Honey From the Lion

2010-01-14T10:34:00.004-06:00

Art...

Recently, the perils of art have visited my thoughts often. I have noticed a dangerous trend in people concerning art. This trend seems quite large, but mostly strikes me as a widespread personal trend, and as such, seems all the more dreadful. I believe art resides as a toolbox comprised of human communication power tools. In this box rests language arts, visual arts, and the physical arts.

I've heard more than once that "the purpose of art is self expression, or just expression". I think this is a dangerous stance to take on art, and a harmful one to proselytize people with. Art is not an end, but rather a means to an end, an exercise. The exercise of art consists of communicating something unknown into the known, the unseen to the seen, unheard to the heard, and unfelt to the felt.

When people paint, write, act, or sculpt they adorn spiritual things with physical elements, baptizing the unseen in the tactile mediums. this process does not gather meaning from its mere exercise, much like confession does little if the confessor lays his deeds on the deaf ear of a stone wall. One could argue its therapeutic merits such as painting or gardening to relax, but much like the pleasant feelings which accompany charitable actions these pleasant side effects do not comprise the main goal. Much like venting ones grievances at their own reflection in a mirror such practice may offer some momentary solace, but inevitably leads to an endless repetition of such habits, never bearing such a person in the end to healing, understanding, or reconciliation.

I believe the design and creation of people by a benevolent, interested, and loving God. Along with people God designed and created the arts, and no design is arbitrary. Art has a design purpose and use. Of course free will might lead to misuse, but this alone does not negate a preeminent intention and a Godly exercise of artistic tools. Using any powerful thing outside of its intended design heralds danger. Abusing or mishandling art plagues people with a gloomy, perilous state of mind.

The creative impulse comes from the Lord; one aspect of how we reflect His image. I believe art's most profound service to people resides in its communicative capacity. The danger I now see comes from how humanity has grown to regard art's purpose, and ignore its scope of function. The purpose of art has become solely to express, a selfish use of art. Furthermore, the goodness of art is now judged on aesthetics. Songs on their beauty of sound and structure. Paintings on their form, color, and stroke. Drawings on the relationship of lines and form.

Perhaps I decide to follow these rules strictly, seeking only ever to exercise my language arts with my utmost ability and aesthetic skill; only ever speaking for self expression. I would use only beautiful words, stringing them together with rhythm and melody. I would have no care for the content or meaning, as long as it pleases the ear, as long as it entertains mentally and physically. I would be a selfish, noisy gong. And only one convinced that this was good language art could praise it.

Art facilitates intimate communication better than any other medium, creating a forum for the voices of the deep. When it becomes nothing more than fashion show it no longer performs its most meaningful function. When the end of Art is to impress instead of to communicate we neuter it, rob it of its color and potency.

This is certainly no black and white matter. However, I contend that there exists greater and lesser shades of grey concerning many subjects, including this one. Art has an appropriate use and an appropriate scale. More on this later...

2009-04-05T11:34:00.005-05:00

Schindler's List

I recently watched Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List". Somehow I had manage to mentally miscategorize this film. I was a little too young to appreciate when it first came out. The people I knew who had seen said, "Oh my gosh, it's so sad and long. You probably won't like it." I said, "Alright, I don't like it".

Well now I've seen it and I love it! I watched the ending twice. I cried both times. I watched all the extras the DVD had to offer and cried some more. I disagree about it being a sad movie. Let me explain.

The story is certainly set in a tragic time period and circumstances: WWII and the Holocaust. "Schindler's List" isn't about that though. It's an incredibly heroic tale of people persevering, and one man sacrificing almost everything to save a great many people.

This isn't a "look at all the murdered Jews and cry story." That is an element, but not the main plot. This movie offered two powerful stories. First of all, the perseverance of the Jews on Schindler's list is incredible. The heroic actions of so many, together, in the face of such awful hate could inspire a brick to grow flowers and drop fruit.

As great as that story is, the best story in the movie is of Schindler himself. I say this because it illustrates one of the greatest promises of the Lord. That he would leave the flock to find the one missing sheep. Schindler is self admittedly an adulterous party animal Nazi crook profiteer. However, he orchestrates an incredible scam on the Nazis by hiding almost 1200 Jews in manufacturing plants supposedly supporting the Nazi armies. These Jews, who witnessed a constant massacre of their fellow hebrews, had to wonder "why us? why have we been spared?". I think the Lord brought Schindler to them for their preservation, even more though the Lord brought them to Schindler.

The Lord always preserves His remnant. The Old Testament has countless stories of a remnant surviving...everything. So these Jews, this remnant, surviving is just one more example of the Lord fulfilling His promise and doing what He always does. That's just the way the Lord rolls. What the Lord does with Schindler though is much more powerful. These jews were already faithful, Schindler though was the prodigal son and the Lord wanted to feast at his return.

The closing scene's of Schindler's list are worth watching twice. In particular, after the German forces have surrendered and the factory has been closed, Schindler is fleeing just after midnight. He's trying to make it to the American lines. If he gets caught by the Russians he will assuredly be shot. The Jews he had working for him sent him off with a beautiful ring they fashioned for him out of the gold from someone's denture work. They wrote and signed an affidavit explaining Schindler's actions hoping to exonerate him from the punishments his crime might require. As he's getting into the car Oskar Schindler breaks down completely. He cries, and falls down, and rants about how he could have and should have done more. At this point he is a penniless war crimes fugitive and his overwhelming desire is that he could have done more. He could have given up more for the sake of these people. Certainly the Lord was there that night killing the fattened calf! That's the scene I had to watch twice.

Other than being a technically fantastic movie, the story itself screams of the Lord's goodness. Watch it and love it people!

2008-12-26T22:38:00.004-06:00

Pale Horse

When storm clouds rolled in from the North Hassle always lost his nerve to drink. He never lost his nerve to kill. Killing is an exercise of his power over others, while drinking merely sapped his control in an all round fashion. Dark clouds rolling in always made him feel like a helpless dead man with his casket closing over him only able to watch the last remnants of light wink out.

He stumbled in the dark over the step in front of his cottage. Northwest Arkansas gets dark and misty when cool air comes rolling over the mountains from the North. Some folks recently began likening it to the aggression of the Yankees into the South.

Hassle is an evil man. Not born that way, but nurtured evil by despicable parents. He had been named Matthew Dobbs, but shortly after his parents realized they didn’t want children and resented him they began calling him Hassle. They felt it appropriate.

Hassle, when he was twelve, watched his father beat his mother to death one night in a drunken rage. His father cried for days after burying her. When his father quit crying, Hassle shot him early in the morning as he was walking into the barn, ever since Hassle had lived as an evil man.

He wasn’t the flashy kind of evil that ends up on the front page of the paper in some big city back east. Hassle’s evil was like a deep dark pool in a bog with something just under the surface waiting to take any passerby. He mostly waited for people to fall into his evil and then he would take them mercilessly. Perhaps the only other person in these parts of Arkansas more evil than Hassle is his wife Matti.

Hassle entered his cottage on the edge of town and took off his boots. As he entered the small parlor to the left of the front door he looked up to see his wife sitting upright in her rocker stone dead with a gaping hole in her chest and pieces of her heart on the wall and floor behind her. Her knitting lay in her lap with her hands still clutching the needles.

She gazed at him with glazed eyes and a shocked but mocking sort of smile, the sort of smile that always creeped into her mouth when she foresaw his folly before it happened to him. To her right, sitting in his chair, is a young man named Craig Patterson dressed in Confederate grays loosely holding a carbine. Hassle looked at his wife one more time in contempt.

You bitch.

As if reading his thoughts Craig briefly glanced over at the woman he had shot two hours ago and then leveled his gaze back on Hassle. Hassle sighed deeply and leaned against the doorway.

“You fightin for the Confederacy huh?”

“Yes sir, riding in the cavalry till couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh yeah, did ya lose your nerve an run off? Come to get your due while all the fighin’s goin on?”

“No sir, not at all.”

Hassle studied his face again trying to recognize him.

“We met before?”

“No.”

“I cause you some kinda trouble?”

“No.”

“Then what the hell are you doin in my house?”

“I came for the reckoning.”

Hassle thought this over for a moment.

“If your trouble’s with my wife you done blown her heart out already. An if all’s well for you, well, you can just walk on outa here if you want.” Wouldn’t that just kill her if she wasn’t already dead. For her to think she saw his imminent death only to have the reaper walk out the door in front of her cold dead body with him watchin the whole thing.

“No, sir, it’s not just your wife I came for you too.”

“Well shit son what the hell you waitin for I’m standin right here.”

“Your days are up, but you still got some words left so I’ll just let you say whatever you need to till you run out.”

“What you mean like confession or somethin?” Hassle was getting annoyed at this point.

“Somethin like that.”

Hassle thought for a long time. He had always wondered what he’d think about when his time came, now it was here all he could think about was how ugly his life had been.

“Well, I don’t suppose its much use for me huh? I magine I done used up Jesus’s mercy and worked him right into a spittin rage huh?”

Craig pursed his lips in thought for a moment.

“I don’t suppose it ever really runs out.”

Hassle looked around the room at all the things his lying and stealing had gotten him. None seemed so valuable anymore, not that he ever really enjoyed things anyway. He just liked stealing and killing.

“What are you talking about a reckoning? Are you with the law?”

“You could say that. I was in a special cavalry dispatch in the army. We were crossing into the union and raiding their supply lines and trying to kill officers in their camps. One night it got real hot and everything went to chaos. I sprang upon a union officer. I took him off his horse and he hit the ground laughing. I was so shocked to hear anyone laughing in the middle of a gunfight I just stared at him stunned like. He looked at me and said, ‘Son, you’re the only man to ever touch me an live.’ He just kept laughing real loud slapping the ground on his hands and knees. He said ‘Hell, you took me clean off my horse. I’m sorry, you don’t understand do you? I’m death son. You just knocked death off his pale horse!” He laughed and laughed at that. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do. Somehow I just knew he wasn’t lyin. This whole time bullets are flying all around us and he’s just laughin, watchin me waitin to see what I do. Then He finally stops laughing and says ‘Well what are you gonna do now that you’ve wrestled death off his horse?’

I thought about it for a moment, and then I said “Well if I can’t kill you…

‘No you can’t do that’

Well if I can’t kill you I’m gonna at least take your horse and your guns.

‘Alright, you can take them. But I’m telling you that horse is on a mission, a reckoning until the apocalypse. If you ride him, you’re on his mission.’

Then I was really shocked. You see this wasn’t just death’s horse, this was the pale horse form the apocalypse, straight out of revelations. I said,

Alright, how do I do that?

He said, ‘Well son, you’ll need one of my eyes in order to recognize the harvest.’
Then quick as a bullet he sprung up and tackled me. He held me down and ripped out my right eye, my shootin eye, and then ripped out one of his and put his eye where my eye used to be. I screamed out in terrible pain but before I knew it, it was over and I could see, only different than before.

He was still on top of me smiling with one of his eyes missing and dripping blood all on my coat. He let me up and said, ‘Well, you better be on your way. There is a great harvest and now you are the sole sower.’

Then I got on that pale horse and started ridin. Ended up here. I knew when I saw you and your wife I’s gonna rid the earth of yalls wicked ways.”
Hassle had spent his life being unimpressed by the things he encountered but this story profoundly struck him.

“You know, I’ve never much liked this life, and its never really…”

The sound of the carbine firing cut Hassle’s words off abruptly. Hassles fell back into the hall way against the wall clutching his chest gasping for air. He couldn’t yell, and didn’t really want to anyway. He slid to the floor and fell over as Craig rose from the chair and walked into the hallway to stand over him.

“Your words were up Hassle.”

Craig pointed the carbine at Hassle’s head.

“Now your time is up too.”

2008-12-05T05:09:00.002-06:00

Spilled Out

This spilled out after a group meeting some time ago. I happened upon it today. I tried explaining this one night but didn’t feel satisfied at my own efforts to illustrate what was going on in my soul. I wrote this hoping to clear it up. I think I meant to bring it back up the next week but never got to it. I came across it today and rehashed it.

The desert, and my time there, visits me constantly. A theme that seems to walk hand and hand with my time there is the desert’s apparent indifference to my presence there. What’s strange is I found the indifference comforting and peaceful. It didn’t need me there, yet my presence made the desert that day unique.

Also, being such a desolate place the presence of life may only be described as hopeful. Hopeful everyday for sustenance.

However the world I live in daily is devoid of much hope. There is too much sustenance readily available. So what do we do with ourselves in light of such “provision”. The world tells us to make more of ourselves so that we could make the world better for more people. We owe it to everyone who longs for our blessings to make the most of ourselves. Most of what meets my eye and ear everyday is focused on me. It’s a hopelessness that is constantly calling my name.

Be this, says a picture that has been digitally “enhanced” beyond what is real. Be more educated, fit, cultured, well read, tolerant, emotional, in control, affluent, important. The desert is a comforting antagonist to such cancerous focus. Live says the desert, if you can.

Why did Jesus retreat to the desert? I think it was to be in the midst of place which so overwhelmingly lacks the world. The fasting even exacerbates that worldlessness, which I believe leads to focus on the things that are not of this world. And how did the devil tempt Him, with what did he tempt him with? With the world, with greatness in the world. And what is it that tempts us from the billboards and T.V. and magazines? Ambition of greatness, but that ambition is a hopeless one. We are all on our way down. We are all aging. Growing slower mentally and physically. Losing our youthful glean. Our world has been so infatuated with being great and the worldly aspects of greatness that its focus has intensified on youth and achievement and merit. The world has learned that only so much is humanly possible in one lifetime, and hoping to avoid alerting people of their inhuman possibilities in the Lord, it has refocused its distractive efforts to feeding our hopes in a fabricated potential. The potential of a fake youth, full of maturity, brilliance, and knowledge.

It’s no coincidence that with age comes the realization of the closeness of Jesus. When the world abandons us to wrinkles and aching joints what are we left with? Hopefully Jesus. For those who do not know Jesus they are merely left with the Hopelessness of lost potential.

I think such an environment leaves us with a certain affinity for distinct types of depression and desperation. Such as my desperation with rest. I feel like I shouldn’t. When I hear that God has prepared good works for me in advance I assume it means every waking moment that I am not working to better myself should be filled with His good works unfolding before me for completion. How I despair when I spend the day doing, as I put it “nothing”. Nothing? Nothing worldly yes, but what is transpiring spiritually when I am doing nothing? Much I should think. Is it not the Lord that calls us to stillness?

Why do I agree with the hopeless pressure to better myself and struggle against the hope found in the stillness of the Lord? In the garden, I assume there was not so much focus on us from the rest of the Lord’s creation as there is from our own. What monuments we build of ourselves with our billboards and T.V. and self improvement tapes and charity tax write offs.

At first I stated that the desert’s indifference depressed me. But I was wrong. I feel depressed when I am still because the world tells me to achieve and be meritous, most of all with the Lord. And it is mostly only when I try to apply that meritous drive to the Lord that I become depressed. Because I know it’s something with no hope. I can’t do that. I’m not supposed to do that.

I feel some hope in my drive for fitness and mental quickness, but that will fade with age and with it’s fading will come a similar desperation of losing something I thought I had the potential for. That’s what I’ve heard all my life. I grew up thinking that if I tried hard enough my name would be in the history books.

The book of life has no such qualifications. But I feel desperate sometimes for it to have some sort of merit base. Thank God it doesn’t.

The desert is indifferent to many things. My beauty and mental agility falls short of impressing the desert. The desert will quickly destroy them. My very life is unimpressive. But that’s the comfort, it’s appropriate to the desert for me to be unimpressive. Nothing I can do out there is impressive. Nothing that is outside of the works of Jesus at least. Making the rain come and go, moving mountains, giving life in a place that is so good at taking it; those things are impressive.

The world I live in though, specifically at my age and my current profession, is mounting an enormous assault on the peace of such indifference to the world that the desert illustrates so well. This attack was launched so furiously, and with a banner of evangelism and spiritual greatness that we found ourselves beyond the front line and deep into enemy territory.

Most of the past 500 years has seen the greatest assault on the peace of the Lord. The segmenting of life, and specifically the spiritual life and “everyday life”, the industrial revolution is guilty, the protestant work ethic is guilty, the very American spirit of American independence is guilty, the information age is guilty.

We have idols of beauty, intelligence, youth, and conspicuous kindness. Why else are our old left in Old Folks depositories to die alone and unheeded? Why do Christian missionaries long for the wildernesses of South America and Africa? They think it’s because that’s where their potential will show itself most apparently. Their greatness among the lowly. What numbers would come to the Lord in light of our advanced greatness and knowledge! In reality third world countries are a retreat from the blistering spiritual attacks of the “advanced” countries. Young Christians today yearn for the simple life and death struggles that they leave America in search of potential hunger and lack of shelter.

My depression on days when I don’t do much is this world applying its meritocracy to my faith and relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s nothing more than the hopelessness of the world’s ways tainting the promises of the Lord.

The amassing of government and cities and concentrations seems to take us further and further away from the wild life in the garden that we were intended for. With the amassing of people comes culture, and society, and the rules of being high society. Beauty becomes more important than goodness. Fashion, which has no place in nature, begins to consume people.

The assault by the evil one has been so ferocious that fashion has even begun to infiltrate the wilderness. REI, green peace, conservation and preservation issues, eco tourism and the organic craze are evidence of such an assault. Merit has infiltrated our rest as well. Who rests the best? Who has the most eco friendly, cultured, physically fit, enlightening vacations? Traveling is chic, and the “wilder” the places traveled to the better.

The desert has no time for such trivialities and offers no hope for those who long to hold on to such things. The beautiful dies just as quickly if not faster than the ordinary. Fashionable gear won’t help you find water when you need it, and it won’t make the rains come.

Our fight is not in the world, but with the world. What does the world have to show us? The places in ourselves where the world reigns indicates the casualties that we are taking because of its assault. The condition of the church in America, which has more sects than any nation in history, is a blatant prognosis of the wounds we have sustained.

The hope comes with the pain in those wounds. The pain forcing us to look for remedies, and that search is quickly wearing out the hopeless facilities of the billboards and magazine covers. How much harder this fight must be for the beautiful and rich.

2008-11-18T17:36:00.004-06:00

The Persuing Front Continued

This picks up right after the last sentence of the first post. The grammar may be awful, I didn't edit much. Hope the story isn't awful.

Rob lay there for sometime weeping. He lay in the somber reality of a tangible cost his life had taken out of the world. He had cost Amanda everything. He had cost Anna Amanda and probably more. He shortly became exhausted and slept again.

When he woke Anna was sitting on the left side of his bed looking over his legs out the window. Evening was in full swing and the light was clean and clear coming through the window. He moved his fingers to let her know he was awake. She noticed and leaned back in her chair as she turned to him.

“When I left I made it to the side exit and realized I couldn’t go home. I live with Amanda’s husband and child.” Tears began to come slowly down her face but her body had finished with crying.

“Her husband was informed of what happened when I was getting my leg casted. He waited for me in the waiting room, but I couldn’t go to him, not then. I waited until he left and then went as far as the exit, and I still can’t go to them. I came back here because you were there when everything happened. You are the only other person alive who was there. I just don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve slept here for the past three nights.”
Not knowing what else to say Rob whispered “I’m sorry”.

“I know. I’m sorry too”

“Are you doing any better?”

Anna shook her head no. “I can’t stop shaking, my hands shake off and on all the time. I can’t sleep. I cry a lot.”

They sat in each other’s company for a few minutes when Anna continued, “We wanted to get a hold of your wife but you didn’t have any info on you, and we can’t find you in our computers and the police are too busy to check theirs.”

Rob’s face became tense and he began to worry about Rachel. Noticing his tension Anna leaned forward and said, “Do you know where we might try to reach her? Do you have family nearby that we could contact? With all the shootings that took place there is no telling where anyone might be. Everything in the city has been locked down. The police and investigators are looking for people who were involved. There is National Guard in all the streets. It is hard to get anywhere or a hold of anyone.”

Rob’s face tensed into more worry, “How many shootings was there that day?”

“There were six outbreaks of shooting. Four of them were quite large. Over five hundred reported casualties. The one we were involved in was the biggest. They were targeting an old storage warehouse around the corner from where we were. You were just in a bad spot that morning.”

As frantic as his voice could be Rob asked, “What about the people in the warehouse, did any of them survive?”

“People? That warehouse was storage for imports from Asia. All of the outbreaks were centered around similar warehouses. They think it was some terrorist group from Texas trying to make a point about the U.S.’s foreign relations.”
Rob shook his head and grabbed her hand.

“You don’t understand. That warehouse around the corner was a housing unit for refugees from Texas, political refugees. All of those people were on a death list compiled and issued by the militias in Texas. There were a number of them around the city, five or six, and more in other U.S. cities. It’s important…” Rob’s voice gave out and he began to cough. His felt ripped to shreds and he started coughing up blood.

Anna rose and held one of his shoulders down to steady him and a rag to his mouth.

“You shouldn’t talk so much. You’ve had two operations on your throat and one of your vocal chords is gone. You really can’t handle talking this much. They were just warehouses, you must be confused.”

Rob pushed her hands away and started to speak again. “No, those warehouses were full of people. Think about it. I was shot by a sniper. Why would there be snipers if all they wanted was to blow up a building full of imported goods? Were people shot in the streets at the other attacks? Or at any other…” Rob started coughing again and couldn’t finish.

Anna held the rag back to his mouth and sat down on the edge of his bed.

“Yes there were. Actually, once it started there were shootings all over town. Everyone has said it was just people panicking and things getting out of control. The bombs stopped after an hour or so, but there were shootings up until the National Guard showed up eight hours after it all started. Why were they shooting people in the streets though if the refugees were in the warehouses?”

When Rob could speak he continued.

“Some targets are higher profile than others. They would have wanted to make sure those targets were taken out.” Rob barely got the last word out before his throat seized up and he started coughing again.

Anna paused for a moment and then looked at Rob as if he were morphing into someone else before her eyes.

“You were one of the targets weren’t you? And the woman the street next to you.”
Rob shook his head no, but he couldn’t speak.

“The woman wasn’t a target?”

Rob shook his head no.

“But you are a target on these death lists.”

Rob slowly shook his head yes.

Anna slowly sat down staring at him. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes to think, to try and take it all in.

Rob reached out and grabbed her hand firmly. She opened her eyes to find him intently looking at her.

Rob croaked out the last words he had in him.

“My wife is on that list too. Please find her.”

Anna started to get up but paused to look at him a moment longer. She nodded her head as if she had just come to some conclusion about everything she had just learned and got up and started towards the door. As she reached the door she looked over her shoulder and said.

“I’ll try again to see if I can find your wife.”

He wanted to warn her to be careful, but his voice failed him, and she left the room.

The next day Rob began choking. He choked for an insufferable ten minutes before Anna happened to walk into his room and find him feebly gasping for air.
He saw her enter the room from what seemed a long distance. He saw her pause and then rush to his side. He met her eyes once briefly as she surveyed his throat and chest wounds. He was comforted that there was no panic in her eyes, not even frustration. He calmed down even though he was still choking. Her hands and presence were enough for the moment.

A moment was really all he had left. He blacked out very quickly after Anna arrived. He was rushed into surgery where the surgeons found a tiny piece of bone fragment in his throat that had become infected and swollen, restricting his already compromised trachea. The surgeons successfully removed the fragment but the stress put further stress on his vocal chords.
Rob woke two days later. One of the regular nurses was leaning over him replacing and empty IV bag. She noticed he was awake and explained some things to him.

“Well, hello Mr. Carter. You had a little bit of a complication the other day but we fixed you up pretty quick. You had a bone chip in your throat that the surgeons missed in the first surgeries. They followed the infection to the source though and removed it. You’ll recover but it’s very important that you don’t speak for a while at all.”

The nurse kept speaking until she finished her duties and then headed for the door. As she turned to leave she finished.

“You won’t be able to make a sound anyway for at least a couple of days, but don’t push it anyway ok.”

How many times am I going to almost die?

Rob lay there unable to think about anything else and eventually fell to sleep.

Sometime late that night Rob woke to a full moon peeping through his window. He stare at the moon for a minute and then surveyed his room. In the bed next to him, which had previously been empty, Anna lay sleeping. She was facing him and could see a strand of hair that had fallen across her face stir with her breathing.

What a mess we are.

As his eyes drifted they settled on a pair of boots sticking out from behind the privacy curtain between the two beds. Black military boots resting casually crossed on the end of two legs covered in course green wool pants. The legs disappeared behind the curtain into a chair usually empty except when Anna would pull it up to his bedside and sit with him.

He strained to see an outline or shadow through the curtain. There was no light coming from the other side to help his eyes. He looked down where the bottom of the curtain floats a foot and a half above the floor. Coming from the curtain to rest on the floor was the butt end of a rifle. He could see the butt, the bolt, the trigger, and the beginning of a high power scope.

Rob began to silently cry. He helplessly cried out with no effect. He lay there crying and terrified. Angry that all the suffering should end like this, and with Anna here too. The silence he lay in deafening in his own head.

From the other side of the curtain a sharp in-take of breath startled Rob. He heard the boots slowly slide across the floor towards the chair. A moment later the curtain moved as someone stood and the butt of the rifle disappeared up into the curtain.

A young man took a few steps out from behind the curtain with the rifle slung over his shoulder rubbing his eyes and yawning. He looked over and stopped when he saw Rob staring at him terrified. They stared at each other for a minute surprised to see each other.
The young man was not tall and had long straight heavy blond hair, thin lips, and steady blue eyes. He had a strong bone structure to his face and a sturdy build. He cast a pleasant smile with perfect white teeth at Rob.

The young man raised his finger to his lips and motioned towards Anna closing his eyes and laying his head down on his hands. Rob looked at Anna quickly and looked back at the young man. When the young man thought Rob understood to be quiet he smiled again and with exaggerated sneak, like a kid playing at sneaking, he moved the chair he had been napping in to the opposite side of Rob’s bed from Anna.

Rob was confused by this young man, and completely terrified. He wanted to run, but he could barely move, He craved to scream but he could feel blood trickling down his throat from his crying and knew it would be useless.

The young man sat down in the chair next to him carefully leaning his rifle against the wall behind him. He leaned in to talk quietly.

“Rob hi, I’m Kevin. I know ya can’t talk, I read yur chart, but I just wonted to introduce myself as if we was just meeting like normal folks at a bar or somethin.”
He smiled and nodded his head to some pleasantry he imagined Rob responding with. He scrunched his face up and squinted at Robs wounds lifting himself out of his chair to survey his throat and chest closely. Rob flinched in fear as Kevin leaned over him, but Kevin didn’t seem to notice. He sat down in the chair shaking his head.

“That’s bad shootin man. I heard he hit a bystander too, a young woman. Tragic. She wasn’t marked or nothing for killin.”

He saw Rob’s face distort into a deeper terror and disgust. He slid in closer and touched Rob’s arm comfortingly.

“I’m not here to finish you off, don’t you worry bout that, and I’m definitely not the one who did this to you. I passed it off once I scouted you out, shame whoever got it wasn’t a better shot. Not that it matters for you none, you’d a survived anyhow, but that poor young woman got her head shot out all over your coat might still be alive. I saw the whole thing, wanted to see how you’d make it.”

Kevin leaned back in the chair and shook his head thinking about the tragedies of poor shooting,

“Poor shooting, man.”

“I aint ever miss, God has steadied my hand when there’s a painted person in my sights. I used to git scared as a kitten when I’d go huntin.”

He picked his rifle up and brought it to his eye and started casting about the room hunting in his childhood again. He got to Anna and stopped to sight her in. Everything in Rob’s body froze.

“As soon as I’d zero in on some kinda game I’d start shakin like a earthquake”.
At this he started to tremble with his rifle and looked to Rob smiling to see if he was getting the joke. He stopped smiling when he saw Rob’s face. Kevin leaned back gritting his teeth and shrugging his shoulders as if he had caught himself committing and embarrassing faux pa. As he slowly put the rifle against the wall again he turned to Rob and said, “I am so sorry. Guns probably make you nervous as hell after bein all shot up and stuff huh? It’ll stay against the wall as long as I’m here.”

Rob was now certain that this young man was crazy.

Kevin leaned in looking thoughtful and continued, “Rob, I shot your wife.”

They stared at each other. Rob had stopped crying and trembling. He lay still silently watching suddenly completely removed from the room. Far beyond his world he sat watching the whole scene no longer able to grasp it as real.

“It was good shootin I promise. She’s dead before she hit the ground. Got her walkin out yalls little hide out apartment. I was eighteen floors up and two hundred yards away but was dead on. Went down through her heart and right lung. She died before she had time to realize what happened, before she could feel any pain or fear.”

Still leaning forward Kevin was speaking to Rob like a surgeon explaining the death of a loved one that was expected to die despite treatment. Still leaning close to Rob and whispering Kevin continued.

“Originally I’s sposed to come after you. I got my assignment and came on up. I scouted you for a week, but you wasn’t painted. You were on the death list alright, but death wouldn’t gonna find you no matter how good a shot you are. Rachel was painted though,” at the sound of his wife’s name Rob could see his body shudder at the repulsive nature of this boy saying her name so intimately.

“She had the fog of death comin out her nose and mouth the first time I saw her.” Kevin leaned back in his chair and began to speak softly staring at nothing next to Rob’s legs.

“Once you breathin in death like that there aint no stoppin what’s comin. There’s no stoppin it anyhow. I used to get scared when all the fightin was going on. Bullets suddenly flying around buzzing your ears, whippin off the pavement at your feet. I’d run so fast from those buzzers and whippers, and I’d always make it. The boys next to me though, they weren’t makin it like I was. I was hidin one night in a bombed out city building in Port Arthur, when a man walked right into the room with me. Unarmed and strangely clean he walked right up to me. He said ‘Why you hidin?’

“I said, ‘I’m scared’. He shook his head and said. You have no right to be afraid. I have told you before if you live like this you will die like this. Your days are numbered, you can’t hide from that. He helped me up and walked out. I aint never seen him again. Ever since then though I’ve seen death on those I kill. I figured if they was saturated with that much death they wasn’t gonna live much longer anyway. I aint missed yet shooting at those who been marked, and I won’t shoot at no others.”

Kevin’s eyes began to refocus into the room. He smiled at Rob and leaned in again. “Anyway, I originally just wanted to make sure you were ok, but when I walked in you’ll never guess it but that very man who picked me up off the ground in Port Arthur was sitting in this very chair, watching the two of yall sleep like babes. When I walked in he got up and he walked up to me and said, ‘Your numbers are coming to an end, but before you die you will return to him everything that was taken’, then he walked on out the door”.

By his last word Kevin had become so excited he was shaking and holding Robs arm. “I aint never thought I’d do nothin good like that ever. I never been particularly mean or nothin, but I aint no angel either you know. Now I’m gonna do something good for you sometime before I die.”

Robs lack of reaction put Rob back in his seat reaching for his rifle. Uncomfortable with Rob’s lack of excitement he got up to leave.

“Anyway, I just thought you might want to know. See ya Rob”, came over Kevin’s shoulder as he shuffled quietly towards the door.

Ten years later the last American owned harbor on the main land United States was sold to the European Union. The United States of Texas had vehemently protested the pending sale. When the sale went through the reaction was bloody.

Rob was now living in Vancouver. He had begun to write books about the nature of the spirit of rebellion in political revolutions. Unintentionally, and unknowingly he was back on a death list at the urging of Texas Baptist preachers, notoriously connected with the far right Liberty Party.
Canada was in summer when Rob was walking home with his wife and five year old daughter from a lunch with friends from the magazine he was writing a periodical for. As he would pass a store front he would look in the reflection at his family and wonder how life could be so different from one moment to another.

Commotion broke out down the street. Skittish from a life of avoiding threats Rob instantly brought his daughter under him and his wife close. As he turned them to walk the other way he was met with an almost empty street with only to older gentlemen sharing the sidewalk and walking towards the commotion. He began to walk away when someone yelling his name behind him brought his attention back over his shoulder. Running up behind them frantically was a smiling, excited young man waving a pistol in the air and yelling out is name.

“Mr. Robert Sullivan! Rob Sullivan!”

Rob turned to see that blond boyish demon from his hospital room sprinting towards him.
He reached for his wife and found her desperately reaching for him. He turned to her as she turned to him. She had not been watching what he had but she looked terrified. He turned to find her terror. The two older gentlemen had raised pistols in their hands and for coming for his family.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

By the last shot Rob had been pushed with his wife and daughter through a storefront door and somehow found himself huddled in the corner with them clinging to him. He was clutching them both finding blood on both of them. Everyone had blood on them. Rob suddenly couldn’t speak.

“Rob are you ok? Rob! Baby!? Are you ok?!”

His wife was feeling all over him for wounds. Rob could see very little over her. He could feel his daughter crying and trembling in his arms. The scene was just now playing is Rob’s mind. As he turned to find the two gentlemen facing him with raised pistols he heard the first two shots.

Bang! Bang!

He heard the discharge just behind him before he saw the flash at his face. Then the second discharge hit him loudly and with force. A rushing wind went by his ear so violently that his left ear felt turned inside out. The man in front of him to the left caved in at the chest and fell back to the pavement with flapping useless hands.

He was struck from behind as the next two shots sounded.

Bang! Bang!

As he was falling through the door he saw the man in front of him to the right fire at Kevin falling through the store front door on top of him. His wife frantically helped him crawl out from under Kevin as the man fired at Kevin. Immediately the second shot sounded and the man stranger’s throat split down the middle like a dilating pupil, erupted with blood just outside the store front.
Kevin slid up to the door and checked his pistol. He looked up and found Rob staring at him,

“Hey there man, surprising aint it. Best keep them wife and kid away from the door. I can promise you they aint in any danger, but they are scared. Man you look good; it’s been a long time huh.” Kevin shook his head and went to pull a mirror out his pocket and began to study the street outside the store front.

“Robert look at me!”

He turned to his wife to see her hysterical and crying. He looked down at his daughter, she was crying too. He looked back to his wife to see her flinch at more gun shots.
Kevin jumped back from the doorway. The last gunshot was followed by a sharp snap in the pavement by Kevin’s leg. Kevin jumped, startled by the impact. He clutched his chest and looked at Rob stunned.

“Well aint that something! I woke up this morning breathing death. Breathing it so thick it was fogging up my mirror as I shaved and I thought for sure one of those to men were gonna shoot me dead point blank. Bullets been missin me by millimeters for years, comin so close to give me wind burn. Thought I cheated death there for a moment, you know a little grace for me. But don’t you know the one that misses me by a good ten inches hits the concrete and jumps backwards right up to git me. That’s irony right? I read your book you know, first book I ever read in ten years, I like it.”

He looked down as he pulled his hand away from his chest. Cupped in his palm was a little pool of pink bubbly blood. Kevin turned back to Rob.

“Man, right in the lung.”

Kevin took on an introspective look and tried to take a deep breath but winced and ceased at the effort. Now dazed and wobbly he mumbled to Rob, “Yep, I can feel em filling up as I breath”, he chuckled frightened, “guess the fog on my mirror was death after all huh?”

He looked over the Kevin’s wife and waved with his pistol, “Howdy, Mrs Sullivan I’m Kevin. Rob’s probably told you all about me, we’re friends from way back. I’d shake your hand but I been shot.”

He truly looked apologetic about the hand shake. Rob began to him change into this helpless child slumped there in the doorway still holding his pistol, waiting to drown in his own blood. Kevin face suddenly distorted with pain and he began to cry.

“It’s startin to hurt Rob, real bad.”

He looked to Rob pleadingly.

“Does it keep hurting worse when you get shot Rob? I aint never been shot before.”
He groaned and brought his knees to his chest, blood started to trickle out of his mouth.
He looked to Rob as he slid over on his side weeping as he died.

“I aint got no one to tell me they love me as I die. Alls I got is Jesus to say I love you to. All I have for years. Rob I liked you a lot man, I wanted to be friends with you so bad.”
Kevin was blubbering at this point and coughing up pink bubbles of blood gurgling his words.

“Do you think we might have been friends Rob, you know after some time? I woulda like that so much…We could have been friends right?”

Kevin screamed in pain curled up tighter. He lay there wheezing, looking at Rob and his wife. Rob could see him trying to form words with his mouth but nothing came out. Rob and his wife watched him die alone by the door.

2008-10-31T17:47:00.002-05:00

The Persuing Front

The building continued to creak as the sun began to creep through the cracks in the boarded up windows, the sunlight silently protesting the cold. This year’s winter had been nothing impressive to the locals of Chicago, but for anyone from Texas the cold was depressing and heavy. Brick walls and tall steel rimmed windows housed a small population of refugees from Texas. Political prisoners targeted for assassination by the militias. Rob massaged his forehead with one hand, not putting down his pen. His brow had a permanent tension that had settled in over the past three years. He looked up to see James walking away with his wiry frame shrugging on an old surplus coat, headed up to the second floor to light up the fires for breakfast.
Rob put his pen down and leaned back in his chair “There’s nothing else to do tonight, but I have an appointment this morning” he thought. His smile was genuine but he could not wipe the tension out of his brow. He slapped the desk proclaiming his business of the night finished and rose to meet James upstairs for breakfast.

James was always pleasant in the morning. What Rob appreciated most about James was that his pleasantness was mostly quiet and peaceful, not the loud cheeriness that hinders some morning people from fitting in with those who are not. Rob sat down in the kitchen and waited for James to make his way over with his breakfast.

“The radio said that the Texas Investigation Agency has stricken the first names from the official murder lists last night. Over five hundred names have been erased from the list, and those people are welcome back into the country. Do you want coffee?”

“Yes I do, thank you James. Did they list any of the names? “

“Yeah some, neither one of us will be welcomed back. But I recognized a few from this building.”

“Well that’s good, maybe sometime soon we’ll get the welcome back huh?”

James had a long narrow face with thick dark facial hair that rarely stayed clean shaven. His face is to bony to be beautiful but he had a smile that was infectious and a great cheerful laugh. He smiled at rob and turned to get his coffee.

After eating a small greasy breakfast and a cup of coffee Rob began to make his way to the large double doors at the front of the old warehouse. The guards would stop him to chat as usual.
He stood just inside the door and chatted about whether or not some of the people in building 110 would be heading back to Texas. Rob stood stamping his feet and stuffing his hands as far down into his coat pockets as they would go. After about five minutes he told them he had to meet his wife and headed out into the cold morning at 7:23 in the morning February 20th.

He turned left out of the front doors and headed towards a local bakery he and his wife had been visiting since they arrived in Chicago. The owners were friendly locals who had both lived in Chicago their entire lives. They were both beautiful and pleasant. Both of their families had lived in Chicago for generations and they spoke everyday about how blessed they were to have no connections with the troubles. They also treated Rob and Rachel incredibly nice and gave them free coffee when they ordered pastries.

Rob had walked thirty yards when a cab pulled past him from behind and stopped next to the curb in front him to let the fare out. The door opened and a beautiful young woman stepped out with a number of bags. Rob smiled as he passed her and she flashed and incredible smile back at him and said, “Good Morning”.

“Good Morning.”

Rob passed her but as soon as she gathered all her bags she quickly caught up to Rob and began to pass him. He could hear her approaching; her heels struck the sidewalk with a rhythm that Rob had always found pleasant. Other people were beginning to crowd the street. He heard the rhythm of her heels change as she weave around people making their way to work. Her heels were sounding right behind him as he rounded the corner fifty yards from building 110. As he rounded the corner the beautiful woman hurried around him on his right. As she passed him her long brown hair flew back in his face. He closed his eyes, but he could smell whatever expensive product she used. It reminded him of Rachel, and that he hadn’t bathed in a while. He opened his eyes to find the young woman speeding by him.

Suddenly, the world grew silent and slow. He saw the back of the young woman’s head, just behind her left ear begin to blossom into a terrible rose of red and grey. Her beautiful hair disappeared as the rose bloomed fuller and fuller. He felt the rose cover his face and dampen his coat and shirt. As the rose fell out of view to his right he felt his neck constrict in sickening tightness and simultaneously open up. He saw street scene begin to ascend to the sky in front of him. A blinding light flashed as he felt his chest cave in below his coat. The world jolted to a halt as his knees hit the ground.

I think I’ve been shot he thought. The first thought in long moments woke his mind to the situation. The world still moved as if through deep water, but his mind progressed with a steady clarity he felt should be strange. I’m not going to make it to breakfast. My wife won’t know that I couldn’t help me. I won’t see her again. No one will see the poor beautiful woman again. He look over to see her laying on the ground next him, her head now a destroyed empty shell with all of its life spilled on the ground all about them. He reached out the move one of her bags closer to her body, but he felt himself lean against the building next to him. His back hit the frame of a door way and he began to notice the people in the streets running away from him.

I guess this is the last?

I don’t know if this is it, but it must be close.

How unfair for her, glancing at the body next to him

And for Rachel he thought.

“I should cry for her”, these were his last thoughts as he slowly blacked out.

Sometime later Rob began to hear gunshots. He heard them intermixed with two female voices. He could still feel himself slouched against the side of the building. He thought he opened his eyes, but still couldn’t see anything right away. As he kept trying to blink his vision slowly returned like a windshield losing its frost from a heater.

He could see one young woman kneeling down in front of him looking down at him. She was covered in blood and holding something over his neck. He could see her face. She had blue eyes and brown hair. She kept looking from his neck to his eyes as if she were looking for something she couldn’t quite see in them. He moved his eyes to other girl who was kneeling by his feet and was holding something tight around his abdomen. All he could see were her strong looking arms and the black curly hair on top of her head.

Rob felt a hand press against his cheek and heard the other woman’s voice grow louder. He slowly moved his eyes to look up at her. She was looking at him, looking for something from him but he didn’t know what. He felt disappointed in himself that he couldn’t help her. He didn’t think he could speak and strangely he didn’t want to try.

The gunshots were growing louder. The two women became frenzied and began to speak more quickly. He still couldn’t make out what they were saying, they sounded as if they were speaking with a towel stuffed in their mouths. The brown haired girl moved around to his back and keeping pressure on his neck positioned her arms under his. The black hair girl tied something down around his chest and moved to pick up his ankles.

They began to move him into the nearest storefront door. From what he could see it was some kind of electronics store, a cell phone store maybe. As his body straightened out he could feel his shoulder tighten and his neck open up. The pain was incredible but he still couldn’t make a sound. He could only endure as he body stiffened in silent protest.

At first the two young women were moving cautiously slow. Suddenly gunshots began to ring out as if they were right outside. Rob could hear them echoing hollowly down the street and fade away underneath the el train. He could see the dust and cement fragments on the ground begin to skip and dance with bullets. The young women abandoned caution and began to lunge with his stiff body into the store front.

Suddenly all the sound was sucked out of the air. Rob could feel the suction trying to rip out his ear drums. He felt the vacuum lift his body, and the two young women through the store front window. He didn’t feel the window shatter around him, but as he traveled through the window frame he could see the shards of glass slowly rotating in the air next to his face like asteroids in a suspended orbit around his face.

Sound returned to him with a roaring attack. Three more explosions rocked the building around them immediately after the first one. As loud as the roar of the explosions were, the silence that followed was so intense he could feel it weighing down on his body crushing his chest. He was lying on his back behind the counter of the store. The brown hair woman was stirring three feet away from him. She was lying on her stomach and trying to pull her splayed out arms and legs into her body like a frightened turtle. He saw her raise her head and look at him. When she saw him looking at her he lifted his hand to wave, as soon as he tried his chest exploded with pain and his body went rigid again.

He saw her begin to stretch out her limbs, her left hand pressed to the glass littered floor of the store and her right hand with a bloody torn shirt began to extend towards him. Her right knee drew up to push her in his direction. Her terrified unblinking eyes never left his as she slithered across the floor in his direction. When she reached him she lifted his torso into her lap and leaning against the wall behind the counter she began to put pressure on the wound in his neck again.

His head against her chest he could hear her heart beat, quick and rhythmic. He lay there listening. The gun shots were still ringing through the streets but the sounded different. They had a reciprocal quality to them, not just a massacre anymore.

He could hear more rustling debris in the store on the other side of the counter. He could feel the young woman’s chest vibrate with urgent cries.

“Amanda! Amanda! Are you ok!? Where are you!? Come behind the counter!?”

Amanda’s voice returned to her from the other side of the counter each word tracking her progress towards the wall opposite where Rob and Anna were sitting, “I need you to stay where you are Anna ok, just stay with the patient alright.”

“Are you ok, are you hurt!?”

A pause accentuated by rustling debris stretched out before Amanda began to answer.

“Anna, sweet heart I’m gonna get to where I can see you and help you as long as I can alright, but I need you to promise…

Rob could feel Anna’s heart rate begin to grow heavier and frantic, “Amanda! Get over here! What’s wrong? Why won’t you come to me, I need you right now! Amanda!” He could feel her tears begin to fall on his temple and streak down his cheeks.

He saw a face appear around the corner of the counter and smile at them both. Her black curly hair was frazzled and she had blood trickling out of her nose, ears, and mouth. She had a strong square face with short black curly hair, dark eyes, and a comforting smile had she not had two of her teeth knocked out and blood stained teeth. She continued over Anna’s screaming, “I need you to promise that you will stay with the patient Anna”.

Anna was struggling to speak through her sobs and her words sounded stained and drawn out. “Don’t say that! What are you saying!? Why won’t you come over here?”

“Anna I can see that your leg is broken just below the knee from here, ok. You need to stay there, and he needs you to stay there.” As she spoke Amanda began to push herself away from them towards the opposite wall. She had sat up and was pushing herself backwards on her bottom continuing to face them as she slowly slid through the rubble.

“Anna your doing so good darling, you’re doing fine, you just stay with him and keep your leg immobilized until help arrives.”

Anna’s voice had fallen to a strained whisper, “Why do you keep saying these things, why won’t you come to me?” As Amanda kept sliding away from them her legs came into view. He could feel Anna’s heart stop for a moment through her chest. He felt her chest heave as she threw her head back against the wall. Her chest was jumping sporadically gasping for air. Her hand clinched his shift on his chest so hard that two buttons ripped off and he could feel the stress in his chest wound, the hand on his neck wound remained extraordinarily calm with consistent pressure.

He still couldn’t move or speak but he could see what was left of Amanda’s legs. Her left leg was missing from mid thigh down and was grossly charred. The right leg was severely mangled below the knee and was being useless dragged across the floor by a slight remnant of skin. The left leg was swelling noticeable and the right leg was bleeding freely leaving large paint brush streaks across the floor.

Anna’s head came back down and he could hear her voice reverberate in his ear a deep primal groan of despair.

Amanda made it the far wall and propped herself up facing them. “Anna darling, you need to stay with him. He’s the only one here you can do anything for.” Amanda smiled and continued, “I don’t feel anything Anna, there’s no pain.”

Anna’s voice caught and she choked on words she couldn’t get out. Rob couldn’t get anything to work in his head, he saw everything but couldn’t react, he just lay watching Amanda feeling Anna.

“You’re going to be fine Anna, help will come soon and you’re gonna be alright, you’ll need to look after him for a while ok.” Amanda’s voice began grow softer and her eyes more distant.

“You’ll be needed around here after this ok, you’ve got to keep going, keep helping people”.

Anna’s sobs were now consistent and heavy, rocking his head back and forth on her chest.

Amanda’s smile began to waver and her stare fixated on something just to the right of their heads and on the other side of the store wall.

“I don’t feel nothing, I’m fine…you’ll be fine…I love you Anna, and you need to keep…stay with him, and keep…you’ll be…” Amanda’s head to the left against the wall but her body stayed upright, her star now far off past anything Rob could think of.

Anna groaned and cried heavily soaking his hair and face in her tears. He could feel her heart steady into a long enduring pace for mourning. He lay in her arms staring at Amanda and wondering where his wife was. The slow rocking of Anna’s heaving body was calming. His thought’s lost all sequence as he lay there and he slowly lost conscious again.

Rob woke slowly. Although he couldn’t tell how he arrived he knew immediately that he was in a hospital bed. He thought,” This is where I would be after what happened. How did I survive? How close was I to dying?”

He lay there as the memories began to order themselves into a chain of events. Once they started he wished they hadn’t. The young woman’s head exploding on to his face. Shot in the neck, then again in the chest. Waking up to the women kneeling over him. The explosions. Watching Amanda die. Feeling Anna’s stress and anguish through the back of his neck and head. He was surprised at how much he remembered. The events, and the two women’s’ names.

It was day outside his window and all he could see were two trees and a little bit of blue sky. He wanted to know what happened. “Where is my wife?” he thought. “How long have I been here?”

He was going to continue with the self questioning when the door to his room slowly opened.
Slowly around the door a young woman peered in. Anna, he recognized her hair and eyes. They looked at each other for a moment. It was the first time they had looked each other coherently in the eyes. They were awkward. Like walking in on a relative’s friend dressing and then meeting them later. Their experience together had been to intimate to allow for common introductions now.

Rob spoke and found his voice strained and barely more than a whisper. She saw his mouth move but couldn’t hear him and waited for him to motion her in before she fully entered the room. She limped across the room with crutches and a cast on her foot. She leaned her crutches against his bed and stood by his feet facing him propped up on number of pillows looking at her. She was plain in most of her features, altogether unremarkable, except for the shape of her eyes. Their color was an ordinary blue, but they were beautifully shaped like slender almonds. For the first time he considered what he must look like to her.

“How do I look?” his voice softly grated.

She immediately looked away with a smile and starting to cry she turned back to him and said,
“You shouldn’t try to speak.”

“I shouldn’t be alive”

“No you shouldn’t. The wound in your neck missed your carotid artery by a hair, and the wound in your chest nicked your heart. You had a lot of internal bleeding, you should have died. We also pulled about a pound of shrapnel and glass out your legs and ass too. No one here knows how you survived, you shouldn’t have.” Her voice shook and lost some of its pleasantness.

“Huh. Are you ok, are you being treated here?”

“Yes, I also work here, I’m a paramedic”

They paused for a few minutes and just considered each other.

“You saved my life, you and your friend.” She looked away and wiped fresh tears from her face. When she turned back to him her chin was crumpled and quivering.

“Thank you”, he finished.

She looked at him sternly for a minute. Her face contorted almost to anger and her body became rigid and posture distant. She asked as she started to weep, “Are you a good man?”

She stood there facing him, trembling, openly hurting and gripping the foot of his bed. He was struck for the first time since being shot with overwhelming emotion. He felt sad and guilty for her, guilty to be alive.

“I try to be.”
She choked for a minute then wiped her face again. Still looking at him sternly she said, “You had better try real hard to be a good man.”

“I will. I’m sorry”, he whispered.

She stood there and watched him melt into crying motionlessly.

“It’s better for you not to talk too much, I should go.”

She quickly turned and headed for the door. He tried to ask if she knew anything about his wife, but whether she heard him or not, she walked out the door and closed it behind her.

*This isn't finished but I thought I'd post what I had.

2008-04-27T00:11:00.005-05:00

This was hard to write, it's probably the most abstract idea I've ever tried to put on paper. I just tried to illustrate a place I find myself in often and don't completely understand.

My pen starts to fly through my note book, bleeding my rants in smooth black ink. The pen races, fingers flexing and jiving with the letters, but my mind is furious on the gas pedal and has lost the brakes. My hand concedes, my pen exhausted, and I lean back in my seat brooding, brow furrowed, waiting for my mind to wear itself out and come back to me. What is this confounding paradox? That which controls my entire body so often loses control of itself.

Approaching half an hour ago I took my seat and smoothed the clean blank pages in my notebook, and readied my steel parker jotter pen. I was ready for the truth, ready to hear it how it is, ready to get it. Then the lies. Palpable lies as if they had walked in the room through the same door I had, walked up the aisle commandeered the podium and has since been vomiting forth through a puppet words that grate my spine. Every bitter word saturated with illusion and a pseudo wisdom that somehow scratches my throat like an allergic reaction. I ask myself, “What is this that it turns my soul hysterical? Why does my soul panic and run to exhaustion? Where is it running to? Or what is it running from?”

Then I was answered. I was answered by a great deepness whispering low in my ear like a sweet lover. I could feel it breathing on me and calling me inward. I began to intravenously break down into myself like origami on fire. I broke down clear out of the room and onto a shore.

I became a spectator. I could see my soul, my mind and emotions and thoughts, wearing a shroud of my body. He was sitting on the shoreline of an island taunting the breakers of a growing sea and staring the sun down fire for fire. That shoreline and its inner expanses were my flesh. The growing see was His kingdom come, the very breath of God, and the voice from the deep was His living song.

Of myself sitting on the shore I could see his history, a content childhood in the bosom of the island ruptured by a natural wonderment that teased him from the island’s embrace out to the borders of land and sea. Along these borders he first heard the voice from the deep. The deep called out a booming whisper that turned his head and closed his eyes, brought him to his seat, and sparked the fire to face the sun. The arbitrary redundant nature of island life became clear and grew more unbearable daily. The deep awoke in my soul a most fundamental longing with no satisfaction to be found on the island. The deep has beckoned him ever since, and he has yearned for its embrace unceasingly, and for its death and satisfaction with mounting hysteria.

Spontaneously he charges the sea with a burning passion so intense the stars turn and cover their lights with their hands and hide it away in shame. He breaks the breakers and joy raptures with the shock of the cold water. Swimming out beyond sight of his island surrounded by horizon and a giant blue sky he begins to dive. He dives to the deep, reluctantly surfaces for air, and then dives to the deeper. Every dive brings him closer to the deepest. Deeper and deeper until his lungs begin to hemorrhage and his skull starts to creak with the deep bearing down on his body. He rejoices is the crushing pressure of the the songs of the deep, a teasing lullaby on shore has taken on the intensity of a choir with voices as loud as the brightness of the sun and clear as the senses saturated in adrenaline.

He stops diving and begins to float, bobbing with the undulating tides. The waves move him with the rhythm and melody of a song born from the throat of the deep. Contentment finally alights on my soul while lying face up upon the songs of the deep, having dived to exhaustion through the crescendos of the roaring abyss.

It never lasts though; my soul begins to cower in the growing presence of the voice and the promise of death in the deep. If he should stay too long the deep will take him completely. He would never return to his diminishing shores, lifeless from the swim, tossed forth by the breakers onto the sand like a piece of gristle falling from the jowls of a feasting lion. From somewhere tainted in his own dark deep his feet begin to desire the firm resistance of standing on his island. The arbitrary redundancy of island life becomes tantalizing and shamefully attractive. He longs to be dry, to wallow in the familiarity and immediacy of residing on the island. His hands yearn to hold matter, to grasp it and mold it into something else. He craves the satisfaction of wielding something solid, sculpting it into a permanent form that he could step back from and appreciate; a form that he could walk away from only to return later to appreciate it again.

He thrashes the surface of the deep in frustration, only heightening his sense of being wet and suspended. The seas grasp on his form further elucidating his own inability to grasp anything of his own in the deep. Shamefully, angrily he sets out on a desperate defeated swim towards shore. Like countless times before, faithful as the tide rolling in, my soul loses consciousness just in sight of the shore and briefly loses himself to the sea only to have the breakers and efforts of his own longing and desire to survive deliver him tumbling listlessly onto the shore.

My soul awakes cathartic with exhaustion and satisfied with coming yet closer to the deep and disappointed that he never really touched it. Immediately he finds his island smaller, blander, slowly being swallowed by the growing deep. Exuberantly he begins to do. He begins to take with his hands and work. At first harvesting that phantom satisfaction that tormented him at sea, reaping its yield repeatedly, growing less satisfied with each season. The calling of the deep never leaves and slowly files away the longings of the island. The island itself also works towards its own destruction, consistently falling short of satisfying my soul’s deepest yearnings, my yearnings for the deep.

Someday, not far off, the sea will completely overcome my island and the deep will rise up on my shores to consume me. My soul will be helpless to avoid its own death in the crushing deep. The deep will extinguish the sun and take my breath. There will be no island to distract me, and no temporal satisfaction to swim back to. I will have only the deepest to finally attain. The rhythm of the sea will take me, and the song of the deep will consume me and break me. Death will meet me at the deepest and clothe me with rapture and fulfillment. My feet will once and for all stand on a new ground salted with the deadly life of the deep's embrace. My hands will be content. My soul at last will be at rest, serenaded everlasting in the bosom of the deep.

2008-03-26T23:23:00.000-05:00

When I walked out I saw the moon and she made me cry. Her eyes look down on me having seen all my troubles time and time again. She offers no help to me though. I glare at her and shake my hand.

“Who are you to look at me like that! You look at me and you know! You know! You know what I just went through! You’ve seen it before and you just sit out there staring dumbly down on all of us. Well!? What do you have to say huh?! What!? You could do better, you’re just the moon, a fucking rock floating in a void with no life no love and no love lost! You don’t know! You don’t know anything; you have no choices to mess up! You have no consequences to endure!”

I sit down and drink deeply. I cry some more and glare at the moon. My heart begins to settle with the alcohol. I wipe my nose and cheeks and look back to the moon.

“I’m sorry moon. It’s not your fault. I lashed out childishly. You’ve seen that before too haven’t you? Of course you have. Just a celestial scape goat; a stellar sitting duck for all the harsh words of the nights that didn’t turn out right. You’re no dummy though. Of course you’re not. You see all the stupid mistakes, the little details I missed that apparently mattered so much. I must look foolish, a complete ass. I was the perfect guy to her, so she says, and somehow she just couldn’t love me. Somehow I messed up even when she thought I was perfect. She couldn’t even love me when I was perfect to her. Must make you laugh huh? Makes me cry.”

2007-08-20T21:31:00.000-05:00

What exactly is my state of mind?

I know it's racing. It's not going anywhere though. I'm running familiar pissed off laps around a mental track or irratibility. My thoughts sound like I'm venting a narration to some omnipotent viewer outside of my own time explaining my actions.

"See! See that?! That's what pisses me off." That and everything else I can see or think of.

"Look at these fucking idiots. All congragating in front of the damn front door. Is there anywhere more obviously inconvenient for people to stand around and drivel to each other? I've got to wade through a bunch of sheltered, naive, smiling, bible thumping christian, incoming freshman just to get inside the coffee house. Standing around wearing their scripted hearts on their strategicly wrinkled t-shirts sleeves. Clogging up the coffee house I would rather have completely empty and absolutely quiet. Wearing an expression of satisfied, scared shitless, pride that says 'I spent last night in my own dorm room without my parents and that means I'm an adult.' "

To be perfectly honest I feel absolutely selfish and base. I am enjoying it, enjoying like we sometimes enjoy small pains. I think I feel like it's honest and real. I'm just letting go of the culture and fears that hold me back from being my perfectly awful self. I want to vent at the top of my lungs and yell and scream and piss everyone off. Piss them off so much that they all attack me. I wandt to start a fight. I want to start such a brawl that I can punch and kick to my heart's desire and then fall down from exhaustion to get my ass kicked till I black out. I always wonder if it's weird how sometimes I feel most alive when I've just fucked something up bad. Go all in and lose it all. Everytime I've endulged myself to losing I can remember leaving the table feeling satisfied. What is that?

Right now I feel like I've got all the right answers and I just want someone to say anything so that I can correct them and crush their misconceived notions. I want some guy to come up to me and get in my face and say, "You're a fucking idiot. You want to know the truth, this is everything that's wrong with you and why everyone in this room is better off than you". He would snarl at me and he would shout out every dispicable thing I've ever done in a room full of codescending sneers from rich little white girls holding martinis and leaning against velour pillow cushions. He would finish and everyone in the room would purse their lips and narrow their eyes in satisfaction and think to themselves, "Yeah, he just got told, dang that was brutal, he must be emotionally destroyed". Is this a desire for home? The final judgement?

Then triumphantly I would stand up and get in the destroyer's face and say, "You think I don't know that? You think I don't intimately know all the sick things about myself? You fucking dunce. Who the hell do you think you are to speak up as an authority on my wickedness? I know my wickedness far better than you do and its bad enough to make you shit yourself in fear. You think you've shocked or impressed me with the giant balls you think it took for you to say those things out loud? You insignificant little shit. Look at you. You smug little shit, so satisfied and patting yoursef on the back because you think that your long thought out dissimilation of my own personal brick wall was devastating and I was helpless to hide all my blemishes from your overpowering truth. Fuck you! You want to shout em out, go ahead, I'm tired of all of you sitting their wondering at my deeds, conjuring up little fantacies of how simple I am and building your own ideas of the evils I've done! Well here they are". Somehow I would then shout out a long list of all my evils and laugh in there faces that are quickly losing their color, "take a good look you little shits, they're far worse than you could have imagined, but these at least are real! These are honest, and real, and nasty, and true, and they're mine so fuck off!"

Then they would all become embarrassed and slink out of the room and leave me alone with quiet so I can do my work.

What are these fantacies? Why do I have them? Why do I feel fine with the state of mind I'm in; knowing that tomorrow I'll be in a completely different state of mind and be able to write something genuinely sweet and endearing?

10 minutes later:

I went outside and had a smoke. I don't really smoke, but every now and then it's just right. I was fancying myself "Mr Bad Ass" taking long slow drags on the sidewalk. Then some women walk out of the coffee house holding their babies. I quickly got up and walked 10 yards out of their way so that my smoke would come no where near their babes. I thought to myself, "Oh yeah, your soo evil aren't you. Mr Bad Ass, afraid to smoke around a baby." My mood quickly deflated.

I sat back down with a wry smile for myself and feeling quite cathartic. At that moment I felt fine. More than anything I wanted be sitting next to a beautiful lady whom I had just viciously vented all that I have written. She wasn't scared or intimidated by my mood and temper. After exhausting my agitation she'd look me in the eye and laugh at my silliness. Then I'd laugh too.

I walked back into the coffee house buzzing and relaxed and was met with song that I somehow felt was just for me. "If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad, if it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad?" I felt like it answered some question that I have been trying to ask, but couldn't find the words for.

I said to myself, "I don't know? Does make me happy? Am I sad? If it does make me happy why the hell am I so mad? What makes me happy?"

I mentally giggle as I return to my seat.

Anybody out there feel me? Am I speaking anyone's language?

2007-08-06T00:45:00.000-05:00

Captain Manuel Rivero De Soto: Revised

The heavy ocean winds brush his face and rustle his hair and beard; playfully irreverent and omnisciently familiar. Eyes closed in a familiar greeting to the wind the captain engages only the senses he needs to greet the wind. He feels its press and smells its closeness. He can taste its salty skin and hear the whispers of its breath chuckling in his ears, like shaking hands with a god. The wind and the captain have long been friends, and as such have had their share of disagreements. The wind rips his sails and batters his ship, taking him days off course and bringing the storms. Yet it is always the wind who brings him home again and brings him to port ahead of schedule.

Reminiscing, the captain smiles with careful fondness at the wind’s mischievous rustlings this morning. He opens his eyes to study the horizon and to take in the disposition of his busy crew. The Sea Bwana’s deck is rolling on its ninth day at sea with Luanda, of the Portuguese Angola, to its stern. The crew is working apprehensively. They know the sea well and are also familiar with the wind; today the wind gloats of the approaching storm. The crew works quickly to put the ship in order for a return voyage to Luanda.

The captain began to close his eyes again and entreat the wind. “What makes you so proud of this storm? Maybe it is not so great as my crew and this ship?” The wind gusts to answer and laughs at the captain’s interrogation. The captain has never doubted his crew or his ship. His only doubts are those of his own ability. Anyone, may follow orders faithfully and confidently, but to give them faithfully is difficult.

The captain turns to issue the order to turn back to Luanda. Upon turning he meets the eyes of his entire crew. His crew is on edge and looking at him with fearful, ready anticipation. He breathes and follows his crews gaze with his eyes, then his head, and slowly with his shoulders over his right shoulder.

Standing behind him and to his right a middle-eastern man garbed in middle-eastern peasantry is watching him waiting to be seen. Once the captain sees him the man begins to speak. “Captain Manuel Rivero De Soto, how are you today?”

The captain, being relieved at only finding a stowaway yet worried about his crew’s unease, smiles reservedly and marvels at the confidence that his uninvited passengers exudes. “Who are you? Why are you on my ship, and why should I not hand you over to the ocean?”

Then the man speaks, “I am Jesus, do you know that this is true?”

Captain De Soto’s heart leaps in his chest as he hears the words crash into his world. He knows for sure that this man is who he says he is. This realization is both stunning and frightening to the Captain. Yet despite these feelings he is also unexpectedly and overwhelmingly relieved to see him, to know He is here, and longs to keep him on board. De Soto knows that the crew is watching him and most certainly noticed his change in demeanor regarding the man.

“Yes, I know this to be true, what would you have with me?”

The captain can feel the tension of the crew rage against the gentle rolling of the ocean. He longs to invite the man to stay, but he stifles the fire in his bowels and waits for the man to speak again.

“Captain De Soto, certainly you have considered the approaching storm, what will you do?”

Hesitating at such an simple question, he stammers, “We must return to port, to Luanda.” Unable to stifle the stirring in his bowels he adds, “You are most welcome to accompany us to port if you so desire.”

Jesus smiles and says, “Captain De Soto I tell you assuredly that this approaching storm is the mightiest storm the oceans have ever seen. You would be wise to return to Luanda. There is no possible way in which any captain ever could successfully sail through this storm, ever. However Captain, I have created this storm specifically for you, and for this crew, and this ship. I assure you that if you were to sail straight into that storm, headed for Cape Town as you had planned, you will reach port. You and your entire crew will live through the ordeal. You will all be injured, some severely, and the Sea Bwana will never make it out to sea again once she docks. However, you and your entire crew will eventually make it to Cape Town.”

Jesus’s smile keeps growing while he speaks and he begins to laugh as he continues. “I tell you that this storm will tax every aspect of this ship and its crew beyond any conceivable limits. You will face the impossible many times only to overcome it and face it again. You will encounter the deepest terrors that the oceans have to offer and that the winds may conceive. Furthermore, once you decide I will leave your deck never to discuss your decisions. I will not be here physically to guide you. You doubt and fear, but take courage, I have designed your mind and heart and spirit to endure such storms. It is your decisions that will save this ship and crew time and time again, and you will be faced with impossible decisions constantly. I offer this storm to you as the greatest sailing adventure the world has ever known. I have made your heart to seek adventure and to tear out the very entrails of fear itself. I have made your will strong to master your nerves and make them your own. I do not say that all your decisions will be the best ones, and when you think it can’t get any worse it will get worse seven fold. Your lives are promised though beyond the storm. Lastly Captain, your ears are the only ears which have heard my words today, your crew will need your faith for though they see me they do not hear me or know me. They do not have your memories of my words to rely on.” Jesus steps closer and asks, “So what say you Captain De Soto?”

At this point the captain’s heart is racing and his bowels boiling with anticipation and fear. But he can feel his spirit dancing with confidence and eagerness. He turns to let a slow hard smile rest on each member of his crew. The captain finally lets his gaze rest again on Jesus, “Son of Man, how could any captain deny his crew such a lovely adventure? We will gladly go forward.”

Jesus throws his head back lets loose a triumphant and raucous laugh. He rubs his hands together in anticipation, “The heavens are dancing with excitement and I will be standing and cheering as well.” As his last word leaves his mouth Jesus vanishes.

The captain loudly and calmly gives orders to stay the course to Cape Town keeping his hard smile all the while. His crew does not hesitate at the orders but the mood has changed, it is sober and severe. As the crew carries out his orders he turns to face his promise. He faces a growing darkness and growing sea swells.

His hair and beard rustle with the mounting winds. The wind feels and tastes the same, but the captain can smell his departed passenger. He smiles at the presence and sighs at the whisper he now hears in his ear. A familiar voice, but one he has never heard on the wind before. As the deck begins to heave and the skies grow darker he begins to sing what the Son whispers to him. His crew quickly and loudly joins in.

At the sound of his crew the captain thinks, “This is our song wind, our holy breath. I wonder, how does our breathe feel to you? How does it taste, and smell, and sound to you? Does it confound you, our bravery? You know your masters voice; and as such you shall soon know our voices too. We, His royal brothers, are going forth to defy and command ourselves with authority. Here we come wind, triumphantly, with disregard for all fear and uncertainty. I will hold tight to a promise though I be the only one.”

His own thoughts make him smile. The winds howle with challenge as he orders full sail into darkness and calamity.

2007-08-02T15:27:00.000-05:00

"Hey you want to hear something ironically funny and tragic?"

"Yes", she said with a smile.

"I feel like I know more today than I did this day last year, but I don't think most of what I learned is any use. Mostly, I feel like anything useful that I've learned falls under the category of 'what isn't right', or 'I definitely had this wrong', or 'nope that wan't the voice of the Lord'.'

She softly smiles and looked up from her book, saying with her look "don't worry my dear one", and with her voice "Awwww, broken heart and spiritually confused, the Lord loves that doesn't He".

Ignoring the voice I say, "It seems that nothing I've learned is useful for doing, only not doing. Am I just supposed to sit and not do?"

"I don't know maybe you could read a book", insinuating she's heard this before but is willing to work through it again if my heart desired.

"Maybe I could just take your book and pin you to the floor again, you know work of some of my angst."

She unsuccessfully fights her smile. Recognizing my challenge as something that I know she loves to lose to me in, she's always chaffed by my bringing up something that is just as confusing to her as my purpose in life is to me. She hates losing at anything, and is shocked that she loves to lose to me in something so base and silly as wrestling, something I obviously have the upper hand in anyway.

Loosing a devious smile over her book she impersonates Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday, knowing I love the movie and always laugh at her awful impressions, "I know husband, let's have a spelling contest".

Catching the insult I chuckle and pounce across the living room floor at her. Screaming she tries to get away, but was far too slow and really didn't want to escape anyway.

Grabbing both of her wrists and pinning them to the floor with one of my hands in front of her face, I stifle the rest of her struggles by stradling her left hip and holding her legs with my feet. I faciously asks "How do you spell dominated?"

Our night will end with no great insights into my divine purpose and she won't finish her book. It will end sweetly and tenderly, comfortably together. The morning will come as it had the day before. All the while I feel the Lord just smiles. Somehow I know that it is good. Can I take comfort in a good that I don't understand and has nothing to do with my problems? Sure, why not, I can at least for the next few hours; until sleep.

2007-03-14T18:10:00.000-05:00

Church: Noun or Verb?

I hear many people today discuss whether or not church is being done right or not. They like to consider how it can be done better. I don't think church is even something you do. It's not a verb. It's a noun. Being a part of the church is like being a person, place, or thing. The grand canyon won't be any better at being the grand canyon tomorrow than it was today, it doesn't have the facility to improve its grand canyoness. Water today is water tomorrow, it can't make itself more efficient at being water. I won't be any better at existing as a male human being tomorrow than I was today. I can't practice having a Y chromosome, or a penis, or a beard, or really hairy legs. These are things that just are.

I am a christian therefore I am a member of the Body of Christ therefore I am the church. Could I be a more christlike person? Absolutely!! But if I'm totally unChrist like one day, it doesn't mean that I was less of a member of the Body of Christ that day, that never changes.

Kingdom living....ahhhh, now there is something that can be discussed, and is discussed quite frequently by Christ himself.

That's it for now.

2007-03-14T17:19:00.000-05:00

Disclaim, Disclaim, Disclaim....Blah Blah Blah

Disclaimers and disavowers are really getting under my skin. They get under my skin and then fester. They fester into this fiberglass substance that itches, hurts, and emits an agitating noise the same pitch a poorly aimed fingernail would make grating against a rock. Not only are they getting under my skin, but they are becoming increasingly distasteful to me. Mostly I hear disclaimers and disavows when people broach subjects that are sensative or touchy. They make me want to slam my head in my cardoor.

I see these mostly when people begin talking about church. At this point I can almost forecast a disclaimer.

*Jesus Freak Joe gets a thought in his head that maybe Lucado and Piper haven't written about yet. He thinks about it some more and realizes it wasn't in Blue Like Jazz either. He then realizes that what he's about to say could be a BOLD statement. He starts to wonder, "just how far out on a limb have I gone here?" He finally looks up to face his jury. A circle of white collar bible babies who have no greater idea than he does. (It's this facial expression that I've come to recognize.) Tight mouth, wringing or fidgeting hands, quick steady glances of eye contact around the room, and then starts to raise either one or both of his hands... then the words, "Ok, I'm not sure about this, and i'm not claiming to be an expert on church, and I don't want to offend anyone, and if I'm way off let me know, but (sigh) maybe we should make announcements at the beginning of service instead of the end?" He cleverly poses his statement as a question. The gravity of the words set in with furrowed brows and grunts fo deep thought.

Then Jesus Freak Jerry speaks up, "You know, I'm no Paul or anything, but I THINK Joe MAY be on to something. I think we should consider it, pray about it, offer it up to the Lord, and see what He thinks about it."

Then the circle grunts approval.

Weak Sauce Man!!!

Why can't we just say stuff? "I think ______ about _______. What do you guys think?"

I think our problems stem from a number of areas, such as:
-everyone is scared to death of being wrong, especially about the Lord. Heaven forbid any flawed human being say anything that was the slightest bit off about a perfect omni-multiple of things God.
-many people today don't know what it is to listen to the voice of the Lord, and ACT on it, or BELIEVE in it. Some people don't hear it and think it's all up to their mental understanding, which ends up being alot of stress. Some folks hear the Lord and doubt constantly whether or not they're hearing the Lord, but they don't want to test it dreading that they've in fact never heard the voice of the Lord or that they may have been wrong about something or mess something up, they're basically being spiritual pussies.
-some of us are way too scared to contradict an established creed, doctrine, or some published christian goo-roo with a life advice book. Why? Most of us don't know anything about these book breeding rabbits. Why believe anything they say? So what if nameless doctrine "A" has been around for a hundred years, well maybe it's been wrong for a hundred years.
-We're all afraid of offending someone. Our first ministry is the ministry of reconciliation, but we never practice it because we try our darndest to allow no one to ever be offended with anything we could ever do or say. "So what if the fence I'm sitting on becomes a permanent part of my body, at least I didn't step on anyone's toes. Thank God I never stood up for anything, I might have been wrong, boy not only is being wrong unforgivable but it's embarrassing too. Man o man, that would have been just the worst thing ever."
-some of us are way to afraid of tarnishing our white washed spiritual resumes
-we don't realize that we don't have to be offended by differing beliefs or view points, it is a choice. Even if we are offended we've got a back up: FORGIVENESS!!

Alright, enough ranting. Basically, I'm exhausted by disclaimers, I think they should be banished.

The End.

2007-01-12T04:12:00.000-06:00

Immediate Post Pary

To those who doubt and question, and to that one dream who doesn’t know me yet,

(I deleted the previous paragraph or so in consideration of others personal feelings, but the rest is pure venting, enjoy)

... yet I couldn’t cast him aside. Little did I know it but the Lord was teaching me about love. I didn’t know how to love at the time, at least not well. That’s why I was tired all of the time. Somehow I had to let go. I couldn’t explain to you how that happened. I can only say that the impossible with man is possible with the Lord.

For instance, tonight I went to a party where most of the people were gay. Two years ago I couldn’t have stepped into a building with one gay person without feeling this overwhelming responsibility to show them the “ever-changing power of Christ”. The love that overcomes all. How would I have shown them? Instead I drank some and realized that often these people are no more messed up than I am. I just live in a society that accepts my faults as common and natural. Lust, sure every guy deals with it. Pride, well that’s not so bad if it’s for the right things. Secrecy, hey everyone’s got to have a private life right? No, I don’t think so.

Instead I spent most of my tipsy time talking with a human wallowing in the guilt and despair of our faults. You see I live in a town full of pharisees. They’d never tell you as much, but a pharisee never would. Of course I’m humble and holy and all that, I’m a christian after all. Shut, I’m in charge of a ministry. How often did I whisper those words to myself. And, oh, how they came crashing down. I knew this person, wallowing, the moment I saw her. Maybe a year ago. I saw her as well as I see myself in hindsight. Very clearly. As well as I see you sometimes.

This person was wracked with guilt over having been drunk and I’m sure a number of things. I was so relieved though because deep down they knew that their guilt in wrong. Because Jesus saved us from our guilt, of any guilt we should ever have. How foolish it is for any christian to ever feel guilty. Regret, hits us all, and rightfully so most times. But guilt, no, Jesus took care of that. Guilt is a waste of time.

This person had never heard that before. Despite the christian upbringing, despite the many bible studies and high regard, they still felt guilty. I look at them and only see myself. How often I fall...no JUMP into the pits of despair because of something I did or did not do. Something Jesus died for already, sin or not. What an insult for me to try and take on guilt that only Jesus could. That really does need forgiveness.

So this is to you.

You who are highly regarded and don’t know it. You who are beautiful and respected. You who have a great boyfriend/girlfriend. That great relationship that everyone envys. You who are in charge of the ministry and placed over people. You who have changed people’s lives in genuinely powerful ways and then looked back and thought “no...that really had nothing to do with me because I am a nobody. I am only a lowly servant who only WISHES to change peoples lives. Who wishes for more than anything to be seen as I truly am so that I could no longer have what I think I am not worthy of. That, being other peoples regard and respect. If other people could really see me as I am, I think they would loathe me and cast me out. I’m sure of it.”

Then one day I let someone see the best part of me. A part that was so good, and holy, and from the Lord that I didn’t want to show anyone in case of jealousy or envy. Something so purely from the Lord that I felt embarrassed at Him having given it to me. It wasn’t until I showed someone this beautiful part of me that I was ever genuinely cast out. Then I knew abandonment. Then I tasted what it was like to have loved ones turn there backs on you. But I also found out for the first time what it was to have loved ones stand by despite what anyone else said. That...that was great...and a blessing beyond anything I have ever received, ever.

Some people who knew me then have seen me now and said, “yeah, he got a little weird.” So I am. I readily admit that I don things sometimes that don’t make any sense. Things that to a normal person scream, “psycho” or at least “too unconventional for my blood”.

I don’t care that’s what the pharisee screamed about Jesus. That’s what I screamed about him before I knew Him. Well now I piss on most of what I used to debate and stand up for. The only thing I ever want to stand with is the only thing that made a difference to that confused person tonight at that party. The unconditional love and overpowering grace of Jesus Christ. That’s it, to hell with the rest of it.

P.S. I’m still a little tipsy so pardon any grammatical errors. I thought that my genuine nature at this moment is more important than a grammatically sound post I could come up with later. I also wanted to forgo trying to reinvent what I felt the night before, tomorrow morning. At this point I'd rather deal with the consequences of a mistake than publish a "pretty" version of my thoughts tonight.

2007-01-10T01:34:00.000-06:00

Obnoxious Manuel

The tinkling bell that announces visitors to such places was taking it easy on this particular day. On occasion it would admit a paying customer to the sunny diner, mainly locals with a slow morning to enjoy and a few thoughts to chew on. The dust motes and quiet clinking of the breakfast plates offers a soothing soundtrack to such times. Sitting at the left end of the bar already is a youngish man whose fame is unquestionable to his self and he is sure most other people. Obnoxious Manuel is a tall man with a strong face and slow eyes that burn with the deceptive and lackluster shine of the hottest coals at the bottom of a fire pit. This morning he is passionately and importantly explaining to his faithful waitress the importance of his initial cup of coffee.

“It must be right. Nothing less than the appropriate cup will do. Not for the first cup of the day.” Flippantly motioning toward his smoking cup of coffee he adopts a hopeless smirk and continues his instruction. “And this, my faithful barmaid, is inappropriate. You certainly, being a bar lass, understand that the first cup of coffee is really the only cup of coffee...”.

The waitress, familiar with his lectures, cautiously keeps her eyes from rolling, and nods along with Obnoxious Manuel’s now monotonously righteous lecturing. Interjecting at random, “is there anything else I can get you Mr. Manuel?”

Feigning emotional injury Obnoxious Manuel cringed and loudly whispered, “I did not interrupt you while you were taking my order did I?! I let you do your job yes?! I don’t cat call you while you peruse your paying gentlemen and ask them if they need their cups filled?! So please return the favor and let me do my job.”

Unable to help restrain her rolling eyes the waitress cut in, “Mr. Manuel Sonny’s diner is not a brothel and I am no winch. Do you want another cup of coffee or not? It’s going to be from the same pot as the first one.”

His emotional anguish now forgotten, Obnoxious Manuel looks for sympathy from his companion, Dancer Douglass, sitting on the stool to his right. Quietly enjoying the shining dust particles dancing on the hot air rising from his cup of coffee Dancer casually remarks “We all make choices”.

Receiving no help from his friend Obnoxious Manuel again turns toward the waitress ready to educate her on the delicacies of the morning’s first cup of coffee only to find a new cup of coffee between his elbows. His consternation is broken by the subtle introduction by the door bell of two gentlemen dressed to kill or baptize.

Mr. Phillips and Mr. Stanley take the booth to the left end of the bar in plain view of Obnoxious Manuel. Once the waitress leaves they both take up their coffees and regard each other with reluctant malice. Both older gentlemen, but they could hardly be more different in mind, soul, or body.

Mr. Phillips is a short older man with an oversized lower body. His cheese log legs and round belly are topped off with polio arms, narrow shoulders and a thin pointy head. Mr. Phillips is an immensely popular preacher at an emergent church a few hours west of the little train-car diner. He was a walking testament to the power of love and the unwavering love of his God.

Across the table sat Mr. Stanley, a man forever and irreversibly changed by the power and faithfulness of his God. He is also a successful preacher, his congregation being a few hours east of the diner. He was a tall man with pole shaped limbs and a slender neck heroically supporting an enormous head which is tragically losing its cover.

Mr. Phillips swallows his coffee first and is first to speak. He spoke with a slow soft central Texas accent.

“I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me. Let me first say that I recognize and appreciate your ministry. Certainly the Lord has used you and your heart his for the people of your congregation. I understand that the Lord has delivered you of some incredible trials. He has obviously healed you and brought you to a great understanding of His power in that regard. However I am very bothered with your heart towards some struggling christians. The people you’ve work with are obviously in need of the Lord, and they are certainly in need of His healing and power. More than that though, I believe they need His love. It’s His love which He came to show us. It’s His love which Christ preaches. It’s His love that forever changes us and drives us closer to Himself. The ever passionate and faithful love of the Father for His children, a love too powerful to be held back by the presence of homosexual tendencies or other sexual deviancies within any particular person. What your congregation needs to hear more than anything is about that love. And they absolutely need His healing, but they don’t need to hear another person telling them to change their ways. Certainly the Lord wants them to changes their ways but it has to be the Lord who changes them. You know that you yourself can’t change them, and that none of us really are able to change ourselves into anything truly good on our own. And you say yourself that only God had the power to bring you out of your sins and that you were helpless against them. Until the Father changes his children they are to love and be loved. I only say this because I think that your ministry, though obviously doing well, could really grow in a godly way by emphasizing more the love of the Father, as opposed to only preaching change.”

Mr. Stanley had patiently waited through Mr. Phillips comments, silently proud at having out waited the man and at now getting the chance to possibly get the last word. He took a minute to give the impression of really pondering what Mr. Phillips had just said to him. After a thoughtful nod he began in his strong south east Texas accent, “Well, I certainly appreciate your honesty Mr. Phillips, and I want you to know that I have the utmost respect for you and your ministry. I have heard great things from a number of people about you personally and have never heard a cross comment about you.” Mr. Stanley silently congratulated himself on having out complimented his adversary. He also found some comfort in giving himself the credit for having a better speaking voice and vocabulary.

“The love of Jesus is absolutely the greatest love the world has ever scene. And I don’t doubt for a minute that it’s what drives us to want to change. But wanting to change and actually pursuing that change are two different animals. The bleeding woman would have never been healed had she not braved the crowds how despised her and reached to grab Jesus’s robe. Zacheus was blessed because he called out above the crowd, and the boy lowered down on the mat through the roof was placed at the feet of Jesus because they climbed on top of a house and tore a whole in the roof for their friend. When these people reached out and called out Jesus loved them already, but it was their determination to be changed by Him that ultimately led to their deliverance or healing.” Feeling the power of the argument he was laying down Mr. Stanley pressed on to his own thoughts of Mr Phillips.

“And honestly I think that you are ultimately hindering your own congregation by not encouraging them and pressing them on to the changing power of the Lord. They absolutely need to be loved, but that’s not all the Lord promised us. He also promised us healing, the gifts of the Spirit, and crowns in heaven for our sacrifices.”

Becoming patiently pissed off Mr. Phillips jumped in at a pause by Mr Stanley, his hands held up innocently but his soft spoken accent taking on a crisp edge id lacked earlier.

“Mr. Stanley that sounds awful close to being performance oriented and furthermore it absolutely is the Love of Christ that should be...”

At Mr. Phillips interruption Mr. Stanley’s pride instantly bristled and brought his preaching finger to a point at Mr Phillips face and furrowed his brows. He started to speak, “Mr Phillips I can’t believe...”

“Oh, hush both of you!”

Simultaneously startled the well dressed preachers both turned from their coffee to face an agitated Obnoxious Manuel. Forgetting his all important first cup, Mr Manuel had swiveled his bar stool to his left ant was now perched comfortably for is own speech.

“Gentlemen, allow me the great pleasure to introduce you to one another.”

Both men began to defensively and confusingly explain that they new the other, but Mr Manuel was past the point of allowing either one of them a chance to say anything more. Gesturing for Mr Phillips to look at Mr. Stanely he began, “Screwdriver it is my unwanted duty to introduce you to Hammer.”

Making the same gestures to Mr Stanley he continued, “And Hammer this is Screwdriver.”

At this point both older gentlemen were quite confused and speechless.

“Both of you are absolute tools.”

This remark dropped both preachers’ jaws and they tensed with anger. Mr Manuel allowed them no time to impede his discourse.

“You see tools have no intrinsic value, which is quite obvious with the both of you. Without a hand to use the tool, and an objective to use them for, they are utterly useless. Both of you are such creatures. In fact we all are such creatures, as far as usefulness goes. It is true that we are loved and appreciated despite a lack of need for us. However, I’ve just labored through both of your opening speeches to what was bound to be an epic battle of sound theology and bullshit, and I can assure that both of you are tools arguing over who is better for the job. What nether one of you realizes is that you’re not the same tools.”

Mr. Manuel feigned shock and surprise at his own observation and paused a minute for the heavy truth to set in.

“You sir are not able or meant to do what he does and visa versa. How silly would a man be to use a hammer on screws or a screwdriver on nails? My goodness we got ahead of ourselves, didn’t we? Each of you thinking the other should work as you do. Now I don’t want to hear anymore of the hammer telling the screwdriver how he should work with nails, or the screwdriver telling the hammer to work with screws. Your tools after all and it’s high time you start behaving like it. You’re not builders, or architects. Neither one of you is a grand engineer high and mighty to speak of how others should operate. These are things that tools, like yourselves, should never attempt.”

Supremely satisfied with his lesson Obnoxious Manuel ordered his coffee to go and made his way to the car with Dancer Douglass smirking close behind him.

2006-11-29T13:20:00.000-06:00

Spuirrel Sex

Today I had a lovely lunch with a dear friend of mine. We had great conversation and a healthy repose from our academic endeavors. It was on our return to campus however that I witnessed an event that both shocked and awed me.

We were about to part ways between the Evans Library and History building when a menacing ruckus errupted in the lofty branches of one of the many post oak trees adorning Texas A&M campus. I looked up to spy two squirrels fighting with a passionate hatred which I had rarely seen exhibited in my human brothers. As I watched I commented "Man they're really going at it." I was starting to get excited about the possibility of one of them being thrown from the branches and falling to its death at our feet. The possibility of such a final and fatal result to an impressive display of passionate dislike was incredibly exciting to me.

Then they shocked me. With stunning quickness one of the squirrels pivotted, circled, and then MOUNTED the other one. The mounting squirrel then released a fury of machine gun pelvic thrusts with such speed and determination that it made my eyes widen and my jaw grow heavy. As soon as it began it was over. The furious fueding began anew.

I was and am still utterly impressed with the sexual experience of the spuirrel. Imagine fighting for your life against the one you want to mate with. Fighting in the lofty branches of your native tree, dangling over your own demise. Then with instinctual timing you strike or succumb (depending on gender). The passion of your fury suddenly turns into the throws of passion while still dangling on the verge of a fall that would leave you terminally on the ground. WOW! That sounds awesome. I applaud you squirrels for the courage it must take to pursue your mating practices. I give the thumbs up to the Lord for His originality and artisitic impression when He endowed the squirrel for procreation.

Reading

2006-11-21T22:01:00.000-06:00

I’ve recently ventured into a spiritual book. Previously I had resolved never again to burden my eyes with the religious ramblings of men I didn’t know and of whom I could not appraise their spirituality myself. Thankfully the Lord has overcome my own mental drivel and delivered me to the encouragement of His gospel. I just finished reading a book about the love of the Father for His children. Towards the end of its pages I read this one quote that almost spoke my name aloud.
“Are you as certain of the triumph of good over evil as the fermentation of doe by yeast? Though on a given day you may be more depressed than anything else, is the general orientation of your life toward peace and joy? Are you diminished by other people’s perception of you or your own definition of yourself? Do you possess that touch of folly to transcend doubt, fear, and self-hatred and accept that you are accepted?
If not, you probably belong to the brotherhood of the bedraggled, beat-up, and burnt-out. You may feel like a charred log in a fireplace, totally drained of energy, and unable to light a fire in yourself. Your personal inner resources appear to be exhausted.
Louis Savary describes the brotherhood this way: ‘Their life is full of demands from others. They seem to be living at least three lives; everyone wants a piece of them; they can’t say no yet they have no time to do what they have already said yes to... They cannot seem to find the necessary clarity and information of which to base decisions... they make an investment in relations and get little gratitude, feedback, or even acknowledgment from others...”
The Lord as often exposed to me the reality of my self in such a state. Repeatedly He has brought me to that place. I used to crumble in devastation at my own failure. I have come to embrace though that it is not to be devastated that the Lord brings me to such a place, but only to set me free, to show me that my devastation and failure were part of the bargain all along, and need not be considered. He struck a deal with life on my behalf and delivered me into its ramifications. My Father loved me and paid my rent before I ever returned home, and when he did he shushed my spluttering, fearful explanations and embraced me into his freedom. Many, many times He has baptized me into His peace and freedom only to watch me return to the very land of bondage from which I had fled from, broken and destitute. I long now only to stay at home and enjoy His freedom.

Sunday Sunday Sunday

2006-11-20T22:47:00.000-06:00

This past weekend my family gathered for Thanksgiving out at the “farm”, a lovely ranch house that could easily be found in any addition of Southern Living. We celebrated early because that was the only weekend the entire family could get together. My good friend Tim went with me and we had a lovely time and ate more food than a young aggie Christian at a ministry lunch hour “served for the foreign students”. The following Sunday we all celebrated again because one of my younger cousins was being baptized. So, we all went to Central Baptist Church for a Sunday morning service. The service was...ok. the singing was typical choir and full orchestra and the “worship leader” looked like a JCrew Mr Rogers on ecstacy. The sermon went as follows.

The Scripture used: Galatians 4:12-20
12Brethren, I urge you to become like me, for I became like you. You have not injured me at all. 13You know that because of physical infirmity I preached the gospel to you at the first. 14And my trial which was in my flesh you did not despise or reject, but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. 15What then was the blessing you enjoyed? For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me. 16Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?
17They zealously court you, but for no good; yes, they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them. 18But it is good to be zealous in a good thing always, and not only when I am present with you. 19My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you, 20I would like to be present with you now and to change my tone; for I have doubts about you.

The main points were:
1. You need to be careful who you love.
2. You need to be careful about who you let love you.
3. You should never love anyone in such a way as to expect something in return.
4. You should only love someone to see the growth of Christ in them.
5. The zealots who were misleading Paul’s Galatians were similar to today’s cult in that they target the lonely outcasts and trap them with love to get them to do what they want. His example was the crazy guy in Waco and how he tricked everyone, with love, into letting him sleep with their wives.

My family was pretty impressed with the sermon. “He really knows how to bring it” was heard a number of times at the following lunch at On The Border. I...was rather unenchanted. The preacher’s delivery was stellar, emotional and gripping and stirring. His content...pretty cock-a-mimi in my book.

The “cult” Paul is refering to is actually the Hebrews (or Jews to the laymen) and they were sucking the Galatians back into the Law, not some occult practice that was later burned down in Waco Texas.

Mostly though I have no idea what he was talking about when he preached about Love. I thought Christ wanted us to love everyone...even our ENEMIES (shocked gasp and throw up in brown bag). Be careful with who you love? Be careful who you let love you? If some one wants to love me biblically, as it describes in 1 Corinthians 13 then bring it on, I’ll take all you got to give. If someone asked me to sincerely love them as it describes in 1 Cor 13 I would be deeply moved and of course comply the best I could. Should I stop and consider though the nature of the person’s heart? Should I consider his/her motives, when he/she may not realize their own motives? I remember hearing somewhere that Jesus said to love others as He had loved us. To me that means to love them before they love you, maybe even while they hate you, or quite possibly while they love you poorly in return.

In short I disagree Baptist preacher, with all ten fingers and toes I completely disagree.

This brings to mid another topic that has burrowed its way into my bad side. If there are any women or girls who happen to read this; what the heck does it mean to GUARD ONE’s HEART. I don’t get it and I am constantly banging my large head against this cold stony wall. Can someone please explain?

Urban Sprawl

2006-11-20T08:29:00.000-06:00

"Politicians have tried to make this a two sided issue, but what matters is not to decipher whether sprawl is good or bad, because it is neither, but to decide how to best accommodate sprawl.”

Felix Landry: educated citizen

Has anyone out there ever quoted themselves in a academic paper or presentation? If you are required to have eight sources and you quote yourself once or twice to reach those eight sources do you really have eight? I think it's a "legitimate strategy in the face of overwhelming circumstances." (Felix Landry, Honey From the Lion 2006)

I Saw it in a Movie

2006-05-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

So...I was watching this movie Keeping the Faith, with Ben Stiller, Edward Norton, and Gwynith Paltrow. The plot is quite interesting. Stiller plays a playboy Rabbi, Edward Norton plays a Catholic priest, and Paltrow a successfull workaholic. All of them were childhood friends. Paltrow left for fifteen years working and returned to work in New York and hang out with her rabbi and priest buddies. The movie starts with them picking her up at the airport where they quickly realize that while she was gone she grew up into this incredible bombshell of a lady. Then her and Jake fall in love but keep it secret, while Norton has also secretly fallen in love with her. In short the movie is full of great akward scenes.
There was a scene thought that jumped out at me. Norton, after very poorly confessing his love to the lady, is talking with his mentor priest about almost leaving the priesthood. the priest makes a cute little speech but drops the line that "some choices are not just singular choices that are long lasting. Sometimes a choice amounts to deciding to make the same choice for the rest of your life." He was saying that this applies to being a priest or being married.
Well this may be apparent to some of you but I've never really looked at anything that way. Come to think about it there are probably days in some married couples lives in which they spend the whole day not really being married, maybe even longer. I know that there have been days when I haven't been a good son, or brother, or friend; definitley never a good boyfriend. but I'm still a son, brother, and friend to many people by title. I can choose though to ignore the spirit of being anyone of those things. I've never been a good boyfriend because I've never decided to make decision to be on over and over again. The other decisions have come and gone and come again.
So there is an observation. I liked it so I thought that I would share it.

SUV's...Should They be Penalized?

2006-05-01T23:36:00.000-05:00

Currently much of America is complaining about our gas prices. I'm complaining too, because it's alot more expensive now than it used to be. Compared to the rest of the world we're still pretty cheap on the gas, but we're america, we shouldn't have to pay what the rest of the world pays. We, being americans, also have a hideous fetish for waste. SUV's for example comprise the most gas guzzling automobiles on the road. I have an SUV myself. I paid 50 bucks last time I felt my 2000 Nissan Xterra up. I even get good gas mileage, about 22 mpg on the highway. I still end up paying alot for fuel because my gas mileage just isn't that good, and many SUV's are worse. Much is being said about how to solve this problem. Some have said we should decrease the speed limits. Some say we should have better fuel economy regulations on cars, mainly SUV's. I say we do both. I think we should have speed regulations on cars with certain fuel efficiencies. For instance if your car get's fifty miles per gallon, you can go the normative 70 mph that we all enjoy currently. However, if your car only get's fifteen miles per gallon you have to go no faster than fifty five miles per hour. This would conserve fuel, encourage the purchase of fuel efficient cars, encourage the production of more fuel efficient cars, increase city revenues by way of speeding ticket, and slow down those shit for brains machismos with their big ass trucks from running over everyone else on the road. It may also bring a little humility to those, who inspite of the looming oil shortage, insist on buying obnoxiously wasteful mammoth SUV's that are prevalent. Problem solved my friends. Thank you, I'll be here all week ;-).

V for Vendetta

2006-04-23T23:43:00.001-05:00

I just saw V for Vendetta. I had heard nothing good about the movie, and me seeing was sort of out of my control. Boy am I glad I saw it. I'm gonna see it again.

The movie was pretty fantastical, and there were a few things about it that made me say "yeah right". But being a former philosophy major I very quickly picked up on the allegorical qualities of the flick. This movie had many things to say about the way society is in america and on a global scale. I'm not saying I agree with all the movie was preaching, and maybe I pulled some things out of it that were incidental. There may also be points that I completely missed. All I'm saying is I spent seven bucks to see it and don't regret it at all. It made me grin with the appreciation that only one thief could have for another that pulled something off very well. I'm pretty good at looking at big pictures, and this movie looks at some big pictures. You don't have to believe me, but I endorse this movie to any who read this.

Come Tou Fount

2006-04-23T00:02:00.000-05:00

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing by Robert Robinson is one of my absolute favorite hymns. I found out the other day that there is a fourth verse to the song that i've never heard anyone sing in any rendition of the song. Below are the lyrics with the added verse. Posted right after Come Thou Fount is another song, written by Robert Robinson, that is written to the same tune as Come That Fount that could be sung in addition. I love the words, hope you enjoy.

"Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing"
Robert Robinson

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

"Mighty God, While Angels Bless Thee"
Robert Robinson

Mighty God, while angels bless Thee,
May a mortal sing Thy Name?
Lord of men as well as angels,
Thou art every creature’s theme.
Lord of every land and nation,
Ancient of eternal days.
Sounded through the wide creation
Be Thy just and endless praise.

For the grandeur of Thy nature,
Grand beyond a seraph’s thought;
For the wonders of creation,
Works with skill and kindness wrought.
For Thy providence, that governs,
Through Thine empire’s wide domain,
Wings an angel, guides a sparrow,
Blessèd be Thy gentle reign.

For Thy rich, Thy free redemption,
Bright, though veiled in darkness long,
Thought is poor, and poor expression;
Who can sing that wondrous song?
Brightness of the Father’s glory,
Shall Thy praise unuttered lie?
Break, my tongue, such guilty silence!
Sing the Lord Who came to die.

From the highest throne of glory
To the cross of deepest woe,
All to ransom guilty captives;
Flow my praise, forever flow!
Reascend, immortal Savior;
Leave Thy footstool, take Thy throne;
Thence return, and reign forever,
Be the kingdom all Thine own!

Deliverance

2006-04-22T23:59:00.000-05:00

So today I got some deliverance. It was pure and good. I’ve never had some one spend an hour talking to me and then turn the tables and tell me my greatest fears and misconceptions about myself. It’s an odd experience to have someone tell you something about yourself that you didn’t know, but knew was true. How did he know? How is it that I know he’s right if I didn’t know until just now? The only answer is the Lord. The only answer is that the Lord loves me so much that He told some of my darkest characteristics to someone else, in front of other people, and gave me the heart not to care, but only to long to be free of those things. I was called Gideon today and for the first time I knew it was the warrior Gideon and not Gideon hiding in the wine press. I was called a “rock of Gibraltar”, and I melted because I could hear the Fathers voice. I was enlightened that some of my problems come from other people seeing the Lord’s blessing in me before I did and wanting to be a part of something I thought I was lacking in and could never be to people.

I didn’t pass out. I didn’t speak in tongues. I didn’t have a vision. I have victory though. It is a victory so complete that there wasn’t even any fighting, only broken jars, burnt out torches, and voices raw from praise; a victory so inevitable that the enemy left the field at the first sign of the coming opposition. They were many and they all left at the bidding of one of my brothers. He said go and they went. I and my family are that scary to the enemy. We are the embodiment of the coming defeat of satan and resounding victory of the called out ones led by the first born and backed by the I AM. My prayer is that the time is coming when our voices are anticipated in the heavens and make the darkest evils shudder at their coming defeat, and at our approach.

Man I Miss That Beard

2006-03-26T23:10:00.000-06:00

Man I miss that beard :-(

Cry Like A Sissy Boy

2006-03-26T21:32:00.000-06:00

i know it's been a while, and maybe anyone who ever read my stuff has abandonned me in my hiatis, but there has been much going on here and i haven't had time to process it. I do think i caught a glimpse of myself spiritually just now though. picture this:

"...little boy so anxious and worried about promised goodies from his dad. he paces and walks in place. his mouth is frozen in a maniacle anticipatory euphoric smile. he rings his hands constantly and breaths sporadically. every few seconds he totally freaks out with giggles and akwardly laughs, groaning his implorations of "when daddy, when!!!!". while dad is still preparing the boys gift the boys entire demeanor changes. his smile fades, the light in his eyes dims, and a foggy glaze rolls over him in place of the overwhelming intensity that once burned in him. he slumps against the wall in defeat of his own passion for what is to come thinking that "it's not here now, i don't see it coming, it will never be hear. daddy only teased me to test my fortitude, and all of my excitment was only a bright banner of my own failure to abstain or resist the greatest gifts". daddy turns from his work and sees the boy in utter despair weeping bitterly. in shock and amazment he leaps from his work and runs to the boy, "what are you doing!? did i not promise you good gifts?! why are you crying?!" the boy looks at him and says, "but i haven't gotten them yet, i've only seem glimpses and you won't let me have them." the daddy laughs sadly and says, "but they're not ready yet son, stop your sissy boy crying. i'm not going to give you incomplete gifts but gifts that are full and wonderful and complete. half a gift truly would be test, but i promised you gifts, and gifts are not tests." the boy being quite fikkle leaps up quivering with excitment and resumes his excited anticipatory figeting."

if you can't peace it together i am the boy. i am a very impatient boy with perverted views about the gifts of the Lord that are thankfully dying. I also have a severe lack of patience that the Lord is rectifying, and I also tend to cry (spiritually) like a sissy boy.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

2006-02-27T15:59:00.000-06:00

On my previous post (Por Tito en Espana) there is a picture of my great friend Fernando flying his flags (middle fingers) which may lead some to believe that he is insensitive or rude. May it never be!!! So here is my attempt at rectifying the situation, and I really want everyone to see this picture in case you ever meet the Nando (don't call him Ferny only Nando). He looks so good in hats, don't you think? This could also be somwhat of a...vengeful act?...but i think its mainly funny.

Salvation As I Know It

2006-02-10T17:35:00.000-06:00

I realized today that I don't know everyone who reads my blog, and may be surprised at some of the people who do. In light of that I considered the many posts that I have written and wondered if I have confused anyone. Probably so. So now I want to post something that I hope is common among all of my bretheren. This may also be what some of those who aren't sure about...are looking for. Following is the salvation of Christ as I have come to know Him. Here Goes.

In the beginning God created man. He breathed into man giving him life. That breath of God is our spirit. When man fell in the Garden and knew sin, our spirits died. That dead spirit is passed down to every human born since then up to the present.

Thus enterth Christ. Christ entered the world without natural conception but holy conception, thus bypassing being born with a dead spirit. He was also born with the very heart of the Father, enabing Jesus to live this life without tarnishing that spirit. Then when Jesus was hanging on the cross the Father took all of our transgressions and iniquities and deposited them into Christ, then turned His back on His only son and let him die the death of our sins. Christ died and went to hell for three days. While in hell he endured the sentence for our sins, all of them, and overcame them. So when He rose on the third day He then had not only a clean spirit but one that had been forgiven all of humanity's sins. Then at the end of John Christ breathes on his disciples depositing His clean spirit in place of their dead ones. So the disciples now had a spirit that was not only cleansed of their former sins, but of all sin. They had the spirit of Christ. That act of breatheing of them is the same way God the Father breathed life into Adam.
Christ breathing on the disciples established the body of christ, because they all had the same spirit, just like my body has one spirit but many body parts, so does Christ's spirit have many parts (all the brethren). So now when we appear before the judgement seat and satan says to the Father, "look at all the bad stuff this guy did" Christ can say "yes, he did those things and was guilty but i have already served his prison time, so he is clean."

It's funny because satan doesn't even have to lie, he just tells the nasty truth, and he still gets it in the rear. HA!

This is what I know for sure as the Salvation of Christ. While I am made up of many rooms, some which will burn away, this truth is the cornerstone to my foundation. It is not my whole foundation, but definitely my cornerstone. There is much more to the Father than salvation, so there is much more to my foundation. That, though, will have to saved for later.

I post this because I want everyone to see the cornerstone that I try to build onto. All the stuff I add may or may not be Godly, but this most definitley is. So in light of this, all of my other posts may burn away, but this will remain.

While I would love to know all the people who may read this, if you just don't feel like saying anything that's fine. But if you do, feel free to correct, disagree, give hearty approval, or leave some sort of pondering comment like "hmmmmm...". I like them all. Peace!

ps- to leave comments place cursor over the number next to the title of the post and the word "comments" will magically appear, click on it. some have been confused, so there it is.

in your face old me

2006-02-10T16:46:00.000-06:00

i've wanted to post this song for a while, so here it is. Rilo Kiley sings this song, though i don't know the title. I cried the first time i heard this song, and a few times since. i could never understand my overwhelming relief at hearing this song until recently. here's the song, the explanation follows:

Sometimes in the morning I am petrified and can’t move

awake but can not open my eyes

and the weight is crashing down

on my lungs I know I can’t breath

and hope someone will save me this time

and your mother still calls you insane and high

swearing its different this time

and you tell her to give in, to the demons that possess her

and that god never blessed her inside

then you hang up the phone, and feel badly for upsetting things

crawl back into bed to dream of a time

when your heart was open wide

and you loved things just because like the sink and the…

and sometimes when you’re on

you’re really fucking on

and your friends they sing along and they love you

but the lows are so extreme, that the good seems fucking sheek

and it teases you for weeks in its absence

but you’ll fight and you’ll make it through

you’ll fake it if you have to

and you’ll show up for work with a smile

you’ll be better and you’ll be smarter and more grown up

and a better daughter, or son, and a real good friend

you’ll be awake you’ll be alert you’ll be positive tough it hurts

and you’ll laugh and embrace all your friends

you’ll be a real good listener, you’ll be honest you’ll be brave

you’ll be handsome and you’ll be beautiful

you’ll be happy

shit may be coming in

you’re weak but not givin in

to the crys and the wills of the valley below

and your shit may be coming in

you’re weak but not givin in

and you’ll fight it, you’ll go out fighting all of ‘em

Why did I cry? because this song is the embodiment of my old self. my religious, fake, naive self who only knew the Lord as master and not daddy. This was my life, i didn't know that as a christian i was aloud to be unhappy and let it show. so i would wake up, swallow my honesty and throw my pretty speech around and listen to the cheers and appreciate the looks of approval. the whole time i was desperate for an honest love that would even love me when i was depressed and unhappy. At the time I first heard this song I was on the near side of being broken in major ways. most of my religion had recently been baptized in fire and none survived. When I heard the words of this song, to a militaryesque determined drumline, i saw my sad broken tear stained body laying in front of the pretty, happy smiling shell i had just been smoked out of. i was laying there in all my ugliness laughing/crying hysterically and giving my blank, staring, performance model shell the big f#%k you. I was so relieved that the Lord saw my brokenness, and freed me from the life this song so poignently sings of while still loving me with an overwhelming affection. Amen?

AMEN.

Global Empire of Wantoness

2006-01-31T23:38:00.000-06:00

The title is supposed to read with that deep echoing voice you hear on the cheesy sales commercials, "GLOBAL EMPIRE OF WANTONESS!!!!" Anyway I was inspired by temporarily Spanish friend, Tito, to the following observations.

Our parents, most of them, seem to obsessed with the idea of their kids, all of us, graduating college and going on to high paying jobs. We, for the most part, seem to be quite upset by the notion and don't want to comply.

Our present generational culture reminds me of the elites of the Enlightenment Period. If you're a literary fellow, we remind me of a rising nation of Pierre Bezuhovs. Pierre was a rich bastard son of a dying political God of Tolstoy's Russia in War and Peace. Pierre enters the epic returning from his educational travels that many rich kids were sent on and partook of many times in their lives. These trips were born of education, need for adventure, and curiosity. Pierre came back unsettled by the state of things and wanted to change everything wrong about the society he was in, which consisted of anything he didn't agree with. So he went on some adventures and changed a few obvious things that were related to him. Now imagine an entire country, like the US, full of Pierres. Creepy.

Except our need for adventure and curiosity is constantly being side tracked by entertainment; TV, movies, video games, overpowering culture shifts. So some of our generation are starting to grow old with that unsatisfied need to be righteous and make a difference. Some of us though are taking our chances and going for it. Traveling, studying abroad, grad school, for many christians in college station they get there adventure from marriage (i may have to explain that later, i'm sure some people will be pissed at that one, hehehe). Ultimately though it's only the Pierres, or the rich that get to take those chances. You won't see any ghetto kids traveling the world.

You see we're no the first world empire. We just happen to be the only one that is truly global and truly in control. The travelers and educated of the Roman's were from Rome or at least the Italian peninsula. During the Enlightenment it was Europe the headed the World, Thus the sophisticates were all from Europe. Now it's America. We are so lost in the middle of the richest of the world that we don't even know it. We are the elites, and we don't see it. Imagine how many people would be driven to action by sheer boredom if we lived with out all of the entertainment we are constantly bombarded with.

Our age also plays a factor. We're at the point where we want experience more than anything. We have this notion that there is so much more in the proverbial "out there" than we've got here. Which in a way is true, but ultimately I think it's all the same stuff just with different frosting (culture and setting). I could be wrong though, I've never really been in the proverbial "out there".

The "church", on the other hand I think is going through this awful "pubescent" stage. It's basically making an ass of itself and all the while thinking it's getting cooler and cooler. The body of Christ is always maturing so the growing pains will be consistent until we reach that blessed day when Christ presents us to the Father as a mature man. I think this "pubescent" stage is stemming from a few things:

1. Our culture is obsessed with being young, so the "church", being extremely cultural, is constantly having to stay young.
2. Our generation has an unsatisfiable hunger for something unknown, so the frustration with the church, and it's need for solidarity, is understandable. Imagine a pregnant woman's frustration at her blind and deaf husband's inability to acquire that perfect food that satisfies that elusive craving that she herself can not identify.
3. Our generation doesn't know what church is so it really doesn't know what it wants. It wants church but doesn't know it. We've seen from our parents that money doesn't get happiness and that the hippie lifestyle isn't the best either. Then we turn around and are faced with the boredom and constraint of "church" life that comes after college church life and, all of a sudden we see the next eighty years of their life laid out before us and it scares us. The "emergent" church is, from my view point, continuation of college service for people who just can't get over it.

Our country has a rich history of adventure and change, not so much a rich present though. I think it comes somewhat with the rising global economy, some with the elite world status that Americans are born with, and the separation between plebs and the government that has taken place over the past twenty to thirty years. Do college students have as much impact on the government today as our parents did in their day, no.

In short our parents see in us the chance to live all the dreams they fought for and believed in, and all we see is the staleness of living someone else's dreams. We've seen all the world has to offer and know there's no lasting fulfillment there. We think we've seen what the church has to offer, and nothing. But oh that blessed day when the church is tested with fire and all the shit burns away. We will be left with very little gold and a great many trials. I think that day is approaching.

Also I think it's important to realized there is a chronic satisfaction in our generation with surface knowledge. We have this tendency to learn something for twenty minutes and claim we know it. This comes from the History and Discovery channels, among other stuff of course. Man (clutching chest) that one hurt, I love those channels. We tend not to ponder the deeps of things. How many married couples have I heard of being mentored by a couple that's been married for ten or fifteen years. How about being married for fifty years, that's the guy I want advice from.

Whew!!!! this is long. I think I'll stop. I'm starting to sweat. You guys let me know where I went wrong and I'll try to explain. Or I may just say "touche good sir/madam, touche." I'll close with some song lyrics by Mike Doughty.

"What is my life without my heart at risk?
When will I love someone
When will someone be mine
Forty grand in the hole
I'm gonna open it up and
Let my yearning, shine"

So...?

2006-01-31T23:14:00.000-06:00

Alright, usually I'm not a very politically oriented or agitated person, but lately I've taken a much keener interest due to my growing interest in environmental issues. I also think getting older has it's affect. I'm definitely not saying I'm getting old, at all. I won't be old till I'm 70 or something, I mean why be old until you have no other choice.

Anyway, I watched the state of the union. The only thing more uncaptivating was the Democratic response. Wow!! Boring!! I don't just mean in a political way. There was no passion, no ardor, no violent uncontrolled emotion in either one of the speeches. When I hear the leader of the most powerful nation of the face of the earth tell his constituents (me and you) the state of our nation and where he intends to take it, I expect some gusto. If he's not excited about where he's taking the nation why should I be? I'm not to happy with him right now anyway. He cut my pell grants, and many others pell grants as well. Moreover he was pretty frikin vague when it came to domestic issues, especially environmental issues. He started to say what I wanted to hear, and then left me hangin.

Lastly, those democrats need to have some rebuilding years crammed into the short amount of time before the next election. They really suck. Their response to the State of the Union reeked of vagueness, unpreparedness, carelessness with opportunity, and ultimately the attitude of "you know what, I'm a bureaucrat, I've got this power and we just really don't care about all you layman. So here is some lackadaisical political jargon, go chew on it for a while." I was almost ready to consider voting democrat next time, if I vote, by the end of the state of the union. Then the democrats opened dumb fat mouths and completely turned me off.

Most of all I just felt like he didn't say very much of anything. At least not anything of substance. I think maybe a powerpoint would have helped, or maybe something interactive. I feel like he was trying to pull a fast one on me, with all his jargon and pleas for liberty and bipartisanship.

Lastly the democrats not cheering at most of the stuff he said and then cheering when he brought up something that pissed him off was so annoying and aggrivating. I've seen more considerate behavior from a room full of five years olds.

I realize I may be politically naive. I know my interests and concerns, and more over I know people who got their shit together when I see em, and tonight I just don't feel like I saw too many.

"He Will Give Them Death, and They WIll Love Him For It"

2006-01-29T01:19:00.000-06:00

I have two of the most fantastic jobs a college student could ask for. First of all I work at the climbing wall in the rec center. Love to climb, love the people, love the work, what else is there. I am also an RA at a dorm for three foreign exchange students from Korea that attend a local private high school. I get paid a great deal. Pay is pretty much like salary, not based on hours. I get paid to sleep, study, play video games and watch TV. This "dorm" is actually an apartment. I am responsible for making sure these guys eat, don't kill themselves, and have a ride. But I am starting to really hate this job. Solely because of the TV and video games. Entertainment is the true opium of the masses, and I am a junky.

I'm a little depressed right now. Mainly because I feel like I completely wasted a day. I spent almost all day watching television. I watched television because I swore to myself I wasn't going to play video games. I did that because the other night I spent close to eight straight hours playing. That's rediculous!!! And I hate it!!!

Thoughts on video games:

I don't have myself completely convinced yet but i'm starting to think that video games are sitting the fence between sin and temptation. Playing video games is the biggest waste of time currently on the earth. It can be stressfull, very time consuming, pointless, tiring, mind numbing, degrading, and it goes on. Also they're not real. A person participates in nothing real by playing video games. They're a lazy form of immagination. A person could sit down and write a story, paint a picture, build something, or even follow some logically deduced pattern of thought to the next great epaphany that will change mankind as we know it. Or you can sit in front of a television manipulating programmed colors that immatate some romantic version of life that never really exists. They leave no room for true creativity. The only games I've ever really enjoyed are the sports games. I could play sports, or write about them, experience them, coach them, or any other number of things concerning them, but I would never achieve the greatness in the real world that I do on MVP Baseball 2006. In that fake world I an owner, manager, and star third baseman of the Houston Astros. But it does absolutely nothing for me in this world. You know the world I actually live in.

There is also something hypnotizing about them. They grab your attention like a naked person would. You just can't stop playing/looking. What is that? They are also a practice in over indulgence and superficiality. Grand Theft Auto? All the games by the rap artists? Fantasy games?

Finally, concerning video games, there is an obvious trend of guys loving them, and girls just not getting it. Granted there are a few girls and guys who bend from the norm, but I'm not talking about them. Why is it that guys are so drawn to them? Why am I? Let's take a look, here's what I've noticed?

1. Guys who are addicted to sports games (me) usually have some sporting failure, or unfulfilled need in his involvement in the past or presenct with some kind of sport.

2. It's usually weak, nerdy, pushover, timid, meek guys who love the shooter games and fantasy games. Granted all guys usually like them, myself included, but the obsessive ones are the afore mentioned ones.

3. The only video game I've ever seen girls really like and enjoy, without having guy friends that enjoyed them first are those stinkin dance/disco video games.

Conclusion: Video games are a perverted substitution for the real thing. Pushovers can finally lash out and destroy all who annoy. Old athletes, normal joes, and failed athletes may finally achieve that athletic god-like status and infamy of sports icons. The do gooder can finally steal a car pick up a prostitute and go on a cop killing rampage. Women can finally dance and operated how rap video's say they should. Basicly it creates a world of absolute control in which a man can overcome his weakness and rule his neighbors. Or would it be easier to say where man can rule, be great, conquer, take, achieve, command, fight, and be brave. It's a filler for the things most guys want but lack, and are told by the world that to be a man one must have. Video games are huge with youth groups, why? because "churches" today breed such a confusing, vague, weak image of a MAN, that video games serve as an arena in which little boys can act the man. In church girls are mainly fed the message "you are enough just the way God made you", guys get the "you were made to lead, be in charge, and set the example". I think that is why guys like the video games and girls just don't care that much. Video game play to a falling short attitude that society is constantly throwing in their faces. I also think that's whay girls follow the models, actesses, and female pop stars so closely; could be wrong about that though. I hate video games, but like all other temptation, my flesh yearns for them.

Television: television is the modern day arena to the coliseum. And like caesar it is used to rule. Most people base their political, fashion, artistic, religious, historical, and moral opinions on what is on TV.

It's scary how much the TV programming mirrors american culture. Get as much as you can out of the time your have. We have hundreds and hundreds of channels, and TV's that cater to watching more than one at a time and can record what your missing on top of that. There are channels for every interest immaginable. More than that, it's beautiful. When was the last time one saw and ugly person, background, or overall picture display on television. That's it's captivating power. Constant stimulation. A big shiny object. Sure you can watch the history channel and try to feel good about it, but even those programs are made to sell. There is even a channel that reports what is on your TV. I hate TV too.

Video games and TV are disgusting because to me they represent a sort of second hand disgusting reality. TV and video games mainly project what humanity would make of the world if given the opportunity. I feeds the soul the desires whispered to it by one's flesh. My friends I think most people look at TV's and video games much like Adam and Eve saw that apple. Looks cool, represents something we're not made for, something that should not be, and leaves us unfulfilled.

I'm sorry for the somber attitude, but like I said I've been in front of the TV all day, staring at the apple, and spoon fed the wants of the flesh and the whole time knowing that they aren't real, and wanting them anyway.

If you don't understand the title you need to watch Gladiator again.

Initiative thoughts

2006-01-25T00:20:00.000-06:00

So I thought of something the other day while I was reading for my environmental sociology class. These thoughts are not finished yet so don't be disappointed at there basic natures.

Environmental studies are going through somewhat of a pubescent stage. Currently a paradigm shift is taking place concerning the ways humanity has come to view it's relationship with the natural environment. Most have come to view the environment in ways that the romantics have instructed us. Something vastly different and untamed from our own places on the earth. Humans are not exactly at home in nature, we belong in groups of humans and in the dwellings we have come to know throughout history. At the same time we can not do without nature. We get our food from nature, all of our resources for that matter, and nature is one of the most sought after arenas of relaxation and play (parks, skiing, lakes, hiking, climbing, hunting, etc...). So we need it but we are in a way estranged from it. Views as such have led to nature being looked upon as frontier that must be explored and conquered, adventure ridden, and dangerous. Ultimately we have separated ourselves from it to such an extent that we view nature as something other than ourselves.

These views have led to many of our resource and environmental problems that we face today. There are many reasons why and many ways in how we have done it. Some of which are the romantics, urbanization, industrialism, and consumerism. The shift that is taking place is an epiphany of our true places within the natural world, that being an actual member of the natural world and no less so than lions, and tigers, and bears, OH MY. Some of us eat fish, but instead of getting it from the river like the noble bear we buy it at a restaurant or at the supermarket. We are never really allowed to see the impact on the natural world or our involvement in it. These thoughts could go on and on and on, but I'm gonna stop here because what I really want to talk about is the church. There are similarities here that I find interesting.

First of all Church has been viewed for a long time now as something we go to, or participate in. I go on sudays, I can have fun there, and I get stuff I need there. The church in this view, like nature, becomes something otherly. It becomes a place, or an avenue, or an ends to a means, a supplier. However according to the bible, we are the church, we can't leave it, the body, anymore than my finger could one day decide to leave my hand. I think the most startling parallel I noticed was that this view of church also comes from having so much stuff in between. For fish we have fisherman, packing companies, shipping companies, inspection companies, restaurants and supermarkets. Now we have sanctuaries, and seminaries, and specific days, and policies, and payments to be maid, and doctrines, and an appropriateness of order and place in ones participation.

I'm not saying it's bad to go to sunday moring service anymore than it is to go to the HEB and get some salmon to throw on the grill. I am saying though that to be good stewards of the environment you have to appreciate the reality of your place in it and the impact you can have on it. I feel the same way for the body.

Lastly there is a greatness in being in the "wild" that many therapeutic firms, correctional programs, and ministries have begun to notice. They bring people out into the wilderness to get some perspective. I know I've been apart of it, and there is an undeniable power to felt by being out in the open, being exposed to elements and subject to forces that you have little control over. Likewise with the body. I've started going to sunday morning service again, albeit a...interesting one, but there is no substitution for the one on one time with my brothers and sisters and especially with the father. You just can't beat the real thing.

Fours

2006-01-22T22:48:00.000-06:00

Yes, after weeks of reading other people's 4's I've been tagged! whooooo-h000000. . . i'm not really that excited but here goes . . .

4 jobs i've had that won't go back to

1.Sweet Eugene's-bad pay, bad hours, annoying christian culture junkies and the local witch craft group.
2.Foot Locker-great pay, buuuut...no
3.Young Life Student Staff-got paid by asking people to send money to YL, they took a cut and I didn't really get anything???
4. Black Market Body Parts Smuggler-no comment

4 movies i've watched on repeat

1.Crash

2.Rounders
3.Gladiator
4.Last of the Mohicans

4 TV shows

1.Best Damn Sports Show Ever
2.Family Guy
3.X-men and batman cartoons
4.Scrubs

Oh yeah in yo4ur face Mol Jr...I mean3 Lost...dang it!!

4 Vacation's I'd like

1. Assend Everest
2.Safari the entire continent of Africa
3.A years stay in the white house
4.Virgin Islands

4 websites besides blogs i visit daily

1.Major League Baseball.com
2.anything Google
3.Aggieland Federal Credit Union
4.facebook

Lust Worthy Foods
1. Whataburger
2.Odwalla Superfood
3.Carne Guizada from Los Nortenos
4.beer

Changes to my house

1.floor length side by side urinals
2.computer from startrek to tell me everthing
3.time warp so that no time passes outside when i'm inside
4.my own rockwall

4 beers and people i would drink them with

1. Ziegen Bock-the green girl from the C.S Lewis book Perelandra
2. Dos Equis Amber-Kate Beckinsale
3. Shiner Bock-Job from the book of Job
4. Kegs of all three-all the guys who expected their names to be on this list

4 things that should have been lists

1. top 4 dream jobs
2. top 4 things to do with 4 legal pardons
3. top 4 country's to own
4. top four reasons why texas should become it's own country

4 tags

i don't really know many other people with blogs so if you want to go ahead and get crazy with it, but let me know so i can look

Hey guys...its a...poem

2006-01-17T18:52:00.000-06:00

Alright, now everyone has permission to poke fun, as long as your honest, I usually don't write poems and I would definitely never think to publish it. But the very idea of publishing a poem that I had written made me scared, and I hate being dictated be fear. I'll be a little embarrassed if it sucks, but at least I didn't not do it our of fear.

I’ve been walking for years now

Down streets of pious contention

The stress is killing my spitits

I can’t seem to nail down the truth

These streets are violent and jaded

Neath rivers with currents of cups

That shine on the edges on midnight lamps

Then taint and dry all their contents up

I will retreat to the city walls

It’s this city’s first line of defense

Against the advances of wild kingdom

And all that doesn’t make sense

Or stand in line with the doctrine

That’s as varied as the cobble stone streets

They keep us safe from each other

And from the dangers of walking alone

I had been sitting up so high then

Trying to stand on my own

Moving as the wind would please

I started to rattle the stones

All the rulers of city

Then Gathered in force at the wall

They found me shaking with pleasure

It was then that I started to fall

I’ve been walking now for hours

On the wrong side of the city wall

I fell from one of the towers

How I fell I just won’t recall

Out here the wind blows harder

And the elements have taken hold

But I feel no need for shelter

I somehow know that I’m at home

This man he came and woke me

With whispers and gentle hands

He teaches to live in the wilderness

He teaches to conquer the lands

I’ve been walking for years now

Outside those city walls

We wait at the gates every morning

Looking for those who don’t need the fall

In the evening we search the wilderness

For those who are lost we sing and call

Of the attraction, and peace, and tenderness

Of the man who dragged me down off the wall

Sometimes he walks the walls with me

We poke fun at the absurdity

But all the while we’er yearning

For just one more who would fall free

My Wisdom is Gone, But My Face is Fine

2006-01-11T00:49:00.000-06:00

For all you how were concerned the operation went better than expected. There were a few plusses going into the operation. Firts of all they oral surgeons were not going to have to slice my jaw open and chop up my teeth into little pieces just to get them out. Secondly I had the great privelage of having my first IV.

I went in at 10:30 in the AM. By 10:40 I was prepped and being guided into the operating room. I was rather surprised though at how many nurses there were. I followed one nurse into the operatin room, and then nine nurses followed me in. I was going to make some silly remark about how the ladies always follow, but I thought why upset the people who are going to have me strapped in a chair and unconcious for as long as they please, and with drills and stuff. So I hopped in the chair...they took the blood pressure, which was shockingly low...then the surgeon came in, also a lady, and got the IV ready. The last coherent memory I have is of one nurse hitting my left arm while the surgeon put the IV in. I looked at the nurse quizzicaly and she said "this is to distract you". Of course then I looked over just in time to see the IV go in. Needles don't bother me so I didn't care. Me last thoughts though were "i wonder if that hitting the other arm thing works on people with IQ's higher than 50. I doubt it would even work on my dog. Hmmm, wonder what the IV's gonna feel like when it starts to kick in".

Then I woke up at home. My mom was waking me to take my first dose of hydro-whatever. I was shocked and awed. Between passin out and waking at home I vaguely remember the nurses telling me that they were lifting my feet up for the wheel chair foot rests, why they were telling I don't know, maybe I asked. I also remember hearing them talk to to my mom as they put me in the car. What I remember most clearly is responding to some question from my mom with "it was so great, better than expected". Then I woke up at home. Those three memories weren't even real memories. I could only hear and feel certain things, couldn't see a thing.

In short the IV was wonderful, I didn't even get groggy. Next thing I know I'm at home sippin on gatorade and knocking back some hydro-whatevers. My jaw didn't even hurt post-op. They ached a little when I stopped poppin pain killers, but even now they already have that itchy-achey-jaw feeling that almost feels good.

Getting my wisdoms pulled this time (uppers) was worlds better than last time (lowers). I'm out $250 for the whole thing, but i'd pay that much for the IV alone. I applaude the entire staff involved, all of them, how ever many there were. I do wish I had had a friend there to film the whole thing, I think the film would have been really funny. I especially wish I had footage of the transfer from table to wheel chair. Maybe that's why there were so many nurses. I bet one of them copped a feel.

Anyway that's my story. Give a shout out to my friends abroad. Tim-ee-oh-ho! Wookie! and Nando! Peace brother travel safely.

my own funeral

2006-01-04T01:08:00.000-06:00

Following my good friend mark's example I will now lay out my own funeral plans.

most important is that I want my body to be strapped to a giant cross shaped rocket. The cross shaped rocket, or the SSS Felix (Solar Sword of Salvation), will by lined with billion candle strobe lights. Within a week after I pass I will be strapped to the SSS Felix and shot into space. Not too far into space, just far enough to stay in orbit for a couple generations of Felix's. Also close enough so that after a couple generations the earth's gravity sucks me back in and I finally go out as a meteor.

This way I can orbit the earth a giant blinking cross. My relatives can just tell the young kids "see grandpa's not dead his on a mission trip to final frontier". I may even get some sort of crazy adventist psycho hippies to predict Armageddon according to my re-entry date.

If I have any money left it's to go into a fund to create brewing company that brews great beer and prints gospel tracts on all of it's labels.

that's all I come up with so far, but I think I have plenty more time to think on it. hope everyone caught the sarcasm.

Regurgitating Mummies

2005-12-30T02:32:00.000-06:00

As much as I love this country, I think I may realized one of it's many faults tonight and it makes me sad. The discovery first began while reading someone's blog about their ADHD nephew and the ensuing prose about unfit parents. Then, earlier tonight I was playing poker with some pagans I recently met. Two of them took a smoke break, leaving me with one I shall refer to as Cobb. Not his real name of course, I didn't receive permission to publish the intimates of our brief discussion, so the least I can do is not put is name on anything I say.

Cobb had mentioned earlier in the game the reasoning behind him smoking weed. He said it slows his mind down to a speed that is productive. He said "my brain just moves to fast and I can't focus". He thought this a fault of his and something that needed to be fixed. I think the fault lies in the hands of our society as a whole.

So during the smoke break, while the two of us were alone, I, being intrigued earlier, probed a little further. He told me that he started smoking in high school mainly out of boredom. He hated school because it was too slow and the only way to stay focused was to smoke weed. He explained that after a smoke he had the focus to read what he needed to. He explained that his main distraction was all the questions he had. Always questions swarming around in his head, one always leading to another. One answer always leading to yet more questions. Yet he needed to push those interests aside to make room for school work. I asked why he didn't just ask the questions. He responded that he came from "small town Texas", and all those questions would have gotten him in trouble. Never found out the specifics of the questions so I can't say one way or the other.

So then I asked what is it that you think about. He said "mainly life, and people. I love to watch people and think about why they do what they do. Sitting and watching people is my favorite. I watch people and laugh all day long." My first thought was "wow that's what I think about". We then agreed that we made ourselves laugh much more than another people ever have. I realized our brains were very similar.

So changing once again I asked "so how do you do in college? Do you think you'd do better without smoking weed now that your not at your slow high school?" He said he didn't think so, but there was no way to be sure because he hadn't really tried it. By this time I made some conclusive assumptions. The guy was pretty intelligent. Besides for making good grades he showed a great capacity to think things through in a logical sense. He also showed a capacity to take one lesson or idea and use it to learn about other things.

Then I thought about all the really smart people I knew. Smart in as many ways as I could think of. Mainly some kind mental prowess that gave them an upper hand in some area of life. Most of them did drugs and complained of things moving too slow and being bored with education. Despite all the intelligentsia that came to mind I thought "maybe they all have wrong". I think this society is moving too fast.

Cobb complained of having no time to follow his own thoughts. Even on topics brought up at school, they were always giving the surface info and then moving on. There is no time for people with the capacity to think on a greater number of levels than the average person to really explore those depths. Everything about the majority of our culture is about quick flashing attractions that don't give you enough time to think things through. What are video games and most television program but quick bursts of color, sound, and movement laced with tiny bits of information someone is hoping will entertain in order to get a buck. The idea of more has impressed itself on our society with greater weight than the idea of better. Most companies succeed on service speed or things that allow us more time in the day to do more things. Consider this, I can't say hi to most people on campus because they're plugged into an i-pod. It's not good enough just to walk somewhere. It's more productive to listen to music and walk somewhere. Cell phones are the same way. Cell phones combined with i-pods. No lie the other day I received from me deceased grandfather an TV-Radio-CD-MP3 player with a compass, thermometer, and flashlight all in one.

I think our society is moving too fast for the slow, methodical, birth of ingenuity. Before we had all these entertaining distractions America led the way in innovation. Now we're viewed as the lazy rich slobs of the world, and so we are. Regurgitating Mummies hypnotised by flashing lights are clever commercial ditties are the target market for every interest: education, entertainment, art, business.

STARBUCKS!!! Somehow I know starbucks is involved here but its to light and I've been typing too long to put in the effort.

I do a trend though. How many of our greatest artists have led depressing suicidal lives? Why do so many of our greatest minds end up in the drink or narcotics? To slow things down, to rest. I didn't get to speak at all about the Lord in this but there is definitely a lot there. There's much of my thought left out in this, but then again I'm not heavily trained in retaining my thoughts for any long length of time. If I don't regurgitate them soon enough they start to fade. OH NO!!! THEY GOT ME!!! They got me. they got...

ps-i'm not meaning to identify myself as a genius

not sure bout this one

2005-12-27T20:41:00.000-06:00

My holidays have been pretty good so far. I had a lovely day with my mom’s side of the family in Houston on Christmas Eve. Then I went to Austin to stay with my dad’s side of the family for Christmas Day. Both were good times. I got some money and loved being around my family.

I went to church service on Christmas Eve with my dad. I hadn’t been in so long I was a little overwhelmed. Of course all of the usual red flags exploded in my head when I saw all the advertising and programming and the…all the other stuff that bugs me about church. But mostly I was thankful to be sitting next to my dad and praising the Lord. That is such a rare occasion for me, and I loved it. Also, during the song “O, Come Let Us Adore Him” the Lord showed up and just smiled at us. I think all the heavens were looking to. There was a line in the song that commanded the heavens to praise him. The heavens noticed, and I was thankful.

Now I’m back, and just working. I work with the same guy everyday, Eric. He’s a cool guy. I enjoy his company and my job so no complaints there. Today we both fell asleep behind the climbing wall desk.

I also had an old friend contact me. I very much hope to see her, but don’t know if it will happen…

Alright, I’m a little frustrated right now because I feel like the Lord isn’t doing anything. But, what should I expect? I don’t know, but I have this evil, perverted work ethic that leaves me feeling worthless in the times when I’m not doing much. I keep reminding myself that the Lord loves me even when doing nothing. I guess I still have some wrong views about the Lord’s love. Unconditional does not match the description I seem to hold of the Lord’s love.

I wish that computers had a shouting function, so that when people read what I write they’ll know when I was shouting at my own computer as I typed, like in paragraph 5.

I’ll leave with this, I had a great Christmas and hope everyone else did too.

Anthropomorphic Kong

2005-12-20T13:43:00.000-06:00

I just saw King Kong. Let me first say, “Wow”, what a movie going experience. It’s definitely a movie worth seeing in the theatre. The visual and sound effects are top-notch first-rate stunning. The movie was also a great deal more emotionally charged than the other two. While I’ve only seen the original, I can only imagine the one from the seventies being…shall I say…not as good. Anyone may correct me if I’m wrong.

What struck me though about the movie was how much humanity Kong had in him. First of all his relationship with the woman, Ann, was very much like what mogely, from the jungle book, had with Kate. The recognition of beauty was only the shallowest trait. Kong showed grace, sense of humor, compassion, favor, love, and a great deal of cognitive reasoning.

Then I think the Lord started unfolding some stuff for me right there on the silver screen. I started thinking of all the other lovable movie characters that we love so much: Old Yeller, Seabisquit, Lassie, Milo and Otis, all of the pixar animals, the Shrek animals, and all of the lovable horses that cowboys always have. I thought of this and how much we cry when any harm should come to these animals. We also seem to excuse any harm they should do to humans throughout the movie. WHY IS THAT!!

Well stick with me.

During creation God made humans and then there was everything else. There was a distinct difference between us and them. We were made in God’s image, and He gave us dominion over all of the earth. I’ve always wondered what it means to be “made” and then to be “made in God’s image”. We obviously have something animals don’t. Some would say that animals don’t have a soul, which inadvertently leads some to believe that animals aren’t saved by Jesus. I think animals do have souls and they still aren’t saved by Jesus. I don’t think animals go to hell though.

Animals I think have souls, maybe not to the same capacity as humans albeit but souls none the less. I do not recall animals ever being breathed on by the Lord, as Man was, in the beginning. I think we may have gotten something a little extra in that breathing on stuff, specifically we got the image of God. Therein lies the difference and why Jesus does not save animals. Jesus cleansed our spirits, breathed new life into our dead spirits. Animals were never breathed on in the first place.

I think animals have a soul because I’ve seen the affects of a soul in animals I’ve known. They show the capacity for fear, love, mercy, grace, confidence, shame, some cognition, worry, depression, excitement, a will of their own, and care. All of these come from our souls I think. By soul I mean mind, heart, and will.

So Kong had a soul, but what makes him more than an animal? Well he should a sense of humor for one thing, and while animals may enjoy something that is different than having a sense of humor. Kong also showed an immediate change in behavior towards humans, by suddenly caring for the girl uncharacteristic of wild animals. He also enjoyed a sunset and showed a sense of sentimentallity.

So what makes us yearn for the well being of these cinematic animals and excuse any amount of killing? When the directors and producers of Kong, and every other Hollywood animal character, apply that extra humanity to animals I believe we get some kind of glimpse of the way we were in the garden. You start to see a mix of the soul and that extra image of God stuff without the fall of man. These characters are seen in the light of absolute innocence, almost like a child but with out the selfish conceit that we all see in every child. That part of children which is selfish and conceited is the seed of the sin that is born in us, which is absolutely nonexistent in Kong. Kong shows absolute selflessness and abandon when he starts to protect Ann. That innocence is also why we excuse all of Kong’s killings. Even when Kong was killing innocent people in New York, we were all still rooting for Kong. After all, what human isn’t guilty?

Here’s what strikes me as ironic.

Why don’t we feel this ways towards the Lord? Well the Lord kills people every day, and he promised us that He works everything for the good of those who love God right. Well Kong worked everything for the good of her who loved him, who he loved first. All of Kong’s destruction and killing was aimed at one thing, saving Ann. So is God’s towards us, so why do we sometimes question Him and scoff at the “world we live in”.

Basically we sometimes feel like we’re being thrown aside by Kong because we’re not the one He loves, or maybe He doesn’t see that we love him. Really we are just being thrown around as the Lord works for us, much like Ann was when Kong battled…everyone.

Also by cheering for the animals on screen we are rooting, in a strange sense, against ourselves. It’s always the faults of humanity that we find our beloved animal characters fighting against.

I’m not sure what else to say, I hope there are comments.

inspiration

2005-12-19T15:08:00.000-06:00

being really bored for the holidays, i'm desperate for inspiration. so far i have found one inspiring nugget of prose, it's bout hoiday brews. I've never really experimented with holiday brews but it is the holidays and i am bored. i will assure you though that i will not mix my previous boredom antidote, self inflicted haircuts, and my new inspiration. usually there is always some sort of accompanying action to one's boredom induced reliefs though, so...i will also try to exercise deep consideration of my actions as well as holiday brew tasting. although i must say, being inspired to the brew and participating in the fruits of the brew often brews inspiration itself. let us hope for the best.

2005-12-18T18:05:00.000-06:00

hello there world

the american church

2005-12-17T00:22:00.000-06:00

so the past week i've run into many, many allusions to the changing church, or the the revolution of the church. I don't get it. To me the "church" as many people see it around here is strictly an american phenomina. The american church reflects our society with such a scary resemblance we may want to question the spiritual mail man who often drops things in my mail box from the many chuches i've visited. I must admit that the "wooing" has recently stopped. My "ministry" young life, not too long ago, deministered me, and the "churches" no longer receive my business.

But the "church" often pursued me the same way american eagle did when i filled out their visitor card. Express, Fox and Hound, REI, and Chase bank of america often do the same thing too. The flyers I received were basiclly advertisements for the services, musical guests, clubs, and guest speakers that were scheduled to come. The flyers were brightly colored and often had news paper style headlines. What was even scarrier was how much the youth group sections looked like MTV and VH1 commercials. The actual youth groups looked much like MTV's TRL hour with Carson Daily. The kids sit around and cheer for a colorful personality who often introduced musical guests. TRL at least gets the kids to sing along which is more than can be said than some of the youth groups i've seen.
Young LIfe meetings often looked like a MTV episode themselves: quick changing programs targeted at entertaining and keeping attention long enough to slip in some subliminal messaging (the gospel). Strange thing is that the church stole the ministries marketing strategy so now only hip youth groups kids started going to young life. Young Life has always said "hey we're not the church". The irony is that by young life screaming we're not the church, they became what church is. Many churches now don'e look like churches and they're proud of it.

Now the big craze is that we need to look even less like the "church". Maybe this is the actual body shedding some of the vintage clothes that we've dressed it in and trying to get some healthy nakedness so it can take a good look at itself. Or maybe its just a clever marketing strategy following siute behind some of the newer companies in america. To market successfully no one must know that you're marketing right?

Further evidence, I think, is the reception of the american church by the rest of the world. Many missionaries abroad, supposedly, have a hard time because those foreign pagans just don't get excited about home groups. They think it's too american. I'd say we're in trouble if what others see the "church" so much of america attends as so american that they throw it in the same pile with all the other "american crap" they don't want infesting their own cultures. I don't know maybe i'm off. It should be noted that this was written late at night and with a stream of thought styling. hope however reads is provoked.

hey buuuuuuuuddy

2005-11-09T14:32:00.000-06:00

hey man,

just wanted to let you know that you are still greatly loved here and missed. I really hope you're still writing music, i miss your songs. really want to know how things are going, and how the heck you're managing to teach koreans english. so respond.

felix

To Justin: Wookie Abroad

2005-10-17T15:05:00.000-05:00

Hey man just wanted to let you know that i appreciate your comment and look forward to seeing again (whenever that may be), but you didn't leave and e-mail address that I could reach you at. To give you an update David Drennon, Cameron, and one other leader got kicked out by JP for drinking at Drennon's house. I got to talk to Drennon, he's kinda pissed, but i think he is going to come to bible study on wednesday so maybe some great things are in store for him. Also, Shaun is still kinda of upset at you for just leaving, he's short a NINTH groomsman now and as you may well be able to guess he's having trouble finding a ninth, some sympathy his way may be appreciated.

Anyway, I love you man and hope you are doing well. Can't wait to hear from you again, send pictures if you can. Oh yeah and send contact information, the dorm guys wanted to be able to get ahold of you if they travel back to Korea while you are still there. . . How is teaching english going?
Peace, Love, and Blessings!!!!

Felix

The Senses

2005-09-14T14:01:00.000-05:00

Readers will have to forgive the incomplete and sporadic nature of this post.

What is it that includes any entity into the realm of the existing, or the realm of “thing”. Certainly trees, buildings, and people are all things. We can see, feel, smell, hear, and taste them. But what of entities like love and hate, or angels and spirits. Do they exist? Some would say that they exist on different plains of reality. I don’t think so. Many would debate the existence of things that our five senses can not register. Existentialism seem to be the focus of many of these beliefs. Some would say that God being cognitively aware of all of His creation all the time would suffice to support the idea that we all exist. What of the things we can’t see. Certainly He is cognitive of things we can not sense. I think there has been a lack of attention placed on the fact that we can not see everything that exists. Or hear, touch, taste, or feel them either.

Astronomy says that the human eye can only see what reflects the light waves that are within the range of human eye site; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Likewise with hearing, smelling and tasting there is a spectrum of all of these senses but we only register certain portions of the spectrum. What of touch though? Does the sense of touch work on a spectrum as well? We can feel wind but we can’t see it. We can feel heat and cold, but we can’t smell, see, hear, or taste it. Likewise we can’t feel most of the things we smell or hear. I would say that the ranges that our senses operate within are positioned differently along the continuum of existing entities as a grand part of the Lord’s design.

Imagine if all of the ranges that our senses operate on coincided with each other. What if everything we could feel we could also smell, taste, hear and see. What would the wind look like? What color would it be? Would love exist as something we could register with all five senses? What would blue or green smell and taste like? Then of course we may wonder about that elusive sixth sense that I often equate with the spiritual.

I think that when we believe and say that all will be revealed when we get to heaven is a much grander idea than people realize. Many people say they will be bathed in love once in heaven. They often only mean it as an emotional feeling that will be consistently felt. But what if love has a state of matter that we will only be able to register on all levels of out senses once we attain our heavenly bodies? Is that what is so great about our heavenly bodies. And maybe our heavenly bodies operate on a much grander scale than just five senses. Perhaps a person isn’t just something we can feel, taste, smell, hear and see, but something we can experience on much greater level. When we get to heaven we will really be able to not only bathe in love, but eat it too.

Surely all of nature was not created with the same functions of the senses. I wonder what animals can hear and see and smell that we can’t. In heaven, if all is revealed we’ll know what angels look, smell, taste, sound, and feel like. I think we may also be able to register the father’s love for us as well on a much grander scale.

Resting

2005-07-18T12:19:00.000-05:00

I've had to rest for almost the entire summer. It's been really hard. First I had to learn what it meant to rest. I thought it meant working only fifteen hours a week and only commiting ten or so hours a week to ministry. The Lord soon corrected me. He gave me a glimpse of rest over christmas, and I really freaked out. Then in the spring He began to prepare me to rest for the summer. He removed me, forcefully, from the "ministry" I was involved in and took my job from me. As much as I've tried I have not been able to get a job since then. Every time I applied somewhere I left with this overwhelming feeling of, "Well that was pointless, He's not gonna let me work anyway."

So I've been resting. I've almost lost my mind a few times in the process. I really had no idea how against the idea of resting my body and soul were. For a while I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, and had no desire to be around my friends. My not sleeping wasn't just because i wasn't tired. My room would become too hot and stuffy even though the rest of the house felt nice. On the night that I nearly lost my sanity I became incredibly terrified of the dark too, or something else that was in the dark, I'm not sure. I became so scared that I had to leave my room and sit in the dining room for a while with the lights on. While in the dining room I became uncomfortably chilled, and my mind was so scared and going so fast I couldn't stop it. For a few minutes I thought I had lost control of my own mind. So after journalling for a while i went and laid under the covers in my bed. There I began to pray. The Lord responded to "Daddy, Abba..." Then peace came and i slept.

The whole summer though my spirit was being ministered to. A man told me once that the Lord wanted me to learn the song "In the Garden" because the Lord wanted to minister to me through the song. So in the midst of going crazy I learned the song and it ministered to me greatly. Even just through listening to the song the Spirit would bring me peace.

Even now I'm surprised how hard it is for me to rest and be silent with the Lord. I think it's just the culture, but man culture can fight.

The Shave

2005-07-07T23:35:00.001-05:00

So, about a week ago I was by myself for about five whole days. I’ll tell you what I did.

First of all I shaved my head. . .

I found myself looking at myself in the mirror, challenging like, at around two thirty in the morning. As I stared into my own eyes I thought to myself, “You wouldn’t, you’re too chicken.” Then I said out loud and defiantly, though not too loud in fear of waking my mother in the next room, “I will to! I just don’t know if I want to, that’s all.”

You have to understand I have quite the large head, and hair that sometimes resembles thinness but is more accurately fine. To better understand think of the hairs themselves as thin and not the body of hair. So I stood there staring into my own beautiful brown eyes with a grimace, intermittently shifting my gaze between my shaggy hairline and the sideburn trimmer that lie still next to the sink like a stalking cat ready to pounce. “Don’t take your eyes off that guy,” I thought, “he could attack at any moment. I then laughed at myself and said, out loud again, “You’re not going to actually do it, just go to bed”.

Then as I turned away, just a breath away from turning out he light, I caught a glimpse of something in the mirror. “Was that Mr. Challenge laughing at me?” It was, and standing next to him was his naughty mistress Ms Sense of Adventure. Then from behind the toilet my pride made his entrance. Upon his unimpressive entrance Ms Sense of Adventure turned to him and with a smirk muttered, “I thought he was taller than that." They both erupted into laughter that echoed across the now over populated bathroom.

Feeling ashamed I jumped back in front of the mirror and gave a long hard look at myself. Thoughts flooded my head, “How can I respect myself if I can’t even shave my own head? I mean what do I care? So I may look incredibly funny, but people will still like me, right?” Then out of the recesses of my mind, a phantom childhood memory emerged in my cognitive kitchen and served up a previously un-thought of memory. My mother’s grad school friends used to refer to me as baseball head when I was little. My head has been the same size since I was born. "Was it still to big for my body?"

The snooty couple behind me let fly and evil guffaw of triumph, “Muwahahahaha!!!!” Mr. Pride took a deflated seat on the John. I stared deeper into my beautiful brown eyes…

“I’ll do it!! That’s right assholes I’ll do it!! I’m not afraid to look like an idiot!!!” Mr. Pride stood up with a cheer of resounding triumph and achievement.

The sideburn trimmer, with impeccable timing and cunning agility pounced. I found myself, in defiance…or what now looked like submission…to the snooty Mr. and Ms, kneeling down in my shower naked, to avoid the hairs in the collar of my shirt, letting the side burn trimmer do its worst, and it did.

After a half hour of effort the once deadly looking side burn trimmer had only found defeat roaming the vast wild expanse of the finely vegetated, brown eyed dome resting atop a superbly etched masculine neck. The outskirts of the wilderness that is my head of hair were chopped to bits but the heart of the jungle was left pretty much unscathed, “SHIT!! Now what do I do?”

I had successfully butchered the front, sides, and back of my head. The top however, the filet mignon of my once professionally cultivated head of hair, was left standing a defiant six inches long. I had come to a point where defeat and humiliation were staring me in the face, pointing and laughing. The bathroom at this point was pretty crowded with personified character traits. I had to get out of there. Upon leaving the bathroom I ran headlong into hope. It was so simple, what place welcomes all bored down trodden lonely people at all hours of the nights offering low cost solutions to all of the world’s major problems? WAL MART.

The trip was short and the hair clippers inexpensive. I arrived back to the now less populated bathroom and gave myself a fine shave with an eight guard in the presence of Mr. Confidence and Ms Resourcefulness. Pride at this point had left my house, I think he got sick.

I woke the next morning with an uneven but surprisingly good look. My mother made a few adjustments to the back and I was good to go. I have to say I don’t think I look half bad. So in your face Mr. Challenge and Ms. Sense of Adventure you got nothing on this.

Hot or Not?

2005-07-07T23:32:00.000-05:00

I shaved my head at the beginning of my five lonesome days, but don’t worry the adventure’s didn’t stop. I left the house after my mother doctored my hair with a great sense of being alive. I had no places to be and no people to see, but I did have a lunch date with Mr. Challenge and Ms Sense of Adventure.

We met at Blue Baker and like usual I sat and studied the Major League Baseball web site while they sat annoyingly close to me. While reveling in the depths of the greatest American institution I caught the faintest whisper of an extraordinary idea. I’m not sure if the Ms or Mr. suggested it, but it was a dandy of an idea.

You see, a few months before my lovely friend Fernando had introduced me to a site where people post pictures of themselves and let other people rate their “hotness”, it was cleverly titled hotornot.com. We spent many an entertained hour on the site looking at some incredible pictures. When I say incredible, I’m describing the feeling one gets after seeing someone trip and fall face first down a flight of stares. Then, a few weeks after that, I was at a former place of employment visiting with my friend Josh Harrison. Somehow the site got brought up and he thought that he may know someone who had posted their picture. I quickly looked up the site, but you had to be a member to do searches. So very cleverly, and in the spirit of hoping to make fun of someone else, I posted my picture. His friend wasn’t on there.

Well I’m sitting at blue baker and the idea sneaks up on me. I heard it plain as day in my right ear, “hey you should become a member and see what kind of responses you can get, see what your rating is. You know have fun with it.”

The idea, and excitement, quickly grew on me. Looking back I should have more closely considered the company I was keeping (Mr. Challenge and Ms Sense of Adventure), and just who it was that was feeding me these ideas. Instead I found a cozy corner at blue baker, shelled out $5.95 and became a star member of hotornot.com. Let me list some of my star member privileges: I can keep track of my public rating, get notices of double matches, send e-mails to double matches, and meet as many people as I wanted.

Let me explain the lovely dance that is hotornot.com. First of all you don’t have to be publicly rated, you can just meet people if you want. Also the site is pretty clean, no naked pics. When a user clicks on the meet other people tab of the user menu three things pop up: a picture of someone, their keywords, and a short message. The keywords are usually interests, favorites, and characteristics. Now if the picture, keywords, and personal message interest you, you just click the “yes I would like to meet this person” tab. If you do click yes on that special someone they then receive an exciting message in their e-mail that says “someone from hotornot wants to meet you!” When they open the message your own picture, keywords, and personal message appear. If they approve they click the yes tab and you are then put in each others' double matches folder. This process also works the other way too, if someone likes your bio they click on you and then you get the message in you e-mail and have the option of clicking the yes tab for them. Once double match status is established you may then send messages to each other.

Another great feature the site offers is the search feature. You can do a search based on sex, sexual preference, location, age, and keywords. So, if you happen to be interested in a twenty two year old straight female teacher from the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex who likes fishing, family guy, baseball, and also professes the Christian faith, you could look it up and you’d meet Alexia, she’s one of my double matches.

So I dove right in as soon as I was a member I spent hours doing searches and clicking on people, some were yes and some were no. Sometimes I clicked a yes just to be crazy sometimes I clicked yes hundreds of times just to be annoying to some really stuck up people. Well I had my fun and went home.

When I woke up the next morning I was excited to go check my e-mail and see what kind of responses I got. Got a lot of cowgirls. The picture I posted was a little misleading. I was wearing a cowboy hat and boots and also had my dog in the picture; in short I looked like a country boy. Not only were they cowgirls, but they were…well…horny. One response started off with, “hey your pretty sexy in that cowboy hat!....I hope we can meet soon…I like your dog…see you later sexy xxx.” I don’t think so. While curiosity did have his time on the floor he was unanimously voted down by the rest of the house. Besides for the horny cowgirls I also got a message from a girl in Scotland, Scandinavia, Ohio, Dallas, and New York. I was excited, but then confused. What do I do? What do I say? I’m not interested in dating any of these girls. So I did what I normally do with strangers, I said hello. Through this simple little written verbal message I am now an international friend to some very attractive ladies. Talking to someone across town on IM never really interested me, but Scotland or Scandinavia is completely different.

Since that first confusing and very interesting morning I’ve gotten quite a few hotornot e-mails, and honestly they make me smile, some make me cringe, bust most make me smile. It’s kinda like steroids for your self confidence, and yeah it is a little sleazy, so.

I’ve noticed a few things about the site. First of all, most of the people who are still in college and on the site are just looking for some hot sex with random people or interesting conversation with people from far off lands. People out of college usually seem either desperate or genuinely interested in conversation, relationships, sex, or for relationships. There are lots of school teachers and military people as well…just something I noticed. And, of course some people just want to know if other people think that they’re as hot as they think themselves. Oh, and some of them are obviously cheap shots at people who someone is really mad at. These are pretty obvious when you come across them. They have awful pictures and often have key words like gassy, no bathing, hairy butt (for girls, not so outrageous for guys), and smells sour.

In my opinion it’s no different than face book, or even hitting the bar in some ways. At least at your computer you’ll be sober and don’t have to worry too much about making conversation, just look at the keywords list. For me, it was lots of fun, I did let all the people I talked to know that I didn’t want a relationship, which was a little akward, but necessary.

The only thing I wonder about now is what I will say if one day, walking down the street, or heaven forbid in a crowded restaurant, someone stops me and says “hey I’ve seen you on hotornot!” I think I’ll probably turn a little red and laugh. What do I care? Everyone’s got stuff they can be made fun of for, and this definitely isn’t the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done. Besides I think I’ve made fun of enough people over my life that I can take a little coming back at me.

Comment of "Fickle Resolve"

2005-06-03T16:36:00.000-05:00

I need to say that the Leutinant mentioned in the post"Fickle Resolve" is still around, he never left. Also a couple of my friends have still remained and grow even closer to me everyday. I think I got a little to dramatic about that. Also I human and don't always express myself clearly, or understand what I am trying to express. Thanks for understanding. Peace!

Felix

Fickle Resolve

2005-05-17T17:04:00.000-05:00

Fickle Resolve

The title doesn’t make much sense does it? I’m trying to figure out what it is that I’m seeing and what’s going on around me. We (my close friends and some others) all know very personally what happened with each other last fall semester. We all know for the most part what was going on with us at the beginning of the spring semester, though some knowledge was only second hand. However towards the end of the spring semester and definitely during the beginning of this summer I have no idea what’s going on with the majority of my close friends. Some have moved away, but most are still here.

There seems to be a growing commonwealth of stress and anxiety. Personally I can say for sure. I’ve been confused, stressed, worried, blah blah blah. Apparently many others have as well. I say apparently because I don’t really know for sure. That strikes me as a situation that benefits no one. When I ask my friends about other our other close friends they say they don’t really know. Why?

From what I can tell we all rushed into a battle under a banner of youthful excitement and tripped over a chord of reality. When we looked up our immediate supervisor was still going, not to say he left us but that he stayed the course. However, instead of helping each other up we just limped of in the dark sporadically calling out to each other aimless encouragement while all the while needing more than ever very accurate evangelism (ministry of good news). A squad of privates, even without their lieutenant, may offer each other better protection than any one of them could offer themselves. Not only are they better protected against their common enemy but also against loneliness and fear. Moreover the closer they stay the better protected they will be from being turned against each other.

My problem now is what that looks like. I hate to say it but maybe we need more _organization. We don’t get together anymore. Why?

Why don’t we come together anymore? Was there much reason or point behind the first meetings we had? I think we found something good and then stopped doing it. Why?

Encouragement to those who need it:

Remember, though your lieutenant may be no where to be seen, your general knows exactly where you are, and will not leave you. He is the watcher who never sleeps. The church in Corinth, Galatia, Colossae, and Philippi did not always have Paul with them, yet the Lord was confident enough in them to take Paul somewhere else.

Sometimes the Lord really does just want us to wait.

Sometimes the Lord does not act quickly

He does not punish us for sin

Emotions and sensations are nothing to base faith on

Faith is given freely

His yoke is easy and His burden is light

If we were really as much against His will as we sometimes think we are, He’d let us know

He works all things for the good of those who love Him

All of these things I have to repeat to myself and offer to those who may be in need. Just because we may be naked standing in front of mirrors for all the world to see does not mean we can’t be naked together. Standing naked in front of the mirrors and the world is not “time out” it’s a blessing. We have to be there and will be there until we can remember what we look like when the mirrors are no longer there. No reason not to enjoy it. Right? In the beginning I remember looking to the heavens and crying “why did You do this to me?” He reminded me I asked Him to: “Oh Lord, bring me to a place where I have to need you. Where there is nothing else but You, and give me strength to stand in the midst of hateful world and love them. Let my weakness show and destroy in me all that is not You.” I can only now thank Him, and laugh at myself. If you’ll let me I’ll laugh at/with you too. :-)

2005-05-02T22:55:00.000-05:00

lions and tigers and bears oh my!!!

Ventage Suade Confession

2005-04-29T03:10:00.000-05:00

What happened to me? Why do I feel so worthless and unused? Why do I feel like I an just waiting in vane for the next. . . something to happen?

I realized something this evening. I was a sweet eugenes and I noticed that I was not willing or exited to meet anyone. In fact I was appreciating and seeking being alone in the crowd. I did not search for new contacts to know and entertain like I normally would have. What happened? I got fired from Sweet Eugene’s and asked to leave young life. Every reason I had to let people know me was gone. That was it. I didn’t want to get to know people for my sake, but for theirs. I was a person that would be a blessing in their life. It was my responsibility, being so holy, to let people know me and see the things I do. Accept now I have nothing to show people, nothing to advertise of myself. I do nothing great that most people can’t do better. I no longer have the collegiate Christian dream job and I am no longer in charge of a college led youth oriented ministry. Seemingly, all I have left is work and school. Most people anywhere are better at school than I am, and apparently most people are better at working than I am as well. Probably the two most “unchristian” things to happen are to get asked to leave a ministry and get fired from your job. I just need to get someone pregnant now and build up an insurmountable gambling debt. Right now I scream unreliable, what else could it be? Why would the Lord ever have people get fired and kicked out of a ministry?

Now when I see people I don’t know, mainly beautiful women, the first thought that goes through my head is what’s the point? Sure they may be happy to meet me, but once they find out that I failed at ministry and failed at work their view of me goes down. Then we may talk about why I failed at ministry. So far, most people have not received very well at all what I have experienced with the Holy Spirit. I don’t think I would feel so down about it except that it seems like the Holy Spirit has stopped doing what He was doing. I have no more exiting stories to vindicate myself. I feel like the walls and roof caved in because of the floor and then the floor fell out from underneath me. So what’s the point of meeting anyone? They have so much to lose by knowing me and I can’t seem to stop losing.

At the same time I know that this is the Lord. He killed my reputation. He locked me in a room of mirrors so I could see myself. Not only did he lock me in this room, but he stripped me naked of all the pretty clothing I had collected over the years to gaze upon when I did look in the mirror. Now it’s just me and there is no outer layer to distract me. No beautiful shirt or pants to cover what I really look like. Everyone else is on the outside looking in too. They don’t see that I’m in a room of mirrors with no door and can’t look out. They don’t see that I was put there by the Lord. They have a hard time seeing that it is not a punishment, so do I. All they see is my nakedness, and I’m ashamed. I am ashamed of my nakedness and trying so hard not to be ashamed of why I’m naked or who put me there and won’t let me leave. I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Why would I want people to see me now?

I know I need to just stay and stand and wait for the Lord, but I want nothing more than to be clothed and to move out of in front of the mirrors. Then I also realize that this is what I asked for. I asked that He would take away what was not His. I have such a hard time thinking that the Lord orchestrated my firing. Maybe He didn’t. Either way I’m ashamed. Maybe I should have specified that I wanted to keep all the things that I liked. I thought he’d take away all my money, or maybe some friends would turn on me. But I’ve never really struggled with that. I had my livelihood and my ministerial network as my closest friends. They would nurse my wounds and bring me new friends. I’ve been poor before, and besides being poor was holy, but not unemployed.

I’m afraid to meet people because I have nothing to show them to validate any worth in knowing me. Besides once they know me they won’t want to anymore, just like I’ve seen some people do recently.

I knew these people because we all lived in this great city that was built on the things we did and the acceptance we achieved. Now I feel like I live outside the city wall and the only interaction I get with those who once loved my company is as they occasionally look over the walls. The first thing crossing their minds is pity and embarrassment knowing that I got asked to leave the city and can not return. If anyone wants to talk to me they have to leave the city and risk being mistaken for someone like me.

Through all of this I feel so small in my shame, ashamed of my shame. I should feel joyful, because this is the Lord, though I think not many would believe me. The people who used to look up to me now pity me and worry about me because my life “fell apart” for the world to see. One of my former ministerial partners asked me “so what do you do with yourself, everything that was you is gone now”. That was very hard to hear. Everything I was to her was Young Life and Sweet Eugene’s. Was I really nothing more to so many people?

Then I remember the friends that stick around, the people who love me. I have a family who, though they may think I’m crazy and pitiful, love me. I am healthy and smart. I have potential. I have the Lord. I have the Lord. What else do I need? Why can’t these things bring me joy? Since I have been left with myself old temptations have come creeping back in on me. I have no other reason to be pure except to please the Lord. I have no policy to abide by, no constituents to be a holy example for, no respectful audience to impress with my garments of praise. I seem to keep constant company with lust, laziness, wounded pride, aimless bitterness, and most of all guilt. I can’t help but think that I did something to deserve this. That this is merely my sins catching up to me, just like I always knew they would. That seems to be the consensus from quite a few people as well. These things would only happen to a heretic, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a stubborn man with a screwed up theology.

I’ve never had to try so hard to be thankful.

Now I feel ridiculous, embarrassed, and foolish for even thinking any of this. Then again I also feel relieved, a little thinner in front of my mirrors. Why not, I just unloaded stuff that must have been on my chest, I certainly don’t have any faded jean pockets to keep it in, no vintage puma jacket it to hide it under, just my naked little self standing here for all the world to see and probably misunderstand. Could this be confession? Whatever it is I’ll be thankful for it. Sorry if you read this hoping for some point or conclusion, cause there aint none.

If anyone who reads this has anything other than something nice to say keep it to yourself, cause I don’t care.

Word

Parking Nazis and Technical Superiority

2005-04-24T20:29:00.000-05:00

I had a pretty incredible night spanning the wee hours between Wednesday and Thursday. I am in two classes currently that assigned two major papers due on the same day. Breaking my usual custom I started a couple days early. Usually I wait till the last minute. I used to despise myself for laziness, but in observation of myself I’ve noticed a great excitement that comes over me when the ten o’clock hour strikes the night before. I really think I have an infatuation with useless challenges. For instance, I usually find willful, mean, sassy, high strung women most attractive, that never works out in my favor. I like to wait till the last minute to write papers, I really like it. This was different though. I had two papers due the same day, so I did start early.

One paper was a formal report, the other a “What Would You Do” style paper concerning a mock town’s youth problems. The formal report was on Ecotourism and was seventy five percent done when I arrived at Evan’s Library to finish it and start the other one. Moreover, I arrived at the library at 6:30 pm which is far sooner than I usually start. I was feeling pretty confident that I was going to be in bed by two AM at the latest.

I parked off campus and walked to the library. It was a great night, I enjoyed the walk. I arrived at the library and got to work. Now, just to be honest, there was and Astros’ game afoot so I was keeping a close eye on the game via live-cast, for the most part though I was pretty focused. I finished the writing portion of the formal report an hour. I must break from the story here and mention that within this formal report I do believe I wrote the finest sentence that I have ever written thus far. Moving on though, I took a small break and quickly began formatting the report so Copy Corner could quickly and painlessly sculpt my report into a beautifully bound and formatted Formal Report, table of contents and everything.

I spent the next four hours formatting that report. I did the margins, spacing, fonts, pictures, live-cast Astros, punctuation, and a great many long, deep, frustrated breaths. I stopped at around midnight to go home and get some coffee. I realized I might be staying up later than originally scheduled, and to toast to sweet victory, the Astros won. I headed back to campus around midnight thirty.

This time I was going to the Student Computer Center (SCC). It was after midnight so I snagged the closest reserved spot I could get. By my calculations I was going to be gone by five AM, which is long before the Texas A&M parking Nazis fire up their scooters. I stealthily snuck my coffee onto the second floor on the SCC and parked it right next to the most populated table of beautiful young maidens I could scope out. I got back to work right about twelve forty-five.

I formatted for another forty five minutes, breaking only for manly sips of coffee and quality eye contact with beautiful women. Before one forty-five I was done. BOO YAH formal report!

I didn’t even stop for a pat on the back, I dove right in on the problems facing the youth of Teensville. In three and a half hours I had saved Teensville’s youth and established eight phenom youth programs that would quickly be converting Teensville’s at risk youth into our future leaders. All I had to do now was print my papers and head over to the great folks at Copy Corner.

I plugged in to one of the SCC’s computers to print my reports off. Eager to impress the late night printing crew with my formatting prowess I quickly opened my formal report. Bewilderment, shock, anger, profanity. The progression was instantaneous. My heart rate would have quickened if not for vast amounts of caffeine facing through my body. Apparently the version of Word_TMthat the SCC supports is not as new as the one on my incredible lap top. All my glorious formatting was now displayed misconstrued and perverted for all the SCC to see. At this point in my life I’m growing accustomed to dealing with always being ahead of the curve. My state of the art version of word was apparently only available to myself and the military. So trying not to ~~pout~~ brood over the SCC’s lack of software tact, I feverishly set to work correcting the formatting achievements which Texas A&M’s lack of technical proficiency had so utterly thwarted.

Well, while I was working away the parking Nazis were cracking down the pagan parking thieves of our holy university. At the time I wasn’t aware that I had so foolishly transgressed upon those sacred grounds.

My mother was the frantic messenger of obvious foopaw. The parking Nazis were closing in on my car. Her frantic nature did not inspire me to immediate action, it merely brought to my attention how tired I was becoming and how close that ten thirty-five turn in time for my formal report was becoming. Being told that my car was already towed I told her I would take the bus to where they were towing my car and deal with it when I was done with my report. She was not satisfied though with my thought and insisted I walk to where she would be waiting to pick me up. So, I walk close a mile across campus to slowly climb into my mother’s silver VW Bug, where I was greeted with, “OK, let’s go see if they have towed your car yet”.

If I had been up for less than thirty-two hours I might have been frustrated or even angry. The SCC was only about two one hundred and fifty yards from my sinful parking spot. It would have taken me all of a moment to jog over to the RESERVED LOT and see if my car was there. Instead I walked all the way across campus to get in my mother’s car so she could drive me back to where I had come from. We pull in to the holy lot and see the back end of my car viciously jacked up unto the back of an A1 towing truck with a parking Nazi joyfully observing. I walk up the parking Nazi and say, “Hey that’s mine, I like it back.” So they start releasing my car. The parking Nazi takes one of the two tickets off my windshield. I instantly felt bad for all the things I had said about them in the past. I started to thing, “maybe they are human”. Then she handed a freshly printed ticket for “releasing” my own car back to me. Eighty-five dollars to give me back my car. EIGHTY-FIVE DOLLARS!!!!

So I climb in my car and head over to Copy Corner. The formatting had mostly been corrected so I thought it would take maybe twenty minutes to touch it up and print it off. I’d be done around eight-thirty, and have time to take a shower and eat.

I arrive at Copy Corner and like always they are happy to see me. Copy Corner employees, I think, are the happiest people in the world, especially in the morning, one of the great true mysteries left in our world. I give them the jump drive with my formal report on it and they bring it up on their computer. Then, once again, the tides of misfortune came rolling back to shore. The version of word that Copy Corner uses is yet another version of the cursed program that is once again incompatible with the formatting I have completed. I spend another two and a half hour formatting my formal report. The Copy Corner folks were true champions of their trade though and did a great job. By the time I got to Blinn College campus to turn in my formal report the class was almost over. So I crashed in the hallway in front of my Tech Writing Prof’s door. He seemed to be pretty good natured about the whole thing and slightly entertained by the short rendition of my adventure; then again I was pretty loopy. Anyway the moral of this story is: Parking Nazis are not really people but mean robots built out of computer parts that failed inspection. Finally, I must never start on a paper prior to the night before it is due, it just doesn’t work for me.

Stormy Seas

2005-04-01T14:53:00.000-06:00

“Friggin write something new already!” AAAAAlllllrrrrriiiiiggggghhhhht! Fine!

Let me set the stage first. . .

Not too long ago I was asked to step down from a ministry that I had been involved in for almost eight years. I was served a beautiful ultimatum at a cozy Whataburger at ten thirty in the PM.

You (me) will have to abide by our alcohol tobacco policy. (I had no problem with abiding by the policy I just didn’t like the policy, and thought it should be done away with)
You will have to join and attend a local church and encourage your ministerial constituents to join you. (I haven’t gone to Sunday morning service in a little over seven months)
You can not talk about what you think you have seen the Holy Spirit do or what you think about the Holy Spirit to your fellow ministers or your ministerial constituents. (I believe in, have seen, and experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit)
You can not talk about the bible study you attend with your fellow ministers or your ministerial constituents. (It’s just a bible study)

I respectfully said that I could not do that, so now I am no longer in that ministry. I was really upset, and would have been really mad if the Lord had not specifically told me (in a dream amongst other ways) that He was doing all of this. So my ministry team is now one member short but there are ten ministers left on the team, some of whom are seasoned vets. So I wasn’t real worried about them. Oh but then-THEN teams were picked and the name calling began. . .

Let me tell you a story. . .

For weeks after this happened I had to tell a great number of people the same story over and over again. I was alright with that, people wanted to know what happened. Through all of the story telling I wasn’t hostile at all towards the organization. However in telling the story I often had to expound upon what I believe about the Holy Spirit. One of the other ministers asked me why I wasn’t around anymore, so I told her. She wanted scripture concerning what I had talked about, so I sent it to her. She then asked her team leader, who is our area intern, what he thought about it, he then called me…pissed. He said, “Out of respect for me can you please stay away from my ministry team and anyone who goes to the high school we do ministry at? I don’t want you to tear our team apart like you did yours. Thanks.” He woke me up with this so at first I just said yeah sure and went back to sleep. But upon further consideration I thought “I’m not gonna do that. That’s just silly.” So I invited him to lunch to talk about it. We ate at one of the local Christian delis, McAlister’s. I thought certainly at such a Christian venue we could work things out. By the end of the lunch he had laid his foundation.

My theology was completely off and I needed to get it straight, but not to worry, he had plenty of books for me to read.
Certain books are not to be taken as foundational for how we live our lives. Acts for example is merely a historical book. Many OT books were put in this category.
I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and he as a shepherd was merely protecting his flock. But not being too stringent he said he didn’t care who I talked to outside of his particular flock, or if I talked with the ministry team he currently runs after he left.
He still loves me
If I didn’t get my theology right soon I would live a life of fallacy
It is foolish to base your faith on experience

I think he was going for tough love?

Also living in Fort College Station Christian Strong Hold is a certain Baptist preacher who preached against our bible study. He said that it was a secret bible study that taught a false gospel, one that needed two baptisms. Well I found out and decided to talk to him about it. I had two goals:

I was going to invite him and explain that it is not a secret bible study.
To explain that we do not believe the baptism of the spirit has anything to do with salvation

So, my friend and I went to his office, and I stated my two points. He then reprimanded us for not being involved in the local body (a Sunday morning church), told us we had been led astray, that we believed a false gospel, and that as far as what we believed about the Holy Spirit it is heretical and “that (we) were dancing with demons”. That’s a big accusation coming from a Baptist preacher, not only are we holding regular company with demons but dancing with them as well. Good thing he didn’t know I like to have a beer now and again. That would have been the Baptist Triple Sin Trifecta, I would have been condemned to hell right there in his office. Whew, (wipe sweat from brow) that was close.

In light of these events let me paint of picture. . .

- The sea was reeling. Deceptively large waves were shouting their objections as far as the eye could see. Lying on shore was a battered naked man recently thrown forth from a mind bending turmoil that had so long tossed him about. As he came to, he crawled to a welcoming campfire and for what was almost a first, rested. Looking around taking in his surroundings he spotted the author of his rescue. He was master of the shore and now his companion. They both smiled, one with appreciation the other with welcome.

Breakfast was soon being prepared. A great, kosher, breakfast feast: fish, eggs, and OJ. Meanwhile the sea raged on, the thunderclouds low over the water. The two companions sat at the edge of the stormy sea braced against its pull. The shallows looked calm and inviting, yet underneath lay a convincing under tow always headed out to sea. Taking joy in each others presence they ate, and were satisfied.

A voice, struggling through the den of the waves, reached the rescued man, “You fool, what where you thinking! Can you not see that you have been led astray? When I saw you first you were well placed and moving up in rank according to the sea, your head above water and your station secure. I looked to you as an example of how to live on the waves and steer a vessel. Now you have gone astray and been cast into the sea. I no longer see you clearly or consistently. I hear your voice but you are no longer visible through the swells of the sea.”

The man who had been brought out of the sea called back to the man at sea. “Please calm yourself and listen. When we were at sea together we often spoke of a rescuer who would not only bring us to shore but into the mountains, and then into the very heavens themselves. We were told of him by our companions at sea, Captains and builders of vessels. Some of whom were the very authors and rulers of the waves. They encouraged us to listen to the rescuers voice, as well as pay attention to the waves so as not be capsized, but the waves are loud and often claim His voice as their own. I heard his voice and followed it despite the waves, and now I am on shore with the very man himself.”

The man at sea skillfully steered his boat among the swells while calling back, “Deceiver! How do you ignore the sea? It gives us our food and keeps our vessel afloat. You encourage us to risk starvation and isolation and to give up what we know best of how to live. You want us to chance the sea for a shore we can not see and of which the waves tell us differently. You abandon ship and your crew and encourage us to do the same? You ignored the swells and tides and their authority to venture where the waves break and crash to carry out their punishment, and you ask us to follow you!? The waves scream testimony against you as well as our captains, yet you say the rescuer instructed you. You lie and speak falsely.”

The man on shore responded, “The waves are not sure or foundational. They often crash into each other. The have capsized vessels, drowned our companions, and fight each other with great opposing words all in the name of the rescuer. Yet, if you listen to the rescuers voice only, he will not let you drown. By his very nature, being the rescuer he will not let you drown! The sea gives us food that it did not make, and brings us places that we never wanted to go. The rescuer though brings us to shore, the only place he ever wanted us to go. We falsely thought that our vessels would bring us to shore and to the mountains, but those vessels were made by the sea for the sea only to be at sea, and have no place on land. Ships have no life on land and must stay at sea. Yes I left my ship because the captain would not have me stay. The rescuer assured me though and had me cast into the sea only to bring me out of it. Yes the waves break and crash, but it’s only because they meet the shore and their depths are made shallow. The sea only meets the shore momentarily and then recedes from it. On shore there is great food, food that has no home in the sea. You can walk endlessly with the rescuer and never run out of solid earth under your feet. The wind that carried His voice to us on the sea is much louder here, and the sea can only be heard as the waves crash and break along the shore line. You see me as tossed about, yet I am standing on solid ground and it is your entire vessel that is being tossed about by the sea and obscuring your view.”

The sailor called back vehemently, “You ask us to give up what is certain and what we’ve always known for something that we can not see. How are we to believe in something that only you and the wind tell us about and what we can not see? You are basing what you say on something you believe to have experienced yet the waves scream testimony against you. We have the words of the rescuer when he came to us in his ship on the sea and the thoughts of all the greatest captains ever written in the bowels of our ships. Our greatest captains reconcile them together and make great truths. Yet you ignore what they say and only take His written word and His voice that comes on the wind. The captains have told us that the vessels and sea are what the rescuer gave us to guide us to him. Though they are not exactly as He left them they are all we have. You ask us to give up what he left us. He promised us the heavens as long as we know him. You also ask us to give up what we know, but this is His promise and we will not give it up.”

The man on shore cried out, “He left us one great vessel on a calm sea that had only one destination which was the shore. We left that vessel though and built our own, and through all the extra vessels we stirred up a great storm that only grows worse with each new ship. Yes we all end up in the heavens, that was his promise for hearing and accepting His voice, but He has promised us the shore and valleys and mountains as well. We were all born of the sea, yet did He not want us born of the wind too? We built ships with no sails to catch the wind and so live victim to the sea. So let us abandon ship and follow the wind despite the biggest waves that may come against us. He also promised to never let us drown, and more than that to shelter and feed us. Did He not warn us against other captains? Those captains are subject to the sea no less than their ships are. Leave them and follow the voice on the wind, it will only lead you to shore!”

The man continued to shout but the ship was no longer in range of his voice-

So forgive me for the really long analogy but I found it more entertaining than me just recounting what happened. I very much believe that the theology I have been continuously encouraged to get straight, and that so many people try to reconcile to the things that happen and the things they don’t understand, are the waves of uncertainty that the Word warns us of. Then again I am a “heretical wolf in sheep’s clothing dancing with demons”. In light of my status you should cross yourself, lay hands on your computer, and pray for my soul. I know the Lord, despite what others may think…feel free to pray for my soul anyway though.

The Akward Vessel

2005-01-28T13:18:00.000-06:00

Here's the deal. I love the Lord, and I love seeking Him. Sometimes He finds pleasure in using me as his vessel. I love that too, can't get enough of it. However the feelings that sometimes accompany post holy usage are less than agreeable. I sometimes get the sense that if the Lord uses me, I need to start being pretty holy. My view of holy isn't exactly dead on though. So on my way down from the lofty clouds of a spiritual experience I usually get a pretty good look at how messy and akward my life really is. I ask myself, "How can a VESSEL of Goooood, still be messed up like this?" Well thank goodness for my Old Testament friends Noah, David, and Lot. These guys were greater vessels and dealt with more drama than I ever will. . . hopefully.
Let's take a gander at these OT studs.

Noah:
God told Noah that He was going to destroy the entire earth in a flood to end all floods, but he wanted to save Noah and his family because Noah was righteous in His eyes. So the Lord told Noah to build The Ark. A ginormous boat that could hold at least two of every living creature on the earth. Now I imagine that the experience Noah had with the Lord when He told him to build the Ark was pretty moving. The other day the Lord wanted me to say something, so he set my inards on fire and fanned the flames until I said it. He set me on fire just to say something, he made a giant fish swallow Jonah to get him to go somewhere, it makes me nervous to think about how the Lord would inspire me to build The Ark. Moving on though, Noah was on this boat with God knows how many stinkin animals, his wfe, the kids, and the kids' wives. This goes far beyond any family trip I've ever been on. I'ld say this trip was rough waters the entire time, hahaha, not to mention it started with the Noah family listening to everyone they ever knew dying outside their boat whille begging Noah to let them in. They may not have liked those people, but that's still got to be upsetting. They spend three hundred and seventy seven days together in the Ark. On the last day they get off and what's the first recorded thing that Noah does? He plants a vineyard and hits the sauce, completely understandable. He had a lot of weight on his shoulders. He was head of the only living humans on the face earth, and on top of that he just received the first covenant God ever made with people. The last instance of Noah that is recorded is in Genesis chapter nine. Noah gets completely tossed and ends up in his tent naked (who was he drinking with?). Then his youngest son, Ham, walks in on him passed out naked and runs to get his brothers so they can all have a laugh at dad. However the two older sons respect their pops and make Ham look really bad by just covering Noah up and walking out having never laid eyes on him. Noah wakes up pissed and curses his son Ham and all of Ham's descendents to and existance of servitude. The whole laughing at him naked I think was just the straw that broke the camels back. Ham probably, judgeing by his reaction to seeing his dad naked, pulled ass clown stunts like this all the time during their 377 day stay in The Ark. He may have even made fun of Noah while he was building The Ark. Who knows? The point is, Noah was deffinitely a vessel of the Lord, and he deffinitely had his share of messy moments and akward times.

David:
David not only had an affair with a lady and knocked her up, but then helped himself to a big old side plate of murder. Not only did all his wives know, but I would bet the whole kingdom found out. David handled it pretty well though. He took the Lord's judgement and then brushed his shoulder off and moved on. I think we could all learn something from David.

Lot:
Lot is probably my favorite example. He was delivered from God's judgement much like Noah was, minus the ass clown son Noah had to deal and Lot's wife who obviously couldn't follow directions. Lot was delivered from a more impressive judgement too. Instead of using water God opened a holy can of whoop ass and brought the fire and brimstone. So Lot escapes to a small town and then goes into the mountains with His two floozy daughters. His two daughters, driven crazy by the deafening roar of an overbearing biological clock, get Lot wasted and SLEEP WITH THEIR FATHER!. I'm pretty sure it would be pretty awful to find out you have been unknowingly dating your distant cousin, but sleeping with parents is over the line. Lot probably never found out either until he was standing before God's judgement seat and the good Lord told him all that he had done. The descriptive power of the word akward falls far short of what is needed here.

I don't mean to make fun of what these guys went through. I just take comfort in knowing that seeking the Lord and being his vessel carries no promise or requirement of perfection or being better at life. So take heart and face those akward times head on. Also these are not the only such stories in the bible. The OT is full of inspiration follies and akward heroes. I encourage you to find your own inspirational OT heroes and share them with your friends