Terrible

It seems like no power in earth or heaven can fix what is broken inside of me. I don't really understand it anymore. I am so incredibly alone. By the way, if you're alone don't listen to "How To Save A Life" by the Fray...it doesn't help.

I have this deep feeling that life will continue to only find meaning in small struggles and that arbitrarily progressing and writing papers and stressing about driving tests and dentists is the only thing that gives me a purpose at all. I've prayed so much, I prayed most of my shift at work tonight. I feel like someone has died, I feel like my life is a funeral procession. I looked at houses in the newspaper tonight on break at work and realized that I will never own a house, I will never be married, or have children (unless I get really sad and lonely and adopt a kid and ruin his or her life as well).

I have a few options I was thinking over as I've talked to all my Christian friends who seem to be doing ok (by the way in a twist of fate after enduring all of the hatred and deciding to convert, it seems God won't grant me the joy of religion either, I find myself HATING Catholicism.). And all my friends are much more pure than I am, they can read the bible and live it. I can only listen to it and either not enjoy it, live it, or believe it. Damn liberal theologians like Marcus Borg for trying to destroy my faith which was all I had left.

Anyway, once again I find myself sitting in the east wing of Cottrill manor in my bed waiting to fall asleep. As Hamlet once said (quoting from memory) "to die, to sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub, for in that sleep, what dreams may come?"

There is so much wrong with me I have no idea what to do... a friend called me and told me about all of his accomplishments which were encouraging and done in a good spirit, but in the end I just realized that I am not like him. I am reprobate, unregenerate, alone. My greatest wish is to some day sit reading this with my life in order shocked and horrified that I'd ever write such a thing and make it public no less. But it doesn't matter, no one reads it anyway, and even if they do, what do you say to the person who's memorized the answers they've given him for years?

Prayer

I should be writing on my theology blog if it's about God or Religion, but I post on here because I know nobody reads it and I can get out my really personal thoughts.



2 days ago a friend asked me to pray for her on the phone. I don't remember how to pray to God the right way anymore. I don't even know if I believe in prayer. I have all the arguments and logically I can accept it, it's just personally I don't know if I think God even likes me, I've abused our friendship too much. (Now's where protestants will attack me) But I've been praying to the saints alot recently. I mean I believe they're going to him anyway, but it just seems easier to talk to a dead person than a deity. So I've been praying to Our Lady in latin, I feel like a medieval peasant so it just seemed right.



Ave Maria, Gratia Plena, Dominus Tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus. Sancte Maria, Mater Dei, Ora pro nobis pecatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis, nostrae.



I'm terrified about so much in life right now, I have so many essays - I don't know how I'm going to get through it. I gave up World of Warcraft. I have a drivers test that i'm scared about too. I'm so angry at life in general, I hate it, I hate me. I feel so incredibly weak and scared about everything.



I was listening to the radio yesterday night and heard the story of Abraham and Jehovah Jireh - the Lord will provide. I just hope he provides me with some help or angels or something and with a hope and reason for living (and again if someone does read this, you probably know that i'm too cowardly to commit suicide, I'd just never do that). But I would like my life to mean more than struggling to survive, please those around me, be thin, and get a piece of paper (history degree).

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is smart, he has alot of good points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdl_xNMTYvs

Self-Loathing

Obese comes from the Mid-17th century Latin obesus , past participle of assumed obedere "eat until overweight" according to my dictionary.

I am one of the random Canadian statistics of Obese people who are apparently making up a huge portion of the population (though I don't really see them anywhere). I was thinking about this -as always- today at Brock. No one likes fat people. It's just a general premise in the world. Sure Kevin James or Chris Farley maybe not, but the vast majority of them, people hate. I don't particularly like seeing them either, even though I'm one of them.

It reminded me of a text we were reading in history class by Thomas Jefferson - slaveowner, racist extraordinaire, and co-founder of the United States. He writes: The negroes wish they were white as it is universally known that we are superior, even as the orangutang would prefer to be a negro. - and other things like that. It's interesting that many times people would really hate themselves today and all through history.

St. Paul says according to old Wycliffe's reckoning that "no man hated ever his own flesh, but nourisheth and fostereth it, as [and] Christ doeth the church." (Eph 5.29). But I got news for you St. Paul, I hated mine own flesh.

Then I realized, even God hates fat people, according to old Ezekiel 34:16 "I will destroy the fat...I will feed them with judgement" (he uses such great puns when he plans on destroying someone, it's like Bond one-liners)

So basically it's actually a virtue for me to hate myself. I can't believe how utterly detestable to every principle established by human or divine law. I was trying to think of things religions have in common today in lecture and I thought, all of them together could point to me and say 'this man has wasted his life - don't be like him'. That would certainly be an interesting proposal.

I genuinely drag everyone down, I am the dead weight of society. The other night I watched "the beach" with Leonardo Dicaprio or however you spell his name. Anyway, there's a scene where a guy gets bit by a shark and he keeps getting more sick and is coughing all night etc, and so the people just drag him out into the middle of the woods and leave him for dead. Then they all go back to their commune and play beach volleyball and have a fun day. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I am that shark attacked guy.

It's no one's fault but my own after all. I mean I started out in this life and made bad choices, and then God saved me at Capernwray from alot more and by the end I was on my way back to health and wealth, but then I screwed it all up by my own choices. So here I am today at 1:43 PM on November the third. I'm laying in bed, barely fitting into my clothing. I finished an essay last week (twice - had to rewrite it) and now I have 4 more due that I haven't started.

What's the point in trying to go on. I can already predict the future. I will struggle through a stress filled month, live in more sin, eat more doritos, play more world of warcraft, and then find myself in another state of severe depression 20 pounds heavier and even more hopeless than before. Life will continue to spiral downwards until I actually do have a heart attack or something and finally die, and if I'm lucky that will be it, and I'll have peace and quiet and rest from my own iniquity.

It would take a miracle on the scale of the Resurrection of Christ for life to turn out in my favour.

World of Warcraft

Lately I've been playing WoW again. There are infinitely better things to do with my time, like exercise or ministry or schoolwork. But I just got to the point where I could no longer find happiness in life, I could find joy in Christianity, but not a fun kind of happiness. So I started once more. I've played probably like 5 characters so far, I can never pick just one. I'm tempted on many days to just pick one and delete the rest, even though i've literally spend weeks ingame on some of them. I think my 61 Priest has like 16 days of playtime. I'm now restarting with a blood-elf hunter.

But why would I play Wow? what makes it different. Here are some answers, not all of them are good or healthy, but they're just thoughts.

Escapism - I'm so tired of life and the stresses that I've lived with for so long, that at times I just need to escape. This is the reason many people drink or use drugs, and in many ways those are more socially acceptable, but Mennonite and Baptist backgrounds die hard and I doubt I'll ever use either.

New Reality - The pre-modern man struggled to survive in the world, the modern man discovered and conquered the world, and the post-modern man invents his own world. Given these 3 options I would choose the modern world. I would love to explore and discover things, but i'd like to be in shape as well. My brother Jeremy is to me the hero of this modern period, out in the wilderness and on the edge of civilization, if I had it in me, I'd like to do the same thing.

In WoW I can enjoy the best of Post-Modernity. The world of warcraft is full of new and exciting places to see and things to do, I can find my own friends from all around the world and have a ton of fun living as a brave new explorer in a brave new world.

Pure Fun - at the end of the week, I can usually (this week excluded) just jump on and have a ton of fun. Last night is an example, I just jumped on my Shaman and rode around on my wolf through an Alliance (enemy) area, and I found other low level players and would kill them in one shot and then dance on their corpses and ride away. This is entertainment for me.

I like playing games, and as I said it is a horrifying thought that I have spent this much time in a fake world doing essentially meaningless things, but when faced with the reality of life that to have fun in this world I would have to diet, exercise, face all of my problems, try alot harder, pass my G test (which I'm still ignoring) and go into new and scary situations. OR I could jump on a game and get almost all of the same enjoyment. Sloth is a sin, but it is the reality of my life, and thus I play World of Warcraft.

WoW

I'm playing my 61 priest and 50 shaman again...

Alone

I took myself out to see "The Dark Knight" again the other day. I don't think most normal people go out to movies by themselves. I drove home without the radio on, not wanting to listen to Joyce Meyer talk about 'the flesh', and also feeling that solitude was what the occassion called for. It only took 14 minutes to drive home, but it felt like an eternity, it felt like being God watching evolution take place, knowing that in some small way things were progressing, but also knowing that it would be a long time before I would have anyone to talk to.

I guess the dogma of the Trinity kind of eliminates my 'lonely God' model, maybe if I functioned in a Trinity my whole life would be an outpouring of love as well.

I was at work the other night and they gave us even more stupid uniforms, weird red hats that look like the kind Anglican Seminarians wear. I saw a girl I worked with who looked really cute, smiling and laughing and talking about going to a party. I am not like that person. I don't go to parties. Post-Modern Fun, and I seem to have a philosophical/moral difference, and can't quite see eye to eye on principle. So once again I felt by myself, not looking particularly cute in my red hat, just looking as one co-worker who hates me described it 'as a big cherry'.

I've always conceived of God deistically in a way, that he was huge and utterly different than us, it was somehow influenced by Reformed theology that nothing I could do would appease him (sola fide) and thus Catholicism is offering new challenges to me. It teaches more firmly the dogma of the Incarnation, the idea that God "pitched his tent with men". It teaches an ongoing sacrifice for sins in a sense and that we can participate -as the body of Christ- in the work of the cross by suffering. It is scarier to think in that way, that as Gladiator says "what we do in life, echoes in eternity". Atheism is the cowardly faith really, it's much easier to believe we are a pleasant mistake. My personal phrase or philosophy used to be "don't worry, you are to insignificant to do anything really terrible". So maybe loneliness is a great comfort and a great despair.

I try to think of a bible verse everyday for work to meditate on and think about all day.

"God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity/nature" (Wisdom of Solomon 2:23)