home sweet south of the lake
i'm home now. i feel good. i feel at peace like i hoped i would coming back here. not doing anything is wonderful. tomorrow i'm going to start towards my goal of working out every day while i'm here so i can march the rose parade and ski for three days without wanting to die. and make apricot bars with my mommy. and sleep a lot.
i told joseph a few days ago that i really, really wanted to come here to find rest for my soul. college life is so great, but it's so busy, and my mind has been stretched this semester in ways that at times i don't think it was meant to be stretched. my goal for being here is to make myself realize that i can never fit my mind around God. He is too big and i am too little to understand. i don't necessarily think it's bad for me to think about religion and what i believe as much as i have been, but i don't want to kill myself over it anymore. i don't want to cry in my car after i go to church because i don't feel like i belong. i don't want to care about that. i want to get lost in feeling, in emotion, something beyond the realm of reason, because that is where i find God. i want to cry when i see the stars because i'm thinking about how each one was put in its place by my loving maker. i want to cry when i'm with my family and my friends because i'm thinking about how amazing of a gift they are to me and how much i want to be that same amazing gift to them. for a time this semester i've let my mind be bound by science and by rules and all it has done is made me an unhappy person. i need hope in this life or i won't survive. i need, desperately, something to believe in all over again...
if this means anything, i just watched american history x. i'm pretty sure this is the cause of this emotional outpouting. just remember-hate is a burden. now go out and love somebody today.
p.s. i updated some of the links-if you want me to link to your blog from this site, please send me a comment or something! (send me comments anyway ;-)
5 comments:
There is no God in the sense you speak of. Maybe that's your problem. God didn't instantly place each star where they are. The formed into what they are. Right now they aren't where or what they appear to be; they were only at that position billions of years ago. Analagously, humans weren't made, we evolved. Perhaps God does exist but not how any church or the bible teaches. Science itself gives much support to God, but not in the fundamentalist bible sense. I highly doubt it was science that was binding you and making you unhappy, rules perhaps, perhaps religion but certainly not science.
There is hope in everything, you just have to want to see it. You also need to believe in yourself and not let your happiness or sadness in life depend on others. People at a church can be just as hindering as people in other places. If you find no support there, move somewhere else. Nor should you rely on Joseph, your friends or family for your happiness and support, you need to find it yourself.
Surely you're an amazing gift to all the people you've ever touched. Whether those experiences were positive or negative, no one will ever be the same after they've met you, and that is special.
Hate is a burden, as well as an escape. The true test of a person is not to just go out and love someone, though we all should. The real trick would be to go out and give love to someone you hate. Perhaps then you would find the answers you're looking for and not need to rely on family, friends, boyfriends, or fellow church goers to decide your worth for you.
Just a thought as I passed by. Take it or leave it. For who am I? In the big scope of things, I am no one, and I represent myself accordingly. However, I do hope that perhaps I have helped, or at least given you ideas and thoughts to ponder.
to anonymous:
you have a pretty strong faith in your not-God. i use the word faith for a reason. you could just as easily use belief.
for, just as i cannot prove to you, empirically, that God exists; neither can you prove, empirically, that God does not exist.
it's not something that is debatable in the scientific plane in which you seem to place it. personally (and that is just my opinion, and may well be unfounded) i think that modern science is as much a realm of faith as any religion has ever claimed to be.
but that's just me
dear anonomyous (and zozo):
i don't think i meant to say that i don't believe it science, or that i don't take it seriously. i think science is fascinating and at times much too powerful for me to deny-for example, all the evidence supporting the fact that we evolved. how can i deny what has now almost become a scientific fact?
i don't want to ignore science. i don't want to be so earth-centered as to look at the stars and believe they were put there merely as a pretty picture-i think there could be other creatures out there circling around other stars like our own, i mean it's possible, i took an entire semester's worth of astronomy on this stuff. i do, however, want to be blown away by the fact that, if there was a big bang, that there was a hand guiding each star to its place, a hand that made the big bang happen in the first place. if we evolved from microorganisms, i want to know that there was a hand guiding us to become the incredibly complex human race that we are today. i think it's possible. all this incredible design implies a designer, don't you think?
so, in short, i don't think ignoring science or ignoring the faith i've held for so long is the solution. i think what i need to do is what i've been trying to do-find a way to make it all fit. find a way to make my head and my heart work together to bring me peace. because in the end, i think that's what faith is supposed to do (short-term at least). it's supposed to bring you peace. it's supposed to center your life around the things that really matter and help you focus on those things.
i know there is hope to be had in the world, but most people i know who don't believe in God are pessimistic, hopeless beings wandering around trying to find something to believe in. i want to know and be secure in that knowledge. that's all.
*agrees* (i didn't mean to make it seem like i thought we should all ignore science - personally i believe that faith and science go hand in hand - but that's a bit metaphysical for this early in the morning)
(:
tyler and anonymous-
there is pretty good evidence pointing towards a moment of Creation several thousand years ago... you can read about it at http://www.creationscience.com
even if y'all are leaning towards evolution as an answer to our origins, it's always good to know both sides of the argument. any less of an examination would result in an uninformed and unfounded decision.
bryan boyd
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