The church, Christians and faith in God.

Looking back over my blog the past couple days I can see a thread running through it that I had not realized had been going for so long... 

It seems it started and then tapered off after Glen Eyrie.  I still wonder why so many times working for a Christian organization can serve the purpose to drive people away from God instead of drawing people to him.  I wonder if it is the intense exposure to Christians at there best and worst all the time?

One thing that it is easy to forget I think is that all people who are Christians are still human, they sin, they doubt, they run back to God and they put fish bumper stickers on there car and then drive horribly.  Sometimes I think that do and have forgotten that.  One of the main struggles I have always had is separating Christians the people, from God.  I think most of my struggles with my faith have been related to that. 

Since we are all fallable and broken it makes sense that we will never be perfect...

Over the years the main thing I have had to learn is that my belief in God has to be separated from how his followers act.  It is so much easier to remember the bad then the good and the experiences that I had with people who called themselves followers of Jesus when I worked with the Navigators jaded me for a long time.  I know I had so many wonderful experiences there and made so many life long friends.  Sometimes in the past I failed to realize that.

None of this is to say that it should not drive you crazy when Christians do or say stupid things.  When Christians spout hate in the name of God or express racism in stead of love towards any of our brothers and sisters.

We need to bring Christianity back to its core where it is focused on us showing God's love to others, not focused on what they are doing but what God wants us to do for them.

Even the people who drive me crazy, because I think "How can they do that and still call themselves a Christian"  I need to be showing love to them to.  I am thankful that after the couple years of my doubts having a war with who I knew God was, I am able to say that my eyes are open to both the good and the bad the Christians do, and that to a large extent when I see Christians including my self doing things that are the opposite of what God wants that I can still believe in Him.

writing...

What is it about putting words on paper.

I had forgotten how therapeutic it is and how it lets me work out some of my thoughts that tumble around in my head and never reach a conclusion.  Over the past couple years there have been so many thoughts tumbling end over end in my head and never finding a place to stop.  I think that to an extent the thoughts would be worked out if they were written down and pondered over.

In the past year or two or three I watched TV or a movie or who knows what else instead stimulating my mind.  My reading has gone down hill... the things I ponder all the time do not seem as deep as they once did.

How do I get that deepness of thought back?  Is it through working out my thoughts in a medium such as this blog or a journal or both?  Is it through searching out books to read that stimulate all the dormant brain cells that I haven't used over the past couple years?  Maybe it is also about finding friends who want to have those conversations about life and love and how we should interact with the world as christians.

Local

Local

Lately I have been thinking about how to buy local...

It is not necessarily to support the USA, cause honestly I am not much of a patriot.
It is not to support the local big wigs
It is not to give the local government a much needed cash infusion.
And it doesn't come from a desire to be more green.

Buying locally should be something that all of us support because it means supporting our neighbors and our community.
Buying a couch off craigslist and having it reupholstered by my neighbor Kat
Buying or bartering for seeds to plant my garden next year
Buying coffee from a local roaster

 All these things enable a tighter knit community,by enabling us to get to know the people around us. It gives us opportunities to serve others and get to know them and find out what is going on in their lives! For me the point of buying local is to get to know and support the people around me.

The culture of community strengthens everyone as a whole and helps people to become others centered instead of centered on themselves. I dream of starting a tool library to increase the community in my neighborhood. It has been an ongoing dream and I have not started it yet. I think I will start once I get done with my house. I will start out with my own tools and add tools as needed. I like the West Philly Tool library as an example of what could be done. Minimal fees and great selection. westphillytools.org/ . I would like to include my truck as part of the initial tool library so that anyone who needs it can borrow it.

Community has the potential to make everything it touches better...

Lifting the House

Its has been almost a year and a half since I posted...

Kind've crazy. for a while there I was posting what seemed like every week. I have debated whether it was because I got rid of my laptop and could not sit outside, smoking the hookah and looking at the stars while I wrote a blog post.

Some of the posts in the past were more contemplative and philosophical, I have seen myself move away from that in the past couple years, I think mostly due to watching to much TV and giving into being a couch potato. I didn't really grow up with TV and for some reason I tend to binge on it when I have access to it.

But to move on. I realized I have not wrote anything or blogged or anything else in a long time.

I will mock up ideas I have for designs on CAD but that in terms of creative, that is about the most creative I get.

I have decided (and this is not a new years resolution) that I will limit myself to at most 1 hr of time wasted in front of Netflix or Hulu everyday. I live in such amazing country and have no excuse to take advantage of it. Hiking trails start within a block of my house and you can hear one of the waterfalls when you sit on the back patio.

Lately, I have stayed inside and watched a TV show vs. getting out and hiking or writing or drawing or something besides vegging out.

I got on the blog to start documenting my thought process on restoring the foundation on my house. I researched all different kinds of ways to repair the foundation and level the house cause it is a scary prospect. Then for some reason I started thinking about all the thoughts that started brewing inside my head about 3 weeks ago as I set in front of the computer watching hulu and had the little warning pop up saying that I had watched it for 3 hrs and did I want to take a break.

So here it goes... Now if it would not bother my neighbours when I use my circular saw after 9 it would be even easier to start the process of de-vegging. As a preview, the first picture is how my house looked to begin with, and how it will look once the process is done. I am kind've in the middle right now.

Just as a point of reference the area to the left of the futon is what the first picture is showing. In the model below the kitchen is moved to the opposite side of the house and the column in the middle will hold cabinets, all the home theater equipment including the projector and then will have indirect light coming out the top and bouncing off the ceiling. Takes some imagination though...