I was looking for a searingly honest post yesterday, when the wierd entry you see below came out. Of course for me it is my attempt to express my utter failiure at life without God and my desire to give my all to God as a living sacrifice. The problem is I can't say it right and you can't understand it becuase of that.
It feels like pent up in my heart is an answer so vast and true that it cannot be articulated properly. There is a deep despair at being unable to communicate myself. I read books on subjects in the hopes that not only will I understand, but be understood thru my understanding. I know there is a separation between my understanding of what I read and what is actually said by the author. Why can't I just see life as it is? why is my intellect such that I only see what I want? Objectivity is impossible. I am very well read, which doesn't make me intelligent, only bookish. What I learn only makes it harder to express what I already know.
My whole life has been running away from the possibility that I am not good enough. That I am not beautiful, not in the least bit perfect. There is such thing as physical beauty and it is noticable. I hate when people say they don't notice. There is real beauty outside my perception of it, just like there is a perfect pitch. Dissonence is the reality of my life, I knew it from the time I was a small child, I knew I wasn't like everyone else. My face is awkwardly unsymmetrical, which in turn has influenced the course of my life to date. You can say society thru the media has conditioned me to think I am not good enough, or I am a psychologically deficient becuase I was called ugly growing up, or whatever people are in the habit of saying these days. Yeah, I understand that I may be influenced by the Capitalist brainwashing box that makes up miscellaneous wants for me to need, that tells me I am not good enough, but, such and such a product will make me so. I am not writing about that. I am writing about perfection. There is perfect pitch on musical notes, perfect answers to mathmatical equations, perfect beauty in symmetry, a finality to truth, and a perfect purity. I also know that my physical appearance is only a small part of my makeup, that me, is something greater than just my outward appearance, that I am made up of body, soul, and spirit. Created in the image of God.
I want to say that I believe there is a purity, or symmetry if you will, to my heart, that I am honest with who I am with God and seek after the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and that I desire this so strongly I am willing to give up all else; Thus I reveal what I consider shameful, my petty fear of not being accepted because of how I look. I don't want people to know this is how I feel! I am a grown man and should be at least spiritually and intellectually past such foolishness. It is my contention that noboby, but the Spirit of God can see past imperfections and this only because He is patient enough to know that there is a butterfly in each of us if only we would endure the cocoon. He loved enough to give me a chance, who in reality doesn't deserve one. Grace. I suppose I should give up on the notion that there is such a thing as love for me, so long as I am unable to emmulate God's love to the world first. Even in saying this, I pray for more grace. I pray that someone can see through the smoke screen of personality that I have spent my life building upon my inadequecies and see me as God does. This is how I define purity. The ability to be Christlike in our acceptance of others, realizing that truly we walk amoungst immortals. That each situation we encounter in life is of infinate importance, becuase God has deemed it so. To have the intregrity to live holy and wholly for God against the vitual floodtide of opposition we encounter and all of this by trusting in the same Grace that has brought us here. Thank you Jesus for saving me. Your will be done I pray....

Life is a big messy painting, and I, am an artist. An artist who is spent in the reflection of what I have completed so far. I see city ending where nature begins, nature explored in the smile of a nursing babe, smoke from passions that burn to no one in endless debate with the vault of heaven, on there right to be; I see a cross upon a hill sillohetted in the rising sun, setting heedless and unheeded on the hurried masses caught in every idle care; I look intently at the hand of a beggar listlessly reaching for unwanted handouts, to the clenched fist of the indulgent youth lost in the immensity of his own mind. I looked with my eyes for once, not thru them, only to see this outward gaze perpetually reflected and retracted in the infinitude of the thought. I sighed as I seen the number of colors used in my unending undertaking. Chaotic, paradoxal, unable to be interpreted, my masterpiece, my thorn in the flesh. I gasped at what I seen next; my own hands, stained deeply with the vessel of my expression, a strange conglomeration of many colors blurred into one dark stain on my once unmolested hands. I am not seperate from what I create. I am not God. Questions boil at the surface, my heart beats broken and beleaguered by never attempted and failed love. A pusillanimus prince paralized by the path ahead, hopeful I can follow, but forgetting how to walk. Paths are forged in the wilderness, but not always in the traditional sense. Some wildernesses we create in our minds and it is easy to lose your way in a wilderness. I don't want to paint any longer, yet my handstrokes continue creating a hateful sight. I cannot be clean if I am not purified by You Lord. I cannot commit to flames what I have created without your strength. I cannot, but, despite myself I choose you.I give my life, all I am to you. I don't know how to be, what words to say, how to live, I am an empty vessel Lord. Jesus Christ I accept your cross anew today, I seek your forgiveness, I look to you for my strength and my comfort. Be my all in all.

Just some thoughts

http://radio.indymedia.org/uploads/rte-carol-coleman-bush.mp3

Again writing from the desert. I must admit before anyone gets the wrong idea as to what I do here. I am a switchboard operator. I sit and I transfer calls and program calling networks in the middle of a very large Army base. I even work the night shift so that I can read all night and relax. I don't need anything... I have some wants, but who doesn't. Please do not feel I am doing anything brave or noble in being here. Do not begin to think that I am a good man or a good american becuase I am here.
Here is a reality that I dealt with a while back. I remember a mortar round landed on the base probably one mile away from where I am. I remember we had a formation for accountability and had to sit inside our little hut for about 6 hours for safety reasons. I remember that we are the only ones on the base doing this seeing that there are daily mortar attacks. I was so mad, I was outraged at the stupidity of my superiors, outraged that they could belittle, discourage, and putdown all of the marines. Why would they make our lives so much harder than they already are? why not be more sypathetic to the fact that many of the young marines are scared and stressed? I felt like exploding, how could power so thouroughly corrupt?
Then... I stepped outside the neat little arguement I was having in my head, looked past my own momentary anger and let reality set in. The sound of AK-47's, 50cal. machine gus, Howetzers, and mortar rounds in the distance meant people were dying. My friends, my brothers in arms, strange men fighting for their country and a strange religion, one and all meeting a common fate. How could this be real? Is this the ultimate end of hatred? death. Love consumates in two becoming one flesh, love produces new life, what of hatred? I began to think seriously how I would react to bullets flying at my head, of having to take a man's life or possibly a women or child with a bomb attached to them. Does bravery apply? Fear drives a cornered rat to lash out, wouldn't my actions be much the same? I wonder how any arguement stands, any rationale, or moral deduction in light of kill or be killed. It seemed easy a few days ago, now I am not to sure.
All I really want is to be with the Lord now. The word says he put His Spirit in me that cries out "Abba Father!" I need to know Christ and Him alone. I have been praying for the reality of the Holy Spirit in my life. I have also been thinking about the role of the Holy Spirit and its Personhood. The truth of God dwelling in me. The truth of spiritual revelation vs. intellectual ascent. The impossibility of knowing God outside of the Holy Spirit. Philosophy, I realize now Philosophy cannot bring a system to bridge the chasm of unknowing. Neither can any of the ways of man attain God's presence outside of God himself. A.W. Tozer says this;

"You see, the Holy Spirit rules out and excludes all Adam's flesh, all human brightness, all that scintillating human personality, human ability, and human efficency. It makes Christianity depend upon a perpetual miracle. The man of God, the true Spirit-filled man of God, is a perpetual miracle. He is someone who is not understood by the people of the world at all. He is a stranger. He has come into the world by the wonder of the new birth and the illumination of the Spirit, and His life is completely different for the world."

This isa what I desire to be set apart.

Listen to the interview with Bush on top tell me what you think.... Seriously!

new to Iraq

So my long flights, numerous formations, ridiculous convoy are all over; whuch means I am in Iraq. I would love to sit and go over all the the details of the flight the realizations I came upon as I observed nature, or my coworkers, but I am not such a man. Especially not now it is 0230 in the morning and I don't even feel like deciphering what time that is for you figure it out. I can't stomach the Marine Corps at times. I am shocked that a man could get a little rank on his collar and be so full of himself, to even make comparisons between himself and God.
these are the type of men that dictate the schedule I work on and what convoys I get sent out on. I could think of about a thousand curse words that come to mind when I think of them. I even realize I am like them, or at the very least should pity them, but sometimes hatred is easier. To let all of your bad feelings anf thoughts boil over in your mind and enertain them rather than rebuke them. We are ordered not to form up in groups bigger than 5 people at a time becuase a Mortar attack could kill everyone if we are all gathered together. This to me makes perfect sense since just today there has been about 4 mortar attacks. My SNCO's don't care though. Us Marines watching thier heads swell before our eyes is so much more important. To think I am losing out on 56 days of paid vacation that I saved for, I am the only one with an EAS so close that got sent here to begin with, and they don't even really need me. They even went so far as to actually assign us numbers, thus confirming that we are in reality only numbers. This is only the light side of the tip of the iceberg for me and the marinecorps. I cannot wait to get out. I only really think of running away, flipping out, or just quitting. The end is so near 5 more months! Lord be with me temper my heart help me to flee from myself and accept your will in me being here. soothe my anxoius thoughts and help me to only see you in EVERYTHING. I am sorry I know none of this does anything to help anybody, not even me. I just want to let it be known that I am definetly human.
I have been thinking alot about what it is to be honest, what it is to need, and how that is manifested in people. There is a lot to it and the Lord has really been opening my heart and mind to understand. Maybe I will saher when I have a chance.

Hello all of my many loyal readers... hehehe. I just want to let any and everyone know that I am in Iraq now. The trip over here was long and stupid, but I am here. I hope over the next 7 months to build freindships with the people I work with, not get a mortar round dropped on my head and not get shot. Growing in my relationship with the Lord would also be a real plus. I have had many thoughts lately about life and living I would love to share. I really feel that as I get older God is showing me more of the absurdity of life outside of Him. I wonder how there can be so many superfical relationships in the world. How can we hide ourselves so effectively from even ourselves? I don't have the time to say what I want properly, when I have spent some time in prayer I and study I will explain my thinking better. In the mean time just know that I am alive and well.