July 2011
64 posts
“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.”
—Dead Poets Society (1989)
have you found out the dates and cities yall will be in? laura and i want to see you guys!
St. Paul the 29th, Grand Rapids the 30th.
There is no safe place:
Recently, the desire to communicate has increased ten-fold. For belief and candid speech to form between someone else and myself in order to convey passions and real truth betwixt the two of us. Here I am, talking on this “blog” wherein I feel extremely exposed. I think in a way you’re supposed to feel an openness about you when you write on the internet. Some people get addicted to that feeling. I have recently shied away from it and have kept most of my real thoughts to paper and pen, or just prayers. You know, the thoughts that let other people see you clearly. The ones that give them a chance to cut you to the quick. So this is less like a conversation than I would like.
There are times that I read my friends thoughts about God and I am completely mesmerized by their genuine and perfected speech about Him. It breaks my heart, because I know not everyone sees Him as they do. I catch glimpses of love and faithfulness and hope each day. Love that is evident in the perfect mixture of gasses in the air so that we neither suffocate or explode. In the way the rain falls to keep the trees alive, and the trees convert our carbon dioxide back into oxygen. In the way that my dog curls up next to me because he knows its safe. How we think, desire to create, and question things. Because we were made by a God that thought of us, beyond even the atomic structures. He, who crafted us to create. And He who expects doubt to come, so that we can seek truth and grow stronger. It can be excused as the goodness of people. But I think the goodness of people is the Imago Dei. The image of God inside of them. That image that gets denied so often.
Like when things happen that cause us to look up into heaven and say “He’s not there. He doesn’t care.” Today, when someone took a gun to 80-something kids and killed them all. When someone built a bomb and set it off in order to end lives. War and famine, murder, rape, disaster, sex-slavery, sweatshops, corruption, greed, theft, child-soldiers, disease, addiction…I really don’t want to go on, because I look at that list and there is rage inside of me, because I wish it wasn’t so. And I know that the terrible wrath I feel that shakes me in my bones and makes me sick, is because God has it too. And He sees it all. Every account, every instance, and knows what both parties feel. And He stays His hand.
Days like today, I look at the world and shake my head. My fist. It doesn’t have to be this way. But how can there be peace when there is war in the hearts of man? There cannot be peace, unless the heart of that man that wages battles in pursuit of some end he cannot see finds what he was made for. Peace.
I am sorry that there are so many people that do terrible, belligerent, malicious, deceitful, disgusting, and vile things in the name of God. I wish I could correct their brazen mouths when they called my Savior “Lord” before dispatching a child or stealing someone’s wife. I am sorry that our churches in America seem to sit on their butts worrying about carpet colors, while people need food and clothing. They don’t look like Jesus, they don’t act like Jesus, so I wouldn’t expect you to look at them and really want Jesus. He isn’t like them. Not at all.
Pieces:
I know for a fact that capitalism is failing so many of my friends. Subjecting people to “choose” when the pool of choices is dominated by the cash-flow to the most power-hungry, belligerent, and greed-driven reprobates you can’t call it choice. We are controlled by death-threats and anti-progress. You cannot move forward until there is a market for it, and that market must be controlled by the paper-harvesters.
Music is a sea. The alien and the familiar clash, like the waves, in my head. I hardly go to shows unless I’m playing them. I meet a lot of wonderful people, as well as the straight-conceited out there in that wild undulation. We hear and we react and we attempt to relate to all the differentiating art. I guess you call it art. I’ve never been one who can think all of what they call “art” is actually art. I have these standards that buttress my opinions of what is actually creative. Everyone has these, to some degree. I suppose the severity of your opinion hinges on how acute your perception of skill is. I’m not trying to be asinine, just think critically.
As I never go to shows unless I’m playing them, nor do I pursue finding new bands. And its because I play music. When I do find a band I like, I don’t usually have time to listen to their entire album to see how I really feel. So, I just listen to Thrice, As Cities Burn, and a handful of favorites. My appetite for music is small. Rather than listen to the popular or new, I listen to my friends, and my loyal relational albums. I know I miss out, but I don’t know where to start.
I am going to spend the next three hours writing short stories about:
- Bear Attacks - Oil Companies
- Good things happening to bad people and vice versa.
