A Prayer From South Africa

You asked for my hands
that you might use them for your purpose.
I gave them for a moment then withdrew them
for the work was hard.

You asked for my mouth
to speak out against injustice.
I gave you a whisper that I might not be accused.

You asked for my eyes
to see the pain of poverty.
I closed them for I did not want to see.

You asked for my life
that you might work through me.
I gave you a small part that I might not get too involved.

Lord, forgive my efforts to serve you
only when it is convenient for me to do so,
only in those places where it is safe to do so,
and only with those who make it easy to do so.

Forgive me.
Renew me.
And send me out.

Here's to the King

Upon driving home I was quite shocked to hear the news that Michael Jackson had passed away today. While fun to poke fun of, he was one hell of an entertainer. So in tribute to the fallen, here is the album version of one of my more favorite Jackson videos "Ghost." I suggest you watch the full 30 minute version. I hope you enjoy! And maybe tomorrow, just wear one glove ;)

Michael Jackson - Ghost sélectionné dans Musique et Rock / Pop

What would ya do for a . . .

I've been mulling this over since I got back from California. Bear with . . .

Okay, so you're sitting in a room with 20 people all talking about their jobs and the striking thing is that none of those people are complaining about what they do and are all enthusiastically going on about their careers and whats been happening with such and such and so and so. And I'm thinking to myself, damn wouldn't that be nice to be able to do. I bitch about my job all the time, mainly because it's exhausting and at the end of the day I don't have the energy to really focus on things that I want to do or 'explore' in my own life.

Passion. It seems to be missing in a lot of what I do. Whether this is because I don't have the energy to put into things I'm passionate about, or what, I'm not quite sure about yet. Then there's the philosophy degree, which still highly interests me, don't get me wrong, but this thesis is slowly killing the passion and consequentially all the joy that it once gave me. It's become a teeth grinding process at most times. The sad thing is that the times at which I seem to have the best ideas flowing through my head with my paper are at 11pm and if I stay up to write them out I would probably become comatose after a week of writing til 1am and waking up at 6am and working for 9 or 10 hours everyday. Maybe I just need to switch to a different time zone (like two hours later from this one).

The question of 'what are you passionate about?' has always seemed like one of those questions that has been asked of me since I was in high school. What interests you and you should do that for a living. And yet there seems to be this proving ground that you must trudge your way through before you get to accomplish your passion. Being the underling at a business to get your foot in the door, earning degrees where people control what you study and doesn't entirely interest you, internships, and all the stuff that seems to suck the excitement out of what you had hoped to be doing.

So as I was listening to these people talk about what it is they do and I began to become a bit envious of seeing that excitement in their eyes and hearing it in their voices. These people had passion, something that hasn't really been with me for quite some time. And so I've been thinking back to what drew me in to a degree in philosophy in the first place to try to reconnect with that initial passion and recharge my enthusiasm for finishing this degree/thesis and moving on to teaching/philosophizing or maybe giving up on the whole adventure and changing paths completely.
*Mom if you read this don't have a heart attack*
I think one of the most important things that comes to mind in tracing back is from one of my first philosophy classes I ever had where 'know thyself should be written on the portals of philosophy.' The idea of struggling to figure out who we are, who I am, and what our purposes and responsibilities are in life. And not just to figure this out for myself but to help others become better people as well. To challenge people to constantly reflect upon their own lives. It's why I love Socrates, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Dooyeweerd, heck even Calvin. These people have had the courage to ask hard questions of the self and have asked others to come along for the ride. There is something marvelous in someone finding something out about themselves and also terrifying at the same time. I have always been a problem solver, a puzzle lover, a riddle liker and philosophy has always presented the greatest challenges in terms of the riddle of our meaning.

It was good to reconnect with that thought and passion I had back so long ago, and I thought I would share it. Now I just have to figure out how to re-engage with the puzzle that is my thesis. Or maybe the problem is that it's solved and I want to move on but I still have to get it out of my head and onto paper.

A bit off the top

10 inches later and what do you know. . . I feel bald






For those of you keeping track, which is probably none of you, this will be my 30th inch of hair donated to locks of love.

I get my hair cut by my cousin and while I was donating her kids walked in to see the unusual sight of a 'boy' with long enough hair to donate. Its at times like this that I realize I don't interact much with my extended family. Anyways, time to fill out the form, let the hair dry and send it on off!

Random

Ok so I know this is completely random ... but I don't think I've ever seen so crazy a weather map as the one I saw just now.

Lord I want to be . . .

Hymn of the month was the program as a child for me in grade school. Every month each class from grade k-8 would learn the same hymn and at the end of the school all the school would perform the songs for the parents and grandparents. As A result I know a lot hymns by heart to this day.

Sunday school was a time when we learned all the great stories of the Bible; Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, The 12 songs of Israel, Egypt, Exodus, Ten commandments, Judges, Ruth, Saul, David, Solomon, Isiah, Elijah, Elisha, Exile and Jesus. As a result I know the general story of the Bible.

There was Cadets, where boys were taught how to be real Christian men by making toy race cars, camping, and learning to tie knots.

High school brought catechism and real 'theology' into the mix to get to know how we have dealt with all the child hood stories and strengthen our faith by memorizing questions and answers: What is your only comfort in life and in death - That I am not my own but belong . . .

It seemed natural for me in high school to join in the praise of God because that was what a good Christian did, was sing and do 'holy' things that I was told would please God. And college was all about finding my call.

Somewhere in all of this faith was supposed to come about. And I'm not sure if it has for me. There are days were church feels more like a ritual of the week than a time to go and share the faith with fellow believers.

I would like to say I've been a Christian my whole life, and for many years I would have said that were true, but I'm not so sure I would say that now. It seems to all hang on that notion of 'faith like a child.'

When i was 11 my great grandfather past away which was not all that traumatizing to me because my knowledge of him was always in a nursing home, slowing losing function of his body and mind. The next month my grandpa Hibma died due to complications with leukemia and heart failure. The following month my Grandpa Haan died due to heart failure in a room filled with his wife and several of his Children. After each of these deaths, the first question I asked of my parents was "is grandpa with God now?"

As children we accept what we are told, we trust (whether we know it or not) what are parents say is true and the right thing. And if that basic notion is what our faith should be modeled after than it is hard for me to say I have a very strong faith at all. Let alone that I am a Christian at present.

After high school things didn't seem right about God. God seemed silent, and I sometimes wondered if what I thought had been God speaking was just me imagining it all. After living the pious Christian life of do-goodery in high school I began to question both my intent and reasons behind my faith life. I was a member of a student group called HOP (House of Praise), basically I was on a praise team that met every other Sunday to sing and be good Christian teens. One night in our prayer meeting our leader said that she really wanted us to 'Show the Spirit' to those present in the room. Looking back I would say this was the first chink in my naive perception of living a Christian life. If i am presenting a false image of the Spirit of God to someone upon a stage, what does that make of me, and what does it say to those I am leading. To this day Praise and worship music makes me nauseous.
When I made profession of faith, it was the first time in my life that I thought the Church was a joke, or at least the church I attended at the time. It seemed more like a catechism test to me than a time of actually sharing my faith. I answered every question with what I knew to me to be my faith, and after every question that essentially responded with "we were looking for the catechism answer." And so I left that church.

I sometimes feel that at this point was the maturing of my cynicism. If most people don't get whats going on, why the hell should I believe anyone is actually being truthful and not just saying what's expected of them. Black and white turned to gray and answers that I once would have stated without hesitation became struggles. Reason began to outrank faith, God's ways didn't make sense anymore and somewhere in all of this, my childlike faith died. I don't know if it is something that can be recaptured either.

When I say I don't know if I can call myself a Christian, it is not because I don't believe God exists, or that Christ died to save us; it is because I no longer have a clear cut definition of what it means to follow Christ; or more often feel that I fall so short of what Christ actually asks of me.

What inspires me most in my life with God is not some catechism, or some story meant to make a dark world seem hopeful, but is the story of David. A man after God's own heart. A man who was not afraid to ask where God was when his enemies surrounded him, who was not afraid to scream to God when things seemed so wrong, who messed up and paid some horrible prices for his sins, and yet someone still always loved God. I wish that I could say my prayers were like that of David's but I often feel more anger towards God than I do loving and desiring to praise. Why praise God for a world of such awful woes and pain.

But Jesus wept and was frustrated with men. Eli Eli Lama sabachthani - My God My God why have you forsaken me! The accomplishment. And then Easter morning. And if I can believe this, that Christ struggled, that God himself would endure our strife, than maybe there is hope. Maybe my anger over this broken world isn't something wrong or to hide, but to lay before God and to lament with him over. That tears and cries of suffering are as much a way of talking with God as the happy songs I sung as a child. Maybe a childlike faith is like me running to my father as a child with tears in my eyes and a bloody knee and asking why it hurts so much as going to God and asking "why does this all hurt so much, take the pain away."

?

And tho this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph thru us.
The prince of darkness grim --
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo! his doom is sure --
One little word shall fell him.

"Baby Don't Hurt Me, No More . . ."

On Valentines Day I was listening to NPR and in particular the program "The Story." It takes a look at different issues and then goes and finds peoples different experiences with that topic and tells their story. For Valentines they did a topic on Love; surprise, surprise. One of the stories has been rattling around in my head for the past few weeks now however and I just can't seem to shake it for some reason. In this particular story a wife asked his husband "Am I the only one for you," as in 'soul mates' and 'meant for each other.' The husband thought about it for a minute and in a very kind and lovingly way said 'well not the only one, but the one i want and chose to be with.' Needless to say the wife wasn't all that happy and the husband annoyed because he merely spoke his heart and what he thought was true.

I often seem to have the same notion with Love as the wife in that story. We go through life searching and hoping to just have that fateful person fall into our laps, letting the Universe unfold before us and lead us into a loving relationship. Love becomes something that controls us, an unstoppable and irresistible force we have no control over. Yet when I heard this man's response to his wife I couldn't help but think he was far more accurate on the matter than I was. Love isn't something out there that comes down upon us and makes us do something, it's something we draw up from within ourselves or that we have shown to us from another. I won't pretend to be an expert on the matter; libraries could be built around the subject of love itself and it won't probably contain the perfect answer in all those pages, but I'm gonna give attempt to get my thoughts out on it.

I have been asking myself why I have been so taken on this Romantic notion of love where we are all prey to its fancy, to the loosing of Cupid's arrow. I think for me it has so much to do with how easily it can happen and on the flip side the ability to blame something outside of us when love goes awry. Falling in love is so wonderful that when it comes crashing to a halt it is as though you are being ripped apart from the inside out. And you ask 'why' and 'how' and 'what now.' And there doesn't seem to be anything to help. You just feel empty and alone.

Free will is the damnedest of things. God gives it to us, along with the choice to love. The choice to love. And the odd thing about it is that he asks us to love. Not to have love consume us and so make us be in love, but asks us to love. So if God lets us have the ability to choose who to love it would seem to suggest that this popular view of love as something that simply comes over us is bunk. Love doesn't just happen to us, it involves a giving of ourselves, a commitment of our being unto another person. And when it happens, so easily at times, it is no wonder it feels as though it just came upon us from outside of us like sunshine after a rainy day. And when it can no longer be expressed, it can rip you apart inside. I so often want to blame God for this, for giving us free will, for not being able to make someone fall in love with. And yet the bitch of it is that God doesn't do it for us and Him so there is no way anyone can be made to fall in love. I often think of those who have arranged marriages where neither ones knows the other when they are wed. How can two strangers forced together ever fall in love? And yet it happens all the time. There is something so magical about love that to turn into a matter of choosing seems so cold and empty but on the other hand it also gives it so much more meaning.
I was chosen, to be loved, and I in turn have chosen to love.
I hope this is more helpful than hurtful to anyone who reads this out there and has or is dealing with similar emotions. It's something I needed to just get of my own chest.