-

2010-12-11T11:30:00.001-08:00

Al-jazeera
bunnyrabbit
calvin carrots
david deida
ed flanagan
gaseous

howdy, jupiter.

K

Llama man, no orange peel.

Quite really so.
Television, unusual vice.

Wacky.
X.
You zook.

2009-10-13T07:57:00.000-07:00

"At the center of the universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow humans beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds. Life is for service."

So said Fred "Mr." Rogers.

Probably the end of this blog

2009-09-16T10:51:00.001-07:00

Hey y'all, anyone who may be frustrated that I haven't posted anything in months. Sorry about that. People are mysterious. I've been alive and breathing and learning, but there's no trace of it here. I may start a new blog someday... but this one is now officially over.

Here's something I found via Sojourners

2009-04-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

50 ways to love your neighbor by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

With the National Day of Prayer coming up (May 7), a lot of folks around the country are organizing prayer services in church sanctuaries and town halls. We’re all for getting together to say prayers … but we’re also challenged by the ways scripture stirs us to become the answer to our prayers. So we decided to start a little campaign. Here are 50 ways — some little, some bigger — that we can start to be the church we pray for. If you can join us in committing to do at least one of these things between now and May 7, consider yourself a member of the movement and share the list with your friends.

1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.
2. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.
3. Ask your pastor if someone on your church’s sick list would like a visit.
4. Join an open AA meeting and befriend someone there.
5. Adopt a child.
6. Mow your neighbor’s grass.
7. Volunteer to tutor a kid at your local elementary school. (Try to get to know the kid’s family.)
8. Grow your own tomatoes–and share them.
9. Ask a small group in your community to meet regularly for intercessory prayer.
10. Build a wheel chair ramp for someone who is homebound.
11. Read the newspaper to someone at your local nursing home.
12. Plant a tree.
13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.
14. Throw a birthday party for a prostitute.
15. When you pay your water bill, pay your neighbor’s too (they’ll let you… really).
16. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.
17. Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.
18. Leave a random tip for someone who’s cleaning the streets or a public restroom.
19. Write one CEO a month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research first).
20. Start tithing (giving 10%) of all your income directly to the poor.
21. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grow your food and visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.
22. Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you and go to a thrift store to get a new one.
23. Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say “I’m sorry” to.
24. Go TV free for a year. Or turn your TV into a pot where flowers grow.
25. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can buy happiness.
26. Organize a prayer vigil for peace outside a weapons manufacturer such as Lockheed Martin. Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year.
27. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.
28. Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month just to encourage them.
29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.
30. Experiment with creation-care by going fuel free for a week–ride a bike, carpool, or walk.
31. Try only reading books written by females or people of color for a year.
32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don´t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.
33. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, pray for those folks who helped make it possible for you to eat it.
34. Create a Jubilee fund in your Church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and by mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.
35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.
36. Give your car away to a stranger.
37. Convert your car to run off waste vegetable oil.
38. Try recycling your water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don´t have clean water.
39. Wash your clothes by hand, or dry them by hanging to remember those without electricity or running water. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.
40. Buy only used clothes for a year.
41. Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God’s Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross.
42. Learn to sew or start making your own clothes to remember the invisible faces behind what we wear. Take your kids to pick cotton so they can see what that is like (and then read James).
43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.
44. Begin creating a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know their family and learn from each other.
45. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.
46. Help your church congregation create a Peacemaker Scholarship and give it away to a young person trying to avoid the economic draft, who would like to go to college but sees no other way than the military.
47. Eat with someone who does not look like you. Learn from them.
48. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.
49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.
50. Join a Yokefellows ministry at a prison close to you. Remember that Jesus said he would meet you there (Matt. 25).

How Henri Nouwen prays

2009-02-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

Henri Nouwen likes to pray by slowly repeating a particular prayer over and over in his mind. (I should say liked, past tense; he's dead, after all.) Anyway, he writes that this practice has proved the most beneficial for him, and if you read his books you find that he has experimented with quite a few. He writes that sitting for thirty minutes, just praying this prayer, may seem like a boring, pointless bit of time filled with mental distraction only, but that it gradually seeps into you, and you may only feel the effects in retrospect. Anyway, I intend to follow his example in this. Here's the version of the prayer I like best:

Lord, make us channels of your peace,
that where there is hatred, we may bring love,
that where there are wrongs, we may bring the spirit of forgiveness,
that where there is discord, we may bring harmony,
that where there is error, we may bring truth,
that where there is doubt, we may bring faith,
that where there is despair, we may bring hope,
that where there are shadows, we may bring light,
that where there is sadness, we may bring joy.

Lord, grant that we may rather comfort than be comforted,
understand than be understood,
and love rather than be loved.

For it is by forgetting ourselves that we find ourselves;
it is by forgiving that we are forgiven;
and it is by dying that we are born to eternal life.

Something I wrote

2009-02-07T20:55:00.000-08:00

To create- this would be
the thing. I feel small.
Unemployment figures spicing curry powder.
Milk the system. Force your hand.
Free Association. It hurts. There is more.
There is God. It's not over. I am held.
Don't despair. Breathe light. Inhale.
Cry for death. No escape. Only patient endurance.
Come Lord Jesus. World being born.

Here's what I read in Kati's journal today.

2009-02-07T19:41:00.000-08:00

I saw two movies today that illustrated so clearly the legacy of the church in America. Neither had anything to do with religion, really, but they were such vivid pictures of how the church has failed in its central mission. The first film, Revolutionary Road, starred these two vibrant, beautiful people who had absolutely nothing to live for. It was a young couple in the fifties, and their whole life was just falling apart because they had no reason, no purpose, for their existence. They both had this notion that they were special, that they had some grand purpose for existence, but the world offered them nothing. They started to just leave it all, go to Paris, but the husband just wasn't brave enough. Everyone treated them like they were children or lunatics when they expressed a desire for something bigger than a life of quiet prosperity in the suburbs.

The American dream isn't enough!

A real Christianity offers more than that. A life lived with Christ is not stable, not respectable, and rarely prosperous. This couple was willing to suffer. They wanted to live dangerously. They could have been great. But life outside the church was unfulfilling, and they saw no other option.

The second film was Milk, about a gay rights activist. Again, the church is faced with an unforgivable, terrible failure. The fact that there even exists a gay rights movement is a failure on our part. We, the body of Christ, decided that some people don't deserve rights because we don't like the way they fuck.

Yes, there is sin in the gay community. There is sin in every community. And the people who struggle with sins of sex, drugs, and the like tend to be hurting people. They look for acceptance and love in sex and drugs. Why?

Because we refuse to love them.

We, professing Christians, kicked them out of our homes, accused them of sickness and perversity, even beat them and killed them. We called them faggots. We wouldn't let them near our children. We kicked them out of our Christian schools. We called them an abomination. We locked them up in mental hospitals. We told them they were doomed to hell.

And we wonder why they refuse to act like fine, upstanding Christians.

Our churches have taken what is unique, what is special in people, and they have stomped all over it. And then, we have condemned those who ran like hell from the all-powerful, homogenizing power of the sanctifying blood of Jesus Christ.

May God have mercy on our souls.

forgive us
forgive us
forgive us
forgive us
forgive us
forgive us

We, who call ourselves yours. Your children, Your precious chosen ones, have been led astray. We have been lied to, and we have believed the lies.

We've chosen comfort over compassion,
money over generosity
piousness over love
the outward over the inward
the American dream over the disciple's call

Some words from Henri Nouwen

2009-02-06T19:52:00.000-08:00

First of all, our life itself is the greatest gift to give - something we constantly forget. When we think about our being given to each other, what comes immediately to mind are our unique talents: those abilities to do special things especially well... However, when focussing on talents, we tend to forget that our real gift is not so much what we can do, but who we are. The real question is not "What can we offer each other?" but "Who can we be for each other?" No doubt, it is wonderful when we can repair something for a neighbor, give helpful advice to a friend, offer wise counsel to a colleague, bring healing to a patient or announce good news to a parishioner, but there is a greater gift than all of this. It is the gift of our own life that shines through all we do. As I grow older, I discover more and more that the greatest gift I have to offer is my own joy of living, my own inner peace, my own silence and solitude, my own sesne of well-being. When I ask myself, "Who helps me most?" I must answer, "The one who is willing to share his or her life with me."

It is worthwhile making a distinction between talents and gifts. More important than our talents are our gifts. We may have only a few talents, but we have many gifts. Our gifts are the many ways in which we express our humanity. They are part of who we are: friendship, kindness, patience, joy, peace, forgiveness, gentleness, love, hope, trut and many others. These are the true gifts we have to offer each other.

Why I Am Drawn to...

2008-11-19T23:34:00.000-08:00

I am cutting and pasting a blog post in its entirety. This post is really just for me; I don't intend for any particular audience besides myself. The blog is poserorprophet.wordpress.com

Why I Am Drawn to the Places and People with whom I Journey

Recently, I was speaking with a computer programmer who works for a large multinational marketing firm. We both got talking about our respective jobs, and I spoke a little about working with street-involved youth and survival sex workers. In response, this fellow expressed puzzlement as to what leads people like me to do what we do. Granted, he respects the work, but he couldn’t help wondering what in the world is it that makes a person think, “Hey, I’d really like to work with survival sex workers! That would be… fun!”

In my own way, I’ve been thinking that question over for a long time. What is it, I’ve wondered, that continually draws me to the places and people that most others would rather avoid at all costs? There are a few options that anybody in my position must consider.

(1) Perhaps there is an element of voyeurism at work here. Am I simply searching for an adventure (I did read a lot of adventure stories as a kid), and seeking out these places and people because of the adrenaline rush I can get, or because of the larger than life stories I can gather? Am I some sort of leech that feeds off of the sufferings of others? After all, don’t our entertainment and news media (and there’s thin line between the two!) train us to be voyeurs in this way? Have I simply been less satisfied than others with the high that the evening news offers? You see, after awhile, even watching live broadcasts of school shootings can get boring… maybe I’ve had to go and seek out greater voyeuristic highs elsewhere. Maybe I’m just ‘chasing the dragon’ but the dragon isn’t heroin, it’s the trauma of others.

(2) Perhaps there is an element of machismo at work here. I was always an extremely quiet and frightened child — I was terrified of going to Sunday School classes, never mind hanging out with misfits in alleyways and rundown bars! Granted, I started confronting those fears in my second year of highschool, but how much of what I am doing is motivated by the desire to prove that I am not afraid? Further, it isn’t enough to just prove this to myself, so maybe I need to prove this to others — hence I share stories of encounters I have had with violence, if walking alleyways at night, of bringing fugitives into my home — but there’s always a wonderful pastoral, ethical, or theological twist I can put on these stories; I can hide my own insecurities, and my own image-building (i.e. self-branding) behind a wonderful screen of ‘radical piety’ or whatever else you want to call it.

As I am trying to be honest, I must confess that I expect that there are elements of both of these things within me. I hate to admit it, but the fact that I despise these things so much when I see them in others, is a sure sign that they likely exist within myself (i.e. I often find that I most despise those who manifest things I try to hide about myself, and I suspect that many of us are this way). Indeed, when I recognise these things within myself, I sometimes think about leaving the work, the places, and the people, and fleeing to some anonymous locale.

But I don’t.

And this is why: by far, the single greatest thing that draws me to these places and people, the thing that draws me inexorably, is the presence of our crucified Lord, who resides therein. To my own amazement I have discovered that such places, and such people, are often overflowing with the presence of God. What else can explain the existence of vibrant communities within neighbourhoods that stand condemned? What else can explain the existence of radical acts of sacrifice, sharing, love, and solidarity, amongst those who are used, despised, and forsaken by the vast majority of us? What else can explain the joy that bursts forth with such freedom from those who, by all of our standards, should be completely miserable? It is all of these things, all of these sacraments of God’s presence with, and within, ‘the least of these’ that draws me most forcefully to places and people of exile.

And so, with fear and trembling, I walk amongst these places and people — afraid that I, too, will use them in some sick voyeuristic or self-affirming manner, and yet unable to turn back because my salvation is only to be found here. It is not flight, but immersion, that will reshape my desires, and my identity.

Indeed, the places and people of exile grant me a full immersion into the wounded side of Christ — Thomas was told to thrust his hand into Christ’s side, and he discovered his salvation in that invitation; I have jumped over my head into Christ’s torn and bloodied side, and walk within it, eat and sleep it, and huddle close to the others who reside therein; and together we await the day when all wounds — even the wounds of Christ that still throb and bleed — are healed.

I invite any and all to join us, for I believe that the salvation of all of us is caught up in that invitation.

For its part, theology also asked in radical fashion about the locus for finding God. Porfirio Miranda responded, “The question is not whether or not someone looks for God, but whether he looks for God where God himself said he was.”
~ Jon Sobrino, quoting Miranda’s Marx and the Bible, in No Salvation Outside the Poor.

quotes from the underground (get it?)

2008-06-19T04:27:00.000-07:00

Here's some quotes I've gathered.

"Passion is the sum total of humanity. Without passion, religion, history, romance, art, would all be useless."

"You cannot teach people how to feel. All you can do is surround them with the conditions calculated to stimulate any natural feeling they may possess. And this is done by familiarizing students with the best works of art and nature."

"Whether we are studying the ending of Mark's gospel or the sexual habits of a rare snail, our eyes are opened to see what is other. Study is ecstatic. I would even go so far as to say that study can touch and heal the deepest hunger of the human being, which is to love."

What I mean to say by all this is, I am feeling short on passion and love. I've been eating in restaurants, reading tons of books, and living without hardly an emotional exchange save with God and Kati. Loneliness and numb monotony can kill a person slowly.

Yet I feel that I am walking in the right direction, and so I am safe. God is my shepherd, perhaps more than ever before.

Today's Word

2008-06-15T03:32:00.000-07:00

Solipsism - noun

1. Philosophy. the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist

2. extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.

Perhaps our common weakness, our "original sin," is intractable solipsism.

"A Living Prayer" - Alison Krauss

2008-05-30T06:29:00.000-07:00

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tLZAWtdFhio&feature=related

seeking is as good as beholding

2008-05-26T05:44:00.000-07:00

In my last post I wrote, "to be a contemplative is to seek God." And I realized that if that's my definition of a contemplative, we are all contemplatives, because we all instinctively seek God.

So perhaps I should say, I aspire to seek him intensely and deliberately.

In this post I want to introduce some quotations from Julian of Norwich's "Revelations of Divine Love." Julian was a Christian (before there was such a thing as a "protestant") in medieval England. Wikipedia tells me that she is credited with being the first woman to write a book in English.

I want to use her words to explain myself to you.

For the continual seeking of the soul pleases God very much, for it may do no more than seek, suffer, and trust. And this is wrought in each soul who has it by the holy Ghost... seeking with faith, hope and charity pleases our Lord. And the finding pleases the soul and fulfills it with joy. And thus was I taught to my understanding, that seeking is as good as beholding, for the time that he will suffer the soul to be in travail...

For a soul that only fastens himself to God with true trust, either by seeking or in beholding, it is the most worship that he may do to him, as to my sight.

My ambition

2008-05-26T05:36:00.000-07:00

All right, it's time for me to come out.

I aspire to be a contemplative.

The funny thing is, I don't even know if you reading this know what that means.

To be a contemplative, to be a mystic, is to seek God. "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." The biblical prophet Jeremiah said that.

It's not too hard to find these people. Fred "Mister" Rogers was one. Mother Teresa was one. I keep seeking them out so that I can read what they've written.

Contemplatives pray. That's really all there is to it; they pray and pray and pray. They pray alone in their rooms and the strength that they receive there they take with them into the world. They see God in the world around them, and especially in the people around them. "What you did to this brother of mine, you did to me." (Matthew 25.)

If you've never heard of contemplation, it might be because the catholics have monks and nuns, while the rest of us are pretty much closed off from that option. But those monks and nuns are the ones who have written the most about it. Thomas Merton's book New Seeds of Contemplation comes to mind. Also Catherine of Siena.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Mahatma Gandhi. Jesus. They were all contemplatives.

More in the next post.

some clarification

2008-05-23T03:25:00.000-07:00

My last post needs some clarification.

I think it boils down to one question: What do we mean when we say God is just?

"God is infinitely just". However, if we understand "just" to mean that he always metes out the precise punishment necessary for every sin, I think we have totally misunderstood what is meant.

Early on in Paul's letter to the church in Rome, he writes about God's wrath being revealed from heaven on mankind. But what does this wrath consist of?

"...God abandoned them in their inmost cravings to filthy practices...God abandoned them to degrading passions... In other words, since they would not consent to acknowledge God, God abandoned them to their unacceptable thoughts and indecent behaviour."

I think it's unfortunate that Paul uses the term "wrath", but I think he was just following the conventions of the Judaism he mastered so well. You read in the prophets all kinds of references to God's wrath - but they tend to refer to invading armies. At any rate, this "wrath" is more passive than active on God's part - it's as if he withdraws his protection. And why does he do this? So that Israel (and we today) might repent and return to him.

Punishment with no end - a popular theory of hell - is ridiculous. If God respects human beings at all, let alone loves them, he would never, never do that.

I am open to two options:

1. In the course of God's plan, everyone will be saved. Hell is temporary. And don't tell me the Bible says it's impossible - Jesus says "nothing is impossible with God."

2. The "lake of fire" does just what we would expect a lake of fire to do - it destroys. It ends life. It is a quick death, after which there is no more. And, I might add, those who end up in this lake will welcome it. They will choose nonexistence rather than the bright light of God.

This is hell.

2008-05-21T06:42:00.000-07:00

Questions of history vs. myth aside, what was the Original Sin of Adam and Eve? And what's so bad about "knowledge of good and evil"? Here's Jacques Ellul (actually, this whole post is paraphrased from his book To Will and To Do.)

Adam's sin is "the very act by which man wants to decide what is good. Sin is not the failure to obey a morality. It is the very desire to determine that morality independently of God, a desire which is at the same time the will to power."

Before the fall, woman and man had no concept of good and evil. They didn't think to judge their actions or fear God's condemnation on them for sinning. They just lived from their hearts, used their heads, and soaked in the glory of creation and of each other and of God.

Solomon asks God, "Give your servant an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil."

We want to judge for ourselves. We say, "we are competent, as human beings, to decide what's good and what's bad." We want to make our own rules. And then there's a famous verse, one that Jimmy Carter liked to quote: "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" "Consequently it is not an instinctive knowledge... God must intervene and make known."

The sure guide for one's decisions and actions is the will of God, and in the Bible, the will of God is revealed. Here is Moses speaking to ancient Israel: "See, I set before you today life and prosperity... For I command you today to love Yahweh your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands..."

Here's another verse - from 3rd John, for Pete's sake. This guy Ellul is thorough: "The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God."

Time-out. That's amazing. "The one who does evil has not seen God." Not "The one who does evil is evil! He deserves to die! Send him to hell!" Just, he hasn't seen God.

That brings me to another thought. Ever heard of Julian of Norwich? She was a famous, famous lady - and still is, if you're interested in Christian mystics throughout history. Anyway, she said something jarring. She said that God's wrath, at least as I have understood it, doesn't exist. She says that if God were ever genuinely wrathful - pissed off - at anything, it would cease to exist. So Jesus didn't die to save us from God's wrath - it doesn't exist.

She also said, and I paraphrase, that God is pure love, and he certainly won't keep us out of heaven - our own stubbornness and our own "wrath", however, can and will. I heard a story of a man who didn't want to live in a place where murderers and cheaters got to live with the same privileges as everyone else. He wanted to preserve his own superiority, so he said to God, "No thanks, I'll just live over here." This is hell.

something from me

2008-05-20T00:36:00.000-07:00

For the last six posts I've done nothing but reference other people's work. So, here is something from me.

I've just been reading, reading, reading like a crazy man. I borrow books from the Sisters' volunteer library, and then I spend time on the internet reading more. I've got a whole list of Catholic saints I want to look into - especially John of the Cross, Catherine of Siena, and Julian of Norwich. Much of their stuff is posted in its entirety online, so that's no problem.

I've been trying to piece together my religion. This is a lifelong task, but it's particularly intense for me right now - a married 20-year-old. And I'm wondering about the choices I will make when I get back home - what school to attend, how to make money, what to major in.

I should say a word about Kati. She's my wife, if you didn't know.

We were talking over lunch a half-hour ago, and I thought of two things.

1.) I am very alone, and sometimes very lonely. Kati is the only person in the world who knows me, and even her knowledge is limited. However...

2.) I don't think I'm any more lonely than I was before we got married. I've never had this close of a relationship with anyone - it's like before I married Kati, I had never had a real friend in my life, but now I have exactly one.

I have made lots of friends here, but I haven't been able to share myself with them like I have with Kati. I want to have deep friendships, but these things take time, and they can't be done in an environment where all your "friends" will be leaving in a matter of months. The same is true for friends made in high school, I think. Once you graduate, it's over.

So I'm lonely, but doing pretty well, because I've got Kati and because it's exciting doing all this self-directed reading and learning.

Elie Wiesel said

2008-05-13T07:49:00.000-07:00

Elie Wiesel said that the greatest evil in the world is not anger or hatred, but indifference. The opposite also holds true, however. The greatest love is the attention we pay to each other, and especially to our children. We serve our children best by simply noticing them - by paying attention to them.

J. C. Arnold

If you want your children to be brilliant, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more brilliant, read them more fairy tales.

Einstein

when it comes to politics

2008-05-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

When it comes to politics in the U. S. of A., I get overwhelmed by the complexity of it all and very much discouraged. And then I read Jim Wallis, and it's as if the world makes sense again. He's a minister, an author, and a speaker, and I read him on the God's Politics blog. If you don't know him, here's a short summary of his core message. (It's also an advertisement for his newest book.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjFFJl4c7JI

the root of grace

2008-05-08T00:22:00.000-07:00

Here are some quotes from a grandfather and his grandson.

The grandson (Johann Christoph Arnold):

"I have often thought that the most difficult of Jesus' paradoxical sayings - at least in terms of putting it into practice - might be the verse in Matthew where Jesus has just noticed a child. He turns to his disciples and tells them, "Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

The grandfather (Eberhard Arnold):

"This is the root of grace: the dismantling of our power. Whenever even a little power rises up in us, the Spirit and the authority of God will retreat to the corresponding degree. In my estimation this is the single most important insight with regard to the kingdom of God.

...it amounts to a clash between two opposing goals. To seek the person of high position, the great person, the spiritual person, the clever person, the fine person, the person who because of his natural talents represents a high peak, as it were, in the mountain range of humanity. The other goal is to seek the humble, the minorities, the handicapped and mentally retarded, the prisoners: the valleys of the lowly between the mountains of the great. They are the degraded, the exploited, the enslaved, the weak and the poor, the poorest of the poor. The first goal aims to exalt the individual, by virtue of his natural gifts, to a state approaching the divine. In the end he is made a god. The other goal seeks the wonder and mystery of God becoming man, God seeking the lowest place among men.

One is the way of self-love and self-exaltation. The other is the way of God's love and the love of one's neighbor. One is the self-glorifying upward thrust. The other is the downward movement to become human."

And the grandson again:

"When a person has been given the peace that comes from living in this love, there is nothing he cannot face. Think of Jesus on the cross... I do not believe such peace can be obtained by human strength."

a man, a band - a poem

2008-04-29T00:27:00.000-07:00

I love the Red Hot Chili Peppers - they seem to really like each other after playing together for three decades or so, and it's not until this past year that they've had a #1 album.

But it's the lyrics that I'm most interested in at the moment - they come from drugs and the unusually full life and mind of Anthony Kiedis.

Try this one on for size. If you don't know the song, watch the video on youtube. It's hilarious.

Can't stop - addicted to the shindig.
Chop top - he says I'm gonna win big.
Choose not a life of imitation,
distant cousin to the reservation.

Defunct the pistol that you pay for [this punk]
this punk - the feeling that you stay for.
In time I want to be your best friend;
east side love is living on the west end.

Knocked out - but boy you better come to.
Don't die - you know the truth is some do.
Go write your message on the pavement;
burns so bright I wonder what the wave meant.

The world I love, the trains I hop
to be part of the wave - can't stop.

Ever wonder if it's all for you?...
...Come and tell me when it's time to [kickstart]

Kickstart the golden generator;
sweettalk but don't intimidate her...

a song

2008-04-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

Reading this morning, my spirit started to hum the tune that Brandon Boyd is screaming.

You might know it - it's called 'pardon me'. (<-- link to the video :)

Voice of the day

2008-04-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

So many people feel so overwhelmed and disempowered by the stresses of modern life that they convince themselves they can't make a difference. So they don't even try. They bury their talents in the ground and let their spirits wither. . . I hope they will bestir themselves at least to say every day as an anonymous old man did: "I don't have the answers, life is not easy, but my heart is in the right place."

- Marian Wright Edelman
Guide My Feet

i want to join the fold of God's peacemakers

2008-04-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

I want to join the fold of God's peacemakers. They are Christians and Buddhists and Muslims and people who don't have a formal religion. They are moving, and I'm afraid I'll be left behind.

God, teach me what you will from this. Open my eyes to what you have to teach me here in India.

thoughts from India

2008-04-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

It's bizarre that I've spent my entire life with plenty of food and a house when billions of people are constantly hungry and sleep on a sidewalk.

I am lonely. I want more deep friendships. I want a deeper relationship with God, whatever that looks like. And I'm trying to strengthen my ties to friends I've had for awhile, but have drifted away from. This blog is part of that effort.

"Peace" is a beautiful word.

I don't think I can have anything resembling peace, however, without caring about other people. So many times I have heard, "The way to be happy is not to try to be happy; it's to try to make other people happy."

I want to write poems. And watch musicals. And be in musicals. Really, I just want to spend a little bit more time in the musical, imaginative side of my brain. Charles Darwin spent his life methodically observing things, and in his old age he found that he could no longer enjoy reading Shakespeare. I want to be a little less calculated and stiff. I see groups of children here running around and playing games, and they're always laughing. I envy them.

I want.

.

Reading through that, I seem really discontent. But I've had some happy times here too, I promise.

hi everybody

2008-04-23T21:15:00.001-07:00

Hi everybody. You may have noticed that I haven't updated here in four months. That makes me a little sad. I thought about shutting down the blog completely, but I think I'll give it another go. I'm in India, volunteering a little bit and reading a lot, and I might just be able to write some things that i like enough to post for the world to see.

Fred "Mr." Rogers liked to say that the greatest gift that we can give each other is our honest self. And a man I read recently said "I don't think that any person can help being creative if they are being themself." So I'm going to try to be honest and be myself.

almost like an epiphany

2007-12-13T16:18:00.000-08:00

I went outside this evening, for a walk.

It was quiet and beautiful.

It was almost like an epiphany; for the first time, my particular slice of 21st-century American civilization was something I could smile at. During the day, when I venture outside, I see the gray cement highway overpasses, the billboards and business signs, the cars. But tonight, the sun had set and the highway noise was barely audible. There was cool air and black trees against the night sky. Even the flags on the houses proclaiming devotion to America and the Florida State Seminoles were charming.

eisenhower on war

2007-11-29T17:23:00.000-08:00

I found this quote at random. This man was a general and a president of the United States. I can hardly believe he said this.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953

our job in life

2007-11-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

Here's Mr. Rogers:

"As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuble each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has -- or ever will have -- something inside that is unique to all time. It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression."

"Uniqueness and children's feelings about it can't take on full meaning in children's lives unless they also come to understand how much we are all alike. Finding out that we are one of a kind could be a lonely and frightening thing without the reassurance of knowing that we belong to humankind... and that all humans laugh and cry about many of the same things; that all have similar hopes and fears; that all have many of the same needs; and that those needs are best met by other human beings who can love us for both our similarities and our differences."

look somewhere else

2007-11-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

Our professor read the entire text of Richard Wright's short story "Long Black Song" out loud in African American Literature today. I've never engaged with a piece of literature like I did with that story today. A woman watches a group of white men kill her husband and then burn down her house. While Mr. Clark read, my heart pounded behind my eyes, and after class I offered Kati a scathing denunciation of the work.

Now I feel a little scared and tired. Caring this much about a story is new to me. I've adopted the NVC principle that "all violence is a tragic expression of unmet needs," and my contempt for one of Richard Wright's best stories was certainly violent. What need in me was screaming?

I'm always looking on the bright side, because the dark side hurts to look at. There's my answer. If I look at the world and see senseless violence, I look somewhere else.

anger in domination systems

2007-10-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

Oh, but this stuff excites me. I just read the article "Anger in Domination Systems" on the website of the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Responding to the question of what to do with anger when trying to be nonviolent, Marshall Rosenberg says:

1. Most anger is a result of bad habits of thinking.

2. When we think in ways that result in contempt, we support domination.

You may disagree, or you may be confused. Either way, read the article. It's short, and it fleshes this out.

----

"At the root of much, if not all, violence -- whether verbal, psychological, or physical, whether among family members, tribes, or nations -- is a kind of thinking that attributes the cause of conflict to wrongness in one's adversaries, and a corresponding inability to think of oneself or others in terms of vulnerability -- what one might be feeling, fearing, yearning for, missing, etc. We saw this dangerous way of thinking during the Cold War. Our leaders viewed Russians as an 'evil empire' bent on destroying the American way of life. Russian leaders referred to the people of the United States as 'imperialist oppressors' who were trying to subjugated them. Neither side acknowledged the fear lurking behind such labels."

-written by Marshall Rosenberg, who also wrote the article above.

sometimes

2007-10-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when I look at my life through a wide-angle lens, the whole picture comes into focus just a little bit and I feel an inner sense of relief.

I have noticed in myself a capacity for hero-worship. My youth pastor, for example, was the object of my loving awe and admiration at times during junior high and high school. The same was true at different times of my teachers, coaches, or just upperclassmen. Most of them were male, but every one of them was older than me. They were larger than life, superhumans. I remember I had a dream once involving Sam Robinson, the theatre star at my high school that year. I admired him and was intimidated by him at the same time, and I remember that in my subconscious dreamworld he was physically taller than me. Which given my height is frankly ridiculous.

I still do it too. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Teresa are modern-day saints, and I certainly admire and am intimidated by all three of them. I wrote an 8-page paper on Gandhi at Baylor, I plan to go work with Mother Teresa's order, and I currently have a PBS documentary on MLK checked out from the library. By which I mean to say: I respect these people hugely and I want to learn about them so I can become like them.

Here's the punchline. I think the reason I admire these people so much is because they give me hope that I can make something out of my life. This has been my concern ever since I was old enough to think about it. I have a powerful fear of a life of meaninglessness, of zero impact, of nothing-to-show-for-it-all. Look at my "about me" section, for pete's sake. I am driven quite concretely by the desire for self-respect, to live up to what I want to be. I want to DO something good by the time I die.

Sometimes (a lot of the time) it's ugly. Sometimes "I want to be like Mother Teresa" becomes "I don't like the person that I am. I am so royally screwed up in so many ways that I don't see how I could ever pull myself together enough to respect myself." And then I get tired or worse, I despair.

But when I'm feeling more secure, a Gandhi or a King or a Mother Teresa gives me hope to fight the good fight in myself.

I've attended a few Quaker meetings at the local chapter here in Tallahassee, and for a week or two Quakers and Quakerism were my source of hope. Instead of hero-worshiping a person, I drew hope from reading about Quakers. If they could make something good of their lives, then maybe I can too. And I still feel that way. I think they're on to a lot of very good, life-enriching things.

But the impetus behind this post is... I have found a new love. She's thin and bound up. She's hard on the surface but she opens right up when I run my fingers along her spine... that's right, friends, my new love is a hardback book. More specifically, she's a hardback book that introduced me to a whole system of thought and practice. The book is Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg. I found it randomly at the library because it was prominently displayed in the "new arrivals" section. And you may roll your eyes at me and my fickle loves, but as the ficklest of lovers once said, "he jests at scars that never felt a wound."* And I want everyone to be wounded by this book.

The word "nonviolent" in the title sounds strange, I know, but it's borrowing the term from Gandhi, who used it in a very technical sense. For Gandhi, "nonviolence" is the best English translation of Ahimsa, which I won't pretend to totally understand, but the concept is deeper than the English word alone. Nonviolence (in the Gandhian sense) is humanity's natural state of being, in which not only do we not harm others, but we derive pleasure from loving them. And it's "Nonviolent Communication" because it's a book about the most basic of life's tasks: speaking and listening.

I want to sound convincing, but not mindlessly gushing, so I'll keep it short. The book is inspiring in that it tells so many stories of conflicts where enraged people get through to each other and begin to care about each other's needs. It's also one of the most practical books I've ever read, because it immediately changes the way I speak and listen to people. And it's a relief to me to read, because it says all kinds of things that I desperately want to believe, yet at the same time it "checks out"; it's genuinely insightful and wise, and not shallow hope built on crap. I can't be comfortable with any system of thought that excludes God, and this book is rooted in speaking from your core feelings and needs (= the image of God in you) and listening to the core feelings and needs of others (= the image of God in them). I can see how a habit of relating in this manner would break through all kinds of habits that keep us from being in harmony with God and help us to find him/her everywhere. And still the book isn't religiously preachy at all; the religious component is easily ignored if you so choose.

I love this book, and if someone picks it up as a result of this post, I'll be thrilled. Read around at cnvc.org if you like. CNVC stands for The Center for Nonviolent Communication, and it's the web location of the whole NVC movement, which is actually much larger than just one book. There are 30 (or so) books by 20 (or so) different authors, in addition to workshops and study groups.

I am sure my newfound enthusiasm for all this will soon fade, but the soundness of the material will stay the same. I recommend this book and this website to every member of the human race that reads English. And if you're at a much different place in your life than I am and the book does nothing for you, then that's OK too.

*That's Romeo Montague, courtesy of Mr. Shakespeare.

I believe

2007-10-18T19:48:00.000-07:00

I believe in global warming.

I believe that Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize was probably deserved, however counterintuitive that may seem, because it really is a peace issue. As the saying goes, it's the places which have contributed least to the problem that are getting the worst of it. If global warming is messing with the climate, then it's messing with people's livelihoods, and that is a peace issue.

However, I don't plan to do one flipping thing about it.

Here's another. I believe that the global economic system that brings us Wal-Mart and McDonalds and Starbucks brings us these cheap products by exploiting (yes exploiting) the powerless of the world. I'm not going to try and back this up right now, but I believe it is wrong.

And yet I have no plans to stop shopping at Wal-Mart.

I don't believe I'm the only one that feels this way... lazy, trapped, and powerless to effect change in the sheer vastness of "the system."

a bone to pick

2007-10-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

I have a bone to pick with Facebook.

But first, can we agree on a few things?

1. Breasts are only pornographic because as a culture, we have made them so.

In many non-Western cultures, especially tropical ones (and cultures that don't exist anymore) women's breasts aren't that big of a deal. Ever watch National Geographic?

In our culture, breasts are off-limits and therefore sexual. In certain cultures, the same could be said for women's elbows.

2. Breastfeeding is the way we humans feed our babies. It is not a sexual act.

I don't think this point needs clarification.

Now here's the point. Women in America are stigmatized for breastfeeding in public. They've been kicked out of restaurants (http://www.kentuckyconnect.com/181/story/161782.html) and now Facebook has banned breastfeeding pictures.

I realize that Americans aren't used to seeing breastfeeding moms in public. I know that this is trying to change an entire culture. I also realize, however, that breastfeeding is the best option nutritionally for babies, and that there really is no reason to make it difficult just because we think it's gross. The mother who was kicked out of Applebee's for breastfeeding wasn't parading around in the nude, she was feeding her child and facing a corner. She didn't bring a blanket because it was hot. We as a culture should leave this woman, and mothers like her, alone.

I'm 20

2007-10-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

I turned 20 a week ago.

So what words of wisdom do I have to offer after living two decades of life?

Psh... no effing clue. I'm still figuring things out. Getting married, though, that was a good move.

Fear and hope

2007-09-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

I say I believe that a loving God rules the universe, but I live scared and frozen and angry.

I say I believe that every person is a child of God, yet I can't find the light in myself or the people around me.

I've been going to Quaker meetings and reading Quaker theology. They have hope, or at least they do in their books. I don't know the actual Quakers here well enough to know if they have hope themselves.

Quakers believe that God guides those who turn to him/her. "The Lord of Heaven and Earth we found to be near at hand..." I've read accounts (mostly from centuries ago) of people who say that the voice of God came to them and told them this or that, but it's in their meetings for worship that they believe they can best find Christ's presence. George Fox liked to say "Christ has come to teach his people himself." There's huge caveat, though; you probably won't get guidance if you aren't ready to hear it. A Quaker from 300 years ago wrote that his church first had to undergo "a narrow search, and a diligent inquisition concerning our state, through the light of Christ Jesus." If they hit on to something real (and I suspect that they did), then I'll have to go down the same road.

There is no pastor and no sermon. Instead, everyone (there were only 30 or so last Sunday) sits in silence. If someone has something to say, he stands up and everyone listens. In the entire hour last week, only five or so people said anything, and the rest of the hour was spent sitting and considering those few words. They believe that the Holy Spirit who guided the writers of the Bible guides their meetings, so that the whole experience adds up to a "sermon" from God.

I don't know if what they do on Sunday mornings is really God talking, but I really really want to be convinced. I say that I believe that God will speak to us if we shut ourselves up a little...

barred windows - part 2

2007-09-17T04:41:00.001-07:00

Hi there. This is the second part of what I was trying to say last night.

...

I want to be able to think deeply and to feel deeply. My feelings are mostly shallow. Hills and potholes instead of mountains and valleys. And the reason I can say this and not feel like I'm just whining is that I think that God is not only the universe's deepest thinker, but even more so, the universe's grandest and deepest feel-er. If God is trinitarian, than he/she/they is fundamentally relational, much more so than human beings. Human babies are born isolated inside themselves, whereas an eternal triune God would be fundamentally social. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would know each other and love each other.

And I think that if the idea of the image of God in every human being is right, then the capacity to relate and sympathize and love are right at the heart of that image.

Anyway, that's the theological basis for my complaint. If I say I'm trying to find God, then I have no choice but to open myself up to emotion and especially to loving other people.

And in case you're wondering what I'm actually going to do to bring about a change, I think I've got some good places to start. The simplest one is that I'm not going to do a lot of reading or writing at night, because then I can't calm my mind down enough to get to sleep. Also, I'm trying to engage the members of my household in conversation and really listen. This might be the hardest part for me.

I've also had some limited success with calming my mind down using various forms of meditation. Last night, after writing the first part of this, I actually had a breakthrough. I couldn't get to sleep, and it sucked. So I went outside and walked. Soon I got into a rhythm and walking became music as I counted out four beats at a time. Every 12th step, I counted one. I got up to 150 or so. This was really good for shutting my mind down a little.

And then instead of counting, at every 12th step (or so) I spoke out loud something that I was longing for. I said the words love, courage, peace, and rest many times, with 11 beats of silence in between. And I was surprised at just how much it woke me up to feelings I had pushed away.

So, I'm hopeful.

barred windows - part 1

2007-09-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

"hell is other people." -- Jean-Paul Sartre

"That's ridiculous... hell is the self." -- a Catholic priest

I feel that I have constructed my own prison, and its walls are solid and strong. Lately I am noticing - and mourning - the bars on the windows of my own consciousness.

Let me try to explain what I mean.

Every adult is just a grown-up baby, and babies are the most "imprisoned" people in the world. It sounds ludicrous, a baby "imprisoned," but imagine you are a baby for a minute. You spend your first nine months curled up inside your mother's uterus, and the next months are spent learning how to see shapes and colors, how to interpret a certain sound as mama's voice. A baby's powers of perception and emotion are just barely grown. The outside world doesn't affect a baby like it affects you or me, because babies aren't equipped to make sense of the world like you or I do.

I feel a little like that baby.

My mind tends to string thoughts together, all the time. It's gotten to the point that it wouldn't be quite accurate to say that "I" do it; it's a conversation in my head that I can't turn off without serious effort. And I don't regret it completely. The main reason why my mind is always working is that I really do enjoy learning new things and seeing how they interact with one another. My heart rate increases and my eyes light up. It's one of the main pleasures of my life.

But sometimes it sucks. This tendency of mine does not help me at Starbucks. I can't make a drink from start to finish without my mind wandering. If I have two or three mini-tasks that I need to get done quickly, it takes a ton of concentration for me to remember them all. A lot of the time, I mess something up. Then I feel anxious, I get self-conscious, and my mind wanders further.

In general, if my brain is bustling around, I only have so much mental space left over to attend to the present moment. I can't sit in a chair and watch the sun set for an hour without getting bored of the beauty. When I watch a movie, I almost never feel much sympathy for the characters. Instead I try to to dissect the movie's message. Does that strike you as worrisome and weird and wrong? It certainly seems wrong to me.

Anyway, I must hush my self-consciousness a little and make room for spontaneous feeling. If I can't do this, then I can never be fully present to another human being. This is important, and I really need to do something about it now that I've written about it.

Part 2: http://andyfeith.blogspot.com/2007/09/barred-windows-part-2.html

my name is Andy

2007-09-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

I know that this revelation will shock many of you who know and love me, and I can understand if it makes you doubt whether I've ever been truthful to you at all. But it's true, and I can't keep it inside anymore. I am a compulsive reader. I love to learn about new things and make connections with old ones. I freeze up when I feel like I don't understand what's going on. Economics, comparative religion, you name it. I need to know, or I'm liable to get spooked as soon as I see something I don't understand.

I thought I could keep it to myself without hurting anyone. But today, this whole mess of a lie I've been living with came bursting out, and now it's time for me be straight with you people.

I spent all last night binging. On my google reader account. And I had to go to class with a hangover. The first sign that something was wrong was before my Child Development class, when I was reading a poem from a textbook and had to stop because I couldn't control my tears. And then in Art History, I lost control of my speech. The lecture was about Egyptian art, and I ranted a bit to no one in particular about the arrogance of white people. Kati said I looked like a scared and angry child. And it's scary to think that, on the inside, I am a scared and angry child.

I know that I have a problem, and I am ready to work toward recovery. I realize now that I need some silence, I need some laughs, I need some exercise. Mainly, I think I need a good dose of perspective now and then, and I thank you for providing me with that in the past.

Kati and I had a talk, and she's going to help me change my attitude. I don't have to be scared of the world when I don't understand it. I can live with confusion, because God is in control and God is good.

Hopes and Dreams - addendum

2007-09-10T18:25:00.001-07:00

One more thing I thought of today. I dream of escaping the corporate world. Life as a teacher would accomplish this.

sometimes

2007-09-04T09:38:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I hate everything. Being surrounded by advertisements, for one. Working for Starbucks. Sitting through six straight hours of community college classes taught at a high school level. Living a small life and not enjoying much in it.

Hopes and Dreams

2007-08-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

I think the most revealing question you could ask a person is, "what are your hopes and dreams?" Let me tell you mine.

Mostly, I dream of doing something good with my life. I used to want to be a grand figure on the stage of history and dramatically impact the lives of many people, like Martin Luther King or Gandhi or something. Lately that dream has receded as I've come to embrace the notion of investing heavily into just the few people that I live with. I'll probably have to work a normal, full-time job someday, like every other person, and the only job I can see myself in right now is a teacher of some sort. So I guess part of my hopes and dreams would be to graduate from college and teach.

I want to live "in community"; that is, I would like to live close to, if not in the same house with, people who have the same goals and beliefs in life. For me and Kati, that would be a Christian community of some kind. If you've ever read Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution, then you know what I'm talking about. That book is something of a manifesto for my life at the moment. I want to find friends who are interested in living and working and sharing and worshiping together, and to stay with them. This may be an utterly unrealistic goal, but this is what I hope for.

Kati and I will have babies some day. This is much more concrete and real in her mind than in mine, but it will happen. I want to be good for them. And for Kati.

But right now, we're going to community college and working at Starbucks. Not the ideal life I have in my imagination. The plan is to save up our Starbucks money and go work with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta at the end of the semester. This is the bright spot I see; I'm looking forward to it immensely. I hope to come back changed.

Greed - corporate and personal

2007-08-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

I'm watching a documentary about the institution of the corporation, fittingly titled The Corporation. And there's some ugly stuff, as you would imagine.

People like to point out the discrepancy in salary between a corporation's employees and its CEOs. Corporations can certainly be accused of hurting masses of people through their greed, and CEOs, with their obscenely large salaries, are the most visible targets of these accusations. But it seems to me that unless I live a life entirely free of luxury, without ever buying a new movie or eating out, I have no room to condemn them for greed. Whatever sin the average CEO commits on a grand scale, I commit on a small scale.

a crossroads

2007-08-19T20:29:00.000-07:00

My life is at a bit of a crossroads.

I'm at that age when people make some of the most life-defining decisions of their lives. I've already made at least one in marrying Kati.

Another potentially life-defining decision: Kati and I are working at Starbucks and saving money so that, at the end of this semester, we will have enough saved to go to Calcutta, India, and spend six months working with the late Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. To say I'm looking forward to going would be an understatement. I look at the trip as a sort of personal salvation through purification. This, of course, is partly wrong and deluded, but consider, it's partly right: we will be bandaging the wounded and caring for the sick and playing with lonely kids, all day. Attending Mass with the sisters. If anything is transformative, working with the Missionaries of Charity and the poor of India surely is.

But until we get there, we're still here. And here, I often feel that working out my faith is much more confusing than it will be in Calcutta. Here's one of the more obvious examples: I believe that the global economy tends to increasingly oppress poor people in third-world countries as first-world corporations gain power. Yet I work for Starbucks, which no doubt buys coffee from those third-world countries at the standard prices that keep inequality unequal. (No, I don't know the details.)

And then there's family life. How do I love these people with whom I share a house? Only one of them (Kati) really sees eye-to-eye with me almost all the time; what about the ones who hardly ever do? How do I best love the ones whose personalities clash with mine? (The answers to these questions aren't that complicated, but I have trouble actually doing them.)

And how to make myself useful, to feel like I'm pouring myself out into something good? I expect to feel that way in Calcutta, but here... it's harder.

These are a few of the problems I think about sometimes. Merton says that every moment carries with it "seeds of contemplation," like the wind carries seeds. Seeds of God's love that can only take root in a receptive soul. The message, then, is that these days, just as much as the days to come in Calcutta, are filled with God's love for me. And if I can just receive what God is giving, I'll do OK.

Trying to make my life more beautiful.... but right now it's a dull, hidden beauty. The quiet beauty of patience and tolerance toward my family here, of gradually growing closer and trying to smooth over the times when we crash into each other.

hello reader

2007-08-06T19:37:00.001-07:00

Hello reader. If we haven't met, let me introduce myself.

My name's Andy. I'm 19 years old as of this writing, employed by Starbucks, married to my love Kati, and living with my in-laws. Kati and I did a year at Baylor University and now we're doing a semester at Tallahassee Community College and saving up money to spend some time in Calcutta with the late Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.

Glad to meet you.

I've been reading

2007-08-06T19:30:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation. Right now this sticks out:

And now I am thinking of the disease which is spiritual pride... Who can escape the secret desire to breathe a different atmosphere from the rest of men? Who can do good things without seeking to taste in them some sweet distinction from the common run of sinners in this world?

...I must look for my identity, somehow, not only in God but in other men.

I will never be able to find myself if I isolate myself from the rest of mankind as if I were a different kind of being.

I know I love to believe that I alone am different and better and good, but I need to remember that I am a human, no more and no less.

-

Probably the end of this blog

Here's something I found via Sojourners

How Henri Nouwen prays

Something *I* wrote

Here's what I read in Kati's journal today.

Some words from Henri Nouwen

Why I Am Drawn to...

quotes from the underground (get it?)

Today's Word

"A Living Prayer" - Alison Krauss

seeking is as good as beholding

My ambition

some clarification

This is hell.

something from me

Elie Wiesel said

when it comes to politics

the root of grace

a man, a band - a poem

a song

Voice of the day

i want to join the fold of God's peacemakers

thoughts from India

hi everybody

almost like an epiphany

eisenhower on war

our job in life

look somewhere else

anger in domination systems

sometimes

I believe

a bone to pick

I'm 20

Fear and hope

barred windows - part 2

barred windows - part 1

my name is Andy

Hopes and Dreams - addendum

sometimes

Hopes and Dreams

Greed - corporate and personal

a crossroads

hello reader

I've been reading

Something I wrote