A Vague Statement of Mental Affairs.

where I am

So I am here. So is fall. So goes life. Thanksgiving draws near with a looming sense of anxiety caused by pre-break exams, papers, and performances. I am overwhelmed by a desire to create and a sense of lacking the vocabulary to do such. Lyrics tease my mind and melodies my ears as I give chase, in order that I might wrest them from the my imagination and into tangible substance palatable to the senses. Maybe with any luck I might accomplish something someday. Tonight, is not that day. 25 hours left to the end of school. I could finish early, but am attempting an extra few hours to minor in humanities, this means philosophy for the next three semesters. I have some recording projects coming up. One for Mark Brant here at school and another with some prolific songwriter people I know. Look for updates on this in the next year. Lastly, as a summation of my interaction with fall thus far, please enjoy the following. (www.flickr.com/photos/musicelevationaddict)

Brothers

So, brace yourself, I've changed.

I've been doing some thinking. About Brotherhood.

An Indonesian pastor named Somat was arrested along with the missionary he worked with for forcing christianity on the people. They were both innocent as they force no one to faith. Their sentence was for two years. The missionary, who was American and whose son goes to school here (hence my knowledge of the situation) was released several months ago. Somat has yet to be released. Since the missionary's release, prayer support and awareness has decreased. Why?

The book of Hebrews says we should remember those in prison (3:13 I think). But what got me really thinking about it was the fact that this Guy is my brother in Christ. I mean, he is out there Serving the Lord, and he was imprisoned for it. What would I do if that happened to my actual brother? Or to someone else I know? If this guy is my brother, I should support him like a brother should. If this guy is my brother, how can I look away? I wouldn't do that to my brother Josh. So I've been praying for him, and a group of us here are sending him some letters to encourage him and just try to build him up as he struggles with hope and staying strong when he is so alone in prison. We also shaved our heads. When they were transferred to a third prison they made shaved thier beards and hair. The missionary's son Matthew Rey who goes to school here, shaved his head with a group of guys he was working with and sent them a picture. When Somat saw the picture he was moved to tears that they did that for them. Its a simple act, but an powerful, encouraging one. So we shaved our heads for Somat. So he would know that he is not forgotten or alone. So he knows that people are still praying for him. So he knows his brothers are standing with him through this.

Keep Somat and his family (wife and two kids) in your prayers they are much needed.

So thats the story here. I think it looks pretty good actually :)

Psalm 94:18

I cry out (to you)
'my foot slips'
grip lost on things held near
my mind on my heart
the lines in my ears
I hear the pain feel the pain
(I think I love the pain)
feel the drain all the same hurt
but different names
calling you called my name
but falling its lost
the cost of living in the world
giving too much to people
too lost to save me
but they gave me
the drugs to numb the pain
pop culture like the rain
falls but is lost
in the game
we play
running away
fill the holes
to save our souls
it falls apart
glass breaking from a shot in the dark
my foot slips
Your Love held me up

Boxes and the Razors edge

I feel like all we have in Christianity today is boxes. John Eldredge says that Christian men have been put in a box. He claims that in todays churches man is being forced into being efeminite weaklings who have lost the warrior nature that is a part of how God created us. Box to Box. Sure that sounds great, the church has boxed in what a Christian man should be; But I find fault in that box and propose that we take a nice big step to what men are actually supposed to be. Hurry, Hurry, step into the 'out of the box' box to avoid being trapped by the other box.....?.....

We seem to be addicted to closing everything in around us, we can't get enough of it. Take spirituality, we have it broken down into six steps. A nice tidy box to set our lives in order. but what if our lives aren't intended for perfect order? What if our lives aren't supposed to be balanced? What if God desires us to Know him, but not to figure him out completely? It seems to me that we kill a relationship if we assume we have the other person totally figured out. Maybe the unknown is there to be unknown. Things we may never know. God has revealed himself to us, this light shines in an otherwise dark room revealing the center of the room where we sit like little children fidgeting nervously and all too acutely aware of the dark in the corners. Unsatisfied with what he has shown us, we want to know what is in those dark corners. But he hasn't revealed that to us. Does that mean that we should than reason out what is most likely to be in those corners in order to satisfy our fears and curiousities? Maybe instead we should try to take the harder road of trusting God in what he has revealed to us. This is the Razor's edge.

It is a narrow road. A hard road to balance in that trust zone. Relying on what hes given us instead of what we think we've figured out. How much of the church's arguments and divisions are over what the bible says, and how many divisions are based on doctrine and theological difference? The difference I mean is that Doctrine and Theology is our systematic categorization of what is revealed and its possible ramifications for how everything works. Essentially shining our reason like flashlights into the corners of the dark room. So we are divided over things such as predestination or legalistic issues of clothing and dance, when the bigger issues, the important ones that lay at the tip of the razor's edge are all but ignored. Left to the pile of issues that are 'a given'. Instead we fight and sacrifice our church to divisions over issues that we invented to fill the gaps that God didn't reveal. When instead we should be clinging for dear life to live out the truth he have been given.

School Days

So here I am, Back at school. Ramen, coffee. Lots of Coffee. How fare I? Well. Not great but well. There are things that keep me sane. Longboarding, friends. The Grace of God. Its hard being back at school. Things have changed, or they seemed to have changed. Sometimes the revolution of change we face is actually only a slight shift in our perception of the world.
Some things are bad at this school now. Profs are tired. some are scared for thier job. There is some kind of huge disconnect in the whole administration here, but its hard to nail what it is. I don't know. Im just a student. What do I know. Maybe too much for what I need to be focusing on.

Something else thats hard to nail down I've been studying a lot of what worship is. I feel like there is some point we are missing. We are all saying the same thing over and over again, but were missing something. I don't know what it is. More on this later.

I've been thinking about moonlight. I was sitting one night out at the point and it cut through the dark lighting the ground with a pale glow. It didn't show everything in perfect detail, but was simply one of those full moons that showed you all you needed to know. Turning around, I saw a chain of lamps each casting a golden yellow glow for a five foot radius. At the edge of each glowing circle there was darkness. A deeper hue of dark, more unclear than that of the shadows cast by moonlit obstructions. Random thoughts cast out into the dorm room of a tired stressed student. More thoughts on this later.

Garden

She has her friends

She has her family

Her rooms A mess

But she doesn't care anymore

There is a garden where she dreams she will lay down and forget the days where she had a fine white Horse and a castle

She has her ways

She has her thoughts

they aren't the best

But she doesn't think about that

There is a place where she knows she can reach and forget about the days where it was all together

Thoughts on a dying blog (not this one)

So I haven't posted on this blog ina while, in fact I haven't really posted on any of my blogs for a while. But Here I go again. Up until yesterday i had a weblog that I regularly updated on Xanga. But for many reasons I decided to let that one go. I wanted to give it a viking funeral not just a quick shut down. SO i put one last post and shipped it off to the netherworlds of the ethernet. A moment of silence...



Okay, so back to regular writings and postings.

School

For those of you who don't know the situation that is currently unfolding at CIU, I don't have the heart to lay it all out here to you. Check the CIU webring on xanga, you'll figure it out. Let it suffice it to say that a number of good things much loved have been axed. People have left the faculty. It has made me not question so much the integrity of the school but the level of training I will recieve there and how it will help me as I continue in the path God ihas set before me and that I am slowly trying to follow. I am considering leaving CIU for a while, until I can figure out what kind of education I need and want, so I can figure out what I want to do. I don't know if Ill actually do this, but the prospect of going to CIU now looks pretty bleak without some key elements in it. The bible portion will be great, but the music portion, is just kind of sparse training when I look at what people are doing out here in Canada with Songs To the Creator. I dunno, pray, and we will see.

Dial Tone

She stirred. Her eyes shut tight against the cold, she pulled the blankets in. After surfacing briefly from the dream that woke her, she slipped back into slumber.
He felt her stir. Sleepily he rolled over to face the clock. The red numbers were a blur. It wasn't worth the effort to figure out the time, it was dark and only dawn would change that.
He stubbed his toe on the corner of the bed as he groaned and got up. Leaving the sheets in a hard pile on his bed. The wood, cheap and warped of use, was splintered, and his toe might have been bleeding. He didn't check.
The night came in through the windows of the apartment. thin streams of light from the nearby buildings that passed through the blinds, pausing over the clutter of the floor. Examining its contents without interest on its passage out through the open door. It Floated into the hallway, set on some errand unknown to the rest of a darkened sleeping world.
His hand brushed roughly against his forehead, displacing the ruffled hair that hung there as he moved through the house. The house was cold. Even the worn carpet on the floor seemed stinging nettles of ice against his bare feet. Not bothering to turn on the lights, he made his way through the mess of his small apartment. He was glad there was no one else there to see it. Rooms echoed in his head with the absence of any thing cognizant besides his own thoughts. He paused at the end of the short hallway that led from the bedroom to the living room. A table of worn pine lazily stained dark cherry that someone had left in a secondhand store leaned against the wall. Its tiring wood seeming feeble on its thin legs. Among a few books and homeless CDs covered in scratches lay the beat up phone.
Leaning against the wall, the blinking red light of the charging cordless seemed to hold him mesmerized. The paper crumpled next to it, a number excitedly scrawled on its stained white. The dark made its presence known. The air muffled him. Closing in. He wanted to retreat, his mind filled with doubt about her needs. Why should he call? why should he care? Why does he have a heart? The shoulder farthest from the wall drifted back towards the room drawn by doubt.
With the forceful energy of the desperate he shot his hand toward the phone, dialing before he even recognized a dialing tone. The rings shattered the silence of her tears, ringing in his ears, she was crying curled in a cold corner, retracting from the light that seemed to burn like the tears and the sweat that seeped into her eyes, he listened, she didn't speak, they Cried.
The time between her first awakening and the sounds were like an eternity of pain. She woke again, sweating in fear, her anxiety increasing. She groped in the darkness, pulling herself out of her bed, the thin sheets dragging behind her over the metal frame and thin mattress.
She paused as she stood, her pajamas rumpled, the shock of her sudden vulnerability scared her, she was alone, the night came in through the window, streams of light through the tightly closed blinds, hands reaching offering memories. She covered her mouth in horror. Oh, god. She whispered shutting her eyes tight. she fell to her knees, suffocating on her own tears that caught in her throat, bitter acid that burned her heart. The Knob of her bedside dresser dug into her skin as she fell against it, unable to support herself, the wood, sparkled as they were wet by her tears. she pulled her knees in tighter, the dark. Oh god the dark she whispered, Oh God, wet through the spit that hung on her lips and fell down to her hands which she hid her face in.
The Phone screamed at her from somewhere above her head. Her hand shook as she wrapped her tired fingers around the white handset. She slowly brought it to her ear, she could hear his breath, he listened, her breath caught sharply, cutting on a sob, he understood they cried.

Untitled Story To Be Edited And Perhaps Finished Later (is this a title?)

The moon shone on the sidewalk. An interesting phenomenon common in the urban landscape, the tacit beams of reflected light struck the stained cement making it glow eerily against the dark green of surrounding grass. The sidewalk moved slowly under his feet. His unhurried gait was a strange juxtaposition against the many tasks he had left. And it was already 1130 pm. Work, Reading, Emotional Wounds to lick clean and apply the salve of nights rest to.
His head drew back lazily. Now instead of the jagged cement, the breadth of heaven, or what of it he could see through the light of the city and the buildings around him, filled his gaze. The tempo of his footsteps slowed to a crawl. He wanted to stop. To lay down on the cool of the cement, stretch his arms out. Fingertips scratching at the walk, he could just rest in nothingness, there in the night.
He chuckled lightly, outloud, but noone was around to hear. What a strange thing to think he thought. But Deep down inside, his heart longed for that rest. He resumed his previous pace, eyes again looking ahead, but if someone had been there to see him, they might of said that his eyes looked more tired and drained.