Ams' Graduation

I returned home Friday evening to be with my family and friends during Amanda's graduation. On Friday night Ams had her graduation party: lots of good food and good people. It was nice to see many of my friends again, and it was fun spending time with our relatives who spent the night (whom I had not seen since Christmas). On Saturday, a bunch of us went to a house on Bunnell Hill and explored. We're thinking about buying this house and selling our current one. It has an abandoned walk-in trailer in the woods, which I plan on renovating and making a reading lounge if we end up buying the place. Amanda and I went to Lenscrafters to order new contacts, Best Buy for some CD-Rs, and we stopped by C.V.S. so I could get some pens for camp. Last evening at 5:00, Ams had her graduation ceremony. She was so frightened, afraid that she would trip getting her diploma. "I would have cried," she told me. My aunt said, "Well, just looked over at us, and we would have all been laughing!" All of us ate out at Marion's Pizza near the Fairfield Commons after the ceremony, then most of our extended family left (grandma's staying the week because Amanda is getting her tonsils out on Monday).

Amanda and I are eating out at China Cottage at 11:00. Following that, I'm going to drop her off back home and begin my long trek back to camp. I won't get there until about 5:00, sadly, so I will probably not be able to go swimming in the pond today. Nevertheless, our training ends Thursday, and I don't start my first week of camp till next Monday, so I have a three-day weekend and plan on visiting the pond a few times. Kyle likes it when I dive into the pond off the dock. He says I look like a penguin, ha!

While at camp, I am unable to access blogger. However, I can still access xanga. So I am rerouting all my readers to the following address: http://www.xanga.com/ajbarnhart. Or you can just go to the top of the page and click on the "xanga" tab beneath the heading. Whichever is easier for you.

an entry from camp

I’ve been at camp now for several days. I made the five-hour trip last Sunday. Kyle and I hung out Sunday night and Monday afternoon, then Amos showed up Monday evening. We went swimming in a pond longer than a football field (and Amos and I swam the full length for fun, and it was exhausting). We’ve spent the last several days getting to know each other (we = the staff for camp this summer). Tom and Karen are in charge, Bucci is underneath them, and the counselors are me, Kyle, and Amos (for the guys), and Emily, Elizabeth, Jessica, and Margie. There has been a lot of laughter and it’s been really fun.

We’ve been spending a lot of time with God, which makes sense, since this is a church camp. It is good that I have been, so-to-speak, “forced” into spending time with God. It’s quite refreshing. I am exploring different types of prayer (for prayer is difficult for me), and I am meditating on scripture throughout the day. I believe this summer is going to be really good.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I feel like a sort of “transition” has been reached in my life, and now my life is going in a different direction. I am contemplating youth ministry again. I am clueless about the future (in all arenas), but I trust that God knows what He is doing. I entered into a dark spell, a chasm of sorts in my intimacy with God, and I feel like things are beginning to go uphill again. It’s a good feeling.

I am wrestling with some deep issues in my life. Confusion. Bewilderment. Trying to trust God in a certain area of my life. We went to Pittsburg yesterday and walked a labyrinth. The whole time I prayed about this one issue. I am praying for guidance and illumination. Seeking what God wants me to do and trying to remember that God knows what He is doing with me—and that He will fulfill the promises He made to me many months and months ago.

My little sister is going through a hard time. Keep her in your prayers, please!

a parable

There once was a penguin. His name was Bert. Bert lived on an iceberg. His only friend was a Walrus named Edward. One day Bert felt the temperatures getting warmer. Edward would often swim the waters, and so Bert asked the walrus if the weather was indeed getting warmer. Edward said, “No, it is not getting warm at all!” So Bert didn’t worry about it. He kept sensing the weather getting warmer, and he continued asking Edward about it. Edward kept telling him everything was fine. Bert believed him. One day Bert noticed that the edges of the iceberg seemed smaller. Edward swam by, and Bert asked him about it: “Does my iceberg look smaller to you?” Edward denied this. Bert said, “Okay. I trust you. You wouldn’t deceive me. You are my friend. If it were shrinking, you would tell me, wouldn’t you? Because I would want to swim to another iceberg.” Edward said, “Don’t worry. Everything is fine!” So Bert believed him. Edward stopped swimming by. Bert noticed that the iceberg was indeed shrinking, so he leapt off the iceberg and began swimming for another iceberg. But he found no more icebergs. His iceberg had drifted south hundreds of miles, and he grew tired. Eventually a sea lion came by and ate him. His blood turned the water red and orcas dined on his remains.

i leave tomorrow... err, today!

So it's 1:15 in the morning, and I should probably go to bed soon: I am teaching a class on servanthood tomorrow for the high school students at Southwest (I would call them high school "kids" but I am no less a kid than they are), and I am making the 5-hour trek to Burghill, Ohio to start camp training. I'm really excited. It'll be good to see Kyle and Amos--and get out of this rut of monotony by actually doing something. Amanda's graduation party is this coming Friday, and I'm leaving camp at noon to make it there by 5:00. I head back Sunday afternoon (the ceremony is Saturday at 5:00, the Nutter Center).

Courtney is deathly ill: she's anemic and has a sinus infection. They're going to be doing surgery on her soon. She's been ridden with sickness for nearly two weeks. My heart breaks for her. We broke up today. It was more of a mutual thing. See, we'd taken a "break" but gotten back together. But the problem was, we didn't deal with our issues. We just went on the steam of liking one another. I love this girl, and she loves me, but right now we can't be in a relationship. So this time we're actually going to take a break for real (it will be hard for me to see her when I am five hours away). We're on really good terms. We were texting back and forth on the phone today about the most random stuff and she was cracking me up. She's hilarious.

I'm excited about this summer. Not just working with kids and being around some of my best friends, but being in an atmosphere conducive to helping deepen my richness with God. I'm really excited about it. I will be stretched, tested, and I will be forced to grow. I'm hoping to come out of it a new person. I'm hoping to find direction for my life. We'll see if that actually happens! So far, the said direction seems fleeting.

All right. I'm starving. I'm going to eat a bologna sandwich and then hit the hay.

my evolving theology

The other night, as I stood out on the deck, looking at the moon, I thought about my evolving theology. Before I started school at Cincinnati Christian University, I wrote a treatise of my theological beliefs called "the forgotten message." Many of my views since then have changed. Not because I have better schooling or a widened vocabulary when it comes to theological ideas and thoughts, but because of my life experiences. Our life experiences shape our theology. One's biblical theology, you could say, flows from his or her interpretation of the biblical texts. Yet no interpretation of the biblical texts goes without the influences of one's culture, values, and personal biases. Our life experiences also have a profound influence on how we read and interpret the biblical texts. When I was suicidally depressed, much of my theology evolved and transformed. It's nothing I'm ashamed of. It's how these things go. Yet one of the most profitable evolving theologies I underwent was the transformation of my perspective on God's character. I had viewed God, subconsciously, as One who searches us inside-out for any faults and then punishes us by taking away what we truly desire. This was the perspective I had when Julie broke up with me. Over the past few months, propelled by my depression, I came to a new understanding of God's character: He is a God of Love and a God of Grace. As the Apostle Paul puts it, God's abounding grace far exceeds our abounding sin.