Creativity && Integration
I had the opportunity to spend a week with my parents in Costa Rica recently, and wanted to share some photos from the trip. They’re primarily from San Jose, where we spent most of our time, but a few are from the Tabacon hot springs up near the volcano Arenal.
Simply click on the photo below to see the whole photo set at Flickr:
The world is a flood, a roaring flood Of different voices and experiences Each a call, a clamor for justification Each drowning out all else The song is shrill, fingers in ears Eyes closed, mouth working Streams that shatter instead of flow (Just one sperm gets the egg) Cast in the torrent we sink or swim And in both the drift inexorable Downward in the great dissipation A waterfall of pure selfish Shout By some chance an eddy forms A silence outside the current A strange vacuum we find, and Hear ourselves for the first time My great contribution to the world My voice in its endless streams Now in the beautiful stillness Is heard as a strident âme, me, meâ In the clatter my voice was my own As a puppet may be unique in all respects, But still moved by the same strings: Essence of chains though seeming free In these backwaters thereâs no need To scream ourselves deaf in isolation But listening together, a voice ex nihilo invades Low frequency song from eternity past The song was there in the flood A hum of bass or treble dance of stars But in the quiet heard for what it is The tale of a different Stream altogether Then a snake of a current grabs ahold The quiet corner is no more We disappear back into the noise The striving to tell right from wrong And we forget the sound of the voice That alien song of still, deep pools But we remember the memory, And hope that by its magic We might spin free from the flood once more
My community spent a week in the wilderness recently, trekking from Mammoth to Tuolumne in California’s Sierras. It was an incredible journey, filled with fun, rest, and even a few challenges along the way (including some adrenalin-pumping encounters with bears). Sadly, my camera broke on day 2, but I did manage to capture a few shots, and the last ones these lenses did see were, quite frankly, astounding. The colors involved in alpine sunsets are fantastic!
Just click on the picture to access the photo set.
Backpacking in the Sierras
One thing I’ve realized in the recent move up to San Francisco is that I have a lot of Stuff. I don’t think I’d have noticed if moving into an empty apartment–all my Stuff only filled 2 cars–but since I’m moving temporarily into a room that’s already furnished and decorated, all my stuff is basically Extra Stuff that I’m struggling to fit anywhere.
My books don’t fit on the shelves, my clothes don’t fit on the racks, my guitars don’t fit in the corner, and finding somewhere appropriate to display my special beer glass collection is a hopeless luxury.
Continue reading ‘Stuff and Metastuff’
During the last week, I was on 9 flights around the country, for various reasons (weddings and visiting my brother). I find that plane rides are a great time and place for personal meditation, and given that I have recently decided to go back to Kenya and spend some more time at Tumaini, I had ample reason for such meditation. I was also listening to a lecture series by Charles Ringma of Regent seminary in Vancouver (which I should blog about soon, as it’s been the most impactful lecture series for me in the last few years). A concept from those lectures stuck in my head, which I’d thought about before but which had become somewhat more real for me recently. That was the concept of downward mobility.
Continue reading ‘Downward Mobility’
A little while ago I linked to my Facebook applications, but that’s not the end of the story. My friend Justin and I have been keeping a blog on all things Facebook, particularly the new Platform I mentioned which has allowed third-party app development. We’ve gotten some pretty good traffic, and you should check it out:
One of the reasons I’ve been forced to maintain blog silence recently is that I’ve been spending a lot of my free time working on several Facebook apps. As most people around the web now seem to have heard, Facebook has recently opened up their social networking site to allow third-party developers (like myself) to create little widgets for people to add to their profiles.
I’ve so far created a suite of 4 of these mini applications, which allow Facebook users to show off what they’re reading (or listening to, or watching, or playing) and interact with friends in each of those spheres. The apps are called Books, CDs, Video Games, and DVDs, respectively. It would be great if you checked these out and added them to your profile! With close to 35,000 total users so far, it’s possible for me to run a small business based on the apps, which would be fun. I’d love your help.
Just for fun, here’s a screenshot of some Books functionality:
I haven’t come out of blog hiding in a very long time, it seems. I have many, many things to share. And many things that are just past sharing.
But this deserves special notice: Today, we at HopeRuns (the non-profit the friends of mine started in Kenya while I was there) released a brand new website, which I designed! I think it turned out pretty well, but take a look yourself, and check things out:
Gratuitous screenshot:
Oh, something else deserves special notice: it’s my 100th blog on Teleios! Decidedly not that many for almost 2 years, but whatever. Still, a lot has been written…
It’s 3am in Orlando, and my brother David and I are getting in the car to drive it cross-country. We’re blasting a trail across in order to transport my parents’ vehicle and things to the new place in San Francisco. Before I go, I wanted to post some links to pictures from the last 5 months! They’re unedited, but enjoyable nonetheless, I hope.
In each case, simply click on the picture to access the photo set!
On tour with the New Frontiers (Dec 26 – Jan 12)
Schloss Mittersill, Austria (Jan 16 – Mar 4)
Oxford, UK (Mar 4 – Mar 
Tumaini Children’s Center, Nyeri, Kenya (Mar 8 – May 1)
Four and a half months after I stopped work and planned to engage in a sabbatical of sorts, I’m back. I flew in from Kenya a day ago, and am now in Orlando as I prepare to help my parents move cross-country to San Francisco.
In many ways, I’m still recovering from Kenya, and cannot yet distill that complex and amazing experience into a weblog entry. In the coming days, I hope to write a thematic series of articles on the various aspects of my time there, which might be a better way of doing justice to it. For now, it’s just hard to adjust to life in the US, and life away from my friends old and new at Tumaini.
I certainly have a lot to think about and process. Between 3 weeks of touring with the New Frontiers, spending 6 weeks at Schloss Mittersill in Austria, and now living 8 weeks in rural Kenya, I’ve had a number of new experiences, and noticed a lot of things about the world and myself which call for introspection, integration, and response.
As I look forward to my future both near and far, I find that I’m more confused about what I can and should do, not less! In that sense, the sabbatical did not live up to my hopes! But I’m beginning to see that this place is probably right where I should be, despite my desires for easy clarity. I think God and other people gave me so many unlooked-for gifts during this time away, albeit sometimes through hard circumstances, so it has been a slow process of gaining the eyes to see their goodness! I’m sure that process will continue in the next weeks and months.
Now, I must focus on re-inserting myself into the matrix of life here, finding work, and pondering next steps. There’s an exciting freedom in not knowing where I will be in a year, let alone two months! But I hope that the right path, if there is such a thing, will present itself to me in enough time to follow it. It usually does, I guess.
So that’s all for now–please stay tuned for the Kenya series, pictures, and other announcements during the next few weeks!
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