Nashvegas Fuge

I am in Nashville, for yet another summer working with M-fuge. I love camp. There is something about it that sits well with me, that fills in my blanks. Its 30 people with hearts for students coming together from all over the country in one place for 2 and 1/2 months. Its exhaustion, friendship, crazy, fun, emotional, trying, sad, beautiful, life-changing, stretching, great! It is, in some ways, something I was born to do. I have a great team of people and we are looking foward to getting our first "batch" of chillens' on Saturday. Its going to be great!

Could I talk to you? Are you listening?
Would you let me ask the questions that burn inside me?
I am reaching out, I am holding on.
Feel like one of Your affections, but not quite like I belong.

I am numb today, everything's a blur,
I've seen too much to deny, too little to be sure,
Like a prodigal, like a distant son, I can see You from a distance,
But I'm too ashamed to come

Will You see me through this valley?
Will You hold my outstretched hands?
As the world caves in around me,
Will You help me understand?
Help me understand, help me understand.

I am scared to fall,
Scared to carry on,
Am I losing to the cynic after running for so long?
There's a child in me, lost in mystery.
But its buried underneath the earth, longing to be free.

Will You hold my outstretched hands?
As the world caves in around me,
Will You help me understand?
Help me understand, help me understand.

Lightning

I rode home tonight in a lightning storm. There is something otherworldy and almost spiritual about lighting. I am fascinated by its complexity and yet captured by its simplicity. It is power and beauty, fear and strength, unforgiving and unstoppable.
It is the ultimate picture of light piercing the darkness. It is part of the storm that seems unpredictable. Who knows where the next one will strike and when?
For some reason I find it calming to watch. I don't know why such a dangerous force can be both deadly and peaceful. I had to remind myself to keep my eyes on the road and not on the free fireworks show lighting up the low country sky.
There is something in lightning that hints at the face of God. Lightning is not of this world.

Social Injustice: Part 2

Ethnic Cleansing- the expulsion of an undersirable population from a given territory as a result of RELIGIOUS or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or idealogical considerations or a combination of these.

I have an easier working definition for this term....In simple terms its HATE, nothing more, nothing less; unwaranted, unadulterated hate, the absolute opposite of Christianity of the message of Jesus. It is hate just for the sake of hate, hate just because of exisiting, where as Christianity says love....LOVE just because a person is a person.

There are many examples of this all throughout history. You know the big ones, so we won't dive too deeply into that. The first one I will delve into was inspired by a book I bought in Seattle and read in about a day. It makes me wonder how many of us really know the depth of the nobility of the war we are in right now and if we knew...if we really knew, would we still hate the President and his decision to fight the Taliban?

Welcome to Seattle

This is my new definition of talent- playing guitar and harmonica, while hulla-hooping and dancing back and forth with wooden shells tied to your shoelaces as instruments of percusion

The infamous outdoor market....RIDICULOUS

The infamous Pike Place Fish Co....where they yell loudly and throw fish with gumption and spirit....Its like "Welcome to Moe's" on steroids!

These friends, these women, are one of God's precious gifts to me. I spent the last few days in Hilton Head with them. I am only sad that all of you don't know them they way I have had the blessing of knowing them!

Social Injustice: Part 1

AIDS- Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

AIDS is the greatest humanitarian crisis of our day. It has already orphaned 15 million children

Every week, AIDS claims as many lives as American fatalities in the Vietnam War. Since it was discovered, AIDS has killed nearly 30 million people--equal to the combined populations of Arizona and Texas, and nearrly 10 times the number of earthquake fatalities in the last century.

Food Shortages are a big problem. By 2020, AIDS will have claimed the lives of at least one-fifth of southern Africa's agriculture workers.

Sub-Saharan Africa has 64% of the world's HIV cases--more than any other area of the world. But skyrocketing infection rates in Russia, China, and India threaten similar or worse epidemics in these regions in the near future. THERE IS NO VACCINE against HIV/AIDS

6,000 children are orphaned by AIDS every day. IF all of these children held hands, they would stretch five and a half times across the United States. By 2011, this virtual chain will reach around the world......That is in 5 years.

While African countries have suffered the most AIDS deaths to date, the virus that causes AIDS is currently spreading fastest in Russia--where the infection rate grew 257% in just 3 years.

So what can we do...go to World Vision and check it out...

"Whatever you did for one of the least of these...you did for me."
Matthew 25:40

Social Injustice-A mini series of sorts

It has come to my attention, a sort of awakening of spirit, that I am surrounded by what could be deemed, "Social Injustice" and I am oblivious to it. Christ was an agent of social change, a voice for the poor, downtrodden and opressed and I, rather, am an agent of just being social. What are we doing....as believers in Christ what are we doing while people all over the world are having thier lives ripped apart? Are we serving on committees? Drinking $4.00 coffees and discussing theology? Attending our "worship" services with the Holy Spirit leading us with technologically moving bells and whistles....or is the Holy Spirit leading us to offer our bodies, our lives to the world as spiritual acts of worship?
I am one of them, naive, no clue that the world is in need of more than a Christian, but a Christ follower. This a journey, if you will, not only for the reader, but for myself; a research project to expel our naivity and apathy and hopefully, spark an urgency for this dieing world.
Join me.

Social injustice
Social injustice is a concept relating to the perceived unfairness or injustice of a society in its divisions of rewards and burdens. The concept is distinct from those of justice in law, which may or may not be considered moral in practice. Opposition to social injustice is increasingly a platform of emerging political parties.




"The one thing we can all agree [on]... is that God is with the vulnerable and poor. God is in the slums ... God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives... God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them."
Bono

One day...

Something tells me that this is going to make sense
Something tells me it’s going to take patience
Something tells me that this will all work out in the end

You know, I am, or at least I have become, such a thinker. I have a feeling the inside of my head looks much like the inside of Grand Central Station during rush hour. I have tons of thoughts, ideas and questions that I mull over constantly encircling them and pondering them and getting really, no where. Surrounding this caticomb of intellectual activity (if you can call it this) is a presence of peace. I know, I don't know how I know, that everything will eventually come full circle. All will be well, balanced, very good, as it was always intended to be.

Goodbye

As the day's sun is setting

To evening's song
Life passing by
As I'm holding on

Trying to capture
what was made to be free
And finding its already
Let go of me

I guess this is just
the way that it goes
My head's catching up
With what my heart already knows.

When we stay in one place
A part of us dies
And the point of living
Is to be fully alive

Goodbye Clemson and Thank you for 5 great years!

so funny...

I was in my kitchen today when a commercial came on adversting some type of women's medication. The commercial was listing off the qualities you must have in order to fit the profile for this medicane. In the middle of the list of qualities was, "Must have a Uterus." NO LIE. My roommates and I laughed hysterically. It was in this long string of things like "must have low blood pressure, no alcohol, must be female, must have a uterus..."
SO FUNNY!

paradox

“The world is neither so full of evil that we cant enjoy it nor so full of goodness that we can abandon ourselves to it. When we see something beautiful there is always the qualifying thought that it has been tarnished. When we see something ugly, there is always the qualifying thought that there is something of the Creator hidden there.”
-Steve Turner

...so much truth in the raw simplicity of this statement...maybe the tarnishing is both the fallen world and the cracked, tainted lenses through which we view it...we can neither recognize beauty nor escape evil.

And you must remember love
is like a dollar in your hand
You can't take to your grave
What was made to spend...

Mystery

"This is MYSTERY: to experience something we cannot manipulate and abandoning ourselves to One we cannot control. Embracing mystery demands that we refuse to stand over our history, examining it and judging it with aloof, sterile detachment. Mystery takes it in like a child's first step onto the vasat expanse of the white sands of the beach. Surrendering to the smells, the cool spray form the incoming tide, the warm sun, and the grainy coolness shifting under his feet, he simply enters into the ocean's world. The young heart has no way to know what it is he is dealing with; he simply has to dive in and feel it for himself."
-Winn Collier, Restless Faith

you are my greatest friend

you are my deepest need
you are my loudest cry
you are my everything

you are my only hope

you are my forgiveness
you are my every breath
you are my comfort here
you are my everything

you are my only hope

the maker of the earth
the giver of my life
the healer of my heart
forgiver of my soul
you are my only hope

-Robbie Seay Band

Happy Easter

I found out some things about Easter this weekend. Easter has nothing to do with eggs or little fluffy bunnies or a load of candy bound to gift us endless cavities. Its not even really all that much about family, at least not the family tree type family we normally spend time with on this occasion. It was this weekend when I didn't see my "family" and I didn't go "home" and I didn't sit on the lap of a rabbit in the mall or dye eggs or even eat candy that Easter was still powerful and real and meaningful. It is about Christ setting off a string of events that set into motion a new and revolutionary way of thinking and living, where family transcends the simple flesh and blood of dna and a group of unrelated humans can come together for a day and share a meal together and form a family even if they have only just met. It is when another "family" that is related unreservedly invites you in to spend a few hours and then a few more and then a meal and then the night if you wish and another meal the next day and you play with their dogs and swing on their porch and get the sense that you are a part of their family if only by "Someone Elses" FLESH and BLOOD. Christ did a curious thing in his death and resurrection. He started a war and he started a bloodline, his bloodline. It is when believers come together as a family, loving uncondtionally and putting aside differences, that we deal out our blows in this waging war and become a beacon of light to the world around us.

Adversity

"Adversity is like a strong wind. Not just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be."
-Memoirs of a Geisha

Applications smaplications

I hate applications, maybe more than ab workouts, maybe more than people who come into Einsteins at 2:55 (we close at 3:00) and want a panini of the worst kind and a mocha, maybe even more than pickles do I hate applications. Not really because I hate the application itself, but simply because of the difficulty of the process. Let me explain what I mean. Each school does it totally different. One wants you to print it out and fill it out by hand and mail it in. One has it online (welcome to the 20th century). Some have part online and part by hand. They all want your testimony, or rather "personal statement" but each wants it written in a different way. I've written my calling to ministry about 10 different ways in the last few weeks and I can't even tell you really what my calling is.....to love? people maybe, isn't that we're all called to. And my poor references, I think they now hate me and instead of writing positive things are writing hate mail to the schools about me. And they can't use the same letters, oh no, each school wants it done differently. Geez...I hope that the next stage of life is more exciting than the process of preparing for it.

Happy Palm Sunday

Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were an offering far too small
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all

O the wonderful cross, O the wonderful cross
Bids me come and die and find that I may truly live
O the wonderful cross, O the wonderful cross
All who gather here by grace draw near and bless Your name

Back at square one

So, after months of slamming doors and indecision, I am back to where I started working yet another summer with my favorite camp, M-fuge. On Monday afternoon I turned down a job in Colorado, uncommitting to the only thing that I had comitted to, only to receive a call the very next morning out of the blue from Lifeway offering me an opportunity to work camp another summer. Now, I'm no idiot, I know an open door when I see one and after I got over my initial disbelief and shock at the ride God has taken me on, I readily accepted the position. I will be the Student Leadership Apprentice Director working my second summer in a row at M-fuge Belmont University. It feels good to have something solid and concrete. I thought I had made a mistake somewhere along the line, that I had messed up and made a bad decision and that I was just going to have to pick something I didn't want to do. But I now know that the Lord has me just where he wants me, good thing to...the plank was getting shorter each day.
http://www.lifeway.com/fuge/mission/