"Ambition is not inherently wrong. It only becomes wrong when it is focused completely on the self to the exclusion of others."
Tim Keel
Jacobs Well 11-09-03

I stuck my arm up to reach for the stars and got ran over from behind by a garbage truck. I just want that taste in my mouth again. To pretend for hours on end and become what you aren't. To drive to be the one that makes the belly ache. The one that brings the house down to the place it wants to be. Whoever gets there first can help me to become better than they are but I will in the meanwhile slap at their ankles just to watch myself win. What if things changed.

"I'm not a Slave
To a God that doesn't exist
I'm not a Slave
To a World that doesn’t give a s**t"

Marilyn Manson "Fight Song"

I just stayed up way to late to watch a movie that got me too hype on too many stupid ideas that get me so hype that I have to stay up and write about them than go to sleep. So about 6 months ago everybody and their mom watched this movie called "Bowling for Columbine" and told me I should do the same. The premise of the documentary film is that America has the most gun violence in the world. They try to figure out why and never really give any definitive answers. There is so much underlying activism in the movie that it can't possibly come into your head and not make an impact. I know that guns are bad, but now I know I shouldn't shot people. I don't know what I know I just know that Marilyn Manson is right. I am not a slave, being oppressed against my will by a fictitious Deity. I am a bondservant to a God-Man who has given s**t upon s**t for me. The cross the biggest s**ter of them all. I'm not a slave to a world either. I am a joint-heir in the kingdom with my Master who has called me son. Okay so that being said the movie rocked and that song got me hype. See it. Decide for yourself whether or not handguns are stupid.

"God is not a part of your story; you are a part of God's story. The world does not revolve around you; the world revolves around God and we are a part of that."

Tim Keel

How deeply convicting this was to me I do not know. I feel as if the pride that daily corrodes my relationship to my savior was shown at its height when I heard this statement of Truth. Did I really think of God as a part of my life? Am I that freaking messed up? Father you alone know my heart. Forgive me once again for wanting anything but to be a part of your story, the greatest story ever told.

"When you honor the sanctity of love, the person is exalted and pleasure ensues. But when you seek pleasure for its own sake, it is the person you profane and weariness which ensues."

Ravi Zacharias

This is the finest line in all love relationships. I love Melissa more than anything in the entire world and that brings me so much pleasure. I enjoy holding her hand and kissing her and being next to her all the time. There is nothing explicitly wrong in this. However I know there is a line. There is a time in which we seek pleasure for its own sake, leaving each other as vehicles of pleasure and loving partners. The line is so fine, and being still outside the marriage covenant is so hard. Not consummating my love to Melissa is contrary to everything that I feel inside. But the truth here is that weariness ensues. I think that I wonder what makes relationships so hard sometime and I think it is this. There is nothing wrong with pleasure as a byproduct of love, but pleasure as a separate end inside of a love relationship, is detrimental. God please help me to interweave my life from outside of its compartments. Love must touch all parts of my life.

"That's why we sing for these kids, who don't have a thing except for a dream, and a f----n' rap magazine who post pin-up pictures on they walls all day long, idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs. Or for anyone who's ever been through s--t in their lives, till they sit and they cry at night wishin' they'd die Till they throw on a rap record and they sit, and they vibe. We're nothin' to you but we're the f----n' s--t in they eyes. . ."

Eminem -- Sing For the Moment

Love him or hate him he is tapped directly into youth culture. Scratch that he is culture. So his message is that there is no message from me or anyone, just music. I don't know if he would say it like this but this is like a textbook argument for existential transcendence through art. So he can reach kids not just because of simplistic vulgarity or because of violence, as so many moralists would like to think, but because he speaks to the reality of something people experience. So what can an artist take from this who has a different view of reality than that of the hip hop superstar? Maybe just that kids want authenticity. They know life isn't peach and cookies and cream and cakies, its poverty, its suicidal thoughts, and its broken homes, its pain. Christ can't be real to anyone when he's identified with "not Eminem", or with empty morals and false ideals. Don't boycott. Let's worship Christ with our art by passionately seeking to be more real than anyone else out there.

"Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean joker is a rara avis in terris"

Edgar Allan Poe-- From his short story Hop-Frog

I too have always wondered why I am not grouch of the first order. One day I will weigh enough to make jokes. One day. Look out belly here I come.

"Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free.
Nor chaste, except you ravish me."

John Donne

Take me to your breast Oh Lord. Let me lean my weary head against you. I am nothing without you. Chastity is worthless unless I give myself to you. Ravish me Oh Lord. Set me free from my freedom with the prison of your breast. Let me be nothing but your beloved.

"If the sexual fantasies of the average person were exposed to view, the world would be horrified." Leo Tolstoy

I had a nightmare last night. Some people call them dreams, or fantasies, I find the most nightmarish dreams of all. My Dream is of my wedding night with my amazing fiancé. But sometimes my unconscious haunts my closed eyes with false desires. Not that I feel responsible for my actions in dreams or for their content, it's just they always seem to catch me off guard. I have seen far too much of the darkest side of human sexuality to claim no responsibility. By choice I exposed myself to the images of these nightmares. It hurts me so much to know that. I hate it. I know that I am not alone though. This timeless Tolstoy quote keeps me from feeling ostracized and alone. My accountability brothers are the same way. We share in our broken lives trying to understand why we still dream of the nightmare. I know that God loves me. I know that I have so much worth as Abba's Child. I know that he just wants me to love him and live in his love. The truth is that I am still frustrated. Maybe my focus is still too much on my own failure and not my worth as the child of God. My sin is not finished. I will sin again, in reality and in my dreams, but I know that those sins are forgiven and were paid for my loving Abba. I am now free to live.

So I think that the worst of the human condition is visible in what means we take to pursue immediate temporal pleasure. Personal pornographic demons are seared behind the eyes of a marred saint impersonator as he casts stones. So who am I to ignore the writing in the dirt. Instantly, the feeling in every corner of my body what my spirit can only wish to ascertain through diligence. Consequences be damned. Vomit be damned. Loss of Innocence be damned. I see the blatant error of my neighbor, but my plank is lodged. The scar tissue has over grown like a vacant lot and my sight is now nothing but tainted memory mixed with carnal imagination.

Psalm 27
4 One thing I ask of the LORD ,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.

Please renew my passion for eternal pleasure God. This world is but a shadow of your beauty. Let it never be satisfying. Let it never be comfortable. I seek that which is beyond any sexy substance. Break me Lord. Break me.