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Josh Allan Dykstra
BOOK JOSH
Josh Allan Dykstra
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LegacyAugust 15, 2007

Holden Caulfield On Jesus, Etc.

Thus spake Holden Caulfield:
"I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard. I used to get in quite a few arguments about it, when I was at the Whooton School, with this boy that lived down the corridor, Arthur Childs. Old Childs was a Quaker and all, and he read the Bible all the time. He was a very nice kid, and I liked him, but I could never see eye to eye with him on a lot of stuff in the Bible, especially the Disciples. He kept telling me if I didn't like the Disciples, then I didn't like Jesus and all. He said that because Jesus picked the Disciples, you were supposed to like them. I said I knew He picked them, but that He picked them at random. I said He didn't have time to go around analyzing everybody. I said I wasn't blaming Jesus or anything. It wasn't His fault that He didn't have any time. I remember I asked old Childs if he thought Judas, the one that betrayed Jesus and all, went to Hell after he committed suicide. Childs said certainly. That's exactly where I disagreed with him. I said I'd bet a thousand bucks that Jesus never sent old Judas to Hell. I still would, too, if I had a thousand bucks. I think any one of the Disciples would've sent him to Hell and all -- and fast, too -- but I'll bet anything Jesus didn't do it. Old Childs said the trouble with me was that I didn't go to church or anything. He was right about that, in a way. I don't. In the first place, my parents are different religions, and all the children in our family are atheist. If you want to know the truth, I can't even stand ministers. The ones they've had at every school I've gone to, they have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. God, I hate that. I don't see why the hell they can't talk in their natural voice. They sound so phony when they talk." - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye (p. 130-131)
//
LifeJuly 31, 2007

Full Of Myself

Over the past six weeks, I have being doing the Body For Life program, in a highly overdue project to regain my physical fitness. I was hungrily looking forward to gaining something that resembles pectoral muscles, and maybe develop "abs," instead of my former, singular "ab." But, man, this process takes way longer than I thought. Of course, the lack of seeing the results that I want to see doesn't diminish the glimpses of progress I occasionally do witness, usually the morning after I get back from working the upper body, when my muscles have a little more blood pumping through them. I hear we males have this "issue" anyway, where we look in the mirror and almost always think that we're pretty much the bomb-dot-com. I don't know why that is -- maybe it's physiological, or some kind of DSM-IV category -- but suffice to say that I rarely have a less-than-glowing review of my reflection ready to print. Kinda full of myself, I guess. I'd never really thought about that phrase before this morning: "full of myself". I mean, really thought about it. But this morning, for whatever reason, I was keenly aware that I was entirely full of myself, in the "no room for anything else" sense. And that bothered me. I don't want to be so crowded with myself that I cannot even find room for others in my margins. I don't want my world to be filled with clones of me. I don't want my bus to be standing room only. I don't want to be filled to the brim of nothing but me, me, me. I want to be able to give, generously and passionately. But who would even want what I have to give? Someone I consider to be very wise once said that we do and say is actually just a reflection, an extension, of what's going on inside us. So, if that's the case, who's going to want more of me: sick and ugly and only taken with, well, me? I'm fairly certain that swallowing too much narcissism will make us throw up; maybe a little regurgitation is exactly what I need. Maybe I can fill up on something else. //
LegacyJuly 23, 2007

Jesus Drives An LAX Airport Shuttle

I guess you could say that I've been practicing "The Secret" for the last couple months. Kind of. I'd been meaning to watch/read/experience the "magic" for probably almost a year now, and also been putting it off, putting it off, blah blah. But when I flew back to Colorado for Gabe's wedding in April, in a stroke of brilliance (or habit), I took my blessed MacBook on the plane, and decided to buck up and watch the damn thing. Despite the apparent torture required to catalyze my viewing, I really did enjoy it. It was inspirational and empowering, if not occasionally hokey. So, when I arrived back at LAX, Allison and I got into one of those little deathtraps they call "airport shuttles" so we could get back to the parking lot where we left our car. We lugged our borderline-weight-limit Samsonite up both little shuttle stairs and heaved it onto the storage shelving. On my way in, I noticed that Jesus was going to be our driver. Of course, he was a hispanic gentleman — correct pronunciation: Hey-soos — but as I normally feel just a little scared for my freakin' life when circling the Los Angeles airport (if you've ever done it, you know what I mean), I instantly felt a little better knowing that the Savior would be my driver that day. But it turns out that Jesus' driving: not so good. He screamed around corners, scraping bumpers and inciting all sorts of hostile honking. He ran red lights and stopped abruptly, causing baggage to fly angrily off the rack. With my newfound Secret, I, of course, was "attracting" safety. Pure, unadulterated safety. I caught the gaze of the middle-aged business-suited gentlemen across from me, and knew he was thinking the same thing I was: "Sorry I didn't learn your name before we both died in a horrific shuttle crash." Things I never thought I'd say: "Man, Jesus needs to go to driving school." But I made it out alive... guess The Secret works. ;-) //