New Blog!

Hey Friends.

I have a new blog. It's much better than this blog (no offense blogspot).

http://keithmontmedia.com/blog

See you there.

Fear and Uncertainty

I dont want to be controlled. I want to be in control.

I find myself lately being more bound and controlled by things that I dont want to have control than maybe ever. I am anxious constantly. I need a job. My bank account is running scary low and come September 1st I have bills due. Not to mention in December when my student loans come rolling in. I dont want to be controlled by this anxiety, this waiting on Company X to call me back.

I ran into a guy yesterday walking between my house and Lis's house. He told me that the night before he got jumped right about where I met him. A group of guys were hiding in the dark and beat him up. I looked on crimereport.com and saw that there had been 3 robberies in less than a half mile from me. I dont want to be controlled by this fear.

I know the bible says to not fear those who come to steal or kill, but damn...it's a little worrisome.

I dont know what I want ultimately. I guess I want to be more secure than I am. Not necessarily in like security system/barbed wire sort of way, I mean like, secure that my worth is not here. And my life is a grain of sand in an endless ocean of time.

Heard a quote yesterday:

"A fish in search of water in the sea, is like a man in search for g-d."

Meditate on that.

My Walk

So long I've viewed my walk with God as a sort of cat and mouse chase. I start off somewhere with God barely in sight and strive and try to reach Him, and then when I get close he runs off again into the distance. This explains why I get so exhausted with my walk sometimes. I get to a place where I feel like I've made progress with myself and with God and then it hits the fan and I'm at the bottom again. I stop to catch my breath and cant find God again.

But today God revealed to me that it's not like that.

It's more like I am swimming in an ocean, continually struggling while He continually reaches out His hand. It is always there for me to grab, but rarely do I. There are times when I've felt Him holding me above the water for periods of time, but more so in my life I feel myself struggling against the current reaching for things much easier to grab, things that are not rooted, that satisfy quickly but let down right after. Instead of seeking and reaching the hand often I'll just talk about the hand, or read things that talk about the hand (Christian books and stuff), or think about the hand and all its complications beyond my comprehension, while the one thing that will help is just grabbing the hand.

It has been a long time frustration with myself that I seek knowledge of God before I seek relationship with God. My "reading about the hand" as opposed feeling the hand itself, reading my bible, taking intention quiet time, stuff like that.

mewithoutYou said it best, "We have our beliefs but we dont want our beliefs, God of Love, we want you."

I'm going to bed now.

Oh great.

Allow me to start with a story:

The day was last week. I was sitting down enjoying some Shakespeare's pizza with some friends and I turned to one and said, "Isn't it strange how graduation is in a week and we haven't heard any information about it at all?"

He tilted his head, puzzled, and said, "What are you talking about? They've been sending crap out all semester."

Well, it turns out that the department of engineering has been sending out info about graduation, you know, important stuff like when to pick up tickets for your family, when the deadline was to make sure your name is correct in the graduation book, what to do the day of graduation...

and I was left off the email list entirely.

Yeah, somehow I slipped through the cracks.

So, I decided to send some emails. If you picture a graph with Niceness on the Y axis, and Time on the X, you would see a steep negative correlation. On the contrary, a graph with Effectiveness on the Y, and Jerk-itude on the X, you would see a steep positive correlation.

The first email I got back (the nicest of them all) got a response saying it was my fault, essentially.

The third or fourth email I got (after basically saying "So, I spend 4 years at this school and go $50,000 in debt and my parents wont get to see their only son walk across the stage because of your mistake?") had a response saying "The dean has a signed note in his office that your parents may present to the ushers allowing you 6 guests."

Unfortunately I feel as though the lesson I learned was the more difficult you are, the more things get done.

I dont want to be a jerk though. I know how bad it sucks to deal with jerks. I guess jerkiness begot jerkiness though and it worked.

And now my family will be at my graduation. Thats good.

I said I was going to start with a story but I didn't really have anything else to say.

Sorry.

Dishes Discipleship

I live in a house with my 11 brothers. I love them so much.

The complication of 12 guys under one roof is chores, most specifically dishes. It has been the most popular topic of discussion at our house meetings, simply because there is always a mess in the kitchen.

You wont believe how much God has revealed to us through our situation with dishes.

First of all, there are two sides in the dish situation: the proud and the selfish.
The selfish says he doesn't have time to do his dishes.
The proud says he does all his dishes and wont stoop to clean the selfish's dishes.

Granted, each does dishes. But each fails. The selfish fails in doing his own, the proud fails to pick his brother up to do his dishes.

The proud must be humbled, and inform the selfish of his err. If I am trampling my brother, I hope he tells me so I can stop. And I want to have strength to tell someone they are trampling me. Its about laying my life down, but also remaining human. (See the real explination of "turn the other cheek")

Dishes have become an analogy for "problems", and this is the most outstanding revaltion.
There is a sink full of dishes, a world full of problems.
Will you walk by the dishes and say these aren't my problems. I've cleaned my dishes, my problems are solved.
Or will you say, I'll do all these dishes, but I'm not going to really tell anyone where they could improve (call my brother out in his "sin").
Or will you help clean the dishes and ask your brothers to help clean with you?


Anyways, its beautiful, the analogies that ring strong and true.

Check this out:
http://share.go-backstage.com/pagecxvi/
Free amazing music. One of my roommates sent the link to me and I cant stop listening to it. Its hymns remade. Amazing.

When Uncertainty is the Only Certainty

I'm at a time in my life, for the first time in my life, where I do not know what is next. I have no plan past 9 weeks and 2 days.

I am graduating.

Then what?

Soon I'll have to make a commitment, to either stay in Columbia, paying for rent and food, but staying where I feel the most community. Or, I can go home, and live with my parents for free while I figure out a plan. I soon must make a decision based on faith as to whether I will make things harder on my self for the sake of being close to my girlfriend and closest friends, or go home, where the job market is much more favorable for a man in my position.

Damn.

For the first time ever, things are so uncertain.

But I cant help but feel like there is a reason for this. I cant help but feel as though God has me in a situation where I have to losen my white-knuckle grip on my life and let Him take control. Sounds easy doesn't it? [sarcasm]

And I think the hardest thing is that people keep asking me, "Keith, what are you doing after graduation?"
"Well... I dont know yet."
"So... what are you going to do if you dont know?"
"...are you serious?"

I mean, I've had a couple conversations where people just keep prodding and I dont know how to kindly say "Look, you're stressing me out. I realize the severity of my situation, but it is intentional."

maybe thats the way.

I dont know. Its hard because most of the places I've applied are looking for people now. So when I send my resume and cover letter that say "I will be graduating in May and seeking a full time position", it doesn't matter to them because they're looking for someone now. So hopefully [hopefully, hopefully, hopefully] it will be easier come May. Else, I'm screwed.

And what if I am screwed? Then what? What if I cant pay rent? What if I cant find a job that will offer me health care? What about when my student loans start requiring payments?

I dont know, and maybe that's the point.

Which seems to be my mantra lately...

Maybe I dont know, and that's the point. Amen.

Poverty - Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day. A day when a crap ton of people all blog about one thing. To get people talking. I'm talking.

Poverty. Damn. Something thats always been with us, and something that will always be with us. Even Jesus said "The poor you will always have with you.." (Mark 14:7). He also said, what you do for the least of these you do for me. (Matt 25:40)

So why then do I sit here, on my Macbook computer on my comfortable couch, while I drink my coffee, in my full clothing, with money in my pocket, complacent, and say "Something must be done about the poor!" ?

I'm comfortable here.

...that is an issue.

Part of my excuse is that I'm in college and have no money to help out. All of "my money" isn't really "my money" at all, but borrowed money. So in my mind I have a slight out.

But then I remember.... its.not.just.about.money.

Its about living past yourself. Slamming on the breaks of selfish desires, raising the white flag of comfort and becoming TRULY human.

Its not about doing everything, fixing poverty completely (how nice it would be though...), its not about cleaning up your city, its not about giving up everything you own to someone else, its about doing something. I have been a christian for a while now and its really easy for me to get down on myself for not doing much. For not going out of my way. For not giving a dollar to *insert something*. I mean, yes, I have helped out at food banks, I've talked to homeless, I've emptied my pockets of change to someone in need, all sorts of things, and thats a step in the right direction, but these things are few and far between for me.

But what if we were all doing these things?

all the time?

We could give poverty the one, two and say dueces.

This is mostly on a local level.

But what about bigger?

Check this out:



These two girls are probably the most charming girls I've ever met. I met them in Choluteca, Honduras where a GCM churh is building a place called Casa Hogar Vida. It is an AIDS orphanage for families and children who have been effected by AIDS. I dont know if you know this, but Honduras is poor. I mean, POOR.



We went there to put shoes on barefoot kids, who walked on rocks and scattered glass. To put roofs on shacks smaller than my room, where entire (and sometimes multiple) families lived.

I'm not trying to boast, please hear me on that.

Where I am going with this is we have to take small steps. Making a difference in the world may be out of scale for most of us, but making a difference to one person is more than possibly for anyone who tries.

Lately, strangely, I've been thinking in knots. On my walk between classes today my shoe lace come untied. How does a shoe lace come untied all by itself? I checked it earlier and it was a firm, classic shoe lace knot. But as my legs furiously kicked while I walked to class, my shoe lace was just suddenly, undone.

Some problems are like this. A few furious kicks and its undone. They are fixed quickly, just on the way.

But other problems are like that megaknot you would tie as a kid with fishing line or yarn, where even thinking about how you would get it back to one straight string gives you a head ache. These knots take time. They take the undoing of single loops, sometimes doubles. Its a slow process that hurts your fingers sometimes. Sometimes the knot is your biggest critique. One time while my church was cooking out for the homeless in Columbia, we went to an older man who was homeless, and asked him to join us. We said we had food and he said "great. But do you have a place for me to sleep tonight?" He then went off ranting that we were placing a band-aid on the bleeding critical wound of poverty (maybe not his exact words, but something of the like). Yes, this was hard to hear. We thought we were doing something good and kind, to the least of these, and yet they asked for more.

This knot is far from untangled.

But at least we're thinking about the knot. We're discussing the knot. Drawing out ways we can untangle this knot.

This knot wont be untangled in my life. But damn it, if each of us just tried to undo one of these loops...

go.

go go go.

By the way, Jesus was homeless. Think about it.