Me, the Bari-tenor

So I love to sing.  Not that I'm particularly talented, mind you.  I just love to do it.  For most of my semi-adult life (age 14 on) I've considered myself a bass.  I've got good low range (I bottom out around D2/C2--deep C or "the C below 'low C'") and I can push myself to reach E4 (F4 on a really good day--just above middle C (C4)).

And then one day, singing in my car I realizes there aren't many cool songs for basses.  Thus I must improve my upper range and become a baritone or 2nd tenor.  Boy, that was fun.  So I've been experimenting with singing tenor in church choir.  Lucky for me, I live in an area where tenors are in plentiful supply (usually good tenors are the hardest to find at church).  Thus I have the ability to hear a good tenor in both ear and match where I need to pitch my voice.

Stretching my limits has been very fun.  I sang a song over summer that required a G4 (a step and a half above my normal max) that I had to falsetto, but it has been fun to learn to hear the higher range of notes.  Bass is easy to pick out because it is the lowest note you hear.

So anyway, I can sing bass better than most, and my tenor is coming along, if a little short on the upper end.  Either way I love it.

Twilight

(Originally dated December 2009)

I honestly can't believe I'm blogging about this. Actually, I can't believe I watched Twilight.

I have mixed feelings about it. Yes. It was as bad an awkward as everyone said. The music was cheesy, and the acting seemed poor as well.

But it other ways, I was very impressed. As bad as Rob Pattinson's performance was (I was reminded of Hayden Christensen's Star Wars performances) both he and Kristin Stewart played the awkward high schoolers perfectly. The script could either be labeled as horrible, or as perfectly representative of high school relationships. Add to that the strangeness of an emotionally troubled girl thinking she is in love with an equally emotionally troubled vampire. (Although you'd think that he'd be a little more in control after "living" for 100+ years.)

The strange camera angles can be seen as reflecting Bella's troubled mind as well as Edward's mental instability in regard to Bella (actually it was horribly accurate to how I felt around one particular woman).

(I had more to say at the time, but I found this in my draft box and decided to publish this.)

Less inspiring, no less interesting

When I started this blog, I felt it would be important to monitor where my traffic (visitors) came from--or at least how many visitors I had.  I thought that's what the SiteMeter widget would do.  It doesn't.

However, some time between when I last blogged frequently and now, blogger has added a sweet analytics interface to my admin dashboard.  And what I can see is super cool.  Since this architecture was implemented, I can track my most frequently read posts, and the sources that send people to my blog.  Yay for Google buying blogger and integrating GoogleAnalytics into the blog interface!

That said, why is "Unclog the Flow" my most-read post?  Please comment, I'd love to know your thoughts.  (Although if you do so anonymously (i.e. don't have a gmail account for some odd reason (WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?)), please leave some hint for me to know who you are.

Jesus Logic

At first this may sound a little blasphemous. It's not, I promise. (As an aside, I freaking hate toaster ovens. I can't even toast things properly.)

In Toronto I met a lot of people whose opinions about Jesus varied. "He was a good guy." "He was a fraud." "He taught good things." "He was the Son of God." "He was a charlatan."

While opinions are well and good, we can know Truth. We can know exactly what Jesus was/is/will be. The Spirit will guide us to this knowledge as we are prepared.

However, what helps me is whether things make sense. Regardless of what my mother claims, I feel I am a logical person whose opinions are based in fact and reason. Thus we shall take a lawyer-influenced look at Jesus and His claims.

We know Jesus taught many things taken as truth and as beneficial. However, are they really? Can we really trust a man who claimed he was the Son of God? In a court case, if a witness is proven to have lied on the stand, even once in hours of testimony, the entire testimony is often discounted and the witness is assumed to have lied about everything. This must happen because picking truth from lies is impossible.

Similarly, we can put the testimony of Jesus on trial. Without doubt, the claim that he was the son of a God and a mortal woman is the most questionable he ever made. If someone can disprove that claim, the entirety of his teachings falls apart. Thus the Beatitudes become useless--for they are obviously taught by a liar, His commands to love one another become unnecessary, etc.

Following that track, any teaching that has come since derived from Jesus' words is also false, any teaching from other perceived great men (Ghandi, Confucius, Mohammad, etc) agreeing or citing Jesus must also be taken as false. As you can see, claim Jesus is only a great man and not 100% what He said He was leads to the disruption of much of the moral code the world follows.

However, if He is the perfect Son of God--a knowledge any willing person can gain--all of His teaching (even the ones you don't like) must be true (because He could not lie) and must be followed in order to gain the Eternal Life He promises to His disciples. This is the case because the Son of God would have full authority to speak on any subject, and His words would be eternal law. Thus evaluating Jesus' claim to divine sonship is the crux of most arguments about Christianity.

So the decision comes to you. Will you throw away the morality of the world by believing He is less than what He claimed to be, or will you discover whether He is the Son of God?

My knowledge is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He died and was resurrected so each person who ever lived may gain Eternal Life by following His teachings. Logic supports it and the confirmation of the Spirit irrefutably confirms it.

Accountability

Any of you who have had an in-depth discussion with me recently know I have been on a kick about agency. You ask me, "what should I do?" and, like a very wise person I know, I answer, "Do what you want." Well, at least that's my answer to most people who already have an idea of what they ought to do. For people who are completely unsure or who I think need guidance I am an endless source of unwanted advice. That said, I still try to end the discussion with "Do what you want."

I take great comfort in the fact we must each answer for our own choices. It makes sense. If my friends came to me for advice and I had to answer to God for their choices, I would not have any friends, nor would I choose to share my opinions. But we will each answer for our own choices. Therefore we have two burdens on us: (1) choose to do what is best for us in all situations and (2) suggest people do the same--this is an action we must answer for also.

So when it comes to you to choose, do what you want. But want to do your best and what God wants you to do.