I still do feel that need. I want to go to church. After a few weeks in Walla Walla, I was feeling a little lonely and started to realize just how blessed our little church is back in Wallowa County, Oregon. I was shy, I didn’t talk to everyone or know all the people very well. But they’re good people. Everything we did together was rich and warm. Even the classroom that our construction talent turned into a cozy chapel seems more warm, welcoming, and personal than any other church I’ve visited.

I miss the community touch that I had every Sunday. We’re ever so slowly trying to find a similar church here. I have my eye on Covenant Presbyterian Church. Many parts of the service are similar and hey, it’s within walking distance. A week or two ago we visited a baptist church that seemed solid, but I only saw one young family, and I’m not sure I can deal with that. The diversity of age and background at Christ Covenant is spectacular. Not so here.

Today I once again visited Blue Mountain Community Church (what a creative name). It reminds me somewhat of the church my grandparents used to go to. Every time we visited over the weekend, my brother and I would later agree that it was all very shallow.

The fact that the worship service begins at 10:15 seems to be a perk for me, however. Somehow, Saturday is the day I stay up latest on. You might think I would take up the life of a night owl being without a job, but usually I go to bed and get up at a reasonable time. Job hunting is actually much easier during business hours, it turns out. But Saturday night is my stupid night and 10:15 works out.

I walked in this morning right on time, unlike last week when I arrived 2 minutes before the service ended. That gave me a terrible feeling. So the praise songs begin and I sing along, warming up my voice as I go. A mustached guy in a chambray shirt bobs on stage, playing guitar and singing in a passionate voice, alternately fake shouting unintelligible lyrics not present on the projector screen. Applause erupts after a pitch perfect performance. To me, of course, this is not a surprise, but not what I’m used to at all. I don’t even know some of the songs.

But I stay standing in front of my bench in the back and sing them anyway. These people are all still Christians, or at least they say they are and I have no reason to not believe it. It’s all a little pentecostal, but it’s still a church and these songs can still be worship, even if they sound like Coldplay.

As I was about to pop some Stride to cover my cover my coffee breath and general lack of toothbrushing, my friend walked by with his daughter and nudged me. Took me a minute to recognize him sitting in the pew in front of me.

The sermon was basically about having family that God gives you—I think the idea was, here we are together in this church, we are a family to each other. I can dig that. After the service I slipped up to my friend and chatted for a few minutes. He left and I found my friend Ruben, an associate pastor there, and followed him around for a few minutes.

For me, that makes a good day, especially a good Sunday. Connecting with people who love me. At Christ Covenant, we called formally called that fellowship. Even our monthly church potlucks are called Fellowship Feasts. It’s all about being together.

[LINK TO POST]

The secret to mastering your time is to systematically focus on importance and suppress urgency. Humans are pre-wired to focus on things which demand an immediate response, like alerts on their phones – and to postpone things which are most important, like going to the gym. You need to reverse that, which goes against your brain and most of human society.

I’m reading Getting Things Done for the first time and it’s a nice tie in. Perhaps one of more to come.

[LINK TO POST]

[LINK TO POST]

[LINK TO POST]

The Heretic – The Morning News

For decades, the U.S. government banned medical studies of the effects of LSD. But for one longtime, elite researcher, the promise of mind-blowing revelations was just too tempting.

World’s best places to get high – Salon.com

Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and “more than 10 years down the line, drug use is down, rates of HIV infections are tumbling, and more addicts than ever have found their way into treatment.” In regards to Latin America:

If we produce this list again in a few years’ time, Latin American countries will probably dominate: there’s a huge movement to decriminalize — even legalize — drugs all over Latin America right now, spearheaded by Uruguay’s proposal to sell state-grown marijuana to its citizens. This is no doubt a visceral response to the bloodshed suffered during the U.S.-led War on Drugs. But in many of these nations the laws are still in flux.

This month, the citizens of Colorado voted to decriminalize recreational marijuana. Washington state followed suite, decriminalizing the possession of 1 ounce. This movement is going somewhere.

I don’t write offline tweets anymore, my brain just isn’t wired that way anymore. This is the tradeoff of being able to read books: slower thoughts that get stuck in a rut sometimes, less free association, more plod.

Knowing I have this power to rewire my brain is odd and exciting. The difficulty now is picking which wiring. Part of me idolizes the concept of old-timey ultra-productives. Think the blueprint-illuminating monk in Canticle for Leibowitz, or the non-fictional Alexander Pope, who spent two decades translating Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. I’d love to do one thing well for two decades, instead of a million good Tweets.

At the same time, this is not a very marketable skill. A world wired to consume things in short bursts needs creators of short bursts more than long haulers, it would seem.

A new metaphor I’ve been mulling for life, universe, everything, is the old cliché of “utilizing the whole buffalo.” You know, the idea of appreciatively and efficiently using what mother nature gives you.

[LINK TO POST]

“My favorite place in the White House,” said the president, “is this way.”

We walked down the living room, passing his study—a huge, formal room with a well-used feel to it. “You know,” he’d said to me once, after I’d asked him what it was like to move into the White House, “the first night you sleep in the White House, you’re thinking, All right. I’m in the White House. And I’m sleeping here.” He laughed. “There’s a time in the middle of the night when you just kind of startle awake. There’s a little bit of a sense of absurdity. There is such an element of randomness in who gets this job. What am I here for? Why am I walking around the Lincoln Bedroom? That doesn’t last long. A week into it you’re on the job.”

—From an interview with Vanity Fair

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama both expressed confidence in winning the White House. Only one of them got the job and while I know it’s not truly random, but a manifestation of God’s will, I can feel the same sense of absurdity as Mr. Obama. To hear such a self-assured figure admit this makes me laugh. I think Solomon would be laughing, too.

[LINK TO POST]