rehab and evolution

Besides all the compelling data, I believe in evolution because that's the primary way that I see God work. Then again, I also see God work in surprising events which are more like the gunshot style of creation. But I'm thinking about process right now, so I'll stick with evolution. I feel like my life is rushing towards something, building up to something, but I don't know what. Working up to one of those gun shots (hopefully not literal). And it works slowly, things take time...

I just realized that I feel like I'm heading somewhere. That's comforting, and surprising.

A lot of major changes don't take place like a shot though. When I look back over my life, I don't see very many defining moments, where one choice dramatically changed the course of my life. It's more like things just happened, and probably happened through many choices over long periods of time.

The other lesson I've learned from life is that resolutions don't usually accomplish much. Over the years, I've been involved in a lot of online communities, especially gaming communities. One thing I noticed is that people who made an announcement that they were quitting always came back. The ones that quit for real just faded away. No announcements, no real resolutions, it just happened. That's how I see life work, a lot of times, it's fading, or slowly appearing. It's not like someone coming up to you in the dark and flipping a light on in your face, it's more like sunrise and sunset.

Besides other reasons, these views are probably why I'm not cut out to ever work at a rehab center: "No, don't worry about making resolutions to kick the habit, just let it happen." Right. Maybe that's true in some drug rehab cases, but I'd bet it's not in most. Still, that change takes time is comforting to me, because I realize that I have all these things about me that I want to change, but it's not going to happen by flipping a switch. God works in his own time, including his own time to change people. Fruit of the spirit, man, it takes time to grow. And it grows on its own time, not just when I decide. Or maybe the two things are one and the same, where I want to change because the spirit is bugging me, but it still takes time.

It's like riding down a big hill that you've never been down before, you know that it has to end at some point, but you're not sure what's going to be at the bottom.

Zoom.

song

I'm tired of playing other peoples songs. I just have almost no songs of mine, and none that I'm happy with. Making music with other people is better than making it by myself, but it's really hard to find people to make music with. I feel a little identity-less playing songs that aren't my own.

memory

It's hard for me to get things done when I'm waiting, or to pay attention to anything when I'm anticipating something else. Especially when what I'm waiting for is uncertain, whether it's going to happen or not, and when it will happen (or not). Usually I have to stop waiting (even if I'm still waiting) to get things done.

It's funny how memory works: memory invents. A few months ago when I was in California, I started talking to Zac W. about a trip that my high school went on, and saying how weird it was that it had already been two years since we went. Then he said that he didn't go on the trip, and I was shocked. It was true, and I remembered that, but up until that moment I remembered him going, and could have placed him into memories of events where he wasn't actually present. Another time I told a friend that I'd seen Five Iron in concert. It wasn't until a little bit later (hours, day?) that I realized that wasn't true. Memory deletes too. Memory's unreliability is part of the reason that I think all stories are fictious (even non-fiction).

But then I was thinking yesterday about how memory lets me see things that I couldn't before, it lets me reintepret past events and see the truth of what was going on, what I couldn't see when I was in the middle of things. I guess that's how we can look back fondly at miserable times, and look back with regret on enjoyable times. That's why talking to people about past events is so important, too. None of us see clearly, but with each other we see a little more clearly.

brazil

I feel very interested in Brazil right now. Not sure why. Last summer it was Iran and India, and those places are still very interesting to me. Right now, Brazil. A lot of people are primarily interested in Africa. I am every once in a while, but not usually. I think it's because I feel interested in big cities, and most images of Africa aren't big cities, they're villages and animals and deserts and savannahs. But Africa has big cities, too.

Then there's countries where I'm not so interested in the whole country as I am specific cities in the country. London, Paris, Jerusalem. Not really Rome. Rome has a lot of historic appeal, but I don't know how enjoyable it is as a place now. Venice would be interesting because of the canals but...maybe too touristy. Most of what interests me in Europe is specific cities. Other than that, it's almost never a place that I feel like visiting. Too cold, maybe.

I wish that Thailand had more poets and more literature. Then again, I haven't made a strong effort to find Thai poetry, but it seems like neither poetry or literature are very popular in Thailand at all. Sad, because I'm into both those things, and I'm into Thailand.

If I had to choose a continent to stay on for the rest of my life, it would probably be Asia. Especially since Asia is huge and contains the Middle East, too. Eh, but I'm okay with being in America, for now, Seattle makes me happy. I don't think I'll be sticking around, though. If I do, I'll be in a city, because suburbs suck.

I think I would feel intensely guilty buying a new pair of shoes. I'm not sure why, maybe I don't feel like I could justify the use of money when I still have shoes that are sufficient. Everyone else thinks that I need new shoes, though. They're wrong.

mwY

On my way to work today, I was listening to mewithoutYou. Then I drove up behind a van, and the letters on the license plate were MWY. And I felt very happy.



When you get down to it, I don't believe in coincidence. I'm like my mother that way. Except I might believe in it on a theoretic level, just the way I think and live shows that I don't actually believe it on a real level. The difficulty for me is that while I don't believe in coincidence, I usually don't know the meaning and purpose of things, so even if events aren't coincidental, and aren't meaningless, they might as well be. That's not true, I just get consumed sometimes with how little I know, and how little I can find the meaning of thing in life. Ambiguity and absurdity (as in meaninglessness) are pretty close to my heart. In that way, I think, I am not like my mother.


I wonder how long these topics will interest me, though. It's strange to look back at my life, and the things that I was interested in, and how I thought I would be interested in them for my whole life, the music that I thought I would listen to my whole life (and I probably will keep returning to old favorites every once in a while), books I thought I would read for my whole life. Friends I thought I would still be friends with.

comfort

So today sucked. It was stressful right when I got up, and more or less stayed that way through the whole day. Draining. But then, thinking about my day, it's not the type of bad day that I'll probably remember. For the most part, it's just been stressful and exhausting, and in a week or a few days, it won't even matter anymore, and I probably won't remember it very clearly, just like I had lots of stressful days last summer, but most of them don't matter. Bad days are more memorable when they're relationally stressful or bad.

Summer has been hard, but it's easier when I remember that (I think) this is where God wants me. Although sometimes the idea that this is where God wants me is really hard to deal with as well, it makes things hard in a different way although I don't think it needs to.

Moving on.

Sometimes I wish that I could see people at a different age. Like see how my friends or my parents or other adults were when they were little kids. Or see how little kids are when they grow up. That's probably easier than knowing how people were when they were little. (Hi)story!

compline history alone

At compline last night, I felt like I should be in water. Like listening to the singing, the ground was too solid. Maybe one day st mark's will install a pool.

I'm fascinated by history. How things got to be the way they are, where everything came from, what has happened. I have a better grip of the world when I understand history, and more sensitivity towards the modern world. This is the same with people, the more I know their stories, where they came from and what they've been through, how they've changed and when and why, the more sensitivity I have towards them. I feel pretty safe making that generalization. I'm fascinated by my own history as well (story), looking back at my life to see change, especially change I was unaware of at the time.

I've been feeling more tired lately, I'm not sure why. Maybe sleep isn't as restful because I'm sleeping on a couch, and I'm not eating as much, and I've been so busy. Funny, I live alone but I've spent a lot less time alone this summer than I did over the school year.

worship

a few things I'm learning about leading worship:

Songs don't have to contain absolute truth. They can't. Trying to find songs that are absolutely true is going to be a frustrating search. That doesn't mean that songs should be sung which are obviously false, just that it's okay to be incomplete and inadequate. And, sometimes, it's more important to have accurate and meaningful ideas than facts.

I don't have to understand something to sing it. There are some songs that I don't understand, that's okay. It's okay to not understand things about God, and I don't need to be afraid of singing things that I don't understand (nevertheless, there's some songs that I might not feel comfortable singing because I don't understand them and what I don't understand seems wrong, where some songs I can sing because I don't understand but the words seem right).

What I struggle with are songs that I don't feel at the time when I'm singing them, or that aren't true at all times. In one way, this seems unimportant, that I should still be able to sing what is true even if I'm not experiencing that truth at the moment, or if I'm actually experiencing and thinking the opposite. Then again, that can just feel empty, like I'm lying. Singing what I don't believe at the time may just be lying to God and lying to everyone around me even if I know that what I am singing is true.

Another hard thing for me is that I don't want to play dumb songs, or songs that I dislike. But a song being dumb or my dislike of a song doesn't mean that it's wrong or that it's not worship or that God doesn't speak through that song to people. It's cool that God can use cheesy and stupid songs, but sometimes I wish that he didn't so that I could completely avoid them without feeling guilty about it. That doesn't happen too often, but every once in a while I feel like I should play some song that I don't like, or not play a song I really do like.

drain

I'm glad that I decided to live alone. Being around people all day, either at work or with friends, is exhausting. It's nice to have a place to come back to where I won't be disturbed.

But I like to be alone with other people, too, and I don't feel like I really get to have that time often. That was a big adjustment moving over from Thailand, maybe something I'm still adjusting to. I spent a lot of time alone with people. Here, most of my time with other people is spent in groups. It's really nice to have the group dynamic here that wasn't easy to accomplish in Thailand, but it's really nice to have the close time that isn't really available here. Actually, that's not true, it just requires a whole lot more work (intention!) than I've been used to in my life. It's been good for me, it's been good to have more public relationships and more interaction with people in big gorups, but it's hard.

I hate leaving messages on peoples phones. Mostly, maybe only, if it has to do with a plan, like hanging out with someone. It just makes me feel dumb. There's something very embarassing to me about making plans, and telling people about those plans, then having those plans fall through. It's not just embarassing if other people know, it's sometimes embarassing if just I'm aware of what I planned to do. Sometimes that's because my plans were dumb or wrong, but I think sometimes I just feel...naive, like I had such hope but where did it get me in the end?

Tonight, the 4th of July, I was looking around at the people I was with, and thinking that last year at this time, I never expected to be with the people I was with. Probably because I knew almost none of them. It makes me wonder where I'll be next year, who I'll be with, how I'll change. Well, I guess I'll find out next year. I feel drained, and I'm going to sleep now.

experience

Ideas are not truth, experience is truth. If all my experiences with God tell me that God is evil and that God is out to ruin my life, it is irrelevant whether God really is good or not, and whether the Bible says he is good or not. What we experience as truth, for us, is truth, and things only become real as we experience them to be real.

If someone is struggling to believe that God is good, telling them that God is good is only as good as a painkiller. Painkillers do exactly what they suggest, they kill the pain (and, actually, I think they don't even do that, they just prevent us from feeling the signals that our body is still sending). But they don't change the fact that there is still this deep, crippling wound. I think that only experience can heal that wound completely. And, if painkillers don't heal, they at least stop that pain from being all-controlling so that we can think and maybe feel right.

Of course, the trouble with experience is the same trouble that we have with writing: all experience and all writing is subject to interpretation. What is true in my life isn't what is actually true, it's what I interpret to be true, because that is what I live my life according to. What is true in my relationships isn't what is actually true, it's what I interpret to be true. Maybe everything in life is based on one interpretation or another.

That things are true only as we experience them to be true is what makes the Bible so amazing and so inadequate. The Bible is full of peoples interpretations of God, interpretations that God is good and the source of everything good in their life, interpretations that God is cruel and the source of all the suffering in their life. And this helps me understand those sections in the Bible where God is blamed for evil things, where God is depicted as a hunter that chases us down like prey to devour us. It isn't that God really is those things, it's that the writers of the Bible experienced, whether over long periods of time or during brief moments, that God is those things. They are true because they are experienced to be true.

As our experience of God expands, the Bible becomes more relevant. We can identify with feelings that God is cruel and out to destroy us, because we've interpreted him that way. We can identify with feelings that God is love and that everything he does, he does out of love, because we have interpreted and experienced him to be that. The Bible is amazing because it is a testament to God and to God's actions and character, testament of individual and collective experience. I just feel that it's inadequate because those experiences are real only as we experience them to be real. The testament is real only as it is experienced.

So where does faith come in to this? Faith doesn't negate experience, faith says that our interpretation of experience is fallible, that our interpretation of the Bible is fallible, that our knowledge is incomplete. Faith allows interpretation to change. It doesn't change events, it changes the way we see events. And, if anything, I think that my times of greatest doubt are also my times of greatest faith. Faith can't live apart from doubt.

God is greater than the Bible, God is greater than the God that we see in the Bible. That doesn't mean that the God of the Bible is false, it means that words are inadequate and incomplete and that God can't be contained in a book. Right now, this is my hermeneutic, my way of interpreting the Bible, and I feel excited about it and comfortable with the way that it is heading (but it's still incomplete).

flow

stay out of God's way. let things flow. don't be afraid of the fact that everything takes time to grow and to change.

then we'll all be beautiful butterflies one day.

invitation

When I'm with people, I don't feel a sense of belonging until I think that I would be missed if I were absent. So then, when I don't feel like I'd be missed, when I feel irrelevant, the temptation has been to disconnect. I think it's both because I hate being where I don't belong and because I want to see if it's true or not, whether I'm irrelevant or not. I don't think that's healthy, but it is what it is. Maybe that's how I think of friendship, as well: friendship means that when we're not around eachother, we miss one another. That we become friends when we hit the point that once we're apart, we'll miss eachother.

The trouble with this (and maybe most things in life) is that I can't see clearly, and I can go a long time wondering whether people actually like me or like being around me. That has to do some with invitation, though, a lot of times I feel out of place if I feel uninvited, and feel insecure in friendships and relationships if I feel univited. I don't know if that's healthy, either, but it is what it is.

My beard's growing in pretty nice. Still patchier than I would like, but okay. It's different everytime I grow it out, probably because I only shave it rarely and I'm still a growing boy with changing hair patterns.

Yesterday, I don't think I went into a bathroom until about 13 hours after I got up. I realized it because when I went into the bathroom I looked into the mirror, and it was weird to see my face.

edges

today, I feel like I was close an edge of sorts but was pulled away from it. what a weird night. it's one of those times where I look at my life as it's happening and see that God hears and works, and that he is good. that doesn't happen very often, but I'm glad that it did today when I was feeling like shit and just wanted to run and sever myself from everyone, and probably would have done just that.