Of Broken Arms Pt. II

I'll begin with the explanation. I was not at TVR the week that it happened, but at a Group Workcamp in Lexington, NC, which is supposedly the barbecue capital, but the general consensus of the group was that good ole SC barbecue is easily better. The town did feature a number of cast iron pigs, in different poses and painted, which was quite entertaining.

Well, on Thursday afternoon of the week, I was playing a game of Ultimate Frisbee with some people from the camp and from my youth group. Maybe 15 minutes into us playing, I collided with my brother as we were both going for a pass. Here is a basic diagram of what happened, with a few adjustments:



As you can see, I was running one way and my brother was running in the other direction, in the air after a jump. Unfortunately, my arm was between us when I was unable to move out of the way. And because I was only wearing a shield on my right arm, just like the picture, well:

Boom pop crack wallakazaam. You saw the picture.

Petty Teenage TV Shows

This is an amazingly accurate description of the ridiculous teenage TV shows such as Dawson's Creek, The Hills, The O.C., etc. from Dr. Awesome's Blog, To Every Man A Manswer. And I agree with it:

Main Character is a teenager/20-something adolescent with issues that he/she thinks are complicated but really aren't that complicated if he/she would quit whining about his/her problems and just do something about them. There is always a love-triangle, though sometimes the triangle expands to other geometric shapes, such as a love-quadrangle, love-trapezoid, or love-rhombus. Other members of the love-rhombus also have complicated-but-not-really issues that they think are very important, though ultimately these issues are also very unimportant and would be solved if people were just honest with each other. These issues get rehashed week after week, episode after episode, while each character of the love-rhombus shacks up with some other character, creating new unimportant issues that wouldn't have existed if the people would stop fornicating. Finally, there is usually some authority figure who causes problems for all of the parties involved by assigning needless homework, making their minimum wage jobs difficult, putting them in prison on charges of larceny...typical things your average teenager deals with. Oh, and there is almost always a loveable gay character who himself is part of an (un)complicated geometric relationship, probably an icosahedron.

Of Broken Arms

I broke my arm. It's taking me dang long to write this post with one hand. For this reason my posts this summer are probably going to happen hardly at all. Sorry. I know you are all greatly disappointed.

Here's a picture of the injury in the hospital, before it was set:

Of New Beginnings to Old Ventures

Today I leave for camp. I am a new man of sorts, I hope. Last summer was a horribly unproductive affair due to my divided attention between plenty of petty idols with a little sliver of care for God.

A friend recently told quoted to me a mantra: "If you don't think of something in your power as a possibility, then it will never happen." In this specific context, I do not want to keep living in my current state of unproductive Christianity, and I even more specifically do not want to have another summer like I did last year.

So now, I am ruling it out as a possibility. Your prayers are desperately desired.

I am going to try and update this once a week, we only have free time on the weekends for the most part, so we'll see how that goes.

If you would like to write me mail, then let me know.

Of "Two Hands"

A while ago I did a post based around Jars of Clay's song "Two Hands." Well, here is their explanation of the song:

Jars of Clay: Stories Behind the Songs (2 of 7) from Jars of Clay on Vimeo.

Of Materialism

"Our minds, which are even now only just awakening after years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief. The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul in its grasp."
--Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Materialism can be applied to an over desire for pleasure and other sins, yes?

The Onion On American Education Issues

I daggum love the Onion. For those of you that don't know, the Onion is a fake news network that creates satirical news stories and videos which are sometimes inappropriate, but always witty and hilarious while pointing to the real issue at hand.

This particular article struck me as something I simply could not not share. Here's a snippet. The article was titled "Report: Increasing Number Of Educators Found To Be Suffering From Teaching Disabilities":

WASHINGTON—A shocking report released by the U.S. Department of Education this week revealed that a growing number of the nation's educators struggle on a daily basis with some form of teaching disability.

The study, which surveyed 2,500 elementary and high school level instructors across the country, found that nearly one out of every five exhibited behaviors typically associated with a teaching impairment. Among them: trouble paying attention in school, lack of interest or motivation during class, and severe emotional issues.

"For teaching-disabled and at-risk educators, just coming to school every day is a challenge," said Dr. Robert Hughes, a behavioral psychologist and lead author of the study. "Even simple tasks, like remaining alert and engaged during lessons, can be a struggle. Unfortunately, unless we take immediate action, these under-performers will only continue to fall further behind."

And it only gets better. I love how it's mind-blowingly funny and at the same time points to two important issues: One, the incapability and underpaid nature of much of the teaching profession. Two, the oversimplification of the issue of kids falling behind in school as simple "learning disability."

So, what do you think?

Summer Conference Notes--Ezekiel 37:1-14

Two weeks ago I was at RUF's Summer Conference in Panama City, Florida. These are the notes I took at the first night's large group session.

Driving image for the rest of conference: The Word of God is like an untamed, uncaged, fearsome lion, and we need to surrender ourselves to it and quit trying to put it in a cage or act like it's a kitten.

Scripture for the Night: Ezekiel 31:1-14

The Word of God comes in different types of "buckets:" Proposition, story, poetry--each a different mode of revelation.
--Ezekiel's bucket is a visual revelation, or apocalyptic prophesy.

It is important to note that it begins with God, God's hand sweeps Ezekiel off like a barrel over Niagara Falls.

We don't need better quiet times or another great truth to apply to our lives, we need our hearts to be reached.

Ezekiel was taken to a valley, not a mountain. Mountains were traditionally where heaven and earth met, but he valley was desolate, filled with bones.

The answer to God's question "Can these bones live?" is the point of the passage.

In the ancient Middle East, covenants were made between weak and strong nations.
--If the weaker nation broke covenant, they were destroyed and their bodies/bones were tossed into a valley, a symbol of the broken covenant. This was an image Ezekiel's audience would have understood.
-->Likewise, our hearts are dry and cast out, "Our bones are dried up, we are cut off," because of our own pursuit of sinfulness, our own covenant breaking.

Sometimes, this dry-bone-ness is manifested in a sort of depression, sometimes in a pressure, like we are carrying a huge weight on our shoulders: everything: our relationship with God, everything with school, etc.

When we feel left for dead, like dry bones lying in a valley, then the Lion roars the loudest.

Illustration: In the movie Defiance, [which was an excellent movie] Tuvia was crushed under the weight of all those people relying on him.

At the end of yourself, change happens on the spot. God spoke, and immediately the skeletons came together.

God appeared to Ezekiel when he is in Babylon, not Canaan, which means that God went into exile with Israel. God followed his people into an exile that He himself imposed on them.

Of Mass Assaults

31

Judging from my experience as a daycare and summer camp counselor, I think it's an accurate number. Speaking of attacks:

59%

As much as it disappoints me, I also think this one is accurate. You can only defeat so many zombies when you don't have guns (even though blades don't need reloading) and when you have some moral sense or desire to save your friends and family.

Of Aces

I know only about half of you care, but I just had to put it down somewhere that today, the 24 of May, in the year of our Lord 2009, I successfully completed a disc golf hole in one (1) shot.

That's right, son! I got a hole-in-one! I was playing Park Circle down here in Chucktown with my pastor, his son, my brother and another friend, so there were witnesses. It was only a 248 foot hole, but still...

I was dang excited too, I always thought it was a little silly when people got so pumped after an ace, but I must say that when you do ace a hole, it's an adrenaline rush. My throat was already hurting, but I think I threw my voice out from screaming "YEAH! YES!" at the top of my lungs several times.

Park Circle Hole #15, aced.