30 Mile Walk

Salut,

I have been picking up biking again lately. Not like Freddy Adams biking but more like normal people biking. I bike over to Palm Beach island and bike along the beach for about 6 miles till the island stops at the this dock that I like to jump off of. One the way back I like to stop at some random part of the beach and swim a little. It's nice because no one goes to the beach up there (mostly because it's all private beach stuff) and it's really relaxing, and really energizes me for the day.

As I was riding today I thought back to my freshman year when I walked 30 miles to church. If you don't know the story this next paragraph is for you, if you do, skip that paragraph and i'll meet you down there.

One of my friends Matt Von Herbulis, who is a brilliant man, and an avid adventurer and lover of life, decided that he wanted to walk from Orlando, where he is from, to West Palm Beach to school at the end of winter break. He wanted to do this because Matt has a heart of gold and loves homeless people and wants to relate to them and experience God in a way many Americans don't understand. Well, just like anything else, he needed practice. At the time, him and I were going to a church in Boca Raton, just about 30 miles south of West Palm. So him and I decided that he would practice by leaving for church Saturday night and get there Sunday afternoon, and we could practice our street skills along the way. We left around 8 p.m. and walked until about 10 and then tried to find a place to sleep. We ended up sleeping next to a coin laundry and barely slept that night, due to other homeless people walking around, police sirens and being next to a busy street. The next day it was a billion degrees, or so it felt in my corduroy pants (terrible idea by the way) but we made it to the church around 3 p.m. after getting up at 6 a.m., exhausted and sunburned.

And were back. Well, one of the lessons I learned on that trip, besides walking in corduroy will chaff like no ones business and is a bad choice all around in Florida, is that when you slow life down, you get to catch a lot of things that you can learn from. As we walked along Dixie Hwy we discovered little things along the way, whether they be restaurants, funny signs, or cool murals. We had somehow found out how to slow down life, and enjoy it where we were. It was a bizarre feeling driving home and before I could point out that that was the coin laundry where we slept all night, it was gone. People were looking over their shoulder and squinting trying to see it as we drove by at 40 mph.

I feel like that is how we treat life. I know I have said it before but I feel this pressure from people and society ever time they ask what I want to do after I graduate. It is almost as if they are pushing me into my career and trying to get me right into the grind of "normal American life" and want me to be focused on what I'm going to do and what I want to accomplish and what kind of job I want and how much money I want to make and where I see myself in five years and....... What I really want to tell them is to just take it easy, relax, it'll be just fine. I want to focus on where I am right now, not where I'm going or what I will do. It's that kind of thinking that made me discontent with where I was. I become discontent and wasn't thankful for what was around me.

The heart of discontentment is a lack of thankfulness. This was my lesson this summer and me slowing down life. Enjoying life in the moment and the little things has been that lesson in action. I have been discontent because I just want to go outside and climb mountains and boulder and hike in the woods and camp, but I can't. I can't even surf cause the waves suck. To enjoy life now I have just started doing the same active things outside here and being creative. Climbing really crappy walls with friends, biking on the beach and just sitting down and enjoying the beach and God's creation.

Slow down life and enjoy the moments you are living right now.

My 2 cents:

I have been loving the song "the great estate" by the freelance whales. It's about reincarnation but the music is incredible and the chorus is about as catchy as any katy perry song that we won't admit is stuck in our head.

Vivre dans l'amour et la paix,

drew

Il n'y a qu'un bonheur dans la vie, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé.

Beastie Boys

I want this blog to be enjoyable. I don't want all my blogs to be super deep and heavy. Part of life is laughing and enjoying stories (which is one of my favorite past times of friends from home, just simply sitting around talking about stupid, yet totally awesome, stuff we did when we were in High School).

Any, this blog is really about Girls, but I thought that if I made that the title you would just roll your eyes back (like we did to our parents when we were 8 and they were making us brush our teeth, or 22 and having our mom still tell us this) and say "oh gosh, another boy blogging about girls". I didn't want that to happen because it's completely true. And by writing this paragraph I simply delayed that reaction until you read the first sentence.

If it makes you feel any better and makes you any more likely to read this, this blog is really about my roommates.

My roommates lives pretty much revolve around women. Not in the bad way like they are always dating one, but in the pathetic way like they are desperately trying to find one to like them to date them. If any news comes by the apartment about a girl liking one of them it turns into a sort of awkward celebration. The one that cracks me up the most is named Johnny Bananas (yes I had to use the song Hollaback girl to spell bananas, but who doesn't!) His real name is John Baggerman (facebook stalk him please) and he got the name Johnny Bananas because during Jersey shore a commercial told us to text a name this a certain number and they would give us a guido name for him, so we did. I don't know what bananas had to with his name but he is now Johnny Bananas, or JBB ((John+Baggerman+Bananas) but seriously, facebook him, it would be hilarious, and yes I double parenthesized that).

He gets the ladies left and right (mostly because freshman girls love upperclassmen, just kidding.... but really). But the kid deserves the attention he gets. He is just an overall cool kid. He loves him some Jesus, plays guitar (who doesn't at a Christian college) and is a pretty fashion savoy kid. The one thing that sticks him with the ladies though is that they for some reason find his paralyzing fear of introducing himself to women and talking to them cute. No really, this fear is serious.

Yet he always has girls following him around, and they always seem to be the ones he really isn't interested in. One of the reasons he is my favorite around the ladies is whenever he says he is going anywhere. I always just ranting about how he is going out to meet with some lady and he gets redder than Lindsey Lohan at..... well I probably shouldn't go there. Anyway. He just gets beat red and it cracks me up that a guy who wants a girl and talks about girls so much can't stand the thought of talking to an attractive women without freaking out.

Well that's all I have to say about the infamous JBB. Please talk to him randomly on facebook, call him Johnny Bananas and compliment his sweet dance moves.

Vivre dans l'amour et la paix,

drew

Il n'y a qu'un bonheur dans la vie, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé.

Burning Bridges

Hola,

This blog isn't so much inspired by a current event as much as it is me reflecting on one of the more important lessons I have learned in college.

I recently was sitting in on a discussion about the mosque in NY and how that is raising so much controversy and whatnot. The discussion was rather dull until someone tried to attack Muslims in general. Accusing them of takeovers and all having bombs strapped to their chest.

This is the sort of stuff that breaks my heart.

(stay with me for this rant in the next two paragraphs)

I think it is so easy to point the finger and forget to look in the mirror. We understand our view as right, therefore when we are examining another view, whether that be another religion, politics, favorite food, etc, we refuse to examine our own views in beliefs because it is almost assumed in our minds that's its right. For instance, I believe that many people few Muslims as terrorist that are after and hate America. This is true with some Muslims, a small minority of them. I think when we take that statement and step back, we begin to see the real picture and what's really going on, and through that, we can come to respect and understand, and not fear, Muslims.

Terrorism makes news, so we are going to see lots of news about radical Islamic terrorist, and not many about the other 3 billion that aren't doing these things. These few Muslims kill anyone who disagrees, they have attacked other Muslims (during Ramadan no less, which could lead you to argue that they don't really follow Islam at all), not just Americans. I believe saying all Muslims are like that is the equivalent to all Christians being like the Klu Klux Klan. Of course this outrages us, as it should, because they represent such a small, non-biblical, voice in the Christian world.

I say all this just to say that we step on to many toes. When we step back and see people for who they are, we can love as Christ did. Instead of harping on the differences between Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, Calvinist, Lutheran, whatever it maybe. How about focus on the fact that we all want to follow Jesus. We both want to love others and pray to God that loves us?

This applies to everyday life: Someone gets angry at you and insults you. The normal response is to be angry back or to retaliate or hold a grudge. Yet if we can pull back and see times when we were justifiably or unjustifiably angry at someone. Say you have a friend whose boyfriend cheats on her. She has every right to be angry, yet if she can pull back and see when she cheated on him, (Jesus said that to look at another lustfully is the same as adultery, it's just not in the publics eye, but worse, in our heart) and to forgive. This is no easy task and I will be the first to admit that I fail many times at doing this. But that is the kingdom of Heaven, and whether we understand it or not, usually every sunday we pray that "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven". We are called to live out God's kingdom on earth.

This is how we are different, how we stand out, how we become salt and light. We love like people have never seen. We do this because we have seen this love in our Maker and live to imitate this to people who haven't seen it. It is not easy but from my experiences, it is incredibly rewarding both in my heart and in the relationships that have been mended.

My 2 cents:

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson (book)

Vivre dans l'amour et la paix,

drew

Il n'y a qu'un bonheur dans la vie, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé.

I'm Back?

Hey,

So I think i'm going to be blogging again. Getting my thoughts out there for friends to see and maybe because I find it cathartic. I am aware that I haven't posted anything in years and if this is your primary way of listening in to my life, you have a lot of catching up to do. I won't recap the past few years partially because I wouldn't know how or where to start but mostly because that would be ridiculous.

Where to start then....

Well, I graduate in December. This is something that I have been looking forward to for some time now. I have longed to do something with my life. It has, in all honesty, been a very painful 2 years simply because I can't sit still. I love the classes I have taken and I have learned alot about God and Biblical living and life and relationships and about myself, don't get me wrong. Yet it kills me to sit in a classroom. I feel as if I am wasting life away. I would rather be on an adventure, living out of a backpack, traveling, experiencing new things, speaking to new people in foreign languages, climbing, mountaineering, helping people. I feel as if college has been 4 years to learn about stuff that hasn't really put you in a direction. As if it were preparing you nothing. As seniors in college my friends and I are constantly asked what we are going to do after we graduate, to which we all reply "I have no idea". Shouldn't college have directed us somewhere? I'm sure it has for a lot of people, but for people who don't know what they want to do, and the goal isn't to make money but to live a fulfilling and happy life, college is the definition to purgatory.

Yet, as I said earlier, college has not been a waste. I have met great people and experienced some really awesome things in my life and learned countless lessons on community and life with people. I have learned so much about the God of the Bible, a God who isn't Greek and emotionless, but a God who is relational, constantly with his creation, and deeply in love with idiots. I have studied the world, anthropology, Islam, the Qur'an, Ethnography and how to love other cultures. I have grown in my fascination with the world and the people in it (only spurring my passion to explore it). I have learned about the difficulties of bringing our faith to some cultures, bringing medicine to some cultures, and separating what is American and what is Jesus.

These lessons have caused me to love nature, and love the world around me. It has guided me to my current passions of climbing, slacklining, mountains, languages, and the middle-east. I love these things because the end result is relational. I could love business, and the end result be money, success, fame, power, or pride. Yet mountaineers and climbers are, as Lionel Terray calls them "Conquistadors of the useless". The end result is useless, you gain nothing material from it. The reward comes from learning about creation, about yourself, and experiencing great things with others. Although it can be done, climbing should not be done alone. To be done safely, you need other people, or at least one other: Community.

When I write I try and convey some sort of lesson or something that I have learned to anyone who would read it. I don't think I did with this one and I apologize for that. This blog is an intro back into writing and exposing my life, and so I decided to simply flesh out my thoughts on where I'm at right now.

I plan on leaving you with something to invest in after each blog. Whether that be a book, song, or movie, I will try and expose you to some of the things that have changed me in some way.

My 2 cents:

Movie: 180 degrees south

(you can find and get this movie via netflixs if you have it)

Vivre dans l'amour et la paix,

drew

Il n'y a qu'un bonheur dans la vie, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé.