A New Wave of Friends

I recently did Part XI in my ever-expanding Friends series, the subject of which was Josh Manning. As I was typing it up, I realized that over the past semester or two, I've made new friends and gotten closer to a whole butt-load of people. It'll probably take a while, but over the course of next few months, you will see blogs dedicated to the likes of:

Stacey Labit, Kelsey Tomes, Lane Trahan, Clint Larson, Bonnie Hippler, Ciji Taylor, Carly Guidry, Josh Higgins, Michele DeClouet, Janna Mahoney, and quite possibly a few more. I hope you'll enjoy them!

~Ken, Born of Fire

A New Wave of Friends

I recently did Part XI in my ever-expanding Friends series, the subject of which was Josh Manning. As I was typing it up, I realized that over the past semester or two, I've made new friends and gotten closer to a whole butt-load of people. It'll probably take a while, but over the course of next few months, you will see blogs dedicated to the likes of:

Stacey Labit, Kelsey Tomes, Lane Trahan, Clint Larson, Bonnie Hippler, Ciji Taylor, Carly Guidry, Josh Higgins, Michele DeClouet, Janna Mahoney, and quite possibly a few more. I hope you'll enjoy them!

~Ken, Born of Fire

Friends XI: Josh Manning

This installment of the Friends is about Josh Manning, aka the J-Mann, aka Big Sexy. Okay, I made up that last one. No one actually calls him that. Well, I can think of one person that might, but I don't know for sure. I usually include a picture in these things, but Blogger isn't letting me right now, so I'll add one later. Anywho, the J-Mann and I became friends when he was an intern with Chi Alpha here at UL during the 2005-2006 school year. If there's one thing I can say about him, it's that there is definitely only one Josh Manning. Well, actually, there are lots of Josh Mannings, and he's friends with all of them on Facebook, but I'm willing to bet that none of them are remotely like him.

Josh is the kind of guy that it's hard not to be friends with, even if you try not to. Not that I ever tried not to. I'm just saying, he's easy to befriend. In any given social context, it seems that Josh's number one priority is to make people laugh, and he has about a 50% success rate, which is pretty good. And when he does succeed, he REALLY succeeds. Though Josh was only here at UL for a year, and even though he's been gone now for almost a year, many of his jokes are still told to this today, and his legacy is kept alive by those who loved to laugh at them. Like the one where you take a saltshaker and a steak knife, and say "What's this? A salt with a deadly weapon!"

Josh is also a great man of God who is enlisted in active service in the Kingdom of God.

Finally, Josh also has a great, highly entertaining website, www.joshmanning.com, which you can check out for a peek into his life. Whether you know Josh or not, I'm pretty sure you'll be at least mildly amused by this site.

~Ken, Born of Fire

Canelope

I eloped this weekend.
I went away and didn't tell nobody.
It was just me and the air
me and the wind
me and you
everybody
anybody
me.

Cake, wrestling, God, money.
The Earth is my dowry.

And now I'm committed,
though divorce is an option.

Insight from the Ecosystem

What is the definition of community?

I was looking through a few dictionary entries, and the best one I could find is actually the ecological definition from the American Heritage Science Dictionary. It reads:

"A group of organisms or populations living and interacting with one another in a particular environment. The organisms in a community affect each other's abundance, distribution, and evolutionary adaptation."

That second sentence is what really strikes me.

Think about your community:

How much do you affect the other members?
How much do the other members affect you?

I think we can measure true community by looking at how consequential each individual's actions are to the rest of the members.

What do you think?

The Restful Student

As the amount of responsibilities I have mount and mount over the years, I have found rest to be an essential part of my life as a student. I mean essential in the most serious sense of the word. Without rest, I cannot function. And I don't think you can either. In case it's any help to you, here is how I try to stay rested (try being an important word here).

1. Daily rest is important. At least 7 hours of sleep a day is always my goal. When I don't, I feel it.

Besides sleep though, I also need rest in the daylight hours. Maybe a nap, but not usually. Just a point in the day where I can relax a little bit. These can take a number of forms: sitting down with a cup of coffee, talking to people in the cafe, reclining in the recliner, quiet time with God, walking around campus, facebooking, blogging, etc. What I'm doing isn't important, as long as it relaxes me.

2. Weekly rest is not only important but commanded by God. The whole Sabbath thing. I try to honor it. The key is to not get tripped up by days or times. Do it whenever you can. I usually stop working Fridays at noon and resume Saturday after lunch. During that 24 hr. period, I don't do any work. I'm also flexible though. If something comes up, I might shift the time a little bit.

And most of it's just relaxing: video games, TV, reading, hanging out with friends, whatever. But I also try to have some version of an extended quiet time during this period.

3. Beyond daily and weekly rest, an occassional extended rest is often vital. Luckily for me, as a student, the university takes care of this one for me. I just try to make the most of my holidays.

4. Lastly, I have what I guess you could call "Spirit-led rest." There are certain times that I'm just doing homework or something like that, and my mind will wander off into thinking about something I've been dealing with or thinking about lately. Usually this is just daydreaming, but occassionally I find that God is speaking to me about something or giving me some clarity about something I've been thinking about. At this point I'll stop whatever work I'm doing, if possible, and allow God to speak to me, and then I'll write about it in my journal or on a spare sheet of paper. If it's not possible for me to drop what I'm doing, I'll make some time later in the day to get alone and reflect.

Anywho, that's I how I rest, and thus how I keep my mind awake and productive. I hope it benefits you in some way. Sometimes I feel like we live in a world of sleepwalkers. Let's make sure that our work and routines don't lull us into such a state.

I just read a good article on relevantmagazine.com. It was about people leaving or switching churches and claiming they weren't "being fed." The author suggests that perhaps we're not fed because we don't pick up our fork and eat. The idea is that you can have a great meal set before you on a table, but if you don't pick up your fork and eat, the food is not going to jump into your mouth. Thus, the responsibility falls not just on the pastor et al to provide the food but also on us to be active in eating and digesting it.

I like the analogy. I think there's some truth in it. What do you think?

I would also like to extend the analogy by adding that if this is true, then our own studying of the Bible would be our spiritual Metamucil Crackers, so to speak. This gives new meaning to the idea of having a regular habit of reading God's Word.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha . . . no, but seriously, what do you think? Chew on that for a minute and let me know how it tastes. Peace.

Born of Fire

A Note I Received

I got an unexpected surprise today. I found an envelope with my name on it at the Chi Alpha house. I opened it and there was a little card inside. On the front it said:

Thank You

". . .he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed" (Proverbs 11:25, NIV).

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I opened the card and the inside read:

"The pleasantness of a friend springs from

their heartfelt advice" - Prov. 27:9

(You are loved)

Ken,

You are a great Man of God and true friend for everyone in the house. Your jokes, light humor, and kind presence always bring warmth and peace to a room. You are always ready to listen and offer advice . . . always thinking before you speak. You are a great teacher and allow God to use you to impact so many students' lives. You are appreciated more than you know!

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Wow. The reason something like this means so much is because we tend to be pretty critical of ourselves. Even when things are going relatively well, we often have this nagging sense that we could be doing better, that we're not meeting expectations, whether they be God's, someone else's, or our own. So to suddenly run into a note like this is just overwhelmingly comforting. It's nice to know that you may actually be doing something right.

Anywho, the point is, when you see someone doing something good, be sure to tell them. It makes a difference. A big one, as vast as the universe itself.

A Brief Encouragement

Peace. Peace be with you. May the peace of Jesus Christ be with you. May the peace of Jesus Christ find a way to nudge itself into your busy heart. And there may it burst and spread and overtake every fiber and nerve of your being.

Clarification

To all who were disturbed by the poem from my previous post, I apologize. And no, I'm definitely not contemplating suicide, just in case you were wondering.

I guess I didn't think about it quite enough, but the poem was actually meant to be funny. How, you ask? So I had all this stuff about my eulogy and love and Jesus, but then my final and most passionate plea was that I wouldn't be dressed up in a suit and tie! Anywho, it was funny to me.

Oh, and be on the lookout. I think I'm gonna get a haircut soon. You may not recognize me.


Born of Fire

About My Funeral

Here's a poem I'm working on:

About My Funeral

To whomever will care for me
When I die:

Please tell everyone
how much I loved them.

Don't spend too much time
going on about me.
I'm not a great person now,
and I never will be.

Tell them all
about how Christ died for them.
I'll finally have a captive audience.
Use it
to say the things
that I like to say.

And PLEASE,
for GOD's SAKE,
don't dress me up
in one of those stupid monkey suits!
They do not suit me in life,
so I do not expect them to in death.

Remember me
just how I am.

A Little Historical Fiction

I've got a fun little story to tell.

So we all know that when God made Adam and Eve, he told them to be fruitful and multiply. And they had some other tasks too, like tending the garden, naming the animals, etc. But did you know that there was one task he gave them that wasn't recorded in the Bible? Yep.

Originally, God had also appointed them judges on the Earth. He said, "Be fruitful, multiply, and judge all that walketh upon the face of the Earth. Watch all they do, and based on their actions, decide and record whether each one is a good person or a bad person. And you are to determine how much love and affection each one deserves to receive, and mete it out accordingly."

And this all went fine at first. But as people kept following that commandment to multiply, and the population increased, it started to get a little burdensome. They were going through piles and piles of paperwork everyday. Meanwhile, the garden was getting overgrown and unkempt, and new species of animals were forming that they didn't have time to name. It was chaos.

So the overworked couple went to God and told him of their dilemma. And of course, God was very understanding and compassionate. He said, "You guys just go back to the garden, and I'll take care of this judging business." And Adam and Eve were very relieved, and they went back to the garden happy that they no longer had to carry out that wearisome job.

On Being Born Again

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be born again.

For many people, Christians and non-Christians included, born-again seems like it has become a term nearly synonymous with evangelical. That is, to say that yourself or someone else is a "born-again Christian" describes a certain set of beliefs that they have, or the type of Christian they are.

Christians should be especially careful not to use the term that way. When Jesus introduces the term in the Gospel of John, his point is that being born again is NOT about having a certain set of beliefs. A man named Nicodemus comes to him telling him that he believes Jesus is from God, and that it is evident from all the miracles he has performed. But Jesus doesn't accept this "confession of faith" from Nicodemus. Why? Jesus responds by saying, "I tell you truth, unless a person is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God."

Jesus said this to show that being a part of his Kingdom is something radically different and more than having certain beliefs. Belief is essential, but it is not the whole. Something must happen so deep and so real that Jesus likens it to being born a second time. Total surrender. To be born again, your life must be essentially replaced by the one Jesus offers.

Friends X: Lance Dunn

This is Lance Dunn. He's a limosine-ridin', jet-flyin', wheelin'-dealin', kiss-stealin' son-of-a-gun! Okay, so he doesn't really do all those things, but he could easily pull it off if he let how cool he is go to his head. And that's one of the best ways I can describe this man. He's comparable to a Ric Flair, or a Jack Bauer, or some A-list celebrity, but without the arrogance.

Lance has become one of my best friends this semester. One of the primary ways our friendship has taken off is that we've watched wrestling in his room nearly every Monday night this semester. That's bonding right there. And I can't wait for January 22nd, when we will have the ultimate bonding experience: attending Monday Night Raw LIVE at the Cajun Dome!! Woooooooo!

To summarize, a megastar personality, a blue-collar ethic, and a love for pro wrestling equal to my own--what more could I ask for?

Me, Me, Me

I don't have any kind of cohesive thing to write right now, so I'll just try something slightly random. Here's some things you may or may not know about me:

I have a fear of choking due to some childhood experiences. To this day, if a situation arises in which I really need to take a pill, I crush it up and mix it up with some water. Yes, the taste is horrendous, but it's better than slowly dying from an inability to take in oxygen.

I used to go to bed early and wake up early. Now I go to bed a little later and I still wake up early. (I gotta work of fixing that).

A discouragingly (if that's a word) large portion of my disposable income goes towards fast food (especially McDonald's) and coffee.

Even though I like to think I don't really care much about my physical appearance, style, etc., I surprise myself with how sensitive I become when people make comments about it.

I think curse words are often hilarious, and it sometimes takes all of my will power to not use them when the opportunity presents itself.

Well, that's all you need to know for now. Maybe for my next post I'll stop this recent trend of writing about myself. Peace.

PMS in Men

That title might throw you for a loop and have you guessing, but don't adjust your monitor. That's exactly what this blog is about. I'm thinking about doing some research on the topic because I don't how to explain some of things I experience otherwise.

I'm not trying to discount the discoveries of the biological sciences or anything. I just know that every once in a while (not once a month; maybe 3 or 4 times a year) I get pretty emotional for a few days. And for no apparent reason. Little things will make me cry (sad or happy, either way).

Just the other day, I went from feeling pretty down (which is not a frequent occurrence for me) to inexplicably exuberant in a matter of minutes (seconds maybe).

I hate my PMS days. And I really want to know why they happen. Any other men out there experience this? Or is it just me? (Please don't let it be just me, or this post will turn out to be quite embarrassing).

The Dark Side of Me

You may be asking yourself who this scary-looking guy is. There's a number of possible answers to that question. I could say he's a professional wrestler known as "The Undertaker." However, for the purpose of this blog, a more appropriate answer would be that he's one of my childhood heroes.

A conversation that I had with Amanda J and Jacob D'Avy recently got me thinking about this. I was explaining to them that I used to be sorta obsessed with him. Most people who know me know I'm a huge pro wrestling fan, and The Undertaker has always been my favorite wrestler. I had posters in my room, videos that I would watch all the time, etc. As I was thinking about this conversation, I started to reflect a little bit, and I asked myself why this was so. What is it about me that drew me to such a mysterious, ghoulish figure?

Despite how it might appear in this picture, The Undertaker was actually one of the "good guys" of wrestling for the majority of his career, especially during the time that I started to become a fan. He was often referred to as "the conscience of the WWF." I think that was one of the main things that drew my admiration. But I think it was more than that. There were plenty of other "good guys" in wrestling, so why him?

Well, not only was he a moral figure, but he had his own way of going about it. He did morality with his own style, and for his own reasons. He had a personal vendetta with evil, and he battled it by himself. He answered to no one. Essentially, he was his own master. His own God.

So in answering why I was drawn to the Undertaker, I think it reveals two desires in me: one for morality, and another for autonomy. While the former is perfectly good and noble, the latter is essentially evil. Now that I'm a Christian, I've had to learn that morality is not "mine." It belongs to God. It was his idea from the beginning. For me to have a morality like the Undertaker's, which I did, only glorified myself. A Christian morality is supposed to glorify God.

It's such a huge change! All of my righteous acts that I was so proud of as a young man, I now consider rubbish. God doesn't look at the acts, he looks at my heart. And the truth is, my Undertaker-righteousness was really not righteousness at all because it was usually done in my own self-interests. As a Christian, I now have to deal with the fact that true morality begins with a fear of God and submission to his will.

Wow. Writing this has really helped me understand a lot about myself. Thanks for reading.

Thoughts on Being a Jerk

A speaker I heard recently helped me realize that I'm a jerk. I found out a few years ago that I'm a sinner, but some how a full knowledge of my jerkhood didn't come with the package.

One might want to say that jerk and sinner are synonymous, but how can they be if one helped me understand something that the other didn't? And it's not that jerk can replace sinner; it just relieves it of some of the weight that it carries, so that it doesn't have to do all the work on its own. Sinner has religion attached to it. Jerk strips that off and helps you realize that you are, plainly and simply, a selfish human being.

For the unbeliever, sinner sounds so foreign. For the believer, it's almost too familiar, and it's impact is softened from hearing years of sermons on mercy and forgiveness. Jerk helps out in both of these areas.

And for the unbeliever, that's the first step to Jesus. If you grow up without religion, realizing you're a sinner can't be the first step because you don't know what sin is yet. (Actually, I think everyone knows what sin is, essentially. It's just the word that throws people off). But if you realize you're a jerk, Jesus can work with that until you understand the full depth and consequences of your jerkiness, which is what sin means.

Sin means that your jerkitude has some serious consequences, among them that it's gotten you into major debt with your creator. That's why Jesus died. Not to make us better people, but to literally save us from those consequences. He paid the debt with his own life.

The Brilliant Shades of Morality

When people talk about moral choices, they often describe things as being a "black or white" issue, (basically meaning something is clearly right or clearly wrong), or they talk about "grey areas," where there's no clear right and no clear wrong.

As useful as these terms are, I think they can, excuse the pun, color our view of morality. Black, white, and grey are precisely the colors that characterize the view we often have of morality: drab. Bland. Boring. Etc.

To me, morality can potentially be so much more, and should be so much more, especially when you introduce Jesus into the picture. When the light of Jesus's teachings illuminate that picture of morality, I find it full of the most brilliant colors. Morality can then be all sorts of different shades of green and blue and red and orange and purple and yellow and everything in between.

What I'm saying is, morality need not be dull. It only seems that way because we force it into rules, lessons, tracts, and 3-point sermons, and we hardly see it played out in real circumstances. Ask William Wallace if fighting for the freedom of his people was boring. Ask Martin Luther King if he was bored when he was battling racial injustice. Ask Mother Theresa if dedicating her life to the poor and oppressed was dull.

If morality conjures up bland, grey images in our minds, it's only because we don't understand it's true power.

Friends IX

Hello Blog of Fire faithful. Welcome to the 9th installment of my Friends series. The subject today is (though I unfortunately don't have access to any pictures of him) one of my bestest friends, Ryan Theriot. Now, since a good majority of my readers are people who know me from UL, I guess a lot of you don't know who Ryan Theriot is. Well let me introduce him to you:

Ryan and I's friendship stretches back over 15 years! We became friends in the 4th grade at Berwick Elementary school, and we've been best of buds ever since. To this day, Ryan is the friend that I always make an effort to see every time I go home.

There's so many memories, I couldn't possibly touch the surface of them here. I remember just staying up all night playing basketball. Or staying up all night playing video games. Or staying up all night watching TV and movies. Or staying up all night playing Magic: the Gathering. As you can see, whatever we did, it usually involved staying up all night.

Now Ryan is married to a cool young lady named Christina, and they even have a little one on the way. I still hang out with them whenever I go home, though we're unfortunately too old to stay up all night anymore. : ( But we still love to play games and/or watch movies. And that, in a nutshell, is my friendship with Ryan Theriot.

~Ken, Born of Fire