Hope

At the end of the day, my heart will sing,

         and the song will swell to a symphony,

                  and the symphony rise till it fills the skies,

                           and the skies will shout, and the clouds take wing,

And heaven will blaze forth in healing streams,

         and the healing streams will wash over me,

                  and the hope I feel will at last be real,

                           as the dawn reawakens my childhood dreams.

 

I Should Be Sick Of This Song

Easy Way Out by Gotye

I once wrote a paper about this song. To be specific, it was a rhetorical analysis. I was taking a class called Rhetoric and Persuasion that semester, and our last major assignment before the final exam was to analyze something from popular culture.

During the writing process, I listened to the song over and over. I put the track on repeat and played it on loop in my headphones for hours straight while I typed. I like the song, but obviously, at the time I had some vague worries that I might be completely destroying it for myself by overplaying it.

This didn't turn out to be the case. Even after all that mindless repetition, I still get a kick out of listening to "Easy Way Out," and the video, which I also viewed multiple times, is still compelling to me. Perhaps it's because Gotye's message remains relevant to my experience. I doubt that's going to change any time soon.

This music video exposes something that I absolutely dread: the idea of life as a monotonous cycle, going nowhere, meaning nothing, an empty, dull, miserable excuse for an existence that never allows you a moment to breathe, to think, to feel. There is never time to reflect on what is happening, or whether any of it even matters. There is constant pressure to perform, but no one ever offers you a reason for this endless merry-go-round of madness. You just have to keep going, even if it costs you your health, your happiness, your sanity. In the end, it may cost you your life, but no one really cares, do they? If you can't keep up, very well, you'll just be left behind.

But of course, I already wrote the paper on this. If you want to hear some more dismal exposition, here's a link to that infamous rhetorical analysis, which placed in the academic division of my university writing contest:

The Dangerous Daily Grind

Just To Spice Things Up

Today I happened to be writing the word behavior. At the last minute, I made the conscious decision to spell the word the British way: behaviour. Here on my U.S. computer, that word appears with a red zigzag underneath it, but in the U.K., that's the standard spelling. I like British spellings, so I just thought, why not, you know?

I was writing that word as an answer to a test question. At the end of the same test, the professor included some bonus questions, including his standard fun one: "How do you spell my last name?" He has an unusual surname; a significant number of people have missed this question on the last few tests. I'm pretty confident of the spelling by now, so I decided to take the time to add some calligraphic flourishes to my inscription of his name, including a quick design sketch beneath it, just for fun. When people handed in their tests he immediately flipped to the back to see how many got his name right, and when he saw my little work of art, he laughed in enjoyment. I smiled. I was glad I'd taken the extra time to do something special.

There are so many opportunities to spice things up in life. When I took English composition at college, there was a question on the final exam about form in writing, and a random inspiration hit me: I could write my answer as a poem. So I did. I put the content of my answer into rhyming verse. It gave me a reason to laugh to myself, and man, you've got to take those opportunities where you can get them.

If I'm walking down the sidewalk and there are roses blooming beside the path, I'll pick one and put it behind my ear. If I'm trudging through the parking lot and notice there's a dog in the car next to mine, I'll take a moment and smile at its furry face. If I'm in some boring adult setting and suddenly there's a child wandering through our midst, I'll be sure to look into her eyes and share a split second of quiet connection. Honestly, the world is full of reasons to smile, but do we? Do we take advantage of the chance to make ourselves happy in all the little ways available to us?

It's easy to get weighed down by the stress, pain, and exhaustion of daily living. But I find that if I keep my eyes open, I discover a lot of simple pleasures along the way, and they renew my strength. Next time you're having a day that is miserable, or just monotonous, take a moment to step outside the box and look around at life with fresh eyes. You just might see a dance you can do, a joke you can tell, a rose you can stop and smell... just to spice things up.

Instinct

Sometimes I know things and I don't know why.

I can walk into a room and get an instant sense of the social dynamic and what is happening under the surface.

I can see a person around, and without ever talking to them, have an eerie awareness of who they are and what they are going through.

I can be friends with a person who seems to be genuinely happy, friendly, and sweet, but find it hard to look them in the eye when we talk, because I can't shake the feeling that they are actually not happy, not doing well; that there is a part of their heart that they have done their best to bury and leave for dead, but I can still feel it beating, like the tremors of a distant earthquake beneath my feet.

I always try to take such instincts with a grain of salt. There is often little to no concrete data to back them up, and I want to be careful not to make unfair assumptions about people or situations. So I wait, and keep those observations on file in my head.

Sometimes the only outward sign of my instincts comes in the form of decisions I make - decisions that may look odd or incomprehensible to other people, but to me, they make sense, because they jive with my gut feelings. I acknowledge my gut by making room for its observations in the realm of my lifestyle choices. That way, if the landmine I am sensing is real, if it blows, I am out of the way.

Yeah, I do my best not to rely too much on random instincts that come to me out of nowhere. But you know, it's getting increasingly harder to just ignore them point blank, because now I  have the benefit of hindsight on a lot of these experiences.

And so far, more or less, my instincts have been spot on.

Why I Call Myself A Christian Mystic

On several of my social media platforms, I describe myself as a Christian mystic. People sometimes ask me what this means. I always direct them to the nearest dictionary.

  

Christian 

noun 

1. A person who believes in Jesus Christ; adherent of Christianity. 

2. A person who exemplifies in his or her life the teachings of Christ.

Mystic

noun

1. A person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy.

2. A person initiated into religious mysteries.

So that's what the actual words Christian and mystic mean, but of course, I still haven't properly explained what I mean when I refer to myself as a Christian mystic. Here goes.

First of all, yes, I am a Christian, and when I say Christian, I mean simply that. I don't identify with one branch of Christianity over another; I feel like I am holistically Christian, rooted in the essence of the faith, but drawing inspiration from its many variations. Basically, at the end of the day, Jesus is important to me: his story, his power, his love. I honestly don’t know where I would be without him.

And secondly, yes, I do feel like mystic is a decent word to describe me, by the above definition. My experience of my faith tends to be marked by mystery, wonder, emotion, and a sense of direct connection to spiritual realities. This makes sense because it is, after all, the way I experience life in general. Of course, I also go through periods of dryness wherein I feel distant from these things. On the whole, though, I think I have an unusually high incidence of what could be termed "mystical experiences," moments where the unseen world seems to suddenly unfold before my eyes, or an intense, surreal feeling of love falls on me out of nowhere, or I hear a quiet, gentle, piercing voice deep within my heart telling me exactly what I needed to hear in that moment.

My spiritual life is very important to me; I consider it the central aspect of my existence. It defines everything else I am, everything else I do. I draw tremendous energy from it. My prayer is that I will be able to share this faith of mine with the world, sometimes in words, and sometimes merely by my presence. I want the deep love and vibrant joy I have from Jesus, to spread to those around me, like an atmosphere of healing, peace, and power.

People who listen

I'll remember the eyes that looked at me in light,
those gentle eyes that took in the dimensions of my mind without remodeling its space,
the eyes that simply
saw
me.

I'll remember the arms that welcomed me in peace,
those open arms that wrapped me up in wordlessness and helped me breathe,
the arms that simply
held
me.

I'll remember the hearts that listened to my own,
those loving hearts that didn't bother with the imposition of another rhythm or pace,
the hearts that simply
heard
me.

I'll remember the people who listen. Everyone else will fade out,
their noise turning out to be silence,
while silence turns out to be song.

My Philosophy

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard.
Do not let pain make you hate.
Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.

Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree,

you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

- Kurt Vonnegut

When people ask me if I'm a pessimist or an optimist, I always hesitate. Frankly, I don't identify with either label. I like to say that more than focusing on either positives or negatives, I aim for something I call emotional honesty. I very much value being aware of life in all its nuances, both happy and sad, good and bad, beautiful and frightening. I don't think of myself as an optimist because I feel like being cheerful about everything all the time is avoiding the reality of all the pain and suffering that exists in the world. In the same way, though, I can't be a pessimist, because if I am paying any attention at all, the world is also ridiculously chock full of beauty and joy. Ignoring either side of the spectrum would be like going half-blind. I'm not into that option.

At the end of the day, though, if someone put a gun to my head and required me to choose either pessimism or optimism as my personal philosophy (a freak occurrence which I am not expecting, but you never know), I would have to side with optimism. This is because, in my heart, I truly believe that the good of life outweighs the bad, that good is the dominant force in the world, and evil's attempts to corrupt that good will ultimately fail. So even at ground zero, with thousands of innocent people reduced to ashes, I see the beauty of life outweighing the ugliness. I see in those ashes a heartbreaking reality, but also an undeniable truth that these beautiful people did exist, and each one of their lives was an epic story all its own, and none of them were necessary, none of them even had to be born. But they were born, they were here among us, and their presence on this planet made infinite amounts of difference to all of us, whether we know it or not. And the glory of those lives, although cut tragically short, vastly outshines the ugliness of death that tried to extinguish their power.

I don't like the label, but in the last analysis, maybe I am an optimist. Because, in spite of all the pain, all the bitterness, all the world's clamoring attempts to convince me otherwise... I still believe it to be a beautiful place. Life, light, and love will triumph; in fact, they already have.