01.26.12
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:25 am by Administrator
at this time in my life, i have two friends with which i feel i have powerful and intimate communion. one is my wife. the other is a woman who is not my wife. recently, i’ve begun to struggle with the implications of this situation. actually, this is an understatement; what began for me as a matter of integrity has developed into a broader struggle to understand my identity. the three of us have been wrestling with the salient matters of boundaries, possession, and safety, and at the root of the discussion has been a central, recurring question: who am i, as a social creature? and why is intimate friendship so difficult for me to have with others?
as i’ve previously written, so much of my socialization has been derived from a childhood paradigm of rivalry and competition. i grew up looking at others as adversaries; i viewed my academic environments as threatening; and i viewed God as my alternate universe, my safe haven in the midst of a vicious world. my childhood was governed by fears, and having grown up as an only child trapped in an intense triangle of dysfunctional family relationships, i lost the ability to readily trust other people. while outwardly i learned to manifest approachability, honesty, and kindness, i was inwardly a deeply guarded, very fearful individual. i learned to distrust authority figures; i learned to question social conventions, which i viewed as derived from power structures; and i came to believe that my life would always be about my battle against the world.
therapy has been suggested to me, but the factors at the root of my profound alienation are the very same things that have prohibited me from seeking help of a psychological kind. on the one hand, i believe that i’m smarter, more insightful, and more self-aware than most psychologists and therapists; i have a difficult time believing that they could suggest a paradigm that i have not already considered. on the other hand, i continue to believe that my psychology is an appropriate adaptation to the world as i know it. yes, i am both unhappy and at times very lost in my world. but no, i do not believe that reality is actually happier and safer than how i view it. moreover, i believe that my profound sense of alienation enables to recognize a spiritual truth at the core of my version of Christianity.
in other words, i have chosen to embrace my unhappiness, because i see truth and value in it. perhaps this is a sad thing. i’ve tried antidepressants, and they changed me. i want to be as i was designed; and i feel that i can be effective as a vessel of love and healing if i can be properly trained, within this design.
the recent discussions with my two closest friends have raised the question as to whether i should be questioning the thing i previously considered my immutable design. must my life be governed by this sense of alienation? must i view others—and particularly other men—as my rivals? should it be my intentional goal to expand my social sphere, despite my instinct to invest myself intimately in only a chosen few, who are more often female than male?
both women in my life see me as a paradox of a kind. i am on the one hand highly capable of transparency and seeming vulnerability in the public arena; but on the other hand, within individual relationships there is a kind of vulnerability i am absolutely unwilling to assume. on one hand i can relate to anyone, particularly those who are suffering or in pain; but on the other hand, i am incapable of really giving myself to others in sustained friendship. i am extroverted, in that i am bored with self and require interactions in order to experience restoration. but i am also introverted in that i constantly feel under siege by the people in my life and what they demand from me.
i am dangerous, in that where i find gratifying intimacy i seek more and more of it, without regard for boundaries. i am unfulfilled, in that i am perpetually uncomfortable with both myself and my society. and i feel unlovable, in such a profound manner. it goes beyond feeling unworthy; i don’t know how to receive love and affection. the only thing that makes sense to me is to be useful, but beyond this i do not know how to enjoy life in any real sense. is this not a tragedy? am i not sick, in the sickest of all ways?
all of this self-scrutiny has worn away at my sense of cohesion. i am seeing the parts in conflict within my being, as they grate on one another and fall into disrepair. there is no easy solution. there is no place where i’m comfortable, except in moments with my wife and in certain moments of solitude. what would i do to get into the nuts and bolts of what i am and just fix it, to be the man capable of being both understood and satisfied? but instead, i find myself more and more the unfathomable thing. and all that remains for me is to serve, to forget myself, to disregard the thing i am that i cannot understand, and to focus instead on others, as God has trained me to do. the complexity of me—it is death. there is no need to dignify it any longer. it is death, and the beauty of simplicity is what i experience as life. it is found in others and ultimately in God. so i serve. i serve. i give of myself, so that i may look outward, and be redeemed
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01.19.12
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:04 pm by Administrator
as i’ve grown up in faith, i’ve maintained a fear of God; in fact, it has grown. but the fear is so different now from what it was. i once feared God because i feared His ability to condemn me to eternal hell; then i feared God because i feared His intention to sanctify me through harsh discipline and even death; and now i fear God because i see the fruits of my life—and i understand now, more than ever, that these are contingent fruit. the life that i experience is contingent life; it is dependent on and derived from favor. and should i lose that favor, i would lose my life. i fear God, because if He left me, i would have nothing left.
now, we make a big deal in our primitive Evangelical discourse about the “perseverance of the saints” (the TULIP “P”). once upon a time, this idea mattered to me as well, because my fear of God was rooted in a lack of total assurance of salvation. but the need for “assurance of salvation” was derived from a primitive spirituality of risks and rewards. the child in this culture grows up believing in Christianity as a gateway to heaven, but heaven is for us a kingdom of perfect circumstances. as my concept of heaven has changed—and it is perhaps better likened to “nirvana” than to “utopia”—self-preservation has lost its centrality in my spiritual trajectory. the Pauline doctrine of self-death and self-loss has become authentic to me, not merely as an abstraction but as a principle guiding Christian transformation. we do not believe so as to be “saved”; we believe as a necessary prelude to becoming deconstructed and then incorporated into a new lifeform, one which extends from God the person as His sentient body.
in any case, the evolution of my theological paradigm has paralleled a psychological shift as well. being one who is now free not only to loathe myself but also to celebrate my decline, i have discovered a capacity to “enjoy the moment” by experiencing the immediacy of God. i experience the immediacy of God in all the countless circumstances when i find myself extending from or united with other people, in transcendent connection. i once felt that the mystical God was something best experienced in solitude. but now, even these personal experiences drive me to quest for something within community. whether by exercising my giftings, fulfilling my roles, or serving others, i feel the trajectory of my life crystallized because i sense God freeing me from the confines of mortality by directing my life stream into His body. i live when i give life to others. i rejoice when i bear fruit, exemplified in the transformation and worship of others. i forget myself in these moments; i experience God.
being so fruitful in this stage of my life has exposed me to certain temptations and trials that were previously unfamiliar to me. people have been drawn to my giftings; as with Aaron, i have felt the power of my charisma, even as i’ve grown aware of my limitations, particularly with regard to judgment. i’ve seen in myself the capacity to enjoy my influence over others—and recently i’ve even been jarred by my tendency to feel “ownership” of people as well. i enjoy mentoring others and delegating responsibilities to them; but there is a fine line between having a personal agenda for their development and, on the other hand, presuming to have spiritual authority on their behalf. the fruitfulness has afforded me a dangerous sense of power. i am reminded of the Proverb: “pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall”.
all of this has somehow reminded me of those biblical stories of men whom God chose to abandon to ruin. perhaps i worded this situation quite strongly, but how else can one describe the situation in which a man loses the favor of God? when God turns His eyes away from a man, does he not immediately fall into his natural state of disgrace? what man is justified apart from the moment-to-moment protection of His creator? i look at the stories of these men—King Saul and King Solomon, most prominently—to understand what quality it was that hastened their downfall, because i fear the consequences that they suffered. i fell asleep last night ruminating on these things, and i woke up this morning with an impression.
there is only one church addressed in Revelations 2 and 3 for which God threatened to remove His lampstand. it was the Ephesian church—a magnificently fruitful church in every manner except in its patent loss of “first love”. now, there’s much debate as to what “first love” really means. some biblical scholars argue that this is a much more “practical” term than what others might read into this seemingly romantic idea. regardless, i continue to see an element of passion in this term “first love”. it is the kind of passion that connotes not only sincere devotion but also single-mindedness. one newly in love does not look at his beloved as a small part of his greater universe; rather, he looks at his world through the lens of his obsession with his beloved. the world revolves around one’s first love, not vice versa.
it was never this way between Saul and Solomon and their god, which is why it sometimes startles me that they were chosen to be kings of God’s chosen people. Saul sought counsel from mystics, and his mind was principally concerned with his enemies, both real and perceived. Solomon’s concern from the beginning was his role as king—and his profound sense of inadequacy at the start of his reign. driven as such to succeed, his understanding of God was always framed by his experience of kingship; God had meaning to Solomon only insofar as godliness was necessary to real achievement. hence, the Proverbs, and hence, the Ecclesiastes—which i consider a tragic essay of dubious implications for the biblical narrative.
there is, in the era that separated these two men, quite a different figure presented in the biblical story. David, who was guilty of far more egregious personal offenses than any ascribed to either Saul or Solomon, had every reason to be abandoned by God. and yet, Israel prospered under his reign, and the bloodline to Christ was established through him. the Ark was brought to Jerusalem as confirmation of God’s pleasure with David and the people, and even to the last tired days of David, he received honor. though he sinned against God, God did not remove His lampstand from him, as he did from the kings that preceded and followed him. why it is that God spared David this horror lies in this idea of “first love”, i believe. you can see it in the Psalms; and you can see it in the thing he said to Michal, who sought to shame him for his unabashed celebration of God’s favor. David placed God first in his life; and despite every flaw in his being, his passion for God was his singular quality and the thing that he projected from his soul. David never lost his first love for God. perhaps more rightly, God placed within David a first love that was unquenchable.
there are so many ways to judge oneself. i look at myself today through this lens of failure and success, defined as they are through the lives of the Jewish kings. and i recognize that what i fear is not condemnation or even hell; what i fear is to see the lampstand of God being taken from my life and the lives of my people. there is no tragedy in the world that can claim to be equal to this sort of devastation. but where God places His lampstand, the people live and prosper, in a miraculous demonstration of His divinity and power. i ask myself today if i have within me that kind of love, that “first love”, demonstrated in singularity of devotion, utterness of loyalty, and undying passion. am i vessel deep enough and strong enough to hold this sort of love? or have i been destined, like most of my predecessors, to be less?
i struggle with you God, against what i fear about your design of myself. i cannot change my makeup; i cannot turn back the clock and have you accord me a more devoted mind, a more loving soul. i am here, as you have made me. and yet i struggle with you, because though i have been molded, i have been shaped to pursue you. there is in my design an agony that drives me to follow you, to quest for you, to wish for you, like the man possessed by obsession, compelled to possess you and to be possessed. whether or not men judge me by this, i judge myself by this. i see in me this first love, and here and now it is the only thing of worth to me. judge me in this light and find within me this love for you. let it be your reason to establish your lampstand in my life, so that i might give life, and so that i might enjoy the life in you. from nothing i came, and to nothing i return apart from you. i love you more than anything else in life; have me, God and don’t turn from me. let me see the Ark brought into the midst of my people, in my time
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01.17.12
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:28 pm by Administrator
it’s been perhaps close to a year since the last time i blogged extensively about the scriptural narrative. i’ve been busy putting faith into practice (and suffering the consequences of all of my failures that have thus been exposed), so there’s been little time for rumination about the biblical story. i haven’t regretted that; but i have missed it. when i go through intense experiences, i feel like i need to compare my journey to those of the saints, to understand what is happening to me. i call it sanctification, but there are many other words for this kind of change.
one thing i was wrestling with around this time last year was how different the Gospel can appear depending on who’s talking about it. when the O.T. prophets talked about the Gospel, it was for them a story of national redemption. when Christ talked about the kingdom of God, it was for his immediate disciples a story of power, consummated in resurrection. when Paul talked about the Gospel, it was for him a story of atonement. Paul’s fixation, unlike that of the original twelve, was not on the resurrection but rather on the death of Christ and its meaning. and then there’s the Gospel that countless other people experienced, others who never wrote a word of the biblical accounts. the adulteress who experienced Christ as forgiveness; the sick who experienced the Gospel as restoration to health; the teachers of the Law who came to see Christ as a renewer of God’s covenant with His chosen people.
there are so many facets to this thing we call the Gospel, and not one of these facets (not even Paul’s) can obscure the importance of the others. i am struck by the fact that there as many reflections of Christ’s importance as there are people to witness Him. and, in the end, the theology we each come to is only important insofar as the authenticity of our personal experience of Him. faith begins with the witness of Christ, not with an understanding of what He represents; the latter is what emerges only as we come to terms with this complex, blinding, and incomprehensibly wonderful man/god/personality.
perhaps all of this is my way of saying that i’m finished with questing for an airtight theology. i don’t care for the idea of it, and neither do i believe that such a construct is even possible. Paul quested for it, and i think he took that struggle to the grave. it was his inclination to struggle with God’s moral universe. and i think that he, in his own way, succeeded inasmuch as a man can succeed at this.
i wonder sometimes whether i’m laying a good foundation for a future career in full-time public ministry when i find myself poking so much fun at the apostle Paul. i must disclaim by first saying that my spectacular failures in my walk have opened me to a whole new understanding of Paul’s emphasis, which i’ve encountered with the help of N.T. Wright. Paul was fixated on “covenantal peoplehood” on account of his personal background, and his theology of atonement was so pivotal to establishing that crucial ideological bridge between the Old and New covenants (and they were categorically different covenants). i’ve come to recognize that “justification by faith” (as we currently understand it) probably meant so little to Paul, and this has helped me to distance him from the American Evangelical tradition that i find so troublesome. in spite of these things, i feel respect for Paul but perhaps less sympathy; his style and his pedagogy often strike me (as they must have struck James and Peter) as overbearing, if not frankly browbeating. and perhaps because i feel that i can marvel at Paul without worshiping him, i feel less threatened by misinterpretations of Paul, such as those employed to disenfranchise homosexuals. Paul is so opinionated that he opens himself to misinterpretation. James, as a counterexample, is so specific in his writings that he truly leaves little room for controversy.
as of late, i’ve begun exploring the matter of affinity with the biblical saints. i feel more affinity with some characters and less with others. when i struggle or suffer, i tend to rely more on the lives and words of certain biblical figures than others. i imagine that we all do have our selective affinities, these being derived from our unique faith experiences with God. i think a lot about two guys in particular: Moses and Jonah. i like their journeys perhaps better than any other journeys depicted in the scripture for two main reasons: first, they were failed men, and second, their journeys were not results-oriented. regarding the latter, Moses had no real results to speak of regarding his own ministry, aside from leading a rebellious people into a lifetime of wilderness wandering. and Jonah did have tremendous fruit he could have boasted of, but he proved (as God intended to prove) that this result was really incidental to God’s judgment of his prophet. i like the stories of Moses and Jonah because they are to me the most authentic characters in the biblical narrative; and as such, they are imprinted on my soul as brethren figures in my own personal struggle to understand God.
it is interesting at times for me to consider that the one character of the Bible i am least drawn to is that of Jesus Christ. now, let me first say that Jesus Christ was the one who introduced me to the Bible, and in person He is significantly different to me than the person that might be suggested from the words of the Gospel books. that character (His heroic self-sacrifice notwithstanding) strikes me as a strangely unpleasant character. here is a man who could have spoken plainly, but instead He chose to trip up His listeners with wordplay, obtuse reasoning, and totally confounding parables. He chose to teach His disciples by luring them into silly confessions and then reprimanding them for their patent ignorance. to the last, He was a smartaleck and an uncompromising intellectual. and even in His most tender moments, He hardly seems tender. but i’ll grant that here is the limitation of the written word. the Christ i have met is different from the Christ that many will read. and herein lies an interesting truth: Christ chose to obscure Himself from most, in the specific hope that He would reach only those who were called. as one who has been called, I see the magnificence of Christ. but the Christ of scripture is an opaque character indeed.
as indoctrinated as i have previously been within the PCA tradition, it is often difficult for me to express what i intuitively believe to be an obvious truth: that the Bible is not and was never meant to be the comprehensive revelation of God. when i first came to this conviction, i found myself looking over my shoulder for a pointed finger or an angry angel. i’m finding it increasingly unnecessary to feel this way. recognizing the limitations inherent to the human narrator has afforded me more and more pleasure in engaging the scripture. i was once the child listening to the sage storyteller, hanging on every word. now, i’m the apprentice among far greater storytellers, with my own story to write but with less time to write it and even lesser skills with which to write it. but i must write it; and to write it, i must pay homage to the art of the storytelling. we will tell our stories; and even after we pass, greater stories still will be written. no one adds a word to the book of prophecy; but neither still does anyone pretend that the story is finished. there is no need to close the book. it is an open book, with plotlines spanning generations and great heroes yet to be discovered. i love this book; i love its story; and i love the fact that we are becoming a part of it, even now
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01.13.12
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:26 pm by Administrator
i ended up watching the “dragon tattoo” remake last night, as my friend really wanted to see it. i’d been reluctant to watch it (as i generally dislike Hollywood remakes of very successful foreign films), so i went into the experience with guarded expectations.
the best part of the movie was the opening sequence. it reminded me of an audi commercial. lots of CGI body contortions and shape morphing in metallic gray tones, with a cool soundtrack. the remainder of the movie was decidedly less innovative. i don’t know whether it’s my progression as a movie viewer or whether i was just in a particular mood, but i couldn’t really understand some of the camera movement and the angles utilized. on a broader level, i didn’t like the flow between the parallel stories. the Swedish original had a haunting and meandering air, and the remake felt more driven and mechanical. neither did the characterizations match those of the original. craig was haggard enough, but he wasn’t lovable, like the original blomquist. and mara definitely owned her role, but the script limited her. noomi rapace defined lisbeth salander; you can’t follow that act.
dragon tattoo admittedly is a difficult story to adapt to the screen. even the original swedish movies perhaps failed the vision of the series, particularly in the second and third sequels. i feel that when one adapts a story as complex as this one for the big screen, one cannot merely transcribe the story into script. one must sense the essence of the story and translate it. the story of dragon tattoo is one of rage against humanity. by eliminating the critical point near the end when lisbeth chooses to watch a man burn to death, fincher robbed the story of its soul. there’s really no justification for this.
speaking of rage against humanity, there is for me in the story of the marines in Afghanistan an undertone of deep tragedy. i’ve written recently about how America is long overdue for true mourning—and how our political arena needs to open itself to true self-reflection, redirection, and even regret. the war in Afghanistan has been horrific for the United States, in all respects. while it has led to some things that our military leaders could call true achievement (i.e. the decimation of Al-Qaeda training camps, the assassination of high-level Al-Qaeda leaders), it has led to many consequences that we would all consider truly unfortunate. the loss of american lives. the loss of so many Afghan/Pakistani civilian lives. the loss of confidence in American leadership at home and abroad. the massive resurgence of the Afghani opium trade. the destabilization of the Pakistani government. a rising regional insurgency against American occupation. economic repercussions for the region and the U.S. and on top of this, the intense psychological ramifications on our servicemen.
the video of the four marines urinating on the bodies of presumed enemy combatants has sparked a lot of the usual formal rhetoric from the American government. i hear words like “inhuman”, “deplorable”, and the like. i’ve heard marines on interview express shame about what their peers had done in the video. all of this is necessary, of course. but when i heard hilary clinton express in the strongest of diction how uncharacteristic and unrepresentative this behavior was, i could not help but feel profound cynicism. what is more horrifying and outrageous? the urine that pelted these dead bodies, or the bullets that took their lives? what is more shameful? the act of gloating over the dead enemy, or the American government’s calculated decision to continue throwing our young men into harm’s way, despite the consequences of this war which bespeak futility and failure?
the marines will claim PTSD, and i personally hope that they will avoid imprisonment. a prison sentence will be the government’s way of claiming accountability. the only true accountability in this situation is for our political leaders to take personal responsibility for the behavior of the troops they have sent to war. if they find reprehensible the behavior of our young men who are being traumatized by war, then perhaps they should be court-martialed, for having made the decision that led to the abuse of Afghanis and Americans alike. separating ourselves from the brutality of war and passing judgment on our troops is a luxury of the most hypocritical kind. there is no respect for the enemy in a time of war. there are no rules when you are fighting for your life. i would urinate on the bodies of my implacable enemy—or worse. i admit this, not to justify my tendencies but rather to say that i cannot and will not judge men at war. the war is the evil. it spawns evil, by necessity.
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01.11.12
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:48 pm by Administrator
a simple question i raised at both of my small groups this week ended up being fairly difficult for people to answer. the question was “how do you define spiritual growth”?
one of the interesting observations i made was that every single person had a very distinct way of answering the question. one person said that she quite simply views growth as “becoming a better person every day”. the person next to her defined spiritual growth as “learning to see God in everything i do”. in the other group, one woman said that spiritual growth is defined as “the bearing of good fruit”, while the next respondent said that spiritual growth for her isn’t about milestones or accomplishments but rather about simply experiencing life.
i presented the question because i was curious about how people would respond. in our evangelical culture, we tend to be very proscriptive about the spiritual life. every church has its own model of ideal spirituality which implies a distinct idea of what spiritual growth should look like. stereotypically, PCA members might be more likely to suggest “knowledge of God” or “appreciation of scriptural truth” as evidence of growth, while emergent church members might be more likely to suggest “humility” or “ability to serve the community” as more primary evidence of spiritual growth.
even the Bible i’d say presents a spectrum of ideas about “spiritual growth” through the lives and attitudes of the saints. i think of the apostle Paul as the quintessential results-oriented spiritual journeyer; even with respect to his personal spiritual formation, Paul defined the fruit by which growth could be tested and measured. moreover, he boasted about the fruit which attested to the truth of his faith. for Paul, the faith journey was a process of self-transformation, by which one comes to understand God and oneself more truly. contrast this with the Psalms of David, who conceptualized his spiritual journey less as a process of self-transformation and more as a quest for actualization, through victory. David did not measure himself by his fruit; he measured himself by his given role, and he inferred from God’s investment in Him a promise yet to be fulfilled.
David’s emphasis on “fulfilling one’s role”, as opposed to Paul’s emphasis on “becoming transformed into Christ’s likeness”, is a concept of the spiritual journey that i see echoed throughout the Old Testament teachings. there are nuances though. Jonah, for instance, is centered on Jonah’s struggle to participate actively in God’s plans, and as such it appears fixated on the matter of obedience. the fourth chapter though hints at a process or conformation that God is seeking in Jonah’s life. in Jacob too there is present in his story a graphic depiction of wrestling, as Jacob struggles not only to be actualized as the spiritual first-born but also to be validated and understood by God Himself.
Christ’s depiction of the spiritual journey is perhaps even more complex. it is difficult really to find any emphasis on growth or process in Christ’s conceptualization of the personal journey. sanctification, a purely Pauline doctrine, is nearly nowhere to be found in Christ’s teachings or parables. at the same time, Christ seeks to dissuade his followers from a simplification of self-definition according to inherited role, whether conferred by gender, ethnicity, or station. there is in Christ’s teachings a simple calling to obedience reflected in loving action, as well as a macroscopic calling for the restoration of a people. i might summarize this complexity in the following way: that for individuals Christ stressed a redefinition of role, while for community Christ embraced the importance of a growth process, consummated in a restoration to glory.
the question for me comes down to this. do we in this society and time perhaps overestimate the importance of “spiritual growth”? and do we underestimate the importance of our role in community? these are certainly not mutually exclusive entities, and i would say that i’ve experienced something of personal growth through my role in community. but as i think about it more, i see that there is a tension between prioritizing personal spiritual growth and fulfilling a role bequeathed. the former views experiences as the template from which personal enrichment is derived; the latter poses experiences as the substance for which the personal vessel was created.
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01.09.12
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:18 pm by Administrator
after having sat on “Tree of Life” for nearly two months, my wife and i finally sat down to watch it. for those who haven’t heard of it, “Tree of Life” was billed as something of a tour de force, a probing, visually stunning movie exploring loss and cosmic purpose. it was, for me, both baffling and superfluous.
being a ruminating person myself, i often expect to enjoy movies that dwell on the philosophical, but i almost invariably find such movies to be annoying. i suppose my genre of choice would be the “foreign independent crime thriller”, though i’m partial to Brit realism. in any case, “Tree of Life”, in what it attempted to accomplish, was about half as effective as “Another Earth” and sagged from its own ponderous weight. my 5 year-old son joined us for segments of the movie, asking poignant questions like “isn’t a movie supposed to have people in it?” and “why are there dinosaurs in this movie?” a weird blend of National Geographic cinematography and spoken word montages, “Tree of Life” attempted to be profound and instead succeeded in being ludicrous.
as an aside, i find it interesting that my wife and I really have converged in our movie tastes. we invariably like and dislike the same movies. we were both thoroughly unimpressed by “Tree of Life”, while we were both blown away by “Another Earth”.
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12.30.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:56 am by Administrator
a month ago, the guy coordinating the christmas worship service at my church got wind that i once played the violin and asked me if i’d be willing to perform for the holiday worship service. i agreed to do it, and the service seemed to play out fairly well. after the worship service, a lot of people approached me because they were surprised that i not only played the violin but appeared to play it quite well. they encouraged me to do it more often; a couple people even implied that it was my obligation to share that hidden talent with the community.
it’s ironic to me, because when i was much younger, the only thing a lot of people knew about me at church was that i played the violin. i played the violin for weddings, for funerals, for church services, for offertories, for revival meetings, and for bible study gatherings. i didn’t complain about it because i thought of it as integral to my identity; it was what i did. but after this past christmas service, i realized that playing the violin is no longer integral to what i am. the idea that i could choose to play the violin more frequently, particularly at church, became to me a question of identity. and the answer i came to was interesting to me—and perhaps reflective of something i have learned. and i’ll come back to that answer in a moment.
i’m ending this calendar year on a down note. i’m thoroughly burned out. it has been an exhausting year for me at church, and for whatever reason, i’m not ending the year with a real sense of accomplishment. at work, despite the fact that much was accomplished, i’m embroiled in a political situation centered on money—specifically money that i thought i had secured as incentive payout for my doctors. now, i’m hearing indirectly that other people, for various reasons, are raising questions as to how the money is being appropriated. the situation and its context are so anger-provoking to me that i’m considering quitting my job if the result of these questions is the retraction of the payout. it’s more than my credibility at stake; it’s the principles i’ve been fighting for. that payout was supposed to be the culmination of a year’s worth of hard battles in advocating for my providers. i’m frustrated enough now that i can draw the line in the sand. and i’m not happy enough in life or in general simply to do what it takes to keep my job. but this is something i’ve already proven, and that fundamental inability to compromise is simply nothing new.
what troubles me more however is the fact that i’m still failing to enjoy the single thing that should be core to a doctor’s profession—the care of patients. as time goes on, i’m enjoying the patient care less and less. it’s patients trying to wheedle Activus out of me—a prescription cough syrup that can be distilled into pure codeine. it’s patients addicted to prescription painkillers trying to coddle me in order to get another 30 tablets of dilaudid. it’s people with attitude threatening to shoot me; it’s mentally ill patients trying to turn me into a spouse or a father figure. on a good day, i am tolerant; on my bad days, i hate them.
and yet, i have talent. my patients have no idea what sort of inner turmoil they cause me; they have no clue how much anger and grief i take home because of them. i come across to them as the consummate doctor, the guy who has the extra five minutes, the person who would never judge them. i cure their maladies; i help them through difficulties; i assume the role of counselor when needed. i have talent as a doctor that is manifest in their praise and loyalty. but it is not a talent that defines me any longer.
when my last patient of the day today tried to force me into prescribing him promethazine-codeine, i was strangely reminded of what i went through recently after the christmas service. they would make me a violinist, like my patients would make me their doctor. i can do these things, but i do not enjoy these things—and i never have. it has been a part of my process to recognize that God has given me a very deep and focused sense of what He wants from me, and this is manifest in what kinds of service give me joy. i can go weeks in clinic, seeing dozens of patients turn the corner and get well, but i won’t reap from those experiences half the joy that i reap from leading a group discussion that results in emotional healing. i can play a huge gig with the violin, but it wouldn’t match the pleasure i get from delivering a public speech. doctoring and playing the violin—these are for me proficiencies but they are not pleasures. God gave me a very specific pleasure in connecting with people at the level of their emotions by speaking to their realities. in this, i express not only a talent but a real gift.
here at the end of 2011, i’m realizing the difference between ability and calling. i’m done with the violin, and very soon i’ll be done with doctoring as well. i’m ready to move on, at any time; and what i want to remember this new year is that i’m afraid of no man, i fear only the God whose vision for my life is utterly irresistible. into His hands, i place myself.
to God, i have this resolution: have me. do not pass over my life, as unfaithful as i am, as testy as i prove to be. do as you have commanded; make me the lion for your people
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12.28.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:12 am by Administrator
i need to get it out, but it’s been hard this year. the reflection doesn’t come naturally. i’ll spend days, even weeks, just absorbed in getting things done. and then, seemingly in the flow of it all, i’ll think or say something completely incongruous with the mission i thought God gave me, and it’s then that i’ll realize that something is not right. contending with myself to get it right—that used to come easily to me, but not now.
the problem, perhaps, is that i’m no longer unhappy. i used to experience unhappiness of that sharp, biting, irascible kind. it would stop me in my tracks; it would gird me more strongly in my core values; it would force me to question my motivations and measure my actions. unhappiness was a result of my fundamental misalignment with my family, my friends, my employers. i don’t have that sort of plaguing alienation nowadays. i find myself in the extremely unusual situation of being remarkably well-adapted to and productive in my present roles. in nearly every social situation i’m involved in, i am a leader. even when i’m not actively managing, guiding, or mentoring someone, i feel it nonetheless; i am the leader.
but neither am i “happy”, in the sense of visceral pleasure or resonance. i feel the satisfaction of fulfilling my roles, and it’s a real satisfaction. but the thing i had five years ago was a sense of my solitude as a refuge from the world; i enjoyed being alone, and related to this, i savored personal communion with God, as a means to restoration and self-reinvention. i am now so absorbed in my roles that i feel defined by them, which strikes me as an ambivalent thing. on the one hand, i feel that it is in my design to pleasure in being useful and effective; on the other hand, i know now that being totally absorbed in these roles does rob me of the principal source of my strength—personal reflection, made complete in the experience of revelation.
i have been relying on surrogates for revelation in order to sustain my inner energies. but i’ve replaced revelation with inspiration. it’s easy to be inspired; inspiration oftentimes only requires stimulation or diversion. but if i go long enough without a revelatory experience, i begin to lose that visceral sense of my own grinding nuts and bolts; i stop appreciating the process by which i’m changing and growing. without that level of self-awareness, i let the seeming importance and purpose of my roles govern the trajectory of my life, and i forget that i was not principally created for a role but rather for a journey. my journey, my transformation—these are my worship. i am given roles so that i may journey, and not vice versa.
it is no surprise that my sources of cheap inspiration have left me ultimately unsatisfied. i’ve found myself returning to vague fantasies of success, or sexual conquest, or creative achievement. i’ve sought outlets for my restless energies, and instead i’ve suffered from a profound lack of real rest. my imagination feels barren and dry; i engage in conversation like one suspended in mid-thought, or one working his way out of slumber. in a real sense, i’ve lost my edge. i’ve stopped bringing real energy and ambition into what i’m doing. and while i haven’t yet stopped being “effective” in my roles—effectiveness being judged in the most concrete of manners—i have stopped fulfilling the vision inherent to those roles.
get it out. deep down, it is about idolatry. as soon as i begin to realize my influence, my nature sees a certain self-importance reflected in that influence. and when i stop agitating against that self-idolatry, it begins to settle into my bones, forming my inner self. i start to become a man who thinks himself worthy of greater responsibility, of greater significance. i start to forget where my journey began—as one so desperate to escape himself and to be discovered by God that he wished for death. indeed, i find it so critically necessary at this juncture to both humiliate myself and to erect an altar to God. what is my life if not this journey, by which a broken and despicable man like me was given, by supreme grace, the pleasure of being a vessel of God’s love to others? and should my life ever become mundane or mechanical, just an iterative exercise in the bearing of “fruit”, then i would lose the life worth living.
today, i erect an altar of words. i tell you, God, in the best way i can that i am still the man of violent tempers and cruelty, defined by lust, betrayal, and utter arrogance. you took away my trappings of beauty; i lost my career, i lost self-respect, and i loathed myself for the reflection i saw most truly. i would not love me; and thus i cannot understand you, who loves me and thinks to preserve me. when i lift a hand to do something, i wish to lift it in your name. when i open my mouth to say something, i wish to say it for you. let me be paralyzed and mute but for the simple things you would have me do. i am a fool fit for rags, and my ambition is to be finished with myself and to be found in you, in the most intimate and spiritual of ways. i will die and my name will be forgotten, as it should, but by your strange grace, i will be accorded a true name in a place where you will be glorified, as you have always deserved. i need not be there; but because you promise it to me, there is no other home for me. i love you God, as a broken beggar with nothing to lose, as a man who owes you for the breath i breathe and the dignity that i can carry in the eyes of others. don’t give up on me. don’t leave me to destroy myself, with my own feelings and thoughts. live in me, and have my life. my altar is my words; my offering is my skin and bones; my hope is that it pleases you and always will. let fragrance come from my life. draw it from me, all of it. get it out of me
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12.21.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:54 pm by Administrator
if you’d told me ten years ago that our “news” would eventually be driven by twitter and youtube, i would’ve laughed in your face. there’s a difference, after all, between true journalism and the entertainment media. but we’re now faced with an interesting phenomenon: no one wants the full, fleshed-out story anymore. the news is the rumor; the key to success is the early tip-off; the assumption is that all news, no matter what the source, is necessarily a risk. the guys in finance and in politics have to be on the cutting edge; like them, the rest of us intuitively need to be part of the viral news stream.
we are increasingly connected to the source. we are increasingly conduits of data. the spin is the news; and bias is the necessary window dressing for everything. the court of public opinion, however misdirected, is both immediate and real, and the costs of being misjudged or villified now exceed what is containable. we have, it appears, truly created civil society—but in the most spectacularly threatening manner possible. even war can be justified and triggered by stray words, like those of an opportunistic defector who lied for the sake of personal revenge.
which reminds me of the Iraq War, and how it began. the last american troops have departed from Iraq, leaving a country that is in political shambles. the government has a warrant out for its own vice-president. the Shi’ite president is considering a purge to eliminate his Sunni opposition in the “bipartisan” government. the infrastructure of the nation continues to rest upon rich, influential, and violent tribal leaders, all of whom have long memories and axes to grind. violence and murder continue to plague the country, relentlessly.
listening to stories from the soldiers and citizens involved in the Iraq War has only reaffirmed my deeply tragic sense of the war. we invaded the country under false premises; we made no apology in retrospect for the incredible indignity of the unjustified war. America precipitated the deaths of half a million Iraqis over the course of the past decade. brides and bridegrooms were killed en route to their weddings; children were incinerated in mortar attacks; stray bullets destroyed families; and disorder precipitated years of looting and ruin which the country still has not recovered from. our strategists heralded the beginnings of liberal democracy; but the reality on the ground continues to be havoc and murder. and now we leave, curiously ambivalent, wishing that history will not judge us unkindly, while our media spews statistics and projections to cover our wounds. but history does not matter. the souls of a massacred generation have already judged us, and they have found the principles of our nationhood to be a cruel hypocrisy.
i feel shame, as i see what we have left behind. i feel shame for what we have done since 9/11, and it is a shame that i will carry for the rest of my life.
in the midst of this experience, i wonder why it is that there is not more anger and indignation in our political realm about what we have become. our focus, as it was in the last election, is on our economy. we bicker and battle about tax breaks and stimulus plans, as if the sole preoccupation of our government is the bottom line. there isn’t even a moment for pause, a moment for reflection, here at the conclusion of this 9-year war, for remorse or for mourning. young men are coming back with mental instability and bad dreams, and we call it the usual effects of war. we fail to connect to one another at the level of conscience. we fail to see ourselves for our failure and for our need to repent, learn, and change.
i fear for the youth of this society. they take it in—recession, war, chaos, and grief—in soundbytes and captions. they’ve learned to look at the specter of drone murder as a matter of daily routine; and they’ve come to believe that animalistic violence is a normal proceeding in their world. and thus, in response, they say nothing. a few trickle into an Occupy protest, to declaim capitalism. most are out for themselves, to find a job, to navigate a complex and changing post-bubble economic infrastructure. their voice of conscience is unchallenged and perhaps even stifled; they have been so thoroughly inculcated in the ruthless tactics of their elders that they have no room any longer for meaningful ideals, for fundamental questions. i fear for them, because they have no soul to speak of. and in twenty years, i will not only fear for them but fear them, because they are destined to be even more cruel than their predecessors.
for me, remembering what i am a part of—and being able to critique it—is essential to deconstructing over and over the identity that i am often too willing to assume. it is an identity of total entitlement; it is an identity which permits me to ignore the injustices and the cruelty that my kind imposes on the rest of the world. to be one of a new people, one must constantly cut ties with the tribe to which one might gravitate to otherwise. i am trying to be a man of conscience. i am trying to remember that i’m one human among many, and i am appalled by the death and the suffering of the world. once upon a time, i blamed God for these things. now, i find that i am a part of it, and it is all i can do to escape what i am, in the quest for an identity that has no home in the world of decay
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12.20.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:07 am by Administrator
so, artosis was going on about how the GSL Blizzard Cup Finals in December 2011 was the very greatest Starcraft series he has ever witnessed or commentated in his 14-year Starcraft career. he went as far as to suggest that this might be one of the greatest sporting events of all time.
i’m not sure i’d advance to that level of hyperbole, but it was a fairly amazing series to watch. if you want to see e-sports gaming at its best, here’s the link to game 7, between MVP_DRG and Slayers_MMA. talk about “nerd chills”; this was an eerily climactic series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1L55zFnZwU
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