The deification of a chemical, a myth, and a chubby 7 year old with a magnifying glass.
Or, the Book of Job.
A couple weeks ago, I was walking to my car after class, listening to Damien Rice's "Amie", when I looked up from my red shoes, and everything was perfect. The sidewalk I was walking on stretched out perfectly towards its vanishing point, the little trees were budding, and Damien was begging her to read the stories of old. There was just enough wind to brush my hair across my forehead and to make me realize that even the kitschiest descriptions with sunshine and vanishing points and narrative told in dependent clauses could only disgrace this moment. I turned the corner towards my car only to interrupt some guy comforting a sobbing girl standing next to him. The water in his eyes and on her cheeks tasted like redemption.
I've talked about my epiphanies before. Once, it was a perect morning, one time was about a little town in the middle of nowhere, and one was all about a book. They are these moments where I break through the mundane and experience the profound. Like diving through the riptide of living into the still waters of life. And then, just as suddenly, I float back up into the current. And I've started having them more often.
Like last night. I was reading Fitzgerald and listening to Elliot Smith instead of sleeping. And then I slowly slipped away from the frustrations and struggle and weight of this past week to find myself in Amory's side of Paradise.
Or the first time I brought the bike out this spring. The weather was nice for a Wisconsin April, but certainly not warm enough to keep my fingers from going completely numb at 55 mph. But it was beautiful. It was more than just an adrenaline rush. Reacquainting myself with the century mark was like being at home and my frozen fingers felt like peace.
But my life isn't just a collection of random moments that I find poetically beautiful. Mostly my life is like a craps table in the movies. Short periods of success followed by the inevitable run of impossibly bad luck. Last Tuesday, as I tried to gut out a random bout of psuedo-flu, it started pouring rain just as I started home from class on my motorcycle, a piece of glass ripped a hole in my back tire, and I found out that the mechanic had found a crack in the head while trying to replace the head gasket in my remaining car. (My other car died a couple weeks ago in a blaze of comic tragedy.) For those of you keeping score at home, none of my 3 vehicles are driveable, I'm trying not to puke, I'm behind on homework, and--oh yeah, I forgot-- our refrigerator died.
Ah, depression. It isn't necessarily that I'm depressed all the time. It's just that being beaten down and pessimistic is what feels normal for me. My comfort zone is that streak of crappy luck. I just settle back and drink it up. I can relax because I know the rules to this game. I just limit my emotions to this narrow range and let that range sink to right above "dangerous". Whatever that means. It works great. That way the bad stuff fits in the "normal" range, and the good stuff is shockingly good, and I don't actually have to deal with it. It is awesome, a blur of seratonin and then it is gone.
There is that one verse that says "All things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." The way I always thought, there was this big file cabinet in God's office. And once we got to heaven, we will be able to page through our file, and see how everything fit together.
About 2 o'clock Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning, towards the end of my shift, while I was standing on a package marked fragile, Jess called me. She told me Pastor Tipmore was dead.
Now I wonder what that verse means. I wonder if it has more to do with Psalm 1. Psalm 1 is this passage that describes a life that is "blessed". And the way I thought of it as a kid was, "if you do all this stuff and avoid these people and don't go to these places, you'll get a cookie." But if you really look at the passage, it's actually saying that living this sort of life is the blessing itself. So maybe that verse in Romans 8 isn't saying that there is some heavenly flow chart of all the crappy stuff that happens to you. Maybe it's saying that this life that is connected with God takes the problems of this life and deals with them, and even turns them into positive experiences. Or, maybe--if you can only think of Romans 8:28 in terms of cliche-- whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
I don't know what to think about the book of Job. It almost makes God look like some 7 year old squatting on the sidewalk, frying ants with a magnifying glass. There's this guy with apparently really bad luck. Then a bunch of this guy's friends turn into douche bags. He yells at them, God yells at him, and then there is this ridiculously cheesy, feel-good ending. This should be a really meaningful part of the Bible for me. But right now, I just don't get it. Don't try to explain it to me. I know what it is supposed to mean. I'm just not there yet.
Some people react to circumstances in exactly the opposite way as I do. Some people go numb and smile. They can't deal with anything outside of their little zone of comfortable happiness. They have these bursts of sorrow and brutal emotion, and then they float back to smiling and not dealing with it.
I think those people are doing essentially the same thing as me. They find an emotional comfort zone and try to stay there. Sure there are moments that they allow themselves to reach beyond, but it is always in relation to their comfort zone.
I don't want to live in a comfort zone. I want to live in epiphany and pain and anything in between. Just not comfort.
A couple weeks ago, I was walking to my car after class, listening to Damien Rice's "Amie", when I looked up from my red shoes, and everything was perfect. The sidewalk I was walking on stretched out perfectly towards its vanishing point, the little trees were budding, and Damien was begging her to read the stories of old. There was just enough wind to brush my hair across my forehead and to make me realize that even the kitschiest descriptions with sunshine and vanishing points and narrative told in dependent clauses could only disgrace this moment. I turned the corner towards my car only to interrupt some guy comforting a sobbing girl standing next to him. The water in his eyes and on her cheeks tasted like redemption.
I've talked about my epiphanies before. Once, it was a perect morning, one time was about a little town in the middle of nowhere, and one was all about a book. They are these moments where I break through the mundane and experience the profound. Like diving through the riptide of living into the still waters of life. And then, just as suddenly, I float back up into the current. And I've started having them more often.
Like last night. I was reading Fitzgerald and listening to Elliot Smith instead of sleeping. And then I slowly slipped away from the frustrations and struggle and weight of this past week to find myself in Amory's side of Paradise.
Or the first time I brought the bike out this spring. The weather was nice for a Wisconsin April, but certainly not warm enough to keep my fingers from going completely numb at 55 mph. But it was beautiful. It was more than just an adrenaline rush. Reacquainting myself with the century mark was like being at home and my frozen fingers felt like peace.
But my life isn't just a collection of random moments that I find poetically beautiful. Mostly my life is like a craps table in the movies. Short periods of success followed by the inevitable run of impossibly bad luck. Last Tuesday, as I tried to gut out a random bout of psuedo-flu, it started pouring rain just as I started home from class on my motorcycle, a piece of glass ripped a hole in my back tire, and I found out that the mechanic had found a crack in the head while trying to replace the head gasket in my remaining car. (My other car died a couple weeks ago in a blaze of comic tragedy.) For those of you keeping score at home, none of my 3 vehicles are driveable, I'm trying not to puke, I'm behind on homework, and--oh yeah, I forgot-- our refrigerator died.
Ah, depression. It isn't necessarily that I'm depressed all the time. It's just that being beaten down and pessimistic is what feels normal for me. My comfort zone is that streak of crappy luck. I just settle back and drink it up. I can relax because I know the rules to this game. I just limit my emotions to this narrow range and let that range sink to right above "dangerous". Whatever that means. It works great. That way the bad stuff fits in the "normal" range, and the good stuff is shockingly good, and I don't actually have to deal with it. It is awesome, a blur of seratonin and then it is gone.
There is that one verse that says "All things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." The way I always thought, there was this big file cabinet in God's office. And once we got to heaven, we will be able to page through our file, and see how everything fit together.
About 2 o'clock Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning, towards the end of my shift, while I was standing on a package marked fragile, Jess called me. She told me Pastor Tipmore was dead.
Now I wonder what that verse means. I wonder if it has more to do with Psalm 1. Psalm 1 is this passage that describes a life that is "blessed". And the way I thought of it as a kid was, "if you do all this stuff and avoid these people and don't go to these places, you'll get a cookie." But if you really look at the passage, it's actually saying that living this sort of life is the blessing itself. So maybe that verse in Romans 8 isn't saying that there is some heavenly flow chart of all the crappy stuff that happens to you. Maybe it's saying that this life that is connected with God takes the problems of this life and deals with them, and even turns them into positive experiences. Or, maybe--if you can only think of Romans 8:28 in terms of cliche-- whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
I don't know what to think about the book of Job. It almost makes God look like some 7 year old squatting on the sidewalk, frying ants with a magnifying glass. There's this guy with apparently really bad luck. Then a bunch of this guy's friends turn into douche bags. He yells at them, God yells at him, and then there is this ridiculously cheesy, feel-good ending. This should be a really meaningful part of the Bible for me. But right now, I just don't get it. Don't try to explain it to me. I know what it is supposed to mean. I'm just not there yet.
Some people react to circumstances in exactly the opposite way as I do. Some people go numb and smile. They can't deal with anything outside of their little zone of comfortable happiness. They have these bursts of sorrow and brutal emotion, and then they float back to smiling and not dealing with it.
I think those people are doing essentially the same thing as me. They find an emotional comfort zone and try to stay there. Sure there are moments that they allow themselves to reach beyond, but it is always in relation to their comfort zone.
I don't want to live in a comfort zone. I want to live in epiphany and pain and anything in between. Just not comfort.
posted by oneweekend at 9:41 PM
2 Comments:
Sorry to hear things have been crappy lately (alittle advise to do with as you please, buy a new car--bumper to bumper warrenties are where its at). They'll turn around I'm sure.
Job is a weird book to be sure. Takes place in a time no one is really sure of and is an almost sappy chick flick like story.
The one thing that has always bothered me about Job is the first chapter and the converstation between God and Satan.
Basically when you boil it down its God saying "Go ahead and mess up one of my best servants' life so I can prove to you how great a God I am."
I mean talk about getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Job does everything he's supposed to and his reward is being a pawn in God and Satan's game of "I Told You So?"
Even in the end when he gets his "reward" he still lost all his kids. I mean does someone ever recover from that?
Why does God feel the need to prove himself to Satan?
What's a Leviathan?
Was the name Job popular at that time or was it unique?
Why don't ppl name either kids Job?
Ok my amatuer analysis of Job is complete.
Hey Dale,
Sorry to hear about all that is going on, but glad to see that you can still see God's goodness in those "epiphany" moments, in spite of all the bad. I agree with you that it isn't about the flow chart. It's about verse 29. I once heard it this way: life is like a mug of hot cocoa with whip cream on it. When everything's going good, you can't even tell what's underneath the whipped cream. But, when stuff goes wrong, well that's like the cup getting bumped. The whip cream sloshes to the side and you see what's really underneath. God's purpose is to make it so that when we fall, we don't learn how to pick ourselves back up as Batman Begins would want us to believe. It's so that we learn how to let God pick us up; to make it so that the next time the cup of our lives is bumped, what people see is Christ. At least, that's what God's been teaching me of late.
I'll be praying for you and your church, brother. Keep me updated, friend.
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