Back...
Well, I'm back.
Whitney has several excellent Posts on our vacation.
I enjoyed it, but I got overtired and fed-up with the whole thing. Sleeping-in doesn't agree with me. Not working (that is, being aimless) doesn't agree with me.
Had some time away from computers and blogging, as well, and that's got me thinking. I'm thinking that my blogging these days is full of crap. What I really think and feel and perceive about this world is frankly unfit for the light of day (any day), much less consumption by people I care about.
At the heart of it, I'm a mean, selfish person, a sinner in true Romans 3:23 fashion. I exhibit schadenfreude so much it kills my soul sometimes. That's the joy (and pain) of the internet...removing all consequence for being a pure asshole. Social norms and mores don't exist here, because *we* don't exist...our thoughts and ideas do, and persist somewhere in Google's vast BigTable copy of the Internet. Though we change, we can look back and see how we were 2, 3, 5, 10 years ago and ask "Who was that person?"
And finally, my point--why my blog has become crap: With my last few years of posts, I can't dig into the inner recesses of my mind. They're not there. The joy, the pain, the REALITY of what I was thinking. Not there. Not even close. What remains is digested, filtered, UNREAL.
* * *
This is much more "real" for me:
I was in church yesterday, and I stopped singing.
Not for a bar, not for a song, but for the WHOLE SERVICE. From 1 stanza into the opening number, I didn't sing again until the recessional hymn. I did something I hadn't done in years--I listened. I listened to my fellow Christians sing and I heard unexpected things: The man who didn't want to be there, but who came because his drug him out on Sunday morning. The woman who sang off-key but didn't care. The old ladies whose deathly pallor didn't dim their song. I heard harmony, dissonance, and confusion as the worship leader transposed a word.
I heard people. The pulpit cites worship as a singular experience, between the worshiper and God, but it's also a corporate experience--a sum of humanity together praising God. Just listening to that filled my heart yesterday and gave me strength, and when I opened-up for the recessional I rejoined a better man for it. I embraced my wife and sang as the Holy Spirit washed through the crowd, giving me goosebumps.
That was an awesome moment, and was truly my High for the day.
Whitney has several excellent Posts on our vacation.
I enjoyed it, but I got overtired and fed-up with the whole thing. Sleeping-in doesn't agree with me. Not working (that is, being aimless) doesn't agree with me.
Had some time away from computers and blogging, as well, and that's got me thinking. I'm thinking that my blogging these days is full of crap. What I really think and feel and perceive about this world is frankly unfit for the light of day (any day), much less consumption by people I care about.
At the heart of it, I'm a mean, selfish person, a sinner in true Romans 3:23 fashion. I exhibit schadenfreude so much it kills my soul sometimes. That's the joy (and pain) of the internet...removing all consequence for being a pure asshole. Social norms and mores don't exist here, because *we* don't exist...our thoughts and ideas do, and persist somewhere in Google's vast BigTable copy of the Internet. Though we change, we can look back and see how we were 2, 3, 5, 10 years ago and ask "Who was that person?"
And finally, my point--why my blog has become crap: With my last few years of posts, I can't dig into the inner recesses of my mind. They're not there. The joy, the pain, the REALITY of what I was thinking. Not there. Not even close. What remains is digested, filtered, UNREAL.
* * *
This is much more "real" for me:
I was in church yesterday, and I stopped singing.
Not for a bar, not for a song, but for the WHOLE SERVICE. From 1 stanza into the opening number, I didn't sing again until the recessional hymn. I did something I hadn't done in years--I listened. I listened to my fellow Christians sing and I heard unexpected things: The man who didn't want to be there, but who came because his drug him out on Sunday morning. The woman who sang off-key but didn't care. The old ladies whose deathly pallor didn't dim their song. I heard harmony, dissonance, and confusion as the worship leader transposed a word.
I heard people. The pulpit cites worship as a singular experience, between the worshiper and God, but it's also a corporate experience--a sum of humanity together praising God. Just listening to that filled my heart yesterday and gave me strength, and when I opened-up for the recessional I rejoined a better man for it. I embraced my wife and sang as the Holy Spirit washed through the crowd, giving me goosebumps.
That was an awesome moment, and was truly my High for the day.
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