judging by appearance

In general, it's better to be positive than negative, but sometimes negativity can be refreshing, and sometimes positivity can be obnoxious and shallow. You know those people who are just very honest when everyone else is trying to be polite....I like that. 

The book of the Bible that is most like this is Ecclesiastes. It's like, everything is meaningless.....I've tried all these things to make me happy - to fulfil me - and nothing does. It's just refreshing to read a message like that in the Bible of all books. 

I was part of a Christian group for many years where joyfulness was obligatory. You were judged according to how joyful you were, among other things. Of course, no one can really know how joyful you are, so you were judged by how joyful you appeared to be. So, to avoid getting into trouble everyone was always trying to appear to be joyful. We justified it with the idea that that was what we were meant to do - that was God's will. We weren't being fake. We were denying ourselves as it teaches you to do in the Bible. We made ourselves appear to be joyful, whether we felt like it or not. 

The irony is that forced joy is the very definition of fake joy. Real joy and love and faith are always based on freedom of choice. Real faith doesn't come from a refusal to countenance any doubts whatsoever. Being positive is not about rigidly refusing to be negative about anything. Real repentance is not about eschewing any kind of struggle completely. 

satisfaction

It's a good thing to do what you really want to do in life - to follow your dream and to do the things you enjoy and are passionate about. But you can't do those things all the time, and actually, you wouldn't want to. Life involves a range of experiences and feelings. A lot of satisfaction and fulfilment in life comes from doing things you don't feel like doing or things that are difficult. 

12

According to AA and other twelve step programs, you can't get help or help yourself with your problem until you admit there's a problem. Why is it so hard for us to admit it? I think it's because we feel that it reflects badly on us. We don't want people to think there's something wrong with us. We don't want to appear weak. I don't think it's just about what other people think of us though. It's a perception issue. People really don't see that they have a problem. 

Although I am an alcoholic, and I will never drink again, I've never been to AA, but I went to a mental health twelve step support group called GROW, which really helped. I learnt a whole different way of thinking from what I was used to. What I appreciated was the way that it provided an environment where it was normal and acceptable to talk about things that are normally pretty taboo. 

One of the big lessons I learnt from my involvement with the group was that truth is not self-evident. There are a lot of lies that we just accept as true simply because they seem true. That was the big lesson - a lot of my thoughts and perceptions were straight up lies....not just a little bit distorted, but actual lies. 

escape

At times I have wanted simple answers to important questions but, ultimately, I'm glad that the answers aren't simple. I was part of a group that wanted to simplify the message and what it meant to be a Christian. It's kind of exciting and refreshing at first to concede to that influence. It's a known challenge. Ultimately, it was a kind of enslavement and deception. It wasn't true. Thank God. When I was part of it, I thought that this is reality. It was a small, constrained world. But I thought, well, God made this world and decided on the rules, so I need to accept them. I thought that I would be in that world for the rest of my life and beyond because leaving was unthinkable. 

It was liberating when the reality of my life was no longer confined to those boundaries and rules.

Even though I no longer agree with them, I don't regret my time with them because it was part of my journey. My commitment from the start was to God, and that remained the case, and I think the more I sought God and pursued my relationship with God, the more that groups rigors and processes seemed empty, soulless, mechanical - not 'of God'. Drawing closer to God drew me away from them. 

winning

We all have our own world that we live in, and no one can touch that world. We face challenges, we overcome, and the victory is ours. A victory is not a trophy or a certificate that you frame, it's something that lives in you - something that you embody, permanently.

langue

In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco talks about how medieval monks subverted the text of the Bible through the illustrations they drew in the margins. This works in two ways. Firstly, the margins frame the text and framing augments meaning. 

Secondly, margins are narrow which means that the meaning conveyed within them is concentrated. It's like when you take a small portion out of a picture, that portion somehow becomes more vivid and vibrant. 

The same principle applies to language. If you have a passage of writing, and you take out phrases and sentences, they have more potential meaning than they did when they were part of the passage. When they were part of the passage, they were just a vehicle to deliver the meaning of the passage. The reader hurriedly moves through them. Nothing interesting or noteworthy happens. But when you take them out of the passage, their meaning is, first of all, concentrated, because, instead of having to give your attention to the whole passage, you're now attending to these few words. 

Then also, there's a lot of creative potential now. You could put the words or phrases with other words or phrases that they wouldn't normally go with, thus creating new and interesting meanings. 

fire

Something you don't see a lot in TV shows or movies is people who are idealistic and passionate about things. We see a lot of Machiavellian characters whose passion and interest are devoted solely to getting and exercising more power. 

In a novel, if there are a few short statements of true, well-expressed passion, the whole book will center itself around them and they will echo beyond the book.

This kind of passion is not hype, bluster or anger. That's often what we mean when we talk about passion, but you see that sort of passion all the time. You see it every day in politics. People try to show that sort of passion when they make speeches, because it's impressive. They do it for effect. But this other sort of passion can be expressed without raising your voice or even sometimes without speaking because it's not about effect. It's about truth and substance and conviction.