a post from a friend's xanga (as in i DIDN'T WRITE the following)...something simply, beautifully, and penetratingly expressed:

truths ive been chewing on lately...

jesus frees.

never give up loving.

people need the lord.

reader, dont ever forget your identity in christ makes you the free-est person alive(and better off dead!). there isn't a thing you can do to make youself happier, but only to embrace a simple cross with blood stained wood that sets every sin, every bondage, every hurt and sadness free. oh jesus, you make us free! so dont let darkness creep up on you like that. no, you look to jesus. you look at that cross and you kneel down. your heart cries out, jesus you're all i want. jesus you make sense. jesus, you love me.
and then you think about the ones you love. the ones who are closest to your heart--but who dont know you. and it's like no matter how much you love them, they dont understand this love. like gandhi has once said, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight with you, and then you win. what a beautiful way to approach those whom we love. loving them into jesus. your love, jesus. it's the highest love out there.
but we need to know our emptiness to seek God. we need to ask you God to fill it. this void that we hide away from everyone else. when we meet you God, there's light just everywhere. no darkness can overcome it. those who need you most reject you in your face. when who you are, and who we are is so evident. we are weak, but you are strong. but they reject you--again and again because the idea of worshiping you for who you are is utterly unspeakable. but God, you're so patient. you're definitely more patient than i am.

God, you really love us.
because you truly make us real.

pushing off a paper and reaching into the newly constructed vault of Precious Things...a recent set of thoughts, expressed to e. maybe this will clarify the lack of april cruelty.

*****

=)

the age we live in requires us to nod in the direction of junior high and high school because it feels unreal that we're floating higher and higher but it's good, i think...it is a circle back to what first love was like, except incomparably deeper and more resonant because it breaks through scales of cynicism that have hardened over certain parts of our hearts through our experiences before we met each other...before you were dropped into my life...and emerges purer because of it, like a column of light racing towards heaven that is fully aware of the dinginess it burst out of, and made more beautiful by this consciousness. i'm going to try to write this entire email without using the backspace, to send you my unadulterated thinking, and also to save time, though i'd much rather be spending all night corresponding with you in some way, through email since you're sleeping now. though i used the backspace in the first part, in that long run on sentence...tried to paint a picture of how i look at the light that is expanding in the space between me and you, though i don't know how clear i'm being, or how much of pretentiousness i'm avoiding. but it's a beautiful thing. sometimes, usually when i go pee, i think about if i should be expressing things like this, and or even feeling things like this to express, and then i think that i'm not purposefully searching for things to express or grasping at things to say to you to try to make your heart beat faster, which i hope it does though, because i want to have that effect on you because you make mine beat faster and my breath catches in my throat when i even start thinking of you, like now. then when i flush the toilet i wonder how long it will last like this, and then i decide not to worry about it...going only au natural isn't the wisest thing, but there has to be a balance between regulation and natural progression, and we removed the emotional barrier of expression after you were here a few weeks ago. though that was a conscious choice...even so, i haven't been like this before, with anyone else, this sense of falling in love with my eyes wide open...i haven't felt like i wanted to endlessly find new ways to talk about you and think about you and the role you've come to assume in my life. i feel free, and liberated, and guilt-free, without the need to justify myself to you, or to myself, or to examine every action through every possible lens of motivation. i couldn't claim a divine green light in releasing the floodgates of connection between souls and allowing things to snowball between us like they have and gather momentum exponentially, but in this sense it is almost does feel like it's back to first love, and i feel no hesitation to be swept away in the tide that brings us closer and closer together, except now i have binoculars and can see far into the distance, both behind us and in front of us, and maybe that will help to navigate through things that come up, and we have oars of experience and learned humility and that will also help us steer into the future, and it feels almost like i've gone through the experiences that i have in order to be able to see you honestly and fully and appreciate you without reservation and think of you without placing myself at the center of my reference point...a (brief) lifetime spent learning and failing to love, so that i can show love to you, and strive to do so to greater extents when i do fail. i have to confess, i used the backspace a bunch of times in this paragraph, but it was still an unbroken chain of thought that came out, untailored and unrefined, unlike how i usually write to you in emails. i'm in a mood where everything feels like poetry, and everything is a different aspect or manifestation of our light. and this light seems to be expanding and expanding in my chest, till i'm dying of wanting to be next to you again, and breathe your oxygen into my lungs to make them function. i’m very deeply in love with you, and i miss you.

*****

April is the sweetest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

we were asked to write a short statement on post-modernism for sunday school a few weeks ago.

***

My understanding of post-modernism. I don’t really understand it that well, at least well enough to articulate, even though I have a feeling it’s something that may have greatly influenced my attitudes and mindsets, as discussed last week. I think it has something to do with relativism and the denial of absolutes, and the questioning of the inherent value of things previously assumed to be inherently valuable. It diminishes the ability to accept simplicity and purity, usually playing the role of self-congratulatory and condescending critic…the post-modern mindset is arrogant in its tendency to see through things yet contributes nothing constructive in turn. It is a way of thinking that acknowledges the failures of modern and enlightenment schools of thought in their efforts to place ultimate meaning within the grasp of man’s rational capabilities but offers no substitute solution, unlike Kierkegaard’s transference of meaning from wholly rational reason to wholly irrational faith.

To my understanding, the ultimate effect of post-modern thinking is the apathy and groundlessness of the current generation of young people.

***

i think i may be out-dated. are we in the post-post-modern era now? what the hell does that look like? how can you advance past the stage of the denial of the existence of stages?

i've decided to stop beating around the bush and allow myself to be simple and happy. hopefully. this is my, um, november resolution. let's call it a thanksgiving resolution. let go of the unholy and masturbatory pseudo-satisfaction of wallowing in the bittersweetness of life and let God make me happy. that last bit wasn't just an excuse to use the word masturbatory in a sentence. hopefully.

wow, imagine if that actually happened. i'd have to find entirely new patterns of thought to occupy my brain. have to trust that not all depth and meaning comes from dissonance, i suppose. like the man said,

We are not here to verify,
Instruct ourselves, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. We are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.

I have a crumbly treasure to dispense

a piece to him, just for her, for you alone

a piece and a piece and a piece

from an unrecreatable shape

and in return, only this

a bit of secretivity

smiled on the way

through reserved melancholy

your han, expressing mine

your quiet promise to cleave

with darkened eyes and fuzzy dreams

to hear what my own eyes say

not so much for my treasure

that I wish would stop crumbling

this summer i'm going back to baojing for a month and a half. i'm going with a team of other grad students to do an agricultural needs assessment survey, and at night i'm going to try to do some bible studies and ministry. there are two other christians going, one of whom is going as a full-time short-term missionary. as should be expected, i feel really drawn back to the place, and i'm really looking forward to it, and...i don't know. i hope it's different. i hope i don't lapse into mere enjoyment of being back, an enjoyment of people and places. i hope things happen.

i wonder if moses ever thought about what his old friends and acquaintances in egypt would think when he returned to them to bring the message of God. would he have feared their attention, their puzzlement at his new mission? would he have welcomed it, to be able to share the transforming power of God? would he have said, this is my heritage of faith, to which i was previously and willfully blind? would he have felt guilty for his former life of immediate and undeserved privilege among them as an outsider?

no more unholy self-projections. a year in hawaii doesn't really equal 80 years in the desert.

april is the cruelest month,
breeding lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing memory and desire,
stirring dull roots with spring rain.

i don't have a firm grasp on cruelty at the moment. this year, the middle of spring isn't seeming to dredge up too many buried memories and stale desires. the roots feel watered and ready to blossom instead, as if lilacs have actually been bred out of the dead land. i suppose the presence of flowers could steal focus away from the surrounding deadness, or maybe if lilacs are coming to life, the land isn't dead anymore. it seems as if death and cruelty must come from a lifetime of unsatisifed desires and dead-ended adventures of the brain, leading to expanding iso-deso-lation. analysis...just don't think too much.


The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

- Deuteronomy 29:29


But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

- 1 Corinthians 2:7


The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.

- Exodus 15: 2

some quotes from sunday school students i came across on the internet while procrastinating reading for class:

Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Amendments.

The Fifth Commandment is 'Humor thy father and mother.'

The Seventh Commandment is 'Thou shall not admit adultery.'

Moses died before he ever reached Canada.

The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still, and he obeyed him.

Solomon, one of David's sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.

The epistles were the wives of the apostles.

Paul preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage.

In some religions a man can have many wives, and this is called polygamy. In our religion a man can have one wife, and this is called monotony.

[warning: not much Christmas cheer found in the following]

i just re-read the first batch of posts i wrote on this blogspot, which i started keeping about four years ago. it felt like reading somebody else's journal, i was pretty surprised at my thought processes back then, and to tell the truth, i kind of miss it. to be sure, i was caught up in some kind of self-parameterized world in which i couldn't seem to let myself be happy, but at least i wanted something better, i wanted to BE better.

this semester was a weird one. it was probably the loneliest i've ever felt in my life, which i thought at first was due to standard causes: readjusting from china, living by myself, not having the energy to make a new set of friends. as the semester went on, however, i came to realize that the real reasons were deeper, and that living in spiritual isolation for two years in china had caused my heart to harden in subtle ways and worsened certain character deficiencies that i was just beginning to notice. i didn't seem to care about the people i was just getting to know, and getting/staying in touch with old friends seemed like some kind of burden. i don't know why or when i started to feel like that, but it totally, completely, absolutely sucks. aren't people supposed to become less self-absorbed as they get older? at least a few years ago, thinking about myself seemed to lead to a healthier place.

i'm not sure where i'm trying to go here. to explain further, here's part of an email to joyce, from a couple weeks ago:

this semester feels like i've been tempted by and struggled with every kind of sin at once, with pride, lust, apathy, self-centeredness, quick-temperedness, lack of self-discipline, laziness. it's been incredibly frustrating, because at the bottom of it i really really just want this purity and simplicity that's eluding me. and then i trudge to campus with a dark and heavy and lifeless heart, unable to force smiles or cheeriness. and this leaves a bad mark on everybody i come across, christian or nonchristian.

and you know what? in some ways, this semester is probably the closest i've felt to God in several years. when i pray with the members of my bible studies, it's done in completely earnest and un-selfconscious supplication and thanksgiving. when i read the bible, sometimes the words feel so much juicier and more full of life than they have in such a long time. so why can't i have joy and peace?? why can't i keep reading, and praying, and living what i know? and how is it mentally and emotionally possible for me to share the deepest part of my spirit and soul with someone through praying together, and revert to feeling like a stranger when our eyes open?

i truly believe that God is the most amazing and the most solid foundation possible that draws together all sorts of unlikely people and makes them brothers and sisters. it's true, i believe it, and i feel it. so why then do i feel like i'm existing in isolation?

***

i can't figure out my inconsistencies. are they the exception or the rule? regardless, things just aren't adding up, and it's driving me crazy. after the few paragraphs above, i went on to ramble about 'the deepest thirsts of my soul', but i'm not so sure i can apply that label in good conscience. if wanting to connect with people and learn how to love were really the goals of my life, why do i spend so little of my time on actually trying to achieve them? if i really want to serve and reach the people of china, why am i so reluctant to use my spare time to read and learn more about them? ok that kinda came out of nowhere, but it's along the same lines.

i feel my life being sucked down into banalities and lethargy, hard-heartedness and emotionalism, and i hate it. it makes me wish that the simple command of seeking first the kingdom of God wasn't so difficult (for me) to follow.


***Postscript***

these were the first few lines of joyce's response to my email:

christians are the only people in the world who can rant like this and NOT be drunk. we're special. listen, by the time you read this it will be daylight and you'll already have shrugged this off -- nevertheless i will attempt to comfort you.

haha...yeah. it's almost 6 am, time to sleep.

going along with jesse-kristof's photojournal thing, here are some of my favorite pictures from baojing, all scenery/non-people focused.

*****

a view of baojing from the radio tower

inside a random house in town



one of the three roads leading out of town

the campus of the middle school i stayed at

Youshui River, which the school overlooked



my primary school students flying kites along the bank of the Youshui River



the mountains behind the primary school i taught at



a waterfall hidden in those mountains

view from the Baota pagoda, a few miles outside of town



coming home from the Baota

Christmas tree hunting a few miles outside of town

*****