Saturday, October 28, 2006

Regina Spektor at the Moore Theater

To say I was hooked up is an understatement for this night. Eden and Nat got me a belated birthday gift with a ticket to Regina Spektor. And not only that, but as I came from work I walked into the theater to see that a front row seat was saved for me.

Her music is a little different than I'm used to, it has some jazz flavor and I'll admit, has a very girlish feel to it. But that does not keep me from seeing her brilliance. And she is brilliant.

One of my favorite songs is Samson, a beautiful description of relationship, and the betrayal that will inevitably happen in some way or another, but also the beauty in meeting each other in our faults and being one another's 'sweetest downfalls.' Something about weakness that invites another person in. Her accent, which gives her voice a divine, goddess like tone, makes me feel as though something holy and sacred is being said and heard.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Just Another Saturday Night





So after Eden's concert saturday night, and after heading to the Park Pub and then downtown seattle to a corner hot dog stand and mingling with the shady party scene crowd outside the bars, we ended up back at our house. And I thought the night had come to an end, but my seminarian friends thought otherwise, and a full fledged dance party began, everything short of a dance off. The best way to illustrate it was Eden the next day, describing the night as one big blur, not knowing what was a dream and what was real, yet she realized she didn't have a sip of alcohol the whole night.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Life in Slow Motion

I have wanted to talk about the title of my blog, Life in Slow Motion, and after writing my Faith, Hope, and Love paper again, I was led into the notes and ideas that inspired the title (along with David Grey’s great song titled just that…Life in Slow Motion).

There is a lot here that has to do with the past, present, and future. Dan has talked about the different kinds of time in class. There is the kronos time, which is the Greek word for sequential, chronological time. And there is kairos time, which is the Greek word for time that is held in the moment. It is the time that we have the ability as humans to hold, where along with the present we are able to engage with the past and future. We operate on this level of time over and over throughout our day, most of which does not hold significant meaning, like remembering what you had for breakfast or knowing what you are doing tonight.

But there are also certain moments when this time is able to hold for us the deepest, most intense times of desire and joy and sadness all together, where the implications, the importance, the magnitude of the past and the future are met in the here and now, as if that moment is a culmination and expression of everything your life has been about or long for it to be. The good and the bad, the heartache of loss and yet the hope and desire and even greater capacity for joy that rises out of that, all groaning towards the hope for what is to come.

Much of the memory I have of times like these have in many ways been found in past relationships, and what I do know of some of those times is when the girl was able to simply be with me, when she didn’t have to do anything or say anything, but we were able to just sit in the moment, we had such a level of intimacy that time appeared to stand still. That intimacy held so much of the past, so much of the longing for someone to know at such a deep level that was finally becoming real. It also provided a glimpse, a taste of the magnitude of intimacy that would be fully met in what is to come.

I look for that in the women I meet around me. I look to see how they sit with me, how they hold themselves. How they react when they think I’m too quiet or for some reason am intimidating, or even have an interest in me and don’t know what to do with it. How do they hold their heartaches and losses and desires and hopes when they encounter all of mine? Will they cover that up with another self? Will they try to be someone else? Will they talk so much just to fill the time and drown out any real meeting and showing of who they are?

All I know is that when I am able to sit and hold all of these things with someone (doesn’t have to be a girl) usually something amazing happens, something that allows for God to come in. When I am in community, when people are able to simply be, when they are present with one another and not trying to be someone else, that is something amazing. That is something that can create the moments that seem to move in slow motion, where time stands still and the past, present, and future convene.

...so after reading A River Runs Through It for class, I came across a section that seemed to paint this idea in the life of a fly fisherman. The character just lost the biggest fish he had hooked before, the moment standing still in time. He says:

"Poets talk about 'spots of time', but it is really fisherman who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone. I shall remember that son of a bitch forever."


Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Mosaic

Today was a long day, in breadth and depth. It really started last night when our house watched Dead Man Walking for class, and the end was very moving. That started the emotion that would continue right up to practicum today, where I told my story.

There were a lot of potential experiences that could’ve happened during the time, and luckily traumatic was not one of them. It was easier than I thought, even though the environment did not seem to bring out the depth of my experience the way I was hoping for. Which was frustrating, but also understandable.

There is just such a longing in my heart for genuine community that I brought those hopes into the room today. This is one of the reasons that I am really enjoying Mosaic, a local church where I’ve been the past two Sundays. The community I have felt there evokes such a longing in me, a longing for something I feel like has been absent since my days at MSU. It has given me what seems like a safe outlet for expression that my heart is ready for. I have been holding back tears during worship the past two weeks when I see so many who are not afraid to express their hearts to God, to really let go and as a community join in praise – there is quite a spirit in that room. It is definitely not an emergent church/mars hill graduate school type church, but does any of that really matter when people just join in community like that? The community is scary, as are any new relationships that really start to have some depth to them. But I am looking forward to taking some risks there and seeing what unfolds. I am willing to take that risk for community.

As I was writing my I and Thou paper, I ran across Martin Buber's idea of what true community was:

"True community does not come into being because people have feelings for each other (though that is required, too), but rather on two accounts: all of them have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to a single living center, and they have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to one another."

Monday, October 09, 2006

Wave and Particle

One of the readings from my hermeneutics class was really good. It really emphasized what an understanding of the context in which the text was written (or spoken) looks like. It talked about the oral tradition of the text and how much that meant to the expression of God's Word in Jesus' time. Hebrew holds precise ethical and philosophical value concepts that belong only to Hebrew and Judaism and that are really untranslatable. Words cannot be learned simply as words without their complete historical context. Hebrew as a written language is skeletal, shorthand structure, in which the main process takes place in thought. Here is a quote from the article:

'For most moderns, scripture has ceased to be the guiding companion of life that resides in one's deepest layers of consciousness, influencing one even when one is not aware of its presence. Instead, scripture has become a literary object to be studied and analyzed along with the other literary texts we possess.'

This reminds me to make the text a story that enters every part of my day, something to be embodied, given life to. Not a piece of literature that one would lecture about, but more like a story that is told over a camp fire.

The last part of the article was an amazing example of what this thought can look like. The expounding of the text in its tradition is done with the words from Genesis 1, 'In the beginning.'

In the beginning...
which means:

in archetypal form-
with the power to be something in principle-
like a point which unfolds itself
in wings, in flame,
in all direction,
conceiving the idea of a universe
for better and for worse...

In that time before time and space,
the Being of beings,
the I-They-Who-Are
the One which is Many,
the Ultimate Pronoun.

Drew upon unknowable Otherness,
to convert into knowable Essence
two tendencies of our universe-to-be

the cosmic tendency toward the Limitless:
the ocean of light, sound,
name and vibration-
all that shines in glorious space,
that rises in sublime time

as well as

the cosmic tendency toward that Limited:
a formed and fixed energy which moves
straight toward goals and solutions:
the sense of purpose which we see in
earth, water, fire and air.

In Principle,
In Beginning-ness,

Oneness envisioned the wave and the particle.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Derek and Sandra


Last night I went and saw Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken play at a local church. Unfortunately Sandra didn't play many songs, Derek took most of the stage, but it was good to see him for the first time. I think I was surprised how much I enjoyed the songs from his Mockingbird album, they seemed to have more substance live. And I was remembered of his poignant lyrics, both from the new album and of old. He is definitely a prophet of this age, calling us to the truth of Jesus' upside down kingdom. The song 'My Enemies Are Men Like Me' does that for me, reminding me of what it really means to love our enemies (how rediculously hard that is - what does it look like to love terrorists, the enemy of our country?), and that I am no better than what I think is the enemy. Here are the lyrics:

i have come to give you life
and to show you how to live it
i have come to make things right
to heal their ears and show you how to forgive them

because i would rather die
i would rather die
i would rather die
than to take your life

how can i kill the ones i’m supposed to love
my enemies are men like me
i will protest the sword if it’s not wielded well
my enemies are men like me

peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication
it’s like telling someone murder is wrong
and then showing them by way of execution

when justice is bought and sold just like weapons of war
the ones who always pay are the poorest of the poor

Monday, October 02, 2006

Nothing unusual, nothing's changed, just a little older that's all...

My 26th Birthday can be summed up as good times with good new friends. My roommates set everything up, yea they are great. As you can see from the pics, it was inevitable for the cowboy hat to come out and 'save a horse, ride a cowboy' to be blasted from the stereo. Later at the Havana Club we did some more dancing, and then some more dancing...