Beyond.Belief

Over at my Tumblr, I wrote a brief post: click to read!

Having worked with kids for so many years, and just having worked with teens and other youth over the last couple years, I often forget how much more developed these people are intellectually. What that basically means is that your typical Sunday School answers just don't work anymore.

I've had the pleasure to have some really animated discussions with a few teens over the last year and a half. Most of the time, I'm almost 100% sure that what I had to say was not nearly good enough for them. And to be quite honest, I don't want it to be; I want it so that it stirs up their curiosity so that they can go search for the answers themselves.

Since coming to Calgary, I've sat in on some really interesting conversations during fellowship or Sunday school. And since I'm almost never the primary teacher, I don't usually say much. The times that I do say something is usually when someone directly asks me to give an answer. And even then, I don't give the answers I want to give because based on what I've learned and what I know, it takes far more than the fifteen seconds or whatever that I typically have to answer in a reasonable way.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances on a few occasions, I've really felt the need to jump in because the questions were being asked, but the answers were really bad. I'm not trying to throw people under the bus because the best questions that get asked are usually the ones that we cannot possibly answer. But even though we don't have a solid "this is the answer", we can take what we do have and provide a reasoning that kind of, to be frank, makes the question really redundant. And so when such a situation arises, I really feel an urge to say something (and it's hard to say this without coming across as cocky) in order to kind of "right the ship".

By righting the ship, it doesn't mean that I have the answer because quite frankly, I have asked the same questions before as well. The answer that I give is usually what I have come to at the time that I answer it based on my experience and learning. I know that there is no way my answer will ever be good enough, but it's only my hope that it's enough to get someone thinking enough so that they want to go search for the answers themselves. Therefore, righting the ship really means to just steer the conversation back into the right direction. Because quite honestly, I've heard some incredibly shaky answers that have the potential to be very disastrous.

Anyways, enough rambling (=

One more week until I get to be home for a week! Here's hoping to good weather next weekend!

I know nobody really cares, but I've been wearing flip flops for much of the last couple weeks. If that doesn't sound too weird, it is currently the middle of winter - February.

This winter, I have pulled out my winter jacket twice. The first time was to play ice hockey. The other time was the random cold day (below -20), and I needed to go get groceries.

Over the last several days, I have also been playing ultimate frisbee outside in the courtyard. Strangely enough, a lot of people like to play in the dark so we can't see the frisbee at all. But that's why it's so fun.

It has also been warm enough that I've set the thermostat in my room to 15 degrees. A normal winter would probably have me want to make sure it was at least 20 in the house.

This is a winter for champs.

In other news, I don't think there's a whole lot of "new" to talk about. This term has been, and will continue to be, rather busy. Tomorrow, I'll finally be able to give my first speech in my public speaking class. It was supposed to be last week, but we ran out of time; so I had to be nervous for another week.

Church has been fun, I guess. There's a Valentines Day thing coming up this Friday and I'll be involved with that. Personally, I think Valentines Day is really dumb and degrading for the people who are single. Singles-awareness Day is about the best way to describe it, because that's what it really is.

Hmm, what else can I write? I guess a little more about my spiritual health is okay. During my fight with God, there was a period of a week or two where I seriously considered giving up my vocation, my faith. The funny thing about that was how, based on my experience, I knew exactly how things were and are supposed to play out. That was the main reason for why I wanted to quit. I found it really stupid, and still do a little, about how things have to work the ways that they do. I hated how inferior we are. And I'm also going to admit that I called God a selfish God for having everything need to point to him. What that means is that all of the "all glory to God" or "every breath I take is because of and for God" type of stuff is all God-centered and needed to be. The whole idea of "we're helpless unless we have God" made me call God an attention whore.

That's not even the worst parts of my fight.

But as hindsight has it, I do take a lot of the blame for being stupid and narrow-minded. It's now motivating me to try to really focus on my attitude. I took my generally positive demeanor for granted for a lot of my life, and so I guess I just want to be able to restart the way I go about it - not being happy for the sake of being happy, but having the reason to do it I guess.

So, where I stand now, I'm still not happy with the way God does things, but I'm more accepting of it. I'm just going to keep going and see where I end up.

Wow, this post ended up much longer than I had originally planned! Haha!

Am I the only person that is really stoked that this year is a leap year? From what I've seen so far, people seem more excited about Groundhog Day tomorrow than the fact that we get to live an extra day this year! What that means is that I get to be 21 an extra day longer than I got to be 20, or 22.

I'm a dork, I know.

Anyways, we had a two hour floor meeting tonight so that's why I didn't get to blog until past midnight. We were doing some encouragement thing with yarn so it took forever. It was really nice to have positivity spread around the pod and to know that there are some nice people.

Recently, I've been thinking about all the phases, or all the fads, that happen over the years. To illustrate, I will briefly walk through some of the phases I've experienced in my life.

• Pogs! I was incredibly young so I never really did a whole lot with them.
• Pokemon! Might be the biggest fad I caught onto.
• Yu-Gi-Oh and Beyblade! At the same time, these things popped up and consumed hours, as well as dollars, of my life.
• And then in high school and onward, there weren't really any dominant trends because there were quite a few that could go on over a period of time.

So now that I think about it, I own a lot of these things that are just kind of sitting around the place that I really don't touch anymore. So with the things that I am currently aware of, such as Rubik's cubes (even though they're not mine), speed Scrabble, etc., etc., I kind of wonder in a couple of years where will they be collecting dust? Not trying to be cynical, but I can't help think that eventually, we're going to all grow out of these phases that we're in and then we will have "wasted" so much time and money developing these "skills" or whatever you want to call them, just to have moved on to other things.

And then I think about how we're always like, "ooh the things in this world will all pass away, and all our treasure in heaven will be eternal." I guess that passing away part is already evident. Because even though all of these things have shaped who I am and who we are, what do they really mean in the grand scheme of things? What or how are they really represented in who I am. Does having beat every single Pokemon game affect who I am on a day to day basis right now? Probably not. Does doing magic trick really affect the way I go about business? Other than maybe impressing a girl here or there, I doubt it.

So I guess it's one thing to jump on a bandwagon, but a whole different monster to be someone that starts a trend or phase. Kudos to those that have been successful in starting some, or renewing some.

I wonder what the next one will be? Selling all our belongings because the world is ending this year?

HAHA!

Given my blogging frequency over the last couple of months, going a week without really feeling the need to blog is pretty weird. I almost felt obligated to just write something down so I don't feel bad about not logging onto Blogspot! Haha.

I did, however, think of a couple things I could potentially blog about over the last couple of days though; I just hadn't gotten around to it until now.

Strange, considering that on a day to day basis, I don't really have a NEED to wake up until 10:30am at the earliest (other than church), but I've still been quite tired over the last couple of days for whatever reason. I start classes at 11:15am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it's at 1:00pm every other day. I don't really stay up that late either, so I'm not sure why I am so tired! Maybe because I am always sitting down and don't really move a whole lot.

But anyways, I know I have bitched and moaned about pretty much everything lately, so I am sorry for that. I have to thank you so much for dealing with all of this! You, being whoever reads my stuff and takes time out to think about me. You're awesome. By the way, I know I can sometimes let out a curse word here and there, but in those times, curse words are the only way I can really use to fully express and get across what I'm trying to relay. Generally, I advocate against using them, but I do think there is a place for them in an everyday vocabulary. The only reason these "swear words" can be looked so harshly upon is because of the abuse they get in society. I came to this conclusion because one of my profs, during a class last term, used "bitching" in something he was saying and it kind of caught everyone off guard. I later came to think that in what he was saying, given the context and everything, that that was the right word to use because it helped him say what he needed to say. So yes, I do think swearing is okay given the right context; of course, you will try to avoid it, but it can be justified in certain times.

Moving on... Over the last few days, I noticed something really weird about myself. I am slowly becoming myself again! There were some really random moments in my day where I might have caught myself being joyful. After being in the dumps for more or less two or three months, I didn't know what it meant to be joyful anymore - or I'd forgotten. So the first time I found myself enjoying a specific time in my day, I was completely baffled at it. And over the course of the last couple days, I noticed it a few more times.

And when I think about it, there were a lot of little things that I did or unintentionally did that helped me get here. A lot of the things that I did were really cheesy and stupid, things you don't think I'd normally do. If you ask me, I really don't think I have a point or an event that lead me to this turnaround; it just sort of happened.

To finish off this post, I want to credit this man for being able to explain some of my favorite things better than I could ever dream of explaining them. These two videos basically sum up the way I normally live and the way I think we can all live to be able to make the most out of life. If you have some time in your day, give them a watch! I know this is a nerd talking about these things, but it's a lot more insightful than you might think. Trust me! I've linked them on my Tumblr a while ago, but I will put them here too!