humorous.

I love apprising.org. It's like Christian smut. I look at it every once in a while, whenever I want to read alarmist rhetoric to feel more panicked about how much ground "real" Christianity is losing to "evanjellyfish" and the "existential rebellion against the final authority of the Bible" (Emergent movement), as well as a number of other terrible things that Christians are doing to subvert their own religion, like allowing women to be pastors.

Actually, it's just entertaining to me.

Check out the latest article, entitled "Recipe for Spiritual Disaster":

First you begin with a great big bowl full of years of shallow self-centered “what does this verse mean to me” Bible studies. Next stir in a large measure of biblical illiteracy, while adding a small dose of the yeast of refusing to refute error; and make sure to blend in more than a moderate proportion of women pastors.

Then add to the mix an unhealthy amount of “let’s make church an entertaining experience” smoothly blended together with tasty man-centered “tell ‘em what they want to hear.” Now ignore at your leisure; let the bitter batter fester until completely dense, then frost with critical-reasoning skills killing contemplative spirituality, and finally, dabble on top just a touch of postmodern pudding in its embrace of “mystery and ambiguity.”

Unfortunately (to continue the metaphor shamelessly) there's an ounce of truth to be found somewhere in this kind of thing too, and that's why it's appealing to a lot of people.

confessions, recent events and Sufjan.

***By the way...my two rules for soc fiction that I made up are as follows:
1=Write in one sitting, stream-of-consciousness style (duh).
2=If I find little errors and correct them later, that's fine. But no complete redrafting or anything like that.
You should try it! I'm hoping to eventually get good enough at writing them so that they can be read out loud too, because I think stories should be shared that way, and haven't been shared that way very much.***

Anyway, this is a post about something different.

Lately I've been reading up on Sufjan Stevens, while I've been getting even more into his music. In the process, I have a few confessions to make.

Confession One: I have hardly listened to Sufjan Stevens at all. I mean LISTENED. I've known about Sufjan (one of the few indie artists that you call by first name if you choose between first/last) for quite a while, and I've had a few of his albums. But I think I've generally been a poser that has tried to just be someone who could say, yeah I like his stuff. My friend Eric, who introduced me to a bunch of great bands back in high school that I just ignored for a while and then fell in love with later, had just heard of Sufjan, and our conversation went something like this:

Eric: Hey, my sister just got this CD by a guy named Sufjan Stevens, and it's pretty good.
Me: What? Did you say soofyawn?
Eric: Well, I think it's pronounced that way.
Me: How's it spelled?
Eric: I think S-U-F-J-A-N.
Me: Oh. Suffjohn.
Eric: I don't know. Maybe.
Me: He sounds weird. Either way, he sounds weird. Suffjohn. Soofyawn. Suffjohn. Soofyawn. Ahh!
Eric: Yeah, probably. But it's pretty good.
Me: Interesting. Right.

Then now, ten million five years later, here I am. Confession Two: Eric, you were right. Again.

I'm probably just slow. But maybe it's due to (Confession Three) my tendency to generally ignore lyrics and soak in every other part of a song. Sure, Sufjan's a genius composer, but he's nothing without his lyrics (The BQE is still good, though). Now that I've begun to listen more intently to what songs are actually saying, I think it's given me a real reason to like Sufjan's music at a different level than, "oh, he's good."

It could also be due to the sheer magnitude of the writing he does, on a myriad of topics that I would never even begin to consider. To be able to write songs on a bunch of different birds? Or states? Or the zodiac? And make (most of) them somehow meaningful?

But then I found out he has an MFA in Creative Writing, and he wrote short stories, too. And that was just too much. I'm not even crazy about Sufjan Stevens, I promise. But I do want to be exactly like him (by that I mean the Sufjan in my imagination, not the real one).

Segue that I made in my mind but had to add in after looking over my post: Sufjan has these convictions that he can make into something real, in the weirdest ways, and they somehow work. I want to be able to do that with what I love and what I experience too.

I'm learning theology right now and I really do enjoy theology as a whole. (Confession Four:) But I don't really know if the world of academia is a place for me. So the route of research papers and theses (which are all good, I guess) and debating minutiae theological points inside stuffy rooms isn't really the way I want to go, I don't think. I don't think that doing grad school is forcing me in this direction, but it's certainly illuminating this route for me. And now that I see it, I'm not gonna head that way. Maybe I'll change my mind (it's only the end of the first quarter, after all) someday, but it doesn't seem appealing to me at the moment.

Here's a complex combination of feelings for you:
I feel like I've only just begun to learn some great stuff.
This makes me want to do things.
But because I'm in these beginning stages, I also want to wait to do things until I know them better.
And I feel like I know more than people sometimes too.
And I feel like I also should be making everything practical, and should make sure everyone else acts too instead of sitting on their asses.
And I don't have any energy to do any of those things (except maybe talk about it) because of my current state of being overwhelmed with everything (new information/schoolwork/life/etc).

And this week is the week before finals. And this week is just as bad as finals week. Wish me luck.

stream of consciousness fiction - #3.

Rolling thunder.

We hear it in the distance. The bass tones reverberate throughout our bedroom, rattling our bookcase and the toys in our toy box, and we can instantly identify its source. Sister runs out first, and I follow not far behind, barefoot. As soon as we cross the threshold of our front door, we're hit with a warm, humid rush of air and water and we cry out in delight, jumping up and down. It has just begun to rain, coating the grasslands in a misty, glowing, green haze. The sun is still shining from behind our house, keeping the warm, fuzzy feeling of spring present, but far off up ahead floats the dark, grey cloud formation from where the thunder came. We stand in front of our house, arm in arm. But we're not outside just to soak in the fresh rain--we want a show.

And soon enough, the show comes. The masses of grey clouds ahead shove up against one another, each jostling and tussling for a better position in the pack as they billow closer toward us. The more they collide, the more friction and the more enmity between them. Their hostility becomes visibly apparent as we see little tendrils of light jump quickly between rivals and just as quickly disappear into the folds of condensation. Each of the creatures excitedly recoil from the shock and then rush up against a new opponent with even more fervor than before, and soon the cloud front is roiling with mayhem, crackling with delight in all the chaos. It's as if the legion is motivated and driven and powered by its own conflict, and it looms ever nearer.

But we are not afraid. We stand courageously, arm in arm, awaiting the rest of the show (but also ready to retreat speedily into our house if we get too scared). The sky darkens, and clouds swirl over our heads and swallow up the rest of the open air, enveloping the sun. But the clouds that have arrived at our house are only the reconnaissance team, the light sentries, sent ahead to scout out the territory. They don't yet have the mass and strength of the main body of the true stormhead, which is still at the horizon but clearly advancing in our direction at full speed.

FLASH. We see the first jagged edge of plasma in the air sizzle in and out of existence, and we brace ourselves for the onslaught. We count, "One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand, six-" BOOM. The rumbles surround us and the atmosphere trembles, vibrating the very air we breathe, moving the entirety of our bodies in a way we rarely feel. Mmm. Such a destructive force at this distance feels like an otherworldly caress to the both of us, and we soak it in along with the warm rain. We stand, arm in arm, and wait for another, because it has only just begun.

wordle.net (click).

stream of consciousness fiction - #2.

A young man, about as old as yourself (this is of course assuming you are approximately his age), left one day on a journey towards the apocalypse of his lifetime. He thought it would be appropriate to pack light, because not many people need many things after an apocalypse. He was one of the many, and thus left his apartment with one set of clothing, a pair of running shoes, and a backpack containing a book and a sandwich in a sandwich bag. The young man consciously chose to leave extra space in his backpack, for he knew that after his apocalypse he might find something useful. But he didn't really know what he'd expect to find (he was more just the type that would be prepared for anything).

When the young man began his journey, he threw away all his keys, tossing them in the canal near where he lived. It was along the way, and so it wasn't too much of an inconvenience, but he thought it significantly symbolic. So he took great care to make sure the keys went into the deepest, darkest shade of water he could find, and made a point to forget where that had been once he turned away from the canal.

The surprise to him was that his apocalypse came much sooner than expected. As the young man walked along some train tracks, he spied a clearing to the east and headed in that direction. All along he had planned to just follow whatever path that he felt most compelled to follow, but it really turned out that it was a pretty limited path. Even if his apocalypse came to him five days from the day he set out, he would only really be able to make it to the next city on foot. And he had set out rules for himself, too, like: 1) Only transport myself by foot; 2) Never talk to anyone; 3) If someone talks to me, ignore them; 4) If they force me to speak with them (like a police officer), that's okay; 5) If I don't find my apocalypse in five days, turn around; 6) Follow the most compelling path; 7) Look at nature to guide me; 8) Look in only places I would never normally look. He had other rules as well, but those other rules were rules which had not yet materialized as concrete concepts, and thus had no shape, even in his mind. But they certainly influenced his decisions when it came to the task of finding his apocalypse.

Between the time the young man came to the middle of the clearing and the time he left his apartment, he had been walking for about three hours. But there it was. Right there in the middle. However, there was a problem. The young man's rules strictly stated only to look in places in which he would not normally look. But he had been compelled to go in that direction, which meant that if this situation ever repeated itself, he would certainly look there again, and so it would be a place he would normally look. Also, the middle of a clearing was generally a common place for interesting and magical things to happen--everyone knew that. So was this really his apocalypse? Well, it was sitting right there, waiting for him to touch it. After that, there was no turning back. Or was there? And maybe do some people have more than one apocalypse? Or maybe not only can people have more than one, but are there also many possible apocalypses that one could simply pass by or overlook? And had he already overlooked some? And who knows what would happen if this were someone else's apocalypse...also, what would happen if he had set out five days later? Then would this one still be there, or would he even have walked this same path?

Too many thoughts, said the apocalypse to the young man. Just take me.

And the young man sat there with his questions, within easy reach of his possible-real-fake-someoneelse apocalypse.