Thanks!

Here's the tally thus far:

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

The good thing though about getting the "comment" done is that I'll then be free the following weekend to go Austin that for a friend's wedding (and get to see another dear friend as well which will be nice). It'll be a quick trip but even a few days in Austin is a joyful thing.

The other major thing in my life is that I'm in the midst of a personal decluttering/organization/health/spiritual awakening campaign. In short, this summer I want to start being the person that I've always wanted to be... a man who knows who he is and lives out of that awareness in an intentional and deliberate fashion. I've tried to be this person for a long time but my own personal disorder (messy house, messy car, fast food eating, etc.) has kept me from this for too long.

So far it has gone well. My car is clean (my friends are shocked by this to say the least) and my return to Atkins has gone well, but there is still a lot that I need to do. One big change for me is that I'm no longer watching TV before I go to bed. This was a bad habit I had got myself into (I live in very small studio apartment, with my front door and window about 25 feet from a busy highway, so I used to have the TV on almost all of the time to drown out the road noise.) but the change has been good. I sleep much better without the TV yapping (the big trucks driving by are loud but at least they don't invade my subconscious the way having the TV on when sleeping does) and even falling asleep is not as hard as I thought it would be. Now I just read until I get sleepy.

I'm still not brave enough yet to get rid of my TV (silence might be good but it is scary too) altogether but I'm beginning to think I ought to.

Reading wise I'm still plugging away at Emerson: The Mind on Fire. The bio is very interesting but also very dense. Emerson is definitely an interesting person. I dig a lot of his ideas but he makes me sad too. He seems so close to connecting with God but never does. I don't understand that.

I've also been doing some reading on Asian philosophies, especially Taoism and Zen Buddhism. Both are intrigueing and have some interesting commonalities with Christianity (but of course so major differences as well).

The books I've been reading are the Tao Te Ching, The Idiot's Guide to Zen Living by McClain & Adamson, Thoughts on the East by Thomas Merton (Merton, a Trappist Monk and author, has been one of my best teachers in the the discipline of Christian contemplation and meditation), and Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh (a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and friend of Thomas Merton). --- After I finish these books, I also want to read Zen for Christians which from the reviews of it on Amazon sounds worthwhile.

But, despite my interest in Eastern thought right now I can't get past the non-theistic viewpoint of traditional Buddhism. My own experiences seem to say so clearly that there is a God. Sometimes God seems close, sometimes he seems far away, sometimes I wonder if he's asleep and ignoring this world altogether, but even in those moments of doubt, I never doubt that He exists.

What I do like about Buddhist practice (but Zen particularly) though is the idea of mindful living and making time for stillness. It really fits in well with the changes I'm trying to make in my life right now.

So, I had it towed to a local mechanic shop (A&C Garage. They checked it out and said that the fuel pump was bad and it would be $744! That seemed mighty jacked up to me so I paid them $25 for the labor to check it out and had it towed by AAA to my local repair shop here in Newcastle. Guess what... that fuel pump is far cheaper (still mighty expensive though) and total cost with install will be $550-650. (hmm... makes me think A&C was playing "let's rip off the tourist")

Anyway though, this is where things get sucky... I'm beginning to think that I will have to cancel my Cornerstone trip. With this extra car repair expense, I'm finding it harder and harder to justify the cost of C-stone (my guess is that the combined cost for the trip including travel expenses both en-route and at C-stone & what I'll lose from not working that week would be $750-1000).

I guess it was inevitable that I would miss a year of C-stone someday but it is still sad. It has been such a good part of my life these last 4 years, and I was super-looking forward to this year since it was the 20th anniversary of the festival and it would be Five Iron Frenzy's last time to play there.

Sad times indeed but that's the way it goes sometimes. The good news is though that FIF will be coming through this part of the country (dates in Dallas, OKC and Tulsa) in October so maybe I can go to some of those shows (what would super-cool is if my friend K would come up for the Dallas show), but missing Miranda Stone and Madison Greene (sigh) woe is me.

But you know life is still good even when it sucks. Last night when riding in the tow truck from Enid to Newcastle I saw such incredible beauty. The wheat fields were all ripe with expectancy, golden (the fields yet to be cut) and coppery (the color after the field is cut), stretching out to the horizon with the sun shining through the clouds and the dark blueness of the stormy sky setting it all off --- it is amazing even just two hours away how much the landscape is different. Northern Oklahoma is almost like Kansas, the topography is more gentle (while it is praire in the southwest as well, it is more stark in the south, with more hills).

In a way, I do think a change is happening inside of me. I finding more peace than I've known in awhile and some good changes are happening. I wasn't sure until now if the changes were real but the fact that I can live with missing C-stone tells me that the changes are real. (a month ago not going to C-stone would have made me semi-suicidal)

OK, enough confession for now. Back to work...

P.S. I'm still planning my Oklahoma road trip (a week of camping with a couple of friends later in the summer) though. That will be much cheaper than C-stone and should be a blast.

Everything else is good too. I feel more at peace about preaching (not to say that I don't have serious moments of doubt, but right now I do feel good about what I'm doing) and I also feel inspired to make solid changes in my life --- to live a neater more orderly life (I have been very neglectful in housekeeping this last year) and to get rid of much of the junk that is weighting me down, and also to get back in shape. I started back on Atkins today and I hope to start biking this week too.

I know this, if I want my life to be better I have to take positve actions. It's time.

On another note, the book is progressing well. I'm now on the third draft of the first four chapters or so but will also probably start hammering out the first draft of the next few chapters now as well. It is satisfying work and I think I would like to keep doing this, maybe as career or at least as a joyful diversion --- which brings me to another topic, law.

I'm having serious doubts as to whether I want to be a lawyer or not. I just don't know if I believe in the system in anymore, especially the criminal law. It is so incredibly unjust that I don't know how comfortable I would feel in being an "officer of the court." Then again, as the old saying goes maybe the best place to throw rocks at the system is from the inside? (I would appreciate y'all's comments on this question.)

I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves. - Harriet Tubman


Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


There is no game if you refuse to play - Rachel Jackson

The current book in progress I suppose is a manifesto of sorts, a revoluntionary statement, a wandering procession of a confused person's mind. It is really something that is still evolving. Maybe it would be easier to just post what I have for preface right now...

Preface


This book is my attempt to regain my sanity. Over the last few years… no really my whole life, I have been trying to figure out what is truth, what is real, what is genuine. At times I smugly rested on what others told me was truth but in more recent years I’ve been questioning everything, to the extent that I feel lost. So many of the things I thought were absolutely solid truth seem so fluid now. Everything seems so vague… especially matters of faith.


The reality is that I am unsatisfied. I can numb this longing in a lot of different ways, but in the end when I can’t sleep at night, and my whole life seems to worthless and pathetic, I must return to the old questions.


This book is way of trying to articulate what seems real. I am still very confused but I hope maybe by putting these feelings and thoughts into solid words, that maybe I can find my way out of this abyss of emptiness and into a life of meaning. I hope in some way that my reader might find comfort and guidance in my twisted wanderings as well because I believe my dissatisfaction is not a unique experience.

I haven't decided yet what direction this book will go. So far I've talked about what it means to discover one's true identity, the critical imperitive of self-identity and that identity's significance in the community, the fact that love is meaningless unless it is specifc (generic bland "universal" love means nothing if it isn't specifc and unique to the one who is the object of the love)... I hope to move on to talk about the power of friendship, the power of autonomy, the difference between being interconnected as contrasted to being dependent on a sick and twisted societal system, and most of all I want to talk about God, about how it seems God works and doesn't work, and how God gives humankind dignity and worth.

Anyway, that's where my writing is focused on right now. I'll probably still blog some but it won't be my primary writing outlet.

Also, I do want to say that life is good. I go through phases of euphoria and depression but all in all things are good. I am in love which in general is both a misreable and joyful state of being. (but even in the misrey I like being in love more than not being in love --- if nothing else it makes me feel more alive)

Beyond writing and being in love, I work a lot and I daydream about summer traveling. Cornerstone will be good (assuming if I can figure out a way to get there) and the planned weekend Oklahoma roadtrips should be a blast.

Well that's enough to say for now. I've typed out plenty of verbal diareha for now as my friend K would say. She's probably right but sometimes it feels good to just say what's on the brain even if it makes no sense.

Hasta que la próxima vez yo escriba

One more thing... Morpheus. He is a prime example of a true man of faith. I totally dig him, even more so than Neo. Neo seems to almost stumble into his divinity, to be pretty clueless half the time. Morpheus though. . .. he is the real oracle. He is the real prophet.

So, here are my first pictures from the new camera... (click on the picture to view a larger version of it)

These pictures were taken of a field behind all of the sprawl on the Noble Parkway in Norman (right behind the Borders bookstore). I call it my "Prayer Field" because I've had lots of good times of praying while walking around there. It is such a pretty oasis of tranquility and nature in the midst of the big-box stores and asphault parking lots. It probably doesn't look like much to those passing by, but I think it is a treasure. There's a little pond on one side of it, several old trees (which I bet were planted by early settlers), and lots and lots of native grasses and wildflowers. I counted tonight at least 6 different kinds of flowers, but the most showy display was by the bright red visual explosive power of the Indian Paintbrush (shown in the first picture). There's also lots of animals, bugs, skunks (I only know of their presence by the sad sight of one dead that I saw tonight), and lots and lots of birds.

I hope and pray they don't kill the field. It would be crime if they did.

Maybe they will keep it, but if they don't the field will always be there in these pictures and as ghost on the landscape, waiting the day when mankind no longer destroys beauty so mindlessly.

posted by JMB at 12:36 AM | link |

Reading about this ministry is such a beautiful thing. So few Christians follow Jesus's example of ministry to the outcasts (even the prostitutes) so literally. If only we all did this.