Woolsey Life

Sometimes I get online and follow bunny trails and tonight was no different. Tonight I was looking at hybrid electric vehicles and I decided to take a trip down memory lane and check in on the hybrid electric vehicle program at San Diego State College of Engineering. I figured the same professor would still be involved and instead of finding that the project was up and running I found a hand full of stories about how politics and self centered personalities wound up destroying an honorable effort.

I got the lion’s share of the details of this story from THIS ARTICLE but I had heard some of these things in the year or so after I graduated from younger students that I stayed in touch with. If you don’t know any of these people this story won’t mean much to you, but I felt compelled to share it here. This story is a reminder to me of how our pride, arrogance and unwillingness to always move toward peace can destroy something that is bigger than us. The fear of the Lord teaches a man wisdom, and humility comes before honor. I know the people in this story, and many of them insisted on honor and never considered humility. They see things completely upside down from how God has made us to be. The result was a black eye on the face of a good institution and damage to some who I consider to be honorable.

It makes me sad.

I love watching movies when I can get into them. I am kind of fidgety but when I can settle in to watch a movie I love to because I can always find God speaking to me in them. Take for example the clip below from Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. If you aren’t into it just fast forward to about 2:30 minutes and look for the discussion between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn as they are left alone in the conference room.

If you are completely unfamiliar with the Star Wars universe, these are Jedi Knights and they are characters that seek after self discipline and they are the assigned keepers of peace and justice in the galaxy. Something struck me when watching their interaction here. Obi-Wan is troubled by something far away from where they are and expresses it to his elder, Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon tells him to be aware of the here and now. He reminds him to ‘…be mindful of the living force…’. When I watch this scene I can imagine a similar discussion between two believers of God who are trying to discern God’s intentions in an urgent moment. It might sound a little more like, ‘be mindful of the Holy Spirit…’ Wow, that is really cool. But is it just my sci fi loving imagination at work?

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We have all heard the saying that we are our own biggest enemy. At one time or another we have experienced the voice inside us that whispers to us when things are hard or when we are under pressure. These voices inside us can discourage us, they can pit us against those that we love and they can fuel suspicion, resentment, and distance between us and others in our lives. Flipping through the Book of Psalms I read the songs and thoughts of a man that must have struggled often with those voices. And like many others, its in those writings that I see reflections of my own story.

Time and time again King David would write about those that sought to do him harm, he wrote about how they lay in their beds thinking about ways to damage him. I think that like Peter, Satan desired to sift David like wheat. The pressure he felt and the stress he found himself under amplified the voice that caused his torment. I can imagine that voice, I hear mine clearly in times of distress. It calls out and paints darkness all around me. When mine gets louder I have to consider the complete story of David.

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I haven’t written much lately because I haven’t been overly inspired to do so. But tonight I have something to share. We had our staff meeting late tonight and we went out because Travis hadn’t had dinner yet. On the way back I saw 2 shopping carts from the nearby Stater Bros. on my street. I happen to know which family is responsible for this and even though I don’t understand their reasons for leaving them where they do, I know I don’t have to.

A couple of weeks ago at one of our iGroup meetings we were talking about anger and whether its right or wrong. In fact, this is a topic that comes up more than a little in our group, maybe we can discuss this more in depth later… Back to my point - this one night we were discussing what anger is about after watching a Nooma video narrated by Rob Bell. His topic was anger and he postulated why people are angry so often is because they have passion to be in a fight and they are not in one. He suggests that these people can use this passion to do good. So, as we were discussing this topic I had a fresh thing in my mind. The topic of my neighbors’ shopping carts. I try hard to make my home look presentable and make it an asset to our neighborhood and when someone else does not I tend to get frustrated. So when the carts are around from time to time I get really annoyed and naturally tend to get mad at my neighbor. But after our discussion that night I decided there needed to be a switch. So afterward I went out and grabbed the shopping cart, put it in my truck and ran it back to the Stater Bros. down the street.

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In case you were thinking my title is a joke, its not. Today was the big computer day for me. I have been putting off the restore on my Dell XPS since the day I got it and at the same time a girl I have had working with me at Impact needed a reformat even worse.

So, I offered to set her up and get her computer all cleaned up. So while my computer was being rid of the all the factory installed ‘bloat-ware’ I was doing an even more needed clean up on her computer. Her computer had been infected with everything from Trojan horses to worms and the result was an unending stream of pop up adds and fake system warnings and the occasional pornographic image. She has been putting up with it for so long she has forgotten what it is like to have a computer that is free of those problems. So I was going through the computer, helping her back up the stuff she needed; I began to take the software axe to the roots and I realized that in a way, this is what my job is!

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