“Do the next thing”

Some things we know for sure that we are stocking the van with for our trip:  cds, dvds, clothes, frisbees, all old TeenPact and Student Project t-shirts, homemade Whoopie Pies for Mr. Echols, (courtesy of Adam,) and a case of Moxie to share!

What I’m not packing for our trip:
books on theology, hermeneutics, or eschatology.  My musings and muddled thoughts on these topics can stay the way they are for now.  I’ll revisit them again later.

Some things we know we are going to do on our trip:
Swing by the Army post we lived at for almost 4 years when the boys were small.  It’s not a post anymore, since we saw BRAC come through when we were there, but I’m sure the buildings are still there. (Amendment: We saw BRAC come through, but as I checked the site to link to it, it all seems intact as a post and the history says nothing of a closure.  Interesting.  Now I really want to visit……..)
Visit our Pastor’s family from the early 90’s…they live in North Carolina now.

Play Ultimate Frisbee.

Finally hear Bill Jack speak.  Erik came back from NC 2002 talking about him……….

Things I know we won’t be doing on our trip:
Sleeping a lot, spending time alone, paying bills, delivering newspapers, emailing, or blogging.

So, that’s about the size of it.  We’ll miss you all while we’re gone, but home is always the best place to come back to.  And, rest assured, one more thing that we know we’ll be doing on our trip: taking lots of pictures to post on flickr when we get home.

If sometimes you think maybe you got up on the wrong side of the bed….

If sometimes you wonder why everyone else has it easier than you…

If you ever wish you could get out from behind your desk job and paint lines on streets or something…..

Take a look at this….

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Sunset, originally uploaded by Midcoast Mainah.

Ok, so Fran isn’t stateside, but his camp has a state name! He sent me this photo today. He’s on the home stretch. It’s hard when the end of the deployment is near…….time crawls………..

First I will try to define a couple words.

Calvinism/Reformed

Ok, I’m getting somewhere here.  Oh, it’s not to say that no one has ever taught, preached, or discussed this with me.  It’s just that my mind seems to only hold onto so much until certain facts find a place in the bottom of a back closet of my brain.  So as I read a bit via my Google search I am reminded:

Calvinism and Reformed churches are all in the same place, basically.  A key component of their doctrine is tied up in Predestination.  That I do already understand, (sigh… I do remember some things from Bible College.) God decided before any of us were, who would be chosen to go to heaven and who wouldn’t.  Humans have pretty much nothing to do with it, unless we are the chosen, then we must accept the gift of atonement.  I think it also says that we really have no choice about whether we are good or bad.  God already decided which we would be.  That is really simplifying it.

As I read, I’m reminded of many things. There are 5 main points of Calvinism.  The word Armenian comes into the text and reminds me as well.  Our Pastor taught on this and I know I have notes.  Now to remember when he taught it so that I can go back to the correct notebook and read through them.  I’m sure he simplified things more accurately than I have!

So, what’s it all about anyway? What befuddles me?

Calvanism
Reconstructionism (not the post Civil War era that the kids just studied)
Theonomy or Theocracy
Postmillenialism
Reformed
Fundamentalism
Evangelical
Protestant (the one I always pick when questioned at hospital registration…but is it accurate?)

I can’t get into details behind my recent delvings since this forum is too public and the causation is too new. At any rate, some recent occurances have caused me to look into things. Find out what’s going on in the church world these days. What types of churches are homeschool families landing in? Why do they choose those churches? Why do they stay in those churches? Why do they leave them?

Fran and I have a whole pocket full of church experiences. Soup to nuts. East Coast. West Coast. South and north. We’ve tried all kinds of churches in all kinds of places. We understand the struggle. We’ve been around the block a few times.

Now I must complete my own primer of definitions of opinions and beliefs. I’m happy where I am, don’t get me wrong. I simply want to know why people around me make the choices they make. I want to have intelligent knowledge of what I’m talking about. How can I do that if I don’t know the basic premise of each of the words above? The problem is, I read the definitions, learn about them, converse, come to a conclusion, make some decisions based on the conclusions, then I walk away and forget the definitions and conversations that persuaded me. How can I discuss it with others later with this process continuing in my head?