Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Life continues to go on. I've been here a week now and it's finally settling in that this is a permanent thing. When you first arrive, you think of your time as if you're on a trip... you're going home, you know you are and you bank on that. When you send your co-workers home and you're still there, it begins to dawn emotionally that this is different. You learn to cope, and I have been. No breakdowns the past couple days... it feels like an advance.
The thing that I'm probably struggling with the most at the moment is how to even go about putting roots down
here. Ang and I had a church that we really loved in St. Paul, but I don't have any idea about churches in Colorado. I was looking at the website for the church that Five Iron started called Scum of the Earth. I think I
might try to check it out this weekend.
Last week I spent a lot of time pondering how social circles fit into my life, and how I felt about this social circle I had nurtured in St. Paul shifting. It's not that I won't see these people anymore, but they shift positions to almost being net-friends instead of meat-space friends. It's odd that I'm having a bit of trouble with this shift. I mean, I've had this close knit circle of friends from a USENET group called rec.music.christian for going on 10 years, and even though we only see each other once a year if that, I'm more comfortable with spacial distance in these relationships than I am when I talk to my friends back home.... (can Ieven call it that anymore)
I need to dig through my library here at work to get some reading material. I haven't read anything of substance lately. With all of this extra time, I probably should alleviate that.
if you want, give me some suggestions. e-mail me! admin@pegtop.com
The thing that I'm probably struggling with the most at the moment is how to even go about putting roots down
here. Ang and I had a church that we really loved in St. Paul, but I don't have any idea about churches in Colorado. I was looking at the website for the church that Five Iron started called Scum of the Earth. I think I
might try to check it out this weekend.
Last week I spent a lot of time pondering how social circles fit into my life, and how I felt about this social circle I had nurtured in St. Paul shifting. It's not that I won't see these people anymore, but they shift positions to almost being net-friends instead of meat-space friends. It's odd that I'm having a bit of trouble with this shift. I mean, I've had this close knit circle of friends from a USENET group called rec.music.christian for going on 10 years, and even though we only see each other once a year if that, I'm more comfortable with spacial distance in these relationships than I am when I talk to my friends back home.... (can Ieven call it that anymore)
I need to dig through my library here at work to get some reading material. I haven't read anything of substance lately. With all of this extra time, I probably should alleviate that.
if you want, give me some suggestions. e-mail me! admin@pegtop.com
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
I don't know that I have anything original to offer in this journal. My story has been told hundreds of thousands of times before... "Man grows up and leaves his family to marry his wife and move to a new land" But there has to be stories in the marrow of the bones of this story that are yet to be told, and I guess that's what I'm striving for. Maybe this is all therapy. If it is, it's inexpensive therapy at that, but it's also a way of connection. I'll still post over at my triathlon journal, but I think that the meat is going to end up here.
I was disappointed at the thought that I couldn't look for some pithy quote from Martin Luther about this entire process since all my books are mostly in Colorado Springs, but I was excited to find something that might work. It seems that Luther wouldn't think much of my trip. At least he wouldn't see some higher calling in it. In his 'a sermon on the Estate of Marriage' he writes
"But this at least all married people should know. They can do no better work and do nothing more valuable either for God, for Christendom, for all the world, for themselves, and for their children than to bring up their children well. In comparison with this one work, that married people should bring up their children properly, there isnothing at all in pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem or Compostella, nothing at all in building churches, endowing masses, or whatever good works could be named. For bringing up their children properly is thier shortest road to heaven... It is also their appointed work."
anyway, I guess he's saying that once I'm married I should focus on poppin' those babies out and raising them well. Though Ang and I want to wait a few years for that. Hopefully Luther can forgive us in that time if we try to discern God's other will for us in our lives.
In wrapping things up in the Twin Cities tonight, I got the chance to head over to my friend Ian's group that he hosts on Wed. nights called the Dead Theologians Society. We were talking about the third commandment and vulgarity in general tonight and I learned something that was really incredible and actually kind of freeing in a way. I never knew that God used the Hebrew equivalent of "F***" in the Bible. I'm trying to remember the verse, but there's a place in Jeremiah (and a couple of other places) where God was really quite upset (to put it mildly) and used the word Shagal to talk about how the Israelites had defiled themselves... with Shagal being the most vulgar and crude form of sexual description... and it was written in later editions of the Old Testament that a milder term such as 'shaval'? should be used which brought it back to 'to lay with' instead of it's more vulgar cousin. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting that it was their and in a small way it made God a little more real to me. So thank you for that Ian.
I leave Little Canada, MN June 2. In these few remaining days, I'll post as much as I can, but I might not show up again until I'm in Colorado. God bless.
-Brian
I was disappointed at the thought that I couldn't look for some pithy quote from Martin Luther about this entire process since all my books are mostly in Colorado Springs, but I was excited to find something that might work. It seems that Luther wouldn't think much of my trip. At least he wouldn't see some higher calling in it. In his 'a sermon on the Estate of Marriage' he writes
"But this at least all married people should know. They can do no better work and do nothing more valuable either for God, for Christendom, for all the world, for themselves, and for their children than to bring up their children well. In comparison with this one work, that married people should bring up their children properly, there isnothing at all in pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem or Compostella, nothing at all in building churches, endowing masses, or whatever good works could be named. For bringing up their children properly is thier shortest road to heaven... It is also their appointed work."
anyway, I guess he's saying that once I'm married I should focus on poppin' those babies out and raising them well. Though Ang and I want to wait a few years for that. Hopefully Luther can forgive us in that time if we try to discern God's other will for us in our lives.
In wrapping things up in the Twin Cities tonight, I got the chance to head over to my friend Ian's group that he hosts on Wed. nights called the Dead Theologians Society. We were talking about the third commandment and vulgarity in general tonight and I learned something that was really incredible and actually kind of freeing in a way. I never knew that God used the Hebrew equivalent of "F***" in the Bible. I'm trying to remember the verse, but there's a place in Jeremiah (and a couple of other places) where God was really quite upset (to put it mildly) and used the word Shagal to talk about how the Israelites had defiled themselves... with Shagal being the most vulgar and crude form of sexual description... and it was written in later editions of the Old Testament that a milder term such as 'shaval'? should be used which brought it back to 'to lay with' instead of it's more vulgar cousin. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting that it was their and in a small way it made God a little more real to me. So thank you for that Ian.
I leave Little Canada, MN June 2. In these few remaining days, I'll post as much as I can, but I might not show up again until I'm in Colorado. God bless.
-Brian
