SuperhappyfuntimeTuesday, June 30, 2009
at 11:34 PM;
This is a picture-laden +1 post. Moar lulz on teh wai. After CTs.
Warning: Get ready for brain meltdown.
the rest is silence;
Monday, June 29, 2009
at 8:17 PM;
Damn it. I'm so stupid.
Why do I have to consistently like girls who aren't interested?
the rest is silence;
saltation(biology): abrupt evolutionary change; sudden large-scale mutation.Sunday, June 28, 2009
at 12:51 AM;
I took notes today. Is it all just words? That depends on the listener. That depends a lot on the listener. Are we disciples struggling, fighting hard to follow Jesus? Or are we just halfway Christians acting our way through Sunday service? Are we simply pretending to change? Or are we actually undergoing true saltation brought on by the redeeming power of the Holy Spirit?
Humility.
Life of Joshua. Jesus washed disciples' feet.
Where is your humility, then?
Where is the real service?
Clique.
Don't want to be in exclusive group from all the others.
But you are. Exclusive T-shirt; place and rank in hierarchy; title, all alienates others, alienates the same people you should reach out to.
Your special programs separate you from the other 'inferior' people.
We feel inadequate, but God is mighty, He can still use us.
Scared of being MC; public speaking, but still stepped up to the challenge.
Meticulous planning of teaching and program for leader apps. Special mentoring for leaders - what about for the youth who are struggling with their walk, who have so many unanswered and pressing questions, the youth who really need it?
Are they given any guidance, any warm helping hand? No.
Being a leader is about being there for people - availing yourself. Do you?
People who come from families with siblings, when they see their siblings' success, they feel happy? More like distanced, overshadowed, jealous.
But even if you don't like it, you should still make an effort to listen. There is still truth. You might pick up something useful.
Whether for motivations good or bad, the gospel is still preached, and I rejoice in that.
Worship.
Have we really grown in the Spirit? Or is it just because the music is too loud to tell whether people aren't worshipping.
Growth.
Are we looking to grow to 140 youth? Or simply grow back to 140 youth, like we had just a few years back? Just how far have we fallen?
Sermon: We are the salt of the earth.
Matthew 5:13.
Salt as power. Salt preserves the world from evil. Sadly, you and I are the evil.
John 17:14.
Jesus didn't pray that we would be taken out, but that we would not be contaminated. The world needs us as light and salt. But are we?
I got the image of a cell - salt lyses walls and barriers built up between people, tears down strongholds.
Nonchristians smoke, drink, but still feel uncomfortable around us. Why? Because it bothers them. Because we are salt and light.
Salt brings taste. There are fourteen thousand ways of using salt.
Job 6:6 - Is tasteless food eaten without salt?
People with hypertension, cannot take salt, but still take because food is just so tasteless without it. Same with life. Without Jesus, life is meaningless.
When people have no joy, no meaning, we season their life. We give them the greatest of all treasures, which is hope.
Colossians 4:6 - Let your words be seasoned with grace.
If you are not salting people, you are not a Christian. You should be reaching out, touching, ministering to people.
Arabs saying. "You are the salt between us." - You gel us together.
2 Kings 19-22 - Salt is healing.
What if salt loses its flavor? It is no longer useful except to be thrown out and trampled.
NOBODY can make you lose your flavor. It is up to you. As long as you let Jesus reign in you, you are the salt of the earth.
When Jesus loses precedence in your life, you lose your flavor.
You cannot stand between. You are either salt or you are not. If you are causing people to sin, you are NOT salt.
It is not a forced role. You don't force yourself to become salt. It is a natural transformation brought on by the Holy Spirit as long as you wholeheartedly follow Jesus.
If you are forcing your self, there is something inherently wrong with your walk.
People can't wait for the service to be over - the pulpit is too small. Sermons are distilled. There is no fire, no real yearning to learn more. Notice where the newcomer went? Downstairs, chatting on his phone. Right after worship. Is it just the music that keeps people coming?
Our foundation is extremely shaky. People don't know where they are, they don't know why they are Christian, don't know answers to simple questions of faith.
Our teachings are sometimes archaic and mostly in archaic language: sermons, Bible study, Sunday school. They do not connect to new youth. New youth have no stake, find no meaning in them.
Why not Paul's letters? They teach simple, matter-of-fact truths, relevant to daily life; exactly the foundation new Christians need, exactly the foundation we don't have. In fact, Paul's letters were mostly written to help new Christians.
the rest is silence;
mortMonday, June 22, 2009
at 10:31 PM;
I have lost my voice;
silenced uniformity,
speak daggers; use none.
the rest is silence;
Ex abundancia cordis,os loquitor.Friday, June 19, 2009
at 8:24 PM;
Before you read on, those who know me, know that I do not swear lightly, and then only as emphasis, which says a lot about how fucking pissed I am.
Yesterday showed me just what little I have left.
When I can't even be myself among all these so-called Christians, when these so-called godly people can find it in themselves to give me the 'he's fucking weird' look when I try to talk to youall, I am forced to realise what a piece of shit this church has become.
No, scratch that. The church adults are still alright. It's the youth group that's become a rancid waste of food.
I do not need your shit. I do not have to put up with your preening, your high-nose arrogance, your needless obsession with the fucking here and now. Go back to your stupid condo life, watching fucking sitcoms with ads every ten minutes, wasting away your parents' middle level income on fucking useless shit that you relegate as 'obsolete' after six months. I may be the scum you seem to think I am, but I have my fucking dignity and I will not stand for your ostentatious bull.
What the fuck.
I know what you're thinking now. "Oh, so he thinks he's a man now huh, using big words and saying fuck every other sentence, the little emo kid thinks he's so important." Fuck you, pretentious brainwashed moneywhore.
And for the record, I hate the word emo, and I will beat the fucking shit out of the next stupid person to call me that to my face. Emo is not synonymous with depressed. Emo is a fucking stupid subculture obsessed with penknives and wallowing in self-pity. Emo is the rambling of a fourteen year old who doesn't know how to survive six months without his mum, singing Cry Me A fucking River.
Anger is not emo. I am fucking angry, not emo, you ignorant piece of shit.
You say it's because of people like me giving up, not trying hard enough, that the youth group has almost halved its size in the past four years. Attendance is at an all time low. No wait. It was worse, maybe thirty years ago.
But guess what? Back then it was because the church was small. And attendance was increasing, not decreasing as it is now. Think of it. Have we kept anyone longer than six months in the past two years? Wait. Come to think of it, have we kept anyone longer than six weeks?
Now think of this. Who do the relatively younger youth and relatively new people say they do not like, say they are apprehensive of? Me? No. It's you. And all the while, you're pointing the finger at 'fucking weird' people like me, when the real reason people don't want to stay is because you make the environment so fucking hostile from the moment they walk in till the moment they leave, unnoticed, out the fucking back door. Because they're fucking afraid, afraid that you'll give them the same fucking look you give me. That you'll mark them as an outsider, just like you already marked me deep down, five years ago when I first stepped back into this church.
I never told you why I left in the first place, so many years ago. From the moment I first stepped in through the doors, at fucking nine, I felt marginalised. Goes to show a lot, doesn't it? Fucking bullied by people who call themselves the followers of Jesus, the only person in history to not discriminate against anyone.
That's really fucking A.
Call yourself a Christian, you don't deserve the name. Then again, neither do I. You're just behaving like you fucking own that right. And that's what bothers me so much. That's what bothers non-Christians so much.
I give no fucking quarter. You should start considering when to give some, or remain the slimy underfed bitch of decadence that you are.
the rest is silence;
has prepackaged bitesized Christian decadence come to thisTuesday, June 16, 2009
at 11:23 PM;
instructions from a serial killer
"I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing."
- American serial killer H. H. Holmes.
after the first four,
you keep score on the bedroom wall/
an etch for each bitch/
no room in your head
to host the dead/
she will grow on you, like cancer
laying claim to your brain/
let the dead bury the dead,
but leave her eyes and remains open
to sudden hands,
the way your rope
strains the death mask
as your knife, eloquent
and rehearsed so often,
quills a stark grammar
on her face,
parts speech from death/
what drives the artist
becomes his method/
you learn to feed off registers
of rage, violence of art,
and there will be no finer moment
than this spell
that keeps you singing hours after
the trespass of sleep,
dyeing of sheets,
the sirens calling forth another chase/
Apathy
There are no extra drugs
In our coffee.
We sleep with our lights turned off.
On the television we watch
With tabloids on our laps: the news,
Yesterday's news.
What are revolts? Rashes on a map.
Strikes are some dishevelled men
Handy with paint and plywood.
Conspiracies? Only in yellowed novels,
Stalked in thriller aisles beside
That other elusive delusion, romance.
Numb does not describe us,
We have nothing to offer for thawing.
We still fly our kites
In designated parks.
We watch our ports in wonder
And still think of ships loaded with wealth.
To the camera we still proffer smiles.
To the orators who slammed
At the tin-sheet sky with their fists,
To the rabble-rousers and rebels,
The ones who weighed the strength
Of a rock in their hands,
The ones weeping from tear-gas,
We owe them nothing.
The window offers another view.
Our hands do not tremble
As we part the curtains
To witness a riot of sunlight.
The pandemonium of traffic,
Yesterday's traffic.
We fall asleep under a moon
Whose luminous nakedness
Makes no ripples
Among the grey clouds.
We sleep on headlines
Plumped like pillows,
Stuffed with cotton;
Plucked by the hands
Of the silent and dying,
From the gaping mouths
Of the silenced and the dead.
the rest is silence;
lukewarm spiritual waterSunday, June 14, 2009
at 9:14 PM;
The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and this well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
"I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
"To the angel of the church in Sardis write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.
Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
drowning
under the neon decadence
all drinks seem, look the same.
what do I thirst for but tar-black
substitute, pure only in name
one shot, bartender, no need
to open your book no time
for talk this week; no heart
bedtime prayer rush
sleep before your head
hits the feather-soft pillow.
feed your desire;
loosen up with thirty-five percent
diluted faux water
sans olive-root.
just a small one, then; very
very
dry.
so this is your schadenfreude.Sunday, June 7, 2009
at 11:01 PM;
a detective sonnet
Words find no purchase in these streets.
I could wake the silence with a gun
and all the confession worth a buy
is a shrug, a blink of sun.
If only you could see man as I
see him, every tunnel of day
blundering in the blind, a cul-de-sac
through which evil empties its ways,
you would understand why all I want is a woman
whose heart hits me true and right,
and that will be enough - to be here, a stiff
drink warming in her light
and her tears christening my past
when my case is closed at last.
on the rocks
the hour is a glass
i keep draining of light
to end it quick
on its welcoming rim
so many shots
to the heart
yet this need
to talk my head clear
and for once
hover
like something real
the rest is silence;
&youclosethedoor.Wednesday, June 3, 2009
at 9:19 PM;
combined literature, D3SR6
the green-tinted sunlight scatters off walls, whitewash
plaster peppered with silver freckle-dust;
crystal facets in fluorescent-blue flicker.
if walls could talk, there would be silence, privy
to white-noise rustle
of opened cracker-packets; soft vibration
of a correspondence more welcome
than that ringing out
across the gridlock of plastic desks.
look down,
look up; anywhere but
the searching eyes, unforgiving countenance
seeking for a sign of weakness;
an outlet for rage.
the floor is grey. this training centre
for the concrete jungle; sneaker-dirt topsoil
and sheaves of neatly typed leaf-litter.
the sky is off-white with neglect. false ceiling
and multiple false suns; together with false promise
of false walls in false cubicle-heaven. no,
no heatstroke, not in this age of climate control;
the lie of the land
fill, lie of mutual deforestation assured
global nuclear warming.
time is a discrete variable here, one o'clock no different
from ten fifty-seven as stick-thin hands move
with the intangible weight of
forty-nine pairs of eyes
but only when you're not looking.
P.S.
'no comment' hurt me deeply.
i named my guitar after you, because it's beautiful, but you're so much more beautiful.
the rest is silence;
love is everything.Monday, June 1, 2009
at 9:01 PM;
How are you feeling?
What are your reasons?
Do you feel love or a lack thereof?
Love is a bond without reason,
A cry for connection,
A light in your eyes.
Love is a reason for living,
A reason for trying,
A reason for life.
Forget the feeling.Get all your of reasons.
Life is love or the lack thereof.
Love is a bond without reason,
A cry for connection,
A light in your eyes.
Love is a reason for living,
A reason for trying,
A reason for life.
Love is a bond without reason,
A cry for connection,
A light in your eyes.
Love is a reason for living,
A reason for dying.
Love is everything.
How are you feeling?
(Love is everything)
What are your reasons?
(Love is everything)
How are you feeling?
(Love is everything)
Oh love, you move me,
Love, move in me, move me.
Love is everything.
the rest is silence;
The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
"To the angel of the church in Sardis write:
How are you feeling?