My former roommate, Ryan, whom I lived with during my sophomore year of college, was murdered the day after Christmas. Over a drink placed on a billiard table. Stabbed to death in a parking lot. 22 years old. Youthful and animated. Now recumbent, decaying.
For a few minutes after receiving the link to the news story ("Son of prominent I.E. pastor stabbed to death in Temecula bar fight Friday night") I could barely stand. There must have been anguish and blood and slipping away. And what of his embodiment so familiar to me? Lifeless? How? What?
My head was light, my utterances breathy, my face listless and mouth agape. Bending over, I clutched my legs—my insides were churning and I needed to recoup solidity. Though I didn't act on it, I felt a desire to crouch in a corner, perpendicular walls flanking my body. Then the mind finds a strain it can grasp—you think about how this is affecting you. Thoughts must be verbalized and responded to. And then you reach for your cell phone. And you start calling others.
Untimely death, like nothing else, leads to uneasy, yet deliberate reflection—but also these bouts of shocked head shaking and resignment. Unrelated thought streams are interrupted with an exhalation and a subdued declaration, "he's really dead." It confounds the mind. Repeatedly.
Mental energy is devoted to the usual time travel fantasies and the what-ifs of Byzantine cause and effect etiologies. You entertain visions of vigilante justice meted out brutally and mercilessly. And you think of his body—his hands and his face once supple and animated, now deteriorating. You vacillate between the indecorum of macabre posturing and the righteous defense of hard reality in lieu of white misty souls ascending to heaven. You think about his salvation. What happened to everything-him?
Physicalist Christian that I mostly am, there is no comfort for me in the pieties that "he is now with Jesus" or "receiving his reward." His embodied existence, i.e., his total personal existence, is over. There is no breath in his body. In my amateur estimation, "he" is awaiting resurrection and in the meantime the "he" that remains is a memory, a void in the context and relationships he shaped but from which he is now absent. Reality marches on, except, now, without the influence of his agency here or anywhere.
His ceased existence challenges my own and the ominous fact of non-breath is unsettling everything-me.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Saturday, November 8, 2008
history channel shows about Christianity are awful
though perhaps a dozen or so eminent scholars are assembled and interviewed, the producers always manage to contrive a sensationalistic plot with conspiratorial or ominous mysteries. yes, they give a soundbite to Mr. PhD from Yale...but, "oh, hey, what does mrs. marginal crank have to say about this?" then the viewer endures silly intoning from some lady who wrote a book that you can't even get the cover image for on amazon.
most of the shows also begin with some radical, heretofore marginalized or new theory that is the WRH (what really happened), which contradicts popular or generally accepted knowledge.
crackpots get to get on tv and it appears that professors get their words twisted to back up the precoceived WRH (though, I'm sure at least a handful of professors get giddy over the opportunity to share w/ the world their novel thesis originally published in the Northeastern Journal of Biblical Archaelogy--issue 36 volume 4--back in 1996).
I always learn a bit--but it's not worth the cringing!
most of the shows also begin with some radical, heretofore marginalized or new theory that is the WRH (what really happened), which contradicts popular or generally accepted knowledge.
crackpots get to get on tv and it appears that professors get their words twisted to back up the precoceived WRH (though, I'm sure at least a handful of professors get giddy over the opportunity to share w/ the world their novel thesis originally published in the Northeastern Journal of Biblical Archaelogy--issue 36 volume 4--back in 1996).
I always learn a bit--but it's not worth the cringing!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
hold the sentimentality. and i'll take extra cynicism
I took a break from God relation sometime back in May.
To an extent, I got to the end of my neurotic Christian rope. There was nowhere else to go. I had plumbed the depths of sentimental/tortured narcissism. I had sinned horribly. I had glided on clouds, mistakenly believing that something “real” had happened to me spiritually in March. I read Wesley’s sermons and concluded, with only a smidge of doubt, that I wasn’t saved—I wasn’t a Christian.
I mean, I always had my doubts—but I was too ignorant to put myself firmly in the unregenerate camp. So I stopped trying. Scrapped the accountability partnership (though to call it that is a lie—it was one sided partnership for months, with all the, albeit meager, effort coming from my end), uninstalled my internet filters, stopped seeing the therapist (he was on the school’s dole/I was no longer a student), and stopped confessing to my Christian friends.
Parts of me want to ask for help. Other parts think that’s a farce. Ask for help? I already did. God and friends didn’t help. They both gave the only advice they really can: man up, work for it, do it yourself.
I used to think others could help. But they have their own problems—some simply don’t have time for others and some don’t even realize how crippled they already are—their advice hardly even assuages their own consciences; it’s not going to help me in the slightest.
For years, I’ve been acutely aware of my neurotic need for contrived affirmation, acknowledgement, and friendship. So I try not to pursue those—for even if I get it, it’s just a band aid or deeper problems of self-responsibility that I need to work out on my own, or worse, I risk entering some unsatisfying co-dependent relationship with another broken person that deepens my problems.
Well, I’m redoubling my efforts to act and think as normally (read unsentimental) as possible—hopefully those interactions born thereof will be reparative. Plus, my slavishness and occasional pretentiousness induce cringes when I think about them later. No wonder they don’t work; they’re fake. Psychically unhealthy people don’t care and the well adjusted don’t see it in other normal people so they don’t know what to make of it.
So I’m cynical. I know I’m still putting myself in the center. I recognize this as just another variety of over-dramatizing my life’s condition—“if I can’t be healthy, I’ll be special.” --Breaking the mold and doing pre-Christian life my way.
Well that’s that for now. I hope this explains why I’m not going to church anymore nor praying. It’s probably true that my heart’s hardened. But let me also suggest that maybe my heart is just too mushy. Love and grace run through me like champagne—the God of those I can’t engage with because the sinful parts of me cling to warped reflections of those.
No, the God for me now is the God of systems, of theology—of sin and hell, of the condition of man, of clouded visions of heaven. Emotive commitments don’t slay neuroses. Real friendships do. Old-school harsh psychology does. Self insight born of new philosophies does. When the scaffolding in my head it sturdy, perhaps I’ll begin to unmoor from cynicism and allow more emotion into the project. Please love me in the meantime. Oh, wait, don’t.
To an extent, I got to the end of my neurotic Christian rope. There was nowhere else to go. I had plumbed the depths of sentimental/tortured narcissism. I had sinned horribly. I had glided on clouds, mistakenly believing that something “real” had happened to me spiritually in March. I read Wesley’s sermons and concluded, with only a smidge of doubt, that I wasn’t saved—I wasn’t a Christian.
I mean, I always had my doubts—but I was too ignorant to put myself firmly in the unregenerate camp. So I stopped trying. Scrapped the accountability partnership (though to call it that is a lie—it was one sided partnership for months, with all the, albeit meager, effort coming from my end), uninstalled my internet filters, stopped seeing the therapist (he was on the school’s dole/I was no longer a student), and stopped confessing to my Christian friends.
Parts of me want to ask for help. Other parts think that’s a farce. Ask for help? I already did. God and friends didn’t help. They both gave the only advice they really can: man up, work for it, do it yourself.
I used to think others could help. But they have their own problems—some simply don’t have time for others and some don’t even realize how crippled they already are—their advice hardly even assuages their own consciences; it’s not going to help me in the slightest.
For years, I’ve been acutely aware of my neurotic need for contrived affirmation, acknowledgement, and friendship. So I try not to pursue those—for even if I get it, it’s just a band aid or deeper problems of self-responsibility that I need to work out on my own, or worse, I risk entering some unsatisfying co-dependent relationship with another broken person that deepens my problems.
Well, I’m redoubling my efforts to act and think as normally (read unsentimental) as possible—hopefully those interactions born thereof will be reparative. Plus, my slavishness and occasional pretentiousness induce cringes when I think about them later. No wonder they don’t work; they’re fake. Psychically unhealthy people don’t care and the well adjusted don’t see it in other normal people so they don’t know what to make of it.
So I’m cynical. I know I’m still putting myself in the center. I recognize this as just another variety of over-dramatizing my life’s condition—“if I can’t be healthy, I’ll be special.” --Breaking the mold and doing pre-Christian life my way.
Well that’s that for now. I hope this explains why I’m not going to church anymore nor praying. It’s probably true that my heart’s hardened. But let me also suggest that maybe my heart is just too mushy. Love and grace run through me like champagne—the God of those I can’t engage with because the sinful parts of me cling to warped reflections of those.
No, the God for me now is the God of systems, of theology—of sin and hell, of the condition of man, of clouded visions of heaven. Emotive commitments don’t slay neuroses. Real friendships do. Old-school harsh psychology does. Self insight born of new philosophies does. When the scaffolding in my head it sturdy, perhaps I’ll begin to unmoor from cynicism and allow more emotion into the project. Please love me in the meantime. Oh, wait, don’t.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
changing my story
a month or so ago, a very good friend asked if I still wanted to be a marriage and family therapist. I laughed because I haven't mentioned that to anyone in around two years.
but it made me wonder, "from my past disclosures, what else do people still think is true of me?" --perhaps it's (an over-concern with others' perceptions of me) a remnant from the years of very insecure adolescence, or of very present-day narcissism, or fear of early death, in which case I never get to publish, figuratively, my life (I'm more than half sure I'll die young), but mainly I'm taking it as a sign that most in my life aren't the best sounding boards for figuring out my future.
what's rather consistent internally, is just bits and pieces in my friends' minds
even after trying so hard to "get real," cut the strings of my airs, double back and criticize myself this way and that way, reveal my strategic maneuvers--my playbook, expose my achilles's heels, render myself understandable, my good friends still remember anachronistic self-disclosures.
I have great friends and we have relationships that are healthy...it's just that I'm not all that healthy psychologically an individual--so I blame most disappointments on myself, on my petty scorekeeping, and on my inability to form friendships like average guys do.
there are three types of relationships that I long for:
romantic: should romantic love be one of self-discovery? well probably not--or at least not how I did it. the last time I was a boyfriend, I entered it with the enthusiasm and idealism of a novice. she would complete me and I, her. every crevice would get a flash light shone in it, psyches would be unfolded, pretenses would fall and the spirits of two individuals in embrace would conquer the anxieties of life. instead, she was more in it for normal love--not dime store psychoanalysis. we fought until words only made things worse and no amount of mental gymnastics could land me on the virtuous high beam. probably never great to end a relationship with overtures to a love that doesn't really exist, a truce, and a promise to stay away from each other for a few years. but I think I can do it better now. I've learned from past mistakes and I'm a better person now, more subdued and deliberate and honest in a constructive way. I'm not getting into next time so much as an avenue for therapy into wholeness. next time it will be mutual and giving. giving is important to me--it's the whole point: living for someone else. still, I want someone who's OK with everything me. of course I can't split myself open on the first date and play self-psychopathologist but I do expect to get honest pretty soon--because I refuse to make someone commit to a persona.
to be continued...
but it made me wonder, "from my past disclosures, what else do people still think is true of me?" --perhaps it's (an over-concern with others' perceptions of me) a remnant from the years of very insecure adolescence, or of very present-day narcissism, or fear of early death, in which case I never get to publish, figuratively, my life (I'm more than half sure I'll die young), but mainly I'm taking it as a sign that most in my life aren't the best sounding boards for figuring out my future.
what's rather consistent internally, is just bits and pieces in my friends' minds
even after trying so hard to "get real," cut the strings of my airs, double back and criticize myself this way and that way, reveal my strategic maneuvers--my playbook, expose my achilles's heels, render myself understandable, my good friends still remember anachronistic self-disclosures.
I have great friends and we have relationships that are healthy...it's just that I'm not all that healthy psychologically an individual--so I blame most disappointments on myself, on my petty scorekeeping, and on my inability to form friendships like average guys do.
there are three types of relationships that I long for:
romantic: should romantic love be one of self-discovery? well probably not--or at least not how I did it. the last time I was a boyfriend, I entered it with the enthusiasm and idealism of a novice. she would complete me and I, her. every crevice would get a flash light shone in it, psyches would be unfolded, pretenses would fall and the spirits of two individuals in embrace would conquer the anxieties of life. instead, she was more in it for normal love--not dime store psychoanalysis. we fought until words only made things worse and no amount of mental gymnastics could land me on the virtuous high beam. probably never great to end a relationship with overtures to a love that doesn't really exist, a truce, and a promise to stay away from each other for a few years. but I think I can do it better now. I've learned from past mistakes and I'm a better person now, more subdued and deliberate and honest in a constructive way. I'm not getting into next time so much as an avenue for therapy into wholeness. next time it will be mutual and giving. giving is important to me--it's the whole point: living for someone else. still, I want someone who's OK with everything me. of course I can't split myself open on the first date and play self-psychopathologist but I do expect to get honest pretty soon--because I refuse to make someone commit to a persona.
to be continued...
Monday, August 18, 2008
Transitions and Summer Ruminations
In the last two weeks, two of my best friends moved, each now living hundreds of miles away from San Diego. And their moves are permanent. Considering their departures in my head, the word "bittersweet" doesn't seem such a cliché, but an accurate description of the mix of nostalgia and regret, both of which loom over the uncertain fog of own my adjustment. When lots of your self-conception is dependent on your relationships and a couple important ones change, you ask yourself, "what's next?" and, not least of all, "what do I do with my evenings?"
There's a tinge of regret at circumstances lost but also of not being a better friend—for being a puzzle piece that never quite interlocked well enough, for not fixing past wrongs, and, perhaps more selfishly, for not shining brightly enough in their memories. (To add to the theme of change in my life's relationships, another friend from my inner circle at Point Loma was married yesterday). So life's demanded some reflection at the close of this most recent season.
It's interesting: when good friends leave, a part of you is suspended—the part of you (well developed over a long/meaningful friendship) that interacted with him or her in a unique relationship of no-two-are-the-same people. It's these suspended interactions/dynamics that are making me more wistful than the relatively un-hurdled end of college. Though, there was a big change post-graduation: full-time employment.
Work brings me money and a weekly routine, if also emotional labor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor), corporate goals, and a pungent mental image of the "great unwashed masses." I really do enjoy the company of most of my co-workers—indeed, it's the dominant social sphere in my life now. A single vignette: There's David, the English accented co-worker who sits next to me all day. We pass our hours joking with each other, letting off steam in the face a sometimes-indignant public, commiserating over our post-graduate lives (perhaps it's an airy luxury of the 20-something to find his circumstances too small rather than his aspirations too big), and wondering when we'll be replaced by machines and/or genius cross-selling chimps.
That all makes me sound jaded, but I'm not...that much. As I told a friend recently, work life, when not meaningful or impassioned, often feels like a distraction from the greater stories of life that make a man: about 45 hours a week, I'm co-worker Matthew, the diet soda swilling former theology student, mostly affable (if haplessly out of touch with the dictates of suave likability), a little too eager to please, and with a penchant for sharing an opinion, even when (surprise!) not solicited. But those aren't the stories of life one tells when meeting new acquaintances, going on a date, or talking to another ambitious peer. And this distraction life takes energy—energy that I had hoped would go into making someone useful
None of this is permanent for me, however. I am building (slowly and with setbacks) the foundations ($ practicalities) of my grad school launchpad, hoping for liftoff within two years. In the meantime, I hope to eat lots of dinners with friends, read books that shift and clarify my insides, fly and drive around this country some, and take my shirt off more.
Occasionally while driving, listening to my iPod, or just walking alone, I’ll realize that I’m pretty happy. I wouldn't go back given the opportunity, I like lots of the new ideas in my head, fun memories, and just thinking about the bright(er) future I'm pretty sure that I'll demand of myself.
A persistent exhortation I give myself is to befriend Jesus...soon or next season. The highs and lows (well, mostly lows) of God-relation in this errant life of mine have been replaced with even steadiness. Not exactly because God's my rock, but because I've reduced him to a pestering pebble (a beautiful shining pebble that I sometimes hold up to the sky) in my step. Oh, and I hop around on the pebble-free foot a lot. Thankfully for my self-disclosure weary friends, very little in me desires writing or talking about my faith as if I'm the Underground Man in Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground. Unfortunately, for my soul...well that’s damned.
And on that cheer-y note...give me a call: I'm living for my friends these days.
There's a tinge of regret at circumstances lost but also of not being a better friend—for being a puzzle piece that never quite interlocked well enough, for not fixing past wrongs, and, perhaps more selfishly, for not shining brightly enough in their memories. (To add to the theme of change in my life's relationships, another friend from my inner circle at Point Loma was married yesterday). So life's demanded some reflection at the close of this most recent season.
It's interesting: when good friends leave, a part of you is suspended—the part of you (well developed over a long/meaningful friendship) that interacted with him or her in a unique relationship of no-two-are-the-same people. It's these suspended interactions/dynamics that are making me more wistful than the relatively un-hurdled end of college. Though, there was a big change post-graduation: full-time employment.
Work brings me money and a weekly routine, if also emotional labor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor), corporate goals, and a pungent mental image of the "great unwashed masses." I really do enjoy the company of most of my co-workers—indeed, it's the dominant social sphere in my life now. A single vignette: There's David, the English accented co-worker who sits next to me all day. We pass our hours joking with each other, letting off steam in the face a sometimes-indignant public, commiserating over our post-graduate lives (perhaps it's an airy luxury of the 20-something to find his circumstances too small rather than his aspirations too big), and wondering when we'll be replaced by machines and/or genius cross-selling chimps.
That all makes me sound jaded, but I'm not...that much. As I told a friend recently, work life, when not meaningful or impassioned, often feels like a distraction from the greater stories of life that make a man: about 45 hours a week, I'm co-worker Matthew, the diet soda swilling former theology student, mostly affable (if haplessly out of touch with the dictates of suave likability), a little too eager to please, and with a penchant for sharing an opinion, even when (surprise!) not solicited. But those aren't the stories of life one tells when meeting new acquaintances, going on a date, or talking to another ambitious peer. And this distraction life takes energy—energy that I had hoped would go into making someone useful
None of this is permanent for me, however. I am building (slowly and with setbacks) the foundations ($ practicalities) of my grad school launchpad, hoping for liftoff within two years. In the meantime, I hope to eat lots of dinners with friends, read books that shift and clarify my insides, fly and drive around this country some, and take my shirt off more.
Occasionally while driving, listening to my iPod, or just walking alone, I’ll realize that I’m pretty happy. I wouldn't go back given the opportunity, I like lots of the new ideas in my head, fun memories, and just thinking about the bright(er) future I'm pretty sure that I'll demand of myself.
A persistent exhortation I give myself is to befriend Jesus...soon or next season. The highs and lows (well, mostly lows) of God-relation in this errant life of mine have been replaced with even steadiness. Not exactly because God's my rock, but because I've reduced him to a pestering pebble (a beautiful shining pebble that I sometimes hold up to the sky) in my step. Oh, and I hop around on the pebble-free foot a lot. Thankfully for my self-disclosure weary friends, very little in me desires writing or talking about my faith as if I'm the Underground Man in Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground. Unfortunately, for my soul...well that’s damned.
And on that cheer-y note...give me a call: I'm living for my friends these days.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
thoughts on grad school
In a hotel room now. I'm in Newport Beach all week at a training class (Part I of III) starting to learn everything about motor vehicle registration for my new job (since my "promotion") at AAA.
When telling people about my AAA job, I invariably add, "I hope to go to grad school in a year or two..." I'll add "in London" if I'm especially determined to preempt their judgment against lazy/unambitious/unskilled recent college grads.
I've realized sometime early last fall that grad school preparation was just not in the works my senior year at Point Loma. I didn't want to think about it then and the benefits of waiting convinced me easily in favor of taking a break from school after graduation. Having decided, while still studying abroad my junior year, that I'd be spending more time abroad (I was thinking mostly mission work then and more leisure travel), I came to think that grad school in England would be awesome. Perhaps I was encouraged by a good friend doing the same in Nottingham and another prepping for a year at the London School of Economics, but mainly I wanted to revisit/recreate/expand upon the amazing, searching, and joyful year I spent abroad.
My research revealed that a one year MA program in London would easily cost me $45-50,000. Well...I came back from Europe with just enough money to keep my bank accounts open and even owing my brother a couple hundred dollars. And my parents, who dutifully paid $60-70,000 for my undergrad degree, will not be helping me with grad school. Of course, I could have taken out loans and be prepping for London year right now...but loans scare me and I don't care to leave for Europe knowing that Fannie Mae owns me when I return. To me, owing over $10,000 seems so limiting like a straitjacket or two left foot shoes that bend me in a certain direction (job I don't care for or more education for the sake of deferring loans).
I like my freedom. And that's why I decided to work. The Auto Club, where I've worked since May 2006 (excepting the months abroad) has been really good to me. Flexible and understanding when I was in school, they're happy to keep me 40 hrs/week now. Plus, there's the friendships and social/professional capital that are earned and won't be transplanted immediately (or are even guaranteed) with a new job. And the pay isn't bad. I know a couple people making less out of college, some others in the $40,000 and plus range, and couple others who are making more (a lot of money by their own characterization) but I'm not sure what that means.
So now I wait. In this year of reading, learning, and saving, I have to decide if I should go to London in the Fall of 2009 or Fall of 2010. I really have little idea what this year will hold for me (and I'm speaking of the tenor), how I may change, what I'll want when... Will I even stay at the AAA? What if something better and better paying comes along? What's the end goal? Which job am I aiming for?
and Am I delaying my life?
Well, yes...my professional/most exciting dynamic life at least. It's funny, but I think I've found an advantage to being a late-bloomer (and I am talking puberty). I'm going to say that those couple high school years of agonizing "my-friends-are-hairier-than-me" bought me a couple years now.
A co-worker who learned that it was my birthday recently, guessed that I was turning 20. Sounds good to me...when I'm 24, I'll look 22--and that physical immaturity is reason enough for me to excuse the professional/academic one. :-)
When telling people about my AAA job, I invariably add, "I hope to go to grad school in a year or two..." I'll add "in London" if I'm especially determined to preempt their judgment against lazy/unambitious/unskilled recent college grads.
I've realized sometime early last fall that grad school preparation was just not in the works my senior year at Point Loma. I didn't want to think about it then and the benefits of waiting convinced me easily in favor of taking a break from school after graduation. Having decided, while still studying abroad my junior year, that I'd be spending more time abroad (I was thinking mostly mission work then and more leisure travel), I came to think that grad school in England would be awesome. Perhaps I was encouraged by a good friend doing the same in Nottingham and another prepping for a year at the London School of Economics, but mainly I wanted to revisit/recreate/expand upon the amazing, searching, and joyful year I spent abroad.
My research revealed that a one year MA program in London would easily cost me $45-50,000. Well...I came back from Europe with just enough money to keep my bank accounts open and even owing my brother a couple hundred dollars. And my parents, who dutifully paid $60-70,000 for my undergrad degree, will not be helping me with grad school. Of course, I could have taken out loans and be prepping for London year right now...but loans scare me and I don't care to leave for Europe knowing that Fannie Mae owns me when I return. To me, owing over $10,000 seems so limiting like a straitjacket or two left foot shoes that bend me in a certain direction (job I don't care for or more education for the sake of deferring loans).
I like my freedom. And that's why I decided to work. The Auto Club, where I've worked since May 2006 (excepting the months abroad) has been really good to me. Flexible and understanding when I was in school, they're happy to keep me 40 hrs/week now. Plus, there's the friendships and social/professional capital that are earned and won't be transplanted immediately (or are even guaranteed) with a new job. And the pay isn't bad. I know a couple people making less out of college, some others in the $40,000 and plus range, and couple others who are making more (a lot of money by their own characterization) but I'm not sure what that means.
So now I wait. In this year of reading, learning, and saving, I have to decide if I should go to London in the Fall of 2009 or Fall of 2010. I really have little idea what this year will hold for me (and I'm speaking of the tenor), how I may change, what I'll want when... Will I even stay at the AAA? What if something better and better paying comes along? What's the end goal? Which job am I aiming for?
and Am I delaying my life?
Well, yes...my professional/most exciting dynamic life at least. It's funny, but I think I've found an advantage to being a late-bloomer (and I am talking puberty). I'm going to say that those couple high school years of agonizing "my-friends-are-hairier-than-me" bought me a couple years now.
A co-worker who learned that it was my birthday recently, guessed that I was turning 20. Sounds good to me...when I'm 24, I'll look 22--and that physical immaturity is reason enough for me to excuse the professional/academic one. :-)
Sunday, June 1, 2008
I wonder
...can watching all 94 episodes of SATC in the span of a little over a week be considered a life experience?
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