wow another post today, must be the weekend mood
my weekend mood is quite different id expect from others
i hate weekends, and i cant wait for them to be over.

why?
because there's only so much that can go on in school to hurt me socially or emotionally?
and in generally i dont come out feeling more refreshed on weekends?

its tiring playing the good churchgoer, and being all cordial since ur supposed to love people you dont really like; very often i get tired from having to censor the bulk of my wayward and judgemental thoughts when i hear some incoherent sermon. (I never figured out why we're taught to listen to every sermon like its precious, i mean sure God can speak through fishermen, but when He does, i bet the people listening noticed the difference, and i'll listen when i can see the difference)

sigh another tirade

so anyways what i actually wanted to blog about was prayer.

i had this random question run thru my head
does prayer only work forward or does it work backward

most people.... well actually i have no idea how the main population think,
but i shall assume (since i like to play the contrarian) that they think that prayer only works forward
ie. you have to pray before an event in order for your prayers to have any effect

i was wondering however whether praying after the said event would work too i mean since i suscribe to the theology that God is outside of time.

It is i must admit a very enticing stand since it helps explain if God can save people who lived before Jesus' time. However passages such as in daniel, where daniel's prayers hasted the angels trip become a problem

i of course believe that we pray because it makes a difference. what difference and how, i have no fixed opinion on. I refuse to believe that God cant act on his own agenda, since majority of our prayers probably arent very spiritual at all, and i also dont believe He only acts when we prayer, since the church obviously doesnt pray enough, and thus it probably would have died out if God had to rely on people praying. I do believe that prayer can and sometimes changes Gods mind, but whether this contradicts with omnicscience, hmm, maybe our prayers work rather as a justification for mercy, which would be congruent with Abraham pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah, or how the Israelites needed blood on the doorpost, as if an angel of death couldnt differentiate between Jew and Egyptian (i see the blood on the doorpost as a justification for mercy).

I do believe that it pleases God to pray, and also we cant claim to care alot about something if we dont pray for it.

as you can see i believe in many paradoxical things at once, which is fine with me since im truly a postmodernist.

Being a postmodernist i also have no problems not answering my own questions, since not all questions have answers, at least not on our side of eternity.

Is it wrong to be christian and a postmodernist at the same time?
well the bible doesnt say its wrong (hehe, of course postmodernism is quite a new ideology) but many prominent christians tend to think so, since christianity is kind of about absolute truths,
and being a postmodernist tends to put me at odds with the majority of fundamentalist christians (whom i obviously look down on)

then again, some say postmodernism is over and the new post post modernists, tend to take authority at its word....

well anyways, the whole gamut of beliefs and differing theologies dont exactly make the case for fundamentalism. How can all of these slightly differing truths be absolute, unless one is right and the rest well-meaning but mistaken and how am i to know to know which one is the correct one?
the local theology? (any search algorithm programmer would tell you that while it is understandable to mistake the local maxima for the global one, it is WRONG)
the one that agrees well with my worldview?(the exact problem with theology nowadays and in the past, so much of it was shaped to match the contemporary world view, that alot of what we belief to be solidly biblical is actually just enlightment philosophy)

or did God just intend for different christians to believe different things
doest seem to agree with i am the way the truth and the light

some people would pull the faith card, but exactly, why not have faith that God meant for me to be a postmodernist?

so anyways, i guess i'll just continue to pray,
admittedly less than i ought to, and more that my brain tells me is logical to.

walking back to hall in the rain today,
i realised how much of a blessing it is that God causes it to rain on both the just and unjust.

i love rain
but that aside, if blessings were exchanged for browny points,
bad christians like me,
disfunctional christians who fail to be just, sometimes by shortcoming, other times by design
would find ourselves in a much more arid environment


Thank You God, for being beyond fairness and propriety
that grace is more for the sinner than the pharisee,
and that making the book of life is different from making santa's mailing list.

one question, how do you really be good for goodness sake, if you get presents under a tree for it

i dont want whatever ur peddling anymore
please go away and let me alone

So what are u setting the stage for?

For some reason I felt really deflated just now

Gosh this really is becoming a place to complain about the weariness of life

Right now im struggling with two sentiments, one of fatalism, one of apprehension of life, neither of which I know is very Christian

Part of me is hoping that like some cheap greecian theatre, God will somehow appear in the midst and everything will turn out right
Deux Ex MAchina, it sounds cooler than the idea it Actually suggests....

The is still humor in the world,
It's just that the time between laughter seems to be dragging long and thin

sometimes I just wish I could it burst out laughing, or cry uncontrollably,
I think both acts while not particular to humans, is probably the most humane in our repertoire.

I think of the emotions, I find resignation and despair the most beautiful, well mYbe relief makes it to top 3 as well

Don't get me wrong, im not masochistic, or sadistic (contrary to popular belief)
It's just that other sentiments are just so fickle and easily shaded by circumstance and mood

Despair cuts straight through our mental and emotive walls,
The hollow pit in our stomach, the crushing weight of reality
The utter bleakness of it's countenance....

I think maybe Gods love is a lot like despair
In how we dont really feel it per say but are consumed by it, nearly crushed by it

If despair is so present it transcends feeling,(IMO despair is more an experience than a feeling)
Resignation probably is one of the most subtle

I think its feels so much like apathy that though the common expression of resignation in literature is that of a sigh, and a shrug, and a deflated posture,
I think it's a sigh we feel the least

It's not strange I guess that relief follows these two closely, if it does at all

Perhaps it's strength as a sentiment arises from the magnitude of the formers
Sometimes so powerful, it takes days for it to register

Ive been moody alot lately, I wouldnt lie by saying i totally have no idea why,
I do know why in parts, but they just dont seem to add up to enough to justify how fustrated i feel

perhaps the weariness of life is getting to me
perhaps the humors are out of balance

met up with an old church friend, well the term "ex-church" friend is more accurate actually
and i realised through him how many of us whom i thought settled down somewhere arent so settled anymore

perhaps when we left, we left our hearts behind

but there isnt anywhere to go back to
or at least isnt much to go back to
being a nomad is wearying

sometimes i just feel like running
well more figuratively anyways
physics tells us that if we run fast enough, we'd eventually leave the earth
i think that'd be nice
to float around in empty vastness and not have to bother about all the shit thats down below

a friend told me that he has started to doubt
and asked how do we know that wad we believe in, that which has been distilled over time
is in fact the truth or if the truth has be lost through all that merciless boiling
let me get it clear, he didnt stop being a theist, he was doubting the collective tradition of christianity that we have today

i didnt get a chance to answer him then
but for my own sake i shall attempt to here

well let me start of saying from a intellectual standpoint
we dont
thats the whole postmodernist bent
we have no absolute proof
all the stuff that people went around giving lectures on to disprove dan brown
well they did have more grounds than a fictional story perhaps
but yes, the dead sea scrolls though a brilliant archaelogical find could very well be a hoax by some  16th century artist just as how the shroud of turin is now thought to be.

so where do we go from there
well we start from a standpoint where believe that Gods is real, and he is good, and he is loving
(be it from personal experience or whatever means of getting there) (of course we believe in his omnipotence and omniscience and so on....)

and for a moment, just a moment (although these moments are far too frequent for me)
lets assume that the stuff they preach in church is misguided misinformation, truth passed down through centuries and warped alongst the way by impotent men who saw to it to color it as they pleased.

well faith is trusting God to speak out of the chaos
and if we believe that God is real and still works,
we believe that he will redeem his word, and his church (although i grimace as i type this)
faith is believing that God will still let Himself be heard above the noise and the subjectiveness of the clergy


i guess faith is also trusting God to find us a home
and to deal with all the angst

It's scary really,
How we get so used to our bindings and fetters,
And let our dreams and hopes shrivel up inside

Do our chains become part of us,
Our weaknesses and faults making up a bigger slice of our ego than we dare admit

Soar, fly? With all this dead weight of past failures, social constructs,and responsibilities?

Sometimes I think I begin to think I understand wad the old one meant when she said God allows our dreams to die before fulfilling them
There's no way we could with what we are, with so much dead flesh still alive

I've asked so many times why I'm still here, when I want so much to out and leave,
Could the metaphysical really intersect with the unpleasant and the mundane?
Could the kingdom come in the midst of all this?

Jesus asked Saint Peter "do you love me?"
His reply was in effect, only as a friend

Im beginning to realize how much I identify with that,
And I'm a lousy friend at that