Runaway

It was a normal, joyful night. We went to see a movie... A very good movie. We were happy. We were laughing. 

I had forgotten. The deep, aching pain had retreated so far into the distance that I didn't feel it anymore. I thought it was gone for good. 

I had announced recovery to my friends, had started seeing again. Not just viewing the world through the smoky red haze of pain, but really seeing. Colors has returned to my vision. Food tasted of itself rather than of ash. I could smile again.

And people had noticed. Friends told me I was happier. They liked my new, joyful outlook.

And that night I wasn't even thinking about it. I had removed the bandage and only a light scar remained, easily dismissed and forgotten.

But then, like a knife twisted into the wound which had just healed, there he was. 

My conversation was cut short. My countenance turned to panic.

I ran.

On swift heels I ran out to the parking lot, trying to look fine, healthy, happy, beautiful. But all the while my heart was in panic, fleeing faster than my feet could carry me. 

 I am a runaway.

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This morning I sit in a shady spot and meditate. Two men come and sit near me, but one of them absentmindedly lays his arm in a spot of bird droppings. He spills his water.

"I don't know what's worse," he says angrily. "The bird shit, or that." He shakes water from his pants.

He walks away and the ice begins to melt. He ran away. 

Minutes pass. Slowly sparrows and starlings approach. And the water left become a pond for the birds. First they sip gingerly. Then they drink deeply, unaware of the drama that ensued. Unaware that their own filth, left on the arm of a chair, indirectly provided the blessing of this water.

I can only hope that the spilt water of my broken heart becomes a refreshing fountain for those who come after.

I keep fear in my pocket,
and past hurts on my sleeve.
I tie my hands and feet with distance
to keep me enslaved
by the lies that I believe.

The brief swish of a skirt.


The stomp of a sturdy shoe.

The flick of a wrist.

And the searing pain of a stiletto heel landing firmly on the instep of my foot.

These are the sensations of the dance.

When I dance, the world falls away. Dance, for me, is very much like one of those word problems we used to do in Math. You have to sift the numbers out of the story in order to get the right information so that you can solve the problem.

And when my feet and my body are moving to the rhythm of the music, my brain sifts. The issues of the day lose their contextual fluff and become clear. I see things simpler within the scheme of the dance.

I barely hear the music. It is about the people. The movement. The writhing, pulsating crowd.

These are strangers.

These are brothers.

On the uneven wooden floor, we are one.

All members of our ever-growing, ever-shrinking tribe, we pound out through our feet the rhythms of life.

With our hands and shoulders we parody our interpersonal relationships.

Although our levels of skill vary,

Although our styles are different,

We are all equal-

subject to the music,

trying our best to keep up with the rhythm

Now and then,

time slows down for a brief second

and I catch someone’s eye across the room

and smile,

before it is gone again.

We strangers, so alien to the world which we endeavor to navigate, find purpose and passion in the dance.

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My dearest friend and salsa buddy Deanne has also posted her awesome experience dancing. You can read it by clicking here.

Science and Faith

I'm a scientist. And I'm devoutly religious. My faith in God is deep and defining. I can't help but see it in everything I do.

But since I have devoted a great portion of my life to science and I see the world in a rational, empirical manner, I cannot go long without someone asking me how I balance my faith and my rational mind.

I try to explain this, but nothing I've said has been as succinct and honest as the answer given by a young Muslim man on the show "Bones".

How do you balance an archaic religious belief with a life devoted to science?


"There's no conflict between Allah and science. Allah created the mystery of the world and science struggles, and mostly fails, to explain it. But the search for truth is honorable, and I honor Allah through the search for truth."

This is beautiful and it's true. If God created the world, the universe, then we do Him an honor by learning about it, just like we would give an artist honor by lingering and pondering over his work, rather than giving it a cursory glance and then moving on to then next item.

To devote one's life to science is to commit to lingering, to pondering God's details, and to constantly be astounded by what we find.

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been quite devotedly watching past seasons of the miraculously witty show "Psych". The show is centered around a man who is a freakishly observant goofball.

He did poorly in school, dropped out of college, worked a variety of jobs for which he quickly lost interest, lived in several countries, and finally found his calling in pretending to be a psychic to assist the police in solving crimes.

The entire premise of the show is that the guy is a brilliant loser. It's that the life he led in his youth was a waste. And that the settling down into a career is to be desired.

But to me, that life of adventure, of moving about with no commitments, seemed less like a cautionary tale and more of... well... a dream come true.

Twirling

"I have a brother with autism."

I uttered those words to a stranger for the first time today. It was a qualifying statement. It made me part of a club.

I was outside the store where I work running the demo of the new product we're offering. A woman approached with her son, no older than four, curious if the product would be good for him, since normal video games require a frustrating amount of manual dexterity that many children with autism simply cannot generate.

I heard her say something to her sister nearby about autism and I had to pipe in. As I spoke, it became clear to me that I was just a salesperson to her. Just someone trying to hawk a product. And so I said the words. The magic words.

I have a brother with autism.

Instantly she began smiling and nodding. And as I talked with her about common issues, I saw that familiar relief flood her eyes. Finally, someone who understands! her expression seemed to say. And as I made references to behavioral quirks, she exclaimed, "Yes!" as if she was just discovering that she was not, in fact, insane.

I looked at the little boy, with his unkempt hair, his bouncy smile, and the filthy stuffed rabbit that he clutched, probably so dirty because he wouldn't even allow her to take it away from him long enough to wash it. I recognized the look in his eyes. Happy, curious, and a little bit frightened. A little overwhelmed. As if he knew that there was so much to learn and was trying to learn it all at once. I watched him jumping around rhythmically to the music as I danced and I said a silent prayer for him and for his mother.

---
I'm reading a book right now about a woman who has a severely autistic sister. Her entire life is defined by the word Autism. It is a tactile word for her, with a distinct look and smell. It is a word full of repetitive occurrences and a constant, dreadful anxiety that something is going to go wrong. Any minute now....

And as I read the book I wonder if this is going to be my life. Am I going to be defined by this? Will my family's identity become Autism? There is so much more to us than that.

My brother is amazing. He recalls words he's read better than anyone I've ever met before. He loves animals. He understands them. He loves dry, witty jokes and tells them with such disinterest that they become even funnier. He tells joke after joke as if he's reading from a page, but he's not. He has memorized the book.

He internalizes frustration with such a staunch perfectionism that it makes my own pale in comparison. He will never admit that something is difficult or challenging. Instead, he'll mumble, I hate this. I'm too stupid for it. I might as well not do it because I'm going to fail anyway. And as much as we try to encourage and edify him out of his defeatist pessimism, he doesn't budge and eventually we give him a cheap answer. "Just do it. It's your responsibility. We all have our part to play."
--
In the book I'm reading, the author compares the autistic tendency to twirl things to a desperate desire to navigate the roads of life.
Heidi was for twirling... The book was a steering wheel beneath her quick hands... She didn't have to look down to keep herself on course, steering through a confusing world of other people and noise and language.

As I read this, a light went off in my head. I'm learning about our needs for control. We all have our quirky habits, and many of them return to a root of being in control. So many events happen in our daily lives that seem random and chaotic and are totally outside of our ability to influence. So we create ways to control the little things. My desk may look messy, but it's meticulously organized and all my classes are color-coded. I can control that much.

My brother creates virtual aliens and orchestrates their evolution in a video game.

Some people throw tantrums.

Some play sports.

Some create art.

Some collect items.

Some cook.

Some exercise.

Some fix things.

Some monopolize conversations.

Some buy shoes.

And all of this is a way of dealing with a world over which we have no control. Beautiful results arise sometimes, it's true.

I'm very proud of the two paintings I created this year during my spring break. I like that I could do them. But if I'm honest with myself I can't help but admit that making those paintings, with their straight lines and defined colors, was just a way of trying to exercise a small bit of control over a world that was falling apart around me. And so they hang in that bathroom, a testament to my own despair at the time.

That doesn't make them not be art. In fact, I think that the idea that they were created from some strong emotion makes them more art than if I had simply been trying to copy a style for the sake of decoration.

That beautiful things sometimes result from such broken and insipid motivations is one of the greatest testaments to God's eternal control. And where HE controls (see: everywhere) we don't have to.

Mark and Me

"The Social Network" is a phenomenal movie. It's written about a socially awkward boy who, without anyone's permission or blessing (without even a secretary or an office), created the greatest method of connection the world has ever seen. Mark Zuckerberg singlehandedly shrank the world by a factor of about a billion.


And the character of Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network" is more like me than any movie character I've ever seen. As described in an article on CNBC.com, "...for people like Zuckerberg, it’s more like Asperger’s, that they lack something essential and don’t have an instinctual understanding of human behavior. That’s why he ended up creating algorithms to explain it.”


Elsewhere the article states concerning our generation, "However lacking Zuckerberg may be in the social graces that drive civil society, he embodies the optimism and creativity of millennials."


Social niceties have never been my strong suit. 


I majored in science because it seeks to explain things. I, deep down, believe that everything must have an explanation. There's a formula. An answer. Within the first minute of the film, I knew who Zuckerberg was and I could predict his behavior. He was vengeful and cruel sometimes, confused and childlike other times. But he never lost grasp of himself. 


One thing that is obvious in the film is that Mark does not understand social customs. He does not see why you should wear a tie to a deposition, or refrain from making glottal noises in meetings with advertising executives. He is often shown as doodling or staring out a window, possibly into the future. He makes statements that seem entirely unrelated. "It's raining," he comments while a lawyer interviews him. 


And when Mark realizes that he has committed a social faux pas, he apologizes and changes his attitude so quickly that he seems insincere. He is, in fact, more sincere than most. But he does not see life in terms of relationships or rules of behavior. He sees it as a long line of math problems. These problems exist to be explored, navigated, and solved. When a social blunder occurs, the correct response, in Mark's mind, is to erase the error and continue solving the problem. 


I function the same way. When people are not literal, I am confused. It means I have to go back and rewrite that portion of the code. However, once I discover a common theme, I can incorporate it into my social behaviors. 


It's evident that the Mark Zuckerberg in the film has no emotional connection to the events that occur around him. His words do not hinge on what is kind or right to say, but rather on what is true. If what I am saying is true, why must I sugar-coat it for you?, he seems to ask.


I often wonder at my lack of emotional connection to the world around me. It's been often that I've thought there was something wrong with me on this level. I've learned to synthesize emotion. I've learned to be passionate. I've learned to be caring and supportive of my friends. But all this is hard work for me. I must remind myself to do this. Deep down, I am still analyzing everything. 


/If A occurs, then B is the correct response./ It's becoming more natural now, but it's still work. 


I am terribly confused when people ask me how I feel about something. I don't understand the question. How do I feel? Cold. or Hungry. or Tired. 


This is also why I could be considered to be either extremely gullible, or very jaded. I think the best of everyone. I assume they are all speaking truth. And when, after months of perceived truth, someone tells me that they have been creating a false impression for me, I am destroyed. All that code must be rewritten. All the /if, then/ statements are faulty because of one mistaken line of code. 


On the other hand, when I notice a trend in behavior, I change too much code. /People behaved like A, therefore explanation is B. Corrective response: C./ This makes me seem cynical. As if I don't trust people at all. It makes me seem catty, arrogant, and unstable. 


I'm not a genius like Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network". But when it comes to navigating the real social structure of the world, I am equally inept. 


But then again, my code is still compiling..............

What's there to lose?

So I was chatting with a friend today, talking about relationships, and he mentioned that he would settle for me. Trying not to be offended, I asked him what he meant. He quickly clarified that he meant to settle down, not settle for, but then he went on to say, "We all settle for something, if we settle down at all."
Maybe I agree with him, if only just a little bit.
But then something else happened. I had to run, so my friend felt the need to finish the conversation via email. He sent me a very sweet and thoughtful message, saying he thinks I'm awesome and that he's praying for me to find a man who appreciates my awesomeness. But very clearly portrayed in the email was the message that he encourages me not to settle for a guy who is decent and likes me.
Now, several questions come to mind. Isn't that hypocritical, saying we all settle and then telling me not to? Who gets to decide which qualities are worth settling for? Why are some more settle-worthy than others?
But most importantly: why is my romantic life so important to others, but so unimportant to me?
In our chat conversation, I had told my friend that I'm happy being single. And I really am. It wasn't just one of those things you say to get people to stop pitying you. I don't even want to date, because I see no need. I'm committed to Jesus and I'm content.
In the email, however, my friend said that he hopes I find a man who makes me as happy in a relationship as when I'm single. This is strange... Why would I want to be in a relationship if it doesn't make me any happier than I am when I'm single?
If the happiness is equal, why go through all the pain and drama that relationships inherently bring?
I don't want to date. Ever again. Maybe I'll end up married, maybe not. But this giving your heart to someone only to have them break it with their sharp lies, this is not worth my effort or my time.
Some of the guys I work with are trying to get me to go out on a date with someone else at work. I said no, and they demanded to know why. I explained that I'm not interested in a relationship, and they just didn't seem to understand.
People seem to think that there's another level of happiness somewhere out there in relationship-world. They seem to think that you can't be truly or fully happy until you're with someone else. Where does this thinking come from? Why do people need another person to complete their happiness? If you're a Christian, shouldn't your source of happiness be in knowing who you are in Christ? If I know this and I joy in it, then how will being with another person ever make me happier?
And if I'm entirely convinced that no one ever will make me as happy as I am today (or happier), why is everyone trying to prove me wrong? They seem offended that I dare to think this way. That I dare to suggest that my relationship with God is paramount to my relationship with anyone else. That I can find true joy, fulfilment, and completion alone with Jesus. Why are they so determined?
What have they got to lose if I am right?

Unflinching

I am a new person.

I've seen this person developing over the past six months and I like who she is. She's secure. She knows who she is. She doesn't waver.

Along with this new person comes a new blog look. It's time, I think, to set the record straight.

I am the same woman who was burned deep within and fell into flaming disarray. But from the ashes of my brokenness, knowing now that I put my faith in the wrong things, I find myself arising purer, stronger, more malleable than ever. Malleable only to the One who knows me, the One who's purified me ever more, placing me lovingly in the fire so that my impurities are burned away.

In Taming of the Shrew, when Lucentio sees Bianca for the first time, he cries out, "I burn, I pine, I perish!" So strong is his immediate love for her. And now I call out the same.

I burn.
I pine.
I perish.

But the more I perish for love of my Savior, the more I live.

6 months later, and happy

Today is the agreed-upon 6 month mark. And though we haven't talked in that long, haven't discussed our relationship (or, at this point, lack thereof), I really didn't expect a phone call today.

Today I am 25.5 years old. Today I am single.

Today I have no idea what the rest of my life holds in store for me, but I am ever sure that I am in Good Hands.

Far Away

I'm not gonna lie-- I'm kind of over this breakup. It's been the toughest of my quarter-century life. However, I know that if I ever date again (however unlikely that may be), the ensuing breakup will inevitably be even harder than this one. Why? because in each relationship I somehow manage to let myself believe the lies that men in this culture are trained from childhood to tell women. Men are trained to tell these lies because women believe them.

But all that's beside the point. Really.

Perhaps it's been work. Perhaps the business of gathering my things together to move in a few weeks. Perhaps the starting of a new non-profit to promote non-political environmental stewardship.

But in all these things I've felt very distant lately. Distant from myself. As if I am dwelling just outside my head, looking over at myself. I find myself staring off and tuning out when someone's talking to me. I daydream. I don't feel like myself.

When I gaze into a mirror, I can only shrug and determine that what I see is as good as it's going to get. I go to work and smile widely, hi-five my coworkers, joke loudly in the break room, greet customers with zeal. I love my job, and I love that I have a future there.

I drive home listening to classical music, clearing my head. And then I sit, feet on the coffee table, laptop lain across my legs. I sit and I unwind. My heart and mind unravel slowly, like changing a bandage at the end of a long day. It's a soothing practice. I recharge, winding up for the next day.

Maybe I feel out of my depth a little bit. As if my entire day is spent treading water.

When I recalibrate at the end of the day, I am flying home. My feet finally hit firm ground, where I know myself. Here, in my room, there's no one to see me, to judge me, to say hurtful things.

Here, alone, I am most myself.

Let's Pretend

I shot a couple of pictures of kumquats growing on a potted tree, and then turned back toward India Street. "Let's cross," I said, after assessing that neither of my companions was particularly interested in what remained toward the south. We traversed the empty street and turned back the way we had come, noting a small but attractive coffee shop along the way.

"I think," began one of my companions, "that I'm and idealist and you're a realist." She said it as if she'd only just realized this, and as if she didn't want to say it, for fear of insulting me.

I'm never insulted by being called a realist. I describe myself as pragmatic quite readily, and am admittedly one of the most practical people you'll ever meet. But the way my friend said it, you'd have thought she was calling me a racist, or something equally reprehensible.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, being very realistic.

"Well, I think you always try to find solutions to things. You don't ever just enjoy and idea for the sake of the idea. You always try to apply it."

Now, part of being a realist is that I don't like rough generalizations. I don't dismiss them altogether, but I'll usually point out the faults in a generalization just for the sake of clarity. But I approve of stereotyping on some occasions, in order to make a point. My students can tell you that I always say, "Stereotypes exist because they're true." And most of the time I say it to rile them up, but I'm secretly serious.

"I admit that I'm a realist," I replied. "But I can enjoy an idea in itself. I can bask in the possibilities and allow my imagination to roam. Only, I need to know that that's what we're doing. It's not my default setting."

"Well," said my friend, "whenever we're together, just assume that that's what we're doing."

We'd reached the coffee shop and I needed to use the bathroom, so I left the little group and when I returned I found the girls sitting staring at the menu. My one friend got up to go use the bathroom, leaving me sitting with the Idealist. I'd thought about it some more by now, and I had something to say.

"I don't think I should always have to make that concession," I stated rather flatly.

"What's that?"

"I don't think I should always have to be the one to back off. I'm a realist, and I find solutions. That's what I do. And sometimes you need to be challenged to take action, and not to just think."

"Yes, but I feel like that's all you do. I don't ever see you allowing me to dream or enjoy an idea. You're always taking me literally." The Idealist smiled.

"So..." I thought about this for a minute, then grinned. "So you're saying that when you told me I should always assume you're enjoying an idea for the sake of it, I shouldn't have taken you literally?"

She grinned back. We both laughed.

We dropped the topic for the moment, but her request resonated in my head for quite some time. And the more I thought about it, the more it hurt.

She may as well have said, "When we're together, let's pretend you're not here."

To ask me not to be a realist is to ask me not to be myself. And if she doesn't want me to be myself, then why are we friends? She likes me (she says) because I say what I think, and I don't mince any words. She likes me because I'm real.

But now she's asked me to not be real. At least not all the time. So, for part of the time, am I not to be myself? Am I to suspend my personality for her sake?

Let's pretend you're not you and I'm not me. And then we'll get along better.

Yes, but then we're only pretending to be friends.

Where I am, right now.

I've had two weeks for working for a family in beautiful Blossom Valley (see image)

Plus, my roommate's been gone visiting her now-boyfriend in Idaho. She comes back tonight.

I've also been jerked around by Microsoft, which offered me a position in its newest retail store at Fashion Valley, but then never called me with a start date. I'm still holding out hope, because they offer amazing benefits.

That said, I've had a lot of time to think. To think about things that are important to me. About faith, and politics (grr!), and romance, and travel, and school, and life.

One frequent feature of the past 2 weeks has been the ringing phone which, upon inspection, inevitably shows the number of the collections agency of my student loans, asking me to make a payment, which I can't. Because I don't have a job.

I asked my Facebook friends to help me out with rent this month, which several did! This marks a new type of boldness that I've not seen in myself before. In the past couple of months, I've done things that are totally out of character... I'll give you a few examples:

1. At the movies with Dee, I asked a man and his wife to move over one seat so that Dee and I could sit together.

2. I walked across the street from my parents' house to give my photography business card to a young mother that I saw playing with her kids.

3. On the way to Cabo, I noticed a young woman crying on the airplane and went to talk to her. I prayed with her!

4. I asked for money. From my friends. On Facebook. 

While these things may seem little to you, they're not to me. I'm extremely shy, and I don't normally talk to people, call people, make myself noticeable in any way.

I also reached another milestone: as of yesterday, I have been single for as long as we were (officially) together. So many people say that getting over a relationship takes half the time of the relationship. This isn't true. This breakup, which will stain my 25th Birthday forever, shook me to my core and made me reassess everything I know about love.

So, as you can tell, I've been thinking a lot. Here are a few conclusions I've come to:

1. Travel is one of the most important things in my life. I need to see something new every year, or I feel like my time's been wasted.

2. Being in debt is really not that worthwhile to me. After a full month of harassment 4 times a day by ringing phones and demanding collections agents, I'm tired.

3. Our parents' generation lied to us. Getting a degree will NOT get you a better job... considering that everyone has a degree. Welcome to McDonald's. And now they're criticizing us for seeming to have a sense of entitlement.

4. I won't be going back to finish my graduate degree until I pay off my student loans. I'll work my tail off and move back in with my parents, but these loans are getting paid off.

5. Getting married because you're in love is really inexplicable. And a very American concept. The rest of the world doesn't associate love with successful marriage, nor did the Bible. My theory is that if you're really committed to the institution of marriage, AND if your faith is strong enough to withstand the trauma of marriage, you could marry pretty much anyone like-minded and make a happy life together. Of course, being in love makes it easier to tolerate each other for the first couple of years. But it doesn't make building a lifetime partnership any simpler.

6. Political conservatism and The Bible are really not all that compatible when you really look into it. How can you be so attached to your right to bear arms when God insists that vengeance belongs to Him?

7. On the other hand, the government has no business telling me whom I can marry, what kind of car I can drive, how I educate my children, or what I can build on my own land. All these laws were put in place to generate taxes. Government-approved marriage licenses, car registrations, public education, and building permits are all ways that the government is doing what was prophesied in 1 Samuel 7: 

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the LORD will not answer you in that day."

8. I've decided that I love San Diego, and I want to live here for the rest of my life. But I have a few cities where I want to live "for a while", just for the sake of the experience. New York. Paris. 

9. Slowly, étape par étape, I am learning French.

10. God is good. All the time. And that's His nature. (and that deserves a hi-five!)

545 people

The following article is written (in various iterations) by Charley Reese, a former columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. I verified it with Snopes, and a lot of other sources. It's real. This version is the one from 1995.

The 545 People Responsible for all of America's Woes
Written by Charley Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don’t control monetary policy, The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.

In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority.

They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.

I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.

No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget.

He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.

Who is the speaker of the House?

She is the leader of the majority party.

She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve an y budget they want.

If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.

I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.

If the Marines are in IRAQ, it’s because they want them in IRAQ.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like ‘the economy,’ ‘inflation’ or ‘politics’ that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Kant is awesome.

For years, I have been claiming to love the ideas of Soren Kierkegaard. I read his stuff, but seemed to lose the most basic ideas in the philosophy. I first read the philosophers in college and found one in particular whom I identified with the most. However, it wasn't Kierkegaard. And now I realize that I made a mistake. The philosopher I fell in love with in college was one Immanuel Kant.
In honor of him, I give you the following quotes.

“Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.”

“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”

“Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.”

“If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.”

“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”

“It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge that begins with experience.”

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”

“Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.”

“Do what is right, though the world may perish”

“So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.”

“The death of dogma is the birth of morality”

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”

“Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.”

“By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man”

“In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.”

“The possession of power unavoidably spoils the free use of reason”

“Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard”

“To be is to do.”

“It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.”

“Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.”

“All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?”

“Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild”

“Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.”

Unfriend

So, on the social networking addiction popularly known as Facebook, I have over 250 friends. Most are people I knew cursorily in college or high school, some that I've met only once but communicate with, and others that I know from my vast and varied travels.

Honestly, I can't keep track of that many people. Just like people that pass you in the hall, sometimes you don't notice if one is gone for a bit. Eventually you think about the person and you realize, "Hey, I haven't seen her in a while. I wonder how she's doing."

And then there are the people that you are more closely connected with. The ones whose absence immediately affects you. You may not notice for a day or two. But eventually you do, and then you wonder what happened.

As you may have guessed, Someone unfriended me this week. Usually when someone unfriends me, I notice the number of friends has gone down and I briefly look through my list, but can't figure out who it was. The rejection stings a little bit, but I figure whoever it was, we probably hadn't talked in a while, and it's not so great a loss.

But this Someone... I noticed almost immediately. I noticed because every day waking up and facing his rejection three months and twenty-three days ago is a weight on my heart. Like a long drag on a cigarette, each breath drags at my heart and burns a little more away. I noticed because after the drama of "The Phone Call" thirteen days ago, which resulted in a strongly-worded email from me, explaining how we are NOT friends and Someone has NO business asking me how I'm doing after essentially telling me that he didn't really care about me anymore.

Someone then didn't email me back apologizing for breaking my heart. Someone didn't call me again (after all, I asked him not to). Someone just unfriended me.

Now to be fair I have to say that I did pretty much restrict all his Facebook access to me after he was kind of a jerk to some of my friends on my wall. But I didn't unfriend him. I thought about it, but I didn't.

Now that he's pulled the plug and clicked that button, I feel more rejected than ever. And I need Jesus more than ever.

The Road to Hell

I've started going to The Flood, and I really enjoy it. One of my favorite things is the imagery that they use. the current series is called "Ten Thousand Years: Ancient Stories of Amazing Grace" and the image they've chosen to represent that is the Bristlecone pine tree. It looks something like this:

Bristlecones are the oldest living things on earth. They're thick, hardy, and gnarly. Like Grace.

Today's sermon told the tale of Cain and Abel, but approached the story from a different angle. The pastor read the verse where God tells Cain, "Sin is crouching at your door..." Matt likened this to a predator lying in wait for the prey to come along. and then he asked us, "What is your crouching sin?"

He warned us that it's probably not the sin you think of immediately. It's probably way subtler. More rationalized. 

And then he began giving examples: 

-"I'm not bitter towards men. I'm just hurt and I'm trying to make wise decisions for the future."

-"I'm not a workaholic. I'm just trying to provide for my family, and make more money so I can help others."

-"I'm not stingy with my money. I'm just trying to be a good steward of what God has given me."

-"I'm not obsessed with the way I look. I'm just trying to make healthy choices for my life."

All those things sound really good. And even your motivations sound okay. But as Matt listed them off, I felt knives dive and twist in my chest. Each point was another notch- another cut. It hurt, because I do this.

I rationalize my sin.

See, these things sound okay because I'm giving great excuses for them. But the focus in each case is still on me, not on God. Cain's sin was self-pity and rationalizing.

My sin is no different.

But God's infinite grace is great!

Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace,
Freely bestowed on all who believe!
You that are longing to see His face,
Will you this moment His grace receive?

Beauty the Villain

(A brief Aside: in the course of this article, I express ideas which I don't actually believe simply to make a point. It's called satire. Please don't send me hate mail for being an evolutionist. I am, in fact, not. In addition, I'm aware that I oversimplify a few matters here, but it's necessary. Trust me-- I didn't want to write a dissertation today!)

A few days ago, I was discussing with a friend the idea that beauty could not have evolved, or that it would offer little reproductive advantage in the grand scheme of natural selection. Birds sing. They sing as a mating call. But there's no reason why a female bird should find a male's song pleasing. There is no gene, as far as we know, for preferences.

Likewise, there's no reason that a peahen should be pleased by the bright and daunting plumage of a peacock, nor is there any reasonable explanation of how having said plumage makes the male a better reproductive choice than anyone else.

There are beautiful mollusks that live at the bottom of the ocean. They have no eyes, and they can't perceive their breathtaking colors. The colors give them no special adaptations over their less attractive counterparts. And in our day-to-day adventures, we never would encounter them, so they give no advantage to anyone else.

Moreover, the ones which live within grasp of humans, you would expect, would evolve to be less attractive, since that gives them the advantage of being left alone on the beach, and not picked up and taken home, where they wither and die.

Attractiveness to the eye stimulates chemicals in the brain which are associated with the reproductive hormones. We know this. But consider this example: researchers discovered about five years ago that in male fruit bats, the size of the gonads is inversely proportional to the size of the brain. Interestingly, this gave reproductive advantage to both categories of males. Some females were attracted to the size, and they chose the males whose reproductive capacity was more obvious. The males with larger brains, however, were often able to “charm” females into mating with them. So the females who were less shallow, if you will, chose males who were more intelligent, giving their offspring a higher chance of propagating said brainpower, while the females who selected well-endowed males gave their own offspring larger reproductive organs. This polarization of traits means that mediocre males with neither larger testes nor larger brain are selected out of the population!

How all this affects us is a bit less obvious, but important nonetheless.

Imagine, for a moment, a lovely caveman community. It's spring, as we know, in the spring a young caveman's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love (1). Now without useful language, only minor grunts, a caveman (We'll call him Og) is not able to express his affection for a certain lovely cavewoman (aptly named Gra). Now, he has two choices: either take her by force as his wife, or convince her to come willingly. What's to stop Gra from choosing Gron, the strongest caveman in town, as her mate? Not to mention, Gron has a reputation of taking whomever he wants, and no one can stand up to him. Poor Og! Will he ever find love?

One day, as he is walking along the sandy shore, Og finds a round rock-looking object. It has a pretty flower design on it, and is quite nice looking. He thinks Gra will like it, so he takes it and gives it to her. Something important has just happened! Og has given the first gift! And now, Gra has a sentimental attachment to the sand dollar and, by proxy, to Og!

Later, Og finds a flat piece of bark. He smears some flower color on it, and again gifts it to Gra. First piece of art!

We now have a reproductive reason for art to exist.

But there's a major problem.

Let's fast-forward several thousand years. We've seen art develop from conjugal gifts. Probably first it was used to secure mates. As time went on, trade began to flourish, and art was no exception. Someone figured out that he could make the art and trade it for goods and services: the first professional artist! (the first corporate sellout as well?)

Cave drawings became a way to communicate, as well as decoration. Rocks were scarred with designs. Paints developed. Stories were told. Suddenly beauty was a commodity and it bled into everything: household tools had to be attractive. Precious stones developed value. And the human body became an expression of art as well when we mixed needles with ink.

Swords were embellished, breastplates stamped with images. Clothing became colorful. And in the Renaissance, our view of beauty developed even more. The early naturalists turned back to nature and smiled on it. They began to paint serene landscapes. Over the next five hundred years, our opinions on beauty were refined. Earth is beautiful. We established National Parks and Reserves to preserve that beauty.

But somewhere along the way, beauty turned against us.

As we discovered more of the world, we began to appreciate nature far above humanity. When we told the story of Earth, we cast ourselves as the villain, the invader, the rapist arriving on the scene and violently destroying what is pure and beautiful when left alone. In the words of Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: "What's so great about discovery? It is a violent, penetrative act that scars what it explores. What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world."

As such we vilified the human race, to the point where we are now blaming and berating ourselves for the very climate changes which seem historically to favor evolution, especially speciation, AND which have yet to prove their detriment.

So in the past century or so, our perception of beauty has created a situation where in favor of preserving the beauty of the Earth, we are almost willing to destroy ourselves.  Beauty has saved us, and condemned us. Beauty has become a villain, seeking to annihilate the human race rather than see Earth overdeveloped and species destroyed because of our selfish needs.

But I have one question:

When we are gone from Earth, who will be there to appreciate its breathtaking beauty?

Let's Get the Men Back

Dockers just started this awesome ad campaign calling on men to "wear the pants" again. To man up, if you will. While I'm perfectly happy being single (yes! finally!), I do appreciate a good strong man who knows how to treat people. So, in support of Dockers, I'm calling all men.