Begin again

Today was my first full day back since being in the hospital. It was good to be back and see everyone. I am so fortunate to work with such an awesome team of people.

Wow what a year

so much has changed. I look back at some of these posts and think was that really that big a deal or was that even worth writing? I wonder if that happens to all writers?

Now Or Never

Well I am back to writing again. Not sure why but it is different this time. I am warning on a shirt story, 2 articles and the series greg and I were working on last year. I will post more info soon and maybe even a story or a poem.

Also, if you wish to follow me on twitter my account is gshstudy.

#20 All Time – Speed Racer

So for the next 20 days I am going to review my top 20 films and why they are significant to me.  Never tried this before so it should be interesting.  So let the fun begin.  The first movie is Speed Racer.

Now, I realize that most people believe this may not be the best movie ever, but for me it was a childhood dream come true.  I grew up with Speed Racer a child and it was one of my all time favorite cartoons.  And it is true to all the core characteristics I remember from the original.  Lots of fast paced action, family values, good moral lessons and a decent story line.  There is a great lesson to be learned in always sticking together as a family.  And of course seeing the mach 5 done up as a real car (even for Hollywood) is still very cool.

New Years

Happy New Years 2009. I am very excited to start writing again. I made several new years revalutions this year. And yes I wrote that correctly. I will explain as the year goes on. I am also going to be writing book reviews and other fun stuff

Late night thoughts

Wow 2am and still up. I have been laying here for 3 hours. Tried listening to music, watching tv, reading and just laying here in the dark but nothing works. Weird too because I had been sleeping well till yesterday.

Today I learned about payback. I think I am reaching a point that Homer Simpson spoke of in the following quote “some times the only way you can feel good about yourself is by making other people feel bad and I am tired of making other people feel good about themselves”.

Today I was listening to an interview at Neue ministries with Rick Warren. He said several good and informative things regarding the origins of the P.E.A.C.E. Plan and how they came to choose Rwanda as theplace to test it out. However he said one thing that makes no sense at all.

He talk about how traditional missions trips would be about praying, studying and giving money and then maybe a slight chance you would actually go to the country. So they decided to turn this idea upside down and you just go. Then after you have been to the country and see the people you will be connected. Then you can pray, study and give afterwards.

But, what I find challenging is the prayer piece. Shouldn’t that be first, then go were God leads us? It almost seems as if prayer is counter productive to the organizational process of the mega church because it might lead people in a direction that doesn’t fit into the churches nice neat boxes. Need to dive into this more in the future but I am finally getting sleepy.

Getting back in the groove

I feel like I have done this a hundred times but I am getting back to writing starting now. I think I’m getting inspired by this new book from Brian McLaren called “Everything Must Change – Jesus, Global Crisis and a Revolution of Hope”. This would not be the first time that he or my other favorite author Jerry Jenkins had inspired me to get off my butt and get back to writing.

It’s also football season again which for me means some great oppurtunities for fellowship. Probably do bigger post on this later this weekend.

I have also been listening to a lot of music lately which I think is better than watching tv. I can’t remember the last time I watched a show, mostly because I am so sick of political ads.

I just can’t stand how negative they have become. So I am limiting myself to what I can research online. Yet even that can’t keep out all the negative garbage out because I still have to check email.

Which brings me to my big question of the day, where does the Bible tell Christians to put down others? For example calling someone a “fruitcake” on you national radio show. I sometimes wonder if my bible isn’t missing a few sections given the way I see many Christians acting and talking. If you know were these lost sections are please post a reply because this has become a very frustrating point for me.

Another itouch and why

Well this a test of the wordpress app for the itouch. So far writing seems easy and for some reason it seems faster the a regular keyboard.
I was watching the movie Cloverfield the other day and I was struck by the idea of how much time we spend on silly unimportant things and how little time we spend with the people who really matter.

itouch post and finishing my class

This is a post done from my new itouch. I finished my apprentice class on Sunday. I am both excited and a little sad. It is cool to have finished the course, but I will miss emailing mentor Norm Rohrer. He is the most patient and understanding person I could have ever asked for as a mentor. He is also very uplifting and each week after I sent out my assignment I would wait like a kid on Christmas morning to see what positive things he would have to say and how I could improve my writing.

Goings on

There has been a whole bunch of things going on lately.  I can’t believe I am finishing assignment 40 in my writing class.  Just 10 more to go.  The script writing was a blast but now I am moving into fiction writing and this will be very exciting.

Also, it’s great to see that Jerry Jenkins has started his own blog.  I followed his blog for a while on amazon.com but I am excited to see he has started one for himself.  They are such a great way to keep in touch with people and to get the chance to interact with people. 

I plan to continue with the movie review and I am thinking of going back through some older movies as well.  We have a netflix account which my parents gave my family for Christmas so there is plenty of opportunities to look at a wide cross section of movies.

Discussion of Iron Man the Movie

Today I went and watched Iron Man the movie.  The special effects were very impressive and the performance of Robert Downey Jr. brought to life all the memories I had of one of my favorite childhood comic characters.  I don’t want to give anything away but it is well worth the money and there is a teaser after the credits, so hang out and watch all the names of the people who helped make the movie.  It will be worth it.

One of the scenes that struck me (and there were quite a few) involves Tony Stark (A.K.A. Iron man) and his assistant, Pepper Pots.  He wants her to sneak in to Stark industries and steal some information from the computer so that he can use it to stop the sale of weapons to terrorist groups.  She does not want to do this because she is afraid he will get killed trying to stop the terrorists.  I won’t tell you how it ends, but Tony replies to her concern with a short speech about discovering his purpose and how he feels in his heart that he is doing the right thing.

This jumps out at me for two reasons.  The obvious is the sense of purpose and I think this has faith implications that are pretty straightforward.  Far too often we are looking for the answer to faith in a book or by waiting for a bolt of lightning to hit us with the right answer.  Instead we should be aligning our heart with God’s and then listening to what is there and going after that purpose.  I also believe that God can speak this purpose to us whether we believe in him or not, it just might be harder to hear and understand.

The other interesting suggestion in this scene is the reaction, which happens all to frequently when we set out to follow our purpose.  Those around us (friends and family) feel they will lose us to it or they are afraid we will change our view of them and try to talk us out of it or worse, make us feel that we are making the wrong decision.  In the scene, Pepper is willing to quit her job in order to stop Tony, even though she has been with him the whole time he was a carousing wild bachelor. 

In The Jesus of Suberbia by Mike Erre, he talks about having faith in faith rather than faith in God, seeing that there is a purpose to our lives and that things may not run smoothly as we pursue our purpose.  He uses the example of the story of Job.  In much the same way, Tony Stark has hit some big bumps in his road of life, but rather then turning and hiding in his old behaviors, he decides to believe in his purpose even if it means losing his most trusted employee.

All in all it was well worth it and will probably be one of the top selling movies of the year.

 

Free Rice web site

A friend sent me a link to the site Free Rice

The idea is you can improve your vocabulary and you can help get food to hungry people around the world.  The site gives you a word and four choice for the definition.  For each one you get the right definition for, the sponsors give 20 grains of rice.  It adds up.  Last month they gave 4,551,581,980 grains of rice to fight hunger. 

NaNoWriMo

So I participated in NaNoWriMo for the month of November.  The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.  I chose to write a prequel to a series I am currently working on.  This gave me the chance to experiment with the story and style as well as character development.  It was a great learning experience and even though the novel I wrote might never get published (maybe someday) it was still worth while.

It has also energized me to get back to my other writing and to jump back into blogging.  In the future there are several thing I want to look into (I am such a planner, now time to execute)

Bill Luce has a new book.

Brian McClaren’s book I have wanted to read for a while.

Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis which I have just started.

There are many others as well as writing about my journey in writing and faith.

Back in the Groove

I feel like I have written this many times recently.  But in truth it hasn’t been that many times.  Or else I wouldn’t be writing it.

But here I am starting again.  I am still planning on doing the McLaren book.  Also I am going to write a novel for National Novel Writing Month in November which I am very excited about.  I still have ideas I am wrangling around for articles.  My first will be an article a coworker request about how much money is enough money? 

What is most amazing to me is that I haven’t done but one post since June and yet there are still 200 – 300 views a month here.  Hopefully people who visit take something away from my writings of the past and as I continue to work on my writing, I hope and pray there will be even more value and enjoyment on what I am writing in the future. 

For those that have kept visiting in the hopes that I would get back to writing, thank you for hanging there.

Writing Again

Wow, it has ben a while.  But I am back.  First off I want to thank anyone who has stopped by consistantly waiting for me to get back to writing here.  So I want to start moving the blog in a new direction.  Well slightly.  I have become very caught up in purpose, understanding, directions, the why of the things we are doing and other topics like these.

So I am going to start the Brian McClaren book The Secret Mesage of Jesus.  I read it once before but if feels like I need to go through it again.  Besides that I am going to be posting thoughts I have from the various discussions I have throughout the week and believe me I have been discussing.  Hopefully there will be people out there with thoughts and ideas on these subject that they are willing to write down in comments.

 Have a great and blessed day!!!!!

Man in the Mirror Chapter 7 Questions 5 and 6

5) Comment on the statement: “No amount of success at the office can compensate for failure at home.”

I think this is a motto that everyone should learn to live by.  I a part of life is about balance and part is about focus.

6) Why do you think men score so low in relationships?

I am not so sure they do.  Maybe they did back in the 80’s but it seems to me that men are more about relationships than they have been in the past. At least the men that I know and are about my age. 

Ruth Bell Graham 1920 – 2007

This is the memorial site for Ruth Bell Graham.  I never had the chance to meet her but I learned a lot about her when I read Just As I Am by Billy Graham and she sounds like she was an amazing women.

I think this quote from Greg Laurie really sums it up, “There would not have been a Billy Graham without a Ruth Bell Graham, and we will forever be thankful for her life and legacy.”

Man in the Mirror Chapter 7 Questions 3 and 4

3) Why do men get so wrapped up in their careers that they forget to be good husbands and fathers?

So the easy canned answer to this is that society expects men to achieve and provide for their families in a material sense.  And I would agree that there is pressure to do this.  I can recall a great deal of it from my parents growing through my twenties since I wasn’t motivated by success or career in those days.  But I believe there is another possible explanation for this.

Most of the guys I know are like I am.  They desire a sense of completion.  Get a task and complete it.  If something is broken, just fix it.  Need to write an article, just write it. Easy. At work, if I get a task, I feel a sense of achievement and pride in just completing it. (Doesn’t always happen but career challenges are not part of the scope for this article)

But I have learned that be a husband and father does not fit into this neat little package of get a task and complete it.  Occasionally I teach my children something and don’t have to teach it to them again.  Mission accomplished, task completed.  But that is very rare.  More likely, it is teach, re-teach, teach again, wonder why they haven’t learned to do this task, teach again and then get frustrated because it is the tenth time I have gone over it.  And I should note, my kids are really smart so it is probably my ability to teach.

It is a challenge to feel rewarded from this constant up hill climb, pushing the boulder an inch forward only to have it roll two inches back.  But I have heard my children pray in ways I can only dream of.  Or they are pretending to be Jedi knights saving household from the enemy troopers.  Or having a BBQ.  Or it could be just spending time at the movies. 

Careers are the quick fix but family is the accomplishment that is worth a lifetime.

4) Have you found the pursuit of a higher standard of living to be worth the price?

Nope.  A guy I worked with at Plymouth State College used to say, you can advance to a point were the increase in pay doesn’t equal the increase in aggravation.  But you won’t know it until it is too late.

Writing Frenzy

Found an interesting site http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/ were you take the month of June and try to write a 20,000 word script.  I signed up and we will see what happens.  Nothing to lose and who knows what might happen.  I will update through out the month as to how it goes.

But wow. 20,000 words sounds like a lot.

There is another site which does novel writing in the month of Novemeber too.  I was planning to do that one as well.  This will be good practice.  http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Been on a bit of a break

I have been on a bit of a break for the past few weeks.  I am going to be ramping back up this weekend so look for new posts on Sunday.  Thank you for being patient.  It has been a bit crazy but that is about to change.