I can die happy now!.....I saw Jeremy Camp in concert on Sunday night. It was more amazing than I could have imagined. He's not a performer, he's a worship leader. He played at the Irvine Verizon center; open skies, mountains all around, the city lights below. My heart and all of my being was communing with my Maker. What a glimpse of Heaven! He doesn't just sing, he preaches too, tearfully pouring out his heart to us, about how his wife died, how God has stayed faithful to him, how He has blessed him Beyond Measure. After sharing his testimony, he shared the Gospel and offered up an altar call. What an amazing man whose heart is completely sold out to the Lord. I can't stop listening to his cd.

Last Tuesday, I felt very far from the Lord. I have come alongside a friend who is finding her way back to the Lord, and I feel that the devil was attacking me so that he could get two birds with one stone. We went out onto the beach and sang our hearts out to the Lord of All Creation. After we had a half hour prayer session. Something was distracting me. I didn't feel in the presence of God. I felt that he was so far away that even if I mustered up all of my might I could not reach him. I prayed, I cried, I even yelled at him, my bitterness hardening my heart. I drove my friend home, questioning him, almost shamefully cursing him. After dropping her off, I listened to Christian music on the ride home. I can't remember which songs played, but I felt the Lord speaking to me. By the time I got back to my dorm I realized that there was nothing more in the world I wanted than him. I had considered how life would be without Him, and realized that He is my everything. I pondered that all week. When I heard Jeremy sing "Give me Jesus," a song I had never heard before, I felt like the Lord was singing it to me through Jeremy. Here are a few lines:

Give me Jesus
You can have all this world
Just give me jesus

When I come to die
Give me jesus

He sang it while all-out balling on stage. He had so much passion in his voice.

Tempted, I wanted to go up and shake his hand, maybe get a cd signed. But, then I realized that this whole celebrity infatuation thing is exactly what I want to change about Hollywood. I also realized that I've got all of eternity to not only shake his hand, but worship alongside him. Isn't that WAY better! :)

River

I want to feel the mud
slipping through my fingertips
as my slimmy leaves
sail down the river
towards the abyss

I want to chase after them
But I don't, I watch
I wonder if someone
will find it
and maybe follow it awhile

The look on our faces after free climbing an 80 ft. cliff.


Once again my obsession of Into the Wild has gotten the better of me. Every time I watch it I hate it even more, but it is an unexplainable hatred. I feel compelled to watch it, it exposes something inside my soul that i cannot let go of.


This weekend, I was supposed to go diving with a friend, but she wasn't feeling well enough to venture deep beneath the 50 degree cold water of the Pacific, so we decide at 12 pm that we would go hiking. By 2 we were at the trail head of the East fork of the San Gabriel river. We were on a quest to find the bridge to nowhere, a fabled 150 ft span bridge whose road was washed away about fifty years ago when the canyon flooded, rising the river to 100 ft past it's normal level. We never made it to the bridge. It is a 10 mile hike without a trail. We forded our way up a rushing river of rapids and boulders. We climbed 80ft cliffs to avoid swimming the river (without ropes), walked across fallen logs as rapids surged beneath, and smalled talked with miners, hikers, and hobos. It was ultimate freedom. We were twenty miles from any city with a population of over 100 persons. The Sheep Mountain Wilderness area is truly wilderness and wild. The water is crystal clear snow melt and the wildlife is untamed. We felt so alive, free to explore, accepting of our own mistakes and fate. As I looked down the 80 cliff I had just climbed, with only one good hand because I had sprained my left one, I saw the rushing river below and the certain death that awaited a slip. Every movement was calculated, every pebble taken into account, every route meticulously planned. It made me think of the Into the Wild quote that I so desperately love:

"I read somewhere how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once... to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head. . . ."




Boy do I feel strong. To me the deaf stone was a literal rock face. We each must find our own. I wish to take into account that to "measure yourself at least once" means that life should be open to several personal trials. I do not need to stop my adventure at this one junction.

Revive America!

"If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." 2 Chron. 7:14

Is it too late?

A bill just passed to add 11 more casinos to Indian lands.

Irony

I'm finally giving in to watching The Da Vinci Code. I didn't really like the book because I thought that it was gimmicky and full of fiction stereotypes, formulas, and cliches. Any controversial book ends up winning in the end; the anti-Catholicism following buys it so that they can try to further prove to themselves that Christ was not who he said he was, and the pro-Catholic crowd buys it so that they can participate in religious debate and then warn their parishes about it. The publisher wins! Look how many even Protestant Chriatians bought the book so that they could see how their Lord was potrayed (myself included). The best part is that now that a book has done so wewll, mind you with very little literary acclaim, more books like it will be on the way. You can see I'm jumping for joy. How does a writer get rich? Try to tear apart a 2000 year old religion, so that both foe and friend shall read it. Seriously, has America been brainwashed (no comment)? Everyone around me seemed to think that this book was genius, but each of the "clues" were so unbearably obvious.

....back to the irony. So before I started the film, there was an advertisment for Click. I was bored, so I fast forwarded through the commerical, until I realsied just how insane that movement was. Click is a film about a guy who fastforwards, with a universal remote control, through everything in his life that he doesn't want to endure. Everything is fine and dandy until the fast forward button becomes jammed. The moral of the film was to show down and enjoy these precious memments that we have on this earth. Great moral, horrible film both in the execution of the story and in fim making quality. But, who isn't curious about the BEYOND? ...of course the mystery door inside bed bath and beyond.

Into Her Chambers

So much diving this weekend!!!! First, with a group of people I met from other dive shops we went out to Cleo street in Laguna Beach. We found the Foss!!!!! It was magnificent and much more intact than I had imagined. The floorboards had eroded which allowed us to peer into the dark depths of her abdomen. It's a wonderful feeling to be interacting with a ship that went down over 50 years ago. That dive was altogether wonderfully productive. We found a jellyfish and an angel shark who just couldn't be provoked. I kept pulling on his tail fin but he wouldn't budge.

Then last night I went night diving with my friend Brewster. We went in at 4:45 and, in the dim dusk light, visited the arch at Shaw's cove. He had never seen it, and I had never been there at night. As it got darker, our lights illuminated the many cracks and chambers. Then we tried to follow the reef down, but ended up getting lost in the canyons. When we turned around, I realised that we were getting deeper as we were "returning" to shore. I signaled for us to go up, and when we reached the surface, shore was a good 1/3 of a mile away. Since it had become dark, we couldn't tell which cove we had come out of. Stupid me, I had planned to follow the reef out and back, completely underwater, and not get lost and come up. Maybe I should hold off on the Dive Master course? It turns out that the cove we swam into was indeed the cove from which we came. I need to hang around some experienced night divers so that they can show me the tricks of the trade. Strangely, that was my 60th dive, the one that allows me to finish the DM program.

"Happiness is only real when shared"

Being from NorCal, I love the rain....but that means no surfing or diving for a couple of days. I'm a little bummed because my missions trip to Mexico was canceled because the roads are swamped in TJ. However, I'll be in Ensenada in January, so not to worry.

It's kinda funny, and sad, but I've had several customers come into the dive shop this week who are recently divorced. They all say that they are getting back into scuba diving or starting it because they now have all of this free times on their hands and want to pursue what they are really passionate about. It was sad, I had a conversation with a young man, probably in his late twenties, who had only been married 6 years and had just got divorced. Apparently, she was spending behind his back and he is the one now paying off the dept that she accumulated. He said that he longed to take off and travel the world, but that finances were weighing him down. He's a teacher who gets the whole summer off, so he has a dream to put everything into storage and trample the far edges of the earth for a few months during the summer. My conversation with him made me realise that A) One should follow their heart more, and their mind less. And B) how lucky I am to be so untied down. I've had so many opportunities in my singleness:

-I've had time to pursue surfing and diving.
-Had time to be involved with two churches
-Might finish my BA in only 3.5 years.
-I will graduate next fall with my world untied down...I can live anywhere!!!
-I had the opportunity to work at an orphanage in Mexico and build a college in Alaska
-no boys=better GPA
-I can pound away 30 hour work weeks with 15-17 units
-Run off to Mexico with my mother in January
-Research James Joyce in Ireland this summer
-Raft the Smokies
-Run off into the woods with my good friend Dinah and just talk about life
-Have time to Volunteer with a non profit: Giving Children Hope

Even though it's intimidating, I'm turning 21 in 4 days and have the world at my fingertips. In less than a year I can pursue anything I want to. I've been reading the blogs of long term vagabonds lately, ones who type their blogs from Internet cafes on small islands in Malaysia or libraries in Brazil, or Starbucks in the south of France. I want to take off on a grand adventure like that, but it sounds so lonely to travel solo. I don't want to just go on a grand adventure, I want to be a part of one. As Chris Maccandless wrote right before he died 20 miles out in the Alaskan Wilderness, 107 days away from being with any other human being: "Happiness is only real when shared." I believe in all of that truth. We have a desire as human beings to hare our lives with each other. More than anything, we want response; we need to know that we are not the only ones feel as we do (Which is probably why this whole Internet blogging thing has caught on). I see my singleness as preparation to join in that adventure. When I first joined the small group that I'm in, I had the feeling that,"Oh no, I'm the only college student again." I joined Rock Harbor to have fellowship with other people my age. It has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The leader Seth, of whom we share a fond view on literature and classic movies, I learned is related to half of the people in the room. There are two newly married couples, one engaged couple, Seth's parents, his sister, his sister's husband, his aunt, and two cousins, and few others. It has been wonderful to see an entire family who really sticks together and loves Christ, and to see so many young couples relaying on Him to guide their relationships. I am now convinced that there are decent men in LA. Right now is just a time of watching other's examples.