there's gaps in my theology - THAT'S the problem.


I'm wrong and He's right I just don't get all of it just yet.  At this moment I don't even have an exhaustive list of what needs to change.



the clutchest problem might be that I can't see His full sufficiency.  I know it's true and I'd declare it sincerely to anyone but it just hasn't saturated my inner self.  I don't get how Jesus is everything... I don't get how He means all and is above all.  I can't even phrase my hang-ups sensibly.  bed.  bleh.

when I get this it should change my life.  it should kick my ass and reorient me all at once.  I'm....ready.

Oh, also?

Another first today was that I had to go around asking people if they had insulin I could borrow....because the twelve-year-old gal that came up to chat with me after service - just came up to shoot the breeze - was unbelievably sweet.  She is really sweet.  And...I wish I could be her friend.

Now it feels so unnatural.

Not only have I failed to compose or publish blog posts in the last few weeks but I haven't even thought about blogging or felt the need to blog.

I really hope this is a short season (and that it's not a choice of mine) because I would be sad if I became apathetic about blogging entirely.  I've been without computer access for a few weeks and because I can't blog via my smart phone I guess I just cordoned off the option in my mind.  I think that's what happened.  I hope that's what happened.  I like the word "cordoned".  I wonder if anyone's ever written a sentence in which Gordon cordoned but didn't do it just for the fun rhyme.


I'm in our local church building right now because I'm (passively) supervising a party in one of our rooms.  It's a party for the daughter of a friend of a guy I know from work.  Yes.

I needed to be on site during all the time the party peeps spend here so I drew up a list of things I've been meaning to do (particularly things to do with my job) so that while I was forced to stay in one room I might get those things done.  This idea tickled me.  These are good things that I need to get done.


Five hours later I realise that many of the tasks are so similar that switching from one to another for a sort of break doesn't work.  I thought blogging (while I've got access to a laptop) would provide a good break.  It is. 

One of my tasks is to sort wheat from chaff in our music repertoire.  I have a two-inch binder that should be an exhaustive collection and I'm matching it against the master binder which is exhaustive.  I'm throwing out songs that are terrible (usually they need to be theologically terrible but they can be poetically terrible too, i.e. cheesy, and sometimes I throw them out because the melody is a soggy gym sock of artistic choice), collecting songs I need to add to my binder to make it complete, collecting songs I'd like to work into upcoming services (that list is delightfully long), and collecting songs I would like to try or to learn.  It's a fun process. 

It scores well with many of my enjoyables (like systems, lists, paring, musical (and literary) analysis, ruminating on truths about Jesus) and it will make my job easier.  I'll be WELL happy to be rid of the chaff.  I first started this process last August and have been putting it off for thirteen hundred reasons.  New leaf, baby.  It's time for some new leaves.

Today I've gone from the middle of the Cs to the middle of the Is.... and while that's not stellar it's good.  And I hope to get to the midpoint of our alphabet before I leave this place about four hours from now.

At one point I needed a break because the part of my brain that's trained in sight-reading was tired.  That...has maybe never happened.  It's... great.  I welcome, welcome, welcome the challenge.
OK, maybe I didn't forget how to blog.  That felt OK.  So... what?  I click "Publish" now?

wow, as if it's been three weeks since I posted.

tmi?

Now I learned recently that I may need to renegotiate my perspective on intelligence but I'm still going to make the following statements today.

I really like being intellectually challenged.  I'm not challenged often.  My boss challenges me continuously.  It's wonderful. 

That was a lot of short sentences, the product of sitting and sputtering through several starts to this post, searching for a sensible angle.

Maybe I'm missing opportunities right under my nose.  Maybe they're hidden behind tasks I don't understand and I balk.

Lately I've been confronted with my inability to learn a certain type of new skills.  A friend of mine graciously agreed to teach me to operate vehicles with manual transmission. 

I got frustrated by how I got frustrated. 

It was not a good scene.  ...they were not good scenes.  During the first lesson, after my instructor said I could leave the parking lot, I was in third then fourth on a road just north of the city for probably thirty seconds before I just seized up. I said quietly, "I don't want to do this any more."  I literally didn't know if I meant for that day or for life.

He quickly and gently said, "okay," but sounded confused by what could possibly have changed in such a short time.  "Like, you want to stop right now?"

I felt so dumb, because nothing was outwardly wrong and we weren't in any immediate danger.  The problem was that every time I stalled, every time I did something wrong, every time I failed, I heard in my head someone laugh at me and tell me I was an idiot.  The more I heard this, the more flustered I became and stupid I felt so it really didn't help my concentration and calmness.  It's a miracle I learned anything that day.

After I was able to pull off the road and we switched positions I grew quieter until I was silent.  When my friend put the radio on, I realised the silence was making him uncomfortable so I eked out a couple conversation sparks.  When he dropped me off I had found my Everything's Fine! plastic smile (you know you have one, too) so there was no tension between us. 

I didn't actually realise what'd been going on in my head until after I'd gotten home.  It was happening naturally on the road but when I got home I had to sit down and think through what had put me into an emotional fetal position and was grateful for the opportunity to explain this to my friend later that day.  Explaining it helped me see the absurdity.  It also made me more determined to prove to the two people who had laughed at me in reality when I said I was going to learn stick that I could do it.  It's warped motivation, I know, but it helped and it's better than being pinned.

I had two lessons before I was declared road-worthy and another before I drove in real life.  I learned so I could split a road trip.  My first gig on a highway with a standard car and my first time driving in the United States, I was fine.  I didn't actually think about how to start or where the friction point was or how much gas I was using or what my feet were doing, I just pressed pedals and moved knobs about and we were on the highway.  I did not stall once. 

:)

The second outing I stalled a few times, probably because I was over-thinking.  I yelled a little bit.  I was angry because I just wasn't improving at the pace I wanted to or thought I should be able to.

I am very unaccustomed to chipping away at something for which I have no natural aptitude.

That's the thing I learned over the past seven or eight weeks.  During my second lesson I had a pair of chopsticks sitting in the cupholder.  It dawned on me that that's possibly the last skill I learned that didn't come easily.  I wanted to learn and I suffered through being terrible at it until I got it.  I wanted to be as good at it as I could be (though I had no expectation of being perfect) because I wanted to use chopsticks.  Now, I'm adept.


There's another physical skill I'm trying to learn, too.  I don't really get to practice driving but I can pursue this athletic goal.  I've gone three times since last week and just yesterday I actually saw improvement.  I saw I was controlling my movements better and succeeding more by effort than fluke.  It's sadly such a new feeling for me. 


Several weeks ago my boss was backing up a point about theology by citing Immanuel Kant.  At this junction I mustn't have known he was so bright and not simply knowledgeable and well spoken because I interrupted him, slamming my hands down as I leaned forward on the table: "You understand Kant??"

In my younger days I had tried.  I had given it a decent go but I seriously couldn't get through many full sentences with the slightest comprehension.  (I'm not sure my brain is built for philosophy but who knows?)  So, I was impressed with someone who understood the man's work enough to bring a piece of it into relative context of everyday life conversation.

His return was seamless and reflected an understanding of why I had gawked.  "I teach Kant," he explains and I just lean back and shake my head.  (I think I pulled my jaw off the floor.) 



I like the challenge.  (And no, that Kant mini-tale is not a challenge, it was just a significant moment for me in realising what wonderful exchanges the future might hold.)  But more, I hope that the challenge actually enables me to build mental skill.  I'd be delighted to understand a smidgen of Philosophy (among other things) as it seems to leave me in the dark and I don't think it should.  I think I can get it.

running a fluourescent marker over notable passages.

1) One highlight of yesterday was having a seven-year-old recount a couple episodes of "Spongebob Squarepants" (1999-present) to me.  Not sure if he knew how much I like the show and wasn't humoring him but it was great.  Then the highlight of the highlight was when he said the name of the person who wanted to buy some exotic weird hat and we both laughed.  I believe it was "Wiki Babawa".  The kid couldn't get it out the first few times because he thought it was so funny.  I began laughing at his laughing and then when I heard it in full I laughed because it was silly + because I like Spongebob + I like kids.  It was wonderful..we both laughed real-ly and laughed harder cos the other person was laughing.  Aha.  It was such a great blip of pure fun and silliness in my day.  (This is also sort of an insight to why I like Sbob - that it's a blip of pure fun and silliness for 23 minutes.)

2) A highlight from last week: someone who has earned their way into the top five* funniest people I know told me they thought I was funny.  I almost thought I imagined him saying it.  I think I goggled a bit.

*I actually counted these out and they are the kind of people with whom I sometimes laugh before they've said anything.  I laughed to myself while counting out the list just now.  A name made me giggle. 

It came in the same breath as some other kind things so I think I wasn't expecting it.  "And... there aren't a lot of funny people in the world."  This seemed like a topic change. I agree heartily because I knew what he meant, all three layers** of it.  "You're funny!" he says, with deep sincerity and emphasis.  I laughed a little bit but didn't say anything because I couldn't believe it.  Coming from someone THAT funny (and talented at being funny) ... ...I was shocked.


**There's a lot of bad "comedy" (actually not comedy) in the mass media, there's not a lot of intelligent [overlaps with creative] humor in mass media or in our personal lives, and there's such a small amount of top-grade comedy in general (the stuff that's taken seriously as both a science and an art; the stuff with punchlines we're convinced we couldn't have seen coming).

3) Possibly one of the biggest highlights of the last couple weeks was forging a new friendship.  We've been casually chatting for a while but after I dropped an "I don't understand what you mean when you say this but it doesn't result in me feeling awesome; can you tell me what you mean?" bomb two weeks ago more work has been required and input from both parties.  More solid emails are being exchanged and on my end, I'm blessed by the depth and breadth of them.  (Perhaps this is an unconscionable thing to say in 2012, but people don't write stellar emails much anymore.)

Better, longer and more enthusiastic face-to-face conversations have transpired as well.  On Wednesday, something like an olive branch and a hand of friendship were extended toward me very openly and very sweetly.  (I'm still reeling from it because of the words used and the frankness.)  I understood the olive branch a sort of "let's hit 'reset'" suggestion but I didn't see the hand until the next day at the end of a different conversation.

My reciprocal hand somehow got stuck in my pocket and I couldn't yank it out.  The conversation ended and I headed to work.  Then the Holy Spirit pounced on me and wrote conviction all over my mind.  I needed to say something.  Imagine: I had to coach myself through it.  I didn't write anything down but I did give myself four main points on top of which anything else positive and true would be a bonus.  Emailing is easy and comfortable so I called.

Chuffed that my call was received so happily and that my opening silliness (a stalling tactic) was played right along with.  (This is also a sign of budding friendshippery.)  I decided to level and confess that I was intimidated and then I launched into my four points, the first of which being, "I think you're great."  Believe it or else, it needed to be said.

I issued Points 2, 3 an 4 with less difficulty than expected and was pleased to find I sounded like I meant what I was saying.  I also appreciated the silence at the other end of the line that was thick with intent listening.  With my captive audience I added that I had been consciously refraining from tangling my gratitude to God with affection for an involved person (because when credit is due God, we must give it exclusively) and added my correction of a statement from earlier that I thought needed correcting. It was his guess at my perspective [that I was disinterested] and I wanted to be clear [that I'm quite the opposite].  Without realising it, my hand was out as well, now.

Genuine receptiveness followed and small jokes were made.  It went super well.  It must be one of the most nerve-wracking conversations with the greatest payoff I've ever had.  We shook on it; we were friends.  We decided we could get on fabulously.  I am beyond myself stoked about this.  Seriously.


Number 4 just needs to wait because I am literally dozing off between sentences here.