Through My Eyes: A Journal

Through My Eyes: A Journal

By Liz Root

Contact Liz by emailing her at liz@vagrantcafe.com

Click here for weekly archives

11/8/2002
i feel like i've been asleep for two months. i think back to conversations i had this past summer, and how i was filled with such hope and desire to really *live*. and i look at myself now and see how short of that i've fallen. without even noticing. but i feel like it's returning, though in a slightly different way. for the first time in my life i think, i feel like making a difference in the world. and i don't really know how that will manifest itself, but i can tell you that i'm asking questions i've never previously asked. i'm wondering about things and why they are the way they are.

last night i was driving on I-20 to Columbia, SC...on my way to a pedro the lion show. and i was borrowing a car that only had a radio, and the only station that would come in clearly was the christian station. so i listened, and i thought about what i was listening to, and it was a pretty interesting car ride to say the least, even if i was alone. first i thought, "this music sucks." then i thought, "yeah, but if it blesses people, then i can't judge it." and then a whole bunch of other thoughts came, like how it all sounds the same, and how hundreds of thousands of people are listening to these songs about "being jesus to the world", but are they? reminds me of the pedro song where he says "the devoted were wearing bracelets to remind them why they came, some concrete movitation, when the abstract could not do the same."

allow me to rant here. also allow me a disclaimer that this is simply a rant, and by no means an accurate representation of what's really going on in the world and chistianity and the church at large.

but aren't you bored? aren't you tired of it all? don't you wish your pastors and leaders would just drop the facade for a minute and admit that they go through some pretty serious shit? wouldn't you like it if every time you told someone your problems, they wouldn't offer you the perfect christian answer to your problems? wouldn't it be nice if our worship was really worship instead of the worship leader manipulating our feelings into some crazy pep rally for jesus? don't you wish we could just talk to each other like human beings instead of hiding behind these perfectly constructed walls?

i've been a christian basically my whole life, and i can admit i still feel pretty clueless. i want *so* badly to be a part of what God is doing on the earth. but i don't want any part of the hype. i realize that in everything we do, there's going to be "flesh" involved. i know it's not like God comes down and overtakes my body so that i don't even know what i'm doing, just so that i can say i do what i do totally and completely in the spirit. that's bull. however, i really do want to be led by God, and not manipulated by what i think i should do or say or be. it's a tough place to be. it's tough to listen to christian radio on the way to a pedro the lion show, and know that both the people singing on the radio, and dave bazan consider themselves christians. i wonder when there will ever be reconciliation between these christian cultures. and i see so many people flocking to bands like pedro the lion, b/c we're all sick of people patting our heads and telling us everything will be okay, when we know it won't be. not until after we're dead anyway, and since we don't have any idea what that will be like anyway, it doesn't offer us much hope in the moment. another pedro the lion lyric to fit the mood: "wouldn't it be so wonderful if everything were meaningless, but everything is so meaningful, and most everything turns to shit. rejoice."

i'm not trying to be a pessimist here. i believe that life can be wonderful, and i'm realizing how much i really haven't been living at all lately. and i don't want to do that anymore. but to truly live, i have to be willing to fight in order to do so. faith is spelled r.i.s.k. and i can't say that i've taken that many risks in life. i just pray for the guts to step out there and start living.

- liz r. - 11/8/2002