I am a Spiteful Valentine's Day Hater

Hello there.

Just in case you're wondering, this particular blog is not going to be very uplifting. Unless I change my mind half way through. Which is unlikely. Since I am a spiteful little cynical Valentine's day Hater. HA! I LAUGH IN THE FACE OF THE WORRRRRRLLLDDD!!!

I. hate. Valentine's. Day. And I admit, it is probably 99% because I have been single for the past 19 years of my life, and 1% because I am against the commercialization of the day. Valentine's Day is... hmmm... how should I phrase this? One of the most ultimately depressing days of the year.

I wake up to my alarm clock playing the top 20 love songs with mushy love tips in between. I whip out of bed so that I can turn it off as quickly as is humanly possible before I start gagging in disgust.

Next, I walk downstairs only to be meet with red cupids, hanging balloon hearts, and Valentine's event reminders. I again feel the bile rising in my throat.

I go to church, and what do they talk about? LOVE. Marriage and love. Dating and love. Romeo and Juliet. Flowers. Chocolate. etc. (Although they do include God's love, so at least I know I am included in that! :P ) Kill me now.

So I come home and embrace the comforting silence of my room and a book of economics. There is no mention of love in economics, (except, i could add, a chapter on "Cash for Condoms", but even this only goes on to explain how the cost of a condom and the cost of a child are widely divergent, and thus, giving away FREE condoms should make no difference then selling them). It is a beautiful read.

I have to say that I did get myself into the next escapade by attending an Opera put on by the Music Department. At least in this opera, the two lovers secretly hated one another. HAHAHA. Not uplifting, but it fuelled my cynical spirit.

Yes, Valentine's does make me spiteful. What an awful day for all the singles in the world. All I'd like to do is scream some Tina Turner, "WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO, GOT TO DO WITH IT? WHAT'S LOVE BUT A SECOND-HAND EMOOOO-TION?"

I suppose that in the end, I'll say that I do secretly wish I had somebody to spend the day with, even if it is simply to sit near them and read my silly economics book near. And I should simply be happy for those wonderful couples who actually have somebody to spend Valentine's with, and who have found someone who makes life happier than it would be without them nearby. I am, in all reality, a romantic. Romantic comedies and Shakespeare make me cry and sigh in utter sadness when I think about how much I'd like to have someone to love too. (I'll admit, it's really QUITE pathetic.)So I suppose I could say that Valentine's Day isn't sooooo bad...

But I choose not to. So there. :P

Finding Hope in the Devastation of the World

The world seems so messed up. There are so many problems out there that I often feel like I cannot do anything at all. I give up and want to go and hide. There's this distinction we put on the "public" world vs. the "private" world. The public world includes the corrupt politicians that decide to sit by while the environment is destroyed or prorogue government, the natural disasters like Haiti and the helplessness we feel while we try and figure out some way to make their lives better, the poverty that kills thousands every day. It's all a bit overwhelming, and it's so easy to lose hope.

And I was thinking the other day, whenever I feel down about the world, like I just can't do anything, I go to my family, to my friends, to the people closest to me. And I wondered why. Some might say it's because it seems easier. I say it's because we're trying to renew our hope. Because maybe the answers to those problems aren't in the huge policies or "development projects" out there, but in the people we meet everyday. Change comes through a dedicated group of individuals. It's in the people around us that we can find hope that maybe the world isn't so bad. There is still love, there is still compassion, there is still sincerity. And maybe that's why going to our "private" world is so much easier. Because it's in the individuals around us that we can see the things that give us the hope we need. In those people, we see that the world isn't so bad. They inspire us, uplift us, and build us into the change-makers that the world needs to get rid of the problems that seem to big.

Some poetry from moi

My poetry is a bit... rough, but it's fun to write, so here's one dedicated to this very odd weather.

The sun slurps the ocean of milk
Poured over the hidden bed of green pastures
A drowned scarf
Beside a soggy pack of cigarettes
Only a few sips remain
Grey puddles
Invite rain boots and giggles

A January spring

The Truth

Sometimes I struggle to believe the truth.

Jesus is so evident in my life. He's given me exactly the words I need to hear at exactly the moment I need them while I read the Bible, he's brought people into my life at the exactly the right point I needed them around, he's spoken to me through nature. His fingerprint is evident in the choices and decisions I make and in my ability to withstand the temptations that many succumb to. And there's a part of me, if this is possible to understand, that innately knows there's more to my life than just being alive. That something else is with me when I am physically all by myself.

And yet I sometimes struggle with God. Because I get caught up in the world around me, in the cynics and people who think I am foolish for thinking there's something bigger than me. and so I often feel like perhaps I am in a wrestling match with God. I am confused and helpless and tiny and inept at understanding why the evidence can't be made more visible to me. But the crazy thing is that whenever I get to this point of wrestling with God, he doesn't fight back. He just gives me this enormous bear hug me, all the while I am crying and screaming for him to explain this mess to me.

There's real historical evidence that Jesus existed on Earth, more even than Julius Caesar ever existed, if that is imaginable. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all wrote about him, as did Paul in his many letters to the new churches of the age. And when I read what they wrote about him, I fall in love with Jesus every time. The immense love he pours into people, but not only love, but grace and forgiveness into the broken-spirited, into the cast aways. It's too much for me to even think about, that maybe he could love me in the same way.

Why can't I just accept his presence in my life? I feel like my spirit is broken into this part that longs for God, that loves him more than anything else, and another part that questions his very existence, and these two halves keep fighting with each other. I can only hope that God keeps hugging me while I fight and scream, because I need it.

Sometimes the hardest thing to believe is the truth.

The Cage

My worst fear of all time is being restrained. Someone locking me up in a cage and leaving to rot all by myself in a tiny little cage with no purpose in life but to sit and wait for my death. Nothing else scares me more. I would rather die a million deaths than have that happen to me.

And yet, there are cages everywhere in my life. A cage of fear, fear that holds me back from saying something that needs to be said, fear that holds me back from expressing my "fullest me", fear that just puts me into this little mold of what I should be but never what I could be if I opened up the door of my cage.

There's also a cage of solitude. One that traps you in front of the television, in front of your video games, in front of the computer, in front of your telephone, your music player, etc., etc. You're trapped in a virtual world. Virtual meaning "NOT REAL." When your conversations start revolving around a world or a person that does not exist, you know that you're in a cage of solitude. Where did the rest of humanity go? When did we decide that the only way to entertain ourselves was to pick up our computers and go on facebook, or to pick up a controller and watch the O.C. or cartoons or the latest movie? When did our lives get so completely and utterly boring that we don't even talk to the people in the same room as us? Instead, we just watch others live another life and think that it's the greatest thing since cheese. I. HATE. IT. I want to break those chains more than anything. In fact, I have an urge to pick up a baseball bat and just start smashing the television in my living room at this very moment... but I will restrain myself.

the very world around me is a cage. The media is censored to tell me what it wants me to know, the schools and universities are censored to tell me what they want me to know, video games are censored to portray what they think they want me to know, books even portray what they want me to know. I do not hear about the things that my government or the big corporations don't want me to hear about. I do not hear about the life of the murderer. I do not hear about the lack of power a citizen really holds in this government we call a democracy. I do not hear about the lives of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic. So here I am. A product of the knowledge that has been predestined for me to know. Is there anything that I have truly figured out for myself? No. Not really. I am trapped at this very moment in a cage of predestined knowledge. For creativity is something very rare. And those who possess it are diamonds in the rough. Do I have the power to question, to think, to create? I don't know.

In many ways, the bars of my cage are a little more flexible because of the truth God's been able to show me through Jesus Christ. The truth and grace and love He brings me is the only truth that I have any sound belief in. As crazy as that might sound. Cause in every piece of nature, in every person, in every creative work, I see a glimpse of a creator. The divine artist. And Jesus, who's life displayed the greatest kind of truth and love that I've ever seen, claimed to be God, and so i believe. I believe the man who's life was not caged. And who was killed for it.

All You Need is Love...

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member.
Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier.
Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual.
But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world. -Ammon Hennacy

The world is one messed up place. It's really hard to think about it all for a long period of time without eventually wanting to just put those thoughts away and find something happier to let your mind dwell upon.

There are wars today in the name of peace and justice. There are churches fighting against the rights of gays and lesbians in the name of truth. There are atheists today fighting against religion in the pursuit of reason. There are citizens today "tolerating" people out of "love."

And there's something really bothersome about it all. Something that makes me want to break. Because, yes, I think it's important to have peace, to have justice, to have truth, to have reason, to have love. I just don't think humanity has quite gotten their fingers around how to get these things all together, or maybe, what all of them really mean.

We value supporting our troops, going to war to bring peace and freedom. Can I ask whether this is simply one-sided? What about the people we are fighting against? Are they also included in this equation which equals out to peace and freedom? If we support the value of love, I don't think killing our neighbour quite follows this trend. If we follow the value of courage, then I still don't think killing our neighbour follows this trend. For if you were truly courageous, you would chance to sacrifice yourself to try and help someone by not killing them. That would be the scary part-facing death to help someone else-and it requires true courage. If we support the value of peace, then no, war is not the method. Arguments require two people, but they can be avoided by the gentle kindness of one. Peace is finding a resolution that puts another above yourself. is it possible that instead of going to war, that we could send doctors? that we could send teachers? that we could send missionaries? For getting rid of hate requires a change of heart. Are we willing to put some cream on the callouses of hate that have built up on the hearts of our enemies, or are we indifferent? Hm.

Thoreau said "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." There's something about our way of living that lacks something... concrete. As if we know the principles, the values, the arches which govern our actions, but we don't know how to fit them all together. Or maybe we don't want to. Because we know that if we were to ever determine the true arch that governs our actions, it would require something of us that we don't want to have to be. And so we are forever in a state of desperation, striving for love, courage, wisdom, but never quite living them out to the point of their true fullness.

But then again, maybe we can find them in God. ;)

Gotta Love Keats

So I'm a lover of John Keats. He's pretty much a genius. Anyways, this is one of his love poems. ;) Hope you enjoy this poem as much as I did!

Bright Star, Would I were Steadfast as Thou Art, by John Keats

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient sleepless eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors;
No yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever or else swoon to death.