The War on Drugs

'those who use meth can lose everything,' my computer screen tells me. another bullet fired in the war on drugs. but those who use colgate can lose everything too. or those who take cream in their coffee. or children just barely learning to walk. it is the blaring uncertainty of modern life.

and so tight-lipped middle-aged men frown at the gas pumps with pink-slips in their trouser pockets. their wives withdraw from reality one prozac at a time while the tv screams out WAR, RAPE, MURDER, and GREED in 30 second sound-bites. flash to commercial.

i have a good job, i don't dread lay-offs or job cuts. but i can no longer sleep at night. too much caffeine. a grande vanilla breve latte + an extra shot = 300mg caffeine. acute overdose of caffeine may result in restlessness, nervousness, excitement, insomnia, flushing of the face, increased urination, gastrointestinal disturbance, muscle twitching, a rambling flow of thought and speech, irritability, irregular or rapid heart beat, and psychomotor agitation. In cases of much larger overdoses mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, loss of social inhibition, delusions, hallucinations, psychosis, rhabdomyolysis, and death may occur. 'those who use caffeine can lose everything.'

my wife sleeps in the room next door as i flip between informercials and b-grade movies. modonna and willem dafoe are making love on my tv. she drips hot candle wax on his chest. he flinches. she switches to wine, pours a drop, licks it off. repeat. i wait for dafoe to disapear in a flash fire of paraphin and pinot grigio but it never happens. instead they move to the shower. i am disapointed. flash to commercial.

Confusing Capitalism with Love

I.
'go to bed,' i tell krista as juno ends. i bought the movie for her at
circuit city. it came in a big orange box with a t-shirt inside.

'well, neither of us wears a size large,' she said, as she dropped the
shirt on the living room floor. it was red with a yellow embled that
said 'dancing elk condors.'

'would you at least come lay down with me?' she asks. i stay up late
on the nights before i work so i can get back on the graveyard
schedule.

'did you drink more than just the bacardi tonight?' i ask after i
taste liquor in our kiss.

'i drank captain morgans with orange juice too.' she turns on her
right side to snuggle against me. lightning flashes like cheap chinese
sparklers through the eastern-facing bathroom window and peeks into
our bedroom. i hold my breath waiting for the thunder that never came.

'did you drink because you are sad?' her sister had tried to kill
herself with tylenol pm and a steak knife just a few nights before
after her husband caught her in bed with the neighbor. it was her
third suicide attempt and second involving tylenol.

'not because i am sad--maybe a little. but i haven't drank in a while
and this is the last night before you work; i wont drink for the next
7 days at least.'

a pause. i shift uncomfortably; april can be incredibly humid in
texas.

'would you turn on the fan?'

i slide off the sheets and flip the ceiling fan on, then lay back on
the bed. her hand rests on my bicep.

II.
i see god through american eyes. what i mean is that i try and earn
god's love because i have been taught that nothing comes for free.
tanstaafl: there aint no such thing as a free lunch. my continued
obedience will lead to god's continued approval of me; this is a very
capitalist mindset and one i wish to escape.

the root of this issue is my mistaken views on love. i had never been
in love until recently and my information on the subject came largely
from second-hand accounts that i pieced together into a hodge-podge
collection of trite antedotes with enough skepticism to keep things
hip. my patchwork-opinion on love was that it was something like a
business contract with seperate parties agreeing to certain
stipulations which, when carried out, resulted in love. the church
taught me this with uber-conservative dating advice, advice that
stressed abstinence more than honesty and sobriety more than
selflessness. and when it came to god, i cut my teeth on guilt. i was
too young at the time to realize that organized religion uses guilt as
a way to extort money and gather power; i was too young to see the
absurdity of thinking that god would resort to guilt. love, to me, was
just a checklist of do's and don't's that i could never perfect.
now i realize that love is not our own, it is a borrowed emotion. what
i mean is that it springs from somewhere outside of ourselves; that
can be a spiritual urge or a sexual one. and true love causes us to
create.

III.
my friend matt came over at 8pm. we drank rich bitter vodka from
martini glasses with lemon-slices as we sat on the floor playing
vinyls on my turntable.

To Kill For

"There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for."
-Gandhi

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than 25,000 people die of starvation every day, and more than 800 million people are chronically undernourished. On average, every five seconds a child dies from starvation.

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US$ (PPP) 1 per day, and moderate poverty as less than $2 a day. It has been estimated that in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day. The proportion of the developing world's population living in extreme economic poverty has fallen from 28 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2001.

• One third of deaths - some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day - are due to poverty-related causes. That's 270 million people since 1990, the majority women and children, roughly equal to the population of the US.
• Every year nearly 11 million children die before their fifth birthday.

• 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day

• 800 million people go to bed hungry every day.

Polls have shown that, on average, Americans believe that 24% of the federal budget goes to development assistance. In reality, less than 1% of the budget goes to this.

So what are you killing for? What extra comfort are you purchasing with the life of a child? It is something worth considering.

The information presented here was gleaned from Wikipedia.org and the sources presented on that site.

Check this website out: www.compassion.com

Cider House Christianity

I am a bad Christian. I don’t like reading my Bible. Honest, I really try to avoid it at times. Let me describe the scenario: I get my Bible out, flip to the chapter and remember that either a) I am hungry, b) I still have a dozen pages of homework to finish, c) my girlfriend is calling, d) there’s an amazing indie film that I need to check out. So I end up reading only a little bit, just enough to make me feel guilty but not enough to learn very much from. So then God (who is a sneaky fellow) drops me a line where ever I happen to be: in the kitchen, at school, through my girlfriend or in an indie movie. That’s sort of what happened today.

I was watching the movie Cider House Rules. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. It is one of those beautiful movies, beautiful script, acting, cinematography—the whole package, really. It’s about kindness, and not judging, about abortion and responsibility. And then there is this one part that knocked me down for the count. Homer is reading a list of typewritten rules posted in the bunkhouse for the migrant workers when the leader of the workers, Mr. Rose, interrupts him by saying “The people who wrote those rules never even lived in this house. Why should we follow them?” That pretty much crushed me.

My life is a connect-the-dots between judgments: judgment against my family, friends, the church, the government, random people who yell at their kids in Wal-Mart, random kids who yell in Wal-Mart and people who cut me off in traffic. People can be so annoying. Then again, I have never lived in their houses, I have never lived their lives, felt their pain, been faced with their decisions so I can’t judge that. But I try. The fact of the matter is, Christianity is more ambiguous than we would like to think. It is not an easy thing to say ‘this is right’ or ‘this is wrong.’ Christ left it obtuse, perhaps even intentionally just so we would be forced to come to the painful realization that we really can’t use our super-powered holy vision to sight-read sins.

So here is my latest epiphany all written down in black and white: we really don’t know what is right or wrong. People are so complex and each situation presents with far too many layers for us to be able to pass judgment. I think we would be better served if we took all the time we typically spend on judging others and spent that time just loving others without prejudice. Maybe then, after we have lived in their houses, we can see their souls with clearer sight. Our lives might even look a little like Christ’s.

This is a blog written by my girlfriend. It has challenged me and I hope it does the same for you.

Forgiveness has been on my mind a lot these past couple of days. I wanted to start off the New Year with an open heart and mind and one of the things I need to do is to forgive and hope to be forgiven. Something that I struggle with is letting someone forgive me. I have hurt and disappointed many people this year and even if I have received a verbal apology from them, I don't always forgive myself. I want to apologize to all those people who I have hurt over my life span. I know it seems really insincere, but I long to be forgiven by them. I can read over and over in my bible how Christ has forgiven us, and to me this is my excuse for continuing in sin. "Oh well God will just forgive me if I lie to my mom" or "I know that this one drink won't stop me from going to heaven because I am forgiven". But the truth is when someone apologizes to you over and over again for lying or cheating, you don't want to forgive them. I mean it is human nature. So I sometimes wonder why God still forgives me for having another drink, when I know if someone did that to me, I would be done. But God has this never-ending love for us that I can't even wrap my mind around. I wish that I could love like that. But the honest truth is I have yet to forgive many people for the hurt that they have caused me, and that is what separates me from God. And it is building a huge wall between He and I. In this book I am reading called When God Writes Your Love Story the topic of marriage is brought up countless times. One of the things that really stuck out for me was that the key from keeping a marriage from ending in divorce is forgiveness. If people could just forgive each other that would save so many marriages. I am someone who grew up dreaming of becoming a wife and mother, and I know that in the forgiveness department is somewhere that needs the most work.

So the bottom line and where I was trying to go with writing this is, Forgive one another and be Forgiven. Hate is just more weight on the scale that you don't need. So my New Years resolution is to forgive others just as Christ forgave me. Christian or not Forgiveness will change and reshape your life!

With Love,
Krista

Neuro-Physiology and Nervous Grace

God speaking to us is a little more than just myelin and axons. We aren’t really talking neuro-physiology here; this is just the way God communicates with us. It’s like listening to a short wave radio: you take it for granted that there will be some static. But that is why we must be constantly tuning into God’s voice.

I heard his voice when I held hands with a girl for the first time. I heard his voice when she wouldn’t return my calls. I heard his voice in a valley cuddled in the arms of the Tetons; it was a chilly late summer day. I heard his voice in a loft apartment worshipping in song. I heard his voice in a drunk’s face, in a junkie’s veins. I heard his voice in glass of wine. I heard his voice in music and laughter, pain and sorrow. God’s voice is not only in churches or cathedrals, pastors or priests. His voice is in us all and all around us.

The real issue here is that we are just too busy to hear God. You see, God doesn’t like to shout. He doesn’t like to compete with our business or pleasure; he would rather that we come to him and offer him a few moments of our time. No lover wants to beg the one they love to spend time with them, they certainly would never shout or threaten in order to have a romantic evening. Instead the woman will make herself beautiful and desirable. The man will be thoughtful and kind. And God seduces us with sunsets. He puts on a gentle breeze for perfume and wraps himself in forests and streams. He waits for us to notice with breathless anticipation; he is enamored with us.

But when God is waiting for us, the rose petal path to the bedroom is laid out, the candles are lit and the wine is poured, I will forget to put my phone on silent or to ignore the hunger pains. So I am off to the kitchen or I have a fifteen-minute phone conversation about the deplorable state of the church, my favorite band or who will win the Super Bowl. Or even about God. But conversations about God are no substitute for conversations with God. And I can say that but it is so much harder to actually ignore the phone call from my friend Ilene (who is one of those freckled, California dream girls). In fact, I hate ignoring phone calls from beautiful women. I think that they only call me because I am so insecure that I will tell them they are beautiful while hoping that they give me some compliment in return. So if I don’t answer they will just call the next guy on their list and while it is a poor thing to be used, it sometimes feels better than being ignored altogether.

The stupid part of all this is that I know that God would never use me, that he doesn’t want my body or my talents: he just is so infatuated that he wants me for who I truly am. He wants the Micah who only drinks Passion Fruit/Mango tea or who gets mad when people don’t like his favorite artists. He wants the Micah who was checking out a hot nurse at the hospital and tripped and almost fell because he wasn’t watching where he was walking. He wants the Micah who makes idiotic comments at the most awkward moments and stalls conversations with arrogant, meaningless facts. He wants me with my faults. God is not blind; he knows me completely. Yet he is completely okay with the fact that I am a huge screw up. He is so in love with me that my faults don’t deter him; that is grace.

Forsaken and Forgiven

Blessed are the meth drinkers, Pot sellers, Illusion dwellers O Lord, why have you forsaken me? My words trickle down, like a wound I have no intention to heal.
-Paul Simon from the Simon and Garfunkel album Sounds of Silence

I am becoming aware of the fact that the single most wonderful thing in life very well could be forgiveness and that God gets pleasure out of forgiving us time and time again. And so our failures are little ladders that lead up to maturity, a maturity that consists not of perfection but of being able to humbly accept grace and forgiveness. A maturity where we can say 'I have no intention to heal' but God is becoming the owner of my intentions. Then with borrowed intentions we can truly take to the world a rare, relentless grace that is echoed in our words and mirrored in our actions.