Turning 27...

Late last year, I was at a Sarah Slean concert and she assured the audience that 27 is a great year, but that you pay for it in year 28 and 29. When one is 27, adulthood has definitively set in and there is no escaping it, although perhaps it is the last year in which denial is quite socially acceptable. I find it difficult, as I believe we all do, to not compare myself to those around me in a variety of spheres and contexts. Some of my more famous fellow 1985 babies include: Lily Allen, Fefe Dobson, Zac Hanson, Kiera Knightly, Lady Sovereign, Frankie Muniz, Ashley Tisdale, T-Pain, and Madeline Zima. Other superstars like Miss Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga) are a year younger. While we could have a lively discussion regarding the degree of adulthood these celebrities have achieved, certainly their success and cultural influence is spectacular. Friends of mine own houses and are having babies... My parents had finished school, bought a house, and found the job my Dad continues to work at, given birth to me and were pregnant with my sister. These are examples of those who while less globally influential are discernably settled, rooted. I, however, seem to be stuck in the midst of the same existential crisis I have been in for the past at least 10 years, except 10 years ago I was more optimistic regarding the future. At 27, I am feeling both the desire and terror of settling... I am feeling distinctly exhausted with the uncertainty and transience of many peoples early and mid twenties.

Please let me be the first to be cynical regarding my own cynical out look. From any other perspective but my own, my own pathos is near inexplicable. I am married, I have travelled the world, I am currently enrolled in grad school and I have concession style popcorn machine, I live in Vancouver; life, by any reasonable external standard, is fantastic. Despite the often uncertain and unexpected series of events that have been the last decade of my life, they have been far from dull, uneventful or unproductive. However, from a young age I have had my eyes set on a world stage, and rather than making progress I find myself living everyday with angsty teenage uncertainty regarding what I want to be when I grow up. And here we are and I still don't really know or am too afraid to say or am afraid that the ongoing ambiguity determines me a failure regardless, doomed to be blown by the wind.

My eternally embarrassing confession of competing in figure skating up to the age of 16 never ceases to cause me discomfort. It is in this context of competition, my eyes always directed to national and international success, that I spent some of my most formative years. The height of my success was not a gold medal but qualifying for nationals (perhaps you can hear my disappointment). Anyway, I retired at 16 in order to more fully devote myself to school and art. My ambition for a world stage did not disappear, it merely shifted toward film and television. I have now spent 6+ years formally pursuing spirituality and theological education. But my vision/desire for global impact remains undeterred. On a side note, 4 years ago I recognized in myself a great longing to escape. This is mostly expressed in not wanting to live in North America. Despite and because of this I seem to have confined myself to the very context I both love and loathe, Vancouver.

Ambition is considered both a vice and virtue in modern society. I have mixed feelings about my own ambitions. Oh I could call them "hopes and dreams" and that would be far more acceptable but realistically it is the same. My desire to engage an audience is, perhaps, innate to my identity. There is not a time in my life that I can remember when some aspect of my time was not directed to this end in some fashion. And yet my young desire to perform and entertain has shifted to a desire to express and communicate. This blog succeeds in quenching some of that need. However, blogs and internet communication are often unsatisfying outlets, as they can feel like performing Shakespeare in the dark. Can anyone hear you? or see you? Does anyone care what about what you are doing or trying to do? These fears are somewhat alleviated here by group authorship...

My question, which perpetuates my own frustration and dissatisfaction is not: Do you care? or Can you see me? but, What am I doing? According to Dorothy Sayers I might be classified as an artist all energy and no idea... Although in reality I am exhausted and rarely energetic. I move amongst my own shadows of doubt looking for something... Perhaps we will have a child and I will find focus, perhaps I will be given an opportunity which will crystallize things, perhaps I will meet someone who will make things clear... But after 10 years of pursuing God for these things, learning to think, and discerning in community,  it is my conviction that we must learn to live in the shadowy reality of our own subjectivity. I must continue to step into the darkness by faith, because all is darkness. It is my hope to walk while holding hands with those I love. It is the deep torture of my soul to be weighed down with the call to speak and simultaneously deep uncertainty about what to say, or perhaps my uncertainty is a mask for inability to commit to a subject or perspective...

So I am most curious regarding your thoughts of ambition as a subject and its role in the Christian life...
How common is my sense of dissatisfaction? I perceive, perhaps wrongly, that many other people are much more content within life's mundane routines and much more capable of finding joy in the doldrums of the grind...
Is existential discomfort good or bad? Some might say that comfort and lack of personal tension should be considered a bad sign. 
Is the my decision thus far to confine myself to a context (e.g. Vancouver) that I do not particularly like, in order to attempt to work out my loathing of North America, reasonable or does it make more sense to run off somewhere and hopefully shatter my naive and romantic illusions regarding other parts of the world? This seems a common experience of many people.
Is my restlessness genetic, merely skipping a generation, and now simply expressed in the anxiety of my postmodern generation?
I apologize for what, perhaps, is far too personal a post for the public nature of this setting. 

Why not?

As of tomorrow, we enter the last month of 2011. A year marked by the motto "why not?" as established last new years in New York. A trip which was made possible by the phrase it was to inspire. It has been a year of travel, transition, creativity, and new endeavours.  Do a super intense internship? Why not? Be homeless for the summer? Why not? Embrace unemployment? Why not? Start a blog? Why not? Write a book? Why not? Shoot a painting? Why not? Start Grad School? Why Not? Move to Vancouver? Why not? Occupy Everywhere? Why not? Stay up all night doing home work? Why not?

In the course of these adventures I have discovered many excellent responses to our courageous question which launched us daringly into many new, difficult, challenging, and rewarding circumstances... However, as I begin to reflect on a year that has been filled with extremes and as I anticipate rest, renewal and rejoicing over the Christmas season, I am moved almost immediately to nostalgia. It has been a year of life shared deeply, with deep friends. Beginning as we slept 3 or 4 to a bed stumbling on top of each other in a tiny apartment in New York, an experience I'm we were sure had deepened or destroyed our relationships, to graduation, to Israel, to unemployment, from artistic endeavours, new jobs, to weddings, to new schools... memories have congealed into a glassy rose coloured past to be reminisced over as we return to favourite restaurants, share a cigar, and in either slurred or perfectly enunciated speech share the deep love and respect we hold for each other. Friendship is about life lived together and that is something that has happened significantly and deeply this year.

The questions to be answered in the coming month is what will next years motto be? How do our relationships transition as life moves us to different place? Will there be the new friends that we will journey, laugh and cry with, and how will they change us?

I anticipate this Christmas season as being celebratory with with old friends and new, with family, with wine, with food and champagne...

May we celebrate both the glory and misery of our lives, holding hands and cuddled together,
with shouting, laughter and tears,
with kisses and hugs,
with both hope and sorrow, grieving and joy...
May there always be pizza...
May water turn into wine...
May death give way to new life...
May life be lived together...
Amen.

Black Friday!

Nothing brings people together on the holidays like shopping. First we consume food together and then we consume electronics, shoes, clothes etc... It is really unbelievable to me that American Thanksgiving and Christmas are immediately followed by such sales that we are sparked into frenzied blitz of consumption (Black Friday and Boxing Day).

I am at home... by myself... not shopping...

As I am writing this post I am considering dressing all in black and drawing dollar signs on my eyelids and going and lurching around Best Buy blinking at people. But I will probably just stay home and do homeworkish type stuff... do some dishes and such.

I would be a terrible consumer on Black Friday... I hate line ups. We went to see Sarah Slean in concert on Wednesday and since it was general seating we arrived early to line up for good seats. Despite having to switch lines to pick up are tickets we managed to get in early and score 4th row seats for a great show. However, waiting outside in the cold in a line up was awful. It was like nightmare. I hate waiting in lines. Its the only thing about grocery stores I don't like. If I am there with someone I will almost always abandon them in the line and do anything else. Clearly, this demonstrates a level of dysfunctional impatience on my part, which is perhaps characteristic of our generation.... However, I continue to find it bemusing that it is in particular line ups that bring it out in me. It is sort of a claustrophobic panic that sets in... I am perfectly capable of waiting in other situations but put me in a line up and my mental health deteriorates faster than jackrabbit. Even thinking about it makes me anxious and uncomfortable. I wish I could tell you when this started for me, but I'm not sure. The bad news is I think it is getting worse.

Maybe this is why I have been a bit depressed recently. Life feels a bit like a giant line up - except I've lost track of what we're waiting for, or if I want to buy anything... and the weather has turned cold...

So I'm not sure I want what we're lining up for but I'm also rather afraid of getting out of line... if only I had a bit of candy... just a few Swedish berries... God help me if I become diabetic...

Out on a limb...

Last week I went apple picking with my mum. There was an apple tree behind the community centre and my mum recruited me to go up and pick the apple which were perfectly ripe and very delicious. I have always liked climbing trees and throughout my life I have made my mum nervous on many occasions as I placed myself in precarious situations. However, last week she was egging me on... "There is lot just out and up a bit farther," she said. And so I found myself probably the farthest out on a limb I think I have ever been. I was careful, I was cautious but I also pushed myself to the very limit because that was the place I needed to be to get the good apples.

The line between madness and genius is thin. The line between success and failure is thin. The line between life and death is thin. The thing I find interesting is that we are notoriously bad and knowing where the line is... We are notoriously bad at evaluation in general. The drummer before Ringo Starr, quit the Beatles because he thought they were no good. Way too many people go on American Idol and think they are great. We try and evaluate results but which results are relevant? Einstein had early speech difficulties, Van Gogh had no success while alive. Our understanding of the present and the stories that history will tell are often different...

At the entrance to the temple at Delphi it said in Greek, "Know thyself." "Who am I?" is one of the ancient philosophical conundrums... The task to know one's self is exceedingly difficult as there is certainly no agreed upon method. Furthermore it is not a question to be answered by a single individual given we are relational beings, our identity is wrapped up in much beyond our own individual psyche. We like to talk about self esteem, and bad self esteem as someone who doesn't know them self. However, "bad" is a judgement we make from the outside based on our perceptions. We are likely to disagree just a strongly with an unrepentant serial killer who has really "good" self esteem.

The line between confidence and arrogance is thin. My father in law says that it is the difference between seeking impress rather than express. And yet I am sure we can all resonate with the experience of knowing someone who liked to express themselves just a little bit too much... I know people who seem to be very comfortable with who they are and they are very "real" but what this looks like is often abrasive or uncomfortable. They are either oblivious or disinterested how there self expression impacts those around them. People deal with it. I put up with it. I find myself often a combination of frustrated and jealous of these people. Frustrated because they can be like a grenade; jealous because they can get away saying and doing things that I cannot, with an earnestness that I would have to fake.

Expectations may well be the death of you...

I find myself farther and father out on the limb of life. My ability to evaluate whether the branch can hold me or not is negligible. Although past experience tells me that I'm ok. But of course past experience tells me I'm ok because one is ok until one is not, one is alive until one is dead, the branch is holding you until it snaps. Will it snap? or will you get a delicious apple?

How much risk is acceptable? How do you determine risk? How do you psychologically manage to get in your car every day knowing the statistics of traffic fatalities: 32, 708 people died in the US last year in a traffic accident.

Coming out Normal...(if that is possible)

As the new school year begins I am experiencing a sense of loss. I miss it. I miss the mental stimulation, I miss making my own schedule, I miss meeting a few new people, and I even miss working late into the night on a paper. BUT I do not miss the crazies.

I have not moved locations, and as a result I am still surrounded by those who are attached to the academic institution. As these people start the school year the stories begin to drift in, stories from every corner. Stories of boys and girls in love, stories of ridiculous questions, stories of ignorance and bigotry, and stories of great conversations and insights. It is a mixed bag, a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the crazies.

The crazies are everywhere, but they seem to flock to Bible Colleges. Maybe it is their need for community, maybe Bible Colleges are really a collection of outcasts and socially inept people. I will go out on an offensive limb that there are more crazies at Bible College than elsewhere.

Let me explain Bible College crazies before I go on. To make vast generalizations, which are not ideal but necessary because I do not wish to point out specific people, crazies may be defined by having a narrow perspective. We all like to think our own unique view is correct, this is just human, but what sets a crazy apart is that he or she lacks an intellectual humility to acknowledge he or she may be wrong. They pigeon hole God and life into neat boxes, which they are unable to see are boxes. These people may even be proponents of the cliche "Do not put God into a Box", but when challenged on their box they refuse to acknowledge it is a box.

Some common crazy boxes at Bible College are: My life is all predetermined and I am just along for the ride. God is logical, as we understand logic, therefore the logic of Reformed TULIP is inerrant. Proper education is the factory making of good evangelicals who know a lot of information, rather than learning how to think. Life is hyper-spiritualized, therefore everything has other meanings which involve the learning of christianeese in order to be understood, resulting in no one understanding what is being talked about. Terms of liberal and conservative, as used in the contemporary media, equate to "christian" and "non-Christian", rather than perceiving Christian as being unable to fit into either box of liberal and conservative.

The barrage of stories coming out of the Bible College of students and professors being caught up in one or many little boxes has caused me to reflect. I reflect with my friends and my community, which I know is totally bias because for the most part I like them and we often agree more than disagree. yet, as of late there has been a theme of how we were able to come out "normal". Normal being 51% so not very precise, but normal in that we are able to converse about various topics, relate to various points of view, and have diverse interests in art, culture, science, sport, etc.

In a conversation with a friend about how we turned out so "normal", we concluded it largely was how we grew up. We were fortunate to go to a church that did not hyper-spiritualize everything, so we grew up with sermons that related to life, biology, science, environmentalism, politics, depression, and culture. These were all tied to scripture and preached from the pulpit. We also grew up in a community where the parents held differing opinions and conversation always was filtered through respect for the relationship while still holding one's opinion. Beyond all of these, I attribute our "normalness" to the fact that I grew up in a community that read.

One specific memory I have that displays this is memories of mornings when camping. The community I grew up in went camping together and on Saturday and Sunday mornings when people arose and gathered around fires, it was a common sight for a newspaper to appear from here and then another from there. Newspapers that had been stashed along for multiple purposes, first to be read, and second to provide the children with fire starting material. The memories I have of these times have follow up memories, memories of all the parents discussing politics, different perspectives and the news of the week.

One might say, but probably would not, "my parents read too, and I did not come out normal". The difference I might propose in response is "what was the breadth of the reading one experienced". The parents in my community read widely, although committed Christians, it was not unheard-of to listen in on a discussion of theology that included works by Marcus Borg, or relevant points of Buddhist thought, or the similarities in Hinduism and the development of India. The newspapers that were read around the fire were not all the same, some conservative, some liberal, and the discussion of the news would include thoughts and critique of bias. This later would become common practice; learning to distinguish a writers bias and take that into consideration when reading what he or she wrote. Histories were also read, from the ancient near east, to asian, to Europe, and even Mayan and Aztec cultures were understood. "Normalness" came from having to defend one's opinion against any critique no matter how diverse the reference point. This prohibited brainwashed answers and isolated perspectives. Defence of one's ideas may include biblical reference but also needed to be logical given other evidence. It was in the necessity to have this other evidence that promoted me and my peers to understand the world as wide and vast, an incomprehensible treasure trove of ideas and perspectives. Perspectives that shaped one into "normal".

Earlier this summer a friend asked me for a book list, I was busy and failed to get back to her. This, however, seems like the appropriate time and place for a list. The following are either books I have read, books my parents and their friends read which fit in line with this post, or books that are on my bookshelf waiting to be read. The highlights that ought to be read include:

Out of Babylon - Walter Brueggemann
A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Karen Armstrong
Failed States - Noam Chomsky (or anything else by Noam)
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Che: A Memoir by Fidel Castro
The Divine Comedy - Dante
Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Colossians Remixed - Walsh & Keesmaat
An Imperfect Offering - James Orbinski
The Shadow of Kilimanjaro - Rick Ridgeway
Reading the Bible Again for the First Time - Marcus Borg
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
Anarchy and Christianity - Jacques Ellul
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
Guns, Germ, and Steel - Jared Diamonds
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
The Orthodox Heretic - Pater Rollins

If you have read a book that you think should be added to that list, put it in the comments section below. I am always looking for more books to read, or dream about having the time to read.