Poem from Shelley

A Poem From Me To You...

I stop by

You no here

This is sad

I cry tear.

By: Shelley Jones

Random Evening

Honestly, I don't know exactly what I am thinking/feeling right now. I feel some awkwardness. This is natural since I am in a transition. (Tomorrow I start at Orchard Road full time.) It is exceptionally weird for me since I am fairly socially sensitive. i want to know where I 'fit in.' Right now, I am having to meet a bunch of new people and begin relationships. That is fun and exciting. But I am a person who prefers comfort and routine. This is all new.

(Listening to: Phil Wickman: Self-titled upon Sean's recommendation; love the style, will listen to for the next couple of days to pick up lyrics and feel. It is relaxed, but not boring. Definitely chill/work to music. Maybe worshipful, don't know.)

Something I am currently learning/noticing in my life is that I do not like to be criticized. (All the people who know me at all are chuckling to themselves and rolling their eyes right now.) But seriously, I don't like it at all. It makes me want to launch into people with my mouth and let them have it. Automatically. That is not right. I need God to take that from me. It is ego, stubbornness and ego. Lord, help me.

Finally, did you know that I have used the same deodorant everyday since 2002? It is true. Old Spice High Endurance Deodorant Mountain Rush. Everyday. I do not get anything else. I do not think about getting anything else. I do not want anything else. That is that.

Also, I don't have to be at the office until 7:45ish now. That is awesome. I will probably feel like I am sleeping in all the time.

This is the Kind of Dad I Wan to Be

Star Wars Kick Star Trek's Butt

(enjoy)

10. In the Star Wars Universe weapons are rarely, if ever, set on "stun".

9. The Enterprise needs a huge engine room with an anti-matter unit and a crew of 20 just to go into warp -- The Millannium Falcon does the same thing with R2-D2 and a wookie.

8. After resisting the Imperial torture droid and Darth Vader, Princess Leia still looked fresh -- After pithy Cardassian starvation torture, Picard looked like hell.

7. One word: Lightsaber

6. Darth Vader could choke the entire Borg empire withone glance

5. The Death Star doesn't care if a world is "M" class or not.

4. Luke Skywalker is not obsessed with sleeping with every alien he encounters

3. Jabba the Hutt would eat Harry Mudd for trying to cut in on his action.

2. The Federation would have to attempt to liberate any ship named "Slave I"

1. Picard pilots the Enterprise through asteroid belts at one-quarter impulse power --- Han Solo floors it.

Update: Team Poland 2007

Here is my previous post on Team Poland where my friend Nathan French is helping change the world.

This weekend they went to Auschwitz.

Here is a excerpt from the post from one of the team members - Susan V.

Saturday morning we went to Auschwitz. Even now, it's hard for me to know where to start in describing the absolute sense of injustice and death that is in that place. It got to the point, at least for me, that I had to force myself to stay and look, because there was such an urge to just check out mentally or even run away physically because of the horrendous reality of what happened in those very buildings. A few times, I did have to just walk away to avoid physically getting sick. But at the same time, I knew that God had spoken to me to keep my eyes open. Go through, see all that was to be seen, but look foward and keep your eyes open. To often we close our eyes in situations like that, and we miss the triumph of the ending because we stop with death and don't continue to the resurrection. (back to the theme of the trip.) Something that Nathan said really makes sense in this context - you have to always have a devil in your theology, otherwise you can never truly know God because you will attribute things to Him that are most certainly not His doing. With so many deaths that were truly unecessary and unprovoked, it is clear to see how much the devil hates God and anything associated with God or that brings God pleasure. Walking through the camps, it was hard to get my mind away from asking God "Where are you in all of this? Where were you when this happened?" I'm so glad that God doesn't get offended when we ask things like that. The most impactful thing for me was walking through the gas chambers and crematorium, knowing that on that very place, within those very walls, thousands of people were murdered and their bodies burned. If you've never heard the ground cry out for justice before, it's a scary thing. I just thank God that we have the blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel, the blood of millions of aborted children, the blood of years upon years of war, and the blood of over 6 million victims of the Holocaust.

Just for Chey

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy

"I'd like to see a nature film where an eagle swoops down and pulls a fish out of a lake, and then maybe he's flying along, low to the ground, and the fish pulls a worm out of the ground. Now that's a documentary!"

"It makes me mad when people say I turned and ran like a scared rabbit. Maybe it was like an angry rabbit, who was going to fight in another fight, away from the first fight."

"For mad scientists who keep brains in jars, here's a tip: Why not add a slice of lemon to each jar, for freshness."

"I think there should be something in science called the "reindeer effect." I don't know what it would be, but I think it'd be good to hear someone say, "Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect."

"Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing."

Quote Time

Every once in a while, it is necessary that I give you a bunch of quotes that I have stumbled upon recently.

"How can a woman expect to be happy with a man who insists on treating her like a perfectly normal human being?" - Oscar Wilde

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself." - Galileo

"A man can be short and dumpy and getting bald but if he has fire, women will like him. " - Mae West (This is a very good thing for me.)

"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean." - G.K. Chesterton

"The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." - G.K. Chesterton

"There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom." - G.K. Chesterton; Orthodoxy

G.R.O.S.S. = Fight Club?

In the film Fight Club, the real name of the protagonist (Ed Norton’s character) is never revealed. Many believe the reason behind this anonymity is to give "Jack" more of an everyman quality. Do not be deceived. "Jack" is really Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. It’s true. Norton portrays the grown-up version of Calvin, while Brad Pitt plays his imaginary pal, Hobbes, reincarnated as Tyler Durden.

Picture this: a hyper, self-absorbed child initially concocts an imaginary friend as the ideal playmate, to whom more realistic qualities soon become attributed. This phantasm becomes a completely separate personality, with his own likes, dislikes, and temperament—and the imaginer and the imagined clash and argue constantly, though remaining fast friends. This pattern continues to the point where the child begins to perceive what was originally mere fantasy to be reality.

Just as Calvin has an imaginary jungle-animal friend named Hobbes, whom everyone else believes to be nothing but a stuffed toy, "Jack" in Fight Club has an imaginary cool-guy friend named Tyler, whom no one but Jack can see.

In both cases, the entity that began as the ideal companion soon took on a more realistic, three-dimensional quality. In other words, they became real. This is evident in that both Hobbes and Tyler also began to function as scapegoats for their creators. For instance, consider that Calvin often blames broken lamps and other assorted household mischief on Hobbes, and that Jack is inclined to believe that Fight Club and other various anti-society mischief is brought about by Tyler, not himself. Calvin claims Hobbes pounces on him every day after school; Jack believes Tyler beats him up next to 40 kilotons of nitroglycerin in a parking garage—the list goes on and on. The relationships between the two sets of friends are the exact same. Is this mere coincidence?

(article continues here. ***some language)

The Gospel and the God-Forsaken

The Gospel and the God-Forsaken
The Challenge of the Missional Church in Suburbia

I found this article a couple of weeks ago. Someone linked it, but I can't remember who at this point. This article has really challenged my thinking. I have read and reread this article. I am going to buy a couple of the books that he used and continue my thinking on this, I think that it is exceptionally important to change the way that we think about church in our Suburban American culture! We must change how our we think about our world.

There will be a lot of posts out of this, but for now I just wanted to tell you that I am reading it.

Here is a quote:

Contextualization is defined by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost as “the dynamic process whereby the constant message of the gospel interacts with specific, relative human situations.” They go on to write that this:
'Involves the examination of the gospel in the light of the respondent’s worldview and
then adapting the message, encoding it in such a way that it can become meaningful to the respondent…it is primarily concerned with presenting Christianity in such a way that it meets people’s deepest needs and penetrates their worldviews, thus allowing them to follow Christ and remain in their culture.'

HA! That is exactly what we need to do, now how do we do it?

Evolution + Global Warming

"I don't understand how the same people that are attempting to convince me that this world was created through random interactions of mass and energy over billions and billions of years are also convinced that we have completely jacked it up in the past 20."

Christian Mysticism

P. Brian has this . . .

"We are being driven mad by our harried, hurried, frantic, frenzied lives. And people instinctively know we were not meant to live this way...We long for the mystical experiences that are nurtured in silence and solitude. In the technological madness of the ubiquitous television, radio, cell phone, internet, Blackberry and iPod there is a means of communication that is not technological -- it is communication with God; it is mystical. I'm convinced that a return to Christian mysticism is essential if we want to save our soul -- not from hell in eternity, but from the madness of this present age."

"Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad; but creative artists very seldom...Poetry is sane because it floats easily on the infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion...The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

Interesting.

Read the rest here.

This is Who We are Fighting

Iraq Insurgents Used Children in Car Bombing

Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday.

The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

"Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back," Barbero said.

The general said it was the first time he had seen a report of insurgents using children in suicide bombings. But he said Al-Qaeda in Iraq is changing tactics in response to the tighter controls around the city.

This typifies the immoral mentality that our enemy has. This is reprehensible. We MUST fight these people. We MUST win this war at all costs.

(Thanks Drudge for firing me up this morning.)

Christian Existentialism

This is a good article by a woman named Ellen McFall. This article goes over some basics about Existentialism. However, this section on Kierkegaard was very strong and I related to a lot of what this author says is his philosophy. (I think she does a good job synopsizing.)
Thanks to Jami for this article.

Christian Existentialists

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), perhaps the best-known Christian existentialist, argued that God had not died but that he had merely been displaced by the Church hierarchy of the day. For Kierkegaard, it was the hypocrisy and bureaucracy of established religion that kept mankind from experiencing the wholeness that can only result from union with God. Like other existentialists, Kierkegaard esteemed the individual, urging man to follow his own path to a personal relationship with God.

The path to God, Kierkegaard advised, was revealed in the day-to-day hardships and sufferings of life that were transformed through faith into opportunities for spiritual growth. Modern man, he chided, wanted to "fraternize with God" but didn't want a deeper relationship, especially if it required sacrifice. Christianity offered solutions to the trials of life, but it was only through an authentic relationship with Christ that these answers would be revealed.

Kierkegaard agreed that man was free not to choose God, but cautions that this choice would result in the "sickness unto death" that is despair. For Kierkegaard, despair is nothing less than an act of defiance-the final decision "not to will to be." He even warns that anyone who is not conscious of himself as a spiritual being, regardless of his accomplishments, is ultimately in despair.

For Christian existentialists, feelings of angst and emptiness are not an ending, but a beginning. Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) believed that the experience of despair could become "the prelude for an authentic hope that far transcends mere naive optimism." Like other writers of the time, he believed that industrialization had reduced man to a set of interchangeable "functions" and had robbed him of his individual soul. But for Marcel, the answer was not to curse the emptiness of the Heavens but to view our time on earth as a lifetime search for truth. He inferred from man's innate need for meaning that he was created specially to commune with God, and it was only through this avenue that he could ever hope to find wholeness.