Trust is such a simple concept yet it is so hard to come by. We worry about what we want and what we need. We are concerned about how things will work out or if they will work out. Our minds are full of things. We are full of anxiety.
Jesus tells us to keep it simple and let our heavenly Father take care of the rest. After all, He already knows what we need before we ask Him. Thus there is no need to totally stress out trying to figure out how exactly to articulate everything going on in our lives and in our minds. All you need is trust.
Matthew 6: 7-15
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Matchmaker
Consideration for your fellow man goes a long way. However, it goes beyond just being "not bad" to others. It involves actively doing some good as well.
Just the other day I hung out at a pub with two of my fraternity brothers. I knew the both of them from before but they had never met each other. They were from different universities. In a very short period of time they were talking to each other like old friends.
Last summer I was invited to go on a short hike in New Hampshire, which included Mass, with a group from Church. Most of these people were based around Boston and I do know a number of people from Church around there. I also know a number of people from Church in southern New Hampshire so I invited them to come along as well since the hike was in New Hampshire. The groups intermingled quite well, including people from both regions getting to participate in some of the Mass parts - the laypeople's parts, that is. At the very least, the Facebook world became a little bit smaller and more intimate after that day.
A few years ago, I did not have any plans for the Super Bowl so I called a female friend from the Boston area. She and her fiance were going to go to the house of a mutual friend of ours in Lowell and recommended that I check it out. Well, I had another friend, also engaged although his fiance was out of town at the moment, who did not have plans either so we both went to Lowell. He did not know any of these other people before this evening. Now, a few years later, he and his wife are very close friends with my aforementioned female friend and her husband and they meet regularly in a group with other young married couples.
You never know when or how you might touch the lives of others. No good deed goes unrewarded. Each of us individually is in a unique position to make a difference in the world around us. So let's not just be considerate to our fellow man, let's reach out to him as well.
Matthew 25: 31-46
Just the other day I hung out at a pub with two of my fraternity brothers. I knew the both of them from before but they had never met each other. They were from different universities. In a very short period of time they were talking to each other like old friends.
Last summer I was invited to go on a short hike in New Hampshire, which included Mass, with a group from Church. Most of these people were based around Boston and I do know a number of people from Church around there. I also know a number of people from Church in southern New Hampshire so I invited them to come along as well since the hike was in New Hampshire. The groups intermingled quite well, including people from both regions getting to participate in some of the Mass parts - the laypeople's parts, that is. At the very least, the Facebook world became a little bit smaller and more intimate after that day.
A few years ago, I did not have any plans for the Super Bowl so I called a female friend from the Boston area. She and her fiance were going to go to the house of a mutual friend of ours in Lowell and recommended that I check it out. Well, I had another friend, also engaged although his fiance was out of town at the moment, who did not have plans either so we both went to Lowell. He did not know any of these other people before this evening. Now, a few years later, he and his wife are very close friends with my aforementioned female friend and her husband and they meet regularly in a group with other young married couples.
You never know when or how you might touch the lives of others. No good deed goes unrewarded. Each of us individually is in a unique position to make a difference in the world around us. So let's not just be considerate to our fellow man, let's reach out to him as well.
Matthew 25: 31-46
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Least Likely
A few years ago I was getting a new apartment and I was filling out information for one of the landladies. She was the mother of the two women who actually ran the business. That day I happened to be wearing my "Gigantour" t-shirt so she asked me what that was. I told her that it was a traveling music festival (a bit like "Ozzfest") headlined by Megadeth. During that particular year it was also co-headlined by one of my all-time favorite bands, Dream Theater. Also on the bill were Fear Factory, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Nevermore. It was a really good show from beginning to end (unlike SOME Dream Theater fans, I actually stayed around for Megadeth) although I could have done without Dillinger Escape Plan. The venue where they had it in Boston was not able to accommodate a second stage so the main stage was all we got, which was plenty.
When I told her who played, she wrinkled her nose a bit and asked if it was heavy metal. It was. She then told me that I would not be allowed to play heavy metal in my apartment. I told her that I would not play it any louder than other people would play their nonmetal. Then she backed off a bit and clarified that her main concern was that she did not want people having wild parties and trashing the place. Well, I had no intention of doing such a thing anyway. To me, metal is just music that I like to listen to sometimes. It is rather astonishing, yet sadly not at all surprising, that many people in society, not just my erstwhile landlady, are so full of misconceptions. In this case it's the widespread assumption that listening to certain kinds of music indicates the content of someone's character, whether it be good or bad.
The time of my conversion came around the late 1990s and then it was all made official during the Easter Vigil in 2000. The late 1990s were actually a very difficult and very dark time in my life. I did not need evidence to know this. Nevertheless, the evidence was there when I was coming up with a playlist for my birthday party last year. I made sure to include music from each calendar year of my life and it had to be lyrically clean - no bad words and no explicit content. Basically, it was going to be my favorite clean songs from each year. Seeing that 1998 and 1999 were rather rough years, I found myself having difficulty with music from the year 1998. KoRn, Marilyn Manson, Monster Magnet, and Rob Zombie were the order of the day for me and my favorite 1998 songs by them were not clean while their clean 1998 songs just did not appeal to me.
Conventional wisdom would have deemed me very unlikely to be receptive to the idea of accepting the Lord at that time. Strangely enough that was when I mysteriously became curious. The way God thinks is not the way Man thinks. He calls those who seem "unlikely" or "improbable" because it's the sick, rather than the healthy, who are in most need of healing. The tax collectors may have been perceived as less "wholesome" than the Pharisees according to conventional wisdom but it was the tax collectors who were more sincere, open-minded, and receptive to the Lord.
Luke 5: 27-32
When I told her who played, she wrinkled her nose a bit and asked if it was heavy metal. It was. She then told me that I would not be allowed to play heavy metal in my apartment. I told her that I would not play it any louder than other people would play their nonmetal. Then she backed off a bit and clarified that her main concern was that she did not want people having wild parties and trashing the place. Well, I had no intention of doing such a thing anyway. To me, metal is just music that I like to listen to sometimes. It is rather astonishing, yet sadly not at all surprising, that many people in society, not just my erstwhile landlady, are so full of misconceptions. In this case it's the widespread assumption that listening to certain kinds of music indicates the content of someone's character, whether it be good or bad.
The time of my conversion came around the late 1990s and then it was all made official during the Easter Vigil in 2000. The late 1990s were actually a very difficult and very dark time in my life. I did not need evidence to know this. Nevertheless, the evidence was there when I was coming up with a playlist for my birthday party last year. I made sure to include music from each calendar year of my life and it had to be lyrically clean - no bad words and no explicit content. Basically, it was going to be my favorite clean songs from each year. Seeing that 1998 and 1999 were rather rough years, I found myself having difficulty with music from the year 1998. KoRn, Marilyn Manson, Monster Magnet, and Rob Zombie were the order of the day for me and my favorite 1998 songs by them were not clean while their clean 1998 songs just did not appeal to me.
Conventional wisdom would have deemed me very unlikely to be receptive to the idea of accepting the Lord at that time. Strangely enough that was when I mysteriously became curious. The way God thinks is not the way Man thinks. He calls those who seem "unlikely" or "improbable" because it's the sick, rather than the healthy, who are in most need of healing. The tax collectors may have been perceived as less "wholesome" than the Pharisees according to conventional wisdom but it was the tax collectors who were more sincere, open-minded, and receptive to the Lord.
Luke 5: 27-32
Friday, February 24, 2012
olaH
"You wear guilt, like shackles on your feet, like a halo in reverse." Those were the words to a Depeche Mode song from more than 20 years ago when they were still in their heyday. Because of my age, or lack thereof in this case, I only caught the very end of the decade-long Depeche Mode train as it began to fade away in the early 1990s. After all, Depeche Mode has always been and will likely continue to be inextricably linked to the 1980s.
I did rather like them for quite some time afterward but these lyrics made much more sense to me in recent years than they did in the 1990s when the Depeche Mode craze was still a fairly recent memory. Part of that is simply because I was younger and less mature back then. Part of that is also because of my conversion, thus making me more inclined to notice the meaning behind lyrics such as these.
Mourning need not be done when there's nothing to mourn. Fasting or other forms of suffering or self-sacrifice should not be in vain. They should be done out of humility and not for show. They should be done to help us focus on God and to make the lives of those around us better and not just for the sole purpose of making our own lives worse. If we make our own lives worse just for the sake of it, then it is merely another form of vanity - like shackles on our feet, like a halo in reverse...
Matthew 9: 14-15
I did rather like them for quite some time afterward but these lyrics made much more sense to me in recent years than they did in the 1990s when the Depeche Mode craze was still a fairly recent memory. Part of that is simply because I was younger and less mature back then. Part of that is also because of my conversion, thus making me more inclined to notice the meaning behind lyrics such as these.
Mourning need not be done when there's nothing to mourn. Fasting or other forms of suffering or self-sacrifice should not be in vain. They should be done out of humility and not for show. They should be done to help us focus on God and to make the lives of those around us better and not just for the sole purpose of making our own lives worse. If we make our own lives worse just for the sake of it, then it is merely another form of vanity - like shackles on our feet, like a halo in reverse...
Matthew 9: 14-15
Thursday, February 23, 2012
The Bachelor(ette)
A few weeks ago while I was working out at the gym, there was this television show playing somewhere in front of me called "The Bachelor." I had never actually seen this show before but I had a pretty good idea how this and similar shows are formatted. Well, it took me only one episode, less than that actually, to develop an extreme distaste for Courtney.
She treats the other contestants like they're just "little people" who happen to be in the way of her "inevitable" victory. She openly celebrates when someone else gets eliminated and speaks badly of them when they're already gone. She treats the Bachelor like he is merely a pawn to use for her own ambition rather than the show's main character. She treats the "easy" task of competing against other women who put in a great deal of effort the same way you and I would treat the task of getting chores done.
"Arrogant" does not even begin to describe this sorry excuse for a human being. She thinks the whole world is her oyster and she seeks to gain it all - and probably expects to do so with minimal effort. It's too bad ("well, not really" as she would say) that she already sold her soul long before any of us even knew about her. She may revel in her worldly greed and pride, but what about when it's her turn to die?
Luke 9: 22-25
She treats the other contestants like they're just "little people" who happen to be in the way of her "inevitable" victory. She openly celebrates when someone else gets eliminated and speaks badly of them when they're already gone. She treats the Bachelor like he is merely a pawn to use for her own ambition rather than the show's main character. She treats the "easy" task of competing against other women who put in a great deal of effort the same way you and I would treat the task of getting chores done.
"Arrogant" does not even begin to describe this sorry excuse for a human being. She thinks the whole world is her oyster and she seeks to gain it all - and probably expects to do so with minimal effort. It's too bad ("well, not really" as she would say) that she already sold her soul long before any of us even knew about her. She may revel in her worldly greed and pride, but what about when it's her turn to die?
Luke 9: 22-25
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
Lent is coming very soon. What that means for me is that I will be blogging just about every day and recording a video every week...well, trying to anyway. Lately I have struggled even to get a written entry posted each week and now I'm faced with what has become a daunting prospect of posting a note every day and posting a video every week.
I'm really not sure how well I'm going to pull this off. I have a lot going on in my life these days - a lot of things I am trying to get done. But I made a promise and I am determined to follow through, just like the four men with their paralytic friend who relentlessly overcame one obstacle after another.
Blowing off a promise for Lent, or for anything really, is just bad practice. I need not look any further back than Lent in 2010, which was poorly planned and even more poorly executed. The result? It went VERY badly. To be fair, my life at that time was already in a bit of turmoil anyway. Although my life is decidedly happier now than it was back then, I would still be inclined to avoid a repeat of the poor performance from that rather painful time in my life.
Mark 2: 1-12
I'm really not sure how well I'm going to pull this off. I have a lot going on in my life these days - a lot of things I am trying to get done. But I made a promise and I am determined to follow through, just like the four men with their paralytic friend who relentlessly overcame one obstacle after another.
Blowing off a promise for Lent, or for anything really, is just bad practice. I need not look any further back than Lent in 2010, which was poorly planned and even more poorly executed. The result? It went VERY badly. To be fair, my life at that time was already in a bit of turmoil anyway. Although my life is decidedly happier now than it was back then, I would still be inclined to avoid a repeat of the poor performance from that rather painful time in my life.
Mark 2: 1-12
Sunday, February 12, 2012
A Beautiful Mind
Just the other day, while I was having a lunch in the fellowship of many others, I was told that there was a fellow suffering from Asperger's Syndrome who just decided to start playing the piano for whoever would watch. Asperger's is a severe form of autism and people with autism are known for being able to express themselves beautifully through music, art, and occasionally writing. Naturally I left the remains of my lunch behind and immediately headed to the room where the performance was taking place. People with autism are naturally spontaneous - they live in the moment. In other words, as soon as he decided to stop, he was not going to just start playing again because someone asked him to - at least not very effectively.
Our musically inclined friend played mostly slow pieces from the mid-late 1800s, often known as the Romantic Period. Having played classical piano as a child, I am aware that these sorts of pieces are incredibly difficult to interpret well, but they afford the opportunity to really express oneself emotionally. I was not so emotionally mature back then so I had generally favored the faster, more grandiose, more technically challenging pieces. Nevertheless I was in awe of the beauty this man expressed through music.
I do not actually know for sure if this man had autism. I left the room after he finished performing. I did not stick around to listen to him speak or watch him interact with others. People with autism are known to have difficulty with social interaction as well as with verbal and non-verbal communication. If he indeed had autism, his outward appearance - perhaps in the form of an awkward demeanor, incoherent speech, and shifty eyes - would conflict with his inner beauty expressed through music. I felt that he left me with a beautiful impression of himself and I did not want that image to be tarnished.
People with autism predictably often find themselves socially outcast. The World just does not understand them because the World just does not know how. These beautiful people may not get much love but they have a lot of love to give. And they have potential. If only they are given the chance to express themselves in ways they know best...
Mark 1: 40-45
Our musically inclined friend played mostly slow pieces from the mid-late 1800s, often known as the Romantic Period. Having played classical piano as a child, I am aware that these sorts of pieces are incredibly difficult to interpret well, but they afford the opportunity to really express oneself emotionally. I was not so emotionally mature back then so I had generally favored the faster, more grandiose, more technically challenging pieces. Nevertheless I was in awe of the beauty this man expressed through music.
I do not actually know for sure if this man had autism. I left the room after he finished performing. I did not stick around to listen to him speak or watch him interact with others. People with autism are known to have difficulty with social interaction as well as with verbal and non-verbal communication. If he indeed had autism, his outward appearance - perhaps in the form of an awkward demeanor, incoherent speech, and shifty eyes - would conflict with his inner beauty expressed through music. I felt that he left me with a beautiful impression of himself and I did not want that image to be tarnished.
People with autism predictably often find themselves socially outcast. The World just does not understand them because the World just does not know how. These beautiful people may not get much love but they have a lot of love to give. And they have potential. If only they are given the chance to express themselves in ways they know best...
Mark 1: 40-45
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Who are we?! PHI DELT!
This past weekend, my fraternity colony at Northeastern University officially became a chapter of the Phi Delta Theta International Fraternity. As a local Phi Delt alumnus, I'm really proud of these guys. It was a time of great joy for them and I was so glad to see them all so happy.
But getting to this point was not easy. This was a first-time colonization, not a re-colonization. In other words, there was no Northeastern Phi Delt alumni base. There was only a handful of local Phi Delt alumni from other universities who were directly involved in the developing of this interest group into a colony and then into a chapter. So the active members (undergraduates) did most of the work.
A lot of the work was not glamourous at all and some of it seemed to yield no visible or tangible result but was nevertheless important. It was indeed a lot of grunt work. Things likely got contentious at times but as brothers they worked it all out and stuck together through thick and thin. They firmly believed they had a purpose so they continued to soldier forth and persevere. As Robert Morrison, one of our founders said, “To do what ought to be done, but what would not have been done unless I did it; I thought to be my duty.”
Mark 1: 29-39
But getting to this point was not easy. This was a first-time colonization, not a re-colonization. In other words, there was no Northeastern Phi Delt alumni base. There was only a handful of local Phi Delt alumni from other universities who were directly involved in the developing of this interest group into a colony and then into a chapter. So the active members (undergraduates) did most of the work.
A lot of the work was not glamourous at all and some of it seemed to yield no visible or tangible result but was nevertheless important. It was indeed a lot of grunt work. Things likely got contentious at times but as brothers they worked it all out and stuck together through thick and thin. They firmly believed they had a purpose so they continued to soldier forth and persevere. As Robert Morrison, one of our founders said, “To do what ought to be done, but what would not have been done unless I did it; I thought to be my duty.”
Mark 1: 29-39
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