She once asked me what I did with my anger.  No, check that.  She once asked me what I did with my stress.

  "Go for a run," I said.  "Cook something.  Bake something.  Have a beer or glass of wine at the end of the day." 

  What?  You expected "pray"?  That's the "Mighty Man of God" answer, the "My-Isn't-He-So-Pious" answer--not the honest answer when you're out of prayer like you're out of coins at the laundromat and you still have a load of dirty underwear to go.  When I'm stressed, I do anything I can to avoid meeting that stress head on.  I'll watch a movie.  I'll play Kongregate for hours.  I'll daydream of flashbulbs and Oprah and black tie dinners for having "made it" as a novellist.

  This highlights how I've tended to deal with anger-- mostly unhealthily.  Conventional wisdom says that we need to channel our anger effectively, but what if you don't know what you're quite angry about?  What if, as they say depressed people are, that anger is most keenly focused upon yourself?  In these cases, I'm not sure how I can channel my anger effectively.  So in recent days, I've been trying something new-- mostly, at her suggestion. 

  "So what are you going to do with all these things you're feeling?  This anger?  This guilt over this anger?  This disappointment?  This sadness?"

  "I was going to just let it pass," I said, hoping that for once I wouldn't be lying when I said I could let things pass after all.  "You know, try to let it go with time..."

  She leaned forward, her bright blue eyes twinkling over the tops of her dark brown glasses.  "Oh yes.  That's worked really well for you before, hasn't it?"

  Touché.

  So I began thinking more seriously about other ways of handling negative emotions, and the one way I have not tried is to meet it head on by talking it out with the people whom I say I'm in community with.  Yes, that dreaded 'c' word that becomes so meaningless with repeated use, but with care, becomes a concept that, because we are all in Christ, needs to be worked out carefully and, in cases like these, sacrificially.  And sacrifice, I need not tell you, is always painful.

  Part of me railed against the idea from the beginning.  Who was I to bother other people with my difficult emotions?  Wasn't everyone just going to get along nicely without me rocking the boat and speaking the truth not only of other people (as I am becoming used to doing) but, for once in this rickety life, to speak the truth of myself?  Perhaps this was all a very "cultural" thing where the dictates of harmony and immediate peace outweigh the stresses of confrontation and addressing the problem as what we always envisioned adults to actually be like?  (The irony, of course, is that adults almost never work this out.  I always thought that adults did the mature thing until I became one and realized I almost never do.)

  So I did the mature thing:  I sat on it for a few days.  And in those few days, I felt my pain subside just a smidgen.  Why would I disturb the scabbing process taking place over my heart?  Well, because I wasn't being emotionally healthy and I knew it.  I was severing lines of communication and openness for fear of discomfort.  I was squashing a tidal wave of powerful emotions because I was afraid of what I might do and how I might do it.  Repression isn't the right word-- though I probably have done that in the past.  Repression implies I don't know it's there and it comes out in a tumour somewhere else in my character.  No, this was just good ol' bottling up the pain and hoping something good comes of it.

  Nothing good came of it.  I was being oversensitive to everything, every little slight, every little comment.  It was hurting me to keep sitting on it like a hen incubating a snake egg that will hatch its own doom.

  So I went and tried to do the mature thing.  The "adult" thing.  And man, did it hurt even more.  My instinct is not to talk about it at all, but because I was hoping to actually live out what I teach when I talk about reconciliation and mediation, I knew I needed to go through it.  Not just so that I can tell others "yeah, I've done that" and so give myself a little street cred when it comes to working things out in community, but for my own sanity I needed to breathe deep and plunge in. 

  I wish I could say that I said everything that I really was feeling, but so much of what I was feeling was a confused jumble that half of what I was saying was awry.  Yes, I was angry but no, I wasn't angry and you but yes, I was angry at you, but no, I wasn't, so I must have been angry at myself, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes...

  The cumulative effect of all this has been that I have opened up even more cans of worms.  I feel a bit like a raw wound, but there's maggots in it cleaning out all the necrotic tissue, giving me an even chance at healing well.  What I fear is mostly for others as I wonder whether I have handled such difficult and volatile emotions well.  It would have been easier, after all, just to leave it.  Not to say anything.  To smile and gasp "I'm all right, Praise the Lord."  But that would have been dishonest, and it would not have silenced the sarcastic quip that rattled about my head:  "Yes, that's worked really well for you before, hasn't it?"  No, I needed to forge on.   Perhaps I am being selfish in expressing pain in a semi-public way.  Perhaps I was taking too big a risk in believing that others could hear such complex, negative emotions come pouring out of me.  Most people don't know what's going on, but they know I'm in pain, and so they pray:  "Oh God, help my moody, oversensitive pastor.  Help him feel better soon, because when he's depressed, it makes me feel sad too.  And I hate feeling sad."

  All right, so they probably don't pray that way.  They're probably a lot more mature about it than I think they are.

  Handling these negative emotions well and living in emotional honesty, well, sucks.  I know from a purely theoretical standpoint (in the same way I tend to know the approach of the eschaton-- with a fair level of certainty) that this is the way to go.  But after talking it out, not only do I feel as though my anger has been misplaced in several instances (leaving me with the tortuous question, "just who am I angry at anyway?"), but that I have also opened up wounds in others.  I hate that feeling, but then I also need to keep in mind that I'm not necessarily responsible for other people's feelings.  That doesn't mean I have carte blanche to be an asshole, it just means that sometimes, even when I do my level best to be as honest and as collected as I can be, I am likely to be treading on hearts from time to time. 

  Someone characterized it as me "lashing out".  It stung to hear it, though that's probably closest to the truth.  Yet it didn't feel like lashing out to me.  If I was just lashing out, I would have not tried to watch what I was saying nor even bothered sitting down with people I'm trying to love.  (yes, love.)  Me lashing out is me swearing profusely and walking out the door.  Me lashing out is going with personal attacks.  This is not me lashing out.  This is, as far as I can possibly help it, me trying to communicate that I'm chock full of shitty-ass shittiness.

  I don't know how this ends yet.  Maybe you'll never find out either.  I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to place emotion to circumstance with a greater degree of accuracy than I have been (i.e.:  "I feel _________ because of _________"), but I sort of doubt that I'll get that far in any appreciable near future.  Instead, what I have left is a muted maelstrom of difficult feelings-- of feeling sad, of feeling angry, of feeling, well, yucky-- and what I have to be content with is the knowledge that somehow, some way, this is me getting better. 




 
 

  It's been so long that I had to try a number of times to get my password right. But I figure my readership has died down enough now that few would actually see this post, thus making it what it once was:  a semi-secluded spot to puke uncontrollably from fear and discouragement.

  I didn't think I'd ever come back here.  There wasn't any point.  Either some people gave too much of a shit when I wrote, and most everyone else couldn't give two shits if I did.  That leaves a shit in between, which pretty much sums up where I am these days.
 
  It was a terribly tumultuous summer, both inside and out.  It never ceases to amaze me that most folks think "oh, everything's fine" when they see me on Sunday morning or another context.  You know what that is, though?  Because when all is said and done, I'm a fucking professional, and it's not about me in circumstances where my personal problems are causing me to bleed dry from within.  I cannot striptease my pain in front of the flock because there are only a few who would understand--and, unfortunately, a few who would be sent into valleys of their own because they are the ones by whose hands I have suffered.  So I will not let them know.  I will only swallow the pain as I swallow painkillers.  I will hide behind my blandest smile.  I will mouth platitudes.  I will offer prayer.  But within, I am rotting away; my bones know no soundness.

  There are stories of how C.H. Spurgeon would get peeled from his bed by his church elders so that he could get up to preach, then would return to his bed once the service was over.  It wasn't exactly like that for me, but were it not for friends and yes, professional counselors, I don't think I would have bothered to leave my apartment at all.  The thing about being self-aware is that you end up doing whatever you can to divert deeper depression:  you keep exercising, you eat as best you can, and you try to get enough sleep.  But sometimes, it's not enough.  I've been taking sustained beatings over the last few months in many different ways, and it's still not all good.  In fact, over the last few days, I've been in the absolute shits.  I've realized in the last few months that I'm actually very good at hiding stuff when I want to, and, more frighteningly, awesome at playing the I'm-so-fucking-happy game.

  I slipped this summer.  Many times.  Into depression, out of depression.  Sometimes wondering why the hell I need to get up at all.  Sometimes wondering what the possible use of soldiering on could be. 

  I tried.  I tried!  I wanted and desired and prayed.  I don't think I ever wanted such a thing as I did when I prayed for this, the change of my wounded heart.  It was secret, it was furious, it was the work of a mountain lifting up its skirts and planting itself in the sea.  Yet, my cold heart warmed too late, too late.  So I am left behind, left alone, left holding the bag-- again.  The moment when my heart of stone became a heart of flesh is exactly the moment when it became vulnerable to being torn apart.  Story of my fucking life.  Why have a heart of flesh at all?  Is it not better to be what I have projected myself to be:  a stone monolith--uncaring, distant, yet strong?

  What for?  What for, this new pain?  Were it to make me compassionate, I mayhap would smile and say "good good", but all I feel now is bitterness and all that comes out of me is groaning.  Were it to cleanse me, as some had thought it would, all this has done is scar me even more deeply-- a surprising thing, since I was not aware of how open I had become.  What was all this striving for?  For naught, I should say, and even less than naught to a terrible hurt that I do not know what to do with.  Pain, pain, go away, come again another day.  Every day I wake up and am in pain, and the only way I know to alleviate it is to medicate mind and body.  And yes, I know you don't know what this is about, but I do, and for now, that's enough.  No one can know the seemingly innumerable hurts I have gone through in the last year, and even if they do, no one understands how I have processed them and felt worn down by every single stroke of the lash.  The first I could stand.  The second tingled.  The third I could feel my skin break.  By the tenth, I am left an incoherent, gibbering mess; sobbing into my wounds and begging for it to stop.  Enough! 

  I don't know why I'm writing here.  Maybe it's because I've written through the last dozen or so pages of my journal complaining to God.  Maybe it's because I spend every morning feeling my tongue curl with curses; and at night when I drift to sleep, my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth in sorrow.  Maybe it's because most of my friends probably couldn't stand a sustained barrage of f-bombs as I am prone to use when I'm angry or tired or discouraged or, in this case, all three.  More likely, it is the revelation of pain that most cannot stand.  You know, I think I just figured out why I'm writing here:  it's because in some weird way, it helps to have someone bear witness to your pain.

  I said as such to Cousin Ted and my buddy Phil last week when I held them in confidence.  I have other friends whom I may call, but I am afraid that they might be exhausted by the difficulty of caring for someone they love and so lapse into explanations.  It is not as though I really want theological answers that explain it all.  I can come up with enough myself!  It is the counselor in me remembering that this is my shit, and even though others are trying to walk with me, it's still my problem, not theirs.  They cannot bear my pain for me.  Only I can.  In that way, I am alone.  But all can bear witness, and this, dear reader (if you have read this far) is the boon I ask of you today:  bear witness.  I am laid low and silent, a shiftless shadow wandering the halls of Sheol.  Voiceless.  Sleepless.  Formless.  Bear witness!  I am a worm, not a man.

  I don't want theological answers.  I want to be loved through this, borne up by the reassurance of God's love for me.  God is good, you say?  Then I need proof!  I have felt the care of God in some ways:  if not by dint of my own flattened will, that struggles to rise like a prizefighter from the mat, then by the attendance of others to me; angels incarnate, those bearing the salve of pity and understanding.  Mockers say "oh, does the little boy need his pity party so badly?"  And I say "yes.  Only heartless bastards do not know what it means to live with a broken heart."  I have lived with mine for so long that very often I feel only as a quarter of a man, not even half-a-man, a speck of what I think I should be.  This long grief, this long sorrow-- it does not kill you, but it shrinks you, pulls you down into the corner of some dark box where there is no warmth and no light.

  I have only begun to ask the most dreaded question we all must eventually ask of our pain:  where is God in all this?  And for me, the pain is still too near, so I can only throw up my hands and say "hidden".  I wish it were as simple as feeling the comfort of His presence, but now, there is nothing.  Only the hum of my refrigerator and more silence beyond.  I do not know where God is in all this, because right now, it feels as though He is not in it at all and that He is asleep or uncaring.  And perhaps that is the best thing I have written thus far:  that perhaps God was not in this at all-- yet what I hope for is the redemption of this suffering.  Maybe not on this side of life, for it may well be that I will weep out the rest of my days, but maybe on the other side, when I am raised anew, all of the way this sorrow has carved me out will prepare me to become a vessel of some greater joy.

  I can only hope.  Right now, after having spent the evening doing my damnedest to drink myself into a stupor and then found, to my dismay, that my tolerance is much better than I thought it was-- this moment, I can only breathe.  And each breath draws the darkness nearer.  Yes, darkness, you are my closest friend.




 

 

  This is the way the world ends
  This is the way the world ends
  This is the way the world ends
  Not with a bang but a whimper

  --  T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

  I've had this fragment of T.S. Eliot stuck in my head for the last few days, not really knowing why I should have such a thing in there to begin with.  The last time I read this poem was over a year ago, I think-- but strange how some things bubble up from our subconscious when we least expect it.

  Today was a difficult day.  I went from contentment to anger to bitterness to acceptance to gritted joy in the span of a few hours-- all because of money.  I am giving up the last of the "Smaug vintage", as Bilbo might say, and quite rightly so, for it is all that I have ever been able to save when I went "there and back again." 

  Giving it up means also giving up certain dreams, things that weren't really happening anyway.  I was hoping to use that money for another degree-- now, I don't think I'll have the money for that.  I was hoping to also use it for a wedding-- but I need not tell you how far that is from me as well.  No, the money was just sitting there, waiting to be used, and used it shall be-- and for good cause. 

  I didn't give it up easily, though.  I raged.  The first thing on my lips after I was confronted with this new poorer reality was fucking hell.  I thought "why me" and sucked my thumb.  I clenched my jaw until I thought my teeth would shatter in my mouth.  And then, I heard from God.

  It was as I was praying for someone else, it was as though God was challenging me on several different fronts, but the most important thing I heard was "some people need to be separated from their money."  It was something my old pastor and mentor in Hong Kong once said about other people, but something I turn over in my head.  However, this is what I usually mutter to myself as I watch congregants drive off in their nice cars to multi-million dollar houses on the West Side.  I didn't think that I, the poor church mouse, would need to be ever separated from my money.  Did I? 

  I guess I did.  Later, another pastor at the meeting I was at mentioned Abraham at Mt. Moriah, and it all became incredibly clear.  I was counting on that money for certain things-- for hope, for a future.  It is a subtle thing.  I was not, in one sense, depending upon God, but upon what He had provided.  The LORD giveth, and the LORD taketh away, n'est-ce pas?  And now, the decision on how to use it is taken from me, the burden of wealth no longer a part of my life.  Not because I still don't have the capacity to pay bills or go out for occasional lunches, but because the option of doing anything more than I regularly do is now gone.  That wealth was my Isaac, my hope for the continuation of a promise and a life. 

  Only this time, there was no ram in the thicket.  My dagger sheared into my own flesh and blood until I cut it away from me.  Quickly, quickly, quickly.  I did it quickly so I would not feel it so much, yet the feeling of leaning on emptiness is discomfiting to say the least.  Yet is it ever emptiness that I lean on?  Will God actually still provide?  Or is it really going to be like the Eliot poem-- "Not with a bang but a whimper."

  O God, I hope You show up here.  Not just for my sake, but You do realize people are watching, don't You?  If not for me, then for Yourself then! 

 

  I've been trying to sift through a number of things of late, none of which I care to directly discuss here in a semi-public forum.  Suffice to say that some moments in life are more like muddy minefields than alpine meadows with bright-eyed flowers.

  This corner of cyberspace is over six years old now.  I originally started it as a testament to the kids I was teaching in Hong Kong and to keep friends in Vancouver "in the know" about my life, but then I just kept on going-- and yes, kept on going with xanga, a much-maligned community primarily composed of people writing about what they bought and who they hung out with, replete with self-photography at various nightclubs while pants/tops are falling down.  It's a bit saddening to read other people's sites from time to time-- it makes those of us who strive to use the Queen's English (or rough facsimiles thereof) despair for what can be, at times, a wonderful language to know.  Everyone knows serious bloggers go with, well, Blogger or Wordpress, not teenybopperville Xanga. 

  Yet, here I remain.  Not because I am particularly attached to Xanga, but because I have certain ruts (or routes, choose which you think applies) that I like. 

  So I blog on.  In my better moments, I use this space almost as a workshop for my more serious writings.  I try out different words and phrases to see how they sound together-- and even more importantly (McLuhan adherents would disagree) I workshop ideas and gauge responses from readers.  All three of you.  And even though what I write is so often (for some) entertaining or intriguing, I suppose one other reason I keep writing is because it gives people space to feel "not alone".  I've been told a few times how what I write has the uncanny knack of speaking what other people feel (a slight difference from a good comedian, who speaks what we all are thinking, such as "I hate pants" and "what's the deal with airlines?"), and this, I hope, has the effect that those who come by here begin to feel less alone.  Though I'm a severely limited human being, my words can go where I physically cannot, building bridges and connecting people to themselves and the way they feel.

  However, there is a dark side to my blogging:  I like the attention.  I like having people comment on my entries and to tell me I'm a good writer.  I like having your eyes/ears for a moment to tell you what's on my mind.  And, of late, I am beginning to see that perhaps this unhealthy outlook might be best assuaged by quitting blogging for a while-- even at the risk of spontaneous combustion from not being able to get my words out of this scrap of hide.  There are even occasions, I must admit, when the prospect of attracting women because of what I write and how I write it is too much of a temptation for me to bear.  Though I am as honest as I can be when I write here, I do know what effect such honesty can have on others.

  So there you have it.  Not the flashiest nor most lyrical of posts I have ever done, but I thought I should confess it.  Will you forgive me?




 

  It's the simple things that count.
 
  I preached today on the Rich Young Man and Jesus.  One of my seminary professors once said that if you can't say what you want to say in one sentence, it probably isn't worth saying at all.  So here's the one sentence summary:  Not everyone is called to sell their possessions and give the money to the poor, but all of us need to be separated from obsessing over the things that we think will bring us security.

  There.  I said it.

  I was a little disappointed that some people who I feel might have benefited from some of the things I said weren't there today.  It's always a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to preparing your sermon with particular people in mind and they're not there to hear it.  But, I suppose all things being equal, the people who needed to hear it probably heard it just fine, thank you very much. 

  The after sermon discussion was also quite involved, as being a relatively wealthy church, every single one of us struggles with "living lightly" as I commended them to do.  Yet the discussion seemed to be strangely repetitive, as though everyone was repeating what I had already said (or what I think I said-- in fact, I'm pretty sure I said it because I have a manuscript to prove that I said it!) and then claiming it as something that just occurred to them.  It's not as though I need them to say "what you said about ______  was really thought-provoking/challenging/beautiful/craptastic", but it felt as though people had just switched off and made up their minds about the passage and would have shared about it in the same way even if I hadn't just preached on it.  Don't get me wrong.  It's great that they're learning.  But maybe it's my insignificance complex talking when I think that people are ignoring what I just said and passing it off as something they just thought up.

  And another thing:  I'm tired of people demanding application and practicality.  Not that these are all bad, but sometimes, truth is truth and how this applies is for you to puzzle out in your context, not for some dude behind the music stand to tell you how to live your life.  Think people, think!

  It wasn't a frustrating day, but I come away from it feeling misunderstood.  Yes, poor Wiggum.  I bet this is how James Houston felt when he talked about modern obsession with technique and "technology" (which he defined as development of technique) and the people around me all wondered "Is Dr. Houston against email and computers?  He said he doesn't like technology."  Yes, that's right.  Oxford don who lives up the hill from me also happens to be a luddite.  That would explain the flickering lights in his house I see from time to time.  Must be him riding his stationary bike to power up his water heater.

  Simplicity is good.  I had a few friends over to make pasta, and the act of making good food together and drinking a little wine on top is always a welcome event.  As you may know, my current obsession (ahead of doing actual research for my next book) is making noodles.  I made two kinds of gnocchi yesterday, a spinach and a butternut squash one.  They were pretty good, but the main event today were the KitchenAid pasta making attachments that my friend brought over.  They're simple machines-- one for flattening and the other for cutting into strips-- but elegant and sturdy little stainless steel die that made some of the best pasta I have ever had. 

  I first made a lemon pepper dough to demonstrate how it's done.  The basic recipe is 1 cup flour/1 egg and oil and flour to adjust the dough to sufficient stickiness.  Then you add in whatever you fancy.  The next noodles were spinach, basil, and italian flat leaf parsley.  Then we made a roast garlic noodle.  Finally, I stepped in and made chocolate pasta-- which itself was just all right, but the sauce is what set it off.  I'm relatively proud of the sauce, since it was my first real time using a double boiler set up to melt the dark Callebaut bits I procured before my trip.  To this rich, glossy (but still very fudgy stuff) I added sugar, milk, a quarter cup of butter, vanilla, salt, cayenne pepper, and peanut butter.  This was no ordinary peanut butter-- this was the stuff my mom had made a while ago but while tasting a little funny with bread, I had been saving for sauces such as this.  I was not wrong.  It was probably one of the most delicious things I have ever made, and I am not even that much of a chocolate fan.  The girls, of course, all flipped out into semi-orgasmic states.  One of them even licked her plate clean.  Not to pass out from tooting my own horn (which is an oxymoronic statement because you know at this point I'm going to brag) but the women around me often say they'd all be two hundred pounds if they lived with me because everything I make is carbalicious.  Breads, pastas, puddings, pies, cakes, loaves... yes, I do tend to make things with a certain "bite" to them. 
 
  I often wonder what life would be like with a wife or family to appreciate what I make.  My friends and family already do tend to like almost everything I make, but part of me is wistful for the opportunity to make wonderful dishes for someone else to enjoy.  It sounds strange, but part of me really loves the act of cooking and baking for others.  It's how, as they say in the vernacular, I like to "love on" other people.  That, and writing.  But writing is like having your lower intestine pulled out of your empty eye sockets.

  Although making pasta was a lot of work, the results were so immediately rewarding that I'll have to do it again. 
My feet ache, my back aches, my hands are chapped, but the bouncy texture of the noodles and the gratification of making something good sends me now to sleep with a smile on my face.

  Noodles, noodles for all.

  She once asked me what I did with my anger.  No, check that.  She once asked me what I did with my stress.

  "Go for a run," I said.  "Cook something.  Bake something.  Have a beer or glass of wine at the end of the day." 

  What?  You expected "pray"?  That's the "Mighty Man of God" answer, the "My-Isn't-He-So-Pious" answer--not the honest answer when you're out of prayer like you're out of coins at the laundromat and you still have a load of dirty underwear to go.  When I'm stressed, I do anything I can to avoid meeting that stress head on.  I'll watch a movie.  I'll play Kongregate for hours.  I'll daydream of flashbulbs and Oprah and black tie dinners for having "made it" as a novellist.

  This highlights how I've tended to deal with anger-- mostly unhealthily.  Conventional wisdom says that we need to channel our anger effectively, but what if you don't know what you're quite angry about?  What if, as they say depressed people are, that anger is most keenly focused upon yourself?  In these cases, I'm not sure how I can channel my anger effectively.  So in recent days, I've been trying something new-- mostly, at her suggestion. 

  "So what are you going to do with all these things you're feeling?  This anger?  This guilt over this anger?  This disappointment?  This sadness?"

  "I was going to just let it pass," I said, hoping that for once I wouldn't be lying when I said I could let things pass after all.  "You know, try to let it go with time..."

  She leaned forward, her bright blue eyes twinkling over the tops of her dark brown glasses.  "Oh yes.  That's worked really well for you before, hasn't it?"

  Touché.

  So I began thinking more seriously about other ways of handling negative emotions, and the one way I have not tried is to meet it head on by talking it out with the people whom I say I'm in community with.  Yes, that dreaded 'c' word that becomes so meaningless with repeated use, but with care, becomes a concept that, because we are all in Christ, needs to be worked out carefully and, in cases like these, sacrificially.  And sacrifice, I need not tell you, is always painful.

  Part of me railed against the idea from the beginning.  Who was I to bother other people with my difficult emotions?  Wasn't everyone just going to get along nicely without me rocking the boat and speaking the truth not only of other people (as I am becoming used to doing) but, for once in this rickety life, to speak the truth of myself?  Perhaps this was all a very "cultural" thing where the dictates of harmony and immediate peace outweigh the stresses of confrontation and addressing the problem as what we always envisioned adults to actually be like?  (The irony, of course, is that adults almost never work this out.  I always thought that adults did the mature thing until I became one and realized I almost never do.)

  So I did the mature thing:  I sat on it for a few days.  And in those few days, I felt my pain subside just a smidgen.  Why would I disturb the scabbing process taking place over my heart?  Well, because I wasn't being emotionally healthy and I knew it.  I was severing lines of communication and openness for fear of discomfort.  I was squashing a tidal wave of powerful emotions because I was afraid of what I might do and how I might do it.  Repression isn't the right word-- though I probably have done that in the past.  Repression implies I don't know it's there and it comes out in a tumour somewhere else in my character.  No, this was just good ol' bottling up the pain and hoping something good comes of it.

  Nothing good came of it.  I was being oversensitive to everything, every little slight, every little comment.  It was hurting me to keep sitting on it like a hen incubating a snake egg that will hatch its own doom.

  So I went and tried to do the mature thing.  The "adult" thing.  And man, did it hurt even more.  My instinct is not to talk about it at all, but because I was hoping to actually live out what I teach when I talk about reconciliation and mediation, I knew I needed to go through it.  Not just so that I can tell others "yeah, I've done that" and so give myself a little street cred when it comes to working things out in community, but for my own sanity I needed to breathe deep and plunge in. 

  I wish I could say that I said everything that I really was feeling, but so much of what I was feeling was a confused jumble that half of what I was saying was awry.  Yes, I was angry but no, I wasn't angry and you but yes, I was angry at you, but no, I wasn't, so I must have been angry at myself, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes...

  The cumulative effect of all this has been that I have opened up even more cans of worms.  I feel a bit like a raw wound, but there's maggots in it cleaning out all the necrotic tissue, giving me an even chance at healing well.  What I fear is mostly for others as I wonder whether I have handled such difficult and volatile emotions well.  It would have been easier, after all, just to leave it.  Not to say anything.  To smile and gasp "I'm all right, Praise the Lord."  But that would have been dishonest, and it would not have silenced the sarcastic quip that rattled about my head:  "Yes, that's worked really well for you before, hasn't it?"  No, I needed to forge on.   Perhaps I am being selfish in expressing pain in a semi-public way.  Perhaps I was taking too big a risk in believing that others could hear such complex, negative emotions come pouring out of me.  Most people don't know what's going on, but they know I'm in pain, and so they pray:  "Oh God, help my moody, oversensitive pastor.  Help him feel better soon, because when he's depressed, it makes me feel sad too.  And I hate feeling sad."

  All right, so they probably don't pray that way.  They're probably a lot more mature about it than I think they are.

  Handling these negative emotions well and living in emotional honesty, well, sucks.  I know from a purely theoretical standpoint (in the same way I tend to know the approach of the eschaton-- with a fair level of certainty) that this is the way to go.  But after talking it out, not only do I feel as though my anger has been misplaced in several instances (leaving me with the tortuous question, "just who am I angry at anyway?"), but that I have also opened up wounds in others.  I hate that feeling, but then I also need to keep in mind that I'm not necessarily responsible for other people's feelings.  That doesn't mean I have carte blanche to be an asshole, it just means that sometimes, even when I do my level best to be as honest and as collected as I can be, I am likely to be treading on hearts from time to time. 

  Someone characterized it as me "lashing out".  It stung to hear it, though that's probably closest to the truth.  Yet it didn't feel like lashing out to me.  If I was just lashing out, I would have not tried to watch what I was saying nor even bothered sitting down with people I'm trying to love.  (yes, love.)  Me lashing out is me swearing profusely and walking out the door.  Me lashing out is going with personal attacks.  This is not me lashing out.  This is, as far as I can possibly help it, me trying to communicate that I'm chock full of shitty-ass shittiness.

  I don't know how this ends yet.  Maybe you'll never find out either.  I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to place emotion to circumstance with a greater degree of accuracy than I have been (i.e.:  "I feel _________ because of _________"), but I sort of doubt that I'll get that far in any appreciable near future.  Instead, what I have left is a muted maelstrom of difficult feelings-- of feeling sad, of feeling angry, of feeling, well, yucky-- and what I have to be content with is the knowledge that somehow, some way, this is me getting better. 




 
 

  It's been so long that I had to try a number of times to get my password right. But I figure my readership has died down enough now that few would actually see this post, thus making it what it once was:  a semi-secluded spot to puke uncontrollably from fear and discouragement.

  I didn't think I'd ever come back here.  There wasn't any point.  Either some people gave too much of a shit when I wrote, and most everyone else couldn't give two shits if I did.  That leaves a shit in between, which pretty much sums up where I am these days.
 
  It was a terribly tumultuous summer, both inside and out.  It never ceases to amaze me that most folks think "oh, everything's fine" when they see me on Sunday morning or another context.  You know what that is, though?  Because when all is said and done, I'm a fucking professional, and it's not about me in circumstances where my personal problems are causing me to bleed dry from within.  I cannot striptease my pain in front of the flock because there are only a few who would understand--and, unfortunately, a few who would be sent into valleys of their own because they are the ones by whose hands I have suffered.  So I will not let them know.  I will only swallow the pain as I swallow painkillers.  I will hide behind my blandest smile.  I will mouth platitudes.  I will offer prayer.  But within, I am rotting away; my bones know no soundness.

  There are stories of how C.H. Spurgeon would get peeled from his bed by his church elders so that he could get up to preach, then would return to his bed once the service was over.  It wasn't exactly like that for me, but were it not for friends and yes, professional counselors, I don't think I would have bothered to leave my apartment at all.  The thing about being self-aware is that you end up doing whatever you can to divert deeper depression:  you keep exercising, you eat as best you can, and you try to get enough sleep.  But sometimes, it's not enough.  I've been taking sustained beatings over the last few months in many different ways, and it's still not all good.  In fact, over the last few days, I've been in the absolute shits.  I've realized in the last few months that I'm actually very good at hiding stuff when I want to, and, more frighteningly, awesome at playing the I'm-so-fucking-happy game.

  I slipped this summer.  Many times.  Into depression, out of depression.  Sometimes wondering why the hell I need to get up at all.  Sometimes wondering what the possible use of soldiering on could be. 

  I tried.  I tried!  I wanted and desired and prayed.  I don't think I ever wanted such a thing as I did when I prayed for this, the change of my wounded heart.  It was secret, it was furious, it was the work of a mountain lifting up its skirts and planting itself in the sea.  Yet, my cold heart warmed too late, too late.  So I am left behind, left alone, left holding the bag-- again.  The moment when my heart of stone became a heart of flesh is exactly the moment when it became vulnerable to being torn apart.  Story of my fucking life.  Why have a heart of flesh at all?  Is it not better to be what I have projected myself to be:  a stone monolith--uncaring, distant, yet strong?

  What for?  What for, this new pain?  Were it to make me compassionate, I mayhap would smile and say "good good", but all I feel now is bitterness and all that comes out of me is groaning.  Were it to cleanse me, as some had thought it would, all this has done is scar me even more deeply-- a surprising thing, since I was not aware of how open I had become.  What was all this striving for?  For naught, I should say, and even less than naught to a terrible hurt that I do not know what to do with.  Pain, pain, go away, come again another day.  Every day I wake up and am in pain, and the only way I know to alleviate it is to medicate mind and body.  And yes, I know you don't know what this is about, but I do, and for now, that's enough.  No one can know the seemingly innumerable hurts I have gone through in the last year, and even if they do, no one understands how I have processed them and felt worn down by every single stroke of the lash.  The first I could stand.  The second tingled.  The third I could feel my skin break.  By the tenth, I am left an incoherent, gibbering mess; sobbing into my wounds and begging for it to stop.  Enough! 

  I don't know why I'm writing here.  Maybe it's because I've written through the last dozen or so pages of my journal complaining to God.  Maybe it's because I spend every morning feeling my tongue curl with curses; and at night when I drift to sleep, my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth in sorrow.  Maybe it's because most of my friends probably couldn't stand a sustained barrage of f-bombs as I am prone to use when I'm angry or tired or discouraged or, in this case, all three.  More likely, it is the revelation of pain that most cannot stand.  You know, I think I just figured out why I'm writing here:  it's because in some weird way, it helps to have someone bear witness to your pain.

  I said as such to Cousin Ted and my buddy Phil last week when I held them in confidence.  I have other friends whom I may call, but I am afraid that they might be exhausted by the difficulty of caring for someone they love and so lapse into explanations.  It is not as though I really want theological answers that explain it all.  I can come up with enough myself!  It is the counselor in me remembering that this is my shit, and even though others are trying to walk with me, it's still my problem, not theirs.  They cannot bear my pain for me.  Only I can.  In that way, I am alone.  But all can bear witness, and this, dear reader (if you have read this far) is the boon I ask of you today:  bear witness.  I am laid low and silent, a shiftless shadow wandering the halls of Sheol.  Voiceless.  Sleepless.  Formless.  Bear witness!  I am a worm, not a man.

  I don't want theological answers.  I want to be loved through this, borne up by the reassurance of God's love for me.  God is good, you say?  Then I need proof!  I have felt the care of God in some ways:  if not by dint of my own flattened will, that struggles to rise like a prizefighter from the mat, then by the attendance of others to me; angels incarnate, those bearing the salve of pity and understanding.  Mockers say "oh, does the little boy need his pity party so badly?"  And I say "yes.  Only heartless bastards do not know what it means to live with a broken heart."  I have lived with mine for so long that very often I feel only as a quarter of a man, not even half-a-man, a speck of what I think I should be.  This long grief, this long sorrow-- it does not kill you, but it shrinks you, pulls you down into the corner of some dark box where there is no warmth and no light.

  I have only begun to ask the most dreaded question we all must eventually ask of our pain:  where is God in all this?  And for me, the pain is still too near, so I can only throw up my hands and say "hidden".  I wish it were as simple as feeling the comfort of His presence, but now, there is nothing.  Only the hum of my refrigerator and more silence beyond.  I do not know where God is in all this, because right now, it feels as though He is not in it at all and that He is asleep or uncaring.  And perhaps that is the best thing I have written thus far:  that perhaps God was not in this at all-- yet what I hope for is the redemption of this suffering.  Maybe not on this side of life, for it may well be that I will weep out the rest of my days, but maybe on the other side, when I am raised anew, all of the way this sorrow has carved me out will prepare me to become a vessel of some greater joy.

  I can only hope.  Right now, after having spent the evening doing my damnedest to drink myself into a stupor and then found, to my dismay, that my tolerance is much better than I thought it was-- this moment, I can only breathe.  And each breath draws the darkness nearer.  Yes, darkness, you are my closest friend.




 

 

  This is the way the world ends
  This is the way the world ends
  This is the way the world ends
  Not with a bang but a whimper

  --  T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

  I've had this fragment of T.S. Eliot stuck in my head for the last few days, not really knowing why I should have such a thing in there to begin with.  The last time I read this poem was over a year ago, I think-- but strange how some things bubble up from our subconscious when we least expect it.

  Today was a difficult day.  I went from contentment to anger to bitterness to acceptance to gritted joy in the span of a few hours-- all because of money.  I am giving up the last of the "Smaug vintage", as Bilbo might say, and quite rightly so, for it is all that I have ever been able to save when I went "there and back again." 

  Giving it up means also giving up certain dreams, things that weren't really happening anyway.  I was hoping to use that money for another degree-- now, I don't think I'll have the money for that.  I was hoping to also use it for a wedding-- but I need not tell you how far that is from me as well.  No, the money was just sitting there, waiting to be used, and used it shall be-- and for good cause. 

  I didn't give it up easily, though.  I raged.  The first thing on my lips after I was confronted with this new poorer reality was fucking hell.  I thought "why me" and sucked my thumb.  I clenched my jaw until I thought my teeth would shatter in my mouth.  And then, I heard from God.

  It was as I was praying for someone else, it was as though God was challenging me on several different fronts, but the most important thing I heard was "some people need to be separated from their money."  It was something my old pastor and mentor in Hong Kong once said about other people, but something I turn over in my head.  However, this is what I usually mutter to myself as I watch congregants drive off in their nice cars to multi-million dollar houses on the West Side.  I didn't think that I, the poor church mouse, would need to be ever separated from my money.  Did I? 

  I guess I did.  Later, another pastor at the meeting I was at mentioned Abraham at Mt. Moriah, and it all became incredibly clear.  I was counting on that money for certain things-- for hope, for a future.  It is a subtle thing.  I was not, in one sense, depending upon God, but upon what He had provided.  The LORD giveth, and the LORD taketh away, n'est-ce pas?  And now, the decision on how to use it is taken from me, the burden of wealth no longer a part of my life.  Not because I still don't have the capacity to pay bills or go out for occasional lunches, but because the option of doing anything more than I regularly do is now gone.  That wealth was my Isaac, my hope for the continuation of a promise and a life. 

  Only this time, there was no ram in the thicket.  My dagger sheared into my own flesh and blood until I cut it away from me.  Quickly, quickly, quickly.  I did it quickly so I would not feel it so much, yet the feeling of leaning on emptiness is discomfiting to say the least.  Yet is it ever emptiness that I lean on?  Will God actually still provide?  Or is it really going to be like the Eliot poem-- "Not with a bang but a whimper."

  O God, I hope You show up here.  Not just for my sake, but You do realize people are watching, don't You?  If not for me, then for Yourself then! 

 

  I've been trying to sift through a number of things of late, none of which I care to directly discuss here in a semi-public forum.  Suffice to say that some moments in life are more like muddy minefields than alpine meadows with bright-eyed flowers.

  This corner of cyberspace is over six years old now.  I originally started it as a testament to the kids I was teaching in Hong Kong and to keep friends in Vancouver "in the know" about my life, but then I just kept on going-- and yes, kept on going with xanga, a much-maligned community primarily composed of people writing about what they bought and who they hung out with, replete with self-photography at various nightclubs while pants/tops are falling down.  It's a bit saddening to read other people's sites from time to time-- it makes those of us who strive to use the Queen's English (or rough facsimiles thereof) despair for what can be, at times, a wonderful language to know.  Everyone knows serious bloggers go with, well, Blogger or Wordpress, not teenybopperville Xanga. 

  Yet, here I remain.  Not because I am particularly attached to Xanga, but because I have certain ruts (or routes, choose which you think applies) that I like. 

  So I blog on.  In my better moments, I use this space almost as a workshop for my more serious writings.  I try out different words and phrases to see how they sound together-- and even more importantly (McLuhan adherents would disagree) I workshop ideas and gauge responses from readers.  All three of you.  And even though what I write is so often (for some) entertaining or intriguing, I suppose one other reason I keep writing is because it gives people space to feel "not alone".  I've been told a few times how what I write has the uncanny knack of speaking what other people feel (a slight difference from a good comedian, who speaks what we all are thinking, such as "I hate pants" and "what's the deal with airlines?"), and this, I hope, has the effect that those who come by here begin to feel less alone.  Though I'm a severely limited human being, my words can go where I physically cannot, building bridges and connecting people to themselves and the way they feel.

  However, there is a dark side to my blogging:  I like the attention.  I like having people comment on my entries and to tell me I'm a good writer.  I like having your eyes/ears for a moment to tell you what's on my mind.  And, of late, I am beginning to see that perhaps this unhealthy outlook might be best assuaged by quitting blogging for a while-- even at the risk of spontaneous combustion from not being able to get my words out of this scrap of hide.  There are even occasions, I must admit, when the prospect of attracting women because of what I write and how I write it is too much of a temptation for me to bear.  Though I am as honest as I can be when I write here, I do know what effect such honesty can have on others.

  So there you have it.  Not the flashiest nor most lyrical of posts I have ever done, but I thought I should confess it.  Will you forgive me?




 

  It's the simple things that count.
 
  I preached today on the Rich Young Man and Jesus.  One of my seminary professors once said that if you can't say what you want to say in one sentence, it probably isn't worth saying at all.  So here's the one sentence summary:  Not everyone is called to sell their possessions and give the money to the poor, but all of us need to be separated from obsessing over the things that we think will bring us security.

  There.  I said it.

  I was a little disappointed that some people who I feel might have benefited from some of the things I said weren't there today.  It's always a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to preparing your sermon with particular people in mind and they're not there to hear it.  But, I suppose all things being equal, the people who needed to hear it probably heard it just fine, thank you very much. 

  The after sermon discussion was also quite involved, as being a relatively wealthy church, every single one of us struggles with "living lightly" as I commended them to do.  Yet the discussion seemed to be strangely repetitive, as though everyone was repeating what I had already said (or what I think I said-- in fact, I'm pretty sure I said it because I have a manuscript to prove that I said it!) and then claiming it as something that just occurred to them.  It's not as though I need them to say "what you said about ______  was really thought-provoking/challenging/beautiful/craptastic", but it felt as though people had just switched off and made up their minds about the passage and would have shared about it in the same way even if I hadn't just preached on it.  Don't get me wrong.  It's great that they're learning.  But maybe it's my insignificance complex talking when I think that people are ignoring what I just said and passing it off as something they just thought up.

  And another thing:  I'm tired of people demanding application and practicality.  Not that these are all bad, but sometimes, truth is truth and how this applies is for you to puzzle out in your context, not for some dude behind the music stand to tell you how to live your life.  Think people, think!

  It wasn't a frustrating day, but I come away from it feeling misunderstood.  Yes, poor Wiggum.  I bet this is how James Houston felt when he talked about modern obsession with technique and "technology" (which he defined as development of technique) and the people around me all wondered "Is Dr. Houston against email and computers?  He said he doesn't like technology."  Yes, that's right.  Oxford don who lives up the hill from me also happens to be a luddite.  That would explain the flickering lights in his house I see from time to time.  Must be him riding his stationary bike to power up his water heater.

  Simplicity is good.  I had a few friends over to make pasta, and the act of making good food together and drinking a little wine on top is always a welcome event.  As you may know, my current obsession (ahead of doing actual research for my next book) is making noodles.  I made two kinds of gnocchi yesterday, a spinach and a butternut squash one.  They were pretty good, but the main event today were the KitchenAid pasta making attachments that my friend brought over.  They're simple machines-- one for flattening and the other for cutting into strips-- but elegant and sturdy little stainless steel die that made some of the best pasta I have ever had. 

  I first made a lemon pepper dough to demonstrate how it's done.  The basic recipe is 1 cup flour/1 egg and oil and flour to adjust the dough to sufficient stickiness.  Then you add in whatever you fancy.  The next noodles were spinach, basil, and italian flat leaf parsley.  Then we made a roast garlic noodle.  Finally, I stepped in and made chocolate pasta-- which itself was just all right, but the sauce is what set it off.  I'm relatively proud of the sauce, since it was my first real time using a double boiler set up to melt the dark Callebaut bits I procured before my trip.  To this rich, glossy (but still very fudgy stuff) I added sugar, milk, a quarter cup of butter, vanilla, salt, cayenne pepper, and peanut butter.  This was no ordinary peanut butter-- this was the stuff my mom had made a while ago but while tasting a little funny with bread, I had been saving for sauces such as this.  I was not wrong.  It was probably one of the most delicious things I have ever made, and I am not even that much of a chocolate fan.  The girls, of course, all flipped out into semi-orgasmic states.  One of them even licked her plate clean.  Not to pass out from tooting my own horn (which is an oxymoronic statement because you know at this point I'm going to brag) but the women around me often say they'd all be two hundred pounds if they lived with me because everything I make is carbalicious.  Breads, pastas, puddings, pies, cakes, loaves... yes, I do tend to make things with a certain "bite" to them. 
 
  I often wonder what life would be like with a wife or family to appreciate what I make.  My friends and family already do tend to like almost everything I make, but part of me is wistful for the opportunity to make wonderful dishes for someone else to enjoy.  It sounds strange, but part of me really loves the act of cooking and baking for others.  It's how, as they say in the vernacular, I like to "love on" other people.  That, and writing.  But writing is like having your lower intestine pulled out of your empty eye sockets.

  Although making pasta was a lot of work, the results were so immediately rewarding that I'll have to do it again. 
My feet ache, my back aches, my hands are chapped, but the bouncy texture of the noodles and the gratification of making something good sends me now to sleep with a smile on my face.

  Noodles, noodles for all.