but I think I'll blog instead. Who says white boys can't rap? I'm gonna blog before my nightly nap. I haven't really blogged much lately but that doesn't mean I haven't been doing lots of thinking.
For the past 2 weeks or so, I've been really digging a band called O'Brother. They came out with an album called Garden Window a couple weeks ago and on the Tuesday it came out, I was on campus writing a paper and I decided to give it a listen. Needless to say, it's a MAJOR grower of an album and it's coming very near to Brand New "The Devil & God..." and As Cities Burn "Come Now Sleep" territory. Both of those albums have had huge impacts on my growth, musically, spiritually, and intellectually. This one might be one of those.
Once I finish my Paradise Regained paper, I plan on listening to the album a few times with the lyrics in front of me and figuring out what's being said. It's not that the lyrics are hard to hear (I can hear 90% of them fine), it's just that it's hard to figure out what character is speaking at which point. I'm pretty sure it's an album all about the fall of man. I think there are lyrics from current man's character, from Adam's character, and from God's character. It's just the kind of lyrical album I will greatly enjoy working through.
All that to say, there have been two sets of lyrics that have stuck out to me the most. First is the lyrics that got me interested when I heard them play the song "Lay Down" a couple weeks back at the Thrice show. It's a brilliant song, both musically and lyrically. I think it's from the point of view of Adam but I'm not sure. Regardless, the chorus goes "So, Abba Father, are you sleeping, as we toil through your gardens keeping? So I'll lay down and begin to grow, right beneath your garden window."
Throughout the album, there's lots of lines about the idea of laying down and while I haven't been able to specifically nail the meaning beyond a shadow of doubt, I'm pretty sure it's about the death that every Christian has to make. One line in another song is "Lay me in the dirt and I will grow" and I think it's this sort of spiritual death that we all have to choose for ourselves in order to become alive in Christ. This idea of laying down in order to grow has been on my mind a lot lately because I feel like God's been challenging me through it to lay down my hopes, my desires, my preferences, and my sin in order to grow in love and holiness. I'm ever so slowly trying to see what laying down looks like in my relationships with people.
The other set of lyrics that's really stuck out to me a lot amidst the flood of awesome lyrics in the album is found in the song "Cleanse Me." It's got a lot of weighty, thought-provoking stuff in it but in the middle of the song, the singer sings "Well, I could wash my hands to pretend they're clean, or I could purge my lips of spineless speech, but the consequence of knowledge is an eager tongue." He sings this multiple times as the music builds and it's just amazing. Lyrically, the "knowledge" talked about seems, at least to me, to be the knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve received upon their disobedient choice to the eat of the fruit of the tree. I think the singer is lamenting that because we are given the choice between good and evil, we'll often choose evil that will come down on our own heads.
I could probably blog all about this album and once I have more time and less things on my mind, I plan on going through the album with a fine tooth comb and maybe I'll even blog about it.
Until then, au revoir.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Burnt out / He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven
I'm in a bad mood. I've been in one much of the evening. I didn't get to hang out with my two friends who were in town like I'd been looking forward to all week and since I only hung out with one of them for a couple hours before he left, I decided to go to work even though i had asked (and been given) the day off because I knew they were short staffed. Basically, the night progressively got worse after the nice reception of surprise and joy that i was there to help. As the night got worse, I got more douche-y and my comments got more sarcastic and more critical. Thankfully, I didn't go too far with anything even though I really wanted to snap at most everybody.
I'm tired of working so much. I'm tired of having tons of reading and other school work just hanging over my head. I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of girls I like expressing care as friends but never looking at me as anything more than a nice guy friend. I'm tired of not having anybody to call to tell about my day, to call to find out about her day, or to just spend time with. I'm tired of being a sinful screw up full of pride, anger, bitterness, resentment, jealousy, lust, and a host of other imperfections. I'm just tired. I'm really feeling Jars of Clay's lyric "I don't have a line of prospects that can give some kind of peace."
I know why all this is going on. It's because of me, at least in so much as things that depend on me. I'm sinful. I rest my hopes on girls to fix my loneliness and then when nobody returns my feelings, I get hurt and frustrated. I make people into counterfeit gods. "Lay me in the dirt and I will grow."
Ever since I saw the movie Equilibrium, the poem that Sean Bean reads in the beginning has stuck with me and lately, I've been thinking about the lines, so I googled it and found this poem by William Butler Yeats:
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
I really like the last three lines. As a whole, I like how Yeats uses the same words to end his rhymes. I think that the most important part of poetry is not in the end lines but in the words before and after. I don't really have much else to say 'cause my words pale in comparison to Yeats'.
I'm tired of working so much. I'm tired of having tons of reading and other school work just hanging over my head. I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of girls I like expressing care as friends but never looking at me as anything more than a nice guy friend. I'm tired of not having anybody to call to tell about my day, to call to find out about her day, or to just spend time with. I'm tired of being a sinful screw up full of pride, anger, bitterness, resentment, jealousy, lust, and a host of other imperfections. I'm just tired. I'm really feeling Jars of Clay's lyric "I don't have a line of prospects that can give some kind of peace."
I know why all this is going on. It's because of me, at least in so much as things that depend on me. I'm sinful. I rest my hopes on girls to fix my loneliness and then when nobody returns my feelings, I get hurt and frustrated. I make people into counterfeit gods. "Lay me in the dirt and I will grow."
Ever since I saw the movie Equilibrium, the poem that Sean Bean reads in the beginning has stuck with me and lately, I've been thinking about the lines, so I googled it and found this poem by William Butler Yeats:
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
I really like the last three lines. As a whole, I like how Yeats uses the same words to end his rhymes. I think that the most important part of poetry is not in the end lines but in the words before and after. I don't really have much else to say 'cause my words pale in comparison to Yeats'.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
The Crimson Pirate / Why I am the way I am
I just finished watching a movie called The Crimson Pirate. It's a swashbuckling adventure movie (with a hint of comedy) from 1952 that I use to watch a lot when I was a kid. It stars Burt Lancaster as a pirate captain he gets involved with rebels, the king's forces, a rebel leader and his beautiful daughter, and a couple other things. It's one of my all time favorite movies from my childhood because it's an incredibly fun action-adventure (Lancaster and friends are acrobats throughout), it's funny and silly at times (bad guys getting knocked on head and falling off ship, etc), and it's just a really enjoyable film all around. The hero fights for the people and in the end, he defeats the bad guys and gets the girl.
This leads me to part two of the blog post. I think one of the main reasons I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic is because I've grown up with swashbuckling and cowboy movies where the good guy is strong and brave and in the end he gets the girl. Good triumphs over evil, all is made right with the people, and in the end, the guy I'm supposed to identify with, the hero, gets the girl.
However, life is not like the movies. Today in chapel, the speaker preached through two chapters in Jeremiah where Jeremiah is honest about being angry at God, saying to God that God tricked him and hadn't blessed him for his faithfulness and such and such. The speaker said other stuff too but that was what stuck with me. A lot of the time I have this arrogant and self-righteous thought in my head that goes something like "Oh, I do all this good things and I honor God and blah blah blah therefore he should've blessed me with a girl by now because that's the blessing I hope for most in my life." And with that thought, I begin to get bitter towards God because of this sinful entitlement I feel, as if God owes me a companion because I do what I'm supposed to. It's like I'm mad at my boss for not giving me a bonus above and beyond what I'm already paid. Not a perfect analogy but I think my point is made there.
The speaker challenged me to remain faithful and to seek God even if I don't have the blessings I think I should have because life's not about me and God owes me nothing and any good thing I receive I don't deserve and should count as grace. Hard faith was what he said. Even when "the rewards aren't half what I'd hoped for" to borrow from a Brand New song, I need to press on in my walk with Christ and give him glory daily.
Anyway, back to my original train of thought (the one after the movie). I think movies have a lot of these norms like the hero getting the girl and good triumphing over evil because these are almost inherent in us as humans. Even though we are evil by nature, we can see that light is better than dark. We can see that Luke is someone to cheer for and the Emperor is someone to cheer against, to use my dorky Star Wars references. And with the hero getting the girl, I had a thought earlier that I want to write out and I don't know how to connect that with the hero getting the girl so I'll just ignore a transition and be a bad writer.
I think it's inherent for us to need one another. In Genesis, God says that it's not good for man to be alone. In I think the Proverbs it says "As iron sharpens iron, so one should sharpen another." There's a sort of beneficial friction in the connection between humans. We have an inherent need for community and on a more specific scale, a man needs a woman and a woman needs a man. We're equal but with different roles, but we have the same needs emotional, physical, and spiritual needs that are met through another person.
My communications textbook once talked about how we gain a sense of our own identity based on how others view us. I don't fully agree with that but I think it's mostly true in its own way. It's in this that we need each other because if we don't see how we differ or relate to others, we don't really know much about ourselves because we have no comparison.
At this point I don't think I'm really articulating the once-good idea I had earlier, so I think I'll just end here and focus on my church history outline.
This leads me to part two of the blog post. I think one of the main reasons I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic is because I've grown up with swashbuckling and cowboy movies where the good guy is strong and brave and in the end he gets the girl. Good triumphs over evil, all is made right with the people, and in the end, the guy I'm supposed to identify with, the hero, gets the girl.
However, life is not like the movies. Today in chapel, the speaker preached through two chapters in Jeremiah where Jeremiah is honest about being angry at God, saying to God that God tricked him and hadn't blessed him for his faithfulness and such and such. The speaker said other stuff too but that was what stuck with me. A lot of the time I have this arrogant and self-righteous thought in my head that goes something like "Oh, I do all this good things and I honor God and blah blah blah therefore he should've blessed me with a girl by now because that's the blessing I hope for most in my life." And with that thought, I begin to get bitter towards God because of this sinful entitlement I feel, as if God owes me a companion because I do what I'm supposed to. It's like I'm mad at my boss for not giving me a bonus above and beyond what I'm already paid. Not a perfect analogy but I think my point is made there.
The speaker challenged me to remain faithful and to seek God even if I don't have the blessings I think I should have because life's not about me and God owes me nothing and any good thing I receive I don't deserve and should count as grace. Hard faith was what he said. Even when "the rewards aren't half what I'd hoped for" to borrow from a Brand New song, I need to press on in my walk with Christ and give him glory daily.
Anyway, back to my original train of thought (the one after the movie). I think movies have a lot of these norms like the hero getting the girl and good triumphing over evil because these are almost inherent in us as humans. Even though we are evil by nature, we can see that light is better than dark. We can see that Luke is someone to cheer for and the Emperor is someone to cheer against, to use my dorky Star Wars references. And with the hero getting the girl, I had a thought earlier that I want to write out and I don't know how to connect that with the hero getting the girl so I'll just ignore a transition and be a bad writer.
I think it's inherent for us to need one another. In Genesis, God says that it's not good for man to be alone. In I think the Proverbs it says "As iron sharpens iron, so one should sharpen another." There's a sort of beneficial friction in the connection between humans. We have an inherent need for community and on a more specific scale, a man needs a woman and a woman needs a man. We're equal but with different roles, but we have the same needs emotional, physical, and spiritual needs that are met through another person.
My communications textbook once talked about how we gain a sense of our own identity based on how others view us. I don't fully agree with that but I think it's mostly true in its own way. It's in this that we need each other because if we don't see how we differ or relate to others, we don't really know much about ourselves because we have no comparison.
At this point I don't think I'm really articulating the once-good idea I had earlier, so I think I'll just end here and focus on my church history outline.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Reaction
My cousin Allison died this morning. It was not sudden nor was it unexpected because she's been battling lung cancer for the past two or so years, but it's still sudden in its own way. To be self-centered for a minute, I don't know how I'm supposed to react. I don't think my cousin was a Christian, so there's little to no hope that I'll see her again. Since I'm the baby of the whole family and all my cousins are at least 8 years older than me, I've never been close with any of them. I've had more conversations with some of them than others but it still remains that we were more acquaintances than family.
So how do I react to this? Obviously, I grieve with my relatives as they grieve when we go up for the funeral, but how am I supposed to feel now? Empathy is something I struggle with on a massive scale. I can feel happy or sorry for someone who I know well and care about but if I hardly know someone and only see them once or twice a year at holidays, how do I feel empathy for them?
Maybe the only thing I can hope for myself is that Christ will completely rework my heart this week leading up to the funeral and when we get there, I'll see all my relatives as Christ sees them and pour out love on them.
The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. This quote has become pretty popular recently and it was even a part of the youth's weekend I helped out with this past weekend. I think I'm guilty of being indifferent to my relatives spiritual lostness. I've used the age, location, and lifestyle differences as an excuse not to pray for them, not to pursue relationships with them, and not to love them every chance I get. I could spend tons of time wondering about what if I had been bold with my relatives could my cousin have been shown Christ's love for her but what if's are just new forms of regret.
God, please give me a new heart to love my relatives. Please use this opportunity this weekend to be glorifying to You. Help me to love Aunt Susan, Uncle Bob, Aunt Barbara, Stephen, Greg, Donna, Jamie, Carla, Mike, and all my other relatives in this time of grief and loss. Give me empathy for them. Give me a loving heart for them. Go with me and my family this weekend. Go before us and prepare hearts and minds. Go with us and give us words to speak.
So how do I react to this? Obviously, I grieve with my relatives as they grieve when we go up for the funeral, but how am I supposed to feel now? Empathy is something I struggle with on a massive scale. I can feel happy or sorry for someone who I know well and care about but if I hardly know someone and only see them once or twice a year at holidays, how do I feel empathy for them?
Maybe the only thing I can hope for myself is that Christ will completely rework my heart this week leading up to the funeral and when we get there, I'll see all my relatives as Christ sees them and pour out love on them.
The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. This quote has become pretty popular recently and it was even a part of the youth's weekend I helped out with this past weekend. I think I'm guilty of being indifferent to my relatives spiritual lostness. I've used the age, location, and lifestyle differences as an excuse not to pray for them, not to pursue relationships with them, and not to love them every chance I get. I could spend tons of time wondering about what if I had been bold with my relatives could my cousin have been shown Christ's love for her but what if's are just new forms of regret.
God, please give me a new heart to love my relatives. Please use this opportunity this weekend to be glorifying to You. Help me to love Aunt Susan, Uncle Bob, Aunt Barbara, Stephen, Greg, Donna, Jamie, Carla, Mike, and all my other relatives in this time of grief and loss. Give me empathy for them. Give me a loving heart for them. Go with me and my family this weekend. Go before us and prepare hearts and minds. Go with us and give us words to speak.
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