Bear Gryllis wouldn't be proud (long)

Upon coming home I found a nice surprise; my parents have cable. Now they don't have cool cable with ESPN and CSTV but they do have the Discovery channel which I've been watching like you drink water after running in the desert. It's good stuff. One of the three shows they're showing is "Man vs Wild." I like it. They drop this guy out of an airplane with a camera man and he shows you how to survive in bad situations. Its kinda cool.

About a 1 1/2 years ago a couple of guys and I decided to go camping during the semester. So in February we all got ready for our Friday night out- three of us couldn't have gotten dates if we were in Vegas with B. Franklin's hanging out our pockets. So K- Stew the Biochem professor, B-stone the physics major, Jake- the Western PA guy, Jeremy - the roommate all were meeting at Kevin's house before the trip.

I showed up on time. Later Brandon Stone and Jake moassied in with a truck bed full of unchopped wood and an axe. There's something soothing, something medicinal about chopping wood; I don't know but it just seems to help. So we chopped wood for the next 30 minutes waiting on Jeremy. Unfortunately the wood was acquired by the "found by the road" method and was apparently pretty wet. I say apparently b/c when we got to the campsite and tried starting a fire it wouldn't light.

I was thinking about this the other day. Except not with wood. I was thinking how many times churches invite people in who don't stay. You put in effort and time and they walk away a week, month, or year later leaving you tired. Just like our fire left us tired from chopping and blowing on it. It stinks and you feel cold for a while. If you can't find people (or wood) on the side of the road then where are we suppose to find them? It's a difficult question and scenario.

Thinking forward I would like to say that our wet wood fire never started. It would give me an excuse at the end of the blog. But after 2 1/2 hours of blowing on a small fire with the wet wood piled around it the fire dried out and caught. Now we had a truckbed full of wood on fire. It just took a little more time and a lot more effort then we expected, but it was cold. I'm realizing I'm not putting the analogy together very well so maybe this helps wet wood : church visitors/ projects :: slowly starting, time consuming, effort wrenching : new members. I've seen a lot of project families go down the drain. Is it b/c of the effort? I don't know. Is is b/c of where we're finding them? I have a suggestion.

Maybe we should go about finding people in less obvious places then our doorstep looking for assistance. Maybe we should find those people that have no interest in church or religious institution what-so-ever. Today there is a new ideology passing around in Western thought. Its the idea of being "Spiritual" but not "Religious." Religion implies you do something over and over for the sake of doing it. People who claim to be "Spiritual" usually have something against the set ways of the church. And usually they have a good point. I think these people are our "Wet wood." They won't walk into the door by themselves but I think they would really burn when you got them in. I think this free thinking person would also be attracted to how most of my reader's churches don't have a definite list of do's and don't about religion but how we see the grey area; not just the black and white. I think that's appealing to this Neo-hippy spiritualist group. They like the idea of well a educated group, benevolent, free thinking group; which I think most of our churches are. Now we just have to get them in on board.

Paul "Prometheus" Murphy

P.S. Don't try to get them in the door immediately. They would probably be more receptive to a less traditional setting then the church building- like bible studies. Also these people seem to flourish at Ultimate Frisbee games and college campuses.

Neccessity is the mother of all big mistakes

I realize that that's not the correct saying but if you're a Murphy it quickly takes form, weight, and truth. So here it begins.

Being the good looking person that I am, my friend Midchelle thought I would make a good Jonah for a little skit at camp. She informed me of her selection and wrote me into the script. Meanwhile, Danny Vaden bailed to play the part of Jesus in the big production on Thursday night. The perfect storm had bruid and fate was ready to strike.
Oh, by the way; my hair is kinda long and after a week of travel I look a little scruffy.

So I get to camp and on Saturday I was asked by Tommy The Program Director if I wanted to be Jesus in the Thursday night big production. I agreed, always looking to serve.

Sunday came and went. There wasn't any script studying. Monday and Tuesday came and I started reading over the material. Wednesday came and I started memorizing. But it was too late. Sometime Wednesday afternoon I decided that I could get away with not memorizing my lines at all. All I had to do was find a small, ear-piece, headphone and plug it into my WT (2way radio). Then I just had to get Matt Fields to read my lines. It would be perfect.

So Thursday morning roles around and I get ready for the Jonah play. The headphones look perfect and are completely undetectable. I start into my part of the skit.

"From the depths of the sea... you rescued me... I sank to the depths..." My earpiece dropped out twice but I was still roling like a champ. Meanwhile a dog had been startled and took a defensive nip at a little girl. I don't care about that b/c no harm no foul. What I do care about is what it caused. Over the WT the call came for somebody to find nurse Karen. At this point Fields can't read me my lines as we are now searching for Nurse Karen. Ooops the skit is ruined. Knowing this I scan the crowd and repeat the line I was given "Does anybody know where nurse Karen is?!" Chaos insued "Fields help me out!" (ommage to Chevy Chase 3amigos) "Line!" Danny Baddeley finally threw his script at me and I finished in shame. Somewhere in there there was extreme laughter on my part. I don't think anybody remembers what the skit was about; only my mistakes.

Paul "Public appology to Michelle" Murphy

I didn't do the same thing that night. I memorized my lines like a champ.

Things I shouldn't Admit To.

Prudence might suggest I not talk about my stupid mistakes in life, but this is Paul Murphy's blog and the title should remain true.

So I dropped Colt off today with Jean Miller (Jaime's Aunt) but the road has been bumpy. Here are some stupid things I messed up.

1. Got lost in Honolulu for a couple of hours

2. Ate lots of fast food. Umm Taco Bell

3. Took Colt to the World's Largest Maze (hedgerows) at the Dole Plantation, then lost Colt in the World's Largest Maze.

4. Reserved beds, that's right beds, at a skank hotel in LA. I thought they had seperate Men's and Women's facilities but the Korean girl getting undressed to take a shower while Colt was making his way back from brushing his teeth proved that wrong.

Its been fun...

Paul "Not the best Travel Buddy" Murphy

Fatality

I just thought of this brilliant Paul Murphy moment while I was just about to go to sleep. This ones brilliant so stay tuned.

So my good friend Jody, you may remember Jody as the girl I stood up about four times for frisbee, had this cute friend she worked with. Now by this time Jody was going out with Steve. Anyways she decided to try to hook me up with her cute friend. So one night last year I was sitting around finishing supper. Jody calls me and tells me to come to the Methodist church where she babysat on Wednesdays nights. So I drove on over in my sweet Jeep Wrangler and tracked Jody down. I was in for a surprise.

Now in the past when I have a friend thats said, "Hey I've got a friend you need to meet," they either meant "Hey fall on this handgrenade for me so I can have some alone time with her friend," or "my cousin is pretty desperate and you haven't had a date in a while." This time was different. Jody found me a hottie. We had a good time hanging out with the kids at the Methodist church. I also got to meet her parents and they seemed pretty cool as well.

So a week or two later Jody calls me up again and says I should hang out with her, Steve, and the girl from Wednesday night. Cool. The girl had invited us over to her place to play old school super nintendo. She boasted her mad Mortal Combat skills. Nothing is more depressing then losing to a girl, it happened to me once, I got robbed, it sucked. So I brushed up on the old Mortal Combat moves. Always be prepared.

Well Jody and Steve picked me up then we went to Wed. night girls place. Solid. Well things started off poorly. I accidentally got her cat stuck between the screen door and the front door. Oops. Then we went to grab some dinner. It was all down hill from here. She started talking about a party she went to the night before and the dude she made-out with. At this point I realized nothing was going to happen and I was wasting my time, so I decided to have some fun. We went to see the "beavers" in a pond in Searcy. It turned out to be a giant rat. Then we went back to her place to play Mortal Combat. I began dominating. The first game I played her was a complete shut-out. I decided to finish up strong with a Fatality I learned the previous day. So after I torched her head with fire I began chuckling to myself. She began to be very frustrated with my domination in the game so she wanted to switch to Street Fighter. The problem there was I trained for hours my freshman year at street fighter with Sam Travaglini, an asian akin to the programmers. So I dominated in that too.

All in all it was a good night. Did I get nookie? Well, no. But I did get to see a rat and dominate in video games. I think Jody and I both realized it wasn't meant to be.

Paul "Socially Inept" Murphy

Decisions

I don't really like to plan. I think life is more fun when you fly by the seat of your pants. When you don't have a plan it leaves the possibilities at infinity. I remember would try not to plan my Friday nights at Harding. I always thought something really cool might come up and I didn't want to miss it. One time my friend Mandi invited me to do something on a Friday night. It was still early in the week so I said I wasn't interested in going or had something to do. The next week she asked me how my friday night went, I hadn't done jack.

Not planning has some disadvantages. I use to tell Sam T. that I was going to get a date the next weekend. The problem is I didn't really ever have anything planned and Friday snuck up on me quick. Then some fridays I'd give a last ditch call to some girl who would always deny my invitation to Wendy's. I think they thought I wasn't thoughtful in my request, but they didn't understand how I work. There are worse stories I just won't tell them.

Not planning also has some serious advantages. Part of the way I like to plan is that it allows me to make some crazy decisions. I never thought, "Hey I bet diving for that frisbee will hurt." It was just a desire to get it. I'm impulsive, and I like it. I don't over examine or over think stuff. I don't consider the consequences first. That doesn't mean I don't consider the consequences, it just means they ussually get drowned out by the excitement of a new opportunity. And it also helps give me great stories and contributes to the name of the blog. Impulsiveness leads to some pretty dumb things sometimes.

Paul Murphy

btw I'll be in Nashville next week and need a ride to camp, and a place to stay.