November 15th

Today I worked a bus shift at the M. It was a fairly normal day, but the monotony of the job really got to me. I was in a good mood, but I was certainly feeling quiet and tired. Not sleepy or physically tired, just shut down. I am on and off about working at the Flying M. I love the place, and most of the people I work with, but I just don't know if I can handle foodservice for much longer. In fact I know I can't. My friends are even telling me that I need to get a new job.

I've been reading A Case for God by Kristen Armstrong. It's been good. Lots of ups and downs, though. At one moment I am feeling inspired by how humanity has viewed God and practiced religion, and at the next I am depressed at revelations about Christian history and left wondering what I really believe in. Then, I am back to being completely content with what I believe. I am loving all this history, but I am not really one to get into history. It's confusing. Maybe I should read that Lee Strobel stuff next, so I get both sides of the argument for God. Then maybe I should read some Dawkins, so that I am not unaware of what I think I disagree with.

I learned more about my possible future job today. It looks like drafting is actually a good place to be in this economy. Lots of professions need drafters. I am thinking it might be a good place to start in my quest to become an architect.

Diana and I sat by the fire tonight, it was nice. I had to lock the dogs out of the library so they would stop barking. They were being distracting and annoying.

Today is the day that Harvey is due. No Harvey yet. It is exciting for one of the couples in our friend group to take the parenthood plunge.

Back to the Blog

Hey everybody or nobody,

I'm coming back to the blog world. It has been about 7 months since my last post. I haven't stopped reading, but I have stopped writing about reading. I'm sorry if anyone/no one is disappointed about that. I've decided that I want to start doing a daily register concerning my humdrum life. Mostly this is inspired by Diana's visual diary that she is keeping. I realized how much I forget about myself in a day, and I would like to continue to compound on my experience, instead of forgetting about it and repeating it in a constant cycle. Anyone/no one who might be reading this for any reason other than an interest in me should be informed that it might be personal and it might be philosophical, but that it will probably be self-centered. Also that it won't be polished. I don't want to spend a lot of time editing things like I did in the posts that came before this one. I just want it to be a reminder of where I've been and what I've done. I've decided to keep the name the same, because it still makes sense. Expect my next post to be within the next few hours from now.

-Joe

Easter 2010

Introduction: After reviewing this posting, I realize it might sound like I believe we should treat Christians better than we treat non-Christians. I don't believe that, but it should be noted that it might be easier to offer love and forgiveness to those that don't believe the same as us if we can love and forgive those that share our values.

Tomorrow is Easter. The most important Holy Day on the Christian calendar. This year I feel oddly lost by the whole thing. It has been an uneventful, yet challenging year for me and my faith.

I still consider myself a Christian, and I still see God daily in the world around me, but the distance I feel from my "beliefs" seems to be growing. This is funny to me, because I feel strongly about what I do still believe. God's existence makes total sense to me, and I do not doubt his presence. I still believe Jesus' ways are the perfect example for the human life to emulate, so living with Him as the centerpiece of my faith is also a certainty for me. I guess what is most likely the cause of my "lost" feelings is the fact that in the last year I have given up organized church.

I am not one of those that has a problem with organized religion, mind you, but merely modern organized "church". I probably wouldn't have this problem if I was Catholic, they still have the sense that your church is your church regardless of how happy you are, or what the church is doing for you.

My problem is one clearly shared by numerous people in the evangelical world today, the collective evangelical church (and how the church views personal faith) has become too much of a product. The "church" is a building, or a charismatic pastor, or the people attending the church, and you get to choose which building, pastor, or group of people most appeals to you. They design the church to fill certain needs for certain types of people.

If your needs or beliefs change, or the direction of the church changes, there are countless other churches waiting in the wings to sweep up the mess that is made. People even switch churches based on advertising campaigns. People aren't unhappy where they are, but the grass is greener on the other football field, or they're gym has treadmills, AND elliptical machines. Is this how we were made to come together? Choosing which church best fits us? Don't we share the Christian title with many types of people, including those we don't always agree with?

Even beyond those whose exact beliefs we don't share, I'm sure there are many instances where people choose not to attend a church based on how others might look. How many whites do you see in a primarily black church? How many people in Nampa would attend a mostly hispanic congregation when there are countless churches populated with a white majority? Even with shared beliefs, people feel uncomfortable when they can't blend with the crowd, and they have the option to leave for whatever reason they choose.

Having limitless options really doesn't do great things for loyalty. It takes people of high character to stick with a church during the rough times, and most people can't live up to that standard. I've left a church or two in my day with hard feelings.

It seems to me that the way Western Christianity does "church" is still focused on the Sunday Service, and that is why I want to leave it behind. How many sermons have I heard that said that the church is the people in attendance and not the building? Do they mean that all Christians are the church, or just those in their denomination?

What if the church didn't revolve around a Sunday Service or an established denomination? What would it look like if it was just a collection of believers that had good relationships with one another? What if the nearly 200 million Christians in America decided that they were all the church body and we treated each other like brothers and sisters of the same faith? Wouldn't that make people begin to treat their neighbors a bit differently? Would we consider any time we spend with the other 199,999,999 Christians to be "fellowship"? A gathering time would be nice, but would it be necessary?

There is a 75% chance that the next American you see registered his or herself as a Christian on the 2008 census. What is the likelihood that you would treat that stranger as a brother or sister in Christ? What is the percentage of strangers that you treat with respect, or better yet, with unconditional love? Yet, at the Sunday morning service, you (hopefully) would treat all in attendance with the patience and love that comes with a shared faith in an unconditionally loving God. If we saw all Christians as the body of Christ, we might start to realize how much we have to offer those that are in need.

I am CERTAINLY not the best at this. I look at my customers at the Flying M as cattle lined up for the slaughter, not like humans in need of a little grace and love. I could also probably use some of that grace and love from the strangers I encounter, not that I deserve it.

So what do we do to solve this problem? Many have tried to start new churches, others strive to better the ones they are in, and others (like me) just give up. I would go to a church that was attended based on location like the public school system, but that would never happen (unless I joined the Catholic faith, like I mentioned earlier... Hmmm.)

Maybe I don't feel distanced from my beliefs, just alone in them. My problem probably comes from a feeling that I no longer belong to an official congregation that knows my name and my family and my personal life story.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that this isn't true. I have a bounty of close friends in my life, probably more than most people who attend Sunday service style churches. When things go wrong, I have friends who gladly talk to me, when things go right, I have countless people wanting to celebrate. When I need somebody to tell me not to be such a jerk, I have that, too. I have friends who learn and grow with me. I have friends that I challenge and that challenge me right back. I have a group of people that I can trust to help me with pretty much anything I need.

I suppose I should stop to realize that I do have a church body that I rely on, and that I don't need to feel inferior or left out of the faith because I don't attend a Sunday service or have some middle aged pastor preaching at me regularly.

I feel better now.

Happy Easter, Christ died because he loved us and wanted us to be forgiven. Lets celebrate with endless practicing of love and forgiveness.

Favorite albums of 2009

I thought this would be a good place to preserve my 2009 lists. It feels like this may be out of place, but I don't really care.

This was a really big year for me and new music. It might go down as one of the best years of my life for new releases, hence the rather large honorable mention catagory...

Honorable mentions in no particular order:

New Albums by Prefuse 73, Dead Man's Bones, Fuck Buttons, The Raveonettes, Grizzly Bear, Converge, Mt. Eerie, Andrew Bird, The Dodos, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Sufjan Stevens, Heavy Trash, The Flaming Lips, and Lightning Dust.

Favorites:

15. YACHT - See Mystery Lights

This barely made it to where it is. You could probably switch it out for any of my honorable mention picks, but it is here because I've listened to it a few times more than any of those.

14. Dizzee Rascal - Tongue in Cheek

Dizzee should be in my top five of the year. This album is still good, but it is obviously not the work of someone concerned with perfection. Dizzee is getting distracted by all that money he made with his last three amazing records. (Impressive that he made it into my top 15 with a mediocre effort, though)

13. St. Vincent - Actor

This would be higher if it was a "best of" list. I liked it a lot, and it showed some great talent, it just didn't get as many listens as it deserved.

12. Decemberists - Hazards of Love

I thought this album was the years best when it came out early this year. It had some stiff competition and lacked a little in staying power, but damn it was good live. And the Double Vinyl is certainly still a proud member of our collection.

11. Magnolia Electric Co - Josephine

A sad album honoring the death of Jason Molina's close friend Josephine. I'm a sucker for eulogy records.

10. The Thermals - Now We Can See

I think this album proved to me that even pop-punk, if done tastefully and creatively, can be listenable. My inner 13 year old is satisfied, but won't be complete until ska gets the chance to prove its value to 25 year old Joe.

9. Built to Spill - There is No Enemy

Local dudes delivered their best album in years.

8. Shelley Short - A Cave, A Canoo

This might be here because it was in our car stereo for half the year and I have every song memorized. But even so, it made it to the 8th spot of the list by being able to survive in the stereo for as long as it did.

7. Dan Deacon - Bromst

Reptile Rumble will be spinning this one till its grooves are demolished.

6. Clem Snide - Hungry Bird

"I can't find comfort in the fact that it could be worse." Diana lives by that line.

5. Mewithoutyou - It's All Crazy, It's All False, It's All a Dream, It's Alright!

Mewithoutyou has finally written praise music that doesn't sound trite, cliche, or forced. This is a fully Christian album that stands up on it's own feet. You don't have to say "this record is good, for a Christian band," it is just good on its own. Who knew that was possible?

4. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs

I love Yo La Tengo. They make me happy. They could put me in a guitar fuzz daze any day of the week.

3. Megafaun - Gather, Form & Fly

This album makes it this high on my list because of how addicting it is. The songs are incredibly memorable and their ability to do something new with the Americana/Folk genre makes me excited for their future output. I listened to this album hundreds of times this summer.

2. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

These dudes are probably in my top three artists of all time list. I just think what they are doing in electronic music will never be matched by anyone else. All I need to say to describe their album is that I believe they are my generation's version of the Beatles. (The Beatles in the sense of songwriting and creativity, obviously not in the sense of affecting pop culture.)

1. David Bazan - Curse Your Branches

David Bazan's most honest and abrasive album yet. I wrote a blog after the first few listens of this album that sums up my thoughts. This album will make you laugh, cry, and feel dead inside. It is incredibly moving, and has probably changed my life.

Christmas Trees For Sale

This story begins as the sun goes down on a stale, cold November night. The type of night where everything in the world seems to have a grey tint, and you hit every red light on your way home from work. A woman pulls her old Lumina mini-van into a dirt lot. The sun is now far enough covered in the horizon that her headlights are on, but aren't doing much. Only letting others on the road know of her vehicle's presence. As she pulls into the lot her wheels roll through the ruts made by the many cars and trucks that have preceded her. She avoids the bigger potholes concealed by tan, muddy puddles left by yesterday's rain. The tires make an all-too-familiar crackling sound as they kick up gravel while pulling into the closest parking spot she could find. She puts the car in park and lets out a long disheartened sigh as she turns the key to kill the engine. The front door of the van swings open. She steps out and looks closely at the giant inflatable Santa Claus with his right hand up and his gaze set upward as if he was waving hello to someone in the sky. From the road she couldn't see the mud splattered on him by traffic or the grey water spots left by the rain. Close-up, the big, bright Santa is just as bleak as the world around her.

In this part of the country, the holiday season is less of a white Winter wonderland, and more of a muddy, grey mess. The sun is too cold to warm the surface, but just warm enough to keep all precipitation from freezing. Even when the snow falls on the city, it just melts into slush in the daytime, then freezes into ice in the evening. Although its effect isn't universal throughout the city, the weather takes a heavy toll on the population's mood. It's hard to find a more depressing time to visit. People act as if a stranger is their enemy instead of an unknown neighbor. Dogs are kicked, children are harshly shushed, and spouses are given cold shoulders. Houses are still decorated with lights, but they are merely a facade. The colors adorned in trees and across rain gutters are an attempt to hide the dismay that the weather and holiday stress build in the minds of the people living within the walls of the decorated homes. The sigh that the women let out as she turned off her mini-van is a regular occurrence in most homes on most days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The woman has decided to pick up her family's Christmas tree on the way home from work. Her husband will be thrilled to avoid the slow selection process. Her children will probably cry because they wanted to help find the perfect tree. Finding the perfect tree is the last thing on her mind. In fact, she is tempted to grab the first one she sees and run with it. Throwing it into the back of her van, then speeding off into the stark, overcast sunset. Of course, that won't happen. Part of the holiday stress is the need to make Christmas morning look and feel as romantic as everybody expects it to be. She walks down the path, using a keen eye to find the tree that is the right height and with the least amount of unsightly blemishes. As she stops to get a closer look at a possible candidate a man on his cellphone brushes past her in a hurry, knocking her purse to the ground. He looks back and mouths sorry while continuing to move away into the parking lot. She bends over to pick up her purse, telling off the man with the cellphone in the privacy of her own mind.

As the sun begins to fade completely out of sight and darkness starts to settle on the city, the Christmas tree dealer brings out floodlights. The Santa Claus inflatable begins to glow, causing his cheeks to become even more red than before. Those in the road can now easily make out the dirt and mud specks all over his body. The floodlights light up the trees better than the sun, giving the woman a better view of what the tree will look like in the artificial light of her living room. She begins to smile as she walks around the lot, still searching for the right tree.

After finding her perfect Christmas tree, the woman walks up to the camper where the tree dealer has a cashbox ready. There is a campfire burning to the left of the woman with two teen boys surrounding it. She gives the man a credit card and he walks up the steps into the camper. One of the two boys looks over at the woman and they connect eyes for a few seconds. His chapped lips move into the form of a forced smile. The woman looks away. She tries to remember the number tied to one of the tree's branches. She tells them the number and they begin to walk in the direction of the tree to help load it into her car. One of the boys playfully kicks the other underneath his foot as he walks, causing him to trip up a bit. They let out a few laughs and begin talking quietly to one another. They get about halfway to the parking lot before the man comes out to tell the woman that her card had been declined. He says he ran it twice and it declined each time. He tells her that he doesn't take checks.

She didn't have any cash, so the boys had to return the tree to its original spot with the others. After it was back in place, they returned to their spots by the fire, staring at the flickering colors. The woman decided to just go home. No need to call the credit card company, she knew they must have gone over their limit last weekend while shopping for Christmas gifts. She wasn't stressed about the card declining, they had the money to pay it off, she just wished that her last minute decision to buy a tree had worked out. She wanted some time at the end of her day to just relax. To forget the stress of the season. To cross another item off of her endless holiday to-do list. The wheels of her Lumina crackled out of the parking lot. The giant, glowing Santa waved goodbye to the sky as she drove out of the lot and down the street.

The woman wouldn't return to the dirt lot to buy her Christmas tree. Instead, the next day while cruising the clearance aisle at Shopko she noticed a different sort of perfect tree. One that could permanently cross the Christmas tree off of her holiday to-do list. This perfect tree was made of metal, wire and nylon. It did not have a trunk nor did it shed needles. She did not need to water the tree, because it was not living. At the end of the Christmas season it fit perfectly back into the cardboard box it lived in before being purchased. The manufacturer would say that the tree was immortal, but in fact the tree was dead, and the box was it's coffin. She could throw out the old, metal tree stand that had been used since before the children were born. The woman kept the tree skirt, but it's function became fashion.

The tree that she had chosen at the dirt lot was never purchased. It became firewood for the Christmas tree salesman and the teen boys he employed. It gave them warmth during breaks from cleaning up the lot they temporarily inhabited. The giant, inflatable Santa Claus waved goodbye as he deflated to the ground. Soon enough, the dirt lot was empty again. The trailer that the salesman lived in for three cold, Winter weeks crackled away, and a sign on the property that said "for sale" took it's rightful place, where Santa stands each Christmas season.

The Plague, Farenheit 451, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Stitches, Pygmy, Invisible Man

Despite my lack of posts, I've still been reading. I'm posting this so that I remember which books I have read and will possibly still write about some day.

Darkness at Noon

I read Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler a few weeks ago. For some reason I didn't feel like writing an immediate response to it. Probably because I felt like whenever I write about a book immediately after finishing it I tend to feel rushed and not able to clearly communicate what I thought of the complete work, but just a minute part that intrigued me. I was going to wait a day or two, but then kept putting it off until now. Hopefully I can remember enough about it to make sense.

Darkness at Noon is a novel about a former revolutionist who is arrested by the government he helped to gain power. It is set in Communist Russia in between the first and second world wars. The whole of the novel is set in a jail cell, but the main character, Rubashov, frequently daydreams about his part in the revolution and the significant things that led to his arrest. Knowing that Koestler was a former Communist who had become disillusioned with the movement after the Stalinist show trials (of which the main character is a victim) and other detestable practices perpetrated by the Soviet government makes this novel something of a historical fiction and less of a literary exploration of ideas. I am certainly more used to novels having less to do with the setting and more about the general theme, but I believe this book did have a theme that can be explored further than just taking the story at face value.

The theme I was most interested with was the suppression of ideas for the sake of a movement. The reason that Rubashov was arrested was that he disagreed with how the communist government was being handled by "Number 1"(the name given to Stalin in the novel). He had no plans to overthrow the government or assassinate the leader, but his objection to policy was enough to have him arrested and sentenced to execution. Much of the story is focused on the methods of coercion and interrogation used to convince Rubashov to admit to false accusations, giving the novel another theme (probably more prominent than the one I am addressing) of how a imprisoned and hopeless person reacts to an antagonist. Like I said, I am more interested in how the government reacts to dissent than I am the confined person.

Basically the idea that interested me was that the Russian government (and that style of communism in general) had an ideal that they wished to achieve. This ideal was a sort of utopia where all are equal in economic circumstance and workload. The problem was that they believed that it took forcing people into much worse economic conditions and much harder labor in order to eventually reach this ideal society. It reminds me of the double-speak in Orwell's 1984, war is peace, love is hate, etc. "Number 1" had his idea of how to accomplish his ideal and that was through making all who were in the country submit to his values and principals through force. Only by overpowering the people will they eventually realize that his way to achieve equality was the correct way. Only through enslavement and suffering would they be beaten enough to know his way is the correct way. It is a very logical and reasonable method, despite it being completely inhumane and during the conditioning of the people the opposite of the utopia he wishes to achieve. This is what interests me. Is it okay to do something negative if it achieves something more positive than the former action was negative.

For example, say you are a soldier at war, and a man in your sights has a trigger for an offsite bomb. This bomb is going to kill many people (Lets say they are also soldiers, not innocent bystanders). Now, you don't believe in killing, even killing the enemies you are fighting in this war (you were drafted into the military). Would it be okay for you to take on this sin of killing so that the other man doesn't sin himself and kill many people. Obviously his sin has much greater consequences than yours. You are taking one life, he is taking many. Does that make your lesser sin a worthwhile one? If you let him live, do you take some of the responsibility for the lives of those he will kill, or does the responsibility lie solely with him? We all know what our answer to this question is. Being a pacifist, I would say that I wouldn't kill him, leaving myself clean and him responsible for his own actions. Others would say that they would share in the guilt if they didn't stop him from killing, and therefore decide that they would kill the man. There are good arguments on both sides, but the real question is: Which one of these is wrong and which one right?

The communist government believed in freedom of thought and freedom of ideas, but they thought the best way to get there was to restrict said freedom for a time until the revolution was completed and there were no biases based on past economic conditions. They believed that once the people were all rooted in equal experience and not biased by their unequal past, that they would all realize the merits of communism and then be able to keep their government accountable. Until then Number 1's ideas were the only ideas permitted to speak about. It is utilitarian ethics at it's core. The suffering that they caused for a short period of history is much less than the amount joy they will eventually bring. They were killing the lives of the present in order to save those in the future. Is that right? Say they were correct in their ideas and it actually worked. Would they still have blood on their hands?

I don't really have an answer to that question, but it sure is fun to think about.