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The Cross and the Switchblade (David Wilkerson)

My brain's on overdrive. My soul is wilting. Oh God, it takes far more energy than I have to follow you, and to do it right. Here's how I honestly feel right now. (I wouldn't suggest reading this all at once. or even at all. I'm not writing here, I'm spitting it raw, processing phase one.)

Here are some of my notes from this book I just finished...it's intense.

What it's about: The story of God's using David Wilkerson (who eventually started Times Square church) to begin ministry to gang-member boys on the streets in New York. He PRAYED, trusted God, stepped out again and again, and God acted (again and again) in miraculous ways. The ministry is massive today. This, my self, this is what life on earth is meant to be spent for.

Almost a rule that the touch of God is marked by tears. "You must be born again" Jesus said. And the paradox is this: at the heart of this newborn personality is joy; yet the joy is ushered in by tears.

"You're going at this backwards. You're trying to raise your money first, and then buy your home. If you're doing this in faith, you should commit yourself to your Center first, then raise your money for it. " (Man always has to act first before God performs mighty miracles. that's a concept repeated in any missionary story.)

Moral problem: all the boys had broken the law at some point. What should they do about that? Need to be strong in the new life before going to jail, and that takes time - many crisis' to pass, dry periods to ride out, much to learn about the art of being a Christian. If a boy confesses to the police too early and is put in jail, isn't there a risk of losing him? On the other hand, he has offended society's law and it will also hold him back spiritually if he harbors guilt.//I have come to feel that there is no answer that will cover all cases.

Amazed that the workers (who came to be in the inner city) could have this desire to "burn out for God" without themselves becoming taut, intense personalities.

Prayer - at the center it tends to be a bit loud. wonderful freedom in the spirit that sometimes frightens people the first time. may think it's uncouth, w/o realizeing that we are just expressing our true feelings before God. if we feel concerned, we say so not onnly with our lips but with the tone of our prayer.

Often I've yearned for a finantial situation that would allow us to breathe a little more easily. But just as often, I come back to the conviction that the Lord wants us to live this way. It is one of the most demandin requirements on our faih to depend totally on God for the needs of His work. Just as soon as we have a balance in the bank, we'll stop depending on Him in the day-by-day, hour-by-hour way that we now do, not only for our spiritual needs, but for our physical needs as well. *star *star *

While his grandfather was preaching against penecost, he got baptized in the holy spirit!!! It overcame him! Wow! God promises (and I must pray for myself):

- you'll have power: Acts 1:8
- you'll have a comforter - John 14:26
- you'll have protection Acts 16:6
- no longer be hounded by mind of the flesh, but have spiritual values Eph 2:3-6
- will have life; now headed to death but w/ HS 2 Corinthians 3:5-6, have new life
- living with the Spirit of Truth. release. fulfilled promise - John 16:13
- access to the Father will be yours Eph 2:18
- Hope - Romans 15:13
- Liberty 2 Cor 3:17
- how happen? dramatic, sudden, overpowering experience. Acts 10:44

Let's not just talk about it, we want to do it!!

Living in spirit is as necessary as receiving the spirit

The holy spirit captures with intent of liberating. wowz -

weed addicts the mind but not the body
heroine addicts both - and freeing from the body's the easy part

"drilling session" - getting shot up
"I've got problems" - i need to make contact and get shot up - soon
"bugging me" - getting to my heart
"debs" - girl parallel gangs. (Dragons - Dragonettes)

Wow - is it easier for them to take beatings/getting knives stuck in them since they're used to it and live on the street? I guess I like my body too much. I even hate giving blood plasma, a "little" needle in the arm...ahhh... Oh God if this is following you I'm scared. Interesting, or normal, I guess - that God uses mostly the people being ministered to, when they come out, to go back into that ministry. Someone from outside may come in to get it going and back it up, but street people to do street work , a few missionaries but mainly natives to minister on "foreign fields" ... even, or especially, anyone afflicted likes to bless others - women with IBC (inflammatory breast cancer) will spend money and time spreading the life-saving information; those with retarded siblings spend their lives on other retarded people; my cousin's working with autistic kids; ... God uses people whose lives are changed to change those of others. That someone being ministered to often wants to turn around and minister right away again.

That seems to be the drawback of those of us who weren't ever particularly deeply ministered to. I had no great visible need, oh no, but I have intense, immense need. So i am expected without having a mentor to have desire to and know how to move on... but - i'm still needy, even if i don't suffer from the obvious, drugs and alcohol and sex addictions. isn't it only fair that i, too, get spiritual help??

It's always a question: "did i expect too much from God without doing enough myself?" It's like you have to go through this phase of doubting and mistrust, conquer it, and step in faith, believing - then God acts. Why does He ALWAYS have to wait till the last minute? Couldn't I just trust him and he'd do it in time anyway? no...

Thanking Him ahead of time is key - it shows trust. Thanking him during trouble too - Hans -Peter Royer. HAHAHA it's so funny - oter people's response to his confidence and prayers of thanks tho there wasn't a cent of the $15,000 to speak of yet. hahahaha. i note that after the extension, he worked his butt off, phoning constantly and others praying. (ach, I don't ever in me have the potential even for the dedication to do this!!! I am too small - too small to care, or even know the shame i ought to feel at not caring.) as though indeed the first time around he hadn't tried hard enough, but now God gave him another chance to.

I just don't get this business of helping people ... it's so slow, reaching into lives one by one. i never could do it, i think. my own life has set up before it too many irksome issues that i'd have to wade through, i don't know how to jump across. it's too much.

"God promised me that if i would accept the challenge, he would give us..." He seems to work that way when He's working greatly. "you have the choice to accept." and of course it's much a harder life if you do accept, but of course it's the only, the absolute best way. You pay far more dearly for saying no.

I honestly have a very hard time thinking of spending my life in the service of this God, directly at his bid and calling. I didn't realize that before- but now i see up front what it means and I just couldn't do it.

What's wrong? I may not be saved...oh i know i said the words, and have the intent, at least outward. But God. maybe i'm not supposed to be like them - yet maybe i am and that's why ahhhh i don't know. i'm not sad anymore, or empty - but i'm not full, either, or happy. i'm expectant, or apprehensive. this feels better than the constant dull throbbing pain...but joy would be so blessed. i don't want to mold to the society around me. i want to be alive... i want to be so alive. teach me your way, teach me radicalness.

Is it really particularly the poor and brokenhearted God loves, and he loves you most if you reach out to them? b/c i don't want to. maybe for a little. but i'm addicted to learning righ tnow, mainly b/c i don't feel like i have enough, and it's a good thing... maybe though God's calling me to something and i'm not realizing that i'm fighting it. i can't see what's best for me so i pick what looks wonderful...
i just can't picture living for God being wonderful. it would't feel wonderful, anyway.

i don't like to do things i don't like to do for very long. (being dirty, pollinating, not reading/expanding my knowledge, many jobs, living in .....)

i'm still having a hard time seeing any way better to live life than missions.

but also a hard time seeing how to live this schoolyear knowing God deeper and deeper yet pursuing academia or anything else, for that matter. this is bad. i don't want it to be true. i want to be able to "better myself". but i can't focus on much more than one thing. i can't intermesh/overtwine them. lap.

Will God oneday break me of my sin, X - even though it's not physical - whatever it is that's a hangup to finding Life? Oh painful...i'll cling tightly, and pray that it goes fast. it'll be like getting over a drug, a (mental? physical?) habit.

Oh he started times square church!!! - 7,000 God-hungry people and no debt...sweet.

Where does the 10% of tithing supposed to go? coming out of the church budget, is it specifically for the poor around the world, and coming from teh individual, to go straight to the church to use and to send out?

Why are people in prison so much more often perversely homosexual ?? it's a trend.

"We have to suffer ourselves to help people who are hurting" - she says after it relates their intense history. no no no no no!!! ouch ouch ouch ouch !! I can't!!!

In conclusion, I think I no longer sound like the goody-goody perfect girl I apparently was in high school.



"Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, like drunken men, know not the road home." - Boethius

Proof of God

If we can fully explain God, he ceases to exist.

Currently reading: Gilead. I quote, where my ideas are put into word i couldn't yet expect to achieve:

"In the matter of belief, i have always found that defenses have the same irrelevance about them as the criticisms they are menat to answer. I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, b/c there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things. We participate in Being without remainder. No breath, no thought, no wart or whisker, is not as sunk in Being as it could be. And yet no one can say what Being is. If you describe what a thought and a whisker have in common, and a typhoon and a rise in the stock market, excluding "existence," which merely restates the fact that they have a place on our list of known adn nameable things (and which woudl yield as insight: being equals existence!), you would have accomplished a wonderful thing, stilll too partial in an infinite degree to have any meaning, however.

"I've lost my point. It was to the effect that you can assert existence of something - Being - having not the slightest notion of what it is. Then God is at the greater remove altogether - if God is the Author of Existence, what can it mean to say God exists? There's a problem in vocabulary. He would have to have had a character before existence which the poverty of our understanding can only call existence. That is clearly a source of confusino. Another term would be needed to describe a state or quality of which we can ave no experience whatever, to which existence as we know it can bear only the slightest likeness or affinity. So creating proofs from experience of any sort is like building a ladder to the moon. It seems that it should be possible, until you stop to consider the nature of the problem.

"So my advice is this- don't look for proofs. Don't bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they're always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp. And they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them. That is very unsettling over the long term. "Let your works shine before men," etc. It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a octrine, words to that effect. I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, themustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion at any particular moment.

- "My heart is greatly disquieted. It is a strange thing to feel illness and grief in the same organ. there is no telling one from the other. My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find out its lurking places. that old weight in the chest, telling me there is something I must well on, b/c i know more than I know and must learn it from myself - that same good wieght worries me these days.

But the fact is, I have never found another way to be as honest with myself as I can be by consulting with these miseries of mine, these accusers and rebukers, God bless them all. So long as they do not kill me outright. I do hope to die with a quiet heart. I know that may not be realistic."

"Miscellanies"

Jonathan Edwards has this book called "Miscellanies" - of random thoughts his mind churned out, but not in a publishable order. This is how my mind seems to work; extremely so. Sometimes things have been mulching for awhile, and suddenly, they CLICK - but you can't see the background, just the final statement. He also apparently went out for walks in the woods with notes pinned to his shirt, and would go about arranging and rearranging them, figuring out what went where.

I imagine that lack of mental organization ability made for a hard time writing essays in school.

At any rate, my miscel for today:

- The immutability of death simultaneously adds to and subtracts from the value of (human) life.

Am thinking about destiny...watched "Unbreakable" and read "Domain" - Steve Alten sci fi. Questions that remain:

Is it necessary for it to be fulfilled for destiny to exist?

Is it individualized, or for the whole - or both? Linked to others, entwined?

Can yours be qualified greater or lesser, depending on what role of destiny you play?

Is a destiny physical, mental, combined?

"A" or "The" destiny?

Does everyone have one? Do you have it whether you "feel" it or not?

Is destiny always for the cause of the "Good"?

Is there both a good and a bad

Does God use horrible evil people for his purposes, for purposes such as revealing a good person his/her destiny - I think definitely so.

Note the sense of unfulfillment - the guy was always a little sad in the morning when he got up, tho he had a great wife, kid, job...

Evil. ?

I haven't used that word (destiny) much. I bet there're other connections stored with other words somewhere in my harddrive.

Humans. They're so much like computers. That is, vice versa... One can load lots of programs on - including viruses, accidentally: effected through contact with others. Note that the harddrive carries all that information that's in there, but not as quickly accessible. That ram can be made larger, and if yours is small, you get real frustrated. Etc. (Just watch out when someone asks you for an upgrade...)

I don't think it's best to have big secrets all your life, like in Unbreakable (his fake-injury) and The Bridges of Madison County (her affair) but it sure makes good movies, and the people's lives are more interesting. Some might call it cowardly, I think in cases they have to be almost stronger.


I bought a bonsai tree, or what I perceived to be one. They all originate from bushes, but apparently have to be trimmed/trained just so, or they're fake. They lady who sold it to me had a big white van, was stationed at boarded up gas station on a sweltering Memphis street corner, and spoke about one word of english per three sentences of what one would take to be japanese.

Kinda want it to be a symbol of "rootedness" - a GKC idea, that the rolling stone gathers no moss, and it's good in ways to not be rolling. Tumbleweeds, for example, burn quite easily. Madeleine L'Engle has her F......? thingies that, as they grow older, have to "deepen" - take root, not romp around anymore. It's part of life. And life is good. At any rate, I am willing to settle down, mentally physically spiritually psychologically. Maybe.

However. I thought, or didn't think twice, "this is a bonsai" - the real thing. But, ah, after reading about it online...it looks an awful lot like the bush-not-art kind - inauthentic. Had my dearheart friend not pointed that out, I'd've been in bliss enjoying my little mindi. Isn't it interesting how our minds are not disconcerted with the fake thing until they know there's a true?


Sometimes I wonder if I it would be okay to take an alternate route to existence - just opt out of life. A plausible escape route - doing somethign that seems more possible and less overwhelming than living. Not suicide, but some option that lets me chance over the looking back at my time on earth and all that I've faced and what I might regret... that brings me to something else I've wondered about lately.

Does knowledge of your choice to the right or wrong path lead to less regret, or having not known the options in the first place?

...I don't remember what I was thinking...

I guess the Bible talks about the dealing with of unconscious sins. But I mean more the feeling. If I can choose, I have/had power to make a difference - free will, of sorts -

The Sabbath

It was reinforced in a Chapel today, one I appreciated, that making the Sabbath a day of rest is more than a good idea, maybe even a life saver, for my college career and my life.

Earlier this summer a friend challenged me to consider what it would be like to make for myself a day or specific time of rest. I realized (like I've been realizing about a lot of things) that this requires THINKING. So I'm thinking.

What does it mean to rest on the sabbath? It will probably be tailor-made for me. What do I like?

It will require discipline. It's something I want to do, but don't want to. (Like going to bed at night - life is still to be lived and it's hard so hard to give it up!) Who doesn't want an entire DAY off? It's like forced vacation!! (Only you have to force yourself.)

Sabbath is Hebrew and means, "to cease, rest, stop."

Sabbath Keeping, doing it, will give me a day to fight the messages of culture to justify myself. I can take the chance to live in reality, "refocus," throw off the weekly accumulating burdens (till I learn to do it day-by-day) - realize my worth comes from God, and not from what I do. This will need to be hammered into my head at least once a week to get it down, so might as well set a whole day apart for it.

I will get just as much done, I'll just consider Saturday my last day to accomplish work. My friend said when she was in school, she took this time off, and noticed all the poor people who sat in the library on Sundays. she got work done just as much as they, but came back fresh Monday morning. It's partially a matter of time-management and focus.

It's mostly a cessation of production.

It's a chance to learn a sense of your call - you know how often stop to wonder "what am I doing, really" - well Sundays can be taken for spending time on that. I won't expect to get answers on the go.

What's this about "drive-in-prayer" offered by some churches??? About every word of that is WRONG somehow.

The Sabbath is, at any rate, part of the balance and rhythm God planned for us initially. God modeled it for us initially with creation; Christ's devotional life would be worth studying - you remember all the times he went into quiet places alone to pray, usually before or after something really really important. He lived an active life, but wasn't "there for everyone" who wanted him. I don't need to be "there for everyone" even if it's the social thing to do...especially if i'm not made or am going through stuff - tho I feel guilty for being otherwise... Jesus resisted the urgent in favor of the important. Eh?

This was good - John Ortberg asked his mentor, "What can I do to be spiritually healthy?" and the only thing the guy would answer was, pause, "Ruthlessly eliminate hurry." - selah.

This clicks right in with thoughts on eternity and living in time, feeling like moments are never quite lived...more on that sometime. (Or read A Severe Mercy)

This is my own though. I've thought it a long time. Being busy is a lie - lie lie lie - fallacy - ad hom - you know. "I'm busy" is a great and true excuse, but think about what really means (first off, its utilization for when you don't want to go on a date...or "hang out" with some irritating person) - for me, it's that whatever I'm excusing myself from is of less priority than where i'm spending that time. sometimes, what I really mean is, "oh sorry, I can't that day, b/c I'm not busy and it needs to stay that way." LIE EXPELLED. And gassed (like we need to do to the Wheaton football players in the dining room). :P

Books - Keeping the Sabbath Wholly
The Sense of the Call - A Sabbath way of Life

I have yet to be at school during a Sunday, however... pray for me...

What makes you happy

I think ou need some vitamin R.

R is for REEDY!!!

Hey kids,
or more precisely, hey self (that's the purpose after all)

This will get its needed revamping. Later.

I was just thinking. What is it that makes me glad? I don't want to get into the moral side, that is, the "ought", the ethical. Simply, which circumstances practially require my contentment? I think this is very different for different people; hence, some of us get along better than others. And, if you think someone's made glad by what makes you glad (video games, sport, a hobby) you're more likely to be inclined towards them - whereas if you think they're a little different, (say, philosophy major) you might tend to avoid them, without a second chance. See the implications?

Why consider this, you ask? I'd give it a food analogy. You might feel guilty, having heard enough health adds "slim today!" to your body when you eat food you know isn't "good for it" or is particularly full of one of the latest evils...lets see, i think it's still carbohydrates, but it was protein, then before that sugar, then fat. (in Austria they have it down - all natural, period.) So you eat something dripping with cheesey goodness or crusted in dough and think to yourself, I shouldn't be eating this. This thought, however, affects what you put in the mouth not at all, and only helps add to psychological disorders and maybe indigestion. Point being, you choose not to enjoy what is happening anyway just for some - well i don't know why. That's related to wondering what makes me happy in that the what makes you happy (what tastes good, like fat and sugar) is natural and a part of your daily, or I hope at least yearly, diet as a human being, and you might as well chew it for all its worth. For me this means mentally dissecting it. Being anal (i decided that's short for "analyze"/"analyzing") about it. Savor the flavor.

For you, it might well not. So just quit reading this blog now.

If we have a wide variety of what contents us, we have a lot of friends. Quantity, anyway. Quality requires more depth in those areas, perhaps? Or it's unrelated. Who knows.

Um okay. So one person says, "I'm going to Cancun and laying on the beach and shopping." That's their idea of something good. Or partying and drinking. Right. Or some nerds really enjoy their studying. That's one place to get your kicks, I guess. ... I personally am thrilled with my planned trip the rest of the summer to CO near the mountains - heaven - to work a little, chill, have peace in my soul and read read read (=intellectual stimulation) with a companion (=not being lonely; emotional), imagining day trips hiking (=physical). That pretty much covers all 4 areas of ME-ness. Which means I'll be happy. But my personal idea of a good time is not everyone's ideal.

Cos...life is made out of thrills, it seems; there's the mundane, the sad, and the glad - and we strive for getting by and then are blessed when something special happens. Which is why we have holidays, and also why God ordained them, even since the Jews in the OT. Holidays are underrated. Perhaps stores shouldn't be open on them; perhaps we'd be better people if we learned what to do on them instead of fushing right on about the normal monotonous everyday life. (I'm saying you can't just say "let's keep Sunday holy" you have to know the meaning of "keep" and "holy" before you can expect yourself to understand and do leading to being blessed.)

Are there certain things that universally un-happify? The problem of pain/evil. So yes.

I, for one, hope my future lovely spouse has a poor relationship or two before we hook up. That'll make the backdrop for me even better - wait this doesn't relate. does it? where'd it come from? While I'm at it. I'm all for platonia. Plato. Platonicness in relationships. Why can't we all just be friends...? Seriously, people. It gets distracting after awhile. All the drama you know you love. Ech. (Russian, for "Ugh" or some such ! remark.)

Along other lines. I'm pretty excited about God. That'll have to come soon. It's real good though. I don't see how you really can feel glad about anything else.

Also. I need to figure out on paper here sometime what's been striking me so intensely. And that is, how much I am mirrored by those around me: I am who I am based on who I'm around. For better or for worse, that's the only way I know to perceive myself: in comparison. Etc.

This has really been noneloquent. I'll try harder next time; just had to get it out there for now. I gotta go sleep. G'night.

There's more

Words.

I was pondering the word WISDOM. (Which I incidentally have a two word definition of. Tell me yours though before I'll let you hear mine.) This word. Vague, yet poignant. I have some. Some have little. Precious few have overflowing – but you know when you meet them. – so. WISE. How do I get there? Will the mere desire (at least) aid me? Say I think about it every day. My ears and mind perk up at anyone’s mention of it. I try looking at all I do in light of its attainability to it(wisdom) through it(things I do). Will the mere symbol W-I-S-E do me good? Is much else required?

In the catholic church, overarchingly it said SANCTUS x3. What does looking at that do, if I went every Sunday? Would it help me in becoming holy? Next, how is it affected by translation?! Does it lose something, the weight behind it? (Really – at the tower of babel, what ARE the implications of that crazy story?)

Along similar lines… sorta. Is there any use or value (I’ve a feeling I’ll find out it’s an old church practice, long abandoned for some unrighteous reason or another) to, say, trying to gain virtuousness – right motives assumed, whatever that means – by choosing one to focus on each week/month or so, and thinking “how can I (be) “kind” this week – grow in gentleness – learn humility, love, maturity…”? I’ve tried and gave up…now think it’s ridiculous till a friend brought it up. Remind me of my objections – a)how would you pick which one when; how measure (or get away from that?!) success failure when you can’t know? – seems it’ll lead to either false pride or false humility feeling you’ve busted miserably. When really…it “should be Christ”? IDK b)…
Whatever.

The latest

Direly early in one morning...

Went to a Latin Mass. It seems “Everyone has own religion” among not only catholics, also evangelicals. Is this b/c some miss truth, or some pursue harder (i.e. are granted greater hunger, more ideal circumstances) OR – b/c God is many angled, like a circle, and hbs complexity fits him in varying ways, so there are essentially infinite combinations of ways his relationship from person to person will look/work? – lines of theology, then, being stronger thinkers in the various discernable, distinct strands setting apart what they know (which turns out to be a mere miniscule (part) of the larger Truth?)

How is true guidance attainable? – not filterlessly from the church or other people, even a mentor – because I know JC to be surprising in his demands, not necessarily something other ppl can tell you. – then personally alone can it (right path) be ultimately said/known? But that feels like no ultimate standard, just building my own raft and floating on it. Wishy washy. Failure is guaranteed either way – trusting “Him” alone is easily mistakable with the self which is fallible, and others, clearly, severely screw up. (Take any -ism) Choosing a “rut” – agreeing to a universal – it’s never all of the whole, so where it may be absolute, it’s lacking the larger part of the rest of the absolute, and unchecked, fails miserably.

…answer, of course, is – always – Christ. Alone. But --- into die Rechnung kommt bestimmt (you must then calculate certain) brokenness. A realization of failure and other’s failure and a necessary acceptance thereof – I believe I am currently in the (shocking!) process of [having lived, and been told to live, the rest of my life to date in what’s labelled “perfectionism” – ½ praised, ½ pitied] coming to grips with this. Someone made this a comment along these lines about their girlfriend. It penetrates me, excites and scares me with its paradoxical perfection – "What you love about someone is/fall in love with is their faults…when they’re vulnerable and show you their real (dirty) selves, that's most beautiful…” Implying that love not disregards or ignores these deep problematic issues as they arise, but embraces them – accepting the other’s “otherness” in the face of the delight of KNOWING in a greater depth, LOVING – the same way – who they are.

The lover affirms the reality and the otherness of the beloved. Love does not seek to collapse the beloved in terms of itself. - NT Wright

The act of knowing is an act of love, the act of entering and embracing the reality of the other, of allowing the other to enter and embrace its own. - Parker Palmer

IDK if that’s how God relates to me. I’ve thought about how can I know “my identity in Him” – as it increasingly seems to be of ultra-importance to survival, esp. and beginning spiritual survival – in order to move forward (i.e. be satisfied)

Faster, faster! Strip away what remains. How could I want any of it? Yes – it hurts! And leaves blistery red marks. Maybe it KILLS like Aslan clawing the dragon Eustice. But by all means…go ahead…strip, and make new. Make useful. …….be gentle enough that I do not despair –

All this, speeding it up, will make me more useful to God faster and sooner, right? Well if that ain’t a thought tainted by focus on TECHNE (product) instead of PRAXIS (practice). (-Chesterton would seem to agree with that, though – at least the idea of not being all about the process and practicality. Ahhh, everything in balance.)

How the h… do I spend time well?! So I can look back over the weeks, months, years and say, with satisfaction, YES, these were WORTH something. Their worth will be measured by going back and forth from their being of more value to me, sometimes more to others using me, depending. Anyway, where do I invest myself? (Sneaking voice: “Listen to Him! He’ll tell you!) How do I do this, this spending of my life's blood, responsibly?

As with time, so with money. ?

As with time, so with people. This gets messy. I seek truth, wisdom – not “personal advice”. There is a way, I know it! On whom do I “spend” myself? I have some to give. I want and need to be given to – so how on practical level, does this work? The roundabout way, or if you will deeper inquiry into the social life – struggle to balance. (Here again: “submit it to Christ, and LISTEN…” – but how?!)

This reminds me of the Bible story with the people with talents. Doesn't it? Hmmm. I totally empathize with the dude with only one talent. I would have buried it to. Maybe I will and am. I feel like that (don't tell me I'm not I don't wanna hear it) - quite often actually - "Dang it, God, if only I was sooo much smarter and sooo much better at piano and sooo much more capable at sooo many useful things. It's the least I could have." I need to start out with this certain amount - then I could really start doing something with myself. Investing." but oh ha another bible verse. he who is faithful with little... etc.
Wow. it's clicking.... etc. etc.

Underlying it all. Do I believe I have the right to believe that God wants these good things for me? Should I?

...

Coming up soon: the merits of the backspace key, and the delete button, and the “return to site” option on the internet.

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...