Blank and the giant

"The woman that I love is forty feet tall..." -Citizen Cope

The first line of this Citizen Cope song haunts me. I like this thought. It is so meaningful and invasive. Instantly my heart feels it... the disproportionate reality that clashes with my expectations of what people should be... my consistent (and not always beneficial) obsession with things and people "larger than life."

(photo from movie adaptation of Dickens's "Great Expectations")
It's so easy to fall in love, so easy to stay in love, with an illusory idea or person. It is that one, that giant or giantess...

I'm in love with that.

Incidentally, this song is called "Pablo Picasso" - as we all know, I'm completely obsessed with Picasso right now... his perception of reality was just this skewed... light, dark, swirls, colors, marred visions of reality, mixed-up images of humans, breasts, eyes, noses all out of place... too big, too strange to be real. That's what life looked like through his eyes.

Bigger than real. More than normal. Beyond rational? Brave, beautiful... like, for instance, 40 feet tall...

"... she's a movie star, she's all in the papers and everywhere I go, people hand me quarters/And they pat me on the back, they treat me like I'm famous/I never leave her side, 'cause dude it can be dangerous/And when the night arrives the light hits her features and/...."
(more of the CC song)


Wreaked. Marred. Squabble but it's what I see.

The point...

...of that last post was basically this: I realize that both viewpoints presented were largely unrelated. The philosophical underpinning of my comments and musings was this: everyone needs a purpose to get behind. Beyond a "spiritual calling" I think that having a purpose, something to fight for, is necessary to living a passionate life.
And here's the thing (where I think Greenpeace has helped me) - the motivation for effecting change is the betterment/improvement/conservation/preservation of one's environment. Whether we are believers fighting for the Kingdom of God or environmentalists fighting for the beauty of the earth, we align ourselves with causes that are meaningful, both intrinsically and which assign our lives deeper meaning.

It is not just the calling of some but really the need of all to become involved with a cause. The causeless are aimless and aimless people are dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Extreme? But I think true.

Does that make more sense?

Greenpeace

Late but here nonetheless...
It's still a bit obsessing (?) to me...

Here are two different views:

1. From the Greenpeace (history of) book. This begins with Canadian ecology and runs through whale defense and forest support, etc. The major history.
This is rather lengthy but worth the read:
"World changers, artists, and social misfits stumble upon history and make the best of it. Or they make a mess of it. In either case, they 'touch the flesh of the matter,' as Greenpeace strategist Ben Metcalfe once dreamed. Or they discover the soul that has no name and enter the eternal battle between spirit and matter. They're on spirit's side but in matter's grip. 'Imagination is seizing power,' proclaimed the Paris students in 1968. 'Our tears prove we are connected to the suffering of others,' said pacifist Joanna Macy. We shall not be moved. Blessed are the peacemakers. Let freedom ring.
World changers aren't planners. The planners come later, with critics and social philosophers to mop up and win awards. Bureaucrats arrive to invent systems. World changes are the mothers weary of seeing their children abused and fathers who have had enough of petty tyrants. Rosa Parks, the seamstress who refused to sit in the back of the bus. Jesus. Buddha."
(Greenpeace.... by Rex Weyler)

A different vantage point:


“We wrestle to free ourselves from macrocharity and distant acts of charity that serve to legitimize apathetic lifestyles of good intentions but rob us of the gift of community. We preach we prophesy, and dream together about how to awaken the church from her violent slumber. Sometimes we speak to change the world; other times we speak to keep the world from changing us. We are about ending poverty, not simply managing it. We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.We fight terrorism- the terrorism within each of us, the terrorism of corporate greed, of American consumerism, of war. We are not pacifist hippies but passionate lovers who abhor passivity and violence. We spend our lives actively resisting everything that destroys life, whether that be terrorism or the war on terrorism. We try to make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so the few can live as they wish. We believe in another way of life- the kingdom of God- which stands in opposition to the principalities, powers, and rulers of this dark world.”

Shane Claiborne’s book “The Irresistible Revolution”

There're people in this world - I am in relationship with some of them - who are willing to do whatever it takes, to join whatever cause is most effective, to live their every breath for the sake of oppression, preservation, redemption.
I once heard a friend claim that war is the absolute opposite of God's will because it destroys human life, animal life, and destroys the earth. What could be worse?

There is so much to say. But what makes me really glad is that, ultimately, the Kingdom of God underpins every redemptive sentiment. So I at least know I am right there. God is the ultimate redeemer. We're in. So do what we know to do... at least as much as we know thus far.

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” James 1:22

Save the whales etc.

"Soldiers dying of leukemia because people are dumb----". -Leah on hydrogen bomb testing north of New Zealand back in the '70's.

I'm reading the history of Greenpeace. So much to say but not yet... it's still percolating. The hippies and the hobos - I want to be among them. These are the people who are moving and shaking. I have a great quote to tell you when I get my book back.

For now, it's a little crazy/amazing to me how many of us (my friends, that is) are on the same wavelength with this stuff. Two major quotes to come and then I need phone calls.

Hell or highwater

8/1/06

"I can see a light that is coming
For the heart that holds on
And there will be an end to these struggles
But until that day comes
Still I will praise you
Still I will praise you

Oh no You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me."

Part of "You Never Let Go" by Matt Redman (on Passion 06)

Exodus 14:10-14 -
"10 As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. 11They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? 12Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, “Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians”? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.’ 13But Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. 14The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.'"

Whoa.
How often do we - because of its accompanying suffering and sacrifice - question whether or not we really want salvation? I mean, the idea of freedom from slavery is alluring... who wouldn't jump at the idea?
But then I find myself standing in an impossible situation - an impass on one side and an enemy on the other... and I don't feel so free and I certainly don't feel safe.

God alone is my hope.

right where He wants me to be but I have to admit to frequent second thoughts.

But I've made my decision.
And I'm going with God...
He is truly my only hope
And my salvation.
Blind faith is over-romanticized
Very terrifying
And here I stand
Completely in the dark
My only hope is that pillar of fire in the distance.

Ah.

So he has made a way for me -
Be it through the water and wilderness -
Onward I go.