It's been a while, and this is my New Years Eve Eve musing. It was inspired by a little piece of paper that rests as a bookmark in my Buechner devotional. On this paper is a little note that a teammate wrote me while I was in India. She had written little bits about me that she saw, and at the end, a quote from 1 Timothy. To her: I thank you; to God: the glory.



What is your god of choice?

We all have them and, in essence, they all boil down to the love of the metaphor of money. Paul, in 1 Timothy, says that the love of money is the root of all evil, and this is true at face value: money causes greed, strife, lust, hunger, starvation, lack of resources for things that matter like clean water and healthcare, etc. But deeper still, what is money? Money is this thing (tangible or non) that we ascribe value to and then use as a scale, a bind, against another person. And so, really, I ask you: what is your money; your god of choice?

Me? By far my god of choice is intellectualism, and I'll be damned (or blessed, either way it's a bad pun) if that's not a form of currency. My intellectual friends and I will flash our bright and shining nuggets of "knowledge" that have no "news" relevancy to others (ref. Walker Percy, The Message in the Bottle). Like there, I pulled out the fact that I have read a Walker Percy book (or, really, I had it presented to me in a class, I haven't cracked the blasted thing) that you might not have, and so, in order to entrap the entirety of the implications I was wishing to convey, I gave unto you - O' lower being than I - the reference, such that you might better yourself to my haughty intellectual level.

Grades in school function in the same way, and they're but only one of the many places where this absurd intellectual exchange is measured. I can potentially use my grades as a scale against you: I will graduate at least Cum Laude, if not Magna. And it's all BS.

But the problem, as was noted with Paul, existed LONG before the university institutions and grading systems:

"If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men or corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain" (1 Timothy 6:3-5).

"a means to financial gain..." in the sense of whatever we ascribe worth to. Once we have ascribed worth to it, we can hold it, and lord it over someone else. But where will that get us? "Controversies and quarrels about words." For the intellectual, this is a mode of life. And through this mode of life, I bow to my false god, and serve him with most of my life.

And yet: "We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God" (1 Corinthians 8:1b-3)

And God, who has a knack for coming out of left field, likes to blindside me with Truth so simple that it turns the intellectual on his head. Or to those who use money as their money, Truth from such a poverse event that it turns them from their old god. Or to those who use strength as money, Truth from such a weakening or debilitating event that it wrecks their tenacity to the false.

Oh God,
Might I love You.
And leave my old god.
Might You take my ways,
And use them to serve You.
Amen

Crying

I don't think that there is much in this world that I hate more than someone who is unwilling to cry. Not someone who, because they don't need to or isn't affected or moved to cry, not crying. Nor someone who cries too much at everything. But, rather, someone who holds back tears.

And it's not the person I hate, no, but, rather, the stoic mindset that underscores a persons unwillingness to cry. This unwillingness is, really, a statement that they are unwilling to be vulnerable. Unwilling to let it out.

I remember back to last year when one of my best friends was going through one of the hardest points of her day, let alone life. We were in my car after another disastrous day, and yet another disastrous event, and she sat there, silent. Or so she thought. Her soul was bawling, and her little hubris was attempting to stifle her soul. At last, I pulled over, and said: "Just f-ing let it out."

She cried.

Her tears were unbridled, and seemingly endless - she had gunny sacked so much raw emotion that once she started it was another good 10 minutes before we were on the road again.

And since that point I have realized why I hate this stifling so: my father.

Growing up, it was my father who always told me that crying was a sign of weakness, and that "that's not how a man is to act." Man!?! I was a boy of eight with a skinned knee; a boy of nine with difficult life choices; a boy of twelve with relationship issues. I sought refuge in my mother and was subsequently raised by her. To this day, both the only time I've cried in front of my father, and the only time I've ever seen him cry was in the theatre during "I Am Sam." I was fourteen. I am now twenty-one.

My father, hubris, stoicism all rise to the forefront of my mind when I see a gorgeous woman stifling back one of her most gorgeous moments: that of reckless abandonment to caring what they world says is proper, and bawling her eyes out.

And this goes for us men too. If we are sad, we ought to have every right to acknowledge - nay, embrace - that emotion. We should not feel pressed into stifling our natural response in favour of a messed up cultural value to be strong.

Kierkegaard is classically known for his statements on "the leap of faith" where a person is required to engage in what is - to the world - seen as reckless abandonment. Abandonment of the models they have been enculturated with in order to follow the pathway of that which they have faith in. Less and less, in our time and in our society, I see this leap, this abandonment. We want to appear as though we hold tenuously to the ideals of being strong, or at least of not being vulnerable.

And the wreckage in this comes, fully, when we realize that we are not holding tenuously to anything at all. Our disposition to be flippant, or not vulnerable - to not be able to cry after a disastrous day in the car of a trusted loved one - is a state that we choose to actively engage in every day, in every way. Hold to nothing, be vulnerable to no one, and yes, you will not have to be hurt.

But you will also not Know love.