'Open Rebellion' is such a dramatic phrase.

right in my own eyes

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." (Proverbs 16:25)

i think i have forgotten to battle the trend. life is hard and mine naturally flows in certain directions. i have forgotten how to swim upstream or even that it is necessary. i think i have assumed in the last few years that by surrounding myself by appropriate influences i could change the direction of the stream. this is the illusion. i am living in the assumption that by being well placed there is no longer a need to fight when in reality the attacks probably become more insidious and of greater strength. there is still so much within myself and in the society that surrounds me that naturally flows away from God.

in many cases my best nature has been turned to the wrong problem so that i hardly perceive the current. i find myself operating in the strengths God has given me to pursue important questions in my life or to accomplish worthy activities but at the wrong time or in my own power. i struggle to sift through the realities of my life without becoming bogged down on things God would have me cast before Him because they are too big for me. these things i struggle with and spend my time pushing seem so important so "right," but on a daily basis they have dragged me under, roughed me up, and deposited me further and further from God's will for my life.

such a critical piece to the deception i have been living under is the idea that clearly being in strong community and striving to live for God must have some effect. as i stated before i have assumed that the effect was to reverse the stream so that i could drift towards God's will. perhaps a more realistic picture is that through the power of God and the support of a loving community I gain swim fins or something in a sleek new outboard motor. i still need to steer myself in the right direction every day or pull myself into the boat and stay focused on pointing the rudder towards my destination. i have never considered metaphor a strong point, but the underlying principle is that my effort is still required. drifting is not an option.

i'm not exactly sure how to stop drifting but knowing is certainly half the battle...right?

end of an era?

hopefully not.

i was thinking about the meaning of television today. so i looked it up. 'tele' is Greek for 'far' and 'vision' comes from the Latin 'visio' which not surprisingly means something like sight. so the initial idea behind television was that it would allow us to see beyond our immediate surroundings. clearly it works, but it has the unfortunate side-effect of pinning us to those surroundings. we as a society feel no need to venture beyond our seperate homes because we can see so much from the comfort of our favorite chairs.

ah for simpler days.

i can't see you

children shut their eyes when they don't want to be seen ignorantly assuming that it works both ways.

i think i operate in a similar theory on God. i walk around with my eyes closed assuming that He is absent from my life. i am obviously right here so where is God?

just because i am ignoring Him or because my eyes are clamped shut for whatever reason doesn't mean He isn't there.

deathly quiet

rage is easily vented. depression is overwhelming and therefore takes care of itself as painful as it may be. emptiness is bizarre and quietly horrifying.

where does this gnawing stillness come from and what am i to do with it?

what dark corner has my personality or true self crawled into and who is this shell that i watch dully walk through my life for hours or days at a time?

those are important questions.

perhaps we can entice someone from the murkiness within to answer them.

perhaps not tonight.

what does it mean to achieve...

it should be pointed out in case anyone reads this post that i am in a 'certain' mental state that would be difficult if not impossible to clarify further. in the following paragraphs i have pushed out, in quasi-stream-of-consciousness, a thought process which i believe to be true but do not believe to be the whole story.

i cannot seem to come to terms with the idea of achievement or success. certainly for most of life's activities there are relatively straightforward metrics for success. my difficulty comes in determining the interplay between the various activities and their varous metrics.

a part of me lends itself to the idea that we are all in the process of performing some overwhelmingly complex optimization problem. there are certiainly absolute comparisons to be made. someone is in fact the best tennis player in the world. someone has written the best selling novel of the year. someone will win the nobel peace prize. we cannot judge ourselves against the entire world in every area and thereby determine whether our lives have been successful. i have never written a novel and have no desire to do so. as a consequence i did not write the best selling novel of the year. i don't think this makes me a failure.

the complexity of this problem comes from the idea that i need to somehow optimize the outcomes of my life's endeavors subject to the constraints of my personality, innate characteristics, desires. etc. etc. i am not particulary tall, strong, fast, or interested in basketball. this reasonably excludes me from participation in the NBA and an endorsement deal with the shoe company of my choice. however, if i am capable of contributing to the neighborhood game and helping my team win than probably i would be considered more successful in life than if i cannot do this (at least in the cold calculating sense with which i am currently approaching this topic i would get a couple of succes points added to my tally). however, as previously stated i am not particulary gifted with either innate athleticism or the driving motivation to play basketball. perhaps i can earn more success points with some other activity.

this is how we live our lives. i am not good enough at basketball to pursue it in such a way to produce 'added value' to my resume or my selfworth. my time is therefore better spent somewhere else...but where? of the vast array of potential activities we are left to choose the few that will (under the obvious contraint of who we are) me most likely to produce 'success'.

i don't even think i know what that word means anymore. in every realm of endeavor there exists the idea that even someone who 'fails' actually succeeds if they pursued the endeavor at hand with certain traits. this concept seems natural enough to spiritual or religious discussion but it is fully exhibited in completely secular circles. from sports to business, tenacious, well-meaning, gracious failures are touted as somehow not quite losers. they have lost certainly, but they can't be losers. to the victor goes the spoils, but if you tried hard and didn't maul anyone in the effort, maybe you deserve a tip of the hat and a couple of fine-sounding sentences of praise despite the fact that you lost.

failures in the absolute sense for a particulary contest (and everything can at least be cast in the light guise of a contest) are exulted because they have somehow put together enough success points in ancillary activities to merit some notice. they have adequately solved the constrained optimization problem set before them. their need to succeed in the absolute sense has been normalized by their capacity to succeed and in this new metric failure with style is counted as success. actual success would of course be a bonus, but it is not necessary if the probability of actual success is low.

this analysis would stand, i think, for a single acitivity (ie. a project at work, an athletic tournament, hosting an event for a person you value). the problem becomes even more complex when we try to consider the reality that most (if not all) people attempt multiple tasks in life and often more than one at a time. our society seems to overlook extreme failure in one area if extreme success exists in another. clearly it would be too much to ask an individual be both a rock star and a good father or mother, husband or wife, etc. all at once. horrible tragedy in the interpersonal arena is acceptable if the latest albumn in up to snuff. few actually achieve this level of 'extreme success'. in this case the ability to juggle an array of tasks without allowing any one to fall too far becomes essential.

i feel the need to summarize. juggle well. realize that when you fail it is probably because you weren't good enough to succeed but that your lack of capacity also nullifies your failure. essentially, if you go about it the right way, a string of mostly failures is ok (this is what most of us call life). we can't all be winners because there are a lot more people than actual contests.

cynical much?

why are there these days when i simply assume that things are not going to get any better than they are today? (which for those of us keeping score was something akin to a bad funk and a half coupled with dumbly poor discipline.)

walking home late at night rehearsing all of the life lesssons that i have learned but ignored throughout the course of the day left me frustrated to the point of tears. this is not the life i signed up for and certainly not the one that i am 'called' to live. even now i sit up at half past the hour of 2 AM knowing that i should have been asleep hours ago but pondering my navel instead of preparing for all that 'needs' to be done tomorrow by getting adequate rest. i have now all but ensured a late start and the consequent spiral which inevitably ensues after such an abbreviated work day.

it's what they refer to in your finer establishment as 'crap leading to more crap,' and here i am without a shovel. sometimes i think that this wonderful gift of choice that humanity has been given is one of the more elaborate inside jokes going in the universe. clearly we don't know what to do with it, and it causes us nothing but pain and strife.

there is a hopeful statement floating around in the recesses of my head that would make an ironic end to this post, but i can't seem to coax it from the murky depth at which it resides. suffice it to say that it's down there, and despite myself i know it's down there. i just don't know what to do about it.