Credo

I believe we were created.  The more I see on this planet, the more I see evidence of an intelligent design.  Working with plants, I am constantly and consistently amazed by the diversity, the grace, and the beauty of the natural world.

I believe we were created to live on this Earth.  I can't stand the mindset of 'we are on earth for a time; our citizenship is truly in heaven' for one more second.  We were created to live.  I love living.  The act of living, and truly being engaged in life is the most fantastic feeling.  Life is beautiful; Carpe Diem.

I believe that love trumps everything.  There is nothing else in life that we should seek before it.  Love is fascinating, terrifying, weakening, strengthening, beautiful and terrible all at the same time.  We were made to love, in any and every form imaginable.

I believe in the simple act of believing.  I think that no human can live out a satisfying existence without discerning that in which they place their faith.  It may be a simple belief that man is inherently good, or a more complicated manifesto of political and religious beliefs.  Be that as it may, man needs to believe.

I believe that death is what gives value to life.  If life were unthreatenable and never-ending, we would have no reason to seize it and live in it actively.

Finally, I believe in God.  But not in the God that you are thinking.  I believe that there exists Something or Someone out there who has created us.  But I can certainly no longer call myself a Christian, and I am certainly not going to attend any more hypocritical, corrupt, money-grabbing churches or schools.  I am not going to let some governing 'authority' tell me what is wrong and right, when they have historically condoned slavery and condemned women.  And I am no longer going to attempt to fit in to a community of lies and hatred.

 I understand all of this is quite blunt and potentially shocking, but I felt the need to get it out there.  I don't want a to maintain the facade I had been maintaining before.  I live unapologetically, and I want you to all know at least the gist of who I am and what I believe.  I don't want to start internet wars here, so I may not approve many comments on this post,  If you simply need to engage me in a debate, email me.

Just Wanted to Know If I Could Go Home

Sorry for my ultimate failure to update lately!

My life has been insane as of late.  Here are some brief updates.

I went to England for my last weekend of backpacking, to meet up with the boys from Vienna.  I can summarize the trip in one photo:

Camdentown, hookah, 4 miserable Jews and myself.

And one video:


After that, I was back in Paris for a few hours; enough to empty my studio entirely, and spend a night in debauchery and tears of goodbye with the beautiful people I met there

Table one

Table two

 Saying goodbye is hard.  It's especially hard if you are uncertain whether you'll ever see some of these people again.










But goodbyes are beautiful, too.  Because in the same way that death is what gives value to life, goodbyes are what give value to hellos. 










With any luck, I'll be backpacking again Easter of 2012.  That is, assuming the world hasn't ended.

Definitely going to miss this crowd

 

Meanwhile, I've been lucky enough to meet the best people I could have ever imagined possible to meet.  And I get to share so much joy and enlightenment with my friends back home for a little while.

The future doctors <3

Massive shoutouts to the people who made this trip a wonderful experience.  Above all: Lynette Van de Hoef, Rachel Stevenson, April Larochelle, Martha Maris, Maria Noorloos, Jemima Dickinson, Larissa Gare, Gemma King, Christina Ammon, Nicolas Sanchez, Bram Van Beek, Paula Molz, James Lloyd, Hayden Lawn, Remi Piriou, Kara Abernethy, Liz Rosenberg, Darren Helstowski, Aidan Kenny and Liam Kerry.  I've never been happier than in the company of any of those people.

Shoutouts also to the best of friends ever, and especially those who kept in touch with me from back home: Amber Lepine, Adrian Vander Vaart, Jill Van Ryn, Amber Burns, Jess Crandall, Elle Rombough, Amanda Fraleigh, Rich Oosterloo, Natalie Campbell, Chad Haverkamp, Dan Kikkert and Austin Miedema.

Some congrats are also due!  Upon my return, I was in a wedding for one of my dearest friends.  Congrats to Elle and Lael and many, many blessings.  Nathan and Janelle, some of my favourite people ever, also tied the knot this May, the day after James and Katie, some of my oldest friends.  Congrats to all three beautiful couples!

James and Katie

Nate and Janelle

Elle and Lael

Those are essentially all of my life updates for now.  I've moved into my fantastic new apartment in Hamilton, am working off the debts that I acquired this year, and am planning to take a year off to work (and travel, of course) before returning to Europe to complete the PhD.

Stay tuned!

Somewhere Out There

I promised I would discover this year.

I'm well on my way, kicking off the year with my trip to Berlin, where I've discovered that I make single-serving friends easily, that I am fully independent and capable, and that the human capacity for evil is horrifying.

I'm also discovering the difference between liking something, and loving something.

The difference is in value.

Our generation likes music.  We lust after it's possession, talking about how big our 'library' is, or how many bands we've seen live.  Our generation likes travel.  We like to talk about how many cities we've been to, and we like to advertise that as much as we can.  Our generation also likes popularity.  If our world used to be about 'knowing thyself', it has now become about 'showing thyself' in the best-laid-out-and-most-unique-and-interesting-Facebook-account-possible.

But what does our generation value?  Value is intrinsic to the claim of love, because you had to part with the potential of something else in order to access this thing you love. 

I heard someone say this week "I love music too much to pay for it".  Sounds right at first, right?  It did... but then I thought about it.  That's not love.  That's like.  Or maybe even lust.  If you love music, you value it.  It's no longer about having as much music as you can on you iPod, but about valuing the music that you actually have.  When was the last time you sat down and listened to an album.  Like actually listened to it. Question part two: did you even pay the artist and record label for that album?  I have a suggestion.  If you love music, I want you to delete uTorrent, pick up an album that you actually have to pay for, sit down with a glass of wine and no distractions and listen to it from start to finish.  That, my friends, would be valuing and ergo loving music.

How about travel?  It's a little different of an approach, but it hurts me to hear people say "I've been to Brussels" when they really just passed through the train station.  Now I know that time is a precious commodity in our world.  And in order to see the most of the world, you'd only be able to pass through a lot of places.  But maybe valuing travel intrinsically carries with it a humility in knowing that you will never "see the world".  And maybe valuing travel means taking a month out of your life to spend in only one country.  Perhaps time, like money in the music example, needs to be sacrificed in order for your love of travel to truly exist.

As for popularity, it's a mix of money, time and emotion -- what I would submit is the third "most valuable commodity" in our world.  When I say popularity here, I don't mean getting a high count of friends on your Facebook.  I mean genuinely investing yourself in your relationships.  Valuing your friends by putting them above other aspects of your life.

I know that our world is flawed, and that it's hard to truly love things.  But in my journey of discovering, the one lesson I've come across time and time again is that love is, and always has been the only solution to any problem.

So next time you say you love something, make sure you hold true to that commitment.

That secret that you know.

Every year I set New Years Resolutions. I know that many people don't believe in them, but I think that having annual goals is a really good idea. This year, my fifth resolution was this:

“My understanding of 'love' and 'guilt' and how they impact my daily life will become a part of who I am in a positive light” (January 1).

I thought it would be interesting, now that the year is wrapping up, to look back through my journal from this year (resolution number two!) and see how I've worked to develop an understanding of love. I've pulled a few quotes from the year and I am surprised at how my understanding really did grow over this year.

“For Christians, the single command is to love. The Bible says there is nothing without love and that we are nothing without love. The Bible says that we are not lovers of God if we are not lovers of man. [...] Love isn't the main thing God calls people to do, it is the only thing” (January 23).

I think one of my strongest pulls towards love at the beginning of this journey was knowing that I was called to it. I had no desire to be labeled as 'loving'; I knew I was supposed to. And I really struggled with it!

“How do I show love when I don't always feel so loving?” (February 5).

Another deep struggle of mine this year was developing a healthy self-image and learning to love myself.

“If I don't love myself, how am I supposed to love anyone else?” (March 14).

One of the best mediums through which I learned about love this year was my friendships. Living at West House and spending my time with people I truly loved and felt loved by was an amazing experience. 

“I've never loved any group of people as much as I love this 'family'” (May 1).

In the summer, I began to wrestle through the inherent weaknesses in love.  It really struck me how closely related love and guilt were, and it took a lot of deep conversations with my friends to work through this.

“Love is both mankind's most desirable strength and our greatest downfall and weakness. On one hand, we would be nothing without it. On the other, it makes us weak, vulnerable and predictable. Yet our only purpose is to love: our created longing is to attain our strongest and weakest trait” (June 7).

As my trip approached, I began to develop an unshakable anxiety.  I was afraid to lose the grip I had developed on love and was anxious that my friendships wouldn't last.

“Is Ben Gibbard right when he says 'love is watching someone die'? Who will be with me, I wonder?” (July 12).

After leaving, loneliness and I became fully acquainted.  I then realized how much loneliness and love have in common. 

“Loneliness is the strongest force which drives my philosophy of self, home and love” (September 30).

As I had more time to reflect, I came to understand that love is not essential 'because God says so'; it is essential because our souls demand it.  We were created to be beings in relation with one another.  Love is something you cannot exist without.

“I need to love and be loved” (October 9).

The longer I spent away from my new-found sources of love, the more I came to understand the glory of love.  The other revelations I had had regarding love still stood, but there was something more in my understanding now.  Love is scary, but it is worth it.

“Love and desire are tough. They can hurt and ruin and burn. But they are good and they can be absolutely amazing if you work hard at them” (November 4).

Finally, the lesson on love that I learned this month brought everything together.  This month, I learned that I am loved.

“I wish I knew how to show as much love as I've been shown. I truly have the best friends on earth. If there was ever a year to try and understand love, this has certainly been the one” (Dec 7).