..fear

Sometimes I feel bulldozed by an idea and somehow it becomes the lens that I see my whole day/life through for a while. Usually its not something that I have been casually pondering for a while, it is usually a thought that pounces and knocks the wind out of me for a bit.

So today I had one of these idea/revelations/ponderings/whatever. I worked a fair trade show this morning. It was relaxing and it was really fun to do costumer service again, for 43 seconds I wanted to be a barista again. The organization I represented was completely, entirely above board and maybe was the perfect model of fair trade, so I take no issue with that portion of the day. But then I started thinking about altruistic consumerism, the thought that enlightened Americans can consume the world out of its misery if they just make the right purchasing decisions. Granted I do not think that this is the primary motivation behind legitimate fair trade businesses but perhaps a broader trend in America (and it is proven that if a consumer believes that companies are charitable with their money or send a certain percent of their profits to an organization, they are more likely to buy from them). The (red) campaign is not going to end the AIDs pandemic and anyone that buys a t-shirt with that notion is horribly mistaken. But maybe its something else. Perhaps wearing a (red) shirt or ordering fair trade coffee or giving your mom a plastic goat symbolizing the new addition to a Bolivian family for Christmas are all noble and worthy things to do. But a part of me asks why do I have to buy something, participate in a barrier, to transfer love and humanity to another person. Is there a part of altruistic consumerism that is guilt subduing but also rooted in fear? Fear of seeing difficult things and having to go some place difficult without the comfort (and barrier) of your wallet?

And then there are entire parts of people that seem scary. People are messy and if you learn too much about who they really are or see them in compromising situations there are things that we become afraid of. We are afraid of the unknown in people, the dark spaces of personality that seem to lurk in conversation, never being discovered. I think that I am scared that people will need me more than I can give, that people will ask me to be better than I am currently, that somehow we will get stuck to each other and then it will hurt like a band-aid when we take opposite paths. Somehow most of the social ticks that I have, the little psychosomatic dialog that seems to always be running, is really rooted in a basic fear. Scared of myself, scared of other people, scared of what it means for us to be together.

And then there is theology. I don't want to be scared of theology. I don't want to be scared to be wrong about God or what it means for me to follow them. I want to believe in a God that is perfect and exists in unending love regardless of my accuracy in systematic theology. My failures in life and misinterpretation of the bible do not compromise who God is, they might make my life more difficult, but welcome to the struggle. I find it suffocating and deeply troubling to be scared of screwing up my theology. In some ways living in fear of a misguided spiritual step leaves me a paralyzed and paranoid Christian. This is what I have been saved from! I have been saved from living in fear of being wrong, of not doing enough, of listening to people who might not have all their theological ducks in a row. I have been saved to life and that is one terribly messy endeavor. When you look at the bible, people who are following God don't live lives of difficulty solely because of outside persecution - often times it is difficult because they tried and failed or just failed outright. To fear spiritual failure is to reduce the unconditional love of God to a flighty, inadequate substitute.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (John 4.18)

..home

Right now I am wearing two pieces of polar fleece and some part of this experience tells me that I am at home. REI apparel and cat hair.

Speaking of cats: We have a new one. My dad found it abandoned in a park and took it home so that he could be warm on Thanksgiving. It is strange to me how compassion towards animals seems so altruistic but really it could just be someone avoiding a hard form of love. The cat (which my mom wants to name Splat, that's a rotten name) has only about half a tail and the half that it does have is crooked. We also have an old cat that we lovelessly call black cat. Ever since we got him he has ate Tucker's dog food. At first it was kind of a cute little nugget of irony and so my parents kept on feeding him dog food. Well apparently this summer he looked like death and lost all of the hair on his belly. They gave him flee medicine which helped but also started to give him cat food. He doubled in weight. Apparently they had been starving him unknowingly. I can't really think about it. It's really sad to me.


Speaking of loosing hair: I'm sick. Whatever. I'm sick and I'm home and I feel comfortable. I think that I might start thinking of home as a place where I can be completely comfortable when I have sick breath, green mucus, and no desire to move. Maybe family is the people that I would want to care of me. Its the people that I would take care of it they where sick because I wanted to and the people I would accept help from because I knew they wanted to help me.

Speaking of death: Suicide has been a theme in my life recently. I went to school the other day and someone was jumping off of the Aurora Bridge. I was listening to NPR last night and they were talking about the frequency of farmer suicides after drought or after an economic downturn where people can't repay the debt that they owe. My parents said that someone jumped off of the Falls today, on a holiday. There is something about suicide that seems brave. I think that there is a part of every human that wants to die. For different reasons, and the reasons probably aren't all good. I think that being honest about a desire to die is being honest about human experience and I respect that a lot.

Speaking of human experience: Whenever I come home I feel like people try to make me do things that I don't want to do. Okay, just my dad. He wanted me to watch a scary movie and I just didn't want to, for some reason it's just not that relaxing to me. He then makes it a big deal when I don't. Also, meat. He gets a huge kick out of me eating meat. This is one of the reasons why I started eating meat again, because I didn't want it to be a big deal. I think that at the base of this my irritation with this is that he seems to find more humor or happiness in seeing me do things that I don't like than vice versa. Whatever. It's probably to grow me as a person or some vague parental bullshit like that.

Thanksgiving. All I want today is to be grateful for my family. If this happens I feel like it will be more God than it will be me.

..bad

When Wallingford residents walk their dogs, their dogs poop, they bag their poop, and then put it in our garbage can. This is not okay.

When our toaster is 2 centimeters too small for all normal slices of bread. So you put it in vertically and it toasts one half but then you flip it over to toast the rest and it burns the center. The center is the best part and that makes me hate our toaster.

There are bigger fish frying in the world though.

..sociology

I have fallen in love with sociology... again. Sometimes I feel as though may relationship to this discipline is like a strange marriage- at times it is amazing and I am raptured with it, other times it is a necessary evil that I have chosen to commit to. But then there are these times when it seems to sweep me off of my feet and I remember all of the reasons why it is so profoundly important to me.

So yesterday I got the opportunity to present a paper that a professor and I have been working on over the summer. Although this seems like a big deal to me, in the real world of academia it is just another paper floating around, being worked on, and maybe someday, people will read it. So really, it's not that big of a deal outside of the context of my small, SPU undergrad experience. The presentation was quick, I was nervous at times, forgot one of my terms, fumbled a little bit on one of my slides, and generally just sat there, took notes, and nodded my head while Jason was fielding questions and explaining concepts that we had talked about for months.  I felt small and young, like a wide-eyed little cousin, looking around the room at all of the big kids who talked about big concepts with precision and accuracy, mouth slightly agape in awe.

And while they where ripping our paper apart, critiquing it intensely, and sobering us up after months of staring at it, I was so intensely thrilled. I have been thinking about grad school lately and a lot of my thinking feels like it did pre-college, like it's the natural next step, something that I could passively enter into (or at least claim interest in) without much thought. I don't want to be too epic about it, but yesterday gave me a glimpse of a little bit more of the actuality of what being in post-grad might look like. 

Being at SPU I have often felt the need/pressure to find out how 'God' or  'his will' works into my education and my 'vocation'. Finding the theological relevance/justification for what I am doing. Or maybe finding out how my education will be of use to God one day, preparing me for a meaningful life of service... like social work or urban ministry. I could type out little reflection papers and snip-its of meaning and I really do believe in the importance of my education as a tool for my future life. But I have never experienced God in learning. It's always seemed like a post-factum attempt at painting my education with spirituality and it was starting to feel like I was gilding self-interest/personal promotion with altruistic motivations. 

But I love sociology. I experience God in doubt, in challenge, and in excellent sociology. It attempts to answers questions of 'why' that I annoyingly ask like a 4 year old all of the time. I love learning and having my ideas be pushed back against and challenged.  I see the importance of excellent thinking and education as a not just a means to a spiritually sacrificial end but as a form of worship in its own right. Yesterday something aligned... or that's kind of what it felt like, for lack of more articulate terms. Higher education no longer seems like a selfish next step that I have to justify with a worthy carrot of service at the end of the journey. I think it is something that would be (will be) profoundly fulfilling and life-giving in and of itself.

I would also venture to say that it makes me want to do well in my housing class. Apparently, a true revolution has happened to me because I loath that class. Oh, and another thing... I think yesterday I learned the difference between being challenged and being overwhelmed. The critique of the paper basically means a shit-ton more work on a paper that I am getting 0 credit hours for but it made me happy. School, daily questions, online quizzes, random sporadic readings in 4 divergent subjects is slightly overwhelming in the quantity. This distinction is important for me to remember. Being overwhelmed with the quantity and (at times) poor-quality of school right now does not reflect accurately on my relationship to education. I feel like I am back in kindergarten, where I am really excited to go to school again. Sweet.

..significant

Perhaps there is some significance in the fact that this is my 112th post and it is happening on November 12th. I'm  guessing there isn't though...

I feel angsty. Like pissed for no reason,  just always want to be somewhere else, angsty. Granted it's not with everyone and it's not in every situation but I just feel intense pangs of discontentment at times and their repetition is difficult to ignore. I can't put my finger on what's causing it. Perhaps its just a general shift in my tide and the unsettledness is getting to me.  Who knows... I just don't like being ungrateful and annoyed by people and things that I am blessed with. I feel like a selfish brat, going around stomping on daisies and knocking cupcakes out of my friends' hands. 

I just want to scream or to punch something, not to release anger but just to release.  I feel angsty about a lot of my relationships and where they will seem to fall post-grad. I am angsty about being in school now and the thought of not being in  school later and the thought of ambiguous grad school in the future.  I am angsty about vague things and who I am and how my education and my personhood actually translate into something of meaning. I feel angst when I feel like I spend large amounts of my day bullshitting with people. I know it's bad when I wish people had some more Marx in them, at least I would see a few sweat beads of conviction on their forehead. But maybe I just want a little more Marx... I have spent a while over the last year or two becoming more moderate. Definitely really needed. But moderate is confusing.  It's intentionally choosing middle places, places of tension and mediation. There is a person inside of me that wants to fight for something, to lay it all down for a worthy cause. Let's face it... an academic career just isn't going to do it for me. Well, right now while I'm writing this it won't, maybe later. I just want some meaning to my madness and some focus to my heart because angst seems like an exhausting, dead-end endeavor.

Whatever. I don't know what I want and that's okay. 

..not done yet

In regards to the election of Obama.

Yesterday was a breath of fresh air for many tired souls and a country that was loosing endurance.

(Full, slightly inciting, article written by Tim Wise found here: Good, and Now Back to Work)

First and foremost, please know that none of these victories will amount to much unless we do that which needs to be done so as to turn a singular event about one man, into a true social movement (which, despite what some claim, it is not yet and has never been).

And so it is back to work. Oh yes, we can savor the moment for a while, for a few days, perhaps a week. But well before inauguration day we will need to be back on the job, in the community, in the streets, where democracy is made, demanding equity and justice in places where it hasn’t been seen in decades, if ever. Because for all the talk of hope and change, there is nothing–absolutely, positively nothing–about real change that is inevitable. And hope, absent real pressure and forward motion to actualize one’s dreams, is sterile and even dangerous. Hope, absent commitment is the enemy of change, capable of translating to a giving away of one’s agency, to a relinquishing of the need to do more than just show up every few years and push a button or pull a lever.

This means hooking up now with the grass roots organizations in the communities where we live, prioritizing their struggles, joining and serving with their constituents, following leaders grounded in the community who are accountable not to Barack Obama, but the people who helped elect him. Let Obama follow, while the people lead, in other words.

For we who are white it means going back into our white spaces and challenging our brothers and sisters, parents, neighbors, colleagues and friends–and ourselves–on the racial biases that still too often permeate their and our lives, and making sure they know that the success of one man of color does not equate to the eradication of systemic racial inequity.

So are we ready for the heavy lifting? This was, after all, merely the warmup exercise, somewhat akin to stretching before a really long run. Or perhaps it was the first lap, but either way, now the baton has been handed to you, to us. We must not, cannot, afford to drop it. There is too much at stake.

The worst thing that could happen now would be for us to go back to sleep; to allow the cool poise of Obama’s prose to lull us into slumber like the cool on the underside of the pillow. For in the light of day, when fully awake, it becomes impossible not to see the incompleteness of the task so far.

So let us begin.

..later

On Sunday someone said,  "I only experience God in the present." True. I can see God and reflect upon their work in my life through the past, but this moment is the only time I experience God. I can put faith in God, in the things of my life that are unseen and in the future. I think that I have made the concepts of faith and trust words about the future. I want to reclaim them in the present tense.

Today I was given the gift of information. 

I am the first person in my family (with the exception of my great  Aunt who got a Masters in Teaching) to consider going to graduate school. My immediate family is not an academic one and the fact that I have done moderately well at school has always been praised, but viewed as an activity very particular to me, like a little stroke of luck.  Education has always been valued and respected in my family, but it has not been celebrated.

I'll be honest and say that I know little of the culture surrounding graduate school,  PhD programs, or what the life of an academic is actually like. Grad school is becoming more and more appealing as the formulated structures of undergrad become increasingly oppressive but it is still a nebulous concept to me. 

People have told me vague things like... 'You are going to grad school, right?' 'You should get your PhD...' and I just want to tell them, "I want to I just don't know how." It's the constant conversation I have with myself, finding the equilibrium between upbringing and ambition, the way I was nurtured and what my nature is. But there are people in my life that just tell me information.  They tell me that if I love sociology that I  have to be a professor, otherwise I will apply sociology to a field, but won't be a student of it. They teach me what it means to be deeply,  almost spiritually, invested in learning and what brightness it can bring to the world. 

I probably think too much,  which sounds like arrogance, but I over analyze the hell out of everything. I don't need people to question  me about what I want to do, to help me ferret out my suppressed inner longings. I just need people to tell me like it is because I don't even know enough to begin to evaluate my interest. Do I want to be a professor? Ha! I don't know. I don't know what I want to do tonight. Worrying about it won't help, just like planning out my life won't help. I want to be more rooted in now, in the people in my life now, in the place of life I am now. I want to find faith and trust for this time, finding fullness through the richness of God now, not just leaning into an ambiguous better tomorrow.

Perhaps temptations of future thinking are little cracks my wholeness, signs of my brokenness if you will. I want to think about a better, more complete tomorrow because there is hope for  wholeness in a place that is not yet broken for me. But trust and faith in the present push me deeper into the reality that I am broken.  I am broken and dying and fumbling to find something better all of the fucking time.  I want to think about tomorrow because it is a salve  on the disappointment of today. Accepting Grace for today means that I have to learn how to accept the fact that God loved me today, and that is something that I embarrassingly do not understand.

Further musings:

Sin is brokenness. It leads to bondage.

I am in bondage because I am a broken.

I sin because I am in bondage. 

My sin does not make me a sinner, brokenness is in my nature.

Jesus come to show us what lives of freedom look like.

The cross was breaking of bondage.

Jesus chose to die for my freedom, he did not do it to satiate God's wrath.

Grace is the medium that connects my brokenness to God's perfect love.

Grace is probably the most confusing thing in my life.

Grace seems more robust than 'getting something I do not deserve'.

What if the only thing between me and God was me? 

Why do I usually assume that that they are reluctant and difficult to impress?

Maybe the question should not be, 'How can God love me?' 

It seems to have already been answered.