Tuesday, July 14, 2009

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/