thanks to the eclecticly well-versed Dave Lilley, i give you Sufjan Stevens, who has been helping me reconnect with my native Michigan. from a distance. if you do nothing else with Sufi, go here and click "Paradise," up in the Upper Peninsula towards the east. and Sault Saint Marie, of course, which i have the privelege of knowing the correct pronunciation for ("Soo Saint Marie").
i'm enjoying sufi on a two day break between trips. First STEP is done, which is a pity because the middle schoolers are much more, if not innocent, at least ready to engage in a hearty stretch of goofy childlikeness, than high schoolers. tomorrow we leave for a ten-day program in conjunction with Upward Bound, a program for local high schoolers who want to be the first in their family to get a college education. i'll be bouncing up to Algonquin Provincial Park in lovely Canada with the UB graduates for a canoe trip. which is kind of a pity because i have new waterproofallleathersh*tkickingrockthumpingmudslogginghiking boots and a new hiy-uge gynormouse 5300 in3 uber-backpack into which i could no doubt load everything along with both the kitchech and bathroom sinks. but not a new paddle or sunglasses. o well. i guess that just means i'll have to keep on hiking after STEP. :)
in other news, we picked up four freezers' full of ice cream at the food bank for only 17 cents a pound. so while we don't have any real food in the house outside of mac n' cheese and eggs, our dietary needs are met by vanilla/crunch bar ice cream bars, popsicles and pints of Perry's Cookie Dough. last night we went and played in the waterfall at Wiscoy--the water was low enough to pile into the little cave behind the falls (more of a "nook" than a cave) where we bemoaned the lack of beautiful women and then looked at each other in horror, recalling all the anguished conversations of the past several weeks, and determined right then and there to not kiss women until we were ready to marry them. sometimes it royally sucks to be a guy. we firmly banished womanliness from our minds by psyching ourselves up to do stupid things, like exploring further up into more dangerous waterfall sections as darkness fell. we urged each other on, shouting ourselves hoarse over the roar of the waterfall with little bits of manly wisdom such as, "because it's there!" and do you know how we got maps? because men went to the edge of the maps they had and walked off!"
at least that's how they did it in the old days. now they use satellites from a safe and cold distance. bah and humbug.
have fun exploring the infinite abyss!
27 June 2005
21 June 2005
*gulp* [apprehension]
at six thirty tonight, i have my first interview with Rural/Metro Medical Services of Buffalo. it's a skills test involving skill sheets from the class i took two years ago. i have a professional-looking haircut, semi-professional-looking slacks, a battered polo shirt, and yesterday's shave. i'm going to brush my teeth. and then i'm going to study skill sheets like crazy. heaven be with me...
20 June 2005
now it's your turn
ok. i don't "go to church" anymore, because at best i am amused, and at worst angry. a short list of reasons:
-irrelevance. sermons preached reiterate the same feel-good, irrelevant pop theology. i could preach a thousand "good sermons," whose goal seems to be to reassure congregants that they are better than everybody else, more knowledgeable, and selected the right sort of people to belong to. or they elucidate a fine point of some new pop theology designed to solve your personal problems by theological education--rearranging ideological furniture at a surface level.
-alienation. i cannot remain polite and honest at the same time. those who do not join the herd are looked down upon with "pity" by the better-informed ones with the good theological answers and placed in a special mental class of "project people," who really need God's help. God's help is then brokered by the better-informed who attempt to form the "project people" into their own image.
-the importance of the unimportant. things like worship techniques, speaking in tongues, using socially-acceptable language, sharing the group's opinions on art, culture, values, and the good life, having the proper political viewpoint, dressing appropriately, being involved and invested in the consumer-driven lifestyle, having appropriate hobbies and bad artistic taste, and being immersed in and content with the evangelical subculture.
-the unimportance of the important. i can't remember the last time i heard someone preach the Kingdom of Heaven. and it's the most important thing in the world. i can't remember the last time i heard someone tell me good news--the poor are truly poor but can be wealthy. the brokenhearted really have a reason to weep, and ought not to ignore their wounds, because they can be bound up. injustice is real and horrific, and justice can be brought to their prisons. bondage is real, in and outside of the church, and it can be undone. innocents do not have to be bombed by US soldiers--third-world farmers do not have to be reduced to poverty by unjust trade--the evils of capitalism can be redressed by the righteous.
so--that was a lot longer than i expected--why should i go to church? why do you go to church? what is the church supposed to be. this is the part of the game where you tell me. feel free to discuss and elaborate, share an idea for consideration and laugh if it turns out to need refining.
-irrelevance. sermons preached reiterate the same feel-good, irrelevant pop theology. i could preach a thousand "good sermons," whose goal seems to be to reassure congregants that they are better than everybody else, more knowledgeable, and selected the right sort of people to belong to. or they elucidate a fine point of some new pop theology designed to solve your personal problems by theological education--rearranging ideological furniture at a surface level.
-alienation. i cannot remain polite and honest at the same time. those who do not join the herd are looked down upon with "pity" by the better-informed ones with the good theological answers and placed in a special mental class of "project people," who really need God's help. God's help is then brokered by the better-informed who attempt to form the "project people" into their own image.
-the importance of the unimportant. things like worship techniques, speaking in tongues, using socially-acceptable language, sharing the group's opinions on art, culture, values, and the good life, having the proper political viewpoint, dressing appropriately, being involved and invested in the consumer-driven lifestyle, having appropriate hobbies and bad artistic taste, and being immersed in and content with the evangelical subculture.
-the unimportance of the important. i can't remember the last time i heard someone preach the Kingdom of Heaven. and it's the most important thing in the world. i can't remember the last time i heard someone tell me good news--the poor are truly poor but can be wealthy. the brokenhearted really have a reason to weep, and ought not to ignore their wounds, because they can be bound up. injustice is real and horrific, and justice can be brought to their prisons. bondage is real, in and outside of the church, and it can be undone. innocents do not have to be bombed by US soldiers--third-world farmers do not have to be reduced to poverty by unjust trade--the evils of capitalism can be redressed by the righteous.
so--that was a lot longer than i expected--why should i go to church? why do you go to church? what is the church supposed to be. this is the part of the game where you tell me. feel free to discuss and elaborate, share an idea for consideration and laugh if it turns out to need refining.
19 June 2005
church
so i went to an amazing church service today in my kitchen. it started when Tim asked me if i went to church today and i said i just couldn't stomach the thought. then we talked for a while. highlights of our worship experience:
-"I don't understand why we go to church and listen to some guy talk for forty minutes about things we either block out as unimportant or already agree with. why don't I just go out and feed the poor or do something important?"
-"yes, i feel alienated from the body of believers, but that's not because I stopped going to church. if i went back to church, i'd feel even more alienated. the church has rejected me and my generation because we ask too much, because we are hurt and cynical, because we swear and drink and smoke and don't follow the stultifying traditions and regulations of men, becuase we haven't embraced the culture of the upper-middle-class contemporary Christian America. i feel alienated from the church because i don't understand and embrace its idols: its theology, its arrogance, its safety-first comfort-first fear of the reality that surrounds it. i feel alienated because the church lives in comfortable illusions of importance and power and smug competence and has thus made itself irrelevant."
-"Jesus rarely ever talked about someplace we go after we die. He came and preached the Kingdom of Heaven: here but not here, within us and breaking out of us, hidden and yet inexorably movng forward. a world where the heartbreaking things--the things that make us cry out this should not happen--don't happen. where losers are not losers and children do not die and the brokenhearted aren't brokenhearted any more and the hungry eat."
-"There is no "them" and "us" in the Kingdom of Heaven."
-"We are--somehow--the Kingdom of Heaven. We have the power to neglect it, or to make it happen around us. If we spend out lives averting one tragedy, taking one poor person and helping him or her become truly wealthy, we have done something worth more than a thousand pretty worship songs or a hundred passionate prayers."
it's a pity we didn't break bread and speak the benediction, because for a moment i actually shared communion with two members of my family. but we didn't have any bread, and it was scary because i was thinking seriously of wandering off and joining a group of Franciscans and ministering to the poor and that's scary.
-"I don't understand why we go to church and listen to some guy talk for forty minutes about things we either block out as unimportant or already agree with. why don't I just go out and feed the poor or do something important?"
-"yes, i feel alienated from the body of believers, but that's not because I stopped going to church. if i went back to church, i'd feel even more alienated. the church has rejected me and my generation because we ask too much, because we are hurt and cynical, because we swear and drink and smoke and don't follow the stultifying traditions and regulations of men, becuase we haven't embraced the culture of the upper-middle-class contemporary Christian America. i feel alienated from the church because i don't understand and embrace its idols: its theology, its arrogance, its safety-first comfort-first fear of the reality that surrounds it. i feel alienated because the church lives in comfortable illusions of importance and power and smug competence and has thus made itself irrelevant."
-"Jesus rarely ever talked about someplace we go after we die. He came and preached the Kingdom of Heaven: here but not here, within us and breaking out of us, hidden and yet inexorably movng forward. a world where the heartbreaking things--the things that make us cry out this should not happen--don't happen. where losers are not losers and children do not die and the brokenhearted aren't brokenhearted any more and the hungry eat."
-"There is no "them" and "us" in the Kingdom of Heaven."
-"We are--somehow--the Kingdom of Heaven. We have the power to neglect it, or to make it happen around us. If we spend out lives averting one tragedy, taking one poor person and helping him or her become truly wealthy, we have done something worth more than a thousand pretty worship songs or a hundred passionate prayers."
it's a pity we didn't break bread and speak the benediction, because for a moment i actually shared communion with two members of my family. but we didn't have any bread, and it was scary because i was thinking seriously of wandering off and joining a group of Franciscans and ministering to the poor and that's scary.
thankyou, dan p
 | You scored as Loner.
What's Your High School Stereotype? created with QuizFarm.com |
17 June 2005
i love the children (pt. II)
annnnnnnd...interlude. it looks very cut and dried coming as a "pt. II", but remember a few weeks span since my last post. with this lapse comes my sincere apologies, but i have been busy. i am now working (temporarily) for Houghton College's Wilderness Adventures as logistics personnel. So now I'm the behind-the-scenes man for Houghton's hiking/backpacking/rock climbing/canoeing/ropes course programs for the time being.
rough translation: i get to work with the kids again! soon! and when i'm not working with the kids, i'm helping train and support a staff of ten amazing and awesome adventure leaders. rock on! and i get to live with and goof off with them during the off hours.
the kicker? the other logistical man is a man named dan. and we're roommates now. dan and dan (sahli and holcomb). it's a duo unmatched. which is good because now i have someone to talk to. funny how we're both dealing with pretty much the same stuff--i love that! and (and this is vitally important) we have basically the same tastes in music, bedtimes, and room climate (slightly cluttered, full of gear, and cold at nights).
rockin' awesome. we just got of a few days of hiking and climbing, just the staff, through beautiful Hammersly on the STS in Pennsylvania and up Rattlesnake Point in Canada. life is good. we dammed a river. twice. raised the water level at Hammersly by two feet. i beat two 5.8s including a wicked underclinging mad cool reach at the top of McMasters. i have a two-week beard and despite the heat, i still have not cut my hair. i smell a little though...i think it's time to take a shower and see if my new boots are here yet (o please please please please...)
rough translation: i get to work with the kids again! soon! and when i'm not working with the kids, i'm helping train and support a staff of ten amazing and awesome adventure leaders. rock on! and i get to live with and goof off with them during the off hours.
the kicker? the other logistical man is a man named dan. and we're roommates now. dan and dan (sahli and holcomb). it's a duo unmatched. which is good because now i have someone to talk to. funny how we're both dealing with pretty much the same stuff--i love that! and (and this is vitally important) we have basically the same tastes in music, bedtimes, and room climate (slightly cluttered, full of gear, and cold at nights).
rockin' awesome. we just got of a few days of hiking and climbing, just the staff, through beautiful Hammersly on the STS in Pennsylvania and up Rattlesnake Point in Canada. life is good. we dammed a river. twice. raised the water level at Hammersly by two feet. i beat two 5.8s including a wicked underclinging mad cool reach at the top of McMasters. i have a two-week beard and despite the heat, i still have not cut my hair. i smell a little though...i think it's time to take a shower and see if my new boots are here yet (o please please please please...)
01 June 2005
i love the children
things i did today:
why am I applying for jobs where I won't be expected to play Nalgene Gold or Uncle Bunkley? I just don't get it...
- got paid to play games with hyperactive third graders from the King Center in Buffalo
filled out two applications for jobs where "vast knowledge of group games for hyperactive children" is not a selling point.
talked to Dan Perrine who might be my neighbor in Buffalo (if I go to Buffalo)
why am I applying for jobs where I won't be expected to play Nalgene Gold or Uncle Bunkley? I just don't get it...
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