Love and T-Shirts

I was reading a book and listening to Pandora when a John Mayer song entitled, "City Love," came on and reminded me of a past dating relationship and of future relationships. The lyric that sparked the memory is this:

"She steals my clothes to wear to work, I know her hairs are on my shirts."

Now, my past girlfriend didn't steal my shirt but we exchanged two shirts when we first started dating that symbolized important parts of each of our lives. She gave me a shirt with "CC" for Cross-Country on the front and with "Fleetfeet" on the back. It was gray with blue lettering and came with a pair of running shoes she bought at Fleetfeet because she was a runner in high school and continued to run for fun and fitness.

I gave her a gray shirt with FSU in red lettering on the front. The story behind that was several guys in my youth group in high school and my youth minister bought cheap gray t-shirts with Harvard on them and I grabbed the last small one. They all looked the same except my shirt had FSU on the front and so our attempt to promote Harvard's sports teams as a joke in the mall kinda failed because they would yell "Go Harvard" and well, I had a FSU shirt on in the midst of the Harvard shirts. So, a shirt with an inside story about the guys in my youth group who were very important to me in high school, especially the friendship I had with my youth minister.

When we broke up in my 2nd semester of college, we never saw each other again and I have lost her CC shirt. However, for ten months we shared those shirts and much, much more for a mostly happy time. She contributed to my life and I did to hers until we started heading down different paths and could no longer maintain the relationship.

In reflection, it was a big turning point in my life and John Mayer's song reminded me of the good times in that relationship. So, here's to the future I have with the girl who I can connect with and share on that deep level again. Life is too short to not love :)

A Musing about God and Society As It Relates to Me

Karen Armstrong writes in her book "The Battle For God" that "The French existentialist Jean-Paul Satre (1905-80) called it the the God-shaped hole in human consciousness, where the divine had always been but had disappeared, leaving an emptiness behind" in relate to the secularism of modern society.

I feel this "hole," in my life sometimes, especially since I've started college and seemingly left what I thought I was in pieces. In high school, life had meaning as I percieved through God, specifically through my experiences in youth group and hanging out with my youth minister. God, at times, was as real as the air I breathed and dictated most of my life through the Bible as I percieved it as a Christian. I learned how to play guitar and helped lead worship in my later years of high school for my youth group on Wednesday nights. I tried to control my hormones in accordance with the purity standards of the church and quotes from the Bible (which I failed utterly at but that's another post) and only dated "Christian" girls until I got to college. Then I discovered Higher Biblical Criticism (beware of biblical inerrancy, it doesn't hold up under critical reading and thinking), the demands of a functioning social life, and the other various aspects of my new life as an undergraduate student.

To say the least, I made it through the first semester with minimal "sin" and with what I though was a really great relationship with a girl I started dating a few months before I graduated from high school. However, when she broke up with me, my faith seemed to disappear and other things took it's place. I felt pain I have never felt before and a lot of things seemed meangingless to me. So, I took up smoking at the suggestion of a friend and began to party a lot more than I thought of before. Basically, I became the person I'd never thought I'd be.

However, now I feel a hole that I need to fill and I can't go back to a faith that is held within a creed and an inerrant Bible. I feel the need for meaning I had in high school and have established some of that but not completely. How is life meaningful on it's own? Is it found in serving others? I have a feeling that lies within the demotion of the ego but in the end, I have to report to myself and perhaps, something higher than me in the end of every day and perhaps at my life.

Any suggestions on where to feel the "hole?" I do agree that society should be secular (seperation of religion/church and state) but what about meaning as an individual?