Today I put on a pair of jeans I had not worn for quite a while. I was looking in the mirror when I stuck my hand in my right pocket and felt a piece of paper. Lo and behold when I took the piece of paper out it was a twenty dollar bill. That is such a great feeling.
Things are slowing down for a few days here for what we call "dead week". We are still not quite sure if this is a week to have a break from homework before finals or to die from all the homework that our profs are not supposed to give us the the week before the end of the semester. I think this is the first dead week that I feel a dramatic change in my work load. I still have homework and things to wrap up, but I am feeling a little relieved for now. Tonight I have a Christmas party to attend with all the people that participated on praise and worship teams this semester. I think it will be a good time.
Finally, I would like ot announce my intention of saving up some money to buy a cello! I have always had a high admiration for stringed instruments in general, and to be honest I really like the sound of the violin. But come on. Could you honestly see a 6'5" Dutchman playing a violin? So I decided for a more aesthetically pleasing alternative that I would like to pursue purchasing a cello and some lessons. This is quite the expense to say the least, but I honestly think I will do this if my financial situation so aloows at some point in the future. Maybe I will start today with the $20 I found in my pocket.
Christmas is coming! 8.5 days until I fly home.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
---------------------------
Last night there was praise and worship here on capus just like every week on wednesday nights. Last night the praise and worship team that I am on played and I had the opportunity and permission from the leader of my team to lead worship last night. I picked out the music, and made my best effort to pick songs that worked well together. I was very pleased with the songs that I chose. I had almost 3 weeks to put the set list together and decide how I wanted to do things for last night.
A typica set consists of about 8-10 songs with prayer or a couple verses plugged inbetween songs. I have felt that over the course of this semester there has been quite a bit of individualism in terms of alone silent prayerinbetween songs or the leader for that night taking a few minutes to give a lesson. I feel like these disrupt the flow of music. It is possible to tyr and make the music flow too much, but we have yet to get any where near that line this semester. So in light of what I felt like choppy worship in weeks past I chose to keep things simple. We had about 10 songs and the only interruptions was a couple verses and thoughts that I shared after the two songs. I emphasized how the time of worship we have won wednesdays is unique in the way that it is designed to be in a community setting and there is something special about communal worship. In light of that I expalined that the worship was going to flow without much interruption.
The time we had to practice I felt was a battle. We have 7 people on our team, and last night I felt that, including myself, there were 3.5 people trying to lead the team. I had put the set together and I had ideas for how I wanted to play most of the songs. But I felt like I would let the team know what I had envisioned the song to go and then I would face 2 people oppsing what I had said with how they thought it should be played! But the reason why I said .5 is that there was a person on the team that was very helpful they were not looking to enforce their opinion, but would suggest something and would leave it up to me to decide. Needless to say, after all was said and done. One of the songs I wanted to do was scrapped for another that someone else wanted to do. The time we had to practice, although is sounded fairly good, took way longer than it usually does because of the opposition. And I felt really rushed.
We play through praise and worship and I think it was one of the most frustrating experiences playing for worship I have ever had! I was really discouraged afterward. Almost always after playing for praise and worship I get a couple comments that I played well, which I do not know how to respond to. Last night I didn't believe it when people said I did well. And in any case it bothers me when I am complemented for playing for praise and worship. I do not like the attention. I should not be the focus of praise and worship.
I feel like last night I tried so hard to make sure the attention was not on us as a team, but there seemd to be tention between me and the couple of people that wanted to lead. It was not right. I felt like the two that were enforcing their opinion did not trust me as the leader for that night. I have no intentions of being a threat to anyone, but in some ways I think the guy that typically leads our team feels threatened by me.
I am so botherd by how last night went, because I feel like the tention directly affected how praise and worship went last night. And because of the things I felt we did poorly I feel that is a reflection on me as a person. I do not want to be seen as selfish or distracting.
A typica set consists of about 8-10 songs with prayer or a couple verses plugged inbetween songs. I have felt that over the course of this semester there has been quite a bit of individualism in terms of alone silent prayerinbetween songs or the leader for that night taking a few minutes to give a lesson. I feel like these disrupt the flow of music. It is possible to tyr and make the music flow too much, but we have yet to get any where near that line this semester. So in light of what I felt like choppy worship in weeks past I chose to keep things simple. We had about 10 songs and the only interruptions was a couple verses and thoughts that I shared after the two songs. I emphasized how the time of worship we have won wednesdays is unique in the way that it is designed to be in a community setting and there is something special about communal worship. In light of that I expalined that the worship was going to flow without much interruption.
The time we had to practice I felt was a battle. We have 7 people on our team, and last night I felt that, including myself, there were 3.5 people trying to lead the team. I had put the set together and I had ideas for how I wanted to play most of the songs. But I felt like I would let the team know what I had envisioned the song to go and then I would face 2 people oppsing what I had said with how they thought it should be played! But the reason why I said .5 is that there was a person on the team that was very helpful they were not looking to enforce their opinion, but would suggest something and would leave it up to me to decide. Needless to say, after all was said and done. One of the songs I wanted to do was scrapped for another that someone else wanted to do. The time we had to practice, although is sounded fairly good, took way longer than it usually does because of the opposition. And I felt really rushed.
We play through praise and worship and I think it was one of the most frustrating experiences playing for worship I have ever had! I was really discouraged afterward. Almost always after playing for praise and worship I get a couple comments that I played well, which I do not know how to respond to. Last night I didn't believe it when people said I did well. And in any case it bothers me when I am complemented for playing for praise and worship. I do not like the attention. I should not be the focus of praise and worship.
I feel like last night I tried so hard to make sure the attention was not on us as a team, but there seemd to be tention between me and the couple of people that wanted to lead. It was not right. I felt like the two that were enforcing their opinion did not trust me as the leader for that night. I have no intentions of being a threat to anyone, but in some ways I think the guy that typically leads our team feels threatened by me.
I am so botherd by how last night went, because I feel like the tention directly affected how praise and worship went last night. And because of the things I felt we did poorly I feel that is a reflection on me as a person. I do not want to be seen as selfish or distracting.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Ecclesiastes 4:1-3
"Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed-- and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors--and they have no comforter."
Psalm 35:10
"My whole being will exclaim, Who is like you, O Lord? you rescue the poor from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them."
Psalm 113:7
"He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap"
Isaiah 14:30
"The poorest of the poor will find pasture, and the needy will lie down in safety"
Luke 6:20-22
"Blessed are the poor, for yours in the kingdom of God. Blessed are you wh hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man."
"Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed-- and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors--and they have no comforter."
Psalm 35:10
"My whole being will exclaim, Who is like you, O Lord? you rescue the poor from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them."
Psalm 113:7
"He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap"
Isaiah 14:30
"The poorest of the poor will find pasture, and the needy will lie down in safety"
Luke 6:20-22
"Blessed are the poor, for yours in the kingdom of God. Blessed are you wh hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man."
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Money
So I going to Europe this spring to study abroad and it is going to cost me a little above and beyond what it typically costs me to be at Dordt for a semester Also there have been some seminaries that have come to Dordt to promote coming to there school after college. I have put some thought into going to seminary and the more I think about it the more appealing it sounds, but that is for another post. I have a fair amount of debt and if I were to go on to seminary that would add to that already large amount of debt. My question in relationship to money is this:
At what point do we decide that money has become our idol and if we have reached that point what measures do we take to make sure that it is not ruling over us?
I have talked to some of my friends here at Dordt about money and many of have the same desire to not have to deal with money at all. How cool would it be to live independant of money? Very difficult, but liberating I would think. Is having debt a sign that moeny is starting to take control? In a couple of my classes we are currently discussing poverty and we question if what we consider impoverish to be acurate. Something else to consider is that there are more ways of being impoverish than just mesured by food or by what you own. Many, many people are spiritually impoverish. Am I poor because I have thousands of dollars in debt, but I potentially have the ability to pay that off? Or maybe I am still weathly for the same reason. I am relatively independant, and can provide for myself. I am wealthy.
I hate money! I %100 mean it when I say hate. It is our golden calf, our baal. And yet we have reached a point of no return. We are dependant on money. Could we be so bold as to willingly give up everything for the purpose of not being submissive to money. The Bible tells us that it is the love of money that is evil. Where do we draw the line between loving money and not? Is the fact that my family lives in a house with 2500 square ft a sign of loving money? We could live in a apartment and share rooms and we could manage just fine. Would that be more stewardly of our money?
In light of my wanting to attend seminary is it wrong for me to approach it with the attitude of not worrying that it will further bury me in debt because I trust that God will provide? Or is this foolish and irresponsible?
Is our dependency on money a sign of lacking faith in God to provide? Should we be so bold as to not worry about our money in faith that God will take care of us? Where do we draw that line between faithfully trusting and complete foolish irresponsibility?
I do not know. I would covet some thoughts and opinions to these questions.
At what point do we decide that money has become our idol and if we have reached that point what measures do we take to make sure that it is not ruling over us?
I have talked to some of my friends here at Dordt about money and many of have the same desire to not have to deal with money at all. How cool would it be to live independant of money? Very difficult, but liberating I would think. Is having debt a sign that moeny is starting to take control? In a couple of my classes we are currently discussing poverty and we question if what we consider impoverish to be acurate. Something else to consider is that there are more ways of being impoverish than just mesured by food or by what you own. Many, many people are spiritually impoverish. Am I poor because I have thousands of dollars in debt, but I potentially have the ability to pay that off? Or maybe I am still weathly for the same reason. I am relatively independant, and can provide for myself. I am wealthy.
I hate money! I %100 mean it when I say hate. It is our golden calf, our baal. And yet we have reached a point of no return. We are dependant on money. Could we be so bold as to willingly give up everything for the purpose of not being submissive to money. The Bible tells us that it is the love of money that is evil. Where do we draw the line between loving money and not? Is the fact that my family lives in a house with 2500 square ft a sign of loving money? We could live in a apartment and share rooms and we could manage just fine. Would that be more stewardly of our money?
In light of my wanting to attend seminary is it wrong for me to approach it with the attitude of not worrying that it will further bury me in debt because I trust that God will provide? Or is this foolish and irresponsible?
Is our dependency on money a sign of lacking faith in God to provide? Should we be so bold as to not worry about our money in faith that God will take care of us? Where do we draw that line between faithfully trusting and complete foolish irresponsibility?
I do not know. I would covet some thoughts and opinions to these questions.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Joel 2:28-32
The Day of the LORD
28 "And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
30 I will show wonders in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
31 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.
32 And everyone who calls
on the name of the LORD will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the LORD has said,
among the survivors
whom the LORD calls.
28 "And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
30 I will show wonders in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
31 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.
32 And everyone who calls
on the name of the LORD will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the LORD has said,
among the survivors
whom the LORD calls.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
I am MAN hear me roar!
I just read the first chapter of "Wild at Heart" for the first time. Good stuff! If you have read it then you will know what I am talking about when I say I am going to take my heart back. In light of reading this first chapter I come to the realization with the help of some stuff that one of my profs has said to me.
Why are youth so in love with music? Why do people raise their hands in the air at rock shows? Why do they raise rock on fists and scream their lungs out? Well I just might have an answer. This first chapter suggests that our world and sadly our churches and Christian families as well has stripped the meaning of what it is to be a man. By this I mean that we have taught our boys and young men to grow up into the nice mild mannered ladies we want them to be, and then we wonder where all the men have gone.( if you have read the book this is going to seem redundant, sorry.) Really we have turned them into women. Men were not created to be passive! Passion and adventure and risk is built into the Y chromasome that only the man has been given by God.
So now the answer to the questions previously stated. Now that we have tamed our young men and taught them to settle down and not be passionate and to be passive and to not follow their wild, seemingly mad dreams it is not wonder there are no men to be seen in our day and age. The reason concerts and rock shows and violent and wild movies like braveheart resonate with our young men is because it is the only environment that we have allowed our young men to express themselves outloud and passionately. As male in society I personally have this desire to yell and beat my chest and wear a kilt and to live with risk and to be bold. It is who I am created to be. So do not try and tame me. I am wild and unpredicable. I am fulling my cultural mandate givne to all men in Genesis to cultivate and subdue the earth and to be fruitful and multiply. I am producing fruit in embracing who God is calling me to be as a man.
Why are youth so in love with music? Why do people raise their hands in the air at rock shows? Why do they raise rock on fists and scream their lungs out? Well I just might have an answer. This first chapter suggests that our world and sadly our churches and Christian families as well has stripped the meaning of what it is to be a man. By this I mean that we have taught our boys and young men to grow up into the nice mild mannered ladies we want them to be, and then we wonder where all the men have gone.( if you have read the book this is going to seem redundant, sorry.) Really we have turned them into women. Men were not created to be passive! Passion and adventure and risk is built into the Y chromasome that only the man has been given by God.
So now the answer to the questions previously stated. Now that we have tamed our young men and taught them to settle down and not be passionate and to be passive and to not follow their wild, seemingly mad dreams it is not wonder there are no men to be seen in our day and age. The reason concerts and rock shows and violent and wild movies like braveheart resonate with our young men is because it is the only environment that we have allowed our young men to express themselves outloud and passionately. As male in society I personally have this desire to yell and beat my chest and wear a kilt and to live with risk and to be bold. It is who I am created to be. So do not try and tame me. I am wild and unpredicable. I am fulling my cultural mandate givne to all men in Genesis to cultivate and subdue the earth and to be fruitful and multiply. I am producing fruit in embracing who God is calling me to be as a man.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Hallelujah by Paramore
Somehow everything's gonna fall right into place,
If we only had a way to make it all fall faster everyday.
If only time flew like a dove,
We're gonna make it fly faster than I'm falling alone.
This time we're not giving up,
Let's make it last forever,
Screaming "Hallelujah".
We'll make it last forever.
Holding onto patience, wearing thin,
I can't force these eyes to see the end.
If only time flew like a dove,
Well we could watch it fly, and just keep looking up.
This time we're not giving up,
Let's make it last forever,
Screaming "Hallelujah".
We'll make it last forever.
And we've got time on our hands.
[And we've got time]
Got nothing but time on our hands.
Got nothing but, got nothing but.
[And we've got time]
Got nothing but time on our hands.
This time we're not giving up,
Oh, let's make it last forever,
Screaming "Hallelujah".
"Hallelujah".
I love these lyrics, and put the music it is that much better.
If we only had a way to make it all fall faster everyday.
If only time flew like a dove,
We're gonna make it fly faster than I'm falling alone.
This time we're not giving up,
Let's make it last forever,
Screaming "Hallelujah".
We'll make it last forever.
Holding onto patience, wearing thin,
I can't force these eyes to see the end.
If only time flew like a dove,
Well we could watch it fly, and just keep looking up.
This time we're not giving up,
Let's make it last forever,
Screaming "Hallelujah".
We'll make it last forever.
And we've got time on our hands.
[And we've got time]
Got nothing but time on our hands.
Got nothing but, got nothing but.
[And we've got time]
Got nothing but time on our hands.
This time we're not giving up,
Oh, let's make it last forever,
Screaming "Hallelujah".
"Hallelujah".
I love these lyrics, and put the music it is that much better.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Beauty
This morning I have been listening to a song that speaks of the beauty of Christ. In our image driven society it is easy for me to dismiss this by thinking, "how do you know Jesus is beautiful? Have you seen him?" The song is also sung by a couple of guys and culture today has taught us that this is odd that a man would sing of the beauty of another man.
It clicked for me when standing in front of my mirror that I am, and I would assume many other people, have become habitually trained to be physically driven to the point that it is hard to not see beauty outside of that context.
"Jesus, oh holy one, I sing to you forgiven. Savior I'm overcome with your great love for me.
You are worthy! you are worthy! You are worthy of all my praise!
You are beautiful! You are beautiful! So I lift up my hands and sing!
You are worthy! You are worthy! You are worthy of all my praise!
You beautiful! You are beautiful! So I lift up my hands and sing!
Mighty King how beautiful you are. How beautful."
So when this song speaks of the beauty of Christ, whether it was intetional or not, it is calling the listener to see beauty outside of what we are seeing. The picture of Christ's love for his church is a beautiful thing. Christ's church responding to that love by proclaiming that he is worthy of all our praise and we will lift our hands and sing is a beautiful thing.
The gift we have been given to experience God's creation with five different senses is a beautiful thing. So why do we emphasize sight? What about smell? Smell above anything has the greatest power to in an instant fling me into memories. When I was in elementary school my family lived in this neighborhood where one side of the street we lived on had these trees that produced this amazing sweet smell when they bloomed in the spring. Now whenever I smell that I automatically think back to playing hide and go seek with my neighborhood friends at dusk on a spring night, and there is the perfect temperature in the breeze and I can smell those trees by my house. What about hearing? I love music for the simple reason that it has this power of moving emotions in people involuntarily. Last night we had a concert here at school and the second to last piece just gave me chills with the amsing harmonies and overtones and a couple hundred choir members singing the last line double forte. What about touch? There is something about touch that can be healing and comforting. It can be the slightest touch that is the most powerful, that can send chills through your whole body. Flavors have the same effect on our memories as smell does. Our senses seem to control us and maybe the only reason we emphasize our sight is because we depnd on it the most to manage our lives. What about the blind? I often think they are priviledged to not have their sight from how dependant those of us that have our sight are.
Find ways to see beauty ourside of your sight. There is nothing wrong with our sight, but we have been given more than just our sight to enjoy.
It clicked for me when standing in front of my mirror that I am, and I would assume many other people, have become habitually trained to be physically driven to the point that it is hard to not see beauty outside of that context.
"Jesus, oh holy one, I sing to you forgiven. Savior I'm overcome with your great love for me.
You are worthy! you are worthy! You are worthy of all my praise!
You are beautiful! You are beautiful! So I lift up my hands and sing!
You are worthy! You are worthy! You are worthy of all my praise!
You beautiful! You are beautiful! So I lift up my hands and sing!
Mighty King how beautiful you are. How beautful."
So when this song speaks of the beauty of Christ, whether it was intetional or not, it is calling the listener to see beauty outside of what we are seeing. The picture of Christ's love for his church is a beautiful thing. Christ's church responding to that love by proclaiming that he is worthy of all our praise and we will lift our hands and sing is a beautiful thing.
The gift we have been given to experience God's creation with five different senses is a beautiful thing. So why do we emphasize sight? What about smell? Smell above anything has the greatest power to in an instant fling me into memories. When I was in elementary school my family lived in this neighborhood where one side of the street we lived on had these trees that produced this amazing sweet smell when they bloomed in the spring. Now whenever I smell that I automatically think back to playing hide and go seek with my neighborhood friends at dusk on a spring night, and there is the perfect temperature in the breeze and I can smell those trees by my house. What about hearing? I love music for the simple reason that it has this power of moving emotions in people involuntarily. Last night we had a concert here at school and the second to last piece just gave me chills with the amsing harmonies and overtones and a couple hundred choir members singing the last line double forte. What about touch? There is something about touch that can be healing and comforting. It can be the slightest touch that is the most powerful, that can send chills through your whole body. Flavors have the same effect on our memories as smell does. Our senses seem to control us and maybe the only reason we emphasize our sight is because we depnd on it the most to manage our lives. What about the blind? I often think they are priviledged to not have their sight from how dependant those of us that have our sight are.
Find ways to see beauty ourside of your sight. There is nothing wrong with our sight, but we have been given more than just our sight to enjoy.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Love of God
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.
Refrain:
Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
When hoary time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.
Refrain:
Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
When hoary time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
High School
Today I have had hihg school on my mind, and I think it started when I was glancing at some photos on facebook. Do you ever have memories that you wish to forget because looking back on them you realize that what you said was rediculous or what you did was embarrassing? And yet I think that most of the time we are hard on ourselves and most of the time our embarrassing moments are only burned into our own memories and no one else's who was there.
When I was in high school(especially senior year) I remember think that me and my friends were so mature, especially in comparison to the freshmen. I remember times when I thought what I was saying was profound or a nugget of wisdom to the underclassmen. I now look back on those memories and my perspective is so different. Most of the time my reaction is "Wow, that was stupid". I wonder if the same is true for me today. Do I think that I am more mature than I really am? Now that I am a junior do I feel like I have nuggets of profound wisdom to share with the underclassmen? I know I have already said and done really stupid things. What is it about me that puts such a high value on the opinion of my peers. Isn't that why we are so hard on ourselves when we remember embarrassing or stupid moments in our lives? In some ways I wish I could forget a lot of high school, but maybe that is because it is easier to remember mr stupidity than what me and some of my friends from high school would always call "good times".
I think junior high and high school are a perfect example of "growing pains".
More to come, but I have to go to class...
When I was in high school(especially senior year) I remember think that me and my friends were so mature, especially in comparison to the freshmen. I remember times when I thought what I was saying was profound or a nugget of wisdom to the underclassmen. I now look back on those memories and my perspective is so different. Most of the time my reaction is "Wow, that was stupid". I wonder if the same is true for me today. Do I think that I am more mature than I really am? Now that I am a junior do I feel like I have nuggets of profound wisdom to share with the underclassmen? I know I have already said and done really stupid things. What is it about me that puts such a high value on the opinion of my peers. Isn't that why we are so hard on ourselves when we remember embarrassing or stupid moments in our lives? In some ways I wish I could forget a lot of high school, but maybe that is because it is easier to remember mr stupidity than what me and some of my friends from high school would always call "good times".
I think junior high and high school are a perfect example of "growing pains".
More to come, but I have to go to class...
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Rainy day in the Neighborhood.
It is raining today. I like it. I went for a walk to the gorcery store and back. Anybody want to come over for chicken fajitas tonight? It's only about $400 round trip from Seattle to Omaha.
I started to listen to Chirstmas music last week. I love it.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
I started to listen to Chirstmas music last week. I love it.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
"How's it going?"--"I don't care."
Last night I was in the Humble Bean(the on capus coffee shop) reading a book for one of my classes today. The jist of the book is all about poverty in America and couple chapters I was reading we addressing the issue of health insurence in the US. I was having a hard time reading cause I was often iterrupted by my brain trailing off and thinking about what I was reading. the chapter was giving statistics of how many people in the US do not have health insurence and reasons why. ON eof the guys in a couple of my classes is a strong supporter of writing letters to our senators about the injust happening in the world. He and I are both in a club of campus called Justice Matters which provides information about injustices in our world and also provides an opportunity and supplies to write letters to our senators about taking action. Last year we wrote letters concerning the issues in Darfur as well as the issues with sex trade and the kidnappings connected to that. All this to say that last night I struck up a conversation with this guy(Micah) about how I have a hard time not feeling fatalistic about all the problems and how it seems never ending. I asked him how the letters we write can make a difference. He responded with stating he understood where I was coming from, and that it is worth our time and to not feel like it is each individual's responsibility to address every injustice that plagues our world today.
After I left the coffee shop my mind was still cranking away at injustice. I was walking back to the other side of campus with a friend and starting discussing what I was thinking. We started talking about an assignment we have for "New Testament Prophets". We have discussed in class if there are modern day prophets and as and how the prophets we read about in the Bible were extremely bold, at times seemingly fearless, and they brought attention to the injustices of their time. So our prof is assigning us the task of finding a way that each of us in the class should look for a way that we can be a "prophetic voice" in our community. One of my fellow theology majors stated that he was going to have to grow some "prophetic balls" to pull this one off. Blunt but true that this could be a costly assginment that will need some boldness. So me and TIm, who I was walking back to the other side of capus with talked about some of the problems we see with our community within Dordt. I threw out the issue of our shallow and hanbitual way of living in relation to eachother. Who do we define as our friends and in relation to those people how well do we know them? A couple weeks ago the praise and worhsip team I am on played on a wednesday night and afterwards I was cleaning up the keyboard I used and someone I have known for the past 2 years here at Dordt came up to me and stated, "I didn't know you played piano you played really well!". My first thought was, "are you kidding me?". But this just further proved how much we are in the dark when it comes to how well we know eachother around here. Even the things we do know( where home is, favorite color and food and their current complaints about anything and everything) are nothing that falls in the category of meaningful.
So me and TIm continued our conversation in the stairway of the building he lives in for another 20 minutes and the only way I could describe how I felt towards this lack of compassion or caring, this fake genuity...I was hurt. I know many people feel this way. Yesterday I was walking past a couple people on the way to my apartment and said "hey" as I passed to at least accknoledge that they existed, and as I passed by one of them mumbled out "How's it going?". I didn't respond because by the time he had finished his question he was a couple feet behind me and walking in the other direction. It took me a second to realize what had just happened, but I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around. I watched as the 2 guy continued their conversation they had before I said "hey" a few seconds before. "How's it going?" he had no intention sticking around to show any interest in how I was doing. Now I don't blame him because this sort of passing greeting is something we all have filed into to our habitual responses along with fine, good, hey, yo, howdy and whatever else.
I wonder if the phrase "you don't know Jack" was a sort of response to this issue. Maybe somebody really didn't know Jack and a friend of Jack's spoke up about it. I think I am going to address this injustice in our community with a prophetic act of some sort, but I am not quite sure how yet. I might take a survey of random people walking by and ask them questions like what do they look for in their friendships, and maybe follow that up with asking who their best friend is and what their frined is passionate about. I don't really know yet, but something like that.
Another thing me and Tim talked about was as a result of this impersonal behavior that is so common, I then wondered what kinds of hurts are not being addressed in the lives of the individuals on this "Christian" campus because we do not have the slightest care about anything besides ourselves? There has got to be a lot of hurting people on this campus, and I don't think that Dordt is the only place this is true. Furthermore I think the church is doing a horrible job of addressing this issue, and this ball is totally in the church's court.
No wonder it's so easy to think fatalistically.
After I left the coffee shop my mind was still cranking away at injustice. I was walking back to the other side of campus with a friend and starting discussing what I was thinking. We started talking about an assignment we have for "New Testament Prophets". We have discussed in class if there are modern day prophets and as and how the prophets we read about in the Bible were extremely bold, at times seemingly fearless, and they brought attention to the injustices of their time. So our prof is assigning us the task of finding a way that each of us in the class should look for a way that we can be a "prophetic voice" in our community. One of my fellow theology majors stated that he was going to have to grow some "prophetic balls" to pull this one off. Blunt but true that this could be a costly assginment that will need some boldness. So me and TIm, who I was walking back to the other side of capus with talked about some of the problems we see with our community within Dordt. I threw out the issue of our shallow and hanbitual way of living in relation to eachother. Who do we define as our friends and in relation to those people how well do we know them? A couple weeks ago the praise and worhsip team I am on played on a wednesday night and afterwards I was cleaning up the keyboard I used and someone I have known for the past 2 years here at Dordt came up to me and stated, "I didn't know you played piano you played really well!". My first thought was, "are you kidding me?". But this just further proved how much we are in the dark when it comes to how well we know eachother around here. Even the things we do know( where home is, favorite color and food and their current complaints about anything and everything) are nothing that falls in the category of meaningful.
So me and TIm continued our conversation in the stairway of the building he lives in for another 20 minutes and the only way I could describe how I felt towards this lack of compassion or caring, this fake genuity...I was hurt. I know many people feel this way. Yesterday I was walking past a couple people on the way to my apartment and said "hey" as I passed to at least accknoledge that they existed, and as I passed by one of them mumbled out "How's it going?". I didn't respond because by the time he had finished his question he was a couple feet behind me and walking in the other direction. It took me a second to realize what had just happened, but I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around. I watched as the 2 guy continued their conversation they had before I said "hey" a few seconds before. "How's it going?" he had no intention sticking around to show any interest in how I was doing. Now I don't blame him because this sort of passing greeting is something we all have filed into to our habitual responses along with fine, good, hey, yo, howdy and whatever else.
I wonder if the phrase "you don't know Jack" was a sort of response to this issue. Maybe somebody really didn't know Jack and a friend of Jack's spoke up about it. I think I am going to address this injustice in our community with a prophetic act of some sort, but I am not quite sure how yet. I might take a survey of random people walking by and ask them questions like what do they look for in their friendships, and maybe follow that up with asking who their best friend is and what their frined is passionate about. I don't really know yet, but something like that.
Another thing me and Tim talked about was as a result of this impersonal behavior that is so common, I then wondered what kinds of hurts are not being addressed in the lives of the individuals on this "Christian" campus because we do not have the slightest care about anything besides ourselves? There has got to be a lot of hurting people on this campus, and I don't think that Dordt is the only place this is true. Furthermore I think the church is doing a horrible job of addressing this issue, and this ball is totally in the church's court.
No wonder it's so easy to think fatalistically.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Very busy, but very good.
Very busy, but very good. Things are getting into fall around here. It is windy and sometimes rainy like today, and this past sunday we had a tornado warning. Someone sighted a tornado 10 miles west of town so a bunch of people were standing outside to look for the tornado, but it never came. Bummer.
Things are looking exciting for the next year or so. There is still a possibility for me to study abroad in the Netherlands, France and Ukraine next semester which would be awesome! My classes this semester are going well for the most part. Some of them are boring and hard to concentrate, but it's all good. I am loivng my music stuff outside of classes. I am in one of the choirs on campus and then I am also in a ensemble of about 20 people that is the best singing group on campus and it is awesome! Then I am also taking private voice lessons which is really good and has really improved my voice over the past year. Life is good right now. It is good to be alive, and I have plenty to be thankful for.
I just really want a girlfriend and there is nobody that I am interested in here. Unfortunate, but I guess I have enough to worry about for now.
Oh yeah, one more thing...if I end up going to Europe next semester there is a good chance I could meet up with Kyle while I am there. The Netherlands is right next door to Germany and Kyle is only a couple hours away by train. How tight would that be?
peace
-Joel
Things are looking exciting for the next year or so. There is still a possibility for me to study abroad in the Netherlands, France and Ukraine next semester which would be awesome! My classes this semester are going well for the most part. Some of them are boring and hard to concentrate, but it's all good. I am loivng my music stuff outside of classes. I am in one of the choirs on campus and then I am also in a ensemble of about 20 people that is the best singing group on campus and it is awesome! Then I am also taking private voice lessons which is really good and has really improved my voice over the past year. Life is good right now. It is good to be alive, and I have plenty to be thankful for.
I just really want a girlfriend and there is nobody that I am interested in here. Unfortunate, but I guess I have enough to worry about for now.
Oh yeah, one more thing...if I end up going to Europe next semester there is a good chance I could meet up with Kyle while I am there. The Netherlands is right next door to Germany and Kyle is only a couple hours away by train. How tight would that be?
peace
-Joel
Monday, September 24, 2007
It's been a while.
Since my last post my theology courses continue to entertain me. I really enjoy my major, and it is a nice comfort to be able to say that. Right now it is jsut before 930pm on monday night and I really should be finishing up my GEN 300 take home test. Honestly you might find that there is probably something better I could be doing when I post, and I might never post if it were not for my willingness to put off my homework and post for you faithful blog readers out there.
My GEN 300 course for those of you who don't know is a course that is frustrating for me in a couple ways. It is a required course by Dordt and despite theri good intentions for the course it has yet to interest/impress me with anything we have read or discussed. According to the syllabus, the course is designed to preapare us for todays society and to approach it with a good Christian world view. Like I said, "good intentions". So in my opinion the 3 profs that are jointly teaching this course are giving an okay effort, but I disagree with thier choices of books, plus they try to entertain us each class period with a new groud breaking style of teaching called "lecturing".
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!
Okay so in one of my other classes we have been discussing education( hence my last post) and we have discussed how many high school students and teachers today have a fatalistic and critical world view. I agree with this at least in my own experience with my high school. So I apologise for my critical sarcasm to my GEN 300 class. I have been trying to put more effort into taking a positive attitude towards my classes and profs. It is just really easy to rant and rave about what is going wrong.
So some thigns that are going well is that I do enjoy most of my classes and most of my classes have people that I enjoy being aroudn as well. I will admit also that even my GEN 300 class does require us to read one somewhat interesting book called "Brave New World". It has some good content for us to consider in relation to today's society.
For my last complaint in classes I will say that in general I wish the teachers would be so kind as to guide the students through the process of reading the books for a class in the following manner. I belive that a danger and often something that is looked over is the fact that classes sometimes seem like a game in the way that profs assign readings and responses to readings with an attitude of "I give the assignment and it is your job to do it and while your going through the book try and figure out what you are supposed to learn from it. Oh yeah and you will find out what you are supposed to learn and get out of the reading when we hand out the test and then you will discover!" Now I know that it is beneficial for the students to do critical thinking and the it is not the prof's job to spoon feed the material. But what the prof wants the students to get out of the material is going to change from prof to prof. In light of this it would be nice of profs to be considerate by saying somthing to the effect of, "This books is going to help you to understand..." or "These assignments/readings are designed to provoke you to consider...or to leanr how to... so keep this in mind when you read, type and respond." Is this too much to ask. I do not believe in "schooling", but rather I believe it is the prof's position to guide and provoke the learning fo the student (not matter what the subject) by asking good questions...NOT by taking an attitude of "I know... and you don't so listen up and learn by me hammering it into your head via lecture, notes and unguided assignments."
Sorry that was not so short. Does anybody recognize what my soap box looks like? Thanks for listening(reading) and I will tryto post mroe often so this does not become such a long experience for both of us.
Peace.
My GEN 300 course for those of you who don't know is a course that is frustrating for me in a couple ways. It is a required course by Dordt and despite theri good intentions for the course it has yet to interest/impress me with anything we have read or discussed. According to the syllabus, the course is designed to preapare us for todays society and to approach it with a good Christian world view. Like I said, "good intentions". So in my opinion the 3 profs that are jointly teaching this course are giving an okay effort, but I disagree with thier choices of books, plus they try to entertain us each class period with a new groud breaking style of teaching called "lecturing".
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!
Okay so in one of my other classes we have been discussing education( hence my last post) and we have discussed how many high school students and teachers today have a fatalistic and critical world view. I agree with this at least in my own experience with my high school. So I apologise for my critical sarcasm to my GEN 300 class. I have been trying to put more effort into taking a positive attitude towards my classes and profs. It is just really easy to rant and rave about what is going wrong.
So some thigns that are going well is that I do enjoy most of my classes and most of my classes have people that I enjoy being aroudn as well. I will admit also that even my GEN 300 class does require us to read one somewhat interesting book called "Brave New World". It has some good content for us to consider in relation to today's society.
For my last complaint in classes I will say that in general I wish the teachers would be so kind as to guide the students through the process of reading the books for a class in the following manner. I belive that a danger and often something that is looked over is the fact that classes sometimes seem like a game in the way that profs assign readings and responses to readings with an attitude of "I give the assignment and it is your job to do it and while your going through the book try and figure out what you are supposed to learn from it. Oh yeah and you will find out what you are supposed to learn and get out of the reading when we hand out the test and then you will discover!" Now I know that it is beneficial for the students to do critical thinking and the it is not the prof's job to spoon feed the material. But what the prof wants the students to get out of the material is going to change from prof to prof. In light of this it would be nice of profs to be considerate by saying somthing to the effect of, "This books is going to help you to understand..." or "These assignments/readings are designed to provoke you to consider...or to leanr how to... so keep this in mind when you read, type and respond." Is this too much to ask. I do not believe in "schooling", but rather I believe it is the prof's position to guide and provoke the learning fo the student (not matter what the subject) by asking good questions...NOT by taking an attitude of "I know... and you don't so listen up and learn by me hammering it into your head via lecture, notes and unguided assignments."
Sorry that was not so short. Does anybody recognize what my soap box looks like? Thanks for listening(reading) and I will tryto post mroe often so this does not become such a long experience for both of us.
Peace.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
What is wrong with our Educational System?
So this article is pretty much one of if not the best thing I have yet to read in all my days in school. Enjoy! Then also free to give me some feed back/ opinion/ critiques on what you thought. joelpilon@gmail.com
Warning...it is farely long, but totally worth your time.
How public education cripples
our kids, and why
By John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the
Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American
Education. He was a participant in the Harper's Magazine forum "School on a Hill,"
which appeared in the September 2003 issue.
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass on the lesson to some remarkable student. For the most part, however, I found it futile to challenge the official notion that boredom and childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom. Often I had to defy custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of this trap.
The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to discover t~at all evidence of my having been granted the leave had been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally retired in 1991, 1 had more than enough reason to think of our schools-with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers-as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insightsimply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.
But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?
Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn't, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.
We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of "success" as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, "schooling," but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons. Why, then, do Americans confuse education with just such a system? What exactly is the purpose of our public schools?
Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold:
1) To make good people. 2) To make good citizens. 3) To make each person his or her personal best. These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not
to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else.
Because of Mencken's reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern.
The odd fact of a Prussian provenance for our schools pops up again and again once you know to look for it. William James alluded to it many times at the turn of the century. Orestes Brownson, the hero of Christopher Lasch's 1991 book, The True and Only Heaven, was publicly denouncing the Prussianization of American schools back in the 1840s. Horace Mann's "Seventh Annual Report" to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1843 is essentially a paean to the land of Frederick the Great and a call for its schooling to be brought here. That Prussian culture loomed large in America is hardly surprising, given our early association with that utopian state. A Prussian served as Washington's aide during the Revolutionary War, and so many German-speaking people had settled here by 1795 that Congress considered publishing a German-language edition of the federal laws. But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens 11 in order to render the populace "manageable."
It was from James Bryant Conant-president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI poison-gas specialist, WWII executive on the atomic-bomb project, high commissioner of the American zone in Germany after WWII, and truly one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century-that I first got wind of the real purposes of American schooling. Without Conant, we would probably not have the same style and degree of standardized testing that we enjoy today, nor would we be blessed with gargantuan high schools that warehouse 2,000 to 4,000 students at a time, like the famous Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after I retired from teaching I picked up Conant's 1959 book-length essay, The Child the Parent and the State, and was more than a little intrigued to see him mention in passing that the modem schools we attend were the result of a "revolution" engineered between 1905 and 1930. A revolution? He declines to elaborate, but he does direct the curious and the uninformed to Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, in which "one saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary."
Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.
Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:
1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
Tre you have it. Now you know. We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that "efficiency" is the paramount virtue, rather than love, lib, erty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed.
There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need. Mandatory schooling was a godsend on that count. School didn't have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modem era - marketing.
Now, you needn't have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident. Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up. In the 1934 edition of his once well-known book Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years, and forced schooling was at that point still quite new. This same Cubberley - who was dean of Stanford's School of Education, a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, and Conant's friend and correspondent at Harvard - had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: "Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down."
It's perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.
Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.
First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.
Warning...it is farely long, but totally worth your time.
How public education cripples
our kids, and why
By John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the
Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American
Education. He was a participant in the Harper's Magazine forum "School on a Hill,"
which appeared in the September 2003 issue.
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass on the lesson to some remarkable student. For the most part, however, I found it futile to challenge the official notion that boredom and childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom. Often I had to defy custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of this trap.
The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to discover t~at all evidence of my having been granted the leave had been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally retired in 1991, 1 had more than enough reason to think of our schools-with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers-as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insightsimply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.
But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?
Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn't, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.
We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of "success" as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, "schooling," but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons. Why, then, do Americans confuse education with just such a system? What exactly is the purpose of our public schools?
Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold:
1) To make good people. 2) To make good citizens. 3) To make each person his or her personal best. These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not
to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else.
Because of Mencken's reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern.
The odd fact of a Prussian provenance for our schools pops up again and again once you know to look for it. William James alluded to it many times at the turn of the century. Orestes Brownson, the hero of Christopher Lasch's 1991 book, The True and Only Heaven, was publicly denouncing the Prussianization of American schools back in the 1840s. Horace Mann's "Seventh Annual Report" to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1843 is essentially a paean to the land of Frederick the Great and a call for its schooling to be brought here. That Prussian culture loomed large in America is hardly surprising, given our early association with that utopian state. A Prussian served as Washington's aide during the Revolutionary War, and so many German-speaking people had settled here by 1795 that Congress considered publishing a German-language edition of the federal laws. But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens 11 in order to render the populace "manageable."
It was from James Bryant Conant-president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI poison-gas specialist, WWII executive on the atomic-bomb project, high commissioner of the American zone in Germany after WWII, and truly one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century-that I first got wind of the real purposes of American schooling. Without Conant, we would probably not have the same style and degree of standardized testing that we enjoy today, nor would we be blessed with gargantuan high schools that warehouse 2,000 to 4,000 students at a time, like the famous Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after I retired from teaching I picked up Conant's 1959 book-length essay, The Child the Parent and the State, and was more than a little intrigued to see him mention in passing that the modem schools we attend were the result of a "revolution" engineered between 1905 and 1930. A revolution? He declines to elaborate, but he does direct the curious and the uninformed to Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, in which "one saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary."
Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.
Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:
1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
Tre you have it. Now you know. We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that "efficiency" is the paramount virtue, rather than love, lib, erty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed.
There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need. Mandatory schooling was a godsend on that count. School didn't have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modem era - marketing.
Now, you needn't have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident. Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up. In the 1934 edition of his once well-known book Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years, and forced schooling was at that point still quite new. This same Cubberley - who was dean of Stanford's School of Education, a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, and Conant's friend and correspondent at Harvard - had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: "Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down."
It's perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.
Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.
First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.
Monday, July 30, 2007
I am very very FRUSTRATED!
As usual this entry could be all over the map, but that is partly because I have not posted in a while. I am so frustrated with not being able to drive. I am so frustrated with living at home. I am really nervous about going back to school for football. I am frustrated that I am not in shape for football, nor have I really had the time or resources to do so. I am really frusrated how my life and seemingly everyone around me is so focused on money. I am frustrated by the fact that I am stuggling with depression and ADHD at the same time.
I need a vacation. Or I just need to go back to Nicaragua. Life is simpler there. As much as appreciate my parents I strongly dislike having to live with them. I hate having to make excuses for why life is so frustrating.
I know that life was not meant to be this complicated or rediculous. It's supposed to be simpler than this.
I need a vacation. Or I just need to go back to Nicaragua. Life is simpler there. As much as appreciate my parents I strongly dislike having to live with them. I hate having to make excuses for why life is so frustrating.
I know that life was not meant to be this complicated or rediculous. It's supposed to be simpler than this.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Mad World
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places - worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere - going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression - no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow - no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very, very...
Mad World, mad world
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday - happy birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen - sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me - no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me - look right through me
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very, very...
Mad World, mad world
Enlarge your world
Mad World
Sometimes the world seems so hopeless,a nd I often want Jesus to come and save the earth from ruining itself anymore. But there is still the thought of how many lost people will be lost forever if Jesus would return tonight, or tomorrow. I think the reality of His return does not really sink in our minds. Maybe it is because we fear what the reality of this might be. Despite our not being capable of wrapping our minds around life after death, I think we need to come to terms with what it will be like in relation to how we live our lives now. It matters. The lyrics of this song sound depressing and I think reflects what my perspective of life frequently has been recently. Hopelessness seems so overpowering. Does it seem like the lost people around us are jumping off cliffs with the choices they make? What are we doing about it? Where is our purpose? Where is our passion?
Should this not inspire us a Christians to be sharing the hope we have...especially in our actions. But I know that my language as well should be in check more than it has.
Please understand that God desires use you. He has not created any of us to be merely observing what he is doing, but actively participating in manifesting his will in our lives and spur others to do the same. I know this is idealistic, but then again another problem is this attitude of trying to do to much on our own.
PS
-I would much rather talk about something important like this than watch a movie any day.
Monday, May 7, 2007
The week before this past week the campus here at Dordt had a capus wide 24/7 prayer. Students and faculty(1 prof) signed up for hour lond sections of time for an entire week of prayer...all through the day and all through the night. All the 1 hour slots were filled and there was prayer on Dordt's capus for 7 days straight. We had a meeting on the Monday night after the week of prayer to debrief and have some worship. Not very many people came just because it was inconvenient or forgot or whatever, but my Resident Director said something that night that I have been meditating on ever since. "If we love God with everything that is in us, then God cannont resist us. He is a lover and love that pure and genuine is irresistable."
God loves us. The meaning has been drained from this phrase for the many times it is used and heard. But if we take time to elaborate on this phrase it has new life.
God loves your voice. The tone, the quality, he created it to be just that way. He loves those things about us that we completely despise and whish we could change. God loves the color of your eyes and hair and your smile. God loves to see us happy. We are who we are because God created us this way. I frequnetly think that God is not close.
2 Samuel 22:7-20
"In my distress I called to the LORD; I called out to my God. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came to his ears. The earth trembled and quaked, the foundations of the heavens [c] shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared [d] on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his canopy around him— the dark [e] rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence bolts of lightning blazed forth. The LORD thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot arrows and scattered the enemies , bolts of lightning and routed them. The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at the rebuke of the LORD, at the blast of breath from his nostrils. He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the LORD was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me."
God loves us. The meaning has been drained from this phrase for the many times it is used and heard. But if we take time to elaborate on this phrase it has new life.
God loves your voice. The tone, the quality, he created it to be just that way. He loves those things about us that we completely despise and whish we could change. God loves the color of your eyes and hair and your smile. God loves to see us happy. We are who we are because God created us this way. I frequnetly think that God is not close.
2 Samuel 22:7-20
"In my distress I called to the LORD; I called out to my God. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came to his ears. The earth trembled and quaked, the foundations of the heavens [c] shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared [d] on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his canopy around him— the dark [e] rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence bolts of lightning blazed forth. The LORD thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot arrows and scattered the enemies , bolts of lightning and routed them. The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at the rebuke of the LORD, at the blast of breath from his nostrils. He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the LORD was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me."
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Desire....or lack of it.
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Today is my sister in law's birthday. Yay to her for turning 20. Right now I am in the library of my school at 6:30 on a Saturday night, thinking about the massive amounts of work I have to do before I leave for home this Friday.
-Read "Affluenza" (150 pages)- Then write 6-8 page page paper due wednesday
-Read "Poisonwood Bible"(500+ pages)- Then write monologue on book for presentation on Thursday. Then write 2 page creative writing on book.
-complete 3 essay questions on take home portion of exam for Monday, then go to finish the rest of the final exam on Monday afternoon.
-Moday Morning sing 5 songs memorized for voice lesson final exam including memorizing an Italian piece before then.
-Study for 2 exams on Tuesday morning.
Despite my list of rediculousness I still find time to do other less importan things, and now I have reached the point of being crippled by the amount of work I have to do that I just don't do anything. I just sit, or just walk around. It's horrible. I Just think about this week being over and flying hom eon Friday to see friends and family and a change of pace.
Lord help me.
-Read "Affluenza" (150 pages)- Then write 6-8 page page paper due wednesday
-Read "Poisonwood Bible"(500+ pages)- Then write monologue on book for presentation on Thursday. Then write 2 page creative writing on book.
-complete 3 essay questions on take home portion of exam for Monday, then go to finish the rest of the final exam on Monday afternoon.
-Moday Morning sing 5 songs memorized for voice lesson final exam including memorizing an Italian piece before then.
-Study for 2 exams on Tuesday morning.
Despite my list of rediculousness I still find time to do other less importan things, and now I have reached the point of being crippled by the amount of work I have to do that I just don't do anything. I just sit, or just walk around. It's horrible. I Just think about this week being over and flying hom eon Friday to see friends and family and a change of pace.
Lord help me.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
God is a Genius
In one of my classes today we were discussing if life was completely horrible or if life is good and reasons and effects to why. My prof said, "Life has to be good! When I sit on my back porch and smoke a cigar and watch the sunset as my kids play on the slide in the yard, life is good. It's about perspective."
I agree. Life is good, but that is becuase I am choosing it to be that way. There are many things that I could point out that really suck in my life...seizures, overweight, in Iowa, behind in school, lame roommate, broken by sin daily. Why would I want to focus on those things?
I love my life. I love the people in my life. (no I am not on drugs, and shame on you for thinking such things.) I love my God. I love that fact that he is God, and he a genius for creating things to be as they are. Life is beautiful.
I think that we have too high of expectations...in a way. Another thing my prof said today was that American Culture is so very very violent. Violence seems to trigger images of blood and gore, but violence involves so much more. The abuse of power in any situation is violence. The expectations we have for eachother and ourselves become violent when they are self centered and we expect the world to revolve around us. It causes our actions and words to be violent.
I noticed that every paragraph in this post starts with "I". It's not about me.Simplify your life and take the focus off yourself. Sunday night my Resident Director for the building spoke about 3 R's that a Christian community should identify with. WE should be a community marked by Rest, Risk and Reverence/gratititude.
So these are my tandom thoughts for today ask questions if you want. Talk to you soon.
-Pil
I agree. Life is good, but that is becuase I am choosing it to be that way. There are many things that I could point out that really suck in my life...seizures, overweight, in Iowa, behind in school, lame roommate, broken by sin daily. Why would I want to focus on those things?
I love my life. I love the people in my life. (no I am not on drugs, and shame on you for thinking such things.) I love my God. I love that fact that he is God, and he a genius for creating things to be as they are. Life is beautiful.
I think that we have too high of expectations...in a way. Another thing my prof said today was that American Culture is so very very violent. Violence seems to trigger images of blood and gore, but violence involves so much more. The abuse of power in any situation is violence. The expectations we have for eachother and ourselves become violent when they are self centered and we expect the world to revolve around us. It causes our actions and words to be violent.
I noticed that every paragraph in this post starts with "I". It's not about me.Simplify your life and take the focus off yourself. Sunday night my Resident Director for the building spoke about 3 R's that a Christian community should identify with. WE should be a community marked by Rest, Risk and Reverence/gratititude.
So these are my tandom thoughts for today ask questions if you want. Talk to you soon.
-Pil
Monday, April 9, 2007
What has gone so wrong?
I origionally wrote an amazing post earlier today, wich was one of those amazing creative writting experiences that i do not think I wil able to duplicate, but I will try my best to remember some of the stuff I wrote earlier.
I have had such a rough semester I cannot begin to write down everything, and I have previously attempted in other posts, but so far those posts seem like my words are scrambled and hard to understand. Since i have been back from spring break I have not felt like myself. This semester in general has been a crazy up and down rollercoaster ride that I have been able to hold on unitl returning from break. I thought that I was doing okay. I feel like a was getting along with people. I thought I had friends. I felt like I was doing well in my classes. So what has changed? In some ways "friends" have betrayed me. I have become so caught up in my thought and activities outside of my classes that I have fallen behind in some of my classes and I am trying to catch up. In the past couple weeks after being back from spring break I have been the closest to being depressed than any other time in my life. Multiple times over the course of a week, "Nobody cares!" comes to mind. I have had so many questions come to mind with what's been going on. Questions like, why am I doing youth ministry?
The most common topic for me to think through has been in light of how much time I have spent "people watching" lately. I pay attention to actions and words and body language and how people dress and I am still wondering why do people do what they do. we have our groups of people that we idnetify with and that I think is the key. IDENTITY. For example, my roommate is really interested in the game Dungeions and Dragons and computer games and role playing games. For the most part he is socially unplugged until you get him in teh classroom setting where his seemingly witty and knowledgeble side comes out. He dresses in practicly the same cloths every day and is what most would consider to be the stereotypical nerd. Now what is significant about all these characteristics about my roommate? I think that the significance is that they are teh materials that make up his identity. No matter the age of the person they are most likely are searching or in some way developing their identity.
I want to move into talking about fear and I will end up tying this back into the identity issue in a minute. Todays North American culture is built on the foundation of fear. Now I say this because of what I was just discussing about identity. the reason we have genres of movies and music and clothing styles and North American slang that is considered "cool" "sweet" "tight" or "sick" is because these are the things that make us acceptable to each other. I hope they like me and what I am wearing. I want to fit in. I want to be popular. These are all thoughts that travel through the typical teen or adolescent and many woudl agree with me. But these thoughts pass through everyone's mind. If we do not fit in then we go buy a new wardrobe or change how we talk or we pick up different interests like the computer and role playing games that my roommate likes. teh problem that we are driven by fear. I distinctly remember a phone conversation that I had with my Mom when I was a freshmen in college. "I don't want to change who I am just to be accepted by a group of people. I want to be me." I said to my Mom. I think I have kept to this statement over the last two years in college. NOT! I alomst wrote that down seriously. Whether I want to me initially honest about it or not, I have been changed to good and for worse while being here. In fact I have become really good at tayloring my words and body language to fit with the group of people I am around. Why? I am afraid.
Who wants to be alone. Nobody right? and that is why we change who we are to fit in. We don't want to be alone, and now that I am tired of being who I am not, I think I have become someone that not very many people or nobody identifies with. So now what? I am alone and I hate it, and I cry about it and I want to give up being here and I yell at God and tell him, "This is not what I signed up for. Multiple times a week I think, "Nobody cares."
Yesterday was Easter. Being here was frustrating. the sermon was good, but everything went as normal. The hymns in the service were sung with the usual drone of the congregation and it seemed like any other Sunday. Why? I was happy it was Easter. Christ died and rose again, and it was as if nobody cared. The morning sermon was on teh story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. The words the pastor spoke were so good. "Today Christ has risen from the dead and he has all power and dominion over death. When he call Lazarus out of the tomb he HAD to call him by name or else he would have call all the dead to life again." The words of Christ are so powerful. by his wounds we are healed. There is a song by Christ Tomlin, "Mighty is the power of the Cross", and the most powerful lines are, "What can take a dying man and raise him up to life again?". Automatically we think physical death, but what about spiritual death emotional death. So how does Jesus do this work in our lives? Would you agree that he often uses the people around us to spiritually and emotionally raise us to life again. Even if just through the words of a song.
It's not about you or me. It's about something and someone bigger than us.
"Shipwreck" by Starfield
I built a fortress
With a hundred thousand faces
I'll keep it safe
With a hundred thousand more
But these masks are wearing thin
As You draw me in
I spent my time
On the empty and the fleeting
I spent my life
On much less than I'd dreamed
But I'm reaching out to you
To make me new
'Cause I am just a beggar here at Your door
I am just a shipwreck here on Your shore
I come empty handed
Ready to see
Your life in me changing who I've been
To who I need to be
You tell me my story
As You sift between the pages
I feel redemption
In the space between each turn
Could You take me in Your arms
And tell it just once more
Could You take me in Your arms
And tell it just once more
I have had such a rough semester I cannot begin to write down everything, and I have previously attempted in other posts, but so far those posts seem like my words are scrambled and hard to understand. Since i have been back from spring break I have not felt like myself. This semester in general has been a crazy up and down rollercoaster ride that I have been able to hold on unitl returning from break. I thought that I was doing okay. I feel like a was getting along with people. I thought I had friends. I felt like I was doing well in my classes. So what has changed? In some ways "friends" have betrayed me. I have become so caught up in my thought and activities outside of my classes that I have fallen behind in some of my classes and I am trying to catch up. In the past couple weeks after being back from spring break I have been the closest to being depressed than any other time in my life. Multiple times over the course of a week, "Nobody cares!" comes to mind. I have had so many questions come to mind with what's been going on. Questions like, why am I doing youth ministry?
The most common topic for me to think through has been in light of how much time I have spent "people watching" lately. I pay attention to actions and words and body language and how people dress and I am still wondering why do people do what they do. we have our groups of people that we idnetify with and that I think is the key. IDENTITY. For example, my roommate is really interested in the game Dungeions and Dragons and computer games and role playing games. For the most part he is socially unplugged until you get him in teh classroom setting where his seemingly witty and knowledgeble side comes out. He dresses in practicly the same cloths every day and is what most would consider to be the stereotypical nerd. Now what is significant about all these characteristics about my roommate? I think that the significance is that they are teh materials that make up his identity. No matter the age of the person they are most likely are searching or in some way developing their identity.
I want to move into talking about fear and I will end up tying this back into the identity issue in a minute. Todays North American culture is built on the foundation of fear. Now I say this because of what I was just discussing about identity. the reason we have genres of movies and music and clothing styles and North American slang that is considered "cool" "sweet" "tight" or "sick" is because these are the things that make us acceptable to each other. I hope they like me and what I am wearing. I want to fit in. I want to be popular. These are all thoughts that travel through the typical teen or adolescent and many woudl agree with me. But these thoughts pass through everyone's mind. If we do not fit in then we go buy a new wardrobe or change how we talk or we pick up different interests like the computer and role playing games that my roommate likes. teh problem that we are driven by fear. I distinctly remember a phone conversation that I had with my Mom when I was a freshmen in college. "I don't want to change who I am just to be accepted by a group of people. I want to be me." I said to my Mom. I think I have kept to this statement over the last two years in college. NOT! I alomst wrote that down seriously. Whether I want to me initially honest about it or not, I have been changed to good and for worse while being here. In fact I have become really good at tayloring my words and body language to fit with the group of people I am around. Why? I am afraid.
Who wants to be alone. Nobody right? and that is why we change who we are to fit in. We don't want to be alone, and now that I am tired of being who I am not, I think I have become someone that not very many people or nobody identifies with. So now what? I am alone and I hate it, and I cry about it and I want to give up being here and I yell at God and tell him, "This is not what I signed up for. Multiple times a week I think, "Nobody cares."
Yesterday was Easter. Being here was frustrating. the sermon was good, but everything went as normal. The hymns in the service were sung with the usual drone of the congregation and it seemed like any other Sunday. Why? I was happy it was Easter. Christ died and rose again, and it was as if nobody cared. The morning sermon was on teh story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. The words the pastor spoke were so good. "Today Christ has risen from the dead and he has all power and dominion over death. When he call Lazarus out of the tomb he HAD to call him by name or else he would have call all the dead to life again." The words of Christ are so powerful. by his wounds we are healed. There is a song by Christ Tomlin, "Mighty is the power of the Cross", and the most powerful lines are, "What can take a dying man and raise him up to life again?". Automatically we think physical death, but what about spiritual death emotional death. So how does Jesus do this work in our lives? Would you agree that he often uses the people around us to spiritually and emotionally raise us to life again. Even if just through the words of a song.
It's not about you or me. It's about something and someone bigger than us.
"Shipwreck" by Starfield
I built a fortress
With a hundred thousand faces
I'll keep it safe
With a hundred thousand more
But these masks are wearing thin
As You draw me in
I spent my time
On the empty and the fleeting
I spent my life
On much less than I'd dreamed
But I'm reaching out to you
To make me new
'Cause I am just a beggar here at Your door
I am just a shipwreck here on Your shore
I come empty handed
Ready to see
Your life in me changing who I've been
To who I need to be
You tell me my story
As You sift between the pages
I feel redemption
In the space between each turn
Could You take me in Your arms
And tell it just once more
Could You take me in Your arms
And tell it just once more
Saturday, March 31, 2007
It's been a month.
I have not posted since March 6 and a ton has gone on since then.
Most recently I have been really discouraged by signing up for housing this past week. About a month ago the capus was informed that we shoudl begin looking for roommates for next school year so that when sign ups for housing came around everyone woule have their groups together to sign up for housing. On campus we have 6 buildings for housing. North Hall is where I have lived for the last 2 years and it is an all guys dorm. East Hall is identical to North accept all girls. Covnenant Hall and West Hall are girls and guys dorms. East Campus apartments consists of 6 apartment buildings with 8 apartments in each, and Southview is on big apartment building with 28 apartments in it. The way housing goes is that seniority gets priority so Southview and East Campus Apartments usually fill up quick and then on down the food chain until everyone on campus has somewhere to live. So I began looking for roommates about 2 months ago because I wanted to amek sure that I would be living with people I liked next year. But nobody was committing to a room because 3 of the guys I wanted to live with were re-applying to be Registerd Assistants for the dorms. So I then went to 2 other guys and asked about their housing situation and the 3 of us became a group, but we needed 3 more guys to have a full apartment and have the best chance of making it into the apartments. So the results for the RA interviews came out the day before spring break and at that point I was torn between 2 groups basically waiting on one of them to way you are in for sure. Well I was pretty well set with the one group I was in with the other 2 guys and the other group included 4 guys that I had approached earlier about living with them. All this to say that when I came back from spring break I recieved an email from the 2 guys in the group I was currently in, telling me that they were joining the other 4 guys in the othe rgroup completing both of their groups in to on group of 6( which makes a full room) and I was the odd man out. Oh yeah, I got that email 2 days before when we needed to hand in our housing forms for next year.
So as of right now I am signed up with nobody again, just like last year, and the school will pick who my roommate for next year will be, whether a transfer student, and incoming freshmen or if I am lucky they will not house me with anyone and I get the room to myself. At this point I am really disappointed in the people that I though were friends of mine, and after this whole ordeal I really feel betrayed and it seems like nobody cares. I feel like I know a fair amount of people, but very few if any of those people do I trust to talk about something more serious than the typical "How was your day?" kind of small talk.
I would not be surprized if my explaination of the house stuff did not make sense, but basically I was set to live with some guys and at the last minute they dumped me and went and completed another room and I was stuck with nobody to live with for next year.
Among other issues I am dealing with, I have about a month of classes left and then a week of finals and I am already struggling to find the desire to keep working hard in all my classes.
I will post more later about my spring break and such.
-Joel
Most recently I have been really discouraged by signing up for housing this past week. About a month ago the capus was informed that we shoudl begin looking for roommates for next school year so that when sign ups for housing came around everyone woule have their groups together to sign up for housing. On campus we have 6 buildings for housing. North Hall is where I have lived for the last 2 years and it is an all guys dorm. East Hall is identical to North accept all girls. Covnenant Hall and West Hall are girls and guys dorms. East Campus apartments consists of 6 apartment buildings with 8 apartments in each, and Southview is on big apartment building with 28 apartments in it. The way housing goes is that seniority gets priority so Southview and East Campus Apartments usually fill up quick and then on down the food chain until everyone on campus has somewhere to live. So I began looking for roommates about 2 months ago because I wanted to amek sure that I would be living with people I liked next year. But nobody was committing to a room because 3 of the guys I wanted to live with were re-applying to be Registerd Assistants for the dorms. So I then went to 2 other guys and asked about their housing situation and the 3 of us became a group, but we needed 3 more guys to have a full apartment and have the best chance of making it into the apartments. So the results for the RA interviews came out the day before spring break and at that point I was torn between 2 groups basically waiting on one of them to way you are in for sure. Well I was pretty well set with the one group I was in with the other 2 guys and the other group included 4 guys that I had approached earlier about living with them. All this to say that when I came back from spring break I recieved an email from the 2 guys in the group I was currently in, telling me that they were joining the other 4 guys in the othe rgroup completing both of their groups in to on group of 6( which makes a full room) and I was the odd man out. Oh yeah, I got that email 2 days before when we needed to hand in our housing forms for next year.
So as of right now I am signed up with nobody again, just like last year, and the school will pick who my roommate for next year will be, whether a transfer student, and incoming freshmen or if I am lucky they will not house me with anyone and I get the room to myself. At this point I am really disappointed in the people that I though were friends of mine, and after this whole ordeal I really feel betrayed and it seems like nobody cares. I feel like I know a fair amount of people, but very few if any of those people do I trust to talk about something more serious than the typical "How was your day?" kind of small talk.
I would not be surprized if my explaination of the house stuff did not make sense, but basically I was set to live with some guys and at the last minute they dumped me and went and completed another room and I was stuck with nobody to live with for next year.
Among other issues I am dealing with, I have about a month of classes left and then a week of finals and I am already struggling to find the desire to keep working hard in all my classes.
I will post more later about my spring break and such.
-Joel
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
The Verse
So I just realized that I posted Galatians 1:10 at the top of the last post, but failed to explain or even allude why. This verse has been on my mind for a while now. I see situations and experience situations on a daily basis where the decision of whether to plase men or God is at hand, and people are constantly making split second decsions to either way. It is an interesting paradox because I want to not have to worry about what others think of me or what level of popularity is, and frequently I sarcifice my devotion to God to increase my acceptability to people and to improve my popularity. I am so frustrated by living what is essentially a double life and I am more frusrated by the idea that me living this way is contributing to the problem of hypocrisy in today's churches. That is all the verse was about, but I would really like to open this up for discussion. SO if you have any thoughts on the problem or the solution or just some thoughts or comments on the matter then feel free to post somehting up in the comment section.
Talk to you soon.
-Joel
P.S. - I come home in 66 days.
Talk to you soon.
-Joel
P.S. - I come home in 66 days.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Galatians 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 trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ."
It is been quite a while since I posted last. Honestly I just didn't know eactly what I wanted to write for while, but now I'm back.
As I am writing this it is 2:47pm on Saturday. I woke up about an hour ago not intending to sleep that late, but let me give you some background. Over the course of this past Thursday and Friday we recieved a dump of about 2ft and some inches of snow in a blizzard. So as of yesterday(Friday) afternoon the weather was clearing up enough that me ans 9 other guys decieded to hollow out this massive pile of snow that the on campus "Snow Crew" plowed up. When I say massive I mean roughly 30 yards across and about 10 feet high at it's highest point. So we proceeded to make this igloo big enough to fit all 10 of us in it laying down and we spent the night in the igloo last night. At least for the majority of the night. Me and another guy left at around 4am cause it was impossible to get to sleep, at least in my experience. Futhermore my nice, comfy and warm bed inside the nice, comfy and warm dorm building was beckoning and was WAY more appealing. So I went to bed and did not set my alarm and I slept until aobut 1:30pm today.
I am not a big fan of sleeping this lat in the day for the simple reason that I feel like I have wasted half my day. I have a list of things to do involving homework among all kinds of other odds and ends, and expectations of people of things to do from both here and home. So I was frustrated with myself when I woke up, not to mention the fact that I was really hungry too. Honestly I have bee trying to keep in touch with friends from home and mostly by facebook or email or myspace, but I have not exactly been keeping up soI have a few people giving me messages that include the, "Dude, where are you? You said you were going to keep in touch." kind of snetence in them. It is not that I don't care about keeping in touch, it's more that my priorities are such that messaging my friends from home is not at the top usually. This is just one example of stuff that is on my mind to do.
On to other things. So now I am continuing the rest of this post today(March 6). So today in my "Theology Enging Culture" class we were discussing the reading we had read for today. The reading was about entertainment and the effect it has on our culture, especially youth. At some point the discussion today turned to ADD and ADHD and how televsion and technology as a whole has given our generation an attitude of passivity. Technology does all the thinking for us, and we just watch. W ehave been so trained to be to be interested in the things that are entertaining instead, and this has been applied to more than just TV and computers or some other form of technology. Now we have students that can read, but rarely do becuase it is not entertaining and forces you to think. We have books on CD and now movies are giving us the images to go along with the book to the point where we are not able to read the book without thinking about the movie images. This is shrinking our imaginations. Then the discussion progressed by applying entertainment to youth ministry, and how our pastors are having to compete by making Sunday mornings entertaining to keep the interest of the students. This class is so interesting to see the kinds of things that we are unmasking in our culture, but then I can't help thinking how can Christianity compete. It should not be a competition in the first place, and if it was the competititon is not playing by the same rules. Now we have to constatnly find new ways to keep students attention because if it is not interesting or entertaining then they begin to sqirm and chatter. It is really discouraging to see what we are up against. All of this is still pretty fresh in my mind so I might write more on it later, but that is all for now.
I miss you all and just this past sunday I was imagining going to Northshore on a sunny morning and seeing everybody again. This will come true sooner than we realize. Talk to you soon.
-Joel
It is been quite a while since I posted last. Honestly I just didn't know eactly what I wanted to write for while, but now I'm back.
As I am writing this it is 2:47pm on Saturday. I woke up about an hour ago not intending to sleep that late, but let me give you some background. Over the course of this past Thursday and Friday we recieved a dump of about 2ft and some inches of snow in a blizzard. So as of yesterday(Friday) afternoon the weather was clearing up enough that me ans 9 other guys decieded to hollow out this massive pile of snow that the on campus "Snow Crew" plowed up. When I say massive I mean roughly 30 yards across and about 10 feet high at it's highest point. So we proceeded to make this igloo big enough to fit all 10 of us in it laying down and we spent the night in the igloo last night. At least for the majority of the night. Me and another guy left at around 4am cause it was impossible to get to sleep, at least in my experience. Futhermore my nice, comfy and warm bed inside the nice, comfy and warm dorm building was beckoning and was WAY more appealing. So I went to bed and did not set my alarm and I slept until aobut 1:30pm today.
I am not a big fan of sleeping this lat in the day for the simple reason that I feel like I have wasted half my day. I have a list of things to do involving homework among all kinds of other odds and ends, and expectations of people of things to do from both here and home. So I was frustrated with myself when I woke up, not to mention the fact that I was really hungry too. Honestly I have bee trying to keep in touch with friends from home and mostly by facebook or email or myspace, but I have not exactly been keeping up soI have a few people giving me messages that include the, "Dude, where are you? You said you were going to keep in touch." kind of snetence in them. It is not that I don't care about keeping in touch, it's more that my priorities are such that messaging my friends from home is not at the top usually. This is just one example of stuff that is on my mind to do.
On to other things. So now I am continuing the rest of this post today(March 6). So today in my "Theology Enging Culture" class we were discussing the reading we had read for today. The reading was about entertainment and the effect it has on our culture, especially youth. At some point the discussion today turned to ADD and ADHD and how televsion and technology as a whole has given our generation an attitude of passivity. Technology does all the thinking for us, and we just watch. W ehave been so trained to be to be interested in the things that are entertaining instead, and this has been applied to more than just TV and computers or some other form of technology. Now we have students that can read, but rarely do becuase it is not entertaining and forces you to think. We have books on CD and now movies are giving us the images to go along with the book to the point where we are not able to read the book without thinking about the movie images. This is shrinking our imaginations. Then the discussion progressed by applying entertainment to youth ministry, and how our pastors are having to compete by making Sunday mornings entertaining to keep the interest of the students. This class is so interesting to see the kinds of things that we are unmasking in our culture, but then I can't help thinking how can Christianity compete. It should not be a competition in the first place, and if it was the competititon is not playing by the same rules. Now we have to constatnly find new ways to keep students attention because if it is not interesting or entertaining then they begin to sqirm and chatter. It is really discouraging to see what we are up against. All of this is still pretty fresh in my mind so I might write more on it later, but that is all for now.
I miss you all and just this past sunday I was imagining going to Northshore on a sunny morning and seeing everybody again. This will come true sooner than we realize. Talk to you soon.
-Joel
Sunday, February 11, 2007
"Transatlanticism" by Death Cab for Cutie
The Atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.
I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.
Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
The clouds above opened up and let it out.
I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.
Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
I've Got It: Ultimate Revelation
So For years now I have been living life with this hunch that the majority of the people around me know something that I don't and there is a connection I ahve not made and there is something that is missing. And as rediculous as this might seem to those of you who have relized this long ago, I was thinking to myself last night as I was falling asleep that connection that I have been missing is the fact that I have lived for a while now in a balance of knowing what is asked of me as a Christian(Bible), as a student, as a son and what God is leading me to think/be/do, but rather living to what I see to be just short of fulfilling those roles to fullest, but acting like I am fulfilling them well enough so that anyone I encounter at first glance will get the impression that have it all together.
I know that our society in general, if they were to be honest, would say that they live in fear, and the sorce of this fear is that they are afraid that the world around them will reveal them to be the broken and incomplete person that they really are. I am broken. I am incomplete. Now what? If I were to meet a complete stranger that would admit to being broken, incomplete and then were to ask me "Now what?" I, as should any Christian, might just cry tears of joy for the simple fact that this would be the ultimate opportunity that God could give us to proclaim Christ's victorious, transforming and healing power in that person's life.
Now, I am again realizing/ admitting that I am broken. Now you are asking yourself, "where is he going with this and what is his ultimate revelation?" Last night I realized the reason behind my decisions for the past 6 years and maybe even earlier. I have been trying to figure out who I am, who God wants me to be and how do I make those two one in the same. My personality, my passions and my decisions combined over the last 6 years, if closely studied, would point to the fact that I have been living and am living searching for the ultimate HOW? How do I become who God wants me to be? How do I become the man I was created to become? How do I get to the point where I can undoubtedly say that I KNOW God and not just know of or about him? It has been a journey that I have taken not always being aware of it, but i realize it now. And I also realize that the answer is no that there is a point where I will have arrived. I will never "arrive". There will never be a point where I will say, "I have arrived!" unless it is when I am with God after my life on earth is done.
The answer to all my searching is that becoming who God wants me to be is found in the attitude that says, "Lord, I am willing. Not my will but your will be done"
Now the question is How do I live that? I will not be able to wake up every day and say confess that! That is impossible!
STOP! That is the point! The fact that it is impossible is the point. Because it is impossible on our own. You may have heard this before, but it can never become cliche or old or over used because it is the simple truth, and truth is always good and new and freeing. "The sinners prayer" is as simple as " I cannot but Lord you can. Lead me on."
The reason I have been feeling like everyone else knows what is going on and I don't is because I have been living in the balance of not fulfilling my roles of Christian, student, son. I simply have been lazy. I do just enough so I can act my way through life, instead of giving so much of myself that I almost kill myself trying to become the most amazing me there can be. I cannot expect good fruit to come out of my life if I o not put any effort to produce that fruit. One of my teachers in high school had a quote on her wall that said, "If you want something different than you 've had, then you must do something different than you've done." The band Audioslave wrote a song "Show Me How to Live" that says, "Live in my head, oh my creator. You gave me a life now show me how to live." Well when God shows you how to live the key is that you actually have to go do it, and God will speak to you through the Bible and through other Christians. So if you are not reading your Bible how do you expect God to speak to you? How can you expect to hear if you are not listening?
The key is to be willing. Lord I am willing. Not my will but your will be done.
I know that our society in general, if they were to be honest, would say that they live in fear, and the sorce of this fear is that they are afraid that the world around them will reveal them to be the broken and incomplete person that they really are. I am broken. I am incomplete. Now what? If I were to meet a complete stranger that would admit to being broken, incomplete and then were to ask me "Now what?" I, as should any Christian, might just cry tears of joy for the simple fact that this would be the ultimate opportunity that God could give us to proclaim Christ's victorious, transforming and healing power in that person's life.
Now, I am again realizing/ admitting that I am broken. Now you are asking yourself, "where is he going with this and what is his ultimate revelation?" Last night I realized the reason behind my decisions for the past 6 years and maybe even earlier. I have been trying to figure out who I am, who God wants me to be and how do I make those two one in the same. My personality, my passions and my decisions combined over the last 6 years, if closely studied, would point to the fact that I have been living and am living searching for the ultimate HOW? How do I become who God wants me to be? How do I become the man I was created to become? How do I get to the point where I can undoubtedly say that I KNOW God and not just know of or about him? It has been a journey that I have taken not always being aware of it, but i realize it now. And I also realize that the answer is no that there is a point where I will have arrived. I will never "arrive". There will never be a point where I will say, "I have arrived!" unless it is when I am with God after my life on earth is done.
The answer to all my searching is that becoming who God wants me to be is found in the attitude that says, "Lord, I am willing. Not my will but your will be done"
Now the question is How do I live that? I will not be able to wake up every day and say confess that! That is impossible!
STOP! That is the point! The fact that it is impossible is the point. Because it is impossible on our own. You may have heard this before, but it can never become cliche or old or over used because it is the simple truth, and truth is always good and new and freeing. "The sinners prayer" is as simple as " I cannot but Lord you can. Lead me on."
The reason I have been feeling like everyone else knows what is going on and I don't is because I have been living in the balance of not fulfilling my roles of Christian, student, son. I simply have been lazy. I do just enough so I can act my way through life, instead of giving so much of myself that I almost kill myself trying to become the most amazing me there can be. I cannot expect good fruit to come out of my life if I o not put any effort to produce that fruit. One of my teachers in high school had a quote on her wall that said, "If you want something different than you 've had, then you must do something different than you've done." The band Audioslave wrote a song "Show Me How to Live" that says, "Live in my head, oh my creator. You gave me a life now show me how to live." Well when God shows you how to live the key is that you actually have to go do it, and God will speak to you through the Bible and through other Christians. So if you are not reading your Bible how do you expect God to speak to you? How can you expect to hear if you are not listening?
The key is to be willing. Lord I am willing. Not my will but your will be done.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Day to day.
Today is Sunday, and I thought I would post for a few reasons...Super Bowl, This mornings amazing sermon and some sweet music. First of all I am going to congratulate Payton Manning on his first Super Bowl ring. In my opinion he and his team deserved it .
This morning I had some roommate troubles...I set my alarm for 8:45 so that I could get up and quickly go get some breakfast before 9 and then come back to get ready for church at 10. Well first of all I wake up and see that it is 9am and breakfast is closed and my alarm has been on for 15 minutes. My alarm sound is nothing annoying it is just the local Christian radio station. SO, I get up and go to the bathroom and on my way back I see my roommate in the hall making his way to the shower and he gives me one of those if looks could kill you would be dead looks and I asked him, "what's with the dirty look?" which he replies "you woke me up". I found this odd because about 30 seconds after I woke up and turned my alarm off his alarm sounds(which is one of the annoying buzzers)So when he came back from the showers I was waiting for him so we could discuss the little beef that was developing. I said, "Hey Matt, you know now that we are in college we don't give each other dirty looks when something is bothering us like we did in Junior High... I would appreciate it if you would come and talk to me instead if you have a problem." Timeout, now I know that this is not the most sensitive thing I could have said at the time, but this guy is getting on my nerves for the simple reason that if he has a problem with me he just lets it build up and we never address it. SO in return I have been trying to "poke at him" to get him to talk to me about what's on his mind. So he responds with, "Well it seems that you just ignored me the last time we talked about this and have not fixed anything." Basically he has a problem with the fact that I do not wake up right away to my alarm and I feel kinda stuck cause I can't do much about it cause the volume on my radio is all the way up and I wake up when I wake up. So the conversation really never resolved anything accept him being peeved at me and me and I know that we didn't solved anything. So that is what's up with the roomy.
So on to this morning. The pastor at the church I attend here, Aaron Bart, is spoke on the story in Mark about the Leper who encounters Jesus and says to him, "If you are willing you can heal me." Aaron pointed out that before this encounter no person, only a demon, has addressed Jesus to be God, and around that time Leprosy was seen as a punishment by God and could only be healed by God. So the interesting point is that the leper does not say CAN you heal me, but rather that Jesus has the power and asking if he is willing to heal him. I thought that what he said was pretty sweet. He then went on to talk about how we as Christians need to have the attitude of willingness and that we won't be perfect and do thing right, but we need to continue saying to God, "I am still willing to follow and do my best for you."
Some good music I have been listening to lately is John Mayer's new CD Continuum, and Shawn McDonald's Cd Ripen. Anyway thanks for reading, and comment if you want. Also I would appreciate your prayers about he being able to go to Australia next spring. You can also pray about housing for next year, that I can find a group of guys that I want to live with. And...one more thing that I can get along with my roommate. Talk to you soon.
-Joel
This morning I had some roommate troubles...I set my alarm for 8:45 so that I could get up and quickly go get some breakfast before 9 and then come back to get ready for church at 10. Well first of all I wake up and see that it is 9am and breakfast is closed and my alarm has been on for 15 minutes. My alarm sound is nothing annoying it is just the local Christian radio station. SO, I get up and go to the bathroom and on my way back I see my roommate in the hall making his way to the shower and he gives me one of those if looks could kill you would be dead looks and I asked him, "what's with the dirty look?" which he replies "you woke me up". I found this odd because about 30 seconds after I woke up and turned my alarm off his alarm sounds(which is one of the annoying buzzers)So when he came back from the showers I was waiting for him so we could discuss the little beef that was developing. I said, "Hey Matt, you know now that we are in college we don't give each other dirty looks when something is bothering us like we did in Junior High... I would appreciate it if you would come and talk to me instead if you have a problem." Timeout, now I know that this is not the most sensitive thing I could have said at the time, but this guy is getting on my nerves for the simple reason that if he has a problem with me he just lets it build up and we never address it. SO in return I have been trying to "poke at him" to get him to talk to me about what's on his mind. So he responds with, "Well it seems that you just ignored me the last time we talked about this and have not fixed anything." Basically he has a problem with the fact that I do not wake up right away to my alarm and I feel kinda stuck cause I can't do much about it cause the volume on my radio is all the way up and I wake up when I wake up. So the conversation really never resolved anything accept him being peeved at me and me and I know that we didn't solved anything. So that is what's up with the roomy.
So on to this morning. The pastor at the church I attend here, Aaron Bart, is spoke on the story in Mark about the Leper who encounters Jesus and says to him, "If you are willing you can heal me." Aaron pointed out that before this encounter no person, only a demon, has addressed Jesus to be God, and around that time Leprosy was seen as a punishment by God and could only be healed by God. So the interesting point is that the leper does not say CAN you heal me, but rather that Jesus has the power and asking if he is willing to heal him. I thought that what he said was pretty sweet. He then went on to talk about how we as Christians need to have the attitude of willingness and that we won't be perfect and do thing right, but we need to continue saying to God, "I am still willing to follow and do my best for you."
Some good music I have been listening to lately is John Mayer's new CD Continuum, and Shawn McDonald's Cd Ripen. Anyway thanks for reading, and comment if you want. Also I would appreciate your prayers about he being able to go to Australia next spring. You can also pray about housing for next year, that I can find a group of guys that I want to live with. And...one more thing that I can get along with my roommate. Talk to you soon.
-Joel
Friday, February 2, 2007
Destination 2008
So as of right now I am headed to studying abroad in Sydney, Australia next year. Here are some pictures. I just wanted to post something because I'm really excited with idea of getting outside of the continental US and oportunities I will have if I go. I'll get to do things like live in Sydney for 5 months, spend a week in New Zealand, spend a week with an Aborigional Tribe and still take about 16 credits in music and theology courses.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Options
Hey everybody, I bet your weather is warmer than mine. Current temperature in Sioux Center, Iowa is 0 degrees F as of 11am Jan. 30! But that is actually somewhere in the middle of what it usually is. Sunday Morning it was -25 walking the 2 blocks to church.
Anyway, my options are bisically choosing between go on off campus study to Australia next spring, or I could continue through the applicaiton process of becoming a resident assistent. Now there are perks to either of these choices. I have a better chance of getting accepted for off campus study because pretty much any one can go if they meet the requirements, which I think I do, but applying to be an RA there are 36 positions and about 100 people applying for them. If I don't do off campus study this next year then I could possibly do it my senior year, but same with being an RA. If I am accepted for the RA position I will recieve free room/ and board + $1300 in work sudy money. So finacially it is sweet. But if I do not do off campus study this year then I would have to do it in the fall of my senior year, and if i did it then it would lessen my chances of getting into the Concert Choir which is the best choir on campus. The director is pretty picky about being committed to the whole year. On top of the amazginess of being a part of that choir there is a Tour to Europe the summer after my senior year for those that are in concert choir that year. Also I don't know if I would be finacially afford going on off campus study as well as speding a couple G's on the tour to Europe.
So all this to say I am leaning toward going through the application process for being an RA and let God decide the outcome of being an RA or doing off campus study. Oh, yeah being an RA is a year long commitment and that's why I can't do both. But yeah I am hoping that I can do everything that I want to.
I should also mention in response to your questions about if I am staying here or coming home...well as of right now I am going to stay here at Dordt unless God pulls something drastic and changes my mind. I would really appreciate your prayers for guidence in general and for encouragement.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave your thoughts/ advice.
-Joel
Anyway, my options are bisically choosing between go on off campus study to Australia next spring, or I could continue through the applicaiton process of becoming a resident assistent. Now there are perks to either of these choices. I have a better chance of getting accepted for off campus study because pretty much any one can go if they meet the requirements, which I think I do, but applying to be an RA there are 36 positions and about 100 people applying for them. If I don't do off campus study this next year then I could possibly do it my senior year, but same with being an RA. If I am accepted for the RA position I will recieve free room/ and board + $1300 in work sudy money. So finacially it is sweet. But if I do not do off campus study this year then I would have to do it in the fall of my senior year, and if i did it then it would lessen my chances of getting into the Concert Choir which is the best choir on campus. The director is pretty picky about being committed to the whole year. On top of the amazginess of being a part of that choir there is a Tour to Europe the summer after my senior year for those that are in concert choir that year. Also I don't know if I would be finacially afford going on off campus study as well as speding a couple G's on the tour to Europe.
So all this to say I am leaning toward going through the application process for being an RA and let God decide the outcome of being an RA or doing off campus study. Oh, yeah being an RA is a year long commitment and that's why I can't do both. But yeah I am hoping that I can do everything that I want to.
I should also mention in response to your questions about if I am staying here or coming home...well as of right now I am going to stay here at Dordt unless God pulls something drastic and changes my mind. I would really appreciate your prayers for guidence in general and for encouragement.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave your thoughts/ advice.
-Joel
Friday, January 26, 2007
Frustration
Today is Friday Jan. 26 and I am really tired of the food here. My stomach is growling and I am really hungry. Problem...the food here seems to be getting progressively worse. But that is not what I am really frustrated about. My homework due today consisted of a 2-3 page response to a chapter I read for my Ed Psych class. I also had an assignment to observe a child and parent for a couple minutes and there was a one page response on that as well. Anyway, that was not exactly a heavy load of homework... the problem is that I just put them off until this morning and I got both of them done and i actually think I wrote a pretty good paper for Ed Psych, but I really should have done both assignments last night. The thing I am frustrated with is the fact that I feel like I am really unorganized. I only did a half hearted work out last night and I really want to get into shape, and I am trying to eat well but some days I just don't care. Last night after my lame work out I was watching some intramural basketball games and I was frustrated again with being out of shape.
My room is messy and I just seem to have higher priorities than to clean it. "Higher Priorities" like xbox, or watching a movie. That is ridiculous! I am also frustrated because I got my tonsils removed over Christmas Break and the doctor said that I would not be sick near as much and I would breathe much better and all this stuff, and now I am sick! Now I know I am not immune to sickness now that my tonsils are gone, but just this morning I kinda missed my tonsils. This sounds dumb but I am starting to think that getting my tonsils removed was not worth it. This is a random thought but I think the show LOST is sweet even though I have only seen the first season. Just trust me... there was a connection between my tonsils and LOST.
Anyway, my watching the basketball games and getting in shape naturally lead me to think about relationships and how focused we are on the physical and what is pleasing to the eye. I watched the movie The Village recently and I think that it is now in my top 10 movies for sure. The ending is amazing and the story line is sweet, but the best part of the movie is this relationship between a boy that is somewhat timid and a blind girl. The relationship is so pure and genuine and little if any at all of it is based on physical attraction, but rather an attraction to character and personality. I remember saying to myself that I could totally see myself marrying a blind girl for the simple reason that she would love me for my personality and not how I look. It was such an interesting perspective to see how things "look" from a blind person's point of view. Yes ladies and gents there it is, the soft side of Joel Pilon. But the more we put this generalization that men are not romantic and do not have the desire to be wanted by a woman the more I realize it is NOT TRUE! I want companionship! Can I get an amen? So that's about it for now, and i shall post sometime soon again.
Comment as you like,
-Joel
My room is messy and I just seem to have higher priorities than to clean it. "Higher Priorities" like xbox, or watching a movie. That is ridiculous! I am also frustrated because I got my tonsils removed over Christmas Break and the doctor said that I would not be sick near as much and I would breathe much better and all this stuff, and now I am sick! Now I know I am not immune to sickness now that my tonsils are gone, but just this morning I kinda missed my tonsils. This sounds dumb but I am starting to think that getting my tonsils removed was not worth it. This is a random thought but I think the show LOST is sweet even though I have only seen the first season. Just trust me... there was a connection between my tonsils and LOST.
Anyway, my watching the basketball games and getting in shape naturally lead me to think about relationships and how focused we are on the physical and what is pleasing to the eye. I watched the movie The Village recently and I think that it is now in my top 10 movies for sure. The ending is amazing and the story line is sweet, but the best part of the movie is this relationship between a boy that is somewhat timid and a blind girl. The relationship is so pure and genuine and little if any at all of it is based on physical attraction, but rather an attraction to character and personality. I remember saying to myself that I could totally see myself marrying a blind girl for the simple reason that she would love me for my personality and not how I look. It was such an interesting perspective to see how things "look" from a blind person's point of view. Yes ladies and gents there it is, the soft side of Joel Pilon. But the more we put this generalization that men are not romantic and do not have the desire to be wanted by a woman the more I realize it is NOT TRUE! I want companionship! Can I get an amen? So that's about it for now, and i shall post sometime soon again.
Comment as you like,
-Joel
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
2 days after my Tosilectomy
Tonsils removed December 26
(I wrote this 2 days later)
I think there is something to be learned in every circumstance in life. I am at college group tonight and now that I cannot speak very well and especially can't sing because of my surgery. I am realizing how worship and living is so much more than what we can say or sing. What are our actions saying/singing? Do they send the same message that we might be trying to send with out words? Mine are not.
What needs to change and how does it need to change?
-Genuine-->Reflecting Christ
-Humility--> For the right reasons,not for praise
-Know your stuff because you really know it and not repeating what you have heard
-What are you dependent on?
-->Friends, Acceptance?
-Be dependent on being real-->#1 priority should be to be who you really are/ who God wants you to be as a Christ follower.
I read this again today(01/23/07) now that I am at school, and it seemed like some good thoughts. I really do not liek being dependent on someone else. I don't like working in group projects and if their is a task of any sort to be done, and I can do it myself, then I by far prefer to do it myself. I am at times what would seem to be a recluse here at school, but my reasoning came from sometime during my freshmen year when I decided I was not going to be the leader/initiator of my friendships here and see what happens. I think this is partly why my freshmen year was a rough go. Honestly it is a "duh" that every relationship goes two ways, but I just wanted acceptence and not by me forcing myself on people. I really enjoy being somewhat of a leader in my group of friends back home...I think I just wanted to feel like people really did want to know me and feel like I have something to offer. I don't really know how successful I have been at taking the follower role, but this could contribute to my friends here being not as close as at home.
I do not want to be dependent on someone else, but I want others to be dependent on me. I have something to offer, and am worthy of a good friendship aren't I? I think this thought goes through everyone's head in some shape or form at some point in their life.
comment at will...
(I wrote this 2 days later)
I think there is something to be learned in every circumstance in life. I am at college group tonight and now that I cannot speak very well and especially can't sing because of my surgery. I am realizing how worship and living is so much more than what we can say or sing. What are our actions saying/singing? Do they send the same message that we might be trying to send with out words? Mine are not.
What needs to change and how does it need to change?
-Genuine-->Reflecting Christ
-Humility--> For the right reasons,not for praise
-Know your stuff because you really know it and not repeating what you have heard
-What are you dependent on?
-->Friends, Acceptance?
-Be dependent on being real-->#1 priority should be to be who you really are/ who God wants you to be as a Christ follower.
I read this again today(01/23/07) now that I am at school, and it seemed like some good thoughts. I really do not liek being dependent on someone else. I don't like working in group projects and if their is a task of any sort to be done, and I can do it myself, then I by far prefer to do it myself. I am at times what would seem to be a recluse here at school, but my reasoning came from sometime during my freshmen year when I decided I was not going to be the leader/initiator of my friendships here and see what happens. I think this is partly why my freshmen year was a rough go. Honestly it is a "duh" that every relationship goes two ways, but I just wanted acceptence and not by me forcing myself on people. I really enjoy being somewhat of a leader in my group of friends back home...I think I just wanted to feel like people really did want to know me and feel like I have something to offer. I don't really know how successful I have been at taking the follower role, but this could contribute to my friends here being not as close as at home.
I do not want to be dependent on someone else, but I want others to be dependent on me. I have something to offer, and am worthy of a good friendship aren't I? I think this thought goes through everyone's head in some shape or form at some point in their life.
comment at will...
Monday, January 22, 2007
Thoughts
Christmas break this year was really good for me. I was able to spend a fare amount of time with the people that I really wanted to, as well as work for my Northshore(church) for a couple weeks. While I have been here at college I have never been comfortable with the amount of debt that I am accumulating. Over break this was on my mind and I have been wrestling with the idea of whether I should stay here at college or if I should look to going somewhere cheaper and maybe closer to home.
From my experience living here in Iowa for a year and some change I have realized that I am not a big fan of the weather, but I do enjoy my classes. I have some close friends but mostly acquaintances, and it is really hard not to compare my friends here to my friends at home.(Seattle area) There are all kinds of small reasons for my wanting to return to the Seattle area, but I cannot help but come back to the biggest issue of debt. So I am still weighing my options and what is my wisest decision. Also a big motivating factor for leaving here is that I still have a strong desire to be involved in missions, and with a substantial amount of debt it will be really hard to do missions any time in the near future.
Thinking through all these issues has been really beneficial spiritually. It is causing me to see how much more dependent on the people around me and God. I guess the dependency issue also came up with my tonsils being removed. Especially on the Thursday after my surgery I was at college group and for the first time since I can remember I was unable to sing along with worship, and I was unable to drive myself to college group itself, and began to realize me dependency on my friends and especially my Mom to help me. To continue on the singing side of things I was discouraged with not being able to sing, and I found myself having to find other ways to worship. This led to me to see what God was teaching through my thoughts and devotions instead of my sing and making music.
From my experience living here in Iowa for a year and some change I have realized that I am not a big fan of the weather, but I do enjoy my classes. I have some close friends but mostly acquaintances, and it is really hard not to compare my friends here to my friends at home.(Seattle area) There are all kinds of small reasons for my wanting to return to the Seattle area, but I cannot help but come back to the biggest issue of debt. So I am still weighing my options and what is my wisest decision. Also a big motivating factor for leaving here is that I still have a strong desire to be involved in missions, and with a substantial amount of debt it will be really hard to do missions any time in the near future.
Thinking through all these issues has been really beneficial spiritually. It is causing me to see how much more dependent on the people around me and God. I guess the dependency issue also came up with my tonsils being removed. Especially on the Thursday after my surgery I was at college group and for the first time since I can remember I was unable to sing along with worship, and I was unable to drive myself to college group itself, and began to realize me dependency on my friends and especially my Mom to help me. To continue on the singing side of things I was discouraged with not being able to sing, and I found myself having to find other ways to worship. This led to me to see what God was teaching through my thoughts and devotions instead of my sing and making music.
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