The Power of Electricity

The power went out at my office this evening.  That used to be a common occurrence, but hadn't happened since the day we move into our new building over a year ago.  Our battery backups kept things up long enough for everyone to save their work and shut down, so the only thing we really lost was time, but it was interesting to see different people's reactions.  People who are only used to the city have no idea what to do without power.  It seems like they think power grows on trees (specifically those tall skinny ones with perpendicular branches, and really long, thin, connected foliage, right?).

In most industries, that situation would be considered a perfect excuse to head home, since it was already late in the evening, but people in Hollywood are just different.  Their projects are already on tight schedules, and working constantly is just part of the culture.  Most people tried to wait it out, and stuck around for an hour or so, but after a few drinks and no sign of repairs being made, they took off.

DWP estimating 10-12 hours when we finally got through to them on the phone to report the problem, since 50,000 customers were supposedly down due to high winds damaging transmission lines.  Anyone planning to do a late shift was out of luck, and it was interesting to observe everyone counting the cost of what possibly missing the next day worth of work would mean for their project schedules.

I had just finished disconnecting everything and was locking the door when the lights came back on two hours later.  That necessitated another hour of work to get all of the servers back online, as well as the phone system and storage network, all of which have to be booted up in the right order for things to work smoothly.  It is amazing to think about how much complexity there is in an average office, none of which would have been an issue even twenty years ago.  What will it be like in another twenty years from now?

It was probably good timing in a way, since I was in town to make sure everything came back online properly.  And since we are in the process of designing the power system for our next building, having this happen now will help people realize the value of having backup solutions for greater security.  But regardless of how much we invest in redundant systems, there is still only so much power that we have to control our situation and circumstances.  We aren't God after all, although sometimes we'd like to think we are.

Understanding How Something Works is the First Step to Fixing it

I have always been someone who is fascinated by figuring out how things work.  That has led to a number of occasions where things didn't necessarily fit back together as well as they did to begin with, but you have got to take some risks if you are every going to learn anything.  Now the most obvious form that this takes is with mechanical and electronic objects.  My grandparent's barnyard was full of interesting items, from motorcycles and go-carts to farm equipment.  With the other side of the family, it was things like circuit breakers, appliances, or plumbing.  A lot of ideas learned from doing that got tested and implemented with my extensive collection of Legos.  As I got into high school, I started toying with computers and figuring out how they worked, both hardware and software.  And then I started networking them together, and connecting cameras and televisions.  This eventually led to my career in media technology, as the guy who knows how everything works, from camera lenses to phone systems, and tape decks to mail servers.

But "everything" is a bit of an exaggeration.  The same principle of needing to understand how something works before you can fix it can be applied to many other areas in life.  Not understanding how your mind works can prevent you from fixing certain habits or overcoming fears.  Not understanding how other people work can make it difficult to fix or improve friendships.  Not understanding how the spiritual world works can make it nearly impossible to fix spiritual issues.

Now every once in a while you may be able to "fix" something that you don't understand, if you keep trying different things at random.  But you usually run a risk of making things worse instead, if you don't know what you are doing.  For the more important things in life, I don't want to go shooting in the dark, hoping that things I am doing are improving my situation.  I want to understand what I should be doing and why.

The first thing I do when I see something new is try to figure out how it works.  With physical objects, you figure that out by observing the individual pieces or taking them apart.  It is less straightforward to do the same thing with ideas and concepts, but there may be something to gain from taking a similar approach.  That is what I am attempting to do here, examining new ideas one piece at a time.

While I may know how to fish out a video cassette stuck in a tape deck, or troubleshoot a fibre-channel storage network, I don't know how to fix everything.  So I just try to keep learning how everything works, and it seems wise to focus my attention on areas I know need fixing.

Taking Risks can be Dangerous

Earlier in the year I came to the conclusion that anyone who doesn't find themselves needing to wear a helmet on a regular basis, is probably not really living.  You could say I wear a number of different hats, depending on whether I am climbing trees, dirt biking, horseback riding, or just supervising construction at my new office.  Pretty much any activity that requires a helmet entails some level of risk, and risk is an important part of life.  In most cases it is a prerequisite for growth and learning.  In finance, the potential return on an investment is usually linked to the level of risk.  In relationships with other people, the depth of connection or intimacy developed will be limited if either party is unwilling to take the risk required.  That will apply to your relationship with God as well.

So how do we handle all of these things we encounter in life that are risky?  There are a variety of ways to approach risk management, depending on the situation.  Much of the training for ropes course work revolves around risk management.  Physical risks are managed by having backups in place for the systems being used.  Ideally, if any one piece breaks, something else will still be able to support the load.  Frequent close inspection of everything being used, occasionally from an outside perspective can also minimize risks.  For the mental and emotional risks, taking things one small step at a time and slowly working up to the bigger challenges can help prevent risks from becoming overwhelming.  Doing things as part of a group can be helpful as well, so that you have the support of a team backing you up.

About a year ago I was invited by my roommate at the time, to attend a small group bible study.  He warned me that it would probably be outside of my comfort zone.  The other members of the group had a fairly different idea of who God was and what he would do, than I was familiar with.  After taking a few steps to manage the risk, like observe a similar but smaller gathering, and arrange to go with a group of people I knew and trusted, I went and checked it out.  It was fairly shocking at a certain level, but I learned a lot, and walked away with a lot to think about.  When my roommate asked what I thought of the experience the next morning, I only had one observation: "Definitely very dangerous."

The idea of being dangerous is an interesting concept.  The word usually has a negative connotation, but it is not necessarily a bad thing, unless you are afraid of risks in any form.  Being dangerous usually requires some level of power, and involves risk.  Objects can be dangerous, ideas can be dangerous, and people can be dangerous.  I have been reading John Eldredge's book Wild at Heart, and his premise is that all men desire to be dangerous in some form. "If you do not supply a boy with weapons, he will make them from whatever materials are at hand."  He sees this as a positive thing, an important part of life.  I don't necessarily disagree, but the idea takes a little getting used to, especially since our politically correct culture frowns on anything that could be construed as promoting violence.

As someone who studied fencing as a martial art, and a skilled archer who goes by the name Bull’s-Eye in certain circles, I don't know what it is like to be totally devoid of that trait, so I may under appreciate it.  But from another perspective, my life hardly scratches the surface of what is possible in that regards to being dangerous.  I know guys trained as Navy SEALS who are far more dangerous than I will ever be, and I accept that.  They make many sacrifices to be in that position, which I value and appreciate but am not ready to make myself.  (I am pretty perseverant, but sometime during the cold water endurance part of that training, I would be done)  But I suppose I am dangerous enough that I don't feel insecure about that aspect of my character.  Both risk and danger are not things that are missing from my life.

Keep in mind that taking risks does not make you dangerous, but you can't become dangerous without taking some risks.  Interestingly, you can replace dangerous in that statement with rich, friends, married, Christian, or a variety of other terms, so we see that risk plays an important role in most aspects of life.  But because of that, it is important to take steps to manage risks wisely.

Who I Am

This is already my tenth post, and I realize that while I initially introduced what I was doing, I skipped over the details of who is doing it.  I originally assumed that anyone taking the time to read this would probably already know who I am.  I honestly have no idea who would ever read it, but as noted before, I am okay with that, but it is publicly posted on the internet, so there is a balance to be found in regards to how much information it is wise to blindly share with the public.  I intend to share stories and discuss specific issues I am dealing with, but have not determined what degree of detail to include.  This is one of the reasons that my posts until now have addressed very general philosophical points and issues.  I will have to feel out one step at a time how far into specifics and details to go.  This will be the first step in that direction.

"Who am I?" can be a very deep and complicated question, that I don't really have a concise answer to, but I will start with some basic factual details.  If someone made a wanted poster for me, it would probably say: 27 year old white male, average height and build.  Wanted: for ignoring social conventions and fashion rules. (And maybe if I am lucky, unarmed and extremely dangerous;)

I grew up in the same house most of my life, just outside of town.  Both sides of my family are Catholic, although I in no way consider myself to be.  I will stick with the label of non-denominational Christian for now.  My parents are recently divorced, but on good terms.  I have one younger brother, who is technically a rocket scientist, and a car fanatic.  I am equal parts Irish, Italian, Austrian, and the last quarter is a little murky.  I am known for being patient, deliberate, precise, and persistent.  I come from a long line of engineers on both sides of my family.  I graduated with a degree in Multimedia and Computer Science.

At this point, I split my time between two reasonably separate existences.  In one, I am the technical whiz-kid who helped build a cutting edge video production company in Hollywood.  In the other, I lead high adventure activities at a Christian camp, primarily focused on climbing and team building on ropes courses elements, which is beginning to grow into constructing and maintaining other courses as well.

They are two very different worlds, but they each add an important degree of balance to my life.  God has provided me with a natural understanding of technology, a gift I would feel I was wasting if I didn't have a productive outlet for those abilities.  But I feel more at peace in less crowded places, and out in God's creation. (God created the whole earth, but man created nearly everything you see in LA)  That is one of the key factors that led to me working at summer camp for many years.  I also naturally find myself comfortable working at great heights, which has led me to enjoy working on ropes courses.  I value both using the courses to help other people grow, and climbing up there myself, for maintenance and rescues.  At this point I am exploring the idea of pursuing work in that field outside the context of summer camp, but I am still figuring out the details of how I want to go about doing that.

This is all just a starting point in describing who I am.  Fleshing out the more specific details is part of what writing all of this is intended to help me better understand.  It remains to be seen whether that will actually work, but it has got me thinking about things in new ways, so that is a pretty good start.

Thinking It's About Time

What we are thinking about is an important aspect of how we are spending our time.  Even if our body is doing something unrelated, our mind can be using that time elsewhere.  I will spend six hours driving to LA on Monday, and those drives are usually a solid period of time for reflecting on life.  Interstate 5 is not the most interesting highway in the world, and since I travel at low traffic times, I usually have a lot of peaceful time to think.

What do you spend most of your time thinking about?  The answer to that question says a lot about who you are and where your priorities are.  That is where your energy is being directed.  Are you even conscious of what you frequently tend to dwell on or ponder?  Do you believe that you can even really control what you are thinking about?

Think for a second about the worst smell you have ever experienced.  Imagine exactly where it was and what it felt like.  Now try not to think about it at all.  I don't know about everyone else, but I find it to be nearly impossible to deliberately not think about something.  It always feels like my subconscious is one step ahead of me.  And to actually deliberately forget about something, I wouldn't even know where to start.

What we care about will dictate what we think about.  This will apply to both conscious and subconscious thoughts, but do we really have the freedom to choose what we care about?  I know I haven't really determined an answer to that question.  But if it is possible to control what we care about, I know that I haven't learned how to do that.

So what am I usually thinking about?  Well I guess we are going to find out over the next few months.  That is part of my purpose in writing all of this.  Over the last few months, much of my thought and contemplation has been directed towards questions about my future, and what I believe God wants me to do with it.  (Or more specifically: how he might want me to go about finding the answers to those questions.)  This has led me to read a lot of books, write much more that usual, and discuss my ideas with many people.  It will be interesting to see where that leads me.

Saving Money vs. Saving Time

So it was amusing to observe the fanfare of Black Friday shopping so soon after writing a post on the value of time.  I had just finished preparing for bed, and was deciding what time to get up the next morning, when it dawned on me that BestBuy's midnight opening was only a few minutes away.  Instead of trying to get up reasonably early the next morning to pick through whatever sale items were left, I could go immediately, and then sleep in later.  Since I was not at all tired (common problem late at night) I decided to go for it, just for the adventure of it, if nothing else.  That was a good approach to take, because as it turned out, there was nothing else.

I was under the illusion that I might be lucky enough to avoid a major crowd, since this midnight opening is a relatively new marketing approach.  I arrived at the store about a minute before it opened, and saw that the line to get in was wrapped a couple hundred yards around the shopping complex.  Undeterred, I headed to the back of the line as the crowd was herded into the store.  As we got closer to the entrance, I noticed a variety of things strewn on the ground as evidence that some people had arrived here long before I did.  They had probably spent much of their Thanksgiving holiday waiting to be the first into the store, while it took me about 5 minutes to enter from the back of the line.  The only difference was, that they qualified for some of the more lucrative deals offered inside.

The question is, what is the value of those deals?  We occasionally hear on the news about people waiting for days to be the first to get an iPhone or xBox or Playstation, which at the time is irreplaceable.  But the unique value of that item only lasts for a few days or weeks, until the supply catches up with the demand.  When that time is spent waiting for a discount, the value of that time should be compared to the value of the discount, and to the need for the item in question.  Being placed a-thousand-something back in line, I missed out on the headline deals, but still had the opportunity to save money on lots of TVs, consoles, and computers, none of which I really needed.  So I spent a few minutes wandering around evaluating whether the potential savings on a number of smaller items I could use, like DVDs and USB sticks, was worth the time I would be spending in the next line, to check out.  Then I took the only rational approach, and headed off to bed.

Less than twelve hours later, I was at Home Depot, and I didn't walk out of there empty handed.  I aimed to miss the initial rush, but was glad to be there on a day when all of the vendors and service people were onsite for my favorite game of stump-the-salesman.  After a lot of detailed technical questions and some phone calls, they satisfied my concerns about their products meeting my expectations, and I ended up with a cartful of things I actually needed, for far less than I budgeted.

That's not to say I regret the BestBuy adventure; it cost less than an hour of my time, which probably would have otherwise been spent staring at the ceiling trying to sleep, wondering if I was missing out on some great opportunity.  But I don't wonder at all whether it would have been worth it to spend all day waiting in line early, to save some more money on a bunch of things I don't really need.  My time is worth more than that.

The Value of Time and How We Spend It

Time is an interesting concept to fathom.  It is the base commodity that we start life with, and nearly everything in life we acquire, by trading our time for it.  Everyone has time, but no one knows for certain how much they have.  Some people feel like they never have any time, but that is because they have traded it away.

Valuing time is an important part of life.  Valuing it accurately can be one of the biggest challenges.  Being conscious of how you spend your time is a good starting point.  It should be very obvious that someone getting diagnosed with a terminal disease will become much more conscious of the value of their time and how they spend it.  The reality is, that we all have a terminal condition, called life, and there is no cure.   If you view the time that you have from that perspective, you will probably find yourself wasting a lot less time.

It isn't that you should live like you will die tomorrow, just live like you could die tomorrow.  Living with zero regard for the future is irresponsible, but if you discover it is likely you have less time available than previously thought, that should change how you live, even if you were living perfectly before.  You will suddenly have less need to invest so much into your own future, but to live in the present and continue investing in the future of others.

I am a very difficult guy to negotiate with at work, because the only thing I really want, is my time back.  And since that is what they are interested in as well, it comes down to who values my time more.  If my employers value my time more, they will pay me more, and I will agree to work more at that rate.  That is not me selling out, I just am aware that investing time making money now, may allow me to spend less time doing that in the future. (As long as I don't let my wants grow as fast as my income)  I envision a point in the future when I have better things to do with my time: like strengthening my marriage and raising children.

Money is a valuable commodity, but not nearly as valuable as time.  We all have been given a certain amount, we don't actually know how much, and there is basically nothing we can do to increase it.  Because of this, I believe there is nothing more valuable that you can give than your time.

When examining what I believe God wants me to do with my time, it becomes an issue of who I am giving it to.  While I give financially to help certain needs, I don't by any strict definition tithe my money.  I give based on the needs I see around me, as opposed to based on what God has provided me.  Over the last 5 years, the closest thing I have done to tithing, is giving about three months of my time every year.  God gives me twelve months in every year, and I dedicated three of those to working at camp each summer.  It is not giving my money directly, but I am definitely foregoing financial and career gains to be there.

Now I enjoy doing that, and clearly grow from the experience, so does that negate the value of what I am giving, because I am getting something in return?  I don't think that is true, because in many cases doing the right thing naturally has positive consequences on one's life.  I believe God designed it that way, and I don't see why this should be any different.  While I am not opposed to giving money, I believe God is much more interested in us giving our time.  One could go pursue making tons of money, and donate nearly all of it to support many others who are directly helping people, but I don't believe that is any better in God's eyes, than being one of those ones who is actually out helping people directly.  Which of those two will be learning more about who God is?  If loving God with all your heart is the greatest commandment, knowing more about him is the first step towards making that relationship work, so you might want to consider spending your (valuable) time accordingly.

What More Do You Want?

Among other things, having lots of options can lead to us wanting so much more than we actually need.  So is wanting more a good thing or a bad thing?  Our actions are usually motivated by what we want.  Is it possible to run out of things to want, and if so would that be beneficial or harmful to one's well-being?  I have wondered for a long time whether the position of getting what we want actually leads us to want more.  Is the grass always greener on the other side?  Will what we don't yet have always appear more attractive to us, or can we actually get to a point of being totally satisfied with what we have?

At a certain level, we are a slave to everything we have and everything we want.  So in a sense, wanting less should allow us to be more free.  Wanting less will likely lead to us having less as well.  But as we saw was true with options, taking that to the extreme of having nothing is clearly bad, so where do we find the middle ground?  That is where we see your actual needs come into play.  I think once our legitimate needs are met, any excess beyond that is where we experience freedom.  Having our needs met does not automatically lead to satisfaction, that is always going to be a matter of perspective, but assuming that it is possible to be totally satisfied with what we have, would that position of satisfaction be a good place to be?

The movie Adjustment Bureau came out a while back and it presented an interesting premise.  The conflict of the story is an omnipotent organization trying to sabotage one man's relationship with a girl.  Their reason was that if he found fulfillment in that relationship, he would no longer be so driven to work hard to improve the world around him, because he would be satisfied with his life.  That is a simplification of their idea, but it is something I have wondered about for a while.  Can someone be both fulfilled and satisfied, and motivated to make things better, at the same time.  Or are they mutually exclusive principles, where gaining ground with one will lead to loss of the other.

As someone who is very conscious of why he does things, I sometimes wonder what would happen if I actually managed to meet all of my needs.  Would I stop working hard, and rest on my accomplishments?  I am not sure because I have never been in that position, but I have gotten close.  I have few material wants, and have satisfied those easily: I have a place to live, a truck to drive, and a really powerful laptop.  My laptop is arguably my one selfish luxury, the way some people's cars are, but it is a useful tool as well.  The rest of my wants and desires are not material things, but they relate to the material world: desires for friendship, marriage, understanding of God and his design for life.  Satisfying those desires requires the investment of time, not money, but money can free up one's time from being spent satisfying material needs.

I will talk more about the value of time in my next post, for now let's just assume that time is able to satisfy the rest of my wants and desires.  If I had everything I wanted, would I want more?  I don't think so, since approaching that goal in the past has not caused me to automatically acquire new wants and desires, but there is a big difference between approaching that point, and actually being there.  When I get there, I believe I will actually feel satisfied with what I have, but I am a little concerned about the effect that will have on my motivation and discipline to push myself and continue to grow.

Too Many Options

Usually the more options you have, the more difficult it is to make a decision. (Unless you have no options)  People used to have fewer options, and therefore usually had fewer decisions to make.  That doesn't mean life was easier, the challenges were just different.  Technology has given us so many options, there are now very few solid limits.  Where you could go used to be limited by how far you were willing to walk, and how many months you were willing to travel, but now I can reach anywhere in the world in a couple of days.  Deciding who to talk to about an urgent issue used to be limited to who you saw on a daily basis, but now I can contact almost anyone in the country instantly with a small device that I carry in my pocket.  To hear music required learning to play an instrument, or finding someone else who was.  At one point, studying the word of God required learning a new language, or letting someone else describe it to you.

Clearly life is very different than it was a few hundred years ago, and we have much more freedom and power over our lives and what we can choose to do.  I see two potential downsides to this situation though.  Having more options makes to harder to discern what the right choice is when faced with a decision, and valuing the freedom of having lots of options makes it difficult to commit to a specific choice.  The issue is that making a decision requires choosing one option at the expense of all of the others, and culturally we have assigned an inherently positive value to having more options.  People see that the more options they have the more control they can exert over their lives.  They seem to miss that it is when they use those options to make a decision that they actually exert control over their lives.  This makes people hesitant to make decisions or commit to anything, and they end up drifting aimlessly, which I consider to be a bad option.  On the other hand, only having one option could be considered the opposite of freedom.  People want to avoid being in that position, and rightfully so.  Fear of finding themselves out of options is one of the factors that leads to that hesitation.

From what I can tell, having many more options at one's disposal does not frequently lead to improved decision making.  If you look at the lives of famous celebrities who have even fewer limitations than most people, so many of them screw up their lives even more that the average person.  Having too many options can contribute to bad choices when faced with a decision.  Or more correctly: when facing a decision, having more options does not necessarily lead to better choices.

I do not claim to be immune from this phenomenon myself.  I was very deliberate in the choices I made in college and after I graduated.  Moving to NorCal was also a very deliberate decision, but now that I am here, I do find myself asking: "what do I do next?"  I have many options available, which has made that a tough decision to face.  I'd like to think that the things I am doing are bring me closer to being able to make a choice in that regard, but I am not sure how you can measure that.  God has given me lots of options, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to figure out what he would like me to do.

Decisions Determine Direction

Clearly modern life presents us with many decisions to make.  At this moment, at some level I am facing a number of big decisions, including:
1. Where to live
2. Where to work
3. How to spend my free time
4. Who to spend it with

The answer to the first one is usually dictated by the answers to the last three.  The answer to the second one is usually limited by one's qualifications and the options available.  Decisions related to free time are frequently challenging ones, as taking deliberate control of that aspect of life requires discipline, and knowing what to do with that level of control takes wisdom.  Who to spend it with is usually limited by location and availability unless you count Skype or can handle long phone conversations.  One goal I have that fits into this category, is finding a wife who is a suitable match to me.  That isn't a decision on its own, but a goal that will both influence and be influenced by the decisions that I make in that regard.  Having solid friendships is another goal I have that will be realized through the choices I make with those last two decisions.

As for where I stand now, I have short term solutions to the first two, each of an explicitly temporary nature.  I am satisfied with each for now, as a step in the process, but appreciate the eventual need to move on, to keep me from being too complacent in my current position.  I try to be conscious of alternatives to my current solution as I come across them.  That is why I consider myself to be facing those decisions at the moment, even though I am not without answers to them at the moment.

As to how I spend my free time, recently I have been fairly consistent in spending it explicitly in learning new things.  That has included reading new books, attending trainings, testing new ideas, and having challenging conversations with people.  I have been aiming to do this for a long time with some degree of success, but the last few weeks have been especially fruitful in that regard.  This site is a part of that process of taking deliberate steps to grow and learn, as well as examine the choices I am making when faced with a decision, and why.  The motivation for this comes from my realization that the decisions I face in the near future may be some of the most significant ones in my life.

Up until about a year ago, the course of my life had been in a fairly consistent direction.  That direction continued through the decisions that I made throughout my life.  That direction also influenced the choices that I made when facing those decisions.  Staying the course is usually easier than changing your heading, and if things seem to have been going well so far, why risk trying something different?  The direction I has going was acceptable to me until I got to where I was headed.  I decided in high school that I wanted to build a technology based company from the ground up, and develop every system from scratch.  Four years out of college, I had fully accomplished that, creating all of the technology support infrastructure for the film production company I worked for.  I designed and implemented every system in our facility, from power and phones to hardware and software.  I am proud of the fact that my company has a reputation for being on the cutting edge, in large part due to my role there.  It isn't that I didn't like where I ended up, it was everything I thought it would be.  It's that I didn't feel a need to continue on past that point just because that is the direction I was already headed in.

That decision became the first real deliberate change of direction in my life, and is how I ended up moving from LA to a small Christian camp in northern California.  My objective was to rebuild their ropes course, and help them through some big transitions.  Once again I have reached the destination I set, and am looking to see what is next.  Continuing on in the current direction past the destination I have reached would be to go rebuild ropes courses in other locations, but I ask myself, why I am doing that.  Is it because I actually want to reach a further destination in that direction, or just because that is the direction I am already headed in?  I currently have plans to "try out" continuing in that direction with one or two projects, but is that wise approach to the issue, or  just an excuse for "drifting" until I find a new destination?  Although I am not certain, it seems that drifting in what might be the right direction should be better than waiting stationary until I have a more clear direction or goal.  Drifting instead of making a decision is usually motivated by a fear of cutting off options, which will be the topic of my next post.

Asking the Right Questions

It is difficult to filter everything down to one question, but at least initially, my intent is to examine everything I am learning to see how it relates to the question: "what does God want me to do?"  That can be narrowed down by adding a qualifier to the end, like: "-with the time (or resources or relationships or freedom) he has given me," to make it more applicable to certain individual topics.

Now this question presupposes the existence of God, which I am okay with, because any examination needs some known variables.  At this point, I have no question in my mind that God exists, as the source of everything we know in the physical universe.  I have investigated the alternatives, and I see no other reasonable explanation for complexity of life and the world we live in.  So if there is an all powerful and knowing entity out there, should that affect the way I life my life?  The answer to that is clearly "yes," but the specifics of "how?" are much less obvious.  That all depends on what we think God wants, which hinges on who we believe God is.

There are many different perspectives on who God is, and I have personal experience with a number of those perspectives.  I was initially raised in a Catholic church and school, finished elementary school at a Calvary Chapel, eventually went to a Lutheran University, attended a non-denominational church in LA, work at a Baptist camp, and participate in a charismatic bible study group.  That diversity should illustrate the challenge I am facing in sorting through all of the different perspectives that I am trying to reconcile and discern the truth from.  Each of these different groups has their own idea of who God is, and therefore a different idea of what exactly He wants us to do.  The primary issue this presents is that many of these ideas of who God is and what he wants are mutually exclusive, and exist in direct conflict with one another.

How do we determine which of these ideas is true, with any level of confidence or certainty?  One place to start is to compare them to the Bible.  While that may be difficult to objectively prove, all of these groups agree that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God.  If we assume that to be true as the first step in our examination of them, and compare the other details of what they teach to what is found in the Bible, we can determine which ideas are most biblically consistent.  This should cast doubt on any ideas or doctrines that aren't very consistent with the Bible as a whole, outside of the context of the individual part that they are based on.

In any complex math question, every time you lock a variable, you remove one dimension from the answer.  An equation with one variable can be answered as a single value or answer, two variables can be visualized on a flat surface, three in depth space, four with motion, etc.  Answers with fewer dimensions are usually simpler to visualize and easier to solve.  By locking the values for the existence of God and the validity of the Bible as Yes and True respectively, we simplify the question that we are trying to solve, and make it easier to visualize the answer.  Once we have a solid understanding of that instance, we still have the opportunity to unlock those other variables in the future, to explore how they affect the results we come to.

What is in a Name?

That might be overstating the question a bit.  Technically "What is in a name?" is a very deep question, that I intend to address at some point in the future.  For now, I will limit my discourse to: what is in the name "Seeing the Forest from the Trees" and why I chose that phrase as the title for this project.

Besides being an idiom for the concept of discerning the larger pattern from a collection of smaller parts, it has other more personal meanings.  As I commute back and forth from NorCal to my job in LA, my co-workers down south refer to where I live as "up in the trees."  I also do a lot of climbing in actual trees, usually pertaining to work on ropes courses, and so I spend a lot of time, some of my favorite time really, seeing the forest, from the trees.  I am actually pictured in the background, silhouetted working up in the trees, if you look closely.

Since moving back to Northern California almost exactly a year ago, God has introduced me to a wide variety of new things that have changed my perspective in many ways.  I have had the opportunity to observe two very different spiritual viewpoints contrasted again each other on a daily basis.  I have read many books and learned from many different conversations.  At this point, the biggest question I am confronted with on a daily basis is: what does God want me to do with the freedom he has given me?  The challenge is in figuring out how each of these diverse things I have learned applies to that question.  Writing about them will allow me to explore how they relate to each other and I am hoping that doing so will help me identify how they all fit together.

Each thing I have learned is a tree, but seeing every tree individually doesn't mean that you know how they all interact in a forest, nor what the forest looks like as a whole when you take the time to step back and look at it.  This blog is an attempt to step back and take a look at all of the things I have been learning and thinking about.  So once that phrase occurred to me, it seemed like the perfect title, and a good place to start. And a title is the first thing that Google asks for when you begin a new blog, after all.

Never before have so many with so little to say said so much to so few

So just for the record, I am under no illusions about the nature of blogging.  With millions of people out there doing things like this, my life and thoughts may not be too much more interesting than the next person.  But the purpose of this endeavor is not for you the reader, although you are welcome to peruse my thoughts and ramblings, it exists primarily for me, as the writer.  If it ends up being a helpful tool to flesh out ideas and concepts that I have on my mind, then it will be a success.  And if it leads to some interesting conversations and insights from my readers, so much the better, therefore feel free to let me know what you think.  The topics are going to vary greatly, depending on what is happening in my life, but they all fit into the big picture.