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Because if this what it means to love you, then I'll do it.
I'll give it.
I'll try it.
I'll do it.
I'll go the distance.
I'll give in, give up, give over, give through.
I'll do it. I will. Whatever you need. Whatever is required for love to live, for love to thrive, for peace to be made and kept . Because I know that this is real. More real than anything else. My flesh is fading, as is yours, and the sky is falling, and I can see the particles in everything turning to dust. We spin each day one day closer to the end. We are blown away so quickly.
But I know that love will not fade. This body of life, where two or three or six can meet, and find a home together. This is real. This is eternal. This is life. And it is here that I will chose to live, to give, to have, to build, and to plant.
Because if this what it means to love you, then I'll do it.
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I hate when I feel unrequited affection. It is, for me, one of the hardest things to bear of all.
...
I am not autonomous. I was not made to be so. And since being made, I have felt the threat of autonomy.
I have needed affection since birth. I have needed connection since birth.
But I, but we, are so pieced together.
I need - and want - the affection of humanity. Part of me is lacking without it. And part of me is lacking with it. But I need it; I need it if I am to know anything, even myself (lewis). I am in need of the assurance of a friend's affection. I am in need of the approval of a man. I am in need of guidance. I am in need of touch. I am in need of proof that I am not autonomous; that no, I am not alone.
I need - and want - the affection of something higher. Something more. A sense of reality that goes past the community of a friend, the intimacy of a lover, the covering of a elder. It is better than me. It is higher than me. It is the best thing I know. It is the affection of a most high God - the affection I am in awe of. The affection I, in no way, deserve.
I want to be connected to something that is more than this plot of earth, this slice of time, this brief clasp of hands. I want to be connected with what it means to live. What it really means - past the flippancy and trite that is a human life.
I am pieced together with these two needs, these two longings. I forget, and childishly exchange one for the other. I forget, and the unbalance shakes my nerves, shakes my heart, shakes my confidence.
I am unbalanced more than I'd like to be. I am unbalanced tonight.
These two needs, they fight for my heart, for my attention. They battle with one another, but sometimes, they hold hands in peace, and come through one another.
May my need for humanity, and my need for Jesus Christ hold hands in peace. May they kiss each other, and lay their rightful claim within my tired heart, within my foolish mind.
I am in need of this peace.
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I am not writing this because I am trying to persuade. I am not writing this with the presumption that I have discovered some higher truth that must be applied universally, now. This is not propaganda for you to digest and regurgitated. I am not sure I am right, and I have no qualms with that. There’s a process to this, and I am learning to be patient with my immaturity...
And the immaturity of others.
You will see I am scattered in the thoughts concerning the candidates that follow. I have sat for hours on my porch, swinging, and mulling these things. I am still torn. Part of me is tied to my conservative roots. Part of me is tied to this idea of evolution, and change.
I am writing this because what is in my head must become words. Because the words will appear, here, in the form of my thoughts. And once they are out, they are, to me, somehow more real. More legitimate. Not because they are mature and endowed and wise -
But, because THEY ARE.
You may take them as you like.
...
I am not voting for John McCain in November. Although the America he is advocating for is a livable one, THE WORLD he is advocating for is not.
We have overstepped our bounds. We have gone too far.
It is not the job of America to democratize the world. It is not our job to save the world - although we are noble in trying. The fall of Suddam Hussein was monumental, and I was proud of America when he was displaced. But Iraq? Why? Is it really for the people? If so, than what about the Kurds? What about other marginalized people groups? Why did we "bestow" our international aid on the Iraqi people, rather than another? Is it oil? A wrestling for nuclear power? On and on, and it must end. John McCain will continue to fight a battle I disagree with, turning the world against us in the process.
At the end of the day, I am not just American. I am a human being. And the recognition of commonality, of human life, will be a fundamental mechanism in the establishment of peace.
The current administration, and the one that would follow under McCain, asks me to choose. To choose between America and the world.
And I will not.
...
I will not be voting for Barack Obama in November. Although even stating that makes me deeply sad.
I love Barack. I love the idea of the first black president taking office in my generation. I love his background as a child growing up in a still-racially driven society, and the process of development he has made, in straddling the fence of race in America. He has reached both sides, beautifully.
He wants to de-occupy Iraq.
He desires change and invigoration, so needed in the America of today.
But what is this change? This change that everyone is excited about? What does it look like? Do we know? Is any change better than how things are today? Maybe. Maybe not.
I am afraid of too much excitement and not enough substance.
From the little that I can draw from Barack’s platform of substance, all that I can draw of significance is a movement towards the standardization of health care, the taxation of the rich, the penalizing of corporations, the establishment of more significant middle class, and the larger role that the government will play in the general welfare of the citizens.
A movement along Marx's linear model of political/economical constructs... from capitalism toward socialism.
Ideally, I believe in socialism, because I would like for it to work. But realistically, I believe in capitalism because I know it works.
It was never the intention of Marx for his model of socialism to become misinterpreted and grossly applied as it has been by some of the most destructive communistic regimes of the 20th century. Hitler applied it, Stalin applied it... the list extends, and goes on and on.
It is a beautiful plan. It was to be the political utopia of mankind. And on some levels of application, socialism is successful - the EU, Eastern Europe, etc.
But in the fundamental and holistic sense, socialism is based on the belief that man is good, and desires good for others. Through a general submission by an entire nation to a form of government, everything will be equalized, all rights will be respected, and the good of all will be considered.
It sounds too good to be true because it is.
One man, or group of men, will retain power. They will perhaps be good men, but even the best of men can be ruined by absolute power.
Absolute power ruins most things. The centralization of power reduces the personal rights of man.
Period.
We are less. The state is more.
This cannot be. This cannot be.
Power to the people.
Whatever change that will come to this once and still great nation of ours, it will have to be on the part of individuals, on the part of communities, on the part of the educational boards, on the part of the monopolies, on the part of the racist and the biased, on the part of the lazy and the part of the greedy.
It must come from within.
Maria Gaidar, daughter to the former PM of Russia, on the economic breakdown of Russia after its attempt at capitalism following the fall of the USSR: "These changes that came… Why did they fail to reach stability? Because in that situation, these changes could only come from above, and were not claimed from below, in the narrow sense.’
the changes must be claimed from below.
the changes must be lived from below.
‘Optimally, any major change should come from a social choice,’
...
I recognize that at 22, I am still a child.
That I have very few things sharply defined. That I speak rather boldly concerning things I understand only inklings of.
But this is who I am, and what I have. And we do the best we can with what we have.
And my vote counts.
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i would like to see you here in the still moments, in the nil moments,
where you are what you are.
everything that makes us less, that distracts, has been quieted.
everything that infuses and steals, where nothing lasts or feels, is gone.
i long to be in this place.
and i long to be here with you.
because i want to know what you really are without all the nonsense, without all the gidgets and gadgets and glam.
i want to know who i am too.
[the wind that rips and tears also cleanses and separates the chaff. ]
i like this skeleton of a tree. i like that authenticity feels like freedom, that nakedness feels like truth.
here in the still moments, here in the nil moments.
where we are what we are.
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