Typos, wood chippers, regurgitation. Hooray for journals!

March 30, 2008

Post Seven24 Wind-down

So I have had an entertaining/intense/sometimes hysterical experience reading through all of my old journals lately.  For one, I can barely read my own writing many times.  My r's, k's and n's come in subtle variations of one symbol, which I seem to have invented.  Good thing it's not on my keyboard.  On top of that my typos are ridiculous! I skip words, replace words, combine words, I even invent words (like "prepiphany" which I guess happens before an epiphany).  Luckily, I am used to laughing at myself, so the discovery of my 'unique' style was not a shocker.   Sadly, many of my entries came at times of frustration and desperation so there aren't too many uppers, however there are some excerpts that I now see came purely from divine revelations.  Here is one night's contemplations:

November 21, 2006

So first off, I'm promising myself that this will be a short entry. 
1.) I have to wake up for church in 5 hours. 
2.) This pen's about to poop out.

I think I've grown up having seen too many movies.  One simple thing that they all have in common is an ending.  Even the depressing, hopeless ones find some imaginative way to make a cute red bow and allow the viewer to feel some sort of closure.  Life, on the other hand, has this way of going on and on (I know 'duh' - stick with me).  Our life stories aren't formed around singular events that strive for depth and closure.  It's like a wood chipper that just spews out more and more chips.  Sometimes I feel as though I'm standing there under it, furiously shoveling the pile to prevent the shavings at the bottom from turning to mulch.  Sometimes I feel like I end up buried in that mulch.  I suddenly get overwhelmed with the philosophies of life, the general concept of the whole 'church thing', and the waxing and waning of my own personal faith in this loving God that knows more than I do.  What does it mean to follow God? He doesn't really use his blinkers.  It's kind of like trying to track a mysterious invisible bus sitting in rush hour traffic, and the job is to understand its shape/direction by seeing the things surrounding it.  By seeing its impression on things visible.   By questioning to understand what it is not. 

Okay back to 2008 Alyssa.  I love this passage below, from Colossians*, that encourages us to acknowledge the mystery of God.  That is the kind of faith that allows questions about what God is or is not.  Don't we have a tendency to think that our pastors/ mentors/parents have done all the chewing for us? I have to think, "Am I allowing myself to be spiritually malnourished** by relying on predigested God?"  Wow I just got a great visual of those mother birds that feed their babies by regurgitating food.   Now I have a disturbing image of Brian Kiley....okay nevermind.  Anyways, what are you eating?       

                                        -Hebrews 5:12