words, words, words

thedailybeard: brilliant.

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:22:31 -0400

brilliant.

Good

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:50:00 -0400

Have you ever thought about how everybody is selfish, but not necessarily in a bad way? Somebody can be “altruistic” and do nothing but help other people, but there will always be a motivation. An altruistic person will always want to do those altruistic things for one reason or another; in a sense, they are only doing what they want to do.

That occurred to me a long time ago, but lately I’ve realized that while everybody is neutral-selfish, it isn’t necessarily good to be consciously selfish. We’re always doing what we want to do, but it might not be good to actually think, “What is the most satisfying thing to do next?” Because if happiness involves immersing yourself in what you do (and I suspect it does) then constantly thinking of how much satisfaction you can get un-immerses you. It merses you. It might also reduce whatever you enjoy into a tool of your own satisfaction, which isn’t satisfying at all.

Which brings me to my title. We have a default way of thinking about satisfying things: we call those things “good.” When I eat a nice slice of pizza, I don’t say, “MMM this pizza brings me so much satisfaction,” I say, “mmm this pizza is sooo gooood.” Which is a little odd, if you think about it. That there isn’t such a thing as objectively good pizza. Mushroom pizza is only “good” for somebody who enjoys mushrooms on their pizza. The pizza isn’t “good.” I enjoy the pizza.

It might not be an accurate way of thinking, but our language isn’t consistent anyways. I don’t think it’s good for me to try and be accurate - to think in terms of my own satisfaction. I think it makes me self-absorbed. Maybe others can pull it off, but I don’t think I can.

I really like the kind of writing that just describes. The kind of writing that doesn’t boil...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:24:27 -0400

I really like the kind of writing that just describes. The kind of writing that doesn’t boil things down or sum things up, or offer opinions, or anything like that. It’s very satisfying to read, and I imagine it’s satisfying to write.

I think it’s an important kind of wisdom. The ability to see.

Snapshot

Tue, 14 May 2013 01:02:15 -0400

This laptop is on a desk, but not on the main desk-level area. It sits on the top shelf, facing backwards, because I’m standing behind the desk while typing. The desk is a comfortable distance from the wall and there’s a squishy foam mat for my standing comfort. My sister got it for my mom, and my mom gave it to me because she disapproved of my standing on the kitchen-chair seat-cushions. It’s a squishy memory-ish foam, but its surface is slick, so it’s wipeable. It’s got a wooden texture printed onto it. An odd combination of tactile and visual textures.

Across the room from this desk is the closet, and between the two hangs a rope tied in a loop. It’s a thick, half-inch-thick, heavy-duty-looking white rope. There is a towel hanging on it, as well as my scarf, and two articles of clothing that my mom hung there. Presumably she ran out of space for hanging her clothes up in her bedroom.

There is no chair at this desk. There’s a lamp, but it’s off. The two recently-installed recessed lights are shining instead. On this desk is a bowl that used to hold the remnants of some home-made dessert soup. There are two boxes from amazon, as well, both about the size of three laptops stacked together. Both of them are empty. They’re for propping up the laptop when I get tired of bending over to look at the laptop screen.

On this desk there is also about four pounds’ worth of a giant, five-pound gummy bear that used to be Haley’s birthday cake. It’s in a Ziploc bag to preserve freshness. Haley’s mom gave it to me the other day, because it’d been sitting around for several weeks. Its freshness stays preserved, but it’s hard to say whether it’ll ever get finished. It’s really difficult to cut giant gummy bears.

This song feels like a sticker that’s been removed and re-stuck too many times. It feels very...

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:12:00 -0400

This song feels like a sticker that’s been removed and re-stuck too many times. It feels very odd. I’m not sick of it - it’s just… there.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:27:58 -0400

New post!

!!!

Default Motivation

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:46:17 -0400

Sometimes, I need to convince myself to do stuff. My success rate is mediocre and that makes me think about motivation a lot. I noticed that when I try to get myself to do something, the default way I motivate myself is to think about the benefits I’ll receive. Or how nice it’ll be to have it done with, or the reward I’ll have after it.

That’s a pretty bad pattern to encourage, isn’t that?

Figuring it out

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 02:23:00 -0400

I’ve recently been watching a lot of Day[9], who is a Starcraft caster. He’s hilarious and insightful and I don’t actually play Starcraft at all nowadays; I just enjoy listening to him talk. (I usually tune into the shows that are half random storytelling and wild tangent.)

Anyways he’s great you should watch him but the reason I mention him is an observation he made about how people think. Whatever “it” may be, we tend to think that we can figure it out. That there’s some trick to it that we just have to grasp, and then everything’ll work out. I think he was talking in the context of Starcraft (who’d’ve guessed?), and in that case, one might say something like, “I’ve figured it out! I can just do ________ and always win!”

I do this all the time for non-Starcraft things. Or at least I feel that way. Actually I’m drawing a blank when it comes to examples, but I have definitely thought that way. Tried to think of a simple way to cheat the system and reach whatever goal I’m trying to hit. Oh, I used to try and study with people a lot. That’s an example. Ok that sounds like a weird example. Let me explain.

When I dormed, I liked studying with dormmates in a really casual way. As in, when there were no pressing deadlines to meet (though it was nice having company for deadlines too). Casual studying would always result in having interesting catch our fancies. We’d have really random conversations or do dumb things. And then we’d get back to studying. No need to have all this small talk and effort filling up the void in between interestingness. No pressure to make sense or be interesting.

So when I stopped dorming I (briefly) tried to study with people a lot. I was trying to find a quick fix for enjoying people but not small talk. That was my trick. It fell flat on its face, I think mostly because people need some time with one another to relax and let distractions be distracting. Anyways! Example ended.

Lateral-thinking solutions exist. Sometimes things are simple, and just need some “figuring out.” I guess it’s bad habit of mine to expect to find tricks everywhere.

I have the oddest sensation of wanting to eat this song. I want it to sink in, or fill me, or...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 03:39:00 -0400

I have the oddest sensation of wanting to eat this song. I want it to sink in, or fill me, or something. It’s like I want to take the song and make it solid and have it become part of me. But no matter how many times I listen to it, it stays transient. I can memorize it, but I can’t catch it.

And who is my neighbor?

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 19:00:00 -0500

- And behold, a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, ”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, ”A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, ”You go, and do likewise.”

I usually hear this parable taught as a lesson on loving the unlovable. The Samaritan and the Jewish man would ordinarily be enemies, but the Samaritan ignores all that and loves him anyway. “And who is my neighbor?” - that is the question, and the answer people teach is, “Love intensely, even those who you are inclined to hate.”

The “answer” I hear doesn’t answer the question! It’s on topic but not on the mark. There are many people who we make no effort to love. With which people should we change that? We should love our neighbors, yes, even the despicable ones, but who are our “neighbors”?

I never noticed the discrepancy till I manuscript-studied this passage. Look carefully at Jesus’ end-of-lesson phrases. Seriously, look. Think about it. Is there anything odd? Oddly phrased, out-of-place, etc?

Here is what I see. Ask somebody, “Who is my neighbor?” and they will think of the houses next door. They will give you some loose class of people. They will reply with “the people who live near you,” or “the people who you see regularly.” Nobody will say, “anybody who you ever lay eyes on.” That’s who the Jewish man is to the Samaritan: a random fellow he happened to see as he traveled far from home.

But Jesus doesn’t even say that your neighbors are “anybody who you ever lay eyes on.” He doesn’t define a group of people to love at all, doesn’t say “your neighbors are ________.” He asks, which of these three proved to be a neighbor? And then he says, go and do likewise. In other words, go and be neighbors to people (loving neighbors, of course). He didn’t say, “love these certain people who are your neighbors.” He said, go and love indiscriminately!

I talk a lot about giving up our spending for the sake of the poor. Jesus said, go and love people (and love them as you love yourself); I feel that this “people” includes the destitute who live halfway across the world. And when you really, truly love people, what would you not give up for their sakes? How meaningless are our costly patterns and material comforts (going out to eat, entertainment, fancy things) compared to the well-being of the people we love?

Some people disagree with me about this. They say it is too extreme. I can understand that. It is extreme. I still think it is true. The reason I bring it up is that some of them say we are not obliged to love the poor as ourselves, not if they live halfway across the world. They certainly aren’t our neighbors, not by any typical meaning of the word. This is my reply: Jesus didn’t have a typical meaning in mind. The Samaritan and the Jewish man were not neighbors. When he said, “Go and do likewise,” he meant, go and become loving neighbors for people. Go and love whoever you can, as much as you can.

How to live? (3 - Sabbath and reflection)

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 17:21:00 -0500

- I like the idea of resting purposefully. Purposefully - not just letting myself do whatever I feel like doing. Rather, choosing to do the things that I know will restore me.

I don’t remember when, but at some point in the past few years, I started thinking seriously about keeping the Sabbath. Since then, I’ve experimented a bit. For some stretches, I would be strict with myself about it. For some stretches, I would try to keep Saturday clear. And sometimes, I would just forget about the Sabbath for a little while. Life got in the way.

I allow life to get in the way. I do it on purpose, for everything; I try to live in the moment. An old decision, actually: When I was a kid, I saw adults living in their pasts (mostly in media, I think, though probably in real life as well), and I decided to avoid that mistake by trying not to dwell on the past. Of course, that doesn’t mean I decided to ignore the past altogether. Just that I should have good reason to dwell on it.

I take a lot of reasons as “good reason.” I think things over a lot. But because I want my default focus to be the present, I have rarely reflected for the sake of reflection. Often I’ll process things that happened in the past week or two, but I rarely think back months or years.

That will change now. I’ve dug up old letters and emails and after reading them, I realized that I ought to have dug them up a long time ago. It’s helping me connect things, helping me answer questions that’ve been frustrating me for months. Now, I want to keep the Sabbath and use it to reflect - reflect on my past, of course, but also the things I have come to take for granted. I’ll take a little time and make those old things (old decisions, old beliefs, old understandings) fresh again.

Leonard Ravenhill in his book Why Revival Tarries recounts the last moments of Charlie Peace’s...

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 20:30:01 -0500

Leonard Ravenhill in his book Why Revival Tarries recounts the last moments of Charlie Peace’s life:

He was taken on the death-walk. Before him went the prison chaplain, routinely and sleepily reading some Bible verses. The criminal touched the preacher and asked what he was reading. “The Consolations of Religion,” was the reply.

Charlie Peace was shocked at the way he professionally read about hell. Could a man be so unmoved under the very shadow of the scaffold as to lead a fellow-human there and yet, dry-eyed, read of a pit that has no bottom into which this fellow must fall? Could this preacher believe the words that there is an eternal fire that never consumes its victims, and yet slide over the phrase with a tremor? Is a man human at all who can say with no tears, “You will be eternally dying and yet never know the relief that death brings”?

All this was too much for Charlie Peace. “Sir”, he addressed the preacher, “if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worth while living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!”

(All taken directly from Wikipedia.)

This story is preached as motivation, but it makes me wonder. Do we really believe what we say we believe? Do I really believe what I say I believe?

Reality, record, report

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:06:37 -0500

- Jesus paid for your sin. This is the reality. But nobody understands the workings of this reality. People preach about it, try to explain it, and try to give examples for our intuitions to grab, but any sense of deep understanding is illusory. We can only take Jesus at his word and trust that it happened.

When learning about God, I find it helpful to distinguish between these three things.

Reality: how things are or were.
Record: the words written about that in the Bible.
Report: the words used to explain all these things to you.

My understanding of the record is often (if not usually) incomplete. The report is often couched in rhetoric and sometimes leaves things out. There is a lot of noise. I find it helpful to remember that, and to focus on the reality.

Schindler's sadness

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 22:01:00 -0500

Schindler's sadness:

I think of this scene pretty often.

Also, I love Liam Neeson.

"Tell me about"

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:24:00 -0500

- That phrase is my favorite question word. I like it a lot. It’s a blank check invitation, a sign that you just want to hear the other person talk. Real questions (the kind with question marks) are more specific and feel a bit more demanding. Broaden the question and it usually becomes as a vague question, unpleasant and confusing to receive.

“Tell me about ____.” is like getting away with a vague question. Such a handy little phrase.

urbana ok yes

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 00:37:00 -0500

urbana ok yes:

I recommend David Platt’s message.

Jesus emphasized money more than any preacher I know

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 04:13:39 -0500

(Not that I know a lot of preachers.)

This is part of the FAQ of this post here.

I hear that one of every seven verses in Luke has to do with money.

I am not talking about money because I believe in the power of money. I talk about money because the way we spend reflects what we value. I don’t think money will solve the world’s problems. It is one area of our lives, a big one. That is all.

Old Testament Wealth

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 03:54:49 -0500

This is part of the FAQ of this post here.

Yes. God celebrates celebration. In the Old Testament, there was lots of gold and jewelry being thrown around, especially when it came to the temple. But who says there were lots of starving people that God ignored for the sake of celebration? Maybe Israel didn’t have many people starving to death.

“If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.” - Deuteronomy 15:7-8.

Sounds like if there were any poor, it was because of selfishness, not God.

To drive the point home, here is Ezekiel 16:49, where God speaks to the Israelites and says, “This was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”

Lastly, if you’re still not convinced that the righteous rich like Solomon or Job were really generous and blessedly rich anyways, take a look at Job 31:16-22:

If I have withheld anything that the poor desired,

or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail,

or have eaten my morsel alone,

and the fatherless has not eaten of it

(for from my youth the fatherless grew up with me as with a father,

and from my mother’s womb I guided the widow),

if I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing,

or the needy without covering,

if his body has not blessed me,

and if he was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep,

if I have raised my hand against the fatherless,

because I saw my help in the gate,

then let my shoulder blade fall from my shoulder,

and let my arm be broken from its socket.

Sounds like Job is pretty sure he was completely openhanded with his giving, and filthy rich anyways.

Spending and Poverty

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 03:41:00 -0500

- Here is my current opinion, at a friend’s request. I’m going to Urbana and talking to people there, so this may change.

“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus said. And, “love your enemies,” and “do to others as you would have them do to you.” Sounds to me like Jesus meant, “love everybody, a lot.” I think this includes the many children who starve every hour. And, to quote somebody else (I forget where I saw this), “you can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving.”

While I’m at it, let me quote somebody else: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower. Do you agree with Mr. Eisenhower?

It’s easy to agree when it comes to war. But this applies exactly to spending on other things. Every dollar we spend on comfort, entertainment, expensive food, unnecessary clothes, whatever, is a theft in the exact same sense. It’s standard economics; when we spend on one item over another, it reflects our preference for that one item over the other. When we go to the movies, it reflects our preference for entertainment over feeding starving children. It takes human nature to pretend otherwise.

I’m not saying that going to the movies is wrong. I am not saying that. I am saying that it’s wrong not to love. I am saying that when we ignore starving children for the sake of our own entertainment, we are not loving those children. (It would be different to pass them over for the sake of other things, like, say, preventing war, or staying alive and productive. We can love somebody and not give to them. But if the reason we don’t give is that we have a hankering for a movie, or because we have a habit of eating out, I don’t think we can honestly say that we love those children.)

Let me put it another way.

Before we decided to follow Jesus, our priorities were in a different order. Our first priority was probably our own security or comfort. The things we did and the way we spent our money reflected that. Our default way of making decisions and spending money was to enjoy ourselves and ensure our own security.

After following Jesus, our priority became obeying God. The things we do and the way we spend our money ought to reflect that. Our default way of making decisions and spending money ought to be obedience to God. When we have enemies, we should have a special reason not to be really compassionate with them. When we know of people in need, our default way of spending our money ought to reflect our love for them. We should have a special reason - a really, really good reason - to spend our money (time, energy, whatever) on ourselves.

Frequently Asked Questions (Also some Frequently Raised Concerns):

Doesn’t God want us to celebrate? The temple was covered in jewels.

You emphasize money too much.

Are you saying going to the movies is a sin?

I don’t want to feel guilty all the time.

I will wait until I’m called to give everything up.

Charity isn’t as great as it’s chalked up to be.

There are reasons to spend money on entertainment, like supporting the economy.

Stop judging me!

belovedteresa: This is Victoria Soto, and she is an unspoken...

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:47:39 -0500

belovedteresa:

This is Victoria Soto, and she is an unspoken hero of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. She went to my high school in Stratford, Connecticut and she was only 27. When the shooter came into her classroom, she hid all of her first graders in the closets and cabinets and told him that they were in the gym. He shot her and left, but every single one of her children were completely unharmed. Victoria passed away there but her sixteen kids made it to safety. I found out from Facebook and my home town is mourning her, but acknowledging that she was a hero and gave her life to save the innocents.

Please take a moment to think about Victoria and her family as well as the children that passed away. If it weren’t for Victoria there would have been almost 40 children murdered today. I didn’t know her personally more than a face in a yearbook, but many people who are close to my heart loved her. I want her memory to live on.