Moved

for the last time to this place. If you’re a long-term reader and have trouble accessing it let me know via the comments

Lazy Linking/Blogging

Don’t believe everything you read

Alexia doing what she does best

Yeah, we’re all familiar with the Fail Blog but I like it so it gets posted :-)

see more pwn and owned pictures

Sometimes when you get it wrong. You get it wrong. And then sometimes you’re just an idiot

Son of a Hamas leader converts to Christianity

Showing Evil Kneevil how it’s done

I really need to get reading the issues surrounding free-will, etc

more animals

You can definitely trust Tommy now. You can definitely, definitely trust in the fact that he’s smarter than you too.

Requirements for leadership positions in the church

If you’re not reading 6YearMed yet give it a look

If you’re a Christian or an atheist and haven’t seen this video yet what do yo do online exactly?

Lord Flash: “Let’s DOOOO-OOOH IT!”

Random Thoughts

Sitting at my table on my new laptop. It’s a Macbook. I choose to refer to it as my new laptop because I’m annoying that way and I refuse to buy into the conspiracy that Apple care about me any more than how much money they can get from my wallet

I don’t want to go to bed.

Life has an odd way of being annoying

Do you like the new profile pic?

Not sure about work. The longest I’ve ever consecutively worked in one job has been seven months. I like my current one I think. Lot of challenges and stuff but it’s good.

Relationship with God goes well. Having someone to hold you accountable makes the difference. It’s not a major thing in and of itself. Just knowing the person’s there.

Soccer is something I’m not sure about. I had the worst training session of my life on Thursday. I’ve been praying about being a godly example. It really matters to me that on some level I can break into a team and just get playing games regularly. But rather than praying that I decided to pray that I would be an example even if I don’t get to play another minute all season. I wonder about where our mission field is and what we do. I wonder if I was the best player in the club would I be more of an example.

I’ve realised that I don’t have much of anything thought out with regard to how I should feel about a girl in a romantic relationship. This is proving an issue as I should have something thought about how I should feel. I over think things a lot. Be happy. It’s why I blog.

On one level I’m incredibly, incredibly discouraged. Incredibly confused. Incredibly hurt.

God is good. God is enough.

I’m setting myself up for a lot of heartache in my life. Seems to be a family tradition :-)

People say things they don’t mean to placate you even when you’ve asked them not to :-)

Life has an odd way of being strange

I want to fast forward three months.

I should have just put the money into getting my old car fixed. I’d have been happier.

Cutting the old blog was a necessary, regrettable step. The Law of Unintended Consequences has really come home to roost. I feel I should apologise to those of you who are reading the writings of this guy in their second, third or fourth incarnation. Thanks for sticking with me and please continue to comment :-)

The lyrics from the song embedded below sort of sum up 2009 so far. If you like it check out the artist’s site and buy some stuff.

There will be days you feel like flying
There will be days you feel like crying
Never give up, never stop trying
Never believe my love is dying

Looks Interesting

A host of the major Christian song writers from the past decade and more coming together to write songs about poverty. Find out more here. Got that this from ShawnW

Looking in the broken mirror

There’s a certain freedom in the anonynimity of the Internet. Sometimes it’s hard to know how to navigate that freedom. It’s a useful exercise. Ask a person, if they could commit a crime in which they were guaranteed never to be caught what crime would they commit? Would there be some sliding scale in terms of depravity? I know what my answer would be. That there would be one person who would know that a crime had been committed. That person couldn’t live with himself.

I’ve been at this game a while now. This is my fourth blog in four years. It can definitely be carthetic to allow your rants into the public domain. Most of the time there are far worse methods of dealing with the struggles and strains that life throws at us. Typing text into a page where in reality only a few dozen strangers scattered across the globe will end up reading it is “mostly harmless” with one exception. It’s something the inestimable Stephen Fry touched upon. Any medium, or any form where a person expresses their opinion becomes a vehicle for self-indulgence, self-gratification and narcissism of the highest order. My opinion matters. My feelings matter. My hurts matter. They do matter. But the danger is that we we acquire delusions of adequacy. My feelings matter more. My unreasonable expectations matter more. And as Mr. Fry points out in his podcast above he is guilty of the same as is this black pot building itself up into a right little huff in front of you over that self-righteous kettle.

I suppose I should start by getting it out of the way where I definitely screwed up. I flirted too much. I made too many comments about sexual acts in a manner designed to provoke a reaction. And in some instances I engaged in cyber sex. It’s funny how an activity on the one hand can be so addictive and on the other hand, when described to a stranger made to sound so stupid. Take football for instance. The most popular sport in the world bar none. Yet if Marvin the Martian arrived tomorrow and you tried to explain the sport to him you may have a tough time relating how so much money revolves around the abilities of twenty two men to guide a spherical object in a skilled manner. It’s something I often wonder about. Pornography or cyber sex or even voyeurism. Isn’t it on one level an incredibly absurd activity? Yet even the simple sentences at the start of this paragraph fail to convey the intense way doing something like that can affect the people involved.

Then there’s the areas where I was unwise or naieve. I think that in heterosexual opposite sex friendships if you ignore the attraction factor you’re an idiot. It either gets discussed and dealt with or it gets ignored, and festers. It can eventually become a non-issue but only after many years. I’ve got a soft heart. I love too soon and too easily. I want to help. I want to make things better. I like to see people smile and to see people happy. Fulfilling the second most important commandment and all that. If you’ll excuse the arrogance I wonder if God’s like that. Loving more than he should. One virtue doesn’t make up for vices though. Widsome and discernment need to be exercised in the Christan walk.

Blogging has become part of what I do; how I live my life. It’s impossible not to do it any more really. It’s how I, to use that annoying term from the American vernacular, process things. It’s how I sort them out in my head. But the problem arises when it concerns other people. There’s an altogether massive illusion with regard to how what we blog can be seen. There’s issues associated with the generation gap and the digital divide. A person reading from another continent may find the nicknames you use for the people at work endearing or amusing but a second degree of separation acquaintance who happens to stumble across your blog will more often than not put two and two together. What you intended to communicate; what you actually communicated; what a person actually understood and how they interpreted might as well be electrons buzzing around your own self important nucleus.

We fool ourselves into thinking that we can blog without consequence. I try to not blog about a person without having talked to them about the issues that I’m blogging on. It’s not easily done though. We live in the Web 2.0 world. It’s all about broadcast and sometimes we just have to shut out the noise. The observer effect is easily forgotten. In politics or the world of celebrity there are often rumours about a new appointment. Person X is in line for the vacant job. In politics at least, the people who don’t know talk. The people who do know don’t. It’s an easy trap to fall into. It’s easy to do. To vent and rant but it very rarely solves the issue. In fact with me, venting and ranting just emphasises why the issue exists in the first place.

It’s socially acceptable to talk about a woman’s instinct. I’m not sure what the male equivalent is but there are times I’ve ignored my gut feeling on an issue. And every time it’s come back to bite me in the ass. This year is only nine days old and it’s already seen important people leave my life. I find it ironic that I’m having done unto me what I’m doing unto others, in a manner of speaking; I’m not sure it’s what Jesus intended but it’s an interesting perspective. You don’t really have a choice in what happens to you in life. Sometimes it just does. You do get to choose how you react to it. I hope that I can swallow my own feelings and emotions as they bubble and act in love. Another family left my fellowship a while back. One member asked for prayer for blessing before he left. I was one of the people who prayed with him. I know it hurts. I know what I want to do and to scream and shout but thus far I’ve been successful in giving that to God and acting the way I feel a follower of Christ should when confronted with hurt.

My fellowship recently had a family leave us. Over 29 years of relationship and now it’s no more. It sucks. It hurts. That’s life. Some people said that what was going on was covenant breaking and that it was sin. I’m not sure if I agree with that. I haven’t read enough to come to a firm opinion on it. The discussion itself tended towards acrimony at points. I prefer to remember the positives from life and draw out all that was good from a relationship. I know a man who spent three weeks being fed only on bread and water by his own parents because of his faith is praying for me every day. I know he is because he said he would. I don’t know if/when I’ll see them again. But I know there’s love there. And that’s why it hurts so much.

I sometimes wonder what my character flaws are. The ones nobody tells me about. I know what buttons a person can push to get me angry but I’m not going to leave a step by step list here :-) I guess I find myself worrying that I’m too forgiving at times. Maybe I should get more angry. Maybe I should get more upset. Maybe that’s all bollox and I should continue as I am. I don’t know. But I’ll probably blog some more about it

Procrastinate Now

Lee Strobel answers atheists’ questions over at Friendly Atheist

Vatican in outrageous divorce

Stephen Kinsella took a reporter from the NY Times around Moyross in Limerick. His thoughts

Interesting post on wind power

This article on internet relationships has definitely rung true in my life.

If/when alcohol advertising gets banned the quality of commercials in general will decrease.

Excuse the mess

I don’t have this set up as I’d like right now but I’m blogging away regardless. I’ll get around to dusting and polishing eventually. Bear with me :-)

Tonight was the first time I cried in years

I’ve no problem with shedding tears. What makes a man weak is an inability to rise above a situation; to stand tall and be counted; to act when there is a need. Anger prevents that as does sorrow as does joy as does a whole range of other emotions. Sort of like be angry but do not sin. When you’re not in control of your emotions that’s when you’ve lost. I’ve never, ever seen my Dad properly angry. I can’t even remember the last time I was properly angry. Not sure if teenage tantrums count.

Anyway, tonight was a night full of hurt and pain for me as well as the other members of my small community of believers. A family who have over 29 years of relationship with my fellowship, and with me, talked about why they were leaving. There was a lot of hurt and emotion and a lot of tears. We love them. They love us. We don’t really agree with their decision. Most feel they’re making a mistake. I’m not sure. I generally don’t go for the whole predicting the future thing. I just pray and hope that they are blessed.

The father of that family lived in a basement fed on bread and water for three weeks because he refused to recant his faith. This was his own family doing this to him. This is a man with a heart for the lost. And a heart for the elderly and a heart for so many people. We all have flaws and he would be the first to admit that. When I was a teenager he committed to praying for me on a regular basis. I know that 99 days out of every 100 he’s prayed for me. And I know he will continue to do so. And I know that not seeing him at our meetings isn’t going to sit well with me. Living in community and living with human beings in general can really cause you to run the full gamut of emotions.

Sometimes loving someone hurts. A lot.

Responsibility

One of the most frustrating aspects of my life is that I do my best to take responsibility. Even in the tough times. I try to live my life as much as possible with my word being my bond. Responsibility is a two way street. It involves both the credit and the blame. People like to take only one side of the coin. Most people think there’s only two sides to a coin but that’s a blog post for another day. I remember an incident during my Leaving Cert year (last year of high school for you colonials). Our Maths teacher put on extra classes. He put on a lot. He put them on over a mid-term break. These weren’t short classes. They were about two hours long with homework thrown into the bargain. This made them almost five times longer than a normal school day class.

I remember the morning of the second class over the holiday period because I woke up and looked at my alarm clock for a long time. I then rolled over and went to sleep. The Monday morning came around and I discovered that if I had attended there would have been a quartet sleepily navigating their way though the sums and figures projected onto the wall. The teacher concerned addressed the class to the effect that he had been hurt and offended by the low attendance and would not be continuing with the extra classes until we had considered our actions and how to respond. I was in the top Maths class at my school. So we had a mix of smart people, Maths people, hard working people and people under a lot of pressure to perform – either from themselves or their parents.

I can only speak from my experience but I tend to look on in horror at the portrayals of stereotypical second level education in the USA. The cliques and infighting might make for good television but I don’t see how it aids a happy education. Several of the girls in the class came to me in a tizzy of sorts as the days went past and the collective failed to act. There wasn’t much discussion per se. It was common knowledge that an apology was needed but the method and the means were an unknown quantity. The most pressing question of all was who would deliver the apology to the stern disciplinarian; the vice-principal of the entire school; the gray haired, gray suited, monotone, monochrome man who had a nickname that played on an emotionless cyberkinetic android ?

I looked into their eyes. I was a boy of seventeen years. I had trouble with acne. I had glasses that an annoying twonk of a wizard was about to ensure no other human being could ever wear again. I’m pretty sure I was in the midst of major struggles with pornography at the time. It would have been when I was putting on weight as well. In most classes I would end up sitting on my own or else with the other people who didn’t seamlessly blend in. Happiest days of your life me arse.

They were prim and proper. Their faces were worried. I don’t want to say there was anything malicious but I felt there was a certain faux politeness almost. Would I do it? What if I said no? An expectation can be a terrible thing. An awful burden. The ones we place on ourselves even more so. Someone who wants to reach an imagined perfect standard can never, ever allow an admission of blame or permit a flaw to blot their copybook. A drop of ink into a jar of water and it is contaminated. “I’ll do it.”

Photo owned by g_kovacs (cc)

The class commenced. I received anxious glances from the previous interlocutors as the class rolled on. Towards the end I stood up. I don’t remember exactly what I said. I do several things very well, so well that a specific instance doesn’t stand out in my mind or necessarily provoke any emotion from me. He thanked me and accepted the apology. He then said that there would be an extra class that Saturday morning and we were all expected to attend.

I got a few snide remarks as people left. “I wasn’t sorry at all.” “Who said you’d my permission to do that?” Those people attended the extra classes of course, as did the girls who didn’t even consult the rest of us when presenting the teacher with a thank you gift at the end of the year. They stood up at the top of the class smiling and shaking his hand marvelling at how wonderful they had been.

He was a good teacher. I feel disappointed that I underachieved by about 25% on my final grade in Maths and my Leaving Cert in general. Still well above average of course but I have my own standards that I choose to maintain. One question I’ve always had though: would he have accepted my apology if I hadn’t rolled over in bed on that second morning?

If my wife’s a Calvinist…

that means I don’t have to do anything right? :-)