riffs on a wound being stitched together

I was going to write about something else-but it's too soon.

I feel lonely today, almost half in-half out of the world. A fair amount should be attributed to the epic Boston-like greyness of the sky on this Friday the 13th, another amount to the lack of sleep due to working when normal people should be sleeping, and the rest to that which i will not write in detail about yet.

If i'm honest, which i will not give guarantees toward, i feel nothing. I'm not sure if the nothing i feel is a symptom of the emptiness and the lack of something, if it is merely anesthesia and will soon wear off, or if it means that i am really ok, and should forget all about this crazy business of chasing after something that i honestly wasn't 100% sure about and had talked myself into in the first place.

I'm feeling better now, if only for the addition of the coffee, and the beginning of my breakfast being consumed(very thick, very salty smoked bacon, if you are curious), and breakfast always makes me feel better, especially on dark and dreary days when all the best things seem just a little out of grasp. Thank Jesus for bacon and eggs.

home

I'm back home now...things were a little crazy in the District, and i wasn't able to post an update daily like i thought i would be able to. Oh well. I'm writing them up, and will post them to this site somewhat soon. Please bear with me. 

In related news, we'll be up and running tomorrow with the song lyrics from today's church service.

Giddy about DC

Ok. As you may have figured out by my lack of posting Wednesday, i didn't find anything to review.(editor's note: also...the links are going to be late...think like it's really friday morning. bear with us while we get the kinks worked out schedule-wise. thanks.) Sorry. So in return for your disappointment, i thought i'd flesh out more of what i'm thinking as regards my giant trip to our nation's capital. I just booked (and therefore cemented my first night in our nation's capital) a berth in a four bed coed room in a hostel (ooh...sleeping in the same room as ladies! ooh!) a couple of blocks from Union Station, where i will come galloping in upon(inside?) my shining Amtrak Crescent steed, and finally gain my first eye looks at my Democratic Mecca(complete with the whole infidel thing as irony) that i have gone 23 and a half long years without seeing. Okay...enough of me waxing Whipple-esque about DC.

The potential highlights of the trip:

Library of Congress tour(with my old friend Katie Vance in tow, who will randomly be in town at the same time as me) at 1:45pm Jan 15.

Capitol Tour(with my friend and Missouri native Sarah Haas) at 9:30am Jan 16.

Possible excursions with my friend Joanna Tillman to points north(Philly? NYC? Wilmington? Baltimore? I have no idea?) Jan 16-17.

Donald Miller at Georgetown University on Jan 18, from 4-5 pm

Kickoff Event at the Lincoln Memorial with President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden....(with special guest Bruce Springsteen) Jan 18, afternoon(i don't know the time of this...but if this runs at the same time as Donald Miller...screw him. I'm watching Bruce Motherf'ing Springsteen.

Martin Luther King Day in Washington, D.C.…I'm likely going to the National Holocaust Museum to celebrate(read: weep like a baby). Jan 19.

The Inauguration of The 44th President Of The United States, Barack Hussein Obama; Jan 20, 10am

Getting my party on; the evening of Jan 20.

Hitting The Smithsonian like a ton of bricks; Jan 21, all f'ing day.

Riding in a train ALL DAY LONG; Jan 22nd.

I'm pretty much scared out of my mind and hopeful that everything works out...but i'm taking my 20degree sleeping bag along with me just in case. Oh, and i'm really excited to be going where so much of our country's history was made...and to walk the halls and converse with the echos of the legions and multitudes of my forefathers who sculpted this nation(for good or for bad) into what she is today. Hope this makes up for no media review or links this week. Next week will likely be completely different as well, but thank you so much for reading and being flexible with my delusional, procrastinatory self.

are we sure that this ISN'T seattle?

I'm sitting in my cousin's Starbucks, mooching off Mellow Mushroom's free wifi, and i'm about to drive over to work. It's raining outside, raining big fat raindrops, and it looks more like Seattle or Scotland today than it does Knoxville. I drive around very carefully, because of the lack of tread on the outside half of my right front tire on the Jeep. I should really get my alignment checked, but that costs money, and right now, i'm not sure how much money(other than the requisite gasoline and other assorted fluids) i want to keep sinking into my car. 

Today i met with my new small group leader out in Maryville at the Cracker Barrel near where he works. It was not breakfast time, so i got the Roast Beef Dinner, which is my all time go to meal at the Cracker Barrel. (I keep wanting to find something catchy and hip to call the Cracker Barrel, but nothing's coming at this point.) We had a good talk about our former churches and how we got burned, and also about how apparently there is a pack of single, frustrated women looting and pillaging single guys of marriagable age…which i would have no problem getting looted and pillaged by, frankly.

I've also been planning my upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., and the planning is starting to take some pretty clear shape now. I'm pretty excited, because i've never been to our nation's capital before, plus i'm going to be there for my first(hopefully of many) Presidential Inauguration. I'm still trying to iron out all of my details as far as where i'm going to be sleeping, which is kind of scary. I've even sent out a facebook message to a girl i randomly made out with, seeing if she knows anyone i could crash with, which officially means i'm desperate. I'll be leaving Knoxville either the night of the 13th, or the day of the 14th, depending on if i'm ready to go by when i have to be at work next tuesday or not. I, depending on if i have consistent wireless access, will be blogging in the schedule during my trip, and i may have a couple of fun things planned for that week on here. 

Look for my review of something tomorrow(I still don't know what i'm going to review, so sit tight), and thanks for your readership.

Ch-ch-cha-changes!

I hate the idea of resolutions for the new year. 

(Something about the idea of making promises that i can't keep, which is something i always do, yet continually frustrate myself by doing.)

However, it would be the beginning of the year that I roll out a new schedule. I'm a glutton for punishment, apparently.

Some of this stuff is already in existence, but this is my first attempt at creating a solvent schedule for my writing, and hopefully it will have the desired effect of making me disciplined in my craft.

So without further adieu, here's the tentative schedule:

Mondays: 

I'll be continuing to post my song lyrics from my sermon-songwriting sessions (say that three times fast) on the next monday. I'm not guaranteeing greatness here, but i do at least hope to have coherent thoughts in a somewhat unfinished fashion.

Tuesdays:

This is my obligatory weekly update/rumination on random subject column for this blog. I'm going to try to not make it quite so much "this really grinds my gears!", but if my job ends up being a little crazier than normal, that may be the first thing to fly out the window.

Wednesdays:

I love movies...and music...and books...so on Wednesdays, you get a review. Not that i'm a professional at this sort of thing, but i'll try to give you a good idea of what i'm thinking without ruining the ending for you. 

Thursdays:

You've got other sites that you check, right? Cause I will not be posting on Thursdays. Go hang out with the good folks at Deadspin if you like sports, or The Rabbit Room if you like artsy stuff.

Fridays:

When you wake up, i'll have a giant post filled to the brim with these magical things called links. These will send you to some of the things that i've really enjoyed during the past week in the world of the intranets. Don't worry, they'll all be safe for workplace viewing.

Saturdays:

I've done my meditation on scripture for the past two saturdays over breakfast(usually a steak and egg burrito, grits and fruit, and copious amounts of coffee) at Cafe4 in Knoxville's Market Square, so this will continue to go out on Saturday mornings.

Sundays:

I will likely not be posting anything on Sunday, though i may be working on stuff for the week to come.

Well...this should be an interesting adventure, as i work at the rigors of blogging "full time". I hope to learn and grow with y'all in this process, and as always, make your voice heard in the comments.

Peace.

updates

I've been tinkering around with the layout of this thing for over an hour now, and i'm still not quite happy with it yet. However, that's not what i'm here to write about. I promised an update with me, and i'm fulfilling that promise.

Since I wrote an update, i went on full time at KARM (where i've now been employed for a year and a month...which is good for the longest that i have ever worked at a job) as a hospitality team leader, found a church home, and fell in love.

Okay, the last one is a lie. (Oh that it weren't, though.)

However, work is challenging as all get-out, and that made the imperative to find a church community all the more strong, as i could easily see myself getting beaten all to hell with the various stresses that are common to my job. Right now, i'm sitting in the shared Team Leader office working my sunday morning midnight to 8am shift with staff in each of our dorms(men's and women's), and me manning the lobby(there should be a staff member at the front desk...but apparently that's a luxury my bosses have yet to afford me in the past month). I still don't feel as if i've got my feet underneath me in this role, especially in the area of how much power i have when i'm on my shift(which is also kind of crazy for me to think about), and what needs to happen when the unthinkable should happen(cause, after all, i am responsible for somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 people on a nightly basis). Plus, i also have to stay up and alert all night, which can be difficult, even for a night owl like me.

But...that's the easy shift.

My hard shift is the 4pm to midnight shift that i work on tuesday and wednesday nights. From 4:30 pm to about 9pm, it's nearly non-stop movement. I'd like to find an athletic metaphor for the difference between the two...but i haven't yet. I'll probably be writing more about this shift in the future, so excuse the lack of a three paragraph breakdown of what happens on the shift in this space.

So that brings me to what was a rather anticlimactic end to the "Great Church Search of '08". Basically how it went was this: I pretty quickly took all the churches that i had been to before out of the weekly drawing in favor of not having my search last until March '09 (because, after all...it was the "Great Church Search of '08" not the "Great Church Search of '08-'09"...little difference...but it made all the difference, if you know what i mean). 

With the previously attended churches out of the way, that narrowed it down to Grace Community Church, Redeemer Presbyterian, Crossings Church, and Knoxville Life Church. I drew the names out of a hat, and that was the order they came out in. I'll write about each experience seperately, because the length is beginning to need the space of a full post about each.

(editor's note: the aforementioned posts have been dated a day after the visit: this places the posts in November, so if you scroll down, you'll see them. Thanks again for visiting.)

The Great Church Search Of 2008 pt.1

So...in the time that has passed inbetween posts, quite a lot has happened.

I ended up lasting on staff at my last church for about a month and a half longer, before my staff parish committee decided not to renew my contract, in favor of opting for a more traditional worship style. I'm often tempted to flame my former employer and church, but...i'm better than that(i think...). At any rate, i was nearly bending over backwards to fulfill the requests given to me, and i know that i could not have gone any further down the road towards a traditional style service and been happy and felt like my gifts were at all being used.

I also flirted with a possibility at another Methodist church in Maryville, but i didn't follow through with it because it didn't feel right. 

So that places us here, at my current conundrum.

I am a worship leader, lead YoungLife at a local high school, work at a homeless shelter...and i don't have a church.

So i've compiled a list of 10 churches that will hopefully sort out to just one in the coming months.

Oh yeah...i almost forgot: I'm choosing where i go each week by drawing names out of a hat. 

Here's the list, if you're interested(and we all know you are). (and these are in no particular order.)

1. Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church-

This was my first official church visited in the Great Search Of '08. I went last week, and was really encouraged by both the worship and the sermon, even though it was apparently the b-team on both fronts because of traveling by both the senior pastor and the worship pastor, and i also had an encouraging conversation with the folks in the visitor lounge(i was the only visitor to show up, which kind of surprised me, actually).

2. Fellowship Church-

I used to go here, until i started in a small group. I didn't know any of the guys or the leader, and they made a marginal attempt at best to get to know me outside of the group, and then they started trying to speak things into my life(granted, i believe that the Holy Spirit binds the church together, and complete strangers can be given knowledge by the Spirit for each other(i've seen it happen), but still...), and without that relationship outside of the small group to build on, their advice didn't really sit that well on my heart. However, the pastors and worship folks i am very familiar with, and hold in high regard. So there's that.

3. Antioch Community Church-

I also used to go here, and still have many friends(and some family) that i care about that go here. I was deep in the fabric of the church, and in some leadership stuff there(lived in a discipleship house, led worship for a small group), but God grew me a different direction than the church was growing. I also differ with the leadership on a number of points of methodology, but i dealt with that stuff for 2 years, and i'm not really interested in dealing with the same differences of opinion again. However, Antioch is on the list because of the folks i know there, and because i'm not about to tell God what he's doing. 

4. Powell Church-

My friend Greg Adkins is the worship pastor here, and because of that, Powell Church is on the list.

5. Knoxville Life Church-

Most of the churches that are on this list fall into a specific category: They are all recent plants(meaning they are new churches). This makes it on the list b/c of that. Oh, and they're also located downtown. That helps bunches.

6. Redeemer Church-

Yet another church plant, Redeemer is of the Presbyterian persuasion, and is located in the Fort Sanders district of Knoxville near downtown which is enough good stuff to land on the list.

7. Sevier Heights Baptist Church-

I don't think I'm going to end up at a Baptist church, but i've been to their college service a couple of times and felt welcomed and really enjoyed it, so i feel like i need to at least go and give it a try. 

8. Grace Community Church-

I would be lying to you if i didn't tell you the real reason this is on the list: a girl. But then again, it's only gonna get picked if God wants me to go there on a sunday.

9. Crossings Church-

My friend Bill Wolf is the worship pastor there, and they will be moving their services to the Square Room on Market Square downtown at the beginning of the year.

10. All Souls Church-

If they met on Sunday mornings, this would be my church. Their pastor is great, and i've got some good friends that go there. But, they meet at 6pm on Sunday evenings, and since i still live in Halls, that would mean going back home and sleeping, and then waking up for church, and the additional driving would not be kind to my bank account.

Well, that's the lineup. Maybe it won't take me two months to post an update.

(actually, i'm probably going to do one middle of the week about this morning's experience-so look for that.)