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

A Sneak Peek

I want to give you guys a little bit of a teaser for future blogs. I've got another round of Friends posts coming up really soon. I'll just go ahead and announce the subjects now. Ryan Theriot, Lance Dunn, and Josh Manning will be the respective subjects of Friends IX, X, and XI. Also, I might be changing the format for those a little bit. Instead of sharing a specific memory, I may try more of a "profile" kind of style. We'll see how that works.

I think I figured out a good explanation for why this life can't be taken too seriously. The statement that "life is short" has become cliche, but it is no less true than the day it was first uttered. Some might say that that's a sad fact, and while it is in a way, it's also what makes life so darn funny sometimes.

Have you ever seen the effect when an playwrite take some classic Greek or Shakespearean tragedy and shortens it? The result is that it becomes funny. All the plot events stay the same, but somehow if they are all condensed into a single act, presented at hyper-speed, they become comic. Well, in light of eternity, the life that we are given here on Earth is comparable to a one-act, super-fast play. Terrible things happen, but overall it's just too quick and too temporal to be truly tragic. Real tragedy is only possible in eternity, where eternal souls are destined for one fate or another. Everything else is relatively comic.

~Ken, Born of Fire

50th Post!

Welcome to the 50th post of the Blog of Fire!

Wow. This is such a milestone. When I first started doing this thing, I didn't think I'd actually keep up with it. It's a good feeling to start doing something and to see yourself remain committed to it.

The Fall semester here at the University of Louisiana is officially back in full gear. I'm teaching two sections of English 101 this semester, as well as taking 3 classes. What this probably means is that I'll be learning things that I want to share with you on this blog. Just today in my Medieval Literature class I learned something quite fascinating that I would like to share with you now. Have you ever noticed that we have different words for the animals that we eat, depending on if we are referring to them as animals or as food:

chicken - poultry
cow - beef
calf - veal
pig - pork
sheep - mutton

Have you ever wondered why this is? I found out today. Before I tell you though, you need to know just a little bit about the history of England. (If you know all this already, I apologize for insulting your intelligence).

A long time ago there was a people group living in France called the Normans. They were originally of Scandinavian descent, but after settling in France they were pretty much assimilated into French culture. In the year 1066, these Normans, led by William the Conqueror, invaded England and conquered it. So for a number of centuries, England was essentially ruled by the French.

Thus, the French language became the language of the nobility, the upper classes, politics, academics, etc. Now, going back to that list of words above, all the animal words on the left come from Old English, while the food words on the right come from French. This is because at that time, only the upper classes ever got to eat meat. The lower classes would be lucky to eat meat once a year. Thus, the words that the French-speaking nobles used for those meats were the ones that stuck.

Pretty interesting, huh? I think so.

~Ken, Born of Fire

The Hardness of God

C. S. Lewis, fairly soon after his conversion to Christianity, stated that "the hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and his compulsion is our liberation."

I had to meditate on that for awhile before I was finally able to grasp it. But I have found it to be so true in my own life. The same God who pursues us relentlessly nevertheless refuses to force us to himself.

Sometimes I find that his pursuit of me is so relentless, that I question how free my will truly is. Other times, his call to me is so gentle that I am almost scared by the freedom that I really do have to say "no." It seems like because of my rebellious nature, the mere fact of choice can often in and of itself turn into temptation.

Am I making sense? I'm finding these ideas hard to express because the only real sense I have of them is from personal experience. When I find better words, I'll post them. For now I'll just say this: I'm sure that God is not a tyrant in any sense of that word, nor does he just "let me be." In this regard, it's easy to describe what he doesn't do. As far as what he does do, I haven't quite found the words for it yet.

~Ken, Born of Fire

Friends, Part VIII

Welcome to Friends, Part VIII:. The subject today is the young lady in the middle of this picture, Sally D'Avy, younger sister to Kelly and Molly, the subjects of those last two blogs.

Sally is a good bit younger than Kelly and Molly. She's not in college yet, thus I don't really have the opportunity to see her very often, except for when she comes to Lafayette to visit her siblings. Despite the infrequency of our meetings, I feel a unique kinship with Sally. I often find myself unusually excited to see her and inexplicably exuberant in her presence. I think I can pinpoint the precise moment when this began, in a memory labeled "I'm SERIOUS!"

I forget exactly what the occasion was, but a bunch of us were eating dinner at some restaurant in Lafayette. Sally was in town, so she joined us. And at the time, I had lately been in the habit of doing this thing where I would be pretending to laugh at something, and then I would suddenly sober my expression, rip my glasses from my face, and say "I'm SERIOUS!" People would usually laugh a good bit, so I would jump at the chance to do it around anyone who hadn't seen it yet. Sally hadn't seen it yet, so I did it to her. She began laughing so much that tears began rolling down her face!

I would later learn that Sally's laugh-tears weren't an infrequent occurrence for her. Regardless, in that moment, it felt quite special for someone to laugh so much at my antics. The bond was forged.

Of course, I don't think that's the whole reason of why I've come to like Sally so much, but that was certainly the beginning of it.

Friends, Part VII

Welcome to Friends, Part VII, (I figured I've done enough of these now to warrant using Roman numerals). The young lady you see on the right (surrounded by all of her adoring admirers, or should I say "holla-ers") is Molly D'Avy, the subject of today's blog.

I remember the first time I met Molly, at a Freshmen Jumpstart, I knew immediately that she was a pretty cool person. First of all, she was a D'Avy, so that always counts for something. But I soon discovered that she was quite the talker, but in the fun way, rather than the annoying way. Over the past few years, Molly's penchant for verbage has led to some very memorable lines, including many almost random outbursts that come seemingly out of nowhere. I'll share two of favorites from Molly's "Random Outbursts" file.

One was when Molly, Kelly, and I were studying at Guillory. Of course you recall from the last blog that Kelly and Molly are sisters, and it's often very funny to watch them interact. They make each other laugh a lot, and you can't help but laugh with them. In this particular instance, they were going back and forth about something (I don't even remember what), then there was a brief silence, until Molly suddenly exlaimed to her sister, "WHY DON'T YOU GO SUCK ON A CHOCOLATE TOOTSIE POP!"

Another good one is from an incident at Cafe XA, where Molly and I are the Dynamic Duo of baristas. Molly was closing up the coffee bar and I was sitting on one of the couches, reading or something. I guess she was sweeping and there was an area of the floor that was wet and it was hard to sweep, or something like that. I could be way off. That's not important though. All I remember is, I'm reading my book, and all of a sudden Molly bursts out with, "Darn . . . cohesive . . . properties of water!" Yeah, that was definitely the first time I had heard anyone curse the bonding tendencies of H20.

Oh, and one more thing you should know about Molly. There's never a moment in her life in which she's not looking good. If you don't believe me, just ask her.

~Ken, Born of Fire

Friends, Part 6

I hope I don't overload anyone by posting 2 blogs in 1 day. I'm just in a blogging mood I guess. Anywho, you are now reading Part 6 of my Friends series. Parts 7 and 8 will soon follow. The subjects of these 3 blogs will be the 3 young ladies you see on your right, known to many as the D'Avy Sisters.

I'll start with Kelly. She is the oldest of the 3, the one of the left in the picture. As I was rummaging through the old memory vault, I found a file labeled "HAVE A GOOD NIGHT!" Ah, yes, that'll be a good one to share. It's one of my favorites.

Kelly and I became good friends primarily by studying together. We discovered that we were among the more studious students in Chi Alpha, so we were great study partners. On many days, we would be studying till after dark, so I would often walk her back to her apartment.

Well, on one particular night, it was already well after dark when we started, and Kelly had the great idea of going to CC's and getting a Mochassippi beforehand. Let's just say that Kelly + late night + caffeine = CRAZY! The funniest thing was when I was walking her home that night, we passed up a random guy that neither of us knew, and as we passed him up, Kelly suddenly turned and blurted out, "HAVE A GOOD NIGHT!" I laughed until we got to her apartment, and then I laughed some more until I got back to my room. That was awesome.

Well, stay tuned to the Blog of Fire. Next will be Friends, Part 7: Molly D'Avy.

~Ken, Born of Fire

I Love This Poem

A while back, I was at a Half-Price Books in Texas, and I bought a book called A Treasury of Christian Poetry. I want to share with you one of my favorite poems that I've read so far in the book. It's by Stewart Henderson.

Pentecost is Every Day

I share and share and share again
sometimes with a new language
which, if you are so open
will take you behind the sky
and award you cartwheels across the sun
I give and give and give again
not restricted by the church calendar nor concocted ritual
for I have no need of anniversaries
for I have always been
I speak and speak and speak again
with the sting of purity
that can only be Me
causing joyous earthquakes in the mourning soul of man
I am and am and am again

Where's God?

Let's play a game. Consider it a literary version of "Where's Waldo?," but this version is called "Where's God?" I'll give you a sequence of events, and you tell me where you see God in these situations:

I realized recently that I completely forgot to fill out a housing application for the Fall semester, and that the only applications being taken for men at the time are for a waiting list.

I go fill out an application to get on the waiting list, and when I go to make the pre-payment, my debit card is declined. This is odd because it's been a full 24 hours since I deposited my paycheck.

At this time, I also find out that the tuition waiver that I thought I had for the summer didn't come. I later find out that it's because I only had 3 hours, and I'm supposed to have 6 to qualify. Whoops. I owe the university some money.

So now, not only are my chances slim of getting into the dorms, but even if a room opens up, it's looking like I won't have the money to do pay for it.

On this same day, only hours later, I find out about a few other alternatives that I may have to staying in the dorms.

So the question is, again, where's God in this whole situation? Is it likely that he's directing all of this, and wants me to live somewhere besides the dorms for some reason? It doesn't seem likely at all that he would cause me to forget to fill out my housing application, but it does seem more than coincidental that all of these things happened like this. Did he cause my debit card to decline?

I'm asking all this because I usually use a lot of caution in saying "God did this" or "God did that." I think Christians say that all too quickly sometimes. Sometimes. Other times, I think God really is working for some specific purpose, and I'm wondering if this is one of those times, or if it is all a simple result of my forgetfulness and ignorance. Any thoughts?