Thoughts About The Church: Post 3

In times of presidential campaigning, such as now, I often fall for a certain candidate. I find myself asking questions such as; “Which candidate is ‘God’s man’ for the White House?” Yancey replies; “I have difficulty imagining [God] pondering whether Tiberius, Octavious, or Julius Caesar was ‘God’s man’ for the empire. The politics of Rome were virtually irrelevant to the kingdom of God.”

Thoughts About The Church: Post 2

Why are the words “evangelical” and “religious right” interchangeable? Why is “evangelical” defined as “someone who supports family values and opposed homosexual rights and abortion”? These are questions that Yancey poses in a book he wrote over ten years ago called, “The Jesus I Never Knew”. It is disconcerting to me that one can ask these questions ten years ago and that they are still pertinent today. The gospel of Jesus did not look like this. I guess I just don't think that the church (myself included) should be known for simply passing laws to enforce morality. I acknowledge that passing laws is good and necessary and anarchy is bad and all - it’s just that there has to be a better way. I have to believe it is better that we the church devote ourselves to something that actually solves the problem of the human condition instead of simply making that condition illegal. “We must continually ask ourselves: Is our first aim to change our government or to see lives in and out of government changed for Christ?” (Yancey)

Thoughts About The Church: Post 1

Over the next few days I intend to post several short writing that were inspired by Derek Webb, the documentary Jesus Camp, and Philip Yancey. The following is the first of those posts.

So I purchased the newest Derek Webb album recently. Nothing stirs me up about the state of the Church in America like Derek Webb. Sometimes when I look around at the Church, Christ’s bride, I want to avert my eyes. I watched the documentary Jesus Camp recently and you know, the church featured in Lees Summit, MO (a suburb of Kansas City, where I live) wasn’t really so disturbing to me when compared to the clips of Ted Haggard. I don’t think it would have even mattered if the scandal involving Haggard had been uncovered or not, red flags went up for me when he spoke.

It was Jesus’ intent to depart, to ascend, from the beginning in order to carry on his work in the bodies of his disciples and the body of his church, which is the new body of Christ. As St. Augustine said, “You ascended from before our eyes, and we turned back grieving, only to find you in our hears.” It is beautiful language that conveys the truth of the church being where Christ lives. It is God’s plan to extend the healing, grace, the message of God’s love, that Christ brought to a few, through the church. But Philip Yancey makes a profound observation, “Living two millennia after the disciples, I look back and marvel at how little difference the church has made in such a world.” Yancey also comments on how he finds it much easier to believe that Christ incarnated as God into Jesus of Nazareth than in the people who attend American churches.

I see such an emphasis on politics in the evangelical church. I hear voices like Ted Haggard who say, “If the Evangelicals vote, they determine the election” (from “Jesus Camp). Yancey says it better than I can; “Political movements risk pulling onto themselves the mantel of power that smothers love. From Jesus I learned that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, not otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.” The truth of this statement resonates in my heart. As Right and Left struggle to gain power, love is lost. The power of God’s kingdom is much more like a force that goes unnoticed. It works from within.

I'm sorry Dr. Dobson

Yesterday, I received the weekly newsletter that I subscribe to from Sojourners in my inbox. The title was Dr. Dobson, Let’s Have a Real Debate Instantly, my interests were stirred. I am sorry to say that they were stirred but they were nonetheless. It’s just that I have learned some things about Dr. James Dobson in the last year or so that caused me to be a bit leary or aprehensive of him, so I was interested in this curious title. See I grew up with Dobson and the ever-present Focus on the Family (his organization) in my own family probably sense the womb. He was the guy on the radio whose show always seemed to be on, no matter when we were driving. It was either Dobson or oldies when in the car. Also, my parents got his newsletters, his magazine, Focus on the Family radio theater and Focus on the Family movies. I recall all of it being great stuff and believing Dr. Dobson to be one of the most valued Evangelical leaders of this day in age. First Billy Graham, then Dr. James Dobson. If one of those guys died I knew we would be in trouble. But I moved out of my Focus on the Family saturated home and I started to see Dobson’s face show up in places I wasn’t as familiar with. Political places. I started to hear his name slandered by gay people I met and democrats in the media. And I wasn’t all that surprised that he was being slandered either. I wouldn’t be very happy with Dr. Dobson if I was gay or if I were democrat for that matter. I guess I started to disagree with Dobson a bit too, probably about the time I started to learn more about what “Right Wing Evangelical” meant. So, upon reading his name in a liberal Christian publication I became quite curious and I am I am sorry to say that I was courious in a gossipy way. I feel badly about it because I knew I was about to find some ammunition that I could use against the man who was the background music to much of my evangelical childhood and for some reason. I guess felt like I needed some.

The Sojourners newsletter begins with a quote about impeaching our president, in typical Sojourners fashion, then proceeds with the story I was eager to read; “Last week, James Dobson and a number of other Religious Right leaders wrote a letter to the National Association of Evangelicals, claiming that work on climate change was a distraction from ‘the great moral issues of our time.’” And terrible of me though it was, I found there my own justification to slander Dr. Dobson.

I read on to find that Jim Wallis, who is the Sojourners guy, Brian McLaren, another guy who write for Sojourners quite a bit, and a bunch of others are inviting Dobson to debate the question, “What are the great moral issues of out time for evangelical Christians?” This debate sounded pretty good to me as I read it for the first time, but the shenanigans of my brain did not last much longer. I began to wonder why I was encouraged to find that Liberal Evangelicals are now strong enough to engage the Religious Right? I began to wonder, “Oh my God, what is happening?” I began to see this debate as a further struggle for more power or a struggle to be seen as more powerful in this culture in order to make more progress for whichever cause it is that the side is fighting for. But what good is more power? Do we really think God views one side as more powerful than the other? This is nothing but divisiveness extending itself further into Evangelicalism.

I have been reading a book, slowly, that I have read before, and as a result it has been featured a few other times in this “Grace to Upend” blog. It’s a book by Donald Miller called “Searching For God Knows What”. I want to include a few passages from that book that spoke directly to me about this issue.

“Paul loved the people he had previously hated; he began to take the message of forgiveness to Jews and to Gentiles, to male and to female, to pagans and prostitutes. At no point does he waste his time lobbying government for a moral agenda. Nobody in Scripture who knew Jesus wasted their time with any of this; they built the church, they loved people.”

“Morality in this way, can be a circus act, giving a person a feeling of superiority.”

“I think most Christians . . . want to love people and obey God but feel they have to wage a culture war. But this isn’t the case at all. Remember, we are not elbowing for power in the lifeboat.”

I spoke with my Dad on the phone last night. My Dad is a fairly brilliant man, so I thought I would talk to him a bit about this complicated issue. He told me right away who he agreed with; not Dobson and not Sojourners, but he agreed with Donald Miller. He also told that he admires James Dobson for some of the tremendous work he has done but when it comes to Dobson’s political agenda I guess my Dad would call him a bit of a clanging gong. I told my Dad I was angry at the whole situation and he me that I should not judge Dobson for his political agenda or judge Wallis and the rest of Sojourners for that matter. It makes sense really. As a judge of Dobson or of Wallis I accomplish nothing. I ended being just like them in that I am choosing sides. Apparently my Dad used to keep up with the Christian politics and used to act on some strong opinions, but he doesn’t anymore and hasn’t done so for a while. He doesn’t know the reason he stopped, he just stopped doing it and he tries to do what our friend Donald Miller talks about, build the church, love people. The rest is just noise.

Like I said my Dad is pretty brilliant. Maybe wise is a better choice of words. Either way, I think I am going to align myself with my Dad’s thinking on this one. I am going to listen to Miller as he points to Scripture and asks me what I find in the person of Jesus. Love Dr. Dobson, love Sojourners, build the church, love people.

The search again

Firstly, I fail. It’s pretty simple really. I ended one of my more recent posts like this: “Here’s to future posts.” I wrote it with the hopes of posting more often. That was November 20th and I have yet to really post anything at all really. I guess there is just too much pressure and thus I am left postless. That is really about all I have to say about that. I just wanted to remove the expectation of posts occurring here often.

I have read Searching For God Knows What before. It’s not hard reading. No offence Mr. Donald Miller but what you write is not hard to read. I know some authors put a lot of effort into making their writing impossible to comprehend by blanketing it in difficult language and grammar. I understand that there is some pride in doing so. It is obvious that one is more intelligent than another when said “Another” has to read “One’s” sentences several time before being able to understand what the heck they are trying to get across. That being said maybe my writing could cause me to be classified as intelligent, because yeah, my sentences don’t always make sense.

Regardless, I am reading the book again because, difficult writing or not, there are great portions of this book that I can’t seem to wrap my soul around. Soul and not brain. I got my brain around it just fine when I read the book the first time but I never actually acted it out. Let me share a portion to explain:

“I know there are people who have actually gone from misery to happiness, but they didn’t do it by walking through three steps; they did it because they had a certain set of parents and heard a certain song and knew somebody who had a certain experience and saw some movie, read some book, had something happen to them like a car wreck or a trip to Seattle. Then they called on God, and a week later read something in a magazine or met a girl in Wichita, and when all this happened they had an epiphany, and somebody may have helped them fulfill what this epiphany made them feel, and several years later they rationalized this mystic experience with three steps, then they told the three steps to us in a book. I’m not saying they weren’t trying to be helpful; I bring this up only because life is complex, and the idea that you can break it down or fix it in a few steps is rather silly.
“The truth is there are a million steps, and we don’t even know what the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and me and they are always changing. I have come to believe the sooner we find this truth beautiful, the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking thing up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather in His guidance, His existence, His mercy, and His Love.” (from pages 14-15)

My friend Don is saying that life isn’t a formula and it’s not a storybook and it is not a Google search. Sure, I understand that in my head, but I can’t seem to stop living life like I can control God.

"On Swearing" by Ben Rogers

Originally I did not intend to give this article a second thought but as time has passed sense I last read it I have found myself wanting to share about it in conversations. Being that it is difficult to sum up this article in conversations I will gratify myself by sharing it here,just click the tile. (I am not sure if clicking the title works from facebook. If that is the case then you'll simply have to visit my blog to follow the link.) It is yet another great reminder of “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

I'd like to add that I found this article to be profound in some ways but offensive in others. You might agree with me when I say that those things often go hand in hand . . . but still I woul like to say, read with caution.

To Make People Happy

It is an amazing thing to make someone happy. I guess I realized that again today as I drank coffee at the coffee shop I used to work at. I have been brewing my own coffee in our little household coffee maker in order to get my fix for the past few weeks. I have done so being that I no longer work at the coffee place and can’t have the stellar coffee that they serve there for free any longer. The coffee I made in that little pot is nothing shy of fantastic, don’t get me wrong at all, I love drip coffee from Mr. Coffee but I have to say that today I tasted something quite unlike my Mr. Coffee made drip coffee. I walked into the building I used to work in feeling ashamed for not stopping by ever sense I quit even though I said I would. I said I would be in often just to assuage the guilt I had for quitting. The truth is I am a people pleaser. The very idea of my coffee-making-co-workers being disappointed with me for leaving made me quite somber. So I said to them I would visit as if my company would make everyone feel better about the whole thing. Obviously, I was not shunned for failing to keep my word. I was greeted with open arms and free coffee, which acted only as a fan to the flame of guilt that I carry, but nonetheless, I could not refuse the free beverage. I put the tiny ceramic cup to my lips, which held the precious macchiato in its bowl and was greeted with some of the most amazing espresso I have yet tasted. I was happy.

I recalled the times of my own employment at that very coffee shop, handing a patron one of the same tiny ceramic cups filled with life giving espresso. Or maybe it was not life giving and maybe I am taking this a bit too far but the point is I made the individuals who frequented that coffee place happy. They would tell me so. Not incessantly by any means but enough so that I new the coffee I made was indeed some of the best coffee they had yet consumed. I credit this to the coffee roaster, God bless him but the fact remains that I was a part of the experience. I could have destroyed that espresso shot but I did not serve bad coffee, at least not often or with my knowledge.

But that was some time ago. It was probably around the time I stopped posting here in “Grace-to-upend.” I have found that not having the routine, that a schedule of college classes provides, I have not been disciplined in my posting. I am disappointed by the lack of posts but surprisingly not because of my desires “to make people happy” (I really don’t want to give my own writing that much credit). My posting in a blog serves as a means for me to write for myself. If others benefit from this blog then I am flattered.

Here’s to future posts.

If we can't be holy, shouldn't we be weird?

It’s not often that I talk about faith with someone who doesn’t share the same belief system I do. I guess I just feel like people don’t want to hear about it. But just the other night I did have a conversation about faith with a man a hardly know. He shared with me his perceptions about Christianity. He shared about a lack of love and the great amount of condemnation and how it’s time that Christians realized that they are on the way out of a position of power and are essentially a dying religion. It was as he shared that I realized the truth that Sheldon Vanauken stated when he wrote that the strongest argument for Christianity is Christians, when they are drawing life from God. The strongest argument against Christianity? Also Christians, when they become exclusive, self-righteous, and complacent.

I have known all my life that Christians are to “come out and be separate” from those who don’t share our beliefs. I understood that our spiritual commitment should make us different somehow. But I have noticed that if we are not marked by greater and greater amounts of love and joy, we will inevitably look for substitute ways of distinguishing ourselves from those who are not Christians. Essentially, if we can’t be holy then let's be different by finding external methods to satisfy our need to feel that we’re different from those outside the faith. If we cannot be transformed, we will settle for being informed or conformed. (John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted)

Jesus didn’t function like this. I wonder what my ever perceptive friend would have noticed had he had love demonstrated to him. Instead on focusing on boundaries Christ focused on the heart and identified Children of God by asking “Do they love God, and do they love the people who mean so much to him?” What if that is what my friend encountered? It is pretty obvious that he wouldn’t have such a crappy perception of Christianity. I think that would be nice.

I only point this out because I realize my own guilt. I tend to work harder at making people think I am a loving person than I do actually being a loving person. I do and I realize that I have contributed to a crappy perception of Christianity. I intend on working to change that by drawing life from God.

guffaw

It's possible that things of this nature are more entertaining to me than they are too others. Enough so that I almost didn't post this but I have posted it for your viewing enjoyment. Just click the "guffaw".

Adventures in Instant Gratification

I recently moved to Kansas City. After an amazing beautiful summer I was privileged enough to make the sojourn to the mid-west with my wife. In our vows we promised to go on adventures with one another and to take each other on adventures. Moving here is an adventure. Here we’re poor and unemployed. It is a beautiful reminder to me that there are people in this world who do not have the ability to be instantly gratified. Let me elaborate.

We moved into a great old Kansas City house. Washington doesn’t have many houses like this and they are missing out. It’s a fabulous old place except my wife and I were not very keen to the color of our walls. Not a big issue though. We can buy paint, we can visit Home Depot, pick out our favorite colors, buy that paint, paint those walls, and done. Not we have beautifully colored walls that match our comforter and curtains. I am gratified.

Now for phase two of the instantly gratifying story. We moved into a great old Kansas City house but oh wait, the bed we were told was a queen is in fact a full. Again I am not gratified so after the room is painted my wife and I head out to every mattress outlet in Kansas City, we visit Goodwill, we check the classifieds. I must say we found some incredible deals but once you get that frame, box spring, mattress, combo going there you might find that you don’t need an incredible deal but that you need an impossible deal. That’s how phase two of this story ended anyway.

I lay on my full sized bed next to my wife closer than before as space permitted as our postropedic mattress cover hung over the edges wondering if the bed was in fact a double or if a double and a full are not actually the same thing . . . I realized that I could not be instantly gratified. A fantastic revelation really. I have said in the past that I am not a material person. I have boasted about in but in reality in the past when a “have or have-not” situation arose you could count me on the “have” side. I realized on that full (possibly double) sized bed that I don’t want to “have,” I want to make myself contented with what I already have instead of purchasing objects to alleviate my neediness. I’ll be ok living without a microwave and I think I can take the bus to work everyday. It’s an adventure for me really.

Quote

"Seven hundred thousand out of a total Lebanese population of 3.5 million, 20 percent of the population, mostly Shiites, are now being cared for and given refuge by mostly Christian schools, churches, and other humanitarian organizations. This is the story of the Good Samaritan at a mega scale! And to think that this is the outcome of a strategy that meant to rouse anti-Hezbollah feelings among the Lebanese population and government. Talk about a failed strategy! Of course, this has happened so many times before that any thoughtful tactician would have learned the lesson by now, but military muscle is always too hedonistic and narcissistic to listen to the voice of reason and history."

- Dr. Martin Accad, academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary of Lebanon.

Donald Miller and Western Faith

In Donald Miller’s book Through Painted Deserts he writes about the “how” questions vs. the “why” questions. He refers to “how” questions as being less important than the “why” questions. To my friend Don “how” questions sound a bit like this; “How do I get money, how do I get laid, how do I become happy, how do I have fun?” But “why” questions seem to be much bigger. They are the questions that underlie existence, nagging at us as we stare back at the cosmos and wonder “why?”

I have been taking a religion class that I finished today actually. In the class we reviewed the “big boy” religions of the east and west, starting with western ones and moving on the eastern ones. I have written a few posts that I will just never publish about that class due to my stupid frustration with western religion and especially Christianity. When I was writing these posts my words got caught somewhere between my brain and my fingertips (clogging some major arteries) so I gave it up hoping that the unexpressed would never need an outlet. Then I read some of Mr. Miller’s words and it helped me understand a bit. Don says that “[Christianity] did seem to stem from something beautiful, for sure, but it had been dumbed down and Westernized. If it was a religious system that explained the human story, its adherents had lost the grandness of its explanation in exchange for its validation of their how lifestyles, to such a degree that the “why” questions seemed to be drowning in the drool of Pavlov’s dogs.”

As the course moved from western religions to eastern religions my frustration subsided, I stopped referring to my professor as a Nazi, and the blood began to course through my veins again. I studied the east and began to have strange thoughts about Christianity. Thoughts like, “I bet if Christianity had been an eastern religion then Christians would actually be able answer some ‘why’ questions and not be such a joke to scholars.” Religion and daily life in the east are joined together in inseparable beauty, a thing of beauty that another hero of mine, David Crowder, applied to Christianity in his book Praise Habit. Christians have their church life, their church friends, their church clothes, all of which they use to successfully to mask themselves. Westerners have a kind of commercial, American version of spirituality. Again, Donald Miller to the rescue with a great example; “’What is beauty?’ I would ask. ‘Here are the five keys to a successful marriage,’ I would be given as an answer.”

In my religions class I saw Christianity through the eyes of the world and it terrified me. I have found out that the world has no idea what Christianity is because it got buried in western commercialism. Western Christianity focuses on the “how’ questions threatening to swallow us all in a bottomless greedy pit. “I needed God to be larger than our free-market economy,” confesses Miller, “larger than our two-for-one coupons, larger than our religious ideas.”

Legalism Also or Grace Is For Freeloaders

When legalism is the motivation a person can get pretty self centered, being very concerned with what they are doing that is wrong or right and not so concerned with loving people. A different friend of mine (different from the last post) was telling me the other day about how he had been helping a lady clean up her yard, but all the while he had a bad attitude about it. But even still, he couldn’t say that Christ’s love wasn’t shared then. He told me that would just be giving himself to much credit. I’m like that. I can concern myself with questions of right and wrong all day long and get nothing accomplished. I am sick of "right and wrong" and I am sick of being concerned with myself. I want to look past myself.

Legalism: harness the savage beast and go skinny dipping

I grew up with a legalist. That kind of implies that I was not buried in the confines of Christian legalism but you know, I was in it deep too. We were both in it deep so that escaping from it was just pure bliss. Older friends of ours who we looked up to in our young Christian faith started swearing, a Christian no-no, as a joke. Our rationale became; they swear so it’s ok just as long as non-Christians don’t hear us. So my legalistic friend and I would walk home from school cussing each other out with strings of swear words that didn’t make any sense together just to have a good laugh. My legalistic friend would laugh so hard at me that he wouldn’t even be able to stand up. I would try and keep a straight face while spitting out the nonsense swear words and he would pretty much fall over and pee his pants. I always admired him for that. I admired that he laughed harder than me. I got to the point where I may have been fake laughing a bit just to keep the game going because, hey, it feels good to make someone laugh so hard that they just pee everywhere. I’m pretty sure nothing else is better for one’s confidence levels.

My friend and I grew up some. We stopped swearing (I think it was because we got really convicted of it and not because it got old) and we started to drive cars around the age of 16. My friend had a beautiful heart and he still does. One of the reasons it was so beautiful then because of his stupid legalism and how it reared its ugly head when he drove. I say it was beautiful not because I appreciated it then, cause I hated it then. If the speed limit was 20 mph, he went just a hair under, so not to break the law. I mean he was 16 years old. He was supposed to be getting speeding tickets until they revoked his license. Now, I appreciate my friend and his legalism because he was doing what he thought was right no matter what. He was intensely doing something he believed in no matter what people thought about him and I think there is a beauty in that.

My favorite example of this was when four of us guys went out to the lake one night. It must have been about two o’clock AM and we are all jumping off the dock, naked, into duck poop pond, except my buddy. I remember being up on that dock, looking over at him and seeing his tears. Crying usually stops such fun being that crying means that someone probably stepped on a broken beer bottle or something else tragic had happened. My legalistic friend explained to us, the best he could through his sobs, that he was pretty much hating himself at that moment because we were all having such a good time and he was afraid he legalism was going to ruin it for us. See, the park we were in was closed after sunset, so we really weren’t allowed to be there and legalism was just destroying my buddy because he was there and yup, it was after sunset. We didn’t have to leave then but we did because it was obviously killing my buddy inside and since we wanted to be with my buddy we all left.

I don’t think I will ever forget that. It seems a pretty silly thing to remember; a guy crying, naked, on a dock, in the middle of the night looks pretty funny in hindsight. He tried to go against his legalistic nature and it just destroyed him. The guy couldn’t have fun the rest of the night.

That guy and I are still great friends but he isn’t legalist anymore and I am grateful for his sake. He is getting to taste freedom and grace and it is beautiful. He is an even more amazing guy because of it. Simply everybody wants to be friends with this guy. But something in me misses his legalism. I am the most tolerant I have ever been in my life right now. I am working for freedom from things that confine me and confine the work that I believe Christ is trying to do in me, and somehow I look back at my legalistic friend and I see a savage desire to do what is right that is attractive to me. I have lost that desire in my pursuit of grace. Sure, I want to do good still and to be good, I want it really quite badly, but “I want to really bad” just isn’t driving me like legalism drove my friend. My own past legalism and even the present legalism isn’t impressive to me and I am sure that my friends past legalism isn’t attractive to himself but I am just attracted to the degree of his desire. If I could just have that desire but somehow not be legalistic then I wouldn’t have to be sickened by my own selfishness so often.

The interesting thing is that my not-legalistic-anymore friend does even better at “doing good” now that he is not legalistic. In his freedom, he is awesome at loving people and it is because of a new “savage desire.” From somewhere, he got this crazy desire to love. It comes to him naturally. This new desire that my friend has harnessed quite unwittingly daunts me. It challenges me to love people like he does but I am afraid to try, I am afraid to fail, I am afraid of what people might think. I am stuck not wanting to challenge myself, always defending myself with the argument that if I challenge myself I’ll just fall back into that legalism.

The next season of my life will tell me a lot more about how I can reconcile all of this. This is just one of the reasons, reasons that keep popping up, for me to go and figure this stuff out. I am planning a move to Kansas City and when people ask why I give different answers depending on who is asking. Sometimes I say travel, sometimes I say to visit friends, to try something new. I think people label it as “He’s going to go and find himself.” Maybe that is true but more than anything I think I just want to go and learn and be a freak’n huge sponge to what’s out there. Hopefully, I learn a habit that I’ll never stop. Hopefully I learn to love people better. Hopefully I am on the right track.

-oholic

I used to get all offended about people smoking, especially as a kid. I was mean just like all kids (kids really say some of the most hurtful things, it’s true) and I would start to cough fairly obnoxiously when I smoker passed me by. I grew out of that. What developed though was a distain for people who smoked, and yes I was defiantly better than all smokers. My logic was undeniable. Smokers have this terribly weakness; they’re addicted, and the way I saw it I was not and therefore, I was better. It really makes sense if you look at it in that Aryan/white supremacy way.

Well, I got over that probably around the same time I found out that C.S. Lewis was a smoker. Who knew right? Or maybe it was around the time I started smoking cigars. I did that on and off for a few years until one made me puke like eleven times. What can I say; it was a memorable experience for all who were involved (the involved parties remind me of it incessantly).

Currently, I have a new reason not to look down upon someone for an addiction they may have. I don’t know too much about addictions or how they happen all I know is I have joined the ranks. I am not an addictive person, and by that I mean I don’t get addicted to things really, but the alternate meaning is probably true as well. But it appears I have become addicted to coffee. It caught me off guard really. I didn’t even think I drank all that much but man, if I don’t get a cup of joe in the morning I get a screaming headache and I get shaky. It's bad.

I don’t write this to say that I am above any other addiction, because I am told being addicted to coffee is kind of a minor thing. I write this to point out a lesson I am learning about myself: I am not above anything. I am finding I could probably be led to do just about anything. Present me with the right propaganda at the right time, or paint me that deceptive picture in my head and tell me it’s the truth and I’ll bite. I’m addicted to coffee and by becoming addicted I have realized I can become addicted to anything. God is teaching me that I am no better than the next guy.

Just hold my hand

When you wake up in the morning feeling vexed you can bet something is up. I’m struggling to recall the word that a friend so aptly called it . . . conflicted, that’s the word and that’s what I felt last night and this morning.

Media has that intriguing ability to take your emotions and run with them wherever. It doesn’t even have to make sense logically but media or, more specifically, a movie or television show can just run you through the gauntlet of emotionally messed up plots. The plot, the characters can be experiencing completely misguided, incomprehensible feelings or emotions and yet, we are right there with them, feeling the exact same way, buying into the whole thing. Somewhere in the depths of me I feel the discomfort as my better judgment screams “How can he be feeling any sense of loss right now!” And when it is all said and done I think, “That was a weird movie.”

I felt that way after I watched “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest” yesterday. In a way I felt cheap and easy for enjoying it, but, then again, I was entertained. Therein lies the reason for my confliction. I missed the characters from the last film in this film, not that I am a huge fan of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, and I am not really trying to write a review here, but if I were I would say that the plot was overloaded with a complicated plot that didn’t justify itself and that the characters could never justify their actions or feelings either. I lost all sense of the good in it. Good referring to the hero, or the romance, or just plain truth, anything virtuous at all. Thus, I was left trying to put the pieces together after, because I wanted to like this movie but in doing so I would feel used I guess.

The sad thing to me was as I walked to work this morning, trying still to put feelings into words (an important thing to me, I’m finding), I was picturing friends of mine liking it, not even recognizing that there is an absence of good, or I could imagine friends calling what exists in the movie “good.” It is a complicated feeling that I can’t currently articulate but it sure made me feel the weight of the distance between me and the next closest person. We are all so close to each other, believing that there is good out there. We wanted to look at each other and cry for help but we were to busy concealing our bleeding wounds to take the time.

It has something to do with a song by Bright Eyes that tells the story about how he ran into a doctor who was looking a little sick and when the doctor asked him for help he replied, or the song goes like this; “’There’s nothing that I can do for you you can’t do for yourself.’ He said, ‘Oh yes you can, just hold my hand, I think that that would help.’ So I sat with him a while and I asked him how he felt. He said ‘I think I’m cured . . .’”

Answer Me Buddha

I made yesterday's post in a hurry, in fact I had to go back and add some stuff later in the day because, upon reading it, I found that it really was incomplete and lacking something. Sense maybe? Not to surprising considering who wrote it. Anyway, I was checking the links and whatnot and in doing so delved deeper into the outrageous silliness of the Answer Me Jesus site. Thus, I was led to find Answer Me Buddha, who is equally entertaining if not more so (but only because it’s the fat Buddha.) I also found that I might have been misleading in my previous blog. Apparently, Answer Me Jesus doesn’t “say” things like “Ask again later.” His responses are basically church lingo. “Have Faith” and such. There is a trial page on the site where you can find out what Jesus would do to get the idea of how he might respond to your unyielding questions. So yeah, Answer Me Jesus and Answer Me Buddha, coming soon to dorm rooms everywhere.

Answer Me Jesus

If I were to write a youg adult novel, I might start it like this:

Krista Sheen is the girl next door. She epitomizes that image. Think Meg Ryan in junior high school and you have Krista Sheen. She’s the head of the seventh grade class at Bradley Junior High, she’s a popular cheerleader, a princes at all the school dances, and is dating the cutest boy in the whole school: Jarred Powers. However, that’s not her reality. All Krista has on her mind is her parent’s recent divorce and the malicious rumors that her “friends” have started about her. As she lies in her tear stained bed on a cold Thursday night she realizes that thins is in fact the end of her proverbial rope. “Can things get worse?” Krista questions the darkness. That’s when she looks up to her shelf to see “Answer Me Jesus”. The eight ball Jesus had been a joke given to her by her friend Macy for her last birthday. They had asked “Answer Me Jesus” questions about who liked who and if Teresa was ever going to get together with Taylor, but that had been the end of it. Now, in an act of desperation, Krista grabbed “Answer Me Jesus” from the shelf and shaking him wildly asked what she really needed to know in her time of need. She needed God more than ever as her world was obviously falling apart, or at least it was really bad. She heard the words slip past her lips “Do you really exist God?” She turned “Answer Me Jesus” over and the words slowly lifted themselves out of the blue; “Ask again later.”

Yeah, I guess it needs some work. There goes my career in writing teen literature. I had such high hopes too. Books like “Dragon Land Is No Democracy” and “Gossip Killed Mrs. Jones and Not actually A Meat Cleaver” will never be published now. But really my intension was to give Answer Me Jesus a little blog space. When I first saw him in Urban Outfitters the story above kinda popped into my head as a possible real life scenario. To me it’s one of those stories that edge on the side of either funny or sad. Oh, and I took a picture of him with my cell camera. The picture included here is infinitely better though.

The day after independence

It’s July 5, 2006, which can seem pretty humdrum being that it follows the excellent Independence Day USA. I was told that the spectacular holiday’s image is tainted by beer and fireworks but that really doesn’t bother me being that neither are particularly sentimental to me. What bothers me is that I did not get to be in Seward, AK for Mountain Marathon a fairly amazing race for the completely average citizen. So yes, today could seem dull, however, my encouragement is that this 5th day in July is not a boring day at all, even in lieu of yesterday’s fanaticism. Behold . . .

Live now France is playing Portugal for the chance to plat Italy for the World Cup. I must say that I am quite torn for whom to root for. Granted, it would just be neat to see Portugal win the World Cup and it would not be so neat for France to. I am told that it would give France even larger egos, and besides, they have other things going for them. On the other hand, the French players have fun names like “Henry.” Not that cool in America because we just shorten it to “Hank,” but say it in French and vous l'aimerez.

Almost as exciting is the "Running of the Nudes." I don’t know if that is so much exciting as it is intriguing. Essentially what happens is instead of running bulls around the Pamplona, Spain (because it’s mean, not to people but to the bull. I guess most people didn’t care about being chased by bulls so much) people run around naked for animal rights. The truth is I wonder about the integrity of it all. Nudity in public is something that I frown on, but I did read once about how nudity in public really isn't what you'd expect; it isn't sensual as much as it is silly but honestly i don't have that much experience with it.

The Boiler Room In Kansas City

It’s pretty ridiculously exciting for me that I finally discovered the Boiler Room in Kansas City. You know how you can search and search for something on the internet and not find it. It should be easy, you’re thinking, but this site is lost to you with no avail. I am currently planning a move to Kansas City, one of the main motivations of my sojourn is the Kansas City Boiler Room by 24-7 Prayer (the only Boiler Room in the nation I might add). It was distressing to me that the place I was headed appeared to have no web presence.
“What kind of place doesn’t have a website?” I think to myself.
“Could it be that I am heading to a land where no one will be able to discover the wonder of the Boiler Room though the lenses of the world wide web?”
Nay! I am please to announce that I have stumbled upon it quite stupidly. I figured out how to edit my links on this little “Grace to Upend” (great news) and upon finding some links to put in there I discovered it. The Boiler Room in Kansas City where I am headed.
Check it out