Today I heard someone say that people in our culture are constantly running on adrenalin. The chemical that our body naturally uses for extreme situations is coursing through us during normal day cycles because we are so busy and so stressed. We set a pace for our lives that our body cannot keep up with unless it exerts every bit of backup energy and power available. The result? We crash. Depression, migraines, physical and emotional exhaustion. When we neglect our spiritual and physical need to stop, to relax, and to reflect we will inevitably come to a place where we have nothing left to give and no amount of trying can fix it. We want the control, the ability to do whatever we want and fix everything, but we cannot fight the natural cycles that our bodies and spirits need to regenerate. This is reflection on my life. I want to do so much, and sometimes relaxing just doesn’t fit in. Of all the things we think we don’t need how did rest get put on the back burner?

Slings and arrows! My snake was found dead today. Rough times on Cherry Street. I’m sure we will recover. 

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Sometime last month:

I can’t convince myself that value is in quality of life, or that happiness will be mine if I work hard at whatever I do as long as I get my share in the end. It seems that our economy, and thusly our institutions and churches, are based on the principal that life is doing and when we accomplish we’re doing what’s best for our world. We’re all a part of this national (or global) community that is striving for knowledge, or power, or survival and when we pitch in we’re worth our pay. This is great if survival and pleasure are my priorities, but they’re not, and as long as I seek to understand the teachings of Christ they can’t be.
    To a person who is really trying to understand Christ the human purpose becomes the pursuit of truth, love, and justice. This leaves little room for my opinion when truth suggests that the world is too complex to have just happened. It leaves little room for sexual indulgence when love demands that that image or object is a real person who has value just as I do. And this leaves no room for my complaining about comfort when justice sees men and women sleeping huddled in the snow less than a block from my apartment.  
    All too often we loose perspective of how strikingly opposed the philosophies of Christ are to what we involve ourselves in everyday. Happiness is fake when our focus is on ourselves. Quality of life, things, will always leave us wanting. Only the pursuit and practice of truth, love, and justice will heal us and make our lives fulfilling.  
    I hold that Christ is our example for teaching and embodying these principles.

“We each have dignity and worth because He made us to reflect his person and nature, regardless of how our contribution to society compares with that of other people” -Harold W. Faw / Psych in Christion Perspective / p. 33

Reflections on marriage:

Everyone told me that it would be crazy and that I would learn so much in the first few months, but this is insane. Out of all the complexities, the joys, and the general craziness, I never could have imagined this. Brace yourselves men; this info is from behind the lines, a secret that women everywhere have been keeping from you: hair curlers have a turbo setting… TURBO!! How sweet is that?? My wife has barley been able to keep me from flying it around the house making jet noises and saying things like “Mr. Spock, bring us to TURBO!!” Life is so good, and now I have a new toy.

Peace Friends,

Aaron Brown

Currently Reading The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical By Shane Claiborne see related

Shane Claiborne:

“I remember hearing about an old comic strip… Two guys were talking to each other, and one of them says he has a question for God. He wants to ask why God allows all of this poverty and war and suffering to exist in the world. And his fried say, ‘Well, why don’t you ask him?’ The fellow shakes his head and says that he is scared. When his friend asks why, he mutters, ‘I’m scared God will ask me the same question’ Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me ‘You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.’”

… burn

Life is hard, and bitter at times, but God is so real, and so good.

---Aaron