It is nearly Valentine's Day and I will be subjected at any moment to defend my dissertation: Valentine's Day is not evil, even for singles. I adore Valentine's Day. It is a day to celebrate your love for someone else, a national day where we recognize how important love is to each of us. I think that says quite a bit. Goodness knows it has to be more lucrative, more joyful, more celebrated than president's day, labor or half the rest of the insanity we get off work. I love Valentine's day. I admit that i am frequently jealous of those in the perfect relationship where they will celebrate Valentine's Day with their loved one and be happy but even still, I am happy.
I suppose I could do what half the single women do which is go out with their girlfriends and raise a toast to the single life, to their rebellion against the institute and pressures of the world to conform and show off a ring. Not happening. If it was them getting together because they were first in each other's world and that is how they wanted things to stay I would be swayed but I'm not.
I have this incredible new book about the railway maps from across the globe. The maps are beautiful ranging from technical to charactures. Some artists render the complicated maps in shapes of alligators to help it be more memorble. THen, naturally, we all remember the most beautiful subway map of all time? With it's straight lines and a focus on the route instead of the geography above, Piet Mondrian's map changed the context of the map and made something that is still used today.
Want to know why the maps of railways are so complicated and awkward? It's because of how the railroads developed. Most the railroads, especially in Europe, were intended for short trips between two not very far destinations. So many of these small little tracks sprung up that it began to make sense to connect them and much as with our golden spike, there was soon a massive empire of wood and steel. That was never the intention but eventually it turned out to be a good thing, it solved numerous problems and built cities were there was literally nothing. In one case a city went from 400 people to over 6,000 in the course of half a decade. It made sense to change the goal and how much was compromised?
On Valentine's Day there will be an assumption that everyone will do what they can do to get a date no matter if that means you scramble back to an ex or ask someone out that you think is beneath you, or perhaps it means going out with someone you don't like as much because your primary partner is busy, perhaps it means sacrificing and going to a party where everyone can be together. People use Valentine's Day like New Years to establish a commitment, a sentence, a status. It becomes about the outcome for some: not being alone, getting a ring. If a good bottle of wine accompanies it though I mean is it truly a loss?
I woke up this morning wanting to have sex. Yes, all of you know my stance on sex and my strong religious beliefs and the aggravation it causes for so many of you who do not want to understand. I started my believe of no sex before marriage well before sex was a possibility. I was quite young and confidently asserted that I wanted my life to be for God and that he should come before all else until the time when I find someone that I am willing to give my life to. This is probably a little confusing but it is important to me. Waking up and wanting to have sex with someone then should be a warning sign to some degree right? Does that mean that I am losing my connection with God? That I think I should go and sleep with all these people? Not really. It simply means something I had admitted for a little while now which is that I don't think God cares. How much of this though was ever about Him.
People often go on these tangents to me about how I have been hopelessly deceived by religion and the Church. In fact, there is a youtube video with a million hits about some poor boy who loves God and hates the Church. He uses all of these lines from the Bible that prove the inconsistencies in Church practice, raises questions about the money that people donate to the Church and a host of other egregious actions. I have no trouble with the Church. I view it as a tool. I don't care if you eat an cheese bagel. The point, to me, of having these rules is that, as I have previously heralded it gives a method of order. I think these monstrous and controlling rules are for our bennefit. You know how people fast to get closer to God? You know how they isolate themselves for years and go without speaking to obtain meditation? I have never believed that God needed someone to do that. But its out there. It's there for us. As a method to help us. As a way for us to feel closer to God. Not because He demands it but because we then know what we are willing to do for God, because we have an idea of His suffering and appreciate him more, because it helps us appreciate the things and people He has given us.
I heard this idiotic argument the other day on a television show about a girl who died and came back to life. She had been the ultimate goodie two shoes. WHen she came back from the dead people asked her what it was like and she responded only by saying there was no God. To her that gave her free reign to do whatever she wanted: sex with everyone and anyone, drugs, even murder. Ok crazy people chill for a second i am not saying anything with that yet. The point to me is that if you are doing these things simply to appease God, well, you have already failed.
If i have grown out of my need to wait until I'm married to have sex than that's that. It has protected me from things I couldn't begin to describe to people. It was something I needed to stay alive. If that's not there anymore than I need to ask why I am continuing to do it. It wont matter to God one way or the other but is it imperative to something else, something, I'm sorry but I can't even tell you.
Did you know that New York didn't want a train? Originally it was planned with the intentions of using canals to transport goods. I find trains to be beautiful, endearing and timeless. So much has changed but there is a timelessness, a sense of might that disappears with every cloud of steam. There is a beauty in the constantly hum of the wheels on the tracks, the weight of the cars and the fading light on the caboose. I suppose it is true that the purpose of the train was always simple, transport objects from one place to another and it has done that. For so long.
Those girls would be happy to leave that table when Mr. Right came in the door. How many would look it? How many of them would let that idea drift off into the fog?
There are these massive maps to dictate where things should go, how things should work and we pretend that if we follow them, or if we do the opposite and ignore everything because we want to rebel, that they will get us somewhere. Either way, we still use them, every day, to tell us what to love, what to do. I am just advocating something a little different. Recognize that we made the maps ourselves. We begged God for the commandments. Moses when back twice right? He needed them. I needed them. I created my own. I heard my own. We all have.
We needed this. All of us did. It is easy to stand on the back of the train car and wave goodbye. It is hard to watch the world drive farther away and stand there in God's true goal. But that is why He gave us maps, why we created rules, so we could find it, so we could stay there, so we could hear it, so we could do it, so we could find our grace.
Happy Valentine's Day, I hope your journey goes beautifully.
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