'Twas the Night after Christmas...

...and I finally felt like writing a blog again. It turns out that trying to be a writer for a living has left me somewhat less than eager to sit down and type out big entries on my blog. I think there's only so much structured thought (and staring at a screen) that my mind can handle.  With that in mind, this entry (and perhaps more and more of those to come) will be very unstructured and random.  The nice thing about having a blog with very few readers is that you can do things like that with no real ramifications. This blog has certainly gone through several different phases of more/less structure, and it will continue to be whatever I want and need it to be going forward.  Right now that means making it more personal and less conceptual, although I have no idea how that correlates to how beneficial it is for anyone else.  It might make me more likely to write more often, but I don't know if quantity is even as important as quality.  All I know is, if you want to read it, I'd love to have you do so! I do continue (even late at night) to hold myself to some standards of writing, so I will at least promise that-- I won't get completely lazy :)

It's funny to me how even the best things in life can become so formulaic that we do them without thinking.  I know I've talked about this before, but I seriously tend to do this with just about everything. Blogging is a prime example.  I like to share my poetry and thoughts, but sometimes I have such a rigid idea of what a blog post of mine can be that I don't write anything for a long time just because what that formula prescribes doesn't sound good to me!  That, in a word, is silly.  I want to do it less.  Random posts help me break out of it.

An interesting issue that brings up in my mind is that randomness can also become a formula.  This is a huge deal in the discussion of modern poetry, which I've been reading a lot of and a lot about recently.  Basically, poets around the turn of the 20th century got so tired of all the poetry "rules" about rhyme, meter, etc. that they just discarded them and tried to start all over without rules.  The thing is, they rejected the rules so rigidly that modern poetry quickly became just as stereotypical as what it tried to rebel against, only with fewer readers.

Now, I don't think poetry has to have rhyme or meter to be poetry.  Free verse can be wonderful if the words are chosen with the same diligence innately required by adherence to rhyme and meter.  It turns out, though, that it's also easy to use the whole "I don't follow the formula" thing as a cop-out for producing work with less effort and attention to quality.  As I look back at some of my poetry, I see that I too have done this.  I have traveled to the Wasteland and seen that many Waldo's have gone that way before, and continued on my journey.

Speaking of poetry, I have a B.A. in English with a concentration in poetry... and somehow I'm still woefully ignorant of good poetry throughout history.  I realized this with an unpleasant shock the other day, and I have a desire to fix it.  I own the Longman anthology of English poetry, so I just started at the beginning.  It's been a lot of fun, and I'm in the 18th century now.  I wonder why I didn't care about my education while I was actually doing it?

Speaking of that, I also unpleasantly realized that I haven't really cared about much of anything for a lot of my life.  I've been afraid, I guess.  I just want to stop living life like that.  I want to do things I really care about, and I want to really care about the things I'm doing.  Those are two subtly different things, in my mind, but I don't feel like explaining why.  Maybe you feel the same way and you'll just get it.

The more I begin to fear the Lord, the less I fear everything else.  This is what I think it means to be wholehearted.  Fear divides you, unless you fear the One whose great desire is to put you back together.  I don't want to live life in fragments, and I think God can make that happen.

I'm ready to care.

You know, I think you can only relax when you really care.  If you won't work hard on anything, you can't relax because there's nothing to relax from!  I know that when I've gone through times of just coasting, I couldn't even enjoy my downtime because it was all downtime.  I constantly had the feeling that I should be doing something else (which was true).  Entertainment, relaxation, procrastination-- they just won't get you where you're going.  Take it from someone who knows.  (By the way, that reminds me of a cool song called "Let the Drummer Kick" by Citizen Cope.  Someone on Youtube made a really cool animation that goes with it.)  To belatedly finish the thought I was just working on: if you work when you need to, all the fun things you get to do become amazing blessings rather than desperate attempts to escape your gnawing conscience.  It's wonderful.

Speaking of music and wonderful, music is wonderful.  Almost everything I was given for Christmas has to do with music (or else food, but that's a different topic).  I think that should tell me something about music.  I care about it!  It's part of what God's called me to, and I want to be better at it and appreciate it more.

Speaking of absolutely nothing in particular, I had one of the greatest text message conversations of my life the other day.  I had been at my parents before going to a party, and afterwards my mom texted me asking how it was.  I told her it was pretty good and pretty much what I was expecting, and I asked her how her day was.  She told me four things she did that day and said that I wasn't being very descriptive.  That's when it hit me: men and women don't understand each other.

If you ask a guy how his day was, you will get an evaluation.  It will probably be short. If you ask a woman how her day was, you will get a description.  It may be quite long.

Obviously, neither side understands the question they're asking, so both end up vaguely dissatisfied with the answers they get.  I think I can solve the problem, though-- we just need to stop asking questions.  Next, I'll be tackling world hunger.  Believe it or not, I also do some of my best and most organized thinking late at night like this.  But tonight is a holiday.

Two last things, and then off to try to live for the rest of the year like Jesus really did come to live with us and die for us... and also to try not to forget the giver for the gifts.

1. Today at church we played O Holy Night, and it was a powerful moment of worship.  Less than 3 minutes later, we were playing Jingle Bell Rock... and there was nothing weird about that.  We praised God with all we had, and then we laughed and danced like crazy people.  Or put another way, we cared about something deeply and invested our hearts in it, and then we were able to have joy in the ridiculous and simple.  Before today, I wouldn't have thought that Jingle Bell Rock could be a worship song.  I think it was this morning.  I can't even believe I'm saying that.  But what if we honored God in that moment just as much as in the rest of the service?

2. Penguins are pretty much the most comical creatures alive.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Streetlights Playlist

Recently I've been asking the Lord kind of a strange question: "God, what do I like to do?"

I realize that might sound a little bit crazy, but the fact of the matter is that I've spent a lot of time worrying about what everyone else thinks and what they like me to do and be. So much, in fact, that I had actually lost sight of what I myself actually like to do. I know I talked a bit about this in a previous entry, but I've been trying to figure out what I actually care about as part of discovering my identity.

See, what I'm guessing is that the things I care really deeply about are things that God has placed in me for a reason, things he wants me to do something with. The part I'm still learning about is slicing through the fallen brokenness on top of all those things in order to find what's underneath.

Anyway, one of the things God has shown me that I really like to do and care about is music. That is a pretty broad category, but I still think that's the best way for me to put it. I love listening to almost all music, and I also like making music in any possible way. I have a song in my head constantly (although I unfortunately have no control over which one it is at any given moment), and I'm always humming, whistling, singing, playing or making a beat to something! So, I think God has given me this passion to glorify him.

The most obvious expression of that passion in action would be worship, which is a great way that I can use music for God's glory. I don't think worship is limited to my own singing or playing, though, which got me thinking about my music collection. I've noticed for awhile now that the idea of streetlights is a theme in the music I like to listen to, so I started looking through my library for any song that has to do with that. I found more than I was even expecting! Therefore, I'm pleased to announce and share with you my Streetlights playlist. All these songs either talk directly about streetlights (i.e. use that specific word) or otherwise remind me of Ephesians 5:8-14, my theme verse for this blog (and life in general really-- see first entry). Here it is:

1. Work: Jars of Clay
2. Sleeping In: Nevertheless
3. Illuminate: Project 86
4. Far & Gone: Day of Fire
5. Serial Sleepers: House of Heroes
6. Oh! Gravity: Switchfoot
7. Turn On the Lights: Sanctus Real
8. Shine With Me: P.O.D.
9. Sandbox Praise: Pax217
10. Burn For You: TobyMac (feat. Double Dutch)
11. Murexa: Falling Up
12. Shine: Newsboys
13. Sleeper: Everyday Sunday
14. I Need Love: Sixpence None the Richer
15. In the Light: dc Talk
16. Broken: Lifehouse
17. Light Up Ahead: Further Seems Forever
18. This Love: Stavesacre


I'm actually listening to this playlist as I write this, and it really encourages me, so I hope it can do the same for you. As it turns out, this playlist is almost exactly one 70 minute CD worth of fantastic music. If anyone is interested in hearing it, I would be glad to burn you a CD (which, by the way, is actually legal if it has no more than one song from any album. Record labels see it as free advertising rather than a copyright violation! And trust me, once you hear this music, you'll be interested in buying more of these artists' stuff). Also, I'm sure many of these songs can be viewed/listened to on Youtube, so check some of them out!

I'll finish with one more verse that has to do with the streetlight call. This verse seems to run through all the songs here as well, and it has inspired me for many years, since even before I thought about the idea of streetlights. Matthew 5:14-16-- "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

So it all comes back to worship in the end. Really, that right there is who I am, and who you are. Let that be my song.

Lists and Randomness

As I predicted in my first entry, it turns out that sometimes I don't have much going on in the way of serious or meaningful thoughts. But, this is my blog and I'm free to post whatever random stuff I come up with, so in that spirit I've added some lists to the right-hand sidebar of the blog. I noticed that due to my general long-windedness when talking about serious subjects, there was starting to be a huge chunk of boring white space underneath the information over there on the right, so this is the beginning of my efforts to fix that.

So, the first list is of my favorite (read: most used) websites, sites that I think are exceptionally useful, fun, or well-made. Basically, anything I link to in any of my posts will show up there, so that if you like one of the links in the posts you won't have to go searching through all the entries to find it again. Believe me, this will be much more important someday when there are more than five posts here. (As a side note, I bet that a pretty fair percentage of blogs started on free sites like this never end up with more than, say, 3 posts on them before people quit/lose interest. However, I'm not one to do things like that, and I'm in this for the long haul. Someday there's going to be a heck of a lot of text on this blog, and at that point you really won't want to search through all my rantings to find one stupid link. I'm just planning ahead.)

Second, we have a running update on the bands (in order) that currently find themselves in the honored position of having all their cd's in my main case. This is subject to change based on my whims and tastes, and based on whether I ever have enough money again to buy cd's. All of these artists are very anti-bubble (see previous post) in my mind... a lot of them are Christian bands, but ones that are more outside the Christian system and on the indie side of things. A lot of people will not have heard of a lot of the stuff there, but that's fine by me. Check it out if you want, as it's all quality music first and foremost (and by music, I mean music and lyrics. I find that the music that I really like over a long period of time always has interesting/meaningful words, not just creative instrumentation).

Finally, and probably most controversially, I included a list of my favorite movies ever. Not what I think are necessarily the BEST movies ever, just my favorites (which is an important distinction: otherwise I'd have no justification for having Citizen Kane lower than Mystery Men). And yes, these are generally in order, so you can see my rankings. However, the ranking process was far less than scientific, and it may be prone to gross miscalculations and glaring omissions. Those situations are where you should post a comment and remind me of important movies I may have forgotten and/or campaign for movies you like to be moved up or movies you hate to be moved down the list. I welcome all manner of comments about this.

By the way, this list was created with a great deal of help from IMDb, another amazing website now appearing in the links list. (http://www.imdb.com/) This site is definitely the most comprehensive website on the net for information about movies. Ever see someone in a movie and be like, "I know I've seen him before, who is that??" This website can tell you, in painstaking and beautiful detail. It's fantastic. It also has information on objectionable material, so you can avoid a movie with stuff you don't want to see. In fact, by way of disclaimer, that may come in handy with my list, since even though these movies are very clean for the most part, there's a few movies on there with some stuff that you might want to skip. I know I skip certain parts of some of these movies when I watch them, so don't take my recommendation as proof that there's nothing bad in there. Be wise and skip it. Also, feel free to let me know if there's something you think I should remove from the list.

And with all the lists, feel free to suggest sites/bands/movies that I might like that aren't currently on there. It's always fun to see what other people think is the greatest and why. That's all for now... stay tuned for more poetry coming up soon.

The Bubble

These are some of Jesus' words on the challenge of being a light in the darkness, which he prayed to his Father for us in anticipation of the problems his streetlights would face:

"I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world." (John 17:14-18)

Have you ever noticed how Christians have their own little set of catchphrases that we throw around like so many theological frisbees? You know, those little buzzwords that we've used so much that we don't even quite think about their meaning anymore but just assume that other Christians will understand? The ones that make people who aren't Christians go "I'm sorry, what now?" Well, This passage is probably the origin of the Christianese saying that we should be "in the world, but not of it."

But, before I go any further, I henceforth move that people who are trying to be streetlights avoid speaking Christianese at all costs, because of two main problems with it:

1.) It makes non-Christians, the very people we want to serve, love and share truth with the most, think we're crazy and want nothing to do with us and our elitist lingo.

2.) These trite little sayings dramatically minimize the true power and worth of the Bible, and also of our calling. This passage is a prime example of that.

Take a look at it: our little catch phrase version of this passage can only tell us that we find ourselves in this place that we don't really belong, so we should live here without letting the sins and customs of the world stain us and hinder our purposes. Not only does this shallowness not even begin to cover the heart of the passage, it also perpetuates what is probably the single biggest shortcoming of the Christian church today, a phenomenon I like to call the Christian Bubble.

This bubble mentality comes, as far as I can tell, from a line of thinking something like this: Well, we aren't supposed to be of the world, but we can't get out of it. So, maybe the best way to do that is to insulate ourselves from it. We'll form a protective shell around ourselves made out of catchphrases and exclusively "Christian" products so that no one else can relate to us. That way, we can interact only with other Christians and not be somehow tainted by the affairs of the world.

As my sarcasm should surely indicate, I think this way of living is ridiculous and completely unscriptural (although, unfortunately, all too easy to fall into). Look again and see what the scripture above actually says for us to do. Jesus could easily have prayed for God to actually take Christians out of the world, but he specifically did NOT do that. He wants us here. Why? Because of the message of good news we're supposed to be bringing (which it says two verses later than where I stopped quoting in that passage above).

Further, who is supposed to be protecting us from the world? Not us, with our walls and insulatory bubble. Jesus prays that God the Father would do the protecting! Why fear being tainted? If we go with the right heart, the protection is already provided. I don't know exactly why Christians treat people who don't believe in Jesus like they're carrying some kind of deadly contagion, but it has to stop. How can we love people if we're afraid of them?

Speaking of love, how does that passage say that we are sent? Exactly like the Father sent Jesus! First off, that's really encouraging, that we're privileged to share his message. But, it's also quite the challenge, because how did Jesus relate with the world? If you're thinking he loved it and served it, you're right because Jesus loved to get in the middle of people's lives with his radical kindness and relate to them right where they were. Still, that doesn't quite cover it. To really be sent into the world like Jesus was, as this verse commands, means we lay down our lives for it in order to bring people to God. Jesus was completely spent on this mission, and that is our call as well. Sounds a little different than just "in, not of," no?

Side tangent: Unfortunately what the Christian community has been doing instead of spending itself in love and pursuit of the people God calls them to reach is insulating itself. Heaven forbid that we listen to and like the same music as people "of the world." Why do that when we can make a lower quality, dumbed down version of the same product and then market it only to ourselves, since there's so many of us? And why stop at music! We can do this with movies, books, toys, t-shirts, etc. etc.... the possibilities are endless. Why would we need to be conversant with the mainstream culture that is all people we need to love will know?

Funny thing about that way of thinking and marketing is, it takes the world's stuff, then modifies it (usually making it worse) and takes it away to its own little protected zone. That's being of the world, but not in it, the exact opposite of what the strategy is supposed to be doing!

This is the Christian Bubble. And as it relates to Cleveland specifically, its line of thinking continues by saying, "why live in the city where the actual problems are, when we can settle in the suburbs and fence ourselves into a gated community?" See how the insulation works? Now, I'm not saying everyone has to live within the city limits to serve God, just that suburbia provides a perfect layer of insulation from the world for people looking for one. In reality, the suburbs have plenty of problems that Christians living there could address too if they were living like Jesus sent them to live. I mean, where do you think city drug dealers make their biggest sales? (If you don't know, the answer is to rich kids from the suburbs.) The suburbs just hide their problems better.

Anyway, all of that was kind of an extended sidebar to the main point. I don't mean to be a downer, even though I am a touch cynical and angry about all this. The truth is, Jesus has promised us the most fulfilling life imaginable in taking his message to the world, not in avoiding it.

Incidentally, that's the reason I like Stavesacre, my favorite band in the world (http://www.stavesacre.com/). All the members of the band are Christians, but they rebel against the Christian bubble and take their music to secular locations and just rock it out. They make a quality product that offends some Christians, but they don't seem to care. They're calling people to more than the bubble. Their song "It's Beautiful Once You're Out Here" (video available on Youtube) is about this, as is another older song, "Sundown Motel." I'll quote from that one to finish off this entry:

I don't believe this is what God ever intended, so I think it's time to go... The sun is going down, I say we follow it out of town, We've been here for far too long... and in the morning, when it rises, maybe it will shine for us...

Turns out that the call of the streetlight is for Christians and non-Christians alike: "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." I mean, a streetlight, by definition, brings light where? Not in some little protective covering placed around it, but in the streets.

We've been in a bubble far too long. But some of us are starting to break out...