Colors

I have a cheap amp that I am trying to configure to get the stevie ray vaughn’s pride and joy tone. I have a fender telecaster and a hardwire tube overdrive pedal. Any ideas.

You would need a strat and a tube amp to even start to get his sound.

However, with your tele and amp combination, you should look at getting a cheap multi-effect pedal. Using one of those you can emulate a number of classic amps without spending much money. It will allow you add pedal effect like reverb to get the sound you want. You also get drum tracks to practice with.

I’m 15 years old, and about a week ago, I heard the chaplain at my school give a great sermon. Now I have been brought up in a Christian family, my mum is a Christian, and so is my dad. We used to go to church, but due to complications stopped about 3 years ago and haven’t really gone regularly since (we also moved house). I haven’t really been a practicing Christian either. I guess I have always believed in God, but I never really read the Bible, or thought about God that much. But after this sermon, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The next night I decided I would read the Bible and pray before bed. I did, and it made me feel really good. I’ve read the Bible and prayed every night since then, and yesterday I decided to go to the church down the road. It is only small, but it is beautiful inside, and You wouldn’t believe how welcome the people there made me feel. I felt so joyful during the 9:30 service, because I knew then that I truly believe that Jesus is my saviour. I felt so at peace inside, and decided to go to the service the church was holding at 4pm, in which one of the members of the church brought in homemade cake and we sat and talked and ate, and then went in and had an informal service (which happened to be a Celtic service from Iona). I felt happy the whole time, it was a truly spiritual experience for me.
However, today, I have been feeling much less spiritual. I have lived today in a way I think befitting of a Christian, I went and apologised to someone I have been a prat to in the past, I have tried to be kind and friendly with everyone I have spoken to, and this morning I prayed to God to help me discover his will and grow as a person today. After leaving for my doctors appointment before school though, I felt a lot less happy, even when I thought of everything I knew I believed. I didn’t feel sad, I felt at peace. I should have been nervous, because I could have a serious problem with my heart, but I wasn’t, because I knew God would be with me, and that whatever happened, it was his plan. I haven’t received a conclusion about my health, I need to go and have a heart scan and get my blood tested in the near future. I just wasn’t feeling anywhere near as happy after I left the surgery as I had yesterday. I was worried, I didn’t know if my faith that I had so strongly felt was real, I was worried I wasn’t really a believer. I decided to see the chaplain who had kickstarted it all and ask his advice. We spoke for about 20 minutes. He told me that the fact I had made the effort to come and see him meant that he believed my faith was real. I felt happy again while we were talking, and afterwards aswell. It gradually dispersed, and I was left feeling ok. Not sad in the slightest, peaceful inside, but not how I had been feeling before.
So, my question. Should I be feeling joyful whenever I think of God’s love, and how he sent his only Son to die for our sins? If you are a Christian, do you feel that way? Was the Chaplain wrong? Is my faith real?
If you read the whole thing, kudos to you!

I read the whole thing. You would benefit from a real Bible study, so you know the scriptures, at least some of them, and can recall them to mind when undergoing trials. Read Psalm 143 and see how ‘down’ David got at times, but he knew that if he trusted in Jehovah, trying his best to do his will, he could endure. Paul tells us to run the christian race with ‘endurance’ (Hebrews 12:1) so times will not always be easy. The joy we feel might be the quiet confidence of knowing we have done our best to please God in all things.

If your parents allow you to read what you like, you might really like the book: ‘What Does The Bible Really Teach?’ http://www.watchtower.org/e/bh/article_00.htm to help answer you spiritual questions. (You can also download the whole book in .pdf format at: http://www.jw.org/index.html?option=QrYQCsVrGlBBX And remember through all your trials that God is the hearer of prayer to anyone who approaches him in sincerity, and you can ‘always’ talk to him.

Christians seem such a dour, joyless bunch. Always serious. Never enjoying life. Are they taught to be like that or is it the result having to go through life believing they miserable sinners?

A better question that you may think..

And those who have really thought about it, or are realllllllllllly into religion are really in a bind….

If a person prays to a God whom he considers omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect in every regard, he will inevitably see himself by contrast as powerless, ignorant, flawed and sinful.

He has stripped himself of his own nobility and worth and projected it onto this remote, inhuman God, so far above the level of humanity as to be unknowable and unreachable.

A person on his knees to this God is profoundly unhappy, wracked with self-loathing. He has created a means to torture himself.

Whenever he contemplates this God, he cannot help simultaneously contemplating how far he falls short. He sees himself as despicable.

Does such a person have a healthy attitude to life? Is he contented, optimistic, self-confident, eager to take on every challenge life throws at him?

Or is he mired in negativity? He can’t save himself, he thinks, only God can save him.

His is an alienated soul.

But I don’t know very many Christians like this, because in reality, few really are Christians…. they have cherry picked Christianity for the cutesy stuff, and ignore anything they don’t like….so do their ministers.

For Christians, all are convinced they are going to heaven, that god is kind and wunnerful, and that they don’t sin. It’s called lala land.

for that matter, any other religious or non religious person converts to Islam right?

There is joy when a Muslim converts to Christianty or another religious organisation right?

After all there is no compulsion in religion so Joy would be the first response to any person finding their own personal faith right?

I feel sorrow for all the people who’s minds are trapped and imprisoned by the dogma of any religion.

okay so I understand that in the poem, joy kogawa writes about the death of a child and what a mother is going through. But can someone help me with the analysis part of the poem?
like i still dont get the rest.

Grief Poem by Joy Kogawa
o that after all no
thought breaks
the mind’s cold spell

chill these bones their
language lost

in this fresh silence
weather hides all
odours of decay

by freezing time
I travel through
this numb day

look look
my small
my beautiful child

the icicle here
how it shimmers
in the blue sun

my small
my beautiful child
look once more
into the shimmering

It is a difficult one to analyze. I would hazard that the Ice melting refers to the temporary nature of life, we are all iciles shimmering in the sun, beautiful but fragile and melting.Not long for this world.