Reconciling Abundant Life with Daily Death

Wrap me tight in my prison of death.
Trade my mundane for the blessed.
Tear me down, bring me down, oh so down
that I can't see.
But my ears can hear and they know my wind is blowing
and my morbid flight is at hand.

****

Christ tells me that he has come so that I might have life, and that my life will be more abundant than a normal way of living. That's exciting.  I can get behind that idea. But then I turn and the church's mentor Paul is there saying he dies daily.  He's telling me that for God to increase I must lessen. How do we reconcile abundant life with daily death?  It's into this dichotomous faith that a Christian walks.

We can't take only one side of the argument. My childhood was largely shaped by the Holiness movement in small East Tennessee churches, where the rejection of self was the ultimate sign of being Holy, and where abundant life was more for the By and By than the Here and Now. But neither can you embrace the promise of abundant life without accepting the loss and struggle that must be intimately intertwined.

We exist on Earth as imperfect productions of a perfectly individual mold. We come to God through faith and belief, and we are saved. Then we begin conversion, from sinner to saint, and we go not from our imperfect self into God, but rather from our imperfect to our perfect self that is made in the image of God. We do die daily. We die to the World, to Sin, to vain ambitions, to lack of self-control, to depression, and to all the layers of unrighteousness that are covering our perfection. We die so that God can rebuild us. A broken sword can't be mended. It must be melted down and reforged. We are each broken, and the method to reform us is a process full of death and life.

The Tail of a Turtle

You may not be aware, but the lowly turtle is actually the first known purveyor of the stars from Planet Earth. Within the turtle’s squat tail lies the aftereffects of a weekend long party by the Borganzines around 5 million B.C. Due to the drunken exploits of a particularly wild group of physicists, a tiny interplanetary gravitational distortion field is housed in the tip of each tail. The result of this field is that the tip of every turtle’s tail is constantly gallivanting through the galaxy. A fact much to the chagrin of the Luvian Emperor, who choked to death when he accidentally bit one of the traveling turtle tails.

I Murdered a Man

I murdered a man

in a cold blooded flood of

passion/anger/frustrated peace.

I didn't look back until I did.

I saw him rise

and he declared my victory lie.

Then I bled and my water fled 

and I bowed to him that was dead.

That moment made of many lives

and weights pulling me to the ground.

There in the dirt I found the truth

and his flesh gave way to bone. 

Time over time he dies. 

My breath has never stopped.

A Story Never Told

a voice I'll never know

a hand I'll never hold

a cry I'll never comfort

a story never told

The Setting of Failures

So, where was I?  I remember some goals, something about being thirty, and for some reason Darth Vader fighting Jean Luc Picard (which would be awesome, btw). It's been some time since I wrote here, and frankly some time since I wrote more than a couple of sentences. 

I was reading through my old posts, and I saw one from 2012 where I turned 30. I looked at the goals I had set and was confronted with failures. It reminded me why I might simply be done with goals of that type...

I've got a bug to write this morning. After seeing those goals, I was tempted to slant negative. However, I don't want to be negative, so instead I'll focus on some accomplishments and other positives so that the next time I go perusing the past it'll be more fun. 

- I got a new job. It pays more, challenges me more, and has better people to work with. 

- I yell less. I've learned to better control my emotions. I've learned to better understand the root causes. 

- I bought a new car. 

- I firmed my belief in God and my desire to be a Christian. 

- I learned a ton of new IT skills. 

- I redeveloped my gaming hobby and beat a video game. 

- I fixed a pipe. 

- I faced some really deep lows but never gave up. 

- I reconciled with some family members. 

- I flew a helicopter. ( it was a toy)

So as I look back and rethink hose goals from another me, I realize I didn't fail at them all. I succeeded in becoming a better Christian, husband, father, and geek. I think my mistake in setting goals has always been putting the proverbial cart before the horse. I focus on the product instead of the tools. 

May the Fourth Be With You!

As anyone who is anyone knows, today is a National Holiday, May 4th, where Jedi, Sith, Bounty Hunters, and Wookies (do you add an 's'?) salute each other, "May the Fourth be with you!"  I thought it a great time to discuss the impact that Science Fiction has had on my life.

My earliest scifi memories are of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Picture it.  Vonore.  1987.  (my wife just smiled at that intro)  A five-year-old boy and his older brother are watching a beardless Will Riker discover the truth behind Farpoint Station and the awesomeness that is a "Saucer Separation".  Thus began my scifi love affair, and in particular many episodes of Star Trek with the aformentioned brother.  I was there with DS9 and the myriad instances of Ferengi earlobes.  I was frustrated with Voyager coming on UPN30 and having to use aluminum foil to get a barely watchable signal because we didn't have cable.  I watched all the movies, and regardless of the critics' viewpoints still get excited when Zefram Cochrane gets to warp speed.  Star Trek: Enterprise, honestly.... I missed it.  By then I was in college and it was on my radar but so was life.  However, I retain my geek status by the fact that I've watch most of the episodes on Netflix.

WAIT!  You've not even mentioned Star Wars.  This is May 4th.  You have to make this about Star Wars.  Oh, let me tell you, Star Wars was watched.  I'm not sure if it still is, but do you know how often Star Wars marathons came on growing up?  I didn't even have cable most of my life and it seems like it was on all the time.  Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi are three of my all time favorite movies.  They were awesome!  The prequel trilogy.... meh. I watched Phantom Menace.  Never saw the other two.  Probably never will, to be honest.   On top of the movies, the Star Wars book universe was my first foray into real scifi novels (I know, some are debatable).  When I was 12, I owned around 22 books in various series.  I remember devouring the Young Jedi Knight series, but I also read the Thrawn Trilogy, the X-Wing series, etc.

Outside of Star Wars/Trek, the memories are fewer but the Force is still strong with them.  I flew with The Last Starfighter, rode with the Transformers, had my mind blown with the Matrix, and manipulated Roger Wilco.  I was glued to Gradius (or some other, or multiple others of the same basic genre), and Knights of the Old Republic still makes me smile (literally, just bought it on the Steam sale).  Comic books also have their niche in my memories.   I collected them, getting a couple hundred I think, up until they just got too expensive.  The recent Marvel movies give me that inner smile that also accompanies playing a Mario game :).  I rode with Jules Verne under the sea and into Earth's core.

Science fiction (and its cousin, Fantasy) played a huge role in my development.  I was never at a loss for dreams and stories.  Always in the back of my mind (and in the front most days), were the characters of a story, or a show, or a game.  It's influenced my theology, my perceptions of reality, and my world view in countless other way.  As a Christian, I've had to come to terms with science, and the ever expansive world of speculative fiction was often the glass I was looking into as I went through my education.

So, on this May the 4th, I salute you SciFi!  You have been my co-adventurer these many years.  May the Fourth Be With You!

Have You Ever Lived in a Box?

I woke up one morning during college, slipped on flip-flops, and walked through the freezing cold to the dining hall.  Outside on the steps was a large cardboard box, like those you'd ship a refrigerator in.  Inside was an almost equally large bearded man, a student that I knew by face but not name.  He was imitating a homeless man to bring awareness to their plight. 

Have you ever lived in a box?

Sure you have.  It just wasn't made by cardboard.  It was made from the expectations of others, or those of yourself.  It was made out of the limitations of your worldview, or maybe from a physical disability.  Maybe the box was your theology.  Maybe it was depression.  These boxes stop us from our potential.  They keep us artificially contained. 

Today I'm in a box.  It's constrictive, immobilizing.  It has stopped all forward progress.  With me in this box are all my failures and unachieved goals.  Undone tasks and bitter regrets.  Its walls are clear, and outside it's a sunny day.  My healthy children are running around playing.  My best friend is with me, and she is beautiful as always. 

And my God is there, ever present both outside and in.  I say this not as a cliche, but honestly from a man who is the spiritual twin of Doubting Thomas.  With a certainty born of years of searching, He is here.

But so is my box, and thus far God hasn't shattered it. 

Sometimes we do indeed live in a box, and try as we might we cannot remove it.  Here lately those boxes come less often it seems, and when they are gone I drink in my world, my family, my God.  But still they come.