This mess we're in.

I am sitting alone in a room while the rest of the house sleeps off an exhaustive day. I am in Lake Tahoe for the weekend celebrating one of my best friends' engagement, or the "bachelor party," as it is referred to in the common vernacular. We spent last night at a casino and then found ourselves in a dive bar singing karaoke. This morning we hit the slopes skiing and boarding through some of the most beautiful mountains in Nevada. The sights were breathtaking and snow seems to make everything look just a little bit purer. Following dinner, everyone sort of just fell asleep.

We have another busy evening ahead and soon each of the guys will begin to wake and ready themselves for a night at a trendy lounge, with table/bottle service and all. I am happy to be with my friend, to celebrate as tradition calls for and yet I feel as though I have never been further from home.

I mean this not in the geographical sense of the word for I have traveled much further distances in my life. Rather I feel that I am deeply out of place in all of the excess that surrounds me during my time here. This sentiment climaxed at a strange time actually. During our lunch break at the ski lodge, as I walked among hundreds of other vacationers who spent excessive amounts on equipment, rentals and lift tickets for some hours of fun, well, I felt like something was wrong. I myself had paid a substantial amount to glide down a mountain of snow over and over again. It is a sport that I find enjoyable, yes, but in all honesty, I regretted what I had traded for my selfish pleasure. It's not just money,- money is time and time is life.

This evening we will spend a few hundred more for a table at a casino lounge... we will spend it to be in a hip environment to be out and about and for drinks that will inebriate our cells and flush through our system in a matter of hours ending down a toilet hole... and all this in the name of fun. The thing is I just don't feel great about it. A billion people in poverty around the world... and we eat, drink and play in excess. The thing is, I don't want to live this way. It is not consistent with the deepest longings of my soul...I feel a strange divorce, a true unhappiness, a deep and wide contrast.

I long for a quieter life, a simpler one. I don't want my life to be about enjoyment or entertainment. Don't get me wrong, I want to be happy, because I believe happiness is a part of our design. Nevertheless, I want to find my happiness far from the superfluous enticements of modern living, apart from the luxuries of upper, middle class America, away from where moth and rust destroy...but in something everlasting beyond the reach of debit transactions.

I feel the temptations constantly and I am not on a soap box by any means. I spend frivolously and always have, and my struggle this weekend comes on the heels of spending more money than I have to please my friend and myself as I have mentioned. The thing is I am actually growing weary of it. I am seeing that it is a product of my own depravity of my humanness even if it were socially acceptable. I have a problem from which I must be delivered from... Furthermore, it simply isn't working, this way of life, I am not finding anything of true worth in any of it...it's a never ending obsession and in the words of Jack Kerouac, "I like too many things and get all confused and hung up running from one falling star to another until I drop."

I want to break free...Queen

I need to break free, for I am dying inside. What can one do in a world that only promotes consumerism, epicureanism, hedonism? How can one find escape? Will I be strong enough, determined enough not to conform? Or will I simply fall in line with the rest?

I feel alone at the moment. Alone in my anxieties, alone in my discontent, alone in my questioning for the rest of the world appears to be moving along at a comfortable pace when all I want to do right now is weep... I feel like a lone sailboat drifted off to sea in the middle of the night... There must be more to this life at least this is what I hope.

I keep on forgetting myself... - Third eye blind

Learning to Love.

It's been a while...and somethings have changed drastically, and somethings remain the same.

I'm sitting outside of the school library alone- watching the sun quickly recede into the deep. Darkness is coming upon me crashing down in giant waves, it is smothering the light and soon it will be evening.

I imagine the headlights of cars, store signs and street lamps coming to life all around this desert state- in various colors, some of them flickering and hesitating for a moment due to years of routine...some shimmering proudly like the stars that line the heavens, others bashfully glowing with a low hum...soaked in earthly humility. For a moment I wish I were floating up above just beyond the clouds, so that I might witness the show... how tiny dots would suddenly sparkling in succession, appearing from one dotted gridline to another. Perspective can change the mundane to the majestic.

This week has been rather tumultuous and I feel weak at the moment. I have begun a relationship and am learning that loving someone is difficult. It is something to be learned and thoughtfully, carefully approached. It is not necessarily because she is hard to love, but rather that drawing close to someone tends to expose more of oneself... she is a mirror by which I am able to see myself and all of the ugly parts...parts I thought I had long lost... But they are here, in full fledge in some cases freshly drawn out from deep recesses of the person I once was... I am selfish, needy, insecure, proud and stubborn and it's hurting the person I am trying to love. What is more, I am struggling to receive her love... questioning it as if it were something fleeting, mysterious, like the morning haze... or a dream from which I will soon awaken from...and I am realizing that I feel hardly worth the love of another... hardly worth her affections because it still remains at times that I am my own worst enemy.

I don't want to be this way... it's difficult and I feel broken and alone. I want to be stronger for us...to protect her from all that is wrong with the world...but i can't help but feel sometimes that she needs most to be protected from me...

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13)

For Christmas I suprised Katie with a beta fish in an interesting vase/water pitcher. Two long stem roses were placed soaring up above the pitchers opening while blue and clear marbles filled the floor, accenting the glittery scales of mr. fish. This has been something we have both since enjoyed a great deal... The vase/water pitcher is in fact a water pitcher from a trendy home furnishings store, and thus has a very unique shape.

This afternoon, I was over at Katie's place and she had begun cleaning this uniquely shaped aquarium. In my attempt to help I dropped the vase in the sink shattering it to pieces. Fortunately, the fish had already been stored away in his hotel room (that is the cup i bought him in), thus no animals were harmed in the making of this accident, but the vase was reduced to nothing but shards. We spent sometime cleaning up the kitchen as the glass was just everywhere, on the counter, the sink, floor and even imbedded in my shirt. We were both upset, but quiet and relatively slow in our actions. It had been a difficult day and to be honest I had been a pretty shitty boyfriend all morning... As we left the kitchen, I noticed fine specks of glass on my hands and arms sparkling in the light and so I did my best to brush them off outside...as we left the house, Katie came close to hug me because she knew I was feeling less then great, not only because of the accident, but because of the kind of morning we had had... The truth was, I was scared to touch her for fear that there might still be glass remaining on me that might cut her... and so I handled her hands and her hugs with great caution as if I were holding something too delicate and invaluable, as if I were somehow infected and contagious.

And I guess at the moment I am realizing something about love and about myself. I am covered in pieces of jagged glass, embedded deep in my soul. Some pieces so fine that they pass fastidious sweeps... but sharp and harmful they remain. I have to learn how to handle more gently...because the things I do, the words I speak are sharp and piercing and I'm hurting the one I love most in this life. She is delicate, soft and invaluable and I always just feel so damn clumsy in this thing like a bear on a unicycle trying to hold on to priceless, porcelain antique.

I will say this. I am learning and relearning (daily) my need for Grace. She grants me this day after day... and often I don't know how or even why, but I am thankful and undeserving, which sort of is assumed in the idea of grace I suppose. I am learning though I think...or at least trying to and this is no small task and love, real love is scaling mountain after mountain, it is finding truth, facing it and changing accordingly, it is a persistent trial by fire, constantly dying and finding life by the Grace of another.



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like a thousand brush strokes...

Today has been quite a roller coaster of emotions... the peculiarity is in the fact that nothing out of the ordinary occured. I woke up this morning to the sound of my alarm clock just as the 100 or so days behind, bathed and headed to school, attended classes and hung out with friends, laughed and conversed... and almost out of habit, camped out in the library until night fall reading lenghty dissertations on metaphysics... That was what occured on the outside at least... internally I came together and fell apart repeatedly and honestly lost count... like an oscillating universe.

I think I'm ok though, honestly this is no new territory for me and I intend on pulling through. Sure some days are worse than others...and there are severely intense moments when the air feels as heavy as lead...but I get through them too placing one foot in front of the other, taking one laborious breathe after another.
And what can I conclude? But that this is life and as the fatalist would proclaim: "we must have it any way it comes."

I am back to embracing the small moments, the moments we often take for granted because of the subtly of their nature. People generally live for the grand moments, weddings, graduations, promotions and births...and these may rightfully bring us great pleasure... but we often risk missing out on the nuances of life... perhaps it is these nuances that provide for the grander experiences... like the thousands of tiny brush strokes it takes for a painting to mean anything.

This evening I drove home with the windows down because the city didn't feel real enough...I needed to hear the sound of bustling cars and find the smell of gasoline burning in the air... As I turned the dark corner into my neighborhood, the scent of burning wood and the feeling of cold reached my senses, immediately causing my mind to bring up the fondest holiday memories I have to date...memories of cold evenings spent with my warm family... I saw my grandmother's house for a brief moment, which was always decorated to a beautiful excess. The cotton snow that covered her armoires, the tiny village of houses that lit up and the collection of soldiers that filled the house with songs of Christmas by rining bells in a programmed succession... I could even smell cookies warming in the oven-teasing our appetites... Most of all I saw my parents when they were younger and still appeared to me invincible, my beloved cousins, brother, and my Uncle Jim, Aunt Lottie, and my Grandmother all together in that old house under the soft glow of Christmas lights... and though I knew that I was simply having a recollection, I couldn't help but smile and feel pleasantly nostalgic.

Of course it's been years since we've all been together like that... and time has taken from me three of my loved ones. For those of us that still remain, we've all grown older. And the holidays have taken a much different form... there is less mystery, less anticipation... the things that seem to fade with age...

The human brain is said to store memories of specific incidences in the temporal cortex, which is the lower portion of the organ. It is true that some unpleasant experiences are to be found here, but we need this area to recall all the moments we long deeply to hold on to... and these moments that we have grown to cherish are more than random images that have been impressed on our minds... so long as we may keep them, they may be a source for the subtle joys I spoke of... where the whispers of pleasure are released...where the shadows of happiness are cast... And tonight I relish this moment, even though it is but a memory.

Memorial

3 years ago, my beloved grandmother passed away. She was a tremendous person and I was blessed to have had her in my life...she would be so thrilled that I was back in school...

How I wish that I could be sitting with her at this moment, over a mexican pizza (with extra guacamole) at Nino's. She would be asking me about my courses, my love life and whether I had music for her...then listening intently to my boring stories she would peer at me through her large plastic glasses, revealing a warm adoration in her eyes. At moments she might grab the hair on my chin and tickle me just to see me smile...and at every opportunity afforded to her, she would tell me how wonderful I was, how much I meant to her...and how proud she was of me... never has walked a gentler, more beautiful woman...and I miss her deeply right now.

Here is a blog that I wrote only a few days after her passing, I guess I just want to remember her...

i am alone, in an empty store...gazing into the cloudy autumn sky. It was a long weekend...and it seems to have carried over. Thursday evening, my grandmother passed away. She was very dear to me...to all of us and now we are forced to deal with this tremendous loss.

It was a very strange and strenuous weekend for me. I find only now as I sit here restlessly...with many hours ahead...that i feel up to the task of talking about this at all. For the most part I kept it to myself...in the days shortly following this event. I just didn't want to talk about it... I didn't care to hear what anyone (outside of the family) had to say about it. I didn't want condolences...i didn't want to hear that she had lived a long life...that it was her time, that she was now in heaven... i simply wanted time to mourn...and i still do.

I have started to tell some of my friends...for pragmatic reasons...since the rest of this week is going to be dedicated to memorial services and family affairs, i have had to cancel some things... but i'm still not up to really talking about how i feel with anyone...

I don't feel like i can't live. I don't feel overwhelmed.

I just feel a deep pain at the center of my being. Like something was torn out suddenly- something I cherished, something i needed, something i can't ever have back.

and nothing feels quite the same. The world just seems somehow flatter... greyer... and everything seems to move just a little bit slower.

Friday and Saturday were beautiful days....they were blessed by clear blue skies, and mildly warm weather... and i could see this... i mean objectively...they were... but i couldn't feel them...i couldn't feel the soothing breezes, or the warmth of sun against my skin... i couldn't feel how wonderful the days were...i just had to trust my eyes...that this was the case.

and now it's overcast...and i feel somehow this weather is more justified.

Attempting to continue my routine is at once therapeutic and equally painful. I have been going on long aimless drives these last few nights... although I don't feel very much like hanging out with friends... i feel restless when i stay in...and the open road, the movement, the scenery, the unknown, it seems to provide me some solace.

The last two evenings i have taken a particular road north...for miles and miles until it ends.
After sometime through the city it leads to a curvy expanding road.. with small hills to the east... it's a liberating drive...wide, open, empty...w/ very few other vehicles... i like most, to stare into the openess, into the deep...the quiet.

As I persist for several more minutes i end up in a remote housing development... There are at most, a handful of tenants occupying several square miles...because the community is still in early development. More hills surround the area...particularly to the north...opposing the development are miles and miles of desert. I have come here, to sit in solitude... i'm not sure what it is i'm looking for. i don't know that i'm looking for anything at all... somehow coming here, alone... makes me feel a bit more calm. It's so serene, so different from the city...you can hear the wind as it passes by caressing the leaves... i watch tiny aeroplanes passing by and every now and then a tiny sound of what seems to be a vehicle can be heard...but all of this, everything, is at a distance.

I witnessed a coyote walking through the development late last night and i imagined it strolling through the ghostly neighborhood, staring at the bizarre structures... and lights, trying to make sense of the uninvited suburban development that was taking over what used to be his backyard. I thought it tragic to consider one day he would simply have nowhere to go. When he noticed me he took a more immediate pace...making his way back to the hills... i followed with my eyes in wonder...until he faded into the night... until it was time for me to head back.

This is my mourning. I love you grammy and I miss you.

Grey

by Ani Difranco

The sky is grey,
the sand is grey,
and the ocean is grey.
I feel right at home
in this stunning monochrome,
alone in my way.

I smoke and I drink
and every time I blink,
I have a tiny dream.
But as bad as I am,
I'm proud of the fact,
that I'm worse than I seem.

What kind of paradise am I looking for?
I've got everything I want and still I want more.
Maybe some tiny, shiny thing will wash up on the shore.

You walk through my walls,
like a ghost on tv.
You penetrate me...
And my little pink heart,
is on its little brown raft,
floating out to sea.

And what can I say?
but I'm wired this way,
and you're wired to me.
And what can I do,
but wallow in you unintentionally?

What kind of paradise am I looking for?
I've got everything I want and still I want more.
Maybe some tiny, shiny key will wash up on the shore.

Regretfully, I guess I've got
three simple things to say.
Why me? Why this now? Why this way?
Overtone's ringing,
undertow's pulling away.

Under a sky that is grey,
on sand that is grey,
by an ocean that's grey...

*

I want to evaporate...

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I find myself at the library preparing for two midterm exams I will have to face on Monday. It's been some months since I was able to drive with the windows down, but it's finally in the 80's and we are assured that we have seen the last of triple digit temperatures for the year. I say, halleujah!

As i drove to school, it began to sprinkle and I held my left arm out of the window to feel the first of autumn showers...It felt cold and refreshing against my tired skin... I had Max Richter (a modern composer) playing on the stereo... his short composition "Horizon Variations" is so richly, beautiful... a two minute piano piece that seems to capture the complex mix of emotions that I am feeling these days, and this without even a single word. As I waited at a stop light, the song repeated for the fourth time and I stared up above in search of even a speck of blue amidst the thick, rain-laden clouds... but a brewing storm caused a wide impervious barrier of mild darkness to wash over every trace of color, and I imagined that life today would be pale and moody for the millions living in this great city of the sun.

Upon arriving on campus, I walked the hundred yards to the library. Being the weekend, the journey was quiet and lonely. A strange idleness filled the school from building to building... empty tables were surrounded by empty chairs, and the walkways and sidewalks and the halls of this crowded university, were calm and hollow save the distant echoes of monday morning chatter.

At the moment I am in the library and I should be studying, but I find my thoughts to be miles from anything academic. I feel abstract not analytical today...As strange as it all may sound, I feel as though I want to come undone... to be pulled apart into a hundred million particles.... to evaporate, with tiny pieces of me scattered into the ocean, upon giant trees, falling into dust

and then floating into the air, where you could breathe me in...

Hindu's believe that God is everything... "Brahman" represents all of matter, and God -and the two are inseparable... in essence we are one with all, the universe and God... extensions, not distinctions. And this appeals to me right now, at least the idea. I want to feel a part of everything because everything feels so painfully disconnected...or rather I feel so separated from all, everything and everyone. I would venture to say that we all struggle with this... that it is the fundamental, existential dilemma of humanity...and perhaps this is why pantheistic, systems have their appeal... it (at least in concept) ties us to this enormous universe...the unconscious cosmos that seems at times so cold, unpredictable, and apathetic to our lives... The Christian message is that all of this was in some way created for us... as an expression of God's glory and as an expression of ours. We are highly distinctive from all matter, and it was not for the stars or planets, or created order that Christ shed his blood, but for humanity alone...and it is humanity alone, not animals or the trees or even the endless galaxies, that is called into a love affair with God... that is called the apple of His eye... and I think that is quite beautiful. The difficulty is that everything in this life seems to try and tear man away from God... and again, we are so highly distinctive of the Divine, how can we be united in our brokenness to His perfection?

...Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. -Ephesians 2:12-18

It is a beautiful day, and I guess I'll try and search for whatever it might mean to enjoy it.



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Untitled

Christendom speaks of a personal God whom reaches out across the eternal stretch between the infinite and the finite...the noumenal and the phenomenal. It was Christ afterall who had to enter our world as a vulnerable man because we could not in all our collective brillance and effort reach out to find the very creator of our souls...

but what happens when God feels like a shadow? Like a fuzzy memory of someone I once knew... He is still strangely quiet, though I am told that all of creation shouts of his splendor... Perhaps God is reluctant, whispering under His breathe now...perhaps he has not left his sabbath after setting the firmarments... or perhaps we've chased Him away...

The Deists like Thomas Jefferson believed that God formed the world and then removed Himself from it's affairs entirely. In a sense, a form of functional atheism; God had no relevance to existence and I guess at the moment I can sympathize with their peculiar view... A friend of mine shared with me that someone in her family had been in a serious accident yesterday. Today a midst all the doubts I have been having lately, I managed to mutter a feable prayer through my warm tears... I pleaded with God that He might reveal his mercy and power...his relevance... I told God that I had no idea what His will was in this situation, but that I just really wanted this person to be delivered and asked Him to hear me... early this evening, the person in question passed away...and the news echoes in my mind...

At this moment, it follows that I feel I am in for another disappointment. It looms just around the corner....feeling so inevitable, like it will stream through the cracks of my window, with the early morning rays... And the dawn will bring with it a strange sickness to my stomach, a dull ache that will follow me through the days, throwing fits of sharp pain between the tenants of my demanding schedule...it will hit me hardest in the idelness of afternoon...under the autumn skies... as I drive home leaving another day behind...

And I know, I'll be fine, that things will work themselves out as they seem to...or at least as we have grown to accept.

Time it swallows everything, from the mighty to the meager things...
-Amos Lee

and I will evolve and change and grow...again. The seasons will continue to unfold, new people will enter and the old exit, cars will fill the motorways and planes the skies, the suburban sprawl will widen it's wings, news will still travel at lightning speed... time will drizzle away just as it always has...and life as I know it will take one clumsy step after another...it will keep going...

and I know that this will not be the last of my challenges...nor is it strange and unusual, but simply that which is common to man...I know all of this...and yet it brings me no level of comfort, no sleep tonight. Perhaps I am afraid to close my eyes now...afraid of the morning, afraid of what that will mean...or what I will come to realize... perhaps I am quite comfortable here, now... in the purgatory of late evening...suspended in limbo, alone. Perhaps I will stay here just a little bit longer...until the dawn breaks me.

Looking for More.

I am beyond tired and I really should be going to bed right about now, but I just got home, found myself famished, and so I cooked myself a late dinner. I generally get an upset stomach if I sleep immediately following a meal so here I am typing away about nothing.

We had club tonight and there was quite a number in attendance. I was asked to sign people up for small group, which meant that I was running around with clip boards and applications. I don't very much care for this type of task, mainly because I feel like I'm selling something. I can kind of see it in the eyes of some of the people I talk to, that they might perceive me that way... they walk in the door, get rushed by smiling folks wanting to make them a name tag, then pulled to a table to sign up for college weekend, and then there I am trying to talk over all the noise about the great benefits of being in a small group. It's a madhouse, and sometimes I feel like I'm in the middle of the stock exchange floor.

We had a guest speaker for the message this evening, he leads a high school Younglife in town. I've heard him speak a few times now and the students always seem to enjoy him. He seems genuinely sincere and likeable and passionate about sharing his faith. But the truth is I found the contents of his message troubling for me personally. As I've mentioned before, I've been having a real crisis of faith these past few months mainly in terms of the nature of God. Consequently, when I hear people talking about their understanding of God, His function in their lives I listen intently. Truth be told, often I simply cannot relate to what I hear and I wonder if we seek after the same being...

My professor of religion believes that there are 3 levels to religious beliefs. The popular, historical and the philosohpical. The popular level deals solely with practical and psychological needs, it is shallow and wide and is the point where people use a system of faith to function daily in a highly pragmatic sense. The philosophical on the other hand has to do with the challenges and questions that go further, deeper beyond the day to day functions.

I often hear people talk about God as if He were a genie in a bottle, but one that is very limited in scope. They tell me that they prayed for a specific car, and the exact shape and color and number of miles were granted, like a wish come true... and they feel that God loves them immensely because he even considered the meticulous details... far less often (maybe twice in my entire life) have I heard of someone praying for a friend or family member who is severely ill or in immense suffering, and their relentless prayers were answered. And I struggle with this fact... and I have to wonder if it is that God more readily answers our trivial prayers... or if it may be true that we more often obsess over nonesense and attain things out of sheer stubborness of will and then attribute it to God to keep our faith system (however faulty) intact.

I say all of this because the speaker tonight talked about how God would bless people if they would truly follow Him. In sharing with us about what it was like to follow Christ, he chose to mention that God had blessed him with finances and two houses and a vehicle. But it all seemed to trivialize God to some extent. To make our religion, popular. Is that really what we're spending our time praying for? More stuff? Is that reason enough for to follow the cross? Are there not larger battles to fight, more imperative ones? Are there not people dying, starving, depressed, lost and helpless? Broken homes, broken families, broken hearts... mental illness, alcholism, addiction, natural disasters, entire continents of people in poverty...and in disease. Is not most of the world lost and separated from God?

Is this what Christendom has been reduced to? Follow Jesus and he will hook you up? I thought following Jesus meant that we could revolutionize the world. That the blind would see, the deaf hear, that all who called on His name would be saved. That He would heal our land. I thought it meant that we could bring down strongholds, make darkness flee, and watch the kingdom, His kingdom come...

but to pray for such is risky prayer, so I get it. We can pray for and long after the small things...manageable ambitions, the things we can in fact provide for ourselves with a little extra effort. But to hope for God to deliver a loved one in desperate need, one that has such complex issues that you feel simply like giving up, that's something entirely different... it puts one out there on the ledge of faith...with the possibility of deep disappointment and disallusionment, with the possibility of falling.

but I just can't seem to bring myself to believe in a God that is in fact no God at all. Or a faith system that requires in effect, no faith. There must be more. More depth, and beauty and glory...more hope and power....more authority...more to His name...



.

The Weight of Beauty

This blog finds me sitting in a coffee shop in Flagstaff. My weekend was surrounded by the beauty of Williams, which sits about 30 miles to the west of my current location. I drove up Friday evening to attend a Leadership camp for Young Life and Friday quickly led to Sunday morning, when bags were clumsily stuffed with dirtied clothes and memories... It was an interesting weekend though and for the most part it was enjoyable. The days were filled with activities, interesting conversations, seminars, poor sleep and indoor volleyball... and I am glad I made the trip, though it means that I have a great deal of studying to catch up on this evening. It was enjoyable and yet not without pain and struggle...not without longing, as it seems with so many things in life... at least this has been my experience thus far.

Perhaps beauty has an intrinsic cost. An artist can create an amazing work of art, a painting that may strike awe in a great number of others, inspire them, make them fall in love and yet her soar arms and joints, the paint under her fingernails, the paint smeared over her arms and clothing speak of a price... the labor, albeit a labor of love. The painting is no less beautiful, and perhaps some might even conclude that it is all the more so in light of the pain involved... but it often seems romanticized from the perspective of the witness, not by the one whom has struggled.

As I headed home (and obviously i didn't make it very far) I drove with the windows down and stereo off, which if you know much about me, you realize it is a rare thing for me to exclude music from my experiences. The highway pierced narrowly through fields of golden dandelions swaying softly in the wind, as if they were dancing to a song, a song that was felt but unheard... The summer skies spread the pale clouds out across the hills...and the vivid colors, the shapes and textures swirled inside my very soul. I was journeying into a painting so glorious that it pointed up above where time and imagination serve as tools and not limitations. But I couldn't help wondering then of the costs... if our broken lives have been our share in the labor, if His broken body, the price...

The air was cool and light, pleasantly curling around my head, like a soft, empathetic hand- it touched my shoulders and grazed my neck as the cabin of my truck took deep breathes to drink in the breeze. It was within such a moment that I decided I would stop in Flagstaff to do my studies instead of hurrying home. I'm not ready to leave the forest... but I may never be.

It was also during this short, but moving drive that I had a strange thought to quit school. It was but a passing thought I admit, and yet a real one. I guess I was thinking about just how structured it all seems, pursuing a degree that is... and though I am interested in the material I don't enjoy the way I have to arrive at it. It seems unlike me, to sit in a stuffy classroom and make note cards and cram for exams... I want to be walking along the ocean, the warm sand against my feet thinking about why it feels so good and why there is such beauty in the world... to ponder why it is we are here and why we keep getting hurt... I want to be strumming my guitar and the chords in my throat, sending waves into the universe...and pouring out songs of how I just keep falling apart... I want the sum of my time, the culmination of my days and years to mean more than a respectable job, a shiny new car and finding the American Dream... but this isn't because I am in some way enlightened or closer to dying to myself... I wish it were... The truth is, I arrive at this conclusion mostly for selfish reasons, because that lifestyle seems rather drab and dull to me... the status quo rubs me like indistinguishable shades of grey.... and I want to dream in color... And though I have no idea what that looks like...I do know what it doesn't resemble.

But like I mentioned, though I had a good time, I felt torn this weekend. To be among natural splendor and the tranquility of the mountains, among good natured people who were engaging and well intentioned and yet still feeling like I was somehow cosmically lost, like a star that had ventured too far out into space, too far to give off any light... too far to be considered a star any longer. I struggled because God still seemed so distant... a great distance from real and present and it was killing me, I guess it still is. Perhaps I am living in a paradox, I'm living in that space between...beyond what is reconcilable, I am living in a gap and I just want it to stop hurting, for it to stop kicking the crap out of me. Sometimes I wonder if this might be my lot in life... for we must all bear a cross each of and everyone one of us... perhaps it is my cost, the price I must pay, my weight of beauty. If this were the case, I can only hope that at the end of this weary life, something amazing would result, something of worth that might allow others to feel awe, be inspired and to fall in love...

Christ promises living water from which streams would flow, reaching unto eternity... but I thirst.



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Stars beyond the scope of vision.

So here I am in my second week of school and thus I have been holed up in the library the last 12 or so days, for hours at a time. It is from this very library, from a very familiar seat -with window view, that I type this, as I break away from my studies momentarily. It is warm and murky outside and I find myself fighting two heavy eyelids and a wandering mind, both indications that I have not had ample sleep the last few nights.

Following two-back to back Ethics lectures, I headed over to the cafe for a meal and watched the news for a few moments as they interviewed "experts" on their opinions regarding Governor Palin; the question at hand- whether she would be overwhelmed with the Vice Presidency considering her familial responsibilities. Strangely this story was quite the welcomed escape for me because the discussion at hand was about something so highly specific and immediately practical. For the last several days I have been knee deep in lectures and readings offered by Plato, Immanuel Kant, Confucius, J.S. Mill, and St. Thomas Aquinas on topics raging from the plausibility of the existence of God, to varying theories and counter theories on Morality/Ethics and the philosophy of religion itself... I actually feel on edge somehow, as if I must critically analyze every passing thought... to the point of feeling as though I want to fold to the nonsensical belief of true skepticism.

After this short break, I journeyed through the center of our modest sized campus where many of the different student clubs had set up tables to appeal to the students passing by. Colorful banners, loud pop music and cheap, useless incentives littered the courtyard making the University look more like a bustling flea market than an institution for higher learning. There were religious/spiritual clubs, fraternities, sororities, an African American association, and a number of event based organizations; a myriad of groups crying out for attention. And I thought for a second how we all just want the sense that we belong somewhere, that we are not alone.

A friend of mine recently admitted to me his greatest fear in life was to be alone and this is evident in the fact that he is constantly surrounding himself with company and I mean that not as a criticism, but rather matter-of-factly. On the other hand I have been inconsistent about company and have spent a great deal of my time without in recent months... and in some ways I began to pride myself in the fact that I did not need to be around other people all of the time... I guess I thought this meant that I was more independent somehow and not so afraid of being alone... but I think this has been a false conclusion.

The truth is I hate feeling alone probably just as much as the next person, just as much as my friend... and I do fear it, I fear it a great deal... or at least fear that it could get worse or be a perpetual state. But the thing is, to me loneliness has always been more of a philosophical problem than an environmental one. What I mean is that it is far deeper a dilemma that may have little to do with whether you are with people or in solitude. I think a person may feel alone in the company of his/her closest friends, sitting around the dinner table with a loving family, in the arms of true love.. at least I have found this to be true. This is not to say that being physically isolated isn't problematic, it does in fact have psychological consequences, but what I'm considering at the moment is the converse, why people can feel alone when they are not in fact alone. But I speak from my experience, never having to have faced actual, physical isolation for any substantial periods of time...so I may be incomplete in my thinking.

Lately, "Community" has become the big buzz word among Evangelical circles. The emergent church writers have filled our bookshelves with seemingly radical ideas on "doing life together" as a fundamental part of what Jesus taught and I think it is a beautiful concept that does permeate the scriptures. Yet I can't help but wonder if we might often view it as some kind of a solution to this problem of loneliness. So when we hear of someone who is struggling with feeling alone, we think that they should immerse themselves in the busyness of community...we think that if we can make them feel loved and accepted, understood and heard and a part of something that they will begin to feel better... it seems quite obvious, if someone feels alone, they must be in need to be with and around other people right? but perhaps this isn't always the case... If I am correct in asserting the idea that loneliness is in fact primarily a philosophical problem then it would follow that merely changing the circumstances wouldn't do the trick... But again perhaps I overstate my idea... I don't know if in fact it is more of a philosophical problem than a material one...or more of a circumstantial problem than an existential one... I think I can, for the time being safely say that it is likely to be at least as much a problem of the soul as it is of the body... back to the books, but maybe I'll touch on this more later....

I leave you with an excerpt from D.H. Lawrence's controversial book, Women In Love:

[A conversation between Ursula and Rupert who are romantically involved.]

"Love gives out in the last issues?" she asked, feeling numb to the lips.

"Yes, it does. At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of love. There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any emotional relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude ourselves that love is the root. It isn't. It is only the branches. The root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that does not meet and mingle, and never can."

She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was incandescent in its abstract earnestness.

"And you mean you can't love?" she asked, in trepidation.

"Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, where there is not love."

She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she could not submit.

"But how do you know -- if you have never really loved?" she asked.

"It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of vision, some of them."

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