I am here in suburbia, the zoo for all things wild.

I wonder if it will hurt, domestication?

Is this what my life is coming down too? Choosing colors for walls, fighting over finances, going to sleep with a mile between the sheets and your other half?

God, if this is your way of punishing me for the greater good, I don't understand.

A life where joy is sparse between regret, betrayal, despair, and depression?

I am not you God, I am your creation and there are some things that seem impossible. I was not created for suburbia, nor was it created for anyone.

Domestication takes the form of the deity, offering safety, conformity, mundane, existence. Life is too short for this, God.

I want a life, to live, not be. Waking up when I am forty to live cannot be my option.

I don't want a corvette, or an mid-life affair with a 20 year old...I want to be a living human being, creating by mandate from my creator.

Where does this leave me? Where am I? Moreover, who am I?

I am a child of the Creator, the Great Artist, who loves me. Thats about all I have...perhaps...that is all I need.

Anything else is fairly debatable in my existence.

God, I am here, wondering and wandering in the world of capitalism, consumerism, and religion, and know that I am nothing without you.

This is all dung, literally and figuratively anyway. It will all fall, it will all die, so what's the point? Why live?

Because not to do so would deny a gift given...Life. We can enjoy, sing, dance, hope, laugh, cry, even hate, because the gift God gave us. God gave it to us and so perhaps I feel guilty and must give it back in the form of my life? Is that what he wants? A life lived in guilty giving? I used to think so...Perhaps, thats why I went into ministry. It was my gift back to God. But I did it more out of obligation rather than joy. Rather than giving freely, I gave grudgingly.

No more. No more. I am going to live this gift out and enjoy what God gave me, paying my life forward, which is paying God forward, which is the whole message of the gospel. Yahweh adores you, Love calls you, Truth beseeches you, everything reconciled. Everything healthy, everything filled with a joy that burns deep.

Now I just have to figure out how to do it.