only 49 days left in this year. good riddance.

i was taking a shower when my cook called. 3 times. at 5.57 am, and my wife is sick and had trouble falling asleep. the voicemail went something like this: hey, it’s Juan. i won’t be able to open the kitchen today… i had some trouble with the police.” so i scurry in to the hotel and start doing the stuff i know how, like baking scones, starting oatmeal, frying some potatoes.

Juan finally scurries in and tells me about how he’s napping yesterday and hears a banging on the door, and a loud voice demanding that Juan Ayala open the door because it’s the police, scumbag. ok, i just added scumbag because that’s what the tellie always portrays. anyhoo, it turns out that after a long night in jail for a car break-in, then getting transferred to Mansfield, that there is, omg, more than one Juan Ayala in texas. whoops.

a new cook starts training friday, which means that at long last, 4 months after being opened, after psychopaths and meddling owners, i am fully staffed with a staff that i (mostly) hand-picked. and that means no more unrequested 5.30 AM wake up calls. and hopefully, no more split shifts. and hopefully some time off over one of the next 3 holidays. and maybe, just maybe, 2 days off a week.

in other news, Just Bekah has yet another thought that you must share with her. i can’t believe she’s doing this as a college frosh. apparently the way of Jesus just might be to take what you need in life and give what you don’t away. it just might change the world. or at least feed it for a day.

i wrote a letter to my grandma in june and didn’t get to send it from north carolina like i’d wanted because it’s hard to find a post office in Asheboro. i need to write a new one. i haven’t written a prayer email to my prayer ninjas in many many months. but i did meet with my mentor last month at Joe’s on Hulen and had devoured some delicious ravioli whilst chatting about being married, engaged, and a follower of Jesus Christ.

my work email addy might be compromised. and it might be my fault for following a link from “business continuity team,” whatever that means. is it bad if you trust marriott enough to enter your address and passcode into a non-marriott site at the behest of marriott?

i need to blog more. i need to be more productive with my time. i need to go see Christmas lights more than once this year. i need to read faster. i still don’t want kids. i’m praying that Russ gets his job offer from Bank of America. and that they finally cut him his commission check from 2 months ago. i need to understand how to treat people well because i respect them. i need to fight through my cynicism and arrogance and respect people. at least a little bit more. and i have a doozy of a blog coming soon. i’m proud of being Korean, but not really THAT proud. more to come.

plaid is in, flannelgrams: out.

Target advertises its self-proclaimed appeal to frugalistas by showing models who would never wear clothes from Target without being paid to do so. michelle says that you can almost never find the clothes being worn in ads in the stores.

i just got an amazon.com giftcard from my in-laws last month. combined with a card from Charter (something for nothing? go figure), i got a bunch of new cds and a dvd. among them is Emiliana Torrini’s “Love in the Time of Science.” i’m having a heckuva time remembering how i found out about her, but the record is blowing my mind. inside and out. especially the last seventy-five seconds. same country as Bjork, this girl. hmmm. something to that.

Pepsi’s local bottler stopped delivering Ethos water to my hotel. now they’re trying to push Aquafina on me. ugh.

i saw this trailer a while back, and my mentor has already been to see it for free at the Modern (which has a deal with Magnolia Pictures, apparently???). while i’ve been a radio fan of the White Stripes since “fell in love with a girl”, i’m beginning my education in rock and roll with my first White Stripes cd, aptly titled “the White Stripes.” so help you God, all you who find yourselves with me and a guitar in the same room.

the books i’m currently reading: Sophie’s World (which i first killed in humanities my senior year of high school), Speed of Trust by 7 Habits author Stephen Covey’s son Stephen Covey (isn’t that the height of arrogance-or hope-to name your kid after yourself?), and Branding Faith by Phil Cooke.

i saw geese, hundreds of them, flying south as i was driving home from work today. it made me simultaneously feel triumphant and sad enough to cry. the V’s weren’t perfect, but they were long and they were many and the V’s intersected. maybe my eyes were tricking me, but i swear some of the geese towards the back were simply floating, not even flapping their wings, just resting and riding the air that their precursors and leaders had put in motion.  it made me think about the Church.

did you know that a V formation is an aerodynamic way to fly? did you know that geese, when tired, fall towards the back of the V because it requires less effort than to be at the forefront? did you know there was a contest recently that took submissions to improve air transportation and that one of the more intriguing ideas was having passenger aircraft fly in a similar formation to save fuel if their destinations were relatively nearby? it made me think about the Church.

after hearing artist Susan Rothenberg talk for an hour about horses and how she was never a horse girl but drew and painted them for years, adding and subtracting, hiding and exposing, i’m wondering if artists simply start off thinking way too much about life as children but actually do something about it to share with the world, unlike philosophers. it made me think about the Church.

see one of Susan’s horses. run, run, run.

See Susan paint. Paint. Paint. Paint.

my choice, for better or worse

i have often thought to myself that God is powerful. somewhere along the line in a theology class, the traditional notion of omnipotence was challenged (and soundly defeated). the word omnipotence is nowhere to be found in scripture and although “almighty” is, the understanding of God’s power has at least 2 contrasting views: a Hellenistic and an earlier Hebrew point of view. culturally, people like to think of their deities as limitless and powerful. who wants a wimpy god? and so the Greeks told tales of gods who controlled life and death, the afterlife, thunder, rain, and other larger-than-human-life things. a display of power was the same as flexing infinite biceps or pecs. on the other hand, rabbis told a different story.

consider a brief story: two men and their daughters are camping alone through the countryside when they are attacked. their children are kidnapped in the chaos and the fathers are left near death. it just happens that the men have a particular set of skills and experience that make them very dangerous to bad people such as the ones who took the daughters. so they recover and set out to find the basterds who did this. invariably, their search is successful and they free their children, and end up with the criminals at gun point. the first father pulls the trigger without hesitation. the second puts his gun down and pulls the other dad away preventing further bloodshed.

who is more “powerful” in that scenario? the one who carries out the extent of possibility, ending a life? or the one who has the same chance but restrains, regardless of how badly he wanted to exact retribution?

the Hebrew view was that restraint was exhibition of power beyond anything a display of power could ever show.

it’s far more important for me to be on the side of the “most” powerful than to grapple with the impossibility and circles of logic when people stomp their foot and frown and insist that God is “all” powerful.

there’s a guitar player who once remade a hymn and added this chorus that blew my mind:

“There is an eye that never sleeps
Beneath the wing of night,
There is an ear that never shuts
When sink the beams of light.
There is an arm that never tires
When human strength gives way,
There is a love that never fails
When earthly loves decay.
But there’s a power which man can wield
When mortal aid is vain.

That eye, that arm, that loves to reach
The listening ear to gain.
That power is prayer which soars on high,
Through Jesus to the throne,
Which moves the Hand which moves the world
To bring salvation down, bring salvation down.”

besides the creepy Eye of Providence reference and some slightly gray theological statements, the idea that words uttered from my dry and cracked lips can set in motion the hand of God, or stay it, as Moses did, blows my mind.

which brings us to this. knowledge is a power of sorts, and we often lack power ourselves simply because we have a distorted view or incomplete picture of ourselves as individuals. there are things that you, dear reader, see about me that i have missed or choose to overlook. and in your hand, you hold the power to transform a part of me. and when you restrain those mighty and astonishing words, you dam up the change that is within my grasp, but out of my reach for whatever reason.

i do the same thing. i don’t delude myself into thinking i’m deeply intuitive or discerning. but i see things that you may not see, i recognize symptoms and toxic patterns that you unwittingly live out time and again, and i silently allow you to cut yourself or purge or self destruct or bow to your self-imposed slave driver or allow yourself to wallow and waste away.

for some, i don’t have the voice to intervene. you haven’t granted me access to that VIP area of your life… and unwanted, uninvited over-intimacy is a shining definition for rape.

for others, i simply watch. there’s no good or redeeming reason. i may have said something to you in the past that you ignored and i have this crazy mellow-dramatic idea that my words are valuable because they are not common. a wedding ring with a semi-pave corn kernel setting will simply not fly. no store accepts pesos for dollars at a one to one exchange.

for whatever reason, i observe. quietly. watching. knowing and understanding now and then. but my silence is consent, and this is my first attempt to break it. and to brake it.

so, for you, the friend that defines yourself by what’s wrong with you and by what you lack, look up. and to you, the friend that shoe-gazes when the world is your oyster, reach out. and you, too, the friend that discounts your own worth by knocking zero’s off your price tag and calling the clearance sale price fair, look in. and to you, the “out of control” one, you who throw yourself at undeserving manipulating nobodies and calling it destiny, look again. to the friend who dares not to light a fire again because of how badly you were once burned, pick the lighter up again. not for a cigarette, but for your heart.

lift your eyes up.

where does your help come from?

a peculiar societal norm

ever since i started at my new hotel, i’ve had multiple conversations with people about whether or not i have kids and when i’ll have them and then when it’s discovered that i don’t want any (oh the horror!), i start having all sorts of interesting conversations. a few days ago, i came up against my toughest questioning, a nice girl who’s my age and has 2 kids of her own. now, we come from vastly different backgrounds, but she used adjectives like ’sad’ and ‘lonely’ to describe childless adults such as myself. and so, i’m renewing my self-exploration as to what it is that makes me not want kids, especially when so many people can’t wait to pop the buggers out.

it’s very important that anyone who reads this should understand that i’m not making judgements and that i don’t apply the standards to which i hold myself to anyone else. people who want kids should have kids.

 however, i’ll go ahead and throw some kindling on whatever fires of controversy burn on whatiseikon: if you have 6+ kids, you have too many. you know it, your kids wearing the 12 year old Lee hand-me-down jeans know it, the people who are around you know it and they talk about you with a mixture of fear, disbelief, and disdain. nobody cares about Jon or Kate. everybody wishes Nadya would just go away. (6 is an almost arbitrary number: the Sanborns have 5 kids and Gilbert and Cherie are just about the greatest parents i’ve ever seen. so i’m going to guess that any more and their heads would melt into a ball of mush. anyway, on to my list.)

-first and foremost, there are too many people in the world. there are 6.7 billion people estimated to be running around this great planet. Chad thinks that i’m wrong when i say that the world isn’t designed to support a population of this sheer size. that’s because he’s silly. feasibly, a finite number of resources could be shared to support an almost infinitely increasing population assuming that everyone played nice and shared and took what they needed. look around and ask yourself, “do people play nice?” i’d like to contribute my life to the benefit of the world, not the overpopulation of it.

-google and read about the sixth extinction. nuff said.

-the US consumes about 25% of the world’s energy yearly. we have about 5% of the world’s population. China, on the other hand has 20% of the world’s population (and is growing 5.5% per year). so if they decide we’re using too much energy (bear with me here), they could make a compelling case at chopstick-point that we need to hand over our incandescent bulbs and SUVs. plus, Jet Li > Chuck Norris (at his current age).

- [insert here] any number of “the world is a crazy place to bring a child into.” think of Baghdad, Mogadishu, Hugo Chavez, USC, pedophiles, smog, Osama’s facial hair, the weakening of the US dollar, ozone depletion, mad bird swine cow flu disease, toy recalls, evil pharmaceutical companies, frivolous lawsuits, child trafficking, DRM, and the like.

-buying a new wardrobe for a pregnant wife. buying pickles and ice cream during the fourth quarter of a Bears game for a pregnant wife. water that breaks.

-to epidural or not to epidural… that is the question.

-diapers. mountains and mountains of diapers. no sleep for a full night. for a very long time. sore backs and arms.

-screening babysitters. paying babysitters. going back home early to let the babysitter go.

-paying about $240,000 over 18 years to raise a child. that’s right, a quarter million dollars.

-unless Nordstrom’s legendary customer service is a reality, you can’t return the kid if you’re not completely satisfied.

-i would hate to spend my child’s life wishing she was grown up.

-i left the gate open today and Wash ran away. will i really do better with mini humans under my care? we bought 9 squash plants this past spring. none of them survived the summer, and we read the articles and followed the directions. how there no parenting license in the billions of governmental regulations?

-all the “what-if’s”… what if the baby has Downs’ syndrome? what if the baby grows up to be a mass murderer? what if i’m a bad parent? what if it looks less like its beautiful momma and more like its wonky daddy?

 

a few choice morsels that other folks came up with:

-in the 12 months after a child is born, sexual activity among average couples drops by more than 40%, with 25% of couples partaking only once a month. that is NOT acceptable.

-parents wishing to offset the C02 emissions resulting from bringing one child into the world would need to plant 1,073 trees.

-60% of mothers say having children caused friendships to be lost.

-childless people save on average 37% by being able to travel and take holidays outside school holidays. and we like to travel.

-women without children earn on average 95% of what men do, whereas women with children earn 75%.

 

Kate is horrified not only at her flabby belly, but the disaster her family has become.

i’m open to any scraps of wisdom anyone may have to toss this dog’s way. comments, please.

ping

dear Kettle One drinkers,

i hope you’ll accept my humble apologies for having left you hanging on the words that i wrote so many days ago. it’s been a busy time in the life of Joseph, with a new cellie, a new job, and a missed chance at vacation thanks to the aforementioned new job. i took a job with a company called Q Hotels that has just opened a new Courtyard by Marriott hotel as of last friday. i am what’s called an operations manager. i manage operations. brilliant flash of a name, yes? operations is the day to day stuff. one may interchange the idea of an assistant general manager (who manages generals) with an operations manager. as this is a select amenity hotel (as opposed to select/limited service, which sounds as though our service is inhibited in some sense) featuring a restaurant and bar, i’m the guy who heads up the restaurant for now. this involved hours with trainers showing us how to flip over easy eggs, how to do inventory, a bit of forecasting, some espresso drinks, and pouring a bottled beer well. we have no soda fountains or beer kegs. even worse, we serve Pepsi (gag!). but all in all, i got a decent raise and a “move forward 4 spaces” card in the game of life. and a free cellie.

it’s been almost 3 weeks since my last day off. i’ve had fevers, chills, headaches, strange mouth sores, and i missed the expenses paid trip to San Diego last weekend with my wife that was supposed to be a summer vacation. but i’m doing well heading into the last day before my first day off. no complaints, unless this blog is a complaint, and it’s not completely like this. is it?

anyway, my good friend Levi now has a blog that he has started with a memorable quote from a little known movie that he showed me last month called Mean Creek. interesting and difficult stuff. he’s a heady guy when he wants to be and he’s got a heart that resembles mine in many ways. please visit it (link is on the blogroll) and comment when you have something to say.

i’m not over the hell issue yet. in fact, i have a few cards up my sleeve that are waiting for a lazy afternoon to slip out. so stay tuned for that. i just thought that i would pop my head in (to my own blog, right?) and say hello to you since it’s been too long.

cheers.

happy hour

Becky invited michelle and i to accompany her to a get together for her running group, Team in Training. it was at a neat Mexican place that’s super popular for socialites and TCU students and alumni. very beautiful people, as you can imagine. we sat in a room and drank beer and margaritas and ate delicious salsas and crispy tortilla and sweet potato chips for a couple of hours, chatting with the various runners on the team. some had been doing marathons (and longer) for many years. their necks were wrinkled and brown, their physiques slender. they nursed light beers and smiled easily. others were newer to the running culture. i heard one lady say something simple that caught my attention and immediately started me thinking. she was talking about her experiences training for and running a marathon. it was likely her first, and she made no bones about it.

she talked about how hard it was and how impossible it seemed just training to run for so many hours in a row. and then race day came and while she gave her best, it she didn’t want to finish, and she was just past halfway done. and then her coaches came back for her. they had already finished, their times ridiculously low, and were circling back to encourage their teammates. she had some run alongside her for a mile and then turn back to find other teammates. she had another that met her around mile 20, and finished the next 6 miles with her.

ahhhhhhhhhh. (a moderately loud scream, not a sigh.)

i can’t remember her exact words, but she has never felt so cared for or loved. she can’t even imagine what it’s like to accomplish something that’s extremely draining and then to go back and assist someone else who’s struggling to the exact same thing.

and neither can i.

and so as i thought of difficult things, it made me think of Eikon. most things do.

perhaps this is how the church should work. people who have gone on before us should help us to run races. people who have finished before us should help us finish. and i thought of saints and how their spirits could help us through rough times. if only they could come back from the dead.

oknotreally. but i was so jealous! i want Eikon to make people feel like that–wanted, like they belong. like they have people who give a damn. but something inside didn’t quite allow that thought to settle.

that lady doesn’t remember the face or name of a single person she passed during that race who was cheering for her on the sidewalks alongside the course. i’d bet my life savings on it.

but she does remember the people who came and ran with her for miles and miles. and so, i guess that although i pat myself on the back for the occassional nice things i do for people, it’s not enough to be nice. you can’t throw a single bean into a cup of water and call it coffee. the bean has to be roasted, ground, and brewed. there’s some intense pressure and heat that is required before the flavor is released into the water. the bean is never served with the cup, but the essense of the bean is there until the last drop.

perhaps it’s not just grand gestures, but real sweat and effort, even tears and blood that are required before the essence of joseph (and thereby, Christ, i hope) is able to permeate the souls of people i know.

i don’t think i sacrifice enough. i come home from work tired from being on my feet or dealing with people and a faltering economy. it’s expected that i take some time to decompress, sit and watch tv, waste time online. it’s understandable. it’s what people do. and no one “can” blame me. and nothing disgusts me more than  my fitting nicely into expectations of mediocre people.

over the past 12 months, i think i’ve read and completed 3 books. maybe 4. how does this prepare me for leading a church? what other ways am i being exposed to the best minds in the world on spirituality, theology, and the like? not many. but i DID watch hundreds of movies on Netflix. so i am ready to talk American (and even some foreign!) cinema with you. last month, i cancelled our subscription. i had a couple of old video games on my computer and i would literally murder and maim and desecrate time, probably weeks worth mastering the perfect Curt Schilling curveball and cheating by randomly dropping nuclear missiles on opposing armies during the Middle Ages or creating an instant army of 10 heavy machine gun units to ward off attacking chariot cavalries. it’s amusing the first three or four (hundred?) times. as of last month, i don’t have any games installed on my computer. and while i watched and gamed my way to oblivion, i didn’t pay attention to our finances and we ended up owing the IRS thousands of dollars.

but all that stuff is about me. where have i been entering the furnace or the french press or the 170 degree water and leaving the fragrance of Christ behind? perhaps i project my shortcomings onto my church, wanting the church to do things as a whole. if i can be a part of a church that does great things, it’s like i’m great. i don’t even necessarily have to be there or do the hard work myself. wait. where have i observed that mentality before?

i know i probably set a less than stellar example to my wife, as though she needs my help anyway, but she’s the one who’s teaching the art class every week at the community center. perhaps it’s me that needs to follow the available examples.

i know that this might sound overly negative, so here are some props for the awesome author of this blog: i’ve practiced the guitar more in the past 3 months than i did in the previous 24 that we lived here. and i’m learning Spanish through Rosetta Stone. and i’m reading a very boring book on hotel operations and management. yay.  *throws paper bits from the shredder into the air.*

ideas for postgraduate work

in discussing my future with my friend over in Africa, we were both thoroughly jeally of michelle and her continuing pursuit of higher education. so we started throwing out ideas of what i could take myself. note: some are ideas for my doctoral thesis, so don’t be a hater and steal them.

-puppetry
-manipulation in triadic relationships
-concrete 2D design
-metaphysics
-facial hair artistry
-paper snowflake engineering and production
-pyrotechnics prevention with an emphasis in therapy for people who are easily startled
-phrenology and it’s effect on modern North Korean culture
-the future role of chemical engineering in fuel efficiency reduction
-the concerning relationship between eschatology and the humanizing and training of hominidae Pongo borneo

any other suggestions?

reeling me back in

there’s been a silence on the blog so deafening that i receieved an email from a lover (well, my only one) about how i need to get back to it. so what has been occupying my time? let me tell you:

-we have cable. with HD. Anna Torv has never had such striking strawberry blonde hair and baby Matt Parkman has never been cuter and the Michael Scott Paper Co has never had clearer marketing and that girl from Buffy calmly reminds me to “be my best” every friday night. also, our download speed beat up your honor student.

-we’re goint to NC  in June for a wedding. and we’re going to SC to see Naomi (no, not to LA to see the University of Spoiled Children). and we’re renting a car which can only mean 2 things: road trip.

-i’ve had more interviews in April than i landed in the several months immediately after we moved here. and i don’t even need a new job. (Seth Rogen says the best time to look for a job is when you don’t need one. or was it Seth Godin?)  i won’t tell you what for until i’ve heard a firm “no” or “yes” from them.

-michelle got a raise. wut.

-michelle is a weiner. and a winner, too. first place in the Tarrant County College spring art show for 2D design. grad school, here we come. (her friend Pam won 3rd for a neat abstract piece. cheers, Pam.)

-we used the lumber from the pool’s original hard cover to build a planter box around a tree in the back yard. we finally finished it and planted some squash, tomato, peppers, etc. we also have cilantro (only missing lime for fresh salsa weekly!), basil, and mint for mojitos. as the plants grow, you’ll have to come over for drinks.

-i still have a vicious dislike for the dog michelle brought home. within minutes of us finishing our planting, the durn beast was ripping plants up. worthless waste of money, that pale, musty hairball of a dog.

-i’ve had 4 very good conversations with people who are a good distance from the Church. people who have dealth with truly horrid Christians or still can’t get the bad taste out of their mouths from their early childhood contact with churches.

-i ran the Fort Worth Zoo Run 5k last saturday. i’d been training with some friends (team name–Mach: Joke. like rather than Mach 3 or something, it’s like we’re so far from being fast that it’s a joke to even mention it. just for those of you slower folks out there.) i told michelle that my goal was 3 eight minute miles (5k = 3.1 miles) and she looked me square in the eye and told me that 25 minutes was for people who trained hard and stuff. see the results and the awful pictures of me staggering around at your leisure. you can search for my last name on the results page (take that, michelle.)

-you probably didn’t miss it, but i reconsidered and decided against any more sly. as the title of the blog so aptly asks, what is Eikon? and how do we figure it out? it seemed fun. it was fun to post and to pretend anyone actually cared about my pithy responses to crazy events. so, bye bye, Sly.

-on that note, i WILL post more frequently on things and thoughts regarding Eikon. if they’re less organized and a bit more scattered, please pardon me.

-i thought it would be neat to have a prayer wall type deal (don’t have a facebook, but the idea of encouraging graffiti is appealing) that we could use along with an RSS feed instead of lame prayer emails. also, a quote wall for amazing things people say?

-a lady emailed Christina through the Eikon website because of MOPS. website: success.

-we’re going to see Phil Wickham saturday night. he’s opening for some no-name.

and i’m out.

gobbledeegook. my various thoughts leak onto your computer screen.

i was just going through the numbers by which we live (money, of course!) and getting little depressed. over the past 12 months, my income has gone down in 2 rather steep dives. it was a net 15% pay cut when i left Trinity, with a slight recovery during my 9 months at Ridglea. but ultimately, even with a new job title/promotion for the hotel (which is effective this week. wut! <–pronounced “whaaaat?” with an ascending vocal inflection. not “woot.”), it’s a gross 21% cut, not including Michael’s rent. i guess it’s only fair to include his rent, which brings it back up to only a 12% cut, but it seems like we’re making suuuuuuuuuch slooooooooooooow progress on paying off debt. i guess i need to spend less, right? and then the tax man comes around.

and apparently, i misfiled last year, leaving one of Michelle’s 1099’s off, which is costing another $1800.

guh-frickin-errrrrrr. (<– pronounced “guh’ frick’ in(g) errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr).

anyway, i read a good article today that really pickled some ears regarding calling. as a Church, we’ve done very well at relegating willing volunteers and servants to mind blowing opportunities like directing traffic, set-up, tear-down, shaking babies and holding hands, etc. this fellow wonders on paper if an unleashed church can afford such mighty dead ends in place simply to perpetuate and grow numerically. perhaps there’s more to the kingdom than manning the name tag booth? novel thought.

Chad is blogging fiercely again, and old friend Mike Deter is showing his brain waves for the world to see for the first time. i’m a comment pimp for them. they thrive on the limelight, although they’d both vehemently deny it. ahh, the denial abounds.

we have a real, 99% done website for Eikon. you can google “eikon church” or “eikon fort worth” to find it. if you have any thoughts or could let us know of any suggestions, we could really use them now. we’re about to start advertising it!

cheers.