Bulletin

I think as people read my writing, some of them might find themselves uttering words like "kook."  Well I do not mind, but people need to know that kooks might end up being a whole Christian denomination, and I think once mental illness is accounted for, our denomination might really beat all the other denominations at life and Christianity.  You know some of the best people from our line of believers actually walk down the street telling people that they are Jesus Christ, and one of the real Jesus Christ's most important messages was that what people do for the least of these, they have done for him.  So it would be a little bit crazy to look down on us too much, and it might not be the kind of crazy that counts as membership in our church.

Cracked Reflection

I was thinking just now about how I brag sometimes even though I figured out early in my life that it is basic Christianity not to brag.  Well there is a lot I do like that and it is because when I was 19 I found myself looking at a life of severe depression and I decided that I had to just live my life and try for happiness and eat and make friends and do a lot of stuff that is normal human behavior instead of sacrificial Christian living.  And yet behind my gregarious selfish extravagance is a very pure Christian motivation to stay alive, not even to have some glorious offering for God, but simply because I am supposed to.  And even with my hedonism, which isn't the "Christian hedonism" that some Christians talk about, but just plain hedonism to stay alive, there is an ongoing sacrifice of my reputation among other Christians, who actually don't brag, who don't seek out wordly fame and temporary happiness, who don't depend on accomplishment for self worth, and who serve a lot more people with a lot more purity and holiness.  I know how they see me and my moral inferiority, which is real considering my knowledge and training. And yet my participation in the church just can't be the same as theirs.  Some people seem to get it even without any explanation from me, and because of them, my little reputation sacrifice and chronic status as an inconsistent and questionable parishoner is, thankfully, limited and minimized so that there are some flashes of service and participation that remind me of life before mental illness. I think all of this must be some kind of help from God that keeps me from becoming a hypocritical monster, and it is something that could provide a great surprise when all the people who did not know to take the glorious Christian path cash in on my prayers that might not have existed if I had been able to truly and successfully walk that path myself.

Paper, Rock, Scissors

My reference to there being such thing as a greater life in that other post reminds me of something I was recently thinking about how God uses different kinds of honor to bless people.  God tells people more than once in the Bible that people should associate with people of low position, and his disciples have several conversations about who is the greatest.  Jesus flips it around sometimes and says that the first shall be last, and he says some hopeful stuff about people being the least. I have found that in life, the best way to treat people is usually to ignore status and to help everyone be loving in a way that rejects meaningless and superficial rankings.  And yet there are rankings, and it seems that not all ranking is evil, and there are hierarchies in heaven.  I do not know what it all means, except that God flips it around a lot and seems to use a lot of it as a tool to bless people.  I also have a current understanding that some of the rankings that are from God and not from the cruel world often have a paper rock scissors relationship, where people might beat someone at something, but that person will beat someone who beats them, and everyone can truly live with the understanding that they can "consider others better than themselves" with relative ease because of people's infinite, immeasurable worth that cannot be confined to lists and position and rankings.

Do you see what I see

             Here is a blog post that I have been meaning to write for a while.  It is about something I recently realized.  For years, I have faithfully avoided reading horoscopes or even talking or listening to people who are talking about astrology, because it is not my religion.  I am always polite and tell people when I was born and even what my astrological sign is, but I always skip over the horoscope when reading the comics, and was even faithful about this during my most extreme times of doubt and alienation.  When all my other Christian habits failed, I just for some reason would not dabble in astrology.  And I have really wanted to, and wanted so much to read the horoscope, but I think I caved in only once in about twenty years.  

            I always did so out of sheer obedience and without much concept of any kind of real consequences or purpose.  But in recent years, for some reason, as I have been making choices about what to do next, including big choices like moving to New York City, I have been remembering times even from when I was in college and envisioned the future in certain ways and planned out what would seem right for me to do.  And I am really shocked at how vivid my recollections are, and how much I can see the path that was before me and see how much it turned out to be my actual path. I am talking about specific things like working in a bookstore, being a poet, having various levels of leadership and nonleadership, foreseeing suffering and persecution, and all kinds of stuff.  I mean it is so clear, and I have ideas about what to do next in my life now, too.  And I think that some of what I can see in my mind is probably possible because of a lack of interference from things like astrology.  And I can see how if I tried to find out stuff from horoscopes, it really could have confused me.

            I have often wondered if maybe people who do psychic readings are often people who just weren't blessed with the same church experiences that I have been, and may even be rewarded by God for using their gifts instead of wasting them, even when their service is technically out of bounds for Christians.  And I am also in the camp of people who think that the star the wise men followed in the Bible was something they discovered through astrology.

            And yet I am almost shocked and certain to find that my faithfulness that I thought was just for its own sake might be paying off in ways that impact my whole life, and that I have a clear vision of what is expected of me and what has been expected of me in a way that is miraculously not muddied by a half hearted effort that included consulting with the occult or near occult.
            It is weird, and if people think that it is just the typical thing that happens to people who were born in the same month as me, please don't tell me, because I don't want to know.

Something Scary to Tell People on Halloween or Easter

Most of what is on this blog is more like thoughts about Christian living instead of theology but this post really is more theological.  It is something I have been wondering about the situation when Jesus washed his disciples' feet right before going to die on the cross.  He was with them and washed their feet and used it as a lesson to them and explained that people who want to be great should become like a servant or slave.  And he put on a servant outfit and washed their feet and talked about having washed them more completely. It is an important lesson that gets taught a lot but I have been wondering if he did that in order to literally put some kind of holy water or cleaning that actually did protect them from something like demon snakes or something.  Because later he mentions that it is a very evil hour and the Bible says soon after that is when Satan "entered" Judas.  So I was just wondering, and then later, Pontius Pilate washes his hands after handing Jesus over to be crucified, and I was thinking what if Jesus mercifically told him to do that for some kind of cleansing and protection purpose.  That is crazy and scary, isn't it.  Well it is an idea I had.  

Supermarket Sweep

In recent years, I have found that I am kind of a hog, and I greedily collect things sometimes or order more food than I really need or keep looking for opportunities in a crazed way.  I think some of it could be just some autistic obsession that I should not feel too bad about and should just try to manage as best I can.  But I do think that some hoarding tendencies can be used to pray for people, and you can literally just let yourself mentally be as greedy as humanly possible on everyone else's behalf as you ask God for stuff like health and food and hope and all kinds of other blessings.  I think part of it is the idea behind fasting, where you let yourself be hungry and it fuels prayer.  Even though I don't think God likes greed, when there are 7 billion people to pray for, it might be good to go on an out of control mental shopping spree for everyone.

Curses and Blessings in Disguise

It is confusing to not find love at church but to find it at a school or a group of random work friends, but there is an enemy that God is continually outwitting to save us and some decoys and unexpected resources and even letdowns may be part of a grand plan to bless us under the evil people's noses and to set us a table in the midst of our enemies.

A thorn by any other name

  I read a book about Buddhism once, and it talked about certain strategies to remain detached from things in life as a way of being more immune to loss. It was interesting to find this idea in such a different context from where I had heard it before, which is from Christians who criticize grieving people because they supposedly loved something too much in this world. The Christian judgers suggest that sadness or depression must surely be a form of idolatry and that it exposes a preference of worthless things over God.  The idea is that if people trusted in God instead of things like friends or insurance, then they would barely bat an eyelash when their whole life is ruined or when they were smashed by a steam roller or all their loved ones died.

  But my opinion is that as surely as it is okay to sit on a bench and trust it to hold you up the whole time, then it is okay to depend on both tangible and intangible resources in this world, and especially to love people so much that you would feel devastated for those attachments to even be weakened by a wrong word or a missed appointment, much less a permanent address change, or something horrible like death or disease.
   In fact, I think it is exactly a lazy lack of intense caring that would cause people to do something as mindless and spiritually inferior as telling others that it is better not to love.

Random analogies about suffering

   I am gradually remembering all the surprising things I have learned over the years of trying to stay alive and salvage as much of life and goodness as possible while feeling like I lose stuff faster than I gain it, except weight.  But anyway, one of the things I remember is an analogy that often comes to mind when I think of a very important command to be thankful for what I have and try not to complain.  I have had depression that made it difficult not to complain, and that is one thing to understand, but there is something else that I think is more important to understand, and when I think of it, I think of a certain scenario.  I think of someone sitting on the floor after a magic show or something like that and someone is standing on their hand.  And over all maybe life seems good but they have to cry out and say "Someone is standing on my hand."  And they can't move and leave and live their nice life until the person stops standing on their hand.  It is a very random analogy and not that great and yet I really believe that a lot of people who are told not to complain are in that situation where not only do they have to describe and explain their situation but they are trapped by the problem too. And even though it is kind of simple thing, and maybe even a mistake from someone else, in a way it is truly incapacitating and almost an emergency as much as it is a simple inconvenience.  I do not have real life examples for it, and some abuse situations should not be minimized by a comparison like this.  But this image did not come from nowhere, and when people say something is bothering them, they should be believed.

   The other analogy I think of is how some people expect people to catch a falling piano. I think this is something I think of when people expect people not to be affected by certain things that actually are very difficult situations. Falling pianos are common in the cartoons, and yet many people did not learn.
 Some writers weave analogies into nice writing but I decided to just say this stuff.

This post might not please some people.

    One of the most common teachings from pretty good people is advice to not be a people pleaser.  It is especially frequent for people to remind everyone to only try to please God.  But God told us to serve people, and most of all to love people, and I think when both of these important commands really are priorities and really are being accomplished, then part of it often involves truly wanting to please people as much and as thoroughly as possible.  And usually, if you really love or even like people, you do care about what they think of you and want them to like you back.  If you don't, then you might just be using them to make yourself seem like a charitable person, which I think is close to the opposite of what God wants from us. People will be quick to say that reciprocal love is not the kind of love God was talking about, but some of those people are probably being defensive because the rejection they experience is from complete failure to be even a decent regular human being.

I think some people haven't been doing what they are supposed to.

Something that has really thrown me off is the way I keep hearing from church people that we are supposed to "go love the unlovable."  I keep making new friends and discovering over and over again that people generally are lovable, and not just lovable, but infinitely lovable, which matches what God has said by letting us know he made everyone and is a creative genius.  Yet there is a continual message from the church that some people, or even all people, aren't lovable and yet we are supposed to love them anyway, and of course bring them to church so everyone can see what a sacrifice we have made.  I mean over and over again people just want to say everyone except us of course is so bad and I think the way it sabotages people's efforts to do the second most important commandment there ever was really is a very unlovable thing for the church to do.

Inspirational quotes can't fool me.

 People talk about mastering the self as opposed to the world but probably most mastery of self happens in the process of serving others and overcoming the world.

What I consider to be my main philosophical discovery

I have a philosophical theory that I would like to share, which is that it is possible to do what is right even when everything is corrupt, and that doing the good or even just the best thing that you can do does ultimately benefit everyone, even if people or animals are harmed in the process because of evil systems and forced choices from unavoidable spectrums of greater and lesser evils. In the most evil situations, this idea of mine probably can only seem offensive, but I think it is a very helpful truth for most people who have had to make compromises in order to survive and do the greater goods that they have determined are worth their participation in very faulty societies.  I do not think everyone believes this idea, but I am almost certain of it, and it has helped me keep living for a long time.

Three thoughts at Christmas

Having some bad feelings every now and then doesn't mean that there is a demon attached to your face, and a milkshake might do the trick.

Christmas is a great time to reward good behavior but it probably shouldn't be turned into a Judgement Day for children.

Everyone wants a remote control car and a puppy.

Harnessing Hypocrisy

It is crazy for me to post this post so soon after my post about going ahead and letting your achievement be outside the church but I have this other idea that I have learned from my struggles with motives.  Even though sometimes you really can't do stuff with mixed motives, there are other times where it is more important to get the work done than to have some kind of pure unselfish heart, and the tendencies to want credit and attention can be used in your favor to just get more service out of yourself.  What I am saying is that maybe it is an option to just go ahead and be a hypocrit and get the hungry people fed. And to flamboyantly drop the hundred dollar bills in the offering plates in front of everyone.

Actors, find a stage.

This post is very similar to the one I just wrote, but I wanted to say something else I have learned as a person with acting skills and attention seeking behavior.  I think that if people have acting talent and have a tendency to play out characters in some kind of Christian sense where you are spending energy on trying to seem a certain way, then a way to immediately fix it is to find some kind of theatre hobby where you actually do acting. I am talking about plays, skits, and stand up comedy.  I think that makes people be themselves in other settings where it is tempting to exaggerate something like goodness, or kindness, or anything else admirable.  People might say well maybe the acting kind of people don't have to be themselves.  Well, some people do struggle more, and maybe acting a little bit here and there is being themselves, but God does mostly tell us to be ourselves.

Fame and Glory

This post is something I figured out along the way and I think that for certain people who have certain sets of sinful tendencies, it could really save your life or your church's life. I think it is especially helpful for people who are a little bit attention seeking like I am.  Basically I noticed as I grew up and tried to follow all the great teachings from church and the Bible, that some of the worldly attitudes and habits that Christians are supposed to avoid can actually be somewhat unavoidable in a way that makes people choose the option of pretending.  And what I am saying is that even with basic intentions to not be overly concerned with things like fame, wealth, and power, these ambitions often just get transferred to Christian settings instead of denounced entirely which is most people's intention. So people who do mean well decide not to spend their efforts on making a lot of money or trying to be famous, and they try to instead live a life of humble service.  That is great and that is the Christian life.  But I think it is hard for some people to not go ahead and pursue that extra love and attention and even a search for money but in a setting where all the other rules are Christian.  So they build their empire as a church volunteer. I mean really it can still mostly benefit people and an ambitious church can be a great gift to the community.  But I am saying that personal desires to be known in a certain way and to have a comfortable life play out in a Christian setting and kind of intrude it with something that was supposedly going to be different than all those bad people on TV.  So what I think is the answer is for some people to go ahead and try to go after their ambitions in a more worldly sense and go ahead and be rich and successful in the way that many Christians have denied themselves.  I am saying that people with some tendencies are better off just going for the worldly fame and glory and that ultimately, even with judging Christians looking on, in their souls they will be more honest and the church will be preserved. And maybe they can give some cash later, and maybe they have an outreach that even they do not realize.

How Good

One time I read a book about the categories of Catholic saint characteristics and qualifications.  I can't remember all the categories that the book focused on, but some of them included teaching and influence, suffering and self denial, service, like to the poor, and maybe one or two more. I wondered at the time why creativity wasn't a category, since that is also a witness of God's nature, and recently I thought that a specific type of suffering, like humiliation, could have been considered a factor.  Most of all, I think that everyone who tries to do what they are supposed to in life has a mix of these things in their lives, and people do not always know what everyone's true sacrifices or suffering is.  So even though I think it can be good to pick some superheroes and say okay everyone, '"this person got it right," I think I side with the Protestants in thinking that asking Christ's perfection to count for them puts everyone on a path of glory where almost anything in their lives will be some kind of demonstration of God's goodness, even if it includes things like failure at being good, and grief about that failure.

For other people with monk tendencies

            I just have a few thoughts for this post which is about appetites and hunger.  Sometimes when people really want to be a good person and pray a lot and accomplish some kind of great service and sacrifice, they try to be strict and disciplined in many ways.  Jesus did say to deny yourself and following Christ does involve great sacrifice in a way that is often habitual.  But everyone needs love and attention and food and happiness.  People can get frustrated by hunger and find that it interferes with their lifestyle goals and keeps them from being as strict or dedicated as they wanted to be, or maybe... seem.  But I have found that these appetites can actually be some of the best things we have going for us as we try to live a good life and do what we are supposed to.  Appetites can keep us honest and connected to others, and relatable.  Going ahead and letting yourself get some attention and eat some yummy food not only keeps you happy and healthy enough to serve people well, but it can be an act of service itself, or put you in the situations where you see other people's needs that you can help with.   Most of all, it can prevent the hypocrisy of always trying to seem better than people. If eating a big plate of food with a friend or hero can be the greatest secret weapon against one of the worst sins, I would say that is the deal of a century and from now on I am only going to read my Bible if I also get ice cream.

Thanks Anyway

You know what is a section in the Bible that confuses me a little bit?  It is the part where Jesus tells people about a guy who was proudly thanking God for not being as bad as other people, and then told about a guy who publicly said "Lord have mercy on me, a sinner," or something like that. Then Jesus says that God prefers the humility of the groveling sinner.  I found that verse comforting during my worst depression where I felt so horrible and guilty all the time, but I often want to thank God for all the horrible things that have not happened in my life, and it confuses me a little bit that maybe we aren't supposed to. Like maybe we aren't supposed to thank God for not being one of those bad Isis people or a child abuser or something like that.  I think the idea is that we don't know all the consequences of our every day behavior and the loss of the good we haven't done but could have.  But I am thankful that I have not done worse things than I have, and especially as someone with mental illness and anger problems, I don't take it for granted that there are a lot of crimes I have not committed.  So I have kind of decided that I will go ahead and thank God for all the ways that things could have been worse for me, including the category of my own behavior, and maybe if I thank him too much every time there is a shooting that I didn't do, then I will eventually feel so bad about my pride that I will say more things like "Lord have mercy on me, a sinner."