The Simple Truth.

Nothing, for me, is simple. (even that statement, upon the further reflection of typing this second one, is much too simple to be true, and it’s not.)  

It would seem simple enough to create an adage “if someone thinks something is simple, they are wrong”, though, how could such a thing be true in every context -when such few (if any) things are? That would also assume we could know every context. We already have an issue seeing correctly the contexts that we have looked at with scrutiny (we see them as far more simple then they are).  

Perhaps I’m using a rather complex bit of text to say simply that ‘everything is complex; even more complex then we now know.’  Choose something you know, really think on it, and you’ll soon see it as more complex then you thought it before, regardless of how complex you thought it before.  

There are manners of speaking, of course, wherein we include the concepts of simplicity and complexity, and, often, things can be said to be ‘simple’ in those relative circumstances. Take the idea of a problem on your computer: you can’t find a file. You search in every folder you can click on and you say “I can’t find that file”. This continues until a 12 year-old enters the scene and uses the handy search field and, like Apple Magic, the file is found. You say ‘wow’ and the 12 year-old says “it's simple.” I know, such a terrible example, it could never happen to you, but that enhances the point- we think something is complex until we think we know it.  Even engineers -who study for years- cough out the words, when they are demonstrating some complex bit of arrangement to a colleague they are exacerbated with, saying “ it’s really very simple.”

And so it goes, from some odd clever person to another, in a wide cycle of one-ups-man-ships that we enjoy around the globe daily. But it's quite a different thing, to know how to 'simply talk to a girl', than to understand the complexities of why this young specimen of the species Homo sapien [latin for ‘knowing’ or ‘wise’ ‘man’] seems to desire so strongly to talk to her at all (especially when he would be awfully unhappy if all he got to do was simply talk to her.)

I really do scratch my head weekly, as terribly simple and ignorant words fly from pulpits around the spinning earth... and simple people enjoy them.  I guess I just have too deep a sense of the paramount atrocity that conflating ideas reek upon civilization.  We live in an elaborately involved complex of realities (reality meaning a 'realm of consciousness'). You are blind to the reality experienced on the other side of the globe, until the New York Times posts an article about it with photos that make you feel you get enough of a glimpse to open your mind to some other reality some other poor soul is living far away from you and your take on things.  The universe is a multiverse, and a complicated and labyrinthine one at that. You hardly can look closely at something you see every day, only to notice a tangled and bewildering existence that baffles the mind (at least my mind). This is why I hate pictures of human skin, where, all the land of small creatures it truly is, is exposed and in color. I like to believe that if you zoomed in on my skin, you’d simply see the smooth skin I see. Not the cracks of my lego-body much too closely resembling the lego building blocks of my monkey cousin, I hope isn’t as related to me as some apes claim. I’d rather pretend I’m not the universe to a host of living things -mostly inside me- and so I do, and I say “I’m simply me- take a look- do you see anything else here? No, of course you don’t, it's just me, plain and simple.” 

There is no truth that is straightforward.  Even reading this sentence you are reading something completely different than I’m thinking as I type- and there is no way around it, italics of not. I know that there is a limited range of meaning, I’m only pointing out that the considering of such things is vastly convoluted, if not Byzantine.  Hence the misunderstandings, and why else would you be asking yourself what exactly the point of this particular arrangement of the alphabet is.  The point is that “ghsdjkdhakdhsad” is the only simple thing in existence. There is no such thing as “chaos.” The nano-second you label it with some simple word to pretend you understand it, you err  Chaos is better revealed in the agonizingly ordered stacks of baseball cards sitting in attics across america. Chaos is starting each sentence with a capital letter.  One reason I think so many people want to find a “God” is only to simplify the myriad of multifarious possibilities. How exceptionally annoyed I can be, when kindhearted folks attempt to placate my sprawling mental voyages by trying to moralize me into accepting ‘what is so simple.’  I will not feel guilty for not being as ignorant as the next guy, no matter how ignorant I’m doomed to be, in my limited cubicle of perception.  I don’t mind not being able peel back the curtain on the heavens, as much as being told that I am not allowed to look for the seams.

If the existential moment wasn’t a thorny, knotty, nexus lying outside the peripheral vision of the masses (obsessed with ignoring pictures of creatures on their skin) we might have less killing in the name of invisible creations, and no need to drink imported beer.  If, at midnight, I’m not so sure of the senseless (literally) things that no one is sure of, then, at midnight, I just may be that much more brilliantly honest. Or perhaps the great canvass, that this checkered and variegated reality is but a thread in, alludes me. Plus... I’m tired.

We Are All Oppressed: part 1 of my Review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion

I'm on the fence right now.   I'm reading a bunch of books and thought i'd offer some thoughts on them.  Let's start with Richard Dawkins'  The God Delusion, since it's such huge hit.

I'll do a number of these, so this is just the start.

1.  We are all oppressed.

Richie Dawkins has made a name for himself, but so far it’s not in valid reasoning per se.  Distinguished philosophers shake their heads at his poplar “The God Delusion,” which contributes nothing to the Philosophy of Religion, the question of God, and seems to be unaware of the last 50 years or so of philosophy on the subject. 

But, I’ll get to that later, today is about his first chapters.

His early chapters only prove the hypothesis I’ve wondered on before: everyone thinks of themselves as oppressed. 

Growing up in a number of different groups, I saw how each group saw themselves as oppressed. When I became a christian, all we saw was how the large atheistic liberal agenda machine was slamming us around and oppressing our rights and our faith. Dawkins sees the tables as turned, and begs us to hear his weak cries through a large and horribly powerful Religious Agenda Machine that threatens the sane existence of intellectuals like himself.

If I hadn’t grown up as I did, I might be inclined to believe him.

Who is right - The oppressed atheists (who DO have to put up with a LOT), or the oppressed Christians (who DO have to put up with a LOT) ?

Sadly, religion does have that military-driven Islam on its side, which somehow finds men is suits to continue to appear on TV and claim it as a religion of peace - as if one man on TV (who is obviously quite westernized) counts more than the thousands holding signs threatening the murder of the entire western world; in downtown London even.

SideNote: Islam lived at peace with Christianity in many countries for many years... as long as they were in charge. But the point is that Christians were once quite safe within the borders of Istanbul, and today they are not.

Dawkins builds a series of Straw-men for his argument on God, beginning by attempting to paint his opponents as dangerous powerful idiots who must be stopped. The first stage is to set-up a situation where atheists, or those closet-creatures who are afraid to admit their doubt, are under the looming thumb of irrational religionists.  

It’s always good to be the underdog.

Atheists claim Religious people are privileged, and Religious people claim that the atheists are privileged.

Faith is a blinding, dangerous thing, I think. Whether you believe in God or your belief is that there is no God, and no meaning to life.

Either way you are likely to see yourself as oppressed. It’s part of our Post-Modern era. 

One of our key Post-Modern themes is that of suspicion, whether Gays are suspicious of being unjustly treated, or Women (look at the feminist Interpretations of the Bible), or the Atheists, or the Religious Right, or Blacks, or Middle-aged White Men, or Asian Women, or Mexican illegals, all Immigrants, the Rich, the Poor, all you need to do is to name a group and they all can read the same copy of Time magazine and find that their particular group or enclave is being maligned (they can all read the Bible the same way).  We are all quite suspicious... not just the feminists who see marriage as a way of man dominating women and imposing ‘traditional’ gender roles.

So... Who is right? Who is really oppressed?

Maybe we all are...       ...and in our fear of being oppressed, become oppressors. 

The Inn at the End of the Universe

This week I’m Teaching a Modular at Briercrest College, and staying for free at the Pilgrim Inn, in Caronport.  Tonight, I arrived from a dinner in Moose Jaw to a dark hotel, courtesy to a power outage of all Caronport.  I used the emergency lights to find my Room, went into the darkness and pulled open the curtains to let the full moon light my room up.

This is my life right now, I thought.  Living in Hotels.

I left the crushing summer I had, to return to Canada, end of August, to a time of waiting, and eventually an end of a visa, which forced me to return to USA, where I went to spend November and most of December with my Pops in Fontana, CA and work on my MFA.  I didn’t really know more than one or two people down there, and didn’t see them.

Half of December I spent in Hawaii with my Mom at her place, then back to Fontana, two days later Utah, two days later Moose Jaw, and now the Pilgrim Inn.

Good thing my laptop’s battery was charged.

I don’t feel too horrible, but the thought crosses my mind that I am completely alone, but not utterly alone.

  I have friends I get to visit, talk to on skype, girls who react well to me, want me for a while in many ways, I get to be loved by some of the most amazing people ever. I’m not utterly alone.

But I don’t have a place to call home, I’m living as a wanderer, with my roots yanked up from the soil I wanted to plant them into in Moose Jaw by the loss of my Visa, and now I’ve only a couple days to decide what move to make yet. I’m so tired of making moves.  I’m tired of being ripped from my community.  I travel alone, and I return to my room at the Inn alone. My friends can’t share that constant presence humans were designed for, girls don’t stay or are knocking on the wrong door with me. Anywhere I go I will be only visiting, and here, in my home of the past ten years, I’m forced to only visit.

I’m tired of moving, I thought the end of college would end that too, I want to settle down and build into something that really matters: a community: a family of my own.

I’m not complaining, but need to express my weariness and, like Abraham before me, look up at the stars and wonder if I trust myself that God has called me to follow him into the Promised Land.

Not sure how much I believe in the Promise Land anymore. Travel has a way of chipping away at it.

Can I be allowed to return to my apartment in the Upper Room and take a rest for a while, and catch my breath?

There is only peace in us where there is peace between us and heaven, and when there is peace between us and heaven, we have peace abundant in all calamity.

Is the peace I’ve had in college and Moose Jaw shown now to not be the peace of God, but of people?  Was it never God’s peace that held up my head, but rather the security of a community?

There is a peace I got when I left Moose Jaw for Fontana in November, or maybe that was the awesome freedom of giving up.  

I’m at The Inn on the End of the Universe, trying to figure out what giving up, being a wanderer, and peace, all really mean. 

I’m sorry God that I don’t expect anything from you.

I argue with myself and fall asleep in the darkness.

Now, in the morning, I press on and get on with asking myself what we’ll do today.

religous "Blending"

If you want to blend in, in any church or cult, be it a Lutheran supper or Wednesday muffins at Heaven’s Gate Cult or a typical Jehovah Witness lock-in, you can very simply, when the meal/service/kool-aid time is over, start putting away chairs.  When they see you put chairs away they know you are one of them, and not just one of them, but a solid ‘top-notch’ believer.  This key might save your life someday.

I used it at a Morman christmas supper yesterday night and I had folks (yes, it was a woman in a classic ugly mormon moo-moo-ish dress..that was light blue denim)  chatting with me at length, and, when mentioning a brother of hers, she used the insider phrase ‘he’s not a member’ to differentiate him from one of “us.”  Even a dread-headed model like me who didn’t close his eyes or fold his arms during their prayers can fit in and be assumed a mormon.   See..... I told you. Cleaning up, especially in the chair-putting-away department is key. You could become a bishop.  

All you need is a religion and a meeting involving chairs.

Note on Praying, if you keep your eyes on the religious leader until everyone closes their eyes -you’re safe. No need to fold arms or use whatever posture they choose to get their heavenly reception tuned in right.  So, unless you take a posture of “what do I do” like you look around at everyone when someone says ‘let us pray’ or ‘lets bow our heads’ or ‘it’s carpet time’,  prayer requires no effort because they can’t see you.

Muslims are harder to fit in with because of certain religious fashions (the Sikh too), and because depending on the muslim praying fashion or sect, they could have their eyes open. But you’ll likely never need or want to “fit in” with them so, no worries.

For catholic masses, or any “pew” situation, of course the chair trick is useless, so one must take things up a notch to be left alone. The key there is to wear a suit (white shirt should be choice, as some sects use them religiously [pun intended]...unless its a black church, but white can pass their too, but no ‘top-notch’ rewards) and you must shake peoples hands and smile and carry a large ‘scripture-esque’ book with you, and you’ll be assumed to be on the “in”.  If you want people to think you’re top-notch, then say something like “you’re a blessing” to the pastor/preist/speaker/talk-giver/juice-pourer dude, and everyone will think you are a top-notch slinger in that religion. Babes will follow. And remember, you are always “visiting here from canada/california/put-interesting-place-here”.  I once had a leather journal of mine mistaken for a bible (which is funny, cuz it doesn’t look like any bible-leather cover I’ve ever seen, but hey, points are points)

The christmas supper was the first Morman thing I’ve really done in a long while in terms of the psuedo-christian cult social circuit.  My dad and step-mum and my baby sis went, so I had addition introductions and people would say things indicating they knew all about me like “enjoying the warm weather for a change?” and I’d think “how do they know I’ve been living in canada....?” so... I guess my dad shares more about me than I ever imagined.  I got invited by a mom or two to their “firesides” or “singles social events” ... They must’ve been convinced by my chair moving that I was a mormonite ... They’ll be sad when I never show up on a Sunday...although I bet they have daughters who would be awesome sacrifices for the Creech volcano.  Maybe I should go to a mormon singles event.....um....nahhhhhhhh. I’d rather hit myself in the face with a tack-hammer...  ...unless I’m bored one night.

Good thing I rarely get bored.

the problem

The problem with saying almost anything about God, is that God won't fit properly into almost anything that can ever be said.
what i mean is, you say God is 'merciful', and the guy to your left says "but he is also just", because to SAY that he is merciful somehow cutts him down to only that trait, and whenever you hear someone saying that, you automatcally start thinking "yeah, but".
people who say "yeah, but" to everything are annoying as hell.
i know, i've been one of them, and i know them.
you start to say "God has been showing me that he is like 'this', and they say "but he's also like that"

maybe this happens because God is not like us, he is ultimate.

if someone says "bob is nice" i'm not dumb enough to think that bob is ALWAYS nice, but that merely in general, bob is nice.
Since God is an eternal being, and since i'm kinda locked into agreement with the way the ancient greeks talked about God, i tend to picture him having immutatble qualities, like never lying.
so if he is something, its not 'in general', its 'eternal.'

try to slip past a pastor that God is love, but only 'in general'.
"in general God is a loving guy"

because whatever trait you tack onto God must extend into eternity and a trait he can't have one second or another, its really hard to talk about him being only one thing.
if someone in a group is learning that God is 'calling us to obedience', someone else is learning the God 'accepts them the way they are, and calling them to hear that he simply loves them'

so, when you say God is wrathful, your friend will say "but he's also happy with us"

and we all grow weary of giving preludes to all our comments on God saying "listen, i know that God is wrathful and just, and that he asks us to follow Jesus and that he loves a contrite heart, but he has been showing me that he smiles at me today, even though i feel like a horrible sinner"

what a mouthful, when you just want to say that God is happy.

maybe i'm wrong, since we do react funny when someone says "mike is nice" and in our minds we are thinking of how much a jerk mike can be and we toss out "but he can also be a jerk"
but maybe that' different.

maybe we should see God as a changing person when it comes to certain qualities.
maybe it'd be better to say "God is patient, but don't piss him off"
or to say that "God loves us, in general" and leave open the implication that sometimes it changes.
it becomes hard to hold the two truths taught in the ancient scriptures that
1. God hates sinners (read the Psalms) and
2. God loves sinners.

can we just say "sometimes God loves sinners and sometimes he hates them"?

its seems wrong to go there.

we want a simple rule- "God loves sinners always" end of story.

if only the Bible and God both would just stop doing their own thing and just follow the simple rules we'd like to impose on them.

i think maybe its not as simple as "sometimes" with God, but that he has this eternal qualities that show up in or world in ways we can only read but as changing, or fickle.

I think this blog goes into the category of things i'll read lately and realize i didn't communicate it properly , or that i'm like "no no, thats all wrong" about.
thats what happens when you think about something, then right about it later. you end up writing when you're NOT thinking and how can that ever be good?

sometimes.

sometimes when i drive home, like late tonight, i can't imagine my life headed anywhere at all, and i just expect God to send some car flying from a side-street through a stop sign at me. i'd die in that automobile accident and pop up in heaven and be like "ok, THAT explains why my life has been like it has been lately"

but sometimes i don't feel like that.

alone.

loneliness is relative.
the nights spent in groups, alone.
the laying in bed, alone.
being alone is something you can do anywhere, with anyone, when you are not with the person you really want to be with.
i wish writing a blog could solve my lonely sum, where i always equal one
i wish understanding some concept could crash it into a pile.
i wish the issues i had four years ago weren't still the issues i have today.
i wish new romances would make me deaf to the sound of my own heartbeat that's not for them
i wish God had not waited me out, and proved me poor, impatient, impoverished, and revealed how weak my trust in him was.
i wish i could write enough songs to express it and pray through it and fight it, join it, feel it off of me
i wish i didn't have to try.
i'm so tired of trying.
i wish i could cry it out.
I wish God seemed more of an author and less of a editor.

i wish God would let my heart change, or that he'd change this world

i want to constantly apologize to my friends and family "i'm sorry i'm still such a sad stupid boy" when God wants me to be a man

I don't know if i know who i am anymore, and i don't think i like who i know myself to be right now.
i can read the christian type "find your identity in Christ"
which to me sounds like "create a black hole by blinking your eyes"
if i could find Christ, maybe i could find out who i really am, maybe i'd have an identity again.

i realized recently that the problem with being good with words at all is that no believes a single word you say.
The people i've ever said "i Love you" to haven't believed me.
and i find that all my poetic honesty is labeled dishonest simply because it is poetic.
no wonder poets are often so lonely - they are good with words, and we are afraid to believe them.

no one believes me when i talk anymore, and i feel like my mouth is wasted on such a life.
how can being good at communicating and connecting with others alienate you and cut out your tongue?
how does it cause you to end out alone?

it seems everyone i talk to knows a Tony that doesn't exist, and the sad thing is, is that the real Tony still does exist, as shy, alone, and thoroughly insecure about being alone as ever. If i had some arch-nemesis he'd find this out and play on it to lead me down a path of destruction.
maybe he already has.
i feel destroyed, the best parts of me have all but slipped away.

let me loose of this listless life and loneliness,
or perhaps i'll pretend to be OK

if you're lost in the woods long enough every free place to step looks like a path.
if you're lost in the woods there are no paths.

Obama interviewed by Rick Warren at Saddleback Church before the Election.

Solutions

G.K. , one of my best'est pals ever, once told me:

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
  -

To Not Be Spoiled

Rummaging through my room up here in Canada, im finding forgotten effects of mine that seem to arrive from the depths of the sea, rather than recent experience.

A piece of wood -carved from a branch camping last summer- sits on a shelf and i stare at it asking "why?"

I always fight two oddly converging movements in my will

1. to have tidiness (which allows me to relax and enjoy a space, or work in it)

2. to hold on to stupid crap.

Since i first ventured overseas years back and witnessed poverty and personally lived on an extreme few possessions, i've held a commitment to regulating how much i own.

i'm only an owner of so many shirts and so many pants, etc.

needless to say that i could go on for hours about how i got to that place,

but walking into my little palace on Saskatchewan Street in Saskatchewan, i think i've found myself a betrayer, maybe even a deserter of my high-ideals.

so now its the Sally Ann and the Junkyard for most of this pile; possessions fighting to rob me of my freedom, heart for people, and life in what really matters.

where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

your heart chases what you put your money into, as money chases what you put your heart into.

i've treasured a lot of worthless crap in my day, and i need an annual release from the materials of mayhem that even the most innocent object can become.

Tinman Blog.

after much research, or none, ive decided.
I have no heart.
i'm like a waste of an artichoke, you get to the center of me and its blank.
i don't know if i can feel anything. i think not.
wait- scratch that, i can. i can worry and feel anxious, get lonely, laugh, feel unloved, feel appreciated, i can feel the pleasures of a good scare, a good kiss, a good flick, a good game, or a good converstaion.
i can feel inspired, and know when my friends are disappointed in me, or that they love me, but in the feelings department i'm like a offshore bank.
i wonder if i'll ever be able to love someone and feel more than that common anxiety of wanting others to like you.
don't go dramatic on me, i'm not being sad or... dramatic.
but i know it.
i sit and observe myself, and become astounded at the pessimisms that have grown up and encased me
for a really open guy, its tough to get through to me arriving at "feelings"
friendship i got down, but too many girls have had to sit across from me, trying to unlock me like i was a vault or a rubik's cube.
i try to tell them that others have done so and found the treasure inside to be less than what they expected, less like treasure and more like constant frustration.
its not like i lock myself up like a vault.
its more like i'm an open vault, and you go in and find nothing.
no apologies, i told them it was empty.
oh well, no one beleives me.
i'm sure i'll fall in love one day.
"sure" being loosely equivalent to "why not, i'm a sexy beast"

I was reminded yesterday that God has chosen to give me a chance at love-relationships, and to have a wife.
will he really bring me someone who'll actually like me for me- a potty mouthed artist theologian with the ability to out-talk Rush Limbaugh ?

Chicks don't me cuz they can't push me around.
ha

or because i'm the weirdest human being alive (not including celebrities, who get paid to be stupid and weird)
or maybe i'm insanely lame.
i feel insanely lame, the books that i read even call me lame.

i'm reading Richard Dawkins and he's not as bright as he claims to be.
i'm tired of empty arguments that are more limp than a Mormon in his wedding day.
i think i'll go back to GK Chesterton and enjoy my life again.

i like a good salad too.

When I became a Christian I took, what some might call, a leap of faith. However, for me it was not quite a leap, as much as a push, or a shove into something I really could never accept outside of a miracle. The history of philosophy has rightly shown us that one question leads to another, rather than to any ‘final’ answer, and surely our whole world has been brought into question. My whole world was brought into question by Jesus Christ, who did not rest at winning my mind over to the Christian worldview, but took my heart as well. He speaks to me in lots of ways, but sadly I have come across no way of controlling these conversations so that I can sit back and scrutinize them with my old questioning eyes. I wish I could meet him at a church or a bar, like those who ran into him in the first century. I wish I could chat with him in the garden, and see what his eyes have to say. But I can’t. I am stuck in a world held by God and mankind to be in question, with only a hope and a Bible.
It has been my recent conviction that evangelicalism, as a shoot growing out of the enlightenment, has pretended to be able to box up this thing called “God’s word” into a Bible. It supposes Humanity can learn the ways of the historical-critical method, master linguistics and archeology, and thus be able to say with confidence “Thus saith the Lord.” This is easy to see, because when you go to Bible college they teach you that you can’t say “Thus saith the Lord” unless you can prove that the Bible teaches it, and you have to be able to prove, using the science of hermeneutics, that what you think the Bible teaches about something is really what those who wrote the Bible wanted it to teach. You can think that Paul or John had meant a certain thing, and then you can take a class on inter-testamental literature and think that he and God were saying something completely different.
When the Word, was something that visited people and someone who became flesh and who was God, when the books of the Torah meant what Jesus opened the disciples eyes to able see (despite the fact that Old Testament professors for centuries would disagree with Him), things were different then they are now, and you depended on your faith in a God unseen and uncontrolled, not on what you could prove the Bible taught. Evangelicalism sometimes has the foundation of the Bible at the expense of the foundation of Christ himself. If our faith is altogether tied to the Bible, and the Bible is a thing that is known through science, then our faith depends on science and you can use science to tear the Bible apart (as many do) and you can use science to try and put it back together again (as many also do). Either way it seems that the academy is the judge. Remember that though the academy calls God into question everyday, in Christ, God has called the academy into question in eternity.

Was the Bible meant to be a book that God inspired so that we could hold onto something concrete in this world, something we could study and we could pull universal principals out of? Why or why not?

Is hermeneutics a valid judge of what we can say “thus saith the Lord” about? Or do we need more, or do we need something completely different than hermeneutics, something more like Jesus opening up the scriptures for us –which cannot be proved but only told? Why or why not?

How does one hear from God? Do they use science to prove that the Bible teaches a particular point and then that point is what God has to say (and if they’re a pastor they find some way to teach this point to their congregation)? Or do they merely reach out to Christ in faith saying things like ‘speak lord and I will listen’ and ‘Lord have mercy on me a sinner’ and believe that He can and will save them and speak to them, no matter what anyone says? Why or why not?

the great Alcohol talk

the great alcohol debate, new and full of stuff to read! check it out yo

Okay so.......my friend Jay Anderson posted on his myspace about Christians and drinking and how the North American Church has made the drinking of alcohol some huge bad scary thing...i mean being addicted to the stuff is a terrible, terrible, thing, drunkenness has cost many thier fathers and mothers, etc. etc.... but it does not justify the 'easy righteousness' actions of those who wish to look good, as if it all had to do with not drinking a beer ever....
we've been way off the mark for a long time... so this is my (somewhat impassioned, somewhat playful and inquiring) response to Jay's post... (i actually posted it there too)

AMEN AND AMEN, i've always that it was soooo funny, all this about alcohol being some big deal... how when we join ministries they almost always require us to sign something saying that we wont drink alcohol (i even did this myself, with my band once). i mean, COME ON! Christ couldn;'t pastor most churches in america, or be a missionary in almost every mission organization i can think of, because THEY ARE TOO BIG OF PRUDES (yeah, and me calling them 'big prudes' doesn't mean they aren't otherwise amazing people or that i haven't been exactly like them, this is no pointing the finger-fest, just thoughts on how is it is to make 'holiness' into a workable thing we can accomplish on our own). Today's religious population deemed 'protestant' for the most part couldn't accept is "dangerous" styles and behavior (is 'prudes' a word? if it isn't then, its substitute is this phrase "big puritan pricks", hehehehe, okay so the puritans weren't all pricks, but the whole legalist door was opened and definitely walked down... and i am not a subject on that time period and i wont go thinking that God didn't want them to go 'legalistic' back then.it's HIS church. i mean i love ole Jonny Edwards as much as the next amazing theologian, the best america ever had next to Donald Bloesch, and i don't think he was anything like a prick, but he's part of that movement, i mean i'm not condemning anyone here, these are the roots to much of what i love about america, but it has turned into an misunderstanding of holiness, and perhaps Edwards took the sinners in the hands of an angry God thing too far, maybe God is not so predictable as systematic theology would have us believe -not that he was like that, i love him. A LOT) Christ is too much of a God follower for us to handle, he will choose HIM over 'man' any day of the week, and i for one, US, we will join him, to the false accusations of the pharisees and loser -christ-wannabees out there all trying to look good at the cost of following the one who is good, and who says we are good, even if we get addicted to having a few too many beers, even if we ever...GOd FOR BID...SIN!! (hey you gotta look at these heart wrenching issues lightheartedly, cuz, hey man they are over our heads and out of our control, God mysterious love of us, is all we have going for us, not being 'right' about any of these issues, no matter how much i blog or argue or ramble)
i wish the fruits of the Spirit were a prerequisite for a ministry job and not stuff like " i will not touch a drop", i hope jesus doesn't show up at most christian weddings in North America, he might drop a bunch of cases of the best wine heaven could handle in the party and HE'll get kicked right out and have his "ministry credentials" pulled if he does not repent, and that'd suck to be at those partys, and see just how much the Real, dangerous, unafraid, unwanted GOd, is not allowed to interfere with church business, the life of a christian, and certainly not thier 'holiness'. ok, now im rambling!!! I AM RAMBLING !! look at me im so mad im molting...i'm molting...cough.... yeah.
hey this is not a blog against those of you who think drinking is a dirty, sicko thing to do, its just a rant about how hard it is to understand Christ and God, who lives outside of EVEN our boxes of what we want to make right and wrong, much less the boxes of the Pharisees of his day... i mean consider him, if we had him around, and he was some guy we knew, we'd sling all kinds of "don't you think there is a better way to deal with these Pharisees then to keep egging them on and telling them that God will destroy them and all this WOE and HELL stuff, its kind of harsh, where is the love?" at Him. Hey, i'm not saying i wouldn't have the same problems with him, i would, and thats why it bothers me...jesus is too unholy for myself...and i guess his Holiness is real and from the core and a wild, Spirit led thing, and mine is made mostly in the eyes of MAN, so its a do-able thing without the miraculous Spirit, and i am a prick and make others feel guilty cuz they are not me like the GREAT me!!! ehheeheh ha. we are funny people, us 'ones who have met the One Christ, the one who is 'good' and yet still has a hard time fitting in with what we know as good. i just don't think we pretend that Jesus had all these 'reasons' for doing what he did and why we don't have to be so stunned by his actions, 'oh jesus lived in a different world, it wasn't as bad back then to drink cuz the wine was different'', or ''he HAD to.. cuz while he could change water into wine he couldn't change it into purified water so it was safe it drink"...

yeah its funny stuff to think about.... i love all you people who take the time to think with me, i feel soo dumb most days, i cant get a grip on most theology, or 'God stuff' so i appreciate your words.
tony

Time to be a man

Yeah, its time for the Creech League, time to get down and dirty or to go home, which is not an option. Its time to find out who you are, if your a man or not (or a woman for than matter, no minding how short the hair may be). its time to stop looking for it in people of the opposite sex (or people of the same sex for that matter) it time to own up to ourselves and to the one who made us, the one who made us who we could be and believes in us. We were made to be the people we were made to be, why are we so scared?
Why do i want a woman to tell me I'm a man? why do i want the men i know and respect to tell me I'm a man? because i missed out on having a dad around to let me know i had become one, so i turned to gals for it, but after all these years, turning to others just doesn't work. neither does living a dangerous life, or sitting on tigers or climbing the great wall or living and preaching in communist China or living and preaching in Ukraine, nor does performing music for people or recording, or producing and recording others, nor does song writing or my art, or basketball, living on clouds and wishes to do want i love to do and be who i was made to be doesn't do it, telling that truth about what and who you love doesn't do it. I guess i need to find out that i am a man from the One who can make me a real man, God. its time for God i guess, and not just serving him and studying and being all passionate and worshiping and all that, i mean time to let him speak to me and let the silence between us talk and say how much i hate him for not letting me know i am a man and that I'm not alone in this world, how much i lack the trust and belief in him to let go of needing to find stupid ways to please myself, how i am so stuck on trusting him and i do trust him and how i feel abandoned by him like i need to find out I'm a man on my own, all the while knowing that only he can tell me that. i know i've searched for it in other places and that has shaped me in a way that keeps me from being a man. its time for the destruction only God can bring. its time for the creation only God can do.

GRAD

Journal 4-27-05

A few days ago, on this very campus, I graduated from college. Even as I write it, it seems like a lie. ‘College’, to someone who hasn’t been through it, at least to me, always carries that illusive, grown-up quality that grabs you in movies and make you wish you could live out such lucid, adult experience. It was like watching John Wayne tote a gun around and treat women like dolls, or watching old what’s-his-face wagging that cigar out of his mouth. Something about it was real, and my life isn’t. Something about the ‘college’ you see on tv and film is real, and mine is not.
Maybe it has to do with the way art doesn’t just represent reality, but it interprets it, and done well, places events up, not as the stream of nothingness that each one endures every day thinking “does anyone care what happens to me”, but as a ‘Tragedy’ or a true blue ‘Victory’, a moment to last, to be remembered, a personality that won’t get driven into the ground for a new, disposable road to be paved.
I guess we all feel our lives are like a flower in the dark of the forest that no one ever realizes is there, and ask ourselves whether it makes a difference to have one more little forest flower in this tub of a universe. We lie in bed at night and wish with all the wish in us that we do count. Even if we buy into a dys-teleological evolution, we still wish that we were not equal to that smear of dirt we trust the washing machine can get out of our favorite denim; we want to be more than matter. I guess that’s why sometimes I sit and stare at stuff, like my walls, or my face in the mirror, and I wish that it wasn’t just stuff, like everything else.
I wish God were something, someone, I could see, like my futon, or my SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas. But then again, I guess I’m glad that he’s not, or he’d be just like the face in the mirror that’s simply bone and skeleton, a thing equal to rocks, monkeys, and mountains. I do not want God to be equal with rocks and mountains, something a scientist could lay out on an uncomfortable table in one of those rooms the doctors keep cold to make you awkward. But I still wish I could see him. A Christian friend of mine had explained to me that God has his ‘Glory’ (I’m not sure what ‘glory’ is, although I know in the original Koine-Greek New Testament it’s doxa). Anyways, this glory would kill a man, ever he was to come across it, and so I should be happy not to have it in a box in my bedroom, waiting for me to draw too close and open it (like in the end of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark).
Don’t tell anyone this, but I still wish I could see him, even in his glory. Don’t you ever have those days where you’d rather have God come down in his full poise and charisma and have his glory burn you to the wall and into oblivion, than last another moment without seeing his spike-marked hands and spear-stabbed side, or just his eyes? Let me die; just let His ‘Glory’ fall.
I think ‘glory’ might be like what it is to see a gorgeously beautiful woman, so raving-hot that you nearly fall down at the sight of her; you long to taste her and are overwhelmed at the notion that she even exists. I love and hate that feeling at the same time; I’m so defenseless and knocked-out by it. I guess I’d hate and love seeing God at the same time, won’t everybody? I don’t mean that God has a hot body, but that if his glory is ‘seen’, then it must be in that category that goes off of human ‘able to answer’ charts, like beauty and love- who dares to explain them? You look, or listen, or hear, and you fall into a place where your heart is barreling down canyons and weaving the moons of Saturn. I’ve endured that from a pretty face or two, but I’d rather endure this ‘beauty of God’, that apparently would kill me the way a lamp kills the dark in your bedroom when you get too scared too sleep and have to turn it on. On a side-note, I hope that when I get married my ‘hottie indicator’ gets shut off somehow, or at least stuck on only one channel (my wife’s).
A friend of mine wrote this neat new worship song called “glimmer” where the chorus says “just a glimpse of you, just a glimpse of you, any more of you is more than we can bear, any more than just a glimmer”. I hate that song. I wish I could like all songs, but I don’t have the talent. I hate it cuz I think, “what I stupid thing to say to God”, ‘I only want a little bit God, not too much’- what kind of moron doesn’t want God to end all the pain and treachery of this cosmos, who wants ‘only a glimmer’ of God? I want the whole thing. You ask for pennies if you want to, I’ll ask for trillions. If God gave me ‘more than I could bear’ I wouldn’t be more happy. I don’t want a glimmer, or a glimpse, I want to see what eyes aren’t allowed to see, I want miracle!
We can’t pack our bags and say ‘well, you know we can’t take that much’, let me and this too-skinny- too-ugly- body if mine burn away if I get to meet God, I mean, what kind of attitude is all this “just a glimpse of you” stuff? Honestly, I swear I don’t get it. Isn’t the death of this plank-eyed man than I am what Christian spirituality and Life all about? “No God, just a glimmer, please, I don’t want to get hurt in all this, only a bit would do”- Lets lose this ‘God is holy and exalted, therefore you can’t imagine he know even your name attitude, be more sorrowful and humble’ attitude and admit that we know he loves us and is acquainted with every hair on our noggin, that in Christ (whatever that mysterious phrase entails) we can go before him with confidence and dialog with him about today’s Calvin and Hobbes, the hefty pimple that has taken up residence between our eyebrows, and how we love the way the summer breeze seems to fill us with life, right up until you get a mosquito in your mouth. And we can see God. On the cross, on the streets, in the sick and the poor, and the tax-masters, in our dreams, in The Passion, in the upper room, and in each others lives, and I’ll be dammed if I didn’t seek to know God, and even to get a chance to suffer as he did, so I can know him, so I can have ‘more than just a glimmer’.

Anyways, now that I’m graduated, and I have two different BA’s, I think the world says that I am a ‘man’. I always saw people that had past the ‘college’ time as real, certified, grownups. Now I can become a professional, and get a mortgage, and load up debt so I’m tied down and feel like I’m stuck. Or not. I don’t feel ‘done’, and I kinda want to get put back in the oven. I thought by this age I could stop crying myself to sleep and get over the issues of being a messed-up kid in the universe. I was wrong.
Bye.