July 31, 2004
hiring stephen colbert
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CHEZJOEL: So, Stephen, I don't have your resume in front of me, but I am fairly familiar with your work, and I must say, it's pretty impressive. I particularly like your Mr. Goodwrench commercials.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Well and good, Joel, but I'd like to talk about...you.
CJ: Ah, ok. What do you want to know?
SC: Your middle name is Steven with a "v", isn't it?
CJ: Well, coincidentally, yes.
SC: Is it?
CJ: Is what?
SC: Is it a coincidence?
CJ: I expect it is.
SC: Aren't you jumping to conclusions?
CJ: It seems like a reasonable assumption. I mean, my parents, when they gave me that name--
SC: This isn't really relevant, is it?
CJ: {pause} No.
SC: Let's try to stay on topic, shall we?
CJ: Ok, perhaps I should tell you a little about the position.
SC: Ok. For the sake of argument, I'll play along.
CJ: Basically we need somebody who can write humorous content.
SC: "We?" "We" is just you, right?
CJ: Right now, well, yes--
SC: What is your policy on sexual harassment?
CJ: Sexual...ah, we're against that, of course.
SC: What is your stated policy on sexual harassment?
CJ: Very much against it.
SC: Is that on your website?
CJ: I'm sorry? You mean like a written policy?
SC: You don't actually have a policy on sexual harassment, do you?
CJ: Of course we do, like I just said, we feel sexual harassment is wrong, and shouldn't be--
SC: There's that "we" again. Isn't it true that you think that because you're the "little guy", and not some "giant corporation", you don't "need" a policy on sexual harassment?
CJ: That's not true at all.
SC: So you do need a policy on sexual harassment.
CJ: Sure. Everyone--
SC: Because you don't have one...
CJ: ...of course we have one...
SC: ...on your website.
CJ: {exasperated pause} Look. If you take this job, that can be your first order of business. You can draft our policy on sexual harassment, and I'll approve it, and we'll put it on the web.
SC: I think the question you have to ask is, what if I, Stephen Colbert, were interviewing you to come work for me? Would you take the job?
CJ: Ah, what sort of business is it?
SC: Does that matter?
CJ: Well, if I were going to work for you I'd want to have an idea what sort of business you were in.
SC: You know what I notice about you interviewing for a job with me?
CJ: No, what do you notice?
SC: You haven't once asked me about my policy on sexual harassment.
CJ: {laughing} So do you have one?
SC: I'd have to be a complete idiot not to have one.
For reasons I can't comprehend, Mr. Colbert now refuses to acknowledge this interview ever took place. At any rate, it turned out that Mr. Colbert's salary requirements were a smidge too high for me. If you're interested in this job, please comment below. It is a ground-floor opportunity to join a fast-paced, dynamic (and small) team, and influence...er, policy.
Posted by joel at 12:48 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 30, 2004
i am job
I finally got a small contract job! Maybe! Kinda! Hopefully! But it's a small one (couple hours' work). C'mon, people, check me out! No, seriously, check me out. I am a programmin' fool. Let me give you an example.
I was once approached by the Department of Defense about creating an April fools prank on NASA (a little inter-departmental fun). I had to work with their legacy equipment, which dated from the sixties, and been heavily scavanged for parts to be used as area 51 debris souvenirs. So first I had to patch things up with what they had on hand, which was exactly two coat hangers, a rayon necktie, and a roll of scotch tape (actually it was a generic brand; it didn't completely disappear when I used it to wrap some presents). Anyway, I sat down later that afternoon, and wrote 80,000 lines of code in JoelBalt, which is a language I created myself (it's a fusion of Assembly, Navajo, Morse code and essoteric jokes I share with a worldwide clandestine network of like-minded individuals). I then hand-compiled everything (it's much faster if I do it that way), and the rest, as they say, is black-ops history.
I don't want to give it all away, but you remember that satellite NASA lost a while back; that $4 billion thingie that pretty much bonked in the clutch, and then disappeared? That was me. Actually, I should say, that may or may not have been me. Suffice it to say, that satellite may or may not be back here in orbit around our planet, doing freelance reconnaisance work (imagine that: a moonlighting satellite). I believe they rent it out for big parties. It's pretty slick when people walk out to the pool, and see the top of their head on the big HD screen behind the stage. They always, always look up to see the camera, and they always get so confused. It is hilarious.
Anyway, I'm certainly qualified to help you with any of your programming needs, like, say, website. Or parsing...files. I'll probably use Perl. JoelBalt is way too powerful for everyday use. Plus most computers can't even use it. It requires alien hardware.
Posted by joel at 11:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
why invade iraq?
I have been dismayed, of late, to see who's backing away from the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. I don't mean to pick on manasclerk, but his recent post about Richard Clark's book got me thinking about this.
I can understand why liberals are up in arms about this armed conflict. They have several reasons to be dismayed by it, not the least of which is the possibility of success in the venture. Bush has proposed a profound shift in our approach to terrorism. It's akin to Reagan's showdown with the Soviet Union, which as we know, was ultimately successful.
But conservatives and libertines who back away from the Iraq invasion generally seem to wind up mimicking liberals' arguments; it's too expensive, American lives are being needlessly lost, or that Iraq was irrelevant to the war on terror.
The truth of the matter is that Iraq was crucial in the war on terror. I make this assertion despite the fact that discovered caches of chemical and biological weapons have been far, far below expectations, and despite the fact that the link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda is still being debated. There is a strong humanitarian argument for the campaign; Sadaam was a brutal oppressor who ruled by terror. He maimed, raped and tortured and killed thousands of his own people. While I'm glad the Iraqi people are free from Sadaam's rule, this isn't the primary reason we had to go into Iraq.
Ultimately, the reason we had to go over there is psychological. Terrorism is, essentially, a psychological campaign; in a sense it is gang warfare. And Sadaam, by defying the UN repeatedly, was challenging our street creds. The United States had already lost credibility over the last couple of decades by not answering terrorist attacks, from Beruit, to Mogudishu, to the World Trade Towers (1993), to the USS Cole, and back to NY on September 11, 2001. Word was getting around that maybe we had lost our edge.
Does this sound primitive or immature? It will sound that way to you if you've let comfortable, urbane American life convince you that there are civilized ways to circumvent the rawest truth about human nature. To espouse further negotiation, dialoguing or gracious attempts to try to understand the enemy's complaints is to live in denial. The psychology of such a reaction is not good; we'd be sitting ducks.
In the movie Family Business Jessie McMullen (played by Sean Connery) gave some advice to his grandson, who was facing possible time in prison. He said, "on your first day, find the biggest guy there, and hit him as hard as you can." The point of this is not that the biggest guy is necessarily coming after us. But once we've decked the biggest guy, all the other guys who were looking for weaklings will think twice about messing with us. Sadaam volunteered to be the biggest man. His UN resolution violations and civil rights atrocities are just the technicalities that got us in there. From a psychological stand point, we had to hit him as hard as we could.
Posted by joel at 10:34 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
July 29, 2004
synchronicity
My friend John, of Belfry, The, is a believer in synchronicity. I believe in synchronicity too, but John sees it all the time. Occasionally it clocks me upside the head, and I think I see something. For instance, John blogged recently about spiders (shudder), and just a moment ago I discovered Brian's Got a Second?, a sometimes humorous, sometimes reflective blog about life (no relation to this, at least I think...boy wouldn't that be synchronicity! But no. You can see what an amateur I am at this.). Brian wrote a very funny post about the origins of spider man. Of course, this example only demonstrates that when it comes to spotting synchronicity, I am the weakest link.
Some people believe every thing is synchronized, and that nothing happens accidentally. Every falling leaf, virtually every breath you take could tell us something if only we knew how to read the signs. But most people aren't quite that extreme. The majority of people are, I find (through mystical means), divided between two camps: those who think synchronicity happens from time to time, and those who believe it's all utter hooey. So we have the "O My God!" pan-synchrotists (whack), the synchro-nihilists (boring), and the limited synchrotists who will be the topic of the rest of this post.
The question we must ask is "what, if anything, does synchronicity mean?" Is it as Jung would have it; our own minds drawing lines between dots which are actually unconnected? Or, as Jean Moisset suggests, are synchronicities the artifacts of fractals; angels' wings on angels wings, of which larger picture we only see the little parts?*
If we follow Jung's path, we can, at most, conclude that our own minds may be smarter than we realize, and that we can follow these synchronicities to unlock a higher understanding of ourselves. The mind works a certain way, but we don't know everything about it. On the other hand, if a tree falls in the forest and kills a lumberjack, but no one is there to see it, is that synchronicity? The universe works a certain way, but we don't know everything about it.
I believe it is moot to argue which of these theories is true. I believe in God, and my faith in Him is far too tremulous to entrust to coincidence as a bulwark. I also think I see synchronicity. If there is a God, he created both the universe and my mind. So if He chooses to show me something through synchronicity, it doesn't matter if it's mystical secrets of the universe, or just all in my head. Generally, when I see synchronicity, it's not a message in a bottle. Usually, it's in those moments when you turn around and see that your own children are walking in your footsteps, or when you realize you're acting like your own mother. If synchronicity has any message to me, it is merely that there is more to this existence than meets my eye.
* Mr. Moisset, in his article Synchronicity and Parapsychology puts forth an argument for parallel universes as an explanation for synchronistic experiences.
Posted by joel at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
valley of the cheesemongers
<stream type="consciousness">My brother is a web analytics specialist, and we were discussing the recent spate of traffic to chezJoel.com. I facetiously referred to "anawebalitics." Transcript of our conversation follows ("Dysprositos" is me):
[09:00] mymo: Webalitics. I like that
[09:01] Dysprositos: it sounds more like a religion than a science
[09:01] mymo: First Church of Christ Webalitics
[09:01] Dysprositos: you just unleash the power that already resides in your website
[09:01] mymo: Or the story of the webalitic at the pool of siloam
[09:02] mymo: Take up your statistics and wlk
[09:02] Dysprositos: pool of siloam...I said bethsada in my loneliness blog...
[09:02] Dysprositos: it was siloam, wasn't it
[09:02] mymo: bethsaida, siloam who knows
[09:02] mymo: a quick internet search would reveal
[09:02] mymo: the answer
[09:03] Dysprositos: y
[09:03] Dysprositos: funny thing is, I did look it up int he bible but didn't notice
[09:04] mymo: well I didnt see your mistake in the blog either
[09:04] Dysprositos: it's under articles
[09:07] Dysprositos: http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=JOHN+5:2-4&language=english&version=NIV&showfn=on&showxref=on
[09:09] mymo: http://www.bible-history.com/jerusalem/firstcenturyjerusalem_pool_of_siloam.html
[09:09] mymo: looks like you were right
[09:10] Dysprositos: siloam was the water supply. no way they'd let cripples bathe in it
[09:10] Dysprositos: stirred or not
[09:10] mymo: lol
[09:11] Dysprositos: dude from near the end of your URL: "Josephus frequently mentions Siloam, placing it at the termination of the Valley of the Cheesemongers or the Tyropoeon Valley ..."
09:11] Dysprositos: what is the a cheesemonger?
[09:11] mymo: CHeesemonger
[09:11] mymo: my lovely cheesemonger
[09:12] mymo: cheese sellers
[09:12] Dysprositos: I'll wait for yoohoo
[09:12] Dysprositos: no doubt, but it makes me laugh
[09:12] mymo: yeah, it is funny
[09:12] Dysprositos: I didn't know it was a word in common usage
[09:12] Dysprositos: sounds like an insult
[09:12] mymo: well, common is a stretch
[09:13] Dysprositos: of course, "monger" on the end of anything sounds vaguely like an anti-capitolist slur
[09:13] mymo: lol
[09:13] mymo: Kerry is such a wafflemonger
[09:14] Dysprositos: but does he have his own valley
[09:14] mymo: Probably could afford one
[09:15] Dysprositos: yeah, but consider, being a wafflemonger almost means you need several valleys, and the mountains in between them
[09:16] mymo: yeah
[09:17] Dysprositos: Fid and I have been discussing why cheesemonger might need their own valley
I'd just like to point out that I thought I needed to offer a correction for my "On Loneliness" article, but, it turns out I was right all along. However, in the course of almost submitting a correction, I misspelled "Bethsada" and discovered that the once mighty Cheesemongers Local 427 had, at one time, their very own valley. Suck on that, Kerry.
Mymo's blog can be found here.</stream>
Posted by joel at 09:39 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 28, 2004
manasclerk and me
I'm back at the Blue Bottle again, sucking down latte, and burning up wifi. I am tired, and am using this moment to reflect on a three day run of productivity that has left me in an exhausted, but pleasant haze. I use the word "productivity" euphemistically: three twenty-hour days of jobhunting, blogging and Internet research has produced a few silly contract leads, a new blogsite for my friend John, and an encouraging little bump in my own website's statistics. Now I need this little coffee break to pull back and figure out what "productive" should mean.
I've been poking around Manasclerk's Power Struggle lately, when I make the time for it, and have especially enjoyed his posts about faith and Grace. In fact, I've been meaning to write a tribute post to Manasclerk's blog, but have stalled out, merely because I am having trouble writing well enough to convey how his blog has encouraged me. So, Manasclerk, to paraphrase Tenacious D, this post isn't the Greatest Post in the World, its just a tribute...
Manasclerk is one of those Christians who eschew cliches and plastic God words; he expresses his faith in common language, sometimes calling upon the power of gritty vernacular. To me this is refreshing, appropriate and eerily familiar. I grew up among Christians with a staggering penchent for the puerile and a talent for the trite. My rebellion, my belligerence toward God's unflinching mercy to me is that I express myself to Him as purely and simply as I can. And when I'm feeling emotional, I use forceful language. My hometown Christians would, I am fond of imagining, shudder to hear me pray the way I do. But that is how I tell God that when I pray to Him, I mean to speak only with Him. My profanity in the presence of His holiness is unfit for others to hear, and this underscores its sacredness.
I do not know what Manasclerk's refreshingly plain speech means to him. Of course I'd like to imagine he feels the same way about it that I do. Whatever the case, his gritty honesty clashes with his obvious devotion to Christ, and the resulting conflict is beautiful to me, for I have embraced the same power struggle.
Posted by joel at 06:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
romance
I do not write for you, my friend,
Not anymore.
Used to send one poem off chasing another
Every other week.
Like paper boats they floated,
My words crowding their decks, bravely waving
To devoted wishers-well.
Wrote good thoughts, too.
I cached those away like stamps or butterflies
Or quaint pewter buttons from Colonial times.
Then we used to chat
Of simple happiness,
Or lofty sadness.
Your answers came so quickly then:
For duty, perseverance.
For vision, striving.
For pain, comfort.
For pain again, yet more comfort.
Thrice pained, you faltered.
Four times, and you fled.
Pain blew mildew on my stamps,
And ugly rotten holes in my faded dusty flies,
And dashed my pewter button box to the floor.
At first I smiled as best I could.
I shrugged a bit and sighed,
"Oh, well. I'll get some more one day, I'm sure."
I've lost count of days since then.
And my boats, oh, my boats.
Let me tell about those.
Many sank, and the desperate mobs of ink
Were lifted on the tide still clinging to their dry fellows
Until the waters bore them away to ambiguous drowning.
Worse, some boats still sail in eddying circles.
Their wordy crews plunge bravely round
Through seas charted many times before,
And sing their chanties,
A broken record of my voice.
A very few boats are just gone.
I don't know where.
And there
You sit and fidget in my stare.
Come back, have you, to drive me mad?
I've nothing left for you to do.
Still, I suppose that I must keep you around
And stay attuned to every sound you make,
But just so you know,
I do not write for you, my friend,
Not anymore.
© 1991, All rights reserved.
I wrote this poem in 1991, back when I knew something about the jaded disappointment that romance often brings. Since then, I fell in love a few times, married once, was divorced, and lived alone since. Somehow romance doesn't disturb me as much now as it did back then. I actually feel less jaded, and less worldly-wise.
When I recently came across this poem in my archives again, I was first excited at having found it again. Then I read it through once, and my enthusiasm cooled. Then I went ahead and transcribed it to my webpage, and as I typed, I fell in love with it again. Not the same love I used to have for it, mind. I am not so impressed with it's verbal punch as I probably used to be. What strikes me now is the subtlety and restraint in word choices. And that takes me back to my state of mind when I wrote it; it wasn't hurried, flustered or mad. It was quiet, slow and sad.
Another compelling thing about this poem is that it directly mocks itself: "Worse, some boats still sail in eddying circles...and sing their chanties, a broken record of my voice." I cannot think of a better way to describe this poem. It is like the flawed man who redeems himself with accurate self deprication. It doesn't make this a better poem, but it does make me like it a little more.
Posted by joel at 03:51 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
introducing: belfry, the
John McAdams and Co.'s new blog Belfry, The has fascinating entries which run the gamut from offbeat to profound. John and his associates have rushed into their site's launch like a fruit bat on christmas pudding; they have eleven posts as of this writing, and only opened their doors 9 hours ago. Content includes poetry, essays and even original art by affiliate contributor Daryk Jozef Havlicek. So head up the stairs and see the stuff their bats are made of.
Posted by joel at 02:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 26, 2004
the kindness of chaos
Yesterday I had 5 hours of driving to do, and I somehow began musing on chaos. "A butterfly flaps it's wings in Brazil, and there is a tornado in Texas." Small variations in initial conditions produce large variations in outcome. This concept of chaos theory has been demonstrated by the lovely and talented Lorenz Attractor. However, the natural world is not as simple a system as the Lorenz Attractor. One of the more amazing things about chaos in nature is that it frequently tends toward states we perceive as proximal order. Most of us "chaos ignorami" don't get the finer points of Mr Lorenz' butterfly, but nonetheless instinctively understand this. Butterflies flap their wings in Brazil frequently, with utter disregard to those resilient Texans, and we have no effective way to prove it does or doesn't make any difference. We could kill all the butterflies in Brazil, but tornados in Texas would probably continue, for if a butterfly can cause a tornado, why not a fruit bat? For that matter, could not a particularly flatulent longhorn steer in Texas return the favor to Brazil?
So, most of us are content to approximate, in our down-home earthy wisdom, a theory of chaos which could be summed up thusly:
And despite the utter lack of academic discipline in our proofs, we are generally right. Talk about chaos.
Much of the energy spent in developing the world's major religions has been motivated by the need to cope with that "no guarantees" part of the equation. Given a moral system handed down by an omnipotent and all-knowing God, if we behave as He dictates we should, why do bad things happen to us? Why does He send rain on the righteous and the unrighteous? Isn't He trying to encourage a certain type of behavior? How better to do that than by offering us guarantees for our own well-being?
Humans dislike this uncertainty inherent in our own existence, and Christians generally seem to join adherents of other major religions in assuming that this uncertainty factor is a bad thing; a force of evil in the world.
But it's not a bad thing. Chaos is a good thing, a needful thing. The existence of chaos manifests God's love and His kindness to us. How can this be? What about a busload of schoolchildren careening into a ravine? What about SIDS, leukemia and acts of terrorism? Kindness?
The reason chaos manifests God's love is that chaos is the fundamental ingredient in a mutable universe. God means for us to exist as mutable free agents in a sandbox of mutable playthings. If the universe weren't created to be mutable, everything would be predictable. Not only the things that happened to us, but even the things we could do would inevitably be completely predictable. No free will. No surprises. No fun.
But a mutable world, now that's an interesting world, and one worth living in. Puny little creatures like human beings are able, by exerting relatively minute differences on their environment, to bring about significant changes. And in an infinitely mutable, deeply complex chaotic world, each puny human being is presented with myriad choices every moment. The vast majority of those decisions bear utterly no significance and are, for all intents and purposes, completely irrelevant. But without vast numbers of insignificant events, how could there be any events with significance?
God created us to be Brazilian butterflies (or Texas longhorns, if you prefer). But we can't be free to introduce our amazing little variations in initial conditions outside of a universe which won't allow those minute changes to result in big outcomes.
The kindness of chaos is this: God has created a universe that is soft enough to let us move about with freedom.
Posted by joel at 11:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 25, 2004
i and you
I am human;
I,
Stepping quickly into the best possible light,
Juggle my sins to my offhand before I shake yours.
I,
Gathering my favorite judges around us,
Smile humbly as they wind me up.
I,
Bidding them be silent with ears like desert gulches awash in flattery,
Cast down my eyes as my shoulders rise.
I,
With a maid’s blush on my sleeve, and a pirate’s grin on my heart,
Always get the best lawyers.
I
Always did,
Until the dawning of the stranger’s moon:
You,
With symphonic joyful darkness,
Burned me with truthful silence.
You,
Unmoving so that mountains seem to fidget,
Moved down upon me in a cloud.
You
Let others tell me, in shaded earthen words,
Of water which clay pots will never hold.
You,
Smiling like a friend,
Broke out upon my dizzy eyes with singing.
You,
Not caring that I shrank and wept,
Swept me into the Best Impossible Light.
You,
Although human too,
Are also
You.
Posted by joel at 03:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 24, 2004
inefficient love
"Dad, look!" My son was staring out the back window of the car to the south-south-west.
"I can't, son, I'm driving." I replied, an irritated, annoyed, weary, worrying, distracted parent with sensory overload. But for some reason, I pulled into a nearby parking lot, and turned the car around so I could see what had caught his attention. I beheld the most incredible rainbow I've ever seen in my life.
The sky hung like a canvas of pure, unpretentious blue; not the color of blue that makes you say, "wow, blue." Just blue, like water is wet, or like lambs wool is soft. The scattered cirrus clouds did nothing to hide the sun of this gorgeous day from our vantage point.
The rainbow itself infused a long, barely arching row of fragile clouds that stood up like grass. The clouds themselves refracted the light, so that behind the clouds, against the sky, no rainbow could be seen. An artist's delicately brilliant colors painted the featherlike clouds. It looked strikingly like an aurora.
I immediately ached that I did not have a camera. This would have been one incredible shot! While silently castigating myself for not keeping a camera in the car, I happened to wonder about my fellow man. Of all the thousands of us who were geographically situated so that we could have seen this rainbow, how many of us actually did? When the sun comes out after the rain, we rush outside to see if there is a rainbow. But this rainbow occurred on a beautiful, sunny, dry day.
I realize now that God is not like me. I would have taken my picture, blown it up, framed it, and would have hung it prominently in my home. You'd have thought I had created that rainbow myself. But not God. He put up this incredible display of beauty, and doesn't mind in the slightest that most of us never happened to see it. He doesn't herd us into a theatre, dim the lights and raise the curtain on His incredible displays of beauty. He just puts them out there, like a friendly smile across a crowded room. If He happens to catch your eye, He just winks. That's it.
That got me thinking how wasteful He is. He really goes to great lengths to show off His generosity. But that's how you make someone feel loved. When we love someone, we must, from time to time, stop being efficient. We put aside our schedules, our time-savers and our conveniences, and waste some time. The Apostle Paul, in describing God's love for us repeatedly used terms like "exceedingly abundantly." If the quantity of something is "exceedingly abundant," then you've got too much. That means leftovers that don't get used. It means waste.
As if on cue, the clouds began to dissolve, and the rainbow slowly faded, starting from the western end to the east. God had winked, and nodded, and now moved on, no doubt painting, singing or whispering to some other few children. How inefficient!
Posted by joel at 02:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 23, 2004
never on sunday
I have always been impressed with Eric Leddell and his decision not to run the 100 yard dash in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Although the 100 yard dash was his best event, the qualifying heats were to be held on a Sunday. He decided his faith took precedence. He entered the 400 yard dash instead. Inspite of the fact that he had not trained for that event, he won and set a world record.
I just discovered another athlete who made virtually the same decision. In 2000, African hammer record holder Chirs (sic) Harmse withdrew from the South African Olympic team because the final for his event was held on a Sunday.
It looks like Mr. Harmse is still competing, and hopefully will be going to Athens with the South African team.
Posted by joel at 01:23 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
fine sleeping weather
My son told me about a dream he had about a strange, magical land, with bizaare creatures. In part of the dream there was a tile set into the ground in a grassy lawn. On the tile there was a depiction of the sun. If you passed your hand over the tile, a shadow would pass over the sky. If you held your hand over the sun, a hand-shaped shadow would appear overhead. My son said someone sat on the tile, and night fell instantly.
I asked him if he ever had any dreams that recur. He said, no, but did I? So I told him about the dream I have everytime I get sick, virtually without fail. In the dream I see the interior of a white room or box (I can't tell the scale of anything in this dream). In the middle of the box I see a tornado-shaped vortex made of solid matter of a dark-brown color. It looks like cornflakes mixed with molassas. It makes a crunching, grinding noise as it slowly turns. In the dream, I'm not actually there in the corporeal sense, and I can feel the tornado as well as see and hear it.
My sister informs me that last night she dreamed of "a beautiful deciduous tree in a rainstorm, [and] the branches twisted and shook in slow motion...the leaves were as broad as frisbees."
Could this be mere coincidence? Call me a dreamer, but I prefer to believe it could be.
Posted by joel at 12:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
on loneliness
When Christ was touring Galilee, he healed droves of the sick, and cured the blind, the lame, and the deaf. But lonely people were passed over. He didn't take away the loneliness of the pressing masses. He didn't enter villages and heal all their lonely people. And yet loneliness is the central problem He came to address. Did He not come to heal the rift which separated us from God? So what was the holdup?
Today it seems to be the same story. So many of us live lonely lives. And God knows we are lonely. We've told Him about it countless times. Yet we continue in our loneliness. We feel, sometimes, like the cripple at the Pool of Bethesda. Thirty-eight years he hung out by the pool, hoping that one day he'd defy the odds, and win the lottery. The impossible would happen to him. For thirty-eight years, the ridiculous impossibility of his own hope sat like a stone on his chest. By the time Jesus came by, the man couldn't even bear to talk about his infirmity directly anymore. He talked about his game plan for getting himself healed. Nonetheless, Jesus healed the guy on the spot. How many lonely people did Christ walk past on his way to the pool?
How many times has He walked past you in your loneliness? How many times have you wondered how long this could go on? Why do other people get what they need, but you stay lonely? What's the holdup?
The holdup is that loneliness requires a bigger healing. And the ingredients for the healing of loneliness are harder to come by. When Jesus healed the blind, he used ingredients like spit and mud. He also often asked for the patient's participation. He ordered the man at the pool to take up his bed and skedaddle. When it comes time to heal loneliness once and for all (for that is His aim), there will be dust and spit and mud and blood and fire. And there will be patients' participation.
The biggest logistical problem must certainly be the participation part. There are so many patients; it's hard to get them all participating. The planet's burden of loneliness is huge. You're just holding a part of it. And it's hard, because some of the patients have left their posts, and have tried various home-grown, superstitious remedies for loneliness. All of us have tried to shuck our chunk of the Loneliness at one time or another. Furthermore, when some of us try our own remedies, we hurt other patients even more, leaving them lonelier than ever. Nearly all of us have had our loneliness compounded and stomped on by other lonely people. Many of us are fixated on the nearby pool, or on that one particular person who would get us into the pool. But still the loneliness drags on indefinitely, and it's getting harder and harder to bear.
Don't give up. God has not overlooked the problem of loneliness, quite the opposite. The sick, the blind, the lame, and the deaf He healed incidentally, as He encountered them, simply because He could. All the ingredients were there, and there was no reason not to heal them. But His Big Plan has always been to cure loneliness once and for all, and that includes your loneliness. It's been a long, long time, and your loneliness may weigh so heavily on you that you find it hard to even think about it. But it's going away.
The cure for loneliness will be God's piece de resistance, His coup de grace. If He doesn't cure loneliness, all His other cures will be worthless, meaningless. All those people that Christ healed in Galilee eventually died. He healed them out of compassion, but He also knew that someday not so very far hence, those eyes would dim again. Those unstopped ears would again cease hearing. Someday those former cripples would lie down again for the last time. But His biggest healing, His ultimate cure was still coming.
There is coming a time when you will not be lonely anymore.
Posted by joel at 03:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 22, 2004
free to read blogs
I'm two weeks and a day between jobs today. This afternoon I fed and watered the pets, and escaped into Muncie. Now I'm tucked into a local wi-fi coffee shop, listening to Frou Frou, sucking on the ice cubes left over from an iced latte, and reading a new favorite blog.
I don't know anything about Frou Frou. I think I'm listening to them these days because their music doesn't interfere with my thoughts, which are energetic, swirling, agitated...unemployed.
Walnut street is darkening to an overcast dusk, and the parking spots are filling up on this Thursday evening, as folks straggle in to enjoy the two bars on this street.
Bookmark this: the intrepid and vivacious Dawn Eden has a blog called The Dawn Patrol. Plenty of reasons to like Dawn Eden: she's a headline writer, pop music historian, outspoken conservative voice living in New York, a Christian and a C.S. Lewis reader. Her blog goes back to February of 2002, and she's prolific, so I've got plenty to read. Way to go, Dawn! Keep em' coming.
Posted by joel at 07:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 19, 2004
chez Joel, redesigned
Those of you who know (and you know who you are), will notice that the website's appearance has changed. It was time. Change is good.
Those of you who know me (and don't think I don't know that you know who I am), know that this change in website appearance can only mean I have too much time on my hands. This is not a good thing. But you knew that.
Posted by joel at 07:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack