sad days and despair

and if the day won't let me,
take me to the bridge,
walking far above the waters.
if the day won't let me,
save some life for me.

and if coffee won't let me,
if trees at my door hiding,
leaves in the air and branches in the sun,
let me rest if only for a moment.

if the days are gone, and my words
lost of sense,
take my hands and hide my face.

tomorrow has worries of its own,
what will i call home?
can't fix what i know, too well.
take whats left, let me down.
all that i have left, in this.

listening to this

reading this

...and the cost was so much more

i've been meaning to sit down, and actually attempt to write something decent. something of flow, contemplation, and thoughtful conclusion. unfortunately, work and the social lives of others have kept me too busy. for the past week i have been vacuuming floors, washing windows, and mopping walls in a girls dorm. a job that allows hours of deep thinking, and solitude. and i've been watching movies with friends. some of which are full and rich, others, which will remain unnamed, only serve to confuse.

so, maybe tomorrow i'll pour myself a cup of chai, sit in the quiet of my living room with a blanket, trying to hear the rain on my roof. then, i'll try and pour out some thing i've had in my head for the past couple days, insights of artistic value i feel the world should share.

until then, i've had this song stuck in my head at work, for the past three days;

heaven bend to take my hand
nowhere left to turn
i'm lost to those i thought were friends
to everyone i know
oh they turned their heads embarrassed
pretend that they don't see
but it's one missed step
you'll slip before you know it
and there doesn't seem a way to be redeemed

we all begin with good intent
love was raw and young
we believed that we could change ourselves
the past could be undone
but we carry on our backs the burden
time always reveals
the lonely light of morning
the wound that would not heal
it's the bitter taste of losing everything
that I have held so dear.

- sarah mclachlan, fallen

oh, man. i love this song.

literature, love, and ethics

i found a stack of books while cleaning today. i was told they were going to be tossed, so i thought i was might as well take them.

so, now i'm wrestling with whether to keep them, or whether to track down the original owner and give them back. the principals from my ethical reasoning class are coming back to haunt me.

beside me, as i'm typing this, are commentaries, mere christrianty, the message, and a tale of three kings. one of these days i'll have to start reading some of the books i'm collecting.

speaking of books, "stranger than fiction" is my new favorite love movie. oh man. i love how the movie speaks to the heart of stories. and it makes me feel like my life is a story, that i can only walk through.

i think that where the story goes is not something the character should try and control, or worry about. also, i've been thinking a lot about love. well, thats pretty much all i ever think about, but that is something for another day (work has me busy all of a sudden. what a strange concept).

if i ever get this into my head, i might start "living" my life. or, i might just start playing guitar again.

-----------------------------------

update, i found the girl that the books belong to. so i gave them back.

ethics- 1 adam- 0

alas this love

today was my first day of work for the summer. the start of a new chapter. i pretty much mopped floors and stacked chairs all day long. i feel immensely blessed with this job, actually.

oh, get this- the BC Lions are going to live at my school, for a couple weeks!! ah! i wish that i was a fan of CFL so i could care. alas.

i went to this birthday party last night, full of beautiful, trendy, uppermiddle class vegan people, in a big artsy house. and as luck would have it, i was wearing a trucker hat.

which, as irony dictates, is what i always get stuck wearing everytime i find myself in the strange world of the well off. man, i swear, i am a walking irony.

so, i don't know how weird i'm supposed to feel when i end up at a trendy people gathering. i have never considered myself all that trendy, thus have never thought i could feel welcome in those places. i kept expecting them to realize what i really was, and send me on my way.

ha ha, no, i'm joking (i'm so down on myself today. what the heck?)

eventually i wandered outside and hung out with derek weiss, who was telling me stories about zen. that was pretty cool.

hm. and my life is still in suspension. i'm waiting to settle into some kind of balance, that is supposed to present itself. and i'm still wondering if what i'm looking for is right. i'm not sure if the things i seek are all that worth seeking sometimes. i might be wasting my time.

oh well. note to self- throw away trucker hats. and unfair assumptions of life and people.

home is

i was sitting on a camp chair, beside my school's cafeteria, facing the empty fountain, when i was asked to apply for a youth ministry job in september. one more thing to think about.

bible college is full of new experiences, things one would never experience anywhere else. well, something new has hit me today. that i'm not going home. i'm not leaving for nanaimo, like i have for the past three years. i'm staying here.

things will change. i'm still looking for "home".

the drive

the guy from mae has a big mouth when he sings, ethiopian food is rich, coffee is a poor choice, i feel big at all ages shows (filled with small people), matt thiessen can rock out a piano (i liked how an actual piano was brought on stage), arlen is amishly manly, cafe de' soleil is a modern day "upper room" (from the last supper... remember?... in the new testament. whatever), denis conroy needs to shave, the keyboardist from sherwood is a dancer, michelle is a dreads hottie, fair trade sugar is convicting, the street is fresher after hours in ethnic shops, kate lee likes pop, i need a cool libation to end this day...

...and we all float on (i love concerts, and the city).

bad time to be poor

tuesday morning. blinds closed. half sunny. organic granola. chai tea.

i finally finished my imagination project yesterday. i tried to make the point that the essence of journaling is both time and story. thus, the title "days drip slowly on the page" (which i borrowed from a bruce cockburn song). i'll have to send you a copy.

so, other than being a pretensious artist, my days are dragging slowly. they are long, and just not filled with much insight. i start work next week, which means i'll have a somewhat balanced life for once.

hm. until then, my life is a cup of tea. which means, i have to find some better tea. by better tea, i mean stuff thats not sold in a carboard box. unless that box is recycled.

i've come to a strange realization... that a class in college will only effect you deeply if you let it. and i have allowed "environmental issues" to effect me deeply. almost every aspect of my life has been brought into consideration.

now, everytime i buy something i look at where the product is from, imagining the traffic it took to get that product to me. i'm not bragging, i'm saying this is something i do without thinking, catch myself, and say ah! what am i doing?

this is the same reaction i had back when i took a class called "effective relationships", which changed how i view myself and how i view my relationships. and i'm still walking through issues raised in that class. so, as i said, if you let a class mess you up / cause you to re-think you're accepted perspective / shake you're foundations / effect you deeply, i think it will.

it will be nice to not have class during the summer. time for;

tea. literature. barbecue corn. organic food. rest. reflection. hopefully.

let down, and hanging around

i spent about 7 hours yesterday, trying to finish my writing project. i am now completely burned out, and feeling rather crappy.

i think i either a) put too much effort in b) tryed to hard or c) aimed to impress when i should have been focusing on art for the sake of creativity.

and i lost sleep over it. grrr. never again.

on a side note, i can now say that i have hugged tony funk. ha. how many people can say that? the story: me, heather, michelle, and dan (people i know but you don't) watched a choir of singers (lead my mr. funk) sing canadian folk songs... good times.

honesty and wrong assumptions

i spent some time reflecting on a personal/private journal i kept these past four months. when i started the journal i found myself writing in the same style as my online journaling habits- writing with the assumption that someone will read what i have to say.

so, of course, my journaling was very reserved. the journal was not supposed to be like my public journaling, throwing all my thoughts out an trying to come to a witty, or insightful conlusion. so, i starting getting real honest, expressing what was really going on deep down, rather that meandering with thoughts and speculating. i got past the "this is how i think i'm supposed to feel" to "this is where i am". so thats me.

in prayer, we shouldn't be reserved, afraid to offend God. i feel like, all i need to do is give up the truest and most honest and, oftentimes, offending parts of myself and know that God will accept all those things... that God wants me to express that honesty. its part of knowing who i am.

so i started to find the truest honesty about myself, who i am, and what things are going on deep down. and i realized how much i need to express them, rather than... i don't know. whatever the opposite of not expressing how i feel is. honesty is a difficult thing...its something we find when we're not trying to impress anybody.

and i'm glad to share that with my friends, who read this.

so thats why i've been on a bit of a journaling hiatus. i don't know what i'm supposed to think, at the moment. my life could use a little balance.

running to, and from

Take
Take till there's nothing
Nothing to turn to
Nothing when you get through
Won't you break
Scattered pieces of all I've been
Bowing to all I've been
Running to
Where are you?

Did you leave me unbreakable?
You leave me frozen?
I've never felt so cold
I thought you were silent
And I thought you left me
For the wreckage and the waste
On an empty beach of faith
Was it true?

cuz, I got a question
Where are you?

Scream
Deeper I wanna scream
I want you to hear me
I want you to find me
...Cuz I want to believe
But all I pray is wrong
And all I claim is gone

And I...i got a question
I got a question-
Where are you?

-silence, jars of clay

hope and the wounded healer

i spent some time today, processing some old thoughts over a cup of jasmine tea. it was a milieu of old thoughts of a old season, and the tea i bought last august. for some reason i never had the time to finish making pots of tea to use up the dry leaves, and i didn't have enough time to fully comprehend things- or work through questions i asked awhile ago.

advent. if i can liken advent to anything, it is like a flowerpot. to grow something in flowerpot, i have to first clear space in that pot, in expectation of dirt or seeds, or a plant. in the same way, we clear space in ourselves during the advent season, in expectation of a coming messiah, who promises to fill us. the very meaning of Christ being born is a welcoming of new soil, a new covenant to replace dry, lifeless dirt that we watched over faithfully, hoping for life.

and what will that new soil grow inside me? i don't know. this is, perhaps, a question i'll ask again everytime a season changes.

day by day. last semester i tried planning for the first time. at the start of the year i planned out what i would read every day, which days would be saved for writing and which for rest. though my days for reading would come, and a feeling of "i don't feel like it" came. and, looking back, what felt like laziness was a moderate depression. some things from my personal life were dragging me down, which made my plans difficult to follow through with.

in all my skilled planning i forgot to account for one thing- life. to have life, and to live it, is unpredictable. there are things that enter into our long term plans and undermine them- issues that even the best plans cannot control. i couldn't help it that i was depressed. its not something i thought was going to happen. as important as planning is, learning to live in the unpredictable day to day is key- its learning to live within those plans.

life, through my eyes, can't be lived a couple months in advance. we can't place joy, sorrow, heartbreak, or crying on a calender. we can't choose our stories, or how they will change us. we can't choose whats going to hurt, what will bring joy, or what will make us stop and wonder, in awe. having a set plan for some things is good, but when it comes to living life, feeling the rush of it stream down my arms, is one day at a time.

i think, all we can do is walk through the stuff of life, willing to learn whatever lesson God intends those things to bring.

tea. i think i drank a bit too much tea today. or, simply failed to balance the said tea with adequate nutrients... aka, food. i need to find some good new tea. having jasmine was all good and fine this year, but it feels lacking in the flavor category. and earl grey has it's moments, but drink the same tea everyday and it starts to feel like just that- the "same old tea". whatever.

...and so he did what countless punk-rock songs had told him to do so many times before: he lived his life.

-stranger than fiction

mennonite ways

i tried yerba mate for the first time yesterday. it kind of tasted like a cow. mennonites are weird.

i miss coffee. a lot.

everythings gonna be alright

well, for the past three days i've been sitting in the collgium, extracting pages and pages of my online journals to publisher, mulling over the thoughts with nemerous mugs of earl grey tea.

so i thought it was about time to make some new thoughts. hmm. and now i can't think of anything to say. dang.

i've noticed, a lot of my thoughts seem fragmented, pieced together. i don't seem to have a lot of completed thoughts. it feels like i've wandered my mind for the past week, and i haven't found a deiscernable direction.

so, maybe this is how my life for the past 4 months can be described. running in so many directions, not finding my way. so i think, life is lived one day a time, to use the cliche'. life is lived between the day to day. between the errands we have to run everyday, there is a conviction to live life.

and its the convtions that make us want to do something. everyone has an inherant convition- a call- to action. to end the aids pandemic, to sit beside the poverty stricken in the downtown east side, or the neighbor with a broken family. and i don't think anyone should ignore that call.

there are moments where we can stop and take a deep breath, realize these things, and wonder at the awe of this life.

and it's in those moments we notice the etchings in the drawing, like fingerprints on a clay pot. these are the marks of a creator. look at an pice of art work, and you will notice small things that jump out as if to say "this was made by someone". i think God leaves signs of himself everywhere. we're just not sure how to recognize them sometimes. it is a beautiful thing, to know why we exist. which is something i still have to find.

i feel very "donald miller"ish today.

on a side note, my school is having an "arts and peace festival" next fall, and i might be on the planning commitee. we're (by we, i mean me and my grass roots menno prof) are trying to get shane claiborne to come speak. we'll see.

thought of the day: I need to believe in myself, a little more.

the science of rocks and hard places

I feel for the lady
In the crimson light
With demand on the left
And judgment on the right
Where the lonely ones
Are the most unloved I feel

-ron sexsmith, for the driver

my life is in a suspended state of animation, i might say, if i was a fan of science ficton.

in the same week i did a talk on "self worth", wrote a paper about "divine abandonement", did lights for a play about a broken family, and read most of "to own a dragon"- donald miller's reflections on growing up without a father.

its been way too much to process all at once. the phrase that is making itself most pronounced is "our relationships with our dads can sometimes be projected onto God". i'm not sure what to do with that.

i'm searching for a direction to go with my thoughts. i feel like i dug myself a bit deep. my creativity is taking a bit of a beating. and the fact that every corner of my house is litttered with clutter makes everything all the more joyful. until a certain someone moves out.

so, thats me. stuck between a rock and hard place, until late april. i've taken too much weight on my shoulders, this week.

much farther to go

i slept in for a mere twenty minutes today (well, an hour and twenty minutes, but so what). and, i missed my ride to "A Rocha", a "christian" nature place. so now i have to write up an assignment to make up for my shortcoming.

i felt like crap for a good two hours. then i had some tea, listened to this, and this, and then i wrote this...

todays as good a day as any
stay inside and sip dark roast,
pretend the rain clouds don’t exist,
or learn to acknowledge they’re grace.

todays a good a day as any
stay inside and hold you close,
lend our hands to hiding the window,
or to open it to the cold.

today is as good a day as any
stay inside and watch the world compose.

i think this would be a lot more legitimate if i actually had someone to hold. meh, the mind of a single man with imagination has endless possibilities.

on an unrelated note, a theme that came up in a paper i wrote on psalm 13, and a speech i gave on self worth, both touched on rejection, and abandonment.

so, i've been feeling rejected lately... i don't know. i don't feel like going into detail.

mat kearney tomorrow. i am not going to sleep in. goodnight.

postcards and prayers

i woke up this morning without a prayer,
waited for the sun to break the window,
rolled out, the sky was cold and gray,
its easier to love that way.

when the sky is alive it seems irony,
as if painted for chance, for the moment,
prepared for the off chance i would walk by.

i taped you're postcard to the wall,
above the fireplace, beside the photographs,
with the others of it's size.
my house is less empty with time, and beautiful with age
i'm still waiting for my fears to follow.

i thought about what it means to be a man
and how "to own a dragon".
how do i find what i am in this ambigous life?
let me know by the end of the book.

i painted a picture before i woke up,
it was of you, walking under the clouds,
rain for a empty morning.
formed with the clay with my hands,
the lines and marks on the page
and the colors on the canvas.
to create, is something of imagination,
of deeps sighs and long laments.

i stood at a mirror and saw sadness in the eyes,
and wisdom in the lines of the face,
i hope someone sees the same, today.

(i'm trying to re-discover the root of why i started this journal. all i can come up with is "to write for the sake of writing.")

i'm alive but tell me am i free,
i've got eyes, but tell me can i see?
the sky is falling, and no-one knows.

-lifehouse

laugh it up, fuzzball

(oh han solo. what a man).

i'm supposed to be writing a youth talk... but i don't want to. so, i'm going to write this entry instead.

this weekend i'm a) doing lights for a play, b) in an enviromental issues class, aka, a day and a half of conviction. well, we get to go to an ecological center for class. finally, after four months, and class about nature is going outide. fancy that.

and, i'm seeing mat kearney at the showbox, in seattle. woot. i'm thinking; pike place market, tall dark roast, that park above a the water where all the wierd artsies hang out. and, maybe pictures, if my camera decides to not act like a tool! i tell ya'.

details to follow

prone to leave the God I love

so, i'm sitting lying on my floor, beside a big tv and a bottle of keith's... not for any express reason, other than my computer is being a piece (shutting down everytime i move it) .

and, i like to think that the occasional brew helps the mind unwind, after a long day of deep thinking.

my deep thinking was, as usual, interrupted by a hockey game. grrr. i'm not so much a fan of sunday afternoon sports, as i also like to think that sunday is a good day for refreshing thoughts, in preparation for a long week...

but whatever. having my mind full of useless crap noise is good too. it makes lying beside my fireplace, trying to clear my head, a lot more justifiable.

~

i stumbled to school, hair messy, wearing a jacket that is two sizes two big for me. i remember purchasing this jacked for two reasons; a) the arms were long b) it was ten bucks. vanity vanity, all is vanity.

i was trying to find a ride to church. no such luck. i was half depressed, so i cooked for a couple hours (alfredo sauce and pea soup). then, typed some horribly deep thoughts into a paper about psalm 13, whereas i read between the lines way too much, and come off as a "hey look at me, i'm so witty and contemplative" type. so, pretty much, it's 6 pages of my online journal, in paper form.

well. what does a single, lonely guy do on sunday nights? sits at home and listens to mat kearney, and robbie seay band. i should write a book about this. i'll call it "i love being single".
~
with the last two weeks of this semester (well, its about 3 or 4 actually) i'm looking forward to 2 more years of this... sort of envisioning the wanderings to and from the arms of grace. and the relaxing through the deep sighs and frustrations in between. life is beautiful

ocean breathes salty

heard the same,
songs that never sing me to sleep.
replayed the words, you weren't home,
used to call you with disdain.

nothing left to start the days,
heard the same.
nothing to eat, no money to buy,
i'd call with admiration, if you were still around.

left myself open to assumption,
afraid of my honesty.
can't afford to be alive,
running out age old regrets.

ocean gone, don't like my days
trade the water for a traffic life.
so fast i've lost direction.
heard the same voice in the walls,
waking up with emptiness.

when i have nothing to say

...but I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
i will sing to the LORD,
for he has been good to me.

-psalm 13

i wrote this journal entry, back in october . i'm going to use this in my Christian Imagination final, and make tony funk love me (more... and in a brotherly sense).

1) I journal when i have nothing to say, just so i can write.
2) i fear that i'm not interesting
3) art is all i have, sometimes
4) when it rains, it pours.

in the autumn, things change quickly. green leaves turn brown, soft grass turns cold and rigid. skies turn grey, and people furrow their brows at the chilling wind. some things change in the fall. and some don't.

like Christ. i realized something. that Christ is the one constant in my life, one thing that never changes... one thing that never succumbs to cold or age. what does change is how i relate my faith, to life.

i relate to Christ when i write. i've always seen writing as a literary art form. and, i've only recently seen art as a means of expressing ones soul... a deep longing to come to terms with ones own humanity. a way of trying understand why we are made the way we are.

sometimes art is all we have. especially in unsure times. times when we are surrounded by doubt and turmoil. or even, more realistically, surrounded by a visible lack of hope.

some art can't can't be explained. at it's heart, art is impractical- it's not supposed to make a lot of sense. sometimes art is not something you try to create. it just happens. it's something that sits lingers in the soul, and waits for it's proper outlet.

confession- i find it hard to be honest with myself. being honest with others, is easy.