Metamorphose

I know many of my followers do not know me, and have followed me for copious posts on the A Song of Ice and Fire novel series, among other things, but note that Metamorphose was originally intended as a personal blog so you can either choose to ignore a couple meaty posts or read the views I happen to express.

Over winter break I attended Passion 2012, an annual Christian conference at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta of around 50,000 people. The conference lasted four days, and it moved some things in me that I would like to share. Over the next week or so I am going to slowly chronicle the trip and some of my thoughts. Also note that the first 1.5 days may seem a little negative, but that shifted drastically later on. I couldn’t fully explain the later awe inspiring parts without including the initial jaded thoughts.

Day 1: The Taxing Journey and a Bit of Praise

As I mentioned previously, Passion is held in Atlanta. Well, for those of you who do not know, I currently reside in Indiana. That’s roughly a ten hour drive and around 600 miles. Passion officially kicked off at 7pm EST in the Georgia Dome with required check in preceding the session. 50,000 people shouldn’t take too long to check in, right? To make a long story slightly shorter I volunteered to drive Allyson and my two friends, Jasmine and Jessica.

The longest road trip I have ever taken started off with a 4am alarm. That’s 4am, as in the morning. With that 4am alarm clock came exhaustion and strangely enough, extreme stomach pain. That thoughts that ran through my head were “no, not today, any day but today. I have to drive 10 hours…” Naturally you first try various liquids, bathroom, etc. Nothing helped my stomach out. Out of desperation I reached out and said prayer, a plea. I asked God to grant me relief so I could better learn about him in Atlanta. Within 10 minutes - flush. My stomach had settled, and I was in prime condition to road trip.

Allyson and I left our apartment complex at 5am to pick up Jess & Jas, and then we headed to our church to pray before hitting the road. Other members of our church had gathered to pray in a group. Once we prayed, we hit the road, and we hit it the fastest. I have first shift; a shift that lasted about 3 hours with no traffic, fog, and darkness. That roughly translates to cruise control, music, and coffee. Three stops for gas, several bathroom breaks, a stop at Hardees where Allyson and I made PB&J, a grocery store run, a hunt for new sunglasses, some traffic, and 10 hours later we arrived in Atlanta.

We ended up sleeping on the floor in another church on the Georgia Tech campus, which ended up being about a 40 minute walk from the dome. Around 4pm we left our “hotel.” As we approached the dome we ran into the horde of people. Apparently 50,000 people all had to check in for the event so the queue was massive. I can’t really explain how large the crowd, line, or wait was. A common theme you will see as I describe moving during the week so just imagine a mile long cattle pen. After shuffling in line for about an hour an a half we eventually made it through registration. Allyson and I were placed in the same community group (Red Eight!), as were Jess and Jas.

By this time it was just before 6pm. We hadn’t planned for check in to take so long so we didn’t pack any of the food we brought along for dinner (yay saving money!). I ended up buying 2 hot dogs and a single coke for $13… We learned quickly to avoid food and drink at the Georgia Dome. More on food smuggling later. Afterward we headed to the dome to get seats for the intro session. We ended up getting seats toward the front of the upper deck. I don’t care what anyone says about the upper deck. As long as you have a centered seat, the view cannot compare.

The first session opened with a bang. A bang so dressed up that I quickly became jaded about the whole thing. Later in the week that changed, but by the time night 1 rolled around I was not in a positive place. During the opening there was loud music, lasers, flashing lights, giant scrolling words on displays, loud people. None of this do I associate with God, I relate that to a rock concert. My thoughts at that point were along the lines of “are people worshipping or just getting excited about all of the dressed up pizzaz.” To me all of the lights and noise were too distracting. Nonetheless, seeing 50,000 people sing and worship in unison did seem super cool.

After the conference opened the whole thing took a more positive turn. Louie Giglio spoke on night 1. He talked about modern slavery and human trafficking. The statistic, 27 million people today are enslaved in the world today, was given. Logical Dan, just had to do the math on that to reduce people to a math equation. I wrote (27 million/7 billion) = 0.3857%. That doesn’t seem like a very big number… At the time I had reduced human lives to a ratio, a probability, a number, a statistic. That view has since changed, but at this time my mind was critically picking everything apart. My heart was closed.

As Louie spoke I took notes, as I usually do during sermons. “You can write Jesus’ plan for you on a 3x5 card. It’s that simple.” At times, a majority of times, it seems that we over complicate our faith. In reality, God has one plan for us. We do not always need to ask “what do I do?” It’s simple; we declare his word fearlessly. That is all. It’s not what do we do? It’s where are am I? What God wants me to do is right where I am, right now. Speak and walk along side others!

Some of you know that I have chronic back pain from an old swimming injury that flares on on occasion. Well, by the end of the session my back pain started to hit hard for the first time in months, and I didn’t happen to have any of my pills with me to handle it. The church was too far away to go get them so I decided to hang in there. After the first session all 50,000 of us were herded toward our community groups. All of us had been assigned to 1 of 19 community groups. Yes, those are very large community groups to divide 50,000 people up into. Luckily, Allyson and I had been placed in Red Eight, one of the smaller groups. Once the session started Red Eight’s leader, Aaron Coe introduced himself and went briefly over part of Ephesians 2.

I am not one to cling to Allyson normally, but at first I will admit that I was reticent (due to the room of 500 strangers) to let her go in our large group when it was time to split off into smaller family groups of around eight people. Unfortunately, I was not given a choice. To divide us up Aaron told us to find someone else born in the same month. I held up 9 fingers and walked around the room looking for another fellow September baby. It just so happens that I found Mike, a Purdue student… What? I happened to randomly find a Purdue student I never met before in a room of 500 people when I was terrified of so many strange faces? Sometimes God gives you a little pat to say you will be okay. Our group of 2 then joined another pair, which then joined another group of 4. My group consisted of Mike, Taylor, Abbey, Josh, Ashley, Drew, a girl we never saw again, and me.

The rest of group was brief, and by the end of it my back pain was in full swing. I found Allyson, and we decided to head to the optional late night session, David Crowder Band’s last performance. At this point I really didn’t want to go out of pain and exhaustion, but I went because I didn’t want to walk home alone so I sat there and tried to enjoy the concert to the best of my ability. To say the very least the concert was incredible, and I ended up buying the album on the 3rd day.

The walk home ended up being ridiculously cold. We were suppose to be in “Hot Atlanta”… What was this madness? 25˚F plus windchill?! Eep! By the time we reached the church, the lights had been turned off, and I had to get ready for bed. I took codeine and got ready for bed in the dark. Also apparently no one in the church decided that turning the heat on was a good idea. I went to bed the first night exhausted, in extreme physical pain, jaded, frustrated, and cold.

All of my perspective and views would begin to shift during Day 2. To be continued…