Five Steps Back, Four

Aimed and Aimless Thoughts.

Ever since I started writing, I realized I'd finally found myself an unwinnable game. Or, perhaps, a game I could not surpass everyone in - there is always room for improvement. Another aspect about this game that, perhaps, suits me particularly well is its individuality.  It's also a bit embarrassing. I was always a bit of an individualistic player. I love team games, but I don't believe that they inspire my competitive drive. Since the team relies on me as only a small portion of the victory or defeat, I don't feel as though I need to better myself exponentially. I'm usually more than content simply matching the mean skill level.
Not so with individual games. But the strangest part about my competitive nature is that once I win something, I don't really care about it any longer, win or lose. I know that I CAN win. I don't have to try to win any longer. That doesn't mean I don't try to win, it just means I don't TRY to win.
The difference is spectacular.

Writing is different. It inspires my individualistic cravings for competition and betterment, without having any actual competition - or at least any concrete competition. And the first thing I learned in this competitive marathon, a marathon that may well last the remainder of my life, was that I'm awful. Simply. Awful.
For every discovery I gleaned, improvement I bled for, each sacrifice made, I fall behind five steps. It's like being thrown out of a plane with a sewing kit and cloth. Every time I sew together a piece of my parachute, I fall slower? Maybe? But I'm still falling. More like it, it's rowing a canoe upriver, a white rapids. I'm actually going backwards with each stroke, but eventually, my arms may get strong enough to make headway. (I should have just pulled to the side and walked upriver, huh?)
Now, though, I've improved. Instead of one step forward, five steps back, I'm only retreating four steps.

The same quality of rowing upriver sometimes affects other aspects of my life, and some I've been enduring recently. In church today, the discussion was on vulnerability, clothing yourself in righteousness, openness in the church, the family of the church body. How many things are there that we internalize rather than sharing with our church body, and how often is the church body helpful in overcoming these things? How often does the church body help rather than leave us hanging, or, worse, judge us for our failings?
Things such as anger, shame, depression, panic, pornography, psychological disorders, difficulties in marriage, relationships, the home - none of these are things I struggle with at this time, but how many people do, and don't feel open to tell the church? Or, having told the church, feel judged or "prayed at" rather than aided in the healing process, the grace and mercies of God?

One thing I was thinking about, in relation to this, is the short story "Franny" by JD Salinger, where Franny and Zooey are discussing the short prayer of the Tax Collector in the gospels: "Lord have mercy on me, a sinner." Actually, they are talking about it as a repeatable phrase, and as a way of praying without ceasing. Sometimes I wonder if this is a good way to avoid temptation, to refocus on God with all your might.

First World Problems

  A while back I heard a story about Christian living in dangerous country.  The speaker had visited a missionary in a persecution zone, and asked, "How do you remain faithful against such opposition?" The missionary appeared shocked, replying to his American visitor, "How do you remain faithful without it?"

I think this is indicative of Christianity in our American culture. We've a persistent idolatry that is so embedded in our cultural proclivities, that we scarcely realize we worship American Gods (I'm not in the slightest embarrassed by my Gaiman cultural reference, here).  Gods of money, prestige, the internet, individualism, capitalism - the subtle, prevalent gods that eke worship from our daily desires. It isn't even always a materialistic tendency, though sometimes that's easiest to pinpoint.  

As Christians, we are called to be giving, loving.  Yeshua initiated the ultimate sacrifice and gift, and we are called to live Christ-like.  As givers, we are called to surrender portions of our resources: time, money, talents, for furthering the kingdom of God.  If I personified gods as Gaiman so adeptly has, would I consider my sacrifices to God as many as my sacrifices to the god of money, the god of media, the god of culture?

Sometimes I believe I write from a very philosophical standpoint rather than a existential or practical.  This means that I analyze, and fail to exact change within my own experience.  Speculative dreaming without any positive changing. I suspect I devolve into a cyclical, recursion, wherein I see a problem, analyze, and then progress into more living, without appropriately transitioning from knowledge into wisdom.  Knowledge is easy; wisdom: the more valuable, and difficult, goal. Knowledge without wisdom is holding a sword that wrong way: knowing a sword is a weapon, but not how to use it, is more harmful to self than anyone else.