balance

This blog will be a bit tougher than my last one...When I used to write, I was mostly a kid-still in school and with little need to be politically correct or write for any particular audience. Although apparently it did help with the ladies...But now, I'm a PC Bible teacher of all things, employee at a Christian school, who is not supposed to discuss controversial things (or do controversial things for that matter) and whose audience will probably mostly consist of my old students...so ya, some balance will be needed, some tact, some couth if you will...But I suppose that is true in all parts of life. Everybody has someone they are, and someone they appear (try) to be, the best people just match up better than most. if that makes sense... Which leads me to my first pop culture discussion...

I recently read a book called "The unlikely disciple: A sinners semester at America's holiest university". The "sinner" is Kevin Roose, a (now) 21 yr old college student, and the "holy university" is Liberty in Lynchburg, VA. you can check out his website here. The gist of the book is that this kid decided to transfer from Brown university to Liberty as a "social experiment". He is more or less a liberal deist and comes from a Quaker family who is not at all pleased by his decision. The family includes two very gay aunts who are worried that Kevin will be brainwashed and indoctrinated into Falwell's homophobic army. Well, you should read the book for yourself, but I loved it. Not to spoil anything, but he mostly is left with a changed view of the young, conservative Christian kids he encounters, and even a bit reluctant to head back to Brown at the end of the semester.

Although Kevin claims he is not an "evangelical Christian" he does believe in God and even gets quite involved in the Liberty life and Falwell's famous Thomas Road Baptist church. The crazy thing though is that for the entire semester at Liberty, he is basically pretending to be holy. He even reads books about how to speak "Christianeze" and how to control one's swearing. But more or less he is pretending to be something he isn't for an entire semester. I would imagine that would wear on someone, but the more I read, I realized he wasn't that much different than most of the kids there at Liberty, or PBA, or JCS, or TKA or any of the other Christian Acronyms I have been involved in, and me for that matter. We wear the hats were supposed to wear. At Liberty your supsed to be a conservative super Christian, and the school cracks down on you if you aren't. AT JCS your supposed to be a "cool Christian" so most kids talk holy and walk worldly, and thats accepted because that is what your supposed to be. IF your too Christian or too worldly though you risk falling outside the range of the cool kids. Anyway, it just got me thinking a lot. These last few years I have been tough in a lot of ways, trying to be real and vulnerable to my kids, but not wanting to be the worlds biggest hypocrite. It takes something out of you. Anyway, food for thought.

So I think I'm serious about this new blog. Spent awhile crafting this one and even used spellcheck. So weigh in, read the book, stay tuned. Peace.

Blogging from bed.

On my iPhone. This could get dangerous...



-- Post From My iPhone

Second time for everything

So the question is...Do I have anything to say? I miss blogging. I miss some of the things about my life when I was blogging. It doesn't seem like that long ago even though it was an eternity. My life is completely different now...And some of this blog will be to keep you up on that. Most of it though will just be to give me an outlet to discuss (vent) about things I don't get to chat about everyday- things I love, like, hate, etc. I love, like, hate alot of things, so it can't be that hard to find things to write about...right? IT is though, this is tough. I envy those peeps who can say everything they want and never forget anything, or always hit their talking points, or be super witty, or super funny, or come up with cool song names for blog titles, etc. I don't think I can be that guy, but I will probably try so bear with me. But anyway, about this blog. I am going to try and keep up with it, even if it is mostly born from the boredom that is a teachers summer. Not to say I haven't been busy though cause I have. Fishing, planning Romania, Getting married, etc..... Ya, I am getting married! four months from now I will be a real live adult. I have been putting that off for awhile. Anyway, I will leave you with a list of things I have been digging on, some of which I will probably discuss in coming posts. Stay tuned.
Here is a picture of my lovely future bride and I to tide you over ( ok see top i cant move it down here), along with my "lists of lists". I hope you all stick around, feel free to comment, post suggestions, discussion topics, etc. And my blog needs a name, so help me out with that...

A few of my favorite things right now
Music:
MGMT
The National
Brendan James
White Lies
Ray Lamontagne

TV-Summer TV freaking stinks

Books:
Fight club
Survivor
The unlikely disciple
The folly of Prayer
The Blind Side

Movies:
Away we go-really the only one I have seen lately that I really liked

Websites:Daily staples
Deadspin
ESPN
Yahoo fantasy
Florida sportsman
Facebook

Vices:
sleeping (and eating) away my summer

until next time...