It's the Phoenix-Life for Me

I love new beginnings. I suppose there is redundancy inherent in "new beginnings," but the sensation of being able to start from page zero, at least figuratively, is so lovely and calming. There's a line in Anne of Green Gables where Ms. Shirley tells Anne that each day is a fresh start, and while that thought is exceedingly obvious, it's additionally exceedingly comforting. When I consider that as the sun sets, so too can my foibles, faux pas, and struggles from that day, I can breathe a slight sigh of relief. I reliably make a fool of myself at some point every day, and it's painful to recognize how I've let God down over the course of a 24 hours. There's hope in the knowledge that I can always aim to better myself, grow in relationship with God, and gain wisdom from the circumstances and people around me. If I didn't have that comfort and optimism for coming days, it could be truly wearying to strive for anything better. Although hackneyed, the great number of clichés about life being a journey, and our spiritual lives progressing as we age in years are incredibly true. Human ability to learn from mistakes and improve through experience is remarkable, and it's certainly healthy to strive for something more no matter what place we are in our lives. As of late, I've received a sense of a starting a clean slate from working for a new boss, starting new books, reorganizing my t-shirt drawer, and simply brushing my teeth. Obviously, this idea is connected to God's gift of grace in our lives, as the experience of starting anew isn't any stronger than when accepting His clemency. My grandpa loved to demonstrate how Jesus could wash away our sins by letting a group of kids in the church to stain a white cloth until no white was discernable, and proceeding to use bleach to represent God's capacity to absolve us. Despite the fact that I'm highly allergic to bleach and chlorine, and the thought of God as parabolic bleach being slightly absurd, Grandpa's analogy stuck with me. No matter how mucky I get, and I can get dreadfully mucky, I always have the opportunity to recapitulate, and be clean in God's eyes. I really do despise substantial, abrupt changes, but change is what propels us forward and drives us to want more out of our lives. Donald Miller writes in the foreword to Through Painted Doors (I'm certain this is classified as some form of plagiarism, but I quite like this particular passage):

Here is something I found to be true: you don't start processing death until you turn thirty. I live in visions, for instance, and they are cast out some fifty years, and just now, just last year I realized my visions were cast too far, they were out beyond my life span. It frightened me to think of it, that I passed up an early marriage or children to write these silly books, that I bought the lie that the academic life had to be separate from relational experience, as though God only wanted us to learn cognitive ideas, as if the heart of a man were only created to resonate with movies. No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath:

I'll tell you how the sun rose
A ribbon at a time...

It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were... and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.

So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

I want to repeat one word for you:

Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.

A great deal of the time, Donald Miller's writing encourages me to stay strong in my beliefs, and reminds me that I'm not alone in how I view God and the world. However, sometimes his writing convicts me that I do need to reevaluate some aspect of myself. I do enjoy gradual change immensely, and tracking the small steps that I've taken as a person is one of the most gratifying pastimes, but there are moments in life when I think it's necessary to just, as Miller puts it, leave. I don't especially want to suddenly drop some part of my life, but if that's what I feel God calling me to do, I need to be prepared for that. I didn't ever have any inclination to go to a new church, attend camp for the first time, make new friends at school, or share my heart with a stranger prior to actually doing these things, and yet they've all been hugely fulfilling. At some point, hopefully now, I have to acknowledge that while change is uncomfortable and unpredictable, it's healthy, natural, and necessary. Whether in the area of what I spend my time on, who I look to for wisdom, how I interact with others, what I turn to for contentment, and how I use my resources, I pray that I'll be in a perpetual state of metamorphosis and, hopefully, evolution as I attempt to live and love as Christ did. Perhaps I'll feel called to make a complete about face in some aspect of how I live out my faith, or maybe this "venturing out" that Donald Miller speaks of will simply translate into a constant appraisal and adjustment of my time here. I know that complacency can only damage any attempts to endure on this road towards transformation and engage in a phoenix-style of living. Not that shame for my current self would be at all healthy, but some critical consideration and open ears are definitely crucial. I suppose any proposed change causes me such trepidation purely because I fear that with change, I'll lose a part of the happiness I have, or the person I am today. The photos I included in the blog today illustrate this; when I took a picture of my shadow created by the dim street lights on campus at night, I could see the silhouette of myself. When I turned the flash on, I suppose metaphorically taking a truly good look at what lay before me, the old silhouette of myself disappeared, and clean slate lay before me. Though I love the place where I'm at right now, it would be reprehensible for me to stay in this place purely because it suits me and it's rather convenient.

Links from the Past Week

• Caitlin Jane's Photos
• Check Out #6
• Canadian Tunes
• Islands in the Sky
• Fire Eyed Boy
• Waiting to Die
• One More Day
• Voltage
• Kelly Watch the Stars
• Never Stop Working
• Sammy Sam
• Summerbirds in the Cellar
• Atlantis to Interzone
• Best Thing Ever
• I Got You On Tape
• Insomnia
• Heaven On the Ground
• You Only Live Once
• Moustache Video
• Vitesse
• Throw It
• Hand On High

Films Seen in the Past Week

• Nacho Libre
• Brokeback Mountain
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
• Enough
• Bone Collector
• Return of the Pink Panther
• Bridges of Madison County

Bad Things in the Past Two Weeks

• Gazelda the eMac is in dire straights
• Philomena Guinea has died
• I was more sick than I've ever been in my life
• my family's impending abandonment of me is nearing
• the Eskies lost their first game against the Stamps
• I acknowledged that I will likely never drive a car
• Honduras fared not-so-well in the World Cup

Excellence in the Near Future

• Street Performers Festival
• Pirates of the Caribbean 2
• the house being all mine
• World Cup mania
• football wins
• Sunday dinner at Grandma's
• Dashboard Confessional (only slightly sarcastic inclusion)
• hair cut à la Cait

Books Being Read Currently

• Through Painted Deserts
• Emma
• Angels & Demons
• Skin Tight
• The Bell Jar
• Grendel
• Searching for God Knows What
• Mere Christianity
• Time Out New York
• Soul Survivor
• Adrian Mole: The Early Years
• Red Green Talks Cars
  

Illness Clearly Stunts Lucidity

Illness has been ubiquitous in my family as of late, and somehow this has resulted in my affliction with the virus-of-almost-death, an illness which involves a headache, upset stomach, sore throat, and exhaustion. However, there’s something about suffering through something with others that is quite lovely in a non-sadistic sense. Jess and Dad’s sufferance of this sickness preceded mine, and their empathy and advice (except for their suggestions that I should sleep constantly) have been quite delightful. However, this cautionary preamble should serve to inform you that I’m typing this as I watch television and drink excessive volumes of ginger ale, and multi-tasking in the midst of delirium frequently leads to nonsensical trains of thoughts and repetition. Hopefully my multi-tasking shall be slightly successful tonight, or even the potential for written words to elucidate will be lost. I really am in a state of placid confusion at the moment, so don’t expect too much from this blog entry.

While on the phone with Caitlin recently, a discussion over the profuse length of my blog was had, and I resolved to at least attempt to strive for conciseness in future entries. Caitlin, along with others from my junior high days, has witnessed the slow demise of any succinctness in my writing. Ever since English with the tremendous Mr. Capstick and Mr. Garry, I have been rendered incapable of limiting my writing. In person, I tend to be rather quiet, and have plenty of fun keeping the plethora of silly and odd things that I ponder inside my cranium; however, as soon as I have a pen and some paper, or simply a keyboard, I find spewing reflections to be quite entertaining. I haven’t written an assignment that had a maximum level of words/pages under that maximal level since grade 8 (I drone on even in lab reports when I’m given the opportunity to do so). Thus far, I’ve been penalized for exceeding the threshold of verboseness only twice, but I’ve been warned that garrulous writing is anything but rewarded in more senior third-year courses. My favourite authors have always been anything but skimpers when it came to the use of description and explanation, but I imagine that their musings are slightly more constructive than my ramblings. I’ve nearly always been a black sheep in any group of friends when it came to my beliefs, whether spiritual, musical, political, aesthetic, or social, and I suspect that the fact that people rarely understand my perspective initially results in my often ineffectual efforts to elucidate people on the rationale behind my thinking. Since I debate my point rather absurdly in person, and people often take my sarcasm and teasing seriously, writing tends to allow me to clarify more efficiently.

















Crystal has informed me that a great deal of the time, my debating skills leave a great deal to be desired. Apparently my arguments neared the preposterous in Three Hills; my argument that we could send spruce trees from Canadian forests to depleted rain forests was taken seriously, and Michael Moore’s tendency towards propagandizing was deemed unforgivable by everyone else at Sunday breakfast. Thus typing is quite an enjoyable pastime when paired with a nice hot drink, some lovely music, Jess’ company, and a comfy chair. Although I enjoy using my blog as a journal, it seems wise to make each entry a more reasonable length, so as to make perusal of it less painful. This, in turn, may simply lead to more frequent blogging, but at least I can be remotely terse in the individual entries. The fact that I am endeavouring to be pithy may be a life achievement of sorts; you should all be happy for me. Happifying news has abounded this past week. Jess, my delightful best friend and brain child/sister and of nearly 17 years, earned the top marks in her grade this year (of the more than 400 grade 11 students). Her proficiency in physics, my silly 91% dreadful course, never ceases to amaze me, and her self-deprecation over her English skills despite getting insanely high marks in the class is ridiculous. In the Lobe household, earning top marks is always a big deal, and we always go out for a splendid celebratory dinner when someone gets such an honour, so listening to Jack Johnson at Café Select made for some very pleasant enjoyment of mousse, salmon, and side-splitting tales of white water rafting. Thus, in addition to Jess’ genius, she is quite useful for the creation of occasions for eating. Moreover, her possessions are quite fabulous for pilfering, and her lap makes an excellent pillow.

Also agreeable in the last while was the news that both sets of grandparents had returned safely after their excellent respites from life in Edmonton during their time spent in British Columbia. The fact that my grandparents remain completely in love with each other, and fully capable of enjoying a glass of champagne, nearly nude acrobats, a stunning waterfall, walks along the beach, and time spent together gives me great hope for old age, if I ever make it to those years. I’m rather concerned that I’m going to become senile as I advance in this years, and I find this exceedingly disconcerting. I find the thought of losing my memory, or not being able to perceive and think through things logically quite distressing, mainly because I’ll be an entirely different person without my complete sanctity of mind (or whatever sanctity I do indeed have). Jess and I were watching home videos of our childhood antics this afternoon, and I was struck, of course, by how we’ve matured over the years, but also by how similar we’ve remained. Jess continues to be incredibly adorable and lighthearted, while I’m still happily opinionated and strange at times. It’s inconceivable to me that we might become gossip mongering, irrational sisters someday, but it’s more than likely that at some point we will. I suppose that so long as we don’t realize our own state of dementia, and our children aren’t overly disturbed by our dementia, it won’t be entirely awful, but the potential of us becoming ninnies continues to scare me sightly. In conversation with my dad over the inevitability of our aging, and God’s intentions for our elderly selves, we’ve come to the conclusion that we weren’t exactly designed to live so long. His grandparents never got to the point where they forgot what year it was, or how to shop for groceries. However, my dad’s ideas about old age must be taken with a grain of salt, as he plans to move into a secluded cabin in B.C., hang glide frequently, play his drums regardless of any muscular dystrophy that he might face, and condition his grandchildren to become selfless altruists. Though he feels that old age isn’t quite what it should be, he evidently idealizes it, and envisions Jess and I clipping his toenails and grooming his ear hair. No matter what the cost, and how much we love him, Jess and I will certainly hire someone to do these wretched things.


















So much of human behaviour is dependent upon the perspective with which one views the world. Whether it’s our attitude towards others, our approach to dealing with a problem, or simply our take on the cause of various events around us, their take on all those things we encounter in the proverbial journey through life has a great impact on our interactions with the world and our emotional experience of those interactions. Our fence was replaced a few weeks ago after it began to sway more than the white picket ones in Wizard of Oz, which provided for some actual excitement to observe from the vantage point of my bedroom window. The juxtaposition between having no fence at all to obstruct the view of our alley and the green fence that I now see from my window has been quite marked, and it led me to think about perspective. I’m easily fascinated by things, and engrossment with various things can often lead me to develop a narrow outlook. Taking a moment to get the big picture is certainly necessary at times. Suggesting that people take a good look at their life isn’t anything very novel, but particularly at this time in my life it’s easy to get caught up in the ridiculous purely because the ridiculous seems to be of great consequence. Far too often, certain aspects of our lives can appear considerably more or less significant than they truly are due to an unhealthy outlook. Because my perspective is easily skewed, I find myself expending energy on the wrong things, and my thoughts can dwell excessively on the trifling matters. This is why it’s so important for me to take a moment to ponder God’s take on everything that I’m juggling and pray to Him about it all; on days when I skip devotions, I tend to concentrate on inconsequential thoughts and fail to see the big picture.

In addition to taking a Godly perspective in one’s life, a decent dose of optimism tends to afford one with a healthy viewpoint. Going through life with sanguinity adds nearly a decade to a person’s life expectancy, and I suspect that a life lived with hopefulness and positivity is more truly lived to the fullest. This is not to say that realism and pragmaticism are to be disregarded when evaluating everything, but accepting the hardship that we inevitably face and seeing the good in it certainly allows us to appreciate the blessings. Everyday I make a list of things that have made a list of things that have made me smile, and it’s not much of a struggle to fill a page with a list of small delights from the past 24 hours, but in truth, the one time I made a list of things of things that I’d found distressing, I was rather disheartened. It was just as easy to fill a page with things that had been stressful and dismaying, and replaying these taxing moments in my day led me to consider how far this fallen world is from what it could have been, and what it will be. When I look for negatives in my day, they’re fairly glaring, and searching for the blessings rather than the hardships is therefore shrewd. Not that venting about a tough day, learning a lesson from a tough experience, thinking through a quandary, or listening for God’s voice in a predicament are unwise, but spending more mental energy on life’s adversities rather than reveling in and thanking God for His blessings seems quite silly to me. Although I’m decidedly wary of hedonism and pursuing happiness at all costs, whether moral or otherwise, a failure to make the most of this short time on earth would be an awful shame.
















In a study by John Ortberg that my small group at church recently discussed, Ortberg suggested that it is a sin not to experience joy in life. Initially, I was somewhat disturbed by his suggestion that we are commanded to live joyfully, but after looking at the Biblical characterization of joy, this was something that I felt quite convicted by. Whereas a psychological definition of joy would include a physical experience of an elevated heart rate, higher levels of endorphins, a more cheerful lilt in one’s speech, and perhaps an increased frequency of laugher, a deep spiritual joy doesn’t necessarily involve chipperness, or even smiling. It’s a joy that comes from our ultimate hope, and glimpses of His majesty and the splendor that is to come. I grew up in a church where many struggled emotionally, and depression resulted in several members of the church family finding it difficult to be contented. Yet very seldom did these same people struggle to bear witness to God’s goodness and worship Him for the gifts of life, salvation, and community. Some of the most beautiful times of worship that I experienced at Zion were times in which people who had suffered tremendous loss or penury were completely joyful and exultant in the midst of trial and tribulation. I believe it was two weeks after our pastor’s mom had died entirely unexpectedly that my mom played “Blessed Be Your Name,” the song that was playing when Judi had passed away, in church. As we sang the coda “you give and take away,” there was a very poignant moment of Shaun weeping as he praised God; he knew all too well the truth that God gives and takes away. Shaun was joyful even in this dark time of mourning; he recognized God’s sovereignty over the whole situation, was thankful that his mom was Home, and acknowledged the wonderful blessing that he had had in his mom. I’ve yet to experience a loss remotely close to one that Shaun and his family did that year, but I pray that now and in the future, I’ll perceive all that there is to be jubilant over and rely on God for the pure joy that only He can offer, that even a grieving son can experience.

I love the opening scene of Garden State, in which Largeman dreams that he’s a passenger on a plane in peril. Throughout this scene, the apathetic Largeman remains unaffected by the chaos and terror surrounding him; instead of reacting to the clear possibility of tragedy, he adjusts his air conditioning and reacts in his seat. He hesitates to answer a phone ringing overhead, which turns out in reality to be a call from his father informing him that his mother has died, as if he is unconcerned with the reality of his situation. A Hindu prayer song plays in the background, and the melancholy in the music is foiled by Largeman’s blank stare, not only making the image seem truly dream like and surreal, but also emphasizing his emotional disconnect from the world. This scene never ceases to make me appreciate the ability to emote. Though horror and dread are the furthest things from pleasant feelings, they are a part of the experience of life. The phone call that Largeman is diffident to answer represents to me an opportunity to know true life, in which the good, the bad, and the ugly are recognized. After all, life is a bit of a roller coaster ride, and the cart has to go down sometimes in order to have somewhere to go up from. In the film, the opportunity to answer the phone to me symbolizes the choice between life and death, a full-fledged living out of our existence or apathy from it all. Largeman’s numbness to everything early on in the plotline, be it the death of a loved one or the ludicrousness of having a gas pump still attached to his car, strikes me as exceedingly tragic. God never wanted us to suffer as we do now, but He did create emotions and not going through these feelings would be a true travesty. Alienation’s growing prevalence has led to a frequent inability to empathize with others’ struggles, feel concerned for the lives of future generations, and comprehend our dependence on God.

This entry has been a bit of a failure in the conciseness department, but at least I made the attempt to keep it short. In the future, I’ll perhaps keep entries under the 2000 word count. The Oilers have just managed to keep their playoff hopes alive, and my family's viewing of the game on Saturday promises to be full of exceedingly vociferous screaming, neglect of the Eskies game against the Stamps, unhealthy foods, anxious clenching of fists, and hopefully another win for the Oilers to tie up the series. As Jill pointed out on Saturday, I was previously faithless in my doubting of the Oilers on the blog a few weeks ago, and the Oilers proved to be quite capable of achieving the unexpected. It is the Stanley Cup that's at stake here, so we musn't give up easily.

Folk Festival 2006 Performers (My Faves in Bold)
Kiran Ahluwalia
Jenny Allen
Baka Beyond
Bedouin Soundclash
Beolach
Geoff Berner
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Salil Bhatt and Ramkumar Mishra
The Blind Boys of Alabama
Bill Bourne
David Bromberg with Angel Band
Greg Brown
Chumbawamba
Bruce Cockburn
Jason Collett
Mary Coughlan
Iris DeMent
The Duhks
Feist
Lennie Gallant
Amos Garrett and the Festival House Band
David Gray
Sarah Harmer
The Holmes Brothers
Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul
Michael Joseph and the Ridges
K'Naan
James Keelaghan
Salif Keita
Paul Kelly
Lágbájá
Mary Jane Lamond
Bettye LaVette
Jez Lowe and the Bad Pennies
Erynn Marshall and Chris Coole
Lorrie Matheson
The McDades
Lynn Miles
Mortal Coil
The Neville Brothers
Karine Polwart
PorkBelly Futures
Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys
Rodrigo Y Gabriela
Linda Ronstadt
Peter Rowan
Sandy Scofield
Show of Hands
Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder
Solas
Southern Routes
Mark Sterling
Susan Tedeschi
Teddy Thompson
Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir
Rachelle van Zanten
Le Vent du Nord
The Waifs
The Wailin' Jennys
Hawksley Workman
















Foods that I'm Craving
- hamburger
- donair
- milkshake
- chicken noodle soup
- white hot chocolate
- A&W root beer float
- bulgar
- tortellini
- bruschetta
- chocolate rainbow ice cream
- scalloped potatoes
- cheesy spuds
- Grandma's buns
- Nealumpstin cake
- limeade
- green beans
- margarine
- ginger beef
- spring rolls
- special fried rice
- naan
- curry
- green tea
- iced tea
- chocolate mousse

Things Left in Three Hills
- shampoo
- conditioner
- two pillows
- cover-up
- toothbrush
- toothpaste
- wallet
- sunscreen
- pictures of cars
- peanut M&Ms wrapper
















Reasons Friday will be Super
- it's Jess' birthday
- we're going out for dinner to Upper Crust (best restaurant ever)
- Jess is learning Spanish words
- it's Bike to Work day
- Jess will be precisely one year away from coming to 18+ concerts
- it's the last day of school
- rain dancing can take place
- my mamushka has the day off
- rain days are quite fun at work
- the weekend will be nigh!

Lovely Songs for this Week
- "First Day of My Life" by Bright Eyes
- "Belle" by Jack Johnson
- "Fire Eyed Boy" by BSS
- "Mushaboom" by Feist
- "Christmas Song" by Dave Matthews
- "Delicate" by Damien Rice
- "Time" by Tom Petty
- "I Saw You in the Wild" by Great Lake Swimmers
- "For Once in My Life" by Harry Connick Jr.
- "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley (this is the song I was supposed to remind you of, if you're reading this Rob and Mike!)
- "Moses" by Coldplay
- "Paradise" by Joni Mitchell