Ankle Deep in the Silver Sea

Racism and the Online Petition

2011-12-28T18:18:00.000-05:00

Racism is bad but I'm probably not going to sign your online petition. I'm probably not going to draw up a sign and stand outside protesting a person, a store, a company. Don't get me wrong. Whatever's making you upset probably makes me really upset too. I just don't think those things work.
If I were the CEO of a company and found a letter with 5,000 names attached I probably wouldn't even read the letter. How do you respond to force? If I capitulate to the demands, I end up looking weak before people I know. If I stand resolute with the people I know, I look like a jackass to strangers. I don't believe much in letter writing campaigns, petitions and protest signs.

Look at this facebook collection of responses to the Knicks' acquisition of Jeremy Lin.

Yes, we can say that nearly everyone commenting is ignorant, stupid and a whole lot of other words too, and I think that's fair. But I also think it's fair to say that Chinese people haven't proved themselves in the NBA as a statistically significant population. Forget Yao Ming and read that last clause: statistically significant population. We need something like 5 more Yao Ming's and about 20 more average players before Chinese players begin to really get respect.

Reflecting back on my life, it feels like I've lived two lives. The early portion of my life met with a lot of racism. Sing song cries of ching-chong-belly-wong (because I was fat in addition to being a minority), Chinese-Japanese eyes, fast food jokes, and a whole lot of bullying accompanied the early years. I'm thankful for my Caucasian friend Brandon who acted as a buffer for reverse racism. Everytime I wanted to type-cast my oppressors as categorically evil, I couldn't do so because his example bucked the trend.

Then there were the college and post-college years where there seemed to be a vacuum of racism. I never heard another racist joke aimed at me. What changed?

I did.

I stopped being fat. I became strong.

I dropped the accent. I became articulate, even overprolix. The only traces of New York Chinese show when I say names like "Sarah" and words like "hilarious."

I stopped dressing like a nerd until the mid 2000's where nouveau-nerd became popular.

I transformed myself and no one made fun of me anymore. But I still wasn't comfortable. I may not be the target of jokes but I know that there are still others who are getting shit for being Chinese. I don't know Danny Chen but I know Chinese-Americans in New York. I know what they sound like on the phone with d's that should be th's. I see them in gyms, undershirts unflattering to their thin chests and stick legs protruding out of too baggy shorts. I know that they get shit I don't get. For them, they're small and weak because they're Chinese. For me, I'm big and strong because of diet, genetics, exceptionalism. Others say they're held back by the same thing that I should be proud of: being Chinese.

I think back to W.E.B. DuBois' talented tenth. I hate reading that essay. I feel so alone afterwards. Even if 10% of 1 billion is 100 million, I still feel too alone, too burdened to succeed. I want to be a writer because I want to punch everyone who ever made a Chinese accent joke seriously in the teeth. I want to be an Ironman-Crossfit-kickboxing athlete so I can stand up for every Chinese, every oppressed who ever got shoved down in a group.

But it's so un-Chinese to take up the torch. I think my greatest racial struggle has been to acknowledge my exceptionalism with its perils and responsibilities. Doing so acknowledges many things. Number one, experientially, most Asians I've met are physically underdeveloped. It feels shameful to bring this subject into the light. Number two, it means people will look towards me. My failures will be magnified and my successes questioned. What must it be like for the Yao Ming's and Jeremy Lin's when they choke in the clutch? Their failures are because they're Chinese. Their successes are because they're exceptional.

I still haven't made it big yet. I'm strong but not overwhelmingly so. Deadlifting twice your bodyweight is the beginning of strength, not strength itself. Completing a marathon? Millions do it every year. Probably thousands exist that can do both at once. And I still haven't received my first publishing contract yet.

But I've made an impact. In small ways, I've made an impact. And dare I say it? I think I've made more of an impact than online petitions and boycotting. I'm "normal person strong." When people are moving apartments, I get phone calls. When I'm at parties, I'm asked to do pushups or pullups, inquired as to how much I bench and what my favorite workouts are. Do I know P90x, Crossfit, Gym Jones, HIIT? When I write, I prefer to stay away from themes of immigration. I think it's still too close, too emotional for me to put it out there in fiction form. Reality is easier than fiction.

That's the impact. Going to parties and being big and articulate. Having conversations that display me both intelligent and unawkward.

Did you know that at one point black people were thought to be weak and unathletic? The rationale for enslaving them was that they needed to be educated and brought up. Left to their own devices, they'd be helpless and small. Doesn't that sound so ridiculous in light of pro-sports today?

And I think that's the best solution to the problem of racism: time and contrary evidence. People don't make racist jokes around me but they will around others. But when they do, my spectre will remain in their mind, the uncomfortable exception to the joke that they made. What bothers them? It's not that I might be offended if I heard them. What bothers them is that their joke might not be funny. And a joke loses it's humor when it loses it's basis in reality. They can joke about Chinese people and their accents but that won't work if they know 50 people as articulate as me. They can joke about Chinese people and their toothpick arms and pencil legs, but it won't be funny if they see a profusion of Chinese athletes on t.v. in power sports.

Sign the petitions if you want but know that five hours a week in the gym will do more for you and for your people than the petition ever will. Be angry and gripe about how it's unfair but taking accent reduction classes will protect your parents more than your complaints will.

Be exceptional and be in the wider community. I think we ought to try this method instead.

A Workout Interrupted

2011-12-14T14:54:00.000-05:00

I was wary but unafraid. He was smaller than me, much smaller, only about 5'6 or 5'7, but I could see, even through his clothes, that his skeleton was filled out muscles as taut as piano strings. His hands kept disappearing back into his pockets though I couldn't see him take or put anything in. Maybe it was just the cold. It was after all, only 34 degrees this morning. Maybe it was the cold but then maybe it wasn't. It would be best to be on my guard.

"I left Romania when I was 19, a revolutionary. You know that picture of that one guy in Tiannamen Square with all those tanks in front of him? It was like that, except I wasn't alone. There were 3,000 people behind me." Tiny said.

I was in the playground doing my usual workout because I couldn't afford my usual gym anymore. 50 pullups and 300 pushups before work was a better workout than most people with gym memberships ever did. I was only halfway through my pullups when he interrupted me. Small, like his name, his hairline receding, I've seen him here before working out just like me. I always assumed he did parkour from watching his workouts. It suited someone of his build.

"Then the general walked out and talked with some of his men. They opened up the barricades and let us through. We stormed the dictators house but he got away in his helicopter. No big deal though. I watched as we shot him and his wife dead a few days later." he continued.

I didn't know what to make of him. I've looked in the eyes of crack addicts before, unnerved by the way they could face me and give me the impression that they're seeing a different world. He came up to me, introduced himself as "Tiny Love" and asked me what I was doing. "Oh, just some shadow boxing." I said. Usually people leave me alone when they see me working out in the park, drilling the few combinations I remember. Jab, jab, right straight, Feint, right straight. The most interaction I've received was from the traceurs who worked out here as well, leaping through the jungle gyms, wowing the kids with precision jumps. We'd nod and smile at each other. Mutual respect.

I always assumed he was one of them.

"Then I came to America and got into the club scene. Rave. You know. Liquid. Check it out, yin-yang sign." He moved his hands into various shapes. I nodded. Yes, I could see the symbol.

"I saw all sorts of things back then. UFO's, demons, the High Council. It wasn't until I saw God that I turned my life around."

Oh. So it was going to be that kind of meeting.

Marathon Sunday

2011-11-06T05:30:00.001-05:00

Running is worship. The open skies, my cathedral, the bustling roads, the church aisles. Running is where I meet God.

I talk about this rarely. It's much easier to talk in terms of the German concept of *aufhenen* or the Japanese concept of *kaizen*, but at its simplest, most reduced state, for me running is about meeting God.

People wonder what I mean by this mysticism, what do I actually do when I run that makes me so much different than the cardio bunnies who wear the expensive sweats with PINK or JUICY written over their butts, those for whom running is mere exercise, mere fitness. Well, I don't recite scripture and I don't listen to Christian music when I run. I don't wear Christian t-shirts either. I've always found that to get in the way. No, I can't tell you what I do that's different. The difference doesn't lie on the surface.

Have you ever met with a friend and come away aglow in the joy of companionship? If someone asked you, "Hey, why are you so happy? What did you do?" you might answer "not much" and that would be a good parallel to what happens when I run. Or you might say "I met with a friend" and the question-asker would smile knowingly and that would describe my running exactly.

The marathon then, is my great day of worship, a day to pour out my heart in gratitide for the life I've been given, my way of honoring providence and blessing. For each mile I've picked out a person whose memories I want to invoke, whose life I want to pray for and whise presence I wish to honor. I wish I could run even more than 26 miles.

It's a day of great love. There are lots of things to hate about NYC. The MTA is near the top of everyone's list, I'm sure. But if you want to find something to love, run its marathon. "Baptism by boroughs" read one of the ads yesterday, and it'll feel like that as a full quarter of the population throngs the street to cheer 40,000 runners, plunging them beneath the waters of acceptance. For one day, New York comes out to say "I love you too."

And when I run on this day, I run wih a heart overflowing with love, joy. I've done the work. I've paid my dues, worn down my soles molecule by molecule. This is the big day, a day of testing and celebration. Count it all joy when you meet these tests in your life, for they lead to the perfection of your faith.

Thank you, friends, family for sharing in this day with me. I would not be who I am, where I am without you. Thank you.

First Thoughts on "He Shines In All That's Fair"

2011-09-16T14:48:00.000-04:00

After leaving Boon Church, the only institution I had called my home church for 13 years, the only one that had ever been my home church up to that point, I chose to attend Trinity Grace Church's Chelsea service because of their outreach to artists. I don't consider myself an "artist" much. It conjures too many associations I don't want to be weighted with but I know that I fall under that category as others use it.

Their outreach to artists intrigued me because it was part of a larger commitment to the redemption and reclamation of creation. Most of my writings on this blog grew out of a frustration that I had with the Christian church as I lived it. I'll say it simply. I felt that they wanted me inside their 4 walls (metaphorical walls) as much as possible and everything inside bored me to tears. The hidden condemnation I felt (and myself fed) for not listening to Christian artists, wearing Christian t-shirts and reading Christian books crushed my soul. I felt guilty for being bored. And I knew that no exciting, action-packed, hard-hitting, cross-cultural, more-catchphrased sermon was going to fix the problem. The problem was one of belief - the belief that the only good things in life were found within the boundaries of Christendom.

Spurred on by some titles the pastor of Trinity Grace gave me, I began doing my own research. I'm currently reading through "He Shines In All That's Fair," Richard Mouw's book on the doctrine of Common Grace, and wonder of wonders, I find that the struggle that's made me lose sleep has been a subject of debate for centuries. And here I thought I was facing the challenges of Christianity's terra incognita. And moreover, many questions posed by Christian and non-Christian alike belong to this family of inquiry.

This series of posts doesn't have a conclusion in mind. I still expect to wrestle with this issue for some time but having discovered that I'm not alone, haven't been alone, in this struggle gives me great hope.

Life Spiral

2011-09-14T12:21:00.000-04:00

Now is not then. It's a constant struggle to remember that.

For the first time in my life, I can see my 6-pack. This is a bucket list item. In addition to the abs, I have the V-shape, the 10 inch difference between my chest and waist measurements, thick forearms, heart-shaped calves... all the things that bodybuilders covet. It's not easy to accept the image in the mirror as reality. I spent so much of my life rationalizing why the body I have now is not a body that I could ever have. Genetics. Rice. Friends. Rice. But this truth finally makes sense to me. It's been a long time coming.

I'm not a rookie. I've been working at changing my entire life since 2003. 8 years now. I did a half-marathon in a decent time with only 4 training runs. It's taken 8 years to carve out a 6-pack. Some things take more work than others. Perhaps it's the number of magazine covers promising 6-packs in 6 weeks, the number of youtube and TV specials on people who've made life changes (shouldn't I be included in that group?), but the reality of life transformation is that it takes time, and it is not a linear process.

If you've ever had any modicum of success with body transformation, you'll know what I mean. You'll be stuck at a certain weight for weeks and weeks, dieting, lifting, running, trying to move even half a pound, a tenth of an ounce. You'll say "to hell with this" one weekend, go out have 2 beers, a steak, french fries and an ice cream sundae and wake up the next morning 5 lbs. lighter. "This makes no sense." you tell yourself and shrug it off. The uncommitted will give up, happy with their modest progress and live life unchanged.

It makes perfect sense if you have the framework to understand it. Your body doesn't know what the hell a scale is. Roleplaying games have destroyed our concept of progress by giving us EXP bars. If you slay enough monsters, you'll just get better right? Run enough miles, eat few enough calories and weight should drop, right? Almost. But the difference between almost and correct is the difference between success and failure.

Physically, when you're doing all those things that you should do to lose weight, your body is trying to make sense of the world. Why are you doing this? How do you see this? If you are miserable when you run and eat right, your body will interpret the misery and do all it can to keep the weight on. This is my personal understanding of the process. But if you approach the process of life transformation as a gateway to the life you've always wanted, your body will do what you need it to do. It'll take some time. Be patient with your machine. It's subtly rewiring nerve pathways, experimenting with different combinations of body chemistry, doing a million things that don't show up on the scale.

Did you really think you have nearly the same body at 205 as you did at 210? Why do you think your body took so long to make the jump and skipped 209, 208, 207 and 206? The numbers are different for everybody, but everyone I've talked to has had thresholds, and not a single person has ever dropped weight by going on a steady decline of 1 pound at a time. I couldn't imagine the scientific experiment that can exist to verify this. The scientific method, as far as I understand it, is about isolating factors while the very hypothesis that I posit is about the interaction between innumerable micro-factors. Whatever. I'm not writing an academic paper on weight loss (though I secretly, and now, not-so-secretly hope that this blog post does inspire someone more scientifically educated than me to create the experiment that verifies or debunks my hypothesis). I want to speak to the person who feels trapped in their own life and the one who's just beginning to change their life.

You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake. You are not good enough as you are. If you were good enough as you are, would you hate your life as much as you do now? Change takes time. And it takes a strong heart that can suffer much. It's OK if you don't have that heart right now. I didn't when I first began. You acquire a heart that can endure by enduring. Ore does not purify itself. Purity needs fire.

Running hurts. Lifting hurts. Not seeing progress on the scale crushes. Can you deal with these realities? They will happen. They will absolutely happen. Grab any of those magazines. They promise shortcuts and quick fixes. Slap those authors if you ever meet them. Slap them once more on my behalf. Change is hard. Change will hurt. A real significant change will take more than 10 minutes a day for 6 weeks. Your body will take care of itself if you give it good food and good rest. It'll change the million things that the scale can't read. But you must have the heart to be patient while it figures out what it needs to do.

Don't delude yourself into thinking it will come easy. Use those magazine articles as glossy toilet paper so that they can be of some use to you. Don't look for shortcuts, pills and the easy way out. Embrace the difficulty. Challenges are a summons to the heroic within us. Is not the real reason you want to change because you see your current self as pathetic? You're probably right. You're pathetic compared to who you could be. I've done a hell of a lot, but I'm still only a shadow and a wisp of what I can become. I'm not afraid to say that. This mountain-conquering marathoner with the 300 lb. bench press and 450 deadlift isn't worth a brown bag of dog shit. Not when I hold him up to my tomorrow me. If anything pushes me through the hard days, it's that thought. Why would you accept anything less than the most you can get out of life? Become your potential.

Shame and Transformation

2011-07-26T17:46:00.000-04:00

Shame shook me awake and began my metamorphosis. I was ashamed that it took me 20 years to find the courage to ask a girl out (especially when I had friends lose their virginity at 13 or 14). I was ashamed that I was dumped the very next day with the worst of phrases, "Let's just be friends." I couldn't handle the embarassment, the frigid waters of reality drowning me. I remember clutching my chest and hyperventilating because the thought made it hard to breathe at times. I remember randomly assaulting concrete walls in stairwells because the rage suddenly came upon me.

Shame sent me down this road. I'm grateful. I'm not looking back. I've said that many times. I'm writing today because I've never written about how shame can stop a transformation in process or even abort one in the womb.

It's something I've seen in the eyes of so many people who have come to me and asked for help as they're getting started.

"I want to lose weight, but my fat jiggles when I do anything."
"I'm so slow at running. I get tired so quickly."
"My friends have seen me fail so many times. I don't want to keep embarassing myself."

There's no diet or exercise that will solve these problems. These issues must be tackled first. Insanity or P90X, kettlebells, ICT, HIIT, swimming, running, bodybuilding, Crossfit, ghetto fitness, Planet Fitness, anything more honest than the Shakerweight will get them fit and looking good sooner or later. The plan that they choose means little in the long run. The commitment and dedication to their goal means everything in the short and long run. I've seen videos of people doing amazing things with poor planning. I've never seen anyone do anything amazing and admirable without first having something extraordinary in their spirit first.

There's this story I keep telling - please bear with me if you've read many of my blog entries - but I keep telling it because of how crucial a role it played in my transformation. When I was early in my transformation, at a chunky 260, two brothers wanted to test out my running and challenged me to a race. 33rd St. by the NYU medical center down to the Williamsburg bridge and back up. They were athletic. Lithe, basketball playing types and I was still fat. The morning of the race, I tried to convince them to do a weightlifting test. I knew I could win there at least.

As we started, the two brothers took off and quickly left me in the dust. I couldn't see them at all two minutes into the race. This was going to be humiliating. Even more humiliating, wrinkly grandfathers and grandmothers were passing me by. Runners usually mark a target up ahead and use that person as a goalpost to pull themselves further. I lost all my targets. Each one I picked out pulled further and further away. I felt my legs drag.

But twenty minutes into the race, I found both of the brothers. Dry-heaving and panting on a park bench, they had burnt each other out. They had completely discounted the fat kid in basketball shorts. I wonder what they might've said had they the breath to speak back then. I ended up winning the race by a half hour margin.

That contest carved in me a powerful lesson that day. It's a lesson that has continued driving deeper and deeper into my soul. Other people's embarassment might hurt but that pain pales in comparison to the pain of giving up. The choices we make once enable us to make it more easily the next time. Giving up becomes a habit of giving up, a lifestyle of surrender, a deep-seated belief in the inevitability of despair and failure. Honestly, it might be better to die than to hold that belief truly.

But just as giving up becomes a habit, a lifestyle, a worldview, so does perseverance. Hush the critics in your life and press on despite their nay-saying. Win or fail, you've done it once. Do it again. And again. And again. As many times as it takes for you to develop a worldview, a belief that your opinion and your estimation of your life matters more than the screams of the haters, the vampires, the ones you indict with your courage and passion.

But the key is to start. Nothing will ever happen, nothing will ever change if you don't start.

Triathlons and Life

2011-07-23T14:34:00.001-04:00

So Amy Winehouse is dead.

She was the soundtrack to the events that sent me into the triathlon world. With the interview coming up tomorrow, I couldn't help but take a blog entry to meditate on how the rest of my life intertwines with triathlons.

"It's only after we've lost everything, that we're free to do anything."

Around the time that Amy Winehouse crooned in the background, I watched Fight Club over half a decade after everyone else did. Tyler Durden, my prophet, his words, sparks falling on dry tinder. I lost everything. I knew nothing.

"I don't know. You're just too Christian for me."

I lost my perspective on life. I had nothing on my resume except teaching at a church day camp.

"You have to answer this question! If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?"
"I don't know. I wouldn't feel anything good about my life."

That was my answer too. I looked at my whole life. I didn't have anything I cared about in all of my life. I had a job I felt nothing towards. It fed me and kept a roof over my head. Was that sufficient for life? I had friends but what did we do except go out to restaurants and eat? I had a church I spent most of my free time at but what was that to me? Why was I even doing this? And take my church activities away from me and what was left of my life? Nothing much. And if those activities were taken away, would I really miss them so much?

People misunderstand what I mean by transformation. They think I mean the 120 lbs. I've lost. I mean the life I began. I turned off my auto-pilot switch. I stopped caring about what other people thought should matter to me. I became obsessed with my own death. Not in a macabre goth way. I feared death before - not because of heaven or hell - but because I lived a life that other people wrote out for me. How shameful would it be to arrive on the day of judgement with a life lived by committee?

"Mom told me to find a stable job. Dad told me to find a quiet woman. Church told me I needed to volunteer more. Work said they needed more hours. So there's my life!"

"First, you have to know, not fear, know, that some day you're going to die."

I became obsessed about death because I knew what kind of death I wanted. I wanted to be surrounded by chubby, red-faced grandkids. I wanted my kids to gather around me grateful for the spirit that I had passed onto them. I have no intention of leaving grand material possessions behind. I'd like to give most of that away before I go. But everyone I meet at anytime, I want to give them a piece of me, the realest piece. I want to lay on my death bed and look back on a long life, grateful for the amazing ride I had. I want to do something incredible. I want to meet kindred spirits. I want to scream defiance against the impossible. I'd like to live a life I thought was amazing.

Is that too much to ask?

We overestimate what we can do in one year. Look at the New Years Resolutions people make when they're "determined" to change their lives. I want to learn a language, read a bunch of books, go skydiving/bungee jumping, etc. Most people end up accomplishing exactly none of those goals. Most forget them by February. I couldn't forget my goals because those goals were all I had.

We grossly underestimate what we can do in five years. Look at where you are now. Look at where you were five years ago. How much did you learn? How much have you changed? And for most people, this happens passively without application or dedication. What might happen if you put the full force of your life behind your drive to accomplish your goals? I was around 25 at the time. I came up with a "WILL DO BEFORE 30 LIST." Completing an Ironman race was up at the top of the list.

So I wrote out a 5-year plan. If I was to make the Ironman by age 30, I needed to see at least some of the steps in between. So I registered for the NYC Triathlon. Halloween 2008, while everyone dressed up and drank, I was at my computer frantically clicking away on the Firefox 'refresh' button. I'm glad I did. The race sold out in 20 minutes.

I chose an Olympic because a sprint just didn't look challenging. A quarter mile swim, 10 mile bike, and 5k? I could fall out of bed and roll 5k before I woke up at that point. I wanted to push myself to the very limit. The thrill of finishing NYC in 2009 was diminished by the fact that my body felt so good. I wasn't sore that day or the day after. Did I take it too easy? I always trained with the goal of over-preparation in mind, but I should have at least some sign that I was pushed.

Next year, I'll get that chance. Ironman. NYC. 2012. A great challenge in the world's greatest city, filled with the world's greatest fans. 2.4 Hudson river miles. 112 Palisade Parkway miles and 26.2 miles ending in Riverside Park. It's my dream come true. It's a chance for me to knock off one of my Before-I-Turn-30 Goals, a year early.

Triathlons are amazing. I'm built for powerlifting. It took me a month to bring my max bench press from 200 to 375 lbs. It took me two months to go from 300 to 450. But I don't regret leaving that behind for triathlons. The first triathlon, I ever did, NYC back in 2009, changed my mind. As I rocketed down the West Side Highway the clouds broke and the sun painted the course with brilliant light. I don't know what happened at that moment. I've seen sunrises and sunsets, magnificent declarations of God's goodness in his creation, but I began to cry. I rarely found God in church. I knew doctrines. I studied a whole hell of a lot. I found a bunch of friends but my soul still rang hollow. At that moment, alone on the West Side Highway, I met God and I felt an overwhelming confirmation that this race course was where I should be at that moment. I could've been in church leading the congregation in prayer that July Sunday but I believe that what happened to me that day did more to help me make much of Christ than ten thousand sanctuary-sequestered Sundays.

I stopped letting other people write my life for me. I'm the one that has to wake up in the morning and look myself in the mirror. When I die, I have to be the one to give an accounting of my life, all the wrong I've done, all the good I've done, before God. I am the one that will lay on my death bed one day, looking back on my own life. I don't know where or when, but I want to look back with satisfaction on my life.

I'm glad Kid Cudi dropped his weed habit. He's the soundtrack to my life right now. And right now, I love where my life is heading.

Generation

2011-05-17T14:10:00.000-04:00

I finally got a chance to read this article that everyone has been posting and re-posting over facebook.

My spirit is burning up.

This is what I went through. This is my blog in 11 pages. This has been the last half-decade of my life. I've always been too big to be a typical Asian but I've soaked in the culture long enough to absorb it's worst qualities. And this past half-decade has been my own Shinto purification.

If I could share but one dream I have, it's to be a guiding light for others who've been in my position. I want to pave a way out of the social hellhole into which our parents have led us. My iPod plays Kanye's "All of the Lights," Eminem's "No Love," Lupe's "The Show Goes On," Maino's "All the Above" continuously so that I can keep my spirit strong. When I see other Asians acting meekly and awkwardly, I want to slap them in the face. I don't want to punch and destroy them. I want to injure and awaken them. Don't go as far down the road as I did. Wake up! Wake the hell up!

Not just for Asian-Americans. For everyone who was ever told to keep your head down and shut up, for everyone whose opinions were trampled on, for every Korean who the church has burnt out with the disgusting social pressure, for every Chinese who watched their parents get shoved around and thought answering with financial success would ease the hurt in their souls, for the black and latino kids, the ones so many Asian parents deemed distasteful, the ones who society sees as unnatural when they pick up books and pens, for everyone who was told that they had to follow the destiny of their parents, I want to show you the way out.

Sitting is killing you.

2011-05-12T06:33:00.000-04:00

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

My public service announcement.

Molting

2011-05-04T19:54:00.003-04:00

"Change" begs the questions "From what?" and "To what?"

Change is, for me, like most people, hard. But although change is hard, fear of change is suicidal. Trying to stop the process of change, trying to keep things the way they are, or worse, to bring back an earlier time, is to consign yourself to a damp, gray, Purgatory. You will never succeed. You will wear yourself out. Our only refuge is in hope and hope lies in Tomorrow.

I haven't conquered my fear of change. I fear the transition in becoming a writer. I fear that I won't make it, that all my neuroses and insecurities will flare up, a madness born of Asian parenting and valuing the shelter of big organizations. Have I defeated my upbringing?

I'm doing it now.

2011 has been all about change.

From the church of my yesterdays to a community who can support my tomorrows.
From the heavy frame of a powerlifter to a more economical chassis.
From wavering to steadfastness.
From selfishness to humility.
From fear to courage.

Boon Church and its culture are antithetical to where I'm going. I've written for a number of years on the things I detest. I find sitting in Flushing restaurants talking about sitting on a couch watching reality TV or sports repugnant. That's not fellowship for me. That's spiritual suicide. The church I'm eyeing fascinates me. In their 5 years of existence, 9 non-profits have started within their community. Intrepid, entrepreneurial spirits fill the community. I'm excited.

Weight loss has been something I've talked about but have failed to accomplish for a number of years. Going from 320 to 220 has been such an accomplishment. A part of me felt that I earned the right to rest on my laurels. You look fine. Women actually check you out now. Men come to you for advice. No need to change anything! But 'good enough' is not good enough for where I'm going. I don't want to do this until I'm 30 and then go on and live a sedentary life. I don't want to let my passion for adventure devolve into a side hobby of hiking and racing. To do this for my whole life, I better look into dropping weight. And I've done just that. I've reached 10 and 12 year lows in weight. I've hit one personal best at a race this year and nearly took two more. We're only 4 days into May. I'm excited.

When I first considered writing, I said "I'd try it." Those words haunted me, shamed me. I read Mark Twight's "Twitching" half a decade ago and it inflamed my spirits. This video burned the image of a real workout into my mind. The song that comes on at 2:15 is "Thunder Kiss" by White Zombie. "I never 'try' anything. I just do it." threatens one of the lyrics. Saying "I'd try it." betrays the spirit that I admired, the spirit that I received from Mark Twight. I wavered. I would not own up to my dreams, my beliefs. As Peter denied his God, his friend, so I denied my soul. But now, I no longer waver. I make the same declaration I did when I first had my heart broken. I will change or I will die. I do not believe in NOT risking your life. In fact, one should realize that every true choice risks their life, whether they will live themselves or die and eke out a false life.

And so I realized I didn't need to grasp my life as tightly as I had. I have enough regrets about my yesterdays. I once told a girl I loved that I was going to live my life the way I wanted to and if anyone wanted to come along for the ride then they were free to do so. I don't believe in living that way any longer. My life isn't my own. I recognized that in many ways. Perhaps I thought I could hold one small corner back and it wouldn't be noticed, missed. Perhaps I thought that with love, I might find a safe way to love, but one cannot love defensively. Tomorrow demands that I hold my life loosely, as one might hold a small bird. When it needs to fly, you need to let go. When you are in love, you must never live otherwise.

And so, this is my letting go. This is my discovery of courage, of resolve, determination, hope.
I feared not recognizing myself at the end of 2011. I should have hoped not to recognize myself. Who I was won't be appropriate for what I'll do.

Sitting

2011-05-02T22:00:00.001-04:00

I hate sitting.

The arc of my life's transformation takes me further and further away from sitting. In my younger years, I read a lot until I found video games. Then I planted myself before a computer and read a lot. The reading has blessed my life a great deal while the sitting has been an unmitigated curse.

Studying the psoas muscle, particularly my own issues with the psoas muscle, has led me to think along these terms.

The hips produce the force for running, fighting, dancing, leaping, loving, living. Plant yourself in a chair and your tell your hips this position is natural. Your pelvis tilts back, the spine comes forward and the head lowers, falling further from the sky. Sitting degrades your hips. Compromised hips, hips that can't run, fight, dance, leap or love properly, ruin the spine. Without a spine, it becomes nearly impossible to stand tall. Who can respect, much less love, a man who's forgotten how to stand tall? What woman is love-able when she doesn't believe she's worthy of love?

So stop sitting.

Repair your hips.

Cure your unnatural addiction to television reality game shows and comedy dramas with life. Breathe it in deeply, the purer, rarefied air of living worlds.

I was teaching a friend good running form this past Sunday, showing him how to finish his stride with his feet coming up towards the buttocks. "Doesn't that use more energy?" he asked. "It's running. It uses energy. Dragging your feet is the act of someone uncommitted to the reality that they're running. They don't want to use energy, don't want to open up to the possibility that running may be enjoyable. These people believe that running must be awful and are determined to be right about their belief no matter the cost. Lift your feet."

Move. In any direction. Open your hips. When you run, stride with commitment to each step. Yes, I am running, so let me run beautifully! God, free me from plodding and power-walking and all such half-hearted efforts! When you fight, let your hips explode with their full fury and force. Don't just throw arm punches, afraid to get hit or hit others. Throw a true punch, snap a true kick. When you dance, let your hips come to the party. Don't just awkwardly shimmy your shoulders on the side of the dance floor like you're afraid someone will see you trying to have a good time. In all that you do in life, do it with your most powerful driver, your hips. Don't go to the grave never having brought your body's engine to redline.

Unlearn sitting. Unlearn all the practices of life that destroy your core, your strength, your integrity. In that vacuum, rediscover possibility. It will start slow. For many years, I struggled to do a single pull-up. It took what felt like forever before I could run 5 miles without stopping to walk some part of it. Even in my 2nd year of running, I still took breaks in the shorter races to catch my breath. Keep fighting. Keep striving. The habits you've acquired over the course of decades will not dissolve in a few well-meant weeks. Before you can build a new life you must clear the rubble of your current one, and to do that, you most certainly must get up off your ass.

Waiting

2011-05-01T22:19:00.001-04:00

I've known amazing people throughout my life. I'm deeply indebted to them.

I don't talk to them nearly as much as I should. With one of my best friends, I only speak with him twice, maybe three, sometimes four times a year. Facebook keeps me well enough updated with how they're doing.

Today, one of the people I look up to finished a third run of her play. I went to its first reading and saw it performed twice. It got better each time. She said this was the best iteration. I don't doubt her. Her work is unbelievable. It's hard for me to remember that she's younger than me. She inspires me.

One of my ex-girlfriends finished a project that Perez Hilton used for a piece on the royal wedding. I've always thought the world of her and admired her ability.

One of my best friends is ministering to the communities in Staten Island.

Another one will be an attorney in the Manhattan D.A.'s office.

A few years ago a friend I served in Graduate Christian Fellowship started up a non-profit to combat sex trafficking. The organization has grown with more and more volunteers. Every time I see them in the news, they're taking on more projects and doing more good.

And where to begin with my girlfriend? I love her spirit. The way her eyes shine when she speaks of doing Chinese medicine and the way that she understands the methodology captivates me. It's the light of a passionate woman. She goes extra miles, clocks in extra time, not to gain some edge over competitors but out of a desire to extravagantly over-deliver on her future product. Who wouldn't pay a premium for a doctor who spent her studies with that attitude? Who wouldn't be incensed to live more passionately with that kind of partner?

People come to New York City to chase dreams. My friends are doing just that. What am I doing? I can't be the only one to drag his feet. Their lives call out to me. What can I do but chase my dreams? I'm done with waiting. I'm done with being safe, sensible, taken care of and comfortable. Each blog post I've ever written was intended to be a slap across my own face -- an attempt to wake from the parent-induced stupor of comfort and safety. There's no safety. There never was security. Embrace the free-fall and learn to fly. Waiting is certain disaster.

I'm done waiting.

Giving Utterance

2011-04-28T20:00:00.001-04:00

You can look at my thoughts from the past few years in a few ways. You can see them as meditations on ambition. My desire to do triathlons, marathons, kick boxing, novels and finding love can be seen as a desire to stand out and accomplish. In refusing to sit back and live a "King of Queens" or "Everybody Loves Raymond" kind of blue-collar life of beer league sports and reality tv, you may see me as a pretentious hipster. My jeans are certainly tight enough.

You can see my thoughts as preposterous navel-gazing. Just why is it that I think about my own biography so much? There is a limit to how self-absorbed one can be, no? Just how often do I need to think about my past relationships?

But really, in my own eyes, this blog has been about life.

Writings like this one encourage me and help me think that I haven't gone insane. The body and the soul have a deep, intimate connection. Traditional Chinese Medicine sees it this way. Their embrace of psychosomatic treatments have profoundly changed my worldview. Reductive anatomical medicine has conditioned me to think that a psychosomatic problem was somehow a lesser issue. The body is not physically wrong so there's nothing wrong. It's all in the person's head. My first steps into TCM (thanks to my wonderful girlfriend) have changed my views completely. A psychosomatic problem just means that there are two problems and reductive anatomical medicine has no means of treating one of them. If a house has problems with both the wiring and the plumbing, shouldn't both of them be addressed?

Western Christianity taught me that souls are real only when we're talking about death. Souls are only real when we're talking about Jesus and his atoning, substitutionary work on the cross. What I've been fighting for these past few years was my soul. I wanted to take it back from the butchers in the pulpits. Eternity is longer than your mortal life so spend your life to further the glory of God. What does that mean? Win souls. What does that mean? Tell people about Jesus and then get them to tell others about Jesus. Your suffering in doing this is glorious.

The practice of Western Christianity as I have seen it contains a deep line of hypocrisy. We teach the reality of the soul and the impermanence of the body. We live the reality of the body and the low value of the soul. Was your flesh martyred for the cause? Excellent. You have a reward in heaven. Did you give up soul-nourishing activities so you could give out tracts? Stop whining. Did a body go beneath the waters and emerge a Christian? Excellent harvest. Did your soul experience renewal and life when you heard an aria, read a passage, saw a photo, watch a ballet, spat a flow, played a riff, or breathed the rarefied air of purer worlds? Better talk about Jesus or we'll talk about how small your experience was.

I heard my soul echo in life's empty darkness. These blog posts of the past 3 years have been an attempt to give utterance to the institutional, doctrinal violence I suffered. My joys, my heart, my passion was crucified on a cross of evangelism and mission. If it doesn't manifestly lead to conversions, then what I do doesn't matter. If I don't apply my talents to racking up conversions, then I'm living in rebellion.

Their words affirmed that creation was made for joy, for our relationship with God but when I wanted to meditate on nature, on beauty, I found their hypocrisy. C'mon, hurry up! Get to the Jesus dying part! They have to know about that! What's with all this sappy crap about your own soul's experience? Joy? Joy without meditating on atonement? Blasphemous. That's not important. Quick before they leave, tell them about Jesus. Every time you talk to someone, you have to mention this!

The soul is real and it can die while a person lives. Rob a person of their means of joy and you do worse than kill them. Take from me my races, my words, my ability to spread my wings and you fetter me with chains of adamant. I feel alive, I feel nearness to God when I run, climb, swim, jump and free the body to do all it can do. I feel affirmation and confidence when I can write and create. Why don't I evangelize and be more plain with my Christian affiliation in my writing? Because that's exactly what stifled my spirit for so many years. I have little love left for movements of missionary zeal. I still support them selectively but they don't have the carte blanche on my heart they once did.
It may have taken me 3 years, but now I can give my heart utterance. It may have taken me two heartbreaks, and a number of hard journeys, but I know who I am. I know what I'm fighting for -- nothing less than my own soul.

Inspire

2011-04-16T08:39:00.005-04:00

Q:As someone who has walked through museums with you, eaten with you, heard music with you, I know firsthand how creativity in all areas lifts your consciousness. Do you feel that as a cultural figure of importance it is part of your responsibility to share what inspires you?
A:I think it's every human's job to inspire others, to feed one another's senses. Inspiration begets inspiration times infinity. Imagine if the person that was inspired to create the phonograph didn't share it with the world.

The above comes from Gwyneth Paltrow's interview with Jay-Z.

After having struggled to write for some time, I've learned some truths.

Genius is love.
Hard work beats talent...
... until talent works hard.
Inspiration begets inspiration.

As I've written more, it becomes easier to write more. As I talk about what I write more, I meet others who write, sing, run, dance, paint, sketch, shoot, lift, and above all, play. Everyone I admire creatively played like children exploring wonderlands and their joy invites me to begin my own expeditions.

But yet, it was not always so.

Not so long ago, the darkness drove me as much as the joy. I feared losing my soul as I once did so I held it back. I tried to love defensively, tried to force creation from my soul like wringing blood from a stone. It wasn't until I was called out on my own hypocrisy - if I thought of myself as a writer, why did I not write to the one I loved - that I began to change.

And the change accelerated upon meeting others who created. I looked back upon the past, at all the authors whose works I consumed... did I ever pause to honor the works I received or did I simply devour without awareness, without gratitude. I look at the friends that I've surrounded myself with. Aren't the ones I admire the ones who seek solitude to create and produce, the ones who aren't consumed with addiction to crowds and opinion? See how they live and find encouragement in their example. Why are you writing, Stanley?

Write because the stories yearn for expression, the way my muscles, my flesh yearned for expression. The level of physical activity I have today would've killed me several times over in high school and college. If someone told me that 10 years out of high school, I'd have half-Ironmans, marathons, double-bodyweight deadlifts, and double-digit pull-up numbers under my belt at the same time, I'm not sure I would've believed that any human was capable of such feats. But from where I am now, I'm not sure that there aren't ten thousand, a hundred thousand people around the world who can right now do all that I can do to a far more impressive degree. And even now, my body is telling me "Keep going, keep going. You haven't begun to scratch the surface of your potential. You owe it to me to keep going." The ceiling is so high. I owe it to my soul to work these mental faculties of creation. Who knows what may happen in 5 years time, in 10 years time? Who knows the people I may meet, the lessons I might learn, the joys I might find if I continue to put my full heart into my work. The gospel lesson bolsters my heart - to whom much is given, if stewarded faithfully, even more shall be given.

Anthem

2011-04-14T23:53:00.005-04:00

Kanye's "All of the Lights" has been my personal anthem this year.

I listened to it when I first began going out with my girlfriend. Accept or reject me, I want her to accept or reject the real me. I wanted to end the posturing, the pretension. I wanted to end a lifetime of thinking that who I was, was not acceptable for reality.

I listen to this song when I write. Accept me or reject me, I want to give you the real me. I want to overcome the years of literary criticism I've studied, coroners who cannot handle the text without murdering it. I want to redeem the years of hiding my love for works that others sneered at, belittled, demeaned as unworthy of serious analysis.

As I was walking to my girlfriend's apartment last night, I thought about my ex-girlfriend whose letters I still open and read now and again. Her words echo in my chest, "Stanley Lee, go and conquer the world." I think about the woman I pursued before her. Could it be that she could not be with a man she believed in but could not believe in himself? Could we have been different, had I been different? And I think about the first woman I gave my heart to, the one who compelled me to take my first step forward, to brave the unknowns of the universe. How ignorant might I still be if I hadn't ever had my heart broken?

All of them have been lights along my path, the joys and the sorrows lighting my way to a deeper knowledge of self and my creator God. I cannot begin to express the volume of gratitude I owe to all of them. I am not a star. I am a constellation of all I've seen.

I think about my brother-in-arms best friend and the example he sets for me in his honesty and purity of heart. I think about my sister-in-arms best friend whose spirit and discipline always pushes me. I think about my mentors and the hopes that they had for me, the potential they saw in me. To deny their belief would be to call them fools and who would admit to having a fool for a mentor? How else can I honor their belief in my potential than to drag it into reality?

I think about my girlfriend the radiant soul whose words resonate with me like no one else I've ever met. Her life frees me to live my own. Her light grants me the courage to live more truly. I think about the support she gives me, the wind in my sails, the strength of my right arm, the driving force in my legs.

And beyond even her, I think about the God under whose sovereignty I shelter. I think about how for so many of these lights in my life, I would not have met them were it not for a chance occurrence, a decision I could not understand at the time, or an impulse I didn't expect. I think about his ordering of my life and I cannot but feel small, a fisherman safe in the tsunami, a feather nestled in the hurricane.

I won't hide these lights any longer. They're the ones who've brought me here. I'll do my part and carry them with me everywhere I go.

Motivation

2011-04-12T23:30:00.002-04:00

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily." -- Zig Ziglar

I believe that everyone should be their own greatest critic and their own greatest supporter. Those who are only one or the other live ineffective caricatures of lives. To be only a critic to yourself is to consign yourself to cynicism and emotionally vacant living. Refusing to nourish their souls, these starving artists waste away gnawing on self-loathing. To be only a supporter to yourself is to glut yourself with cookies, big sweaters, fuzzy slippers and spiritual diabetes. A soul insensitive to insulin, it has overwhelmed itself with saccharine sentiments and can't differentiate between useful help and useless wishes any longer. The spiritually obese and anorexic alike are malnourished.

This is personal experience.

My parents sheltered me from the pain of failure as I grew up. Don't take risks. Hide behind the aprons of big organizations. All you have to do is not make people angry. Tell yourself things to feel good. If something bothers you, don't think about it. And especially don't think about dating pretty girls.

My religious mentors left me with a faulty understanding of Total Depravity. The doctrine proper states merely that we are all with some sin and therefore guilty. The doctrine as I received, it declared every intention malicious, every action blasphemous in every possible way. Stanley can do no good unless it's done in a church-y way.

But the scales are falling from my eyes.

I know who Stanley Lee is. Perhaps not perfectly, perhaps never perfectly, but I know who he is and what he's worth. I know that I'm capable of so much more than what I am now. I can be smarter, stronger, kinder, more generous, more understanding, more disciplined, resolute, wise, audacious, joyful. And because I know that there's no ceiling to how far I can grow, I am my own fiercest critic. If a Picasso... screw Picasso, I know nothing about painting, if Murakami or Roth told you that they were satisfied teaching Catcher in the Rye in high school until the waters turn to blood and the sky rains fire, if Frank Sinatra was OK with playing Rock Band and watching American Idol, how could you keep from howling with red-eyed rage? If you only could glimpse the grandeur of your own souls, how could you keep from destroying everything you are now?

What I've done in my life thus far pales in comparison to what I will do. If it doesn't, I'm better off dead. If my best years are behind me, then slit my wrists right now. It doesn't matter if I'm 27 or 97 - I refuse to believe that my life can ascend no higher. The critic in me is above all, passionate. Ardor for life inflames me, fans my anger; impatience for the world to come, the world I know I can see.

And yet, with wisdom, I have learned that frustration accomplishes nothing. The audacious words, the braggadocio, it's a life-ring, a buoy to cling on to in a sea of people who feel that my life and my beliefs are an indictment on their choice to watch television and wear sweatpants. It's not. We all make our own choices. I don't have any power beyond that which you give me. You can take it away at any time. It won't make me sad. I believe no one shines their brightest when watching T.V. and wearing sweatpants. The night is long, the sky is dark. If my light can kindle a light within your breast, then I will smile for having done so. Please don't hide your light because shining takes effort, takes work, takes heartache. Throughout my life, I've yearned for the love and support of others. In so many dark moments, I had no one's voice with me, so I had to claw my way out tooth and nail. I don't want that to happen to anyone else. I'll speak life to my own soul and hope that it can reach your soul too.

Motivation doesn't last. People who dwell in pits, who believe that the stars above are of different substance, who sneer and laugh at those who reach out their hands to grasp them, these will gnaw at your legs and snatch at your feet when you climb. Your hands will bruise on the hard rock and some falls will hurt a lot. Motivation doesn't last.

But neither do rocks. The slow flow of water carved out the majesty of the Grand Canyon. The patient work of tree roots opens up the hardest rocks. A motivation that renews itself day after day will wear down all walls and free the light to shine.

Offering

2011-03-28T11:52:00.000-04:00

Am I loved?

Am I pleasing to you?

Those two questions from last night's sermon circled above me my whole life, specks in the sky, vigilant, patient. I answered the needs beneath those questions for 20 years by hiding myself beneath obedience. I'll be the guy you want me to be. I'll study hard in school. I'll get a stable job, marry a girl who's not too pretty, not too fancy. I'll contribute at church and write up new bible studies. I'll show up for all the prayer meetings and head up committees. I'm good, right? I'm acceptable, right?

I prostituted my soul for over two decades but I don't blame the buyer. I blame the victim. No one took me by force. They couldn't deceive me had I not wanted to be deceived. I wanted to be accepted and I chose my path. Because I knew so little of who I was, I could not defend myself against who I was not.

There once was a peasant who grew his carrots and turnips on his farm. This plebeian loved his king with all his heart and from the overflow of his heart brought the king the largest, biggest carrot he ever grew. In response to this pauper's love, the king bequeathed land to the peasant, doubling his territory.

Seeing this, a well-to do lord wondered to himself. If the king was so generous to the peasant for a carrot, what would he give in response to a cow or a horse? So with expectant eyes the lord came before the king and gave the king a fine steed, a mighty steed, tall with lithe muscles and shimmering coat. The king thanked him absent-mindedly and waved the lord away.

Flummoxed, the lord dawdled confused. As the guards came to escort him away, the lord stammered about how excellent the horse was, surpassingly so, peerless. And indeed the horse was, said the king. So excellent this beast was, that you wanted to give it to yourself. You see, the peasant brought his carrot out of the love in his heart, expecting nothing in return. You however, seeing the peasant's reward brought the horse hoping to win something in return. Now, begone.

Others gave their souls to God from a genuine desire to minister. I gave my soul in service and in ministry hoping to find acceptance and approval. I do this, you do that. That's the deal, right? But God loved me far too much to accept those terms and conditions. No, he brought me through several hells. Lonely nights, hard fights, punching my knuckles bloody against boulders, throwing trash cans into lakes and destroying public property, screaming my anguish into the thunder. He gave me everything necessary, even if those necessities drew out tears and screams. My reward has been a mirror. I can see who I am now. Never in my life have I been so confident in my knowledge of self.

I haven't worked out the details yet but there's undoubtedly a connection between knowing yourself and dimming the need for approval, acceptance. Do I still battle it? Surely, but for the first time in my life, I've been finding victories. So, no, I don't blame the church for what it did but with my life I hope to light a way for other misfits, for those who refuse to settle for quiet lives of meek obeisance.

From where that pavement is...

2011-03-27T12:13:00.008-04:00

"...'cause there's no parachute that they can make for this

'cause I put my pain, my heart, my soul, my faith in this..."

My spiritual infancy brimmed with missionary zeal. Every faithful Christian should eventually find their way to missions and ministry. Christians who simply gave financial support and prayed were just ducking the hard work.

Did anyone ever say as much? No, not once.
Was this the overwhelming impression that I was left with? Yes, I and very many others.

As adamant as these zealots might have been in saying that there was no two-tier Christendom, they never realized that their works and words created such a world. They scoffed and laughed at the charismatics who segregate the faithful into those who've spoken in tongues and those who haven't, but they then frowned on those who elected to pursue a dream apart from third-world countries or clerical collars.

Two tiers? No, never. It's just that some people love God more and some not so much. Not being in ministry meant you either didn't love God or you didn't love people.

Unacceptable hypocrisy.

God cannot be God of all creation and God of only those who are in ministry.

Creation, so great and so wide and God's name is writ large over it all. And yet, I believed, I followed those who would confine Christendom to church walls, literal and otherwise. The otherwise refers to the begrudging concession that Christ may be loved outside a church building. But a discomfort plagues them if the love is not covered in crosses, soft lighting and tearful conversion stories.

But now, day by day, the glowing upswell in me burns brighter. I know where I'm going. For so much of my life, I feared that my teachers were right and that God was a petty Asian bureaucrat who wanted to lock me inside a church. No, far more powerful, far more gentle than I could have imagined, he beckons me towards a life I was trained to believe could never be mine.

There has never been a moment of greater rebellion and greater obedience for me. Throwing my hat in the ring, I'm going to be a writer. An echo from years past rings in my heart "If you won't take a chance on this, what will you take a chance on?" I'm not going to write for Christian media. I don't have the stomach for trying to be awkward and impish, skirting family-unfriendly realities. Screw that stupid shit. It's not going to be for academia as if I cared about impressing them and acquiring for myself their distinctions and honors anymore. I won't have a big organization to hide me. My parents taught me that security lay in size. There is no security in size. There's only security in the hollow of God's hand. And I believe that's exactly where I am. Throw away so many of the beliefs I've been taught, so many of the doctrines that finger-wagging reverend faces have instilled in me. Throw away the fears, the false needs, the empty materialism. Throw away the useless practices that no longer serve me. Rebel, reject and return to the naked freedom of knowing that God wants you to be yourself.

Easy

2011-03-25T13:32:00.000-04:00

Throughout the uproar of the Tiger Mother book, a part of me quietly cheered on the mother. While I disagree with a tyrannical leadership style and social deprivation, she affirmed two of the deepest truths I learned.

#1 It's not fun until you get good.
#2 You won't be good if you don't put in the work.

Those thoughts ran through my mind as I put in my 5 miles this morning. As it usually happens, I got frustrated going too slowly during the run and let my feet really fly for a few stretches. The joy, the exhiliration, the sheer uplift, my feet thrilled. Barking, chasing, and the dog tired before I did. Better luck next time, kid.

My youth was never like this. I hated running. I especially hated basketball because it required both running and jumping. I felt the fat jiggle on my unsightly breasts, around a too-large midsection, rippling across the thighs. Could there be a worse sensation in the world? Yes. Worse still was the sensation of other humans seeing your shambling, porcine form lope down the street. Running is embarassing for the slow and ugly.

So stop being slow and ugly.

Work.

It hurts. Forget your muscles, forget your weak, aching back. I know that hurts. You can withstand that. You're having trouble with how much it hurts to show other people you're fat.

Battle your fears with reality. Taking refuge in delusion invites disaster.

They know you're fat. They see it. I see it. You alone refuse to see it. They knew I was fat. You saw it. I alone refused to see it. Until I had my heart broken. Until I overheard a girl say "Him? Ew! Never!" I'm forever thankful for "Fight Club" teaching me to embrace "rock bottom." In the earliest posts here, in the oldest posts there, I wrote about immersing myself in the reality bath. Acknowledging the cruel reality, a hundred, a thousand knives piercing your every inch of skin, every acre of soul, the freezing waters of the arctic killing your flesh, awakening your soul. Come alive and wake up. Things are bad.

And they'll stay that way until you change them.

Until you put in the work.

Work first to acknowledge truth. Work next to change what's true. I think soon, you will find the work become beautiful. It has for me.

Daily

2011-03-23T07:36:00.000-04:00

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." -- Aristotle

15. Finish the Badwater Ultramarathon.
16. Finish the Norseman Triathlon.
19. Have 100 works published in major media.
28. Bench press 2x bodyweight.
29. Deadlift over 500 lbs.
43. Clean and jerk a 175 lb. (5 pood) kettlebell.
56. Run the Boston Marathon.
71. Receive an invitation to a State Dinner.

Many of my bucket list items cannot be done at the geriatric end of a life. A great many of them require years and years of sustained effort, sacrifice, determination and guts.

That's why it's on my bucket list.

I can't achieve them as I am now. I would have to change. Personally, I would find it an utter tragedy to leave this world barely changed from how I entered it. The change, the drawing forth of effort, the discovery, the growth of courage... these make the goals matter. It's less important that others recognize me than I recognize myself.

If I found a shortcut, if I cheated on a race and lopped off 100 miles or took some substance to enhance my performance, or if publishers suddenly came to me and wanted to take my blog posts and plaster them everywhere, I'd fall into a deep depression. If that actually happened, I'd prefer death than to take them up on their offer. A shortcut would not achieve my goals. That would destroy any possibility of accomplishing them. The real heart of my goals lies in the belief that what I am right now is not what I want to be. To acquire the fruits without the labor would utterly destroy me for the personal, spiritual labor is what I desired the most. The fruits just acknowledge that I invested.

I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to suffer heartache. I already know this. I don't mind those pains. A pain I could not withstand is a loved one telling me "Slow down. You're fine just the way you are." Life is too short to just be fine. Life is too short to just settle for enough. From the moment I was born, I began to move closer and closer to death. I want to hand him an autobiography worth reading when I finally meet him. Slow down? Not fast enough.

Today, I made the realization that this investment has to be made every day. Overly simplistic? Glaringly obvious? Yes. I think so. So obvious that I neglected it until this point. Monday night I went to a concert with a friend. I didn't just lose that night to work and grind, I lost the day after as well as my mind recovered from the music and the late night.

One of the things I discovered in changing my life was to increase happiness, do less of the stuff that makes you kinda feel good and do more of what truly satisfies your soul. I watched a lot of TV as a kid and enjoyed a great number of shows. It was pretty good. I'm not settling for pretty good. I'd like to watch Firefly, the Wire and a whole lot of other shows people have told me about. I have Total Recall from Netflix sitting on my table. These things are pretty good. But they're not really good. How many TV shows was last year's Half-Ironman worth? Innumerable. Does not compute.

It's like trading for baseball players. Giving a team 3 or 4 legitimately good players does not equal having 1 extraordinary player on the caliber of an Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez or A-Rod. The things that are pretty good could never come together and be more than something that's truly great.

The concert was good. I enjoyed spending time with a good friend. But I have begun to realize pretty decent moments will cost me the great life affirming moments if I do not manage my time. There's a good reason I'm fasting gmail, facebook, manga and other social media between 8 and 5 for Lent. I want to demolish my addiction to these time traps. Even determination, the quality and virtue which I've cultivated in myself for years now, cannot grow when distracted. Determination also means focus.

That said, less blogging, more doing.

New Beginnings

2011-03-20T09:00:00.001-04:00

My blogs stay fresh for about a year (or one relationship) before they go bad.

I don't believe in coincidence. Thus far, I've measured out my life in relationships, marking out my personal growth by what I've learned and how I've matured through each. From inception to separation, massive changes occurred and this fills me with satisfaction. It would be an insult to my former partners if our time together produced no change in either of us. I consider myself honored to have met the women I have and shared part of my life with them.

When my previous relationship began, I stood at a crossroads in my faith. I hated where I came from, but I couldn't find the words to tell you why. I wanted to leave everything I knew but I desired to know God more. I was so angry, so embittered at God yet longed for Him. Did I then self-identify as Christian? Yes. But with many qualifications.

I was disgusted by the white Jesus draped in an American flag standing amidst Ground Zero wreckage, red-state Christianity. I couldn't help but be embarrassed by churches as diverse as Hillsongs (though I still quite like their music) or Joel Osteen's or Fred Phelp's (each one for very different reasons of course). I no longer felt the same fervor for Passion ministries that I once had. I was a Christian, but not *that* kind of Christian.

Yet, I wasn't the Sunday only kind of Christian who looked guilty when confessing the fact of his faith. I refused to say "None of us are perfect." with a tired resignation and no conviction to turn. Fascinating, how a confession of guilt has so often left open the door to a repeat trespass. Neither did I desire to be a morally upright person who just happened to affiliate himself with this tradition or that lineage. Faith is more than preference.

I was a Christian, but I only knew what I was not, and the negative space was still insufficient for showing me who I was. Little by little, I've been learning.

I'm glad the sovereign plan of God subjected me to that period of my life. Though I don't believe that time is over, I have crested that hill and see the lush valley before me. I don't know what I'll find down there, but I'll go there anyways.

I hope that with my last blog, I can, for myself, turn the page on that previous chapter and explore what lies ahead. I hope to work on new ideas and play with new concepts here. Epistemologies, ethics, and a universe of other life facets besides, I hope to investigate them here.

New beginnings for a new day.

Today Is Practice For Tomorrow

2011-03-19T20:58:00.000-04:00

An action becomes a practice. Practice becomes a habit. A habit becomes a life.
Today is practice for tomorrow.

My mother was a chef in AIG's cafeteria for about 20 years. In those years, she brought home leftovers beyond what our family might've afforded otherwise. Mountains of filet mignon, cornucopias of cutlets, pounds of pork chops, and the like. I loved them all. I remember many a time sneaking downstairs for another slice of filet mignon.

The taste wasn't the same but my appetite for burgers, pizza, fries, pies and fried chicken continued to grow like a tumor of the soul. In high school, I was well over 200. In college, 300.

A small action led to a life and quite nearly, the end of a life.

It's not easy to treat a cancer of the soul.

I had to summon up a lot of willpower to decide to spend my money on a salad that was the cost of a Popeye's meal and a Chinese lunch box combined. It's just green rabbit food! Why's it more expensive!? But I did. And I yearned for golden fields of chicken skin, rivers of black bean sauce.

Actions become practices. Practices become habits. Habits become lives.

I ate salad one day. And then another. And now I can't imagine ever going back to a fast food restaurant. If I were driving on a road, I might grab a banana and a bottle of water from a rest stop instead of a burger. Habits become lives but lives change.

I find myself holding onto this truth these days as I'm excising another tumor.

A lot of my blogs draw a lot of questions. "Stan, are you talking about me in that post?" No, I'm far too self-absorbed to think about others. I'm talking about myself, to myself. When I talk about hating a life watching TV, watching American Idol, eating potato chips, I'm trying to apply chemotherapy to myself. I want to change. More than anything else, I want to change.

For decades, I believed a painting on a mirror was my reflection. The oils have dried and chips are falling. I'm beginning to see myself. But it's not someone I recognize. Why should I recognize him? I'm getting to know him for the first time.

I can't go back to watching TV. I can't stay at a job where I have to wait for assignments. I can't ever settle for good enough. Maybe it's enough for someone else to have a safe job at a big company and wait for the weekend, but that's dishonest living for me. I don't want to spend 40 hours a week hiding my values because I'm too scared to step out on a limb. I don't want to spend any more time watching TV or movies or doing things to kill time. I'm dying.

From the moment I was born, I began my journey to death. I can't stop and linger here on the couch with you. If you think this means I believe I'm too good for you, I'm too haughty or I'm just an arrogant asshat, I'm sorry you think so. I don't have enough time for more explanation than what I'm now giving. I know how I want to die. Do I know if I'm going to get it? Not a clue. I do know what it'll take for me to die happy. If you had a choice between stuffing your coffin with regrets or treasured memories, what would you choose?

If I spent my life serving in church ministries up to my ear, chained to a desk job, welded to a couch, or around restaurant tables talking about gadgets... I simply do not love anyone enough to fill the grave with that many sorrows.

Actions become practices. Practices become habits and habits become lives.

Writing this blog post memorializes an action I took nearly 3 years ago. I refuse to live somebody else's life, by somebody else's values. I sought my own and found a remarkable parity with God's values. It has been a slow realization that I'm where God wants me to be. I just do not care if no one else is doing this. (For the record, I think there are a few who do something similar. I think that of all of them, I am the one most sensitive to criticism.) I don't know what the path will look like 2 or 3 steps down the road. It's like running through twilit Peruvian jungles with a flickering headlamp. The future is vague, and the present is just clear enough so stay in the present.

And at the end of all these presents I look forward to the life I will have left behind.

Update

2011-03-13T09:50:00.000-04:00

An e-mail I sent to a good friend of mine, updating him on my life.

Hey X,

I am glad to hear that you have been flinging your cat around. If you wish, I will show you advanced cat hurling techniques and if I deem your skills acceptable, even cat annihilation techniques. Despite the name, these techniques also work on pigs, bears and humans. You may have already intuited this knowledge.

In response to your question, my life has been rather fulfilling of late as I've been learning a lot (though I always wish I had more time to reflect on these lessons!). I guess I shouldn't be, but I was rather surprised that the martial arts gym I've been going to for the past two months has been the source of my insight. I absolutely LOVE this gym. It's always packed, but that's OK because the gym isn't your traditional gym where you get on a machine and flail away. No, entering this gym feels like entering a hipster military bootcamp. Tattooed patrons are doing jumping jacks, pushups and squats. Others are doing kettlebells, still others are doing yoga or stretching.

But you can find that at almost any gym. What separates this gym is the intensity with which many of the parishioners are approaching their workouts. See, what makes this gym special is that there's at least one professional fighter and about a dozen amateur fighters. If they're sloppy in their workouts they risk broken bones, concussions, even death. They train like their life is on the line because it is.

This has been one of the most invigorating times in my life. I only took the basic membership which didn't allow for participation in the fighting classes but I was inspired just by training next to these warriors. Even the girls had spirits which pushed mine. One of them I might have passed on the street or in my daily routine and never given her a second thought but she came to the gym sporting massive bruises, green and purple on her shins. Others, men and women, had tape wrapped around broken toes, bruised ribs and yet they continued to train.

My membership ended this past Tuesday and I've been feeling a bit listless as I've rested. Going back to training alone will be... well, lonely. I can find other teams to train with but I don't think it'll be the same. Distance athletes are too laid back. They may compete in 100+ mile races but many of them are mellow, married with kids. I miss the fervor and the intensity of a person who trains knowing that his own life is at risk. That's when I realized that I take this attitude into every area of my life, physical and otherwise.

I grew up believing in certain truths. If you don't get a job at a big corporation with benefits, your life will be miserable and no one will want to marry you. If you don't go to the right school, you won't get such a job. If you don't get all 100's, then you won't get into the right school. The purpose of life is to have kids. People will get old and weak. As an adult, you have no time to enjoy life. Asian men will never be attractive to, nor respected by, Caucasian women. Whatever you do, don't date the white women.

I could go on. But the most painful one was that getting steady pay and coming home to watch TV and go out to eat at restaurants was the best life had to offer. Play softball in the summer. Go to some island somewhere for vacation. I howled in the prison of that belief system. In all my ambitions, in all my training, I've fought for my release. I work so hard because I'm still trying to escape that prison. Perhaps others may find joy and God in such a life. Perhaps. But after a quarter century and change of living, I realize that normal sort of life numbs my sense of divine proximity. I sense God most truly when something great is being risked, when something audacious is attempted. God seems the furthest away when things are soft and safe. I long to live at the very fringes of existence, the places you can't bring a lawn chair, the places where iPads, iPad2s, iPhones and fancy cars look laughable.

Sometimes I wonder whether it's my youthful vigor speaking and whether this attitude will flare out with age. "To hell with that!" I say. A Christian brother, parroting conventional wisdom, said that a guy like me couldn't do marathons and triathlons many years ago. Well, I got 2 of each under my belt with more to come. Conventional wisdom says that we grow decrepit and laid back as we age. Yet there are 80 year old power lifters and 90 year old marathoners. Those who say something is impossible should not interrupt those who are doing the impossible.

Mmm, if this email seems a bit harsh and stringent, please forgive me. I am writing to answer your question but also as an exhortation and reminder to myself. In James, the author writes that a man who listens and fails to act is like a man who looks at his own reflection and then goes away forgetting what he looks like. I'm trying hard not to forget who God made me. For so many years, others drew my identity for me. Only lately have I begun scratching away the faded paint from the mirror and finding myself underneath. The reason I am so adamant, so unyielding, so contemptuous of those who lived the life I formerly did is because a big part of me hurts to be away from them. I desire community. Long for it. But I just can't have anybody. Five Points helped me realize what I need. I need people who train with their lives on the line. My soul is on the line, X. I find myself thinking like a man released from prison. "I can't go back. I'll do whatever I have to not to go back."

An End To Men?

2011-01-11T14:32:00.000-05:00

I read this article during lunch today and cringed.

I drew back not because of the content within and my own personal reaction to it but more because I already began hearing in my mind the responses from many Christian communities and mentors that I've had in my life. I make no effort to hide that my great struggle these past 3 or 4 years has been to distance myself personally, emotionally and spiritually from those who brought me up. I've been becoming my own man.

And that process felt like hell. I struggled with feelings of rejection, abandonment, apostasy and all of that preceded actual conversation with them.

But that's just background. Regarding the article at hand, I instinctively found their arguments ready and waiting. The headship of men, the created order, the fallen world, radical feminism, homosexuality (although that wasn't even mentioned in the article), the snide jokes and character attacks. Familiar with these tactics from years of watching and even my own time employing them, I found these responses in my mind.

That is not my response.

If women are doing well professionally, good for them. If they're receiving more recognition and the world realizes how amazing and precious a daughter is, how prized and adored she should be, good. And if men are losing their jobs because manufacturing and other old industries are drying up, then they can shrivel up and die. They get no sympathy. This is my response. I feel neutral to the fact that women have overtaken men in so many fields. I'm not cheering for "Team Testosterone." I think that's the dumbest shit in the world, dividing humanity into two opposing groups and pitting them in a zero sum game where there's one winner and one loser. I believe humanity has reaped an enormous benefit from the prosperity and advancement of women. I believe that their rise, in light of their relative biological disadvantages in terms of physical strength and childbearing, is great news for humanity. Less reliant on the worker prized for his muscle and more dependent on those who work with their mind, humanity has taken another step forward. Women have demonstrated an equal capacity for mental work as men have and a substantial argument exists for the superiority of the female brain in many areas.

Men have more competition now than ever in almost everything. Good. Competition should weed out the weak. The unambitious, the undisciplined, untalented, unthinking, unresourceful will sink to the bottom. Good. That puts me at greater risk than ever before. Excellent news, because now I have more incentive than ever to grow myself. From the Homeric epics where women were interchangable with horses in being chattel slaves and spoils of war, tools of pleasure and procreation, things to carry off in a raid to this article, humanity has come a long way. Consider this, I don't need to be a very good man to be worthy of a chattel slave. I just need to be strong enough to knock her unconscious and carry her away with me. What kind of man would be an appropriate companion to an intelligent, ambitious, articulate, creative, thoughtful and discerning woman? Would the rapist pirate brute be her equal? Absolutely not. Because the market has now been flooded with amazing women, men must now bring more to buy love. The currency is your own soul and in my estimation, the vast majority of men are poor as dirt without two pennies to rub together. If humanity were indeed divided into two hormonal teams, I would be so damn disappointed with this sad sack of Bad News Bears and demand a trade, retire or fake an injury.

But then again, perhaps my views are skewed. Perhaps there are men out there who have interests beyond watching sports, eating and video games. Perhaps I just hate Flushing, New York and the kind of men it's produced in general because as I'm writing this, I keep thinking about quiet, passive men or men consumed by consumerism. Perhaps, I've just been incredibly bitter about spending years of my life trying to fit in just such a community. In my mind, like fireflies in a forest far away, memories of better men flicker through but I can't be sure if that's my hallucination, my wishes telling my eyes what to see. If you haven't guessed by now, I despise life without initiative and ambition.

More people than any point in the history of humanity are living with initiative and ambition. In the past few centuries, women have been taking steps to live more fully. Small steps at first until now they're taking giant strides. Despite how frustrated and angry I may write sometimes, I actually live most of my life smiling. I can only do so because so many women now live fully and I've been reaping the rewards of them doing so. I'm thankful.

27 lessons from 27 years, Part III (16 - 1)

2010-12-31T16:40:00.001-05:00

16 - Promises are meant to be kept.

What’s the good of your word if you don’t keep it. This year has been an absolute revelation in terms of my own character flaws. Perhaps the most obvious, but probably the least egregious example has been my tardiness. Danielle pointed out how my constant tardiness reflected my list of priorities whether I consciously acknowledged that list or not -- a painful but necessary lesson. I’ve been trying to work on timeliness but I’m still far from a satisfactory level. Half of life is showing up. If I can’t even get that down, what hope do I have of the other half?

15 - Your ambitions should be ambitious.

I do an excellent job of hiding thoughts from myself. After I completed my first triathlon I was happy to be sure, but I felt a strange disappointment. That wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I thought I’d be more broken down, more on death’s door. I pushed as hard as I could at the end of the race, once I hit Central Park, but considering how quickly I recovered I kept thinking to myself “I could have made my big push sooner.” This year I did the Half Ironman in Syracuse and I’ve never lived a day with such intense emotions as I did that day. Fear. Despair. Desperation. Hope. Triumph. Elation. Gratitude. I felt them all, I emptied my soul out that day. I’m glad I met a new friend on the run and old friends found me at the finish line. But the last few weeks I’ve been trying to remember how much my body hurt that day. I can’t recall anything of my IT Band pinched between my knees nor vomiting on myself in the swim, or my heart rate flying through the roof prematurely on the bike. I can’t viscerally remember a single one of those facts. Again I feel a dissatisfaction with one of the happiest days in my life. I can do that faster. I can go even further. Ambition. A pastor who has always struck me as flamboyant and full of hot air actually gave me one of my most cherished nuggets of wisdom, a Chinese proverb: your life is a boat rowing upstream. You’re going forward or going back. There’s no staying still.

14 - Your body remembers joy. Your body doesn’t remember pain.

Remember that the next time you want to skip a workout and stay in bed. See previous for details.

13 - The 80/20 rule. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

80% of your results come from 20% of your work. Take fitness for example. I’m extremely, extremely confident that you will be fit as you will ever *need* to be for the rigors of this modern world with a balanced diet and 2 half-hour walks every day. That’s ALL. Forget going to the gym for hours and hours lifting weights, running, swimming or sinking loads of dollars into gadgets and programs. Your workouts come for free and you’ll actually save money with your diet once you cut out fast food. You can stay mentally active into old age by doing sudoku’s and crosswords.

12 - The 80/20 rule. The Devil’s in the details.

20% of your work produces 80% of your results. But the difference between 80% and 100% is enormous. You can be fit with a good diet and walking but you won’t be able to do a triathlon, climb a mountain, fight a bear or crush an apple in your palm. You can stave off Alzheimer’s and dementia by eating fish, fruits and doing newspaper games. But you probably won’t write a great novel, play or sheet music if that’s all you ever do. Not a problem if those feats are meaningless to you. A big problem if those are your life goals.

11 - 10% Inspiration. 90% Perspiration.

As good as your plan is, as passionate as you may claim to be, as supportive as your friends and family may be, no one can do the work that is yours alone to do. You must work for your dreams, your goals. If you do not work, nothing will happen. And you will die never having lived, a stillborn soul. Your life is work. Your work is your life.

10 - Man was made to work.

Musing upon Genesis, God’s first words to humanity were work orders. Go forth and cultivate the earth. Man was made to work. Humanity, born late on a Friday and the first thing he has to do is to clock in. I think our lives would be much improved if we had that same attitude.

09 - Your Work might not be your job.

And your job is not your Work. Every life should have a Magnum Opus, a great work for which they’ve given their whole life. Some have criticized my views and writing as a workaholics manifesto. In some sense, it is. Work is better than indolence. But they misunderstand me. I don’t really care too much about money, prestige, recognition or compensation. Your compensation is joy. That’s better than money. You can’t buy joy. You can buy marshmallows which might make you happy but they’ll rot your teeth and make you fat. And then you’ll be sad again. You may have to get a job, several jobs, in order to fund your Work but you must give your all to your Work. Your Work may be your family, or something that people with small visions and shriveled hearts may demean as a hobby, but you have to give your all for it. Because...

08 - Your Work is your joy.

Every soul owes it to themselves to question the conventional wisdom that work is a nasty, miserable odious chore that you have to suffer through in order to survive. Question it! Every year I find myself working much more than I have in previous years and every year I find myself having a deeper and deeper gratitude for the life I lead. Not a coincidence at all.

07 - Your Joy is your destiny.

Want to know what you’re meant to live for? Your joy. The glory of God is a human being fully alive. Happiness defies reasoning. Axiomatic in nature, how would you argue that happiness is better than sadness? It just is. If you don’t understand the premise, then there’s no argument based on any epistemology that can convince you. Happiness is. Joy is. Every argument that requires the subordination of joy to any other principle or cause immediately comes under suspicion. And rightfully so! Follow your joy. Find your destiny.

06 - Caffeine is a hell of a drug.

I fought a hard battle with caffeine addiction and depression this year. Just because it’s typically caused by a beverage that most people, even kids, drink on a daily basis, is no reason to discount the potential for wrecking your life.

05 - No improvement without recovery.

Forsake your sleep, forsake your food and let all your work go to waste. You can train like a demon or like you have a demon but if you don’t allow your body to rest and recover, you’ll hardly see any gains. Your body knows what to do. It’s kept you alive your whole life. It’s on your side. Are you on your body’s side? What’s your relationship to your body? Do you treat it like a jerkass Asian parent, always demanding without listening? If you have, why should you wonder at your own body’s rebellion against your tyranny?

04 - Protein.

15 grams at a time. A few hours apart. You don’t really need much more than that unless you’re bodybuilding.

03 - Water.

Drink a lot. Drink often.

02 - Air.

Breathe deeply. Breathe regularly.

01 - You’re never done.

Never.

27 lessons from 27 years, Part II (21 - 17)

2010-12-21T22:25:00.000-05:00

#21 - Breathing is important.
   Breathing is the most fundamental activity for life. Gaseous exchange. Inhale fresh fuel. Remove waste products. Were I to speak only of the body, this lesson would have profound impact. Consider if you will, the typical member of the American workforce: grossly out of shape, winded after a flight of stairs, unable to run more than a few blocks without panting. What factor tells us whether a person is in shape or out of shape? The breathing. I no longer rely solely on physical appearances, I've had my butt whupped by enough Clydesdales in both runs and triathlons to care about how far a belly protrudes. It's the breathing. A person hunched over gasping for air doesn't possess fitness sufficient for the activity he's doing.

#20 - Breathing denotes mastery.
   Consider how breathing denotes mastery of a subject. When you are in full command of a situation, when you're relaxed, when you can breathe easily, that's when you're in control. Have you ever noticed what your body does during times of stress? Why are your shoulders so high and tight? Why are you holding your breath? Did the room just fill to the ceiling with water? Did you stop breathing well because you thought you would benefit from a lack of oxygen? No, of course not. You stopped breathing because you didn't have enough awareness to continue breathing. You stressed yourself into more stress. Someone with full mastery of their craft doesn't forget to breathe. I had the chance to witness some excellent fighters spar. Even in such a tense situation with high level combatants pummeling each other, they didn't forget to breathe. Just because your boss is yelling at you isn't reason to forget breathing either.

#19 - Breathing causes mastery.
   Consider also how to master a subject, you're going to have to breathe. Athletes say it all the time. Newspapers say this constantly about players like Jeter and Mariano. Heck, they even say this about each other. Players who perform well in the clutch have a preternatural ability to "slow the game down" and "let it come to them." Have you ever noticed that when the great Mariano prepares to throw a pitch he breathes out a short breath? Do you think this is mere coincidence? I didn't pay as much attention until Rif spoke about breathing in the training DVD I watched. I won't go into the details now but I would hazard a guess that breathing well isn't only a sign of mastery in whatever you're doing, but also a likely cause. One of the things that have increased the general quality of my life has been waking up at 5 in the morning to spend half an hour doing breathing exercises.

#18 - Never sacrifice the breath for the form.
   Now actually I learned this the first time I did yoga with Kendra but I hope you've already picked out the theme for these 5 lessons I learned. It might be yoga or it might be kettlebell intervals like I was doing this morning. Or it might be pull-ups, writing, anything. If you're going at a pace where you can't breathe properly, you're going too fast. Now there are definitely times when you want to practice being in a state where it's hard to breathe, maximum power sprints and the like, but this shouldn't by any means be your regular state of existence. If I'm not breathing right, expanding the diaphragm, protecting the spine, during my pull-ups and kettlebell drills, then I'm not getting as much as I can from my efforts. Slow it down. Work on the basics.

#17 - Your basics can never be too good.
   Ilio-tibial band syndrome. Tendonitis of the posterior tibialis. Shoulder soreness. Groin pulls. Hamstring cramps. Calf cramps. Those might be the worst of what I experienced this year and they're all likely due to poor emphasis of the basics. I've run with improper form. I've done workouts with improper form and I'm definitely payed the price for my own negligence. 2011 for me will be a year of getting back to basics, of taking a step back to take a step forward. I think about all the excellent fights that I saw this year. None of the fighters had any fancy maneuvers like jumping punches, spinning kicks or other blockbuster summer movie type moves. Left jab. Right cross. Left hook. Right uppercut. 1. 2. 3. 4. Low kicks. Front kicks. Everything is simple to execute. They've just practiced it tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times. Each time, these high class fighters weren't seeking to add something to their technique. No, they were looking to remove impurities. That's what the basics are. They should form the very bulk of your training menu because this is what separates the good from the mediocre, the great from the good and the legendary from the merely great.

27 lessons from 27 years, Part I (27-22)

2010-12-20T17:30:00.000-05:00

I'll be turning 27 on Saturday. In recognition of that, I'll post up 27 random lessons I learned in my perfect cube years of life.

#27 - Benchmarks.
         Birthdays don't mean much to me. An odd thing to say since I'm writing a week of blog posts in honor of 27 but quite honestly, I don't really like people making a huge fuss over me. Also odd to say since I love the spotlight but the idea of an entire event devoted to me boggles my mind. Why would someone do that? Really, I celebrate life every single day I have it. I'm alive in a world full of opportunity. That's more than enough reason to celebrate.
   Instead of birthdays, I like benchmarks. Benchmarks are awesome. They offer you a way to measure your progress towards your goals. Years go by, the calendar pages roll on and on, but am I any closer to the death I want to die? Have I lived the way I want to live? I love numbers and time because it slaps me back into reality. I look at so many of the people around me. I'm going to be 27 years old and the most beautiful thought in my mind is my own death. If I can have it, I can't wait to be surrounded by fat, crying grandkids whom I love so much, who I'm going to miss lifting in the air, teaching them how to throw a punch, how to take a punch, talk to adults without looking away, ride a bike without being afraid to fall, swim deep waters, climb tall trees, kiss all the pretty girls and throw baseballs through brick walls. My children, biological or otherwise, soberly reflecting on the spiritual inheritance I'll be leaving them. Friends, whom I've known for a good long time, laughing at me because I always said I'd be the last to go, punks all of them. I want more than anything else to die smiling knowing I left nothing behind. I fought the good fight. I ran the race. And I made Death work his damn ass off to catch me.
   Or who knows? Maybe my reckless driving will get to me and I'll zig when I should have zagged and end up burning to death, shards of glass, beams of steel piercing my vital organs. Who really knows? If I don't get the death I'm asking for, so be it. I don't control that so why worry about that? Death will come when it does. In order to die that death, I'll have to live my life. Live. Life.

#26 - Time is never objective.
         Quantum physics should have taught us this much already. Some of the more scientifically inclined amongst us knows what happens to rays of light as they stray too near the event horizon of a black hole. But what happens when black holes start emerging in our spirits, in our schedules? The prospect, the spectre of the real world haunted me back in college. Why? The people representing the "real world" to me looked so dead and lifeless, fish on a bed of ice at the market, eyes red, glazed over. 5 days a week of doing just enough to get by, going home to watch shows that numb your pain, drinking on the weekends to forget you're alive. 80 years of life? Too long by far. Years become crawling, creeping vermin, each annum indistinguishable from the next.
        But life moves quickly, too quickly for those who love life. Einstein said that placing your hand on a hot stovetop for a moment may seem like an eternity but a night spent with a beautiful woman passes like a phantom. As someone who has met his share of stovetops and beautiful women, this is true. As someone who loves his life, this is true. I'm going to die one day so I have to start saving up now for a big coffin. I have a lot of joy to bring with me. Ain't gonna have much room for any possessions in that box.

#25 - Your life won't wait for you.
         As much as time isn't objective, it will still move no matter what you do. So get your ass in gear! Your future you isn't any more likely to stop procrastinating than your current you. Your future you won't be any better than your current you unless the current you does something. Like every battle that has ever been waged, the key to victory lays in taking the initiative. If you wait for the enemy to dictate the terms of engagement, you lose.
         Life is hard. Life demands that you fight for your joy, that you get up off the couch, off the floor where you've been crying, off the bottom of the well where you've been thrown and fight. Tooth and nail, grit and guts, you must fight. It'll hurt. It'll hurt even more than it's hurting right now. But your other option is a life of slow suffocation as the coils of time tighten around you. Live or have your life taken from you. Choose or have choices made for you.

#24 - Stop fighting the water.
         My swimming took a massive step forward this year. Suddenly, I was slip-streaming through the water where before I felt like I had to plow through with brute force. If you looked at my workout schedule and saw swimming twice a day, five days a week, you might think that I improved because I developed more swimming muscles. Not really. I improved because I finally opened up to the water and surrendered.
         Life requires that you fight. Not everything in life is a fight. Looking forward, I think a great deal of my maturation will come from trying to hold each of these truths in their proper tension. Swimming teaches me to surrender, to stop fighting, to let go and let things be. It would be one thing if the water was merely stronger than you, but not only is the water mightier than you, the more power you bring to bear, the faster you go, the more resistance you'll meet. And this resistance scales geometrically.
         But the water doesn't want you to fight. If you're stuck in an unwinnable fight, you should probably consider whether fighting is what you're supposed to do.

#23 - Trust the water.
          I stopped fighting the water when I began to trust the water. I'm 222 lbs. Densely muscled. Fairly long legs. Poor swimmer design. All the more reason to trust the water. I'm not going to drown. I can lean on the water. The water will support me. The water is here to help me. Believing these atomic facts, truly believing in a way that those who define belief as 'mental assent' will never understand, is the difference between swimming 1.2 miles and clinging onto a kayak and giving up with 90% of the race in front of you, eyes full of tears.
          Consider the wealth within this metaphor. Where are you fighting unnecessarily in your life? What succor and aid are you pushing away, refusing to see? Where can you soften? What can you relax and still maintain this posture? What are you holding on to that you can, you should, you know you should let go of? Let it go. Trust.

#22 - Fun is a sign of trust.
         I have lots of fun goofing off in the pool ever since I began trusting the water. Swimming upside down, backwards, making up ridiculous new strokes, just generally acting like a kid again has been a great joy for me. I went to swim at the pool right when it opened up this morning when suddenly the realization dawned upon me: I didn't come to get a workout in this morning. I came to have fun. Swimming fast and smooth is fun. Swimming for time is fun. Swimming in zig-zags like I was doing an aquatic cone drill is fun. Empty pool all to myself, about the only thing I was missing was wacky Hawaiian shorts and a crackling barbeque on the side.
         For the longest time, the only thing I thought about 10 to 12 times a week was how I could improve my swim time. I ground out every work out trying to fix my form. After the truth of water shone upon me, I felt liberated. The scales from my eyes, the weight from my shoulders, the seconds off the clocks, all these burdens fell and I could be a little kid again.
        I'm a little country boy at heart. Yeah, I read such and such and like this and that, but what really makes me ridiculously happy is summer sunshine, running and chasing things to my content, jumping, swimming, climbing, building, catching, wrestling. Fields of tall grass, forests of high trees, babbling brooks, running rivers, I've never outgrown this part of life and may the very flesh rot off my bones before I ever stop having fun. If something I'm doing is not something I can have fun doing, I'm doing the wrong thing.

On Rebuilding

2010-12-11T15:03:00.000-05:00

Watching a dearly beloved little sister of mine finish her first road race this morning reminded me of my own rebirth through fitness.

The first true heartbreak I ever had in my life. Emotional devastation, suicidal ideation, blind, hot, fury, dark, drowning, sorrow... I experienced premature enlightenment. In the hatred I felt towards my own life, I realized what might be the most valuable lesson I've ever learned: I love my life. It mattered to me. It was worthwhile to me. Each successive heartbreak in my life has driven this truth deeper and deeper into my bones. I. Love. My. Life.

The hatred I felt was absolutely appropriate. My life, the life I had lived, the life that we can speak of in the present tense, did not deserve love, admiration, respect. It was absolutely pathetic, worthless sewage that you wish you could flush away with a lever and never set your eyes upon again, an aberration, abortion, abomination. That life I hated. But the life in the present tense, I loved. By using the word love, I mean to use it in the strong-sense of a choice, an action, a continued matter of will and decision and not in the weak-sense of an emotional response. I loved my life. It wasn't worth loving by any means, but I loved it, sought it's good and would fight to preserve it.

In this narrow space, the contradiction could live. I hated my life. I wanted to commit suicide, end it, destroy it, abolish it from reality. I loved my life. I wanted to live, to find joy, to see what everyone was smiling about.

So I did both. I've often written about, here and elsewhere, the promise I made to myself. I'd change my life or I'd end my life. Little did I know that I changed my life by ending it and ended it by changing it. I was 320 lbs. Once I went down, I never went back up past 240 and now usually live at 220. Contrast this to the endless string of failures and rebounds that people talk about when they talk about 'dieting'. Dieting, on a long enough time-line, will always fail. I didn't fail because I didn't diet. I changed. That Stanley you knew isn't around anymore. Don't look for him. I killed him and left his corpse in plain sight.

You want Stanley? Here I am. I tore my life apart and built it back one piece at a time. Throw away the parts that I didn't need, put in some new pieces that should've been there from the start. When we rebuild our lives, the easiest thing to do in the world, the best thing you can do for yourself, is to start with your body. Your body will listen to you. Anyone, and I mean anyone, in the world can build muscle, lose fat.

You. Can. Change.

This is the first truth I learned. This is the truth I hold onto more tightly than anything else in the world.

Change is possible.

My prayer is that I never find perfection, never find completeness, never be OK with myself. My greatest joy comes from changing myself. Forget that nonsense you drank in all your life from soft, mushy grade school teachers. You're not special. You're not OK as you are. You're so far away from what you could be. Doesn't that break your heart? The way you are now, as much as you've learned, as much you've experienced, loved, sorrowed, felt, thought... as far as you've climbed, pursued, dreamed, imagined, are you OK with life just this far? That's why I didn't commit suicide 6 years ago. I thought about ending my life right there. I can't end on that note. I could never end on that note. Stanley Lee has more in him than that, and every, every year of my life has proved me right. 27 better than 26, 26 better than 25 and so on down the line. Change is possible.

Change is not only possible. It's our lifeboat, our hope, goal and dream. Because of change, of transience, of temporary states, there aren't any unclimbable mountains, unassailable fortresses. The realm of possibility blossoms, thousand-petaled lotus of enlightenment.

And for me it began with heartbreak, with fitness and has now become the first step on a road that I hope stretches forever.

Torn Fibers, Unbroken Spirit

2010-11-25T17:08:00.000-05:00

LINK

Little known fact: Sometimes I fist pump when I read something really amazing. The above article is one such occasion. I love reading articles about the elderly and their accomplishments. As I believe I've said before, I want to become the coolest, strongest old man ever. I want to make Death drop to his knees panting because he can't keep up with me. When I meet Him, I want to greet Him as an old friend who I've been waiting for all along. Don't fear the reaper.

"You have to know, not fear, know, that some day you're going to die."

Embrace reality. Embrace the fact. Stare deep into the monstrous truth until the terror melts away and all that's left is a friend that's been hurt by your absence. You. Will. Die.

What an odd thing to write in light of an article about increasing the quality of life and prolonging the livability of life. But I don't see it as antipodal ideas colliding. A few years ago I may very well have written something bemoaning the fact that a long life, well-lived, full of spirit but without Christ was meaningless because put on a scale of infinity, any non-infinite particle may as well be zero.

That's no longer something I can write with integrity. My great fear as I've written before was actually going to Heaven. So far as I was concerned my options were fluffy cloud, existential hell or fire, brimstone sensate hell. What difference did it make? My life was lived out of John Piper books and Reformed sermons, taking the conclusions of others as my own premises for building a life. Soli Deo Gloria, punk. A catastrophic, if understandable, error on my part.

Racing has given me reason to look forward to eternity because racing is where my soul comes alive. I don't particularly care about impressing others with my accomplishments. I'm no Scott Jurek, David Goggins Superman with merchandising and media support. Fine by me. I feel extraordinary ecstasy racing and a true sense of peace training. How much would you pay for euphoria and tranquility? Money, time, fame, friends are fungible. Joy is not.

Any option for eternity is hell if you have not discovered joy in this life. And behold the body. I've been interested in the esoteric, the soft-science, the mostly ridiculed aspects of somatic knowledge for quite awhile now. Yoga is a major contributor to my interest. I'm looking to start up Pilates at some point in the near future. My foundation lays in body-building, power-lifting and Ross. I've always been fascinated by how the dedicated always seem to be the happiest, or to use a more interesting word choice, the most blessed.

In the article, the idea that we're exercising far below our capacity continually peeks through behind the clouds. And that under-performance may well cause our premature chromosomal decay. Let me say this more clearly. Not finding joy in this world may be one reason why our bodies are so quick to leave this world.

Quadriceps that look like they've been devastated by potent serpent venom often accompany faces beaming, bursting with joy. My face certainly shone like that on November 7th. Have you ever had a groin pull? Nasty injury that. I skirted that cliff several times that day. Though the light may have went out of my eyes a few times, the smile never left my face. I was truly overjoyed by the act itself. Not the accomplishment of completion, not the knowledge that I've already done things that most humans could not imagine themselves doing, not anything but the simple act of exertion.Our bodies, our souls crave challenge. Growth, our capacity, is a huge part of our joy. God has made us with so much power and capability. For what? For Facebook? For rotting in front of 500 channels? For shopping and material acquisition? Does this challenge you? Does this make you come alive? Heaven or hell, when you die? Honestly, what's the difference if you've never lived?

It doesn't matter where you are, what you do or what you've done. 100% of your future remains to be lived. How are you going to live?

Fear and Sight

2010-11-19T17:34:00.000-05:00

In preparation for the marathon, I did a long run of about 16 miles a week and change before the race to keep the legs fresh. Autumn in New York makes a man glad to be alive. I believed that truly but in the pre-dawn darkness that thought remained distant and cold. I practiced my form and focused on the angle of my posture and the swing of my arms while Billy Talent screamed through the earphones.

The darkness, the winter makes a man lose focus. Recently, I was reading up on the slender man mythos. To avoid any hint of confusion, I will confess plainly that I have no balls when it comes to scary movies. I will sit through them and through discipline and willpower I will neither scream nor avert my gaze but inside I'm sniveling and crying. Walking home, I'll constantly be looking over my shoulder. When I get home, I'm sure to turn on the lights and wait at the door surveying each room before I enter. Every sound and movement in the corner of my eye startles me. I am that kind of guy. I can walk through any neighborhood in New York confident in fighting just about anybody I meet, but the "Devil" trailer (I haven't even seen the movie!) had me taking the stairs for about a month.

So my run took me through Forest Park. I didn't plan my run beforehand, just a double-loop of the usual. But coming to the eaves of the park, the trees loomed overhead above the flickering lamp posts. I noticed my route now.

Go forward. Fall back.

Go forward and face your fears. Face the reality of change. Your world is dying every moment. The knowledge you possess is quickly becoming obsolete. You'll need to change, to adapt, to grow. This is what happens if you go forward.

But if you go on the defensive the universe will slowly whittle away at everything you have until you die an empty husk. This is why I do not consider myself a conservative anything. Not in politics, not in theology, not in anything to which the word may be applied. Regardless of where I stand on particular issues, I may very well agree on many points, I refuse the name. I do not wish to preserve an imagined golden past. I want to see the world of tomorrow.

And that means running into the forest where monsters wait. My feet carried me into the park. Scratch that. I carried my feet into the park. All around me, I imagined spider-like monsters crawling, stalking me, ghastly blank faces and vicious, gangly limbs. I wanted to keep my eyes down on the road in front of me. No. I refuse. I looked up and sprinted 180 beats per minute. I wasn't running away. I was charging in. In my mind's eye, I saw the monster straight before me in all its grotesque horror and I charged straight ahead. If I felt fear, so too would my nemesis. We fear the dog that charges at us. Yet, which is the species that has yoked the atom and fathomed the abyss? Which is the one that rules land, air and sea? As a matter of fact, who's bigger? If a dog may frighten a man, then man should terrify the monsters.

As a child, we feared the various figments and phantasms. Some of us may have hid under the sheets, under the bed or in the closet hoping that the absence of sight meant an absence of the terrifying. This instinct dooms us. I look forward to the day when I tell my children that you make monsters disappear by staring them in the eye and not backing down. It's a lesson it's taken me a long time to learn.

Living Towards Death

2010-11-13T09:40:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since I've read Heidegger and I've loaned my copy out (I can't even remember to whom I loaned my volume of "Being and Time") so I don't know if the concept of "Being Towards Death" that I'll be writing about today accurately reflects his idea. That doesn't matter. I'm writing about "Living Towards Death" and if it's the same, it's the same. If it's different, it's different.

The idea owes its shape to an exercise by Stephen Covey. Imagine your funeral. Imagine the speakers. One from your family. One of your friends. Someone from a community you participated in, a church, a club, a league. What would they say about you? What will you wish they said about you? What kind of life will you wish you had lived?

But that's the shape of the idea. The root goes down deeper than I can trace. Ever since I was a child I was fascinated with the concept of life as narrative. I didn't want a boring story for a life.

But the dreams I was sold, the values I was given, the life I was told to live derailed my desire. Be safe! Study accounting or finance instead of unstable English! Save money. Buy a house. Get kids. 2 of them. 1 boy and 1 girl because that portends prosperity. Serve the Church! Advance the Kingdom! Here's what it looks like. Do the following activities because that's real Kingdom advancement and not this silly pretend stuff. Live for maximum impact on other people. If you don't want to do that, then you're resisting the Spirit of God.

Or so I thought.

If I close my eyes for a moment and imagine a life where most of my weekends and maybe 1 weekday a week was spent in the confines of a church, my heartbeat raises. I feel the artery in my neck pulsing. My diaphragm tightens. My hands clench and unclench and a wild, desperate anger swells in my gut. This is the frenzy of a cornered animal. I will kill whoever I have to kill to escape. You won't take my life this way. I refuse to go to the grave with this life. This isn't mine! Who took my life and gave me this sorry substitute?

I open my eyes again and my breath still doesn't calm down. The terror is too real. I know my values. I know my heart. They can't be found indoors. They're not found in group settings. I'm socially capable and I do recognize the need for regular social contact. But for me, I'd set my own upper tolerances at about once a week if the group is more than 3 or 4 people and meets regularly. It's not that I'm emotionally unavailable. I wear my heart on my sleeve and have no trouble opening up. The honest truth is that other people get in the way of what I want to do.

If I close my eyes and imagine my perfect death I know what I want to see. I'm old. The almond tree has blossomed but the heartwood remains vital. Back when I was much younger in the faith, I devoured Scripture with an appetite that surprises even me. When I came across Caleb's testimony I thought "Yes! That's what I want!"

"And now behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming." -- Josh. 14:10-11

Some old people impress me to no end. The septa- and sexagenarians that rocketed pass me on the Half-Ironman for starters. And then to maintain a mind with its full faculties and the flowering of experience while possessing a vital body would complete the package. Do you notice how when someone turns a vital age, 16, 21, 25, 30, 33, 35, 40, that the joke is "It's all downhill from here!" I don't believe that for a second. Life is all uphill. That means it's going to demand more and more energy the further I want to go. It's going to make me want to puke my guts out. And life will need more man than I am if I want to be appropriate to the challenge. The challenge of dying with a life free from regret.

Excerpt from this morning's journal

2010-11-12T07:40:00.001-05:00

So then, if that’s my goal, let’s get there one day at a time. My intention is intentionality. I want to focus on the do-ing, on the here, on the now. I want to be present for my own life. I refuse to be a spectator operating on animal instinct and impulse carried along by tempestuous moods, always taking the course of least resistance. Such a life would be an abomination of all that I love and value. I love life. I love joy. Joy is not lying in bed, comfy and cozy. One can be happy there. One can be content there but in my most brutally honest opinion I cannot entertain the notion that one may be joyous there. Joy is exuberant, shouting, wild, energetic, frenetic. Joy is dancing, jumping, running, leaping, flying. Joy is active, alive, vibrant. It may in a quieter moment become something else, something still good, but my life is about joy and not comfort. But comfort is easy, warm, low-energy. I can slip into comfort by slipping into pajamas, crawling under sheets, staying in bed just a bit longer. Can’t I slip into the grave that way too? My fear, the one that decided my life course when I was in college, was my fear of waking up 30 or 40 or 50 years old and wondering what happened to my life. I don’t want to miss my own life. I will meet the grave one day. I want to meet it at full throttle, fully knowing where I’m going. If I’m going to meet Death, I want to meet him by not backing down in a game of chicken. I have no intention of rotting away warm and sedated while I still live.

Realization

2010-11-06T18:28:00.000-04:00

A realization after a session of yoga.

I can open my eyes and gaze full upon reality because reality is where God dwells.

Live long enough and you will lie to yourself. Animals do this without any of the functions of higher consciousness. At the New Orleans Zoo, I found a cute little chameleon in a small cage outside of their World of Reptiles or whatever it's called. Red mottled with green it clung to the cage. When I brought my head, colossal, misshapen, a terrifying monstrosity held at bay by the thin wires of the cage, the creature averted its eyes. Why? Would I disappear once it stopped looking at me, I, who have the power to crush it within my hand? Would its refusal to acknowledge reality change reality? Then why do we look away from reality? Why do we avoid asking the difficult questions? Why do we avoid searching for more difficult questions?

In my last post, I recounted my friend's question "Why do you (Stanley) study something so anti-Gospel?" I found my answer weeks and months later. I search because I believe. Supra-rational, non-rational, pre-rational, irrational, whatever you wish to say, I hold this belief in an ultimate being who acted, continues to act and will continue to act in history, who incarnated himself a little over 2,000 years ago, who dispenses treasures beyond imagining today. I believe.

And what could be a surer sign of faith than to test it? Princes and ideas should be shot at in order to prove their right to hold the throne. If God is real, if God was correct in his estimation of himself as the Scriptures recount, then let's ask the difficult questions.

The most difficult question continues to be the question of joy. It's the question I ask when I lift, when I dance, when I write, sing, love, run, jump, explore: "Are you God greater than your creation? If so, then how? Then why? Show me." I've heard testimonies all throughout my Christian life: I was a great businessman. I had it all. Then I was ruined. But in my ruin, I found Jesus and I much prefer Jesus. So they say. Or sometimes they had it all and gave it all up at the height and devoted their life to Jesus. Rarer but still out there. I need to find out. I need to ask. And I need to make the question as difficult as possible so that the answer might be worth as much as possible.

You see, I've lately been wondering what Christianity can offer to the mature person. The sermons decry petty materialism, the pursuit of European cars, clothes, metropolitan vacations, skyrise apartments with commanding views of the city, gastrophile cuisine. In short, consumption for consumption's sake. There seems to me very little Gospel and a lot of blue collar populism in those talks. What does Christianity have to offer the man who knows he will die and is not afraid, what dreams may come? What does Christianity offer the man who cares little for material acquisition? Where is Christianity's joy? And does it match the joys of the created world?

I'll ask that question every inch of tomorrow's 26 miles.

Verboten

2010-11-03T11:19:00.000-04:00

The above picture comes from the Rally to Restore Fear and/or Sanity. I love it. A lot.
That piece of oaktag captures a lot of my frustration with my faith. I, quite literally, and if you've seen me discuss religion, you've actually seen me do it, facepalm upon seeing Christians in large numbers. There's a reason I've avoided Christian rallies and concerts for about 4 or 5 years now. I have lost faith in the ability of a large group to think rationally and thoroughly, the larger the group, the dumber the words. Now don't get me wrong. This isn't a phenomenon limited to the religiously affiliated like Christians and Muslims. Atheists and members of political parties exhibit similar poor thinking and behaviour as well. I don't talk about those as much because I don't identify as strongly with them. I have no reason to talk about them. At heart, I don't see myself as a defender of the faith against non-believers. Looking back, reformation has always been a greater value to me than propogation. I am a Christian who's concerned about how absolutely, for lack of a more precise word, fucked up the Christian system has become.

Life is hard.

I never expected an easy life, haven't asked for one as an adult, but I didn't expect that a great deal of my spiritual struggle would be unlearning my Christian education. First and foremost, stands the injunction against seeing, knowing. Ostensibly the struggle lies with self-identifying Christians who aren't afraid to share their beliefs, but possess the sad distinction of being able to fit all their beliefs onto a sign. "But that would violate the amendment protecting Freedom of Speech!" "Well, you wouldn't need Freedom of Speech if you let Jesus speak for you." I think I could overcome that on my own. That bothers me but ready solutions exist.
The faith's foundation, the Bible, proves to be more painful by far. Beginning with the tree in the garden, the cleft in the rock where Moses was hid, on to the holy of holies in the Tabernacle and later the veil in the Temple, and finally the scattered verses throughout the psalms and the Pauline epistles that declare the unknowable and the what-should-not-be-known trouble me deeply. There seems to be an injunction against exploration and learning. Now to be clear, it's not exploration of the physical sciences, origins, or anything like that. These are prohibitions against learning about God. But remember the context. These restrictions are the signs reading "No swimming here. Falling rock zone." Our knowledge of God outside the insulation of grace proves fatal.

Remembering that is hard.

Especially when combined with the culture of American Christianity. "You're a philosophy major? Why would you study something so anti-Gospel?" "Stanley, you think way too much. Just let it be, man." "Does the difference really matter, Stan? If we really had it wrong, wouldn't someone have said so already?" The specific boundaries that God set on knowledge were set on knowledge of him, the kindness of a holy God. We may as well complain about safety warnings on a nuclear reactor as complain about the warnings he gives of himself. Yet, throughout history so much of Christendom has misused these prohibitions and leveled them against learning and thinking. Your thoughts should not question the conclusions of authority, no matter how ridiculous a position is taken.

That's the fear common to large groups, no matter what that group believes. So the current question I've been ruminating can be phrased thus: "If groups hinder our search for truth, inhibit the desire to see, then how may one find fellowship and grow?"

Resting on your laurels

2010-10-18T17:27:00.000-04:00

I just realized that I am among the 1% most fit persons on Earth. Surprised? So was I. So am I.

Given my combination of physical abilities, the current status of my energy systems (the level of both the anaerobic and aerobic systems) as well as my ability to produce force and the period of time for which I can sustain that production is in nothing short of rare in the human population.

Let me put this in context. I've currently maxed out at 25 pullups, a deadlift over 400 lbs., a squat over 350, and a bench press over 300. This is middle-of-the-road average for a lot of powerlifting forums I've frequented. I'm still getting stronger as we speak. For America, the average is 0 pullups, what's a deadlift?, I can't squat to depth., and a bench press of around 100 lbs. if I'm feeling generous.

I've done a half-Ironman and placed in the 47th percentile for my age group -- below, but nearly average. By all means unremarkable. 47%? I believe I still have tremendous room for growth. I will grow. I will get much better. But the fact remains, I've done it.

To say that I am below the top 1% of all humans currently alive is the same as saying there are 68 million people who have simultaneously more strength and stamina than myself. A country of 68 million persons, would be the 19th most populous country in the world ranking ahead of the U.K., France, Thailand, South Korea, South Africa, Italy and 200 others.

I do not believe there are 68 million human beings alive who are at the same time stronger and more resilient than myself.

By my definition of fitness, a measurement of physical capacity that tests both strength and ability to maintain strength over time, I am in the top 1%. Actually, I am probably in the top 0.1%. I think there might possibly be 6.8 million more human beings who are more fit than myself.

Why am I saying these things?

I'm saying them because I have heroes, or perhaps role models might be a more appropriate term and my accomplishments would be as remarkable as an insect's before their own. I want to know what it would take to get where they are because I want to go there.

I'm still not satisfied. There's a dizzying height above me.

Remember, I'm only 47% for my age group in long-course triathlons. What does it feel like to be 50, 60, 70 or 99% I can do 25 pull-ups. What kind of strength lies in the body of those who can do 60?

The great fall because of complacency.

Anthem

2010-10-15T20:14:00.000-04:00

Oh, life is bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I've said too much
I set it up

(chorus)
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight, I'm
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much
I haven't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

Every whisper
Of every waking hour I'm
Choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool, fool
Oh no, I've said too much
I set it up
Consider this
Consider this
The hint of the century
Consider this
The slip that brought me
To my knees failed
What if all these fantasies
Come flailing around
Now I've said too much
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream
That was just a dream

(repeat chorus)

But that was just a dream
Try, cry, why try?
That was just a dream
Just a dream, just a dream
Dream

Lyrics from "Losing my religion" by R.E.M.

Jumpstart

2010-10-03T11:14:00.000-04:00

I have not posted here in what feels like forever. I'd like that to change.

So here I'm posting a reply to an e-mail that I sent this morning. I recently wrote to a good number of friends that growing up I was taught to be 'nice' and that the major struggle of the past few years was to undo the psychic conditioning to which I've been subjected. He asked me what not-being-nice looked like. This is my response. (I moved some ideas around and re-worded some sentences for clarity but hey how would you know that unless he's fwd'ing the e-mail and if he's doing that, then he's about to die.)

Being authentic.

Living according to my values.

What are my values?

I want to see the furthest limits of my existence. I want to explore how strong I can be, how fast I can run, how deeply I can think and how fully I can love.

I want to conquer one challenge after another, to keep searching out higher and higher mountains to climb.

I want to be fully authentic, without duplicity, deception in my being.

I want to summon forth all the best that I have within me.

I think I would be doing God a disservice if I was content to let that potential rot while I play church.

Nice may as well be an abbreviated way of saying "non-offensive." Doing your best offends people. I don't know why and all I have is conjecture about why. Think about school. If you're spending all your time studying something you love. What are you? A geek. A nerd. A dweeb. He doesn't want to hang out with us. He wants to read. But what if reading gives him joy? What if he just is so excited that he wants to learn more about something? The effort he spends invites mockery. In our churches, we call it idolatry. If you spend more time going to the library than to fellowship, you have an idol! Think about going to the gym. If you work your hardest, what do people say? He's nuts. He's roiding. He has insecurity issues. He's vain. They never accuse him of finding his happiness when he pushes his limits upwards. What could a couch potato know about the joy a lifter feels when his lift goes up 5 pounds? When you tell people that you want to produce the sincerest, most honest, most transparent love from your heart, and that you know you aren't doing it right now, but damnit, you're working at it, what do people say? Hippie. Fag. Homo. Or at least that's what a lot of people we know would say. Or at least that's what a lot of people have said to me.

Nice people don't offend other people. The office drone quietly mining his minerals and vespene gas for the Overlord, goes to the gym, looks OK, goes to happy hour with everyone else and watches the same shows as everyone else is a nice guy, no matter how many off-color jokes he tells. Think of the hipster, detached, too cool to try, content to blog about whatever arts world of interest. Talks about it from a distance. Says he creates but rarely shows. Irony everywhere. Caustic and sarcastic but nice, I wouldn't think it possible if I didn't see it myself. The office drone and the hipster -- not so different after all. Being authentic in your ardor offends people. Passion is never detached. Passion is never purely intellectual, purely theoretical.

Maybe it's because your passion makes you a mirror for others. When you love fully and truly, when you try your best -- and fail -- and you hear their laughter, their "Look at him fallen and defeated! All his efforts for nothing!" and then one group of people will say "That's why you forget all that stuff and just have fun getting your d*ck wet." and the other group says "That's why you forget all that stuff and serve God." You hear their mockery, their baseless, senseless comments that reveal how little they understand of you. You see their faces, the ones who say they are closest to you, and you hear them snickering. But still you fight on. Still you believe and still you struggle. Because what you have means more to you than their opinion. They look at you. Everything you have, destroyed, yet still not defeated. All your work now ashes, still building. Alone, without friends, still fighting. They see what they themselves might be 10 years younger, 20 times more courageous, a million times more honest.

That's what they read onto me. I don't care about being anything for anybody. I am myself. I want to find my joy. Let them think whatever the hell they will. I'm so done with living in a way so as to not offend other people. I've already wasted far too much of my life doing so. I'm going to climb the highest mountain in the universe. And they can come along, they can watch, they can laugh, or they can not even notice me. Let them do as they will. Going higher is the way that I meet God.

Above Us Only Sky

2010-07-19T14:22:00.000-04:00

I had mixed feelings reading this Slate article on heaven.
http://www.slate.com/id/2249657

When the piece began by debunking several conceptions of heaven, I was rooting for the author. I despise the Patrick Swayze, Precious Moments, All Dogs Go to Heaven version of the afterlife myth. Speaking in terms of theology, I believe that conception is an odd aberration that crept in when Scriptural watchdogs weren't looking. The Bible simply does not teach that belief. If I could speak to a gathering of evangelical leaders, I would tell them that correcting our beliefs in heaven by removing this strange and alien belief from our common practice should be a much higher priority than either gay marriage or prayer in schools.

But then the article sunk into the septic tank. The enjoyment evaporated like an ice cube in an oil spill. The writing became a tirade, another battlefield where nasty, backwards, primitive, blue-collar, fat American belief-ism dukes it out with progressive!, enlightened!, rational!, urban!, urbane! SCIENCE!

I'm not going to waste my time with such nonsense. I'm so bored with that discussion and life's too short for me to be bored. I'm done with arrogant epistemologists of either persuasion. I turn my nose at both the close-minded scientist and the ignorant Christian, both of whom are convinced that the scientific evidence shows whatever or that THE DEVIL (cue cellos) has blinded their eyes, closed their hearts and just waves away tough questions with screeching, nonsensical, counter questions.

I'm so tired of this debate. It gets nasty. It gets nowhere. And it just leaves people angry. And there's no communication. None whatsoever. This is the gravest issue and the one people tend to work on the least. To properly visualize what this type of debate inevitably becomes, imagine two 5 year-olds. Picture them screaming, caterwauling and making the most God-awful noise in the world. Now watch as they plug their own ears with their fists and try to headbutt each other to death. Now place this snarling juvenile mess in a locked latrine. Any debate touted as reason vs. faith can only rise this high.

But conversations are beautiful. They're beautiful because there's communication, connection and humanity. I love having conversations with anyone who believes anything. We can talk about baseball or manga or God. Whatever. When we do talk about God, I'm OK with them believing whatever they believe and their reasons for doing so. Often it's psychological. Sometimes it's rational. And other times, it's a complete non-sequitur. I believe in God because I'm Irish. Um, OK? I like people. I want to learn more about them. Maybe they want to learn more about me. I don't ask for it up front. If they want to know more, they'll ask. I don't like to be in the business of telling. I'm not sure I should hold the assumption that strangers are just so curious about me.

Conversations are beautiful because one human heart touching another human heart is beautiful. That's where alithea-truth exists. I'm thankful for having read Heidegger because he gave me a better word than heart-truth, which people just interpret as "feelings." Alithea-truth is not your goddamn emotion. It'll affect you emotionally, but it's not your emotion. When you take your medicine, it affects your body. But the medicine is not your body.

Alithea-truth is not fact truth. "This computer I'm using is running Internet Explorer 6 and I hate it." That sentence is an example of fact-truth, veritas-truth. Alithea-truth is Eureka, the I-Have-Found-It experience of life. An example of alithea-truth would be the pitcher on the mound realizing "I have to throw a fastball." "I have to throw a fastball." is not a fact. It's almost something of an anti-fact. Facts describe what is. "I have to throw a fastball." is a judgment concerning the future, concerning the what-is-not(-yet). For those who don't care for sports but know something of love, another example of alithea-truth is the realization "Just be yourself." It's a truth you can't check. A command, like a question, is immune to fact-checking. How do you find out if "Sit down!" or "Who's Billy Mays?" are true statements? Alithea is truth beyond truth, truth beyond fact.

The alithea-truth of God is simply "God". Although you may phrase it in a way that looks like veritas-truth - "God exists.", "God is real.", "Jesus Christ is the Son of God.", "God loves me." - the most vital part of the statement lies in the realization. Verity gives it substance. Oh, pardon me. Did you think that these were exclusive categories? They're not. "Once you hit the liver, you can hit anything." is Bas Ruten's alithea-truth of fighting. It's also the veritas-truth taught to all Mexican boxers as part of the curriculum.

Alithea-truth can't be taught. Veritas-truth can. To use John Piper's (I like him again.) famous illustration, you can't reason a person into realizing ice cream is delicious. They taste it. They like it or they don't like it. Teaching you the biology behind mint leaves and chocolate chips won't help you enjoy the taste more if you don't already like the flavor.

Without this understanding of alithea-truth, all discussions about God are absolute dung. Don't take the easy way out and psychologize the issue saying "People believe because they're scared of dying." or "People don't believe because they want to keep sinning." Both are insulting and absurd. Cite some specious statistic and assume that the entire population sit uniformly on an issue offends common sense. Each person is an individual. Respect them as such. Treat them as such. Investigate, discover, explore the alithea-truth of their life. Ask them for it. Maybe they'll share it. C'mon reach out and touch somebody. People aren't that scary. Grown-ups only bite when you ask them to.

Three Gifts

2010-07-18T07:47:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I experienced the best morning of my life.

Afflicted by a sinus infection, I hadn't run since the Aquathlon the previous Saturday so arriving at the race I wasn't expecting very much from myself. But as I stood at the start line warming up to Lupe Fiasco and Lady Gaga, words Liz had spoken last night echoed in my head. "You've got to say that 'I did this.' even before you begin the project. No maybe's. No 'I'll try'."

"I'll race under an 8-minute mile pace today."

What? I've done that once in my life. A year ago. That was when I ran regularly. I've yet to develop a real training schedule for this year and stick to it. My race times fall within the mid 8's this year and now I'm looking to hack half a minute from my time? Absurdity. I'm setting myself up for disappointment.

But too late to think anymore for the race horn started. Most of the time, the first ten minutes or so of these New York Road Runner races are about jostling for position and elbowing people out of your way. Not today. From the start, every runner around me took off at a pace I thought bewildering. No one's saving their energy?

Fine with me!

I pushed through the first mile.
9:08 on the race clock. Drop a minute for the time to the start line and I'm on schedule.
I picked up my pace for the second mile.
16:32 on the race clock. 7:24 mile! The blood surged through my veins. My goal in my hands!
I labored through the third mile.
24:59 on the race clock. 8:27 pace. The hills and the dehydration were getting to me. The benchmarks, the other runners around me, these rungs on the ladder were pulling away from me. Runners were overtaking me.

I summoned what fire I could to push me over the next half mile. And then a quarter mile. The finish line in sight, I shouted to the sky "C'mon let's do this!" As if answering my call, a large runner, at least 3 inches taller than my 6 feet darted past me, ebon skin glistening in the sun. I took off after him and matched him stride for stride, quadriceps churning, hamstrings grunting. His strides though, fell a half-step ahead of mine and the gap would not close.

"Your body can do just about anything you tell it for another 3 steps."

I had heard those words said somewhere in the depths of time. Rally! One final surge of strength, one more painful breath and my foot fell in front of his. Victory.

Or so I thought. Too soon. I had only stared, only worked for the first sensor mat on the ground. Looking up, 20 strides distant stood the pillars, the bright blue banner with the word "Finish" writ across it. Stumbling, I chased after my marker. But to no avail. I had lost my focus. Momentum carried me across the finish line. Coughing and dry heaving, the accumulation of 4 miles fell upon me all at once. I kept walking. I never liked people asking me if I was OK. I lost sight of my marker. Where had he gone to in the frenzy of the finish? He may have never noticed the shadow he picked up along those last 300 meters but I wanted to thank him. Without his effort, I do not think I could have drawn out the best within me.

Apples and Gatorade for breakfast. I gathered my belongings and made my way out of the park. I didn't
feel bad at all. I wish I could've beat him but that's the past. I left my guts out on the course today. Filled with so many endorphins, there's no space left for regret.

Walking, a welcome respite from the rough running a few moments ago, I heard a violin cut the air. At the end of the literary walk a woman stood her bow drawn over those strings, that music danced through the air.

I sat.
I listened.
I had the best morning of my life.

Gracefully, elegantly, she called out the names of the pieces she played. Some pieces immediately recognizable, Vivaldi, Brahms, Bach, Handel, those I knew, and many others I didn't. The sunlight drifted through the leaves and the breeze wafted through the shade.

I sat.
I listened.
I had the best morning of my life.

I received two gifts that day. I'm not sure the givers were aware of what they had presented me.

Happiness.

I haven't lived very long but from the little I've learned, I've come to believe that happiness surprises you. My nemesis appearing 300 meters from the finish, spurring me on, challenging me, asking me if the effort I had given was all the effort I had to give; my valkyrie, violin in hand, ferrying my soul from battle to repose; their heart was their gift to me.

They did what they loved.
And they blessed me.

I can't pay them back. Paying them back would be an insult.
So I will honor them by paying it forward.

My love. Out in the open.
My heart. Bared for all.
My soul. My gift.

2010-07-15T08:25:00.000-04:00

So I ran my previous post through a website and this is what I got.

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Without the Three Bears, Clarification

2010-07-10T16:37:00.000-04:00

Even to this day I remain my own fiercest critic. This critic wants to tear me down and tell me that my place is to be miserable and endure life, to suffer like my parents did at jobs they only wanted for the money, to retreat into television, consumption economics and frivolity. Breaking free from this paradigm of existence would be rebellion and an insult to those whom I love dearest.

Similarly, in my Christian life the allure of martyrdom has always been too strong, too premature. If I'm not suffering, I'm just not putting my neck far enough out on the line. To enjoy a life of comfort and plenty would be to mock the God who didn't have a rock to lay his head upon, who, under Pontius Pilate, suffered, bled and died to ransom sinners.

Or so I believed.

For so long, my model for understanding obedience and fidelity operated on mimicry. If I love someone, I'd live their life just like them.

No longer.

I am not my mother.

I am not my father.

I am not Jesus.

I don't have the same upbringing, the same mission, purpose, desires, quirks, tendencies... why in the world would I live my life the same way? I began to understand these differences as I mulled over the life of my father more and more. A refugee for a great deal of his life, he endured imprisonment seven times in China for attempting to leave. He knew deep poverty. Why is a man so strong, so short? How big would you grow if you had to ration out 2 lbs. of rice for 12 people over a month? He chased grasshoppers to roast them over fire in the corner of a forest. His family ate a lamb they found inside a python because they were so hungry. Needless to say, I have never experienced poverty so crippling.

He came to this country and toiled in oppression, but at least he began to toil for himself. He strove against other Chinese people who wanted to use national origin as a way to defraud him of his money. He strove against street thugs who threw lit firecrackers into the kitchen he worked, who tried to mug him and intimidate the vulnerable immigrant. He strove against the suits who thought this funny little man must be dumb because he can't even speak English properly.

I grew up steeped in his alithea-truth. If you want to survive, keep your head low, don't make eye contact, don't stand out. That was how he survived New York City, the metropolis that welcomed him in his second day here with the great blackout, his first summer with the Son of Sam murders, and his first October with a Yankee championship. He doesn't know baseball so he never mentioned the last part. I mention it because I just can't help but put my heart into his story.

But I am not my father. I am half a foot taller, about 10 lbs. lighter, speak 2 languages fluently, and my Chinese is improving. I do not believe I ever worried a day in my life about starving to death. I do not believe I ever will. If that day does come, I'll deal with the challenge then. But how absurd would life be if I sat at a buffet and hoarded the food because I thought the kitchen might run out? How ridiculous would the scene be if I received a 30-minute grab-all-you-can shopping spree and spent 20 minutes comparing prices on items?

He came to the land of plenty and taught me how to survive poverty. I realized this truth half a decade ago.

In my spirituality, I am only now beginning to see the same story played out. I've said before that I don't like Piper. After listening to some more sermons, I retract my statement. He has such amazing insight into the text and maneuvers through the rich terrain so deftly that I can't help but feel a warm, unhostile jealousy towards him. So whence did my previous animosity stem? I suppose it's from Piper's Pretenders who try to emulate his way of speech and understanding.

I identified a deep hypocrisy in my own emulation of the Puritans. I'm not a New Englander hoeing impossibly tough soil in bitterly cold winters in the 17th century. The infant mortality rate in my community is not 80%. I do not need to have kids to survive my old age. I did not escape religious persecution in the Old World, and I do not have to take up arms in case of an Indian raid. The only person that tries to ambush me these days is Richie Luu and he can't take more than 1 body shot without doubling over. Therefore, I am not going to write like I am a Puritan. I would never write this sentence except for irony:

"In answer to this mystical type, the great High Priest of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, being to enter into the "holy place not made with hands" (Heb. 9:24), did, by the glorious prayer recorded in this chapter, influenced from the blood of His sacrifice, fill the heavens above, the glorious place of God’s residence, with a cloud of incense, or the sweet perfume of His blessed intercession, typed by the incense offered by the high priest of old." -- Excerpted from John Owen's "Glory of Christ"

I do not have to be anyone else.

I need only be myself.

Does this truth need defense?

No one seems to be attacking this beautiful statement. Except in practice. Do something untried and people grow concerned about orthodoxy. Ask a question that challenges the categories people have always worked with and receive violence as they protect the structure of their world. If I've learned anything during my quarter-century of experience in this world, I've learned that the world is enormous, beautiful and terrifying. The most glorious way to honor God making this world gigantic, breathtaking and intimidating is to draw out the best within us and explore.

My life is my exploration. And I love it.

Without the Three Bears, Part II

2010-07-09T11:11:00.000-04:00

The ending to my previous post was meant to be slightly confusing. I find that appropriate since I'm baffled myself. I loathe the Christianity of Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, Joyce Meyers, Creflo Dollar and their ilk. Those teachings are a pyramid scheme wrapped in religious language, a scam with spiritual sentiments.

But there's one strong idea I hold in common with them: heaven, a good life, a beautiful life, the achievement of life, isn't something that should wait for us in our graves. I refuse to believe that. I'd rather lose all my friends, all my support, be outcast as a heretic than acquiesce to an anti-life teaching.

But it's not the kind of good life that those greasy charlatans sell. After so many years of hearing Christian preaching, the question I found myself asking the most over the last year or two was whether Christianity had anything to offer mature persons.

Most sermons I've heard spoke at length about the foolishness of materialism. Why spend your life chasing a career and money when it can be snatched from you by a speeding bus? Why invest everything in your heart into making the perfect family when you can't control what they do or who they become? Why go drinking and partying when your body will eventually give out on you, when the lights won't always shine so bright, the music won't always pump as loud... why waste your life?

And I agree with the statement lurking inside every question: those things just don't satisfy. Agreeing with the statement behind those questions isn't however, enough to support the next statement which is "So give your life to Christ."

What has boggled my mind for nearly a decade now is the way all Christian preaching I've heard, and hear I use the word "all" genuinely for I cannot recall even a single instance of an aversion, much less subversion, manages to take a rich world full of color, shape and complexity and flatten life into a gray, unrepresentative mass of stereotypes. Can I fault them for doing so? Most people only think in stereotypes. Depending where you first meet me, you might think that I'm a boisterous, hot-headed, idiot jock. Or you might think that I'm this frigid, overly-cerebral hulk. For most people who've met one side, meeting the other is something of a jaw-dropper. Stereotypes make the world easy.

But you know what? To hell with easy. Life ain't easy. Neither is dealing with real people. So seriously? Forget easy.

I've been playing with this idea ever since a close friend asked me if I ever considered the frailty of the human form and how everything I loved was so transient. What if I'm allergic to jellyfish and get stung by them when I dip into the Hudson on Saturday or Sunday 2 weeks from now? What if a car careens onto the race course and collides into me? What if I finally pick a fight I can't win?

I have my answer.

It's been a hell of a ride. I loved it. And let's see where we go from here.

What does Christianity say to the person who doesn't give a damn about material accumulation? I haven't bought new clothes for about 9 months. I haven't bought new furniture... well... I don't think I've ever bought furniture. Trophies? They're collecting dust underneath a mirror I rarely look at. I don't care about any of that. I care about the moment I have. Right now, as I'm typing in front of a computer at work, I'm enjoying my life. I can't really ask for more than that, can I? Some people might consider this enjoyment pathetic. They might say real enjoyment is lying pool-side at a resort. Well, they don't understand perspective. I enjoy every moment of my life. They enjoy 2 weeks of vacation time they slave 50 weeks for. Who's pathetic?

I'm not worried about tomorrow because I'm enjoying every moment of today that I spend building for tomorrow. If tomorrow doesn't come, I've lost nothing. Tomorrow's not a guarantee, not a promise. Why pretend it is? I'm not going to wait for anything to seize happiness. I'm going to have it right now. I'm going to have a lot more tomorrow, if that day comes. I enjoy my life because everything I do proceeds from my heart, emerges out of honesty. Every choice, every action proceeds out of desire. I refuse to be bullied by the word "duty." I'm writing science fiction right now, bad science fiction to be sure, but it's getting better. I'm doing it because I love thinking up new ideas and worlds. I hope to one day be able to leave a law factory with the freedom it gives me, but if that day doesn't come, then it doesn't come.

And Goldilocks no longer felt shame for enjoying her food. She savored each bite slowly, tasting the complexities and interplay of the myriad ingredients. Herbs, spices, oils, textures, flavors, fragrances... each bite simultaneously brought new horizons and dimensions of sensate satisfaction while dimming the world which lacked flavor.

I read a blog post recently about how hostile churches can be to those who don't fit their stereotype. Could the same be true of those serving those churches? A good number of ministers I know are so impressed by Luther's trembling before God in the Eucharist, how he couldn't let slip the sentence that would, in his view, transsubstantiate bread for flesh, wine for blood, that these ministers talk at length about the fear that they have in serving, and in everything they teach.

Isn't that insulting to God?

Fear and trembling is good, but the practice seems to be that since doing something wrong is terrifying, let's just do the same thing everyone else does. Safety in anonymity. If every other minister is doing it, if everyone respects them, then they must be right!

Safety is just re-organization. Threats don't just vanish. Making one element safe, endangers another. What are you making safe? What are you endangering? When you copy what other people doing, you're protecting yourself from criticism at the cost of your soul, the only one God has ever given you. Be dangerous. Live on the edge. Swing for the goddamn fences already and stop going up to the plate with the aim of "Just don't let me embarass myself."

What if leading with your heart and following God meant re-writing age old ministerial practices, spending less time at church and more time smiling? Could you endure the stares, the whispers, the claims that your an egoist and all the chastisement you'd get for not hanging out... oh, I'm sorry, fellowshipping as much?

Goldilocks finished her breakfast. She left a generous tip and asked the waiter to give her regards to the chef; it was the best meal she ever had. On her way out, she pulled one of the servers aside and inquired as to why everyone ate the same grey porridge when there was so rich a fare available. Sighing heavily the server said "They all come here and see everyone else having porridge so they order the same. Why ask for a menu when you're too scared to make a choice?"

Without the Three Bears, Part 1

2010-07-08T23:53:00.000-04:00

Author Stephen Covey, when asked, said he could sum up all his teachings in the phrase "Seek first to understand before being understood."Now that I'm an avid fan of his, I've begun to examine the strange and meandering course my own thought processes, and the books that nurtured them, have run.

In High School where I first came to faith my earliest sources of Christian education were charismatic, borderline pentecostal in origin. I believe you can hear the crackle of Holy Ghost fire in my truest, most honest and heart-felt congregational prayers. I'm greatly indebted to that line of ecclesiology for teaching me movement (rhythm), laughter, and ecstasy.

But Goldilocks found the porridge too... unsatisfying. She wanted something more wholesome, more complete in her meal.

In College, my mind began to open. Seth Godin often writes about how terrible the classroom is for fostering creativity and individuality but I'm a little more gentle in my stance. In college, I began to take my first steps and found the courage to acknowledge my intelligence. My movement towards Reformed theology was no coincidence. The Charismatic environment I grew up in often demeaned the mind and the products of the mind, often setting them in opposition to "the heart" which was the domain of things Spiritual. Once, I did sit in on a conversation with two brothers who spoke otherwise but their actions told me no different. The more frequently a Christian group or person invokes the answer "You can ask Jesus yourself when you meet him." the more suspicion you should cast upon them. In college, my doubts about the argument structures that the Charismatics often used couldn't be contained any longer once I began to really excel in philosophy classes.

Those classes didn't teach me much I couldn't find on Wikipedia. What they did however was provide me with an outlet to exercise the abilities I had used in every other area of life but spirituality. Oftentimes, this outburst of mental activity leads many to abandon the faith. And why not? Wouldn't you feel betrayed, duped, deluded if you had to lead a life without rationality, relying on your intuition for "a move of the Spirit?"

But I didn't abandon the faith because as I was taking one foot off of charismaticism, it was settling upon the rock of Reformed theology. A few posts ago, I wrote about how I needed to break with the tradition. In many ways, I have but that was another post. Here I want to thank Reformed theology for teaching me how to read Scripture correctly and how to put the pieces together with integrity. Instead of haphazardly jumbling disparate verses together and sprinkling in anecdotes like the preachers I had previously known, as good as their intentions were, I grew in my understanding of exegetics and hermeneutics. I was able to use my mind to reach the ends of theology, question method, approach, bias and intent. I found a place where they respected the fact that my feelings about the text had little connection to the meaning, purpose and structure of a text.

But my zeal and fire dimmed. I could wax more eloquently about the sublime glories of Christ but my flame grew tired and weary. Not only did I lose some of what I previously had, the hole in my heart only filled by the barest of circumferences.

Goldilocks tried the next batch of porridge and found this one too bland. She tried adding cinnamon, but the cinnamon lost its color and flavor as soon as it touched the pale, flavorless paste in the bowl. Reading the nutrition label though did encourage her to some degree. It wasn't a degree to which she would willingly eat another bowl of this slop though.

During the Reformed period of my life I fought vigorously against the Joel Osteen way of Christianity as well as the "Name it and claim it"/ "Health and Wealth"/ "Prosperity Gospel" preachers. I believed back then that materially focused Christianity was a doomed Christianity. Real faith is about the immaterial, about union with Christ, the rational-mystical.

And now as we've reached this part of the story, I can't tell you how flummoxed Goldilocks is to be having eggs benedict and mimosa's for breakfast. She's relishing each bite and now she's waving for the waiter to come and bring another round. She hasn't eaten like this for ages!

One of the most private struggles I've been having is how materially and temporally based my Christianity has become. I won't lie that this has also been the most joyous time of my life. Should a man struggle with the fact that he's experiencing joy? I've been wanting to make the phrase "Your best life now" for a long time and it makes me doubly shamed inside. First and foremost, Osteen beat me to it. Secondly, I love the phrase.

The genesis of the sentence comes not from the slick-haired, toothy smile of that megachurch fleecer, but from a quote of Ayn Rand's: "Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves -- or whether it should be ours here and now on this earth."

I simply can't find any reason not to have my best life now.

Negative Christianity

2010-06-27T19:39:00.000-04:00

The ability to think about thinking represents a glorious achievement in life, but have you thought about the manner in which we learned to think, the public school system? Have you thought about how children are brought together, segregated by an arbitrary determinant -- age -- and then forced into a common mold? Ignoring the specificities of their abilities, desires, gifts, heritage, upbringing, physical talents to start, they go through the same classes and programs. Woe to those who break the mold.

Now that's an over-simplification. I left out the parents and teachers who care deeply and passionately and demonstrate their love by investing in each ward as an individual. But I left these exceptions to the system because I want to talk about systems at large. As the situation stands, public education in general does little to reward passion, and encourages safe mediocrity instead.

Our current public education system developed during an age of factories. Students scurry through the halls on a conveyor belt schedule. If the social studies teacher in 3rd period screwed up the class, no matter, it's time for 4th period math to be squirted into the student. Like many a factory in America, the workers have just stopped caring about producing the best product possible. Do your bit and if you don't do your best, no big deal because there are enough cogs in the system for you to not take full responsibility for your product.

Is Christianity a rusting, moldy factory producing subpar widgets in a world where the most important product is information?

More precisely, instead of Christianity in general, I want to ask about the model of Christianity and the model of ministry it often operates on.

No, that's not quite right yet. Let me limit it yet more and talk about what I truly wish to write about: has the only model of Christianity I've known, the one I've seen duplicated in so many Christian organizations I've seen the rusty factory?

The rusty factory model of education does a decidedly mediocre job of producing entrepreneurial spirits who want to explore and venture forth to seize the world. The rusty factory model of spiritual development... what does it produce?

Sometimes it produces defective models like me.

But that's OK. I wouldn't want to be a product of a factory anyways. Through processes still mysterious to me, I managed to not only survive but begin to find a spirituality truly my own -- a negative spirituality. What the majority does would be death to my soul.

Where others teach that the self and the heart is evil, needs to die, I need to learn that the self is to be honored, loved and the heart with its products is to be guarded.
Where others teach the depravity of man, I need to repeat to myself the doctrine of the imago dei.
Where others teach helplessness, I need to discover resourcefulness, initiative, ambition and perseverance.
Where others think that I've strayed off the straight and narrow, I need to persevere and remember that I can't allow myself to be run back through the factory. If I did, what have I really learned from the first disaster?

Back to Basics

2010-06-25T10:34:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to find an analog to my current period of life but the only one I can think of comes from the world of Hajime No Ippo, where Ippo sealed off his Dempsey Roll, to work on the basics.

The Christianity I've been taught requires several important premises to be understood before it can be useful. The Gospels record an account of Jesus saying that "He who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." It's given me an incredible amount of trouble over the years because of the obvious question: if I hate my life, why would I want even more of it? Yes, there's the answer that the hatred of our current life means something quite different from the implied meaning in my question, but that remains in the realm of theory, which is to say, trash until it can be applied.

When I think of people who hate their lives, quite a large number of people come to mind. They play video games. They live moment to moment like animals scratching their itch for entertainment and diversion. Their life seems to be a rejection of life, a desire to forget the fact of their existence. I see bored faces with eyes glazed over. I see them holding energy drinks, needing cocktails of chemicals "just to wake up" as if waking up was something that should be difficult. I see them downing oceans of alcohol to shut down their minds. This style of living is what I see "hating your own life" as. If you promised me an eternity of that and called it Heaven, I'd probably say "See you in hell." Losing a life I loved is far more desirable than living a life I hated.

I've devoted the last 2 years of my life to finding out what I life I loved look like. I felt an intense dissatisfaction, dissapointment with the previous life I lived because I based that life on premises I didn't trust. But I never stopped believing in God. This more than anything else gives me confidence in my state among the elect. Though my mind seemed to fail me, though my experience had led me into a world of misery, though I despised most of the advice given me because most people just didn't "get it", I never stopped wanting to have the joy of divine fellowship. I remembered a taste of it from earlier days but I don't think at any point, I ever made a sustained effort to recreate the past. And I'm glad I didn't. The past is yesterday. I'm looking for tomorrow. The way out of the forest takes me through the forest.

So quite honestly, I'm going to grow the only way I know how: unorthodox. It's no secret that I detest the cookie-cutter practices of Christianity. So I'm not going to bother with that anymore. Life has always been terrible when I follow templates. It's always been fairly enjoyable, even in the painful times, when I've been given liberty to grow naturally. Safety? Forget safety. Let's aim for the greatest possible outcome. Let's dare greatly.

I grew up believing the world was scary and hostile, that video games and doing nothing with other people was as fun as life got -- a life I now see as hollow and false. My search begins with joy. I refuse to take an answer that someone else has found and call it my own. I never copied a paper in college. I'm not going to begin in "real life." Is God the ultimate joy in life? Maybe. It's possible. It's not my experience. Until it becomes my experience, I won't be able to live like it is and I refuse to pretend like it is. How does that help anyone?

No, living life at the limits gives me joy. I've feel like I've only tapped into the barest sliver of my mind's potential, into my life's potential and I'm enthralled. I want to know it so much more. Going hard in a race, during training, gives me a great amount of joy. Reading the bible, sitting for sermons, not so much. I figure it's about time to be honest with life.

So I'm getting back to basics. Without a working definition of joy, without a way to interpret the verse I quoted earlier correctly, and not just to interpret it in a way that works rationally, but to have a living, working explanation, how could I possibly live so as to look forward to eternity?

The only way out is through.

No Beauty

2010-06-08T18:47:00.000-04:00

"There is no beauty in the Presbyterian Church. There is so much emphasis on sin and self control."

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

My theology runs ardently Reformed. Presbyterian doctrine is, in most meaningful ways, identical. From all that I've known and seen of these traditions, I've come to the same conclusion. I discovered the above quote at the end of a biography of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's life and it shone like the light of another ship in my darkness. Someone else bobs lost upon these waters.

I love the theology of these traditions. It's accurate. Logical. Faithful to Scripture. But lately, with Western Christianity in general, and Reformed Christianity in particular I have been bored out of my mind at the best of times and ulcerously angry at the worst of times. I said previously that my theology runs ardently Reformed. Yet, I know -- it's no mystery to me -- that my writings are more akin to Joel Osteen than John Owen. I don't write much about the surpassingly glorious mysteries of the infinite, only good God, these days. I write mostly about human potential, about willpower, determination, discipline, planning and goals. Should that be any surprise? How else would you expect aufhebung to happen?

It's dawned upon me that the rejection of the old ways might perhaps be my destiny. I hear John Piper talk about human frailty. I read other writers and their discourses on human inability. To hell with all that! Humans landed on the moon having had less electronic computational ability than a Nintendo DS. We've glimpsed the edge of the universe and the depths of the sea, harnessed the atom, torn down mountains, created islands, flown faster than sound, and have carved the faces of our heroes onto mountains. Can you imagine what a Palestinian peasant of the first century might call someone who can do open heart surgery? Humans are pretty damn awesome when you pause and think that debates amongst the next most advanced creatures on the planet consist of flinging feces.

Yet, despite our great achievements, humans lay dead in their sin. In the past two weeks, (late as usual) I've become a voracious reader of the news from the Gulf. It breaks my heart. I love the beauty of this natural world and my fury flares everytime I see the initials BP in my news feed. I think about the decades that will pass before this mess can be cleaned up. I think about how hurricane season in a few months might fling all this corruption hundreds of miles. My office, my workplace deals with an immeasurable volume of human sin on a daily basis: doctors defrauding their patients, drug dealers, terrorists, corporate fraud, the trafficking of children, who should be playing safe at home with a loving family, for the purpose of sexual abuse and captivity.

Reformed theology, as I have been steeped in it, only ever praises humanity, or acknowledges the great accomplishments of mostly hairless bipeds in a world of animals much bigger, stronger, faster than them, as a foil for God. I have never heard praise simply because humanity deserves it. Reformed theology loves to drone on and on and on about sin. It loves to beat you into a corner and tell you to stay there. For all the talk of grace, I've for too long ignored the mean-spiritedness about it. It loves to remind you how selfish you are when you do something you enjoy for no other reason than you enjoy.

So this is my realization. I can't follow their path, the path of the John Pipers, John Owens, Jonathan Edwards, and a laundry list of other bland names. I have never really had a desire to see Europe. But they've given me something invaluable. They are to me great sages I've met along the way. I must walk my own path, find my own way in this trackless desert. Reformata semper reformandum. There's no other way I can be true to this principle other than what I'm doing.

Humanity is too gloriously capable, too admirably strong and wise and noble, for me to endure all the abuse that these patriarchs heap upon them. That is the source of my break. They'll acknowledge humanity's ability and accomplishment on paper but give it only lip service. Bullshit. Get this mess out of my sight. The reason I set goals, learn about how to accomplish them, meditate on the process of the human mind and the practical aspects of soul transformation is my stumbling, stuttering way of groping in the dark for a path. I don't see anyone who holds both these poles faithfully. How does one acknowledge human effort and ability in the face of a sovereign God in life, love, ministry and all areas? I affirm both of them rationally. How can I execute the practice of it?

Well, if I knew the answer, I wouldn't call my current life stage a struggle, would I?

Goals and Humanity

2010-05-31T07:57:00.000-04:00

2009 was a watershed year for me. The volume and quality of experiences that I've accumulated that year were worth several other years of my life: I met a fantastic woman whose presence in my life continues to be a source of unabated joy, I did a triathlon, a race which has been on my heart for half a decade, I did a marathon, I gave a big gift to my parents. But taking a step back, the more important landmark historically speaking will be the fact that I finally did something about my desires besides pine for them from afar and whine when it stayed so distant.

Goals. Tangibly and materially speaking, setting goals has contributed to my general happiness and contentment more than any other immediate action. Setting personal goals says a lot of things. It says "I have a desire and it's a worthwhile pursuit." I've documented my struggles with feeling the freedom to pursue my own dreams in many a previous blog post before so I won't belabor the point.

I've been obsessed with goals for a year now. It still amazes me what effort, resourcefulness and initiative can accomplish. It still confounds me that I was able to I live for years without it. The novelty of initiative and determination hasn't wore off for me yet.

Setting goals taught me to measure progress, to value measurement. Surprisingly, my spiritual life received the greatest windfall from this development. Before I would set goals, wishes really, like "I want to love God more." and leave it at that. Now when I hear my past echoed back to me through the mouths of other Christians, I respond asking "How would you know you're getting there? How would you know when you're there? What steps are you going to take? How often are you going to measure progress? What adjustments do you foresee making?"

Roughly 4 out of 5 people I interrogate in this way respond by stammering or avoiding my gaze, avoiding the subject. I'm deeply thankful for the 1 out of 5 that I meet because nothing encourages me like comrades-in-arms, others who aren't content to take life as it comes living like worms in the soil on a day to day, bite to bite existence. Nothing is more appropriate to humanity than dreaming while awake. The poor do it. The rich do it. The sick, the healthy, the strong, the weak, across nations, across genders, across history... I haven't researched it, but I'm willing to wager on the fact that there has never been a person who fails to dream, to imagine while awake. Even animals dream when they are asleep. Humans can dream in the broad daylight of consciousness and awareness. Goals then, aren't fundamentally human. Goals, setting goals, separates those who are human merely by birth and chance, from those who want to make the most of their human gifts while alive. Not only do they dream, but they realize that their dreams can come true if they seize upon it with both hands. They are a people alive.

Today is May 31st. At the end of the day, 151 days of a 365 day year will be in the books. How alive have you been for the 41% of the year that has passed?

What The Iron Means To Me

2010-05-15T00:59:00.000-04:00

It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have learned from the Iron. I used to think that it was my adversary, that I was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong. When the Iron doesn’t want to come off the mat, it’s the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn’t teach you anything. That’s the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.

The Henry Rollins essay that I posted before expresses so clearly the things that I've spent years trying to say. Iron is beautiful. It is kind. It is loving. It's something only those who love the Iron can understand. Those who misunderstand the Iron may think that we're talking about a location, a gym, a community, an activity or a hobby when we're talking about Iron. To think that we're talking about material is to make the fundamental mistake. To those who understand, to those who have the secret gnosis, to speak of Iron is to speak about that which is purely Spirit.

Prefontaine was a runner but when I read his quotes I resonate with a kindred spirit. "I don't run a race to see who is the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into the most exhausting pace, and at the end, punish himself even more." Pre knew about the Iron. Most likely he called it something else. Funny thing is, most people who know about the Iron don't even have a name for it. I like what Rollins calls it. It's simple. It's hard. And beautiful.

Those who see the end of Iron, the telos of Iron as building a body don't understand the Iron. Not at all. They think they do. They talk big and may in fact, be big. But they don't get it. They are not my brothers nor my sisters. The purpose of Iron, and this is repetition for those who know and silliness for those who don't, is to build the Soul. A friend asked me if my injury-speckled year had humbled me any and made me think about how fragile and impotent the body is and how catastrophe may overcome it at any time.

Yes and No. So far as I have thought about my own body's weakness in terms of how I trained improperly, how I improperly assessed my fitness and displayed my poor understanding of physiology, then yes, I am very much humbled. My iliotibial band and posterior tibialis have been wonderful teachers and my soul, an unworthy student. So in that sense, yes, I have thought about it. Do I believe that the accomplishments I earn with this body are unworthy or somehow diminished by someone else's accomplishments, or that they are cosmically insignificant because I am one of 6.5 billion carbon life forms on the far end of an unremarkable galaxy who's ever so slightly more fit than average... then no. I laugh at such thoughts. I laugh at the thought that someone would think that would deter me.

The Iron is not about your body. The Iron is not about material. The Iron is about your soul. The practice of Iron is only a method. Take away one method and I have others. Bar me from gyms and I'll work out in playgrounds, on trees, beaches, closets. Bar me from weights and I'll do pushups and leg lifts and rows. Stop me from moving and I'll work isometrically. Slay my body and let my soul laugh at you. The Iron is about strength and freedom. The accomplishments in the Way of Iron happen daily and they happen where only you can see it. The Day of Testing is just a day to show off, a day for others. All the other days are where those private victories, fought on the battlefield of the soul take place. Yet, as they are where private victories are won, so too must we recognize that they are where the bitter defeats take place. The times where I stop sets early, pull up in fear of injury, justify poor effort with "It just wasn't a good day." -- those are true defeats, true failures.

The Iron freed me from the 90s. I grew up being told that I was a special, little snowflake that was fine just the way I am. The Iron laughed at me. "If you really were fine, how come you can't move me?" It sat there and wouldn't move until I made it move. It was always honest. It never made things easy for me. It never told me I was smart when I was dumb, handsome when I was ugly, strong when I was weak. The Iron freed me from the hipster's sin of judgement. Can I really look down on fellow humans when I too was weak once? And what is the great democratic principal of Iron but the promise that anyone, with nothing more than effort, can become stronger? Anyone. With Effort. Can Change. And we all need to change. No one is ever fine just the way they are. Slacking is suicide. Comfort is claustrophobia. Entertainment is euthanasia. And Iron, the Iron teaches one to live!

ARCHIVED: Iron and the Soul

2010-05-11T12:01:00.000-04:00

I never read the original until now. I've only read bits and pieces, which were quite good, but I never had the full meal until I got a link from Ross' facebook today. So here it is, the legendary essay by Rollins.

Iron and the Soul – By Henry Rollins

I believe that the definition of definition is reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself.

Completely.

When I was young I had no sense of myself. All I was, was a product of all the fear and humiliation I suffered. Fear of my parents. The humiliation of teachers calling me “garbage can” and telling me I’d be mowing lawns for a living. And the very real terror of my fellow students. I was threatened and beaten up for the color of my skin and my size. I was skinny and clumsy, and when others would tease me I didn’t run home crying, wondering why. I knew all too well. I was there to be antagonized. In sports I was laughed at. A spaz. I was pretty good at boxing but only because the rage that filled my every waking moment made me wild and unpredictable. I fought with some strange fury. The other boys thought I was crazy.

I hated myself all the time. As stupid at it seems now, I wanted to talk like them, dress like them, carry myself with the ease of knowing that I wasn’t going to get pounded in the hallway between classes. Years passed and I learned to keep it all inside. I only talked to a few boys in my grade. Other losers. Some of them are to this day the greatest people I have ever known. Hang out with a guy who has had his head flushed down a toilet a few times, treat him with respect, and you’ll find a faithful friend forever. But even with friends, school sucked. Teachers gave me hard time. I didn’t think much of them either.

Then came Mr. Pepperman, my advisor. He was a powerfully built Vietnam veteran, and he was scary. No one ever talked out of turn in his class. Once one kid did and Mr. P. lifted him off the ground and pinned him to the blackboard. Mr. P. could see that I was in bad shape, and one Friday in October he asked me if I had ever worked out with weights. I told him no. He told me that I was going to take some of the money that I had saved and buy a hundred-pound set of weights at Sears. As I left his office, I started to think of things I would say to him on Monday when he asked about the weights that I was not going to buy. Still, it made me feel special. My father never really got that close to caring. On Saturday I bought the weights, but I couldn’t even drag them to my mom’s car. An attendant laughed at me as he put them on a dolly.

Monday came and I was called into Mr. P.’s office after school. He said that he was going to show me how to work out. He was going to put me on a program and start hitting me in the solar plexus in the hallway when I wasn’t looking. When I could take the punch we would know that we were getting somewhere. At no time was I to look at myself in the mirror or tell anyone at school what I was doing. In the gym he showed me ten basic exercises. I paid more attention than I ever did in any of my classes. I didn’t want to blow it. I went home that night and started right in.

Weeks passed, and every once in a while Mr. P. would give me a shot and drop me in the hallway, sending my books flying. The other students didn’t know what to think. More weeks passed, and I was steadily adding new weights to the bar. I could sense the power inside my body growing. I could feel it.

Right before Christmas break I was walking to class, and from out of nowhere Mr. Pepperman appeared and gave me a shot in the chest. I laughed and kept going. He said I could look at myself now. I got home and ran to the bathroom and pulled off my shirt. I saw a body, not just the shell that housed my stomach and my heart. My biceps bulged. My chest had definition. I felt strong. It was the first time I can remember having a sense of myself. I had done something and no one could ever take it away. You couldn’t say shit to me.

It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have learned from the Iron. I used to think that it was my adversary, that I was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong. When the Iron doesn’t want to come off the mat, it’s the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn’t teach you anything. That’s the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.

It wasn’t until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain. When I finish a set that leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I know it can’t be as bad as that workout.

I used to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is not my enemy; it is my call to greatness. But when dealing with the Iron, one must be careful to interpret the pain correctly. Most injuries involving the Iron come from ego. I once spent a few weeks lifting weight that my body wasn’t ready for and spent a few months not picking up anything heavier than a fork. Try to lift what you’re not prepared to and the Iron will teach you a little lesson in restraint and self-control.

I have never met a truly strong person who didn’t have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone’s shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character. It is the difference between bouncers who get off strong-arming people and Mr. Pepperman.

Muscle mass does not always equal strength. Strength is kindness and sensitivity. Strength is understanding that your power is both physical and emotional. That it comes from the body and the mind. And the heart.

Yukio Mishima said that he could not entertain the idea of romance if he was not strong. Romance is such a strong and overwhelming passion, a weakened body cannot sustain it for long. I have some of my most romantic thoughts when I am with the Iron. Once I was in love with a woman. I thought about her the most when the pain from a workout was racing through my body.

Everything in me wanted her. So much so that sex was only a fraction of my total desire. It was the single most intense love I have ever felt, but she lived far away and I didn’t see her very often. Working out was a healthy way of dealing with the loneliness. To this day, when I work out I usually listen to ballads.

I prefer to work out alone. It enables me to concentrate on the lessons that the Iron has for me. Learning about what you’re made of is always time well spent, and I have found no better teacher. The Iron had taught me how to live. Life is capable of driving you out of your mind. The way it all comes down these days, it’s some kind of miracle if you’re not insane. People have become separated from their bodies. They are no longer whole.

I see them move from their offices to their cars and on to their suburban homes. They stress out constantly, they lose sleep, they eat badly. And they behave badly. Their egos run wild; they become motivated by that which will eventually give them a massive stroke. They need the Iron Mind.

Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my mind.

The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found. There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and body have been awakened to their true potential, it’s impossible to turn back.

The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

Belief Beyond Borders

2010-05-05T08:43:00.000-04:00

The seed from which this entry grew.

I am a Christian.
But I don't want to see a Christian nation.

At least and definitely, not in the way the current discussion uses the phrase. Proponents say that this nation was founded on God. It was also founded on the backs of slaves, the blood of indigenous peoples and the belief that man was and always should be the final arbiter of value. Why don't we return to our roots?

But that's an easy question to answer.

I think the more difficult one is for Christians: "Why are we such cowards?" Is our faith more steady when our government points guns at others?

For me, I believe one of the real tragedies of Christian history lay in Constantine's conversion to Christianity. It would've been a joyous occasion if only he produced fruits in line with repentance, if only he weren't Emperor, and if only the Christian faith hadn't been made official. Should the Church have been given Imperial authority to decide how to punish heresy and unorthodoxy? Israel of antiquity did it, so why not Rome, why not America? God had commanded the kings of Israel past to cut down the Asherah poles and demolish the altars to Baal. If these politicians wish for America to be a Christian nation why don't they stump for the demolition of mosques and fire-bombing of Buddhist temples? Should Billy Graham lead a cadre of Navy SEALs to seize Tom Cruise and the Christian Scientists?

My problem with this whole idea of a Christian nation is my very real conviction there's a lot of heresy pork-barreled into the words "Christian nation." When I see the term used, there's a very real idea of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christianity, a Bible-belt Christianity, a kind of Christianity liberally sprinkled with football and country music references. I have never understood "Christian nation" to mean the Christianity of immigrants and refugees, the sector of Christianity most alive and thriving in America today. I have never understood the Christian to refer to urban Christianity of prison ministries, AIDS ministries, battered women ministries and homeless shelters. It has always been megachurch Christianity, happy, shiny, plasticanity, a sickening, saccharine creed of cowardice.

I think that dirty fingernails are a sign that Christianity is done right because this is the kind of faith that grew from a soil uncontaminated with the "Cleanliness is next to godliness" tradition of Sunday bests. True faith has no geography. It realizes that Christianity doesn't end with the reach of the bayonet and border patrol but that the line separating the heathen from heaven is drawn through every heart of every person. This was Rome's mistake. When it became a Christian nation, Christianity only spread as far as the Roman gladius could take it. What of the rich Christian tradition in ancient Ethiopia and India brought by Philip and Thomas, or if your tradition has it, St. Philip and St. Thomas? They've been Christians longer than the Romans, easily have direct linkages to people who have seen Jesus, but they don't look like the cultural Christian "us."When we see bearded, dark-skinned, turban and robe wearing figures, our eyes see terrorist and not 'brother'. What lies have we bought into? How much will it cost to buy us out?

This belief I'm going to share with you next is applicable for every single area of life: The greater the trial, the greater the risk, the greater the pay-off. Doing hill sprints for a workout has a dramatic effect on improving my leg strength, lower-body power, cardiovascular system, and carving out a six-pack. But doing them requires intense mental exertion to keep going. For the rest of the day, I'll struggle with a seductive somnolence. I'll need to rest for the next few days or else I'd re-injure my right ankle and left knee. Big risk. Big pay-off.

The same is true of faith. The bigger the risk, the bigger the pay-off. When we clamor for security, what are we making safe and what are we endangering? When we want our government to secure our doctrinal borders along with our national borders, I can only see disaster as a result. There are lots of great passages in Scripture that illuminate the proper method of Christian ministry but this one from Psalm 20 has stuck with me since my days in Baruch has been this one: "Some trust in chariots, some trust in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God." Christian ministry is not predicated, never has been predicated, and never will be predicated on safety. Parents whose great hopes for their kids go no further than well-paying jobs, social acceptance at large and regular attendance at an ornate popular church don't get it. Rather Christian ministry contains a great deal of risk and unpopular choices that buck the conventional wisdom. Congregants say they need a bigger church but Christianity seems most alive in places where the faithful gather together in obscure places and whisper in hushed tones. A movement says we need to return to our roots and become a Christian nation that doesn't tolerate gays. I think Jesus' heart would be closer to the marginalized who's been cast out, trodden down and looked upon as a subhuman than the powerful majority, the oppressors.

It feels very safe to be in a great crowd of people who talk, think and dress like you. You're making yourself safe at the risk of having genuine connection with those outside of the tribe. It's a great personal risk to go where you are vulnerable, to have someone whose views and thoughts are opposite yours to be in power over you, but the possible reward is great for doing this testifies to your belief that such things don't matter, that God alone is the one who changes hearts and the changed heart, not the political boundary, is an indicator of where faith is.

Now there's a lot more to be said about what kind of specific legislative acts to vote for and the wisdom of voting one way or another, but that's for another time.

Your Best

2010-05-03T15:03:00.000-04:00

"I don't know about this, Stan..."
"Just do it. It'll be OK."
"I'm not sure..."
"You're going to do it or I'm going to leave. Which one do you want?"

That sounds like date rape. I didn't realize it until I typed it out but actually the conversation took place a week ago as I trained a friend at her request. Setting the weight, and I told her to pull down as hard as she could. She protested saying "I'm going to hurt myself." "I'm nervous. I don't want to attract attention to myself." and "I don't know if I can." To the last one I replied "I'm asking for effort. If you can't give me your best effort, then you've wasted hours of my life."

For this past week, I couldn't help but to review the training session in my mind over and over again. I was dissatisfied with what I perceived as the effort my friend gave. But I thought on it, I realized a stain of hypocrisy in my words. I criticized her effort but for months I've seethed at my own lackadaisacal attempts to work out. I don't know how many times I've finished a workout and smashed my fist into a wall in frustration. I've not been giving my best. The results will show on the day of testing. As days fly off the calendar, my desperation grows, but my body never seems to respond in kind.

Am I out of my mind?

Perhaps. But more critically, my perspective is flawed. I've been feeling a reservoir of hidden power in my workouts but for whatever reason I can't tap into it. It drives me insane to think that such potential is there so tantalizingly out of reach. I've called myself "lazy," "pathetic," "a spineless, gutless worm that deserves to be ground into shit." as a result. But if I stepped back and gazed upon the broad history of my personal transformation, a glaring inconsistency stares back at me.

People ask me "Stan, how did you lose all that weight? What did you do?" I tell them the plain and honest truth "Willpower and determination." When I died inside my chrysalis, I chanted a mantra like "Doesn't matter how much it hurts, just keep going." "It's better to die than to live fat." But all runs came to an end. The pain always got the best of me and I slowed to a walk. It never failed to defeat me, but the pain that made me quit yesterday is simple rust that I dust off in the morning today. I really have grown.

And how did that growth happen? By going to what I perceived as my limits each time. Back in the training session, she eventually acquiesced. Grabbing ahold of the bar she pulled down and the weight moved swiftly. Once, twice, three times, now five, now eight... finally twelve times. At half her bodyweight. She looked tired but she did it. I didn't specify a rep range for her. I only expected 3 or 4 reps. The weight could have been set much higher at around 75 or 80% of her bodyweight. But she had never done this before. I take for granted the fact that I've been working at a (relatively) high intensity in isolation for 2 years. My body knows what to do when exerting a maximal effort and feels little hesitation in doing so. Prior to this, I spent many years playing around in a weight room where insecure boys tried to one up each other by pushing more and more weight. It provided a stable foundation for strength training, if not maturity. That psycho-physiological foundation is key for future gains. The body and its soul desire security for going hard. You give ithem that security with constant training and exposure to hardship. I've pushed 200 pounds and it hurt, but it wasn't too bad. Now I can do 205. Little by little, the old self and more importantly, the old standards are sloughed off and a new self emerges. Everyone salivates at the goals but it's much more important to heed the process.

When I work out today, if I were to describe my effort, I could only give it an honest 30% There's so much more I can be doing that I'm not. So what does that make the effort of last year or the year before or 5 years before? It took me a long time to work up to what now seems like 30%. Before I thought I was at 100% effort because I only had my previous work as a comparison. Now that I know myself more, I know that my spirit is sorely lacking.

Practically, this means two things for me. The first is that I need to prepare my spirit to go at 100%. It's not so simple as slapping yourself, beating your chest and yelling at yourself. It only works for so long. I need to do more work purifying my spirit of unnecessary things like sleeping late, candy, TV, facebook, idle banter. My body isn't in race shape yet but it will never be if my mind is not in race shape.

The seocond is that I need to give more grace when I train others. I, myself am not at 100%. But I am further ahead than where I was a year, 2 years ago. It's the daily increase that matters, the daily ritual of purification and renewal. No matter where anyone starts, they may grow.

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well neither does bathing -- that's why we reccomend it daily." -- Zig Ziglar

"To not give your best is to waste the gift." -- Steve Prefontaine

College

2010-04-29T12:53:00.000-04:00

To see power at work, you have to see the invisible. The things that you don't see, don't notice, the things that are so natural, so normal that your mind has forgotten them before your eye sees them, this is power. Can you really fight such a power? Could you breathe a different air?

How would you even know if the air you breathed did nothing to keep you alive? What if it was simply a slow, slow way to die? You assume that since you live and since life doesn't hurt so badly, that everything must be, OK. I'm here to tell you that it's not.

College asphyxiates most. There are maybe 50,000 students at NYU. That's almost enough to fill the vast interior of Yankee Stadium. Each one of those students is asked to pay a mid-size luxury car every year for enrollment. Some have the costs defrayed by scholarships and grants. What do students who pay this obscene amount of money do when they get to college? What excites them? For most of them it's free waffle nights. Drinking parties. Discounts to baseball games and Broadway. Having a piece of paper with their name and a school name at the end of 4 years. Living in New York City. Pathetic. Inexcusably pathetic.

You know what's worse? Parents rejoice when their kids get sent there. Parents think that this is a good investment of what may amount to a quarter million dollars. Have you ever thought about not going to college as a good thing? To my mind only a single person stands out. The others who've not gone to college have felt like failures or society's degenerates. Those who have gone to college feel like they've made some great accomplishment. And why is that? What standard is being used to judge success and failure?

Normalcy.

In my experience, the overwhelming majority of the human herd lives to avoid failure. It is too scary to step outside the lines of normal and search for your own path. It's better just to follow the other lemmings. If everyone's doing it, it can't be wrong, can it? It's safest in a group. Others can give me advice. I include myself in that category. If I had more confidence in my writing, I'd quit my job and set out to be a writer. I'd produce fun action stories that would entertain. I love experimenting with different ideas. I'm completely in love with the way Murakami integrates Japanese mythology into the present world. More, and I hate to use this word, realistically, I know I'm not very good yet so I practice on the side. I'd only really step out onto the water once I see that this living is sustainable. I'm a coward who's trying to have it both ways and I hate that about myself.

But I'm working at it. Slowly but surely, I'm un-learning so much of the trash I've taken in throughout my life. Step by step, I want to refine my mind and purge the idea that what is is what should be.

This is one reason why I love the act of teaching and the thought of raising kids. I want to expose the framework of the reality others give them. I want to put the choice firmly in their hands of what they'll do with reality. They can follow society and live for retirement out of a fear that the last few years before death will be uncomfortable (and they do that by ensuring that the majority of their life is miserable, working a job they don't like for people they barely tolerate to give the money to kids who are strangers) or they can have life now. They can ask the question of joy.

Where can joy be found?

In the end, isn't it shameful that asking this question in an ethical sense of "How shall I live my life?" is a daring question? Yes, yes I think it is. To hell with normal. Live your life.

Color

2010-04-20T14:16:00.000-04:00

When I wrote my previous post, I could not help but think about the faith that I've carried, that has carried me these past 11 years. I think specifically about the effect that theologians like John Piper and John Calvin have had on me. I first learned about the place that 'joy' has in the Christian life from them. But when I received their instruction, I had a seed of doubt in me. Through the years I held the doctrine of Christian joy firmly but the seed continued to grow until I couldn't ignore it any longer.

"Joy" was a dishonest word to use for the Christianity I knew.

Let's talk semiotics for a moment.

Christians love the color white. Spotless white lamb of God, full-bearded, English-accented Jesus wearing a pristine white robe towering over Jew and Arab looking peasants, white-faced church with its white steeple, white fluffy clouds where white-winged and white-robed angels fly...

What a God-damned bore. Piper and others that I've read talk so much about joy but the joy that they write about seems so fundamentally boring. Their language is so impoverished it makes me laugh. They play the same visual tropes to death a thousand times. The Grand Canyon! The sunset! And Piper tries to say sex, but I hear such scorn and contempt in his voice when he shouts it in his sermon that I might have thought it were an expletive. He has not once used the word in a way that gives me the impression it's something I want to have. If I don't have any new way to describe beauty and joy, I'll say the old ones MORE LOUDLY!

More than that, the expressions of joy were so limited. It's a thought you think. It's a feeling you feel. After absorbing such a mass of material I have the distinct impression that they really must not know joy.

The life that I lived, the life which grew out of that kind of Christian environment, was miserable. More than anything else, I had wanted to compete at a high level. In any sport. It didn't matter. I wanted an honest life, and nothing seemed quite as honest as someone who throws their body on the line because they can't stand the thought of losing. For whatever reason, when I saw the Ironman I wanted to do that. Maybe it seemed more accessible than something like MMA or maybe my inner glutton for training finally came out. For years I kept saying "next year, next year I'll start." But when next year came, I'd feel guilty that something might dull my evangelistic zeal, so I never did it. When I registered for the race, a part of me felt like I just burned a Bible and pissed on the ashes.

Oh certainly my theology proper knew that feeling was misguided and wrong. All things can be yours if you have Christ. This is the freedom of the Christian. But then how is it that mentors who hold to that same theology said to me:

"Do you really *have* to compete, Stan? You're so fit already. Do you have to be so vain? Think about how much time it'll take from your schedule. Can you really be committed to Kingdom ministry if you take up this hobby? Oh, I'm not trying to guilt trip you, just think about your priorities. What's really important, the souls of the lost or some silly thing you do for fun?"

It wasn't until my disastrous middle relationship that I finally woke up. I was forfeiting vibrant color for a sterile white. The joy I had in Christianity was so hollow, so false. But I didn't abandon Christianity. I never for a moment doubted God's veracity. I doubted the entire system I bought into. I needed to find my own way, to start over.

I searched for color and vibrancy because I didn't find it in the pastors, the theologians, the churchmen. Sure, they would always smile when they saw me, they would write about the joys of being a Christian but the practice was so shallow. Part of the answer was that they were all too pastoral, cloistered in an ivory-tower.

Listening to the Cirque du Soleil soundtrack, I find what the Christianity I know is missing -- frenetic energy, raucous joy, celebration sans alloy. The word "hallelujah" means a wild, uninhibited shout -- a holler. Where now is the church that can do justice to the word "hallelujah"? I "hallelujah" when I sack a QB in a football game. I jump up and down, I beat my chest and I let out a hot-blooded roar. Chest-bumps, forearm bashes, celebration dances because there's something worth celebrating. Doesn't the Christian have something to celebrate? Could I do that in my church service? Oh no, never. That's not appropriate for church, young man. When a church cannot "hallelujah" it's probably time for that church to close its doors.

A few months ago, at my Baruch Alumni Men's Fellowship Group, a friend showed me of a video he took at a church in India. I think I saw some pews in the distance but they were empty. The music was turned up to 11. Where was the congregation? They were in the back of the sanctuary where the pews didn't obstruct and it was there they danced. In jubilant circles they danced. They sang and clapped. Hallelujah.

Now, that's only speaking of church services. My interest is far bigger than something as claustrophobic as church. I want to think about life at large. I've followed the lives of the theologians and for all the vastness of God that they were supposed to contain, they look so small and shriveled. They say they had more joy than anyone else. Were I to meet with them, would I come away with an understanding of what joy was?

No. The more that I met the more I was convinced that the practice was wrong. Everything we've been doing all looks so wrong. God should be praised. God should be renowned through all corners of the earth and what I'm convinced about more and more each day is that the way we've been doing it is all so seriously wrong.

Christians have understood white to mean purity. To do this, they've bleached, murdered and mutilated thinking that this would make them more pure. They've cut away joy, happiness and laughter from Christian living and somehow still preach that Christians are given joy, happiness and laughter as gifts from God. The white that I'm looking for is the white of completion, the white light which is the blend of all colors. I want the rich red of Chinese fortune, the festive green of Brazilian life, the deep blues of the sea, the whimsical blue of the clear sky, the beautiful, deep mahogany of Eastern Africa, the rich, warm ebony of Sub-Saharan Africa, the oranges of the desert, the violets of the sunset, the brown of cinnamon, the yellow of saffron and curry, the fall foliage, the Aurora Borealis, the Painted Desert, Hanauma Bay, Havana. I want a synaesthetic Christianity whose loud, passionate colors leave the soul hungering for more of God. Piper asked if we understood majesty in music. I ask if he understands festivity in music. The movement and celebration of an electric yellow and green samba, the seduction of black and red tango, the light-hearted laughter of pink and baby blue sugary pop. All rivers flow as one, all colors shine as one, this is the white I think Christianity should be looking for.

Achieving Life, further thoughts

2010-04-16T15:30:00.000-04:00

Achieving Life. I feel like I've talked about it too much. I feel like I've barely touched the tip of the iceberg.

I'm well aware that achieving life is a weird phrase. By its construction, it seems like it's something you earn: a promotion, a victory, a prize. Only the prize fits. And it must be earned. But the prestige is always private. The glory always hidden. In its simplest form "achieving life" means... joy and the fullness thereof. But I use the phrase "achieving life" instead of "being happy" for two reasons: 1- Ayn Rand uses it, and I want to pay homage to her by using that phrase and 2- because I don't want you to be confused by what I mean.

What's joy? Is it just an expansion of happiness? Is it, like so many Christians blabber about, eternal and thus different from just plain 'ol happiness? When people speak of happiness they speak of chucking sick days to take off, paychecks, the Yankees winning the World Series, a new gadget, breakfast in bed, a night out drinking, parties where you get drunk and hook up randomly, vacations in the Caribbean. No, joy is much more than those things. They're nice but not enough. They can move endorphins but not the soul.

Joy is deep. Ecstatic. Effervescent. Overwhelming. Welling up from the depths exploding into reality. It fills up your being so that there's no room for thought. The Romantics pegged poetry correctly when they believed that it should be composed in quiet contemplation remembering passionate moments. It should not be composed in that moment.

Usually when I think about joy I think about competing in triathlons. The hot-blooded thrill of churning through the sea of arms and legs in the swim, zooming on the bike and tearing up pavement on the run. I think about the sun burning in the sky and my soul burning twice as hot in my gut. And I can't stop smiling. No matter how much the body hurts, no matter how out of nutrients, how torn the muscles, I never stop smiling when I race. And as I storm across the finish line I let out a giant roar and beat my chest. Joy.

The first time I wrote about achieving life, I wrote it after I did yoga with Kendra. A phenomenal teacher that I consider a huge blessing in my life, I'm glad to have begun my practice with her. I achieve life, I joy when I practice yoga with her. When we practice my mind and my body fall away and I simply live, I simply move. And afterwards, when we're done, I walk away feeling 10' tall and floating 6" off the ground. No fist-pumps, no shouts or hollars, only the realization "That was joy."

And when my girlfriend took me to see Cirque du Soleil's "Ovo" this past Wednesday she saw my jaw slacken and my eyes widen. I get that same child-like look when I witness joy in others. And the grace of the movement, the playfulness and artistry, the explosion of color, even as I call up the memories I feel my fingers slow and another smile stretch across my face. Joy remembered.

(Pictures not my own. Taken from a photoblog here which captured the Toronto show.)

To be honest, I'm dissatisfied with the stills because as beautiful as these pictures are they lack the energy and movement, the astonishing and haunting soundtrack (that I've been listening to ever since) that happens when you experience the show live. This is what I think about when I think about joy. Energy. Movement. Beauty.

A life you've achieved should be beautiful. Not a fake beauty like the air-brushed mannequins on men's magazines but surpassingly beautiful like a live Cirque, like an honest smile.

An honest smile for an honest life. It fits doesn't it? Playing beer pong does not seem like an honest life. Drinking, dissolving reality in alcohol, seems like a protest against life rather than life itself. How is that honest? Clicking your way through thousands of channels, watching a show because it makes you forget the fact that you're alive with powers and abilities beyond any animal, gifted with locomotion and initiative, does not seem honest. Thumbing through endless magazines, buying gadget after gadget, iPod, iPhone, iMac, iPad, I want to know if there's a reason beyond impressing others. No, that doesn't seem like an honest life.

Let me be clear here. I'm not advocating that people run off and join the circus, practice yoga (though that would be great), or register for a triathlon (that would be horrible as races are crowded enough as it is). These are merely metaphors. They worked for me. You cannot follow me in the same way I cannot follow anyone else. That's what honesty... integrity, is. You are what you are. You love what you love. Your life is what you live. So go and achieve your life.

Going Hard

2010-04-15T08:41:00.000-04:00

Link to the post that inspired this one.

Last year, I was a big fan of go-all-out-every-day-you-only-live-once-stop-being-such-a-shriveled-scrotum school of thought. In the words of Jay-Z, "we off that." What changed from last year to this year?

Balance. A year of triathlons and road races under my belt in addition to a poorly planned offseason full of injuries has taught me a lot about balance.

For all the effort I expend, I must have an equal amount of energy coming back in.

In writing; inspiration.

In training; nutrition.

In love; reciprocation.

For all the work that I do, I must experience the appropriate amount of rest.

In writing; reading.

In training; sleep.

In love; ... gee, I'm not sure where to go with this one.

Pfft, it was working so well up until that point. Well, I learned a lot, but I don't know it all. Maybe the equation doesn't balance out perfectly. That's fine. I'll learn when it's time to learn. Or maybe I'll eventually have the appropriate lens that will make me realize the question was wrongly aimed.

At any rate, the reason I don't train all the way balls to the wall anymore is because of the very real fact that I am not a pro triathlete. Because of my scheduling issues, because I'm unwilling to sacrifice much else for bigger gains, because I still have a lot that I can improve on before I need to sacrifice more, I don't treat each session as a personal Everest. I would only receive more benefit from harder training if I coupled it with the appropriate amount of rest. From my experience, a complete all-the-way-to-failure workout requires about 10 hours of rest that same day with the next day being a complete rest day or at most an easy day. I sleep 7 hours a night. Barely. I don't see where I can slip 3 1-hour naps into my day on top of that. So because I won't get benefit from that style of training, because it would push me further away from my goals, I don't train that way. Steady, consistent, effort over a period of days has been the formula that's been working for me lately. This is the effort that matches my rest schedule best.

I think about my spirituality in terms of balance as well. My faith has consistently grown through challenges and consistently shriveled with claustrophobic conditions. To a point. There was a time where I never wanted to see the familiar shores of orthodoxy again, convinced that while the theology was right, the practice had... in my own words, gone to shit. But as I journeyed further along my path, I realized that the contrapuntal interplay between the world I was exposed to and the tenets of my faith grew me. When I first began to wander off the beaten path, it was due mainly to an overwhelming amount of Christian newspeak invading my life. This time, proper doctrine had grown too faint. For growth, I need the two to match each other.

In terms of challenges, I would like to use the image of a bell. If you don't ring it hard enough, there won't be an effect. Deafening silence will answer you. If you ring it too hard, you break the bell and now all you have left is junk. The body and mind are far more complex than any sounding instrument. What bell will, upon being rung, produce the strength to ring louder next time?

Why Today Is Better

2010-04-14T13:10:00.000-04:00

... than the today of 3 years ago.

I haven't wrote anything in a long time because I've been awash in thesis work but a thought popped into my head this morning that I wanted to share. So, just a few thoughts on what exactly has changed about me from 3 years ago. I can sum it up in one sentence: I stopped trying to be normal. Let me reformulate that 3 ways.

I stopped aiming at being average.
I no longer cared about fitting in.
I gave up on other people's opinions.

But since that's not really all that helpful, I wanted to share 3 ways I did that.

I stopped doing things I thought were worthless.
     I have 24 hours a day. I might have 80 - 120 years on this earth. I can't really ask for more. Do I seriously have anytime that I can casually kill? That's an incredibly short time. Why in the world would I waste any of it? That reasoing caused me to stop doing things I wasn't invested in. For example, I stopped eating with people after church.
     Why? A- I hate spending money. B- I hate greaseball food as a regular part of my diet. C- They called it fellowship but we never got closer to anything except obesity. Ergo, it was a big waste of my time. And damn, I hate wasting time.
     The amount that I really connected with people skyrocketed after this point. Instead of going where everyone goes, I decided to take the initiative. If I want to know somebody better, I'll go hang out with that person. Knowing somebody better consists of me and that person talking about either me or that person. It's produced far better results than sitting at a restaurant with 15 people talking about trash I care nothing for thinking to myself "Oh God, why the hell am I here? Is this my martyrdom for you?"
     Darwinian evolution at work. All my activities are species competing for time. If something's less capable of producing then it should just die off. Other things that I threw out of my life a- TV, b- Gchat and in the future c- Facebook.
I started doing things alone.

     No one wanted to take acting or improv classes with me. So I took them alone. No one wanted to do triathlons with me (well except Liz, but our abilities are too far apart) so I did them alone. When I confronted myself with the question "Why do you need people in the first place?" I realized I had no answer. There wasn't a single good reason why.
     It was at that point that I realized no one on this earth today could ever be as invested in my life as myself, so to ask them to come along was a grievous error on my part. So the easiest thing in the world to do was to go alone. It was supposed to be this way after all.
     I did things on my own and I realized that I was far happier on my own. It didn't matter what I was doing. Their interests weren't my interests. Our friendships were built on artificial premises. For the first time in my life, I thought about building friendships on shared loves and joys instead of common locations. Should I laugh at the same jokes if I were to work at the same workplace or attend the same church? Because we went to school together, does that mean I should enjoy the same music? More and more, the crowd of people that I had previously tried so hard to please seemed like barnacles clinging to my hull. Their values weren't my values. Working to satisfy them would do nothing for me.
     This recalls a common answer to church complaints. Why, oh why, are Christians such liars, adulterers, such hypocrites and ridiculous fools? Well, God came to save the sick, didn't he? A person whose ignorant doesn't magically become either educated or rational when he converts. That's the myth of Christian media (of course). When God puts you in a church, he puts you in what amounts to a spiritual cancer ward. People who look at church and think that perfect people are supposed to be inside have no idea what a church is.
     So the effect is less, but still noticable in all areas of life. As an adult I had to stop thinking that I would run into people who had like interests. I had to go and find them myself. So yeah, I started doing things alone, but I never really stayed alone for long.
I learned what I valued.

     And am still in the process of learning what I value. Tied into the previous point, I didn't really know much of myself a few years ago. I think I wanted to be normal because there was a guide for normal people. You lived this way. Did these things. Had these problems. And fixed it in these ways. Easy. It's just like following a treasure map. The prize at the end? Someone else's life.
     And could I blame anyone but myself that the life pinched when I put it on? It didn't fit me. My dreams were far too big for dreams of living like the King of Queens. I wanted to test my limits. No one in my current networks at that time wanted to do the same. So that meant, I had to make choices. I wanted to see new and amazing sights in the world. Few around me cared. So I went with the few who did.
     More than anything, learning what I valued combined with the realization that life was quickly passing me by resulted in a reversion to child-likeness in my heart. Instead of complaining that what I wanted was so far away, that no one would do it because it was unwise, I simply went ahead and built up a new way. Like a child with no preconceptions, no models for understanding, I invented my own models. When I look back, they're nothing spectacular. Other people have done better, will do much better, but it's fine. Good for them. I'm happy fo r them and I think I only started only being able to have joy in the success of others once I started enjoying my own life.

And looking back on what's changed about me in the last 3 years, I can only look forward with great expectations. More than anything else, I think I finally look forward to the challenges that are ahead.

Thoughts on a Good Friday - Safety

2010-04-02T12:34:00.000-04:00

"Safe is risky."
Seth Godin

This may well be a continuation of the series on limitations. But because it's Good Friday, because it is a critical aspect of my faith, I wanted to take a break from the framework of the previous blogs. Also, I was bored of using the same image and quote.

My parents caged my soul with beliefs. Don't do this, don't do that, it might be dangerous. You might hurt yourself. Be a doctor or a lawyer. Don't do something unstable. You never know what might happen.

We rode down to Brooklyn together. I didn't think it was as huge a deal as they did but they insisted on coming. "We never did that much to support you when you were growing up so we wanted to at least take you down to your race." was what they told me the night before. On the drive that day, "If you feel tired, just give up. It's better than hurting yourself. There's nothing wrong in giving up." was what they repeated to me over and over again.

Further back down the tunnel of time we go, "Why don't you just take English as a minor if you like it? Just because you like it doesn't mean you have to do it as a job. Just read some books on the side or something. Do something secure like accounting."

What am I protecting? What am I keeping safe? What is at risk? What is in danger? And what's more important?

Achieving life is not the same as postponing death. Preventing pain is not winning joy. My parents taught me strategies and methods, instilled in me a value for prevention. They never intimated that a goal could be worth striving for. They only told me things that I should really work to avoid: poverty, illness, loneliness. But if I avoided those things would I ever find wealth, a vibrant life or true companionship? It's like a baseball catcher who instructs his pitcher "throw it anywhere but down and in." Is it any surprise that the pitcher then gave up a home run?

Achieving life is not the same as postponing death. If all of your efforts are focused at preventing bad things from happening then no good things will come. If all of your efforts go to placate your fears then what energy remains to realize your dreams? If there are no good things, if there are no dreams, if you've only prevented bad outcomes, then you remain a zero. So I offer you two options: the first, disappear from reality. Your existence is a lie. The second, change.

It will require battling your fears.

Maybe an example will help. Theologically, I'm rather orthodox. TULIP, 5 Solas, Nicene creed. Amillenialist. But I think the most rewarding point in my faith came when I took a Gender Politics class in grad school. I don't know why I approached the class this way, perhaps the professor was just that good, perhaps some other factors were moving in my heart, but I eventually left my worldview, my referential lens at the door when I went to class and learned with their premises and built with their materials. And the effect was profound. I don't think I've ever learned so much in a class before.

Now at this point I want to address several sectors amongst my Christian audience. The first, the lazy people who do what I did because it's the fastest way to an A, the people who would say "Oh, it's just a class. You do what you have to, you know?": our motives are different. We are not in the same boat. I think when you leave aside the fundamentals of faith out of convenience, it is a treasonous, cowardly act. I hate cowards worse than I hate rapists and slavers.

The second, the people who have studied apologetics and/or theology, who would have gone in with guns blazing (thinking that you're) mowing down arguments with things you've picked up in a book or a sermon, to you I want to pay special attention. I was one of you. I remember how proud I was to be able to hold my own in undergrad against philosophy professors because I did the research. To the people like you, I say that you are no less cowardly, that *I* was no less cowardly for adopting this method. In the end, you weren't willing to change your mind because you were convinced of the truth. Whether you were actually right or wrong is immaterial. You were scared, you little nut-sack. Turtling up and barreling forward responding to arguments by repeating your argument even louder is a craven, despicable act. Christians are by far the most cowardly demographic I've ever seen with my own eyes.

For me, orthodoxy is incredibly important to me. I don't want to learn or teach heresy. So the best thing I ever did as a student was expose it to risk by opening my mind. To illuminate this point, let me share with you this video:

I scoured YouTube to present you this video of some nutsacks sparring. Why is it that we all get a good laugh out of this? It's because it's a slapfight! If you want to do damage, you have to get much, much closer. You have to put yourself in a much more dangerous place if you want to do anything worthwhile. My friend told me that in a fight, if you think you can elbow the guy, you're only close enough to punch. If you think you can punch, you're only close enough to kick. If you think you can kick, you can't do anything at all. Ever since Adam, the natural instinct has been to be a coward.

On the other hand, look at the distances between the fighters here.

If you want to do anything of worth, of any kind of value, you must become vulnerable. You can get a knock-out, but you can get knocked out. Kill or be killed, kids.

But we're talking about a class and not combat here. In Gender Politics, I opened myself to real learning. And I realized, hey, Equal Marriage Rights is more complicated and in-depth an issue than I've ever heard in a sermon or read in a book. But that much was obvious, right? And the more risks I took, the more I realized no one else was willing to take a risk. And this saddened me deeply.

Christians, right? The events of Good Friday allowed us to be Christians. The word "Christian" itself means something along the lines of "little Christ" or "Christ imitator."

"He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God -- children not born out of natural descent, nor human decision or a husband's will, but born of God."

God himself obeyed the principle I examined here. Open yourself up to vulnerabilities if you want to make it happen. My thinking is that his own nature made a safe path to salvation impossible. The only way for the cup of Gethsemane to pass from him was for him to drink it. The courage it must take to go from God Omnipotent to face humiliation and vulnerability on the cross, from eternal fellowship to complete divine rejection, to risk all of that, to endure all of that... there was no other way to purchase salvation.

Face. Your. Fears. Is your faith important to you? Then dangle it over the precipice of the unknown. Go to an atheist's convention with no picket signs, tracts or book of easy references to call upon. Just sit and learn. Or make friends with someone who has a non-standard sexuality. Or next time you have a conversation, try and see things from the other person's perspective instead of repeating yours more loudly. Answer their questions straight-forwardly. Be willing to change. Is your life important to you? Then be prepared to look straight in the eye all the terrors that haunt you and march boldly into their jaws. There's no other way.

Liberation Through Limitations, Origins

2010-03-31T23:55:00.000-04:00

Let I breathe, Jedi knight

the more space I have, the better I write

if ever I write, I need the space to say, whatever I like

-- Jay-Z, "Change Clothes"

"We are part of a nameless and faceless generation united for the renown of God!" said the speaker on stage. I glowed with enthusiasm. I sang the songs. I lifted my hands. My spine sparked with spiritual ecstasy. "Yes Lord, Yes Lord, Yes, Yes, Lord!" The hall resounded with these words.

The cause of suffering is desire. If you cease your desire, your attachments, you will no longer suffer. The goal of life is to purify your sins through clean living so that you may eventually escape the cycle of samsara. Existence itself seemed to be an error. This is what I gleaned from a book on Gautama Siddhartha that I read in the 3rd grade in my father's library.

Everywhere I turned, the message seemed to be the same -- life, your life, is meaningless. Your joy is foolish. That joy only produces more attachment to this world.

In college, I remember a close group of friends that would go to Applebee's nearly every Saturday. We would eat and talk. Those discussions set the course of my thinking for many years afterwards. Although I've now rejected a great number of things I agreed to back then, I am grateful that they set me down this road. Every single one of the conversations we had left me with the distinct impression that the "self" was an entity to be battled at every turn. The self wanted to be known, to become greater, while in fact, it should be aiming to become lesser. Humility. Because we all had the mindsets of young men, every idea had to be turned up to 11. The logical conclusion then was that we must become so small as to not exist.

I ardently marched down this path for 6 years. If you know me, then you know what I mean by ardent. Once I have an idea stuck in my mind, I become the Juggernaut. And so I marched on working to remove traces of my existence believing that the goal of life was to diminish it that I might not obstruct anyone's view of God. I mean, everyone hates it when someone stands up at the movie theater right? We're all supposed to be here for the main show, not some guy who stands up. Such a person is selfish, an egoist without care and concern for others.

But how does a person live in this way? I came to realize how unlivable this ethos was in actual living. I could not continue to exist believing that the purpose of my own existence was to diminish itself. On a very basic instinctual level, it struck me as deeply wrong. Rand eventually put it into words for me. Because of her, I finally realized that one could only receive love when one decided that one deserved to receive love or at the very least did not deserve its absence. This was perhaps the most enormous step I ever took in my life.

In my heart, it was a step away from Buddhism, away from the Puritans, away from what my teachers had taught me. In my heart, I felt it was a step closer to the God who existed. I was beginning to learn what everyone else viscerally knew but could not put into words. A small step but an important one.

I began to battle for my own existence, for my own life. It started out with some admissions that may be painfully obvious but I couldn't ever bring myself to say. I worked out because I wanted to look good. It required tremendous effort to say that looking good was a value, that trim was better than fat, that health was better than sickness. Years and years of Christian teaching taught me that such thinking was superficial and sinful. Years and years of Buddhist culture imprinted on me its meaninglessness. The two combined to make me think I was in the right for being a nerdy, fat kid. That's just one example. There are others but I like to go back to the physical changes primarily because they're obvious and secondly because I am rather proud of the work.

That's something else that took me a great deal of effort and work to say: I'm proud of what I've done. It has taken me a very long time, much journaling, much work and sincere searching to say that I've done something that is justifiably impressive. Good work, even when I'm the one who did it, deserves praise and notice. In Islam, the strictest adherents do not believe in music as only God should be praised. (Of course, there are less strict practitioners who blast Jay Sean from their Escalades. I acknowledge both realities exist.)

In their own small ways, receiving love and saying thank you, these two actions deeply affirm my own right to be a part of this universe. This isn't your typical Christian blogging. I've read innumerable Christian blogs. God taught me to be humble like this... I've been convinced through Scripture that glory goes to God alone... Soli Deo Gloria! And so on and so forth.

But I have also come to realize something else. A good number of those who wrote those came from having a healthy sense of self -- something I'm becoming more and more convinced that a not-insignificant number of Asians, particularly Asian-Americans lack coming from our inherited culture and bullied by our adopted culture. I was one of those who received the worst brunt of both cultures. Although I love my life now, I find myself wishing that I could have been born in the Age of Wonders. I would've killed a man to be a part of Shelley's circle. Of course, I'd be dead in a year or two considering none lived into their 30's but then again it's better to die of thirst than drink from the cup of mediocrity. What an un-Asian (and sometimes I think, un-Christian) sentiment!

But in the end, I can't walk someone else's road to God. I can't take the advice so easily dispensed to others. I, in a very deep way, am not like them. I have to forge my own road. Whereas they had to learn how to break down their identities, a large part of my own growth, perhaps the most important part, is learning that having an identity is not evil.

This much I know.

Liberation Through Limitations

2010-03-30T11:28:00.000-04:00

Let I breathe, Jedi knight

the more space I have, the better I write

if ever I write, I need the space to say, whatever I like

-- Jay-Z, "Change Clothes"

I've lived 26 years of a fairly unremarkable life. 6' tall, 215 lbs. A standard deviation above the Asian bell-curve but normal in almost any other group. Normal people would consider me strong, any dedicated strength athlete would consider me weak. Because I make much more than $2 a day, I am disgustingly affluent from a global perspective. Because I make much less than 6 figures, I don't really merit any comments in a New York perspective. I'd like to think that I'm a fairly active person with a lot going on in my life. But then I consider the friends whom I admire. One of them wrote a play that's going to go on a nation-wide tour one day. Another is a social entrepreneur who founded an abolitionist organization. Another directs urban missions. In the end, I'm pretty average.

In a cosmic scale, I'm pretty small. A rude, upstart, carbon-based life form on a moist pebble orbiting a below-average sized yellow sun on the tip of an uninteresting spiral galaxy -- who would take notice of such a speck? This carbon based life form may only live to 80 years, or if he's particularly healthy, 120. That doesn't even match up to a sea turtle's average. And in his 80 years of existence, he will never be as strong as the bear, as fast as the cheetah, as graceful as the gazelle. All the art and science he creates and discovers will be enjoyed by creatures equally as frail who themselves will succumb to the fate of all things that live.

How meaningless.

Let me be clear about the subject of that previous statement.

This course of discussion, this line of thinking, is meaningless. Humans and their pursuits are not meaningless. I used to believe in the gravity of those first two paragraphs. No longer. I grew up Buddhist and later became a Christian. Both of them taught me that I was small and had little control over my life. Buddhism told me to give up my desires because desire is the root of all suffering. Christian teachers told me that this was a clue to the majesty of God, that he did not suffer as we mortals do.

And now all I have for both these groups of teachers is my laughter. Derisive laughter.

I'm 26 years old. Given my lifestyle, I'm statistically poised for a good long life full of vitality and energy. But I don't assume it. The reason I push so hard and the reason I'm a fiend for efficiency is because I realize I could at any moment lose my life. I came back from Boston and found that I left the stove-top on for 2 days. If the pilot light went out and filled my apartment with gas, I could've come home and sparked an inferno that would've ended my life. I'm an aggressive driver. I push the limits everytime I drive. Sometimes I'm in a hurry. The other times, I just like to feel Honda engineering obey my commands. On a rainy day, I might slip up and careen over a guard rail. I think about the shock crossing my face as I slam into the railing, air bags deploying scorching skin, breaking bones, tearing tendons. I think about it but I never do slow down.At any moment, I could die.

So what's my response? Live without regrets. It's quite simple actually. Life tastes much better when you know you're not going to die and you have no regrets. It's made me a much more honest man. I haven't told anyone a lie in about 2 years. Their feelings and opinions just don't merit the time it takes to fabricate a story. I haven't done something half-heartedly in about 2 years. By not being nice, I've been liberated to be kind. By not wasting my time on meaningless chatter, I've been able to have real conversations. Because I've stopped doing what others said was required of me, I've finally been able to begin meaningful work.

Where does meaning come from?

Because something won't last past our lifetime, does it make it meaningless? If we have eternal souls, does that make our mortal lives meaningless?

My answer? No. Those things do not deprive our lives of meaning.

What I've been pursuing for the past 2 years is to find my own humanity. One of my greatest struggles has been working assiduously to undo years of Christian teaching and Buddhist indoctrination. For two and a half decades, I've been given the script that because we are not omnipotent, we are therefore impotent. Bullshit. For the vast majority of my life, my teachers robbed Man of its humanity to give God his glory, and now I finally realize that crime vandalizes both humanity and its creator.

This post begins a series of reflections and inquisitions into this area. I feel that this crystallizes much of the work I hoped to do with this blog. I launched it because human potential fascinated me; I wanted to see my own. This is just another step along the way. In this series, I'll wrestle with both the portions of Scripture that make me hesitant to fully adopt this view as well as the ones that led me down this path. And well, who knows where we'll go from there. But I've been looking forward to writing this for a long time

The Hypocrisy of Being Good

2010-03-28T08:16:00.000-04:00

I'll do something right now that I swore I'd never do when I created this blog. I'm going to tell you what I made for breakfast 30 seconds ago. But bear with me, there's a good reason for my breaking of faith.

I made a peanut butter and honey sandwich. To my dismay, I lacked both a banana and my flax seeds. The banana I could do without, less so the flax seeds. You see without the addition of the flax seeds, this was junk food. What was I eating? Bread. Empty starch. Mitigated of course by the fact that I always choose the high-fiber oat bread, but it was bread nonetheless. And it was an absurd, 2 slices of bread. And spread on it was my always generous helping of peanut butter as well as honey. But, were I to add the omega-3's of flax seeds, in my mind, suddenly this became a nourishing and life promoting food. "Being good" meant that I had to eat this sandwich with my ground-up flax seeds.

Hypocrisy.

It's the same hypocrisy that leads people to think they've "earned" an order of General Tso's chicken or potato chips or night at the bar by going to the gym. Is it any wonder that these types of people never make progress in their workouts. They've been pushing small plates since high school.

If I took my car to the shop, got a full tune-up done. Have I earned the right to slash the tires and smash the windshield? Do I wash my clothes so that I can start running through mud and brambles? This is idiocy.

But I've been participating in it. And now I realize "being good" is not good enough. It never has been. "Being good" will never get you anywhere. I search my mind but find nothing when I think of people who climbed to great heights by "being good." Jesus did not live "being good" as we use the phrase in common parlance. He did not live by accruing a savings of good deeds to be cashed out to spend on actions he would call "bad." No, a life of integrity is quite far from a life of "being good." The actions may appear the same but the motives are certainly different.

Consider Edison for example. He doesn't draw up 5 schematics for his light bulb and then say "Now I've done my daily quota. I was good. Let me now go and cash it in by going and playing Pokemon on my Nintendo DS." That kind of inventor, that kind of human goes nowhere in life. But it's quite another thing to say "I've spent 10 hours working today and have produced 5 schematics. I'm going to go and get my mind off of this project so that I can come back to it refreshed." He may very well go and play Pokemon as that other activity but I wouldn't criticize it. Well, perhaps a little. I'm looking at motive.

Why are you doing what you do? If you truly want to accomplish your goals, if there's something currently out of your reach that beckons your heart then friend, let me just say, you won't get it by being good. Re-organize your life. What's important? Build around this as your core. What's hindering you? Throw it out. What's left? Fit it in if you can. That's a life of integrity.

Passing, Part 2

2010-03-13T13:21:00.000-05:00

I was editing last night's post so much I decided to just make a new one for today.

If I embodied any one of the seven classical sins of antiquity, I think it would be Greed. There's a strong argument for Pride -- I certainly am not in the running for the 'most humble man in the world' competition -- but ultimately, I think there's a better argument for Greed.

I want it all. I want to have a 2:30 marathon time with a 600 lb. bench press. I want to climb Everest unassisted and then do the Tour De France the week after. I want to speak 7 languages, write a novel in at least 3, and that's just for starters. I'm sure once I reach those benchmarks, I'll want even more. I do not understand what it means to have 'enough.' I have one heritage. And now I want the world. One is simply not 'enough.'

But it's more than just a personal preference. In my heart, I believe that the lines are shifting, the world is changing. Sometimes there are terrible results. Consider Africa as an example. After carving up their colonies and drawing up a map without any African representatives, the continent has been plagued with violence with neither end nor reasonable hope for ending. When majorities became minorities, when the oppressed became oppressors, violence and hatred festered. And then there are other moments, much more beautiful moments. I remember when at Urbana they shared the story of how at tearful prayer meetings, Indians reconciled with Pakistanis, Palestinians with Israelis, Koreans with the Japanese. I know the emotions that pull in my heart when I read about a world leader who said that he will "never, never, never" shake hands with a Jew, finally shake hands with a Jew. Beyond oppression, beyond reconciliation, the interactions of these groups left each group changed.

But is this mixing new? History has always been on the move. Whether it's out of a valley in Eastern Africa or from a Garden in the Fertile Crescent, humanity has constantly migrated. The diasporas and captivities of the Jews, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, African diasporas to Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, Georgia, Virginia, new diasporas, people moving because of jobs, because of trafficking, because of violence... Even the categories that seem the most privileged, the most entrenched, are products of mixture. Let's take the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, this exemplar of privilege, tradition and history for a moment. Even the name speaks of movement, of a historicity, of revolution. 'White', the use of a color to denote a vast swath of people transcending nationality only became wide-spread in the 19th century. Anglo-Saxon makes this person a mixture of two ethnic groups: the Angles and the Saxons. The Norse Saxons came and mixed with the Norse Angles, who themselves displaced the Romans (who assimilated the Celts) before them. Those mixtures were certainly not peaceful. And Protestant points to a tradition that broke away from tradition. Any thought that anything, or any group is 'pure' in the sense of unmixed, from one stock, is complete illusion.

What does it mean to be Chinese? 90% of Chinese are of the Han ethnic group. Does that make the other 10% not Chinese? Is the girl on the left what comes to mind when one thinks 'Chinese'? Does being Ugyhr and not Han make her any less Chinese?

Or what of the Taiwanese aborigines? The Emishi or the Ainu? The Basque people?

The world is a wide, wide place. The more I see, the more I want to see. The more I see, the more I'm driven to prayer for its brokenness. This is the reality of living after the Fall and before the New Heavens and the New Earth.

WIth such a vast variety of human experience, I have trouble understanding why anyone would desire to limit their identity through nationality, geography or perceived genetic purity. My parents grew up in China and they raised me here in America. But calling me Chinese-American feels so constricting. I acknowledge the roots without adopting the identity. You can identify me by my job, "Paralegal" but I don't acknowledge that as my identity. There's so much more to me than work. There's so much more to me than naming where my parents grew up and where I grew up. It's a big influence sure, but I have lots of big influences. Stringing them all along, and even attempting to order them by priority seems eminently foolish. I have no desire to call myself a Chinese-American Christian Foucaultian Randian with a Murakamite aesthetic and strong Romantic themes. It sounds so God-awful pretentious that even I get nauseated thinking about that phrase coming out of my mouth.

I am the person you have before you, and I exult in my 'self-ness' because this person, this 'me' has seen what seems to be a whole lot of the world, but in truth he knows it's only the barest sliver of the big picture. Everything I know about the world, about the God who made it, only tells me how much more remains to be discovered. I know next to nothing about France and everything Francophone, but wow does it seem rich and exciting. South-East Asia also remains largely a mystery to me. Eastern Africa and the Balkans. God, the world you made is so big! How many lifetimes of man would I need to explore it all?

I want it all.

In Baruch Intervarsity, I discovered that my deepest kinship came not from fellowshipping with the Chinese, wonderful though they were (and let me not belittle the fact that they were incredibly kind, supportive and generous in the way they accomodated our needs despite the small space we shared), but with those who had similar experiences from the places I named in the previous post. It was there that I grew a taste for this whole world, where I became dissatisfied with only being Asian.

I voted for Barack Obama because I was in love with the idea of beginning a post-racial epoch in world history. And also, I just didn't like McCain as a human being. There was that too. But I'm no less in love with the idea of a post-racial, Bennetton world. The table is that much richer when you bring your own dish to share, and I come hungry.

Passing

2010-03-12T17:51:00.000-05:00

I've been running from classification my whole life. In fact, the path to triathlons began in a prayer meeting. I forget the context, but I mentioned somehow that I would like to do the NYC Marathon at some point in my life. A friend found this hilarious and laughed with such a keen edge that I still rankle at the memory.

"You? Run marathons? As big as you are? Stick to beating up kids in football and bodybuilding, Stan."

I fumed through the rest of the prayers, smoldered through the sermon and then made myself a plan for not only answering his laughter, but doing it in such a way that he wouldn't dare laugh at anyone's dreams again -- not mine, nor anyone else's.

So reading this article sparked a few thoughts for me.

I could identify with what Ken was saying, but only as if viewing it through strips of gauze. I went through that. But its alien to even think of that happening now. Plenty of people have asked me "Where are you from?" as if I could not be from America. I perhaps hear that twice a year now. Nobody tries to mock the fact of my lineage anymore. Or at the very least, no one, acquaintance or stranger, has tried to do that around me in the last five years or so.

It helps that I'm not what people think of when they hear the word 'Asian.' I'm 6 feet tall. As a friend's father put it, "and built like a brick shithouse." (I just wish he knew that the meaning has changed somewhat over the past 60 years.) People hearing my voice over the phone wouldn't know where I'm from genetically or geographically -- just plain, straight, unaccented English. (You can hear a slight Gotham brogue when I say names like 'Sarah') And most importantly, I look people in the eye when I talk. All of this played a huge role in my experience as an Asian-American. If I was a smaller man, if I spoke any less articulately, or dressed differently, what would my experience be?

Needing no more than his picture and his interview, I already have a profile of the guy ready in my mind. I have no idea if it's accurate or not, but I would be more than comfortable moving forward upon these assumptions.I would guess him to be around 5'6 to 5'8, about 160 lbs. He's either wearing khakis or slim-fit jeans in that picture, most likely khakis with Converse all-stars, and the rest of his wardrobe carries a similar aesthetic, hangs around mostly Asian-Americans of a certain socio-economic class, probably has eating at interesting restaurants as a hobby. I can't imagine him living in the 8th Ave. section of Brooklyn. On the other hand, I can imagine him crossing the street when a large group of scary locals congregate on the street.

But perhaps I'm wrong. There's a significant non-zero chance that's the case. After all, I have maybe 200 words and a picture to go off of. That's not very much. I haven't heard of him prior to the interview. And really, more than trying to know who he is as an individual and a person, I'm taking a tiny amount of information and comparing it to a lifetime's worth of categories and memes. It's the same process happening as we walk down the street everyday. I hate it when it's done to me, yet I can't seem to shut it off.

What I wish to really talk about is what kind of Asian-American I am. What do others see as they pass me by on the street? You see, the kind of Asian-American that I described, the kind that I can easily imagine Ken Chen fitting into, is an accepted kind of Asian-American. You know where you stand with them, what you can assume, what you can expect. There's a different kind. Poor broken English, blue collar job, dresses the way he speaks, serves you your General Tso's chicken in a styrofoam box. He too has a place, a much less enviable place, but a place nonetheless within the category of Asian-American (even if many would dispute the American part). And then there's the Asian-American who hardly has Asian friends, can't speak a lick of the mother tongue and whose stomach churns at the thought of pig's blood cake, chicken feet, stinky tofu or any cut of an animal that Tyson doesn't sell in his supermarket. He too has a place within the larger rubric.

But what of me? Is there a place for those who want to hold on to their heritage without being identified by their heritage?

I think others would place me in the same sub-division that I filed Ken under. I'd just have a footnote: "Great flavor when paired with Blacks and Hispanics!" Is that all? After an entire life lived trying to resist being understood, being classified, is a footnote all I have? I don't want to think so. More than marginal, I'd like to think of myself as liminal -- at a place of transcendence. It's haughty to say that of myself, but I'm not shy about saying that's where I want to be.

I don't want to be an Asian-American anything. I want to be as human as I can be, in as inclusive of a sense as that term can handle. I joke with my girlfriend that she's dating a Black, Mexican, Indian man trapped inside a Chinaman's body. But in all honesty, I wish to, like Whitman, embody multitudes. Of course there are going to be contradictions. I'm not forfeiting my claim to gunpowder, spaghetti, a big wall, terra cotta, jade and won ton noodle soup. I'm not forfeiting my claim to Ha Jin, Haruki Murakami, Chang-Rae Lee, chicken wings and french fries for $3.25, decades of being oppressed and marginalized, and the still-coming-day where we rise above it. All of these are equally my heritage and I want to honor it all. It's hard to get where you're going, if you don't know where you're from.

But at the same time, I don't want to let go of the fact that my sincerest moments of fellowship have come from my Black and Hispanic and Indian αδελφοι at Intervarsity, that I'm madly in love with a white girl whose family, dog, diet and culture endlessly fascinate me. If the Southern China of rice paddies, of expected academic success, of hustle and drive, if that is part of my heritage, then I too want to lay claim to Trinidad, Guyana, Moldavia, Jamaica, Kerala, Puerto Rico, la Dominicana, Nigeria, Norway, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney. I don't take lightly the fact that so many streams have flowed into me. I want to transcend, if only in a minute way, and if only for a moment, the limitations of genetics and become that wide shoreless ocean.

When I look at my church and how racially homogenous we are, even in the English-speaking segment, I feel so utterly alone. Doesn't anyone else find this too restrictive? How can you breath freely in such a small space? But it's not just my church. I look around at every segment of life and I want to ask everyone around me, how can you breathe in such confined quarters? There's such beauty out there in this world. How could you not want to breathe it all in?

5 Freshman Lessons (And some bonus rambling)

2010-03-09T09:40:00.000-05:00

A quick post to crystallize some thoughts I had upon waking up this morning.

(This is a terrible tattoo. But I didn't find any other images that worked.)

You're a triathlete 24/7... sometimes.
The idea comes from the Training Bible, the phrasing comes from Hajime No Ippo. The bigger the race, the more it will demand from you. People intuitively understand this much. I mean, everyone understands that running a marathon is significantly more taxing than jogging around your block. But most people will not realize until later, and some people never realize, that competing means you have to eat, sleep, read weather reports, plan vacations, plan families, plan work schedules a certain way. If I stay up to watch my favorite youtube videos until midnight, I'm not going to get to the gym in time for my early morning swim. If I do, I'll be depleted and unable to give my best effort. If I'm not giving my best effort, can we call this competition?

However, it works the other way around. The smaller the race or the lighter the competition, the less you have to be a triathlete to finish. I think some people have enough raw physical talent to just get up and start a sprint triathlon and finish one day. Maybe, maybe, there are some who can do that for an Olympic. I cannot for the life of me imagine them doing that for a Half-Ironman. The 56 mile bike and the 13.1 mile run make that seem absurd. But then again, it might be the perspective of someone who finished an Olympic and hasn't finished a half-iron. Yet, as I look back on 2009 and the way I trained, I can say with complete honesty and integrity that I trained more than I ever did and more wisely than I ever did. And upon completing the NYC Triathlon last year, I wonder how little I could have done and still gotten away with it. Olympic-distance may sound impressive, but what if we used the equally true "second shortest" instead? Would I be as proud of myself? My poor effort, poor planning gave me predictably poor results. Near the bottom in swimming, 3rd from last in the bike but... above the middle of the pack in the run? An apropos time to go to my next point.
Your everyday efforts are also what define your weaknesses.
Another Hajime No Ippo line that works well in thinking about this past year. Last year, I focused on swimming and running figuring that my impressive leg strength would simply carry me through the bike. And I already told you the results of that method.

But in case you haven't heard from facebook or in person, it also led to some critical injuries. The IT-band issue was so severe that 3 hours of playing football left me unable to walk up a flight of stairs. I had to inch myself up and sit after every step. My everyday efforts didn't include stretching or isolation work for supporting muscles. I only wanted to use my time to develop the prime-movers: hips, knees, a decent amount of core. Everything else would just move through a matter of willpower. If I had to cross the finish line with all my limbs dangling in a grotesque pile, I would.
What you do today should be in direct relation to your goal.
Goals, goals, goals, goals... goals I do ad-ore. Most people I've met don't have well-defined goals. Even if they have a well-defined 6-pack they probably don't have well-defined goals. This is about much more than just triathlons, but I'll talk about triathlons specifically.

What did I want to do last year? Actually, this was pretty good. I wanted to finish an Olympic distance triathlon and I wanted to finish a marathon. Done and done. Now it gets worse.

What do I want to do in my lifetime as a triathlete? Finish THE Ironman. Really? Is that REALLY my goal? Then what was that immature garbage about crossing the finish line with my limbs dangling? Upon reflection, I blush with shame at how many times and how many ways I chose to look cool and hard instead of working towards my ultimate goal.

And more importantly, I never asked myself this question: How do you know if you are successful in your career? Last year, I would've answered "If I finish THE Ironman." Really? How might have I answered the corollary? "If that's all you did, would you really be content?" And in all honesty, no. Looking deeper, I want to compete my whole life. I never want to not be training, not be looking at my weaknesses and working to overcome them. I never want to be sedentary. I never want to lose the camaraderie and fellowship of my competitor peers. I would be immensely sorrowful without that part of my life. Weighing a lifetime of the sport versus one moment at the top, I would rather have this be a constant part of my life. The glory is nice, but the experience is better. So if that's my truest goal, then I have to work in a way that gets me closer. I can no longer do dumb things to look brave. Foolish pride has to be discarded.
Start small. Grow big.
It's important to set goals that will push you beyond your limits, but it's no use if you don't get there. The best way of getting there is consistent daily effort. Without a doubt, it's consistency over a longer period of time that will be more effective. For triathletes, the rule is "When in doubt, leave it out." If you're a triathlete, you don't lack motivation. In fact, you've probably left a lot of friends behind, a lot of T.V. shows, a lot of drinking and all the smoking, as well as late-night comedies, to train hard. You don't lack motivation. What triathletes need is for someone to tell them to stop and go back to those things every now and then. My injuries, and many of those who've taught me a lot have come from trying to take too big a step too soon.
No rest, no progress.
Working out does not make you strong. It makes you weak. When I have a hard swim or run in the morning, the only thing I can think about the whole day is eating or sleeping. Images of delicious foods dance in my mind, dosas, dumplings, duck, durian... Send me to Singapore already! Strength doesn't come when you work out. Greater strength is the result of your body recovering. So let it recover.

I could talk about the physiology of it, protein synthesis and all that but instead I want you to think for a moment of the trials you face in your life. Hardship breaks us down, disassembles our souls and leaves us feeling naked, vulnerable. We become stronger after we learn those lessons, not when we're being battered on every side by the stones and slings of life. So, rest.

And the final most important lesson, the one that encapsulates everything above is... less talking, more doing. Last year, I wanted to let everyone know that I had arrived. It was vain, certainly. I won't deny what can't be denied. But it had one redeeming reason: I wanted to leave myself no room for backing out. I've been a coward most of my life. If I didn't win, I'd have an excuse. I wasn't trying. I wasn't ready. I was just playing around.

I talked big so that I would be utterly devastated if I failed in my goals.

That no longer serves me. No one's listening. That's good. Now, I can start to really push. I believe it was Moody who was quoted as saying "Character is who you are in the dark." That's true, isn't it? It was Ali who said "The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road; long before I dance under those lights."

For me, this is a huge moment of growing up. A friend was sharing her training philosophy with me. She's a gunner. She never quits. She'll work out 'til she falls apart because DAMNIT, THAT'S JUST THE KIND OF PERSON SHE IS. As I listened, I asked myself "Was that really me?" "God, was I like that not too long ago?" Big talk. Big dreams. No plan. But I'm moving past that now. And the more I train, the more I realize that there's much more time in my day than I thought. The more disciplined I become, the richer my life gets. The more garbage I remove from my life, the more quality remains. If I don't spend time on facebook, I have a ton of time to write. If I don't watch Youtube, I have a lot of time to be with my church people, my girlfriend or make new friends. If I don't start a new manga series... How much joy do the small things of life give me compared to the big things? If I stack up three minor distractions, does it equal the happiness I derive from one major enterprise?

More and more, I realize that my great struggle is against the element of the middle in my life. Refining my life. Achieving a higher level of integrity and purity. Living in full consciousness and awareness of my time. This is my aim.

Refining is to remove the dross activities. Checking my e-mail and facebook, doesn't do anything for me. I do it because I have nothing else to do. Given the dreams and goals I have, can it ever be said that I lack for something to do?

This is what I mean by integrity -- if I say it, it's because I mean it. And if I say it, then I will live it. Compare this to the girl who orders the double cheeseburger with fries, a diet coke and goes to Coldstone afterwards and yet complains about how fat she thinks she is. The words and the actions are in two different worlds. Where is the integrity in that specific part of her? I want to achieve integrity in every area of my life. I want to be that strange person who says something, believes in it fully and acts on it immediately. I'm not there, but I'm getting there.

And to do that, I need to live consciously. I need to be in the present moment. I've given up completely on multi-tasking. It's a distraction and a waste of time. It takes me longer and the quality suffers. Where is the benefit in it? One thing, and one thing only at a time. Give it my full attention and best effort. Be aware in whatever I'm doing. The moment I have in my hands, I'll never have again. So let's make it count.

The Dialectical

2010-03-05T11:27:00.000-05:00

Never put my words in a vacuum. They would die as surely as an oak tree in a vacuum.

My thoughts, my heart, my passions grow out of 1983 New York City seed, nurtured by Asian-American values and enervated by Western Evangelical Christianity.

I am not Martin Luther. I am not John Calvin, John Frame, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards. I am a Johnny Appleseed scattering hard work and determination everywhere I go. My theological viewpoints are a reaction and a movement away from many, many things I learned as a Christian. Some things remain the same: the high view of Scripture, the 5 points, the 5 solas. Some things are very different. You've been reading them 3 to 4 times a week on this blog.

Why do I write so much about hard work, determination, effort, guts, intuition, intelligence and intensity? Why do I so highly prize these things and never write about humility, meekness and gentleness? It's not because I think they're useless -- they're not -- it's because I think we've lost some things and I want to return things to their proper balance. I think of the many prayer meetings that I've sat on. Why is it that people who pray and then live by the principles of hard work and determination get what they pray for and the people who pray and then expect things to magically happen rarely get it? It can't be coincidence that the latter group says "I guess it wasn't God's will." more often. I go where people don't want to go. I name the things people don't want to name. I ascribe responsibility when everyone wants to cover up.

I have no doubt that I go too far in my writing. I find it maddeningly difficult to be fair and equitable when I have a keyboard or piece of paper in front of me. To be honest, there are a great number of things that I'm grateful for, a number of things I acquired through no personal merit. I was born healthy. I grew up with a Renaiisance man father who gifted me with his mind and curiosity, and even more than that, his presence. His philosophy is to never stop learning or growing. No coincidence I hold these values in my heart higher than so many others. My mother gifted me with charisma and showmanship. How could I have merited these things before I was born? So yes, I want to acknowledge that God blesses and God takes away, or in some cases, has never given at all.

But where do we go from there? I get sick to my stomach when I look at people squandering their gifts trying to entertain themselves. I get impossibly angry when people claim they have no gift to give. Have any of them considered seizing a gift with their own two hands? English is the second language I learned. I'm contemplating picking up a fourth. I used to be 120 lbs. heavier. Now I have my eyes locked on a half Ironman. I used to suck at math. Now I can factor quadratics and do derivatives in my head. I was afraid to speak up, to write, to ask girls out, to try and wear fashionable clothes. Life really used to suck. But I changed. And I did it because goddamnit, I wanted it and no one was going to stop me from getting it.

I'm reacting against a lazy mysticism by being an aggressive activist. By venturing out into the unknown, I'm making a statement about xenophobia, clannishness and ignorance. I talk about the wonderful ability we have to control many of our actions, to restrain our appetites to a large degree and to set a direction for our lives in direct opposition to the whining and caterwauling of so many who style themselves New Puritans and ape the Apostle "I do the things I don't want to and don't do the things I do!" For many of these people, I see a distinct lack of effort and an extremely narrow methodology. Without a willingness to experiment, can they really say they're trying their best? Sometimes it seems like they're hoping to fail so that everything can stay the same.

Let's use a common example. Struggling with pornography? What's their answer? More prayer! More accountability! More books! If this isn't the answer, even more! Or else pathologize it. They simply have a disease. Because we've tried all the things that "experts" have said and they didn't work, they must simply be sick.

Shut. Your. Lazy. Mouth.

If you tried everything the experts told you and nothing worked, then try something else. How badly do you want your goal? A nation-wide study of athletes were asked this question "If you were able to take a pill that gave you an gold medal at the Olympics but would kill you in 5 years, would you take it?" The answer was overwhelmingly, OVERWHELMINGLY, yes. It's more than steroids. Do you see all those ridiculous necklaces that baseball players sometimes wear? It's because they believe that the aura of the titanium will make them better players. Wade Boggs ate chicken before every game because he was convinced it made him the great player he was. Jorge Posada and Vladimir Guerrero pee on their hands because they think it makes their skin better than gloves. Many of these things have no scientific basis and are borderline witchcraft --in fact Ozzie Guillen engages in Santeria rituals involving animal sacrifice-- in the slim hope of improving. How desperately do you want it? If you only want it enough to look like you're trying, how can you pray with a clean conscience? Oh God, grant me purity, but only enough so that I don't have to do anything difficult!

Reaction. In reality, there's little I disagree with on a factual basis with the people I level polemics against. They won't say that nothing changes. I won't say that everything can change. The expression and practice is what I'm interested in. I love God but how many more songs are going to use sky, rain, mountain, sea, forest imagery mixed with a hodge-podge of awesome, majestic, mighty, worship tossed in? I'm sick of it! But I have to realize, it's only sickening to me because I've been overwhelmed by it. I certainly supported them when it seemed daring and radical to use instruments like drums and guitars in worship, but that era is long since past. Once the revolutionary becomes the norm, it's time for a new revolution.

This is the Japanese kaizen philosophy, the dialectical view of history, the Jay-Z view of progress.

Brave, new minds of the world, revolt!

The Cost of Opportunity, the Price of Achieving Your Life

2010-03-03T20:15:00.000-05:00

"Choose your future. Choose life. I chose not to chose life. I chose something else."

Dan wrote today that choosing any particular choice simultaneously means choosing not to take an infinite number of other choices. Because I am typing now, I am not swimming, not running, not biking. And this is true. I wrote this and spoke this a number of times. We all have 24 hours in a day. No one has more. No one has less.

There are choices we make that, no matter how we juggle or how we strive, forbid other choices. In my life, I've chosen to explore widely. This precludes me in many ways from investing as deep as possible. I chose to study philosophy, feminism, post-modernism, other religions and mystery cults -- and more than that, I chose to take them more seriously, and in my opinion, honestly -- than a great number of Christians. When a radical French lesbian writes something, I pay attention and believe she has something worth listening to, worth considering as if it were true... something worth my sincere and deep effort. I do not, like nearly every Christian I have ever met, write her off as a faggot French who's just mad because she can't get a man with her hairy armpits and crazy hair. I myself feel a great deal of shame when I recognize that those who don't say that to her forebear out of cowardice and those that would say this to her, do it out of contempt. And I, together with them, are always assumed to be displays of Christian love. I am ashamed.

I've gained a lot from this stance. Because I've chosen to adopt this stance I've made some deep friendships and read some deep works. Second-wave feminism has subtly changed my views on the dignity and worth of women. I haven't been exposed to much third-wave feminism but I think there's a lot I can learn there too.

And at what price does this come? I think I've alienated a few friends along the way. Let's widen the scope beyond feminism and speak of any worldviews for a moment. I have a friend and one-time mentor who refuses to read the Koran because he believes that exposure to this ink and paper is a gateway to spiritual attack. Because of this he's never picked up Derrida, Lacan and the other writers that bore me greatly. Because of this he has no dialogue with others. Only monologues. Because of this, his evangelism is limited to lecturing others.

Another cost is companionship on this journey. I wanted to explore. And I did. And what exploration means is that you've left the safe world of the known, the agreed-upon and ventured into the world of the unknown and debated. A ship cannot be in both the open sea and the sheltered bay. Is there anyone else who does what I do, thinks what I think? I don't know of any. It's part of why I have this blog. In many ways, it's a distress call. Someone please let me know I'm not the only one here out in the unknown.

But you know what? The costs are small. The returns are great. We all must choose, but the wisest choice is to choose yourself. Or to be more theologically precise, choose to be who God made you to be. I used to read my Bible much, much more. There was a time, I read it 2.5 times in the same year while leading multiple bible studies and participating in 2 distinct fellowships and extracurriculars. This year I might only finish 1/8th of it and halve my "fellowship" time. But I truly believe I function better this way.

Scripture reading is often draws dietary metaphors. And as well it should because man doesn't live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. But just as a person would harm themself by eating nothing at all, a person would do cause themself injury by overeating. Look at America's waistline and try to contradict me. We all have 24 hours a day. How much of it would you devote to Scripture? If you slept 8, and spent another hour eating, would 15 hours of reading lead to a more spiritual life? A more vibrant life? A more God-honoring life?

What if it were 8 hours? 4 hours? 2 hours? 15 minutes? Less than daily?

May I humbly submit that we have to find that answer ourselves? I know how many of you read. I know that my blog doesn't have a lot of readers because most people who start at the top never make it this far down the page. I know that I don't keep you in suspense like Lost, have the drama of the Bachelor (who some of you didn't swim with me to watch) [oh hell, like they would read this] nor the competition of American Idol. So when you spend 15 minutes "with the Lord" every morning, what does that amount to? When you listen to the Bible in your car, do you really gain anything out of it or does it quickly become background noise to a life of Jesus fish bumper stickers, Christian t-shirts and praise nights?

The same goes with every other choice we make. It takes experimentation to understand the proportions which honor God the most, honor the lives he has given us the most.

I find the Christian community, and Christian culture as I've lived through it to be so disgustingly cowardly and afraid of experimentation. Why are pastors so afraid of liberating their congregations from the READ EVERY DAY mantra? What does an absent-minded 15 minutes get them? Triathletes don't train every day and they bring more zeal, determination and enthusiasm to their regimen than most Christians do and yet many of them live with more joy, passion and excitement. We're under spiritual attack, yes, but how do we know that we've not already succumbed to it? How can we be so sure that this slavish attachment to tradition isn't itself the attack?

Does that itself stimulate growth? I've seen a committed student learn more in a week than a church-goer who has mailed it in for decades. Worse, the church-goer never made the little he knew, his own. He only had the stale regurgitations of his teachers. Yet, they've read as close to every day as one could hope for! There has to be a better way.

I thought so. So I experimented. Went through some dark times, went through some good times. I found out certain things about myself, about God, how we relate and how I move through the world around me. I used to like the Puritans. They taught me a lot but I like them a lot less now. They're far too melodramatic and the emotions strike me as overwrought. I used to value ancient Christianity but I realized I did that because of its novelty value. It just made me cool (in a select crowd). It's not really for me. People in suits garner a lot less respect once I learned how to wear one right. They're just people to me now. And more than anything else, I learned never to compromise truth for harmony. Never ever betray the integrity of your life. If not being competitive makes you feel like you're suffocating in a soft world, then fight for your life. I learned this when I sold my soul for what I once thought was unattainable, and since then have discovered it be so easy to attain as to feel embarassed at the past. I tried to be soft. I tried to be a normal guy. I tried to blend in and adopt another face to be accepted. And paid for it by being wounded like I never thought I could be. So above all, never trade your integrity for anything. And to keep your integrity, you must choose in a way that propels you towards your telos.

When you make choices, choose in a way that gets you closer towards your goal. Don't choose in a way that gets people to stop bothering you about something. A half-hearted choice brings you closer to nothing but the end of your life.

The Most Important Thing

2010-02-28T17:23:00.000-05:00

"The most important thing you have in this world is your time." -- Jor-El

Indulge me in this thought experiment if you will. You are invincible, beyond the reach of injury or disease. You can travel faster than the speed of light, appearing anywhere on Earth in at most, a few seconds. You can see past anything not shielded by lead. What would you do with your life?

Think about that deeply for a moment. Not just strong, but impossibly strong. You could push the planet out of its orbit if you so desired. Not just fast, but capable of going to any point in time. How would you use this power?

I'm sure there are a bunch of snarky answers. I'm not even sure if anyone reading this will actually take this thought experiment seriously. As humans we have a power greater than any amount of super-strength -- the power of our mind. And yet, even with this power, we will someday die. Our lives will end and it will be no more.

My expected lifespan is somewhere around 85. Let's be generous and adjust it to 95 because I only know of 3 or 4 people in my life with what I'd consider healthier lifestyles than me, and because my family has a tradition of longevity. That's 34,675 days of life I can expect. Not a million. Not a hundred thousand. Barely half-way to fifty thousand. That doesn't seem very much at all does it? And more than that, I've already spent more than a quarter of it.

I don't have much time left.

So what will you do with your life?

Don't worry, this isn't a Jehovah's Witness method of evangelism. I won't tell you that the way to stop worrying is to have eternal life by doing whatever it is they do. That is quite possibly the last thing I want to say. Have you ever noticed that if you're given a project with an indefinite deadline, it'll likely never get done? What do you think will happen if you were then given infinite time and space at your disposal? Won't you do so much less than you are now?

Last year, I and one of my closest friends sent each other a list of ten goals that we wished to accomplish in 2009. I wrote in that e-mail "Most people grossly overestimate what they can do in one year and severely underestimate what they can do in five." Consider New Year's Resolutions. How many times have you made them? How many times did you keep them? But consider 5-year spans. 5 years ago, I was graduating college. I was applying to grad schools. I was taking on a dead-end job that I had no real desire to go to and only attended because it was the first thing available. The things I did, the things I believed, the intentions I had... was that really where I was after 21 years of life? Yet, I look at myself now and it doesn't feel like a 5-years difference. It doesn't even feel like the same life.

And you know what else? Year by year, I'm picking up steam. I feel the gears in my mind inexorably turning and grinding. Determined. Focused. I plow forward through time, each moment richer than the last. And it's largely because I realize how fleeting all of life is. What is it that I want to do? I want to realize the full potential of humanity. It's a goal with infinity as the end-point. But as one of the quotes that continues to inspire me goes, "Goals aren't necessarily meant to be achieved. Sometimes they serve as targets to aim at."

For me personally, I want to see this in my life. I want to see how strong, how enduring I can get, how much I can learn, how much I can share and how deeply I can feel. I want to see where the outer limits of human existence are. Why do I fight for justice? I fight because I don't think I should be alone in my journey. I fight because I think that as long as people suffer as victims of slavery, of poverty of disease, that I won't reach my potential, because I was meant to live in community and they are my community. If I ignore them, I would be someone strong and smart, but I think I would have given up a critical part of my humanity. And also it's because I believe that these abilities exist for a reason. What good would strength be if I never had to carry anything? What good would my spirit or mind be if I had no one with whom to share it? And more than that, how could I reach my full potential as a human if I don't understand life from the perspective of those who suffer? They are neither charity cases nor damsels in distress awaiting my knightly self. They are human beings with their own lives. And because of that, the most valuable thing they can give me is themselves. I would be honored to receive it.

So little by little, I want to live in time rich and full. Not the vacancy of empty movements of hands along a circle, a guillotine falling in slow motion, the life of a person aimless and purposeless, but the kind of time and life that is proper to a human being, conmeasurate with the powers and abilities that they have been gifted with.

Let's go. Clock's ticking.

100 Facts About Me: #98

2010-02-27T12:27:00.000-05:00

In my private journal, I, being at a loss for what to write, decided to list 100 random facts about myself as they came into my mind. There are some things that are more important that did not make the list but it's the list. Who knows if I'll ever put the whole thing up? Probably not. But it was a thoroughly enjoyable exercise. Here's #98.

98. I love God, I really do, but it's so hard for me to see him past the smog of Christianity. I want to innovate, pioneer, create, but all I see is the same depressing mass of Thomas Kinkadian art, all I hear is the same cacophony of songs that sound the same, the same small set of jingos and catchphrases, the same plans that leaders try to copy from each other, the same desire for numbers, for "growth"... God, I love you, but how can I be a Christian when THAT is what a Christian means when we speak of Christians? If there's anything I think that's beyond my own power to achieve, it's to try and change what it means to be a Christian in our time. God, I would ask for strength to do this, you certainly are capable of granting it, but I don't know if it's worth the cost. I know, or at least believe I know, what the cost is. I respect it. If I want something big, I'll have to pay big for it. I get it. But I just don't know if I want it enough.

The Vikings, particularly the Norwegians had the figure of the Askeladden, the free-thinker, individualist, who no one expects to succeed but does because he's bold and tries new things and questions what others hold to be fact. God, has there ever been a group of Askeladden? Isn't it very nearly a contradiction in terms? A group of people who don't care for being in groups, who think on their own? Why are the Christians I see such sheep? Not in the good way of those who know and heed their Master's voice -- their lives clearly say no -- but sheep in the sense that their only defense mechanism is to huddle in a xenophobic group? Why the hell do they love safety so much? You sent them out as sheep amongst wolves but all this bleating, cowardly mass wants to do is to stay among the sheep. Why won't they act until they're in the position of power? Why won't they stop being so cowardly? Why do I have to keep counting myself amongst their number? I don't want to leave you, and in fact I don't believe I ever will. But is it my lot to continue to suffocate in their wooly ignorance?

God, I have no ability for art. Please show me a Christian who does bold, daring and creative work, someone who's not fluffy, not soft lighting, not afraid to be post-modern, not afraid to put the ugliness in your world front and center. Not dull it, not dim it, not shy away from the fact that you are Lord over rapists, child soldiers, favelas, cancer, poverty, AIDS in Africa and tuberculosis in Russian prisons, in precisely the same way you reign omnipotent over mountain creeks, deer and sunsets over forest cottages with thatched roofs. Are there yet 500 who haven't bowed the knee to Baal? Are there yet 50 who don't give a damn about contracts and BIG IMPACT just so they do something worth doing? Are there kids in youth groups who are willing to practice until the skin strips off their fingers, who don't care about hanging out with their sunday school buddies so they can go and write music? Are there youth groups who say "Sit down and shut up, parents. A child who has this kind of dedication should be cultivated and supported in his Christian walk."? Are there parents who say "To hell with you, youth group. Dedication isn't idolatry and it isn't sin." God, show me a philosopher who's faithful, who's bold and courageous, who believes that you are truer than logic and who's willing to think critically about everything. Give us someone who's not going to attack the weak points of other religions and belief systems. That is not the way of kings. God, give us someone who's willing to fight strength and against strength because of his utter conviction in your reality and his utter submission to honor and fairness.

God, I have no idea how this turned into a prayer. But I'm praying now. I'm praying that middle America god-damn moves out of the god-damned middle. Throw away the 401k, the college savings, the college debt, burn your bridges, no safety nets, do something worth doing. I'm praying for the downfall of idiots like Benny Hinn and for bears to maul Creflo Dollar. God, damn this HappyShinyPlasticanity all the way to hell. Wake people up to how ugly life is and how beautiful it could be. God, show people that sedated, easy living is hell in slow motion. I don't like C.S. Lewis much anymore, though I do owe him quite a debt, owe YOU quite a debt really, but that scene from the Last Battle works perfectly well. Joel Osteen and the rest of the Prosperity Pulpits, feed us rotting cabbage and moldy bread while we fail to see, smell and taste the impossibly rich feast around us. Who the hell cares what your neighbor Mary Jo Rottencrotch thinks and gossips about us, what import are her words when we are truly alive? God, oh God, my God, why does no one consider it a sin to leave this magnificent world that you created for our pleasure, untouched while we wage war and do violence over dime-store delights that never satisfy? Why does no one care about this? Why do pastors want to do another boring, staid, run-down, worn-out revival meeting when no one knows how good your gifts are? Who the hell wants to be a Christian when this is what a Christian looks like? Dumb, sheepish, gossiping, clannish, cliquish, cowardly... What conclusion will others draw about you, God, you who are supposed to be Most High, Most Exalted, Most Wise and Most Strong, when your followers exemplify your antipodes and rarely, if ever, draw closer?

God, give me the balls to ask that I go forward as one of these pioneers. I mean really, the nail that stands tallest gets hit the hardest. Who wants to be that nail? And who would be that nail for such a backward, wayward, stupid, sheepish, troupe? These are the kinds of people who burn at the stake the one who discovers fire, straps to the electric chair the one that tames lightning, and crucifies the one who comes to bridge Infinity and Mortality. No, that's not me asking. I'm still a long way from asking. I'm just asking that over the course of my life, as I grow, as I enjoy my life, that maybe one day I'd see this as something worth fighting for. I don't know. I'm actually OK with you choosing someone else for this. Let someone else charge up that hill. I feel like I've bled enough. Seriously. But if you give me the big, brass orbs to ask you. Then go all the way and grant it to me.

Amen.

Always and Never

2010-02-25T23:10:00.000-05:00

Women never shut up.

Men never listen.

Blacks can never be trusted.

Jews are always stingy.

Asians are always frail.

Whites are always boring.

Republicans never care about the poor.

Democrats never care about America.

It suddenly strikes me that the words "always" and "never" might be great indicators of the lizard brain at work. The lizard brain works at the instinctual level responding to fears and drives. It can only act on impulse. People are not lizard brains. They have lizard brains. It is simply a question of whether they serve their impulses or their impulses serve them. I'll go into that another time and if anyone knows any more about it, I'd love to learn.

But at any rate, why am I thinking about this? Facebook. Youtube. If I wanted to argue for the destruction of all our technology and a return to the age of naked savages with clubs and torches, I would use the internet as my strongest argument. In graduate school, one of my classmates was fascinated with technology and the concept of the singularity -- particularly the eventual union of all humanity into a single consciousness. Having seen Facebook threads, having seen Youtube comments, I can only shudder at the thought. Discussions on the internet have this unnerving tendency to degenerate into what amounts to be geysers of sewage spraying in every direction.

The words "always" and "never" have the ability to comfort a person in ways that empiricism simply cannot. Absolutes order the world, give it structure, tell you what your place is in it, require you only to nod your head and go along.

Arabs are always terrorists.

Americans always fight for freedom.

Arabs are always oppressed by the Zionists.

Americans are always after oil.

Atheists are always scientific.

Christians never think.

Atheists are always arrogant douchebags.

Christians are always persecuted for their faith.

Everything fits into categories. Nothing is left unaccounted for. The things that are left unaccounted for need no explanation. They only need to be explained away. That black swan isn't a swan at all because all swans are white! Logic now moves in reverse, a retrograde rationality.

If you wish to live life, the lizard brain must be subdued and made your servant. The impulses must be mastered. The fear must be mastered. Embrace uncertainty, venture forth into the darkness of not-knowing, of possibly-never-knowing, and set up your tents there. When you hear the questions howl in the night, don't run back to the warm, moist confines of mother's womb -- once you've left it, you can never go back -- instead go forward, always forward, and seek out the unknown.

Approach each moment, each instance, each atom with the knowledge that its distinct from every other. Your sample size is always one. Don't approach everything the same way. There may in fact be two of the same thing. I may be wrong. You won't know until you get there. I'll be working from the premise that if I want to get there, I'll have to get moving. If it makes sense to you, then get off your ass and go. If it doesn't make sense to you, if sitting still and waiting for the answer seems more reasonable, then sit and wait. But you must think. You must overcome the mind that knows only fear, thinks of only survival, can not give you anything more than survival. Is survival all you're after?

Pretty girls are always bitches. Or have boyfriends.

Good guys are always taken. Or gay.

Frat boys are always homophobic jerks.

Sorority girls are always sluts.

Premise #1: Life is infinitely rich and diverse.
Premise #2: Homogeneity is wearisome.
Conclusion: The diversity of experiences and facts in life is a gift from God.

"A ship is safe in the harbor -- but that is not what ships are built for."

-- John A. Shedd

To enjoy this gift, we have to leave the harbor. A willingness to throw away what we know in order to gain what we don't yet know -- isn't this a premise to all learning? I believe it's a fair one. The classical physics that govern airplanes and billiards required minds to throw away the Greek theory of the elements. Quantum physics, Schrodinger's cat, requires us to discard the airplanes and eight-balls. What new mysteries yet unknown will require us to throw away quantum physics anew? Are you scared or excited? Do you want to shrink back or push forward?

"... don't be mad because it's all about progression/ loiterers should be arrested"

-- Jay-Z, On To The Next One

For me, I learned this experience when I took a gender politics course in grad school. Up until this point, I only received an unilateral education in gender politics -- conservative and Christian. I'm still not exactly sure what my motives were for taking the class. Was it because feminist criticism was the only major school of theory that I had no training in? I think I said that to some people. Was it because other people believed that those people, those gays, those lesbians, those people who love gays and lesbians, were so far away from God that they could never be brought back and consequently needed an intrepid adventurer like myself to go and win them for Jesus? Yes, I believe I thought that to myself a number of times too. Or maybe because it's the only class that could fit my schedule that semester. I don't remember.

But I do remember carrying a combative attitude to class every week in the early part of the semester. I can only express relief that I did most of the readings and as is my usual habit, waited around to get a sense of things before I spoke. Something changed in me. I began to see where they were coming from and the legitimacy of their arguments. These were serious thoughts and issues that needed to be considered. I burned with shame and anger that I laughed at Voddie's jokes. No, lesbians are not lesbians because they "can't get some." No gays are not failed attempts at "being men." I've seen too much to make that repulsive a joke. I have had a lot of great things happen to me in life, all of which I feel a deep indebtedness to God for, and right near the top is whatever work of the Holy Spirit caused me to walk a mile in feminist and LGBT shoes. I don't agree with them, particularly on political issues -- I remain adamant against abortion although not opposed to gay marriage (which isn't the same as supporting it), but I understand the issues far more fully now. And more importantly, I respect the origin of those issues. And I sneer at the ostriches in the pulpit, the ones who have never sailed real-life experience's stormy seas, the ones who say that we're the ones being persecuted when we comprise 90% of the population.

I wonder what kind of world we would have if we could all subdue our lizard brains and venture into the unknown. Last year I had an argument with someone over religion. I don't do much of this sparring anymore but he had been so aggressively douchey about it that I felt compelled to stand up. He eventually made this assertion that I could believe whatever I wanted because it gave me comfort.

Comfort.

Motherf*cking comfort. My religion, my belief in God has been the source of nearly all my greatest anxieties and angers in life. Love God? Sometimes I hate him. I love the Courage Wolf quote "Climb the highest mountain. Punch the face of God." because that's exactly what I want to do sometimes. Even the pains I experienced in relationships are attributable to my theological leanings. I certainly did not choose Christianity for Goddamned comfort.

But this assertion flew. As if he knew me! As if he understood me! As if he knew about my mental breakdown where I ran off into the stormy New England night, sprinting into the howling wind and pouring rain, lost in a park, with my cell phone battery dying, screaming obscenities into the sky until my throat was hoarse and punching boulders until my knuckles bled. Comfort. God damned, motherf*cking comfort.

But can I blame him? Christians, in debates, often assert that people don't want to be Christian because they want to continue to live in immorality. Hell, I made that argument many times in my early years. I made that argument to people I didn't know, barely knew and knew all my life. I followed a script. The whole world followed a script. But that was then. Here we are now. I grew. I moved forward. And now that I know, I'm resolved only to ever move forward.

Would you join me in this journey?

Response to Dan's "On Pain"

2010-02-24T07:27:00.000-05:00

Did you know googling ''Dan Shih" gets you his picture on the first page of google images?

I have yet to find mine under the google image search.

Dan wrote an excellent blog today, yesterday, whatever, I don't remember whether Australia's the future or the past, on pain. I wanted to respond, but as always, it got too long. So this is my response.

To talk about pain, I want to talk about my upbringing. I hated my upbringing.

Of course I would, I'm a product of my culture. Hating your origins is as natural as divorce, college education and awkwardness. And because of that, I am deeply thankful for my tendency towards the unnatural. I hated it. Note the past tense. I no longer do.

Stereotypes, despite their exaggerations, have their origin in reality. Consider, if you will the one associated with Asians: cowardly, small, weak, awkward... but at the same time, over-educated, under-endowed and the only compensation is a ridiculous ability with computers and money. I've grown up in the Asian-American community. I went to one, no two, prestigious institutions in my life. I've been in the locker rooms. It's not completely false. It's not even mostly false. It's mostly true.

And how very much of that stereotype finds its origin in our upbringing? It's not going where you think it is. Yes, my upbringing caused me pain but I dealt with it. I'm not going to spout some emo trash here. What I want to talk about is why that upbringing even existed in the first place.

Why do Asians put such an inordinate value on harmony, safety and education? Why do they demean ideas like pursuing your dreams, doing what you love and the life of the body?

My father was a city boy. He graduated at the top of his class (and for all the hucksters who think this is stereotypical, consider that the rest of his class was Asian and they were not the top. So we have 1 case for promoting this particular stereotype and the rest of the class for refuting it.) about to head off into college and become a math teacher (no defense here). Then the Cultural Revolution hit. He was shipped off to the countryside to smash Ming vases to make chicken feeders. He was imprisoned. Seven times. And on the seventh time he escaped. One of my most vivid memories in life is when he called me into his room when I was young, still a pre-teen. And then he showed me the scars he received from the attack dogs in prison. How many of your fathers have prison scars?

He came to America during the era of Democrat mayors. Anyone who remembers this time remembers that it was an utter shit-show. I, even I, was too scared to ride the subways alone at any time during that period. This is not the Republican era New York City of today, this is the Gotham of television and movies. I've been mugged three times in my life. Twice by gunpoint, once by a mob of about fifteen kids from the neighboring school. All of this happened during the Democrat era. My father did not have my language skills. He did not have my physique. He did not have himself being my father to strengthen him. He had his mind and his will to survive. Two days after he arrived in America, the great New York blackout happened. This was the summer of the Reggie Jackson era Yankees and the Son of Sam murders. He lived in Harlem.

How would you survive, reader?

Dan writes from a certain perspective. I agree with it. I might even go as far as to say that I find my own words spilling out into his blog at times. It's my life perspective as well. But consider the difference in my father's position and mine. His life was accustomed to pain and hardship, of reboots, riots and racial tensions. He worked a Chinese take-out place in Brooklyn once. They left the back door open in the summer because it just got too damn hot. One day some black kids from the neighborhood threw a lit firecracker through the back door. If this was your life, wouldn't you carry a butcher's knife with you at all times? Wouldn't you walk expecting to use it at any given moment? Wouldn't you live in fear?

Does it seem so far fetched to discourage your loved ones to avoid the risky route? Did they suffer so much, endure so much, and love you so much, that they could so easily allow you to try to be a professional musician, athlete or actor? It's form is rather similar to the prisoner's dilemma. Choosing to absorb the tedium of life gives you a higher chance of experiencing epic failure. If they didn't go through life like this, their culture certainly did, and as a culture, as a massive living consciousness, they've adopted a risk-averse, pain-averse strategy as a method of survival.

The East never experienced the Romantic Era as a distinct period. No Beethoven or Byronic heroes, no smashing your patron's vase against the wall like the composer and no dashing off with medical supplies to aid the Greek liberation movement like the poet. People like me, who would rather raise a fist than bow a head, are still very much a novelty. We all know someone weird like that, but it's nowhere to the level of having cultural roots.

You know, I wanted to throw up a picture of an Asian dork at the top of this post. It was about 5 in the morning and I didn't think too deeply about what I was doing. Imagine my surprise when I had to dig really far to find anything that remotely resembled what I wanted to use. Culture is changing. My immigrant generation, ever so slowly, is realizing that their parents' values do not serve them in a land of security. To hell with your homeland security warnings, would you rather live in LA or Lebanon or Liberia? We live in comfort and security. What preserves life in crisis situations suffocates life in times of abundance. I wish I asked that Hispanic girl out back in Junior High. She was uncommonly pretty. I wish I punched that Irish boy back in Elementary school. He tormented me mercilessly. My life might've been much different today.

Indulge me in a brief tangent if you will. I think one of the reasons I have this perpetually simmering anger at the people of my church is that it seems so few people realize that they don't have to live this way. I want so badly for them to stop living under the constant fear of some nameless, vague, unidentifiable terror. Why do I bully the boys at my church so badly? It's because I want so badly for someone to stand up to me. To take a risk. To look me in the eye. God, I want someone so badly to look me in the eye when I talk to them. Why is it that I try to teach them the ways to subdue me? I would like some of them to use it. I want someone to see that if they apply their mind and efforts, they can surpass me. But no one has risen to this challenge. And so week by week, I wonder if I should just shake the dust off my shoes.

The world surrounding us in 2010, for those of us living in the urban west, rewards risk-takers because the repercussions of failure are so very light. How many home runs might be hit if batters needed 4 or 5 or 6 strikes to get struck out? But in life, we are batters that can stand at the plate for a near infinite number of strikes. That girl said 'no' to you, you super pathetic Asian male? The next one is sitting not 5 feet away. That college turn you down? TO HELL WITH COLLEGE. Shit on Yale. Punch a Harvard Grad in the face. Slap the word UCLA out of someone's mouth. And yes, when someone says NYU laugh in their face too. Show this blog to your parents. Read a manual, learn on your own, use your strength, your mind, your will and forge ahead. Where's your initiative and resourcefulness? What's the worse that's going to happen? You have a job as a day laborer and make a living? HALF THE WOLRD LIVES ON LESS THAN TWO DOLLARS A DAY. If you live in the urban West, no matter what you do, you have a very low chance of being worse off than half the species. Why are you still so cowardly? Why won't you step off the beaten path?

Now, keep in mind that this is hyperbole. College can teach you a lot. I valued my time in Baruch and yes, even NYU. It's unwise to live avoiding risk, avoiding the potential for pain when the pain is so light and the risks so few, but it's just as unwise to take risks for the sake of doing so. There is a matter of wisdom to choosing your risks. I, as you might know, work as a government paralegal. Yes, I chose this because it is safe. Because I lean on expecting 80 years of life, because I know what I want and the highest chance of getting there means taking the right risks. The wise path is to properly assess the risk and potential for pain. It requires you to use your mind, to think, to consider and to make your own damn decision. It's equally cowardly to have one manner of decision making, always on or always off, for every decision in life.

Next, I'm going to write on how this parlays into Pain Avoidance and Life Achievement.

Congregational Prayer February 21, 2010

2010-02-22T20:24:00.000-05:00

The following is the prayer I wrote for yesterday's worship service.

Lord God, Scripture, every page of Scripture declares both your sovereignty and your majesty. From the first pages of Genesis where you framed the sky above us, formed the earth beneath us and fashioned the people around us, we understand that you Lord, are good, by the joys we experience through these things. From there to the final pages of Revelation where you promise to come again restoring shalom to the world, creating anew and restoring again the heavens and the earth to their proper place, drying every tear and wiping every eye, judging all nations and all peoples, displaying at once your perfect justice and your deep mercy, we understand your sovereignty. Lord, you reign and to you alone belongs the right to judge.

But God as we live between the beginnings of Genesis and the end-point of Revelation, while we yet live on this earth surrounded by sorrow, suffering and sin, Lord would you hear our cry. We rebel against your rule in our lives, we follow our desires, consider our knowledge, wisdom and discernment to be of greater worth than yours. So Lord, we plead forgiveness for the ways we slander your name -- our thoughts, our words, our deeds. In our wealth and affluence, God, forgive us our neglect. We take these testaments of human drive, desire and determination around us, monuments to man's intelligence and ingenuity, and by these great wonders, which you fully intended to serve us, now blind us, and blot you out of our sight. In trusting in only these small things, we grow sedated and complacent, fat and indolent, drowning in affluence and apathy.

God wake us up.

Show us God, that you're better than the food we eat, the T.V. shows we watch, the sports we follow, the video games we play, and all the hundred million little false gods that occupy our lives. Are you better than these things, God? Show us! Are you more worthwhile than the creations of your creations? Show us. Yahweh God, He Who Is That He Is, He Whose Introduction Is His Presence, Whose Name Is His Justification, you Lord to help us ask honestly whether you are greater than all of life's frivolities. Jesus Christ, would you slap the plastic, store-bought, saran-wrapped Sunday School answers from our mouths. Those things won't survive Monday morning. Lord, give us a real answer -- the kind that only comes from truly knowing you, from having a broken heart that you alone repair.

For those of us drunk on our own strength, inebriated by our pay grade and badges of luxury, for those who would never think that this prayer is for them, for those who only give their "amen" when the prayer points to those who earn more than them, for these people would you shatter their illusion of stability. Would they realize that their wallets provide no security and that your strength alone is surety.

For those who are weary of life, who search for entertainment as rodents search for crumbs, for those whose hands itch and inch closer and closer to their Nintendo DS's and cell phones the longer this prayer goes on, Lord would you terrify these people with your reality. No one is ever bored when their life is in danger, so God would you scare them senseless with your presence. Not with the Hellfire, I ask, Lord, but with your grandeur. The pits of Hell have no terror to match the brilliance of your throne. Would you show them your presence and would you force them to ask themselves whether they will live transfixed by the proximity of Ultimate Reality or whether they will live hunched over a LCD screen much smaller than their heart.

And for all those others who we lack the time to pray for this morning, for those that we've already prayed for, for all peoples the plea is the same: Lord don't let us keep sleepwalking through life. Open our eyes, open our hearts, cause us to live with the vastness of Infinity as our kernel, sprouting bold lives and fearless deeds.

In your name we pray,
Amen.

Just Desserts

2010-02-19T22:26:00.000-05:00

I finished reading the first volume of "In Search of Lost Time."

What a god-awful mess it was. Because of the book, I grew to hate my daily commute. My pride would not let me leave the book unfinished, my values did their best to keep from reading more. From the very start, I despised the sentence structure. I enjoyed the fact that it mimicked the natural flow of thoughts -- it's quite accurate, but that's something to use once as an example, and then to be filed away, never to be bothered with again. To fill over 600 pages in that manner borders on the obscene. But this does not begin to enumerate my many misgivings with the book.

I hate each and every single character in the book. It is a deep, visceral hatred. I would very much like to fight them, for my right-straight to shatter jaws and send shards of teeth flying in every direction. I cannot stand doddering old aristocrats who care about family registers, who cling to the fortunes of a by-gone era, spending their lives looking for entertainment and, for lack of a better word, 'drama'. I quite like nobility when they are active and doing things. I don't mind kings, barons, counts, earls, knights who plot and govern, wage war, negotiate truces and march at the forefront with their battle standards. I hate the ones who grow fat and lazy, made obsolete by guilds and craftsmen. Clutter, even if it wears an ermine cape, should be thrown out with the trash.

I hate characters who "fall in love" which is to say the hazy, vague, unidentifiable obsessive love that sickens its host. This is not love. This is an adolescent psychic parasite and should be treated as such. Remove the offending agent and take measures to never acquire it again. Because of how deeply opposed I am to this kind of infantile type of love -- I, in my own practice, never call this type of emotive state, love -- I can't help but group "In Search Of Lost Time", revolutionary novel, ground-breaking novel that it is, with mf'in Twilight.

Just as I hate Edward Cullen, I hate Swann (how ironic) and would dearly love to step on their necks. Principally, I hate the kind of 'love' that's not openly predicated on values but on impulse and unidentified desire. Love is always, always a response to values. If a person continues to choose partners that injure him, I'm going to just flat out say that I'm talking about women who are always in relationships with abusive, violent men, and men who are continually in relationships with castrating harpies, I am going to say it is because they have chosen it, and until they change their value system, they will never choose anything but their own pain and torment.

So when I read for God-knows-how-many-pages about Swann's adoration for Odette de Crecy and how, in the vernacular, she's playing him like an old Nintendo classic, I want to throw the book out a window and scream "Stop being a whiny prick and do something about it!" The people I have the least tolerance and most fist for are the over-educated and under-couraged who use their sensitive brains as an excuse for such a flimsy will.

Does this signify my leaving the realm of literary theorists? Well then, good riddance. I know of a few people, all of them would describe themselves as literarily minded, who would go apoplectic at this kind of criticism that I'm leveling. It's not done in one of the major schools? It's neither Foucaultian or Derridian or ... or... He's really leveling a moral objection to the book? Hell yes. I object to the book because this is exactly the kind of trash work that wastes my time with its delicate and sensitive topics. My only pleasant experience from the book is the fact that I can now say that in reading "In Search Of Lost Time" I wish that I could find the time I lost in reading it.