My, my. This morning I was finishing loading up a truck when I heard a scary clattering/rumbling that I quickly surmised was coming from the pellet mill area. Yikes. I gathered up the courage to run up the stairs and see what was wrong [By the way, the Booth Brothers are singing a real nice song called "Under God," but dude, here's part of the lyric: (referring to the U.S.A.) "dependent on his goodness / indebted to his care / maybe more than any people / anytime or anywhere." Now, is that not ethnocentric? We're pretty special huh? Sure more than, say, the poor people in Sri Lanka or Saudi Arabia... I heard something on Air America radio, they said "...and God bless the whole world!"] and between plugging my ears, watching a bolt fall from above in front of me, and realizing something was majorly wrong with the grinder, I called dad, who was just crawling back into bed on this Saturday morning, and told him worriedly that something was very wrong and he should come over.

Something was very wrong. Without going into details, stuff that held the big 200 hp motor in alignment with the grinder shaft had come loose, and it vibrated hugely which caused other stuff to come apart and bolts to be sheared off, and all was not pretty.

Invocation

For those whose eyes would see / Render them in faith to thee / For all those seeking peace / In thine arms all strife shall cease.

If we seek we'll find; if we want peace we'll find it in the arms of Jesus.

Easy to say of course, difficult to dogmatically assert said promise in the face of conflicting testimonial evidence.

I had a hard time explaining this song when someone asked me about it awhile ago. Sort of miffed me, that I couldn't articulate better.

My heart ached today, for those relationships that I have failed to develop. I'm going away soon, and when I do, how much regret will I have that I was not as close to those I love as I would like?

One of the strongest arguments in favor of scrapping my plans to go away to school is that it would disrupt my church life. I love my church, I love it! I love the people, I've invested myself into it, and to leave all that for a year or two is going to be tough. Not to mention that me leaving increases the chances dramatically that when I get a job it won't be in this area. Though that would be my dream.

I get to sleep in tomorrow, in other news.

Parties, Ketchup, Craziness, Burdens, and Laws

Four things, quickly.

The thing about this Constitution party is that they're really big into God. Their slogan is something like God. Family. Country. Sounds good. They're for limited government. Sounds good. But then they're for getting rid of pornography and gambling. That doesn't quite equate with me. "Let's limit government, give the people freedom, except in areas we deem immoral." Ok, so they're immoral. You better outlaw adultery, fornication, and cussing too. But then, the Bible says the government is to punish the evil doer. A pornographer is an evildoer; so is a cusser.

I can't believe someone would do this to me, be so thoughtless. And his girlfriend's around, which means he should be super-extra thoughtful. But no, he goes and takes the only bottle of ketchup we have in this entire house to work! Can you imagine? For the last two days, I've been reduced to preparing the "meat" of my lunch at home and taking it to work so I can consume it satisfactorily (with ketchup). What? Can you think of any good lunches that can't be made great by adding ketchup? I can't hardly. Ok, maybe a real good soup.

I've got to stop this working craziness. Notice the time I've been posting lately. I've been getting off work really late, putting in 11, 12, 13 hour days, and that's splitting between OSU and the pellet mill. The deal was--at the beginning of the summer--40 at OSU, 20 at the mill. That's been turned on its head lately, it seems I've had very little time outside of work. I know it's temporary, which is a solace. The sooner it becomes unreality the better, though I see dad's need to get hours in. We're way behind.

"Bear ye one anothers burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ." Haven't figured out how bearing someone's burdens connects to the law of Christ. Dude, I don't even know what the law of Christ is. Grace, maybe. If that's true, I can sort of see a connection. The law of Christ. Maybe it's the fruits of our Christian living. I'm going to read Galations again, I'm guessing I can get some clues as to what "the law of Christ" is there.

No proofreading.

Love Songs

Make sure and put me in the "Pro Love Song" category.

Oh yeah, love songs should be applauded, not as substitutes for the Ultimate Love or focal points of the Christian's life, but as expressions of the great gift of love the Ultimate Love has given us.

The whole idea of "Christian" music is a little misguided anyway, I think. Christian songwriters should write about life from a Christian perspective. I think that would mean that they write lots of "Christian" songs about their great passion, but they might write about "A Big White String" or how strange the thinking processes of girls are. You know.

Now, I'm not sure how that plays out in the popular music marketplace, but that's a whole different discussion, the "Christian Music Industry." I think the wrong people have the power; it's set up all wrong anyway.

Running with a full backpack is one of the more awkward things a person can do.

Partisan

If I were politically active, I think I might join the Constitution party! Can you imagine me joining some nondescript idealistic group of political crusaders? Nah, but they make a lot of sense.

I heard their presidential candidate on the Michael Medved Show today and he was fascinating! He called the two major parties Socialist Party [a] and Socialist Party [b]! And he kept telling Medved that he was making a logical error in his reasoning that would be the fatal flaw to his ideas. Medved was trying to say that a vote for the Constitution party was a vote wasted, especially since it would take away from votes toward the Bush campaign, but the dude said no, you've got to vote your conscience and you can't assume that any political candidate has no chance. If you don't vote your conscience, if you settle for "the lesser of two evils" there's no way you'll get what you want.

It's interesting how much I blather about politics on this page. I think it has something to do with the fact that my position on politics and my relationship to--and view of--the government is unsettled as yet.

It's raining today. Hadn't rained for a month, and then boom! The Grabers come and the weather starts. Last time they were here it snowed. I just hope they stay away during earthquake season (ha).

But dry and parched isn't what Oregon is. Drizzle is what Oregon is, and it's not so bad.

Other news...

Randy and mom left earlier this evening to pick up Shelle and part of her family. Randy couldn't sleep, he was so excited.

I received a letter from the IME department informing me that I am to receive a $400 scholarship for the fall term. That made me smile. Something about getting scholarship letters makes me unable to wipe the grin off the face.

I was thinking today of how it seems as if Tom and Kon used to state in fairly bombastic tones that I would be the first to marry of the quartet. They seemed pretty hopeless back then.

On the Christian's View of Government

Thesis: Christians ought not labor for a government that enforces their particular sense of morality.

Pro-: the Bible says we are to worry about the morality of our fellow Christians but not that of unbelievers. It also says any godly person will suffer persecution. Why should Christians be working toward a government that would do precisely the opposite? If we succeeded in, for example, attaining an all-Christian government, then what would we have? Depending on the leadership's philosophy, we'd be like Iran except Christian instead of Moslem. Well, I don't know that. I don't know what the activist Christian's ideal is if complete control was attained. Would our country still have the freedom to sin or would the goal be to eliminate any sinful practice?

Anti-: if not the Judeo-Christian ethic, what? What's to keep a society from imploding if not guided by an objective morality? And Christians should be laboring for the right on any level, whether it's government, business, church, or ... engineering. You know: abortion is murder, murder is wrong, thus Christians must fight against it.

So I don't know. But I'm a strong proponent of separation of church and state. Where the line between "church" and "we-have-to-have-some-standard-for-society-to-function" is I don't know.