If there's one thing I've been learning the value of lately, it has been the corporate nature of our faith (or, what a Calvinist might call "the covenant community").

From a recent read of mine:

I once heard a Catholic priest, a native of New Jersey, give a homily in which he told about visiting the southern part of the United States for the first time. At the hotel restaurant on his first morning, he studied the breakfast menu. Several combination meals featured grits, so when the waitress came for his order, he asked her, "Miss, what is a grit?" She replied, "Honey, they don't come by themselves!"

The priest used this story to emphasize the importance of the body of Christ. Christians don't come by themselves, he said. Like grits, "Christian" is a plural thing. To follow Jesus means to be part of a community.

Now, this is true. Worship and fellowship and all these things must be done corporately to be done right. The saints of the New Testament are perhaps clearest about this assumption in the fact that they rarely speak to it. Instead, their addresses are almost never to one person, but always fashioned for the digestion of the church body at large. We need each other to live out our faith.

But there is a problem with Christianity. Allow Deitrich Bonhoeffer to elaborate:

He who is alone in his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final breakthrough to fellowship does not occur because, though they have fellowship with one another as devout people, they do not have fellowship as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship...

What is the solution to this? Bonhoeffer went on to speak of the grace of the Gospel, and how we can dare to be sinners before a God with whom masks do no good. And he's right. But what about the solution as it (the Gospel) is applied to our "pious fellowship"?

I don't believe the answer is an easy one. I believe it is quite simply the tough, truth-bearing work of real, honest, and complete accountability that can make this happen in the covenant community. It starts with true communication between only two people, and perhaps never stretches much further beyond those twos, but the more that are paired up, the more the community as a whole will grow in this very necessary change to our typical easy-does-it approach to honesty in the church community. This also requires a good deal of wisdom from the individuals approaching true accountability, and the Proverbs have great guidance for us, much of which must be balanced delicately:

He who covers an offense promotes love,
but whoever repeats a matter separates close friends.

Better is open rebuke
than hidden love.
Wounds from a friend can be trusted,
but an enemy multiplies kisses.

To quote a very few.

And we must, we all must, remember to live out that grace of the Gospel of which Bonhoeffer spoke. We must see ourselves as equal sinners before God, all justly deserving of his wrath no matter what our individual struggles may be, all clothed in the work of the cross. With this humility, we can come to our Christian brother or sister, bear who we really are, and accept their confession as well. More from Dietrich:

...only the brother under the Cross can hear a confession. It is not experience of life but experience of the Cross that makes one a worthy hearer of confessions. The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus.... In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner.

I am thankful for the blessing of friends in my life that can help me be more real. I can only hope to do the same in return.

Its Thursday and I'm cleaning up the FireFox tabs...

Scott and Fiddy are well on their way to hitchhiking 50 state capitols in 50 days. And yours truly gave them ride #1. I might not be as cute as all the college girls giving them rides, lately, but I think I came through pretty big getting them out of Times Square - they could have been there for a while. That deserved a picture or at least a little more write-up, hmph.

Ann Marie got me hooked on WOXY.

What a ripoff of Woot Wine.

Web 2.0 + real estate = Hotpads. Speaking of real estate, this WSJ article (you'll need a subscription to read it) has me pretty convinced to buy near a major city. As does this WaPo article.

Completely missed OHNY. Smooth.

Manhattanhenge is fun with the sun. Meanwhile the moon theives our colors.

Why does the UK get the coolest Sony ads? Maybe its because their comedians read the bible.

18 mistakes that kill startups.

TaskbarShuffle is rad, if you're a tad OCD about your task bar. Just a tad.

I want, I want, I need, I need.

I've linked to A Final Salute before and its pretty much the saddest thing ever, but man is it important.

I'm not known to be one who goes on many emotional roller coasters, but I feel like I just spend a week and a half at an emotional amusement park.

And yes, I am talking about baseball.

That's all I have to say about it. The pain is still too raw.

So I haven't blogged since Boston, which is shameful. I was unstaffed last week, and I have no excuse (sans the baseball travesty). Although I did get some training done and spent all day Friday in a technology seminar, which was both interesting and kind of weird at the same time. And Saturday we had a seminar for the youth leaders centered around counselling, given our unique position of involvement with families. And then I went out and got my groove on that night.

And then I went 5 and 1 in my fantasy league with a ridiculously stupid 120+ point win. With a team that I didn't draft. Ridiculous.

And I'm back up to 8 miles a day for my runs, and feeling pretty solid.

Will try to blog a bit more for the next couple weeks, but come end of month, I'm off to Greece with the fam for a week and a half, and when I get back from that, I start my stint in Chicago. That's right, Walgreen's in Chi-town, Monday thru Friday, likely for the next year. More on that when I know more. Which probably won't be til after I'm there, in mid November.

First time ever in Boston, this weekend.

Never really been a priority of mine to get there. It was nice, seemed like a decent enough city - too bad its filled with Red Sox fans.

Dave and I drove up Saturday morning so that his brother Mike could show me around Gordon Conwell - the seminary I've been looking into that both he and their dad attended. It was definitely a beautiful area, very close to the shore, and way outside of Boston. Way too far outside. But they do have a campus in the city, so that's something. But it would mean living in Boston.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life.

Anyway I caught dinner and bummed around the city with Angie that night, which was fun. We picked up some cannoli's at a little bakery off the beaten path, at the bottom of Salem street, and then walked up to the Old North Church, and after that over to a park to sit and eat.

Talking with my dad tonight on the drive home, he told me he did the same thing with mom almost 29 years ago, to the day.

Eerie?

This morning Dave and I went to Mike's church, then I was very blessed to meet with Jo Kadlecek and her husband (who I had met before) - over coffee after church. Jo's an author that I've been looking forward to meeting for a while, and she turned out to be a real sweetheart - gave me all kinds of awesome info - people to look up, programs to look into, books to read, etc.. So that was tres exciting for me, and its given me a number of things to do this week, while I'm still home and between projects.

Speaking of projects...no. I'll get into that later this week.

Dave, Mike, and I caught lunch at an Irish Pub (where else) and then we all drove down to their parent's place for dinner, and I drove home.

And Ben Roethlesberger is still terrible.

Go Steelers.

I didn't read I Kissed Dating Goodbye until I was at least halfway through college. Years later, I would come to wish I had read it before starting high school.

I didn't read I Gave Dating a Chance until I was well out of college. Years later, I would come to wish I had read it before starting college.

And tonight I had another enlightening (non-reading) life-event that I could only walk out of wishing it had happened to me 6 years earlier. Wondering where I would be right now and what life would be like, if it had.

But God didn't want it to happen until tonight. He wanted all that has happened before now - and all that has not happened as well - He wanted it that way for a divinely perfect reason. He wanted tonight to happen tonight, just the way it is.

Never stops to amaze me how I still, even as I write this, how I still think that I know what's best for me.

And, ironically, this is why I want to be a writer. Not enough people are writing enough quality material about some of the most important issues facing us today. Or I'm not finding the right books, lately. In my so very humble opinion.

Yes, that's an edited-for-kiddies version of Reuben's classic. For you prudes out there.

I love this city.

I love driving past the bull with my windows down late on an October Tuesday after not doing too terribly in my regular poker game down on Wall Street. You can't do that anywhere else in the world, and I love it, everything about it. I love walking down the middle of Wall Street, even if its blocked off to anything but pedestrian traffic for sadly necessary reasons. It feels like the safest part of town, with the cops walking around with machine guns strapped to their chests.

I love paying six dollars to drive through a tunnel every time I don't feel like riding the train/bus into the city. I love the myriad wonders of the subway.

I love the free metered spots on a Sunday morning when I'm headed to church and the general shopping public isn't even awake yet. I love the leaders and kids of my youth group and our regular Domino's habit. I love Central Park on Sunday afternoon when its filled with locals and tourists blending more seamlessly than anywhere else in the city at any other time.

I love my church.

I love not being a Yankee fan, and I love that anywhere you go here you will always run into co-fans of your out-of-state team, because 90% of the people here are from somewhere else anyway. Even at Yankee stadium in October. I love Steeler Sunday afternoons in Hell's Kitchen.

I love discovering a bar in the back of a restaurant on Bleeker that sells ridiculously low-price top-shelf drinks. I love taking a girl to a swanky little dinner joint secretly tucked at the end of an alley in SoHo. I love breakfast at the Hollywood diner near Union Square at 3 in the morning. I love haggling with taxi drivers over the fare back to Hoboken at 4 in the morning. I love knowing the secret best entrances to the Lincoln from 33rd and 31st streets.

I love the Cloisters, and I love my Winslow Homers that they keep in the Met. I love brunch in Chelsea, the Chelsea Market, golfing off the Chelsea Piers, and pretty much every bar I've found in the West Village.

I love Grand Central and the Theory employee store hidden near the library. And I love running into movie / tv shoots on a regular basis, not to mention seeing celebs crossing 5th Ave for a jog in the park, looking like we all look when we wake up to exercise.

I love the pizza here, and the constant availability of food and drink.

And I love that there are so many other people who live here and love all these things and more with me.

(Read: don't see myself leaving soon, even if I am starting to look at going back to school. Dilemma.)

I had not a minute to surf this week (and yes, its been incredibly difficult for me, thank you for asking). Hence, instead of the normal "here's what I've found," today is "here's what I normally surf."

My (online) day usually starts with a stop by my work email and my gmail (I have plenty of invites if you want one). And I usually try to drop by Woot earlier in the day than later. Most times the best stuff has already sold out by the time I get there, which is why some nights I try to remember to check it before going to bed.

If I do have time to surf, I usually kick it off at Metafilter, and that usually leads me to askMeFi and MetaTalk. And from there to all other kinds of places.

I also like browsing the del.icio.us' popular list from time to time.

If I have time for news, its either Google News or WSJ, usually. And I'm usually learning about a couple random things that come up via the ever wonderful Wikipedia.

Most years I would be checking my fantasy team at Yahoo pretty regularly, but I missed my draft this year thanks to work, so my team stinks, so I've lost most interest.

And I'll occasionally refer to craigslist, ebible, menupages, and Lifehacker, although I get to the latter a lot less than I used to. And sometimes when I actually just need to channel surf the internet, I hit the good ol' StumbleUpon button.

Oh, and of course, this time of year, I am consumed with playoff baseball.

There shall always be the Church and the World

And the Heart of Man

Shivering and fluttering between them,

Choosing and chosen,

Valiant, ignoble, dark and full of light

Swinging between Hell Gate and Heaven Gate.

And the Gates of Hell shall not prevail.
– T. S. Eliot

Happy birthday, T.

So thanks to a number of different reasons, I've been learning all about the Jewish holidays of late. I've met / spent some time with a number of people who either practice or are interested in how to practice the Messianic Jewish faith - most recently Karen, the sweetest old lady you could ever hope to meet, who sat next to me at (my) church this past Sunday. She gave me a hug and a traditional Rosh Hashana greeting when we reached the part in the service where we greet those around us. And today happens to be Tzom Gedaliah. Happy Tzom Gedaliah. And, since I missed it, happy Rosh Hashana too.

Cooked tonight. My own special pasta meatavera recipe, and its tres delish, if I do say so myself. Used the new Barilla Plus, thanks to this miracle I can eat pasta again. Caught the second half of Heroes, which I had really hoped to catch both halves of - but then I need to kick this TV watching thing anyway, reading has all but dropped off the radar, again. But they are going to have a replay of the premier online, and that's too cool to not watch.

Trying to get an update to the side-bar sometime soon, but doubtful that will happen - I have a lot of work to get done on my day off, if I can't stall it, and I have to get it done before noon because Cregan, Dave, David, and I are headed to Whitetail for the afternoon. And I have a blog post to write.

Saturday I worked all day and did my lesson that evening, and Sunday was your typical fall Sunday - church, youth group, and meeting Dave at Merc Bar (although we ended up at Joshua Tree) to watch the Steelers lose a game they should have won by two touches. Ridiculous. But kind of karmically deserved after the way we decimated them in the playoffs last year.

And I found a new song, from Mayer, that's going to get me to finally pull out the guitar after a summer off. Plus lil bro Jon introduced me to Current Swell, and I seriously dig their stuff.

You peaches from Jamaica? Cause Jamaican me crazy. I love that Stop and Shop ad.

Albeit in a smaller, much more hurried manner...I have that annual happy- its-fall feeling that I get when the weather starts to turn and the regular fall activities ramp up.

First the days get a little more bearable temperature wise, and things are just beautiful for a week or two. Then you start to feel a comfortably cool breeze in the evening that gives you hints of sweat shirts and long pants. Before you know it, its nice enough out at night to leave the windows open instead of the AC on - and you can sleep comfortably with the sound of cars and people walking their dogs and whatnot, passing in the street below.

It will be another week or so and we'll be shifting all the vents again. My room tends to be the hottest in our place, so during the warm months we close the all the other vents and open the one in my room, and in the cool months, close the one in my room and open all the others. And a week or two after that, it will be one of my favorite times of the year - when the down comforter comes back out and the light one goes back in the closet. And I sleep better for 4 months or so.

But its not just the weather. I like fall because usually I've had a good summer with some long weekends and a few adventures and perhaps a weeks' vacation or so. And the beginning of fall kind of signifies wrapping up the fun break and getting back to things - work, youth group, home fellowship group, et. al.. This year there wasn't much of a summer, but I have a feeling it will be a good fall all the same.

The folks are taking me and the sisters to Greece for a week and a half, after all. Life goes on.

The people of Save Darfur were marching on the UN this weekend when Bush spoke, and I was sadly unable to join them. These people are doing a good thing.

I want a Firefox extension to...

Yep looks pretty cool. As does Peanut Gallery (possibly may have linked to this before - no idea).

Forgot all about fo.rtuito.us, haven't really been using it.

Cool Google link, as usual: Biiible.

102 WPM with 4 (corrected) mistakes. Yep...stilllll got it.

I may someday turn to this for sleep help.

FreeNYC. And NY's best cheap eats.

I think I'm going to try these guys for my next pair of glasses.

The issues facing our generation today.

Only in Hoboken: Giant Robot imprisons parked cars.

Open House New York - almost that time again. Also see: The New Yorker Festival.

And last, but the very furthest extreme opposite of least, a belated happy 10th birthday to Homestar.

And that's how you turn 35 open tabs into 8. Ok, 9, I admit it. I have a problem.

As you might have noticed, yesterday I finally threw up a blog post, after some weeks off. And here's the strange thing: it wasn't so much work's fault. Yeah, I've been working the same crazy hours on the same crazy project, but there's been time here and there. And yet blogging seemed like this huge looming burden I had to deal with, even though I knew after just one post I would break through and be, hopefully, back in the swing.

Anyway, I don't expect that to make sense to anyone, it barely does to me. Suffice to say, I'm back, and I'm going to make a earnest effort at throwing something up here on a Mon-Fri basis again, even if its just pointless drivel like this. Because that's what keeps them coming back, the pointless drivel. And my cunning wit.

Tomorrow is Thursday, which means links.

Oh, and yesterday's post - I've had all but the last paragraph or two written since shortly after the trip. Along with a few other posts. And pictures. What is wrong with me?

Here's the pics from the trip. Well, 10% of them. Hoping to add some more to the same set, soon.

Welcome back...

Go A's.

For me, of all the 300+ photos I took during my trip to New Orleans this past summer, none said more to me than this one. This guy, sitting there, on break from work, reading his paper and smoking his cigarette. For him, life is normal. He lives and works in New Orleans, one year after one of the most catastrophic natural disasters to ever strike our nation.

The city will rebuild. Its part of our human nature - we fight back against the rest of nature, we dominate it, and even though it may lash out at us from time to time, we live in a perpetual state of perceived dominance over it. People will eventually return to this city, live there, work there, worship there, and take their smoke breaks there. But it will take so much time.

Imagine the place that you live, the place where you sleep and keep all your belongings - filled to the top with muddy water. The water subsides, your belongings, what's left of them, settle to the floor after floating for so many days, scattered and broken. And then everything sits for one year. No windows, no locks on the doors, everything just sits in the humid, motionless air. Imagine the dirt caked on everything. Imagine the dank water still sitting in broken dishwashers, refrigerators turned on their sides, tubs with the plumbing clogged. Imagine the smell.

This is the house we walked into on day one of our work week in New Orleans. There were 18 of us, leaders and kids from the youth group at my church, split into two teams. Although this was not your typical international missions trip, we might as well have been on the other side of the planet - this was a disaster zone left to sit, for all intents and purposes. With my team, we helped gut 3 houses. Imagine someone going through all your things, your secret possessions, your life built up around you, tearing it all out and placing it in a pile on the street. This is what we were there to do. Family picture albums, closets full of clothes, books and bibles, jewelry, household chemicals, pornography, kitchens full of utensils, electronics, furniture, guns, everything. All in piles on the street.

They are still finding bodies to this day in New Orleans. The neighborhoods where we were still sat empty by and large - I never once worked in a house that sat adjacent to any other inhabited residence. With so many deserted homes, neighborhoods, and other uninhabited areas, I imagine they'll still be finding bodies years from now.

What amazes me most is that anyone would expect a city full of people who were totally dependent on the government - who couldn't even provide for themselves the most basic of necessities in the time of the storm, and who couldn't find even a ride to points north - that anyone would expect these same people to rebuild their entire house. To gut it, to throw out everything they once owned, to rebuild from the ground up. In one year.

One year after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, hundreds of thousands of displaced people had begun to move back into the city and rebuild it, but that was a different time. Nobody was waiting on the government to help - in the end, the same government that had ordered the law enforcement to shoot looters on sight was only able to establish temporary housing for some 20,000. And this was in 1906.

We live in a different era now. Now there are cities full of people that expect the government to care for them when things go bad. New York City is no different - the blackouts in Queens recently and the region at large 2 years ago provide preliminary evidence of that. Society at large relies on a system that it believes will be there for them in their day of greatest need. In that sense, we are on a razor's edge.

I believe this is the failure of the church. Our failure was not in a lack of immediate response to New Orleans, when the government failed to act, or even in the fact that the church lacked even the ability to respond to a disaster of that magnitude. The church's failure at large has been to sit idly by while a godless nation has ever so slowly but surely placed its faith in the government, not in God.

I think it was C.S. Lewis that once said, "We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them."

I wonder how much hard He's going to have to shake, before things change.

That said, we were all very glad that we went on the trip. Almost everyone expressed a desire to return and help keep rebuilding next year. And the knowledge that the need would still exist went unspoken - there is simply no question about it.

I think, most importantly, at the end of the day, our goal, whether we realized it at the time or not, was to show people what it really means to rebuild your life. We were there to help people who had seen their physical reality completely displaced. And we did. But in any place - especially a place like New Orleans - our greatest need is to rebuild the misplaced foundations of our faith. To rebuild our lives on something that cannot be shaken. I hope that in some way, some tiny little way that may never be known, we helped towards that end.

OK here's the difference between right now and a couple of months ago before I was sentenced to this gulag of a project: before this I had time to complain about how little time I had outside of work.

Now, my schedule is essentially sleep, work, eat, repeat. Period.

Everything, just everything, has been dropped so that I can work. The only luxuries I'm taking at this point beyond the necessities of sleep and food is the time I take to shower in the morning and listen to the radio on the way to work. I can't do dry cleaning, I can't do laundry, I can't write, I can't read, I can't watch TV, I definitely haven't worked out in weeks, I can't keep in touch with people (although I'm making a concerted effort from work with a few), and I can't prepare a decent meal. I can't find 5 minutes to search for new projects, which it was agreed upon that I'd be doing in the first place when I came to this role. I certainly can't relax, which is what I should be doing with the 2 or so weeks that I actually don't have youth group to worry about before the school year starts again.

And worst of all I am spiritually drained. First this project ate through my physical stamina, then my mental, and now it feasts on what little I have left. And its now that I realize that I can't complain, either. Because I don't have time to do that, either. But more importantly, because in some sense I had no choice to go onto this project, but in another, this is the line of work I've decided to go into. At any point I could quit, but instead I've quietly gone along with an oppressive workload instead of refusing it.

Theoretically its all supposed to end tomorrow night when I work my last day shift, but I doubt that it will be that easy, as things are not settled and the client is certainly not ready to lose the full support team.

This is where I am. This is why I have not even been able to recap my trip to New Orleans at this point. I'm aiming for something decent by Monday of next week, with pictures, but based on my predictions lately...you do the math.

The ballet people are champagne drinkers; a younger, more exciting crowd than the opera people. - Walter Nurena

This is mainly a tribute to my new found appreciation for Flickr, to some extent. And my enduring appreciation for ballet. And a cryptic self reminder to mention this quote to a ballerina that doesn't read my blog. And a reminder to myself that sooner or later I need to get a decent post up, now that its been more than a couple of weeks...

I'm back safe. Hope to get a recap post up tomorrow before I start working night shifts again, tomorrow night. Otherwise, I'll get it up when...I start working night shifts again, tomorrow night. In the meantime, here's a picture of the team, before we left last Saturday.

Why is it that I can't even stand to watch the trailers for Stone's WTC movie when they come on? I mean I literally have to change the channel, because seeing the shadow of an airliner flash across a Tribeca building makes me physically ill. It just all seems so wrong - Flight 93, now this...complete capitalization on the most horrible event of my generation.

I've never liked going down there, taking the Path to downtown makes me uncomfortable every time. I mean, its the biggest tourist attraction in the city. Hundreds of street vendors still making a living off of it. And now Hollywood needs to get their cut. Makes me sick.

Don't get me wrong, history needs its proper memorials, but these are clearly not it. A better example? Saving Private Ryan. Amistad. Schindler's List. Movies that weren't trying to make a buck off of horrible events in human history so much as tell the real story and make people remember. Neither of the 9/11 movies are trying to do that. I doubt many 9/11 movies will be able to do that, for years to come.

I've linked to it before, but I'm still interested in seeing The Great New Wonderful. This looks like a real movie for a real (good) reason.

Its morbid.

And yet stuff like Falling Man is fascinating to me. Because its the real, raw history. Its not commercialized.

Anyway, that said, I'm off to New Orleans for the week, as of tomorrow morning. Doubtful you'll see a blog post before next weekend, and even that will be difficult - as my work week will start Sunday evening on that weekend. Please keep me and the kids and the other leaders in your prayers.

This is Ozzie and Harriet. You can guess which is which. I picked them up at Ikea the other week as kind of a birthday present to myself. I figured I'm officially killing off my late 20's now so I should give having kids another shot. That's how I refer to keeping plants alive - its like having kids practice for the bachelor. They require periodic attention and nurture. Yes, I realize they require less than a normal child. But the basic underlying precept remains the same: I and no one else am responsible for either their life or death. My goal is to keep them alive until I move, which I suspect will be some time next year, either for school or necessity of a newly married roommate - who knows which would come first, if either.

Well, the school part better come one way or another. When you work a 15 hour day and come home in time to eat, sleep, and start it all over again, you find about 2 minutes, somewhere around the point you're stripping out of the work clothes and changing into sleeping garb, to wonder why it is that you can't meet someone nice to come home to and bitch about your day. When the only thing that didn't go wrong, right down to the 15 minutes you had to spend looking for parking after driving home from work, is the fact that you didn't find out that you *didn't* get promoted. Or worse yet, why you can't meet someone to come home to and tell that you got promoted. (Pray Lord let it be.)

I find out in the next week or two.

Basically it will determine exactly when and how hard I start pursuing my enrollment in a school for next year. If I do get the promotion, I figure I'll sock it out for a year, and hit school next fall if things work out smoothly, maybe wait 6 months past then and start the following spring - basically get some experience at the next level on my resume. If I don't get it, I'll be filling out applications starting the following weekend. No point in staying somewhere that isn't going to put you where you should be, isn't going to maximize your potential. That's right, I said it.

So anyway, other things I got for my birthday (from people other than myself) included, from the fam:


Which I have wanted for so very, very long. And this:


Which Mom loved, along with the accompanying documentary. And from the grandparents, the best table game of all time:


Oink.

That's it. That's all the presents I got - parents and grandparents. This is what happens when you get old. I remember reading in the 5 Love Languages that gifts or giving gifts or something like that is one of the languages, and I'm like 98% sure that its mine, along with a small mix of one of the others - words of affirmation. Problem is, it hardly seems to be anyone else's.

Well I blogged through last weekend and so didn't have much to blog about on Monday, and then it was Tuesday and all of a sudden its Sunday night.

Started working on Wednesday of last week, Friday morning I went to work and by the end of the day I could barely breath, my throat was so swollen. So, I had to get that taken care of. Saturday I didn't go in, but I did get over to Matt's in the afternoon after I woke up and ganked a Zithromax off him - they have a powder-in-a-bottle version now that you just add water to and guzzle. Then I came home, had another gallon of soup, and crashed again.

Today was church - for our commissioning for the missions team, then right back to work. Had a good conversation with the manager I'm actually enjoying working with, because he's cool. Might end up staying on this project and taking on a manager role, if nothing comes up in retail.

Going to work tomorrow and Tuesday, maybe a bit of Wednesday too, then I think I'm going to hit the beach for a day or two before we take off for New Orleans.

This week - a half-decent links post and the *original* Snakes on a Plane story (long story short - I had this idea years ago).

P.S. Football is in the air. Hall of fame game. Eagles and Raiders - I couldn't possibly care less, but I do hear Madden's voice and men hitting each other at high speeds in the background, and that makes me happy. Fall's coming. Joy.

Blogger says this is post # 500 for me, but as I've said before, Blogger's count is way off, I've done a good number more than that.

Spent the evening playing a rousing game of Pass the Pigs with the gang - Mossy sent it to me for my birthday, its basically the best game ever. Swine and gambling. Some guy some where is sitting on his own private beach because he thought of that before I could. Some day I'm going to think of something somebody else never had, and then I'll have my own beach, too. Maybe. It will probably involve swine.

Didn't sleep much as I'm still on the night shifts schedule, and then it was meetings all morning, and after lunch as well. Then free time. We're at a resort type place so I decided to spring for my first ever massage.

I swear between that and the sushi I'm becoming a full-fledged fru-fru adult. Ugh. I need to go skiing or wakeboarding or something, right quick.

Anyway it really didn't do that much for me. I told her a good 4 times she could use more pressure, and she did, but it never seemed like it was quite doing the trick. Very relaxing, but not the deep muscle kneading I was really hoping for. I'm thinking perhaps I need one of those small asian women walking around on my back to really do the trick. Maybe I was spoiled by Jen the chiropractor's daughter. Anyway it was weird to have someone touch you so much, after so many years with next to no touch at all.

Tonight is dinner and more meetings, hopefully a half decent night's sleep before tomorrow morning's worship / meetings / driving back to the city.

Later...

Dinner was burgers from the grill, then more meetings till late this evening, where more pigs were passed. Right now everyone's alseep, and I'm probably the only human being awake in about 20 miles. Which is a distinctly different feeling from being awake in the middle of the night with a couple million people in the same predicament within that same radius.

Tomorrow we're hiking up some hill for a "mountain-top" morning deal (there are no mountains in Pennsylvania), then driving back in the afternoon. I like driving through Penn. because you pick up a lot of country stations, and although I don't know most of the songs anymore, I still enjoy driving long highways while listening to country.

Off to middle of nowhere Pennsylvania for the weekend. Youth leaders annual summer planning retreat. Why we needed to drive this far from the city to do it is beyond me. We're in the middle of the woods and this place doesn't even have a pool. I guess we'll be focused at least. I'm voting that we return to the beach location next year.

Worked the first part of the week then took last night off as it was the annual summer social for the New York office - they rent out a club and we all do our best to drink / party them into the ground. This time was at Pacha - really weird joint on the far west side, but it was good to see old faces and meet some new ones. I knew my sleep schedule was going to be screwed up for the weekend - I had woken up in the afternoon with just enough time to shower and head to the club - so I decided to be good and not after-party with the masses. All the same, I only got about 3 hours sleep and I was wide awake at 4am this morning. Waited for the world to wake up then I went and got some shopping done and had yet another sushi lunch at Whole Foods. Kinda growing on me.

Came home with all the good intentions of putting together the new dresser I picked up at Ikea earlier in the week, and instead finished my latest Netflix - Running Scared - and took a nap. It was thunderstorming out so it was perfect weather for sleeping on the couch. Woke up, packed, picked up Russ, Libby, and Liane at the Path, and we made the drive out here.

I'm supposed to be leading worship this weekend but my guitar practice has been about as dead as my worship practices lately, with this idiotic work schedule, so I'm feeling particularly under-prepared for that. Sometimes the only prayer I can muster is asking for the desire to pray more. If God meets us where we're most lost, I should be finding Him pretty soon, I figure.

In his heart a man plans his course,
but the Lord determines his steps.
- Proverbs 16:9

When I was growing up - a kid, a teenager - I always thought I'd marry in my early 20's. Mom and Dad married in their early 20's. So did everyone else's moms and dads. When I went to weddings, that's how old the people getting married were - early 20's. By my late 20's I'd be entering parenthood, perhaps even twice over. I'd have a house and a couple cars. And a couple dogs. I'd be happily married.

This was the way the world worked, and this was my reality. This was how my life was going to be.

I still remember the first day of college. My aunt drops me off, gives me some cash, made a wise remark about how I probably was more than ready for her to leave, and then she took off. And I was left there, surrounded by a couple thousand mostly Christian girls. For the next 4 years.

How I screwed that one up, I'll never know. And yet somehow, before it all began, I already knew...

Later that morning at the first general assembly, the ancient dean of students crowed for us her centuries old mantra: "Look to your left, look to your right, your future mate may be in sight." Or something similar. It rhymed, I remember that much. She told us 80% of us would marry a fellow student of the institution. For many of us, that meant that, although we hadn't met them yet, our future mate was sitting in the same nervous room with us, at that very moment. Probably with their parents still sitting next to them too, helping them make their way through day 1. Not me, though - I was on my own, standing in the back of the auditorium, not knowing a soul in the room, and ready to do this college thing. And I was also vehemently opposed to the idea that I would be marrying someone I met there.

To this day, I don't know why that was. Perhaps it was just the rebellious streak I was on at that age - I wouldn't be grouped with the herd - I suppose. But, deep down, somewhere, I knew that my future mate wasn't going to be someone from the 4 years to come. I knew it right then and there. And time would prove me right. But it still took time for my preconceptions about my future to change.

Being surrounded by that many girls, and being free from an upbringing that had made girls all but taboo, and being the generally attractive single guy I was, I was soon dating. I enjoyed it, having a girl actually interested in you as a person - you above any other guy walking around that place. Someone to sit with at breakfast. Someone to go to the movies with, someone to study with. Someone to talk to on the phone when you were lying on your bed falling asleep, a few hundred yards away from her on hers. It was nice. And I still knew that I wouldn't be marrying someone from there. I had my doubts at times - but for the most part it was straight knowledge, strong as the first day, standing alone in the back of that auditorium. I think maybe it was somewhere around the middle of my college experience when I first started to realize that I might be in my mid-twenties when I was getting married, not the early 20's I had always imagined.

Pretty soon college spat me out, the same way it took me in - completely alone and ready to take on the next thing coming my way. Senior year went way south for me in the relationship realm - you can't go much lower than a painful breakup with the girl of your dreams. For one thing, you learn to stop having those kind of dreams.

I knew coming out of that storm that I needed to be single for a while just to get back to a healthy emotional state. I had been pretty heavily invested, so it took me a while - maybe a year or two. Not more than two, I don't think.

Around the end of that second year out of college, I moved to the NYC area and began another new chapter. Still alone. Busy with life. Not really thinking about the fact that I was fast burning through my mid twenties. And then they were gone.

I woke up this morning and I was 28. Officially in my late twenties, and as alone as I was 6 years ago leaving college, and as I was 10 years ago starting college. Every bit as far from where I thought I'd be in life as I was from it back then, before reaching the preconceived age. Probably a lot further. I'm not saying I wish things had worked out differently - I wasn't nearly ready for marriage in my early 20's. But now I sometimes wonder in passing whether or not I'll be married in my early 30's. There's almost zero chance it would happen before then, and if it doesn't happen by then, chances are it won't happen at all. Now, 10 years wiser than I was when I knew there was no one in that auditorium for me, I wonder if there's anyone out there for me at all. I don't know if there is or not.

Somehow I'm ok with that. Its not an easy thing to explain, quite frankly. I am content with life, but I still feel there is something missing - and not in that way like I'm missing out on High Def television or a leather couch or something else I could go out and buy. Something missing in that way that makes each life experience - waking up, going to work, eating and drinking, relaxing and playing, going to sleep - makes each of them feel somewhat incomplete. And I believe they really are, because we get the most complete joy out of anything when we can share it with someone.

Now, even if there is someone out there, it will be different from what I always had imagined. There won't be the more carefree vitality and animated passion of young love. I'll be older, I'll have seen more of the world, I'll have been an adult on my own - longer than my parents ever were. And unless she's a younger girl, she'll likely be much the same way. Its like this: the other day I sat on the side of my bed and put my shoes on the way I always sit on the side of my bed and put my shoes on. And then it just kind of hit me - I realized that, if she's out there, she'll likely never lay there and watch me and love the fact that this is just what I do - the way she might have if she had been with me through the twenties and seen me sit there to put my shoes on every day. She'll have her own things like that too - maybe the way she puts her makeup on or answers the phone or folds the laundry - things that I might never stop to love and appreciate about her because we missed younger years together. We'll have missed out on at least some of what we might have imagined.

You do lose your imagination with age. I never used to believe it - its just a little at first but then it starts to go faster. Reality replaces it - cold, hard reality. You realize that your ideas about the future are probably much more accurate, but you also realize something else important. You realize that the you of 10 years ago had absolutely no idea where you would be in 10 years. And dangerous hope springs from this, because that means the you of right now might just - despite all its lost inspirations and gained substantialities - it might just not have any idea where the you of 10 years from now will be.

When I was growing up - a kid, a teenager - I always thought I'd marry in my early 20's.

Boy was I wrong.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.
- John 3:8

The problem with working nights is that you have to try to sleep during the day, which no one should have to do. I have enough trouble trying to sleep at night, for crying out loud. Usually I hit the wall around 4am or so, but then you just push through and by the time 8am comes you're driving home wide a-freakin-wake. When you do fall asleep you wake up 4 hours later with a headache like you only slept for 5 minutes. Then its time to blog, shower, and go start the magic all over again.

And for the life of me I can not find a better project to save me from this...project.

Messes with your weekends too, when you have them, when you try to be up while normal people are up. Friday night was out at Naked Lunch with D and some work kids, Saturday was struggling to say awake until I picked up Darin and Sonny at the airport on the way back from their missions trip to Gulfport, MS. Sunday was a 9am exec committee meeting for the youth group leaders, church, final prep meeting for the youth group missions trip, and then over to Cregan and Mindi's with Jenny for a bit. And that evening a bunch of peeps from the Hoboken church came over for the annual St. Anne's festival celebrated on our roof. Basically we get food from the festival and then bring it upstairs to chill away from the sweaty festival people. And usually there's throwing of Zeppoles off of our roof but this year the line was too long for them. The lengths we go to for tradition.

Monday I made a run out to Ikea. Best time to go, found the sheet set I needed in 5 minutes, grabbed some impulse-buy candles, and found a nice replacement for my dresser, which is coming apart right on schedule - 6 years after I got it at Ikea. Checked out bed-frames briefly too - mine seems to be holding up, but I did get it when I got the dresser, so its suspect.

Grabbed some groceries and a sushi lunch at Whole Foods - first time eating sushi by myself, which was an adventure. Socks at TJ Maxx and bug spray for the missions trip at Target and then it was time to lug everything upstairs and get ready for work. Which is what I have to do again now.

Time for Thursday linkery...like good ol times.

How to beat pac-man for good.

Guess where I'll be August 4th.

The best show on TV is on the web this summer.

How do you steal a bike in NYC? Any way you want.

Apparently we're killing the bees that make our food supply possible. Great. In other news, I'm investigating a career in bee-keeping.

A riveting slide-show from the New Yorker - letters read by those serving in Iraq. Part of a preview for a new book compiled of the same, which I will be picking up.

I got another hit on a Where's George bill. So far its been a very underwhelming site for me.

Peanut Gallery - MST3K your own movies - brilliant!

Things I figured out. Ok, not me, but other people.

What makes women happy. I like how it doesn't even really answer the question definitively.

I want a Firefox extension to...

New York Brain Terrain

Wine Log

There, that gets me back to only one line of tabs open in Firefox. That's what we call progress these days.

4:04 AM. I don't even know what day it is anymore.

The US Postal Service's largest processing facility is located in Secaucus, NJ. On top of a majority of the domestic mail sent throughout the northeast, it manages all international and military mail, coming in or out of the the entire eastern half of the states. That means trucks. Trucks from other postal facilites. Trucks from the piers. Trucks from the airports. Trucks from the trains. Trucks. Thousands of them. Actually only the trailer parts. Technically the truck is the tractor part that pulls the trailer, and the trailer is the part that the trucks drop off here, full of mail waiting to be processed and reinserted into another empty trailer. So, thousands of trailers. Less trucks.

Anyway. We're here putting in a new system to track them, or something. All I know is that these are the worst hours I've ever worked in my life, ever. This week has been 7pm-7am shifts, which always turn out to be a good deal longer than 12 hours. And that's about all I have to say about it.

So...since sis was in town for the holiday...I really don't remember much besides work. Sundays after church we've been having our prep meetings for the missions trip, and this past Friday was the annual Dorney Park trip, but other than that its all been a big blur of work.

Speaking of the missions trip, you can help support me by praying for me - I'll be helping lead the youth group as we help rebuild in New Orlean's 9th Ward area from August 12th through the 19th. You can also help support me with your wallet, here (you'll find my name in the drop-down under the "Katrina Youth Team" section).

I'm thankful even in this valley of overworkingness for good friends and kind words and providential encounters of late that have all combined to reignite my desire to investigate pursuing an MDiv in the near future. Even if I do make my promotion - perhaps especially if I make it - next month, I think I will be filling out paperwork and visiting a few schools. I'm not saying that my mind has been made up, and there certainly needs to be a good deal more prayer - and likely a concerted effort at a return to daily writing for a number of months - but I suppose I am starting to lean more heavily in that direction.

Three more nights of getting home and having breakfast before passing out for a few hours of tortured daytime sleep and then I'm off for the weekend. Maybe blog then. Doubt it. And I want an MBA again because why?

They say that when a man faces his destiny, his destiny ends, and he becomes the man that he really is. - Mos Def, as Eddie Bunker in 16 Blocks

Time for another clearing of the firefox tabs and general excusing of myself for not posting much at all lately. In that order, this evening.

You can pay money to see this guy shock himself with a dog collar. The internet yet again bestows another manifold blessing upon us. You can also pay to have him not shock himself, in which case you are the one that should be shocked.

The Downtown Boathouse puts on free kayaking on the Hudson for people on the weekends and holidays during the summers, and its all volunteer run/funded. I'm out of town in DC this weekend, but I hope to volunteer with them some this summer, at some point. Meanwhile, if you're a cute, single gal in DC, this weekend is your big chance to meet the Daves (however I'll be the only single one, this time).

In other free-in-NYC-during-the-summer-news, Philharmonic in the Park. I'll be there on the 12th. Ladies of NYC, this is your big chance.

Music.metafilter.com

Your morbid link of the day is last words from pilots of downed planes.

The Modern List could have been a cool site if it wasn't so freaking small.

Scary because its true.

The Great New Wonderful might be as close as I'll ever come to watching a movie that has anything whatsoever to do with 9/11.

This is the only online apparition of that French cafe I had brunch at a couple of weeks ago that I've been able to find. Apparently its remained completely unlisted elsewhere - impressive.

Best burgers in the city (shake shack dropped to like 6th!).

Funny how this one didn't make very big waves in the media, huh?

OK, that was as far as I was able to get before I had to leave for our farewell dinner for the seniors in the youth group. Always a bittersweet event - and it always makes me feel older, like a parent sending their child off to college, in a sense. Except I get to do it every year. It was at Jerry's in Soho, which despite the external facade has great ambiance inside, complemented by equally above-par service. Food didn't really do it for me, though.

Worked in the West Village office today - glad to be back there in a sense, I really love that area. I just wish it was filled with more single women and fewer gay men, but we can't have our cake and eat it too, I guess.

Had a good holiday weekend. Friday was quiet. Saturday was helping a friend with way too many material belongings move to Hoboken, and then golfing with Ko that afternoon. I hit par on the second hole - that's all I have to say about that. Sunday I caught church and then brunch with 'tina - a friend from Grover days. Then off to JFK via train to pick up Margy. I left my super-umbrella on the subway, garh, but at least Margy showed up dressed in all black with black luggage - I was so impressed, what with her looking for all the world like a local. We caught the evening service, I was able to introduce her to Pastor K on his way out, and then we caught a ride back to the boken. Monday we biked to the ferry, up the west side highway, did the free kayaks, biked the loop in the park, back to the WSH, back over by ferry, back home. It was a blast, but it was hot out so we were wiped out after. Sushi dinner late with the roommate - I have officially inducted sushi - well, the tamer forms of it - into the hall of foods Dave will eat. That leaves pretty much everything but things that are alive, things that are a bug, things that are eyeballs, and Ethiopian food still outside the hall.

For the fourth we were quite patriotic, we got up early and took sis to the Statue of Liberty, which is like my 9 billionth time there, but its not something that's easy to do without a local - takes about 9 billion times as long - so I don't mind tour guiding. Then a BBQ with some of the old Hoboken church kids, and then sis dragged me down to the waterfront to watch the fireworks. I am getting old - for the first time I actually wanted to watch them from my deck.

Put her on a plane Weds. morning and it was back to work for me.

So, there you have it - a real blog post. Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863

One year ago, today, I wrote this. Funny how fast 2 years go.

Scary, even.

I don't really have stats, or even estimated stats, like I did last year. Blogger says I've written 488 posts, but, as I speculated last year, I'm almost certain that number is drastically low. I'd guess I'm more in the range of 600 in 2 full years of fairly regular blogging. Who knows how many words that means at this point. A lot.

I've started using Google Analytics, which is good, has more features than I know what to do with, but to give you any stats would be pretty meaningless as I only started using it about 4 months ago. Which was the same time I started on the Royal Caribbean project in Miami. Which was the same time I started working round the clock and completely missed any regular blogging. So traffic tanked.

I guess my blogging has been a fairly good testament to my life in general lately. Crazy, irregular, all over the place. The Royal Caribbean project management wanted me to go to Salt Lake City to do some side work on the project this week, but I turned them down on the advice of my Career Counselor and HR Rep in the hopes of finding a more long term role. The idea is that if I get promoted at the end of summer to manager, I should already be in a role that I can be promoted in, on that project, rather than having to sell myself as a fresh manager to a new project, which could be a problem. If.

So - my summer will probably be less enjoyable than last, because I'll be on another new project working my tail off to make good first impressions, just like I was for the last 4 months. And then, if I get promoted (if), my workload/responsibilities go up up up and blogging goes...can you guess? The idea, if I get promoted, is to give it a year of dedicated effort, to at least get it on my resume, and then see where I'm at and consider further schooling. And, if no promo, the idea is to start looking at more schooling immediately. And so, quietly on a Thursday night in late June, the gauntlet has been thrown down.

The problem is I still haven't decided on which of my three schooling options to go with, however at this point I'm leaning towards the least temporally practical option.

I think I need a girlfriend to make me go to business school.

Happy birthday blog.

Ugh. I'm back to being unstaffed and I still can't find it in me to throw up a blog post. What gives?

I think I've been partying a little too hard to make up for all that time of working too hard. Friday was catching up on paperwork and then that evening out in the city for Dave's girlfriend Jen's birthday party. Good times at the Sugar Bar. Saturday was our first meeting with the leader/youth team that is going to New Orleans for our missions trip in August. It lasted the better part of the afternoon then I headed home to start cleaning up for the evening. That night we had people over. Not a party - just opened our doors.

Next thing you know its in the wee hours and I'm swing dancing and getting my hip hop on and before you know it I'm getting digits...crazy.

Sunday was church and then Dave and I tried to get out to the last round of the US Open at Winged Foot. Because of our late start, we got stuck in crazy traffic, and decided not to even bother just trying to see the last hour and sit in terrible traffic coming back, so we turned around and got back to Dave's place in 20 minutes (it had taken us 2 hours going there).

On the way to the evening service Dave's dad showed me his sermon notes. I've always wondered what they looked like. He has his own strange version of short-hand that makes them all but illegible. I found that rather interesting.

After church Dave and I saw Cars - everything Pixar touches turns to pure gold, in my humble opinion. Monday and Tuesday were working from home - trying to find the right next project/position to get on, and Tuesday eve I headed over to Dave's to help him move some furniture as his mom is having their place repainted. Then we took off for more poker at 45 Wall. I dropped $50 to play 3 hands, basically. Total joke. I lose every freakin time I play there. So I didn't get home until early in the morning today.

So there you are. Tomorrow, there will be a blog post. Tomorrow is an important day.

(Addendum: Oh, and Monday I had a rather wonderful lunch at Le Granne - 9th and 21st, so new you won't find it on menupages or citysearch - followed by cupcakes at Billy's and a stroll through Chelsea Market and the Piers to boot. Cupcakes not so much my thing, but the company was.)

I have become a slave of sorts to my Firefox tab option. Right now I have about 40 open and that's roughly average. There's a few I always keep open - del.icio.us' popular list, Lifehacker.com, Metafilter.com, and my Gmail. Pretty much need those. But the rest are all things that I'm either a) meaning to bookmark to del.icio.us, or blog, or both. So here's to closing down some tabs...

Nathan is one of the guys in the youth group I work with at church - this is his robotics blog. This is a totally rad ad that Nathan sent me the link to.

The Vanguard.org is an online community of Americans who believe in conservative values, the free market and limited government as the best means to bring hope and ever-increasing opportunity to everyone, especially the poorest among us. I'm not the ultimate conservative by any means, but I definitely like the last part of their purpose. Found via Amy Bedsole, who I met via blogging. And, ironically, Wayne Johnson, from my parent's church back in Sacto, is a member of the board.

Tonight's main feature - good stuff to read:

Overheard in the Office is based off of the original Overheard in New York. Both are pretty good reads, albeit the potential language/content warning.

Found magazine is another interesting one. I may have linked to this long ago, but I just found it again recently - pun intended.

Timothy McSweeny woke to a sandy tongue and a reddened elbow.

Talk about incredible design...

10 steps to guarantee failure.

Another sign of the Ipod apocalypse. Personally, Idont follow the trend.

I've avoided the Sudoku fever but in case you haven't - here's your solution.

Wikimapia makes a wiki out of Google Maps. Check out the info for Central Park - courtesy of yours truly, baby.

I missed out on the Big Apple BBQ this weekend but I'll be planning on it next year.

I want a Firefox extension to...

Fo.rtuito.us looks like some kind of social networking similar in format to del.icio.us - that's about all I can figure out about it at this point.

I won't read this article because its blasphemy.

Here's this week's Christian Carnival.

Well - that cut my tabs almost in half. Still have a lot of reading cut out for me tomorrow.

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it..."
- Mal. 3:10

The above is the only place in the Bible where God actually tells us to test Him - the only place where it is not considered a sin to do so.

Its the end of the year for youth group, which means we're on our 7th checkpoint - Others First. A couple weeks back the passage for the lesson was from Deuteronomy 15, another passage promising abundant blessing upon God's people if only they would trust in the Lord's promise that the land He was giving them had more than enough for everyone, and share accordingly with the needy among them:

Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be open-handed toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.

I'm constantly being challenged to give more. There's a billion opportunities, from the homeless ministries in the city, to missions trips to New Orleans (one of which I'll be going on this summer with the youth group), to the people in Darfur...there's just need, as far as the eye can see.

I don't give nearly as much as I'd like right now, and I keep telling myself its because of my debt and that the prudent thing to do is to eliminate it first and then give from a state of liquidity - in the end I'll be giving more that I would pay in interest otherwise. The real challenge will be to see if I truly can find it in me to give radically when I do break free of my debt.

But I do give some, and that's the key - at least for now. Even if it's only a little - it is the first step in the right direction. I always think of my childhood friend, Aaron. His mom was raising he and his brothers with no father around to help pay the bills, and they struggled more than most to make ends meet. But that lady paid her tithe, on her precious little income. I never knew it at the time, of course, but years later my mom mentioned it by way of pointing out that 10% of a precious little is a whole lot more than 10% of a much larger sum. Its a matter of perspective, not volume, at the end of the day.

As with the rich young ruler, giving is an issue of the heart, not the wallet.

Wow...time for a nice long catch-up post. I've been juggling so much lately I feel like I'm not sure if I just lost my horse or found a rope.

Rewind...last post was June 2nd. Early in the morning after my big night out in Miami - actually the first night I had taken there to do something other than work in like 2 or 3 months. Friday was a few hours of work before hopping on a flight back to NYC. Just in time for a big rainy weekend. Redeemer had a prayer conference and it was really great - led by the pastor of the PCA church plant in Vancouver, BC - same church we went to last year at the start of our ski trip in Whistler. He was passionate and practical - good combination.

Saturday afternoon I had a couple hours to relax then headed to Arlene's Grocery in the East Village to see Like Summer, the band led by Steve Gretz, husband to my college friend Allyson, who I don't think I'd scene since before their wedding. The band's set got pushed back and I had a lesson to write for youth group still, so I left early and got to work on that. Sunday was church, youth group, and then I took off to finish packing and catch an evening flight to Chicago.

Spent the week in St. Charles, Ill. - about an hour outside of downtown Chi-town, training at the company's big training facility there - came to find out its a shared facility, but everyone's there for pretty much the same deal - some kind of training related to their consulting work. Its surreal - like going back to college. People going out every night, seeing the same faces in the caf, running for a class you're late for...people not showing up for class on Friday morning. Played an evening of soccer with a bunch of the guys in my program from Europe - they were good, real good, but I represented the states well. Worked out a couple times, and spent a few hours working on my short game as well, which was awesome.

Lest you get me wrong - it was a lot of work, too, so by the time Friday rolled around I was dragging. They have us share limos for rides back to the airport / city, so I hopped in one that was to drop me at Dawn's place, and promptly went straight to sleep. Woke up an hour or so later and we were still in traffic. Dropped my stuff off at Dawn's and headed for the Blues Festival at the park downtown. Great music, plus, the museum was free, so I got to spend an hour or two drawing Hopper's Nighthawks. I can't think of a better way to end a tough week than relaxing in front of that painting.

Met up with Dawn and we headed out to Nick's Uptown to hear some more blues, and for Dawn to cavort with her underground Swing scene counterparts. These kids were good. So good it inspired me to get back into dancing - and there's a class I'm signing up for through church this summer. Thanks for your previous comment, btw, Dawn.

Crashed for a couple hours then caught a morning flight out of rainy Chicago back to windy New York. Saturday I was useless for the most part, Sunday was the same - church, youth group. But no laundry / packing that afternoon, b/c this week I am WORKING FROM HOME. Woot.

So, that's what I'm doing today. Got a bit more, then a 6pm call, then tomorrow. Then I'm taking Weds-Fri off, save for one conference call I need to be on. I'm going to use the time to research some schools. Still not sure where I want to go, but its time to stop putting things off. Pretty soon I'll be dead without having made up my mind, and that would be not very good.

So, that said, I'm going to try and do a regular week of posting, for old time's sake. Check back tomorrow!

(there might even be new pictures posted...oooooh...)

I feel so odd when I go out.

Maybe its where I'm going out - New York City and Miami for the most part.

Its just not my scene. Tonight I saw literally hundreds of beautiful women, and thousands of dollars of alcohol being consumed. People dressed, looking, acting, dancing, and in every other respect basically being about as cool as humanity can define the term.

I sat there, dressed well, looking and acting the part, trying to be as cool as possible...for what?

Its clear what most of the guys are there for. But I'm not looking to take a girl home at the end of the night. That quality sadly does nothing to separate me from the rest of the crowd. Its clear what most of the girls are there for too, and I'm not one who's there to go out of my way to provide them with the attention they're looking for. Which does serve to separate me to some degree, but not really a positive one...more of an aloof one.

What I wonder is why don't Christians go out? Am I limited to meeting them at church? Isn't that a place I should go to worship, not meet women? Why aren't there places where I can go out, have a good time, dance, have a drink, laugh with my friends...but not have an alternate agenda AND not be concerned that the other 99% of the people there have one either?

Why is it so freaking hard to find someone who sees the world the way you do? Am I really that far outside the norms?

Wow. Well, I didn't miss my blog's birthday. Not gonna do that. But June marks 2 years. We'll have to think up something special, especially since we've been so rare at blogging lately. A big surprise. Stick around, as Ahnold would say. 10 points if you can name the movie.

Happy June, btw. Its already summer, wow.

So I haven't been able to blog but I have a number of posts I've been able to either a) write while off-line, and save for blogging later, or b) write while on-line but not have time for publishing. What follows is one of the b's. An IM convo I had at work today with a co-worker of mine. I realize that its not 100% my writing, but it is an exciting opening to a conversation about faith.

Context: I had just figured out how to solve a systemic analysis issue at work, and my co-worker thanked me...

Co-worker: Thanks again. How'd you figure it out?

David: the ways of the oracle are mysterious to the minds of mere mortals (yes, I call myself the oracle, from time to time, at work)

Co-worker: Are oracles immortal?

David: yes

well. my soul is. everyone's soul is.

Co-worker: wow immortality + req pro expertise. impressive. (req pro is the database system we use at our current client)

David: i know, sounds like a d&d character

Co-worker: ?

David: dungeons and dragons

"my oracle has immortality and a +5 req pro expertise"

Co-worker: ... never played

cards right?

David: yeah

i never played either

parents forbid it

Co-worker: why?

David: conservative christian upbringing

all that goth stuff was the devil

Co-worker: is d&d considered goth?

i guess so huh.

David: yeah.

Co-worker: would you play now?

There is chocolate here btw.

David: i'm allergic to chocolate

Co-worker: really??

David: i don't have time for card games save poker now

Co-worker: I kind of wish I were.

David: yes really

not bad, but it messes w/ my sinuses

David: so what do you think happens when you die?

Co-worker: I haven't decided yet.

I think there is heaven. But I also think there is a big void after death too. So I don't know.

David: its kind of an important thing to decide on - hah

so do you believe there is hell?

Co-worker: it's not really my choice.

I will have to wait and see!

David: what do you mean its not really your choice?

Co-worker: yes, if there is a heaven, there is a hell.

You said it's important to decide on

David: good - i'm glad you get that there must be a hell if there is a heaven - i can't stand it when people think there's just heaven

Co-worker: well there has to be. no way around it.

David: exactly

but i still don't get why you don't think what you believe is your choice

Co-worker: you mean I can choose to believe one thing or another?

David: doesn't everyone?

Co-worker: But it would be a cognitive choice. Like, "I choose to believe there is heaven and hell"

instead of "I believe in it"

David: doesn't saying you believe in it necessarily assume that you made the choice to believe at some point?

Co-worker: yes but at this point, i would be forcing the choice.

David: how so?

Co-worker: because i can't decide right now.

David: why not?

why wait? what if a tidal wave wipes us all out this afternoon?

Co-worker: then you would go to heaven.

or, one would hope. but i do not know what would happen to me.

David: what do you think would happen to you?

best guesstimate

(btw, lest you think i'm crazy about the tsunami - we only narrowly avoided it this month: http://savelivesinmay.com/)

Co-worker: brb - conf call

what do I think would happen?

i think I've lived a good life and done good. but following the scripture, I'd probably go to hell.

But i don't believe that entirely either.

I could be treading on very contentious ground, but I'll share with you -

It is hard for me to accept that because I don't live my life exactly as dictated, I would burn for eternity, even though I have not harmed others, have treated otheres as I would have them treat me, and have lived virtuously.

I guess the problem is, virtuous is subjective, and without an objective definition, anyone could say they are a good person and thus should not go to hell.

Therefore, it is hard for me to decide if there is a heaven/hell or nothing at all, because while I believe in a lot, it is hard to accept that it's a binary decision and as a result I would get a 0.

David: that is an extremely well thought-out point of view

but, sadly...it leaves you hanging.

i think a lot of people reach that conclusion, or something like it, and assume it is a dead end. and they never get around to addressing the paradox before they die.

Co-worker: I think my internal conflict stems from the fact that I want to believe.

But you are exactly right, that I have reached a dead end that it's a paradox that I won't be able to address.

David: well that's a quitters point of view

"paradox that I won't be able to address"

Co-worker: You mean, I should keep digging until I find a resolution?

David: yes

Co-worker: That is not a bad point.

What if I dig my whole life and do not find one?

David: the important thing is that you dig. if you give up on digging, you'll never find the answer

and then you'll be like all those other people, kind of blindly throwing your life into eternity hoping you land on your feet

Co-worker: Yes I think it's important to keep digging..

David: so how are you digging?

Co-worker: slowly learning more about it I suppose.

David: ok...well, watch out for tsunamis in the mean time

Co-worker: I will but if it's my time...

David: Co-worker B and i were talking about this famous extreme skiier we knew who fell off a cliff trying to save a friend back in april

he was talking about what a horrible way to go it was - not even having time to make peace with yourself or God

but that made me think about how it could happen to any of us - car accident, heart attack, whatever

Co-worker: yes it could

David: anyway that's why i think its important to sort things out rather than just taking it as it comes

eternity is a whole freakin lot longer than this brief stay on earth

Co-worker: I agree. its hard to force a choice that is not natural.

we'll talk more about it later

gotta run

thanks for the convo.

David: have a nice night

Co-worker: it's not a topic i get to atlk about often