Communication

"what we've got here , is... failure to communicate. some men you just can't reach. so you get what we had here last week. which is the way he wants it. well, he gets it. i don't like it any more than you men." - warden martin from cool hand luke

it's funny how sometimes even when you try your best to communicate information to someone, you're still the one who everyone blames when someone else drops the ball. today i received a suprising phone call at work. a client who i haden't spoken with in over a month called me and asked me about the status of his job. it took me a second to recall his job from the dusty archives of my scattered brain. i collected my thoughts and told him that as of the last time we spoke (over a month ago), he had placed that project on hold, and it was to remain on hold until he notified me otherwise. i even sent him a subsequent email stating the exact same back on the day of that conversation. so, naturally, he proceeds to get upset with me for prolonging the project, and hangs up on me! awesome!

not 10 minutes later i get a phone call from my boss asking me what happened with the previously-mentioned project...why i dropped the ball and why the client is all ticked off and now looking for a new architect? are you freaking kidding me! i did everything right, and somehow i'm still the bad guy! after a couple minutes of defending myself, i get my boss back on my side. as for the client, perhaps warden martin was right, "some men you just can't reach."

A Day Of Rest

in fulfilling tasks that depend upon accessing energy, there is a fine line between fidelity to work and foolishness to self. there are times when your determination to continue working carries you through, regardless of your inability to extend your energy. by sheer willpower alone you meet the personal or business goals you have set for yourself. in spite of abiding fatigue, you call forth seeming undiminished reserves. in fact, you often use tiredness itself as a private index to prove that you are working invaluably hard. a serious problem exists here even though you can't acknowledge it.

atlast, your mental and physical pace cannot be sufficiently supplied by the energy at your current disposal. you are using up more energy than can be replaced. so you assume that your sincere will to accomplish the task at hand can compensate for the lack of vitality. the more you try to succeed, however, the harder the struggle becomes and the more miserable you feel. too bad. lashing your tired self with the whip of willpower becomes a persecution, but the fear of impending defeat, threatening your self-esteem, pushes you on until you are forced to stop.

and stop i did, yesterday. my body had finally had enough of the constant going, and it gave out. i left work early feeling horrible and exhausted....i came home and i slept! in fact, if my math is correct, i believe i slept for about 13 straight hours. i saw this coming too. i knew my body well enought to know that a collapse was coming. i even requested the day off next monday for just this reason...to recharge. katy and i were to go out of town for a long and restful weekend away...but things change. now, not only are we not going out of town, but we have other commitments...such is life. so, needless to say, i was just shooting for monday. then i could relax and have my day of rest. i didn't make it to monday, but i'm still getting my day!

The Sims

"even eternally free people are enslaved by the process of living." - chuck klosterman

i don't know how many people have played the video game 'the sims'... but if you've played it for more than 15 minutes, one thing most certainly becomes apparently clear; your character isn't happy unless he/she is constanly purchasing something. whether it be a new flat screen tv, mahogany dining room table, the latest in kitching lighting or a new designer outfit, if you're not spending, you're not living! the funny thing is, this game can become highly addicting. it can actually develop into you having no real life because you're too consumed trying to better your sims life.

on the surface, this may just seem like a great selling video game and nothing more. but i think it's a great microcosm of our culture today as a whole. never have we been more consumed with consuming ourselves. what are we constantly spending our paychecks on... a new flat screen tv, mahogany dining room table, the latest in kitching lighting or a new designer outfit? consuming defines america. everyone is looked at and judged by how big their house is or what kind of car they drive instead of what kind of person they really are.

consuming drives this country. the government is even going so far as to send everyone tax-relief checks worth $1000 or so and urge everyone to go out and spend. after all, consistant consuming is good for the country, right? the notorious b.i.g. once sang, "mo money mo problems"...and he should know. after all, he was shot to death! perhaps this country needs a real wakeup call, a real change in values. lets step out of the video game world and into real life. lets find a way to make our sim happy without swiping the credit card...

Day 4; I've Got The McShakes

so, today is the final day of my fast. i'm actually felling a pretty good right now. i've got a pretty bad headache and sinus pressure and drainage, but i'm blaming the mountain cedar on that one. yesterday i wrote ryan and told him "i hope God is messing with your head, because He sure is with mine!". i have been doing a lot of talking with God over the past 4 days, and he's reavealed to me some pretty amazing things! more on those things in a couple days, once my brain and heart has processed all that i've heard and seen.

i know i wrote yesterday that when you seem to have it all figured out, God throws you a curve ball, right...well, He threw an entire 9-inning's worth of them at me last night! i went to my dimensions of wellness class last night and we watched Super Size Me!! are you freaking kidding me!? i haven't eaten in 3 days and i have to watch a movie all about a guy stuffing his face with mcdonald's for a month! for those of you who haven't seen this movie (which i would highly recommend you do), the filmmaker; morgan spurlock; displays the downfall of american health through poor eating habits. in order to lighten up the amount of information regarding our love for that which kills us, spurlock decides to see what would happen to his health if he were to only eat at mcdonald's for an entire month; breakfast, lunch & dinner. the results are astounding! even the doctor's said they would never have guessed that someone could do so much damage to their body in so little time. oh, did i mention that he gained over 25 pounds in 29 days!

of course, that was all secondary information for me...all i really thought about was the big mac, quarter-pounder w/ cheese and their deliciously addictive french fries! for 2 hours, i saw a guy stuff his face with fat, and i wanted to be him. this really makes me realize now just how weak i am. Jesus went 40 days in the desert, and i'm struggling to go 4! i bet Jesus never got the mcshakes...

Day 3 of 4; Encouragement

this morning i met with my good friend for breakfast like we do every thursday morning at 6am. it was a tough morning. i didn't want to get up. my body has realized that without food, there's no energy either. so, needless to say, getting out of bed this morning was a chore. but i got up because i live for my thursday morning chats...and because i was hoping to share my fasting story with him and get some encouagement. but; like always; when you think you have things figured out, God throws you a curve ball.

when i arrived, i ordered a water and coffee and sat there waiting for him. he showed up a couple minutes later, got a couple tacos (the most amazing looking tacos ever as seen by my food starved mind) and we proceeded to chat. he asked me if i was eating, and i told him about my fast. immediately he was encouraged. we proceeded to talk about the past week, our spiritual walk, other life issues, etc. but eventually it went back to fasting. fasting for discipline, fasting for prayer, fasting for hope, fasting for direction. somehow in my goofy words, God must have spoke to my friend. he told me he was really seeking direction and a goal. he felt like life was just going by each day, but he wasn't giving it his all (who does?). he decided at that moment to fast next week and really be obidient to God and trust Him...to really listen to what God is calling him to do.

i showed up this morning seeking encouragement and instead gave out advice. only God could work things out that way. i am very encouraged...

Day 2 of 4; Hunger Sets In*

i am fasting...4 days, no food. just fluids (water, grape juice, coffee, orange juice, tequila**). i never thought i'd ever fast, honestly. that just seemed like a crazy idea...and i love food way too much! but, upon reading a simple comment from sara (the blog lurker), she motivated ryan and i...and God placed something on our hearts. last week, ryan and i slept out in the freezing cold (click here) to gain a better perspective of what it must feel like (not that one night can even compare) to be homeless. but prior to our jaunt to the outdoors, i filled my belly with enough food to feed a small family. i know God is placing these things in my life for a reason. i have always sat back and wondered what it must feel like to have this or that situation happen to me. but i've learned, you'll never know the feeling from just sitting around and thinking about it....you must do it.

0nce a month we feed the homeless downtown (pancakes with a side of love), and i hear stories and see pictures of children in south african squatter camps grateful just to have a sandwich that someone made for them (likely their only meal of the day), and i feel compassion. i want things to be different for all of them.

i also want food. i haven't had anything to eat since dinner on monday night...and i won't eat again until saturday morning. everytime i feel hunger (which i imagine will be quite often come tomorrow and friday) i am going to thank God. thank Him for ryan and sara. thank Him for my wife. thank Him for kyle, stef and tiff, who relay their amazing stories of struggle, heartache, hunger and victory from those very same squatter camps. thank Him for the homeless that we feed. thank Him for the people who "get it". thank Him for the many others who don't. and i'm going to pray to Him. pray for change. pray for eyes to be opened to what else is out there. pray that someday, someone will see possibilites and change, just as i am finally beginning to see.

everytime i think of this subject, for some reason 4 lines of a john mayer song always pop into my head:

"One day our generation

Is gonna rule the population

So we keep on waiting

Waiting on the world to change"

i can't wait...

*thanks ryan for allowing me to borrow your title!

**no, not really tequila

How Small We Really Are

do you ever look up at the stars at night and allow your mind to drift? do you wonder what all is out there? ever think about just how big this universe really is? well, if you're a nerd like me, you do this quite often. the following passsage is from a book that i've been reading entitled In The Presence Of Mystery.

"we live in this continuously expanding universe. it is a very large one. to get an idea of the amount of matter and space involved, begin with a pea about one-third of an inch in diameter. let that stand for the earth (a little less than eight thousand miles in diameter). put the pea next to a very large beach ball, one full yard in diameter, to represent the sun (eight hundred sixty-four thousand miles in diameter). now, put the pea at one end of a football field and the ball at the other end, about one hundred ten yards apart. that approximates the average distance between earth and sun (ninety-three million miles). the earth is quite close to the sun compared to the outermost planets. *pluto's average distance from the sun is forty times as far as earth's. if the whole solar system out ot pluto were shrunk to one inch, on that scale the nearest star would be ninety yards away. our solar system is three-fourths of the way out from the center of a cluster of stars known to us as the milky way, a galaxy with as many as perhaps three hundred billion stars. there are an estimated hundred billion such galaxies in the known universe, each of them averaging another hundred billion stars or so. this speck of rock called earth can seem insignificant in a universe where even our entire milky way galaxy is lost among a hundred billion others. in a few million years our sun will follow the normal course in the life of a small to medium sized star, first bloating out into a "red giant" burning the earth raw and then collapsing and dying."

over a hundred billion galaxies! i'll never be able to comprehend that. scientists estimate that our planet was formed approximately fourteen billion years ago. meaning that even on our little speck of rock called earth, our lives won't even be a tiny dot on the timeline of this planet. so, why we we still think we're so imporant? why do we persist that our lives on this planet mean anything? we get so caught up on the 'american dream'....fancy car, big house, etc, that we completely lose sight of the much bigger picture. when our speck of a life is up on this rock and we're dead and gone...what then? what about your eternal life? so, what's more important, planning for tomorrow, or eternity?



*apparently pluto is no longer a planet. i'm not sure how they (whoever they are) decided this (nor do i care). i just know that its really far away from here.