continual nonsense

RT @aileenburns: Everyone PLEASE pray for my friend Dan RT @AltPress Hot Rod Circuit drummer suffers stroke, in intensive care: http://p …

“As the Radical Orthodoxy theologians have helped to show, the Constantinian error now even extends beyond the State to the way the church has established alliances with all the dominant institutions of late modernity, most importantly the complex amalgam of institutions that comprise global capitalism. The reason this is important is that we now live at a time when the power of the state has declined relative to the market and in this context, international capitalism and the technological innovation that drives it have become every bit as oppressive  as the state. How is capitalism oppressive? Beyond the obvious failure to provide adequately for the needs of the poor and disadvantaged, its more significant problems derive from its success. In short, when it is working well, capitalism deforms and corrupts human desire, turning it into the insatiable appetite for more and more. Augustine was right in his observation that desire and the continual renewal of desire is part of our nature as human beings.” 

“In Hauerwas’s view, it is not surprising that ‘God is killing Protestantism and perhaps Christianity in America and we deserve it.’ Overall, Michael Budde summarizes, ‘few people inside the churches seem eager to admit it, but in matters of human allegiance, loyalty, and priorities, Christianity is a nearly complete, unabashed failure….The twentieth century provides too many examples of Christian failure to consider any other conclusion.’ The most ergregious harm is done by conservative theologians—Protestant and Catholic—who continue to justify the Constantinian project, misleading the church along the way.”

—excerpts from this book I’m reading—“To Change the Word. The irony, tragedy, and possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World”

Putting guitar pedals and quarter inches in your carry-on is a sure way to delay your boarding process. #thoroughTSA

I want nothing to do with the manifestations of love which I often see.  I have not been able to relate to the circus, and all of those hoop jumpers and tight rope walkers under the tent, in their own world, unaware of the currents swirling about on the outside which at any moment can come crash their party. At that moment, when their heart is broken, that is when they become most pathetic. They behave like pendulums. When in love, that is all they care to know. They have no time for those who condemn romance, they have no time for those who find expression in loneliness, they have no time for those who tread  slowly and do all they can to resist the whimsical temptations to fall into love with any beautiful rose who decides to bloom before them (as if their season is the only one which caused the bloom, unwilling to recognize that it blooms for every season!). When they are in love, the prance about with silly smiles, boasting their infatuation as the real thing, daring all of us to let go of our reservations and leap into the arms of another and then we can also join them in their real life sonnets. Although, what happens when their love ends? Then, those same soaring birds come crashing down and wallow in their hurt, denouncing love and claiming to never fall in love again. They claim to be “independent!” and that from this point on, they will focus on their job, or their art, or God. YES! They fall BACK on God after their infatuation becomes boring and the excitement fades, and their bodies and humor become boring. They want nothing to do with love, they prefer to hear no mention of those who have found love, the wish to listen to sad songs and become empowered. They abandon their hearts and wish to think only with their minds, they abuse the idea love by becoming only interested in selfish self exploitation in the spirit of their new found “independence”, thinking that asserting themselves sexually equals freedom. Yes, it’s maddening.

“I do not get excited at the prospect of true love, I become overwhelmingly pensive. I realize that something such as love means to devote yourself to someone else, and in that act, become vulnerable to the point of appearing weak willed. How often have we heard our friends trying to “talk sense” into us, selling the idea of being better off without someone who takes advantage of us. The person in love is blind to abuse, because being in love isn’t based on a pre-requisite which demands respect. Being in love is an external expression, an emotion that flows outward with such ferocity that no human idea of equality and respect comes into his or her periphery. The outward flow does not depend on reciprocity, that is the torturous characteristic of love. How is one supposed to control their own love for someone else? If ones love passes away when the possibility of fulfillment is extinguished, it is certain that it was never love in the first place. ” (the hypothetical, the unreality, not of this world)

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“Blessed is the lover;  he hopes all things. Even at the last moment does he still hope for the possibility of the good for the most degenerate? This he has learned from the eternal; but only because he was a lover could he learn from the eternal;…”

“No, the true lover understands only one thing: to be fooled, to be deceived, to give everything away without the slightest return…”

“Love seeks not its own; for in love there is no mine and yours. But mine and yours are only relational qualifications of “one’s own”; consequently, if there is no “mine”, or “yours,” there is no one “one’s-own,” either; but if there is no “one’s own,” it is indeed impossible to seek “one’s-own.”

“What the world most highly and unanimously honors is cleverness or acting cleverly. But to act cleverly is precisely the most contemptuous of all. If a man is clever, in a certain sense he cannot help it; nor should he be ashamed of developing his cleverness–but should be all the more ashamed of acting cleverly.”

(kierkegaard)

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Some respect love so much as not even touch it, they can adore it from a distance. Some treat love as if it were a theme park, venturing into it with unbridled excitement with the understanding that they can leave the roller coaster at will. I prefer to take on the task with a sober approach, never mistaking anything for that which is the most difficult to sustain, love itself. Being that love is perfection, it is no wonder that we constantly fail, or try in vain to make it less than it is. With one’s beloved, (s)he exists with such a quiet and looming clarity. (S)he doesn’t prop up your ideas nor tear down your ambitions, (s)he doesn’t compete with you, but  constantly conquer you, and every time that happens, you rejoice.

“What delusion needs most always is what it thinks of least, since otherwise it would not be a delusion”

My credit card is relieved that this drive from Nashville to Chesapeake happened on record store day. #avoidspendinghundredsofdollars

Pretty instense coffee shop. http://tweetphoto.com/18534449

“What do I want with your nature, your Pavlovsk park, your dawns and sunsets, your blue skies and your smug faces, when all this feast that has no end has begun by excluding me alone? What is there for me in all this beauty, when I am forced to be aware every minute, every second, that even this tiny fly buzzing in the sunbeam near me, even that is a participant in all this festival and chorus, knows its place, loves it, and is happy, while I am the sole outcast, and only my cowardice has prevented me from wanting to face it before now! Oh, I know very well how the prince and rrest of them would have liked to make me sing for the sake of decency and triumphant morality that celebrated classic stanza of Millevoix’s:
‘Oh, let them see thy holy beauty
Those friends deaf to my departure!
Let them die full of years, let their death be mourned, 
Let some friend close their eyes!’
-instead of all these “mischievous and wicked” speeches. But believe me, believe me, my dear innocents, that even in these edifying lines, in this academic benediction on the world in French verse, there is embedded so much concealed bitterness, so much irreconcilable, self-deluding, rhymed malice, that even the poet himself my have fallen into the trap and taken that malice for tears of affection, and so died, God rest him! Let me tell you that there is a limit to the shame inherent in the realization of one’s own insignificance and weakness, beyond which a man cannot go, and at which he begins to take an immense satisfaction in this very shame of his….Well, of course, humility is a mighty force in that sense, I admit that—but not in the sense in which religion accepts humility as a force. Religion! I admit the existence of eternal life, perhaps I always have. Suppose that consciousness, kindled by the will of a higher power, suppose it looked round at the world and said: ‘I am!’—and suppose that it has been commanded by that higher force to annihilate itself, for some sufficient reason, even without any explanation—it had to be, all that granted, I admit all that, but again comes the eternal question: what point is there in my humility in all this? Why couldn’t I just be devoured without demanding that I praise what is devouring me?”

Saw me some Dave Elkins today. I miss me some Ellen. I love me some bon fires, and I love me some Jameson. Sittin next to some rob.

Screw the NYTimes for stealing my buddy @brettbrownell worldwide moment idea! But don’t worry Krugman, I still love you.

“you know what your problem is? Well, among other things, you can’t listen to music passively, it’s annoying,” said me to myself.

Ah! when one sees someone protesting complete understanding of how Christ went about int he form of a lowly servant, poor, despised, mocked, and as the Scripture says: “spitted on”—when I see that same person taking so many pains to seek refuge in the place where in worldliness it is good to be, setting himself up as securely as possible, when I see him so anxiously avoiding—as if his life depended on it—every unfavorable breath of wind from right or left, so blissful, so utterly blissful, so jubilant, yes, to round it off, so jubilant that he even emotionally thanks God for it—for being honored and respected by everyone, everyone; then I have often said to myself, “Socrates Socrates Socrates, how could it be possible for this person to have understood what he claims to have understood?—(k) the sickness unto death.

“No, the true lover understands only one thing; to be fooled, to be deceived, to give everything away without the slightest return, this is what it means not to seek one’s own. O, the poor fool. How ridiculous can he get—in the eyes of the world! The true lover becomes the unmitigatedly injured one—which in a certain sense he brings upon himself by his self-renunciation. Yet in this way the revolution of mine and yours achieves its highest; therefore love also achieves its highest blessedness in itself.”—k.

Back porch in Nashville. Not too shabby.

Driving to Nashville today. Looking forward to seeing some good people.

Hey @brettbrownell AKA salad bar, I just wanted to show my support for the new nickname. #brilliantidearod

Ellen just bought seasons 3 and 4 of ALF. Love it. #melmac

I just heard my first Ke$ha song, and to no surprise, her music sounds as obnoxious as she looks. #garbage

Hello Tampa! I’ll be hanging out with you for one day. Let’s be friendly to each other. http://tweetphoto.com/17888350

Reading “The Sickness Unto Death” as I watch the sun rise offers quite the internal collision. #Kierkegaard

Mark Curry was damn funny. Now off to tampa. #hangingwithmrcooper

Wine and mr. Cooper with @elcupcake and friends. #hangingwithmrcooper

This bird outside my window has a pretty amazing internal clock. Every morning, same time, it starts “singing”….