Wow, I suck at writing in this thing. Ah well, it’s still nice to have a place where I can write down my thoughts. Lots happened this summer. I went to the Canaan church retreat. I know, I know, I’ve been going since I was really little so what’s the big deal, right? WRONG. This retreat was the youth group retreat – my first one since now I’m officially in seventh grade. It was a little weird to be there with all these high school kids and stuff too, but they were cool, and kind of just left us alone. The retreat was really awesome though…I can’t explain it or describe it but for some reason, I just really started crying the last night of praise and prayer and then after all the crying I felt so, so peaceful. The pastor said that it was the power of God. It’s a little scary because I’ve never thought much about God. Every Sunday I came to church because my parents were going and made me go. Last year, I even just went to my friend’s house to play during the service because I didn’t want to go. Now, I don’t know. Everything’s changed. If God is real then I want to know him. So I want to go to church every week and even on Fridays. I want God to be one of my passions.
Mom’s making me go to Korean school on Saturdays again…gross! And she’s making me continue my guitar lessons even though I don’t want to.
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John described his experience at his 7th grade church youth group retreat to be the pivotal turning point in him taking his religion more seriously. He described having a religious experience that, in my view, reoriented his views towards religion and life. This is points to Piaget’s process of how children grow intellectually. According to Piaget, an experience that goes against one’s previously held beliefs, or a disequilibrium, causes either assimilation (interpretation of the experience according to one’s views) or accommodation (the reforming of one’s views to accommodate the experience). John’s experience disrupted his previously held notion that church was unimportant and he accommodated his view by changing his actions.
John is also showing the beginning signs of asking questions like “Who am I?” He is questioning what it means to be a Christian and whether or not he is one. This mimics Erikson’s stage of identity versus role confusion. According to Erikson’s theories, in order for him to resolve the crisis in this stage, he must have successfully resolved the crisis in the previous stages – this will also be analyzed through the later entries.