But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ.
-Romans 5:15
...at its truest and most potent, love invariably does change us, deconditioning our painful pathologies and elevating us toward our highest human potential.
I've heard it said in the business, if you aren't growing you're dying. And I've always hated that thought. The idea that there can be found no equilibrium, no contentment, no rest. But the more time I spend on this planet the more I see the truth in the statement. It isn't about greed. It isn't about seeing how much you can grab at the market. The world is not a stagnant place. The world is constantly moving both literally and figuratively. Because of this natural movement standing still is, in a way, stepping backward. The same must be said of love. To love, to truly love, is to change, to grow, to become and discover the most you you.
When lovers are expected to fuse together so closely and completely, mutuality mutates into a paralyzing codependence — a calcified and rigid firmness that becomes brittle to the possibility of growth. In the most nourishing kind of love, the communion of togetherness coexists with an integrity of individuality, the two aspects always in dynamic and fluid dialogue.
Status Quo, predictability, Routine, these are the words I would use to describe marriages I have seen. Spouse wants to come home from work and find something predictable, The routine, children doing homework, picking up from practice, dinner's at six, The usual TV programming routine, rigid, comfortable, controllable. Imagine being in this cycle and wanting to change it a bit. Imagine knowing that voicing a new thought could rock the boat of the one you love. It might be easier to keep quiet they seem so happy in this state. But that little thought that wasn't voiced...that was the uncovered path on the trail of love. Take a step down it, share it with the one you love, walk hand in hand and see who you become. Nothing wrong with turning around love will gladly walk it back with you. As soon as any relationship feels like a place where the idea cannot be voiced it's the first step down the paralyzing fusion too close and complete of love, or I would argue of something other than love.
Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
-Kahlil Gibran
M. and I have plagued each other with our differences for more than forty years. But it is also a tonic.
…
Along with the differences that abide in each of us, there is also in each of us the maverick, the darling stubborn one who won’t listen, who insists, who chooses preference or the spirited guess over yardsticks or even history. I suspect this maverick is somewhat what the soul is, or at least that the soul lives close by and companionably with its agitating and inquiring force. And of course all of it, the differences and the maverick uprisings, are part of the richness of life. If you are too much like myself, what shall I learn of you, or you of me? I bring home sassafras leaves and M. looks and admires. She tells me how it feels to float in the air above the town and the harbor, and my world is sweetened by her description of those blue miles. The touch of our separate excitements is another of the gifts of our life together.
-Mary Oliver
I think Tem and I are figuring out this balance between space and togetherness, between her and me. I think the next step forward on this path of love is the safety and trust of sharing. Reminds me of the book Scary Close by Donald Miller. Finding who we are away is one thing...being able to bring that true person forward infront of the person you love with all of my thoughts, ideas, fears, worries, hopes, dreams, to bring all of that and to find the safety to share it. That is where the soil will be found to plant our roots of love giving us the room to push deeper with the space to stretch branches outward.
I want you to think with me this morning from the subject: rediscovering lost values. Rediscovering lost values. There is something wrong with our world, something fundamentally and basically wrong. I don’t think we have to look too far to see that. I’m sure that most of you would agree with me in making that assertion. And when we stop to analyze the cause of our world’s ills, many things come to’mind. We begin to wonder if it is due to the fact that we don’t know enough. But it can’t be that. Because in terms of accumulated knowledge we know more today than men have known in any period of human history. We have the facts at our disposal. We know more about mathematics, about science, about social science, and philosophy, than we’ve ever known in any period of the world’s history. So it can’t be because we don’t know enough. And then we wonder if it is due to the fact that our scientific genius lags behind. That is, if we have not made enough progress scientifically. Well then, it can’t be that. For our scientific progress over the past years has been amazing. Man through his scientific genius has been able to warp distance and place time in chains, so that today it’s possible to eat breakfast in New York City and supper in London, England. Back in about 1753 it took a letter three days to go from New York City to Washington, and today you can go from here to China in less time than that. It can’t be because man is stagnant in his scientific progress. Man’s scientific genius has been amazing. I think we have to look much deeper than that if we are to find the real cause of man’s problems and the real cause of the world’s ills today. If we are to really find it I think we will have to look in the hearts and souls of men. The trouble isn’t so much that we don’t know enough, but it’s as if we aren’t good enough. The trouble isn’t so much that our scientific genius lags behind, but our moral genius lags behind. The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live, have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man’s soul. We haven’t learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that through our scientific genius we’ve made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we’ve failed to make of it a brotherhood. And the great danger facing us today is not so much the atomic bomb that was created by physical science. Not so much that atomic bomb that you can put in an aeroplane and drop on the heads of hundreds and thousands of people as dangerous as that is. But the real danger confronting civilization today is that atomic bomb which lies in the hearts and souls of men, capable of exploding into the vilest of hate and into the most damaging selfishness. That’s the atomic bomb that we’ve got to fear today. Problem is with the men. Within the heart and the souls of men. That is the real basis of our problem. My friends, all I’m trying to say is that if we are to go forward today, we’ve got to go back and rediscover some mighty precious values that we’ve left behind. That’s the only way that we would be able to make of our world a better world, and to make of this world what God wants it to be and the real purpose and meaning of it. The only way we can do it is to go back, and rediscover some mighty precious values that we’ve left behind. Our situation in the world today reminds me of a very popular situation that took place in the life of Jesus. It was read in the Scripture for the morning, found over in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel. The story is very familiar, very popular, we all know it. You remember when Jesus was about twelve years old, there was the custom of the feast. Jesus’ parents took him up to Jerusalem. That was an annual occasion, the feast of the Passover, and they went up to Jerusalem and they took Jesus along with them. And they were there a few days, and then after being there they decided to go back home, to Nazareth. And they started out, and I guess as it was the tradition in those days, the father probably traveled in front, and then the mother and the children behind. You see they didn’t have the modern conveniences that we have today. They didn’t have automobiles and subways and buses. They, they walked, and traveled on donkeys and camels and what have you. So they traveled very slow, but it was usually the tradition for the father to lead the way. And they left Jerusalem going on back to Nazareth, and I imagine they walked a little while and they didn’t look back to see if everybody was there. But then the Scripture says, they went about a day’s journey and they stopped, I imagine to check up, to see if everything was all right, and they discovered that something mighty precious was missing. They discovered that Jesus wasn’t with them. Jesus wasn’t in the midst. And so they, they paused there, and, and looked and they didn’t see him around, and they went on, and, and started looking among the kinsfolk, and they went on back to Jerusalem and found him there, in the temple with the doctors of the law. Now, the real thing that is to be seen here is this, that the parents of Jesus realized that they had left, and that they had lost a mighty precious value. They had sense enough to know that before they could go forward to Nazareth, they had to go backward to Jerusalem to rediscover this value. They knew that. They knew that they couldn’t go home to Nazareth until they went back to Jerusalem. Sometimes, you know, it’s necessary to go backward in order to go forward. That’s, that’s, that’s an analogy of life. I remember the other day I was driving out of New York City into Boston, and I stopped off in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to visit some friends. And I went out of New York on a highway that is known as the Merritt Parkway, it leads into Boston, a very fine parkway. And I stopped in Bridgeport, and after being there for two or three hours, I decided to go on to Boston, and I wanted to get back on the Merritt Parkway. And I went out thinking that I was going toward the Merritt Parkway. I started out, and, and I rode, and I kept riding, and I looked up and I saw a sign saying two miles to a little town that I knew I was to bypass- I wasn’t to pass through that particular town. So, I, I thought I was on the wrong road. I stopped and I asked a gentleman on the road which way would I get to the Merritt Parkway. And he said, the Merritt Parkway is about twelve or fifteen miles back that way. You’ve got to turn around and go back to the Merritt Parkway, you are out of the way now. In other words, before I could go forward to Boston, I had to go back about twelve or fifteen miles to get to the Merritt Parkway. May it not be that, that modern man has gotten on the wrong parkway? And if he is to go forward to the city of salvation, he’s got to go back and get on the right parkway. And so that was the thing that Jesus’ parents realized, that, that they had to go back and, and, and find this mighty precious value that they had left behind, in order to go forward. They realized that. And so they went back to Jerusalem and discovered Jesus, rediscovered him so to speak, in order to go forward to Nazareth. Now that’s what we’ve got to do in our world today. We’ve left a lot of precious values behind; we’ve lost a lot of precious values. And if we are to go forward, if we are to make this a better world in which to live, we’ve got to go back. We’ve got to rediscover these precious values that we’ve left behind. I want to deal with one or two of these mighty precious values that we’ve left behind, that if we’re to go forward and to make this a better world, we must rediscover. The first is this-the first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe, just as abiding as the physical laws. I’m not so sure we all believe that. We, we never doubt that there are physical laws of the universe that we must obey. We never doubt that. And so we just don’t jump out of airplanes or jump off of high buildings for the fun of it we don’t do that. Because we, we unconsciously know that there is a final law of gravitation, and if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences we know that. Even if we don’t know it in its Newtonian formulation, we, we know it intuitively, and so we just don’t jump off the highest building in Detroit for the fun of it we, we, we don’t do that. Because we know that there is a law of gravitation which is final in the universe. If we disobey it, we’ll suffer the consequences. But I’m not so sure if we know that there are, are moral laws, just as abidng as the physical law. I’m not so sure about that. I’m not so sure we really believe that there is a law of love in this universe, and that if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences. I’m not so sure if we really believe that. Now, at least two things convince me that, that we don’t believe that, that we have strayed away from the principle that this is a moral universe. The first thing is that we have adopted in the modern world a sort of a relativistic ethic. Now, I’m not trying to use a big word here. I’m trying to say something very concrete. And that is that, that we have accepted the attitude that right and wrong are merely relative to our. . . . Most people can’t stand up for their, for their convictions, because the majority of people might not be doing it. See, everybody’s not doing it, so it must be wrong. And, and since everybody is doing it, it must be right. So a sort of numerical interpretation of what’s right. But I’m here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Eternally so, absolutely so. It’s wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong! It’s wrong in America, it’s wrong in Germany, it’s wrong in Russia, it’s wrong in China! It was wrong in two thousand B.c., and it’s wrong in nineteen fifty-four A.D.! It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong! It’s wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it. It’s wrong! It always will be wrong! And it always has been wrong. It’s wrong in every age, and it’s wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we’re revolting against the very laws of God himself. Now that isn’t the only thing that convinces me that we’ve strayed away from this attitude, this principle. The other thing is that we have adopted a sort of a pragmatic test for right and wrong-whatever works is right. If it works, it’s all right. Nothing is wrong but that which does not work. If you don’t get caught, it’s right. That’s the attitude, isn’t it? It’s all right to disobey the Ten Commandments, but just don’t disobey the Eleventh, Thou shall not get caught. That’s the attitude. That’s the prevailing attitude in, in our culture. No matter what you do, just do it with a, with a bit of finesse. You know, a sort of attitude of the survival of the slickest. Not the Darwinian survival of the fittest, but the survival of the slickest-who, whoever can be the slickest is, is the one who right. It’s all right to lie, but lie with dignity. It’s all right to steal and to rob and extort, but do it with a bit of finesse. It’s even all right to hate, but just dress your hate up in the garments of love and make it appear that you are loving when you are actually hating. Just get by! That’s the thing that’s right according to this new ethic. My friends, that attitude is destroying the soul of our culture! It’s destroying our nation! The thing that we need in the world today, is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and be opposed to wrong, wherever it is. A group of people who have come to see that some things are wrong, whether they’re never caught up with. Some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not. All I’m trying to say is, our world hinges on moral foundations. God has made it so! God has made the universe to be based on a moral law. So long as man disobeys it he is revolting against God. That’s what we need in the world today-people who will stand for right and goodness. It’s not enough to know the intricacies of zoology and biology. But we must know the intricacies of law. It is not enough to know that two and two makes four. But we’ve got to know somehow that it’s right to be honest and just with our brothers. It’s not enough to know all about our philosophical and mathematical disciplines. But we’ve got to know the simple disciplines, of being honest and loving and just with all humanity. If we don’t learn it, we will destroy ourselves, by the misuse of our own powers. This universe hinges on moral foundations. There is something in this universe that justifies Carlyle in saying, No lie can live fore~er.~ There is something in this universe that justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again. There is something in this universe that justifies James Russell Lowell in saying, Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne. With that scaffold sways the future. Behind the dim unknown stands God, Within the shadow keeping watch above his There is something in this universe that justifies the biblical writer in saying, You shall reap what you SOW. This is a law-abiding universe. This is a moral universe. It hinges on moral foundations. If we are to make of this a better world, we’ve got to go back and rediscover that precious value that we’ve left behind. And then there is a second thing, a second principle that we’ve got to go back and rediscover. And that is that all reality has spiritual control. In other words, we’ve got to go back and rediscover the principle that there is a God behind the process. Well this you say, why is it that you raise that as a point in your sermon, in a church? The mere fact we are at church, we believe in God, we don’t need to go back and rediscover that. The mere fact that we are here, and the mere fact that we sing and pray, and come to church-we believe in God. Well, there’s some truth in that. But we must remember that it’s possible to affirm the existence of God with your lips and deny his existence with your life. The most dangerous type of atheism is not theoretical atheism, but practical atheism that’s the most dangerous type. And the world, even the church, is filled up with people who pay lip service to God and not life service. And there is always a danger that we will make it appear externally that we believe in God when internally we don’t. We say with our mouths that we believe in Him, but we live with our lives like He never existed. That is the ever-present danger confronting religion. That’s a dangerous type of atheism. And I think, my friends, that that is the thing that has happened in America. That we have unconsciously left God behind. Now, we haven’t consciously done it, we, we have unconsciously done it. You see, the text, you remember the text said, that Jesus’ parents went a whole day’s journey not knowing that he wasn’t with them. They didn’t consciously leave him behind. It was unconscious. Went a whole day and didn’t even know it. It wasn’t a conscious process. You see, we didn’t grow up and say, now, good-bye God, we’re going to leave you now. The materialism in America has been an unconscious thing. Since the rise of the Industrial Revolution in England, and then the invention of all of our gadgets and contrivances and all of the things and modern conveniences-we unconsciously left God behind. We didn’t mean to do it. We just became so involved in, in getting our big bank accounts that we unconsciously forgot about God-we didn’t mean to do it. We became so involved in getting our nice luxurious cars, .and they’re very nice, but we became so involved in it that it became much more convenient to ride out to the beach on Sunday afternoon than to, than to come to church that morning. It, it was an unconscious thing-we didn’t mean to do it. We became so involved and fascinated by the intricacies of television that we found it a little more convenient to stay at home than to come to church. It was an unconscious thing. We didn’t mean to do it. We didn’t just go up and say, now God, you’re gone. We had gone a whole day’s journey, and then we came to see that we had unconsciously ushered God out of the universe. A whole day’s journey-didn’t mean to do it. We just became so involved in things that we forgot about God. And that is the danger confronting us, my friends. That in a nation as ours where we stress mass production, and that’s mighty important, where we have so many conveniences and luxuries and all of that, there is the danger that we. will unconsciously forget about God. I’m not saying that these things aren’t important, we need them, we need cars, we need money, all of that’s important to live. But whenever they become substitutes for God, they become injurious. And may I say to you this morning, that none of these things can ever be real substitutes for God. Automobiles and subways, televisions and radios, dollars and cents, can never be substitutes for God. For long before any of these came into existence, we needed God. And long after they will have passed away, we will still need God. And I say to you this morning in conclusion that I’m not going to put my ultimate faith in things. I’m not going to put my ultimate faith in gadgets and contrivances. As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow. But to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Not in the little gods that can be with us in a few moments of prosperity. But in the God who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and causes us to fear no evil. That’s the God. Not in the god that can give us a few Cadillac cars and Buick convertibles, as nice as they are, that are in style today and out of style three years from now. But the God who threw up the stars, to bedeck the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity. Not in the god that can throw up a few skyscraping buildings, but the God who threw up the gigantic mountains, kissing the sky, as if to bathe their peaks in the loftitudes. Not in the god that can give us a few televisions and radios, but the God who threw up that great cosmic light, that gets up early in the morning in the eastern horizon, who paints its technicolor across the blue, something that man could never make. I’m not going to put my ultimate faith in the little gods that can be destroyed in an atomic age, but the God who has been our help in ages past, and our hope for years to come, and our shelter in the time of storm, and our eternal home.’ That’s the God that I’m putting my ultimate faith in. That’s the God that I call upon you to worship this morning. Go out and be assured that that God is going to last forever. Storms might come and go. Our great skyscraping buildings will come and go. Our beautiful automobiles will come and go, but God will be here. Plants may wither, the flowers may fade away, but the Word of our God shall stand forever, and nothing can ever stop Him. All of the P-38s in the world can never reach God. All of our atomic bombs can never reach Him. The God that I’m talking about this morning is the God of the universe and the God that will last through the ages. If we are to go forward this morning, we’ve got to go back and find that God. That is the God that demands and commands our ultimate allegiance. If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover these precious values -that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control. God bless you. The Lord bless thee and keep thee, The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee, The Lord lift up the light of his countenance unto thee, And be with thee in thy going out and thy coming in, In thy labor and in thy leisure in thy moments of joy and in thy moments of sorry until the day when their shall be no unset and...
Last Friday one of my kindergarten students brought a loaded handgun to the school building.
Thankfully the staff was able to confiscate the weapon upon arrival and he didn't make it past the office.
I know this kid, I have no idea what was going through his little developing brain when he decided to take his dad's gun to school.
I'm doubtful it was with the intention to harm, but nonetheless, a 6 year old with a loaded weapon with no violent intentions is equally as frightening as an older student with intentions.
I keep thinking about our active shooter training, I think about our lock down drills, and then I think about how this kid was minutes away from pointing a loaded weapon either at me or at classmates, with or without the intention of pulling the trigger, people's lives in the hands of a 6 year old who isn't cognitively able to comprehend the magnitude of the situation and the weapon he held. The thing could have gone off on his own leg.
Then I think about the child's father, the kind of man, or rather kid himself, who not only keeps a loaded firearm in his home but in a place that is accessible to his kindergarten child.
And then I think about the gap between us, our lifestyles, our day to day, the things we stress about, the things we deal with. Guns to me are a fantasy object, they are only in video games and movies I talk about guns so lightly. 31 years of life and I've never had a gun pointed at me. I've gone shooting with friends maybe twice in my life.
I think about how scary the thought of a kindergartner pointing a gun at my class or me seems.
Then I think about how all of those American citizens must have felt while a police officer sworn to protect and serve them must have felt moments before the officer decided to play judge, jury, and executioner moving the index finger fractions of an inch to end a citizen's life forever.
What the fuck are we doing with guns? Why do these things exist? Or rather why are their so many and why are they so accessible?
Too many strangers have complete control over who gets to exist and who doesn't...in an instant.
I think about that college girl at Kent with the semiautomatic weapon on twitter showing off all her weapons...how foolish, how absolutely foolish...why, what are we doing?
Treating this death objects like it is a political game, like it is funny to wield them in public, like a stranger couldn't take it from you, like it couldn't misfire, like it isn't the instant changer of lives.
And for what?
What does it profit for Americans to own one of these? What can a gun do that bear mace couldn't?
Other than the complete and utter finality of one over the other?
What kind of person would choose ending a life over incapacitating until arrest?
I could have very easily not be here today to type these thoughts.
Even Monday when I return to work, What is stopping another child from bringing a weapon undetected into the building?
WHY THE FUCK is being a teacher in a public American school so dangerous? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY? To know the stats, to hear the students fears, and the survivors stories...and to do NOTHING...to give me an active shooter video and continue living EXACTLY the same way...
I think the saddest thing is knowing that if I am ever shot dead in my classroom nothing will change. My life or rather my death will be in vein...no laws or government change will happen in order to keep future classes like mine and teachers like me safe. My last thought will be how useless my death will be to protect future lives in a school in America.
It makes me think about all the teachers of the past the ones who died doing what they loved, but without any expectations of the risk, and for what? thoughts and prayers...and this fucked up country moves forward adding another statistic and pushing on.
Dave Sanders - Columbine
Barry Grunow - Lake Worth Middle School
Eugene Segro - Red Lion Area Junior High School
Joyce Gregory - Dover, Tennessee
Neva Jane Wynkoop-Rogers - Red Lake Senior High School
Gary Seale - Campbell County High School
Mary Alicia Shanks - Essex Elementary School
John Alfred Klang - Weston High School
Vicki Kaspar - Millard South High School
Dale Regan - Episcopal School of Jacksonville
Rachel D'Avino - Sandy Hook Elementary
Dawn Hochsprung - Sandy Hook Elementary
Anne Marie Murphy - Sandy Hook Elementary
Lauren Rousseau - Sandy Hook Elementary
Mary Sherlach - Sandy Hook Elementary
Victoria Leigh Soto - Sandy Hook Elementary
Michael Landsberry - Sparks Middle School
Karen Elaine Smith - North Park Elementary School
Scott Beigel - Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
Aaron Feis - Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
Chris Hixon - Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
Glenda Ann Perkins - Santa Fe High School
Cynthia Tisdale - Santa Fe High School
These are the school staff members who have been murdered at work since Columbine. This isn't even the count of a single student, and this isn't a count of the college, and higher education professors who have been murdered.
Each and every name a life lost while part of the education system and each and everyone of their deaths has had no effect on this countries gun laws.
if I am ever shot dead in my classroom nothing will change. My life or rather my death will be in vein...no laws or government change will happen in order to keep future classes like mine and teachers like me safe.
Hey dude, I know you're 40 which is basically 80...so since you're retired and have a lot of time on your hands I wanted to see if you could write something for me to read while I'm gone on sabbatical?
I'm planning to be totally unplugged. No social media, text, email, or anything while I'm gone.
But I'm gonna miss my people, and you're definitely one of my people, so if you wanted to write a devotional, prayer, letter, or share a favorite song or passage or whatever you think I might like to read from you, let me know. You can email it back to me by Jan 20th so I can print it out before I go and I'll be sure to print it out and take it with me.
Well currently as you know Tem and I broke up which means my mind is consumed with only thoughts about that, So I'm sorry I should have written things for you to read prior but who could have known. Well first off if you ever are in need of mindless ramblings of my inner thoughts to occupy yourself you're free to print off as many posts from my blog as you see fit. https://adamandchrist.blogspot.com/ I wish I had a secret book I was working on to share with you like you have or something of more substance. The simplest thing I could do is provide you with a reading list...so here it is:
"What are people for?" by Wendell Berry
"Cousin Bette" by Honoré de Balzac
"No impact man" by Colin Beavan
"The Luminaries" by Eleanor Catton
There is this quote I absolutely love in this book:
'Well,' said Staines, frowning slightly, 'that's very difficult to say—which to value higher. Honesty or loyalty. From a certain point of view one might say that honesty is a kind of loyalty—loyalty to the truth…though one would hardly call loyalty a kind of honesty! I suppose that when it came down to it—if I had to choose between being dishonest but loyal, or being disloyal but honest—I'd rather stand by my men, or by my country, or by my family, than by truth. So I suppose I'd say loyalty…I myself. But in others…in the case of others, I feel quite differently. I'd much prefer an honest friend to a friend who was merely loyal to me; and I'd much rather be loyal to an honest friend than to a sycophant. Let's say that my answer is conditional; in myself, I value loyalty; on others, honesty.
-Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
I wrote about it back in 2016 https://adamandchrist.blogspot.com/2016/07/072416.html sometimes going back through old journal entries really makes you see what an idiot I am constantly repeating my mistakes cursed to run from the people I love only to be given the grace to be loved by another person and again continue the cycle.
"The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend" by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin
"Absolute truths" by Susan Howatch
And another quote I love from this book:
She touched the clay with a sensuous gesture which implied a satisfaction physical in its intensity, and not for the first time I thought how strange artists were. With their capacity to seal themselves away in a private world and retreat deep into a forest of mental forms which no ordinary person could penetrate, they seem almost inhuman as they slaved constantly to explore humanity. Harriet caressed her work like a mother; I suspected it would always mean more to her than any infant of flesh and blood, and that it was probably no accident that she was childless. Yet I felt that she must know more about the deepest emotions of maternity than some mothers, and I saw then that although she was obviously capable of profound passion, every ounce of it was so fond of Aysgarth. Any affectionate, amusing, intelligent male who made no time-wasting demands would be a highly prized acquaintance.
"I always wanted to do those hands of his," she said, "but I could never see the right way to present them. Then about a year ago they began to haunt me. I dreamed about them, thought of them night and day - until finally I saw how they had to be done."
"And after that did everything go smoothly?"
"Good God, no! Quite the reverse. Creation has to be the greatest pleasure in the universe, but it can be pretty damned harrowing when the work's in process."
"You never thought of giving up?"
"Don't be ridiculous! When things go wrong I don't chuck in the towel. I just slave harder than ever to make everything come right. Making everything come right, that's what it's all about. No matter how many disasters happen, no matter how many difficulties I encounter, I can't rest until I've brought order out of chaos and made everything come right. Of course I made a lot of mistakes. I turned down various blind alleys and had to rework everything to get back on course. But that's normal. You can't create without waste and mess and sheer undiluted slog - you can't create without pain. It's all part of the process. Its in the nature of things. You theologians talk a lot about creation, but as far as I can see none of you know the first damn thing about it. God didn't create the world in seven days and then sit back and say: 'Gee-whiz, that's great!' He created the first outlines of his project to end all projects and he said: 'Yes, that's got a lot of potential but how the hell do I realize it without making a first-class balls up?' And then the real hard work began.
"And still continues. Theologians don't believe God withdrew from the world after the first creation blast and forgot about it"
"Of course he couldn't forget! No creator can forget! If the blast-off's successful you're hooked, and once you're hooked you're inside the work as well as outside it, it's part of you, you're welded to it, you're enslaved, and that's why it's such bloody hell when things go adrift. But no matter how much the mess and distortion make you want to despair, you can't abandon the work because you're chained to the bloody thing, it's absolutely woven into your soul and you know you can never rest until you've brought truth out of all the distortion and beauty out of all the mess - but it's agony, agony, agony - while simultaneously being the most wonderful and rewarding experience in the world - and that's the creative process which so few people understand. It involves an indestructible sort of fidelity, an insane sort of hope, an indescribable sort of... well, it's love, isn't it? There's no other word for it. You love the work and you suffer with it and always - always - you're slaving away against all odds to make everything come right. Every step I take - every bit of the clay I ever touch - they're all there in the final work. If they hadn't happened, then this wouldn't exist. In fact they had to happen for the work to emerge as it is, So in the end every major disaster, every time error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat and tears - everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me."
-Chapter 17 Section 2 Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch
I wrote a lot about this book as I read it in the winter of 2014. https://adamandchrist.blogspot.com/2014/01/011814.html I apologize in advance if some of my thoughts make you cringe. Understand that life is a growing process and most of that growth comes from mess. So my past (and present) thoughts are probably all messy.
"The Mind of the Maker" by Dorothy L. Sayers
"Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly" by James E. McWilliams
This quote is from The Man in the High Castle, you can read it if you want but I really just like this quote so I hope you enjoy it.
...Getting up, he hurried into his study, returned at once with two cigarette lighters which he set down on the coffee table. "Look at these. Look the same, don't they? Well, listen. One has historicity in it." He grinned at her. "Pick them up. Go ahead. One's worth oh, maybe forty or fifty thousand dollars on the collectors' market."
The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them.
"Don't you feel it?" he kidded her, "The historicity?"
She said, "What is 'historicity'?"
"When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of these two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt's pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn't. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing, Can you feel it?" He nudged her. "You can't. You can't tell which is which. There's no 'mystical plasmic presences,' no 'aura' around it."
"Gee," the girl said, awed. "Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?"
"Sure. And I know which it is. You see my point. It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves. I mean a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if it hadn't, unless you know. It's in here." He tapped his head. "In the mind, not the gun. I used to be a collector. In fact, that's how I got into this business. I collected stamps. Early British colonies."
The girl now stood at the window, her arms folded, gazing out at the lights of downtown San Francisco. "My mother and dad used to say we wouldn't have lost the war if he had lived," she said.
"Okay," Wyndam-Matson went on. "Now suppose say last year the Canadian Government or somebody, anybody, finds the plates from which some old stamp was printed. And the ink. And a supply of --"
"I don't believe either of those two lighters belonged to Franklin Roosevelt," the girl said.
Wyndam-Matson giggled. "That's my point! I'd have to prove it to you with some sort of document. A paper of authenticity. And so it's all a fake, a mass delusion. The paper proves its worth, not the object itself!"
As I said you're free to read my journal entries in my blog if for no other reason I usually put my favorite quotes in them and then try to process them. So If the only stimulating words you read from my journals are those from other author's pen I wouldn't be offended because they are great quotes.
I'm going to miss you on your trip and if I think of anything else to recommend or say I'll let you know.
January 1st 2019 New Years Day I went over to Tem's after getting back from Cincinnati. She wanted to talk. She told me I wasn't meeting her needs. We are never intimate, I sucked at her birthday, and I don't audibly let her know how beautiful she is.
On my end, I've been struggling trying not to lose myself in this relationship. Trying to keep the Adam in AdTem alive. The stress of thinking about the rest of my life. The questions about are we right together? We are very different, is that okay? and we are never intimate.
She mentioned using the time she would be traveling to take some space and think about what she wants. She seemed to have her mind made up like she knew the space wouldn't change anything. Both of us talked about the things we wanted from a relationship and everything came to a head late that winter night.
We broke up and I left.
Wednesday morning I woke up in a haze, was this real? What did I do? Was this right?
Why was it right?
Can something right feel this completely wrong?
post honeymoon relationship...what does that look like?
“Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting. An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness. It is less concerned with where it has already been than passionate about where it can still go. But too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air.”
-Esther Perel
How do you fan the flame of desire? How do you give the relationship air?
How do you hold these two conflicting things together?
Love by definition consumes mystery and desire by definition requires mystery.
Like the night sky
love is light and desire is the darkness. In the beginning you have the beauty of the stars, the constellations filling our hearts with wonder. But as the relationship grows the sun of love begins to rise and in the spender of the day the stars of desire are no longer visible.
How do we hold the day and the night of a relationship? How do we create space, give the fire air? How do you live together, know everything that happens, and still manage to surprise, delight, mystify, and captivate one another?
This space away from Tem, this air for the fire of desire, has shown me one thing for certain.
I love Tem.
I do, I want her to be my life partner and the mother of my kids. But I think I've already known that. I think the piece I haven't is how the hell do people do this long term relationship thing?
I'm not even talking about monogamy, I'm not only speaking of having only one partner for the rest of your life. I'm talking about how do people keep desire alive, keep learning, growing, and engaging with a person at 5 years, 17 years, 26 years, 33 years, how is that possible?
I want that, and specifically I want that with Tem. I do.
But I come from a fucked up home life and I struggle to meet her needs.
I'm struggling to keep desire's flame lit.
I guess I've been confusing my fear of monotony for a fear of a long term relationship.
There isn't anything wrong with monogamy so long as desire remains
but what examples of that sort of relationship do I have to guide me?
Tem has always been so wise.
She knew I wouldn't like moving in
She knows me better than I think I know myself
She knows what she wants and she doesn't even flinch at the idea of the rest of her life with me
How is she so capable of decisiveness?
And even know she knows for us to end is a fucking mistake
She makes commitment and openness so easy. She makes it seem effortless.
And she is so easy to love.
I think she's right, AdTem not being an item is a mistake.
I love her very much
But at the same time, I'm afraid.
I'm afraid that inside me somewhere are the traits of my family
Sleeping in different rooms, never any sex, no expression of emotions or feelings, My mom's ability to stubbornly cut anything out of her life, her church and her in-laws.
I do need to work on this stuff, I'm just not even sure which direction to take the first step.