My dreams last night

Ready for the dream world?

*****

So, Allen and Evan and I were camping in Big Bear, and Allen's car got stolen and driven up a ridge. So we went looking for it up there, and found a super environmental testing/physics base up there. We had to sneak around until we got chased by the guards throughout the base. We sprinted past them, and we found our way into a giant physics testing lab. Then the security guard let us go because the damage had been done.

So we poked our head around there to look to see if any of them had any insight to where the car would be, until we found one guy who was doing experiments with dropping bears off of the same ridge that they drove up Allen's car on. So we asked him, and he told us to ask the girl doing experiments with the Pink Avenger.

We meander over there and it turns out she's doing experiments on teleporting through a pink tunnel. So I run outside, and there's the main guard standing next to Allen's car. I kick him in the nuts and take the car, then call out for Allen.

****

And that was when Allen called to wake me up, cause it was already 11.

Thoughts on C.S. Lewis's "The Great Divorce."

...Bear with me here, this might be a little bit obscure or something.

In "The Great Divorce" (TGD for short) the whole thing is a story in Purgatory. Sort of. It's a dream world type thing, where the main character is in Hell but gets a chance to go visit heaven and change his mind about the world, God, and being saved.

The best quotes are "ye cannot fully understand the relations of choice and time until you're beyond both."

"were these arguments only mimicry of Choices that had really been made long ago?"

"without the choice there could be no hell."

However, it was interesting that all these choices happened after Death. I believe that is allegorical. For example:

Hebrews 9:27 : As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment.

And then...the really confusing one...

Revelations 20:12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.

What? This says it is by works that men are saved!

Then:

Job 8:3 Doth God pervert judgment? or does the Almighty pervert justice?

I'm confused now.

Things in my mind are clearer, but we're not in the clear quite yet.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a religious person. I do not generally keep that a secret in any way.

I went to Christian school until high school. This is not why I am a Christian, it just gave me a basis of knowledge for the bible. My friends called me a Bible geek. And to be called a bible geek in a Christian school is a bit of something.

My first year of college strengthened my faith. Contradictory, I know, but it happened. Probably talking to all the different people who actually had different ideas made me think about my own more. And it helped.

Yet now, I find myself embroiled in a huge conflict of faith. Calvinism, Predestination, Sovereignty, the goodness of God, all these huge ideas in my head, and I can't get any of them out. Not with talking, not with writing, nothing.

I tried talking with someone, and they basically went "aww, that's cute. You're concerned about your little 'religion'." Yes. Yes. I am concerned about my religion. I am concerned about something that big and that steady in my life being shaken. I don't appreciate being patronized just because you consider yourself to be enlightened past the constraints of religion. It might not be a big thing for you, but it is to me. And trivializing it doesn't make it better.

Christian friends aren't much better. They just looked shocked that I would even consider saying some things, then shake their heads at me, saying I'll understand God's will some day.

But can this God be so cruel as to not save someone and still be the "all-good" God I've worshiped and known all these years?

Today

Today is the first day since Todd died that I have dared to wear eye make-up.

Plan of action

I'm tired of being like this.

So here are a bunch of goals to implement to help myself.

1. Listen to more music. Even when I'm alone. Especially when I'm alone. And while at work. Even if work is being negative, that's no reason for me to be pulled down with it.
   
2. Work out. No more excuses. Work out. I feel the best when I'm in shape, and no reason to compound this thing with body issues.
3. Eat what I want. Still be healthy, of course, but let myself have dessert. No silly restrictions. And don't feel guilty about it.
   
4. Over the break, write about five pages a day. My goal is to write another episode, all 60 pages of it.
   
5. Don't get more than 11 hours of sleep a night. Cause then I get a headache.
6. Talk to a Priest. Or a Pastor. Or someone who has a leadership position in a church.
7. Talk to people when I'm feeling down. Don't make myself feel that I need to be cheerful all the time with my friends.
   
8. Alternatively, don't feel like I have to be down all the time. Let myself be cheered up.
   

My life is off track

And I feel like I'm drowning.

I snap at people easier. I get angry at the smallest thing. I cry almost every day. I don't want to, I don't want to.

. No one wants the friend who just cries.

Some people have said I can rely on them, I still feel guilty. Because I'm not already over it.

People just say I should get over myself and feel better already. As if it was a switch to turn off.

Lately

When it rains, it pours.

On Monday, I last used my keys to open up the trunk of my car to get some water out. I then climbed into Allen's car and went to the Golden Mean show. The next time I tried to pull my keys out, at 10:45, they were gone. On my key chain were my car keys, my apartment keys, and my house keys.

We went and searched 411 again, we searched Allen's car, we waited outside in the cold for AAA to come unlock my car trunk. They weren't anywhere.

So I put in a word at the RSO and borrowed one of their keys and got back into my apartment, thinking that my keys would turn up.

On Tuesday, I came back to my apartment to find my door wide open.

Nothing was taken. I had my camera and flute upstairs, and they weren't touched. I had my dvds downstairs, they weren't taken. My jewelry was out in the open, nothing was missing. My roommate showed up after we did, and that was the first time she had been back to the apartment since Friday.

In short, someone opened my apartment and took nothing and let the door wide open.

We got the place re-keyed immediately, and I moved my camera and flute to a safe location.

But it scares me that someone has my keys and isn't friend enough to turn them in. It also scares me that they know where I live. My apartment number is not on the keys. Not too many people know where I live, and it's mostly only my close close friends.

So I ask for your help. If you know who has my keys, please please ask them to return them. I can't afford to rekey my car locks. You can turn them in anonymously at the Bannockburn RSO, and there would be no questions asked.

****

About five minutes after we rekeyed my apartment, I found out that my Coworker and Friend Todd Ransom died. Please pray for his Mother and his Sister, and for my work as we grieve him.

It has been so hard for me to keep my head above everything. I have had three or so crying breakdowns. Not only has my apartment been intruded on, my friend died.

Allen described it as if I had been rifle-butted in the face. That's fairly accurate. A gut punch might be more accurate.