Polyphonic (Dionysian) Musings

Random Scribblings

2006-09-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

So while I was reading Jeremiah 31-33 and the related texts of Exodus pertaining to the New Covenant (in a local coffee shop), I took some notes which flashed into my mind (on the back of a forteen inch receipt). Really, they are random scribblings which I wanted to post online. They're rich in a personal sort of way, and rather abstract too. Perhaps mystical at times, but fall in the genre of "stream of conscienceness," or "prayer and meditation," with minimal editing. Welcome to my mind.

--

Sometimes an utterance confirms and enhances an event.

Other times it exposes it and cheapens its experience.

--

One attitude will deplete lifeful events of significance; that is, the unnatural desire to attain someone in an externalized, abstract sort of way, while ever maintaining an unwillingness to embrace them and allow oneself the vulnerability to be changed.

This is imposing the genre of acquisition outside of its proper scope. Violence is done and an opportunity for significance and greatness forsaken, all for the mundane gain of security from risk. A calculated, wise risk may bear fruit, while a risk forsaken ensures empty success. Its far more awesome to dream and live in the moment of insecurity and flux. Oh, but what faith it takes to embrace, prolong, or at least not steamroll the uncertain movements of becoming. It is for this courage which I pray and that you Oh God would sovreignly direct my steps all of my days toward your kingdom. This courage is to become something, something finite, surely, but something not bound up in the eternal possibilities of indecision.

God's grace is sufficient for us to be wrong and imperfect while we are finding our way in the world. Answers are not always as fast and quick as platitudes and bumber stickers.

Part of what it means to be human in this time; this "in between" time, between the fall and the redemption, is that we're going to change our minds and we're going to see as through opaque and imprecise glass, dimly, but later, upon the fulness of time and redemption, we will see face to face.

Let us prepare an answer as Paul says but let us not boast in our over-confident conjecture, but rest in the sufficiency of God's tangible providence and kindness.

--

It is important to learn to rely and trust oneself. There is a healthy way to do this which does not steal God's thunder and honors him with wise stewardship. As pertains to order, organization, and scheduling, we need to trust ourselves and become trustworthy and faithful sorts of people.

Imago Dei Community

2006-08-21T19:41:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot to say about Imago Dei. I probably wouldn't attend there myself if in Portland, although they seem like a good church. I enjoyed seeing Donald Miller. He didn't speak much, but seemed cool. The other fellow had some really nice pictures, and the sermon was a conversation between the two. That was the most "emerging" thing about the church; otherwise, it's not altogether different than the 2nd generation "willow creek" style. I didn't like having to go up to the front and feed the Eucharist to myself (literally take it off the table w/o any scripture reading about the celebration), and the Eucharist came after the "conversation" more in line with a baptist and individualist / modern-evangelical liturgy. Boo PowerPoint, as well. Their vernacular was nothing to be coveted (though I've heard worse), and the praise music was pretty standard commercial evangelical stuff, nothing especially radical. I had hoped for something striking with innovation in this church, its network (Acts 29), and even Portland, and have been sorely disappointed. Yet, it makes me much happier to be in Chicago and grateful to have been at Wheaton with all of the not-so-obvious perks. I sent a bunch of post-cards out, to people including Dr. Litfin, the Parking Coordinater Dawn, and Dean Powers. Today I think I want to meet an INFJ girl who is Reformed, and I think it would be cool to start dating for marriage immediately. :-) I'm also ready to get a job and go back to my wonderful apartment in Chicago and get back in the habit of going to *my* church. :-) Okay, so there is a little glimpse into my life right now. BTW I got a new cell phone a week ago -- it's the Verizon Chocolate one. Not a bad choice, and I'd recommend it if you're up for an upgrade. I'm counting the days for Apple to update their MacBook Pro line to the Intel Core 2 Duo (Merom) so that I can have a blazing fast, sexy, new and funcitonal laptop! Oh, I almost forgot! I'm planning to do street preformance downtown Chicago (getting a license) to pay my rent until I get a tech job or until it gets too cold to do otherwise. :-) Peace for now, from the Apple Store in Portland, OR!

Portland!

2006-08-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

Well, to update you: I've been in Portland for a few days, and the few days before that I moved my things into my new place downtown Chicago. :-) I'm in the Ukrainian Village, just south of Wicker Park on Damen and Chicago. So, in Portland today, after my father arrived, we went to the largest bookstore in the world and I bought a few books, all of which I have researched after the purchased, and I think they were good choices. I chose them all for a combination of my interest in the subject and in their price, as I attempted to buy each of them used. I'll list them here with minor commentary:

1. Thus Spake Zarathustra - Frederich Nietzsche - Partly after reading Bruce Benson's article in the volume he edited entitled The Phenomenology of Prayer, examining Nietzsche's tears and prayers (and the excitement built into his forthcoming book entailed Pious Nietzsche: Decadence and Dionysian Faith), I thought I'd educate myself on Uncle Fred. It's rather striking to see how thoroughly marked (and if you will, marred) Nietzsche was by Christianity. The prose and subject matter should evoke this.
2. God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion - Merold Westphal, Westphal is a fellow "post-modern" graduate of my alma mater, Wheaton College, who is the foremost scholar concerning continental philosophy of religion today and resides in the Bronx at Fordham, currently (then, Hope College).
3. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays - Martin Heidegger - I've hear of this, and the price was right.
4. Poetry, Language, Thought - Martin Heidegger - This was called the best of Heidegger's works, and is certainly an exciting purchase, partially because I have read Gadamer on aesthetics. I'm especially curious about his view of language and the question of whether the human primarily exists in through linguistic or a pre-linguistic state. In the back of my mind, I'd like to read Dallas Willard on the same subject which is freely available online entitled The Absurdity of Thinking in Language. Willard is a continental philosophy specialist in California.

Tomorrow, Sunday, I aim to attend the Imago Dei Community Worship Service with my father, and incidentally enough bohemian author Donald Miller will be speaking about nature. Rarely does he speak there, I gather (since I see no mp3s of him on their website) so I take this to be a remarkable treat. May God's spirit move and excite us to worship and greater love of God and our neighbor tomorrow. It's exciting to have the hopefulness of Christ in the world (and especially this city) without hope, to have something to grasp in the midst of cynicism. Well, it's getting later, and I'm planning to go to bed. Peace friends! Enjoy the links.

Moving to Chicago

2006-08-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

I'm moving to Chicago! I haven't secured a place yet, but I'm torn
between the Ukranian Villege and Wicker Park and possibly Old Town /
Cabrini-Green. Please, if you have any connections or advise, pass it
my way. Thanks!

I like Video Chatting!

2006-07-24T00:44:00.000-07:00

I own an iSight on my newly acquired used powerbook that is no longer portable. All that to say, if you wanna videochat some time -- I'm game, b/c I like it! It's a lot more fun to see you while we're talking than merely hearing you -- there's a more full social context which is affirmed. To you luddites out there: get a mac, and get up with the times!

"If You Could Read My Mind"

2006-07-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Johnny keeps things real -- his voice is simple, his lyrics deep, poetic, and moving. God rest his soul. This song brings out some very human chords as loss, unrequited love, hopelessness, and frustrated expectations. I appreciate that Cash doesn't just (even though he didn't write this song -- he did choose to record it) sing empty, happy lyrics, but ones that are weathered and torn with reality. This world is not our home, but this world is where we wait -- and even with the Christian ideals which we behold, if we're honest, shame marks our lives and we have not been changed by the gospel as we ought. In the in-between moment of the two kingdoms, the kingdom or reign of man and the Kingdom of God as seen in the full reign of Christ, we can not escape from the reality of depravity, that shit happens and none of us has come out unscathed, unmarked by frustrated loss and shattered ideals. Cling ever tighter to Christ and the words of hope we have through the Father's grace, for there is nothing in this world which can give us what our hearts so deeply long for. We long with expectation. Hope deferred makes the heart sick (says the proverb) -- do not refuse to render God his due today. Savor it and even more savor Him while you still can. Be humble enough to submit to his goodness which he intends to mercifully lavish upon you today. I know this is my challenge. I pray for repentance.

Johnny Cash - "If You Could Read My Mind"
Originally by: Gordon Lightfoot
Album: "American V - A Hundred Highways" (2006)

If you could read my mind, love,
What a tale my thoughts could tell.
Just like an old time movie,
'Bout a ghost from a wishing well.
In a castle dark or a fortress strong,
With chains around my feet.
You know that ghost is me.
And I will never be set free
As long as there's a ghost that you can't see.

If I could read your mind, love,
What a tale your thoughts would tell.
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind that drugstores sell.
When you reached the part
where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me.
But heroes often fail,
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just too hard to take!

I'd walk away like a movie star
Who gets burned in a three way script.
Enter number two:
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me.
But for now, love, let's be real;
I never thought I could act this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it.
I don't know where we went wrong,
But the feeling's gone
And I just can't get it back.

If you could read my mind, love,
What a tale my thoughts could tell.
Just like an old time movie,
'Bout a ghost from a wishing well.
In a castle dark or a fortress strong.
With chains upon my feet.
But stories always end,
If you read between the lines,
You'll know that I'm just tryin' to understand
The feelin's that you lack.
I never thought I could feel this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it.
I don't know where we went wrong,
But the feelin's gone
And I just can't get it back!

First Post!

2006-07-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

A couple of things to say:
1. This is my Dionysian blog. That means, I prefer not to justify a lot of the things I say, but rather give a greater stream-of-consciousness style which might annoy some of you readers. Organization is not going to be my main objective in this blog -- but rather, getting thoughts down and on paper or rather into the blogosphere, for myself and hey, I'm a bit of a selfish narcissistic, so I'll just publish it publicly, and hopefully someone will like it and complement it and interact with what I've said . Don't complain if things don't make sense, I can always clarify, but frankly that's the nature of this blog. (Dionysus was the god of wine in Greek mythology -- so if you're angry about my style, go have a glass of wine, and then read it again to see if it makes any more sense.) I chose the Dionysian form rather than Apollonian (to use two of Nietzsche's Greek categories), while my Apollonian blog, which might hardly even live up to such a distinguished and honorable appellation -- yet, it can be found at http://guyfain.blogspot.com, and is mainly steeped in essays and papers. It could even be more organized, but alas -- such is too difficult to maintain, so I haven't been posting there very often.
2. Why the title "Polyphonic Musings"? Polyphonic because I've always got 80 different things going on in my mind at once, so this sort of makes space for that. Polyphonic is not always beautiful, although it can be, nonetheless it's always busy and often complicated. Such describes me and my thinking. Musings, because I don't expect to have answers always, and I certainly don't want to make strong claims the norm, b/c they tend to be quite difficult to come up with. Thus, I muse -- speak from the particular moment and vantage point where I stand. I am hoping a site like this will actually make me into a better person, and help strengthen my voice. I reserve the right to over-do intensive introspection, simply because I can. If you don't like it, you can quit reading -- it will give you an insiders view into my over-complicated mind. I will do my best not to fabricate, and speak honestly and clearly according to what I can see.
3. About me -- I'm an ENTP on the Myers-Briggs. I learn primarily kinesthetically, reflectively, intuitively, verbally, and globally. I beat to my own drum, and most traditional forms of teaching -- even educational hierarchies rub me the wrong way, although I yet understand and appreciate them, if not only for familiar reasons. I graduated from Wheaton College -- which I believe is a very inauthentic place if you look at the way the administration guides the school, and I'm glad to be out. But don't let this give you the opinion that I hate Wheaton or had a bad time there, because both would be untrue. I loved certain profs a lot, and I wouldn't be the person I am today if I didn't attend school there. I just think Wheaton could and should lay off on its pompous institutionalism a bit and internalize the gospel of grace a bit more. It's a very legalistic place, and it's hard for me to decide whether it's Evangelicalism or the Midwest or a combination of the two which makes it the way that it is. Narrowness is not an altogether inappropriate term to use, while I also apprehend Wheaton as living off of a borrowed reputation -- the Harvard of Christian schools. Most of us roll our eyes and cower when we hear such words, while I'm sure there are some who salivate and whose posture and pulse rise. I was a Philosophy and Theology major, and I am skilled in Computing -- the field I think I will choose. My life is sort of up in the air right now, as I'm trying to find a job and get out of the Midwest, although I might stay in the area for at least two reasons -- my church and a couple more classes here at Wheaton. I might take John Calvin with Steven Spencer next semester and German, and maybe Shell Scripting up at COD (College of Dupage). Currently I'm in Summer, Intensive Hebrew. I'm also not dating anyone, and I kind of think I'd like an *NF* girl, which I think will mesh well with my personality. I just can't decide about E/I or J/P -- even though I'm strong on both of those (E and P). To go beyond my usual public limit in disclosure of personal information, I really like kissing and miss the camaraderie and companionship of being in a relationship. I guess I'm in love with being in love -- so yes, I'm an idealist and a hopeless romantic as well. I often dream of being in a relationship again, although it would be empty and inauthentic to force something that isn't happening naturally. I'm pretty bad when it comes to casual dating (so what was your name again? j/k) -- I sort of want the other to pursue me and already love me, because it can be so draining to reach outside of yourself so much. I sort of want someone to care about me and accept me and already be trustworthy, before I invest into the neutral ground of relationship exploration. Eww.. Even the thought of that sounds a bit yucky. I just want it, but I guess I'm scared and lazy or at least "beaten up," whiplashed, or tired of having given so much to one that drained me and was not worthwhile. That said, I don't think there will be a problem getting a relationship off the ground with a woman I'm well suited for, but in the meanwhile, dating sucks because I feel like 99% of women out there wouldn't even possibly work. Maybe that number is too high, maybe not. I don't know. If you include personality and values, that is an even finer delimiter, thus it might actually be smaller than 1% of people I'd be compatible with. Nonetheless, I believe in God and that he is Sovereign in such a way that he will bring one together in the right time. I just pray I'm ready for it. That said, I'm off to do some reading. Perhaps I'll find a cool quote and post it later. PEACE! -- Guy, otherwise known as Guido in Spanish.