alas, i oblige...

...and i shall offer no explanation. A few should appear, and still more prevail. And that, my friends, is how the cookie crumbles...

I will be leaving this cold state for a short while. I go through stages of excitement, but right now I am a bit sad. I hate the day-before-you-go syndrome where everything turns into the "last time for the time being". Hence all the cuddling. I love all of my boys, but I do hope they know how much I do every day, not just the day-before-I-go hundred times. Give 'em some love if you think of it...(=

random thought

You know you've got a friend when you ask them to elicit an embarassing moment, emphatic no less, at their expense and your benefit.

If you weren't sure enough, it had better be irrefutable after you call them and ask them to do the very same thing that very same day after they thought they were recovering at home in peace. And they said yes.

I hope you are recovering, because I am about to pick up the phone...

(=

breathe deep

I find myself gasping for air. Too many shallow breaths after breathing becomes routine and I have forgotten why I do it.

Oh man, do I love C. S. Lewis...

"As soon as the Lady was out of sight Ransom's first impulse was to run his hands through his hair, to expel the breath from his lungs in a long whistle, to light a cigarette, to put his hands in his pockets, and in general, to go through all that ritual of relaxation which a man performs on finding himself alone after a rather trying interview. But he had no cigarettes and no pockets: nor indeed did he feel himself alone. That sense of being in Someone's Presence which had descended on him with such unbearable pressure during the very first moments of his conversation with the Lady did not disappear when he had left her. It was, if anything, increased. Her society had been, in some degree, a protection against it, and her absence left him not to solitude but to a more formidable kind of privacy. At first it was almost intolerable; as he put it to us, in telling the story, "There seemed no room." But later on, he discovered that it was intolerable only at certain moments -- at just those moments in fact (symbolised by his impulse to smoke and to put his hands in his pockets) when a man asserts his independence and feels that now at last he's on his own. When you felt like that, then the very air seemed too crowded to breathe; a complete fullness seemed to be excluding you from a place which, nevertheless, you were unable to leave. But when you gave in to the thing, gave yourself up to it, there was no burden to be borne. It became no a load but a medium, a sort of splendour as of eatable, drinkable, breathable gold, which fed and carried you and not only poured into you but out from you as well. Taken the wrong way, it suffocated; taken the right way, it made terrestrial life seem, by comparison, a vacuum. At first, of course, the wrong moments occurred pretty often. But like a man who has a wound that hurts him in certain positions, Ransom learned not to make that inner gesture. His day became better and better as the hours passed..." -C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

when chief sinners become moral guardians

"The brutal fact is that we Christians are not generally known for our love - for the simple reason that we, like the pharisees of old, generally judge more than we love...

For the church to lack love is for the church to lack EVERYTHING. No heresy could conceivably be worse."

-Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation

the kingdom of the cross

"The love we are called to trust and emulate is supremely manifested in the cross of Jesus. The cross is the ultimate symbol of the Kingdom of God, for it defines what the Kingdom always looks like. It looks like Christ - self-sacrificial and loving. It looks like grace."

-Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation

the kingdom of the sword

"We fallen humans have passionate convictions that control us and lead us into conflict with others who have equally passionate convictions. We believe in our nation over and against their nation, our religion over and against their religion, our culture over and against their culture, our political ideology over and against their political ideology, and so on. And insofar as we are influenced by the kingdom of the world, we express these passions by attempting to exercise "power over" others as their nation, culture, religion, or political ideology conflicts with or threatens our own. Violence is the inevitable result."

"...So long as people locate their worth, significance, and security in their power, possessions, traditions, reputations, religions, behaviors, tribe, and nation rather than in a relationship with their Creator, Babylon's bloody tit-for-tat game is inevitable. Of course, peaceful solutions must still be sought and can, to some degree, be attained with regard to each particular conflict. But as long as humans define their personal and tribal self-interests over and against other people's competing personal and tribal self-interests, violence is inevitable and will break out again."

-Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation