Theme Workshop

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Revision as of 21:36, 24 July 2007

Technical Aspect - Andrew Hong

    “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, and with thanksgiving make your requests known to God.  Then the
    peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Phillipians 4:6-7

Anxiety: distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear of danger or misfortune

There is anxiety in our lives because we do not know the future, and that scares us. When I was much much younger, and my mom took me to the doctor, I preferred to watch the needle as it was going to my arm. Why? Because I wanted to know when it was coming. I wanted to be ready for the pain. But let’s go back even further, when I was even younger. What about my very first shot? Did I know that it was going to hurt? Of course not! How would I know, instinctively, that this little needle that doesn’t make loud scary noises, or is big and scary looking, how would I know that it is something that causes pain? I don’t! Not until it hits me for the first time. I felt that sharp pain, and I learned. The weakness of my body, how its vulnerable to these things, it taught me fear. The world that we live in, teaches us fear. And the next time I saw my doctor pull out a needle, I sensed danger; I sensed painful misfortune, and I feared for my life! My brain went into alert mode as it exaggerated the pain I felt last time, and all of a sudden the fear drove me insane into this whirl of anxiety! I couldn’t sit still! It took my mom and the doctor like 30 minutes to settle me down, enough so that I was tangled up in my mom’s wrestling move, some submission technique where I couldn’t escape. And I watched. Why? Because no matter what, it was going to come. Whether I liked it or not, that needle was going to pierce my skin. And if was going to come no matter what, I decided, I might as well know when it’s coming.

But we don’t always have that luxury, do we? We don’t always know what misfortune will come at what time. What we do have, is experience. Like I said before, the world that we live in teaches us fear. Did you ever know what it was like to feel left out, before ever going to school or some place with a lot of other kids your age? Before you saw their faces, how they looked straight at you, and cared nothing about you? What’s going to happen when you get home? You’re going to be scared that tomorrow, when you go to school again, the same thing is going to happen. Now take this on a bigger scale. Eventually, you start experiencing all these other emotions; these other problems. Embarrassment, rejection, accusation, abandonment, emptiness, frustration, confusion. All these different types of problems coming at you at different times. Eventually, it’s not just the next day you have to worry about, it becomes the next week, the next month, maybe even the next year. Right now you guys have to worry about the next school year. What new kids are you going to meet? What new challenges in school? Are you going to get good grades? Will this year be the year you finally get the courage to ask that one guy or girl out to the movies? There are countless things that could be on your mind.

Looking even further, once you get even older, it’s not just the next year you have to worry about, it becomes the rest of your life! Are you going to get a good job? What’s your career going to be? Will you ever get married? Will your marriage be a good one? How many kids are you going to have? Will your kids be everything you wanted them to be or totally out of control? We don’t know any of this stuff! We don’t! And in trying to be ready for this unknown future; in trying to prepare ourselves, we take what we have learned already, our experiences so far, and we try to predict. But what do our experiences tell us? Our experiences tell us to expect the worst! Our experiences tell us that something bad could definitely happen! They tell us that we should be scared.

“Man, that test is going to be so hard tomorrow.” “I’m so nervous about the talent show. What if I mess up?” “My parents are going to kill me!” “What if I don’t get into that college?” “What if he doesn’t like me?” “What if I never get the job I want?”

And so here we stand in fear for our lives because we are scared of the future. And why are we scared of the future? Because we depend on our own experiences. We depend on the lessons that the world has given us; lessons that teach us to be scared; to fear. And with this fear, from where does anxiety come? Think about that definition again for a second: distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear of danger or misfortune. Don’t be fooled. Anxiety is not fear itself. Fear itself is not bad. It is our reaction to fear. It is how we let fear control us. That is anxiety. Anxiety is the distress of the mind--caused by fear. When we allow fear to consume our state of mind, and it comes to the point where we cannot think straight and we are stressed out, that is anxiety. Anxiety is the result of the overwhelming realization that we are incapable of handling all the dangers and misfortunes that life throws at us. And life has a lot of dangers! A lot of misfortunes! How? How can we not have anxiety? How can we live peacefully, even though we know that this world is a dark and dangerous place? How is that possible?

By making our requests known to God through prayer and petition, and thanksgiving. There’s a part of the verse we skipped, but it’s better to go over that at the end. For now, this part of the verse tells us how we should live our lives instead of living with anxiety.

“…by prayer and petition, and with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”

The reference to prayer and petition is not a form of repetition used to emphasize praying to God. Most people think prayer and petition are the same. But really, prayer and petition are two separate actions that create a bigger idea when done together.

Application Aspect - Ray Jang

So my part of the passage is “8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” So the passage here might seem straightforward in a general way but what is the passage really trying to say? Let me break it down to you into two parts.

The first part is verse 8. Where St. Paul is saying, “8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Is St. Paul telling us to think about rainbows, butterflies, and happy innocent things? No no my friends, it goes far much deeper than that. Let me explain to you first and foremost why St. Paul is saying this. He is saying this because he understands the influence of one’s thoughts on one’s life. He understands that what people allow to occupy their minds will sooner or later determine their speech and actions. To better understand this verse, I will let you into the amazing world of Counselor Ray’s life and use myself as an example. A simple anecdote that might make you see how this verse relates to you. So, this whole Theme Workshop business was something that I actually volunteered for. I knew this was a very important program in Summer Camp. So I wanted to contribute back to a program that I personally enjoyed when I was a camper. Well, couple days went by and the more I thought about it the more I was thinking “Ai yah!” this is so much stuff to handle. I had to do this on top of my morning exercise as well as the icebreaker program. You might think this is much but honestly/unfortunately I can be really lazy/lethargic especially when it comes to doing work. A few more days go by and I do small amounts of research here and there but I still did not put full focus into my huge hard-hitting lesson that I am teaching you guys now. As you campers can see, my apathetic/uninterested mindset was influencing my actions. I kept thinking in my head, “This can wait till the next day.” Which lead to “This can wait till next week.” You see how such a small, trivial thought in your head could lead to such a large amount of laziness? Ironically what motivated me and pumped me up to learn about as well as teach St. Paul’s word was after hearing our very own MC Paul’s word. You guys get it, since they were both named Paul? Ok, anyways, MC Paul’s deep testimony was the key that ignited my mind engine to think of my position as a catholic and my relationship with God.

Alright, so why am I talking about myself other than the fact that counselor Ray is a pretty interesting guy. It is because of the fact that the verse hit me, and it hit me hard that night. I actually sat there and began to ponder about the thoughts that I let consume my mind and how it influenced my very own words and actions. Just now I was talking about how I can “wait” to do this or that. This lazy mindset, what did it produce? It produced exactly that, LAZINESS!