My Conscience' Name is Jonas

Hello blog world
I am writing this blog entry under complusion to allay my readers' interest (and my conscience' nagging). A short update is all that I can really spare at this moment, as school is literally eating up all my time. Currently, my double-major program is making me do schoolwork 96 hours a week (of which, I tend to only get 85-90 in... unfortunately)--also meaning that I do not have any time to blog, much less eat well or sleep more than 4 or 5 hours a night. School will be done, thank goodness (if I make it that long), by the first full week of December, when I'll have ample time to dither in the world of Bloggingness.

Things of note:

The other day, I say a graffitti tag that read
"God loves you.
He just doesn't want to get involved"

I thought to myself, "how poignant". Because it seemed really true: I mean if the God of the universe, who being the most powerful Being in the universe, could do anything, then why doesn't He--if he loves us so much--make himself more evident and more present in our everyday lives? After thinking about this for a while & coming up with all the typical rationalisations & Christian jsutifications, I decided that there really wasn't a good retort to this statement, save that maybe God really _does- want to get involved in our lives, just that we're either too busy (like me) to look for him, or we're too lazy to find him, or we overlook/discount where he is involved--since he's persistently there & we can fathom what it would be like without him being present/involved. Then, also, what about Christians? I mean, maybe it's our fault that the world doesn't see God. Jesus said that we are his body & that He lives in us, which means that our mandate as Christians is to be Christ on earth.

What does that say when the world cries out that they're being told "God doesn't want to be involved in my life"?

Please, do, discuss

eep

Hello Blog world.
Yes I am alive, but I have been swamped with busyness for the past 6ish months. Soon... very soon, a new & fresh post will arrive, pregnant with purported profundity.

Wait for it.....


... ... .... Keep waiting. All good things come to those who wait.

Iω, or to you Commoners, "Rotational Momentum"

For everything—turn, turn, turn—there is a season—turn, turn, turn—There is a time for every purpose under heaven.

Ahh... The birds putting music to the rantings of Solomon in his book of collected experiences, known to the general world by its Greek name, Ecclesiastes.

It's eleven days into the seventh month of the fifth year after the genesis of the second millennium, anno domini. I am sitting at what is known by the front-of-house staff at my workplace as "table fifty five"—a two-person booth skirting the main thoroughfare between the restaurant’s entrance and the bulk of the dining area. I have recently started to come to work quite early, mostly because of the availability of endless caffeinated beverages and a decent environment in which I can write in peace. As a result, I seem to be more productive these days, chipping away at the massive beast of my first legitimate short story, quasi-regularly updating this, my weblog and also getting some reading done on top of it all.

The crazy thing to think about is that summer is technically in dull swing, with the pendulum reaching its dreaded apogee, threatening with eversomuch menace to begin its dreaded recoil, ushering in the dawn of my ultimate undergraduate fall term. Have I told you, oh reader, about my Mexico trip in February yet? Or what about my first week at work, where there was a fire in the garbage area at work, forcing thee closure of all Bourbon Street in West Edmonton Mall? No? Then I probably also haven't told you about Sony patenting technology that uses ultrasonic waves to stimulate artificial sensory experiences within the brain, quite reminiscent to the artificial world generated by sentient computers in the beloved Matrix trilogy. What about my unfortunate discovery that it takes less than 90 minutes to walk from West Edmonton Mall to Grant MacEwan College, downtown? Haven't told you that? Hmm...must mean that I've been busy at work.

Mind you, work is a mixed blessing. I love the place—meaning the people I work with. There's a guy in the kitchen who reminds me of me: always talking in accents, always quoting and/or singing bits from The Simpsons, Futurama or other beloved prime-time entertainment. He is also even an artist, preferring graphite—just like me. Biggest difference, I would have to say, is that he has no relationship with Christ, so it kind of lets me look at who I might have been, were it not for that life-altering difference.

Two of my kitchen managers are as big of computer geeks as I am, which is great. We talk about hardware every once in a while & compare systems, or talk about the most recent games that have hit the market.

The greatest thing, however, is that everyone in the place—whether working in the kitchen, or working "front of house"—is totally real. There are no veneers of expectation, no plastic personalities, no misleading masks. Everyone is real, and my fornicating goodness, is it ever a refreshing change from a.) university and b.) contemporary Christian circles. At work, who you are is who you are, whether you're a multiply-convicted felon, a drug dealer, a Christian, a lesbian or some combination of any of the above. It doesn't matter: you are who you are, and people are cool with it. In fact, the individuality and the diversity are embraced, leading to a dynamic, colourful community, where conversation and interaction flourishes.

Although however cool the people may be, this still doesn't change the fact that working in an "open kitchen” is extremely warm. One of the stations that I work on, known as sauté, is stuck between hundreds of litres of boiling oil on the right while flanked by an open broiler grill on my left, burning natural gas at approximately 600° Fahrenheit. If that weren't bad enough, I am neatly tucked in behind the holding window, which is where all the food gets placed just before the servers come and run it to our customers. The holding window is—for all intensive purposes—an open oven, whose overhead heating elements operate non-stop throughout the day, emitting an infrared shower of blistering warmth at 400° Fahrenheit. Oh, did I mention that the sauté station is a ten-burner gas range, which operates with 4 burners keeping our metal presentation skillets searing-hot throughout the day? Yes, yes, that's what the sauté station is like. Needless to say, the ambient temperature in the kitchen as over 30° Celsius, and when one is wearing three layers of clothes while preparing as much as 8 meals at any one time, I hope you can imagine the thermal conditions of the kitchen inferno.

So, that's work. I like it: the people are cool; the job's thankless, but stimulating; and best of all, I know that I'm not going to be doing it for the rest of my life (hallelujah).

I guess it's time for my characteristic Theo-Messianic (my fancy word for "Christian") reflection bit, a staple portion of all my blog entries. This one however will be short, as the rest of my entry is already quite long. Here goes: I was thinking the other day about who we as Christians are in Christ, and it occurred to me that the years of inbreeding we've had navel-gazing has kind of numbed the awesome sense of who we really are. As a Christian, I am an adopted son of the Most High God, the Creator of the universe and perhaps anything beyond it. Isn't that a bit freaky? Try telling a non-Christian that you are an adopted child of the most powerful being within and without all existence. They'll probably answer back with some sort of bovine droppings. Tell them that God Most High wants to call them his child as well and I wouldn't be tooo surprised if the ended up laughing at you and again mentioning some sort of bull excrement.

What a privilege, what a powerful position, what an amazing heritage we as Christians have—and any one who would like to become a Christian has access to as well. To be the adopted children of the most powerful source of everything and everything...it kind of blows my mind away. I am an heir of Creation. My Father made all of this and He is gunning for me. Why do I bother being afraid of anything that might potentially danger me, when the Boss and Overseer of All has a vested interest in my well-being—a Boss and Overseer who sees everything and who knows everything, one who doesn't miss a single step in the goings-on of His handiwork.

Food for thought, don't you think?

Intermission

Hello, world.

It's 5:30 in the morning, 6 hours since I got off work & also just before I start my second 8-hour shift at "the restaraunt". A couple of thoughts struck me this morning, and I feel impelled to share them. As I was in my bathroom this morning shaving, I heard the sound of a toilet somewhere in my building flush, and it got me to thinking how crazily amazing, peculiar and wonderful the creation of the Lord is. Here I am, going about my life, yet in the very same building, there are probably close to another hundred individuals, goinga bout their own unique lives, having their own experiences which may be in no way related to mine at all. They all have lives. They all ned to get up, eat, and go about their daily mandated activities. What a totally absurd concept that other people have their own business & their own agendas. Yet, this is the way with the world. The intricacy of the whole human endeavour is mind=boggling if you sit down and think of it. Imagine watching/observing the whole dynamic thing from the outside: and you thought ant farms were astonishing!

The second interesting thought came to me whilst I was showering. I remembered a long-past memory, when I was a wee lad of narry three years' age. My family was at the time living in Grande Prairie, Alta, and I remember this certain occasion when my family was travelling to Peace River in our old Vista Cruiser-esque station wagon (It was an Oldsmobile, but that's all I can really remember). My brothers and I were sitting in the back (reversed) seat of the station wagon with a couple of our Peace River cousins, and while we were driving, the road bounded over a long row of small hills. It was--at the time--perhaps the coolest thing in the world. The closest thing to a rollercoaster that I had yet experienced, that straight road bee-lining over the hillcrests & through the intermediate valleys. Every time we got to the top of a hill, the peak was small enough to get that little rising feeling in your stomach you get when you lose a bit of earth's gravitational putt. We all laughed, giggled and thoroughly enjoyed both the amber-coloured countryside & the upsie-downsie of the trip while watching our other cousins in the only other vehicle on the road, several hundred metres behind.

The bliss of those days. It seems so long ago & so removed that it almost feels like another lifetime. I think that heaven will be much like that memory: We didn't have a care in the world, as everything was looked after in our lives. We knew that we were loved and we feared nothing at all in the world. It was a snapshot of perfect, childish happiness, and it is a memory like this that makes me all the more aware why Jesus calls us to be like little children. He's taking care of everything: there should be no worries, no fears, no troubles, for we know that He is watching over us & is protecting us from all kinds of evil & trouble. Mind you, we will still get our knees scraped in the playground of life, be we shouldn't be so caught up in the things that stress us out. Instead, we should sit in Vista Cruisers with our family & friends, bobbing up and down along the road of life, letting Christ drive the station wagon as we thoroughly enjoy what He has in store for us. Oh, and don't forget to invite your friends on the road trip: the more people in the back seat, the more infectious the funness and the more contagious the laughter becomes.

Episode III: Revenge of the Blog

My my, does time ever fly by. Looking at my calendar, I am amazed to find that it has already been two full months since I have finished this past school-year & three full months since I have started my job as a full-time line cook at an upper-tier restaurant in the world's largest shopping complex. In 5 weeks, I’ll be heading into the nether regions of the Rocky Mountains for 20 days as a counsellor at one of the Bible camps my church has ties with. It has been over a year since I started logging, and it will be less than a year until I graduate with an undergraduate double-major degree.

Wow.

Don't you remember those days when you were a wee lad (or lass, if you're of that genetic disposition), and when those 75-minute made-for-children movies seemed to stretch on for eternity—much less a full day. Or how about summer vacations? Remember how those things seemed to be as long as the time spent in class? And those vacations were only two months! I'm more that halfway through my summer break before my penultimate undergraduate term begins in September, and believe you me: it hasn't felt like two months at all.

I once was told a theory about the perception of temporal relativity—aka why time seems to "feel" longer or shorter depending on what you're doing &/or how old you are. I'm not completely sure where I heard it, but if my failing memory (in my pre-geriatric years) still serves me with any faithfulness, I believe that I learned the theory in my Advanced Perception class this past term. Anyways, the theory states that the reason why long periods of time seem to progress a lot faster the older you get is due to the amount of time you have previously experienced. When a 5-year-old adds another year to his life, he has increased his total experience of time by 20%, whereas when a 25-year-old adds the same year to his life, it only chalks up another 4% of total experienced time. Relatively speaking, a 5-year-old's experience of a year would be equivalent to a 25-year-old's experience of 5 years. Relative perception of time is crazy. No wonder a day is like a thousand years to God & a thousand years like a day. Poor Methuselah... His last year of life would have felt as long as these past two months of mine. Man, that's fast!

I think sometime soon, I will write/e-publish my documentation of the Mexico Spring break trip that I & a handful of my friends took at the end of February. It was good times. Travelling 5,000 kilometres to get a couple hundred bottles of pop, among other things. Nonetheless, there is many a story to tell from that trip. Many a story indeed.

A month ago, I was reading about how chemists have discovered a new method of combining atoms to form new compounds, which have the same physical properties of compounds that are created from other elements. The process is amazing & profound, as it pretty much adds a third dimension to today's conventional periodic table of elements. The even cooler thing is that chemists now have the ability to do what alchemists always dreamed of doing: They can turn lead into gold...or at least they can turn lead into what looks, feels, acts & reacts like (and therefore is essentially) gold. The chemical process has been wittily dubbed "jellium" since how it works basically involves individual atoms of the same element globbing together in little jello-like clusters to form super-atoms. It's pretty neat, and of course—like all things that I think about—it reminds me of Christianity & the Church.

Every individual in the Church has been chosen by God for a specific purpose. All of us by ourselves have been given gifts by which we can glorify the Lord & can spread love and kindness to our hurting world. The amazing part, however, is that when we decide to shed our protective outer layers & become vulnerable enough to let others in the Church close enough to form a productive, healthy & proactive bond, the community that results can become & can act to accomplish anything: nothing is impossible for a community that is bound together with the true love of Christ. The problem is that the members of the Church—like the individual atoms—have to get close enough in order to create a super-atom structure. The warning there, however, is that there is a tendency for atoms (super, or normal) to try to fill their energy levels & become stable and non-reactive, unable to make any change in the world.

Think about this. Let us learn the lesson from chemistry. Community & individuality are both excellent things; just don't fill up your life with things so as to become non-reactive: leave enough room to change the world around you. The implications are explosive.

Pithy In(ter)jection

How someone "is" is 80% determined by how you have decided they should be. Change your perspective & most likely, the person will change accordingly.

Part II of a Many Parted Entry...

I really hope that this BlogSeries ends up being seven parts long, then I can refer to it in the future as the ruminant ruminations of random recall, being that our bovine friends & their other cud-chewing brethren have something like seven stomachs (or is it nine? Man, if it's nine, I'm really going to have to become long-winded... More so!)

So yes, extending my thoughts from rumination one, I must say that I have learned a lot about leadership and responsibility in the past term. Much of this learning has come from being the sole leader of a pair of first-year acting students for my introductory directing project. Truly an amazing experience. I learned a lot & applied a lot of my psychology. I think the largest lesson on leadership I learned from the ordeal is that in any position of direction and/or guidance, the actual "real time" interaction with the people you're dealing with is truly only 50% (or less) of the work that's involved in being a successful & effective leader. An hour of rehearsal easily took 90 minutes—if not an hour of solid preparation and planning in order to be fully productive. When I slid in my pre-meeting work, the rehearsal efficiency suffered along with its effectiveness. It isn't only having all the pre-work completed, however—it's the focus and confidence in what you're doing that plays a key role in motivating people. As a leader, one cannot be overly apologetic, and it is a fundamental error in leadership to show uncertainty in decision. Those one leads are looking to the leader for confidence and assurance, and when their director/leader isn't radiating these qualities in even some respect of his actions, the enterprise suffers, morale drops and compliance becomes more difficult to elicit as questioning the authority's proficiency increases. Fortunately, however, these slips can be easily rectified by taking a good, strong & prepared posture.

Note, however, that there is a large difference among strong leadership, overbearing leadership, sensitive leadership and ineffective leadership. Although one can combine the above styles in many different ways, each style by itself is a different flavour of leading. The strongest form of leadership can only come from a strong/confident leadership style that is coupled with a sensitivity to the needs, desires and opinions of those one leads. This being said however, a strong leader cannot be wholly swayed by every opinion or comment from those being led. It is a fine line to walk, but when done well, everybody is exceedingly pleased with the outcome.

***
I have more to say on this & more subjects—but again, time is the natural and pervasive constraint of these, my blog entries. Stay tuned & hopefully another installation will arrive shortly!

Of Shifting Shadows and Lucid Elusions

Well, where shall I begin? I must say, it has been a prohibitively long time since I last have posted anything on my blog, and for that my noble readership, I do not apologise! Excuses come & excuses go, but a life of responsibilities remains beyond the realm of electro-bytes.

Since I last made a meaty post, back in the dawn of February, I've travelled to Mexico, I've directed a 10-minute scene, I've completed my psychology major, I've become a line-cook, I've learned about Sony patenting technology that can be used to implant thoughts into people's brains & I've read about chemists succeeding in actually turning lead into gold. Yes, all very interesting things & yes, all very true, but when you boil it all down & render it into some digestible form, what does it all matter? What are the implications and the true significances of this oddity called life?

I don't know. I'm having a hard time right now trying to figure it out. I do know what my conclusions on the matter are, but that will come later on in the paragraphs below, for it's not nearly as much about the destination as it is about the journey towards it. That being said, I will continue in this seemingly disjointed and discordant rant that will hopefully congeal like much atoms of lead in a jellium formation to look, feel and act like gold in the end.

I got contacts for the first time in my life about a week and a half ago. It's funny—the first time that I actually succeeded in putting the, in and walking around without glasses on, I was amazed. It truly is a wonder to be able to see with crystal clarity in every region of the visual field; something which I am sure that those with perfect (and even those with relatively good) vision cannot really appreciate. I was ecstatic. There were no lenses to clean, no frames to keep pushing up on the bridge of the nose, no blind spots and no restrictions on how or where to look. Perfect visual freedom: amazing. Glorious. But, then it began.

I'm now leaning towards the opinion that every "correction" that mankind applies to the Lord's creation necessarily comes with a costly trade-off. Industrialisation, while improving the productivity of mankind, ravages our natural resources. Modern medicine, while improving each human's longevity comes at the cost of both overall quality-of-life—since people get sick more often instead of dying off—and overall genetic strength—since medicine's role is to circumvent the "survival of the fittest" ideology. Organised religion, while purveying peace, costs liberty & naivety. Contact lenses, while correcting for feeble vision, dry out the visual organs and irritate the eyeballs immensely. I've been wearing these contacts for like 10 days, and without exception, an hour or two into wearing them, my eyes are dry as a desert, scratchy like unbrushed wool and burning like caustic soda. Not only this, but trying to read actually gives me a headache. It's quite a cost for spectacle-freedom, and I'm not fully convinced that it is worth it. For the most part, wearing contacts just makes me feel tired and unpleasantly discomforted (yay redundancy!), but people say that you get used to it... What about the headaches at trying to read? Will that go away too...? I think I may need to take a trip back to the optometrist...

Interesting organs, the eyes. Most people believe that their eyes see lightness, but that actually isn't the case at all. On the contrary, in human eyes (I can't globalise here across species, but man would I ever like too...), our retinal ganglion cells—aka the signal-detecting ends of the optic nerve—actually respond to the absence of light: we see darkness, not the other way around. Implications? Many. Good illustration material, you betcha.
Close your eyes & turn off the light in your room, if you can. The darker the environment you can find yourself in, the better. What do you see? DO you see a solid, unchanging void of complete blackness? ...or do you see something else... Say, like little pops & bursts of floating bits of "snow" of various (usually) dim colours and intensities. Kinda reminiscent of channel 1 on your TV set, but without the hissing in the background & not nearly as "present," correct? Try it out: the longer it's dark, the more "intense" the fuzzy little pops become—to a point. If, on the other hand, you actually see absolutely nothing when you're in a dark environment, then you've severed your optic nerve(s) & aren't really reading this blog entry in the first place!

Anyway, what you're seeing—those bits of light—is visual noise: eye nerves are fatiguing due to all the darkness you've placed yourself in & they can no longer keep up the rate of activation that they were originally producing. Up the stream, in the visual regions of the brain, these randomly slowed down signals get combined to create the visual experience of patterns, shapes, motion, depth & colours that aren't really there. Cool, eh? Apparently—extending an example from one of my textbooks that created a featureless visual environment—being surrounded by a uniform field of light would be the most relaxing thing for your eye nerves & any variation in the uniform light (we're talking a visual scene that has no shadows, no lines & no changes in colour or depth, regardless of where you look) would eventually melt away to you seeing nothing but a soft, neutral grey. Of course, this is simplifying the whole thing a huge amount, since there are more than just "seeing" ganglion cells in the retina & I'm getting waay off topic, telling you something you probably don't really care about in the first place :). But think about this: how does all of what I said tie into God describing himself as The Light?


Part one of a many-parted installation is complete for now. I'll do this in chunks to save you (and me) the pain of going through all of what I have to spew out of my fingertips at once. Keep checking back every once in a while & you may be pleasantly surprised!

Until then.


—-slipping back into the shifting shadowland-—

Quick Thick Trick Pick

ok, so it's 3.30 in the morning & I want to go to bed, but I thought that this was interesting enough to post before hitting the hay...

So, I was riding the bus home from work today & a guy got on, paid his fare, walked past me & sat in one of the seats across the aisle a couple of rows behind me. All's good for a while. I'm sitting there minding my own business, reading my Bible on my PDA. The bus keeps going along on its route until some time later, the guy who got on out of the blue says, "So, you're the Lord's, eh?" I look up and over at the guy, who was obviously looking at me. He sounded a bit drunk, so I ignored him. A few seconds later, he says, "So, you're fighting for the Lord, eh?" as he mockingly smirks and chuckles, "So, what're ya gonna do? ... Drink a lot of beer! That'll help you fight for the Lord! ... A lot of beer!" The next thing I know, he's pulled the yellow "stop request" cord and gets off at the next stop.

I mention this instance because it was completely out of the ordinary, but it reminds me of several previous incidents I've had. What's striking about these circumstances is that there would have been no way that he could have known that I was a Christian by mere observation: I was quickly reading the preface to the NASV during his stay on the bus, so there was no Biblical passage in sight even if he was looking directly over my shoulder, instead of across the bus & opposite of my viewing perspective. So.... what's up? Here's the goods: intoxication lowers inhibitions, not only physically or mentally, but spiritually as well. It was not the guy who was taunting me. Yes that's correct, you read it right. Although it was his body, it was not him. A spiritual power within him was manifesting itself. How can I be sure? Well, I've seen, talked to and been around demon-possessed people before & I know what it's like: I've been involved in 2 exorcisms; I've seen the signatures of demon-possession in people's eyes when I "look into" them (ask me about this sometime if you're interested); I've heard the manner in which demons have spoken (at least the manner they've used when I've been around). Not only this, but we have documented instances of demon-possessed people interacting with Christ & even some apostles in the NT.

As a result of this experience on the bus, I kind of was hit by a feeling of "Oh yeah." I was reminded that there's a lot more going on around us in our daily lives than what we are aware of, and that we are actually in a battleground, with an a enemy that is not bound to this world & who is very powerful—yet not more powerful than He who lives within me.

It made me think again. Demon-possession is weird. It could be around us all the time & we don't even notice it... the spiritual world is real & it's something we as (post)modern Western civilisation gloss over far too readily. But--this experience is yet another instance of me being confirmed in the realisation that the God I serve is real & the spiritual powers out there actually do exist.

Are you on the winning side of the war? Are you fighting? Do you want to know more &/or to talk about it? Feel free to approach me.


The Lucid Elusion is out... for now.

Why the Original Matrix Was So Much Better Than 2 or 3

because it was stolen.

Or so I've come to believe [I say this just in case some uppity-up in the film industry comes after me for defamation :) ].

I just finished watching one of my favourite films, Dark City and I found it quite shocking to observe an uncanny amount of similarities between the two films. Both involve alter realities; both involve "the one"; both involve the programming of people's experiences; both involve sinister "agents"; both involve the manipulation of time; both involve extensive "machines". Here's the kicker though: Dark City was released to the general public in Feb. 1998. The Matrix didn't begin filming until March 1998. This means that Dark City which was in production for two full years before The Matrix even started its production run... Hmm... a little bit suspicious.

How come The Matrix' sequels didn't have the same edge, story-filled oomph? Because they ran out of material to lift, I suppose. Just browse The Wachowski Brothers' writing credits and you won't find much to be impressed about.

The one thing—if it provides any solace to Dark City's Witrer/Driector Alex Proyas, if not the ca$h that I think he deserves for his brilliance—is that Dark City itself is listed in the series of references that are attributed to The Matrix' production.


Why is it that all the good ideas are never attributed to those who come up with them, and why do those who steal the gems get all the glory? *sigh* life!

ps. I'll be posting a "real" entry about my adventures of the past severeal months sometime soon this week—I just have to finish my last exam, this Tuesday.

Until then, O faithful reader!

Mohs Was Wrong

So, after what has happened today, I discovered the the great mineralogist Mr. Mohs was wrong. Diamond isn't the hardest mineral—but I'll get to that.

Fancy story: the most humbling thing in the world is when the Lord speaks through you, and you end up getting convicted by the message that comes from out of your lips. Guess what? Yup. That happened to me today. This morning, I was chairing my church's service—which involves all sorts of administrative tasks & collaborations, including the leading of communion & a devotional time centred around it. The message that I had prepared for communion ran along the same lines as my most recent post (yes, that one just below) on this here blog. The long &the short of it was that I challenged the congregation to look at their lives, to reflect upon where they were at & see if they (we) were giving Jesus as much as He deserves. Now, at the time, I wasn't really thinking too much about me & about my life—I mean, being "at the front," you're supposed to be "all together," right? Well, that's how many people perceive it. Truth of the matter is that it doesn't matter what side of the pulpit you're occupying. People are people. Christians are people. We are all flawed.

Okay, enough of the sermonette. Getting back to the point of this post. This evening, I went to the worship service that I usually attend on Sunday evenings, and as we began singing, I recognised that I could not sing the words that were up there on the screen. I was amazed to realise that I would be lying right to God's face if I were to tell Him at that moment that He meant everything to me. On the contrary, the opposite would most likely have been more true. I was shocked. Apalled. Scared. What in the world had happened to me in the past few (several) weeks?! God had been replaced in my life. We no longer was the centre. What took precedence, I asked. Me. School. My academic pursuits.

No wonder I had been feeling miserable for teh past while! No wonder my concentration & overall compsure was messed up. No wonder things weren't driving smoothly: there was something seriously wrong with what I was doing, with how I was approaching the world—I had begun to think that this world was my world. Mistake. Big, bad mistake. As I was sitting in one of the back pews at this worship service, the Holy Spirit threw the words that came out of my mouth less than 12 hours earlier on that day, right into my face. "Do we value Christ as much as He is worth?" "Sometimes we need to change. This may involve starting something that you know you should start; stop something you know you shouldn't be doing; approach something in your life from a different perspective." Whabammo! Right to the heart. I was slammed, clobbered, broken to the bone. The Lord revealed to me that I had not been giving him what He deserved from me.

I was spending so much of my time worrying about my academic pursuits, worrying about whether I would get my assignments done well & in time or not, that I completley pushed God to the side & choked Him out of my life. Completely. ...Well not completely, one cannot force God to do anything, to be honest.

He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed. --Matt 21:44

Diamond cannot scratch the stone mentioned above. Nothing can affect (or effect) it. It is the pinnacle of adamant, the cream of resilience, the picture of eternality (if that's even a word). Mohs' scale of hardness would perforce rate this Mineral as 10³—ten cubed. Falling in this Rock, I am necessarily broken, He is necessarily unscathed. It was what I needed to recognise that I had been dumb. The Lord woke me up. Is He worth more than my degree? Yes, when I come to think about it. Then why do I not give him precedence? Good question. Change is needed. He said to me, "I am the desire of your heart; seek after Me & all these other things will be added." Don't worry about these other things, He will look after it all, as long as you have your priorities straigh. He holds the universe in His hands, so He definitely knows how to take care of you & of the desires in your heart.

I broke. I had been a vessel that had contaminated its contents by mixing in the mud from the floor. I had compromised my position with the One True Giver of everything. I had forced Him out, since He has a distaste for impurity. And what's worse is that the more I focused on what I wanted, the less I had a desire to have God to anything in my life, the less He meant to me, the less His absence was bad.

I was broken. The Lord humbled me before Him & made me realise that without Him guiding my life, all was for naught. All was useless. It was time to change. It was time to shift priorities back to where they belong. That is what I am determined on doing. No more muddying teh waters, no more tainting what is the Lord's, no more claiming it as my life.

The greatest part of a broken vessel is that it no longer is able to contain poisoned water. In brokenness, there is renewal. In brokenness, there is reformation. In brokenness there is recommission. In brokenness there is opportunity for a cleansed, purged vessel, ready for the King's service yet again, as He puts the pieces back together with His loving & masterful hands.

Mohs' Scale of Hardness

Hardness	Mineral
1	Talc
2	Gypsum
3	Calcite
4	Fluorite
5	Apatite
6	Orthoclase
7	Quartz
8	Topaz
9	Corundum
10	Diamond

Why is it that the hardest things are the most valuable? When it comes to geology, the matter seems quite obvious: the harder a mineral is, the more resistant it is to erosion, scarring and overall decomposition. They stay together longer and keep their nice appearance because they're tough. Furthermore, harder substances can be used to refine & shape softer minerals. This very property was how the German geologist Frederich Mohs created his “rule of thumb” scale of hardness. Each mineral with a higher number would scratch and mineral with a number lower than it. Hence, limestone scratches talc; quartz, limestone; emerald, quartz; ruby, emerald and diamond, anything.

It's no wonder that gemstones all occupy the harder, upper, half of Mohs’ scale for hardness: they all are resistant to being scratched, and therefore stay shiny after being cut. The longer I live, the more I am beginning to appreciate that “hardness” and “value” are typically paired, across all areas of life. It is the challenges in life which we, as humans value more so than those “easy” things. This is why we applaud Olympians for their accomplishments; why we give out various Nobel Prizes; why there are “masters” and “masterpieces” in the fine arts. We recognise names like Einstein, Newton, Gretzky, Mozart, Leonardo, Galileo because we recognise that they have done things which we know to be hard.

Hardness doesn’t exist just in the world of great ones. Its value, I bet, can be seen in areas of your own life. Take my life for example: I don’t necessarily value walking or riding a bike, because these things are quite easy for me to do. However, things that require discipline and consistency are very difficult for me to do. Working out, getting my degree, relationships with other people and my relationship with Jesus Christ are all hard things for me to do. And it is, to some extent, precisely because these things are hard that I value them. On the other hand, it is precisely because these things are hard that I also hate them. So here I am, stuck in conflict between pursuing hard things because I value them and rejecting to pursue hard things because they require significant investment.

Another thing I've noticed about hard things is that—or the most part—our manner of engagement, that is your decision whether to pursue the hard thing or not, is self-reinforcing. The more often I go to the gym & work out, the easier it is for me to continue doing so, because I easily remember how enjoyable the experience is & how enjoyable its results are. When I stop going to the gym for a while for any reason, all I can think about is how much I don't want to go to the gym because of how hard the physical activity is & how much time it eats up during the day. The same goes for my relationship with Christ: if I habitually read my Bible, pray and spend alone time with the Lord, such activities become the joy of my day & I eagerly look forward to them. Conversely, when I stop doing these activities consistently & regularly, they become burdens to me, dutiful difficulties that I would rather forego for other, easier activities.

My university studies have been absorbing as much of my waking (and some of my sleeping) hours as I let it/as I can afford recently, and the demands of my program are only going to increase for the rest of this academic term. Needless to say, certain non-academic activities that I usually commit to have fallen to the wayside. I haven’t hit the gym to pump iron for over a month now and my time spent alone with God (or even with others) has suffered drastic temporal cutbacks within the previous 4 weeks. This leaves me in a state where I don’t really have much of a desire to pursue either of these activities: going to the gym takes effort & makes me feel tired; reading my Bible has become somewhat of a chore & praying has become somewhat of a perceived useless activity. It really is too bad, because I can recognise the value of all of these hard activities and I realise the potential impact of not doing these things will have on my overall life, but...

Attitude is a habitual beast: the longer you are doing something, the more favourable it appears. I bet that there has been some psychological study on this phenomenon, for analogues are easily seen in perceptual inertia & hysteresis effects as well as in social psychology's theory of interpersonal liking & love: the more that an individual is exposed to something, the more a.) its effects persist, b.) the individual prefers it. It would therefore, not be unreasonable to draw a similar conclusion that motivation & will may be subject to the same inertia/hysteresis effects.

Why am I saying all of this? Well, because it provides a means of escape from the vicious, self-reinforcing cycle of not wanting to go after the hard things. What is it, you ask? Simple: go after the hard things. The most difficult part of changing an attitude or an approach towards something is taking that first step. As soon as the first decision & the first actual engagement/“doing” of that hard thing is done, the easier the following engagements & decisions to continue will be.

To be honest, this post is mainly written for my own, personal kick-in-the-pants purposes, but I think that it would be good to let others know about this idea as well. I’m sure that there are things in your life, oh reader, that you know you should start doing (or stop doing). I can guarantee that there is some part of your life that needs change, but you either feel unable or unwanting (or both) to make that change. In my life, there are several of these, and reconnecting with Christ is the most important one in my life. The problem is that it's hard. It requires giving up energy; it demands doing something that you know will be difficult. It's hard to make that change. It's damn hard, but as we can see in Mohs’ scale of hardness, the harder something is, the more valuable it is. The harder something is, the longer it will last and the greater it will affect those easier, softer things.

Look at your life, as I am looking at mine, and recognise both the challenge and the value of pursuing the harder things. Pull a Nike and “Just do it,” because the hardest part is starting the change. It will get easier to continue in the change, the longer you actively pursue that change.

In Revelation 2:17, Jesus promises to give to whoever overcomes a white stone. Which white stone do you want him to give you: a block of talc, which will crumble into baby powder and disappear, or a diamond which can cut through anything as it shimmers and glows with an internal, eternal fire? The choice is yours & the choice is mine. Pursue the hard things, for in them you will find great value. Making that hard change will be worth it, so the only decision that remains is this: are you going to go after it or not?

Yessss!!!

I am 42% Geek.

You probably work in computers, or a history deptartment at a college. You never really fit in with the "normal" crowd. But you have friends, and this is a good thing.

Take the
Geek Test
@ FualiDotCom

Funny thing is that I actually know a couple of people who look like that guy in the picture & I definitely have friends who can score higher than I did on the Geet Test. How about you?

Progression, Regression & Internal Consistency.

Contents:
-Parable of the Rope-
-Determination Analysis-
•Prologue• •Fire & Ice• •January Begins• •Regression• •Conclusion@Hand•

We Begin With a Parable...

There is a rope. It is a very long rope; in fact, no one has ever been known to reach the very top of this rope that seems to rise forever, affixed to some anchor at its supposed top. There is a tale about this rope, and the tale says that all of your dreams and wishes will be fulfilled by the miraculous treasure found only at the top of this rope. The tale also speaks of one person who indeed reached the top, many years ago, and that he slid back down to tell everyone about the amazing wonder of this treasure.

One man decided to climb the rope. He recognised that it was very long, so before he started, he packed many supplies to hoist up along with him on the trip. As he made his way up, however, he began to notice that all the things he was carrying made the climb that much more difficult.

Another man sought to climb the rope. He climbed and climbed and climbed until he became frustrated with the monotony and labour of always going straight up. At one point along the rope, this man thought to himself, "Perhaps if I start swinging the rope from side to side, I will be able to swing hard enough to make a loop in the rope & rise up faster, without having to climb as much.” So, the man began to swing back and forth for a long time, but despite his efforts, he could never get the long, heavy rope to swing around enough to make a loop.

The third man was a thinker. He logically assumed that if there indeed was an anchor at the other side of the rope, he could pull on the rope instead of wasting his time and energy climbing it. He sat down and made many calculations, figuring out how best to pull the rope and at what angle in order to cause the rope & the treasure at the top to come falling down to him. After he had created his plan, he put it to task and he began tugging the rope with all his might. Not being able to budge it at all, he then began to build a ramp. As soon as the ramp was built, he rolled a heavy weight to the top & tied it to the rope. He pushed the weight off the ramp with triumphant expectation, but the rope did not give. Plan C was to make a machine that would pull the rope with ever-increasing force until the long cord finally gave way. However, even this machine failed at pulling the treasure any closer to the man.

The fourth man eagerly desired this treasure as well. He desired it very much, but as he watched the previous three, he became very discouraged. "What shall I do?" he asked himself, "I have seen these previous three try to get this treasure, but with no success! I also desire the treasure very much, but in light of these others, the rope seems utterly unclimbable." He sat and thought for a long while about the problem until coming to a solution. "Aha!” He said, "I cannot change the difficulty of the climb, nor can I change the greatness of the supposed treasure at the top, but I can change my desire for it. If I just make myself so miserable and lacking in life here on the bottom, this will make me want to climb the rope & I will get to the top easily!" So the man, instead of climbing, went around the world doing all sorts of foolish activities and wasting the things he already had in order to develop a greater need for the treasure. As the years passed, his desire for the treasure did increase, but the climb always seemed to get harder and harder.

There was also a fifth man. He was deathly afraid of heights, but hearing the story about the one man who had reached the top filled him with hope that the climb was at least possible. He resolved to climb the rope, and climb he did. Every once in a while, the man looked down, and he became exceedingly frightened. He couldn't handle the height at which he was, so he slowly slid down the rope a little, looking up, so as to avoid the petrifying sight below him. As soon as he had slid down a little, however, the man was filled with despair, for he realised that in sliding down the rope, he had that much more rope to climb again—not only this, but also every slide down made his hands a little more raw from rope burn. After this realisation, the man stopped sliding and began to climb the rope again, only to slide back down a little further up. He was caught between his fear of heights and his desire for the treasure at the top of the seemingly endless rope. His desire, however, outmatched his fear, for little by little, the man was actually making his way up the rope. Rumour has it that this very man is still somewhere up in the sky climbing that rope, and every once in a while, people who look up from the bottom can just barely make out a tiny figure very high up. These sightings have become less and less recently, they say, as the man continues to climb up & slide down a little only to start climbing the rope again, determined to reach the treasure at the very top.

Determination Analysis

It has been a little over a month since 2005 has begun, and if you have been an avid reader of the Lucid Elusion chronicles, you will note that I had made a firm resolution to seek God Most High with more fervour that I have in the resent past. This portion of the post will recap my take on this the first month of these efforts.

The Prologue of Christmas

I am blessed. The Lord watches over me more than I can fully appreciate, for at the beginning of the New Year, my mind was not really on the whole concept of pursuing Christ with all my mind, strength, heart and soul. In fact, I was feeling quite discouraged with the whole "God" thing at the end of December, especially due to the fallout of Christmas, where my family—true to form—filled our mutual conversation with the constant reminders that I am useless, that my efforts will amount to nothing, that I am wasting my time & my life in the pursuits that I have chosen. The notion of me being a stupid, failure-bound, underachieving fool was readily (and potently) reinforced as we were about to sit down for the Christmas dinner. A couple of days later—these thoughts and perceptions predominantly salient in my consciousness—I left to meet with several peers in the Rocky Mountains.

This weeklong interaction had caught me a bit off-guard, for I was with a similar congregation of individuals the year before at the same location. My previous experience had been filled with a social atmosphere of relative ambivalence & low interaction. This year, however, I was immediately met with much more esteem, interaction & inclusion—something I was not expecting at all. It had ramifications, to be sure, and my family Christmas mentality began to melt away. Not only this but one of the evenings at this week-long adventure pushed me head-long into a fervent pursuit of deepening my relationship with the Living God.

Fire & Ice

The evening of Wednesday, the 29th of December 2004 there was a sauna. It was the third night into this week of camp and it was the first chance I had to hop into the small, wooden shack for excessive heat. We began at around 10:00pm, stoking the fire and sweating every drop of water out of our pores. The night progressed and the wheat was separated from the chaff, for some folk could no longer take the heat. As the retirees increased, they were somewhat replaced by new recruits, eager to sear their flesh in the >80°C wet-heat. After a while, the population stabilised to a small six individuals: 3 guys from the beginning, another late-comer, a girl who had meant to just stop in and ask a few of us about sleeping in the newly-constructed snow shelters, and a guy who had just intended to say goodnight to us all. We started singing songs of worship & praise in the dark, humid and hot wooden crucible. The wood reserves for the stove began to get low as time progressed, and as time progressed, the worship began to shift slowly to a time of prayer. Praying began. It got intense. Hours passed. We started to intermix prayer with worship again. More time passed, and as it did, we barely noticed the temperature in the room drop to barely above zero as the sun outside began to peer through the windows like a curious toddler, wondering at the handful of sweat-encrusted people who inadvertently forsook sleep & security to come before their God as one unified whole—hiding nothing from any of the others in a perfect humility and oneness.

That night was one of the first times that I had ever experienced a form of Christian community that I believe is expected of the Church: open, accepting love and relation—no masks, no walls, no defence mechanisms. It was glorious. We worshipped together in our brokenness & inadequacy. It was a group of Christians in which I did not feel alone.

Barriers down, we met at the end of the week again, by what seemed like chance, and we resolved to keep each other in prayer & in community to the best of our abilities.

So, January Begins: Progression

I now began the year with something that I never felt I've had (or knew of) before. I was weird to have a handful of people who were around to encourage me to keep on keeping on, to go for God regardless of the cost, to seek Him first in all things. And this I have tried to do. I have reinstated one night of the week to solely commune with the Lord; I have picked up bi-weekly corporate prayer again; I have kept reading my Bible. Fridays are now spent meeting with those individuals from the sauna meeting who live in town to worship and pray (you are invited to come, by the way. E-mail me for more details). I have even begun to listen to the Voice of the Lord again, which is something I have difficulty doing or even comprehending.

At the beginning of the school term, I submitted my undergraduate program for review by the Faculty of Arts to check my graduation requirements & to determine my eligibility for entering into an honours psychology program. The results would not come back to me for two weeks, and in the middle of that, duration, we had a meeting on Friday. At that meeting, I asked the people present to pray for me—especially for direction and for what I should do with my life. As they were in the middle of praying, the Lord spoke to me in the most undeniable way He has ever done before. He told me to pursue church leadership. My heart leapt for joy, for I was immediately given an answer to a request from the Lord. It was amazing. It wasn't something that I was overly expecting, since I don't really feel very adequate to pursue church leadership, but it was an answer nonetheless. Since then, when I have told people this, many have told me that I would do well in this capacity—something that seemed a little odd to me and still kind of does, for my feeling of inadequacy is still very much present in my head.

Not being one to follow what some may classify as whimsical fancies, I asked the Lord to confirm this to me in a more concrete way. 6 days later, when I received my program check back, I was informed that it was impossible for me to begin an honours psychology program. Although I met all the main requirements, I had two very strong obstacles: 1.) my course load the previous term hadn't been 5 classes, so if I wanted to apply, I'd be forced to wait until the end of the following year—after two full terms of 5-class course load. 2.) I had too many credits in my academic career to "transfer" into this other college of the faculty. Maximum allowable transfer credits equals 60. I currently have 99. Were I to start an honours psychology degree program, I'd have to take 10 courses next year, equal to 30 credits, I would have to forfeit 70 academic credits, and spend 2 more years trying to find a way to take the courses I already completed in order to meet the honours psychology requirements. In a phrase, it would be impossible. The Lord closed that door, locked it with 85 different locks and encased it in 36 tonnes of blast-proof concrete. My calling had been confirmed.

And January Ends: Regression(?)

As much as the previous section seems out of this world & exciting, it has an unfortunate flipside. It scares the crap out of me. I feel quite at a loss with what to do & how to proceed—knowing that going up is the way to go, but being paralysed by a terrible fear of heights of my own. Listening to the Voice of God is exhausting for me on many levels, one of those being my persistent unsurety in my ability to discern God from myself and from other non-benevolent spirits. School & its troubles are sneaking up on me, and they desperately try to seize all of my God-apportioned time. My desire to spend time alone with God falters with my distractions; my time reading the Bible has been shrivelling up to almost nothing. Worry & anxiety begin to replace joy & confidence. Frustration subsumes discernment. My time gets eaten up by busyness again, and I feel myself becoming everso much off-target. I need to change this swinging pattern. I need to stop sliding down the long rope. I need to remember that it is not by my strength that this rope can be climbed: in my ability alone, I'd freeze out of fear six inches from the shortest blade of grass. The strength and the hope that only Christ can give needs to support and sustain me. But accepting this is hard, especially if—like me—one has an anxious-avoidant style of attachment: I tend to push away those things which desire to draw near to me, out of fear of abandonment as demonstrated to me from historical interaction (See Ainsworth's Attachment theory.).

The Conclusion at Hand...

I struggle. Pursuing Christ is hard. It's the hardest thing that I have ever done, especially since my natural tendencies are towards self-sufficiency and towards isolationary self-preservation. However, pursuing a relationship with Christ necessarily requires the abdication of self—both in its sufficiency and in its preservation.

My hands are raw from rope burn, but I cannot assent to my desires of giving up—my desire for Christ is too great. I will press on. I need to press on. That which I value can only be reached if I pursue it with all my heart—holding nothing back. The choice is hard, but the choice is necessary, and I make my choice with immutable resolve: I will climb. Though I am prone to slide down a little, I will nonetheless climb.

Trust me: it's worth it. So, what are you waiting for? Grab that rope.

A wee factlet for today:
If you only eat one small meal all day 6 hours before starting your 90-min. bodybuilding workout, don't expect to finish it.

Take this psychometric quiz to find out your attachment style & let me know what you find.

Krap

So I've been trying on this whole "listening to God" thing again recently, right? Well, it turns out to be a pretty potent thing: direction as to what I should do &/or how I should respond is now sometimes explicitly spelled out for my by God Most High—cool, but at the same time daunting and very scary. After my divinely ordained meeting with Person on Tuesday, the Lord has also told me to do (and not do) several other things. In one particular area that I was thinking about yesterday that has to do with direction in my life, the Lord told me to lay low for a while on / not pursue, because He has begun this new reshaping & reformulation of my life. Pretty much it came down to the fact that God wants me to focus completely on my relationship with Him at this moment in time, so that I will be prepared & properly equipped for the next stage in my life. Starting adventures in other territory(ies) is not what He wants of me right now, but He said that He would give me the signal as to when the appropriate time would be for me to go & chase those adventures. Cool.

Another thing He told me to do—or actually, not to do—involved a spur-of-the-moment thought that I had this afternoon. I thought it was a great idea & very worthwhile in acting upon, but as this whole "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness..." & the "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding" bits are becoming increasingly concrete in my life, I decided to consult the Lord before proceeding. He said not to do it. I complained. He didn't budge. I submitted & after a long while, I started to kind of understand the reasons as to why it may have been a better idea to not do what I was thinking as opposed to actually running out & doing it.

The bad thing, though, is that sometimes God tells me to do things that I don't want to do. My first experience with this was nary a half hour ago, as I was walking home. A young middle-aged woman was carrying a small (but apparently heavy) box home and her purse was falling off of her shoulder. Being right beside her on the sidewalk, she turned and asked if I could pull her purse back up onto her shoulder, which I did. She thanked me & said quietly that with the heavy box she was carrying home, it wasn't very easy for her to do it herself. I chuckled friendly-like, smiled & proceeded to go on my way. Then the Lord piped up. "Carry that box for her." I cringed, bit my lip and as silently as a silent prayer can be, said, "No." ACK!!!!!

What the heck did I just do?!!?!?!!! I outright refused a direct instruction from the Lord. Of course, He didn't hide that fact from me either: Immediately the Holy Spirit convicted me; immediately verses swelled in my noggin about "whatever you do for the least of these..." immediately, my head was swirling with the prayers I had just prayed that morning—and the many days before—about asking the Lord to help me be a faithful steward with the gifts He has given me & about asking Him to help us as the Church to make every opportunity to let His light shine through us. Did that stop me from continuing to walk onwards? Nope. I cowered in my steps, as I walked away & begged for forgiveness. I felt horrible. I felt hypocritical. I felt like I wanted to continue walking away from that woman as fast as I could. Shoot. Crap. Crap crap crap. The Voice of the Lord, the Holy Spirit within me, and even my own Spirit all stood against my overt actions & all the while I was walking ahead of the woman, it felt like every fibre in my body was screaming to turn around—every fibre except for my "I'm afraid of this stranger" fibres. Three blocks later, as I was holding my head down in shame, I turned around to see if the woman was still walking. It being foggy out, all I could see was this silhouetted figure two block back walking towards me. Crap. What a freaking idiot I am!!! But did that make me walk back & helpl her? Nope. I had now convinced myself that, being alone, I was potentially in danger by this strange, helpless woman. not only that, but actually helping her may not have been on my route home & I couldn't have that! I mean, far be it from me to sacrifice a wee bit of my time for the advancement of the Lord's Kingdom, right? I am a loser.

Two blocks later, I couldn't stand it anymore. The Lord was telling me to turn around, so I struck a deal with Him: "Fine. I'll turn around & walk a block back in the direction I came, and if I see her, I'll help her. I'm sorry, Lord for being such a defiant idiot. Forgive me, but please let this be only a good learning lesson of how stupid I am... please!" So, I turned around & loosely walked back towards where I had come. I didn't see her. I thanked the Lord, but sheepishly as a disobedient child thanks a parent for not punishing them with the deserved severity. Crap crap crap. I am du-u-u-u-mb... Thank the Lord for His mercy & His boundless grace.

I learned a very valuable lesson today. Sometimes God calls me (probably us) to do things that we really don't want to do, and if we don't do them, it isn't just "Oh well," it's direct defiance against God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. I promised Him that I would never again pull a Jonah; now I just need to pray for strength to keep my promise...

Feeling very humbled,
The Lucid Elusion.



A little factlet for today:
•­The giving of the Self to others is key to successful community. In doing so, the Self grows & extends beyond the single human being and now embraces other humans as fundamental components of the very Self that was initially poured out.
•(Tied in with the above, but having broader implications...) Who you are is what you define your Self to be.

A question to ponder...

Here's the primer:
Alister MacIntyre states that there is no reason without a context. Reasoning about the Self is never neutral. Reason itself is a product of history & society. There, therefore, is nothing that isn't conditioned historically. There is neither Persons nor Reason outside of tradition & history. Rationality is not caused by tradition, rather it finds its origins within tradition and the Self is how one defines one's place in history. This definition of one's place in history is formulated out of the multiply available traditions, and it is in this conflict of traditions that the Self is defined. Since current society is amnesiac of its traditions, we objectify history. It is therefore difficult to escape conflict since we are no longer able to appeal to strong traditions. Inner conflict must perforce be resolved by the compartmentalisation of our ideas & our attitudes. We split our Selves into different forms to deal with this because traditions do not provide the higher values necessary to resolve these conflicts. Without this heirarchy of values, there cannot be conflict—instead, there is dissociation. Compartmentalisation of the Self precludes the notion of integrity or unity: there can be no unified Self if the Self is compartmentalised or split due to the lack of higher-order traditional values. Since there is no Self prior to tradition(s), then all traditions will necessarily split the Self. The inherent inability to construct a unified narrative used to define the Self results in our inability to unify the Self. This causes multiple splits—both in society & in the Self—which creates a culture of narcissism.


That being said:
Is the Biblical account of narrative in opposition to MacIntyre's concept of an irresolvable, unified narrative?

Hory Cwap!!

Okay, get this. I've taken up my old habit of meeting alone with God again. Whereas I used to make an hour for him every evening (waaaay back in Grade 9), in this recent version I only have dedicated Monday nights to be my “dates with God.” In this time, I spend half an hour reading my Bible, 15 minutes talking to God & 15 minutes listening to Him. This particular date—last night to be precise—I was feeling a wee bit frustrated / at a loss / unsure with who I am or where I am with the Lord. Now—partially because of the copious levels of caffeine injected into my bloodstream by the 3+ℓ of Diet Pepsi I consumed earlier on in the day, and partially because of my brother loudly watching late-night television—I was having difficulty going to sleep, so I do what I usually do when I am struck with insomnia: I pray.

During the course of my praying, the topic turns to me & hearing the voice of God. It has been something that I have previously experienced—yes, that means I have had two-way conversations with the Lord—but recently (say, the past 3 or 4 years), I have been shutting Him out of my mind because I was unsure / afraid that the voice I was hearing actually was the voice of God. This seems rather prudent—wouldn't want to start acting like a whack who goes around doing things because he claims that voices in his head told him to... I'd be thrown on antipsychotics & placed in a psych. ward to assess possible schizophrenia. So, last night as I was praying, I asked God about his Voice & whether I should listen to it. As the prayer continued, I asked Him about a certain situation in my life & what to do about it. I listened. He told me to talk to a specific individual. I laughed, “Are you serious?!”

Who knows? Maybe He was… So, being the nerdy little skeptic that I am, I decided in my mind that I would do nothing to make the interaction happen—more than that—I put the onus completely on God’s shoulders. I said to Him, “Fine then. If this is really you, Lord, then—man, God, I really hate to do this cuz I really don't want to put you to the test, but there really isn't any other way for me to know for sure, so here it goes: If this is really you, then make this person come & meet me at such & such a place on campus between noon & 12:30 tomorrow.” I prided myself on being crafty, since I had only seen this person on campus once this whole term, and that only in passing on a completely different day of the week. What would the chances be of this person actually showing up at a place I’ve only ever seen them 4 times before in my life on a day I’ve never seen them there within a 30-minute window? If it was gonna happen, God had to pull strings. As soon as I had made this request of the Lord, I shut His voice out of my hearing—but not before I grasped a teensy, weensy little “Fine,” that squeaked through the lines of open communication. At the time, I dismissed this “fine” as a wishful thought of my own desire to see God concretely work in my life. I continued praying for a while after this, talking to God about the same subject and others until I sometime fell asleep.

Morning comes & I carry out my usual routine, which has me belched from my apartment building into the wilds of the 6:30 am Edmonton downtown streets. Needless to say, it’s pretty quiet & pretty dark. So, I begin my usual jaunt towards the LRT station, singing praises to God & praying to Him. As my trek southward progresses, my prayers return to what the Lord had said to me the night before. I let Him have it a little easier, for I thought that I was being too demanding on the Lord—I mean, who am I, His creation, telling Him how I want it, right? Because of this thought, I made a new deal: If the person whom he told me to talk to ran into me at all during the day, then I’d make the effort to talk with them. I started the whole “listening to the Voice of God” deal again, and this time he said, “I will show you myself today,” to which I responded, “But Lord, how in the world do I even know that this is your voice I am hearing right now? I mean, it could just be my own wishful thinking! I know in 1 John, you tell us to test the spirits, but if this is just me, the voice would still pass the test since I do believe that You came in the flesh as the redeeming sacrifice for all. I don’t know what the heck to do!”

I love God. This is what he said to me in response: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord you God will be with you wherever you go.” He won. “Okay. Do your thing, Lord,” I said.

I get to school. I go & meet in prayer with a handful of other Christians on campus. We talk to the Lord & we worship in song. I don’t see the person at all before classes start. Class one begins & continues for the next three hours. My mind begins to rationalise the earlier experiences I had and I start to think that maybe it was all just fluff. Class finishes, and I go to the appointed place—where I typically go after this class for my 30 minute break between classes. No person there. “Okay, whatev,” I say to myself. I check my e-mail & return. Still no one. It is now 10 minutes after noon, so I sit down at a table & unpack some of my schoolwork to pass the time. No sooner had I unpacked my notes than this person the Lord told me to speak with appeared in the doorway and walked over to me. What the heck?! This isn’t supposed to happen! Not only that, but the person even brought up a topic of discussion that I had been meaning to talk with them about, but unfortunately time was running out quite fast & I was not able to complete (nor really even begin) my talk with them. As I packed up my stuff to head off to my next class, I let them know that God had told me the night before that I would meet up with them at that place & that He wanted me to talk with them. Person seemed relatively unfazed, which to me seemed a bit weird: the dude standing before them is claiming that the Creator of Heaven and Earth told him beforehand of this chance meeting & that He wanted them to talk, and Person nary bats an eyelash?! Wow. Odd. I was actually expecting at least the slightest reaction. I mean, I found it wholly absurd & completely foreign to my experience, but that may just be me. Then again, maybe I missed the reaction, or perhaps Person missed what I had said.

Anyways, the moral of the story is that I think I need to be listening closer to the Voice of God. I still have my reservations, however. I mean, one example isn’t enough to dispel all of my uncertainties, but it sure bolsters a pile of support for me to actually pursue it. The gift of prophecy is a weird thing. I should listen to God more & trust Him when He speaks. The small, effortless things are easy to do, but when He tells me to actually go out & do something, maybe I should actually do it. My relationship with God is weird, to say the least. But I love Him for it—however He decides to interact with me. Oh, and just in case you missed it earlier: Holy crap!!! God actually spoke tangible words to me & told me something that actually happened when He said it would. Not only that, but He even responded in my most difficult of requirements when He didn’t even need to!! Holy crap! Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!

A little factlet for my readers today, which is by no means really connected to the above:

I have discovered that when someone says that they are too busy to do x, it is really just a polite euphemism (yes, my English geek friends, I know it is redundant☺) for saying that x isn’t important enough for them. If it was, they would be sure to make time to ensure that x occurred.

Peace out.

Driftwood & Piledrivers

Lord Jesus, where am I? Help me to give you praise in everything that I do. Speak to me, work through me, minister to my broken heart. I need you—more than anything else, I need you. Come to me, my Lord & give me life.

Picture with me, if you will, an expanse of windless ocean. There are no clouds in the sky; there are no waves on the surface of the water. The only thing around—besides the warm, noonday sun—is a piece of driftwood, minding its own business as it wanders through the endless expanse of liquid hydrogen hydroxide. Now, imagine as though you are lying in the water right next to that piece of driftwood, having not a care in the world that could shatter the relaxed bliss of that moment. As you smile, lying on the surface of the water, you close your eyes & daydream for a while—maybe you're even the type of person to take a short snooze. Seconds mature into minutes, and the minutes pile up like the sand on the shore. After all sense of time has been successfully removed from your consciousness, you casually open your eyes. That piece of driftwood which was right beside you is no longer around. In fact, the two of you have meandered far enough apart that you can barely make out its shape far off on the horizon. "How in the world did that happen?" you muse to yourself as you lie back again and rest on the surface of the seas.

It truly is an amazing phenomenon, the action of drifting. You don't have to do anything at all, for just by the very nature of a fluid, you will ultimately end up moving. I don't know what to say. I think I was given a rude awakening yesterday evening, when I realised that I myself am very much like that piece of driftwood. The duration of time, however, has been much longer than a few minutes, and it is not you that I have drifted from in this my most recent realisation. I got smacked across the head last night & realised that my relationship with God has become so long-distance that I can barely see Him in my life anymore. What caused this realisation, I'm not all too sure: it just was, and that's as best as I can explain it. Needless to say, I found this realisation very, very unsettling.

If I actually asked myself the hard questions, how would I respond? Honestly? If I were to ask of myself, "What impact does your relationship with God have in and on your life?" or "Do you love God?" or "Do you love others?" or "What is the most important thing to you?" or "Where are you at with God?" I know that I would come up very short. And it makes me want to weep.

Today and yesterday, I have been questioning myself as to whether I have been living a lie for the past several years. Has Christ truly been central in my life? After serious thought about it, I would have to conclude that He hasn't. What does God mean to me? I know how I should answer. Heck, I even know how I would answer, but if I actually sat down & truly considered the question, how would I answer? Is God my security blanket? No. Has he become that to me in my drifting? Maybe. Is God living and active & central in my life? Living, maybe; active, maybe; central, doubtful. Has he been any of these in my life before? Hell yes. Do I know who my God is? Definitely. Is my heart his? That's questionable & uncertain. Do I want it to be? Consciously & verbally, yes I do, but in my daily living...?

To be wholly honest, I love my God more than words can express. I desire him more than wealth, fame, power, comfort & even others. He is a living, compassionate, love-filled, super-awesome everything. He is the one thing that I could not continue living without. God makes my day; He comforts me in my deepest, darkest moments & he celebrates with me in my victories. He is with me when I don't feel Him; He is with me when I do. To try to define who I am while leaving God out of the picture would be like trying to define a word while leaving out the vowels & consonants. And this, I hope, will help you appreciate better the crisis that I currently am dealing with. How would you react if one day you woke up and the one thing in your life that you absolutely love without limit, that you define your life by, that you live for—that most dearest thing—what if you woke up one day only to notice that it was almost completely out of sight because you were taking it for granted or because your were focusing on something else for a while instead.

What is love? I know there is a definition for it in I Cor. 13, but what is it really? I say I love, but do I really? When the mass-market media-frenzy tragedy of the year hit a few weeks ago, many people around me were shocked & dismayed. I? Numbed & unmoved. As hundreds of thousands of people experienced a life-shattering event, I was saying in my head "whoop-de-doo!" and to be honest, my attitude still hasn't changed that much (if at all). A cutting edge theory of emotions states that love is a rational construct wherein an object is recognised as being central to the advancement of one's personal strivings for eudaimonia (good spiritedness) that is not fully under one’s control (Cf. Nussbaum, 2001). I think that that is a good definition—no, it is an excellent definition. Thinking about love this way, it is no surprise that the tsunami effects have had little impact on me: those effected by this disaster simply have not preconsciously been recognised as central objects of my personal strivings. I don't love them because they mean nothing to me. Is this bad? Some would call me a monster, I think. I would just say that my emotive worldview has been constructed in such a manner as to localise my extension of love, and that the formation of these constructs are not done consciously, but pre- and sub-consciously, hence how we can grow to acquire new emotions for things & how others can fade away. Okay, forgive my large, theoretical bunny-trail. I will get back to the core of my content & try to wrap up shortly ;). But if you want to read more about this theory of emotions, I suggest you pick up a copy of Martha Nussbaum's Upheavals of Thought. Excellent read.

Alright. Here's the gig, in a more succinct fashion: My life has been plagued with distractors for the past several (5 or 6) years, and I hadn't really realised how much of an effect this has had on my relationship with God. Much of the space created by this inattentional drift has been caused by my attention on personal preservation—"the fear of man." A huge portion of my life has been characterised by rejection, attack and dismissal of me as a person or of that which I say/stand by. Times that I have tried to overcome this inhibition to community in the past have been met by just more of the same. This has caused scarring, hardening of my heart & vehemenent reluctance to be open & "real" with people, especially when they are unwilling to take that step first themselves. Now, me worrying & fretting about how people will react/respond to me has (duh) taken my attention off Christ (wow, this sounds a whole lot like my original post back in July...). Placing the focus back on Christ in my life has been good, but I never really surveyed the extent to which I had wandered, and now looking at the expanse between where I was with Christ & where I exist now, things seem rather daunting & very, very disparaging. So? What to do? There is a nasty voice in my head—one that I recognise—that is telling me that the distance that I have "fallen" from is too great to surmount & that I might as well give up. This voice of our beloved friend Satan has been haunting me for, ohh... The past 24 hours or so, and the a-hole is very very convincing. But screw that junk! Like I said before, God & my relationship with Him is too dear to me than words can describe. I cannot give up on my Lord. I love Him too too much to walk away, even though I have been drifting away for soooooooo long. Instead, there is only one thing that can & must be done: get back to the grindstone, even though the journey is difficult & even though it seems impossible & unrewarding. In the end, the reward is intimacy with Jesus. Nothing, nothing is better than that. I want Him, I need Him, I long for Him, and the only way to get to Him is to go to Him. I'm off.