Friday, September 28, 2007

life.

"It's stunning isn't?"
"what"
"just how much respect we give to death"
"hmmm"
"we are so willing to take time out of our lives, to honour the dead. Death can just consume so much of our time, and we really don't ever question it; but the interesting question is really how come we didn't make this time when they were living?"
"huh"
"no one ever questions asking for time off for a funeral, or just to honour the dead; that's a given" "but we really don't have that same time, respect, or priority for life." "isn't that right?"
"I guess so"
"it's just a cultural standard of relative priorities - we have chosen to take life as an expendable, infinite right, and death - wow, death is this thing that we get all up in arms about, shocked and saddened at the thought that somehow this life could end - but what were we doing with it anyways" "And then it takes a death to realize how quickly our agenda can be cleared, how everything becomes droppable, expendable, once someone dies" "and yet we never make that a priority when they are alive"
"yup"

Monday, September 24, 2007

You Finally Made Me Happy

I've said it to a few, that september is really the month where the medicine balls of commitment get chucked into the sky, and the great juggling game begins. I know I will drop atleast one of the balls - as I never had much hand eye co-ordination, but it's really a question of when, not if. Juggling is tiring, dropping is painful (they are heavy after all), and it's all a game of weighing relatives. Today, a man told me that he would not want to be in 50 years - because if I'm juggling this much now, can you imagine what it'll be like then (and I sit there holding back tears). I'm so damn tired of figuring it all out. My head is heavy from watching balls circle above me.


I'm done with hiding behind the guise of figuring out 'what God wants me to do' - we both know that's only legitimizing your own desires.
I want the river. I want what comes through and rips trees out from their 30 year old roots - tossing them like they were nothing
I want the river. I want what is red, and permanently stains all that existed before it.
I want the river. I want that which cannot be shapped by small boulders, I wan that which cracks rocks, and defies thousand year traditions.

That it would come and knock me off my feet. Knock this church, this social circle, this half assed concept of community - or rather this half assed attempt for us humans to run in circles trying to figure out what it means. We're too damn clever.

I want a dingy big enough that people could hop in, when they see the fun I'm having (this is obviously not at this moment, but once this so called river comes).

I want not to think of 'how to pray', which is really the christian way of spiritualizing our means of risk management (God, give me the wisdom to know how to phrase "I don't want to do this" in a way that will cause Susies heart to realize......)

I want to need only to be still. I want to watch as it comes, and to blow up my dingy and ride along - maybe with a softdrink or two to make the trip more enjoyable.

Because the long and short of it is - I don't know what I want.


unedited. don't shoot.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

words

Main Entry: clan·des·tine Pronunciation: klan-'des-t&n also -"tIn or -"tEn or 'klan-d&s-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French clandestin, from Latin clandestinus, from clam secretly; akin to Latin celare to hide -- more at HELL
: marked by, held in, or conducted with secrecy : SURREPTITIOUS
synonym see SECRET
- clan·des·tine·ly adverb
- clan·des·tine·ness noun
- clan·des·tin·i·ty /"klan-d&-'sti-n&-tE, -des-'ti-/ noun

aka: rogers wireless

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Make Hay.

Talk of value added services, talk of competing on quality, and how a race to the bottom never benefits anyone, is great. It's what I surround myself with, it's how I make myself sleep at night whilst watching those bottom feeders grab up market share.
Today I realized that evolution is truly kind to the bottom feeders.
The problem with being a bottom feeder is that we get greedy - bottom feeders must be content to not be the rulers of the world, they must be content to be the sustainable second.
Rogers (to use a completely random example)does not play the bottom feeding game. They compete on value added - on saying 'don't come to us if you want the cheapest game in town.'
This is all fine, when the market is great. To be the 'classy cat' in a sea of dog fish is a nice card to play. In fact, arguably it is the only card to play in a time when life is good. Be the elite, be the value added, be the classy one. Don't run ads that even breathe the word price; show sexy men going down escalators with their phones working - claim reliablity, beautiful, rich and meaningful words.
Just make sure you keep a few staff who have the bottom feeding mentality around. Because you'll need it when the economy tanks (and it will) in a few short years. Until then, if your playing the classy game - play it for all it's worth. Make as much of it as you can but invest it so that you can transistion into a bottom feeding mentality that still has the class image. hmm easier talked about than typed.

This has applications far far far beyond business - personal debt payment, education, heck even spirituality. While you have time, while you have finances, while your life circumstances permit. I'm sounding like a tired motivational speaker as it can really be summed up in the cliched 'make hay while the sun shines'
wow. this is a lame post.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The POB Moments and the death of SMB

"The Dragon will fall victim to a school of small fish in shallow water"
-Chinese Proverb

In Small Medium Businesses, the school of small fish are Pat on Back Moments.

POB (Pat on Back) will take out the dragon one nibble at at time. We all stand around a whiteboard, we all come up with a 1000 great ideas - we all pat ourselves on the back, and we all walk away.
Sure we have legitimate reasons to ignore the whiteboard of life - things, projects, being put on hold, on and on and on.
Here's my short (odd I know) advice for the day. If you can't follow through, don't start. Don't start the brainstorming, dont talk to me about vision, growth, future planning - just stop.
And if you cant follow through with tangible, measurable tests to see if it's worthwhile on and on. How we're going to track it, deadlines.
The ammount of grandious bullshite that goes on in the business world, almost comes on par with the church.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

One More Drink

"Praise God, who has many names - but the Devil has, many more, so with the love that my mother gave me, I'm gonna drop the devil to his knees "

Our conceptions of God could very well be the great antagonist in the tragic comedy that is our lives.

The most effective thing the devil can do, is pretend he is God. Convince people that he is the divine. The devil is known in the drug den, the devil is known in whoretown, capatilist city and any other image that our Fallowellian Disneyland has created. But by this stage, the 'christians' of our time have for the most part crossed off those attractions. We are able, by-and-large to recognize and advert our eyes when the binge bus comes down the lane.
So ever the clever cat, the devil has had to change strategy. And man is he clever as hell. It's perfect, it's military genious, it's devistatingly effective and yet tragically most will never recognize it. By pretending to be God - we don't really have to have much behaviour modification to serve. Me and the Devil walking hand in hand - I think is how the song goes. And again, tragically there are many times in my life when this is devistatingly real.

We start by chasing God, and it becomes about a chase, it becomes about a figuring out, it becomes something oh so subtly different, so quickly that a minor adjustment in course leads to a major adjustment in destination. A deceptively parallel universe, that ultimately becomes a lense by which our world is viewed. And it has become so organic, so innate in our lives, that most Christians (myself included) are completely unaware of it's effectiveness in our lives.

Ok so this is all very nice - but what does it all mean? We all know the devil is clever - whoopee.

We are so easily wooed, that to a large degree, we cannot understand that much of our notions around 'following God', "understanding our relationship with him", "theologically correct reasoning" and much of the other elements in a Christian life - are distractions. We get so caught up in this idea that we can actually 'understand our relationship' and that God is a concept to be grasped - that we spend most of this life chasing this eternal drum (maybe that's what Dante meant). It's like somewhere in God speaking, and our listening, God writing (bible) and our reading - something was lost in translation. And the only thing I can peg it to is the devil. Because let's face it - he's a pretty easy target.

I know if you follow this line of thought through to it's natural conclusion we will end up lying in a ditch, bottle empty shouting awkward obsenities relating to a general 'what's the point' type of attitude. This line of thought can be played out in many realms, but I'll start by exploring how I first really realized it - Dave Matthews.

The blog post is running on now (and they always said to keep it punchy)- but I want to close with an example. Here is a guy, with little involvement in our Disneyland of Churches, who has been able to at times point with such clairvoyance the relationship between man and God, God and God, man and man - that it has stunned me that no 'christian' artist can mimic.
I picked him because his song happened to be on - but there are so many of these guys who just have moments of "getting it" in ways that leave me wishing at times to be them.

Anyways, this is not a blog post to rag on Christian Arts (that deserves it's own), it's to say that part of the effects of the clouded universe; part of the devil that Christians have not recognized, is the part that makes our God out to be lame sauce. And because, I believe, that that devil exists in the contemporary christian scene - those on the "outside" realm - while they struggle with other very real things - do not seem to be influenced to that same degree.

Oh, oh deep water, black and cold like the night. I stand with arms wide open, I've run a twisted line. I'm a stranger in the eyes of the Maker.

I'm not going to make Dave out to be the spiritual guru of our time. This sex obsessed guitarist has a long way to go before I'll start taking too many notes from his book. But he represents I would say, a clarity on a relationship that our tragic drum chasing has prevented us from seeing. Completely caught up in something we don't even know were caught up in, Dave, and many other "non-christians" are blessed to stand outside the ring.

My body is bent and broken, by long and dangerous sleep. I can work the fields of Abraham, and turn my head away. I'm not a stranger, in the hands of the Maker.

Rise, river rise, from your sleep.

I've rambled.

Sunday, September 2, 2007

wavemaker.

"so is this night church thing dead?"

We are such victims of routine, such fearers of stagnancy - that a lapse in implied order can bring about not only a crippling sense of confusion - it can lead us to thinking we can control the waves, that we can keep the momentum up.

He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.

Waves. One of the few words that seemed to escape my mouth in a moment of confused prayer was waves. Feeling bold, I decided to pray give 'er a whirl and pray away - not really getting the meaning of what was comming out, and just hoping no one would ask for an explanation. Feeling strongly about this, I followed up into an email to the person with whom the prayer was directed. Half hoping they would provide me with some insight into my own words. Nope. And lying in a semi-uncoscious state this afternoon on my bed, again, waves waves waves.

The destructive beauty of a wave smashing against a rock, completely gone - holds strong metaphorical significance for me. Seeking out the streams, and finding those waves that we should ride out, and those waves which really have yet to even reach their size demands an attention that I lack. It requires a flexibility to move when the wave is going to smash - a reduction in pride to admit that what you thought was a wave, was really a ripple. A patience when the wave is building momentum well below the sea level (and you're wanting to jump wave) and a certain sense of strength, because more often than not - standing up to waves, avoiding them and even riding them takes everything out of you.

And as fighting the waves is both useless and exhausting, creating waves is equally as futile.

I can't say I know what I meant when I was praying for waves - I am reminded however that Jesus ultimately was the one who could fall asleep in a boat that was just getting hammered by them - and, at the right time - just tell them to stop.

Start your school, start your church. Start casting your vision and start deciding where to spend your time. But start noticing where the streams are - where the waves are. Where have they smashed in and poetically destroyed the houses - and where are those that should be ridden?

The sea will rise over Babylon; its roaring waves will cover her.

The seas have lifted up, O LORD, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.