No voices in my head

Okay okay, I know that lately, I've only been posting links to things and not really posting anything original at all. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, I've been in Conway sitting around watching SportsCenter again and again and again all morning and YouTube videos all afternoon because there's just not that much to do here, and that leaves me with very few interesting stories to tell the 12 of you who read my blog. Second, I've promised that I would write about some of the things that I've been thinking about for the last few months, but as of yet, I don't think I've finished thinking through those things enough to be able to offer you a summary. It's been good for me lately to just write down as many of my thoughts as I can in rough form and start to mull over those. As of this very moment I'm renewing my vow to you (isn't that romantic?) to actually write something serious on this blog and try my best (for your sake and mine) to summarize what I learned at and through L'Abri.

Until then, I want to point you to an article that I just read. Literally, I just finished reading it, and I don't think I've read something that's summed up my views on an issue this well and coming at such a perfect time as this. The article is called "No Voices in my Head" and it's by Bill MacKinnon who writes some at the blog The Internet Monk which has quickly become one of my favorites. The article concerns the idea of God's leading or personal revelation to individuals and how obsessed the evangelical church in America has become with "feeling led" by God or "hearing" from God in a private way. Here are two excerpts, one from the beginning of the article and one from the end:

I’m a lousy Christian.

There. I’ve said it. People say that admitting it is the first step. What makes me a lousy Christian you ask? Hidden sin? Lukewarm commitment? Worldliness?

I wish.

At least if it were one of those, I could do something about it. No, what makes me a lousy Christian is something I don’t seem to be able to do anything about. You see, God isn’t speaking to me. He won’t give me assignments. He didn’t tell me who to marry. He was obstinately silent when I had to decide whether to take my current job. He doesn’t give me secret knowledge about other people or situations. In short, He isn’t doing for me what seemingly the rest of the evangelical church claims He is doing for them.

and

It is curious to me that if someone in a typical evangelical church stood up and said an angel spoke to him and told him that God wanted him to be a missionary to Africa , we would be very skeptical at best. Yet if that same person stood up and said that he “just really feel led to go to Africa to be a missionary”, the "amens" and applause would be deafening. Yet the former is biblical and the latter is not.

Read the article. It's not that long. Don't be turned off by what seems to be cynicism about the idea that God could speak to people privately. He says in the article that he's not talking about what God can do but about what we can teach (read: tell people to expect).

I imagine that when I summarize my thoughts over the last few months, this issue will play prominently into the discussion. Read the article and if you have the time and energy I'd love to hear what you think about it, positive or negative. Any of your thoughts will help me work out my own.

In other news, I leave in about seven hours to go to Atlanta with my family to hang out with my dad's side of the family for the weekend. There's about 30 of us so it should be loud. It's always a good time. If anything awesome happens I'll be sure to let you know.

Spanish is como estas

Since there's not a whole lot to do around Conway right now I have been watching almost every video on YouTube. It's a little bit dorky, but I don't care because if I wasn't watching every video on YouTube then I wouldn't be able to show all of you these great clips that I find.

Here's four videos by the same people. I'm sure you've seen the first one, but I just found the other three and they are just as funny if not funnier. I hope you enjoy.

Happy merry

Merry Christmas everyone. I'll post something with more words in it tomorrow, but until then, here's my Christmas gift to you: a dance video I edited last night while waiting on Santa. It's made up of a bunch of clips from different times while I was at L'Abri. Enjoy

PS If you're reading this post on Facebook, you'll have to actually come to my blog to see the video.

American Gladiators

This was the most exciting show of my childhood. American Gladiators was, is, and will always be the best fighting/wrestling-related action/drama ever made in the 80s and resurrected in the 00s. Here's a great clip that, I think, truly shows the high quality wrestletainers that they had on this show. We can only hope that in the new version there will be gladiators as amazing.

Amazing beatboxing puppets

I need a life . . .

Classy people read my blog

This might creep you out, but I don't even give a care.

After I started my blog up, I registered with Google Analytics so I could see how many people were coming to my blog, where they were coming from, how long they were staying, etc. Don't worry, I can't find any information about you specifically unless I know you're in some random place like Croatia on December 12 and I see that I had three hits from Croatia that day. I would know that it was probably you, but it doesn't tell me your name or anything like that so don't be so paranoid and vain, as if I would try to track you.

Aaaaaaaanyways. One of the things I can check on is what things people search for on Google that leads them to my blog. The following are a few of my favorite keywords that people have searched for and ended up at my blog:

--"that bird is not my doppelganger"
--"beard growth fill in" - this person actually spent 9 minutes on my blog
--"fisherman beard" - there were numerous beard searches which leads me to believe that I'm not the only one self-conscious about my lack of manly facial hair
--my favorite beard-related query: "how to shave so that it grows more and tough"
--"bicep is twitching"
--I would like to meet the person who searched for this, I'm sure he's . . . awesome: "pictures of awesome jet planes doing awesome things" - he only spent 30 seconds on the site so I guess the Swiss jets weren't awesome enough or doing awesome enough things
--"where do most jamaicans live in brooklyn?"
--"it's my last chance to say something to save my marriage" - fortunately this guy/girl didn't stay on my site for very long

And finally:

--"dirty swiss lady gallery" - proof that there are lots of pervos on the internet; this guy searched my site for dirty Swiss ladies for 8 minutes before moving on

Yes, classy people read my blog. People who are interested in an eclectic mix of topics ranging from SNL skits to how to be a more manly man to where to find weird niche pornography. Thanks for reading y'all.

Journaling

Here's a good and interesting article comparing the journaling habits and styles of early American Christians to those of the modern American. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

In this essay, which briefly compares the recent phenomenon of “journaling” to early American devotional writing, I’ll try to answer several questions: Why did so many early American Christians feel compelled to keep diaries, and why has there been such a surge of interest in “journaling” in our own time? How do today’s “spiritual” journals either resemble or differ from early American diaries? In the first part of this essay, I show that early American Protestants kept diaries in order to “crucify” themselves and worship a transcendent God. In the second part, I argue that today, Americans write spiritual journals for a very different set of reasons: to create an authentic sense of selfhood, to come to a deeper appreciation of their own worth, and to find God within them.

And here's a link to the article. "'A place to go to connect with yourself': A Historical Perspective on Journaling". Interestingly enough (and the author mentions this as well), many of the critiques that we could level against the modern practice of journaling find no criticism or counter-examples within current Christian writing, thought, and theology. Also interesting is, in my opinion, how the theology of several of the most widely-read preachers and writers coming out of the theological traditions of the early American Christians (Puritans) can, if read without care to discern these themes specifically, leave the reader or listener with the same sense of self-loathing and lack of self-worth that the author rightly criticizes in the theology of their predecessors.

Enjoy the read.

Two new vids

So, I might post again later on today, but as of right now (7:37 am) I think the most important thing for all of you to see is these two videos from L'Abri. They're made by a girl named Valerie (not the one in my 'Day at L'Abri' videos) who was at L'Abri for about ten days. The first one is mainly a bunch of the girls dancing on a day trip to France, but at the end is some footage of us playing volleyball. The second one is a group of four or five people walking up to Villars to go to a bar one night. They made the mistake of taking the trail through the woods instead of just going up the road. Rookies.

Enjoy!

Zombie Survival Guide

Bought it today. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. I'll let you know how to save yourself after I'm finished reading it, which will probably be by the end of this weekend in Asheville.

In other news, if you didn't already know, I'll be going to Asheville this weekend with my family to stay at the Sourwood Inn.

Okay, this blog post, however short, has been too much about my boring life for my comfort. I want to stay away from the type of blogging where I just tell you what is going on in my life unless I'm going to make it into some half-fictional story that will entertain you.

I'm done.

There goes my hero . . .

Watch this video. It is my hero, the author of "The Zombie Survival Guide" and "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War", Max Brooks. Here's a link to a video of him explaining how to survive a zombie attack.

Here I Am

I made it back to America! Yeah, I landed in Charlotte, NC at about 5 pm on Friday night, and I was picked up by Pat and Alan and brought back to beautiful Columbia, SC. That night I had an amazing burger and a dark beer at Rockaways and then had some more good beer with Dando, Nate, Pat, and Alan. Couldn't ask for a better first night back. Friends, food, and beer that, unlike all the beer you could get in Villars, is darker than my pee.

Since I've been back I haven't done much. It's been at least 80 degrees here in Columbia every day and I don't have a car so I've been trying to find stuff to do in Alan's . . . wait a second. I'm watching TV right now and a show just came on where they're documenting the Ohio State Grade School Wrestling Championships. I don't even know what to say. Little kids throwing each other around on a mat acting like hardcore big dogs--like they're already men--until they start to lose the match and start to cry. There's nothing wrong with crying. It's just that if you didn't see the little kids wrestling in the background, you'd think all the adults were coaching and screaming at grown men and the kids are acting like grown men until the match is over and the loser is sobbing hysterically and everyone has to switch gears back to the reality that the kid that they just told (and I'm quoting) "This is the most important match of your life" and "If he hurts you, you hurt him worse" is just that: a kid who is at most 11 years old. That was a long long run-on sentence. Anyway.

I've been trying to stay inside and not sweat to death. Today I'm going to hang out with James Basler and get some lunch somewhere downtown.

I'm not sure what all I should write in this post. I think I want to give you all a rundown of some of the things I was thinking about while I was at L'Abri, but I need to think about it a little bit more and take some more time to process everything a little bit more. Until then, here's a quote from the blog of a girl, Emily, that I think is a good beginning to my thoughts about my time at L'Abri:

"It was a time to stop 'doing' and think about what it was that I was doing. I was allowed the freedom and time to explore thoughts that I have never before allowed myself and then to actually attempt living out some of those things with the space to fail. I can’t quite describe in words how valuable this has been in my life and how badly I needed such a thing."

That's from Emily's blog. I linked to it on the right, but here's another direct link. Check it out.

Before I go, here's a video I've been watching about five times a day for the last three days. It's a music video for Kanye West's song "Can't Tell Me Nothing" and it's starring Zach Galifianakis and Bonnie Prince Billy. It's amazing. I think it's hilarious. Maybe you will too. Here's a link to the website of the director: The Claw Productions. Check him out.

A Day at Swiss L'Abri - pt 6

Here's the final video. See you guys in a week!

Zombie Cockroaches!!!

Yes.