A ghost of Christmas past?

It's more or less been a week, and I'm posting not necessarily because I want to write (I don't - not now at least) but because that's one of the most logical things to do.

After a week, it's surprising how quickly I've fallen into old habits and, in a sense, even more surprising that I not only saw it coming but brush it off. Is surprised the right word? Terrified seems more apropos. And that's definitely the truth - it seems in a certain sense that I've forgotten how to deal with this kind of repentance, the kind that takes no deep prayer or contemplation to find; the kind that stares you right in the face and slaps you senseless until you've all but forgotten where you are. I'm in pain - and old dogs never die.

Yet in all this complacency and sloth lack of visible effort, I still remember that there's nothing I can do to work towards or buy my redemption. Repentance does nothing unless God's there to help me - and I realise (to an extent, I do wish I could "realise" it on a more inward level) that it is indeed not my willpower but His that has the final word. It seems in my eager self-affirmation I've forgotten how weak I really am, especially against myself.

But the main thing that's become evident is that I need a change of heart - for God, for myself. for all sorts of things - and what better season than the Advent? I do want to change more - God knows I do. And I do want to stay strong - God knows I do. But I realise now that I would rather stay strong on His terms than my own. I only pray that I could want it more.

I'm still weak and sinful as hell, but by God's grace, He'll keep helping me up. Heaven knows I need that. Yet all in the end it goes back to Him - He kept his promise, no matter how far we ran away and no matter how much we loved ourselves and our own sinful world instead.

God with us, indeed.

Merry Christmas.

A red light ahead

Well, it's been fully 3 weeks since I last posted. Sure shows how committed I am even to something I promised to do for myself. I've wanted to do more posts, but somehow I just can't remember. Easy enough, I guess.

But in another sense I think it's a good thing that there was an interim period between posts. A lot of things happened after Thanksgiving break, and the sudden appearance of all that insincere secular holiday jibber-jabber kept Peter from enjoying himself (and the Advent). Though I guess once more I only have myself to blame.

I don't even know where to begin. I'm not sure I really want to begin. Though I'm sure that in beginning (and finishing) this post I might just uncover another deep understanding of the human psyche and the profundity of human perseverance. Then I'll make a movie about it and cast Will Smith as the lead role. Man do I hate Will Smith.

I guess I'll just list everything. Chrisanna and I started a something (our something, if that means anything) and then it ended. She broke things off; for a while I couldn't stop thinking about it - or her. I still can't. I think God's teaching me a lesson. Finals were terrible. I realised at that fine hour when I couldn't decide whether to write the Aristotle or the feminism maybe not falling asleep (~Ap in predicate logic, in case I ever need it) in class could be a good option every once in a while. Small group sharing was a very reinvigorating experience - because for the first time in a while I got to hear myself speak, and I got to hear God speak through me. CFC Lock-in was very strange. I'm amazed I stayed up - and even more amazed at the fact that for whatever reason, I have no functioning comprehension of the Holy Trinity at 5 in the morning (yet when I sleep and wake up again I understand it as before).

It's strange to see that all written out like that. 3 weeks of my life more or less summed up in a paragraph, a few parentheticals and the irrelevant inclusion of some symbolic logic. Good thing at least I know what I'm talking about. Who knows how lost I'd be if that weren't the case - when I come back to read this, whenever, I'm sure I'll remember.

At sharing small group, I shared how winter break was both a "break" and a "brake" for me - or at least what I was expecting. I think in a certain sense that has to be true not just for one month out of one school year at one university but at least every day. I wake up every day not entirely sure whether I want to do anything specific and, if I do, wondering (with mild fear) whether or not I will complete my task. It's certainly a strange life to live when your biggest enemy is yourself. A month is a long time, in any case - whether on break or not. But in another 4 weeks, the only record of it having happened will be this highly unreliable machine in my head and (if I'm lucky) 4 or so more posts here. Yet braking (and breaking) is a process - every day we'll get slower, breathe a little easier, and remember just a little more in time to stop and reconnect to another years' obligations.

Maybe if I ease the brake just right, I'll barely even notice I stopped.

Thanksgiving (Part II)

Well, it's that time of year again. This time it seems so typical for everyone to be "thankful" (I wonder why) and "united", whatever that might mean. I can't say I feel that way - or at least not the same way.

The holiday season has become corporate. Even the real, true, heartfelt "meaning" of Christmas and Thanksgiving has become something gridlocked into picture-perfect family dinners, frame-by-frame cathartic realisations of the "joy of giving", captured by none other than the American cinematic imagination. It seems that people quit being so damn greedy and self-interested for this meager month and a half, then resume their lives as quietly as if nothing had ever happened - only to replay that same amnesiac recreation every year on end. If people really cared so much, you'd think they would at least pretend as much the rest of the year round. Though I guess in a sense that is really that fabled holiday cheer. Good thing we can all, for a little while, shut up and at least pretend not to be so damn insincere.

Though in true Thanksgiving spirit, I really do admit that I haven't been very thankful. I'm not even used to being thankful - which, I guess, is why we have a week off and a special meal designated for such a purpose. But I realise, in a kind of lightly ironic way, that we don't need to be thankful for everything all the time. We've only got so much in the end. I mean, in a sense, all I really have is myself - if only I weren't so unreliable. And I'm undeniably certain that I don't deserve most or any of what I have, or what, by God's mercies, I've come to have. I guess my thanksgiving is less about giving thanks (in the traditional sense) and really just looking at my life and being glad that I can never be thankful enough.

Next year I'm sure there will be another post remarkably similar to this one, and the year after that, and who knows for how long after. The repetition is only half the deal, though - and God fills it up with so much more. When I said I was thankful for struggle, it was true - but only in the sense that God brings me through struggle and in how well He's sustained me so far. When I said I was thankful for struggle, it was true - but infinitely more, just as God is so much infinitely higher and infinitely stronger than us. And I'll be damned if I'm not thankful for that.


So again, I suppose, it all goes back to God. That's something to be thankful for in itself.

Thank God for Life; thank God for the Truth. Thank God there's a Way.


Amen.

Thanksgiving (Part I)

So lately I've been chasing a lot of expectations - and that's just it. These things are to me more than just hopes or "good ideas", they're things that I genuinely expect to come true. And because of that I'm often surprised, taken off guard, and sometimes even shaken when they fail to materialise in the way I expected them.

I guess it can't be blamed - there's a certain way in which I'm sure I'm wrong even to expect certain things - reason, stability, balance - without doing a bit of work on my own. Then again, I do frequently try to justify myself before "myself", the "me of the moment" that asks those unanswered questions and second-guesses I assumed I had already answered and decided.

Charlie Dates, the guest speaker at Revival, was speaking on Psalm 23 - "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil." It seems in reflection now that such a thing might be harder to do if the evil you're trying not to be afraid of is in yourself. Though I suppose that King David might have had this in mind. As might have Mr. Dates. One thing that I continue to remember, though, is that in his message, Charlie Dates said that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death - we don't sit around in it, we don't set up camp and build a family there, we walk through it. I hope I can remember that fact.

I'm sure when future Peter looks back and reads this he'll have a great deal of confusion as to why I'm being so incredibly vague (and, after having read this sentence, will probably remember just a little bit). But the truth is, I'm thankful for struggle. I hate it, but I'm thankful for it. I know when Peter looks back at this it will be at a time of challenge and change, and I just hope that I remember why I wrote this. I hope that when I reread these long lost thoughts, I find that I will have been faithful not only to God but to myself.

I hope that when I find nothing left to be thankful for, I still thank God for thanksgiving.


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Now playing: As I Lay Dying - Confined
via FoxyTunes

A week of ambivalence

I know in general, I'm a very sarcastic person. Some people might call me a misanthrope, but I'd like to think that' s a little too rough for what I do. Some people might call me a cynic. That might be a little more accurate. At least I have a good sense of humor.

These last few weeks I've been very....stuck. I'm tempted to call it almost a species of depression, though I know that's both untrue and inaccurate. I myself might say I'm bitter - but that still doesn't name the feeling correctly. I guess the most truthful way I can name it is that I've been having a hateful week. A "Peter" week. At least, a certain side of Peter - the tortured Russian author side.

It's not a new feeling. It's not a new process. It's helped make me who I am, I'm sure of it. But it's the first time it's really hit like this since I've been at college. Maybe it's just a vague manifestation of some subconscious homesickness? I feel like this time it's different - like I'm caught in the near inescapable bubble of hedonism and self-conscious pleasure-patrolling that is college - and I'm trying to burst it from the inside out. In fact, there's a good chance I'm just exaggerating that unsympathetic ambivalence now that I'm thinking and writing about it. But hey, what better way to quantify irrational feeling than with superexpressive words and such pitifully colorful language as is sure to follow?

More than I hate to be around those kind of people, I hate to be around myself when I'm vulnerable. That's a new thought - didn't hit me until just before I wrote it, actually. I hate to see that I'm still so easy to spark, and I hate to see my raw disregard for anything and everybody else hurt me first. I hate to see that I can still fall just as fast as everyone else - like the dumb "sheep" that we all are. I hate to see Peter struggle to be Peter.


....But at least I'm known for something.

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Now playing: Hillsong - You Are My Strength
via FoxyTunes

On Struggle

Well, it's been a week and, needless to say, updating this is not at the top of my things-to-do list. On a certain level, though, I suppose it is - the last week has been exactly the type of seven day struggle that provides me with that ever refreshing search for myself within the meandering ambiguities of the world (and internet, it seems).

On to the good stuff, then. As I said before, a certain part of me doesn't want to write this - but I feel now that the part of me that does want to is the true. After all, the easiest person and subject to write about is oneself. What is ironic is that I'm not quite sure the easiest person to read about is oneself - though even in spite of that difficulty, I'm sure Future Peter is now confronted with a retrospective and nostalgic sense of past-being.

The last few weeks have been very interesting. This week, perhaps, has been a different type of interesting. I had thought (in actuality, more or less assumed) that struggles of faith were below me. I thought it would never happen to me. I thought I could pull my way out, as I've done so often and so much before. Even so, for a person like me (which, I guess, means a person as "I" view "myself") it does indeed seem odd that a struggle like this came by. But I guess that's just me looking at myself from the lens of Peter, again. Not a bad view to have, but certainly not the one that's needed right now.

To say that I've discovered this new thing would be a gross overstatement - I haven't even put much consideration to it, except for briefly before and maybe just now, a little bit. Regardless, I've "discovered" (for lack of a better word) that I am extremely insecure when I can't reason my way out of a dilemma, theological or otherwise. I'm insecure when I get stuck, and I'm insecure when I try to compromise. I'm insecure when I realize I might not know. I'm insecure when I try to crack the puzzle and instead I realise the puzzle has cracked me.

It helps, though, to remember what had brought me to those questions (and brought me, in another sense, even to acknowledge that those questions exist) is something outside of my view. It helps to remember that answers are not neutral, and it helps to remember that the answers are few and narrow. It helps to remember that questions are indeed questions; and it helps to remember that because of that, I might indeed occassionally be wrong. I hope in those times I can quickly see the right answer, and not fumble around and struggle on my own, trying too hard to prove something that needs no proof. God will provide.

It seems that even after all this time, even after doing so much to let go, I may never have sufficiently let go of myself.


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Now playing: Hillsong - Desert Song
via FoxyTunes

Purpose

I created this mainly for myself, though there are those of you whom I would like to read the periodic entries here. Luckily, though, this is by no means that cry for desperation, one of those ever-so-unique attempts at self-legitimacy and identity in our world of anonymity. Please. Unique? By no means. I'm one of the last people who needs to be reminded of his insignificance, his inconsequentiality, his lack of gravitas. In a good five years or so, I'll look back at this post and think of how I should have lightened up, and remark on what an awful pretentious jerk I must have been to write something like this. Is it ironic that I both acknowledge that fact and continue to write this more "serious" of endeavors? Ironic maybe in the same sense that a person like me chooses to make a "blog" at all. Who do I think I'm kidding?

Those of you who know me well enough to understand why I would create a journal like this would probably say that it's long overdue. At the top of the list of those people is myself, of course. I might just have to start taking life more seriously for there to be more vividly interesting posts. I'll be so disappointed when I come back and read this. Good luck with that, world. You better get to work. Anyways, I anticipate that this, in all likelihood, will help immensely to have a legitimate outlet for those rare moments that I find my modern life important enough to document. That being said, it's probably also a good idea to make a schedule of periodic entries - which sounds painful enough to me at the moment. Friday or Sunday, then. One entry a week? Who do I think I'm kidding?

All that being said, I'm sure that those of you who would read this (as well as myself, whenever I happen to return to these age-old entries. Even at the moment of my writing this, it is ancient history, after all. Funny thing about that.) have an idea, however vague, of why I do what I do (I'll leave inquiries at your discretion). Now, ignoring that the previous was an incredibly loaded sentence, I would like to say now that the point of this is as much to keep track of what I'm going through as it is to "keep track" of future going-throughs. Figure that one out.

By God's grace, I'll make it out of here alive.


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Now playing: Dustin Kensrue - Consider The Ravens
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