Death, Exile, and Magus.

"At the heart of the Christian faith," says Thomas Merton, "is the conviction that, when death is accepted in a spirit of faith, and when one's life is oriented to self-giving so that at its end one gladly and freely surrenders it back into the hands of God the Creator and Redeemer, then death is transformed into a fulfillment. One conquers death by love - not by one's own heroic virtuousness, but by sharing in that love with which Christ accepted death on the Cross. This is not apparent to reason: it is, precisely, a matter of faith. But the Christian is one who believes that when he has united his life and his death with Christ's gift of himself on the Cross, he has not merely found a dogmatic answer to human problem and a set of ritual gestures which comfort and allay anxiety: he has gained access to the grace of the Holy Spirit. Therefore he lives no longer by his own forfeited and fallen existence, but by the eternal and immortal life that is given him, in the Spirit, by Christ. He lives 'in Christ.'"

This post shall talk about three things: emotional death, feelings of exile, and a character named Magus from Chrono Trigger. And even though I never plan these posts out beforehand, I'm sure I'll be able to tie it all together somehow.

First, Magus. Who is Magus? Magus is a character from my favorite video game, Chrono Trigger, a game about using time travel to save the world. If you plan to play this game on SNES, PSX,  or DS/3DS, skip the next three paragraphs. Magus' story begins in the game's "middle ages" period, wherein Magus is an evil villain bent on taking over the world. The "good guys" at this point, believe that Magus is the creator of an evil creature named Lavos, who eventually destroys the world. After a puzzling series of events, it becomes clear that Magus did not, in fact, create Lavos at all. Lavos crashed into the planet 65 million years ago. Magus was merely attempting to summon Lavos out of the ground - to kill him. Why? Revenge. However, the "good guys" foil Magus' attempt and through a bizarre accident they all end up in 15,000 B.C., a time when the "magical kingdom of Zeal" reigns over the earth. It is my personal favorite part of the game - the scenery, the music, and the dreamlike experience of the area is glorious.

Anyway, apparently, Lavos' presence on earth actually has given some humans magic powers. The Queen of Zeal, however, is bent on resurrecting Lavos to use him as a gigantic source of magical powers (which at this point in the game we have already discovered is a terrible idea). Your group follows the events as they unfold, and it is clear that Schala, the Queen's daughter, is instrumental in being used to help bring about Lavos' return (against her will), while the younger brother, Janus (whom you discover is actually Magus as a young boy), has no apparent magical ability and broods around the Kingdom, disliking his older sister's treatment. Your group, the good guys, show up and make trouble, but are foiled by a mysterious prophet. You cannot stop the resurrection of Lavos, and once it occurs, the prophet reveals himself to be Magus in disguise. However, at this point in the game Lavos is so powerful compared to all of you, including Magus/Janus, that you must make a desperate escape and actually lose one of your characters to Lavos' wrath. The young version of Magus, Janus, is sent to the middle ages, where we can easily assume he eventually became Magus. The adult Magus goes off to a remote area to think about the course of events (being a Byronic hero of sorts).

Not only did Magus live his entire life exiled almost 20,000 years beyond his birth date seeking to gain enough power to summon and destroy Lavos to revenge his sister and fail that, but when he finally gets another chance in his original time period to defeat Lavos, he is still not strong enough. He had to live through the most traumatic time in his life twice.

What does this have to do with me? Well, first of all the character of Magus strikes me as admirable in a sense. Of course, he believes the terrible means by which he gained power justified the ends of killing the evil Lavos, which would be bad enough except he also was motivated by revenge...but yet, I can't help but admire the great tenacity. The determination it would take to live one's entire life motivated by avenging his sister's (apparent) death - well, I don't know what else to say except I like that. It reminds me of my own lesser determination to follow God's will for my life, which I believe is to take part in the self-gift of married life. Right now, however, it's not going so well.

In fact, I feel like I'm reliving some of the worst parts of my life, as Magus did. It hurts, but it is a necessary hurt. I know that one cannot gain something good without sacrifice. Often times, it ends with me sacrificing my comfort in not saying something terrifying and making myself vulnerable to someone else, only to get stepped on. So be it - it will all certainly be worth my trouble, someday. At least, I have to believe so. Magus did, and he's not even real.

And so now, however, I go into an exile of sorts. I feel as though in this moment of my life, I am really bidding farewell to many of the people who have known me the best in my life. Who I have become emotionally attached to...I have to let them go. There is nothing I can do. I can only move on. That is the nature of friendship - it's not forever. It's transient. And it feels like being exiled. It hurts to feel so alone in the world. But what am I to do, except go on.

It feels like a death. Did you read the quote at the start of this post? It is all about this kind of death. I am not experiencing a literal death, however, but an emotional one. If I am to not let this conquer me, I must look at it realistically - if I have given myself as a gift to these friends who are leaving, then I should be happy to give it all back to God as they go on. I must conquer this death through my love of them.

In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, "I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory." I believe this applies also to my life - it will be no more than a long defeat. But it will have "glimpses of final victory," in which, perhaps, I will see the fruit of my love. Perhaps in only a smile.

I know this is a long post...but thank you for reading. It always means a lot.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream of conquering death by love.

The Aftermath.

Much has changed emotionally since my last post.

The pleasantness of slowness and my patience in general has dwindled. I'm not sure what happened, but loneliness, it seems, has finallyeasily caught up to me. I'm disappointed in myself, to be sure, as I thought that I had finally escaped many of my old tendencies. I thought I'd finally gotten emotional independence.

In one respect, at least, I am better in that I still have avoided indulging my old desires to draw attention to myself for the sake of simply feeling better. I know better now.

Still, it seems like writing this blog is really the only outlet for attention-seeking I allow anymore. That's what it must be, isn't it? I don't see any other reason to write it other than to put my thoughts were others can see it, otherwise, I would just write it in a journal and show no one. I'm not often sure who reads these blog posts, only the ones who reveal themselves, I suppose...but sometimes I post knowing I wish certain people would read it. That worries me. You see, I don't wish to allow any credence to desires that lead to me acting out again.

I've been looking over Facebook's timeline feature. It's nice in many ways, but that's not the reason I'm talking about it now. I had to go through my timeline and remember all of the times I was most lonely and depressed...and start hiding the worst of my old statuses before people could read them! It's embarrassing how obviously desperate for someone's - anyone's - attention I was...how I would target specific people sometimes...how I would "hint" at things related to love, loss...anger. Nothing I want to relive. But I did.

It's funny how you can get a sort of "link" to your past self in ways. Sometimes you can look at a certain photo and remember how you felt and what you were thinking when it was taken...or read an old journal entry, or something. That was what happened to me looking over these old writings of mine...so sad, so pathetic. I kinda lost grip on myself while I was reading/hiding those old statuses. It was too easy to remember and over-empathize. I had been wondering what it felt like to be my old 2009 self or something...well, suddenly my 2009 self possessed me for a short time! Ahhhh!

Well, once I snapped back to reality, it was so much easier to realize how imperative it is that I avoid using others to relieve my negative emotions. Especially women. It's easier when I'm tempted to, oh, text somebody something to try and initiate emotional contact to just look inside and shout "FOOL!" That's my only lifeline at this point.

Another thing I noticed about my old self is that a lot of the things I've noticed about the young folks (freshman) around here also applied to myself. I think I would totally become friends with my 2007 self - if the Facebook posts help me get an idea of what I was like, I'm pretty sure my old self was just in his own little world all of the time. I was so innocent and possessed by the geeky side of myself that I'm sure I would really enjoy meeting that person that was me - because he was so untouched by the world it's amusing. That's why I became so immature only two years later - once that mask was torn off, I looked around at my real world - and realized who I really was - and hated it. The momentary glimpses that I hid from in 2007 became ever present in 2009/2010, so since I couldn't hide from it anymore, I tried to rebuild myself...which manifested itself much of the time in depressing Facebook posts. Yikes.

Lest I say too much in this post and start getting tempted to disclose too much about what or who is on my mind, I will just say that I hope people will pray that I build more patience. Someone told me the other day that wisdom and patience go hand in hand - and I believe them! I wish to build up my relationship with God and ignore the rest of me that is demanding human companionship...it's a lot harder than I thought, even though rationally I have provided myself with many excellent reasons why I should be wholly desiring the single life for the moment.  For some reason the conflict doesn't want to go away that easily.

That's all for now.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for emotional peace.

Male friendships versus female friendships.

I am not strictly speaking about how men and women conduct friendships differently in this post, nor am I going to say one is better than the other. This post is about how my own friendships with men and conversely with women are different.

I suppose I must say I have the rare pleasure of having an even amount of male and female friends. How this happened, I suppose I don't rightly know, but I really enjoy and appreciate it.

Having said this, I notice that the way I am friends with men versus with women is a lot different. The first thing that comes to mind is that I can be a lot more sentimental with my female friends. Women really appreciate the memories and the bonds of friendships much more than my male friends. For instance, when I smile and say "You're a really great friend, Jane," she is likely to think of fond memories of our friendship and, hopefully, agree that we have had a beautiful friendship. However, when I say "You're a really great friend, John," John is much more likely to think I'm being pretty obvious (assuming we are good friends) and just trying to be nice and complimentary.

My male friends are much better than my female friends at making a highly intellectual conversation. That is by no means to say my female friends are stupid! What I mean is that our conversations are much more intellectually appealing and centered on experiences we share and conclusions about such things, and our own thoughts and opinions.

My female friends can do much the same way with me, however, it is much more emotionally appealing. We might talk just as the men about experiences and conclusions, but the result is more about solutions and comfort in having experienced that. The sharing of the experience is almost an end in itself, instead of the formation of opinions as is more common with my fellow males.

I have someone that I can go to for just about anything. That is not to say my friends are only good for utility, but I want to express how fortunate I am.

Thank you friends!

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for the blessing of friends.

Love game of heart and pain.

"What's this phony ceremony hanging around? We got to...get down! Lock it out from this shaky ground! Come on and spit it out, your hearty party, mood everywhere. Let's see you people laughing, people punching out in the air!"

I feel like I lost my positive outlook for a while there. It's scary to see how I'm changing, sometimes. The one thing I miss about my old self is that I never stayed down for long. Now I get pushed down and stay down until I feel like I've fixed it.

"Get down to the hip hop a bee bop a loo a...You hear the sound it's all coming to ya! I wanna get ya! I wanna tease ya! I'm gonna get this beat to hit ya! Get down to big time illusion, life or the rest. Come on and tough it! Jump it! Funk that feeling! Give all your best!"

I also seem to be becoming a perfectionist. I used to feel that as long as I did my best I didn't care what the outcome was. In many ways that was bad, but in some it's a major detriment when even when you do your best you still don't get the outcome you wished for, and you end up with a lot of regret for something you had no power over.

"Come on and drive on drive on drive on into night...You got that burning power, midnight hour, flashing your light...It's just a love game of heart and pain that we're going out. That's what the twenty first century is all about!"

I'm not down and out, yet, dear reader. This love game of heart and pain called life hasn't defeated me by any means. This is simply a hiccup, and I think the feelings I expressed in my last post were exaggerated by my exasperation with the spiritual desolation I've been feeling. I'm determined to keep my head up. It's not over yet.

"Get down to the hip hop a bee bop a loo a...You hear the sound it's all coming to ya! I wanna get ya! I wanna tease ya! I'm gonna get this beat to hit ya! Get down to big time illusion, step into time...Come on and rock it sock it, just jump on it, LIVE IS DIVINE!"

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was for a positive outlook forever.


http://chrono.ytmnd.com/

My agoge.

"At age 7, as is customary in Sparta, the boy was taken from his mother and plunged into a world of violence. Manufactured by 300 years of Spartan warrior society, to create the finest soldiers the world has ever known. The agoge, as it's called, forces the boy to fight."

I feel like I'm going through this in a very spiritual way...my own agoge, at least as depicted in the movie 300.

I feel like I've been left out in the cold in more than just a -5 degrees sort of way like it was this morning. God has really left me to stand on my own two feet. He sure chose a strange time to do it, from my limited perspective.

I'm tired. Just plain tired. Except in rare moments often involving my amazing girlfriend I find it very hard to hold a smile for very long. I'm running out of patience with anyone and everything. I'm hurt by small things. I'm more tempted by things I used to be strong against. I can't do a lot of things right anymore. I'm under attack.

I'm facing a duel to the death with the Deceiver and I'm starting to lose stamina.

If there's one thing I hate since my conversion, it's being a disappointment. I feel more assured with my girlfriend that I'm doing OK with her because of her constant patient reminders, but I still feel that I'm not doing all I can in many other ways. I want to become who I was born to be, but now God has taken off the training wheels and I'm in a wreck. I need to get stronger, I need to persist, I need to fight, I need to win! I can not and will not fail again. To me there is only greatness in the eyes of God or failure.

I take back what I said about God choosing a strange time to do this to me. God knows me well enough to know how I feel about victories. It's the most hopeless fights that are the greatest victories, and the most unexpected victories that are the most glorious. And right now, I feel that I'm fighting a losing battle. If I can just persist long enough, maybe I'll survive my agoge. God has forced me into battle, and that's fine. I'll fight if I have to.

I go in and out of fascination with the movie 300. It's violent and has nudity in it, but sometimes when I remember major themes and amazing lines in the movie I feel differently:

"'Remember us.' As simple an order as a king can give. 'Remember why we died.' For he did not wish tribute, nor song, nor monuments nor poems of war and valor. His wish was simple. 'Remember us,' he said to me. That was his hope, should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be. May all our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones, 'Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here by Spartan law, we lie.'"

Christ, our King calls us to die to ourselves, to join in the battle against Satan and give our lives up for his sake. "Remember me," I hear from Calvary. How can I forget His sacrifice?

Here I am, left in spiritual desolation for only a month or so and already I've run out of energy. Well forget it. I'll run on empty for as long as it takes to complete my mission in life. That's the end of it.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was for victory in spiritual battle.

Beyond thought and time.

My favorite season is spring...and I'm really starting to miss it.

Winter is nice during Christmas, but now it's starting to really be gray and dreary. My car keeps getting stuck, and although I'm decent enough at getting it out (sometimes with help) it doesn't help that Winter is just plain depressing in January and February. Stark contrast to jolly December.

I find I am much more relaxed talking to girls now. I like being friends with members of both sexes, but whenever I would develop a friendship with a woman, I was always worried that I would send a wrong message, or that people would see me as "prospecting" them. Now that I have a girlfriend I don't have to worry about that as much because women will know I'm not interested in them in that way.

It was in talking with one of these good girl friends that I realized how much I missed the spring time. My friend had not gone on Alternative Spring Break before, a service program held over Spring Break, and I emphatically stated that she had no idea what she was missing.

I remember it now. Campfires, mud fights, liturgy of the hours and mass as a community, making dinner and having conversation with everyone, meeting new people, writing poetry on a mountain top, hiking, the world around you just being so big and beautiful...watching the stars revolve around the globe of the sky! What a beautiful world you can see if you can just reach beyond thought and time. Eastern Kentucky is just one of those places. It also happens to be one of the poorest...

...Poorest in the monetary sense, at least. I found that it was rich in love and beauty. Perhaps that's just me.

Last spring was one of the biggest periods of spiritual growth I had, and due in no small part to my new outlook on the world. I really attribute a lot of my spiritual growth to ASB and spring. The structure of ASB and the beauty of God's creation unfolding before me really helped me to feel God's love and to yearn to grow closer to him. Right now, Winter is just really being a drag. Don't get me wrong, my love for God doesn't change with the seasons, it just makes it much harder. And the stark visibility of God that I could see in my friends and in His creation made it very easy.

I can't wait to go back.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was for eternal springtime of the mind.

Conversations with infinity.

Conversations with God are certainly nothing like a conversation with a human being.

At first this sounds like an absurdly obvious statement, but sometimes I think that God should make himself more easily available. It takes me a great deal of concentration and determination that I don't often have, especially with my huge attention deficit, to have good prayer.

I have long held the belief now that the reason God speaks to me when he does is because I'm ready to hear what he has to say, and not because he doesn't want to talk sometimes. My prayer only became good after I truly wanted to talk to God and would actually understand what he wanted to say. But as I have said to some extent in my last post, prayer lately has been difficult.

Though, now I believe I know why. Whereas for a while, I have had many incredible experiences of prayer with God that have led me not only to enjoy prayer, love God more, and make some important decisions regarding my love life, suddenly this all vanished. Every time I pray, though my approach to prayer is unchanged, I feel and hear nothing.

Saint Ignatius says that it is a normal part of anyone's spiritual lives to have periods of spiritual consolation and desolation. Consolation is the time where one feels God's presence, feels joy in their faith and grows easily spiritually, which is how I would describe my spiritual life in November and early December. I learned a lot very quickly in this time and entered a new stage of my life. Then after all those wonderful things, suddenly God felt a little farther away. I had no idea why.

At first I was worried I'd done something horribly wrong. Then I was worried I was starting to regress spiritually, that I was screwing up my prayer. Then I was worried about both. Now, I have a different opinion.

I have entered the opposite side of the coin of the spiritual life, that of desolation. Spiritual desolation happens often when someone slacks off in their spiritual life, but St. Ignatius, the expert on the topic, writes of two other reasons why it happens.

Sometimes it happens because God is testing how we will respond when the result is desolation and not an expected reward. "God may try us to test our worth, and the progress that we have made in His service and praise when we are without such generous rewards," says Ignatius. This makes perfect sense. Prayer felt so good, it was so wonderful and helpful and miraculous. I had come to expect it, and now God knows I need to see how my faith works without it.

I needed to see how I would handle the changes in my life if suddenly God withdrew and left me alone for a while. If I would suddenly make my girlfriend my god instead...if I would suddenly decide I no longer believed in God because he was silent. God knew what I would do, but I would not if it never happened.

I'm still trying to figure out the full implications of the result of my time in this period of desolation, but it's still not even over yet.

I'll wait.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was for full communion with the Lord eternally.