Hello, world.
It's 5:30 in the morning, 6 hours since I got off work & also just before I start my second 8-hour shift at "the restaraunt". A couple of thoughts struck me this morning, and I feel impelled to share them. As I was in my bathroom this morning shaving, I heard the sound of a toilet somewhere in my building flush, and it got me to thinking how crazily amazing, peculiar and wonderful the creation of the Lord is. Here I am, going about my life, yet in the very same building, there are probably close to another hundred individuals, goinga bout their own unique lives, having their own experiences which may be in no way related to mine at all. They all have lives. They all ned to get up, eat, and go about their daily mandated activities. What a totally absurd concept that other people have their own business & their own agendas. Yet, this is the way with the world. The intricacy of the whole human endeavour is mind=boggling if you sit down and think of it. Imagine watching/observing the whole dynamic thing from the outside: and you thought ant farms were astonishing!
The second interesting thought came to me whilst I was showering. I remembered a long-past memory, when I was a wee lad of narry three years' age. My family was at the time living in Grande Prairie, Alta, and I remember this certain occasion when my family was travelling to Peace River in our old Vista Cruiser-esque station wagon (It was an Oldsmobile, but that's all I can really remember). My brothers and I were sitting in the back (reversed) seat of the station wagon with a couple of our Peace River cousins, and while we were driving, the road bounded over a long row of small hills. It was--at the time--perhaps the coolest thing in the world. The closest thing to a rollercoaster that I had yet experienced, that straight road bee-lining over the hillcrests & through the intermediate valleys. Every time we got to the top of a hill, the peak was small enough to get that little rising feeling in your stomach you get when you lose a bit of earth's gravitational putt. We all laughed, giggled and thoroughly enjoyed both the amber-coloured countryside & the upsie-downsie of the trip while watching our other cousins in the only other vehicle on the road, several hundred metres behind.
The bliss of those days. It seems so long ago & so removed that it almost feels like another lifetime. I think that heaven will be much like that memory: We didn't have a care in the world, as everything was looked after in our lives. We knew that we were loved and we feared nothing at all in the world. It was a snapshot of perfect, childish happiness, and it is a memory like this that makes me all the more aware why Jesus calls us to be like little children. He's taking care of everything: there should be no worries, no fears, no troubles, for we know that He is watching over us & is protecting us from all kinds of evil & trouble. Mind you, we will still get our knees scraped in the playground of life, be we shouldn't be so caught up in the things that stress us out. Instead, we should sit in Vista Cruisers with our family & friends, bobbing up and down along the road of life, letting Christ drive the station wagon as we thoroughly enjoy what He has in store for us. Oh, and don't forget to invite your friends on the road trip: the more people in the back seat, the more infectious the funness and the more contagious the laughter becomes.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Friday, June 24, 2005
Episode III: Revenge of the Blog
My my, does time ever fly by. Looking at my calendar, I am amazed to find that it has already been two full months since I have finished this past school-year & three full months since I have started my job as a full-time line cook at an upper-tier restaurant in the world's largest shopping complex. In 5 weeks, I’ll be heading into the nether regions of the Rocky Mountains for 20 days as a counsellor at one of the Bible camps my church has ties with. It has been over a year since I started logging, and it will be less than a year until I graduate with an undergraduate double-major degree.
Wow.
Don't you remember those days when you were a wee lad (or lass, if you're of that genetic disposition), and when those 75-minute made-for-children movies seemed to stretch on for eternity—much less a full day. Or how about summer vacations? Remember how those things seemed to be as long as the time spent in class? And those vacations were only two months! I'm more that halfway through my summer break before my penultimate undergraduate term begins in September, and believe you me: it hasn't felt like two months at all.
I once was told a theory about the perception of temporal relativity—aka why time seems to "feel" longer or shorter depending on what you're doing &/or how old you are. I'm not completely sure where I heard it, but if my failing memory (in my pre-geriatric years) still serves me with any faithfulness, I believe that I learned the theory in my Advanced Perception class this past term. Anyways, the theory states that the reason why long periods of time seem to progress a lot faster the older you get is due to the amount of time you have previously experienced. When a 5-year-old adds another year to his life, he has increased his total experience of time by 20%, whereas when a 25-year-old adds the same year to his life, it only chalks up another 4% of total experienced time. Relatively speaking, a 5-year-old's experience of a year would be equivalent to a 25-year-old's experience of 5 years. Relative perception of time is crazy. No wonder a day is like a thousand years to God & a thousand years like a day. Poor Methuselah... His last year of life would have felt as long as these past two months of mine. Man, that's fast!
I think sometime soon, I will write/e-publish my documentation of the Mexico Spring break trip that I & a handful of my friends took at the end of February. It was good times. Travelling 5,000 kilometres to get a couple hundred bottles of pop, among other things. Nonetheless, there is many a story to tell from that trip. Many a story indeed.
A month ago, I was reading about how chemists have discovered a new method of combining atoms to form new compounds, which have the same physical properties of compounds that are created from other elements. The process is amazing & profound, as it pretty much adds a third dimension to today's conventional periodic table of elements. The even cooler thing is that chemists now have the ability to do what alchemists always dreamed of doing: They can turn lead into gold...or at least they can turn lead into what looks, feels, acts & reacts like (and therefore is essentially) gold. The chemical process has been wittily dubbed "jellium" since how it works basically involves individual atoms of the same element globbing together in little jello-like clusters to form super-atoms. It's pretty neat, and of course—like all things that I think about—it reminds me of Christianity & the Church.
Every individual in the Church has been chosen by God for a specific purpose. All of us by ourselves have been given gifts by which we can glorify the Lord & can spread love and kindness to our hurting world. The amazing part, however, is that when we decide to shed our protective outer layers & become vulnerable enough to let others in the Church close enough to form a productive, healthy & proactive bond, the community that results can become & can act to accomplish anything: nothing is impossible for a community that is bound together with the true love of Christ. The problem is that the members of the Church—like the individual atoms—have to get close enough in order to create a super-atom structure. The warning there, however, is that there is a tendency for atoms (super, or normal) to try to fill their energy levels & become stable and non-reactive, unable to make any change in the world.
Think about this. Let us learn the lesson from chemistry. Community & individuality are both excellent things; just don't fill up your life with things so as to become non-reactive: leave enough room to change the world around you. The implications are explosive.
Wow.
Don't you remember those days when you were a wee lad (or lass, if you're of that genetic disposition), and when those 75-minute made-for-children movies seemed to stretch on for eternity—much less a full day. Or how about summer vacations? Remember how those things seemed to be as long as the time spent in class? And those vacations were only two months! I'm more that halfway through my summer break before my penultimate undergraduate term begins in September, and believe you me: it hasn't felt like two months at all.
I once was told a theory about the perception of temporal relativity—aka why time seems to "feel" longer or shorter depending on what you're doing &/or how old you are. I'm not completely sure where I heard it, but if my failing memory (in my pre-geriatric years) still serves me with any faithfulness, I believe that I learned the theory in my Advanced Perception class this past term. Anyways, the theory states that the reason why long periods of time seem to progress a lot faster the older you get is due to the amount of time you have previously experienced. When a 5-year-old adds another year to his life, he has increased his total experience of time by 20%, whereas when a 25-year-old adds the same year to his life, it only chalks up another 4% of total experienced time. Relatively speaking, a 5-year-old's experience of a year would be equivalent to a 25-year-old's experience of 5 years. Relative perception of time is crazy. No wonder a day is like a thousand years to God & a thousand years like a day. Poor Methuselah... His last year of life would have felt as long as these past two months of mine. Man, that's fast!
I think sometime soon, I will write/e-publish my documentation of the Mexico Spring break trip that I & a handful of my friends took at the end of February. It was good times. Travelling 5,000 kilometres to get a couple hundred bottles of pop, among other things. Nonetheless, there is many a story to tell from that trip. Many a story indeed.
A month ago, I was reading about how chemists have discovered a new method of combining atoms to form new compounds, which have the same physical properties of compounds that are created from other elements. The process is amazing & profound, as it pretty much adds a third dimension to today's conventional periodic table of elements. The even cooler thing is that chemists now have the ability to do what alchemists always dreamed of doing: They can turn lead into gold...or at least they can turn lead into what looks, feels, acts & reacts like (and therefore is essentially) gold. The chemical process has been wittily dubbed "jellium" since how it works basically involves individual atoms of the same element globbing together in little jello-like clusters to form super-atoms. It's pretty neat, and of course—like all things that I think about—it reminds me of Christianity & the Church.
Every individual in the Church has been chosen by God for a specific purpose. All of us by ourselves have been given gifts by which we can glorify the Lord & can spread love and kindness to our hurting world. The amazing part, however, is that when we decide to shed our protective outer layers & become vulnerable enough to let others in the Church close enough to form a productive, healthy & proactive bond, the community that results can become & can act to accomplish anything: nothing is impossible for a community that is bound together with the true love of Christ. The problem is that the members of the Church—like the individual atoms—have to get close enough in order to create a super-atom structure. The warning there, however, is that there is a tendency for atoms (super, or normal) to try to fill their energy levels & become stable and non-reactive, unable to make any change in the world.
Think about this. Let us learn the lesson from chemistry. Community & individuality are both excellent things; just don't fill up your life with things so as to become non-reactive: leave enough room to change the world around you. The implications are explosive.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Pithy In(ter)jection
How someone "is" is 80% determined by how you have decided they should be. Change your perspective & most likely, the person will change accordingly.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Part II of a Many Parted Entry...
I really hope that this BlogSeries ends up being seven parts long, then I can refer to it in the future as the ruminant ruminations of random recall, being that our bovine friends & their other cud-chewing brethren have something like seven stomachs (or is it nine? Man, if it's nine, I'm really going to have to become long-winded... More so!)
So yes, extending my thoughts from rumination one, I must say that I have learned a lot about leadership and responsibility in the past term. Much of this learning has come from being the sole leader of a pair of first-year acting students for my introductory directing project. Truly an amazing experience. I learned a lot & applied a lot of my psychology. I think the largest lesson on leadership I learned from the ordeal is that in any position of direction and/or guidance, the actual "real time" interaction with the people you're dealing with is truly only 50% (or less) of the work that's involved in being a successful & effective leader. An hour of rehearsal easily took 90 minutes—if not an hour of solid preparation and planning in order to be fully productive. When I slid in my pre-meeting work, the rehearsal efficiency suffered along with its effectiveness. It isn't only having all the pre-work completed, however—it's the focus and confidence in what you're doing that plays a key role in motivating people. As a leader, one cannot be overly apologetic, and it is a fundamental error in leadership to show uncertainty in decision. Those one leads are looking to the leader for confidence and assurance, and when their director/leader isn't radiating these qualities in even some respect of his actions, the enterprise suffers, morale drops and compliance becomes more difficult to elicit as questioning the authority's proficiency increases. Fortunately, however, these slips can be easily rectified by taking a good, strong & prepared posture.
Note, however, that there is a large difference among strong leadership, overbearing leadership, sensitive leadership and ineffective leadership. Although one can combine the above styles in many different ways, each style by itself is a different flavour of leading. The strongest form of leadership can only come from a strong/confident leadership style that is coupled with a sensitivity to the needs, desires and opinions of those one leads. This being said however, a strong leader cannot be wholly swayed by every opinion or comment from those being led. It is a fine line to walk, but when done well, everybody is exceedingly pleased with the outcome.
***
I have more to say on this & more subjects—but again, time is the natural and pervasive constraint of these, my blog entries. Stay tuned & hopefully another installation will arrive shortly!
So yes, extending my thoughts from rumination one, I must say that I have learned a lot about leadership and responsibility in the past term. Much of this learning has come from being the sole leader of a pair of first-year acting students for my introductory directing project. Truly an amazing experience. I learned a lot & applied a lot of my psychology. I think the largest lesson on leadership I learned from the ordeal is that in any position of direction and/or guidance, the actual "real time" interaction with the people you're dealing with is truly only 50% (or less) of the work that's involved in being a successful & effective leader. An hour of rehearsal easily took 90 minutes—if not an hour of solid preparation and planning in order to be fully productive. When I slid in my pre-meeting work, the rehearsal efficiency suffered along with its effectiveness. It isn't only having all the pre-work completed, however—it's the focus and confidence in what you're doing that plays a key role in motivating people. As a leader, one cannot be overly apologetic, and it is a fundamental error in leadership to show uncertainty in decision. Those one leads are looking to the leader for confidence and assurance, and when their director/leader isn't radiating these qualities in even some respect of his actions, the enterprise suffers, morale drops and compliance becomes more difficult to elicit as questioning the authority's proficiency increases. Fortunately, however, these slips can be easily rectified by taking a good, strong & prepared posture.
Note, however, that there is a large difference among strong leadership, overbearing leadership, sensitive leadership and ineffective leadership. Although one can combine the above styles in many different ways, each style by itself is a different flavour of leading. The strongest form of leadership can only come from a strong/confident leadership style that is coupled with a sensitivity to the needs, desires and opinions of those one leads. This being said however, a strong leader cannot be wholly swayed by every opinion or comment from those being led. It is a fine line to walk, but when done well, everybody is exceedingly pleased with the outcome.
***
I have more to say on this & more subjects—but again, time is the natural and pervasive constraint of these, my blog entries. Stay tuned & hopefully another installation will arrive shortly!
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