A Montana Musing

Shane Carruth has this theory.

Now hang with me on this one:

Let's say it were hypothetically possible to go back in time. As in, enter a box or machine or whatever at point "A" and re-emerge at point "B".

Now, point B just happens to exist in what we call yesterday, or last week, or maybe that day you really screwed your life over. And now you want to go back in this box starting at point A, the aftermath, to get out again at point B.

I call Do-over.

So you sit in this box, and you're being transported from point A to point B. But it's not instantaneous, like in the movies. If you want to go "back" 48 hours, then you have to sit in the box for...48 hours. It's a 1-for-1 relationship, Shane says. There is a cost for going back.

And here's the tricky thing. When you get to point B...well, "you're" already there. If you truly want to re-live that moment, change something, you're going to have to dispose of the variable. And he's "you".

Folks who dwell in sci fi will notice the appearance of the paradox. What happens if you meet yourself? Will the universe cave in? Will time cease to have meaning? No, says Shane, probably the only thing you're really going to screw up is your sanity and the lives of people you choose to surround yourself with. Anyway, he made a movie about this, called Primer. It won Sundance. Netflix it.

See, people fantasize about time travel thinking they can go back and change something they don't like. Nostalgia to the extreme. But even time travel, following this logic, doesn't "change" anything. Traveling...switching locations, switching times...doesn't change anything. What happens somewhere never stays there - you always take it with you.

I've often wondered why I travel, why it makes me come alive like little else can. So the reason I bring all this up, is while I haven't necessarily time-traveled (other than forwards at a slightly relativistic time-dilated rate having driven so far at high speeds), I did get into this Chevy Cobalt-sized box yesterday morning. 9 1/2 hours later, I exited this box almost exactly 650 miles away from my previous location.

So here I am...hoping for inspiration, hoping for change, hoping for insights. And I get them. I think I used to travel because I wanted to escape. I wanted to run away, to become someone else, to start over.

But up here in this chilled mountain air, I'm thinking a bit differently. See, now I'm thinking that maybe I travel because I know who I am. And every so often, I must allow myself to be transported somewhere unfamiliar to see myself, as I have become, from the outside-in. To search fearlessly within that soul of mine with the searchlight of Truth framed in self-denial and the relentless slap-you-across-the-face passion of Eternal יהוה.

To meet myself, and to converse with him. But this version of me doesn't get disposed of...I get to take him with me.

Redemption

“He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.” Hebrews 9:12

The after-effects of redemption – cleansing. Pure. White. Fresh. New. Like this:

I find myself in a bit of a revelation this evening. I must have always pictured redemption as an instantaneous process. I’m starting to wonder about that now. As I experience redemption, a new beginning, that process of cleansing, I think it’s more like this:

He entered the Most Holy Place by his own blood.

It must have been like that for Him, then. Redemption doesn’t look like redemption on the ground. In the midst. It may not look like the chlorinated church baptismal.

It looks like suffering, it looks like something that would draw blood. It looks like the tip of a spear. It looks like darkness, and fatigue, and everything you wouldn’t want redemption to be.

Jesus says to Nicodemus, “You must be born again”. Being born must be one of the most traumatic affairs which one endures in life. The pain, the screaming, the forced emergence into something completely foreign.

The blood.

If being born of the flesh is analogous to being born of the Spirit, should we not expect a similar experience when being born of the Spirit?

Redemption is continual, I find. It is daily, even as it is eternal. And creation groans expectantly. Which means something eternal, deep, and aware inside me, groans expectantly.

Redemption sounds like a battle cry. It sounds like crying. It tastes like blood, it tastes like victory. It screams when nothing is left, that everything is ahead. It demands everything, but it takes us where nothing more is needed.

So I say, Let me be born again.

Nostalgia

First, watch this:



"Nostalgia" actually is made up of 2 roots. From the Greek, "nostos", meaning "a return home", and the Indo-European "-algia" meaning "sickness".

Janelle Wilson, who wrote "Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning", has this to say:

"Nostalgia goes well beyond recollection and reminiscence. It demands an emotional valence..I think it is more a longing to recapture a mood or spirit of a previous time. Or, perhaps, to rediscover a former self (a self that seemed more like the 'true self', for instance). Perhaps we "nostalagize" for those things which symbolize what we wish for. What we are nostalgic for, reveals what we value, what we deem worthwhile and important."

Today, I'm cleaning my apartment - like, for real cleaning. And I come across boxes, cartons, of old cassette tapes. So I start sorting, tossing, dusting off and playing these relics.

Mix tapes (remember those?) from middle school...high school...even college. Some crappy blues song we recorded when I was 14. Old Zeppelin and GnR. My sister's voice when she was 3 or 4, my mom in the background.

My own voice, addressing me in all its pre-pubescent glory.

Draper's dead on with this "time machine" concept. A carousel. And sometimes, I don't want to get off back here. Where I got on. Sometimes I'd like to go back and try again.

To get off somewhere back there, and try again.

Those times weren't especially good, or particularly bad either. They were moments, just like this one. Okay, so my angst was greater, my confusion more pronounced maybe. Every one of those moments has helped me become who I am in this one.

But that kid...he didn't know any better, and he didn't need to. No rent, no job (well, not a real one, that actually mattered...), no burden for spiritual maturity. Make a crappy video, make a jackass out of yourself with tin foil, torches made of notebook paper, and a Saturday night.

As I listen and reflect I feel nauseous. Sick. Nostalgic. So, then - who am I trying to rediscover? What do I want tonight? What am I saying is important to me?

Possibility. Promise. Hope.

These are the things I find myself swimming in nostalgia for. Because that kid, desperate and clueless and full of angst as he was, KNEW, and I mean KNEW, that there was something better down the road. Just make it through this, and it gets better from here.

Nowhere was this more pronounced than at Uni. The whole world laid out before me. Do anything, be anything. I knew I could pull off...anything.

I guess the question in front of me tonight, is am I fulfilling that kid's dreams? Am I the man he thought he would become? If he met me right here, tonight, would he be proud? Disappointed? Would he want to punch my face in?

And would he be right?

2nd Travel Blog

I'll be updating my travel blog with photos, etc. (http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Fort-Fun-Granola-Boy/) as I am able!

1st Travel Blog

Just finished up the first of several travel blogs. No, I haven't gone anywhere yet. Thanks.

And yes, that is my shower curtain.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja6P_XYx8G8&feature=channel_page

Now in HD!

Wanted - a Shedding of Pretenses

The following is something which I wrote a few years back, but it is more true to me now than even it was then.

It seems that most people, Christian or not, end up having small vision, small dreams, and, consequently, small impact in this world, because they hold onto this "life" too tightly.

Each man or woman, by necessity, will by degrees do one of two things: clutch desperately to what they think they have earned or deserve in this life, or lose his or her life, for His sake, and in doing so find their true self.

Those who understand this truth, and proceed to live it out, are fewer in number than I once thought. Like John the Baptist, who knew and acted: "He must increase, but I must decrease". Or Mary Magdalene, who never pretended to be worthy to wash Jesus' feet, but knew there was nothing but rags to lose, and infinite purpose to gain.

I now believe, at the risk or pretension, that most never live. Few are the number that hold so loosely, who have even once known the touch of the Father as they spread themselves before Him, stripped bare of hindrance, and with joy can proclaim, "It is well with my soul; O my Lord, it is well".

YHWH, help me find these people, who wish to live as I do.

A youth pastor parody

This isn't so much in-your-face funny, more like "Ugh...I think I know this guy" awkward-funny. It's especially revealing that some people don't realize it's a pardoy...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTn8FDoKBL4&feature=channel_page

Enjoy.