I'm sitting on my bed writing emails and listening to Geoff play his guitar and sing in the living room. Back in Tawa, our neighbor upstairs played everyday - he was studying classical guitar - and the music always filtered down to us. After this, I've decided that I do not want to live very long without someone playing guitar in the next room. I just won't do it.

Hey, so here is a list of countries that people I know are going to in the month of June. I am supremely jealous.
Belize (x2)
Ethiopia (x2)
India
Portugal
Kenya
New Zealand

I've been informed that I should watch Anatomy of a Murder (1959) with James Stewart. I don't think I've ever told my grampa that James Stewart reminds me of him. I wonder if he would consider it a compliment.

Today I was thinking about crossing the line into boredom insanity, but I got a call for a job interview, so I will put it off another day. Here is a portion of a suggested list of things I could have done (one of those silly email forwards).

7. Burn all your waste paper while eyeing your roommate suspiciously.
8. Read the dictionary backwards and look for any hidden messages.
9. Stare at people though the tines of a fork and pretended they’re in jail.
10. Write a short story using alphabet soup.
11. Make a list of things you have already done.
12. When your roommate is sleeping, place his or her hand in a bucket of water.
13. Write checks with Roman numerals.
14. Write ‘out to lunch’ on your forehead.
15. Explain the reasons why World War 2 started to your cat.
16. When queuing shout ‘giddy up’ and whip the person in front of you.
17. Start the conversation ‘I wonder what would happen if our knees bent the other way...’
18. Pop some popcorn without putting on the lid.
19. Bill your doctor for the time you spent in the waiting room.
20. When someone says ‘Have a nice day’, tell them you have ‘other plans’.
21. See how many clothes pegs you can clip onto your face.
22. Re-enact the sinking of the Titanic in your bath

I love comments! Give it up for the two!

I am reading the book by Mariane Pearl called A Mighty Heart, about her husband Danny Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan and killed. I'm sure I'll talk more about it later. What's triggered my train of thought today? - her recalled details of the first conversation she ever had with Danny. One idea - "we discussed how people who leave their homeland also leave their frame of reference."

Frame of reference. I think that explains why I have been so indecisive, feeling in the dark, and giving in to self doubt. Months ago, when I left the country, I also left behind what little frame of reference I still had. When I left, I think I lost it for good. I'm not sure what that means, but I don't think I am alone.

Speaking of indecisive. Decisions. Yesterday I had 4 phone calls related to my old job. One from the lady who now has my position, one from a girl who worked for me last year and is working there again, one from the lady who formerly had my position, and one from my close personal friend who has worked there for years. Crazy times. Even though I know the stability of me staying there probably would have been best, I am very confident that getting out was better. I get to put that decision, especially with the doubts I have, in my "good learning experience" folder.

On the other hand I have been struggling with the outcome of two decisions I made recently. One stopped something that had been going on for 2 years, and the other stopped something that had been "going on" for something like 2 weeks. I do not have the confidence about those decisions like I had about quiting my job. Despite everything, I find myself still wanting to go down one of those roads. The 2 year decision is a frame of reference that I can acknowledge, even though it was rather screwed up. I want the comfort of that familiar frame. The 2 week decision, well I have no frame of reference for it - I felt out of my element, but at the same time strangely in the middle of it. I don't know if I should distance myself from it or try to get more, so I act like a rollercoaster - up and down. Plus, having empty days of waiting - no job, no school, lots of sitting and reading - my mind tends to over-analyze and I do feel like I am all alone - the only one still struggling with these decisions.

this is a test.

I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.
-from Story People

someday...

I was reading the book, Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut when I had an interesting series of thoughts. The specific part I was reading at the time discussed the indexing of a book. One character was a professional indexer. This skill also enabled her to look at any index and draw specific conclusions about the book’s author. From a book discussing the history and people of a particular country, she said the index revealed that the author was homosexual. I was surprised.

For some reason this made me think about the Bible. I’ve had several in depth conversation with friends about the Bible, including thoughts on inerrancy, validity, relevancy and it’s authors. This made me think about Paul – who is the author of a majority of the New Testament books. I’ve always thought very highly of Paul. I know he certainly wasn’t perfect, due to his history of persecuting followers of Jesus, but I think in my mind I thought of him as practically perfect after his Damascus road conversion. I had a new personal thought that maybe Paul struggled with homosexual desires. I was surprised again.

This comes after having more in depth conversation with friends about life and struggles and relationships - openness, honesty and meaning. One friend told me that several years ago, during a serious relationship breakup, she felt able to be open and totally honest only with one other friend while working through the heartache and confusion. The thing about that confidant friend of hers is that she was not a Christian. My friend did not feel like there was a Christian who she could talk to at the time. While she was telling me this story, I mentally noted that she and I were friends back then and I must certainly have fallen into that group of Christians she couldn’t be completely honest with about herself without feeling judged. I was disappointed, but I wasn’t that surprised.

I know that Paul was not a homosexual. I am using that word now as the lifestyle defining, general blanket of a thing that many Americans, particularly professed Christians, use to summarize the entirety of a person who happens to act freely on physical desires for the same sex. Paul was not a lifestyle homosexual (and most likely he probably didn’t have an occasional experience in that category either). I know this because it would negate his writing. This wouldn’t surprise anyone.

Interesting discussion has always surrounded Paul’s unknown “thorn in the flesh.” Many people make speculations about the identity of this thorn. The consensus seems to be a physical affliction or the persecution struggle he went through as a Jesus follower. I think that’s about right. Turns out others, starting with some medieval era folks, thought Paul’s thorn was a struggle with fleshly lusts. Those crazy fleshly lusts were evidently a major struggle for many people living in medieval times. I knew my idea was not original, about Paul, but it was interesting to learn who thought it up. Again, not surprised

So going back to all those deep conversations: what’s wrong with Christians in America, is the Bible completely true, what is sin and what isn’t, what about war, what does religion mean, why is Jesus more than religion, what to do about prejudice and intolerance, what about homosexuality, combating all encompassing terms like prejudice, intolerance and homosexuality, where do politics and Jesus meet, life purpose and me 101, etc. With my new thought about Paul, and taking into account all those conversations, I decided it would be good for America if we read Paul’s letters believing that he struggled with homosexual tendencies – like he was a “Christian homosexual”. I think we would all be surprised.

But then I had another thought, again, not new to the world. Maybe it wasn’t about Paul. Maybe it is my idea about Paul and the perfection pedestal I put him on. I am not perfect and I cannot relate. I know that Peter and pretty much all the disciples was a very wayward dysfunctional bunch of sin-tendencied men that struggled even with Jesus standing right next to them. I am just like them and I can relate. Since that big chunk of New Testament is Paul’s writing, and the church typically preaches and acts from that text, and the typical conservative American Christian often times falls into legalism and defensiveness, then I think what America has produced is a distorted Paul as Jesus theology. I don’t understand Jesus, but that’s because I cannot fathom God, and who assumes that they can? He talks in parables, he doesn’t follow the rules, he was treated unfairly and killed, he loves everybody the same. All that makes me like him more, and because of who he hung out with and the impact he had on social “injustices” makes him sort of a hippie, and its cool to be a reformed hippie right now. I understand Paul, as Superman, and that’s because we are told we are supposed to be Superman – it is the American dream (what global citizen wouldn’t want that?). Paul was a religious guy, to the point of going overboard. He has a run-in with Jesus, got that last crucial duck in the row and off he went. He survived shipwrecks and beatings and wrote things down and offended a lot of people with holy intolerance. Sure what he says is actually founded on the ultimate Jesus truths of love and grace, but its hard to put Jesus and Paul side by side and believe in both as right, so it is easier to look at only one side. I think that is what Americans believe deep down – we pick sides. The Christians pick Paul and everyone else picks Jesus. Is that a surprise?

I cannot read Paul’s writings supposing that he was dealing with homosexuality because that is how I should have been reading it all along, as myself. As a human, just like Paul, I have all sorts of tendencies and imperfections, whatever form they may take for either of us. Unlike Jesus, Paul and I actually act out on those tendencies, living up to that sin nature we were born with. I need to approach the Bible, my life, and other people in a real way, being myself. The Biblical authors can’t judge me nor I them. I can’t judge my friends nor they judge me. We all struggle, we all screw up, we are all loved totally and completely. Jesus still changes everyone the same way. Living that should make all the difference. Why is this old idea always a new surprise?

Today

I held Addy this morning outside the Hertz office - she was warm and soft and squishy.

A man smoking outside the gas station spoke to me as soon as I stepped out of my car, asking what part of Texas I was from. He said he had children in Frisco and Houston and he wished he was there right then, sitting down to a big table of TexMex.

A man in a speedo and wetsuit top walked along the beach at the shoreline with his video camera - recording 2 dolphins swimming in the shallow water. He followed them down the beach. He was alone.

While I was swimming in the pool, my grampa sat in the plastic deck chair and told me about how, during WWII, he was outside for 24 hours a day for 5 weeks in the coldest winter in 40 years in Belguim - with 2 feet of snow surrounding the foxholes where they lived between turns on patrol. He would take off his boots and socks to try to dry them out - the soldiers wouldn't get their winter gear for many more weeks. One day they were told they each could go down to a house in the village to sit by the fire for one hour. Around midnight it was my grampa's turn. He left his foxhole, walked down to the house and knocked on the door. The family let him in, but no words were exchanged because they didn't know each other's languages. A man led my grampa to a chair by the fire, took off his boots, put his feet up and left him alone. He got his whole hour. My grampa says he used to know the word to describe something that happens like that in life, that people do for you, but he can't remember what it is.

I missed a phone call from a lady in Austin for a job postion I applied for 1 1/2 weeks ago. I left her a message. She hasn't called back.

At dinner, I sat with 7 people - all 50 years older than me or more. One woman and her husband told me about a man in Haiti who made his fortune in the US then went back to help his people. He built a school and now a hospital. The school is the best around; the hospital is only a building with no staff. The Canadian government and churches do most of the funding. The only government presence of any sort is the UN. There is neither a well nor electricity. The woman said the children are beautiful. "Black, black, black with the whitest teeth."

I watched a tv show about a single woman (with a dog) who chose the best of three designers to renovate her kitchen and living room with a $60,000 budget.

My grampa is in the other room dictating his memoirs. He just said, "They put 50 of us in the back of a truck. We sat on our gear for the 16-hour ride to the German front."

The window is open. I hear crickets...and the branches of the palm trees rustling in the breeze.