overproportioNATE

I wonder how much information has been known, and then forgotten. I wonder how many things could have been invented, but weren't. How many men and women knew the best way of doing a thing, only to bring it with them when they died. How many scientific papers, books, works, life works, have been burned? How many sculptures were destroyed by invading armies? How many mysteries lie somewhere, unfound? I think we can rest assured that either the greatest scientific discovery, or the greatest poem, or the greatest philosophical work, is not currently known, it has been lost to history. We have these bits and pieces, memories of entire people groups of statues that were, but are no more. We hear of entire libraries, full of unique works, burning to the ground. For all that is known, so much in unknown. We have the knowledge of several living generations, and the vote of many, many dead.

I am pretty sure that time travel is impossible. Not because man couldn't think it up. In a way, I feel that man is certainly smart enough to figure out how to move through time. My reasoning is that it would be stopped. It would be a new tower of Babel. It would bring us too close. We could go back before mistakes we made. We could change it all. We'll never move through time. We don't deserve to.

I have, in my time at the school, been alright going to work every single day. I have often enjoyed it, glad to wake up on a school day. Today was the first day where that didn't happen. It was certainly a mix, not feeling 100%, some frustration with students. But it was also a restlessness. How to deal with that has been a challenge in life. The grass has always looked greener, but I have always written it off as some kind of artificial coloring. A trick to get me over the fence. The difficulty in this life, in leaving your fenced in property for another, is that you can rarely go back, at least easily. Again, I am trying to sort it all out.

I enjoy trivial mystery. I like a mystery that isn't do or die, that doesn't change the course of my life. Uncertainty is fun when you can quickly reminisce about it. But the uncertainty & mystery of life, the constant question of what one should do with one's life, is exhausting. I am down to two options. Those two options will lead to two entirely different lives, with two entirely different groups of people. One will lead to seeing family more than ever, the other will change everything. Passion and desire come into play. They always do, but as a child, I didn't need to consider the impact of human lives on my dreams. I didn't think about what I would or wouldn't regret on my deathbed. How anyone is asked to decide what they should do with their lives as the tender age of 18 is not just unkind, it is unreasonable. May we be asked, over and over again, just as the answer does change.

I am not sure if I like poetry, or if it just the form I feel compelled to use. Many of my favorite writings are poems, but they needn't be. I like short stories, for their brevity, and how I am able to consume so many of them. I love how they are able to at least begin a story, leaving me to fill in the blanks with my own experience. I love the idea of many stories, many thoughts. Classic novels are wonderful and rich, and can be more memorable. But they don't seem to teach me much more than a good poem might. But here is where poems and I don't get along. There is a certain pressure in poetry, to make the rhymes work. To do it all... right. I don't always desire that rightness. I hate rhymes that mean nothing, that just are. They don't add anything, and actually take away, because my mind is taken away, to wondering why the author felt the need to put two terrible words together. I know many famous musicians have hated lyrics. Found no need for them. You c

A dwelling is always a choice. It is where you live. It is what you concern yourself with. What you dwell in is very important, and can define you. If you dwell in excess, in too much, it can become you. If you dwell in simplicity, it can benefit you, it can help you focus on the more important and vital things of life. But anything you dwell on, or in, can ruin you. You can start to feel like your way of dwelling should be the only way. I get frustrated at the dwelling of others. But at the same time, generally, I feel like I have never felt like my way of doing life is the only way. I need to do that, I need to remember that. Because even though I honestly believe that, it doesn't mean that I have always expressed that. I want to dwell with less. I want to dwell with uplifting people. I want to dwell in partnership. I want to dwell where I am wanted, and needed. Where do we dwell? What do we surround ourselves with? Why?

I don't remember if I've written about this before, I am fairly sure that I have, possibly even recently. But I feel it today, and so here I am. I want to spend at least segment of my life doing something other than pastoring. I want to always be connected to ministry of some kind. It is the purpose of our lives. There is good news, and there are many who haven't heard it. We are messengers, I am a messenger. But for  period of time, I want to be outside of paid ministry. Not so that I can go off and sin. But just for some relief from the fishbowl that I have become accustomed to. I feel like I can't post a thing on Facebook without critique. That is not necessarily the fault of those doing the critiquing. It is much more likely simply the place that I am. I do my best to hold myself to a high standard, not that I'm perfect. But I feel like I am unable to write about anything even close to controversial. Taking a stand as a paid ministry worker is dangerous

Prophet Priest or King Educator, Counselor, Priest I am getting closer to defining my role. It is still difficult though. I still feel intensely the idea that I am taking my first steps down a path, which is very exciting and new. I will see a world that I have only heard about. I am going into woods that I've never been through before. But I am also leaving behind many paths that I will not have time to come back to. I want to take all of the paths. I want to be everything. In a big way, I want to learn it all. But I cannot learn how to be a teacher, a counselor, and a pastor. My life will not hold all of those things. Some paths could lead me away from home. Which many would say is a tremendously wonderful thing. But I'm not so sure. I am much more excited about the paths that allow me to linger still. Staying is hard, and I've always put more value in difficult things, almost instinctively. I'm not so sure anymore that hard things are always the best thing.

There are no high roads or low roads, we can't live that way. There is only one road. We cannot allow ourselves to think there are more options for ourselves. I want to have a healthy fear of things. We must have a healthy fear of ladders, to be careful, to use them wisely. Not an unhealthy fear of them, because if we everyone had an unhealthy fear of ladders, no light bulbs would ever get changed. There is a place for a healthy fear, you need it in dating a girl. You should care about how you treat her, how you speak, how you are a gentleman. But you shouldn't have an unhealthy fear, because you'd never try, you'd never even ask.

I am pretty jaded. The world seems bleak. I am saddened, mostly, by my experience with men in church. There are so few that will engage in spiritual conversation, fewer still who will begin one with a younger man. Few act as though God is anything more than a topic of intellectual debate, or a means to getting to an end. He is acknowledged when someone is diagnosed with cancer, heavily consulted, and then, at last breath, forgotten again. I have little desire to be a part of that world. To be a part of that church. I am even more afraid of becoming that kind of man. I think often of my own conversations. Do I bring up God? Do I pursue Him along with others? I don't want to turn into that. I can't. I won't. I am learning more about what I want to do in life. What I am passionate about, and what I can actually do. I don't know if I want to be a pastor. For the most part, in our "modern world", the pastor is almost exclusively the sole source of evangel