peace is a paradox

a breath

2007-08-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

If dreaming is so good for me, why is it so painful?
Why haven't I written anything for so long, it hurts to try?

Who am I? what do I believe? what do I think and feel?

To meet the world with kindness, and generosity of spirit, to love, and be loved, to hope, and sometimes to receive, achieve, and believe.

To face compromise with charity, and decay with grace.

To hold gently the broken peices, to shake the status quo.

To look blind mediochrity in the eye and charge screaming at it until it must choose to either fight or flee.

To feel, to breathe, to hope, to live.

To cry and greive, and to perceive.

Green Day - Jesus Of Suburbia Lyrics

[Part 1: Jesus Of Suburbia]

I'm the son of rage and love
The Jesus of Suburbia
From the bible of "none of the above"
On a steady diet of soda-pop and Ritalin
No one ever died for my sins in hell
As far as I can tell
At least the ones I got away with

But there's nothing wrong with me
This is how I'm supposed to be
In a Land of Make Believe
That don't believe in me

Get my television fix
Sitting on my crucifix
The living in my private womb
While the moms and Brads are away
To fall in love and fall in debt
To alcohol and cigarettes and Mary-Jane
To keep me insane, doing someone else's cocaine

But there's nothing wrong with me
This is how I'm supposed to be
In a Land of Make Believe
That don't believe in me

[Part 2: City Of The Damned]

At the center of the earth
In the parking lot
Of the 7-11 where I was taught
The motto was just a lie
It says "Home is where your heart is"
But what a shame
'Cause everyone's heart
Doesn't beat the same
It's beating out of time

City of the dead
At the end of another lost highway
Signs misleading to nowhere
City of the damned
Lost children with dirty faces today
No one really seems to care

I read the graffiti
In the bathroom stall
Like the holy scriptures in a shopping mall
And so it seemed to confess
It didn't say much
But it only confirmed that
The center of the Earth
Is the end of the world
And I could really care less

City of the dead
At the end of another lost highway
Signs misleading to nowhere
City of the damned
Lost children with dirty faces today
No one really seems to care

[Part 3: I Don't Care]

I don't care if you don't
I don't care if you don't
I don't care if you don't care [x4]

Everyone's so full of shit!
Born and raised by hypocrites
Hearts recycled but never saved
From the cradle to the grave
We are the kids of war and peace
From Anaheim to the Middle East
We are the stories and disciples
Of the Jesus of Suburbia

Land of Make Believe
And it don't believe in me
Land of Make Believe
And it don't believe
And I don't care! (woo woo woo)
I don't care (woo woo woo)
I don't care (woo woo woo)
I don't care (woo woo woo)
I don't care!

[Part 4: Dearly Beloved]

Dearly beloved, are you listening?
I can't remember a word that you were saying
Are we demented or am I disturbed?
The space that's in between insane and insecure
Oh therapy, can you please fill the void?
Am I retarded or am I just overjoyed?
Nobody's perfect and I stand accused
For lack of a better word, and that's my best excuse

[Part 5: Tales of Another Broken home]

To live and not to breathe is to die in tragedy
To run, to run away
To find what to believe
And what I leave behind this hurricane of fucking lies
I lost my faith to this
This town that don't exist

So I run, I run away
To the light of masochist
And I leave behind this hurricane of fucking lies
And I walked this line
A million and one fucking times
But not this time!

I don't feel any shame
I won't apologize
When there ain't nowhere you can go
Running away from pain
When you've been victimized
Tales from another broken home

Where have you taken my God?

2007-06-26T07:15:00.000-07:00

Once, I believed in something, so gently, so clearly, like a cool breaze in the afternoon of a muggy summer day... like a dreamy stormcloud pouring out giant raindrops on cracked red earth.

Good was good because it was centered on love. Liberty and liberalism weren't a jaded battle, they were trusting expression of kindness.

At 26 my sense of awe and beauty and peace, my faith, is on the rocks. Sarcasm, cynicism, distrust, those things make sense to me now. Be prepared for the worst, be greateful for what accidental or isolated kindness you encounter.

We see society as something someone else has created, and mistakenly believe that to experience quality of life, we have to follow the formula.

I crave simplicity. Efficiency. Ellegance. Imagination, intuition, inspiration. Passion and creativity... artisanship. If life is really just surving, eating, sheltering, reproducing, and expiring... then sanity and sobriety are irrelevant, and I would rather live in a wonderful dream, than a nihilistic realism.

To really live, neither implies conformity or non-conformity, but it demands conscious choice... and Authenticity.

I'm not bitching about things being complex: ethics get complex when one life might be expended to save others... but love provides a path... and when a choice seems strange, love provides a measure by which to understand it. A functional Society is utterly dependant on love, on mutual care and concern, to function... and it can't be legislated. Punishing someone for being unloving is possibly unlikely to produce effective change.

Regardless of structure, heirarchy, belief, or system, we must, first and foremost re-inject love into our society to bring spiritual healing. For those of you addicted to an individual way of knowing or belief system, remember this... while love may not 'save' all people by your definition or belief, giving love will do no harm!

If there's one thing I know I believe about love, and about God, its that there isn't enough charity or kindness in this world to go around... except that we find it, pray for it, feel it, imagine it, conjure it, call it into being from somewhere else... something above, and beyond us, something lower and deeper than us.

Its easy to say, but so hard to do!

A ship called love...

2007-05-24T07:26:00.000-07:00

Gotta love Eric Bibb!!! (Blues/gospel guy)

Three things on my mind...

Green...
Wish I was more green... so hard to be green in someone elses house... so hard to 'work for the man' in a petrochemical world, and feel in anyway green... hard to want to ride a bike to work in winter.

People/Community...
Its three years since I sat in the lounge room of a rental property with Bec Thompson and drank tea from an old jam jar in bright winter sunlight... but its still as clear as yesterday. A difinitive moment... unforgettable. No rush... no frenzy... just a legacy of kindness, honesty, truth, and above all, acceptance. We were all part of eachothers lives back then... living in houses, chosing our lives... not this horrible melbourne suburbia so isolating, so cold, so distant... living with parents, and expectations, self-repressed.

Love in...
Its so easy to forget to soak up peace and beauty and become love. So easy to forget those small insignificant moments of kindness that make life so sweet and bearable... to forget what it means to be scared, alone and far from home, to be handed a warm cup of tea, to be welcomed, embraced... so easy to miss what it mean to give those simple things. When did hugs go out of fashion?

Our way of life is about to change, and its not just scaremongering by crazy green hippies. The only people who will tell you that peak oil is years away either own shares in oil or mining, or are ignorant and in denial. I'm unlikely to be excited about a career in anything to do with non-sustainable living... but sustainable living is so out of reach right now... and I feel like an evil self deluded hippocrite for even thinking I still care.

I promies life is going to be much harder than you think it is... but if your ever worried, hunt down Eric Bibb, and listen to "A ship Called Love"

dock my pay!? is this wharfe or nothing?

2007-05-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

Just watched part 2 of "bastard boys" on ABC.

Real fair dinkum Aussie stuff... but real like you haven't seen real before.

Ever wondered what the big picture of your life might look like, if you stepped back far enough to see it?

Ever felt like you are fighting alone and in the dark for a lost cause?

It might be worth thinking about the values that are playing out in who you are and what you stand for. Sometimes God paints life in small brush strokes...

If these men had given up, they would have thought for all time that theirs was a lost cause... but they didn't, and so history tells the story the way it stands now.

How would you have history tell your story?

Free to be...

2007-05-13T02:27:00.000-07:00

I feel unshackled...

things in my life, the chains, no longer hold me

and action taken, that by virtue of its truth, destroys old fear.

without the question being asked, the need revealed,

the action not required, the challenge not met

fear, the chain, would still remain

unchallenged and unmet

in shadow

dark

A heartfelt prayer...

2007-05-13T02:22:00.000-07:00

Hello world of blogs...

who reads me? who knows!

Read this prayer from a dear friend of mine... it's quite moving.

Why? I don't know why... never mind why... just read, and be moved... it'll be good for you.

You never know, she might be the person who sits next to you, or just across the room from you every other day, and you never had the courage to ask her how she is, or listen to the answer.

Dare: Ask. Listen.

Put me in a book of quotations.

2007-05-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

I wrote this in a blog comment, and liked it so much I'm going to completely indulge my ego and quote myself.

I find myself surrounded by people who are determined not to tarnish their good record of mediocrity with any unmittigated moments of brilliance.

For example... the machine I work on, the one that makes my company all their surplus income (read profit and sustainability) has never once been stripped down and maintained... and is now tearing itself to peices from the inside out.

When the golden goose dies we run around screaming and waiving our arms around saying "woe is me, how could fate be so cruel".

But if, as logic might suggest, its our golden goose, then that makes it our job to feed and water the goose, and ensure it has nice clean hay to lie down in.

So when the goose dies from grosse negligence, the responsibility falls squarely on our shoulders.

Failure to plan, is planning to fail.

Let it go...

2007-04-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that when you hold things too tightly, they tend to slip through your fingers?

I've come to the conclusion life is like a jellyfish butterfly.

Gently.
Gently hold.
Cupped hands.
Don't close.

Free to linger,
Free to fly,
a silhoutte,
so soft against night sky.

Can't see the forest for the trees?

2007-03-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

Have you ever woken up one day to realise that your worldview is completely destroying your view of the world?

Or ever wondered why everyone around you seems like a jerk?

There's nothing like a good attitude adjustmet to set things to rights.

Cheer up! Smell the roses... or burp and laugh... or anthing...

Or fart loudly and when someone confronts you say "well someone needs to take charge of the stink around here!"

Or call an old friend and talk about random junk until you both fall asleep amidst bursts of hysterical laughter.

If you look with distrust, you will see untrustworthyness everywhere you look.

If you look with love, you will see loveworthyness everywhere you look.

No one demonstrated this principle better than mother Teresa.

Ask yourself today, is the way I'm seeing being influenced by the way I'm looking?

I dare you to look with loving eyes, with kind eyes, with trusting eyes. See what happens!!!

The Selfish/Selfless Continuum

2007-03-04T17:31:00.001-08:00

So I've had this theory for a long time that pure selfishness, and pure selflessness end up meaning exactly the same thing. WHAT!?

It just depends on how smart and wise you are about it...

Selfishness: wanting to get the most out of everything in life for your own satisfaction and pleasure.

Selflessness: giving up the above in favour of making others happy.

But there are principles that work on a deeper level:

1. When you focus on living a life of kindness, kindness is returned.

2. When you invest into becoming a better 'self' with the intention of increasing your capacity for kindness, generosity, sincerity, and love... what may initially appear selfish, is ultimately an investment into potential future selflesness.

So sometimes our obsessive discussion of dieing to self, and living for self simply becomes a distraction from living a life of sincerity and kindness. If you want to look at it from a spiritual perspective you could argue this:

God gave you a self, and he expects you to be a good steward of his gifts... so don't punish or neglect the best tool God has given you to bring his light to the world: your selfhood. Live a life of devotion to God, celebrating your individuality, as well as your dependance on God, and everything Good in the universe, for light and truth and wholeness.

Of course the paradox of independance and dependance is tangled up in that somewhere... and whatever you believe about life and the universe, its clear that while God may live within us in some ways... there is so much more outside of us that we depend on. We don't control the sun or the moon or the stars, the tides or the seasons... we are at the mercy of those things... we are blessed by those things.

Do you feel free to invest into your selfhood? or does it seem like a sin?

Employment vs Vocation...

2007-02-12T19:13:00.000-08:00

A topic I have been hanging out to post on... here it is finally!!!

Employment:
A job... a way to bring in the income... something to do with your day... a contract that involves money for labour.

Vocation:
The thing which you are gifted to do... your calling in life.

Of particular interest to me lately, has been the idea of reinventing what it means for men to be working and 'gainfully employed'. I feel as though there has been a women's liberation movement that has freed women from many unhelpful expectations and constraints... but so many men still feel trapped and obligated to spend their 9 till 5 labouring blindly for someone else's vision.

Of course the principle is true "if you don't work, you don't eat"...

But could it be possible to re-difine our concept of "quality of life" to allow us more liberty to be creative, relational, and inspired? Do we need to continue to slave for other people's purposes five days a week or more, or is it possible to dream into being, a way of life that ballances labour with love.

For me, this would mean working two or three days a week... and then investing the other time into a vegetable garden, a pottery kiln and studio, time to learn and create music, and to appreciate the arts and nature... to be a whole, ballanced, spiritual creature... and not just a beast of burden.

What would it be for you?

What are your dreams and passions?

Do you dare to imagine that we could put enough pressure on our society to change the way that employment and vocation are considered in the mainstream?

Might it be possible to pioneer companies and businesses that use split-shifts to empower people to invest into their true vocation?

Relatively absolute truth...

2007-02-11T21:39:00.000-08:00

Recent conversations with people have reminded me that there are many different perspectives on truth, ranging from total existentialism: the idea that everyone's truth is entirely different... to total absoluteism: the idea that there is only one possible truth and no alternative.

Those who wish to believe in an omnicient God, have to believe in a kind of total absoluteism... which is only fair enough, until someone wants to claim that they have a clear window on that absolute truth. A human 'absolute truth' myth can only be sustained in total denial of any questions. Anyone for instance who wishes to argue that the bible contains absolute truth, must answer the questions "which translation?" and "who's interpretation?" (Invariably the answers run, King James, and MINE)...

Anyone who wishes to claim that absolute truth can be known by 'hearing the voice of God'" or some other spiritual experience, must answer the questions "who's experience is the absolute one?"

For myself, I do believe in absolute truth, and in an omicient God. I also believe that that truth can only be estimated and synthesised. Just like the human laws about physics and thermodynamics become increasingly less acurate when they move away from the contexts in which they were developed... so our concepts of truth and morality suffer inadequacy when directly and literally lifted from one time, place, or purpose, to another.

For those who don't like the idea of absolute truth, and find it naive and offensive, I have only one question: "Are you absolutely certain there are no absolutes?"

For anyone who is not familiar with logic, this is an unanswereable question. To answer yes, is to create an absolute... the absolute idea that there are no absolute ideas. The statement negates itself. Its a bit like the old classic "This statement is false." If it is truly false... that makes it true... so it is quite clearly not false, which makes it a false statement, and so it is true but then if its true... its a circular argument.

So anyone who wants to approach the concept of absolute truth skeptically, can only conlude this: that we can never be absolutely certain there is absolute truth.

And so we enter the realms of faith.

But it strikes me that it would take more faith to believe that there are no absolutes, than to recognise that in such an infinite universe, it would have to be inevitable that there are some absolutes.

Anyway, in general the discussion of absoluteism is only necessary for as long as it takes to expose the manipulation of people who want to claim they know the absolut truth... and allow us to recognise that observation of life, and sythesis of ideas, are far more valuable in deciding what is moral, than literalistic interpretation of morals from other cultures in other eras.

That doesn't mean discounting the morals of those eras. Absolutely not. What it means, is carefully exploring those morals to uncover what principles, what concepts, what values and beliefs underpin them. By understanding how other people have chosen to respond to their context and environment... by understanding not what they chose, but why they chose it, we can begin to form an understanding that will help us to develop constructive morals and beliefs that fit effectively with our culture and circumstances.

To some this may appear to be an argument for imorality and relativist/contextual ethics. If you feel that way, ask yourself these questions... "how do I construct my values?" and "do they fit with my life?"

I believe that we all contruct our values from our best understanding of life... regardles of whether we do that literally and blindly, or analyticaly and consciously. On that basis, I choose to be as conscious as possible of the values I am constructing, and the beliefs I am building them upon.

Perhaps I am mostly just thumbing my nose at the people in my life who constructed their "absolute" morality on the bible, as they intepreted it, in King James english. (Many of whom believed that the 'very hand of God' wrote said book in said language). All the same, people who subscribe to that kind of irrational naive realism, could probably throughly benifit from a few well aimed questions.

The Hardcore Music Scene...

2007-01-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

Did you think it was evil... loud dark hard fast heavy strong and screaming?

We just went to a gig and heard a band called "In name and blood", their final show.

Steve's friends. It was one of the most relaxing, inspiring, and uplifting things I've done in ages... and I finally understand what the crazy guy is on about!!! Onya Steve... hang in there bro, I can't wait to hear your band.

Steve, Laura, Anna, and myself went... it was awesome! But I will leave it to them to tell you about it if they happen to stop past. And I'd like to hand over to Steve to talk about why he is passionate about the hardcore scene. This guy's heart and his passion is awesome... so read the comments!!! Go hard stevie!

more photos...

Men who Dance and Cry...

2007-01-28T19:25:00.000-08:00

Someone put this question in a hat the other night...

When did you last cry?

And then later,

When did you last really cry properly?

(or similar words)

So often in our culture it seems men are not allowed to cry, and probably aren't allowed to dance in any way other than that meaty nightclub dance where you tap your heal and waive your fist. (or perhaps thats just a bendigo thing).

Guys... When was the last time you cried? when was the last time you danced freely, expressively? if ever!?

"If you treat me like a dog, and keeped me locked in a cage

2007-01-24T23:30:00.000-08:00

I'm not relaxed or comfortable, I'm agrevation and rage!"

(Powderfinger - Like a dog)

I spent 40 minutes waiting in a queue at CenterStink today, so I could give them two peices of paper. On arriving at the desk, I discovered that the person I saw earlier in the week had mislead me. 40 Minutes of wasted time, and they nearly tried to tell me I have to start a whole new claim... oh no... not like that!

Was it the sheer frustration of waiting? Was it the pain in my legs from running on tuesday, is it just the testosterone from all that exercise? Why was I pacing the whole time? Why was it so frustrating? Why did I feel so trapped and angry?

Give me a shovel and tell me to dig a vegetable garden... hand me an axe or a saw or a hammer... but don't make me wait in a queue.

Of course... I don't actually have to apply for newstart allowance. I could go without. It would be a financialy stupid thing to do... but it would be good for my pride. But I need the money to help buy a car so I can get to a job so I can make enough money to afford to move out of home and study part time, and do some things that are actually living, like going hiking and climbing and maybe even skiing and kayaking...

Should living be this epic of hand to mouth, of filling out resumes for positions I don't even want to make barely enough money to sustain my present lifestyle, let alone plan for the future and for change? Is there a better way? something I've missed?

And why do we dehumanise people with our institutions? is it possible to change that? is it realistic to imagine that we can? Why is centerlink such an inefficient organisation? (probably because anyone with any management sense at all would stay well clear of something so shrouded in incomprehensible policies)

What do you think?

My Kind of Scene (Powderfinger)

2007-01-24T23:18:00.000-08:00

Tell me where I'm
Supposed to begin
An unhappy life working
Some kind of dead end job
For everything you thought you had
Has gone from worse to bad

Lean to the side
Whisper it quiet
The end is in sight to working
All night around the clock
For everything you thought you had
Has gone from worse to bad

But it's not my kind of scene oh yeah
Footprints on the other side
Remind me where I've been oh yeah
I'll watch from the other side

Tell me where I'm
Supposed to begin
Move out of sight and onto
Some life I'm dreaming of
For everything you thought you had
Has gone from worse to bad
So I'll just wait and watch the wheels
While you're turning back

But it's not my kind of scene oh yeah
Footprints on the other side
Remind me where I've been oh yeah
I'll watch from the other side

Pulls me over and it drags me under
Pulls me over and it drags me under

I'll watch from the other side

The Opener:

2007-01-24T20:07:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my new baby!

No... I'm not becoming a dad... unless you consider this blog to be the love child of me and my other blog with a ridiculous sounding name (if you can say it at all...) accessible by this link here.

Perhap a journey in ambivalent blogging was necessary to find something I feel inspired about blogging for. I think the disordered thoughts will stay with me in some form, probably, for disordered thoughts.

But in this blog, I want to explore what it means to live holistically, to be a spiritual, emotional, physical, sexual human being, both in western culture, and across cultures. I'd like to be able to add people to it... so if you get inspired and want to post on here... let me know!? Right now, there's not a great deal to be inspired about... but lets just see what happens.

To get you started, I will link to the handful of people who have inspired my thoughts, Geoff, Bec, and Laura, and Analise also because she put a cool picture of me fire-twirling on her blog... so she gets extra points. For the inspiration to find something clearer and more cohesive to blog about, I have to thank Laura for her posts on wierd girl stuff. (Actually its a wonderful and amazing celebration of an important aspect of womanhood, and I encourage anyone who can handle a frank and alternative perspective on childbirth, and menstruation, and other things to read her blog). It makes me wonder, what do men have to celebrate that we are missing? I hope that with the help of some readers, we can answer some of those questions!

Why my choice of name you may ask? I find peace in paradox. Reductionism pulls life apart into little peices and imagines it can understand the whole, by knowing the parts. Holism embraces and accepts the whole, in the awareness that it is so much more than just the sum of its parts. Truth, Life, God, Love, Hope, all these things are paradoxical at their core... and not easily explained. So, lets raise our glasses to paradoxes and revelations... and see what flows!