I'm going to read 40 pages a day, everyday. I'm also going to practice and study German for one hour everyday.
Also, I'm going to submit my life to Christ, make friends, make peace with enemies, get a six-pack, straighten out that one tooth, and regrow some hair around my temples.
Well, maybe I'll just try for the first two for now.
So yea, I'm taking German now at a community college. It's been in the back of my mind for a while and it makes sense for a certain life avenue I'd like to pursue...and, ahem, I have some more free time.
So, basically, when God closes a window, he opens a classroom door to room full of pimply late teens.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
broken up
since I've last blogged (well anything original that is), I trained for and ran a marathon. I also started dating someone. that person broke up with me. so hey, life events happened.
life happened--many cherished memories forged. gratitude.
pivoting now. uncertain. friends of 14 months now out of my life and now I'm left to figure out what to make of the near future--I feel like I got pushed into another world, one I don't like as much.
older and ever-there lights shine. europe looms--perhaps january 2012? maybe I'll learn german in the meantime.
psychically, I'm sound as ever, which, as I've thought, is indicated by my not feeling much need to write here--too busy living for time to think about living. I've learned things, things I need to know for the future.
will engage old friends and try to make new ones.
some break up songs:
life happened--many cherished memories forged. gratitude.
pivoting now. uncertain. friends of 14 months now out of my life and now I'm left to figure out what to make of the near future--I feel like I got pushed into another world, one I don't like as much.
older and ever-there lights shine. europe looms--perhaps january 2012? maybe I'll learn german in the meantime.
psychically, I'm sound as ever, which, as I've thought, is indicated by my not feeling much need to write here--too busy living for time to think about living. I've learned things, things I need to know for the future.
will engage old friends and try to make new ones.
some break up songs:
Thursday, March 4, 2010
soul, interrupted
a letter I wrote to a cherished friend some two years ago in the middle of the night:
XXX,
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I think a hug would be the most appropriate transmitter of my gratitude and love from my heart to you. But, ahem, that damn ocean...
I'm touched that you would write such valuable letter to me. And, and, and, I feel like I don't have the right words to write back.
XXX, I'm just low and so wrong and I can't even be a person that interacts truthfully or in goodness. I don't know what to say or write that isn't a selfish, internal, discordant dialog of all the heavy thoughts in my head. I wish I could claim any corner of truth...but all I know is that tomorrow I will get up and go to school, see a friend, drink some soda and come home. And that's all I seem to be sure of!
I could critique my emotionalism, my neurosis, my dependencies and my sin, my all that isn't right and still be the same person as before.
I just want to be saved. But nothing brings that. God doesn't (well at least not when I ask him earnestly and repeatedly--though maybe it just need to be steady and faithfully ratcheted up [goodness knows I haven't tried those]). Paul doesn't. theology won't. professors, wikipedia articles, friends, chapel don't do anything lastingly.
Of course, Christ's death and resurrection save me but I can't believe that with my all. In truth, it pretty much just fits into my systematic theology--I have to believe it because it's a beam in this ideology.
It's like psychology and theology have neutered me of any of those human capacities that make for faith. I don't trust my psyche and certain writings make it so I have no trust in what I am pursuing. Did I start in the middle without a suitable grounding. do I need to go back to the beginning? where's that? (rhetorical questions all)
I still can't negotiate it. It's like there's a theory that eludes me, a resonating idea that will patch my weakened will so I can be like the others who write good words they mean and live lives of God. Again, I'm devoting my energies not to being good but to explaining why I'm not.
It's not vanity...but it is. I don't want people to think that I'm weak because I like it...but I do like it. The encouragements and the denunciations, I take them and don't reform.
XXX, I don't even know what my future looks like but I really can't imagine the fixed one...nor can I imagine the one lived with abandon, striving in the opposite direction--just as my sinning past infects the striving now, I would hope that holiness is just as an infecting contagion were I to strive in the opposite direction!] small hope!
what's step one? do I just go through the church-y motions? fake it 'til I make it? damn my individualistic sensibilities that make "matthew" believe he has a self that he is sovereign over? (I'm trying to imagine a philosophic answer!)
XXX, as one person who thinks and writes to another, I just want to thank you for reading this. The tangible, readable love of my friends is one of the few things that remind me of goodness and light and hope. Dynamic and real love in the faces and words of living people heartens me, warms the heart of the co-opted and masked sleepwalker on the road to hell I usually am. I want to be weak and vulnerable but people don't trust that--and they're mostly right not to do so.
XXX, sorry and thank you. thank you for being a light. These are all thank yous and nothing obligates you to me. I don't expect that and almost don't want to waste your time. There is certainly a different language I could have written to you in but I chose this. It's not easy but that person who writes that way doesn't need fixing (he doesn't stay fixed); this one does.
If there is love that a broken person may muster, I send it to you,
Matthew
hitting send button with hesitation...me tomorrow (separation of self into multiple parts is false, huh?) will not be happy...
XXX,
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I think a hug would be the most appropriate transmitter of my gratitude and love from my heart to you. But, ahem, that damn ocean...
I'm touched that you would write such valuable letter to me. And, and, and, I feel like I don't have the right words to write back.
XXX, I'm just low and so wrong and I can't even be a person that interacts truthfully or in goodness. I don't know what to say or write that isn't a selfish, internal, discordant dialog of all the heavy thoughts in my head. I wish I could claim any corner of truth...but all I know is that tomorrow I will get up and go to school, see a friend, drink some soda and come home. And that's all I seem to be sure of!
I could critique my emotionalism, my neurosis, my dependencies and my sin, my all that isn't right and still be the same person as before.
I just want to be saved. But nothing brings that. God doesn't (well at least not when I ask him earnestly and repeatedly--though maybe it just need to be steady and faithfully ratcheted up [goodness knows I haven't tried those]). Paul doesn't. theology won't. professors, wikipedia articles, friends, chapel don't do anything lastingly.
Of course, Christ's death and resurrection save me but I can't believe that with my all. In truth, it pretty much just fits into my systematic theology--I have to believe it because it's a beam in this ideology.
It's like psychology and theology have neutered me of any of those human capacities that make for faith. I don't trust my psyche and certain writings make it so I have no trust in what I am pursuing. Did I start in the middle without a suitable grounding. do I need to go back to the beginning? where's that? (rhetorical questions all)
I still can't negotiate it. It's like there's a theory that eludes me, a resonating idea that will patch my weakened will so I can be like the others who write good words they mean and live lives of God. Again, I'm devoting my energies not to being good but to explaining why I'm not.
It's not vanity...but it is. I don't want people to think that I'm weak because I like it...but I do like it. The encouragements and the denunciations, I take them and don't reform.
XXX, I don't even know what my future looks like but I really can't imagine the fixed one...nor can I imagine the one lived with abandon, striving in the opposite direction--just as my sinning past infects the striving now, I would hope that holiness is just as an infecting contagion were I to strive in the opposite direction!] small hope!
what's step one? do I just go through the church-y motions? fake it 'til I make it? damn my individualistic sensibilities that make "matthew" believe he has a self that he is sovereign over? (I'm trying to imagine a philosophic answer!)
XXX, as one person who thinks and writes to another, I just want to thank you for reading this. The tangible, readable love of my friends is one of the few things that remind me of goodness and light and hope. Dynamic and real love in the faces and words of living people heartens me, warms the heart of the co-opted and masked sleepwalker on the road to hell I usually am. I want to be weak and vulnerable but people don't trust that--and they're mostly right not to do so.
XXX, sorry and thank you. thank you for being a light. These are all thank yous and nothing obligates you to me. I don't expect that and almost don't want to waste your time. There is certainly a different language I could have written to you in but I chose this. It's not easy but that person who writes that way doesn't need fixing (he doesn't stay fixed); this one does.
If there is love that a broken person may muster, I send it to you,
Matthew
hitting send button with hesitation...me tomorrow (separation of self into multiple parts is false, huh?) will not be happy...
Thursday, January 14, 2010
there's a girl
I think I'm wooing—"think" because I'm rusty and inexperienced in the ways of infatuation and romance. I probably need to woo more though, since this crush seems unrequited—either that or she's worse at this than I am.
It's strange, for the last few years I've been, without incident, comfortably single. I've been lonely at times, also self-doubting a bit, nervously wondering if I was missing out on valuable life experience and letting time and opportunities slip by as I approached my latter 20s. Despite that and in part, to be honest, a neurotic detachment from most people and relationships, I've always had other priorities, namely self-development in the areas of good-personhood, intellect, and faith...oh, and laziness. So this is a diversion of sorts.
I think everything there has to be written about love/romance/attraction has been committed to paper and blog but here are some of my thoughts:
I’m finding the daydreams ridiculously but delightfully irrational.
In my perfect world everyone would speak the truth in love. Well, the whole "truth in love" thing is more an ideological, doctrinal commitment I assent to because it's very Christian. If I were to give my more fallen spin on that, I wish I could be exactly who I am at present and still be loved/even admired by all the right people, even as those right people edge me closer to redemption, or, merely, better personhood—so my daily life is very human with flashes of aiming for the Good or God. Please bear with me as I get to the point: there are limits on this "being yourself"—1) it can be very stupid at work or in school, for example, where one has to submit in order to stay in the good graces of one's institutional superiors or 2) in regards to love with the people closest to oneself, where sometimes love demands yielding and sacrificial compassion rather than demanding one's rights or brandishing saber-like truths. So after some prefatory remarks (see, I think about this little...I think I'll need to a blog about just that some time) let me say that courting is something for which I am pretty unprepared for. It's ironic to me that as one endeavors toward the most intimate of interpersonal relationships, one has to conceal and qualify so much. It's like chess (I imagine, since I haven't a clue how to play) with gambits and calculated maneuvers. This is trying for me because, despite my bachelorhood, I put a lot stock in eventual coupling and marriage—of all the meaning found there, of finding yourself in another. So, what a strange start to that.
If that happens now, which is looking doubtful.
It's strange, for the last few years I've been, without incident, comfortably single. I've been lonely at times, also self-doubting a bit, nervously wondering if I was missing out on valuable life experience and letting time and opportunities slip by as I approached my latter 20s. Despite that and in part, to be honest, a neurotic detachment from most people and relationships, I've always had other priorities, namely self-development in the areas of good-personhood, intellect, and faith...oh, and laziness. So this is a diversion of sorts.
I think everything there has to be written about love/romance/attraction has been committed to paper and blog but here are some of my thoughts:
I’m finding the daydreams ridiculously but delightfully irrational.
In my perfect world everyone would speak the truth in love. Well, the whole "truth in love" thing is more an ideological, doctrinal commitment I assent to because it's very Christian. If I were to give my more fallen spin on that, I wish I could be exactly who I am at present and still be loved/even admired by all the right people, even as those right people edge me closer to redemption, or, merely, better personhood—so my daily life is very human with flashes of aiming for the Good or God. Please bear with me as I get to the point: there are limits on this "being yourself"—1) it can be very stupid at work or in school, for example, where one has to submit in order to stay in the good graces of one's institutional superiors or 2) in regards to love with the people closest to oneself, where sometimes love demands yielding and sacrificial compassion rather than demanding one's rights or brandishing saber-like truths. So after some prefatory remarks (see, I think about this little...I think I'll need to a blog about just that some time) let me say that courting is something for which I am pretty unprepared for. It's ironic to me that as one endeavors toward the most intimate of interpersonal relationships, one has to conceal and qualify so much. It's like chess (I imagine, since I haven't a clue how to play) with gambits and calculated maneuvers. This is trying for me because, despite my bachelorhood, I put a lot stock in eventual coupling and marriage—of all the meaning found there, of finding yourself in another. So, what a strange start to that.
If that happens now, which is looking doubtful.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
my life should’ve been a music video
and me, the star—not for the fame, but for the sublime self-expression.
from the visuals, archetypal symbols that emanate from primal, word-elusive truths, to the poetry of lyrics more resonating than the most profound of prose, to the music that carries and lifts like pythian vapors, inspiring the imagination toward ultimate, eternal meaning.
ever the theology major, I'm in search of redemptive transcendence and nothing like music and it's media approximate the aesthetic religious quest—how ascending crecendos and climaxes imitate (if they don't match) the liberative transcendence sought in religious reflection.
"music is God's gift to man, the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to heaven." - walter landor
from the visuals, archetypal symbols that emanate from primal, word-elusive truths, to the poetry of lyrics more resonating than the most profound of prose, to the music that carries and lifts like pythian vapors, inspiring the imagination toward ultimate, eternal meaning.
ever the theology major, I'm in search of redemptive transcendence and nothing like music and it's media approximate the aesthetic religious quest—how ascending crecendos and climaxes imitate (if they don't match) the liberative transcendence sought in religious reflection.
"music is God's gift to man, the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to heaven." - walter landor
Saturday, September 12, 2009
play it again, Jesus
there’s a feeling that I’ll never get this right
and a feeling that redemption’s not for me
as the Word says, as the teachers say
as I believe
caught up in the thrill and the tang
in the adventure and the mundane
of all the things that damn a man
I remember what it feels like to be strong
and I want to play it again
play it again, Jesus
and a feeling that redemption’s not for me
as the Word says, as the teachers say
as I believe
caught up in the thrill and the tang
in the adventure and the mundane
of all the things that damn a man
I remember what it feels like to be strong
and I want to play it again
play it again, Jesus
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