to be exact

It has been a week like.....one of those.... one of those weeks that you hope to look back on and laugh about months from now. School is just stupid tuff right now. The things you go through, the hours you take to exit and pursue elsewhere......well 18 to be exact.

Prayer

A dinner coming up- the 28th to exact.

RSVPs..... where are you?

Things out of our hands are so much fun when the fruit is coming...... so damn frustrating when it's not.

The rest of this week will tell- Do people want a free meal and pitch from a couple of misfits about Africa?

We'll see

Always miss you,
Michael

p.s. reunion camping with Dan B. and friends...... yeah that picture

...

This morning was perhaps the best morning i've had in a long time. Maybe it was waking up an hour early, maybe it was the oatmeal, maybe it was the coffee, but it was probably a steady mixture of all the above with a nostalgic layer of flurries to seal the deal. It was good.

Then, I bought The Welcome Wagon's new c.d...... do whatever you have to to get that c.d. (welcome to the welcome wagon)..... One word: Sufjan

I wrote a letter to the editor at the times in Gainesville masked under a title concerning athlete's clueless parents in Hall county......which it was about, but perhaps the title was incomplete.... it should have read, "Athletes, Parents, often have their priorities wrong.....also this town makes me want to vomit for the rest of the day." http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/article/13912/

I'm going through some discipleship with a new believer and friend.... we're going through Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell and Don Golden. Excellent book. In it I fell like Bell finally gives a more complete picture of his theology. Not only that, he finally gets a little specific about certain issues and tragedies in the church. The kid that I am going through the book with, asked me some excellent questions which I must say, I have been asking older, wiser people than me for about 2 years and have yet to receive a biblical answer.
Here are a couple he threw at me:

"I just don't understand, I am reading through the Gospels for myself for the first time, I mean actually reading them, and I just can't reconcile parts of the church to them......."

"......How do so many people in the church support capitol punishment? I see zero basis for it in the scriptures (NEW Covenant scriptures)"

"How does the church advocate violence as much as it does? A 7 year old who can just now read could gather that violence is wrong from the scriptures"

"How does the church support war as much as it does?" "I know in the old testament or covenant or whatever God commanded war, but that was the OLD covenant, what was Jesus and the new covenant for then?"

(If we(gentiles) are grafted into the tree(the Jewish one that is), then we all take part in the new covenant, the way of Jesus.)

I have asked these questions, and not once have I ever been given a biblical answer to justify these things.

I usually get crazy hypotheticals like:

"So you walk in your house and a crazed man on 11 drugs is raping your whole family, would you not kill him?"

"So are you a pacifist? So what about WWII? The Revolutionary War?"

Sadly I never hear scripture supported answers.

And praise God that I do not hear:

Well how about when Jesus picks up the first stone and begins to stone the adulterer? (Of course, that didn't happen)
(It was the law to do so, a law given by God to Moses...So I guess that was Jesus breaking his own law?, or perhaps just giving us a clearer picture of how a person interacts with man in the New Kingdom, perhaps He was saying, "no, more killing will only get us farther from Eden, but forgiveness, forgiveness will get us back there."

I really need to study for a GOVT test,

Michael

Listen to more Jon Foreman, The Welcome Wagon, and Arcade Fire than you are now.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and me being on this site again.

Well after a good time away, I think I will return to this public display of emotion or indifference if for no other reason than to to keep tabs on the family, and get a thing out here and there. So why not start with Benjamin.
If you have yet to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, then watch it and right soon. Well.... uhhh now that I am here and ready to type, not sure what to say. I could take the time to describe the film, deliberately ruin it to be an ass, and tell you my favorite parts..... or you can see it for yourself then call me to have an extensive conversation. Instead, I will just tell you this. As the credits rolled Justen and I just sat there, misty eyed and plotting our life of worth, only to finally get up thinking we were the last to leave, we were the soldiers who were so affected by this masterpiece of a film, that we sat still for a whole ten minutes to try and process..... but as we we crawled out of our seats, I noticed him. Sitting directly behind us was a man, maybe 70 years of age, and his face was....... well.... He was smiling and he was crying and he was silently screaming and ranting on just how beautiful life is..........
.............................................
In other news, i'm about to start my last semester of school....about to try and start over, about to try and create, about to try and love, try and stay in and out of touch, try and find and lose, try and filter, try and balance.

MichaelDavid

(christmas fun in pictures)

I have been sitting in this stuffy lab for some time now.....Not one word, thought, or click in the direction of anything pertaining to school.....Maybe it's listening to Billie Holiday.....Or maybe I have been studying for the last three months, and I, 4th grade style, just don't want to do it....(cue a temper tantrum). I just keep telling myself that a book analysis or a test over medieval art matters in the slightest.

Balance
Every morning it seems I just want to want to strike a better balance.....Holy Spirit/desire/listening/speaking/touching/smelling/crying/laughing/people/school.
And perhaps Jesus' best example of such would be in his ability to be a man and God, all in one human/sweet/holy breath.
sometimes it seems impossible in the midst of my rich man problems: gas lights, homework, people who love me, etc.
Rich man problems are....well nothing almost, not hot or cold, barely bitter sweet.....not trivial enough to ignore them, not serious enough to feel sorry for myself over. This discussion in and of itself: Rich man problems.

Family
From Trey(bro) to Gus to Matt to chris(ty) to Joanna to Robby to Teec to Mom to Dad- The thought of us making dinner in a house we have no business being in on a beach we have no business being able to visit is lovely enough to look my professors in the face and tell them I care. 2 weeks and I'll be "heading down south to the land of the pine".......On my way and see you soon.

Michael

pictures: where I am to where i'll be, if only a short while.

p.s. listen to more Ben Kweller than you are right now- www.myspace.com/benkweller

Not I but Christ....Really?

So- Longboarding the other day, in beautiful downtown Lynchburg, with the lovely Mark Mellette, and Ryan Zimont......Really and truly so relaxing after a week void of sleep and full of books. How do I like all of this.?....?....All this, is coming to a close. But to at least attempt to follow the subject line thought, I will get back on track the best I can.

Longboarding
Down mainstreet, and like any other sunday afternoon, there was no one. That was of course until the honking started. Let me preface the rest of this story with noting that we(you, your friends, and most anything will wheels) have a right to be on the road, especially with two other lanes to your right.

Refusing to drive around, she stayed on the horn for about 20 seconds......then finally, drove around and pulled over......But as she drove around, I saw it, those of us from Lynchburg know it very well, we see it often, a sticker that read Thomas Road Baptist Church's mantra, "Not I, but Christ" So, seeing that she was upset and calling the police, I rode over to her car to talk.....After many attempts to get her to roll the window down to talk, she only gave me a look that was nothing short of deadly. So through the window, real close like, I told her how much I liked her sticker, about 20 times I must have told her, until finally we rode off before her cop in shinning armor showed up.

I don't know what to make of that.
Thank God we weren't a couple of skeptical high school kids, getting all of our stereotypes confirmed.
Have I confirmed stereotypes? Have you? Do we still live in a state of dying to self as long as it does not mean sacrificing our beloved temper or short fuses....our oh so hard to penetrate bubble. But.............. as long as we keep telling ourselves what a good job we are doing, I don't see it really changing. But haven't you heard all of this before, haven't I? Is there anything truly knew to learn. The Kingdom is and has been.
I don't know what to make of that.
But...............
School is close to done and I will see my family. I will see my Guatemalan family(16 days). I will go to weddings and see some love.....it's good to see love, keeps me thinking that one day I might come to understand it a bit.....or something like that......don't care right now, kind of scary. Love you

Michael

And that's how it all started

"When you have insomnia you're never really asleep, and you're never really awake."
-Tyler Durden

I can't sleep. Two out of the last three nights have been spent rolling and staring at the ceiling......So I kind of can't live either....I really do feel moderately like a zombie going from class to class.....But I can doze in class, the sound of a professor regurgitating facts and information can somehow do the trick. So I guess I cant get enough of it. I find myself bubbly at the thought of crawling into my next class and sleeping right in front of my professor. Just bubbly.

miguaekutoicantsleep

pictures include what all faces look like right now

Accept the Cookies

It seems that for the past year or so, one of the few things that God has been showing me- is children.
Well, I should say has showed me as much as he has anyone who so chooses to read through the red letters. We see constantly Jesus' love for children. For probably the same reason we love children. They believe us. Anything we say, they believe. Anything we do, they immitate quite accurately. They love us absolutely.

In the midst of skeptics, Pharisees, and even his disciples constantly questioning Jesus, I can imagine it to have been quite refreashing to have children run to him for simply his touch (Matthew 19:13-15). The rest want a sign (Matthew 16:1-4), but the children just come. Jesus goes as far as saying that unless we become as children, the Kingdom is not for us (Matthew 18:3-4). And considering that same Kingdom is here and now, perhaps Jesus would have us humble oursleves in child-like wonder, here and now.

I then read this passage in Brennan Manning's Ragamuffin Gospel(Visual Edition, I highly reccomend it).

The Kingdom belongs to people who aren't trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior. Twenty centuries later, Jesus speaks pointedly to the preening ascetic trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, to those of us caught up in boasting about our victories in the vineyard, to those of us fretting and flapping about our human weaknesses and character defects. The child doesn't have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn't have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his position to Jesus; he doesn't have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn't have to achieve any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. All he has to do his happily accept the cookies, the gift of the kingdom.

Accept the Cookies