Saturday, June 25, 2005

Airport Pickup

So I'm in San Jose. Part of my job requires that I shuttle out to the airport here to drop off and pick up speakers. I know, sounds little dull and hokey, right? Well, the thing about it is that I am picking up the SPEAKERS. I'm not picking up guests (although I'm sure they would also be interesting to talk to), but am instead picking up people that are coming to Mount Hermon with the purpose of imparting knowledge. I get 45 minutes alone with them on the way back from the airport, and then again at the end of the week as we drive back out.

Let's take an example, shall we? A week ago today I picked up Dale Cooper. He's the chaplain and a professor over at Calvin College. He was with his wife and daughter, as well as granddaughter. What an interesting guy! One of the most gracious men I have met, and he has a demeanor about him that assures you he is ALWAYS thinking about something.

In the future I hope to take a few notes on the sermons/sessions the speakers have and fill you in on what they are talking about from time to time. And I'll let you know if they sucked, should that ever be the case.

In other news: Week 1 of camp is done! This was an interesting week because the CRC peeps are usually running the place, but for the first time in many years they are not the sole group that takes over camp. As a result, the college program usually isn't runing this week. Also as a result, the numbers for college were WAY low because people from CRC were still out in droves.

Soooooo, I just had one (1) kid there, really. Because of that, this may prove to have been the most difficult week of the summer. Spending large amounts of time with the college group is no big deal because I need a lot of time to get to know everyone. However, when it is just one person, it can fizzle quickly depending on personality. As it turned out, the guy that was here was always willing to talk about his faith life and struggles. It is great to see someone that struggles with how to live according to Christ. I was also surprised at some of those struggles, which I won't get into. It is enough to say that we talked a lot about how to continue the Christian walk on a day-after-day basis, and how to be at peace with our shortcomings as sinners.

OK, the coffee house I'm in is officially hot. And I mean that it is neat here (did I just say neat?!?!) and actually hot in terms of temperature. I think I might be melting.

By the way, what's on my background right now:
46 - Sunset 6
A sweet sunset the night that Nick and I got creeped out. Why creeped out?

50 - Creepy New Campsite
CREEPY!

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Train Day

Today is the first Train Day of the summer. For those of you who aren't hip to the scene (like me, one week ago) Train Day here at camp is the day that most of the staff folk get the whole day off. The campers/conferees take a train into Santa Cruz and hang out there all day. That means that there are no programs going on at camp. Hence, we staffers get to do whatever. I took some time to take a nice run this morning, grabbed breakfast BEFORE showering (glorious), and am now hanging out with some free wireless and a spiced cider (when you can't stand coffee, and haven't yet come around to the glory of tea, a spiced cider is the best EVER), and a different perspective. I'm halfway into this first week, and I can already look at my previous post, and past journal entries, and note that things have distinctly changed.

Let's run through some of the changes, shall we?

1) Transparency. I should put a note in here that I think some staff members at Mount Hermon may have my blog at their fingertips these days. That makes me a little squirmy. Why? Well, past posts were a bit dire at times, and I wrote them knowing that no one at camp had the address. It has brought out an interesting exercise in blogger transparency that I think all bloggers deal with at some point or another. Namely, how much of one's thoughts and inner self does one reveal on this thing? That's a relative and personal decision to be sure, but I'm a novice at this whole venture so it's smacking me for the first time.

2) Comfort level. So the most common advice I've gotten over the past week (and perhaps the best advice as well) was to remain patient. I'm good at knowing and telling myself this, as I've fallen into the same pattern just about every new place I go/live/spend time: give it two weeks. The first two weeks can be rough. Most of the time I'm settled by the end of two weeks, or at least more comfortable.

3) People. So at this point I'm not syaing that I've had something that ranks up there with 'amazing experience,' but things are in a much better position than last week. I think this one relates to the previous bit about comfort level. It also has to do with the next one...

4) The Thick of Things. Programs are up and running. Things are moving. We are scrambling to care for the people who are here. We are running ourselves ragged and we know it. In a situation like that I think a community grows closer, especially for those people who are making an effort to be aware of that closer growth.

5) The Cost of Discipleship. I owe one K.Plax a huge thanks. At the book sale back at school he found an old copy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship and thrust it into my hands. $2 later I owned it. I used a few pages out of it in my Bible study yesterday and have started to work my way through it in general. "Cheap grace" is something hitting me hard these days. Setting up the difference between it and "costly grace" has put a lot of food out there to chew on and I'm loving it. The permanent knot tied between grace and the call to live according to Christ is huge. That and I think I'm so happy to be reading a theologian who is NOT Paul Tillich. No offense meant there, just nice to understand what I'm reading.

So, for those from PTS who have been praying for me, I have appreciated knowing you are out there.
Also for those of you at PTS, I have not shaved my head since May 13th. I actually bought shampoo for the first time in about two years. It's Herbal Essence stuff, and it smells great. Little things.

I'm going to try to get around to taking some pictures this weekend, and possibly this afternoon. My dad has been wanting to get an idea of what surrounds me here, so keep an eye out for some posts with some of those in there.

And, by the way, I've been enjoying the awesome power of the Party Mix option in iTunes. I love it because songs pop up that I would never think I wanted to listen to at the moment, but they pop up on their own and lyrics can just HIT like that. I'm pretty sure that ol' Ben has a woman in mind when he writes this, but for some reason I'm identifying more with new places and new people in general. Sometimes I don't think past the beginnings of things....

Ben Lee - Begin (off of Awake Is the New Sleep)

I'm walking down broadway
Each foot step is a new love letter
I'm trying to make eye contact
With each and every stranger that I pass
Thinking about the city
It's living proof people need to be together
I'm thinking about how I just want to open up
And give and give and give
And it's ok for you to care
Cause I can feel you in the air
And while you wonder "how's this gonna end?"
I only want it to begin

I'm thinking about desire
I've had to learn how to sin successfully
I'm thinking about bliss
And bliss is all dressed up
And there's no one to dance with
Remembering her smile and the nuclear bomb
And the reasons I loved her
Walking through Central Park
I'm in a foriegn country and I'm waiting for a sign
That it's ok for you to care
Cause I'm not going anywhere
And while you wonder if you should let me in
I only want it to begin

I'm still singing
Twisting humilities, breaking arrangements
Thinking about my heart
I guess you've heard, sometimes it's heavy
But I just keep moving
When I hit a wall, I look up at the sky
I'm thinking about my makeup
In spite of all this I know she won't give up on me
And its ok for you to care
Cause I can taste you everywhere
While it's true
All straight things must bend
I only want it to begin

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Like a Hurricane

Yes, it's a Scorpions reference. However, that's where the reference ends for today. Sorry to all you Scorpions fans out there.

It is Sunday. More precisely it is Sunday the 19th of June. The first wave of campers arrives this week here at the Conference Center at Mount Hermon. That puts me a bit on edge because it means that everything that I planned out last week will go into motion this week. This is the time of inadequacy and self-doubt. Now is when everything that I put in the back of my mind last week comes to the forefront. It is the weight of being solely responsible for a program...or being solely responsible for anything, I guess. How much more must a single parent feel? So yeah, there's a meeting today in a few hours, and then a couple hours after that the boulder begins its official, and unstoppable, roll down the hill. Will it bring damage and destruction, or will it roll harmlessly? No matter what happens, I will know the answer to that by Friday night.

So, coupled with that, I'm also grappling with a few issues through everything I'm reading. Two books occupy my time at the moment: Guns, Germs, and Steel and Dune. So, both books are great (and yes, for a very slim selection of books I am a SciFi fan) but both present some interesting issues. Guns, Germs, and Steel presents a pretty comprehensive look at how many of the cultures and societies that we see today got to be where they are. The inspiration for the book came from the author's experience in New Guinea, with a friend that he has there who basically asked him that question: how is it that Europeans came/have come to be in the position they are in. For example, why were the Europeans the ones to set sail to explore other lands, and infect so many people with their germs? Why wasn't it another culture who came to land on European soil? And, beyond that, why was it the European germs that killed off other races and not the other way around? And why was it that steel and guns came to be weilded by those same Europeans? This whole thing is a thorny issue and really comes down to agriculture, according to Diamond. Of course, the factors surrounding that single issue are very complex and culture comes into play in terms of willingness to adopt new means of technology, ability to interact with other peoples to gain that other technology/innovations. That ties into a group's ability to sustain larger and larger numbers, and whatnot. Perhaps what is hitting home so far is a very surface and obvious issue: chance. There is so much in there that just seems to be the way things turned out: location, cultural norms, etc. How much of that do we say is providence? How much of that is God's hand at work? And, if we consent to that, how close is that to a VERY slippery slope about racial differences and God's preference in that arena? I tend to balance that out with the belief that God doesn't deal in that way, but instead knows that a great deal of life here for us is indeed up to a certian amount of chance. God works through a lot fo that chance, which is the (one of the) wonderful thing about God. I've gone on a while here so I want to settle it with a general boggle the mind comment. It boggles the mind.

OK, so the other book is Dune. Suffice to say that is revolves around good and evil, and has much to do with motives, patience, and the fulfillment of prophecy (a la the first Matrix in that last respect). The big question around much of the book iis about Paul and whether or not he is the one meant by a prohecy. The matter is complicated by the fact that Paul's mother, Jessica, is a member of a kind of secretive (but not secret) society. This group moves onto planets and spreads certain stories and prophecies that follow a basic pattern. Unknown to the native inhabitants, these prophecies are made to support this secretive society. Of course, the native people of the planet are going to take that prophecy and twist/change/adapt it as time goes on. Now, this planet seems to be finding truth/Truth in this woman's son. We, the reader, get the sense that there is a larger hand at work, and that what may have initially been a hoax is actually real. The tie-in here is indeed similar to those issues raised by the Matrix, I guess (except this book was written in the 60's I think) and have to do with whether or not one might know what they are doing when they are walking the path of greatness or prophecy and all that. I think the larger issue for me is that we may not know when we are even doing God's work. That blade cuts both ways, I suppose. We may think we are doing God's work and in fact we are not. That is a large issue that, for me, has a lot to do with our own ability to relate to and commune with God. I think a certain level of humility should aslways be present: never be totally certain of what God requires, especially as we go forth and proclaim our interpreted messages to others. That responsibility is massive, with equally massive consequences (which Dune also makes clear).

OK, I rambled. Maybe I should throw in another pic from this past week to end the email with a nice, serene moment...I'm on top of Humphrey's Peak in this one. It's the tallest point in Arizona, just north of Flagstaff at calm 12,633 feet. I look really content and happy in the pic, but the wind was gusting 40 to 60 mph and it was at no warmer than freezing point. Yeah, pretty miserable. But I tried to climb this bad boy back in December of 1998 and the snow was too much, so it was nice to finally check it off.

23 - I Look SO Casual

Friday, June 17, 2005

A New Beginning

I am at a new point in my life. Or, at least, I am at a point where many things are new, which maybe makes it feel like I am at a new point. I am in a new geography. I am with new people. I am at a point where I have TIME. I have time to do a lot of thinking. I have time to do a lot of observing. For that reason I am reviving what was previously a sputter start for a couple weeks: this very blog.

I've set some ground rules for myself:
1) This thing is going to be simple. And I'm going to keep it simple.
2) I'm going to actually be regular with my posting.
3) The majority of this will revolve around my experience where I am, both in terms of this place, and where this place is taking me.
4) Taking all of the above into consideration, I am not going to let this thing rule, or even direct, my life in any fashion.

That said...here we go.

I am at the end of the first week of employment at Mount Hermon. I'm not going to lie, I had pretty high hopes for this summer. And don't get me wrong - the first leg of the journey has been amazing! I spent a month on the road and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. I just might have time to get some of the pics up around here or something. OK, maybe a brief sample here...

20 - Backdrop from Side of Tigger

Yeah, so that was on my up to the summit of Mount Princeton. Gorgeous. Incredibly difficult hike. There is some amount of accomplishment when you get to the end of something you thought about quitting a dozen times.

So yeah, I eventually arrived here near Santa Cruz at Mount Hermon. It's been an adventure. The driving was great, and I spent half of the trip with people and pretty much the other half completely on my own. I think that put me something of an odd position as I entered Mount Hermon: I was isolated and used to it. I was enjoying my time on the road, absolved in my own travels. Sounding a little self-centered? Perhaps.

So then I arrived. Don't get me wrong, I'm thinking that everyone here is great. I really don't think I have met or seen anyone around that I think is a total jerk or anything, But Mount Hermon has a rich history, and a lot of the people on staff have experienced part of that history. They were campers here or they are returning staff. Not only that, but most people are part of a smaller staff like the Youth Staff, or Daycamp, or Child Care, or AdFac, etc. I am the one and only College Advisor. There is no staff other than me. It sets me apart and while everyone else is working together all day long I am on my own, doing my own thing. It's odd. It's unsettling. It is hard.

I'm not having a pity party. I've decided that I'm not really looking to have an amazing connection with people up here, and maybe that is how I have decided to deal with what is going on. But I have also decided that I am fine to have time hanging with the college campers, getting reading done over the summer, and having time to journal, and now apparently do some blog action.

Or, maybe I am preparing myself for the worst case scenario or something.

In addition to all of this stuff going on, I think the past month on the road has changed me. I don't think I've experienced that in a while. I don't think I've been able to put a finger down on exact changes, but there is something different. For the time being I am more quiet. I am observant of nature and things going on around me. I am not as quick to make a random comment. I am comfortable in my own skin. That comfort, however, has taken me away from people, and I am unsure of that direction. Does that mean I'm actually NOT comfortable in my skin?

Well, in a completely different direction I am preparing a Bible Study for the college kids next week that I hope to expand into a two part "series" - a Bible Study and a seminar. The topic basically deals with how we view Jesus and questions that view, and the general view of the stereotypical Christian American. Is Jesus the buddy we grew up knowing? Or is Jesus perhaps calling us to something that we are afraid of is we face it? Has the true meaning of Christ been lost in a mix of pop culture, which the church (Church?) has fallen into?

It isn't something totally new, I know. But I hope it is something that these college kids can sink their teeth into. It also allows everyone to come in with their different faiths and compare notes on who Christ is for each of them. We then move on to what we might do with those views, and how they affect who we are as we leave this place.

It is something. It is something.