Open with caution: Raging Soapbox Inside

You guys have gotten pretty used to my major quotage so this will be different, and not to take anything away from the people that I quote, but they can only give me a shadow and a glimpse of the truth that is in my heart. Just as the words that you read here can only inspire and change you so far as there is already something awakened in your spirit that rings very similar to this, so I am not trying to dazzle you with my wits, only to add kindling to the spark already so graciously placed inside of you. May you burn…

It would be fair to say that I am not the most serious girl in the world; in fact there are many situations in which someone might find themselves saying of me that I am downright silly! I love retarded movies, sneezing, spider solitaire, The Simple Life, Sudoku and just about anything; pretty, frilly, shiny, pink or sparkly. And there are times in my life where the simplest of pleasures and fulfillments can take over for days and even weeks at a time. Times over which I find myself looking back and asking, "what did I accomplish?" Times where my moral and emotional and spiritual and mental self seem to suffer because I am feeding myself with the breadcrumbs of these menial, time-consuming things. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of the trivial things that have the capacity to demand so much of my attention and have the ability to entertain me so well, and yet I stand at a place today that I have stood many a day before and wonder where to go. Those things can entertain, sure, but when the silliness doesn't feed my passion for life anymore, I hunger for substance that I find rare and in short supply in those around me. Even those who I know to possess the substance that I need to share with other human beings seem to have trouble awakening themselves to it. It is harder to live with this gnawing and raw weight than it is to be flippant about life and demand nothing more than what can be grasped by human hands, and so we silence the cries that take from us the illusion of control that we have and we simply numb ourselves to truth. It is simpler, some would say (and those who wouldn't say it, still seem to be screaming it with their actions) to stay on the surface, to protect ourselves, to ignore that unsettled feeling or, even more commonly, to silence it with other, less substantive things, than it is to be open, exposed and vulnerable to something that has the ability to change us so. I have found a way to find this substance in God, that's not the problem; I don't wonder where to find "it"! I've got "it"! The part that gets me is that I have no one with which to share these things! As frustrated as this situation is to me, I know that there is no way for me to show anyone what I have seen! The very things which place the desire for Him so deeply inside of me are the struggles, battles and hardships that I have had to "overcome" in my life. If I had not been to the extremist of extremes in certain areas of my life, I would not know how to find Him in everyday life. If I had not fought battles that most would flee from, I would not know how to battle the daily grievances that plague me. And so, I will pray a prayer for those dearest to me that most of you will probably want to shoot me for later; and which most Christians would probably call borderline heresy, but, let's get em all riled up shall we??…I pray that you struggle, that you wrestle, that choices not be easy, that money not be always in full supply, that malcontent would reign in the midst of your worldly pleasures, that health be bestowed and not due, that your road be marked with suffering and pain, that loneliness would permeate every fiber of your being, that people would let you down, that your heart would be broken, that you would fail, that you would cry, that you would yearn, and most of all that we would cease to be anesthesiologists to ourselves and those around us and that we would instead be catalysts that spark change and growth with every word and deed. A long shot? Maybe. But anything less drastic just wouldn't do the trick of overhauling this morbid apostasy now would it?

C.S. Lewis is such a pimp: Chapter Part II

So I am reading Lewis' The Problem of Pain and, well, I don't know what else to say except HOLY FRIGGIN CRAP!!!!! I can't even get through the introduction without feeling like an unlearned, uneducated goober! As I suspect most self-aware people do, when faced with such sweeping genius as Lewis possessed.

At the beginning of his first chapter, he addresses the "problem of pain" in this way, "If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both." This, as he puts it, is the problem of pain in its simplest form and the popular belief of most non Christians in the world and unfortunately a painful seeming paradox of the nature of God to even some of the most sincere Christians. He goes on to drop this amazing concept on us, or rather, to put into words exactly what most Christians wish we could say in response to this problem of pain, and yet find ourselves pitifully unable to do so. Later on in the chapter he makes this splendid assertion:

"His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit on His power. If you choose to say 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it', you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words 'God can'. It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God."

Chew on that for a while! And then imagine the fact that that is one of the simpler pragraphs in the book. And then feel sorry for me that, dangit, I am getting through this book even if it kills me...and it very well might!

C.S. Lewis is such a pimp!

Ok, so I'm afraid that headline may be a bit misleading...you're possibly thinking that this will be lighthearted and jovial (anyone who has ever read anything by Lewis should immediately know better), however, this will be nothing of the sort. I am re-reading a book called The Sacred Romance, for those of you who are used to me telling you that I am currently reading the most amazing book I've ever picked up and that you have to read it...well suck it up because I am telling you again! This is one of the most life changing things I have ever read...enough so to drive me to read it a second time!! Anywho, in this book, the author (John Eldredge) quotes a paragraph from Lewis' book, The Problem of Pain, and it's phenomenal! I don't think I have ever felt more like someone was reading my mind than I did last night when I read this part! So I'm not going to preach...I know you're shocked...I'm just going to let these words speak for themselves.

"Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of-something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water on the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it-tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest-if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself-you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, "here at last is the thing I was made for." We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeaseable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all."