there are no levels

I think I will have to go on a pilgrimage one day. Maybe not the shrine-and-relic-and-holy-place-visiting sort of pilgrimage, but religious in its own way. Not necessarily religious, just life-ish. When I think of a pilgrimage, I usually think of going some place by myself, usually in Asia, and wandering around.

Too bad that money sucks. It's hard to think of a time in my life when I'll be able to go on such a pilgrimage, because I would like it to be for an extended period of time, maybe a year, maybe more. Maybe just a summer. The next few years seem pretty out, since I'll be in school. And, over the summers, I'll probably need to make money for school. Then once I'm out of school, I'll have to pay off my loans. Then once my loans are paid off...maybe then. I'm obviously feeling pessimistic about the whole thing right now. I'll probably just have to screw it all at some point, and leave. Maybe I can find a job that will let me wander around basically doing what I want. Time to start writing.

I was thinking today about how practical the English major is. There seem to be some naysayers who think otherwise. But we make sense of our lives through stories and interpretations. Stories that we tell ourselves, stories made up of our lives, and the interpretations of those stories. Stories and interpretation are basically what English comes down to. And writing. Writing is pretty integral to the major, too.

Today I went on my mini-pilgrimage, and walked around a lake. As I was walking, I wondered if knowing God, closeness to God, is something like closeness to other humans, where it can't be forced. In other words, I can want closeness to God, but I can't make it happen. It will happen on it's own time (God's time, perhaps?). This makes the whole thing seem rather passive, but I don't see it that way. It's still about movement, but about graceful movement rather than forceful movement.

But, that whole idea seems to fly in the face of what I'm told of, which is that there should be this great desperation and seeking after God. And there should be. I guess I'm not convinced that it comes through "spiritual disciplines" (although I would probably support most spiritual disciplines, just not as disciplines). This seems to match my experience, where regular Bible study and prayer don't necesarrily "do" anything. That's more true with Bible study than with prayer, I suppose. Sometimes I feel like I just become more miserable the more I read the Bible and pray.

Right now, that isn't true with the Bible. I've been reading through Mark, and seeing this beautiful side of Jesus there that I hadn't noticed before. If John's gospel is, to me, about the mystery of Jesus, Mark's gospel is coming to be about the kindness and intimacy of Jesus. The miracles, the solitary times and times where Jesus took people away from the crowds to a private place. And, when Jesus taught people that found him when he was trying to get away. That is one of the moments in the gospels when I see just how kind Jesus was (is).

And prayer? Often, I just become miserable when I try to pray, because it always seems like I should be "doing" something else. Jesus tells us to take our requests to God. Then I do and feel so self-centered, and like I should be listening. Then I try to listen and it's very hard. Sometimes, thanking God for what's in my life is all I can do (and I think I end up feeling gross about that too). Giving thanks is good.

I want intimacy (which seems, right now, like such a simpering word) with God. But I don't know what I need to do to get that. Maybe the point is that I can't really do anything, that there's nothing I can force, there is no system to follow. There is step, and step, and step, and movement towards something closer and closer, and God shows me step, by step, by step, and there's nothing I have to worry about except that I listen and seek and follow step step step. Not steps like a 12 step ladder where at the end I reach the top, maybe there is no tangible end point, a lot of it has to do with who I'm walking near and with. Jesus is the way, and that way seems more like an incessant journey that meanders all around more than it does a computer game where you level up until you reach the highest level. There are no levels here. There are no steps.

Recently, I was churching it up, and the church was separated into groups to talk with each other. One of the questions we discussed is how religion is keeping us from God. I answered that it was ceremony. Things done that aren't bad in themselves (like reading the good book, or praying), they may be really good things, but the ceremony destroys the reality. I want the real thing, the one that surprises me, not the puppet that I twist and pull and predict.

Don't worry, God's not a puppet.

So there are a few answers. Here's two. One, is that disciplines fail me because I am undisciplined and don't follow them. That's a definite possibility. The other is that the disciplines themselves are worthless without the pureness of heart (not quite the term I'm looking for, but it will do for now) that creates "discipline" in the first place. And once that pureness is there, discipline isn't really important, because it will lead you to what you should do anyhow. Jesus was talking about something different, but maybe it was the same idea when he said to seek the kingdom of God first, and the rest will fall into place.

Seek God, not goodness. Seek God, not discipline. Seek God, that's it.

beer and balance

When I was in Seattle today, I gave a guy money for beer. This is probably not what Jesus meant when he said to give the thirsty something to drink. But, you never know. The most interesting part of the exchange for me was as I was walking off, the guy asked me, "Am I bad?"

I wasn't really sure what to say, so I said, "What do you think?"

He thought for a few moments then said, "I'm bad, but I'm really good at it."

Then he said something about how he should be a used car salesman. Reflecting on my experience, I don't think I would give someone on the streets money for beer again if they asked me. If I had an alcoholic friend, I wouldn't support their addiction by giving them money for beer. I don't see why it's loving to do that for a stranger. At the same time, a part of me doesn't mind giving someone money for beer when they might be miserable. I really don't know much about the guy, I don't know if he's homeless or a drunk or what, those are just assumptions.

I tend towards balance and creating balance. If I sense extremism, I want to balance it out. Seeing things from multiple angles. I don't enjoy feeling like an extremist. When I think 'extremist', I think 'misinformed'. Not completely wrong, just not seeing the full picture. I don't like unfair treatment and description. This probably changes how I talk to people. If I sense their disapproval of something, I will probably try to either talk about parts of it that they will approve of or balance out their view by clarifying things that I think they don't understand. It can be hard for to talk about things when I know someone will disapprove. It's not even thinking that I'm wrong that's hard to deal with, it's more like thinking that I'm wrong and disapproving of me. I don't like that I do that. Fear = lame.

Most things aren't as completely good or as completely evil as people make them out to be. Most things aren't as completely anything as people make them out to be.

knowing

Coming to the end of my internship, I don't know people as well as I wish. The youth there, I wish I knew them better and closer, but I don't. I don't know if that's because of some failure on my part or what. But my knowledge of them isn't some measurement of success, I guess. I don't think there is any tangible measurement of "success" here. Hopefully, and probably, God has used me in ways that I'm not even aware of to do his work.

Work. To talk about "God's work" seems very impersonal to me. Like God has these labors to complete. I'm not sure if I can explain it, but it's almost like "doing God's work" is a human take on something that is much more personal and intimate and mysterious. I want to "do God's work" and join in with God in what he's doing, but I would rather know God deeply and let the work follow from that and because of that and because of love.

All in all, I don't know people as deeply as I want to. I'm not sure what this means or what to do about it. I know that everything grows in its own time, that relationships grow in their own time. I don't know whether or not it's accurate, but when I look back to Thailand, it seems like my relationships there were much deeper than here. But the situation in Thailand was an unusual one. It's been important to realize that America is not Thailand, Seattle is not Chiang Rai and it never will be. There were things that were great about Chiang Rai that I don't have here, and there were things that were terrible and hard about Chiang Rai that I don't have here. Not to mention, the people I was with in Thailand, I was with for a long time. Here, most of my friends I met this last school year. Different.

I'm still adjusting to not being alone with people very often, because that's how most of my interactions were in Thailand. It was normal there, while normal here is that if I'm around one of my friends, I'm probably around 3. Alone is probably where I'll always be more comfortable, talking, but it's important to adjust so that I can be fully functional when I'm with more than one or two people.

I don't know God as well as I would like. Some days I think that I don't know him at all.

HI !!

Sometimes when I'm walking or biking through neighborhoods, I want to walk into peoples houses. Not people I know. I'm not sure why. Probably just because people are really interesting, and I like to go through peoples stuff. No theft, just searching.

Side note: As far as getting work done, I think I function best when I'm by myself without anyone telling me what to do or without anyone asking me what to do. If I had to choose the one or the other, I'd rather lead, just because I don't feel free to act when I have people telling me what to do, and when I don't have that freedom, I don't do well. It's not necessarily that I have a bad attitude, I'm just stifled. And, I like to do things on my own time. Whatever.

Something I realized this last sunday is that I associate powerful acts of the holy spirit with bad theology. Not as in, "to believe in powerful acts of the holy spirit is bad theology" but that when I hear about the holy spirit acting in some unusual way, it's always around people that I think have sketchy beliefs. Sometimes it's just that their view of God is something that I hate, that I don't think the God they talk about actually exists, that who they think God is is wrong, and I want no part in that God. So, that was sobering to realize, because it probably means that I reject movement of the spirit without realizing it, because I don't want to be that sort of person and have those sort of beliefs. This should change. Not that I not to adopt wrong beliefs, just the fear needs to change. Fear is lame.

I don't really do much. It's hard for me sometimes to figure out what to do with people when most of what I do is for one person. Reading, writing, music. Other people can all be included in those things, but it's hard to do. Most of my friends here don't play video games, and I don't play them much anymore, either. Whatever.

what I learned in solitary confinement

Okay, that's the dramatic title. For a more pleasant one, you can replace it with 'solitude'.

I realized the other night when I was at my apartment that even though I spend a lot of time alone, it's all time where I am involuntarily alone. Since I've had my phone, I always have it on me or nearby. So I went on a walk and left the phone behind. I think it's important to take time to be voluntarily alone, to be in solitude. Being alone, and closing off opportunities to be with others, is totally different from being alone while leaving yourself open to being with others. When it's voluntary, it's much more peaceful and relaxing, where involuntary alone-ness can be stressful. This next year, I'll need to make sure that I do intentionally leave myself by myself at times, where no one can get a hold of me.

This weekend has been really good.

A story: So last night a little after 9, I rode my bike from the U-district to my brother's house. The friends I was with had just left, and I wasn't able to get a hold of anyone, so I went to Zach's even though I knew he wouldn't be there. I thought someone would be, though. I got to the house and rang the doorbell, but no one came. Then I had to pee really bad. So I paced around trying to figure out what to do. I called Zach's phone, but he didn't answer, and I left a message asking if he knew a good place to pee. But I ended up just going to the park. Then I biked down to Greenlake, rode around the lake and came back to the house. I love biking in the city at night. So I'm back at Zach's, and I read a little bit. Now, I can concentrate since my bladder isn't bugging me. Unfortunately, I started to get cold, because I don't have a sweater with me. Once cold, I can't concentrate on what I'm reading, and just end up sitting and walking around until Zach and Javier show up and let me in the house. Once we're in there, one of Zach's roommates comes out of his room. He says he heard the doorbell but thought there were other people in the house who would let me in.

But I'm glad he didn't get up. If he had, I wouldn't have gone on my sweet bike ride, or peed in the park. It's like missing the ferry last weekend. It turned out good, and I'm glad that we missed it and had to wait another two hours.

isolation

Jesus saves, everyday.

I have felt very isolated lately. Probably part of it is the physical isolation of living away from people, but its more of a psychological isolation. It's been okay for most of the summer, but not lately. It bothers me when I can go home and know for almost-sure that for the next 15 hours, there will be no interaction or communication with anyone in any way. Real life or e-life or phone life. Oh well. These things happen for reasons. (Not to mention 8 hours of that I'm probably sleeping).

Typically, when anything weird or unexpected happens, I blame/thank God. Probably not fair. Oh well. Actually, it's not just blame. Those are the times that I see God.

existence

God doesn't exist. Neither do you or I. Sort of.

Better said: who I imagine God to be does not exist. The same goes for the people I know. My conception of them doesn't actually exist, and my conception of myself doesn't actually exist. God is so much more complete than my conception of him, and that's part of the problem. God is not who I think he is. It's not just that my knowledge of him is incomplete, it's that some of what I know about him is false. And so with my friends, with myself, my knowledge is incomplete and in some areas is sure to be false. With people, I sometimes realize this when looking at pictures of them, that I don't have a clue who they actually are.

I'm not sure what that means, what the result of that is.

It doesn't mean that God or others are wholly unknowable, or that true relationship with God and others is impossible. What I think it means is that I should be in a place where I can allow my belief in God and knowledge of who he is to be redefined, and the same with others. I think that's a good place to be in, in less it sinks into this hopelessness that God is so big and that humans are so complex that I might as well give up on knowing anyone. Think of it as being a position of humility, or being open to the truth. It's wrong to mistake our ideas of something for the thing itself.

I was also thinking last night that this means that I really only fully exist in God, that I am only real in God because only God knows who I actually am. To me, I'm just an interpretation.

Maybe this is why touch is so meaningful, too. Touch is not an idea, it's out beyond words. Movement is out beyond words. Words have been, and probably always will be, a huge part of my life, but words still don't match reality (though they have a lot to do with how we experience reality, which is sort of like saying they're reality). Then again, touch and movement and action can all be deceptive, too, but that has to do with our interpretation of touch and movement and action (which is words). This is why it's important to experience God, too, experience gets away from ideas and words.

time

I'm not usually into cataloguing what I've been doing, but sometimes I am.

The other night, I slept in a queen sized bed with 3 other guys. Well, sort of. There wasn't much space, and I felt like I was dehydrating because of how hot I was. So eventually, I crawled out to the floor. The problem there was that it was dark and cold and I couldn't find a blanket, so I ended up covering myself with my sweaters. This was not a very effective way of keeping warm. At some point in the night, I saw a blanket nearby and grabbed it, and then I was warm. The weirdest thing about that whole night for me, though, was that I felt absent from time. I have no idea how much time I actually slept and how much I was awake, I never saw a clock or watch during the night when I was awake to measure the time with. But it was more than that, like time didn't exist or something. That was also the feeling of my weekend, going out to a friend's house and feeling away from time and the world there. Similar to a couple weeks ago when I went over to a different friend's house.

There's still five weeks left of summer for me, but I already feel like summer is coming to a close. Maybe because I only have two weeks left in my internship, I don't know. Maybe I've just been thinking more about the future and what will happen once school starts, and feeling bleek and scared about that. Things change.

ankles

This is not about girl ankles, this is about my ankle. I realized last night that it's about two years to the day that my ankle got chopped open. Which is so strange, because that means it's been almost two years since I graduated from high school as well. And strange because it seems like it just happened.

I don't think about it much. My ankle doesn't bother me most of the time, just when I hit my scar against something. But I think my right leg is still weaker than my left leg because of the accident. When I slackline, my right leg does't work very well and wobbles a lot if I try to start out on it. My left doesn't, and I think it's because of my accident when my leg turned watery. On the bright side, I can run and jump and dance and drive and play sports again.

dumpsters

My apartment is right behind a few grocery stores. The whole summer, I've meant to go look through their dumpsters. I'd tried a few times before, but it didn't work out. I don't really have much impetus to do it, either, since I'm not sure it's something I really enjoy doing by myself, and because I'm not sure I need the food. So at midnight, I went down behind Trader Joe's, because I was hoping that workers I'd seen there after the store had closed would be gone by then. Well, they weren't. Then I noticed another dumpster, one that belonged to a used bookstore. So I lift the lid and inside I see piles of books. I spent the next 20 minutes or so inside the dumpster, squatting on piles of books, looking through a mound to see if there was anything good, and ended up taking five or six books home. And no food. Oh well, this is maybe a better type of food.

It was such a strange experience. Being inside a closed dumpster, using my cellphone light to look through book after book. I stayed in there until my phone was dying.

writing

My mustache is long enough again that I can bite it.

Themes that have come out in my poetry this summer, unintentionally: darkness, reality and illusion, reaching/effort. I'm not sure why. That darkness isn't darkness as in evil or oppression, it's more like blindness or ignorance. Being "in the dark." Which is interesting to me, because I don't feel particularly in the dark right now, and I'm not feeling the uncertainty of the future very strongly. There are definitely things that I'm uncertain about, where I don't know how they will end up, but it's not something I feel a lot of despair about. Which makes sense, I can't put into writing most of the things that I feel a lot of emotion about at the time. Oh well, I have no idea why I write about what I write about, words just have a way of coming out for their own reasons.

Reality and illusion, things being real, things being illusory. This has probably been encouraged by reading Murakami, but it started--I think--before I'd ever read anything of his. It started sometime in spring quarter. I've written some about wells, too, but that was pre-Murakami as well (har har, unintentional). I'm not sure why I would write about things being real or illusory right now. Rumi's influenced me, though. More abstraction and less imagery. I have a habit of picking up other people's writing styles. Oh well.

I feel like I'm writing about God more in my poetry, too, but it's hard to say whether that's true or not.

hydration

I keep accidentally dehydrating myself. Yesterday, I didn't drink anything until 4:00 in the afternoon. Maybe because of this, I go somedays without peeing or even walking into a bathroom until early evening. It's always a shock for me to walk into a bathroom at that time and realize I haven't been in one all day.

I didn't have a problem with hydration in Thailand. It was easier there, somehow, with the water coolers. Maybe I still have an aversion to drinking from the tap, or to drinking warm water. (Side note: water from bathroom taps taste better than from kitchen taps, and it's colder, too). I don't know that it was really the heat there that reminded me to drink, because it's been hot here lately, and I haven't been drinking much.

I like humid heat better than dry heat. But when I lived where it was humid, I didn't notice the humidity. One theory I have is that it's nicer because the wind is nicer. With dry heat, it can still be cold because of wind. But with humidity, the wind is actually refreshing instead of freezing. I don't know if that works in reality, but it does in my head.

There are 20 days until I finish my internship. It's close but far away at the same time. I'm curious about how it will end. Endings are important to me. Endings in my life are often redemptive, too: things suck until the very end, and then I feel overwhelmed by the goodness of the ending. Not always, sometimes things end poorly. Struggle struggle.

books

I feel some sense of desperation when I read Murakami, because there's so much there that I want to look at in depth, but that I don't understand. His writing is the type that needs to be reread. I hate the feeling when I read that I am missing so much, that I am reading but not comprehending. Oh well, that just means I will have to reread.

I don't remember whether I wrote this on here or not, but I've decided that I want to be very intentional about what I read. To not read writing that is poor or mediocre or a waste of my time. I have a long list of books that I want to read, and I want to start chipping away at that. It's better to dish out money and read what I want and read what is good than to go cheap and read crap.

On another note, I was thinking the other day: no matter what your diet is, you still produce tons of shit.

I've realized lately that the division of what I really enjoy and what I enjoy less reading isn't fiction/non-fiction, it's story/non-story. Obviously, there are some stories that are terrible and boring, and there are also non-stories that are super interesting. Maybe the reason that the stories I read tend to be fiction is that we write what we read, and so people writing fiction have been exposed to a greater breadth of story-telling, and so they write stories better. But, that's a very much non-verified, non-studied claim.

I'm not into political music. And I think this is because I'm not as into explicit writing and explicit words. Not explicit as in swearing or sex. Explicit, as in everything's out in the open and obvious and not very mysterious. This was the problem I had with Bel Canto when I was reading it last week. The story and characters were interesting, but everything felt laid out for me, explicit. The ideas and messages, mostly. Explicitism feels simple, and stressful. Simple can be good, Siddartha is simple in its own way, but sometimes simple is more than style, it's a lack of depth and mystery.

Funny enough, I've been really into Rumi lately, and Rumi is very explicit. He's low on imagery and high on ideas and I'm not really into his narrative poetry. For me, though, Rumi manages to be explicit but complex and mysterious at the same time.

God is sneaky

Waiting for things to end is a bad place to be, and not where I want to be. Yep, this summer is the summer of waiting, it's been on my mind a lot. It seems like a lot of life is just waiting for things to happen. That's dumb.

In my life, when I stop trying, or when I'm not trying, is usually when things happen. It's more like "Stop knocking and the door will open". Discouraging sometimes, but mostly it just baffles me. I start to adopt a very passive attitude towards life. But actually, I think the point isn't passivity, but receptivity. It isn't not trying, it's flowing. It's not inaction, it's flexibility, bending to things that are outside my control or letting other things bend and grow the way they want to. Letting go, in the best way possible.

I have a lot of empathy for people who feel controlled by forces outside of their control, because that's often how I feel. Not just controlled, but also treated very kindly. God is sneaky.

Along the lines of God's control and planning: sometimes when I wonder in my life what God's will is, I stress. Or I'll be faced with a decision and wonder what I'm supposed to do, and stress. Then I was thinking the other night about how funny and arrogant that is. Like I'm big enough to eff with God's plans. More importantly, the stress over my ignorance of what God wants shows a distinct lack of trust in God, like he'll let me slip up when I want to do what he wants (or at least that's what I tell him). Then again, I slip up all the time. Ugh, I wish that stumble wasn't such a cliche verb because of Christian lingo, because it really could be a powerful word and powerful metaphor, and probably was at some point.

I'm not as interested right now in surrendering or submitting my life to God as I am in union with God. Joining into God. Meeting God. I'd rather know God and love him and give over my life to him because of that than try to give my life over to someone I don't know and don't love, hoping that through the sacrifice I'll learn to love. I think I've tried that with God, and it didn't work, and it just caused anxiety, a bad sort of anxiety and not a good sort of anxiety. It wasn't about God, it was about being good. But love is better than being good. And knowing/loving God is more important than being good. Love first.

I want to move the way that God moves, and that image makes me feel peaceful.