Flower of Youth.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
hiatus in writing...but consumed in realizing.
How sad it is that I write with temerity. Restraint and hesitation. Self-contempt and bitterness.
How sad it is that I can say, "At least I am writing."
How sad it is that February is lost--a whole month wasted. Wordless.
But there are words...words in a tattered five-subjected spiral notebook, words in emails to friends, words exchanged at dinner in the dining hall, words left unsaid, unwritten, perhaps even unformed in my mind.
I regret that I did not take a moment to sit, to ponder, to contemplate, and most profoundly, to record. This month has been a month of Understanding, yet most of that Understanding has been internalized. It is writhing, rebelling, and waiting in ernest to be unleashed...applied. What good is clarity if it is not verbally expressed? What good is acceptance if all new concepts are pushed aside?
Why didn't I write?
Angry regret...and yet...contentedness.
Yes, February has been a good month. It lacked the novel ecstasy, energy, and enchantment that flavored January, yet it was somehow better. Stable, monotonous, with routine lows each wednesday. yet...peace.
Peace?
Monotony?
Do the two even go together?
Yes, I argue.
(Stop using such vague terminology, Courtney!)
Okay.
So I got myself in a rut at the beginning of the month...so stuck in routine that I stopped thinking critically. I get in those modes sometimes; it was my general mindset towards work in high school: just do the work, even if you don't reap anything from it.
Photography homework,check. Bible reading, check. Dinner at Ram's Head, check.
What pitiful reductions! It's equivalent to saying this:
Passion, check. Spirituality, check. Fellowship, check.
Luckily, after several sessions of RUF, good conversations with respected friends, and readings of various books, I realized the fallacy of this mindset. It's a regrettable way to live, and a sinful one at that. A life enslaved to Routine; my god was Information (which wasn't even retained!)
The second week of the month was RUF Conference...and that is where things started to come together. nothing spectacular happened there, but there is something healing about retreating to the woods with only sleeping bags, bibles, and good Christian friends. something very rudimentary and bare...it's exposing, and it's hard not to be rubbed clean.
Things climaxed, though subtly, after Conference. I had identified myself: how God made me, what made me tick, what made me uncomfortable, what made me happy, what made me cry. There are four types of people: the Confident, the Overly Confident, the Indifferent, and the Despairing. I am the latter...prone to introspective contemplation, self-flaggelation, self-loathing, and deep lows. Jonathan told me, "Maybe God is bigger than you think...and better."
Wow. If I only saw past myself, I would realize that things aren't in my own hands. It's not up to me...I sin and sin and sin but it's not up to me to fix that! And God will do good things with me...he has promised to do so.
Peace. I understand that one, basic concept. Yes, it's basic...but I never fully grasped it.
Ask and it will be given to you. You don't have to have pure intentions, you don't have to have perfection...and that's the beauty of it.
I guess the biggest realization that I've had is that my faith isn't "just personal." I was deceived for so many of those Christians that were "on fire for Jesus." People who would "spend time in the Word" (what is that?) and map out "spiritual plans." all of those are good (for the most part), but you know...God isn't just some nebulous force molded to fit MY feelings, MY expectations. I think that Christianity is very Americanized...which is to say, it is very individualized these days.
What happened to brotherly love? What happened to fellowship? What happened to community? What happened to the Church?
the Bible never discusses "spiritual highs" spent in isolation...because that's not Christianity. Though God is a personal God, faithful to the individual, I am seeing that he is a God faithful to the community..faithful at the national and worldly level. the Old Testament is founded upon a string of promises...first to Adam, then to Noah, then to Abraham, then to Moses and David. If you take a closer look each of these promises are made to individuals but FOR the world. promises never to destroy all of humanity again, promises to bless all of the nations through one man, promises to deliver his people from slavery into God's very presence...
Promises. Each promise affects greater humanity. And God has faithfully upheld each one. That realization makes it so much easier to trust that God's promise to do good work with me is valid.
It's an ongoing process that will never be complete or completely perfect while I'm alive. but that's what the Church is for...and friends and family.
At any rate, it's nice to be able to say that I don't have it all figured out. BECAUSE I NEVER WILL. sanctification, faith, maturity, love...these aren't things that you attain with the snap of a finger. it's not "you've got em or you don't." when is anything like that? becoming and adult in an instant, falling in love at first sight...these are contradictions. We use progressive tense, anywyas, which indicates that a process is underway. BecomING (slowly) and adult. FallING (slowly) in love.
Life isn't black and white. There are so many shades, so many hues, so many mixtures of paint that depth is a bottomless pit.
So that has been this month. Working things out...at first in my head, then with other people. I never wrote anything down, and I do regret that. But in a way, it's good that I didn't.
I probably would have been writing things down for the sake of writing things down.
And I want more than that.
How sad it is that I can say, "At least I am writing."
How sad it is that February is lost--a whole month wasted. Wordless.
But there are words...words in a tattered five-subjected spiral notebook, words in emails to friends, words exchanged at dinner in the dining hall, words left unsaid, unwritten, perhaps even unformed in my mind.
I regret that I did not take a moment to sit, to ponder, to contemplate, and most profoundly, to record. This month has been a month of Understanding, yet most of that Understanding has been internalized. It is writhing, rebelling, and waiting in ernest to be unleashed...applied. What good is clarity if it is not verbally expressed? What good is acceptance if all new concepts are pushed aside?
Why didn't I write?
Angry regret...and yet...contentedness.
Yes, February has been a good month. It lacked the novel ecstasy, energy, and enchantment that flavored January, yet it was somehow better. Stable, monotonous, with routine lows each wednesday. yet...peace.
Peace?
Monotony?
Do the two even go together?
Yes, I argue.
(Stop using such vague terminology, Courtney!)
Okay.
So I got myself in a rut at the beginning of the month...so stuck in routine that I stopped thinking critically. I get in those modes sometimes; it was my general mindset towards work in high school: just do the work, even if you don't reap anything from it.
Photography homework,check. Bible reading, check. Dinner at Ram's Head, check.
What pitiful reductions! It's equivalent to saying this:
Passion, check. Spirituality, check. Fellowship, check.
Luckily, after several sessions of RUF, good conversations with respected friends, and readings of various books, I realized the fallacy of this mindset. It's a regrettable way to live, and a sinful one at that. A life enslaved to Routine; my god was Information (which wasn't even retained!)
The second week of the month was RUF Conference...and that is where things started to come together. nothing spectacular happened there, but there is something healing about retreating to the woods with only sleeping bags, bibles, and good Christian friends. something very rudimentary and bare...it's exposing, and it's hard not to be rubbed clean.
Things climaxed, though subtly, after Conference. I had identified myself: how God made me, what made me tick, what made me uncomfortable, what made me happy, what made me cry. There are four types of people: the Confident, the Overly Confident, the Indifferent, and the Despairing. I am the latter...prone to introspective contemplation, self-flaggelation, self-loathing, and deep lows. Jonathan told me, "Maybe God is bigger than you think...and better."
Wow. If I only saw past myself, I would realize that things aren't in my own hands. It's not up to me...I sin and sin and sin but it's not up to me to fix that! And God will do good things with me...he has promised to do so.
Peace. I understand that one, basic concept. Yes, it's basic...but I never fully grasped it.
Ask and it will be given to you. You don't have to have pure intentions, you don't have to have perfection...and that's the beauty of it.
I guess the biggest realization that I've had is that my faith isn't "just personal." I was deceived for so many of those Christians that were "on fire for Jesus." People who would "spend time in the Word" (what is that?) and map out "spiritual plans." all of those are good (for the most part), but you know...God isn't just some nebulous force molded to fit MY feelings, MY expectations. I think that Christianity is very Americanized...which is to say, it is very individualized these days.
What happened to brotherly love? What happened to fellowship? What happened to community? What happened to the Church?
the Bible never discusses "spiritual highs" spent in isolation...because that's not Christianity. Though God is a personal God, faithful to the individual, I am seeing that he is a God faithful to the community..faithful at the national and worldly level. the Old Testament is founded upon a string of promises...first to Adam, then to Noah, then to Abraham, then to Moses and David. If you take a closer look each of these promises are made to individuals but FOR the world. promises never to destroy all of humanity again, promises to bless all of the nations through one man, promises to deliver his people from slavery into God's very presence...
Promises. Each promise affects greater humanity. And God has faithfully upheld each one. That realization makes it so much easier to trust that God's promise to do good work with me is valid.
It's an ongoing process that will never be complete or completely perfect while I'm alive. but that's what the Church is for...and friends and family.
At any rate, it's nice to be able to say that I don't have it all figured out. BECAUSE I NEVER WILL. sanctification, faith, maturity, love...these aren't things that you attain with the snap of a finger. it's not "you've got em or you don't." when is anything like that? becoming and adult in an instant, falling in love at first sight...these are contradictions. We use progressive tense, anywyas, which indicates that a process is underway. BecomING (slowly) and adult. FallING (slowly) in love.
Life isn't black and white. There are so many shades, so many hues, so many mixtures of paint that depth is a bottomless pit.
So that has been this month. Working things out...at first in my head, then with other people. I never wrote anything down, and I do regret that. But in a way, it's good that I didn't.
I probably would have been writing things down for the sake of writing things down.
And I want more than that.
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