*gulp* [apprehension]

at six thirty tonight, i have my first interview with Rural/Metro Medical Services of Buffalo. it's a skills test involving skill sheets from the class i took two years ago. i have a professional-looking haircut, semi-professional-looking slacks, a battered polo shirt, and yesterday's shave. i'm going to brush my teeth. and then i'm going to study skill sheets like crazy. heaven be with me...

sweet pictures

courtesy of bound2success

now it's your turn

ok. i don't "go to church" anymore, because at best i am amused, and at worst angry. a short list of reasons:

-irrelevance. sermons preached reiterate the same feel-good, irrelevant pop theology. i could preach a thousand "good sermons," whose goal seems to be to reassure congregants that they are better than everybody else, more knowledgeable, and selected the right sort of people to belong to. or they elucidate a fine point of some new pop theology designed to solve your personal problems by theological education--rearranging ideological furniture at a surface level.

-alienation. i cannot remain polite and honest at the same time. those who do not join the herd are looked down upon with "pity" by the better-informed ones with the good theological answers and placed in a special mental class of "project people," who really need God's help. God's help is then brokered by the better-informed who attempt to form the "project people" into their own image.

-the importance of the unimportant. things like worship techniques, speaking in tongues, using socially-acceptable language, sharing the group's opinions on art, culture, values, and the good life, having the proper political viewpoint, dressing appropriately, being involved and invested in the consumer-driven lifestyle, having appropriate hobbies and bad artistic taste, and being immersed in and content with the evangelical subculture.

-the unimportance of the important. i can't remember the last time i heard someone preach the Kingdom of Heaven. and it's the most important thing in the world. i can't remember the last time i heard someone tell me good news--the poor are truly poor but can be wealthy. the brokenhearted really have a reason to weep, and ought not to ignore their wounds, because they can be bound up. injustice is real and horrific, and justice can be brought to their prisons. bondage is real, in and outside of the church, and it can be undone. innocents do not have to be bombed by US soldiers--third-world farmers do not have to be reduced to poverty by unjust trade--the evils of capitalism can be redressed by the righteous.

so--that was a lot longer than i expected--why should i go to church? why do you go to church? what is the church supposed to be. this is the part of the game where you tell me. feel free to discuss and elaborate, share an idea for consideration and laugh if it turns out to need refining.

church

so i went to an amazing church service today in my kitchen. it started when Tim asked me if i went to church today and i said i just couldn't stomach the thought. then we talked for a while. highlights of our worship experience:

-"I don't understand why we go to church and listen to some guy talk for forty minutes about things we either block out as unimportant or already agree with. why don't I just go out and feed the poor or do something important?"

-"yes, i feel alienated from the body of believers, but that's not because I stopped going to church. if i went back to church, i'd feel even more alienated. the church has rejected me and my generation because we ask too much, because we are hurt and cynical, because we swear and drink and smoke and don't follow the stultifying traditions and regulations of men, becuase we haven't embraced the culture of the upper-middle-class contemporary Christian America. i feel alienated from the church because i don't understand and embrace its idols: its theology, its arrogance, its safety-first comfort-first fear of the reality that surrounds it. i feel alienated because the church lives in comfortable illusions of importance and power and smug competence and has thus made itself irrelevant."

-"Jesus rarely ever talked about someplace we go after we die. He came and preached the Kingdom of Heaven: here but not here, within us and breaking out of us, hidden and yet inexorably movng forward. a world where the heartbreaking things--the things that make us cry out this should not happen--don't happen. where losers are not losers and children do not die and the brokenhearted aren't brokenhearted any more and the hungry eat."

-"There is no "them" and "us" in the Kingdom of Heaven."

-"We are--somehow--the Kingdom of Heaven. We have the power to neglect it, or to make it happen around us. If we spend out lives averting one tragedy, taking one poor person and helping him or her become truly wealthy, we have done something worth more than a thousand pretty worship songs or a hundred passionate prayers."

it's a pity we didn't break bread and speak the benediction, because for a moment i actually shared communion with two members of my family. but we didn't have any bread, and it was scary because i was thinking seriously of wandering off and joining a group of Franciscans and ministering to the poor and that's scary.

thankyou, dan p

You scored as Loner. Loner 100% Goth 69% Drama nerd 63% Geek 50% Punk/Rebel 44% Ghetto gangsta 38% Prep/Jock/Cheerleader 25% Stoner 25% What's Your High School Stereotype? created with QuizFarm.com

i love the children (pt. II)

annnnnnnd...interlude. it looks very cut and dried coming as a "pt. II", but remember a few weeks span since my last post. with this lapse comes my sincere apologies, but i have been busy. i am now working (temporarily) for Houghton College's Wilderness Adventures as logistics personnel. So now I'm the behind-the-scenes man for Houghton's hiking/backpacking/rock climbing/canoeing/ropes course programs for the time being.

rough translation: i get to work with the kids again! soon! and when i'm not working with the kids, i'm helping train and support a staff of ten amazing and awesome adventure leaders. rock on! and i get to live with and goof off with them during the off hours.

the kicker? the other logistical man is a man named dan. and we're roommates now. dan and dan (sahli and holcomb). it's a duo unmatched. which is good because now i have someone to talk to. funny how we're both dealing with pretty much the same stuff--i love that! and (and this is vitally important) we have basically the same tastes in music, bedtimes, and room climate (slightly cluttered, full of gear, and cold at nights).

rockin' awesome. we just got of a few days of hiking and climbing, just the staff, through beautiful Hammersly on the STS in Pennsylvania and up Rattlesnake Point in Canada. life is good. we dammed a river. twice. raised the water level at Hammersly by two feet. i beat two 5.8s including a wicked underclinging mad cool reach at the top of McMasters. i have a two-week beard and despite the heat, i still have not cut my hair. i smell a little though...i think it's time to take a shower and see if my new boots are here yet (o please please please please...)

i love the children

things i did today:
got paid to play games with hyperactive third graders from the King Center in Buffalo
filled out two applications for jobs where "vast knowledge of group games for hyperactive children" is not a selling point.
talked to Dan Perrine who might be my neighbor in Buffalo (if I go to Buffalo)


why am I applying for jobs where I won't be expected to play Nalgene Gold or Uncle Bunkley? I just don't get it...

i AM indigo

thanks to my GMail account's sponsored ads, i have discovered my true identity: i am an Indigo Child. [this works better if you intone said title in a reverent, thundering tone]. this could come in handy for my world domination planning, i think. Are you an Indigo Child?

If you want to help as many people as possible evolve and get better then why do you charge for your services?

..."there is something called Divine Right Order that needs to be taken into account and respected here in this universe. In Divine Right Order, which is how the universal physics operates and is totally related to the concept of karma, it is appropriate for a healing facilitator to accept payment for the personal time and energies invested in learning and developing facilitation skills...The time and expertise offered by a facilitator to assist the client in stimulating their own healing energies allows them a legitimate right to honor their own worth as a being by requesting reasonable payment in fair energetic exchange for the service that they offer. I believe that seeking to find one's personal Divine Right Livelihood in sincere service to others by providing client service via healing facilitation, IS a spiritually legitimate motivation."

the great thing is, via the mighty power of the internet, you don't actually have to meet Toby--you just Paypal him $100/session and your schedule, and at the appropriate time he thinks himself towards you and "aligns" his uber-consciousness with yours, then proceeds with a Karmic Cleansing and whatever else is necessary to re-align your DNA with the appropriate pre-Babel perfection. Lovely.

and here I am actually trying to find a job to pay off college debts...

the bean sets forth

hello world. this is me. it's time to set out again, and i have no idea where i'm going. yet. by my feet are itchin' to get there.

here i'll post notes from the road, pictures (soon'z i get a camera--i'm hoping to do a picture a week to help keep in touch), and ideas.

in the meantime, here's a good idea: watch Garden State (not with children or those with weak consciences, please, even though it's an amazing movie) and ponder a few salient quotes--

Large: "Hey Albert? Good luck exploring the infinite abyss."
Albert: "Thanks. Hey--you too."

and

Large: "This is my life, Dad. This is it. I spent 26 years waiting for something else to start. So no, I don't think it's too risky because it's everything there is. I see now it's all there is."

I'm really sorry to bring toby the rabbit back up again, but on my latest visist to the effort to protect this most fragilist and cutest of creautres, I found this (it's an actual screenshot...just imagine the little brown bunny scampering back and forth across the screen while the letter blink bright yellow and sordid red...)

cheers!

please, please, please do not think i am a monster, but this is quite possibly the funniest and best way to cover my college debts. if anyone would like to donate a charming dwarf lop bunny to my cause, see my mailing address in the righthand column.

Save Toby

tonight

i am happy because two of my hosuemates have that look in their eyes and rather silly grins on their faces

i finally finished Lord of Chaos(ouch, does it look as silly as it sounds? sigh, i'm always a sucker for adventure...) so i can get on with important things like writing the last paper of my undergraduate career

i went swimming in the icy grip of wiscoy creek today; the rock bed is still covered with a slick blanket of silt, and the current off the falls is so strong that standing up one cannot help but slide downriver as if wearing wool socks on a kitchen floor. with a torrent of water rushing by. and numb toes.

i did my laundry!

i am now listening to great big sea's "old black rum." in a few weeks i will finally be able to truly appreciate the glory of a good solid Irish drinking song while simultaneously raising a toast to my alma mater! perhaps i could burn that old Statement of Community Responsibilities.

BusinessWeek Online, October 10, 2002 "Why 'Trade, not Aid' Isn't Good Enough"
Question and Answer Session with Jeffrey Sachs.

Q: Why can't countries in these regions pull themselves out?
A: One characteristic of the historically poorer performers is they're farther away from the major markets, so they don't have market forces pulling them. So Mexico is better than Central America, and Central America is better than central South America. Central Asia does much worse than coastal Asia.

For a lot of the poorest places, I don't think we have an economic theory for getting a lot of growth going. I challenge anyone to debate me on how you are going to make Mongolia prosper. I've been there many times, and I haven't had a good idea yet. It's basically 1,500 kilometers away from big population centers and has a few million people.

Half of the people live in yurts. Their connectivity is low. They have no viable industry right now. They sell some camel hair but can't process it because they get a higher price by selling it to China, which processes it at much lower costs and gets it out of the ports cheaper than they can do by having a knitting factory in Ulan Bator. The real economic answer for Mongolians is to leave. But that's not the answer for Mongolia.

That's an extreme example. But let me put the positive side on that. No Mongolians need to die of extreme deprivation. Africans do not need to die of these pandemic diseases. Everyone should be able to have a basic education. But in some places, it can't all be paid for out of local resources. And my belief is that we ought to have a global system that enables a Burkina Faso or a Mongolia to have a shot at the future, rather than dying.

Now the really interesting thing to do is look internally; look locally. What happens when you replace "Mongolia" in the previous conversation with, say, farming communities in America? Textiles manufacturers? Inner-city Detroit for crying out loud? The cost of capitalism is the worship of efficiency. It doesn't matter if a way of life is desireable for social stability or cultural heritage--if you aren't efficient, you must change. We don't want local farmers, local musicians, local artists, local flavor, neighborhoods--we want everything mass-produced and available at Wal Mart.

And when you've become inefficient, you're laid off and sent to a nursing home.

If it were just us--just America--I'd say fine. But we're changing--some would say demolishing--the rest of the world. We're demanding free trade, mass market capitalism, and the destruction of incompatible lifestyles. It's the Western conquest of America all over again: become a consumer/producer or watch yourself become marginalized and die.

One time I taught my little sister a card game. And then I proceeded to annihilate her at it time and time again. I was better at the game than my little sister; she didn't know the tricks, the ins and outs. If we had been playing for money, soon she would have had none. And I would have it all.

One time in Russia, they decided to privatize the state industry. But no one had played that game before. Now 80% of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of 20% of the population. The rest live with what they can to get by. With interest rates hovering around 18%, business investment is difficult to come by. Those with money, make money. Those without cannot generate the capital to begin. Marx's capitalist oppressors are back!

And now the US wants the world to play a new game, a game called free trade. Long-developed, efficient American businesses want access to less-developed markets. Who will win this game?

Five Reasons I Am Loving This Semester:

-starting the day at one a.m. watching "Boondock Saints" and a short documentary on the sociological impact of growing up in American ad-driven consumerism and the unchecked creation of needs and insecurity, with all the fervor of eight angry young hairy men fomenting revolution (why is it that revolutionaries are always hairy?) Why has Christianity become a program of social control? How can we say we are free when we are slaves? We will change our world.

--sleeping and then doing a little honest labor with happy social interactions

--trying all day to study for my Foreign Policy exam tomorrow and succeeding only in having six amazing and varied learning conversations: Confusion and Hope with Musser, Basic Pottery with Rachel, abstract art with Hnatiuk, Community and Wholeness with Cheryl, photography and third-world life with Adkins, and great movies with Dave Lilley.

--by the time you reach senior year, your professors are your friends and your friends are your professors. i a priveliged to be surrounded by people like Cheryl, the Adkinses, Hnatiuk, Kanski, Farrow, Brautigam, Halulko, Mitchell, Nafziger, Musser, Alex, the Arensen Ladies--the discontented and passionate.

--writing a little free-form poetry

--listening to loud Irish drinking songs

--eating delicious Big Al's food

--my bank account is back to three digits!

--a good email from my brother

--a chat with two old RA's

--and finally, a fifty-minute brainstorming session with my housemates to generate creative ways to abuse the fact that the main source for Ben's next paper is a man with the unfortunate last name of "Butt."

This year rocks.

conversation of the day:
Paul: [munching on a fortune cookie leftover from the ISA banquet] "My fortune cookies says 'Now is the time to ask that special someone on a date.' "
Me: "Dude, who's that special someone?"
Paul: "Man, I don't know!"
Me: "Ahhh, that's horrible! Now is the time, man, you gotta get working!"
Paul: "But I don't know who she is!" [opening another fortune cookie]
Me: "Dude, that sucks."
Paul: [reading the next fortune] " 'Do not desire what you do not need.' "

Rush Limbaugh makes money because people listen to him.
So does Dr. Dobson. Sean Hannity. Anne Coulter. Bob Jones IV. and Marvin Olasky.
On the nightly news, they have a slogan: if it bleeds, it leads.
People campaigning for office--campaigning for influence and furthering their ideologies--know that the best way to secure a vote is to scare a voting bloc. Things like wars and terrorists, social security and disintegration of society get people's attention.

Because we grew up watching movies and reading stories about heroic, last-ditch attempt victories against all odds against the forces of evil, we tend to try to structure the world that way. The evil fiscal liberals want to tax and spend our economy into oblivion; the gays and lesbians want to steal the souls of our children and eat them; the atheists want to silence and contain Christians; the public educators want to indoctrinate our children. Fear drives us to desperate, valiant action against the faceless hordes.

Reading the Internet Monk brought a lot of these thoughts to the forefront. They're thoughts that have been growing for a long time--Michael Moore helped me with his insightful "Bowling for Columbine," and Dennis Miller's brilliant "Blue Like Jazz" was an inspiration, among many others, including Father Anthony Ugolnik, who visited our campus two weeks ago.

The future of Christianity in American lies in this question: will we embrace the fear of the people around us and continue to construct safe ghettos for the kingdom of heaven to stagnate, or will we embrace the unquenchable life and love embodied in the indescribable, unstoppable kingdom of heaven? I think we have forgotten that the kingdom is here--among us--living in all its mustard seedy, yeasty, salty power. It's not a kingdom of fear--it's a kingdom of laughter that's never afraid to share common life with outsiders, even the socially dangerous ones. Its inhabitants aren't scared by sin or by schemes--it's amused at their pathetic attempts to thwart heaven and saddened by the condition, their misunderstanding of heaven. It is not afraid or disdaininful or dismissive of sinners, because it is made of sinners who identify with the sinners walking around them.

It embraces people no matter who they are, just how they are: bitter, jealous, gluttonous or homosexual. It's not afraid to laugh with, to relate to, the ones society calls the lowest of the low, the inhuman ones: perverts, monsters, murderers--because everyone in the kingdom knows they began as freaks, perverts, lustful angry pitiful murderers.


I will not stand with a church that cuts itself off from the people it was called to. I will not fellowship silently with a church that discriminates among sinners. I will not be called a Christian if that means despising homosexuals, women trapped in prostitution, and the poor. I will not call myself one with a church so afraid of the people around it that it builds walls to keep the honest out. I will not worship with a church that is so afraid of unpredictability and the possibility of screwing up that it ostracizes and cripples its artists and refuses to attempt or commit to any venture that is not a sure-proven thing, already safely mapped out in a book available at the local Christian bookstore.

I will not reject the church in its many, flawed forms. But I will not stand within its tragic walls, and I will not be silent. The Kingdom of Heaven and the fellowship thereof is for all and equally so, and it is for now, and it is the only kingdom worth living and dying for--the only kingdom where you can have life, and the only kingdom where death makes sense.

Hah! Back in action! This weekend is merely a sore throat and persistent cough now, and film class has given me impetus to be excited once more. This week we are watching Lawrence of Arabia and The Third Man--both British films. I love Brits! Especially exciting is The Third Man, written by the same author as the book The Power and the Glory, the amazing Graham Greene who does an astounding job taking evil out the realm of the fanstastic or fairy tale and into the mundane where it lives every day. Want to watch them with me?

Film class also has the power to disturb. Joining The Last Laugh and Battleship Potemkin, not to mention M and Citizen Kane, Ladri Di Biciclette ("The Bicycle Thief") has reminded me again that bad things happen to people who cannot find jobs: society is a pitiless machine that rolls over people's dignity with its iron cogs. The closer I meander to the ranks of the unemployed, the more I am convinced that a society that does not provide people with meaningful place is no society at all. And I take too many people to the hospital from the nursing home to believe that American capitalism concerns itself with meaningful social relationships.

If I'm lucky, I'll manage some meaningful place riding a camel across a large desert, discovering a shady haven in a rocky outcrop just in time for afternoon tea.

observations on the passing scene, in no particular order:

-just chilled a little with Dave Pascoe, of Tanzanian fame. good times! i sure am scared to graduate and leave this wonderful school, but on the other hand i love reminiscing, so there's something to look forward to...

-i hate being sick. it makes me wish i lived at home still.

-i just found a trove of Animaniacs songs on the network. here's to the bestest cartoon show ever!

-i love ibuprofen. it keeps you from biting people's heads off.

-i need tea. now. it's a good thing it's almost lunchtime. i think i'll abscond with some from the cafeteria. perhaps i'll cache some teabags surreptitiously for later.

-

yet one more log on the burning bonfire that is my ambition to travel:
the see-thru loo

as if to spite my passionate resolve to write only good and beautiful things, only literature, life or fate or awful cockup (in the words of the nutty British rock star from love actually) would have it, the times demand a news flash:

*as i was resigning myself to call around Rochester for a good eyeglass shop to shell out a few hundred bucks to get my vision back, i opened an innocuous anonymous intracampus mail envelope to find the lost lense for my glasses. fifteen minutes of work with a leatherman and a twist-tie and you can't even tell they were broken! I CAN SEE AGAIN!!!!!!

(and I can buy coffee at the coffee shop and food at the Jube again!)

and now for something completely different

*to take advantage of someone else's misery for a moment of sheer integrative studies genius, let us all pause and offer our sympathy to Katrina Lao, that pioneer of bloggers, who suddenly and without warning lost her three-years running blogspot site to what Dr. Oakerson would only call the vagaries of having only an imperfect property right. perhaps if she was a Peruvian street vendor she could have called a voluntary organization to protect her pitch, but alas it is gone without even a chance to redirect her vast network of friends, family, admirers and stalkers to her new address at msafiri-k.blogspot.com.

additionally, for those with free time

*my alternate site for more literary/creative/depth of thought projects now has another long stream of semi-disjointed thoughts coopted from my journal. see deadmoosetalking.

this broadcast brought to you by bad sleeping habits, Tikka headlamps, Compaq "Comcrap" computers, and glow-in-the-dark SPAM boxers which are currently glowing for all they're worth. and my roommate, the Russian Faire Princess, who is blissfully snoozing the night away. and my new and super-cool discman that reads a massive collection of mp3s i burned freshman year. and Sting for "Desert Rose" which is either incredibly cool or very patheticly cheesy. or both. like me. :)