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baseball
Just wanted to post up a few quick thoughts on this year, with opening day (the real opening day, not the Japanese crap) less than 2 days away, I probably should have posted before this, but oh well.
Likes:
Escobar. He had a phenomenal spring break, batted over .500 for the first two weeks of spring training, spent the off season training with Rentaria, and gained quite a bit of bulk. He should be pretty hot right out of the gate. What I don’t like is the six errors.
Diaz. I’ve always liked the guy, I love how he can take the nastiest swing at one pitch and essentially set up the pitcher to give him the same pitch that he then places either against or over the wall. He had a hot spring too, ending with an average just shy of .400. Hopefully he doesn’t end up platooning, but we’ll see.
Hudson. Come on, the guy is hot. I’ll admit, I have a complete man crush on him, and he makes me want to get a crazy tattoo on the underside of my wrist. But he’s still lights out, I can remember how incredulous everyone was last year when he went with the >1 ERA for a few weeks straight. I think we’ll see something similar this year.
Mike Hampton. I know I know, this guy should worry me, with the glass arm and such. But look at his spring numbers, he pitched the spring with an ERA of under 2, and realy hasn’t looked unhealthy at all. If he can stay solid and go 200 innings then our bullpen will be on of the best rested in the league.
Worries:
Kelly Johnson. I like him, I like him a lot, but he’s been kind of rough this spring. I think he’ll heat up in a few weeks, but I’m worried he may lose his job, or at least be forced to platoon, with Prado, who had a great spring.
Chipper. He’s always a worry, the guy hasn’t spent a season without going on the DL in a few years. That’s just nasty. If this is truly to be the year that we return to the post season, Chipper must remain healthy.
Pitching. We put up two pitchers over forty, one pitcher who hasn’t pitched since August of 05. Then our bullpen, until Gonzalez returns, is a little scary.
sickness and health
So apparently the plague decided to visit my house this past week, I was running a fever of 103 at one point. Becky caught whatever I had too, so we’ve been a pretty miserable bunch. The worst part of it is the Wellstar urgent care doctor that I went to told me it was OK for me to go back to work. I freaking work in fast food, if anything I should be precluded from work for even the smallest illness. I ran the 103 fever after they told me that it was OK to go back to work.
Sometimes I think that doctors are all quacks.
The other good part of this weeks story comes before I went to the wellstar (which is kind of like a doctor chain), Becky called our (awful) insurance company to find out where I could go for free. They gave her the name a place that was a half hour away, so she loads me in the car and takes me down there. When we got down there and had filled out all the paperwork, the lady at the desk said it was gonna be $250 bucks. What?!
So it’s taken me four days, but I think I’m on the cusp of feeling 100% again. It helps when you sleep for 10 hours when I did today.
In other news: opening day (if you don’t count that Japanese bull crap that happened this week) is Sunday, Braves open up with the Nats at the Nats new Stadium, look for Hudson to dominate against a fairly weak lineup. On Monday, we’re going down for the home opener, which is always great fun, a few friends are doing a tailgate party that Becky and I will swing by, then we’ve got some pretty good seats just past first base (Gotta love eBay). After that we’ve got another 9 games already lined up, I’m hoping to pick up a few more by scavenging eBay for good deals.
today
It’s called Holy Saturday. I guess they couldn’t come up with a better name for it than that, I mean the entire week is called holy week for crying out loud. The Filipinos refer to it as Black Saturday, and I think I’m going to adopt that name.
I think we’ve lost sight of this day, like so much of our heritage, and it’s a travesty. Tomorrow, we get up and those of us who go to church will most likely sing songs of the victory of Christ and other great themes. I think a large number of Christians will take time to think about Sunday and all that it means, and I wholly support that.
But, what about today? What about Black Saturday? Can we really grasp the significance of this day? This three-year whirlwind ended with a bang, but not the kind that was expected. Instead it ended with the bang you see when that character whom you rooted for during the entire movie just dies. It’s that emptiness that you feel when you see the long drawn out death scene, the slow motion camera, and the deafening off all sound but the violin in the background.
Take that feeling and let it abound, and maybe, just maybe we can grasp the beginnings of the sorrow that Black Saturday must have been.
But instead of thinking about today, reflecting on the coming daybreak, we move straight from Friday to Sunday. Some churches (mine included) have even begun to celebrate Easter Sunday on Saturday!
I work Saturdays, so I can’t do it this year, but I propose next year, a day of silence is taken. A day to reflect on the sorrow felt within the followers of Christ on this day, a day to cleanse ourselves and prepare us for the glory that is Easter Sunday.
the story (pt 2)
I have a tendency to look up things on the web that will probably piss me off. So I was looking up criticisms of Rob Bell, when I happened upon the name Brian McLaren. I think it was a Christianity today article I was reading, but the author bashed McLaren pretty badly.
Needless to say, I was enthralled. The Red Pill was taken, and the journey down the Rabbit hole began.
The rabbit hole brought out some pretty profound changes in me, essentially a complete ideological, political, and lifestyle change in me. The story from here on out is yet unwritten, I’m still just a college student trying to figure out where I’m suppose to go. We’ll see how it all ends up.
Sometimes I look at the dichotomy between my current way of thinking and my past ways. For some reason the Christianity I embrace now is a lot less angry to me, I don’t feel that anger towards anyone. Then there’s the guilt, the massive racking guilt experience that was part of my life for all of those years. I just couldn’t handle it, it was basically one of those things that I think really started to cause me to lose my faith in the first place.
It’s a post for another day, my view on guilt that is, perhaps when I’m able to get my views all together I’ll put it up.
Now for a few lighter side notes.
Before I really jumped into this whole crazy thing I knew that there was some pretty radical (for me) ideas out there, so I set a list of “absolutes” that I wouldn’t stray from. One was “Any who don’t believe in God and Jesus will end up in hell,” this of course being a literal eternal hell. ☺ If you told me a year and a half ago that I’d be voting for Obama in this election cycle I’d probably have punched you, which leads me to another point… if you told me I’d end up as a pacifist I’d prove to you just how un-pacifistic I could be.
Some of my friends think that I’m just in a crazy stage that I’ll pass through, but I guess they don’t understand people don’t undergo such deep-seeded changes only temporarily (unless of course your Mark Driscoll, but I guess he was never comfortable with the whole thing).
So that’s the basic gist of my life, there’s so much more I could say, but I think the basics will suffice for now.
I’d love to hear your stories, or answer your questions if you have them.
the story (before the pill)
This one is kind of long, I’m not known for the length of my posts, but it’s a good story.
Trajectory is such an interesting concept if you think about it. An object, put in motion, will essentially hold to the same trajectory, unless acted upon by another force. Be that force gravitational pulls, “roadblocks,” or other human intervention, the object will remain on whatever it was originally set upon, unless those objects which have potential to act do so. The object itself has no ability whatsoever to influence it’s trajectory.
Trajectory in my life is particularly interesting.
I was born into a family of relapsed Christians. A few years after my mother and birth father divorced, my mother and the man I consider my father began living together. They weren’t particularly religious people, from what I can remember our religious rites consisted of visiting churches occasionally (I think we went mostly to mainstream churches back in the old days). My parents eventually got married, and began attending the church that I basically grew up in.
Here’s where my trajectory began. The church we attended was a southern Baptist church, Bible thumping, sin condemning, angry church. My personal theology formed tightly around the ideas I was taught in my Sunday school classes, in “big church,” and various church “camps” I attended throughout the years. I was fully indoctrinated in the systematic theology of the Southern Baptist convention, full with the idea of such an angry and quite bitter God. Can we see where my trajectory was taking me?
The other acting force upon my life was my family. My dad was (and is for the most part) a staunch republican. I can remember various comments over the years like “The only right vote is a straight republican ticket,” and something along the lines of us needing to kill all the Palestinians. I look up to my dad, he’s the hardest working man I’ve ever met, I’m eternally grateful for all the sacrifices he’s made over the years to enable me to reach where I am today, but my respect for him caused his influence on my worldview to be very great. Can we see where that trajectory was taking me?
The third influence on my life was my friends, Not my church friends, but my other friends. While the first two big influences on my life put me on a similar trajectory, this third group was the first to gently change it. The direction they shifted it into was where I ended up for several years (quite some time in my short life). They were the group who introduced me to the lovely (sarcasm) world of alcohol, drugs, and other such worldly influences that both my (former) church, and family feared greatly. I began to essentially set myself between two opposing forces, which inevitably leads to some major problems.
The problem with my original trajectory is it’s far from sustainable. The various views on God, eschatology, and our (Christian) relationship with the world inevitably lead to such anger and ill will. I embraced it all with such passion, but the problem is that these views can’t possibly continue on without the person who holds them destroying themselves, with the help of the third influence I did just that. I never became a “druggie” or alcoholic, or any of those things that when people are ‘saved’ from become stories of incredible wonder within the “church,” instead I began to lead my life of duality. This duality eventually merged and placed me on the fast track to self-destruction.
Here’s the kicker. I was getting married around the same time that these two forces began to act like the old homemade volcanoes from science class. My poor wife was subjected to such anger (thank god never physically manifested), that I’m somewhat amazed that she stuck with me (though her pluck and resolve have done me great help in this area).
This self destructive trajectory would have lead me down a road that probably would have ended up with an atheistic (at the very least agnostic) world view, without my wife, and in such a miserable state that I’d be the poster child for all the happy pills in the world.
Tommorow: A much lighter post on the Red Pill
on america (pt2)
I’ll admit, the last post sounded quite angry. But I’m not so sure I’m angry, I think I’m more along the lines of “hurt.”
The last post came after a string of e-mails between my mother and I, about the nature of Jeremiah Wright’s words and Obama. But that was really just the straw that broke the camels back for me. I find myself getting more and more frustrated with America, the American ideal system, and “americanism,” but, as Ken pointed out in the comments section of the last post, I feel like it’s more from a love of America than a hatred.
This is a country of immense opportunity, of immense good, and of immense passion. Unfortunately so much wrong, so much evil, and so much pain go right along with those things. It’s been the latter set of things that has been shown to me time and time again over the past few months. It seems that with all of the “junk” popping up on my radar screen I do miss the good. I think that both should be looked at when looking at America.
Now, after adding the positive note, I do see one other issue to bring up on top of this view.
The roman empire did plenty of good too. They built roads, they (at first) had a pretty decent Republic working, they did (try) to feed their poor (within the city itself of course), but we must look at what costs these goods were completed, and namely, the way in which they were completed.
How many similarities can I draw between Rome and America today? If John were to write in Jewish apocalyptic today, as he had done in the latter 1st century, would he refer to America as the great whore? Would he revile from our ways as he did 2000 years ago?
Is there hope left? Must we go away as the desert fathers did when Christianity embraced Rome? Maybe we can’t save America. How do we save Christianity, or do we have to hope, as Tony Jones says, in the fact that the gospel, like lava, will break through, no matter how much crust is formed over it.
on america
So we have a problem here in America. It’s called americanism. It’s a religion, it’s a lifestyle, it’s a drug. The way it’s progressing, it doesn’t seem like it will stop. There’s always been voices against it, but those voices somehow always seem to get silenced. It’s like we’re scared of the voices offering dissent or opinions different from our own. It’s like we’re afraid of understanding other viewpoints, because maybe, just maybe, they could show us where we’re wrong.
It’s like when someone points out that America, in it’s junkie like addiction to oil, might be causing some evil in the world, which in turn causes more evil to spread, we turn a blind eye. It’s like someone pointing out that the very same texts that we use to justify the slaughter of Muslims can be used to show that traditionally God would damn America, we call the FBI to report a terrorist. It’s like when we do come across someone who listens isn’t scarred to hear the voices in the margins, we quickly turn ourselves away from that person, we shut them out, we stand up for what’s right and hold dearly to our American “values.”
What kind of values does Americanism present to the world?
Stand Tall! Work your way up the chain! Succeed! Bring your values to the world! Peace! Victory! Love!
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Stand Tall… the backs of those you stand upon will hold you.
Work your way up the chain… because the top is all that matters.
Succeed… because if you don’t, you may become the minority, and the majority will stand on your back instead.
Bring your values to the world… because they are all that is right.
Peace… through war.
Victory… at your expense.
Love… if you live like us.
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That is Americanism. That is patriotic. Dissent is not.
Ignore the voices in the margins. Ignore your conscious.
Duality is the way.
on understanding
I was talking with a friend the other day. We were discussing John Piper, Joel Osteen, and the Prosperity gospel (actually it all started when I showed him the Pisseth video) and I was trying to articulate my view of acquiring “stuff.”
I was attempting to explain to him my viewpoint on the idea that Christianity has been infected with consumerism. I don’t think he quite understood. The viewpoint he holds is that it’s not so wrong for Christians to acquire the stuff they want as long as they are still tithing and such. One of his ideas on the topic was that we can continue to acquire stuff because we don’t know if what we’re acquiring is God’s blessing or not. Lets just say I’m not a big fan of that particular reasoning and move on. Another point he brought up was he says that somewhere in the Bible it says God wants to give us both what we need and what we want. I challenged him on that one because I don’t ever recall hearing that before, but he couldn’t remember where it was either.
But topic of the argument, nor the validity of our respective viewpoints in the topic of this post. It’s more of a reflective post.
Why?
Because I can’t understand why he doesn’t see what I see.
I have that problem. I get passionate about something, I devour that topic, I let it permeate to essentially every core of my life. And I get puzzled when others don’t do the same.
True I’ve gotten better of late, I can understand why people disagree with certain issues that I hold, like on hell, but I still hit that brick wall (at about 90 miles and hour) when someone doesn’t care about the poor, or doesn’t understand why the environment is important to me. Here’s the thing. I think I could talk to a muslim who cares for the poor easier than a Christian who drives a Hummer and “tithes” each week. (note: the friend doesn’t drive a hummer, and the place his money goes is pretty cool)
So here I sit, replaying that scene from the other night in my mind, wondering if my inability to understand why he didn’t side with me hindered his understanding of my side, and why, when I wholly held that viewpoint just a short year ago, I can’t understand it now.
How does one get through such and impasse?
Listening to: You’re not alone By: Saosin (I love ballads)
music time
Lately I’ve been listening to some music that is a bit outside my normal spectrum. I usually go for the corporatized sound (I know some of the bands I listen to would argue against them being corporatized sounding, but they are), but I stretched out to a newer artist lately.
I first heard his song “How He Loves” a week and a half ago and I can’t seem to get enough of him since then. Anyone who can use the phrase “sloppy wet kiss” in a song about God intelligently gets my vote. Like I said before, his sound is different, there’s something… unknown about it.
It’s like he’s not trying to become the number one listened to artist in the world by imitating everyone else, instead it sounds like he’s actually playing the music the way he envisioned it (not letting it be corporatized, over produced, or over ‘popped’). I genuinely feel like this guy cares about the music, not fame.
Here’s an excerpt from his biography on his website
You get the sense, when listening to an album by John Mark McMillan, that there is another America out there. It’s an America more real than the one you’re used to: the one of endless car dealerships, sprawled out suburbia, and shoeshine religion. This is not that America. This is the America that exists, breathing and living, outside the realm of blue state and red state allegiance. This is the America built on the backs of the bruised and the broken, the America of under-produced country music and fuzzed out rock and roll and old time gospel
And that last sentence basically describes it. A beautiful messy mixture that feels like nothing else to me.
The guys a poet, no if and or buts about it, heres a couple of lyrical excerpts
Come closer, closer to me.
Find me broken, find me bleedin’
cause I need more now than a fairy tale,
a god who lives in a book.
I need someone real.
Hope grows between cracks in the asphault
In the downtown ghetto streets that contour
The government housing intentions of my heart
No one notices the daisies don’t care
About gang related violence
As long as they get enough air and water and sun
They’re all just fine
We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And the heart turns violently inside of my chest
Anyways, give him a listen, he’s on iTunes.
sunday lazy sunday
Pretty good day today, I did go to the evil empire to start off the day, but the coffee was actually pretty good. Normally I’m not a huge fan, but I went for the caramel latte instead of the vanilla. Good choice.
Moving on, we did several pretty cool things today. First off Becky borrowed a bread maker from her mom, thus bread making ensued.
Anyways, we decided to take the dogs out for a walk today, we had heard our neighborhood had a “pond” but had never seen it before, I brought along the new camera and snapped some shots of Becky and the boys.
After the walk we partook of the (homemade… mmmm) roast, and the homemade bread. Stinkin’ great.
Finally we rounded out the night with the first two of the Oceans 11 movies. All in all, pretty good day.
Maybe this is what sabbath is suppose to feel like.
There are more pictures on the flikr.