Hurray for Taste!

I have a sticky note at eye level in my cubicle. "Pray" is all it says. I started this a few weeks ago to help me focus on the Almighty a bit more frequently. It works pretty well, but like this blog, sometimes I don't know what to say to God (I know, sometimes I just need to not say anything). But today, while I was eating almonds and dried mango, I was smacked with the thrill of taste.

I thanked God then for taste. It blows my mind that our world can have such a variety of sensations, but even so much variety for just one of our sense is incredible. I don't even know what all to say about it, but God is a stud for making so many things that taste so different, and then to have so many things mix so well to get more tastes.

Slow down and taste.

Life-Changing Experiences

Recently, I have been attending a seminar at my church. At first, I abhorred the idea of attending. The first couple were as boring as watching the effects of gravity on well-crafted statue of cheese. I dozed off a couple of times. Secondly, it was a seminar. Just the word makes me hate it. Too much information poorly presented. And that is exactly what it has been. However, God works regardless.

I have a crew of people that also find the seminar strange as it leaves us with a feeling of unease. Though there is a lot of material to go through, well under half is from scripture itself. And even though I believe God inspires hundreds and thousands of people, I want to see the direct connection to the scriptures (this can't be done when whipping through page after page of material). The joy of the posse that I share this common feeling with is that we release our hot wind filled bags after each session. We ask questions about what was said and how we don't feel comfortable with it. We freely share what bugs us about what we heard. We seek to discover what stirs our guts and makes us feel like we could spiritually hurl.

I am out of school for this week thanks to the first quarter break. I was able to take a Bible and sit down for two hours strait, searching for answer to some of the questions we had. I'm still looking. But I had a fantastic conversation with God. He showed me things today that cleared up a lot of questions unrelated to seminar, and I felt closer to Him than I have in months. I was also confronted, not for the first time, with the time-consuming practices that keep me from the most abundant life: video games. World of Warcraft has been the most prominent over the last year, but it is not the sole pillar of distraction. Therefore, I'm going for a covenant to avoid video games outside of social situations. This means that unless I am in a room with another person playing a game, I am allowed to join them in that game. Otherwise, I want to be free of such a time-waster.

Already, it's bizarre. I came home and didn't know what to do. I wonder what I used to do, and I can think of very few activities. Pray for me, please, that I stand strong on this.

Death and One Funny Thing

Over the course of a week, I heard of two deaths that really bothered me. One was the brother of a former student, the other a great friend's grandmother. This stirs all sorts of feelings and thoughts, as death seems to do. But the real beast of it is that I've not said hardly anything to those who lost.

My dad died when I was four. Throughout high school and the early part of college, I was crumpled if I thought about it for more that .3 seconds. I know the sorrow that death brings, that insensitive, numbing lukewarm feeling that wraps around the body and suffocates. I often told myself that one reason my dad died was so I could help others who faced something similar. But I haven't.

All of a sudden I'm loaded with an insecurity, a lack of confidence about what to say when I know that often, people don't want to hear anything. They want to know that somebody is praying, loving, being a safety net in the event that they need to gush.

I need to suck it up.

On a totally different note, I heard somebody call Shihan a bad mamma jamma yesterday...and he was serious.