assignment 1: the distance between absence and excess

My roomate Bethany has taken it upon herself to assign me topics to write about. The thing about Bethany is that basically everything that comes out of her mouth is a sound bite... and not a shallow sound bite, not a throw away line, but things that just stick with you, you have to chew on them for a while to get them, and when you do (IF you do, cause sometimes they are so brilliant, she needs to explain them to you :) ) you realize that you could unpack them for a few hours, write some essays on them and then bring them up to other people as if they were your own and they would think you are just so smart-- all the while, you know inside that you are not and you are sad--but happy, too, that you know someone like her :)

Ok, so, now that you have an introduction, here we go...

Oh, wait, so you might be wondering why i need to be "assigned" things to write about... ok, the reason is.... that i can't think of good ideas on my own. I just can't. I mean, sometimes i can, but it is rare. If someone gives me a sentence, a word, a concept, anything to get me going, i can go. But sitting in front of my computer, i get nothing. i can begin on some existential idea, or how i am feeling, but i think without direction, feelings just get so messy, so cerebral, so just unclear, that they don't really stick to anything and you feel sort of cheap after you read inarticulated, unformulated, badly written feelings, because they probably mean way more to the person who wrote them than to you, the reader. I digress....



Its interesting that Bethany should give me this topic to write about, because as of late, i have been going through a subtle, but drastically needed paradigm shift... and its a shift that every fleshly bone in my body wants to resist. The sift is that I am trying to put aside excess and exist in the absence of the part of myself that craves worldliness.

Let me present a few cases in point:

1. Everytime i am in the supermarket, no matter how hard i think i am trying, i CANNOT stop looking at the supermarket tabloid magazines. I wonder if there is some sort of condition for this, because, seriously, it is a strange, sick addiction. It begins innocently enough. You just glance over.... "hmmm, i wonder what is going on with Brad and Angelina... oh wait, new news on Jessica and Nick!!... ohh, let me have a look here at another" and then its over. You have to look at every magazine cover out there, every tantalizing headline, every exclusive pic (though they all look waaaaay too photoshopped to be real anyways). And eventually you just have to grab one, flip through it and there it is, you have fully emmersed yourself in the alternate universe known as "celebrity culture"... you greedily soak up all the glossy, pictures of the beautiful people, you read the little articles about their spending habits and their parties and their weddings and divorces and... ugh, it makes my stomach turn over a bit just reliving it. You do this for the 3-5 minutes you are waiting in line (sometimes its shorter, if your boyfriend gives you a hard time for getting sucked in and then you have to put the mag back and defend yourself that you just wanted to see the film reviews or, uh, whatever) and then the minute you get your change and walk out the door, you realize what you have done. And you just get sad because of it, since you promised yourself you wouldn't perpetuate the whole sick cycle anymore. The thing is, that in your stronger moments, you have recognized the pitfalls of celebrity culture. For you (because some people can remain healthy in their relationship with celebrity culture), you know that its not a good thing to begin tangling yourself up in the "news" you find in these magazines (or on E! or VH1 or the gossip section of MSN.com or whatever other outlet you can find). I think what happens to me (i am back to first person, its hard to go in 2nd person for so long), is that i start seeing what i never will have. I am seeing what i will never look like. I am recognizing who i will never be. And because i will never have it, somehow I want it. And in deeper introspection, i realize that the ideal of being beautiful and rich is not even what i should want in the first place. Its not bad to want to be attractive or to want to be stable financially, but its not what we should want in excess or over anything else. So i am doubly screwed, since i am wanting something i can't have and then seeing that i am wanting something i shouldn't want.

Proverbs 11:28 Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf.


2. Secondly, clothes. Further, hair. In addition, makeup. In a word: beauty. There is another haunting reality i am facing: you know how you go to your closet sometimes and no matter how many possible outfit combinations stare back at you, you cannot figure out WHAT TO WEAR?! This is me, nearly every morning. For some reason, even if i have just washed everything i own or just bought a new tank last week... it takes me so long to figure it out. And then, after way too long figuring out what to put on my body, i have to then tackle the hair. Now, though i get it cut at a very sassy salon by a very hipster hairstylist, my hair never ceases to anger/disatisfy/frustrate me every morning. And i don't even want talk about my face, cause its never enough, there is always an uimperfection here, a zit under there... and the color is too pale, the nose too big. And though i spend the better part of an hour getting ready, i still walk out of my house not quite sure that i look good enough. And for what? Desire? Acceptance? Really, deep down, what is it i am trying to accomplish every morning?

Proverbs 31:30Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.



SO, what do these examples have to do with the distance between absence and excess? and shifting a paradigm? Second things first. The paradigm i am trying so hard to change, the way i have lived for so long, is the pattern of thinking that says, somehow, that what i have and what i look like are what define me. Its such a freaking cliche, "all you need is love," "money is the root of all evil," etc etc and i know that, but its so real right now for me.

I feel that this season, this time, is so definitive for me. I feel for the first time since i turned 18, like a real adult and i want to begin my adulthood with healthy thinking, with truth, with a paradigm that i can be proud of, that God could be proud of. I want to be defined by who i am, who i am made to be, not with the things i can earn or do. I don't think i have quite figured it all out yet, how to shift, to shift and not go back. But i am trying real hard. i hope that the image i am made in can be the image i see. That the riches i received for free can be all i need.

And back to the assignment:

The distance between absence and excess is... nothing. Because excess is absence.... it is absent of value, of meaning, absent of anything. And the only absence we need is that of the part of our self which makes us believe we need more than what we have so graciously been given.

in pursuit of illumination

in pursuit of illumination, one must ignore any sense of their own nature and commit to the diligent task of denying everything they would normally want or do.

in pursuit of what is only light and without any sort of darkness, you become incredibly lonely and afraid at times, realizing that in pursuing light, you are implicity existing in and out of darkness.

What does the light need?

If you ask the most trusted and reliable source of information (google), it will tell you that:

the light needs a source
the light needs polishing
the light needs to be switched on where people issues and attitudes cause organizations to stumble
the light needs a little work

But sometimes light needs to be slowed down so that signals can be routed in the right direction

It would seem that if you pursue illumination too quickly, your speed will extinguish what you are pursuing.

and so i am still.