"Oh What vileness human beauty is, corroding, corrupting, everything it touches." Orestes, 408 B.C.
I'm in a good mood today, both jovial and tense at the same time. My heart rate seems to maintain homeostasis thanks to my hypothalamus. I'm currently snared by a situation that happened earlier in today's timeline. I managed to make it through a mega church service that had a bunch of flags but no cross. I was able to forget about the meaning of God and do some eye-gasms with some of the women at the church. It was gross i know. If we can envision ourselves as stars, today I am the darkest. Instead of "in god we trust" my mind becomes "in lust i trust." I understand that I need healing and maybe some cognitive behavioral therapy, but i digress. The church service felt more real than a robot dog or a genunie laugh from a Pauly Shore film. It was a presentation, a rock concert too much of both dim-lighted and dim-witted. I was wondering if the worship band was opening up for the band "Yes." I got really excited to hear the song "Roundabout." I was expecting the kid playing the drums to eplode and out of the bloody drummer mess was Neil Pert. I know what your thinking, thats Rush not Yes but its the same genre. It never happened though, maybe next time. They displayed a progressive Christian rock sound much like a power ballad. These songs were a minimum of ten minutes and involved repetitionof the same phrase and notes over and over again.
To make things even worst when my friend and I arrived at the church we were suddenly giving a tour around the place when we meandered into a pre-school childrens ministry room equipped with a state of the art puppeteering stage and a television that had to be the highest and maybe the holiest definition. It might have been the sight of the full basketball court or perhaps it was the brand new oak pool tables with an enourmous high definition that scared me, made me want to vomit a little, and had created some unsettling feelings or perhaps the passivity of her blind spots leading us to both think...somethings not right about this place. I needed some Tums but I didn't have any so I settled for chewing gum instead. I started to think to myself I can't afford to go to this church. I don't make very much money. That's not a good sign.
The people on the other hand very welcoming though. A couple of women came up to us and asked how we were doing. I just think to maintain eye contact and do not merge my head like a submarine, stay above water: Do not view the landscape. No need to try to be a Holy Diver. All mental pictures in a place that's sacred, purely natural and ideally wrong. It's strange how in the sreets or in the hallways on campus looking at women is so natural, lust is fine in public, non-sectarian establishments. But the second you step into a church you go pew, what is that smell...pheromones? I hope you ecapsulated the church humor on that one. Oh yeah, Happy Valentine's Day by the way (insert positive looking emoticons).
To make matters worse, again. We sat in the back of the church just in case we needed to make a dashing escape to the car, which we did, the hunger pangs in my stomach began to make there case to my brain. The stomach usually prevails they have high priced lawyers. While we were sitting there a lady darted into our row. It happens to be one of my ex-girlfriends sitting next to us. I let out a sarcastic "awesome" and thought too myself please toll booth guy open the emotional flood gates and lower the bridge to resentment and uncontrollable urges to re-create timeless romances and sexually depicted fantasies. I was doomed after that to think about anything else and could not possibly look at this church in a positive way. Nothing authentic anymore now that I got to wrestle with "I wish I had here back" and "I can't stand sitting next too her." It then becomes a battle between the situation and the personality. Yeah, insert referral to a psychoanalyst let the free assosiation begin. He who is without sin, cast the first stone (Bible). I sometimes am so full of myself i will push myself to the front of that hypothetical crowd with David, not the sling. I'll throw the whole person at him or her. Without remorse of the situation, justification rears its ugly head. I will end up on the horrible end of the pyramid of choice. Something wicked this way comes and he's covered in a three piece suit and has talons made from teeth shed from children's mouths and the sinner is staring back at me, it's my own reflection.
It hurt, but i started to understand why I enjoy going to church; it's to fancy the familiar feeling of lust. It's a sweet smell , seductive and sinful. The snake slivers even in the catacombs of a mega church. I'm not into the whole speaking in tongues thing either, healing the blind, or raising the dead southern stuff. We saw a toddler speaking gibberish as we were be wooed by the view of the game room. I told my friend that he was training to speak in tongues. I'm learning that i'm a percentile Christian and only a small percent on the pie chart. I worship every other day or actually if I like a girl who's Christian...boom i'm screaming Hosanna louder than a southern baptist choir. I'm part time; perhaps at times I feel that I was hired to be Christian for seasonal help only. I can work on my Christian values every other weekend; unfortunately I have to work my other jobs. Those include judging, lusting, trying to increase my ego, ignoring the poor, pretending to pray for people, and of course hating what other Christians do (more judging). Yep it is hypocritical indeed. But I know I'm not alone. I have days where I really feel the love of God and God's people. I really feel that way when I encounter a gril that I like. A little Atmosphere "I do believe in God, because I keep coming across, all these fine women with low self-esteem." I'm not too much into hip-hop but I can nod my head to some fine Minne-snow-tah hip-hop!
There are parts of the Bible that i can't or simply won't believe. I have trouble with the women are made from men's ribs, Jonah and the Whale story, and the book of Job. I'm more of a New Testament type of Christian. I really don't obsess about the Acts church either. I do however really like the four Gospels and most of Pauls letters to the churches. But even in parts of Jesus' three year mission has me rolling my eyes and sighing in disbelief. I turn to that's impossible or highly unlikely. Most of the times I would rather read the cliff notes instead of the scripture. All I know is that I not know. I have a lot of respect for pastors but not the overly charismatic ones on television that have rehearsed and practiced saying the same phrase over and over. The pauses are perfectly lengthened as well. He came to love us...pause...he came to love us...longer pause...he came to love us...not so long pause...HE CAME TO LOVE US..AMEN.
I'm learning the more culturally the more angry I become. I'm incredibily angry. I think it has to do with being single and also realizing that I want to change my major right before I get my undergrad. I'm burnout before I even begin my internship, not a good sign. Anyways, denominations bore me and also confuse me. It's all promotion instead of the attraction. Let's get to the idea of dominations of denominations; it was coined by a friend of mine. I was discussing church-stuff with a friend about the denominations Presbyterian (which sounds like a period of time between the Jurassic and Paleolithic Age) and another friend about Catholicism (it sounded cannibalistic and believing in false idols to me.) Catholicism believe strongly in communion, physically eating the flesh of Jesus. It was uncomfortable to me, and we thought that Jeffrey Dahmer was a mental mess. Look I have so much trouble with denominations because it becomes a competetion compared to the rivalary of the Boston Red Sox and The New York Yankees. It becomes who can recruit or purchase the best players (us) as quickly as possible. To these dumbnominations, we are just numbers not people. It's a race to the finish line. It makes me wonder is heaven a Super Bowl or a March Madness bracket where the Evangelicals take on the Lutherans? Are steroids banned? What's the leagues drug policy? How must does a commercial cost to air? Oh, wait it's a World Series. East versus West! What a fight! Which culture wins? The "ME" not "WE" culture of the West or the "interdependence, care about others and group automomy" of the East. We try to remain neutral but will fold toward the dicotomy or doctrine of a comfortable faith. There can be only one and let the games begin. What's the over/under for the series? I need a new style of interpreting the Bible, i'm thinking about ignoring the challenging and convicting portions so people don't leave.
Look seriously we all have broken wings, both persecuted and been persecuted, and destroyed the purity of the thing (not us the Bible). We can't turn around and mend the denominations together to form Voltron's Body, but we can work together. I hear about a denomination and I quickly see the differences of my personal views, not the similarities. But to the group Christian Identity I send a righteous fuck you. See I did it again. I personally need to learn more about people regardless of the place they go to worship, the style of the worship, and the physical apperance of the worshippers (forgive me women, I know not what I do). I'm just saying worship, be a part of the body and we need to understand we are so flawed, so broken, and cannot be healed by ourselves. Its cliche to say but we need to be saved. We need to realize that we are disgusting hypocrites and have to stare directly at our character flaws and give them up. Trying to live life on your own is like canoeing without a paddle on a river, sure your going to float along but you won't travel very fast and could starve to death on the boat, watch out then for Catholics. Sorry...I'm horrible. Please forgive me.
I'm a troublemaker and I love being in trouble. We need to own our brokeness and expose it. So what's the solution? I can give the mundane Christian textbook answer. To confess your sins and tuen to Jesus, and poof you're restored just like that. Well I love and don't believe that. A key portion is the uncomfortable part. The action stage which is much like the action stage in recovery. It is a tough one and we are prone and more or less expected to relapse. We need to pray rigoriously and understand that we are innately human, flawed from womb to tomb.
Let's lighten up the mood. Now who wants to go on a date? We can slow dance to the intro to "Come Sail Away" by Styx, and compare radical ideas, tendencies, and worldviews together. Going off of the Styx reference "Sometimes I feel like a man in the wilderness." Right now i'm wearing a sleaveless shirt with my grandparents on it, having mild body dysmorphia, wondering is my thought bubble bigger than yours, teetering again, having uniquely placed new hairs on my body, and a crooked grin which is about as attractive as a tye dye tee-shirt at a NRA convention. Love ya, call me!
"When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object" Milan Kundera
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