Make them feel like they earned their commission

I'm pretty sure that I could never work at a job that paid commission. I don't like people thinking that I'm helping them for what I might gain out of it finiancially. That is also why I hated being a waiter. I hated the idea of being tipped. The customer's satisfaction really was my reward and the tip made me feel cheap and stripped me of any good feelings. I believe i have talked about this all before... but I have a new idea.
I thought of a sport to enhance my enjoyment of shopping. I will try to make store employees feel that they are helping me in much more meaningful ways. For instance, I will allow them to solve deep or serious issues in my life of the sort that are usually reserved for mental health professionals, counsellors, philosophers, pastors, and theologians.
For example:
I walk into the Gap and say: "I am struggling with the meaninglessness of my life. Can you reccomend a pair of jeans that would help me discover meaning, or perhaps distract me from my realization?"
Or, walk into a ski-shop and say "I need a pair of goggles that will help me to get over poor self-esteem issues and make me feel that I am really valuable. I need other people to govern my self-worth, so if they tell me I am cool, I might believe it. Which pair will cause people to tell me I am cool?" If this seems to be going well, I can get more specific and perhaps taunt a bit:
"Now, I believe you that these goggles will make me cool, but I don't want to be too cool in the sense that people will see me as unapproachable and better than all of them, because I wouldn't be able to handle that kind of loneliness." or "I am also concerned about girls throwing themselves at me if I look too cool becasue I am unsure how I would handle that kind of temptation. Can you reccomend something that will avoid that dangerous problem while still fixing my self-esteem issues?"
Ok, you get the idea. Have fun with it yourself. I don't want to overdue it here because I fear I am already boring you, (and my self-esteem can't handle the rejection of you not reading my whole blog and therefore not commenting).

An update

Well, it seems that I still have computer problems but the level has now been adjusted from "major" to "annoying". I finally got my video drivers to work again. Now it is merely the hardware problem that started all these shinanigans. There are constant flickering vertical lines all over my screen. My eyes get sore really easy now and the picture doesn't look so good, but at least my icons are back to normal size and the computer is at least usable now.
What else is new? Well, Christmas season has started. My birthday was last monday. Thanks for all the "Happy Birthday" wishes. It is much appreciated seeing as this was my "champagne birthday" (meaning that I turned 27 on the 27th of the month). I had a wonderful time with Anh at noon on the 27th as she took me to the Pizza Hut Lunch Buffet. I loved every minute of it.
I also went to the AUC-NUC Christmas Concert. It was quite fun. Here's a picture or two that we took during the intermission... ok, maybe like 3.

Major problems

Sorry, I have not been using my computer much lately (and therefore not blogging) because of major video card/driver problems of some kind. Everything I see is absolutely rediculous and unbearably painful. Isn't this what computers looked like about 25 years ago? Maybe not. There was a couple less colors but it was much clearer what you were reading.
Anyways, hopefully, this can be fixed. Otherwise I will have to survive the rest of my life without a computer. I think that may get me fired though. Nowadays, people get hired based on the technology that comes with that person. I hope that wasn't the case with me. OK bye.

What was once lost...

So, last weekend I had a day off. I read the book, "Voyage to Venus" (Perelandra). I really got into it this time. I think I read it once over 10 years ago. I've heard that it has similar ideas in it to Lewis' commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost. Pathetically, I have not yet read Paradise Lost but it is these themes that got me really thinking this week. It got me thinking so much that I have now changed my passage and sermon topic for this Sunday. (Ted is gone this week for his ordination interview and I am left to do church this week). Anyways, is it wrong to change my sermon for this reason? I wasn't so excited about what I was going to preach on, but I had hardly started the work for before. It was going to be on the faith of the Centurion in Matthew 8. I had shortly discussed that one with Ted a couple weeks ago and he seemed happy with it. Anyways, I don't think he'll care much that I changed it, but what is a good reason for changing topics? I wanted to study what I am presently interested in. Perhaps that is wrong. I was interested in the other passage a couple weeks ago, but not as much as I now am in this one. Oh, by the way, this one I am preaching out of Romans 5:18-21. This talks about how everything got mucked up starting with the disobedience of one man, Adam, and then how the the obedience of another man, Jesus, gets us out of it. We can be under the one or the other. What draws me to this passage this time is a few things I think. 1)I get to preach about the gospel specifically 2)It deals with issues that stretch from the beginning of creation, through now, and into the future/return 3) I get to dwell in this story that I have gotten into lately about how the world was made so good at first but we somehow defiled it. Perelandra helped me understand just how tragic that first mucking up was and made me get into a part of the story of our world that I had not really cared too much about before. I mean, I always already knew whenever I read about the Garden of Eden that it doesn't last and it is ruined and it is all lost. Ya, I deal with it before I even get to that part. I'm not horrified with that part of the story because that is the only reality that me and everyone else I know has known for the last thousands and thousands of years. We've gotten pretty used to it by now. I can't read that without seeing it in the context that it's gonna all be solved by Christ anyways. So, what I am saying about Perelandra is that it helped me get into the tragedy of that part of our story. It made me long for what could have been. It made me imagine a perfect world without sin, and no separation from God. All of nature and humanity living in harmony. (Really, for once, I can imagine that in a way where it seems cool and exciting and not boring) People are real and they don't rebel against God and they live in a unique position of looking after the world under their care that is also not spoiled by any act of rebellion. I can't know exactly what that would have looked like... no killing by anyone or anything, no death etc. Anyways, that was all lost. It was spoiled, ruined, defiled. We thought there was something better than trusting God and now we have learned from experience that there isn't. Sometimes experience is not the best source of knowledge. In the case of sin, experience ruins knowledge and confuses almost beyond repair. In Perelandra, the character, Dr Ransom uses the analogy that sinning to learn about evil is like trying to study sleeping patterns by going to sleep. (Something like that, I'll have to search for that part.)
Well, once I could appreciate what was actually lost (to some small imaginitive degree), I think it helps to see more fully what God has done to fix the problem. It was no half-conceived experiment to save us through incarnation. Here is the turning point for all of humanity. Christ's obedience replaces Adam's disobediance, and guess what? It can be applied to us in the same way. The actions for one man can be applied to us. This gift works for all of humanity. We have all already chosen to align ourselves with Adam's sin. When Adam sinned, so did we. And, we have continued to sin. Our world is so muddled, messed up, confused, cut-off, lost by this sin, we can barely even figure out which way is up and what the difference is between straight and bent. I think we can alot of times admit that things have been lost and we got it wrong, if we are really honest with ourselves. I'll admit that sin and its effects of messed me up and confused me so much that I don't even know what the right, the good, the pure even look like. I'm trying to learn, through the renewing of my mind, by the power of the Holy Spirit, but there is alot that has been messed with since this whole sin thing started thousands and thousands of years ago.
So, where are we now? Things have been fixed, through the biggest scandal in the history of the universe. God takes on full humanity in the very stinking, messed up, rotten middle of it and says that He made it good. He talks about the Kingdom of Heaven and what it is like. He points out what it is like and what that things are near to it. Jesus shows us how to live like we are apart of that kingdom even though we look around us and see that we are still in the middle of this world we already destroyed. But, what? It still works? We can live for God's kingdom before Christ returns and fully sets everything fully right again. He has started with those of us who are willing to have His obedience apply for us in a way that says we never sinned in the first place? We walk around as The Undefiled in the middle of this world that we ourselves remember defiling? So now we go about reconciling this world that God, through Jesus, decided to reconcile back to himself. We get to work that out. We are reconciled to God by the work of Christ on the cross; now we get to be there and involved as we see Him continue to reconcile others and our world back to him. He's doing it, and he will finish it. Soon, EVERYTHING that was lost, will be regained. I'm not smart enough to deal with the "what ifs". Only God really knows. Would we have still gotten the human visit from God if we hadn't blown it all and needed him to fix it for us? Who knows? Maybe I should write a Sci-Fi novel about how God became incarnate in a world that never rebelled against Him, and how much better and cooler that whole thing went. It worked out pretty well for us though, in the real world, despite how shameful our actions have been toward him in our defiled world, and he visited us anyways. What a brick that guy is. (I hope that was proper usage of that early 1900s british slang) I think it means "a great chap".
hmmm, sorry, I think I ruined my train of thought with my "brick" usage. that's ok. I was too scared to talk about what the future holds anyways. I'm not studied enough to talk much about it.
Well, writing a blog about this stuff was fun enough. The problem is, how do I write a sermon about this...before sunday?

Arrived at Last!!!!

I'd been nagging the women at the post office every business day, asking them if my package from Grand Prairie had arrived yet. They assured me that I would get a card in my box when it did. Well, this morning there was a message on the church answering machine, letting me know that my package had arrived. My Matthew A. Wilkinson CDs finally arrived today. I love these CDs so much. All three are stylistically quite different (one is country sort of, one is instrumental ambient sort of, and the other is umm, standard Matthew Wilkinson stylings which is all sorts of cool sounding songs). Anyways, check out his website and really check out his music for yourself. This guy really inspires and motivates me to write my own songs. He has basically dedicated the majority of his time to writing and recording, and finishing songs, and it is really coming together now. He is a real veteran at songwriting by now even though he is so young... well, check out his site for yourself:
http://www.matthewawilkinson.com/

Tired in here?

Mondays are usually my day off. Yesterday it was not though. We had in-service training over in Cranbrook. It was really good (except for spilling hot Timmy Ho Hot Chocolate all over my pants and hoodie on the ride out there). (Unfortunately I have no pictures because even though I have gotten really into taking them, I lent my cam to Anh for a couple weeks; I sure hope she is making good use of it).
So, I saw David Collins there and he had some really valuable things to say. We returned to town here in the afternoon and now I feel very burnt-out. I really missed having a day-off and some time alone to relax. I do, however, get to take that day at some other point. I must choose wisely. I just hope I can make it through this week.
I got to see Liz yesterday too. That was a real treat. See, ministry is still pretty sweet, you get to connect with old friends in other towns while on the clock(kind of on the clock). Let's hope that Liz gets to make up a day off some time too. We brought it up with her supervisor but I think he got the wrong idea and thought we were asking him if he will ever get a day off. (We care about that too, but don't forget about the intern!)
Ok, this blog is un-linear and tangentful just like how I feel today. See, my mood governs everything here. Look at my girlfriend. Ain't she cute!

Time to open a can....

So, life as a pastor offers some perks. For instance, on thanksgiving weekend people from the church brought some jams and stuff for a display and it was meant for the pastors and stuff to divide up and keep after. So, I got some good stuff, including a pie and some pumpkin bread.
All I have left by now is a jar of canned peaches and some jams.
However, I still have a problem; I can't get that jar of peaches open. I've been trying for a few days now. I wrestle with it for a few minutes before giving up and putting it back in the fridge. This has been a real blow to my self-confidence. I've been going to the gym every weekday at about 4:30 pm with Brian. I was under the impression that we were getting quite HUUUUUGE by now. But, apparently I still can't open a can of peaches.
What should I do? This is beginning to drive me mad. I do have tonnes of space in my fridge, but this can sits there taunting me and calling me a puny, wussy little puke.
Does anyone know how to get into this can of peaches?

Beets

If you want to see some really cool things done to toilet water, eat alot of beets. Trust me.
I was about to take a picture, but then I realized I have more taste than that.

In the aftermatt

Thanksgiving is over...obviously. Well, I guess that is less obvious to the Yanks, but I'm pretty sure I don't have american readers. I think it went well. I didn't cook much. I made a breakfast and mostly did alot of dishes. I hope everyone had fun.
We have an awkward family tradition of taking pictures during family dinners, that I adhered to. "Awkwardness is the Spice of Life"-(Matt Yeomans)
As you can see, it wasn't a fancy or formal dinner like most years, but the food was still good. Look at that plate!
Here is a bit more of the action...







































Wow! Exciting stuff!

The Eve

This is the post where I can hopefully build some rapport. So far I have come across on Old Man Yeomans as looking down on singles, jealous of marrieds, and a fair bit wierd and obsessed with manners. Probably only some of that is true. Perhaps a bit crazy is what I am going for here anyways.
Lets talk about my real life these days. Tonight is the night before most of my family, and my girlfriend, Anh, come to visit me for Thanksgiving. (Yes, I am Canadian and we do have a different date for Thanksgiving). Actually, this reminds me that next week it is time to set up for Christmas because it is officially the season, according to me.
Anyways, I am really, really excited for this weekend. I don't remember even being this excited for Christmas in recent years. Maybe it is because I get to host. I finally live completely on my own and can do this sort of thing. All of a sudden I am thinking of that movie, Pieces of April with Katie Holmes. In the movie, poor April doesn't have too much of her life together, yet she does make a thanksgiving dinner for her family. I, on the other hand, am not even pulling that off; my parents and sister are bringing most of the food. I liked the movie surprisingly enough. I had to say that so we can drop it and get back to my life. There will be 6 of us staying in my 2 bedroom apartment. But, as Mitch Hedberg points out, it is up to me how many bedrooms my apartment has. Mine has 6. One room just has a stove in it, another looks like a closet, another looks like a hallway, and another bedroom has couches and people tend to watch TV in it.
Another reason I think I am so excited about this weekend is that it may be my only Christmas-type get-to-gether with family and loved-ones (Anh, so far you fall under the Loved-one category) that I will get this year. See, as a new pastor, I am not quite sure if I get any time off at Christmas time. It's not that we aren't all about celebrating the incarnation. It's more about the fact that we are so into celebrating the birth of Christ as a church community, I don't know if I get any time where I am actually allowed to leave town because of it.
So, I am going to enjoy every moment of having us all here in my little pad. I hope everyone doesn't mind giving up their otherwise luxurious lives for a couple days to be apart of the highlight of my year.

I think I'm pretty dedicated to good manners

So, I've realized that like any good Canadian should be, I am dedicated to being polite. I realized this when I woke up this morning. I had just finished having a dream that was strange. It was kind of funny and surreal.
It takes place in room of the third floor of a building. The room was small and empty with one large window. There were about 3 of us in the room. When I looked out the window, there was some people down on the ground below, supposedly waging war against us. So, in essence, the guy right below our window, down on the sidewalk was trying to kill us. (This dream is getting exciting now, isn't it?) Anyways, he had this contraption sitting between the 2 wheels of some sort of bike trailer. The contraption had a pipe that went straight up to right outside our window. Then there was this dinky little hose that attached to the top of the pipe and went inside our window. Anyways, this whole contraption was some sort of flame-thrower that the guy down on the street was controlling. He was shooting bursts of flames in through the window, trying to burn us up. The flames narrowly missed my friends standing on the left side of the window inside the room (I was on the right). Everyone was ok though.
I thought this wasn't cool that we might get burned, so I gave the pipe outside a shove so that it fell away from the building. This upset the guy outside a bit but he quickly got his flame-throwing contraption upright again and shot more flames inside our room.
This next time, in order to protect us, I yanked the hose off of the pipe. This caused the flames to shoot straight up into the air out of the pipe outside our window whenever the guy below pushed his button. This made the guy below really angry and he started yelling at us to give him back his hose so he could kill us with it. He even climbed up the pipe to the window to look in at us and demand the hose back. I told him I would give it back if he promised he would stop blowing flames in our window. I explained that he had almost burned my friends and that he wasn't being polite. He retorted that I wasn't being polite by stealing his hose. I couldn't argue with this, so I planned to throw the hose back to him while he hung on to the window sill (we were standing by the door of the room). I figured that I could then make a run for it along with my friends if I had to.
Before I had a chance to give him back the hose though, he told me that we were in a battle with each other and that I should started acting like it. Then he proceeded to throw a hammer at us. The hammer stuck into the door right beside us. This got me quite upset and I actually yelled at him: "How Rude! You could have put someone's eye out with that!" He resonded by saying, "I know! I'm trying to! This is a war! If you don't like it, you can leave!"
At this point, I yelled, "Fine!" and threw him back his hose and left.
As I walked away down the hallway, I was muttering to my friend about how rude the guy at the window was and that there was no excuse for such impoliteness. I don't care if it is a war, I still think it is pretty rude to try and kill someone.

Well, that was the dream. Get what you want out of that. I thought it was interesting that I seemed to not only get upset at the guy trying to kill us, but that I got even more upset at the guy's unwillingness to change his ways when I informed him about how rude he was being. Is there no respect for manners these days?

Whiners!!!

Well, I think I have something to rave/rant about now. I was doing it to my girlfriend over the phone instead of listening to and supporting her like I should have been. Anyways, she suggested I blog about it in order to get it out, so here it is:


First of all, let me say that I have the utmost respect for marriages and I believe that everything possible must be done to protect them. Second of all, I will say that I am not ignorant enough to say that anyone is completely alone. God is always present and can comfort anyone no matter what situation they are in in life. Really, he is our only real hope and source of true joy. Also, I need to say that I am not complaining. I have nothing to complain about because I feel quite blessed to have the life that I have; I get to do something that I love and am passionate about and I have beautiful and wonderful girlfriend that I am so grateful for. With that being said, it's time for me to stick up for some people out there.

Please, please correct me if I am wrong (I really mean it), but married people are whiners. Have you ever noticed how everyone gives a married couple soooo much sympathy if they ever have to spend a few days apart from each other? It becomes this thing that everyone says is so unbearable and horrific. Weren't these two people separated for years before they were married? Does something happen to them the moment that they get married that causes them to be so super-sensitive to being apart? I am not at all saying that they should be apart. What I am saying is that 'have they forgotten what their lives were like when they were single?' I don't think that they get super-sensitive, I think it is just the opposite. They have become DE-sensitized to the pain that they suffered as single people. They have simply forgotten how hard life was before they were married and when they are apart from their spouse, they get a little taste (not the full experience) of what it was like when they were single. To make matters worse, instead of recognizing it as the hint of an painful old experience be remembered from their single past, they writhe in agony as if it is some new and awful torture that no single person has experienced. Give me a mother-fathering break! These married people need to take a memory pill!
Let's dissect this issue and compare the 3 main statii of people: 1. Married (spoiled) 2. Dating (awaiting glory) 3. Single (horribly alone with only some distant glimmer of hope that the situation may some day be rectified). Alright, now let's apply these 3 different situations to the issue of being separated from one's soul mate for a certain amount of time.

1. Married People
These people have developed a close relationship with their other half. They have someone who understands them, loves them, supports them and knows them. They have someone to share life with, all the good and the bad, and they are never alone because they always know that their is some other human thinking and caring about them. Also, they get to have SEX (don't think I wasn't going to go there; O yes I am!). So, when married people have to spend a week apart or something, the worst that they have to experience is the realization of how good they have it. They can talk to their spouse on the phone in the meantime and know that they will be able to be physically near each other in a little while. Ok, they have to suffer for a week without sex (cry me a river!)

2. Dating Couples
This is my category and I am terribly grateful to even have this. There is a relationship that is growing. These people have someone that they know is thinking about them and there is that comfort of knowing that someone that you care about, cares about you too. They get to share some parts of their lives together but really, they don't get to live together or spend too much time together because they have separate lives for the time being. And, obviously, there is no sex or much of a physical relationship at all. There is only hope that grows stronger. When these people are separated from each other for a week, (I am familiar with this because I only get to see my girlfriend a few days out of every month) they still know that someone cares about them. They can still talk to each other on the phone. Being apart can be somewhat difficult but really, there is not much more that they really get to do when they get to see each other anyways, especially when you compare it to married couple reunions. As far as sex goes, they just have a realistic hope of it happening on some glorious day off in the future. But dating couples are always grateful for the chance just to be around each other.

3. The Single Person
Let's be honest, there is no point talking about the situation when the single person is separated from their soul mate because that is ALL THE TIME. This person leads a life of solitude and loneliness. They have no one to give them a kiss. No one cares about them in a deep way. Apparently they are expendable in times of battle because no one cares much if they die except themselves (if they even care themselves). They only seem to care about living if they are clinging to some hope of someday not being single anyways. Sex: they can only dream that this will someday happen, but there is no evidence yet to support a hope of it at this stage. These people live for the hope of a hope. Pitiful.

Dr. Matt gives his prescriptions:
To the married people I prescribe that we all support their marriages and do what we can to make sure they can be together. After all, they are meant to be. To the dating couple I prescribe that we all support them and give them any chance to actually hang out with each other. Give them environments where they can hang out with each other because there seem to be so many where they are not allowed. And finally, for the single people I prescribe that we do whatever we can to make their horrific lives more bearable. Show them some love because we all know that they aren't feeling it from anywhere else special. Take them out for dinner. Be nice to them. Don't give them any of those crap lines about how they can enjoy their freedom (we all know that's a crock). Give these people some hope about actually meeting someone too. You don't need to set them up or anything, but don't be afraid invite groups of single friends together in settings that are relaxed and subtle so if their is a chance of someone hitting it off sometime, it is actually possible. Oh, dear friends, we must pray for the single ones living their pitiful lives.

So, in conclusion, people give married couples too much sympathy, and single people not enough. The truth is, in my opinion (just like this whole blog is), married people have become accustomed and don't even realize how good they have it, and some single people have not even yet realized how bad they have it. I guess relativity, desensitization, and forgetfulness all seem to work in our world to keep people from getting too bitter or too satisfied. Hmm, this blog did not go totally where I planned it.

New Beginnings

This has got to be like my millionth blog/space on the internet. (msn spaces, previous blogspot, myspace, etc) But now it is time that I grow up and use what was inevitable all along. This is my mature new space where I will finally make use of all the new things that google has to offer to the world.
Ok. Later