the paradox of trial's manufacture

there is no freedom without price.
men fear most the loss of freedom.
so much so that they invent the machinations of war and bondage to maintain the fragile illusion and deliberately grandiose value of peace.
because without paying a price, without making a sacrifice, peace seems unjustified, unreal, undeserved, and without personal meaning.
this is why Christianity frightens men so.
because the freedom is a gift, and the peace that passes all understanding also passes all earthly claims. men cannot put their own name to the peace of Christ, because it is Christ's gift. they cannot plant their flag in the soil because a cross already stands firmly planted in the earth they tread.
this makes men nervous.
this makes the peace of Christ something apparently intangible, because it is so huge, and most simply don't understand that the scale of the peace itself is what eliminates the possibility, and more importantly the necessity, of weighing any earthly offering against it. men are so much smaller than this peace that it will never be possible to earn it. and yet we still strive, still we lock ourselves in small bondages and rejoice in the overcoming so that the power and peace of Christ can at last be something concrete, because it triumphed over something equally conctete.
presidents create war because it creates and reinforces their illusions of peace, power and prosperity. men war with themselves because at the end of the day, they would like to believe that their salvation was a product of their cunning and resiliance, that they were integral to their own overcoming.
but if they overcame, it is only because Christ has overcome the world. of course, if this holds true, then Christ has also overcome the illusions, the tacky inventions of desperation that make men imagine struggles for themselves to hoist themselves above other men and rise to be more than they are.
this, too, is illusion... men are only what God makes them, and any more within them is found only in the biblical paradox of making themselves smaller so that Christ might increase. and perhaps this is what truly drives our desperation, what lays siege to our lives and gives us the subtle motivation to apply unnecessary bonds and trials to out otherwise exalted futures... because we think that the only way to make ourselves less is to struggle in the mire of human tribulation, and the only wat to make ourselves more is to overcome that mire and our sinful former selves.
which means that our focus, as ever, is still all too firmly planted on ourselves, and not, as we delude ourselves to believe, on Chirst at all. it is only our own image of Christ as he directly applies to our own lives that we see, only the reflection of Christ in our shoddy brass mirror that we mistake for the glory of the Son of God.
how ridiculously pompous.
how contrary to the things God would have for us.
how cowardly.
to face a foe we know, one we understand because we build it ourselves, and believe that in facing soemthing of the earth, we will rise above its decay?
when we know full well that we do not fight against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
and we do not fight them with the sword, or with our egos, or with our brilliance or knowledge or savvy or clever words or actions that impress those around us. we fight them with the solitary tool that Christ has given us. Love.
love is what unravels all of these illusions and brings the truth to the fore.
because all the rest, all the war and all the turmoil and all the little things we put into place to justify ourselves and our place in this world, not to mention our hopes of our place in the next world, do not flow from love. love does not destroy. love does not take aim at the innocent, love does not cripple nations. fear does these things.
we live in a world that is afraid.
a world afraid of judgment. a world afraid of being wrong. a world afraid of itself. and most of all, a world that becomes more afraid the less it understands, a world whose fears increase as the object of their incomprehension grows.
a world afraid of peace.
because this peace passes all understanding. not some. All.
fortunately for us, there is a flipside to this equation of peace and hope, if we can only grasp it with something more thana our flawed intellects and learned reactions.
the reciprocal we need is simply this:
the lack of peace does not pass all understanding.
this means that we should be able, with the help of the Holy Spirit (which leads us into all truth, after all) to understand the lack of peace.
and once we understand why peace is absent, we can finally stop doing the things that create that absence.
it will not make us understand the peace that follows, it will simply make room, in our world and in our hearts, for that peace to come.
in the end, there is only either the acceptance of a peace beyond comprehension or the perpetuation of petty violences in the name of understanding a peace that does not actually exist.
we remain deluded only so long as we choose. there is only the illusion of peace while men deceive themselves. it is only after deception ends that truth can reign.

a quiz of sorts.

Bold the true ones and add a truth of your own. something i found on someone's blog somewhere that seemed like a good idea.

I've consumed alcohol.
I've run away from home.
I have lied to my parents about where I am.
I don't like Bush because he is dumb.
I don't like Bush with my own reasons to back it up.
I am for Bush.
I listen to political music.
I collect comic books.
I am shorter than 5'5.
I think I'm ugly.
I shut others out when I'm depressed.
I open up to others easily.
I am keeping a secret from the world.
I watch the news.
I own over 5 rap CDs.
I own an iPod or MP3 player.
I own multiple designer purses, costing over $100 a piece.
I own something from Hot Topic.
I have a shirt my dad got me.
I own something from Pac Sun.
I own something from The Gap.
I own something I got on e-bay.
I love Disney Movies.
I am a sucker for hair/eyes.
I don't kill bugs.
I curse regularly.
I paid for that cell phone ring.
I am a sports fanatic.
I have "x"s in my screen name.
I've slipped out an "lol" in a real conversation.
I love Spam.
I bake well.
I would wear pajamas to school.
I own something from Abercrombie.
I have a job.
I love Martha Stewart.
I am in love with love.
I am guilty of tYpInG lIkE tHiS.
I am self conscious.
I like to laugh.
I smoke a pack a day.
I liked Perks of Being a Wallflower.
I liked Go Ask Alice.
I have cough drops when I'm not sick.
I can't swallow pills.
I can swallow about 5 pills at a time no problem.
I eat fast food weekly.
I have many scars. (just not physical)
I believe in ghosts.
I am really ticklish.
I see a therapist.
I take anti-depressants. (sometimes)
I love white chocolate.
I bite my nails.
I am comfortable with being me.
I play video games.
I'm single.
I'm in a relationship.
I'm married. (legally, anyway)
Gotten lost in my city.
Saw a shooting star.
Wished on a shooting star.
Saw a meteor shower.
I had a serious surgery.
Gone out in public in your pajamas.
I have kissed a stranger.
Hugged a stranger.
Been in a fist fight.
Been arrested.
Laughed and had milk or another drink come out of your nose.
Pushed all the buttons on an elevator.
Made out in an elevator.
Swore at your parents.
Kicked a guy where it hurts.
Been close to love.
So close I fell in.
Been to a casino.
Been skydiving.
Broken a bone.
Skipped school.
Played spin the bottle.
Gotten stitches.
Drank a whole gallon of milk in one hour.
Bitten someone.
Been to Niagara Falls.
Gotten the chicken pox.
Crashed into a friend's car.
Been to Japan.
Ridden in a taxi.
Shoplifted.
Been fired.
Had a crush on someone of the same sex.
Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back.
Stole something from your job.
Gone on a blind date.
Had a crush on a teacher.
Celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Been to Europe.
Slept with a co-worker.
Been married.
Gotten divorced.
Had children.
Been to Africa.
Driven over 400 miles in one day.
Been to Canada.
Been to Mexico.
Been on a plane.
Seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Thrown up in a bar.
Eaten sushi.
Been snowboarding.
Been skiing.
Met someone in person from the internet.
Been to a moto cross show.
Lost a child.
Gone to college.
Graduated college.
Done hard drugs.
Had someone cheat on you.
Miss someone right now.
Taken painkillers when you didn't need them.
Woke up crying.
Cried yourself to sleep.
Peed from laughing.
Had sex.
Watched the guy/girl you liked make out with someone else.
Accidentally made yourself vomit.
Kept a journal for more than a year.
Read more than five books in one week.
Have a website.
Hate baths.
Dance when no one else is.
Create imaginary friends.
Refer to actors by the name of a favorite character they portrayed.
Love bruises.
Have sat on the roof.
Stayed out past curfew.
Ignored people 'cause they weren't popular.
Love rain.
Have baked a pie.
Have grown to hate the summer.
I am squeamish.
Scuba dived.
Have intentionally set something on fire besides a candle.
Wondered why school exists past grade 6.
Wished you were the opposite gender.
Didn't know who your best friend was.
Have lived with over twenty animals in the same house at one time.
has an obsession off something
Got so drunk you slept on the stairs
Don't really care what people think about you
Danced -while- watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show
think i'm stupid for thinking things will get better.

dumb people, newspapers, and the waste of ink...

great article in the paper monday...
discussing a proposed curfew in saskatoon.
this is what Coun. Tiffany Paulsen had to say on the subject...
"there's no doubt when you see a six-year-old running around at 11 o'clock at night, there is a problem. but often that problem is that they've come from a dysfunctional home."
holy crap.
i mean, i thought for sure that 6-year-olds running the streets at night was the very definition of functionality. but it's a problem? i'm blown away.
but wait, she expands on this bit of brilliance...
"...and simply taking them back to an abusive situation is not solving any problems, and is likely making them worse."
wow.
so now, not only is it a problem that kids are fleeing their abusive homes in the middle of the night and spending all kinds of unsupervised time on city streets, but -
-get this now-
it's NOT helping them to just take them back to the abuse. returning them to their crappy home isn't "solving the problem".
THAT, my friends, is profound.
but she's not even done...
we flip the page to the continuation of the article, and get one more nugget of intelligence...
"it's a lot more difficult to vandalize or cause crime in the middle of the street as opposed to a hiding place in a park"
man, is there no end to the brilliant conclusions she can draw seemingly out of nothing but air, print, and glaringly obvious fact?
so, we've basically learned that kids who are outside the house at 11 pm have problems at home, that taking them back to an abusive situation won't solve the problem, and that it's easier to vandalize a hiding place in a dimly lit park than it is to spray paint "i'm retarded" on the mail-box under a streetlamp.
shocking.
well, i think we've absorbed all we can, it's time to sit back and reflect on this for a while, ponder the deeper meaning of this seeming bunch of crap.
but please, if you come to any conclusions about it that you know everyone else is already well aware of, just keep it out of my newspaper.

reconcilliation from God's perspective

God sacrificed his perfect son, sent him to bleed, suffer, stagger, hang, and die, to reconcile completely sinful man with completely perfect God.
actually, it's deeper than that... because it was the people He was trying to reconcile to Himself who were responsible for the death of His son.
He basically said, here's my son, i want you to humiliate, torture and kill him, and then i will raise him from the dead and he and i will be able to be your friends.

people, by comparison, are generally unwilling to make the slightest sacrifice to reconcile the petty differences between ourselves. missunderstandings. prejudices. certainly nothing on par with perfection trying to reconcile to sin.

the difference is that God, being perfect, always does the perfect thing. and people, being imperfect, often choose that imperfection.

we have this all wrong. all backward.
because there are cases, many i'm sure, where people who have made giant mistakes have gone to the people they've wronged and sought forgiveness, or at least the chance to have their apology heard and acknowledged, whether or not acceptance ever came.
this is not what happened with us and God. we didn't suddenly decide we had been rebellious and ignorant for far too long and beg God to take us back.
as a people, we generally wern't that interested.

seldom, however, has the Godly version of the story carried itself out here among us. there are few times when someone in a better, more righteous position is ever willing to sacrifice that position, to lay down the righteousness that fills their own eyes, to come to someone that has wronged them, and offer an unsolicited reconcilliation.
it just doesn't happen.

but it should.
especially among believers. the more you claim you believe, the closer you claim you are to God, the more willing you should be to drop those things, to sacrifice your ego, or your pride, or your rightness, or your superiority, or your knowledge, or your justification, to ammend a relationship between you and one of those neighbors that you're supposed to be loving as you love yourself.

still, it doesn't happen.
not only does it not happen, but when the party in the wrong comes with apology and remorse and a genuine desire to fix what was broken, even then the earthly justification of the righteous is too shiny a trinket to lay down, and they instead walk away validated, in some perverse and contrary-to-God manner, by the fact that they are better than someone.

this all makes me kinda sick.

but it takes two sides, as always, to make the hope work.

God made the initial sacrifice, be we had to accept it or it was worthless.
he must get frustrated, sometimes, at the non-lengths we go to in response to his efforts.
the same way we get frustrated when we know what we're supposed to do, know what's possible, but get rebuffed by someone who has chosen their own way over this particular way, and somehow find a way to claim they are doing it in the name of God.
it's like us telling God that we can't possibly reconcile to Him because it doesn't fit in our belief of who He is.
it's not up to us.
God is who He claims to be, not who we claim He is.

which i guess all boils down to, do what you can to love people. don't build walls, build bridges. don't be "right", be righteous. don't make distance, make friends. and if someone comes to you with hope, don't throw it back in their face. it's rude, and doesn't much reflect any kind of God of any kind of Love.

and try not to get as frustrated about all of this as i seem to be. lol.

one-sided boats don't generally right themselves...

i shouldn't write when i feel just exactly like this, but i'm going to anyway, and you can't stop me.
so there.

one day or another, one way or another, this is going to be the very last thing i say on this earth, the last thing i want anyone to take from me, from my life, from my experiences.
if an opportunity to get something great comes along... take it. and if you succeed, live your life in such a way that keeping it comes naturally.
because despite what people will tell you, despite what you might find in the popular media, chances will die, opportunities will break, and some of them can't be fixed.
there are no dream sequences, no flashback montages, no ghosts of christmas past, no future versions of selves speaking via digital transmision. there is only us, our awareness, our hope. and that has to exist on both sides.
reconcilliation is a cute way to end a movie... everyone happy, both parties having come to realize their love, their mistakes, and the hope of their future.
but in reality, people often choose to remain broken.
they will call their brokenness "growing up" or "maturing" or "restructuring their fundamental paradigmes" or "being strong" or "independence" or "self-reliance" or a bunch of other words that free them from the responsibility of trying and hoping and trusting.
the reason they do this, the reason they choose their unfixed state, is that it hurts, in the perfect sense of word, to hope in vain.
to be the unbalanced believer in an opportunity that someone else is keeping nailed in its coffin for fear that, if brought back to life, it will only die again.
most will live forever hiding from that potential death, without ever realizing that the state in which they keep their life is no different whatsoever.

sadly, we can do nothing to change this.
and it doesn't matter what stands in contradiction to it. it doesn't matter if it's meant to be, if it's God's plan, if it's written in the stars... none of it matters until everyone agrees it matters.
and if someone isn't willing to take that step, then the ship sinks.

i've spent a lot of time bailing water. i will admit to making many of the holes myself. i take no pride in it, but know that i can't change what has come before. i can only change what comes after. but not by myself.

this stupid boat is probably already under water. i loved this boat. i will never see its equal, except perhaps in movies about lives that have managed to go better than my own. they make me cry, and i am genuinely happy for the characters, fictional though they may be. but i can't stop wishing that this boat would float again, that i would have a partner willing to plug some holes and bail some water, and that the sea might again be ours.

for now, it remains to be seen if i can rise from the wreckage of this ship before my lungs fill with water and my heart explodes from pressure not meant to be experienced by fragile human sailors.

if only i could leave the ship.
i love it.
i love her.

it's pointless.

live your life so this does not happen to you.

water

Jesus calmed a raging sea with a simple gesture and some words. and then he asked his disciples why they were afraid when he was there.
if Jesus can calm a storm, he can certainly calm the swirling circumstances of my life.
if i am afraid, then my faith is too much on the boat and not enough on the One inside.
God, help me keep my eyes on Your Son. this water is nothing. i can stand on it, walk on it, if only i keep my faith in You and my eyes on Chirst. I need Your strength to accomplish that. Please keep me standing, wet feet or dry, on the promises of Your Word, and increase my faith with each step i take. i love you.

safely home

excited to have been so wrong...

generally, this would be the type of thing that i would excitedly want to share with my wife. i can't do that just now, though it may be possible in some future that God still has for me. so i share it here, because i know it's not just for sitting on. every time i sit on my leg, it falls asleep, and then i can't feel it. i don't want to stop feeling this.
was reading yet another post in my archives, this time only because i stumbled across something in the bible this week that proved that i was not, in fact, nearly as important as i might have thought i was.
this is not to say that i am not worth something. quite the opposite, in fact, if you read on. it's just to say that i was, unrecognized though it may have been, living under a delusion of my own power, of my own influence over things that are so much bigger than myself and in such better hands.
so anyway, the blog i'm talking about, in case you wish to take a look, is http://hawkhandsaw.blogspot.com/2005/10/lost-coin_23.html#comments
(scroll up)
although the part to which i'm referring is specifically the bit at the beginning, the story of the coin.
and where i thought it was.
yup, there i was, thinking about something as incomprehensible as my own salvation, something so immense it required the death of the Son of the God that created the world, and, for a reason i will never quite understand, believing that it was in MY hand.
again, not to beat myself down, for i am something to be rejoiced over in the eyes of my Creator, but why would any kind of responsible Deity ever put something that overwhelming in the hands of a human? a flawed, sinful, and generally not-as-careful-as-necessary human? why wouldn't He instead put that treasure, and the life it saved, squarely in the hands of his Son, who has overcome the death, the world, and the final level of legend of zelda for nes?
wait, He DID.
john 10:28 and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.
29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.
30 I and the Father are one."

so. if nothing else, we're in good hands. allstate's got nothing on Jesus. and His Fater is greater than all. ALL. and that's the hand in which rests our salvation.
which doesn't mean that we're exempt from doing anything about it, naturally. after all, we are called to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. but i think a big chunk of working that out is just to realize that regardless of what we do with it, it's still ultimately in His hands. because we're in His hands, too.

Just good to know, isn't it?

on another note, have been thinking about life, about changes, about consequences, and about the weather.
that's right, the weather.

it's a beautiful day today. the sun is shining beautifully, the sky is beautifully blue, the air is crisp and clear.
yesterday, by comparison, was terrible. huge amounts of snow, ice, wind, making even the smallest trip seem like it would take forever, causing accidents, getting people stuck.
i was lucky, i didn't get stuck anywhere, i didn't hit anyone (even when i was driving while trying to scrape the forming ice off the inside of my windshield and my rear-view mirror). but it was still ugly, still difficult, still undesirable.
so today, we have another chance. winter isn't over. life continues. just now there's a bunch of snow everywhere. and we can sit back and get stuck in it all over again, stuck in how awful it was, in how much work there is yet to do, how cluttered our once simple lives have become.
or we can pick up a shovel and start to get the mess out of our way so that we can move forward again. we might be driving a little slower now for a while, we might feel like we're not making any progress... but eventually, the streets will all be cleared, and we will once more have all the freedom that we take for granted most of the time.
and life will go on.

my life has had a lot of days like yesterday. i have snowbanks i can't see over, i have streets that are undrivable, at least for the moment.
but God has a fleet of graders the moment i take the roadblock off. God has all kinds of shovels, and he's willing to lend one to me. he might not give me the snowblower, he certainly won't just make the snow go away all on it's own, because it's not summer yet, and that's not who He is. but he'll stick a shovel in my hands, and if i break it, he'll give me another one. and once i get moving, once i get shovelling, it's not really so hard after all, the air is still crisp and clear, and i'm feeling more alive than i have in a long time.
and the snow moves. i toss piles into the patches of light, and it melts. slowly, but surely, it melts.
there is less snow all the time.
the car is waiting.
i can't wait to drive out of here and rediscover all the things that the snow was keeping me from seeing.
i don't know why it had to fall in the first place, but that doesn't matter today... it's here, and so am i, and there is nowhere to go but forward or nowhere.
i'm tired of going nowhere.
today, i dig.
tomorrow i drive.
or maybe the day after. or however many days it takes.
i will drive.
i will get my life back.
i will get my wife back.
i will go where God wants me to go.
right now, He just wants me to shovel. so i shovel.