My Christianity, not the church’s.

A child runs around, not really knowing what’s going on. Stubs their toe, cries a bit, and gets along in their day.

My Christianity is a lot like this. I ran around a lot, making – no kidding – after-rapture survival guides for my non Christian friends. If you ever want to burn bridges, there’s an excellent route.

I’ve heard it said before that every Christian goes through a few common phases. Initial conversion, obligatory ‘you should drink, smoke, chew, or hang out with anyone who does’ (this is a stage with loads of ignorance), and when the Christian begins to learn -finally – to love quietly, and to choose words.

There is so much more to say about this than what I’m saying right now. So what I’ll do is edit this over time.

I need practice. I need practice saying what I believe.

Saying that words can hardly describe my faith is not good enough anymore.

Pent up

Self awareness, at some point, is self obsession. Self reflection then is.a form of that same obsession, so to what extent is reflecting upon the condition of ones self become basking in the spectacle of the thing?

This is not the first time someone has attempted to broach the subject of the validity of self reflection – as it should well be, for if we as a people cannot learn from our immediate (or separated from the moment) failures, are we not then more inclined to fabulously perform those same feats of failure? Thus it is my conclusion that self reflection is then validated not in the spectacle of the reflection, nor the wittiness of the commentary. It’s validated in the improved health of the author.

In short, the more sensitive vessels – the ones more capably helped to health by the airing of some inner monologue – their improved health itself is the goal of such reflection, and the public exhibition of vice and virtue is the therapy to nurse such a one back to reasonable good spirits.

It is with this bias that this, and all other public journaling done here (and largely through the Internet, in this authors opinion) justifies the existence and very public nature of this medium.

I don’t think …

I don’t think God would actually think there’s weight to anything I tell him until I really cut my own hand off.

Not to be self-abusive. But I’ve lived a life of half-measures of holy dedication and hedonism. How can God ever consider me to be anything but shifting sand myself? 

For a Calvinist, habitual sin prohibits an a person’s salvation in the first place; the Arminian, that you’ve left your own salvation behind when you court another love. Either way, in habitual sin, you don’t know God.

I don’t know how to believe harder. I have to rationalize myself to me and others because…what the Bible says so clearly, I get so muddled in my sin and confusion. And I don’t really want to change, else I would have done it in the infinite chances to do so over the last decade.

Salvation by believing that Christ is risen in you heart and confession with your mouth. I can shout and scream, but I don’t know how to believe harder. This is when I think religious people are the intellectually inferior–what I hold true in my life is disproven by current scientific evidence; and my own lifestyle doesn’t line up with what I believe my behavior would be to indicate that I believe in the first place.

I have to be a sociopath for these two people that live within me to be at peace with each other.

PS: Now you know why I don’t tell anyone my (real) name, or why my friends don’t know about this blog. This entry will be uncategorized. 

Ever heard of PostSecret? Yeah..

So strange…

It’s so strange how I can bo so fired up to blog about something to profound…

And by the time I type in wordpress.com and hit ‘Go’ that steam has already evaporated. 

I wanted to rant about how love is precious, and people are precious…and how girls–as much as I want one to call my own….it’s only because I have such great friends overall that the motivation for getting one just isn’t happening anymore–yeah, bazumbas are fun, so I’m told, but….it makes me tired, thinking of what I would have to deal with.

And how Jesus is everything and it’s a scary choice ALL THE TIME and it shouldn’t ever allow others to suffer permanently for your indiscretion in personal drama with others.

You shouldn’t require something in law that you can’t mathematically or scientifically prove. The law is not a very good conscience. How can a group think it’s acceptable, regardless of how noble the intentions, to require something they simply can’t prove? 

I want to change the world. I think that’s a legitimate life goal. 

I want to love. 

I may be a sociopath. Not sure. I think sociopathology is extreme narcissism. 

UGH.

Good day, fair reader. 

My opinion of blogging.

Blogging is the concept of journaling coupled with the audacity that the entire planet needs to know. It is when I forget this that I can blog.

We would expect Dali Lama not to be ashamed of blogging. The whole planet looks up to him, right? He must think his thoughts worthy enough to share, or attached to a high enough cause, in order to enable him to share his thoughts with a clean conscience. Otherwise, the amount that a person would need to believe in (pride) themselves above all other men enough to elevate their own thoughts above their neighbors, on the scale of the entire connected planet, is massive.

And with this, I bid you–dear reader– a good day. Smile and share love with someone who needs it. You won’t be alone.

Letter

Dear God,

You know me. You watched me sleep, you know the dreams I had last night. There’s nothing I can do or say that would be news to you.

Do you want me to tell you you’re awesome? That you created everything and is always there and is every other God-thing I can think of? It doesn’t change the fact that you deserve it, but you also know that in my case it wouldn’t feel real.

God, I’m tired. I’ve been gorging myself on everything I can get my hands on. I want to cuddle. I want to pour myself into someone. I don’t think about when they wouldn’t pour back.

She would smile and laugh and somehow actually tell me something *funny*. God, what a miracle that would be. So no, I’m not thinking about it through and through. I don’t think about when she’s on her time. I don’t think about when she’ll not want touched.

So where does that leave me? Anyone would know. I’m the little kid punching the girl in the playground thinking it would get me what I want. I want the cuddling but not the commitment.

Ergo I’m selfish. And I’m tired, and I made me this way. And I don’t know how not to be.

I’m typing you a letter because I think I distanced myself from you. If you’ll read it…

I think you can fix me. I can’t. I don’t know how to stop wanting to be this way.

Tell me you love me. That will get me through this. That will help me live with me.

Sincerely,
Anthony

Bucket list

Watching clips of the golden globes, dear reader, I think that I felt the same that you did: that roaming nameless desire to match the accomplishment showcased that night. To that end, I felt compelled to compose a cavalier compendium of courses to carry myself on before my death. Now being compared to death would imply a measure of gravity, but I will tell you a truth I hold dear: humor is as necessary to every moment in life as air or water or food or love. It is a seasoning on all the best dishes. Is it within the marriage that carries through the years. It is within the people that thrive.

But the list.
1) tell every person, as relevantly as possible, of my God of love. See, I’m flawed. Why the need for humor? I think…I don’t know. I think humor is inspired in me by the same part that thinks that people live in snowflakes, people are precious, and that once you see a celebrity reveal their humanness–the desire to celebrate their persona fades to immaterial in face of their person. And that part is fueled by my God. He isn’t necessarily your God, He isn’t some religious obligation I need to fulfill. I won’t badger you about it, but if you ask me how I get through a hard time, I’ll give you spoilers right now as to what I would say. (:

2) Be seized by love.

I’m single, and 24 soon enough. Yes please.

3) Fulfill some items on by List Which May Be Contained in a Bucket (SOPA safe)

• be physically fit.
• write pretty script.
• produce a movie.
• act in a production.
• write a production.
• play improv piano
• speak French and Italian
• read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
• write a book.
• invent the Optical Computer.
• invent a car that has a HUD.
• invent Jarvis.
• have enough money to go do the things I’d rather do.
• learn how to dance.
• do sketch art
• combine cool flash video stuff and an OS
• have coffee with James Lipton

For an engineer, I sure as hell do love acting.

Orson Scott Card said something to the effect that writing–his passion turned employ–loses its stolen savor when it becomes your job.

Work what you like. Do what you love.
…

Things that make my eyes pee.

That picture there is for this worldwide effort to end Polio. It asks the leaders of the world to gather to support this endeavor…

 

what would the world be like if the logical choice to look for support was not the world leaders, but the church? That it could be the case of choosing between McD’s and the cheesecake factory?

The Thrill of My Lover’s…Stomach? Part 1.

“Order up, please!”
“Thank you!” Robbie responded.
He snitched the freshly torn stub of paper off of the squeaky pinwheel. Looking over the half-scribble, half-script list, he finds a culinary itinerary for a table, by his guess, of 4; using his summers of experience as Itinerant Line Cook Number Three, in one of the many kitchens within the bowels of the cruise liner his uncle served an administrative role in.
See the world, make food for people worth more than his dads life insurance policy.
Taking a seat in his mental recliner, he set about watching his hands make salads, pastas, one immaculate bowl of Smoked Paprika and Coconut Soup, a basket of bread, and three steaks. Medium rare, of course.
Of course.
Upon completion, he arrayed all the completed, nicely plated, foodstuffs on the shelf where the servers can pick it up. It’s incredible how restaurants got their design these days…you would expect these high rollers to want to at least see how their food has been prepared. Not so much. Funny how priests are always priests, shocking their congregations when their humanity rears its head, yet it’s humane to hide the process which prepares the food that people mash to bits every day.
Robbie had a bit of a goth phase back in high school. He’s since shed the stereotypical monotonal color scheme, but he developed a taste for his definition of macabre literature-which survived. Nobody took a pimply kid named ‘Robbie’ very seriously anyway.
His shift ended at about one thirty in the morning. The brine smell seemed to cut through the cooked-on grease in his mind as he walked along the deck, weaving between the drunk and the altogether far-too-loud-being-this-early crowd. It was never truly quiet on a cruise ship. Sophocles-or Socrates?-once said, ‘Beware the emptiness of a busy life’. This ship made its business making sure that all of its guests had no reason not to be busy doing something.
A spoke on a gear only feels useful when it’s actually touching another gear, the rest of the time it feels like dead weight. It literally is dead weight. Robbie looked forward to not thinking any more, and his bunk was just a few decks away.
Looking into the breeze, he saw the stars reflected off of the waves. God, he wishes he’d brought a camera-it’s a travesty, to see something so beautiful and not record it in some way.
He turned and walked towards his bunk.

Carpe Diem and Car Drama

When I just woke up from the wreck this summer, my attitude was different: not just from the drugs they gave me. It faded over time, but I didn’t forget: I had an irrational function to what I thought about doing. The nurse who tended to me was named Amanda and she was beautiful. Is beautiful. God, I hope she’s making some guy’s life amazing; she might as well been made of gold. The Girl Next Door who happens to be from Dubai. I wanted to kiss her. She was smart, considerate, patient. Everything professionally required of the nursing profession. But still, I saw her, wanted her, and wanted to build a life with her. I disqualified myself, the first charge being she had to help me pee for the first two days–and I’m in no way tolerable beneath the neck, and secondly with as much understated beauty she was equipped with I knew so many drugged up slobs drooled over so much I would be preternaturally indistinguishable from them. But it was simple. I’m alive, so is she, I want her, why not do it.

I went home and the trivial nature of an untested daily life surprised and frustrated me. It’s like being shocked at waking up one day to find you now hate your old favorite comfort food. What? All your old habits protest.

Marissa Miller was on Conan for the second time. Not the red dress, more of a young woman than a porcelain doll. I turned it off. Not often does a youngish man change then channel when a supermodel doth speak about anything really. But I figured what’s the point? Why do I need to know anything about her if I’m not going to be building a life with her? Why not save brain space for the one whom I will? And why not spend my time chasing her than spending time learning about a woman of whom no amount of personal knowledge will grant me an audience to build a relationship with regardless? Because that reasoning isn’t what stalkers use to justify behavior.

I watched Sucker Punch. Not an imaginative plot line, but it forced me to identify in spirit with the obscene men in that movie. Though my actions and theirs differ, our hearts are made of the same mettle. Pot metal. Carpe Diem.

The Adjustment Bureau. This time, take what God and Fate hand you, push and push and push until either God kills you or you convince Him to change his mind. I don’t often reflect on the times when Gods plan has been proven malleable by the actions and hearts of men. A static will with definite correctness may span more than a single set of finite choices and outputs. Try it.

God help me remember. Zeal may be one of the most precious gifts He gives. And absolution.