Fire in the Sky

"In the created world around us we see the Eternal Artist, Eternal Love at work."
- Evelyn Underhill

China Bound

I leave for China on August 15th.....I went to DC to get my visa from the Chinese Embassy. Still can't believe I'm going. Should be a blast. Here are some pics of some of the things I will see. That is if we dont change our itinerary and instead of going south we go west to the Tibet and the Himalayas- The rooftop of the world. But as of now, we are heading to Beijing...then to the south to a city called Guilin and the river Li and then work our way north to Suzhou and the other canal and garden cities. So the first couple pics are of Guilin and then Suzhou and then Beijing. In case your wondering...going with my good friend Daniel Cohee...our third trip together...first was Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar...the second was London, Dublin, Scotland and Norway. Brien Meyer was with us on that one but he cant make the China trip...Brien you can still change your mind buddy!
We are going to start a Gentleman's Expedition Club where we smoke pipes and banter back and forth about our past exploits and our future adventures.



















Tibet? If we change our mind and head west...we will go to the rooftop of the world
Go to the city where the Dali Llama has his palace....where for a thousand years no foreigner set foot in the city....
And could possibly go take a look at the tallest mountain in the world.
The three pics of the Potala Palace...One of the top wonders of the world, on top of the world!

Love

This post was inspired from the common bond I see in humanity. Its a comment on the human condition. And as general as that sounds it is so achingly personal and it haunts me every day of my life.
Why do we love? Simple. Feeling loved and giving love is the closest to heaven we can get on Earth. It is in our souls..it is written on our hearts. We search for it, yearn for it, write about it, sing about it, dance for it, fight for it, die for it.
We live and die by love. To love is to be human. It is the deepest longing of our hearts to be accepted and loved. We will do stupid things, crazy things.....and if we arent careful our pursuit for love can become twisted...distorted...unhealthy and it can corrupt us. The irony, the sadness of longing for love to be known, to be intimate...to be loved unconditionally can very very very easily be the ruin of us!
It doesnt make sense does it? It seems to be that everyone wants the same thing. What seems so natural to our being, or personhood is so so so hard!
Everyone wants to love and be loved.....and yet why are relationships so broken? Why are relationships so hard? Why do we hurt eachother?
And those mountaintop experiences never last do they?!! Its infuriating isnt it? We try and try and try and yet we ruin everything. What seems so innate and natural inside us becomes difficult and turns to heart ache. And before we know it its all happening again...the cycle is endless.
The continued pains leaves scars that many people cannot recover from.
Well....I would say the reason this happens is not because we werent meant to have beautiful relationships full of love but becuase we are the problem. We cant love people unconditionally like we should. I mean thats what we want right? So it seems to reason we should be able to follow through. But we cant. We are messed up. People are messed up. Relationships are messed up. They are broken and distorted.
What do you do?
When you have turned to everyone you can possibly turn to...your family, your friends, your best friends, your guy friends, your girl friends, your romantic interests...you've tried everything and no one is there for you.
It is at this point that everything seems hopeless. You've hit rock bottom and all you ever wanted to hit was someone who loved you completely and accepted you totally.
Only one person can do that. That person is God. He is by definition; Love. Why is this desire to be loved written on our souls? Because we reflect our maker, our creator. If God is love then it stands to reason we long for love with all our being.
Imagine if you could turn to every single person on earth...for love. In the end no on can love you the way your heart really wants to be loved. No one. God can....God does.
He loves you so much He sent his son to die on the cross.....to die for all that broken crap in the world. To die for all that sin in the world....all things we are ourselves are guilty of....We all are guilty of hurting people.
Well Jesus died so we didnt have to be miserable anymore. If we admit that we are messed up and broken and guilty of our own share of crud, ask for forgiveness and then believe that God in his perfect love sent his son to die for all of that and that Jesus conquered death and sin and reunited us to the perfect love of God then our lives will change.
Rather than looking for love and truth in the brokenness of this earth...in the broken people around us.....in ourselves
we can find PERFECT LOVE, PERFECT ACCEPTANCE in God....who is by his very nature and definition Love.
Imagine that!!!
Love is written on our hearts for a purpose. And God doesnt want you to hurt...He wants you to turn to him.
The perfect Lover, who will never abandon you.

Philippians 2:4-8
"Let each of you esteem and look upon and be concerned for not merely his own interests, but also each for the interests of others.
Let the same attitude and purpose and humble mind be in you which was Christ Jesus...(Let him be your example in humility)
Who, although being essentially one with God and possessing the fullness of the attributes which make God God, did not think this equality with God was a thing to be retained.
But He stripped himself of all privileges and rightful dignity, so as to assume the guise of a servant, (slave), in that he became like men and was born a human being.
And after he had appeared in human form, he abased and humbled himself and still further carried his obedience to the extreme of death, even the death of the cross!

Imagine having perfect love...perfect is an imaginary word to us on earth, because everything is broken...there is nothing truly perfect here. But Jesus had it.
A perfect relationship with his Father...perfectly accepted and loved and yet out of that love he chose to leave that perfect state and descend to earth. Amazing.
And then he went even further...rather than simply coming down here...he actually took all that brokenness and took the burden of sin for us...
Jesus was obeying his Father by dying on the cross for us to have access to God.


Romans 3:23
All have sinned and fallen short of the honor and glory to God.

Romans 3:22 But
"Righteousness of God which comes by believing with personal trust and confident reliance on Jesus Christ (the Messiah-Savior)

To be honest with you...I do not feel satisfied in posting this entry as it is. It is not sufficient for the great magnitude and depth of the topic.

And to be honest with you....this post was written for one person that I met recently. Someone God purposefully put in my life and I in hers. (And it was more than simply being a helping hand at the hospital!)
I hope she reads it and finds peace, acceptance, forgiveness, righteousness, hope and love from her heavenly Father.

But as I mentioned it is important for everyone to hear because it speaks to the human condition and it is a daily importance for me to hear as well.

PS
Romans 5 is great too...
We are justified, declared righteous, given a right standing with God, through Faith, let us grasp the fact that we have peace and reconciliation to enjoy peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through Him we also have our access by faith into this grace, (state of God's favor) in which we we firmly and safely stand!
And let us rejoice and exult in our hope of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God.
Moreover let us also be full of joy now! let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings....(READ THAT AGAIN) knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance.
And endurance develops maturity of character (tried integrity). And this character produces the habit of joyful and confident hope of eternal SALVATION!
Such hope as this NEVER disappoints or deludes us, for Gods LOVE has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
While we were yet in weakness, POWERLESS TO HELP OURSELVES!, at the fitting time Christ died for and in behalf of the ungodly, (us).
Now it is extraordinary thing for one to give his life even for an upright man, though perhaps for a noble and lovable benefactor someone might even dare to die.
But God shows and clearly proves his own love for us by the fact that while we were still SINNERS, Christ died for us.
Therefore now we are justified , brought into right relationship with God, by Christ's blood, how much more , certain it is that, we shall be saved by Him from the wrath of God.

AMEN and AMEN!

(taken from the amplified Bible version, Romans 5:1-9)

New Entry Coming SOON!

I dont know why I just posted this....I am leaving in 5 minutes to head off to Church for Family Night of VBS.
A new post coming soon.....hint...it will be about my adventures in the Middle East!

Well...as you can tell...it ain't happening tonight...its nearly 11 and I am going to set a record by hitting the sack before midnight two nights in a row. So....g'night ya'll

Untitled

Back by popular demand.

This is something I wrote 4 years ago....way back in February of 2001.

I am not a man of in betweens
I am either here or there
I see the space behind the face
I know the beat upon thy heart
I see beyond your words and footsteps
I stand alone listening to the song of leaves dancing in the wind
I vanish away- I fade into the gentle breeze
I fade into your eyes
I fade into the earth I tread upon
I fade into the distance-
the distance I see in this life
The distance of this earth stretches into infinity
And I can barely comprehend it,
Before it collapses back into the snap of the wind
The song of the birds,
The smile in your face,
It fades away- the distance fades away
Everything near fades into an oblivious sharp epiphany
I see the calmness of the earth
I see the traffic, I see the movement
The constant change is static
And it stretches apart from me
My searching eyes its focal point
time, place, circumstance, memory and moment
reign no more upon my soul.
Everything fades away from me inside of me
This earth, this grey shadow of reality...
fragile on the reflection of a teardrop
So various, so beautiful, so new
So static, so grey, so old.
A paradox within my eyes
Within my mind upon my soul
Everything grey fades away from me and into me.

EAGLES CAMP & Victory Jam 2005

The last three weeks have been a whirlwind, I have spent two of those weeks at summer camps....Middle School Victory Jam on Long Beach Island New Jersey right next to the beach and EAGLES Camp at Swallow Falls State Park in the mountains of Western Maryland.....details to come...now I'm off to VBS.

Okay I'm back...I am 4 hours removed from the end of VBS today and now I will tell you that I had an amazing time at both camps this summer. Above all the most influential experience for me was the deeper relationships I formed with my youth group and with other kids at the camps. Both camps were different in that regard...Victory Jam was large and I spent all my time with my kids and it was great. I felt like I really got to know everyone a lot better. Brandon and Alan...you guys were awesome roommates! We got a room for six all to ourselves! And I was really impressed by both of you and how intelligent and deep your conversations were about the topics we were talking about. You guys have wonderful potential to be wonderful leaders for the youth group. No doubt in mind about that.
I was so glad that we had some of the newer girls to the youth group come to camp. It gave me and Suzanna and opportunity to get to know you guys better. Kelsi and Lauren...you two really opened up by the end of the week and I was totally impressed with your "big booty" skills....I still havent been able to get that game/song out of my head!! Ah big booty!
Anyway....Katie...your so cool....you were so quiet at youth group but by the end of the week at Victory Jam I think you opened up the most! It was so cool to see....and lets not forget Colleen.....you really let loose and showed your funny side and your capability to be such a great influence on those around you was amazing.
It truely was a treasure for Suzanna and I to get know you guys better. The week really endeared me to you guys.
The camp itself was a blast....lots of fun games....fun moments- like my car breaking down on the way up, to our beach freeze tag to our night game of outburst to our Christian Rap Jam session in the parking lot to the Showplace ice cream adventure where Colleen and Katie sang musical caliber lines in order to get their ice cream!
I know for me the talks given by Drew Derreth were incredibly enlightening and encouraging for me and I am pretty sure that you guys like it too....and I definately know you guys enjoyed the jump and jiving worship time and the wacky skits put on by Jeff, Tim and Steve.

EAGLES Camp
I got home late Friday night completely wiped out...and it took two days of sleep for me to recover from those cold, damp nights spent shifting my sleeping posture over a rock that was unremovable under my sleeping bag.
Other than the cruddy sleeping conditions and the two days of rain...the experience was amazing.
This was a much smaller camp...probably close to 30 kids and around 10 counselors....and we all bonded like family!
I loved spending time with Laura, Rebecca, Mary Claire, Jaclyn and one my tent buddies, Ben P! MC and Jaclyn were in the best small group...the "Quazi's" which was my group! (Along with Sydney from Severna Park) We had the best group because we had the most laughs...and the freakin' best flag design ever! Our name came from the word quasi meaning half....long story.....and our motto was cleverly thought up by Chelsea....."Quazi's are half and not whole without God in their souls" Wow....what a catchy phrase...and only a cheerleader could come up with that!
The highlight of the week was a our small group time, problem solving and the rafting. The problem solving was so so funny! Sydney and I's group did the least creative things to cross the imaginary canyon with their boards and other tools to help them cross over.....Hannah was so funny, she wanted to use Duct Tape for everything....including anchoring the 2 x4's to grass by using the duct tape! I made a bewildered face after that! Our group also had the bright ideas of doing a run, jump and summersault roll across the tavern in an Indiana Jones fashion....roping a branch and swinging across like Tarzan and using cheerleader holds and pushes which only led to a 2 foot jump....so yeah....thats why I said our group was not very creative...they just wanted to copy Hollywood stunts.
So Syd and I decided to make up the rule that they had to use all their tools to get them across....in a good nature they complained about it to Trip, leader of the camp, and he said they had to follow our rules and the kids responded by saying that other groups didnt have to do that and he said it was beacuse their group leaders were sadistic! Of course that was their new catch word for the week.....everyone wanted to change our team name to the Quazi Sadistics!

Onto Rafting....everyone in my raft....Scott, Chelsea, Hannah, MC and Jacyn fell in twice but me and MC, the anchors to the raft in the back. I dove in once kamikazee style to take out Andrew who was on another raft...but what was better was down the river when Daniel repaid my act with an even more stealthy kamikazee manevour that left my feet vertical and my body doing flips under the frigid river waters....I heard it was quite the site to see!

Another highlight was Brian Wolf....the speaker from Miami who reminded me a lot of my college friends. He really taught us a lot about temptation and how to surrender our lives to God. His stories and funny sense of humor really made it relate!
I am thinking we might see him again next year.....if the youth group goes down to Miami for a missions trip.... perhaps?

So I get home Saturday and my roommate is gone and I am alone and I feel like I should have 40 people around me and there's not.....and of course the last couple days I have missed everyone.
These two camp experiences were amazing for me and I loved every moment....even the lack of good sleep and stinky kids!
I Thank the Lord that he gave me the opportunity to grow closer to those of you that went....that was the highlight for me

Thoughts in a Graveyard

I wrote this a while ago when I was sitting in a graveyard on a grassy hillside reading names from tombstones....

Emarita Pitts Murphy
March 31, 1912
June 26, 1989
Gone but not Forgotten
Perpetual Care
Colbert- Eady- Caldwell- Armour- Hicks
Bowles- Williams- Layne- Eason- Calhoun
Thompkins- Boozer- Toney- Dixon
Jefferson- Rice- Cater- Jones
Banks- Tuggle- Albert- Keith
Page- Riggs- Lee- Grace- Cameron
Matthews- Bradford- Price- Skelly
Gilmore- Hainey- Tyler- Lawrence
Eastman- Angel- Irvine- Robinson
We were people once- a generation apart
a disease apart- an accident apart
We were alive to set the stars in place
That glimmer in your deep dark face.
We were alive and whispered love upon the ear of time.
You can hear it softly spread upon this earth-
Love- Forgotten beautiful love-
A person in his own right...
He strikes upon you in the moonlight
He wanders these windswept hills and plains,
visiting valleys and mountain peaks,
whispering forth from the echoes of time-
Loved and not forgotten
Gone and not unloved
It lingers yet above the grave-
Oh it lingers yet and fills this world of dreams
Love- He dashes forth like a mountain rapid
Yet finding root upon this slippery solace sneaks away into the night
These lost loves
These lost loves who once loved
Loved like we- loved with passion and fear
Loved with trembling hands and studdering lips-
Loved the beauty set before them...
Loved the dying of the light and the golden caste set upon the earth
A blanket of warmth and solitude
Gone but not forgotten
We who stand at the doorway to eternity
We who journey to unknown lands
We whose eyes search upon this land of dreams set before us
We who have had lost loves
Who set upon that distant sea
We who love murmer it upon the earth
And set it free to roam
In this interlude to eternity
We who love now will be gone too soon
But never to be forgotten

Orioles vs. Astros 6.13.05

Monday Night I went with Larry and Lydia to the O's Game. It was amazing! I felt like a little kid again. It was like no other game I've been to.
I thought there was no way to beat opening day when I sat in the first row of the outfield and got to high five the entire team as they got introduced. (The only time all year they come in that way) This time, I was actually sitting in row AAA seat 1. It was the seat of the owner of the team! (Although most often he sits in his skybox) Peter Angelos gave the tickets to Larry's mom because she works for him. I was sitting so close to the players in the dugout I could reach out and touch them without getting out of my seat! Out of 48,876 seats I was in the seat closest to the players! I was closer to home plate than third base, so close to the on deck circle I could take two steps and stand next to the players, and when I talked on my cell phone the players could overhear my conversation! I made eye contact with every player on the team and I bet they wondered why that kid was sitting there. In fact it was kinda odd, Rafael Palmeiro made enough eye contact with me to make feel weird. Anyway, it was awesome, it was a high I hadn't felt since climbing up one of the pyramids in Egypt. I also got some good video, Miguel Tejada waved at me as he was on the on deck circle.
A tremendous thank you is due to the Komenda's!

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