Frustrated

Fuck. Man it has been a long time sense I said that word. It feels so good sometimes just to let it out. Few words do that better that Fuck. FUCK. Ah such a raw soothing sound. I have been reminded of a dream I had in the past. It was the dream of picking up and moving deep into the forest and building myself a cabin with my hands and living off the land until I die. I always thought it was a good idea until I started to enjoy people more. But I was reminded why I wanted to do it in the first place. Drama.

I hate how the human species interacts with itself. The whole thing is twisted and messed up. The human system is no exception to the laws of thermodynamics. The more structure one tries to put into their life the more chaos they must cause in the world around them. It takes so much energy to order everything and keep it that way. I hate the fact that statistics can rule over us so easily.

People get so mad at each other for no good reason. Because one does not see that they were hurting the other. Because everybody has such a crapy time at putting themselves in others shoes. What the hell are you all doing? We sure as hell aren’t walking around bear foot. Perhaps that is what we all need to do, just rip off the shoes and let our true colors fly. Perhaps then we will see that we all get cut by the same broken bottles and the same cool water sooths all of our weary feet.

The problem as I see it is reality. It is far too common an assumption that reality is a singular thing. That there is only one reality. I say that is crap and simple cannot be. Reality is defined as the quality of being true. How can everybody say that they know the truth when everybody has a different truth? I say there is not truth that will satisfy all. There will always be somebody that can deny the truth of anything. Therefore nothing can be true. How then can I call myself a believer in God, is God not truth? God is truth for me but that is just me. God is simple another name for truth, a few more attributes than that but at its core that is what it is. Everybody has a truth even if they call it by a different name. The only thing that bothers me is when people ignore their truth. I never have understood why people don’t like when others disagree with them. It never made sense to me. I’m okay with people disagreeing with me because they are not in the same reality as me and they never can be, but at least they are looking for something and know where they stand.

So fight, bicker, and argue. Just don’t let it become drama. Don’t let it linger. Life is not about moving the same path to the same point. It is about cutting your own path and seeing where you end up. I think I will wait a bit on my retreat to the forest. that it is posible is son told us that our sins were forgiv

Remembering Something that I Promised Myself I Would Never Forget

I went wandering yesterday. It had been a long time sense I simple wandered and I remembered something that I promised myself a long time ago back before God found me. Back when I only saw logic and nothing of faith. Back when I wandered.

I found in those times that wandering cleared my mind. The simple movement of the feet allowed for the mind to drift where it wanted to and where it needed to be. It had been I long time sense I walked without destination. Sense I simple lifted my legs and cut loose the anchor on my mind. I did it yesterday again and it was wonderful.

My blood is thick with the history of a people that were ill content with walls and permanency. I am a Norse man. A barbarian. A Viking. I have never been a person to enjoy walls or a solid roof. I find that my feet feel best on the fermenting needles of a pine forest. And my eyes are comforted my by the soft light of the dimmest stars of the sky. I enjoy moving. Some people enjoy driving other bike, still others running or jogging. Not I. I simply like to walk. I like to take my time and see what is around me and to watch the world transform as I am transformed in it.

So I walked yesterday and I remembered that I had once promised myself to live a life that was a wander. I have a good reasoning behind this. It was a promise from before I had faith but it fits perfectly with faith. My rational is that anything worth doing is not about the destination or the final outcome. It is about the journey that it took you on to get to that end. I my eyes life is, most certainly, worth doing, if it were not I would not try to live it. So this is what I want to see life as. Not as a means to an end but as a journey, an adventure. Death is only that end of that adventure. Or perhaps the start of a new one.

I found myself trying to figure out how to live like this how to live the adventure of life. I found three aspects that I need to work on in my own life to make my life a wandering one. Perhaps aspect is not the right word for them; they are more life guidelines for me.

1. Respect the past. Look at the past like you would an old beloved man. One that has lived a good full life with no regret. A man that you learn from but do not rely on. An old man who loved life and is loving it but will welcome death the same way that he welcomes the morning sun- a matter of fact. A man content and at peace with who he is. This is how I should look at the past. The past is this old man. Let the past die but remember it.
2. Now. Do it now. Let the world be as you want it to be. Force nothing. Let your words and actions come from nowhere but your heart because that is where God resides. That is where everything must come from. Let peace flow from the heart. Do not cling to now. When it is past let it go and when it comes hold it close. Live in the now because it is the only place where you can do anything about the where you sand in the world. It is the only place where you can affect your relationship with you peers and with God.
3. The future… God will do with that as is needed to be done. Simply have faith in that.

When you wander you simply put one foot out there and let it decide where it wants to take you. The path behind you is simply an experience and the path before you is ever changing. All that really matters is which direction that foot points. Whether it is pointed right or wrong. Wander life.

That was way to long but I need it to be.

God and life

My brother and I were having a discussion about religion and faith a few months back. There is something that has stuck with me like glue on my shoe, not always thought about but always there. “I am glad to see that you and our other brother have found something that you can believe in. But for me God is to far out from the world to matter. I am just going to try and figure out life first.” His words stuck with me because they were something that I have always seen and I still see. It was thoughts like that which kept me form God for so long. It was not until I caught a glimpse of life in God that I started to see something different.

There is so much focus on the world beyond. The glory of heaven and the damnation of hell. We are not capable of comprehending the fullness of those things so why do we even bother. Look at them but do not wait time on them. In contrast to what is beyond, I feel like there is a definite possibility that one could comprehend life. I’m not saying that it happens regularly, but I would like to hope that if one dedicated them selves to it one could comprehend. So I say live life.

But then where does God come into it all? Why does he matter in a life that is nothing to him? He matters because he is who lays the path before us. He is the light house for all us ships on the ocean of life. Guiding us to solid ground and helping use avoid being dashed against the rocks. The land is truth and the truth can kill. (My views on God are different from many others and I know that many do not like them but I will say them anyway because it is my life and I must do what is on my path.) I see God as the teacher. The one that is showing the children about the truth. And we must listen. I feel that there are a good many people who get hung up on the fact of God and miss what he is trying to teach them. Like a person that admires their prof. but could tell you nothing of what they lectured on. God is father and creator, yes, but he is more, he is trying to show us something more. Trying to speak to us without dashing us on the rocks with the simple whisper from his lips. Like a father trying to teach his son how to work on a car but the son it deaf and distracted by the simple movement of the tools.

I feel that one of the reasons for life is to learn. So how can we learn? Some might say that the best way to learn is to read so they read. Others listen. I learn best by doing. I learn by getting so frustrated that I can think of nothing but the problem and then when I get it I never forget it. The frustration is building I just pray that God will be patient with me. I just wish that I figure out the problem that I am getting frustrated with.

Hypocrisy

I feel that I must apologize to the world. I talk greatly and at length about love. I say that it should be one of the highest goals of man. I say that it is the best way to grow with your brothers and sisters in this world. I say that it is a great way of growing deeper with God. But I, myself, do not love. I’m not even sure that I ever have. I would like to say that I would sacrifice my life to save another, out of love, but I’m sure that there would be a part of my mind that would wonder, at the moment that I gave my life, “Will this make up for all those things I did? Will I be remembered by this action rather than those others?” That does not sound like love to me. Love is selfless. It glorifies others and God and not yourself. I try to think of a time when I completely left the picture and everything that I did was for another. I can not say that that has ever happened. I can not find a way to set myself aside and I loathe that about myself. I have found lately that I have been taking love and not giving it back. I am so out of balance right now. I have only recently learned how to accept love. I never would accept love when I was younger, for fear of closeness. But I thought I gave love. Now that I have begun to take love in I must say that I have never give my love to anything or anyone in my life. I have a cold hard heart that needs to be softened. Or I need to go back into hiding and stop accepting love. I do not like the man that I am becoming and I need to change something soon before I can change nothing.
Time moves to fast and life is far far too short.

My Dilemma

I find myself in an odd place in my life. For a long time I have purposefully tried to distance myself from those that I became close to. It is an odd thing that leaves me in a constant state of loneliness. It is one of those things that I truly don’t like about myself but I have no idea how to fix it.

For a long time I thought that reason was because I did not want to hurt anybody. I have always been a large person and I learned at a very young age that if I did not keep tabs on myself I would hurt people. This physical idea quickly transferred over to an emotional one. So I started move away from those that I become close with in life because I do not want to hurt them. For so long I thought I was doing them a favor. I realized a long time ago that this was just me lying to myself. Turning fear into something more noble.

It has occurred to me lately that there is another reason behind the way I prematurely terminate friendships. It has to do with my father’s death. My father died when I was nine. Through the events that followed and the hurt that was suffered I developed a bad understanding of relationships. I see growing with a person like growing a new part of your body. When they hurt you hurt and when they feel good you do as well. Through my dad’s death I first had the experience of a part of me dieing. It was not just the part of me that was my father. Do to extenuating circumstances I ended up losing all the friends I had had in elementary school. Ever sense then I have been cutting off my relationships. Some times before they were fully developed, other times were more like an amputation. I would rather have control over my suffering than have it all lash out at once. I can deal with the pain that I can see.

The reason for all this thought on past relationships is that I feel like I have started the amputation process with a few of my friends that I have now and I really do not want to cut them off I want to end this cycle of self inflicted suffering and loneliness. I want it to end it but I have no idea how to do that. It has become instinct to move away from people. It has become natural to be alone. I love being alone but it is so dam lonely.

Thoughts on the Bible

I have said before that I think the bible has error in it. This has been brought up as a major issue with my faith. I would like to clarify what exactly I mean when I say that the bible has errors in it. I feel that in it most pure form that the bible is the word of God. But I do not think that that form has been passed down into this world. I feel that the word of God would shatter this world like a light bulb dropped from a twenty story building. I feel that the words that were written down so long ago are more of a metaphor than just the words of God. I have never found words to be enough for describing the smallest part of this world. It is not that I don’t thing God could not put his words into this world it is more that I don’t see much sense in him doing that. I look at a tree, a stream, a mountain. I look at this world and the universe as a whole and I see a word of God. Not a story or even a sentence, I see a single word uttered from the mouth of the creator. Every sun set, every perfect nuance of this world that we have yet to comprehend. All of it a single word. So why would God want to limit himself to languages that change and shift?
People have told me that my vision of God is too small because I do not think that God has kept the bible pure. I don’t think that is it. I think the bible is in error and it can not be fixed but I do not think that the words of the bible are as important as the bible itself. I have faith that God has kept the metaphors as he wants them. The details might have changed but what God wants us to get out of it is still there, we just need to find it.
This idea gives me so much hope and straightens my faith. To me metaphor is the perfect form for the Bible to be in. God seems to have set it up so that what needs to be there never changes, while at the same time everybody can find what they need, it might not be what they want but undoubtedly it is what they need.
So I read the bible not looking for words but looking for the metaphors that may be implemented into life. In the end I pray that metaphors will be washed away and we can all see truth in its pure form.

Luke 9:23

“’If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’” Luke 9:23
Christ does not tell man to give all there burdens to Christ. He tells his followers to take up their own crosses and follow. The metaphors run rampant, I love it. “If anyone would come after me,” to follow in the steps of Christ. To take the path the he took. To attempt to follow the path that God has set before each one of us with out slipping. Did Christ slip? A perfect soul in an imperfect body, the soul will always win out over the body. But Christ does not ask us to be perfect. He simple asks us to love unconditionally. “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’" Matthew 22:37-40. The part about the neighbor always gets me. Jesus was a man that loved those around him with his whole hart but at the same time he would let them fall into darkness. Why would he let this happen?
One of my favorite quotes about love is actually from a song by Death Cab for Cutie “Love is watching someone die.” The idea is odd and horribly morbid but I think that it is fitting. In love you ride life with that person through thick and thin all the way to the end. So in a dark sense in love you watch that person die. Christ calls repeatedly for people to simple “Follow me.” he never hid what that meant from them it meant that that person needed to “Take up his cross daily and follow” but what is the a persons cross? Is it the burdens of life? Christ care not about these things. If Jesus cared about things of this world then he would have taken his place on the thrown on Israel. But he took on the life of a poor preacher of God. I feel to see what the cross that we are to take up to follow Christ we should look to that cross that Christ himself took up. Christ took the sins of man. That is quite the burden but then again it is exactly what we humans do naturally. We lift up those that are hurting around us. We try to help them in any way possible. We do this not because we want anything from them in return but because we care for those around us. We feel the pain of those around us and we try to take there pain. But this does not answer what our cross should be. However to me it seems clear. The Cross that Christ is asking for us to carry is one that we are specifically fit to carry. The burden of man is not a weight or even a tax on life. The burden of man is the one thing that makes life sweeter than anything in this world. It is the one thing that makes the sky seem brighter and the one thing that make the dark not as lonely. It is the one thing that I have the hardest time expressing. The burden of man is Love. Love in the highest is what will save human kind from itself. Love, both given and taken, is the only thing that will save my soul.

Not a Christian

It has occurred to me of late that I am fighting the way that I have been for the whole of my life. A year ago if you would have asked me what religion I was I would have given you this response: “I am not a religious man but I am a spiritual man.” I get the feeling that when I first accepted Christ I automatically thought that I must follow a religion. Structure has never been a good thing for me and I fond myself in a mental battle with many of the Christian ways of life. I see too many of these ways at odds with much of what I have learned from Christ. So I no longer consider myself a Christian. I’m not saying that I no longer believe in salvation through Christ. Far from it. What I am saying is that by classifying myself I do not feel that I can pursue God and Christ with the full passion that I would like to. The world is too great to be strapped down by titles, and classifications.
What does this make me then? I really have no Idea what this makes me but I feel that I must always pursue truth and I feel that this is my way of doing that. What is truth?