Discipline.

A note: This post was originally begun in early May and it's taken me until early June to post it. How's this for some irony? The reason it's taken me so long to finish a post about discipline is that for once I've actually been disciplined when it comes to my schoolwork. I have only a few days left to finish it and I'm cramming in lesson after lesson after lesson. I'm finally becoming disciplined in my academics. Maybe now I'll finally become disciplined spiritually. Let's hope so.

Discipline.

D-I-S-C-I-P-L-I-N.

Discipline.

*DING*

Ten letters.
Big word.
Bigger implications.

Does anyone else feel this way, at this moment? That the thing that's holding them back from what they want more than anything - like, I don't know, let's say... a living, breathing, bleeding relationship with the Everything that created the universe and brings meaning to it - is a lack of discipline? For so long I've felt disconnected from God. Not that God wasn't there - he was always there, and I knew it - but that there was a wall separating me from him. God could have broken down the wall, but he chose to wait patiently for me to figure out how to get over it first. I realize now that the wall in front of me is not something to be chipped at and eventually torn down, but a challenge - something to be climbed, surmounted, with his help. But he isn't about to reach over it and do everything for me. Why? Because that wall is discipline.

In saying that discipline is a wall, I mean that to have any sort of a relationship with God, I need to know him, and I can't know him without discipline. The word "discipline" comes originally from the Latin word disciplina which means "instruction given to a disciple." So discipline is being given instruction and learning from the person who is discipling you. Disciplines are the ways we learn from our discipler. I want to be like the disciples in the Bible; I want to be Jesus' disciple. I want to learn about him, I want to learn how to love him, to follow him, to know him.

So how do I know him? Some of the most basic disciplines we're taught are fellowship with other people attempting to follow Christ, reading of the holy Scriptures, and talking to God one-on-one. (I told my friend once that I talked to God, and he said, "Really? Directly? That's pretty good." He thought he was a psychic.) You know what? The only one of these I do regularly is go to church. I mean, I talk to God all the time, if we define "talking to God" as throwing out words to nobody in particular that I happen to address as God. God hears the words, but we're not having a conversation. I am not listening to him with my spirit, and half the time I'm so busy worrying about meaning what I'm saying that I don't mean what I say. The most embarrassing lack of discipline I am currently displaying is my inability to read my Bible every day. Every time I do, I am so glad I did.

Can I possibly be so busy? No, I really can't. I spend hours every day lying around, playing video games, watching movies that are a complete waste of time (read: watching The Tale of Despereaux), et cetera. I spent the last hour trying to finish this post when I was supposed to be doing math. Sometimes I do nothing but think about how I have nothing to do. Does the thought of talking to God, talking with someone about God, or reading his word cross my mind? Very, very rarely. It seems I have time for everyone and everything but God. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are nothing but a comforting thought. Do I engage? Heck no, I'm trying to beat the next challenge on Skate 2.

I spend a lot of time at MCA now, doing homework and whatnot. It's a quieter place than my house, and it's easier to get my subjects done there. How's this for a sad reality? I have no time for God, but I set aside a time every day to work on school all by myself. I even go out of my way to make sure I have a place to work uninterrupted. I seem to be very eager to learn about physics, learn how to love physics, to follow physics, to know physics. I say the same of myself about Jesus, but which one do I follow through on? This is the ultimate truth of my current existence, and it's humilating to say it. It's so humiliating that I can't even say it here. Click on this link so you can go away where I won't see you reading it.

Private schools pwn public schools, although homeschooling does pwn them all. I'm so glad I took a class at MCA this year. The socialization was great, for one thing. Homeschooling does not equal a lack of socialization, but there's something about seeing people almost every day that connects you to them, almost like the way a family works. Sometimes you can't stand one another, but you feel connected to them in a special way because of the amount of time you spend with them. However, the most encouraging thing for me has been the teachers. I have had an experience that is pretty unique, being sort-of a member of the school but in a way set apart. I spend a lot of time, sometimes whole school days at MCA, but I homeschool there, if you catch my drift. I get to talk with them from a different perspective then the full-time students there do. In truth, everyone who goes to that school could see it that way, but it's harder for them to because teachers are the evil people who live to give them more homework. One teacher in particular - I'll call her "Mrs. Longval" - has been an incredible encouragement to me. There's no way I can quantify how much of an encouragement she's been to me, but that's okay. If you ever need an example of someone earnestly seeking after Jesus, look no further.

Lately, we've been discussing teaching, because I really want to become a teacher in some capacity. She says that the being a teacher is basically composed of giving your whole heart to your students and then letting them break it. Wow, that's got to be tough. And I can see it on the faces of all the teachers. That must be something like how God feels when he pours his love into us and we break his commandments to his face. We don't even make an effort most of the time to keep them, never mind keeping an active relationship with him. I want an active relationship more than anything, but I can't get the discipline thing down. I started to tear up as I thought about this, and she asked me if I wanted to pray with her. We prayed, and I felt better, but a few weeks later and I'm still not reading my Bible and I still feel distant from God. Now, maybe I'm being too hard on myself. After all, most good things worth doing require hard work. But then again, the essential things in life, like breaths and heartbeats, come naturally.

It all comes down to the Fall (no pun intended). I believe that a real relationship with God is completely essential. So why isn't it like breathing? That's the thing - it was like breathing for Adam and Eve before they sinned. I was reading the account of the Fall in Genesis chapter 3, and there's a cool passage in verse 8 that reads, "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden (Emphasis added)." Now, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems pretty literal to me. Can you imagine this? Adam and Eve literally walked with God physically. How incredible would that be? I'll tell you. Infinitely incredible. And then they had to go and sin. Suddenly God was distant, and is distant, at least in our default sinful state. It's as if our sin actually grips us, holds on to us, and we have to fight that sin nature in order to try to get close to him.

Now, one of the cool things about God is that he uses events in my life to show me his will. Here I am thinking all about discipline, and then a few days later I go on a fine arts field trip with the school to the Community of Jesus Ecumenical Monastic Community in Rock Harbor, Cape Cod. It's a mouthful, but basically it's a modern monastery, convent, and friary all rolled into one. The place is incredible, absolutely incredible. The place is dedicated to the use of the arts to glorify God, and that basically is my alley. My life feels like an Adventures in Odyssey episode where Eugene goes to a monastery to learn about discipline (episode 366, "Solitary Refinement," to be precise). Except that in that show, Eugene actually became a little more disciplined. I didn't get to do any of that solitude stuff. No, we took a guided tour. While it was fascinating to see all of that indescribably beautiful artwork, I didn't get to do what I really wanted to, which was talk to the monks and the nuns there. Not just the cute 20-year-old nun that I developed a short-lived crush on, but as many of them as I could. I wanted to ask them, "How do you do it? How do you keep all of those vows? How can you possibly be so disciplined?" Yes, it's true, monks mess up too - we could tell whenever they did because they did this quick little bow thing to confess to God that they said the wrong words in a Gregorian chant (which I actually got to sit in on - so cool!) or whatnot. But their capacity for obedience seems to be so much greater than mine, at least on the surface. Maybe I should take a vow or something.

Ending this post is difficult, because I'm not at the end. But I may as well wrap it up, because if I wait until I'm at the end, I'll never get to post it. After a month of writing this post, discipline is still a big word to me. If it was a word in the Scripps' National Spelling Bee, I would fail to spell it. Not because I can't spell the word, but because I wouldn't ever get there. I love watching the Spelling Bee on TV - call me weird if you will, and I know you will - but I couldn't do it. I always wanted to do it (the first time I saw it was the year I was too old to compete), but I don't think I would have the discipline. I would rely too much on my natural spelling ability and wouldn't spend enough time learning word roots.

So I'm not disciplined. What do I do? I fight the sin nature inside me. I resist the urge to take the easiest path. I look up word roots. I make an effort. It will be difficult. It is difficult. It might be impossible, or at least infinitely improbable. But I have a penchant for infinitely improbable things.

Discipline. Can I have the etymology, please?

"It's from Latin to French to English."

Discipline. Can you use it in a sentence?

"Andrew decided he needed to become more disciplined in his walk with God."

Discipline. Is it from the Latin disciplina, which means instruction given to a disciple?

"You're on the right track."

Discipline.

D-I-S-C-I-P-L-I-N-E.

"That's correct."

Fortunately, unlike the Spelling Bee, God gives us grace. We're allowed to try more than once, and I'm so very happy for that.

Quotes from The Shack...

God: "Mackenzie, I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it's because I love you."
Mack: "But then, why is there such an emphasis on you being a Father? I mean, it seems to be the way you most reveal yourself."
God: "Well, there are many reasons for that, and some of them go very deep. Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don't misunderstand me, both are needed-but an emphasis on father is necessary because of the enormity of its absence."

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God: "Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around. You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around. Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you. Mack, pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly. And if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place. I'm not like you, Mack. I am God. I am who I am. And unlike you, my wings can't be clipped."

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God: "When we three spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird, whose nature it is to fly, choosing only to walk and remain grounded. He doesn't stop being the bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly. Although by nature he is fully God, Jesus is fully human and lives as such. While never losing the innate ability to fly, he chooses moment-by-moment to remain grounded. That is why his name is Immanuel, God with us, or God with you, to be more precise."
Mack: "But what about all the miracles? The healings? Raising people from the dead? Doessn't that prove that Jesus was God-you know, more than human?"
God: "No, it proves that Jesus is truly human. Mackenzie, I can fly, but humans can't. Jesus is fully human. Although he is also fully God, he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being. He is just the firs to do it to the uttermost-the first to absolutely trust my life within him, the first to believe in my love and my goodness without regard for appearance or consequence."
Mack: "So, when he healed the blind?"
God: "He did it as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone."

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God: "A bird's not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image."

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I would recommend The Shack to anyone with the ability to discern. There are many Biblical inconsistencies and also many things that may or may not be interpreted properly, but in my opinion the things that weren't doctrinally sound stuck out like a sore thumb. Just bring everything back to the Word of God. One thing the book has done for me has been to get me reading my Bible in order to sort out what is truth and what is pure fiction. And besides, if you want to know what to watch out there, there are plenty of book reviews that will tell you what's wrong with it.

"You mean the SWIRLING VORTEX OF TERROR!?" "That's it, dude!" "Of course it is!"

I love Finding Nemo. :)

Anyway, I really enjoy photography. It's one of those things that I would do if I had loads of money to buy quality equipment. As it is, I still enjoy creating art from time to time with our 8 megapixel Canon Powershot from time to time. The other day I had fun leaving the shutter open for a very long time. Witness the power of flashless photography!


Here's me in the swirling vortex of terror. AAH!
Here's when I told the aliens I wanted to know everything... bad idea.

And here are some miscellaneous ones. Boy, is the last one creepy.

A Creative Collision

I'm lame, because I haven't posted something on my blog since May 2nd.

OR

I'm cool, because I've been spending time in the real world having face-to-face communication with physical people. It's all in how you look at it.

The problem is that since I stopped posting, I've started doing a bunch of creative things and have had no outlet for them. I got hooked on vector art after being introduced to it by Micah on his blog, I started recording tons of music with my new Micro BR Digital Recorder, I read The Shack and found a thousand things to quote/debate, I simultaneously started reading Hamlet and actually enjoyed it, and I found out that if I turned off the flash on my camera and spun around really fast I could create a swirling vortex of terror.

In addition, my mind was filled with thousands of thoughts from the deluge of consciousness and I had nowhere to display them. So I'm back. I've been busy the last two weeks, and my blog has fallen to the wayside, but here I am now. Get ready for a sensory overload.

Vector art is oodles of fun, and oodles really is a good word for it. The possibilities are literally (or, at least, virtually) endless. Here are some of my first attempts:

This would be a strange alien structure designed for intergalactic public relations. The silver grabber things field questions and the fake head on the front maintains a placid expression while the real head (green central dome) takes in the questions from the grabber things and computes appropriate lies for questions to which everyone already knows the answer. It then feeds the lies up to the fake head for transmission, while the articulated arms in the back hold reporters hostage while sending coded signals to the vice president out of view of the public. This apparatus was christened "Robert Gibbs" and has now been successfully accepted into Earth government.

My dad instantly dubbed this "modern art," and at first I was defensive, but he's right. It means nothing. I do think art should have meaning, but sometimes it's can just be fun. Besides, I'm sure if you work hard enough you can conjure up some kind of deep meaning within it. One giant red object is in the center of little objects of different colors that are inside of spirals. There's something for you to start with.


This always makes me think of mice. Not computer mice (although I do get that impression as well, for good reason), but the original mouse. I'm not sure why, but the overall impression is that those two red things are mouse. It probably has to do with the combination of the dashes and the squiggly tail-like line, but for whatever reason it is a game of mouse and mouse.

On this dead, mechanical planet, life is impossible. Perhaps at one point it was not, but now no souls may inhabit it and its machines are left to run down and eventually disintegrate. Shavings to shavings, sawdust to sawdust. In this universe, darkness dominates due to the black hole pictured in the upper left corner. Light functions as a shadow of darkness, visible only when an object gets in the way of the darkness to protect it. How twisted is that? Perhaps this is where Robert Gibbs' creators originated. As a note, the tree, although it looks organic, is actually a generator powering the gears that is sheathed in a brown synthetic material. My dad thought it would be cool (and perhaps redemptive) to create a negative (of sorts) of this image, so...


Yes, this the negative. Black is white and white is black. Vector art has turned me into an existentialist nihilist postmodernist. Micah!

More art later.

The Kingpin Wrecking Crew!

Technically, The Kingpin Wrecking Crew is not an existing band. This has been the source of much confusion and distress for me, but I still love them. Or not them, but what they are now. Whatever.

The Kingpin Wrecking Crew, for those who don't know, was an amazing band with an amazing label debut called Abolition Strategy. They were based out of Maine and I had heard of them before watching them open for Sanctus Real at a local concert. But once I saw them live, wow! Their musical innovations were a sound to behold. They managed to be both catchy and original, and the lyrics!

I'm unsure whether the music or the lyrics is the best part of The Kingpin Wrecking Crew, but I'm leaning toward the lyrics. Their songs read like poetry and (gasp) sound like it, too! They find the coolest ways of saying things. For once, I don't get a sense of deja vu while listening to a Christian band.

A couple years ago I was walking through a church where Micah and I were performing Fun With Phone Solicitors to promote NCFCA and I saw a poster for a concert being held at the church later in the year. The members of the band looked eerily familiar.

Wait, wasn't this The Kingpin Wrecking Crew? No, the poster insisted, this was a new band called The Wrecking.

Did they think they could fool me with such a flimsy, see-through disguise? It even had the word "Wrecking" in it. This was definitely my friends The Kingpin Wrecking Crew.

No, the poster patiently corrected me once again, this was The Wrecking.

Okay, so they changed their name. NBD. I still loved them. Oh, and this just in from the poster: they've got a new album out! It was apparently titled A New Abolition. That's funny, both of their albums have the word "Abolition" in them. Well, that's not so unusual. They just like that word or something.

I went home, pulled up the internet, and discovered something shocking.

A New Abolition was horrible. Half-horrible, anyway. It was nothing but a rerelease of six of the songs from Abolition Strategy combined with 5 new cuts by The Wrecking. The Kingpin Wrecking Crew was gone. The Wrecking was here.

And no, it's not just semantics. From what I could tell in the 30-second iTunes previews, everything that made The Kingping Wrecking Crew awesome was not in those 5 new tracks. I'll get into that in more detail in a moment, but let's get back to the future. Since The Kingpin Wrecking Crew became The Wrecking, I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of Abolition Strategy. Yes, A New Abolition has half of the good songs, but some of my favorites aren't on there. I didn't want to waste money buying half the songs if I could buy the original album.

Recently, a family who took our speech class gave Micah and I some gifts. I received The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook and an Amazon.com gift card. Now not only did I know how to land a plane if my pilot was knocked unconscious, but I also had the opportunity to fulfill my materialistic desires.

Wonder of wonders! Miracles of miracles! Abolition Strategy was used on Amazon.com! Yes! Yes! Finally! After years of searching! Quick, push "add to cart!"

...And then I looked at the price tag. Unfortunately, I had already purchased a book of Keith Green sheet music (admittedly, a choice I was very glad I had made), and didn't have enough money to buy the album. So close! Then I noticed that you could purchase tracks on the newer A New Abolition individually. I had just enough money to purchase all of the Abolition Strategysongs.

You'd think after all this waiting I'd be able to wait a little bit longer. But no, I hadn't ever counted on actually having this sort of situation at my fingertips. Besides, there wasn't anything else I wanted to buy with the small amount of money left on my giftcard, so... why not?

I did it. I caved. I bought the songs. I was so happy. A few minutes later, I started thinking, "You know, these guys are so good that their new stuff can't be that bad. So I caved again and bought the rest of the album. Bad idea. The stuff really was horrible. They sounded like every other U2 soundalike Christian rock band, borrowed everything from their other songs but did it worse, and were uber repetitive. I mean, really!

And the writing was bad! NOOOO!! Okay, I know Doug Elder can write better than that. Here's a sample of his writing from The Waiting:

So much of this sickness,

Far too much to witness

I wish a God-shaped fist would fix this

Reality breaks you every day

Yes I know you're dying dear,

Drowing deep inside your fear,

The same this time as every year

There's no joy in these darkest of days

When stumbling blocks get used in foundation

The downward spiral of a nation

First comes a bloodbath

And after that the aftermath,

But Jesus hears the accusation

I know you're waiting there for me

Across the deepest water

Beyond everything I can see

Life is short, but time is shorter

Remember to never surrender your colors

Like towers you know that we stand together

We shine the light in the darkest of cellars,

We're searching out voices we hear forever

March on soldiers, you know you belong

We kick the dark 'till it bleeds the dawn

We'll never forget you, the beat goes on

We'll strangle out screams 'till they bleed out songs

Try, act, move, don't relax, win

Decisively break what don't fit in

Trust and now wait expectantly for reply, swim

Turn corners and dive

Deep into water that's breathable,

Deep into water that's alive, shh

I think something's about to happen,

The conductor's hands are held high

I know you're waiting there for me

Across the deepest water

Beyond everything I can see

Life is short, but time is shorter

Pure poetry. Now here's a sampling from Sights and Sounds:

Closed doors suddenly start to open,

This healing comes so beautifully to the broken,

You're all around, more real than sights and sounds

I fall for you, I feel my feet leave the ground

You're all around

I know you surround me, and suddenly I see

That I'm lost without you here beside me

I know you surround me, and suddenly I see

That I'm lost without your hand to guide me

Lost life suddenly is revived

This future calls so beautiful and open wide

You're all around, more real than sights and sounds

I fall for you, I feel my feet leave the ground

You're all around

I know you surround me, and suddenly I see

That I'm lost without you here beside me

I know you surround me, and suddenly I see

That I'm lost without your hand to guide me

That's it. How did they get from that to this? Now, don't get me wrong, I listen to stuff much more simplistic than that, and I'm fine with it. It's only when I know they can do so much better that I get mad. It's a fine song, so long as they mean it, but I have trouble believe that they worked hard on that. What probably happened is their label didn't think they were accessible enough and told them to make something a little easier to understand and catchier.

The music is stupid. Just the same chords that everybody plays, with no variance, except what's copied from their first album and watered down. So all I can do is listen to the lyrics, and there's nothing there to hold onto. Basically, it's forgettable. So I'm going to make some money and then buy the original album, even though it has songs I already own now. This post is such a waste of time because I can't show you any of the music. I can't any good songs to stream anywhere. So much for the web being a bottomless resource! Seriously though, if you're interested I'd love to show you some of their music sometime. I'll bring it to Nats, how's that? And for once I can say with a clear conscience that you should definitely buy this album. Abolition Strategy, that is. If you don't want to buy it used on Amazon like I'm going to, the good songs on A New Abolition are as follows:

The Reel to Real

The New Jerusalem

March On

The Waiting

In Your Eyes (Cover of a Peter Gabriel song)

Burn the Bridges

The only one of the new stuff that I can recommend is Inside. It's nowhere near as their oldstuff, but it's pretty good. I like it. Don't love it, but it's okay. Buy Abolition Strategy if you can.

Isn't this sad? My longest post to date is a music rant. It took me multiple hours to write and I'm not sure if it was worth it. But I have to rant to somebody, and you were the only one available to me today. I hope you don't mind.

5 Stupid Things I've Done Recently:

1. Eating Smuckers apple jelly with a spoon because it was free at the restaurant and I had no money.

Lesson learned after realized how disgusting fake jelly is: The best things in life are free... as well as some of the worst things.

2. Jumping off of someone's roof so people wouldn't think I was dumb. Yeah, That helped.

Lesson learned after getting mud all over the side of the house by climbing up it: Don't succumb to peer pressure, especially always.

3. Forgetting to put more steering fluid in the car before leaving the house.

Lesson learned after being forced to drive without power steering: In reality, I have no control over that giant hulking mass of metal.

4. Trying to watch City Slickers 2 with the little kids.

Lesson learned after hurriedly pressing "mute" and then switching off the TV altogether: When it comes to movies, hindsight isn't 20/20.

5. Getting older way too fast.

Lesson learned after realizing that I'm graduating in just over a month: I gotta stop doing that!

Micah has some competition.

This guy is insane.