Photo by Chase Macri of some Vegetarian Chili I made for New Years

I bought three shirts on Monday, January 2nd. My family—namely my parents, sisters Melody and Katelyn, Aunt and Uncle, and my grandparents on my mother’s side (those on my father’s side are dead)—also bought me various clothing items as Christmas presents this year. Some shirts, a heavier military style jacket in navy, some leather shoes that look like Chuck Taylor’s but aren’t, a ski cap; all of which maintain their original thread count, are as bright as the day they were sewn, and are, most importantly, new.

New clothes have a baptismal affect on me. Their newness is a fresh start, a clean slate and the ability to think of and define myself as someone I was not only moments before. To consider who I am, what I believe and what that means. Are these the clothes of the old me? This cut, this color, this pattern, and this combination is the fashion of the person I want to be. Forget the former things baby, and check out the new sneaks.

Inevitably, when the new year approaches the question of “resolutions” arises. I seldom think very long about my answer to this question and somehow I’m always surprised that it is asked.

“Do you have any new years resolutions?”

I respond, “Hmm, not that I’ve thought of but maybe I could…”

These hip-shot resolutions last about as long as I consider the question. In the past, I’ve tried adding to my schedule some humanitarian volunteer work, playing guitar every day, writing a song-a-week (with lyrics and even singing!), regularly attending morning prayer services, and (that is until lent of recent past) vegetarianism several times and not one of those resolutions ever did stick as a consistent or meaningful part of my life. They were lofty ideals that sounded good at the time but were never motivated by a realization of some existential truth or an emotional, life-changing event. They were pretentious. They were prayers of lead tied to balloons of hot air.

The new clothes are a similar façade. They’re only new for so long, eventually becoming one with the rest of the wardrobe. And the “new me” fades just as the dye in the clothes after a thousand washes. Then I search again for another renewal, a second and third and fiftieth baptism. My problem is these fabric baptisms are the same as my new year’s resolutions: the direction of the change is backwards.

I imagine myself doing all these lofty and righteous things and I like how that person looks on the outside, so I try to make my outside resemble that person. Take on his clothes. Resolve to do what he does. But I don’t consider the cost of believing what he believes. In years past, I tried on vegetarianism because I wanted to lose weight. I wanted to look better, sexier, and more attractive with the rational that eating more veggies would be healthier than the pork and bovine I had enjoyed. That translated into a few days of suffering through meals of salads, cans of green beans and peas, dipping baby carrots into peanut butter before finally binging on a double cheeseburger with bacon. I actually like eating those veggies! But the superficial motivation for restricting my diet was chasing after the wind. As the preacher says, that’s vanity, bro.

My most recent foray into vegetarian living, as is any drastic lifestyle change that is worth a damn, was this time motivated by something more significant than waistline. Modern meat production in this country is anti-Christian. It is unethical, dehumanizing and unsustainable from every means of measurement (social, economic, environmental, psychological, etc., etc., etc.) Without telling the sordid tale here, because other people have already told it better than I could (Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals”, the documentary Food, Inc. are two examples), I can no longer look at a hamburger, a strip of bacon, or a chicken breast without wondering if the cow my burger came from lived in a cage in which it couldn’t turn around, or how many antibiotics the pig had taken to combat the rampant disease that spreads from the close proximity the pigs are inventoried, or if the chicken was slaughtered after its legs gave out from the immense weight he was engineered to grow (which assumes the chicken spent much of its life standing to begin with!) I used to put this in my body? This is “food”? And I used to eat these creatures? I can’t avoid thinking about that anymore. I can’t block it out of my mind and ignore it. I cannot, as I paraphrase Foer’s paraphrase of Franz Kafka, “choose to forget.” It isn’t right. These are not the animals slaughtered in The Garden, and weren’t those animals begrudgingly killed to begin with?

We worry so much about the pollution our industry and our cars emit and how it is accelerating climate change in the world, but did you know that animals accounts for more CO2 production as our machines? According to Scientific American “It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for someone’s lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles.” All so I can eat a hamburger that costs $1. How is that sustainable? Meat is so easy and normal and commonplace and I imagine many feel it is a basic right but I have no idea where that meat came from, how that animal was treated, who killed it or how it was killed, who processed, packaged, and shipped it to us, and that lack of intentionality, that hip-shot thinking, is literally killing us. I can’t pretend that the problem doesn’t exist anymore. All the excuses I kept were childish and immature. I can’t say no any longer. I’ve changed. I am baptized.

I didn’t resolve to eat vegetarian. I didn’t imagine this different version of myself in these animal-loving clothes or as one who joined PETA, or took part in animal activism; my beliefs were shaken by the truth and a vegetarian is who I am now. It isn’t a phase. It isn’t something I am trying on for size. It isn’t something I’m doing to appear sexier. It’s just the facts. A stream popping up in the desert. A path in the wilderness. Behold, all things are become new.

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore.
—Franz Kafka, while admiring fish in an aquarium

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: it’s good to run off with someone you find interesting after just meeting them if they have *that* spark

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: it was really, really, really incredibly easy to steal cars in the 1930s.

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: it’s perfectly acceptable to go see a movie after robbing a bank and shooting and killing a guy.

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: theres something so cute about two amoralists in love. Aww, they just wanna watch the world burn together!

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: they had fast food burgers and french fries in the 1930s.

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: your family is surprisingly okay with how you are a professional bank robber and wanted for murder.

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: Except for your Mom. She’d turn you in to the law. ‘Cause she’s a cold-ass bitch.

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: Cops have remarkably bad aim.

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: a pattern of crime & illicit behavior is a good way to get to know somebody. its like courting for sinners

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: never trust anyone named Malcom.

#thingslearnedfromBonnieandClyde: it takes at least twenty direct hits by tommy gun to kill true ganstas like Bonnie and Clyde.

Fantastic film overall. I definitely feel as though I learned many valuable lessons if I ever desire to turn to a life of crime. Lessons of survival, who to trust, and safety measures to ensure every job is a success. In all seriousness though, I really loved the way the film showed the two main characters utter abandon of society for each other. The way they both held the lighter that set the world aflame was actually endearing and I was sad when they were finally blown away in a blaze of Po-Po gunfire. But I guess every gangster gets a taste of their own bullet one day.

God is real and active in the world and a personal relationship is possible.
Christ is interested in the wholeness of a person.
The truth always makes itself known.
Love is important.

Everything else is murky. We can know a great many things through science and our theology must be in line with that science. Therefore there are quite a few “traditional” beliefs I’ve rejected since I was a child such as the common understanding of sin and guilt and to a large extent also hell, Satan, demons and angels, maybe heaven, the rapture, the tribulation, the creation story and so many other things. On a large scale, I’ve rejected any notion that attempts to box up Christianity, or Christ, or God in a small, easy to understand package, or a set of rules to follow, or a certain type of way to live. The world is so full of wonder and the biggest issue I have with most Christians and churches is we try to make it very black and white. We try to explain it all, because not having an explanation is enough to make everything fall apart. Or maybe it’s too terrifying not to have THE answer, or whatever the reason may be. I don’t want to know all there is to know about God nor do I want to think God works in only one way because that God can fit in my tiny brain and what does that say about that God?

Anyway, to start this reboot of my beliefs I’m going to read a few foundational books to my early Christian life as a means of defining where I sit with the things I used to believe. I’ll start by reading a landmark book for me “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis. I aim to write a bit on each chapter. I hope that happens, and here we go.

From: s h
To: chasemacri
Date: 6:58 am
Subj: Re: Data Entry Position

Dear Applicant

The Human resources have just reviewed your resume due to the one you posted on www.craisglist.org .You are now scheduled for an interview with the hiring manager of the company.She is Ms Heidi Klum ,you are required to setup a yahoo mail account(mail.yahoo.com) and a yahoo instant messenger (http://messenger.yahoo.com).After this process is done,you are to add up her yahoo id (kheidi61@yahoo.com) to your yahoo buddy list for the interview.add her up now.she is online waiting for you

Regards
Human Resources Dept
Depa Ltd.

I better hurry on that too. I can’t imagine Victoria’s Secret or Seal appreciate my keeping Ms. Klum waiting.

So writing stuff for me has been going very well. I am a Staff Writer now for a metal website called Crustcake. We keep a steady stream of metal news flowing through the site as well as write interview, reviews, show reviews and other such metal music stuff.

I still write for Eleven Magazine. I wrote the cover for the October issue as typed up in my last post.

I contribute ideas to Invisible Oranges (that are mostly shot down…)

I’m playing music with a couple dudes that is ever so slowly taking shape and my old band Pilots is looking to finally track the last songs we wrote and put out a final full length. We’ll see. It has been promised before.

Oh, and we bought a new (used) car after an old fogey with no license totaled our old one by ramming his car into ours in the parking lot of Caitlin’s workplace. Crazy story but the car is a 2006 Chevy Malibu Maxx LT.