Today is another of thousands of annual commemorations of the birth of Christ. God incarnate with us, for the redemption of a fallen created order. Why am I so focused on my own unhappiness? Where is my joy? Better yet, where is my joy rooted?

Thanksgiving and Christmas - these are strategic days, and the Evil One attacks me relentlessly on these days. Father, deliver me unto a peace of mind that results from being focused on You. Spirit, lift mine. Holy Son, I remember Your arrival into this world, and this day of remembrance cannot be more timely.

Bevo l'Alienazione Liquida

Coffee is my life, my heart in a cup. I clutch it in my hands, then drink down all of the rich bitterness. It's chock-full of ellipses, which summarize the distance between myself and others. Taste it well, take it all. Love is jumping from one dot to the next, hoping that the sentence, the conversation, the relationship, continues on the other side, not trailing off into nothingness.

What was the atomic bomb but an ontological statement? "We hold power over your existence." A wonderful end to the U.S. military's island-hopping campaign, no? They got sick of continually jumping from one dot to the next across the ocean made bitter as coffee by the never-ending nature of the chase, and decided to change the way that relationship was going to be.

But I'm not a violent person. This ends only when you decide to actually be on the other end of these ellipses, these islands in the gulf between us, so I can finally arrive to where you are. Or even decide to meet me in the middle. Or even decide, after all this time, that we can do without them.

Truth With Love

If you spit the truth in hate, it will hit them in the eye and blind them to the love of Christ. That is all.

On Listening to Secular Music

Responded to this post: http://www.revelife.com/717919608/the-popes-ipod-includes-tupac

How can you hope to change the world without encountering it? Some of Tupac's stuff is very insightful, and definitely engages the brokenness of the culture he lived in. We can't show love to our society by belittling its culture. I would argue that today's contemporary Christian music is no more biblical than most rap music; who are we to look down on others? I think that, even if the culture of our society is pagan, it can give us perspective on how to engage, challenge, and better it.

Instead of always looking in, and looking after our own, the Church needs to look out. Why is there a music industry geared toward an audience consisting of almost exclusively church-goers? We need to be ministering not only to our own, but also to our broken world, because we are as broken as "everybody else." By insulating ourselves in the Christian bubble, we are more than useless, deepening the divide between "them" and "us." We are salt and light. What use has salt that is no longer salty, or light that is hidden?

Christ himself went to the IRS agents, prostitutes, and terrorists. In a way, products of culture, in music, movies, books, etc. are expressions of the tortured soul of the world. Do you hear their cry?

Preliminary Reflections on John, Chapters 9 and 10 (Unfinished)

It's abundantly clear what I shouldn't be doing, but what is it that I should be doing? Looking back, I see that I was only ever motivated by passion. In high school, my devotion was to obtaining conventional success. College burned away the scholar-student in me. Rejecting old paradigms, I see clearly. But sometimes I wonder about this correction of vision. In the last year, it has seemed to me like those paradigms are what allow people to see what's not there, make something of nothing, create meaning in absurdity. All I saw was darkness.

But the saying goes that it gets worse before it gets better, doesn't it? It's like Jesus spitting and rubbing dirt in the eyes of the blind man. The guy has been blind since birth. It's just ridiculous that the person he wants to fix his defining problem spits in his eye. He has the biggest "WTF!?" moment of his life. And then he sees, upon obeying orders to wash, because he continues to go with it, despite whatever misgivings he may have.

John 9-10 is so good. I feel like it speaks to me. John 9:30-33, the response of the formerly blind man to the religious leaders:

The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."

John 9:34, the repose of the religious leaders:

To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out.

And then John 9:38, the response of the formerly blind man to Jesus, the giver of his sight:

Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him.

It's a two-fold response. Worship and witness. Upon receiving knowledge of the identity of the Son of Man, he doesn't hesitate to worship, openly proclaiming his loyalty. Before he was healed, he was already lowly in Jewish society, being essentially useless as a blind man. He is rejected by the religious leaders, that society's elite, for disrupting the status quo, proclaiming merely that a miracle has been performed on him and that it could only have come from God. He seals his own fate by embracing his renewed pariah status, and enacts through his swearing of allegiance to Jesus. The now-sighted man sees clearly, accepts what he sees, and proclaims what he sees. The leaders see the same thing, but refuse to accept it, and loudly repudiate it. Sheep to the right, goats to the left.

We also see how Jesus must have foresaw all of this. That his one act of healing would have forced the man to choose between him and society. His acts in our lives don't just exist in and of themselves; each demands our response. Does any formerly blind person wish to become blind again? Does he reject the reality before his eyes because it will cost him his comfort? How much do we love Jesus, really?