3:26 AM. A great time of the day. I don't think I will have a lot to say but here goes.

I miss playing music. I went to a wind ensemble concert a few days ago and it really made me want to play music again. They played a 5-movement piece that went through different stages in the book of Genesis- these included the creation of man, the fall of man, the flood, and two others that i don't remember. The flood movement was humongously epic. There was a lot of good stuff in it. I think i've come to appreciate music a lot in the last few years. I really think that if I could start college over again I might be a music major. The fact that I took so many years of piano lessons and then completely quit because i hated practicing makes me literally sick to my stomach. I don't know anything on the piano any more. I want to teach myself again, but I think I would get frustrated very quickly and spend a lot of time playing with very little improvement. The same thing seems to happen to me on the guitar. I wish i could play like these guys.

I know I talk about this a lot (my last post was a poem about this), but I have come to the conclusion that most people talk way too much and don't communicate enough.

Make sense?

We are so quick to open our mouths. I think a lot of the time when we talk, our words don't really mean anything. We just want to talk. There are a lot of other and better ways to communicate than just running our mouths. The eyes communicate a lot. As do hands and pretty much every movement done by our bodies. Music says so much. Without ever uttering a word.

God has blessed me with a great friend recently. This person is an inspiration to me and somebody who I feel like I can really invest in and vice versa. Good friends are one of the biggest blessing that we can be given in my opinion. Praise Him for answering prayer and being sovereign.

Scar Symmetry is a great band. I don't know how I went so long without ever hearing about them. They very well balance and contrast heavy and light sounds.

I need help to walk in the Spirit and to mortify my flesh. To embrace the plague that Christ infects our sinful natures with, as Becoming the Archetype boldly puts it. pray for me if you remember.

Peace

Isn't it ironic how the most important words are never spoken

funny how the simple becomes the beautiful

amazing how humility creates strength

and revealing that words cannot convey our hearts

those we know the best may be the ones whose voice we've never heard

Due time for another of these.

A lot has been going on lately.

i'm not thinking too clearly tonight. I'm just kind of burnt out. Emotional energy has been scarce for me in the last year and a half, although I have been slowly getting better. I think the change to California will boost it, at least I hope it will. It's an interesting concept. It's almost like there's a fuel gauge on our hearts, and the more emotions we encounter and react to, the lower we are on fuel. My last relationship left me far, far below empty on that gauge, and only recently have I started to get some of it back. Shawn Ammons taught me a little bit about this. He said to use it wisely. Protect that energy and use it when it will accomplish a lot.


I can never predict how I will react to things. It scares me too. Sometimes i really think that all i ever do is react to things. If you know me you know that I am not someone who starts things, i only react to what has already been started. That has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years.

I've also been thinking about humility lately. It is absolutely essential to have. The reality is that no one on earth has any reason to be proud, no matter what, ever. We are so tiny and helpless on our own. Pride has to be the most ridiculous of all sins. If we ever for a second think we are better than anyone else, we are being so foolish. Pride is defiance toward God, which is comparable to an ant staring up at Goliath (times infinity) and saying "that's right i'm stronger than you." Like i said, ridiculous. We know nothing, can do nothing apart from Him. And yet we truly are amazing creations. C.S. Lewis compares our existence to God's as God being the sculptor, and people being sculptures. Our level of existence is only the slightest shadow of His. A sculpture cannot move, think, breathe, act. And think how incapable we must be of how God operates. Wow. Humility is the only state in which we can be servants. And we are here to be servants.

I'm leaving really soon. Like, 4 days or so. I don't know where or with whom I will be living, I don't know any of my professors, don't know what church i will go to, don't know any students besides 2 or 3, don't know my way around the town i'll be in, nothing. This next month will hold a lot of unknowns. I'm gonna go for it hard though.

A few words about metal, because it is a huge part of my life-

To me, it tells me to go after what i'm doing as hard as I possibly can. I don't always listen, but it never changes its message. Singing is so mellow and happy and carefree, screaming your guts out has POWER. Not that singing is all horrible, because it's not.

Seriously, in church I take all the words that i'm singing, and translate them into screaming in my head, and every single song, every single time, becomes so much more worshipful for me.

Some people will argue that it promotes violence. Some of it does. When I say metal I am referring to Christian, or at least positive, metal. I think anything else is a waste of energy. I can appreciate the music, but it's not the same. I'm out of words for now.

Cornerstone 2009 Slideshow

New Beginnings

Hey everybody. I've been working on this blog pretty much all day, which is probably a little bit sad.. but I thought it would be good for me to make one so that people who want to could keep up with my move to California in a little more concrete of a format than facebook, and so I can have some form of journaling outlet which i've been needing for a long time. So here we are.

The title comes from As I Lay Dying's song "Confined", and is referring to how easily humans get consumed by the events, responsibilities, and trivialities of the world, when all of those things are pretty much meaningless. If you're interested in watching the music video (which is by far the best music video I have ever seen) here's the youtube vid. The video is a great representation of the song. The beginning shows a child working and devoting himself to this chalk drawing. And by the end of the song it is completely gone and he has nothing to show for it. Hopefully this blog will help me focus on the eternal.

Bigger things are at work than what we see and experience during a typical work or school day. A lot of what we work for will pass away and be forgotten. Money, possessions, jobs, entertainment, food, are all disposable. Some of them are necessary for biological life to continue, but none ultimately amount to anything significant. So put those on the back burner.. because it will be either those, or it will be your spiritual life and your friends and family sitting back there. To put it in much simpler terms, i'll quote the sticker on my guitar. "Starve the flesh, Feed the spirit". It's good advice. Flesh = death. Spirit = life.

I'm getting anxious about moving. It's going to be such a massive change that I have no idea how I will react, and that makes me nervous. My single biggest worry is that I won't connect with anybody or have any close friends out there. I never feel like I am good at making friends. I like knowing what lies ahead, and I don't know what to expect from the Master's College. I am very confident that it will be a great experience, but parts of me will be stretched, challenged, and possibly broken. If there's one prayer that I need at the moment it's that God will shake my world up. One thing I think is very true about people is that we're addicted to comfort. We will do just about anything to make sure we're comfortable as much of the time as possible. Again to use an AILD song, Comfort Betrays.

On a lighter note, Cornerstone was the bomb. I love music more than anything else on Earth. I really do. I think if I could start college over right now, I would be a music major. The only thing that disappoints me is that you can't really major in the kind of music I love. haha. I remember reading a quote somewhere several years ago that stuck in my head, and at first I didn't agree with it but now I think I do. "Music is the vernacular of the human spirit". Vernacular basically means the commonly used language (which I didn't know at the time). Interesting thought, isn't it? There really isn't anything else that can move the spirit as much as music can though, apart from a spiritual force of some sort. Nothing can speak to the spirit as clearly as a song. When Becoming the Archetype played End of the Age at Cornerstone (specifically the second time, since i was much more awake. The first time I had gotten like an hour of sleep the night before, and they played at midnight.) it was without a doubt one of the most real moments of worship in my entire life. Screaming or not, God was being glorified. I GUARANTEE it. The awesomeness of metal is my favorite thing to talk or write about, but it's difficult for me to explain. It is POWERFUL stuff if you let it be. Absolutely magical.

I'll have to write more about Cornerstone another time. I'll post a slideshow of Cornerstone pictures after this though, that will be a lot more visible than the stamp-sized ones on facebook.

\m/