Sunday, February 22, 2009

I hate colds...

Yep. Hate 'em. And I think I have one now. The head congestion, the sinus pain, the "giant head" feeling. The running nose. It's all just a hassle. I'm fighting back with lots of sleep, vitamin C and a barrage of over the counter meds. I'm worried the DEA might come busting in, thinking I'm running a meth lab (For the record, I most certainly am not).

Enough whining about being sick.

It's been a busy few weeks. Between work and home stuff, I feel like I haven't had a lot of free time recently. I'm sure it's not the case, but it's like I've been running nonstop for a month. I realize that I'm a big slacker and I really enjoy being a bum.

Okay, enough whining about... well, anything.

I've been working on planning a retreat for our youth ministry. I think the hardest part was just juggling schedules between all the stuff our youth have going on in order to find a weekend that would work for the majority of our group! It's really ridiculous how busy everyone seems to be. I don't remember being that busy when I was in middle/high school. Anyway, we have a date, and a place. Now, I need to get working on praying, planning and all that stuff. In our youth ministry, I'm trying to build a real sense of community, to tighten the bonds among our youth and between our adults and youth. I realize that you can't force community (believe me- I've seen that tried before, and it does not work). But one can help to cultivate it. And that's what I'm trying and hoping to do.

Speaking of community, it's been a weird adjustment moving from Atlanta where we were surrounded by people our age, with whom we had much in common. Now we're here in Terre Haute, and it's been a difficult time trying to find people here our age. I'm sure I've written about this before, but it's been on my mind a lot as of late. Just how important community is, the value of great friends. It helps me value the friends I do have, even if they are states away. For example, some of my fraternity brothers went to Punxsutawney, PA over Groundhog day. A random trip, but I'm sure they had a great time. I had wanted to go along, but just couldn't get away. I miss ridiculous events with them.

This blog is depressing...haha.

Life's not bad at all. I suppose I use this place to vent, now that I think about it. In the future, I'll have some more substantive posts. I've gotten involved with some different things that involve me doing book reviews, so I'll be posting reviews here in the near future. I'm reviewing books for Thomas Nelson Publishers (the first of which I'll be reviewing is The Faith of Barack Obama, by Stephen Mansfield) as part of a blogger review thing. And I'm also doing reviews for the Transforming Theology project. I think the first one I'll be doing is John Cobb's Reclaiming the Church. Of course, I've got to finish reading them first. But you can look for those in the near future, if you're interested in my take on them. It's pretty exciting, getting to take part in something like this. And it's only made possible by the rise of social media like blogs and internet forums, things like facebook and twitter. I'm interested in seeing what the next step is in this technological revolution as it changes the way the world works. I'm especially interested in seeing how it impacts the church.

Okay, I've rambled on for quite a while now. I guess I'll get back to being bored to death as Jill subjects me to the Oscars...

Peace...