Scraps of Thoughts & Impartial Memories

Song of the Week: “The Wave” by the Colouring

Shalom, inshalla, and go in peace. All religions agree in peace. It’s instilled in our language and that’s a beautiful thing. But all religions have violent adherents. They think peace can be obtained with violence. Some crave peace so desperatley they’re willing to do horrible things to achieve it. Yet this paradox never brings peace. Arrogance, condescension, and violence never create true, lasting peace everyone hopes for. Only humility brings peace. The surrender of the self, the nation, and the ideologues of man. It takes the transformation of the spirit to accept the violence in the world and resist it through pacifism. And that requires humility. Who is the exemplar of this humility? Jesus Christ. They called him the prince of peace, because he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Because no man had greater humility than he did. So that’s who I pray to become closer to. I believe his peace manifests in every humble spirit regardless of what tongue they pray in, doctrine they adhere to, and country they were raised in. He is our savior. He saves the jew and gentile. He showed favor to the samaritans. And he brought peace through humility. A humility that led him to, as the son of God, to lay down his life in brutal fashion on the cross for the redemption of our sin.

After a stroll through the park together we reached the ocean. She had finished her ice cream cone long before I had, as I realize I was talking fervently about what I wanted to accomplish in college. We settled at a bench which overlooked the beach. At that point, my ice cream cone was melting quickly, dripping onto my hands. I turned and looked for a trash can, but to no avail. She took charge and leaned over my body to take a bite in assistance. I encouraged her to continue and and removing the paper lining of the cone we each finished it in another few bites or so. I began licking my fingers like a seven year old and she began to laugh at my childish nature. The ocean was threatening on this night, but I felt safe in her arms. The cool breeze had no invitation in the spaces between us. I put up my hoodie and angled my chest, so she could better lay on me. And then we sat there in the last fleeting moments of light.

There’s such a beauty found in the quietest moments. I hear her faint breathing and feel each slight adjustment her body makes against mine. We hear in the distance the slow dance of the waves that seem to being losing steam as the day turns into night. She then looked at me. Her eyes, despite the dusk, were so clearly in focus. With the last moments of light I leaned over and we began kissing until the light of the day left us and it was just our faces together in the dark. A light that glowed within our hearts kept us in unison. And the cool breeze that enveloped us became irrelevant, as we enjoyed each other. All our past regrets, present insecurities, future fears drifted away with the breeze.

With the flashlight of our cameras we our way back to the parking lot. Sometimes, learning about someone is just done by observing. Sometimes, it’s not asking them a bunch of contrived questions about their past. Arbitrary questions that seek context, but only fill time. I know I always covered things in my answers, dodging over secrets and regrets I wished to be kept hidden. But staring into the ocean that is someone’s eyes and learning of the secretes that lay beyond their horizon, I think it gives you a glimpse into what lies hidden in the depths of their soul. We’re all more alike then we think we are. We got lost in our differences, but in just being and living and sharing the present moment brings one radically closer to someone. That’s my prayer. To be radically present with her. To have patience and sympathy. Love is patient and love is kind.

I am off instagram and snap chat and other social media and I felt more confident socially and at ease when talking to others.

I have been home for the past few days as I am sick with covid and being around my parents I’ve observed a few things about their social manners. I observe amongst my contemporaries a lack of social grace that my parents posses. This being an ability to be radically present. A presence that exudes sympathy and patience. One such example of this social grace on display is seen in the manner in how they approach and depart from social interactions, as ordinary as they may be. I think in what sometimes I observe is a hastiness in my contemporaries which makes me question if theirs a nervousness and rush to sort of “live” in the middle portion of an interaction, the substantive and important part, and there’s no sense in dwelling in any niceties or “cresencdo’s”.

I’m not suggesting there’s a generational social inferiority by generalizing from the few people I’be noticed recently that lacked social grace. I think context to why we behave as we do, especially for my contemporaries in this digital laden world, is necessary to understand. No, the purpose of this observation is not to critique my contemporaries but understand that their is this difference between us and my parents (who do happen to be on the older side) in handling the simple conversations, the passing conversations particularly in the beginning and ending. And perhaps this is due as I proposed to a kind of nervousness that abounds from the transition of digital communication, which in nature can be measured and “filtered”, unlike real life.

I understand when qualifying a generation, generalization are necessary, which do not account for the actual truth, but it is true that we are engaging in more digital communication and that is altering how we behave in real life. What-percentage of our interactions take place online? From a daily perspective, we email, we text, we dm, we do all these forms of communication virtually. How many conversations happen in the context of an iphone app or through a snap message thread? Is this concerning?

I understand inherent in this premise as you could assume already is my concern for this behavior and hope we lessen that percentage and doing so, reinherit those social graces older generations have. Like my Dad, he will given an extended second or two of eye contact without saying anything. I think strong eye contact is weakening my generation. These, my parents, were kids who didn’t grow up online. They didn't; grow up int his hyper connected world where communication can be accepted as two words and an abbreviation with one’s face partially cropped via a snap. It’s becoming impersonal. Are words less meaningful when done in haste instead of the prolonged letter my late grandfather would have written his family back home from the battlefield of Nor-many? Are conversations less substantive. I don’t pretend to know, these are my anchedotal observations. I am concerned about the social implication these last two years have had on the peers and youth of my generation. We didn’t adapt to talk virtually in break out rooms.

Be exciting and give grace to others and yourself. Be like Jesus? Winsome, Personable, and Exciting. And most importantly gracious. He was loving by what he sacrificed. Our is love is measured by what we sacrifice.