It’s been a crazy month. Sue’s been sick a lot – allergies are pretty bad this season. Plus – she’s been fighting this cold off for what seems like 3 years, and it’s finally caught up with her. As a result, I’ve had a lot of free time just to do my own thing which has been interesting. I’ve had a lot more time to play guitar, write songs and learn about who I’ve become. God’s been giving me some really great insight into what makes me tick. He’s shown me a lot of things that I really need to change and give up. I don’t want to give these things up – I really enjoy them – but they’re not helping me. I’ve kind of been re-assessing my faith. I’m trying to turn my life around so that I’m not taking things at face value, but really searching in the scriptures for the truth. Like my tattoos – rather than just listening to other people say it’s a sin or it’s not a sin, actually going and seeing what God has to say about things.
As much as I hate working for CCS, in hindsight it’s forcing me to do a lot of thinking. For those who don’t know, I work at a Christian school teaching middle school. Many of my kids aren’t Christians, but have Christian parents. Talking to these parents has been eye-opening in a lot of ways. I’m not really going to get into things but I’ve been raised as a first generation Christian. My parents aren’t Christian so I’ve had to learn my own way around being a Christ follower. Most of the people I work with would disagree with the way I live my life. I drink. I listen to non-christian music. I believe in evolution. These are all big problems according to some people I work with. It’s led to some interesting conversations and left me labeled as the rebel. I think it’s the spiky hair.
Being put in this position, I’ve found myself really examining what I believe and why I believe it. Like why do I think it’s OK to drink beer when so many other’s don’t think it’s OK. In doing all this self-examination, I’ve been asking lots of “dangerous” questions. At the same time, I’ve been listening to a series from Mosaic entitled “Life’s Toughest Questions.” One of the things I love about Erwin McManus is the fact that he’s so genuine and honest. Some of the questions they’re tackling are – Does God Care? – Is Faith Non-sense? - Is There a Hell? – which are all things I think I know and understand but was never sure why I believed them except – my pastor told me so. I guess I really don’t have much of a point to these ramblings except to say that I’m constantly learning that faith is such a fluid thing. I’m enjoying reexamining my faith and adjusting according to what God’s showing me.
But the year’s over in less than a month which is great. This will be the first year though that I don’t get paid through the summer. Part of the private school curse. So I’m kind of freaking out that we’re hoping to buy a house in a few months and we’re moving to Pittsburgh this summer with or without jobs. So we’ve been submitting applications and resumes and going on interviews but as of right now, we’ve got nothing for next year. I’m trying to be faithful that we’ll get jobs but it’s so tough when you see jobs open and close and you don’t even get a call. And it’s tough to look for a house on the internet and not be sure if you’re working 10 minutes or 80 minutes away from that house.
But on to more important things…
I finally went to see a concert. After what seems like a 2 year dry spell of no live music, I went to see Ben Gibbard on Wednesday. For those who don’t know, Ben is the lead singer for Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service. He embarked on a month long solo-tour where he performed solo on the acoustic guitar and piano. He brought along one of my favorite song writers – David Bazan. So on Wednesday I ventured down to the TLA all alone. You see, I ordered tickets online. I went to get two tickets and it said two tickets were not available. I double checked the the show was not sold out, so I tried again and again to no avail. I decided to try to order one ticket and it let me buy my ticket. Within seconds of me buying my ticket, the show was announced as sold out. So I bought the very last ticket available. But I had to go all alone. It’s OK though, Sue actually had an interview in Pittsburgh that same day so she couldn’t have gone even if she wanted to. I got there about half way through David Bazan’s set which was OK because, frankly, his new stuff sucks. Ben came out with a Donovan cover which led into a Postal Service cover. He continued the night with a great mix of new DCFC stuff, old DCFC stuff, TPS stuff, solo stuff and covers. It was kind of like a Dashboard show though – everyone was singing along to every song – loudly! He pulled out some interesting covers including an acoustic version of Thriller to end the night and a piano version of All Apologies. In the end, I think that about half of the songs translated to the solo acoustic setting and the other half were just kind of awkwardly performed. (Soul Meets Body was played on piano and slowed to a funeral march pace – not fitting to the song) But it was just nice to be out seeing some live music again. The move out to Pittsburgh is going to suck because bands don’t really like to tour Pittsburgh the same way they do Philly so my choices will be limited.
OK – off to take care of Sue and write some songs. Talk to you soon!
I bent my wookie.
