Dave Matthews Band

Today my friend SEB had a pre-release party for Dave's new cd which comes out in june. I attended, not being a DM's fan, but a SEB fan. While there, I came to talking with my friend Amber, about how we both are not listeners of Dave. She replied, "SEB told me she would have me obsessed by the end of summer." So I asked SEB about it. I asked how she knows that Amber doesn't listen to him, but she is so confident in the music of Dave Matthews, that she knows Amber will be obsessed. She said that it will happen.

I got to....brooding.....about this. And I am bothered by it. It doesn't have to be limited to music, but we will for the example. So often, people say, "this band is great!" "This artist is so talented!" anything that praises music as being 'good'. I am bothered because I dont' like dave matthews. I have tried. I don't understand, how this thing can be good, can be so believed to be good, and yet pass through my radar undetected. Like, hearing an empty joke and waiting to be entertained. Waiting for it to make me laugh, completely apart from my own volition, but leaving me staring vacantly. But that's an unfair illustration. And I am not vacant. I hear it. I just seem to not perceive it.

I don't believe I listen to 'bad' music. I appreciate and recognize good music. And yet...

Let's take it pass music. All forms of art. The most immediate that comes to mind is painting, sculptures, architecture. I know 'good' when I see it. I am confident in my 'sense'. I will get back to the use of that word later.

Dance is different. I have never appreciated it. Not without lying to myself. The most recent I remember was watching the A&M Chara girls perform with a friend who gasped, held her right hand to her arm, in a salute of her entire body to the beauty happening before her, and said "this is perfect. It's their best dance." My only reaction was to stare harder. I felt nothing towards it. They were moving, and that seemed to be all. Was that goodness lost on me?

I am waiting for reaction. For an uplifiting, airy, loss of breath not in my physical person, but in my inner self. I know what 'good' is because I have known it and reacted to it. This is why I do not doubt my abilities in perceiving it. I feel as if it can only be described as another sense, recognized only by the reaction from sensing. As if, not know you can hear, until the light notes of music are heard.

And this is where my dilemma is. I want to know, hear, see, feel the beauty and 'good.' In everything. Past art. In people. Possibly, that is one sense Jesus had above all of us that needs to be fine tuned within ourselves. Possibly, He never looked at what we call art as beautiful, but straight at people.

Today's Sermon: II Tim. 2:22

There was a lot I liked about this sermon, and not just the numerical symmetry of it. Although, that did appeal to me....
The text reads:

"So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart"

Chris talked about how Paul did not clarify what it was exactly Timothy should flee from. My NLT version makes the vagueness more explicit:

"Run from anything that stimulates youthful lusts. Instead, pursue righteous living, faithfulness, love, and peace. Enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts."

The word 'anything' is not definite at all. This is in contrast to what Paul tells Timothy to pursue. The point of Osborne's sermon was that when we focus on what our struggles are, how Satan is attacking us, or what is drawing us away from God, we are not focusing on what is really important. To paraphrase what he said: "The way to defeat satan is not to fight him, but to pursue God."

Now how this applies to me, huh?

Where I lose focus on Christ is on what thoughts enter my head. Now, I am sure they are a mix of spiritual attack on me, and my own ideas, but that doesn't make them any less of a distraction. I constatnly try and find the logical solution or reason for or against what I think. For instance, this morning on my way to church, the thought that entered my head was, "do I really believe?" Maybe it started as "do you really believe?" but origin is unimportant as far as this example is concerned, and so this morning and all through church I was stuck battling this thought. My point is even in church, when my focus should be on Christ glorified, it was me. Me and my belief. I am discussing this under the axiom that I DO believe. But this is only as to show how following Christ for me tends to revolve a lot around myself. So all through the sermon, I was thinking of the facts that prove I believe God in my life, rather than accept it and be done with it. Kirkegaard talks a lot about faith in his book 'Fear and Trembling' (actually, all he talks about in that book) and one of his main positions on it, is how difficult it is for him to accept and believe, when he looks around and sees so many people doing it so easily. (This specifcally to abraham and isaac and his understanding in the sacrifice and person of Abraham.) I would say I have a similar problem, however I do accept and believe, but my mind constantly tries to revert back to "are you sure?" Maybe that's everybody though, and the 'everyone does it so easily' image is only a façade.

I obsess over nothing. I want to obsess over Christ.

Layout

I stayed up a while yesterday trying to get this right. I like the banner. However, this is just temporary; I hope to put more time into what it looks like, and maybe learn more html.

I have two jobs now for the summer. Subway and Ben & Jerry's. I dislike their ice cream. I start at Ben and Jerry's today at 5 pm.

At sweets today, I read four two hours out of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Dominique may be one of my favorite literary characters. If you haven't read this book, I suggest you don't. It will leave you wanting so much more out of life and people than is attainable or realistic. It leaves me crushed at times, where I find the only thing I want to do is go for a jog until I collapse from sheer exhaustion.

To Begin

For the record, I have edited my facebook profile, you know, the part that says 'i will not blog.' Because you see I AM blogging; I couldn't go on being a liar like that. This will be a my place to practice writing outside of my journal. If anything, it will keep it neat and clean in cyberworld.

To explain my title, I am not lost. I find that I brood too much, too often and on too depressing of issues. Dictionary.reference.com defines brooding as "preoccupied with depressing, morbid, or painful memories or thoughts" also "a number of young produced or hatched at one time" however we will just consider the former. At least for the time being. My defense against these thoughts that constatnly plague my all-to-open mind is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am given to cynicism naturally and it comes easily. I find the serious effort in remaining hopeful through it. So you see I am not lost in my broodings, and the negativity the world is willing to hand to me. It is enough for me to know that in the end, regardless of all the shortcomings I see in the world, its people and me every day, God saves.