Ironies abound

Yesterday I went to see Almodovar--he's a Spanish director--movie. It was really good, and although it was at its base two intertwined love triangles, it was better than a majority of the crap pumped out of the West Coast at any given point of time nowadays. It made me think, to say the least.

But really this post starts, or my point in bringing this up is that I went with some people who speak Spanish fairly fluently and so we spoke Spanish all the way there (and there) and on the way back (with Radiohead in the background, hehe, but I promise I didn't pick it, even if I enjoyed it!). Now except for a couple of points on 795 when I hit those spells of mental fatigue that one hits--I was the one driving--I understood everything and participated, but admittedly, it takes a lot more work than speaking in English. And here's my point. I talked less, listened more, and was much more careful that what I said was really what I meant. Which I guess makes sense, but in the language that I'm most comfortable in (I don't have many choices, here) it's weird how I can be very careless, not really making sure that everything I say is what I really mean.

In fact as of late, I find that I say a lot of things that I'm really not sure I mean. Or sometimes I say things and right afterwards I'm really don't know where they come from. Or after saying smoething I will stop and really question what I say and end up not buying it at all. In fact nowadays there's just a lot I don't buy. But of course once you say something, you're like held to it, and everything you say is pieced together, used to glue some kind of dripping, popsicle stick figure of you that has to keep having more sticks added to it so it won't collapse, or one taken away from here and added there--more glue! more glue!

Or maybe I'm confusing metaphors here. Maybe that's what we do with our picture of God. And be sure that our understanding of God is not the same as who God is. And btw, a lot of what I'm thinking/not buying/skeptical of what I once may have been saying has had to do with God, though not everything. A lot of it has to do with other people, life, etc. Personal realizations, etc.

I was having a conversation this past week about God and why people's experience of God are so different, and I said there are two possibilities: either God manifests Himself (I personally mean nothing by using the reflexive masculine pronoun) differently to every person or we've all got it wrong. Of course, right? In my nice black-and-white dichotomous way. Being the positive person I am, at the time I said that I tend to believe the latter--we've all got it wrong, except of course then that is slightly problematic, especially if I truly believe God is trying to build relationships with His people. Sooo... I've modified my view, though it's still too simplistic probably, that we've all have different understandings of God, but they're incomplete. And it's when we think that our understanding is complete that I think we've got it wrong. And if God is so infinite, I think that He probably does manifest Himself different to different people. (Of course I think certain views of God are wrong like, I don't know, God being evil or something like that.)

So, yeah, maybe I need to just shut up and listen I say as I post a ridiculously long blog.