I Heard Rumor of a Time When Gas Was Only a Quarter Per Gallon

Five-lane streets at lunch time fill up with cars much like beaches fill to the brim with tourists once summer begins. Judge Ely is no exception, and even in the little town of Abilene, traffic thickens and frustrations facilitate from the motorists sitting behind their wheel. As I head to Little Panda, I am thrust into this very situation, dodging grandma drivers, frowning at speeders, banging the wheel impatiently at that guy who has the nerve to drop speed to 5 MPH before making a turn. For the love of Mother Teresa, why is there a tractor taking up two lanes? Why is my tank almost empty? I filled up a week ago! Man, gas takes a chunk out of a paycheck.

My stomach growls. I could really use a heavy dose of General Tao chicken. Time to bump up the speedometer to fifty. Crap, slow it back down, a cop is in that parking lot. Who is this guy driving 35 mph? Doesn't he know the limit is 40? Switch lanes, car in my blind spot, swerve back. One can never trust the side-view mirrors for this very reason. Why is that Hummer riding my butt? Fight the urge to hit the brakes and take her to court. Uh oh, the light turned yellow, and I'm at that awkward position where it would be one heck of brake fest to stop, but I had better gun it if I'm going to make the light. Pull the trigger. Eh... maybe I should have stopped. Too late now. Please, oh please, let their be no cops. And Nathan said, let their be no cops. And Nathan saw that it was good.

Hit the brakes again, I'm going ten over, and the traffic is picking up even more. I feel like it shouldn't take this long to get to Little Panda. But there's so many cars, all going to different places, all with a different human, a different soul, each soul with different amounts of millions of seconds of a life created by the thousands of relationships of thousands of ancestors who conceived at a specific time in history, a time that is absolutely paramount to creating this exact scenario, because if conception happened even a minute earlier, a different sperm out of the hundreds of millions produced by each male would fertilize the egg of the female, creating a completely different human being, meaning that this 'other' being would have a completely unique agenda, placing him or her in another place at another time, and all of these infinite variables converged into this chaotic moment, the moment in which I am trapped in traffic on Judge Ely.

My view is composed of the car in front of me, and the car to my right. Oh, and the Hummer riding my butt. My mind focuses on the brakes and the accelerator, pushing and letting off at appropriate moments. As the parking lot of United appears on my left, I ease my truck into the turning lane, and I can see farther ahead than I could before. In fact, the turning lane is relatively empty. It's a relief, a brief moment where the chaos ends and tranquility begins, a moment where the noise and traffic of the world falls away. This happens because few travel in the turning lane. And even those who do quickly turn out, back into traffic, back into chaos.

Few walk the road less traveled. The narrow path is, well narrow. The world travels in the wide path. The Gospel preaches on this pretty passionately. If one is to reach Heaven, one must take the narrow road. I hear Heaven is a wonderful place.

Growing up, I had heard this story many times. Growing up, I have always tried to travel the narrow road. In my present, I try to travel the narrow road, though often I turn off of it. Something about the crazy world always pulls me off.

Like a magnet.

For the majority of my Christian faith, I have always viewed the narrow path and the wide path as two separate paths, two paths that are in two different dimensions of spiritual space. It makes sense, where sex and and drunkenness belong on the wide path, purity and soberness belong on the narrow path.

Like oil and water.

I'm beginning to see these two paths in a new light. I see a vision of these paths as separate but intertwined. If we are to be lights unto the darkness, we must be in the darkness for our light to illuminate the darkness. How can we minister to those under the curse of sin, if we are prancing in the meadow with Bambi?

Light the meadow on fire.

Bad company corrupts good morals, but too much good company corrupts good Christians. We must learn to walk the narrow path right smack in the middle of a hydrogen bomb, like driving in the turning lane right smack in the middle of four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic.

But in real life, don't stay in the turning lane... head-on collisions corrupt life. That means they can kill you. This is a metaphor, sort of like you shouldn't gouge out your eye if your checkin' out a fly lady. Just ask for strength, and high-five God for creating such a gorgeous woman. But in all honesty, I think this is a vision of the narrow/wide path story that should be considered. Let us who walk the road less traveled place ourselves in the road most traveled. The way of Jesus isn't an old country road, but rather the yellow stripes dividing the highway.

Just food for thought.

This General Tao is delicious, though I recommend using a fork. Chopsticks may make you look cool, but let's face it, a fork is so much easier and more efficient. How can the nation that invented gunpowder never evolve past two wooden sticks?

A Hobbit's Life for Me

There's a fire burning in my head tonight. I'm metaphorically banging my head against the wall, bedazzled by humanity. You see, I was recently involved in a situation of little importance, but as you know, the little things in life are what irks us the most, and tonight I am irked. Before I begin my tale, I feel like I must clarify that I am not 'picking' on anyone, and really the point of this post is much larger than the minute situation, whose only importance was really to get the wheels turning in my head. So if you read this, and begin thinking, "Nathan, your a jackass," chill, I still love you dearly, and in all honesty, probably love you more than you love me.

Tonight I will be ripping Christians as a collective group, because we all at some point fall under the umbrella of this post's topic. If you are offended, then you get offended too easily, which is another soap box entirely. But for now, sit back, grab a lemonade, and enjoy a classic Nathan-is-right-and-you-are-wrong- rant.

So a couple of nights ago, I was preparing to head out to a friends house to enjoy the company of some beloved friends who I have not seen nearly enough of this Summer. The night's events consisted of cookies and taquitos and an epic hearts tournament. I love hearts, but I'm not very good. I only have one speed, and that's running the tables, because I go big or I go home. I found myself going home most of the night. Let me back up. I'm getting off on a tangent. Before said party, I received a text from one of my esteemed friends. It said something along the lines of, "Hey guys, in order for a few people to come tonight, I promised them that y'all wouldn't smoke, so yah." To the casual reader, this may seem like a small deal, and I admit that it really wasn't a problem. The guys and I enjoy an occasional smoke on our distinguished pipes, and most of our friends know that. Not all of my friends enjoy smoking, which is perfectly fine. It's not for everyone. The reader must, at this point, understand our habit. I will re-emphasize the word occasionally, which basically means a few times a month. We don't smoke cartons of cigarettes a day, we smoke a few bowls of pipe tobacco, which is much more pleasing to the olfactory sensors that cigarette smoke is. The next important thing to know is that when we smoke, we do so outside, giving those who choose to have beautiful lungs the option to converse indoors where the air is clean. We do our thing, while also being respectful to those who don't like smoke. So what's the problem?

Here's the problem. The problem is that I have 'friends' who are placing conditions on our friendship. And not even good conditions. It would be one thing if we were smoking stogeys indoors, while sipping scotch, and playing cards, where the smoke would suffocate our more tender guests. But that's not what we do at all. We take our business outside. So, by careful calculations, this leads me to believe that the issue isn't the smoking, (how could it be? said guests are not even around the smoke), but rather the idea of smoking. Dun dun dun....... Like I stated earlier, I'm cool if you don't like to smoke. I don't enjoy yoga. But if it's the stigma... woa buddy. Some of my readers know how I feel about stigmas.

As I also mentioned earlier, this story is only a setup to a much bigger picture. The above scenario is meaningless really. But when the issues of the above scenario play out in Christianity, which they do, problems arise.

There's a lot of non-believers in this world. A compelling reason that I have heard way too many times is that NBs (non-believers) say that they can't follow a people who are so judgmental. When us Christians hear this, we scoff and say, "Pah, that's Ludicrous! We accept everybody for who they are!" Bullshit. No we don't. I bet there's a Christian reader of my blogs right now judging me for cussing. Get over it! I'm a nice guy! And it's the little things that set NBs (and me) off. Things like, "I can't hang out with you if your going to smoke." That right there is already batman-signaling your ignorance and unacceptance of a person, and when that person is a NB, they are associating Christianity as a bunch of bigots who think they are too righteous for the rest of the world. Why are Christians so afraid of nutting up and getting their hands a little dirty? For goodness sake, have you read about the places Jesus went?? For those who shudder at the thought of consuming a single drop of alcohol, NEWSFLASH: Jesus made gallons of wine (which has alcohol ;). And not your everyday-run-of-the-mill wine. He made some damn good wine, causing the guests of the party to comment on how the best wine was saved for last. I wasn't there, but I'm pretty sure there was more than one person who was hammered at that party, and yet we find the Son of God right in the middle of this crowd. What if Jesus was like, "Well, I'd come celebrate your Holy union, but.... if there's gonna be alcohol...yah I'm gonna have to skip out. If you were as perfect as me, you'd understand."

Language is another thing that Christians OBSESS over. But do you ever stop and consider why certain language is even bad? We lose our temper and say a curse word, and we better pray because we just sinned, but if we lose our temper and say a replacement word like frick or dang or crap, then we're safe. Shouldn't it be obvious that the real sin is that we lost our temper, not the specific combination of letters we strung together?

As Christians, it is high time that we stepped outside of our little worlds, trekked to the land of Satan, and looked back at our world from the point of view that everyone else sees it. Kind of like standing on the moon. Next time there's a wild party, go and have a beer or two. Don't get smashed, but get your hand a little dirty. Blend in, mix, show everyone that you except them, rather than saying that you do. You'll make a lot more progress in the long run, and gain the respect of NBs. If you do end up getting struck by lightning, my bad, that's totally on my soul. If you don't like smoke, deal with it for the sake of Christ. Nut up or shut up I say. DC Talk says that the greatest single cause of atheism in the world is Christians. Let's change that. Say a curse word today, talk to a person who would tarnish your perfect reputation in the eyes of your fellow bigot christian friends. It's funny, that we look at the material world and shun them for caring about the way they look, but really, we care about the way we look, so much so that we'll skip out on fellowship for the sake of not getting any dust on our shiny mirrors.

Have a sketchy day for Christ.

Suhbadicool

Hi.

I have not posted a single blog this summer. I apologize. I've been a busy man. That's not really true, I guess I'm fishing for excuses for my long absence away from Blogger.com. There's many things that I wish to say, but that is not for this post. This is simply a welcoming party to my revamped sight! Welcome to 'I Thought About a Burning Fire'. I got tired of the name 'The Enclave', because, although it was the birthplace, The Enclave just doesn't exist anymore, and one can't live in the past forever. I decided to move on, and thus landed on this title. Think of it as a child hitting puberty. It's the same mind, the same words, just.... older? Maybe this is a terrible analogy. The title comes from one of my favorite songs, 'About a Burning Fire' by Blindside. I find the title fitting because often as I write, my thoughts are difficult to decipher, not due to the complex nature, but rather to my ineptitude at untying knots. It's like a burning fire in my head. Cool, huh? So that's about all for this post. Here's to more posts in the near future. Enjoy the fiery colors. Peace.