Why does my Christian music station play "Letters from War"? Where does Christ endorse violence of any type? Everytime I hear this song I cry. I cry for the mother, I cry for the world, I cry for how wrong it feels. Throughout history, people have used religion to justify the worst atrocities against each other. If there is a devil this is how he works. He mixes up righteousness with God's message and laughs...

One of Jesus' critical messages is that pronouns are arbitrary. That I and she and he and me and us and we are all the same. What does it mean when we say "Do unto others as you would have done unto you?" Is it so far from "Do unto others because he is you." Is it that different to say "Love thy neighbor because he is you?" instead of "Love thy neighbor as thy self."?

A friend of mine recently handed me a book called Opening the Bible by Thomas Merton. It is fantastic. Merton is obviously a thoughtful and powerful thinker. When you first pick up the book, you are like "huh, 100 pages, should breeze right through this". Not so fast. If you don't find yourself marinating on certain passages for days then you aren't reading it.

I have found some very intersting sites that I want to jot down:

Interesting Philosophy on living Simply.

TV, a balanced approach.

A less balanced approach to TV.

I have grown more and more aware that we can rewrite our pasts. Not the events of the past. Those for the most part are set and established, but what those events mean is constantly being written and re-written. It came as a shock to me to find out that the events don't matter.

A person grew up in poverty. A person makes a mistake. An accident happens.

I have an interesting response to the arguement from evil:
The Bacon Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich
(AKA the BLT)
I realize that this isn't exactly high theology, but I think it works. Wanna test it? Next time you are feeling down about the fact that this world sucks, go to the kitchen, toast some bread, light mayo, salt, pepper, fresh vine ripened tomato, lettuce, and a couple pieces of thick cut west virginia bacon. Two bites...
serious
try it...

God give me the power to change the things I can change,
and the reserve to bear the things I cannot,
and the wisdom to be able to tell the difference between the two of them.

French Cooking: Take fresh ingredients, combine them, add wine, layer them, reduce them, add cream, reduce them, add liquor. The end result is a multi layered obfuscated dish that makes things taste nothing like what they started.

Italian Cooking: Take Fresh ingredients, cook/prepare minimally, serve. The end result is that everything tastes exactly like itself.

I have been hauling drywall from Home Depot for several years now. Drywall is rather heavy and very cumbersome. Most of the time I have to load and haul this drywall on my own. Imagine, if you will, me with a sheet of drywall precariously balanced on my head as I shakily maneuver it to my cart. To my credit (or to God's for protecting even the biggest idiots) I have not dropped or mishandled a single sheet, but I have come close many times.

I have often said that there are only 2 rules in the universe.
1) People never change, and to think otherwise is insane.
2) Sometimes they do.
This got me thinking about change and God. It made me think about the medieval concept of God as the unmoved mover. Constant and unchanging. Perhaps this metaphor for God isn't inaccurate insofar as God's nature is constant change.