What's been on my mind?

Let's see... faith, love, relationships, God, my purpose...

It's always the same... too much about me. That's how I got here in the first place. I was sick of me. Not that I'm something bad. According to Him, nothing He makes is bad.

And we can never escape ourselves. We can only change our context. But we are ourselves in any context.

And that may be exactly why I love myself when I'm traveling. Somehow I feel washed new because suddenly, I'm almost completely without context. When context is constantly changing, it's easier to be happy with who you are.

That's why it's nice to leave often.

just leave.

whatever that may mean to you or to me at the time... leaving a friend, a habit, a tradition, a dream... a place.

it's nice to leave.

leaving... though... sometimes helps me to feel in control. I can always leave. that's not too hard. it's the easiest way to avoid failure. And what does failure do? Slaps you in the face with a big, fat "YOU AREN'T IN CONTROL AND YOU NEVER WERE!"

so as helpless as we all sometimes feel when we are alone, or lonely, or in a new context, I honestly believe it is nothing in compared to

the helplessness of faith.

staring into a sunset on Ocean Beach, just after a pretty hard fall and winter, a move to SF in a desperate attempt to jumpstart my sorry life back into motion, i couldn't see the end of anything. I was on a beach, completely alone--nobody knew i was there or even cared... and that's where I lived. I didn't know what was next. I had few concerns, with a steady job, no debt, and no real commitments. And looking into the sunset, I felt completely unteathered. I had nothing to hold me down. But it wasn't freedom i felt. It was fear. And, in a way, it was faith.

That sunset seemed to engulf me. It seemed to embrace me. but it seemed to let me simply float and exist in its complete unquantifiable vastness. And it was ok.

it was all ok.

it's funny, now, to think of people referring to faith as a crutch. Because when I really experience faith, there's nothing supportive about it. It's a willingness to live in complete fear. A willingness to have no grounds at all on which to stand. Surrender, reckless abandon, and total passion without concern of hurt.

Most of which we ascribe to the emotion of love.

I can't explain faith. And by that, I mean faith in God.

I can't deny that there is a spiritual aspect to the world. I think I'm the type of person who, even if I were not a Christian, would always be a spiritual person.

So faith in what?

Faith that Someone is in control of this.

I don't think His plan is to invade Iraq.

I don't think His will is to put an oil pipeline from Canada to Alaska.

But He has a plan.

Is it evil?

Who's to say? Can we define evil? Even Christians have notoriously mis-defined evil. Are we often the evil? Absolutely.

The irony is that our evil is often a desperate attempt at control... and we often call that faith.