Let me start a little earlier than I was initially going to.  My faith, my Christianity, and my love of Christ remained with me through my late teens for one reason: logic.  I was confronted by two strong desires that were hugely in conflict.  The first was for freedom, complete, uninhibited freedom.  The second was for justice.  Don’t think these two conflict? Let me explain further.

The freedom I craved was the freedom from constraints.  I wanted to be able to drink whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted.  I wanted to sleep with whomever I wanted.  I also wanted revenge on a person who nearly ruined my family, by any means necessary.  That desire for vengeance held the key to the problem I was faced with.  I knew something wrong, something inexcusable, had occurred; yet to walk away from my faith was to allow that the two worlds, the one in which this person believed he was right, and the one in which I believed he was evil, were mutually exclusive.  I could not accept that.

It was in this realization that I figured out what sin is.  Sin is the catastrophic consequence of wanting things my way, applied universally.  To acknowledge the sin in this person’s actions also meant acknowledging the sin in my desire for vengeance, my desire to pass the hurt back.  Yet this is the cost of absolutes, that standards exist, standards I may not like, but that I am constrained to.  I take up the constraints with the hope and faith that Christ will eventually make sense of what I cannot.  I just can’t say I will always like it.

The first was that friendships are different from Family because they are choices. I agreed with her here. You can definitely be friends with your family, but sometimes (and sometimes often) family are also a training ground for dealing with people we would normally not associate ourselves with.

The second point was that friendships are choices, choices based on mutual interests. But they go beyond this. Friendships become a balance of similarities and differences, held in tension. This was wonderfully illustrated when Luci discussed her theological and relational differences with L’Engle.

I think these points heightened my understanding of friendship. What do you think?

Unlike 99% of the people in my age group I was kind of a fan. You were ruthless, cold, and calculating, but you got the job done and sang the beatles.

I’m starting to change my mind.

See, first you blow a billion on a ridiculous meeting in Toronto, I understand security is paramount at an event like this. But Toronto could use the cash way more than the “prestige” of hosting the G20. I was about to ask if you had ridden the TTC lately. Then I remembered your motorcade backed up the already insufficient Don Valley Parkway yesterday, so I’m thinking no.

Now you are try to make millions of Canadians crooks. I stopped downloading in January. I wanted to feel right about how I obtained music. But I’m just one, and it is almost culturally entrenched among my peers. My peers who also happen to be among the most underpaid in a very competitive job market. There isn’t a lot of disposable income to go around and now you are going to make criminals of these kids, teens, and young adults.

I don’t think it is going to win any of us over. It may have just cost you the last one you had.

It isn’t just him. I would put myself in the same category. I believe we’ll see a whole generation of men who are not wholly grown up. We have forgotten the rites of passage, the conversations with our children about what adulthood, and manhood is all about.

Mark Driscoll talks about how culture feminizes men. I would humbly beg to differ. Both Christian and secular culture have forgotten how to train children, especially boys, into adulthood. There is no education in self-control, responsibility, or faith that is strong enough to make men out of boys. I would argue that Mark Driscoll’s machismo is as much a product of a failed full entry into adulthood as my weaknesses in being a responsible young man.

I’m not sure what the solution is. I can only say that we are failing to produce men. We are making adult-shaped children.

First among these realities was that 2009 was not the best year of my life, not even close.  Somewhere in the process of coming home from school and turning a long distance relationship into a regular relationship I lost sight of the big picture.  I realized last month just how self-involved I had been, and to some extent still am.  I realized that I had not been able to see past my own nose, my own problems, and my own wants and desires to recognize the deleterious effects my self-involvement had on my relationships.

What I’m starting to realize is that when Christ told his disciples to die to themselves it was because the self is selfish.  When we live in Christ all our relationships find a new, right, ordering.  This ordering operates according to the original design for human relationships.  I have realized in the past month, as I’ve tried to incorporate disciplines of prayer, study, and fasting into my life, that the more I lean on Christ, the better my peripheral relationships become.  The more I turn inwards, the more I treat others like objects.  My prayer while attending Candlemas tonight was this: “Lord, let me love you first, so that I may love others through you.”

I can only care, and love, so much from myself, before what I want gets in the way.  I write this like I’ve got it figured out, but those who know me well know that the selfish me lurks and rears his ugly face far too quickly still.  I can only say I’m growing.

After I recently discovered that I was reading far less than I would like I decided to look for opportunities to read that I was overlooking. Instead of just putting my headphones in and zoning, as I’ve been prone to do, I began to pack my bag with a book, my moleskine, some stickynotes, and my trusty iPhone. Armed with this kit I read and take notes while riding the subway.  I then write drafts of posts which I save to the phone, then the drafts folder on wordpress, before posting them here.

I heard that part of the reason that N.T. Wright is able to write as much as he does is because he has a car and driver in his role as bishop of Durham. I have a subway and engineer, and plan to take full advantage of this. Although I’m sure the smell in Wright’s car is more pleasant.

The first is that art, beautiful, tangible, thought-provoking art is not dead.  Sure there was one gallery with a whole lot of paint splashed on canvasses with clever titles like untitled 1, untitled 2, untitled 3.  Yet apart from that one gallery there were four more we visited that had imagery you could get a hold of.  Some were more obscure, with shapes and objects coalescing only on closer examination.  Others were overt in imagery yet profound in meaning.  I was particularly struck by the work of Mark Henson who incorporated surrealism into some stunning critiques of our consumeristic lifestyle.  (warning:there is some graphic/disturbing content following the link).  His work is on display at the Meta Gallery.

My other realization was that art must be imbued with some meaning from its creator.  The notion of creating a piece (particularly of abstract art) that leaves everything up to the viewer is ridiculous.  The idea that you can charge 2500 dollars for it means you are capitalizing on rich people with no taste.  Too throw paint at a canvas in random, though sometimes striking, fashion is not something only the select few can do.  If a person truly wants to seek their own meaning in imagery they can examine the cracks in a sidewalk, or the pattern of bricks in a building, or the time honoured cloud-watching.  The meaning can be vague, hidden in visual clues and hinted at in the title, but it must exist.  Meaningless art is not art at all.  It is at best visual nihilism.

You can read the whole essay here: http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/tremendous-trifles/10/