missed

I want to go skydiving
I want to start painting
I want to go camping... a lot
I want to help people
I want to write music again
I want to write poetry again
I want to start a coffee shop
I want to make an ambient music project
I want to disciple someone someday
I want to sleep in
I want to run for fun
I want to run away but come back and then do it again
I want to capture everything in a picture
I want to live in a tree
I want to go to europe
I want to go an entire year barefoot
I want to write a story
I want to have an adventure
I want to bungie jump
I want to find who I will spend the rest of my life with
I want to talk to God
I want to Hear God
I want to drink some coffee
I want to go on a canou trip
I want to have a small get away cabin
I want to be able to flirt with my wife
I want to discover something new
I want to stay out all night
I want to enjoy a beer with someone
I want to be interviewed
I want to live in a flat like in the movies with the big lift elevators
I want a nice motorcycle
I want someone to be able to guess what I am thinking
I want someone to want to do all of these things
I want a girl in a short skirt and a long jacket
I want a wife who is spontaneous
I want to record a CD

I want a lot of things... I hope that they happen... God willing that they happen... of course that's like saying I want God to revolve around me. and I know he revolves around himself and everyone. not just me.

I think it's insane how our minds work. we see everything from our own perspective. I kind of look at myself as David Spritz from "The Weatherman". Everything is happening around him that has to do with other people and yet all he can keep coming back to is himself. his mind is always on himself. he gives an eulogy at his fathers funeral and it gets interupted, and all he can think about is how he got interupted. I think that's me. It's hard for me to imagine anything outside my own bubble. and whenever I ask someone a personal question to see what they think, all I get is a confused "why?" it's as if I can't get anyone to tell me what's on their minds. but I guess that also is my problem. I don't tell anyone what's on mine. instead I put them on a blog that no one reads. i like it that way though. It feels an aweful lot like I am venting. or sharing something with someone. even though like I said, no one is reading this. of course now waying that the feeling of venting is now slightly diminished.

It's like I can't get out of my bubble. even on this hill in cincinnati, I am still above all the things going on below. I am still isolated. people down the street are getting beat, and murdered and I am isolated from it all. I think sometimes God creates people like me for the intent of satisfying a satirical sense of humor. I know it satisfies mine. I see everything from a satirical point of view, so I guess it works either way.

even so... I hope someone does read this.

... I need a shower.

Duality

There are two sides of me

There are different people inside of this shell.

One who wants to pray, and one who dares curse.

One wants to embrace beauty, one only seeks to destroy.

One who desires to romance, the other who urges calamity.

There are two people within who wrestle in my soul

One who wants to love and the other wants to kill.

The one that brings warmth, the other, is ice cold.

One who seeks to win, the other who will cheat.

There are two dogs in inside me and both of them I feed.

The one who looks for justice the other filled with greed.

The dog who wants to guard and the other who will attack.

The dog who wants to lick and the other who wants to bite.

There are two men inside me who battle for control.

One who makes repair the other who destroys.

The one who finds clarity the other makes a haze.

The one who wants to hold the other wants to throw away.

There’s a tipping scale inside me on the left and on the right.

One side measures bravery the other measures might.

One side holds the truth the other holds the lie.

One plate makes a counter to the other’s mess of minds.

There are two within me and I only want one….

Church?

I guess this is a topic that's been going around in my head for the last few weeks because I just haven't found a church to go to yet so I haven't attended one in about three weeks.

see I have been having this feeling like God is displeased with me because I haven't been to a church. and I know that's a ridiculous feeling to have but... it's still there.

I guess God has made somewhat of a confirmation of the ludicracy of that thought. It's just funny to me. I feel like church is such a necessary part of being a christian, which is true, but I also feel like we have a misconception of what church is. see to me church feels like going to a building as a ritual part of sunday. but what if we did church in a park? or under a bridge? (check out http://www.churchunderthebridge.org/) or in a dorm room?

I can't help but think that the feeling that we are out of God's favor because we didn't go to "church" the building, is a result of the church's exsclusivity environment. I would much rather agree with the statement that we are out of God's favor because we aren't BEING the church.
would you agree?
I guess this revelation comes from witnessing a couple of friends who DID go to church this morning as opposed to my NOT going to church this morning, getting into a heated discussion over the pettiest of subjects.

toilet paper.

one of my friends (well call him fred) made a smart aleck comment about my other friend's (we'll call him george) fascination with the fact that he found a key to unlock the toilet paper dispensers in the bathroom. I started to laugh at the whole thing until I saw how seriously they were both taking it. george locked us BOTH out of his room (funny because I wasn't even a part of the argument) and when he finally let us back in fred started taking all of the stuff he let george borrow out of george's room and putting it back into his.
both brothers in Jesus and yet both fighting over the most insipid of subjects. how come they were so okay going to church today but when they got home they started fighting? over something as ridiculous as toilet paper might I add!

are you starting to get my point?

church isn't a place or a point in time.

it isn't a part of our lives...

it is our lives!
- giving
- loving
- eating together
- praying for each other

if we look at the church in acts 2: 42-47 the text says that they did all these things and more. it says that:

"all who believed were together and had all things in common.

and they were all selling their possessions and belongings

and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need."

it later says that they were praising with generous hearts (kinda makes you wonder if there's more to the word generous than we think... or praising...) and then in verse 47 "having favor with all people"

wow... there's a thought. a lot of the modern christian thought is that we have to be out there in people's faces to prove a point. to be branded a radical for Christ. and that if we are ridiculed or made fun of that we are being persecuted and Jesus likes it when we are persecuted. not to say that persecution doesnt' come with the territory. but sometimes I think we have no idea what it means to be persecuted. to be called a name.... that's a small thing in comparison with paul's chains.

no here it says they found favor with ALL people... wow. that's a task that's hard to accomplish. maybe the writer was exagerrating a bit but the point was that the church was a widely accepted organization. it was branded as friendly and welcoming (see the last part of verse 47)

what has happened to it?

what has happened to the church that God intended?

The Church that Jesus started?

and how can we contribute to it's growth?

to it's re-establishment.

not of a power over but of a power of another realm?

the realm of heaven?

Crave

so I just started reading soul cravings by Erwin McManus. I mean literally. like 5 minutes ago I saw it on a bookshelf, went to the cafe at Barnes and Noble, ordered (in fact demanded) an iced mocha, and purchased my book using a Barnes and noble membership card. I sat down and read the intro and it touched on the topic (this is the second page of the intro mind you) of bitterness. which is funny because it has been an unconfronted issue with me as of late. but as I read I felt as if I was sitting in Erwin McManus's office and was being counseled by him. he said," Bitterness is like a cancer that makes you blind. I had allowed my hurt (this is a recollection of his personal experiences) to make my soul toxic. From my end, I was sure that I was becoming a realist."

stop.

First I must tell you that five minutes before the now seven minutes after I purchased this book (that would be twelve minutes for all of you non-counters out there like me) I had stopped in the middle of the aisle of the christian book section and prayed "God I know there is a huge conflict in my soul right now. please help me find a book or come across something that will address whatever it is." I had prayed to God to help me find a book that would help me with my lack of compassion and forgiveness. so the fact that you are reading this right now means that you have read about an answered prayer of mine 12 minutes ago. God works fast when he wants to. second, the part where he says "I was sure I was becoming a realist.", directly applies to me because that's what I have been telling myself until this point in time.

he continues, "In fact I was desensitizing myself. why risk being hurt anymore? I didn't realize I was becoming blind to love. I couldn't see the people around me who really cared." this is another thing that is directly relatable to me. I have become scared of being hurt. I hate when people who are closest to you do something that is deeply wounding and crippling to the soul, and then have no idea that damage has been done and so do not apologize or acknowledge the problem. so I have lately become reclusive. sure I go out in public. I am not afraid of people, in fact I am particularly outgoing. I just am no longer willing to become friendly in a personal way, but completely capable of being social.

you know

always happy

loud but not obnoxious

friendly to everyone

but deep inside there are things that you want to say to everyone that you wont say particularly that you don't believe that they care

and because of that neither do you

It might not be true but at the moment you are blinded by your cynicism and emotionally it is empowering to be angry at this moment in time. so you keep doing it.

later on in about the 3rd section or the book McManus goes through the evolutionary cycle of bitterness. he says," bitterness turned to skepticism, which turned to cynicism, which turned into an emptiness of the soul. bitterness is the enemy of love unconditionally."

which is precisely where I have been for almost four months I would say.

toward the end of the 3rd section Erwin says something that really convicts me right now."when love does not come to you, it breaks your heart, but when you do not give love away it hardens your heart. one thing stranger than our need to be loved is our need to love." the rest of the chapter it's almost as if he is leading you (or at least where he lead me) toward the conclusion that we were created as vessels of love. but not just so that we may receive love, but so that we may give love out. we were made to love. and love. and keep on loving. and it hurts me because I really have a hard time loving people. I don't want to say that I can't love. because I think that that is an excuse.

so I wont say that.

I don't want to love anyone unless they give me something back. that's called conditional love. and it's not the way of jesus.
while we were created to give and to receive love and it is natural to wish for love in return, we were created to desire love back, it is not always our natural response to want to love first. or to show love back.
"the human heart
was not created
to be a container
for hate."
or maybe the most profoundly put statement in chapter five,

"we live in a time where the most terrifying bomb is not a nuclear one, but a human one. this is where humanity has come. this is how far we have evolved. we strap bombs around our chests, lure innocents into our presence, and then consider ourselves heros as we destroy everything around us. If this were not bad enough, for some it has become a proof of their spirituality."

think about this in figurative terms. we have become like emotional bombs. waiting to explode. and in some cases it reflects on us so much that some of us actually strap literal bombs to us and proclaim destruction in the name of a god. there are millions of people with these kinds of emotional explosions. and they effect everyone around them. they are an emotional downer and a physical embodiment of the opposite of what we were created for.

I wonder if I am an emotional bomb.

I mean how many times do we go around spreading our negative thoughts?

opinions

attitudes

or even habits?

it's something for both of us to think about...