spiritual autobiograpy

I wrote a spriritual autobiography for class. If anyone wants to read it, please ask and I can email it to you.

ignorance

I don't even know how to follow God. I will probably be saying this my whole life. And, I wish sometimes that God would just speak and tell me things as clearly as a human would. But maybe if he did he would get annoying. Not so much annoying as overwhelming. Maybe that there is the exact reason that I don't feel God's guidance more, because I'm not really ready to be overwhelmed. Oh well, I'm headed that way.

Except I do feel God's guidance, at times, and see it in my life, day to day. At least I think it's God's guidance. I guess it's okay to primarily be in touch with the sneaky, subtle side of God as opposed to the explicit side.

My whole life, I will probably struggle with knowing how to pray as well. Prayer isn't very appealing when it makes you feel rotten. Not rotten in the sense of feeling rotten about "sin in my life" or something like that, but rotten in the sense that I don't know how to pray, and feel overwhelmed with the immensity of communication with God, and that all my communications are corrupted and inadequate. A lot of times when I pray, I feel like I'm missing the point, like I'm insulting God one way or another.

Reading and writing is usually how I relax, it's interesting to be back in school where reading and writing are what I do for work. Reading and writing to relax isn't as effective. I go on more walks. I almost never went on walks at night during the summer, and maybe that's why.

gratitude

Good things about today: getting my wallet back, dinner with my brother, park with friend, discussion with friend and professor, reading out loud with friend, check from aunt, sermon at group, eating chicken off the bone. I think I always have more to be grateful for than I realize.

Sleepy time.

reflections in my old age

Lately, I've realized a few things that have been long-running in my life. Where long running means since I was little. I see this in my sense of humor: It was at about 10 years old that I realized that deliberately making fun of people for something that I myself also did (where they knew this too) was very funny. Tonight, when I was at Barnes and Noble, I realized that since I was about 10 years old, I've appreciated moral ambiguity in stories. No simple lines between good guys and bad guys, no moral stereotypes. What a good little post-modernist I was. Who knows, maybe it even began before that, but that's the first example that I can clearly remember. I'm sure my parents could tell me more.

It's funny, I used to be very much a non moral relativist, and now I feel very drawn to relativism. But the whole time, I have been fascinated with subjectivity, and over this time my views have not changed significantly. In other words, what I would have told you about moral relativism is probably the same now that it was then: some things are subjective, other things are not. Which makes me an objectivist still. Oh well, I still think of myself in a lot of ways as a relativist. Maybe now I just have a greater sensitivity towards relativism, and a greater understanding, and I'm away from some of the panicked reactions to moral relativism. It isn't just about doing what feels good, because sometimes doing what's right is doing what everyone else thinks is wrong and feeling shitty and frightened about it at the same time. It isn't a form of self-justification. I think it's a way of staying sane, among other things, and this is very important.

Whatevz

ssssssss

I feel very broke up right now. By life. It's very strange though, it's like at the same time that I feel broke up and confused and frustrated, there's something like God that runs deeper and that makes things seem okay. Not okay, but the feeling that things will be okay. It's not optimism, it's not something I'm just thinking or telling myself, just something that I sense, even when I feel very weary and bitter and useless. Whatever.

It wasn't until last year that I wanted Jesus to come back, and for everything to be right. But I really do now. There's nothing I have to do now that I wouldn't trade for that. I have no reasons now for Jesus to wait. Not that I really did before, it's just a change in desire, or perspective, not reality. I want things to be new, and right, and good.

I realized tonight that I've been away from doubt for quite a while. This was strange for me to realize, because doubt has been a central part of my journey with God so far, and tonight I wanted to return to that, and I didn't know if it was good or not that I was away for it for now. With God, the more analytic part of my brain has been turned off for a while, for better and worse. It will come back. Inevitably, it will be different than it was before, and that's good. I feel like my times of doubt weren't balanced out before by......experience of God, and now it is more so. Maybe I've been giving God too much slack lately, letting him off the hook a bit. Whatever.

"God hates sinners just the way they are." That's what a street preacher's sign said, that I saw yesterday. I felt humiliated, especially that people from my religion were preaching hate, and being hateful, where the Buddhist monks at the peace rally that I was at were preaching love and peace. Not that I would expect Buddhist monks to preach hate, because I wouldn't, but it's embarassing to me that something which should be focusing around God's great love ends up being about hate. At that moment, I would have much rather been identified with the Buddhists. Maybe Jesus felt the same way, though it's a big thing to speak for Jesus. God loves everyone.

I can't tell more than a few people the same thing in a day, or a short time period. Not anything that's really important to me. It's interesting for me to realize what things are important, that no one would guess were important to me, by whether or not I feel hesitant to talk about them because if I do it's like spreading myself out too much. That's how I feel about the dream I had last night, even though I've only talked about it 3 times today. But I'm gonna write it on here anyway.

So I was making out with this girl. I don't think she actually exists, but in my dream her name was Becky (though I kept forgetting, and thinking her name was Anne). Anyway, we made out, and did again the next night. Then for whatever reason, I decided that was a bad idea, and said we couldn't anymore. She got pissed and told her parents, who ended up being Les and Leslie Parrot (two professors here at SPU, not sure if that's how their last name is spelled, but it fits). Then her mom ended up coming up to me with a list of classes that I should take from her (like it was a threat, and these classes were punishment for giving her daughter the cold shoulder,) there was one that was something like "psychology and despair" that I thought actually sounded interesting. One of the guys on my floor confronted me about Becky, and asked if we had sex. And I told him no. That's about all that happened in the dream. Facebook also shut down because it ripped off of other sites, and I crashed my bike when the dirt road I was riding on dropped off into water. One of my rims was bent by the fall.

Listening to Death Cab right now, and it's yummy, and I'm going to bed.

post-classroom thoughts

I feel very strongly today that God loves everyone. God does not hate anyone. I know this runs contrary to specific verses that say God hates certain people, or people who do specific things. I think those verses are wrong, or hopefully just misunderstood. God hating anyone runs contrary to what I know and believe and experience about him, and it runs contrary to what Jesus tells us to do. Jesus can't tell us to love our enemies and then say that God hates his enemies, or hates anyone. And when Jesus tells us to love our enemies, he says this in the specific context that we are to be perfect as God is perfect. That is what I hold to, that perfection does not involve hatred for others, that loving God does not involve hatred for others.

I also feel that if God hates sin, it is because of his love for us. That should always be the context for viewing sin, as something which is irrelevant next to the love and mercy of God. Then again, mercy is only relevant in the context of our errors, in the context of our needing mercy. That's not the point. The point is that God's love is incomparably bigger than any wrong that I could do. This is also how I am coming to view sin. I hate it because of what it does to me, and what it does to my friends. Because of how it harms them and harms me. And the reason I hate that is because I love my friends. And if I can love my friends in spite of their sins, God can certainly do the same and love anyone in spite of their sins. Anyone. How petty it would be for me to hate anyone because of their sins. The same goes for God. Love is the context for viewing sin. I think that with love our view towards the sins of others (and maybe our own) is grief, and not disgust.

potry

Sometimes I write poems about God. I feel silly when I do this, a little ridiculous. Like anything I have written is so laughable compared to the real God, which I think it will be. I wonder if this is how the writers of the Bible felt. Not to compare my writing to scripture, but I wonder sometimes how writers of the Bible would feel if they knew how much we hold up their writings. If they would be uncomfortable with that, if they would think that their writing about God is ridiculous and silly. Not false, maybe, just funny.

Anyway, I feel silly sometimes writing poems about God, or sex, or love, or death, or poverty. I was thinking about death the other day, and about how I feel like I'm still...young, because I've never experienced death. Not my own death, obviously, but the death of someone close to me. It seems like a pivotal part of life. Not that I'm eager for it to happen, but I know it will at some point. I realized this when I was reading Traveling Mercies, because death seems like such a central and defining aspect of Ann Lamott's life, and it hasn't been for me.