To a Hammer...

So I was listening to the radio on the way home from the thing that I do on a fairly regular basis for which I am not getting paid but most would consider work but I don't since I am really against the idea of work, and the dude on the radio made this statement:

"To a hammer, everything looks like a nail!"

He said it like it is a common cliche. I have never heard that saying before. Now, granted, I haven't heard everything there ever is, but he said it in such passing that I felt like I should have heard it a hundred times before, but the thing that caught my attention is the coolness of the statement.

Anyway, I just thought that was worth mentioning. I don't have anything else to add.

It is tomorrow.

Jason

Where in the world?

I found this site and normally don't like these sort of surveys, but this one was interesting. I love to travel so I figured here wasa good place to save the link.

Here are all the countries I have been to, 17 in total. One day, I would love to fill this in completely.




create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Nothing is easy!

Why do we do it at all? Interact with another human being that is. There is nothing easy about it. Well, almost nothing. Let me explain. Better yet, let’s talk about the movies.

I watched When Harry met Sally today. It is possible that I had seen that movie before, but doubtful. Maybe at one time or another, I had seen the entire movie, but today was probably the first time I did it in one sitting. It is a good movie. Actually it is a great movie. A lot of it had to do with the intelligent comedy. Intelligent comedy is my favorite. (Intelligent comedy, as opposed to stupid comedy, comes from the proper use of timing, dialogue and subject rather than crass and lude sexual jokes. Austin Powers Goldmember, watched two days ago, falls into the second category.) It has been a while since I have seen anything with Billy Crystal in it and I forget how funny he really is. But I didn’t come here to write about the comedy of the movie.

When Harry met Sally was also a great movie because it so aptly described relationships, male female ones. Remember the scene near the beginning where Harry is telling Sally that guys and girls can’t be friends because the whole sex thing gets in the way and messes everything up. He goes on to explain his theory further and you will just have to watch the movie if to get those comments. I am not sure if I completely agree with Harry. I would say he is mostly true, but there is the aspect of a “brother” “sister” relationship between a guy and a girl that is possible, I think. Possible, although very difficult. Which brings me back to nothing being easy.

There are a few things going on in my life right now that bring all of these ideas to a head. Some of them have to do with my life itself, and others, the lives of people I know. There will be much greater detail when discussing my life and protective vagueness about the other people. I will start with the others.

I have four housemate, three girls and one guy. Interestingly, my relationship with the three girls is a little closer than with the guy. Some of that has to do with my being in a bible study with the girls, but mostly it is due to my own propensity to hang out with girls instead of guys. (This is an issue with me and something that I probably won’t discuss here. I could go as far as to say it may be a sin that I struggle with, but I won’t. Besides, I think that if you hold things in and don’t address them, it makes things better and they eventually go away.) So with these new relationships, come new insights, and opportunities to put my foot in my mouth and all sorts of fun. But I have also been able to get a closer look at relationships, something I am keying in on because of my own circumstances which I will discuss later.

One of the roomies is working on a friendship. Without going into details, God has told her to obey Him and change some things and now she is dealing with the difficulty in that obedience. I have watched and listened to a lot of what is going on and my conclusion is that, “relationships are hard.” There is also some tension in the house itself. No one is perfect and our living under the same roof brings out personality conflicts and issues that probably wouldn’t exist in another setting. Again, I look around and all I see it that, “relationships are hard.”

So I stand here, (sit actually) and ponder again, “Why do we do it at all?”

Here is an idea:

Somewhere it is written “it is not good for the man to be alone.” OK, why, why, why is it not good for man to be alone? Maybe because we were not made to be alone. Now, to agree with me on this you have to agree with me that we were made and didn’t just happen, but that is a debate you will never see me have. Assuming you agree with me, then if we were made that way, then the important question to ask is why were we made to be in relationships? And what are we supposed to do about it?

My answer is that we were made to be in relationships so that ultimately we could be in a relationship with our Maker. Simple, yet so complex at the same time. Again, I don’t have an explanation for this, it is just my hypothesis. But again, assuming I am right our relationships here, the boyfriend or girlfriend, the mom, dad, brother, sister, the roommate, the wife, the husband, the child, all of these, are showing us a little of what it is like and training us a little more about how to be in a relationship. This way we can ultimately enjoy a perfect relationship with our Maker.

That being the case, I am all for relationships. We should strive to work out each of ours with those around us. See each one as an opportunity to grow and mature. What we should not do is run from them, or try and escape when the going gets tough. And it will get tough.

I recently read, The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis. In it he is describing Hell, but in a very different way. Hell in the book is a place where humans go and get everything they want. Initially that wouldn’t seem like a description of Hell, probably because all of you have been so engrained by the Judeo-Christian/Western description of Hell as this hot place that devils and demons will torment bad people like Hitler for a long time, but not forever because forever is a concept you can’t wrap your mind around. But Lewis goes on to explain that in this Hell, humans have taken to extreme the lifestyles that we see becoming a reality in this world. In Hell, the humans are not forced to do anything they don’t want to do, and the result is surprising. See, Hell there is huge; everyone is spread out over millions and millions of miles because nobody wants to interact with anyone else. We get what we want. Things start out fairly normal. A couple meet and are together, maybe even living in the same place. Eventually things become difficult in their relationship and instead of working things out, because it is so easy to move and get another house apart from each other that is what happens. Now the two only have neighbors to deal with. But after a while some thing becomes hard in that place and again, the people move to a neighborhood all their own. This happens again and again until every person in Hell is completely separated from everyone else, no interaction what-so-ever. By the end of the book, we get what we want and what we get sure sounds like hell to me.

There is another story I remember that sounds a lot like hell. In Blue Like Jazz, Don tells of this astronaut that gets lost in space, floating around the earth. Everyone back on earth thinks he is dead so no one goes looking for him. The problem is that he is stuck in this special space suit that will keep him alive. He ends up circling the globe for 50 years, unable to die, communicate with anyone, but always seeing the earth. In the end, old age triumphs and the man dies nothing like a man. Again, sure sounds like hell to me.

I have been trying to conceptualize these two stories in relation to eternity. It is too difficult to do because the idea is too horrific. That concept of hell is much more devastating to me than fire and torment. Which is why it perversely makes more sense. More upsetting than this idea of hell is what I see happening today; how we are starting this separation right now. Everyone lives in their own little world: head-phones, ipods, single passenger drivers, Internet, bill-pay, alberstons.com, telecommuting, direct-deposit, WOW, Sims, Netflix, and so much more. Relationships are replaced with a computer screen, sex with porn, reality with fantasy. Sorry, I got of subject a bit.

All of this relationship crap has hit me because of my own situation. As I have expressed before, I would really like to be married. I desire that because of everything I said before about relationships training us for what lies ahead. The relationship with my Maker before of me, I see marriage as probably the closest manifestation under the sun. What better way to practice? Because of this, I am keenly aware of those around me that could be a potential mate and frankly I am looking at every interaction through that lens. It sounds bad, so feel free to convince me otherwise.

But it is hard. It is hard to put yourself out there and be open and vulnerable. It is hard to sit down to the computer for the sixth or seventh time in a day and still not have an email from that one person. It is frustrating to call and get the voicemail, or look for them at church and they not be there. To talk with them and just get this feeling like you did something wrong and now what you thought was interest seems to be ambivalence. To second guess, and triple guess, and quadruple guess your words, their words, their lack of words. Do I call now? Or maybe wait a few hours because I don’t want to seem too anxious. I sent an email and haven’t received a reply. Would it look over zealous to send another? But I really have something to tell them. All these decisions and options and you know what they say, “life is a lot simpler without options.”

Relationships are a continual series of options. One decision after another and that is what makes them so hard. But that is also what makes them do their job of helping us grow, change, and ultimately mature. It is a wonderful Catch 22.

So I met this girl in Colorado. She loves the same God that I do, is beautiful, and wants to work with teenagers in Europe. Talk about the perfect girl. Too bad she lives in Nashville. Nothing is easy. We have been talking and email a little bit here and a little bit there. Our last conversation was eye opening to say the least and it certainly didn’t turn out the way I had hoped it would. The place I go to on Sundays often discusses the issue of marriage and is generally, extremely, personally, convicting. One thing they harp on is that it is the dude’s responsibility to be responsible. The dude will step out; the dude will take the chances; the dude will risk heart ache and rejection; and the dude will do all of this with the confidence of God. Nothing is easy. So with those convictions, I did just that and was, in my heart, shot down.

“Crash and burn?”

“Slider… you stink!”

It is for the best though because my confidence is in God… Nothing is easy.

What am I going to do now? Pray about it and try to have that confidence thing that seems to elude me at the moment. Dwell on this for a while:

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

It is tomorrow.

Jason

Who can be a father?

She is sleeping on my chest. Her beautiful blue eyes are covered by the delicate eyelids that are squeezed shut on this lazy Wednesday afternoon. Mom is in the kitchen doing some cleaning so it is my job to watch the baby. Watching the baby for me means lying on the couch and having her rest in my arms. It is very easy work, assuming the little angel is asleep as Taylor has been. There is something about holding a baby in your arms. They are like old men, go from sleeping to awake and back to asleep, in between breaths, only unlike old men, their waking moments normally are accompanied by a short cry. A couple times when Taylor began to cry Tiffany asked if I wanted her to take her, but I knew that the crying was only because she needed to shift her head from one side to the other and that the crying would fade as quickly as it started.

We laid there for a good two hours. First I was praying, praying about the father I may be one day. When you hold a young babe in your arms, only the most stone hearted wouldn’t think about the child and how their life is literally and figuratively in your hands. This baby is so helpless. It disgusts me to even think about how easily that life could be snuffed out, so little effort would be necessary, or for that mater, no effort at all, doing nothing could end the life.

Taylor is need. Her whole existence is based on the giving of others: her mom, her dad, her grandparents, even her uncle. It is not too boastful to say that without us she would die. So with great trepidation I hold her. What kind of father will I be? This one isn’t even mine, so these few short days in the morning of her life are inconsequential. I doubt I will remember them and she most definitely won’t. Or maybe I will. As I said earlier, she is beautiful and right now as I stare into her face, I long for one of my own. Maybe this moment today will be a turning point, a time when I realize with absolute certainty that I want this thing that I do not yet have? Maybe so?

Babies make noises. All sorts of quite gurgles and coughs, burps, bumbles, sneezes and floops. Her breathing is rapid, maybe 5 breaths to every one of my own. I think she is going to be a snorer. Her little nose hastily consuming and discharging the air around her and my slow breath as it covers her. I try to breathe away because I would hate to make her sick with unwittingly.

One thought that keeps running through my head is how close she really is. Our faces for all this time have been only inches away and that is an intimacy I am not altogether familiar with. Think about it, how often do you look so closely at another’s face that you can pick out each spot on their cheek? See the wrinkle in their nose, and count the little white heads below their eyes? I doubt even husbands and wives stare at each other this much. Someone would be accused of being a stalker if they were to do that with someone else, but here I lie, staring endlessly at her, not a single concern in her cringing, perpetually closes eyes.

Oh, she is smiling. Nothing has changed. I didn’t move and neither has she. There must be an innate sense of joy in that little mind. God has come down to look on his perfect creation and she can see Him, even if I can’t.

I could be here forever. If this one was my own, I wouldn’t hesitate.

It is tomorrow.

Jason

Post of Joy

Here is a little post of joy. A rarity I know because when something is inspiring I usually go deep. This morning I am making pancakes. Which I have to go flip...

I'm back. These pancakes are being cooked on my own stove, in my own pans, in my own house. Yesterday I made some banana bread in my own oven, using my own Kitchen Aid, and my own ingredients. One sec...

OK! So I am baking again, cooking my own food. Last night was spaghetti with a red sauce (out of a jar, sadly) and grilled chicken. But the point is, I have a kitchen. A lot of you may not know that I love to cook and over the last, what 3 years, I have not have the opportunity to do so with out the head ache of using someone else's stuff. Got to go...

That was close. Don't get me wrong, I love cooking enough to do it anywhere. One of the best Mexican meals was in Germany at the Swope's. But it is really home when I have the run of my own kitchen. I can sleep anywhere; I don't need privacy; my stuff is unnecessary. But my kitchen. I need my kitchen. Last time...

Wonderful! The pancakes were really good.

This morning put a smile on my face. Standing in my own kitchen, cooking, knowing where everything was and belongs, it is a great feeling. Everyone needs to know that I am doing great. God is very good.

It is tomorrow.

Jason

She will be odd

“Either she will be odd, or she will make herself the same as them.”

“I felt the same way about my kid going there, but between odd and the same, you got to be rooting for odd, don’t ya?”

One of the best lines from a movie full of great lines. A movie that portrays almost every emotion and human relationship I have ever experienced in my short, sheltered life and some that I still haven’t. One of the best movies I have seen in a very long time. A great movie despite starring Adam Sandler (Adam Sandler of Waterboy fame).

Spanglish is a great movie. If you haven’t seen it, go! Go now and rent it from Blockbuster. Then sit down and think about your life, the decisions you are making and will make, and decided what you want to be, what is going to define you, and what is important.

There are so many complex levels in this movie, you can’t even began to explain them. But if I was a movie critic, or maybe even a philosophy guru, I would start by explaining each relationship. I would look at the marriage, the parents and kids (all three of those relationships), the wife and the housekeeper, the husband and the housekeeper, the housekeeper and their kids, and all the smaller interactions, and with each of those, an entire picture, a complete idea of human life, of psychology, of world view and culture would present itself in vivid color and magnificent clarity. I would write a book and enlighten the world about itself. But I am neither of those things and so all of these musings are probably grossly obtuse and remarkably trite.

“She will be odd, or she will make herself the same as them.” Isn’t that the dilemma that we all face in this world? I was made unique. Someone up somewhere designed me in a way that is so different and so unique that I have no option other than those. How could I have missed that before today? Why is it that some other writer, some other person got that and it took this movie to make it a reality in my life? Movies really are becoming the art of our time. I am moved more by a good movie than almost anything else. Sadly, more moved by a movie than even the Word of God.

I was reading something just a few hours ago and the author was talking about believing the Bible as the Word of God. The start of studying it and therefore maturing and growing as a Christian (something that I would like to do, or at least say I would) begins with truly believing it is what it says it is. If you can’t do that then, stop the presses, everything else is inconsequential. What is the point of maturing and growing if all that maturity and growth is built on a false foundation? So I assume that I believe it, but the earlier mentioned writer’s test is extreme. He said that it isn’t a belief unless you are willing to stake your life on it. And I don’t think you can have something extreme like that just any day, maybe only once in what would then become a prematurely ended lifetime. I see a Catch 22, how about you?

This feeds into something else I read. CS Lewis, in A Grief Observed, said;

“Apparently it’s like that. Your bid—for God or no God, for good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity—will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. Nothing less will shake a man—or at any rate a man like me—out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the
truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.”

So it is torture! Torture will bring about the belief that I think I desire. That sucks! Maybe Lewis is wrong, but I doubt it. I doubt it not because he is one smart cookie, but because I have read the same idea in different book, collection of books that is.

Circular! Circular is the reasoning I am back to. You can’t believe everything you read, but you can read something that is believable, I think. We could twist on this idea for another few hours, but that would make for a long post and I really want to get back to a previous thought, so let’s make one assumption, it is the Word of God.

Since I, which obviously includes you too, was made unique, there is the option to do nothing and be “odd”, or choose, make a conscience decision, to make oneself be same. So when it says, “do not be conformed” what it means is, do not make yourself conformed. But can I say that with any even remote certainty? Making the assumption that I am accurate, then it makes things a lot clearer. It makes the other places that say I am not of this world, and the ones that say I will be hated, more understandable.

If I don’t choose to make myself same, then the odd will be rejected, loathed, even hated. It always has been, from the first day of The Rebellion till now. So is that what I, we, want? Is anyone even making a bid for those answers? If you aren’t then nothing I just wrote makes since and why should it; why should the general musings to answer a question unasked make sense?

Everyone is thinking about being odd or being same though. It is a part of human nature to do so. The grander questions about someone or something else out there may escape our daily meanderings, but asking why you are the way you are and why no one understands you don’t. Everyone realizes at one time or another that they are different. We obviously look different, but there is a deeper difference. As much as we try to fit in and “make ourselves same,” we can’t because we can’t undue something that we didn’t do in the first place.

We are different because we where made that way and the sooner I accept that, the sooner I can embrace it and thrive. I hope you get what I am saying.

It is tomorrow.

Jason

Look at that!

Left, Right, Left, Rig… What is that? Wow, look at that formation! The way the flowers combine to protect each other. Isn’t God amazing? Left, right, left... Another one, and another, there is a bunch of the flowers. And look at the rocks here, God is so strong He can pile up these rocks; what, that has got to be at least 13 inches high. The other day I saw this incredibly powerful trickle of water too, what can’t He do? Isn’t our God awesome?

The other day, Tim, Alex and I went up to The Enchantments in the Washington Cascade mountain range. On the second day, we scrambled up Little Annapurna. It was a quick two hour hike, and the view was magnificent. On the way up, Tim decided not to look up until we reached the top. He stared at his feet and narrow view to his front the whole way up. He wanted to experience and take in the entire thing at once, be utterly surprised. We knew that the view was going to be great. From the bottom you caught a glimpse of what was next. Little A has a gradual slope on its north face, very easy to walk up. But the south slope is shear cliff, jagged, jutting rocks and immense drop-offs. Quite an impressive sight had with relatively little effort.

Part way up Tim made a comment that I am still thinking about today. He said that our view of God is like this. We are staring at the three feet in front of us and that is our impression of God. He has revealed a whole world for us to see, but we are happy, actually euphoric, just looking straight down. What is up with that?

Ironically, Justin Weeks used a comment two weeks ago that is fitting here.

"Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. We are far too easily pleased." - C.S. Lewis

Justin and Lewis were talking about the substitutes we are satisfied with, the things other than God that fill our days and bring temporal “joy.” But we are also “far too easily pleased” with our finite image of God Himself. We settle for this image of God as something that could exist on this small planet. We package this god very nicely and handle him at our convenience. Granted that is only reality. This finite mind can not comprehend the infinite Creator of the universe.

I wish I had taken a picture of Tim’s face when he finally looked up from the top of the mountain. Tim is prone to grand explosions of joy and he does take great pleasure in some of God’s most basic and wonderful creations. Last week was nothing less than a continual outpouring of that most child- like attribute which is only preceded by revelation. His face at the top was the best of them all because the anticipation, the waiting, the perseverance and the steadfast determination to experience something that big brought it about.

What would it be like if we could have that sort of experience with God? Everyday He makes new revelations most of which are either missed or ignored. But what if, what if we could look up from the small world inches from our noses and see the vastness and the greatness that is God? I don’t think you could stay the same, and you certainly wouldn’t ever look down again.

So why don’t we look up? What are we afraid of? That is just it, we are afraid of what we haven’t experienced because we haven’t looked up yet. One excuse that I have heard is that knowing God will force me to stop all the things I am doing today. How can I give up my friends or habits, my girlfriend or even wife, my job, security, home, or life, those things are all that I have and I just am not that much of a gambling man to trust that some ubiquitous God is going to see me and be there. I would HAVE TO give up sex with my girlfriend, the porn I look at, and the nights out on the town. Who wants to be a monk? That isn’t satisfying.

You know what I say? You are wrong but you don’t get it. You won’t HAVE TO give up anything! But what do I know? Not much. To bad you won’t even give Him a try because deep down, you are just…

It is tomorrow.

Jason