The Book of Harold by Owen Egerton

The Hot Tub Incident

..... "Music is like that."
"but I don't even like James Taylor. I hate James Taylor. It wasn't the music. It was the crowd and the girl and the weed. It was all of it. It was the moment."
He nodded. " Like you happen upon this secret--- you're suprised to find it. So clear, so real. But you can't hold on to it or even look at it straight on. It's gone as soon as you try."
"Yes."
"And you're left without even the words to describe it, but you know it was there and it was what you are meant for."
"That's it."
"God making us hungry for God."
"I'd like to know God," I said. I said it casually, letting my hand skim the water's surface.
"You're sure?" He leaned back and looked up at the sky.
"Yeah. I want that purpose. I want to be a part of it, you know?"
"That's not God, That's just tinsel on the tree."
"Sure, okay. But I do want God."
"What does that feel like, to want God, Blake?"
"I don't know. It feels like wanting. I don't know."
"Do you want to know? Because I can show you."
"Yeah, I want to know." As soon as I said that, Harold pounced. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and pushed me under the water. The hot wter jets and bubbles thundered in my head. At first i thought it must be a joke and tried not to panic. I watched the drain. A minute passed, I started to struggle. I was a strong man, but Harold had me pinned. I let go a mouthful of air. My lungs tightened and i could feel blood blue, oxygenless blood scream through my heart. I threw out my arms, grabbing and clawing. I scratched Harold's hand and saw his blood cloud the churning water. But Harold didn't loosen his grip. My throat tensed and my head pulsed. I knew I couldn't hold out much longer. I knew I would try to breathe in the water. My body was going to suck in no matter how hard I tried to tell it not to. i was going to drown, thrashing away like one of my kittens. Harold let my ears above the water. My mouth and nose were still under. "There," he said. "Like you want your next breath. That's how it feels to want God." Then I was up gasping and crying. Harold leaned back. That was the first time it occurred to me that this walk might end poorly.


LIKE YOU WANT YOUR NEXT BREATH. THAT'S HOW IT FEELS TO WANT GOD.

HolyyloH

We had a prayer night at church and we sang this song tonight. One of the verses goes.. Holy are you God Holy is your name With everything I've got my heart will sing How I love you... and this was my thought...

No matter how I feel I have made a choice to put my heart in Jesus and ultimately my heart will sing how Holy our God is even if my brain and mouth aren't saying it. Eventually my heart will start to sing the loudest between the two...

Jazz Like Blue

This is from the book Blue Like Jazz

"I suppose what I wanted back then is what every Christian wants, whether they understand themselves or not. What I wanted was God. I wanted tangible interaction. But even more than that, to be honest, I wanted to know who I was. I felt like a robot or an insect or a mysterious blob floating around in the universe. I believed if I could contact God, He would be able to explain who and why I was. The days and weeks before a true commitment to Jesus can be terrible and lonely. I think I was feeling bitter about the human experience. I never asked to be human. Nobody came to the womb and explained the situation to me, asking for my permission to go into the world and live and breathe and eat and feel joy and pain. I started thinking about how odd it was to be human, how we are stuck inside this skin, forced to be attracted to the opposite sex, forced to eat food and use the rest room and then stuck to the earth by gravity. I think maybe I was going crazy or something. I spent an entire week feeling bitter because I couldn't breathe underwater. I told God I wanted to be a fish. I also felt a little bitter about sleep. Why do we have to sleep? I wanted to be able to stay awake for as long as I wanted, but God had put me in this body that had to sleep. Life no longer seemed like an experience of freedom."

A lot of times, if you've ever actually talked to me, I get really stranged out by who I am. I think I get out of body experiences more than most people and sometimes I feel as if I'm not real. I know I'm real and I know Jesus is living inside of me but this body is only my temporary home. It was just nice to read someone else being angry that we weren't born with a blow hole so we could be underwater....

... I wish I had a blow hole.....

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization

This is a product of being awake for 17 hours, working a 10 hour shift, Christmas shopping, 2 mochas, studying for Christology final, fooling around with the idea of a 10 page paper, and being left alone... If I was left alone for a week.. Oh my gosh don't leave me alone for a week.

My Idea was that I was a figment of God.. I started looking up defintions.
Figment: An Invention; a fiction; something invented or devised. Fiction: A creation of the imagination. Feign: Touch, form, mold, conceive, devise, stroke, smear-- to put on an appearance of or pretend-- to make believe; pretend. Imagined: To form a mental image of something not actually present to the senses; represent to oneself in imagination, conceive; to assume or suppose; conjecture or guess; think, beieve, or fancy. To form mental images of things not present to the senses; exercise the imagination, suppose. There are some verses that always stay with you in your mind. One of them for me is the verse about how life is just a vapor. Life is so short so what in the world am I doing here making flashcards while there are children in other countries who are sent to fight a war and can't even hold up a gun? Why am I even sitting here writing these words? A vapor makes me feel like I'm not real or if I am real than life is super surreal beacause poof I'm here poof I'm gone. Ok, I'm not crazy I know I'm real. I'm just trying to make sense out of my late night thoughts. I am most of the defintions. What's the difference between imagination and dreams? I had to at some point be imagined by God. Why do we encourage imagination so much? We play with the word negatively and positevly. We encourage people to imagine but when we voice our imagination we look down with our voice by saying, "Oh you were just imagining things...." If we imagine and voice it as a dream or ambition is it any different? Am I an imagination? Am I an imagination with an imagination? How do I become real? :) Thanks for bearing with me even though there aren't any bears here....

Thanks all two of my readers... Sarena and my Mom :) ha

I think it's a rude gesture to tell a stranger to smile...

Why would I ever ask God for anything? I think our "prayers" get consumed with asking instead of thanking. We're suppose to be in this attitude of thanksgiving at all times but yet I think most of us make a thankful sandwhich. Do you know what I'm talking about? Ever heard of a compliment sandwhich? It's a term used in work places I feel. It's where you tell a person they're doing a great job, give them input on an area they need to work in, and then say they're doing a great job again. We do this so we aren't harsh with improving them. Compliment, construct, compliment. What we're iterating is the construct though. I feel like this is how our prayers usually go... "Thank you God for this day in which you have made, Please allow me to do this and that... but I mean only if it's your will, thank you again for your son." Does this make sense? I'm not trying to be rude I just think we routine our prayers with Dear Gods and signed in your Son's name Amens. We say thank you but we don't have a heart to it because we want to get to the middle, get past the introduction. The point I'm really trying to make is be thankful. Just be thankful. because you know what the rest of the world is worried about today? "Am I going to have clean water." You just don't realize how beautiful your life is. Love it. Embrace it. Be thankful for it.

You'll never be a vegetable... even artichokes have hearts

Do you know the part in the movie Amelie where they are saying what some of her favorite things to do are? One of them was to stick her fingers in the buckets of beans at farmers markets, I was thinking what were some of my favorite things. I'm sure most people wouldn't really think about it because they don't know what their favorite things are. Most may say watching movies. Well I know what some of my favorite things are and one of them came back to me as I was getting the mail the other day. I love going to the lost and found in churches and flipping through the left behind Bibles. I love to see at what part God touched them or spoke to them loud enough they needed to underline some of the alphabet. This is connected to me going to the mail box becuase I ordered a used book for a class and I just love going through it and seeing whoever owned this book before me caught their attention. I love seeing that at one point they stopped using a highlighter and used a pencil.. what happened to the highlighter? I love the book mark they left in it. It's a little distracting but... It's one of my favorite things...

Intelligent Input Darling

Another night of thoughts written down with a pen then typed up days later to share...

-Sometimes I like the voices you've given homeless people. The tone they use to say, "God Bless" when I offer a bag of cheddar sun chips.
-God's love I've come to realize is a different type of love than what I'm accustomed to
-Hopscotch should be in Ihop
-Kenny Rogers is behind us
-He's telling me to meditate on what he just said but I didn't hear what he just said...
-"Man can not stop the move of God"
-I love when people hum... it's beautiful sounding

Then something more worth your time
-The man speaking said something that really touched me. He said that once we learn to see beauty we'll be able to see it everywhere. He then mentioned soemthing about finding beauty in your husband eating breakfast. So I started thinking about my future husband eating breakfast. Will I be able to find beauty in him eating ceral? Will I be able to see God in him? What ceral is he eating? Would God eat that? My prayer now is that in the mundane times I'll be able to find the beauty of God in my husband and in my future children and find it in my present family that I've been given now.