Quickshots [05.24.06]…

May 24, 2006 | 2:31 AM

• If you haven’t read Organic Church by Neil Cole, you need to. It may not be the greatest book on Earth, but it’s pretty good.
• I’m packing my things this week, and I move to New Orleans a week from this Thursday (on June 1st). I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t nervous. I am. Excited, but nervous.
• I know that the American Dream and the life devoted to Christ don’t really go together, no matter how much we try to make it work. If I were to live my dream, I’d be married and living in a cottage-like house with a nice garden. Maybe it’d look like this. Maybe I’d be a writer, or a preacher, or a baker. It would be in a small town or village- maybe in the UK or New Zealand. Maybe in Scandinavia or Northern Europe. But I’d live a peaceful existence. People would leave me alone, and I’d leave them alone. We’d be happy neighbors. And maybe if I lived in this place, I would have a couple kids whom the entire village adored because they looked just like their mother. Every once in a while we would go out to the fields outside the village and just lay in the fields, and fly kites with the kids, and watch the clouds. And every year we would travel to some exotic random place on the planet- maybe Fiji, or Namibia, or even Alaska, but we’d take a trip. We’d be free to see the world. I think I’d like that very much.
• I think I would like that a lot. But I know that it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen because to live that way means ignorance to reality. The reality is that life is not like that beautiful picture I paint for myself. And there is way too much at stake in this lifetime of mine to spend it chasing what I want. That picture, in my head, is so beautiful. It’s not real.
• I found out a couple weeks ago that my uncle has prostate cancer. I don’t think it’s life-threatening, but I don’t really know much about what’s going on with him. I haven’t brought it up because I didn’t really have much more to say about it. I still don’t.
• Sometimes I think about my future, like I just did, and I imagine myself as the hero who returns from war and takes his bride into the hills where they live happily ever after. (Like in Kingdom of Heaven, or countless other movies.) But I don’t know that I’ve actually ever been to war. Maybe I’ve just had a few bar fights and haven’t seen real pain yet. I kind of hope I don’t go out like William Wallace did in Braveheart. I’d prefer more of the Aragorn kind of exit.
• I guess the constant in most of these thoughts is that the war is inevitable. And I don’t mean between me and other people, like the Crusades or World War 2 or something. My Enemy is invisible, and constantly present. And I don’t think there is really any escape from it in this life. That’s frustrating.
• One day I really want to visit Hungary, where my dad’s adopted father was born. When I think of Eastern Europe, I usually imagine everything in black and white, like from the old 40s and 50s photos. I think of this giant shadow of the Soviets taking the color out of life there. (What an American point of view.) When I try to see it now, the only time it’s in color is when I visualize fields upon fields of green grass and yellow flowers sprouting out. Millions of them. And it must be dawn, because the rays of light are just beginning to light the sky. Maybe there’s something more symbolic to it all than I really know. Maybe one day I’ll go there and find out.
• I think maybe I’ll post my “Top Eleven Places to Visit” list for 2006 soon. It’s almost been a year. I ordered some brochures for Scandinavia a couple days ago. That’s where I’m told my heritage really comes from.

Posted in Life, Quickshots, Travel