C.S. Lewis

"We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity-like perfect charity-will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."

Awkward

Yes. I've thought enough about the topic of awkwardness to create a post. This is a testiment to the fact that I think too much...Ever notice how, even the word itself is awkward? I mean, spelling it with an a-w-k-w is just odd. I don't think there's another word with that consonant combination in our language.

Though I didn't learn the awkward turtle until 2006, awkwardness has been a part of my life since early childhood. Beyond the klutzy 7-9 ages, twisted junior high age and even beyond the freshman/sophmore college days (what? I am a previously sheltered, though ghetto, homeschooler now surrounded by people?!) I was pained by my inability to avoid uncomfortable situations.

Then I moved to Mississippi and lived with my gay brother for six months. Talk about an awkward shock to my system. "That guy is cute" John says as we watch television. Silence. Those six months taughts me [painstakingly] an invaluable lesson: how to live through the awkward moments instead of always trying to avoid them.

Where that brings me now:

I write alot of letters. In fact, I write alot period. I love it. I often feel that I can express myself more honestly by writing, somehow its safer because I'm, pragmatically, communicating to a screen or a piece of paper and not a face. The situation this presents is that, alot of poeple, several of you in fact, have become good friends to me through written form [I can think of 6 such people right off hand] but on the rare occasions where we hang out in person it's: awkward.

I realize this is probably my fault. It may be perceived awkwardness [J-you could probably tell me if I was awkward at the wedding or not]. More than likely, however, is the following senerio: I'm thinking to myself - they know what it's my head because I wrote and told them, but now, because they know and because they're right in front of me, I'm feeling vulernerable and I don't know what to do. Take it a step further and I think: I know what's in their head because they told me, but what if they are feeling vulnerable as well and they don't want me to bring it up? But if I don't, is it going to be the big white elephant in the room that no one mentions? Its because of this exact situation that many of these friends, I don't see in person [well-B-you're in Italy so that's my excuse there ;-)] and even worse is that I don't want to - because I want to avoid the awkwardness.

So, how do I change that? Does it even need to be changed? Can't I just go on relating throught the safe medium of written form? In some cases, (dt - that's you), it really isn't necessary/appropriate to ever see my friend in person. In most cases, however, I keep coming back to the lesson I learned with my brother and I'm reminded how - when I got through the awkwardness-waiting on the other side was a relationship refined and more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.

-never settle-

Into the Wild

I was really excited to see this film because a) it won a lot of independent film awards, b) it looked to be beautiful artistically with a combination of great music and cinematography, and c) the plot was intriguing: a kid who donates his life savings to charity, leaves his family and material possession behind and backpacks to random places, meeting random people and in the process, learns about the meaning of life.

I was severely disappointed.

I expected it to put forth a worldview where the essence of man is found as he relates to nature, realizing that he is a part of nature and nature is a part of him. Instead of developing this over the course of frames, it immediately presents an extreme philosophy where the meaning of life is found in nature to the exclusion of human relationships, then hammers it home mercilessly over the next 2.5 hours until at the very end, McCandless finally recognizes he needs people and the philosophy shifts. But by this time, you don't care anymore. The constant selfishness of McCandless leaves you feeling that his end was deserved. Contrast with Braveheart, where one man sacrifices himself for the good of everyone's freedom, we find here McCandless sacrificing everyone else for his own personal freedom. It's a depressing movie. The main character finally understands at the end but its too late and it took him far too long to get it.

The music and cinematography are gorgeous but they don't make up for the flaws. Character development is lacking, this is demonstrated by the excessive voice-over which is needed to explain McCandless' motivations, thoughts, and feelings. There are points where McCandless seems to be gaining wisdom, for instance a speech about forgiveness by the grandfather in the desert, but we see no application. Interaction after interaction and nothing seems to make a difference. Further, McCandless never once has self-reflection concerning his own possible character flaws, he is a constant victim. Thus the plot "Come, leave everything behind and follow...nothingness." [Jason's phrasing] leaves not only much to be desired, but much to be depressed about.

Mundane

Life can get mundane sometimes.

I ran yesterday. The sky was gray streaked with blue and the wind was in my face; the air smelled fresh with a twinge of rain. So even though I hadn't run for awhile, I think I pulled out a whole mile :-]

I also danced around the kitchen singing made-up rap songs as loud as I could.

It helped.

parts of my day

In the morning, I wake with a hazy mind full of yesterday's things. Curl my hair, brush my teeth, get dressed, but I don't really notice what I'm doing; there's a disconnect between my thoughts and my actions. Its amazing that, without yet being fully awake, my mind still bounces around so swiftly.

I get in car and everything shifts. As I settle in for the commute I begin to focus on the Christ and His glory and my life. His handiwork is right in front of me as a vast sky breaks with light. The gridlock reminds me how helpless I am and the sky remains me how small I am. I see my life in perspective and often I pray, driving automatically as it were. That hour commute is turning out to be the best time of my day.

I enter my office and another shift takes place. Now, for the first time, my mind and my actions are in sync. I focus for the second time and tackle the paperwork, the e-mails, the phone calls and the visitors.

If its a Tuesday or Thursday, my friend Kristen pops in for a hug and a small chat in between her classes. I'm glad she's here. I visit into the lounge down the hall for coffee and glance at the newspaper headlines of the day. I'm glad to stretch my legs. Sometimes I meet up with Dr. Merrill getting coffee or eating a cookie. I like him because even though he's written books and knows Piper personally, he still talks to me as if I have something to say.

Sometimes for lunch, I go to the cafeteria and get grilled cheese sandwhiches. The chef is amazing at grilled cheese sandwhiches :-] They are my weakness. I don't like the cafeteria unless Kristen is with me because its a swimming sea of poeple I don't know, most of whom are male seminary students and that just makes me nervous. So I usually leave.

In the afternoon, I visit the lounge to make myself several cups of tea. I get up and about alot more because I feel stifled as the hours in my windowless box accumulate. Around 3pm, I visit Laura or Beth, secretaries downstairs. They both have candy and laugh at my antics - which I admit, is a sort of reinforcing of attention seeking behaviors. But I like to think of it as a need to connect and brighten poeple's day. Ironically, they're the ones doing the brightening :-]

When 4:30 comes around and I start wrapping up to leave, I usually have this odd feeling that I don't know what to do with myself. To make it this far in the day means I've beaten down just about every part of my personality. It is slow in rising back to the surface. I always gaze at the sky and inhale deeply when I walk to my car.

The hour commute home is a time I reflect on my day. I have failed miserably in many different ways and not met most of the resovles I had at 7:30 am. Thus, 5:30 pm is when I receive the most grace.

There's more but I'm done for now.

Never settle.

another one

I wish I knew the answers to everything. I wish I could give away faith to those who seem to be losing it; I don't know why God choose me to be the recipient of His grace by filling me with faith. It hasn't been easy or pretty, but it's there: I believe. I know I've lost it at times and struggled to keep it, still, I can't help but think that its all so easy for me, who believes, to tell others they must simply believe. It reminds me of a verse in Job "Those who are at easy hold calamity in contempt." Why do I have faith? Why do I know beyond all the superfilious doubts, that I will never pledge my allegiance to anyone else and that no one else is deserving of it? And, why, oh why, can't I help others understand? If I could reach out and give my faith to those who have none - I would - but I guess that would make me God huh?

I do not strive to know all the answers. I do not strive to do His job. I am simply humbled in His presence and I have no other recourse but to trust. Still, I wish that I could give my faith away like I would my coat to someone who is cold or my sandwhich to someone who is hungry.

-never settle-

How do you let go of something you previously marked time with?

How do you let go of something you felt so strongly was a gift from God?

How do you let go of your favorite wishes everyday, especially when those wishes are the same one repeated?

"Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead." C.S. Lewis

I've been holding on.

Let go.

The things of life

Last night, I sat down with a cup of decaf coffee and read "An Honest Thief" by Fyodor Dostoevsky and "A Father's Story" by Andre Dubus. Both were excellent short stories but Dubus' was particular moving. It spoke about a man losing his identity and finding it again through a struggle to help his daughter. It was moving in its comparisons between a man's relationship with his sons versus his daughters. His daughter finds herself in an awful situation in which the father must respond. I'm paraphrasing here, but he says in essence: if it was my son, I would've called the police and watched them take on the pain and struggle as is a man's lot to overcome and taken pride in the strength of their manhood emerging. But my daughter, I could not have borne her passions. What he means is, he could not simply stand by and watch her go through this with the intensity of emotions which would crush a female soul. Anyhow, its an excellent short story about fatherhood.

I'm glad I read last night. The night before, I got sucked into watching television (yuck) and stayed up an hour past my bedtime. PBS is so addictive. I always despise myself after a night of wasted life before the television. On Saturday mornings, its different though, mainly because of this show: http://www.pbs.org/everydayfood/ :-) I was given a gift certificate to Macy's for Christmas and after endless searching for clothes I liked, I got tired and ended up in the home something department (what is that section called?). I found this cookbook. Realizing it was an excellent investment for my gift card, I promptly bought it. :-] I am disheartened though, that there's no recipe for manicotti in it. In fact, manicotti recipes are scarce even on the internet. Have people stopped eating it? That would be sad in an inconsequential way. It's on the menu for this weeks family night.

My sister and I had a fight Tuesday and it's been hanging over my head all week in an exhausting way. I like to get things in the open, resolve them and move on. She needs a couple days to herself to process and think through. So I have to be patient and wait and its incredibly hard for me to do - I immensely dislike not having things resolved. It's akin to torture to sit and wait and not be communicated to: basically, to be clueless about what she's thinking and how she feels. I have to make sure my character flaw of impatience does not hinder reconciliation. But, those are the things of life.

repeat

Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

-Walter Raleigh-

History or A scattered non-spiritualish post

Sitting on the floor of my room, I reached for something I had never made my own. I put down my pen a moment before having just crafted a short-story which I was inspired to write after reading the "The Blue Cross" by G.K. Chesterton.

But this isn't about writing. It's about history.

My sister, Anne, has this way of speaking about history where her hand motions are illustrious, her eyes light up and somehow the French revolution becomes alive (sometimes too alive ;-). I listen in awe as I learn that Finland courageously defended itself during World War II when the odds were against them 7 to 1 or how General Patton marched his armies audaciously through Germany. She loves history [as every history teacher should] and has slowly been teaching me to love it also.

My eldest brother moved away when I was 19 and left behind a tattered book of half-filled stamps: the remnant of an impressive collection he sold to pay for college. I totted it around with me these past 8 years, through college, to Mississippi and back, without ever really looking at it. I'm not exactly into stamps, except as a means to my extensive letter writing habits. I kept it because its one of the more tangible things he's given me [a love and skill for the piano and basketball, and an interest in physics being the most notable].

As I began to flip through and take note of the stamps, I noticed history was recorded before me in a unique and powerful way. There were stamps in 1942 raising awareness of the war campaign, there were stamps in 1974 about conserving the environment [funny how some things come back around], stamps encouraging people to employ the handicap, a stamp commemorating the Apollo's moon mission that said "In the Beginning, God". Stamps with faces I had never known: a supreme court justice, a congressman that lost his wife to a plane crash in Africa, the man who began labor unions, the education chairman who proposed sending federal funds to institutions of higher education. Stamps commemorating statehood, or the coal miner's union, or celebrating the national park act or celebrating our farmlands, stamps to campaign for beautification urging us to plant trees and flowers in our yards and along our highways.

Stamps are snapshots of our history and culture. Our stamps now aren't bad: flowers and hearts, breast cancer awareness and Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Kwanzaa. But instead of stamps with a picture for education or labor or agriculture, or celebrating the man who established the (then) republic of China, we have: spiderman & Disney. It reflects a society different from yesterday with women baking, men landing on the moon, workers in the fields. But one is not better than the other ...is it? Sometimes I wonder if there are alot of missed lessons out there we could be learning. Perhaps it has something to do with corralling all our wise patriarchs in crumbling group homes? Wait. That's another soapbox :-] Just as in my spiritual walk, I have to ask myself: have I forgotten where I came from? And would things be different if I remembered?

History. It was the stamps that did it Anne; I finally understand. And perhaps, just perhaps, you should be thanking our brother :-]

"Oldness is no vice and newness is no virtue." ~John Piper

To Live is Christ?

The drive or the will to follow Christ comes from Christ. The point where you stop and He starts – where you die to self [Rom. 12:1] and live and move and have your being in Christ (Acts 17), where He wills but you work (Phil. 2:13) - that point is honestly a mystery to me. Your will does fail because it’s yours, sin tainted. In a way, it is okay that your will fails. God is big enough to handle that. God’s will in you working – that is something I can’t make you understand – there is a certain part of it that you can’t wrap your brain around or that you can understand by feeling this way or that.

This is not an easy answer. I would like to have everything figured out – in a way I am often like Adam and Eve striving for the same knowledge as God – regarding equality with God as something to be grasped. Christ Himself did not even regard equality with God as something to be grasped (Philippians 2:5-7) [this is different than seeking after God] Rather than regarding equality (which He certainly had a right to), He humbled Himself and obeyed. Interesting that this verse takes place in the same chapter as the description to work out your Salvation with fear and trembling and trusting God to will through you because your will is inadequate and corrupt.

And when it feels like He’s failed? When you mess up and you say – God, where was your will working through me? What then? Just that: Ask Him. He may discipline you where you need it, He might say: my ways are higher: obey me and then you obey. You accept grace and continue. You can’t run around trying to use Christianity as a magic wand to make you a good person. You don’t get to decide. I know I will fail so I say: God help me and then obey until I rebel and then God brings me back again. There is a subtle difference of running along looking at yourself [I should do this, I ought to be that, why am I not this way?] or running along looking at God [God keep me, God I’m sorry I sinned, God thank you for your grace, God why have I sinned again? God keep me, God you said….]

Thoughts?

-never settle-

To Live

To live is not to backpack.
To live is not to be right.
To live is not to be in the know.
To live is not to be married.
To live is not to be intelligent.
To live is not to be beautiful.

To live is not even to be good.

To live is Christ.

post

I either have too much whirling around in my head to know where to begin or no thoughts at all. Though I don't normally post for the sake of posting, I admit to doing it now :-] We had a party at our house and these pictures show the house, my sister/roomie, my self, and our guests.














never settle