I know this is stoning worthy....but I hate christmas music

Now before you begin throwing stones at me, just hold on and let me explain...and because my mind is a sparatic nutso, I am going to use a list that may not flow logically from one point to another at all...

- To begin, christmas music, is not Christmas music. Small c, christmas, music is those absolutely annoying jingles about sleigh rides, santa, and snowmen. Now I will admit at one point they were catchy and I sort of liked them, but after having them played on the radio for 3 monthes a year for the last 21 years have made them lose their charm. I know the numbers may be an exaggeration, but radio stations now adays start playing them right after Reformation Day, if not before. I am disgusted with hearing them, and the 50 variations upon the same theme. Come on people, how many artists(and I use the term loosely) are going to make a rendition of santa claus is coming to town.

- Beyond being annoying, the jingles detract from the true nature of Christmas, and turn it into a secularized hallmark holiday. Yes thats right, I just classified christmas with sweetest day, valentines day, and all the other hallmark holidays. To prove my point we can look at the origin of many popular holiday music and see it finds its origin in advertising and schemes by companies to make more money. The entire holiday focuses on greed and stimulating the economy. The invention of santa claus is probably the most horrific sin of the 20th century. Why you may ask? Because rather than just causing physical death, like war, santa claus has caused hundreds of millions of people to be led into greed, into sin, into forgetting what Christmas really is. I know its not the only reason, but the invention of santa is one of the causes of the death of Christmas.
Christmas is a Christian feast day following the fast season of advent. Up until december 25th the Church sits in waiting and preparation for the coming King, both the rememberance of His first coming and in expectation of His second coming. The feast season of Christmas doesnt begin until december 25th, and it is a short stint before epiphany. It's time for Christians to reclaim their feast from the pagans, because despite what most americans think, they don't celebrate Christmas! they celebrate x-mas, or whatever other bastardation of the Feast of the Incarnation that removes the incarnation all together!

now you may be saying ok, I agree lets not stone him, or you may have already stopped reading and thrown a few boulders my direction, but time to move from the obvious wretched part of the holiday, to a more subtle, dangerous, and painful criticism of the Christian practice of Christmas. So we are moving from the secular holiday christmas, which needs to be abolished, and removed from the bastardizing power of satan in world, and into the Christian feast day. So lets see what trouble I can get myself into...

- The celebration of the Feast of the Incarnation has historically been within the church a culmination of the fast of Advent. Now adays Churches have a tendency to try and skip advent and jump into Christmas. Churches put up Christmas trees(whose symbolism needs to be reestablished and explained) at the beginning of Advent, if not sooner. While not common yet, I know that many congregations try and push into Christmas hymns during Advent, totally missing the point of Advent.

- Advent is a fast of preparation and contemplation, a fast of waiting. We eagerly await the coming King, and prepare for Him through patient waiting, prayer, fasting, and singing hymns of longing. I feel as though most congregations would rather skip the season and jump into Christmas.
Why? Because we are an impatient people who as a church have begun to forget what it means to prepare and wait in eager expectation. We have bought into sociteies obsessive desire for things right now, for immediacy. We have forgotten the good of longing, of desire, of fasting.


I hate christmas music....because it seeks to destroy the Rememberance of the Incarnation, and turn it into a celebration of the god of money. I loath Christmas music, because it reminds me how we as a church are forgetting to fast and ever seeking to live in 'happy times'.
Christ was not made incarnate because he likes peace and good will towards men, He did not come to earth to make us never want, to make life into a pastoral scene in which animals dont smell and dont make a mess. No, Christ came to suffer and die. We tend to forget the truth of Christ's coming because it makes us feel all warm inside if we say he came to bring peace and good will, that he didnt come to earth the suffer and die for our sins. Yes the incarnation is a glorious miracle which we should sing about and praise, but we must never forget why Christ came, why the immortal ineffable deity became frail mortal flesh.
Let us reclaim Christmas and banish the disgusting perversion that is the feast of greedy consumerism. Let us wait in bitter longing during advent and feel a painful waiting, let us stand up for Christ and His incarnation, and turn from ourselves, and our own desires for peace and good feelings, and serve God, rather than demand that he serve our own desires.

Lord, let me wait in bitter longing with eager expectation for your second coming, even as I await to celebrate your Incarnation and birth. May I cease to abuse your feast for my own good feelings, and remember the true nature of your coming to earth, to suffer and die for our sins. I praise and glorify your Holy Name and remember your cross this holiday season. Amen

traveling agnst

I am currently sitting in the Spokane airport waiting for a flight to get me out of here, and I have been waiting since 6:30am, and wont even know if I can get on a light til 3:05pm......over 9 hours of waiting in an airport.....sigh.

So I am continuing this post in Chicago, which I got to 36 hours after I left from Pullman. Ugh traveling sucks. But highlights....

-I got upgraded to first class on my flight from Spokane to Phoenix, and oh how wonderful it was :-). What a wonderful, and probably once in a lifetime treat. There were free drinks, the seats were comfortable, and there was tons of leg room......sigh, it was wonderful.
- In Phoenix it looked like I would be stuck again, the plane had to cancel 4 spots because of weight restrictions, and things were looking sour, when at the last minute there were a few cancellations and I got on :-).
- It is great being in Chicago again, I've missed it alot, and am extremely excited to see Hugs and Rizzo and whoever else is around...still not sure of who all is here.
- I stayed at the Wyndham hotel because I couldnt get picked up at night, and well..it was also wonderful. The bed was exceptionally good, and their restaurant has wonderful coffee....which I am enjoying as I write this along with some soup. I really should write more often, it is good for the soul, like a good cup of coffee or scotch.

- Did I say I got upgraded to 1st class for free? :-) Wonderfulness

But alas and alack I will end this post to begin a more critical and cranky one.

labor

It is fascinating how manual labor can be so refreshing, and so rewarding, in the midst of a life of study, and mental abuse.

Grad school is like boot camp for the mind. In boot camp they push you to physical limits and break you down in order to build you up, here in grad school I find that they beat your brain to a pulp with a large amount of complicated and extremely taxing mental labor, plus I sometimes believe that grad profs find profound glee in tormenting grad students and giving grades like 65/170 and calling that a B+.

In the midst of this tremendous difficulty, and new mental landscape I find myself not finding comfort where I once did. In undergrad where I had mental power left after doing school work for reading and writing, I find that my mind cannot contemplate anything after the extreme stress of my work and therefore I find myself in need of a new method of maintaining sanity. And surprisingly manual labor has risen as an answer.

Well I should probably realize that it is not surprising given my studies and my predilection to monasticism. 'Ora et labora' The cry of the Benedictine order, work and prayer. The Benedictine's follow a rule of balance, a rule of simplicity. They pray, study, and work; a life which most of us can't imagine, believing it drab and dull, or difficult. Yet I continually find myself returning with joy to patterns of life that I had while living among the Benedictines. Prayer, maual labor, study: It seems that when all these things come into balance life is slightly less crazy, and my sanity is more well maintained. Maybe there is something deeply ingrained in human nature that requires all three, without which there is dissonance.

And yet also the Benedictines teach us that while these three seem separate, they are in fact, and should be inter related. It is not just ora et labora but also labora cum ora. Not just work and prayer, but work as prayer. We were not meant to live a disjointed unbalanced lives, instead God created us in such a way that we should live in harmony with ourselves and with one another. But this harmony isnt just a balance, or a hermenutical meeting of otherness, but a realiztion of the ways that the other express the self and vice versa. We work and pray, yet also we pray by working. What a joyful comforting realization! That when we strip away all the brokeness and imbalance we can find a place in which working becomes a prayer and a restoration. Coming home to do laundry after having gone to class, taught and graded no longer has to be a stressful and painful thing, instead in the quiet mundaity of laundry, in which I am not thinking of physics or of grades I can begin to simply pray and give thanks for the things God gives me: for clothes, and shelter, clean water, and a way to wash clothes. I find that all the small little things of life become an opportunity of praising God while also finding refreshment and renewal of a grad school weary spirit.

Lord let me always remember you in the little things. Amen

Thanks and giving.....the holiday before christmas

As the years go by there seems to be a trend about this time of year. A trend to skip over Thanksgiving, over Advent, and jump straight to christmas. In years past stores resisted putting up christmas decorations and items until after Thanksgiving, radio stations played everyday music til at least Thanksgiving. But now stores have skipped Thanksgiving and some even hand up christmas products before Halloween was even over. A radio station in Detroit started playing Christmas music on November 1st, nearly two months before the holiday, and every ad on TV, the radio, and the paper seems to be about christmas shopping and products. It is interesting that the richest and most greedy population on Earth are the ones who have decided to skip over there own holiday Thanksgiving and go onto a more tolerable holiday of self indulgence, greed, and selfish desire.
Writing on how christmas has lost its meaning in America is a very long and drawn out topic, and is for another time. No, for now is the time of Thanksgiving, despite what the media tells us. It is time for American's to give thanks for what they so abundantly have. It was pointed out to me by a charity worker that even the poorest of the poor in America get more to eat, clean water to drink, and shelter than a good part of the world, I think he said a number even as large as 75%. To realize that even our poorest, most destitute citizens are richer than 75% of the world! And we skip over giving thanks and demand more!
Our economy is shot, we are all afraid of losing money, all our savings, being unable to support our dry houses, our clean water, our daily supply of food. Oh how terrible it is to be an American today! What we as a country spend on our venti half caf lattes a year alone could end world hunger if not more! And yet we think we have a right to pray to God to save our economy, restore our fortunes and save us from actually living thankful lives. Because no, we do not want to give thanks, we do not want to admit that what we have is a gift, we want to believe that we achieved it all on our own, that we are strong enough, smart enough, independent enough, that we do not need God or His gifts.
I am not saying that wealth is inherently bad, or that we deserve the crisis we are in, but I am asking us to return to reality. To realize that we are blessed above every other nation in the world by God, and because of that we have responsibilities. We have responsibilities to give thanks, and to properly use our wealth. God gives gifts not because he wants to please us, but because he wants to teach us to give. We all are nothing on our own, we all have nothing, and so we cannot give on our own. It is only by God's mighty grace that we have anything to give. God desires us to become like him, to become loving, to become full of Life through love. When we hoard and store and turn our backs on the world we sink deeper into sin, deeper into our selves, farther from God and deeper into death. God desperately desires that we would turn outwards, acknowledge the gifts we have been given, giving thanks everyday, and as a corollary to share those gifts with others spreading God's love and grace. And maybe, just maybe we will find that when our hearts are turned outwards and we give more than we want, and we thank more than we whine we will find that God gives so abundantly that we cannot hope to give it all away, that we will find that His Love, His Life is a boundless spring which seeks to permeate the universe with infinite Glory, infinite majesty, harmony and joy. God desires so much more for us than we have, if only we would cease to cling to the clay sculptures that adorn our hearts and let the refining fire of God's grace and love fill our heart's instead. It is my hope and prayer that I can live by my own words, but only by the help of the One who came to help the helpless, and bring the dead to Life. To God be the Glory, Father Son and Holy Spirit now and forevermore. Amen.

Reformation Day II: Sorrow

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love

Today is Reformation day, and so one part of me rejoices in the triumph of the gospel over those human failings that would have hidden and distorted the gospel so many years ago. But another part of me weeps in sorrow over the bitter schisms, which rend our Lord’s most Holy Church. We are all under one calling, one gospel, one Lord, and yet our sinful humanity divides us, we fight, we argue, we even go to war over those things which divide us. Reformation day is a wonderful day to remember the strength of the Word and of the gospel shining throughout time and rising in loud strains upon the criticisms which the reforms made of the Church. Yet one cannot but help to remember all the schisms and the brokenness of the Church today. How the day of victory is one of sorrow?
I pray that one day I may be reunited with my brothers and sisters in Christ under the Word free of all the human sinfulness that so distorts our thoughts and causes us to depart from one another.

The Church’s One Foundation
By Samuel J. Stone

The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ, her Lord;
She is his new creation
By water and the Word.
From heaven he came and sought her
To be his holy bride;
With his own blood he bought her,
And for her life he died.

Elect from every nation,
Yet one over all the earth;
Her charter of salvation:
One Lord, one faith, one birth.
One holy name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses
With every grace endued.

Through toil and tribulation
And tumult of her war
Se waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore
Till with the vision glorious
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth has union
With God, the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won.
O blessed heavenly chorus!
Lord, save us by your grace
That we, like saints before us,
May see you face to face.

Reformation I: Mysterious Ways

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. 1 Cor 1:18-19 ESV


When all was naught, when neither energy nor matter, neither space nor time existed, You existed. In emptiness You alone were infinite fullness, and from Your infinitude through absence all things came to being. Where there was no space to be filled your fullness made space to overflow into. You are the ontological mover, the One from whom and by whom all things were made and without whom not even nothing would be made. Your existence is even necessary to predicate such a thing as non-existence, for without You there is neither existence nor nonexistence, for there is no thought not concept to comprehend the negation of the ontological necessity of You.

Your ways are higher than my ways, Your thoughts higher than my thoughts. You act in mysterious ways that we can neither observe nor understand. For you became incarnate as a man who neither betrayed the Glory of God to those around him, nor thought the glory a thing to be grasped but humbled himself to death, even death on a cross! And so the incomprehensible mystery of the cross, of infinite humility killing the infinite deity. The death of Life itself, and yet in that death, the death of death itself. Life giving death, the abdication of death by death itself. Oh Glorious Holy Mystery! How I yearn to dwell in your mystic incomprehensibility!

All my wisdom, all my ways, all my self-reliance, my feeble power is swallowed up in the mysterious ways of God.

From the cross thy wisdom shining,
Breaketh forth in conquering might
From the cross forever beameth
All Thy bright redeeming light

Oh Mysterious Cross! The wisdom of God shining as death and suffering redeem! In the broken places, in death on the cross comes the conquering redeeming light. Not in chariots and horses, not in regal glory, but instead in abject despondance and brokenness. Oh the folly of God that causes the wise to stumble and the arrogant to fall, but to use who cry out in despair and hopelessness we are given hope and life, we are raised from the pit and into a new life, not just one of a new experience of this life, but a new life all together which permeates all things and raises us to be no longer creatures of God, but instead sons and daughters of God.

Lord, keep us steadfast in your Word;
Curb those who by deceit or sword
Would wrest the kingdom from your Son
And bring to nought all he has done.

Lord Jesus Christ, your power make known,
For you are Loud of lords alone;
Defend your holy Church that we
May sing your praise triumphantly.

O Comforter of priceless worth,
Send peace and unity on earth;
Support us in our final strife
And lead us out of death of life.

Keep us steadfast in your Word, hold us in the gospel light never to fall away from your son. Oh Lord of Lords and King of Kings, hold us in your hand, guide and lead us through the dark nights of life and lead us by your ever shining light. For from the cross your love and grace call us from death to life through the Holy Spirit. Guard and protect your church, lead it to unity in your Word and Spirit.

Quotes taken from the LSB. Thy Strong Word, and Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in your Word are written by Franzmann and Martin Luther respectively.

ZZ Top, exams, and more oh my!

It has been quite a while since I have updated my blog, so I feel as though I should add an entry even though it will be quite scattered as I try to recollect many happenings over 2 months in a short space.

To begin with recent events, reverse chronological order, or how I remember them randomly.....I went to a ZZ Top concert on thursday and it was aaaaamazing! This is the second time I have seen them in concert and both times it was wonderful. They have a great mix of rock and blues and they are very entertaining. If only I could grow such a lucious beard, but alas and alack I'll stick with my small goatee.

The next day I had a quantum exam, which was wonderful. I strangley enjoy doing quatnum tests....actually I just enjoy doing quantum period. I was also prone to the realization once again that I have this unusual inversion in that I am terrible at easy things and great at hard things. I found the quantum test to be very easy and simple, while the rest of the group didnt, which I think pissed them off, but it also made me realize once again that in undergrad my lowest physics grades were in lower level classes, while my highest grades were in my quantum(supposedly) hardest classes. I have this weird correlation where I do better as an increasing function of difficulty, which one would think is the opposite of how it should be. I am weird.

I had a math methods exam and got slaughtered by it, because whoever grades seems to be a jerk. The problem that the fewest people got right was weighted the most....which once again adds to the ever growing lists of angst towards that class. It is neither a physics nor mathematics class as it lacks mathematical rigor, and it also lacks physics, so its some weird bastardization of the two that pisses off both the physicist and mathematician in me. I really miss valpo where math classes were taught by math profs and physics was taught by physics profs and people didnt disrespect each others fields by bastardizing it.

Cleaning and keeping track of an inordinate amount of mail(primarily junk) and lab reports is continuing to be a problem. Everytime I clean and organize it is back to a mess by the next day. I feel like I need to be cleaning 24 hours a day just to keep up. Its like the pile of lab reports grows while I sleep and spreads all over the apartment.

Well I must pause for now and return to the endless tide of work....

Exhaustion, Root Canals, and Wine making

Well time to update the issue of my stupid mouth.....the pain continued to get worse, and I was unable to sleep laying down for several days, which in turn made me very tired, very grouchy, and made me miss some appointments, and it was just no good. Finally on Thursday I was fed up and I finally got an appointment with a dentist who could do a root canal. He quickly decided that it was abscessed after he merely touched it and I was filled with excruciating pain. Now I want you to understand something about the experience I was having. My cheek/jaw by the sore tooth was visibly swollen, hurt to touch, and felt like I had stuffed cotton balls in it. It was probably the most painful thing I had ever experienced and even vicodin only dimmed the pain, not took it away.
But then they numbed me up, woot Novocain! and I didn't feel anything anymore and they did a much of stuff to prepare and then did the root canal. It only took like 30mins which the dentist said was amazing. He said I was a pleasure to do dentistry on. I don't know if that is a compliment or what. Guess my mouth is just easy to deal with and fix. So my mouth felt great afterwards, because it was numb, and there was much rejoicing. Later when the numbing died out, there was some pain as the remnants of the root canals pain came back. Took one last vicodin to deal with that, and then the next day and since I have been pain free!
While being pain free, I am still recovering from the side effects. I am exhausted still, and trying to catch up on my grading and other work that got postponed by pain. I feel like I could sleep for a week.

On a different note of cool new things, this weekend I partook in a wine crushing, which meant that I helped to make wine. It was alot of fun, a little bit cold as fall has finally hit Pullman in force, and very staining. Grapes leave your hands a nice shade of purple. I met some new people and got to try alot, aalllooooootttt of grapes, I dont think I will be able to eat grapes for a while. I got a free bottle of wine out of the deal, woot! and the fun experience.

Frustrations and much need for prayer!

So I figured I might as well rant a bit and vent my problems and put out there that they are all basically prayer requests:

- Grad school thus far has been a slow review of undergrad physics, and I am bored. We are going slowly, over material I have known since sophomore year and it is very aggravating. I really want to learn new challenging stuff, not just rehashing of things I already know, and rehashing in less detail. Once again I find that I am over prepared and therefore am left bored and frustrated.

-Being bored and frustrated means I am not putting as much effort as I ought into homework, and therefore am not doing as well as I could be. I don't know why but I always do better on extremely difficult problems then on easy ones.

- I have a tooth infection or some such thing which has put me in terrible pain for a week now, and dentists are beign very slow about fixing the problem. They just are having me manage the problem with drugs(which are very nice) but it doesnt fix the underlying condition. I hate being in pain, and I hate being hopped up on vicodin becuase I'm half asleep the entire time I'm on it.

- Professors at large state schools are no where near as approachable and nice as Valpo...which is a huge culture shock.

-I miss Valpo's faith life dearly. Churches out here don't know how to use an organ, or do liturgy well. Plus there aren't services during the week, and all the bible studies are during when I am teaching.

In summary, things are not going as well as they could. Their is much opposition to my growth as a person both academically and spiritually, there is physical illness, and there is the continual aching for a time and a place that will never be again. I will write a happier note later, since not everything is bad.

Oddities

Life is odd. We are all trapped in this distension of senses which we call time. Time warps and shifts reality around us, and turns the eternal into the momentary. Everything we do, every relationship, every interaction is just dust in the wind. Temporal life is the constant state of death. Every second that time ticks by the past dies and we are left with the grief of lost moments, whether they be beautiful, or awful. There is grief as who we once were is lost into the shadowy darkness of time.
I mourn the loss of loved ones, all those who have died in these years of my life on earth. I morn the loss of lives I knew and will never know again: High School, Valpo, Walcamp, Lutherwood, and now I am in a new life at WSU. I mourn the missed opportunities, the mistakes, the brokeness. How knowledge comes at a great price! As I have grown in my understanding of the universe and therefore my capabilities, I have also fallen from the innocent presumptions and simple thoughts of youth, and I come to realize that a Man's capability for evil is porportional to his ability for good, and that with the great gifts which God has blessed me comes great responsibility.....but maybe these are just the late night ramblings of a man on narcotic pain killers for tooth pain.

first exploration post

Today in Quantum the professor said that rather than think of waves and particles as existing, think of all things as waves. I explicate and say that at the heart of all things is a wavelike nature, a vibrating essence, the reflection of the Divine Harmony. Things in this fallen world do not vibrate in resonance, instead they try and follow their own tones, their own desires, and this wreaks havoc like an out of tune violin in an orchestra.
The universe is meant to be an eternal symphony, a hymn to the Divine mystery, an exclamation of the Lord's Glory. In the Fall the harmonies and melodies were broken and the world became a cacophony of noise. And as any musician or physicist knows, in order to return to resonance there needs to be a very intense source of resonance. And so into this cacophony the ultimate symphony came down and was incarnate, and His notes, his melodies filled the world and shattered the dissonance and slowly all is returning to the symphony, slowly all will either enter into harmony or be lost forever. In the incarnation the fallen universe suffered an incurable change, a good infection spread into all things living and inanimate, all things began to fall into the brilliantly clear and loud music that is the Holy Trinity. And all that will be will fall into harmony with that joyous tune, or else be lost in nothingness. The teleos of our existence is to enter into harmony with Christ.

wow....

So the last two or so weeks have been jam packed and insane. So rather than writing a novel we'll do some bullet points again :-).

-I did regular camp the last week of camp, 7-8th. It was an all right week, I had a problem child again who swore and was inappropriate the entire week. He also complained alot.
-I was frustrated with just doing regular camp again, but finally got through it and enjoyed being done. The summer was a hard one.

-After camp I went diving with Goat in the lake which was tons of fun, even though the lake has terrible visibility. We reset some anchors and brought a lawn chair up from the bottom. I've missed diving, it was so wonderful. And afterwards I got a great deal to purchase the equipment, so now I have dive gear! woot!

-My mom and I went up to Vancouver BC for the weekend afterward and ran into a bunch of problems at the border. The Canadian border guards are absolute jerks! They basically wanted documentation about my entire life. Who takes a lease, college transcripts, and copies of bills with them to canada? argh.

-Vancouver was really big and expensive. I was kind of amazed by how much more things cost there. It was very frustrating.

-After Vancouver I moved into my apartment, which is great minus a few things that need to be fixed, and a ghetto fridge.

-Orientation was crazy busy and full of stuff, but it went well, and I got to go the the National Lentil festival and get free chili and go to a beer garden! Woot!

-I am taking a Math Methods Course, Classical Mechanics, and Quantum 1 this semester, and I am getting the feeling that while this will be a really hard semester, it will be alot of fun also.

Oz, from Lutherwood, and I have been talking for a bit online and the phone and we both realized that we liked each other, and so we decided to start dating, albeit the fact that it will have to be long distance. She is really amazing and makes me really happy, and she <3's orange as much as I do....btw I got an orange couch!!

My life is in a crazy state of change currently and I am not sure where things are going or whats up. I'm like an electron in a time dependent perturbation, never knowing where I really am or where I'll end up, but hopefully God will turn off the perturbation soon and show me whats up.

The group of incoming grad students is all guys, but they all seem to be great, I think I'll find some really wonderful friends here. Well I think I will stop now and write more later.

Zaccheus

So this post is a little bit dated, this actually happened about a month ago, but anyways....I got a new car!! It is an orange 2004 Chevy Cavilier which I have finally decided to name Zaccheus.




I believe it is a good replacement to Nehemiah, although it doesn't have the same storage space, and it is manual everything rather than power, but I am learning to deal and its fun.

It's orange!! Woot!

week seven: Sr High Advernture

So I got to go zip lining this week! See the video!



I also got to go white water rafting, which I unfortunately do not have pics for because my camera does not like water like I do. We went on the Skagit River, which has primarily class 1 and 2 rapids, but we did a few class 3's including the Skagitator, which was amazing. It was a good 8 foot wave that almost threw me out of the boat.

I still cannot believe that I am getting paid for this. I basically get to play all day, do adventure, and do crazy stuff that I would pay to do, and rather than paying, I get paid. Nuts!

Then again dealing with the stress of campers and programing, and other staff members is not necessarily the most fun. Scuba, while being extremely awesome was mentally in Ghana this week and that made it very hard on me, because I had to do a lot of extra work. He will physically be there in a few days and I wish him the best.

The campers were really good this week, but of course that means something else has to go wrong to make up for it. Camp tends to have this rule that something has to be bad and going wrong. It can be different things, but every week has to have problems.

Next week I was supposed to be doing a waterski/wakeboard daycamp, which would mean evenings off, but one of the male counselors broke his ankle, and so the need me to replace him so now I have normal camp with 7-8th graders. I feel bad about his ankle and hope he heals well, but I am also cranky because his injury means I have to once again do work outside of my job description. Camp doesn't like to keeping to job descriptions.

Well I am going to go rock climbing, so I will write more later :-)

frustrations

So week six was a contract adventure trip, and it was easier than week five, but filled with frustrations, and just exhaustions. Once again I have lots to write and no time to do so. So shortened versions:

-Adult leaders are the most frustrating campers, especially when they encourage bad behavior and try to undermine your authority all week
-Rain and mud suck...I miss thunderstorms
-I am really lonely, OAP keeps me very seperated from the rest of camp so I have very little support and contact, and I am just lonely....sigh
-Christians suck at being christians.....sin really sucks
-Camp makes setting up utilities, paying bills, and doing other things nearly impossible
-I hate the FAFSA
-I hate having no time to write!

-Also I love rock climbing, and I blew a bunch of money on gear. I bought my own rope! Its awesome, but its not good for the pocketbook.

I need to run...sigh.....write more next weekend.

Week Five

Why does it always seem like I have so much to write and no time to do it, but when I do have time to write I have nothing to write about sigh....

now onto the horrible joy of week five:

A few snippets......some of my campers peed and spat in another's sleeping bag......an 11 hour drive to southern WA with whining campers and terrible directions and food packing....one camper has a terribly bruised arm and is also emotionally injured...two of my campers may be facing assault charges..... the camp may get sued....and that was all in one week....AHHHHHHHH

I have no idea how to write everything about this week without it being a novel, but we will try. Let's get the negatives out, so then I can focus on the positives and end happy!

To begin, two campers dumb and dumber(not real names) decided that they wanted to make my week and everyone elses week miserable, and they tried very hard but failed. But a few things that they did.....peed and spat in another camper's sleeping bag(we'll call him Bugman). They also threw things at him and pushed him out of bed Sunday night when I was asleep. Of course I have to sleep like a rock and not wake up after all of that. Another camper, Flirt, decided to pour shampoo on Bugman in his sleep.....and this was all Sunday night. They also decided to stay up til 4 yelling obscenities and being very inappropriate....and I slept through all of it to find out in the morning.....erg.

Monday morning we woke up and every single camper wanted to leave and didnt want to do OAP. "We dont want to cook" "we dont want to clean" "we don't like the food"....and every other whiny annoy complaint that is possible. So after an entire day of dealing with a bunch of whiny kids we got a few of them to start to enjoy themselves. Then Bugman's mom showed up and took him home, because he didnt like dumb and dumber picking on him, and that made me sad because he actually wanted to be there.

Monday night all the campers slept soundly...only getting 4 hours of sleep made them very willing to sleep, it was nice. Tuesday morning we got up and did our morning thing which was going well until Picked decided to spit in Dumbers hairer. Dumb and dumber then decided to punch Picked as much as possible, so I had to split them up and it was annoying. We did geocaching, and the units decided to misbehave and not work right, and I had to spend forever fixing them, and then had to deal with bad campers. But finally got the geocaching done, at lunch, and we packed up and left for southern WA way later than I wanted to because the campers took forever packing.

The drive wasn't too bad to begin with, the campers were quiet for the most part and well behaved, they complained about my music choice for a while until they realized that I wasn't going to play very inappropriate rap music and they just fell asleep. We drove through several national parks and saw some of the most gorgeous land scapes I have ever seen. Massive snow covered mountains and pristine lakes with ancient pine forests....oh dear it made me want to jump for joy. But all good things must come to an end...we stopped at a rest area to cook dinner, only to find out that program staff forgot to pack several essential items for cleaning and forgot most of the food. So after two hours of work and improvisation we were finally back on the road and running really late...sigh

Google maps really sucks, as their directions sent us the wrong way several times and just had terrible routes....so here we are, 11 campers, Mich and I at 1AM driving through the middle of no where Southern WA and have no idea where we are going because we've given up on google and we stop for a bathroom break....only to find the entire town closed down. So we stop at the one place I know is open, a hospital. The campers go to the bathroom, they are whining and all asking if we can sleep in the hospital, and I'm like no....so I ask the receptionist where to go, and they tell me the park we are going to is closed, and now we have no where to go.....and then God steps in. So the receptionist calls her pastor, at 1:30AM, and after talks and such and a short drive we are all sleeping in a church in a strange city, being blest by amazing hospitality of total strangers. God rocks, and sometimes his people pull through their sinfulness and do amazing things.

Weds we head off for live rock climbing, which is an absolutely amazing time. I love rock climbing, and challenging the campers to climb was awesome. Maybe some other day I will right more about this day, but I dont have time to now.

On Weds we drive up to Olympia WA, which isnt as beautiful of a drive, but still great and we set up camp, cook, eat, and then sleep. With dumb and dumber doing many things that require discipline, and it was just frustrating.

We get up Thursday, make omlettes, which are amazing, and then are on the road way later than I wanted to be because of course campers are slow at everything. We finally get back to camp, both Mich and I are exhausted, stressed out and basically are ready to curl up and cry......only to find out that Dumber spent the entire ride back punching Picked in the arm leaving massive bruises, and not a single camper said anything to Mich or I about it. Why didn't they say anything? We counselors can't watch every moment, because I have to drive and Mich had to direct, and just.....no fun at all, at which point I did break down. It sucked.

I have already written so much.....but the rest of the week went by fast and it was fun, Screamo and the other girls entertained me so much and were awesome, I may write more about them later, no time now, the parents ganged up on me and I nearly cried when Goat and Bob saved me from them.....just AHHHHH. Crazy Crazy week, maybe write more when I have time.

milk was a bad idea......

So it is 4AM right now. I just ran out of bed because the pizza I decided to have last night decided it wanted out the same way it came in. Ugh.

Might as well ramble about my week.

I had confirmation camp this week, which meant no OAP, which ended up being very annoying. I mean regular camp is great, and the campers are no different, its just not my hired job, which is annoying. I really missed sleeping outside. Its weird.

For the most part the guys were great, there was a group of them, the self proclaim fantastic four, which were just a bunch of annoying brats. They had tons of potential, but they purposely sought to disobey and annoy people for attention. For instance, I had to limit their consumption of french toast one day and after that they yelled "french toast" for the next two days at random times. Needless to say the rest of the cabin wanted to duct tape them to trees and leave them. The four weren't very smart when it came to making friends.

Besides the kids the week was frustrating as there was very little freedom in the schedule, which is very different from OAP. But every morning there was confirmation instruction and therefore the pastors took the kids and the counselors were free for other stuff, which was the cool part for me.

Every morning we ran the High Ropes Course for the confirmation groups and I was facilitating everyday, which was amazing. It fascinates me how people react to the high course and how many people get pushed far beyond their supposed limits. It's so cool to be a part of something that reveals new and exciting things about themselves.

I think I am going to try and sleep now.....

OAP next week on the mountain! Woot!

utter insanity

Life is insane.

That short verse basically summarizes the last few weeks, and my life in general. So week two I had Jr High waterski/wakeboard camp with one camper, then I flew to TX for the Jer-linda wedding, then came back and did Sr High waterski/wakeboard and am now confused as to where the last three weeks went.

The Jr high week was interesting with the one camper. It made programing interesting and difficult as many camp activities need at least 4 campers, so I had fun making that work. But since there were such low numbers I got to go wakeboarding and skiing which was amazing. I really love water skiing.

Driving the boats was lots of fun and I got to use alot of skills that my dad taught me which was great. I also facilitated high ropes, more fun playing in the trees, and just had alot of chill fun with my camper, until thursday came around.....

I left for TX on that thursday from Seattle and got into Houston at midnight local time. It was great seeing Jeremy again, we did a nice greeting in German and it was just fun. It was amazing to go to a hotel and actually sleep in a real bed indoors. I am sleeping in tents nearly the entire summer. TX was hot and humid, totally different than the cool NW weather, and adjusting to central time was a pain. It was great seeing Valpo friends again and getting to hang out. It was a little bit sad because there wasnt that much time to hang out, so while I did see people I didnt get to catch up as much as I would have liked too.

Linda looked absolutely stunning, and Jeremy looked odd, it's weird seeing him in a tux. The ceremony was lovely, and the BBQ was excellent and CJ and I got to bartend which was tons of fun. Sadly after an evening of eating, drinking and dancing, everyone just wanted to go to bed, so rather than hanging out we went to bed, and I had to leave at 6AM for my flight back to seattle. And then began the longest week ever....

So a four hour flight followed by a hour wait for my ride in the airport, summed up with a 2 hour drive back to camp made it so that I left from the Hotel at 6AM central and got to camp at 1:30 PM West coast or 3:30PM central. 9.5 hours of travel time is exhaustingly long, then I got to clean cabins, move in, get campers and start camp right away again....ahhh!

I had Sr High so they all decided that the best thing to do was to stat up til 11:30PM everynight, even though they, and I had to get up at 6:30 for early morning skiing. So having everyday go from 6:30AM til 11:30PM made for a really really long exhausting week.

The campers were great individually, but as a group all they're IQs dropped 50 points and a bunch of great kids became a bunch of idiots. I mean I love them to death, and it was fun and all, but how many stupid and dangerous ideas can you have without being an idiot? (and I probably was the same way at they're age too).

Well this past week was just insane with crazy kids, long days, a bunch of stuff happening outside of camp, and stuff happening with people here at camp...its just been crazy. Keep my insane life in your prayers.

Next week life is switching up, we are overbooked on confirmation campers and so they needed another guy counselor. So I am being taken off of OAP for a week and will be doing confirmation camp, which means sleeping inside, on beds, doing less work, and basically like a week off. Woot. Well I will end this post now, and maybe write more later.

short blurb

So Staff training is over, but I only have a little bit of time before going out to celebrate a friends birthday. So quick overview....I am overworked, tired, and slightly frustrated with inane topics that have to be covered, whilst being stoked and joyous about some really cool landscapes, rock climbing, high ropes course and just Outdoor Adventure Program(OAP) in general. Next week I will be facilitating low ropes, high ropes, and rock climbing for a contract group, and the week after that I will most likely be doing waterski wakeboard. Quite fun......I'll go into more detail later

I miss battlestar alot, I have missed the last 3 episodes :-( it makes me want to cry. Julie you need to send me tapes!

Anyways peace with all.

Wedding and Lutherwood

So I dont have much time to blog, but some quick updates.....

Nile and Nicole got married May 31. It was an exciting time. The service went well and wangerin preached well, but of course the chapel sound system didnt work because it was him. The reception had wonderful food, and it was fun being the MC, but when it came time to dance there wasnt much of that...all those old folks :-). Nicole looked absolutely beautiful, and they were both beaming with happiness. I am really happy for them and wish them the best.

After the wedding I flew out from Midway to WA. It was insane getting from Valpo to Midway as the train was late, and so was the L, and I had to rush to make my flight. I got stuck in between two big guys, it was rather cramped, but I survived and finally made it.

Washington is absolutely gorgeous, although it is a good 20 degrees colder than Valpo and even the UP. Lutherwood is built on an 8mile long lake and the side of a mountain. Everyday I get to go hiking up and down a mountain, which is really hard right now for my body used to midwestern flatness.

I have played up in the trees on the high ropes course which is amazing and I am now certified to facilitate and do rescues! which hopefully I wont have to do.

there is so much more to talk about, but not enough time, so I will write more later. I'm keeping you all in my prayers, if there is anything specific you would like to be prayed for let me know. If you could pray for strength and energy as I am out here at camp that would be great! thanks

intro

So first post for this blog....um not sure what to say. This is where I will be updating about my life and travels. So to hear about Lutherwood, and then Pullman just come on back!