Social Anxiety

Now that the semester is over, I feel finally able to sit back and process a little. These times are good.

I know that sometimes I will hide behind a very structured schedule, and life, to avoid down time. I guess I've come full-circle, since I used to be neurotically anti-social and heavily sought out alone time to avoid others...now I'm more likely to spend my time neurotically hopping from activity to event to class to avoid being alone.

Yea neurosis!!!

Some of those close to me know (some don't, or at least didn't...) that I have dealt with some form of anxiety disorder for all my adult life. I don't make a huge deal about it, since it's something like 40 million adults in the US that find themselves in a similar boat. In fact, I used to think that "anxiety disorder" was just a clinical term that we make up.

It's always so much comforting to know that your seemingly unexplainable, irrational physical symptoms and emotional crises has a name...plus it's a lot easier to say, and saves us all some time.

Which is why, when my god speaks of my becoming a new creation, when He says that "creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay, and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God...", that it means a great deal to folks like me.

Which is why following Christ, for me, is hardly a crutch to help me through life, as some have claimed. I've never understood that argument, and dispute it more now than ever. The Jewish concept of redemption, and I would argue, the Biblical concept, has as much to do with today as it does eternity.

On my best days - my most confident days, the days where I truly feel connected to something deeper than myself, the days where I know the lives around me are better because we share something - on those days, I can literally sense the new creation taking shape, and the old begins to fade.

Days like today...like Paul emotes so eloquently in Romans 7, the old creation is not completely gone. Some days, it is as if redemption takes a back seat. I want nothing but to be left alone, and the wall grows thick. I don't want this, I know it isn't rational or right or anything resembling who I have become...yet here it is.

"Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, the help of my demeanour, my God."-Ps 42

Newly Created

We seek commonality. Do we not latch onto that which is familiar?

I would argue that even our differences become commonalities, when those differences intrigue us. Why would someone intrigue us, unless we identify a part of ourselves within them?

Maybe they excel in that which we aspire to. Is this not inspiration?

I have heard the idea tossed around that, to be truly progressive, we should rid ourselves of preconceived ideas about what "this" or "that" mean.

I maintain that not all preconceptions are bad. Our instincts communicate to us, alert us to universal truths.

It has been said, for example, that the only universally despised quality in a man, across any culture alive, is cowardice.

When men see that quality of "beauty" within a woman, he cannot help but to look. This is not a rational decision.

We rise above some of our instincts - greed, lust, any quality unrestrained. These are the instincts which, as new creations in Christ, belong to what Paul called "the former self".

But do we not also see that the New Self shares some of the qualities of the old? It does not lust, but it is sexual. It does not envy, but it is still ambitious and assertive. It does not descend into bottomless appetites, but it still appreciates flavour and beauty and taste.

I find that the Old Self makes a damned big show of its appetites. Its rationalizations to this end are rather tiring and irritating.

I thereby contend that part of our responsibility as Christians is to be INTRIGUING and INSPIRING to others. If we truly share the qualities of the divine, how can we be boring? If we truly love another as we love, how then can we be careless in seeking common ground?

I have given up nothing

There are times where I begin to truly count the cost of following this Christ. There are things I don't "do" as a follower. There are things I don't say. My ambition in certain areas is curbed.

The stakes are raised. Some in my life don't understand my faith, or pretend not to. Some scorn. Some talk behind my back.

So why do it?

Lately this world seems to be calling me, seducing me, with intense ferocity. It wants me. It speaks sweetly to me. Every rationalization seems to be at my lips.

Here is my answer.

"But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

"More than that...I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things.

"And I count them but garbage, so that I may gain Christ." - Paul, Phil. 3

That word, garbage, is in the Greek skubalon. Refuse. Excrement. A polite way of saying "shit".

In other words, I have given up...nothing. Rather, I have gained everything. I begin to grasp the slightest understanding of the WAY, the דרך, the journey towards G-d. Whatever I have given up to get this far: IT WAS WORTH IT.

As Hebrews notes of our fate, we are but wayward travelers, passing through. This strange firmament is not our home. Thank YHWH.

Does this really happen??

So here's a video that was forwarded to me. My question: is this for, um, real?

These are the times I sit back calmly and quietly thank YHWH that I grew up Catholic and missed this part of Christianity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsHH_HYSkH8&feature=related

It is kind of charming/funny in that "Thank God I wasn't there for this" kind of way.

"Hun"??

I was called "hun" twice this morning.

Usually I would expect this kind of comment from a waitress in her 40's or 50's when she offers me a fill-up on my coffee.

My first "hun" this morning was from the girl at my apartment Starbucks. She had to be all of 19. We started talking about the music playing over the speakers, I thought it sounded oddly like "jingle bells". She laughed, then called me hun. ...what?

The second was at Joes. A girl walked in and wanted coffee. I told her that we were closed, and I got..."Thanks, hun".

Should I take this as a compliment? Or should I be worried?

Snuggie Cult!

Okay, so another YouTube video...I promise to get back to some original thoughts soon, but for now...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWHlvtWhum0&NR=1

The truth about the Snuggie revealed, at last. Finally someone said it.

Never let 'em see you sweat, my friend...

Check out this poor guy's sermon (the clip's only a minute or so). I couldn't watch it all, it *hurt*.




Not that I haven't wanted to just lose it on stage on the rare occasion. It's one thing to "want to" lose it, another thing entirely to actually self-destruct in public. Uglllyyyy.