Inside Out and Fear: The Highest Cannot Stand Without The Lowest

The highest cannot stand without the lowest.

Cool saying right? Sounds all deep and philosophical. It's definitely one of those sayings that you can use while offering advice and almost be guaranteed that you'll get a "Mmmm, right" in return. 

Frankly, this particular saying has struck me as good sense more than something mystical. It rings with similar practicality towards such classics as "The wise man builds his house on a rock" or "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones." 

I take the saying to mean that a good foundation or basis should be built before attempting any grander designs. 

Don't take grunt work for granted. Put in the effort so that when you make something, you know it will also last as long as possible OR be easily fixable. Know how the foundations work so you know what parts effect other portions and how to best address them. Do the tedious and seminal tasks first so you do not have to tear apart something you love later. 

Mind you, I have no idea if that's what this saying actually means, but it is how I understand it.

At any rate, a friend and I were talking about Manipulation and his close friend Guilt Trip. In her particular case, she reacting to having been told "Well, what if I died tomorrow? How would you feel then?"

*Knocks on wood*

"I feel like that is just so manipulative. I don't want what I do to be motivated by fear." "So I do think that was manipulation. That doesn't mean it's a bad question to ask or try to answer."

Our conversation went on to talk about what role Fear can have in a person's life and if it is always bad.

"It reminds me of a George MacDonald quote where he says that fear is a form of motivation, but the lowest form." "Hm, but the highest cannot stand without the lowest."

Since then I have been thinking of the role of Fear in a person's life. In the movie Inside Out, Anxiety/Fear is present almost immediately after Joy and Sadness, two of the main characters in the film. Fear's role is to keep Riley (the little girl) safe, and though each Emotion brings something grander to the table, they also constantly have to check back in with Fear.

In fact, when Joy and Sadness go missing in the course of the film, Fear is the one who offers the most sensible advice (we need to wait until everyone is back together).

This is not to say that our lives should be ruled or tyrannized by Fear (as Fear does pretty poorly in charge of Riley), but it is worthwhile to note some the ways it is unique and potentially instrumental.

Fear has an imaginative side and can create grand (if often exaggerated) pictures.

Fear demands that we consider things from multiple viewpoints.

Fear respects the world around us, maybe even too much.

I could say more here, but I'm reluctant to, because one of my fears is that I sound too much like the Batman villain Scarecrow or Green Lantern's arch-nemesis, Sinestro. 

All this to say, it was interesting to consider just how seminal, instrumental, and potentially good Fear might be as a motivation. If we are to do service to the higher motivational values, such as familial love, hope, or compassion, perhaps we cannot properly consider them without first recognizing and experiencing Fear.

Because the highest cannot stand without the lowest.

Casting Stones

Christ has rightly said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

As I write this, I understand both sides of the protests/riots in Baltimore would say "It was them, they cast the first stone." I also see the conflicted insides of me asking for justice and truth, wondering which side did cast the first stone.

Who is justified? Who is in the right? But I am struck by the fact that Christ did not say this statement to provide us with a tool to understanding the cause of injustice. He said this so we would look inward and examine our sin.

So I look inward and I know that, as a mixed race individual, I have a personal investment on both sides of the conflict yet find myself belonging to neither. Am I a White with tan skin? Am I Hispanic but sound White? Which side of my heritage am I a traitor to? Do I even belong to either? Would either side even have me?

It is times like this that I feel I am being told I need to choose, and that I am a coward if I don't.

I am not complaining though, and what is going on is more real than a search for identity. But if I have learned anything worth sharing from my own internal struggle it is that thinking of these matters in terms of sides and who is right makes us blind to our own injustices and inhumanities. We are quick to point the finger and (accurately) say "That is cruel", but we do not take the step that Christ has asked us to take, look inward, and say "I am cruel".

Any man who has not looked inward and said "I am cruel" is either self-deceived, a liar, or simply not introspected long enough.

But I know the response to this because I see the response in myself: "I may be cruel, but can't you see how they have been more cruel? Justice must be done!" And justice should be done. We are responsible for our own actions. But this justice looks different from the perspective of one who knows he is a sinner being asked to judge a fellow sinner.

Because really, how does anyone being more cruel than we are in any way justify our own cruelty.

"But you see them? They are not willing to answer for their crimes. They would place all the blame on us. We need to stand up for ourselves!" Absolutely, but let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Those who abuse power should be held accountable, and cruelty should not be answered with cruelty. However, I say this knowing with full knowledge that I have sinned on both accounts and deserve justice too, and it is only by Christ's mercy that I can be redeemed.

Because once I have sinned, God has given me the mercy to atone for it.

So instead of asking which side I am on, I find myself asking these questions instead. How might I have stopped this? How, in my own life, have I contributed to the growth of cruelty and the abuse of power? How can this be healed, first in myself and second in my community?

 Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Edit: I recognize that  this blog itself might be my own attempt at throwing a stone, to lash out at both sides for demanding me to make a choice. I too am a sinner, and I can only apologize for my own self-righteousness and that, instead, we all look to the life of Christ.

Shocking News: Study Finds That Brain Altering Drug Alters Brain!

Recently, a study has been released that has generated a bit of media talk. Granted, both of these articles are dated in April, but they just recently found their way into my Facebook newsfeed and I wanted to say something about them.

The articles themselves are easy enough to summarize. Researchers have found a correlation between certain brain changes and marijuana use that were more extreme than is widely expected. In light of the discussions on the legalization on marijuana, some are using this to show how dangerous the drug is and push that it remain illegal (or have more restrictions on it).

That being said, this blog entry will not be about the legal status of pot.

What intrigued me most were the reactions that people had to this study. Some people responded with "Look! Pot is bad! We knew it all along!" Others were saying "These results are exaggerated. And if smoking does not hurt anyone around you, why is it a big deal?" Granted, these are responses that I've heard many times before, but seeing them come up again made me reflect on them.

Let me address both of those of them.

Yes, the results explained by the media article can be exaggerated. The maxim that researches live by, correlation does not prove causation, rings true in this particular situation. To put it simply, just because two things happen at the same time does not mean that one caused the other. A stereotypical example would be how ice cream sales and drowning strongly positively correlate; the higher the ice cream sales, the higher the drowning rate.

If you were trying to make a causal statement out of this correlation, it would sound something like "Buying Ice cream increases the chance of drowning". This makes no sense though, and a little bit of reasoning shows that both of these are correlated because both happen during the Summer (people buy more ice cream and swim more because it's hot).

That being said, the same is true for this study. Does drug use cause the brain to change? Or does a different brain make someone more inclined to use drugs? Based on what we know about drugs, the first is, in my opinion, more likely to be true, but it cannot be proven simply from one correlational study.

Only long-term studies where you have a control group and a group experimented on can help prove that kind of causation. Functionally, you would need to have a group of people who aren't given the drug, a group of people who are given a placebo, and a group of people given the drug and measure changes over time. However, this would be such an unethical study that I find it hard to believe that it could ever be conducted.

Their are a few other holes with the study, such as the small sample size, that need to be addressed for the sake of continuing studies (something the researchers mention in their own article). However, it strikes me that part of this backlash comes from the idea that marijuana is not bad to be used recreationally, a question that no amount of studies can conclusively answer (merely inform).

Let me use some examples to explain this. Cigarettes are known to be bad for you, yet people smoke (like I said, I'm not going to touch the legality of any of these). Video games have been shown to correlate with violence, yet people (including myself) still play video games. Donuts have been shown to correlate with heart failure, but they're just too delicious to pass up.

This study is certainly not the first one about how marijuana affects the brain, and I am tempted to say "no duh". Almost everything we do affects our brains, and it should be obvious that a drug that is used recreationally to alter the brain will have stronger and more lasting affects through extended and increasing use. Similarly, eating donuts will affect my waistline, and the more I do it, the more permanent the change will be.

Granted, I know tragically little about the lasting effects of marijuana. I also know tragically little about the lasting effects of eating donuts. It might be easier for your brain to reshape itself after using marijuana than it is for me to lose weight on a treadmill after a donut binge. However, good sense is that the longer and more frequently that you do something, the harder it is to stop and the more lasting the effects.

Even with that being the case, finding out that information does not tell someone whether or not they SHOULD smoke pot, merely what may happen if they do. I have not found many people who are willing to say that marijuana is always a good thing. Usually, the more sensible argument is that marijuana does not always have to have bad consequences, or that the bad consequences that it does have can be more easily managed than those of other substances.

It's at this point that you have to leave the realm of objective fact and base things on more subjective facts.

Marijuana alters the mind and, as a result, puts people into a state where they MAY (not necessarily will) make decisions that they would not make while sober. Notice, that is not to say that the decisions they make will be any better or worse, merely that they may be different. An angry person who uses pot to relax may be more pleasant to deal with as a result, whereas a lazy person who uses pot to relax further may become kind of obnoxious to be around. These reactions are so subjective though that it is hard to come up with any definite judgement calls.

However, it being subjective does not mean that it is unimportant to talk about. If we care about the people around us, we should know how our actions are affecting them and be sensitive about it.

Something that is not bad to us may be bad for someone around us. If we care about them, we should care about how they are taking it.

I feel like the harder questions to ask are not being asked, which is dangerous. Those who want to condemn marijuana users ignore that life is hard for people and sometimes we need to relax. Or they see marijuana users as ignorant and making poor life choices when, in reality, they put a lot of thought behind how much they should or shouldn't smoke and are attempting to balance it well.

However, I also see marijuana users dismiss the naysayers as being too controlling or sanctimonious, when sometimes they are right. Sometimes people do start doing drugs without knowing all the dangers behind them and sometimes people make bad decisions because they were high.

I see a lot of condemnation on both sides and very little attempts at understanding.

The question, I feel like, is how dangerous of a habit is marijuana. Objective facts can help inform this, but ultimately the decision will come from a combination of subjective and objective information. There are habits that are more dangerous and less dangerous than others and that can change depending on varying objective and subjective degrees.

Let me use a few that I mentioned as an example. Here's a range of danger (in my opinion) of a few habits. From least dangerous to most dangerous

Eating a donut -> Playing video games -> Having a beer -> Playing violent video games -> Eating a lot of donuts -> Having a lot of beer.

I certainly hope some people read this and disagree with it, because they have different experiences with it than I do. My brother comes to mind. As he is more health conscious than I am, I'm sure he would say eating a donut is more dangerous than playing video games. 

Yet I also hope that most people who read this understand how each of these things CAN be dangerous. Obesity does not mean that you will have heart problems, but it does mean you are more likely to. Video games do not always make a person violent, but can increase violent tendencies. Drinking does not mean you will make bad choices, but you are more likely to.

I do not think that anyone is foolish enough to think that a drug that alters the brain will never be a bad thing to use. If people can use telling the truth to hurt someone, then clearly even good things can be used wrongly. How much more so is the case for drug abuse.

This is why introspection and conversations are so important. We cannot know by ourselves what is good or bad for us. We get that wrong all the time. Sometimes, we know better than the people around us, but most of the time someone knows the situation better than we do. People should never stop asking questions and wondering if what they are doing is not simply good for themselves but also those around them. Most of the time we will be in the wrong, and it takes a strong character to be able to humbly admit that and change. One which I can only pray that I have.

My advice to both sides would be as follows: there will be hateful people on both sides of the issue. Ignore them and try to find thoughtful yet understanding people on BOTH sides of the issue. Then dialogue.

Because, ultimately, what will always be true is that people are more important than ideas.

This may mean that at some point I will have to eat my words and admit I'm wrong. It may very well be the case that I am hateful, stubborn, and narrow-minded in this regard and have to change. Or it could be the case that I'm not wrong yet am still treating people around me poorly. THESE are the factors that, on a personal level, I find important to consider.

Are we treating each other well, and are we healthy? 

A Trilogy on Size. Part 3: Health and Love.

"One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul." - G.K. Chesterton

It's been a long time since I've updated this, so I'm going to briefly summarize Part 1 and Part 2 of this particular trilogy.

Part 1 was about the feelings we get when we are around something huge. Hugeness inspires awe, wonder, and safety. However, bad hugeness can bring about feelings of fear, insignificance, and helplessness. Children's reactions to adults are a good image of this. On the one hand, children look to adults for protection and are often in awe at all a "grown up" can do, but, on the other hand, few things are as horrific an image of distorted power as the adult out to harm the child.

Part 2 was about how we all eventually become huge, be it literally or metaphorically. An unhealthy response to this natural change is desiring that it did not happen, instead pretending like you are still small (or, to put it another way, refusing to put your childish ways behind you). Sometimes we cannot recognize or cope with our "hugeness", but we all grow up eventually.

We all become giants, at least to someone else.

This "growing up" is a tricky balance (one that I hope to have explained by the end of this blog) because there is value in its opposite: condescension (making yourself smaller for the sake of someone else). The parents who are able to lower themselves and play with their children are good parents, and one characteristic of good growth is that teachers who are better than us are willing to help us "on our level". There is a childlike smallness that is good and natural; we are called to be children of God.

Even though my particular struggle has to do with having a lowly view of myself, I wanted to spend some time focusing on its merits. Likewise, I wanted to spend some time on those who go too far in the opposite direction of hugeness and desire power over others. 

This bad hugeness is characterized by a desire to dominate, to become so huge and powerful that nothing can hurt us. Commonly, this happens because someone was hurt and wants to make sure that it does not happen again. Sometimes, it just happens because we are puffed up by pride.

One of my favorite comic series illustrates this well. In Irredeemable, the author Mark Waid deals with the question of "What if a person with the powers of Superman could not handle the responsibilities that comes with it?" As a child, this super hero does not know how to handle his strength, so he's constantly hurting people and having them pull away. It is an unfortunate story, because he wants desperately to be a normal child, but his powers make this impossible. 

The problem with pretending you're small when you're powerful is your "little" mistakes become much larger.

When the child becomes older, he becomes a superhero and seeks to help people, but he begins to feel the strain of having to be "good all the time". Eventually, he snaps and starts to use his power to do whatever he wants, which usually involves oppressing the "ants". Millions die. Continents are sunk into the ocean. The entire world is condemned to die by slow radiation poisoning within three generations. But this too is a coping mechanism. On a real level, this would not happen if his reckless rage didn't feel good. It's evil. It's wrong. He needs to be stopped. But it made him feel better.

Flaunting power is intoxicating, and you can get drunk off hurting people.

Neglect or cruelty. This is what happens when people use "hugeness" wrong. This is true for love too. The most obvious cases of this are, well, neglect and abuse. But there are subtler ones. 

Have you ever met someone who wanted to be worshiped? To be treated as a Savior or a Goddess? I've begun to understand that these are not harmless words. C.S. Lewis says in The Four Loves that love begins to be a demon the moment that love begins to be a god, nothing the distinction between God being love, and love being a god.

How many of us have put our beloved on a pedestal and decided that we would rather do what they want instead of what is right? How many of us have wanted to be put on a pedestal and told that we could do no wrong?

But like I've said, this is tricky. We should sacrifice for those we care about, and we should take the side of those we love. But we shouldn't sacrifice until we become insignificant, and we shouldn't expect people to take our side if we're being cruel.

I think this is where perspective begins to matter. It is our individual perspectives that are skewed toward viewing things as either greater or lesser than they actually are. Children view their parents as giants, and parents know the limitations of their children. This is just a part of nature. Tall people see people smaller than them as short, and short people see those taller than them as tall.

Yet an unrealistic "small" perspective can lead to either seeing others as flawless or, when a flaw is noticed, demonizing these few flaws. Likewise, "giant" perspectives can fall into the trap of either ignoring other's perspectives or putting too much stock into them. Personally, I fall into the vein of hero-worshipers and seeing those around me as giants. My world is a world where any good is heroically good, yet any evil is demonically evil.

However, I've started to try and keep things within their proper proportions.

Some things need to be brought a peg down, while others need to be brought up to snuff. If you have a perspective like mine, it is likely the case that most things you deal with are  not as great (or as evil) as you imagine. But this isn't advice for everyone as the opposite can easily be true (even within the same person). I have no doubt that there are a great deal of things that I think too little of. This is why I think it is a matter of perspective and depends on a case-by-case basis.

However, the difficulty lies in determining the right perspective. What is the proper size of a human? How can we measure a man's worth?

G.K. Chesterton deals with something similar in Orthodoxy. People, and most truths, are constantly  between these kinds of paradoxes. Do you ask giants to be small? Do you ask small people to grow into giants? Chesterton would say that giants need to be allowed to be giant, but without hurting people. Small people need to be allowed to be small, but without being petty or worshiping the wrong things.

Man, according to Chesterton, is a broken god. No person can think too much of their souls, because we are made in the image of god, but no person can think too little of themselves either, because we are not living up to it.

All in all though, I think it comes to happiness. The people who are giants and the people who are small that I described do not strike me as happy people. They strike me as people who do not have a good grasp of something (do not have a good grasp of the world). We need a healthy perspective.

The Opposite of Love is not Indifference, it's Hatred.

I was having a conversation with a friend about love and its opposite, hatred. My friend was looking for an argument, so he decided to get smug with me and said, "Well, you know, the opposite of love isn't really hatred. The opposite of love is indifference."

This blog is written in response toward this comment.

For a while, I believed that the opposite of love was indifference for two main reasons: 1) both love and hatred are passionate emotions whereas indifference is a lack of emotion and 2) love and hatred can coexist in someone at the same time toward the same subject.

However, it's very simple why I came to believe that the opposite of love is hatred. There is no larger boomerang of emotion than going from love to hatred. Loosely speaking, love is wanting what is best for someone else, whereas hatred is wanting what is worst.  It's the difference of going out of your way to do something nice for someone and going out of your way to do something horrible to them.

Yet you can be angry with someone without hating them, and you can do good for someone without loving them. No one action, moment, or emotion proves that these exist in a relationship, but I believe that both are an active and pursued choice. 

A lack of love (indifference) does not mean hatred; my friend was right about this. And this is true for most things that have opposites. A lack of speaking the truth may just mean a person is being silent. A lack of goodness does not make a thing evil. A lack of the color red does not make green. If you're not moving up, that does not mean that you are moving down.

Indifference falls into a similar category; it is an intentional (or unintentional) thoughtlessness and passionless neutrality.

As an aside, this is not to say that indifference is a bad thing, actually, hatred is not always a bad thing either.

All people are called to hate what is evil and love what is good. We should want the worst for bad things and the best for good things. This is how both of these can exist toward the same person; we can admire the best parts of them while hating the worst. Growth often comes from such tensions, but the struggles come from when we hate or love the wrong things.

Sometimes, struggles also come from loving (or hating) something too much.

My friend wrote a blog (that everyone should read, hence the link) about the myth of Icarus. He points out that we live in a generation unlike Icarus: where Icarus flew too high, we refuse to take our eyes off the ground. I don't mean to disagree with his point, but just as we are opposites in most ways, I find it important to take note of the traditional moral for the story: unkempt ambition is dangerous to ourselves. Just as it is wrong to have wings and refuse to fly, so it is also wrong to have wings and aim too high.

It is the moderation and focus of our virtues that is important here. We can definitely have too little love for something (neglect), but we can also have too much love (stalkers/need-for-restraining-orders). Likewise, the same is true for hatred. As with Icarus, the problem is not the passion, it is where it is being aimed. Temperance and Wisdom should be our guides.

But I digress.

If indifference is the opposite of love, why is it that the opposite of indifference is not love?

If indifference is just thoughtlessness and passionless regard toward a particular object, then its opposite would not be love, it would be simply caring (which I will refer to as vivacity). As such, the opposite of indifference does include love, but it is not simply limited to love. It includes hatred too, as well as any other feeling.

The opposite of saying nothing is saying something, which can be either true or false. The opposite of doing nothing is doing something, which can be good or evil. The opposite of black is white, which technically contains all other colors. And if you are not moving, then the opposite of that would be to move in any given direction.

Yet, in a weird way, indifference can also work with love or hatred.

I've known people who have chosen to have no opinion about something because they did not think the topic was important enough to offend someone. I've known other people who have done the same thing because they knew that having no opinion was the most offensive thing they could do. The same can be said about vivacity. 

I've learned to stay out of certain things because it is just not my business, however, when it becomes my business, you can bet I'll care about it.

To put it another way, I am called to be indifferent about some things but I am also called to be passionate about others. However, I say this cautiously, because I know that I can often be wrong.

An opposite is not a lack of something, it is using the same object in a contradicting way. It is moving over from one camp to the other; it is being on the other side. Granted, life is so complex that even people on the same side do not always agree, but variety is the spice of life and I wouldn't have it any other way.

If you have ever had someone who loves you begin to hate you, you know what I mean. In some ways, you wish they would be indifference. Indifference would be a reprieve.

May Wisdom and Mercy guide my steps.

Trilogy on Size. Part 2: Feeling Small

I ended Part 1 of this trilogy with the question "What do you do when you become the giant?"

Anyone who is reading this blog is likely a giant right now, at least in proportion to something (or someone) else. In the first part, I mentioned how children feel small in comparison to adults, but I'll spend some time giving more examples.

Some of us have personalities that are "larger than life" that may make people feel insignificant. Some of us are in positions of power that affect the well-being of another human being. Some of us are trusted with secrets that are so big that we could ruin one of our friends if we let it out. Hell, I've heard of people ending relationships because the person that they are with is too "good" for them.

It's hard to be around someone who makes you feel small, yet it's even worse when that might be the right way to think about it.

Most of us have a problem with wanting to be bigger; we are all giants when compared to someone else. All of us are huge in some way, and our hugeness scares those smaller than us.

I want to confess the moment where I learned this to be true in my life. I say confess because it is a moment I'll never forget.

When I was a child in daycare, I had instructors who liked to jokingly be rough with the children. It was not uncommon for them to punch us playfully, give noogies, terrorize us with Indian burns, or frighten us with the threat of these things. But I was never afraid of my instructors. We all did it and knew that it was all joke. In reality, we were deeply loved. It was all done in good humor, and our instructors proved that to us by putting bullies in their place and standing up for us when we needed a hero.

This is why I felt myself to be extremely blessed the first time I got hired as a daycare instructor; I wanted to be one of the playful big guys that I loved.

Yet a few months into my job, I got called into the principal's office. My daycare supervisor was sitting there with the principal. Evidently, a little girl had gone home and told her dad that she was scared to go back to school because I had threatened to beat her up. I don't remember doing this, but I would not have been surprised to have said it. As I mentioned before, this rough kind of joking play was what I was raised on. I explained how I would never hurt a child and my boss supported me, but the principal thought it best to remove me from that position because the father had threatened to remove his daughter from the school permanently if I was still there.

At the time, I thought this was an overreaction, both on the part of the parent and the part of the child, but now I don't think so. The truth of the matter was that I had not realized how big I had become. I was 16 at the time yet still thought of myself as a child; who could possibly be scared of me? Ironically, this was also the time when I started to play rugby because I was considered a "big guy".

At the time, I never put two-and-two together and felt cheated out of a job. But I realized how I must have looked to the poor child. I scared a little girl because I failed to realize how huge and menacing I looked to her.

As I mentioned before, most people have a problem with wanting to be too big, but I lived with the desire to want to be smaller. I did not want to matter more, I actually wanted to matter less. When you're big, the world is on your shoulders and a tiny, miscalculated step can crush someone you care about. When you're small, you can't hurt anyone.

For me, it was always better to not take a risk than risk hurting someone. Better to deflect responsibility than to misuse it. Better to have not loved than to have loved and lost. Better to be small and overlooked than large and feared.

But this is a bad response. 

If you have not read East of Eden, you should stop reading this blog and go read that book instead, because it is better. However, if you are alright with me spoiling it a little, read on.

You are in a tough spot when you find yourself relating to Cathy in the book. Cathy is a very cold character (to put it mildly) throughout the story, but her death scene is tragic. She is terrible, cruel, and remorseless, yet as she dies, she remembers her childhood and her imagined friendship with Alice from Wonderland. She reflects on how she always wished she could shrink down with Alice so they could play together, away from everyone else.

From the start of the book, Cathy was described as knowing that she missed something that other people had. Some spark was not in her. This made her very capable to deal with the world, but she never felt like she was a part of it. Survival was her only instinct, but someone who only lives to survive cannot be happy. When she took her own life, it was because she felt overwhelmed with everything that was happening with her. 

The world was too big, and Cathy could not cope with it.

When Cathy's life gets too big for her, she becomes cold and calculating to deal with it, but inside she just wishes that it never got big. She does not want to be responsible. She knows she cannot handle it. Yet this deep feeling of detachment and smallness brings her to do horrible things without realizing they are bad. 

She abandons her newborn children because she is worried that they will shackle her down. On another level, I think she abandons them because she knows she cannot be a good mom.

On one hand, being smaller makes your life easier, but on the hand, it hurts people just as much as the giant.

Growing up is inevitable, but because their is no actual way to grow small, we're sometimes left as giants who feel small. I felt small, which made it possible for me to terrify a little girl. That was my mistake. Cathy wanted to be small, so she abandoned her children without a second thought. That was her mistake.

We all become giants at some point, not matter how much we wish that was not the case. So how do we cope?



*A quick aside: people still have 5 days to do the prose and poetry challenge. You should submit something!

Untitled Prose By Meg

Hey, Tito. It feels weird that you’ve requested guest posts without specifying a topic. Not even an opening question. So my question becomes: 

What is so important to me to say that I have to post it on someone else’s blog?

Tito, what I like about your blog is that it reminds me of my beginning-Torrey days, when sessions were short and ideas were big and the energy I felt was like a kid’s first sugary iced coffee. In Narnia. You have kept pursuing the Logos, combining a child’s innocence with the experienced perseverance of a sage. You’ve kept your wonder.

One of the things that remind me of that joy is missions. I read an account by a friend of mine who visited the Turkana nomads from the desert in the north of Kenya and how she told them about the God of the Christians for the very first time. My heart sang.

The Holy Scriptures teach us that each nation has its own angel (cf. Daniel 10:13). In the Scriptures, “nation” is ethnos, which really means “people group.” Also, each Christian has their own guardian angel, who constantly sees the face of God (Luke 18:11). I thought about this as I read about the purity of heart of the Turkana people and their way of living in the spirit of the Old Testament, so that they were prepared to receive the words of the evangelists. The angel of the Turkana people must be somewhat different than the angel of the Cherokee people, for example—embodying the finest characteristics of these people, even as they change over the years. And that angel must have been interceding for them and leading them towards God.

I wonder, at least, if these extrapolations might be valid. Angels are wonderful.

Word Count - 300