Eric Bailey's

I have been reading Donald Miller's book "Searching For God Knows What". In this book he brings up an idea that sounds interesting. As human beings, the thing that is missing in us, that one thing that we are searching and striving for in everything we do is a relationship. Not just any relationship but the closeness to God that we were designed to experience, but have been separated from since the divorce of the fall.

Because our view of the world is lacking this relationship we have replaced that acceptance by God with the game of comparing ourselves to others. Miller calls this the lifeboat theory. We are in a lifeboat and deciding who should be thrown overboard, who has more value.

"If there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctore, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbage man, and one person had to be thrown overbaord to save the others, which person would we choose?"

We rate people. We rate people based upon some arbitrary ideas:
•Slam dunking a basketball - athletes get respect because of their ability to play sports.
•Good Looks - What is beauty? Who says? Different cultures have different ratings for beauty, and it all is arbitrary.
•Intellegence - Does less ability to reason make people less valuable? Why? How far are we willing to extend this?
•Wealth - This one goes along with the idea of power and ability to get your own results in our world. We value money and possessions, we say things like "He who has the most toys when he dies wins." Why? Wins what? More worms?
•Rightness - We argue over things, trying to convince each other that we are right. I've seen some arguements that just keep going even when people realize that they can't convince the other.

All this comes back to thinking about the people that Jesus was interested in talking with and the people that most churches try to attract. Jesus didn't judge people by these catagories, but instead he just loved people. He spent time with people that others wouldn't see. He spent time with the untouchables. He spent time with the outsiders. Spiritual outsiders, those who couldn't enter a church because of the looks they would get, because of the feelings of unworthiness. These are the people Jesus spent time with. Jim Cymbala says something about this in his book Fresh Wind Fresh FIre. Are we really like Jesus while we do our best to attract the pharisees to our church? Too many thoughts, I think I'll have to try again tomorrow to organize these rants, and ramblings into coheriance.

Well, I guess I should post again since the week is almost over. I said that I thought this week would be terrible, but for the first half of the week I did not really have time to dwell on the sadness of being out of football. Instead I had to be ready to drive bus Monday morning for training. When I drive bus I have to be up, so I was not depressed while training, but I was not moving particularly fast (especially since the hot tub was not working at that point). I did my check of the bus to make sure it was in working condition before I could take it out on the road for training, but the bus did not make it through my check. One of the brake lights was not working. It seems like there is always something to report on a bus that I am looking at. We after I finished my check we took out a different bus, one that was checked by thr driver earlier in the day. I learned about "pick-ups" and "drop offs". It sounds easy but there are a lot of things to remember that need to become second nature. There also needs to be homework done ahead of time when driving an actual route so that you know when to stop and when to fix a route sheet. It's complicated.

Tuesday I drove the bus again, but this time we skipped practicing the "circle check" so that I could get more hours in driving. I think we did about 3 hours. It was good. We drove an old route and talked about situations that might occur while you are droping off or picking up students. This route is one they like for training because there is a place where you have to turn around in a drive way. Before school pick up the students before turning around, and after school you drop off the students after turning around, that way no one gets run over.

Wednesday was a different kind of fun. I attended (at the Valhalla Inn) the Safety Session that the bus people put on for their employees once in a while (they have these things and you have to attend 5 of them). I sat at a table with people that I didn't know, but I met one of them earlier that week (he drove the bus for my kids last year). I visited and learned some about the various people sitting there and also learned some about the job that I hadn't asked yet. There were a couple of guys who were spares (they fill in for other drivers) and they have been pretty busy so it sounds like the bus company is kind of short staffed right now. I will probably get a regular route, but I am not sure what kind of money that will pull in for me since it sounds like the different routes pay different amounts.

Tuesday I had a meeting with the elders and Thursday I went to work at completing some of the things I needed to do. Wednesday I sent out an email about our small groups and very slowly replies have been trickling in. I don't think I will have the groups set up by this Sunday at this rate.

Thursday night was an ejoyable small group. I had prepared a devotional, then in the afternoon I was struck by an article I read in MacLean's so I was going to improvise a discussion based on that, but I brought my original devotional just in case people showed up that would make the MacLean's discussion uncomfortable (more than it would normally be), and when I saw that we had a new person at the meeting, decided to go a head with original devotional. We actually had some good discussion and the new person who has been coming out to church the last couple of weeks joined in and seemed to enjoy herself.

Today I have more work to do to get ready for Sunday, but at least I don't have to preach. Hey, I don't have to teach this Sunday either! Maybe this weekend won't be so bad after all.

It is about time for a head long dive into a bit of a depression that no one will believe can really happen. I can feel it, but no one seems to have really noticed it.

Today we lost our football game. Next Saturday was to be the finals where I was sure we were heading. I was not sure that we could win but I was sure that we would get there. Now I will be there as the paid backjudge for the game. I had a big game making some big plays including a one-handed catch that I ran in for a touchdown (I did not have to run very far on that one), but I also had a number of drops. It was terrible, it could have been extremely disheartening if I did not have so many catches in the game. The quarterback this week seemed to depend on me some and I felt like the guy who was covering was not good enough and that I could beat him all night. They still won.

Football is over, it is over in a tragic way, and there is a lot of uncertainty about the existance of the next season (either indoor which is unlikely to happen or outdoor next fall which has some definite question marks). So I made too many mistakes and we lost. I suppose that a lot of things can be pointed out as the cause for our loss but when it comes down to it, I made those plays in the indoor, I make those catches usually. I didn't make those catches today.

I am sad. If you are still reading you are probably not believing it, but I really do feel sad. I'm not sure what it will take to come out of this, but I do know that I am sad right now.

I ran across another strange quiz and when I got my answer I posted it here, but when I came back this afternoon and looked I discovered that the post was gone, leaving only the title. That made for a really strange quiz since no one could know what I was talking about.

The link above should take yo uto the quiz page, but it is very few questions so it is kind of a skewed quiz.

Maybe tonight or tomorrow I will blog about my meeting that I am trying to prepare for, it shouldn't be bad, but something inside of me is dreading it some so we will see.

One of the problems I have is the format. I received the agenda for the meeting and this agenda mirrors the agenda style that we use for our congregational meetings. While the one is a more "business" type of meeting designed to get information out, the other is not. I am not sure what I would like the meeting to look like, but I am going to have to communicate to others my desire for the format to be different. If we don't make the effort to be different then we will slip into the same kind of meeting that we are used to and that is not what we need.

First the bus driving. I was driving again today and I am getting more comfortable behind the wheel. I was actually driving at the speed limit today. There were a lot of railway crossings and that is always a pain, but I am getting better at it. It is kind of funny but one part of our training is to tell them everything you are doing. After you get your licence though we don't do that kind of thing while we drive the kids around. A well, learn what I'm supposed to, to do the job right. I drive again tomorrow, but then I take a break on Wednesday before I get behind the wheel again on Thursday. There is no driving training on Fridays.

The weekend went alright, but I find that the more things I have to do on a Sunday the harder it gets for me to ask for help or volunteers to do various things on Sundays. I wrote a skit for Sunday, I preached, I taught the boys class, I planned the service for Sunday and so I was to contact those involved and recruit people to be in the skit. People were not called with a lot of time and I feel disappointed because I did not get things done quickly enough. Well this Sunday I have less responsibilities so hopefully I can do those well.

Football Report:
It was the last game of the regular season, playoffs start next week. We were already securely in second with no hope of catching first. The only thing to be decided was third and fourth and that was done before we even played. The game was not important except that this was the team that we should face in the finals (if we play as we should) so we wanted to beat them to remind ourselves we could.

While we are waiting for the ref to show up (he never did), our quarterback arrives with my friend who I asked to pick him up (it has been hard for me to get there every week so there are three of us who have given him a ride to games). My friends comes up to me and says, "I just want to warn you, XXXXXXX is drunk." Our quarterback shows up to play drunk!!! He claims to care so much of the game that he criticizes others harsher than he should, but he shows up drunk. He doesn't seem to realize what a difference it makes to his game. I don't know why, but we let him start the game at quarterback, he fumbled a number of snaps (one was terrible but the rest were workable - I was not centre) and made some wrong reads so we did not really put together much in the way of drives. He did run for a first down once, but that was the exception, he was not able to play like he can normally.

We pulled him (which he did not like) and told my friend, who gave our quarterback a ride to the game, that he would be trying his arm at the job. He had previous experience at quarterback, but he did not do well. He faced the best rusher and probably the only guy on that team that could match him for speed. We wanted to try a couple of other guys at the job, and part of me wanted to give it a try again. The first guy we tried is one of our younger players, and he had the arm, he has some speed, but he could not see the field very well nor could he call the play himself. He tried a couple of series, but there was one more guy to try before we were done so we pulled him to try our final player.

While he was warming up on the sidelines, I asked if he could call plays in the huddle or if he needed help (because I wanted to know if I had to think up plays - it is hard to do on the spot). He told me he could handle it but he did not sound confident at first. We got in the huddle and he threw a couple of completions that looked good. Then he threw a pass to a guy who suddenly found himself wide open, the defender had left his coverage to stop the quarterback from running. The receiver was suddenly open deep and he had another level of speed he could run when he has a chance to find it. A touchdown! Our first of the game. One the sidelines we (there are 5 guys who play only offense this day - we have a lot of players out this day) are talking and this new quarterback admits that he was the back quarterback at the University of Calgary. He played quarterback! He knew what he was doing and knew what we were failing to do all along! Well guess who is starting our next game at quarterback.

Part of the reason for this new quarterback getting the job next week is because of the way that our previous starter reacted to being pulled. First I told him he would play receiver so we could try some others. He flipped out, he swore at us he criticized us extensively especially other players individually, he threatened us and promised to find himself another team because he has never been pulled before. With his reaction he was told he was benched, we don't need such an attitude there on the field. He still continued to do the same as he had, out of control anger and threats. After some time he came up to me quietly later and asked if he was going to play today or if he should just go home. With the way that he was acting, and the fact that he was drunk, I told him to just go home. He left with the promise that he would not play for us again and that we could go back to the 2 win season we had before he came. I wish I had the receivers that he had when I played quarterback.

Well we have a solid quarterback for this year but we are left wondering about next year. Who will play for us? Will the team exist? The biggest question is probably if there will be a league next year, but that is a different issue. A lot happened for a game that meant nothing to us.

Well I have started driving the bus. Yesterday I did the little very controlled driving on a deserted strip of road. Today I drove where there was a possibility of other vehicles (there were other vehicles). There were all kinds of dangers around as I thought about all the things I need to remember when driving a bus dangers like parked cars that can suddenlly leap out in front of you and cause an accident (it is amazing how much inanimate objects that are uninhabited can move - ask Heimdahl). Somehow I survived without hitting anything, with doing pretting good on my corners (right turns better than left, but that will come with practice), and with crossing those evil, frightening, irritating, and horrible railroad tracks. A school bus must stop at all railway crossings. Open the door and the driver's window, look and listen for trains, close the door, look again and then go. Try that on your first trip where you cross one a little more often than you cross street (it is a weird part of town)!

I survived and I am feeling better with each time I get behind the wheel. Tomorrow I don't go in to drive, I wait till monday to start trying to build up my 20 hours of driving (I got 1 hour out of the 3 that I spent there as driving - the rest of the time was spent on pre-trip inspection - it is going to take me all day at this rate to check the bus pick up kids, drop off kids and then clean the bus). I have a lot of driving time to put in and I need to get the inspection down so that I can spend more time driving (it should take 30-45 minutes). It would also help if the bus I use doesn't have to get anything fixed. We discovered that this bus had the wrong kind of mirror on one side and had to get that replaced. Part of me wants to find and use the bus my kids ride so that I can see how good a job the driver who uses it is doing with safety and that sort of thing. I haven't even brought it up to anyone because I think it is just part of my evil, over-protective, scheming mind.

Tomorrow is back to the regular grind of writing sermons and preparing stuff for Sunday. In life your either behind the wheel or you look up and find the bus is bearing down on you.

Well I'm not sure where the week is going so quickly, but it's Wednesday already. Yesterday was to be my first day on the bus, but I discovered that description is a little decieving. First day on the bus we learn to check the bus before we go any where. It is supposed to take about 25 minutes. For the first one it took us most of the 3 hours of training for the day. Today then all four of us who are in training went on one bus to the training area. We set up the pylons and drove around them (not over them - no one drove over them!). I even got to do it a second time (forwards and then backwards each time). Before anyone else got a second turn though we had to head back to the terminal. Tomorrow starts the one on one training that we each have to do. Besides our time spent in the pre-run check, we have to have 20 hours of driving in before we get our licence for the bus. Well, I'll be a little bit closer to being finished after tomorrow.

Football Update:
For all you who are waiting for the weekly football update (since I know most of you are), we won! We actually played this time and we still won, bringing our record to 5-4-0. I did manage to score a touchdown in the second half of the game (I had a lot of catches and 4-5 drops besides). I am disappointed with the number of drops that I am having this year. At half time we had put together some drives, but did not finish any of them. So the team that was last in the league was leading us 16-0 at halftime. We came back and won 24-22. We score three touchdowns in the second half and stopped them near the end of the game from getting the two points after they scored a touchdown. It was close. I mostly played centre and the responsibilities are really different there. Sometimes I like it sometimes I don't. The big problem with playing centre is that my lower back hurt a lot the next day. Pain doesn't hurt as much when you win though as when you lose.

Today I have no bus driver training, instead I get to catch up with my church work. All the things I couldn't do in the 1-2 hours after training I need to get done today. Luckily this week I am not preaching so I don't have that to add to my list of things to get done. I have some furniture movement to do after our meeting last night. I have to set up my classroom downstairs and I think I want to preview a movie for the class. I can't remember the title but it is a Jim Carry movie. The boys want to talk about Me Myself, and Irene, but that is not the movie I want to watch with them (as a matter of fact that is not a movie I want them to watch at all!). There is a nice little movie with Jim Carry, Morgan Freeman, and Jennifer Aniston which I think could continue some interesting discussion about who God is and how little we can really understand about him or even about our world. This feeds off the idea of "Why do bad things happen to good people." I also want to do some preparation for next week so that as I go through bus training next week I won't fall behind on my work.

Next week my bus training takes place behind the wheel of one of those huge monsters (stay off the sidewalks). I am looking forward to this but also dreading it. I feel like I should be good at this kind of thing already and I don't want to look foolish. I want to already be competant at the driving because driving is my thing. This attitude leaves me with much apprehension because I worry about not living up to my expectations and not being as good a driver as I am in my head. The problem of where the rubber meets the road.

I have completed two days of my bus training and I wonder how much information I can continue to take in. It is not that the ideas are hard, or that they don't make sense. The difficulty seems to be the pressure on remembering everything. While they don't say your job is related to getting everything right, there are some things that are zero tolerance (which as a parent makes sense, but as an employee are frightening). Up until now I have been focused on the driving aspect and wanting to learn driving techniques and just learn better habits that will suit driving the larger vehicles. This has been the biggest concern of mine up till yesterday. Yesterday the amount of information that I was given seems overwhelming. I suspect that some of it is common sense, but some of it is driving for a while. 3 feet from the curb, I am not great at distances, I am already freaked out with the 15 feet from the RR crossing, and following at what ever the distance is supposed to be. I just hope that things will become second nature, as they did when I took the motorcycle safety course. The problem is that I have been driving a motorcycle since I was 14, I have nevern driven a bus before.

I guess I am just feeling some of the natural stress at learning a new job, and at knowing that I will be tested on what I know. Some of the stress relates to the responsibility involved in the job (the care and concern for little ones). Some of the stress is because I had to stay up late and watch my Canucks win their first game of the season. Sleep the cure all, maybe later. Right now I have to get to work.

I am off today to start training for a part time job. This job will hopefully be fun and helpful for my main job. I am training today to drive a school bus. I suspect that for this year I will be a relief driver as I am starting part way into the school year, but maybe next year I could have a regular route to drive. The stuff that I will be doing today is going to be classroom type training. I'm not sure what there is to learn about driving while sitting in a room watching videos and hearing someone talk but I guess I'll find out. There is supposed to be 40 hours of training with 20 of that spent in classroom and 20 spent driviing. I am looking forward to the driving and getting to do things I have been learning already, but I am not anxious to be sitting in a warm building for too long. Warm building can make me sleepy and then I have trouble staying awake.

I'm still waiting to hear what the pay will be and what the expectations of the job are. I thought that they had started having a person ride along with the driver to help with the kids, but I discovered that they don't. So I guess I just have to become Otto so that the kids will just enjoy the bus and not have any troubles.


"The wheels on the bus go round and round ..."

I found Sunday to be a quick day. I got up in the morning to finish off my preparation for the service (which meant a lot of photocopying on a machine that I sometimes wonder if it will continue to work, but somehow it does). I copied the program, I copied the minutes from our last congregational meeting, I copied work sheets for a class I was leading, I copied something else but I don't remember it any more. I think that there were three or four other things I copied that morning. Besides practicing my sermon, taking the furniture out of the teen room and setting it back up with a table and chairs for the class (why to this is a whole other set of explainations, maybe another blog), trying to figureo ut how the new lapel mike works, and making coffee for the morning. Sunday morning usually just doesn't seem to have enough time to have everything the way I would like it but I don't seem to start any earlier for these things.

After church we had our congregational meeting (where we sit and discuss the things we are doing as a church and have the possibility for those who are not in leadership or on any of the ministry teams to hear what is happening and give some input if they feel moved to do so). This is the first one I ever chaired. I did not try to rush it, I even worked around one leaders who wasn't there yet to give their report (they showed up near the end of the reports and gave their report). After the ministry reports we had a couple of other things on the agenda to talk but those did not take long. Then there were two items that were not on the printed agenda that were brought up and discussed. With all this our meeting (which started around 12:30) ended at 1:30. This left me with plenty of time to get to my football game which I thought I might be missing this week.

Football Report:
As we near the end of the season, we played this week our final game against a "B" division team. We have not beaten any of hte "B" teams so far this season, but this is the team that is at the bottom of the "B" and lost to a "C" team that we beat. I showed up just a little bit late and saw 6 guys on our team just hanging around waiting for someone to show up. As I was walking up another of our team organizers showed up so that at least there was two of us there. I then looked across the field and saw on the other side 4 players. While we waited, the ref finally showed up (the first game he would ever ref) and I dug him out some equipment (flag, bean bags, whistle etc). He talked to both teams and then we waited ten minutes to see if anyone else would show up for them (if you have 5 players you have to start - a full force on the field is 7 players). No one showed up and so we got our win and then we gave them a player and played 5 on 5 for fun. The ref stayed and did the fun game, learning and practicing so that he could do more games in the future. Beside not getting to really complete it was a pretty good set up, we even got our back up quarterback in for one play (he threw a pass and it turned into a touchdown) and then the game ended. I feel better about putting him in during a game even though I have only seen him in for one play. I think we should make plans to have him play in our next game since it is against a team that we beat fairly easily last time and they are going through some injury problems now. So our record moves to 4-4-0.

Richard directed me to this test and so my old movie personality is: