seventy7x

I found this blog today in my sprint around the internet. at first I was turned off because the first entry that comes up had something to do with masturbation being bad, and feminism somehow being related to giving minors vibrators, and I was like "wtf?"

but then I got to clickin, as I do, and I found two amazing entries out of many, many good entries.

A Gentle and Quiet Spirit? - what the scripture actually says about women's decorum in church.


Submission: A Touchy Subject - not only is this a really well thought out entry, but I also liked the following quote:
... these passages are indeed difficult and have certainly been abused, but given that Christians do not have the option to ignore them or erase them, we must find a way to engage them such that they cohere with the whole of the Bible.

she is so right. it's tempting to pick out one or two verses and be like, "look, it's the truth." but it's handy to have a thorough knowledge of the Bible to refer back to when things look a bit wonky or inconsistent. there are so many verses that can be interpreted in a harmful way, or are just confusing. but in reading the whole of the Bible you get a sense of the spirit, the theme if you will. and understanding that theme will colour how you understand and interpret each verse. it totally makes the difference between use and abuse in contentious verses like these.


oh, and then on another blog there's this: Helping Wounded Husbands
about how we've been fed an unrealistic image of the ideal Christian dude who fills all these roles and shoulders all these burdens. best line: It’s not a mindless sidekick waiting on an order. It’s Morpheus or Trinity to the Matrix’s Neo.

so I am revamping this journal to make it more legible and organized and also relevant. I have been trying to get entries from my regular blog and repost them here, backdating them so that everything sort of makes sense. anyway, I started reading old entries and then started googling stuff and finding references, and got lost on this whole train of semi-related blogs for like the last four hours, which happens a lot now that I am unemployed.

but anyway. a few weeks ago I was having this conversation with someone I like a lot. we were talking about spirituality and he said basically that he doesn't know what spirituality is. and it was so hard for me to define, because in my mind it's almost like a nerve or a vein, connecting me with God and filling up my life and giving my life this whole other dimension and fullness that I can't imagine living without. but how do you explain that to someone who doesn't "know" God in the sense that Jesus is not his personal saviour? how do you explain it to an agnostic without sounding vague and sort of retarded?


OKAY the point is: I totally found this quote in an article by Lauren F. Winner about why chastity is awesome. this article is stupid. and I think that because I resent the notion that promiscuous people have trained their genitals to behave uncontrollably, and that "it stands to reason" that people who were sexually active before getting married will cheat on their spouses. because we all know that liking lots of dicks in college = not possessing willpower or love or respect or ethics or a sense of moral decency. so it follows that abstaining from sex till marriage automatically gives you skills you need to make your marriage last, like communication skills and healthy boundaries! wait, what?

I just hate how sex is demonized as, like, this huge epic tragedy that will surely cause the total downfall of humankind. my ongoing beef with churches is that they disproportionately emphasize abstinence and purity, especially for teens and young people of my age demographic. somehow this adherence to "biblical" purity (which is all too often Joshua Harris purity or John Eldredge purity or lol Ted Haggard purity) trumps everything else when it comes to predicting whether your marriage will survive or whether you as a person will have a fulfilling life. wtf is that? people need to spend more time working on their respect for others, their honesty, and their integrity. oh, and their sex education knowledge, since statistics show that abstinence-only education directly contributes to rising teen pregnancy rates. mmm mmm good.


ANYWAY now that I have totally digressed. this was a good part of the article which I otherwise kind of hated:

The language of spiritual discipline, an ancient idiom of the church, has come into vogue again. In the 1970s and '80s, two books on spiritual disciplines, now rightly considered modern-day classics, were published: Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline and Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines. Foster and Willard called readers to deepen their Christian lives by incorporating ancient practices of the church. These books struck a tremendous chord, and Christians of all stripes began exploring habits and structures like liturgical prayer, fasting, solitude, simplicity, and tithing.

The spiritual disciplines are things we do; they are things we practice. They are ways we orient our whole selves—our bodies and minds and hearts, our communities and rhythms and ways of being in the world—toward God. Thinking of spirituality as something we practice or do strikes some people as odd. Isn't the point of Christianity that Jesus saves you regardless of what you do? No, doing spiritual practices doesn't get you into heaven. Rather, practicing spiritual disciplines helps align your feelings, your will, and your habits with God's will.


this is interesting to me because it confirms my general understanding of today's evangelical dogma; that is, that a lot of it has been developed over time by contributions of the peanut gallery. sometimes it's spiritual God-centred books like these that change the focus of modern Christianity and shape its culture. sometimes it's ubiquitous books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye and The Sacred Romance that begin to transform peoples' ideas of their lives, their bodies, their gender, their roles in the home. and sometimes it's people like W. K. Kellogg who launch campaigns motivated by racism, classism and personal vendettas that nonetheless end up riling people up and causing giant changes in the way we view our world, ourselves, our morality. it makes me wonder how people viewed spiritual growth back in the day, beside "cleanliness is next to godliness" and the Angel In The House bullshit.

but then there are modern texts which introduce ideas that resonate so deeply within me. especially when they reference ancient beliefs hatched in or around the time that Jesus lived. and there's this:


Discipline is a modern term for what the old church would have called asceticism, which comes from the Latin word ascesis, meaning exercise. And, indeed, the spiritual disciplines are, in part, exercises that train us in the Christian life. Thinking about physical exercise, actually, can help us understand spiritual exercise. Serious runners run at least three or four times a week, rain or shine, whether or not they feel like it. Even on the days you don't enjoy your jogs, you know you are maintaining your skills and strengths so you can go for that run on the beach when you want to. Spiritual practices form in us the habits, skills, and strengths of faithful followers of Christ. Committing myself to a discipline of daily prayer, for example, teaches me how to be a person of prayer. Committing myself to tithing, even when it pinches my budget, turns me into a person who understands that all is a gift, that all belongs to God. As Willard explains in The Spirit of the Disciplines, spiritual practices "mold and shape" us. They are activities "undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and his kingdom. … To grow in grace is to grow in what is given to us of God and by God. The disciplines are then, in the clearest sense, a means to that grace and also to those gifts."


if Lauren F. Winner wrote a whole article about how overall discipline brings us closer to God, then I would probably not be making sarcastic jokes about her last name in my mind, and I would be less inclined to get so incensed. in my mind, abstaining from sex is a discipline EQUAL TO "liturgical prayer, fasting, solitude, simplicity, and tithing." and yet, later in the article she's talking about how great it is to integrate fasting, prayer, and bible study into chastity, she throws out this quote: The world would not have ended if I'd eaten some. I don't think God was sitting in heaven jotting notes to himself about my cheese intake. But in passing up the cheese, I got the inkling of a lesson. I am not captive to this desire. I can pass up the mac and cheese. I can say, Nope, today I'm fasting from cheese.

notice how you never see Christians treating sex that way? you never hear anyone say, "well, God's not taking notes on my sex life. the world won't end if I put my dick in this hole. I could've banged that broad just now, but I didn't, because I am learning an inkling of a lesson." no dude, instead of being a lesson in self control, abstaining from sex is a life-or-death morality-squelching WMD that the terrorists probably invented. weird how you never hear anyone denounce religious fasters for slipping up and eating Kraft Dinner which will surely put them on a path toward obesity and spiritual degeneration and early herpes-ridden death since they obviously have no self control and are polluting their lives with sin.

instead of having someone throw statistics at me about what percent of Christians believe that anal sex doesn't count as sex, I'd like to see more ZOMG PANIC articles about how many Christians don't tithe. because I heard in a sermon once that if every self-identified Christian in the world consistently tithed, world poverty would be eradicated. think about it!!!

that being said I think that this view on discipline in general, without all the chastity business, is a good one. I would like to find these books by Richard Foster and Dallas Willard. I would love to know what prompted them to examine ancient methods of spiritual discipline and recommend them for modern use. was it just because they were trying to find a new angle with which to sell books during the evangelical/fundie resurgence of the 70's and 80's? or were they just trippin' along in bible study and find these verses and it hit a nerve?

the exercise analogy for spiritual discipline is worth thinking about. meditating over, even. because even I with all my wayward shenanigans notice that when I pray, fast, tithe and yes abstain from sex... those veins I was telling you about, that connect me to God and illuminate everything and make me feel connected and well? those seem to enlarge. they get stronger. the get hotter, and faster, and more pronounced. they pump more of the good stuff into me. they make me feel really good and really aware of my self, my body, and that heart of mine pumping away. when I exercise, my spiritual cardiovascular system is strengthened and then I can do even more and I have more power. I soak up God the way my body uses oxygen from my blood.

so maybe that is what spirituality really is. it's being aware of a heartbeat somewhere within you, that you can't see, but nevertheless know that it is your centre and without it you would die. it's exercising by employing those disciplines... not merely adhering to behavioural standards so that you can keep hanging out with the cool kids at church, or so that the neighbours don't talk, but because you feel the desire for something more and you strengthen it because you know you need it. because you want to move with something more than your body, and you can't do it unless you have oxygen. that's what spirituality is. it's circulation, and God is the heart.

dating unbelievers. this is a common theme in my life... that, homosexuality, and fornication. natch.


recap: I dated my most recent ex for 2.5 years. we lived together. it was very serious. in the end, it was not right for me and I broke up with him four months ago and moved out of our shared apartment a month after that.

atheism was significant part of the dealbreaking, among many other things. not a big part, but a significant and important part. I am a Christian and he is an atheist, simple as that. I can't wrap my head around atheism and he can't wrap his mind around Christianity and that is that. when I met him, I was at a low point in my faith so I wasn't exactly looking for anything more than a friend with benefits, much less a spiritual leader and godly man partner. you dig? but as time went on I realized that my faith was still important to me. it hurt that not only did my ex just not "get it", but he never would, and had no interest in getting it.

I hoped that maybe he would see the truth that I see, but I didn't expect it. still, I would have wanted him to come to certain church events or meet some of my Christian friends, the way I went to support him at work or school events and met his friends who are all laser people and do things I can never hope to understand. so there's that, a small issue. a BIG issue is that in the long run I perceived disrespect for what I found important. for example, he told me he didn't believe in marriage as an institution but would do it for me, as his partner, who he loved and wanted to be with for life. but when it came time to actually talk about getting serious, he would merely argue with me. he would not acknowledge that it was important to me from both a legal and a spiritual standpoint. instead, he would instigate arguments and or change the subject in order to avoid committing one way or another.

there is another component to our failure and that is the lack of a challenge. I think, as a Christian woman, I ended up expecting him to act like a Christian man is supposed to. unfair? maybe. I didn't go into it with those expectations. but as I began to get back to strengthening my relationship with God, that lack became really obvious and pronounced. will he challenge me to grow? will he allow me to challenge him for the better? can I trust him to make decisions about our household and our finances? will he "lead" me if need be? can we function as one unit?
because after all, when two people are married, in God's eyes they become one. oneness is both a practical thing, I think, and a mental/emotional/spiritual thing. you're united in your philosophies of the mundane (finances, household duties, responsibilities, jobs) and the intangible (goals, values, ambitions, dreams, core understanding of what it is to love and be loved). there is also a oneness that comes out of being united under God and growing closer through Him which is sort of a moot point when you are talking about Christians and atheists marrying each other, but I digress.

I need that oneness. I don't want to marry someone for "reasons" knowing that it's a temporary arrangement until we get tired of each other. I respect and enjoy the differences between men and women, and the unique personality traits that made my ex who he was. but if I'm going to be with someone for life, it's not going to be us sitting around and watching reality tv and not progressing as human beings. we are going to be like two oxen pulling a cart, equally as strong and bright, pulling at the same speed and each encouraging the other to keep the pace.
and God IS going to be a part of it because he's part of MY life. and oneness is to be achieved, God has to be part of it. I'm not sure I buy the whole "Christians must marry Christians" idea but I do know I need to be with someone who does not deny or attempt to disprove something that, to me, is The essential truth of my life.

then again, it is pretty difficult to ignore 2 Corinthians 6:14-17 .


that all being said, being Christian does not automatically mean that someone is an appropriate mate for me. a close friend and I were discussing this because we both know a guy I have referenced here on this journal... a guy who, for all his convictions and devotion to Christ, was not very respectful of my lifestyle, my space, my body and my needs. my close friend has had a similar experience with him. if I had dated and married him, would that be a productive union pleasing to God? would he and I have been like oxen pulling a cart? no, I think we would have been pulling in opposite directions, end result me kicking him in the face. there were so many things we differed on (he was a political conservative who believed global warming didn't exist and who told me my body modification obscured my "natural beauty") but he was so blinded to these really glaring and obvious differences because he was caught up in this "must find a wife" mindset and aggressively courting all the single girls in the church.


so here is my new list of no compromise.

self awareness.

integrity.

honesty and truth-seeking.

progressive.

left of centre, politically.

similar sense of humour.

someone whose mind is always growing.

someone who leaves room in our relationship for God and knows that God is going to be my motivation for everything major in our lives together.

I think it's amazing when people try to un-convert me. Out of nowhere, in a seemingly innocuous conversation, someone I considered a friend will start telling me how stupid Christianity is and how they wish all religious people would die. Or I'll mention I'm a Christian and the person I'm talking to will all of a sudden bring up "facts" and half-assed arguments to attempt to show me how misguided I am.

Now, imagine you are a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu or even an atheist, and you happen to mention your beliefs in passing as part of the conversation you are having with me. If I immediately started telling you that you were an idiot, or started trying to challenge you, or attempted to convert you to Christianity then and there because I was convinced my way was the right way, I'd be accused of bigotry. Now, why doesn't it work the other way? Why is it that people can mock my beliefs and insult me, my friends and family members to my face for our religion, and it's just accepted? And these very same people go on to call themselves open-minded and progressive.

My favourite conversational anecdote was when a "friend" all of a sudden started spouting off "reasons" to doubt Christianity. This was the key to his rationale: "Well, why does every other religion have a flood story then?"
1. The flood apparently actually happened. There is scientific evidence to show that there was a massive flood in this time period.
2. Since many different traditions have a flood story as well as the Bible, that means they all agree with this aspect of the Bible. So I don't see how that means the Bible is wrong if many other religions agree. In fact... doesn't that sort of confirm what the Bible says?
3. Why are you so rude?

so you may have noticed that I took all my old "Premarital Sex and Why It Will Save Your Life" entries down from wordpress and stuck them into one big entry on this blog.
that whole series of blogs was quite popular with my friends who, I suspect, were wary/weary of my constant chirping about my beliefs, and relieved to see I'd had the sense knocked back into me, ostensibly with the thrust of a peen. also, it generated a lot of traffic and got a lot of comments from randoms, which is new. wordpress is far more "reader friendly", it seems. which is why I moved everything here.

the PSAWIWSYL series was popular because it conformed to a lot of what people want to believe today. that is, sex is awesome, you can have sex without worrying about morality, homos are good times, abstinence will warp you, the church is outdated, let's go bang. but I took it down because I was starting to not believe all that myself. trust me, it's far more convenient and pleasurable for me to believe all that. but I'm not sure that I do.

I wrote it when I was in a very dark period of my "Christian walk", doubting much of what I had been taught and choosing to align myself with the interpretation of more liberal writers and thinkers. I'm still not sure what God thinks everyone should be doing, and I'm not sure such a blanket prescription exists for everyone's sex lives. but as I began to work my way towards a relationship with God again, I realized that my anger, suspicion and disappointment (in myself, in God, in the Christian "lifestyle", in celibacy, in other Christians) was at best misguided, if not outright unfounded.

I blamed God and other people for the results of my year of celibacy -- for the loneliness, the confusion, the frustration, the warped sense of purpose and the increased desire for sexual gratification at any cost. in reality, it was a result of my sin. I was doing God's will for me, but with the wrong attitude. I didn't date, but still indulged in feelings of lust and infatuation, still flirted with unsuitable guys while shunning actual dates with more appropriate suitors. I didn't guard my heart. instead of turning to God in my loneliness, I obsessed over my own desires even more. as a result, although many things changed for the better, many aspects of my sinful life and approach to dating/sex remained the same.

I still think I was treated badly by some of the men at my church, both the sex-addicted "bad guy" and the well-meaning "good guy", both of whom disrespected me and violated my boundaries, albeit in very different ways. I still think the leader of my old church handled the situation badly, mostly because it was probably so alien to her and she just figured God would sort it all out. I still think many congregations need to change the way they think about sex, sin, and people who've had premarital sex. but this isn't God's fault. none of it is. I developed the "root of bitterness" (Hebrews 12:15) because of my own actions, and this isn't God's fault either. God has great things planned for us if only we obey, and though I was obedient "on paper", my heart was still disloyal.

I posted in my other journal about my struggles with forgiveness. here are some links of interest I've been perusing today:


Counterfeit Forgiveness

Defining Christian Forgiveness

The Question of Christian Forgiveness (basically, whether forgiveness is conditional)

Fundamental Christian Attitudes: Forgiveness
this one is my favourite... the most convicting and edifying, but also the most difficult to read, for me.

"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns [wells] that cannot hold water."
Jeremiah. 2:13

"Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more."
Ephesians 4:19

"Death and destruction are never satisfied, and neither are the eyes of man"
Proverbs 27:20


"Men are in a restless pursuit after satisfaction in earthly things. They will exhaust themselves in the deceitful delights of sin, and, finding them all to be vanity and emptiness, they will become very perplexed and disappointed. But they will continue their fruitless search. Though wearied, they still stagger forward under the influence of spiritual madness, and though there is no result to be reached except that of everlasting disappointment, yet they press forward. They have no forethought for their eternal state; the present hour absorbs them. They turn to another and another of earth's broken cisterns, hoping to find water where not a drop was ever discovered yet."
- Charles Spurgeon

"None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it."
- Richard Chenevix Trench: Notes on the Parables. Prodigal Son Osbeck, Kenneth W., 101 More Hymn Stories, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications) 1997.

"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." (Prov. 4:23)


sometimes when you are listening to testimonies of other people you will hear them say that God has "spoken" to them. and I always used to wonder what that meant, whether angels attended or the clouds opened up and some crazy natural phenomena occured to accompany the Divine Word about to be bestowed on the lowly human follower.

I do find that when you are very close in your spiritual relationship with God, when you are really in tune with His Word and really seeking His heart, that He will speak to you.

sometimes it's through His Word. as you read the Bible, a certain verse may "hit" you or ring true to you or be especially relevant to your situation. Christians believe that the Word is "alive" and thus it does have the capability to communicate in that sense.

sometimes it's through other people, ie. you have a question and have prayed for an answer, and the next day you have a conversation with someone and they say something (sometimes totally randomly) that suddenly convinces you of what you need to do. I find this happens more in conversations with believers, although occasionally in unbelievers.

sometimes it happens in random "coincidences" that pretty much makes it clear... sometimes after you pray about what to do in a certain situation, you'll find out that, out of options A, B, and C, options A and B have been suddenly and inexplicably closed to you by external factors, leaving C as the only possible option.

and SOMETIMES you will hear it, while you pray or meditate on his Word and even while you're just chilling. not audibly. not a booming voice from the clouds. it's more like this phrase that pops up in your head, accompanied with such clarity and certainty that you know it's not your own mind chattering, but rather a divine communication.

this happened to me on a memorable trip to the wilderness last summer. in retrospect it's kind of interesting to me that I spent 4 days in the wilderness, fasting, unknowingly preparing myself for temptation. Jesus' fast in the wilderness was 40 days, but Jesus also didn't work for the government and I couldn't take any more time off.

I was lying in a tent doing absolutely nothing. fasting. staring up out of the mesh tent-top at the sky, the movement of the trees, feeling the cool wind blowing in and around me, listening to the lake about three metres away from my quiet campsite. and I heard God speak, and He said two things.


Stay away from Z.

and,

If you keep yourself pure, and respect your body in this way, and keep well away from Z, then I will give you what you want.


it was undeniable. everything was very clear. and of course I had already felt the stirrings of temptation from 'Z', it was already starting to affect me. I saw the danger clearly.

SO WHY DIDN'T I LISTEN?

in the coming months I was drawn closer and closer to 'Z', to the point that I couldn't think of anything else. my life literally unravelled. my faith crumbled, and I was no longer close to any of my strong Christian friends. I certainly did not care about church and never picked up my Bible unless I needed to read it for homework. and I did not get the thing that I wanted, in fact I got the opposite.
it got to the point that my devotion was almost Pavlovian - at the snap of Z's fingers I'd salivate, sit, stand, undress, spread my legs, whatever. and it certainly eclipsed my devotion to God.

interestingly, in spite of my disobedience, and in spite of my deep desire to utterly disregard the summer warning, and fully, physically give in to my temptation, I couldn't.
because there were several scheduled times we were supposed to consummate this temptation, and things would get in the way... either one of us would fall sick, or some other circumstance would arise. I started to strongly suspect that these "roadblocks" were God's way of keeping me from totally losing myself in it, although I really wanted to.

I also started to strongly suspect that the implications would be totally disastrous beyond my expectations. my life was already falling apart, my mind was already possessed and destroyed, what could be worse?
but if the outcome of the sexual involvement was such that God was prepared to intervene in my life over and over just to stop it from happening, then... it must be much, much worse.

I managed to wrench myself away after several months by distracting myself with other things and people. the strong draw was still there, but so was this feeling of utter disgust that had been slowly growing since last winter. the core of it was the recognition that this course of action was totally and completely evil. in fact, even being around him felt evil. everything Z did and said was absolutely contrary to the Word of God. absolutely everything, from the way he approached sex and relationships to the disdainful, disrespectful way he treated his peers and coworkers. every word out of his mouth was meant to tear someone down, unless it was meant to get something from them.
and a little while after that, I found out that things WERE much worse than I had thought. I was, of course, being deceived and used for a very long time and was either too naive or too possessed to understand that.

I began to attempt to rebuild my life, and fasting is a part of that. it cleanses your palate in more ways than one, so that your sense of taste becomes ultrasensitive.

"Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Blessed is the person who takes refuge in him." (Psalm 34:8)



and that, my friends, is where I'm at right now. Taking refuge.

Tasting God.

"Look at the nations and watch—
and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,
even if you were told."




- God

9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and He will say, Here I am. If you take away from your midst yokes of oppression [wherever you find them], the finger pointed in scorn [toward the oppressed or the godly], and every form of false, harsh, unjust, and wicked speaking,
10 And if you pour out that with which you sustain your own life for the hungry and satisfy the need of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in darkness, and your obscurity and gloom become like the noonday.
11 And the Lord shall guide you continually and satisfy you in drought and in dry places and make strong your bones. And you shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters fail not.
12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of [buildings that have laid waste for] many generations; and you shall be called Repairer of the Breach, Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.


I have been rereading my past blog entries and noticing that I haven’t updated since just before I met my current (atheist) boyfriend. I know many people who would read a lot into that. I myself don’t know what it means. Maybe I have just been too happy and too preoccupied to spend hours at my computer obsessing about spirituality?

Anyways, I’ve been feeling the effects of physical and psychological addictions, not in the form of anything more specific than a vague feeling of being unwell. That, and in rereading this blog and other blogs I am realizing that there are some fixations I should have been able to vanquish on my own and I can’t, they are too strong. It manifests in the form of dreams. I used to be a prophet, my only gift is such and it has died. I cry all the time. My house and my life should be joyous, and instead everything around me is full of death. I am left wanting things I can never have. Their absence gnaws at me; the unfulfilled desire grates on my soul, as does the knowledge that such desires are wrong.

I sometimes find myself looking back at the year of celibacy and longing for it. It was a different kind of fast. And like those who come out of a water fast, and immediately eat a steak… well, I broke my first fast the wrong way too. I sometimes think I might like to do it again, but I am in love and our sex is sweet and good and I am not willing to break all that in favour of being alone, on purpose, for another year, to make up for mistakes I knew better than to make the first time around. In light of that failure, I am thinking the root lies somewhere else.

Still, I need to release myself from the bonds I have ignorantly placed myself in. I need to release my mind, body, spirit and soul. Much like that first fast, I need to be brutally honest with myself. As a result, I plan to become a new creation symbolically and physically.

We will see how it goes.

loving unconditionally is really difficult and also, by turns, psychologically debilitating.


is it even possible?
I've been saying for months that I wish I were capable of 'agape' love, or all-consuming unconditional love of humankind. even fuckers like roy, even the scum of the earth, the dregs of society, even the people who have used, slandered, betrayed, hurt, molested and deceived me.
you don't necessarily have to be involved with these people to want the best for them and hope that they find the ultimate source of happiness.
in a lot of cases this involves humbling yourself, and this is what is so hard... allowing the other person to have the other hand EVEN WHEN THEY ARE WRONG. softening yourself.

I am just afraid of being too hardened to care at all. Christ's ministry is all about compassion and it's something I don't possess a lot of.

I suppose true altruism is giving when you are expecting nothing back except maybe a "fuck you"... does that mean you should stop giving?
I could deal with giving of myself and getting nothing back, but not sure if I can handle giving and having my actions turned into a mockery or an offense.

then again I suppose a Good Christian would say that's how Jesus felt, etc etc.


the indicators for extreme depression, addiction and suicidal tendencies are all there, and he clearly needs someone. every action is a cry for attention.
do I want to be that "someone"?
am I okay with being randomly verbally abused in response to my concerns?
yeah, not sure what the answer to that is yet.

am tempted to say that it's his own life and his choices determine that it will end in one of two ways: he gets better or he doesn't.


anyway I suppose there is prayer. I guess that's how one is supposed to deal when actually being involved with a person is going to cause harm.

God, keep him and heal him and give him a reason to live.

have been reading lots of John Darby's interpretations of Daniel, Revelations and some other books in preparation for a presentation I am doing on the Rapture and dispensationalism.

I'm not going to say that I agree with everything he says, but it is interesting indeed.

the title of this entry is especially important - especially after just reading it in one of Darby's lectures, a little while after reading an article in an old issue of Time entitled "Does God Want You To Be Rich?"

and it kind of underscores everything I've been thinking about lately concerning materialistic, image-centred glossy churches... like the one I have just about quit attending.


more on this later

this is an entry I wrote on July 5, 2006 in my other journal. I want to share it here.

these days when I talk about spirituality or otherworldly realms or the "unseen" it is usually to lament about how I was once so close to it and how I'm so dead and disconnected and cynical now.


the last few days have been surreal. yesterday (tuesday morning? monday night?) I sat outside and chainsmoked with G. we talked about God and faith and symbolism and spiritual warfare. we talked about things that nobody can see and nobody else seems to be able to feel. afterwards, when C came to start the day shift and he was on his way home, he came over to me and whispered in my ear, "talking to you today was fantastic." he told me that he feels like he can't talk to anyone about "this kind of thing". we smoked and watched the rain start and stop, watched the sun rise and burn through the fog, watched the stream of cars build and build as the rest of the world woke up.

with G it's like when you're with your best friend and you say something really awkward and disjointed and seemingly random and they know you well enough to be able to understand what you're getting at. he can fill in the blank spaces in my words. we are talking about things that are too big for words anyway.

everything has had its face ripped off to expose the tenuous cords holding everything together. things are being built that can never be ripped away. I understand everything in that I don't understand anything. the witches knew -- there is power to midnight, to the early still morning. those hours have magic. the few people awake during those hours are connected by whatever it is, the sparse quiet of those minutes.

I am nocturnal. the rest of the world isn't, which makes banking and shopping and satisfying Wendy's salad cravings a bit difficult sometimes. I have gotten to know the people I spent the last 7 nights with on a whole different level. it thrusts you into deep, meaningful conversation with people you wouldn't ordinarily care to spend time with. I miss all-nighters, I miss the things I think about, I miss my realizations, I miss quiet moments. weird how talks and revelations from this time of night mean very little; the things we've said don't hold much water in "real life", in daylight hours, in "normal" routine.

one day I would like to think I'll marry someone who elicits these reactions and revelations from me. it is a little annoying that L and D and G are married, have daytime lives, have responsibilities, have solid routines and expectations apart from these lapses into other realms. I am learning to take these things for what they are -- insights arising mostly from being in the right place with the right people in the right frame of mind, at a time conducive to verbal and mental experimentation. I wish Roy and I had left it at that and not tried to make it more than it was. I will not try to make it more than it is. yet I do wish I will meet someone with whom it could feasibly be more and still retain that unreal sense of connection, of understanding.

I feel like I am archiving these experiences as they happen. I feel like I am filing things away, labelling and preserving them for future perusal, deciding which moments are worth remembering and which are definitive of Youth. or My Twenties. or some shit. I will get old but I am not yet sure I will die. in my head my life is still very important and these little moments and these fleeting interactions are the happiest, most satisfying parts of it. one day I am sure I will be Routine and I will think back to when I was 20 and hung out with my boss at 4:30 am one summer morning, smoking and talking about the universe, with the whole rest of my life ahead of me, filled with promise. in the meantime, between these moments, I watch a lot of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law and have started reading book 6 of the Dark Tower series. I sleep a lot. I have dreams about my mom accidentally running over and killing my dog. sometimes I look at the internet but not often. I wait for the time that I will be able to feel like the life I am living is actually happening The Way It Should Be. or something.

I dreamt that I wrote an essay on a scholar who said that just because God holds the world in His hands does not mean that we are safe and free. it made more sense last night. I should have written it down.

humility = being okay with not having the upper hand.



in other news.
the Prison Break theme at church has come to an end today, I think.
today's sermon kind of collided with some personal thoughts I've been having as well as things said by N in this conversation we had on friday.

basically I am thinking back to the time in my life where I lived for God and only God. I wasn't all caught up in relationships, sex and etc...
alright, that's an enormous lie, because love, sex, homosexuality and gender issues occupied me constantly during that time but I chose to act in a spirit of chastity and purity.

and, oh man, the changes were immense.
the changes in my head, in my physical body, in my relationships... not all of them were necessarily positive, but they were there nonetheless.

I am not going to get into it here. it's a long and complicated meandering thought process that will probably end in me getting really retrospective and rehashing the same stuff that I always rehash.
I was not 'happy' then. things were not easy, but I felt that they were RIGHT.


so now I am in this stupid situation, doing things I know other Christians don't approve of... and I know exactly why, and you know what at some point in my life I wouldn't have approved either. at some point I would have been "beyond that". it seems that somewhere along the way, something broke, and I am finding myself doing things and wanting things and saying things even non-christians would find immoral and despicable.

so now is the time where I either admit my 'addiction', get help, be what I was.
it's going to end so badly and it's going to be so hard and result in a lot of bridges being burned.

OR I can keep going, keep trying for that 'thing' I've wanted for so long.


what happens if I get what I want?

let's not deny it - we are all so twisted and fragile and perverse and confused and enslaved.


sometimes I am not sure why we attempt to impose order on any of it.

and sometimes I look at all the systems, and all the rituals, and all the doctrines, and all the superficiality... and I don't understand how we got here. it totally boggles me. it's like when I try to think of the evolution of music when I'm stoned... it's just too much, too many variations, too much history and culture attached to these weird little chords.

ehh okay yeah I overthink.


anyway there is this base messiness about us that I guess we all try to cover up and ignore. we're all so base.
even the refinement and purity that comes from getting saved and being close to God isn't going to change the messy reality of our physical form and of our mental makeup, our base nature.

I could go on and on for hours because I don't know how to say what I want to say.
I'm in a place right now where I am very well-acquainted with the "low", the "animal", the "baseness"...
in 2005, two years ago, I was in the opposite position, focused entirely on the mental/spiritual, the pure, the sacred. and I did not touch anyone, ever, in any way.

in 2006 I attempted to bring the two extremes together in a way that crashed and burned. trying to reconcile the spiritual with the physical, the pure with the profane. and it can't be done. or if it has, I haven't figured out how to do it yet. I don't know where to strike the balance.



It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home -- only the millions of last moments . . . nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

a Christian friend of mine once got upset with me for giving her son a box with a brass pentacle on its lid. she considered the sign to be an evil omen and didn't want it in her house.

I gave the guy the box a long time ago, before I was a Christian... but I still never felt right about it.
I know the symbol is used in pagan rituals and is sometimes thought to symbolize the devil... but... we need to realize that these marks and symbols and everything keep getting adopted by different groups of people and used to achieve different ends, their meanings hijacked, and their original functions perverted and evolved and added to or stripped down over time.


here is an interesting passage from Sir Gawain and The Green Knight:

And why that noble prince bare the pentangle I am minded to tell you, though my tale tarry thereby. It is a sign that Solomon set ere-while, as betokening truth; for it is a figure with five points and each line overlaps the other, and nowhere hath it beginning or end, so that in English it is called "the endless knot." And therefore was it well suiting to this knight and to his arms, since Gawain was faithful in five and five-fold, for pure was he as gold, void of all villainy and endowed with all virtues. Therefore he bare the pentangle on shield and surcoat as truest of heroes and gentlest of knights.

For first he was faultless in his five senses; and his five fingers never failed him; and all his trust upon earth was in the five wounds that Christ bare on the cross, as the Creed tells. And wherever this knight found himself in stress of battle he deemed well that he drew his strength from the five joys which the Queen of Heaven had of her Child. And for this cause did he bear an image of Our Lady on the one half of his shield, that whenever he looked upon it he might not lack for aid. And the fifth five that the hero used were frankness and fellowship above all, purity and courtesy that never failed him, and compassion that surpasses all; and in these five virtues was that hero wrapped and clothed. And all these, five-fold, were linked one in the other, so that they had no end, and were fixed on five points that never failed, neither at any side were they joined or sundered, nor could ye find beginning or end. And therefore on his shield was the knot shapen, red-gold upon red, which is the pure pentangle.


it's all in our heads.

or something.


I apologize if the symbol offends you, if you do indeed consider it to be evil and demonic... or rather if the symbol has another spiritual meaning for you and you feel like I've compromised/perverted that in a way by discussing it here in relation to Christianity.
I was just amazed to see such a biblical rendering of a symbol I had always considered to be linked to paganism, witchcraft etc. THE MORE YOU KNOW... etc





so I suppose that raises the question... do symbols HAVE power? and what gives the symbol its power? is it our belief, our intent, that charges it?

makes me lie down in green pastures.

god breaks my leg so i'll stay in one place, because i don't get the message, and keep turning to run, so finally he snaps a femur or some shit so i'll stop and chill and humble myself.

moral relativism is a way easier philosophy to reconcile oneself with, then any kind of restrictiveness or asceticism or anything based on an invisible god or a book written two millenia ago.
yet. as much as I would love to embrace moral relativism I am called back again and again to scrutinize the reasons certain things are prohibited or discouraged in the bible, and I have to admit that God's way is the right way.



R tells me that muslims believe that the torah, bible and qur'an are all true, that it's the same god sending different prophets to fix things where humans have tried to wreck it by imposing their own doctrines.
the difference between the qur'an and the other books is that no human hand has altered the book from the prophet muhammad's original writings.

today in class, the guy who hates religion got in a word-fight with the psychochristian, about premarital sex.

it came up because of the virgin/whore dichotomy present in the new testament, and (arguably) still present in the consciousness of contemporary Christians.


I was going to write something really clever using my superamazing Bible Knowledge, analyzing this phenomenon.

I was also going to talk about what it was like to be part of a church that emphasized radical purity...

there was a time in my life where I was sure I was going to marry the guy I lost my virginity to. yet that guy was too insecure and emotionally abusive to ever let me be myself. his sexual-mental issues of course had an effect on my development as a sexual being and my self-confidence. had I stayed in that relationship, I would have been ruined.

there was a time in my life when I shunned monogamous relationships in favour of merely trying to experience as much as possible.

there was this terrible time when I became infatuated with someone who was engaged (and he let me, encouraged me even)... ironically this was the same person who guided me to a church and was responsible for me finding God again.

and then there was a time when I was made to feel guilty about all of it, and went through a year and a half of intense self-searching. and guilt. I couldn't even think about having sex. I couldn't visualize it. I suspected maybe I had forgotten how... but I didn't desire it anyway. even thinking about hugging the person I was infatuated with, was almost too much to handle.

now I am just kind of into living my life, and don't think about it one way or another except in the most abstract and academic of ways.

I do remember a well-meaning church peer who kept assuring me that "despite your past, God has forgiven you. I'm sure that someday you'll find a nice Christian guy who can overlook the fact that you've slept with a dozen men and women, and love you for who you are!"

kthx.


at this point I am just tired of the need to label myself either/or.
tired of this obsession.
it's funny how sex becomes so important and yet in some ways it's treated so casually.
I think I will write about this later, because trying to reconcile everything and come to some kind of definite conclusion is exhausting.

the apocalypse class is getting ridiculous.

it's awesome and I love it, but out of twelve people the only ones who talk are me, Q, this psychochristian, a supermuslim, and this other guy who I've had classes with before who seems to hate religion.


the (extremely attractive) supermuslim took me out to dinner last week and made me sit in the car with the heat on while he scrubbed the snow and ice off for me.
I think it is less of a romantic gesture and more of a need to be nice to potential converts.


anyways the prof tends to argue with us about the truth of prophecy -- he tends to think that apocalyptic literature is less prophetic and more psychological.

whatever, no way to know until the world ends, right?

two things.


#1

alright man let's talk about the Beatitudes.
you'll find them in the book of Matthew, chapter 5, verses 3 through 10.

this is what it says:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.


so what have we learned?
you are BLESSED when you suffer. you are blessed when you cry, when you hurt. you are blessed in your loss and your anger and your helplessness.

I think it's interesting that we're not blessed when we're awesome and self-sufficient and confident and proud and carefree. we are blessed in our vulnerability and our pain.

(I want to also point out that "Jesus wept"... the Marquis de Sade mocked a God who would lower Himself and be bothered to cry, to be affected by anything we do. I am amazed by it. God can cry for us. why don't we cry for each other?)

I wrote before about this quote in An Ironic Christian's Companion, about how we're not here to throw bible verses at each other but to be present for each other.
how I wish I had had that, in 2004-2005. someone who was open to me, someone who helped me know I was blessed in my confusion and my humility and my wrongful shame. someone who was present for me, instead of people throwing truisms and verses and John Piper/Beth Moore/Joshua Harris quotes at me while making sure to stay well away for fear of catching my sin. horrors! not sex! or even worse... TEH GAY!!!!!

no, we're here to trust each other, to be trustworthy, to confide in and be confided in.
look at the early church described in Acts. they practiced this radical selflessness, radical honesty, sharing everything they had, united by this love and joy of serving God. I imagine that it was not only a material sharing but an intense emotional and mental sharing too. these men and women called each other "brother" and "sister", and they definitely didn't have thousands of years of BS Christian tradition forcing them to do it out of habit either ... these people were closer than family, closer than blood.

when you mourn. when you hurt.
and when you open yourself, when you give without expecting to receive, when you do what's right even if it kills you, even when others take advantage of the kindness you offer... you are blessed.

---

#2


if anyone asks me about my tattoo I am inclined to tell them exactly what the translation means and no more, unless they ask for more. most people don't. then again most people don't want a really complicated summary of the reasons I identify with these two D. H. Lawrence novels either.

one, The Man Who Died, is about Jesus coming back to life post-crucifixion.
far from the exalted divine entity popularized by Christian lore, Jesus in this story is fully human, having surrendered his Godliness upon his death.
he has suffered. he has died. and now he lives AGAIN, having seen that darkness and touched that coldness, knowing that NO ONE ELSE ON EARTH CAN RELATE. no one can ever imagine what he has been through. he cannot even have relationships or touch other people or entertain emotions because he is so shattered by this. he cannot bear to be touched because he is still so empty and wasted from this ordeal, and no one gets it, and they are still caught up in their passions, in giving and receiving, and the people around him are so betrayed because he can't participate in their love or their revolution or their ecstasy at being new creations, he can't bear it because all he has done is make himself open and allow others to open to him and here he is, a hollowed-out man. post death.

he still sees life around him, recognizes it; it manifests itself as a visible thing, as colours and shapes and light.
people still entreat him and want things from him or offer things to him or ask questions.
he forfeits and wanders off to Lebanon where no one will know him or seek him out.

he can't handle it until he finally lets down his guard and allows himself to be touched and loved by another human being again. it's an act of courage for him to even initiate such contact, especially with a woman like the priestess he meets, who has been doing her thing so long she no longer knows how to interact in a "normal" way. all she sees is someone who needs to be resurrected and she does it the only way she knows how -- with total, full, pure love -- without expectations.


lack of trust and lack of faith tends to break us down, beat us to the bone until we won't give. we harden against the onslaught of criticism, doubt, pain, betrayal, disappointment... and the hardening, that shell or wall or whatever analogy you want to use, that goes two ways. you are impervious to other people, safe within yourself, and yet you're not doing a whole lot of giving either... no compassion, no love, no trust in return.



it's kind of funny how, when I'm with certain friends, I sometimes mock men in my life for crying with me instead of being manly and aggressive and whatever, enter adjective here. for being vulnerable instead of playing the certain masculine role they're "supposed to" naturally assume.
(but since when are stoicism, aggression, emotional impermeability, or HARDNESS given characteristics of any human being? we all have our soft places. we all have our weakness. we all have our need.)

it's funny because I pretend to disrespect these people when really I am so touched by it. I pretend to be disappointed when in reality I think it's absolutely beautiful and wish it would happen more.
it is just easier to be stoic, facetious, contemptuous, flippant.
and it works the other way too -- I'd rather laugh and joke about the things that really wound me instead of crying about them in the presence of someone I respect. or crying about them alone... or admitting them ever.

it's funny how we're so ashamed of this.
why do we do this?
it's beautiful, we should be available for each other more, we should open up for each other, we should tell each other our secrets and help each other through this shit instead of bogging each other down with feelings of shame and disrespect. and of course gossip.

eh, I am just as bad as anyone, I wall it up.

or I confide, then spend the rest of the time afterward in ABSOLUTE TERROR that either my confidante will spread it around, or think less of me for being emotionally open.

why are we so ridiculous?


blessed are those who mourn.