You're looking forward to the wrong thing

So i've joined two small groups at RPI this week. Really looking forward to how they unfold.
On wednesday nights there's a group on the subject of prayer. Yesterday we covered a bunch of ground, but spent the most time on John 17.
Throughout the chapter, Jesus is praying to God before he is turned over to the chief priests. A lot of verses stuck out at me. Here's the first 3 of them:

"After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: "Father, the time has come. Florify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." [John 17:1-3, niv]

Traditionally, humans think about "eternal life" as never dying. Living forever. Immortality.
Christians usually recognize this as something that can only be achieved by "knowing Jesus".
But that's not what Jesus said in his prayer; He didn't say that "they get eternal life by knowing you".
No, he defined eternal life as "knowing you".
That's so awesome.

Eternal life.
If you're looking forward to living forever and not having to worry about mosquitoes, you're living a sad shell of a life. What we ought to be looking forward to is getting to know Jesus.

Reality

I don't know if i've talked about this before, but i think about it all the time.
I have a very difficult time holding on to "reality".
I don't think that this is a deficiency on my part.
I think we all have trouble with this, i just don't know how many people actually think about it. And i can't possibly describe to you what i'm talking about, you just have to experience it on your own.

But tonight I spent almost an hour laying down on a hillside listening to worship music.

When you climb a mountain, one of the first things you do when you get to the top is look down- or out- at the view. You usually see an expanse of landscape, lakes, trees, and other mountains for miles and miles. It's beautiful.
It's a sight that makes many people think about God and how big he is, and that He created all of this beautiful world. Old ladies buy posters of mountains and hang them on their wall because they wish everything was as pretty as a view of a lake, or a sunset.

The view from the hillside I was on tonight is pretty much exactly that. You can see for miles and miles. Except the view is of downtown Troy, NY. (that's the actual view from next to where i was laying down)
At night, this view is one of the dingiest looking things you've ever seen.
It's all yellow streetlamps and roads. Police sirens and ambulance horns are an almost constant drone. That's pretty much the best way to describe Troy: Dingy.

The sky above troy tonight was a beautiful deep, velvet black, peppered with a few stars. After looking between "up" at the night sky and "down" over troy for a while, I decided that it's one of the coolest contrasts i've ever seen.

That's where I start to lose my grasp on reality.

I think that in America today, we are one of the worst reality-recognizers of all time. Our culture is escapism. Books, tv, movies, sex, our jobs, and video games are all ways that we forget about how we are living beings on a tiny blue planet hurtling through space.

That's what I think about when I look up at the sky- when you look up, you see the vastness of the universe. When you look down, you see the pitiful, dingy mess that mankind has made on our little blue planet.

Do you think that when God looks down on our planet, he sees Troy NY as just as beautiful as the mountainside in north western new hampshire?
I think maybe He does.

When I look at Troy, i see dingy. When I look out from a mountain top, I see natural beauty.
When God looks down at the landscape, He sees his handiwork, his Creation.
When He looks at Troy, I bet he doesn't even notice all the buildings falling apart, or the nasty smell of the streets. Because inside Troy are 50,000 of his best creation of all- 50,000 desperate human beings trying the best they can to live within the walls that we've created for ourselves that we call "reality".

I met a guy a few weeks ago on the bus to walmart.
He was having a lively conversation with the bus driver.
When we got off, he put on a visor and went to work.
He doesn't have time to go to a hillside and look at his city and think about the ridiculous boundaries that we put on our lives through our culture.
His "reality" is completely different from mine.

He knows all the bus drivers on his route because he probably doesn't have a car and probably works 14 hours a day to pay his bills. or his alcoholism. or both. or neither.

I walk around the RPI campus ignoring homework, watching people, and looking out at Troy.

These two lives are so different, we might as well consider them to be in different universes. We would have never met or affected each other's lives if we hadn't crossed paths on that bus. And two weeks later, all i have is a brief memory of his existence- an awareness. That's it.

God knows all of us, even when we don't know him, or choose to ignore His love.
That's so powerful.

The end-all point in Hinduism is Nirvana: the point where you simply cease to exist because you've somehow broken out of the endless chain of reincarnation. Buddhists claim that they know how to reach Nirvana, or that they know how to strive for it. They say that they know how to break out of our earthly "reality" and enter into the true, real, truthfulness of the universe.
Here's what I think.
I think that as soon as you realize who God is and begin to notice His Love for each and every one of us, at the moment when you stop thinking about reality in terms of your little personal mundane life and start to think about it in terms of everything, of how only God could possibly encompass everything- that's "Nirvana". I think that's the point where the Hindus 5,000 years ago were trying to get to, where Buddhists think they know how to get to. A realization of reality.

Closing thought:
As I lay down on that hillside, the wind was blowing in my face. It was cold. It was amazing. We spent money on fog and hazers, and HVAC systems that can move cold air to enhance the experience of a live show. Youth church services are like that a lot- we use fog at Uturn because it looks cool.
But when you're outside, looking at a city, you don't need atmospheric effects.
You have the atmosphere around you.

opportunity land

during the weeks leading up to going off to college, I began to really dread leaving. I'm definitely homesick. And i definitely believe that my place in the world isn't in academia, or troy, ny.

I did, however, know that I couldn't stay at home.
I could have gone to UNH.
One major reason that I didn't is because I knew there would be a tremendous ammount of stress trying to give my all to my studies and at the same time wanting to give my all to uturn. It would split me into two pieces that would leave me an empty shell of an overstressed human being. By going somewhere that I don't know anyone, It ought to be easier to focus on schoolwork entirely and get it over with.

It's also proven to be a sea of opportunity:
Opportunities to get involved with technical theater, opportunities to have a job at one of the most acoustically perfect performing spaces in America, opportunities to give what I know and can do to other churches, to new people, to work with lights on campus, to join IEEE, to meet in 4 weeks double the amount of people that i've built relationships with in the first 18 years of my life.
And to learn like crazy.
My primary objective anytime i'm not in class (i have 17 hours of class each week and therefore 95 waking hours each week where I'm not sitting in a lecture hall) is to simply absorb everything I see and do.
I pay special attention to venues. I've seen more venues in a month than i've ever seen in my life- the RPI playhouse, each lecture hall, each church, each of the 4 theaters in EMPAC.
Every space is different, and seeing how different spaces can be utilized is really inspiring to me.

so that's that.
opportunity land.

On no grounds for Arguing

i read this verse last night and i love it.
Paul is in Corinth and, as the usual, people are trying to persecute him and the people people with him.
"'This man,' they charged, 'is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.'" [acts 18:13]

Read that again.
"this man is persuading people to worship God in ways contrary to the law."

Paul wasn't preaching against God.
he was preaching a different way to worship God, a way that the Jews didn't see as part of their custom.
They didn't like that.
But like it or not, he was still preaching that people worship God. And, in fact, to worship him in better ways.

Sometimes people in the Church have a mindset like that.
"it's not what we're used to."
but it might be better.
Just be glad that people are worshiping God, don't try to put 'em in "jail" because of it.

Missing

I've been to three church services in a row away from home, and one college campus service.
What I miss most is jumping.
Not necessarily actually jumping, as much fun as it is, but what motivates people to jump around during a worship service- the energy, the all-out total abandon of praising God with everything.
This week as well as last week I attended a church of 1200 people that meets in what used to be a strip mall.
The building is nice.
But I wanted nothing more than to break out of the acoustic worship set and start jumping around like a maniac.
I miss it so much.

I want to be in a church like Hillsong, with crazy energetic people and members that don't stand around, ever.

I guess i'm pentecostal or something.

On Unexpecting

've definitely learned a lot in my first few weeks at college.
There are a number of things that i didn't expect, or that i hadn't considered before leaving home.

However, one thing that I was actually a bit worried about was alone time.
Living with someone else, in a building full of hundreds of other people, sharing a bathroom with 3 others, i was figuring that I wouldn't have much time to myself.
And sometimes that's true. when 7 people are in my dorm room playing xbox, there is no privacy.

But i was not at all expecting the level of privacy that I have here. First of all, my roomate frequently has classes when I don't. So I find myself with the room all to myself during most of friday afternoon, which is pretty neat. But other than that, there's an important note about RPI: There's 2 kinds of people here. People who go out every night to party, and people that never leave their rooms.
The easiest way to get privacy is to just start walking around campus, because no one ever does that.
And that's really cool for me, for two reasons:
1) I can't accomplish anything when other people are around me. Can't think, can't write, can't do homework without someone helping me, can't read.
2) I am much better at thinking and talking when i'm walking around. I pace when i talk on the phone. I can't avoid it.

So that works out really really well for me. If i want to get alone, I just have to start walking around campus. It's also really neat because I can pray outloud and not worry about anything. I love walking alone because it's like i'm hanging out with God, one on one. The added bonus of talking out loud is a big plus.

Anyway, Today was pretty unexpected.
I went to my first RCA (Rensselear Christian Association) meeting. It was different then i expected. Worship wasn't as energetic as i'm used to, and much less refined. But still very deliberate. Instead of a sermon, they had a few reams of lined paper and pens, and we wrote letters to servicemen/women in honor of september 11th. Pretty thoughtful.

The meeting started at 7. At 8, I had been planning on going to a concert at EMPAC. But as i was sitting in the RCA room, trying to decide if i should leave early for it, I just sort of felt like I should stay.
I left at 9 and wandered towards the empac building to see if anything was still going on. People looked like they were beginning to leave, so I kept wandering through the campus.

Then I noticed something that i've never noticed or thought about before.

the RPI campus has a church on it. Except it's really just a church building, a 150 year old massive stone church. In 1977 the school turned it into the computing center. And to do it, they actually built a building inside of it. with interior walls and everything. It's very interesting. really. The building is open 24/7.

As I was walking by the VCC, that is, the church, I looked up. They kept/restored the stained glass windows in the church. And the windows were working opposite of what they were designed to do. They were lighting up the night sky from the inside of the church.
It was very, very cool.
And unexpected. I've never seen stained glass light up the night.

I started walking back to my dorm. When i was pretty close, one of the guys from RCA was walking towards me. I waved.
He invited me to Friendly's.

Friendly's after youth group is/was a tradition back home.
I felt like I should go.
I went. They paid for me dinner.
Then they invited me back to an upperclassman dorm and we watched a bunch of episodes of the flight of the conchords.

Today was unexpected.
For the first time in a month, I feel a little belonging.
RCA made me pumped to visit home there. I can't go anywhere without being completely overwhelmed by plans, ideas, and details. Everywhere. Its nuts.

On Hearing

I have a textbook for my digital media class titled, "Audio Culture, readings in modern music" by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner.
It is a compilation book of essays written about modern music.
The assignment I just read was incredibly interesting. It was about how, over the years, silence has steadily been removed from our society. We fill our lives with noise, which makes it more difficult for important sounds to have any meaning. The author referenced "signal to noise ratio" a few times, but giving it a new meaning in what we hear with our ears.
Very cool.
What was most interesting to me, thought, was a paragraph that i'm going to reproduce here. Read it all. I dare you:

"We will not argue for the priority of the ear. Modern man, who seems to be in the process of deafening himself apparently regards this as a trivial mechanism. In the West the ear has given way to the eye as the most important gatherer of information. One of the most evident testaments of this change is the way in which we have come to imagine God. It was not until the Renaissance that God became portraiture. Previously He had been conceived as sound or vibration. In the Middle East the message of Mohammed is still heard through the recitation of his Koran...."
"Clairaudience" from The Music of the Environment by R. Murray Schafer

how cool is that?

I've heard it said that blind people have a much easier time interacting with the world than deaf people. Because the ears are, inherently, much more useful than the eyes.
Think about this.

All art conveys emotion. That's what makes us look at it or listen to it. But visual art and musical art are inherently different: most people can't look at a bunch of colors on a piece of canvas and understand what the artist was thinking. Visual art usually represents something: pictures of objects that we already recognize, shapes with lines that our eyes follow to perceive thoughts, and colors that influence our thinking.
Music is different.
You don't have to recognize sound for it to convey emotion.
You could be a time traveling blacksmith from the 1650s and listen to ambient electronic music and still feel the emotions of the composer, without ever knowing what you were listening to.

Our ears are rooted to our subconscious. They are sensitive.


So many problems that people have with God would be nonexistent if we were better at using our ears instead of our eyes.
You can't see God. But you can feel him. Like you can feel wind.
And you can hear wind.
God's name in Hebrew was a bunch of "breath noises"-no vowels. His name was literally breath. Vibration.
God is much more fundamental to life than what we can see.

on belonging

so i was thinking a little bit as i was walking across the rpi campus today.
(sidenote: first blog post as a college student)
I was thinking about belonging.
I've been plenty of places during my short life on earth: i've been through private middle school, public highschool, private highschool, juggled churches, and now i'm a student at a university with a ~$800m endowment.
And what i've realized is that i've never really "fit in" anywhere, the exception being cwc.

In middle school i was the kid that threw pencils at people.
At somersworth i was the fattish kid in the corner that didn't talk to people.
At BA US i was constantly stretched in every direction and couldn't ever focus on academics. And all my friends weren't in my grade.

At RPI i'm the kid in engineering that doesn't want to be an engineer, the kid with a bicycle that doesn't use it because i enjoy walking, the kid that is completely lost in physicsII and mostly lost in calcII, the kid that gets locked inside stairwells in EMPAC, who misses job interviews because the interviewer's phone didn't ring, who doesn't go to frat parties, whose laptop needed reimaging 10 minutes after he got it because vista lets you create limited user accounts when there are no administrator accounts on the machine, the list goes on.

So i'm thinking, maybe its not that i don't fit in here.
Maybe it's that i just don't like fitting.
Example:
In highschool, I amassed a collection of geeky tshirts because a) they were funny and b) no one else had them.
Now i go to a school where everyone wears geeky tshirts and i no longer wear them. because other people do.

But i think that there are advantages to being somewhere that you don't fit.
Mostly, people remember you.
I missed my job interview at EMPAC today because i was supposed to call the guy's cell phone so that he could open the door for me. I called it at exactly 4:40, the time of my interview, and it went straight to voicemail. Thinking that he was running late, I just hung around in the hallway for a little bit.
There was a stairwell next to me.
I started looking out the window.
The door shut behind me, and it locked.
And i soon discovered that every door leading to the inside was locked.
So i ran down 6 flights of stairs as fast as i could, luckily there was an outside door at the bottom, and then ran back inside the main entrance and up 6 flights of stairs again.
Then i waited where i was before.
At 5:17 he came out the door.
me: "are you heading out?"
him: "yes, did you want to meet with me?"
me: "yeah i had an interview at 4:40"
"well it's 5:..." (shows phone clock)
"yeah i thought you were running late"
"i've been standing here by the door, you were supposed to call.."
"i did..." (takes out phone) "it went straight to voicemail"
"oh... well i'm sorry about that, how about you email me for another time slot"
"okay, sorry. thank you"

then we left. But with any luck, my unfortunate exchange will help him to remember me next week when i get an actual interview. maybe.

anyway, some parting thoughts:
psalm 119:19 says "i am a stranger in this world"
and that's how i feel every day.
But i don't mind it too much, because i think that i'm supposed to be here.
also, in verse 11 says, "i have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you"
and that's also how i feel- that through the daily troubles of college life i have nothing to worry about because I have God's word hidden inside of me, forever, holding a spot that cannot ever be usurped. And if i rely daily on it, nothing can go wrong because i'm convinced that inside of God's will, there is no wrong.

On the Nature Around Us

Got the new MuteMath cd on monday.
It's excellent.

The very last line in the whole album is, "The devil is not the nature that is around us // but the nature that is within us all."

I heard that line and decided to think about whether or not i believed it.
My conclusion: both yes and no.

The line brings in an element that is prevalent in Eastern thought- we go around pegging things as "good" and "bad" based on how they pertain to us. For example, a hurricane might be considered "bad" because it destroys houses and makes people cry. But in reality, the hurricane isn't "good" or "bad" because nothing in eastern thought is good or bad, just is. The good and the bad is our interpretation that is often wrong. In this case, the word "devil" in the line up there might refer not to the devil in the traditional christian sense, but to the concept of "evil". Nature isn't evil. People are.

That's how I think that Paul Meany intended his lyric to be read.
But there's a whole lot more under that.

Taken literally, the line doesn't actually make sense. The devil is a being; a fallen angel. So he can't be equated to any sort of "nature". He is his own distinct thing, not 'within' us but hanging around in the natural world.

But I started thinking about the devil and his role in our lives, and his role in "nature".

First, some prose:

“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.
—Isaiah 14:12-15

Let's journey back in time to sometime after God created the heavens and the earth, but not very much after. Your name is Lucifer. You're an anointed angel, with responsibilities above other celestial beings. But you want more. You want to be as powerful as God himself.
But God, being God, knows this, and throws you down to earth.
bummer.

Here's a similar situation:
We're back in the present time.
Your name is Johnny, and you're a 7 year old boy.
It's Christmas time.
For the past few months, you've been asking for a Nintendo Wii. It's all you want. It's all you hope for. You want nothing more than to play Sumer Smash Bros Brawl against your older brother. You're fixated on it.
You're sure that your parents Santa is gonna get it for you.
Christmas morning rolls around.
You see a box that looks something like a Nintendo Wii sitting under the christmas tree!
excitedly, you rip into the wrapping paper... it's an n64 with no games and no controller. $7 at a yard sale. You throw a temper tantrum.
Dad just looks at you and says that he doesn't want you getting fat in front of the TV. Not yet, anyway.

What does a disappointing christmas morning have to do with the fall?
Johnny wanted a really cool video game for christmas. He got something that he couldn't use. Satan wanted the really cool ability to control everything in the universe.
He got the earth.

In John 4:8-10, the Bible reads:
"Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 'All this I will give you,' he said, 'if you will bow down and worship me.'
Jesus said to him, 'Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.''"

The devil tried to get Jesus to bow down to him in exchange for the Earth. the Earth!
That's like Johnny trying to pawn off his n64 on the school playground for his friend's dad's brand new car.
It makes no sense whatsoever.

Because the earth is lame. It consists of trees and mountains, lakes, rivers, and wild animals. They just kind of hang around. They don't have relationships with God. They just simply are. Just like how an n64 isn't playable without controllers or games. It's pretty to look at, if you're a video game collector, just like how the earth is pretty to look at if you're into nature. (everyone should be, by the way).

If you were Satan, you'd probably have pulled a temper tantrum just like Johnny over there. You wanted it all, and you got a bunch of lame animal friends that don't even have souls.

I asked Pastor Nate a bunch of questions about Nature this week.
Here's my conclusion:
Nature isn't good nor evil. in a sense, them eastern guys are right on that.

But, rather, it's broken.
God created Nature to be perfect; He said that it was "good". Good as in, "swell job, Self." Then Man came over and messed it up by bringing Sin into the world.
We decided to disobey God.
Not only that, we decided to disobey God while standing on his Creation.
That's digging a hole in somone's front yard and then refusing to leave.

So we broke Nature. Now dogs bite children and hurricanes drown old people.
And the devil gets to hang out with it all day long like a kid without an n64 controller.

None of it matters. Jesus fixes it all. And gives us all Wiis.

On General Research

I read an article in Popular Science today about how IBM has built a supercomputer that they are going to pit against contestants on Jeopardy. It's going to participate just like a human, with a buzzer and everything, and offer spoken answers. The showcase here is the programming that has to be able to read Alex Trebek's voice and interpret it's meaning, not only literally but also through tone of voice and inflection.

I told my brother, "Why is IBM doing this? They've been losing money for 20 years, it seems like a waste."
He replied cooly: "General research. Companies make money by doing research."

And he's completely right.
Example: NASA spends billions of dollars each year in weird little projects that don't seem directly related to space exploration. Yet NASA projects have given us things like memory foam mattresses and the protective coating on the outside of the statue of liberty.
Bell Telephone in the 40s through the 70s had one of the most successful think tanks in the world- Bell Labs, which created UNIX (aka every modern computer operating system), thousands of advances in electronics, MOSFET amps, C, and all sorts of things that have shaped our very world. None of which, of course, seem to have anything to do with telephone. 6 Bell Labs researchers received Nobel Peace Prizes.
And you know what?
Bell Telephone was one of the most successful companies of all time before it was split up by the government.
Companies get successful by putting money into research.

And you know, it got me thinking.
Think about how much more successful church ministry would be if we invested more into general research?

I've sat through innumerable "salvation sermons". Some have been better than others. But the problem with every salvation sermon is that at the end of 40 minutes or so, they challenge a listener to make a radical, life-changing decision.
That's not something that i think I, personally, would do after a 40-minute sermon, at least not without help from the holy spirit.

Recently in our area i've noticed an increase in general church ministry- there's more outreach going on, which is a good thing. But i still think the church is lacking in the area of community "research": Spending time and money getting our foot in the door by creating community building projects and being generally charitable. Things that have no apparent use for getting people to church. Because when you make something obviously about getting people to church, they won't want to go. Because there's valuable experience and reputation that can be built by "just being there" in the community at every available time.

I want to be part of a church that puts emphasis on that: "just being there", even and especially when it doesn't make sense to "church people". Because just like Bell Labs, you never know when you'll stumble on something that changes the world.

On Identities

This weekend I went to my student orientation for RPI.
It may have been the most socially awkward event that i've ever been to, because at RPI, everyone is socially awkward in some way. At 8:00 last night, they told us that we were going to the "New Student Celebration". It was essentially a highschool dance, except 80% of the kids didn't even go on the dance floor. And we're in upstate new york, so all they played was slow, annoying club music, not the high-energy disco that i'm used to for dances. There was a few good minutes of enjoyment, but most of it was just noise and advisors encouraging people to mingle.

Here's my overall impression:
RPI is a lot like my highschool. This is both good and bad, but i don't know which it is more of. I'm not too worried about my schedule, as it looks like its going to be a lot of the familiar struggles with calculus and physics that I spent my whole senior year getting used to. That's a little comforting, though I'll admit I was beyond joyous when AP tests were over. Summer break feels like a fleeting respite from the agony.
More familiar than the sinking i'd-better-find-someone-smarter-than-me-and-be-their-friend feeling was the faces: I met at least 10 different people who all eerily resemble someone that I already know. That's playing tricks with my head, because I will probably forget about the people that i currently know as I get to be friends with the people that look like them. There's even a girl here named Kathryn who calls herself Katy. I kept doing double-takes because she looks exactly identical to a "katy" from Maine.

I really feel a lot like i did the first week I went to somersworth high school.
There's this familiar deal with stereotypes: At RPI, there seems to be three(3) mixable, interchangeable, fashionable stereotypes: The Nerd/Geek (of which there are several flavors), the "Smart Jock", and the "Minority". Everyone seems to have at least one of these traits down pretty good.
Except me.
I believe that I have succesfully avoided stereotype as a teenager through my mish-mash of changing schools, intense time divisions, and diverse assortment of friends. Resultingly, I don't have a recognizable "clothing style", unless jeans+tshirt with the occasional khaki/polo has a style named for it, I don't play any sports, I have good hygine and don't talk about videogames during lunch...

I feel very out of my own environment. I'm sure everyone does.
But I'm starting to get used to that feeling.
So far my only hope is that the christian group here isn't lame. Because I know i never would have made it through highschool without Uturn, and maybe, just maybe, there will be continuity through a campus group that will allow me to keep my bearings.

This is going to be a pretty nutty next couple of months.
But as Paul said to Timothy one day, "Continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." [2tim 3:14+15]

It is impossible to ever be completely lost, completely alone, or completely forgotten.

on Transformers

I saw transformers last night. Midnight showing.
It was exactly what I expected, and exactly what I wanted to see- a highly produced action movie full of alien robots and lots of explosions.

But here's the deal.
For that 2 and a half hours in the wee morning, I was completely engaged in the movie.
Halfway through, I caught myself thinking, "i don't want this movie to end.. ever."
And then it ended.
And I got up slowly from my seat and trudged wearily out of the theater.
And then I went home.

This morning, during the ride to work, here's what i started thinking about.

Even though I was incredibly tired from the long night of watching Transformers, I was completely "pumped up". I had difficulty falling asleep because I was still thinking about the movie. It had seeped into my mind.
And I realized one of the reasons i felt so empty immediately after the movie ended: because I had become so engrossed in the film, when It ended, I suddenly had to return to reality.
Reality, which is so much less awesome than the fictional world of transformers.
There are no massive alien robots fighting a war on our planet.
There is no Shia LaBeouf to save the world.
There is no ancient mystical "energy" that holds the universe together.


Micheal Bay and his contemporaries have figured out how to tap into our heads.
He can make a movie that engrosses us, makes us feel a part of the action.
And movies like that sell. We consider such movies "good movies".


50 years ago, movies didn't have to be that good.
Most young people don't like to watch anything made before the 90s.
Why?
Because production budgets weren't what they are now.
60 years ago, nobody spent 80 million to make a movie.
It seems like a natural thing that movies would get better and better.
But how come we don't like old movies anymore?

Here's what I think.
I don't think that it has anything to do with getting "used to" the highly produced nature of modern films. I think we need it.
We need movies to "move" us.
we need movies to make us feel there.
we need something to get us riled up and want to get out and do something.


because real life is boring.


that's what i think.
As our society gets more advanced, we don't spend time on tasks like we used to.
Washing clothes and the dishes is now a matter of loading and unloading a machine.
Getting somewhere is a matter of driving or flying there.
Communicating is as efficient as typing.
Re-connecting with old friends is a facebook search.

we've removed all of the adventure from life.
and we've created a longing for a cause.

that's why people play video games.
they don't just need a way to kill time.
they need to be a part of something.
That's why people spend months of their life dedicated to participating in advertising campaigns.


but here's the problem.
life isn't boring.

if people lived lives that glorified God and strived to be more like Him every day, they wouldn't find themselves needing "something more".


Here's what I think.
If someone created a movie half as good as Transformers about reality, as it really is, as it should be, no one would leave the theater feeling bummed out. They would want to participate. If only a few people put as much energy into Reality as they did into viral ad campaigns, there would be no world hunger problem. There would be no economy collapse. There would be no poverty.
Just the Love of God showing through people's lives.

On Questions that Aren't Really that Difficult to Answer

I was going to post a blog today attempting to recap a stream of consciousness i had last night about reality.
then i opened a bible and the first passage i started reading caused me to change that plan.
Reading the bible has a funny way of messing with your thinking.
in a good way.

Anyway, the passage is Mark 8, 1-10.
It's where Jesus feeds 4,000 men along with women and children, off of seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.
It's a familiar story to anyone who grow up in church or has spent time in or around a church for any time- a simple message of faith, right?
Just believe in it and God can feed thousands of people off of nothing.

And as I was reading that, here's what I was thinking, in chronological order:
1: "God can do anything"
2: "God could feed all of the starving people all over the world with zero effort"
3: "Maybe the reason He doesn't is because of a lack of faith."
4: "No way. Millions of people have faith in God and pray for hungry children every day"

And I realized that this is one of the common traps that nonchristians try to spring to see if a christian really knows what he's talking about: "If God's so good, why are people dying from hunger?"

And you know, usually you consider that one of those "really difficult questions", the kind that you sometimes have to admit that no one really knows and the best we can do is pray.

And then I kept reading from that passage.
Mark 8:11-13 goes as follows:
"The Pharisees [religious leaders] came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. He signed deeply and said, 'Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it.' Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side."

This passage follows immediately after he fed north of 4,000 people.

a) that's quite a bit of a miraculous sign.
b) Jesus answered the "difficult question" right after I thought about it.

It's there in writing.
We complain about how God isn't feeding a few million people.
Quite frankly, we should be doing something (more) about it.
Rather than tell God we want to see him do something spectacular, we should be thinking of ways to solve the problem.
Remember, it was the disciples who physically handed the food to the crowds.

So why doesn't God feed all the starving people in the world?
I'm sure he wants to.
But he can't just come down and throw food at them, because our generation just wants a miraculous sign. He's telling us to start breaking our own bread and to give it to others.

On Patience and Confidence

I was reading through 2 chronicles the other day and got to this part about king Asa.
Check it out.

"The spirit of God came upon Azariah son of Oded. He went out to meet Asa and said to him, "Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach and without the law. But in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought him, and he was found by them. In those days it was not safe to trabel about, for all the inhabitants of the lands were in great turmoil. One nation was being crushed by another and one city by another, because God was troubling them with every kind of distress. But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded."
When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Azariah son of Oded the propget, he took courage."
[2 chronicles 15:1-8]

Firstly, there's a huge theological point to be made by that statement, "If you seek him, he will be found by you..."
Secondly, Azariah the prophet had encouraging words for his king.
He told him to stick with it and to ramp up what he was already doing to improve his kingdom and to glorify God.

The story continues.
"They assembled at Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa's reign. At that time they sacrificed to the Lord seven hundred head of cattle and seven thousand sheep and goats from the plunder they had brought back. They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul." [2 chr. 15:10-13]

Let's back up a moment.
Asa had been king for 15 years before any of this happened.
He had been doing the "right thing" for a decade and a half before we have any inclination that God even appreciated the efforts, save for a few military vicroties.
And by "right thing", i mean he was trying to abolish idolatry and the worship of "foriegn gods" in Jerusalem. He made his people worship God.
I'm sure he made many enemies. his grandmother was not happy with him.
But he perservered.
And fifteen years later, God sent a profit to tell him not to give up.

There's something to be said there about doing what we know we have to, even when it looks like it's not paying off right away.

On Malarkey

The last two weeks at my school for seniors go as follows:
seniors stop going to classes and instead spend 20 hours per week on a "senior project", learning new skills or helping the community.
During this time, it is a tradition to play a game of Assassin, where teams of 2 all have another team of 2 to try to kill.
The end result is that when not at their projects, you have 40 teenagers running around Portsmouth, dover, rochester, and stratham with water guns, scheming and plotting endlessly.
It's a big childish game.
And there's really no point.
In years past, cops have been called on students for various reasons.
It's gotten incredibly serious.
Yet there's a small cash prize for all the malarkey it causes. It's more than worth it to simply not play the game.

For what it's worth, there isn't much difference between senior Assassin and "the real world".

Paul said, "Since, then, yo have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." [Col. 3:1-4]


Think about how much of "the real world" is complete malarkey.
Businesses want money and spend all their resources making as much as they can.
Soccer moms spend their afternoons gossiping with each other about each other.
Day in and day out, people run around like nut cases trying to accomplish this or succeed in that.
We forge friendships and then break them.
There's drama and scheming everywhere you look.

All for a small cash prize.

Henry David Thoreau once said, "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."
He also said, "Our lives are frittered away by detail."

We live our lives looking intensely at the ground, trying to make something out of it.
But all the while, God has incredible things planned for us. Paul said to set our hearts and minds on the things of God, since we no longer need to worry about all this malarkey that goes on down here.
It's all such a waste.

On Chocolate Chip Pancakes

I ate chocolate chip pancakes for dinner last night.
Actually, I've had chocolate chip pancakes at least once every day in the past 3 weeks.
Had them for breakfast the day after the ap calc test.
then had them for breakfast almost a week later after the ap physics test.
and had them for dinner yesterday.

Here's the deal about chocolate chip pancakes.
I love eating them, so much.
All you have to do is say, "this place has pancakes", and i will immediately crave them.

There's a single other food item that works this way for me: tacos from Dos Amigos.
For all of the first semester this year, i had 4 beef tacos every friday for dinner.
And i didn't get sick of them because they are so delicious.
And you know what? all you have to do is mention tacos and i'll crave them.



There's something else that we should crave at the very mention.

Jesus said, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded to you." [matt. 28:19]
Telling people about God's promise to us and sharing the truth should be something that we always want to do and never get tired of.
It's better than eating chocolate chip pancakes and tacos.
It has eternal rewards rather than brief satisfaction.

On Tailfins

Everytime i see a cadillac on the road, i get a little warm-fuzzies.
Not because i like them, or think that they're good cars.
I have more negative feelings toward Escalades than any other car ever made.
No, these warm-fuzzies stem from a simple fact: Cadillac still makes cars with tailfins.

Whether or not the breaklights on the back of a CTS are actually "fins" is up to you, but the fact is that ever since the 50s, just about every cadillac car has had verticle tail-lights. I don't think that cadillac does it to be remeniscent, either. I think it's part of their identity. People see vertical taillights and they instantly know, "that's a cadillac."
Also, notice that Cadillac doesn't make a single model name that was around 20 years ago. Their entire line is like 10 years old. Most auto makers have at least a few models that have survived a few decades. Not cadillac. Everything's new. They haven't kept anything except the leather and the fins.

I've been thinking a lot about identity lately.
Seeing as how I have less than 10 days to decide where i spend the next four years of my life, I think that's perfectly okay.
But while wrestling with how different my life could turn out depending on this one simple decision, I've realized that we all have our own vertical tail-lights. No matter where I go, I'll be taking me along, too. Sure, my life could be different depending on where I go to school. But it won't change who I am, and it won't change the way I think and the way I react to situations. Different opportunities will come and go, but who we are remains who we are.

On Daily Affirmation

It's calculus season.
in 3 weeks, I'll be about to take the AP Calc AB exam. Until then, every day I have to spend 2 hours on homework trying to not fail.
But in the midst of school, i've had a little time to think.

It's Easter Season.
Today was Good Friday.
Easter's the best holiday because as long as you avoid shopping centers, you're allowed to just sit and think reflect. listen.
It's a much needed respite before the College Board takes over my life.

Christians spend a lot of time complaining about the world- society, culture, nonchristians... we complain about everything that makes us uncomfortable.
It's one of those things that we shouldn't be proud of, and it's one of society's main reasons for not liking christians to begin with.

A few people in America have been trying to get every aspect of Christianity out of our federal government. The words on our money, the line in our pledge of allegiance, the customs of courtroom proceedings.
These are things that aren't in our laws, but that were adopted by various organizations at various times because people back then were predominately christians. No one complained when "In God we Trust" was first printed on our money. They probably liked it. Thought it was a nice touch. That was the culture then.
But since then, times have changed, and Christians in our usual remonstrative way have been disenchanted with the idea that "God" would be taken off our money.
But there's one aspect of society that is so intermingled with Christianity that isn't going to change anytime soon; one place where no one is going to sue the United States of America for violation of "separation of church and state".
That aspect is the Date.

The date for me, right now, is the 10th of April, 2009.
The reason today is that day is because 1,484 years ago, a Romanian monk named Dionysius tracked the years back (slightly inaccurately) to Jesus' birth and used that to keep track of the years.
Eventually it caught on and here we are, year 2009.
What I really like is the term "AD."
Now, some scholarly folk prefer the term "CE" to mean "Common Era" because they don't like Jesus. But from what I can tell, most americans still say "AD".
Which is an abbreviation for Latin which, when translated, means "In the year of our lord".
Here's what's cool about that:

Before Dionysius came around with his AD/BC numbering system, the year was kept track of by who was the local ruler.
For example, when Augustus came into power, the year was "1 Augustus" and started over when Tiberius became emporer. If you've ever read the old testiment of the Bible, numbering schemes like that are absultely everywhere.

But think about that. The year used to be determined by how long your ruler was in power.
And yet, nothing is any different today.
Every time you say that the year is 2009, you're reaffirming that Jesus Christ has been lord for (roughly) 2009 years. And counting.
The reason why we never started over with a new "year 1" is because Jesus never had a successor. And he never will.
Society probably doesn't like to think about it that way.
but that's alright with me. They'll figure it out someday.

On Splinters

I just pulled a splinter out of my finger.
It took me about a half an hour's worth of digging into my skin with a needle before i could finally nab it with the tweezers.

At one point, my finger got all inflamed from poking at it for so long, so i sat down and knawed on some munchies until it calmed down again.

I first became aware of this splinter at around 11:00 this morning. But it was smallish, and i couldn't tell if it was just a cut or not. So I ignored it. There just wasn't enough incentive for me to find some place with a bright enough light to sit down and see what was wrong with my finger.

Then some 12 or so hours later, I finally looked at it, annoyed that it was still bothering me. Upon deciding that it was, in fact, a splinter, i set about trying to get it out.

Splinters.

They're annoying.

And they take effort to remove them.

Yet how much effort does it take to get one?

zero.

In fact, it takes so little effort to get a splinter, you generally can't try to get one.

Have you ever taken a piece of paper and tried to give yourself a paper cut?

It usually takes several attempts before you realize that it's a stupid idea. They just happen.

In my case, not only did the splinter just happen, but i didn't notice it until it had been lodged in my finger for several hours.

Left unchecked, splinters can get infected.

Metal splinters can give you Tetanus.

Heck, people probably die from them every year.


Now, i know splinters are kind of a lame example.

But isn't the scenario applicable to the way we go about life?

In Hebrews 2:1-3, the writer tells us, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?"[NIV]

Here's how The Message translation puts it:

"It's crucial that we keep a firm grip on what we've heard so that we don't drift off. If the old message delivered by the angels was valid and nobody got away with anything, do you think we can risk neglecting this latest message, this magnificent salvation?"

Sometimes we slip away, slowly enough that we don't even notice it. Or maybe we're just too lazy or unmotivated to seriously examine our lives. But if we dig deep for a little while, we can remedy a potentially big problem.

And splinters feel the best of all when they're gone.

On Improving Handwriting

Today was a nutty day.
I woke up at 6:45 to go to the Uturn Flapjack Fundraiser. left at 10:30 ish. We made like $200 in the two hours people were there.
Then i went home.
Now the way i had planned my weekend was to do ALL of my homework during the following time period. However, as soon as i got home i promptly fell asleep. I woke up at 3:00 in the afternoon, only to fall asleep again. I eventually pulled myself out of bed at 5:00, which was when i had to put black clothes on to go to the second performance of my school's musical. At this point i hardly remembered anything about pancakes, because the nap i took essentially made two days out of one.
We teched the musical until 10:30. Because i'm a senior, and this is my last musical, i got a rose and a short speech from the director on stage.
Then as we were walking to my car, we saw a school minibus idling in the parking lot. Inside were my friend and the teacher who runs our school robotics team. There was a big robotics match in Massachusetts that i couldn't go to today for the above two reasons. We ended up in the final rounds, and got a trophy.
My friend had gotten 30 minutes of sleep last night because he spent the entire night fixing our robot, and they had to leave school at some ridiculous hour in order to get to mass by 10:00 in the morning. Everyone on the team got medals for making it to the finals.

So i walked off my school today with a rose, a medal, and quite a good feeling.
Tomorrow is more complicated.
I have church in the morning, followed by a 12:30 call time for the last performance of the musical, followed by youth group.
I'm going to be spending a lot of time driving through downtown dover without time to stop for food. So I don't know when i'm going to eat all day.

But here's the deal. Lately, i've found that I am incapable of remembering what i have to do every day. In the past i've made lists in my head of thing to accomplish in a week or day, but i can't do that any more. I've started writing things down. I have to write down my classes in order to figure out what i have to do for homework. I have to make lists of things to remember to bring with me when i go places. I think i'm going to use it as an excuse to get a G1.

But what i've realized recently is that i like having no free time. I sincerely enjoy knowing that i am actually accomplishing something with my time. And when you walk off of your school feeling like you made a difference, you're glad you don't get enough sleep.

But one of the reasons that i have so little free time is that i have to constantly balance doing things at my school and doing things at church. The personal feeling of accomplishment is the same whether you help organize an event for a church or organize an event for your school. But personal accomplishment isn't what matters in life. Or maybe it does, and maybe it shouldn't.
What ought to matter is accomplishing things for God, not setting lights for small children dressed as orphans. When i graduate highschool, i'll go to college.
Who knows how involved i'll be wherever i go. But one thing that i want to do is make sure i get more involved with church, or ministry of some sort.

In Matthew 9:37, Jesus says, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field"
To qute Gene Wilder, "So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it."
We have our work cut out for us.

On God Not Disliking Science

There's an article in the most recent issue of Wired that is an interview with a scientist who recently published a book titled, How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't have to Be Forever. The idea is that modern-day chicken embryos contain all the ingredients that you need to make a dinosaur. All you have to do is mess with a few genes that regulate the development process, and you end up with a chicken that looks like a dinosaur.
Awesome.

But here's why i'm telling you about this.
One of the statements from the interviewer was this:
"It would certainly prove the creationists dead wrong."
Oh boy, i thought.
But here's where it gets good.
The scientist replied with this cutting remark.
"Religion is about faith, not evidence. Comparing science and religion isn't like comparing apples and oranges - it's more like apples and sewing machines."
ouch.
and excellent.

Here's the deal.
Science and Christianity, or any faith, for that matter, aren't mutually exclusive.

A lot of times, hard-core conservatives will go neck-and-neck with people who think in scientific terms. You end up with a whole group of people who believe that global warming is a government plot, who don't care about following any scientific process, and who won't listen to anyone with a master's degree, versus a whole group of 'intellectuals' who will immediately stop taking you seriously if you mention anything to do with God.

This shouldn't be the case.
There is nothing in Science that is mutually exclusive with God.
In fact, until the past 70 years or so, pretty much every scientist believed in God anyway. It's merely a coincidence that much of our modern scientific community is made up of atheists. People look at science and say that it's better than religion, that it's a more worthwhile endeavor than worshiping God.
Maybe those people are just looking for a way to add usefulness to their lives where they haven't discovered the purpose God has for them.

Evolution doesn't have anything to say about creation.
The theory of evolution is widely accepted by the scientific community, but i'd say that the Big Bang theory is on a much smaller pedestal. Darwin was a christian. He believed in creation. But he also believed that organisms change over time.
I'm not supporting evolution here, i'm just trying to flesh out my point.

Science can only prove theories wrong.
It can't just come out and say something.
And since science can't prove God, creation, or anything in the Bible wrong, it's perfectly legitimate to be in the scientific community and not be an atheist.

Isaiah 29:14
"Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder;
the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

science is good, but God is better.

On The Piano

For the past week or so, we watched a movie in my english class: The Piano.
We have sort of been looking at different women roles in modern drama, and The Piano is an admittedly stark contrast to the role women play in many "modern dramas", whatever that means.

Basically, the movie is about a mute woman in the 1850s who is married off to a missionary in the New Zealand rain forest.
If you want the entire plot, read the wikipedia article, it sums the entire thing up.
Here's what i have to say for it:
It is the most traumatizing, emotionally tearing, nasty, and uncomfortable movie i have ever seen.
Before showing the film, my teacher told us, "there are scenes in this movie that I can't watch. and i cry every time i see it."
my teacher is a man, by the way.

And here is what i told people when they asked me what i thought of it:
"I think i would have been better off not ever seeing The Piano."

Think about it.
What did i gain from that movie?
A perspective on femininity that i could have had by someone telling me about it.
What did i lose from that movie?
It ruined every day that i had english class. It seriously disgruntled me.
And so much more.

By simple logic, i would have been better off not seeing the movie.

Modern society tells us that there is a world out there to experience.
There are places to see, people to meet, things to try, and every new experience we have is a gain.
That's almost entirely untrue.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians, "'Everything is permissible for me' - but not everything is beneficial."
I feel like if i could go back in time and un-watch The Piano, i would.
And i would have gained back some valuable time.

Here's my point.
Some things in life are simply not worth spending time on.
There is no way to learn everything, experience all there is, or have 2,000 different jobs. So you might as well pick and choose what will benefit you the most.

On making a day

Yesterday I was incredibly tired.
It seems like every time i get 7 hours of sleep, my body freaks out.
As if it's so accustomed to getting only 5 or 6 that it doesn't know what to do with the extra hour.
So in order to actually have a good night's sleep i need to bargain for more than 8 hours so my brain has time to figure out how to continue sleeping.
The biggest problem is that it makes it virtually impossible for me to have a restful sleep on a school night, as when i actually try to go to bed early, i just end up screwing up my day even more.

Anyway, you get the idea.
I was really tired and not feeling tip-top yesterday.
So after school i found myself at the local neighborhood South Berwick Cumberland Farms, which is actually only about an 8th of a mile away from the next local neighborhood Cumberland Farms, across the boarder in Rollinsford.
I had $10.
I bought a small bag of beef jerky, a quart of chocolate milk, and some candy.
As the guy rang it up it turned out to be $9.76.
I was relieved, because with Maine taxes, you never know when you're going to go over your $10 bill, they're always taking your money for their good education system and low property taxes.

As i handed the guy my money, he said, "i'll throw in a penny so i can give you back a quarter."
At first i was confused, but when he handed me a quarter in change, my mood changed entirely.
I thanked him, and went back to my car happier than i had been since i woke up that morning.
You could say that the cashier made my day by giving me a quarter.

Now, we could get into the details on why quarters are so good; every quarter i get in change goes into the cupholder in my car so that i can pay for tolls when people randomly tell me that they want to hang out in newington.
I'd go as far as to say that quarters are the only useful coin in our currency system.

Thinking back on it later, I realized that the cashier probably had no idea how much he impacted me. He just tossed a penny into the cash register to make my life a little easier.
Maybe that's what was so good- he made an effort, small as it may have been, to make someone else- me- have a better day.

I'm a firm believer that if we all were just a tad bit nicer to each other, just a smidgin more thoughtful, we'd be much further than we are now.

On Tangentialism

A number of weeks ago, i walked into latin class.
I forget what i did, but it was something in accordance with my usual style of going about things, which is "out of the ordinary" for most people.
My latin teacher looked at me and said, "Peter, your life really is just a tangent."
I laughed, looked around, and heartily agreed.
Then i sat down and thought about what that meant.

From geometry and trigonometry, we say that a line is Tangent to a curve if it is perpendicular to that curve and sharing a single point with it.
The classic example being: you have a circle, and you draw a line next to and touching the edge of the circle.
That line shares a single point with the circle.
If you were to follow that line, you would realize that it quickly goes away from the shape. The only time the line is actually near the circle is where it's right next to it.
Everywhere else, it's just another line.

I'd like to think that the world would be a much more interesting place if everyone lived their lives like "tangents" to the world around them.
If we could all learn not to take ourselves seriously.
If we could all understand that the world is impermanent.
If we could all realize that what we do here doesn't mean hardly anything in the long scheme of 'history'.

I think that's how Christ would have us think of our lives.
You have the world, caught up in all of itself.
And then you have Eternity.
Eternity has almost nothing to do with the world.
It's this line that briefly, for a single point, is connected with it.
And that single point is all the time we have to do everything we're here to do.
As soon as the line moves on, we're gone from here, on to bigger and better things.

Jesus said, "my kingdom is not of this world."
And so, i believe, neither should our lives.
But we're here now, and we have work to do.

On Changing

As i was sitting in my room tonight i started thinking about all of the junk that has accumulated in it over the years.
I currently live my life without much interaction with my room; I come home, sleep, do homework, and that's about it.
But i have various trinkets that at one time were interesting or "cool", books galore which are mostly unread, and mounds of dust.
None of this gets any attention on a day to day basis.
My eyes fell on my Somersworth High School Class of 2006 yearbook.
Freshman year.
As I flipped though i realized that i barely knew anyone in it.
Now, this makes perfect sense because i only spent one year there and wasn't social at all. But it troubled me in a more-than-on-the-surface sort of way.
Here were all these people that I never had a chance to have an impact on. Here were all these people who i never got to get to know, be friends with, or be part of.
And then there were the people i actually recognized.
Kids i had classes with, other freshmen.
The most obvious thing is how much everyone looks like children.
You look at pictures on facebook of people you haven't seen in 3 years, and they look completely different. Towards the end of the pictures was my photo.
I laughed and cried.
I had no idea that they were taking school pictures on the day they did.
As such i wore an ugly black polo. and my hair looks rather awkward.
And i look so young.
I dug up my freshman id card so i could have a juxtaposition for you:



There is a marked difference.

Then my thoughts turned to all the people on facebook with "somersworth highschool" as their network.
I guess you could say that there's some "buyers remorse" from me not staying at somersworth. There are kids that i can barely remember the names of who i wish i could have gotten to know. It's like this intense feeling of failure.
Sure, i might have a better chance of getting into college now.
But what about the people?

Approaching the far edge of highschool has me thinking about how much i've changed in the past 3.5 years. And it has me thinking about how much everyone else has changed as well.
A lot of the time, we change with our surroundings.
Easy example: You notice when one of your friends gets a haircut.
You don't notice when, every day, their hair gets micrometers longer, because you get used to the hair growing out. Your perception of their hair changes ever so slowly with the passing of time.

So i can say that i've 'grown up' with my friends at berwick; i've known them for the past 3 years, most of them much longer, and i've grown with them. We've impacted each other, shaped each other's personalities and thoughts, what we think is funny. We've created inside jokes, not payed attention in any math class of any sort, and still manage to survive.
This is a good feeling.

However, much worse feeling is how much i've missed all those people i've had just glancing friendships with.
This question keeps me up at night, seriously: What about the people who I could have been friends with?
I have forever missed the chance to be a part of their time growing up.
I can't start inside jokes with them, can't not learn precalc with them, and i will never see almost all of them ever again.

It's just another thought in the infinitely useful mantra: "Life is complicated. Living is simple."

On Accidents, or lack thereof

With the new semester starting this past week, i got a new course in my senior schedule: Humanities.
This class isn't "humanities" in the traditional sense. It's not a history class, or even much of an english class. It's more of a religion and philosophy course, covering all the bases but starting with a focus on eastern religion.

As such, this week we started reading the short novel Siddhartha, which is about a young Hindu who goes out into the world to seek "truth".
Anyway, in reading this book our teacher has tried to explain some of Hinduism to us. The main picture that i'm walking away with is that hinduism is inherently enormous in the complexity of beliefs. But there are some key concepts that i find very interesting that Hindus and other easterners take to heart.
One that caugt me unprepared was this: There are No Accidents.

Sure, events can happen that aren't intended.
But someone is always responsible. It is related to the concept of Karma.

I for some reason was on Miley Cirus' wikipedia article over the weekend, and i was thinking about the kind of persona that "stars" have, and the sort of idle time-wasting connotations that are associated with them.
Thanks to the media, we have this idea, and i'm sure it's usually correct, that when people in the entertainment industry aren't earning big bucks, they're out partying all night.

On Monday, my Latin teacher brought ancient Rome into modernity. We are translating parts of the Satyricon, the first novel written. He noted how back then, as in modern times, the wives of famous people didn't have much to do. Sure, they'd sit around, give press releases, and donate money to charity.
But there wasn't much else to do.
So they started these sort of cult clubs.
All the wives of famous politicians and generals would hang out together and have this massive party consisting very much of drinking and debauchery. But they had elaborate cover-up schemes: they were "actually" devotions to different roman gods and godesses. Men weren't allowed around, so no one ever knew. They just thought that their wives were paying respects and devotion to their gods. But in reality they were partying it up.

In our world, nothing is a secret to consumers thanks to the media.
We know which celebrities hang out together, who's dating whom, who's planning on dating whom, who just broke up with whom, and all this stuff.
And then every now and then a celrbtiy will post an apology, either official or unofficial, or in the form of a song, for something that they did. Like when Miley Cirus had her photoshoot that wasn't exactly what parents would want their middle school kids aspiring to.
But here's the point: no celebrity, or celebrity's wife, ever has any valid excuse. There are no accidents in that industry. Stars get out of jail sentences all the time because they can afford good lawyers. But the united states legal system is one of the worst judges of character in this country.
When famous people do drugs and waste their lives, or pay innordinate ammounts of money for religious safegaurd, yes, we can blame them, because no, it's not an accident.

Here's a great quote from Paul in Galations 1:10:
"Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ."

You think about celebrities, and you realize that their entire fortune is centered around making consumers happy. Entertainment is, by defenition, the business of making men (people) happy. They give us what we want to see and hear, and in exchange we give them money and allow them to live their prolific lives.
Then we sit here and complain about how rich people get away with everything and do whatever they want, but keep out of sight the concept that entertainment wouldn't exist if people didn't pay for it. But that's a different story.

Here's the point.
Paul wouldn't have made a good movie actor.
At least, not a successful one.
He wasn't at all interested in satisfying people; all he lived to do was spread God's word and bring all men the truth.
When people didn't like what he had to say, it was tough luck for their hard headedness.
And nothing he did was an accident.

On Babbling Madmen

2 Kings 9:1-3 reads as such:
"The prophet Elisha summoned a man from the company of the prophets and said to him, "Tuck your cloak into your belt, take this flask of oil with you and go to Ramoth Gilead. When you get there, look for Jehu son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi. Go to him, get him away from his companions and take him into an inner room. Then take the flask and pour the oil on his head and declare, 'This is what the Lord says: I anount you king over Israel.' Then open the door and run; don't delay!""

Back in the day, Elisha was like this wicked awesome prophet. And it so happened that other prophets that we might assume to be his pupils hung out with him.
Imagine him sending one of his eager pupils on this 'mission', the same way a research professor gets a grad student to do all the menial tasks for their experiments.
And reflect on how odd a request that is.
"hey dude. tuck your cloak in (i'm guessing this entails an air of swiftness), and take this bottle. run up to an army commander, dump oil on him, tell him that he's the king of israel, and then run away. fast."

the story goes on.
After this guy finds Jehu, anoints him king, and runs away, Jehu went back to his buddies:
"When Jehu went out to his fellow officers, one of them asked him, "Is everything all right? Why did this madman come to you?"
"You know the man and the sort of things he says," Jehu replied.
"that's not true!" they said. "tell us."
Jehu said, "Here is what he told me: 'This is what the Lord says: I anoint you king over Israel.'"
They hurried and took their cloaks and spread them under him on the bare steps. Then they blew the trumpet and shouted, "Jehu is king!"

I think that the officer's judgment of the prophet being a 'madman' was justified. That's pretty much the only sane way to react when some guy runs up to your friend and proclaims him king of Israel.

But here's the kicker: they believed him.
The writers of 2 Kings doesn't record any conversations between Jehu and his friends trying to convince them that yeah, he was king of Israel. In fact, it seems like Jehu was a little embarrassed that he was randomly selected as the next king.
Instead, the commanders spread out their cloaks and proclaimed him king.

That would be kind of like a band of University professors proclaiming Al Gore to be the President of the United States.
But only if those professors believed enough in Al Gore to assassinate obama and proclaim gore the president. Except assassinating people for power and believing in al gore are mutually exclusive. So ignore that.

HERE was my point:
At first glance, the unnamed prophet was said to be a "babbling madman", but no one disputed his authority.

Kind of like how John the Baptist ate wild honey and wore clothes made out of camel hair, like a freaky hippy, but was regarded by his contemporaries as a prophet and and inspiration.

Kind of like how Jesus healed crippled people on saturday (oh no! not saturday!) and had to wake up extra-early in order to get away from people.

The "things of God" often times are presented to us in ways that appear completely ridiculous. As if God is a crazy eccentric old guy. But it's our job to roll with that, presuming we use discretion and don't assume that everything nutty is divine.

On Falling Trees

When a tree falls in a forest, and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

People have always asked that, and quite frankly, I never understood why.
The next time someone says it, here's how i'll counter:
"If a tree falls on the side of the road, and nobody hears it, but it takes out your power for 4 days, does anyone care if it made any sound? no sir. You're just ticked at that tree because you know PSNH won't get their trucks to your house until halfway through next week."

I don't think i've ever been without power for so long because, and it presents an interesting juxtaposition.

I woke up friday morning to no electricity and no final day of school before midterms. I then sat around until 3:00 when my dad turned on the generator. At that point I took a shower and drove to a friend's house who didnt' lose power. I didn't return until 11:00. Saturday was the same drill. Woke up, showered, left, and came home at 8:00.
What was so striking is how little there is to do when there's no power.
Literally all you can do is sit around in the dark.

Weirder still is how different life can be just a block away. For people who didn't lose power, its as if they lived in Utah, where the only way they know about any "state of emergency" is though CNN telling them that 300,000 people in New Hampshire have no electricity.

Meanwhile, though, my parents have kerosene lamps going and are freaking out about food in the refrigerator. Its like, two completely different worlds, right next to each other.

Apostle Peter referred to his fellow christians as "strangers in the world", "aliens", and in the kjv, "peculiar people".
In 1 Peter 1:13, he said, "therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed."

Here's what I take away from this:
There is a distinct difference between christians and nonchristians.
This whole weekend, as soon as i stepped into my house, i realized that there was absolutely nothing to do. And when i went to someone else's house, it was as if everything was normal.

But when i was sitting around with nothing to do, i realized that, 150 years ago, that's how everyone lived. There was no electricity, no modern conveniences.
We complain and yell and whine when our power goes off, and sit around with "nothing to do", but clearly they had ways of filling their time up in the 1850s... just ask the Amish.

That's how nonbelievers should see our lives.
They should look at us and say, "woah man. all this time i thought life was awesome, but now i look around and theres nothing to do."
They should be asking us to hang out because they're "bored".
We never have to sit around in metaphysical darkness when the "power" goes out. No matter what happens to us, we still have our best friend at our side.

That's totally way more awesome than not having running water.

On Finitness

Teenagers are often a good topic to talk about because they present a concentrated form of Humanity.
By the time we're teenagers, we've figure out everything that we can get away with, but we haven't learned what we shouldn't do. We know what we're capable of, but don't have the wisdom to live responsibly.
Case study: Teenage girls who get their first job.
I know a bunch of girls who work after school or on the weekends.
Baggers at Market Basket make well above minimum wage, and they typically make more than $50 per week.
Now, with gas prices so excellently low, $50 is way more than it takes to fill up a gas tank for a week, even with the ridiculous amount of "let's go to the mall!" and "i'll drive" that they do.
So what do you spend all your money on?
Well, the answer is obvious, right?
clothes and shoes!

Lets buy 3 pairs of shoes that, in 6 months, either won't fit, will be worn out, or will be out of style. Then we'll buy one of everything in Hollister, and pick up $15 worth of pretzel bites on the way out.
When we get home, we'll make sure our parents get us a nice semi dress that we'll never wear again, and then spend the whole afternoon talking to cute boys instead of doing our homework/chores/etc.
Then we'll watch some completely unredeeming tv and yell at our parents for asking where we've been all day.

Do you get my drift?
good.
Now on to other things.

I read about a guy in the old testament a few months ago, and i've been wanting to write about it ever since, but couldn't seem to make it fit anywhere.
But i think now i have it.

During the reign of King David in Jerusalem, there was a really smart guy that David would seek advice from.
His name was Ahithophel.
2 Samuel 16:23 states that "In those days the advice Ahithophel gave was like that of one who inquires of God."
Essentially, this guy knew what he was talking about.

Now, at one point, one of David's sons, Absalom, got on this power trip and ran his dad outta town. Whilst he was trying to commandeer the throne, he asked Ahithophel to give him his advice.
One such tidbit of advice was concerning the best way to ensure he would stay on the throne:
"I would choose twelve thousand men and set out tonight in pursuit of David. I would attack him while he is weary and weak. I would strike him with terror, and then all the people with him will flee. I would strike down only the king and bring all the people back to you. The death of the man you seek will mean the return of all; all the people will be unharmed."

Now there was another advice-giver in town.
His name was Hushai, and he was still loyal to David.
Hushai said something completely different:
"The advice Ahithophel has given is not good at this time. You know your father and his men; they are fighters, and as fierce as a wild bear robbed of her cubs. Besides, your father is an experienced fighter; he will not spend the night with the troops. Even now, he is hidden in a cave or some other place. If he should attack your troops first, whoever hears about it will say, 'there has been a slaughter among the troops who follow Absalom.' Then even the bravest soldier, whose heart is like the heart of a lion, will melt with fear, for all Israel knows that your father is a fighter and that those with him are brave. "

Anyway, Absalom decided to do what Hushai said, which meant that David knew what was coming for him and was able to beat him.
Meanwhile, we read in 2 Samuel 17:23:
"When Ahithophel saw that his advice had not been followed, he saddled his donkey and set out for his house in his hometown. He put his house in order and then hanged himself. So he died and was buried in his father's tomb."

and that's all we know about this dude Ahithophel.

What do Ahithophel and teen girls have in common?
They're both excellent examples of one of the human conditions: Finitness.
As people, we're incredibly good at living "in the moment".
we know how to procrastinate, how to enjoy minutes right now, and how to eat candy.
We're notoriously bad about thinking ahead in time, about thinking about consequences, and more importantly, about heeding those consequences and actually doing what we're supposed to.

My biology teacher has, if anything, increased my belief in creationism.
When we were studying enzymes, she constantly said, "this enzyme is designed for this substrate" and "when the wrong substrate binds to the enzyme, the intended substrate can't bind"
Like, shouldn't she have been saying "this enzyme by chance happens to break down this particular substrate" and "when this substrate binds to the enzyme instead, nothing happens and the other substrate can't break down"?
The theories and teachings that we've developed through science are inherently finite. That's why we're still trying to figure the world out: because not everything makes sense to us.
We have been unable to grasp the way the world works.
We have an incredibly difficult job realizing the way the human race fits in to the rest of the universe.
And individually, we are unable to see the "big picture".
we're finite.
And sadly, far too often we don't give the big picture any consideration.
We live as if the little piece of reality that is the present is all there is, and it gets the better of us down the road.
bummer.

On Thanksgiving

I just got home from DEC's "thanksgiving eve" service.
They rearranged all the chairs in the sanctuary so they all faced inwardly, and then they passed a mic around the room for people to give a short story of what they're thankful for and why.
At the end, the worship pastor lead communion, and he said something that stuck with me:

"Thanksgiving is like the one holiday that America hasn't caught on to yet. Just a day of worship."

And if you think about it, it's entirely true.
The most obvious example is that thanksgiving is completely left out of everyone's decoration closet- stores jump from Halloween to Christmas on November 1st.
Also strikingly absent is that it doesn't have its own "season".
there's a "Christmas Season", an "Easter Season", a "Veterans Day" season...
but no "thanksgiving season".
Thanksgiving has, wonderfully, been allowed to remain exactly what it is.
Possibly because it isn't a big catholic holiday that everyone celebrated in the 1700s (George Washington created our national holiday), we are given a few days off from work and school, and just allowed to gather as families and whatnot, and be thankful for what we have.

For Christians, that means thanking God and remembering that he made the ultimate sacrifice for our own lives.

I think that thanksgiving is my new favorite holiday.
Not that i ever had a favorite holiday before, but now i'll have an answer for when people ask me.
And this is because its the one time when everyone around our country, no matter their political convictions, economic situations, or religious beliefs, find it in themselves to, for one weekend, have the attitude that we're all supposed to carry every day.

That's why i like thanksgiving.
Because its one time where everyone in the world has the right idea.

On people, part two

Yesterday I wrote down my thoughts on how people treat other people.
It is my firm belief that one of the predominant traits of humanity is selfishness.
Not selfishness in the blatant sense, but in the sense that it takes effort on our parts to think about others.

I'll give you two examples of this. The first one is simple: Xenon headlights.

Some of you may have heard me talk about xenon headlights before. Usually i rant about them after i've had to drive alone on some back roads in the pouring rain whilst struggling with the defroster.

Xenon headlamps are a great idea: you increase the color temperature of your headlights, which brings the spectrum much closer to natural light, while actually being brighter, which increases visibility dramatically.
That is, visibility for you, the driver.
Not for me, the car on the other side of the road who is temporarily blinder by your might-as-well-be-hibeams headlights.

See: by installing expensive headlights, we make our lives better while making other people uncomfortable/miserable. Obviously we don't think about this when we get the nice headlamps. But as far as i'm concerned, that's exactly the point: Humans aren't programed to think of others by default.


I'm going to give a second example, which is much more abstract.
Bear with me.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation is a nonprofit organization started by none other than Lance Armstrong shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer.
Through it and its associated organizations, such as Livestrong, it raises money to help cancer patients and to raise awareness about the incurable disease.
A noble cause. Lance Armstrong has proven himself to be an influence in our society by being more than just an athlete.

But here's the problem I have: all those little yellow bracelets.
Why weren't they manufactured BEFORE Lance Armstrong had cancer?

This is nothing at all against Mr. Armstrong.
This is a gripe with our human mindset.
There are thousands of organizations out there like Livestrong that help people.
Except a vast majority of them were started by people who have been through the same troubles as the people the organizations help.
Here's my question to you:

Why can't we start organizations to help people without first experiencing what they feel?
Why did it take getting cancer to make Lance Armstrong start his foundation?
Why is it that the parents of children with obscure, incurable diseases are always the ones trying to find the answers?

Why couldn't Lance Armstrong have sat down one day, pre-cancer, and say, "i think i'm going to start a foundation to raise money for cancer research."?

This is what i'm talking about.

All you have to do is listen to teenage girls for a little while: they are completely uninterested in their friends until they say, "my dog died last night", and then it's all, "awww, my dog died 2 years ago and i cried for 3 weeks!!!"
People in general have a hard time with empathy.
We find it difficult to think about the every day struggles of anyone other than ourselves.

Paul wrote to the church in Rome:
"Let no debt be outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not covet,' and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." [Romans 13:8-10]

This is one thing i believe we can all do.
It's not that hard to love each other.

On people, part one

A lot has been said about what people do in their cars while driving. People have talked about witnessing commuters shaving, eating full-course meals, and reading newspapers while in traffic. This fascinates me. Not that people are so desperately deprived of time for these things, but that they are put on display for everyone to see.

Ever since i was little, i've imagined that there is a bubble around every car on the highway. As we drift past vehicles in the other lanes, for a brief moment we are traveling on the same road at the same speed, in the same place at the same time. I always glance at that person in the other car, not to be nosy, but to see if they glance back: to see if they are just as interested in my life as I am in theirs. For that short time, your lives are connected, and that glance is all the communication you will ever have with that person. In the age of facebook, where a mere acquaintance can be labeled as a "friend" and remembered forever, this is a powerful concept. You only have a few seconds to meet this person, and only a few seconds to realize that their life isn't that different than your own. They, too have much too much to do and much too little time to do it in. They, too, are overwhelmed with thoughts and plans.
Here in America, we are famous for busying ourselves. Employers in Britain are required to give their workers 20 days of paid vacation time per year; the average in America is half that. We like to complicate our lives and stretch ourselves too thin.
We worry about our lives a whole lot.
But hardly ever do we worry about people.

I'm not talking about people you know well, or even only vaguely know. Everyone cares about their friends. But to a certain extent, that's just the same as caring about ourselves: our friends are part of our lives. Caring about them is, in effect, caring about ourselves. Never do we think about the lives of others- those people we pass on the highway, those people who we don't know, and whose lives couldn't possibly affect our own. After a few seconds, their life is once again unimportant to us. We go on with our day as normal, unaware of the condition of that individual. This is something that I would like to unsubscribe to.

On Twelve Hours

Today was an incredible day.
My parents are out of town until tomorrow afternoon, and as such i've had to take care of myself.
There was also a sectional youth rally in Tilton today, which we were going to take a bus to from the church:

The day started at effectively 11:00. That was after i'd fully woken up, taken the dog out, fed him, took a shower, etc.
I ate some pizza, finished glueing my speakers back together after re-foaming the surrounds, listened to the recording of last night's uturn, and did a little lazing around until about 2:00.
2:00 found at Somersworth's pumpkin fest.
Here's how that went:
I parked the car, walked around for about 5 minutes, then left again.

As I was leaving downtown somersworth, i decided that i didn't want to, or have reason, to go straight home.
So I spent half an hour or so perusing the backroads of somersworth, enjoying some alone time.
I thought, "how nice is this to just drive around?"

Little did i know what would come later.

After i got home, I did a little housekeeping on my music library, and started re-syncing my mp3 player.
While that was going on, i vacuumed the car, put the speaker box back together, and tried it out. I was pretty excited to leave for the sectional youth rally at 4:10.
Except my mp3 player wasn't done syncing, so i waited for it.
And waited.
And waited.

4:20 rolled by, and it wasn't done.
So i pulled the plug and drove to barrington.
The bus was supposed to leave at 4:30, so i hurried along, only to have to wait for forever for traffic on route 125.

I get to the church at 4:35, and the Indonesian's are like, "they just left!!"
So, using the amazing power of cell phones, i find out that the bus is not far away, except now i'd have to drive to tilton my meself.

I spent the next 45 minutes or so on and off the phone getting directions on where to go- and all the time trying to catch up with the group. At one point, we used the mile markers on the highway to see that we were only 4 miles apart. But the whole time, i never saw them.
I watched the oil temp gauge hit the halfway mark as i was going down the highway as fast as reasonably achievable in a ford taurus.
I got to the tilton church about a minute after them, and then the rally got underway.

The message that the preacher gave was about standing up for what's right.
At the end there was an altar call, and i sat in my chair for the whole time thinking.
I like going up at altar calls, except sometimes i have a hard time thinking about what to go for. I spent the entire time trying to figure out a reason to stand up.
And then, when it was too late and everything was over, i figured it out:

At one point, the preacher mentioned something that seemed a little off-topic to his sermon.
He said that we need to be "A" students.
Not students in the academic sense, but students to God.
And sitting there, i thought about school.
I thought about how i don't get all As in my classes, and i thought about why.
I spend most of my days on "autopilot".
One time, my bass teacher got frustrated with me during a lesson.
We were playing a song with a cd, and i didn't have the notes memorized.
He said, "you're just reacting to the song. Try to anticipate what comes next."

That's exactly how i am in school.
I just go through my day reacting to what my teachers say, to what homework is, to what i'm supposed to be learning.
I just kind of scrape by under the radar.

And as i was thinking about this, i noticed that it's how i live my life, too.
I just kind of react to life.
I've been a christian all my life, and i kind of just do what feels natural to me, which is usually the right thing to do.
But it doesn't change the fact that its all just reactions.

I decided that i want to live in anticipation of what comes next, not waiting to see it first.
I want to live deliberately, thinking about everything i do.


I was hoping to be able to follow the bus home.
But that didn't happen because they left before i could eat my food at mcDonalds, and i also had to get gas.
I put $20 in at $2.99/gallon.

After spending a good half hour trying to decide how to go home, we figured i'd just backtrack the way i came.
So what if it was 10:00 out and had no idea where i was?
I seem to be doing a lot of blind driving lately, not really knowing how i'm going to get someplace.
Anyway, I got on the highway and discovered that i was completely alone.

There were no cars ahead of me, and no cars behind me.
I turned off the radio and started talking to God.
And i quickly felt like an idiot for thinking to myself, "its weird being lost and alone somewhere you've never been before"

I wasn't alone, i just finally had a chance to have one-on-one time, undistracted, with the greatest friend in the world.
At first, it was kind of weird.
I started thinking about being alone on a highway-seriously, no one was around.
I even thought about putting the car in neutral and seeing how long it would take to coast from a stop from 70mph.
But i didn't.
By the time i hit Route 9, though, it was different.
The road is curvey. I road the Epsom traffic circle a few times around for the fun of it.
It felt like the northwood countryside was almost a big playground that i was frolicking around in with my best friend.
It was like, "hang out time".

By the time i made it to barrington, it was 11:00 PM.
I rolled down all the windows and turned the heat on full blast.
Of those 12 hours, i spent 1/4 of my day in the car by myself.
And in that time, i realized how great it is that i can be alone without being alone.
And i decided to live my life deliberately.

I want to ride my bike to church tomorrow.
Let's see if i can wake up at 6.