Session is over for me

Last night was my last session meeting for my term. It has been a long 6 years. When I started I was jumping from job to job after being laid off, and now I have a nice stable job with UWMC. 6 years ago our church had a pastor, associate pastors, and were gearing up for a major addition to our building. Now that addition is completed, we even re-modeled some other areas, our pastor left, we hired an interim and are in the process of searching for a new permanent pastor.

I've also learned a ton, about our church history, both good and bad, about some of the people in our church, both those i've served on session with, and through their eyes others, and about myself and my relationship with god. Its solidified some beleifs i was noodling around in my brain before.

All in all it was well worth it, but it will be nice to be off for a while and just be an average church member, not having to decide the path of the church.

Facebook changes society

Ponderable:

Pre-Facebook Myspace and other social networking sites, many people had silos of friends that for the most part didn't interact. Work friends, school friends, family, church friends, gym friends, etc. Sure they might meet sometimes, but by and large they remain seperate.

But now social networking sites are mixing them. Its not immediate, people still tend to stick to their silo, but the lines are bluring, reducing the degrees of seperation.

Is this good or bad? Dunno, I tend to go with a little of both. Any tool that brings people closer together is good I think, and these sites definatly do that. Even if that closeness can sometimes be painful ("you like that person, i can't be your friend any more") but in the long run, they can help promote communication, and thats always healthy.

Anyway, thats just a ponderable, a quick thing to think.

Rocking in a New Year

I invited a few people over (it started as them inviting themselves) and we played Rock Band 2 to ring in the new year. Now balls dropping, no fireworks, just friends, games, music, and drinks. Tiki related drinks mostly.

Holiday Snow

Holiday's are come and gone. We had mondo snow storm here in Seattle. Over a week of snow and below freezing temperatures. I don't ever remember it being so cold and snowy for so long. A day or two mayb, 3 if were lucky, but 9 days, crazy. But as much as the city grumbled, half about the snow, and half about how "those people" reacted to the snow, we survived. Another step completed in our traning for the Zombie Apocolypse. Seattle will be ready.

While I had the forsight to take the snow week off as vacation months ago, I had planned to spend it at Cama Beach, not at home. But they had even more snow then I did, even if I could have manged to somehow get my Mini out of the driveway and onto the freeway. So they canceled my reservation and gave me a refund. Another day. Also decided to stay at home for Christmass and wait till the weekend, when the roads were a little better to head up to my parents. It worked out well, one of the benefits of being an adult is you can wait a few days for presents and not freak out.

Anyway.. the new year. what to do. Mostly I'm happy. I could make resolutions, but I know I wouldnt' stick with them, no self dicipline for that kind of thing. Defeatist? maybe. But I prefer to think of it as knowing and accepting my weaknesses. I'd rather make efforts to improve things when the mood strikes me sometime in the year, rahter then try to force myself to get motivated on this one day.

Money Quandry

I'm pondering my giving right now. Church says give 10%. ok. But i've never done that, having always felt I give time to church, and specific moneys to specific needs, and give most of my moneys to other things like Child's Play. Very worthy charity, but not "God driven". But is that important? Will I have less in heaven because I didn't give what I could to God? I don't think so.

I beleive there are no levels to heaven, the truelly longtime faithful do not get a better heavenly experience then the recent believers. I also have a hard time... no its stronger then that. I can't believe in a god, that would send Ghandi to hell, just because he was a Hindu did not beleive in Jesus. My current belief, is that God is huge, all things, everything we can imagine and more. Well if he is everything we can imagine, well then why can't he be everything every other major religion imagines as well? I mean if you look at it (disclaimer: i'm not an expert on religion, so i may be wrong) they all beleive in a Supreme God, by whatever name. And the rules\teachings\commandments are all pretty similar, allowing for a bit of divergence because humans are the ones writting it down and passing it on.

Anyway, what was the point? oh money. So accepting that God is more then I can imagine, I don't find it hard to beleive he finds it perfectly acceptable that I give money to a non-christian needy kids charity and not to a church that has turned into a clubhouse.

Its been said before...

Good lord can they possibly fit any more games I "must have" into a few weeks? Fable 2, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead. And If it had been any other time I would have bought Mirrors Edge and Deadspace as well, but those will have to wait.

Fallout 3

I know everyone's already said it but Fallout 3 is awsome. It directly feeds my particular love of "wandering to see whats over here style" of gaming. So many times in games I wander only to find nothing. But here, in this devastated capital landscape, I wander over here, I find a cowering survivor, I wander over there and find the remnants of a house complete with child skeletons and a skeletal couple embracing each other on the bed. And while the landscape may not be destructable like some games you can blow up an entier town if you lean toward the evil path.

mmnn.. actually, enough blogging, i'm headed back to the game.