The longest week

Groders death was simply the appetizer. The main course came so fittingly on Thanksgiving day. It is so strange because I hardly knew the man, but his death has hit me very hard. It is a strange strange thing to be there for a grieving brother and sister and be the only one not fully grieving. And to be the only one really there for them. Well, of course The Lord is, but I know how difficult it is to feel that when so sad and in shock.

Rest in peace, Jack. I can truly see you were an amazing person. It's unfair that you went so young but you were someone who truly lived a life far fuller than most 36 year olds. I really wish I had been able to spend more time with you, to laugh and play and be silly in ways neither of your siblings tend towards. You were so briefly my brother in law, it breaks my heart to have yet another member of this ragged bit of family I've claimed to be torn away so tragically.

Peace and love, Lord, if it is your will.

I feel so numb..

Sad, but ok. A good life leading to a good death, is all we can really hope for.

Goodbye, old friend.

True

Even better is her acoustic version of Oingo Boingo's "Stay."

Wendell Berry

What stood will stand, though all be fallen,
The good return that time has stolen.
Though creatures groan in misery,
Their flesh prefigures liberty
To end travail and bring to birth
Their new perfection in new earth.
At words of that enlivening
Let the trees of the woods all sing
And every field rejoice, let praise
Rise up out of the ground like grass.
What stood, whole in every piecemeal
Thing that stood, will stand though all
Fall -- field and woods and all in them
Rejoin the primal Sabbath's hymn.

a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles

I love how the Lord can guide me even when I'm completely incapable of understanding anything.

And its one of those things...that I know sounds crazy if you aren't "in on it" with God. Haha, if you don't have the Word...or Christ...it just sounds crazy. Deluded.

But it is the one thing that is undoubtedly beyond human comprehension. From just a human perspective, yes it still sounds like utter foolishness to point to something and say, "God did that." But with the Spirit inside me, it is different. The discernment within is no longer human, because God is so beyond that limitation. We are such imperfect little siphons of his Spirit that of course we only catch glimpses of His work in our lives! So yes perhaps some of it is still marred by my own interference. But the joy I feel from His presence is different. Nothing I say or do can describe it, just like nothing I say or do to an unbeliever can make it sound any more rational. It so not of this world, and if all you have and know is the world....of course...

It is SO different, so BEYOND the most beautiful sensations or thoughts of this world, of my entire life before this point. I realize now so much that the desire every human being so longs to fulfill is simply to find God and be reunited. That longing for connection, for real connection, with anyone else is impossible if you take God out of the equation. We are all the same. Just as we cannot fulfill that connection by ourselves, so we cannot fulfill it with each other. It takes what we lack, what we all lack, to fill that void. That unspeakable void that none of us ever wants to look at let alone admit to.

This is what I have been searching for all of my life. And it is worth every ounce of suffering I've experienced to find it. And it will always be worth so much more. More than anything.

These words and this soul are all so insignificant, but they are all for you.

This is just to say

I dont have anything to say, really.

Part of me is so tired of analyzing myself, analyzing my life and the lives around me. Because ultimately I know its quite asinine. Why? Because even if I'm being 100% objective in my analysis (an impossible feat in itself) any tools I use to complete my analysis would be based off of someone else's un-objective theories. Its just switching one pre-supposition for another, no more significant or necessarily true idea about reality.

Where do you stand without any possible truth? Because we stupid puny humans have to stand somewhere, don't we, lest we go insane?

Some hold that we "choose" the meaning in our lives. This is, in a sense, very true. But it is also very horrible, because it still leaves us knowing that the meaning we choose is based on our own entirely subjective desires.  How can one hold onto any meaningfulness from their chosen meaning upon recognizing that? It becomes solely driven by ones ego, I guess.

Maybe that's my problem. In rejecting the significance or worthiness of my ego I have rejected my ability to accept any meaning in my life based upon its desires.

Well, I still don't like Mr. Ego, its not for me. That is making some meaning I know... but really, it is inevitable not to. Which is why some choice is good, I guess? If you can use the inevitable choosing to choose something outside the realm of human choice? That would be the only solution. And we really can't do that, we can't choose outside the realm of human choice can we? Which is why we need something outside the realm of human choice to choose it for us.

I'm a very lazy philosopher. I think my brain is only firing on one side today. And maybe only half of that side. C'est la vie.

hungry hungry hippos (warning: graphic imagery follows)

I am kind of hungry right now but part of me really doesn't want to eat anything.

I've been thinking about being pregnant a lot lately. I find I've become kind of paranoid/fixated on it for some reason whenever anxiety gets really bad. Strange how one finds new ways to defend oneself against psychological stress.

I had this dream that I gave birth to 3 baby girls. That right there was enough to make me gag (boys are so much better...what would I do with a daughter? ....I really don't know...). But to make it even weirder, when I looked at their pink, raw little faces, they had leech mouths and scrunched up eyes. They were really pretty gross, and they had sort of eaten their way out of me so I was pretty much a big bloody gaping mess down there. I didnt' feel any pain in the dream but it was very unsettling, to say the least.

Very strange, strange times. I should probably eat something.

The fight to survive continues. Nick's brother is in Lodi, dying, or maybe recuperating, from pneumonia and a grand mal seizure that lasted almost 40 minutes, leaving him everything but completely comatose. What a complicated mess that is. His sister is hovering over him 24/7 caring for him as only one obsessed with new age homeopathy can. The crazy thing is the hospice nurses say he IS showing signs of improvement. More shocks to the system.

 0% complete on thesis, which I think is due in December, probably right around Christmas. Unless I take an extension which I might (meaning, I will, in all likelihood), screw graduating with my class. I find myself conforming less and less to the ways of the world. I'm just kind of...slipping into something else.

Hopefully something better. Hopefully not just exchanging one dysfunctional system for another.....