But winter’s awesome! Ha! Snow is so much better than rain.

So I’m taking a look at my school term for Spring 2005, the second of three consecutive school terms for me, and I am loving it! Again, I don’t have classes on Monday or Friday, and only one class on Wednesday. The big stink, though, is that I have 8:30 classes again. This certainly does not bode overly well, considering I have a bus ride to school to catch. But, everything else is looking pretty sweet, so I should just suck it up and cut my losses 🙂

A quick Google search yields nobody. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that life is a bastard. Jesus said it, albeit it not so many words. And He lived the perfect life: living to the ripe age of thirty-three (or there abouts), dying on a Roman instrument of execution! Boy, am I ever glad that I signed up for this one!

Okay, seriously, what the heck. I stop writing for a few days and a bunch of things decide to take a pooper. This isn’t going to turn into a wahfest any time soon, but I thought that I should at least point it out. I suppose everyone needs little reminders now and again about how vicious life can get, and that we really shouldn’t be taking anything for granted. (Can you tell that I’m going crazy? How does that song go… I am slowly going crazy 1 2 3 4 5 6 switch! Crazy going slowly am I 6 5 4 3 2 1 switch! I love tangents. Aahh!)

So, anyways, there was something from the retreat that I was thinking about sharing. I held off for a little bit, mostly because I didn’t see the point in posting it. But after some discussions about my past, I began thinking about how much I have changed. In fact, I follwed what Jasmine did and ventured into the the depths of Hel.. er.. my archives. Oh what a silly boy I was. She says that I have grown up. I think that what I wrote on Sunday morning sums up my thoughts:

I have made it this far, but there is so much more to go / There is so much more to feel, so much more to know / I need to put myself behind me; my life cannot be mine / But I cannot do this alone; I need something divine.

Some two years ago, I would not have been caught dead saying this; instead, I fully imagine myself being one of those cocky, indignant boys that I love to hate. Something that I say to a lot of people is that, if I met someone like me, I wouldn’t want to be his friend. Honestly. Then people say that I’m too hard on myself and that there are things that make me a slightly-better-than-a-spawn-of-Lucifer boy. I probably heard about as many words of that as Beethoven did in his late career.

So what gives? I certainly acknowledge that my exposure to Kat & Co. has made a huge difference in my life. I went to my first Embassy service with them. That day in September, I was exposed to the black hole. I didn’t notice it at first, but it was pulling me closer.. ever closer.

But did those next couple of years suck (pun intended – har har har!). It was a long road in school. Work took its toll. My faith was shaky. My emotions were like a superball. No wonder I became “emo.” And, yes, I got sucked into the Embassy black hole.

Through all of it, though, there was one constant: God. While I didn’t feel it all of the time, I see now that He was indeed always there. It was His telling me that I should be a big computer geek and go to the University of Waterloo for Software Engineering. (Now where’s me pocket protector?) It was His kicking me in the butt to go talk to Kat and Katie that fateful October evening. (Whine and Cheeseball 2002, baby!) It was His shooing me into His house – then, a bar – and shutting the door. (Nothing insightful and/or stupid within these parentheses.. sorry.)

So God has led me along. But I still feel that, despite making what seemed to be a huge amount of progress, there is an endless amount ahead of me. There’s an entire lifetime to go, and I feel so grossly underprepared for it. I don’t have a roadmap for where I’m going. Nor do I even have a map. Nor do I have a compass. Nor do I have any sense of direction.

The insight that I found during the labyrinth, however, is that there were too many “I”‘s in the previous paragraph. Justin needs to trust God; he needs to put his selfishness away and embrace the selflessness that God calls him to do. Justin doesn’t need a roadmap, a compass, or a sense of direction. All he needs is Truth. And maybe a couple billion dollars. No wait… just Truth.

Through Truth, Justin will be able to find Company along his journey. The problem is, though, that Justin has a really hard time accepting the Truth. In fact, he isn’t even sure that he wants to know the Truth. By being ignorant, he can blissfully live life his own way, and not feel challenged to give up his life for a Greater Purpose. He can take care of his own needs, and enjoy the riches of the world around him.

But then, he’d also be screwed. This reality, however, doesn’t really persist in his mind. Like the rising and setting of the sun, his fear of the Lord comes and goes. While this doesn’t always show, it has been something that has plagued him for years. He doesn’t see any way to resolve this, either. Maybe he’s already screwed.

There still is hope for Justin, though. God can come and scoop him up from his present disposition and instill grace, strength and hope in him. For those of you out there that believe in the power of prayer, please try and remember to pray for poor little Justin. Pray that God will continue to affect him and that he will remain open and receptive to it.

And that’s the way the cookie crumbles. For Channel 5 news, I’m Bruce Nolan.

Alright, I’m awake and, as I promised, it’s time to finish my previous post.

The leaders were divided into five teams and, before we even got to Hidden Acres, the first element of the competition began: a crossword puzzle whose answers were found along the drive to the retreat centre. I forget how many clues there were, but we got all of them! Woohoo!

Our team (Team 2 or ‘Lettuce’) made a song to the tune of the Adam’s Family, and I had a good time soaking Andrew 🙂 There were a couple of sessions in the afternoon about realigning ourselves as a church. There were some group exercises meant to generate some short-term goals and identify areas of tension that prevent us from going where we want to go. While some people were idealistic, some were surprisingly pessimistic! It was very interesting to see and hear both sides of the spectrum, and maintaing some sort of balance was challenging. All told, I think that the important problem areas were pointed out, and the job now is to get working on them!

Like I mentioned, there was karaoke, perhaps my favourite thing to do in the whole wide world. And by favourite thing, I really meant least favourite thing. We had to do it, for the good of the team, so we got up and sang “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” At least it wasn’t a Backstreet Boys song, right? Right. Kat says that I seemed really “into” karaoke. That’s one big lie and I’m glad that I was far away from the microphone.

That night, I borrowed Paddy’s guitar and played for a good number of hours.. a group of us went to the recreation room and hung around. Some of us played guitar, some played cards, and all of us chatted with each other. Slowly, people skirted off to bed and, by the time 3:00 am rolled around, the last couple of us went too.

8:00 am. I’m awake. Ugh, that sucks. Shut down.

9:15 am. Hebron’s wandering the halls: “Room service! Room service!” I’m awake. Ugh. Breakfast time. I trudge my way upstairs, with my eyes half open, and my feet reluctant to move further away from the bed. I felt like death.

It didn’t take long for me to get some workable amount of consciousness… and good thing! The morning’s activity was walking the labyrinth, which is a guided path (i.e. no dead ends) with various stations along the way. Before we went in, there was time to do some personal reflection and spiritual meditiation. I took the Bible and I read the section about how the Bible came out. I’ve learned some things about it, but it was interesting to read how the most important book in my life was compiled.

Some of the stations were really good, and I think they seriously affected me. In particular, I liked one station where we cast a stone into a pool of water. The stone represented something that we wanted to let go, and the act of placing it in the water symbolizes us relinquishing it.

I spent about 80 minutes in the labyrinth because lunch was shortly afterwards; had I had more time, I probably would have been there for maybe two hours. After lunch, a group of us went outside to play around in the snow. The conditions made for really good packing snow and, well, it doesn’t take a genious to figure out what we did. There was one last session that afternoon before we all went home exhausted (physically and mentally)!

I had a really good time with my friends from the Embassy; I think we all took steps to grow as a team, and some of us had an opportunity to get to know each other better. Tonight, I really hope that the fruits of our efforts will begin to show…

Anyhow, I must apologize for the somewhat boring post. It was more a recounting of what I did than a reflection of what happened. I’m still mentally toast, and my creativity is somewhat lacking right now. I also have a substantial amount of reading to do and, subconsciously, I think that I’m going quick so that I can get to that soon! Another thing that I want to do in the near future is to have one of those good, reflective posts. Hang tight.