I'm tired

This past summer I worked at Ironwood Christian Camp - great experience, I loved it. The first night we were there they got all the new summer staff together and divided them up into four teams and played this game called the Pygmy Gold Rush or something like that. The whole purpose of the game was to "get the gold" and we proceeded to play for the next 3 hours. At the end of the game (after our team had almost deciphered the clues and the rules [purposely left vague]) we learned that the whole game was rigged and that it was virtually impossible to win. In fact, the only way that winning was possible was for everyone to put aside their personal dreams of glory and to build alliances with the other teams - to become one giant team. This was probably the biggest lesson I learned in camp, and as I've come back home I've been continuing to try to apply that lesson to my life. And so I feel the need to vent about something -

I'm tired of people spitting on each other.

I'm tired of fundamentalists lashing out at evangelicals, I'm tired of evangelicals lashing out at fundamentalists. I'm tired of Republican vs. Democrat, liberal vs. conservative, African-American/Hispanic/Minorities vs. Whites, Al Franken vs Ann Coulter, CNN vs Fox. I'm tired of college students preaching that BJ/Maranatha/Northland/West Coast/IBC/Clearwater/Crown is the best. I'm tired of adults being satisfied with making rules instead of teaching kids whats right, I'm tired of kids actively rebelling against the rules because they disagree with them. I'm tired of having to defend Christian politicking (why in the world should Christianity EVER be political?), and I'm tired of being involved with Christian politicking.

I don't have anything original to say, or anything very profound;

I'm just tired.

past or present

Realism or Creative Expression
Which is more accurate

Cosmically speaking

So I have finally gotten a cell phone and while this is not big news to most people. It is to me (kinda sorta right up there with your license and other major firsts in a life).
I want you to know that I have the coolest wallpaper in the entire world. It's weird trippy flowers done up in sixties colors (orange, beige, peach, brown, green, baby blue, yellow, white) its officially amazing.

The real reason I'm posting is to castigate, shred, destroy, verbally mangle all of you people who do not post.

There is no excuse

none

not even a little one.

Don't complain about school, don't complain about work, don't even comlain about having anything to say (you don't need to talk about anything to make the blog work - and there's been enought stuff going on in the world that you can talk about anything)

PUBLIC HEALTH NOTICE: SURGEON GENERALS WARNING
Eating Spinach can cause to you to get E.Coli, thats right ladies and gentleman kids the world over have been vindicated in their age long quest to get out of eating the leafy green vegetable by the recent announcment that spinach has left a swath of destruction in 10 states and killed at least 1 person.
So the next time Popeye comes on the TV hide your kids eyes when he eats his spinach and then tell them that he eats something healthy to make him grow strong (Like a Hamdog).

And all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity.

{none}

There is no real reason to post. I just want to
For those of you who don't know - I live in Illinois.
If you care, there you go - If you don't care, there you go.

I am now a secretary.
And I leave you with this painting

its another Jackson Pollack. I really like this one.

Anyway props to
Brett Favre - for proving he can still play
(oh wait - no he didn't)
Art Shell - for proving that the poker face is only good when you have a gameplan behind it
For Andy Roddick - who once again proves that its impossible to beat a guy who actually plays a complete game of tennis rather than just having an amazing serve
USA basketball - for losing again
California cheese - for being disgusting
And car problems

Does the theater really matter?

Ok so I've just got done reading Dale's blog and the comments posted on his "Nasb is so two months ago" post. And I gotta say that in some ways it was the funniest thing I've read in a while and in some ways it was the saddest thing I've read in a while and in other ways it was a great challenge to me intellectually and most importantly (to me at least) spiritually.

A digression. I'm not a big fan of anonymous commentors - it seems kind of sneaky to me. Please understand that there occasions when knowledge of a name will cloud the message given and I understand that. And there are times when a name would be innapropriate and I understand that but as a general rule I don't really care for anonymous commentors. Digression over.

I'm not particularly into disillusionment, I don't like it personally when I'm disillusioned, I tend to react wrongly to people I have been disillusioned about and then I don't like myself either. All in all it tends to be a vicious cycle.

I also do not like ignorance, more than anything in my life it irritates me more than I can possibly say when people don't see their own shortcomings and the shortcomings with their own belief system.

As a belief system Christianity (from a human viewpoint) is one of the easiest "religions" to reject. because it makes so little human sense. It doesn't make sense to willingly sacrifice dreams, ambitions, desires, opportunity, fun, to deny yourself pleasures, to love others more than yourself, and to do it all because a book written a long time ago seems to tell certain people that. And for a long time thats all I understood about Christianity was this list of things that I had to give up. You might even say that I had Christian illusions. But my big problem was that I did see Christianity as a belief system, I saw it as a religion because, frankly, for the most part thats what I saw in the Christians around me. And if I'm choosing a belief system based on what I have to do and rewards and everything, believe me it would be a lot more tempting to be an LDS or a Catholic or even a Muslim than it would be to be a Baptist.

What I missed was that Christianity isn't about a system, it is about my relation to God. And he is willing to accept me WITH ALL MY SINS as a son of his. This was extremely powerful to me - when I was saved God knew all the sins that I would commit in the future and in spite of that knowledge, God still desired to save me. In a sense I lost my Christian illusions.

(I will now wrap this up ASAP) This Christian disillusionment led to a disillusionment with the same Christians I saw around me living a belief system - the proscribed ritual of the Christian life. And for a while it was tempting to reject them because of their beliefs. But God does not promise to work the same path with everyone - only that His desire is for to everyone to believe on Him and to continually draw closer to Him. And so I have to learn to love those people even as some of them seem to reject me.

If you want to talk about this I'd almost prefer if you didn't leave a comment. you can email me at piano_player21@hotmail.com if you want (there's an _ in between piano and player).