January 29, 2005

por que tu va?

It was like dropping a Nalgene on a pillow, only to have it break. It was like cranking the radio, only to hear static. It was like opening the Bible, to find blank pages. It was like calling a friend, only to hear their number was disconnected. It was like sipping from a canteen in the Sahara, only to be splashed with hot coffee. It was like biting into a sandwich to find only peanut butter and ants. It was like putting on favorite pants only to have a leg rip off. It was like visiting a blog, only to find the author had deleted it.

I really liked reading Sherry's blog. I'm sad it's gone. It was an O'ahu, or meeting place, for quite the community of eccentric, delightful people. I'll miss the comments as much as the posts. Well then, moving on.

January 27, 2005

I just had the weirdest thought. I wonder if anyone has ever gotten a postage stamp permanently stuck to their tongue. How awkward it would be standing in line at the post office pawing at your tongue!

is this profound?

I've just realized I tend to be far more profound commenting on other blogs than when writing on my own. I'm not much of a self-starter, apparently.

when no one is looking

I'm sitting in the hospitality room at my condo, bumming their internet. I've just thrown a crumpled bread bag, with only a heel left, across the room, banked it off the wall, and landed it in the garbage can. I just had to tell someone.

January 25, 2005

A comment

Posted this on a blog today. Funny how a quick comment becomes so much and so true. The post is here:
http://andrea_kom.blogspot.com/2005/01/days-like-these.html
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Yea, yea. What is holding us back? I've considered this so many times and now I'm considering it again. Shakespeare said that the world is a stage and we're merely actors on it; so then, can't we play the role we choose? Why not get up and go? Why not step onto a highway, hitchhike across the continent, bum enough money for a ticket to Ghana or India or London and start a new life?

I almost left after high school. Almost left after freshman year at university. Now I'm finishing up my sophomore year and have put the plans to the back burner: I'm not leaving till after I graduate. Doesn't all this planning take all the spontanaiety out of it?

I think the reason we don't want to leave is simply that we're afraid of succeeding. What if we get to India and meet a friendly man who offers us a job, who offers us room and board, who offers us friendship? And what if we meet that someone and get married and assimilate so fully that we don't actually ever have to stop traveling: we can live in a new nation and never go back home. Well... never go back to the old home. I want to go, but I want to have to go back to Seattle. Why? Because if I do succeed, then I break all the constraints of society. If I end up happy without taking the path society has laid for me since birth, then society was wrong about my future. Society was wrong when it told me I had to be a rich, popular businessman in order to be happy. And if society was wrong about that, maybe its wrong about everything. If culture crumbles, then I have no paradigms with which to judge the world, and I've no foundation. I'm lost then. Scary.

January 23, 2005

Today as I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and listened to Jack Johnson while looking out the window from my 21st floor condo I realized three things.

1. The point of our existence, my existence, is not to prosletyze the nations, not to travel the world, not to learn all that can be learned and understand humanity and God. The point of our existence, my existence, is not to make it big, make it rich, make it to the top. It's not to gain power and force the world to fit my worldview. It's not to tell people they're wrong and show them how stupid they're being. It's not to make a million friends. It's not even to have a job, a family, a suburban house a boat and three cars. Still more, it's not to attend church faithfully for seventy years. It's not to spend seventy years serving a church, living in a church, building a church. It's not to spend seventy years in dedication to prayer.

No, those are all means. They're all pathways to the point. The point of our existence, my existence, is to bring peace and wholeness anywhere and anyway I can until I die.

I took a Hebrew class last semester. It kicked my butt, but I learned a lot. One of the things I learned was about two words, pronounced "rah" and "shalom". "Rah" is the Hebrew word for evil. "Shalom" is the Hebrew word for peace and for wholeness. Shalom occurs when everything is as it should be: the puzzle is complete, the tree is full of fruit, the human is physically, mentally and spiritual fulfilled, lacking nothing, complete, whole. Rah occurs when anything, even the smallest bit, is missing from Shalom. Take one piece from a puzzle and it is Rah. If the tree doesn't bear fruit, it's Rah. Likewise, if a tree doesn't have enough water, it is Rah: it is needy, unfulfilled, Rah. So it is with humans. If we are missing something physically, mentally, spiritually, we are Rah. We all are missing something. Therefore, we're all Rah. And we will be until we die. It's the result of the curse.

However, you'll remember that the curse was broken a couple thousand years ago. Jesus broke it when he rose again. He brought the Kingdom of God back to earth, usurping the rule of the prince of this world. He changed our direction and set us on the pathway back to Shalom, our state at creation. When we accept his intervention and allow him to set us individually on the path towards Shalom, we are made a new creation. We have Shalom again, for a moment. We lack nothing. We experience brief moments of Shalom throughout our lives, so we recognize it. An intimate encounter with Jesus, a poignant moment with dear friends, an epic tale with a true ending, a perfect harmony of voices and instruments, a time in our lives when every need is met and we top Maslow's heirarchy; all of these are instruments God uses to give us Shalom. And we too are his instruments, endowed with the cause to go unto all the world bearing God's Shalom.

We can bring them Shalom by introducing them to Jesus; by providing them food, housing, clothing, a car, a bed, anything that brings them to physical wholeness; by educating; by giving them a refuge from a stormy ocean of circumstances; by inspiring them with story, serenading them with symphonies, entertaining them with adventure; by fulfilling any need they bear. By filling the holes Rah has punched in them, we take them nearer Shalom, nearer God's original plan for them, nearer God's will, nearer God.

And this is what I'm going to do with my life.

2. Listening to Jack Johnson while eating peanut butter and jelly brought my attention back to this summer and the road trip. I jumped back into the Napa Valley, where Matt, Trevor and I spent the better part of a day wandering. It instantly dawned on me that on that entire trip, and especially that day, we hardly accomplished anything. We wasted two weeks of our lives. And I knew in that moment, mouth full of masticated peanut butter and wheat bread, that the waste was important, even necessary. And so our youthful excesses were permissible, because those two weeks of nothing meant more to me than so many years of something. In those two weeks of waste, even on that day, as I rode in the back seat, laid back, looking out the window as the valley flew by, I was right where God wanted me to be. We, we three, were just where God wanted us to be. It was permissible; more than that, it was necessary.

3. The third thing I realized is how blessed I am to be sitting on the 21st floor of a condo overlooking Waikiki. I don't know if I'll ever return to this place, to this island, but for now I'm in a sunny place instead of a bleak place. I'm in Hawai'i, not Spokane, and for that I must be grateful. I'm ready to come home, absolutely, but I can't quite yet. So I'm going to make the most of the sun and go outside and enjoy it. Yes. Right now.

January 1, 2005

What happened the night before the new year.

In brief, since it's late.

To downtown Seattle. Accidently drove by a hotel with a view. Stopped in on a hunch. A bit of God's favor later and we had a suite overlooking the space needle, one block from the paramount. Beats a 15 minute drive to the show plus parking. Caught a cab to Kells, the Irish pub on post alley. They wouldn't let my dad buy me non-alchoholic beer. In the words of the Irish woman I met at Kells last year, "Ef I tol' 'em thet en Irelund, they'ould lauff et mae." Watch a security guard lock up the market. Cab back, family decides it wants snacks for the night. Convince valet to give me dad's car, though I don't have the claim ticket. Drive to QFC. Park underground. Shop. Can't find noisemakers. Go to bartell's on the floor above QFC. Turns out there's a parking lot on top of QFC too. Bartells is relegated to a corner of rooftop strip-mall. $3.29 for Happy-Birthday noise makers. Purchased. Get lost looking for car. Parking lot attendant angry: Cashier was supposed to stamp the parking ticket. OOOH, that's what validation means. Here's the receipt. And the bag. It says QFC. "'Don't do it again" he says. Poor guy lives underground: best forgive him. Speed home. Get dressed up. Walk to the Paramount. Feel rich in cashmere sweater holding last minute ticket. Rich feeling subsides as woman with a poorly kempt lawn on her head sits in front of me. Spend Lion King leaning into the aisle. Fifteen seconds in and I'm fighting tears. Not because of the seat; because of the show. It's so beautiful. "Happily ever after" beautiful. "We're gonna be a family!" beautiful. "Home, Shadow, Home," beautiful. "A seperate peace" beautiful. "Les Mis" beautiful. Live choir beautiful. Christmas carols at the president's beautiful. Best friend beautiful. Sunset on the Olympics beautiful. See it. It's that beautiful.

Greet the new year on the balcony above a bunch of drunks chain smoking cheap cigarettes. Love your neighbor has a whole new meaning. Read sister to sleep. Sleep.