It made my head ache. It was that that great.

Today found itself midwest gray missing southern sky blue. Maybe that was just me. 

I always dislike the past couple days after an event (in this case, ABC-I) because it takes me a while to get used to having nothing to do and no one around. It takes me a while to get used to the nothing. It sounds horrible, and a little more than slightly depressing, but thats only because it is. This is why something had to give. This is why, as terrifying, and uncertain and sad it will be for Jaymin and I to move, it will be so worth it. It will be something new. Something with purpose and people. There isn't much of that here right now. 

Although to be completely honest, I think ABC-I worked on me this year. I'm only a couple credits short of my degree from there, I am trying to see if it would work out that I could go there this fall semester to finish before moving with Jaymin. I just don't know how the finances would work out, seeing as though I don't have any right now. It would certainly make my part of the move easier, to already have condensed most of my stuff and have it only a couple hours away. Plus, its something I've been wanting to do for awhile now, I was just afraid that I would be asked to stay here, that my dad or my grandparents would want me to stay, and that I wouldnt be able to say no. Silly reasoning, I know, but its a big part of why I left to begin with. I hate disappointing people. 

Just something I've been thinking about. 

I've been thinking about too many things recently, and I dont always know what to do with these manic thoughts spinning behind my eyes, so it helps to vent some of them, sometimes. I kind of feel like my brain only has two settings, swirling mess, or vapid vacuum. I'm either thinking too much or not at all, and I wish there was a medium setting. haha. 

I hope everything turns out alright. I am sure it will. 

"All I ever wanted was to know what to do." -Dave Eggers

This is what I was trying to say at ABC-I. It just didn't happen. Sucktastic. I thought you might appreciate reading it though Jaymin.

Direction Notes

Tonight we’re going to talk about direction, which I thought was a great topic to talk about, because I don’t know about you, but I’m still looking for mine. So all this stuff we’re going to be talking about, I’m learning too. I’ve gotten to the age where all my friends are graduating colleges and getting real careers or getting married or having babies...beautiful perfect babies with comic book names. And I’m still turning circles trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. 

Today we are going to talk about someone who had direction, it was just the wrong one.

In Acts 7 we have the stoning of Stephen, but we’re going to be focusing on Saul’s role in what happened. A little background information, Stephen is the first martyr for jesus, he gave a passionate speech that ended up really wounding the pharisees pride and they ended up stoning him for it. We’re coming in just before that happened. 

 

 54When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56"Look," he said, "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."

 57At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.

 59While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 60Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep.

1And Saul was there, giving approval to his death.

Now, it seems bad enough, here we have Saul, watching and even approving of the murder of a Prophet of God. Lets look a little deeper into that.

After 6 AD the Romans outlawed unaccounted for capital punishment within the Jewish community, in order stop vigilantes. So after that the Jews had to report and account for the people who were put to death, and the way they would do this was by throwing their coats at the feet of the person who was going to take responsibility for this. That, in this case was Saul. 

Now, this is made even more interesting because Saul is a student of Gamaliel, who was a famous and hugely respected Rabbi and member of the Sanhedrin, the jewish council at the time. 

Two chapters earlier we see that some members of the Sanhedrin wanted to put the apostles, and people preaching about Jesus--one of which was Stephen-- to death, and Gamaliel stood up and spoke for them, saying to leave them alone. To let them go, because if what the apostles were preaching was false like so many other disciples of random people claiming to be the messiah, then it would fail, it wouldn’t last. You see, Jesus wasn’t the first man to go around claiming to be the Messiah that the Jews were waiting for. Gamaliel told the Sanhendrin that if these men were false, God would take care of it like he did the others. 

And here we have Saul was so turned around that he was going against his teacher...he was defying the judgement of Gamaliel…This was unheard of. I can’t even think of a good analogy for it, it just didn’t happen.

And not only did Saul act against Gamaliel in this act, but he also began hunting down and persecuting others involved in The Way, which was what the Jesus movement was called at the time. He was looking for anyone he thought might be a threat to his religion, to his lifestyle, he went to their houses, door to door, finding people who believed in Jesus’ message and even doing that in his own country wasn’t enough, he began to travel to others and bring them back to Jerusalem for imprisonment… 

HE WAS GOING SO FAR THE WRONG WAY HE WAS CROSSING STATE LINES! haha. 

Here is a man that was not going in the right direction. 

But with a little help he gets turned around

In Acts 9 things change for Saul. 

1Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

 5"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.

   "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. 6"Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."

 7The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

 10In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, "Ananias!"
      "Yes, Lord," he answered.

 11The Lord told him, "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight."

 13"Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. 14And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name."

 15But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel.

This is Saul finding his direction. His purpose. Jesus himself lays it out for him. From then on things go pretty quickly for Saul, who is now called Paul, he starts preaching Jesus and within a couple weeks he already had the people he was working with before wanting to kill him. He’d found his direction.

Now, lets hope none of us have to be blinded to find out which way we should be going. I’d prefer that none of us send death threats to each other as well.

Switching gears a little bit,

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote- All men want, not something to DO WITH, but something to DO, or rather, something to BE.”

Direction might start with finding somewhere to go, or something to do...but it’s sustained by finding out who to be. 

 

When you know who you are, what you are here for, what you stand for--then your actions will naturally coincide with that a little bit easier. When you know that you are loved, blessed, set apart from all the crap in this world...that you are above that...that God made to you be someone to show his love in this world, today, to act out his mercy and grace and his compassion everyday with everyone around…that even though its difficult and even though you will make mistakes, you will have problems, it will be a constant daily battle...but you’re strong enough for it.  When you know that, your direction, it starts becoming a little clearer.

Saul was created to be a preacher of the kingdom--a chosen instrument, of jesus and his love and his message. Saul was meant to travel his world and preach to all sorts of people… He was created to change the world. 

Another thing to note is that Saul had all of this zeal, and all of this passion already in him, as it says--even following christians out of the country to persecute them. He was already using some of his passion, He was just going the wrong way. He hadn’t found his purpose, his direction. 

His story wasn’t easy. His direction wasn’t a path of little resistance. The verse after the one we read, Acts 9, Jesus is still speaking….and says: “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."

 Wouldn’t that be lovely, Jesus himself, saying...man, this is going to be hard. Oh, thanks Jesus, nice to know.

Saul’s story had action and tragedy and love and forgiveness and violence and all sorts of mess that makes it memorable. That makes him set apart. We read it in the bible, or if you come to ABC you read about him in textbooks and it all seems very monotone and oddly like the sound of your 3rd grade sunday school teachers voice--the one with the slight mustache that you couldn’t not look at...or maybe thats just me. But it seems very boring until you put it in the context that this was a man who lived and breathed his passion, who embraced every opportunity to live up to what he was meant to be, to constantly follow the direction that God laid out for his life. A man with a story so powerfully moving, so extraordinary that we read about it almost two thousand years later.

“Le monde est un livre dont chaque pas on ouvre un page.”

The world is a book, each step opens a page for us.

Awesome things happen in your life when you find your direction. When you let God help you to become what you were made to be.

I love you so much that it hurts my head.

pop bang pow splat.

heart beats fall flat. 

My fingers are twitching and itching and my brain doesn't know how to stop them, so they're typing and typing away nonsense. Everything is nonsense.

Am tired. Am wired. Am coping alright. Am hopeful. Am wishful. Am not sleeping at night. 

I guess thats nothing new. 

But a new found deeper sense of worthlessness is!

Fantastic. 

It's been an eventful couple of months. Ok, so, it really hasn't but I still have miraculously not found the time to update this regularly...or at all. 

I've been spending alot of time writing and reading and feeling inadequate, so its been productive at the very least. I'm still only 21,000 words (roughly 62 pages) into my project "Somewhere In The Middle" but its got potential. I am hoping to have another 10,000 words finished by new years, and maybe look into having it considered for publication (under a pseudonym, naturally) in the next year or so. Thats kind of exciting. Whether or not it will actually happen is up for debate, but eh.

oooooooooh! And I found my copy of A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius again today after an extended period of misplacement, so that makes me very very happy in a sort of not really happy but kind of relieved that I found it because it bugged me not knowing where it was even though I wasn't really planning on reading it again anytime soon sort of way. Now that I have found it, I will read all the ridiculous and wonderful things Dave Eggers writes and seethe with jealously over the fact that I didn't think of them first, or rather, I thought I did, but I didn't, and I used many more crappy and incoherent (perfect example there in that) words to describe them.

I was talking to my grandmother today about something, I don't remember what, but she said this phrase "Well...God works in mysterious ways, but it's all for a reason." 

I told her I disagree with her. I think sometimes God doesn't work in any ways. I think sometimes bad things happen, somethings are just shit, and thats all they are. There isn't any reason for it, there isn't any apology, it just is and we have to deal with it. She looked at me like I was burning a cross, like it was horrible and blasphemous for me to think such things. I do not think it is blasphemous. I think there are somethings that God is not working in. I think there are alot of things that he is not involved in, but it is up to us to use them, take them, learn from them and see God through the mess. You can't tell me that everything happens for a reason, I don't see how that is possible, how God could have a hand in everything and still be at all good. Maybe I'm wrong. 

I just want to go to sleep...why can't I go to sleep...I just want to sleep...I close my eyes, I close my eyes and nothing happens, I close my eyes everything spins, I close my eyes...the ceiling is liquid, it gets darker darker darker...degausser is playing in the background...the dog is barking outside again, the ceiling gets darker darker darker....I just want to go to sleep. 

goodnight.

Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon...

What do you do with passion?

What do you do with that gutwrenching, heartbreaking, deep, firey yearning for whatever drives you? What do you do with all that turmoil, that sickness, that desperate every-fibred longing for your desires? How do you react when you feel that pull at everything you are, have been and will be being wrapped up completely in something other than yourself?

Do you cry? Do you shut down? Do you get angry?

How do we deal with that? Its terrifying, wreckless, aching, urgent--painful even. Passion is synonymous with suffering for a reason. Passion is not always pleasant. In fact, I would say that it shows up most often when we are missing something--when we feel that we are lacking in some aspect, or relationship. When we want something more and feel empty, or lonely, or isolated for lack of it. Thats because once we have something its easy to become desensitized to it. Its kind of like kids with christmas toys. They spend weeks counting down the days until christmas, waiting anxious, longing for it to come sooner. You can almost see the pain in their eyes--what? twenty days until christmas--its so far! And finally Christmas comes, and they recieve the gifts they were so passionate about--the things they longed for so badly. And they love their new toys, and their passion carries over into a joyful form--but what happens in a week? Two weeks? Next december? Are they still excited about those toys? Or are they longing for something new, something they dont already have?

Its easy to feel passionate about romance when you're a single twenty something.
Its easy to feel passionate about following Jesus at a church camp.
Its easy to feel passionate about helping the marginalized when they're right in front of you.

But what about when you're not? When you're somewhere else? When you've distanced yourself? When the novelty has worn into the common place?

And also what is the result of the passion in our own lives? How does it effect our behavior?

How do we control passion for good in our lives? Because passion is the driving force behind all of our desires and therefore all of our thoughts and then all of our actions--both godly and sinful it can lead to either good or selfish outcomes. That said, it is not a bad thing, its powerful and unpredictable and dangerous but it is not bad. Its like a small small reflection of God in our own lives.

Over and over in the Bible we see God and Jesus filled with such awesome passion. God's longing for the Israelites in the Old testament to return to him from their own selfish passions-His passion for humanity to be reunited with Him being so great that He allows His own son to die for it- Jesus' desire for the Jews and their religious leaders to embrace the wonderful freedom of God and hope of the Kingdom instead of the legalism and judgement of the law appears over and over in the New Testament- the entire Bible is made of books oozing passion. It's a part of who God is, and therefore a part of who we are as well.

So what do we do with it?

I will be a poet, and you, poetry.

This blog should really be named: Diary of a Derranged Insomniac or something like that. Geesh. Must I only write at ridiculous hours about nonsense?

In a word: Yes.

Now A Quote:

"...he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome...but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same..."--Emily Bronte

I've been reading Wuthering Heights recently, and Im not ashamed to admit its only because of Twilight. But I like it. There's not one good character in the whole book really, everyone is horrible, and selfish, or cowardly and more like real people than just about any other story I've read.

I really liked that quote there though, about how they're the same. Her love for him isnt based on how he looks, its not shallow, its in her blood, its part of who she is.

"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."

Lovely.

Another Thought:


When is it time to give up?


When do you just let things go, when do you stop fighting for, or crying over your dreams and start living with the fact that maybe life doesnt have what you wanted in store?
Im still trying to figure things out, and I hate that about myself. I spend so much time talking about things, thinking about things, talking about how we should stop just talking about things and do things, but Im paralyzed. I fall short. I dont do what I want to do, I am desperately aware that this is my life and Im wasting it, with doubts, with hesitation, with all this uncertainty--but as much as I hate it, I dont change it. I stick with it, I live in it, and I pull other people into it.

When do I quit that?

When do I stop waiting fo the guy to fall madly yet improbably in love with me, stop waiting for a magical fairy to drop a load of cash on me so I can open up a coffee shop like I've wanted or go to France and buy a studio apartment to paint and eat croissants in, stop waiting for my life to fall into place before I live it. Its not going to fall into place. Its not. Its messy and awkward and above all lonely but its mine. When will I own up and accept it? Will I? Or will I spend the rest of my life with this wierd disconnect, feeling like Im looking down at myself like a stranger, like everything is foreign and doesnt fit?

This past week at FUEL Dale Bliss kept talking about how you have to own your life, you cant just sit back and watch it go. You have to make it. Maybe its time to stop making the cowardly lion look like the terminator (oh how I love Twilight) and start something real.

Yeah!

....How?