The Journey

I’ve made a promise– really what I’ve made is a deal that guarantees more to read from one of my favorite authors. So here it is… the update.

San Diego is a place where it never gets hotter than 70 degrees and the sun always shines, or at lease that’s what my neighbors tell me. I have been spending the last week in a warehouse trusting my sources. It helps that I have been counting away the hours in what is far and away the best warehouse in the lower 48… maybe even in the whole 50.

I wish that everyone I know could have escaped into the lovely little office where I have spent the last week. There is so much to learn about Invisible Children as an organization, and I feel like I have been granted a private look into it’s true heart. It’s better than gold. It’s driven by love for the marginalized and it acts powerfully to bind broken hearts.

–I have to admit something to you all– I have actually gotten out of the office. Friday afternoon we left the office early to go up to the San Bernardino mountains for a retreat. They where different than the ones I am used to. These mountains are kind of young and rebellious. They just shoot out between the desert and the LA suburbs with a chip on their shoulder. Unlike the Appalachians, the San Bernardino mountains surprise the landscape and make you wonder why such big mountains would pop up in a place that is otherwise so formless and void? Well I’ve got no answers, I’m new to this area, I can tell you though that they are very pretty and that I had a great time getting to know some great people within their tree line.

download drive thru dvdrip My focus is waning and I’m sure you can tell my tone change along with the songs on my playlist, so I will leave you with a final thought. The road ahead– it’s going to be a tough one. I know this for sure; but as my film producing/master dancer boss told me and the other roadies earlier this week, conflict makes for better stories. I know this story is going to be a good one because I know it won’t be an easy one to write.

A really good friend sent me a text message on Friday that I want to pass on to each of you out there.

May you discipline your time for the most freedom and beauty. A Jazz music kind of life, not the rushed gradification of a hollow pop music life. ????? ?????? ???? ???????

I don’t have too much to add on top of that, accept that it’s a good word and I plan to apply it in planning my days out this week.  I hope you do the same.

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Peace.

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This is weird, yesterday I felt like a garbage can. I sneezed all the time and my nose ran like Michael Johnson. Today I feel mostly great, I haven’t sneezed once. I say mostly because there is still left over snot in my head that hasn’t come out yet, thats just a matter of time though.

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I’ve decided that I’m going to write something every day. I can’t promise that everything I write will be worth reading, but hopefully there will be more than there is now. ??????? ?????? ???????

If I had a digital camera, I would take a picture and show you how beautiful Clemson is today. Then you would know exactly how cruel it is that today, out of all the days ever, is the one where I have to sit in the library and write papers.

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Please, if you love me, go hiking today in my memorium. It’s what I would have wanted you to do.

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It’s been so long since I have written anything that I almost don’t see the point in bringing the fact up, But I’m back at school now and back in a place where it’s convenient to write and write often, so expect more posts soon.

Last summer was an adventure. I’m thinking about writing a screenplay detailing my trip westward. If I did, I would send it to Mel Gibson, though the tails of my trip be may be more in the vein of Paul than of William Wallace. Who knows though, maybe I could make millions.

This great sense of adventure that I found on beaches where the sun sets into cold water, and atop mountains that are still jagged in their youth was what made last summer the greatest of my life. It wasn’t just that I was on a road trip to who knows where with two of the coolest people I will ever have the privilege to call friends, and it wasn’t the handful of devinely placed people I met and learned from this summer that made the adventure so new and memorable. Those things make men like Jack Kerouac and Don Miller best selling authors and though those things may be what could sell my own story, they won’t be what my friends and I remember when we conjour up nastalgic emotions of our summer together. The thing that made last summer so great was that amidst all the people we met and places we saw, God provided. I am convinced that this was because we didn’t know what we were doing, accept that we wanted to serve God and his people, and upon seeing our ineptitude mixed up with faith He saw it good to provide us with everything we needed to His work. All we had to do is show up and God really just took care of everything else.

Back at school this adventure has been hard to come by. I realized about a week and a half after getting back that this was why I felt so awkward. My life had turned back into a mix of good intentions to minister and a feeling that I needed to focus on the more secular tasks of daily life like homework and finances.

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I’ve thought a lot about this desire for more vicerel ministry all my thoughts ultimately trail to the conclusion that the God who provided for me on the road is the same God who is providing for me here at Clemson. Granted my senses aren’t quite as sharp here as they were on the road, but still I have begun to see the adventure take shape within the monoteny.

iron man dvdrip I just borrowed Do the Right Thing from the Cooper Library. If you are a Clemson student and you have never been to the second floor of the Coop, get down there, its pretty sweet.

This movie is nuts. I am tempted to recomend it to you all, but if you watch it do so with caution. Definately not one to watch around young ears. It is basically a story of the racial tension that exists in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. When you step back though it’s pretty apparent that Spike Lee’s intention in this particular joint is to show how these same tensions exist all over. The movie does a really good job of showing that violence doesn’t do much to solve our problems. Still though, at the end of the film you are left with a feeling that Spike isn’t really sure how these issues can be solved, just the the current means of resolution isn’t working.

This is perciesly why I love Jesus. I am reminded by this film that the only means of peace on this ball of dust and water and love and war is through Christ. The answer isn’t laying down arms or picking them up. It is pure unadlterated love. This kind of love allows us to bear eachothers mistakes and controversies. I see this love in the hearts of Jesus’ deciples. I know there is a tendency to voice dissapointment in the Church, how little we are doing to bring love to the world, but I just dont feel like now is the time. For me my heart is happy right now, because I know that Jesus is in me and that he uses me to show love, even if it isn’t as much as is best.

I read an article the other day that almost made me cry. That I didn’t is proof that I’m not as plugged in with the heart of my father as I aim to be.

According to ABC news, Atlanta ranks among the top cities in the United States for child sex slavery.  I don’t know what I can add to that to completely mess you up.

A lot of things pass through me as I think about this. One of the more profound is that our prayers have the power to create global change. A book I havent read yet but probably will because of the title is “When Heaven Invades Earth”. I can’t remember who the author is. Apparently the book talks about the global change that can occur because of faithful prayer. As a result, my friends in Athens have started praying against human trafficking. Shortly after they started praying for this a pornography ring was discovered and destroyed.

Seriously guys… Lets start praying for the innocent and watch our Father protect them.

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Last Friday night I experienced the rare and earth shattering experience of what it looks like to read the Bible out of sheer pleasure and enjoyment. It’s amazing how different the word of God is when I approach it this way. Hebrews 11 was the scene of the accident. God didn’t really shatter my world here, but he did bring me to a new perspective that has caused a paradigm shift in the way I will interact with the poor and when He is teaching you things like that there is no guaranteeing that He won’t be shattering your world soon.

Hebrews 11 is basically a long list of encouraging sories to the Jewish people that the author is writing to. They are encouraging in the way that we might feel encouraged seeing a child to sponsor on tv, by way of comparison we are reminded that we are safe here in the United States. This is a metephore that really doesn’t work for me any more, but more on that later. The author keeps bringing up how if these hero’s of the faith, heros that are no different in their capabilities from those being written to, they have still survived and did so without ever having seen all the wealth the Jesus brings once he enters the picture. It’s as if the author is saying “LOOK! If they can survive… no THRIVE! without ever having seen God’s promise fulfilled than you have the chance to thrive all the more!!”. He drives this point home with and illistration, this is the crux upon my world will be rocked, so read on with caution. He says that these people were like exiles in a forign country. They were displaced by their communities because they had a hope no one else could understand. He goes on to say that this is why “God is not ashamed to be called their God” and that “He has prepared a city for them”.

Here’s where it gets rediculous. If I am a son of God and a forigner displaced among decaying kingdoms, if what Jesus said about me having no place to rest my head is true, than I have everything in common with the child living in a displacement camp. This being true, that child can no longer live in a commercial to me, nor can a widow remain unidentified to me or a drug addicted man live half a world away from me. They are all more relatable and tangeble than I ever gave them credit. I am unbelievably fortunate to have things like clean water, but if we are both living in communities that refuse to be hospitable to us because of who we are, than the fact that they have so little and I have so much is no basis for our seperation. It isn’t the wealthy who are going to save the poor of this world, it is God who will save the poor and he is doing it with other people who know the destitution they live it.

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It’s been a great weekend, and I have experienced and heard a lot of amazing things in Ski Country USA. I heard this today and thought maybe you should take note incase you ever take a Delta flight over any body of water.

“A light can be activated on your life vest, and most seat cushions can be used as a flotation divice”

Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, you know how it goes.

On a heavier note, after a long day of skiing on Friday, I had lost feeling in the second smallest toe on my right foot. I thought it was temporary. I still cant feel the little guy.

Peace.

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This afternoon I was sitting at a starbucks in Breckenridge and I heard a guy say:

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“Excuse me ma’am, your dog lost it’s shoe”

If I had a nickel.