A Breath of New Air

Here is something very imperative to remember.

"Don't take yourself too seriously."

That's always the problem isn't it? We have a very high opinion of ourselves individually. Each one of us sees ourselves as gods and prophets and leaders and teachers and parents and elders and the top of the highest mountain in the world. We have a shit-load of self-importance that we hulk around on our shoulders trying to prove how incredible we are.

A complete stranger said, "I just want you to know that when I drink whiskey I apparently become an unrepentant sociopath with a sense of entitlement a mile across. However, I appear to have a conscience when sober, because I feel bad about having picked your pocket the other night at a show."

Sometimes, I'm an unrepentant sociopath with a sense of entitlement a mile across, too. Sometimes, I think I'm mighty great.

Hold it right there for a moment. Mighty - great? What is "great"? Who determines the definition of greatness, and who decides that it is universally applicable?

We are all only one person. And one person is only just as "great" as any other person. Wealth and status and accomplishment are all illusion.

We are not going anywhere but around the sun, circle after circle after circle.

Oh, but we take ourselves so seriously, don't we?
Like we have a monopoly on truth somehow. Like we see all there is to see and have all the answers there are to find and have been through all there is to experience. And we are so wise.

I'm sorry, but I know very little. I see what I see and I feel what I feel and I have been where I've been.

Does that make me better at seeing or feeling or being?

All anyone does is do what they do. And that's all I do, everyday, too.
I am a human and everyone else is a human. And that's all there is to it.

So, I' going to try and not take myself so intensely seriously. And I'm going to try to not take life so seriously, either.

All we do is live until we're done living. And in living, we are just going round and round the sun and the moon is going round and round us, and we pass through the cycles of life until we don't anymore. Then, we become pieces of the dust that blows on the breath of God.

So, in the new year of humanity, let's all try to not take our own busyness so seriously and try to see the deeper truths, together.

Welcome, my friends, to 2010.

And a Response:

There have been several comments as of late that have ruffled my feathers.

Firstly, I must thank those who ruffled me because it made me realise that I wanted to go in a new direction. If I hadn't been ruffled, I may never have gone. I may have stood where I was, static, unmoving, and unmoved.

But, now I am moving and where I will go is undetermined and indeterminable. And almost irrelevant.

But, the comments also left me feeling defensive and angry. I had opened myself and I was attacked. So I put up walls and grabbed guns and made to return the attack.
Then, I calmed myself and made a rational decision instead.

That decision, I'm not sure was entirely rational.
Or, perhaps more rightly, it had implications that I had not thought of.
Or, perhaps even more, it had implications that I did not want to pay for.

So, I am at an impasse as an author.

I crave honesty and conversation.
I crave feedback and criticism.
I crave contact.

And yet, I do not want to be attacked in the night and slaughtered in my bed.
So, where does that leave me?
What can I go?

I can continue to do what I have always done and not allow vehemence and anger to spit into my veins. The end may not be what I had thought, but it will be better - all the same.

A Challenge and a Possible Change

As I launch into a whole new world of writing, as I begin to take my craft seriously, I look at this blog and think, "Something has to change".

The first step was obvious: bringing the two sides of myself as a writer together - real world and internet. That has already occurred. If you missed it, check it out:
A Call and a Commitment

An ironic thing happened when I decided to open up this blog to a wider audience. The word verification came up and the words to verify this change were "wrecked" and "life". Randomness, at times, has a way of striking a certain chord.

A friend of mine put it extremely well when he asks me if I really wanted honesty.
I answered that I did and that I knew the dangers and the implications. I was ready to face them.

Despite my liver, I still am.

Honesty is difficult because it stirs up emotions. Emotions stir up arguments. Arguments get out of hand.

As I begin to change, I have to make decisions. Honest decisions. Honest decisions that stir up emotions and arguments and get out of hand.
But, I must remain honest and open to the spirit.
All around me the Tao flows, and all I have to do is step back into it.
The current flows and the spirit moves.
Agape moves us and we reach outside of ourselves.
Phileo stirs us and we reach out to our neighbor.
Eros pushes us and we fall into the flow of the Way.

I'm at a point of uncertainty.
I want this blog to be real and honest and serious.
I also want it to be personal.

Or do I?

This is the point where honesty doeesn't count for much because the problem is a conflict of interests.

Or does it?

The quandary of what to do and which way to turn.
If there were easy answers, we would lead easy lives.

Ah, but to quote The Weatherman, "Easy doesn't enter into adult life."

And so, as I go make my way through this life, I will bear that in mind when the road is rough. And I will keep my eyes up and my soul tuned to the spirit of life and creation and art and truth and Love.

As for all the smaller questions, they will find their answers eventually.
For I will go to the ones I trust and I will offer up my questions and I will hear the answers and I will fall into the Tao.
-------
The second step is embarking on a journey.
For, as the earth completes another cycle around the sun, I am myself arriving at that place of decision. And CfC is arriving with me.

The face of this blog is changing, growing, deepening. And now I am left to deciding what it will be in the new year, and what I want from it and my readers.

Perhaps, I will turn CfC into a zine.
Perhaps, it will be what it always has been - my personal soapbox for the world.
Perhaps, CfC will take on a new character and become something more solid, more professional, less personal.

Perhaps, I do not have to define it but allow it to be what it is.
This moment is the present moment and CfC is what it is.
And it will be as long as it is there.
And I will write when I write.
And readers will read when they read.

Now is the only moment, and I will be alive in it, writing and breathing and creating.

Dawn of the End of the Oughts

When I see the sea and rivers foaming over rocks, when I see trees growing tall, rising out of the fog - I remember that nature in itself is a beautiful work of art.
But, I can only wonder what it might be like without the neon signs and the streetlights and the pavement cutting veins and the fences marking dividing lines. I can only wonder what it would be without a name, without a brand, without being owned.

Out the window of the train, the space is wide and wasted now, full of empty houses and rusting metal and fields full of nothing but trash and death - places that were once claimed but lost their value to be recalled.

Trees grow out here where they are told to grow, water flows wherever it can find a space before it's taken up with another house, with another plotted bit of the scenery, with another planned neighborhood where the cookie-cut frames all crouch together on a littered landscape trying to hold together against the spirit of the world they have ravaged.

Bits of forest huddle against the wasted land, shivering against the cold of humanity, hoping an axe won't be the next thing to strike. Hoping it's the winter or the cold or some less-calculated thing that decides their fate instead of another builder with his tools and his destruction and his disregard.

Out here, the train whistle blows and we pass it all by. Out here, where little evergreens grow in wait to be cut down for the next year's solstice celebration, for the next year's commercialized rampage, for the next year's religious jubilation, for the next year's holdiay season.

This is the future out here that we travel through at 60 miles per hour tucked warmly inside the belly of a metal beast burning fossil fuels to get ourselves across the land. Burning up the sun and the ground to move without our own expense.

The future from this angle is bleak and hopeless, sterile and useless. It is made up of rusted ruins of a society built without quality, with the illusions of granduer and wealth and richness. It is the hollowed husks of barnyards that once stood for work and a lifetime, but now stand for nothing more than a family scraping by on McDonald's and the Wal-Mart where everything is still afforadable to the forgotten because it is indescribably cheap.

This future is thin and easily thrown out, cheap and shoddy. It lacks any craftsmanship or art whatsoever. Because the future is made by machine, occasionally handled by a human, and shipped back and forth so many times that no-one knows where it's coming from.

Because the future is global in the worst sense of the word.

It speaks one language with poor diction and no comprehension. It reads one sinisterly simplistic history full of lies and half-observations. It tells the stories of the companies that built it, and it knows the myths of the soulless gods that made it. It sits on a hill without knowledge of what is below. It rests on a rock without knowing what rock is.

Because the future is out of context and it's citizens do not care. Because the future is out of rhythm but it's citizens have lost their senses. Because the future is out of place but it's citizens do not take notice.

So we will travel to the moon and the far reaches of space and we will become the aliens that we have feared and we will stretch our hand of careless destruction as far as we can stretch it, until there is nothing of substance left to take.
Then, we will pass away and our story will have no-one to recall it.

Is not our God bigger than all this?
Will the people of God not stir against it?
Will the Spirit of our God no longer move us to take up the burden of truth and bear it to the world?

Somewhere out there in the future, amongst the waste and the rubbish, there is a prohpet waiting to stir, preparing to speak.
Will you listen?

Ten years have passed, and a new era is beginning.
Where will you stand in it?

A Call and a Commitment

I am beginning to understand that if I am going to be relevant, I also have to be real. That if these words and these convictions and these visions can ever matter, can hold any weight, I have to admit first that I have spake them. That if I am going to start a revolution of thought, I first have to admit that I think revolutionarily.
That if I am going to stir anything up, I first have to admit to be stirring the pot.

And so, I am coming out of hiding. Out of the case I had made for myself to protect myself from the world. Out of the sanctuary I have grown myself into and allowed myself peace. Out of the safeguards of my own mind. Out of myself to come and stand among you, so I can be a part of the change when it comes.

I have hid on the sidelines for a very long time - my entire life.
I have made excuses and logiced out real reasons to excuse away my fear of being who I have always been. I have run like Jonah did, but only out of a fear of being named, being recognized, being called out along with those I have called out, being judged along with those I have passed judgement on.

But what sort of speaker hides her face from her audience? What sort of prophet covers his name from his public?

I stand before you now as I am, as all I have been. I stand now plain and transparent. I will allow you to know who I am.
And I will allow you to judge me the same.

So come and stare and see what there is to see and judge what there is to judge, and if I am lacking, I will rise up to meet the challenge and I will pick myself up out of this mire to stand on the stage I have been setting with the current of our river and the burning of our heart.

So, come. Come and see the spectacle and judge if it is worth while.
Come, let us all be real and transparent together.
Come, let us love one another.

Speaking out isn't easy.

Neither is speaking up.
Or speaking anywhere but within your head, where the space is safe.
But, I've had just enough of the shit of this society to crack my lips and bridge that gap.

So, as this decade comes to a close, here's something for you, America and Western civilization and "First World":

You've become sick, fallen ill, been diseased. Your skin is translucent and fatty and thin. Your head is swollen with too much blood and not enough flow. Your eyes are rimmed in red from staring into the sun.

You've got bad blood running in your veins, spoiling all your insides. Your brain is deteriorating - soon it will be entirely uninspirational, non-functional, decorational. You've got cancer of your soul, of your life, of your way. And it'll eat you up, leaving more fatty tissue in it's wake.

You know you're sick. You've been diagnosed and self-diagnosed because the disease was easy to spot. But you are hiding in the hospital wings claiming that this is the way to live. You are lurking in the darkest places claiming that you've got the solution. You are cowering in the recesses whispering how you've got yourself sorted out, huddled over bags of drugs and piles of trash and signs of old sex.

This disease could be so easy to stop, but you won't seek the treatment.
So, leaders of the world, heads of the west, seats of the setting sun, kings and queens of your own personal domains - I suppose you will rot.
And your decay, your refuse, your remains will cover this land until smoke rises from the ashes when the natural order comes back around and burns you all away.

One of these days, I trust, you will see the error. Even if you see it much too late.

And the sun and the truth will burn up your heart and your souls and your mind.
And there at the end of your reign, you will find your second death when no-one is left to recall the way it once had been, when all your brains will disappear into the desolation you have made.

I hope you will listen on your high and lofty thrones to the voices that are below you. I hope you will heed the warnings rising up from your own feet. I hope against the current, against the staggering strength you have made to pull the sun to yourself, that you will turn back, turn around, turn to what is right and good and true, once more.

I hope, but I do not wait expectedly.

Simplicity is best

In our day and age, it feels as though everything must be incredibly complicated to get anywhere. Any given company must sell all the things every other given company are selling in order to make profit. Every shop must be a 'one stop shop' to remain a shop at all. Cafes have to serve items with twenty different flavor combinations.

And not just this, but 'all natural' is now equated with 'bland' and 'boring'. Anything that doesn't have additives and corn syrup and artificial flavors added to really make it pop is considered lack-luster and uninspiring.

Contrary to popular belief, simplicity is still the key to an abundant existence. We have mucked up our lives with excess and with additives so much that we have lost the true flavors of life. We have lost the true scent, the true feeling, the original texture of the way we were meant to live.

We have lost the flavor of simply nuts and honey. We have strayed from the pure enjoyment of a perfectly crafted loaf of fresh bread. We have forgotten the smell of real vegetables being cooked over real fire.

We have lived so long in a canned, pre-packaged society that our thoughts and our motives and our passions have become stale and processed and bland. The lives we live are uninspired and uninspiring. We have become a society who's brain has been canned and set up on a shelf, and we have replaced it with the garbage the big money-making profiteers have been selling us for decades.

It's time to wake up America, and remember the smell of being alive.

Conviction

Where Truth often leads us is a strange and terrifying place. A place where it is not uncommon to find exactly what you had hoped to avoid, what you had been avoiding, what you did not even realise you were running from.

The other day, I suppose my spirit got fed up with me coming home and sitting in my favorite blue chair and asking myself what I was even doing with my life.
So, it decided that I should do something about it.

Now, I'm not happy about this decision. However, it is necessary, and I will go forward. I must discard the old burdens and walk this road that looks as thought it might lead to death.

It might. In fact, I am certain that it eventaully will.

And yet, Jeshua died.

I think the Christian community at large has forgotten this.
Jeshua spoke out boldly against his society, defied his own culture, and put down the highest leaders as hypocrites and enemies of God.

And, just as any other prophet of Truth all throughout history, he eventually died for it. But not before he changed his society and made others see beyond.

If this is all I do in my life, I will be satisfied.
If all I do is run from the fear of being real and allow the ways of this society to seduce me into living in that fear, when I reach the end, I will regret every step of the way.

May the spirit of Truth lead me, and not the spirit of Selfishness and Fear.
And may you all walk along with me, too.

Let us live bold and courageous lives. Speaking clearly against the evils and deceptions of our culture.

Because a prophet who refuses to speak and lives in fear, is not a prophet at all.
But a prophet who speaks in love and loses his own life, might just save the world.