I took my love and I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
And the landslide brought me down
Oh, mirror in the sky--what is love?
Can the child in my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
I don't know.....I don't know...
Well I've been afraid of changing
Because I've built my life around you
But time makes us bolder; children get older
I'm getting older too....
So, take this love...take it down
Oh, if you climb a mountain and you turn around
and you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
well, the landslide will bring you down;
The landslide will bring you down...
Well I've been afraid of changing
Because I've built my life around you
But time makes is bolder; children get older
I'm getting older too - Stevie Nicks
changing and changing and changing and not changing a bit. it all comes around to where it started, and it hurts and won't stop. time should make me bolder but it just makes me tired.
I had it all right here and now it's gone and it hurts.
wanted to see what is, not what isn't. now I don't know what's what and I'm afraid to find out.
no one could possibly be worth all this trouble.
why can't I believe anymore?
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
yawn
My favourite season is just around the corner and I really don't care.
I'm terrified to write that because I fear being taken seriously and having privileges revoked, as if God would throw off the seasons just for the sake of slapping me in the head to remind me Who's in charge.
I don't care anymore. I have no desire for anything. I will probably go down South to visit one family or the other, maybe both. I'm supposed to love road trips and Shoney's and weird little convenience stores off otherwise-deserted West Virginia exits at 3 a.m. and down-home drawls and reunion and firearms and four-wheeling and general depressurisation. Yawn.
I don't want to be reminded of how out of reach the life I wanted is. I never knew I wanted it until it was already too late. It's still my fault, because I was warned and I didn't listen. Every time I go there I can watch others reveling in it, bathed in possibilities and options and boundless optimism. Every year I see how far they've climbed and they know at a glance how far I've fallen. I am so insubstantial compared to them that I am surprised they can even see me or hear my voice when I speak.
I had dreams and desires and vision once. I had a heart once. Yawn.
I should be alive, reveling in possibility, exploring new corners of some huge good thing I was made to be and do. I don't. I ship denture adhesive to Kansas and collect old Romanian bayonets that attach to rifles I'm not allowed to own and pack gear for hikes I never take and my house gets messier every day and when I think about cleaning it's already nine-thirty on a Sunday night. I try to hold my own in a crowd of people I dearly love and get squeezed into the margins because I'm no good at interrupting or speaking with force and clarity. I hear or read others' words and pain and struggles and the things they describe are exactly what I know and feel, and the connection should be wonderful but it's hollow and empty and who cares? I share what little I know of life, as an act of faith that it matters and will be received, but in that act I am constantly exposed as weaker and more naive than anyone around. I don't think I am really in the room when I'm in the room. If this is all I bring to life, that's probably for the best.
It may be that no one intends stratification with me at the bottom, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. What else should I expect?
I don't want to not care. I want to once again desire to live and enjoy and affect for good. I don't want to waste a second of this summer, or any other second. But what if everything I bring, everything that's within my reach, everything that makes me come as nearly "alive" as I ever get, is itself a waste?
I wish I was them. Anyone or anything but this. I wish I could stand among them and know I mattered like they do. I need to be punished. I dread it, but know how to expect nothing else. I am a very bad thing. Yawn.
I'm terrified to write that because I fear being taken seriously and having privileges revoked, as if God would throw off the seasons just for the sake of slapping me in the head to remind me Who's in charge.
I don't care anymore. I have no desire for anything. I will probably go down South to visit one family or the other, maybe both. I'm supposed to love road trips and Shoney's and weird little convenience stores off otherwise-deserted West Virginia exits at 3 a.m. and down-home drawls and reunion and firearms and four-wheeling and general depressurisation. Yawn.
I don't want to be reminded of how out of reach the life I wanted is. I never knew I wanted it until it was already too late. It's still my fault, because I was warned and I didn't listen. Every time I go there I can watch others reveling in it, bathed in possibilities and options and boundless optimism. Every year I see how far they've climbed and they know at a glance how far I've fallen. I am so insubstantial compared to them that I am surprised they can even see me or hear my voice when I speak.
I had dreams and desires and vision once. I had a heart once. Yawn.
I should be alive, reveling in possibility, exploring new corners of some huge good thing I was made to be and do. I don't. I ship denture adhesive to Kansas and collect old Romanian bayonets that attach to rifles I'm not allowed to own and pack gear for hikes I never take and my house gets messier every day and when I think about cleaning it's already nine-thirty on a Sunday night. I try to hold my own in a crowd of people I dearly love and get squeezed into the margins because I'm no good at interrupting or speaking with force and clarity. I hear or read others' words and pain and struggles and the things they describe are exactly what I know and feel, and the connection should be wonderful but it's hollow and empty and who cares? I share what little I know of life, as an act of faith that it matters and will be received, but in that act I am constantly exposed as weaker and more naive than anyone around. I don't think I am really in the room when I'm in the room. If this is all I bring to life, that's probably for the best.
It may be that no one intends stratification with me at the bottom, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. What else should I expect?
I don't want to not care. I want to once again desire to live and enjoy and affect for good. I don't want to waste a second of this summer, or any other second. But what if everything I bring, everything that's within my reach, everything that makes me come as nearly "alive" as I ever get, is itself a waste?
I wish I was them. Anyone or anything but this. I wish I could stand among them and know I mattered like they do. I need to be punished. I dread it, but know how to expect nothing else. I am a very bad thing. Yawn.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
challenge coin
Last night I went for a stroll about the neighbourhood. I went with my usual intentions of connecting with God, and my usual expectations of being distracted into failing at it. I was pleasantly surprised.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I knew He was there, walking with me, engaging me in real conversation, for His own inscrutable reasons taking an interest in my blather and gushing. I could actually hear Him answering me. We actually hung out and enjoyed each other.
It is strange to converse with the Creator of all that exists as if I were a vet bumping into the CO of his old unit in a bar. As a fat civilian, I have no such first-hand experience, but I imagine it would feel very much like last night. Whatever pathetic "battles" or struggles or trials can be called my own were undertaken at His behest. He was with me all the way. He has total authority to evaluate and judge the outcome of my conduct on those occasions. He was not "leading" from the safety of an office. He has known every step I've taken before they ever happened.
I reminisced with Him about my early years as a Christian, when I was much more easily impressed by anything that had His name on it. I was so glad to be alive and in Him that the cheesiest band or book or song or sermon could delight and inspire me, and I didn't much care who knew it. I went gleefully and implacably berserk over things that it actually hurts to remember. They were that bad.
What makes the memories so painful is less about artistic quality then about lost innocence. Even coming out of a lifetime of mockery and contempt and reasons aplenty to mistrust my own species, even after having my very faith hijacked and poisoned by legalism and bondage and spiritual abuse, I hadn't really learned how fucked up people are, myself included. I am afraid I still haven't.
I hadn't yet learned how much corruption lurks under so much of what is broadly accepted as Kingdom business. I hadn't discovered how hollow and world-weary and cynical so many of my favourite Christian musicians were when the shows were over. I hadn't yet learned the knack of reading and listening between the lines to spot the little twists of deceit and empire-building and doctrine-peddling that now seem to hit me almost everywhere, even, it sometimes feels, in the living rooms of those precious few souls whom I can still muster the moxie to trust with my very life. People call that discernment, and sometimes it's apparently a spiritual gift. I am assured it is necessary. So is a designated marksman in an infantry squad, the one who doesn't merely fire at muzzle flashes or rustling leaves but looks through an expensive scope at an enemy with a face and a certain eye colour and maybe a wedding ring two fingers down from the one on his trigger, and who is forced to learn all that in a very few seconds about a person he has already decided to kill.
I don't pretend to equate myself with a combat veteran of any stripe, but I know one or two, and I have tasted a very muted, minor shadow of a phenomenon they have described to me. The things they have had to learn and do and become to survive have changed them forever, and sometimes they don't like what those changes add up to in a mirror or a moment of introspection. I wanted to go on finding God around every corner and reveling in Him forever, but I had to learn a lot of harsh, bitter lessons about the gulf between His heart and so much of what is done in His name. I learned this not only to survive, but to help others do the same, though I hope that anyone I may have helped came through with a little less cynicism than I have. Okay, a lot less.
I used to be giddy and enthusiastic about Jesus. I saw Him through and beyond and in spite of all the junk and trash and hype and petty human antics. There isn't much I know, but I know that He was pleased with that. Oddly enough, that scares me on some level, because I fear He will ask me to do my thing again and it will no longer be real and spontaneous and heartfelt, but only embarrassing. Make no mistake, He's no less real, just a lot harder to see and hear for all the noise. And I still love Him, though I've become quite a bit harder to pin down because it doesn't pay to stay still for long. There are snipers everywhere. I hate this. I really do.
I don't know how many more episodes of "doing my thing" I have left in me, if any, between now and heaven, but there is one thing I would like very, very much to know. I would like to know that I lost my innocence from fighting an adversary worth standing against, not from letting it die by default or whoring it out for the approval of others. I would like most of all to know that He knows that I did. Whatever He knows about me is true. I hope that is better than I feel.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I knew He was there, walking with me, engaging me in real conversation, for His own inscrutable reasons taking an interest in my blather and gushing. I could actually hear Him answering me. We actually hung out and enjoyed each other.
It is strange to converse with the Creator of all that exists as if I were a vet bumping into the CO of his old unit in a bar. As a fat civilian, I have no such first-hand experience, but I imagine it would feel very much like last night. Whatever pathetic "battles" or struggles or trials can be called my own were undertaken at His behest. He was with me all the way. He has total authority to evaluate and judge the outcome of my conduct on those occasions. He was not "leading" from the safety of an office. He has known every step I've taken before they ever happened.
I reminisced with Him about my early years as a Christian, when I was much more easily impressed by anything that had His name on it. I was so glad to be alive and in Him that the cheesiest band or book or song or sermon could delight and inspire me, and I didn't much care who knew it. I went gleefully and implacably berserk over things that it actually hurts to remember. They were that bad.
What makes the memories so painful is less about artistic quality then about lost innocence. Even coming out of a lifetime of mockery and contempt and reasons aplenty to mistrust my own species, even after having my very faith hijacked and poisoned by legalism and bondage and spiritual abuse, I hadn't really learned how fucked up people are, myself included. I am afraid I still haven't.
I hadn't yet learned how much corruption lurks under so much of what is broadly accepted as Kingdom business. I hadn't discovered how hollow and world-weary and cynical so many of my favourite Christian musicians were when the shows were over. I hadn't yet learned the knack of reading and listening between the lines to spot the little twists of deceit and empire-building and doctrine-peddling that now seem to hit me almost everywhere, even, it sometimes feels, in the living rooms of those precious few souls whom I can still muster the moxie to trust with my very life. People call that discernment, and sometimes it's apparently a spiritual gift. I am assured it is necessary. So is a designated marksman in an infantry squad, the one who doesn't merely fire at muzzle flashes or rustling leaves but looks through an expensive scope at an enemy with a face and a certain eye colour and maybe a wedding ring two fingers down from the one on his trigger, and who is forced to learn all that in a very few seconds about a person he has already decided to kill.
I don't pretend to equate myself with a combat veteran of any stripe, but I know one or two, and I have tasted a very muted, minor shadow of a phenomenon they have described to me. The things they have had to learn and do and become to survive have changed them forever, and sometimes they don't like what those changes add up to in a mirror or a moment of introspection. I wanted to go on finding God around every corner and reveling in Him forever, but I had to learn a lot of harsh, bitter lessons about the gulf between His heart and so much of what is done in His name. I learned this not only to survive, but to help others do the same, though I hope that anyone I may have helped came through with a little less cynicism than I have. Okay, a lot less.
I used to be giddy and enthusiastic about Jesus. I saw Him through and beyond and in spite of all the junk and trash and hype and petty human antics. There isn't much I know, but I know that He was pleased with that. Oddly enough, that scares me on some level, because I fear He will ask me to do my thing again and it will no longer be real and spontaneous and heartfelt, but only embarrassing. Make no mistake, He's no less real, just a lot harder to see and hear for all the noise. And I still love Him, though I've become quite a bit harder to pin down because it doesn't pay to stay still for long. There are snipers everywhere. I hate this. I really do.
I don't know how many more episodes of "doing my thing" I have left in me, if any, between now and heaven, but there is one thing I would like very, very much to know. I would like to know that I lost my innocence from fighting an adversary worth standing against, not from letting it die by default or whoring it out for the approval of others. I would like most of all to know that He knows that I did. Whatever He knows about me is true. I hope that is better than I feel.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Good Friday
My mother sent me an e-mail a few years ago that was meant to be an encouragement to me after a conversation we had. She told me that, among other things too wonderful for me to have ever hoped to be, she saw me as "someone who is much too critical of himself, but perhaps does not expect enough from others." I have wondered a great deal about that, and whether or not that was a good thing. I think I have the answer, and if not, God will correct me.
I think it is both good and bad. As much as my words and actions do not seem to bear this out, at my core I know that the merciless standards I hold myself to are not good at all; moreover, they are not the least bit effective in bringing about the changes I need to make. At the same time, it's certainly better to expect too little of others than to hold them to the same draconian ideals I reserve for myself.
Let's be honest, mmkay? Oddly like Mussolini when he bragged that he made his own rules and didn't even keep them, I'm no better than anyone else at being consistent. I fudge and rationalise and make excuses; perhaps if my own standards are as inhuman as others claim that's sometimes all that keeps me alive. And like everyone else I am adept at judging and categorising and dismissing other people while holding myself outside the problem as if it had nothing at all in me, when all the while I am as much a part of it as the enemy himself.
Expectations have always gotten me into trouble. My own set me up for a seemingly endless and predictable string of disappointments with myself and others, those of other people are all too often bricks in the pitiless wall of my own standards that I keep hurling myself into. I need very much to learn to expect what should in fact be expected, not because it's natural or even comprehensible, but because it's real and true. Or rather, He is.
As I write this, it's about an hour and change past Good Friday, another term I've often wondered about. The term "good" as used here has always been puzzling, as it's attached to the name of the day set aside to commemorate the Son of God's death by torture, but again, that's natural expectations talking. It was good for us, because there was no other way to save us. It was good for Jesus, because He was fulfilling His Father's will. And in some inscrutable, scandalous way, it was good for God because He loves us enough to pay such a monstrous cost for us.
Make no mistake, I am not in the least deluded into thinking that he came out ahead in this deal because of our intrinsic worth. We don't have any. Dirt is cheap. Except that He blew the breath of life into some and got us. So all the worth we have is from Him. And that is the only fact that offers any hope for us to understand how the the day that marks the most infernal and horrendous act in human history can be called good.
My expectations of satanic triumph are dashed when I discover that he was playing right into God's hands when he spilled the blood of Christ. My expectations of life as it always was - bereft of real living - shatter when the cross is revealed as the gateway to Resurrection, first His, then ours, not only on the last day but a little each day until then. My expectations of despair and damnation wither before the inescapable fact that the God Who loved me enough to die for me knows full well that my bottomless failure is precisely what qualifies me to receive His unspeakable gift.
If I can really learn to expect what He has never once failed to come through with, all these crushing, stultifying false expectations will fall off like scales off a pair of long-blind eyes. That's His plan. That's His business. That is good. He is good. All the time.
I think it is both good and bad. As much as my words and actions do not seem to bear this out, at my core I know that the merciless standards I hold myself to are not good at all; moreover, they are not the least bit effective in bringing about the changes I need to make. At the same time, it's certainly better to expect too little of others than to hold them to the same draconian ideals I reserve for myself.
Let's be honest, mmkay? Oddly like Mussolini when he bragged that he made his own rules and didn't even keep them, I'm no better than anyone else at being consistent. I fudge and rationalise and make excuses; perhaps if my own standards are as inhuman as others claim that's sometimes all that keeps me alive. And like everyone else I am adept at judging and categorising and dismissing other people while holding myself outside the problem as if it had nothing at all in me, when all the while I am as much a part of it as the enemy himself.
Expectations have always gotten me into trouble. My own set me up for a seemingly endless and predictable string of disappointments with myself and others, those of other people are all too often bricks in the pitiless wall of my own standards that I keep hurling myself into. I need very much to learn to expect what should in fact be expected, not because it's natural or even comprehensible, but because it's real and true. Or rather, He is.
As I write this, it's about an hour and change past Good Friday, another term I've often wondered about. The term "good" as used here has always been puzzling, as it's attached to the name of the day set aside to commemorate the Son of God's death by torture, but again, that's natural expectations talking. It was good for us, because there was no other way to save us. It was good for Jesus, because He was fulfilling His Father's will. And in some inscrutable, scandalous way, it was good for God because He loves us enough to pay such a monstrous cost for us.
Make no mistake, I am not in the least deluded into thinking that he came out ahead in this deal because of our intrinsic worth. We don't have any. Dirt is cheap. Except that He blew the breath of life into some and got us. So all the worth we have is from Him. And that is the only fact that offers any hope for us to understand how the the day that marks the most infernal and horrendous act in human history can be called good.
My expectations of satanic triumph are dashed when I discover that he was playing right into God's hands when he spilled the blood of Christ. My expectations of life as it always was - bereft of real living - shatter when the cross is revealed as the gateway to Resurrection, first His, then ours, not only on the last day but a little each day until then. My expectations of despair and damnation wither before the inescapable fact that the God Who loved me enough to die for me knows full well that my bottomless failure is precisely what qualifies me to receive His unspeakable gift.
If I can really learn to expect what He has never once failed to come through with, all these crushing, stultifying false expectations will fall off like scales off a pair of long-blind eyes. That's His plan. That's His business. That is good. He is good. All the time.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
aye, different
Just read a piece by someone I love dearly that detailed her struggles with body image. From my point of view, it's an unnecessary concern for her, although she seems to be staying on top of it rather well. Of course, my point of view is heavily biased in her favour and incorrigibly slanted towards her benefit as a whole person. There are no forthcoming apologies for that, but it will of course make it harder for me to understand how said concern affects her.
I don't worry about her; it just made me realise how infuriating this issue is to me. Can there be a more useless facet of a human's existence to wield so much power over them, to thwart them and berate them at every turn, to force them to alter and amputate pieces of themselves inside and out to chase this impossible and ever-changing mirage of perfection?
Why do I give a flying fuck what people think of how I look? Why have I ever once changed the way I did anything to appease their judgments? I'm ugly by most standards. Overweight, oddly shaped, impenetrably strange fashion sense. Deal with it. I'm done trying to impress anyone. I have a wife who's happy with what she's got here, even if no one envies her. She told all of Facebook today that she married me for my weapons. I love this woman.
She dealt with the same body-image bullshit growing up. It still bogs her down sometimes. I'm as happy with her as I'd be with any other woman on this planet, but you don't turn off three decades of taunts and derision and objectification in a blink. I don't try to turn it off; I work my ass off to prove it all wrong. Because it is.
Has anyone but me rationally considered that there had best be more going for a person than looks if they're a potential friend, let alone life partner? It is infuriating to see and hear and breathe this mania at every turn. I can't do, say, or think anything without some nattering voice trying to turn it into an obsession.
I looked up Virginia Hey recently. She played Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the movie that formed the backdrop for much of my misspent youth, and Zhaan on the Farscape series. She accepted me as a friend on her Facebook page, and I looked at the photos she had posted, not only from her films and television work, but also of her hanging out with dear friends in London, just being another pretty 50-something out and about in a nifty city with people she loves.
She happens to be a strikingly beautiful female celebrity who had a fairly major role in a film dear to my heart. Her beauty does not intoxicate me or addle me with lust. I am interested in the person that she is, not the image she projects. I refuse to be obsessed with or overawed by her. Or anyone else. If I could have any relationship at all with Ms. Hey, it would be the same kind of friendship my wife and I have with Angela or Jenn or K or Niko. Real people sharing real life and bearing each other's burdens through love and faith.
I very much doubt it'll ever happen, unless New London explodes as the new East Coast film capital, and that's okay. Because I know, no matter what anyone wants to think, that there are other ways to respond to a famous beauty besides stalking or worship. I've been on the losing side of the body-image game since birth. It holds no promise or illusions for me. I care about my own much more than I should, but that's just one of a long list of bugs that God's fixing in me a day at a time. The people who matter most to me like who they see when I show up no matter what the outside looks like.
There are those who doubt or deride what I wrote here, because they are likely so given to this sickness that they can't help but see it in others. They'd rather infect everyone else than get healthy. Stuff every one of them. Let them prove me wrong about them or keep it to themselves. I'm armed and insecure and about to hit my wall with this noise. It never has been a good idea to fuck with me, and it gets to be a worse idea every day.
I don't worry about her; it just made me realise how infuriating this issue is to me. Can there be a more useless facet of a human's existence to wield so much power over them, to thwart them and berate them at every turn, to force them to alter and amputate pieces of themselves inside and out to chase this impossible and ever-changing mirage of perfection?
Why do I give a flying fuck what people think of how I look? Why have I ever once changed the way I did anything to appease their judgments? I'm ugly by most standards. Overweight, oddly shaped, impenetrably strange fashion sense. Deal with it. I'm done trying to impress anyone. I have a wife who's happy with what she's got here, even if no one envies her. She told all of Facebook today that she married me for my weapons. I love this woman.
She dealt with the same body-image bullshit growing up. It still bogs her down sometimes. I'm as happy with her as I'd be with any other woman on this planet, but you don't turn off three decades of taunts and derision and objectification in a blink. I don't try to turn it off; I work my ass off to prove it all wrong. Because it is.
Has anyone but me rationally considered that there had best be more going for a person than looks if they're a potential friend, let alone life partner? It is infuriating to see and hear and breathe this mania at every turn. I can't do, say, or think anything without some nattering voice trying to turn it into an obsession.
I looked up Virginia Hey recently. She played Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the movie that formed the backdrop for much of my misspent youth, and Zhaan on the Farscape series. She accepted me as a friend on her Facebook page, and I looked at the photos she had posted, not only from her films and television work, but also of her hanging out with dear friends in London, just being another pretty 50-something out and about in a nifty city with people she loves.
She happens to be a strikingly beautiful female celebrity who had a fairly major role in a film dear to my heart. Her beauty does not intoxicate me or addle me with lust. I am interested in the person that she is, not the image she projects. I refuse to be obsessed with or overawed by her. Or anyone else. If I could have any relationship at all with Ms. Hey, it would be the same kind of friendship my wife and I have with Angela or Jenn or K or Niko. Real people sharing real life and bearing each other's burdens through love and faith.
I very much doubt it'll ever happen, unless New London explodes as the new East Coast film capital, and that's okay. Because I know, no matter what anyone wants to think, that there are other ways to respond to a famous beauty besides stalking or worship. I've been on the losing side of the body-image game since birth. It holds no promise or illusions for me. I care about my own much more than I should, but that's just one of a long list of bugs that God's fixing in me a day at a time. The people who matter most to me like who they see when I show up no matter what the outside looks like.
There are those who doubt or deride what I wrote here, because they are likely so given to this sickness that they can't help but see it in others. They'd rather infect everyone else than get healthy. Stuff every one of them. Let them prove me wrong about them or keep it to themselves. I'm armed and insecure and about to hit my wall with this noise. It never has been a good idea to fuck with me, and it gets to be a worse idea every day.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
cheers
Lisa and I went to Willimantic last night for an "Anti-Valentine" party. We were invited by a schoolmate I recently reconnected with on Facebook. I saw a few other people I knew from back in the day and met some new faces. We went to two clubs I'd never been to, and honestly wouldn't have if not for the nifty folks we were with who made them bearable. Not my scene at all. I'm way too old, too skinhead, too married. For the club clientele, that is; the crowd we went to hang out with had no problem being seen with us. And I thought that was pretty swell, given that their gathering was a sort of good-natured backlash against romance. It was actually rather an honour to have a huddle of thirtysomething singles let the most revoltingly cute married couple on the planet in on their fun.
My friend is a single mom who, like me, grew up overweight and felt the wrath of our culture for her "defect". It's amazing how focused and passionate the contempt and derision can be when you don't measure up to some arbitrary standard. And when it starts early in life, from all angles, even from family, it can stay with you long after people are no longer throwing it at you. The voices still bray inside your head, the shame and self-loathing carve deep ruts in your soul and you can't see yourself any other way. You know and fear loneliness like few do. And you tend to be prone to falling into unhealthy relationships because any attention at all is so intoxicating that you panic at the thought of losing it, especially when you're programmed to believe with total conviction that you're too undesirable to get it from anyone else. You have no concept of being able to choose from a position of strength.
For reasons like these, she hasn't done well with relationships, though by God she's tried. She loves her daughter and wants a man to share her life with who is willing to commit to them. Not much to ask, given that such is what God designed humans to do. And she is worth it. Better still, she is starting to learn that.
I am glad she reconnected with me on Facebook, and that she and Lisa get along swimmingly. When we were in the Dean's Office Cafe, surrounded by wannabe thugs and college tarts and pumping dollars into the jukebox to blow holes in the stream of Top 40 tripe with AC/DC and the Dropkick Murphys, she confessed that she was a bit afraid that we would hate what she turned into after a few drinks, which really wasn't a whole lot different from her sober self - bubbly, vivacious, friendly and pretty darned sweet. She was afraid our faith would cause us to cast a jaundiced eye on her. Apparently when God gets a hold of someone He sees to it that they don't have much stomach for someone letting their hair down.
Has it really come to that? Does my claiming the name of Christ really cause someone who doesn't know Him personally to expect the very opposite treatment from that which He exemplified in His earthly sojourn? The religious leaders of His day couldn't talk enough trash about His choice of company or the pursuits He engaged in with them. He was known for hanging out with far more notorious people than our friend could ever bring herself to be. Why should she expect His followers to turn their noses up at her when she's being nothing but herself?
That's pretty embarassing, and it's yet another reason for me to be thankful for the delightfully misshapen saints He's surrounded me and Lisa with. I can't play the church game anymore. I want to be like Christ, not like the neutered, Prozac'd mannequin that religion has held up in His place. If that means I drop some cash on a few pints and get my wife and I into cheap nightclubs to have deep conversations with hurting people whose lives aren't neat and tidy (as if ours ever were), then sign me up. I want the church to look more like a bunch of thirtysomething singles rallying around each other on barstools like a family to share each other's burdens, and less like a management seminar with tips and techniques on how to prop up the facade of Godly oblivion to real human need.
Jen, thank you for being seen with us. We love you. And so does God. I hope we can help Him to prove that to you.
My friend is a single mom who, like me, grew up overweight and felt the wrath of our culture for her "defect". It's amazing how focused and passionate the contempt and derision can be when you don't measure up to some arbitrary standard. And when it starts early in life, from all angles, even from family, it can stay with you long after people are no longer throwing it at you. The voices still bray inside your head, the shame and self-loathing carve deep ruts in your soul and you can't see yourself any other way. You know and fear loneliness like few do. And you tend to be prone to falling into unhealthy relationships because any attention at all is so intoxicating that you panic at the thought of losing it, especially when you're programmed to believe with total conviction that you're too undesirable to get it from anyone else. You have no concept of being able to choose from a position of strength.
For reasons like these, she hasn't done well with relationships, though by God she's tried. She loves her daughter and wants a man to share her life with who is willing to commit to them. Not much to ask, given that such is what God designed humans to do. And she is worth it. Better still, she is starting to learn that.
I am glad she reconnected with me on Facebook, and that she and Lisa get along swimmingly. When we were in the Dean's Office Cafe, surrounded by wannabe thugs and college tarts and pumping dollars into the jukebox to blow holes in the stream of Top 40 tripe with AC/DC and the Dropkick Murphys, she confessed that she was a bit afraid that we would hate what she turned into after a few drinks, which really wasn't a whole lot different from her sober self - bubbly, vivacious, friendly and pretty darned sweet. She was afraid our faith would cause us to cast a jaundiced eye on her. Apparently when God gets a hold of someone He sees to it that they don't have much stomach for someone letting their hair down.
Has it really come to that? Does my claiming the name of Christ really cause someone who doesn't know Him personally to expect the very opposite treatment from that which He exemplified in His earthly sojourn? The religious leaders of His day couldn't talk enough trash about His choice of company or the pursuits He engaged in with them. He was known for hanging out with far more notorious people than our friend could ever bring herself to be. Why should she expect His followers to turn their noses up at her when she's being nothing but herself?
That's pretty embarassing, and it's yet another reason for me to be thankful for the delightfully misshapen saints He's surrounded me and Lisa with. I can't play the church game anymore. I want to be like Christ, not like the neutered, Prozac'd mannequin that religion has held up in His place. If that means I drop some cash on a few pints and get my wife and I into cheap nightclubs to have deep conversations with hurting people whose lives aren't neat and tidy (as if ours ever were), then sign me up. I want the church to look more like a bunch of thirtysomething singles rallying around each other on barstools like a family to share each other's burdens, and less like a management seminar with tips and techniques on how to prop up the facade of Godly oblivion to real human need.
Jen, thank you for being seen with us. We love you. And so does God. I hope we can help Him to prove that to you.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
steel cocoon
My job schedule is four 10-hour days so that leaves me with three-day weekends. For the last few of these I've been fairly steeped in various little survival projects, and the depth with which I can become absorbed by them is by turns comforting, wondrous and disturbing.
I've modified an aircrew survival knife and four different machetes. Nothing major, just little tweaks with a rotary tool and some sanding and filework to improve different functions. I took the knife and one of the machetes and made a survival package with some odds and ends and a few ideas of mine and others I found online. It's cheaper than drinking and there's no hangover, just a lot of little metal shavings everywhere.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist or zombie apocalypse enthusiast. I haven't been camping in any way that requires more than a pocketknife in nearly two decades. I just like this stuff.
I have to take my ideas when and where I can get them. If they involve things I already have, that's even better. Give me the time to work on them and it's better still. To take something good and improve it, adorn it, weave it with other good things to make a system, leads to a rare and elusive euphoria. Trial and error doesn't enrage me here like it usually does as long as the errors can be corrected. Here like almost nowhere else, I grasp the meaning of learning from mistakes.
Mistakes are illegal in my world. They are to be prevented, avoided, and failing that, punished. The main thing to be learned from mistakes is not to make them. There is no dodging or evading responsibility. I own my mistakes. They define me. This is not what I believe because I want to; this is what I have learned. This is what I was taught. This is the signal I picked up five-by-five from people and life almost from the start.
In the bubble I've locked myself in for the last few weekends I receive a different signal. I still own the mistakes, but I also own what I learn from them. Oddly enough , the absence of pressure to perform improves my performance. I excel by not obsessing over excellence, by focusing on what's good enough.
It's a tiny island of competence in an ocean of haze and uncertainty and failure. Here I'm the boss, and I'm a pretty decent guy to work for. The job gets done and enjoyed in the process.
People use the term "cocooning" to describe a deep, tunnel-visioned retreat into any activity as an escape from life and reality. When I get this deep into a hobby I feel pangs of guilt as though that's what I'm doing. Wouldn't it be a right kick to learn that it really is a cocoon, not a coward's refuge but a place to transform into something better?
It could be argued that I have more important concerns than convex grinds and paracord wrap patterns. I do, in fact. It often feels like fiddling while Rome burns. My only defence is that this, like it or not, is part of who and what I am, and it has not a thing to do with how long it's been since I hacked out a campsite. I still don't know like others claim to that I matter much at all, but I know that many people and other forces have expended tremendous passion, energy and resources to nullify and erase me. If there are things I need to address, than I matter at least as much as those things. If there is none of me left to bring to them, they are lost to me.
I don't think God made me for that. Any step I can take towards what He made me for, however trivial, however mundane, is closer to where I belong, if such a place exists. I wish these tiny things didn't loom so hugely on my pathetic little screen, but it is still better to have them than not.
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