This Is What Happened...

I haven't blogged in awhile...It's been a quiet couple of months...lots and lots has happened but, to be honest I haven't felt it. My heart has been quiet and so I've felt I had to say less...not just that I had less to say. I think there is a reason for that. It has been an interesting last couple of months...lots of ups and downs..but mostly ups and it's been great...I stood in the back of my congregation in Eureka and decided somewhere in my heart about 6 weeks ago that if God had me here for a reason...I should live in that. I should believe that this is what He has for me..and if He is giving it..it is always in my best interest...I needed to trust that... But I'm not good at that, nor am I used to not feeling anxiety, not worrying. I think generally when I look back on the entirety of my life it has been characterized by the downs...or I have characterized it by the downs. It has been easy to say these are the highlights of my life and really mean the ...

If it weren't for that one night when I was 15...one 15 minute period really...my life would look totally different. I suppose we could all see that on the way to that moment and since there is a dizzying array of events that could have changed everything too...but they didn't and this did. There are little bends in life, different footfalls on the same path, but then there are other paths, paths almost completely untraveled covered my moss and lichen. These paths change everything. I often feel isolated because of my path, but I wouldn't be who I am without it. I think what it comes down to for me is that the best moments of my life, when I find myself most complete, most known both by someone else and in understanding myself is when I find myself in the presence of the maker of that path...when I again sit in the moments where everything changed. Even still today 14 years later, when I meet him again all else faded to insignificance and the greatest moment...

Contrary to popular opinion I am coming to believe freedom means being able to choose the right thing, even when it's hard. Anybody can be a slave to their desires, lusts, wants, etc...being able to not let those things control you, not letting your mind be enslaved to your momentary hopes? That is freedom, living beyond the cage you live in. Freedom is not being what you are told you have to be, and choosing to be what you want to be beyond the whims of culture...beyond the whims of emotion or hormones... To often screens with glowing letters and pictures tells us that life with no restraints or boundaries is the ideal. The satisfaction of an invincible body and redos of video games ought to be the norm, ought to be real life...and if it's not easy..it's probably not worth striving for.  ...It's not popular to follow the crowd or tradition. Being different is cool. Sometimes the hardest things in our American culture is to...not be an independent being...

I don't know that anything is really wrong...in a lot of ways it's right...but I'm bored with myself...and, maybe that is normal and I am only now entering a world of normalcy other humans live in most of their lives... I want my life to matter, I want it to be interesting but I don't think life has ever been so daily as it is here. I mean it is uneventful. I rise at 7:30 I read and eat breakfast. I go to work. I eat lunch at noon and dinner when I get off. I usually work out in the evening. I think about writing but just keep coming face to face with the fact that my life is very uneventful...it seems just another figure on somebody's data chart for days worked, hours banked, income earned, tasks completed or in process. I am a measuring tool for an external thing which is not me and it's success...I do not hate it, but I suppose not hating your life is hardly a destination. I am bored with myself and my adventures...or lack there of. A weekend get away...

Hearts are like feet… They start soft, unable to support one’s own emotional weight…which leaves one sobbing in tears or giggling to them at a moment’s notice. At first they must be wrapped and warmed in simple things…others are left to tend for them, but as you grown they change. They become stronger and take a form of their own, they can now bear more and stand alone longer. But when unprotected they can be hurt, gouges can be taken from soul and sole alike And when rubbed against life like sand paper both become calloused and hardened….sure over time that callous may lessen, may start to heal, but it takes far longer than we would like and although a calloused heel is good for walking along a rough road barefoot it is not good for a foot massage….with the coming of one you lose something of the other and to which ever extreme you tread there will be consequences… And yet both fuel journeys, you cannot have adventures without both...the hardness to bea...

I've started to refer to this time as “Jordan Time”...a time when I concentrate on well...me. Tonight I got to have some good me time...good “Speez” time...as the kids say. I went outside...got to sit down, smoke my pipe... play this nylon string guitar I borrowed from a friend of mine. I even wore my super skinny jeans and my beanie bought at a thrift store in Wisconsin. It went along well with my discount slip-ons and thrift store hoodie. I was channeling my inner Bon Iver singing in overly high falseto and being all woodsie. I thought I should throw on a flannel and after making a gold albumn crack open a barrel of fermented backwoods maple syrup as a chaser. I have provided a picture that some of you have been asking for for your viewing enjoyment....I didn't take it...I am smoking a pipe...(Thanks to Meg for catching me being picturesque.).. O enough of that! I got to think about this thing that happened today. I think it was good but...well, let me explain. Today...

So...team...this one is...a little unfinished. Forgive me for being unfinished, I just feel like it' s a lesson I'm in process on and just don't have the right answers...if I ever will. Enjoy some vague glimpses into some of my thoughts and concerns. Good luck. So I feel like I need to learn friendship better...with everyone but especially with women. Being all old...ish and single sucks. It makes you all antsy and paranoid at the same time....like any attractive woman who walks into your life may carry both the burden of complete stranger and potential “mother of my children.” However, as you may assume, this isn't really fair. It certainly isn't fair to me...It's stupid. It's setting myself up...What kind of mindless fool walks around unable to picture a member of the opposite sex as anything more than a potential mate...besides roughly 50 percent of men between the ages of 13 and 80. When I do this I totally cheat myself out of relatio...