The 40, Day 3

Struggling. Spiritual high all gone. Going to pray, read some scriture, and pass out.

[One hour later]

Wait...I just got a call from another youth group leader and we've become prayer/accountability partners. wow. One minute I'm falling apart and the next, God has helped me through a crisis with encouraging words and prayer.

I think I'm leaving the internet. I'm taking this off-road. I'm addicted this thing too. I'll see you guys in 37 days. I hate it, but I want to seek the face of God more than I want to be on the internet.

Pray for me. I'll definitely be praying for you. Write me a letter or call me. We'll chat! :D

The 40, Day 2: The Fire Spreads
Moses Flees To Midian, Exodus 2:11-25

We shared the vision for the fast with some of youth group's student leadership yesterday. Eight people joined immediately. They had all been praying for something huge to happen in the youth group. Every one of them had the same feeling that they wanted to take their faith to the next level, but couldn't figure out how to go about this change.

We announced the fast within the youth group tonight. Fifteen kids have posted to Ernie's MySpace or told me verbally that they're going to be fasting in some manner: technologies, junk food and sodas, or useless entertainment. It's amazing, because to me, they don't have to do this fast. Forty days isn't a short amount of time when you're fifteen years-old and living without your iPod.

Personally, I'm hungry, tired, and excited. I'm existing on 340 calories a day, 90 ounces of water, and a lot of prayer. This doesn't look or feel like what I imagined. I think it's a good thing. God doesn't ever come to us in the manner we'd prefer.

I just erased a sentence that said I'm waiting for God to reveal Himself in my life. He is revealing himself through the lives of these youth and I'm blessed by their courage. I'm blessed by this entire endeavor already. I'm blessed by the encouragement I've received from even those who aren't participating, but want us to succeed.

I can feel your prayers. They carry me through the day. Thank you and may God bless your endeavors also.

I sound all Bible-y...what's up with that?!?

The 40, Day One
The Birth Of Moses, Exodus 1:1-10

I've just taken over teaching the youth's leadership study. We just finished the Listening Leader and the Communicating Leader chapters. That type of material pierces the soul. You realize how short you fall, but it's incredibly inspiring.

I've become friends with one of the other leaders in the group who's a high school senior, and just turned eighteen. It's exciting to be around passionate youthfulness. Here's reading on his own and he's questioning his level of commitment to his faith. We were IMing last night and the conversation took a turn and I confessed that I've done tons of leadership studies before and after it's over, you feel that huge sense of accomplishment and while you're busy patting yourself on the back, you throw yourself into spiritual cruise control and coast.

And I realized that's as far as I've ever gotten in my spirituality in fourteen years. And I hate it. I've been patting myself on the back for fourteen years.

I look like a leader, I talk like a leader, but I feel like a youth with two years of study on everyone else. I just have the vocabulary and have read a few more verses that I take with the sentiment of a verse written on a coffee mug. I nod knowingly and walk away slowly. I know where I lack and I feel it pull at me every time I look in their faces. I'm doing NOTHING different in my life different from them. Why should they follow a person who SAYS "do incredible things" when he does nothing more than live a mundane spiritual life himself?!? I wouldn't listen either if I were them.

The topic of the "Next Level" comes up. What's after this? Do we just go back to life and cruise through this existence with the underlying knowledge that we BOTH feel that there's something more to our faith?

We kept bringing up the disciples and their world-changing faith and their acts that almost seemed superheroic. We both love the Star Wars Trilogy, and crazy movies like the Matrix and graphic novels, but I think I understand why we seek those out now. We're both fascinated with the heroic nature of man, but we came to the conclusion that the heroic nature of man lies buried in our faith.

We're both big nerds, so I threw out the Big Challenge: how much do you think a Jedi meditates to attain all his rich, chewy Jedi-ness? Isn't that our faith when you strip away the fluffy cultural aspects, church programs, and softball games?

We are spiritual warriors that dwell in a physical realm. It's Matrix-y in nature. It's all Jedi and deprivation and baring our souls to see what God wants for our lives. Faith can alter what we take for granted as "reality". We can change the world through our faith, but there's a sacrifice of deprivation. He's calling the rich, young rulers out again, in us. Do we let go of our cherished baubles and follow him this time? Yeah, yeah...this time we do.

We want incredible things to happen in our youth group and we want that in our spiritual walk. But we know that we have to do something incredible to make that happen. My fellow padawan's major realization is that no one teaches or leads you to that next level of Jedi-Delicious Faith. I'd never thought of that aspect. Then, I reasoned, if no one's going to teach you, then we need to step out and lead ourselves. We're leaders, we have no excuses. It's not like we don't know scripturally what to do. You don't need someone's permission to fast and pray and cast off the unecessary crap that inundates our lives.

He's going to buy a journal. I'm going to blog. I have chosen to relinquish music, solid foods, movies, and caffeine for the next forty days. I want something BIG in this youth group, and something LIFE-ALTERING in my life. I believe this will be it. Please pray for me in this time, as I will for you.

"Do, or do not. There is no try." -Yoda

White Man's Boombox
"Excuse me."

The tone denoted neither manners nor any intention to be polite. They were words of misplaced authority and presumed obedience. And the proximity was far too close to be beseeching. He was standing over my right shoulder and I could feel my neck beginning to flush and my throat tighten.

"Excuse me. Whatever that is, could you please turn it off ?!?"

I discerned from his bulging eyes and striated neck that he was upset. The small vein in his forehead pulsed and was apparently supplying some sort of energy source for his hairstyle to stand erect, but I couldn't divert my eyes. His hair seemed angrier than his words.

"Surrrrrrre."

Not everyone appreciates Adam Ant. I would never have thought before that moment, so vehemently.

He turned on his heel slowly and walked back to his four children. They wanted ice cream. He wanted justice. He wanted vindication for having his meal of average Chinese and lackluster service ruined by Thoughtless America, with their blaring electronic gadgets and dirty hippie music.

He tried to maintain some manner of stoicism, but our tables were only three feet apart. Captain Righteous Hair of Anger had just created a socially awkward chasm filled with repressed rage and violent tendencies. There was nothing our party of four could do except sit there and stare down into its abyss with great big doe eyes and clenched lips, making the sounds of a thousand tiny elephants.

Behind us: "We're leaving."

And they did. Just like that. Children are such clueless, good-hearted, dutiful creatures. They moved along behind their glowering guardian singing happy songs and chitchatting like they were on a picnic. And as he crammed his family of five into a 2005 Mustang 5.0, with racing stripes, all I could say in a lisping falsetto voice is, "Someone's compensating."

I'm such a crappy role model.

Just wanted to see my new profile pic
Hmm...what am I thinking, in a bathroom in Gatlinburg, TN?

A Passwaters Family Gothic Roadtrip
There is something macabre in the soul of a teenage boy, but there lurks something far more sinister in the time-ripened heart of a seventy year-old woman. The Family Passwaters accompanied by our young ward, Jeffrey, was on our way to church on a brisk Sunday morning when a pleasant conversation on local wildlife took the usual menacing turn for the worst and everyone showed their true colors.

Our neighborhood is plagued by an alarmingly high suicide rate amongst small to mid-sized woodland creatures. I don't know what is so damned depressing about the South or so distressing in the life of a small to mid-sized woodland creature in Central Tennessee, but we could fill a train car with the corpses on any given day of the week. One particularly inspiring piece of roadside death brought out quite an amusing tale of ironic demise by young Master Jeffery.

He told of a road trip through the local countryside, similar to ours. His grandmother piloted their motorized carriage, carrying Jeffery's brother James to the estate of a dear friend and school chum. His grandmother was quickly losing vision as the evening neared dusk when from a nearby copse, they were accosted by what could be described as a mature, feral tomcat. The tom may have been famished out of its usually discreet mind and confused the carriage's speed and trajectory with that of a low-flying bird, albeit, an ave of abnormal breadth and width.

Whatever the intent, the outcome was obvious and the sound of the tom's head beneath the wheel of the carriage was both distinct and final. Jeffrey continued that nothing more was said of this tragedy until the following week when James returned once again to his school chum's manor. A passing conversation revealed that the friend's family cat had been struck and killed by a passing motorist. James was astounded to hear of this and revealed that his grandmother had indeed killed their family cat the week prior. In generations past, such an affront could cause a feud amongst their two families, but in the socially desensitized world of the new millennia, it only served as fodder for the morally depraved set of ambivalent ne'er-do-wells.

Their sickening peals of laughter were echoed in the cabin of our truck that brisk Sunday morning as we shared other grisly roadside deaths we had been apart of, but one of our passengers didn't share in our glorious recounting.

I could feel myself bristle even before I cast a sidelong glance to the passenger seat. In all of our joviality, I had forgotten that my mother had joined us this morn. Her countenance was held in dour, self-righteousness, all-too prepared to let us know just what her overly arched eyebrows could not convey.

"This is just morbid," she stated. Knowing full well what she meant, I still had to goad her to elaborate on her dramatized discourse. "What do you mean, mother," I taunted. "This whole conversation," she railed, "is just sickening, and it's just morbid how those two sit back there and laugh at the death of a beloved family pet."

In all truth, the conversation was a bit dark for my taste also, but who was I to pass up a perfectly good moment of levity. "Mother, what exactly are you offended by? People hunt deer and have for centuries celebrated in their killings with hunting stories and weekend parties." Aghast, she said, "Well, I think that's just wrong too. I'm not one of those people. I hunt deer with a camera!"

"A camera," I retorted. "How the hell is bludgeoning a deer to death with a camera any better than just shooting it? And what sort of bait allows you to sneak up on a deer to bludgeon it with a camera? Do you use the strap for leverage? I bet you're one of those cruel hunters who try to save money on your equipment, so you buy disposable cameras and have to kill the deer by finding a sharp plastic edge on the camera and blinding the deer in hopes its wound becomes infected, and then mercilessly stalk it over the next few days as it wanders aimlessly through the wilderness. Madam, you are a monster."