Sometimes I have multiple windows open on my computer, including many internet ones and other programs on my computer, like iTunes. Sometimes many or all of these windows display music sites or have music-playing capabilities. Sometimes, I will forget about them, and sometimes one will somehow just randomly start playing music.

You have no idea how much joy this gives me, though occasionally it is extremely startling.

I have so much music in my iTunes that I can’t possibly listen to all of it, and I haven’t actually heard all of it. To cure myself of this, I put the entire library on shuffle most of the time. Within 10 minutes, I will stumble across something that I haven’t heard and immediately love. Who knows how I came by the music in the first place– all I know is it’s incredible that I never discovered it on my computer before.

That gives me an immense amount of joy, too.

It wasn’t with much excitement today that I accurately labeled myself a “procrastinating Christian.”

It’s that feeling where you know you have tons to do–There’s all that homework, and the messy kitchen, and the living room floor because you have people coming over, and what is the source of that awful smell?!–but there is always something to do before you can get started on all that. But, at least you’ve made the list of things to do, right? I’m not sure whether we consciously or subconsciously decide not to do all that work, but somehow it just never gets done. Am I right?

There is so much that I need to do and figure out before I could do something like devote myself to a God about whom I know relatively nothing. It would be like ordering a bride in the mail! Still, the longer I wait, the more I feel like a seamstress (in keeping with the mail-order bride analogy). I feel like I’m going to expire for God. …And now I’m resisiting the urge to go for a cheese metaphor.

Anyway, I know what I’m waiting for. I have zillions of pseudo-answers lined up for when people ask me why I haven’t accepted God into my life yet and confirmed myself as a Christian. They are all true, because there are SO many things I’m waiting for, but there is only one for which I would ignore all the others. I am torn, knowing that I will be forever waiting in vain, but knowing that I can never turn my back on the remote possibilities, and also knowing that the remote possibilities would be less remote if I was a confirmed Christian.

It all comes back to Love, which apparently I am not familiar with anyway. If I knew God, then I would know Love. If I knew Love, perhaps I would know God. Which comes first?!

You know that part of “The Polar Express” where they’re trying to slow the train down before it hits the lake of ice, but the piece of metal flies out of the brake lever, so they can’t stop the train? For what seems like minutes, they grasp and grasp for that piece of metal, while it slips out of their fingers, down a grate on the floor of the train, down a man’s throat, until finally it is coughed up… only to fly out of the train’s window and puncture the ice, causing gashes in the surface that nearly signal the end for every passenger.

That little tiny piece of metal, and that moment where they’re so close to losing it… that’s what Love feels like to me, too much of the time. It’s exhilarating, and it’s definitely a rush of adrenaline, and that piece of metal is so precious and valuable… but it never really feels safe. It seems like it’s always something I’m trying to grasp, something that I need to hold on to but just can’t seem to get a grip.

I can’t remember the last time I really felt safe in Love, but I do know when it all fell apart. Ironically, it’s one of my most meaningful and cherished memories. At that time, I learned what it would take to fully be able to relax into Love and let it be my life.

Why is it so difficult to take that challenge? I hate feeling like I’m missing something, or like I’m too inadequate to be able to hold on to it. That’s not the way this is supposed to work. From a Christian perspective, if God is Love, and God made man in His own image, are we Love? I know we are capable of Loving and we are meant to Love, but what in the world does it take to access that? Why do I feel like by being born, I was given the key to this secret vault and told to open it and use what is inside to create and spread Peace, but I can’t use the key or access the vault or something?

WHY do I feel like I’m missing something?!

And why is it that whenever I receive a gift from people who mean so much to me, I feel like I’ve been given a clue?!

I want to give clues! I want to be a strong person who knows how to tell people to Love!

__________________________

Trust me, I know what this allegory is about, and it’s not Harry Potter. Or the Matrix. I wish it were that simple!

Sunday, May 27, 1979

The past ten years we noticed everything we wished came true in its own time, good or bad, one way or the other. We kept telling each other that one of these days we would have to get organized and wish for only good things. Then our baby arrived! We were overjoyed and at the same time felt very responsible. Now our wishes would also affect him. We felt it was time for us to stop discussing and do something about our wishing process: The Spring Cleaning of our minds! It was a lot of work. We kept finding things in those old closets in our minds that we hadn’t realized were still there, things we wished we hadn’t found. As we did our cleaning, we also started to notice many wrong things in our house: there was a shelf which should never have been there in the first place, a painting we grew to dislike, and there were the two dingy rooms, which became light and breezy when we broke the walls between them. We started to love the plants, which one of us originally through were robbing the air from us! We began to enjoy the drum beat of the city which used to annoy us. We made a lot of mistakes and still do. In the past we spent lots of energy in trying to get something we thought we wanted, wondered why we didn’t get it, only to find out that one or both of us didn’t really want it. One day, we received a sudden rain of chocolates from people around the world. “Hey, what’s this! We’re not eating sugar stuff, are we?” “Who’s wishing it?” We both laughed. We discovered that when two of us wished in unison, it happened faster. As the Good Book says — Where two are gathered together — It’s true. Two is plenty. A New Clear Seed.

More and more we are starting to wish and pray. The things we have tried to achieve in the past by flashing a V sign, we try now through wishing. We are not doing this because it is simpler. Wishing is more effective than waving flags. It works. It’s like magic. Magic is simple. Magic is real. The secret of it is to know that it is simple, and not kill it with an elaborate ritual which is a sign of insecurity. When somebody is angry with us, we draw a halo around his or her head in our minds. Does the person stop being angry then? Well, we don’t know! We know, though, that when we draw a halo around a person, suddenly the person starts to look like an angel to us. This helps us feel warm towards the person, reminds us that everyone has goodness inside, and that all people who come to us are angels in disguise, carrying messages and gifts to us from the Universe. Magic is logical. Try it sometime.

We still have a long way to go. It seems the more we get into cleaning, the faster the wishing and receiving process gets. The house is getting very comfortable now. Sean is beautiful. The plants are growing. The cats are purring. The town is shining, sun, rain or snow. We live in a beautiful universe. We are thankful every day for the plentifulness of our life. This is not a euphemism. We understand that we, the city, the country, the earth are facing very hard times, and there is panic in the air. Still the sun is shining and we are here together, and there is love between us, our city, the country, the earth. If two people like us can do what we are doing with our lives, any miracle is possible! It’s true we can do with a few big miracles right now. The thing is to recognize them when they come to you and to be thankful. First they come in a small way, in every day life, then they come in rivers, and in oceans. It’s goin’ to be alright! The future of the earth is up to all of us.

Many people are sending us vibes every day in letters, telegrams, taps on the gate, or just flowers and nice thoughts. We thank them all and appreciate them for respecting our quiet space, which we need. Thank you for all the love you send us. We feel it every day. We love you, too. We know you are concerned about us. That is nice. That’s why you want to know what we are doing. That’s why everybody is asking us What, When and Why. We understand. Well, this is what we’ve been doing. We hope that you have the same quiet space in your mind to make your own wishes come true.

If you think of us next time, remember, our silence is a silence of love and not of indifference. Remember, we are writing in the sky instead of on paper — that’s our song. Lift your eyes and look up in the sky. There’s our message. Life your eyes again and look around you, and you will see that you are walking in the sky, which extends to the ground. We are all part of the sky, more so than of the ground. Remember, we love you.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono

New York City

PS. We noticed that three angels were looking over our shoulders when we wrote this!

From the back page of The New York Times
Sunday, May 27, 1979

So you say you want a love song

One to move your feet onto

I’ll sing a real life tune

So you say you want a love song,

One to trick your girlfriend with

I hope my little number will do….

Lets stop our busy lives awhile

And think of the many many people

Across the many miles of earth

That have no clothes, no food to eat.

And what about the air we breathe,

to the food we eat,

Are filled with things that kill,

Our deaths are closer than we think.

Well another silly love song could make me sick

About a heart broke emo rocker and his messed up chick

Are we so deaf dumb and blind we can’t see the candlestick

Burnin down

Wakes up on her Monday morn

Its just another cup of coffee

In her run down place called home

She makes her way out to the car

The radio blares to drown

All the many many faces in her life

That at one time cared

But they have all moved away and gone.

Now to work she goes

Removing all her clothes

For all the perverse older men in our sickly generation

But they don’t, no, they don’t give a damn

Well another silly love song could make me sick

About a stupid emo rocker and his messed up chick

Are we so deaf dumb and blind we can’t see the candlestick

Burnin down, it’s burnin down

Said open your souls, said open your minds

Another silly love song could make me sick

I could say hello but I want a conversation

I could love till I’m dead but how long will I live

Till I’m down

We’re burnin down

I’m developing my winter music playlist. So far, it consists of Bon Iver, Real Estate, and Iron & Wine. I’m also invoking the Muse of Paste Magazine to inspire it. What should I add?

I have a conundrum for you.

The other day in church, the pastor asked, “Did you ever think about what the world would be like if God had not made music?” I had, in fact, thought about it, but this time was different.

I wonder, do you think God made the concept of music first and then humans, so that we could create it and enjoy it, or do you think he made humans and included in us the capability of making and enjoying music?

I can’t decide whether “waiting on the world to change” is pessimistic or optimistic–not as a song, but as a concept. When my mom first heard the song, she did not approve. She said, “why would we just wait for the world to change? What an odd thing to promote. You’d think people would get up offa their asses and actually do something themselves.” Okay, she didn’t quite say that. Anyway I told her, in absolute defense of John Mayer, that the song was supposed to be ironic. John Mayer was trying to tell everyone that we shouldn’t just sit around all the time and wait for the world to change. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I guess I like it.

The point is, it’s an odd phrase. Pessimistic because regardless of what John Mayer might have meant by it, it sort of implies that we’re at a complete loss as to what to do or how to accomplish what we think needs to be done about our world. But it’s optimistic because at least we know something needs to be done, and we know that change is good.

That optimism is hard to find lately. I’ve been noticing with my friends that sometimes we tend to only bond when we’re complaining about the same things or bitching together. When we agree, we agree and leave it at that. I hate it. I’ve even brought this up to a couple friends, who agreed that they found it frustrating as well, and then we started bitching some more about it.

What is wrong with us, that we can’t find joy in even the lowliest sparrow, and share that joy with others?

Why is it so easy to find things to complain about, when really there is an exponentially greater number of things that we could choose to find fascinating, outstanding, awesome (in the REAL meaning of the word), or touching?

Why is it that in thinking about this problem, all I can do is blame some people (like the media, for only reporting on negative news and issues)? Current events can be depressing, but why have we trained ourselves to never look at the subtexts? For instance, The Copenhagen discussions that have been going on about global warming– for a while, we were learning the facts about what was getting done. Suddenly the conference is over, and all we can do is talk about what didn’t get done. People don’t realize that we are so lucky to have come out on the other side of the conference with even more questions and topics at hand. For one thing, we’re strengthening our international relations. But also, it is so easy to forget that science is all about asking questions! When we did science experiments in middle school, the goal was to prove our hypothesis correct through our experiment. In high school, the goal was simply to explore more about our hypothesis. If it turned out to be right, we needed to know the variables that could actually make it true or false in difference cicumstances. If it turned out to be incorrect, we learned how to ask more questions to narrow down what might have gone wrong, what we needed to improve on, and what else we could consider for the future. The latter was so much more of a learning experience than simply proving ourselves right through the same steps that had been performed countless times before.

Why are we so afraid of asking questions and being unsure of ourselves? I do not operate under the belief that ignorance is bliss, but rather, that the road to enlightenment is paved with doubt, and the only way to recover from that doubt is to be optimistic. And the only way to be optimistic is to have hope. The only way to have hope is to have faith in humanity. The way to have faith in humanity is to have faith in yourself, as a member of humanity who will make a difference. And the way to have faith in yourself is by being the change that you wish to see in the world.

Be.Love.

So, Verizon is like, “OMG look at our map! It is so much more covered than AT&T’s!”

And AT&T is like, “PSHH, Verizon doesn’t even HAVE a map!”

And T-Mobile is like, “Well, if you want to sing out, sing out, and if  you want to be free, be free, cuz there’s a million things to be, you know that there are…”