Honesty

Wilco - You and I

You and I
We might be strangers
However close we get sometimes
It's like we never met

But you and I
I think we can take it
All the good with the bad
Make something no one else has but

You and I
You and I

Me and you
What can we do?
When the words we use sometimes
Are misconstrued?

I won't guess
What's coming next
I can't ever tell

You're the deepest well I've ever fallen into

Oh I don't wanna know
Oh I don't wanna know
Oh I don't need to know
Everything about you

Oh I don't wanna know
And you don't need to know
That much about me

You and I
We might be strangers
However close we get sometimes
It's like we never met

But you and I
I think we can take it
All the good with the bad
And make something no one else has but

You and I

Alexander Solzhenitsyn said: “The line between good and evil is not drawn between nations and parties, but through every human heart.”

Prayer and repetition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya46wfeWqJk&feature=related
Listen carefully from 1:10 - 1:50.
Were the Greeks and Derrida on to something? Are we like Echo in our worship, stringing together the glimpses we have of God into some small response of love for Him?

Blogs

Blogs are not the most effective way of building community. They disembody us, make us ghosts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CZaXwdj7u4
I am a man, in a body, and embodied language is my primary method of communication.

Beach

I'm at Huron Feathers now, a Presbyterian Church Centre & Day Camp in Sauble Beach, Ontario.
It's really good. But I miss everything.
I'm reading "A Secular Age" by Charles Taylor.
If anyone loves beaches and visiting, shoot me an email before you leave for Sauble and we'll hang, deal?
This isn't normal for me.

Crammin'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMrPjl-927Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htwkRYa0gOk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_S-Mijm9gQ&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJNCqkKJbBc
If you've got the time, watch a few of these.

Dunking has become such a huge status symbol. Ask any grade 10 basketball player and they will tell you how much they want to dunk. It's quite the feeling. Success in sports is euphoria - you've beaten the game, you've not cheated but you've completely dominated your opponent (if you really have time, look up some David Beckham free kicks). Sometimes, basketball seems like such a timewaster, but your whole self flourishes - has shalom - and sings praises - when you dunk. I've been doing a lot of leg presses lately.

Ballin'

I really dig coaching basketball. Tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after that we have games. If we lose any of them, we are out of the playoffs.

Understanding sports is tough - it's such a passionate cultural phenomenon, and thus has plenty of potential to be used for Gods glory, but an equal amount of potential to be abused. If you think about it, basketball is just two groups of guys each trying to throw a ball through a hoop more times than the other group can throw the ball through the hoop. And that's fun. That's a game. But as soon as you decide that you want to get the ball through the hoop more than other teams on a consistent basis, against very good competition, basketball becomes a whole lot more than that. I don't know if that is what makes it a sport or not. Maybe someday I'll understand. In the interim, I'll coach as best as I know how.

People say that it's not about whether you win or lose, it's about having fun. Well, I have more fun when I win.

Christmas

There is a rusty and bent bedrail hammered into the ground to mark the northeast corner of my parents' property. Sometimes I stand on a little pile of dirt beside it and listen to the night silence when I get home late. Tonight, as I stood there I thought about what the world would be like if the sun went out - poof. I could survive in my house with the propane in our tank for a week, and eat some of the food we have. But it would be only a little while before the planet was a ball of ice. I was also thinking about the sun, and whether or not it really exists, or if God puts it in the sky every day, along with the stars, nebulae, and other things we humans have seen out there. All we can do to prove their existence is see them with our eyes - and what if our eyes lie? What if it's all a cosmic trick? A sense-experience Imax film played in our brains?

All this existential wandering happened on Christmas Night, which I think is cool, because part of the mystery of Christmas is faith. Are we really supposed to believe that Jesus Christ lived, died, rose, and mattered? On what evidence? The Word of God? It can be shredded by all kinds of criticism. Our own experience? My short 19 years have taught me that my senses are far less reliable than I give them credit for. So what am I doing? Am I a Christian or a fideist?

A Christian. I can't prove it to you, but this Christian story - it's true. God give me strength to live it.

May you meet the living Word this Christmas.

Love, Ben

I removed this from my blog because posting it on Christmas felt so unholy.

Postmoderns Are People Too.

This is one video on youtube that I would watch even if Ryan rolled his eyes at me. I don't think it would get me that token gang of friends gathering around me in the library to laugh at something mildly funny, but I still recommend watching it. If the name Derrida means anything to you, feel free to head on down to the end of this post, ignore my poor introduction to him, and click the link.

See, here's the deal. Jacques Derrida (the man in the clip) is probably the most important postmodern philosopher. His work concerns meaning - he tries to ask the question if any part of our lives really means anything, especially books and conversations. He is also the name most people associate with deconstruction, a technique for interpreting text which he believes is capable of stripping the text of all meaning. For Derrida, life has no meaning, but is a dance, a play, an undoing of the past and a knitting together of the present.

As a Christian, it's hard to accept Derrida as a good philosopher. It's impossible for me to tell you exactly why, but here's my best attempt: YHWH is the meaning and the source of life, and history is His Story. So working to undo the meaning we have in our life seems foolish in the true sense of the word (Psalm 14:1). And working towards a place where no words have meaning does not seem smart for a man who attempts to make his living selling books and giving speeches. Derrida seems unenviable, he is convinced that the world has no meaning other than the meaning assigned to it by humans. The only problem with this is that now his words themselves can be doubted.

Maybe it's more easily expressed with an example: if one person says: "everyone can create his or her own truth", he is not able to argue his position against a person who says: "There is such a thing as absolute truth." For the first person to argue would be for him to say that there is something that is true for both people; namely, his opinion. Derrida finds himself in a similar predicament.

The fact that he is in this predicament may make this video mean less, because Derrida is simply playing his game, building and then destroying even his own arguments to keep the dance going even at the cost of his own credibility. But you have to appreciate the humanity with which he expresses himself. It makes postmodern philosophy seem so attractive.

Sorry for keeping you all waiting. The video is available here.
Love, Ben

Anger.

Anger is an emotion. I feel it sometimes. A lot of the time my anger is pointed at some abstract thing. It's kind of like I need something to be angry about all the time. If I stop being angry with the fact that people are killed and women are raped and that the world is broken, I find myself being angry with things closer to home: basketball, philosophy, particular people who are friends but who I disagree with, and who are distant enough for me to be angry at them and never be forced to resolve the problems, because I don't see them often enough to see the tangible, physical effects of a broken relationship - the harsh body language, the chill running up the spine, the hole in the chest.

The thing is, most of my anger is sustained by space between people. If we were closer together, we could do something about fixing the issues, even if our only motivation was that the issues had more tangible effect.

Today though, I was honestly angry, at someone who was standing beside me, and who I had to deal with that instant. I had just gotten to "The Seer's Tower" on Illinoise, and was enjoying it in my subconscious, when a security guard tapped me on the shoulder and woke me up, telling me to go take a nap in my dorm. Who the heck wakes someone who is enjoying a nap on a decent couch in the only quiet part of the school? Seriously.

My anger needs to be directed. I tell the team I coach that they need to direct their passion and energy into good defense and good offense. Somehow anger has to lead me to constructive action. Which seems a really dumb thing to say, since we're not talking about rage and fury here, just annoyance. But annoyance is probably an alright thing to harness too.

There, I did it. My annoyance was fuel for the first blog post on here in a few months. Great blog, eh?

Love, Ben

One thing I am not mad about:

Filling up my gas tank for less than $40. And that's all!

Thing 1.

Hermeneutics is about rules of interpretation. This is the simplest one I can think of:
God is both creator and poet.

Philosophy.

The day after I thought philosophy was useless:
This
And, the day after I started thinking that there is no opportunity for a person like me to use philosophy:
This
I have to figure out what I'm going to write about/if I'm going to do it, but the privilege of speaking to such an audience would be like nothing I've ever experienced before.

Big Question # 1

Who are we?






(taken from James Sire's Universe Next Door)

A.F. + B.O. = B.F.F.

With everyone going insane over Barack Obama, I can't help but feel that he's going to take over the world. I imagine that this is what Hitler was like before people realized he was a maniac. But, I wasn't around back then so I can say nothing for sure. And, the fact that Barack seems to be a darling candidate may just be a lie of the media. Perhaps he is benign and popular. Perhaps he is malicious and popular.

Arcade Fire's Win Butler says "Barack is the first candidate in my lifetime to strip some of this bullshit away, and I just hope we don't blow this chance."

Arcade Fire is the type of rock band that seems infallible, that can almost do no wrong. Everything I hear about them is good, and their music is very good. Perhaps they are benign, partly Canadian, and popular. Perhaps they are malicious, partly American, and popular.

Roots and anchors and things that hold us in one place.

Roots Day in the Park is coming in only 4 days! I'm dreadfully excited, and scared. It's the first thing that Mieke, Ben, Kristen, Justine, Amber, Aaron, Sarah, Garnet, Dan and I will try to do as a group for other people, and that's scary stuff somehow. None of us are perfect, but for 6 hours on Saturday we are responsible for a buttload of people's bodies, minds, and in part, souls. It's the souls thing that's scaring me most - just because I'm supposed to figure out a way to lead all these people. And as I go from work to school, from "ickle firsty" to second year, from summer to fall, from not having Youth Group to having Youth Group, I can't help but get a drifty-changy feeling. (see also Justine's latest)

This transient feeling is not new, just more intense than normal. And the intensity scares me because I'm planning to talk about roots, anchors, and things that hold us in one place at the Roots Day. How the heck do I encourage others to understand what God has done for them when by my life I show that I don't really care?

I think that God's grace is huge in that He takes people that Satan is fighting tooth and nail to claim, and makes them trophies of grace. God polishes us up, makes us all nice and shiny, engraves His Name on us, and sticks us in His trophy case. And then God probably trash talks Satan (Job 1:8).
If you won't admit that you're broke, God probably won't fix you.

At least, that's how I think it goes.

Peace + Love, Ben

I am / living in this house / this house!

Here's some photos of my crib for the summer, if you haven't been to visit yet. And, what are you waiting for? Let me know when you're coming over.






Front view, with Accordion.















Perennials left over from the previous owners.


























Vegetable garden! and carrot! Yumm-o!


















Front view from the roof















Hamilton from the roof! + trampoline! + backyard!







So, that's that! I like living here, with these guys. It's interesting that we are at the edge of suburbia - There is a horse farm in front of us and a subdivision behind us. There is also a large white sign in front of this house that tells anyone who cares that an application has been submitted to the City of Hamilton for the house's destruction. 5 subdivision boxes will be on this property in 4 years. I don't know how that makes me feel, but I know that I am thankful to have spent the last 3 months here.

Busy.

I hate being busy. It doesn't really accomplish all that much.
To make up for it, I put a Muskoka chair on my roof and I drink my beer there.
That's all.

Realism:

When I'm in a pine box, people will read the internet and say: "Wow. Grampa was cool. He wrote a blog! How endearing and soulful."

Actually, that was a lie.

When I open the cigar box full of old stuff I got from my Grampa, I get goosebumps. When people dust off their Macbooks 80 years from now and type www.benbouwman.blogspot.com into that crazy old thing they used to use called Firefox, will they get goosebumps at the garbage I write here? Doubt it.

I need to leave something behind that will yellow with age, that people will have to dig up and dust off, that they will be able to physically store and treasure, not look up on the internet every once in a while.

But who really cares? It's all going to burn anyway; that's what mom always says when Aunt Margaret talks on and on blah blah blah about her next addition to her collection of antique collections. Then Aunt Margaret goes red in the face, pours another glass of wine and says: "Yes that's true - But I love to have a Coll-eck-shun!"

I am an Aunt-like figure who has had far too much wine and who yells at the top of her lungs "I LOVE TO HAVE A COLLECTION!" until her nephew wishes that either he was not obliged to sit at the table with her or he was Harry Potter and could make her inflate.

Thoreau says that poor people are actually rich because they can do with less. He is right about that.

Life is Beautiful

You plant a rose
And if the rose comes up
You're thankful to God
And when it doesn't you cuss him
You raise a child
And when the child grows up
You got to learn to let go
If you can't learn to love him
But, oh, what a beautiful thing when you sing
Hear all them bells ringing out in the street
Hammer strikes the metal and it makes me believe
'Cause if I don't believe in love
Then I don't believe in you
And I do

Now I'm not saying only bad news comes
For the people who want it
But you gotta play that music for who's listening
You got to have someone you wanna sing it to
Oh, what a beautiful thing when you sing
Hear all them bells ringing out in the street
Blue sky cracking and it makes me believe
Oh, hear all them bells ringing out in the street
Hammer strikes the metal and it makes me believe
'Cause if I don't believe in love
Then I don't believe in you
And I do

Close my eyes, see the glorious sunset
Through the windows of a store and I want it
Anyway, if I ever felt haunted
You were there for me
These angry people who are waiting to judge you
Have their own judgment that they'll have live up to
Open your mouth
And if nothing come through
Remember
You're the one that sings
And it's a gift
And life's a beautiful thing
Oh, don't waste it doll
You build a house and if the house comes up
You gotta work on that house
If you want to make it your home
'Cause everything inside that's not something you own
Is what you're taking with you
On the day that you go
And oh, what a beautiful world when we sing
Hear all them bells ringing out in the street
Hammer strikes the metal and it makes me believe
Hear all them bells ringing out in the street
Oh, hammer strikes the metal and it makes me believe
'Cause if I don't believe in love
Then I don't believe in you
And I do

Ryan Adams is a good singer and guitar player and writer. Someday, if I work up the courage, I might review his album "Cold Roses" on this site. It's maybe my favourite album ever.