Aaaaand boom goes the dynamite

They've always said, "You'll do quite well,
I really now must say-"
If only I could write a villanelle.

The big word seemed to ring a bell,
And I acquiesce, for they -
They've always said, "You'll do quite well."

But suddenly my spirits fell,
For I couldn't, try though I may.
If only I could write a villanelle.

This anxiety I must quell,
I hate to disappoint this way...
They always said, "You'll do quite well."

My back is forced against the rail,
I must find something to say...
If only I could write a villanelle.

Suddenly the words came in a hail,
The outline clear as day-
They've always said, "You'll do quite well,"
And i wrote a freakin' villanelle! (sort of)

the question to the answer is 42

Ok, so we've already determined that when people think about Christianity, Jesus somehow gets lost in the equation, right? The question is, why? I mean, christians and non-christians alike somehow ignore him, but what's the reasoning? I think the reason is fairly simple - it's a whole lot easier to ignore Jesus. Wait, what? No deep theological explanation? Nope. It's just easy to ignore Jesus. And people love to do things that are easy. The reasons are different for christians and non-christians, but the root cause is there. For Christians, it's easy to ignore Jesus because we can never follow all the rules. Ignoring Jesus means that when we screw up (daily), we don't have to realize that we are the bride cheating on the only one who will ever truly love us. We don't have to realize that we are the son rebelling against his father time and again. Without Jesus in the picture, all we have to think about is how many people do worse things. Sure, I may have strayed a bit, but did you hear what that guy did this weekend? Man, I would hate to be him on judgement day. And on the rare occasion we do happen to follow God's direction, man oh man, are we special. We don't have to realize that Christ expects and deserves more of us than controlling a few wild urges. We don't have to consider that all our "righteous acts" are like filthy rags before God. All we need to know is how great our self-control is and how much better the world could be if there were more people like us. I mean, that stuff I did was in the past, right? Today I conquered immorality once and for all. Did it single-handedly, too. Without Jesus, our faith becomes nothing more than a list of rules that, for all we know, could help us reach nirvana. Or at least make a lot of people pat us on the back. I mean, who needs a relationship with the creator of the universe, the only perfect being, the one who died just so we could have a relationship with him, when you could get a pat on the back instead? A pat on the back is so much more physically reassuring.

Well, if you will look, rule #783 clearly states...

The other day, a friend and teammate of mine described how he wanted to go to a church and make the congregation choose what they thought was the lesser of two evils in a moral dilemma with God holding a gun to their heads. It was essentially a game of "Would You Rather" with God thrown in there. Why God needed a gun, I'm not sure. Another teammate chimed in to offer his opinion - "That's essentially all religion is anyway." I disagreed, and he defended his position - "There are rules, and if you don't follow them, God punishes you." As much as I disagree, I have to admit this is a fairly common view. In the southern christian culture we live in, however, voicing this opinion gets one relegated to the ranks of the sodomites and baby killers. That is to say, self-righteous hypocrites instantly hate you. Now, I am not saying that I agree with my teammates, or that homosexuality and abortion are perfectly ok. The point I am trying to make is that christians and atheists alike often get true Christianity confused with something insignificant - rules. The obvious difference between Christianity and religions of the world has nothing to do with rules. Christians do not have better moral rules than other religions. If you were to strictly follow the teachings of Buddhism or Hinduism, many people would applaud your moral character. However, there is something that Christianity offers that nothing else does. It's very simple. Can you guess? I sure hope so. Are you ready? OK.......... We have Jesus. Christians are not meant to set their eyes upon the Ten Commandments. Did you catch that? If we are living our lives based upon a set of rules we were probably made to memorize at age 6, we don't get it. We are to set our eyes upon the author and perfecter of our faith. For some reason, Jesus gets lost in conversation. Over the next few posts, I hope to explore why this is. I would love input, and I hope we can get this issue tackled.



p.s. - here's a haiku I wrote a while ago, just for fun

Words as art, beauty
flows from the pen majestic.
Hang that on your wall.

I have to think of a title? Crap.

This might be a little easier for me, because I am by nature a very laid-back person (and, by many people's accounts, very boring). However, I still believe it is important. What I am asking is this - slow down a bit. Did you know that one of the leading causes of heart disease in America is high blood pressure? Did you also know that it has been shown that in remote villages around the world, blood pressure is significantly lower than in America? These people have to deal with the stresses of disease, hunger, and wild animals, and their blood pressure is lower! The reason is simple - we move too quickly. In the villages in the middle of the jungle, time is not a factor. There is no rush to be at work, no appointments to keep, things of that sort. General wisdom has always seemed to find a place for a slower pace, from "Be still and know that I am God," to "In stillness the world is restored." In the world today, it is apparently very hard to slow down. I, for one, am a huge advocate of a slower lifestyle. Whether this be due to the blood pressure risks or laziness, I'm not sure yet. What I do know is that the times when I am in the most hurry are usually the times I'm enjoying the little things in life least. And I always try to follow Rule #32 - Enjoy the little things. My name is Caleb Osborne, and I approve this message.

p.s. - I just bought the new Lissie album "Catching a Tiger." I would highly recommend Lissie to anyone and everyone. That is all.

Peace Be the Journey!

Comedian Mitch Hedberg described how he comes up with his material one time - "I sit at my hotel at night and think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and write it down. Or, if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny." And that more or less sums up why this is my first blog in a long time. But after much nagging from my mom, I decided it was time. I'm at a point in my life where decisions must be made. Not so much "what do you want to eat for supper" decisions, but bigger ones. Now, you have to realize that I am in a place (Troy) that I never expected to be. Or really wanted to be, for that matter. There are often quite large pockets of discontent in my life. It's better than it once was, but the fact remains. I often wonder what my life would be like if I lived in the middle of the mountains, or on the beach (and I don't even like the beach). Or if I had decided to do this or that instead of what I'm doing. Or if I decided to do something to make a lot of money. Or had a really super hot girlfriend. Or if I were some time of extremely popular world leader. Or if I had superpowers. How much better would my life be? Answer - not at all. I have heard before "wherever you go, there you are." Which makes sense. If you go somewhere, you have to be there. Unless you have superpowers that let you separate yourself into separate identities. But on a deeper level, this is the answer to the problem of discontent. No amount of money or natural beauty or any location can change who you are. The spirit of discontent is a dangerous thing. It tricks us into thinking that who we are is determined by where we are or various other factors that really have no effect. To quote John Candy from Cool Runnings, "Derice, a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without one, you'll never be enough with one." Just a thought that I struggle with. If your situation is determining who you think you are, you don't know who you are.

Newton's First Law of Motion

1) Step by step one goes very far. - Proverb of unknown origin
2) The first step is the hardest. - Marie de Vichy-Chamrond
3) What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. - C.S. Lewis
4) A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. - Confucius or Lao Tzu, depending on who you ask
5) The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs. - Vance Havner
6) The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Does there seem to be a common theme here? In high school I was assigned to write a one-page paper on the quote by Marie de Vichy-Chamrond. I don't recall much, but I do remember being extremely proud of my closing line. It was the hook behind the jabs, if you will. More or less, the line was this -"It is not the thousands of steps which tire the legs that are most difficult, but the very first, which taxes the mind and soul." I know, right? I was proud of it. Unfortunately, at the time it was simply a closing line. I didn't understand it. I understood the concept enough to put pen to paper, but the actual truth did not strike me. Now, however, the importance of that first step is all too clear. Without that first step there is no second step, or third, or fourth. There are no steps without the first. I don't believe any of these quotations are referring to literal steps. They are choices, decisions, actions. And you see, once we decide on that first step, the others are sure to follow. No one takes a step north then a step south, then north, then south..... North or south. Those are the options. In our lives, there are certain times when we are faced with decisons and we must take a first step. I fear these first steps more than I fear most things in life. Not only my first steps, but the steps of those around me. These first steps determine the future. Determine joy. Determine pain. Determine life. There is no message to this post. No hook behind the jabs. I just needed this out there.

Stuff

A few weeks ago, I saw someone get stuck with a javelin. He did not get hit. He got stuck. In the spine. The javelin literally stuck almost an inch in his spine and didn't come out until he hit the ground. And guess what? He was perfectly ok. The trainers were checking him out and he was sitting up talking on the phone. As we watched this, a teammate made the offhanded remark "The Big Guy upstairs must be looking out for that guy." I do not think this teammate truly believed that God was watching over this man, or even if he believes in God at all. Which is why his comment was so odd to me. It seems to me that there are certain things in this world that cannot be explained by science or facts or things like that. Some would call it blind luck that this guy didn't die from that javelin, but how many people truly believe in blind luck? It hit me then that even the nonreligious seem to grasp the fact that there is something behind luck, or chance, or whatever. I watched a Richard Dawkins (probably the world's most famous atheist) program recently in which he said that atheism (his form of atheism seems a bit naturalist to me) is the greatest way to appreciate nature. I could not agree less. He admitted that every living thing and many nonliving things have the "appearance" of design, as he calls it. I can't quite understand how someone could see so much "appearance" of design without searching for the creator. For Dawkins, the thing most worthy of worship is natural selection (Romans 1:25). Which to me seems a lot like blind luck. The logistics behind one cell becoming millions of species is incredible. Ten thousand monkeys on a typewriter and all that, maybe. I guess my main point is that there is something within each of us that is crying for the Creator, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. From crediting an unknown "Big Guy" for the life of a man to admiring the beauty of living things, our spirits are constantly crying out for their Lord. It's just sad that some choose to drown out this cry.