Observations from 35,000

We were flying out of Heathrow International.  The weather outside was the type of weather that makes everyone hate London.  The sky was so grey it was almost black, even though it was early afternoon there, and the rain was coming down so hard that I feared it would actually penetrate the plane's body and bruise my skin.  The sound of the rain pelting the plane was a dull roar, only drowned out by the obnoxious baby crying somewhere up towards the front of the cabin.  We hadn't even taken off yet and already it was starting to get musty inside the plane: someone needs to teach Indians about this little invention called deodorant.  The guju in front of me already was making it a point to recline his seat to its fullest extent, while the guju behind me was making sure his legs were packed tightly behind my seat, making it impossible for me to recline at all.  Stupid gujus...errr, I shouldn't say that: they can't help being guju.  I hate Air India.

All this crap was only adding to my crappy mood.  I didn't want to spend Christmas in India.  The original plan was to be back the day before Christmas.  Then my dad changed his mind, but he had already told ammachie and appachan that I was coming; I couldn't disappoint them and back out now.  So I'm going to spend Christmas in a tropical climate, without snow, hot chocolate, a Christmas tree, presents, or anything of the sort of Christmas I'm used to.  My mom wasn't coming with us anymore...at least not anytime soon.  The effing British government has this stupid "transfer visa" policy for resident aliens that our travel agent, airline, and embassy didn't tell us about.  So my mom came to JFK and then ended up having to go home.  I didn't want to spend two weeks, especially my favorite two weeks of the year, away from my mom and my friends.  Ken and I were fighting when I left Pittsburgh...we hadn't talked in weeks.  I didn't want it to be that way, but I let things get in the way, namely my pride...although I made excuses and gave it different names, like "Schoolwork", "Julie", and the general "more important things to do".  Speaking of which, how much does it suck that I don't get to talk to Julie for two weeks???  Ugh...kill me now.  I don't get to go the annual L5 & BHG Christmas dinner: I don't get to spend Christmas with 14 of my best friends.  I don't get to spend any time with Adam, Mike, Alex, or Shannon, who I haven't seen since May.  This vacation is looking more and more horrible with every passing moment.

Lost in my thoughts about how much I hated the whole situation, I hadn't really noticed that we had already taken off and were climbing.  A thought briefly passed over my mind, namely that I should pray about this whole situation.  My bible was in my backpack.  I put it there mostly because that's where I always keep it, not with the intention of actually reading it during the trip.  I can't really remember the last time I seriously sat down and intentionally studied my bible.  I can't really remember the last time I seriously got down on my knees--physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually--and prayed to God.  I think the last time I did any of that was early November.  I looked at my bible...thought about praying...started to seriously consider it...then started thinking about how much this trip sucks, and all thoughts of prayer left my mind.

I was still seething in my seat, when I noticed that someone had turned a light on.  No...everyone had turned their lights on.  I looked up and realized that we had broken through the clouds and were now above them.  All of a sudden the sky was bright bold blue in every direction through every window.  The sun was blinding me every time I turned to my right.  And all of a sudden it hit me.

Have I really forgotten about Christ?  Have I allowed the baggage of Earthliness to weigh me down to the point that I no longer have the strength to lift my head and look up to Heaven?  Have I allowed the dirt of my own flesh and desires to cloud my eyes to the point that I can't see grace?  Have I tried to carry so much by myself that I haven't a free hand to reach out and take hold of Christ's which is ever before me?

I started to reminisce about the old days.  I started to think about the days when I woke up and reached for my bible before I even thought to look at the clock.  I used to be excited about praying and reading the bible.  I used to really look forward to it, to make it the beginning and the highlight of my day.  I still had problems in those days.  I still had to deal with people, situations, and other things that I didn't enjoy.  But it was different then.  I wasn't letting them distract me.  I wasn't focusing on them.  I wasn't looking at them.  My gaze was set completely set on God, and every other thing going on was just another piece of the background floating by.

Basically, it comes down to perspective.  I can remain on the ground, beneath the clouds, soaking in the rain.  I can sit in the muck and the mire and observe my circumstances from my worldly perspective by myself.  I can suffer through my problems and add on the suffering of loneliness and of not being able to find an answer.  Or, I can take God's hand, direct my gaze to His face, and go above the clouds, where the Son is always shining, where there is no rain, no darkness, no suffering without comfort and support to get me through it.

Give Love, Take Love

I used to date this girl.  She was an incredible girl.  The kind you see in movies and then go home from the theatre wishing for.  The kind with whom you could picture yourself spending evenings in conversation, and enjoying that time more than a kiss.  There was a substantial point in time where she was literally the last thing I thought of before I fell asleep and the first thing I thought of when I woke up.  We spent hours talking everyday, but were just as at ease being perfectly silent in each other's presence.  There were never awkward moments when we were together, because we knew each other so well, it was impossible to find anything the other said or did discomforting.  When bad things happened to her, I would actually get that feeling of dread where it feels like your stomach just fell straight through the floor and you’re still standing.  I would call her and, sure enough, something bad happened.  I was the only one who could make her laugh in her saddest moments.  She was one of the ones who, once you lose, you kick yourself in the ass for what seems like forever.  Not just because you lost her, but because you lost her.  You are the one responsible for the end.  This girl wanted to share her whole life with me.  Not in the sense that she wanted to marry me (perhaps), but in the sense that she wanted to know every wrinkle and crease that appeared when I smiled.  She wanted to be intimate with me, not in the sexual sense, but in the emotional and mental sense.  She made herself vulnerable to me, acknowledging to me what no one else knew; her deepest fears, her warmest desires, her dreams, emotions, all there for me to know.  No man was as lucky as I was.

I have a natural tendency to ruin my life.  Maybe it's some sort of sadistic, self-hating subconscious impulse I have inside of me stemming from some severe emotional trauma I experienced as a child; maybe it's stupidity.  Either way, I lost her.  I didn't just lose her, I made her lose herself.  I screwed things up so bad, I hurt her so much, she still has scars from our relationship today (not physical...God forbid I ever physically hurt a woman, though, I believe to emotionally scar someone is far worse than the cruelest of beatings).  She called me once, crying, ages since our relationship ended, asking me to explain to her why I did the things I did.  Her new boyfriend had caused her some pain and she came to me for answers.  I had none.  I told her, crying, that I didn't know why I did the things I did, why I hurt her so.  I told her that she certainly didn't deserve it: that, of all God's work, she perhaps deserved to experience pain the least.  I still believe that today.

That long, teary phone call got me thinking.  Why did I hurt her?  Why didn't I repent and recognize the blessing God had given me in her?  I certainly had numerous opportunities.  All the time in between the break up and the phone call, I didn't try and find out why I did it.  I only kicked myself.  Now I look back on it, and I realize that it was precisely that, my self-disgust, that made me ruin everything.  Throughout the relationship, I questioned myself.  Why does she care about me so much?  Why does she like this about me?  Why doesn't she hate that about me?  It was precisely that lack of self-confidence, of self-worth, that caused me to push her away.

All human beings have a desire to be loved by others.  We have a natural desire for fellowship, for companionship; it completes a certain part of our nature.  Look at what happens to people who live by themselves: they go mad, they become angry, they forget how to love.  Love from another is just as vital to our existence as water and food.  Yet, what I've come to realize is that the willingness to accept that love is a wholly different matter.  More often than not, we find ourselves unworthy of love.  We view our faults, our insecurities, our blemishes, our flaws as unattractive and, moreover, unlovable.  We fall into some type of legalistic system, where we must fit a certain ethical mold in order for love to be accessible to us, to be capable of being loved.  When we fail to fit that mold on our own, as we always have and always will, we become discouraged and walk away.

The reason so many of our relationships fail is that we get into them without first realizing our worth.  We view ourselves as broken, incomplete people, unworthy of love and incapable of being loved.  Rightfully so, we seek completion in another.  What we fail to realize is that it is only God who can cover us.  It is only God's perfect and unfailing love that is able to take away our self-loathing and self-disgust.  Only when we see the most perfect of beings transcend all space and time to love us, and we accept that love, will we ever be able to accept the love of another.  Only after we accept perfect love can we ever accept anything else.

The truth was, I destroyed our relationship because I myself couldn't accept the love which was offered to me.  What was offered freely to me, both by Christ and by her, I rejected because I saw myself as unworthy of it.  I spent the entirety of our relationship questioning the gift of love, doubting my worthiness of it, as I did with my faith.  I continued on a path of self-destruction because I saw no worth in who I was.  My saving grace was to look at Christ and not only know that He loves me, but to accept that love, to claim it as my own.  To know that Christ went through every single second of the passion with my face ever before Him.  To know that He did all of it for me, because He loves me, as much then as much now and as much for all eternity.  To know that love and to hold it, to claim it as my own, was to remove all doubts and fears of myself.  It was to finally be able to be loved, and to love, truly.  Because love cannot just be given.  It must be received.

No More eProps/Comments

So I was blessed with the opportunity to hear Saleem Ghubril speak tonight.  He talked a lot about doing things for admiration versus doing things for openness.  An admirer seeks praise, while someone wanting to be open seeks not praise, but for people to know him and come to love him.  I realized that the whole eprop/comment thing can become a snag for me, because sometimes I get high on the comments.  Other times, I find myself trying to formulate a thought in my head and all the while I'm thinking "I wonder how many comments I'll get if I say this..."

Long story short, Saleem made me understand that if I am going to realize the full potential of doing what I do with my xanga, then I need to avoid anything that might taint my motivation.  So, I've disabled the eprops/comments.  This isn't to say that you can't correspond with me at all about my xanga.  If something I say affects you, I want to know.  But I want it to be constructive, not just "praise", and I want it to be between you and I, not for everyone to see.  So, from now on, if you have something to say, leave me a message on AIM or call me and we can talk.  And I really do mean that.  The point of me having this is to be able to have open and honest spiritual dialogue with anyone who is interested.   Peace.

Pride & Prejudice v2.0...Shout Out To C.S. Lewis For Inspiration

When we say that sin exists, we unknowingly presuppose two things.  First, our conception of sin requires that there be a law against which sin is committed.  Apart from the law, sin is a morally ambiguous action committed by a morally unbound agent.  We do not know when something is a sin unless we have a law by which it is considered sin.  Second, our conception of sin requires that there be a second agent against which we sin.  Even if the law were to be in existence, without a separate agent to act unlawfully towards, there is, again, no sin.  There is no sin against yourself if you are the only being, because the law would then be made by you and for you, and certainly could be modified to allow whatever actions you deemed pleasing at any given moment.  Thus, to sin requires both a multiplicity of agents (two, at the very least) and a law which is above both of them.

Man was created by God with the intent of being God's companion, made in God's image.  The original man (Adam) was created to be Christ-like, free from sin and blemish.  Yet God, in His omniscient wisdom, knew that a choice without alternatives is no choice at all.  So we were granted free will; the ability to choose from an infinite sea of options.  Free will, however, entails the possibility of evil.  If any of our choices were limited in any way, or if God were to go around correcting our mistakes, there would be no free choice.  If we made the right choices, they would be made in light of not having any other options.  If we made the wrong choices and God followed us around cleaning up our messes, free will would become meaningless, because each "evil" alternative would lose its effect.  The original conception of man was to be Christ-like; to freely choose to love God.

This was no problem for man.  To be made so fearful and wonderful, to be the greatest among God's creation, man could not help but feel an overwhelming desire to love God and serve God and remain close to God.  It was of his own volition to love and serve God, to be God's companion.  We still feel hints of this when we recognize our superiority over the Earth, when we recognize the beautiful complexity of life on Earth and our ability to shepherd it.  Yet it was not enough for man.  Man could not hold himself below God, could not keep God as the center of his life.  Slowly but certainly, man became less and less God-centered, and more and more self-centered.  He began to desire to be God himself.  And there it is.  Pride.  The Original Sin.

Original Sin, as it is described in the Bible, is the result, then, of two actions.  It is the recognition of two separate beings, God and man, and it is man's cognizance of the free will given to us by God.  The moment we recognize the separateness of God and man, we fall into the dilemma of Christ-centeredness against self-centeredness.  God, in granting us free will, accepted the possibility of evil, a risk He deemed worth taking.  Man, however, could not foresee the consequences of self-centeredness, and chose to make himself thus.  That is the original sin that is born into every human being since.

We recognize it in our everyday lives, even when we wake up in the morning and say to ourselves "Lord I give You my problems."  When we say this, we are confirming subconsciously (or perhaps even consciously) that we have some sort of possession of our lives.  It's as if we say "Lord, you can have X and Y, but Z is my own, and I retain sole possession of it.  Let's leave it at that; You take what's Yours, and I'll take what's mine."  To "give" the Lord the entire day, or even your entire life, is a confirmation of the inherent inclination towards self-centeredness in the soul of man.

In a sense, it is true that we have ownership of our lives.  Through our free will and our inclination towards self-centeredness, we have the choice to do with each day what we want, and are under no strict obligations to use the day for any higher purpose.  Yet what we forget is that each day we have is from God.  Each day we live is a gift from God and a test to see where our heart is.  It's as if we are trying to build a house on someone else's property.  The house can be built and provide many years of comfortable living, yet we will eventually be held accountable to the owner of the property for what we've done with it.

This is the fall of mankind in our everyday lives.  The fall from grace wasn't a one-time event known to us only through some genetic trickle-down effect; it is an ever-present, constant occurrence that goes on in our hearts every time we try to assert control over certain aspects of our lives.  The fall happens everyday.

I write this because I feel that certainly in my life-and probably in yours too-I leave my problems and bad things up to God, but nothing else.  I leave the sins I don't like, the problems I have going on, the character blemishes I feel hold me back, all for God to take care of.  What I don't leave to God are the things that I think are going right, the things I enjoy doing, the things I don't want to change.  I try to maintain this silly concept of dominance over things outside of my sphere of power, things beyond my control, things that can only be controlled by God.  I don't listen to those glimpses of overwhelming love because I can only see them as glimpses; I struggle to find a way to make them lasting, but more often than not, I fail.  Instead, I go along with the lasting deceptions of self-centeredness and false dominance.  I think we all do.  And that's where we fall.

When will we finally stop falling?

Hieromonk Damascene, of the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood

     In modern Western society, many people turn away from the Christianity of their formative years because they find its truths smothered under an unreal kind of religiosity.  They see that the people in the churches are not changing and becoming better, but rather are comforting themselves and each other in their unregenerate state.  They find that the spirit of the churches is, at its core, no different from that of the world around them.  Having removed from Christianity the Cross of inward purification, the churches have replaced a direct, intuitive apprehension of Reality and a true experience of God with intellectualism on the one hand and emotionalism on the other.

     In the first case, Christianity becomes something that is acquired through rote learning, based on the idea that if you just get the words right--if you just memorize key scripture verses, intellectually grasp the concepts and repeat them, know how to act and to speak in the religious dialect of your particular sect--you will be saved.  Christianity then becomes a dry, word-based religion, a legalistic system, a set of ideas and behaviors, and a political institution that operates on the same principles of the institutions of this world.

     In the second case, the churches add the element of emotionalism and enthusiasm in order to add life to their dead systems, but this becomes just as grossly material as religious legalism.  People become hypnotized by their self-induced emotional states as much as they do by feeling "right" about their scriptures and doctrines.

     This is not direct perception of Reality; it is not the Ultimate...

     ...Our path to a true experience of Christ is often long and arduous.  We in the modern West have become too sophisticated, too complex.  When people talk to us of Christianity, we've heard it all before: we've already become conditioned to react in certain ways to Christian words and concepts.  The reflexes they evoke in us are often connected with some emotional trauma that causes us to either cling to them or rebel against them.  Clinging and rebellion are only to sides of the same coin: both are predicated on emotional involvement in words and concepts which claim to be Reality itself, but are not.