Interests:.pondering the wonder of it all .talking nonsense with people who can have conversations off the cuff about the most ridiculous things in a completely serious tone .springtime .a finely turned phrase .laughter .books .nature .eye contact .mercy .walking through a beautiful park .families .jack handey quotes .ping pong .autumn sunsets .foreigners .marveling at the created world .mystery .the discovery channel .questions .juicy watermelon .the inner spinnings of the mind .dreaming in brilliant colors Expertise:laughing Occupation:b&n employee Industry:books
for a number of months i've been sustained by a few things: my job, cookies, and hope.
my job has enabled me to live a somewhat normal life, as i interact with fellow employees and customers for 30 hours a week. when i'm through with work for the day or week, i need something else to fill me. my first choice is large, soft, warm chocolate chip cookies, which are also a representation of everything else i look for pleasure in that gives me temporary highs but ultimately offers nothing of substance. (when i'm in the mood, books offer a good distraction. for three weeks last year i was so ensconced in the world of harry potter that i think i skipped a few meals).
the third thing that has fueled me, especially the past few weeks, has been hope. i'm the type of person who, if he's not getting what he needs, will do whatever it takes in order to get it. it might take me longer than some people, and i might take different routes, but i will do everything in my power in order to live the kind of life i want to live.
i'm moving away from new jersey back to the midwest. not to my hometown, or even my home state, but near enough to family that i'll be able to see them a few times a year. i hope to join up with a community of people who are living the kind of life i want to live. i have no clue where i'm going to fit in, but then, who hopes for what he already has?
i think i've only heard this song once in my life, and it was in my car the day before i left for asia - 5 years ago - but somehow it stuck. over and over again: we fall down, we get up.
there must be some hope for the rest of us there must be some hope left for us we fall down, we get up we fall down, we get up we fall down, we get up and the saints are just the sinners who fall down and get up
in december i got a crush on a girl from work. she was raised catholic but never really seemed to take it seriously. she still believed in god, but for the most part lived a hedonistic lifestyle. i thought i could be the one to rescue her and bring her to a true understanding of god. i thought i could save her from her wild drunken, cursing, dancing ways. as i thought more and more about the possibility of being with her i wondered how i would explain my beliefs; i didn't even know what i believed anymore. for a few days i seriously contemplated ditching the whole tradition i came from. it wasn't working for me. i was as far removed from any church, family, or friend context than i had ever been. basically nothing was stopping me from diving headfirst into a lifestyle that most college freshmen experience as they experiment with their newfound freedom away from the contexts they've always known. i walked to the edge of the plateau of christianity, looked across the divide, and contemplated jumping off, away from those conservative, binding restraints.
the bible and the god written of in the bible say that certain things are sins, which lead to death, while other things lead to a full life. for all of my christian life i believed these things, and as best as i could tried to follow them. this was pretty easy in a context where everybody believed the same things, which was the case from 1998, when i first became a christian, until 2007, when i journeyed a few thousand miles and a few years' thinking away from the culture in which my christian life was born. i was free now. i could live any way i wanted with no fear of being chastised. the temptation to jump into a hedonistic lifestyle was strong. the sirens were calling, and i started listening.
matthew four
one cold december afternoon a teaching that i had heard the past year shot to the front of my mind as i sat in the library writing in my journal, contemplating giving in to my natural human desires for fulfillment, for pleasure. what if? i thought to myself. what if i jumped off the plateau tonight? what would i be thinking tomorrow? would i be proud? would i feel more alive?
words from a book i was reading came to mind. words from a teacher i respect came to mind. yet still i contemplated. why not jump? why stick to your tradition? why continue being a lifeless human being who rejects the fun life simply because you believe that it's "wrong"?
in a moment of clarity i made a decision. sin really is horrible, i decided. sin really is something a person wants to avoid, but not necessarily because a god or a holy book says so. sin is horrible because it distorts my character, and character matters because it is a central feature of my very humanity. many months later i would read frederich buechner summarize the reality swimming inside me that i couldn't find words to:
“the bible is not first of all a book of moral truth. i would call it instead a book of truth about the way life is. those strange old scriptures present life as having been ordered in a certain way, with certain laws as inextricably built into it as the law of gravity is built into the physical universe. when jesus says that whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will save it, surely he is not making a statement about how, morally speaking, life ought to be. rather, he is making a statement about how life is.”
let's talk about sex, baby
i decided not to jump into hedonism. i made this decision apart from any solid context. i made this decision because it made the most sense. sexual exploring with anyone other than the person i've made lifelong vows to really is destructive, whether i believe it or not; whether christian conservatives in iowa or philosophical, secular ivy league students say it's true or not. disregarding the laws of gravity actually will hurt me. i'm free to do as i please, of course, but i will face the consequences. this is a natural law built into the universe - a person reaps what they sow. you get out what you put in. this is not first of all a moral code to follow because a preacher or holy book says to; it is first of all the way things actually are at the deepest level.
do you hear what i hear?
i decided on that gray december day that i was going to, as best as i could, tune my ears to hear the slow and steady drum beat of ultimate reality, and then adjust my stride until i'm walking in step with this rhythm. because to live out of rhythm just doesn't make sense to me.
everybody's following something or someone. those who say they don't need faith, that they prefer not to lean their weight into anybody, are in fact trusting someone - their self.
i believe that old writer paul, who said that every thing in existence was created through a person, in whom all things are also continually held together. it's a strange idea, really. if i'm completely honest with myself, most days i don't actually feel like leaning into anyone, but even the weakest faith in a strong object is infinitely better than strong faith in a weak object.
several years of this went by - i developed a few friendships and continued going to church - but then i started working on sundays, and i liked it. i didn't want to be in church anymore. i was getting tired of hearing the same things over and over. i had started listening to sermons online from people who seemed to have a different understanding of christianity. i read more books that were slowly bringing me out of the old way and into a new understanding of life, god, jesus, and christianity. the totality of who i was grew more, but i shared less because i didn't have close friends to open myself up to, and also i feared people would think i was denying biblical christianity, so i kept it inside except for writing about it in my journal and on my blog. i needed an outlet and xanga was a place for me to be real anonymously. it was therapeutic to share myself with others and find out that i wasn't alone in my thinking.
dare you to move
during this time of slowly moving away from the old way of thinking i contemplated moving away from home. i considered several places: little rock, arkansas because there was a school there where i had been taking a few correspondence courses and i wanted to use their extensive jewish roots library and be closer to the professors. it turned out they didn't offer too much of an on-campus experience so that option was out. i contemplated applying to juc in jerusalem but the costs were far too high; my financial burden was heavy enough already. my final two options were grand rapids, michigan, which i never seriously considered but just imagined what it would be like, and trenton, new jersey, where a friend from college lived and he wanted me to move out there to get an apartment with him.
oh virginia
in early 2007 i started leaning heavily towards the last option, the first three didn't seem to be working out, and finally a few months into the new year i made a decision without telling many people: i was moving away from my hometown on may 1st. another thing i told still fewer people is that for the month of may i planned on staying in a log cabin on top of a mountain by myself. it was supposed to be a spiritual retreat of sorts, a time to stop thinking so much and just listen for god to speak to me whatever he wants to speak to me. i journaled extensively on that trip, and it was not the utopian experience i had hoped for, but it was a worthwhile month. i learned a lot.
garden state
on june 1st, 2007 i left the appalachian mountains and rolled into trenton, new jersey, my new home. i had envisioned the type of person i wanted to be, and this was the perfect chance - new dwelling, new friends, new job, new part of the country, new everything.
after graduating college i went to asia with a team of like-minded people and a goal of sharing jesus with people who i had heard were hungry for the truth and were open to hearing about god. at some point in my later college years a small seed was planted. i fought the possibility that i might be wrong, but the little seed was strong. for the most part i buried it in the back of my mind; the conditions around me were not suitable for watering the seed and opening it up to the light. i tried, fairly successfully, to keep it in the dark corners of my brain, at least until i had the resources and the freedom to explore.
roots
in the summer of 2004 i returned to america, very excited to shop in familiar grocery stores, walk on soft carpet, and finally water the seed that i did not plant. at the time my understanding was basically this: there is more to christianity than what i had been taught. for several years i had a growing interest in jewish things. i soon discovered a jewish roots movement that sought to teach christians about the jewishness of christianity, the bible, and jesus. this is what i was looking for, and this is what i found. i left my church on west avenue (eternally grateful for the people, the pastor, the memories, and my introduction to jesus, but ready for something a little different) and started going to a bigger church 10 miles away, through a few small towns and a lot of cornfields, that i thought would give me what i needed spiritually. i also hoped to meet people my age, as i was dying for some real friendship.
the totality of who i was grew a little bit more, and i was basically still anchored to the tradition i'd been taught since becoming a christian 6 years prior. i still wanted to really get to know jesus and worship god, but part of me was rebelling against some parts of my tradition. i couldn't really articulate them, and it wasn't deep theological issues that i was in disagreement with and wanted to bring before my church leaders, but it just seemed to me that our understanding of jesus and the bible should be rooted in a 1st century jewish context, since it was this culture that the scriptures came from, and for the most part i didn't see that understanding being preached on sunday mornings, either in my old church or my new church.
a change (will do you good)
through the internet and a few books i was introduced to the emerging church. i really resonated with the things coming from this movement because i still wanted jesus, and i still wanted to be a christian, but i didn't want to do it in the traditional way. i began to have more and more problems with the way i saw christianity being lived out, both in the church and in my own life. i started to wonder if the way i had been taught things might not be the best way to explain the bible, jesus, god, christianity, etc.
slowly the totality of who i was grew, but this time i didn't really have anybody to share it with. i tried going to events held by my church for the college/career group, and overall i enjoyed them and found that some of these people were also reading emerging church books, but for the most part it was just a cooler way of being an evangelical christian - loud music, jeans & t-shirt services, talking about jesus less in religious terms and more in relationship terms, basically being more "in the world" with a hipper way of being "not of it." i enjoyed it more than the typical christian thing, but this, too, was not enough. i still wanted to really get to the heart of who jesus was and to really understand the bible the way it should be understood. i was still basically anchored in the conservative christian point of view, but i gradually started lifting one seemingly super-glued foot out of the tradition and really started contemplating the seed that slowly became a little less submerged. there were even a few times when i imagined jumping out of "the circle" and into some place else, but those imaginations lasted only a few seconds. my understanding of reality was still firmly anchored.
i've always had friends. even when i was young and shy, by the time i warmed up to people i had no problems finding groups that i shared interests with.
the past few years, however, while good in some areas, have been my lowest years friend-wise. there are various reasons for this, but i might know the biggest reason: i'm not able to share who i really am.
high school musical
my high school years were the best years of my life because the totality of who i was was open to my friends. granted, in high school i wasn't much of a deep thinker, so the totality of who i was wasn't too deep or complex. i was a normal high school kid who played sports, hung out with friends, went to parties, had a few girlfriends, went to friday night football games, watched saved by the bell after school, ate dinner with my family, slept in during the summers, and didn't give a whole lot of thought to adult life until my junior and senior years when i tried to maintain a "b" average so i could get into a good college so that i could obtain a good job. i was a goofball with good friends and an easy life.
saved!
in the spring of my junior year i "got saved" by praying the sinner's prayer in the upper room of a small baptist church on west avenue, about a mile up the road and around the corner from my high school and about two miles from my house. my friends and i, being upperclassmen, got our licenses around this time so we would often drive around town listening to music, hoping to see somebody we knew (ah, midwestern towns.) now that i was a christian the majority of my thoughts while driving around town with my "unsaved" friends, west avenue included, was that i really needed to share the gospel with these people because their lives were apparently empty without jesus and they were headed for hell if they died. this is the reality i lived in for the rest of high school and all of college. to outside viewers it's known as evangelicalism. to insiders it's the truth and the way. i thought it was the life. it definitely was my life. i became known in my extended family as the religious guy, the bible-thumping believer. most of my family on both sides were catholic so it's not like they knew nothing about christianity, but i think they did see me as especially "into" my faith.
college daze
i had good, close friendships in college as i grew in my understanding of what it means to be in a relationship with jesus. i was introduced to the study of theology. i haven't been given the scholastic abilities that some of my friends at my christian college had but it took me a while to come to that conclusion. i just really enjoyed listening to my bible-major friends discuss different theological viewpoints and how the bible supported one position over the other and such. i also enjoyed my mandatory bible classes. until a few years ago i thought i knew what i was talking about, theologically speaking. the totality of who i was grew, but i was still able to share it all with my friends because the majority of who i was was wrapped up in a conservative evangelical christian understanding of the world. i basically shared the same filter, the same viewpoint, the same worldview, as those around me.
