yesu

I'm tired of life

substance

And I feel like I am insubstantial, like a ghost, something thin not in the sense of a thin body, but a thin reality. Indistinct. And I don't like when worship songs sing about Jesus having made us whole. I don't feel whole, I feel incomplete.

It's too bad that Christianity has ruined the word 'saved'. I don't like that it's come to only refer to what comes after death. But the truth is, that is the most abstract and distant meaning of the word to my life. It's much more immediate and real that Jesus saves me now, in many ways. At least salvation still has the potential to be a powerful word. Saved is a weak word, and I hate weak words. I hate the way I weaken my own words with qualifiers (I think, I feel, kinda, like, not really). Those qualifiers castrate sentences. (Most of the time, sometimes uncertainty and weakness can be powerful as well.) I very much agreed with Tim's pastor yesterday that salvation is a process.

When people attempt to systematize and categorize the processes of conversion and salvation, I become suspicious. Actually, I feel suspicious in general of a lot of theology now. There probably is a good basis for a lot of what I'm suspicious of, but it just hasn't been demonstrated to me yet. I don't like that. Even theological concepts like the trinity haven't been necessarily demonstrated to me yet.

I really like elephants. Perhaps this is my Thai-ness revealing itself, since the elephant image is so prevalent over there. But I'm not sure that I really like elephants themselves as much as images of elephants. I probably wouldn't get really excited about seeing a breathing elephant.

kow jai

I still hate the term, but I think that I'm finally coming to understand and want intentional relationship(s). Except a lot of it comes from rejecting its opposite. I don't want accidental and coincidental friendships, where I hang out with people when I happen to come aross them or life (or God) pushes us at each other. That's not enough. At least, it needs to move beyond that, to intention (intention = good word, intentional = crappy word). It's just a difficult step to make.

When I came to the States last year, my sugar tolerance was much lower, and sugary things weren't as appealing to me. It bothers me that I have a higher sweetness tolerance than before, I don't like that. I miss the ice cream from Thailand, too. Although before I left, I remember that even when I would have ice cream there, I would feel a little grossed out and not want to finish it. That's how it is when I have pop now: I never want to finish it. I opened a can the other night at a bonfire, and ended up dumping about half of it out. It's just not very appealing right now.

I don't like mob atmospheres. That's a little how my experience of critical mass was. It was cool, but it also felt like a mob flexing its arms, it felt like an exercise of power. Which could be wrong. Mobs are fascinating though, and I'll go back if I get the chance since it was fun. Sometimes there's a mob feel to worship, as well. Mostly at bigger events...like conferences or camps.

I just took my laundry out of the washing machine to move it to the dryer. When I did, my sheet dragged along the floor, and got dirty. Oh well.

shaving

my discovery today: c-store razors suck. actually, it seems like I've found that out before, and just forgot and bought another one. and really, it's probably just me not shaving very often, and so the hair gets long and hard to cut with a razor. eww...I just touched my chin and when I looked at my thumb it had watery shaving cream and little bits of hair on it. I've only used aloe vera to shave a few times in my life, but it was pretty sweet: it feels like snot that you're rubbing all over your face, and it's clear, and it's not synthesized crap. shaving cream spreads and makes it harder to see what you've shaved. oh well, I'm not really intending to be shaving for much longer, but it might happen.

sufjan stevens makes me think of Christmas. not his christmas songs, though, because I haven't really heard those. illinoise. probably because that's when I was first able to listen to the whole album, and zach and I had it on in the truck a lot then. except it isn't really Christmas that I think of, it's Christmas season. sufjan was playing in the bathroom when I was finishing up my shave.

I'm an incredibly boring interior designer. this ear, I've basically done nothing. I have a few things posted on my bulletin board, but that's it. no other decorations by me. even when I lived in the same room in thailand for...over 3 years, I didn't put a single thing on the walls. eventually, I put a sign on the inside of my door, but that's all. I wonder how much of it has to do with me just being a boring decorator and how much has to do with impermanence. maybe after moving countries and traveling so much and seeing so many people come and go, I'm used to impermanence, and so I don't bother decorating because I figure I'll just have to leave soon. that sounds sort of like a dumb reason, but I guess it could be true.

I don't unpack, either. i always thought it was weird when we would stay in a hotel for one night and my dad would still unpack and put things in the hotel drawers. but even when we would vacation for two weeks some place, I would never unpack. when we would visit the states, I would never unpack, although that made more sense since we were moving around quite a bit. but even if we would be somewhere for several weeks, everything stayed in my bags. I remember four years ago when my family came to the states on furlough, then went back to Thailand, I didn't take everything out of my luggage when I got back to Thailand. It was probably about six months later that I finally did. my dad would always make us unpack when we got back from trips, unpack right away. I'm not sure why it was important to him, but he hasn't done that for...a couple of years?

In Thailand, I never had to worry about money. here, that's one of my main worries. that's dumb. but it makes me realize how artificial some of my experiences in Thailand were. everything seemed cheap because we were supported by money from America. and it was so easy to save money because I never had to use it for anything. my parents paid for gas and food, I wasn't really into snacks...and there's not much else to do in Chiang Rai. even when I did spend money at LAN shops, I always had a lot left. but one of the things I really miss is the low cost of traveling, that I could travel 100 miles by bus for....a dollar? two dollars? but the reason I think of it as artificial now is that I have no real insight into the lives of the thais. I don't know what a well paying job is, or what a normal job is. I don't know what looks expensive to them, and I wish I did know more.

I'm sad that Tim and Charlie are leaving school next year. besides being sad about them going, it makes me wonder when I'll be gone. I try not to worry about it, and figure that everything worked out just right this year, and if God wants me here next year then he'll keep me around. I guess the trouble is that I don't know for sure that God wants me here. sometimes I really want to be gone, to be away from here and away from America, and somewhere in Asia, but if I had the choice, I would stay 3 more years here, according to "the plan". I try not to worry about it, but in the end I do.

I never want to be at a job again where I don't care about the work. warehouses and food service are not close to my heart. working with youth? yes. one of my profs fall quarter told us that we should go for jobs that we would do even if we weren't getting paid. I think that's a good rule of thumb, and that's how my internship this summer is. in reality though, I'll probably have to get more jobs I don't care about in my life. too bad. I don't want to work at anything where I have to wear gloves. I don't want a job where I have to clock in.

I've realized that I live my life assuming that something shitty is about to happen and that I'm going to end up miserable. I don't think that's healthy. relationally, I live pretty paranoid and insecure. it's not healthy.

I'm picking at a scab, and pieces are falling off.

inside outside upside downside

I used to wear a lot of black shirts. These days, if I'm not wearing a white shirt, it's probably because all of my white shirts are dirty. It was about two years ago that this changed, and I'm not sure why it did. Not a change in happiness, because that time was pretty miserable. I don't necessarily like what I wear. Almost every shirt I have has been given to me. Then again, by this point I've weeded out a lot of shirts I didn't like.


I have headphones on right now, but I'm not listening to anything. I'm also bored of starting paragraphs and sentences with I. Oh well.


I feel dumb when I wear non-canvas shoes. I don't like the bulky look or feel. It just seems a little ridiculous. Not as much when I wear them for running (since they're running shoes), but even then they seem too big. Canvas or bare feet or flip flops is wear it's at. I used to wear sandals, but not for years, and I don't think I would like them anymore.


My body seems disproportionate without facial hair. Especially if I still have long hair. My head and face seems small. My lips look smaller too, at least to me, and I don't like the look.

Sometimes I want to sit down with people and figure out what they're all about. That's what happened tonight when I watched people play music, that I just wanted to sit someone down and figure out what they're all about. I hope I do. Today, I also felt tired of being at SPU, that it was time to be away from school and meet people with entirely different views on the world. There is a lot of diversity within Christianity, but I'm bored with that.


I'm tired of morality. Not following morals, but just the idea of morality. It's lost some of its weight for me. I'm not really sorry for the loss. I don't sense a change in my actions, just more internal peace. I'm tired of questioning whether something is sin or not. I just want God.

My sentences are shorter today than normal, maybe because I'm tired. Maybe because in my paper conference with a teacher today, a lot of it focused around sentence clarity, and short sentences often equal more clarity.

I feel tired of theology and teaching as well. Then again, I love theology, and I love learning. But the danger in theology is in compartmentalizing God. I don't want to study God so much that I miss him completely. Sometimes I think that's what happens when I read the Bible. It's so easy to forget that God is real, that God is person (he has personality). If I had goals for my prayers, the main one might be just to remember that God is real. Right now, I feel much more interested in narrative and in life. Where life is true life from God and with God and with others.

I don't feel a deep and abiding passion to help the poor. It's just not where I'm at right now. The funny thing is that a lot of my writing involves the poor. I think that was a them I forgot to list last week, but it's one I've noticed. It's not intentional.

When I was reading the Irresistble Revolution, I wondered if it was a problem that I don't have enemies. At least not that I know of. But I do wonder who the people are out there that dislike me. Or people that like me but resent me for some reason.

I've realized that it's important to be willing to let yourself be misunderstood, and to be willing to let others think you're an idiot. That's probably the first step to actually learning anything at all in life or in school, it's just incredibly difficult.

It's important to be needed, and important to have responsibilities. One of the difficult transitions to make between Thailand and the States was moving from where I was needed and important to a place where I was unnecessary. That's still how I feel to some extent: largely unnecessary to peoples lives, like a prop or a minor character.

Then again, I wonder if the whole idea of necessity is just delusion anyway, the idea that if I were gone, there would be no one to replace me. While this is true in one sense, that humans are too unique to be replaced, it's untrue in the sense that what I do for people can't be done by others as well. Maybe it's a good place to be in to not consider myself a necessity to anyone's life. I'm not so important that God can't find someone else to meet exactly the same needs that I meet for people. And I don't want to be motivated to get closer to people just so that I will have a sense of necessity, so that I will feel like a major character, which is good since I don't sense that I do that. Then again, that attitude promotes passivity, where I can assume that if I don't step up and meet a need, it's not a problem because someone else is just as capable of meeting that need.

The main problem with feeling unnecessary is that as long as I feel unecessary I will interpret myself as an outsider. But by thinking of myself as an outsider, I can never reach that elusive (and non-existent?) insider status. And, in some ways, I enjoy being an outsider because nothing is demanded of me, the only thing required is to observe.

I've been so restless lately, and I don't feel that I find rest in God. But rest has all sorts of meaning, and maybe sometimes it isn't so much about peace as it is about release.

nails

I am not satisfied with God and I am not content with Christ. And it's not that I'm dissatisfied and discontent with my "relationship" with God, though that is true as well. It's dissatisfaction with God himself. That's a hard thing to tell people though. I don't want people to try to give me answers or fix the problem, and I feel like that's exactly what would happen if I did tell people. And I also feel like whatever answers people would give me are answers that I already have on an intellectual level, and that's the level they would be speaking on. But I don't need answers on an intellectual level, I need them on an existential level. And, to be honest, this dissatisfaction isn't anything new. See, it feels like life would be easier if I smoked. Then I could just go smoke with a friend.

In a way, though, I feel like that's good. I hope with my discontentment (and with my doubts) that it comes from God, and that God is pushing me to something better and deeper and somewhere where he is and where life is.

Sometimes I feel that as a Christian there is a lot of pressure to be intellectually and existentially dishonest. I'm tired of that. Having Christ in my life does not make me content with life and content with whatever happens. Maybe one day I will reach that point, but I'm not there right now.

I don't understand why I like songs about drinking and songs about alcohol so much, but I do.

Tonight, I wondered if I should get a mentor. But I don't want a mentor. Maybe it's the word mentor itself that I dislike. It's not a word that pleases me. Here's a secret: I don't like the phrases intentional community or intentional relationships either. I'm not sure why (don't take it personally). Maybe those phrases are just too long. In any case, I don't have good alternate ones to use. Actually, I just sort of hate the word relationship altogether right now, probably because I'm sick of hearing "relationship with God." Maybe I should start calling it my struggle with God instead.

Another phrase I hate: "the real world." I feel like what that really means is "the fake, shitty world where everything is controlled by money." I always get a little upset when people talk about the "real world" coming after school or after college. Vomit.

I heard once that Seattle is the city where you're most likely to have a stranger tell you their life story. Maybe that just means that Seattle is full of lonely people. The truth is that I often feel lonely, but that isn't something new either. I suspect it's something I'll have to deal with for my whole life, just because loneliness seems like something that's at the center of human existence. Loneliness and ignorance (hm...I think I'm borrowing ideas from Nouwen and Sartre).

I miss my parents, too. Looking back, I'm very grateful for the way I was raised. There were things about growing up that I wouldn't reccomend to other families, or want for my own children (like not really having a home), but I'm grateful for what I got. I think that when my dad is here, I'll have to play catch with him, and make sure to hug my mom a lot.

screws

Today in class, my teacher asked whether or not God screws people over, and I wanted to answer yes. I didn't, because in the end I don't believe that he does. But I guess I do believe that God not only allows but causes suffering. And that's okay. (See, writing about something like this is difficult because I can't make absolute statements, but I hate prefacing everything with I think, or I guess.) Suffering can lead to something good, and hopefully that's the type of suffering that God allows and causes. A lot of suffering is getting what you don't want and not getting what you do want (Buddha pointed this out). But looking back over my life, I can see how often it was good to not get what I wanted, and to get what I didn't want, and I do think that at times that was because of God, not just someting he allowed to happen.

The problem here, for me, is that it's easy to see that God causes suffering and then reason from there that he isn't good. That's the trouble I run into often. But even from my own experiences I can see how at times it's good and necessary to cause suffering in other peoples lives. That's not as twisted as it sounds. I mean things like being honest with people about the problems you have with them, or calling someone out, and the suffering that causes. It can lead to good, if it doesn't always.

Another part of the problem is that there's really no easy way to see what is from God, good or bad. I don't believe in predestination or fate, but I have a habit of looking at everything as being from God. The people I come across and talk to, events that happen to me. So if something's bad, I blame it on God and wonder why it's happened and what he's trying to do. Same if something's good, I thank God and wonder why it happened. But I'm not convinced (on a theoretical level) that everything that happens is direct from God. Maybe it is.

Another problem: it's easy to identify things that I'm averse to as bad, and what I do desire as good. The problem here is that I have no true way of knowing what's good or bad. I don't mean on a moral level, but on what is beneficial or harmful to my life. But it's easy to look at people I want to know or be friends with, and think that because I want that, it would be good to happen. Experience and reality tells me otherwise. In the end, I need to admit that I don't have a clue and trust that God is working things out.

Then the problem that I face is that I become passive. If God wants me to be friends with someone, then he'll work it out. To some extent, I think that's true, and I do believe that God throws people together (both in a good and in a violent way). But it's easy to stop there and think that I don't need to move or act, or take chances and risk things and be brave, and to mope around waiting for God to move.

And I wonder sometimes why God throws people in my life. Meeting strangers and having great conversations with them. Sometimes I wonder if all that was meant to happen is that one conversation, and that it gets forced into something it wasn't meant to be. I feel like this isn't clear, but I'm not sure how to explain it, or maybe I don't want to be honest enough to explain it. Maybe one of the worst and best things in life is to have a great time with people you will never see again, or people that are exiting from your life, people just passing through (from your own reference frame, of course). I guess that I believe God can throw people together just for one space in time, and not intend for them to ever see each other again. But I may just be making excuses.

meow

"I remember thinking that unless I knew what was going on inside of someone else's head other than my own I was going to explode" - Douglas Coupland

This is how I feel sometimes as well. I get bored of my own thoughts. At the same time, I get tired of not expressing my thoughts to others. It's so strange and fascinating that I can go through the same events as someone else, but our experiences might be totally different. And it's important to me to figure out how other people see things. At least in some cases.

And (I love starting sentences with and, I don't know why, I think I was already trying to do this in elementary school) I've been wondering a lot lately what's running through peoples heads. I'll be sitting in a room or hanging out with people, and look around, and wonder what everyone is thinking about. Eh, I guess the only way to find out is to ask.

talk

I have trouble talking about people. I'm not sure why, I just don't feel comfortable doing it most of the time. I remember when teams of Americans would come over to Thailand, and then coming here to America, how much they talked about each other. Sometimes I disliked it and might still dislike it, but other times I'm fine with listening to what people say, and with asking them questions about people, but I wouldn't feel comfortable asking those same questions. I don't like answering questions for people when they're absent, or answering questions about people. I guess that's okay.

theme

I've noticed a few themes in the poetry I write:

1. I really like to write about the beach and the ocean. Not really about them, but about people at them, and things that happen on them or near them. This makes a lot of sense: I love the beach and many of my best or most memorable times were at the beach. Vacations. Conferences. Warm beaches.

2. My narrators tend to be cynical, uncertain douche bags. Or, if not douche bags, just not necessarily likeable. At least in first drafts. When I rewrite, I take some of that out. I'm not really sure why that happens, it's not intentional. Maybe poetry is where all my cynicism and rottenness and uncertainty come out.

3. Women die in my poetry. More precisely, a lot of my poems center around situations where a woman is dead, or gone in some way. Once again, I'm not really sure why. I love women, I don't want them to die.

Now, I think of Pedro the Lion, and about how so many of his songs are about cynical douche bags. There's not very many dead women in his songs (women kill people in his songs), but there are a lot of split relationships and women who are gone. Now I just wonder if his songs influenced the way I write, or if there's something in these things that attracts me to his songs and that I also write about. Probably both.

A few notes:

Today I was in what I think was the smallest plane I've ever flown on. Walking down the aisles, the ceiling was barely above my head. When I went into the bathroom, I couldn't stand straight.

I read some Salman Rushdie and Douglas Coupland on the plane. I really like their writing.

Too much of my life has been wasted feeling sorry for myself and being a pansy. This needs to end.

uncomfort

It's hard to realize that I'm often still uncomfortable with people over here. Even my friends. Not at ease. Not at ease talking, often. There's a still a sense that I have to "prove" myself. And the whole idea of that is ridiculous. And I feel like a little boy, that I would come onto my web log and write that. More importantly, maybe, I often feel uncomfortable being silent. But a lot of times I'm okay with silence and not saying anything, and just watching people. Often, I suspect that I would be happy just to grab someone and go sit by the canal and not talk at all and just watch the water and chill. Oh well, I don't know if anyone actually reads this. Except I think my brother does.

I don't like being interrupted, but I get interrupted a lot over here in the States. Funny, but over a year after I've moved to the States, I'm still not used to talking in groups of people. I guess I talked to a lot of people in Thailand one on one. I miss that. It's hard to go from a place where what I had to say was important to people to here, where it feels like what I have to say is so much shit. Except a lot of times it is. Or that's how it feels, and I wonder if it's because I'm usually in groups of people here, and I'm not used to saying much of importance when I'm not alone with people, so I just talk nonsense.

I've realized that often when I'm feeling the worst, I don't want to talk about it, I just want to tell stories. I like to tell them, and hear them. I haven't found America to be a place where people want to hear stories though. That's a supergeneralization, but I guess it's true to my experience. I think being interrupted is worst if you're telling a story. I love stories.

Unrelated: something I was thinking in class today: God by any other name is still God, and Jesus by any other name is still Jesus, and that doesn't have to be threatening. Allah is still God.

foot stains

When I walked back to my room this afternoon, the lobby floor of Hill was being mopped, and it was wet. So I slipped (but didn't fall). I looked down at the ground and realize that my flip flops had been making black prints across the floor. It reminded me of years ago when I would walk around barefoot a lot, and then I would get in trouble for going into the bathrooms at my school. When the bathroom floors were washed, they would stay wet for a long time and, since no one wore shoes in doors, I would walk in the bathrooms and make big black foot marks on the clean floors. There were flip flops outside the bathrooms to wear, but they were too small for me to fit comfortably into them, so I didn't usually wear them.

That's all

understanding

In Thai, the word for understand is 'kowjai'. Literally, "into the heart". Ever since I've understood that's what I meant, I always understood it to mean the heart of that speaker, that something has entered into your own heart (which I think is a notable understanding of understanding as opposed to knowledge and theory based concepts of understanding). And I do think that's an important part of understanding, letting things get to the heart of you ("into your heart" sounds so cheesy, I hesitate to write anything like it).

Now, though, I wonder if the reverse is equally true, that to have understanding you have to enter into the heart of things, of people, that to understand someone isn't just to let them in you but to enter in to them. Maybe it ends up being the same thing.