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Frogalogthe1st
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Name: Tommy
Gender: Male
Interests: The first thing in my life is my relationship with Jesus. After that comes everything else: spending time with my friends, reading, writing, drawing, good music, walking in select sceneries (I'm a sucker for a good patch of woods), cloud/moon/sun-watching, playing my instruments, philosophical and abstractly analytical thinking (not too great at the latter), and eating when hungry. And good art, rare though it is. And my favorite colors are green and brown. I like other colors, though, mostly natural ones. And I didn't draw the profile pic, even though I wish I could. That's it.
Expertise: Mostly artistic stuff, a lot of the above... I have a knack for figuring things out. Navigating concepts, I guess.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Creative Writing (for now)
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
3/28/2004
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| YES!!! God DOES want me to exercise spiritual disciplines!!
And it's wonderful. I just read about meditation, and it's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful thing. It's the practice of communion with God! It's a deep, intuitive rumination on Him, and it is practiced in four different ways in the book: meditation on the Word, re-collection (waiting in silence for God), meditation on His creation, and meditation on the times. It was SOOOOO insightful. I felt like a crashing wave built up in suspense and dashed against the rock that would finally give rest to my rolling over the sea. I felt like a cloud weighed down to the breaking point and finally bottomed out until I poured myself out and away, falling and crashing against the ground that would soak me up and send me out and up and together again. I was in a state of intellectual exultation reading those words, realizing that the very essence of what I have not practiced that is crucial to my life is meditation. There's no doubt more, but the contemplative life seems to be something I am especially intended to focus on. It's so funny, because when Jenny came to Ohio to visit while we were both there she gave me this test that SAID I was primarily a contemplative person who flourished best devoting time to dwelling in the Presence of God. I have a Bible Mom gave me when I was 8 that has a special message from her saying it is good to come to God, but it is BEST to abide in Him. I memorized John 15:1-something, the passage where Jesus speaks of being the vine, and encouraging us to abide in Him as He does in us -- I thought it was very important. It just seemed really important. I already had this major entry on here once about abiding, and how God was teaching that to me in my life. And I ALREADY read Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence and was completely blown out of the water like a fish blasted with a shotgun, because it was too amazing to comprehend a life like he led, and I didn't know how to go about it because there is so much in this life to occupy the mind, and well I already read this part of this book once when I was reading the book before only it was so challenging to think of not studying or gleaning for other people from my time in the Word that I couldn't do it for long -- I get to mentally hyper, frantic, wandering around, unDISCIPLINED. Well, whadayaknow but earlier this year I was working at Starbucks and one of my coworkers noticed me in a rush state where I was trying to get everything done quickly so I kept at maximum burn, and she was like, "Hey Tom (they call me Tom at work because it's hard to work with a Tommy who doesn't really look like one compared to other non-Thomas-named people), you seem really [frantic]. Have you ever tried meditating?" I told her that I had just recently (I was trying to read this book around then) read about Christian meditation, and was just starting it. And she said, "Oh, that's good. It's good to meditate." And I was like, "Yeah, it would be nice if I could actually MANAGE meditating." And lo and behold, it was just a matter of investing the seeds in my mind and heart until God brought everything about to show me WHAT His way was that I had not understood the first time!
I work every once in a while on a kind-of epic fable about these animals who are adopted by a beaver, and one of them is a jackrabbit. That's why I'm researching different animals every once in a while. Well, on researching jackrabbits I found that they are ruminating creatures, meaning that they, along with other ruminating creatures, digest their food more than once to get all the nutrients out of it. I won't tell you how jackrabbits specifically do this, but suffice to say that it was something I had already run through and tried to apply but didn't really understand the full depth and breadth of that I re-examined and found to be the crucial component my life, at least apparently, is missing. It's a wonderful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, at least when you're His child. Otherwise... well, Hebrews talks about the otherwise (10:30-31).
So that's all that's really going on, except that I am even more indebted to Mom now, and I suppose always will be, but that's okay because it's okay to be indebted to your parents, because you're already indebted to them anyway. It just challenges how you perceive them and act toward them already, because you don't think about what they "had" to do when you were little but you DO think about how you look at something that they want you to get done and leave it be while they just recently forked out a lot of money to invest in your exploits, deliver you from certain financial peril, etc. It is a humbling experience to live with. I suppose it helps acquaint me with how I should treat God, who basically did the same thing times a number beyond my imagination.
So that's that. God has, yet again, revealed His will to me at an opportune time. I'll keep you updated! Until next time!
Tommy
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| Hmmm... apparently, God wants me to begin exercising spiritual disciplines.
I take the bus a lot, and every once in a while I share a bus with Billy, this great guy just getting on track again with God in a passionate spurt. He may be evening out, though... but he has memorized so much Scripture it's insane.
Well, I shared a bus with him today, and we got to talking about our lives... he happened to be reading a book.
Earlier today, before I left, I had suddenly realized that sitting in bed for two hours instead of spending time with God had left me open for some unsettling dreams, and kneeling by my bed to read Scripture gave me the chance to plop my head down and ignore the fleas God may give to wake me up. In the middle of my discoveries I had an epiphany that several books sat by my bed, ready to read. The one on top I could barely see through the plastic bag (did I tell you about my room-purge? Well, in short, there was a roach awakened to its inner power): Celebration of Discipline, by Richard J. Foster. The last time I had tried to read it, it was amazing; but I lost track of it. It called to me again.
So it sat in my backpack on the bus while I talked to Billy, and noticed HE had a book he was reading, and I asked him, "Hey, you've got a book!" He said, "Yeah," and gave it to me to look at: Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, I think it was called. It was definitely about spiritual discipline. I was kind of boggled. Apparently, God has revealed His will to me. As the last verse I memorized lately says, "For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." (Phil. 2:13). That morning I had been reading along in Acts, and got to the part where Paul and Barnabas argue over taking John Mark with them because he had abandoned them earlier. It struck me that, according to how I have been shown the passage, John Mark abandoned the two after a long trying missionary journey where they had, until then, only converted three people. But right after John Mark gave up and abandoned them, God used them to bring revival in the very next city. If only he had used a little more---
God works actively and specifically in our lives, to point out what He wants done. He does not leave us hanging, just leaves us going the way He wants us to until He decides to schedule the next point on the journey. That's what I've learned so far. My prayer is that God's wisdom will add to me in such a way that the words to make it clear will become more and more succinct.
So that's the big new thing: spiritual disciplines! One important lesson that I've been trying to get my head around practically for a long time is the way between moralism and apathy. The book goes over that. I'm very excited to meditate on it (meditating is one of the spiritual disciplines, and it helps you understand something deeply rather than intellectually processing it). So that's what's going on with that.
I'm also cutting it close on a deadline for my term paper, which I'm writing on The Princess Bride! It's about the book as an epic inside an epic frame, and I focus on illustrating the epic nature of the frame as well as on the "abridger", William Goldman, as the hero of that frame. I think it's cool, but it's felt weird in spots. So I'm trusting God that it won't be a flop, or if it will be a flop it will be God's flop and not my flop. It's funny that I don't think more in terms of dedication to God than in terms of success. Another challenge.
The paper seems very boring, by the way, unlike the book. And I think the book may actually be addressing romantic ideals in an idolatrous manner, at least in the frame epic, which worries me.
Ol' Testament's still functioning. He has had a couple of hacking fits recently, and a couple of days ago he would stall whenever I turned the steering wheel all the way to the right when I was backing out of a parking space, but other than that no problems. Is it okay to address a mechanical object as a he, if you've named it? Maybe I should call it an it, even though I named it. Dunno.
But that's cool, because I don't mean to make it a person, just retain a flow of language. It makes me think, though, all the same, because everything and its uncle does.
Okay, that's all I've got. Until next time!
Tommy
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| Talk about exhausting.
God has been dealing with a particular fear of mine, that has consumed a great deal of my life as I try to avoid. It has been getting more regular, these forays into the unknown. It's kind of scary, but I haven't actually run into anything that I was afraid of yet except one thing, which was just an invitation for further involvement at the risk of everything I was aiming for being shot down. Yes, I'm speaking in vague terms, but after having decided on vagueness it's hard to go back when you're in the middle of stream-of-consciousness.
So what else? Other than that I'm slacking on my Bible-reading plan, which is stupid so I'm going to try to catch up every morning. Ezekiel is such an insane book. It's got such beautiful imagery in it. It may be one of my favorite books in the Bible, and I thought I could never find any.
Mom told me how to make nut butter!!! We ran out of peanut butter, but we have all these walnuts in the freezer so she just told me to get some walnuts, oil (I used vegetable oil on her suggestion) and salt, and mix them together in the blender. So I did, at 6 in the morning (it's a loud blender too), and it took a long time because I put all the walnuts in at once, and I kept having to turn the blender on and off to get the walnuts to catch... but once it was done, it was so CREAMY... I like crunchy nut butter, whatever kind I'm using, but it was very good walnut butter. I made walnut-butter and jelly sandwiches and took them to school. I used Concord grape jelly to save on our strawberry jam, which I really love but it would be a terrible shame to run out of strawberry jam, so... I don't mind the jelly. It tastes good with the walnut butter and the Milton's multigrain bread we use. Milton's multigrain bread is wonderful bread, one of my favorites, as long as I eat it with SWEET things; or butter; but it is AWFUL -- I repeat, it is AWFUL -- I emphasize the AWFULness because there are not many things in the culinary world quite as DESPICABLE as this bread -- with salty things like eggs and turkey. Meat. Milton's multigrain bread was not made for meat. You can tell, because the bag itself has a purple box on it, and the color purple (wait, isn't that a movie?) rarely is associated with meat.
In my experience.
Other than that, did I tell you about my new car??? Someone gave me a new car!! I love it. It's an old car, rusty in spots, as old as me (really), but it's the perfect color and it's enormous without taking too great a toll on the environment, so run-down I need to get it checked up as soon as possible but so stoic I can barely ever tell, smooth and sophisticated but boxy and conservative and everything looks closer to it than it really is so I never almost run into anything (you don't know how therapeutic that is for a guy who rear-ended someone in his last car), and the seat has just the right padding so it's comfortable and it grips my back so I don't slide down in the seat, which drives me CRAZY in other cars, and there's so much legroom and cargo room and, as someone I know observed, I could probably convert my trunk into a jacuzzi (which would be stupid). It's definitely the perfect car. And I got it for free! The people just GAVE it to me! God works for our benefit constantly. It's the perfect texture... and they want me to WAX it! Some people...
I decided that the name for this car, my first car, will be Old Testament, because it's a testament to God's goodness and mercy in my life, and it's the perfect hold-over while I wait in eager hope and expectation for the new to take its place. If you saw the car, you'd understand how wonderful it is.
So that's all that's going on! Okay, until next time!
Tommy
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| Hi! How are you doing? I am fine.
Actually, more than fine. Things come together in such wonderful ways, I'm actually glad I don't have more answers. However, there are plenty of answers still in process. So...
one of those answers was to a question about desire. I wondered if the desires I had to do things like draw and write were of God, because they were so intense. I learned that they were. That was such a relief! I also learned that it's impossible to extricate oneself from what's going on, because leaving those voids of life empty will lead to... well, you know, substitution. But I've told you this one already. The good merely taken out will substitute with the bad, because it comes easier. So there's a lot that's been cleared direction-wise.
Another help I've gotten is that God IS directing my path, by specifically slamming doors in my face. Smacking me over the head when I go way off, guiding me gently along the way I'm supposed to be going. Great stuff. That helps a lot also.
Another thing that has helped is a challenge to discipline from my pastor. Not directly of course. But ever since seeking a disciplined search for God in my life, it turns out He was way easier to "find" than I ever hoped He would be; yes, He's been with me, yes, He's been leading me, but sometimes the difference between tree-growth and grass-growth and bamboo-growth is not the relationship itself, in all its fervency on both sides, but on the relating, in all its regularity and determination. It is a crucial component of a relationship, I've learned. Very good to know, too.
So that's led to God's regular guidance in my life, and things are cropping up more and more as I seek Him, which is wonderful. You should seek Him too! He says if you will seek Him, you will find Him. I've been looking for how to seek, and the key is to come back regularly, to abide in a constant search, and that's the other lesson. Abiding. I'm getting better at it.
Nothing is perfect yet by any means, and there are still problems I've been carrying since I was two still manifesting, but it's good to have God there and to smack me when I go wrong. God's brought that to the forefront, that He gives us proverbial jackasses to guide us, like Balaam's. So even though we don't like how we get smeared in life, it's saving our lives from the invisible doom that threatens us, which is worth pain and humiliation when we mess up. So that's it.
I'm going to go now, lots to do! Mom has me on an art project for the church, and it seems God's blessing it wonderfully, even though it's not big. Well, it's said it will be big dimensionally, like a couple of feet for the whole canvas, but... you know... we'll see how big God decides it'll be.
Okay! Goodbye! Is "bye" an archaic form of "by"? "Have a good forthcoming passage of time!" How practical, and nobody has decided to reinvent it yet... amazing.
Tommy
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| It's high time for an update.
!
So what's going on? It's been an amazing few weeks (check that: couple weeks). For some reason I have been obsessed with doing animal studies for that idea I'm working on, working out how the animals look and move to get an idea on what they are generally like, catch their essences in more specific ways... It's very cool stuff. I wish I could show you this red panda picture I drew!! Talk about cute animals! It only took me half an hour, too... a quick rough sketch, but MAN... a complete proportionally accurate, properly shaded picture in half an hour... three inches across though it may be, that's amazing for my usual work pace. So that's been great.
What's also been great is that God has been meeting me more as I specifically seek Him, consistently, in the morning. It was hard to realize that I'd essentially given up on my just-after-waking-up time with God other than a quick glance at where my Bible opened up to, to chew on as I sat in bed for another hour or so... but that was the case. All my Bible reading and talking to God was in the in-between times, like on the bus and on breaks at work, during meals, etc. Now I do that AS WELL AS spending time in the morning. I've also, by the encouragement of the pastors at our church (to the church in general), started a Bible-reading plan that will get me through the Bible in a year. It's great so far. Just today's reading completely opened up my eyes in a lot of ways, especially Luke 11. If you read Luke 11 ever in your life, PLEASE soak it in with everything you've got to soak in things you read. It just transmogrified for me today as I dwelt on it, sitting and asking God and reading it, studying how the different sentences fit together. Also I read a part of Jeremiah I'd never read before, and slowly I'm developing a greater admiration for him. He seemed to be constantly whining to me before, but really he was fighting a battle in himself to blindly obey God in the most utterly whine-worthy situations. That's why you see him having so much trouble with it. He was like Rocky, sort of, in that way. To put it more accurately, I unwittingly paralleled my hero's struggle from The League of Unified Moustaches with Jeremiah's, which made reading about him even more intriguing because everything played out in ways I had not thought to make them go when I was conceptualizing my book. Of course, I have set the book on the shelf for the time being, not the least because my computer with it on the hard drive is completely useless right now...
So what else is new? Not much I can think of. More hours at work, more struggle at school, trouble with my Sabbath, praying about what to do with my partially self-imposed alienation, as well as my commitment issues. It seems God Himself is the only thing I can remotely commit to, for any great amount of time. Except maybe for Mom. And Jacki. And Dave. That's about it. So other than that, it's pretty much the same
EXCEPT FOR how I'm learning about Grendel in one of my classes and the perspective held by... John Gardner?... is quite intriguing. I was not expecting the spin it would put on the story. It was actually different from the cookie-cutter let's-ditch-anything-before-the-'70's slant people like to put on the average ancient narrative. So other than that, my life makes surprisingly homogeneous writing. Is that right, homogeneous? I thought homogenous was different from homogeneous... Well, I have been wrong before.
Okay, until next time!
Tommy
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