Some Simplicity

Things I have learned, amd learning, and daily struggle with, but feel are important:

1. Nothing is permanent.
2. Speak only the truth at all times, no matter how inconvenient.
3. Speak only when you need to speak.
4. God and peace may be frequently found in solitude.
5. All relationships are also God, if they are what they are supposed to be.
6. Logic usually supercedes goodness or good nature, many virtuous people have harmed others with good intentions and miserably execution. Yet Logic without a good moral base can be equally dangerous.
7. Many things are interconnected, any imbalance usually causes the house of cards to crumble.

I hope everyone is well.

The Quarter Life: Romantic Relationships

Since I bootlegged the last Quarter Life, I figured I would re-hop on the bandwagon and give the laid back tropical island perspective. Since It is bootlegged and all, like 98% of the DVDs here in the Marshalls... I will simply sufice by saying you can check out the original work by Aaron here and the links to Bryce's from there.

So, on the topic. I will limit this as well to all about myself, philosophizing about everyone else through that narrow lens...

I talk a lot.

Everyone that knows me knows that.
Everyone that knows me has a love/hate relationship with how much I talk. Sometimes it is amusing, sometimes it is confusing, and half the time, only I am in the mood for it. I repeat stories 1000 times and I need to share anything and everything I get excited about with everyone at anytime. And I get excited about almost everything. Hence... there's a lot to say!

Yet, as those who know me very well also know. While I wear who I am on my sleeve, I also restrain myself from sharing a significant part of my genuine feelings and personal thoughts about things that are important or significant to my life. I get uncomfortable talking about myself in real depth, I've even been uncomfotable writing this blog sometimes.

So, what the hell does all this have to do with romantic relationships, Mike?

Unfortunately, for me and those I have been involved with, I treat romantic situations, if they can be called romantic, in the same way that I treat my topics of conversation. It is quick and easy for me to get myself into "relationships" that are fundamentally superficial and frequently produced by a moment of brief excitement, a fleeting passion for something shiny... sometimes, it doesn't even have to be that shiny. BUT, when it comes to the girls/women I have met that I truly find substantial, powerful, beautiful in intricate and expanding ways, and together utterly amazing (here concurring with Aaron that the list is extensive) I have absolutely no idea what to do, what to say, how to breathe...

I freeze and I have two typical reactions:
A) Avoid them at all possible costs
OR
B) Assume that they don't and will never like me back and aim hard to cross the friend barrier, turning them into a close confidant, a hang out partner, an adivsor and advisee, a sister, and the farthest thing from a romantic relationship.

These two methods ensure that I either keep their amazingness in my life and/or avoid getting emotionally injured in any possible way.

It is an amazingly terrible method because up until now I can't say I have ever had a meaninful romantic relationship, and I have had many relationships with women. The benefit is that I do have an inordinate amount of very amazing women I can call my friends.

I think I should drop this method, but that is hard. Due to years of self-conditioning, I simply assume that any woman worth my time wants nothing romantic to do with me. It makes it easier and infinately harder, simultaneously.

I think about my friend John, whose engagement I recently learned about (while I was sad I didn't know of it earlier, I was happy I heard it instead of read it, there's something nice about that), and I find myself full of admiration. The commitment, dedication, compromise, and all the other pretty amazing qualities required to be in a relationship that leads to a real engagement and marriage, not just for the ritual and the paperwork, but a real one for which ritual and paperwork is just a sidedish, is something worth admiring these days. While I have never been a strong supporter of early marriages I can think of a few couples that were either married early, are enganged right now, or are in a relationship where one could say they are married despite the lack of formalties... that tend to prove me wrong, and the old cliche of love being all that matters more of a reality.

I think that now, in my life, I have come to a point where I no longer feel like I need a relationship, I no longer really feel pressured to get one. While I would like to be in a meaningful relationship right now, I don't feel inadequate not being in any relationship. I am utterly content and happy with my life and waiting for someone else amazing to come along. I think that means I finally AM ready for a real relatioship. But who knows? We'll see.
I would like to wait and see.
I would like someone to share the things I have a real difficulty sharing with.
I would like someone to be comfortably quiet with.

THE cross walk (Faith, PT. 2)

So, I have been weary and hesitant, cowardly and foolish, since I have been intensely avoiding this topic. First, some more procrastination: the background of this reflection. THE cross walk... yes, you read correctly, this was not just ANY cross walk or A cross walk no...no... no this was THE cross walk. There are three main reasons for this:
NUMBER ONE: Marshallese people on Majuro don't really walk that much. People do, and there is a lot of basketball, but during the day there is the intense and penetrating sun, and then there are cars and seventy-five cent taxis. Let us forget that not too much is really THAT far away, but it is in people's minds. One mile is 100. So many of the people above the age of 15 are not used to walking too much... and even less so after the age of like 20 or 30. People also get very large after the age of 25 or so, so it becomes harder and more agrivating to do so. So to ask many of these people to walk and carry a heavy cross and heavy icon of Mary for EIGHT MILES... makes this THE cross walk.
NUMBER TWO: It has come to my recent attention that the cross we carried for those eight miles was in fact the actual, legitimate, 100% real cross that the actual, legitimate, 100% dying and alive and walking on earth son of god, Jesus, died on. Not a cross made out of two pieced of wood, sanded down, laquered, and held together with large metal bolts... NO... Jesus died on this cross...
Want to talk about Lost in Translation?
I hope that little mess up was clarified...
but, despite its not being the stage of Jesus' execution, the cross was still pretty cool despite, and partially due to, its simplicity. The Pope gave the cross to the world's Catholic youth a bunch of years back when he (John Paul II, the dead one for all of you non-holics in the reader's circle) established "World Youth Day" in an attempt to create something that would reignite youth passion and the idea of pilgrimage. It happens every 2.. or 3.. or 4??/ I dunno, every couple of years in different places all around the world (the next one is in australia and I am hoping to stick around long enough to go with the Majuro Youth, not only to see the amazed adn stunned faces of many Marshallese kids when they see something like australia, but to see mine when i do, lol). The cross travels around the world and has done so for a bunch of years. Well, this is the first time (and very possibly the last time ever) when the cross has come to the RMI. So both the awsomeness of its travels and the uniqueness of its arrival and stay here (for less than 24 hours, yes it was walked for longer than it was in the church before it was back on the plane) make this THE cross walk.
NUMBER THREE: The amaount of people thta showed up and MADE it all the way was awe inspiring and intense. I was so happy to see so many people, Catholic and not, united around this one simple cause. I had a lot of fun, one of my favorite moments in all of my time here. I carried the cross and the irritatingly slippery and awkward though beautiful icon of mary, I prayed, and I messed around with the youth group. It was pretty effin' sweet.
So.
Mike.
What are you getting at other than showing cool pictures of the 4-5 hour event ending in a huge feast of delcious delights and a mass I still get made fun of for falling asleep in (it was 3 am and I had just walked 8 miles, come on!)
I do not belive any religion uniquely possessing the entirety of universal, ultimate, and divine truth. I belive they all do. I admire the passion and prayer of the Muslim, I admire the philosophy and conception of God of the Hindu, I admire the rigor and laxness of the Buddhist, I admire the way of the Tao, I admire the humanism of much of atheism...
I respect and honor all of them. And I also admire Chrisitanity.
All religions are haunted by mistakes, human faults, historical bull, and constant internal and external bickering...
despite that, there are so many people around the world doing powerfully amazing things in their search for God in reality and in each other.
I am here still because I love Jesus.
Despite what theological stuff and doctrine and fundamentalism I may or may not agree with. I get frustrated with Christianity so often, as well as with many of the other religions, like I do with my family, with my friends, with new yorkers, colombians, nepali, and marshallese. I get frustrated like I do almost every single day with God.
I am glad I do and fear a day that I don't, because if that day comes it will mean I no longer care, it will mean I am no longer putting so much of myself into trying to get myself a step or so coser to God, and a step or so closer to the world as well.
I get frustrated because I am on a journey to make myself and them better, the best, the most loving, the most generous, the most kind, the most forgiving.
I get frustrated because I want to be perfect, and I want everyone else to be as well.
I get frustrated because both me and others lose track of what is important.
I get frustrated because I am constantly trying to live up to the example of a man, god or not, that inspires me to love.

I leave with a Sufi Muslim quote I got from teh reading from "Life of Pi" I gave to my World Religions class:

"If you take two steps towards God, he runs towards you."

I am trying to take those steps.

Jesus fell, and I fall, but I have a whole hoard of people around me doing THE cross walk to pick me up again.