![fyeahenglishmajorarmadillo:
[Picture: Background — a six piece pie style colour split, alternating black and grey. Foreground — a picture of an armadillo. Top text: “ [THINKS MOST ENGLISH MAJORS ARE PRETENTIOUS DICKS] ” Bottom text: “ [IS ENGLISH MAJOR] ”]
Hunter S. Loveson](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2bmtbeugF1qhe5udo1_400.jpg)
I’m not sure how anyone, speaking mostly to myself, ever convinces themselves that facebook is the right medium for voicing your opinion.
I think I’m more drawn to real struggle and failure than what feels like fabricated and imaginary success.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
-Wendell Berry
Last church service at Cornerstone tomorrow. As much as very polarized emotions can weigh a person down, I’m weighed down by ambivalence. I think after a year of very tumultuous service full of hope, then disappointment; hearts being filled, then heartbreak; and clarity, then confusion, there exists a bit of disconnectedness that I’m not too proud to admit to. And as much as I can be disappointed by my lofty expectations of others, I think I can safely say that most of it’s on me, or rather, most of what I feel and have felt about the year. Inability to overcome a lack of passion at times, bitterness towards others, just straight up laziness, it’s pretty all encompassing. Again, as much as I hate to say it, I look at the trajectory of the church or more so my life within the church both as an institution and as a body of believers, it’s been pretty downward. It’s been year of atrophy after year of atrophy so it seems like the inevitable conclusion for our church to end its time in ministry.
That was mostly all really sad. When I put it like that, it seems like there’s no ambivalence at all but only a sigh of contemptuous relief. But I really do mean ambivalence because, well hell, there was a whole lot of good in there too. I’ve seen a lot of love spread around and a lot of vulnerability within it all, even if for just some glimmering seconds at times. From my freshman year when I felt so surrounded by a love greater than any ordinary kind from people I’ve felt before, to the independence in my faith life that’s been cultivated in my life at Cornerstone, I really do have so much to be thankful for. I think a lot of really, really genuinely good, God-loving and God-centered people have entered my life because of Cornerstone. And I can’t say that they’ll be in my life forever because I think the nature of life is for people to enter and exit each other’s lives, but the time that I did get to share life with them was definitely something I’m so thankful for.
I’ve thought a lot about what my life would be like had I not gone to Cornerstone because I would be lying if I said I never questioned especially towards the end if I had just wasted 3 years of my life investing so much of myself in this church. I can say with certainty though that it wasn’t all for naught. No way. I’d be damned if I believed in a God that wastes time. But I can’t say that I know what it’s all about either. I can point to some things that make sense to me as to what the lessons could have been from my time at Cornerstone. For instance, there were a lot of times where I felt like God held up the mirror to my face that I’d been refusing to look at for so long, showing me not only my glaring weaknesses, my surprising frailty, and my stupid, stupid, ego and pride, but also showing me the person with all those imperfections that He loves so dearly. That’s one thing that I think God was showing me, but even that I can’t say with complete certainty because at least in my eyes, not enough time has passed yet.
All in all, if I believe in a higher sovereignty over my life than my own feeble expectations for my life, if I believe in grace being at the center of life, if I believe that the resurrection can mean that people can and do, in fact, change no matter how slow and painful the process is, if I believe in God himself, then I have to believe that this all means something. And regardless of whatever ambivalence and uncertainty and contempt and regret and hope and joy and sadness and reverence and etc that may be swirling around in my heart in a clusterfuck of emotion and thoughts, here’s to that whole having-faith-in-God aspect of my spiritual life.
So Cornerstone, here’s to knowing that it all meant and still means something.
And off the soapbox.
i dont think Christians realize how much God loves people who aren’t Christians.
Need to remind myself that I’m still young enough where idealism is okay (in respectable servings). A reminder that I’ve got the rest of my life to be cynical (or hide it under the guise of realism at least).
[Picture: Background — a six piece pie style colour split, alternating black and grey. Foreground — a picture of an armadillo. Top text: “ [THINKS MOST ENGLISH MAJORS ARE PRETENTIOUS DICKS] ” Bottom text: “ [IS ENGLISH MAJOR] ”]
Today, one of my professor/advisors said to us, as a parting bit of wisdom, “It’s okay to be irreverent about things you have reverence for.” And it was one of the best things a teacher has ever told me.
![fyeahenglishmajorarmadillo:
[Picture: Background — a six piece pie style colour split, alternating black and grey. Foreground — a picture of an armadillo. Top text: “ Someone uses adjective ‘unique’ to describe something there’s more than one of” Bottom text: “Condescending Facepalm”]
I made this one.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1lnax5IhW1qhe5udo1_400.jpg)
[Picture: Background — a six piece pie style colour split, alternating black and grey. Foreground — a picture of an armadillo. Top text: “ Someone uses adjective ‘unique’ to describe something there’s more than one of” Bottom text: “Condescending Facepalm”]
I made this one.