Dan Byl

As you head into the new year I would like to give you some food for thought, This is a chapter from the book I have just finished. It talks about fear and the affect it has on us and what we must do with it. I know for many new years is a time of anticipation, for some a sense of fear of what is to come and other a chance to take life by the horns and show it who’s boss. So take this chapter and think about what you are going to do when fear begins to sneak into your life.

The life of Pi by Yann Martel

Chapter 56

I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

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But I don’t wanna,

It’s a funny thing how we bask in the fact that God will forgive us, but when we are asked for our forgiveness we give it with a half hearted huff and a puff.

I have been learning about Gods forgiveness, and as a result I have been challenged to address the way that I go about forgiving the people in my life. I have been thinking about the way that God forgives me, he is ready at the to forgive me at the very moment I ask. He reaches out says yes you are clean, here let me put my blood over that spot so that it can’t be seen anymore. He doesn’t have to think about it, he may be hurt by the rejection we have just showed him, but as we do what we do, he is in some way preparing him self to forgive, so that the moment we ask he can give it whole hearted with out a moment of hesitation.

I am also coming to the understanding that the person I really need to learn how to let of the hook is me. I sit in a puddle of self loathing, if not just for some sort of sense of attention. We like attention and so our pity parties are in some way a way of getting attention. I need to claim the blood of Christ and focus on some other thing. There is no sense in dwelling on the problem.

What void am I trying to fill? What attitude do I need to change in order to not act the way I did are the things I need to focus on, not necessarily on the action.

So when it comes to my own life I need to position my self so that in a moment of offense I am going to God so that when the moment comes for me to forgive I am ready. I need to continually prepare my self to forgive so that I don’t dwell on the offense, so that I don’t allow it to grow in my mind or a void to be created between me and the offender.

When Christ taught us to pray part of what he said was “ father forgive us our trespasses just as we for give those who trespass against us.”

Food for thought

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As I sat in Starbucks, I was maybe eavesdropping just a little bit on the two forty something women talk about men and relationships. It was really sad actually, listening to them one was divorced and looking, and the other was married and I would say unhappy.

The married lady was bashing her husband, and the clothes he wore and the haircut he has. He had dyed his hair and I guess the woman thought that this was the sure sign of a mid life crises. She though he was ridiculous, he had gone to the tanning salon and was apparently not acting his age. What does that even mean acting your age. Does it mean accepting your age, and if that happens to be over forty that you are old, and should be trying to retire and working all the time.

North American culture is a trap, you have all your fun when you are young, then you spend your life trying to make as much money as you can so that at some point when you are to old to really enjoy it be looked after and have some semblance of freedom. I know that I have no desire to follow this pattern. Taking on all the responsibilities that we are supposed to have if we are to be grown up in the worlds eyes.

It was sad to here this woman bash her man because he wanted to have fun in his life. She mocked his ideas and emasculated this man in the presence of her friend. These two woman sat there and talked about men and there baggage. I am sorry but when I hear two women sit and talk like they were I have to wonder who has the baggage.

I am glad that I have a woman in my life that wont talk bad about me behind my back. That doesn’t mean that she wont ask friends for help in dealing with my issues and I have many issues. But what it means is that she loves me and wants me to be able to live the life I want and she won’t stop me, she won’t bash my horrible and dangerous ides. She supports me and she loves me and she laughs at me.

And when we treat the people in our lives this way, it is all to often reciprocated.

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I was driving down the road as I do most days, and then I heard it the sound of a siren of the sound of my music. I immediately slowed down and began to move to the side of the road. The ambulance was rushing to the hospital, And then I saw something that really “pissed me off” People were not moving to the side of the road they just kept driving normally. I am not sure if people know this but it is against the law to not pull over when an emergency vehicle is approaching.

It doesn’t matter which direction it is traveling, it is your responsibility and obligation to move your ass over to the side of the road and get the hell out of the way. What would you do if you where dieing and some lunk head didn’t get out of the way to let you through to get the proper medical treatment. I am sorry maybe I am being harsh but this is something that really makes me angry. When I was a kid I remember I would get excited when a emergency vehicle would come down the road because everyone would move over. It made those sirens such a powerful device.

But know maybe it is Hollywood and the car chases where it seems no one ever gets out of the way. In my humble opinion those people should be dragged out of there cars and beat.

Or maybe it is that today’s world really has no sense of right and wrong. When I was a kid it was wrong to not pullover and stop. Now we live in a me, me, me world and we don’t give a second though about anyone else even if there life is at stake. You might think it is just an ambulance or a fire truck its not some ones life. Well just a heads up their job is to save lives and if you where the one who called I know you would be pissed if someone hindered it.

So get your ass out of the way.

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Muh hahahah…. Yes when ever I think of those wonderful promises we make to our selves for tradition sake, I begin to laugh in an evil way. On occasion I take a bit of inspiration from a blog I read regularly www.Stuffchristianslike.net. So the other day when he began to talk about new years resolutions and said why wait to start why not start right now I was glad someone other then me thinks that way.

“There is no time like the present.”

I severally dislike holidays like Christmas and valentines for a one reason in particular, that is the gift giving aspect of the day. You might think I am some sort of masochist but the reason is simple, I don’t like giving things to people out of some sort obligation, I want to give to people out of a want a desire to bless.

There are so many expectations that I don’t want to have to live up to. For instance I bought my wife a bike this summer, because I love her, she didn’t have one and I thought it would be something we could do together. And in my expert opinion of my wife she appreciated a random act of love more then when there are expectations. That of course is not to say she is not always very grateful, its just to say that when it is unsuspected a Tuesday morning in the middle of July it reminds her that I am always thinking about ways to make her life better.

This is all to bring me to new years eve, why do we need a certain day to make a resolution that is usually in the realm of making our selves better people. I will stop smoking, drinking, beating up my kids. I think that most of us don’t stick to our resolutions because we made them in the face of some sort of expectation. And over the years I have learned one thing that if we don’t do something because we want to, we will either fail miserably or we will do it half ass.

We use new years as an excuse to not stick to our resolutions, we use excuses like, it was new years, I was drunk, I only said something cause it was my turn. We use new years as a chance to make our selves look good in the moment in front of a group of friends, but we have no real intention of actually acting on what we just spoke out.

So this year if you make a resolution follow through or don’t make one. All you are doing is practicing not following through if you don’t actually do it.

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These are virtues that “all civilized” people recognize. Prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude.

Prudence is the same as common sense, thinking things out before you do them, and determining the consequences to our actions.

Temperance is knowing your limit, “the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying.” (CS Lewis)

Justice is more then just laws and what goes on in court, it includes fairness, honesty, give and take, and everything that we would expect from a “good person.”

And lastly, fortitude, the guts to walk it out.

Temperance seems to be the most used and abused of these virtues, in the Christian circle. Temperance is usually used in the realm of pleasures, it is knowing your limits, Many religious people have a hard time with this, they tend to do the same couple things wrong.

They tell people what is right and wrong for them, (this is a good thing) and they believe that if something is not right for them, then it is wrong for everyone. (this is bad)

C.S Lewis writes, “…The moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he is taken the wrong turn.” “ A man who makes his money or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as ‘intemperate’ as someone who gets drunk every night.” “Ohhh burn…”

So I guess we are not all as good as we thought we were, we need to find the healthy limits in our lives, and allow each person to do the same for them selves. It is super important to enjoy life. And a huge part of that is finding things that we find pleasure in.

For instance I have a tobacco pipe named Watson, I am sure that some people may be surprised and a little perturbed by the fact that I smoke. But I really enjoy it, I enjoy sitting down to a game of cards and blowing smoke circles with my friends. Today I went for long walk in the rain down by the lake and christened my new hand made wood pipe. The very thought of it still puts a smile on my face.

But there is limits If I were out smoking everyday well, firstly that would be really bad for my health, and second it just would be a little over the top, so for me a couple times a week is my limit, and most weeks I don’t reach that limit. Where others are once a day is there limit, and that’s ok. This is a personal thing if I started telling my friends they are wrong for doing something that they enjoy, and there really is no moral obligation attached to it then I think I am over stepping my boundaries.

We need to ask God what our limits are to be, we can ask him about a verity of things, smoking, gambling, buying clothes, and the list goes on. He will give you a boundary.

You may not like it but he knows us better then we do, and he gives them to us for a reason. The best option is to take them, question them find out why they are there, and make sure that we work with in those lines.

Its like coloring, there are many lines and if we stay in them the picture will turn out beautiful, but if we give it to our friends 2 year old well there is beauty there too but I think you get the idea.

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