untitled.

Ok so I am going to start something new with the blog...this summer. I will begin posting on Sunday's a weekly plan of action for blog topic as well as music [please note the music will not always be from a different artist I will sometimes use the same artist over and over again]. During the following week I will post on whatever I have set as the days topic. My goal is to get a larger reader base, shouldn't be hard as I believe it is currently zero. Other than that I hope to bring a lot of new content to the blog, I will post my thoughts on religion/doctrine, music, movies, and really whatever I feel like talking about. I will however stick to my topic list so what I might end up doing is setting up a general topic for every day and on the day dedicated to religion I will post about a religious topic and so on. There are just some beginning concepts and much of this may not happen but I want to post more often and hopefully build up a reader base so that conversations can happen. Well this is all I had to say I need to get off this and do some more reading for class... One love.

A Eulogy...

Now I didn't personally ever get to have Dr. Derryberry as a professor in my time here at SBU. I did however, have the chance to encounter him a few times and know several good friends who did have him as a teacher. Dr. Derryberry every time I encountered him was a smiling, happy man. The couple of times I did encounter him he also left an impression on me even though he said but few words any of those times but I will remember, particularly in this time, how his simple little action of telling me I was a gentleman and a scholar impressed on me. I cannot say for certain but I am very positive that he was the first person to ever say that to me and for sometime such a thing has struck me. I feel like neither of those things. I do not spend much of my time in study, I do not dedicate my life to the pursuit of knowledge how am I a scholar? I also do not find myself very often opening doors for ladies and elder men who are my senior, how then am I a gentleman? I cannot answer these questions and I don't know if it matters if I can or cannot what matters is that a man who is no longer with us impressed on me in a way that has made me look at my life. I say to you today the world lost a saint but his life has encouraged many young people to not give up on dreams or themselves. While SBU sits in mourning this morning our lives will continue on tomorrow and the day after that. Dr. Derryberry will live in the memory of many a student and colleague and someday we will have the chance to encounter him again but until then we bid him goodbye and wish that bright scholar the rest he so deserves. One love.


εἰμί ὀλιγόπιστος מרנא תא – Lord, come I am of little faith.

P.S. I wanted to add this in because I feel like it is appropriate.

Jumbled thoughts

So this blog is inspired by the live webcast Don Miller did just a few hours ago. Well anyways I'm gonna post some stuff that caught my attention while he was talking. Everything comes from the notes I took during it when he talked about his thoughts on stuff and I will supplement my own thoughts in.

First thing is some talk about passivity, specifically in a man. At least anyone who has had spiritual formation with Kurt Caddy, if not everyone, have been introduced to the idea that the curse God gave to men is to be passive. Well passivity is a terrible thing, men should be decisive now that is not to say that a married man shouldn't consider what his wife thinks about something or seek council from other men on something but what I am saying is that we shouldn't go to our wife, girlfriend, or whoever and kind of beat around the bush to get them to tell us what they want to do so we can go and sound spiritual by coming back a little later and saying something like 'Oh I prayed about things and God is leading me to '. Now when a question dealing with passivity came up for Don to answer the thing that initially caught me with it was that Don said that "passivity in a man is destroying life". Now in keeping with his recent theme of writing a better life story Don followed this up by saying something close to "if you aren't active in your life someone else is writing your story" and well needless to say while someday when I am married I am gonna love my wife more than almost anything I do NOT want her to dictate my story for me. One last little thought on this and it leads into my next thought Don said one other thing at this point which stood out to me, "Men need to create and protect an environment where love is safe." I love that thought and cannot agree more with Don there.

Now for my next thought process for tonight! Don was talking about initializing change in the country and talk turned to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his nonviolent resistance. Now there wasn't quite as much here as I would have liked but the point was made nonetheless. Nonviolent resistance works. Period. Then there was something of a challenge I picked up and yet this is something I am ever trying to work on because it is the second most important commandment in the Bible only following "Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." It is to love your neighbor as yourself. The challenge is to learn to genuinely love my enemies. This is difficult for me and really everyone I know. My roommate pisses me off so much so often and I just want to punch him in the face because he is my enemy a lot of the time... Well I guess long story short I need to learn to love him and not just kind of put up with him or love him like I love my dog.. I need to genuinely love him and care about what happens to him.. When my roommate pisses me off I should be praying for him not wishing bad things to happen. This lead me to consider something Don says he is doing to help with this... Don said he is using insulting people, those people who bash him on his blog which you can find at www.donmilleris.com , to learn to love his enemies. I think this is a good way to start. I know there are a lot of people who do not like me for some reason or another I can use that fact to learn to love my enemies by learning to love those people! Ok so this post is getting huge and I'm only like half done! I have two more thoughts from the webcast to share and then I will give a few closing questions I think and be finished.

Third thought from the webcast, Don mentioned at one point that while he does not believe that any church has it one hundred percent right by any means... He thinks the great diversity of churches that we have is necessary. Now what I got out of this is that this vast number of denominations and inner denominational differences found at different churches is necessary for the Church (note when I use Church big C I mean the body of believers church little c is for the building) to thrive. It was briefly noted during this portion of the webcast that several of these denominations and such came about as a result of people trying to live in a more Christ like way. That is the people who founded them saw something amiss in the current system, this doesn't mean it was all bad just part of it, and tried to fix it and make that thing more Christ like. I do however, feel that in fixing that one thing many of these new collections of believers messed up something the previous collection did get right and that is partially why there is no perfectly correct church, that and the fact that we as humans, post fall humans, are in some way flawed and indeed this is why we need Christ but that is a discussion for another time! Now for my last webcast thought!

At the very end there was a question about this so-called "Cool Christianity" Don defined this as "taking a false god to entice people to God." I think this is a pretty neat concept. I don't think it is necessarily the best way to do this but like Don kept saying at this point we live in a fallen world and therefore nothing will be perfect. The interesting thing to me is that this system works and people come to God through this all the time. So I kind of think the Church, particularly that part built up of elderly believers, should reconsider the judgment that gets passed off on younger believers, those believers like me who have piercings and tattoos (I do not have tattoos yet I do plan to get some though) us long haired "hippie" types. We are bringing people to Christ with this so-called "Cool Christianity" and it seems obvious that what worked thirty years ago with the now elderly believers isn't going to work in today's society. Well that about wraps up my thought process from the webcast I would like to pose a question or two of my own now for your consideration!

How can YOU help make a safe environment for love where YOU live?

Is there something YOU can do to make YOUR story better and to help those people involved in YOUR life also live better stories?

Is there a false god in YOUR life? If so what is it?

What does it look like for US to really, truly love OUR enemies? -- I know the Bible has stuff to say here but, lets face it I can look that up and see and ideal example of it but I want to know what it looks like in YOUR life and in MY life.


Well I hope this stimulates some thoughts for you as it did for me. One love.

The Stories of Our Lives...

So lately, I guess really tonight mostly I've been thinking about the stories of our lives again. As you probably remember awhile back, at Christmas to be exact, I read the book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years and I was thoroughly impressed with it. Since I read the book I have been trying to write a better story with my life. One way I'm trying to do that is with a new program that I got from Jonny for my laptop which is like a useful version of parental controls. Well so far, and it has only been a day now, its working pretty good. Well to keep moving along I will cut that to all of the discussion there. Other examples include but are not limited too: Taking over as the primary leader at White House, started to exercise some so that I can do new cooler things in the future when I am in better shape to do them, talking to some older men who I respect about things to try and build my relationship with God by understanding things and to become a better leader, and the last example is I have been expanding in my conversations with friends, that is I am trying to talk about new things instead of the same old crap we always discuss. Now to be fair not all of that really seems like it is making for a whole lot more of an exciting story BUT I think that while it isn't directly effecting the story right now it is working towards a new more exciting end of the story in the long run. This is kind of like the better ending of two endings in a movie, the other one, which has been cut, is a crappy alternate ending in which the hero doesn't get the girl because he can't save her in time. Which brings me into my next thought, do I need a girlfriend/wife to make the story the best? Now I know in the Bible there is talk from Paul on both sides of this issue, at one point he says to get married and yet at another time he says it is best to stay single... This is kind of confusing.

I kind of wonder sometimes... I look around me while at campus and I see all these happy little couples and sometimes it really really makes me mad.. I can't stand it. I don't understand what is so repulsive about me to women, especially a group of women who time after time have said that they want a good guy not just some muscle bound clown. Yet when I look at the couples I see something missing, the nice guy. Also to drag this down the tube a little I feel like I'm losing all my friends to women. I mean I'm happy for them but for crying out loud when they all have girlfriends and I'm still the single guy I'm like an extra wheel and I feel like crap then and so I selfishly want them to remain single because it really bites to be alone. Anyways.. Enough griping about women... I guess I have one last thought and then I will be done! In writing these stories shouldn't we work into them a glimpse into what it is that drives us? I mean, when someone looks at my story should they just see me doing cool stuff like hiking the Grand Canyon or kayaking? or should my story reflect the drive Jesus has given me to live a life of excitement because it brings glory to Him when I live life to the fullest? I think the second is the option we should have. Yes having that exciting stuff is important to a good story but no good story is driven completely off of the struggles, NO there is other plot which drives the story along and that other plot is what motivates you and me, the heroes of the stories, to do what they do. In closing I challenge you the reader to consider what it is that you can do to change the story of your life a little this week, to make the story more exciting but without cutting out that necessary plot which drives you to do what you do. One love.