Thirsty

You scored as Roman Catholic . You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you. Roman Catholic 79% Neo orthodox 61% Charismatic/Pentecostal 57% Fundamentalist 50% Classical Liberal 46% Modern Liberal 46% Reformed Evangelical 43% Emergent/Postmodern 43% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 39% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

Why do those words strike such a feeling of pride, joy, happiness within me? I experienced it and thought nothing of it when I first began reading Letters from Thailand shortly after the last December's tsunami. Today I experienced it again when I came across Postcard from London . It's not limited to Bruderhof , either. Any time I learn of a community of believers pulling themselves together and donating souls to places of need, oftentimes for long-term committments.

... is once again pushing the envelope for me. Last year I dropped into it out of the blue, cold, knowing nobody, and vaguely knew a smattering of people afterwards. It was a relatively intimidating experience for me, kowing exactly zero people. At the closing party I shook hands w/ Cardinal George, and had very very distant acquantinces with... oh... 3 people? Which promptly diminished into nothingness. hehe so, maybe not so much pushing the envelope. But kinda. Planting seeds. This time around, I'm heading up the food committee. Fortunately it doesn't really matter that I have like zero experience - great people are surrounding me. I think what I've most enjoyed is the opportunity to spend more time working with people who I kinda knew but didn't have all that much face time with. I like spending lots of time with people, not spending bits and pieces here and there. Wasn't it that dude in Ecclesiastes that said we find joy in our work.. it very much m...

Two friends near and dear to me have recently joined us in the ether. Jackie Shuler and Chris Cooper . Please give them a warm welcome. People usually need a little encouragement that there are, in fact, people interested in what they have to say. Jackie is that crazy redhead who always took up all the couch space throughout my years of rooming with Don. Chris is a track coach at heart, stuck in the shoes of a marketing services professional, helping his friends realize their dreams. Below is my "Friends" subfolder in Bloglines . No particular order, except perhaps the order they were created in, and there are a few that I read but don't happen to be on the list because I'm lazy.

It's people like Elliot Bougis that whet my appetite for immersion . Ah.. Lord is that what I (and maybe, just maybe, therefore, Y ou) want? Update: Matt/Maethelwine too!

Just got back from 7pm Mass @ St. Mike's. The celebrant was a " redemptorist " who said he goes around and gives parish missions but happens to be living at St. Mike's. The parish missions that I've been to have always been really strong and not harsh, but according to my Dad, they used to be a lot... scarier? in the past - it seemed like their purpose was for some top notch preacher to come in and scare the hell out of you, I guess preaching hell and brimstone at it's finest. This guy gave off a slight tone of that, but much more in his style of speaking more than the actual content. Very dramatic, tense, formal. If you only heard him preaching and didn't hear him talking like that throughout the whole Mass, you'd probably assume that he's got the "holier-than-thou" thing down pat. As the celebrant finishes the Eucharistic Prayer (I think it's called that), the consecration, he is holding it aloft and we all go through this form...

Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law. - former abortionist Bernard Nathanson , co-founder and first president of National Abortion Right Action League

All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them. The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. G. K. Chesterton

A movie is an opportunity for a director to focus our observations of life into directions that he deems important, for whatever reasons he sees fit. Sometimes that direction meshes with our own direction, sometimes it doesn't and leaves us pleasantly surprised and entertained. Well I just watched a movie that, while many may find it boring, meshed more closely and directly with my own focus, at least at this point in my life, than any movie ever has before for me. I'm not sure how to word it any more clearly than that. Basically, while I may not agree with all the choices the characters made, I wholeheartedly agree with where the camera zoomed in, what music was playing at what times, the glimmers of emotion that were the primary focus of the movie rather than a juicy sub-plot as they are found in most movies. I guess what I'm saying, is, if you want to see the world the way I see it, watch this movie. Crash . (Not to get your hopes up or anything, like I said, yo...

The Snowsuit Effort ( info , coverage ) - Getting Detroit's homeless into the blogosphere.

Well, as a followup to my " surge of dialogue awareness ", tonight was the infamous night, and it was indeed pretty powerful. Sheila ran the show, providing us with stories, quotes, pictures, sound clips, and just plain up-close-and-personal details on life in Iraq. A coupla points: Want to build peace w/ someone? Sit at a table with them. Eat with them. Set aside your uneasiness, reach out, and sit face to face. Tables are everywhere. We all eat about 3 square meals per day. Violence is not an option . Live by that credo, and alternatives will present themselves. A little tie-in to my own faith journey: People who profess themselves to be Christian usually have a time they can look back on and point out as being when they started that journey, right? Sure, you are born a Christian, but at some point, you have made it your own, nobody else's. Or at least started the process. Well it happened for me at a retreat for high school members of the P.O.P. in the R...

Friday after work I went down to the Goat for a couple of drinks. The occasion was Sabeena's last day of work with our company and Kelly's almost-last day. I'm going to miss both of them.. I don't work as closely with Kelly anymore, but did with Sabeena. When I worked at McDonald's all through high school, the payroll was constantly changing, the average length of employment seeming to be 2 months or so. It's not quite that at Shared Marketing, but it still resembles it, when I think of the state when I arrived and what it is now 21 months later. Oh well, such is the here and now. Not everyone can maintain the record that my Dad has: the only employer change he's gone through since he graduated from college has been in the form of company mergers, and only two of those I believe. An hour and 2 beers later, I ditched early to bike over to Rehab to spend some time with Barrett. This guy is an inspiration to me, so I'm enjoying the opportunity to g...

If you've got a few free moments and feel like being obnoxious, go over to Wanderings and congratulate Don & Jackie on their new status: married ! So let's see... Thursday Did my thing at the Rehab Institute after work, unfortunately not getting out of there in time for running club @ NikeTown, but did get to meet a pretty cool guy at Rehab who I'll be staying in contact with. Biked to my truck, drove to my apartment, packed, drove to pick up JoeJohn , caught a wee bit of traffic just outside Chicago, made it to my parents' place in Muncie by 12:30... very hard to keep the eyes open! Played briefly with Heidi, who stunk like poo poo. Friday Awoke at 7:30, greeted the parents & Greg, bowl of cereal, traded the truck for their suburban (to truck all the guys together in around FW), and on the road by 8:45, at the Courtyard by Mariott by 10:00, met up with Don, then Nick, then Sean. Picked up, tried on, and paid for tuxes. We all made it to Good Shepherd Un...

Human beings are adaptable. That is the assumption upon which I rest my patient but ever-increasing "research" - if it can even be called that - on the global internet. It started out with the occasional search engine query in high school, to more of that in college plus plenty of geekology, to an explosion towards the end of college ('03) and continuing today. As internet consumption increased globally, so eventually did internet production, and with that production has grown my own consumption. It was once a network of academics, a bunch of geeks illuminating the [techno]logical portion of my brain. I crawled online first through a local dialup bulletin board system, which managed to give me a real email address, not just one local to that system. Now I'm up on the surfboard, riding wave after wave of information pertaining to nearly every aspect of my life. In fact, the raw volume has helped both hone and broaden my interests. My arrival in Chicago ignited a...

Through the last couple of weeks, I've been taking one trip per weekday to my new studio apartment at 1824 N Lincoln Park W with a load of stuff to drop off. One of the benefits of trying to decrease my belongings over time instead of increasing them is that moving is a wee bit more bearable! (Another benefit is not really caring when your car's CD player is stolen... ;-) The last day on my lease is Tuesday, so I've got till then, not including going back to Indiana this weekend to help Don move and maybe see some of the fam in Angola. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! - Revelation 3:14-16 Every day around 6:15pm I get a small scripture verse delivered to my phone. This one came in Monday, and spoke to me. Weekends, and work. Weekends, and work. It's a sign of stagnation when you feel that you are living for the weekend, and that the cycle of a week is just an endless cycle, beginning anew each wee...

Can't really write much at the moment, but just wanted to share a little surge of "dialogue awareness" that has been wafting about in my mind. Firstly, I read a bio on a woman who will be speaking on a weekday evening later in June up near me. There is a collection of some of her reflections at Voices in the Wilderness , and I can post the bio if anyone's interested, you can tell that she cares very deeply about peace and the Iraqi people. I believe she'll be at St. Teresa's on the evening of June 22. Secondly, how many of you have had any sort of introductory ethics course where one of the scenarios is, "You are hiding a Jew in your home during WWII and some Nazis come and ask you if you have any Jews with you. As a lover of Truth, how should you respond?" Get some flesh and blood injected into this generic story by reading how A priest embraces his hidden Jewish roots , found via Christdot.org .

This post will be a reminder to you, gentle reader, that this blog finds it's origins in the typical fare of self-justification. I write this for me, not for you. Sit back, relax, and be happy. Eight days ago I felt a slight tightness in the outter bridge of my left foot. It started sometime in the beginning of the day which I had kicked off with a hard bike ride to try not to be too late to my final Minister-of-Care training. Perhaps I pushed too hard on those pedals, because by the end of the day there was a pretty noticeable burning sensation while walking more than a few paces. It grew more pronounced the next day and ran it's course for three days before showing signs of letting up. I could bike fine, but forced myself to slow down my walking and accept a slight limp to avoid more strain on the strain. After another three days of recovery, there was (and is) no sign of the problem. Possibly tomorrow I'll be putting my first run in since before it happened, to s...

you were born together and together ye shall be forever until death should scatter it wouldn't matter in the memory of God above let the wind of heaven dance between you too allow the space and time to bring you closer to everlasting love cause God moves what do you do God moves through you when love beckons his ways are often hard and steep when his wings unfold ye yield to all he speaks the soul it might be hidden there among his pinions oh you may wear a wound that truly spoke to you believe in all that voice and follow through follow so on and on what do you do when God moves through you what do you do say i do i do just remember love possesses nothing nor would it ever be possessed oh love is love sufficient unto love and you can figure out the rest your children will not be your children they are the daughters and the son of a beginning they'll come through your womb but not be coming from you they will be with you but do not belong to you you may give them your love but ...

"Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all." - Peter Drucker A prize for the first person who explains why I think this quote brings understanding to a sorely misunderstood ethical issue. :)

It seems that an inspirational man has just died. Some of you may have caught a whiff of it on the news, a skydiver who collided with his airplane mid-flight, got his legs sheered off, still managed to make a landing while conscious, and died in the emergency room. Grab a membership at Dropzone.com forums to listen in on the genuine mourning and testaments to the impact Gus had on people, and stop in at GusWing.com for a more structured memorial. He gave us lasting memories of the best times of our lives. His work captured the sheer joy humans are capable of. - Elizabeth May Damn.... My team trained at DeLand 2003/2004; Gus always had time to talk to anyone, in this case me; he didn't need to know who you were. Listening to his stories of early skysurf camera and Grand Canyon jumps and you soon realise the history he has personnally added to the sport. Gus apparently died just a while ago, wow one of the nicest people you ccould ever meet with a great outlook on life, what a t...