a question of faith...

How long, how long, will I slide into the abyss that is myself?

God knows how much I try to make sense of this life by putting it in a perspective that is beyond me. But every time I do so I miserably fail. It must be a matter of will power, something that I sadly do not have an ample supply of. For someone who holds fast to a truth claim like faith in a loving God, I am one who always treads that thin line between belief and unbelief. In faith I wrestle with doubt. In faith I fall prey to the apparent certainty of my understanding. In faith struggle to climb out of the pitch-dark well that is myself...

The terrorists have won.

Whenever I get my bags ransacked at every mall, airport, train station and cinema...
...I breathe a silent sigh and think to myself: "it's ok the terrorists have won."
Whenever I get frisked, stereotyped and deemed as a potential threat to security because of my clothes...
...I breathe a silent sigh and think to myself: "it's ok the terrorists have won."
Whenever I hear people complain about the government but helplessly accept the way things are as realities that we have to live with...
...I breathe a silent sigh and think to myself: "it's ok the terrorists have won."
Whenever I see people give consent to those in power to scare them with structures, laws and ordinances that take away their liberty...
...I breathe a silent sigh and think to myself: "it's ok the terrorists have won."
Whenever homeowners in subdivisions choose to protect their homes with gates, guards and stickers because they can afford to purchase a claim to their dwellings...
...I breathe a silent sigh and think to myself: "it's ok the terrorists have won."
Whenever, I choose to see the world as a dichotomy of 'us' and 'them'...
...I breathe a silent sigh and think to myself: "it's ok the terrorists have won."
Whenever I hear a preacher tell me to submit to man-made authorities, to accept evil as a part of a grand scheme of things or when they scare me with hell and then promise me heaven in a distant ethereal realm beyond this life...
...I breathe a silent sigh and think to myself: "it's ok the terrorists have won."
Whenever I hear of an activist who would write a permit to practice their right to express their convictions...
...I breathe a silent sigh and think to myself: "it's ok the terrorist have won."
Whenever I live a content life of TV, Facebook, individualism expressed in fashion and whenever I'd find happiness in the things I buy...
...I breathe a silent sigh and think to myself: "it's ok the terrorists have won."

i vous voulez et vous seul

˙˙˙ snoʌ
ɹnoɯɐ,l ǝp ʇǝ xnǝʌ ǝɾ ǝnb ınlǝɔ ʇsǝ,ɔ 'lnǝs snoʌ ʇǝ snoʌ
ǝɯâ uoɯ ǝɔɹǝd ınb xnǝʎ soʌ ʇǝ snoʌ
ʎɐʍs élǝddɐ uosuɐɥɔ ǝʇʇǝɔ ɹǝɔuɐlɐq ǝp ǝɹıoɯéɯ ɐl ǝnb ʇǝ sdɹoɔ ǝɹʇoʌ ǝp ǝɹpɐɔ ǝl ʇǝ snoʌ
suıɐɹʇ sǝl ʇǝ sɹǝılɐɔsǝ sǝl 'snqoʇnɐ xnɐ nɐǝʌnou suǝs un éuuop ɐ ınb ɹǝsıɐq ǝɹʇoʌ ʇǝ snoʌ
ǝɹʌıʌ à ǝƃɐɹnoɔuǝ,ɯ ınb ǝɹıɹnos ǝɹʇoʌ ʇǝ snoʌ
ǝıʌ ɐɯ ʇǝ uosuɐɥɔ ɐl à suǝs un éuuop ɐ snoʌ ʇuǝɯɯoɔ ʇǝ snoʌ
ʇıɐɟɹɐd ʇsǝ ǝpuoɯ ǝl ǝnb ǝlqɯǝs lı ʇǝ 'zǝıɹnos snoʌ
˙˙˙ snoʌ

ut haud lacrima can exsisto effundo.

Why can’t I cry?

Does the absence of tears mean that I have gone past the point of crying?

Have I totally lost my humanity that I am not totally devoid of emotion?

I have gone past the point of crying…one can only wonder why the things hoped for are the things that blow up onto our faces with a resounding “no!”

I have gone past the point of caring. For the nth time I have been burned and rendered broken for caring.

I have gone past the point of living.

I’ve done so much.
I’ve hurt so many.
I’m a miserable person.
God help me now…

growing old | growing cold

After so many years I am scolded by my parents two times in the span of a week.

Funny thing about it is that its mostly about the most mundane things that I have done or have forgotten to do.

I am almost in my 30s, I am aging and have become even more aware of the immanence of my mortality.

I am aging but not growing.

I am suddenly realizing that the prospect of death isn’t so bad as opposed to the prospect of living dead in a life that’s filled with remorse and ‘what ifs.’

I cannot think straight anymore.

I am consumed with this unquenchable thirst for this one thing that’s so near and yet so far away –of this one person whom I must love from a distance, whose heart cannot be mine.

I hate myself and I want to die, because it is in dying that I hope to find solace that perhaps my passing would clear out the grime that I have tainted on the lives of the people whom I claimed to have cared for and loved.

Life as it seems now is somewhat pointless and that trying to make sense out of it inevitably leads to the collapse of my sanity.

So for now I wait and see and hopefully accept what life has in store...

if some people really are...

if some people really are smarter
than other people and
if some people really are better looking
than other people and
if some people really are happier
than other people and
if some people really are more moral
than other people and
if some people really are understand better
than other people and
if God really did make us all that way
and
if he really does love us
and
if we really are going to live together in heaven without being jealous then I guess those things aren't really so important after all, are they?

- Randy Welch
Rappings , edited by Robert Webber, (Wheaton: Tyndale 1971) p. 14

The miracle of reading the poetry of Rappings

It’s really amazing what one finds in the rubbish bins.

A couple of months ago I was able to rummage a copy of Rappings on the garbage bin of Grace Bible Church, Rappings is a 1971 literary portfolio of Wheaton College seminarians that was compiled by the late Robert Webber, who was then an Associate Professor of Theology at Wheaton the portfolio is an attempt to give wider circulation to the thinking, the probing and the challenging questions of young Christians at the time.

I consider it a miracle that I was able to find this at church where at times I share the same feelings of guilt, frustration towards many things related to my personal faith in God, and my relationships with people at church –that is to say not so great at the moment. Moreover, I consider this a miracle as I have found a sense of empathy with the words that were written in Rappings, particularly because their poetry provides an affinity with my present state where again I am reminded that I am at a lost –and that I do not know everything –and it is in that not knowing everything that I am (as we all are,) rendered into what can be called a re-orientation of faith as it is now derived not with intellectual congruence in systematic theological formulations or in what is seen as ‘sound doctrine’ but in an encounter with the Living Word which confronts us to boldly live faith in the context of hope…

It is in this context of hope that I found this piece of poetry from an unknown * seminarian most worthy of reflection:

Out in the cold I stand,
Looking on at the world sitting tight,
With its people in their nice little world,
And the friends who don’t even know me.
It makes no difference to their world where I am.
If I’m there, it keeps going;
If I’m not, it goes on,
While I walk around, wandering, wondering,
My mind a mass of mixed-up machinery,
Clashing with conflicts and unanswered questions.
I don’t ask if the world is real—
It sits up there on its foundations,
Secure, concrete, hard and stone and real.
But I’m not real—
Or if I am maybe I shouldn’t be.
They answer, “Smile, God loves you.”
But I can’t smile.
I’m numbed by cold inside and out.
Even in the heat in the square brick buildings
Would only warm my body, nothing else.
I’m alone in a world full of people,
Apart, shut up inside myself,
Cold, unfeeling
in a cold
unfeeling world.

* found as it appears above, written on an ink blotter on an empty desk in Fischer Hall.

When I Say "I Am A Christian"...

When I say..."I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I am saved"
I'm whispering "I get lost!"
"That is why I chose this way."

When I say..."I am a Christian"
I don't speak of this with pride.
I'm confessing that I stumble
and need someone to be my guide.

When I say..."I am a Christian"
I'm not trying to be strong.
I'm professing that I'm weak
and pray for strength to carry on.

When I say..."I am a Christian"
I'm not bragging of success.
I'm admitting I have failed
and cannot ever pay the debt.

When I say..."I am a Christian"
I'm not claiming to be perfect,
my flaws are too visible
but God believes I'm worth it.

When I say..."I am a Christian"
I still feel the sting of pain
I have my share of heartaches
which is why I seek His name.

When I say..."I am a Christian"
I do not wish to judge.
I have no authority.
I only know I'm loved.

-Author Carol Wimmer - Copyright 1988