Good Time

Well, I'm in the middle of a good time right now. I've had meaningful devotions I think every day this week, even if only a few minutes in Philippians. I worked out three times, yesterday being a very enjoyable time of doing whatever I wanted, working myself without nasty strain. Wednesday evening I FINALLY, FINALLY wrote great words to a song I've had written for a year, and recorded almost all the vocals beautifully, to match the perfect, scintillating guitar already recorded. The song is beautiful, in every way. This morning I aced (from my point of view) a Reactive Process Engineering exam, but more importantly, I buckled down and worked for hours and hours studying for it Wednesday and Thursday. I just ran up 10 flights of stairs (22 steps per flight) to get to this computer lab to print off four great articles I found for the kinetics design project I've been dreading but made myself work on after the exam this morning. I just ate a containerful of delicious mexican-ish bean/rice/meat stuff that perfectly met the gnawing hunger that developed as I researched in the library. Do you have any idea what that feels like for me? I actually DID things that needed to be done. They were hard. They were dreary to anticipate. But I did them, and wasn't a baby about that. The sickening cloud of disapproval that usually presses on me from undone tasks is lifted, at least in this area. I HAVE worked out. My body feels somewhat solid. I DID study long and hard. I used my recording equipment. I had quiet times, and they really meant something!

Yesterday I actually took purposeful joy in being saved, even after a depressing and difficult session of studying for a hopeless-feeling exam. Today I came across a verse (more like really fully noticed and noted it) that I call my verse, because it clearly and plainly prescribes treatment for my plaguing pride and self-centerness, particularly regarding interactions with others. I wrote it down on a bookmark in my bible like this (the underlines are just spacers. Disregard them):

Let nothing be done
through selfish
______ambition
or ____conceit,
but in lowliness of
_____mind
let each esteem
others better than
himself.
Phil 2:3

It's pretty clear what to do: If I'm doing something for selfish ambition, DON'T DO IT. If I'm doing it through selfish ambition, DO IT DIFFERENTLY.

I'm sure these are just more words bouncing off your head like most spiritual writing bounces off my head (especially from other people's blogs), but they actually soaked through my skull as I read them today, and they mean something to me. Not a grand amazing new meaning, just their actual, simple word meaning. If my mind could be opened and I could read scripture, in one hour I'm sure my life would be forever changed, and my brain would probably explode.

I'm going to finish this post, grab the articles I just printed, and go lay on the grass in the sun for 30 minutes and then catch a bus home.

I write this to document what it feels like here at the peak. I feel like my life is measuring up to the markers. Past experience predicts a horrible trough on the horizon--failing catastrophically in anger or some other sin, ditching devotions, skipping working out, or even just wasting my time over the weekend--but I'm not so sure that has to happen, though I doubt I can stay at this peak indefinitely. Should I? Is this what life lived rightly, apart from external circumstances, should be like? Is it wrong to feel wrong when I'm not living like this? Is my life on the way up, or is this just another few-day peak before I descend to the misty swamp where I normally walk? Should I expect to "be on the way up" at all?

I do think I've come one step closer to rejoicing in being saved, no matter what's going on or what's coming up.

--Clear Ambassador

What do I do?

I was gone from home for twelve hours today. As I glanced at the clock and realized this while unpacking my stuff just now I thought, "where was I?" "What was I doing?" "This was a day of my life, a day like many, and it's mostly gone. Where did it go?" So, here's where it went:

I drove to Pitt at 8:45am, getting to class 10 minutes late. I slept through appreciable portions of the 30-minute short class, borne down under the unexpectedly strong post-Youth Camp tiredness. Jenna and I knocked out two problems of homework #6 before her class at 11, and then I went back to the car to refill the meter. Ditched my backpack, jogged to the Peterson, and worked out while listening to the first sermon in the series "Man with a Maiden," from Covenant Life Church.

After working out I had a little time left on my meter and a lot of hunger for meaty food, so I got cash, got a gyro, and got a 44-oz Mountain Dew with shots of Blue Raspberry flavoring. So good! Then the drive to NOVA, waiting for an alarm to clear so I could get in, and then 4 hours of work finishing up the SARA 313 report that's due July 1st. It's finished.

I debated it and almost just went home, but time with Jonathan is hard to come by, so I drove to the House of Hughes (which only took 40 minutes!) and had pizza and Sam Adams with Nate, Ryan and Jonathan. We had good times joking around, listening to "Hot Fuss" by The Killers, and jamming with 3 guitars while Ryan studied. I left after a good string of improv at 8:45pm.

Now it's 9:30, I'm writing this after checking my email and MySpace, the iPod is updated, it's too hot to wear a shirt 'cause we turned the AC off, and now is the time to finish up my evening, decide if I want to finish the U2 DVD before my quiet time (or after), and not stay up excessively late.

We're all sitting around the living room. Daniel's feet are in my face as he rests them on one of the little tables and sits on the big couch opposite me. I'm hunched over my laptop, which is on the other little table. Mom has been sitting in the huggle chair by the computer and Dad just moved from that computer to the other huggle chair. A fly is buzzing around periodically, the kitchen fan is sending spinning shadows across the ceiling, and I feel like every inch of my skin has an indelible layer of heat and sweat swimming over it. Oh for some moving air to disturb this humidity! We're a family. It's cool to be together on nights like this when it's not FAMILY NIGHT, it's just night, and we're a family, all in the house at the same time, in the same room. I want a haircut again.

--Clear Ambassador

Stuff About Me

This is my 101st blog post! That seems like a lot.

Stuff about me that will hopefully represent some corners of myself at this time for my future self and all of posterity who will be clambering to know about me:

Phrase I came up with about myself and used a few times and now am purposefully not using so as to not overuse it: social sensibilities

Current most over-used, banal phrase: good times

Thing I should be doing: eating appreciable breakfasts

Thing I really should be doing: working out

Thing I really really should be doing: having devotions every day

Current weight: 143.2 lbs. Down 2 pounds from before Youth Camp

Current injuries/bodily nonidealities:
- worn away middle finger nail on my left hand, from playing guitar. The skin under the nail is torn from playing so hard, too.
- double-split thumbnail on my left hand, from blocking a frisbee throw today
- messed-up tendon inside my left knee from something today, perhaps an unexpected skid on the wet frisbee field or standing with it locked for too long sometime
- Believe it or not, clearly visible marks on my left leg, one from the ice skates on New Year's Eve, and one all the way from my collossal shin smash into the Hoffman's backyard stage in September of last year. Geez. Can my body heal itself?
- zits on my back
- Skinniness (Is he joking? Is he not?)

Song running through my head at this moment: bass line from "Playboy Mansion" from U2's album Pop. Interspersed with "But if god will send his angels" from the song by that name.

Currently anticipating: Being involved with the youth at PChOP

Currently enjoying memories of: Leading worship at church this morning and adding to the post youth camp discussion after frisbee this afternoon.

Way I've changed within the last year: I've become much more flippant and [over]familiar in my writing and in talking with people

Most recent purchase: Subwoofer and amp for my car for $150 from a garage sale (mediated by Steve in Akron)

Profound thought: real life sucks. I'm not cut out for it.

Current flippant wish: That I didn't have to go to school or work tomorrow

Current deeper wish: That I wasn't the kind of man who wished he didn't have to go to school or work tomorrow

Current most not-looked-forward-to item: Working on the design project for Reactive Process Engineering

To-do this week: Learn the material for the RPE test Friday and have quiet times

Time to stop writing and go to bed: now

Ah, how I love thinking about myself, analyzing my performance, potential, motives and place in my surroundings, and likewise analyzing others around me. I reckon I look pretty self-involved, or full of myself, to others. Hm. I dislike people like that who I know (I can think of two right now). So do people dislike me like that? If not, how undeservedly kind of them! I would hate myself if I could duplicate myself and have the other one of me not be me.

Mr. Pierson is the coolest pastor and guy ever.

I'm totally clean and perfect before God right now.

--Clear Ambassador

YC in 14 hours

Well, I didn't think I'd be saying this for years and years, but

I FOUND A GREY HAIR IN MY BEARD!

Kinda scary. I dunno. Maybe it's just blond. Maybe I'm part Californian! Switchfoot, here I come!!

Youth Camp is tomorrow, and I've packed nothing but my electric guitar gear. And I'm very tired and would like nothing better right now than to just lean over a little further, slip off my headphones and collapse into oblivion. What hurts is that knowledge that, as I keep fighting to keep myself going, I'm denying my body rest it desparately needs. My joints have been getting irritable, which happens when I start accruing a long-term sleep deficit. I've already only *barely* written the final paper for Short Stories. Good thing this isn't Kafka, or I'd be SO dead. *shudder*. As it is, I think this paper wanders, misses some key points, and is raggedy when it could be tight and punchy. But those things haven't been harped on by Kate, our grad student teacher, and I think she'll like what I've written. *sigh* It hurts to let this paper go like this, but it hurts worse to think of the work it would take to make it solid. Low standards....what can I say?

That's pretty much it. Who cares about all the long-term things I'm unsure of, the grinding miserable ignorance that surfaced in Reactive Process Engineering this morning, all the many aspects of YC coming up, all the other million things I could devote pages to if I chose to. All I care about right now is getting my packing done and going to sleep. Shower tonight or in the morning? How am I going to do it in the morning? Get up in time, shower, drop off my paper before transport, and hoof it back home in time. Oh well. I will pack, I will sleep, and I will make it work, whatever happens. I wish I had the control to wake up when I need to. It would make my life fantastically better. How bitterly funny that so much of my life ends up hanging on when I am able to force myself to go to bed and when I can make myself wake up. Sleep. It cripples humanity by design. Reminds us that we're not gods. Sometimes I wish I was one, though :-/

Peace,

--Clear Ambassador

Prayer Request

OK, so, I'ma gonna set the stage for a nice before and after picture of Youth Camp. Below I have pasted the contents of an email I sent to my men's group from church asking for prayer for YC. I've been feeling quite desperately inable to carry myself in a Christ-like mannar at YC, and this represents my concerns. In 5 days we'll see what God has done!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hey guys!

I'd like to ask for your prayers for myself for Youth Camp. I always deal with trying to impress everybody, being self-centered, and getting caught up in hanging out and forgetting to be purposeful and godly in what I do and say, and YC threatens to take that propensity to cataclysmic heights (or depths). I've been praying a lot and feeling my vulnerability and weakness in that area.
In particular, I'm feeling sharply the need to reach out to new people, people I don't know well and may not even like much. I would much appreciate your prayers for God to supernaturally help me keep that in mind in the whirl of youth camp--something I have no capacity to do myself. My other main prayer has been for God to kill my pride. Not just *not indulge it* or *help me be whatever*, but to just KILL it and glorify Himself, whatever that may look like. Especially as I'll be the only non-LOLC'er on the worship team, playing electric guitar no less. Arg, I tremble for my stupid ego.

Thanks! I feel weak, but I know God can do great things ('cause He has in the past), and I'm always confident He has no problem glorifying Himself and getting me out of the picture :-)

Hope y'all have a good time being at not Youth Camp!

--JPB

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I'm also feeling the need for God's help as I prepare to lead corporate worship for the first time ever at PChOP this Sunday, a few hours after returning from YC. So, we'll see what He does there, too!

It's nice to know I can throw all this stuff into God's hands and not worry that it will turn out bad. In fact, it's like going grocery shopping with Grandparents--you get cooler stuff than you expect, and they're not on a budget :-)

Peace in the East, love from above, and sleep in the deep,

--Clear Ambassador
(actually, I need to get pinstripes for my toms)

*Squeak Squeak*

I'm so excited and happy! I brought my studio headphones upstairs to listen to some music on my laptop. These are headphones so brutally honest they almost don't sound good. It's like looking at a landscape with glasses on when you've got astigmatism.

So, so, I was listening to Phil Keaggy, an' it was a spanish guitar song, an' I heard his bench squeak in the background!!! There, in a world-class recording, perfect-sounding, jumping out of the headphones into my ears, he shifted his heine and his bench squeaked as he ripped off unearthly cascades of beautiful nylon-stringed notes. YAY! These are indeed real recordings of real people actually playing this stuff! Professional recordings are so good I wonder sometimes.

--CA

Hmmm... according to Steve Hoffman

Ok, so I'm randomly blogging on John's site for no apparent reason, but seeing as how I'm the only person who ever reads these things, it shouldn't make too many waves in the real world. Ha! Burn! For those of you wondering "who the hexigon is Steve Hoffman," no i'm not some strange hippie who hacked into a random blogg spot. Coincidentaly enough I am a friend of John's, and he does know I'm doing this. John and I met a couple years ago when he he first came to Akron to record a couple songs for his christmas album in my brother's studio. Our corprate musical genius fused and flouished one fatefull night producing a techno rap featuring the voices of yoda, gollum JarJarBinks, and Obi-Wan-Kenobi. *Sigh* the chemistry... So then me and my buddy Brian got him in our band Pure Boss... which you may have noticed, he writes quite a bit about.
So enough about John, let's talk about me :) i guess i'll add a profile like you would on some lame web site, 6'3", long brown hair, brown eyes, and quite cute... oh yeah and naturally-pouty lips. I am single and looking for a wife. I'll just throw that out there, lolz!

Stephen has apparently given up, and is now reclined in a chair hugging a guitar and mumbling about his wife hunt. So I shall end his post by remarking that few people I have ever been privelidged to know have the ability to both listen well and talk to keep a conversation going that he has. I'm grateful to be his brother, even if he is vain about his tan :-)

--Clear Ambassador and the Drum Stick [that would be Steve]

Sayanora Stephanie

Last night I said good-bye to one of those people who defy the short time you've known them. The Mittelmans have been coming to our church for about a year now, and for maybe half a year Jess's best friend Steph has been coming to church and church events. I didn't know either of them at all until a couple months ago when I started hanging out with Daniel again after a crazy blur of Akron stuff.

One night the four of us hit up Taco Bell to try the new Ultimate Chalupa and ended up on Mud Mountain, the ridge behind Wal-Mart overlooking the tonka truck playground and miles of shopping centers in which we live our suburban lives. The moniker derives from the copious, clinging mud that had formed from the day of rain preceding our adventure. Much of it still resides in my car :-/

Two weekends ago the fab four went to a Pirates game on a Friday evening. We got dinner at the food booths for the art festival, which was way cool. There was a good chance of rain that night, and it did indeed fall. And naturally, because we had buy-one-get-one-free coupons we got nicer seats...which were out from under the overhang. We braved four innings in the rain, eventually getting so thoroughly soaked that wetness and rain became irrelevant in the face of the memories being manufactured. Jess was getting over a post-NA cold, though, so we retired to cover for the fifth inning and then left. The game was called after the sixth inning with some abysmal score like 7 nothing enemies. The girls were great sports, though, which I appreciate. We slogged back to my car where I cranked the heat and distributed my two dry jackets. Biblical masculinity scores again! To cap the night off we went to The Cheesecake Factory at South Side Works and had some rich desserts and good fellowship. Quite a night :-)

Tomorrow Steph leaves to spend the summer with her Mom in New Jersey, from where she will leave for college in the fall. So I got Daniel to get some folks together for a good-bye get-together at Applebee's last night. Justin, Luke, Anna, Heather, Matt, Nick, Danmybro, Jess, Steph and I overfilled our booth and entertained ourselves with great joviality and consumption of food and use of cameras. When at last the longsuffering employees asked us to leave we headed to Mud Mountain, dry this time, and had a nice time praying for Steph while we surveyed the spotty lit-up world below us and contemplated the precipitious drop by which we stood. Then hanging around being silly and taking pictures on the great plane of Wal-Mart's side parking lot, and at last we parted our ways. Nick came back to our house and stayed the night, which was fun and gave a pedestrian Wednesday night the feel of a summer weekend. Too bad I had to get up at 7:52 and give a presentation at 9.

So, bye Steph! Thanks for entering in whole-heartedly into the life of Providence Church, and for following God in an honest and real way. *droning voice* Once again I shall pronounce over thee the blessing of the Aaronic priesthood for the children of Israel:

The Lord bless you and keep you
The Lord make His face shine upon you
And be gracious to you
And give you peace.
















See ya 'round the net!

--Clear Ambassador

PHNWD

Praise His Name With Dancing

It's more than a moniker, and this weekend I got to experience the apex of the yearly cycle of its existence: the June show.

PHNWD is the dance company run by Mrs. Hoffman, my "second Mom." Dancing classes fill a large portion of a normal week in the Hoffman household, and every year the 140 or so students from all the ages and styles taught put on a grand, God-glorifying show, which over the years has become a respectable community event, and a profound experience for many. Dancing that wholeheartedly and wholebodily worships God is starvingly rare. Most "Christian" dance companies are like most "Christian" bands--doing what the world does, just skipping the nasty stuff and throwing the Jesus word in. Mrs. Hoffman and her girls work through each piece painstakingly to express, through the medium of moving bodies, God's goodness and our response to it. It is quite interesting for me to watch the shows (I've seen last year's June rehearsal and Christmas show) and think of how they think in dance like I think in music. This year I went to both performances (Saturday eve and Sunday aft), and really enjoyed them. The pointe dances especially were beautiful, and many of the pieces accentuated their music in a way nothing else really can. The "togetherness" of the dancers wasn't always great, which bothers my mind, but almost all the time I still enjoyed and appreciated the choreography, and several times I really got lost in the beauty of sweeping sleeves, shimmering skirts, and the visual spectacle of people moving together, seeming to flow as one expressive unit to the music and truths coming out of the house speakers.

Yes, this was an unusual trip to Akron. Shannon rode there and back with me, and I barely saw Brian at all. I didn't eat a single meal at home, and I didn't eat a single meal with less than two other people. But I didn't have a part to play in either the technical or performance aspects of the show, so there were strange dead spaces in the days. In some ways I ditched Steve-O, but in other ways we had great times together.

It occured to my sense of the future, round about the Ohio Turnpike exit toll, that I didn't really know where to go in Akron when we got there. Rehearsal had emptied the Hoffman's house, but it was ending soon so there was no point in going to Central Hower. Craig wanted to get together with folks for dinner and a movie, but we weren't sure yet who could come. We ended up going straight to the Murphy's, meeting Criag there, and going with their girls and him to Applebee's for a late dinner. And picking up Emily randomly on the way there as we passed her house. Gotta love Akron :-) Why doesn't that ever happen in Pittsburgh? After Applebee's we met Steve and Craig steered us to a "secret" park tucked behind a shopping area. We guarded the women from dogs and other threats, I climbed a tall fence and ripped my shorts, we swung on the swings, and at last got back in the cars, Jess so tired I'm sure anyone would have thought her inebriated.

That night Steve and I ate Sundaes in his van and looked through the PHNWD yearly booklet to make Mom #2 happy. Then I drifted into awakefulness at 4am, face down on the livingroom carpet, disoriented to see Mrs. Hoffman still at the laptop with the lights on, and my conacts dry and my teeth unbrushed. Serendipitious sleep is sweet. I made my bed in the den, brushed, kicked Steve awake and told him he should go to his real bed, and then proceeded to disappear into dreams of dance shows and strange things until 12:30pm. Wonderful.

On Saturday Steve, Mike and I painted a bunch of baskets for the show (long sad story involving 31 hand-made baskets being thrown out), ate at Taco Bell while they dried, and dropped them and Mike off at the high school. Then Stephen and I had a couple hours to kill, since he was off work that day. So we plunked around on guitars, worked out some kickin' dual-acoustic stuff for his New York song, and recorded bass for "Hit the Wall." Other than one F# instead of an A it's perfect, and heck, I never knew it was supposed to be an A there anyway! When you put Contemplative Afterthought into your CD player, the bass you hear on "Hit the Wall" will be what Steve played that afternoon, standing in Mike's crowded room by the big studio board, with the tape machine whirring, the window open, and me singing and air-guitaring along with the drum track pounding out of the monitors.

We got to the 7:30 show a few minutes late (as we arrive to everything we attend together), so I texted Heather in the dark to find out where they were sitting. Hezz, Furkins, Domenica and Tim had driven up from Pittsburgh to see the show, which I think is way cool of them. Steve and I entertained ourselves with whispered comments, inbetween which I watched, contemplated on, evaluated and enjoyed the performances. Then the long period of hanging around, hugging happy dancers in bridal gowns (The theme of the show was the bride of Christ), talking to Pittsburgh people and watching them talk to Akron people, and trying to figure out what we're doing after the show.

Eventually the evening found Steve and me, Craig, Micah and Shannon seated around an umbrella-d table outside the Rally's by the University of Akron campus, munching on burgers, talking, and laughing hysterically. It was the trip of Craig. He was pretty much everywhere I was, and his laughter, his sure-footed stories and recollections, and his encyclopedic knowledge of movies and music provided most of the entertainment. The double barbecue bacon burger was good, and the Mr. Pibb was everything cold, carbonated, sweet and oh-so-quenching soda can be. It was warm enough to be outside and not be cold, which is one of the best things ever. Being outside at night is, well, WHAT A NIGHT-ish.

At home Steve and I lolled around for a very long time working on songs, as documented LIVE in my previous blog post. All the skin-tingling action of that night captured in the text of a humble blog entry. PHEW! That night we got to sleep at 4. Ouch. I hate not getting much sleep. But that night was a great time with music and Steve--a killer comination :-)

Church was pretty good--John Joyce on Evangelism, Dave Walters on banging drums, Richard Murphy on high-voiced piano-led worship, Scott Thompson on skilled chorusy guitar, and my own Steve-O on the bass that makes it all sound complete. Oh, and a bank of female vocalists. But, ya know, they're just *vocalists*. :-P It was Jim's birthday, plus 11 people are graduating this year, so we had fun celebrating and honoring and joking with those folks. Then lunch at Chipoltle with Steve and Craig. Mmmm, burrito. But when all that steak and rice and beans and delish salsa hit my stomach the night's lack of sleep hit me like a bag of sand, and I felt like collapsing. So Steve and I went home and recorded guitar for "Hit the Wall" (NOT the guitar you will hear when you pop Contemplative Afterthought into your CD player) and got Berries and Cream Dr.Peppers on the way to the show at 3 :-)

This time I watched most of the show standing in the back, from which vantage point I could see and appreciate the whole stage and the whole audience, as well as the behind-the-scenes action of dancers coming in to watch a number or congregating for the occasional entrance from the back of the auditorium. It was a good show, especially because the live choir really belted it out. They sang from their bowels! From their bowels! (hilariously appropriate Homestar Runner reference). I really got caught up into many of the dances, and enjoyed the show a lot.

Then much much time wandering around masses of people, wondering what to do, talking to people I knew, and wishing the stinkin' line to the chocolate fountain would get shorter. The Hertzogs came to the show, so I got to catch up with them, which was a treat. Finally most attendees (and dancers) had cleared out, and we got down to the business of tearing everything down and packing it into cars and the U-haul. What a staple of my social life--setting up or tearing down things with people. Church, moves, events, band practices and shows... it's a peculiar context for fellowship, one I like a lot. You have things to do with yourself, and the snatches of conversation and joking you get as you heft stuff around and ask what to carry next are like Jelly Bellies--small and tasty.

Eventually, with undue confusion, I ended up in my car with Jess and Shannon, leading the way to the Montrose Don Pablo's. Don Pablo's! That long-gone staple of Behrens family celebrations. When I walked in and the ceiling opened up and I felt like I was in a courtyard in Mexico I felt strangely at home. Dinner that night was with Craig, Shannon and three giddy-tired dancers :-P Jess, Jen and Christin were indeed giddy, but the show was over and they had nothing Monday, so we just sat and ate and joked and laughed a lot and abode. Abided? Whatever. Irrelevant. It was nice, even though I felt (and was) outstaged by Craig. He's good for me--reminds me of my own ultimate social cloddiness and the fact that I have indeed only known these Akronites for a year or two. It was fun to laugh a lot, but even funner to watch Craig laugh, and then Christin, and then Jen, and then all of them laughing at eachother laughing :-)

Once the remaining third of my chimi de oro was safely ensconsed in a sheet-molded polystyrene foam container normalcy would have expected Shannon and I to return to the Hoffman's, pack my stuff in the car and return to our city. But I don't go to Akron for normalcy, and I don't usually remember normalcy years afterward with a warm glow in my heart. So all of us piled into our cars and drove to the Hoffman's to pick up some acoustic guitars and sing worship songs together. But then Mrs. H arrived so we talked and unloaded her car. And then the caravan from Central Hower arrived, and at Jess's prodding I stuck my head in the car loaded with Craig, Steve, Jen, Shannon and Christin and said how 'bout we unload us some serious U-haul? So we did, and it was very good. Good to heft heavy things, good to joke and talk while doing stuff, and mostly good to shorten a long night of work for Scott, Mike, Micah and Steve. We had that puppy unloaded in about 30 minutes :-)

Then the search for Brandy, who ended up being right outside the house anyway, and then congregating in the den for worship. That is my forte, and I led us in I dunno how long of singing. I love free worship like that. No song list, no song book, just a bunch of folks singing songs we all know, as though worshipping God was something good to do, even if it's not Sunday morning :-) Then things sort of disintegrated, but I rounded us up for the gospel song, and then Shannon and I headed for heading out in earnest. Good-byes were said, hugs all around (of course. This is Akron, folks), and at about 12:30am I was sitting statically in my seat, not yet tired, but eminently comfortable in darkness and stillness. Eventually sleep started to tug my eyelids down and draw hallucinations in the patterns of light on the highway before me so we hit a rest stop, tanked up, and I got a Vault. It worked, but not without effort. It hurt to not sleep when sleep called so enticingly, and to kill the calling comfort with crass caffeine. Dang, I'm writing good right now! That's why it's 12:15am and I'm letting myself stay away, even though I've been ploddingly tired all day and I have to get up at 7:30 tomorrow. I haven't had a good ol' rip-roarin' good-adjectivin' full chronological account of a trip in awhile. How nice that I have trips to chronicle! I was just thinking earlier how nonchalantly I take these Akron trips now. It's quite a blessing to travel so much that Akron is a second home, I can find my way around on my own, and it feels normal to be surrounded by these special people, randomly grabbing dinner somewhere, stringing the nights and days out, and ultimately sharing God's goodness--the unifying factor that lets there be peace in popularity, meaning in conversation, and comfort when you leave.

Keane is the perfect music to be listening to now, which is why I'm on my second time through the album.

So, the trip was good. When I think of it I think of dancers filling the stage with their swirling dresses, the secret park in the not-cold night, Craig laughing, and a lot of other indistinct fragments of everything I've just written about, none clear enough to add to this list, though I would like to add many of them. It was Akron.

--Clear Ambassador

Tired as Death

It is 2:55am, I'm kneeling on a random green folder filled with papers on the concrete floor of the Hoffman's computer/dance costume room, and I feel as tired as death. Steve and I have been sitting in front of the other computer drowsily mulling over lyrics for "Keep In Touch When You're Gone," a sweet new song of his, trying to get verse two. Here's what we've got so far:

The road branches off
And leads away from home
And now my mind and thoughts
Return to what I've known
You can find me here
Never growing old
Remembering the years
And wishing you were still here

The chorus is kick-butt, but I'll keep it from you for now. I love Stephen's songs. And I love my acoustic guitar playing (most of the time. Actually I despise my stupid scales and runs now. They almost make me sick when I play them).

We get up in a few hours and Steve plays bass and Mike runs sound and then there's the dance show at 3. I keep thinking about the remains of my Taco Bell Dr.Pepper in the fridge and how it's sweet coldness would quench my dull pounding thirst. I'm probably going to go drink some of it, pitch the rest, brush my teeth and go to sleep.

Randy

The first thing I noticed about him was his hat. Then his Dave Harvey-ish beard, which I liked. Together they made him look pretty sharp and cool, even as he inexperiencedly flagged down the bus and labored to make it up the steps, sitting down hard in the row in front of me. He made a little talk with the bus driver, about living in the worst place in Pittsburgh to catch busses--right up Lebanon Road by the bus garage. I agreed internally, and appreciated the fact that someone else realized the irony of this situation. He was trying to find out about where to catch the 56C for another way home, but he wasn't getting much from the bus driver, a big white dude with flashy sunglasses who answered as if talking to himself up in his little bus driver seat. So I broke the stranger's silence and said that you could go down the first right off of Forbes to Second Avenue and catch the 56C there.

He turned around and we talked a bit about the busses. He'd been waiting out there since noon since he didn't know the bus schedule, and I mentioned the loss of the 12:45 bus back in the route cuts of '05. I don't remember how it came up, but pretty soon I learned that he had taught jazz at CMU for eleven years--quite a respectable profession and position. He stopped at one point, after we had entered for sure into conversation, and shook my hand. "I'm Randy, Randy Purcell. Nice to meet you." It was an unusually long handshake--he held on a while after I had stopped shaking.

As we wound down Carson Street in the midafternoon sunshine I was told that the man in front of me was a world-renowned jazz trombonist, that he became a stock broker (back then most people didn't know about taking care of both your left and right brain), and that teaching, playing four nights a week and being a broker had run him into the ground, so now he doesn't do s*** and he's a pretty boring guy. He was the first jazz person to become a member of the Duquense Club, which has consistently been voted the ritziest of the 6000 or so rich people's clubs in America. He lost a couple million in the stock crash of 2002, but he still goes there, and in fact he was just talking with Mrs. Dick, of the construction company, in the workout room there this afternoon. Then he began to talk about his rules for the kids he let play in his jazz band at CMU and how you have to dress as required and he made them follow ten rules and how this one kid showed up in red boots and he threatened to take him outside and kick his [behind]. I had to break off the conversation when we approached Holy Angels, so we shook hands and he said it was nice to meet me, and in the end it just comes down to a good handshake and a smile.

I walked slowly to my car and got in, quite bemused and wondering if anything he had told me was true. Mostly I thought about how he typified the self-centeredness of many old folks. Even as they eagerly seek to correct (or at least bemoan) the wrongs they see in so many others, they drown out all conversation and nearly ignore the one they are talking too. Such were my thoughts as I banked right onto Miller Rd. and saw Randy struggling to walk up our hill.

The part that amused me most and gave me several private smiles as I learned about his crazy good guitarist son on the way up the hill was that he said when I pulled over, "See? All that philosophy paid off--the good comes right back." Apparently getting a ride up the hill was the cosmic reparation for the instruction and "philosophy" he'd given me on the bus ride.

He directed me to his house on Shope, first on the left as you go up the steep little street. We sat in the driveway for a few minutes and he talked vehemently about his crazy **********er guitarist son who was voted best instrumentalist, period, at the Tenessee University where he just got his masters. Then we shook hands again, this one weaker and shorter, and a little cold to the touch, and I drove away as he walked up to the disheveled house.

I enjoyed telling Daniel about the crazy old guy I met, and speculating on whether any of what he said was true. It seemed almost too crazy to be true, riding a bus back from the Duquense Club to a empty-seeming house in West Mifflin, but nothing he told me sounded made up or inconsistent. So I let it ride, and ruminated on how it felt exactly like I'd been thrown into one of the short stories I've been reading in ENGLIT 0325.

Then it got downright fiction-like. I was walking out to the back of the van, parked in the garage, to get another armful of groceries, and wondered who Daniel was talking to. Sure enough, there in the street was Randy. I raised my arms wide and said "Wassup Randy!" like we were best buds, 'cause I knew him and Daniel didn't and that was cool, and he offered me five bucks to drive him to Applebee's. At this point I was up for anything, particularly because you never know how God will use you, so I said sure, and informed Mom that I met a guy on the bus and I'm giving him a ride to Applebee's. "What?"

First he talked about the trees "blown down by lightning" in his back yard. He'd asked his neighbors to take care of them and given one $100 and another who helped $50, and he asked me if I thought that was fair. To which I didn't have a good answer, but that didn't matter because he went on to talk about how they didn't want to take it but he said they could do whatever with it, it wasn't his anymore. "I'm blessed, yes, I've been blessed," for the third time since I'd met him.

Pretty quickly I busted out the question that would settle the veracity of his claims. "You mentioned CD's before. Could you give me any names of ones you've worked on? 'Cause I always enjoy music--jazz and even rock--when I have some background." As I was still finishing the question he started fishing a CD out of his pocket. He had apparently come prepared :-) He sold me his CD for five bucks, so we were squared away for the drive. It was a bunch of unofficial recordings of live performances of his over the years. As he told me about it and I looked in the booklet I realized, quietly and quite happily, that this guy was legit. I was indeed sitting next to a great jazz trombonist who taught at CMU and played and recorded with world-class artists and contributed to several gold and platinum records. The River City Brass Band has a lot of his former students in it.

My cell phone rang and he said something about my girlfriend calling and he didn't want to interfere with my business. But the flip phone had open and shut as I tried to get it off my belt, and it was Mike W calling, so I let it go. I put his CD in as we sat in rush hour traffic 700 feet and five minutes from Applebee's and he talked about his music with the greedy eagerness of old people full of experiences. He still likes music with the enthusiasm of youth. I prepared to tell him about Pure Boss, asking if he just liked jazz, or if he liked some rock too. To which he looked at me and said "Of course I like rock. I'm still alive, you know!" So I pulled Pure Boss's album out of the glovebox and showed it to him. He didn't buy it right then, but he liked that I was in a band.

As I coasted to the front of Applebee's he stuck out his hand, before I had stopped, and we shook again. He thanked me again and said he'd buy me a drink, but I probably don't drink. I said I don't mind a drink with the right friends, but I had to go anyway. He said it was nice to meet a nice young man as he closed the door, and then I tugged the clutch and pulled away.

http://flickr.com/search/?q=Randy+Purcell
http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.asp?z=y&CTR=160965

Nope, I didn't make all this up, though I feel like it's read right from a story in "Interpreter of Maladies." How weird and surreal and way cool.

--Clear Ambassador

New Attitude 2006

Ahh, New Attitude :-) It's interesting - my past Na's have been very good times, but I was a fairly lowly tagalong, in the shadow of social greats like Matt Duncan and Eric Grover, feeling mildly left out but still having a great time (I've gotten very good at that over the years). This Na I was smack in the middle of a drastically different set of people. I didn't hang too much with the older singles crowd from Providence (Domenica, Lisa, Joel and Cindy, etc.), but instead I ended up in a core group of me, Daniel, Heather Q and Jess Mittelman, and mixed that up plentifully with the emerging singles scene from Pittsburgh and Akron. I was older than pretty much everybody I hung out with, and the entire conference was suffused with the invigorating enjoyment of hanging out with young people. We wrung those four days of every moment of craziness and experience that we could, for once (for me at least) stringing ourselves out heedlessly on caffeine and disregarding the human body's need for sleep. And I regret nothing but the last two hours of the all-nighter Monday night (Tuesday morning, actually) when everybody went to bed and I felt weird and had nothing to do and it was getting light. When I think of New Attitude I think of Jess Mittelman, Daniel, Heather and Justin, the food court, the circle screens, the weird snappy snare drum sound, the street between the Galt House and the Hyatt, Mike Bullmore, imitation lucky charms, pop cans chilled on the AC vent, and the hazy glow of the streetlights Monday Night.

Spiritually, New Attitude was the gospel Red Bull I had hoped it would be. Josh Harris, Mark Dever and Mike Bullmore laid out the call to applying and understanding the gospel Saturday night and Sunday morn and aft, and Sunday night CJ paced the stage and poured out his heart, bringing us to our knees with his stirring presentation of the gospel itself. He seemed like the Apostle Paul, crying out to us from the storehouse of passion God has given him. Then on Monday we were informed on the Holy Spirit and deeply challenged to evangelism. Josh Harris capped it off Tuesday morning with a summary of what we'd heard and a perfect portrayal of how the devil will try to kill the seeds that had been sown and how we must, in that moment of failure and despair, hold fast to the gospel. Hold fast to the gospel. Hold fast to the GOSPEL.
On Monday afternoon I went to Mike Bullmore's breakout session about feeding on God through prayerful meditation on the Bible. IMO it should have been a keynote session :-) It left me with no excuse to not have regular morning devotions, great expectations for such devotions, and a simple, eminently doable plan for them. Thank you Mike! I'm looking to get up at 7:30am, devote for 30 minutes, and then rush to get ready and head to Pitt. Oh Lord, may I at last gain some measure of success and consistency in this area!
My family group was great. We were small, but they put together the community groups (150 or so people, of whom 15 family groups are formed for personal application and discussion after the sessions) by geographical area, so I knew or had some connection with almost everyone. Our leader was a champ, and our group was solid, and Jocelyn seemed a lot like me which was funny.

Some moments and experiences of interest:

- Catching up with the two PChOP vans on the way down, though we had left 2 hours after them!
- On the elevator ride up to my room immediately upon arrival having a totally random woman say "You're from Pittsburgh, right? [I'm freaking out inside] ..John....Behrens?" She turned out to be Sarah Kearney's Mom whom I'd never truly met before. So bizarre!
- Plunging my head into the swimming pool after wandering around the Beatles festival Saturday afternoon and getting very hot.
- Great conversation with Akron girls over dinner at the food court Saturday night.
- Playing guitar by the street outside the Galt House with Justin, Steve-O and Craig Saturday night, and then retiring to the empty lobby on the 25th floor for drowsy hanging-outage.
- Talking with Justin as our legs got rained on outside the Galt House waiting for the pizza to come for the PChOP pizza dinner Sunday afternoon.
- Going out with some of the older singles from Providence Sunday night and getting, appropriately, bourbon.
- Sitting at the bottom of the cavernous Hyatt between 2:30 and 4:30am Sunday night and writing a song, as I boldly claimed I would as we exited the Calano's room. It ain't a bad song, either. The only people around were hispanic hotel employees and the occasional small group returning from the bars.
- One such lady running over upon hearing the guitar and having me play a song. I pulled out "Blackbird" by the Beatles, and she was smitten. I got $6 for one song! :-) (We only made a total of $4 and some change Saturday night, all four of us!)
- Hanging in the Akron girls' hotel room with a ton of folks for lunch Monday since everything was closed 'cause it was Memorial Day. I had to work hard, but I did get some profitable conversation in :-)
- Swimming with Daniel, Jess, Luke and Matt H Monday afternoon.
- And that most magical of all times, those glorious timeless hours in the humid glow of the orange sodium-vapor lamps surrounding the square block of grass across from the convention center Monday night. I honestly don't even know what time we were there for. I just know that we sat and sang worship songs by the fountains for a long time and then played frisbee for hours in the lovely rectangle of grass. The temperature was perfect--I never once thought of us being outside. It was like that lit up block was our house. We ran barefoot onto the roads to get frisbees, we tore across the grass with our shirts off, we wandered around the fountains, and we sat at the tables and benches talking and playing guitar softly. We're outside? It's 3 in the morning? It's downtown Louisville Kentucky?

There is much more I could detail here, but I will leave it at this, hoping that these skeletal and emotional accounts will spur my memory in the future, and impart to my readers the feel of the conference. It's funny--I can get totally full of the people memories as though I spent the weekend hanging out, or I can get enveloped in the spiritual memories as though I was buffeted by a gale of quality teaching in isolation. But in God's great goodness those two were mutually inclusively present in one radiant weekend. And there I will leave you--gazing at this wonderful loving God who blessed me with such fun and such a merciful buffet of digestable truth, and most of all, who crushed His Son for me. He crushed him. Christ stood there mutilated, hated and beaten with the ferocity that MY perverse sins deserved, alone, with no answer from the Father who turned away from Him. I will never have to know the bottomless anguish Jesus experienced, and right now (and always) there is no obstacle to me freely coming to God, praying to Him, talking to Him, and being loved by Him. Thank you New Attitude, thank you Josh, thank you CJ, thank you GOD!

--Clarified Ambassador

New Attitude Parody

Hey hey!

Well, I still haven't had sufficient temporal freedom to justify the time it will take to write up the New Attitude trip, but I did come up with a parody of "Crooked Teeth" by Death Cab for Cutie. Mostly it came from the line "And kids strung out on homemade speed," which I kept thinking of as "we were kids strung out on lots of caffeine." :-)

The song is on the web HERE, and the words are below. Not everything may make sense, but I think you'll get the idea of the crazy good times and crazy good teachings we got:

It was one hundred degrees as we ran in the dark and played Frisbee
And we just didn’t care, we just stayed up all night
And refused, to stop, to sto – op

And we saw we’d made a horrible call
It’s a holiday, nothing’s open at all
So we hung around in a hotel room
And ate food

‘Cause God gave us some truth for our hearts
The teaching was good, every scriptural part,

‘Cause you can’t do nothing at all
If you don’t hold the gospel strong,
No you can’t do nothing at all
If you don’t hold the gospel strong

Yes, we played on deserted streets,
We were kids strung out on lots of caffeine
We had hotel rooms, but we did not sleep
At all, woo hoo, woo hooooo

And the pop, and the candy and treats
Tasted mighty fine, but they were bad for our teeth
And the elevators were filled with Beatle freaks and guitars

All those dudes came to louvul to speak,
Now the conference is done and they want us to leave..

And you can’t change nothing at all
If you don’t hold the gospel strong,
We’ve got churches, care-groups and songs,
Keep the gospel center and strong

So, there ya go :-) I know I know, I left out the third verse, but whatever. I figured it'd get tiresome, so I kept it succinct. Enjoy, and thank you Lord for New Attitude and for the truth it presented!

--Clear Ambassador