DARE Officer Training

I just had one of the best weekends with my family. I spent the last week in South Dakota at DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) Training. Its hotter than blazes up there. You know they say absence makes the heart grow fonder. When I came back this weekend we really had all missed each other and had a great time together. In fact, it was the kind of great time that I hope I would have with my family right before I were to die unexpectedly, not that I plan on dying anytime soon.
DARE school has been intense. ALOT of homework the first week, hopefully there will be less this week. I definetly had a bad attitude midweek last week about it, but was able to recover by the end of the week. You know Jesus said that if someone slaps us on the one cheek we are to offer him the other to slap and that if someone makes us carry their load a mile we should choose to carry it another mile for them (I wonder if that is where the expression going the extra mile came from?). Anyway, the instructors here are on our side just trying to make us the best we can be, and I still have trouble having a good attitude. The "pressure" their putting on me isn't even malicious like in the situations Jesus is talking about and I still have a really hard time having a good attitude and just accepting my rightful place as an obedient and grateful student!
AUDIOBOOK Reviews
I listened to the Davinci Code on the way up here. It was a decent detective novel, but definetly not the scholarly attack on the deity of Jesus Christ I had been led to believe. Its a novel about people who believe the church has erased female divinity out of christianity. It was kind of an extremist feminist bent on what Christianity, and all religions should be. That seemed particularly funny to me since the main character of the book was of course a guy. He had a female sidekick, but she was the type cast sidekick type character. The book ends up being a search for the holy grail redefined. Do not read this next sentence if you don't want the story ruined****. Drag your cursor over the blank spot below to see the spoiler!!



The side kick ends up being the holygrail and the the lost female divine all wrapped in one and she doesn't even know it.



Safe to start reading again
I think the book was probably so popular because it is a good detective novel and because the church is starting to feel antiquaited to many people. Maybe they were hoping for a new vision of the future of faith. Plus the book is all about knowing about the skeletons in Jesus' closet. If there is anything our society likes its knowing the dirt on our celebrities.

I'm also about halfway thru The secret message of Jesus by Brian McLaren. It has been really good so far. McLaren does such a good job of capturing the disconnect between what Jesus and Paul say in the New Testament and what the present day church does.

Well I better get back to work. I have homework due tomorrow.