Times they are a changing

I am leaving livewire. 6 years, 64K posts, and an infinite amount of time spent later, I feel like I have reached the end of my rope where this website is concerned. Livewire has done nothing wrong, I am not leaving because I am upset, mad or otherwise unhappy in anyway, I am simply ready.

Ready to move on past a website filled with juvenile adolescents. Ready to get on with my life. Ready to stop hiding from reality. Ready to find more godly things to fill my time. One thing I intend to do is start blogging more (lol) and to read more. I intend to focus my life on things that matter, and stop wasting the time I have on things that don't matter.

Its been a good run. I have fought the good fight, and given much of myself. Its time.

Sigh.

A new year and once again my plans to educate myself have fallen to the wayside. All those books I began I never finished. I have bookmarks in like 12 books right now, and cant seem to keep my attention on any of them long enough to make it mean anything.

I have posted thousands more insignificant posts on a teen website, and committed thousands more insignificant actions as a moderator there but cannot finish a book to save my life.

I was telling someone the other day that I was an exceptionally smart 17 year old. Probably significantly smarter than the average population, not to sound like a jerk. But now I am only a normal 24 year old. What happened in the last 7 years? What changed. How did I go from Harvard bound to minimum wage secretary. Boy, I sure showed them what I was capable of. :tired:

A little Exercise for Young Theologians

A little Exercise for Young Theologians by Helmut Thielicke is possibly one of the shortest books you will ever read. It is also quite possibly one of the most profitable books for anyone who considers themselves to be a recreational or studied theologian. The book is a short read, and will take you literally a few hours at most to read. I highly recommend it.

While speaking about the necessity of maintaining a relationship with God as you attempt to become learned in matters of theology, Thielicke says this, "a theological thought can only breathe in the atmosphere of dialogue with God". This is something that really struck home with me becuase I think one of my greatest fears as I have studied religion is the idea that as I learn more, I distance myself more and more from God.

He goes on to say that the only way theological study can be understood is when:

1) I recognize that the text is directed at ME
2)I become involved in formulating a reply

Thielicke claims that the first time someone transitioned from second person terminology regarding God to 3rd person (Genesis 3:1) is also the first time someone asked "Did God really say that?"

Educating myself Take 1

So As I have complained here before I find myself feeling completely uneducated these days and I feel that my life is suffering because of it.

I have come up with a schedule/life plan to help myself get educated and challenge myself. I have committed to:

• Staying off the internet when I get home at night.
• Watching less TV
• Reading things that stimulate my mind
• Working on my Greek, and doing a better job of making sure i don't lose it all.

So far to work on this I have been doing a pretty good job. I have failed a few nights, but mostly I have resisted the force to get online at night.

I have restricted my tv watching to a few less days a week.

I have read 2 articles in a church history journal, and am currently working my way through a book about hidden children during the holocaust.

next on my reading list is: A book by George Elliot, More of St. Francis, and A book about biblical interpretation.

The Shack

I will not attempt to give here a detailed review of the myriad of theological problems this book contains, but will limit myself to this: The theological implications of what he suggests about the saving nature of Christ are staggering, but since I do not claim to be a theologian or anything like that i will leave those issues for someone else.

Any book that claims to solve a theological claim as monumental in size as the problem of evil in this world and then proceeds to use simply emotional manipulation and underhanded tactics to do so has no place on a bookshelf of christian literature. Did the book make me cry? Yes. Did I find myself loving the main character as he struggled with the problem of losing his daughter, and his struggle to forgive the monster who killed her? Yes. But did this book actually attempt to make a theological argument against the problem of evil? No. It was emotional manipulation. Plain and simple.

I am a girl in need of education

So I am feeling very, untrained right now. I feel like In the months since I have been out of graduate classes I have greatly deteriorated in both mind and spirit. I feel like I am in danger of becoming a drone worker with no capacity for thought. I need some way to continue to challenge my mind, and I am feeling very lost about that right now.

HELP!

The Tatoo I am trying to build up enough courage to get. :)

War, Peace, and Non-resistance

So I am reading this book called War, Peace, and Non-Resistance by Guy Hershberger. It is very stimulating and very troubling. I find myself sometimes being further and further ostracized from my fellow Christians, and more and more incapable of finding any place where I can be happy comfortable to worship. In reading this book I am becoming convicted of what was previously simply a leaning before. 

I feel broken by the reality of how my convictions are driving me away from the body, rather than closer to it.

Constant Renewal

So funny. I began this blog as I was beginning a move to new part of the country, a new life, a new everything. That failed. I never once wrote or journaled about that experience, because I was so mired in pity, self-doubt, and apprehension. Now I am back to the land of light, back at Harding, and so many things have changed. 

I feel like I am at a crossroads of my life, and I don't know what or where I am going. Seminary was a catastrophe, and now I am working full time at Harding, and just dropped out of my classes for the semester, effectively making me a loser. 

I don't know what I want, where I am going, or what I am doing. I am just...freefalling. 

Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. 

1st Day Same Day Feelings

Today is the first day of my third internship at a church. It is common at my school for students to take an internhip every summer of their College life as preparation for going straight into ministry. There are very few who go on straight to their Masters, certainly not in my neck of the woods, which is Children's ministry. I know a couple of CM's with their Masters Degree, but none who majored in CE and then went on to get a masters in a ministry field. All of this is to say basically that most people who graduate from Harding with a ministry degree go straight into that field and stay firmly planted there. They don't achieve higher educations, they don't bother with going on, and so the 2+ summers they spend with internships are great experience.

I have found in my situation however that this may or may not be the best thing for me. I feel like I am as qualified as any CM I know. This feeling leads me to not use my internships as learning experiences, but rather as sounding boards, a place to test what I know, and prove that I am capable. Last summer this had disastrous results wheny my boss percieved these actions on my part not as competence, but rather, as presumption. She thought that I was too cocky, to self assured, too good at my job, and it made her attack me and everything I did. It was very alarming, and led to some bad times for me and my thoughts about ministry.

This summer should be different. I am interning at the church I have volunteered at for 4 years, and I am volunteering with someone who expects me to be good at my job. Todd does not want me to be a doting amateur wandering around asking questions. I have responsibilities, jobs to do, and he expects me to do them with relatively little involvement on his part. This is good for me, but leads to further feelings of being ready and wondering why I am on the track I am on.

Why am I going to grad school? I have made the statement to a friend of mine several times that "the more education I get the more sure I am that I am never going to be a Children's Minister" This may seem strange, but the more I go and go and go, the more I realize that while I love working in a church, I wonder if it is where I am supposed to be. And yet, I trek on to grad school because I know I must, even it means shifting my paradigms once again.

This day has spurned many thoughts and has brought about a lot of feelings. More than anything though, it feels like more of the same. I have been here, done that, and the routine is comforting.

As I came to realize recently however, God is not in my routine, but rather in my changing life. God pushes me to change, and that change pushes me to grow, and that growth pushes me closer to God.

Oh well, back to my routine.