Roosevelt Play Reflection Pt. 2

I brought up in a prior writing that I've been thinking more about the community I was raised in and their way of spreading beliefs. (The Hidden Process of Belief) At this same time I went back to this local high school to watch their games. This was a return to this building and made me to think about the musical we performed there as a high schooler years ago. Their basketball team was doing really well this season (Supporting the Teams Shortest Player) and I wanted to attend many of their games. By returning I couldn't help but compound a number of long forgotten thoughts. It is amazing how a place can be so intertwined with a recollection of one memory which it is mostly known for.

If I went to Roosevelt there would be hundreds of memories of this play. This one small thing we were doing would have been a drop in the bucket yet the area to me revolves around a single memory which is the thought of telling others how they should live their lives. I needed as much help as anyone inside this very large auditorium.

With all of the Christian clubs inside the school and our large church one block away it surprises me that there would have been a need for so much proselytizing. I talked to someone in this year who said that a Christian school was being opened right next to Roosevelt. Looking back it sure requires a lot of upkeep to keep a religion going.

Sometimes I wonder why it needs so much work and multiple Christian organizations for everything to function? I would be more convinced by the truth of a religion's claims if it would be obvious and simply laid out. Shouldn't an all powerful, all knowing God be rather easy to detect and not need so much help getting his message out? As I look back now the fact we are putting in that much effort should have been a rise for question.

If this idea isn't coming across let me explain it this way. Say I am trying to convince a group of a political stance. We would expect this endeavor to be a multi-year campaign to start winning the populace over. As a mere human being it wouldn't be expected that I have all the facts on my side. There would still need to be a big push for my cause.

With a God that has infinite understanding and claims to know more then the rest of humanity and all of its competing systems wouldn't this case be closed in a second? This wouldn't be one idea among many and we would be right to assume this belief would crush everything around it due to so much involvement.

Early Teachings Influencing How I would Structure My Time

As early as grade four Sunday School I was taught that the first of the Ten Commandments is to not have other Gods before the God of the Bible. Further the initial instruction of this commandment wasn't just for other deities other then the Abrahamic God it was for anything in your life that had precedence over God. This meant it wasn't just the traditional definition of God. As far as I can tell it isn't spelled out in the Ten Commandments.

I wanted to talk about what it means when you define God so broadly so that your resources can be a "God" as well. If you limit time invested in a pursuit that really matter to you (and the world as well) you are lessening the chance of being successful in that area. Achievement of goals is based on a large number of hours you put into a particular skill and the right combination of those skills to get you to your ultimate desired end. Many goals are not just obtained by one thing you learned but by a combination of many.

When seen in this context you have to be focused not just on what you are doing but also exercising caution into not filling up your time with anything that is not worthy of it. How can you keep up with others if there are too many things holding you back? Others will constantly pull ahead of you. This isn't just a race about who is in the lead but you provide a unique touch in your work that you only can bring to the table. All these important things may never come to fruition if you are burdened with too many tasks.

I just have to imagine if all the time invested in pursuing God, who we can't even know exists, had been put into any number of other important endeavors to the fullest extent. The search for what you want out of life is hard so adding extra dead-weight by way of more commitments is going to hold many back. You always have to make compromises instead of giving it your all.

We sang in choir that God's burden is light. That wasn't true. This burden was very distracting, hindering and potential squelching to nearly everything that is important. In the church camps I went to the leaders would ask what prayer requests I had but I realize now they were not coming from some outside source they came from extra burdens that they placed on me. The main thing created my problems was really internal to the organization if you think about it.

Walking Around in Circles

As I was in Cannon Beach going between reading, writing and going on walks a poem we learned about in the conference center kept coming back to my mind. It was about walking on the beach with Jesus and going back to look at the line of footprints left in the sand. The story goes that at one point the footprints stop and instead of their being two tracks you eventually only see one. The person writing the poem asks Jesus where did your tracks go at that point? Why did the tracks of Jesus leave him behind? Jesus then says in this poem that the tracks really belonged to him but he carried the poet in this story the rest of the way. I listened to this poem as a teen and the perspective has changed greatly from that time until now.

As I walked between the beaches and towns I couldn't help having this recurring thought that the path certainly isn't a straight line. A straight line to me signifies clarity; a clear direction the passengers are moving in. The journey with the church as been like walking in a loop without the awareness that this was what I was doing for the most part. No help showing a way which could be conceived as understanding the world or what is deeply going on with it.

The part about carrying me, I just didn't know how to process that. It is like not only are you moving forwards in life but this imagined trek can be carefree to the point of my not needing to be the one putting in the effort. How detached from the real world can it get?

Be Here Now

I've been thinking about that title. An album name that came out the same time as this play. I didn't know what that meant. It is so strange that you live in a world where people are trying to live in the future instead of focus on now.