Its 1:33 am. I have had about.... six, fifteen-minute naps in the last two days. I woke up in Chicago this morning and now I am at my parents house in big bear. I am having a sip of the old "mark," courtesy of my good friends "the makers" and I think to myself, "hey, it's time for a new blog."
I was just reading a blog which was beautifully and inspiringly written by an acquaintance of mine (hoping for this to change) who was talking about the beautiful pain of moving and starting a new chapter in life. the way certain feelings and thoughts and little memories were missed resonated so harmoniously in me. it made me think of times in my life where I could only find a wonderful life treasure through the absence of comfort or loved ones.
then I got to thinking about the value of pain. it is amazing how pain can be such a healthy thing. my lovely best friend nate and I were talking about this on a hike the other day. we were talking about how we both felt a bit distant and numb lately. I told him about a Philip Yancey book I read once where he talked about leprosy as an example used by Jesus over and over in the bible to explain the value of pain.
from what I understand, all that leprosy really does is attack your nervous system and make you completely numb to pain. this is why lepers were always bandaged up and looked like their bodies were falling apart. they could not feel pain as an alert that there was something wrong. lepers go blind because when your eyes start to feel dry you blink and that is how you keep your eye balls healthy. they would not feel this and their eyes would dry up. so anyway, to bring it back, the blog made me remember how beautiful of a thing pain can be. specifically I am speaking of pain as opposed to comfort. but I honestly feel that this is true in an all encompassing way.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the way humans view perfection. I was talking to a good friend about this tonight. in this case there are two kinds of perfection: human perfection and heavenly perfection. human perfection has more to do with what you get when humans try to perceive or understand heavenly perfection, and heavenly perfection can be understood as Christ's love.
so if you believe or are struggling with believing that God is real you kind of just assume with it that He is perfect. kind of like, if you believe peter pan is real then you have to be willing to accept the fact that he can fly. don't think about that too hard; I know it is not the best analogy. I have heard so many people say, "if God is perfect, why do bad things happen to good people?" I know this is a pretty clich question but I understand where it comes from and have asked it many times myself. but I think it has more to do with how we perceive perfection than the actual answer most people are looking for when asking the question.
ok... I am tired and I dont feel like being super clear so I will just explain what I am trying to say by saying this and hope you understand what I mean. ex. (in my opinion) to be a "perfect" lover does not mean that you never mess up and that you are good at being in love. it means that you understand the beauty and importance in the relationship between love and heartbreak... ya that is all I will say for now but one more thing that barely has anything to do with all of this but is appropriate only because I am in an honest mood. I am terrified of heaven. I constantly struggle with the idea of eternity and consciousness and a "perfect" place that we go to after we die. obviously I am more terrified of hell, but you know what is the only idea that I have ever heard that has given me some comfort about this issue...? that we will work and have jobs in heaven. my feeble brain, which can barely grasp the idea of heavenly perfection, cannot get around the thought and the hope that there is some kind of struggle in heaven. that there is some kind of tension or hard work that still has to be done. I don't understand how not crying or feeling sorrow is going to allow me to feel ( or know) what joy is. I can't comprehend how we will be able to rest and have peace (and know what it feels like) without some kind of hard work or toil. I am definitely open to off the wall, drunken, and open minded thoughts on this.
sorry one more thing. I have been reading a lot of Thomas Merton lately and I am looking for some really good literature on Christian mystics or mysticism.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006


blah blah blah blah

so.... a little bit more thought on the last blog.

just something i am realizing and need to get down so that a week from now when i am acting like a bitch and feeling sorry for myself i can remember a few things. one of the reasons it is so hard to make a difference or trully show love or whatever you want to say; is selfishness. once you finally get around to humbling yourself enough to show love towards others i think the first small battle is just to love and then let it go. i already messed this up today. i showed something, made myself vulnerable, and then i was either misunderstood or under-appreciated. i grew bitter (self concious). i've always known that if you want to trully love, you have to allow your heart to be truly broken. now i am wondering how much pride are we supposed to have in the love that we show others. is there supposed to be any at all? is the right thing to love even if it means loving until your dignity is trampled into dust? i guess i know the technical answer to that. one thing i do have a hard time wraping myself around is rewards. love is the opposite of hate. truth is reality and hate is the opposite of truth. (in my opinion) so... striving for truth and reality, i want to love. i wish i could say it was the other way around for me. but the fact is, loving for a reward is a conditional love. it is self-seeking, selfish, self-centered. the reason i want to show love to others is because i want the reward of truth, or a better world, or to make someone feel better because i care for them. i wonder if this is why some monks beat themselves? even if i show love to someone i don't know i am hoping for the reward of being a loving person even if it is not needed or understood. maybe this is why grace is so important. i know this is just getting into knit-picky, theologic, annoying bullshit, but.... if i was able to send a whole world of people to a place like heaven just by loving them, even if i was not able to be part of this world and experience and enjoy that love, i would only do it if i was able to go with them. if sending them to heaven meant that i had to go to, or through hell i would probably still be able to squeeze out a bit of pride for having made such a sacrifice because, this is what i am getting at, i cannot concieve of the idea of trully caring for someone more than myself.

but here is something else, i know that there are certain people in my life (family and friends) that i would die for. the thought of them going through something like pain or death is too heavy for me and i would rather take it on myself than have to think about them hurting in any way. that all still has to do with me though. I don't want them to hurt because I can't bear the thought, and I would not be able to take the pain. ok it is almost four in the morning and i have had a bit of makers mark. i think i need sleep more than anything now. if you read all of this i appologize. i think that right now i am content to say that there are many truths and good things about selfish love even. and if it is something that will never be trully trully pure as long as we are human i am ok with that. i am happy to not read between the lines. and I am happy to not grow too old. blah blah blah blah
Sunday, April 02, 2006


what do you call those arm floatie things?

it is good to unearth the past sometimes and home is always the best place to do this. so where am i right now? floating along the surface. i feel like i am this fat kid in a pool with arm floaties on and i want so badly to go under water and touch the bottom but i am so buoyant right now and it is driving me crazy! do you ever talk with an old friend about the past and realize, "dang i kind enjoy and miss who i used to be" i guess in this circumstance i am speaking mainly spiritually, but it definitely applies in other areas too. i am back from nashville and what turned out to be a wonderful and beautiful and hard and dark and learning experience. we've returned with and album, a piece of art that i am more proud of than anyone will ever know. i could personally play these songs for anyone and if everyone hated it i would still love it and cherish it. i was standing on the back porch of the studio like fifteen minutes before we left for LA and i finally realized "this is why God has been putting all these crazy thoughts and dreams in me since i was a kid. this is why i've dropped out of most of the jr. colleges in southern california. this is why i sucked at football. this is why i get so frustrated sometimes that it brings me to tears. this is a life long dream that i've had and it is here." there is not an ounce of shame or regret or holding anything back. every once in a while a friend will talk to me with this kind of cautious concern and ask me things like "so do you really enjoy these songs" or "...playing bass" or "...being in this band" as if i have sold my soul to live in some cheap, plastic, fake, distant land far away from the warm comfortable glow of elitism. i now realize though that i need to stop wasting my time trying to please people or gain approval. i need to stop caring about being misunderstood or judged. i will not be sorry any more for things that are not mistakes! all i want to care about is showing love to those around me and to stop giving only if i get. fear and insecurity is what gets in the way of love. we are the only ones who cause ourselves to not show love. weird. i usually forget that idea just as quickly as i remember it. how do we change that? i honestly want to know. what do i have to do to truly show love in a way that makes things change for the good. how do i show love to other people that causes them to truly know that they are loved. i know the way i have to think and be and feel about myself and others. i know what to do to show people that i love them. i feel like we all have a pretty good grasp on what it is all about and how to do it. why, then is it such a hard thing to make it who you truly are? i know all the typical shit that friends and family and christians are supposed to give as answers to these questions. maybe that is why i am having such a hard time with this. my whole life i have only just adopted certain sayings or answers that you apply to different questions. this is something that i have known and hated for a long time. let's come up with our own answers that we've discovered from our own lives. not what our parents learned from the jesus movement or calvary chapel. that was good, but it was for them. those were the answers that their generation needed to hear. but not ours. we are a different kind of people, not better or worse, just different. let's get dirty. let's search and let's be ok with making mistakes or taking wrong turns over and over and over again. let's bring grace back into the picture. lets stop being weird to our friends that are searching right now. lets encourage it!! let's meet up in random towns and talk until the early morning. lets stop caring so much about cool and/or trying to act like we don't care about cool! just let it be, there is so much more that is so much more important. we will find our own answers and find truth by making our own trails. i am so ready for this! i am ready to get scratched and get lost and confused and passionate and to fall in love!
Thursday, October 27, 2005


the mystery of the mystic

"for it is God's love that warms me in the sun and feeds me in the bread that i eat and God that feeds me also by hunger and fasting. it is the love of God that sends the winter days when i am cold and sick, and the hot summer when i labor and my clothes are full of sweat: but it is God Who breathes on me with light winds off the river and in the breezes out of the wood. His love spreads the shade of the sycamore over my head and sends the water-boy along the edge of the wheat field with a bucket from the spring, while the laboreres are resting and the mules stand under the tree.
it is God's love that speaks to me in the birds and streams; but also behind the clamor of the city God speaks to me in His judgements, and all these things are seeds sent to me from His will.
if these seeds would take root in my liberty, and if His will would grow from my freedom, i would become the love that He is, and my harvest would be His glory and my own joy.
and i would grow together with thousands and millions of other freedoms into the gold of one huge field praising God, loaded with increase, loaded with wheat. if in all things i consider only the heat and the cold, the food or the hunger, the sickness or labor, the beauty or pleasure, the success and failure or the material good or evil my works have won for my own will, i will find only emptiness and not happiness. i shall not be fed, i shall not be full. for my food is the will of Him Who made me and Who made all things in order to give Himself to me through them."
-thomas merton
Tuesday, October 25, 2005


yesterday was pajama day, today is backwards day!
Current mood: awake

a lovely friend has just got me thinking and i need to get this down ok:
-to allow yourself to love means that you allow your heart to be broken to that same degree.
-rest cannot be trully enjoyed without a long day's hard work (without the work, it is only laziness)
-without physical pain, we would all be walking around like lepors
-without emotional pain, we would all be walking around like robots
-a depreciating bank account will create an apprieciative soul
-i think that last one is only more true when you consider that a rich man keeps himself busy with money.
ok i'm done
Friday, October 21, 2005


quiet and white

i want my thoughts to stop screaming at me and just whisper to me. i want my eyes to enjoy being open. i want my heart to be free and eager to experience life. i want every song to be the perfect song in every exact moment. i want it to be so quiet that you can laugh with just your eyes and cry when you need to. i want to kill words and never let another word sneak from my mouth bound for misinterpretation unless it is "fuck you" or "i love you." i am tired of explaining the life out of every word i don't mean to say. i don't want to be afraid to be around people any more. i remember winter nights in big bear when i was younger, when it snowed on park and wren. all sound would be muffled in the air. it would be so quiet at night that you would think to yourself that if you tried hard enough you could hear the snowflakes landing softly and laying together. the only light that made it through the air was the street light on the corner which made huge white flakes appear out of pitch black. it seemed as if you were looking through a huge hole into a whole other world. you could stand in the street and the whole world was no more than as far as you could see by the street light. then inside it would be so warm and soft. i would wait till around nine o'clock when everyone was home for the night and the snow began erase all evidence of movement. i would put on layer after layer till my whole body was encased in warmth and step out into the cold. behind our house was a small empty field and when it snowed enough it would look like a huge, perfectly made bed without a single wrinkle. i would make my way out to the middle and lay there on my back. not a thought in my head, nothing at all. it was just quiet and white, that is it, there was nothing else in existence, ever. it was so dark and i would just lay there as long as i could stand it. and it was so quiet and white, just quiet and white.
Friday, October 14, 2005


i can't sleep
Current mood: tired

i've tried everything. last night i got out of bed and went for a two mile run at three in the morning and it didn't work. any of you have any suggestions i would love to hear em.

7:14 PM - 7 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove


pumkin patches and bunny rabbits

i have been on so many wonderful hikes over the past few days...

lately life has held a lot of brokenness for me and the people around me. there is nothing more real and beautiful than being stripped down to completely nothing. "when you've got nothin' you've got nothing to loose" to be hungry and poor in every way thinkable. how is it that so many things can cloud our perception of reality or i guess more appropriately, the supernatural. if there is one truth to know about the Holy Spirit, it is that it is not a warm fuzzie. it is wild and untamed, it is not found in comfort or rest. it is not a lazy sunny sunday afternoon. it is a long night struggling through thoughts and dreams without sleep. it is not good fortune it is hard work. it works through struggle and tears. it is what makes pain and weakness beauty. if you allow yourself to see with your worldly eyes you may never see the work of the Holy Spirit. i think that another way you could look at the verse 'blessed are the poor in spirit' is 'the poor are blessed by the holy spirit' all my late childhood i spent struggling with my frustrations with the faith that i was brought up in. when i got older i was consumed with detaching myself from it. now i am in a spot where i feel so free to discover the God that i have felt so distanced from my whole life. there have been so many wonderful things i have been discovering in the word and in studying others from the past. i want so badly just to tell all but there is so much nonsense that you can get caught up in with words and perceptions. it would be like trying to describe a beautiful sunset to someone when you know that the description would only devaluate the beauty of it besides, the understanding of the experience could only be shared in such a delicate and intimate way. which is the opposite of myspace! another thing that is very frustrating is that people seem to have lost the freedom of having an open mind. when new ideas come along most people either will try to make it their own and exploit it as a trend or something else that is the complete opposite of what it really is; or they will instantly turn themselves off to it because of insecurity in.. well so many things. or they will hate it because they see it as a trend. anyways, i just needed to express to the few lovelies that might actually read these that i am so very inexpressibly excited about a new found thirst i have come across and where it is taking me. i want to hike to the top of the highest mountain and allow myself to be touched by God. .