Christianity in the Raw’s blog

A year ago today The Wife and i went to a Red Lobster in Georgia and sat down to discuss either reconciliation or divorce. Truth be told, it could have gone either way very easily. The Church i attend, MercyHouse, had paid not only for the marriage retreat we were at, but for the plane tickets as well -- and i will say right here and now that i do not expect to ever find another Church like this one, who puts their resources and love where their mouth is to people who do not deserve that kind of treatment. We arrived in Atlanta on Sunday, and were done on a Thursday.

We were pissed off and hurt, and it took a long time for us to learn how to actually apologize to each other, which is why the night we went out was so late in the week. For me the decision to stay with The Wife boiled down to this simple point: did i believe unconditional love existed? Which of course really means if i believed that the gospel of Jesus Messiah, God's physical incarnation of unconditional love, existed. Was i a Christian? Why my wife decided to stay, i will probably never know, although my hunch is that both of us recognize that neither one of us would ever find another person like the one we are involved with now. In other words, we were made for each other in a very strange and unique way.

I'm not saying this past year has been some storybook perfect year where we begin to live happily ever after without further conflict. However, the difference of the past year in comparison with the five before it has been startling, like noon day is from midnight. We have tried our best to take what we have learned at the retreat and make it part of how we live our lives. I know that what i used to think was an apology was really an empty joke, and that my love for The Wife has actually grown over this last year. I always say that happiness depends upon circumstances, and my relationship with my wife makes me happy, and is one of the few bright spots in my life at the moment.

I am so grateful. God has had mercy on an entire race -- the human race -- and has offered rescue from the illusions of grandeur we are all have willing fallen victim too, thinking that humanity is somehow the measure of all things. When i think back upon my life it is with the knowledge that i was the author of my own misery, that i have always been, while living for myself, my own worse enemy. I thank God for Messiah Jesus because it was only through His radical action of human sacrifice and resurrection that enabled me to escape the prison cell that i had willingly made for myself. What we call the "Beatitudes" is actually Christ's proclamation of the gospel of grace. Blessed are the morally and spiritually bankrupt beggars, for they truly know just how desperately lost they really are. I is part of the dark night of the soul to realize that i am the guy at the traffic island with the cardboard sign begging for help because i cannot pull myself up by my own bootstraps. It is a time of death, and death is always ugly despite all the well-meaning platitudes about death being just another part of life. There is something stark and obscene and final when death finally comes calling, and it is only a friend when it ends a nightmare of pain and suffering. With a friend like that, who needs enemies? But Resurrection is well worth the death of our selfishness and self-interest, and the gospel that makes Christianity unique is simply this: That Jesus Messiah was crucified, dead, and buried; that He descended into hell; and on the third day rose again. If this isn't true, then like the Apostle Paul says, we are of all people to be pitied, and we should eat drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. I am truly grateful that there is something, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Messiah, that isn't in some way some type of Nihilism...

And i thank God for my wife every day as well.

I have been dutifully doing my work to finish my incomplete. I am designing a unit of lesson plans covering the Civil War because we were allowed to choose our own subject and i couldn't think of any other subject that has so much information in print and online. Let's just say i haven't had any problems finding overheads... I am beginning to see a pattern that  i will probably grow to hate as it becomes clearer. Using the MA State frameworks means i have to plan these lessons around the test they give sophomores and seniors to pass before they can graduate. Teaching from the frameworks is the same as teaching to the test, and an awful lot of narrative gets left behind.

My best buddy Mike, his wife and two kids came in for a surprise visit yesterday, which was like a shaft of sunlight at midnight. We went to college together, Mike and I, and altho i couldn't take organized Pentecostalism any more Mike, the trooper he is, has managed to begin a ministry that has both significance and relevance. He is about the only person that could actually fan to life the embers of a fire that i thought was buried in ice, the only one that could make me a little wishful about being a minister again.

Otherwise the nose is to the grindstone. It has been a long time since i have experienced this  kind of stress, the kind that presses down and causes you to hunch your back when your awake and squint your eyes when your asleep. At least the weather has been cooperating, as it has been in the mid to low 70s this week. What can i say? Autumn and Spring are my two favorite seasons, and i figure in the winter, you can always put more clothes on, right? Summer is fine, but it often is accompanied by humidity, which i could do without, and you can only take off so much clothing to cool down.

I am also sitting the dogs again, till Sunday. Its kool, they have began to grow on me. Plus, these folk's TV didn't melt down, and they have NESN, the home of all the Red Sox game. The Sox gained a game on the fucking Yankees last night, and i hope we make it six tonight.... OK, time for me to get back to the lesson plans. Mike gave me a B&N gift card, which i intend to use to purchase this publication of "On the Road,"  the original manuscript Kerouac typed out on a scroll , as well as John Leland's new book -- next week sometime, maybe. Sigh

So things are coming down to the wire for me in terms of student teaching this semester. I have to jump thru so many useless hoops that i feel like a trained poodle. One of the last obstacles to getting this all set up is completing an incomplete i received in my Methods class.

If anyone wants to know if there is a crisis in American secondary education, i'm here to answer that question with a resounding "Yes!" There has not been a single education class that i have taken that has not made me want to pound my forehead into a brick wall until i bled. I took a curriculum class a couple of semesters back where the entire semester was utilized by the professor to teach us that there is no objective definition for the word "curriculum." That class made me want to light myself on fire, although i managed not to get an incomplete in that one.

My methods class was very hard to handle because it was sooooo frustrating. It was tied in with a pre-practicum where i had to teach five lessons and be in a classroom at least one day a week. Everything i was learning from my practical experience mocked everything that i had to do for my Methods class -- and so did the teachers at the High School. To a man/woman, every one of them pulled me aside and told me that if they would have had to go thru the bullshit i was going thru they never would have become teachers. I ran out of motivation to do this work for my Methods class very quickly.

So here i am, behind the 8 ball again because i did not grit my teeth and discipline myself to do all this busy work that will in no way pan out into anything of practical value or use. I probably won't be blogging very much this week as a result, but i will try to read the blogs produced from my neighborhood. I have to produce a unit of ten lesson plans covering the American Civil War, write out all the assessment materials, do a calendar, write five reflection papers from five of the lessons i taught last year, and to finish off the last three lessons from the reflection paper assignment.

To put this all in context, my TV just died (it was a great TV for the ten years we had it, thanks Mike), i'm behind in almost every bill by at least two months, my GSL defaulted and i have to come up with the money to "rehabilitate" it, i will be working part time so 1/2 of my paycheck will be gone while at the same time, because of the default, there will be no new student aid for yours truly, and The Wife has a habit of picking up parking tickets at the meters in NoHo and on Campus. Oh, and to top it off i'm a passive/aggressive lazy ass. Fuck me gentley with a chain saw, right?

Glory, glory, glory.

Christianity makes sense to me exactly because it explains what i have been observing and experiencing my entire life, that there is much more pain and suffering than peace and wholeness, not only in the world around me but in myself as well. Christ never ever promised a utopian rose garden where, if one followed Him, there would be happiness and blessings forever more. He said it straight out -- the world hated Him, and so it would hate His followers. When He sent His disciples out, He told them that when, not if, they would suffer persecution and death. However, in their sufferings Jesus promised that His followers would find purpose in their suffering. So much pain and suffering is seen as arbitrary and random -- often good men die and rats get fat. Yet to paraphrase CS Lewis, Christ died not to take away our suffering, but to make our suffering like His.

However, daily crucifixion and tension with a world that we are aliens and strangers too is not the whole story. As the Apostle Paul says, we are resurrected from our crucifixion to a new life, one that can and should be lived abundantly.

"Or have forgotten that when we became Christians and were baptized to become one with Christ Jesus, we died with him? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives" (Romans 6:3, 4 NLT).

Joy is a complete mystery to me. I have learned over the years not to trust happiness, as that state of mind is often tied to circumstances beyond our control. One of my favorite movies, Tender Mercies, makes this point very well. Right when things seem to go well, often tragedy will strike. Robert Duval's character Sonny, the washed out yet redeemed country music song writer & singer, perfectly exampled this as he realized at the end of the movie that he had no clue as to why things happened as they do, that he could only trust on the mercy and will of God.

Joy and unhappiness often exist at the same time. It isn't any secret to those who have been reading this for almost a year now that i have been having a really bad day for about the last seven years. It has been a miserable and stark experience. I can count the number of times, on one hand, that i could have said i was happy. Yet at the same time i experienced times of joy so intense that often i was overwhelmed, and could only stare wind eyed in wonder at the love God had for me and had given to me to love others. I came to realize that happiness was dependent upon circumstances, while joy was an inner state of mind. Joy depends upon who we know ourselves to be, or, in my case, who God, thru the power of the Holy Spirit, created out of the ashes of my old, selfish man. Yet make no mistake: I was more often than not, by a wide margin, unhappy and depressed. As i look back with the benefit of hind sight, i realize now that if i wasn't feeling that way, then i probably wouldn't have qualified for the label "sane." These feelings were completely appropriate for the context I found myself in.

I think the key to this ability to be in mourning, or hurting, or depressed while at the same time experiencing intense and overwhelming joy has to do with the ability to crucify ones self and being raised again by the power of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that rose Christ from the dead.. Christianity has these two beliefs (the only agreement, imo) in common with Buddhism -- they both believe that life is suffering and that suffering can be excised. Suffering comes as a result of a person's desires or expectations. Our desires betray us every day, and expectations easily are frustrated due to our lack of ability to control the circumstances and people around us. That we live in such an idealistic society makes sure that more people suffer than ever before. This is why considering one's self as a dead man (or woman) walking can lead to the joy of the dead who resurrect: If one tries to save their life they will lose it, if they give their life away they shall find it.

Without desire or expectation, what can hurt us? I guess i shouldn't say that a Christian doesn't have desires or expectations, i should say that they have been radically translated and altered. Our desires and expectations are to be for the Kingdom of God, and while we are in this state of being all the other stuff we schemed and plotted and worried and obsessed over, things like respect, security, meaning, love, understanding, and even everyday things like food, water, and shelter, shall be provided for us by a loving heavenly Father. It comes down, from the beginning to the end, to trust, faith that God is who He claims He is, that Christ has done what He promised to do, that the Spirit gives these mortal bodies the ability to become disciples. Love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, patience, and self-control -- are not these things, provided for us by the Godhead, the ingredients of an abundant life?

I firmly believe this: i laugh more fully and deeply now after all i have come thru than i did before.

I went to services on Sunday morning & it was a good thing, as i needed to hear the text that was being preached: "Deny your self, pick up your cross daily, and follow me." Nothing against the good man whose responsibility it was to bring the message, but my mind hit into overdrive and most of everything i had ever learned when in the ministry about this passage came flooding inside my mind.I've been thinking about it even more over the last couple of days.

It is almost impossible to hear a good sermon on this topic, mostly because American preachers either, a) land a God sized guilt trip with this passage, emphasizing a radical individualism or, b) illustrate just how well the congregation has done in this area, and in the process democratizes the Kingdom of God.

I have been in Church services since before i was born, literally, and there are things i have never heard preached on ever. I have never ever, except the few times i tried my hand at it in youth group (where they looked at me as if i'd lost my mind because who wants to hear this when your young and full of piss and vinegar?) did anyone cover what it meant to the those ruled by the iron fist of Rome.

Three things popped into my mind: 1) alienation and estrangement, 2) political subversion, and 3) tension maintenance. If you were crucified in the ancient Roman world, it meant you were an alien and a stranger, someone who was not a citizen. You were considered to be a second class citizen, without the right of due process. There was a reason why crucifixion happened outside the city gates -- it was to make death that much more a lonely and hopeless experience because it cut you off from a ethnic or communal identity. It also meant you were considered an enemy of the State. Crucifixion was reserved for those who rebelled against Roman authority, although others who threatened the established order, such as thieves of private property and murderers. The crucified was almost always a threat to the established political order. Lastly, this passage means a tension few could be able to live their lives in. Think about a prisoner on death row, who has to steel themselves to their fate, knowing they are going to die. There have been rare occurrences in the past where the method of execution has not only failed once, but several times. Can you imagine someone who has survived multiple execution attempts, how much tension must have been ratcheted up during each

successive attempt? Jesus said to pick up the cross daily...

Although their is individual application to this passage, i believe the implication is far more communal than individual. Until i found MercyHouse, I had never attended a Church body who was not fully comfortable in the culture around them. I had never attended a community of faith who said they were members of the kingdom of God first and Americans second. I had never attended a group that has consistently, everyday, expected each individual that made up their community to live counter culture to both the political ideologies of Left and Right and the cultural expectations they were raised in. Part of the legacy of the Second Great Awakening (or the Great American Counter Reformation) is a reconciliation of Christianity, culture, and politics, and Pentecostals/Evangelicals are especially guilty of cultural accommodation.

This is glaringly opposed to the early Church. Holding true to Church Liturgy meant being branded as cannibals (the body and blood of Messiah); Christian community meant being labeled as incestuous (brothers and sisters in Christ); believing that God was Three yet One earned the name atheist (Christians no longer sacrificed to the local deities); and calling Messiah Jesus by Caesar's title "Lord" meant the possibility of a literal cross to carry as an enemy of the State. Christian morality has always revolved around people being made in the image of God and thinking that as Christians they were dead men (and women) walking. Christian morality has traditionally been viewed as without rhyme or reason by the culture surrounding the Kingdom. Christians have always acted morally by opposing abortion by adopting, ditto for saving babies left to die of exposure (mostly girl babies), by giving their lives away to die taking care of plague victims, by staying as man and wife in cultures that have practiced polygamy, and by doing the same and risking the wrath of an effeminent elite, especially in Rome (You try telling Nero that man was made for woman and woman for man and see how fast you'd be on fire to light his dinner party).

It is hard to think of yourself as a convicted political subversive with a daily death sentence hanging over your head. Yet can one follow Christ, Messiah Jesus, without at least a partial awareness of this call?

PS if any of you know a better blog location than Vox, let me know. I am so tired of not being able to download audio files that i about can't stand it.

I've been thinking about the saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same. There is a lot of truth in this statement, although people have, in different epochs, thought very differently to come to very similar conclusions.

For a long time i never could figure out what the apostle Paul when he wrote that Christians are free: because one is either free and a slave to righteousness, or a slave to sin. If this confuses you, it is because contemporary people don't think this way. Either one is free, or a slave. We say that a person can be a free slave like a woman being kinda pregnant. The ancients thought different. Freedom meant that they could, by free will, choose whatever obligation of honor they wanted to bind themselves too. Freedom for a modern person is to be free of any obligation or boundary or restrictions. Thus Paul made perfect sense to his first century audience, and sounds so odd to modern ears.

My favorite author is James Lee Burke. His work is our country's Illiad, as he is the perfect combination of prose poetry and violence. What is interesting about his prose is that he has lived in two different worlds, that of military and civilian life, and recognizes that savagery lies very close to what we are proud to call a modern, civilized surface. His characters are always in that tension between law and personal honor, between an ancient and a modern mentality. What would it take for any of us to shed our civilized exterior and operate under the black flag?

I went and saw The Bourne Ultimatum, and i saw a trailer for a new upcoming film that i forget the name of. In the trailer a gang of related thugs kill a suburban kid while his Dad watched at an inner city gas station. The killer gets off on a technicality, and of course, the father declares war. It seemed to be a good flick, as it seemed to consider the cost of beginning a personal vendetta, of becoming a vigilante. However, it also made me wonder. This guy had a wife and a couple of other kids. What would happen if he had nothing really to lose?

I would like to think that i am Christian enough to not repay evil with evil, that i could pray for my enemy and for those who despise me. But i wonder -- how far under the surface is my ability to rise the black flag of no surrender, no quarter? I have had a very bad couple of weeks, and although i have been, by and large, the author of my own misery, just how far can someone feel helpless until they attempt to take control of the situation, by force if necessary? The unedited self talk and imaginations that only God and i see are sometimes very, very violent, very primal.

Every day i was in Jr. High and High school was a day where physical violence was a distinct possibility, I was a pretty sick kid, and when i got better i had to begin with the weakest kid who picked on me and work my way up to the most popular and strongest kid who picked on me. It was two years of some very violent activity, but i also have to admit that was the last time i ever got into a fight. I'm 6'5" and i weight around 280 lbs -- and i walk like i'm coordinated. No one would mess with me, and frankly i have been very careful to never put myself in a situation where i could be in that situation. But i have never forgotten how thin the line is, or that civilization is barely civilized. It effects how i look at life, how i live my religion, how i comport myself at work, how i see the political arena. It is probably the reason that i have such contempt for Progressive politics, as that particular ideology is so completely idealistic as to be completely useless. It is also the reason i have such contempt for those Conservatives who think war is the answer -- i can almost guarantee that those shmucks have never been in a battle in their lives. Savagery, which is what war is, is savage, with few rules or redeeming qualities and when one lets loose the dogs of war he is also opening the gates of hell.

I feel so odd, so out of place. I am not of a modern mindset. I don't fit in on the Left -- that people are basically good is something that doesn't even compute. I am a Christian, and Christianity's insistence upon forgiveness and turning the other cheek certainly is not welcome in the Conservative camp, although Christianity is based upon tradition. I don't fit in there either, especially when both the Left and the Right tries to make a mascot of Christianity by turning it into some kind of civil religion based upon morality. I also do not fit in with many of my peers, as many have chosen intellectual laziness for emotional sentimentality, or those that haven't this problem often accent the rational over the passion of following Christ. Both kinds of Christianity are simply two sides to one coin, and hold no interest for me.

Whatever happened to Christian realism? I like Reformed theology a lot because there is a lot of common sense in their doctrines, altho they tend to lean toward the rational and the systematic. Sometimes they are like a bunch of lawyers treating the Bible like a legal document in order to draw up a contract. I like my Pentecostal background a lot, as there was a lot of passion in their Christian experience. However, they tended to be even bigger slaves to cultural populism than the general culture; witness the mics and drum sets and clean swept stages front and center of their multipurpose auditoriums where symbolism tells you what is most important. I like liturgical Christianity as well, the rhythm of the Church calendar, the rhyme of the liturgy and the use of sacred space and emphasis upon symbolism. What might happen, do you think, if any of these might be combined? I wouldn't feel so lonely, i guess....

Please forgive this strange post. I have had an odd couple of weeks, and my mind, for some reason, has wandered along this line of thought for reasons i don't know. Now, if i can just convince Vox to upload my song i wanna use...

So I have been way to busy to post very much lately. My car was too rusty to pass inspection, so i had to bring it into a "body shop" a local boy has in his -- get this -- tobacco barn. My local and honest beyond belief mechanic referred him, as he could get my car ready for inspection cheap. Damn, i hope so.

Last week i wrote out a tithe check. That was the same check that caused our account to  be overdrawn. This is the third attempt to write out a tithe check and the third time when, despite having $ in the bank, i've been overdrawn. The Church that i attend doesn't even take offering during the service, i grew up knowing its a good thing to be generous. It isn't like  they church is asking, "Show me the money!" Tithing = giving, and i don't think tithing is required. It is a good idea and generosity can only be drummed into selfish people by discipline. So, here i go.

Although i grew up Pentecostal, i rarely credit spiritual warfare with the strange stuff that happens in life. I am a Christian, and i do believe in the supernatural. However, this spiritual warfare concept is a very nice excuse for intellectually lazy or manipulative people to avoid responsibility for their own actions. However, i'm beginning to think that there might be something behind this whole tithing thing, and i don't see angels and demons under every rock or behind every couch. Whatever it is that is happening, this week has been insane. Most of my week has been scrambling to scape up enough money to actually be in the black at the bank. Thankfully, Friday is payday.

I have also been wincing every time the Red Sox has played on their West Coast road trip. After taking 2 outta three in Seattle, where they never win, they are on the brink of being swept in LA. We are only 51/2 up on the fucking Yankees now, although we still posses the best record in MLB and the largest divisional lead in baseball. Lets just say that i can't wait till college football and the opening of the Cornhusker's season. I can get back to rooting for winners for a change...

I called out of work today, i need to get a whole lotta work done this afternoon. I need to get about twenty lesson plans done, yesterday. Sigh....

Over the few years that I have lived in the Happy Valley i have heard innumerable people voice that they preferred Karma over Dogma, often in a very condescending tone, or with a sneer on their face and voice. I'm sure many have seen the bumper sticker that says My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma. Since blogging on Vox, i have read many blogs and YouTube presentations blaming Communism's brutality not on a secular ideology, but on the fact that those dictators that ran these little carnivals of horror relied upon religious dogma. (Stalin, you know, was training to be a priest so its all Christianities fault-- it couldn't be that certain atheist understood that if God doesn't exist, everything and anything is permissible?)

So let us define our terms, shall we? My Mac laptop has a little dictionary, and that dictionary defines Dogma as: 
 

"A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true: The Christian dogma of the Trinity/ the rejection of political dogma. Origin: mid 16th century: via late Latin from Greek Dogma, 'opinion,' from dokein, 'seem good, think.'

And Karma?

"(In Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as defining their fate in future existences. Also, Informal destiny or fate, following as effect from cause. Origin: from Sanskrit karman, 'action, effect, fate.'

While we're at it, how bout the word ideology?

"1. a system of ideas or ideals, esp. one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy: the ideology of republicanism. Also: the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group, social class, or individual: a critique of bourgeois ideology.Also: archaic visionary speculation, esp. of an unreasonable or idealistic nature.
2. archaic the science of ideas; the study of their origin and nature. Origin: Late 18th cent. (sense 2) : from French ideologie, from Greek idea, 'form, pattern' + logos (denoting discourse or compilation).

I can't really figure out the argument, truth be told. There has to be connotations that have been added to these words that i don't know about.

Dogma is easily understandable -- there are a core set of principles to anything that, when questioned and challenged, damages it irreparably as to make those challenged principles into something else entirely. I suppose the trouble is that authority has declared those said principles as dogma, as incontrovertible truths. Modern people have made rebellion against authority an assumption and a duty. The Church, secularists favorite target, is the big bad authority, based on tradition instead of progress, calls doctrine like the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the Resurrection dogma. But secularists have their own dogma, Evolution being the most obvious. Try being a biologist and challenge that "theory," and see where it gets ya. Try being a Communist and challenge the dogma of progress.

Karma can both benefit and come along and bite you in the ass. I have never understood the attraction that western people have with karma, except that is is something new and different from traditional western thought. There is a lived out ethic, and a very reassuring cause and effect kinda vibe happening here which vaguely echoes the Christian teaching of the last judgment. Mean people suck, and with this belief, mean people will get theirs. The problem, of course, is that everyone will do whatever is necessary to protect their self-interest and justify their actions in a lifetime, which means at the end of anyone's life they will have fucked up way more than they will have done what is right. Mother Theresa ministered to the dying untouchable caste in India precisely because no one else would -- why should they if they were getting exactly what they deserved from actions they had taken in a former lifetime? When hard times happen now with those people around me i don't hear a lot of people whose karma ran over the dogma stoically enduring as if they deserve their fate. What i hear from these folks is bitching and moaning about why bad things happen to good people...

Ideology is easily understandable as well. Ideology is a whole system of belief, and can be both good and bad. I personally love the political ideology of republicanism -- i like what the American founders were thinking when they wrote the US Constitution and set up the government. I happen to dislike Socialism as an ideology, and i hate Communism unconditionally and with savage abandon. Ideology, however, has its limits in real life situations, boundaries set because often ideologies are abstract and idealistic.

Dogma, karma, and ideology get bad raps mostly because of certain personalities that tend to thrive and obsess over them -- people who cling to them as a means to an ends, as the vehicles for their will-to-power. Dogma is set as incontrovertible truths, but that doesn't set those truths as something that cannot be examined and proved. Every theologian worth his or her salt throughout Christian history has had to come to grips with the central Christian dogmatics. Likewise those who would disregard without pity or sympathy the poor and the dying as those who deserve their karmic fate in order to persue their own goals. The same goes with ideologies. There are always those, like the Russian intelligentsia, that are willing to single-mindedly apply their ideology regardless of the immorality of their actions. The irony is, of course, that the temperament of these people, regardless dogma or ideology, are remarkably similar -- and once again, in the name of the greater good, bullshit reigns and blood flows..

As for me, sometimes its good to be on the road, and revisit highway 61.

 

Well, the other shoe finally dropped, and of course it turned out to be mostly my responsibility, altho i was given terrible & contradictory information. I have a very old GSL that i am currently having trouble with, and right at the worst possible time as i am supposed to go to work part time to enable me to student teach full time beginning Aug. 28th. Oh yes, Murphy will probably be riding shotgun on the day i die...

I do not handle stress very well. I tend to get very angry with myself and to eat a lot of comfort food. As i am also very passive aggressive, i tend to bring my anger out in areas where i have some modicum of control, in relationships or circumstances where i think i'm secure, and it is usually friends and loved ones who suffer. Talk about the banality of evil, how fucking petty is that? Yesterday i went from work with a couple of co-workers to the bar and , altho i didn't get drunk, i probably drank too much. Now i'm 6'5" and semi hefty, it would take a huge amount of booze to get me drunk off my ass. On the other hand, i very rarely drink, and when i do its only a couple of beers. I hit home around 8:30, went and got The Wife some pork fried rice, and then went back out to my bar, The Spoke, to watch the Red Sox until last call.

I had fun yakking and doing the whole male bonding thing, and the Red Sox are in Seattle so the game began at 10:00 pm last night. (They were, of course, losing at last call) But i couldn't really enjoy myself, i had this hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach all night and a gnawing feeling that all i have been doing is avoiding my problem instead of facing it head on. I don't think about expectations all that much, as when i think about the fact that i am 43 and now very much middle-aged all i do is get very, very depressed. I need to get an incomplete done, my student teaching binder done, calling who i have to call to arrange what needs to be arranged in my finances, and still all i find myself doing is dinking around on my computer, watching tv, reading a book, eating, or drinking a beer while i watch a sox game.

On the other hand:

My Dad once told me this story: There was a man in a local AG church that had run thru most of the congregation's good will. He was a continual hardluck story, and he managed to live on the edge of disaster on a number of fronts, including a struggle with an old drinking problem. One day the man was arrested for drunk and disorderly in the small town, and the church board had finally had enough. They met, and on the agenda was a vote to take away the man's church membership as Pentecostals don't hold with members drinking alcohol. The oldest member of the board waited until everyone else had voted, and it didn't look good for the ner do well. The old gentleman stood up, with tears streaming down his cheeks, and explained that he couldn't cast a vote, or play any part of disfellowshipping the arrested man. He agreed that the church should take action, and volunteered to bail the man from jail and to be responsible for befriending the man and holding him accountable. He would do this, he said, because someone did this for him when he was a new convert. The rest of the board, shamefaced, adjured the meeting after agreeing to the old fellow's proposition.

I know this was corny, and my Dad probably got this from one of his Dad's sermon illustrations, but my point is this -- grace has brought me safe this far, and grace will bring me home. God's grace is God's attitude toward someone that results in unmerited favor. Grace is receiving that which you didn't earn while mercy is not receiving something you did earn and deserve. Without either of these, both grace and mercy, i am pretty much floating facedown dead in the water...

Also there is this: my wife loves me, which is a new and wonderful feeling. It has been hard for me to shake the conviction that i have never been loved as much as i loved, but i'm getting into the practice lately with The Wife.

And lastly, this: although i am far from a completed project, i am learning bit by bit how to face up to my short comings and to try to function despite the fact i have this tendency to sabotage myself. Intellectually for me it is easy to say God loves me, for some reason is is so much harder to understand on a existential level that God likes me as well. I like what Billy Graham's wife wanted on her tomb stone: Thank you for you patience during construction.

Yup, if you remember the sequence of the days of the week you will know today, mouseketeers, is Literary Thursday. Yayyyyy! I'm tipping my hat to the neighbor lady back home when i was a kid; she always let me come over and watch old black and white Mickey Mouse Club repeats of the old Mickey Mouse Club from the 50s and 60s. She already had four boys, but they pretty much, like mangy coyotes, ran wild around the fields and woods where i grew up. I suppose she enjoyed a kid who she could make cookies for and yap with her during a summer afternoon. Jimmy always had a different event for every day of the week...

I am reading two books by the same author at once, Persian Fire and Rubicon by Tom Holland. I'll admit it: after taking classes from Carlin Barton here at the University, i am hooked by the Greeks and the Romans. I am hooked because of a crisis that i went thru due to my own religious upbringing. I grew up a third generation Pentecostal, my family attended the local Assembly of God Church. The Bible was important, but not as important as the religious experiences Pentecostals are known for, i.e., speaking in tongues, prophesy, testimonies, quick, rollicking hymns, and three services a week. In Sunday school, in the sermons, and in the hymns the Bible, an ancient document thousands of years old, was presented as an authority that gave legitimacy to all our modern assumptions and presuppositions. I was young enough not to find it at all odd that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures were written by a people who thought just like we did...

This concept was not dispelled even as i attended Bible College in North Dakota (where, i assure everyone, i suffered for Jesus). Instead, it was reinforced. With the nifty application of the scientific method of hermenutics, i learned anyone could completely exegete a passage to understand its one, original meaning and intent the author had when he wrote the words lo those many years ago. Imagine my surprise as i read beyond my college years and began to understand that these people, both the Jews and Gentiles that produced the documents that make up our modern Bible, thought and acted almost completely opposite from a post Enlightenment mindset.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, there were only three basic sources to generate the power needed for the tools society depended upon. There was "horsepower," from domesticated animals, wind power from windmills and ship sails, and manpower. Every society from the dawn of time to just after the American civil war was a slave holding society, as people were needed to do most of the work. All the cultures of the entire world, up until nationalism was invented, again around 1300 AD, had their foundations based upon kinship with some kind of honor code, some type of warrior code not based upon individuality or conscience but upon community and honor. The assumptions and presuppositions of such a society was hugely different.

What happens when we place these differences between modern and ancient culture in the forefront of our minds when we read the Biblical narrative? Well, for one thing, all those stories Jews and Christians are sheepish about now, such as the invasion and conquest of Canaan and Paul's exclusion of  those who practice homosexuality from inheriting the Kingdom of God, to name two subjects off the top of my head, gain a new perspective. The problem is that American teachers/pastors are rarely well-read about antiquity. During my whole Bible college experience i never heard of the Church Fathers or Patristic studies. The main focus was in introducing me to the modern methodology of hermenutics, the "science" of Biblical interpretation. Here's the irony:       Wait for it, wait for it        In studying for my history undergraduate degree at UMass all of these things were required reading for my classes, especially Professor Barton's classes. She actually taught a class entitled Martyrs and Sacrifice, and used the biblical books of Dueteronomy and Hebrews as well as Greek and Roman texts on ancient religions.

Professor Barton has spoken to the Patristic Society at the University of Chicago and to this day still requires Jewish and Christian Scripture in her classes. When she taught the Roman Empire class i was attending, she required the book of Romans, and gave a lecture on Paul's teaching of Justification by faith that was better than 90% of my theology classes in Bible college. Prof. Barton isn't a Christian, and we have spent hours in her office debating about Christianity and ancient paganism. Yet i came away with a completely fresh perspective on my own Christianity.

So i recommend these books, and also ask forgiveness for my many spelling errors. It seems the spell chech button on my Vox compose box will not function properly...