DO I KNOW YOU?

I’ve wondered this for awhile. If you know what I’m talking about and have any ideas of how to put the question, that’d be swell… It has to do with relating to people. What’s the difference between conversations. (Note: This isn’t commenting on definitions of deep, philosophical or theological.) I notice people can have “deep philosophical and theological conversations” but get away not knowing a lot about the other person besides a few of their opinions or books they’ve read that have impacted them. And you can really get to know a person by talking to them a lot; um....whatever. I got lost I think.

So where does the differentiation take place? Maybe it’s between the emotional and the rational level. (There remains an undefined spiritual level – where kindred spirits take place.) A perfect balance is…well…perfect. But one is appropriate for one situation, and one for the other. Some in the classroom, some for in the dark late at night. But how, besides intuitively, and not all of us have natural social graces to know this, is it permissible (or does it just happen, only not very often?) to talk beyond the headiness? When does bringing my personal self into the classroom or Bible study or table-side conversation benefit, and when … will they look at me and grimace, “information overload, didn’t need to know that”?? I am in situations sometimes and I think about this; usually I say it anyway and trailer the sentence with “but you don’t have to answer if I’m being too nosey(I don’t use that word but I don’t remember which one).”

Ah reason, you really are a bitch goddess. (Martin Luther said she was, I wouldn’t just cuss.)

Maybe my hypothesis about deep = real isn’t quite as rectified as I thought? Just continuing that rabbit trail.

I think too much, eh?

Something else – apparently the female race is more intuitive, magically reaching a conclusion that’s right, but doing it in the subconscious so having to retrace to figure out the steps. Males generally are able to analyze their way there – we both can get to the same place in the end. Knowing this affects my life b/c it makes me not feel quite as intellectually incompetent for being the way I am in comparison to … well… all those guys I’m around.

Also am wondering if you can be (wise) and know it, etc. – on a universal level – how much do you not know that you are, that you dare not find out about yourself? Speaking of which, as a writer (Creative writing class) I get the impression you’re supposed to dig deep into your past, yourself, your dirt – it’ll make something real, be painful, but better your writing. But I was thinking. It would be treacherous to go into my past on my own – chhhhh (pronounce that like it’s in German, but breathe inwardly) who knows what fascinating artifacts I’d dig up. Or stinky rusty prickly ones. But the “good” things I’d unearth about myself would be equally perilous: the conscious knowledge would kill them.

There. Now I’ve figured out the background for my “original intuitive statement” I made the other day - that what someone says about themselves (i.e. I’m , it is possible this isn’t a good representation of who they really are.

If there is a really. Maybe it’s all subjective/relative.

Excavation, anyone?

Finally, then I’ll quit…C.S. Lewis has somewhere (he really should be marked up into books, chapters, and verses like the Bible) the idea that it’s quite useful to learning to have the body be comfortable. This (fully?) justifies Wheaton having beautiful grounds, easy living, clean fast access to internet and laundry,
What if we have complete ease and health emotionally?

a) we might all have 4.0 GPAs
b) a lot more time and energy for dance parties and pranks
c) or none of us would really need and experience Christ at all the same way. I guess there’s no way around suffering. Maybe it’s a beautiful thing after all? (Is that a cheesy way to end? Sorry.)

Auf der Suche nach Weisheit.

The vogue in verses from Proverbs – chapter 19 – The fear of the Lord leads to life: then one rests content, untouched by trouble. // He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; he who cherishes understanding prospers.

A writing video taught me another snidbit about wisdom. You ever have it happen (I do all the time; it’s a disease) where you’re thinking about something interesting and you want to know more. Something you’d have to research or read books about and then synthesize them in your head.
For example:

- How many square feet of restroom space there is per building in your average skyscraper
- How the religions in the middle east use music these days since it's assumed they apparently don’t feel the need to make ‘contemporary worship services’
- what it means to be a geek, how different people define it, if you’re one
- How it works that the more (time, anything) you give God, apparently the more you have??
- How necessary it is to be nice to people
- Whether hell and heaven exist, and what they are like, whether the senses perceive them
- You know, the everyday questions of life like that and beyond. ETC ETC ETC
- Why some people talk so much.

Now not everyone might be interested in some of these, or any of them, for that matter. In fact, it often occurs that you’re thinking about some subject you want to know about ‘deeper’ and there’s noone who really gets into it. The head in the video (it was an old commentary) said something a wise person is able to do is to take a subject of interest and pursue it themselves, find things out. (Incidentally, that’s what we’re supposed to learn at college, how to learn, how to learn alone.) You know how you think in your head a “would-be” conversation with various people during your day? Learn how to do that with ideas, too – only use your own personality, just divide it up in a couple parts, develop it, and discuss. You’d be amazed how far you can get. It’s like the gym for the mind.

So, as I’m pursuing wisdom I’m likewise aspiring to schizophrenia. Sounds like a plan.

Maybe I'm feeling Pagan.

Am I a pagan?

Chesterton’s “Heretics” is incredible, folks, a real trip…like a roller-coaster. Emotionally – I thrill or gasp in surprise at every other paragraph. You should observe me reading, you’d laugh. The poor library book has markings all over it (at least they’re in pencil, so don't turn me in.) But there are so many topsy turvy ideas, ones I have and haven’t thought about, and you know I’m a connoisseur of those. I’m trying to digest them all, and things connecting to them float through my head all day…. I'm afraid this is more or less copying and pasting together in understandable format the sentences/main ideas I underlined. It's a rough draft, just to get the ideas down....and I'm not a brilliant writer...yet.

I promise this will be interesting, if I get done with it and if you stay with me as I hash. Takes some explanation.

I am not, “Like so many Christian idealists, basing my case on certain things that Christ forgot to say.”

Chesterton thinks we have a mistaken idea of pagans. (I don’t really have one at all, so ja.) Factus unum: one came after the other. Paganism was prior to Christians. P isn’t the newer of the two, a parallel ideal, more fitted for a newer age. … The one thing in the modern world that’s been face to face with paganism is Christianity. I guess we get our string of sausages at Christmas and our flowers at Easter from pagans. (That is, the way of celebrating the holidays, apparently not the holidays themselves hehe.) Um cuz everything else stems from Christianity, the French Revolution, newspaper, anarchists, and physical science. The attack on Christianity is even of Christian origin. (Pretty much dominated.) The only thing today of pagan origin is Christianity. Huh.

He compares pagan virtues to Christianity’s. The first are sad virtues, and are quite reasonable: JUSTICE consists in finding out what’s due to someone and giving it to him. TEMPERANCE finds out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and adhering to it. But, Christian’s ‘gay, exuberant’ virtues are utterly unreasonable, and I’ll elaborate cuz they’re cool:

- CHARITY pardons the unpardonable, the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. NOT in truth “charity to the deserving poor” -
- HOPE means hoping when things are hopeless, power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. Only exists in earthquake and eclipse.
- FAITH means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all. (this happens to be as insane as the other ones, but much less popular)

So, The old pagan world went straight forward. (If I use that one Martin Luther term again, forgive me in advance). Then they realized their enormous mistake: reasonableness will not do. He says the pagan age was truely an Eden, or a golden age, in the essential sense that it is not to be recovered. The naked innocence of the intellect cannot be recovered by any man after Christianity, b/c every Christian knows it to be misleading. (HA!) Love of a thing for its own sake is a Christian product. Everything in the old world was clean and obvious: a good man was a good man, a bad one bad. Now apparently the lines are smeared. Pagans hadn't the art of fiction, or romance (thinking a thing more delightful because it's dangerous). Here was a place common sense was really common.

Enough on the virtues then. There's that explained. Now I can start.

Christianity had to discover those three virtues, or die. They are all paradoxical b/c they are practical. "It is the stress of ultimate need, and a terrible knowledge of things as they are, which led men to set up these riddles (3 virtues that Christianity brought), and to die for them." The virtue of humility is another one. It explains

TO BE CONTINUED - sorry...


"


And by this point, I’m not quite sure how I was thinking paganishly...

Look with anticipation for the next post: "Maybe I'm feeling Marxist."

Better to be a philosophy major...

...than a beached whale.

Hello, "them"

I am just not happy today. I don't knwo what it is. Yes I do. I need to talk. I need light. I need to think to create, to write...to get out of this rational world I love but... so disattached.

This really is the end fo this post. a mere expression of sadness.

I could not find myself today
I got lost in reflection
retracing steps all along the way
(back to days of no direction)

living my life without connection
to the One who’d always seen within, who knew my heart and my intention


My brain doesn’t work like everyone else’s. I feel like, where they are nicely 2D, traveling in a straight line with an occasional stray “random” comment, I caper awkwardly about between 3 planes, perhaps even a few added non-existent ones, in flailing attempts to express myself – more of a mini trail straight, then upwards, then crashing down again into a subject of who-knows-what (the hell) that who-knows but somewhere in my internal self how on earth it is related to the price of tea in china.

This inability to stay on topic could be labeled ADD…I think not. I don’t have issues concentrating in school; if I knew one thing about myself it’s that I was (emphasis on WAS) forever the top student in my classes. I am really more inclined to take the blame for it (as though who I am is something to feel guilty for.) If only I could have put myself in the right situations, reacted differently…it’s all a matter of will-power, right?

I wonder sometimes how much is related to ‘my’ third-culturalism. (TCKs, as they’re known – third culture kids. Don’t belong in one, or the other … just kind of make up their own and get by. After they’ve accustomed themselves to one place, you think they’re ordinary people…but there’s a who ‘nother side waiting, if you only knew how to get to it. Born in a different country, moved ‘back’ to the States at age three, decided to return right before 5th grade and spend a few years there again learning a new language, to the US which I’d disowned by that point for all of high school crappy high school…a year in the UK…now here. I’m starting to get used to it here. Most on that later – I could go into detail…but anyway – do you see where come some “identity issues”?

So this schizophrenically frantic way of speaking/thinking is potentially related to that. Not that it does it to everyone – everyone’s different, and copes with overwhelming circumstances in various ways. As long as you don’t drown, you’re still alive. So they say.

Sometimes I look at myself and who other people see me as (from my perspective) – and realize I’ve given up. Why bother talking when they’re not going to be able to make our my words, anyway – when sometimes, I get the look I got in Austria of “you are speaking a foreign language” though I’m in the States, surely speaking my native English. (Last time I checked.)

Do you see how this could be a challenge for relating to the generality of humankind?
And if that relating is the one thing that means everything to me in life, the loss of it causes some severe feelings of misfortune…

Yes, I can make small-talk – if I want to, I learned the art last year, actually. Sort of. But I can live on that level as long as a fish can live out of water…then … suffocation…
(So much waits to be known.) Besides, there is never need for small talk. It's just that few have the art of drawing a person out, asking them real, interesting, good, imaginative questions ,and everyone should.

Basically, I want some psychologist to tell me (so I know I haven’t been making excuses all these years) that the truth is, I’m screwed up for having lived overseas. I’m not the only one in this boat, but the ones who aren’t in it … let’s just say, you don’t really get it. We can be friends, yeah – but I’ll never understand how you can be so deeply attached to your friends and house and family, and you’ll never get that I like the idea of being the rolling stone that collects no moss. I’d like to say I’m on a deeper level, but Chesterton has recently thrown a twist in that perspective, so I’m in the process of rethinking it. In “Heretics” he makes the, to me, shocking statement that “the globe-trotter lives in a smaller world than the peasant.”

Huh.

The globe-trotter “has not the patience to become part of anything.” I identify with that. A man who “can endure anything…but not permanent presence in one place.” ----

It’s like highways – how they’re meant to make the world better, ppl can travel and visit their relatives all over. But actually it makes it smaller – they just move further away with moving vans down the miles of smooth slick pavement and don’t return. They always talk about globalization making the planet smaller; when you run into someone you knew from grade school at the Eiffel tower you’re inspired to sing “It’s a small world after all.”

Dang.

I pray don’t me wrong now. I’ve enjoyed being first at church potlucks around the country. That old music – DeGarmy and Key, PFR, dc Talk brings nostolgia of a small appartment in the Alps with emotions shared only by my little brother… And not that I was conscious of the “identity issues” until I came back into contact with people who really HAD lived in one house in one town all their life. Wow.

What’s it mean to get used to being somewhere? It means you’re comfortable enough to be yourself, .......tbc Some of them are amazing at it – I don’t understand how you can get in a new situation and just jump in. There’s too much of me at stake; if I do, I might – again – drown.

Or maybe, as far as me and how I think, it’s just my effort to have ideas when I don’t really have any in the first place. …no…can’t be…it’s just how they’re (not) organized. … -

How you look at US from a distance, revel and pride, then loathing disgust from closer up...

It’s interesting to go back in life and figure out what made me how (as far as it’s plausible). Maybe it’ll help other pplz – if I can be honest – and face my self – but is it really good to face myself, at least alone? Cuz I’m as scary a person as the next, as complex…and myself facing myself…I need a creepy metaphor/analogy for it but it’s not a pretty picture. Skeletons battling in the graveyard at newmoon?

AHHHHHHH...

WORDS I LEARN

Trenchant – cutting, caustic, biting, dynamic

Funk – despondency, gloom, depression**

Tao – the seeing of the things of this world in their eternal aspect. …

Precocious – advanced, forward, developed

Benign – good, harmless

Opprobrium – disgrace, disrepute

**(my personal favorite)

So on my spring break...

I was in Michigan with Steph, my female philosophy friend. It was pretty cool. The several trips to the hospital especially....but that's not my story to tell. What did we do. We wrote all three of the outlines for the rest of the year, history of philosophy - that's a great feeling. (My, darling, do I see your nose growing?) We watched, you know, the essential movies - one being Pride and Prejudice and instilling yet again in me that I must simply hold out for Darcy - hmmm and just generally enjoyed Holland's fine weather. Particularly the night at the beach when the cars started driving up with party music blaring and we skittered back to our car and drove away asap. Oh why do I have to be a girl...otherwise we coulda gone and partied with them...(jk)

But seriously now. I found out 3 guys from my school were killed in a crash back home. Stupid drinking party. It made me cry. I furthermore found out yet another couple high school aquaintance/friends are getting engaged, the one I particularly ... don't know what to think.

On the other hand there's my friend Ginnia who's a dearheart and called me - we're working on putting together a little artsy gig dealie at the end of the summer - with her art, my piano, and maybe some other people's stuff. We'll see!! Stop by if you're in Iowa in August.

I might get a missions internship for the first couple months of the summer. The question being, do I WANT to? It'll be $$$, and look good on my resume, and such...but...what if I do not have a heart that is in it? Hmmm. And nothing against home, but it means living there... So anyway I'd feel disloyal or somehow not honest (what's the "i" word - integrity. integretous?) with myself doing it if I felt about it the way I do now. Maybe that'll change.

I can't believe I just used my blog for normal information. My head is beneath the clouds, and it's not even raining. It's like I feel...normal...Spring break got me away from the suffocating atmosphere I'm feel like i'm in - the pressure I let be on myself. I'm refreshed. I guess that was the idea. I really can't wait to get back at it though!!! ("You really do like school, don't you?" - geeky nod and grin - "yup!!")

...this is what I thought about.

WHY PHILOSOPHY/THEOLOGY?

Am I chasing something that will eat me alive…soul and all? It could…I can see it. Like Jimmy said last year – “people leave Wheaton not believing Christianity anymore”. I could see that. Particularly in the community setting I feel constantly exposed to – so like our pencils and desks: developed, produced, plastic. The soul must spring like new life from a charred old tree. The nutrients are there, but if they connect in time?

But at the same time, how can a fish spit out the hook that’s firmly lodged in its jaw, without wearing or tearing itself to pieces? Is there any way to suck yourself out of a black hole, even though you’re the one who steared yourself there? Once you’re swum, in chasing the sunset’s glory, out to the middle of the pacific ocean, how directionless and with glazed stunned vision is there a choice but to continue all the way to … japan? Asia? The man (or woman) truly in love, likewise, is not so easy to let go of the pursuit, shrug shoulders at the foothills, and turn and walk away a different path. I like the fish-hook one best. Or a leather bridled horse.

Whether it is right or not, I do not know what else. If it’s not sacreligious to say, as Peter, “where else, Lord?” It would seem God has given me some direction, some intellect directed a certain way, the narrow path but the one with joy. Let me accept my assignment and know peace.

But God – it’s so hard! They ask me “how are you?” and I want to say, “I am not good enough!” I will surely fail. The bar is set too high for me; I am crippled by various forces. I am a different color than those running the race with me; I fear them, repel them. My soul – it’s like the boy’s hollow leg who, to the astonishment of his mother, can eat bowl after bowl of cereal. Like my stomach right now – craving food to make me strong, but too weak to handle it/keep it down. I’m trying so hard, inside. I’m not good enough.

Sometimes the Cartesian doubt sets upon me, and I am alone with it. Attack like a ravanging lion, my soul shreded…
I don’t even know how to read, or write a research paper…

There is so much to know. And I would rather not worship anything besides you in the great amount of time spend in the library and talking – I would please you in every single move I make. To the highest degree, Lord. How can I please you? These mere words... I seek to answer them by Philosophy and Theology (for it appears the true queen of sciences has returned, and is indeed not without her handmaiden.) But the laborer needs refreshment. You’ve given me such a mind, God – I don’t understand it. It amazes me, frustrates me, I need a manual to learn how to work it right, or the right experience.

All this verbal homage I give to you. But is the same in my heart? Can I force it to be? Can I know you, or are you indeed like mars (do you realize I randomly chose a meaningful planet for that poemetry?! Cool!), beyond my reach in my paddle boat.

Uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh...

I am sick, pining away…restless fantasies
No time to be
No time to sit think ponder
No time

Exhaustion
Must move forward…but there is a soul in side
Can’t be denied
But it will.

Pining away…restless fantasies
Would shoot me on the back of a sparkling star
Delight of the universe
Joy of existence

Lying with my piano music
Listen to teeth crunching away
Too tired to move
Too tired to do anything but want you

Want your strong mind to encompass mine
As your solid hands touch each part of me
Caress, sooth
Save
Rescue from wilting, meaninglessly.

To return your deep gaze until it consumes me
Your dark eyes one with mine,
Mine falter…not good enough
Yet better

Love me

But I can not reach out
You are as distant
As the earth from mars
And I as much vehicle as a paddle boat in space
You dazzle me in the night sky
You haunt me during the day
I will regret keeping my face toward you
What can I do?

I crave what you have
I cannot rest until it is mine,
And I am yours.
Until I can give to the world…