Kethuvim

I have a confession to make...I watched some of the Oscars (and by "some" I mean like 30 minutes on and off). It seems that this year the environment took center stage, what with Al Gore's documentary on Global Warming gaining so much attention. Let me state that I have no problem with environmentalism. I don't take the traditonal Christian view of the environment of, "Hey, let's destroy it, because Jesus is going to come back anyway." In fact, I'm trying to take some steps in my own life to be a bit more conscious. However, I get tired of celebrities talking a good game and then living something so seemingly different than what they profess. I find it interesting that Christians get accused of being hypocrites constantly, yet other groups of people don't.

I watched as celebrity after celebrity pranced on stage and mentioned something about the Oscar's being "green" this year (I found it odd that they never seemed to define in what way the show was "green"), and about how we should be more responsible. All of these comments gained applause from their peers. Did no one else happen to notice that pretty much everyone arrived in a giant limo? Are those eco-friendly now, did I miss the memo? I'm guessing a limo gets roughly the same gas mileage as a Sherman tank, so how can they justify it?

I read in the book of 2 Timothy (which, incidentally, comes right after 1 Timothy) the other day a passage that I can't get out of my head. Paul is writing a letter to a disciple of his named Timothy, hence the name of the book, and he lists off characteristics of people in what Paul calls "the last days" (by the way, I do think it's possible that Paul was speaking of something other than the second coming of Jesus when he used that phrase). Here are the characteristics of these people:
Lovers of themselves
Lovers of money
Boastful
Proud
Abusive
Disobedient to their parents
Ungrateful
Unholy
Without love
Unforgiving
Slanderous
Without self-control
Brutal
No lovers of the good
Rash
Conceited
Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

Paul then says that these people have "a form of godliness, but deny its power." Then it clicked with me, holy crap he's talking about the Church! Then I started thinking, this list characterizes many of the aspects that I see in the American Church. Paul's final phrase keeps haunting me, "having a form of godliness, but denying its power." This phrase leads to many questions in my mind. Does this mean that the believers Paul speaks of to Timothy say all the right things, they know the doctrine, but when it comes down to it, they look nothing like Jesus? Have you ever met anyone like that? Am I like that? What is the power of true godliness? What does it look like? Do I look like Jesus (not literally, I'm much fatter than he would have been) to those around me? If I don't, what can I change in my life to make sure that I do?

Paul says in the book of Galatians, "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." To my brothers and sisters in the American Church, please listen to the words of our comrade Paul. It doesn't matter what you verbally agree to. It doesn't matter what you say you believe. All that matters is whether you put in to action what you say you believe to be true. The measuring stick is love, the measuring stick is Jesus, how do you compare? How do
I compare?

Our first real vomit, how exciting. I was feeding mini-me last night, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite things to do, and we decided to give him rice cereal again. He had been eating oatmeal like it's going out of style, so we thought we would change it up a bit on him and go back to rice cereal periodically. Well, apparently he's a texture freak, because he gagged on every bite I gave him. I'm not going to lie, I laugh when he gags. He makes a noise like he's throwing up his toenails, and gets a classic "I'm throwing up my toenails" look on his face.

Anyway, after about five bites, I decided that maybe the rice cereal wasn't a good idea because he was gagging relentlessly with every bite. It seems, however, that five bites was one bite too many. He proceeded to gag about four times on the last bite and then he expelled everything I had fed him to that point, including peaches and green beans. It was a technicolor bile-fest as he coated anything within two feet of him with his stomach contents. My wife and I sat there for a minute, just looking at each other and asking each other, "So...what do we do now?" We eventually got him cleaned up and all was well. We've come to a couple of possible conclusions as to the reason for his puking. 1)He hates the texture of rice cereal and showed it by gagging until he heaved. 2)He realized that his Huggies weren't fitting quite like they used to, and he thought he would give bulimia the ole' college try. Who knows.

I was doing some thinking the other day (and yes, it hurt). I read the passage of Scripture where Jesus says, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose his soul? What can a man give in exchange for his soul?" I've read that passage a hundred times in my life and given my lovely fundamentalist upbringing (Yea! Let's hear it for Fundies!) I always assumed that Jesus was simply stating that if you put anything in front of him, enjoy the fires of hell because you lost your soul. Because, after all, Jesus was primarily concerned with heaven and hell right (if you didn't read that with caustic sarcasm, feel free to insert it, and then re-read the sentence)? However, this time when I read the passage a question formed in my brain. What is the soul?

Over the last couple of years, I've read some fairly mind-melting stuff, mainly written by Jewish authors. It all of sudden clicked with me that the way the Ancients defined the soul vastly differs from what I've been taught. So let me give the two contrasting views of the soul.

Modern - We seem to have what I call a Tom and Jerry view of the soul. In Tom and Jerry cartoons, very often Jerry would whack Tom across the head with something heavy and Tom would "die." He would be lying on the ground and a foggy version of him would release into the air. This is, presumably, the cartoonists way of saying that his soul has left him. This view of the soul has permeated our way of thinking. To us, the soul is nothing more than a ghost who's only purpose is to determine where we go when we die. We view the soul as something that is ultimately disconnected from who we are. It is a separate entity from our body, mind, thoughts, and emotions. When we die, this soul floats out of us and enters either heaven or hell. According to Christians, the soul can be saved by "accepting Jesus" (how's that for a foggy description?). This soul, by accepting Jesus, is made perfect and is thus "saved."

Ancient - They saw the soul as the deepest part of your being. The soul (or known also as the "heart" in ancient writings) was your life-force. It was the thing that shaped who you were as a person. It was not separate from your physical, mental, emotional body. As the soul went, so did the rest of you. Your soul was ultimately who you are.

This would have to be Jesus' view of the soul. The idea of a soul being some sort of separate entity from the rest of you was non-existant in his day. So this has gigantic implications for all of us. If your soul is the thing that makes you who you are, then Jesus' statement above takes on a whole new meaning. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet lose himself? What good is it for you to strive to gain the world, and yet sell out who you really are in the process? Jesus' statement has nothing to do with the afterlife, but has everything to do with a quality of life to be lived here and now. Our country is full of people who are striving to gain everything the world has to offer and, in the process, they are losing their entire identity. They're selling out the very core of who they are for the bottom line. I believe that God is calling a people that will stop losing the deepest part of them for a bunch of crap that isn't going to satisfy or last anyway.

May you look to Jesus to find out who you really are created to be, and may you have the courage to make the changes necessary to regain your soul.

So, I saw this and thought for a second that it was a joke. Turns out that it isn't.

http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/tours/slimming/index_f.html

I'm not sure if I think it's funny or if there's something wrong with our culture when we have to have this type of effect on our cameras. This whole thing leads to a lot of questions in my head. Does this really help with our culture's image problems? Is it wrong to look at an image and state that it's "not pretty enough" and slim it? Does it lead to more laziness in people ("Why should I take care of myself, when I can fix it all on film?")? Any thoughts?

So if you watched any news channel yesterday or today, a great deal of talk centered on the euthanization of Kentucky Derby winning horse Barbaro. For those who don't know, Barbaro got his leg broken in a race shortly after winning the Derby. A broken leg in a human isn't a problem, a broken leg in a horse means shortly gracing someone's dinner table in the form of Jell-O or being ingested by a Kindergartner in the form of Elmer's glue.

For the last eight months, trainers have spent millions of dollars on surgeries and rehab so that the horse could live. The only comment I can come up with is, it's just a horse.

Do you realize that every 8 seconds, someone in the world dies of AIDS? This is, of course, something that doesn't get a great deal of press, because a vast majority of those cases are poor Africans. How can we mourn the loss of a freaking horse and not give a crap about the fact that millions of people will die this year of AIDS? Or how about the fact that 40,000 children die everyday of malnutrition. I like horses as much as the next guy (assuming you like horses), but what is the life of a horse compared to the lives of human beings? Where's the consistency?

We took Ezra this morning to get his six month immunizations. To say that he wasn't a fan would be a gross understatement. For all of you parents out there, is there anything worse than listening to your kid cry so hard that they miss breaths? It makes me want to cry to see the tears running down his face.

I think my son is afraid of the dark. At least he's afraid of the dark while riding in the back of a car. At any given time while riding in the dark, he will start to squirm and then start whining, which leads to crying. My wife and I have determined that he seems to be afraid that we're not there because he can't see us. Last night was one such episode.

We were all heading home from church and he started the aforementioned process. He was crying and crying until my wife turned on the light, turned around and said to him, "It's ok, mommy and daddy are still here." He could see her in the mirror that faces him and he stopped crying and immediately smiled at her. All she had to say was, "I'm still here" and he calmed down.

I started thinking, man, how often do I need to hear that? I don't know about you, but I go through seasons in life where I'm frantic, distressed, discouraged, and frustrated. I start the inevitable looking toward the clouds and wonder, "Just where is God?" It's in those times that I've come to understand and listen for his whispers, "It's ok, I'm still here." I can't tell you how it calms me, in the same way that my wife's gentle words made my son calm down and smile. It seems that our Creator knows when we need to hear it, the question is, are we listening for it?

Listen for his voice, the voice that speaks not to your ears, but to the deepest part of your being and says, "I'm still here, you're loved, everything is going to be ok."

That may serve as a tremendous disappointment to some, but oh well. I promise an update soon, I've been gone all week.

My kid is fat. Ok, actually he's perfectly normal sized, but he'll eat anything. He has yet to meet anything (other than a small dose of Benedryl) that he doesn't like. We decided a few weeks ago to start him on vegetables. We (and by "we" I mean my wife) decided to start him out on the nastiest vegetable we could think of, that way he could get the worst right off the bat and everything else is a step up. We started him on peas. I can't even hardly stomach peas, especially when they're pureed into a watery paste. Ezra, however, shoveled them down like they were going out of style. He couldn't get enough.

Adorable block-head, carrot face, does it get any cuter than that? Does anyone know of a good restraining device to prevent this type of thing from happening (Note: To anyone reading this who is my parent, grandparent, parent-in-law, child proctective services worker, etc., I'm only kidding...or am I.)? I can't wait for his 1st birthday (six months from tomorrow for all none of you who are counting) so that I can watch him shower our dining room with copious amounts of cake, icing, ice cream, and vomit containing all of the above items.

I just spent the morning at the local high school helping out the guidance counselors because a freshman killed himself this weekend. I was helping talk with students and listen to them as the voiced their anger, sadness, anguish, and frustration with the whole situation.

Fielding questions like, "Where was God when it happened? Why couldn't he/didn't he stop it? Do people that commit suicide go to hell?" all morning is not exactly the most fun way to spend a morning, but I always like an opportunity to do real ministry. I was thinking throughout the whole morning, what makes someone get to the point where taking their life is the best option? I can't help but feel sorrow for this young man because he didn't realize that there was life to be lived. Maybe he realized it, but he just didn't care, I don't know.

What goes through someone's mind in the last minutes/seconds before they take their own life? I kept getting an image in my mind all morning that I couldn't shake; I kept picturing Jesus saying to this young man, seconds before he hung himself, "It doesn't have to be this way. You may not feel like anyone loves you, but I do. Please don't do this, let's talk about it. It doesn't have to be this way, I can show you what life lived beautifully looks like."

I can't shake that image, and it almost brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it. He didn't have to despair. He didn't have to die. He could have lived, really lived; lived in the way God intended.

I think I just created two new words, I'm so flippin' talented. Anyway, I was thinking about New Year's the other night as I watched Ryan Seacrest try desperately to hide his homosexuality behind a very awkward peck on the cheek with Christina Aguliera, and I was wondering why we get so excited about New Year's Eve. Think about it, New Year's is honestly just another day where we turn the calendars over to the next day/month/year because of the moon cycle and the planet's position around the sun. So why the excitement?

Sure, for some I think it's just another really good reason to get lit and wake up in a puddle of your own urine, but for most I think it goes much deeper than that. I think somewhere deep inside of us we desire to be new. There's an excitement to a new beginning, where for at least a minute/hour/day/whatever, we feel like we can be a new person. There's something inside most of us that screams to us that we aren't right. There's a deep discontent with how things are that most of us are afraid to talk about or even think about for more than just a fleeting second, so we bury it hoping it will go away. New Year's appeals to us, because it represents this feeling down inside of us that we desire to be new and different. This is why we make New Year's resolutions that we know we can't keep, but we like the idea of trying.

I think God understands this yearning inside of us to be different. I think he's responsible for wiring it into our DNA. In the book of Lamentations, the author says, "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions (some translations "mercies") never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Let that sink in for a minute and let it wash over you. With God, every day is a New Year celebration. You don't have to yearn to be new, you are made new because all of your screw-ups are erased and you are renewed in the love of God. I believe this is the mark of the Kingdom of God. It is a Kingdom built on love, with the ability to restore and renew all things.

The New Testament talks extensively about the idea that we have an old self that is replaced by a new self in Jesus. How did this happen? A man two thousand years ago made it possible because he was so full of love, that he couldn't allow us to live in the old self anymore. He knew that the old self was broken and fractured, and his great desire was, and still is, to see all of God's creation and his creatures made new. You don't have to be broken and fractured. Your old self sucks, maybe it's time for it to be replaced. In the words of the musician Joseph Arthur, "You've been loved all the way."

I've been working on patience the last year or so, with some prodding from my wife. I would tell you that I'm doing much better, she would probably say something different than that, but oh well, she's not writing this post, I am. Anyway, I say that in order to say that I've been wanting a few cds, but I have waited patiently to receive them for Christmas, or to buy them with Christmas money. Here's some of my new music that I'm currently listening to...


Come to Where I'm From - Jospeh Arthur
I've only recently been introduced to this guy. He's amazing, and he looks like John Lennon. The highlight of the album is "In the Sun" which happens to be the first song. The rest of the album is solid as well.


Redemption's Son - Joseph Arthur
75 minutes of ridiculously good music. A little more poppy than Come to Where I'm From, but very good. The highlights are: "Nation of Slaves" and "You've been loved."


Into the Blue Again - The Album Leaf
I haven't had a chance to formally absorb this one yet, but what I've heard has been great. Some of it is instrumental, and some of it has vocals. Give this cd a listen and then realize the fact that this leader of this band is also in a death metal band. Pretty funny.


American V: A Hundred Highways - Johnny Cash
Cash's final recording before his death. This is an infinitely sad, and yet incredibly beautiful album. Most of the songs deal with death, which sounds depressing, but it isn't when you listen to an old man's quavering voice speak of death as a welcome inevitability. If you want to know what it means for a person to die with grace, listen to this cd. The highlights: "God's Gonna Cut You Down" and "I Came to Believe."


Seven Swans - Sufjan Stevens
I've waxed idiotic enough on this guy's music in past posts, so I won't go on more here. A very simple album. Beautiful acoustic guitar and banjo arrangements. This album may never leave my Ipod. Highlights: "Abraham," "Seven Swans," and "The Transfiguration."

Mule Variations - Tom Waits
I'm new to Tom Waits. I've always been turned off by his gravelly baritone, but I'm starting to really appreciate it's uniqueness. A friend convinced me to buy this album because you can't find his new album anywhere. I'm loving it and listening to it as I type this. Highlights: "Hold On" and "Chocolate Jesus."

That's what I'm listening these days. I'm tired of mainstream crap music, and I can't stand contemporary Christian music, so I'm finding alternatives to listen to. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that the New Year is great as well. Try not to drink so much that you can't remember your name.

I was flipping through my 10 channels this morning and came across the usual...you know, news channels all reporting the same thing, and a myriad of T.V. preachers blowing off their crap-cannons while sitting in opulent studios...in other words, just what Jesus intended.

But I digress, I came across a guy, who shall remain nameless, wearing a hideously Cosby-ish sweater talking about various passages of Scripture concerning the Christmas story. He was talking about Zechariah (father of John the Baptist). If you don't know the story, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of it. An angel appeared to a fairly old man named Zechariah and told him his wife would give birth to a boy who would be the forerunner to the Messiah. Zechariah proceeds to tell the angel that he must be mistaken because he and his wife are old. The angel says, "Ummm, yeah, I'm Gabriel, I told you this was going to happen, so it's going to happen" (from the New Polley Version of the Bible). The angel then tells Zechariah that he won't be able to speak until some time after his son is born because he didn't believe him.

The preacher then launched into a diatribe about how awful it is to question God and have any doubts. I've written extensively on doubt on this blog, so I won't go into my opinion much in this post, but I feel like the preacher was wrong. Do I feel like the angel's punishment was a bit much, considering the Bible describes Zechariah and his wife as, "well advanced in years"? Yes I do. Do I think that the angel had a reason for it, yes I do. It seems to me that doubt and questions have to be a part of a vibrant and growing faith. I can't stand when I hear any preacher (TV or otherwise) tell me that it's wrong to doubt and question God. You can't tell me these guys have never doubted anything before. The Scriptures are full of people who doubted and questioned, and God always resonded honestly.

For instance, God tells Abraham that he's going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and Abrham responds with this accusatory question of God, "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" God responds with, "Sure. Find ten righteous people in the city and I won't do it."

I'm tired of self-righteous Christians acting like they never doubt anything that God ever said. I think they're lying and I think that they lie about it because they're incredibly insecure about their weak faith. They're afraid to let anyone know that they might be flawed. I made a promise to myself when I entered the ministry that I would be transparent with people, it's my hope that I have been and will continue to be.

I was feeding my son this morning, which has become a favorite routine of mine. He's so sweet in the morning. He lays back with his eyes closed and eats and plays with my beard at the same time. Anyway, I gave him four ounces, which is usually a good stopping point for a burp. I couldn't get one out of him, no matter how hard I pounded and pounded. I decided that I would just go ahead and keep feeding. That would be what experts call a gigantic mistake.

He took two more ounces and then started squirming. I sat him up and beat on his back for a minute. He burped and then showered half (this isn't a huge exaggeration) of the living room, and me, with everything in his stomach. As God as my witness, he was a head rotation away from being the star of the Exorcist. He's puking, and I'm looking for a crucufix and screaming at the top my lungs, "I NEED AN OLD PRIEST AND A YOUNG PRIEST! THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU, THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!"

I swear, I think he yacked up part of his colon. His duodenum is lodged somewhere in our Christmas tree. It didn't phase him one bit. After my wife and I hosed down our living room, I looked at him and he gave me a look that hinted at, "Hey idiot, that's what you get for not burping me the first time." He smiled real big as I headed for the shower. What a punk, I love him, but he's a punk.

I came across this the other day. It's called the "seven deadly social sins" as laid out by Ghandi. Here are the sevens sins:

Politics without principle
Wealth without work
Commerce without morality
Pleasure without conscience
Education without character
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice

See if you can pick out how many of these America is guilty of. For extra credit, see how many the American Church is guilty of. For extra-extra credit, see how many I have broken. Ah crap.

So why is it that we, as Christians, feel like we have to offend everyone that isn't like us? We whine and complain about the world "going to hell in a handbasket" (never really understood that phrase, and I'm not sure it's necessarily true either), and then we decide to alienate and isolate everyone who doesn't subscribe to our ideology.

Let me give you an example. I was driving home the other day and I passed a new billboard on the way out of town that said this, "An educated person knows the Bible." My crap detector went crazy and I started thinking, "so what you're saying is, is that if you don't know the Bible, you're a complete dunce." I wanted to pull over, stop the car, climb up to the board and paint, "And a Christ-follower doesn't even think things like that, let alone say them."

I can't fathom this kind of a thought process. The Bible says, "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it..." If this be true, and I believe it to be so, then it stands to reason that any knowledge we have (even knowledge outside of the Bible) comes from him and thus is good. Do I believe that the Bible holds knowledge for living? Absolutely I do. Do I think that it is the beginning and end of God's revelation of knowledge? No. What I love is that Christians that believe that the Bible alone is knowledge, are the same ones with extensive libraries full of books on life and living. What's the point of having these books if the Bible is the end all-be all of knowledge?

Hey brothers and sisters of mine, can we please stop alienating everyone that isn't like us? Can we please start loving people instead of seeking to offend them into the Kingdom? I wonder how many times Jesus weeps for his Bride, the Church? I wonder how many times he screams from the heavens, "That's not what I had in mind!"? May we seek to show love to all of his creation and his creatures. May we seek to live as Jesus lived.

I thought I would give an update on Ezra, because I have a few pictures and whatnot to show off.

and this:




Finally, he had his first go around with Rice cereal yesterday. To say that is was funny would be a gross understatement. This picture should pretty much sum up the experience.

FATTY LIKES IT, HE REALLY LIKES IT!

Or at least he liked the 1/3 of a teaspoon that actually stayed in his mouth. This may be my favorite picture of him. Anyway, that about brings you up to date on the life of the boy. More updates in the coming days, weeks, months, years.

Sounds like a strange question for a minister to ask, but I'd really like to know. We get a glimpse from the gospels as to what he was like (i.e. loving, compassionate, full of grace, accepting, etc.), but I want to know more. Did he have a sense of humor? I would think he would have to, because if he didn't, he would have killed his disciples after about a year with them. Was he nice? We generally like to think of Jesus as nice, but frankly, some of the stories of him in the gospels show a man who said scathing things against the Roman Empire and against the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of Israel. Did he do stuff as a kid to earn the anger of his parents? Probably.

I've been thinking about all of this recently because I've been reading a book by Christopher Moore entitled, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It's a fictional retelling of Jesus' life as told by his friend Levi, who is called Biff. Firstly, if you're a stuffy Christian concerned with correct doctrine, don't read the book. You'll miss the humor in it (of which there is plenty), and just get mad. I've read the book twice now and I like it because it causes me to think about what Jesus was like, especially as a kid. My guess is that he was mischievous like any other kid. He probably pulled pranks on his friends, had a boyhood crush, etc. Thinking of Jesus in this way only makes me love him more. I love to contemplate the human side of Jesus; the side that struggled with temptation, got into trouble as a kid, had his heart broken by his friends, that kind of stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed by the healer Jesus, the Jesus who could walk on water, the Jesus who could rise from the grave, but I'm more impressed with the Jesus who touched lepers because he loved them and ate in the homes of those who were hated by society. Think about Jesus as a human being, not just as divine, and I think you'll find a Jesus that you never knew.

I remember leaving Bible College over four years ago and thinking something to the effect of, "I'm not sure I believe much of anything that I was just taught." I was raised in an environment where it wasn't really encouraged to express doubt about God or anything in the Bible. This lead me to reject basically all of science and, in fact, saw science as a natural enemy of Christianity. Maybe I didn't reject all of science, just the parts that disagreed with my particular ideology. I wasn't just raised in an environment where it wasn't safe to question, I spent four years at Bible College where it wasn't safe to doubt and question either.

Basically, all of this led me to a point in my life where I looked out at the world in which I resided and realized that the faith I had carried with me for so long didn't really work once I started using my brain. I was lucky enough to have my brother and another really good friend dealing with the same sort of thing. Realizing that we would most certainly be branded as "liberals" (as if that's a bad thing or something), the three of set out to develop a faith that went beyond the fundamentalism we were all taught was true. I started realizing that the Bible, far from being an answer book (which is how it was presented to me my whole life), was really a book of questions. The more answers I sought, the fewer concrete answers I found, and the more questions I ended up with. Seeing as how my entire livelihood is based on teaching the Bible and being some sort of a pillar of strength and confidence, this naturally scared the crap out of me. Ministers aren't supposed to question, they aren't supposed to have doubts, they're supposed to have all of the answers.

Four and a half years later, I'm still searching, still doubting, still questioning. I feel like I'm playing a game of cat and mouse with my Creator, a game of divine hide and seek. The thing that scares me is the unknown of my whole situation. There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to doubting and searching in the spiritual realm. I have no idea where my journey is going to lead me. Will it lead me to having to choose another career path? Will it lead me to dismantle everything I've ever known to be true? Will it lead me into the arms of God? I have no idea. Time will tell. There a few things I have found to be true in my searching. There is a being out there named Yahweh and he won't stop loving me no matter how hard I try to distance myself. This Yahweh is mysterious beyond anything I can comprehend. There was man named Jesus who walked the earth a couple of thousand years ago and he lived an amazing life of love and acceptance, which ultimately led to his enemies killing him. I believe that his resurrection brings me life everyday. Aside from these few truths, a lot is still up in the air for me.