Nice guys finish last if they think that being a good person merits them a great performance.
If they think that they deserve results because of their integrity and kindheartedness, they finish last.
The truth is, performance depends on your ability to execute, not on who you are.
The goal for nice people needs to be to realize that they are undeserving of anything other than what their hard, smart work merits them. Then, they will not only finish first, but they will become indispensable.
Because when you perform, people trust you. And when people trust you, you can influence an entire culture to become nicer.

- Rosanna Tomiuk in Nice Guys Finish Last

“When you build a city near no mountains and no ocean, you get materialism and traditional religion. People have too much time and lack inspiration.”

- Don Miller in Through Painted Deserts p.21

Long, but incredibly interesting.

“Leave // Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you always wanted it to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.”

- Don Miller in Through Painted Deserts's Author’s Note

Anyone want to have a wedding like this that I can film?

“People commute from the land of Thoreau’s solitude to Boston, to work at banks, to work at law firms. And I wonder if Walden exists anymore. I am not talking about the real Walden, the one in Boston; I am talking about the earth God meant to speak before we finished His sentence.”

- Don Miller in Through Painted Deserts p.4

I can't wait for this documentary to come out!

“No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath.”

- Don Miller in Through Painted Deserts’s Author’s Note

"And as with all those who have come before you, their path came to an end and they only found me, their future. Quiet. Waiting. And I asked them the same two questions that I will someday ask you. Is it possible to be happy with this life? And then I will ask, as I do everyone else, did you enjoy your story?"

Chile anyone?

“I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like season they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God’s way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their homes and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”

- Don Miller in Through Painted Deserts’s Author’s Note

A great little short about working with your hands.

"There's a satisfaction in putting something together, a sense of accomplishment."
"The idea was to do as much as you could because the quality of your life would be better."
"You can still use your hands to build a home. There's no way that machines can really build homes other than sterile ones."
"Shelter is more than a roof overhead."

Also check out the old man longboard session at 4.06!

Fun.'s new album, 'Some Nights,' dropped yesterday and is amazing. Check it out.
This is a single off of it that's been out a while, but is still super good!

"Nor does a man, even though he is spiritual, judge the disordered state of society in this world. For what business of his is it to judge those who are without, since he cannot know which of them may later on come into the sweetness of your grace, and which of them may continue in the perpetual bitterness in their impiety."

- St. Augustine in Confessions p.250

This man is my new hero.

"Let truth spring up out of the earth, and let righteousness look down from heaven, and let there be lights in the firmament. Let us break out bread with the hungry, let us bring the shelterless poor into our house; let us clothe the naked, and never despise those of our own flesh."

 - St. Augustine in Confessions p.241

I can't even handle how cute this is!

"how is it that there are two times, past and future, when even the past is now no longer and the future is now net yet? But if the present were always present, and did not pass into past time, it obviously would not be time but eternity. If, then, time present - if it be time - comes into existence only because it passes into past time, how can we say that even this is, since the cause of its being is that it will cease to be? Thus, can we not truly say that this is only as it tends towards nonbeing?"

- St. Augustine in Confessions p.193

He honestly takled about how he doesn't understand how time is possible for 20 pages and over the course of those 20 pages, he made me doubt everything I thought I once knew.

It was bad.

Start listening around 1.05.
So good.

"More willingly would I have answered, ‘I do not know what I do not know,’ than cause one who asked a deep question to be ridiculed - and by such tactics gain praise for a worthless answer."

- St. Augustine in Confessions p.192

One of the dumbest sports ever so of course I want to play.

"The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Ohhhhhhhhhh, I dig.

“Effective rebellion isn’t just expressing your personal feelings. It means replacing one set of authorities and institutions with a better set of authorities and institutions. Authorities and institutions don’t repress the passions of the heart, the way some young people now suppose. They give them focus and a means to turn passion into change.”

- David Brooks in How to Fight the Man

My incredibly talented friend, who is probably going to yell at me when she finds out that I uploaded this, combined parts of Hillsong's 'Sometimes by Step' with Mumford & Sons 'Awake My Soul' to make one great worship song.
Enjoy the music, the lyrics, and us trying to keep a three year quiet and off sugar during the song!

"If I could offer advice to a young rebel, it would be to rummage the past for a body of thought that helps you understand and address the shortcomings you see. Give yourself a label. If your college hasn’t provided you with a good knowledge of countercultural viewpoints — ranging from Thoreau to Maritain — then your college has failed you and you should try to remedy that ignorance."

- David Brooks in How to Fight the Man

If being a travel videographer for an advocacy organisation like World Vision doesn't work out as a career, I wouldn't mind working for Red Bull.

“Who can find a virtuous and capable wife? She is more precious than rubies. Her husband can trust her, and she will greatly enrich his life. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life … She is clothed with strength and dignity and she laughs without fear of the future. When she speaks, her words are wise and she gives instructions with kindness. She carefully watches everything in her household and suffers nothing from laziness … Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last, but a woman who fears the Lord will be greatly praised.”

- Proverbs 31:10-31

Everything I love about skateboarding.

"It's not that everything works out "in the end" - because this isn't "the end". This is today."

- Sarah Jarvis in The Unexpected

“O God, I beg two favours from you; let me have them before I die. First, help me never to tell a lie. Second, give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s hold name.”

- Agur son of Jakeh in Proverbs 30:7-9

One day I'll be here (Jan2013?).
Also, booya, Palestinian Christians!

“But now in writing I confess it to you, lord! Read it those who will, and comment how they will, and if they find me to have sinned in weeping for my mother for part of an hour - that mother who was for a while dead to my eyes, who had for many years wept for me so that I might live in your eyes - let them not laugh at me; but if they are persons of generous love, let them weep for my sins against you, the father of all the brethren of your Christ.”

 - St. Augustine in Confessions p.145

I'm really digging the simple elegance of this song right now and, based on the number of covers, it seems that I'm not the only one. Check out some of my favourite ones below:



Walk the Earth
This one has been making the rounds based on the whole weird factor, but I like their music best out of all the covers I've heard.



Ingrid Michaelson
This cover not only makes the list because I love Ingrid Michaelson, but also because the video itself is a standalone piece of art! Without a doubt some great editing!



4FRNT
Finally, if you're into the whole remix thing, this should float your boat.

“And I marveled that I now loved you, and no fantasm in your stead, and yet I was not stable enough to enjoy my god steadily. Instead I was transported to you by your beauty, and then presently torn away from you by my own weight, sinking with grief into these lower things. This weight was carnal habit. But your memory dwelt with me, and I never doubted in the least that there was one for me to cleave to but I was not yet ready to cleave to you firmly. For the body which is corrupted pressed down the soul, and the earthly dwelling weights down the mind, which muses upon many things.”

 - St. Augustine in Confessions p.104

First off, ignore the title of the video.
The guy is an openly gay DJ and this is his interaction with one of the members of Westboro Baptist "Church."
Not how I expected that to go.

Two of my roommates are learning to play guitar and they found out that another one can sing. This is what the lesson turned into.

“And I asked what wickedness was, and I found that it was no substance, but a perversion of the will bent aside from you, god, the supreme substance, toward these lower things, casting away its inmost treasure and becoming bloated with external good.”

 - St. Augustine in Confessions p.103

Bluegrass is so good that the animals just flock to it!

“And it was made clear to me that all things are good even if they are corrupted. They could not be corrupted if they were supremely good; but unless they were good they could not be corrupted. If they were supremely good, they would be incorruptible; if they were not good at all, there would be nothing in them to be corrupted. For corruption harms; but unless it could diminish goodness, it could not harm. Either, then, corruption does not harm - which cannot be - or, as is certain, all that is corrupted is thereby deprived of good. But if they are deprived of all good, they will cease to be … So long as they are, therefore, they are good. Therefore, whatsoever is, is good. Evil, then, the origin of which I had been seeking has no substance at all; for if it were a substance, it would be good. For either it would be an incorruptible substance and so a supreme good, or a corruptible substance, which could not be corrupted unless it were good. I understood, therefore, and it was made clear to me that you made all things good, nor is there any substance at all not made by you. And because all that you made is not equal, each by itself is good, and the sum of all of them is very good, for our god made ‘all things very good.’ “

 - St. Augustine in Confessions p.102

ALL THIS LEG SHAKIN' AIN'T MONEY MAKIN'!

I'm reading St. Augustine's Confessions right now and it's a strange book. As the title suggests, it is the personal confessions of St. Augustine to God. The book is an intensely personal and thorough (sometimes painfully so) account of his life to his saviour.
As I read it, I feel like that creep sitting in the coffee shop overhearing a couple break up; the guy going on about how he still loves her and the girl making up weird and vague excuses. I'm not using this as a metaphor for Augustine and God's relationship, it's just that this happened to me a few weeks back (while reading Confessions actually). Awkward.
All this said, you should read Confessions.

“I entered into my inward soul, guided by you.”

 - St. Augustine in Confessions p.100

This is one of those cases where I find a video, add it to my list of videos to post and, by the time I get around to posting it, it's already made rounds on the internet.
So if you haven't seen this before:
1. Where have you been?
2. Get ready for gorgeous.

If you have seen this before, deal with it because you know that it's beautiful enough to watch again.

“Lord our god, under the shadow of your wings let us hope - defend us and support us. You will bear us up when we are little and even down to our gray hairs you will carry us. For our stability, when it is in you, is stability indeed; but when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable.”

 - St. Augustine in Confessions p.56

I started watching this video thinking that it was all about electronic music and that it would be the stereotypical life of a musician. I was so incredibly wrong.
This video is the closest visualization I've found of what I want to craft my life to be like; a beautiful wife, wonderful children, a house I built, a garden, and a personal space to make my art. Who knows if it'll ever happen, but I sure aim to try.

I'm not the biggest fan of his music, but you can check it out here and you can read an article on the house he built for his family here. My favourite quote: "We have a no contractor rule. If we can't do it ourself than we don't do it."