on the move

Lisboa, Portugal


It is about time to get out of town. My friend invited me to go with him to Portugal, at first I was hesitant for that would involve me missing three days of class. He was coming over to hear my answer and I had decided to tell him “no”, but as he entered the apartment, something in me changed. In a little over thirty seconds I had changed my mind and agreed to go. Not only am I going to go to Portugal, I am going to take four days to get there and visit a few cities along the way.

My roommates have been giving me a hard time because every time they ask me what I am doing, I have a new plan or no plan at all. At the moment, my plan is as followed;

Thursday: wake up around 8am and take a bus to Madrid. From there, I am going to take another bus west. I am not sure where, but things tend to work out.

Friday- Saturday: ?
Sunday: meet Pier in Lisboa
Sunday-Friday: ?
Saturday: Return to Zaragoza

Life in Spain.

Things are going well, I have been spending a lot of time reading and indeed enjoying that, however, I might be over doing it. Example, one of my friends wanted me to read a book called “God in the State” by Michael Bakunin. For some reason I did not start reading it until Saturday afternoon. My friend wanted me to read it because we have been having some interesting conversation about life/faith/ world view and he told me that this was a book that brought all his thoughts together. The book is red with a picture of the late Mr. Bakunin sporting a wiry beard and a quasi cray look in his eye. As I read the back trying to get a feel for the book, the description said, “God and the State has been a basic anarchist and radical document for generations. It is one of the clearest statements of the anarchist philosophy of history: religion by its nature is an impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity. It is a weapon of the state.” You could see why I have been putting off reading such a book (not what you would call a pick-me-up). But, I want to understand what he thinks and this is indeed important to him.

After about two hours of reading and taking notes, I had to call a friend of mine (Jason Jackson), the book was wearing my little brain out. I still have about half of the book to go and I will indeed finish it, but not until I get back. I know that there are a lot of people that generally avoid books like this as if it is the plague (and I can understand that), but that is not ok with me, I want to learn how to think, how to process information, but this is hard when you grow up in the world of consumerism. We tend to take in information like cows, we listen accept and move on. However, problems arise when you hear or read things that are in conflict with one another.

So, there are two ways (maybe more) to go from here. One, filter your information and only listen to things that you agree with or two, learn to think. There is great value in the ability to sort through information with the hope of coming to a more full understanding. This is where I find myself, its not easy, but I don’t want ease.

I think critics get a bad wrap. The word critical, mean to take a careful or examined look at something, from politics to religion this idea is of utmost importance. Ok, that is enough ranting for me, but I guess that is what this whole blog thing is all about.