i'm having trouble engaging.

at least - i think that's what i'm having trouble doing.
I've done some really adventurous stuff this summer - and yet - i don't feel adventurous.  In fact - it's barely phased me.  seriously.  Fiji?  Oh yeah!  i DID do that this summer.  It was cool.
that's actually how i feel about it.

and i'm having trouble pointing my inner compass, if you will, toward my true North.  I keep following somthing else, which leaves me a bit dizzy and very disoriented and frustrated.
and what's worse - is that my head is fully engaged.  I know what's happening.  I comprehend everything just fine intellectually.  I"m behaving in a logical manner.  I can convey all the right ideas, communicate the stories, get other people all tied up in tales of my recent experiences.  However, my heart just can't seem to get with it.

Instead of peace - I find I'm numb-ish, near apathetic, growing cold.

but WHY?

I know why.  And it embarrasses me too much to type it - much less pen it - and even less likely - speak it.

No one wants to truly look emo.  I want to project the me that is happy, cheerful, adventuruous, mischevious, witty, content... and those are all true.  It's just that there's something else lurking in my heart currently.

Perfection never was a requirement - although some might say I desired it.  So then, sometimes when things get old - i might get cynical. 
I see that I don't see.
Honestly, there's room for improvement.
sometimes i feel like you have ot either lose your mind - or lose your soul.
but therein lies the issue.
i want to test that  against logic.  and it works - and tells me that logic isn't the answer at the same time.
i love it.  irony.  paradox.

i want to be so passionate that both love and hate are very evident in my life.  Hate of the right things of course - not of people, naturally. 

i want to be wreckless - and i want to be responsible - crap.

::deep breath::
    I am going to attempt to explain the dating scene of ORU, without ever having really participated in it myself.

If most school's dating scenes resemble that of an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet at a middle school, then ORU's dating scene looks more like an incredible gourmet meal at a famous restaurant and you're sitting there wondering which fork to use. 
 
yep - think that's pretty accurate.

(These are the unexpurgerated linear notes from "In Another Land", without the censorship and unrequested spelling corrections, such as the word "linear" into "liner.")

 

today there was no bomb scare - just the reality that something exploded long before we knew it and now we are living in the fallout.  all of us, crippled and mutated from the radiation of that moment in the garden but from the outward appearance we look normal at least to each other.  the earth is a dying planet man a dying race.  there are strange things moving in the sky at night.  some people hope that it is help from other planets but i fear that it is evil let loose, vaporizing and streaking across the universe.

 

i have been having dreams at night.  i dreamed i was driving down the boulevard my car putting out a black cloud which covered the sky behind me and turned the moon to blood.  i saw a young boy hitch-hiking, pulled over and let him in.  don’t you know it’s dangerous to trust strangers i asked.  he just smiled and said

 

“the garden the planet the land of the son past present and future the trilogy’s done

Each life has three parts till three become one eternity stretches for aeons to come”

 

and then he disappeared.  i looked all around but couldn’t find him.  Then a great bright light was everywhere i couldn’t see  at all but heard weeping and laughter, weeping and laughter.  then i woke up. i don’t know what it means but i’m sure it means something.

 

turner came over from England to see me and we were stopped at a red light.  this lady ran into the back of us and smashed into a third car and then drove off.  hit and run.  now they say i’ll be responsible because i was last in line.  tag.  i’m it.  that’s life under the law.  my back and neck still hurt a little bit but it looks like i’ll be alright.  turner is o.k. too.

 

(pause)

 

funny sad place we’ve turned this world into.  the courts free killers on technicalities to rape and kill again.  people are starving to death and yet we burn and bury food or sell it to foreign enemies because the economy would fluctuate if we fed our own poor.  we worry about saving porpoises and whales but don’t think about the abortions going on in every major city around us.  we argue about pornography and it’s effects on society and then let people watch television  which is probably the second most corrosive wedge to befall families besides incest.  or parental alcoholism.  or religion without love.  and not in that order..  go ahead and laugh.  if you’re not a liberal by the time you’re twenty – you’ve got no heart and if you’re not a conservative by the time you’re forty – you’ve got no brain.  am i ahead of my time, over my head, out of my depth, or just out of my mind? caveat emptor!

 

preachers are allowed to say all kinds of wild things on television which you can hardly find in the Bible and on and on they talk about money and how we need to give to the poor but how if we will just send the money to them, they will locate the poor in question and fairly distribute the money for us but in the meantime to give generously because they need a few extra million for a gospel satellite so they can broadcast their sermons to other countries that don’t speak english and into houses that don’t have television sets.  some people i meet are ashamed to be americans because of vietnam and nixon and that grassy knoll in dallas when they oughta be shamed that we spend billions of dollars on the space program and completely overlook the hungry school children and people sleeping on streets who need food, clothing, medicine, and large amounts of love.  is this up to the government or is this up to the church? what church?

 

we’ve got a fat nation of people with nice clothes and tidy souls who wouldn’t know quite what to say if such an unemployed, unwashed street-person wandered into God’s house and asked for some help and some food.  these nice people in polyester don’t talk much about God except to each other and seem kind of embarrassed to believe more publicly in Christ and so they keep it a secret, when it seems everybody else is proud of what of what they are.  homosexuals talk openly about their beliefs, urban dissidents and intellectual terrorists speak loudly of their conviction at every college campus, beer bash, or dinner party, and women with short hair talk in sisterly anger, now that children with long hair have failed to establish brotherly love.  only a few generations ago women started dressing openly like men and now it seems like men are starting to dress like women; with bronze blush, an earring, shoes with tall heels, and children are starting to dress like adults.  whatever happened to innocence and to time?  time for childhood. time for love.  time for sex.  maybe we’re running out of time.  now earthquakes and new disease quickens hearts full of fear in diverse places.  students talk of world unity.  some say bring the wall down.  i say bring all walls down.  not just the ones built by totalitarian governments, but more importantly, the walls between us; in the churches, in the home, and in the streets.

 

politicians talk of ideologies and take it to the bank.  i say there is no us against them, just a brotherhood divided by untruths.  stop talking about communism/socialism vs. democracy/capitalism.  there is only one enemy.  he rules from an invisible principality and only the light can displace his darkness.  alas, Armageddon doth approach.  ineluctably, one world rises and oil is the coin of the realm.  Babylon is here with attendant sex, drugs, and illusion to blind the body, soul, and spirit; pornucopia-pharmekia the disease and religion of our age.  the world seems to be crumbling, choking, and yet people are eating and drinking and living unnaturally as though there is not right and wrong – and as though their lives will never end.

 

(End of Pause)

 

some people say there is no God; others say that we are all god.  sometimes i look out over the city late at night and all the lights look like diamonds and rubies on a black jewlers cloth set in a straight little rows and sprinkled on the hillsides – and i wonder how we have fallen so far.  and then i look up in the sky with its far superior jewels.  i look up and i find myself smiling.  and waiting.