Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

I wrote up a page about the Alabama Christian freaks get-together on January 30 in Birmingham.    (In this theme, pages get special treatment at the top, and I want to always have the latest up there.)  Check it out, and join the Facebook group or comment to be kept up to date on details.

I wrote this up Sunday night but somehow stupidly locked myself out of my account and couldn’t post it until now. The formatting got destroyed in my copy/paste but I’ll fix it later.

On a day where I’ve been responding to a sermon by focusing on my idols, I want to scribble down a few more thoughts before heading off to bed.

Besides significance, the other great idol I’m struggling with is provision. I mean providing
both for my own needs and for those of some hypothetical
down-the-road family I might one day have. Providing for my own needs is
obvious — even grinding out a meager living playing 60 hours a
week has been a source of some satisfaction, because I’m earning my own rent.

Providing for others is obviously a consideration only in the hypothetical, but the impact on my self-image is very real. No woman wants attention from the proverbial guy who lives in Mom’s basement, right? Especially at my age, the inability to at least work out an acceptable d ?tente with the evil mysterious world of careers, whereby I spend all week doing something I despise in order to pay the bills so that my (yet hypothetical) family doesn’t have to go hungry — my inability to work that out is troubling. Should be troubling, indeed.

I guess I need to have more faith that those issues will get resolved when the time is right. That’s why provision is an idol.

As I spend time processing the profound disappointment that has been my life through Year 36, and hopefully getting better and wiser at doing so, i find that my prayers need to get simpler. It’s way too tempting to try thinking really hard about The Big Picture, which leads me to approach God with cynicism and bitterness, a feeling that i was given gifts for no purpose. It’s far better to cultivate a childlike faith, to just ask for stuff without stopping to make a jaded assessment of how likely such faith is to be rewarded.

O God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, God, pleasegivemesignificance, amen.

Last week I was driving in from East Memphis on Poplar and saw some kids walking by the side of the road. Because of some experiences with this community in Boston and (believe it or not) Huntsville, my brain parsed the scene and decided they were the sort of young people who hop trains in going from place to place. I kept driving for maybe half a mile debating whether to turn around and try to make contact with them, finally decided to do so, and did two U-turns so that I could stop on the westbound side and talk to them.

My intuition was correct. They told me that they were planning to catch trains to Louisville for some reason. I wasn’t terribly helpful in directing them to the appropriate railyard, but I had been driving home from the supermarket so I did give them a loaf of bread and a package of cheese. That seemed to be helpful.

It would be interesting to know how many of these folks pass through Memphis. Given the number of freight rail lines through here, I’d imagine it’s a bunch.

I’m less than a week away from officially conceding defeat in yet another chapter in my life. So far defeat seems to be the greatest unifying theme about me. I’m trying very very hard not to spiral down into yet another cycle of despondency. I keep reminding myself that as an ostensible Christian I’m to cherish the myth that God has amazing things in store for my life around the next corner. I’m thoroughly convinced that’s little more than self-deception, but maybe it’s helpful self-deception so that I can keep plowing through.

Being confined to hospital for a week isn’t great, but it does give you the chance to get out of some well-worn channels of your daily routine and into some other habits of greater or lesser value, such as reading novels or watching TV, respectively. I’m fortunate to have had some friends from church who brought reading material, and others who loaded up the church iPod with more than just sermons. Here’s what I’ve learned in the last week:

• The Price Is Right is an underappreciated cultural staple. Well, not exactly underappreciated, but… OK, what I mean is, I’d not bothered to watch it in the Drew Carey era despite considering myself a low-grade game show connoisseur. (Mind you, low-grade because I’m certainly not like most of the people commenting here). Now that I have spent a week waiting for 10:00 CT to arrive each day so I could watch the only remaining network daytime game show, I’m quite impressed by how they mixed so many of the naturally retro elements that have just aged well with other more consciously retro accents to celebrate the show’s place in TV lore. In the former bucket we have:
  • the dollar sign logo and “the price is right” logotype
  • virtually all the music and audio cues, from the iconic “losing horns” to the little ditties that play when prizes are shown off
  • minor elements of the set, such as the curtains in the back of the studio and the little flower design motif
  • many classic games, such as the Range Game whose analog mechanism looks like it hasn’t changed a bit.

  Meanwhile, I think I’d always been put off by what I glimpsed of the Carey-era changes, until it dawned on me this week that they’re consciously in homage to the hearty roots of the show in 60’s consumerism:

  • the changes to the set, particularly the box motif in light blue/dark blue (or whatever other color schemes)
  • that weird almost polygonal shape around the logo now

  There are a few other signs of the times — do the models’ longer dresses mean that we’re getting away from, “Sex sells,” finally? — but in general TPIR is still a lot of fun for those of us who grew up on daytime game shows in the 1980s.

• When you spend a lot of time watching the local TV news, the anchors showing up at their appointed times start to feel like family. “Oh, it’s the 5:00 pm news. There’s good ol’ Jim Jaggers doing the weather!” I get virtually none of my news from TV newscasts, so this time spent watching TV when I didn’t feel like getting news off the computer gave me some insight into the emotional bond that older generations seem to feel toward their TV news presenters.
• Life of Pi , Yann Martell’s fanciful 2002 novel about an Indian zookeeper’s son lost on the high Pacific, is the kind of book that makes me question why I don’t spend more time reading novels. I’ll have much more to say about this book. Its central theme of God expressing himself through story should be right in the sweet spot of most emergent/postmodern Christians’ discussion. (Wait, do pomoXtians ever actually discuss novels, or just talk about how important stories are? And no, of course A New Kind of Christian doesn’t count.)
• Cliff Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg , a 1990 first-hand account of his efforts to counteract malicious hacking into early computer networks, was interesting, too, in a different way. Quite dated of course but fun to read about for anyone who’s ever cared about this time in tech history.
• The Apple iPod user interface is hugely overrated, and even though I might consider purchasing an Apple device I’ll still be a proud curmudgeonly Luddite. My complains may show up as a post of their own, so I’ll just summarize it like this: When someone tosses you an audio player the day after your surgery, even not being an “Apple person” it shouldn’t take you more than ten seconds to figure out how to do anything besides play all the songs alphabetically starting at AC/DC.
• That said, two days later when I picked up the iPod I took to the UI a lot better. Obviously someone at my church has similar musical taste to mine, but in much greater depth, because I kept finding whole albums by artists that I just kinda-sorta-thought would be worth learning more about.
• By now I’m familiar with most of the songs from Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois but for the first time I listened to all 22 tracks pretty much in sequence. It really drove home why that guy is so highly thought of.

Soon I want to write up a reaction to something fascinating I read today, but first I want to have time to process it. Meanwhile, I have several stray thoughts that are sort of follow-ups to what I wrote yesterday.

—
One of the interesting things I learned yesterday is that writing about my feelings makes them easier to cope with. I guess that really shouldn’t be a surprise. Isn’t that the motivation behind the classic “Dear Diary” blog posts that no one ever wants to read? Hopefully, even if I’m writing as therapy, I can find a way to provide some sort of analysis or generality that’s applicable beyond my own life. Otherwise, there’s not much reason for anyone but me to read this stuff.

But writing does make me feel better. In part I think that’s because in my mind it’s a community-oriented activity, even if the whole community isn’t present at the same time. When I write I feel like I’m communicating, even if it’s only pretend because I don’t really know with any certainty that anyone else is going to read it.

—
Yesterday I also found that cleaning up even a small part of my living space made an immense difference in how I felt about things. It’s like it was an instant “accomplishment”, something I could feel good about.

It’s hard for me to keep organized because the task seems so daunting. So that’s why it’s significant that I didn’t really have to organize my while bedroom, or even the majority of it. It’s still a pig sty. I just cleaned up maybe one square meter on the floor, but that made me feel great.

Likewise, making small inroads in freeing up the dishwasher today made me feel 1000 times better about working around the mess my roommate left in the kitchen. Funny how that works.

—
It’s sort of interesting that so many people are seeking community but so few know where to find it.

Do people really know they’re seeking community? Or do they think they’re in need of something else?

—
I’ve never lived my life in a way that made sense to others. Picking up and moving to a new city because you’re bored with where you are isn’t the most “responsible”, predictable, typical way to live. Lately I’ve been living a lifestyle that most people would consider even more abnormal. Often I’ve been staying at the casinos until 4 or 5 am on weekends, sleeping until noon or 1 pm. I just think of it as working the graveyard shift, same as if I were working at a hospital or in security or what have you.

But it’s given me a great appreciation for how many of society’s community-building structures are oriented toward “normal” people. If you work odd hours, church isn’t for you. If you change cities every few months, you’re going to be trying to meet people who already have established social networks.

I guess it’s easier to get indignant about the first point, because there just aren’t many good church options if you’re not awake enough to worship between 10 am and noon.

The second point is more, “Like, duh!” and yet it’s probably worthwhile to ask if it’s the only way things can be. Are there ways for communities — and here I’m thinking mostly about faith communities, but it could be any other sort — to open their arms more fully to us nomads? What’s the risk for them? What’s the risk for us?

I’m going to experiment with writing blog entries to respond to other people’s blog entries here. In part that’s because I still don’t know what the heck the purpose of this blog is supposed to be! I guess I want this to be stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into my other blogs, maybe a bunch of theological ramblings with bits and pieces of my life as I move around. I don’t know.

But I feel remiss in not keeping up with my friend Garrett’s blog, and so I’d like to jot down a few comments on his last entry. He talks about a “Christian novel” entitled The Shack — like most of his entries, it’s reading that requires setting aside some time to make it all the way through. Even though I’d never heard of that work before and don’t really think I’ll ever get around to reading it, Garrett makes enough points about how we appreciate art (especially art held in high esteem in the Christian bubble) in general that I want to dig deeper.

(continue reading…)

I made my first late-night (or early-morning) snack run to CK’s on Union. CK’s is a chain of 24-hour diners that seem to be all over Memphis.

I read most of chapter 2 of Tony Jones’ The New Christians, which Charles loaned me and I’m only now getting serious about reading. Good stuff. I’ll have many thoughts about it.