All I want is to have my peace of mind

In my recent attempts to redefine myself, which have included getting bangs, joining a gym, doing my laundry every two weeks (rather than every three), and learning how to maintain my own vehicle, I also got myself a new phone which also serves as an MP3 player. So now I'm one of the cool chicks at the gym with her earbuds in as she sweats away on an elliptical machine. But the joke's on everyone else. I'm sweatin' to Boston, Regina Spektor, and The Black Eyed Peas.

I'm still working on jobs for next year. Right now the one that's acting most interested is the position with Rehoboth - I interview again with them tomorrow. Apparently this one is going to be more formal? I'm nervous. But I'm still holding out for the KC job, and Justin Van Zee has recently offered me an opportunity to take my business to Korea, so we'll see what happens. As I sit here in my bedroom and sweat under the influences of a swamp cooler because it's already 95 out here, I'm coming to realize that I really can't stay in Tucson forever. Love love love LOVE the place, but it's not somewhere that people come to do great things with their lives. It's more of a place where people come for a while and figure out what great things they could be doing with their lives, then go do those things elsewhere.

This morning my church had a meeting to decide what our future direction should be. We've gotten to the point where there aren't enough members to really financially support the church, but more importantly we the members are divided on how this church could move forward, and so no progress has been made in several years. My parents project, and I tend to agree, that there really isn't a happy ending. Most likely we will have to close our doors and walk away with our heads up, unless people decide that it would be better to continue to drag ourselves along until we're forced to acknowledge the truth and give up, with a last rattling breath and death twitch.

My parents and I were talking about it with some friends over lunch today, and it is remarkable how relatively ineffective the Reformed denominations have been in Arizona. It's obvious in CRCs in Phoenix and ours in Tucson, in the fact that there are not any other expressly Reformed churches in Tucson, in the fact that most Presbyterian churches are simply absorbing each others' leftovers, rather than bringing in new believers, in the limited impact the Reformed University Fellowship on the university's campus is having, in the fact that most graduates from Reformed colleges are not going to Reformed churches down here... It's a little puzzling, because, and one of our non-Reformed friends said it this afternoon, Reformed theology is a huge comfort. It's solid and well-organized and Biblical. But Reformed denominations are working on making themselves completely irrelevant in a world that is becoming more and more like Tucson, Arizona. Everyone is moderately transient, multi-cultural, self-involved, and lonely. The Reformed churches have nothing for these people, even though Reformed theology holds a great deal for them. It's sad, but at the same time it's a challenge to the young (in age or in heart) of this tradition to find new ways of making a Reformed perspective in life matter to the people they have around them. Where to start? I'm not quite sure yet.

I'm going to go fix myself some creamy potato soup I made myself yesterday because I'm either sick or have allergies from hell, and regardless I feel like shee-yet. Then maybe I'll pour myself a giant rum and Dr. Pepper. Who knows! The sky is the limit.