On Facebook I got some feedback from some folks that they thought the title of my last post, “It’s Not a Muslim Thing, Is It a Mid-Life Crisis Thing?” was going to be a refutation of some sort of liberal excuse to not blame the shootings at Ft. Hood on muslims.

I hadn’t even thought of that (liberals blaming aging men instead of muslims) when I was posting about it.  It was just an observation I thought was worth noting.  I actually started noticing this over the past few multiple shooting tragedies.  Not all, but enough to notice, it seems that the men who perpetrated those acts were around this age.

Now granted, I think the miltant cultural strain of Islam is totally a part of what Major Hasan was influenced by.  No doubt about that.  But my inner-sociologist wants to interview these men while they sit in jail for the rest of their lives.  Not to make up pc liberal excuses, but to discover any possible way to help other men who might be in similar situations before they do something horrible.

That’s not a liberal thing to do is it?  If it is I guess I am liberal in some ways

Major Nidal Malik Hasan who murdered and wounded all those people yesterday in Fort Hood is 39.

Jason Rodriguez who went on a shooting spree in downtown Orlando today is 40.

What the heck?

I remember commenting here that turning 40 was odd but I never wanted to go shoot anybody. Approaching mid-life was weird and there were dark times along the way but the Lord has proven to be the Savior, Redeemer and Prince of Peace in all those situations.

I pray the men who perpetrated these horrible crimes find earthly justice and eternal forgiveness before they die.

Today when they interrupted normal programming, and did the emergency announcement broadcast, the hair on the back of my neck literally stood up.  It’s just a really weird sensation.  It happened yesterday when I was driving home and heard about the Ft. Hood shootings too.

I don’t want to ever have that sensation again.

I wanted more beauty to come to the blog and the last two days have been horrible (news wise.) I am going to start looking for the beauty that is bound to rise in spite of these tragedies.  If you know of any good articles highlighting the First responders or the lives of the victims… please feel free to leave links in the comments or just send them to me.

Good will always win in the end.

Here is A Taste now on display on my credenza at work

A Taste On Display

A Taste On Display II

I heard about this on the way home and was deeply moved as the casualty count kept rising.   Tonight at the gym I was on the elliptical when Congress stopped for a moment of silence. I stopped for the moment of silence with Congress too.  I wished everyone else in the gym would have but … there ya’ go.

I listened to the Fox News interview with the killer’s cousin and he kept saying he wanted everyone watching to know that Major Malik Nadal Hasan (the murderer) was a good American.  Granted, I can understand a cousin and loved one being concerned, defensive and shocked that someone they loved did this.  But truth is truth, this man was not a good American, he murdered 11 and wounded 31 people.  There is no reason that can justify this behavior and salvage Major Hasan’s reputation and legacy.

We need to pray for the cousin and for all the grieving families and for our military.

What are your thoughts? Response?

MORE:

Michelle Malkin gives a “refresher” on Muslim Soldiers with an attitude and tips us off to the Twitter trend feed for the subject at #fthood

I have this bald friend who once said in a very funny fake nyah nyah way:

I will always be younger and better dressed than you.

I shot back

That’s probably true. It’s a shame you don’t have hair anymore being as young and well dressed as you are. ::: running my hand through my own full head of hair :::

Pretty good come-back huh?

You had to be there.

So, a few years after this interaction, I have noticed the past couple of weeks that I can now see more of my scalp than before.  Another friend of mine who is TOTALLY bald and has made funny remarks about me still having mine in the past, was on the phone today and I said

Well dude, I think your prayers are being answered … I think my hair is falling out.

He laughed.

I didn’t … ok … I actually did.

If I have to, I can rock some baldness.

I have gotten so much positive affirmation of my blogging on facebook, here and privately via facebook, twitter and email.  I should totally delete and recreate my blog more often!

Wait … I kinda’ do.

But this one message really struck my heart, many touched my heart but this one … just kinda’ got to me.  A friend on Facebook writes:

(Printed here with permission)

I will be entirely upfront and honest. I have had a few shots of vodka and am feeling a bit vulnerable. Within the past hour, I have just shut down communication between an old mentor. I moved in with her and her family this summer. They did nothing but talk badly about my family and made gay jokes often. It was an environment that I could not remain in. Currently, I am living back with my parents – who know nothing of depth about my life – but support me.

I am a 20something who struggles with sexuality. I am utterly depressed and fighting drug addiction. Recently, I have relapsed. Overall, in regards to the drugs, I am doing okay. But in the big picture, my depression is deep. I feel as if no one understands me, and as if there is no help for me where I live.

All this is said not to raise a flag or gather your alarming attention, but rather to encourage you, as weird as it may seem. Please, continue to blog. Continue to share your heart. You and Exodus have been much of the instrument that God has used to continue to give me hope and a reason to move forward and live.

Your words are from God and are needed. I pray for you personally and for the ministry of Exodus daily. You are a needed voice amongst the Kingdom of God. Please, fight opposition, and continue.

You are sincerely appreciated.

Of course I responded with some ideas on finding support for this friend with regard to AA, NA and online forums.  I didn’t think about Celebrate Recovery at the time but this friend reads the blog so … check out Celebrate Recovery too.  I know she was trying to encourage me but they definitely have my increased alarm and their welfare was/is my first concern.  You have my continued prayers and support.

If God can use my crazy random musings on this here blog to be an anchor of encouragement and hope for others … awesome. A constant online presence that shares about life and current events that glorifies Christ and edifies His people … that’s it.  That’s the purpose.  I don’t know that my words are “from God” but if He can use these posts to help others … amen!

Of course the above observations would seem obvious and a restatement of my thoughts on this in the past but this friends message (along with others) opened my eyes, in a deeper way, that this isn’t just a personal hobby for me.  It’s years worth of commitment and investment that has continued value.  I do need to raise my own blogging bar here and I will.  Not in busy-ness but in quality and relevancy. I will be using the facebook page for the blizzard of random crazy things .

So, back to the most important part of this post.  Please pray for my friend.  Let’s call her “Blessed.”  She does read the blog so if you have words of encouragement or ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments.  Also, please respect her anonymity and not try to draw her into conversation unless she chooses to join the conversation.

Y’all rock.  The Lord has really used *you* to speak life and encouragement to me.  Thank you very much.

Currently considering a relaunch of the blog (with the .org address) from complete scratch.  No imports, no nothing.  The word that keeps tumbling over in my spirit is “beauty.”

::: pondering :::

I am slowly realizing that it isn’t the act of blogging that I think I am disquieted by. I love blogging. But unlike the Exodus Blog, which started with a clear purpose (Educate, Equip and Encourage) my personal blog has always been a mishmash of a ton of … stuff. IF I do relaunch I want it to be very clear in purpose. Which, will be limiting but hopefully will increase excellence.

::: still pondering :::

Thoughts?

UPDATE 11/4/9 – I imported my old posts.

He walked in, making a grand entrance … rockin’ his iPod
He wore all black
Black shoes
Black socks
Black basketball shorts

He wore a Black hoodie that was so large he looked like a Ring Wraith out of LOTR

And the only white article of clothing … his iPod ear buds … hung down out of the hood and disappeared into his mysterious garments folds …

It was like death swallowing the only sign of life … the only connection to potential beauty … gone

Without even a whimper … just … gone …

The hoodie is adorned with dark gothic designs on the front and the back …

If you look too closely at the magical symbols , beware … are you confident in the condition of your soul?

As he passed through … it was as if dark angels attended him … they sought to intimidate others before and after his footfalls …

through the free weight area …

it’s obvious that this man is accustomed to expecting others to take notice of his bad sassiness …

The hoodie hides his eyes … you can only see his amazing permanent sneer …

His body language simply says …

FEAR me!

… it’s as if he wants to send a cold shiver down our spines as his shadow falls all along the way …

He eventually sat down like a dark, mysterious, brooding lord on the work out bench … I mean … throne of power! and then …

and then … … and then …

He started doing bicep curls …

With fifteen pound weights.

::: snort :::

I finished reading this for the second time earlier today. I love this little book because it is packed with amazing insight, allegory, symbolism and truth. Here are a few of my dog ears and comments “kindle style.” I totally believe that Lewis dreamed this and then built it up into a story.

The Great Divorce (C. S. Lewis)
- Highlight Loc. 161-67 | Added on Saturday, October 17, 2009, 12:17 AM

‘Not at all,’ said my neighbour. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very likely he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbours—and moved. If so he settles in. If by any chance the street is full, he goes further. But even if he stays, it makes no odds. He’s sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he’ll move on again. Finally he’ll move right out to the edge of the town and build a new house.

Lewis’ depiction of Hell is to portray a place that is “millions” of miles all around and growing because people cannot tolerate each other or themselves. It made me think of how that kind of hell already exists here on earth. Anyone else sick of the quarreling?

The Great Divorce (C. S. Lewis)
- Highlight Loc. 379-87 | Added on Sunday, October 18, 2009, 04:04 PM

… ‘But don’t you know? You went there because you are an apostate.’ ‘Are you serious, Dick?’ ‘Perfectly.’ ‘This is worse than I expected. Do you really think people are penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken.’ ‘Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?’ ‘There are indeed, Dick. There is hide-bound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed—they are not sins.’ ‘I know we used to talk that way. I did it too until the end of my life when I became what you call narrow. It all turns on what are honest opinions.’

This is one of the reasons I am concerned about those who make a living out of “keeping it real” pseudo or real intellectualism about relevant spirituality in a modern context.  All the same questions asked with an honest heart is great, but other motivations of the heart (that are contrary to God’s opinions) could lead to personal and communal tragedy.

I am glad God is the only One who can Judge the heart.

The Great Divorce (C. S. Lewis)

- Highlight Loc. 719-24 | Added on Sunday, October 18, 2009, 11:21 PM

‘Do ye think so?’ said the Teacher with a piercing glance. ‘It is nearer to such as you than ye think. There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself…as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.’

==========

The Great Divorce (C. S. Lewis)
- Highlight Loc. 730 | Added on Sunday, October 18, 2009, 11:24 PM

The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.’

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The Great Divorce (C. S. Lewis)
- Highlight Loc. 785-91 | Added on Sunday, October 18, 2009, 11:39 PM

This curious wish to describe Hell turned out, however, to be only the mildest form of a desire very common among the Ghosts—the desire to extend Hell, to bring it bodily, if they could, into Heaven. There were tub-thumping Ghosts who in thin, bat-like voices urged the blessed spirits to shake off their fetters, to escape from their imprisonment in happiness, to tear down the mountains with their hands, to seize Heaven ‘for their own’: Hell offered her co-operation. There were planning Ghosts who implored them to dam the river, cut down the trees, kill the animals, build a mountain railway, smooth out the horrible grass and moss and heather with asphalt. There were materialistic Ghosts who informed the immortals that they were deluded: there was no life after death, and this whole country was a hallucination. There were Ghosts, plain and simple: mere bogies, fully conscious of their own decay, who had accepted the traditional role of the spectre, and seemed to hope they could frighten someone. I had had no idea that this desire was possible. But my Teacher reminded me that the pleasure of frightening is by no means unknown on Earth, and also of Tacitus’ saying: ‘They terrify lest they should fear.’ When the debris of a decayed human soul finds itself crumbled into ghosthood and realises ‘I myself am now that which all humanity has feared, I am just that cold churchyard shadow, that horrible thing which cannot be, yet somehow is’, then to terrify others appears to it an escape from the doom of being a Ghost yet still fearing Ghosts—fearing even the Ghost it is. For to be afraid of oneself is the last horror.

“For to be afraid of oneself is the last horror.”  <–That is one of the best lines ever written in my opinion.  Because it is so true.  I think there is something within every person that we know we were meant and created for perfection and we are far from it.  It is only in Christ where that Image is fully restored and even then, it is so difficult (sometimes) for the believer to receive the humbling peace of assurance that God looks on them with love.  Many talk about “love yourself” and they are actually loving a narcissistic projection of themselves.  I’d rather look within to find Christ redeeming the image of what it means to be me.  Then fear is cast out by True love and there is nothing to be afraid of even within myself.

The Great Divorce (C. S. Lewis)
- Highlight Loc. 830-34 | Added on Sunday, October 18, 2009, 11:46 PM

… Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower—become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.’

If that isn’t a warning to artists … what is?  Every art form tells a story that transcends words … whose name does it magnify?

The Great Divorce (C. S. Lewis)
- Highlight Loc. 1193-95 | Added on Saturday, October 24, 2009, 10:38 PM

‘Only in a poor sort of way,’ she answered. ‘I have asked you to forgive me. There was a little real love in it. But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you.’

This was a lady who was now a Saint in Heaven talking to her earthly husband who was now in Hell.  She was responding to his question of whether she loved him or not.  I find her answer shockingly honest and *very* thought provoking.  How many people love out of their own need and not out of selflessness?

The Great Divorce (C. S. Lewis)

- Highlight Loc. 1277-79 | Added on Saturday, October 24, 2009, 11:04 PM

‘The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.’

Oh the ways that this dynamic is already being played out …

And then there is this near the end of the book

The Great Divorce (C. S. Lewis)
- Highlight Loc. 1312-15 | Added on Saturday, October 24, 2009, 11:09 PM

‘Nothing like small enough. For a damned soul is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouth for food, or their eyes to see.’

Heart breaking and my soul is so thankful He gave me eyes to see and ears to hear.  I pray others will be freed as well.

This book is fantastic on so many levels because it does expose the darkness of mankind’s heart in light of the simple purity of God’s Truth.  It’s also ends with a fantastic cliff hanger that encapsulates both transcendant joy, chasing away eternal despair but leaving one literally alone to make up our own mind of what we just experienced by reading the book.  At the end the reader IS the author being brought back into stark reality.  I love it.

One scene, where a man is describing his father, who has been a washroom attendant his whole life, was brilliant … simply brilliant. When the scene ended I literally said out loud, “That was brilliant.”

I also love that most of the wisdom that comes forward, comes from the invisible made visible narration of the servants in the movie.

Of course my own Christian sensibilities wanted to say that there is SO much more to men than this humanist/rationale had reduced them too. Even so, the movie is commendable because it doesn’t shy away from the fact that men are both simple on one level and yet infinitely more complex than the secular stereotypes placed on them. It’s hard to explain. And of course I thought it was a great expose of what sexuality and emotional intimacy (and the abuse thereof) outside of marriage can do to hurt people.

I also love that there was no nudity and most of the sexual talk wasn’t detailed or explained in an erotic manner.

There are a couple of scenes that do come close to that line but even there the sexuality isn’t the main focus. The men’s perceptions, reactions, observations … some of them were heartbreaking.

One was hilarious. (shown in the trailer.)

Honestly, I watched it after some recommendations to do so expecting that I would turn it off at some point. I not only didn’t turn it off, I found it quite thought provoking.