1. Notes: 1 / 2 months ago 

   Where did we as Christians get so concerned with making ourselves happy? Why does most of what is taught and accepted all seem to stretch back to a desire for “eternal pleasure?” I thought the whole point was to deny our pleasures- take up our crosses and follow. Instead we are taught to follow God because it will make us feel good, or “God has a plan for you”, or that communion with God is eternal life, and eternal life is this “ultimate pleasure”. Are we trying to sell people into this communion? Why? If the outcome of this relationship is egoistic satisfaction, why should any of us give a damn if someone doesn’t know what that means? Isn’t it all about us?

   I truly believe that there is more to this world than a material and physical state. I’m rejecting the atomists and the materialists and mechanists that say that the only state of being, the only plane of reality, is what is physically real. Whether or not you want to construe that as saying all things are one, or there are many things, or all that is real is seen, touched, felt, or experienced. How does that explain my consciousness? Wouldn’t love and art be meaningless in such a world? I could care less about hopelessness (because truth is truth regardless of how it makes us feel), but would that not make life and every single person’s existence completely meaningless? Why then, are any of us still alive? Still doing anything these thousands of years after we first started kicking around in the desert?

   So if this God is real, if He exists, why the hell is it all about us? His existence alone would seem to dictate to me a call to follow Him, not because He’s nice, or great, or will give us nice things. Truth should be the ultimate and decisive reason behind the things we choose to put our stock in-not the emotional response we elicit from them. I think it is interesting that the first time that God names himself in the Hebrew bible, he calls Himself “I Am.” Not “love” or “redeemer” or “father” or whatever. His name is a state of being-existence. It is void of these emotional responses we want to attach to it; Not because these emotions are wrong, or that God is not full of love, but because these are all things it seems we have attached to God not because they are true, but because they make us FEEL GOOD. If God is Love (which he is), I want nothing for myself. I’m not taking stock in this so my sickness will be healed, or I will feel “peace”, or that I can live forever in heaven, which seems to sound a lot like the way a 5 year old would describe Disneyland. I have no idea what the concept of heaven is or what it means., but communion with the One who exists outside of this material world (which is all we can comprehend) is going to be a whole lot different than just simply physical things that make us happy.”Feelings” are such a small pointless chemical reaction compared to the purpose and will of a God who exists outside of our realm of reality.

   What would happen if we approached God from outside our 5 inward focused senses and with a sort of sixth, outward and singular focused sense? Toward Him? What if we actually took up our crosses? Denied ourselves and followed Him not because we will have peace, but because He has given us a path that will bring us out of this egoism and into an outward-focused and selfless existence-like Christ had. I’m not saying he never struggled with it (Gethsemane), but Christ’s example should be so much more important than these self-centered desires. By denying our evolutionary tendencies to survive or to act in a way which will please ourselves, and instead offer our lives unto any other man (john 15:13), I feel we will truly achieve that communion we so desire. And only if we do it not for ourselves-but for Him.

2. Notes: 1 / 2 months ago 
   "Um, like my hair straightener says it has ions in it….are those like the same ions from space?”
   “uh….i dont think so.”
   “Well does that make my hair better?"
   - a girl in my astronomy class talking to the professor.
3. 2 months ago 

   well shit

   i’m really bad at tumblr.

4. Notes: 1 / 3 months ago 

   i’m in the “studio” (and by studio i mean our studio, not the real legit deal) listening to lance track some scratch drum tracks for the 4 songs we have for the new record. I have been super stressed out and worried about how this record is going to A)sound B)feel and C)represent us. Now that these 4 random ideas we had are starting to coalesce into a more complete and unified thing, i’m more excited than i have been about anything to do with this band in a LONG time. i think this is going to turn out incredible.

5. Notes: 1 / 3 months ago 
   

   tonight i get to see this in person. i already pooped in my pants a little. oops.

    
6. 3 months ago 
   "

   Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him.

   It was music.

   I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out.

   It was disgust with civilization.

   "
   - Kurt Vonnegut
7. 3 months ago 
   "Before you play two notes learn how to play one note - and don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it."
   - Mark Hollis of Talk Talk
8. 3 months ago 

   my very intense and uppity 11th grade english teacher who used to chew me out for not being a productive member of society (because i didnt read “the awakening” or “their eyes were watching god”) just cut me off in traffic after riidng my bumper and swerving violently. strange. a pillar of strength in my mind of the human community just fell.

9. Notes: 2 / 3 months ago 
   

   this is what our next record is going to sound like.

   and lately, its what i feel.

    
10. 3 months ago 

    as i left for work this morning i saw a little boy getting onto the bus as his mother stood at the bus stop waving at the bus, and she didnt stop waving till the bus was out of sight. i couldnt help but laugh imagining how embarassed he must have been.

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