random anxieties of existence

Sometimes the latest theories about "who Jesus was" or "what he did" sound more like Enquirer stories than anything remotely resembling history. In my mind they appear much like the following:   (Note: neither of these are actual Enquirer covers - I modified them to make a point)

so this is what we wanted to prove Jesus through our intellect to show that He met up to our standards of historical science we tried to have God on our own terms then we realized that history is not a science and neither is science because we are not scientific and neither is God -------------------- but by then it was too late we already had the Jesus seminar and the historical Jesus movement which were essentially glorified predecesors to the Da Vinci Code historical fictions without the history as if such a history would satisfy our souls were it even possible ---------- ---------- we wanted a personal Jesus no, I wanted a personal Jesus not you, not we, because there is no 'we' we, i mean i, cannot prove a 'we' and yet i write to you who isn't because i don't know you scientifically, that is ---------- ---------- and so i want a personal relationship with Christ my Jesus, my way my documents, my pictures, my videos or at mcdonalds my fries, my dr...

One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it." Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face." The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger." Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.  (Job 1:6- 12) ...

Something to think about: "You think you've figured something out? You run over here all pleased with yourself because you changed your mind? Now you're certain? Hal, you don't know anything The book, the math, the dates, the writing, all that stuff you just decided with your buddies, it's just evidence. It doesn't prove anything." "OK, what would?" "Nothing. You should've trusted me." -from the movie Proof (2005)

Secrecy and silence is often the best to express oneself. Kierkegaard wrote Fear and Trembling under the psudeonym Johanne de Silentio . He wrote as a poet, as one who claimed to have no faith, writingabout faith. He used the old Socratic technique of claiming ignorance. Ignorance is always safe to claim. Usually it's the one thing we're right about. It often seems as though speaking from the silence of the grave is often the only expression one gets. Think of the Count of Monte Cristo, who was only free to live his life and get his bitter-sweet revenge after he was considered dead. Think also of Huck Finn, who killed a pig and spread its blood on the floor, making it look as though robbers had killed him in order to begin a new life away from his psycho father. I would prefer to speak while alive. I would prefer to live my life while alive, and not wait until after death to live. I have much better things to be doing when I'm dead.

one of my favourite things about having a blog is the ability to see comments people leave me. have no fear! if you leave a comment it will still eventually appear. unfortunately, due to mass advertising i now have to moderate my comments, so your wise and profound thoughts won't appear untill i have a chance to read them. but they will appear! i also had to take down the sidebar comments form because it was causing pop-up ads, and no one likes pop-ups except if it's a pop-up children's book. those are still pretty cool, but i wasn't able to integrate a pop-up children's book into my site.

In case you're interested, the Dominican University College has included my photo a few times on their new website at www.collegedominicain.ca . To see the pics, go to admissions or cost of studies or student association (there's a couple of other places too) and wait for a second for the image on the right to change. You should then see my happy mug peering out of the screen at you. It's pretty glamorous, I know, but I'll try not to let it go to my head :)

6 out of 10 was the average of the German quiz I received back today. 60%. Apparently that's a fairly average mark for a language class; according to my professor. I've never thought of myself as average. Generally I'm a bit over par when it comes to schoolwork, but today it was there, staring me in the face. Keith Dow is average.   Incidentally, three out of the four marks I lost were mis-translations of the word "Teil" or "part." Where the sentences contained "Teile," which is plural, I mistook for "Teil," one singular part. The truth is, I don't like thinking of myself as one part among many. I recognize that I am a part; there is no way to avoid this in being distinct in the world. I merely fail to make the necessary connection that there are numerous other parts; that I am not as distinct or unique as I sometimes would like to think I am.   One of the things that I most enjoy doing, and that which I've occasionall...

I had a German test on Friday. It's only another couple of days until I find out how terribly I actually did on it. The problem is, teachers never mark tests according to our humanity. They don't say "Keith, there were a few things that need to be worked on but I'm sure you'll have them down by next time." No, they mark us like machines. You are and always will be 7.5 out of 10. This particular quiz mark will never change. There is no next time for this one. You cannot improve.  It's the same idea as a SIN number; the system gives you one number, and that number is you to them. The name "Keith" is flexible enough to encompass my varying fluctuations and to allow for improvement or decline on my part yet particular and specific enough that when people hear my name they are able to point me out in a crowd. A number, on the other hand, is absolute. In a closed all-encompassing system, a number represents a specific point which will never be diffe...

As some of you know, it wasn't long ago that that my car was broken into and the culprit ran off with my CD/MP3 CD player. At the time I was quite happy about how I handled it. My roommate's car had been broken into that night as well so I had a foreboding feeling that mine had too. So, when I found that it had, indeed, been broken into and my CD player was gone, I wasn't completely unprepared. In fact, I was quite relaxed about the whole thing.  At first I think it was out of a genuine unattachment and the feeling that the situation was out of my control. It wasn't long, though, until I transformed this loss into an opportunity to upgrade to an all-out MP3 player. Now I realize that, instead of turning to God in this situation that was out of my control, I turned it into an opportunity to assert my dominance over a world - and ultimately a God - that (Who) can't be controlled.   My attitude reminds me of the United States in their insistence on rebuilding the ...

remember those scratch-and-sniff things? of course they still exist, but i haven't smelled one in a while. now all we have are those horrid cardboard car scents: those leaves of aesthetic tragedy. the one i'm thinking of has a strawberry scent. it might have been strawberry shortcake - that little red-headed girl with strawberries painted all over her ginormous hat, a hat ten times the size of her head. this reminds me of those markers you can buy that smell, too, often like berries of some sort. i can remember the blueberry ones the best. which scents do you remember?  when Jodi and i (and sometimes Justin, Dan, Kaia or some other participant) would take empty milk jugs and stealthily place them on Mark Vust's doorstep (our Resident Director), i would sometimes smell the rotting milk. it didn't smell good. i'll give you that. but it was certainly a powerful scent. smelling things reminds me of how much i love life. like when i'm in a forest ...

this left shoe of mine is very squeaky today.  his brother glides quietly along the polished floors, polite and well-behaved, as though lost in profound meditation in these silent monk corridors, while he obnoxiously shouts echoing obcenities at passers-bye that have the ill-fortune to be in the wake of yet another disrupting college student.

"In order to reach God, freedom, and immortality, speculative reason must use principles that in fact extend merely to objects of possible experience; and when these principles are nonetheless applied to something that cannot be an object of experience, they actually do always transform it into an appearance, and thus they declare all practical expansion of reason to be impossible. I therefore had to annul knowledge in order to make room for faith."   Dogmatism in metaphysics: "Encourages them (youth) quite early and strongly to reason with ease about things of which they understand nothing and into which, moreover, neither they nor anyone else in the world will ever have any insight"

Today I received this envelope in the mail. It says on it "Opening this envelope may change your life!" My first reaction was "Yeah right. Whatever." Of course I didn't think it would for a moment. Then I realized just how wrong my perception was. Unconsciously I was thinking "I mean, it would be nice if it changed my life, but it's really not going to," instead of "If this was true, it would be the worst thing that could happen to me!" I'll let Paul elucidate:  "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption throu...

so reads the cover to fight club, the movie of a man who meets someone who he thinks is everything he wants to be only to find out that someone is his worst nightmare and that someone is himself.  you see, on this globe there will always be a part of us which is that someone we once thought we wanted to be only to find out that he is everything we have grown to hate. that demon within started feeding with the first forbidden fruit and hasn’t stopped feasting since. he has grown oh so fat that one is scarcely able to step around him upon encountering oneself, especially in a culture worshipping self-indulgence and painless existence. the fattest demons are those who use the lie that alcohol will make them disappear. they are the ones that command constant drink or else their dictatorship is too painfully real.  in the Christian’s life, such rulers have been cast out by the throne of grace. all-too-frequently, however, the empty hole where they used to be still resembl...

"When one grows older, everything becomes so miserable. God in heaven has to sit and wait for the decision on his fate, whether he exists, and finally he comes into existence with the help of a few demonstrations; human beings have to put up with waiting for the matter to be decided... Youth understands immediately that there is a God."   "There was a thinker who became a hero by his death; he said that he could demonstrate the existence of God with a single straw. Let the thinker keep his demonstration; give youth the straw-it cannot demonstrate. But why is demonstration necessary at all when one has the straw and-God! When one grows older, along comes the demonstration, and the demonstration is a prominent traveler whom all look upon with admiration."   -Soren Kierkegaard in "Think about Your Creator" in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

"Do not take too much control of the young, nor of the infant, but do not therefore do the opposite, either; do not make it prematurely old, lest it drink the bitterness of not being allowed to be young when one is young, and for a second time drink the bitterness of not having been allowed to be young when one was young."   -Soren Kierkegaard in "Think about Your Creator" in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

"Indeed, nothing is more loathsome than to see the miserable beggar whose eyes and countenance implore everyone for the flattering falsehood that he still seems young, or to see the poor wretch who despite his advanced age still bolsters himself with the lie that he has youth ahead of him, or to see the weakling who has no other defense against the years than a feeble wish that he were still young."   -Soren Kierkegaard in "Think about Your Creator" in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

I just finished possibly the best pecan tart I have ever eaten. It was crumbly, but it was oh so delectable. Yesterday night I went downstairs to cook a late supper, settling on my usual fare - microwaved hot dogs on bread with a cheese slice. Upon entering the kitchen, I noticed that on the stove-top were a fantastic-looking pie with crumble on top, which I found out later to be peach pie, and a pan of melt-in-your-mouth pecan butter tarts. Now, I would like you to get a glimpse of how much I like butter tarts. Years ago I decided it was a prerequisite that the woman I was to marry had to know how to make butter tarts. That's how much I like butter tarts. Since then, reason has poked its hideous little head into the play-pen of my mind and has pointed out that perhaps this is a superficial and idiotic prerequisite to have, so I have dropped it as a requirement. Anyway, so I was there nuking my very unhealthy dinner in the microwave, and Trina comes upstairs to check on her ...

Understanding my distaste for unexpected expenditures, you can imagine my discomfort taking Arfy to the mechanic. As a general rule, though, if your car's radiator fan is not working and you can't drive more than 15 minutes without overheating and having your coolant boil and explode out of its container, and if overheating can cause your engine to warp and seize up, rendering your car useless - it's probably a good time to see a mechanic. In the case of a mechanic, the unexpected costs are generally the result of finding out that your car will explode into a million pieces unless you have this, this, and this replaced. In my case it was probably true. I think that's why I tend to have an overwhelming urge to put off going to a garage for as long as possible, basically until even I can tell I'm not going to last long driving the car, because I know they're going to tell me something is more wrong with my car than I first thought.   "How are you?" ...