Sketchism

So Saturday night I travel up to West Palm Beach in my car, rehearsing my lines as I said I would until the point where I felt completely comfortable. I arrived about 40 minutes before the band, which gave me time to rehearse standing in front of a mirror. The church building was beautiful. They had this lounge area that was better than any starbucks handsdown. So we hung out there as a wedding was getting wrapped up. Finally it was time to set up, practice, and perform in front of an audience of about a hundred people. In honesty, I was expecting to see a bunch of high school students but the turnout was mostly people in their mid-twenties and older, which was quite a shocker. It was supposed to be a youth group. I guess the word has a different connatation north of Miramar.

The crowd was completely hispanic, so my jokes about my family struck a good chord with them and that pulled in some good laughs. It’s so fun to connect with people on that sort of level. Some people came up to me afterwards and expressed the similarity of households we live in. It’s great to know I’m not the only weirdo out there.

Anonymous performed incredibly as usual and Rey preached an awesome message of biblical friendship that the whole human race needs to hear. We were all challenged to examine the basis of our current friendships and what they are built upon. Current trends? Music? Faith? God? All or none of the above? In the past I’ve built relationships on the hope that a person is reliable to a certain degree: a point where I’ll be nice to them if they’re nice to me. Friendships held only by a mutual fear of betrayal or ridicule, denying any possibility of growth or communion. We looked at Old Testament friendships such as David & Jonathan and New Testament friendships such as Ruth & Naomi.

I find that much of my life is in need of a good upgrade, friendships not withstanding. Two nights ago before I went to bed I found myself scribbling ideas for a new section on Sketchism, what most would call the About section. I want to explain what sketchism is, and to what end this whole website is leading to so it’s not a mystery to anyone including myself. Outside of my writing I don’t want to tapdance around any issues or concerns that I face on a daily basis, and I want to live a life that can be judged righteous in the eyes of my Maker despite my fears and anxieties of what the rest of the world thinks. I find writing to be such a great excersise for my craft and for socialization that I want to do it some justice by being completely honest with myself. Maybe I’ll get a few questions here and there, perhaps a few criticisms on occasion. There are a very few people I owe any explanation to in this lifetime, possibly less than I can count on both hands, and an even fewer group of people that have displayed a good amount of honor in areas of truth and taste that I feel I can be accountable to. To the rest of the world I offer the only explanation I repeatedly attempt to display, and that is a life that strives to reflect the glory of Jesus Christ. Anything else is just wordplay.