“You know, I used to have this tendency to project onto girls my fantasies of what I thought they should be like, and it just, didn’t necessarily have anything to do with what they were actually like. It’d just take me forever to figure that out; usually 4 to 5 months.”
“But Sophia was different?”
“Yeah. Well, you know…
…
No, actually, that was pretty much the same deal.” (>>)

Download

• MP3, 34:25, 47MB

Playlist

1. Matthew Ryan – Dulce Et Decorum Est
2. Too Bad Eugene – All at Once
3. Bruce Springsteen – The River
4. Over the Rhine – Hometown Boy
5. the Dropkick Murphys – Boys on the Docks
6. Joseph Arthur – A Smile that Explodes
7. Matthrew Ryan – A Complete Family
8. MxPx – Sweet, Sweet Thing

Notes

• What Doesn’t Kill You

“If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you probably wouldn’t cry at the end of the movie when he drove off the lot testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on and sit in a chair to think about what you’d seen. The truth is you wouldn’t even remember that movie a week later, except to feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who got a Volvo. But we spend years living those kinds of stories and expect life to feel meaningful. Maybe that’s why we go to so many movies, because our real lives don’t feel meaningful anymore.” (>>) [PDF]

“The truth is, the small ethical dilemmas we face are very important. They prepare us to deal with harder, more complex issues with more at stake. Had I followed the leading of my conscience in this small and relatively easy circumstance, I might have found some of the more difficult decisions that I faced in the next few years easier to deal with. Small ethical decisions prepare us for the more important ones. If you can’t stand your ground for the little things, you probably won’t for the big ones.” (>>)

“There are plenty of liberals who talk about poverty and injustice but rarely encounter the poor, living detached lives of socially responsible but comfortable consumption. And there are plenty of Christians who talk about how much God loves the poor, but don’t know any poor folks. There is nothing more sickening than talking about poverty over a fancy dinner.” (>>)

“My eye is still used to searching for her in a crowd. My breath is still used to catching when I see her and the light is angled just right. My body is still used to hers moving next to mine. So the distance — anything short of contact — is a constant rejection. We were together for six months, and in each of those months my desire found new ways to be fueled by her. It’s over can’t kill that. All of the songs I wrote in my head were for her, and now I can’t stop them from playing. This null soundtrack. I’m tired, she’d said, and I told her that I was tired, too, and that I wanted to take some time for us, too. And then she’d said, No, I’m tired of you, and I slipped into the surreal-but-true universe where we were over and I wasn’t over it. She was no longer any kind of here that I could get to.” (>>)

“That’s the Kingdom, Jesus is saying. When it’s here, people don’t recognize it. So they choose this world (a good world!) over the Kingdom that’s here now, so the Kingdom then belongs to the unlikely; the last, least, lost, lonely, left out and unwanted. In other words, the Kingdom of God is populated by grace-rescued, undeserving people. It’s not populated by people who couldn’t and wouldn’t recognize Jesus and his rag-tag movement of losers as the Kingdom in their midst right now. As usual, Jesus is asking if we perceive who he is, and how that changes everything.” (>>)