Well, for reasons currently passing my understanding, I’m finding myself extremely pissed off at just about anything tonight. It didn’t start until I got back to the house I call home. I was in Fresno since early Saturday morning to attend the wedding of two friends of mine and, due to the distance of the commute, stayed overnight at a friend’s grandparent’s house. So I didn’t return home until late this afternoon, a day after leaving.

But I have found myself angry at a great many things. Dishes left undone, a CD-RW drive that doesn’t like to be recognized as existing by Linux (Mandrake 9.1 to be specific), a CD-ROM drive that just seems to enjoy smoking drugs of an illegal nature and not share them with it’s user, or at least attempted user. But mostly, I think that I am angry at the fact that there is very little joy in my life at home. When I leave the house, there are chances for joy at least, and I often find them. But the house has become a place where I do not experience the freedom or love of God, much less love for neighbor. I feel on the defensive at home right now and I can’t for the life of think of why exactly.

I think part of this stems back to the idea in an earlier entry about not knowing what my passions are and finding that I have no avenue to explore what they are to just about any extant. I have little time at home to pursue anything and even if I did, there is little space with which to do that. I feel crowded in by my surroundings, small, contained, and very rigid. Even economically (which has nothing to do with my house, of that I am sure) I feel weighed down upon with little ability to do anything that I’d like to or would find joy in. The American system of what-have-you is entombing me in a new way.

I tend to try and take the persepctive on things that Jesus knows exactly how I feel because he had experiences similar in nature to whatever I happen to be feeling at some point during the record of his ministry that we have. This seems to be his being oppressed by crowds. More often than not he is asked for heal the sick and release the possesed from their personal hells. At some point, this actually starts to deter his ministry, which seems to frustrate him to some degree or at least frustrate the message that he has from getting out into the world. Jesus, of course, takes it all in stride knowing what needs to be done and being infinitely better at taking things in stride than I will most likely ever be. Jesus’ passion was people, particularly those who had been cast aside by society. I do not know my passion, but if I did, I am blocked from giving that passion everything that I am able to give it. And I am not blocked by people, but by committments, sometimes even those made by other people. I look for Jesus presence here in some fashiong, showing me the way out, but then look again at his experience and wonder if a way out is something I should seek to find. After all, he never turned away the sick or possesed no matter how much in “frustrated” his ministry. Does that mean I just bite the bullet? Probably not, pursuing a passion has been encouraged to me by so many faithful people that I can’ believe that ruling it out is a good thing. But learning how to set it aside when necessary probably can’t hurt. Now, just to find a way to discover what that passion is in the first place so that I am able to set it aside when needed in the first place…