"every beautiful moment..."

There's an inherent beauty in every passing moment of our lives.

Every thought, every perception, every sensation, every memory carries with it some essential, definitive quality of singular perfection. From that quality, that characteristic spark that sets a particular moment apart from all others, is where its beauty is drawn. Of course, in our near-infinite capacity to be unappreciative, we pick and choose our perfect moments in order to conceptualize our lives, and in the process fail to recognize the value of the majority of what we experience. But that doesn't mean that the beauty we so often overlook doesn't actually exist; it's all there, waiting to be sought out and cherished.

Art is the medium that allows us to explore and to draw out the beauty of every moment, for ourselves and for the people around us to witness. It's our most sincere response to our hearts' greatest longing, unobstructed as it is by spatiality, unconstricted as it is by dogma. Art transcends conflict, transcends sadness and suffering, transcends space and time, the mind and the flesh. It's a paradox of impossible complexity and absolute simplicity, woven together in seamless symbiosis. Of its own it holds no bias, but in the hands of the determined spirit it strives to amplify every nuance and inflection.

Art is divinely purposed, and it's when our creations reveal both the purpose and the divine origin of the art that we truly succeed in fulfilling our roles as artists. We're all artists in the end, after all, forever doomed to find beauty in ugly things.

And the face of art is still changing today. As we crawl beyond an age of legalistic rigidity and pseudo-liberalistic "freedom", in a culture that never tires of giving us the free choice of no choice at all, the need for art to touch deeper than ever before is growing rapidly. We need a new connection; we need an escape. We need an art that lives through reality, through stories, through twists and turns and spiritual longing. We need difference, not indifference. We need change. And we need it now.

For those of you who are interested in art and the direction it's taking, you can check some of these sites out. A couple are already linked to on the sidebar of this blog, although only accessible through rather cryptic names.

lowercase people: a quarterly online magazine that addresses art and social justice
relevant magazine: an online counterpart to a Christian magazine that impacts culture through media
nooma: extremely well-constructed media (DVD)-based devotionals by Pastor Rob Bell
268 Generation: official website of the Passion Christian university conferences

injustice

I hate myself, with a great deal of passion. I'm sure most people feel that way about themselves to some extent or another. I don't think it's necessarily unhealthy; if hatred leads to opposition, and opposition to conflict, conflict to change, and change to growth, then it's a necessary step in the grand evolutionary process of self-perfection that we call life. But, in some ways, I hate myself more than others.

It's funny, because my idea of perfection is characterized by an understanding of justice and morality and righteousness, of courage, of truth and honesty, of selflessness, of fidelity, loyalty, devotion, of strength, perseverence, and most importantly, of honour. Not just an understanding, in fact, but rather a manifestation of the full extent of each of these virtues. And looking over the list, I see nothing that fits a description of my own character.

What do I see in myself? I see weakness. I see selfishness. I see hypocrisy, cowardice, intolerance, ignorance, falsehood, immorality, deceptiveness, irresponsibility, injustice, and pride. It's absurd; it's a ridiculous paradox, a divine comedy that even Dante would've laugh at. By the way, if you don't agree with me, I'm not being self-critical. You just don't know me well enough.

Day by day I'm losing any desire I had to see heaven in all its glory. As I continue to defile the tabernacle of my own heart, I'm instead longing for a very different day -- a day when justice will carry itself out to completion and I'll be sentenced to hell for what I've done. I know I deserve it. I want what I deserve, and nothing less. It's as if it's the only way for me to rid the shame of a thousand black marks left on my dying soul.

Let me die, then. Let me die and know that I paid for my transgressions with my life. Salvation is too forgiving; there's no fulfillment of righteousness when the sinner never atones for his sins.

Here's another weak confession, one too many and far too late. What do I have to offer? Nothing, not anymore. All I can do is kneel, and, for just an instant, for one flickering moment that lasts a lifetime and then vanishes as quickly as it came, I am free.

Knowing how easy it is for me to wash my record clean, I already can say that this won't be the last time it happens. I guess the only consolation I really have left is that I don't have to offer sacrifices of gold and oxen every time I need to step back into righteousness. I'd go broke if I did, but fortunately for me, my God's graces come with no strings attached. And that, of course, isn't always a good thing.

how long to sing this song?

Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?

I waited patiently for the Lord,
He inclined and heard my cry,
Lifted me up, out of the pit,
Out of the miry clay...

And I will sing, sing a new song,
I will sing, sing a new song...

Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live.

... how long to sing this song?

Do not withhold Your tender mercies from me, O LORD; let Your lovingkindness and Your truth continually preserve me. For innumerable evils have surrounded me; my iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails me.

You set my feet upon a rock,
And made my footsteps firm,
Many will see,
Many will see and fear...

And I will sing, sing a new song,
I will sing, sing a new song...

I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great assembly; indeed, I do not restrain my lips. O LORD, You Yourself know. I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart; I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth.

... how long to sing this song? How long...?

Please, O LORD, deliver me; O LORD, make haste to help me!

I waited patiently for the Lord,
He inclined and heard my cry,
Lifted me up, out of the pit,
Out of the miry clay...

Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry; do not be silent at my tears!

How long to sing this song?
How long, how long to sing this song...?

Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; let such as love Your salvation say continually, "The LORD be magnified!"

But I am poor and needy; yet the LORD thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God.

O Lord, how long to sing this song?

broken/eroding: the sky is caving in

There was never a fine line between right and wrong. Divine will is singular and absolute, on a path of its own; anything apart from it is distantly removed and intentionally opposed to it. To do wrong is to defy God. Doing right, or obedience of God, is therefore the furthest removed extreme from wrong.

So how can there be any forgiveness? How can there be redemption? Why is it that we can so easily skip from wrong to right, from hell to heaven, and back again without having a second thought about it? How can we pretend that the two paths are indistinguishable, when so much sets them apart?

Is there any greater hypocrisy than our attempted return to holiness after walking hand in hand with the devil? Why should we ever have a second chance? How can we ever have a second chance, when all we have is this one last try?

There's nothing here worth saving,
There's no one here at all,
Is there any net left that could break our fall?

We want more than this world has to offer, but why do we still want what the world has? Our greedy little hearts want it all; the bad and the good, the benefits of this world and the next. But why, if one is evil and one is holy? Why do we so desperately fulfill the desires of both our sinful natures and our godly yearnings? Is more better? Or can we not be content with having simply the good? Does having the bad to go with it somehow make us complete? Or are we just too blind to know when enough is enough?

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, "All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'"

We accept the temptation to sin as a part of our lives, something that we can never avoid and will inevitably succumb to. We forgive ourselves in advance for our transgressions rather than trying to avoid them, in such a way that we hardly feel guilty when we commit them, and point the blame away from ourselves, to the wiles of the devil who leads us astray.

Do we have nothing to be blamed for? Are we not the ones in control of ourselves? Do we not decide whether to do right and follow God, or to do wrong and throw our treads off the track? Should we not be the ones who are punished for our own wrongdoing? Yet we so often shift the responsibilty over to the tempter, and in our infinite hypocrisy we claim for ourselves salvation and redemption, letting Satan deal with the repercussions of our actions.

We are so self-centered that we would rather see another suffer in our place. We had no remorse in our souls when Christ was crucified; we were relieved. Anything to avoid having to face reality for ourselves -- even the life of another. Even God.

We are hardly any better than the devil himself. And still the love of God pours infinitely over us. This is the greatest injustice, the greatest irrationality. This is grace, this is righteousness; this is love.

Oh, Erosion, would You wash away my sins?
Oh, Erosion, I need a second shot again,
Oh, Erosion, would You break my heart again?
Oh, Erosion, I am a broken-hearted man...

only you

The light is blinding. Flashes, eruptions, from distant bulbs... and I shut my eyelids tightly. What does all of this amount to? Self-respect? Celebrity? I feel illuminated on the outside, but the shadow is still cast on my soul. The intensity increases, and I shield my eyes with one hand. None of this belongs to me anyways. None of it is mine. I turn it around and shine it so often on myself that I even forget it exists. All that matters is the light it emits. All that matters is that I am visible. Now the brightness is creeping through my fingers. It is unbearable. I cannot find the switch. I cannot find the switch. I cannot find --

Take my heart, I lay it down,
At the feet of you who's crowned,
Take my life, I'm letting go,
I lift it up to you who's throned...

The noise is deafening. I cover my ears, but the beat still pounds incessantly against my head. My aspirations, my resolutions, my 20-year weather forecast all scream back at me in defiance. My lives, my minds, my different selves shown to different people, all clamour for dominance, dissonant and discordant. What have I become? Why does my own voice strive to drown itself out? The feedback builds. It is beyond my control. I struggle to equalize, but nothing works the way I imagine or intend or want it to. There is no longer any rythm, any central melody, and I stand in the midst of an awesome cacophony, hideously unsynchronized and directionless. I bury my face in my hands. I want nothing more to do with this. Turn it off.

Take my fret, take my fear,
All I have, I'm leaving here,
Be all my hopes, be all my dreams,
Be all my delights, be my everything...

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. You must worship no other gods, but only the LORD, for He is a God who is passionate about His relationship for you."

And I will worship you, Lord, only you, Lord...

"Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

And I will bow down before you, only you, Lord...

"Therefore humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you hypocrites. Let there be tears for the wrong things you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Bow down before the Lord in humility and dependence, and He will lift you up and give you honour."

It's just you and me here now,
Only you and me here now,
You should see the view,
When it's only you...

When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more."

It's just you and me, here, now...

catching up

So this is something that came to me not too long ago, and something I think I need to share while it's still fresh in my mind.

There were some things about Christianity that I'd never quite understood, that I couldn't entirely wrap my mind around. Not your standard confusing topics like the Trinity and the book of Revelation... for some reason I'm quite fine with those. I think it's because my questions weren't necessarily to do with the "what", but moreso the "how" and "why". And one of the key problems nagging in the back of my mind was "how" and "why" salvation worked.

My old youth pastor once gave me an analogy of salvation as a chair of some sort. It might've partially been because I wasn't paying attention, but I totally didn't get that at all. It didn't quite make sense to me in a tangible way, not like other things do, and so I was never really satisfied. Same with the age-old explanation that everyone gives of Christ's blood "washing us clean of our sins." Does that mean that it's constantly pouring out on us? Wouldn't that technically make us sinless, which we aren't? And so, for quite a long time, I was living my faith with only a partial answer of "what" to one of its most important questions.

But I was recently reading through the book of Exodus -- specifically, about the Passover -- when it suddenly became clear to me. In a nutshell, the passage was about how God was executing judgement on the disobedient Egyptians by killing every firstborn in the land, but how he'd also promised to spare the Hebrews, his chosen people who were living in Egypt, from his wrath. He instructed them to take a lamb without any blemishes or imperfections for each household, kill it, and mark the doorposts of their homes with its blood. And when God brought the tenth plague, the Death of the Firstborn, on Egypt, his spirit passed over the marked households of the Israelites.

So what does this have to do with salvation? Christians are God's chosen people, just as the Hebrews were. The plague is the judgement of the world, when God will bring his wrath on the unrighteous and ungodly. The blood of the lamb is the blood of Christ, who was slaughtered on the eve of the world's destruction so that his blood could mark the doorposts of his followers' hearts, the children of God. The key is that the blood, at least in this interpretation of salvation's meaning, doesn't wash us clean and make us righteous. The fact of the matter is that we can never truly be righteous, because we're always imperfect and sinful. The blood, instead, marks us, sanctifies us -- sets us apart -- identifying us so that we'll be spared the wrath of God when the world is judged. There was still sin in the homes of the Hebrews when God's spirit came to them, just as there will still be sin in our lives when the end of the world comes and we're standing before God. It's unavoidable. But God's spirit passed over them, just as it will pass over us, because we're his chosen people -- and even beyond that, he delivered the Hebrews from Egypt into the Promised Land, just as he'll deliver us from this world to heaven. And so in that sense, salvation's got nothing to do with our abilities or efforts or godly character, and EVERYTHING to do with God's unfailing mercy and our decision of whether or not to accept it.

After I thought about all of that, I was pretty amazed. I still am. It might partly be because there's a certain joy in discovering things for yourself, but I think it had more to do with how everything else that I'd understood about salvation just clicked into place... it's a hard feeling to explain. The extent of God's love and power were also quite the cause for amazement. Oh, and I apologize to those of you who already had this figured out, because this post was probably a bit redundant.

val-day

Today was Val-day. Val-day has been in planning for some time, although the planning that went into it wasn't necessarily too intensive. Val-day was initially supposed to be Monday, but Ren was waiting until cheques were cleared on his BMO account with unlimited ABM withdrawals and debit usage.

Val-day started at 7:15 AM. The alarm was set to 6:30, but I didn't hear it. I quickly showered and threw on clothes and threw them off and threw on more clothes and left sometime after 8:00. Got there, grabbed Val, ran away. We bused to Finch, subway'd to Eglinton, where I totally abused my no-limit withdrawal. That was around 10:00 AM. Then we took a walk down Eglinton to the Golden Griddle.

It was nice and quaint, although there was a fly and flies always give me such bad impressions of places, especially restaurants. I had orange juice, three buttermilk pancakes and hash browns. For the lady, a giant Belgian fruit waffle with strawberries and ice cream. A rather thoroughly filling brunch, and the little boy sitting a couple tables down from us was cute. He squeezed syrup into the air.

We left Golden Griddle a bit past 11:00. Headed down to Eaton Centre, where we tried to get Vans for Val, only they didn't have the right colour. I considered getting a composite stick, but I decided I like wood more. Checked out them super-hot Crowdsters at Steve's... they are HOT. $3,300 of hotness. One of them even comes with a case. ... what happened to the other one?

Then we were tired. So we came back up to Val's house and played hours of Monopoly. I finally got un-unlucky and started winning lots, although I got slaughtered in the first game. Then suddenly it was time to go, so we made a mad dash for the car and drove over to Bayview Village for the surprise movie, which was March of the Penguins. It won awards everywhere, and deservedly so; it's a very good movie. It's a documentary, really, but one that's really well-put together. Throw fascinating scientific observations together with breathtaking scenery of the Antarctic and Morgan Freeman's captivating voice, and you have yourself an 8-week, top-10, $70-million blockbuster that came not from the bowels of Hollywood, but from the backs of the minds of a couple French guys. Not too shabby. The penguins were very cute.

Then my house, where we ate kamonabe. Kamo = duck, nabe = dish. It's basically hot soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles) with duck, watercress, and some other stuff. And we watched Jeopardy. And Stargate/Shanghai Knights or Shaolin Monks or whatever it was.

And now I am here. Tired. But today was well worth it.