Sunday Happenings...

Grabbing a Starbucks coffee traveller, Tim Horton's donuts, and my servant attitude, I got up to the main campus around 7AM to begin working with Chad, Robin, Kim and their team of servants to deploy the environment of the community festival. I worked through 'til 9AM, when I went to teach the Sunday school classes I've taught for years. 

After worship celebrations were over, I came out and enjoyed the 2008 Community Festival. Here are some shots I took: 

(a wide look at the entrance to the main tent at the community festival) 

(kim set up the entrance to the main tent—great job, kim!)

(the other side of the entrance)

(the children's ministry team had a great tent for the kids)

(i helped to set up this tent—the visitors/servant-check in/medic tent)

(the comfortable, casual seating inside the visitors/servant-check in/medic tent)

(new path ministries had a great table with many people engaged with servants)

(the media ministry had an engaging booth at the ministry tent)

(the media ministry undertakes a mock video shoot to show visitors what the ministry does each week)

(the sudan project booth in the ministry tent)

(the indiana jones setup at the missions booth—great job, robin!)

(attendees enjoyed the multiple vendors, including fox's pizza)

(kim miller's vintage toyota landcruiser was put to use as a design element for the "indiana jones" themed missions booth)

(attending kids got to bounce around on on about a dozen inflateables.)

(the climbing wall made for a challenge)

(vesta takes attendees on a hay ride around the cornfields)

(mom and child look on at the camels on exhibit, amongst other animals)

(ginghamsburg's music ministry entertained for the festival)

(the crowd enjoys the music ministry as they lead the afternoon's entertainment)

(a man bravely awaits to see if he'll be dunked)

And then things took a move for the worse when 30-40mph gusts came into the area:

(servants and staff hold the main tent after it broke from its holdings.)

(angie watches as the main tent totters on extinction.)

(the ministry tent completely tore down the middle—thank goodness we evacuated!)

As I've mentioned above, in the past 24 hours, a major windstorm moved through the midwest, slamming the Miami Valley with 80mph winds. I've been working all day to clean up my yard after trees in and around my yard came down, some in full and some only losing a few branches. I've also been helping my neighbors with the various pieces of equipment I have as we all try to clean up the aftermath of nature's awesome power. Here are a couple of pictures of the aftermath:

(the neighbors down the street lost a dead tree completely...)

(another neighbor down the street whose old, non-working TV antenna came down and impaled their porch awning... terrible!)

End-of-week happenings

Tomorrow is the famous Ginghamsburg Community Festival at the main campus. I'm pumped because I didn't get a chance to fully appreciate last year's fun, and I'm looking forward to really taking in all that is Ginghamsburg. 

I've tried a few times now to get into the new Fort McKinley campus building, to little

 avail. I'm hoping to make it there sometime in the coming week to explore what Kim and her team have d

one and to get a feeling for this new Ginghamsburg campus. 

I spent the majority of today in Cincinnati, with my Uncle Doug and my Dad. On the way down to Kenwood Towne Center—a mall that we've 

all been to at least once, I've been there probably a dozen times—we got distracted by one another's discussion-debates. We must've gotten off incorrect exits, fought over 

who was right in the first place, and gotten back on the highway at least three times! It was so ridiculously funny. We went to the Apple Store to buy Doug's new iPhone, and to check out my favorites: Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, and Williams Sonoma Home. It was great to be with them on a lazy Saturday afternoon. We left the mall and headed for IKEA to browse and eat. Gotta love those Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes and lingonberries! 

Tomorrow morning I'm headed up to Ginghamsburg early—how does 6:30AM sound to you?!—to help Kim, Robin and the other team members set the stage for the Community Festival. I've been commissioned to get the team a traveller carton of Starbucks and Tim Hortons donuts (I'm the only one who lives south of town, and thus, nearby an authentic Starbucks)! Ha! 

I forgot to blog that I spent 

Wednesday, was it? Or was it

Tuesday? Anyway, I spent one evening this week with Zane, my fantastic five-year-old little brother. He's such a ham, as you can see from the pictures! We ran into another family at the Harmon School park and I made a great two-hour conversation with her, talking everything from politics to money management, from colleges to life on the East Coast. It was delightful to have someone so open and interesting to talk to on a rather dreary evening. 

Also—I've decided to enroll in classes come January studying design again. And I think I'm going to throw in some marketing. I want to make sure every obstacle in the way in obtaining a role to serve God's mission. 

Writing from home... Brandon.

The dreamer's fate

The other day, I was browsing www.brainyquote.com, and I came upon this quote, spoken by fellow Daytonian Erma Bombeck: 

"Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely."

Is this really true? Are all dreamers bound by their creativity and dreaming to a life of loneliness? 

If I think about this deeply, as deeply as I can muster, I'd have to say that I would agree. A creative person can write down all of his or her ideas, publish them, print them, send them to hundreds of his or her friends, and yet still not have really translated the original idea correctly. It is the horrible truth that befalls the creative dreamer: It is nearly impossible to bring someone into your dream.

And, if it's nearly impossible to bring someone with you into a dream, then, aren't you bound to be lonely?

I think this quote rings true for me most especially right now. I'm newly single, newly re-focused on what I want to do with my life, and newly re-energized by the One who made me. If I'm to live a life of service to my Creator, then shouldn't I welcome all the wonderful dreams, visions and ideas He gives me? Absolutely. 

I think that one of the things we have to accept as a creative expander of the Kingdom is the fact that we are not among many others like us. We're a very small, select bunch. 

My pastor and mentor, Mike Slaughter, the chief dreamer of Ginghamsburg Church, calls all the members of our church-in-a-cornfield to pledge our service annually. I find this both a very simple and a very complex thing. In one corner, I can find a couple of things that I can sign up to do with regularity. I teach Sunday school classes three times a week in the children's ministry, as I have done for now eight years. But, can a true servant of Christ pledge himself to serve in all the unplanned ways that come up in one's life? 

This morning I'm driving up to the church campus to help Kim Miller, longtime friend and fellow creative dreamer, design a space for the Vine bookstore. I just found out about this opportunity to serve just this past Sunday while at the Miller's house (see before posted Blog). If I wasn't a true servant of Christ, couldn't I easily point out that I already was serving, excuse myself from the opportunity, and go about the rest of my day? I think that one thing that has to be emphasized is that being a servant of Jesus is a full-time job, not a recreational hobby. If you want to fully immerse yourself in the teachings of Christ and live out His calling, you have to be ready 24/7. Standing ready with other followers is a powerful experience, one that brings me great reassurance that He truly reigns almighty. Although many times throughout my day I'm reminded of how alone I am, when I step back and realize all the sisters and brothers in Christ I'm united with, I accept this temporary feeling and pledge my support to His work in spite of my hesitations. 

So long as I continue to band together with other creative dreamers, isn't that, at very least, a tear at the wall of loneliness? I'm following Henry David Thoreau's advice: "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."

Writing from home... Brandon M Haskins. 

Careers

For the past two years, I've considered, and taken at least one course in, at minimum FIVE degree programs. 

Is this unusual? 

Well, from the many conversations I've had and articles I've read—no. I know this from familial experience even. I have a cousin who went to three universities, studied four unrelated programs, incurring nearly $60,000 in UNNEEDED student loans, in her degree-quest. 

Seriously, how's an 18-year-old to know what to do for the rest of his/her life?

Let me take you on a fast-track through my thus-far career path:

When I first graduated high school, I was dead-set on design. I enjoyed it, it brought out my creative expression, it connected me with people who were similar to me (and all the eccentricities that come along with being a creative!) and with God, and I just plain liked it. I would find myself playing around at 2 o'clock in the morning, honing my skills. I did three internships in several design jobs, mostly at Ginghamsburg Church, my longtime house of worship. Under the mentorship of Rebekah Olsen, Brad Wise, Sarah Gillenwater and Kim Miller, my artistic talents exploded and I felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be. I enrolled in Sinclair Community College—a public two-year college in the heart of Downtown Dayton with roughly 22,000 students—in 2006. I continued taking courses through 2007. 

Then came summer...

Summer break provides many things to a college kid. A break, a summer job and the chance to re-connect with all of his/her old high school buddies, be it running into each other at the local Starbucks, passing the afternoon at the pool or swallowing hot-dogs at the Fourth of July party that everyone's Dad seems to host. 

After talking to four of my then-closest friends, I became fascinated with what they were studying: one of my good friends was studying fashion at the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, one was at Miami University studying finance in the top-rated Farmer School of Business,  one was at Yale University studying psychology and one was at the Ohio State University studying pre-medicine. 

Here I was studying design at the local community college. I thought to myself: was this good enough? should I, who scored a 135 on an IQ test in the eighth grade, who got a 28 on my ACT and who graduated with a 3.75 in the top 10% of my class of 600+, really be doing something so, so, mundane?

No, I told myself. I got it in my head that I was destined to do something greater. I rationalized to myself that I was better than design, I was smarter, I deserved more and I needed more. So, for about a month I was set on fashion, for another month—psychology, for two months—medicine, and for a good six months—finance. I bounced around schools, Sinclair, Wright State, Miami, and even looked into schools such as FIT, CUNY and NYU. 

But, were they the right one? Were any of those careers something I could foresee myself doing for twenty, thirty, forty years? Were they careers that I would be so wrapped in that I would have to be asked to retire for fear that, at age 88, I was a bit too old to keep working? 

Honestly, no—and here's why. If I'm honest here, (which, after a good amount of time spent convincing myself has worked its course, I always am), I wanted fashion for its glitz, glam and fabulousness; I wanted psychology for the intellectual prowess and the power I would feel advising people how to live their lives; I wanted medicine for the mentions I'd receive about town and for the respect I'd command at the country club; finally I wanted finance for the ridiculous amounts of money it's notorious for providing. However, these are not the things that God calls us to seek. 

God calls us to seek Him in truth. If I'm 100%, unadulteratedly true with myself, I know that I'm called to be an artist. I'm not sure that a lifetime designing graphics on a computer is quite what He has me on the path toward, but, deep down, I think it's the most honest step that I can take today in landing that future goal. God has undoubtedly given me strengths that favor creativity—why am I so darn hard-headed that I can't accept my gifts and be thankful for them?

And to be entirely honest—let's really work this out, people, as Pastor Bowie would say, "tell the truth, shame the Devil!"—I would not have come to this level of honesty if it weren't for a totally random house call I made this past Sunday afternoon.

My good friends, long-time inspirations of creativity and spirituality, two people I'm proud to list as mentors in my life, Clark and Kim Miller, were in a very serious motorcycle accident two weeks ago. At the time I heard about the accident, I reeled in the thought of losing them, but I didn't connect anything from their events to my own life. But how quickly things can change!

As I was leaving church Sunday afternoon, it occurred to me that I hadn't been getting Kim's replies via email all week and that I should take it upon myself to step out and visit them, if but just for a few quick minutes. Although I felt bad for dropping in unannounced, I initially just wanted to find out when would be a good time to visit soon and if she had heard back on a possible job she had recommended me for, I ended up spending a good three hours with the Miller's. 

Spending over an hour dealing with a fickle blog can only hold back one's anger if one is the company of friends, and talking to Kim about what she has been up to lately while taking in the authenticity that is the Millers' life, I was smacked—(it felt literal, but I assure you Kim is not the violent type, although one time she did recommend a movie called "A History of Violence")—by the realization that all this pride that I had built up was hurting my spiritual self. 

I was putting aside what God had planned for me for what I wanted, namely: a penthouse in New York City, a house in Southampton and a Bentley at each. 

Are these things God-things? Does God truly call someone to live like that—I don't know. But, I do know one thing: He wasn't calling ME to live that life. 

As I drove home from their house, I began to feel the weight lift from all those pressures and stress I had been piling on myself recently: how am I going to make sure I am a multimillionaire before turning 30, as is the norm in the financial world? is it going to be easy to get a gig at a hedge-fund or investment bank without an Ivy League degree? should I go $250,000 in debt to get Ivy League degrees? and on and on. 

How at peace I feel, even at 6AM as I write this, to finally accept the plan God has  for me. 

I am thankful that it only took me a year (and a half-ish) to figure this out, and that I didn't waste many years, years that I can be furthering the purposes of His will, not mine—(although it's going to have to take a daily reminder for a while that I don't really need a Bentley). 

It is now that I jump back into the real world of faith, trusting God for my every decision. Living true faith. Amen?

One's finances

It doesn't take a financial professional to understand how dreadful US financial markets are right now:

Equity indices, otherwise known as the stock market, (the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq, the S&P 500, and the Russell 1000 among others), as of Friday, are down just over 20% off their October '07 highs, and just 2% over their July '08 lows, after our brief mid-July through August rally. 

In fixed income, corporate and junk bonds are trading at a huge advantage over T-bills, the 10-year note as of Friday offered 3.658%. 

In perhaps the most major plus to consumers, but a major drag on hedge-, pension- and some mutual-funds for late summer, West Texas Intermediate, the futures contract most directly responsible for setting the price of oil, traded both globally and on the floor at exchanges such as the New York's Nymex and Chicago's Merc, is down 27% from it's highs, along with many other commodities, including inflation-proof gold, recently around $797 per troy ounce, down more than 20% from its recent highs. 

In this climate, what is an investor to do? 

With such ferocious swings in the stock markets, many investors find stocks too volatile for their liking. 

However, most individual investors aren't learned enough to understand how to invest in commodities themselves—and even if you could, you would've lost a lot of money doing so over the past month and a half, when even the masters of the universe, hedge funds, lost money in commodities. ETFs offer a portfolio direct exposure to commodities, some short, some long, and can be a great way to profit, but they are extremely risky. Unless you have quite a clear picture, I wouldn't recommend using them. I went short an oil-heavy commodities ETF when oil was trading at $130, and although I kept it as a long-term hold, I didn't get as much profit as I could have—not to mention all the worried nights when oil was $15 over my short entry! (And that was a mistake coming from someone who is daily involved in the markets!)

As individual investors, we lack the crucial connection that comes from working alongside Wall Street analysts and traders at the investment banks and hedge funds. Although there are most assuredly pluses to not being on Wall Street, the extreme stress for one, there are negatives, too. Information—in the form of those pesky rumors that run amok on the floors of the exchanges—comes to other investors far too late, and we often miss those quick bucks made on opportunity trades. 

For example, I have a friend who was on the exchange floor when Hewlett-Packard announced it was going to acquire EDS Systems back in May of 2008. I was personally holding thousands of shares of HPQ common shares in anticipation of good earnings, however, the EDS rumor sent the share price falling through the floor. Luckily another investor who happened to know I was in on HPQ texted me to make sure I was seeing it and to tell me that he thought it was showing support for a floor about 5% beneath what I could currently sell it for, and 7% beneath what I'd bought it for. I sold it, losing 4%. I should've used that opportunity—I was even telling myself to do it—to buy more of it once it had been beaten down into the ground. Promptly, over the next two days, it rode up 10.5%! 

A true opportunist, the floor trader, could have very easily and foreseeably been fortunate enough to have seen the commotion caused by the HPQ rumor, while it was being rumored on the floor—(not reading the rumor on a ticker ten minutes later), and could've gone short with tens or hundreds of thousands of shares, then buying them back to cover, then buying them back to go long to ride it back up. 

A good investor has to understand the information behind a particular move in a share's price. Why did it gain 2% today, why did it lose 20% over the weekend? These are questions that a good investor should have the answers to before even being asked. 

A 2% daily gain might come from a particular analyst advising his clients to buy, via an upgrade on its rating. A 20% move lower on a weekend can come from an unexpected announcement, for instance if the CEO comes out and tells the public he's going to miss this quarter's original expectations, or, recently, you happen to be talking about any financial-services companies. If you're in the financials, expect daily swings of 20%. 

For example, Ambac Financial (ABK) and MBIA Inc (MBIA) shares, (among other financial shares), are a perfect instance of good opportunities for trading. A good investor could've started shorting ABK and MBIA in November '07, knowing that the credit crunch would hurt the re-insurers, when ABK and MBIA were above $50/share. 

When ABK got down to $1 a share in July, he/she would promptly cover his shorts, and buy as much as he/she could get their hands on, knowing that they would restructure, acquire capital, and be back up running in a year or two. The re-insurers, everyone knows, are essential to credit markets, and thus, many analysts were telling their clients that they would recover before much of the rest of the financial shares would. And they would be right, with an opportunity to sell those shares this past week for more than $9 each—an 800% return-on-investment, a magical miracle rarely heard of that turns every $1 dollar invested into $9 dollars. 

I don't say any of this to make you feel like you suck because your portfolio is down 20%. I just want to let my fellow individual investors know that there are tons of opportunities right now. The main article in August 2008's Bloomberg Markets is entitled "Why Buffett is Buying." Don't take it from me, take it from the Oracle of Omaha. Hell, if thrifty Warren Buffett sees reasons to be buying right now, surely you should! 

I would especially be looking for long-term buys in emerging markets via the dozens of EM ETFs out there. This past Thursday's Financial Times had an article with a quote in it I liked: "Long term, there is no reason to believe that emerging markets will not continue to grow more strongly than developed nations." 

So what if the indices are down right now, they're actually presenting better opportunities now than previously! Get in there and buy, and in one, five, ten years from now you'll thank yourself. 

Sir John Templeton, a short while after the 1929 crash, went into the New York Stock Exchange and bought 100 shares of any stock trading at under $1. He infamously spent the rest of his years running many multi-billion dollar Templeton funds out of his home office in Bermuda! Remember, other individual investors out there, that equities markets historically start to signal an economic rebound three-to-sixth months before the numbers start rolling in. The equities markets are forward-looking indicators!

Let's man up, investors! Whenever a hedge fund fails, you know it's going to tear apart things, and when the New York, commodities-based $3 billion dollar Ospraie Fund keeled over, it was a sign to me, and several other investors, that commodities weren't up for a huge rally any time soon, and that we all need to buy, buy, buy! 

Latin mottos

As I researched a name for this blog, I came across a great Latin motto, "Ad praesens ova cras pullis sunt meliora." Roughly translated, it means "Eggs today are better than chickens tomorrow," which is another way of saying "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

Last night I re-watched a favorite film of mine, "Marie Antoninette," the 2006 version, directed by Sofia Coppola, not the 1938 version, directed by W.S. Van Dyke. I am reminded of how unfortunate the situation before the "Madame Deficit." The people of France were already cautious as to anyone of Austrian roots 

and looking for an easy target to w

hich to affix blame for the country's horrid financial situation. Although she had little to do with the country's finances, (her own husband wouldn't take her advice when it came to running the country), she was pegged as the woman who ruined France. The true fault did not fall on the French royal family, who, in its enormous size, had spent the vast wealth nearly into the ground. 

If only Marie had been less concerned with maintaining her image and went to the people and explained what she was truly about, would she have suffered the same awful fate? 

It also reminds me of J

ay Gatsby, the magnificent "Oxford" man, who, in his desire for Daisy, poured—what must have been—millions into trying to get her attention. Rather than taking a boat across the bay to East Egg, Gatsby hosts dozens of parties in anticipation that she will randomly one day come to one of his magnificent bashes and he will romance her out of Tom's clutches. But, alas, she never comes. 

If only we were to grasp what we have before us, to quote another Latin phrase "Carpe diem," or "seize the day," we would find better use out of our eggs in our hands today, than we could make use out of possible chickens tomorrow. We simply need to identify what instances we can utilize this mindset, and begin.

The Greeks spent hours each day philosophizing their lives: Should we do this? Is it ethical? Is it right? What are the repercussions of doing it? 

Rather than doing things, the Greeks famously spoke of things. I say we should do the opposite. Let's live life. Abundance isn't necessarily something measured in monetary numbers, but rather in memories and experiences. 

I love a good Latin motto, it seems nowadays that every University and non-profit has one. Brown's is "In Deo speramus," or "In God we hope." Columbia's is: "In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen," translated as "In Thy light shall we see light." Yale's is: "Lux et veritas," which means "Light and truth." I think that all the thinking we should ever need to undertake regarding living a measured life can come directly from the ancient civilizations of the Greeks and Romans. 

I will be using this blog to rant, at times, about current events—from the political, ethical, education, business and financial, and even international worlds. I will post musings I come across, facts and trivia bits that intrigue me, deep theological and ethical debates, book and movie reviews, and other cultural exploits. I encourage you to check back. I am using this blog to make an examined look at my previously unexamined life. 

As Socrates would say, "the unexamined life is not worth living."