life

Thoughts on life, in general.
life — 3 Comments
4
Oct 09

want to want to

Dawn is quickly breaking on a strange, convoluted, and dim-if-not-dark night of my life.  I lovingly refer to this passing phase as “my resetting years” and it all became apparent because of feelings of isolation and entrapment. Had you or I the time to take in all of the details, I am not convinced that they would really benefit the discussion and so I have decided to give you a very quick synopsis: I’d be happy to share the complete collection with you if you’re genuinely interested….

The essential details are:

  • my wife and I have experienced some isolation from almost everything/everyone that we knew and loved within the past few years;
  • along with this isolation came a sense of entrapment – that no matter what we did we could not affect the larger details of our lives;
  • this initiated an extended period of anxiety mixed with questions about life and love and faith.

We were both raised in good homes in a good church – our foundation was solid.  We were involved, and respected, and happy.  With the onset of this isolation, however, a number of questions also made their way into our consciousness.  It was around this time that we began reading authors like Rob Bell who started to make us think that maybe there was a lot more “stuff” just beneath the surface that we never considered (I’m sure I’ll post soon on exactly what some of these things are).  There was an obviously but seemingly uncorrectable sense of unhappiness with our professions and circumstances.

These issues coalesced and manifested as physical symptoms of anxiety in late December 2006/January 2007. Several months of introspection and other therapeutic mechanisms ensued.  These were eye-opening and enriching, and while many questions were still unanswered and even remained occluded in the depths of my soul, a long, meandering, often hazy and difficult journey began.

From then until now it has been just over two years.  There have been a number of difficult questions involving faith and self-worth and priorities and tradition and God and friendship and love.

I have only recently (read: in the last few weeks) realized how long and far and trying and draining and rewarding this reset has been.  For the first time in a long time I have a real sense of self-confidence.  I want to be around people and more often than not I believe that they want to be around me – some of them have even SAID SO in one way or another.  Inside of me now is a burgeoning faith that is my own – not founded on, or a dependent of tradition or others.  After years of lamenting the loss of who I used to be, I’ve discovered who I am supposed to be.

I know that questions are OK.

The practical implications of this are astounding and immediate.  Others have recognized a change in literally the past few days.  My wife has said “I feel like we’re friends again!” – which is not to say that we weren’t – I was just a lousy friend.  Suddenly I feel like I can approach people free of my longstanding fear of rejection.  I’m writing again. I’m reflecting again.

I am happy.

Brennan Manning, in Ragamuffin Gospel describes a similar scenario which I will paraphrase here, as it seems to really capture my experience at that time…

God, I don’t know if I love you.  I don’t know if I want to love you.  But I want to want to love you.

Though at the time I couldn’t or wouldn’t put this into words, I did know that I wanted to want to be at a place of peace, I wanted to want to be compassionate, I wanted to want to keep going.  In my time of reset I didn’t know what would work or what was right. Unknowingly that last statement framed the posture of my life on this most recent leg of my journey.

Even as an often embittered and indifferent wanderer, I knew that I wanted to want not any old ways but truth and grace and peace.

And slowly, but safely and securely that prayer was answered abundantly and fully.  And the God that I had always heard of as faithful at every step, and loving beyond comprehension, and accepting without precondition, I now know for certain to be faithful. And loving. And accepting.

I want to keep going.

general / life — Comments Off
20
Sep 09

passive

During lunch today, I spoke about how my experiences in life have given me “permission” to be passive.  I’ve written about this before (read my entry from a couple of years ago), however it’s always interesting to revisit these thoughts to see how things may have changed, how I may have changed.

Since first having these insights, I’ve realized that this tension exists in so many parts of our lives and I’ve been trying to actively live my life by learning about myself, making decisions that reflect the person that I am, the values that have been developing in me, etc.

This has been most evident recently in my interactions with others.  Whereas before my self-analysis has revolved around decisions directly related to my own person (jobs, marriage, etc) I’m now beginning to see how I’m continuing in my passive ways at it relates to building relationships.

It has far more often than not been the case for me that because I’ve looked “the part” relationships have “just happened.”  In many cases, these relationships were often shallow but were convenient.  This is not to say that these relationships were of lesser value, just built on a passive foundation and were not long-lasting.  As time, distance, or difference began to separate these relationships, they were not actively preserved because they were not actively pursued in the beginning.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), it is very much the case that many of my experiences now require the opposite to be true.  In other words, to begin relationships, I have to begin to make decisions about which type of relationships (and perhaps people) I want to pursue.  Who are the people and what are the characteristics that I want to introduce to or reinforce in my life?  Even further, I need to “make the first move” in building these relationships – I need to strike up conversation.

This is a foreign concept for me.  I enjoy being around people, but as with the employment opportunities and other issues referenced in my 2007 post, my relationships have almost exclusively been built passively – out of convenience, or proximity.  Again, this is not to say that I do not value these relationships.  Rather, this highlights the fear and ignorance with which I am approaching new relationships.

Perhaps there is a lack of confidence, a fear of rejection.  I can’t rule them out.

Most likely though, I simply don’t know how to make friends.

But I’m learning.  I know it’s a problem and I know what to do to rectify the problem.

Now, it’s a matter of finding the motivation.

general / life — 2 Comments
19
Sep 09

value

It may be self-evident that all men are created equal.  Unfortunately, this belief leaves a lot to ambiguity. There are a few posts on this blog that have been written to try to encourage people to think about human-ness, human rights, and humanity in general.  I believe, as the late Senator Kennedy did that the health care issue, and many others, are primarily a question of morality.  There are, however, a lot of social, economical, and moral overtones sounding just about the tonic of “equality.”

As with my ignorance towards the many interpretations of the “We” in “We the people…” I have always assumed that if all men are created equal then that means that all men ARE equal – and that’s clearly a misinterpretation or a miscommunication.  It may be that the founding fathers meant the latter and did a poor job of writing it.  Or, it may be that I’ve done a poor job of comprehending it.

A third option, of course, is that we’re thinking about this far too hard…

But, the questions remain:

  • Are all men and women created equal?
  • Do all men and women retain the same intrinsic value throughout their life?

There are so many perspectives from which to view this.  However, I continue to contend that human’s have an innate moral tracking that gives some basis for morality, for some definition (however loose) of right and wrong, of good and better and best, and that we have some hunger and thirst for social interaction and, perhaps, even society.

That’s the perspective I’ll use.

First, let’s look at this matter of equality: on what grounds are humans equal?

Saying that all men are created equal is essentially an expanding of John Locke’s Tabula Rasa (blank slate) theory.  Not only are all people equal in that there is a blank (or at least equally written on) mental slate that experience will write on, but we can expand this to include physical, social, and all of the -als that humans experience.

But our first problem is already self-evident.  All people are not equally able.  Some newborns have issues that may be major or minor; that could cause life-long inequality or could be just a temporary stumbling block.  So then is equality instantly fleeting?

And another.  One of the adjacent beliefs with Tabula Rasa is that nurture plays a major role.  Given differences in parenting styles, circumstances, experiences, and happenstances, there are no two people that have equal opportunity and preparation for life.

Perhaps there is another way to approach this question: does equality speak instead to a person’s worth or value?  Is each child assigned arbitrarily and unconsciously some monetary value that can accrue interest or lose value as they grow, experience life, make choices, etc?

The key here is to note that this value is completely subjective.  To illustrate – if you could “pay” to be saved from a burning building, would you pay more for a skydiver, an IT professional, or a fire-fighter? How would that change if you fell out of a plane?

I believe this is how our free-market society operates – this, too, is self-evident.  Whether it’s insurance companies that look for which risky or money-losing plans to drop for their portfolio or advertising companies targeting some demographic (superbowl commercials anyone?)  As long as you’re worth something to someone.

What is painfully obvious here is the greed and selfishness that bubbles at the surface of all of these discussions – from health care reform to missile defense shields to entitlement to talk radio.  Because of the way with which profit and value are intertwined with our lives, it is so easy to mask human life with an identification number and relegate that number to the “worthless” pile.

You know, we have built into our social fabric means for dealing with individuals that harm other individuals by  damaging them emotionally, or by taking their things or their life; by devaluing other’s lives. But on a corporate level we assess values with the intestinal fortitude of an insurance adjuster.

When there is profit to be had, beware of falling prices.

What does that say about the character of a country?

general / life — Comments Off
15
Sep 09

ego

In one moment of unplanned (but most likely planned) impulse, Nimrod West has validated a point that I have been wanting to emphasize.  His idiocy is my exclamation point.  For those, who aren’t aware, while Taylor Swift was accepting her award at MTV’s video music awards, a grade A douche bag jumped up on stage and so eloquently said :

Yo Taylor. I’m really happy for you. I’m gonna let you finish but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!

With this in its proper perspective, I’m not going to shed any tears for Taylor or be embarrassed for Beyoncé.  These people are entertainers and while it was awkward, it certainly is not the end of any of their worlds.

A few days ago in a post entitled overboard, we discussed the idea that unbridled individualism is as bad as free-reigning “socialism” or collectivism.  In fact, the basic idea was that extreme anything is not good.  As with so much in our daily experience we set up these opposing camps of ideology and we scurry to find cover with those like us.  The result is a dichotomy – two distinct points rather than a scale joining one extreme to the other.

It is trivial to find examples of the rampant individualistic tendencies that we exhibit.  Whether we look to Bernie Madoff and his ponzi scheming or the number of tables for two that are half empty in any coffee shop or restaurant, we have been told that we can excel with what we have each been given.

Certainly it is politically correct to say that all man and woman kind are created equal.  That has been reiterated for years – in schools, and churches, and government.  This may be up for debate, but what is certainly not up for debate is that from before the time we are born we begin to be valued quite differently.  We are classed by demographics: by age group, and household income, and risk, and ability, and gender, and socioeconomic status, and race.  Advertising money gets spent on groups that will allow the greatest returns.  Insurance companies assess our value based on risk – and determine which patient groups (i.e. portfolios) are worth saving and which are worth dropping.  Our current economic condition will see some folks (with good credit) being treated like kings, and others like riff-raft.

If we’re not careful we begin to internalize these evaluations.  I’m subtly aware of the fact that I’m worth less to advertisers now than I once was and as my age and waistline creep upward my “worth” goes down.  We begin to figure out ways to increase our value – by dieting and spending and living as if consequences didn’t exist.

And we begin to make these evaluations of others.  Many things are framed primarily by “What’s it worth to me?”  or “What can you do for me?”  Others worth becomes blazingly apparent – by their looks and their choice of vehicle and their neighborhoods.

Finally, as preschoolers often are asked to line themselves up by height from shortest to tallest, we find our place in the line of worthless to emperor of the world.  We can look to one side to see the worth that we have to aspire to and to the other side to see those who are much less valuable than ourselves.  As preschoolers we often have disputes about who exactly is taller and who is standing on their tippie-toes.

And who’s voice is the loudest.

And who’s opinion most ought to be heard.

And heeded.

And that is where Kanye enters our story.  While I don’t want to pigeon-hole him as just another self-aggrandizing “jackass” (The president’s words, not mine!), it is easy to see this as a sign of the larger issues that are often ignored because we often just don’t care.  Kanye decided that what he had to say, his thoughts and opinions, were more important than anything else going on at that moment.  More important than a seventeen year old entertainer getting recognition for her work was Kanye’s gospel that someone else deserved to win.

And when we cut people off in traffic because our schedule is more important than anyone else’s, or we lose our composure when dealing with customer service representatives on the phone, or we yell our opinions to drown out the all others, or we sit safely in our ideological base camps we put us above all others.

Some would say that is what you have to do to get ahead in this world.

It may be that we need to do something different to move this world ahead.

faith / general / life — 2 Comments
9
Sep 09

worry for nothing

Recently I’ve been reading “The Furious Longing of God” by Brennan Manning.  In it, he says this:

…I’ve decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn’t only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth.  No, not one.

A funny thing happens when you come to know the freedom that being in touch with Jesus offers: you can potentially be overrun with guilt.  There is a checklist that may seem to descend from the sky (though, I now realize this checklist comes from somewhere very different) that outlines each of the many things that you have to do if you are to truly experience and relate to God.  You have to pray, and read your Bible, and confess your transgressions, and do a good deed everyday, and study, and sing, and reflect.

Herein lies one of the problems with Christianity as it is expressed in 2009.  There is so much to do that we miss the great intention behind it all:

Cease striving and know that I am God.
Psalm 46:10 (NASB)

Yes: a life being lived modeled after the way that Jesus lived his will involve self-improvement.  It is a good thing to read scripture in order to understand the way that people thought and processed things in and out of connection with God; to take the good, and the bad, and the confusing and incorporate these things into our own lives.  It is good to spend time in prayer.  Relationships are the means by which real change takes place and a relationship with God is no different.  Doing good is good.  Confession is good.

But when the redeemer becomes taskmaster, when guilt overpowers freedom, a core component of the whole system is jeopardized.  God’s intention has never been “Keep ‘em occupied so they don’t have time to bother me.”  Instead, God’s intention is that as much as is humanly possible we live in a type of union with Him.  Not performing for him.  Not doing his bidding and returning to the bell-tower a la Quasimodo.  Just being confident in His love, in the security of His relationship with you.

Manning finishes up this thought-process with this:

What would I actually do if I had to do it all over again?  Heeding John’s counsel, I would simply do the next thing in love.

As a person of faith, I struggled for a long time with wanting to look the part which involved doing all the things that were expected.  I know I’m not alone in this.  I saw certain things as bad and (*gasp*) unholy.

We can “do” ourselves in.  Don’t misread what I’m saying – I know that “belief” and “action” are as integral to each other as breathing is to life.  But preoccupation with the irrelevant minutiae of our spiritual lives is counterproductive to living like Jesus lived.

So, may you live with the confidence that Jesus is in the processing of reinvigorating your soul with life; that during this process, there are people that He wants you to meet and interact with, things that He wants you to do that bring just a little bit of heaven to earth; that he never intended for you to become preoccupied with the endless pursuit of self-improvement; and that He wants you to stop your striving, and know He is God.

life — 3 Comments
8
Sep 09

overboard

a friend of mine recently said this:

I think that when constitution says “We the people” it does not mean some collective, but rather a group of individuals. There are costs and benefits to this idea of individuality in governance by the people. One of the costs is that we have to either handle issues on our own OR create our own groups to deal with the issue.

I have to admit that I had never thought the words “we the people” to mean a group of individuals.  “We” to me has always meant many people together in some set of circumstances: we partied all night; we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque; do you remember where we parked?

We are all in this together.

So this newfound interpretation of “we” took me back a few steps.  I’d never assumed it to mean “We were all waiting at the DMV” – together in essence, but only in the sense that we were all in the same physical location.

What took me back is that this is a perfectly legitimate interpretation of “we.”  While my humans-making-humanity-better idealism says that we cannot exist in a vacuum, perhaps in reality we can.

As I thought some more about this individualism a few more pieces started falling into place for me.

Firstly, this individualism that is so highly favored and accepted based on the “we the individuals” is on the other end of a scale from a something that resembles what we’ve popularized as “socialism” – “we the collective.” Socialism itself is actually an economical system – not a political system as seems to be the general understanding.  Instead, the other end of our scale will be collectivism.  In any event, individualism in the broadest sense favors individual rights above the rights of community – my rights are more important to me than yours.  In check, it promotes self-reliance and independance.  Approaching extremes, individualism promotes a “selfishness” mentality, a protect-the-empire-of-self-at-all-costs mentality.

Secondly, this individualism is evident when contrasted against other people groups.  A perfect illustration centers around the H1N1 pandemic.  It has been reported on NBC as well as other networks about how some Asian travelers wear masks when they are sick in order to prevent passing the virus on to others.  In contrast, western travelers wear masks to prevent themselves from becoming infected.  The very stance of how individualists live their lives is quite different from that of collectivists.

Finally, as with much of life, we can’t live approaching either of these extremes.  Approaching “extreme” individualism we cannot “create our own groups to deal with the [issues]” because true individualists would say “That’s not my problem!”  Now as a one-time Psychology graduate, I know that Self-actualization is an important part of life – finding your individual identity is crucial to a mentally-healthy existence.  At the same time, I believe strongly that at the very core of humanity is a need for interconnection.  It is the reason that thousands of years ago humans organized themselves into tribes: not completely out of selfish ambition (though I’m sure that more hunters meant larger kills and bigger returns on investment) but rather to benefit the community (risking your life chasing down an elephant was more dangerous that blowing a dart at a two-toed sloth).

Ultimately, as I’ve said before, we are not enemies here.  It would serve us well – as individuals and as a people at large – to learn just a little from those around us.  While “We are all Individuals!” and “We can think for ourselves!” (Yes, that was a Monty Python reference) we mutually benefit when we are a people and not a group of persons.

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