doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.

fear and weakness, courage and strength

the longer i stay here in this strange town in the middle of the forest with very few job prospects and little security, the more people tell me how much courage and strength i have. and it’s true. this is taking all the courage and strength that i have… much of which i didn’t know i had.

i’m afraid. i’m scared. i don’t know what my next step will be sometimes. every now and then i get into this state of mind where i’m just not sure what’s going to happen, and it’s not even that evident that i have any safety net at all… where do i go? what do i do? what am i doing here anyway? who am i? where am i? why am i here? dear God, what in the world am i doing here? why did you put me here in this place, in semi-rural Quebec, surrounded by trees and cows? i have a B.Sc. in computer science… why did you put me here in this hunk of farmland?

in a way i can answer that question for myself. i am here to surrender to God and to do His bidding. nothing else matters. not whether i like His will or understand His will or agree with His will or feel like carrying out His will or anything like that. none of that matters. I am here to surrender to God and to do His bidding. He has put me here to change my fear into courage, to change my weakness into strength, to change my abasement into exaltation, to bring me from shame to grace. that’s what I’m doing here. Through His grace I will come to realize that He is doing for me what I could not do for myself.

after all, I sure as hell wouldn’t have put myself out on this pile of rocks.

no offense intended, of course. it’s really quite a nice town ;)

mcgill goes goofy

“…humanity can only achieve that golden age of global unity once it wholeheartedly promotes the consumption of seaweed and raw fish.”

I wasn’t aware of that particular pillar of divine civilisation ;)

carstairs carruthers

blah car garbage. I gotta sell my old car to get it out of the driveway, and get the license plates on the new one changed. what the. grumble grumblesmurf.

snow once again

hey people, woohoo it’s snowing :) I love snow. it’s melting when it hits the ground tho. I’m hanging around at Benoit + Constance’s place, and the kids in the schoolyard across the street are roaming around under colourful umbrellas, talking about the sorts of things kids talk about. kids are great. i love kids.

I’m feeling a little existential right now. so many things i used to think and feel and believe are slowly crumbling into dust, and slowly being replaced with new concepts, new behaviours, new manners of thinking and acting. i’m not the same person i once was, and i never again will be. over the past seven months i’ve become aware of so many parts of myself that I had no idea ever existed. and i’ve reached a point of no return that says, hey boy, now that you have this new awareness, you’re never going to lose it, and now you have no choice but to act in accordance with this new awareness. if you ignore and put away the things you’ve learned, you deny yourself and your Lord, and your life becomes meaningless. I have to change my life. I have to live in accordance with what I have learned, without hesitation, without reservation. it’s quite a task to take on.

quite a task. please God I may achieve it.

the dance of the sugar plum fairies!

hey looking

centre: “hey chump! you keep taking pictures of me and i’ll crack your head open and make an omelette with your brains!”
left: “you better listen to him. i seen him do it.”

feeling weirdly good

Arrggh razzen frazzen french keyboard layout. Anyway, I went and had a nice group info session with Manon from Accès-Travail, and signed up to a job research club. Yay! Hopefully this way I can put some effort into gaining skills and experience in the job market. Gotta learn how to sell myself well, how to be efficient. I’m glad I can do this right now… I think I’ve really needed it and I just never took the chance to do it before I left university. too bad, but hey, that’s in the past. right now I just know I’m taking care of myself and giving myself something that I really needed. Man, I could use some potatoes right about now. French fries. Mmmmm. I want french fries.

Ok peace out y’all.

news

so, just to let you all know, i got re-evaluated at work today (since my training period was up), and they decided not to keep me on. i met with my boss today and we had a good talk about it. he explained why i was being let go, and we reached an understanding. he even suggested to me where i could direct my steps to get better work. i won’t go through all the details here, but just to say that i’m now gainfully unemployed, that i left on good terms, and that i have lots of options open to me. i plan to join up with the local job research club and see if i can find something a lot better.

sometimes God does weird things. and we may grumble and curse and moan at the outset, but generally, once we accept it, we see that those weird things are exactly what we needed in order to grow. more news as it comes in. i’m happy.

trials

through no fault of my own, I was given this life to live, these faults, these lacks, these wants. these myriad imperfections are slowly, one by one, being exposed, dug up and rooted out by the tests of God. God must want me to become real strong and really well-developed, because the tests just don’t stop coming.

it’s nice that I can be positive overall. I don’t think I’d have much if I couldn’t. I guess positive doesn’t necessarily mean happy, either, because I’m certainly not happy at the moment. maybe that’s because I have the wrong definition of happiness. it’s always best to be content with the will of God. nothing else works for the highest and best good of all concerned.

i’m not happy right now because I’d rather everything be simple and easily within my grasp. of course, if everything was that easy, I’d never progress or get anywhere. and I have a lot of progress to make. if there’s anything I’ve learned on seven months of service so far, it’s that I have a long way to go. there seems to be only one real way to be happy, and that’s to be content with what God has ordained. otherwise, there’s always some calamity that pulls you down and messes you up.

I’ll get this. It’s going to take more than just a year to get this stuff down pat. I’ll get it.

tartes aux citrouilles

Voilà voilà je suis chez Benoit et Constance Girard, faisant l’aide-pâtissier. J’ai porté un beau tablier avec des fleurs et j’ai joyeusement magané la pâte avec mon beau rouleau en bois. Demain, l’Assemblée rencontre Dr. Shapour Javanmardi, un des membres du Conseil bahá’í du Québec, et un homme très gentil, radieux et chaleureux. On va dîner ensemble au Luxor, un restaurant au centre-ville.

J’ai juste une autre chose à dire. Vive la positivité!

Tartes aux citrouilles is french for pumpkin pies!

questionnement et cheminement

that’s all I’ve been doing lately. questioning myself. progressing a little. questioning myself again. progressing a little. and so on. sometimes God gives people a complete personality rearrangement, but for most of us, He’s ordained a slow, tortuous process where we end up doing all the important work ourselves ;)

gah! why am I here! what am I doing with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in this backwater? bleh. oh well. at least I’m not hoovering up all my savings like I was doing before. that’s definite improvement. I have a job, I have a car, I have a home, and that’s already far more than a lot of people in the world have.

I don’t know. I’m just thinking. thinking. thinking. what in the hell do I want to do with my life? what? serve the Faith, yes, definitely! But what else? What’s my trade? What’s my profession? Who am I going to marry? Where am I going to go? What am I going to do? How many children do I want to have? What languages will they speak? What useful contribution to society am I going to make? How am I going to make myself useful?

If that’s what I’m saying now, then my priorities must have changed. When I left high school I only wanted a job that would be easy to get and would pay lots of money. So I chose computer science. Go ahead and laugh at me now.

Hmm, my monitor just went click and did something wierd.

Check back later.

woohoo!

woohoo I have a car! I have a car! I have a car! I have a car! I have a car! I have a car! I have a car! I have a car! I have a car!

nice tings

tomorrow the car comes, unless something wack happens like it gets hit by a meteorite. I also have to get up before 10 AM because that’s when the 19-day feast is scheduled. :P er, I mean :)

;)

hey, the community had a really phat meeting with the Quebec Bahá’í Council tonight. It was really positive with lots of great energy and encouragement. I sense a lot of good things are going to come in the months ahead. And OH MY GOD! The phattest of the phat news! Someone new just declared her faith in Bahá’u'lláh this week in Drummondville. And she’s cool, too. I met her. She’s a youth, I think about my age, and she’s a friend of one of the Bahá’í youth in the town. Cool cool cool cool :) Now that brings up the number of Bahá’ís in Drummondville to… 6 I think? 6 is a GOOD NUMBER because it’s only 3 away from 9 :) That brings it a little closer to home, when someone you’ve met becomes Bahá’í, because you can tell when a person is open and searching for the message of Bahá’u'lláh, and you know you want that person to get connected, you just wonder how it’ll come about. This person met and talked to a lot of Bahá’ís the one time I saw her, and it must have had an effect. Man. Good stuff… I’m happy. Drummondville is doing good stuff. I want to work with them more. That reminds me, I have some emails to do.

Anyway, I’m having some toast and going to bed. g’night. Hey, where am I supposed to get cheap halloween candy? anybody know? I checked at the local pharmacy and it wasn’t quite as rebated as I thought it would be. You’d think it’d be pretty cheap after Halloween. anyway, peace out. peace. peace out. take it easy. peace out. hi there. bye there. peace out.