Question.

It's quarter till 4am, and I'm wide awake. Is that bad?

My character sheet.

NOTICE: This post is going to have some serious geeking out in it. I won't be surprised if half of you have no idea what I'm talking about.

So I was working at a table top RPG one day and I got to thinking how I would look on one of those sheets of paper. So I sat down and thought hard on it, and this is what I got.

Jusin Fighter lvl 1 Human Lawful Good 5'8" 180lbs Brown Hair Brown Eyes


STR 15 (+2) HP: 13 AC 20 Move speed: 20ft

DEX 14 (+2)

CON 17 (+3)

INT 15 (+2)

WIS 12 (+1)

CHA 10 (+0)

Fortitude 7 Base Atk Bonus: +1

Reflex 4

Will 3

Melee Total Attack Bonus = 3

Ranged Total Attack Bonus = 3

Weapon: Longsword Total Bonus +4 Damage: 1d8

Armor:

Shield: Heavy Steel Shield: Armor Bonus: +2, Armor Check: -2

Skills: Jump +4, Climb +3, Knowledge Religion: +6, Search: +2, Spot +2, Listen +3

Feats: Weapon Focus: Longsword, Improved Initiative, Shield Focus Heavy Steel

Yeah, total geek. I know.

My favorite "pick me up."

For when I feel sad. It's a song.

Whenever life gets you down
Keeps you wearing a frown
And the gravy train has left you behind
And when you're all out of hope
Down at the end of your rope
And nobody's there to throw you a line
If you ever get so low
That you don't know which way to go
Come along and take a walk in my shoes
Never worry about a thing
Got the world on a string
Cause I've got the cure for all of my blues.

I take a look at my enormous penis
and my troubles start a-meltin' away
I take a look at my enromous penis
and the happy times are coming to stay
I gotta sing and I dance when i glance in my pants
Oh yes the feeling's like a sunshiney day.
I take a look at my enormous penis
and then every thing starts going my way.

*whistlling interlude*

a zubba dub dub ba hey hey, a shooby doo dee
a dubby buzz buzz a shooby doo wa

Zubbi-doo-zub-bub-diddy-bub-bub PENIS!
Zub-abub-duh duh duh duh daa.

I take a look at my enromouse penis
And my troubles start a-meltin' away
I take a look at my enormous penis
and the happy times are coming to stay
I got great big amounts in the place where it counts
Oh yest the feeling's like a sunshiney day
I take a look at my enormous penis
and then everything starts going my way.

Listen for yourself. It's awesome somehow.

Anxiety attacks!

Or something like it. Ever get suddenly wound up over an unknown? A sound, a blur, a notion? And suddenly your blood is ice, you're heart's a rock, and your legs can't budge. And when you sit still your heart beats a bass drum in both your ears and your intestines tense and bunch like a snake ready to strike.

At any rate, I can't sleep. I wish I had something more awesome to post.

Statement:

As long as my life is ruled by love, no matter how scarred it may be by sin, it's worth more than a life sin-free that lacks love.

Say Cheese.

Brrrrooooooootheeeeeeeeerr.

Imagine. A small, curious thing with no regard whatsoever for convention. Germs, disease, social aptitude--none of these are worth any consideration.

The floor tastes like funny.

Things are around for the mere experience they offer--and they can be experienced in so many ways. Nothing is normative, only creative (and maybe informative). Things are for trying out and having fun: when people get in the way of experiences, then there is a problem.

I wanna do it! No, me! Let me use the Drill!

Experiences themselves are good. The outcomes don't matter.

But Mac, he's going to SCREW IT ALL UP!
No, I'm just screwing the wheel!

Of course, once experiences are had, they are defined as good or bad based on one thing: how much fun is had.

I like this game!

Sometimes Things must be done for their good stuff. Other times Things must be done just because.

Yeah, I like Candy.

Naturally, not everything turns out as planned.

Candy is broken.

Such is Cheese, the oddly shapped yellow thing that stabs people with carrots, insists on painting bunnies on cars, and likes to eat soap.

END POST HERE. BEGIN RANDOM CHEESE QUOTES HERE.

I like chocolate milk.

I HAVE SCURVY!

I FOUND A CARROT!

Hi doggies.

I'm a lady! NOW WE'RE BROTHER LADIES!

My being stirs.

After a few weeks of feeling deadened, I'm finally coming back to life, I think. I read a book! And what a book it was. It was The Bellmaker by Brian Jaques. Very good read.

In the book, two searats, Slipp and Blaggut, stumble upon two infants from Redwall Abbey. Searats are bad guys, btw. Redwall Abbey is a place chock full of good guys. Blaggut finds the children and tells Slipp, who is the leader of this duo. Slipp is ruthless, cunning, and cruel. Blaggut is simple to the point of being stupid, oafish, and totally honest (which is odd considering he's a bad guy).

Slipp suggests making the children slaves and using them as ransom for whatever treasure might be in the abbey, but Blaggut won't hear of it. He protects the children and befriends them, causing Blaggut to create a ruse that places the searats as simple tradesmen who stumbled upon the babes. They're let into the abbey.

Slipp pretends to be a cook, and Blaggut pretends to be a boatmaker. Neither have done these things their entire lives, but it helps them while they scour the abbey at night looking for treasure. Just one problem. The abbey elders (who figure the rats are up to no good) try to pry them out of their lie by putting them to work at the jobs they claim to do. Slipp sucks at cooking, but Blaggut is an amazing boatbuilder and builds two small boats for the children he found in the woods.

As the two continue living at the abbey Slipp gets more and more pissed, and Blaggut gets more and more comfortable and at home--in fact, he proves to be a pretty good beast.

But on the night that Slipp kills the badger mother, the two rats run away, and Blaggut makes up his mind to be evil no longer. He turns on the abusive Slipp and kills him, then returns to the abbey to make his apology.

He then goes out to the seaside to live in peace and build boats all day.

I liked Blaggut. He was my favorite. I'll mannered, smelly, and crude, but good as gold as best he could be.

It stirred my being, I tells ya.

My inner geek meets my inner theologian.

Yeah, so I was watching Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back when the movie came to the part where Luke Skywalker meets Yoda and begins his Jedi Training. As I was so wrapped up in the complete load of Awesome that Yoda is, the education I got in college started to work with what Yoda was teaching. Then I realized that a majority of Yoda's dialogue with Luke is about faith.

You must unlearn what you have learned.

How many times have I heard that statement? I read it in a Taoist book, and the Bible says something similar. "Lean not unto your own understanding," it says. This is not a Head vs. Heart issue. It's an issue of control. When it comes to matters of faith, you cannot always let your mind scream at you, "LET'S FIGURE IT OUT!" The mind helps us to understand God, and know good from evil. It doesn't help us believe in Him. For that matter, the heart doesn't help us to believe either. It helps us to love God. The soul, that is what causes us to believe in the way that we call Faith.

When I became a CHR major and I began to learn about the Christian religion, I thought myself ready to face any kind of faith challenge. I was prepared and strong. I had tools to answer questions. I had nothing.

Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless.

It's true. I daydreamed about all the theological heiney I could kick and all the good I could do once I had this degree. I looked towards my career (at that time I thought it would be pastoring a church: That's gone). I looked forward to all the good I could finally do. I nearly missed the things I could do now, and didn't appreciate the things I was already doing. I was ready to be quit of the "in-between time" and get on to the important stuff. But we spend most of our time living in the "in-betweens." My home was there. I nearly missed it. I didn't like it much at first, but gradually came to love it.

Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is.

So as I continued to grow comfortable in my home (Friends, family, and community [also my weaknesses, my shortcomings, and inability]) I was able to finally start earnestly searching for God. Little did I realize how close God really was. And what at first was a desire for a meeting with God ahead, I found God in the very near future.

Not far. Yoda not far. Soon you will be with him.

Being blinded by my own forward facing outlooks on life, I missed God's presence--God's Now-ness. Later on I only missed God when I found myself doing things that made finding God hard. Not going to church, staying busy and crowded all the time--those things kept it hard.

Now I'm on a God hunt to see what I can do here and now. Hopefully God will allow me to take the little I have and get a lot done.

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.

So, faith. I've not said that word out loud since I started, so I might as well start making it a more integral part of what I'm doing. Faith, as Monsignor Cuddy says, it taking God at His word and trusting what He says. As God teaches us through others and Creation, we come to find that God's empowering presence can really give us peace wherever we are. After all, God is everywhere. And God, being everywhere, and being all powerful, can do anything, anywhere. I want to see it, but most of the time I'm like Luke. I've got enough to move stones, but moving the larger, more important things, that's too hard. Take Grad-school for example. I know it can be done, but I don't know how. Certainly I can't figure out how to do it.

So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?

Yoda's reply to Luke's nay-saying really got me here. God says, and I hear, but I act like none of it matters. There's always an "if" or a "but" or some sort of caveat or addendum that seems to negate it in my mind. There's something there that keeps me from going out and doing the Awesome that I can do in the name of God. And what is it that prevents me from these things?

Only what you take with you.

Sometimes I sit down with God and I say, "The everyday, common things are decent. They're expected. But the others?" Luke has a similar statement. He tells Yoda that there's a big difference between lifting stones and lifting his fighter from the swamp. And Yoda, that Little Green Ball of Amazing replies:

No! No different! The only difference is in your mind.

Common things: A fast shift at work. Uncommon things: Affordable Grad School. Neither of these things are different from one another. To have faith enough to know that God will deliver a fast shift at work is the same amount of faith to know that God will give affordable Grad School. Maybe that's what Jesus meant when he said that if we had the faith of a mustard seed we could move mountains. But somehow, there's a difference and we can't do any of it. It looks hard, so it must be hard. It still looks like bread, so it must be bread. It looks like wine, so it must be wine. It can't possibly be the body and blood of Christ, right? We can't believe it!

That is why you fail.