Relational worries

God, give me hind’s ably precise feet to bring me to right relationship; to this end, I ask questions. I want to stand on what others have learned, as well as obey Christ, but also to learn on my own, and to not simply hold on to Biblical Principles, as well as to enjoy life and not fear mistakes so much that I don’t learn. (How much can be learned without them??) I don’t want to live based off my parent’s (or James Dobson’s) opinions. I don’t want passively let media permeate me. I don’t want to live off just my own reasoning, but as long as the latter is informed by biblical principles which can be applied, and solidly reasoned, I am learning about them.

1. A comment. A well-known (deceased) lover of souls kept his secret under wraps his whole life for the sake of ministry: he was a celibate gay. I am immensely impressed at his willingness to live with the chronic pain: each time a relationship got close to the (emotional, spiritual, intellectual) intimacy he – as does every human being – craved (was made to have, needed), he drew back for fear where it would go. He had to draw back to be obedient, to keep from sinning by consummating the relationship. This is the reverse of what relationship is like: you go into it and you are supposed to go deeper. ! Imagine what it was like for him: too close to a female, and she could fall in love with him; outcome impossible due to his orientation. Too close to a male, and either one or both might fall in love with the other: outcome impossible due to his obedience. He instead chose to embraced pain, pain of loneliness, rejection, anxiety.

Here’s my thought: he, by birth-not-by-choice-gay, is not the only one with that dilemma. It sheds light on my “relating.” I want to be close to people, to one person; with any guy, however much I like him, however whatever else, we can’t be just friends, weren’t made to. But there, the cure is restricted. With a girl, you don’t anticipate that kind of satisfying relationship (even minus the physical), and if you experience it, you’re labeled or you are lesbian. I’m trying to say that either way, being a sexual being gets in the way of having a deeply satisfying relationship. Or maybe I mean, being a broken sexual being; I can hardly picture “whole”. The cure to hellish human loneliness is this thing called intimacy. Intimacy involves another; relating to another makes me a subject TO another subject, thereby giving me identity: it makes me myself. What is this sexuality that gets in the way, this thing that is simultaneously restriction on intimacy, and the channel for intimacy?

2. A Piper sermon I just skimmed said we’re “called not to engage in a sexual relationship outside of marriage.” I want to (am no-where near done) systematically note if there's support in Bible ideology (note: am NOT looking for references) for this. (a) I know “no adultery” is a commandment, in other words, do not engage in a second sexual relationship. (b) does “sexual” include …kissing…making out…foreplay…non-physical elements as well… (c) aren’t most ‘romantic’ relationships inherently ‘sexual’ relationships; does this speak as harshly as it sounds like it does to the sexual relationship assumed in dating? Key word, assumed; maybe natural is another one. Is the conclusion, then, that I am not to engage myself in these? To the extent off laying off exhilaration of doing, even thinking, anything sexual with the boyfriend, avoiding FUN flings, forsaking delightful fantasies, cuddling with a guy friend even though it’s not going any further, thinking of what I sexually am, need, deserve? If romantic relationships ARE sexual, ? Am I to be unsatisfied, and to not satisfy another? What does it mean to walk the straight and narrow here, and to walk it not in my own strength or of my own initiative, but in faith…? If I were to go along with this, I’d have to avoid sex (as I find it around me) a whole lot more scrupulously. I don’t see myself ending up happier, just more aloof and ignorant, counter-cultural, ... not in or of the world.

I'm no advocate of WWJD. But whatever did Jesus do??

Conclusion: Bonhoeffer. "The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus." -- "Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth." !!!

His disciples, "Christ has delivered them from the immediacy with the world, and brought them into immediacy with himself." -- "He is the mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality." -- "Since his coming man has no immediate relationship of his own any more to anything, neither to God nor to the world; -- Of course, there are plenty of gods who offer men direct access, and the world naturally uses every means in its power to retain its direct hold on men" -- "Christ wants to be the mediator."

THAT satisfies me.

Color

I like those slow-release shots a lot. It's in the middle of a big city, at dusk, all the cars driving home, lights just turning on, sun still proceeding toward the earth - your eyes miss the disproportionate shadows because they're tracing lines of brilliant color.

"Plainly a bird-butterfly, it flew with a certain swallowy double. Its wings were very large, nearly square, and flashed all the colours of the rainbow. Wondering at their splendour, I became so absorbed in their beauty that i stumbled over a low rock, and lay stunned. When I came to myself, the creature was hovering over my head, radiating the whole chord of light, with multitudinous gradations and some kinds of colour I had never before seen. ...unable to take my eyes off the shining thing to look at my steps ... I sat down to watch the little glory ... To my unspeakable delight, it began to sink toward me ... I felt as if the treasure of the universe were giving itself to me."
(Lilith, 47)

I love color in-and-of-itself. It's usually on something, a "secondary property." Think: what if it's not the color that's there, but the eyes (at least, heart and mind's eyes) seeing it that give it certain color? All these situations here are deeply colored, shaded, hued by the one experiencing. What color are you seeing?

People who listen to Des Moines "Light" radio. I think they use barely perceptible, pale shades.

I have a lot of drastic moods right now. Mascara is all over my hands - I wouldn't have worn it, but I had an interview this morning. A couple nights ago, I was absolutely high (?) on Ghandi, enthralled with his campaign to make peace with his soul, wanted to jump to it then and there in the wee morning hours. The day before I had been uncontrollable, in the opposite direction.

The emotions of this period of my life are coming with less deep stirring than I remember having had. It's like the cry or laugh or thrill just wells up out of zero, - when I expected a normal day, my body expected something else -

At Capernwray when we were getting on a bus once, my friend C. impressed me telling me how he sometimes viewed the happy oblivious people. One or several of them might not come back. This is reality. But so is the butterfly.


Meanings:
Light - insignificant, chitter-chatter
Light - weightless
Light - of the world
Grave - open-mouth, daisy-toothed, consuming the dead
Grave - somber gravity
Grave - -9.81
and further?

Ruhe

Silence. Stillness. Abiding. Peace. To Be. Breathe. Enough.

Die Ruhe. Das Ruhen. Ruhig bleiben. Stille. Pause. Sein. Atmen. Genug.

I just today realized that peace is a matter of obtaining and not of happening upon, or falling into or any form of suddenly birthday-present-Eurika, taking for granted, being angry that I didn't happen to be naturally endowed with my full share of it. When this has ... occurred ...
1) I will probably be while after it's come before I'm aware of its presence in me
2) It will cost me personally an arm and a leg, and already is, but will be worth every blood-drop, because one will not mistake it, and others will take great courage in its weather-worn light-beacon.

Whether it's okay to sort of study it, Scripturally, etymologically, every-day-ically? I mean, to study it means to do theory about it, and assume that that will work its way to my heart and soul. Well, I'm not asking, so please don't answer. I guess I know it is, in the Spirit-way I intend to go about it.

Besides, in the end, maybe "peace" or whatever I'm talking about is the analogous to knowledge of God, and that is inestimably worthy (see post below, under "haunting questions", about "driving life question).

Blah, blah, blah....nothing to be discussed that can't be talked about...nor any bed to be slept in that can't not be slept in all night long when my mind has other merry-go-rounds to attend to, all you need is love

Suffering from History-having

On Having a History, juxtaposed with Human Suffering

In The Ultimate Gift, Jason's dead grandfather gives this "wise statement" - 'Heck, I lost all I had three or four times. It was the best thing in the world for me.' Jason proceeds to have everything (material) he owns removed from his home, garage, and person.

So what I'm going to try to articulate here is something about how ordinary it is to keep what you have, and if you lose it, do so by getting rid of it intentionally, in small quantities; and how not ordinary and painful and wrong it seems to have this happen otherwise. With this discussion of the physical matter we interact with and possess, I consider the metaphysical "haves" that go along with the physical or at least with relationship, um...

A) First, what is history? As humans it is our nature to be located in time, 1) i.e. to HAVE histories, as well as 2) to have them of various sorts (my history with the law, the confessions priest, or my riding instructor are quite different things). History is relationship, if resembling certain cafeteria meals - slushily-frozen, only half-remembered, but cell-buildingly-nutrifying.

B) I suppose we best become aware of history in practice after having tried to ignore it in theory. I have been provoked to think about history, particularly in my own pain of uprootedness (which has led to an increased appreciation of the familiar, sometimes inclusive of the boybands in my past, Barbara). I also hear that modernity models for us po-mos the dilemma of ignored history.

This picture was central to getting me out of bed to try to write all this: I attempt to make a picture of the way we experience life (reality) in light of "history". It's a weaving (there must be better metaphors?) Things fit on on top of the other; within each other; it's like water, which cannot be torn apart, just measured and moved and its space quickly re-filled, with more water, or with sand, or with salt-water,.... No thing leaves until shortly around the time something takes its place.

Ex: Your house has a lot of crap in it. Well, over the course of time (especially if you move often enough, or if your mom goes through a 7-step-sprint-phase of "Living Your Simplified Life Now!" - the new bestseller by Joel Osteen?) the amount of stuff in it may stay the same, but the type undoubtedly changes. Specifically, your underwear drawer may go from dinosaurs to minnie mouse to pink flowers to straight black, without you knowing it consciously enough to make sure you save one as a keepsake from each era. Weaves.

*Sidenote: To the effect that since the material stuff we own is stuff we use and probably won't hold on to, our lives take on a different dynamic than that of the people of the prairie days; Laura treasured her doll for her entire childhood giving it a new button or piece of hair; I had countless toys growing up and can't remember them or so much particularly special memories with most of them. So matter has much less meaning to us b/c it spends less time in our presence ("developing a history with us" if you will.)

Sooo...stuff in my life moves in and out.

C) Sometimes, though, it doesn't flow so aqueously. Sometimes the weaving is torn; there is a rip in the water - belief-staggering, unjustifiable reality that it may be. To the previous understanding of being human add suffering. [Pain, of course, is what is physical; suffering may or may not only include the (possibly corresponding) rational in our being.] Suffering results when you don't go through the ordinary process of one thing leaving just as another takes its place. (I forgot about love, of course - where you actually appreciate the identity of the thing, which is b/c the thing is someone/thing you had a history with, and that has a self of its own, and thus is irreplaceable.) So Jason had both the suddenness and the completeness of his loss to deal with. (The movie failed to show this causing him much duress.)

A couple's basement got flooded within the first year or so of their marriage; she had a lot journals destroyed. I empathized with her very much; yes, we have memories, but no we don't hap upon them them without triggers. Think about how much of her life got eaten away in one swoop. Do you see why it's a dilemma to (when I) have an empty feeling head?

If I always bring the general-specific categories to play, a friend of mine frequently draws in a distinction between either-or and what fits, instead of at poles, between them in gradation (kind of like black-white, and color). Apply here?

Conclusion: MMMAYBE some other time. Conclusion? What? That involves a far too disciplined thought-flow.
Random: Did you realize that the problem of pain would not exist as a problem, apart from the existence of Christianity? (CSL)

Unrelated, haunting questions:

- How (apart from living in moment-to-moment dependence on Christ) do I speak what is appropriate to speak or write when meeting a given audience (of one or many)? This seems like an endless challenge, possibly impossible to get the hang of.

- When I struggle so with getting it across, Is meaning (clarity?) frikkin pre-linguistic or not?? The thought-word dialectic. Something I read today went back a step further even and used pre-thought as a metaphor. Wow.

- AS I discover writing: How best for me to communicate, taking into consideration rules given by the culture, and rules given for clarity? What I do when I write is try to get you to come along on my thought process. Perhaps this is just since that's how it makes sense to me to get from point A to point Q - or b/c I have no other way of going about it - or ...whatever. That "method" though seems the most natural, and natural is bound, if still tweak-worthy, to be most consistent.

- Why, when I think about it, do I really, really, want to find some way that I am very significant and unique? There is not a simple answer to this, and it's probably one of the things (along with the curiosities of the male-female relationship) I'll be answering for a lifetime. It fits right along with a whiney "God, if everybody's your favorite, why should I care that I am, too?" I reckon the answer goes along the lines of, "b/c you don't know who you are fully yet. if you did, you would be quite satisfied with that."
- What is a, and what is your (given, not chosen, and perhaps current and changing hues at various stages of life) driving life-question? At one point, I thought mine might be, since I always come back to it, and since it is the reason I identify with the fundamental-ness-seeking of Philosophy: "What is most important to ask?" I have problems with the places this one leads, "How do I best live life?"