Weekend recap:

Thursday...went to Felix's and shared 2 bottles of wine. Then, headed down to Er and Francis', where I drank 3 more bottles of San Miguel and then commenced taking swigs out of the bottle of Jack and Southern Comfort with the guys. I drank like a man, dammit! The next thing i remember I'm throwing up all of my salmon on the side of the freeway. Here are a few highlights (some i do not remember):
*Group primal scream
*Er pouring beer into Mike's ear
*Jon wanting to jump through the living room window very very much
*Er throwing office chair at Mike
*People throwing one another into the bathtub full of ice
*Joe prostrate on the cement with his head in a bush
*Loud drunken rendition of "drop, baby drop, baby drop, drop all your love on me"

I wake up in the morning, still drunk (I find out later that just about everyone else woke up drunk too....worst of all was Mike, who woke up drunk still in the hallway of the empty apartment) and drag myself to work. Somehow i make it through, and then head to church retreat! Hypocritical, you say? I fully agree. Spent the weekend soaking in mineral hot springs, eating resort food, staring at the beautiful lake and black swans....and i must admit, not praying very much at all. I have some issues to work through, but I do not know if I will find the answers at church retreat.

After a weekend of heartfelt talks, admonitions, and altar-calls set to the weepy picking of a guitar, i have only been able to recoil at what now appears to me as emotional manipulation...preying on the insecurities and wounds of a few kids who are hurting so much inside. the altar call dangles in front of you the shiny carrot of forgiveness for your sins, healing for your pain, communion with your peers...but at the price, in my humble opinion, of your self-reliance.

i am not saying that we as humans can ever be self-reliant....but we must learn before we submit to a higher power the abitlity to discern the things caused by our own actions from those directed by divine intervention. too often it seems that whenever i'm wrong, it's because i'm an imperfect sinner and i deserve all the bad things that happen, yet whenever anything good happens to me, i should thank god for his blessing. i want my successes, as well as my failures, to be my own.

even so, i realize that just because i want something to be a certain way doesn't mean that it is.