To everyone at LifeBridge church:

If this church represents the hands and feet of Jesus, then I have learned that Jesus is rich, spoiled, cliquey, persnickety, and exclusive; friendly, but only superficially and only on Sundays.

I attended this church for years and attempted to invest in people and into new friendships and relationships but felt so turned away and abandoned by so many who probably simply forgot that I exist. The only friends I have who attend(ed) there were my friends before I ever attended, the people who invited me in the first place. Sure, lots of us are friends on facebook, but are we really friends? Am I getting the love that I need through relationship, am I even allowed to give any?
I have offered multiple times to help with various ministries at this church, but each and every time I have been turned away because certain areas were “too full” or they “didn’t need me.” When I left the church, not once did anyone ask where I went.

I saw a therapist for months because I knew that somehow it must be my fault that no one at this church seemed to notice or really care about me… he told me that there was nothing wrong on my part, other than I didn’t realize that some people don’t really care, and that I can’t change them.
Now, I am not attempting to selfishly complain because MY needs were not met, I am simply stating that after years of trying, after quietly, patiently praying that people would notice me, let me in, return my calls with messages other than “sorry I’ve been busy”, I am giving up. And I am really sorry that it had to happen this way.

So to everyone there, if you are genuinely my friend (and I’m sure you know who you are, because we actually spend time together) you are amazing and I am eternally grateful for you. To everyone else, please notice the impact your negligence has had on my heart.

I would still love to be your friend, and I realize how insanely busy everyone’s schedule can be (which is why I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt for so long), but I would still love to to go to cool bible studies with you, to go out to eat and get coffee and hear your life stories and encourage you, pray with you when you need it, etc.
But this message is to let everyone know that I have stopped trying because my efforts thus far have been utterly fruitless.

I have felt welcomed and comforted in the company of agnostics and atheists more than I have ever felt love in this white-washed church.

Merry Christmas.

‎"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." - Leo Buscagli

Home Sweet Home

I live in a house with 64 people.

Sometimes more, sometimes less.

There are:

50 roadies (the rest are interns)

6 Canadians

2 brothers

2 Morgans

5 refrigerators

4 bathrooms

one attic

two cupboards-under-the-stairs

two "harry potters" (who live in those cupboards)

one machete in the hall closet

one giant cockroach named Rickey

10 musical instruments of mine which are kept in the basement

9 couches

39 cups and mugs

No cable

5 massive vans (you know, those vans)

"enough knives to arm the neighborhood"

1001 laughs

4000 Questions for Getting to Know Anyone and Everyone

ten thousand reasons to rejoice

A million stories

64 distinct and wonderful personalities

A house full of people who love switchfoot. (My dream come true, right?)

64 hearts that, in one way or another love Africa and have minds made up to change the world.

The Roadie house is one of a kind.

(Did I mention there is a basement? Isn't that weird?)

Are you ready?

this is your life.

whoa

October 22, 2010 has snuck up and pounced upon me like this awesome tiger upon this frightened man:


I have not posted (here) in a long while!
I've got some catching up to do.

But time is merciless!
Time will continue on, against my will and thoughts and work and tireless valiant efforts to slow it down (or even to speed it up on occasion).

Time is like the clinging monkey on the back of this rather angry parrot,

or like this vulture's vicious attack upon an unsuspecting jackal:
Time still marches, marches violently, silently onward!

a englilish poem

The Chaos

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

- Charivarius (G. Nolst Trenité)

Two quotes I have memorized, and that I will unconditionally love forever.

Jon Foreman:

"I yearn to live and love and burn, and yet so much of my time is spent faking and forgetting, faking and forgetting... I carry out my disbelief with uninspired hands, my eyes shut, my emotions dulled, my spirit numb. It is in times like these I am in desperate need of truth to come to me like a blinding light, like a splinter in my soul, reminding me of the brevity of my time here on earth."

&

Jack Kerouack (from On the Road):

"But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

i am a child no longer - but this is still me.

“Millions of children—one in five—have what psychologist Lucy Jo Palladino, Ph.D., calls the Edison trait: dazzling intelligence, an active imagination, a free-spirited approach to life, and the ability to drive everyone around them crazy. They have the raw talent to succeed in our fast-paced, information-rich, techno-magic world. But, unbridled, their talent also brings conflict into their lives. Edison-trait kids excel at thinking divergently, brimming over with one idea after the other. However, schools, organized activities, and routines of daily living reward convergent thinking, which seeks to focus on one idea at a time. Parents and teachers get frustrated by the Edison-trait child’s apparent intractability and lack of focus. A mismatch between school and child can mask the child’s considerable gifts for creativity and independent thinking.”

from: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0812927370/borntoexplotheotA/

i need a place to live.

I am starting to get tired of having to retell my confusing present life situation over and over again to everyone who asks, so I figured I should write it all down.

At times I really hesitate to share some of this information. One, because it's very personal. Two, because I don't want to sound like I am complaining. But it is what it is and I am in desperate need right now of support or at least, just the ability to get all of this confusing ish out so I can sort through it and find out what I need to do.
I'm no good with being vague, so I tell it like it is.

the first part of this was written on Sunday march 28th:

I've had a very rough weekend, to put it lightly.
After weeks of worrying and wondering about it, my mom finally lost her job and now has to sell our house since we can no longer afford it, so I have to move out.
She has no idea where she is going to live, and no, I cannot live with her, so please stop asking about that. Initially I wasn't too worried about this because I was blessed and fortunate enough to be able to move in with Courtney and Jordi's family in Chula Vista, and the more I prayed and considered the ramifications of this move, the better it seemed. There was a good church community that they are involved in, (and since I currently work at a church on Sundays I do not attend a church and have no community or fellowship with any specific church, especially certain ones that to a good job of making me feel like an outcast, so I figured this was good,) and everything else just seemed right.

But this Sunday was an especially stressful day because on Saturday (march 27), my car started stalling and I had to trade it with my mom's car because it wasn't working, and I needed a car to move my stuff because she continued to stress that I needed to have my stuff packed up and moved out so she could sell the house.
That night, however, I tried to go home to sleep but my mom was out drinking with her boyfriend and I couldn't get inside because she had my house key since we traded cars.
So, since I had no place to sleep, my best friend and I stayed up in his car talking for an entire night. We spent most of it crying. It was not good. We decided to break off any potential we had for a relationship. (And yes, there was one there as most of you surmised.)
As the sun came up on Sunday I went straight to my internship feeling groggy and hungry and sad. All I had to eat was some coffee... so I felt ridiculous.
I had planned to go to the absolutely wonderful bridal shower of the amazing Alison, but as soon as I got there I got a call form Courtney saying that
the Williams got evicted from their house and had 60 days to move out. I'm sorry that I wasn't for longer, Alison! I wanted to be. Courtney is moving back in with her mom, but I don't know where I am going to go.

Anyway, it has been a few terrible weeks since that Sunday, and I have not really felt the crippling sadness that now overwhelms me until recently. I have been doing poorly in school but still I am trying to keep my head up and not let all of this suck consume me. However, I heard again today that after Jordi's family moves, I can't come with them. Initially Jordi said I could share a room with her, but I guess it's going to be more expensive if more people life there... So:
In a month I won't have a place to live. I still don't have a full time job, and I don't have money to attend college. I barely have money to keep paying for my car, so affording a large rent right now also seems near impossible.

But! I do realize that I am blessed. I know I am very blessed. I have food and water and clothing and so much stuff that I don't even know what to do with it. I even have the time and ability to do incredible things and really enjoy the beauty in life.

But even still, when I look around at my current situation, I just feel completely crippled. I am helpless and I don't know what to do. There are so many goals and dreams I have, but I fear that none of them will ever be realized.

I am trying my best to look on the bright side of things. I am trying to enjoy this most turbulent and interesting this time in my life.

But right now, I figure that my life will either continue in this horrific downward spiral until I eventually die, or things will get better.

I have faith, and I know that SOMETHING is going to happen, so I shouldn't give up just yet.
Whatever it is, bring it on.

I am trying to figure out what I want to do with my life - it's crazy but I'm kind of loving it.

on a whim

I woke up at 4:00 this morning, and then I drove up the golden state to Davis with my friend Stephen.
It was really quite random, fun, unplanned, and amazing.

I'll be in the bay area for a little while, but I don't know how long. I'll fly back whenever I can.
I got to spend time with Christina who is very excited to have a visitor. I really love it here. I should be in college some more. I really love college.

Also, I'm glad I took this trip on a whim. I think that life should be more whimsical.

Because who even knows what life is anyway?
I want to figure it out, and for now, this is the best way I know how.

Do something unexpected today, friends. Do something positive. Make the world a better place.

yes...

we made it!

happy 2010.

don't read this if you want to keep on pretending that everything we do in the world is alright.

Every single piece of plastic us humans have ever produced is still on the planet today. It will never go away.
We can recycle it, but most of it ends up in the garbage, and then in the ocean, where there is a mass of garbage that is estimated to be twice the size of Texas.

Please take note of this.
Read this website to see what it is doing to the environment:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11


I hope you are happy with this, humans.

I am quitting my job at Tuesday Morning because the company is wasteful and never recycles. I honestly can't stand killing the earth any more than I already do.

Even though you are only one person, what you do definitely matters.
So be aware.

this is my new favourite blog:

1000 Awesome Things



also this other fledgling blog might eventually shape up to be something nice: www.friendofmine.wordpress.com

:)

life is wild

When I was born, I was fortunate enough to have a loving family that cared for me and provided for me.
Initially they taught me to speak and walk and think and reason and then eventually they put me into school where I learned many, many more things.
From that point on my life was rather well planned out.

What no one ever told me is that at one point, my life wasn't going to have a plan.

I guess that this was always a given: once I was finished with my schooling then I would have to do something with my life and "make a living" somehow.
But even in high school, there was still this idea that, well, next year I will go to college, and then I will have skills and a degree and I will be able to apply for jobs, etc.

What no one ever told me is that you can't exactly apply for jobs like you apply for schools.

There is no set path or set goals or set plan for anything.
Life is wild, open, unpredictable, beautiful and grand.

I don't know if this secret had been purposefully or accidentally kept from me my entire life. I don't think it was intentional because I guess that it is not really a secret.

But it is a scary thing to really realize that, from here on out, if I do nothing to make something happen, then nothing will happen with my life.

I feel as if I am starting my life over again, right now, with a fresh clean slate, except already I have twenty years of training and education and experience under my skin, and I am well enculturated into this society.

Right now, I am looking towards my open horizons, and am excited to see what happens next; I am also prepared to bear the weight and consequence of my future decisions, whatever those may be.

Please do not fear the wilderness of life once you come upon it. Look out into it, take a risk and prepare yourself for the wildest adventure you can possibly dream up.

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs;
ask yourself what makes you come alive.
And then go and do that.
Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive."
-Harold Whitman

P.S. Copland's Fanfare For The Common Man is probably my favourite song at the moment. Please listen to it while you read this post, and while you perform any other task ever.

Switchfoot (and me!) on Jimmy Kimmel

Yep, after working for switchfoot all weekend, and going to their Hello Hurricane release party on Tuesday, I got to see them again on Jimmy Kimmel.



After Courtney and I saw U2 (posted below) I said that I wished all of the shows I attended would be broadcast on YouTube.
Well look at that! Maybe they all will be!

Thanks

best weekend ever?

Last night I got to see The Lion King musical.

It was amazing.

Today I am working for Switchfoot.
My favourite band ever.
As I type this, I am sitting back stage, several feel away from them.
They are soundchecking.
Jon just played the main riff from New Way To Be Human. I don't know if that's on the set or not.
They are so cool and so nice.
They are also messing with their new equipment and they look like kids on christmas.

This is a dream come true.

Thank you Switchfoot, thank you.

the end of october and the indescribable infinity

This past week has felt so amazing.
I don’t even know why I am trying to describe it except I feel that I need to lest I ever forget about it.

There is this one ungraspable feeling and idea in particular that I want to make a vain attempt at grasping.

First: Courtney and I went to a U2 show at the Rose Bowl on her 21st birthday. At the same time, our dear friend Madison was in labor, and the next day, a new and beautiful little human life was brought into this world to be with our lives.
Welcome to the planet, Sage.

That night, on the eve of Sage’s birth, the halfmoon shown brightly in the dim Los Angeles sky and I knew it was just a perfect night.
It felt magical.
And this “magic” is precisely what I want to ascertain.

For a few good moments I could pause and breathe and know that there was a grand story unfolding all around me. I could just feel it, see it in the eyes of all other people, inhale it in everywhere around me.
It is the feeling of infinity that I have occasionally discerned throughout my life, and it is the best feeling ever.

I can’t quite say where it comes from, but it was like I knew my distinct part in The Greatest Story Ever Told.

And I guess that a piece of me always knows that I am a part of this, but so often I ignore it.
I know that I can feel it, but I cannot exactly hear the narration.
I don’t know the next chapter or page or even the next sentence of this story.
That is a little scary.

Right now I am wondering if maybe I have to write it.
And in facing that, I am tempted to cram as many shallow, trivial things as possible into that gaping story line, just to make it easy; so I don’t fear getting it wrong.

But! sometimes, I can hear the pen: and I know it isn’t mine.
Something is out there and it is guiding all of this. Every coincidence in the story was planned long before by the author; none of it is chance.
And in this feeling I can reach out into eternity, into infinity, into that immeasurable magical brilliance.

For some reason it makes me think of those tucks driving through the long, cold nights in the vast, empty spaces across America. Maybe if you have driven for a long time you will know what I mean. The trucks will drive all night and then into the desert sunrise; across the unending land and into another still day.
They make me feel something I can barely wrap words around.
I guess it's what I mean when I say, "I feel infinite."
But somehow it is more than that, too.

This summer dragged on far, far too long.
And though now some days are still warm I am so glad to feel the bitter cold wind that swept through here this past week.
I sat with Jordi and the newborn Sage as the crisp wind blew outside. I could hear the sound of the freeways sigh along with my sigh, my lungs breathing in, and out and in, keeping me here on Earth and as a part of this story.
She played her guitar softly and I just thought about what it means to be alive.
I love that feeling.
I really do.

The wind comes in at night and brings a change that you weren’t expecting; it brings a life you never thought you had the chance to live until now.
It is when you learn something new that will forever impact how you live your life.
It is understanding love; it is the stars; it is gazing into the night sky and attempting to perceive your own infinitesimal existence.
It is those three perfect notes you hear together which somehow construct a euphoric harmony.

Simple, ubiquitous; yet quietly magnificent.

We rush around and fill our lives with so many busy things, but for me it’s those quiet moments, which I cannot describe, that are worth living for.
When you can take a breath, and know that your soul is alive, and that there is another step beyond this one, and then one more beyond that one, and that the story continues forevermore.

Because the sweetest melody is the one we haven’t heard.

And we all need to keep listening.

everything is amazing and nobody is happy

couldn't have said it better.

^_^