If anyone is spineless, its me.

I haven't posted lately, mainly because i've been spending my time racking my brain with pathetic creations of stress causing situations-- maybe accurate, maybe inaccurate. I had a lovely Christmas and I am planning on having a lovely New Year. Party at my house, everyone come, unless you weren't invited. I bought some records, read some books, bought some sweet gifts for my family and spent time with friends. I saw some movies too. One sunday, I sat through a harrowing sermon in which the incredibly knowledgable and seemingly biggoted southern baptist preacher went on for an hour with politcally inclined ramblings about how the "pro choice" supporters might as well be referred to as "pro death", also mentioned how the "UN is spineless", commented negatively on "liberal" ideals and came up with some deragatory acronym for the ACLU. So here's the deal, while writhing in my seat from a headache and the disbelief at the sight of this man spewing personal agenda to a passive audience of senior citizens and youth group kids--I was angered not because of his opinions on politics, (he sounded so warm and forgiving when he said that he thought the only way to deal with religious martyrs was to kill them, he was referring to the Iranian president and other extremists, overlooking the fact that his comment was quite ironic and it showed a degree of naivety when dealing with foreign policy and the ramifications of such "gung ho" actions), what I was so taken back by was the fact that none of his rants had anything to do with God, Jesus, or Christmas. His podium served to act merely as a soapbox in whch he could rattle off all of his personal politics which came to him during the past week while he watched some FOX and CNN. I couldn't deal with it, or understand his approach. After he was done preaching to a choir of people who he KNEW would not challenge anything he said, I wondered if he served any purpose in bringing anyone closer to God. If anyone there was not a christian when the went into the service, I am almost sure they were not any closer to becoming one on the way out...which is the bitch of it all really. So there ya go, another church experience which seemed to alienate me more, moving me further away from identifying with any current stream of cultural christian ideals. I haven't spoken much about my thoughts concerning God or religion lately, and mainly because it becomes redundant. So I apologize...thankfully, my "everyday" resonates with Gods grace, which I have yet to be able to deny (not that I'm trying or anything arrogant like that). Thank you God--are you laughing or crying, or merely bewildered? Are you proud or do you feels stings of regret? What are you thinking about?

Here are some quotes I read recently, and I liked them.
"A christians thinking is perverted; even when he humbles himself, it is to be exalted"-Nietzsche

"The church has become the precisely the insitution that Jesus wanted to abolish"--I forget who said this, maybe I just read it in a book.

reasons.

i've loved this band for years (still do--and yes, I think In Reverie and Sound the Alarm are both great). I saw them in tallahassee at the cow house years ago. I went with my friends Jason and Allison...Allison wanted to meet him after the show and she was super nervous. It was fun.

you ever feel like you're just missing the grasp on life. like it's the sun setting, and you're racing across the distractions of living to grasp onto meaning right before it sinks below the horizon. it teases you all day while you're chained at work, just floating above you, white and blinding, and right when you leave work, you jump in your car and race as fast you can to catch it, but it doesn't happen. do you begin to think it's feeble? maybe it is..meaning of life is only important to those who have the luxury and lunacy to chase it, and ignore reality. we wrote a record called the everglow and it's quite idealistic...it's easy to talk about following passion, hard to actually do it...reality gets in the way. remember? the bills? the exams? the rent? your parents? the new record is more concerned with the disconnect...the shock of foundations being questions. exciting and discomforting. like a bus station, the promise of hope mixed with the depression of last resorts. i'm listening to iron and wine right now, taken by a pathetic love and disquieting nature. each night my heart settles on a jagged bed of new rocks, uncomfortable and easily awaoken. i want it to fall languidly onto a sand dune and never wake up. i've been home for the last 4 days and i have spent most of that time on the couch, playing xbox..i've bought some records recently (queen, u2, decemberists, incubus) and some christmas presents. i love my time off...i enjoy it.

Everyone is whipping each other about which god they prefer.

When you fall in love with someone, one of the cons is that the word "sucker" loses all meaning. Everything she asks you to do for her seems as small of a favor as if she asked you to pick up milk from the grocery store on the way to see her. I'm listening to Lou Barlow right now and drinking Southern Comfort. Before I started drinking, I used to be fascinated by Souther Comfort just because of the name. I'm infatuated with everything that is "storybook southern". I know there is an ugly characteristic that comes with anything deemed "southern", but that is a result of history. There is something appealing to me about the south. Front porches and sweet tea. I want to be married in a southern church, in Alabama, or North Carolina or something. Some church with a creek that flows behind it or something. You ever smell old wood? Maybe if the band doesn't work out, I'll take my wife to Savannah and stay in some haunted bed and breakfast...find a small college and get a philosophy degree. My house will have a hammock and I'll gladly live in an old suburb. I'll put record player out on the porch and listen to Tom Petty or Merle Haggard on sunday afternoons. I think I'm more like my Dad than my Mom. When we used to go on family vacations I would lie in the back of our Dodge Ram Charger and I remember hearing Tracy Chapman or the Travelin' Wilburys, or Paul Simon. In North Carolina, you feel the earth run deep beneath you, the soil feels hard and supports your body. In LA I feel like the street is going to crumble underneath my feet, and I'll fall into some black void...all of a sudden the earth will reveal itself to be flat like people used to think. I'll hang on to what remains of the intersection of Sunset and Vine and finally just give up, let go and fall into whatever beasts mouth is open beneath me. But that's completely OK. What a lovely and exciting way to go. No one will ever believe me. God doesn't exist maybe, the thought of that is eerie because it removes all purpose and direction from living. Ayn Rands nightmare. There is this Cursive song that says something like, "We're gonna need an explanation for rational thought And what it meant and the weight of our hearts. In a world of entropy, why can't we just simply be? And don't feed me lies, intelligent design"--that makes sense, and can be comforting depending on the night. Hey, for the record--I'm pro-choice and I don't care if homosexuals are allowed to get married--who am I to make the call...I'm merely a human who loves God, I'm not supposed to play God.