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Shmuel_Hacohen
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Name: The Ray
Location: Bay Area, California, United States
Gender: Male
Interests: I have no interests, nor am I interesting.
Sometimes I get an itch. I will scratch it.
Sometimes I think about becoming a Riverdancer.
Expertise: clog dancing, Caber-tossing, eying newts.
Being pear-shaped.
Occupation: Perennial Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  BigRayFox
Member Since:
10/17/2004
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| Wow, it's been five months since I've updated this web journal. Yeah, I started an advance degree program and a new job last August that pretty much wiped out my desire to post anything beyond facebook status updates. The new program is no longer new, but it is no less taxing. A funny thing has happened in the interim that I would have never expected: I actually made a friend. I know that there are plenty of people that count me as a friend, but there are not that many people that get beyond acquaintanceship with me. Perhaps it is all my fault. I've learned that I have a powerful ability to keep people at arm's length with a pseudo-transparency that effectively truncates the growing edges of new relationships. It took finding this new friend recently to expose that tendency in myself to the extent that I can see it, and rehabilitate that part of me that sees every person as an opportunity for ministry instead of an opportunity for love and friendship to develop. My friend has helped me to do just that; namely, try to realign my expectations of people to include a wider variety of humanity under my umbrella of camaraderie and mutual care. Not everything is about what people need from me. It is possible that sometimes a person just wants ME, and not what I can do for them. That is both refreshing and beautiful. Tonight i am thanking God for a friend. God is the Father of Lights and gives good gifts; this time it was the gift of a person that loves me for me. I am humbled and grateful.
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I spent some time in the mountains last weekend. Natural environments
are interesting, but I am never very comfortable in my own skin out in
the great lonely. I have many, MANY friends that talk about how close
to God they feel when they are out in nature. I had occasion to think
on this idea that a person can feel closer to God when they are alone
in nature, then when they are surrounded by people, responsibilities,
noise pollution, and deadlines.
~~~
My belief system, and faith, has taught me(and shown me experientially)
that God is a trinity. He is one essence, but three distinct persons.
He is manifest as God the Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit
simultaneously in perichoresis (interpenetration). The Father relates
to the Son through the Spirit and the Son relates to the Father through
the Spirit and the Spirit relates to each of the other two as the
empowerment and activity of God Almighty. I sat alone about 1/2 mile
away from my wife and little niece and thought of this 'dance of the
Godhead' that takes place even when God is completely alone. For, God
the Father is never alone in the sense that he is without the Son and
the Spirit. They are interrelating and interpenetrating with one
another in eternal fellowship. The Son is not independent of the
Father. The Spirit is not independent of Father or the Son. They are
not even interdependent as we understand it; like the bacteria in our
intestines are dependent upon our intestines to survive, and the
intestines do not do their work without the bacteria operating on the
digested food: this is not what the Trinity is like. The Trinity is not
like that because there is no dependence.... there is only the Three in
One: being. Existing. Self-existing. interpenetrating one with the
other in a dance of relationship on a scale about which our minds can
only dimly imagine.
~~~
Anyway, I'm out in the nature that people claim to be so close to God
while in it, and I am alone. I recognize that Jesus went off alone to
commune with God, and we as Christ followers often say that since Jesus
went off to be alone with God the Father, then we should go off as well
in order to be closer to God. I wonder if that really holds true.
Bearing in mind that God is eternally in relationship, would it not
make more sense that to be as close to the Triune God as a person could
be a state of relationship would be crucial? Further, since we are not
created to be interpenetrative beings that relate to ourselves
eternally as self-existing, perichoretic deity, would it also not make
sense that the relationship that brings us closest to God necessarily
needs to be a relationship with other created beings; namely other
people?
I sat 1/2 mile away from others and thought about God and about
relationship. As I was alone in nature, I took the time to ask him for
help in getting closer to Him through my interrelationships to the
objects of his most affectionate and passionate work; namely people.
Being alone does inspire a feeling. A feeling of liberty overtakes a
person when they are away from others. A feeling of being free of the
responsibility that God has placed on a man or woman to relate, and to
relate well, to all of those people that one comes across in the course
of the day. Perhaps that feeling people get in nature when they are
alone is not actually closeness to God, but temporary freedom from the
burden of others that God asks us to bear in his word.
"Lord, help me to come down off the mountain. I am not closer to you up
here. It's down there in the valley that I meet you in relationship to
others. Allow me this time on the hilltop to appreciate your creation,
and to recharge my tired, introverted and fallen nature. Thank you for
relationships; especially when they are the means by which I find
myself closest to You, Lord God Almighty."
  
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| Ack! So sad. My little car needs tires again. I bought tires last year at Sears. I had such a hugely disappointing and hate-generating experience that I am refusing to even go back there to tell them that they sold me crappy tires that wore out after only one year of moderate use. We spent $450 bucks on tires and alignment at that crap-hole of a store, and today, we will spend half of that at Costco and like it!
So, SEARS.... you can eat a bucket of slop.
I need more than 18,000 miles on my tires before they wear out. That is all.
In other news, I'm getting a costco hotdog and a churro today.
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| Interestingly...my new job has me in closer contact with the human that I was ranting about in the last blog entry (really blog entry about three times ago. Not the guy who wont replace my coffee carafe). Hah! G-d is powerful! The Name wants me to live a life of love for the unlovely because of my own inner unloveliness. So, my new job forces me to be cordial and non-retaliatory to the piece of humanity that riles me up so much. It is a good exercise to disallow myself the luxury of telling this person the things I have dreamt up telling her. That's just fine. I can live above my own pettiness. I can handle whatever humans do to each other in the course of a day at work.
No big deal. I don't have to come home and live with this person. I don't even have to spend 8 hours a day with this particular specimen. It'll be fine as long as I keep my perspective.
okay. deep breath.
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| I am more than a little angry right now. Vent it out Ray. Okay. I will.
My great friend recently had a sweet baby girl. His mother-in-law came for some time following the birth. She loves her morning coffee and my friend doesn't drink coffee and doesn't own a coffee pot. I loaned them my sweet and BELOVED possession...a cuisineart coffee brewing sweetness machine.
Mother-in-law dropped (or somehow broke) the carafe. She wanted to replace it, but her husband (who is in charge of her world apparently) told her no. His reason was that they are in financial distress and cannot afford to replace it.
Now, I am a reasonable guy, and understand that it is just a THING and I need to be fairly detached from worldly possessions if I am to be right with my Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, I think my machine makes the best coffee in the world, and YES, I have quit drinking coffee since April 1, 2009. I am more than willing to be understanding that the person that broke my pot cannot afford to pay for it.
What I am not able to understand is how a man who frequently claims to be walking in the Spirit can simply decide that he doesn't even need to have a conversation with me about his financial situation and the fact that he is sorry he cannot allow his vassal (err. I mean wife) to provide a replacement carafe. I wouldhave been so willing to let it go at that bit of communication. It would have been my distinct pleasure to say, "hey, no big deal. Forget about it. You owe me nothing." I am still going to do that in my mental conversation with this great man, since he will never call to explain his actions.
Apparently ethical behavior is not a required criteria for walking with G-d the Holy Spirit.
Yes, yes it is.
I need to relax.
God never said that a person has to ask for forgiveness to be forgiven. I'm going to work on that now.
END TRANSMISSION
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