self awareness is only valid in the context of societal awareness, the awareness of those around oneself, because each one exists in that context. any knowledge of yourself you may posses is intrinsically dependent upon your knowledge of your context. 

with man everything is relative. only with God is there any kind of absolute standard. 

the past year has been one of more uncertainty and unfamiliarity than ever before, and consequently also one of more pointed self examination than ever before. [and that’s saying something]. through all of these changes, something i’ve been realizing with increasing clarity is this: any truth i might discover or discern about myself is relative to the community or environment i am in. e.g. i am good at guitar. well, maybe in my living room with a few friends that is true, but enter into that living room another musician, and my talent, in comparison, has more than likely just diminished or even dwindled.  

but… not only is the truth relative, the significance or consequence of that truth is also relative. e.g. to community a, my musical ability might be the quality that makes me a huge hit, where as to community b, my musical ability might have no value whatsoever. 

now substitue musical ability in those examples for personality traits, personal interests, future goals, and—especially—morals….. and you now have some serious disparities in the works. 

so for someone like me, someone who strives to be conscious of his role and place in a given community, someone who puts a good amount of effort into monitoring himself and his community, and just as much effort into maintaining a good standing in that context, but also someone who consistently finds himself in several contexts in which differing standards and differing significances to those standards exist, it is not hard to see why one might start to look at oneself and feel a little bit…. lost. 

it’s a little bit more clear now why, at times this year, i’ve felt a little bit like a dingy in the middle of a giant ocean, being tossed around by the waves.

in the old days, without a north star, sailors would have no way to find their bearings at night. and sometimes, it’s tempting to feel that way myself. 

thankfully though, i have a north star in the night time. i have an anchor in the storm. whatever contexts or communities i might exist in in my daily life, there is one in which i exist that defines and penetrates them all. and that’s the context of God and his reality. and in this context, there are absolutes. without an absolute being, there can only be relativity. with an absolute being, relativity is redeemed. my pointed self examination is no longer an endless spiral of relativity, i have an absolute standard with which to compare myself. and the best part? according to that absolute standard, i am good enough. i am accepted. i am loved. not because of anything i did, but because of the standard that i have received through the gift of God’s grace. there is nothing that i or anyone else can do that will change my standing in His community. that is simply amazing. 

so now the challenge is to place more of my value in this one context, and remove it further from the other contexts. not that it’s not good to exist in those other contexts, it’s just important that the one be my anchor, my north star, the one i go to for my fulfillment. because when it comes down to it, it’s the only one that really matters. 

and i encourage you to do the same. think about it this week, and try to figure out what it would look like for you to take steps in that direction. 

and my favorite part…. with an anchor, with a north star, you should never be afraid to gather up your sails, push off of the familiar, and let the winds of adventure take hold of you. 

God works in mysterious ways. that’s a slogan i’ve heard tossed around christian school classrooms and dual purpose women’s tea/sunday school rooms throughout the majority of my childhood.  

well today i’m praying for clarity.

over a year ago i set out on a journey without any particular destination. i guess you could say the journey was the destination, as cliche as that may sound. i wanted to experience more of life. the thought of waking up one day in in a house in escondido-or even somewhere in orange county-with grandkids running all over the place and no stories to tell them of my youth was enough to persuade my (already) wanderlusting heart to cut what ties i had and set my sails in hopes that God’s inspirational breath would catch them and carry me aloft into that ever elusive great adventure. 

i did what many young men had done before me, and what i’m sure countless will do after me- i went “north, to alaska.” half a year later i found myself in portland oregon, on the doorstep of a church by the name of solid rock. now, almost a year later, i find myself a different person than the one that first passed through those doors, jobless, friendless, hopeful, yet clueless. 

what has changed? well, yes, i have a job. and yes, i’ve made some friends. hopeful? still. clueless? not as much. i guess despite all the growth i’ve seen God work in me over the course of this past year, perhaps the most important change is that i’ve realized (or started to realize) the importance of the balance between direction and participation. 

up until this point, i’ve either been so focused on my goals that i missed the life that was going on around me, or the other way around. but over the course of this year, God has started to open my metaphorical eyes to His leading and direction for my future. He has begun to teach me how to be passionately involved in what’s going on around me while still passionately pursuing forward movement in my life. 

and so I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough over the past couple days. i believe i’m starting to hear the direction for which i’ve been praying and waiting almost a year. 

but i want to be sure. so i’m praying for clarity today. and i invite you to join me. 

join me in prayer today… pray for wisdom and for discernment. and direction. and a humble and willing spirit to follow that direction. 

With a humble and willing spirit, God’s whisper can be enough inspirational breath to catch my sails and put my ship into motion. With a hard heart or prideful spirit, it might take a hurricane. 

ip

the secret, i don’t know… i guess you’ve just gotta find something you love to do, and then… do it for the rest of your life. for me, it’s going to rushmore. 

- max fischer 

fighting against a culture of glorified complacency, satisfied mediocrity, and ubiquitous apathy is a never-ending battle. and it’s one that shouldn’t be fought alone.

there’s a handful of people in my life that really inspire me. these are the people i cling to with a vengeance. because i know how seductive and simple it is to slide down a slope that leads to nowhere but self-satisfaction. and that’s somewhere i don’t ever want to be. 

maybe that’s why the girl at work last night told me i was more different from her than anyone she’d ever met in her life. maybe that’s why i can’t seem to find the same fulfillment in the vacuous lifestyle of so many of my peers. i have been given life and a passion to live it for something much bigger than the quenching of my hedonistic desires. 

but as i said, it’s a fight; a battle. the thing is, with this battle, the struggle is just as often in my own mind, with my own flesh, as it is against this culture of complacency. because, you see, i am a part of this culture, weather i like it or not. this is what i was born into, it’s my natural habitat. my snow-globe, if you will. no matter how hard i shake the globe, when i stop shaking, the snow all settles back to the same place it started. 

so that’s where i am right now. realizing that i’ve been shaking that glass paperweight by myself for a while now, wondering why every time i stop shaking the snow settles. what i need is to place myself back up against some other movers and shakers (sorry, i couldn’t resist) so that when i begin to slide down that slope, when my shaking arms get tired, they’re still there, stirring me on, agitating my waters. 

sometimes it’s the agitating ones that get through to you best. (ahem cablablah). 

“what is love?”

it’s not just a song blasting from a boombox held over the head of doug butabi in the final scene of 1998’s a night at the roxbury. it’s not just the premise of the 2009 flick paper heart. it’s a question that plagues the thoughts and commands the dreams (both conscious and subconscious) of our society. 

but when our answer to that question— what is love? … when the source of that answer is found primarily in movies and fairy tales with formulaic plots and what people in the romance business call H.E.A. (happily ever after) endings, it’s no surprise that our society has a skewed and shallow definition of the most true, deep thing in the universe. 

i’m not about to jump into an exposition on love, just wanted to raise a question. i’m trying to ask questions more and answer unasked questions less.

so what is love?

we’re all looking for it, right?

but do we know what we’re looking for? are we looking in the right places? with an over 50% divorce rate in our country, i’d say the answer to both of these questions is most likely a “no.”  

take a minute today to think about your definition of love, and whether or not you have an idea of what love really, truly, actually is. 

after all, in the immortal words of jason derulo, “everybody’s looking for love. aint that the reason you’re at this club?” 

to choose long boarding as a means of transportation is akin to choosing love as a philosophy of life. 

and i am in no way bashing love. 

a year and a half ago i bought (with my own money, that is), my first set of wheels. they were orange. and atop them sat a bamboo core sandwiched by epoxy and tri-axle fiberglass: a loaded dervish long board. beautiful. i knew a guy who knew a guy so i walked down wilshire to the beverly hills factory and handed some guy a wad of cash and rode home on my new board at a considerable discount. undoubtedly not the first time an underhanded cash transaction happened on those streets, and assuredly not the last. 

not long after that i ordered my second set of wheels online on the recommendation of an acquaintance in florida. never consult a girl from florida before buying a longboard. it was a piece of rubbish. the whole point of buying a second board was to take friends out with me. as it happens, most friends that i have taken out are absolute beginners, and me being a big softy, i just can’t put someone who’s skills as well as opinion of the sport are in a stage of fluid fragility on such a horrible piece of junk. so i end up riding the piece of flotsam on wheels around while they enjoy my baby. and them being beginners, my baby has taken it’s fare share of abuse. 

so short story long, i’m setting out in a few minutes on a a perfectly well-advised late night craig’s list rendezvous to acquire a replacement: my fourth set of wheels. (oh, yea, i bought a car somewhere in there too… i guess that’s somewhat notable as well)

but this board isn’t just another set of wheels. it’s an exciting investment in my future. who knows where this board will take me, who it will bring alongside me on my ride through life. i woke up on the first day of this year with the just-right-amount-of-whelming notion that twenty eleven is going to be pivotal, big, the biggest year of my life so far. the board i’m buying tonight could very well direct my future. i could end up riding it into traffic, get hit by a truck and die. it could end up being the thing that makes me fall in love with the girl i’m going to spend the rest of my life with. or it could just be a hell of a fun toy. who knows? 

my future is still unwritten, but (stealing a line from the brother’s bloom), i want to live as if i’m writing the best story ever told. and that means following the plotline. so here we go, i’m sticking both feet on this board and riding it where it will take me. 

have you ever stared at something so long your eyes start to go out of focus? 

i remember walking through the mall as a kid when those magic-eye things were just starting to get popular and stopping in front of a store that had a bunch of them in the window. i picked one out and my parents told me to keep staring at it till the sail boat or dolphin or whatever it was magically appeared. that was before i learned the technique, but that tactic worked… eventually i saw that thang.  

so it’s been a long time since i’ve written about love, since i’ve even thought about writing about love. 2 years, actually. but i think i’m about to write about love. 

yes, the metaphor. 

they say love is blind; i say it’s more like this magic eye thing. at first, you stare at something so long it kinda goes out of focus. “out of focus” is probably a lot more accurate than “blind.” when i was falling in love everything was a blur. sometimes it was like one of those pictures you see where the subjects stand still in the middle and the shutter is left open long enough so that everything else is blurred out. sometimes it was like we were the ones passing the world by, the background stayed the same and we were the blur across the photo. it was that feeling where a hundred times a day you suddenly remember the person you’re falling in love with and think: “o my goodness i’m with her!” and you find yourself randomly grinning like an idiot all day long. and you can’t really remember how you called it “life” before. 

i love that stage. we all do.

but really, that’s just the stage where my little self is standing there in the mall, gazing intently at the window display, waiting for that pirate ship to pop out at me. 

cause you see, the real good stuff comes later. one minute you’re staring at a beautiful and hypnotizing mess of color and patterns, the next  a definite shape emerges, taking form before your eyes. and you feel special cause your’e seeing and appreciating things normal people don’t. 

that’s what i love about love. the point where the sailboat pops out at you and you realize that you’ve just seen that thang. for reals. 

it’s been a long time since i’ve felt that way, but i know that someday i will again. someday, a painting will come into my life, and i’ll stare at it till that sailboat pops into view. and when that happens, rest assured…. that’ll be the day that i start sailing.

i feel there’s a fine line for me, sometimes, between bursting at the seams and painfully empty. it’s a matter of perspective, i think.

so much of life is dependent upon your attitude, your perspective. like i’m inclined to say often, we are masses of contradiction. and i have the ultimate paradox; the commingling of finite and infinite, the union of flesh and spirit… the banner of this world written across my mind and heart, but the blood of a savior written over top that. and as is the case with any dual natured thing, i cannot express one of those natures purely without the other one leaving it’s effect upon that expression. i cannot walk a true line without departure and i cannot stumble without conviction to correction.

one of the great things about being made human is that i am inherently designed to long; to have longing attests to the actuality of something for which that longing exists. i long because God made me to be in relation with Him.

my flesh, however, straight up highjacks that longing, and pedals it off to various empty promises, pours it into broken cisterns, attaches it to sinking ships, betrays itself. self destruction is in my blood.

“what exactly are you doing?” i often ask myself. knowingly chasing after ghosts time after time, all the while a hauntingly faithful, gentle voice reminds me of the one thing i can never quite shake yet never quite realize: “you were made for more than this.”

so when i broker that longing to agents that offer false promises of fulfillment, when i seek life from the dead, water from an empty well, i run dry. i am empty. i am defunct. when i seek i return emptier than when i set out.

but, when i take that longing to the source of truth, the author of life, the living water, the giver of perfect gifts… when i seek, i am found, i am overfilled, inundated, exuberant.

the wonderful thing is that no matter how far down a dry well you might have dug, all you need do is remember the call, listen for that longing, and follow it to it’s intended source. as empty as you might feel right now, it’s a matter of perspective. bursting at the seams is not far off. it doesn’t take long to get wet when you jump in a river, it doesn’t take long for the lights to come on when you flip the switch, and God is never far from you. He is near, He is faithful. even when we’re not.

it’s not about us. it’s about Him.

perspective.

and there is that still small voice that we never quite shake, yet never quite realize… “you were meant for more than this.”

to start with few words would probably be the best way to deceive myself as well as any potential readers into believing this outlet will be anything short of prolifically unnecessary, so i think that’s just the ticket for me tonight. then again, i’ve never been good at limiting myself. maybe that’s why i’m up at all hours of the night, night after night. maybe that’s why i feel like a piece of butter spread over too much bread. and maybe that’s why i’d let myself fall for the unavailable. yes, i’m talking about a “her”. 

i spent the day in solitary today. on days like today people bum me out almost as much as being alone bums me out. there’s something inherently depressing about how much time and money we spend shutting ourselves off from the rest of mankind and then turn around and throw away almost all we’ve just earned trying to find some meaningful connection to humanity. why would i be writing this if i lived in a tent village surrounded by everyone i’d ever known? this simple answer is somewhat embarrassing; i wouldn’t. 

human beings are an infinite source of humor and tragedy. and sometimes the two are hard to tell apart. 

the truth is, i’m a mass of contradictions, just like everyone else i know. and tomorrow i’ll be a happy-go-lucky, jaunty, even mercurial spry young lad with a bounce in my step, a whistle on my lips, and little recollection of the few sombre thoughts that passed through my thick skull, down my long and under-toned arms (both muscular and skin color wise), and out my calloused fingers just a few short hours and one long blink ago.

but as is the case for most of us here on earth, it is both my blessing and my curse to be confined to the moment. and so in this moment i commence. and i welcome anyone with half the notion to join me in doing so, because although i can’t promise you this will lead you anywhere, i can give you my word it just might be worth the ride.