Random thought

If people stopped pooping in toilets, what other role would they serve?

A super light duty washing machine?

A water bowl for the household animals?

a garbage can that you don't have to take out?

Any thoughts ? ...have fun with this one.

Really?

Due to a task I was given at work, I have looked at a large number of chord charts and lyrics lately. I'm not much a fan of the typical "Christian worship" songwriting, so I was looking at a lot of songs I didn't know, and picking songs that I had heard from the few artists that I knew. I do like Chris Tomlin, because I feel that once I've heard one of his songs, I've heard the general gist of all the "hit" songs on Christian radio (likely because he wrote most of them, or so it seems.) While I enjoy playing worship music, I don't particularly enjoy listening to it.

This brings me to a few questions.

1.) Why does this stuff all sound the same? Given that God himself is the author of all creativity, you would think that the "christian" genre would be so much more diverse. And yet bands such as Switchfoot, while not falling into that category, claim to be Christians and their stuff, from the beginning of their existence to now, continues to change and find new ways to reach their audience rather than settle for the same mundane 1-4-5 chord changes and guitar effects. And while some would say that Switchfoot has sold out in not DIRECTLY addressing their faith in their songs (while the references to scripture suggest otherwise, at least to me,) I would argue that the worship musicians that fail to push the envelope for the sake of record sales are the greater sell-outs.

I must say, though, that people worship differently, and lyrics and songwriting technique reflect different worship styles. I am not attacking the way people worship by any means. I am simply trying to figure out why the stuff doesn't speak to me the way it seems to speak to most people.

2.) Like I said. I read a lot of lyrics this week. I can't count the number of times I read something referencing how "all we need is Jesus." For some reason this bugs me. Because while I feel that we should come to Christ first to express concern and seek council, I also believe that we were designed to have needs besides those that are spiritual. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, of course, you were to lock yourself in a room and have no way out or in. There would be no light, no refrigerator, to water. Theoretically, all you would have would be God himself, in the form of communication through prayer. SO, if we have no other needs but God himself, we should be able to stay alive forever (or at least until our old age) through prayer. This, to me, sounds like sheer madness. While God could sustain us for that long. We were created to be relational, not just with God, but with other people as well. Our bodies do not function without water, food, rest. Does this train of thought follow with anyone else, or am I overanalyzing things?

Cheers
Brandon

Ugh

Today was hard for me. As was yesterday. And I have been a total weenie about it too. Realized how freaked out I am about everything has led me to some interesting conclusions and questions.

1.) How does one just stop worrying? I know that Jesus loves me and that he has a plan for me, even though I have no idea what it is. But knowing and believing are two different things. People may see my lack of direction and try to convince me that I'll end up ok, or try to push me in one direction or another. But I'm doing the best that I can...

2.) I am forever reminded that I am nothing. The only reason I'm alive is because God sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of me and help me through stuff.

3.) I continue to grow restless. And I continue to feel that my vocation will not be in history, as my degree will state as my area of expertise. And I have no idea what I will do after that.

I will survive.

Two Weeks

I have two weeks left before I load up my truck and travel the 200-some miles to Bellingham for begin my training as a Resident Advisor in Ridgeway Beta/Gamma. As I start thinking about all that I have to do (stuff I need to buy, stuff I should pack, stuff that I probably should start thinking about sometime soon...) I almost feel a sense of panic. In some ways, I am beginning the last year of what I consider to be my youth. It has been said that the college years are the best of one's life. Yes, I begin this one knowing where stuff is, knowing what hoops I have to jump through, and so on, and yet I am so clueless as to so many things. I am stoked to meet my residents, but I have no idea how much time I will get for myself. I have committed to playing bass on the worship team at Christ the King Community Church. Anyway, there's a whole new set of unknowns involved.

That's pretty much it. I miss Bellingham.

This lyric keeps coming back to me. It has nothing to do with anything...except...just about everything.

Jesus paid much too high a price for us to pick and choose who should come
-"If We Are The Body"- Casting Crowns

Old People

Today is my great-grandmother's 95th birthday, and it would have been my great-grandfather's 98th. Driving down to Eugene to visit for an hour and a half with other relatives and family friends, I don't think anything could compare to what I saw when I walked into the room in which my great-grandma greeted (well, sort of) guests. She sat in the corner of the room in her wheel chair. Her hair line had receded since the last time I had seen her. Many of her teeth had fallen out. As I smiled and said hello and happy birthday and gave as much of a hug as I could without feeling like I was going to crush her now-frail body, she either didn't recognize me at all or straight didn't know that she had a red-headed great-grandson named Brandon. I would bank on the former being the more true of the two. Anyway, aside from a similar goodbye, that was the extent of the contact I had with her all afternoon.

It absolutely tore me up to see my great-grandma. I thought of all the conversations I wanted to have with her and my great-grandfather when he was still around. They had lived through two world wars, the "Cold War," Watergate, Vietnam, the protests of the 50s, 60s and 70s. They had heard the news that Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon. And I didn't care enough to ask them about such things when I felt I could at least ask a question of them without wearing them out.

Each time I see Great-grandma, I think it will be the last time I say goodbye. She's given 95 years of her life to the God of the universe. And she's confined in a body that is no longer functioning as it's meant to.

Visiting Great- grandma reminds me to live life to it's fullest, to not be afraid to take risks, because one day I may find myself in an assisted living facility with nothing to do but sit, pray, and reflect on all of the risks I should have taken.

It also reminds me how much I really hope I don't live to be so old I have to have someone help me go to the bathroom.

Last night, as I visited the park near my house, walking on a piece of tubular climbing webbing cinched to tension between two trees, I realized how much I worry about stupid stuff.  Stuff like "Where will I be in a year?" or "Will my history degree actually mean anything?" I focused on the tree and the moment, doing my best to smoothly link turns on the 1/2" thick slack line. After a brief break to do some journaling and realizing I had nothing to say, the picnic table a few yards away looked like a splendid place from which to view a sunset.  The sunset only made me worry and think more.  As my iPod played mostly worship songs, I stared blankly, alternating between the colors of the sunset and the movement of the grass that blew in the breeze.  

I put my slack line away, keeping an eye on the sunset.  It was in many ways ridiculous that something so beautiful could cause such tension in the moments in which it was viewed.  My music failed to distract me from the thoughts of anxiety, up until one particular song came on. I smiled and cranked it as far as I could without feeling like I was going to blow my headphones in half.  

Anxiety is a choice. It basically comes down to whether or not we trust God enough to get us through things that may or may not be affected by our futile attempts to change our circumstances.  It's a hard choice to make, at least for me.  But at the moment that Listening to Levon by Marc Cohn popped up on my playlist, I was over it. Worrying will not stop something from happening.  You won't live any longer by worrying about some minute detail of tomorrow.  And I was done, at least for that moment.

I turned off and threw my phone across the park, which was mostly symbolic of my mindset because I picked it up when I left, put it in my bag, and didn't look at it the rest of the night.   

See My Reflection, Don't Know My Direction

I got back about five days ago. I recently became aware of just how tired my body is, and came home from work to a nap in a dark room and some music. Still tired, but a little better.

So camp itself, aside from my ridiculous story, was very different from the last set, which happened at the end of June to mid-August. The first set of camps consisted of training with Junior Interns (JI's,) young adult (college-age) camp, and a 50-ish person high school camp. This was essentially my training ground and the time when God loaded up my plate with ways that I can grow. After becoming very aware of my weakness and staring at that plate for a few weeks, the time came to start swallowing.

The second round of camps included an 85-ish person high school camp, as well as a 60-ish person middle school camp in which the staff and JIs likely overwhelmed the middle schoolers themselves. Each stretched me more than I could have imagined. High school camp #2 saw me taking on more responsibilities, including daily running shuttle with trailers loaded with rafts (bringing the vehicles to the boat ramp at take-out before actually rafting so that rafts could be loaded as soon as we hit the beach after our run,) topping off our water supply, leading a small group, and having to navigate rapids with which I was not as familiar in addition to my normal duties of cooking breakfast (which took longer,) the occasional dinner clean-up, helping with music, and being down-to-earth and friendly with everyone that I came into contact with. Managing all of this left me always doing something, but I realized at the end of the camp that I had yet to play my guitar outside of worship, which we rarely practiced due to time constraints. By the time I came to this realization I was so tired that I was continually digging within me for the energy that came with the amount of food I consumed and was always looking for. I leaned on God for the strength and energy to keep going, and thankfully I didn't break at this segment of camps. Yet all of this activity, in retrospect, only served to wear me out. I didn't deal with much other than sleep deprevation in the week of high school camp. I had to think to excersize patience a bit with certain individuals, but otherwise I was so busy I only thought of the next task to be done. It was middle school camp that I did most of my thinking and endured what seemed to be the most spiritual attack.

After a "rest" day- oriented towards the introvert- left me more tired, the middle schoolers arrived. I remember that evening very clearly, simply because I wanted to escape it all and climb something. Middle schoolers are great, but they take a lot more patience than high schoolers. It was as if God had said "Now you're good and worn out. Did you learn anything?" and put me to the test with the most challenging camp yet.

Due to the ridonkulous amount of staff and JIs on this camp, I had a lot more down time. I got to have JI's, which I had spent the whole summer getting to know, on my paddle raft, and even got to run the chaotic mess that is the Salmon River on an inflatable kayak. Regretably, I didn't talk to many middle schoolers outside of the breakfast line, small group (which I thankfully didn't have to worry about leading solo,) and when one of them needed something. However, the tension in camp for a few days was unbearable. Being very in-tune to issues of emotion and stress, the whole camp felt heavy, especially amongst JIs. Whether it was unspoken conflict, tiredness, or whatever, I resolved not to involve myself, and yet at the same time I was very involved simply because I was in camp with it. It eventually got better. But those were a hard few days. I struggled and learned numerous things, which I'll outline below. Then the last day of rafting, travel and the night in between the two rocked my world so much that I'm still recovering and processing.

1.) I said before that I struggle with leadership and being a role model. This hit me REALLY hard during middle school camp. While I was no longer scared of stacking and strapping 4-5 rafts on top of a trailer, I knew that I was constantly being watched. I was a leader. I know I could look 18, so high schoolers might think of myself as one of them and be a bit more discerning in what they choose to follow and don't. But at middle school camp, I couldn't hide, even amongst what seemed to be a herd of staff and JIs. I am loud. I laugh a lot. Some would go as far as to call me funny. I was up front helping with music. I remember being a middle schooler and looking up to guys in positions in which I find myself today, and remember not saying hardly anything to those I admired. I simply saw them and knew there was something about them that was worth immitating. The idea that someone could look at me and want to be like me wrecked me inside, considering how little I feel like I have it all together.

One of the few things that I was challenged on for the first camp by a guy named Zach and another intern was confidence. Sometimes I feel as though I am nothing special. A small fish in a big pond. There are others out there with contagious laughter, decent guitar skills, red hair, free spirits. And yet I was reminded that there is only one me. I know what I am capable of as a person, and yet I know that I can't do anything without Christ in my life. I can try. But I'll fail. And if those kids took anything away from becoming acquainted with me in the days they spent in my raft, in the conversations we had while filling up water jugs, in the way I found tents for them when they realized that it might rain in their time on the beach, I hope they saw a guy that is trying to follow Christ and love people as he loved us. If all they remember is that I made them laugh, I have failed miserably.

2.) PATIENCE. Oh my goodness. I am a pretty laid back guy. I was recently told by a JI that they only time they saw me freaked out was right after I flipped my first (and only raft) on a huge wave, dumping my entire crew. When I was surrounded by a bunch of tired people and middle schoolers asking me for stuff at inopportune times, I had to remain calm and help them get what they needed. Everytime I felt like using sarcasm, yelling, or just ignoring anyone, I had to remember back to when I was 12 and wanted to talk at 6:30 in the morning. And I apologize to whatever trouble I may have caused anyone as a friggen crazy twelve-year old.

3.) I'll just re-highlight this from yesterday's post. Next summer, I will no longer be a student, in the collegiate sense at least. Which means that I have to do something with myself. I currently have aspirations of moving to Boulder or Winter Park, CO, or perhaps Northern Idaho, maybe even Hood River, to feed my addiction to mountains and adventure. I'm waiting for a monkey wrench to be thrown in those plans, honestly. I have no idea what I am going to do with myself, or what God has planned for me. It'll be an interesting ride, and I have to trust that God knows what he's doing. As a friend pointed out the other day, it's not like there's a trust-o-meter that goes *DING* when you hit the top. I don't know that I can swing that hard, honestly. But I'm trying.

This summer was amazing. I threw a lot into it, but I've also gotten a lot out of it. I've got a few weeks left as an intern, and I will continue going full bore, but I feel as though the bulk of the intern experience has been passed. I already miss the massive waves and just feeling so futile and insignificant compared to the river and the power that you can only feel by being in it. I may tack things on as I continue to process, but this is the bulk of it.

Prelude to Raft Camp Reflection: Round 2

As I returned from raft camp on Friday, August 8th at 10:30 PM after a two days of exhausting complexity, I put off processing all I had learned.  Thursday night, after guiding a paddle raft, a monsoon-ish storm swept through the canyon, complete with lightning, thunder, powerful winds and driving rain.  As the storm gave way momentarily, returning to camp revealed Guy's Camp in a wreck.  Many of us had tents that had fallen over, rain-flies torn off, and flooded living quarters.  It was a mess to say the least.  I got off lucky: one of the tent poles to my bright orange 1972 model pup-tent had fallen over, leaving my pillow and the top half of my sleeping bag sopping wet.

Leaving things out to dry while the weather still looked safe (which totaled about a half-hour,) somehow we had a dry dinner, clean-up, Bible study, and worship and snack time. I had dismantled my tent because of my morning responsibilities as staff, leaving me sleeping under the Big-Top, a tent-like structure formed by spare oars, canvas, and rafting straps.  As soon as the call for lights out arrived, so did the rain.  Even while under the tent, the wind and rain were so strong that they soaked me anyway. So I attempted to sleep in an already wet sleeping bag with a wet pillow. Every time I would almost be asleep, a flash of lighting like that of a camera 6 feet away would "jolt" me awake. By the time the storm again subsided, it was 1 AM.

Yup.

Still cold and wet.

And yet I didn't even have it the worst.  Several of the middle schoolers lacked even dry cloths besides the ones on their backs.  Sleeping in the kitchen tent, they were given garbage bags to keep the water off of them. Yuck.

Morning came at 5:45 AM for me. Hard boiled eggs for breakfast. As I floundered about trying to grasp some semblance of order from my not-so-cognitive mind.  After a bright red sunrise gave the promise of rain, our entire plan for take down was altered. Regardless, we got out on the road on schedule, departing camp at about 9:30 AM. 

 The next several hours passed without incident, my co-pilot Marc and I chewing sunflower seeds, playing Twenty-Questions and searching for anything that resembled music on the radio. Once we passed Tri-Cities, the troubles began to ensue; the truck I was driving threw a tread on one of the tires. As the box truck the church had borrowed stopped to help, the bus made sure we were ok, then continued on to stay on schedule.  The spare was good, and we were back on the road within 15 minutes. 45 minutes later, as we merged onto I-84 West, driving through a thunderstorm, it was the box truck's turn, blowing the rear-inner drivers side dually.  Mark and I made sure he got to a place where the tire could be fixed, then got back on the road to get the luggage our truck carried back to Vancouver as soon as we could.  Of course, 20 miles outside Biggs Junction OR, now the OTHER tire threw a tread.  Neither of us had cell phones.  Radio contact had been lost with the box truck.  We could keep driving, or we could sit and wait for a few hours and wait for help.  

We kept going.

We pulled into a service station in Biggs that claimed to sell tires, hoping to find a used one that could just get us as far as Vancouver.  No, said the attendant who looked about 18 and to have been smoking cannabis on his ten-minute breaks, "we don't sell used tires.  A new one is $150." After some thinking, we decided it was worth it both in terms of time and money. We unhooked the trailer, then pulled the truck around to the garage.  

"Just a second.  Let me check my inventory."

Seriously!?

I took a moment to vent to my companion, pulling out a pizza I had picked up in Tri-Cities and setting it on the hood of the truck.  It sat long enough for me to pull out my Nalgene, find it empty, then look at Marc and say "This is friggen ridiculous, what is going ON?"

At that moment, the wind picked up my pizza and plopped it cheese-side down on the asphalt. I threw down my water bottle and just started laughing.  This was divinity.  If there was ever a doubt about it, it became clear at that moment.  As Marc and I laughed at our terrible "luck," the the attendant showed up with a tire.  Sweet: except that it's not the exact size that's on the truck.  We declined.  We introduced ourselves to the attendant, saying that if he saw on the news that a pickup truck and trailer flipped into the river because of a flat tire that was us and he could say he had met us.  

Next stop, the Dalles.  Hoping to find a tire that fit, we drove 45 mph on the freeway before taking the downtown exit to the Dalles. The theory was that it would take us past more shops.  It did.  But none of them were tires shops.  There were people everywhere.  And really nice cars everywhere. It dawned on us that we were participants in a parade and car show.  More hysterical laughter ensued. Hoping to pick up a hip-hop station to blast, we also worried that our tire would blow right as we passed the judges table or in the middle of an intersection.  Again, by God's grace we made it through.  All the tire places were closed.  We were going all the way home on this tire that was teetering on the edge of destruction.  

It sort of hit me solid right then that God wanted me to stop trying to fix it myself and to just let him take care of the situation.  I found myself wanting to control what was happening, and I couldn't.  Marc noted that Jesus fed 5000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish; he could probably handle this. It was the coolest thing to watch God work it out.  Like he will work out my future.  I can point myself in whatever direction I want, but he can always give me a flat tire, not have another one for me, or stick me on a one-way street in a car show.

Still out of contact with the box truck, I tried every five-ish minutes to raise them on the radio.  Finally, I spotted them blitzing past me on the left.  Frantically flashing my brights and trying to get their attention, I sped up past where I knew I should have  trying to keep from losing them.  I finally got ahold of them, and found out they never got their tire fixed either.  Now each of us had an escort. Awesome.

We each made it all the way to the church without incident, arriving at about 10:30 PM. After looking at the tire bare all the way down to the metal, I know we shouldn't have made it. It was the ultimate in knowing that God was in control the whole way, and every time I tried to take it back from him, something ridiculous would happen.  

I'll have more reflection in a day or so.  I still haven't really talked about it, other than a few thoughts I put in at debrief yesterday afternoon.