simplicity and the art of reconnection

I'm not going to lie. I lead a very un-simple life. I use InDesign to type up a letter to my landlord asking about rent. I then use the same program to make up an envelope and print to it. Handwritten stuff? On my penmanship skills alone: forget about it. Would it be easier to hand write a letter and then hand address the envelope? Yes, but I lead a un-simple life, I think I've said that.

In this un-simple life, I have a bible on my iTouch. Don't worry, I didn't pay for it, it was a gift from my wife, who thought I'd love an iTouch and she was right (as she usually is). The iTouch is far from simple and even more so after I jailbroke it and now have customized it to fit how I want it to feel: un-simple.

Back to that bible for a moment. I use it as a reference tool more than a study object. When I open my bible to read (which hasn't been much of late because I've been unfocused, but this is about un-simple, un-focus will come in another post) I like opening a bible, holding God's word in my hands, feeling it come alive.

I don't seem to find time to reconnect with God like I should, and I really want to. I really want to close myself in an empty building, too big for my to look through, and just be in God's presence, in God's word, in His majesty of silence and simplicity.

I'm not talking "get rid of everything I own and be a nomad" kind of simple, because in that life I see nothing simple. I'd always be worrying about my family's next meal or the gas to move my vehicle to our next location - not simple.

To some, yes, it's simple. Everyone has their own view of simplicity, but God has a better view and in His word, it shows us. Where? If I was better at picking up His word, I could tell you.

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parallel posts (like deuling banjos but better)

On her blog, Redefined Juliet mentions an article my wife had her read in a Cosmo (link to the blog by clicking her name).

Said article, 99 Ways to Please Your Man, was written by a female, probably one of those "I'll never marry but bang every guy I meet to write articles for softcore porn magazines." Let us be real: Cosmo is Penthouse without the nude folk.

Sorry, that's what the taste of bitterness looks like written.

My bitterness isn't that she's banging tons of dudes and I'm not, it's far from that. Far far from that. A few things, actually.

First, It goes back to what I said yesterday about Christian production values.

Where is the Christian 'Cosmo' at?

Yes, if we take the concept and turn it into what we do best (ie: screw things up) we'll get articles about how Magic: The Gathering is witch craft and Pokemon are agents of the devil. Even if I agree Pikachu is a bit satanic: please.

How about we get real for once, folks, and really talk about things we need to talk about.

When was the last time you prayed for the guy who cut you off, or the guy who took the last carton of milk, or the little kid who threw up in line in front of you, or for the people in the accident that made you late this morning?

Go into church this week and when someone asks "How's it going?" tell the truth instead of "Good, good. Things are... good..."

When was the last time lust grabbed you by the neck and screamed to be released?

Where do you pray? Where do you eat? Where do you do your business no one wants to know about but Jesus does?

When was the last time you thought of 99 ways to please your man/woman in a non sexual way?

Now, back to the list at hand. I read through them, and being married I knew the chance of any of those things happening were zilch to none. Mainly because I'm over weight and handicapped and some of the positions would take way more than my body could produce.

The sad part was, I began to think of times when even these 99 things done to me, one after another, would only please me for a bit, if that, and when it was over the moment would be too and my overall pleasure would be 'meh'.

Seriously speaking, when was the last time you had sex and it made the rest of your week perfect?

When was the last time you prayed and it made the rest of your week perfect?

99 Ways to Please Your Man: 1 through 99: pray for him, pray with him, and hug him from time to time, and he'll love you ever so more than you can imagine. I bet dollar to donuts that suggestion wasn't on their list.

Finally, why does it take sex to please a man? I mean, who made that into fact? Some days a doughnut (I'm hungry, sorry) would please me more than sex. Spending time hanging out in sweats, in front of the TV with my family, pleases me more than sex.

Sex with my wife is amazing, don't get me wrong. Being with her is pleasurable, but I am not a one dimension character on a badly written situation comedy. I am a human, with feelings, layers of feelings, complicated layers of feelings. Like an onion or a parfait, everyone loves parfait! I'm not here for sex and food. No, I'm here for love and companionship and family and Christ and His Church and sex is pleasurable but it takes more than that to make it pleasurable.

The "lets do it because we haven't done it forever" reason makes sex a bit less sexy. The "lets do it because I've been staring across the table at you all night undressing you with my eyes" sex is better. The "lets have sex because I love you and you love me and we were created to be together in this moment" sex is the greatest. If you've never had the kind of sex where you look over to your spouse and your eyes meet and it isn't animalistic lust driving you but overwhelming love, I think you need to really evaluate who you're with, or why you haven't reached that.

Yes, God created us to have sex to reproduce but at the same time, God also designed one specific person for you to be with and when you find that person, life is just that much better. I'm not making you question that the person you're with isn't the person you're supposed to be with, I'm making you question the reason you have sex with them.

No matter how you look at it, real sex is for the creation of life but in that real sex there has to be a bond formed beforehand of real love and if there isn't, what the hell?

I'm not going near the mole hill that is "what constitutes as married sex" because that is the same thing. When you are married, you are married for love, for the realization that you want to continue God's work with this person for the rest of your life, raising smaller versions of yourself in God's word, building up a community of God's people with a spouse in hand, children in tow.

Anything less than that is lust.

Question (didn't see that coming, did you? BAH!): Is it wrong to lust after your spouse? Shouldn't every bit of feeling we have towards them be love? When we look across the room and we want to Parkour over the couch, table and chairs, rip their clothes off and pleasure them in 99 different ways you have to take a minute and look at the reasons why.

Are your own feelings coming first? Pardon the pun, but are your own emotions of self gratification overwhelming the emotions of love? If so, it's bad lust. You can love someone so much that every ounce of you can't focus without touching them (even in non sexual ways) and still not be lust.

Yes, there is a fine line between lust and love and it's up to you to really understand the difference in any given situation.

What brought on this feeling? Was it the way she walked into the kitchen. That simple little way she walks that reminds you of the first time you met? That's love, folks. If something they do brings up strong emotions of that person, it's love. Smiling is the strongest sex potion EVER. You want to have sex with your spouse tonight? Smile. Really. Not that stupid goofy smile, but smile at them. When they look at you, even for a moment, smile like you're afraid to say something because it'll be embarrassing and you'll make an ass of yourself for doing it. It's cute, playful, and a turn on (from a guys POV, at least).

If that feeling came because you've had two too many beers. Lust. Or if the feeling came from watching television or a movie unless the movie reminds you of the person. The Notebook, a lovely little movie about old and new love, reminds my wife of our story (don't know why but it does) and it reminds her of the love we have for one another. It starts her mind into that direction, and even though she wants to dive over couches at me, that 'lust' is fueled by love.

If that feeling comes because you've been hit on all day by some other person, that's lust and not only a bad lust but a destructive lust. If that feeling comes because you've been hit on all day by your spouse, by all means, spend the evening locked away in the bedroom or shower or back seat of your van you bunch of love birds you.

If you video tape it, it's lust, and disturbing. If we have learned one thing since the beginning of the internet is that sex tapes ruin lives. See, self porn is still porn.

In the game of paper, rock, scissors; love beats lust and porn every time.

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Worship: The White Album

Last night I had to get some reading done (as I will tonight) and I had to find a way to block outside noises. I attempted to put on Classical or Enigma but the soothing music began to put me to sleep and being able to concentrate became impossible. So I did something I didn't even know my iPod could do: I put all of my Beatles on loop and turned down the volume so all I really could hear was the music and the lyrics were almost subliminal.

Now, being someone who learns by my senses, by doing, I began to be afraid that the music would be a distraction but it wasn't. It not only helped drown out the sound of Sprout, my wife on the phone and our house guest doing his homework, I actually remembered what I read.

I am a firm believer that music really speaks to peoples emotions and Contemporary Christian music either fits the bill or doesn't. There isn't a gray area. I found myself, writing an entire blog about how much I loath the local CCM station because the music is either really strong or really dull - there is no middle ground.

Yes, most radio stations are like that, I get that,

But why should Christian production houses of any sort be putting out sub-par stuff just because we're Christian?

It seems that there are plenty of secular companies that do a great job at what they do, but for some odd reason you put a Christian label on it, it starts producing junk.

Kirk Cameron, God bless him. Everyone remembers him from Growing Pains but he makes movies, mainly those that do the church circuit. You know, those movies that churches pay a license to show to a non paying audience (but that's another post all together).

I guess, my issue with Mr. Cameron (Kirk, not Crowe) is that he plays the same character in each of his movies and still at the same time he seems to not get it.

He plays the guy, who at the beginning of the movie, doesn't know God, doesn't need God, can do it all on his own. Then, by the end of the movie he finally understands that it has nothing to do with him but God and he gives everything over and he's happy and everything will be fine.

He's lying to you but that isn't my point either.

My point is, if these movies were regular released onto a non-church viewing group; someone who was seeing the movie as that, a movie, then it would be slaughtered. We are told to live in this world, not of it, so why isn't the stuff we produce better than what everything else out there is? We should be aiming to be better than what those around us are doing because we're giving 150% of ourselves to this project because it's to glorify God, not ourselves.

A song not sung as if God himself is sitting right next to us is de-glorifying God and there-for sin.

However in the same sense a book written, that doesn't mention God in a single page, and the writer has given a hundred fifty percent of their effort to make the best damn novel he can to glorify God is glorifying and the book is thereby written for God, because in all we do, we do for Him. The book doesn't have to be about someone named Curt who goes on this quest and in the end finds God or learns about God or anything of the sort. Christian writers don't have to write about God for the book to be about God.

I speak as a writer. I write, a lot, and most of the stuff I write I trash because I know I can't give everything I have to make what I started the best I can. I've been able a few times, but most of the stuff I start never goes anywhere. I'd rather start something and throw it away before it gets a hold of my time and effort and then I loose it than start something and know I can give it everything I have because everything I do is to glorify and nothing else.

If I could physically play an instrument, I don't think I'd ever play it anyway because if I gave anything less than it all then I'd be doing it wrong.

I have this script and it's sitting in my inbox (for safe keeping) and I'm itching to get production started because even though God isn't mentioned, isn't referenced, isn't alluded to, I used the blessed talents God gave me in His creation of me, and I used it at full strength to write the best damn script I could, and I know He's smiling down at me because of it.

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time management

Being stuck inside for three straight days really made me think about something:

How do you spend your time evangelizing?

We're all called, at one time or another, to evangelize, no mater who we are. Some do it better than others, some do it for the wrong reasons, but before we're done on this planet, we're going to do it.

The question is, how do we go about doing it? I'm not asking are you one of those people who take a soap box, a bullhorn and stand on a corner. Nor am I asking you if you hide little pamphlets in bathroom stalls.

I'm asking about your filler. What do you say on your soap box, pamphlet, blog.

Do you tell people to repent or they're going to hell? Do you give them a step by step guide to anti-materialism? Do you just do and hope people follow by example? Do you criticize what people are doing wrong in such a general way it doesn't point any real fingers? I'm personally guilty of that last one, and I hope I keep away from that from this point on.

I guess, what I'm looking for, is how do you evangelize?

Still confused?

I've spent many of hours in my first few months as a born-again (shivers) in Yahoo chatrooms (do you remember those?) telling people they need to repent and come to Christ. What kind of rooms? Christian chat rooms. I was preaching to the choir. I never dared go into a sex chat and go "how many of you are married and are currently having an online relationship with someone other than your spouse?" That could have been awesome, at the time, but at the same time now I still wouldn't be doing much help.

We talk about "planting seeds" because that's what we're supposed to do, plant seeds. The issue is, Jesus warns us about that same thing.

The beginning lines of Matthew 13, Jesus tells us of the farmer who sows his seeds and where the seeds land. This parable warns us of where to plant the seed.

If we just randomly go around telling people about Jesus, the birds of prey will come along and quickly pick away those pieces as if we had never been there.

If we go around, telling people about Jesus and don't help them get their footing into somewhere they can learn more and flourish, when the heat of sin strikes them, they'll fall.

If we dive into the sex chat rooms, give our two cents and leave those flourished plants to their own devices, the thorns and weeds of temptation will rip down the progress and destroy the spark we started with.

We're told to use our time, wisely, and to focus, nurture, love those we tell about Jesus, to make them understand it's more than a personal relationship with Christ but a communal relationship with His Church in a Christ like way.

We're not called to bash other peoples works. We're not called to picket military funerals. We're not called to claim a natural disaster was caused by a pact with the devil. We're not called to be of this world, to use this worlds hatred against each other.

We're not here to throw mud but to plant crops. We're here to become farmers again.

In Micah 4:3, we're told "...They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. ..." showing we will all become farmers, like we were in Eden before the fall, as we're called to be now.

Fishers of Men. meh. It's been overused, and I think it's a little far fetched to think of ourselves as just fishermen.

What do fishermen do? They cast a net, grab as many fish they can and throw the small ones back to mature up more. What do farmers do? They attend to every crop, personally taking care of crops that need a little attention. They add a little more water or fertilizer to the corn if it isn't growing as fast as it did last season. It cuts back the weeds on the fruit when they start to pop through. If a fisher catches a sick fish, it's tossed out, to keep from ruining the other fish. It's not the fishers fault it got sick, but if an apple is rotten, on the tree, then the farmer is to blame.

So, how do you spend your time evangelizing? Do you spend your time fishing or plowing?

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