I finished a book today. I'm happy about that. I've been alive for a long time. It bothers me that the overused, watered-down words of my culture have crept back into my vocabulary, despite what I thought were rigorous boycotts of the past year or two. Poop. I'm going to go on strike again. I don't remember the last time I finished a book, including the ones for school. ... Well, I finished the Book of Acts, Ephesians, Galatians and Colossians oh and Genesis this year but I don't quite count those "books" as books. I mean they're books in an anthology but reading the Bible is not about reading. Not most days, anyways.
Ever wanna smack a friend for being childish... while they're accusing another friend of the same? Weird sitch. I do like God, I do. But I wonder sometimes how I can be so far apart from myself in some moments/6-week periods.
I was watching Dr Phil today and his wife, Robin, was talking to a woman about her marriage, a lil' heart-to-heart of the woman-y kind. [I'm fascinated by how readily we - the general WE - accept each other's neologisms without batting an eyelid. I can't tell you how much this titillates me. Hahaha... I should write a thesis.] Anyways, Mrs. McGraw tells this other woman that we all have a personal truth (and at this point I'm of course thinkinga bout how I know she and the husband are Jesus lovers and "personal Truth" could be spun into something Biblical for themselves while it means whatever else to the woman she was talking to. [<--This is where a professor would write "awk" in the margins of my paper.]) She said that the personal truth was what defined how you saw yourself. I think her words were slightly different but that's the gist. Um...I got to thinking (I had flashback of all the major identity in Christ conversations I've had in the past two years) that my personal Truth, my personal Savior, my Life, Truth and Way is (or in this case SHOULD BE) the what/who defines how I see myself. Wow... without.... without someone like Him, I am a sorry sight. (Oh - I'd be a sorry site, too. Not a cite, though. I wish. Well maybe...) How devastating it is to forget who we are. Or, as many pastors like to point out, whose we are. I belong
It struck me the other day, as I was reading some early Old Testament, and writing something down about it, that I was talking TO the author of the book I was reading. I mean I tend to fluxuate between referring to God in the second or third person and I usually don't think much of it because it's appropriate, strangely enough. It's like... it's like He's hanging on my every word ANY ways so it doesn't matter whether I turn and make eye-contact or gaze at the page or stare into the fireplace. Some days, I refer to Him ONLY in the third person and that is usually a symptom of a distance betwixt us that I should address and let Him shrink. But this day, hangin out in chapters 4, 5, 6 of Exodus (what a delicious book!), I knew what I wanted to write but a took a moment to decide whether I would say "Him" or "You" and when I decided on the latter I had a mini-revelation moment that said, HECK yes, I have GOT connections. I mean.. it's a little ridiculous. I don't see God for all of what He is for many reasons, one that my eyes aren't big enough, two, that my mind isn't big enough, three, that my imagination isn't big enough, perhaps four is my small trust of Him, five is my selflessness... there's more... I can't see all of Him because He IS that great.. but also because I get distracted. From time to time, any Bible-believeing "little Jesus" will say, "Can you imagine? The God of the Universe -- inside me!" or, "-hears me!" or whatever it is. Most of the time I internally scoff at these people: CHEESE! It's easy to say, seriously. But I had my own moment like that once a while back.. 2004? and since then I've realized, OK, we all get it sometimes. I bet that if you say it all the time you're a LIAR but whatever. That's..... something else. (I could have used "neither here nor there" to finish that sentence! but I didn'st! boo) I mean.. it's cool. I was reading about the God who heard the cries of the Israelites ..whose anger burned against Moses for questioning God's judgement... I get to talk to Him like an old friend. I guess... I'm... honored (?). Can I be that?



Martin, Steve. The Pleasure of My Company: a novella. New York: 40 Share Productions, Inc., 2003.
PS 3563 .A7293P57.2003 PORTER