On seeing the reviews and previews of "Brokeback Mountain"

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, (His love) is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

-Gerard M. Hopkins
"God's Grandeur" (parenthesis mine)

If you're reading this post and are struggling with this lifestyle I just want to say that God loves you and He doesn't love me anymore than He loves you. And, if you have ever put your trust in Him then He is still your Father but its up to you to decide whether or not what you feel inside you is really your conscience (telling you what's right and wrong) or just a product of living in this "morally conscious" society. We are rational beings. Let's look at some of the facts:

1) Biologically - to reproduce you need a man and a woman (even without a biblical interpretation of this fact the evidence does not favor homosexuality)

2) Spiritually - the Scriptures (both Testaments) speak against it directly (Leviticus 18:22; 1 Corinthians 6:9,10)

3) Emotionally/Psychologically -

• 30% of gay and bisexual adolescent males attempt suicide at least once[10]
• 83% of adolescent lesbians use alcohol, 56% use other drugs, and 11% use crack and/or cocaine[11]
• 68% of adolescent gay males use alcohol, 44% use other drugs[12]

[10] Remafedi, Gary, et al. “Risk Factors for Attempted Suicide in Gay and Bisexual Youth,” in Pediatrics, 1991.

[11] Hunter, Joyce, et al. Unpublished research by the Columbia University HIV center for Clinical and Behavior Studies, 1992.

[12]ibid

If these stats are really true (there's no reason for them not to be seeing as they came from a pro-homosexual article) then I truly feel for you. This doesn't seem like a very happy and satisfying life. Now, I know there are a lot of Christians out there drinking and selling all kinds of Hatorade when it comes to homosexuality but if you think about it, that is really a peripheral issue. The real issue today, right now, is are you doing what He thinks is right, not what you think is right? Do you have peace in your heart? Do you wake up in the morning excited about life? Or is your life characterized by these statistics? You can't continue to violate your conscience (not to mention biological and spiritual laws) and think that you will lead a happy life. I'm not looking for a way to pour my hate on you, I'm trying to talk to you simply, as a friend.

I know there are many who will read this and defenses and flags will fly--keeping them from seeing any of my points because they are caught in fighting for "The Great Cause" of the homosexual. And they will go on fighting for the cause and ignoring and suppressing the greater emptiness that's in their hearts. And there are many who will read this and defenses and flags will fly--keeping them from seeing any of my points because they are caught in fighting for "The Great Cause" against the homosexual. And they will go on fighting for the cause and ignoring and suppressing the greater emptiness that's in their hearts. Yes, there are a lot of Christians that are just as empty as the homosexual that they are preaching at.

law of diminishing returns...

law stating that if one factor of production is increased while the others remain constant, the overall returns will relatively decrease after a certain point. Thus, for example, if more and more laborers are added to harvest a wheat field, at some point each additional laborer will add relatively less output than his predecessor did, simply because he has less and less of the fixed amount of land to work with. The principle, first thought to apply only to agriculture, was later accepted as an economic law underlying all productive enterprise.

they tell me there there is a field that can never be exhausted...a field that is not subject to our laws...a field that, though we multiply ourselves and our wrongs exponentially, will not decrease by one grain...and they tell me His love is constant as the northern star...

her heart's a coat of many colors

american mystery...what color would you be--what color would those stars turn if the salient sun burned the clouds and bellowed loud a glory brimming over, full of our might, our mistakes, and all our red-ruptured heartaches? to sing our story under an aqua-marine blue-green canopy screen, with silvery silver strips like trumpets tipped to the heavens, and shout out the bars of how those white-whigged stars looked on, heedless of the sorrow-stained skies, and all at once fell headlong--like a madman--a rushing redman--and ran red, gushing, bleeding a trail of tears from all our eyes? and this blood in time would become a red-mud mulatto flood (see the Mississippi river) surrounding the piebald trees (cross the taker and the giver), somehow enriching maroon roots way down deep (how those white-hooded stars will shiver), down in the brown ground of our hearts...

to raise up a coat of many colors.

and if they said history comes from color, then who was red white and blue's mother? and will this coat of many colors--yes, they say her heart is a coat of many colors--say, "come red, call the red beating drum (while mothers weep for their sons) heart; and come blue, second to none! (yet unable to know all we've done) heart; and come purple, the earth bows down, yes, the east, west and all the seas come and bow down to meet these and...

to gaze on our coat of many colors.

shanghai status:

singing.

The Chinese truly have themselves a beautiful language. The fact that meaning is derived from, or based on, tone is absolutely incredible. Just like a song or a dance is based on the sequential order and precise production of certain notes or steps, so the Chinese language cannot be performed or understood without the sequential order and precise production of its 4 fundamental tones (with variations ad infinitum). You don't know how much this helped me when I actually got it. Let me put it this way: If you wrote a song and I came up to you and tried to sing your song but made up my own melody, how would you react? Probably by making a weird face and saying, "What's wrong with you?" Or, the same way the Chinese react to me when I attempt to speak to them, "Ting bu dong." (lit. I hear you but I don't understand you).

*the correct title of this blog should actually be "learning to sing". :)