Day in the life of

even
after
all this time
the sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
me.”

look
what happens
with a love like that,
it lights the
whole
sky.

                             - Hafiz 

“In passing, we might say that success is a hideous thing. Its false similarity to merit deceives men. To the masses, success has almost the same appearance as supremacy. Success, that pretender to talent, has a dupe - history. Juvenal and Tacitus only reject it. In our day, an almost official philosophy has entered into its service, wears its livery, and waits in its antechamber. Success: That is the theory. Prosperity supposes capacity. Win in the lottery, and you are an able man. The victor is venerated. To be born with caul is everything. Have luck alone and you will have the rest; be happy, and you will be thought great. Beyond the five or six great exceptions, the wonders of their age, contemporary admiration is nothing but shortsightedness. Gilt is gold. To be a chance comer is no drawback, provided you have improved your chances. The common herd is an old Narcissus, who adores himself and applauds the common. That mighty genius, by which one becomes a Moses, and Aeschylus, a Dante, a Michelangelo, or a Napoleon, the multitude attributes at once and by acclamation to whoever succeeds in his object, whatever it may be. Let a notary rise to be a deputy; let a sham Corneille write Tiridate; let a eunuch come into the possession of a harem; let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an era; let a pharmacist invent cardboard soles for army shoes and put aside, by selling this cardboard as leather for the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, four hundred thousand livres in income; let a peddler marry a usury and have her bear seven or eight million, of which he is the father and she the mother; let a preacher become a bishop by talking platitudes; let the steward of a good house become so rich that on leaving service he is made Minister of Finance - men call that Genius, just as they call the face of Mousqueton, Beauty, and the bearing of Claude, Majesty. They confuse heaven’s radiant stars with a duck’s footprint left in the mud.”

– Victor Hugo - Les Miserables

not a ton of time thus far for pictures, but here is a kinda fun on…

the middle of the desert… sure, let’s have a huge garden with butterflies and bees…

i took some pictures of marin’s parents’ new little kittens (i guess a kitten by definition isn’t allowed to be old, but anyway) here are some of the results, they were kinda fun. unfortunately, i shot these as the sun was setting so they are a bit noisy, but overall it could have been worse…

we don’t have any children at the moment, but i now have learned something that will make me a better parent.

this is good to know. i was planning on storing all of my children in the attic (when we finally had some) and getting them down for holidays and special events, but i guess now that just won’t work. i guess parents have to think outside the box…

in a nail biting match with chelsea, liverpool pulls off a trip to the champions league final on pk’s!

at least one of my teams is actually winning (cough astros… cough cough…)!! they face either ac milan or man u… let’s hope for milan… (at least that way i know i will have giovanni rooting for liverpool too…)

marin’ and i were on the way home from playing tennis today and flipping through radio stations (something that is a must since they are systematically removing every decent radio station from the college station airwaves) and we came across gospel radio. always a safe bet right? (no, of course that question is not dripping with sarcasm…) while i know it is no use getting worked up over something like this, i found that point being raised is something we commonly hear. it goes a little something like this: “jesus was hated by the world. the son of man has no place to lay his head… we have to take up our cross and follow him and yada yada yada the church needs to examine why it is trying to make people like christianity.” of course, this means we should not try to imitate the music of the world (rock is the devil i tell you, the devil!) and other such things.

don’t get me wrong, i see the point he is driving at, maybe. i wholeheartedly agree that we are not called to conform to things that we know are wrong. what i find interesting however, is that the people who generally hated jesus and generally hated his disciples were not “the world.” pilate finds nothing wrong with jesus and seeks to do everything he can to release him without losing face. a roman soldier sends for him to heal his son. we claim that we should be making the world feel uncomfortable and shouldn’t be trying to convert them, but rather showing them they are wrong (sadly, this is almost a direct quote). the interesting thing to me is that Jesus did just the opposite. it is the religious and the pious that anger Him the most. i could be wrong, but i don’t recall a single harsh word ever spoken to a non-jew by Jesus.

i agree that we should not be trying to sell christianity with a good marketing ploy, a nice catch phrase, and a pretty boy Jesus with blonde hair and blue eyes. i also agree that we should not be handing out beers at the door to encourage people to come to church. it seems to me, however, that we should do everything in our power to make those who are not a part of our family feel welcome and loved when they come over. the church building is like a house where we all meet together with our family and spend time together and we should practice hospitality, opening the door to travelers and those who need a place to find a good meal and rest their heads. why do we so easily forget that at one point we were not members of the family, but someone took us in and introduced us to the Master of the house, and now we know Him.

the other thing that bothers me about this line of thinking is this idea that “godly people” should be completely different from the world. why is it that we decide that rock music is the devil, jeans make you go to hell, and anything that is enjoyable must be wrong? why do we assume that God just wants us to suffer, that He wants to deprive us of everything that we find as joy in our lives? if i love to play the guitar and i devote that to God, i have another way to worship. if i love to paint, and i can create art that makes me think of God (and possibly inspires others as well), why not use what God has given me? if i can play music that doesn’t sound like something from the middle ages and people can find music they enjoy and that encourages them to draw closer to God, why is that bad? i don’t think we always try to emulate the world to sell God to people, i think we take who we are and we give that to God. after all, isn’t that what He asks of us?

yesterday, I had to drive to huntsville and pee in a cup. i did this, not because it is a hobby of mine or even something that i enjoy doing occasionally, but because i had to take a drug test for an internship. on the way, i encountered an interesting sign. church signs always seem to provide entertainment to me, and this one was no exception. i wish i had brought my camera, but the sign read

“Our job is to make God look good.”
don’t get me wrong, i understand what they are driving at, and it isn’t a bad goal. what strikes me first about this is underlying assumption that God needs help from us in looking good. in some ways it made me realize that i’m looking for a God that needs me, not the one that i need. the truth is that God loves us, but that we don’t supply any of His needs, and that is hard for us to understand as we are always looking to find someone to whom we can say “you complete me!” and receive those words in return. taking this a step further, i also realise (i figured i would use the british spelling juste fore funne) that this is what i have grown up my whole life thinking. or maybe closer to the point - “our job is to not make God look bad”.

it is this constant drive to impress God, or show Him that we aren’t so hopeless after all. maybe if i do everything right and everyone sees how Godly i am, then God will notice and He’ll realize i’m a pretty good guy. as always, i just miss the boat. the fact of the matter is that God doesn’t see where i messed up before, because Jesus has taken that away. what God sees in me is a new creation. i serve Him because i love Him, and i want to do good things because He loves good things. it is like a gift to a loved one when i serve someone else, or choose not to participate in something i know is wrong. furthermore, it should be what i want because i desire the light (even though part of me craves the dark). on top of this i should choose to love those around me because God is love. maybe how our sign should read should be something along the lines of

“Our job is to look like God”
i think if we did that, we wouldn’t have to worry about how God looked.