Seriously

I was called out as “one of those people” yesterday! What a demeaning slam on someone’s character! How is someone supposed to respond to a statement like “Oh, you’re one of those?!” I signed up a few weeks ago to be a part of a Bible Study geared toward understanding missions and a Christian’s call to spread the Gospel. We’re reading a book, a good book. The book I mentioned in the previous post Let the nations be glad by John Piper. Last night in our discussion of the book I mentioned a great point that was made in one of the footnotes that apparently no-one had read. No problem, i don’t always read footnotes. Throughout my collegiate career if I read just the preface of a book I felt like I was giving a reasonable effort. Last night though, when the guy next to me cracked his sarcasm, I wanted to say “yeah! one of those people that actually cares.” My friend might have less of an interest in Piper, which is fine with me. My encouragement was to take the subject more seriously, but I’m afraid it’s easier to ignore the challenging parts.
So, why is ignorance so blissful? Why is it easier to be apathetic? Is this sort of ignorance leading to a much larger problem? I hope you agree that it is. For Americans, corruption in politics, climate change, humanitarian injustice, corporate greed, and the thousands of specific issues that plague us could cease to exist if people took responsibility. The global responsibilities that we’re enlightened by the news every single day could be more than the fuel for our of fear and worrying, or worse yet, for our entertainment! Even more critical than those issues, for Christians, what if ignorance toward spiritual questions and apathy toward an accurate understanding of who God is and our role as human beings was hindering us from experiencing and sharing Joy? I think it is. I think it will take being called “one of those people” in regards to more than just an attention to details in a book; perhaps a passion and attention to playing out the details of what it means to be Christ represented in the world today. I want to be called one of THOSE people.

Recurring

Do you role your eyes when in conversation, random scripture reading, books and several different preachers and Bible study groups seem to be saying the exact same thing? Does it excite you that right then you’re experiencing one of those moments of divine clarity. Like God is setting the scene, and wants you to understand something. Personally, I would probably be more excited if I was repeatedly learning something like the importance of accepting gifts and receiving blessings from God, but that’s not or I should say, that’s not all of what I’ve been learning lately.
I’m not sure when it started, but the concept of the supremacy of God in missions through suffering has weighed heavily on me from the John Piper book, “Let the nations be glad.”  The supremacy of God’s will and when he says “no” to my desires was the topic of Sunday’s sermon and Wednesday’s youth bible study at two different churches I visited. We discussed the supremacy of God in the “Problem of Evil” dealing with a biblical perspective of man’s depravity and sole hope we have in Christ in a college group bible study this week as well.
I’m afraid of where this is leading. I’m so glad that I’m getting to a point of understanding these important lessons, but what is it preparing me for? What’s with the intense conviction that “pop-christianity” doesn’t understand sacrifice or suffering? Why right now do I need to learn how to accept “no” as an answer from my loving and all knowing heavenly father? Am I going to wrestle with this or is the lesson simply that I haven’t wrestled with suffering enough. That i don’t know what sacrifice is and that i need to begin seeking ways to give up the things of the flesh for the sake of the Spirit? Is it that there is not enough conflict in my life between my fleshly desires and my Spiritual calling?

Five Types of Camping.

(originally written In July 2008, post delayed). I decided to plan a fun little trip last month that I have wanted to do for a few years now. When we were kids, my brother and I would go up with my dad to a little lake in the west side of the Sierra’s called Ward Lake. The fishing was always amazing and the hikes were always a ton of fun to just take off and get lost. This time I wanted to do a little bit of back country camping. Hike away from the car and set up camp with whatever we could hall on our backs. My original thought was that I’m 24 y/o so backpacking in the sierra’s is a must, even if it takes getting back in shape to do it. So I called my dad up and asked if he wanted to go up to Lake Edison in the Sierra National Forrest at about 8,000 ft. We had a good time. He taught me how to fly fish, so we went up the creek a few miles one day and caught about 60 golden trout between the two of us. We took his kayak across the lake with us so that we could fish out of it as well. It was a much needed trip, but this trip got me thinking about camping and the people who do it.

So basically, there are 5 ways to go camping. Each style has it’s own types of camper and different people find there own comfort level based on their sense of adventure, their collective history of camping experiences and their financial situation & physical ability. First, the Cabin Camper or perhaps better put, rustic hotel camping. This type of camping provides minimal contact with the outdoors. One may find a squirrel on the front porch in the morning or a blue-perched outside the window but animals and wildlife are not the attraction in this style. Cabin campers will bring a car load of groceries into the cabin’s kitchen and arrange the refrigerator as they would their own, stocked with all of the necessary condiments, hamburgers, a watermelon and maybe a case or five of sodas and sparkling mineral waters. People that enjoy this style of camping tend to be from the city and vacation just to find a bit of peace and quiet from the normal loud and busy schedule of life at home. Attached to their vehicle is usually some sort of recreational vehicle, a boat, a couple wave-runners or even just a family rack of bicycles. Honestly, I don’t really consider this camping, but others do so I had to list it.

The second style of camping is similar to the last except that instead of staying in a cabin, the family sleeps in an RV or 5^th wheel. This is a major investment to the camper and often suggests that camping is a frequent getaway, again from a more sub-urban setting. They are also apt to bringing other recreational vehicles like boats and wave runners but the benefit to these style campers are that they can travel further into more rustic spots on the river or the lake. There is with most RV and 5^th wheel campers more time spent outdoors partaking in the areas activities and even a campfire for grilling and roasting marshmallows. RV campers enjoy this style because of the always close in proximity bathroom, shower and miniature kitchen for the essential clean and neat feeling that they highly value. My aunt and uncle take these kinds of trips pretty regularly and for a day or two at the lake I think this is pretty fun.

The third type of camping is what I call car camping. This style is what most families in America would call real camping. It’s adventurous in that you park your car at a campsite, set up your tents and from that point on the family and friends are all outdoors around the campfire, taking day hikes, fishing, enjoying each other’s company and even getting a little dirty. Showers and bathrooms are not a necessity on these types of trips, but often there are public restrooms and bear-proof containers to keep the trip a little bit more pleasant. This style of camper is typically a younger suburban family that can handle life away from cell phone service, and the comfort of the indoors for a few days. These campers will more than likely encounter more wildlife than the previous campers. Day hikes allow for summit climbing and nature walks away from camp where one may encounter a deer or a night encounter with the frequently visiting black bear after the scraps not stuffed in the provided containers. Roasted marshmallows and beverage coolers are easily loaded and unloaded from the car so a group can usually bring plenty of food and pass-time activities to fill the day with. Story-telling around the campfire is always a lot of fun in these types of situations. Something about camping under the stars brings out a more intimate atmosphere and conversations tend to be deeply spiritual. There is a lot of joy that comes with the ability to lie down in your tent and look up at the starry-night sky. Depending on the altitude and clarity of the sky, one of my favorite things to do is count shooting stars and satellites that scrape across the atmosphere when there is no sign of light other than the dimming glow of an exhausted fire and the stars themselves that make the sky seem barely lighter than the black horizon nearly un-recognizable in the distance. There are a lot of memories of these kinds of trips. I grew up doing this every once in a while with my dad and brother. The most beautiful place I’ve been car camping was outside of Muscat, Oman; a few miles from Wadi Tiwi called white beach. I so eagerly want to go back there, but that’s a different story.

The fourth style of camping is what for the longest time I figured was the most extreme; Backpacking. Backpacking is all about hiking. The most essential part of this type of camping is in my opinion a good pair of hiking boots. Without this, you might as well go back to your car and set up camp from there. A backpacker must pack lightly and efficiently, bringing only enough for as long as they’ll be gone. Backpacker’s choice of food is narrowed down to the very light dried bags sold at camping stores and whatever other lightweight things that they might desire. In California at least in certain altitudes backpackers are mandated to bring bear canisters to keep bears from raiding camp and destroying everything that gets in its way. This style of camping requires the packers to minimize their excess into the essential comforts that are lightweight enough to either fit inside the pack or attached to the outside with straps and carabiners. All of the joys of outdoors camping are involved in this style of camping and the market today is filled with new technology that allows for gear to weigh less, pack into smaller sizes and provide more efficient and comfortable ways of carrying your stuff around. Backpacking is of course, more dangerous than the other types but, with the necessary precautions and warnings heeded this style camping is definitely worth the money it takes to do it. Backpackers are usually young athletic college students or recent graduates, newly weds and extremely adventurous adults that are capable enough for the physical strain and don’t have to worry about tending the little ones too much. Children are definitely welcome, in fact I would encourage more families to partake in backpacking trips but be sure to note the attention that it takes to keep a child from wondering off and getting lost in the wilderness. This type of camping is my new found love.

I went last weekend with my dad and learned a lot about what I still need to do to make my future trips more efficient, but I also learned something about another type of camping, the fifth style. I met a few guys along the Pacific Crest Trail at Lake Edison that had been traveling for 3 months and were only a third of the way to their destination. They started at the border of Mexico and California in San Diego/Tijuana and were headed toward Vancouver, BC, Canada! These guys hadn’t had a shower in weeks and were dreaming out loud of eggs over easy, bacon, rye toast with butter dripping off, tall stacks of pancakes with butter and syrup covering the plate and glasses of juice and coffee running down their throats. It was funny to listen to and not always pleasant to stand next to, but I couldn’t help but admire their ability to take on such a wild journey. They were on their ultimate adventures. They carried only the bare essentials and together were there own sort of community, all with the same goal: Get from point A to point B. And some had lost up to 60 lbs along the way. I don’t think I could have sensed an ounce of stress or worry in any of their faces. There were some really skinny people both men and women along the way, they were hungry but there was a sense of satisfaction that they gained from every step. It was amazing to see. They referred to themselves as PCT-ers (Pacific Crest Trail), or if they were only on the 211 mile stretch from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney they were called JMT-ers (John Muir Trail). Those that have aspirations to do the trail are called future hikers. I think that’s what I might call myself right now. We’ll see… I hope you enjoyed this blog about camping now go outside and stay out for a while.

The Pink Elephant

Dave and I were talking about what’s going on in our lives yesterday and the topic of faith came up. Long story short he gave me a message series that he’d listened to and loved for a long time from a guy named Michael Wells. I had never heard of him before but Dave made it sound important and worth the listen. He tells a story about how early on in his ministry he used to slander people in the church. He’d tear everyone down and he knew that he needed to stop. He tried all sorts of things, but decided one day that he should take his sin before God and for 40 days he fasted. At the end of his fast he realized that he hadn’t stopped, so he fasted for another 40 days and again didn’t stop slandering. In fact he says at the end of both of these fasts he was the skinniest slanderer around. I had these messages playing in my ipod yesterday as I walked the few blocks over to the park for my late lunch. He’s a great storyteller so i enjoyed listening, and his insight into Christian faith was so refreshing to ponder.

When I got back an old friend of mine named Katie, who was in my bible study a few years ago at a Fuge Camp in Glorieta, NM, facebook chatted “hello”. I said “Hi” and she explained that I probably didn’t remember who she was, but that she needed prayer for her cussing problem and asked if I would pray for her. People sharing prayer concerns online make me smile. She mentioned that she had this problem for a while now, and that she’d tried a lot of things to stop it. She was getting to the point where she felt guilty. Her friends from church would know that her heart wasn’t right because her tongue was revealing its true darkness. She would go to church and act one way and the very next day she would flood her speech with filthy, vulgar language. Hurtful, angry, arrogant, nasty, you name it, it came out. Katie didn’t go into details about this, but she didn’t have to. I knew exactly how she felt. I picked up cussing in high school at first just to fit in with the in-crowd, but then it got so addicting and fun that within a few days I did it for no reason. She felt guilty. According to what her mind was telling her, she was a horrible person and a hypocrite for leading such a double-life.

When I asked Katie what she had done in the past to try to stop cussing, her answer scared me. She had done things to inflict pain on herself so that she would correlate pain with her sin. Whoever told her that this was a good idea should be shot. She hadn’t done anything drastic like cutting or marking as far as I knew, but she was doing little things like snapping rubber bands or telling her friends. “hey, punch me in the arm if I cuss in front of you.” She’d tried those and they weren’t working. She still cussed. There’s a deeply spiritual reason for why they didn’t help. Inflicting pain for sin is pointless. Christ already paid in full the price for sin. Hurting ourselves more is insulting God’s power, it is denying Christ’s effectiveness in wiping away every last consequence for our sin. Besides if we really understood it, the consequence for sin was death. Feeling guilty and wanting to inflict pain would be trivial in comparison with our real sentencing: the separation from God for eternity. So i told Katie that her problem was rooted in her focus being off of where it needs to be. She had messed up her priorities and lined them up in a bogus order. It didn’t take much insight to know that cussing wasn’t the only negative thing going on in her life. In fact, she told me that she had a horrible temper, she could be set off instantaneously with the smallest of words.

Here’s the most beautiful thing about this conversation; Michael Wells’ story about ordering our priorities around Christ had just finished playing in my earphones. He describes our sin like this: Imagine in the room that you’re in right now, there is a huge pink elephant with black polka dots all over it. Picture that image, get acquainted with that thought for a second. Focus on the elephant. Now forget it. Forget what you just imagined. Forget what you were focused on. You can’t. You cannot forget something if you’re thinking about it and focused on it.

So what does she need to do? I knew that if I told her that she needed to do anything she’d be suspicious and probably reject anything I told her. So i said, “Christ is already in you, and you don’t need to work to keep him there. The only thing you can do is recognize him revealing himself to you. He has forgiven you and lives in you. He loves you, in spite of the cussing because He bought you and He has already paid the price for everything you are and are not. The truth is that He’s given himself to you and keeping your eyes on him is all you will ever need. You don’t have to do anything else. Focus on Christ and the image of our sin goes away. Focus on Christ and the things we were focused on before are shifted and He is revealed. Focus on Christ and the pink elephant with black polka dots is just a distant memory from the past. The places that are our biggest weaknesses are where Christ is going to reveal himself the most. He even works through crooked broken people to comfort us and to reveal himself to us.
Praise God for his matchless wonder and his unending grace. He alone is able to save.

I asked myself after talking to Katie if I was going to be able to take my own words and apply them to my own life. Truth be told, I’ve been fighting it. My weaknesses are sometimes overwhelming and I’ve been working too hard to make everything the way I want it. Christ needs to always be my focus and sometimes He’s not.

Social Networking

I just had a great conversation with my good friend Dr. Fermin Whittaker this morning about the topic of Social Networking. We talked about ministry effectiveness and the need for authenticity in all of our motives. Are we really after the numbers or is there another bench-mark that we should place our aim? We talked about community and how that word has become elemental in our culture.  Questions began streaming as we talked, I’m asking myself: What am I doing to take what I do to the next level of impacting lives? How can I do a better job of communicating?
Dr. Whittaker is an out of the box thinker, which allows him to step into the thinking processes of young people and look at what’s coming soon with excitement for change rather than dread. Speaking of change…Change is for obvious reasons a cliche right now, but I can understand why it’s being overused. It needs to be welcomed now more than ever. My Boss Tim, talks about change and how he used to think it was like cancer. You don’t ever want to have to deal with it, if you do then it sucks to be you (not quite his words). Change would always have a negative effect and was approached with extreme caution. Now he thinks of change as a necessary part of life. A positive aspect of life. Imagining life without change is craziness. It should be approached as a theology. A theology of change is asking God to work and mold everything into what he wants. It’s painful, but only because tradition and routine is so comfortable. With a theology of change, the need to look at life, to look at our work, to look at our individual ministries with a glimmer of excitement and optimism is crucial. So much is changing around us. Communication mediums are popping up continuously from every direction. Whether its e-mail, cell phones, AIM, Txt messaging, myspace, blogging, facebook, twitter, etc. Communication is evolving and my generation is instigating it. As I was leaving my friend’s office this morning he gave me a book about this topic called ”Here Comes Everybody – The power of organizing without organizations.” It illustrates the brilliance of reaching out and connecting the disconnected, making relationships into powerful tools for efficiency.  Social Networking is connecting the minds of young people and even older generations, allowing them to do more and more inovating things together. It’s something to be welcomed.    I’m going to devour this book and try to implement its lessons into my work. I hope to be 67 years old and in touch with the world like Dr. Whittaker is.

Mountains On My Mind

It’s after 1am and I can’t sleep. I have to be up early tomorrow morning to meet with the guys for prayer and coffee, but every time I try to force myself to fall asleep my brain kicks into overdrive and I start to think about hiking in the mountains. I’m consumed by it. I bought a book the other day about places to hike and camp in California, I started reading a little bit and it’s seriously keeping me up at nights. Just looking at the maps and thinking about the wilderness has inspired me to want to climb all the highest peaks and see the most beautiful vistas California has to offer. I read about a bunch of 3-4 day backpacking trips in the Sierra’s that until now were never really my idea of fun, but now i can’t stop imagining how great it would be go leave tomorrow. I’ve decided that I need to buy a whole bunch of gear too. Every time I try to close my eyes, hiking boots, backpacks, sleeping bags, tents, the new camera I want to get all flicker in my mind. They would cost over $2,000 if I went out and bought it all. If it’s not the gear its my need to get back in shape and ready for my next exciting adventure that has taken over my life. I’m losing sleep and all because of this new found passion I have to climb things. Seriously, more so than my birthday and Christmas, I can’t wait until July 8th-12th when I’ll be hiking up Mt. Whitney with Tim and Joe Gentry. I really need to sleep before then.

Out of the Rut

Music is an extremely important part of my life. I don’t play jack, but I listen obsessively. When I used to buy cd’s along time ago (now I buy mp3-4’s), I would listen to it over and over again until it became a boring sound. The cd’s were great. I practically wore the shine off of Matchbox Twenty’s “You, yourself, or something like you,” but they got old really quickly. I was in a musical rut for the last couple of months and I was listening to great music. It was so good that it was pretty much on loop. I do not recommend using the loop setting on your iPod. Most people do this with bands like Coldplay and Jimmy and my advice to you is STOP! Take a break from it or you’ll ruin great music! You’ll be like one of those smug music snobs that looks down at people who listen to music that’s not in “the scene.” I have been listening to Paramore, Panic!, The Weepies, Wolf Parade, Page France, Explosions in the Sky, Yael Naim, Patrick Park, and Greg Laswell constantly. I want them to sound good later so i needed to get out of my rut. I needed a change…but change is hard. So i saved up some cash for an itunes splurge. It was rough, but now I’m out of my rut. Here’s what’s on my recently added playlist  She & Him is beautiful to my ears, even though there’s mucho twang. They have officially brought back “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. Cold War Kids are fantastic and the video for “Hang me out to dry” is every bit as good as it claims to be. Death Cab’s new Album brings joy to my life. They always have sorta ‘possessed my heart’, I guess you could say. I’ve decided to post some artist pages on my blog so all can enjoy. so listen & enjoy.

Mother Mary’s Head

It’s way past midnight and I’m not tired. 32 ounces of Monster energy does a number on the mind and body, none of which is good for it i’m sure. That stuff tastes like I’m drinking candy. I had a really cool last few days. Mother’s Day was spent with mom, which was nice. It’s always good to be home for a few days. The day after Mothers Day I went up to a really cool peak in the San Jacinto Mountains called Lily Rock and looked out over a cloud-ocean covering the Inland Empire all the way until the faded horizon a hundred miles west. It was a nice little hike and a beautiful day for it. I thought of something on the way down though. Climbing a mountain can be really boring and sometimes just a mundane chore. Trails switching back and forth, slowly winding around rocks, each step defined clearly with an easy to follow well traveled path are monotonous even to talk about. We didn’t do that at all this time, or at least it didn’t feel like it. It was difficult, i’ll be the first to admit. I haven’t hiked or done much straining physical activity in a while so I’m pretty simply out of shape, but it was a fun hike at the same time. My friend Max and I started walking up the mountain and before long I realized we were going through terrain that hadn’t been traveled through frequently. It was clearly a trail but not a trail marked with two lines of equally sized rocks, conveniently placed beside a path. A few times, max and I felt like the path could have lead one way or another and we would have several choices to make about how to get to the top. One way would lead to the summit and the others would lead to being lost and stranded in the woods. If we were lucky we could run into Les Stroud, if not, then probably certain death because of or lack of ability to survive in the wilderness of Idyllwild.

Fortunately we found our way to the breezy summit, took some pictures and ate lunch. At about 1 o’clock we decided it was time to head back. I was getting restless and tempted to jump from things that no one should jump from. The decent was almost the coolest part. If anyone knows me really well, you know that one of my favorite things to do is leap off of things. I love boulder hopping and someday I’m sure that I’m going to hurt myself doing it. It’s so much fun and it’s a lot more interesting when there’s icy snow and slippery rocks all around. One wrong step could have meant, well it could have not felt great. But we made it down safely and i can now say I’ve climbed up the rock that looks like Mary the mother of Jesus from our view of it at my mom’s house. I’m now looking forward to, and preparing both physically and mentally for my next big climbing adventure… Mount Whitney in July; something a little bit less tame than Monday’s day hike to the top of Mary’s head. I’m probably not ready yet.

Professor David Wayland Marler ( 1937 – 2008 )

He was my favorite professor. A very wise man, absolutely stunning. I would sit in his office and listen to him talk about History for hours, those were some of the best hours of college I ever spent. I went on a trip to East Europe on the Holocaust remembrance tour with him in 2005 with a class of about 25. Dr. Marler was head over heals in love with the girl on the left of him in this picture. She was our tour guide for the day and she spoke czech so beautifully, he kept asking her in German if she could speak a language he knew so that he could ask her to marry him. He definitely had a sense of humor. It was a challenge and a joy to learn in his classroom. Though, the topic of discussion usually went on 4 tangents before we talked about anything regarding the classes purpose. What we learned from a lecture or an assignment from one of his classes was so often secondary to what we learned from his passion. He loved history, he loved reading books and talking about them, but there was a sense that he actually loved each one of us as well. That’s why will miss Dr. Marler.

too busy

I left my phone at home today. I feel naked. There’s no reason to have my phone today, so I shouldn’t feel anxious. Like most days I will drive home later on and probably won’t need to pull over and call someone for help. If I need to call someone regarding work, or even if I want to call home, I have my office phone right here on my desk. I have so many other ways to communicate it’s ridiculous. My computer blips with a new email recieved every few minutes. I check facebook at work. shhh…don’t tell anyone. On a normal day, I’m communicating electronically all day long. Whenever I do something it’s almost as if something electronic told me to. I wonder what would happen if I unplugged for a day. Or what if I took a sabbath day. I think I would nap.