Learn Something New Every Day

I'm hastily beginning to realize that this is going to be a very busy month. It will be such a nice change, as I think I've been feeling things getting fairly mundane lately. I just hope I won't have over-extended myself by the time the month is out!

There's so much going on, and I want to tell you about it all, but for now I'm going to start with one thing, because I'm excited about working out the tech details of how to tell it.


I'm taking my first online class! It's through Shimelle.com. Shimelle is a scrapbooker in the UK who's blog I follow. I've watched this class go by for several years now, and this year I decided was the year to join. I'm so excited about this class. The concept to keep a record of what you learn every day for a month. We all know how drastically poor my last "do something every day for x time period" worked out (see here and here if you're masochistic and just want to relive the fail... I did actually make it through the week, and took pictures every day, but before I scrapbooked them, or even printed them off, my HD crashed, and I lost them all.)

But this time I have no expectations whatsoever. I do have an album, an old stapled book I got at Barnes and Noble or something of the sort that's a bunch of pages stapled together. And I'm using a pack of paper that had no original reason for being bought other than that I liked it. I'm compiling from my current stash, with the plan to not buy anything (which has reason more in the financial side of things rather than the not needing more stuff, but more about that later). But no expectations. I'm going to take each day as it comes and see what happens. And I just may learn that I don't really have time to do any of it! But I hope I learn that life, my life in particular, really does have exciting things going for it.

So, go check out the class! I'd recommend it for anyone, even non-scrapbookers. Shimelle's instructions are so simple you can do it with just a pen and a journal, and, as she says, "this project can be considered complete and valuable without a single scrapbooking supply."

Here's to learning something new!

Choices

I did a lot of church musicals growing up. I can remember asking the choir director if I could be in the children's musical when I was only in the 1st grade (it being the 3-6 grade choir that did the musical). I had "borrowed" the tape from my sister (who was in the musical) and listened to the music over and over again until I learned it for myself, and on the night they staged it, I asked, and got to be a part.

Even after we left that church, I was involved in musicals at other churches. It seems every church does at least one. In the fifth grade, I remember being at lunch with the choir director and my family, and he asked me if I would be one of the leads in the upcoming children's musical, Shortstops, a baseball musical. I was elated, and had so much fun.

(By the way, this post isn't about children's musicals.)

There was this one song in Shortstops called Choices. Interestingly enough, of all the musicals I've been in, with all the songs, this song has stuck in my head over the years.

"Choices are waiting just around the corner,
choices that have to be made.
Some are polite, some are out of order,
none of them want to wait.
So what do I do at times like these,
what is my action plan?
Shut out the world, say an honest prayer,
open the Book and take a look at what's there.
Choices, voices, little everyday things that everyday brings.
I will listen to the Spirit, and then make the choice
from the voice that is Jesus in me."

I've been thinking a lot about choices lately. I made the choice in college to study Christian Education, and now have a job in that field. But I am drawn to theatre, desiring to be involved in it in any way I can. And I find myself asking, what is it that I'm supposed to be doing? What did God create me to do? What is God calling me to do?

The thought crossed my mind the other day that God doesn't care. No, God cares about me, but God doesn't care whether I choose CE or Theatre. God just wants me to be happy, to be who I am, whatever my field.

And while that may be a comforting thought, it's actually quite terrifying. Because it means that the choice hasn't been made for me. I'm not supposed to be doing Christian Education, I'm not supposed to be doing Theatre. I'm not supposed to be doing either, because I have the choice. And I have to choose, because I've been trying to do both, and I feel pulled apart at the seams. I've never really had to choose in my life. I mean, yeah, I had to choose a college, and I chose a mate, but in those and other choices I've made, I claimed more than I had before. I gained something wonderful, without really giving up anything. This time, it feels like I finally have to give up something, something that I do want to do, whichever it may be. Something that flows in and out of me like breathing.

I could be wrong. Maybe I can keep on doing both, and I'm going to for as long as I can. But something inside feels like my choice is waiting, just around the corner.

Right Now

Right now, I'm sitting at my desk at home, working and listening to Pandora.

Right now, my dog is at my feet, sleeping peacefully.

Right now, my desk is cluttered and it'd driving me crazy.

Right now, my scrapbooking and art supplies are still packed in boxes in my closet.

Right now, my bed is not made.

Right now, I'm missing lots of people that I haven't seen in too long.

Right now, I'm struggling with things like calling and friendship and purpose and truth.

Right now, I'm trying to not beat myself up for the things I have/have not done, and trying to not worry about the things I have yet to do.

Right now, I am not at peace. However, I am striving to be content. I am striving to just be.

Harry Potter Countdown

Okay, the countdown has already begun for many people, but for me, I've just been getting in the mood over the past few weeks or so. I think it's because we had decided not to go to the midnight showing, because we're going to be out of town. But, we've changed our mind and have decided to go on our vacation, now, and have our tickets, so it's starting to seem more real to me!

In honor of the 6th movie, I wanted to re-read the series. I started with The Sorcerer's Stone back in April when I had plenty of time to read them all. However, life got in the way, and I just finished Chamber of Secrets last week. (I had a really hard time getting motivated to finish CoS, I think because it's my least favorite. I understand its importance in the whole series, but it still seems the most unnecessary to me. That, and I can't stand Lockhart. Not in an I love to hate him way, I just flat out hate him.) I started Prisoner of Azkaban over the weekend, but have decided to skip ahead, thinking a re-read of Half-Blood Prince is more important. So, I read the Ministry of Magic battle to the end of Order of the Phoenix and began HBP last night. I feel sure I can finish it before the movie, but think I'll wait until after the movie to read Deathly Hallows again. I'm most excited about Deathly Hallows. I've only read it once, and I zoomed through it that one time in the 24 hours after it was first released. 

I want to talk about movie vs. book for a second in regard to the 3rd (Prisoner of Azkaban) and 5th (Order of the Phoenix) because I'm intrigued by some choices that were made. I understand the different medium of movie vs. book, and how each calls for something different, and overall I've been pleased with how the franchise has honored the story of each book in film, rather than trying to make a movie that follows the book exactly. But there are two thing I wish they would have done differently. For a long time after the Prisoner of Azkaban movie, I was frustrated with the amount of information left out of the movie about Harry's father and 3 friends. Though, I think I'm going to wait and say more about this after I've re-watched the third movie. For now, I want to move on to my second beef, with Order of the Phoenix. 

Spoiler warning: If you haven't read the fifth book or seen the movie or learned what happened, you deserve for the ending to be spoiled. I will do so below. 

In the book, when Harry returns to Dumbledore's office after the battle at the Ministry, he is outraged. He has been ignored for an entire year by one of the few adults that he has learned to trust, has been manipulated by his mortal enemy, has spent the last 10 months being surrounded by governmental authority figures who deny everything he knows about himself and Voldemort, and now has lost the one adult that he's truly begun to see as a parental figure. On top of that, he's 15. He deserves a breakdown. That scene in Dumbledore's office where Dumbledore sits patiently while Harry destroys his possessions is... beautiful. Harry's emotions are so pure and unbridled. And we learn so much about Dumbledore, about how old men make mistakes, too, and the deep love he has grown to have for Harry. I was really looking forward to that scene in the movie. But what we got was a subdued, 2 minute conversation that barely brushed the surface of the information that needed to be conveyed, much less the emotions of these characters after such a difficult experience. Again, I understand the needs of film are different from the needs and abilities of a book, but I really think we missed Harry and Dumbledore's characters when we lost that scene. It's probably one of my favorites in the whole series. 

Well, instead of re-reading the whole series, we've decided to watch the movies in preparation for the 6th one. We started with Sorcerer's Stone last night. It was... long. It was good, for the most part, but they were all young. I was watching the opening scene with Dumbledore and McGonagall and thinking, man, did they have any idea how big this was going to be when they first started? They did have a long way to go - I noticed the editing was choppy, and the characters didn't always react they way they needed to, or even have continuity in their reactions. Like, at the end when Dumbledore is awarding extra points for Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville's acts, one second Hermione is blissfully applauding with the table of Griffindors, and the next she's excitedly whispering that they're tied with Slytherin. And a lot of Hagrid's reactions are delayed, like when the goblin at Gringotts asks for Harry's key. I know, nit-picky. But I did notice it. What I noticed more is that they got better (of course), and I'm hoping to be more aware of that as we watch the next four (five!) movies.

Taken Back

Do you ever have that experience when you are all of a sudden reminded of something from a long time ago, out of nowhere? It's not really deja vu, because you can place the memory.

I was brushing my teeth this morning, and all of a sudden, the combination of Altoids, water, and toothpaste in my mouth brought back the memory of my grandparents' backyard, when my cousin and I used to play in their garden. I'm not sure what specifically I was reminded of. Something about the water, maybe drinking the water from the hose in their yard. My grandfather had this bird feeder, and also this board that he set up on top of the fence that he'd put birdseed and other food for the birds on. It always frustrated him when the squirrels would get to it. Behind the fence, my grandmother had a garden, kind of back in the woods and up a little hill. I've always wanted to have a garden, and I think it's because of her.

Right inside their back door was a laundry room where they had a fridge. I don't remember if it was their main fridge, I think so. But I remember they always had it stocked full of drinks and snacks for us when we would come. It was so freeing to be able to grab and eat anything you wanted, not that we didn't do that at home, but somehow it was different.

Hmm, it's just nice to think about. Childhood memories, and my grandparent's backyard.

See, one of these days, I'm going to do something creative to share and preserve memories like these. Though, maybe just blogging about them is simply enough.

Annual Conference Day 3.1

Annual Conference ended on a great note. Just before the CFA report and the "Where will the 2010 Conference meet" report (which are always the last two) we heard the official report of the camping ministries. I was very pleased with how they provided both positives and negatives, both honoring what this camp in question is and has been, and being truthful about what it needs to be.

The began by asking themselves what our liability would be if they kept the camp open. They then asked what our spiritual liability would be if we closed it.

What a powerful, important question to ask, especially as they shared the statistics that 60-80% of Christians make their profession of faith at camp.

They revisited the information given in the briefing, that in 2001-2002, the camp experienced a decline in attendance, which we thought was attributed to the incident that occurred there, however camps across the country experienced the same percentage in decrease as we did as a result of 9/11. They continued by saying that the camps that survived and thrived are the ones who "retooled" and moved on in a better direction. We did no such thing with this camp, and the task force proclaimed that they see this camp to be at ground zero.

So, what the task force proposed was to build a new intentional connection between the Conference office and the camping ministries. They propose to operate the camp as only a summer camp until additional usage and income mandates the hiring of a full time director for the camp to be open year round. In the meantime, the lodges will be available year round for "self-use" by churches (meaning you have to cook your own meals).

They propose to update the camp by cleaning the cabins and making them more user-friendly. The kitchen and the dining area are in dire need of renovation, including a whole new kitchen and air-conditioning the space. They acknowledge that we are competing with camps across the state that are already offering much better facilities.

On a broader note, they encouraged the conference to take camping ministries to a place where we are doing a camping ministry that no longer takes a back seat and does things half way, but looks forward and meets the needs of children and youth. They look for the day that this camp can apply and become accredited by the American Camp Association.

They talked about how to fund it, and then told the story of the priceless pearl for which the man was willing to sell literally everything he had. As he walked out the door of the store, the store owner returned all of his possessions to him, saying they are not yours, but you must use them to serve others as they come to you. We have been given this camp back. It is not ours - it is God's. What do we do with this gift that we have been given?

The proposal passed unanimously!

Annual Conference Day 3

This morning and early afternoon we had a speaker, Sally Morgenthaler. She had some good things to say, speaking about passionate worship. Jay was a very thorough note taker on all the sessions: 1, 2, and 3. I appreciate him sharing these with us.

The one thing I will say about the sessions was that toward the end she asked for questions and someone brought up the issue of keeping worship as worship, and not entertainment. She didn't say a lot on this, but I was glad someone brought it up, because it is a big deal. What she did say was that we have to keep our focus on God.

As my computer is now running on reserve battery, my wrap up of Conference will have to come later!