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|  One of the few religious rituals I observe or at least attempt to is Lent. For 40 days one abstains from a particular binding part of life. Something of which can be said “I couldn’t live without ___”. Even this simple things like meat was hard but it all serves as a reminder that everything is borrowed (like this line, from Avatar). The season of Lent is to remind us that our lives are on loan (oh snap see what I just did there?) and things can be given to us as easily as they can be taken away. The beauty of the frailty of all things is truly spectacular. Like how first snow blankets the world and then gets trampled and muddied up or how flowers bloom and then wither. What we have and what we work to have is never permanent. We lock our doors, put things in the freezer and guard our treasure all the while knowing that it will all pass if not before then after we do ourselves.
This year for Lent I will try to limit myself to $40 for 40 days. Leaving my credit and bank cards at home and carrying $40 cash. There will be some elasticity with this plan such as gasoline but I will try to stick to it. Two pitfalls of such a plan arise with becoming stingy - which I will try to stay generous to counter; and becoming a freeloader - which I will try to counter by kind refusal and providing for my self in such instances as lunch/dinner which I must get into the habit of packing for school.
Money has such a grip on us, as if we are useless without it. I will say that I am rich, not boastfully but truthfully as many are accustomed to claiming they are poor. What is it then that defines me? What will people see of me if I do not have money? The analogy of ourselves and what defines us when you remove the material is very peculiar. The analogy saying that who we are is intangible and so we find things to wrap ourselves in so to define ourselves; looks, clothes, money, car, friends and even ringtones.
So, what have you got to lose? | | |
|  So you're at this train station and you're waiting. But you don't know what you're waiting for or how long you've been waiting. And you look down at your feet and see two fuzzy brown things and suddenly you realize that you have the body of a bear-like plush creature. And you may think to yourself, this is not my body, this is not my life. And you look around and there's nothing around you. It's just you, the platform, in the station and no one else. You consider the possibility that this is all a dream. You wonder if it is and you now realize it is based on the unrealistic nature of things that you should wake up any minute now that you have become self aware. Yet you can't manipulate the world around you like you would be able to in a dream where you self actualized. So you stay there. Waiting. At this point you don't even know if you are capable of motion but you stay where you are and continue to contemplate the situation. Then you suddenly become aware of your other senses, you start to hear sounds. They are faint at first, a sort of quiet howling and then a treble tone like that of elevator music or a static radio. You recognize the song. It's Ryan Adams and the Cardinals cover of Alice in Chains. "Down in a hole, feeling so small. Down in a hole, losing my soul". And you may ask yourself, what exactly is happening here. As the song plays in the background you further explore your senses. It's neither cold nor warm but just the right temperature. You catch a smell as it passes your nose in a slightly warm breeze from the tunnel. It reminds you of the city, the familiar but dirty city, cooked food and engine exhaust. The smell of a big city. And then you may ask yourself, where am I? Apart from the fact that you seem to be in a subway station, where is this station. You get no answers, "down in a hole, feeling so small. down in a hole, losing my soul. I want to fly, but my wings have been so denied." You notice that you don't have wings. And you may think to yourself, that's it.
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|  This started a few years back when my friend pestered me on my birthday to think of the top 3 things that happened in my previous year. This is the top 3 highlights of my year being 21. At first glance this doesn't have the makings of a great year but the more the storm grows the more I stand in awe of my life thus far. So here it goes in no particular order;
1. Hong Kong trip in March - It wasn't the best reason to go and wasn't a good time either but it was a great time. Staying up late, waking late, living in a tiny room, was only around a week but it felt like a really long time. All of a sudden I was across on the other side of the world.
2. Seeing all those people at my mom's celebration of life service - It was only when I got on stage to say my roughly scripted highly disorganized last minute story that I realized just how many people were there. I have ne'er seen that church so full. I don't even know who was and wasn't there, there were just too many people but I guess I'll have to check that guest book. It was one of those moments that you just absorb and no picture could capture it.
3. The third one can't be so easily titled like the rest because it's more ambiguous and broad. It's the sheer joy of connecting with people and I think this year I have connected and reconnected with a lot of people. With a lot of my school friends at UBC because I started saying yes to hanging out with them and staying late at school. I've gone from thinking of them as classmates to friends. Also old friends from far off genius schools, I really get a kick out of seeing them again and seeing how they are doing. I've opened myself up a little more to meeting new people and it's been a blast.
So now that brings us to the year of the tutu (22) and it's many mysteries that it holds. My term is looking pretty swell and I hope my marks are too. School in the summer maybe and a trip to China as well as hopefully finally getting around to writing the OAT. At the same time putting on 20-30lbs of pure muscle mass and fitting into bike jackets that and selling my old bike and getting a newer different one hopefully a cafe bike or one with a sidecar. I should also be able to do planche pushups and one arm chin ups and will look sexier than ever for the beach donning some speedo-esque-ness. And I need a new job hopefully something in an optical field. All these things and more, all these things and more....
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|  I have two eyes. They're not perfect and I have glasses but they work well enough. Although we all have varying degrees or levels of sight, we have even more drastically polarized levels of perception. It's a nice sentiment, especially among church folk - that judging is reserved for God but 'thou shall not judge' can be perceived quite differently for many people.
We make judgments on a daily basis and we need to in order to make informed decisions. We decide what is important and what is not, what we should and should not do. The later being the premise for 'hypocritizing'. We have for ourselves judges and lawyers, policemen and authority figures who are judges and arbiters keeping order in our society. We have to rate to make choices about schools, professors, significant others, friends and fashion.
This is particularly an issue for Christians, if they claim to obey the word and not judge they dig themselves a hole. Firstly obey the word in such a manner is making a sort of judgment that this part of the Bible should be carried out this way. It's also a declaration of what is right and what is wrong. This sort of decision making used throughout the Bible leads to the perfect polarization of life. This is bad, this is good - there are grays and you should avoid grays altogether just in case. We pretend to not judge, to not see and perceive but we are so much more aware in the light of the "law" what is good and pleasing to God and what is not. We make the best judges. Some churches or christians push the notion that "dating non-christians" is bad. This is a very clear judgment call with a very strict criteria - it even comes with reasons why! So long as we think we're better than someone else, which we all do on some level, we will judge. When we hit rock bottom and are swimming in our own shit, then we probably won't judge. So where are you?
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There is a disorder called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Andihidrosis and as the name suggests it's an inability to feel pain, stress and temperature. At first it sounds really great - thinking about it you would love it if stubbing your toe didn't hurt or stomach aches and headaches didn't exist. When a child is diagnosed with this condition, they are usually found to be quite happy infants. They don't feel the need to cry because they never feel that anything is wrong. Then things take a turn for the worst when they start teething and now they chew up the insides of their mouths and their tongue because they simply can't feel it as their mouths become a gory scene. Hot stoves can be touched, falling down the stairs is fun and running head on into concrete walls is of no consequence. They can't sweat in hot weather because they don't feel it's hot and there is a prevalence of a limited mental capacity. They usually don't live past 3 and it's rare for them to reach 25.
So why am I mentioning this disease? Sunday was someone's idea for an international day of prayer which most churchy churches will participate in. This brings me to my point: religious freedom. Of the major religions of the world, religious freedom is most whined about by Christians. In the biblical context, no one complained about having religious freedom - it was expected that there wasn't going to be the sort of religious freedom for Christianity that there was for the established Jews or Greeks. Constantine screwed things up by trying to make Christianity mainstream and in all honesty, it's not meant to be a mainstream religion. North American Christianity is boring, dull, fake and overall disliked by most - because an unsuppressed Christian becomes apathetic and lazy. We fill our lives with Christiany things because we lack the realness that is the testing of faith by persecution. The oppressed Christians ought to pray for us slackers who find retarded things to fill their "spiritual lives". We don't feel the pain, the stress, we're free and we'll die soon because we're living a dead bliss.
We don't need another sermon, another praise night, another conference, book study, new song - we need the anti-christ. We need the fanatic atheist. We need to feel something real because our attempts to make things real are like a cutting at the wrists. Commonly misunderstood as a suicide attempt, wrist cutting is usually an attempt by emotionally drained people to feel something because they can't feel anything. It's time to live.
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