data sets and future formation... rather awkward attmepts to say something which I think is important.

I've been thinking a lot about data-sets recently

What i mean by this is that we go off what we know: our worldviews, our conscious or sub-conscious list of perceivable options for ourselves.
I know I'm being broad.

More specifialy I was thinking about why some people succeed to more profitable or happy careeers whilst others suffer on in the more menial- when it seems to me that often the latter are more equipped for the formers' jobs. I was thinking about some people I knew who grew up in lower-class families and ended up working at gas-stations or grocery stores when they were bright enough to study and get better jobs, and when some of the young students i encountered in university, who exhibited less common-sense, would probably end up better employed because of the expectations that they would. Their families, environments, class peirs, indicted that they would end up a banker or a beauricrat, and that this would be handed to them as easily as their post secondary funding was handed to by their parents.

I don't mean to generalize, but I think this does happen all the time, and its subtle, because we often don't realize how our own lives are dictated by what we expect out of it.
I don't mean some "positive thinking" mode of success. I just mean that I think sometimes the kid working at the gas-station has more gumption to be a banker than the university graduate does if it was offered to him as an option in his own mind.

I've been trying to figure this out for myself. In what way am i the guy working at the gas station? or maybe i'm the over-confident graduate. Or maybe I'm both, but I still haven't considered the outlandish option of not selling my labour, and working for myself instead. Maybe there's more options if i stand further back.

I've been planning on taking a teaching certification program, but here's my conundrum: am i just choosing teaching because it's the obvious choice in my set of data?
That is, we all know who teachers are. So when people hear i have a history degree they think, even suggest, I'm going into teaching. They even say I will make a great teacher- and while I might and I appreciate the confidence- I might as well just make a great "capital plannings program manager" (a title i just pulled off a job-posting site) but no-one would say that because no-one has any idea of what that entails; whereas we've all met teachers.

So am i defaulting, or is there something better out there that i'm not thinking of because i'm too lost within the box?
Am i locked within a geography, schedule, lifestyle, model, paygrade-expectation, management model, economic commonplace, linguage, experience, arrogance, insecurity, competitivity, idea of myself, concept of a future, others expectations of me, or any number of things i can't think of that are holding me back from another (better?) potential? Almost certainly.

But at what point to i hold off, survey options? How do i even get outside the box? And when do i charge full steam ahead into one innevitable fate without thinking about the rest?

tomorrow.
and the day after that.
and the next day.

A walk

After spending some very nice days on Pender Island I promptly discovered that the ferry from Sidney didn't run to Anacortes. And while i should have gone and taken the ferry from Victoria to Seattle, I thought for some reason that I'd be better off going to Vancouver and crossing the border on a bus. I bounced off Seattle by way of en route to Portland, where i enjoyed some tasty breakfast, met some very nice people, and went to the church that Don Miller said was so great in his books. It was pretty hipster, but not un-nice.
I took a bus to Seaside, and knew i was in small-town country now. Hiked to Cannon beach and was taken away by haystack rock which was about a thousand times more inspiring to see than the Space Needle was. On those wobbly hiker legs i stood roadside with thumb in the air and promptly gave up on hitching. Nevertheless, a very nice older woman picked me up and offered me some pot while we drove down the coast to one of the tiny and destitute looking- but in an incredibly beautiful setting- little towns where she lived. I declined the pot, which she only had for medical reasons anyways, but accepted her offer to drop me at the local bus stop which would take me through to the next bigger town. There i found a Starbucks (an institution which would continue to be my internet hub from city to city) and a department store which i walked around for hours before finding my way to the local Denny's, scarfing down a massive meal, and then settling in for the night to read a book. The next morning I found a local bus which would take me back to Portland, which it did, in time to take another bus through the night to San Francisco. With some thanks to a very uncomfortable bus-stop layover (where security would come ask you for your ticket the moment you started to drift off on the hard-floor as if only free-loading bums would do that) and two interesting and long-talking coach-mates I perhaps dozed for an hour. Perhaps. In San Francisco I had coffee with one of my new coach friends before finding a wonderful camera store which sold me a replacement wide-angle lens for the camera i had borrowed from my Dad. I knew i needed a smaller backpack, and after some considerable wandering around and discovery of some of the less romantic parts of the city I eventually bought one and after some more wandering around, found the hostel i had made a reservation at. I don't remember much of the rest of that day except that by the time sleep came i had had the same pair of shoes on for as long as I'd essentially been awake. Sixty some hours. Gross.
San Fransisco was beautiful after that. I ran across the big red bridge. I walked along the boardwalks and saw beautiful people smiling, enjoying the warm evening. I took a great tour of China Town. After eating otherwise poor-quality food everywhere on my adventure, I now couldn't hardly find bad-quality food if i wanted to. But then I went and left.
I loved the train to LA, excepting some annoying patrons. The scenery was great. And rail was more comfortable than bus coach by the length of an American Football field. I got off near UCLA, which smelled beautifully of blossoms or flowers of some kind. It was warm, and I saw many cute couples, some with roses in hand, walking arm in arm with their Valentine's day dates. I imagined that perhaps I'd find something to do on Valentines day somewhere- like singles bingo or something cheesy like that, but instead I had to catch a bus to Santa Monica, and LA's busses were not about to be as conducive as San Fran. By the time I was at my, relitavely expensive and generally blase hostel at SM I was ready to call it a day.
Sure the beach was alright, and I met a nice guy from New Mexico at Santa Monica, and I met a very interesting man dressed as a tree at Venice Beach, and a very funny TV writer who gave me a ride between the two, but by the time I caught a crazy bus to the crazier Greyhound Station, I was ready to get the $%&* out of Dodge... or in this case, Los Angeles. In hindsight, you really do need a car to get around that part of the state.
San Diego was supposed to be reconnassance time. I would gather my chits, consult my new maps, and plan my next move. I though i might go to Mexico for a few days. I had put a reservation on a car rental back in LA to get out and potentially into Joshua Tree or even Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, but that was a few days away.

Now that i was in San Diego I began to hit rock bottom. I got a familiar diminishment in spirit which warned me i might need to go home sooner than my plane was booked for- some two weeks away. I would miss seeing Arizona, but I was missing my drive more. I think I was ready to admit that I'm not the lone ranger I've always epitomized. A good thing to know in any case. Pack animals we are, and I missed my pack. But I was also not self-disparaging about this fact. If i wanted to go home, I wasn't about to give myself a hard time about that. It had been a good run, and aside from the jets flying overhead all day, the hostel at Point Loma in San Diego was very nice and affordable; so I stayed a few days.

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

C. S. Lewis

While in SD I ate some fantastic sea food at the beautiful harbour, rented bikes with new friends and rode to the top of point Loma, jammed out pop tunes on a piano and guitar at the hostel with a guy (I think he was from Minnesota) and saw the underwhelming but highly toted San Diego park. The hostel was also only a walk from the Airport, so I rearranged flights and got one that flew from there to Vancouver, and on my way out I saw the anti-submarine, navy-trained dolphins passing through the harbor.
My Flight bounced off Phoenix, which I'm told is not as interesting as Tuscon or Flagstaff, but at least i got to get into Arizona in some respect, and see its horizon for a moment before the light died.
I would like to drive that golden sea someday.

I went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sun down, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir

So I returned much sooner than I'd anticipated, which was just as well since I really was pretty broke anyways- or so i realized once i surveyed my accounts. The dollar exchange rate had been cruel, and the fact that the currency exchange at the airport in Vancouver took me for an extra few dollars as a "fee" to change my greenbacks back to Canadian really annoyed me. I had to bunker down in the airport for the duration of the night to catch transit to the first ferry home, and when i did step outside (having abandoned all warm clothing in San Fransisco) I had to grit my teeth and second guess that I'd really wanted to be home again. I had, strangely, missed the cooler climate while in San Diego, but wearing shorts at 6 AM in February made me wonder if I had been delusional.

Its funny. Friends asked me what the deal was with the trip. Was I going to "find myself" or something? I never expected an epiphany to strike me on the road. I didn't expect nothing, but I didn't know what to expect except a change of scenery and lots of time by myself to be self-reflexive and breathe deeply. A change of scenery, I have come to belive now, can do a lot for ones psyche. I felt like I was just going through the motions so much of the time last year. I was living in a blur of time. I sometimes described my life like someone else was living it and i was just a spectator watching it go by. Clarity, however, found me on the road, though it never came like a beam of light or a Eureka. It came in a coming home and cleaning house. I suppose it came in realizing what I wanted, accepting who I was, and leaving some things behind for a new chapter. Three weeks in the wilderness, or whatever, and I get that?! Not exactly. I think maybe conlclusions build over time, but it takes a steppping back, out of the mundanity to get the clarity on it. It was upon stepping back into "my life" that I realized how this all would pan out.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Henry David Thoreau

I'm not saying i got it together. I still don't know much of what next month or next year holds, but I'm more confident in who i want to be next month and next year, I think.

Just to clear it up, although I called this short blog 'walking' I didn't walk everywhere. I walked from ship to bus to train to light rail to taxi to car to bicycle to bus to plane and covered distance that way. There was, however, lots of walking in between, and perhaps, more importantly, every trip begins and ends with a walk. There is something about walking I think, that people have done for millennia to figure things out, and it is this persistent idea that persists. Not to be confused with nomadicism, for in my story, as in most, the adventurer comes home, or finds home, or achieves something which he can bring back with him to revive his existence.

The car park and adjacent lot looked like nothing at all that day, but then nothing is what I'd expected of them. Perhaps that is the very essence, and beauty, of place, even if I can't define it. The way anywhere can take hold, and burrow deep within. The way it can dance when we allow it to. Which is why these days I prefer to think of place as wherever I happen to be and the relationship that can be brokered with it.

Julian Hoffman The Small Heart of Things

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit

a day in san francisco

First impressions: Lanky, Tatoo sleeves, black mohawk, generous smile. Second impressions: kind conversant and intelligent. He was leading a walking tour and on the way to its start he led off asking me some general questions about where i was from. As I began to return his niceties with my own queries I uncovered a third layer of information which rather outstripped my stories in stark interest.

Anton had grown up with a Greek (and Greek Orthodox) Mother who had migrated from Quebec, and with a father, who I took to be Italian, (and Roman Catholic). He was raised in San Francisco's Little Italy- a stone throw from Chinatown. Thus he had political dual citizenship, religious dual schismship -if you will- and was obviously rather keen to the way cultural diversity effects us.

When I told him where I called home he flattered it. Said that if he were to live in another city on basis of its own merits, that mine would top his list. This, of course, made me wonder what he had to compare it to.
A lot, it would seem.

Having received his masters of divinity from a Roman Catholic institution in New Orleans, Anton became a monk in a monastery in Athos for what he said was "many years" - though this confused me, because he didn't look so much older than me. In time he decided to study eastern traditions by living at their monasteries, and as an ambassador on behalf of his tradition. Now he was a lay monk, living back in his home city of San Francisco- a place I wonder if he'd ever left in spirit.
He was my tour guide through his old backyard of Chinatown, and as he took our tour group into, first a Buddhist, and then a Taoist place of observance. He revealed that his immersion to an understanding of these traditions dated to his childhood in that corner of town. He would never leave San Francisco for my city on basis of its own merit, not while this was his home- I could tell that. Anton personified what I liked best about his city.

That night he called out Spanish names in a Día de Muertos themed game of bingo in the pub next to the hostel. And as he did I heard him laugh to his friend, the bartender, how there was something absurd about someone, with his Mdiv, repeating mispronounced Spanish phrases like a trained parrot for a handful of travelers in some tiny hole in this city's many walls.
"And yet," he came back, continuing his aside a few minutes later.
"And yet this is actually one of my favorite things to do".

I wish I knew more of Anton's story. Wish i could pick his brain for hours. But maybe a city itself is no more eager to render those answers to a passer-through than any of its faithful sons.

Yes, you may see the genuine smiles on my plethora of faces, but you may not know why I smile.

To be true to one's own joy in the mosaic of a community, is this your lesson for me? Or is it that it's ok to go home if that is what feeds you, for perhaps that is what defines the beauty- even the simplest and the smallest of joys.

This is today

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-4-dark-sides-being-in-love_p2/

This is the most inspiring, romantic/realist/just plain decent advice I've ever read on Cracked... at least it sure seems like it to me.

I guess that most of the time when people talked about long-term committed loving relationships, at least over the last couple years, I've sortof smiled and nodded and not believed half of it. But once in a while somebody who actually has lived a little drops a bomb that I can't ignore.

"the amazing thing about being married to someone this long" this person said, "is that they know more about all your worst things than anyone else, and yet they keep loving you... and alternatively I guess I know the same about them, but I love him more today than twenty years ago."

and then there was this one,

"The one thing that does stink about being married to someone you like so much is the question of: What if they die before me? Where does that leave me?"

Holy shit.
yes. That's what i thought, but i let it go, because it just went flying through the air like mashed potatoes at Christmas and we went back to talking about the weather or what-the-crap-ever.

Love that's a long haul...

You know, I'm pretty damn sure that's what i want.
For a bit i was wondering if its all about the action, the romance of playing the field.
F*ck that.

Maybe the fairy tale is over-romanticized... yeah, that's actually pretty likely. And maybe half of all people who get married don't stay married, and that stat is only going to get better because people stop getting married... But on the other hand, its what my parents did, and its what their parents did, and so on... I'm starting to accept that tradition and convention are not the same thing necessarily, and if i ever have kids I think I'll probably do them a disservice if i don't pass on some kind of tradition which i value.

F*ck its hard to be a good human being some days, but I'm starting to think that tradition might actually help.

I love this story I heard about a rabbi's answer to being asked about their Jewish athiest population. He says that its ok. some will return to the tradition. In the mean time, the tradition- the community- will carry on for them, and thereby carry them.

That seems right. Righter than this stand-alone die-alone sort of mentality that many have.

So I get up in the morning and try and face the day. I wrote a while back about switches going on in the brain, where an immediate switch is sometimes possible. I wrote about being a good person because of a belief in the sanctity of life, because you love someone, because you believe in God. But shit, sometimes i wonder if all you have is tradition: a convicted convention, if you will. It says get up in the morning and do it even though you're not sure it matters, even if you've got no-one watching you, even if you're not sure you believe God is watching or even there today. Get up and damn-well do it anyways, because its fucking worth it. Because its better to believe the romantics, the artists, the theologians, the bravest philosophers and Jesus Christ himself for the sake of hoping that the sun will come up on their words, than throwing caution to the effects-of-the-wind and living like an animal to its carnality.
I'll be the romantic, so help me God.

Everything must change
There's a mirror showing me the ugly truth
These bones they ache with holy fire
But I've got nothing to give, just a life to live

If your world is without color
I will carry you, if you carry me

-Martin Smith

I guess we can survive most mistakes.

Well, its new years eve again.

I’m back on the farm. I finished off the classwork for this degree I’ve been working on, so I’m taking care of the homestead ‘till the bosses come back in a few weeks.

Then, I’m not sure.

Its new years eve and I don’t think I’ll be up ‘till midnight. Got my first day back on it tomorrow. Lots I’ll want to do.
Hopefully I’ll get to do some reading and some writing along the way. Hopefully work on music.

Then, I’m not sure.

Its been gorgeously fantastic weather. I went hiking on the West Coast with a classmate from Alberta And had to remind them that it was December. The skies clear. The days beginning to get longer again. I’ll be here for a month likely.

Then, I’m not sure.

I’ve been dreaming of journeying for a long time; finding camaraderie on the open road or pilgrim’s trail. Do you have to know why you’re leaving? I won’t likely have lots of extra money, but I consider myself blessed to have got through my degree without much debt. I’ve romanticized just taking my backpack and walking out my door. “It’s a dangerous thing walking out your front door” said Bilbo Baggins, “You never know where your feet might take you.” I’ll be thinking about some options over this month.

Cause I’m not completely sure.

I’ve been thinking about heading south, finding a bit of warmth for a while, hopefully finding some new experiences, different people, time to hike and time to mull.
I’m not sure, But sure enough, and that’s good enough
For me.
For now.

By Grace.

Cause I'm not completely sure.

111

--------------------------------

This is honey off a knife's blade
Berries through the thorns
All we saw was your metaphysics
Show my my death,
and I'll show you Yours

-----------------------------------

Say you've got, only so many days
all your choices supposed to be crucial
boiled down to moments
of impulse or rage
do you run
or do you stay

in the camp or out
into the house or not?

To the things you've known
or to the things that dreams illuminated but never revealed?
to love known,
or fantasies unknown

into your rest or ramble?
Into your love or theirs
Haven't you known it?
-----------------------------

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
But See the movie had it wrong
we were supposed to shape our own lives by decisions
In a panoply of decisions
Co-creators the epistle said
More like Cusack in say anything than in serendipity… why?
‘cause you know what you want rather than waiting to be told,
relieving that anxiety. Bravery is striking out into the night with a firm grasp on reality and hope.
but not the hope in someone else's fantasy... To co-create a destiny which is probably unlike every meaning of that word we’ve ever had constructed for us.

---------------------------

Waiting for something to happen
The walls to fall
or the tide to come

Waiting's not always passive
Though maybe i could do more than this

something to anticipate
to just need
a little

quiesence on a shoulder of the sun coming up.

Reason to rise
beyond
a known repetition
so


-------------------















Its not always just that things can be so damn sorrowful

Its that we deal it

And we deal it alone

And even when i know you don't have to.
And you do too,

Inches apart
We're acres away

afraid as the silence
As the pain
a word away
and stuff it up with noise

The most sorrow blazed in caustic feathers, till they, raindrenched and bloody
are all we see

two great motivators
ever remaining
till consumation breaks the fetter for the free
Fear and love
in silence and noise
fear or love
compel us.










----------------------

So When language divides,
We will confide,
Upon a harmony
Give me the tonic
And I'll reach for the Quintessence

Forgive me, I'm just a bit sentimental
Regimental exchange
Has divided our plays
To a sense of economy

Your eyes reprise
falling on my ledger
Pupils like notations

to want the heart of home

Have you ever decided to do a major downsize of the stuff you own? I try to do this every so often with mixed results. Often I find myself staring at old books, nicknacks, and writing, not knowing what to do with it. Do you throw it out, burn it in a brave act of moving forward and fresh starts? I mean, honestly, is anybody EVER going to look back on the stuff you wrote and stuffed away when you were sixteen and learn something from it? On the other hand, I feel this odd anxiety, as if I’m saying that everything I did and were ten years ago will be invalidated if I burn it… Its like I want to prove that I really was the kind of sixteen year old some wouldn’t believe my 27 year old self to be. Some of the nicknacks seem like they’re the only things separating my memory from losing people and experiences that I think, for some reason, are significant… though I’m not sure they are.

I suppose we are trapped by time, because we see it as a jail with two walls at either ends of our lives, but these are just two doors, with hints of beauty and tragedy between. Opportunities to love. Opportunities to consider the concept of home.

I took a class which turned out to be surprisingly wonderful this spring. It was a writing class focusing on travel narratives. What is so compelling about the heroes’ journey? What is the truth in a first-person narrative? What is the documentary value of a story? These kinds of questions are what we had the opportunity to mull over. Another was, “what is home?” To help us envision this consideration, came the writer, Julien Hoffman, to lecture to us and to read to us from his book, The Small Heart of Things. I loved it.


“Anywhere has its stories if we look and listen for them
This is what interests me: How do we go about being at home in a world, a beckoning world, graced by murmurs at every turn. “

This spring I took a bunch of nicknacks I’ve collected over ten plus years and went for a long and meditative walk around, what I could consider more than anywhere else, my home town. Conveniently, this town provides a rocky walk along the ocean so that very easily you can find yourself feeling alone with the sea. Then I took the items out of my pocket: mostly things like rocks or carved wood that I had made into monuments along the road - things which I felt weren’t polluting as much as giving back to that great indifference and I threw them in- not all at once mind you. One at a time, with time to contemplate what each one meant to me, then I let it go with a throw. Then I walked on.

“Everything beckons us.”

In need of a folk song or conversation

had a bad night not long past.
My car didn’t go but,
My mind did.
don’t know what happened, except,
When you’re up shit creek
At 3AM,
Who you gonna call?
Becomes an important question.

Things I learned in 16th Century British Literature: lesson 3

“All We Saw was Your metaphysics” Blake and the “Marriage of Heaven and Hell”

From my Class Notes:
Blake licenses everyone to be a prophet. Prophecy is not dead. Generic incommensurability.
Juxtaposes philosophical with proverbs etc, and by doing so leaves huge interpretative gap.
People will expropriate properties of personifications and use it to enslave others. Blake says no.
We are makers. Genius. We make personifications. This book is a toolkit.
Power of imagery demonstrated in nation-making.
“as the eye so the object”
“all that we saw was owing to your metaphysics”
For Blake imagery is judgment. Makes the ability of the poetic genius. “The hunger of imagination which preys incessantly upon life”
Insanity cured by conversation

What I learned:
As a poet you can create your own metaphors, which is most all what any-one has when it comes to explaining the inexplicable. Basically, don’t let politics of control use fear borne of someone else’s dogma control you. Supersede that.

Also. A folk song may save you from the fear of superstition in the darkness of a drunken walk home from the pub.

Things I learned in 16th Century British Literature: lesson 2

Synecdoche In Burke’s A Sentimental Journey

From my Class notes:
Sentiment: an equivocal doctrine of virtue: spontaneous, especially resulting in Virtue.
The book is trying to curb male desire.
Sterne is more realist. There has to be some kind of euros. Metonymy of Synecdoche all over. Communication often the means of exchange. Snuffbox.

Where Rasselas said that “let all prevalence of fantasy over Reason is insanity” Sterne is just the opposite!
Takes pulse of woman. Fever associated with feeling.
French woman not concerned about having to relieve themselves while riding in coach. Escaping a prudishness.
Chambermaid. Coins in the purse. A joke, vulgar.?
Starling shouts “I can’t get out”
Yorick exchanges wet handkerchief with Maria.
Gloves. Swords.
A story about a male constantly diverting sex.

What I learned: So much of life is that existential problem that we are only us. One of our greatest desires is to close the gap between our experiences and that of others. What do we have but shared experiences and symbolic gestures. Sex may be the first act that comes to mind in this vein, but there are others, which Yorick ridiculously proves. A shared handkerchief, Cigar, Meal. These things can mean more than their conjunctions. Something in these things are beautiful. So it is sad when institutions of “morality” say that these things are immoral- like Jesus eating with sinners. How can you not see the beauty, even if it is, so often, a tragic one.

Things I learned in 16th Century British Literature: Lesson 1

Artists have long been philosophers, seeking to maintain God’s relevance beside the Natural World’s opposition to Religion

From my class notes:
Boerhaave sought to marry theology to botany, medicine, and chemistry.

Christian thought ought to take back modernism relativity and stop identifying with constructionist tradition.

But imitation in Christianity i.e. Thomas Aquinas. (How would Johnson’s approach to common-places effect idea of relative morality?)

Boorhaave cures himself at age 12. As a Christian, meant to bear pain with patience, but also labour: help to improve the world.

In an age of rising novel, Johnson concerned about how one can come to empathize with “mixed” character.
Biography more about imitation. Elements of life as instructive
Observation. A medicine application “empiricism” from observation.
Johnson to weld cure with curiosity. Curiosity as a value.
Cure is an antiauthoritarian strain.

What I learned: Curiosity may not be a stoic value, but it can be a religious one. Art, science, and religion do not negate, but rather, may depend on one another.

Its a dangerous thing walking out your door

In “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off” the great germ isn’t why everyone at school loves him so much, it’s why his girlfriend loves him. You think its because he’s charismatic, fun, unafraid, and takes her to the fanciest restaurant in the fastest car… but I think its actually because Ferris Beuller knew “exactly what you were going to do when you woke up this morning.”
He’s a man with a plan. Why wouldn’t a girl want that?
Integral to my lack of ever following through on a relationship might be the fact that I don’t have a plan… and I don’t mean career or whatever. I mean, I don’t even know what I want out of a relationship. There are appeals, but I don’t know which one’s I’m really willing to trade-off my current existence for. Sound ridiculous? I know.

I’ve blamed the Christian culture for a long time. In this culture there is often such emphasis put upon traditional coupling (marriage and procreation, preferably in that order) that girls will either shy from a relationship they fear they can’t commit to in a really serious way, or if they do, consider marriage to be right around the corner. I’m speaking only one gender side. I believe it works the opposite way too. Its just that I only want to get my feet wet. So I went out with a few girls outside my particular tradition, and things were slightly less complicated… but then, nope. They were complicated too. What do you want out of this? I suppose this is the crap that dating websites try to cut to the bone through, and about which no-one tells the truth anyways.
But talk about guilt complex, when you quit a relationship, having grown up in my culture. I’m really not sure if its good or bad to feel so much. Then there’s the division of breaking with the culture and with what you believe is actually right. They often feel the same, and rebelling against one’s conscience is a no-good thing.

I have a friend who knows what kind of girl he wants and what kind of commitment he’s looking for. He actually loves the idea of commitment. He will, undoubtedly, sooner-or-later join the increasing ranks of those guys around me paired off in steady and committed marriages of some kind or another. Maybe he’ll even settle down in one city with a regular job. Bold, undoubtedly, and good, for certain. Yet, here I still am, wondering at the diversity of experience in the world and wondering, probably very selfishly, but certainly with real curiosity, at the panoply, quite unsure of what I want. Do what you know? I don’t know. Do what you want? Does that include anything? Everything? Do you really even want it to?

I Just don't know. Tell me that's ok.

I’ve often equated my relationship to romantic relationships to the Joker’s explanation for his actions: “I’m like a dog chasing cars: I wouldn’t know what to with it if I caught one.”
In the film, Up in The Air, George Clooney’s character believes his own philosophy that less is more, is true. Watching his motivational speech in the film, I find it resonating.


Imagine you wake up with nothing “kind of exhilarating isn’t it?”
Of course, Clooney goes on to fall for a real human and find his philosophy crushed, But the romance of retreat remains.
Everybody I talk to these days seem to want to travel or to live in the woods in a “self-sustainable” cabin.

We love the story of an artist writing a masterpiece In a lonely house in the woods, or the breakup album written on a journey of self-reinvention, but aren’t the greatest creative works really collective; the product of a crowd working closely on the same project?
If we are told to own our choices, then we are implicatively responsible for our failures, and this is what I think I truly am afraid of… the breakup. The hurt caused to someone else. The scar inflicted on myself, about which someone else may someday, upon seeing, ask “how?”
Who says we can’t share our trials and errors? Who says they have to be regretted every time? Who says we can’t come home and admit our ideal decrepit?

I love the end scene of Cast Away

I’ve heard that dreaming about owning something can bring just as much pleasure as actually owning it. Say, a boat. I spend a lot of enjoyable time wandering around boatyards with a coffee in my hand imagining what it would be like to have one of them. Actually owning one, however, makes me think I’d be stressed when I’m using it that I had picked the wrong one, and stressed when I’m not using it thinking of the moorage cost. Then I’d also have to think about maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and safety. They say that the day a man buys a boat is the best day of his life, second only to the day he sells it.
The Romance of possibility is rather beauteous. There is this coffee chain that extends the island, and some of the mainland, and they all tend to have a similar ethos. The funny thing is that often when I walk into one, I am flooded with sentimentality, which I’ve placed in the planning I’ve made while sitting in one. Particularly it was one time when I was on a road trip and stopped in to take coffee, take notes, and decide my next road. The sentimental moment was one where I had few ties, no real obligations, a set amount of free time, and enough money that I didn’t have to think about gasoline. I could pick any road and go anywhere the road took me.
I loved that feeling and I’m pretty sure I think I still do.


But is this just fear? Would I be better off role-playing, living in fantasy all my life than actually taking the risk of committing to a destination? Maybe, but will I have lived well? This I don’t know.

coin flip

I don’t want to grow up.
I’ve never ever said this.
But I might have meant it.

There’s a Ted Talk by this guy named Shwartz who says that there is such a thing as having too many options. Economists say more the better, but Shwartz says that with many choices come a paralysis of decision-making capability, or, on the other side, regret that we haven’t made the best decision once we’ve made it.
I get this.
I’m the guy who, when playing a strategy bored game, will keep his options open, toying with each of the several strategies I could use to win, thinking that this will serve me, and it almost does, until the game ends and the winner is some guy who took a gamble and put all his tokes in one fire. I thought that this might have been my discipline of delayed pleasure, or of discretion, but I wonder now if it’s a microcosm of something else too…
One of my favorite podcasts is from Freakonomics, by the guys who wrote the books by the same name. Anyways, they launched this comically radical science project recently. They aim to collect a large data set of people who, upon the need to make a big decision in life (we’re talking, job placements, moving, marriage, changing religions, big stuff like that) are willing to give up the stress for an otherwise difficult decision and give it to the experimenters to take the burden upon themselves with the arbitrary flip of a coin.

happiness?

Its been a good year. The summer was quite probably the best yet, and it was not because I was winning at the rat race. In fact, it felt like it was because I had checked out. It got me to thinking about what constitutes the “good life.”

I knew this marimba player once named Bruce. He had grown up in South Africa. He was one of those guys who just put you at ease to hang out with. He told me that he had a friend from South Africa who had lost his family and everything he owned in a fire, but who carried on. This man said that he only needed four things to be satisfied with life: Fresh food, a place to sleep at night, friends and faith. Bruce said he took this set and added his own two: Family and something to look forward to every week.

I wonder if sailors understand life better than landlubbers. I mean, theres the classic motif of the poverty-striken sailor who can't give up the peril for want of food to put on the table, but we know there's also the money-hungry men who we see on “world's deadliest catch” and moreover, those who just love the ocean- peril and all. They talk about being at peace on the water. Somehow it makes sence, drifting on the great indifference, that you'd feel your place in the universe. Also with the imminence of death. Fishing is apparently by far the most regressive Canadian Industry in terms of worker safety. I wonder if the closeness to death, like Bruce's friend in South Africa, makes the sailor appreciate and even enjoy life more.

Why is it sailors in that parable? You know, the one where the man goes down to the pier to find two sailors smoking and playing chess. He asks why they aren't working. They answer that the fish will be there tomorrow. He insists that they could be catching them today. They ask why they would. He says so they could make more money. They ask why. He says, so they could put some away. They ask what for. So you can retire early, he answers. Well what would we do then, they ask. Whatever you want, he exclaims. One of the men spits and moves his knight. Doin' it a'ready. Of course the story isn't about laziness, its about being alive.

We live in a society that respects the self-made person, the steady worker and the empire-builder, but we envy the person who is happy. Scoff at him if it means he's sitting on a beach waiting for the surf. But we envy him all the same.

I had a long talk with Philosopher Robert recently. Got to talking about how we are all on a journey, how none of us- in any religion or doctrine have a monopoly on knowing God. We are perhaps privy to enough, but encouraged to pursue more. At the end of the day we are a mortal looking into the night sky and wondering, and I wonder, if that's not as good as anyone can do. To be. To sit on that beach and recognize one's place in relationship to their creator. I've made fun of the Yoga freaks, as I jokingly call many friends of mine, but more and more I think they are practicing a discipline which seekers of truth and life, of God, of all kinds have been practicing for millenia. The Bible teachers get uncomfortable now, but I offer Mary who sat at Jesus' feet as preferable to Martha running around trying to make things right. I think about Jesus' teaching on worrying and wonder if he wasn't getting our perspective back in order. Thinking about tomorrow isn't going to change it, but being here, now, is good. Personally, this is what I think the idea of a Sabbath is about. We have a week to be agents of productivity, but on the seventh we should, if we can, relax into who we are as human beings, as creations of the devine. I'm not going to say I'm very good at this, because I really don't think I am. I am the guy who will put my desires to do something “great” before relationships. I am the guy who will forfiet the feast before me by banking it on some pipe dream. Another of Jesus' parables was about the man who stored up food for many years and then died before he could do anything with it and maybe this is about the frailty of life or the importance of sharing or of not being lazy, but maybe if the man had thrown a party with his excess he might have been happier about dying. I don't know. How do we live the good life?

Over the years I've fallen back on that verse from Micah which simply tells us “I have shown ye, oh man, what is good and what the LORD requires of thee. To do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”
It could be simple.

I've got to make a TV show recommendation. I really do. Its called “Derek” and its available as an exclusive on that movie streaming service everyone uses. Just seven short episodes, but if you have any appreciation for British humour, watch it. The main character is named Derek, who is described by his roommate as not having “a lot going on up there, but what is, its all good”. In the last episode different characters reveal their boiled down life philosophies, deciding that Derek had hit upon a way to live the good life, even if he was a bit simple. He had figured out that being kind to others made his life have meaning and made him feel good. It was simple, but something that no-one else seemed to get. It was like a boulder in the middle of the road which everyone walked around but if you were to climb atop it you would have found a sign that said wait here for the bus.

One of my teachers in high school, i remember, advised my class to not be caught up with getting life all lined up. “First it was finish high school for me,” she said, “Then finish university, then meet a man and get married, then have a child. It was always the next thing, but I don't think it needs to be.” I guess i took her words to heart because i did about eighteen different things between the time i graduated high school and decided to get a university degree, and none of them was get married or have a child. But now even those sound like they could be great adventures. Peter pan thought that even death could be a great adventure.

“Our daily bread” Jesus said. In our society we might be lucky enough to live one that's not entirely “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” as Hobbes put it, but all things in perspective. We don't live forever in this life, and that informs our perspective. We live with the immediacy of temporality. Beauty becomes sacred. Enjoy it before it sets behind the city lights.

considering dogma in 8 scenes

It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar... it is indispensable to be perpetually comparing [one's] own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances."
John Stuart Mill

Scene 1: Don

“You know, you're the first religious person I've met in Canada”
“Really eh? Yeah... well, frankly the West-coast isn't known for being the most churched part of the country, you're not as likely to find as much of a “religious” culture here. Not in the traditional sense anyways.”
Don was from Ireland. Brainwashed, he would say, by the overbearing Catholic church there, and plenty bitter about it. He would be working with me for another couple weeks on the farm. He was a thoughtful and hilariously explicit musician. I loved having him around.
“They lied to me. Out and out. Compromised my primary education by telling me science was wrong because they couldn't make it work with their system. They held fear over our heads to control us when we were kids and it wasn't till i was a teenager that I got the guts together to call it out for all its bullshit. I mean, I get that religion is a way of self-betterment for some people, and i respect that, and, you know, you seem pretty relaxed and open as a religious person, but in my experience that kind has been anything but the norm.”
“Yeah man, I don't know. I can't speak for others, and I guess that's it. We're all on a journey, and for some that has brought them to a fairly static place. Personally, I feel like I've seen too much to paint the world in black and white. For me there's really something about Christianity that I value a lot. I mean, there has to be, but I get it if you don't. I don't know much of your experiences, but I'm guessing your choices and views on life are based on some pretty unique ones, and I can appreciate that.”
“Its dogma I can't stand” he said. “I mean, I was down in Texas a while back and had a fellow tell me to my face that I was going to burn in hell. You know? Because I didn't believe what he did.”
I sighed. “Yeah... that bothers me too, but I've been thinking about that kind of thing. I mean, I don't appreciate the sentiment either, but you know, if we remove ourselves from that kind of 'blind faith,' if you will, you have to kind of admire it, don't you? I mean, whether you're a Islamic extremist with a bomb strapped to your chest or a Bible-beating baptist who won't give on his particular belief system no matter what is propped up in front of him to illuminate its absurdity, its sort-of admirable that both kinds of fundamentalist tolerate the kind of prejudice they do while sticking to their guns. Its sort of amazing. That's real belief isn't it? I think if I'm going to try to understand others' reasons for believing the things they do and the choices they make, that includes the extreme dogmatists, that's all. Its something."
“I don't know” Don answered. “I wouldn't use the word respect. Unless its respect like I respect that doorjam after i got my foot caught in it and got all bruised up. Its a respect based on fear. Fear of the potential for getting hurt. I'll look out for it next time.”

Scene 2: Olivia

“Ok, well, if you don't mind me asking, could you date or marry a girl who wasn't Christian?”
“Could I or would I?”
“Both?”
Olivia was riding in the car with Don and I. Olivia from South Britain. She's come to work at the farm too, and she fits right in. Unlike Don, she doesn't have a religious background. She's just curious about mine. I love being the center of attention, so I let her drill me on whatever she wants. Plus, she's pretty.
“Well, I don't suppose there's any strict rules against it, although there are some bible verses that churches toss around to argue against marrying out. Personally, I think it comes down to the fact that I wouldn't be likely to marry someone who didn't have some similar faith experience because its integral to who I've become, in the same way that I probably wouldn't marry someone who grew up in a different culture or class. I mean, look around you. It happens, but not often. We tend to pair up with those with commonalities. If i was truly in love with someone who didn't believe what I did, I don't know. I haven't been there. If it happened my answer might be different.”
“Yeah, religion shouldn't keep people apart if they want to be together”
Don, despite his cynicism is yet the romantic. (When I first met him he reminded me of Glen Hansard so much that I had to ask if he'd ever met him. He simply answered, “ah yeah, I've met Glen.”)
“Ok but what about this...” Olivia pressed on, “Wouldn't you not want to marry someone outside the church because then you'd believe that she was going to hell while you were going to heaven? Right?”
“Yeah, I don't know...”
“But isn't that right? If you don't believe then you go to hell? And you wouldn't want your wife to go to hell.” Olivia's sincerity makes me want to marry her, a little bit. Maybe she's right.
“Yeah, the rest of the world gets to go down below 'cause they got it wrong” Don confirms.
“What do you believe about that? That's right isn't it? I hope I'm not putting you on the spot too much asking you all this,” Olivia presses.
“Well that's it. I don't know. I mean, the party line is, yes, pretty much what you say. But who makes up these doctrines?” I stumble along “I mean, I get that the church as an institution has to have its belief systems in a row, but personally, my guess is that a lot of Christians will admit that they aren't sure. There really isn't that much in the Bible, if that's what you're basing your doctrine off of, about Hell. Not really that much about afterlife in general, not in a conclusive way. I think there's quite a bit of room to question and not be sure at the end of the day. I don't have a conclusive answer, but since you're asking me, I just don't see it. The idea that there is a streamlined narrow belief set that you have to subscribe to to get out of here without getting burnt, and the rest are screwed because they weren't lucky enough to stumble onto that path- yeah, that doesn't really make sense to me.”

“What's the difference between Faith and Belief?” Olive again. We are almost back to the farm.
Damn good question.
“I don't know that I've given that enough thought to be honest, but I suppose some might say that belief would be like believing that a car will carry you across the country, whereas faith would actually be to get in the car and drive it across the country. I think that's a reasonable metaphor.”
“Right, that makes some sense I think.”
Don hesitates as we pull up to the farm house “I would rephrase the analogy” he says, “Belief is more like seeing a boat and thinking that it will float and faith is taking it onto the open sea to see if it sinks.”
Don. Always the romantic.

Scene 3: the marriage of Heaven and Hell

I didn't see it coming. I had dragged my lazy summer legs to church in the heat of the summer, secretly hoping for a short, palatable and practicable message. I did not expect the topic to be on “heaven and hell” and for the speaker to spend 95% of his time emphasizing the hell side.
He opened by saying that if we were people who believe the bible should be taken literally as it is written then we should stick around for the remainder of the message. The assumption seemed to be that we did.
I considered leaving right then, but like the time I'd paid for a terrible box office remake of a terrible box office original under the influence of several pretty girls, I stuck around to see what happened.
There were a few classic fallacies to follow. There was the “if-the-preacher-says-it-its-above-question” fallacy (“There are hundreds of references to hell in the Bible”... wait a sec. No there's not. Not even close. What's a “reference”?). Then there was the, drawing a parallel from one section of the bible to another, in this case nehemiah on the watchtower applied to a warning about post-life punishment. “If the bible says it...” even if in several different places. Like playing beatles albums backwards or finding connspiracy plots in peoples magazine using numerology. There was the Jonathan Edward bomb: he said this therefore we believe this. Then there was a collection of quotes on hell, as if by someone else saying it it proved something. They weren't qualified or barred, just stated. Like this one: “If you don't believe in hell you're probably going there”. Wow. If anything fosters a fear-based dogma its that kind of thinking. If I, who as you now know, am not always sure about what I believe, does that mean I'm necessarily going to hell- and not just any hell. THEIR version of hell- because that's the one I don't believe in. What if I don't believe the right things about other parts of doctrine or characteristics of the unfathomable deity we humbly call “God”? Am I in danger of fire? Is this a gospel based on fear? Hold onto your beliefs and bury them deep within the bunker with your shotgun shells and canned goods, 'cause when the day of reckoning comes, we need to protect them as our lives depended on them. Don't question them, because we all know where that leads.

Scene 4: Love and Fear

I don't know how many people brought up that particular sermon at the pub or dinner table after church that night, except I know that I found conference with a couple of educated and experienced thoughtfulls in a back corner who took issue with the sermon as i had, and made me feel better about doing so. Two Sundays on, however, I found myself at a table with a few other church-goers with a prompt to discuss practical ways to love other people. It wasn't long 'till the topic from two weeks ago was brought up. One member at the table had apparently swallowed the watchtower metaphor down to the dregs and was sincerely concerned about the eternal destination of those in his life and wondered how to show love and draw them to the light as an act of well-meaning love.
“How do you translate to someone to whom you are asking to change their whole worldview” he asked. “Why do we get so hesitant, so scared? We are doing them a favor. They need to know.”
None of this was making sense to me and i had to contribute my perspective. It was beginning to scare me how the conversation was ringing with the remaining tones of an earlier fearful bell of my religious history which i thought had been cut down. I began by advocating that a practical way to love others was to approach humbly. We aren't any better than anyone else, i said. Not really. Our decisions are really very attached to our experiences and the more we realize this the more we can speak honestly about who we are, what we believe and why, while adjusting OUR worldviews to understand why others see differently than us. This is where I need to start to really love someone, I said to treat them as equal as God says we are.
But a comment from across the table wanted to make a distinction. Perhaps she heard echoes of pluralism in my monologue.
“But we are different: we have made a choice. Its grace, like you say, but we are different.”
So hard, I thought, to love as we aught while holding fundamentals which seem to embody a politics of othering. Yes, we accept that the difference is grace, but its no more extended to us than to those who aren't inclined to reach for it through the dark. I reminded that we should be careful, if not fearful in expressing our beliefs, because some have very good reasons to have negative associations with religion or faith.
What concerned me was the fear that the message on hell had seem to left on some hearts. I've been there, and I don't think its right. I don't.

I heard a podcast once, about a guy who coined the self-identitifier “possibilitarian”. As funny as it was pertinent, The idea was that in a world of conflicting certainties, he wasn't sure about a lot of religious assurances, but believed that they were possible. Not a new philosophy, but a fun rephrasing for an era worn down by more than a century of years Christian fundamentalism and culture wars. Inter-disciplinary awareness tells me that science has been backing down from absolutes and philosophy has not solved any of the great questions, and I find this invigorating. The conception might be that this perceptions ask one to question their faith. But I don't think that's quite right. Do we trust a system of doctrines, or God? Some will say I've sold out to say that we need to step back to see a bigger picture, but I'm trying to be honest about where this journey is taking me. I don't think I'm out to undermine a belief system, but perhaps faith, for me, is trusting God while realizing that searching for truth will not always jive with what I've believed before. Trust God while discovering his world. Step into the void like Indiana Jones? Philosopher Robert likes to say that if atheism were true then God would want us to be Athiests. Can I trust God to get me through a journey if that journey is a genuine pursuit of Truth and Light? It has been said that all truth is God's truth. What have we to fear?

Ignorance is bliss?
nah...
Ignorance is closing your eyes in the twilight.

We wait for all the cards to be on the table, but we look out the window trying to glimpse the wind.
Limitation is life.
but I trust its enough.

Scene 5: a Red Light

I rolled down my window at the red light and leaned across the passenger seat to say hi to a guy I knew from the church I used to help out at in the town where I used to live. I wouldn't say we got along really well, but he was well-meaning. If anything, I was probably a jerk and he was the guy who ignored the fact. Got to give him that.
“You heading to church?” he asked, we were both driving into the city, away from our small town church. I hesitated. It was sunday. I was on my way to have breakfast with friends. I hadn't been to church on a Sunday morning in a long time.
“Uh, no. Breakfast... You?”
“Yeah, a new church” he gave me the name. “You know it?” I'd lived in the neigbourhood a long time. I knew a lot of the local institutions. I knew this one by reputation. I wanted to ask why he wasn't going to the church back in the town, but i guessed at the answer.
One trades up.
The name of the church denomination made my stomach turn a bit. I've come to know it through a collection of vocal Church people from around town who I'd come to, frankly, avoid. Even showed up to a few of their church services when I followed a pretty girl in. What I couldn't handle was how everyone seemed to be talking at me, from a point of authority. They told me that scriptural authority was ignored by most churches. They told me about the denomination's Bible college in California as some kind of utopia. One guy came back espousing scriptural authority and the importance of exegesis. Fuck. I've heard enough of that greek derivitave cultural contextualizing business. Same as any historical work except that these kinds of Christians are the only ones who seem to think they can achieve an authority on truth whereas the rest realize that there's inherent problems which prohibit any ultimate claim. Two of the loudest of this following had built a reputation in my mind for backing less-confrontational people into corners and telling them how the Catholic church was a heretic pagan institution. Not a fan of that approach, nor the attitude. Also not a fan of how leadership in Christian institutions, whether churches, youth groups or campus ministries, look at the headstrong people like these guys and mistake it as a leadership asset which should be employed in their institution. Scares me, to be honest. Young people don't need a narrow set of ideals and doctrines any more than the rest of us, but it might do them more damage.
The problem, as I see it, is that a group like the one my friend was enroute to congregating with might have been as well-meaning as he was. But when you start saying that everyone else is wrong and only you have it right, it seems like you're on your way to becoming a cult yourself. For better of for worse, people seem to latch onto groups with a strict set of beliefs, and I guess that included me, but a few years ago owning the authority stopped sounding cool and smart and cutting-edge, and started rubbing me the wrong way. When you set up your bible, your interpretative process, your college professors or the word of your pastor from the pedestal as some kind of idol, some kind of authority, I get scared and defensive. When someone starts waving the Bible like a weapon that they alone know how to use, then I'm afraid they might indeed kill and maim, well meaning or not. Knowing the Bible is not knowing God. Categorically its not. Does knowing more make me elite anyways? Does the lubricant from spitting contests sharpen iron, even if a sword is what you wanted? Is scriptural interpretation based on seeking the truth or propping up one's own ability? Authority? Philosopher Robert recently told me that the more he experiences in life the more he has learned to question those in power: those who have something to lose by losing their side of a debate.
The light turned green and I pulled away.
Its tough to get along.

Scene 6: Fear; all that we saw was owing to

I don't know if it was the dreary rain that oppressed my glorious hike on the West coast or my aloneness, the Vampire Weekend song I had just heard on my drive up to the trailhead
(“If I’m born again I know that the world will disagree
Want a little grace but who’s gonna say a little grace for me?

We know the fire awaits unbelievers
All of the sinners the same
Girl, you and I will die unbelievers
Bound to the tracks of the train

I’m not excited, but should I be?
Is this the fate that half of the world has planned for me?”)

but somehow, for some reason, I was transported back to a dark place in my spiritual journey- a place ruled by fear. I fell, like a spirit on my soul or drug on my mind on oppression which drew on the fatal threat of “what if”. If you let the “what if” rule you- succumb to the possiblity that the fundamentalist is right, that those not accepting of the truth and redemption according to their system is doomed- then there was no way out. There was no chancing that it COULD be wrong. The stakes were too high. Must treat it like truth. Not even room to question- to reintrepret it, to re-explain. No room for any of that.
I thought about something I'd read about, I think it was about Brother Laurence who evidently struggled much of his later life in knowing twheter his sould was secured for salvation. Brother Lawrence, the guy who wrtoe the book on just enjoying God's prescence and fnding joy and satisfaction in doing every menial task to his love, rather than regimenting certain blocks of time to disciplined and forced communion. I wondered if he doubted his salvation when he looked around and reaslized that he was doing things differently than everyone else. He wasn't obeying the formula. He doubted. He fell to the “what if” and he stumbled into fear. In fear religion is an opiate.
Its better to die on your feet than live down on your knees.” I'd heard the mantra applied to life in religion and heard it as a sad rebellion against a God who doesn't force us on our knees, but helps us find our bearing. In this moment of regression, this hike of fear, however, I suddenly encountered what I think they really meant.
My sould screamed it to the fear, and my will said “NO!” with but a hint of a quiver, “NO!” I can't go back there! I'd sooner walk away and loose it all.
This is no way to live.
Hell, this is no way to hope.
And so I came back to that odd bit of gospel- like the word “gospel” itslef; the idea that Jesus' message was, in fact, “good news”- I came back to that line, desperate to believe it, “the Thief comes to kill and destroy, but I have come so that you might have life and have it to the full.”
No. This couldn't be gospel: This “what if”- this fear-based unsurety was the thief. It killed. It was destroying.
I looked up and saw cedars and salal bushes and picked some huckleberries and saw the birds and the surf and the people, all the beautiful people. And i breathed this goodness deep into my mortal lungs.

Scene 7: Come all ye weary

Pasta Rob was speaking at church. He offered up some hope. He reminded me of another little bit of gospel which pointed to liberation rather than slavery.
“Come to me you who are heavenly burdened and I will give you rest.” This was evidently saying that the gospel was being made accessible. 'till then the teachers of the law and members of the strict and full-time religious orders had something of a monopoly on righteousness and religion. The lower class people could only do their best to keep up with the books of law and regulations that were prescribed for a Godly life. Jesus said “enough!” A great weight will be lifted. Come to me you who are weary of being yelled at by preachers and told you aren't good enough. I will give you rest. Come to me you who feel weighed down by fear that failing to keep the rules will prove you don't love God enough or belong with his saints- those ruled by the fear of the fundamentalists and the dogma... and I will give you rest. Come to me you who are almost as fed up with religious people as you are with their religion, who are tired of being told to fit a mold- the pharisaic mold, the Sadducaic mold, the stoic mold, the protest line or the show-up-on-time mold, the mold that says you can play piano at church Sunday morning but not at the pub on Saturday night, the mold where a youth master is a near ideal with anything he effuses while a single, thirty-something artist academic who works at a charity which serves sex workers without bringing religion in, is most certainly not. He hasn't shaved in a while. I think he lives with a dealer. He asks inappropriate questions. He votes for the other party. He smokes when he's anxious. He makes us nervous. Why does he bother? Because Jesus said.
Come to me.

Scene 8: the impossibility of unconditionality... and the hope that its not.

We had just run into some Mormons- which was fun. I used to walk past them for the same reason i walk past pushy perfume kiosks at the mall: I'm not in the market. I knew that some people insistently challenge them and talk with them and debate them, but I felt this was equivalent to the same kind of spitting contest that evangelical denominations already have with each other. (Who is smarterest now?!) It accomplishes little. But then i realized that these young missionary guys (why are there never girls?) are all on a journey, literally, traveling on their own pilgrimage. Its really fun to get them off track by asking them about the different small towns they've stayed in. But all that is beside the point.
I was in Salmon Arm for a wedding and was strolling around town with a friend I hadn't seen in a few years: Crazy Chelsea. I love Crazy Chelsea. We used to go to the same college, but then she moved to the big city to pursue her desire to help people and change the world. I think it was there that she both made her mark, but moreover got marked up. But talking to her now was as good or better conversation as ever, and the Mormons set off a dialogue between the two of us as we parted ways with them, that allowed each of us to catch the other up on our lives in the years we hadn't seen one another. We had both re-evaluated our Christian educations. She asked how I managed to enter the academic world with my Christian perspective. By loosing it, I answered. Probably the best thing that could've happened, in hindsight. It was by having it all fall apart that I was able to accept new information openly and honestly and honestly put my faith experience against it. It was liberating, if depressing at times, and that should be telling. When my faith had really been deconstructed I had the good luck to meet people who helped me build it up with out a lot of the ill-foundations it had been built on before. Taking a religion course, for instance, without bias or concern of being proven wrong, was releasing. It helped me relate to people better.
Chels started talking about conversations she's had with her dad, stuff about angels sitting on pinheads or whatever, creationism and salvation and truth and the way one of these hangs on the other. She admitted that she didn't probably believe some of the stuff that her dad insisted on. She believed in the evidence of science, for instance, which he evidently considered an affront to religious truth. The trouble was that these conversations she had with her father wouldn't sit well with her later. The question became, she explained, “well dad, do you still love me. Do you still love me despite what I believe. I mean, I'm still your daughter aren't I?”

I know a guy who ran away from the cultish brethren church of his parents, as a teenager. Upset and looking to escape he ran straight to the continental hell hole of debauchery and decadence: Disneyland. When he ran out of money and food and returned home, however, his parents shunned him. Made him sleep in the basement.
My friend Laurels' grandparents believed that preacher from the states that said that the apocalypse was going to happen last year. I wanted to know how they treated their children and grandchildren in the lead-up. She said it was a chilly relationship. More interesting was after. Her grandfather came back to her mother and apologized. Her mother said no worries; we all believe some crazy stuff.

Chelsea's point was so valid. Does our love/care for others depend on their beliefs? Does God's? And when I was done chewing on that, I flipped it: Can I love the fanatical fundamentalist despite the pain they cause to others? That's a tougher one.

“And then” said Chels, “there's this religious idea I've been raised with that we aren't to be happy, pursue it, or want it. I think happiness is a gift, and something that I feel church has robbed me of.”

Freedom to question. Freedom To be loved regardless of beliefs or conduct. Freedom to pursue happiness. If I can believe that these are valid liberties, will I love people better, worse, or indifferent?

Changes IX: on our feet. on our knees.

I've been wanting to become a better person, and I suppose that is as much as anyone can ask. Its something which has had to begin at a reasserted sense of self-identity- a real desire to become better because its where I believe creator God wants me to be, but also as i realize the advantage it holds for me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the past semester, under the pressure of academic deadlines a tired body and heart I became effected by the duality of, on one hand, my own failures- and on the other, determination. I like the romanticism of positivism and the idea that i can make myself a better person, but I admit that it is God's grace that I continually rely on in a world where I am pulled by two relentless polarities- often failing, ever weak. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So we do the best we can in a world which is fraying under the weight. Sometimes we feel stronger and sometimes weaker and the lies fed to the strong are that they will always be strong and that their strength is a licence to run solo. What I think I've become more aware of is that my strengths are not for me alone any more than my weaknesses are. We help each other, and usually out of a place of shared infirmity, relative limitation, and the awareness of equality that that brings: “beggars telling other beggars where to find bread,” someone once said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “One thing I realize as I get older” Said a friend recently, “is that there is a lot of sorrow in the world”. I think there is a time early in life where you can largely ignore this sorrow, and it might even evade you. At some point, however, it will find you and it might destroy you or it might define you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discipline and conviction are, i suppose, what helps prepares someone for an event which his heart would normally respond badly to. It is what helps rescue workers focus on the tasks at hand and ignore shock. It is what makes you want to keep becoming better even after the girl who was your aim and hope cuts you lose. It might help you stay alive when others die. We take a deep breath, and with strength which comes from community and Grace that comes from God we put another foot in front.... And then another.

Changes VIII: encounters

I used to think that Clint Eastwood's movie Unforgiven was a little bit ridiculous. Just because I didn't really think that a woman could change a man. The fact that he finally reverted to his old cold killing self after she died shouldn't have come as a surprise. The fact that she had changed his character at all, and until years after she died seemed pretty far fetched. At least to me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But then I met someone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't really get that someone could fall for someone else so fast and so hard. Damn. So hard it hurt. Didn't know that could happen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The point here being that she made me want to be a better person. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now, its worth saying that it didn't go anywhere. I had to take a lesson in humility and acquiescence. I guess life goes on. But when I was trying to make an impression I felt like I had no ammunition. I felt like any charms up my sleeve had been had been corrupted on shallow flirting and social manipulation. I felt like a politician trying to be a real person offside the campaign trail. He suddenly realizes that aside from gimmicky speeches, honestly proving substance comes hard. Trying to be real, I stumbled and choked and I felt a welling within to be better. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was no gunslinging killer, but I realized I could be better, that I should be, and that I wanted to be. I suddenly realized what kinds of things motivate people improve themselves. The “WHY” hit me. For her, yes. For friends, yes. For God, yes. Why? Because I was made to be better, it just took some realizing that I wanted to be the way I was made: that this was in fact a very beautiful transformation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the past couple of years I have written on my disillusionment with ethics and christian religious life, contouring slowly back to where i have begun to find value in discipline and community once more. I think in more or less words I have decided that it takes seeing oneself as consequential to see a life as something worth improving. The “who” in my life have been cataclysmic.