i’m feeling my age.

it’s not that i’m old, mind you, i’m well aware that i’m not. i’ve got plenty of vim and vigor and ability to stay out ridiculously late, ride my bike like a madman, and in general i’m in better physical condition than i’ve probably ever been. mentally though, i’m reaching a point where i am trying to figure out what to do with my life. that’s been instrumental in the topics i’ve been mulling over this past summer and autumn – work, travel, graduate school, housing, friendships. i feel like my peers and i are faced with three broad options, each somewhat exaggerated to for detail’s sake.

the first is the thrill-seeker. the immediate, as it were. this is most prevalent when i’m hanging out with .83 and is carpe diem personified. life is about experiences, doing things, the next activity – of which there are nearly infinitely many to schedule. i had a busy summer of riding bikes, bbqs, beer drinking, and more but a sense of not actually doing anything.

perhaps that’s because i remember college, and see myself as a preparer. looking toward the future. obviously, working at a major research university i’ve watched this quarter as a number of my friends have progressed through their {undergraduate, graduate, post-doctoral} positions and moved on towards their goals. i’m not sure i have any goals though. what’s more, it seems like i’m notoriously bad at achieving the ones i set. learning to wrench bikes has been fantastic, and i’m hoping to have a similarly good experience with cars and houses. but for the most part i don’t feel like i have much to prepare for. the end times perhaps?

which i could sit and wait for, if i were comfortable. i’m somewhat envious of those around me who seem to be comfortable with where they are at. i know that i often use that term as a pejorative for apathy, but i think there is true value in not feeling undue pressure to perform in either of the two directions above. of course, if you get too comfortable there is the ever-present danger of stagnation.

so where does that leave me? sort of nowhere. i’m not suggesting that these three categories above are exhaustive or exclusive, but as i look at my life and consider how incredibly quickly the last year has slipped by i wonder what life i am building and what i’m implicitly choosing for myself.

yes, it’s a month late but i’m still in fact waiting for monkey to post the photos from their halloween party. fortunately the lovely and wonderful alison came through with a classy photo of the hero of canton. if you don’t get this reference, you should watch some firefly.

seriously, i’ll loan you my dvd boxed set.

i originally posted this over at thoughts from the sugar bowl:

there have been times in my life where i’ve thought i had God figured out. not even in that hubris-laden way of ‘completely figured out’ but even in relatively small ways. ways where i looked at my faith, theology, practices and was quite convinced that i had put together a solid religion with my ducks in a row. those are the times when i stopped wrestling with God, stopped fighting with the world around me and acquiesced to a shallow road of simple beliefs.

the first time i did this was as a nonchristian, looking at the world around me and knowing there was more but refusing to engage with it, desiring only to be left alone and to live out my days. surprising only myself, i again faced that same error years later as a young christian; convinced that i had arrived, i achieved my salvation and now needed only continue on as i was and happy to preach conversion and teach scripture to those around me. i was insufferable.

God disabused me of that notion right quick.

that brings me to where i am today. down in the trenches, fighting. doing battle with my own beliefs and wrestling with God as revealed to me through scripture and through relationships. trying to understand in tiny ways the church, the community of broken people around me and what is it all worth? this tension is the only thing that keeps me moving forward, bumbling in ways to try to understand just what the hell i am doing with my days on this planet.

i have to recognize that even in this simplistic look at the world – this recognition of tension and questioning – there lies the seeds of trying to be ‘arrived’, to be done with it and able to focus on other things.

to which gabrielle responded:

What is the point of all this struggle anyway? Can we really be assured that there IS a point? Is HOPING that there’s a point enough? Every time I think I’ve survived some major turning point in my life and come out ahead, I wonder how much God had to do with it and how much I just hit the right combination of blind luck elements and came out ahead. I am terrified of losing my love. I am terrified of losing my freedom. I am terrified of losing my sobriety. If I have to start being terrified of losing my salvation as well, what is the fucking point? I’m sorry, but there it is. Why can’t we feel assured in God? Is there NOTHING that gives us a sense of calm anymore? Are we to even doubt our very faith and salvation and existence until the end of our days because struggle is the only religion there is of value?

I can’t accept that. We might as well die then.

a response to which i am pretty much dumbfounded. in a sense it forms another experience to support my point that every time i think i have something understood i’m brought to a place where new information causes me to have to rethink my theology and worldview. this is one of those questions i don’t know how to answer. i don’t want to have a gospel of “suffering” – nor for that matter one of “prosperity”, “easy answers”, “power”, or any other single aspect of our life and faith.

of course the sunday school (or bible study!) platitude might be to say i want a gospel of jesus christ, but even to say that is burdened with imagery and associations that are inherently flawed. so am i becoming completely postmodernist, tearing apart my beliefs until i have nothing left and trying to reconstruct reality as a discursive framework?

i hope not.

still, what assurance do i have and where do i get it from? why don’t i just give up? is it all just a fool’s hope, a child’s self-centered expectation of safety?