Love Machine

No messing around, no trailing off in some incoherent babble, only what is going on in my life. Right now it is 12:14am and I must wake up in about 5 hours. This is part of my normal routine, on a daily basis I start work around 0700 in the morning military time and get off at about 1630. I shower change change out of my camoflauge utilities uniform into regular people clothes and go out. Going out for me on a monday night is sitting in the Barnes&Noble in Oceanside and reading drinking tea. Right now I am reading Blue Like Jazz by a guy named Donald Miller. So far so good. It is right in line with the whole new Christian Postmodern movement headed by men like Brian McLaren, and Millard J. Erikson. Some kinda breaking free from the shackles of deductionism and reactionary spirit that comes with Modernism. They want to use Post Modernism not the extreme kind i.e. "the truth is there is no truth" as a tool to witness to the generation of now and appeal to them on more relevent basis. An example would be to use beauty and showing how certain lifestyles are not beautiful, instead of thumping them over the head with you Bible. Not that Donald Miller is adressing the issue of Post Modernism in his book, I just believe there to be a post modern feel to it. A better word I would use for it is honest. Donald Miller is honest with who he is and it is working my heart.
I am also reading Moutain of Spices the sequal to Hinds Feet on High Places, both of which are spiritual allegories. On the cover it says An allegory about human weaknesses and Strengths comaparing the spices in song of Solomon to the fruits of the Spirit. I am only about 50 pages into it, but already all of it applies to me. Hinds feet on High Places changed the way I perceive my daily walk and interactions with others I feel this one is gonna do the same.
My freinds Russ and Kevin left two, 4 min long messages on my voice mail, they are funny guys. Apparently they wanted me to eat some pick up sticks with them. The best message I received came from my freind Justin who just returned from a 2 month long missionary trip to Croatia. Of course he lives in Nebraska and I in California, but at least now I can find out how the Missions work went and just hear how the Lord has been working in his life. My freind Nick also called he joined the Marine Corps about 6 months before I did and is getting out in 2 weeks. He plans on moving back to Nebraska and working at a bar in the small town of Battle Creek population 997 people and growing. We used to do alot of partying together back in my savage days. He really only smoked pot and drank with me. Ocassionally he would trip on acid with me, or eat some shrooms. He never got involved with he more serious drugs I was addicted too. The problem with him now is he still thinks of me as the same person and want's to drink with me all the time. I am not one who believes drinking to be a sin. I think it is smarter to stay away from and have all kinds of wonderful arguements I could wax intellectual with concerning the issue but will leave it be for now.
I have a really large group of people I can turn to for help in anykind of trouble. I have been blessed with more friends than I can really stay in touch with properly. I think by now most of them know that I am just strange. I have weeks where I will hang out pretty steady then other weeks where I have some strange social anxiety and cannot handle being around people. In fact I get very standoffish. I am not a very good freind. I rarely return calls on time and never am reliable with hanging out becuase some weekends I will opt to spend reading at Barnes&Noble instead of doing anything. Or I will hang out with people I hardly know instead of my core group. This thie point where I would normally get extremely introspective and dwelve into why exactly I act the way I do, but today I resist. victory!!
Friday I went to the Switchfoot show!!! The show was really good and they played like three new songs. My freinds Willy, Becky, Jamie and Nicole are personal freinds of the band and talked with Linda the lead singers wife. I, on the other hand left as soon as the show was over. I was a little curious about the lack of giving God the glory talk out of the band members. I would want to ask them what they think about there responsibility to spread the Gospel and how they are acting on it. One way I see it pan out is when I tell someone that Switchfoot is a Christian band and they say "really!" I say yeah, listen to the lyrics of such and such a song. Basically, I explain Christianity in the context of explaining a song meaning. I wonder if that is their intent and if they are fine with being sponsered by Jack Daniels and Heiniken beer? I am not some judge or anything, I am ot passing moral judgement I am just curious as to how they are dealing with everything, where are their hearts at? That is plenty of late night ranting for me. Since I highly doubt anyone will read this entire entry i will include that I love Carne Asada Burrito's, a lot. By the way the title has nothing to do with anything.