(Okay I'm gonna take out Zeffy's messages out because at this time he was talking about a friend of his that he was watching get high, but those thoughts are probably personal so this will mostly just be my messages)

back when she was drunk-confessing - "i hurt myself to push you away but you don't go away"
"i don't know what christians think about getting with non-christians but if you love me i can bring you down, i can hurt your faith and once you see enough of me you will start questioning god and if you ever start questioning god i will lose all the hope you give me"
and i was thinking about mark east
and this is where my mind is at right now, this is the place that your words from last night are falling into

Zeffy
i was thinking about god too, because i don't want to feel like the chances some people have of finding happiness are entirely left up to chance

Steven
let's have a great summer. for sure.
haha. i think i pretty much am perpetually thinking about god
this week at mark east we were studying genesis, and charis, the teacher of the class, used the word "tension" to refer to, like
tension between belief and unbelief. tension between the god genesis portrays as good, and the god our lives often portray as malevolent and silent
and i was talking at the final class and said "i think i pretty much exist in a place of tension" and i think that's true
there was one little journal i did like 2:30 AM (New Brunswick time) on thursday, just to write certain moments of that day down so that i'd remember them

there was a baptism in the lake on thursday, super super cold and everyone was huddling against each other. i was beside elly and we had our sides up against each other and then i put my head on her shoulder and closed my eyes and felt that having my eyes closed somehow really helped with the cold. and it was almost meditative, listening to one of the girls' testimonies while feeling elly beside me and i felt like i was falling into something, into a kind of warmth
aaron skipped out on the baptism because he's been really skeptical about anything he sees as christians trying to help each other believe in god. after the baptism i was talking to him and our conversation ended on the idea of spirits, on demons. he said that he wanted to see one, wanted to ask them what they wanted, wanted to ask them if they just wanted to be loved. that night he had a vision where he saw jesus with a spear - the rest is in the journal.

Mark East was good. There are so many moments to latch on to - Avalon with Alix and Elly and the rest, messaging Zeffy, talking with Kelly and Jing about their stories, the bus ride back with Jing. Rebecca's outburst about her grandmother and that period of lament, prayer ministry, telling Jenny about what happened between Janice and me. Walking with God part one, walking with God part two. The first time allowing all the doubts and cynicism to just bleed away underneath how large the sky was. I felt small and my problems felt small and it all felt inconsequential, all my sadness and confusion in response to those questions inconsequential, the sky was so big and it was like this huge mass of clouds and trees lining up down the path on either side. Talking to God in Chinese, thinking about tension and the questions I had - "I basically exist in a state of tension" - conversation with Aaron 1 and conversation with Aaron 2. The first conversation, him asking about original sin and evolution, how there could be a time when man was morally perfect if the beginnings of man itself is completely abstract, imposing some arbitrary demarcation upon the miniscule gradations of a spectrum between the human and the primate. The historicity of Adam. And we talked about love, about God, we talked about whether people can really trick themselves for their entire life that a God existed just so that they'd feel better, or whether they would invariably see through their own ruse at some point or another. Christian community as a means by which we construct that ruse for each other, Mark East as a way to create a bubble where we can make God's existence and goodness seem obvious and self-evident when it is really anything but. I talked about how I had loved people and felt surrounded by love and that even if somehow I lose Christianity and lose my faith I didn't see myself ever losing the belief in some kind of infinity, because I felt that infinity there, and that infinity still hums and whispers and echoes through every moment I experience and likely will experience for the rest of my life. Worshipping with Jing when 耶穌的名 came on. Francis's crying, Gavin's sharing, Rebecca's emotionality, "So then I started thinking about how to kill myself." "You are not the only person here who suffers." "I think we should look at the way we responded to the tension that occurred just now." "Invite others into your tension." Charis crying. "Why does it seem like everyone is always really moved from these retreats, and I myself just don't know what God is trying to show me?" "I think what Chris is demonstrating here is a time when you can become ashamed of your own story. All your stories are beautiful, and your story is one of the most profound things God can give you." "Throughout this week we have seen the goodness of God in Genesis, but we have also seen places where this goodness seems at odds with the pain and confusion a lot of us carry in our lives. But God allows us to rage at him, yell at him, ask him if he's truly good. He allows us to question him. I think that one question that has been often raised is the question of, 'Am I going to trust that God is guiding me towards what is truly good for me, or am I going to rise up and take what I believe is good for myself?' And this is a question that we have to answer every day, with every decision we make. My understanding of the goodness of God is that he will answer you, that he will call out to you, as you stand within that tension, that he will show his goodness to you if you look for him."