Matt W Cook

writer.former fundamentalist.christianly fellow

Category: musings

September 19, 2012

Getting Things Done

I’m a busy dude.

But only because I want to be, so that’s nice.

Talk to me sometime.  You’ll discover that I’m full of energy.  I’m motivated.  Ambitious.  I want to get stuff done.  And I want to do it well.  The things I do, I want to be the best at them.

I’m a husband and a father, and I feel threatened by folks who seem to pull those jobs off better than I do.

I’m a writer, and I get chills of joy when I read a published book that’s worse than what I’m writing and chills of agony when I read something that I know is better than what I can do.

I’m a preacher and there’s nothing better than seeing a crowd of people inspired to love more.

I’m a student and I want to write essays that make the professor smack his forehead and say, “Wow, I never looked at it in that way before!”

I’m a friend, and I love everyone I know and want them all to know it and feel empowered through their friendships with me.

I want to excel at all these things, and I don’t really think it’s unreasonable.  But, wow, sometimes I just tank out.

I’ve never been the most organized person.  I leave things to the last minute and I get emotionally crushed under the knowledge of all the things I’m trying to pull off.  It’s not that I have too many things on my plate.  It’s just that I’m not so good at organizing my plate.  Stuff keeps falling off and I keep making messes all over the table.  My writing suffers, I lose touch with friends, I miss important family things.

All this is to ask, how do you do it?  How you you keep yourself on track with all the life-roles you want to excel at?  How do you organize your time?  How do you organize your emotional and mental energy?  How do you keep the things you love from falling through the cracks?

Tell me, people of the interwebs.  What solutions help you to get the things done that you want to get done?

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September 17, 2012

Diversity

Diversity of culture and opinion is like genetic diversity in a population. Without it, people become stagnant and get all sorts of nasty, cancerous ideas.

Without diversity, a population has very few new and innovative ideas. Generally they just continually repackage old ideas, try to put newish labels on them, and pass them around to each other. This is why those fundamentalist religious groups always seem to be two or three decades behind the rest of the population their in. Because those kinds of places don’t mix well with people who think and act differently than they do. And the more closed-minded the religious group, the further back in time they seem to be. Walk into your local Gospel Hall if you don’t believe me. You’ll feel like you’re in 19th century Scotland. Cool singing, but pretty messed up ideas about gender roles, science and how to live life.

That’s one of the reasons I love where I’m living now. I used to live in Thorncliffe Park, a predominately Islamic area. A place where everyone kinda dressed and acted and thought the same. A place where there was not much in the way of new, ricky ideas. A place where most people did what they did so that everyone else would approve of them.

But when the population is diverse, people feel empowered to try new things. SInce everyone is so obviously unique and living life the way they think it should be lived, there is not much pressure to conform to a pre-established pattern. You’re free to live life according to your own conscience, instead of the conscience of some dead role model or abstract system.

And whose conscience should you be living according to anyway, if not your own?

I’ve lived in Toronto for almost four years. But only now am I beginning to see how wildly awesome this town is.

So here’s to diversity. I hope and pray we get butt-loads more of it and that it spreads to all those neat places where it hasn’t been welcomed before. It may be uncomfortable for a lot of people, but without it we become cultural inbreds. Slow to accept change and ill-equipped to deal with real life.

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September 4, 2012

A Sense of Life

There is an intense sensation that I’ve found only in a few places.  A sensation of deep reality.  Of trueness.  A sort of clarity of life that reminds me that I’m alive and so is everyone around me.  Earthy.  Dirty.  Wondrous.

I first noticed it in Pakistan.  I had it every single day.  It was as if every bit of artificial life was taken away and nothing but the raw, pulsing trueness of life remained.  I think it was this sense that made me love Pakistan so much.

I have felt it in other places, too.  Sporting events.  Protests.  Certain types of bars.

I had expected it to be in Thorncliffe.  After all, Thorncliffe was supposed to be mini-Pakistan, wasn’t it?  I was surprised to find that Thorncliffe didn’t have it, though.  It was wonderful to live there for four years, but the spark wasn’t there.

But it seems to be on Bloor.

I took my bike down to the coffee shop near our new place.  I could feel it there.  The dangerous, moving life.  The sense that everyone I see is interesting and beautiful and full of so much potential love and power and happiness.

I’m going to enjoy living here.

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August 27, 2012

Insatiable Curiosity

I’ve been looking over the amazing photos that the Curiosity Rover has been sending back from Mars.  This photo is my favourite so far.  Go look at it.

As I looked at this photo, zooming in to check out the rocks and gravel covering the ground, it suddenly hit me that we’re on our way.  The solar system is not nearly as big as it used to be.  Human creativity, curiosity and ingenuity are all so great that we will never be satisfied with these photos.  As amazing and wonderful the rovers are, they are not good enough.  It’s great that we can analyze the molecular structures of rocks on another world, but we won’t be satisfied until we hear the crunching of Martian gravel beneath our feet.

We’re going to go to Mars someday.

The first man to walk on the moon is dead.  That’s significant in so many ways.  We have been able to leave this planet and walk on other worlds so long that the first one to do it is no longer with us.  We’re not really new to this anymore.  Now it’s no longer a race to perform the miracle of setting foot on another world, it’s just the work and wait until we finally do it.  We’re going to do it.  No question.  And that’s very exciting to me.  I only hope I’m still alive when we finally get there.

What a wonderful universe we live in.  I’m so thankful that we are a curious species.

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August 23, 2012

Here Goes Nothing

First off, it was chilly.  It’s hard to do anything in the water while it’s chilly.

The whole group of us paddled to the jumping rocks anyway, even though I made it clear I wasn’t going to jump.  The lowest rocks were seventeen feet above the water and I don’t do heights so well.  But it’s always fun to watch my brothers leap off the rocks.  I usually don’t like being a spectator, but when it comes to flinging my body off a cliff I’m content to be the armchair athlete.

My son, it turns out, is not nearly as content.

His jaw hung open when he saw my brothers flying through the air.  He turned to me.

“I want to do it,” he said.

“You’re only seven,” I told him, as if he didn’t know.

“I’ll wear a life jacket.”

I was about to forbid him.  I really was, I promise.  But that most interesting of all adverbs gave me pause.

Why?

Why tell this young dare devil no?

Why tell him to act his age?

Why refuse his desire to push himself beyond his limits and seek the special place where the magic happens?

Because the magic always happens on the edge, or just over it.  It always happens in those places that we fear to go.  Out of the zone of comfort and familiarity.

“Sure, Joe.  Go for it.”

Five minutes later he was at the top of the cliff, inching to the edge and shaking all over in fear and excitement.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You can do it,” I called.  “It’ll be fun.”

He put his toes on the edge and gazed down.

“Here goes nothing,” he called.  And he pushed himself off.

He hung in mid air for a moment.  His arms were outstretched and waving.  His feet floated in the air beneath him.  His face wore the look of joy and terror and life.

He was where the magic happens.

Here goes nothing.

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August 10, 2012

Sliding Up

All my life I was cautioned against doing things, not because those things were bad, but because they could have led to bad.

Don’t drink because you might become a drunk.

Don’t watch Nova because you might become an atheist.

Don’t have sex because that could lead to dancing.

Don’t open your mind because your brains may fall out.

Seeds of fear, sown from childhood on.  Not from my parents, interestingly enough, but from teachers and preachers.  You’ve felt them.  You’ve probably sown some yourself.  People live in constant fear and refuse to do things they’d like to try purely on the grounds of what they may want to try next.  Fear of the slippery slope.

But can’t the slippery slope go the other way, too?

If I walk to work instead of drive, could that lead me to a healthier lifestyle?

If I cut down on my clothing expenses, could that lead me to a less materialistic attitude?

If I write up a cheesy scene about a guy on a bus, could I write something bigger some day?

I’m not afraid of the slippery slope anymore.  I used to be.  I’d turn the channel whenever a science show came on, fearing I might become an atheist again and go to hell because I guess God hates it if you think the universe is as old as it looks.  I’d stay away from booze because, even though I have a normal person’s self-control, I figured I might become a raging drunkard.  I said ‘no’ to many good things, purely on the grounds of where they might possibly maybe lead me in the future.  It was a stupid fear.  A self-destroying fear.

I think the slippery slope concept is true, but mostly in the opposite way.  You want to excel at something?  Start it.  The slope will carry you.  Because your spirit wants to soar.  The universe wants to hear what you have to sing.  Just start sliding.  Walk to work one day a week.  Get up early to pray or meditate for a couple minutes.  Write that cheesy bus scene that’s been in your head.  It’ll take you somewhere.

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August 8, 2012

The Gravity of Gravity

We’re getting ready to start home schooling our kids.  This gives me a great excuse to buy all manner of geeky science toys to play with.  A few weeks ago my kids were having a blast playing with magnets, trying to figure out what is affected by magnets and seeing the beautiful patterns iron filings can be put into.  We all experienced that awe of seeing something invisible have a strong effect on the things we can see.

I was thinking about that as I walked to the bus yesterday.  And a thought struck me so hard that I stopped walking and looked down at my feet.

Gravity.

Every single second of my life, this massive ball of matter is pulling at me, trying to suck me inside its centre.  All the time.  I’m plastered to its side.  I can’t get away from it, though it’s completely invisible.  I stood there for five minutes, awe-struck.  There were people at the bus stop staring at me.  I didn’t care.

“Look at this!” I wanted to yell at them.  “We’re all stuck to the earth!  Look!  It’s gravity!”

And that made me think of the larger-scale gravity wowzer of earth being tossed around the sun.  The massive thing that is sucking at me is getting sucked at by another big-huge-sucking thing!  Oh, and that one is made of nuclear explosions.  Whaaaaat?

So, I just want to share this to you.  Look to the ground, feel its girth, pulling at you.  Look to the stars, feel their distance, so great that the light you are seeing is billions of years old.  Look to your own consciousness, feel the mind and the perspective that has spawned technologies, arts and religions that have built and destroyed worlds.

The universe is full of greatness in all the things that we see every day.  I hope you pause every once in a while, as you walk to the bus stop, to drink a bit of it in.

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August 6, 2012

Sermons and Stuff

People often get surprised when they find out I’m a preacher.  They get even more surprised when they find out I mostly preach in evangelical fundamentalist churches.  I remember one man, when he found out I was a preacher, asked “So, you part of the Church of the Universe or something?”

Yes.  Yes, I am.

I enjoy preaching and the wicked-cool opportunity it gives me to throw ideas about love around.  And, since I didn’t have much else to say this morning, I figured I’d give you a link to the last two sermons I preached, both of them on the favourite passage of weddings: First Corinthians 13.  Love, baby.  It’s all about love.

What is Love? Pt. 1

What is Love? Pt. 2

Hope it makes you want to love more.  If it doesn’t, then one of us missed the point.

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August 5, 2012

Sometimes Art is Like…

Sometimes art is like the little girl who was drawing a picture in art class.  Her teacher walked over to her and stood behind her for a moment, trying to figure out exactly what her student was drawing.  It was nearly impossible to make out.  The girl’s crayons danced on the page, scattering colours and shapes all around.  In some places it was wild and frenzied.  In others it was sober and serious.  In a few places, it looked downright childish and silly.  Finally the teacher couldn’t be bothered to guess anymore.

“What are you drawing, dear?” she asked.

“God,” the student replied without looking up.

The teacher gave a wry smile.  “But no one knows what God looks like, dear.”

The student leaned in close to her page, sticking her tongue out as she laid down a streak of deep red.  “They will in a minute,” she said.

Sometimes art dares to touch the things that cannot be touched.  Sometimes it tries to see the things that cannot be seen.  Sometimes it succeeds and turns around to show it to us.

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July 31, 2012

The Slippery Slope

Beware that slippery slope!  It’ll change your life before you even notice it!  I speak from experience, friends.

I once made the mistake of dabbling with the written word.  It was ill-advised, I know.  But I didn’t think it would go anywhere.  Honestly, I didn’t.  I thought it would only be ‘this one time.’  But it never works out that way.

Slowly, the dabbling grew.  I wrote a wee poem.  A small short story.  A larger short story.  Then, one day, I stood in my room holding my first novel.

“What have I done?” I whispered.  I had never thought it would go so far.  And now I was tumbling so fast down that slippery slope that I couldn’t stop.  I had another novel done in a couple years.  And now, I say it with shame, a third is well on its way.

Beware the first step!  I could have avoided all this productive creativity if only I had pushed down those nascent urges.  I could have been satisfied with a mediocre life of working, eating, pooping and sleeping.  But I didn’t have the wisdom.  I felt the sinful urge to create and I obeyed it without thinking.  

Be careful, friends!  Creative energy has a will of its own.  If you let it touch you, it won’t let you go.  And if you start today with just a little bit of dabbling, you may just find yourself sweating out a novel in a few years.

Be mindful.  Be on your guard.  The universe wants to take your ordinary life and make it extraordinary.  Cling to what is familiar if you hope to avoid it.  Push the light out and close your eyes.  If you are resolute, you will be able to get through life without making any waves.

It’s too late for me, as the slippery slope has made me an addict.  But there’s still a chance you you.  Good luck.

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