Grace

There is a concept in Christianity, "being saved by grace". It's one of the more important tenets of the worship of Christ, and as such I find it odd that it seems to be a point of such division amongst the various sects. Some believe that grace and grace alone will save you. Others that it's a combination of good works and grace.

Those two ideas seem to be at rather constant odds with each other. I'll admit I don't fully understand why. Doing good works seems like a generally benevolent thing to do. But I have on many occasions heard proclaimed Christians damn near arguing against them. Once good works are mentioned they start in with a lecture about Ephesians 2:8-9 "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast." It even sounds sort of straightforward (in this translation at the very least). God has saved you so you give him the credit. There is no "be a good person" loophole into paradise. Now that being said you'll hear a lot from Christians saying that this doesn't mean you shouldn't do good works. It just means that you should give God all the credit for it.

To look at a different model, I remember the metaphor I was told to explain this to me when I was young Mormon. Good works are the ladder that will get you closer to God. But in the end it doesn't matter how high you get on the ladder, only that you try to get as high as you can, because Christ's sacrifice will take up all the slack. I honestly see it as a good compromise between the idea of buying your way into Heaven by not being a dick whilst still throwing all the credit to the Homie on High.

The real problem I have, is not how it's explained or justified, but with the very idea of Grace itself. Or at the very least the current understanding of the concept. I'll be the first to admit, it's a concept that has been brewing and mutating for thousands of years at this point. I'm certain it meant something completely different when it was first conceived then what it is now.

Now, I understand its appeal. I really do. No matter what you do, or how horrible you are, there is hope. You can bath in the blood of the Lamb and be made clean again. You will be rewarded for your belief in him and the glory that you direct towards Him. There's a clean comfort in this. Particularly for those that assume that the natural state of mankind is abomination.

The base assumption of Grace is that only a God could care about helping others without trolling for glory. And even then, that's sort of the point, to give the glory to God and not hog it for yourself.

And that's something that always bothered me. I mean I understand how dangerous unchecked Pride can be, and that seems to be what this is trying to stop, but what you're doing in reaction is something that passively encourages the worst kind of spiritual, ethical, and philosophic laziness. It leaves your entire fate in somebody else's hands. There's a freedom in that I have to admit. The freedom from responsibility.

And that's the crux of the matter for me. Being saved by grace implies a lack of responsibility for your actions. That is the whole point of Christ's sacrifice isn't it? That we can be terrible people and still find glory through him, through repentance or truly taking him into our hearts. Now with repentance there's less issue for me. Because at the very least you're doing something. There's an aspect of admitting you have done wrong, and trying to make amends.

But that's not what I see as much from the diehard "saved by Grace" adherents. Jesus (Joshua) took on their sins with his great gift. And now that they have taken Him into their heart, or been baptize in His name they are somehow no longer burdened by their actions. They can punt off the guilt over what they did onto someone else.

I mean no offense as I go over this. I'm just trying to understand why it just smells so deeply wrong to me, and it always has. I was taught to only do that which I could be proud of, and to try and make amends where I could. But regardless it was for me to take responsibility for my own actions. Be they good, evil, neutral, nonsensical, they are MY actions.

And if I wasn't going to fully accept the consequences, why in the seven hells did I do them?

Practice

I'm writing to keep in practice, not because I have anything of worth to say. It's something to do. It's something that's hard to do, keeping in practice. Particularly when I find myself running around so often. Between my work with Clockwork Chaos Publishing my play with Meat and Potato Theatre I'm really quite exhausted and busy. Add to that my complicated emotional state and the loss of my job and well... I'm surprised I honestly get anything done at all.

But you sort of half too. Writers write. It's sort of inherent to the nature of the word itself. So I'm trying to keep it up. Throw a few hundred words onto the internet when I can find a few moments. Because it's something to do. Keeps the machinery of authorship moving. So that hopefully when I actually have something worth saying that I'll be able to slide it quickly instead of hammering on the inside of my skull till the broken bits falls out.

That is apparently what's happening today.

The shards of thoughts and feelings spilling out because I'm hammering away. I find myself being overly honest lately. It seems to be causing more problems than I currently am able to deal with. Though I avoid dishonesty in all but the most necessary of circumstances there comes a point when you're too honest. When you're honest to the point of straining or outright destroying important relationships. Regardless of wether they should be that important.

But I'm stumbling far too close to things I'm not ready to talk about. Things better left unsaid.

So there it is for the day.

Entirety

I don't tend to see things the way most people do. I don't mean to say this as a way of pointing out that I'm a special snowflake. It's simply a matter of observation. I sincerely don't see things the same way as others do. I think perhaps it has to do with the way I think and the amount of data I absorb.

Every word spoken to me. Every detail of everything around me. Every fact is absorbed, catalogued, and sorted in some bizarre alchemical process within the confines of my skull. It's as exhausting a process as it sounds. If I don't make time alone, time where I just sit and think, I start to get sick. But this isn't about that. It's about the way I see things, and perhaps a little bit about the way I think.

I think in entireties. I don't break things into components. Everything I learn is taken into consideration. Nothing is discarded. Everything is connected to everything is. There is no such thing as extraneous information to me. It may not be immediately relevant but information is always important.

When I look at something, anything really, all that it is crosses my mind. I look at a person, any person, and I see vibrations beyond number forming particles forming atoms forming chemicals forming proteins forming cells forming tissue forming organs forming a creature with roots tracing back through millions of years of history to a wad of amino acids in the time before there was time. And from there it stretches back to the death of a thousand thousand stars whose blood and bone dance in the subtle dance of the cosmos.

And when I look at that person at that moment I can see the echoes of who they are, what choices they have made. I can smell the touch of all those they've loved and hated, every bit of pain, or significant pleasure. And more than that I can see the hundredfold paths that stretch before them.

It's not seeing the future. In the same way that looking at a seed and imagining the tree it will become is not seeing the future. It's more about extrapolating. It's an act of studied imagination not divination. Though sometimes I can look into the eyes of a person I have known and see who they can become. I can see the hundred different potentials that they carry within them. The different people that they can become. Sometimes I can even watch as their choices strip away some of those potentials. Things beyond their control. Different points of data that they didn't assume were important.

But all data is important.

I know this, I understand it in my bones. I understand it to the point that it looks and feels like madness. Everything interconnects. We are all unique manifestations of particles and circumstances. We are snowflakes both by our nature and our place in space and time. But we are all connected to each other. In more ways then our minds will ever be able to fully comprehend.

Not that it's ever stopped me from trying.

Teaching

(Or: Why I'm not sure I want to be a teacher)

For years now I've wanted to work with children. The first job I got with an elementary school, I couldn't wait to make it to work. It was an amazing, life changing experience. I worked with people who truly cared about the well being of the children under their care. What amazing people.

Then I got a different job. And I started to see things. Things mandated by the state and the district. Things that people who have never been the leader in the classroom thought were really good ideas. Easily qualifiable measures of effectiveness.

The only problem being, in the land of learning there are no easily qualifiable measures. What works for one child will not work for another. Each person is unique with unique learning needs, and despite what some seem to think children are the same in that regard. Each one has it's own needs, interests, and desires and the trick of educating them is to use those as the template to create a way for them to learn.

That's not what we're doing though.

We're hammering test after test to see where they are and then punishing the teachers and the school for not doing well enough. Never thinking that stripping the resources from a place that's doing poorly isn't the way to make it do better. We're treating our schools like factories that we can keep track of the  "quality standards". But it's not like they're human beings...

I'm going to say something that I probably shouldn't. America (and Utah in particular) really doesn't give two shits about children.

We don't.

Because as soon as they're born we think it's somebody else's problem. We refuse to treat teachers like they're trained professionals. They may as well be teenage babysitters for all the respect they're given. We treat education like it's a poorly run factory that's supposed to churn out citizens, and then we are completely surprised when that doesn't work.

I mean this is America right? The corporate model and treating everything as a for profit is the way of things right? It's the best way because of the grim "Invisible Hand" of the all powerful market.

But children are not a profitable industry. Not in the way that we think of things being profitable. And they really shouldn't be. There should be no profit in education aside from the growth in a society that comes from an educated populace. We all benefit from education, just nobody can make a clear dollar out of that. Long term strategies are always destroyed by short term thinking.

A lot of people across the state and even across the country are right in the middle of High Stake Testing. Tests that are meant to show a students progress according to the "common curriculum". These test will determine if some people lose their jobs.

That's why all of these cheating scandals come to light. Because this situation has completely incentivized cheating. If I'm going to be treated as a lying cheater who lies and cheats why the hell shouldn't I just actually commit the crime I'm assumed of?

I don't condone the behavior, far from it in fact, but I can completely understand why.  In what other profession is it okay for you to lose your job over something you have very little control over? It seems that folks tend to get up in arms over stuff like that. But not in education. Here we're already a bunch of "lazy lying cheaters", who need to clearly told every possible way we can cheat so we don't do it. Because our jobs are on the line, and so help you if that student wasn't paying attention or had a bad day, or you couldn't get through to them due to deep seated personal conflicts, or you had a rough year... YOU are responsible and should have taught HARDER. And don't you dare think of cheating to save your job, insurance, and the funding to your school... because "cheating is wrong".

Why is education different? Why don't they rise up and try to make a change? Become more than glorified test dispensing babysitters? The answer is actually really simple. For the really good teachers, the higher ups have leverage.

Really good teachers care about children.

They want what's best for the children that they've grown to love and care for. They want to see them succeed and so they put up with all the rough parts of the job. They love their students with the kind of transformational love that seeks to make them better people. To make them stronger, smarter, healthier citizens not just of their city but of the world.

Yes, we get to teach, and teaching can be the most rewarding job there ever will be... But everything has it's limits. The poor pay, the disrespect, those could be overlooked by the truly dedicated to helping students. But now... they're starting to strip us of the power to teacher.

The world is changing, and the way we educate has to change with it. The future isn't more tests. It's more critical thinking. In the united states almost everyone has easy (or easyish) access to the internet. And through the internet you have access to the entirely of accumulated human knowledge. Memorizing the facts of which President died when is irrelevant when you can google it from your smartphone faster than you can remember it.

This means we need to change the focus. We need to step away from the easily testable bullshit that clogs up our time to ACTUALLY learn things. Important things like critical thinking, logic, compromise, and skills that will be useful in the outside world.

I want to be a teacher, perhaps more then I want almost anything. I want to help guide the most at risk, flawed, and broken little creatures in the world so that they can reach their fullest potential. I think it's the greatest gift that I can give to the world outside of arguably my writing. But even I, with a true passion for the profession and deep desire to teach and help children, am starting to seriously reconsider my options. There's got to be a better way...

I just wish I could see it.

Beauty

I was recently cast in a play. A play that I am quite excited to be a part of. An ever so slightly absurdist farce version of Macbeth. The cast is pretty fantastic and I sincerely look forward to working with them. And as several of my friends have pointed out, many of these women I'll be working with are quite pleasing to the eye.

I've come to the conclusion that I really don't give a shit.

At this point in my life a pretty smile, face, or pleasantly shaped body has as much interest as gardening or dancing. Which is to say, I can see the appeal but don't really care. The shape of their silhouette has the same weight as the shape of their elbow. Their face with the back of their hand.

I've lost interest. Physical beauty bores me at the moment. Attraction seems tiring. My default reaction is to set to "oh. well. That's nice I suppose. Can you step out of my way? You're blocking the door. I have things to accomplish."

Which I'm fully aware sounds very mean. And perhaps a little sexist. But it's pretty much the way it is. I've chased after pretty faces for so very long. All it's done is left me feeling rejected and alone. Now that has very little to do with my ideas on beauty I just need to explain why I don't care about pretty girls as much. Why "there will be beautiful women there" is not in any way a selling point to me anymore. There was a point not too long ago where I would start to get angry about it. Angry at myself for my desires. Angry for wanting what I couldn't have. But that just got too tiring to be worth it.

Now they're just another person. Which has me less worried about sexism. Sometimes it's still hard. There is a part of me that still wants that happily ever after dream I foolishly feel entitled too. But that part seems to hold less and less weight. I've become less concerned with beauty. Less concerned with finding somebody special. Not because I want it any less, but because I don't have the time to waste on it anymore.

As a poet, a writer, and an actor, beauty is not something I can simply deny in my life. It's pursuit is the only true one. It's just that sometimes in chasing the distilled beauty in art, we are forced to face the ugliness in our own lives.