Emerson, stars, and scapegoats

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Nature,” he says that stars are all the more sublime because they are always there but never reachable. What should normally drive us insane instead just puts the world into perspective: the vastness of the sky, and the smallness of our own selves.

I think that can be applied in a lot of ways; that is, seeing what we know we cannot understand, and accepting that, only to observe in awed silence. In one way that’s a sort of worship, that simple kind of admiration that a mouse that lives in a giant palace might have. The universe gives us a little sliver of an idea of how large God really is. I’ve been thinking that just as we are a reflection or image of God (or in the words of C.S. Lewis, the “statue,” or copy, or the artist himself), the universe is a cheaper copy of another of God’s many facets. I could see how some people would want to worship the earth, as it does remind us of God a lot, but that’s just as silly as deifying man or beast. That’s only because both man and earth are from the same “artist,” the same creator. It’s only a shoddy reflection we see in the stars, although a pretty one.

I’ve only just begun reading Emerson’s works, but he sounds awfully Godless and Pocohontas-y to me. He was also talking about how Nature (capital N, apparently) was designed [or created itself] to include all its own answers, and that science was only the process of finding those answers hidden in Nature. I think thats a bit silly, since God’s kept a few things mysterious just so we wouldn’t think too much of ourselves saying, “Oh look at me! I know all the answers!” And looking back at history, every time a man gets that into his head he gets rather Narcissistic and thinks quite highly of himself. So God’s tried to keep us out of trouble that way. Then of course we get mad at God for hiding things from us. Every time we come across something we don’t understand, and know we never will understand, we blame God. He is our ultimate scapegoat. It’s a nasty habit we’ve all fallen into that we should stop. It’s as naive as you can get.

More later.

Snatches of a theme

Listening to Jars of Clay always makes me think. [If anyone reading this knows anything about me, you probably know how hard the whole thinking thing is for moi.] The song, “Light Gives Heat” always fills me with a sense of…not-big-enough-ness. Like there’s this theme, coursing through the veins of life, and I’m too little to take it all in (because I sense you have to do it all at once or not at all), let alone understand it. I can only hear snatches of it, when I go out walking, when I fall alseep listening to the Narnia soundtrack and the rain mingling together in my head, when I lose myself in a story, when I watch the news, or when I sit in my bed with my journal in hand. The song doesn’t have a sound, and yet it does – it’s very complicated and yuppie, and a thing they don’t have words for. Maybe defining it would make it not as special. So I’m not going to attempt it any further.

I really hate the whole cell phone thing right now. I mean, I’m grateful I have one, but the people I wish would call me never do, and the ones I wish I could avoid never stop calling. I can hear my cell phone ringing right now as I type, and I don’t know whether I should answer it or not.

I didn’t. But I’m going to make the trek upstairs to see who it was.

TFK + crying myself to sleep last night + my journal = this.

Don’t listen to me.

I like tearing myself apart.

My complaints aren’t voiced to garner sympathy.

I just need to rip myself apart without anyone telling me I’m me or special or stupid or beautiful.

As long as everyone keeps lying to me

the only judge I can trust is myself.

Every time I tell myself how imperfect I am

it feels really good. Like by honesty I could be rescued.

They all lie. It doesn’t affect me whether they hate me or love me or appreciate me or want to kill me. I’ve grown numb to the world enough that hating myself has become my favorite habit, something I do to myself because my hatred is the only thing I can trust.

Don’t tell me you love me. Why bother?

I can’t hear you anymore, anyway.

Please give up on me.

It’s all I want.

Post-Winter Camp…

Amidst all the carpetball and prank drama, I’ve taken one thing away from winter camp: sweep me away. It’s a song the band played only once, but I was left with the coolest metaphor. I’m swimming against the tide of life, against God’s will, against all I was taught to love. I just need to stop trying and let go, let God “sweep me away.” It was so cool. I’ve always felt like I should get the “God feeling” at camp, because I usually do, but what a few people have taught me is that when you base something serious (a relationship with God, marriage, etc.) on a really fickle thing like emotions, it won’t last, because those emotions won’t last long. So even though I don’t feel spritually refreshed and all that, and I feel like I might have missed out on something, I think I learned more this way. The speaker, Jason George, said something that hit me really hard, too: rededication isn’t something that happens whenever you go to camp, it’s a prayer you pray every. single. day. So from now on I’m going to ask God to help me with the easiest/hardest thing to do, living like I’m going to die tomorrow.

Besides starting over *coughagaincough*, I’ve also become friends with people I’ve always though were standoffish/hated me/were scared of me, which was very nice. Hopefully with more on board the anti-clique train, we can shake up our youth group fo’ realz this time. Which isn’t going to be the prettiest process ever, but hey. Nothing worth doing ever is.

Dissecting my favorite bit of Romans

1 So do you think we should continue sinning so that God will give us even more grace? 2 No! We died to our old sinful lives, so how can we continue living with sin? 3 Did you forget that all of us became part of Christ when we were baptized? We shared his death in our baptism. 4 When we were baptized, we were buried with Christ and shared his death. So, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the wonderful power of the Father, we also can live a new life. 5 Christ died, and we have been joined with him by dying too. So we will also be joined with him by rising from the dead as he did. 6 We know that our old life died with Christ on the cross so that our sinful selves would have no power over us and we would not be slaves to sin. 7 Anyone who has died is made free from sin’s control. 8 If we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. 9 Christ was raised from the dead, and we know that he cannot die again. Death has no power over him now.

Is that not the coolest? If King David had written that, there would have been a couple of selahs tucked in there. Man I love the word “selah.” Anyway,  this is what explains my username, soulvessel. I kind of came up with it but I found out that there are a couple verses that make sense of it. Go figure.

Paul is saying (welll…my interpretation:) that when we accepted Him as Savior, the connection between  our bodies and our real selves, our soul, was severed. At the same time, our souls were finally connected to Christ, and we share His death when we die, or rather, let God kill, our sinful selves (=bodies=not really us to begin with. Shoot. I hope this ends up making sense.). Therefore, by logical connection, if Christ rose again, and we died with Christ and are connected to/with Him, we will rise, too. QED, we can see that we won’t ever die again since Christ will never die.

Sooooo….what does this mean for me? See my aforementioned, inconveniently logical argument.  I’m dead, therefore I live. Wait what?

I accepted Jesus = I died to my body/sinful self = I live in/with and for Christ = I’m still alive because I died a while back = Nothing’s changed, just my attitude = WHAT THE FRUIT? The next step is to be figured out.

Til then….soulvessel says bye.

(now that you get it, it’s pretty cool, right?)

More about me [an explanation]

My name’s Jo. I’m a Christian, I have been since I was eight I guess. I used to struggle with little things like lying and self-deprecation and anorexia, and I still do, but God’s helped me with that, and it’s not much of a problem. So right now, my problem is boredom, staleness, yearning, and longing for God again. I’m one of those homegrown church kids who has an excellent time at winter and summer church camp, confesses everything, praises God, then floats down from this little Christian feel-good fantasy world back into reality. I’m not really sure about a lot of things. I think I want to rededicate my life to Christ but I’m a little scared right now because I don’t know what I’ll be getting myself into. The truth is, I really really want whatever that is. The thing beyond the open door – the closeness, the love, the comprehension of God. Or do all you people out there not know Him just as much as I do? Are you confused as me?

The reason I don’t feel like I know God right now is that it’s sort of disconnected – I don’t have the God feeling. I feel dead and disconnected and unreal, but I can’t seem to get back to God no matter how hard I try. Is there some magic spell I need to say? Am I missing something? Are Christians only Christians when they “feel” God’s presence? Are all of you out there completely connected and one with God? Or are you just as confused as me? Maybe this rebelution stuff is what I need. I want a 180 degree turn. So what next? Also, since I’m the one girl in my group of friends that doesn’t mess with stuff like porn and cutting and other stuff, I’m always in the middle and labeled the perfect little rich girl that doesn’t have any problems, which really gets on my nerves. As if you need to have this horrible life to be a good Christian or something! It bothers me.

Well, a lot of things bother me. I’ve never been able to be satisfied with lukewarm life. Which is why this stale silence is driving me slowly out of my mind.

An Introduction

Well! Good heavens, I hope I can find a place to start. I know blogs can be hard to get up and running, and this is my very first, so it’s going to be pretty boring in the beginning. So sorry.

A bit about me: My blog’s name is inspired by my favorite poem, which you can read here: http://www.blight.com/~sparkle/poems/pruf.html

I am 15 and live somewhere in North America. I write a lot. I am starting this just because I feel like it’s time to get a start on my life. This will be the unveiling of my soul, which is actually very easy to do on the internet. Yay!

I hope I can get some people to respond to this, but oh well. Nobody’s listening except God. Which is what I want most anyway.