Something I wrote on Saturday:

When I am sad, very sad, I often try to remind myself of all that I have to be thankful for as a way of making myself feel better. That practice often works so well that I feel selfish for treating thankfulness in such utilitarian terms. Shouldn't I be thankful for its own sake? How difficult then is it then for me to cultivate the discipline of thankfulness when I am happy, deliriously happy? I get caught up in the sheer pleasure of happiness that I lose sight of who and what might have contributed to that happiness: God, my family, my friends, the dumb luck of having had many opportunities falling in my lap. I take for granted what might withstand a taken-for-grantedness for a while, even a long while, but that ultimately wilts away with time and neglect. Today, I am thankful that I can be thankful, even for a short moment on this gloriously beautiful Saturday Berkeley afternoon.

Last Thursday, in a 1-1/2 hours session at the Free Speech Movement Cafe, I had one of the most productive spurts of work-oriented creativity in a while. There's something incredibly freeing about sitting before a pad of blank paper with several pens, some-multicolored, letting my mind wander in structured serendipity. At some point, I might scan in some of my "mind maps"/"cognitive maps"/scribbles to show better what I'm trying to do on paper that I have yet to pull off on a computer. I'm not one to insist that I'll be able to fully replace paper with digital media such as some researchers are aiming to. I like paper and pens and pencils too much to throw them out. And I skeptical about embedding digital technology into pen and paper fully -- though I'm prepared to be wrong on that front.

While I'm excited about my semi-verbal, visually situated, personally meaningful, even colorful mind maps, I've also been anxious to return to writing on my weblogs and in many other different forums. I have found writing to be an equally important way to sort out what's really going on in my head. There's writing to myself -- and then there's writing for other people. Of course, writing for others can take on many forms, but I have found the free form writing of my wiki and blog to be very liberating. There's an energy there that I often lose in more formal writing.

So what's the bottom line here? I will write more -- that's all I can hope to do. And as I write more, I hope that quality of expression and depth of thought will gradually increase.

A number of developments has pushed me to become more expressive, more courageous in that expression, more honest, more open to new possibilities, including that of being shown to be wrong. It's been a rather vertiginous time -- but it's been like a sweet breeze blowing through the somewhat musty chambers of my life, mind, heart, body, and soul. I am, however, bracing myself for the whirlwind that is surely to follow. This anticipation, mind you, is not pessimism or the thought that all good things must come to an end. Not at all. Rather, it is the anticipation that if I am open to the truth and to life as much as I can embrace, then I will be profoundly unsettled. A lot of days, I'd rather have the gentle breeze than the hurricanes. Yet I need to remember that whirlwinds, though absolutely overpowering, can also be the very presence of God (see, for example, Job 38:1-3: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: 'Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.'"" For someone who is pretty good at questioning others, I need to keep in mind what it might feel to be questioned by the One who knows all.)

There have been times in which I stopped writing on my weblog because I was sad, so sad that I had no energy or desire to communicate in writing to a general audience. Today is the first time in two weeks that I have updated this weblog -- but I'm glad to report that I have written nothing here, not because I've been sad, but because I've been wondrously happy living away from a mental and physical space that makes for good blogging.

It's not that I haven't been writing at all in cyberspace: my wiki has remained active on a near daily basis. Rather, I've just had the energy to pull together a set of coherent thoughts that I wanted to place here.

Maybe this entry marks a return to this weblog. Maybe not. Time will tell.

Lloyd invited a number of us by name to write about The Passion Of The Christ:

A hope (and a challenge?!) -- a few people I would like to see
write in their weblogs about the movie (and not necessarily a response
to the above): mom ... Pepe ... Raymond (a friendly nudge to Raymond:
dude, just write what you feel, without that inner editor/censor. it
might be liberating, it might be frightening, but the point is: it will
be you, and for that glimpse of You, this reader for one will be
grateful.)

I'm working on a response on my wiki -- and as an act of openness and vulnerability (and/or foolishness!) -- I'll let anyone interested see it in process. I've not seen the film yet, so my response is tenuous. When I finalize my response, I'll publish it here on my blog.

For now, let me quote (without comment here) the part of Lloyd's essay that jumped out at me:

The breadth of the crime against children perpetrated by priests is simply, agonizingly, appalling: 10,667 documented cases in the past half century, in America alone. Even taken at face value, that number is harrowing, and difficult to imagine. And can there be any doubt that the actual figure must be higher? I'm not going to say much more on this issue than this: this is most certainly indicative of a systemic flaw in Christianity. It is a cancer in the corpus of Christianity. Whether or not this cancer is inevitable or accidental is not the point; the point is that it exists, and it must be confronted for what it is, an absolute, horrifying evil. How this generation of Christians confronts it will define all our common humanity for the foreseeable future.[emphasis mine]

What I write on this weblog is a small part of what I typically write on the web any given day. My wiki has become the primary place I work out my ideas and dump random thoughts and observations. If you care to follow it, I recommend looking at TodaysNotes. There's a lot there that hasn't been well though through enough to "publish" here. But I'm growing increasingly comfortable with airing the materials on my wiki....

I've found it difficult to speak freely, from the heart, on my
weblog; maybe my wiki will be more freeing. Indeed, it has already
given me space to be messy, tentative, and downright wrong in my ideas
and fact-gathering. At the very least, I've not worried about literary
quality in this space. There is a blend of "high" and "low", really
refined pieces juxtaposed with a pastiche of URLs, cryptic phrases,
uncontextualized observations.

What drives this dichotomy? As Laura pointed out, perhaps it's because I've made a promise on this blog
to be rational, fair, even-handed. I've made no such promise on this
wiki. It's not that I don't embrace those qualities. Rather, I let
myself be freer to take on many other modes of communication -- and
that's what she observed to be missing on my blog. Hmmm....

Oh no, Laura, I managed to misrepresent what you said! How
embarrassing. Yet so appropriate. In my feeble attempt to write a bit
more freely, inspired by what I thought I had heard from you, I
stumbled. Will I now just stop writing now? No -- I must push on, write
first, and ask forgiveness later. Hmmmm....

How was I supposed to get to work today without getting soaked? The answer was simple: avoid the instant tributaries that swept my street and work at home. Driving in might have helped -- but no, I didn't want to keep driving into work. I felt it lame to move a ton of metal just to keep water from soaking my feet. But I don't like wet feet either.

As quickly as the waters gushed outside, a train of ants marched across the carpet of our rumpus room. A preternatural force, no doubt, because they disappeared as quickly as they appeared. I thought first of ant traps, the long struggle of ant wars past. But all the ants wanted was what I wanted -- to stay away from the flood. The rhythm of the ants matched that of the rain. I couldn't stop the latter; why did I think I could stand in the way of the former?

When I write and when I speak, I try to do so with utmost
propriety -- carefully, responsibly, discreetly. When I am unsure about
some matter, I try to calibrate my language to indicate the appropriate
level of uncertainty. I am not rash in my judgement.

So what do I do with that part of me -- even the dominant
half -- that is full of rage, prejudice, passion, irrationality? I just
want to scream sometimes to let loose, to let it all hang out,
unapologetically, without shame even.

I channel that unruliness into...silence.

I'm so tired...let's get on with it.