Advent and Christmas

Hey guys, what are your thoughts on the Christmas season? It's said that originally the advent season was one full of fasting and longing to be nearer to our redeemer. My question is where did this longing...and the striving which was a part of it go? Is there any life-giving potential left in this season or is it lost to consumerism? I would love to hear your thoughts...

Content from KP

Self-validation.
Let's talk about it.

Hey guys!

I admire, respect, and miss you all!

-Kyle (No, I'm not really the Lord Caldwell)

New reads...

I started reading Mere Christianity yesterday and I am thoroughly excited nonetheless. I am also about to start "Everything Must Change" by brian mclaren whcih I am just as excited about. I am starting to feel some momentum about how im going to start living expressively my life for Christ again, I feel that everything I went through and how I feel about it is about to be at a place where I can take it and live it with people verbally and outwardly as well as inwardly....just loving life right now, just loving life....oh and coming through ruston next thursday night on the way to fayatteville and then coming back through sat night yayyyy

Comment to Will's post...

I would definitely say that your response helps to answer that question, it is one that I have kind of put on the back burner, but one that I always have trouble with and that I think more than anything keeps me from growing and seeking more is when I think about blessings/answered prayers etc...Because by no means can I not say that God has blessed me at times when I have asked or needed it, and that is actually where I struggle, He has blessed me so much at times when I have needed it and asked for it I can't accept it. Its so hard for me to hear things like, "God kept the rain back for an extra hour so we can have this skate show or picnic fundraiser He must have been looking out for us" or I needed an my boss to let me off so that I can go to this show or on this trip and when he did God blessed me with it, when I know that terrible things are happening to people all around the world and hard situations are prevalent for so many people it is hard for me to accept the fact that God is going to bless us middle class white Christians from some rain for an hour or a day off of work when some girl is getting abused by her dad or someone is starving and cold by fault of neglectful parents or war, but that isnt to say that that isn't the case, I just have a hard to coming to grips again with thinking that and accepting that God is blessing me with things that don't seem as crucial as other peoples situations.

angry v. femine-side G-d.

"God is the same God as yesterday today and tomarrow"
Yet, I struggle with this idea so much, seeing God in the Old and New Testaments to be the same.
With one, Sin seems to have much more devestating results, in the other, sin is described by some people to "not offend God" or even, "not seperate us from God."
Ot: Quick tempered and not afraid to use violence when necessary to obtain land for His 'chosen people.' Sin seems to have immediate and sometimes deadly results.
- Go and take Jericho.
- You sinned... well then, we're going to take you outside, set you and your familly on fire and throw stones at you till you die.
Nt: Grace abounds and sin seems to play a less retributive role in our lives.
I would really benefit from all of your thoughts on this idea.

green, gold, and brown

oh gosh, i love this weather. I know it is supposedly trite to talk about the weather. Sometimes I apologize to people in conversation and swear I'm not desperatly searching for something to say and out of a lack for anything... vocally observe the obvious.
"The sun is out and it is shiny."
"You are correct"
But, i was watching the leaves fall off their limbs and float across the street as i was driving and I thanked God on how every season has something unique and poetic and beautiful about it, no matter what that is. The green of summer, the gold of fall, the birth of spring, the white of winter. sometimes in winter, the cold strangles all plant life and kills the grass and the leaves and everything looks brown and barren but even so... there is so much beauty theirin that nourishes my soul. God said it was "good" for some reason apparently. It's been said to me that God said that man was 'good', but when you look at generation God actually steps back and seems please by creation in entirety. So, when I say "The weather is nice out today." I'm probably insinuating something much more heart felt than it is commonly interpreted to be.
Maybe we should invent some new small talk conversations... "What's your favorite color?" only lasts up to one word, thus only getting me past about .32000015 seconds worth of awkwardness.
"Do you fear death?" Maybe that one is a better go, eh?

Ahh the Weather

Beautiful day today. I was eating breakfast in the breakfast/lunch restaurant that Rachel works at ( which is the cutest little place in downtown covington) where I sit at the bar and order, what has become my usual of two eggs scrambled, potatoes and toast with a cup of coffe, and read the paper. I was reading the "Living" portion, which the paper also includes the Times Picayune out of NO and there is the New Orleans film festival going on this week so we are going to go across the lake tonight and watch a John Cusac film calle'Grace is Gone', I was kind of bumed because last night a Vince Vaugn film played and turns out he was in attendance. So I am pretty stoke about that tonight, also in covington they have this thing going on that they do every year called "Fall for Art" where the open up all the gallleries downtown, which are all on one street and there are about 8 of them and they are really nice on top of that, and they have food and drinks and the community comes out and strolls around downtown. A pretty nifty deal I think. Also there was a rally this morning for Bobby J for govenor , where all of the elected officials in the area who endorsed him did so, which happened to be one block down the street from the restaurant so I just walked on over and caught that, I really honestly hope he wins because our state desperately needs him.

..oh and I just finished my training at Macaroni Grill haha so now I just have to pass a test and I will officially be a server

hope everyone has a beautiful day...au revoir

Job Hunt

So the teaching thing didn't really work out so well for me. I am now living in Mandeville/Covington at Rachels house until I find a job. I have some good leads, but I decided that the smart thing to do is to just get a job until I find a more permanant like job, because it could take several weeks or even a month. I have a second interview today at Macaroni Grill for a server position, hopefully it will work out. One of the most promising leads for a job job is wit mary anns dads insurance company, but it could be until january until they do more hiring, so waiting tables seems like a viable thing until that happens if it does. At first I was kind of freaking out about the whole thing, like most guys would, but I think I am learning alot of valuable lessons. The first lesson is conditioning myself to be happy where I am, not thinking that I have to be in some crazy cool city immediately around a bunhc of cool people, but instead to make this the coolest town ever ( which it actually is pretty incredible as you will see). And making community here, finding people here to build relationships with, because surely there are other people our age here that are thinking the same thing. Me Rachel and Mary Ann are starting something every monday night that is kind of like continuing education where we are going to self teach ourselves in different areas such as literature and art and foriegn language. Needless to say I am pretty excited about that. Also there is an awesome bike trail called the trace that goes from the lake front( lake pontchatrain) to downtown covington and it goes right by her house and all total it would probably take a good two hours to bike the whole thing, and she lives in about the middle of it so we have been biking lately and it is so refreshing. Every saturday there is a a market down by the lake front and we biked over there and walked around this past weekend. And the coolest thing happened for our spiritual journey yetsterday. About a year ago when I started looking into the whole emergent church thing I had been connected to a guy out of new orleans who was also wanting to start an emergent cohort in louisiana but since we were in different places we just corresponded through emails for a while, and yesterday after church me and rachel were talking about different churches and places we could try out as far as getting involved and she said that her old youth pastor used to go to Imago Dei in Portland for a while and loved it but was part of a church planting/leadership organization and felt compelled to start more like it and so he moved to new orleans and started something there, and so we were both talking about this guy we knew in new orleans who we should contact to see what they were doing there and if it would be something we would want to get involved with so I went to emergent's website to see if there was something in new orleans and two guys names came up and I asked rachel what her old pastors name was and it was him and then I noticed his email address and it looked familiar so I checked my old emails and it was the same guy I was corresponding with a year ago, how incredible and coincidental is that, we were blown away nonetheless. So I emailed the guy last night and we have been emailed back and forth some today and we are going to go thursday to new orleans to sit down with them and check out their community, it is called "Communitas New Orleans" it looks really neat and promising and most importantly encouraging that there could be some bright potential for spiritual growth here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcXb9lAVko0

I hope all is well and we are shooting for possibly the 3rd weekend of this month to make a trip to Ruston. Much love.

Anyone order a pizza?

I preached for the first time ever on Sunday. It was an interesting experience as I am not a practiced public-speaker my delivery wasn't say -- eloquent. However, I do think that I communicated somethings despite my obvious nervousness. The people at the church were very grateful for us all to have been there. They pastor there came out of retirement to preach and do visitations there. The congregation consisted probably around 20 people or so, mostly elderly, in a country church between Ruston and Quitmen. I talked about in Genesis how God said "It is not good for man to be alone" and the corellation between that and the need for community in church today, specifically on college campuses where the biggest struggle for people is lonlilness. It was interesting to go and speak to a small group of elderly people who seem to do community so much more naturally than we do. There was one woman who couldn't be there but wanted to, so they recorded the entire service for her. haha... gosh, at least it has megan singing on it!

I need to read something from someone on here

My title speaks for itself haha...someone post something I would love to read a little bit about what is going on in your lives...I miss y'all and love y'all.

Marriage----Community

Dear Matt,
I'm incredibly excited for you, oh man. However, I'm not stoked that I missed you on Saturday and not being able to hear this fantastic news directly from your bearded face. I wish to speak with you soon brother.
In Love,
In Christ,
Blessings,
Trent

--------
What does it look like to be the Body, the Church? How do we create "on earth as it is in heaven?" What are our needs? How do we live missional lives? What can we observe? Who are we to become (or is that the wrong question?)? What are the right questions?
Community:
Together, Contract, Covenant.
No divorce when conflict arrives.-we're in it, and we'll work it out.
We. Collective.
Centralized. Diversity. Brotherhood & Sisterhood.
There is a difference between friendships and servanthood.
Community is not a buffet line. "Ours", and not "Mine"
Not "What can I get" rather, "What can I give"
Everyone has something to give. Give specifically to those who feel they have nothing to give.
Sometimes the poor wear abercrombie.
Community does not operate within a consumerist mindset.
Seek Righteousness, being exclusively outward leaves one incredibly near-sighted.
Fully engaged in relationship.
Amorphous.
???

Persevering is never fun at first

Im not going to lie, I almost quit the other day. I had the towel reared back and ready to fly out of my hand. No more! I thought, but then reason struck me in the face( not to mention they bumped up all the kids in my class who were 15 and 16 to the 9th grade finally) but nonetheless, I did not give up. If you ever plan on teaching I highly recommend taking some certification classes or student teaching or something, because its not a breeze by any means, its slowly getting easier as I am getting a system for everything( and as I keep writing kids up) plus the beard is coming back and that will definitely strike some fear in the hearts of these young minds.

On another note, I think I am coming to ruston saturday, so hopefully that will work and I will get to see some of your brilliant faces.

take care and more to come....

Teaching...for real this time

So I am officially a teacher now, I am teaching middle school social studies and North Iberville Highschool. 7th grade american history and 8th grade louisiana history and possibly an ACT prep class...and yes I am pretty freaked out and overwhelmed right now, as much as I am excited. I want to start a blog for my classes so as soon as I get that going I will let y'all know( and by y'all I mean whoever happens to still read this haha) I hope to make it to Ruston sometime around the start of school, so I hope to see some of y'all if not all. Take care and more on this whole bit later

teaching

well I am in baton rouge trying to get a job teaching for the year. looks like I will be teaching somewhat special ed kids math and english to help them pass the leap, go figure huh. whatev you gotta do what ya gotta do ya know. more on this later.

encouragement from going to church

Its kind of ironic that the very same thing that used to upset me when I would go to church on Sunday mornings now encourages me. All of the "stuff" that we all know people have problems with, and that we talked about many times I am sure, creates a sense of security in my beliefs now, it strengthens my newly transformed mind on where I am spiritually and where I am with the church and where I am with Christianity. It excites about where I am heading with all of this, what it is leading up to.
Before recently it has been a while since I have had a good conversation about all of this stuff, I really wish I had what I, and we, had last year. I know it will be back with different people and in different places. But what we had was definitely incredible.

Ol' Ruston

So I might be coming to Ruston saturday night if anyone still reads this, and I hope to see as many freaking people as possible if that happens, I will be staying at Zachs so if you get this come hang out....p.s. does anyone know where the new inklings is going to be?

dont graduate

wow graduating from college is pretty freakin crazy, it is so freeing yet so scary. I hope everyone is doing well, I miss everyone so freaking much and I love yall, take care

p.s. I just started reading a book called "God's Politics: Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it" Im just now getting in to it but I already highly recommend it.

Just checking in...

Im not sure who all, if any, might still check this, but if so, how is life? A broad question I know, but feel free to make it narrow.

shout out to my homieess

sup gangstazzz...
we need to figure out what time would work best for everyone to meet up on Friday. I'm cool anytime after 12.

Somethinzzz

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020707P.shtml
I was researching in the library and found this article. It's a scholary journal but I searched online and found a copy of it. This gives history from everything that happened before 9/11 to Iraq. It's all of course, oil.

_____

How do we live lives for Jesus while living in the paradox of 'dying to yourself' & joy. I understand that joy can be found in this idea but how do you rationalize your own joys without puting yourself down? How do you pursue God with that? How do we do ministry in America without it being an occupational minister? People say things like "just live your life for God" but what does that even mean if I'm just 'living my life'..where is the 'dying to self' in that? How am I being a servant by 'living my life' as just being a christian.

family frustration

does anyone else struggle with family relationships? I know that that is a dumb question in the sense that Im sure everyone does, but its one of those rhetorical questions that has to be asked. It sucks because I love my family and vice versa, but I dont know how to let them get to know me. They dont know the same person that all of you know. And I know that there is specific reasons why that is, but the frustrating thing is that I wont let myself overcome that ya know. Its like the only thing that I can think of when I am around them all is "when can I get away?" This might sound pretty vague, and probably intentionally, but none the less you get the point. So if there is someone else out there that has family crap dont feel alone, because I have it too, and Im sure we all do. Ive come to realize something, that if I would not have held in my past from so many people then I could have helped someone else realize that their family is not the only dysfunctional one and in return they would have told me about their family crap and how I am not the only one. So if anyone needs to talk about how crazy their family is and how you dont know how to deal with it at times, I am all ears. I know I have said it before, but I really do love you guys.

Iran

What would you do if the U.S. started a war in Iran? There has been a lot of talk about Iran in the news and there are ALREADY books out about Iran and the supposed up and coming "NUCLEAR WAR".

>>terror alert red<<
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>>terror alert red<<

There seems to be a lot of things being published and spoken on the news that seems to be prepping us for a war in Iran, which oddly enough sounds very much like the language when we were in Afghanistan (failed) and wanted to move into Iraq.
Iran, is in need of more proficient energy sources and they want to go into nuclear power. They want to do this because first off, they are using more oil then they can produce. (not to mention that they export a lot also) Secondly, beause of their energy needs they would like to go into nucleur energy.
The radioactive material used for generating electric energy is a down graded version of what one might use to build a nucleur bomb. Once the materal is down graded for generating electricity it can not be purged or cleaned in a way that would make it useful again for producing WMD's. (It's good to know that a few nations are running their countries off of nucleur energy. the U.S. does have a few nuclear power plants but our use of them is extremely minimal. However, France is run highly off of nuclear power.)
It was suggested that the Russians supply Iran with this radioactive material where they profit off of selling it AND are therefore in control of the kinds of radioactive materail Iran would pocess. Thus, a happy checks and balances where Iran is allowed to stabilize their country (which is a good thing, it would not benefit the U.S. to force them into poverty) and we get to make sure they don't get any 'illegal' meterials (guess we could talk about the whos and whys of the legalization of nuclear arms but we'll leave that for another time eh?). The U.S. of course, didn't really like this idea so much and didn't back it. So, they aren't doing it.

All this to ask... if we did go to war in Iran, what would your thoughts be? What would you do? Clap? Smile? Shake your head in shame? Riot?

man down next qrt

well guys, I have a class at 2 on mwf next qrt so I wont be able to attend, blahh, but thats just part of the deal I guess, hope everyone is having a good week....any encouraging things or words from anyone?

The poor so close, a Kingdom so Capable

Kind of similar to that last post, I thought I might say something about the poor that live near us. I was reading "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennen Manning a while back and he talked about something that has stuck with me. He talked about a man in Mexico, very close to the border, that he had gotten to know on a mission trip. The Mexican man had many who were dependant on him for their most fundamental of needs. Manning was able to forward a decent monetary donation he had received to the man in Mexico and in return he received something like 5 letters of gratitude...daily. The man's appreciation was overwhelming even on paper. But what does this mean? As the kingdom of God how should we respond? I've read some statistics and it appears that if we gave something like half of our tithes to the needs of the poor most poverty would be eliminated...globally. I recently heard a Rob Bell sermon about a similar topic, and in discussing the implications of the American ideal with terrorism he said, "It's very difficult to hate the ones that feed and care for you."

A clean water well to sustain an entire African village for a lifetime: around $3000

global condition/perspective

How important do you think it is for Christiandom to be educated about the World? How would understanding the way other cultures experience the world would shape our theology and understanding of what Jesus talks about? Would this make our communities more or less relevant? How important is it that we stay informed about things beyond our own towns and churches and communities? How do we become the Global Church? How are things like genocide in Africa, the war in Iraq, global warming, and empty cathedrals in England directly realated to the way we view the world? How do we avoid a regionalistic or nationalistic faith?

once again guys, sorry I couldnt make it today, I really wanted to go...hope ya'll are having a good time with great discussion and Godly insight. love you guys, seriously, I do.

Quietness

There is much to be said of quietness. Perhaps there is more to say about how little we experience it. We hear often that we should sit and know that God is God...but until fairly recently I really didn't know what that meant. To a westernized, i-pod addicted, always on the move american quietness is rather frightful. I want to share an experience though. A while back on a mission trip me and a couple of friends(a couple might be in the blog here) were in this gutted out sanctuary later in the night. We talked for a while but then we moved into just sitting there quietly. It was like meditation, but it was something else, something with more gravity. Maybe meditation has more gravity than I know, but I felt so certian that God was in our midst. Something about a community waiting for their Lord in silence is really beautiful.

Dear friends,
~A friendly reminder to spend some time with the Lord~
He loves you very much and is waiting to let you know it!

I hope it's sweet,
-Kyle

sorry I missed, I just really needed to get away for a day or two...for my own well being...Im sure everyone can relate

of heaven?

God created the World

the environment depends on each species to sustain itself
the church depends on each member to sustain itself
Everything depends on God to sustain itself

God created the World, and we are to be imitaors of the things of heaven.

I just think its interesting how God created us to be dependant on him, and everything else in the world seems to revolve around that same concept as well.

Feeling alone here, a foreign place

I'll be missing today but I thought I would throw this out for everyone. Every now and then I feel alone and alien in this world. I don't think this is a problem, but when surrounded by non-Christians I sometimes feel pushed into the corner. It's like I'm anything but yoked with them in beliefs. What bothers me is that I feel like all they might catch from me in regard to my faith are my refusals. We are sadly often known more for what we do not do than what we do. I've found that in the gospels things were quite the opposite most of the time. Jesus was proactive rather than reactive. Holiness sounded off for itself without legalism. He told us that they would recognize us by our love for one another. That's alien too, that kind of love, yet it's quite irresistible.

....

ok so everyone who is a contributor can post...if your not one yet just give me your email and I will add you