Another year, another emo blog post. Well, hurray.

Before this year, the concept that I might want to pursue a psychology degree never seriously entered my mind. God has a way of changing minds though, and over spring break He showed me that I really need to be helping people. With my then-major Cinematography, you can do one of two things: bring ‘awareness’ to an ‘issue’ or make movies. I understand that both of these are valid options, but not for me. I need to be helping people however I can, because that, quite simply, is what I feel called to do. I honestly can’t quite rationalize it, but there it is all the same.

Still, another option has been brewing in my mind. If I decided to pursue this, I would quit JBU and the study of Psychology and go into Computer Science. I would work as hard as I could to be the best computer programmer/analyst/administrator I could be, and from that position I could help people as much as I could with computer problems. This is a tricky issue for me, I really love doing this kind of thing, but again it boils down to the fact that it’s something I don’t feel called to do. I suppose it’ll be a hobby all my life, at least!

Now comes the point in every post’s life where I suddenly ask myself ‘where am I going with this?’ You’re probably asking the same thing, out in cyberspace. From where I stand, I have two options: follow God, or follow me. Option one, I go where I feel God is leading me and live a life of discomfort and weirdness, possibly in some foreign country with no clean water, but eventually get rewarded with ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ Option two, I go with what I want to do and although I could help people, it would be a hollow victory at best. This reminds me of the sheep and the goats in Matthew, and if you read said passage, you’ll know which one I want to choose. I want to go all out for God, kamikaze so to speak.

There is one problem with this, but there’s something one of my teachers from high-school wrote back in late July you should read first. Back already? Ok then, he’s talking about names as identity, but I’m dealing with a slightly different part of the concept. I know my name, but I don’t know what it means. Do I identify as a Christian, as a student, as a computer nerd? Should I try to accomodate all of those into one identity? Whatever the answer, I’ve had enough of trying to define myself on my own terms.

Here’s the problem I spoke of: in the analogy of the potter and the clay, I know I need to let God be the potter, but I don’t know how to be the clay. I have these nagging fears, what if I’m not good enough, or strong enough? What if circumstances conspire against me and I fail? I honestly don’t know how to continue past my own stupid. So I’m going to be in prayer about this, and I ask that you pray for me to. I’m going to close out with a quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

‘I think you have not quite understood our purpose. You talk as if we had come to you with our hat in our hands, begging for shipmates. It isn’t like that at all! We and our royal brother and sister and their kinsman and Sir Reepicheep, the good night, and the Lord Drinian have an errand to the worlds edge. It is our pleasure to choose from among such of as are willing, those whom we deem worthy of so high an enterprise. We have not said that any can come for the asking, that is why we shall now command the Lord Drinian and Master Rhince to consider carefully what men among you are the hardest in battle, the most skilled seamen, the purest in blood, the most loyal to our person, and the cleanest of life and manners; and to give their names to us in a schedule.’ – King Caspian

He goes on to say what rewards await those who are are chosen, that they will have money to make them and their children rich, and how they shall bear the title ‘Dawn Treader’ all their lives. That is my ideal. If Christ were to make a list of all those who could come with him if he were to take everyone today, based solely on how they lived for him, I would probably not be on that list. In reality, very few people would. But I want to live for God in such a manner that I would be on it, or at least that it would be very hard to cross my name off.

Godspeed.

This truck was ridiculously awesome. Just look at all those boxes. For everyone who was wondering, Mission Survivor was frickin’ awesome. I’ll write about it later I think.

I have a paper heart. Paper is crushed, rip, torn, and burned easily. It is a fragile substance, any number of things could happen to it at any given time. Yet it’s an awesome medium for expressing oneself with the written word or drawings and stuff like that.

Origami is also awesome. You fold paper until it looks like a crane or a frog or a little dog or whatever. And any paper can be folded. Even burned, ripped, bad paper can be restored when it’s put back into a pulp and made into new paper.

Can you guess where I’m going here?

SCHWING! Cheesy Christian metaphors! The Bible’s full of stuff like God’s the potter and we’re clay, but with concepts like Orientalism and Anime in the west now, I think an analogy of paper folding and origami will capture attention better.

Yes, God is folding my heart into whatever He wants it to be, and I’m ok with that. No doubt I’ve been burned and torn beyond recognition as paper several times now, and each time I’ve been smushed back into pulp, reformed, and refolded. And hopefully each time the origami becomes more beautiful, more intricate.

But here’s where the analogy suddenly sort of breaks down. Some pottery is for noble purposes and some is for common right? Well what good can even a pretty, intricate, even beautifully folded piece of masterful artwork origami do practically? In short, Matthew 5:14-16:

“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

I think that beauty is infectious. I also believe everything has a set purpose. True beauty is the kind that you can only see when something is accomplishing that set purpose. I think that my purpose is to spread the good news. Not the kind that tells people on the street that they’re horrible sinners on their way to Hell, but the kind that is with you when you’re feeling fine and when you’re feeling horrible.

Therefore my origami heart hopefully shows God’s beauty and grace through the way my actions unfold (hah, get the pun?) every minute of my existence. This is how beauty is practical, I can give people hope and life through what I do.

So yes, I know, that was really cheesy. But I think it was worth it. Let me know how you feel in the comments!

I know the term “ring by spring” applies mostly to girls, but a lot of my extended family  got married in college (a few of them at John Brown) and so I’m feeling more than a bit of pressure there.   It’s probably a bit wrong of me to expect to make more than friends for at least the first semester, but I’ve never been a really adept person at relationships of any kind.  If any female-type person reads this: sorry, I’ll try but I’m going to be awkward sometimes.  Yeah.

Second thing that’s been on my mind is technology.  Why is it so necessary in the first place?  When I was at home I would spend nearly 24/7 on my computer doing some form of electronic thing or another.  It was good, and I enjoyed it.  But now that I’m here I spend maybe an hour on the computer, and most of that’s just checking facebook and e-mail and doing homework.  It’ll get to be more I think as the year goes on and I have to write more papers and stuff, but for now I could get along fine without a computer.  And I actually like that for some strange reason.  Before I couldn’t even imagine being without a computer for any length of time, now I think that I could do like a 6 month mission trip or something with limited access to any form of communication without much difficulty.  Just one of those strange quirks of getting more mature, I guess.  Who knows what God’s got planned for me?  I haven’t even touched any of my programming projects in nearly a month.

The third thing is church.  I’ve gone to a church with some friends called Community Christian Fellowship (CCF) for the past couple of weeks.  It’s kind of a funny thing though, there’s nothing unsound in their doctrine or in how they conduct their services.  In fact I like the church, the pastor, and the music, but there’s just something there that I can’t really account for that kind of throws me.  I think the term for it is a “cognitive dissonance.”  Something that needs to be resolved but can’t really be easily without major change.  Luckily in my case, major change won’t be hard to do.  I’ll just go to a different church next Sunday.  I could actually go to a different church in town every week that I’m here.  There’s something like 40, I recall hearing that Siloam Springs has the highest churches per capita in the U.S.  It was even in Guinness.  I don’t want to do that, of course.

Well, I just got completely distracted for nearly a quarter of an hour.  Relative time to posting = fun.  I’m in a purely different mood now.  Write ya later!

Welcome to my life.  In other news, I’ve started www.therealcaffeine.com back up again, going to try to do a weekly video of some kind, even if it’s just a webcam rant updating my friends and family how life’s going.  Comments?  Suggestions?  Please?

I took some photos of my friends the other day at our Bible study. This one of Pat is the one I think is the best. I used quite a bit of editing to get it to look more saturated in the grass but not blown out on his face. There’s another photo at the tag where I cloned him. Fun times

Huge Tire

I’ve started a portfolio account on Flickr. I think I’ve got most of the good photos that I’ve done, but I need some feedback. So if you’re bored, could you look through http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianhicks/ and tell me which ones to nuke and which ones to add? (Most that I can add are here) Much thanks!

Loud voices, each with their own dischordant harmony of rights and wrongs, each with opposite ideas spewing forth in sync with life’s heartbeat. They are the ebb and flow of the tide of opinion; the word on the streets, the press releases, and the fantastic tales. These voices, each individually clear, are muddled and confused by speaking on unison. Their accapella crescendos and diminishes, fades but never dies. Their pitch and timbre constantly shift pitch, wallowing in ad out of thirds and fifths. Their clarity grows and changes and occasionaly snippets of beautiful voices may be heard, different from the rest in their sheer overpowering volume, soaring above the chaos.

“And they do not rest day or night, saying: ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’”

I hear them when all is still, all is quiet, when the whole of humanity stops to catch it’s collective breath. The voices can be heard on mountains, in valleys, at home, at church, in community, and at silence. But curiously, despite their majesty and despite the truth of their statement, nobody seems to be able to hear. Maybe they’ve plugged their ears so to not hear or perhaps it’s just that because of the constant loudness they’ve gone deaf. And sometimes because of that loudness, I can’t hear the voices myself, but I know they’re there.

Here is the real social injustice: that the world is so loud, the community so large, that no individual sound may be heard. The noise continues unabated. Koyaanisqatsi.

“The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress.”

But it needn’t be this way. Silence can be restored as easily as turning off the music and cell phones and just listening. Order and peace can be bought for less than a ticket to a new age seminar. So to the list of slogans and phrases add one more:

Finally I’ve shot a HDR that doesn’t suck horribly. This ‘un is of a lightpole in a Wendy’s parking lot. For some reason, I associate these poles more with Wendy’s than I do with their actual logo. But with this shot (as in all the other HDR that I’ve taken) there’s artifacts that look like compression artifacts, which kind of sucks :\