From deepest darkest.... Korea?

If y'all haven't read Rupert... well then maybe the above doesn't make sense to you where he says that he is from deepest darkest Africa.

But ramblings aside, I am here in Korea now and going to be here for the next two months doing a little bit of everything. For the first week, I will be in Pusan attending a global missions conference (Urbanaesque) and then going on an urban missions trip immediately following the conference. From there I will be returning here to Daegu, where I will be preparing three to four weeks worth of material in order to help run a children's ministry from July 27th to August 17th. In the meantime, I might also be teaching English to the neighbourhood children, but that all depends. Plans are really flexible right now, so just keep all of the above mentioned in your prayers.

It's really humid and wet here right now, it being in the middle of the rainy season and all... but my first experience of inland Korea was the feeling that I was breathing water... it was so humid. This is the life for the next two months - and even though I hate humidity, I'm too excited over being here to really care.

Signing off from Korea.

Apparently....

Apparently I'm an active, intellectual, traditional enthusiast. What does that mean? I'm not too sure seeing as how I'm just writing for writing's sake than for any other real reason. But I'm most definitely an enthusiast. I live for the highs of life (a good thing? Absolutely not) and they really exhilirate me when they happen. You'll meet very few people that have emotional instability levels equal to mine - one moment I'm on top the world, at another moment I'm down in the deepest valleys of despair.

Apparently, writing for writing's sake gets me nowhere. My mind just doesn't want to turn concepts over right now.

But on a light note, I saw Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer today. It was entertaining. Not excellent, but also not terrible. Had a good time watching it... even though I did go to the bathroom as they were explaining an important storyline point that led to the climax of the movie. Whatever you do, don't leave the theatre at any point after they arrive in the Army base in Siberia.

And did anyone that saw the movie notice that Von Doom looked WAY too much like Emperor Palpatine?

And does anyone else think that Stan Lee cameos are getting more and more ridiculous with each Marvel movie that is released?

Traditions and rituals

So I was considering yesterday as I was reading the chapter in Spiritual Pathways about the Traditionalist and how the use of symbols, rituals, and liturgies really helps such a person connect to God, more so than other forms of worship and times of devotion and how such a person is such an "anachronism" in modern - or rather post-modern - society. In this post-modern individualistic society, rituals, liturgies, and routines are "constricting", "stifling", or just plain old boring. People claim they have no freedom to do whatever they want, that the structure stems their creative flows, that no one should be subjected to such structure because nobody can benefit from it.

Perhaps the above claims are somewhat extreme. I'm sure that many people I talk to would package the above in a more pleasant light - more along the lines of "Hey, if that's cool with you, go for it man." But the truth of the matter is that the traditionalist, liturgical, ritualistic worship is definitely not "cool" anymore. If it's "cool" with you - well that's just plain weird.

There's just something about the pattern of the prayers in the "Common Book of Prayer" that just strikes me. The reverence to God that the prayers encapsulate, the beautiful mixture of Scripture readings and prayers that have been said and read for hundreds of years, and the content of the prayers themselves that so encapsulate what I try to say in my prayers but just can't seem to say properly - it's all there. Within the context of the Christian faith, the liturgies and rituals don't seem boring and dead but exciting and full of life. Last Sunday at the Anglican service that I attended, it was just an amazing experience. I've never experienced a liturgical service before, but contrary to everything that I've heard, I felt a connection during the service that I've little felt at many worship services. Not once did I drowse and not once did my mind wander as I read through those prayers. In fact, it gave me so much peace and brought me to a place where I could completely rest and relax in the presence of God, even though I had my LSAT looming ahead of me. And it completely prepared my mind and heart as I listened to J.I. Packer speak on the doctrine of the Trinity and it opened up the eyes of my heart to comprehend in a different light the passage to be found in the Gospel of John where Jesus discussion with Nicodemus was recorded (chapter 3).

There is much that we, as young people, could learn from these ancient prayers in crafting our own. Though the more casual prayer might be a more culturally sensitive way of approaching it, there is much we could learn in the formality and the reverence displayed in the ancient liturgies.

It might not be for everyone. I'm not suggesting that the liturgical method is the best way for everyone - merely that we can learn a lot from it.

Makes me almost want to go to an Anglican church Sunday evenings.

A good old fashioned rant

I haven't ranted in a while... so here it is. Yes I know I said I might make a more coherent post... hopefully this is that, but not quite so much on the lines of about me.

So I'll begin by asking you when you have a product, that is a pretty good product but has varying levels of reactions from varying levels of the population, and when forays into different niches of the market really don't pan out very well, what does one usually do? Usually you decide that you leave those markets alone where it's just more resources in then profits out in terms of all the advertising, time, and energy spent trying to make it work in said markets. The competition is just so well established, that it's not really worth your time or money to grab market share - all of your attempts to do so flop miserably. So what does any good business do? Well I don't know what they would do, but I know that I for sure would pull out and spend my time trying to milk the markets that I do have for now while attempting to perfect it so that in the future I would be able to interest those other markets at some point. In the end, you want to ensure long term survivability of your product.

What does this have to do with anything you may ask? Well today, I read an article on Yahoo! Sports that said that the NHL is considering adding two more teams to the NHL. Where are they going to put them? Winnipeg? Quebec? Some Canadian city that cares about hockey?

No.

They're thinking of putting them in....... Kansas City and Las Vegas.

One word. PUH-LEEEZE..........

Sure the NHL will rake in about 300-500 million dollars in franchise fees to set up these two teams. In the SHORT term. But what happens in the long term? You just have two more teams leeching the revenue sharing trough, which means a smaller cut of the pie for teams that are already in the league that are also feeding from that trough, which means even less teams that actually turn a profit which means garbage like another lockout as the NHL tries to lower the salary cap by even more because the teams just can't afford to pay their players.

And seriously now... the statistics show that people would rather watch Law and Order reruns then hockey in the United States (this information courtesy of that article). How is hockey expected to compete with the entertainment that goes on in Las Vegas or against football in Kansas? It'll just be two more cities with hockey pages buried somewhere 3/4 of the way through the sports section of the paper, never read, and only found to be useful when you get a new pet and are in the process of house training them.

Don't believe me? Anaheim just won a Stanley Cup... yet you'd be hard pressed to find a citizen of that fair city that could probably tell you where the hockey arena was. Sure Kansas or Las Vegas overall population is probably at least 5 times that of Winnipeg or Quebec... but I'd be willing to bet my academic career on the fact that more people care about hockey in these Canadian smaller population markets than in those apathetic cities. I'm sure the average attendance will never pan out to more than 20 000 a season.... and as for selling out? Forget it! Meanwhile, if we were to have the Jets again or the Nordiques... watch those season tickets sell out faster than you can say Hockey Night in Canada. Need proof? Ticketmaster has already posted that you can put down a deposit to guarantee purchases of seasons tickets for the Predators in the event that they move to Hamilton. If they don't come you get your money back. Interest payments on all that money aside (does anyone else realize that Balsillie is milking a cow that he doesn't even own yet?), the big picture implications are huge! Southern Ontarians are willing to pay for season tickets to a hockey team that DOESN'T EVEN EXIST YET! Is that not evidence enough that in terms of fan base revenue, it would make so much more sense to take those deadbeat teams that do nothing but sap revenue from the teams in cities that care about hockey and either cut them or move them to Canadian cities (and arguable more Northern State cities). Anywhere that gives a hoot about hockey.

Although I'm sure that the players in the Western Conference really wouldn't mind their road trips as much with a Las Vegas team. Who knows? Jeff O'Neil might actually enjoy his flights. They'd sure enjoy their trips a lot better than if they had to come to dirty old Hamilton 8 times a year.

A century is like a life...

This is something that I read somewhere recently (not allowed to say where ;) ). Essentially, the line stated that as a life comes to a close, people reminisce and remember the events of the past. Since people do this at the end of a century... a century must also be like a life.

Interesting logical implications aside, that's what I thought of as I read back at my last few postings. They've been incredibly emo (as emo as I ever get in writing anyway). But my LSAT is now done... finished as of 5:35 PM yesterday evening. I am finally free of school things... at least until I get back from Korea and start fourth year, and need to begin gathering up my references and application materials for law school.

I now, truly, do not have anything to worry about (not that I really did before.) I can finally rest. It feels good.

I will start by going to bed. Perhaps a more comprehensive update, or a more coherent post to follow at some later date.