| the landslide |
[Nov. 30th, 2004|01:49 pm] |
| [ | this music will change your life |
| | john coltrane - too young to go steady | ] |
so its been a strange few weeks. we've decided to buy a house and then decided that we couldn't and then decided that we should and then that we shouldn't. we decided to leave scm, but we aren't. we challenged my parents and were admonished by my grandmother for our audacity. we wrote our christmas lists and made new years resolutions in november. our entire life hung in the balance like an intangible tsunami. and here we are at the tail end (we think) of it all. today we meet with our realtor and (probably) decide to wait another year to buy a place. tomorrow i go to school and meet my fellow classmates who will (likely) tell me that i did not get the job that was promised to wisk us away from it all. then i will (maybe) tell my parents to expect my services at this company for another two years or so. and things will largely go back to normal from an outside perspective.
but in all of this i sit back just perplexed at everything. what happened? why did all of this happen? why did we make this big plans that seemed so possible only to have them fade away so suddenly? was it God? was it just dumb luck? it seems too strange to be just a coincidence or chance. but what did i learn here? then again, almost two hundred whales and dolphins have beached themself on the beachs of austrailia and new zealand in the past few days, and we're told that is likely a coincidence as well. so who knows.
still though, there were some good things in the past few weeks. i told my parents about my plans for the future that do not include scm, which has really made things better and more real with them. my grandma totally encouraged us with all of our plans as well and said nice things about me and cate. cate and i are in love more and more every day. plus we're doing much at being with God and trusting him. we also have decided that we need to stop being lazy and start eating good and exercising and doing better with our money. and this time i believe we match our conviction with our determination.
i am having a hard time with work lately though. every day just seems awkward and sullen. i think i am a big part of the problem, which is even more frustrating. but i'm just tired of hearing the stupid slogans and getting the nonsense lectures on "value added" and "safety solutions made simple", blah blah blah. i'm tired of feeling like a fool.
so that's all. its december tomorrow, and not a moment too soon. |
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| witty song lyrics do the talking for me |
[Nov. 1st, 2004|02:55 pm] |
| [ | this music will change your life |
| | the gloria record - miserere | ] |
so the month of october hurried by like a stranger and now its november. well, its not really october's fault. for three weeks i was stuck in a chemical plant, saving the world from itself. salary has its benefits but the last three weeks were not them. i would have made over one whole extra pay check last month if i were an hourly employee. oh well, such is life.
speaking of life, its a weird thing these days. my lovely wife and i are growing more hopeful so that's good. we're deciding whether a change in positions for me is in the cards. of course the down side is that we endanger the relationship with my parents, which may actually be a good thing, but no one really knows for sure. the up side is that it gets us closer to where we want to go, or at least that is what we think. the real issue is that i need to grow up in confidence and get rid of pride. for now though we're just going to wait and see what God wants us to do in all of this. because without him its like peanut butter without jelly. (i hope that wasn't blasphemy)
the election is tomorrow and thank God. i'm so tired of all this political hub-bub. i just want whoever wins to just get down to business making this country better. its so amazing to me all the misconceptions and distortions there are about. if you believed either side you might believe that this election is a choice between abraham lincoln and adolf hitler. of course this isn't the case. george bush isn't as bad as everyone makes him out to be and john kerry isn't as bad as everyone makes him out to be. the only problem is that not enough people are saying this so that we can have an actual real debate about what each candidate truly stands for. there's too much propaganda and flair thrown into everything to see the real truth. and for that i resent both sides of the aisle. it is depressing to see how far people will go in order to gain power. sure, you could argue its for the greater good but at what point must we say that the means has become so corrupt so as the make the ends meaningless?
tonight i go to a rock show and i'm excited and then again on saturday. its november, its fall, and i am beginning to feel alive again. |
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| no one can hurt you now |
[Sep. 30th, 2004|09:04 am] |
| [ | this music will change your life |
| | new end original - better than this | ] |
hello. so its been a long time. anyways, much has happened, but really nothing of much interest to the rest of the world. i went on a vacation with my wonderful wife for one week and it was awesome. we just stayed home mostly and relaxed together. and we celebrated our first anniversary together. we've been together for one year and its been awesome. how strange to have been married for one year now. but its been so great. i have rarely been as happy as i am now and its all because of her.
plus, we've both been making a concerted effort to improve our collective and respective relationships with jeezy creezy (aka. god). its really fulfilling. i feel more full, and real than i have in a long time. its amazing how easily one can lose god in all the hustle and bustle. silly me.
the winner for most annoying political/social bumper sticker: "an eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. -ghandi".
ok, so i don't want to disrespect ghandi because he truly was a great man. but just because he's great doesn't mean he was infallible. i will agree that people are sometimes too quick to look for revenge when they should really look for a solution to the problem, and perhaps if the quote were talking about merely the act of vengence i would buy into it. vengence is wrong. however, i think sometimes that people equate vengence and justice. the two are not synonymous. and i know that some people would say that christians are supposed to turn the other cheak, and they are right, we should. we should not seek revenge when people wrong us. but that does not preclude that governments can seek justice for wrong doing. in romans 13 paul tells us that christians should obey the laws because governments "do not carry the sword for nothing". and even on a personal level, jesus said that if someone wrongs us we are to forgive them, but if they do not turn from their ways, even after we have given them chance after chance we should shun them. this isn't vengence, this is justice, it is solving a problem and having people reap what they sow.
this is how we should approach it: justice is about solving problems. now to some this would sound cold, but its really not if you accept the idea that people and their sin are two separate entities. we are not our sin, or our "flesh" as the bible calls it. we are not slaves to sin or our flesh forever simply because sin is not a part of us. it is something that we have accepted over time. and like an infection it is connected to us, but it is not us. so by seeking justice we are working to help destroy that infection.
the problem with the quote is that it does not accept the facts of human nature, namely that for many people if there were no consequences to our actions we would go on being lawless and eventually hurt ourselves and others. if you weren't afraid that at some point you might get a speeding ticket would you really obey the speed laws? if we were honest most of us wouldn't. the point is that pain isn't always bad for people. personally, if i hurt someone unjustly i hope they call me on it and i hope it hurts me because things that hurt me i usually try to avoid. pain and justice are important, and even war has a place in human events. when people refuse to accept morality and justice we must deliver it. we aren't creating immorality by waging war, we are merely accepting the immorality that confronts us.
those are my thoughts. it may sound pretentious but i hope its clear that all of us need punishment sometimes. we all mess up and we all need forgiveness, and sometimes, we all need to feel the pain of justice against us to get us back on the right path so we don't hurt ourselves and others. the end. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 18th, 2004|02:34 pm] |
| [ | this music will change your life |
| | death cab for cutie - passenger seat | ] |
life seems like mess these days. we thought that we were going to enter a period of calm but things remain chaotic and confusing. the good news is that we moved into our new place and its going great. i also got a raise, which is always nice.
still though, i feel numb right now. i'm not really sure how to explain it. i'm just blank. i'm not really sure what to think or how to function. i wish for everything that we had people around us who we could trust and respect that we could lean on right now but for some reason true friends seem elusive. my friends only get annoyed at me when i tell them i can't play poker this week. still, i always wonder if perhaps it is us who really are the problem. maybe we're the assholes and everyone else just normal. maybe we're overreacting to everything and we should just go play poker and have superficial conversations with people who don't really care about anything below the surface.
oh the bitterness.
anyways, still i find myself raising the question, am i wrong? maybe all of this is just silly. maybe idealism is for suckers. nothing will ever be perfect, i know that but am i in the same breath demanding perfection?
bah, all i want is to go home and hold my wife. |
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| where bumper stickers preach |
[Jul. 20th, 2004|08:21 am] |
| [ | this music will change your life |
| | the rolling stones - honky tonk woman | ] |
god bless america, where every car is a billboard. here's a real winner:
how's that for real intelligence? who cares that, in reality, Bush's and Kerry's plans for the war on terror are largely the same. i don't need to waste my time with facts when i've got sean hannity to make my decisions for me. liberals are all liars!
this one is my favorite piece of conservative ignorance:
once again, forget the facts. forget every battle that the US lost in every war in which, truly, the colors ran. forget about the korean war. forget about vietnam. forget about somalia. forget lebannon. don't get me wrong, i'm as big a patriot as the next guy, but patriotism should not be based primarily on blind emotion. america isn't great just because we feel that its great or that we want it to be great. its much deeper than that and things like this cheapen that.
here's something that's interesting, although i'm not sure if its true or not:
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