So I'm hanging in the (in)famous Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco...and I don't know why or what it was but I had this tremendous feeling of inadequacy - as if while I was there I was only three feet tall (rather than my towering 5'5").
I think partly it had to do with the variety of people who were there (if you've ever been, you know what a cast of characters you'll find there). But it wasn't just that. It was also how sure they seemed of themselves. They all seemed to have this invisible shield around them that protected them from the brutally prejudiced eye of society and because they had that protection, they were free to be who/whatever they wanted to be. I felt I lacked this force field and so I felt a kind of nakedness.
Now I know that as a child of Christ, I am to put on the armor of God which protects me from slings and arrows and such, but what about these people? I don't mean to judge but judging (oops) from the buttons, shirts, posters, graffiti, and bumper stickers that abounded, I'd say that most of the people there weren't Christians. Where do they get their armor, their confidence, their freedom to express themselves in such counter-cultural ways?
In part, I suppose it has to do with the fact that they're all counter-culturing together and so there's a kind of strength-in-numbers voodoo happening. I mean wearing a hyper-conservative suit or an anti Che Guevara shirt would be just as counter to their culture as them wearing their patches, tatoos, and piericings in the heart of San Fran's business district.
But it's not just that. Take the Suit in the Haight-Ashbury section guy. He's probably going to feel uncomfortable in that setting because he's not used to dealing with being dressed out of his element - in the world he's familiar with, everyone dresses as he does and to a certain extent, he builds his wardrobe around the unspoken assumptions of those around him. All that to say that he dresses to fit in.
In contrast, the H/A guy dresses in such a way that he will NOT fit in. I mean, in their own element, they all kind of blend together and fit in but because they dress in such a way that they expect to be disliked and disrespected, put them in the heart of the aforementioned business district and they're not uncomfortable with being out of place. Instead, they get a kind of affirmation of the style choices they've made precisely through that reaction. They want to make a statement by the way they dress and so disdain is a kind of affirmation of their style choices.
So then, the Suit dresses to fit in and so is uncomfortable when he stands out. On the other hand, the H/A guy dresses so as to not fit in and so rejection is the very reaction he wants. And in the end, maybe the reason I felt uncomfortable/naked/vulnerable there was because being around a bunch of very counter-cultural people made me question my own personality via style choices (because as much as we want to say/believe it doesn't matter, that we don't think about it, it DOES matter). I mean, how much of who I am is just a product of living primarily in polite society and how much of it is really who I am.
I suppose to a degree, the two are inextricable. Tony Campolo tells a story where a student came into his office. He said that he wanted to move away and camp out alone (a la Thoreau's Walden) to strip away all of the layers that society's expectations had deposited upon him.
Campolo countered with the onion analogy. Take an onion, he explained, and one by one, peel away the layers. Remove one and you'll find one underneath. Remove that one and there's another. Keep going, layer by layer. Do you know what you'll find in the center, he asked? Nothing. An onion is a product of its layers. In the same way, outside/environmental forces are a necessary part of who we are. "No man is an island," wrote John Donne, "entire of itself / every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..."
It's kind of like the nature/nuture debate (do our genes determine who we are or are we a product of our upbringing). People argue for one side or another but (as with most things) the truth is somewhere in the middle. Who we are is a product of BOTH how we were raised and what we were born with.
I'm not sure where all of this leaves me in regards to how I was feeling in the Haight/Ashbury district. I feel like I've circled around and grabbed by own rhetorical tail...but I feel better. Writing does that for me.
Can't wait to see what the rest of the Harrison tour has in store for me.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Monday, June 20, 2005
37. shedding the body condom
Here's what happened to me last week:
Monday morning, find my right rear tire almost completely flat. Pump it up again.
Tuesday morning, find my right rear tire almost flat again - I have a slow leak that must be looked at. Tuesday night my antenna breaks off my cell phone (for like the third time).
Wednesday, plagued by poor cell phone reception. Wednesday night my car gets broken into. Now this isn't like picking or pulling the lock kind of break in, this is the kind of break in where they smash the passenger side window out. If it weren't for the shards of leftover glass around the edges, it looks like I forgot to roll my windows back up. Luckily nothing was stolen. Still having tire problems.
Thursday morning, realize that something was stolen - my backpack - but there was nothing but paperwork from work in there. Thursday, early afternoon, realize that my checkbook was in there and that I need to get to the bank and close out the account before someone starts furnishing their living room, so I borrow my mother's car to run some erands. Thursday late afternoon, find out it's going to cost $170 to fix my window. Then mom's car overheats so that I have to pull on the side of the road. Because of poor cell phone reception I can't call anyone to come and help. I just have to sit and wait for the engine to cool off and pray that I can make it back home without a meltdown (I do).
Friday, got my window fixed but still having tire problems. Can't go to Firestone to get it fixed until Sunday. Cell phone reception still sub-par.
Sunday, something happens (can't go into detail...involves friends and assumptions on my part) that really knocks me off balance, mentally and emotionally. Well, at least I got my tire problem taken care of...and w/o charge (thanks, Firestone).
Fuck, it's like I just can't get a break. I mean the whole trying-to-think-positive thing was working up until Sunday, despite all the crap that happened this week. But I can only take so much and it's like on Sunday, I reached the tipping point. And I'm scared shitless because I recognize the state it put me in - it's the very state that I want to leave behind. I'm feeling the old bullshit paranoia - where I get to thinking that I'm a bad-luck magnet, that the twin moons that orbit my heart are named despair and frustration.
Life isn't making it very easy, but I have to remember my new credo: optimism as a revolutionary concept.
Optimism truly is a revolutionary, subversive thing. There's so much bullshit and cynicism and apathy out there - it's like this thick, invisible fog that we're saturated with. We breathe it in, it seeps in through our pores, it coats and clings to us like a slimy latex body condom. It's getting to the point where seeing a genuine smile is like spotting the real Elvis (amid the many impersonators). The pessimistic view of life is an assumption. A genuinely positive outlook (not a blindly sunny or naive one) is a shiny, pastel colored middle finger in the face of all the nastiness out there.
You know what? Here's one theory of why so many bad things happened this week. "Everyone has their own personal velocity," writes Rebecca Miller. And it's true. We all live life with certain assumptions and habits and comfort zones. Our lifestyle becomes a kind of vector by which our choices (and by extension, our future) can be predicted. It also develops a kind of wake around us that affects the things that surround us. Draw your hand through a still pool and you create a current. In the same way, our personal velocity exerts a pull on the life around us. Any change in direction will initially disrupt this flow.
I've made a decision to think more positively about life and this change grates against the momentum that all my years of negative thinking had developed. It's no wonder that I'm running head on into these disturbances. I need to push past this initial resistance, put my head down and power through.
The world defaults to negativity and I'm issuing an open challenge to that assumption. It's not easy but I must continue. I'm tired of thinking like everybody else. I'm tired of wallowing in the mud. There's lots of fresh air and freedom to be found above the fog - I've just got to keep flapping my wings, flailing away while I pray for updrafts.
And the sky's not the limit, it's the only the beginning.
Monday morning, find my right rear tire almost completely flat. Pump it up again.
Tuesday morning, find my right rear tire almost flat again - I have a slow leak that must be looked at. Tuesday night my antenna breaks off my cell phone (for like the third time).
Wednesday, plagued by poor cell phone reception. Wednesday night my car gets broken into. Now this isn't like picking or pulling the lock kind of break in, this is the kind of break in where they smash the passenger side window out. If it weren't for the shards of leftover glass around the edges, it looks like I forgot to roll my windows back up. Luckily nothing was stolen. Still having tire problems.
Thursday morning, realize that something was stolen - my backpack - but there was nothing but paperwork from work in there. Thursday, early afternoon, realize that my checkbook was in there and that I need to get to the bank and close out the account before someone starts furnishing their living room, so I borrow my mother's car to run some erands. Thursday late afternoon, find out it's going to cost $170 to fix my window. Then mom's car overheats so that I have to pull on the side of the road. Because of poor cell phone reception I can't call anyone to come and help. I just have to sit and wait for the engine to cool off and pray that I can make it back home without a meltdown (I do).
Friday, got my window fixed but still having tire problems. Can't go to Firestone to get it fixed until Sunday. Cell phone reception still sub-par.
Sunday, something happens (can't go into detail...involves friends and assumptions on my part) that really knocks me off balance, mentally and emotionally. Well, at least I got my tire problem taken care of...and w/o charge (thanks, Firestone).
Fuck, it's like I just can't get a break. I mean the whole trying-to-think-positive thing was working up until Sunday, despite all the crap that happened this week. But I can only take so much and it's like on Sunday, I reached the tipping point. And I'm scared shitless because I recognize the state it put me in - it's the very state that I want to leave behind. I'm feeling the old bullshit paranoia - where I get to thinking that I'm a bad-luck magnet, that the twin moons that orbit my heart are named despair and frustration.
Life isn't making it very easy, but I have to remember my new credo: optimism as a revolutionary concept.
Optimism truly is a revolutionary, subversive thing. There's so much bullshit and cynicism and apathy out there - it's like this thick, invisible fog that we're saturated with. We breathe it in, it seeps in through our pores, it coats and clings to us like a slimy latex body condom. It's getting to the point where seeing a genuine smile is like spotting the real Elvis (amid the many impersonators). The pessimistic view of life is an assumption. A genuinely positive outlook (not a blindly sunny or naive one) is a shiny, pastel colored middle finger in the face of all the nastiness out there.
You know what? Here's one theory of why so many bad things happened this week. "Everyone has their own personal velocity," writes Rebecca Miller. And it's true. We all live life with certain assumptions and habits and comfort zones. Our lifestyle becomes a kind of vector by which our choices (and by extension, our future) can be predicted. It also develops a kind of wake around us that affects the things that surround us. Draw your hand through a still pool and you create a current. In the same way, our personal velocity exerts a pull on the life around us. Any change in direction will initially disrupt this flow.
I've made a decision to think more positively about life and this change grates against the momentum that all my years of negative thinking had developed. It's no wonder that I'm running head on into these disturbances. I need to push past this initial resistance, put my head down and power through.
The world defaults to negativity and I'm issuing an open challenge to that assumption. It's not easy but I must continue. I'm tired of thinking like everybody else. I'm tired of wallowing in the mud. There's lots of fresh air and freedom to be found above the fog - I've just got to keep flapping my wings, flailing away while I pray for updrafts.
And the sky's not the limit, it's the only the beginning.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
36. the arc or change (part 2)...aka Cusack vs Giamatti
Current mood: rejuvenated
Victimhood. Everybody's a victim. I used to look down on people who pointed to problems in their youth as an excuse for their present inability to play well with society. And then I realized that I had been doing the same thing in my own life. Instead of using past problems as an excuse for behaving badly towards others, I used it as an excuse to beat myself up.
Here's an example. I've had very (make that VERY) bad luck when it comes to women. More accurately, I had very bad luck with one woman in particular (long, ugly story...I think I may have touched upon it in one of my older blogs). That episode (along with something else that happened at the same time...but she was the worse of the two) affected me so deeply that it became a kind of turning point. Before the Episode, life was wide open and the possibilities were endless. After the Episode, life was a closed circle with the cool, happy people on the inside and the sad, lonely losers on the outside. And I wasn't inside.
From then on, bad luck with women was a given. I accepted the thought that for whatever reason, I was chronically unappealing to women. I thought that perhaps through some genetic defect, instead of releasing come-hither pheromones when attracted to a female, my body released a subtle, toxic go-yonder scent that made it impossible to hold the attention of anyone I was remotely attracted to.
It sounds silly but I was convinced that I was doomed with women I was attracted to. I mean, there have been women who I knew liked me so I know I gots skills, but I just didn't feel the same way in return. I just thought I didn't have a chance with women I wanted to have a chance with. In my mind, Randall-attracted-to equalled Randall-doomed-with.
Here's how stupid I became. Let's say there's this woman...let's call her Kim. Kim and I got to hang out in social settings. She seems to be really smart, funny, and cool. Maybe she even has short hair and glasses (big points in my book). We seem to get along and so later in the week I start thinking maybe I should call Kim and ask her out. The instant that synapse fires, it triggers another one called the synapse of pain and humiliation. Once that happens, any chance I thought I might have had becomes overrun by predictions of doom and gloom of the worst sort. I mean I was so mental that in my head, I'd actually go through a scenario where Kim and I start going out, things work out well at first but eventually we discover an impossible to overcome conflict and we break up in the cruelest way possible...so I change my mind and don't call her.
All this because I haven't been able to free myself from being the victim of one bad relationship. Writing it now, it seems as retarted as it must read but at the time it made more sense to me than peanutbutter jelly = sandwich.
A few weeks ago I saw the movie, Unleashed, starring Jet Li. Li plays a character who, from a very young age, has been trained to kill at the whim of his mob boss master. He's a human attack dog and his master treats him that way, keeping him shelved away in a cage under the floor of his office.
Li gets away and after meeting up with a blind piano tuner and his daugher who take him into their home, he learns humanity, acceptance and the value of home - all without the benefit of therapy or psychotropic drugs, just love.
I can't remember what line or situation in the movie did it for me but I realized something that showed me how wrong-minded I'd been about hypothetical Kim and I. I realized that for the most part, past has nothing to do with the present - at least it didn't in my case. Mistakes and mishaps are meant to teach us lessons, not to serve as a template for the future.
I wrote mainly about relationships but the same holds true for other areas in my life. In so many cases, I used one bad episode after another to define the outcome of all future situations and so I shut down the dream machine, parked it in the basement of my mind and walked away because what use are dreams that will never come true?
No more. Every day, the sun rises on a new day. God designed it like this because he wants to drill into us the idea that as soon as we're ready we can pick our sorry selves off our ass and get back at living the life extraordinary.
However, patters once ingrained do not release their grip so readily. I still catch myself responding with the familiar (and comfortable) pessimism. It's a habit and a crutch but I've begun the hard work of weaning myself. It takes discipline (catching myself every time) but it's kind of fun. I mean it's so much nicer trying to stive towards hope than to wallow in self-pity.
One of my favorite movies is Say Anything (John Cusack and Ione Skye). I was listening to the director and cast commentary and they talked about how they wanted the main character, Lloyd Dobler, to be someone who embrased optimism as a revolutionary concept. I love that idea. There's so much bullshit and negativity in this world that optimism CAN be a kind of act of defiance.
Funny side note. I told a friend of mine that I used to want to be Lloyd Dobler when I grew up. He commented that I reminded him more of the Paul Giamatti character from Sideways. I had to laugh because it was true. Well I say from now on, fuck that. Giamatti's character was a whiny, pushover bitch. Once again, I want to be Lloyd Dobler when I grow up (and I'm 33 so I'd better get to it).
Victimhood. Everybody's a victim. I used to look down on people who pointed to problems in their youth as an excuse for their present inability to play well with society. And then I realized that I had been doing the same thing in my own life. Instead of using past problems as an excuse for behaving badly towards others, I used it as an excuse to beat myself up.
Here's an example. I've had very (make that VERY) bad luck when it comes to women. More accurately, I had very bad luck with one woman in particular (long, ugly story...I think I may have touched upon it in one of my older blogs). That episode (along with something else that happened at the same time...but she was the worse of the two) affected me so deeply that it became a kind of turning point. Before the Episode, life was wide open and the possibilities were endless. After the Episode, life was a closed circle with the cool, happy people on the inside and the sad, lonely losers on the outside. And I wasn't inside.
From then on, bad luck with women was a given. I accepted the thought that for whatever reason, I was chronically unappealing to women. I thought that perhaps through some genetic defect, instead of releasing come-hither pheromones when attracted to a female, my body released a subtle, toxic go-yonder scent that made it impossible to hold the attention of anyone I was remotely attracted to.
It sounds silly but I was convinced that I was doomed with women I was attracted to. I mean, there have been women who I knew liked me so I know I gots skills, but I just didn't feel the same way in return. I just thought I didn't have a chance with women I wanted to have a chance with. In my mind, Randall-attracted-to equalled Randall-doomed-with.
Here's how stupid I became. Let's say there's this woman...let's call her Kim. Kim and I got to hang out in social settings. She seems to be really smart, funny, and cool. Maybe she even has short hair and glasses (big points in my book). We seem to get along and so later in the week I start thinking maybe I should call Kim and ask her out. The instant that synapse fires, it triggers another one called the synapse of pain and humiliation. Once that happens, any chance I thought I might have had becomes overrun by predictions of doom and gloom of the worst sort. I mean I was so mental that in my head, I'd actually go through a scenario where Kim and I start going out, things work out well at first but eventually we discover an impossible to overcome conflict and we break up in the cruelest way possible...so I change my mind and don't call her.
All this because I haven't been able to free myself from being the victim of one bad relationship. Writing it now, it seems as retarted as it must read but at the time it made more sense to me than peanutbutter jelly = sandwich.
A few weeks ago I saw the movie, Unleashed, starring Jet Li. Li plays a character who, from a very young age, has been trained to kill at the whim of his mob boss master. He's a human attack dog and his master treats him that way, keeping him shelved away in a cage under the floor of his office.
Li gets away and after meeting up with a blind piano tuner and his daugher who take him into their home, he learns humanity, acceptance and the value of home - all without the benefit of therapy or psychotropic drugs, just love.
I can't remember what line or situation in the movie did it for me but I realized something that showed me how wrong-minded I'd been about hypothetical Kim and I. I realized that for the most part, past has nothing to do with the present - at least it didn't in my case. Mistakes and mishaps are meant to teach us lessons, not to serve as a template for the future.
I wrote mainly about relationships but the same holds true for other areas in my life. In so many cases, I used one bad episode after another to define the outcome of all future situations and so I shut down the dream machine, parked it in the basement of my mind and walked away because what use are dreams that will never come true?
No more. Every day, the sun rises on a new day. God designed it like this because he wants to drill into us the idea that as soon as we're ready we can pick our sorry selves off our ass and get back at living the life extraordinary.
However, patters once ingrained do not release their grip so readily. I still catch myself responding with the familiar (and comfortable) pessimism. It's a habit and a crutch but I've begun the hard work of weaning myself. It takes discipline (catching myself every time) but it's kind of fun. I mean it's so much nicer trying to stive towards hope than to wallow in self-pity.
One of my favorite movies is Say Anything (John Cusack and Ione Skye). I was listening to the director and cast commentary and they talked about how they wanted the main character, Lloyd Dobler, to be someone who embrased optimism as a revolutionary concept. I love that idea. There's so much bullshit and negativity in this world that optimism CAN be a kind of act of defiance.
Funny side note. I told a friend of mine that I used to want to be Lloyd Dobler when I grew up. He commented that I reminded him more of the Paul Giamatti character from Sideways. I had to laugh because it was true. Well I say from now on, fuck that. Giamatti's character was a whiny, pushover bitch. Once again, I want to be Lloyd Dobler when I grow up (and I'm 33 so I'd better get to it).
Monday, June 06, 2005
35. ...throwing around an idea...(fiction, sort of)
He realizes that he's been going through life with the wrong lenses on. But he's an analyical sort so rather than just blindly disbarking towards a new view of life, he begins formulating a kind of calcus of life. Unfortunately, he's never been very good at math.
He calls it a calcus of life because he wants a kind of formula for how to take in and analyze life. He uses the word calcus because he knows that any system that attemps to encapsulate life will be more complex than algebra or geometry (the extent of his math education). He knows nothing about calculus except that it's hard and it's a language spoken with geeky-cool looking symbols.
He knows that there are different ways of looking at life. Some take on life with an unswerving optimism or pessimism, but for him, that's not enough. Seeing life that way is just packaging - a bright wrapper or a dark one. Not enough.
Some think that the universe conforms itself to their perception of it. This is a tempting way to think about life and to a degree it's true. All we do as individuals is take in the world and the conclusions we draw from that input becomes our reality. It's not a great leap to think that you could reverse the process - begin with a version of reality that you want to see and believe in that vision so powerfully that it influences, bends, compells the universe to confirm to it.
But he doesn't buy this. Not after he read the story of Rachel, the author who wrote and spoke about just such universe altering ways of thinking. All her powers of thought could not change the reality of the hungry, sweaty, animal of a man forcing himself upon her after breaking into her home.
---BREAK---
This is just an idea I'm throwing around. I know it has something to do with this new outlook on life that I'm formulating. Like the character I was writing about, I know it's something new, something made up of bits and pieces of the ways I used to try to order the world but put back together as a kind of composite, a matrix where the individual elements are interactive.
It's very unfocused, unformed, random. I'm going to use any kind of writing I can to try to figure it out. There may be some odd blogs (and some mundane ones) still to come.
He calls it a calcus of life because he wants a kind of formula for how to take in and analyze life. He uses the word calcus because he knows that any system that attemps to encapsulate life will be more complex than algebra or geometry (the extent of his math education). He knows nothing about calculus except that it's hard and it's a language spoken with geeky-cool looking symbols.
He knows that there are different ways of looking at life. Some take on life with an unswerving optimism or pessimism, but for him, that's not enough. Seeing life that way is just packaging - a bright wrapper or a dark one. Not enough.
Some think that the universe conforms itself to their perception of it. This is a tempting way to think about life and to a degree it's true. All we do as individuals is take in the world and the conclusions we draw from that input becomes our reality. It's not a great leap to think that you could reverse the process - begin with a version of reality that you want to see and believe in that vision so powerfully that it influences, bends, compells the universe to confirm to it.
But he doesn't buy this. Not after he read the story of Rachel, the author who wrote and spoke about just such universe altering ways of thinking. All her powers of thought could not change the reality of the hungry, sweaty, animal of a man forcing himself upon her after breaking into her home.
---BREAK---
This is just an idea I'm throwing around. I know it has something to do with this new outlook on life that I'm formulating. Like the character I was writing about, I know it's something new, something made up of bits and pieces of the ways I used to try to order the world but put back together as a kind of composite, a matrix where the individual elements are interactive.
It's very unfocused, unformed, random. I'm going to use any kind of writing I can to try to figure it out. There may be some odd blogs (and some mundane ones) still to come.
34. the arc of change - part 1
I was going to title this entry "the turning point," but I realized that there's no such thing. Changes in life generally follow an arc, not a point. There may be pivotal points along this arc or a focal point around which the arc circles but the process of change is a continuum, gradually moving from one direction towards another.
I feel like my life has begun to bend, bending towards a more positive direction. See, I've been thinking about a lot of stuff lately, it's all been kind of simmering in my mind and finally, some clarity and understanding is emerging.
Put in the simplest terms, I've been wrong about a couple of key things and I want to make things right...because being wrong about these things has led me to a pretty dreary place in life. All my blogs lately have been rants of frustration and loneliness and I'm tired of it. I've been thinking about how I ended up there and I guess that's why I haven't been writing much lately.
Anyway, the first thing I was wrong about was God. I don't think I ever admitted it even to myself but if I followed the logical progression of my thoughts on God, I would have to admit that I believed that God was working against me - that the opposite of Jeremiah 29:11 ("For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future") was in effect. Randall's translation of that verse read something like, "...plans to harm you and not to prosper you, plans to rob you of hope and your future." Although I would not admit it (not even to myself), I lived with the assumption that God was working to make my life miserable and every setback, every disapointment served as confirmation of this belief.
I guess I ended up thinking this way because I was taught (or at least this is the thought I took from church which isn't exactly the same thing) in church that God was this sugardaddy, raining bling from the sky down to his faithful followers whom he loves. I kept waiting for my windfall and when it never came I slowly (the arc, remember?) came to the conclusion that God had no blessings for me and therefore God didn't love me and was working against me. Actually, I never really believed that God didn't love me, it was more like I believed that out of all God's children, I just wasn't one of the favored ones - I had to settle for leftovers and hand-me-downs - I identified with the faithful son and his frustrations more than the prodigal one.
So a couple weeks ago, it finally hits me. The understanding that I had of God was not the God that's described in the Bible (unfortunately lots of churches have that same problem but I'll save that for another time - see _Searching For God Knows What_ by Donald Miller). At this point I figured I only had two choices. Either my view of God was wrong or the Bible was wrong. With the weight of history and divinity against me, I folded.
But this is only the beginning of the arc. On the other side of the curve is a thriving, vibrant faith that fills my life with joy and light. On this side of the arc is a lot of chaos and uncertainty. I realize that I've been building a warped view of God - the model doesn't work and I've got to start dismantling it, finding the good bits, discarding the bad. It's going to be a lot of work but I'm betting that God wants to be known even more than I want to know him. "For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Luke 11:10) God will help me build an understanding that confirms to his reality. In contrast, my screwed up version of God took YEARS to develop because it was contrary to what God wanted me to believe.
Well, so ends part one. I was going to try to fit everything into one entry but this is WAY too long already. Stay tuned for part two - there's lots more Randall-was-oh-so-wrong still to come.
I feel like my life has begun to bend, bending towards a more positive direction. See, I've been thinking about a lot of stuff lately, it's all been kind of simmering in my mind and finally, some clarity and understanding is emerging.
Put in the simplest terms, I've been wrong about a couple of key things and I want to make things right...because being wrong about these things has led me to a pretty dreary place in life. All my blogs lately have been rants of frustration and loneliness and I'm tired of it. I've been thinking about how I ended up there and I guess that's why I haven't been writing much lately.
Anyway, the first thing I was wrong about was God. I don't think I ever admitted it even to myself but if I followed the logical progression of my thoughts on God, I would have to admit that I believed that God was working against me - that the opposite of Jeremiah 29:11 ("For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future") was in effect. Randall's translation of that verse read something like, "...plans to harm you and not to prosper you, plans to rob you of hope and your future." Although I would not admit it (not even to myself), I lived with the assumption that God was working to make my life miserable and every setback, every disapointment served as confirmation of this belief.
I guess I ended up thinking this way because I was taught (or at least this is the thought I took from church which isn't exactly the same thing) in church that God was this sugardaddy, raining bling from the sky down to his faithful followers whom he loves. I kept waiting for my windfall and when it never came I slowly (the arc, remember?) came to the conclusion that God had no blessings for me and therefore God didn't love me and was working against me. Actually, I never really believed that God didn't love me, it was more like I believed that out of all God's children, I just wasn't one of the favored ones - I had to settle for leftovers and hand-me-downs - I identified with the faithful son and his frustrations more than the prodigal one.
So a couple weeks ago, it finally hits me. The understanding that I had of God was not the God that's described in the Bible (unfortunately lots of churches have that same problem but I'll save that for another time - see _Searching For God Knows What_ by Donald Miller). At this point I figured I only had two choices. Either my view of God was wrong or the Bible was wrong. With the weight of history and divinity against me, I folded.
But this is only the beginning of the arc. On the other side of the curve is a thriving, vibrant faith that fills my life with joy and light. On this side of the arc is a lot of chaos and uncertainty. I realize that I've been building a warped view of God - the model doesn't work and I've got to start dismantling it, finding the good bits, discarding the bad. It's going to be a lot of work but I'm betting that God wants to be known even more than I want to know him. "For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Luke 11:10) God will help me build an understanding that confirms to his reality. In contrast, my screwed up version of God took YEARS to develop because it was contrary to what God wanted me to believe.
Well, so ends part one. I was going to try to fit everything into one entry but this is WAY too long already. Stay tuned for part two - there's lots more Randall-was-oh-so-wrong still to come.
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