|
skestel
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Steve
Birthday: 10/22/1983
Gender: Male
Interests: Jesus, Jen (very interested), and to a much lesser degree, other things. like food, or hiking, or reading books. i also enjoy lasanga, and cinamin toast. my grandma also makes a mean green bean casserole (i just found out that green bean casserole is also one of jen's favorite foods!!!!), which is enjoyable.
Expertise: Making any decent basketball team into a horrible basketball team; Getting FREE shoes from any variety of random sources; making a pteradactyl/velociraptor noise
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  skestel
Member Since:
2/28/2003
|
|
| I'm probably going to start using Facebook more than this, just cause more people are on it and there is a bunch of new stuff on xanga that i don't understand. Look me up on it or e-mail me or whatever. Hope this finds you well! | | |
| I usually try to reserve my xanga for specific discussion about particular topics. I'm not too sure why exactly, though I guess it's mainly because those are the types of entries I will usually read.
This, however, won't be neat and orderly, but I do like giving others a glimpse of my thoughts. I think it is healthy.
Our job is so much of our lives. That really hit me the other day, when I was taking one of the guys to a skatepark, and I saw some guys my age skating around. I got to thinking about how different this job is compared to the normal work at certain times deal, and I guess I feel fairly satisfied with myself. I like to feel like I am doing something important, and this job allows me to feel it.
I recently read Into the Wild by John Krakauer, which is a book about a young man seeking to discover if he can survive on his own without anyone else (at least, that's what I think it's about). I admit, the idea of going off, away from the normal, every day in pursuit of discovering nature and living in it is rather glorious. I think of what I might have decided if I wasn't married and I had read that book, and I think I might have started training for a trip along the Appalachian Trail, or something. For several days I couldn't shake this almost vertigo feeling about my life and what I was doing with it, and I sort of half-heartedly came to the conclusion that I'm doing ok with where I'm at.
It hasn't been until I got a third into Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged that I feel a sense of peace with things again. In it the protagonists are faced with the rise of a popular philosophy that pushes general concern and love for others to extreme and unreasonable strains, compromising the ability of the economy to sustain the people they are trying to help. The protagonists, in my opinion, essentially throw the baby out with the bath water (in my opinion) and conclude that the idea of living for others and not for one's self is flawed, irrational, and essentially corrupt. I disagree with either extreme, but it helped me to see that I have been fortunate enough to get to live for others. My job requires me to put my own wants behind the needs and wants of these boys, and I don't think many people get to see that as readily and so clearly "in your face" as we do.
It reminds me of Mandate trips, and a feeling I would sometimes get while doing the most menial tasks, like vacuuming or scrubbing a floor, that I was truly setting aside what I want for these people that needed extra help. It is amazing how scrubbing your floor and scrubbing someone else's floor can be two completely different experiences.
While it is quite difficult to keep things in perspective while we are working, to remember that I am so privileged, I am glad that I can recognize it later. And while there is still a great appeal in going out into nature, I think that in the end, Chris McCandless figured out that it was with living in community with others that was really leaving him satisfied.
And I have to agree.
| | |
| John McCain was in Greenville last week, and I went out to see him, along with one of the teaching parents from the girls home. It was at this restaurant, and we found a decent place to stand. It turned out that that was right next to where he was going to walk through, and so I stuck my hand out and shook his hand, telling him that I was glad to meet him. He looked back and said thank you, and kept on going. If you go to this website, you can see me after he just walked by. In my own defense, I was just trying to figure out who else was with him and what all was going on.
| | |
| "There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the oppurtunities for satisfaction are many and profound: choosing the riht bread, for instance. The Sandwich Maker had spent many months in daily consultation and experiment with Grarp the Baker and eventually they had created a loaf of exactly the consistency that was dense enough to slice thinly and neatly, while still being lightm moist and having the best of that fine nutty flavor which best enhanced the savor of roast Perfectly Normal Beast flesh. There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sence of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich - here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savor that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience. The proper tools, of course, were crucial, and many were the days that the Sandwich Maker, when not engaged with the Baker at his oven, would spend with Strinder the Tool Maker, weighing and balancing knives, taking them to the forge and back again. Suppleness, strengthm kneeness of edge, length and balance were all enthusiastically debated, theories put forward, tested, refined, and many was the evening when the Sandwich Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker's forge making slow sweeping movements through the air, trying one knife after another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a fourth. Three knives altogether were required. First, there was the knife for the slicing of the bread: a firm, authoritative blade, which imposed a clear and defining will on a loaf. Then there was the butter-speading knife, which was a whippy little number but still with a firm backbone to it. Early versions had been a little too whippy, but now the combonation of flexability with a core of strength was excatly right to achieve the maximum smoothness and grace of spread. The chief among knives, of course, was the carving knife. Tis was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife. It must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip wach sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist onto the beautifuly proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with for deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the villafe so longed to gather tound and watch with rapt attention and wonder. With just four more dexerous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting kigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwhich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would now be accomplished. The Sandwich Maker would pass what he had made to his assistant, who would then add a few slices of newcumber and fladish and a touch of splagberry saucem and then apply the topmost layer of breat and cut the sandwich with a fourth and altogether plainer knife. It was not that these were not also skillfil operations, but they were lesser skills to be performed by a dedicated apprentice who would one day, when the Sandwich Maker finally laid down his tools, take over from him. It was an exalted position and that apprentice, Drimple, was the envy of his fellows. There wee those in the village who were happy chopping wood, those who were content carrying water, but to be the Sandwich Maker was very heaven." This came from the book Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams (if you are still with me), and I won't bother to give the context because it isn't really nesarry and you wouldn't find it particularly helpful anyway. It is very funny, I think, and It is a good read, though you should probably start with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy if you really want to understand it as best as can be. | | |
| This morning was an unusually clear morning. On clear mornings there is a place on my school run that the mountains north of here suddenly become visible and every time I get to see them I gasp and think of how great God is. Today not only could I see the closest mountains but I could see the mountains past those, and I could see the different colors of the leaves still left on the trees. The view only lasts for thirty seconds or so before the road turns and they are no longer visible. But that time is always a privilege.
Recently this little part of C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce came to mind and I wanted to post it.
Some kind of procession was approaching us, and the light came from the persons who composed it.
First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers - soundlessly falling, lightly drifting flowers, though by the standards of the ghost-world each petal would have weighed a hundred-weight and their fall would have been like the crashing of boulders. Then, on the left and the right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: nd after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done.
I cannot remember if she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produced in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye.
But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.
"Is is?... is it?" I whispered to my guide.
"Not at all, said he. "It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green."
"She seems to be... well, a person of particular importance?"
"Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things."
"And who are these gigantic people... look! They're like emeralds... who are dancing and throwing flowers before her?
"Haven't ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her."
The context for this passage is the narrator has been visiting outside of Heaven with some fellow souls who have for one reason or the next decided that they didn't want to go to Heaven. For each of these souls a person from Heaven, shining brightly and brilliantly, has come to talk to them and try to convince them to give up their pride and go to God. There is great description for each of these people, but the description of this woman is by far the most extravagant. The part that came to mind is that she was someone he never would have heard of but yet she is one of the great ones. Fame on Earth and fame in that country are two quite different things.
The woman who was being honored was no one of particular importance here on Earth. What does that mean? I believe it means that just because you do not have riches or fame here and now does not mean you are not great, and that greatness as defined by men is very different from greatness as defined by God. I think this latter definition is often misunderstood or not understood at all by us. This leads me to think that there is something to decreasing, to the letting go of my self importance. But is that in the Bible? I think so.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
-Philippians 2:5-11
If Christ made himself nothing and submitted himself to death of the cross and was THEREFORE exalted to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, then what should we do? Should we seek after riches and fame and fortune? Or should take on Christ's attitude and make ourselves servants for others? I believe these are mutually exclusive, and I think one does not follow the other. I think servitude will lead to great rewards in Heaven, and there may be some rewards here on Earth, but they should not be confused.
In another of Lewis's books, The Screwtape Letters, Lewis tells us that if we are willing to give up ourselves and our cares and our self-importance then we will find ourselves taking joy in not only our own talents but the talents God has given to others as well. We will be able to build the most beautiful cathedral every concieved and delight in our ability to do it, but if it was made by someone else, we would be able to take just the same amount of delight in their ability. Lewis also tells us that if we give ourselves up, then God will give us back everything he takes away. "What he takes with the left hand he will gove back with the right." It's when we are no longer looking for the thing that we were seeking, but we are looking at God, that he will give us what we wanted in the first place because then we can really enjoy it. But if we are looking for increasing and how God can increase us, instead of looking at God, we are never going to enjoy what we have been given.
| | |
|
