Food for those who don't like food.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Handle With Care



"Why Am I afraid to dance, I who love music and
ryhthm and grace and song and laughter?
Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the
beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth
and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to Love, I who love love?"

Eugene O'neil
The Great God Brown


Commercial Drive. Did anyone ever know how much I hated this place? How much I despised and loathed all of it. You knew I loved it, but did you really know that I hated it more than any other place in the earth. Heck, I thought I was done with it. It was like an old photograph, in that it found it's beauty in it's character and grime; It's life in it's nooks and crannies and down the alleys you never should go. The sky was beautiful, hell...the people were all gorgeous. All the while something so ugly, so hideous had tainted my own love for Vancouver. Now before I go any further I must say that I really do love this city, more than any I've been to...now continuing.

My crappy pride. My terrible evil inner self that caused me to be such a bratty child, all the while I would attempt to present myself as calm and composed. Have you ever seen a bratty child try to act grown up? It's a little cute and well-intentioned but all the while a ridiculous scene that never ends with maturity. I hated that I was not a good person there. I hate that some have considered me to be abusively angry and at times for no reason I would just be so mad, so mad. I know it seems silly, but I really can be that mad...at myself. You see it's all because of pride that I forget things that I love. I love to watch life happen, yet I'm afraid to live it. I love love, yet I fear and hide from it more than anything or anyone I know. I just didn't understand the concept of love.

So recently, I went back to something else biblical I didn't quite understand. The severity of the cross, so I listened to one of the most graphic, insensitive, vile, no mercy sermon on it. I loved it. It was by a speaker named mark driscoll, and he delivered this speech at the reform and resurge conference in Seattle this past august. I think because all of my life the cross was this fluffy happy symbol churches gave to you. It was on all bibles, and ornate necklaces but I never really understood it. I never understood just how much pain he had to go through. Looking back, it forces me to see myself as just how selfish I'd been. So I started reading Luke, again, and this time I'm working through it slowly but surely. I've never really read the bible through a whole chapter so bare with me, this is new.



I've learned something though, if not it was drilled into head by my mom, my family, my friends, my job, my own brain---which overworks every stinking thing. As much as I hate this terrible evil crappy place known as Ohio, if god wants me here...that's where I'll be. Where we have the coldest winters, and the hottest summers. Where drinking and watching men fight to the death uniformly over a small bundle of mess wrapped in a sheeth of rubber is the most popular form of entertainment, and the fumes of an old factory makes you dizzy with anger at the polution we cause. I hate rubber town so much, that if god really wants me to stay here, than that will have to do. Heck if God wanted me to spend the rest of my life in an amazing city, or a polar ice cap, or even the dodgy side of london in the back alleys---SO BE IT.

Because I would hate it more if I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. In this spirit of travel...I applied for another school. This time you may have heard of it, although I hear they're getting a new building and moving a little down the road; you might have passed them at some point walking through Vancouver. They would walk the streets wearing funny aprons and spouting silly promises, or better yet, I think you've tried their soap. Yes, my friends I have applied to that fun city you all know I hate.

More specifically I talked to Mark, which took a lot out of me. I haven't written a blog about it, simply because I wasn't sure. I think I'm sure. I've tried to apply for other schools because I just wanted to go somewhere, anywhere. Drats though to that crappy mean bully of a god who wants me to go somewhere specific, who pushed me in the direction of a city I had never heard of in the first place (in a country with play money none the less). Then to top it all of he sends me back to Ohio, because I wasn't ready yet. Darn him, but I think he knows what he's doing. I'm trying here, to see the plus side to it all. Ohio isn't a terrible place, I think people even move here because it isn't. We have great produce, and culture in our cities. We have an abundance of resources to dabble in, and places to create our dreams. Heck, Akron invented Purell, Instant Oatmeal, the first breakfast cereal, and the first graded school system among others. Alchoholics Anonymous originated here! That means Ohio was the first group of people to try and get help, so maybe it is a place for the refugees of life. Come and deal with your problems, before moving on and such.

Then after the first time I tried to post this message I get a post card from someone in San Fransisco, suggesting I apply to their January DTS. Go Figure. Like I really need anymore help second guessing myself, come on. Honestly! HONESTLY, GOD---you bully!

I want this Vancouver school to happen, key words though: I want. If it doesn't happen, I will wait, because I'm the only one who can make myself wait. A few things need some prayer though, first---It will need more students for a school in January (which they're are currently one other than me that I know of in both Vancouver and San Francisco) and secondly I will have to pull the funds and make it happen. I need God's help in this though, because I just can't have someone donating me a 1000 dollars at the last minute despite they're good intentions when it isn't supposed to happen. It's like the first picture I took in this post, where the statue is holding on to the water and it's just slipping through her hands. You don't try to grab water. You can help it a little though, to get where it needs to go. God will have to make it happen, and I've give that up to him. I'm just going to wait at the stop sign until then. So Hey God, won't you be my traffic light? Heck, why not drive the car, I'll just take a nap now.




Word of the Day - Clemency

Clemency is an associated term, meaning the lessening of the penalty of the crime without forgiving the crime itself. The act of clemency is a reprieve. Today, pardons and reprieves are granted in many countries when individuals have demonstrated that they have fulfilled their debt to society, or are otherwise deserving (in the opinion of the pardoning official) of a pardon or reprieve. Pardons are sometimes offered to persons who, it is claimed, have been wrongfully convicted. However, accepting such a pardon implicitly constitutes an admission of guilt, so in some cases the offer is refused.

2 comments:

Ashley said...

I had a similar epiphony the other day.

We haven't talked in a while! So sad (but good because it means that you have been doing productive things away from the internets -- I hope ;) ).

Anyway, I've been so busy telling God that I absolutely refuse to have an office job, that I haven't been able to hear him at all, meanwhile he's practically shouting at me to knock it off with the know-it-all act and just follow him.

I think I have a tendency to get the "pick up your cross and follow me" thing a bit backwards. I think a lot of times I'm standing around, dragging along something much bigger than I am going, "Alrighty Jesus, let's go this way!" and then I think he shakes his head and laughs at me.

So while you're trying to get out of Ohio, I've found that I'm stuck here for quite a while longer (and may not do a DTS until I'm one of the oldest people there o.o;). And not only am I stuck here, but I'm stuck in an office job! ACK! BUT, here's the kicker, Jesus is going to sustain me through it, and he's not going to give me a job that's going to chew me up and spit me out, like I'm afraid of because that's not in his character. :)

Just like he's not going to put you somewhere that you're going to be completely uncomfortable and HATE, because that's not in his character.

Pluuuuuus, there's a lot of character building and learning of zee patience and self dicipline that you are doing and learning at home right now. *nodnod* In addition, evalutate yourself as you are now -- with yourself as you came back from Vancouver last time. How have you changed/grown? Are you ready (or more ready) now than then to embark on another DTS? Look at this as a building time (which it sounds like you're starting to do), rather than as a holding tank and it will go a little faster :)

Ashley Keen said...

AAAAAHHH! YOU STILL DIDN'T BLOG!

*throws a shoe at you*

:P