Tears In Rain, Revisited

Dickens and Kinkade

2010-08-28T05:24:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Tale of Two Cities recently, and while I think I will prefer Great Expectations by the time I've finished, the struggles of Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are beautifully realized. Likewise, choose a random painting by Thomas Kinkade, undoubtedly a scene with some combination of cabin, woods, sun, stars, flowers, snow, and hearthy blaze emanating from windows (perhaps all at once), and I find myself admitting that the piece does demonstrate capability in its technical execution. So what makes the difference between the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and the most popular living artist of the 20th/21st centuries? In other words, why should we forgive the sentimentality of Dickens but not of Kinkade? In a word: sin.

One interesting feature of Dickens's books is his constant reference to Christianity; though it's typically simplified into a moral system from the complex religion it truly is, Christian values are the driving force behind most of Dickens's heroic characters. Though my brief research into his actual religious values makes him more likely a universalist than an honest Christian, his core values seem clearly and solidly rooted in the New Testament. Kinkade, on the other hand, is a self-professing Christian who apparently had the good taste to give each of his four daughters the middle name "Christian", and who has referred to his work at times past as painting "the world without the Fall". For comparison purposes, then, Dickens is a lousy Christian who produces great Christian art, while Kinkade is a professedly serious one who produces kitsch.

Kinkade is perhaps the easier to assess. His paintings are instantly recognizable; all one has to do to describe the bulk of his oeuvre is to throw a random collection of bucolic, down-home-y elements on a canvas that may or may not make sense in the frame together. This produces paintings which are often difficult to describe in normal ways. Look at one of his paintings and ask yourself what time of day is represented. Easy, it's daytime, because there's Mr. Sun, smiling down on the cottage that has... light pouring out of its windows to the extent that it completely obscures the scene inside? Either the woodsman's house is on fire, or Kinkade is in love with a good "hearthy glow". Then ask yourself what season is represented. Aha! That's an easy one; the forest is drenched in snow. Yes, but there are also flowers in the windowboxes and deciduous trees with leaves nearby. I could go on, but this painting speaks for itself. Try to understand what's going on without reading the commentary beneath it. Good luck.

Ranting aside, I want to make it clear that I have no theoretical problem with his subject material; fantasy settings intrigue me: castles in the distance, mountainous landscapes with roads winding up their sides, cliffs with the sun setting behind them. Scenes like these can evoke powerful feelings and encourage the imagination. If I contrast Kinkade with someone like Allen Lee, who created art for The Lord of the Rings that has become almost canonical, I find their compositions superficially similar, yet Lee's are compelling and Kinkade's are flat, Lee's alive and Kikade's dead. The primary difference I can see is that Lee paints the dark side of the story, not just the happy ending. Lee paints the mountains and the cottages, but he also paints the monsters and the danger. With Kinkade, happiness is all that is ever on display, and as a result, his art feels handicapped; catharsis isn't cathartic if it isn't preceded by distress.

Looking at his art from its stated objective, to "paint a world without the fall", I'm left wondering if this goal is inherently flawed, or if Kinkade is simply a poor example of it. For reference, I turn immediately to Perelandra, a book which does effectively the same thing, but with far greater effect. Lewis tells the story of a man who travels to Venus to find it unfallen. It's an alien world, all rolling seas and floating islands, but what makes it truly different from Earth is the native woman's lack of corruption. She sees her world simply; the categories of "good" and "bad" don't seem to exist for her. She does what God tells her to do, and she lives a happy life. And if this were the entire story, it would likely be as boring as anything Kinkade has produced. Luckily, it's not; Ransom brings the devil with him, and the story follows Ransom's struggle against him to keep Perelandra unfallen. While the native woman remains sinless, and thus the happy ending does in some sense pervade the entirety of the work, there is the threat of a Fall throughout the story, and thus there is resolution and catharsis. Essentially, the threat of sin is enough to give the story weight, but I do think its complete absence would do harm to Lewis's work.

Turning to Dickens, we find another artist that many would consider sentimental. Dickens created characters that at times approach caricatures. There's Wemmick, with his post-office-slot mouth, who slowly transforms the further he gets from work, until he arrives at his home, which has a drawbridge and battlements from which he ritually fires a cannon at certain intervals. There's Scrooge, a grasping miser whose physical manifestation seems to be an outpouring of his inner self, and who moves from being the meanest, most selfish man in London to being everyone's Grampa, literally overnight. Dickens's characters, some more colorful than others, can at times seem one-note, as if they were created to fill a role in the story, and all of their personal details chosen to suit. But then there's also Pip, the young boy who seems reasonable and fair in his dealings with others, but who comes to the end of his story and finally realizes his selfishness. He spends the rest of his life correcting his mistakes, and he never gets what he wants; I dare say he's the better for it. Then there's Sydney Carton, the man with a brain that seems capable of anything, even building a legal case while drunk out of his mind; the man who saves people's lives for no reason he can discern, except that doing so means he wins; the man who makes other people's lives dramatically better, though he's unable to care for his own in the same way. This man speaks and acts with nuance, and when life is on the line he acts the man and finds heroism few might have seen beforehand.

This brings me to my point: Pip and Carton are both good characters because they sin but eventually realize it. The ends of their stories are wonderful and heart-wrenching because they've lived, and life includes a substantial dose of sin. They aren't better because they've sinned, but because they recognize their sin. Dickens could have written both worlds without sin, I suppose, but then there would be no story, and no proper ending. Kinkade's art lacks the contextualizing struggle; it's the happiness that goes forward and backward and has no contrast, and thus is meaningless.

Perhaps what makes a happy ending happy is that it comes at the end of a long struggle; without the struggle, it's neither an ending, nor is it truly happy. And what is a struggle without sin, or at least the potential for it?

Note to Future Self:

2010-08-28T05:22:00.000-07:00

If ever you find yourself in the process of designing a vessel for the purpose of exploring the dark, vast reaches of endless space, promise me you'll do two things.
First, install a metric crapload of emergency lighting; enough to illuminate every square inch of ever part of every area anyone might conceivably go.
Second, design corridors without a metric crapload of dark corners in which creatures, grotesque beyond polite description, can, and certainly will conceal themselves with the stated purpose of jumping out in a decidedly unfriendly manner.
Do this, and you will earn the gratitude of countless future explorers.
Yours,
Past Self

Seeking

2010-04-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of Kings is to search it out."
Proverbs 25:2

Today I took a walk. I've walked this particular route many times, but rarely by myself (a walking companion is a thing to be valued!). If I were to sum up the nature of this route, I would say it is unremarkable; it's paved, much of it parallels a road substantially trafficked, the would-be grasslands on either side are regularly hewn to mere shadows of their natural selves (i.e. mowed), and people sometimes ride skateboards on it (the horror!). All this to say that today's walk was along a heavily traveled, metropolitan (read with disgust!) area designed to give people a taste of nature without any of its inconveniences. I am, obviously, far above such a jaunt (read with sarcasm!), and yet factors* prohibited me from pursuing a more vibrant and natural setting for my ruminations. Thus, I decided that I should make the most of my experience, and thus seek God's hidden matters in the midst of convenience and society.

*Predominantly, I was too lazy to find something more exotic.

Beginning my walk, I prayed a quick prayer that God would open my eyes to see something He has created. I've prayed this prayer before, and in my experience it's one of the few prayers I pray that is answered resoundingly every time. Results vary; times past I've seen things extraordinary (a bald eagle with a groundhog-sized catch, which might well have been an actual groundhog), and things mundane (a creek with startlingly metaphysical implications). Sometimes I've felt God wanted me to learn something particular, perhaps an object lesson with obvious ties to my contemporary situation. Sometimes I've felt God simply wanted me to look, in the manner that people want to show others things that they've done and are proud of. I suppose, then, that this post is my way of saying look to anyone who reads this, in the same way a child runs to show his friends what he's found under a rock he's just dug up.

The first thing I noticed (and I know it was first because I took notes in a rather 21st-century fashion) is how amazing my feet are. There I was, walking along a path paved and worn smooth by traffic, and my feet felt completely normal. However, I took a few steps on the ground beside the path, and was impressed at the results. My feet were encased in running shoes, with a solid half inch of high-tech rubber and hard plastic shielding them from the ground, shoes designed to cushion impact and support my feet so that ground imperfections are made uniform and my feet are spared resulting damage. And yet despite all of this technology, I was impressed that I could feel distinct items on the ground through the sole of my shoe. Here a pebble that's smooth on top, there a cluster of gravel on the right side of my foot. I could actually feel the texture of the ground, and that could only be because the nerves in the soles of my feet were feeling the uneven deformation of the sole of my shoe, and interpreting that flexing as the shape of the terrain underneath. Even though the artificial barrier I've placed around my body, the body God made for me is able to sense the world, to take in its textures. A neat trick, considering.

Upon looking downward to observe this effect, I was led to a second observation: geometry is a poor substitute for actual shapes. I picked up a rock, roughly fist-sized and with a granular surface texture, and turned it over in my hands a few times. One side of the rock was roughly trapezoidal, but not exactly. Another face was curved, but not smoothly, and tapered into a series of angles, like steps coming down from a miniature throne carved by a race of tiny, hierarchical beings. A third side was almost completely flat and smooth; likely this side was longest on the rock's top, thus worn smooth by the elements swirling around it. My point is that while I can use shape-related words to convey an approximate image of the rock, the only way for someone to truly understand it is to experience it firsthand. I suppose this is true of many things; one can experience thrills vicariously, or go out and find them for himself. Maybe I like literature and poetry because I'm better at the former than the latter. Maybe I'm thinking too hard.

A third observation was made roughly ten minutes later, as I sat watching a stream pass under a bridge I was sitting upon. I stared at the water, and wondered at the strangeness of clarity. Here is a substance that presses back against anything physical, yet permits light to penetrate with only a slight wavering. Remove enough of its energy, and it settles into a crystalline structure, which is a scientific way of saying that it magically transforms into something else under certain circumstances.

RABBIT TRAIL: Isn't it strange how regular we think strange things are, once we can apply scientific explanations for them? Take a tree, for example. It absorbs air and sunlight through countless tiny mouths scattered across thousands of flat, green things mounted horizontally on its many limbs. It absorbs water through countless tiny ropes it somehow puts into the ground for many yards in all directions. It sends the water upward through countless tiny vessels, where it is combined with the air and assembled into countless tiny sugars, many of which are sent back down via another set of countless tiny vessels. Yes, we have wonderfully clever terms for everything, words like "photosynthesis" and "chlorophyll", and I can talk about the tree's stomata, and its xylem and phloem. I can dissect it and label it and understand each part, and if I do it properly, I am respecting the tree and its creator by such acts. None of this changes the fact that a tree is a thing which makes itself bigger using only the air around it and some moisture from the ground; it literally makes itself out of thin air, and it does so without any discernible will of its own. It does what it does because it is what God made it to be. Outlandish, when properly contextualized; beautiful, when properly seen.

But I digress. My final observation came when I stood up and began walking back to the place from whence I came. I noticed that my vision was swimming downward in the middle and upward at the sides, as if the ground in front of me was sinking to form a valley. I was momentarily puzzled, until I remembered an article I once read about the way the human brain interprets what it sees. The main thrust of the article is that our eyes are not really like video cameras, though we typically thing of them as such. Human vision involves layers and layers of interpretation; images from the retinae are sent to the brain, where they are decoded in stages. One part of the brain perceives motion, another attempts to recognize and contextualize items (people, objects, etc.), and so on. One strange feature of vision is that the brain corrects for things. Studies have shown that if people wear goggles that flip all images upside-down, the brain quickly corrects for this, such that soon enough people see everything right-side-up. Once the goggles are removed, the brain converts back after a bit. So while I was staring at the creek, my brain told itself that it wasn't moving, the thing it was seeing was, and applied some sort of image correction, likely to keep me properly oriented. When I looked away, it was a moment or two before it switched this process off.

So I guess what I found today was myself, in context with the world around me. God gave me a body, and it is fearfully and wonderfully made (not mine in particular, in case that sounds arrogant, but all peoples'). It ages, it hurts, and it doesn't always do what I want it to, but at a fundamental level it is a thing of beauty. It exists so that I can interact with the world, with other people, and most importantly with God, and though it will eventually break down, it will be replaced with one superior in every way. I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis's description of those regenerated in The Great Divorce: "One gets glimpses, even in our country, of that which is ageless-- heavy thought in the face of an infant, and frolic childhood in that of a very old man. Here it was all like that."

Won't that be something?

Poem written during a church service

2010-01-17T11:26:00.000-08:00

Gap-toothed,
balding,
skin like pumice:
pebbled, mottled, dappled.

Eyes too close,
ears out,
like a shutter in a thunderstorm,
loosed from its fastening.

Coat too long,
pants too short,
socks unmatched.

A foot off the ground,
a fist in the sky,
the biggest smile I've seen all day.

All Things for the Glory of God

2009-12-29T07:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, I was peeling a grapefruit for the first time in my recorded life. I remember eating them as a child, but my mom always cut them across the grain. Then we'd douse them with sugar and eat them with spoons.

Anyway, one of my Christmas presents was a box of fruit straight from Florida, and it included oranges (which I like) and grapefruits (which I haven't eaten in years). Having sated myself with oranges over the past few days, I decided to try a grapefruit.

To preface the situation slightly, I was sitting at my counter after trying to read my Bible and coming up empty. I'm a relatively serious reader, so my ability to focus on words that aren't particularly interesting to me is probably above average, but yesterday morning I simply couldn't focus on David's regular evasions from Saul's murderous rage. Being the good Christian I am, I gave up and planned to pray for forgiveness later. So instead I grabbed a grapefruit and decided to eat it on a whim. Normally I would have cut it open and eaten it as in my halcyon days, but all my knives were across the room. Rather than walk across the room to make my life easier, I decided to peel the fruit as God intended: to go hand-to-hand with nature, to seize its bounty and make it my own.

Now, if you've ever tried to peel an orange, you'd know it's pretty easy; you get an edge, and the thing practically peels itself. Assuming a grapefruit would be similar, I set to work. I was quickly frustrated by the toughness of the outer shell. I eventually resorted to my teeth, which left me with a "zest" taste in my mouth, as well as a strange tingling sensation (could I be allergic to grapefruit rind?) in my lips and tongue. Even my teeth failed, and as I could sense the insides of the grapefruit beginning to squish, I decided to opt for the knife, just to get started.

When I finally got through the outer rind and began to peel it off in chunks, it occurred to me that I was handling a piece of God's creation, and I wondered if it was possible to peel this grapefruit for God's glory. I remember a few somewhat-hokey youth group sermons in days past, in which I was exhorted to do all things for God's glory, including (literally, at least once) brushing my teeth and tying my shoes. I figured grapefruit-peeling has more glory-potential than shoe-tying (look at me quantifying glory!), and so to make up for my dearth of Scripture reading, I decided to attempt a substitute with my fruit.

This idea raised questions, though, not least of which was "what does it mean to do anything for God's glory?" For example, how does it glorify God to read His word? Well, in doing so, I'm honoring Him implicitly by spending my time learning about Him and His character, rather than wasting my time elsewhere. Then how does it glorify God to sing songs about Him? Now I'm honoring Him by using what meagre skills I have to say insufficient things about what He's given me in a somewhat-musical fashion.

Then how does it glorify God to eat a piece of fruit? Well, I guess I can glorify Him by noticing the component parts of the fruit. Rather than cutting into it and slathering it with sugar, I can pay attention to its form by peeling it, and savor its taste by eating it "as God intended."

So I tried this. The difficulty of the peeling process became a challenge to overcome. I noticed pieces of the rind that stuck out slightly, and by grabbing these and pulling, the rind suddenly came away much more easily. I imagine I was grabbing some part of the fruit's now-deceased circulatory system, but for my purposes they were easy-pull tabs designed to let animals like me access the juicy goodness inside. When I finally got the fruit out of its rind, it was a round clump of segments that were mostly self-contained. It's marvelous that I can exert that amount of force and wrangling on a thing that soft and not have it be a juicy mess afterward. Pulling the segments apart, I skinned one of them to find it completely filled with little juice-pockets, similar to an orange. I was left to wonder what the point of all that juice might be. The seeds are the reason the tree makes fruit, but the juices around them don't nourish the seeds in any way. The juice is the payout for animals to come and take the seeds to transport them elsewhere, according to biology. That seems believable, but that means the tree spent an enormous amount of energy making sugar molecules just so its fruit would be tasty enough that animals would come and carry it away, and thus make more trees.

This makes me wonder if the proper way to eat a grapefruit for God's glory is to plant the seeds afterward. This being Pennsylvania, I'm sure the tree wouldn't grow, but then maybe God didn't intend for people to ship things like grapefruits all around the world; maybe He would prefer we were satisfied with our own fruit, instead of importing other people's. Maybe the world would be a much, much better place if we were willing to accept what God gives us, rather than seeking after things rightly kept from us. Maybe it's no coincidence that original sin comes to us in the form of forbidden fruit. Maybe in the midst of my silly fruit-peeling-for-God's-glory experiment, God actually showed me something about who He is and what He cares about. And maybe my observations made Him smile, just a little.

Knowledge and Faith

2009-12-16T09:31:00.000-08:00

I like to know things. I like to find them and pick them apart. I like to walk through the woods, looking for bits and pieces of things that maybe nobody else has seen: things that God put there for me to find and think about. I like to read books in which people do strange things for strange reasons and experience consequences that are at times joyous, at times difficult and at times permanent: things that other people put there for me to find and think about. I like to stare into the face of things to understand, to experience, to truly know.

Eye contact is strange and serious and funny and difficult, I think because everyone knows that looking someone in the eye is revealing at a fundamental level. Looking someone in the eye makes it hard to lie, hard to hide. Vulnerability rises to the surface, in the form of weaknesses and imperfections. It cuts both ways, but the field isn't always even.

I think exploration is something like staring God in the eye. Not to challenge, but to see and understand. God displays Himself, if we look. He does it in His world, in his plants and animals, from the towering and the majestic to the humble and pedestrian. He does it in His story, as it comes to us through the fumbling fingers of countless agents, each trying to make his way wherever he thinks best. He does it in His people, who are silly and selfish and sinful and, at times, just the least bit noble.

I like knowledge, of the kind that comes through books and study, of the kind that comes through experience, of the kind that comes from sitting and and staring and listening and talking.

What I don't like is faith, if I'm honest. I don't like leaping when I don't know what's beneath me, I don't like stepping on things that shiver and bend, I don't like having the inability to control my surroundings. Or at least I should say I don't naturally like these things, or, at the very least, that my nature is broken up inside me on this point. I've experienced moments of crystallized certainty, when I knew exactly what to do and how to do it, and carried out my part with efficiency, to my surprise as well as others'. I've also experienced moments of abject weakness, when I've watched a scene play out and been paralyzed by my inability to see all ends.

What's a man to do? Does he leap and fall again and again, until he finally shatters himself on the ruthless rock of poor judgment? Does he sit and wait and hide and calculate and mutter and ask for advice until all his opportunities are safely in the hands of others? How does a man balance the waiting and the plunging, the examination and the action? To quote Eliot:

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

How does a man overcome the shadow? I pray, but that becomes a veil, a shield in time. I get no clear answers so I don't act and claim inaction is God's will. In time, this will leave me with a wonderfully pious life, vacant of danger, but void of color. I'll sit in my living space and be holy, and people will listen to my advice and stand in awe that I could know so much. Some might even be jealous, little knowing how well their feelings match my own.

So sometimes I act. Often in poor judgment (but when is leaping ever really a good idea?), usually with unexpected consequences, always leaving marks. But after everything settles, I find that I like myself just a tick more for those bruises and bloodied knees.

I just hope God isn't laughing. Or if He is, I hope it's in a jolly "I can't believe he's so worried, what a silly, foolish child" sort of way.

God's Grandeur

2009-12-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck His rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: The soil
is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings

-Hopkins

Why I Love my Job

2009-12-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

Today I skipped school. Our entire upper school faculty did likewise. Instead of classes, we met at the home of my principal for a day-long meeting to plan this year's seminar week. Every year we take a week out of our standard academic schedule to immerse the kids in something different, something hands-on, something deceptively educational. This will be the third year for this tradition, and like the previous two, it seems like guerilla-style teaching.

I won't give any specifics, as part of the tradition is a complete information blackout for the students until the start of the week itself (I don't imagine any of my students read this, but Google can work wonders these days, and my students find all sorts of random ways to waste time). That said, the meeting was essentially a day-long discussion about what we want the kids to learn, and how we can best teach them through a set of challenging and unusual experiences. I think this year's topic will be exciting and novel and entertaining, and somewhere in there, though they might not realize it before or even after, small kernels of knowledge and experience will seed themselves into our students' impressionable minds. They think of seminar week as a break from learning; sometimes I think it's the best tool we have to provide the sort of long-lasting experiences that keep with people throughout their lives.

Of course we discussed practical details. We drafted a schedule, criteria for judgment, goals and awards, and other necessaries. We also spent over an hour dividing our student population into groups, trying to determine who would work well together and who would provide challenging but ultimately fruitful relationships with others. We also discussed who could never be in a group with whom, if any work were to be accomplished. Looking down through the ranks of the upper school, I noticed that the older students were easier to characterize. Partly, this is because we've all had more experience with them. Partly, though, they've simply defined themselves more fully than the younger ones. Talking over group assignments was like watching the maturation process in microcosm, especially when we looked at siblings who ranged over the course of a few years, and it impressed upon me the importance of shepherding students as well as teaching them. Yes, we give them knowledge, and yes they need that for their future careers. But more than that, we give them experiences, we put them in difficult situations, we give them opportunities to rise above themselves. We make them choose to dine with Wisdom or with Folly. Some of them choose well.

Random Observations on a Quiet Morning

2009-12-09T06:31:00.000-08:00

This morning as I drove to work, the roof of my car was covered in wet snow. The layer of snow wasn't just "good packing snow" wet, it was an ice sponge. I know this because whenever I stopped my car, water poured down my windshield in smooth rivulets. Flowing constantly, they appeared still, only the downward progress of their tips giving hint to their movement. They cut my view into pieces, my panorama punctuated by strips of impressionistic distortion. When the lights went green, I'd accelerate, and as the wind picked up against the windshield it began to affect the water's course. At a certain speed, the weight of the water was perfectly balanced by the force of the wind blowing it back toward its source, and for a brief instant the once-streaming water would pool into droplets, arranged in vertical rows. They hovered on the glass like beads slipping from a broken necklace, caught mid-fall in the mind's eye, not yet scattered across a floor. I would flick my wipers and clear the scene. At the next stoplight, the pattern repeated itself.

It's strange to me that everyone drinks a beverage made from a bunch of beans that have been roasted, ground up, and stewed. How did this process come about? How does one decide that it might be good to take a bunch of bitter-tasting plant parts, mess with them in random but specific ways, to produce a dark, hot drink that frequently looks suspiciously like used motor oil? At first taste, it's bitter and slightly acidic, so why would anyone drink a second cup? I think I would have considered the experiment a failure, if I produced the first cup of coffee in recorded history, and it tasted like a modern cup (even a good one). However, knowing, as I do, that drinking coffee is something that Stylish Young People take seriously, I continue to drink it as a matter of course. Strangely, the bitterness of the drink is eventually eclipsed by the subtle twinge of that something that makes the difference between processed chemical filth, seemingly culled from a manufacturing catastrophe and possibly involving witchcraft, and a drink brought carefully from the fruit of the earth, that speaks to the complexity of its Source.

Kids arriving. Respite over. A few more inches of snow would have been wonderful...

Wonder

2009-06-30T11:32:00.001-07:00

Not quite two years old, little Lily looks up at the bubble she made with a feeling I don't often experience in my adult life. Her expression shows unadulterated glee at the sight of a translucent body hanging in the air just out of reach, shimmering and sparkling as it glides unpredictably about, perhaps rising, perhaps falling. Perhaps it glides low enough that she can reach it, perhaps it ascends out of reach to be caught by a breeze and sent to parts unknown. To a girl her age, this moment, among many others I'm in constant danger of taking for granted, is captivating.

When I look at a soap bubble, I don't usually see a mysterious orb with a mind of its own. I see a thin film of soap and water of varying thicknesses, such that light filtering through it and reflecting off of it produces an interference pattern that gives it is swirling eddies of color. Surface tension keeps the bubble together, and the equal pressure between the air inside and out keeps it from expanding or contracting much. Its movement, though seemingly random, is actually just a complex response to varying currents in the air, affected significantly by the bubble's lack of structural rigidity, often producing as much twist and deformation as lateral movement. Thus, when I see a soap bubble, my mind comprehends the physical nature of it, its form and movement, and understands it as a physical entity, without design or purpose. It's simply a physical oddity produced by chemical forces at the molecular level, magnified out to an extent visible by the naked human eye.

But why do those physical laws produce things like bubbles? And why do they have such tremuluous colors, constantly shifting and winking over the surface like some gypsy's crystal ball? The chemical properties of water and soap could be so slightly different that they would function in all respects as they do now, in terms of their usefulness to us, but not permit the delicate balance of forces necessary to form bubbles. If so, we would go about our lives with such a small loss that almost none of us would feel it.

But Lily would, if suddenly her bubble solution stopped working. She would dip her ring in the water and blow, and nothing would happen. She would dip it again and again, with the strength of will only a small child possesses for such things, and would fail again and again. Eventually, she would give up, and move on to other pursuits. But something would be lost, some small piece of her sense of wonder at the world around her. Everything would be just a little more predictable, a little easier to anticipate.

Our current teacher at our Adult Education Fellowship (read: Sunday School) has been speaking about the importance of stories in shaping our views of the world around us. This past week I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia for the first time in several years, and I'm again amazed at Lewis's ability to capture a sense of wonder about what his characters are experiencing. Something I noticed this time around is the unique way Aslan interacts with the children; he never repeats himself. He rarely shows up in person, and when he does there's always something mysterious about his appearance. Sometimes he's a great lion, sometimes he's a cat or a lamb. Sometimes he's comforting and playful, sometimes he's ferocious and violent. Sometimes he calls people to greatness, other times he chases them into it. He's not a set of rules, he's a person with his own will and designs. He follows his rules but they don't contain him.

So a bubble is just a collection of water and soap molecules which, due to the fact that its density is inestimably close to that of air, is kept aloft by a buoyant force so close to its weight that it might as well not have any. But when my niece looks at a bubble, she sees something inexplicable and beautiful.

And when I look at her, I see the same.

Note to facebookers: Go here to see the picture. It's worth it, I think.

Obama Nation

2008-11-05T06:10:00.000-08:00

Gazing out the window into an appropriately bleak morning, I find myself wondering where this country is headed. Not a good place, I think, as the historical similarities between our current state and that of other great civilizations on the brink of destruction looms persistently in my mind.

I'm not surprised in the least at the outcome of last night's election; a culture like ours demonstrates its true colors when given the choice between what is comfortable and what is good. We voted with our wallets, and if you don't believe me, simply think back to all the news footage you undoubtedly ingested depicting people explaining how much "free stuff" they were looking forward to under Obama's rule.

I've been thinking about why people like Obama so much, and I feel like I've subconsciously identified two major groups of people. The first is blue-collar workers who may or may not actually have, or intend to have a blue-collar job. These are the bottom feeders, who are looking to Obama to give them handouts so they can afford the newest gaming systems and still be able to order pizza every night. Retirement planning be damned; fix social security so nobody has to worry about that. I know people like this; they hang out in front of my apartment building in the middle of the day, when most people are typically at work, and talk about greedy rich people and how the government screwed them yet again.

The second group are those who should know better. They're the ideological elite, the products of a mainstream faux-education that offered no significant foundation in truth. They were born of wealthy parents and have likely never worked a job that made them sweat. They make a lot of money, and thus will likely be subject to the impending tax hikes that are certainly coming. They want Obama because they want to feel like they're making a difference in the world, but have absolutely no desire to actually get their hands dirty. Tax hikes that allow more economic relief to Africa and other depressed areas of the world allow them to feel good about their lives of luxury; they're helping make the world a better place because they've endorsed a man who plans to give money to poor people. Now they don't have to feel bad about ignoring the poor homeless veteran who stands outside the neighborhood Whole Foods.

The latter group holds to a philosophy which is blatantly self-contradicting when both of its expressions are brought together. The first premise is that human progress is possible without divine intervention (indeed, to offer such an idea undoubtedly leads to smiles of smug self-satisfaction at its perceived quaintness). This philosophy pours itself out in a desire for peace (if we leave them alone they won't try to blow us up, if we negotiate with them they'll play by the rules), in a desire to help the poor (funnel money into Africa and assume that it gets all the way to the people who need it), even in sex education (tell kids how careful they need to be and they'll take the advice to heart). Nestled in these expressions is the idea that people are good, and will do what's right with the proper education and opportunity. Hand-in-hand with this philosophy is the idea that consequences for mistakes should be removed; we wouldn't want anyone to learn the hard way, now would we?

The second premise is that the world is a proverbial shithole that needs audacious liberal minds to save it from itself (what preening self-importance!). America needs welfare because so many people simply can't take care of themselves. These people claim that education will solve all of our country's problems, and yet they offer government handouts that encourage apathy and sloth. Why should I work to get myself a good education if sitting on my steadily-widening ass still nets me a living I'm comfortable with? Why should I contribute to society when it's perfectly willing to coddle me like an infant? Why should I grow if I don't have to? Biology prevents people from retaining the form of an infant, but not the mindset. If people are basically good, then why are so many perfectly happy to live off other people's hard work? Further and more crassly, if people are basically good, then why do they fly planes into buildings full of civilians? Quite frankly, many of the people who perform those kinds of acts are more educated than the average American, not less; at least they can read, and probably in two or more languages.

No, I think education, at least in its modern liberal form, is not the answer. Perhaps this sounds strange coming from someone with an extensive education that spans several unlike disciplines, and who further has a career explicitly intended to promote learning and understanding in young people. However, unlike my liberal counterparts, I do not think truth is subjective, I do not think ultimate truths are unknowable or changing, and I do not think schlock sentiments like "being true to yourself" are virtues (after all, being true to yourself assumes quite baldly that you are worth being true to). Further, I try communicate these tenets to my students on a daily basis, and fight to acquaint them with the source of actual Truth, the creator of the universe and its ultimate authority. Without this solid foundation, education is a parlor trick. My consolation in the world of education is that the students we turn out at my school will be able to think and talk circles around their counterparts (we have four particularly sharp seniors, ripe for growing into important young adults). Education is not the answer, truth is. And truth can only be found at its source.

So what are we to do when our nation takes the wide road to destruction? We spend our mornings on our knees, praying that God would stay His hand for our benefit, reminding him that Sodom is not without its righteous few. Then we stand and fight the venomous serpent that lurks in every mainstream publication and school, exposing lies for what they are and holding out the light of truth to those who are willing to see. Let us not go silently into that good night, but swing away at the dark beast before us. Obama is not satan, nor the anti-Christ. Obama is a symptom of a deep problem that deserves exposure and cure, and it is our calling as Christians to meet the challenge.

There are likely dark days ahead. Now is the time to secure our footing and sharpen our swords.

Chapters

2008-10-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

This morning was the last Sunday our senior pastor gave the sermon as the senior pastor of my church. He started the job almost 37 years ago, and is the only senior pastor Hershey Free has ever had. He announced his impending departure about a year and a half ago, so the change is not abrupt. However, now that it's here, the reality of it has begun to sink in.

I've had mixed feelings about this change. My church has had some difficulties in recent years, and I think a portion of those stem from problems in the leadership of the church. I've never been able to pin down where the problems come from, but something about the way the church runs just doesn't seem quite right. I think part of the problem is that the leadership is populated mostly with South Central Pennsylvanians, who, amongst their many endearing qualities, often harbor a debilitating fear of conflict. When I think about the various committees and leadership groups that populate the church, I get the impression that decisions are always unanimous, and yet nobody ever seems quite happy with the actual decisions made. I read this as people putting their own ideas and hesitations under the table for the sake of not stepping on anyone's toes, and then grumbling about the decision later.

This isn't how I'm used to operating. As anyone who's spent time with my family can understand, I am not traditionally gun shy. Though not as brazen as some, the people in my family tend to speak their minds, generally to a fault. My dad is one who always gets up at congregational meetings and asks those questions that make people visibly wince. I look at that behavior as important, even necessary in a family, and, by extension, in a church. Certainly there's no place to be crass or self-serving, but to hide one's desires and convictions for the sake of unity is simple burying, and that always leads to a mess.

But I digress; this post isn't supposed to be about the church or the leadership at all. Suffice it to say, I like our senior pastor very much as a man, but I do think it's probably time for him to step into a different role. He's looking at doing some teaching at local seminaries, which seems like a great fit for him (he's extremely well-educated in his field). I'm also hopeful about the man God has to fill his shoes; the right man could do amazing things with the church.

No, what I was thinking about as I was singing in the choir this morning was that Pastor Dave's departure marks the end of an era. For good or ill, he's leaving and someone else will take his place, someone with different goals and different ideas of how to reach them. The first 37 years of the Evangelical Free Church of Hershey have drawn to a close, and the next chapter looms ahead, a vague shape cast in the haze of time future.

I wonder why time always seems to be organized in blocks like that. Novels are compartmentalized into segments that are usually characterized by a central theme or setting. History takes the continuum of time and breaks it into labeled chunks that can be understood as relatively separate from each other. My own life breaks down easily into separate pieces: there were the years I lived in Palmyra, the years I went to school, the years I was homeschooled, the years I went to a different church. There were each of my relationships and the doldrums that chased them. There was college and grad school and working life. Many of these overlap, play off of each other, but each has some unifying idea that separates it from the others.

I wonder if God organized creation this way so that our human minds could make sense of things. Maybe He breaks our stories down so that we generally only have to work through one or two lessons at a time. Thus if God wants to strengthen my trust, He puts me in a situation I can't get control of. If He wants me to understand one particular aspect of my character, He puts me in a situation that forces me to respond in such a way that exposes that particular part of me. And if He wants to grind off one of my many rough edges, He puts me through a trial that forces me to confront that particular sin or weakness so that I can surrender that part of me to His refining fire.

If this is true, all I can say is: thank you God for letting these things happen to me one at a time! Thank you for knowing and caring for how frail I am, and for not pushing me beyond what my fragile soul can bear. Thank you for meeting me where I am, and for writing a story for me that I can wrap my head around.

Magic

2008-10-08T08:41:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I bought the 1959 Disney classic Sleeping Beauty in high definition*. I watched it last night, for the first time since I was a kid. Prior to my viewing, I remembered a few particular scenes, mostly the fight with the dragon and the trip through the thorns immediately preceding it, but my memory was jogged in places as I watched. The story is simple, the characters are rather one-dimensional, and the pacing is languorous. The good characters are infallibly good, the evil, evil, and the story evinced no character development in either direction. In short, the film contained none of the standard features I would apply to a piece of narrative art to deem it "good." And yet, as I sat in my reading chair, eyes affixed to the screen and ears attentive to the soundtrack, I found the experience extraordinarily satisfying.

I continued to sit in my chair, absentmindedly playing with the nap of the fabric as I am wont to do during period of rumination, and I thought about what made the viewing experience so unaccountably pleasant. My first reaction was to regard the sensory experience as the source. I had read about the great lengths to which Disney had gone to restore the print to its original state, which included scanning the film at its original aspect ratio (astoundingly wide) to show every inch of artistry present. They sorted through negatives and matched colors, dousing each frame with bright primaries and soft earthen tones in turn. They cleaned up all of the background art, displaying the meticulous care that had evidently been taken in the crafting of each set piece. The sound recording was also rummaged through, bit by bit, cleared of any crackles or pops, and otherwise remastered to produce a glorious, reference-quality soundtrack for the images on the screen. Thus when Princess Aurora, in her guise as Briar Rose, meets and dances with Prince Phillip in the forest, both the visual beauty of the trees and rocks and distant castle and the aural majesty of the orchestral backdrop produce a sublime sense of peace and ease which, for me, recalled memories of the wonder and idyllic nature of the beginning of a relationship. I've never danced with a maid through a forest with animals waiting on me, but I have walked through a forest that seemed all the more magical for having a beautiful, virtuous woman by my side.

As I continued to think about the film, though, I was reminded of my reaction to the trailer I recently blogged about (if you're reading this from facebook, go to http://davestears.blogspot.com to get this post and other with the appropriate graphics included). My interest in that film had more to do with the evocative aesthetic the trailer displayed. Here again, I think ultimately my attachment to this film has more to do with the imaginary nature of the world as it is presented therein (my use of the word "imaginary" here is in the word's literal sense: to form an image in the mind of something not perceived in reality). The film imagines a life in which the virtuous and the vile are easily separated and each can be trusted as such. Magic exists in that world, and it has rules: the good fairies cannot undo the spell cast by Maleficent, but they can limit it; magic can be used to clean a room without using one's hands, but the broom and mop are still needed to move the dirt around. Castles are white and graceful, or dilapidated and crag-ridden, depending on their owners. Every facet of the film seems to be arguing for a world of simplicity, in which people and things are as they seem, and yet something spectacular could be waiting around the next corner, or hidden behind a tree, or singing and dancing through a forest glade.

*Image comes from blu-ray.com's review of the disc, located here.

Fellowship

2008-10-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

I moved back to south central PA about a year ago, and the move was a bit strange relationally. While it's true that I moved to the area in which I grew up, I was unsure how I would get along with the people who live here. My family is great, possibly the only known factor in the entire ordeal, but I didn't know anyone in the area very well, and those I knew at all remembered me from high school, not unfairly, as a complete jerk. Add to that the fact that I was both living alone and working my way into a new job, and my previously steady social life dwindled to a perilous low, and continued after that fashion for the better part of a year.

As a point of reference, I moved from a house inhabited by five people, mostly of a similar mind. While this arrangement produced much strife over the course of two years, it also created some great memories. There were dinner parties and halloween parties and Christmas parties. There was wine and whiskey, cheese and crackers, bread and oil. There were late night talks about the inspiration of Homer on our front porch, or the value of reading Descartes in the science seminar. There were movie nights populated by foreign, and strange arthouse films. It was one of the few places I can recall in which my book and movie collections seemed ordinary and essential. Of course I would have an movie catalogue including names like P.T. Anderson and Hitchcock and the Coen brothers, as well as at least two translations of Homer and Aeschylus and Aristotle; what self-respecting graduate student wouldn't? Yes, I lived in an attic with a humorously-uneven floor, and yes my housemates and I fought regularly about whose turn it was to clean the kitchen, but the intellectual community was as vibrant and insightful as any I've found.

Back home, however, this kind of dialogue did not happen often. My family tends to have strong opinions, and we spend a lot of time sitting and speaking after Sunday dinners. However, other than these and some sporadic after-work discussions over coffee, my life was largely devoid of interpersonal contact of this ilk.

However, this past spring I decided to add my weight to our burgeoning young-adult group at church. I'm not sure why, exactly, as I would traditionally have been skeptical of the value in such a group; perhaps it was a sign of me shedding some of my priggishness. Whatever the reason, I decided to dig in and make friends.

This grand social experiment led to me spending many late night hanging out with a variety of people. There were game nights, meals eaten out and movies taken in, scavenger hunts. There was homemade pizza and chinese takeout. There were conversations about college and football and people's careers. The people were different, the points of interest were different, the setting was different.

What has come as a surprise to me, however, is that the friendships born out of this environment are just as real as those from school, even more so. After realizing this, my natural tendency to break everything down and understand it drove me to consider the reason. The only answer I can come up with is that my current friends are all rooted seriously in the Christian faith, and thus have a common ground on which to speak about their often un-common interests. We have a solid foundation on which to build relationships. I know that I can speak to each friend about the state of my soul, and that he will understand at least the broad strokes, if not every nuance.

This realization culminated last Friday night when a few of us got together to see a movie. One of the girls who came along was a relative unknown, but the others were people I've spent a good amount of time with over the past few months. We went out to eat, and the discussion was great: a few of us are teachers and talked shop for a bit, and all of us considered some of the recent political issues amongst ourselves. The showtime snuck up on us, though conversation continued through the previews and on into the movie. Walking back to the car afterward, I pulled my jacket around me and felt that tranquil happiness I always feel on a fall evening when everything seems right. After parting ways, I was left with the sense that I had actually had fun that was both intellectually and interpersonally satisfying. And while we didn't explicitly speak about our faiths, they ran as an undercurrent throughout the night. In short, I had a great time.

Sometimes I wrap up these posts with some kind of conclusion that attempts to tie everything together, a practice due no doubt to years of analyzing and packaging thoughts into neat, grade-able packages. This time I can't think of a way to put everything together, so I'll leave it as it is. Then again, maybe that's a strange sort of conclusion of its own.

Curiosity

2008-10-02T08:51:00.001-07:00

Above is the second trailer for the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a movie which entered my sphere of interest about a month ago. The premise of the film is certainly strange, and I find it intriguing. What if a man's best, most productive years came after he had already lived for decades? What if he could take that collective experience and bring it to bear on his surroundings when he's at his most virile, when his ability to "change the world" is at its highest?

From the trailer, the movie seems to be centered on a particular relationship and, I imagine, on the difficulties such a situation would create. It seems the problems the movie will focus on to be primarily physical (i.e. sexual), as I'm not sure why reversed aging would affect the intellectual development of poor Benjamin Button. The line in the trailer about understanding life "in reverse" is interesting. What the line means exactly remains to be seen, but it could point to some insights into the nature of life and understanding and growth.

What strikes me about the trailer, though, is its setting. The film seems to be set in the early 20th century, stretching through some years, as I gather from the relative ages of the characters. My initial reaction to the setting is that of course it would be set in the past. This sort of story has no place in modern culture. However, as I began to think about this, I also began to wonder why the story wouldn't fit anywhere else.

I think partly the setting is aesthetic. The plot is a romance, and modern America simply isn't that romantic. Sailing off to war when people still shot each other at distances measured in feet and yards is romantic; marching through Iraq to get picked off by a sniper a mile away isn't. I don't know if the perceived difference is more than chronological distance (who doesn't romanticize the past?), but I think it might have to do with modern morals. World War I and II were necessary, and we lifted our soldiers up as heroes. Vietnam and Iraq are often seen as unnecessary, and while we may still lift up our soldiers as heroes, the perceived pointlessness of the war renders the romance null. We don't think anything has meaning, and so the only way to make war epic is to choose an older one. Further, setting the film in a time when buildings were still built of real wood and wrought iron lends a certain palpable beauty to the setting itself, bolstering the visual impact of any given scene. Watching beautiful people stride through beautiful buildings evokes romance more than the same people walking through drywall and cinderblocks. The effect is the same as the various settings found in Tarsem Singh's The Fall, (highly recommended, incidentally) though not to the same degree.

The other issue is the reception of poor Mr. Button in his respective societies. I can already see the doctor's office scene now: the poor doctor is called in to examine the boy, does so, and concludes that he's never seen anything like it, but that poor Benjamin likely hasn't got long to live. He then puts on his hat and coat and strolls down the front landing onto a cobblestone street with the feeling that he has just witnessed the strangest sight he is likely to behold. Compare that to our modern response: Benjamin is driven to a local hospital and is presented to a doctor, who is bewildered by what he finds. Benjamin is committed and placed in a special observation room away from his surrogate parents, and a comprehensive slate of tests and experiments begins. He is eventually shipped off to a larger, more well-equipped hospital for further tests, and articles begin flooding into Scientific American about the abnormal nature of his DNA and his lack of particular blood enzymes. A cure may or may not be proposed, but either way Benjamin's childhood is seriously disturbed and his parents are marginalized.

The point is, back then it is not unreasonable to think that doctors would have left this particular case unsolved. Benjamin would be left to live to the best of his abilities, and people who knew him would think him strange, perhaps even scary. But they might not try to figure him out. Nowadays, some scientist would propose a theory, and another would respond, and the entirety of Benjamin's life he would likely be seen as a test subject rather than a man. The curiousness of the case would dissolve into a search for hard causes and effects, the man into a collection of cells and chemicals with some unknown deficiency.

This is a strange line for me to walk. I've a head for hard science and a head for mystery. I like the idea that the world is larger than my brain will ever comprehend, and that it is filled to the brim with secrets no man may ever know. I find myself vacillating between the desire to know and understand, and the desire to appreciate without that same understanding. Knowing someone does not mean cutting her up and analyzing each piece, it means living with and observing and recognizing patterns. And yet so often I find myself dissecting, using a scalpel and tweezers when I should be stepping back and simply watching her unfold.

I think I do this with God, too.

It's about that time...

2008-09-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

Fall is coming, as evidenced by the crisp chill that ran down my spine yesterday morning upon stepping out onto the fire escape steps to descend into the alley below. I was wearing a jacket, having been warned yesterday of the potential for rain this afternoon. Despite that portent, the sky was clear and blue, with a few high cirrus clouds faintly occluding the sun and giving breadth and substance to its vermilion hues. My fingers grazed the iron rail as I ambled pensively down the steps, which swayed slightly under the weight of my frame. Summer is dying, and will soon flame out its life in a colorful spasm, like a man giving a diamond ring to a woman at the cusp of a heartrending breakup. Then I realized I forgot my keys.

I'm not sure why the fall season always gives me the urge to write. I'm not even sure why I ever write at all. "It's therapeutic" - but I don't buy into modern psychobabble. "It's a record for the future" - which I never read and no one else will ever care about. Instead, I think it's to capture a moment in sound and form, so that its essence can perhaps be communicated to another, or simply characterized for the writer's enjoyment. I guess that's why I do it; I'm honestly not sure.

I do know that my writing tends to be overwrought (see above) and melodramatic (see same). I don't know if that's an indictment of my own thought processes; probably it is. I do spend a lot of time wondering "what does it all mean?" Of course, I know what it all means in broad strokes, but the details do seem to tangle sometimes. I get into flights of "God, why did you put me here" and "why do you keep doing awful things to me," but I rarely find myself thinking about all the privileges He's given me. Human nature, I guess. 'Petty selfishness' in my mind.

So today I sat on a bench outside between classes and watched the mist swirl.

2 minute poetry (Now with a Title!)

2008-05-19T17:31:00.001-07:00

X-ray vision

If I looked her in the face
I am sure that I would find
two cameras
a tiny speaker
a piston to work her jaw
and a counting machine
calculating
my bottom line

3 Minute Poetry

2008-05-16T18:09:00.001-07:00

From the heavens it gathers
pieces of things
bits congeal into perfect
spheres that reflect light and
break it into bands that traverse the space
and enter a child's eye;
one fleeting burst of color
in the middle of its plummet.

4 Minute Poetry

2008-05-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

The languid sway of verdant limbs
like emerald tresses
over a sharply jutting brow
move ceaselessly, out and back
above the ground that gives them life.
Months later they return
to be gathered and
crushed and
mixed and
bound up in new life
to sway once more.

5 Minute Poetry

2008-05-13T11:43:00.001-07:00

She sits and watches as
the water crashes and slides crashes and slides
seeking purchase.
Spray flies like cracked tips
of nails scrabbling over the ragged surface
fingers tearing themselves apart to hold on.
She smiles.

Strange Night

2008-04-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit sick over the past few days, which is out of character for me since I had my biennial illness just a few months back. Maybe this whole teaching thing is wreaking more havoc on my immune system than I anticipated. That still wouldn't explain how I got sick after a week away from my students, though.

But illness is not the point, as it's just a bad head cold, of the sort that remains a nuisance during the day but makes sleeping miserable. After two nights of abbreviated slumber, last night I decided to get serious. I took some Afrin to clear up my nose (that stuff works wonders), and I took some Nyquil to help me sleep. I didn't look closely at the dosage information on the Nyquil, figuring that it's one of those drugs that's hard to overdo. In truth, it probably is. Still, after ingesting what seemed like a reasonable amount, I casually looked at the dosage information and quickly realized that I had taken more than three times what a mortal human should have. Still, I figured it wasn't a big deal, so I let it slide. I guess my only other option would have been to induce vomiting, or something. No thanks.

In any event, the drugs did not translate into a spectacularly good night's sleep; it was passable but could have been better. However, forgetting to set my alarm produced a strange dream experience this morning. It's probably pretty tame by most dreamers' standards, but the fact that I remember it, even now, with such clarity puzzles me.

The details:
I had apparently decided that I should get a haircut on the way to work. I'm not exactly sure why I would ever think this a good idea, as haircuts have never been something I've gone out of my way to procure. I sat down and the hairdresser started clipping away. Now, I tend to be a rather punctual person (with a few specific eccentricities), and although the process of getting my hair cut usually takes less than 15 minutes, I was critically aware of each second as it was passing. I watched the girl, who looked suspiciously like someone I dated in college, as she got out her scissors and began to cut infinitesimally-small bits of hair from my head, such that the trimmings that were coming off my head looked like dust. I remember thinking "man, I hope she hurries up." The next thing I knew, she had somehow shaved a swatch along one side of my head, which she apologized for and then said she'd touch up. Exactly how she was going to "touch it up" I have no idea, but somehow it worked, though the process took forever. I was getting more and more worried that I would be late for work, when I realized that part of my hair was covered in goo, and was slowly turning blond. I asked her what was going on there and she said that I had asked for a color treatment as well. I remember thinking "that doesn't sound like me, especially when I'm on my way to work and only have a few minutes to get this thing finished." At this point, the haircut was magically finished and I was following the girl to the register to pay. She ran up the bill, and it came to $280. When I complained that I hadn't actually asked for the hair-coloring part, she re-entered the bill and it came to $450. At this point I began to get a bit mad, so she said she'd look in the back and see if she could figure something out. Up until now, the setting was bit-for-bit identical to the place I've most recently gotten a haircut. I followed her to a door, which exists in the shop, but it opened into what seemed like a store that sold completely random items. I remember a number of stands, proffering the awful sort of garishly-colored candy that kids eat in massive quantities and later wonder why their mouts hurt so much. In the back of the store was a popcorn popper that was shooting out its product in an angled geyser, and in the center of the room was a rack of movies for rent. The girl grabbed one and thrust it at me as if it would somehow solve my $450 haircut problem, and then stalked off to the right to where there was apparently a door to the outside world. I had the distinct feeling that I was in a backroom where shady deals went down, though I have no idea where that feeling came from. I walked back to the register to find that the white of the salon had turned into burnished brass and hardwood, and that the kitschy haircut photographs that had previously peppered the walls had been replaced by worn and faded detritus typically found on the walls of an old diner with a proud heritage. I pulled out my check card to pay for the haircut, when suddenly I was surrounded by five or six other people, each clamoring to pay their own bills. In the shuffle I dropped my card, and began scrambling to find it. Most of the other people left quickly, while one or two stayed on to help me look. I remember being suspicious that they were just trying to find my card so they could keep it for themselves. What was strange was that I kept finding credit cards everywhere I looked, but none of them were mine. The first few were recognizable; they were Mastercards or Amex cards or something of that ilk. After a few minutes, however, I began to find card after card that looked exactly like mine until I picked them up. Once in my hand, they clearly belonged to others. The situation was strange because the counter was covered in bottles and papers and other random paraphernalia, but every time I looked under something I found another credit card. The phenomenon never became overtly ridiculous, I just kept finding those cards, one after another. At this point, I woke up.

This whole experience happened more or less in real-time. I know this because I woke up at precisely 6:02 this morning and rolled over, figuring my alarm would go off in another three minutes. However, as I mentioned before I had forgotten to turn it on, so rolling over meant a lapse back into sleep. When I woke up again, it was 6:28. At this second waking, I was fully alert immediately, such that I felt I had almost superhuman powers of observation. The only way I can describe it is that it is like when a runner practices running with weights, and then suddenly feels invincible when he finally removes them for the big race. The scientist in me attributes this phenomenon to the fact that REM sleep, which is the sort that produces dreams, is a relatively light sleep and thus is close to wakefulness already. But I digress.

What are dreams for? Reading through the Old Testament, I see God using dreams to bring about a variety of different effects. Most directly, He speaks to people through dreams, as in the case of Joseph. At other times, dreams are central to the actual workings of the plan, as again in the case of Joseph. An example of the first sort is Joseph's dream of his brothers' wheat sheaves bowing down to his own. An example of the second sort is Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dream: the dream gives Pharaoh knowledge of the future, and the interpretation moves Joseph from prison to Pharaoh's right hand.

I don't believe I've ever experience this sort of interaction with God. I've heard somewhat convincing accounts by other that this sort of thing does still happen, and I can think of no Biblical reason why it shouldn't. Still, my own dreams are generally limited to bits of memory cobbled together into a semi-coherent whole. What I enjoy about them is that even the strangest happenings in dream worlds can make perfect sense as long as I stay inside them. It's usually only after I wake up that their dubious logicality confronts me.

Anyway, this is the sort of post that serves no purpose to anyone but me. Oh well, it's my blog after all.

In other news, someone somewhere found this page and sent me a copy of an e-mail debate on atheism that will presently be published as a small book. I have been tasked with writing a review of sorts, the details of which I am in the process of working out. I'll admit, it's fun to have a writing assignment. It's been a long time.

Yay for nerds

2008-04-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

Brilliant.

Arguments

2008-04-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been reading quite a bit about the recent flare-ups in the atheism/Christianity debate. The atheists are spearheaded most successfully by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, and the Christian responses I've read are led in eloquence and logic by Dinesh D'Souza and Douglas Wilson. I confess that of all these authors, Dinesh's book What's So Great About Christianity is the only work I've read cover-to-cover. I have, however, hawked Richard Dawkins' website to find some interesting writings and debates. Dinesh makes some appearances there in the flesh if you search for him (most prominently his debate with Hitchens can be downloaded for your viewing pleasure). I do think I have at least some handle on what the different sides are arguing over, though I need to read a bit more of the atheists' perspective before I can claim to have read impartially.

I just finished reading a rant on Dawkins' website regarding the recent documentary Expelled, which examines the issue of teaching intelligent design in the classroom. On this particular point, I'm honestly conflicted; the whole ID movement, despite its claims to the contrary, is an attempt to get Biblical creationism into science classes. Frankly, a lot of creation science is just bad science with a special name, and I wouldn't want any kids of mine being taught young-earth creationism by itself.

(As a side note, I don't necessarily think young-earth creationism is untrue, but I do think it's explicitly unscientific, and thus shouldn't be taught as science. As philosophy or metaphysics, perhaps, but not science. The theory simply doesn't allow for any observations older than 6,000 years, since that's when the universe blinked into existence at the will of God. The only way young-earth creationists can explain the universe's apparent age is that God made it that way. In other words, the universe looks like it's 14 billion years old, but it's not. Hopefully the scientific difficulty in this idea should be obvious: we can't make any claims about the nature of the universe that reference any time before about 4,000 B.C., since those times never actually existed. Thus, the answer for every question about this realm of the universe is some variation on "because God made it that way." I'm a Christian, and I've studied a lot of science, and this answer is entirely unsatisfying. Also, the only reason anyone would ever think the universe is only 6,000 years old is because they think the Bible says so. That's just not science.)

However, a more moderated form of intelligent design, one that simply notices the high level of complexity inherent in the universe at all levels and advances the explanation that something outside of the universe might have designed it, strikes me as a worthy idea to advance in the classroom. The atheists' response is that this idea is a supernatural explanation and is thus not a scientific question. This is certainly at least partly true. However, the atheists' unstated goal with evolution is, in fact, to remove the necessity for belief in God. And so when they trumpet their ideas in the classroom, they are trumpeting their atheism as well. Essentially, they're claiming that ID advocates are pushing "their side" on students, but that atheism is itself not a "side". So atheism can be taught, at least implicitly, because it is not a religion, but even vague forms of theism cannot because that would constitute forcing religion on students. Atheists claim they are arguing for pure reason, and that any form of ID at all is at least partially metaphysical.

This argument looks good on paper, but is disingenuous. Having watched a number of different debates and lectures by these vanguards of unbelief, and I've come to the conclusion that the driving force behind their arguments is categorically similar to the theists across the table. Despite their claims of believing in rationality, of using only logic and reason to develop their collective and individual worldviews, ultimately they believe what they want to believe, and ignore serious arguments that point this out. In his book, D'Souza argues that Kant has already exposed the flaw in their thinking, when he (laboriously!) explained that reason has certain inherent limits.

The preeminent limitation is this: everything we think about is based on our experience, and our experience is always filtered through our senses. Therefore, any logical process we can follow is necessarily limited by the extent of our observations, and we have no way to demonstrate that actual reality matches up with what we see. We have five senses with which to observe the world, but who's to say those five are enough to understand everything about it? Putting this argument in my own terms, we could think of ourselves as two-dimensional beings with the ability to observe and comprehend any body in two-dimensional space. However, having two dimensions that we can observe does not mean that there are not actually three dimensions, it only means we can know nothing about them from direct observation. Further, it means that our reason is also limited to two dimensions, since everything we think about is ultimately based on our observable reality. Therefore, reason cannot make claims about anything that is outside the universe. The atheist's claims that there is no evidence for God are inappropriate not because there is evidence for God, at least not the kind they would theoretically be persuaded by, but because that kind of evidence cannot exist in any way that we could ever observe.

Now, I'm sure I've butchered D'Souza's point pretty badly here, but hopefully it makes some amount of sense. And if we take away reason's halo, bringing it back down to its rightful role as a tool, then we must look for some other motivating factor behind Dawkins' and Hitchens' worldview. We can do this by taking stock of their most passionate arguments, that is, the arguments they seem most excited about espousing.

I cannot say for sure what Dawkins' is most interested in, but with Hitchens, his passion always flares when he speaks about Christianity as demeaning. From cross-referencing his arguments with his level of fervor, Hitchens always comes out swinging when he reminds his audience that the Christian God is one who makes people grovel. He despises the idea that Christians feel they can do nothing outside of God's will and nothing without His help. He has no trouble admitting the villainy man is capable of, but he is unwilling that man should be unable to lay claim to goodness in equal measure. He is a firm believer in human decency, and uses that as his foundation for morality. When asked where his ideas of right and wrong come from, his answer is always a shrug and a "why do they need to come from somewhere?" mentality.

This is pride, pure and simple. I suppose pride is ultimately the source of all sin, in that sin is the preference of one's own will over God's, but here it seems to be demonstrated in pure form. Ultimately, Hitchens' atheism, and that of most if not all of his compatriots, stems from an unwillingness to follow an order if he can't see the value in it. He would rather do as he pleases than accept any kind of servitude. He is one who would quite literally prefer to be his own master in hell than to be a servant in heaven. I suppose he will get his wish eventually.

Against this kind of determination, there is no argument. There is only Providence.

Music

2008-03-31T18:01:00.000-07:00

The other day I was straightening my apartment, and I realized that of the four blu-ray discs I own, two are musicals (well, one is a concert). Most recently I bought a copy of the show Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds played at Radio City Music Hall about a year ago.

To the chagrin of one of my friends, I'm not a fan of the Dave Matthews Band. However, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds play a mean show by themselves, and they also tend to play only the type of songs that really hit me. My new favorite is "Stay or Leave", which is one of those sad songs about remembering a lost love and the questions that inevitably surface alongside. It's beautiful (my test is whether or not I've felt the need to figure out how to play it after hearing it a few times, which I have in this case), and it's oddly coincidental with my most recent post. The verses are mostly a scattershot collection of simple moments shared between lovers, not unlike the bits of my own life I wrote about the other day.

So after thinking about it for many months (and when do I ever make decisions quickly?), I finally joined the church choir. And before you assume that I'm speaking hyperbolically, know that the previous statement is temporally accurate. You might think this an indication that I've put far too much time and effort into a simple Sunday commitment, but I disagree. It's not an issue of time; God Himself knows I have plenty of that. The conflicts are a bit deeper, so I shall elaborate.

One issue is excellence. Quite frankly, I don't have a great singing voice. I can approximate a certain set of notes, and I think I generally get pretty close. But in the upper registers my voice sounds pretty nasal, and I can't go down quite low enough to be a bass proper. Now, I know the verse about making a "joyful noise" and all, but the purpose of a choir is to create something that is technically beautiful (and here I mean the word literally), and not just joyful. "Joyful noises" are fine for the pews, but up front I think the standard should be higher. And, at Hershey at least, the ability of the company up front certainly is higher, so I was worried about bringing the average down. I guess I got over this one by just deciding that if I was terrible, someone would let me know and then I could just quit as easily as I joined (which was pretty easy).

Another issue is expression. I actually sing a lot in my private life (in the car, in the shower, when I'm cleaning, just for fun), but I've never been particularly comfortable doing it in front of others. I'm not entirely sure why that is. I know the standard assessment will be that I'm insecure or shy or something, but I honestly don't think that's it. As I think about how to explain it, it's more like my personal methods of expression don't seem to fit with the aesthetic of other people's. For example, I know a number of people in church who like to put their hands up when they sing. I think that's a great expression of passionate devotion, but for me it's always fake. It's fake if I do it in church because it's not something I would think to do at home. Of course, in my apartment I'm usually either sitting at my piano or playing my guitar, so that could be part of it. Another example is that I don't really smile when I sing. I remember way back in middle school when we students used to put on these recitals, and our music teacher would always remind us again and again to smile during the songs. I could never do it. When I'm singing, I concentrate, and that makes me frown more than smile. Hopefully nobody will notice that guy in the back row who always seems to be constipated on stage.

Ultimately, I decided to join because I like singing, and therefore would add sincerity to the choir, if not talent. Music moves me, especially when the words and music come together to produce that feeling of loss and exaltation that defies description. Watching the Easter musical a few weeks ago, I was struck by the realization that my God is a God who understand both the greatness of joy and the depths of sorrow, and who has experienced both more fully than I ever have. Probably the hardest part of my life right now is just the fact that I'm single, and I've lived with that long enough to know it won't really hurt me. God has felt that agony of rejected love not just from a few girls, but from countless of people across history. And since He's God, He spent more time with each lost soul than I've ever spent with a girl I loved and lost, and so for Him the loss is incalculably greater than mine.

What gets me is that all of this loss is worth it for the sake of communion with those who come to Him. God allows us to leave Him because that ability gives meaning to those of us who seek Him instead. I imagine it's something like watching a child grow into an man, as he slowly grasps the weight of his situation and realizes more and more what his father has sacrificed for him.

And so I feel the need to thank God somehow, knowing full well that even the best I can bring to Him is worth nothing in its own right. I'm like the kid who brings home random things I find in the woods because I'm sure my mom or dad will think they're neat. And God, in His boundless love, looks at the pebble I brought him, and He sees a small treasure instead of a muddy rock. Further, His refrigerator is absolutely plastered with awkwardly drawn crayola pictures, many completely unintelligible in form and subject, and He loves them because they were given with His glory in mind.

And so I will let my poorly-crafted songs ring in His hall, and God will enjoy them because they come from His child.

Romance

2008-03-24T06:01:00.000-07:00

Last night, somewhat against my better judgment, I watched this film. I was expecting another Odyssey-esque "coming home" story, in the vein of Cold Mountain or, well, The Odyssey. While I do love the underpinnings of that sort of narrative, Atonement is directed by one Joe Wright, whose largest claim to fame was the relatively awful 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. As a director snob, I tend to veer away from further work by those who have proven themselves untrustworthy with good source material (note the use of "good" here, rather than "great").

You can imagine my surprise, then, at finding a film that captures a sense of romance better than any in recent memory. The first thing I realized is that it is not really a "coming home" story, and is, perhaps obviously, a redemption story. Two lovers are split by the actions of a third person whose motives are confused but ultimately selfish, and who eventually comes to realize what she's done and attempt to fix it.

I don't want to say any more about the plot, though. It's good, we'll leave it at that. What struck me most about the movie, though, were scenes like this:

You'll notice the entire clip is a single shot, start to finish. If it's difficult to make sense of exactly what is being shown, then I think you've responded correctly. To say the shot includes disjointed or disarrayed images is fair, and part of the emotional impact of the scene is that the characters in front of the camera seem to mirror the confusion of us on the other side of the screen.

The shot is almost surreal, conjuring a certain "carnival of the damned" feel to it. The soundtrack is also beautiful, especially when it incorporates the soldiers' singing of a piece of the hymn "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind". Melding this hymn with the "carnival of the damned" idea, this scene becomes an example of the way people deal with distress. Some run wild, drinking and debauching and otherwise living for whatever small pleasures they can find. Some, such as the men shooting the horses and breaking the vehicles so the advancing German force will not have their use, keep working for posterity, making whatever material differences they can in order to help those who come after them. But some take the time to focus on the beauty they can still see by singing a hymn to the God who created them and brought them to this place. Through each of these options, we walk and observe, and ultimately choose our path. In the face of death, will we love what is beautiful or despair and seek after transient pleasure?

The other observation that struck me about the film is its ultimate portrayal of what matters most to lovers. It's not sex, though that's part of it. What matters most are the quiet moments shared: walking on the beach and chasing the surf, or standing at a corner waiting for the bus.

Once I danced with a girl in a field of freshly-fallen snow. After a few minutes, our footsteps had cut a fantastic shape into the field, which we leapt away from, so as not to spoil, and then gazed at. The night was perfectly still, as only winter nights are, except for the sound of College Creek lapping against the dock behind us. We held hands as we walked to the boathouse.

A few weeks later I got snowed in at her house, following the worst storm we had had all season. Around midnight we walked down her street to the park that bordered the bay and watched the snow blow out over the water. The snow was wet and the wind had been furious, and the result was that one side of everything was coated in snow, while the other was completely bare. The walk out had shown nothing but snow everywhere, while the walk back had shown the branches and walls that had escaped the storm's fury. I slept on the couch, and the next morning I shared her toothbrush.

But now that girl is married to another man, and is probably happy. I haven't spoken to her in almost two years, and possibly never will again. I remember these moments from time to time; they're the last I shared with somebody like that. For her, though, the moments are all different, and the ones she remembers are those shared with her husband.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee,
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity,
Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

Random Ranting

2008-03-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a great book by Dinesh D'Souza about how Christianity is actually responsible for all of the things current atheists are claiming as their own (science, morality, and even reason itself). The book is What's So Great About Christianity, and throughout the text the author wears a number of different hats. He goes through arguments about politics, science, philosophy, and morality with a refreshing amount of intellectual precision. To read an argument by someone who can actually string some logically related ideas together is exciting to me, not because these sorts of arguments are what won me to my faith, but because I can look at the sorts of thoughts that stick in my head and point to other people who think those issues are important. I've spent a lot of time considering the implications that the nature of time and space have for the identity and character of God (and there are some!), and I'm encouraged to see that I'm not alone.

I first heard about the book in World magazine in an article about modern atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Shermer, etc.), which made reference to a debate between D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens (of God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything fame). The actual debate is available online (go here, there's a download link if you look just below the topmost image), and though I've only watched the first third, I have to admit I revel in this kind of stuff. I enjoy this the way a boxing enthusiast enjoys some old-fashioned barstool pugilism.

It helps that I generally like Hitchens' writing; he's refreshingly crotchety and he's not afraid to draw hard moral lines. Regardless of where he and I disagree, he has a sharp mind and he's disgustingly charismatic. I get flashes of C.S. Lewis when watching him, and I imagine Lewis was very much like Hitchens before his conversion.

I do wonder sometimes what good these debates produce, though. On the one hand, I don't think anybody was ever argued into the kingdom of heaven. I can say this with conviction because I think our beliefs are entirely up to us. People involved in this sort of debate are either interested in finding the truth or in being right. There is no third option. If a given person is in the first category, then he will eventually find what he is looking for. This is what the Bible means when it says "seek and you shall find": people earnestly seeking the truth will always find it. How could it be any other way? If God creates people who earnestly seek the truth but are never allowed to find it, then I have trouble seeing Him as anything but a liar. On the other hand, there are those people in the second category, and these people are a strange kind of idolater. Some of them are interested in being right for the sheer narcissism of it, and their idolatry is easy: their idols are themselves. However, some of these people are interested in being right because they're actually interested in the ideas themselves. The idol here is not obviously self, it's an infatuation with the way things ought to be. I think this can can be worked back to self, in that if I choose my beliefs based on what I think the world should be like, then I'm underhandedly stating that I think I could do a better job than God. Still, it's seems more honest than the other version (or ironically more deceptive, depending on how things are counted).

On the other hand, the truth is that people attack the Christian faith regularly, and if we Christians don't put up a fight, then those people who are earnestly seeking the truth right now might get disgusted with the search and give up. The Bible puts the emphasis of Christianity on feeding the poor and taking care of the weak and defenseless, and this is indeed the work of God. But even those who don't need this kind of help in a physical sense still need their minds and hearts fed. To people like me, a good argument is a type of brain food; it gives me ideas to turn over in my head for days, and I invariably come away with a heightened appreciation for God's creation. People point to Genesis and say "it's not a scientific text," and they're right. That said, God created science, and moreover told us to subdue the earth and rule over it. How could understanding the structure of things possibly impede that end?

I'll admit, this stuff isn't for everyone. But for the brain God gave me, it tastes good.

In other news, I read Slate pretty regularly. For the uninformed, it's an online news journal that mostly offers editorials on the news other sources report. It has a pretty liberal bias, though there are occasional conservative voices that pop up (Christopher Hitchens again). Some contributors are less left-leaning than others, and one Ms. Dahlia Lithwick is probably somewhere in the middle. Still, being "in the middle" of the Slate pool is still far enough left of center that Howard Dean could seem reasonable.

Anyway, I read today a piece on a supreme court case regarding gun rights. Specifically the issue seems to be whether a gun ban in Washington D.C. is constitutional. As all debates on this issue inevitably goes to the second amendment, she quotes it. The rest of the debate then hinged on whether the "right to bear arms" applies to all citizens, or if the amendment is specifically allowing states to maintain a military force. I'll admit, the amendment does seem ambiguous in a vacuum, which is why people have inevitably appropriated it to fit their specific political agendas. The lefties would like to make everything capable of propelling a bullet absolutely illegal, while the righties would probably hide their guns in their babies' cribs if they felt they needed to.

However, I'm not interested in the actual interpretation myself. From a practical standpoint, outlawing guns seems silly since we're (supposedly) only worried about criminals having guns, and criminals, by their very definition, aren't known for taking the law too seriously. I think reasonable measures should be taken to keep guns out of the hands of people proven to be untrustworthy (i.e. people who've done time), but further control seems like the classic big-government oversight that I detest in other areas (public education, I'm looking at you).

What I am very much interested in is Ms. Lithwick's conclusion, which I will quote here in its entirety:

"I sometimes fall for the old line that there's no such thing as politics at the high court; there are merely different interpretational tools. Not today. Today we have four liberals rediscovering the beauty of local government and judicial restraint and five conservatives poised to identify a fundamental personal right that will have judges mucking about in gun cases for years to come. After all these years of deep conservative suspicion of turning over policy matters to the courts, the Roberts Court has fallen in love with a new constitutional right. And while they don't seem much concerned about how the judges will manage it, they've just about ensured that judges around the country will soon be ruling in gun cases the way they used to rule on speeding tickets."

If we assume her entire point limits itself the the idea that there are political concerns in the minds of the supreme court justices, then I have no argument. However, that's like arguing that rain makes the atmosphere humid; it's not the first thing people think when they hear the word "rain", but it is obvious. If this is what was meant, I have no objection and will kindly not make my next point.

However, since it seems clear to me that the author is putting her own political spin on this decision, then I feel the need to point out a similar case that took place way back in 1973. I am of course referring to the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, which made abortion a woman's right, and overturned most anti-abortion laws in most states in the union. What's horribly ironic about Ms. Lithwick's statement here is that Roe v. Wade ultimately hinged on a woman's right to privacy (in ways I've never entirely understood, to be honest), and the right to privacy isn't in the Constitution or the bill of rights. Let me say that again, in slightly different terms: the supreme court of 1973 identified a fundamental personal right that gave them the power to muck around in state laws. Sound familiar? So Ms. Lithwick has no trouble with making abortion a fundamental right based on a nonexistent "right to privacy" -- a right that has claimed the lives of millions of unborn babies -- but she is prepared to argue that "the right to bear arms" does not, in fact, mean that citizens are allowed to own firearms. And she argues this on the grounds that the mention of a "militia" for the purposes of defense is clearly all the amendment intended.

Help me out here, Dahlia.

Fantasy Ex Machina

2008-03-12T18:02:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned before, I bought a certain gadget recently whose name I still will not speak. Part of me regrets the purchase, as its primary function is completely negated by other gadgets I own, but another part of me is excited because this it gives me access to some strange Japanese art. I recently bought Final Fantasy XII, and have been playing through it for the last week or so (I'm not very far). It's classic Final Fantasy stuff, but as I enjoy a certain amount of that, it works for me.

For those of you who aren't in the know, Final Fantasy is a series of video roleplaying games that started as far back as the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Since then, there have been at least ten complete sequels (I don't count XI; does anyone?), with another in the works. It fills the space in the video game world that the Bond series does in the celluloid world: some titles stand out over others, but they all follow the same basic formula. Though to be fair, I'd say the Final Fantasy series has done a better job of not sucking than the Bond franchise (does anyone remember "Live and Let Die?").

The interesting thing about the series is that almost none of the games share any characters, or even any particular setting. Some games feature characters who are mostly human, while some feature strange animal-people, some games take place on earth-like planets, some feature settings that are completely bizarre, and so on.

This kind of approach to sequel-ing makes it hard to define exactly what makes a Final Fantasy game what it is. From my own experience (mostly with VIII and the one I'm playing now), the games tend to have a certain aesthetic that carries through each episode. To define that aesthetic is difficult, but it's somewhere between fantasy and sci-fi. Most of the games feature airships of some sort, but these range from basic flying pirate ships to intricately-detailed starships straight out of George Lucas's wildest dreams. The world architecture is usually another key feature, as the games generally take place within all manner of castles, cities, and fortresses, at least half of which are flying for one reason or another. In terms of plotting, most of the games feature a variety of characters unravelling some sort of conspiracy to overthrow this kingdom or another, usually discovering, roughly halfway through the game, that the guy they were sure was the bad guy was really just a pawn for a much larger and far more devious bad guy. Usually Mind-Control is involved. Also, there's almost always some set of giant deities you come to control to give yourself humongous powers at some point during the game.

If my tone above sounds like I think the games are actually kind of silly, the truth is quite the opposite. The games are truly wonderful, as they craft a world that works entirely on its own rules, and they consistently find new ways to implement ideas. The franchise does get stale from time to time, but it also goes through periodic reboots which introduce substantial changes to the formula, most notoriously with Final Fantasy VII which is practically deified by most gamers who enjoy the genre. The claim to fame there is that one of the main characters dies throughout the course of the story (which is not so uncommon), and there's absolutely no way to bring her back (which is quite uncommon). I like the games because they create the entire world the game takes place in, and they seem to revel in that creation as much as possible.

Which brings me to the other source of inspiration for this post: Appleseed Ex Machina. What is that, you ask? I have no idea what the title means, but it's a feature-length film from a Japanese studio with a lot of design cues somewhat similar to Final Fantasy. The film most accurately fits in the "anime" category, but as the whole thing is computer generated, albeit with a not-quite-cel-shaded filter applied, it lacks most of the features I have trouble with in typical anime (most notably the 7 fps render speed. Also, it doesn't have too many unnecessary emotional gasp sounds, which seem to plague every anime film ever). Additionally, the architecture and technology of the world seem downright believable for its time frame.

What I like about this kind of movie is that, like Final Fantasy, everything is built from the ground up. The people, the sets, the props, and every other visual piece in the film are all drawn painstakingly in three dimensions and animated to produce a meaningful image. Literally everything in the world had to be created from scratch, which means that nothing the viewer sees in any shot is ever accidental. I don't mean to say that there isn't any strange coincidence of line, or that there aren't any mistakes of any kind in the film, but just that the level of intentionality in a film of this sort is, by its very nature, necessarily higher than a similar film shot in the real world. Making a film like this is, in many ways, the actual creation of an actual world, which, though only ever viewed from the perspective the director finally chooses, is in many respects quite real.

It seems to me that the world created in a computer language is as real to its creator as this world is to God. He picked out the materials, and put this piece here, that piece there. He gathered the sun and the stars and gave them each their places, He carved the surface of the earth into mountains and oceans, and finally He sculpted each human being who ever walked the land. Not only did He create me and put me where I am now, but He also created all of the things I see and touch and smell and eat, and He did this for my benefit, so that I would see and learn and know and, finally, trust.

So I guess I like human creation, especially those bits of it that are the most outlandish and require the most effort, because it reminds me that my world every bit as intentionally rendered as the frames of a movie spawned in the mind of a strange Japanese artist and birthed through a myriad of digital channels.

Current Events

2008-03-04T05:39:00.000-08:00

I don't really care about them, for the most part. That probably seems pretty "small," but it's often hard for me to get terribly stirred up over who gets into the white house, what the president of Russia does with his power, what celebrities are up to, etc. I tend to care about the things that go on around me, as, frankly, those are the only things that I have any real chance to impact. Those are the issues that press on my mind, and those are the ones I end up fighting for.

Recently, some issues have been brewing at my church, issues that are probably not as enormous as they often seem to me, but are still important as they regard the life of my church body. I won't go into the specifics; suffice it to say that a big decision has been recently made that I personally disagree with. I don't think it's a sinful decision, I simply think it's not the best use of our resources and that it could potentially divide the church body in substantial ways. I've met with the church leaders, and they settled some of my objections, but ultimately my intellect is not satisfied, nor is it likely to be at this point.

Which brings me to my point: faith without knowledge is hard. I'm a man who likes to know things. I enjoy discovery in a wide variety of forms; there are few things I enjoy more than taking a new (and often complicated) idea, mulling over it, figuring out its nuances, and applying it to my set of operating principles. This was the sole part of my engineering training that I enjoyed. I remember vividly when, in a programming/linear algebra class, I finally realized that all of the matrices we had been solving were actually descriptions of position and movement, and that any motion could be described by these groups of numbers. In an instant, what had been a group of meaningless numbers suddenly became placeholders for forms and motions, and my work went from being a mere mental exercise to being a description of the solid reality of creation. I wasn't looking at data, I was looking at a rocketship, or a soccer player, or a ballerina. I spent the rest of that particular class playing with numbers instead of listening to the professor.

But sometimes God doesn't give us the facts. I read Genesis 15 today, and was struck by God's response to Abram (I'm reading through the bible, chapter by chapter, and making notes about the character of God). God counts his belief to him as righteousness, but doesn't respond directly to Abram's sacrifice. In fact, the sacrifice bit only comes as a result of Abram's desire to know that God would do what He said. The text doesn't make clear to my mind whether this response of Abram's is sinful, but unlike His response to Abram's belief, God does not credit Abram's sacrifice to him as righteousness.

So I think about this and I wonder if it applies to my situation now. The truth is, I don't know whether this new direction the church is taking will ultimately result in what I fear. I would like to feel better about the decision, but I don't. At the same time, the people leading the church are older and wiser than I am, and so a large part of my difficulty in trusting them may very well be sinful pride on my part. Abram believed and was righteous, but when he asked for details he ended up doing a lot of work and still didn't know the "here and now" parts. Maybe where I am, I simply need to trust God that He will work through my church's imperfect attempts to reach out, and do something great in spite of some philosophical weaknesses I've perceived.

On an entirely different note, my life has been unusually fulfilling recently. When I think about the things I've seen and done recently, I'm filled with the sense that my life is full, as though every moment is important and that God is speaking to me through almost everything. I'm not sure why it seems so strange; I've always felt that God speaks to me mostly through circumstances. It's probably the scientist in me wondering why I've suddenly been so happy despite no major change in my life situation. I haven't "met anyone," or made a sudden decision to become a missionary in Africa, or experienced any of the usual changes that spark this kind of excitement. Still, as I've stepped out into the world each morning on my way to work, I've felt the urge to inhale deeply, followed by the sensation of the air in my lungs coursing through my veins down to the tips of my fingers and toes. Maybe it's just the onset of spring, or maybe my fresh project of reading through the Bible and really searching for the personhood of God.

Whatever it is, I'm certain it's from God, and I'm enjoying it.

The Older Brother

2008-02-19T09:22:00.000-08:00

I listened to a Tim Keller sermon the other day, which pretty much blew my mind. It's not uncommon for me to hear a sermon that hits me just so, but it is rare for it to happen on this scale. It was one of those moments when you hear someone say something out loud that you've thought inside your head countless times, and then gives you the conclusion you'd been striving to get your head around. It had to have been God speaking directly to me, especially when I consider some of the prayers I had made earlier that day and in those prior, and further in small details like the fact that the sermon lasted exactly the length of the drive I was taking (I literally pulled into my parking space as he said the words "so let's close in prayer"). It was a strange experience, all told, and it's simultaneously heartening and discouraging at the same time. I'll explain.

First, the sermon was given on the parable of the prodigal son, one of the most commonly regurgitated parables Jesus ever told (pretty much tied with the sower and the seed). I've heard sermons on this parable many, many times, but Tim Keller's approach made a few points I don't believe I've ever heard articulated. He starts out by saying that he thought the parable was titled incorrectly, and that it should in fact be referred to as "the prodigal sons." Note the plural; it's the backbone of his message. He then proceeds to put the story in its cultural context, explaining how inappropriate the younger son's request is, and demonstrating all the ways in which the father's feelings and reputation are harmed by his interaction with the young man. Most of this is more or less obvious in the text, though the speaker makes the offenses vivid and personal. What is perhaps less obvious is the way similar offenses are carried out by the older brother, though again I think most people have some inkling that the older brother isn't behaving particularly well by the end of the parable either. Considering Jesus's audience, Dr. Keller makes the point that Jesus is speaking to the sinners when he speaks of the younger brother, and to the pharisees when he speaks of the older. He identifies the sin of the younger as actual, obvious, even physical sin, and the sin of the older as the more insidious sins of the heart. Then he makes an interesting observation: speaking in terms of analogy, the younger son is clearly saved by the end of the story while the older son's story is left unfinished. It's almost like Jesus is saying "the sinners realized their error and are healed, now are you pharisees going to do likewise?" At some point during the sermon he quotes Flannery O'Connor as writing about one of her characters, that he "knew that the best way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin." Keller brings his message to its crux when he notes that just as the older son is good for the sake of his own benefit, as illustrated by his reaction when his younger brother returns, the pharisees do not follow God for the sake of loving and desiring Him but for the sake of the blessings they hope to receive for their compliance.

This idea is significant to me, not because I've never thought it before, but because I've used a lot of Dr. Keller's particular language in comparing my own situation to other people's. In my own family, I'm the oldest brother, and, frankly, of the four kids, I'm the "good" one. Looking over my life, most people would be hard-pressed to find any substantial blemishes. I don't mean to say that I'm sinless; I have plenty of heart-sins to damn me for all eternity (especially since it only takes one), but simply that my external life is extremely clean. I don't smoke, I've never really been drunk, I've never slept with anyone, I don't cheat on my taxes, I'm responsible, I tithe, I've generally made good decisions across the board, I'm an active member of my church, and I'm generally respected by people who know me. And yet, when I compare myself to people I know, I wonder why it seems like blessings are poured out on them and not on me. In particular, I look at all of my married friends, and I wonder why they all seemed to stumble into serious, life-changing relationships while I've never made anything work for longer than a few lousy months. I've actually said of myself (to myself), "I'm the good one. Why does it seem like nothing ever works out for me, while everyone else gets blessed left and right?" Obviously, there's a good amount of pride in that statement, but frankly, there's also some truth in it. I haven't committed a lot of the sins other people have, but still, I'm the one left standing when the music stops.

And so it's particularly convicting to hear a sermon about a guy who did everything right, and yet who didn't realize the truth about himself at all. The older brother's sins are not of the same ilk as his brother's; indeed, as far as the story goes the two brothers don't seem to share any. And yet his sin is deeper and more insidious; he is not redeemed because he doesn't feel he needs it. The younger brother is in trouble because he's led a bad life, while the older brother is in even more trouble because he's led a good life.

The twist on this is that, of course, I get to write the end of my own story. Rather than saying "oh, the older brother doesn't get it, so I'm doomed," the truth is that this is an opportunity to figure out how to deal with my own attitudes and motives, and to get them right. This is not something I've never been confronted with, though, and it's something I've always found difficult. It's relatively easy for me to do the right thing, it's a lot harder to do it for the right reasons. Doing is easy because other people can see it, and thus hold me to a standard. Getting my motives straight is a lot harder, since I'm pretty good at speaking the right language, and can throw together a logically sound explanation for my actions without any real preparation. Also, when it comes to sin, I'm generally a coward, which, coupled with the knowledge that what I'm afraid to do is actually not something I should do, has kept me out of a lot of messes.

It's always seemed easier to me to fight things outside of myself. I've prayed many times that God would just make my problems into something I could see, something I could study and understand, something I could then beat into bloody ribbons. My struggles are all inside my heart and mind, though, which I guess makes sense when I consider how much of my life is lived in here. Even here, though, I can see the Older Brother-ness coming out; I want my sins on the outside so that I can beat them. God wants them on the inside because He knows I'm helpless there, and thus need Him to take care of them for me.

So what's the remedy? In practical terms, I think I have to stop looking at the bottom line. I do a lot of things for the unspoken reason that I'm getting something out of them. Furthermore, often the things I'm getting are imperceptible to other people, things a seemingly simple as a sense of self-satisfaction. I've learned, though, that people have intuition for those sorts of things, and frequently understand that while many of my actions don't seem to have any unspoken motive, there's often something underneath that is frequently not so innocuous as it seems. I think a lot of this trouble would be removed if I lived more without expectations. Honestly, I think I've been heading this direction for a little while now, but listening to this sermon has helped me to put it into words, to define the process and thus make it easier to keep track of (though I recognize that "keeping track" is not the goal).

It's a long road to take heart attitudes and make them comply with what God desires for me, and it's one I'm not particularly good at. I get frustrated with myself over things, and then just sort of give up on them for a little while. I've always come back, and usually it seems like I do a little better that time around, but I would definitely prefer a slow, consistently-upward trend to the climbing-and-backsliding method my life employs.

Anything that reminds me that I need God's grace for everything is something worth digging into.

Phantom Girlfriend

2008-02-14T17:38:00.000-08:00

I recently made a questionable purchase that cost a lot. I will not speak its name out loud, for fear of destroying my carefully crafted anti-Sony image, but suffice it to say that this new gadget plays blu-ray movies. Naturally, a few days after purchasing it, I found myself in the difficult position of needing to buy a blu-ray movie, you know, just to test it out. It was a sacrifice, to be sure, but one that had to be made.

So yesterday, with heavy heart, I stopped off at a big-box media store and perused their selection of films lovingly captivated in high-def. There were many to choose from, many of them utter crap (take Seven Years in Tibet, for instance. High-def crap is still crap, sorry Brad Pitt). I was looking for 3:10 to Yuma, as I've read that its picture quality is beyond good, but I couldn't find it. I was eying Casino Royale as well, as it again apparently has stellar encoding, but I have a hard time plunking down thirty bucks on a movie I already own in standard def. A few others piqued my interest, but I ended up settling on Phantom of the Opera. A strange choice, you might think, but I remembered the movie fondly (I saw it with a girl), and figured the lavish set design would really pop in high-def.

In short, I was right. This, to me, is what makes high-def video so enthralling. Every scene of the movie is drenched in color, and each costume and set piece is full of the most remarkable details. It's possible to see the stitching in Christine's dresses, and the rock walls of the Phantom's lair practically ooze their moisture into the room. For a film so completely focused on the look and sound of things, the picture quality practically places you in the middle of the stage for the entirety of the production. Additionally, the soundtrack is tremendous, thanks to the extensive dynamic range available at the bit rates modern technology provides. It makes me want to upgrade my speakers and receiver just to take advantage of all that aural information (I'm still using the amp I bought in high school, hooked up to a pair of speakers inherited from my grandfather). I understand high-end video and audio equipment is, and probably always will be a niche market, but I'm a fool for it, all of it.

But what really struck me about the film is the romance central to the plot. I know it's a bit sappy at parts, and that the whole thing veers dangerously close to melodrama at times, but I can't help but be swept up into the whole feel of the work. It has love, death, betrayal, sadness, happiness, and ambiance. There's something intoxicating about being led down a never-ending flight of steps into the bowels of an opera house, taking a boat ride further into the gloom, and at last finding yourself inside a cave hideout lit by candles and decorated appropriately. Ridiculous, yes, but thrilling none the less. It has sword fights, it has dancing and singing, it has gothic sculpture and brilliant architecture, and it has a leading lady worthy of all the trouble men go to to get her.

There are two men vying for her hand, as is the case in all stories of this ilk. One of her suitors has liked her since childhood, and embodies the kind of puppy-dog devotion one read about in fairy tales. The other loves her for her voice, for her ability to make music, and recognizes that her true beauty flows from this source. The first man is handsome and likable; one imagines he is popular the way all good-natured, well-mannered, affluent men are. At the same time, his wealth is likely inherited, and throughout the course of the film we never once see or hear any evidence of his occupation (the assumption being that he has none, other than to serve as patron for the arts). The second man is dark and ugly; he scares people into respecting him, and as long as they do they have nothing to fear. He is talented: he writes music and performs it, he designs clothing and costumes, he is a magician and an actor, and one imagines him further dabbling in painting and sculpture and architecture at his whim. He is ugly, but he is passionate. He wants her heart and her voice, and he wants her in order to make her great.

Ah, the leading lady. She's beautiful, but more importantly, she's talented. She sings, dances, and acts, and generally makes the film worth caring about. It's easy to see why our two suitors are taken by her. As for myself, I'd have to say the thing that makes her worth caring about is her talent. If I knew she wasn't really singing her lines, I'd think she was just a pretty face with an awesome stylist (her hair never ceases to impress). However, when I add her voice to the equation, she goes from "cute girl" to "art goddess."

I wrote about talent being attractive a while back, though as I was talking about Veronica Belmont (still hot, by the way), I think the point came across a bit differently. Talent comes in all shapes, and almost all of them are interesting. A girl can be cute, but if she can't read a book to save her life, or play an instrument, or sing a song, or do anything artistic of any sort, then she's just a pretty face. Take a girl with a bit less in the looks department, though, and give her a voice to bring down the house, or a brain for literature or science, and you've got something special.

Maybe this is just me feeling a bit sappy at the moment, I don't know. The film is a bit silly in some respects, but the overall passion it puts forth is thrilling, in my opinion. I'll admit, as I flatter myself as being more like the Phantom than Raoul, it is a little distressing to see her go for the puppy dog over the great man. Still, as he was a murderer, I guess she can be forgiven.

But hey, ladies, I'm not a murderer, and I like art and all of that...

And now, in the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should set the record straight on Mr. Joel Schumacher, the film's director. Some of you may recognize that name. I certainly do; he took over the Batman franchise from Tim Burton after Batman Returns (and before Batman Begins, which was Christopher Nolan). His second foray into the Batman franchise produced this:

So, even the greats miss on occasion.

Comedy Gold

2008-01-29T17:43:00.001-08:00

So I finally got five free HD-DVDs that I sent for a good four months ago (8 to 10 weeks for processing my butt), and as I was forced to pick from a list, I got a couple I really wanted, one I hadn't seen, and The Rundown. I forgot that one was on the list, and was pleasantly surprised to find it in the package. It's a dumb movie, not high art by any means, but it has a good hero, a good-looking woman, a smart-mouthed kid, some good adventure, and...

I officially own one more awesome thing.

A Full Life

2007-12-03T17:57:00.000-08:00

I'm generally a pretty non-social person. I spend most of my off-time in my apartment, with semi-regular contact with my brother (who lives across the hall). Other than that, I'm part of a men's Bible study of which I am the youngest member by a solid twenty years. I also semi-regularly attend a Bible study for people mostly my age but of diverse socioeconomic and educational backgrounds. That's pretty much all I do; the nights I don't go out, I spend reading or in some comparable pursuit (disclaimer: occasionally video games). My social life, in the absence of roommates who were always going out and inviting me along, is pretty spartan.

I'm not sure exactly why this is. Contrary to my unintentional facade, I don't hate people, I don't hate being around them, and I don't hate talking with them. Many of them are quite interesting. I have little trouble meeting new people, as long as I have some context for doing so. For example, meeting new people in the context of entering a new workplace, or a new church or Bible study group is generally fine with me. Though this has not always been the case, I think I'm at least relatively good at asking questions that demonstrate a significant-yet-not-forced-or-creepy level of interest in new people (and I've had more than one person highlight that quality as an initial point of interface). Thus I generally don't have too much trouble mixing with people I don't know, albeit with a few substantial caveats (which I will explain in due course of time).

Whatever the reason, I'm generally not a very busy person. I especially don't like scheduling myself in; it makes me feel trapped when I have social obligations that I've agreed to and thus must attend. However, I generally don't have much problem with spur-of-the-moment planning, and even have a sneaking suspicion that I'd be happy with even the busiest schedule imaginable as long as I couldn't see what was coming.

But I digress. This past weekend was going to be spent grading papers, which was actually accomplished in large part. However, I also ended up attending an Eagle Scout ceremony for two young men who are friends of the family, and then additionally a choir service at my brother's college. If I had known the day would last so long ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have gone to at least one of those, but as I didn't know, I did go, and I'm glad for it in retrospect.

The Eagle ceremony was a trip back through some memories I hadn't accessed in years. It turns out that both the graduates were part of the old troop I was a part of, and earned my Eagle rank in years ago. A few of the same leaders from back in my day were still involved (and remembered me!), and the feel of the whole affair was remarkably familiar. There were the candles that represented the different aspects of manhood, the sense of accomplishment understood by the adults and lost on many of the young men, the letters of recommendation flooding in from major and minor dignitaries, and, of course, that one kid who somehow got a speaking part in the ceremony and giggled his way all the way through (though I shouldn't criticize; I was probably that way when I was sixteen or seventeen. Sometimes it's easier to laugh at something you don't quite understand than it is to take it seriously and actually try to appreciate it). I have to admit, the entire affair put a smile on my face. It's nice to know that some people still do things the way they've always done them, even as the world changes all around them. I know the Boy Scouts have run into some significant policy hawks in recent years, so it's good to see at least some of them pressing straight forward with their traditional values and mores. God was the focus of the ceremony, and good, old-fashioned decency was heaped alongside.

After the ceremony, it was back home for an hour or two, then off to a choir service of which my brother's fiance was a part. This event took place in the chapel at his college, which was in some ways a modern building, but in other ways old and hallowed. The performance started off with a candlelight procession, which is something I've always enjoyed. There's something intoxicating about a candlelit room; it reminds me that the world is built of wood and stone, and that for centuries man has been more of a frightful inhabitant of this sphere than its supposed conqueror. Much of the music was performed without any accompaniment, and it was amazing to hear how versatile the human voice is. At one point, a small piece of the choir (I think they were the voice majors) came and sang a piece in the aisle of the chapel, and the music was wonderful. It's amazing to me that human voices can sound so different, and yet, taken together, can produce such harmonies. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

After the musical, we went back to my parents' house and I finished up some grading (and some laundry), and thought about my day. Maybe it's just the Christmas season, or maybe it's just the winter, but once again I was forced to admit that the entire day would have been better if I had someone to share it with. Yes, my parents were with me the whole time, and that's not insignificant, but they have each other. My brother has his fiance, my sister has her husband. Winter is when I have the most trouble being single, I think, though probably not for the reasons most people might suffer the same problem. I love fall and winter; they're the seasons in which everything exciting is happening. I've been in a lot of interesting new situations of late, but by myself, a lot of my experiences tend to stick in my brain until I file them away or forget about them. Come summer I won't have this problem; summers are always pretty slow-moving for me.

Making matters worse, the choir service was packed with women. I'd forgotten how many were at my own college; being in that setting again reminded me how lonely the mid-twenties singles scene is for someone like me. There must be some women out there who managed to sneak through college without getting married, but where are they? My family decided to walk to a reception after the service, and I noticed a girl there who looked interesting. I was talking to my brother and she was talking to some girl friends. She was short, and cute in a bookish sort of way (think Lauren Winner). She wore glasses and had a slightly upturned nose. She looked a little too old to be a student, maybe a graduate student or a young member of the faculty, and I couldn't help wondering, based solely on the company she kept, if she was stuck in the same kind of mid-twenties relational doldrums that I seem to be drifting helplessly inside of. I feel there must be other people out there like me, who can speak to anyone except the people who can produce real and significant changes in their lives, about anything except that chasm that separates them.

Anyway, it was another one of those "girl of my dreams" moments that just kind of spontaneously crop up from time to time. Usually they're completely ineffective, though the last two had some results (one matured into a serious relationship before self-destructing, another was just one date that proved less than thrilling). It caught me off guard, I'll admit.

I wonder if I could find her again? That's probably a dead end; I don't know anything about her, and would probably realize I have nothing in common with her if I did. I have no idea who she is or where she lives, what she likes to do, or where she goes to spend her free time. The logical thing would be to give up and wait for someone to drift past me. That's what most people in my position would do (assuming that they, like me, didn't actually introduce themselves during the one chance they had). That's what I always do. I wonder, though, if there isn't some better way?

My New Favorite Place

2007-11-29T17:04:00.000-08:00

I got my chair! I'm quite happy with it; it's well made, comfortable, old-fashioned, a bit pretentious (in a good-natured way), and it even fits in well with my rust-red walls. I live in an old building (built pre-1900), and the pattern and texture of the upholstery fits in well with the old-time aura of the place. It's probably the single nicest thing I own at this point, and I have to admit that the thought of sitting and reading under a blanket on a cold night is more inviting with a chair like that to support such activity. The upside to this is that my intellectual life will be stimulated and expanded. The downside is that I now have one more reason to stay in and hang out with myself rather than go out and hang out with other people. We'll see how this plays out.

Amendment

2007-11-17T09:13:00.000-08:00

Reading over my most recent blog post, I think I need to say a little more about what I meant. I don't think I need to contradict myself in any particular point, but I do think the overall tone of that post was more negative than I had intended. Reading it again, I couldn't help but hear a bit of veiled anger over past wrongs being repaid with isolationist tendencies covered by a thin veneer of logical justification. That wasn't my intention, so I will attempt to clarify.

I think the biggest point I was trying to make is that my understanding of relationships has changed over time. When I was in high school, I was very unhappy, and so when I found a girl who didn't mind talking to me and that attention made me feel better, I ended up assigning my happiness over to her. This worked for a while, but eventually the relationship (which was never even official) began to come apart. When it did, I lost the happiness that I had come to rely on it for. Relationships #2 and #3 played out similarly, though each time less of my happiness was invested in the relationship. I wasn't happy when I found a girl in high school; I was quite happy when I found a girl in grad school. So the first time I was left alone, the girl took a lot along with her, hence the gaping emotional wounds, the complete lack of interest in anything, and all of that melodramatic crap. On the other hand, my third trip down that lane didn't hurt the same way; the happiness I had before the relationship wasn't gone, it was just eclipsed for a while by the pain of loss and the muted frustration of finding myself once again without that kind of love (hence the "flat disgust" description in my last post).

All this is to say that I don't need a wife to be happy; I'm happy now. I have an awful lot to be thankful for, both in terms of spiritual blessings and physical ones. My life is stable: I have an interesting job, a nice place to live, a loving family, and financial stability. So the question of whether or not I should find a wife is actually an open question. Getting married would force me to give up things that, frankly, I enjoy. I have a lot of freedom, time, and even disposable income, much of which would go away with the addition of a wife, and even more with the addition of children. So why get married?

Well, there are some very good reasons, which brings me to the point of marriage, or at least what I think the point is. While I'm not sure I'd defend this idea to the death, I think God created marriage as a way to grow men to their full potential (and here I'm using "men" to mean "people"). Intimate relationships are good for people because they teach us how to love others. Part of what makes life so interesting is the staggering amount of variety in people. Anyone who reads this blog regularly probably has some idea about how I think: I like things that make logical sense, and I analyze everything until I can put them into those kinds of terms. For example, when I walk through a forest and find a strange insect or plant, my instinct is to study it and understand it. It amazes me to find that everything I see works according to the physical laws of the universe, and yet each thing God created uses those laws to exist in an entirely unique way. However, other people's minds don't function in the same way, and so being in relationships with others, most significantly a marriage relationship, I can learn to value viewpoints foreign to my own. With enough time and effort, I could learn to see beauty in ways that don't come naturally to me, and thus be able to glorify God more fully with my life than I otherwise would.

Equally important to note: marriage is not about happiness in and of itself. God didn't create Eve so that Adam would be happy, He created her so that Adam would have a "helper". A woman helps a man by making him a more complete creature, and hopefully he returns the favor. Along with that growth, one certainly hopes that a marriage relationship brings a good measure of happiness with it, but I think we need to be careful what we mean by that. I truly believe that an unhappy person will never find happiness in a relationship unless he can also find it alone. If I'm not happy with my life as it stands right now, then adding a wife won't ultimately take me from here to there. The kind of happiness that a relationship would provide is an augmentation of what's already there; seeing God's grandeur by myself makes me happy (and it's everywhere!), but having someone else around to share the experience would make me even happier.

Of course, it also heightens pain, in its turn. Right now I have very little to lose in my life. The greatest loss I've experienced all week was when a pen exploded in the washing machine this afternoon and ruined a few articles of clothing. Sure there are things, people in my life that I care about more than a pair of old khakis, but I imagine none of them would hurt in the losing as much as a wife would, especially if we had been married for decades, and she had seen me through a host of both difficult and exciting times.

So marriage has its good points, for sure, and logically I think it would be good for me to be married. In terms of time, I have no clue as to when would be ideal, but I'm at a place in my life where there's no longer any reason to wait (i.e. to finish college, or get a stable job, etc.). If I could find a girl who fits what I need in a wife, I would at least consider giving the relationship a chance.

Which brings me to what I need in a wife, or at least what I think I need. Basically, I need a girl who loves God with all her being, as evidenced by her desire to glorify Him in everything she does, and who can handle being around me for long periods of time. That's about it, I think, though those two points imply a set of further characteristics. A woman who truly loves and follows God will be secure in who she is and she'll be happy with her life (which isn't to say she won't be trying to make it better, just that she won't be constantly depressed), and a woman who can handle me will be kind enough to listen to me yet sturdy enough to tell me when I need to shut up. On top of that, hopefully she has interests in some things that I can also get excited about (i.e. she should be a reader of some ilk), but as I get excited about a wide variety of topics, that's not usually an issue. If I found those characteristics in a single woman, I'd definitely consider taking a risk. At the moment, I don't really know any single women, though, which makes cultivating an interest difficult.

Ok, rant finished. On an entirely different note, I'm getting a reading chair! It's a Bradington -Young recliner with a great fabric on it. The chair frame is made entirely of hardwood, and I've heard on good authority that this chair could last me for decades if properly cared for. Most importantly, it has claw feet. It should get here on Tuesday, and I'm excited. I'll post a picture of it when I get it settled.

Leaping Delight

2007-11-12T18:03:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday I had to stay late at work to attend a staff meeting. These meetings are "catch-all" meetings in which the staff members bring up any and all issues they've come up against since the last meeting (as well as some on-going issues that won't go away), and we deal with those issues as best we can until we get tired of the meeting and go home. The meeting in question lasted about two hours, which means I didn't get out the door of the building until half-past five. Thanks to the daylight saving switch, the sun was already setting. I zipped up my jacket and pulled up the collar, then walked to my car with a smile on my face.

I don't know what it is about the shorter days of fall and winter, but I always get excited by the change. When the sun sets early, I get wonderful thoughts of blankets and books and hot chocolate by the wood stove back home. There's something about the short days that excite me; maybe I have reverse seasonal affective disorder.

However, last Tuesday as I walked to my car, a thought occurred to me: it would be nice to come home and find someone at home waiting for me. Not in a "50's housewife ready with a pot roast and the day's newspaper" way, but in a "someone to talk to" way. As it stands, I come home to an apartment that looks exactly the way I left it, and if I don't make noise, nobody does.

I think the most attractive part of having a wife is the long-term companionship it would provide. I've experienced a pretty steady flux of friends over the past seven or eight years. People come and go; they don't stop being my friends, but they don't keep living around me either. None of my friends from college or grad school are less than two hours away now, and some are a lot farther than that.

This is an entirely common situation for someone who's regularly changed his abode and set of roommates over the past half-decade. And it's okay. I don't weep over the friends I have who aren't as close as they used to be. I talk to them when I have a chance, and most of us get together at least once a year. It's not as convenient as having everyone living within walking distance, but it works. That's life; I can accept it.

Still, I think about my life and all the things that have happened to me over the years. Much of it is unimportant even to me. Some of it is difficult to express. Some of it I forget. And as I think of these things, it occurs to me that I'm the only complete record of it. There's a lot in my head that has never seen the light of day. A lot of the big things get written down for future reference, but a lot gets filed away in my memory to be retrieved at some later date (though frequently that day never comes). I figure other people must be doing the same things with their lives, though I don't know that I've ever had enough contact with anyone to really dig into that stuff. And the few possible exceptions to that statement are all off in their own lives by now, sharing those thoughts with other people.

So what is a single man to do with his thoughts? Try another relationship? I guess I could, but I'd be exaggerating enormously if I said I was excited at that prospect. I'm not good at them; I don't think I've ever really been understood by someone I've dated. I always work hard to get into the relationship, and after a few months find myself hearing about how "we don't mean the same thing when we say 'I love you'." I don't know what they meant, but I actually meant I loved them. I can love, small and seemingly selfish though it may be, but I can't seem to inspire anyone to return the favor.

I think some of it is me falling prey to people's ideas about what love is. I remember having long discussions with my most recent failure about how love is an action, it's something done and not felt. And yet, a month later she was telling me how she had to be true to her feelings, and that meant leaving. She didn't love me, she had a squishy feeling in her chest and called it "love" as long as it felt good. I don't know how to deal with that; I don't think that way, and I don't think I act that way.

So I don't know about another relationship. It's actually an open question at this point in my life, unlike the past. When I got dumped for the first time, it hurt like crazy and I thought I'd die and all that juvenile stuff, but the passion of that reaction belied the hope that still burned underneath. My most recent failure produced as much flat disgust as anything else. I wonder what that means?

I go back to Eliot, to a poem he wrote late in life:

"To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
the breathing in unison.

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech,
And babble the same speech without need of meaning...

No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public."

I read these words by a man whose first wife was insane, and who suffered under that relationship for years before finally finding some happiness in his second marriage just a few years before his death, and I wonder what he felt at my age. I wonder what he thought about his first marriage in hindsight, if he would have said it was "worth it." I think about the few months I've spent in relationships over the course of my life, and I'm not even sure those months were worth it.

But then what do I do with my thoughts? What do I do with cold, dark nights? What do I do with good books, and music that I love? What do I do with the amazing things I find while hiking alone, things I used to show the girl who used to hike alongside me? I guess I write them down.

Let my cry come unto thee

2007-11-06T16:26:00.000-08:00

"Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death."

Here we have an excerpt from one of my favorite poems, "Ash Wednesday" by Mr. Thomas Stearns Eliot. The man had a strange taste in words and images; here I'm given the impression of a decrepit eagle perched on a branch, too old and weak to fly any higher, yet yearning to do so. Unable to hunt, a feat he's relied upon for years, he's left to sit and ponder his nature before his impending death.

First, a bit of history. I had what you might call a "dark period" during my teenage years. It began around the time I entered junior high youth group, and didn't fully end until sometime during college. This is a period of my life that I've repeatedly found myself exploring of late, in large part because I've recently found myself in many of the same places (that is, physical places) that I used to haunt in those days, and even come into semi-regular contact with a few people who knew me back then. And while some things haven't changed much (why is Hershey the only place in the world that I can never seem to make any friends?), most of my life is extremely different, and as a result, a lot of my life right now seems to be caught up somewhat in atoning for past errors and sins. My historically negative views on Hershey have been shed for a more uplifting "throw in and help out" approach, for example.

"How does this relate to Ash Wednesday?" you ask. And I answer: Eliot is a poet I've long been interested in, but that interest has changed its form considerably over the years. As a teen, I think I was in love with hopelessness. I honestly have no idea why; such a love is, by its very definition, hopeless. And so a lot of Eliot's earlier work appealed to me, as it speaks of impotent men unable to express themselves to people (read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"). There's a grim acceptance of failure that echoes through the streets he walks, and even is echoed even in his dreams. As a teen, I spent a lot of time daydreaming, but rather than me saving the world and getting the girl, my musings were mostly about me trying to do something amazing and failing at it (or succeeding but dying in the process). I could relate to Prufrock on a personal level, and thus Eliot became my muse.

However, as any good Eliot scholar can tell you, the poet experienced a rather significant change through the infusion of Christianity into his life. There's an interesting, in some ways subtle shift in Eliot's poetry that coincides with his conversion. "Prufrock" was his first published poem, and was written pre-conversion. "Ash Wednesday" came after the split, and makes numerous references and direct cries toward God. Unlike "Prufrock", "Ash Wednesday" has hope.

Eliot had a hard life; his wife was mentally unsound and caused him who knows how much pain before she finally died. I think about that situation slowly sapping his strength over the years, taking small pieces of him away, and I see God using a difficult situation to bring a proud man to his knees. The impotence in "Prufrock" is hopeless, the same in "Ash Wednesday" is a surrender to God. Then I wonder if I need to experience the same slow burn of my talents in order to be made into the man God made me to be.

So why write about a once-proud, now-dying eagle? Why write about dereliction and decrepitude, of life leaving the limbs and strength slowly dwindling? I think the answer lies in the "care" lines:

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Teach me to care about the things I should care about, teach me to leave all else at the door. Teach me to care for people, and not about what they think. Teach me to stop beating my wings uselessly, take my will from me and give me a new one. Teach me to stop and sit at the feet of Christ and listen. Teach me to glory in my weakness, for only then will I appreciate Your strength.

The poem's final statement:

"Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto thee."

Maybe we need to bleed and age in order to realize that all we can ultimately do is cry out. And even then, the only cry with any strength is that aimed at God.

Commitment

2007-10-08T15:52:00.000-07:00

A few months back, I wrote a post entitled "Breaking Up," which was a collection of my thoughts about finding a church after my then-impending move back to Pennsylvania. It was most directly a response to the Easter service at Hershey Free, and focused largely on my distaste for said service. Without quoting directly, my conclusion was basically that Hershey was not a church I could stand to attend regularly, let alone become a member of and be actively involved in (Holy dangling participles Batman! And from a grammar teacher, no less!).

In yet another one of God's wonderfully-humbling "irony" moves, this post was recently recalled to me by a friend firmly entrenched in the church in question. I've known her since high school, and thus she witnessed my life during what I will hereafter refer to as my "sullen teenager" phase, which was set to the tune of many nihilistic Smashing Pumpkins tunes, was characterized by much selfishness and nastiness (under the guise of righteousness but actually motivated by horrific self-distaste), and was punctuated by a series of diatribes against the church in question. The blog post in question could perhaps be thought of as a final sliver of that way of thinking, and while I'm not about to disagree with my own words on the level of them being dishonest (they were quite honest at the time, and I'd probably still experience a lot of the same feelings were I to re-live that Easter service), I am going to explain a few changes in my stance on the actual nature of the Evangelical Free Church of Hershey.

(A strange coincidence: somebody outside my window just drove by while simultaneously blasting The Cranberries out his window. It's like high school all over again)

As I mentioned, I was a rather sullen teenage boy. Those years were not good for me in many ways, though my own struggles were almost entirely internal. I was never into drinking, drugs, or sex, or anything else that would have created external problems in my life. I was pretty quiet, socially. I kept to myself and my small circle of friends, and we mostly spent our time watching cheesy movies and playing violent video games. I was certainly never popular, and I'm pretty sure nobody in youth group knew who I was (both because I didn't go to high school with any of them, and because my defense mechanism for social difficulty, especially girls, was avoidance). My method of dealing with situations I didn't understand was to criticize or belittle, the idea being that if I thought something was stupid, then I was allowed to be terrible at dealing with it.

This took the shape of some sharp criticism leveled at the church during that time. Some of this criticism was founded, but most of it was based on my own insecurities and small-mindedness. I would complain about how this aspect of the service wasn't challenging, and how nobody was "real," among other typically puerile attacks.

The problem I wasn't seeing then is that most of my difficulties with the church could have been alleviated partly or entirely if I had just been willing to get off my butt and be pro-active; "nobody's real here," is an entirely hypocritical statement coming from a kid who's deathly afraid of being honest. I do think that some of my difficulty with the church (the youth group, especially) was at least somewhat grounded in reality (they did switch up pastors a number of times, and at least once the split was less than amicable), but a lot of it was just plain old, sinful, glass-half-empty thinking. I've thought recently how much I'd like to meet myself as a seventeen-year-old, and smack some sense into that kid.

Anyway, enough history. My post against the church this past April was less the rant of a petulant child, and more the rant of a frustrated, if slightly myopic adult. My goal was not to question anybody's heart or motives, as it easily might have been seven or eight years ago, but to point out frustrating practical decisions being made that, in my opinion, hamstrung the Sunday service. Furthermore, my change in heart regarding Hershey is not evidence that I've suddenly become a "real Christian" or anything, it's the product of a more carefully weighed opinion (crafted on much more steady interaction), along with some improved understanding regarding my own personal tendencies. Also, I have to give credit to the powers-that-be in the church; the service itself does seem to have improved substantially since my previous intermittent visits. In saying this, I mean that the change here is not just internal and specific to me, but that the pastors at Hershey do seem to be doing a verifiably better job with the worship and teaching (topical preaching has been dumped for a far more exegetical approach, worship has seemed more liturgical, including responsive readings, references to the church calendar, etc.). My opinion has grown to be a bit more fair, and simultaneously the church has changed some of its more personally-infuriating habits.

So what am I going to do? My hubris is not so great for me to think that anyone reading this cares overmuch what my plans are (or even that anyone still reads these words), but as this is my blank page, I shall write them nonetheless. In a word, I'm going to commit. My previous post used an allusion to a broken relationship to describe my feelings toward Hershey, and I will consequently finish with the same image. When a relationship hits a rough patch, the two participants are left with a choice: they may go their separate ways, or they may pick up the pieces and, armed with knowledge from their previous troubles, set about forging a stronger relationship. I was previously convinced that the time had come to sever ties and move on to greener pastures. But just as I've never really considered breaking off a relationship with a girl, I don't think I can walk out on my church, either. This is not because I'm a great man, it's because I'm simply too much of a sap to let go of something I care about. Honestly, it's just not in my blood, and as I think about where I am now, and what I want my life to look like going forward, I think I'll be a better man for staying and helping, rather than walking out and looking for some other church that "gets me" (which, after all, is quite hubristic in its own right).

Ephesians 5:25-27 is Paul's command to men that they love their wives the way Christ loved the church. I don't have a wife, but if God loves the Church enough that "he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word," then I should do the same, for my own benefit as well as Hers. As I'm finally in a place in which I intend to settle down and live indefinitely, I think it's time I started helping to pull the church forward, rather than having it drag me along behind it.

The Hidden War

2007-10-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

My thought processes have been a bit more scattered than usual, thanks to a host of responsibilities I've not had to deal with in my life before now. This blog post is one I've been meaning to write for months (among several others, which I'll hopefully get around to writing in the near future). Teaching has filled up my life in more ways than one, and has quite possibly involved more learning than teaching anyway.

But this post is about war, that deadly struggle between right and wrong that exists within the soul of every man and woman God has created on this Earth. I don't believe war is good or evil of its own accord, but that it's only the product of incompatible ideals being taken to their logical ends. I'm bothered by the modern idea that war is the greatest evil; war isn't evil, evil is. We see this externally in actual physical wars (scroll through a history text and take your pick), but also internally in the momentary struggles we each face on a continual basis. To allow evil to exist for the sake of peace is really, at its foundation, just a form of apathy (which is, itself, its own kind of evil).

This is ironic to me, because my own war is frequently fought along the metaphorical lines of convincing myself to get up and simply pick up a weapon; apathy is one of my greatest adversaries. My war exists in the thoughts and motivations I deal with on a daily basis, which range from the mundane impulse to flip off a speeding jerk on the highway to the more extreme struggles with pride and selfishness. In all cases, my life can be broken down into a seemingly-infinite series of battles in which I can choose the easy way or the good one.

And that is how it splits, just about every time. In fact, that's often the test I use to determine the right solution (in the absence of other, better pieces of evidence). If I'm forced to make a decision, I generally find I need to seriously consider the option I find least tasteful and ask myself honestly why it's the hardest option. An overwhelming percentage of the time, my difficulty is due to some fear or pride issue dwelling in my heart which is trying to cloak itself in some guise more palatable or upstanding. I tell myself I don't necessarily need to stand up and take the blame for something that's really, after all, nobody's fault in particular, even if I might have had a hand in bringing it about. I know in my own life this struggle between good and evil all too frequently slithers beneath my field of view, gently guiding its insidious tendrils beneath my defenses until once again I'm flat on my back, wondering how I got to be there.

And this is what I find so completely frustrating about my life; I know there's a spiritual war raging all around me, and yet so often I can't see it. I rifled through a few of my DVDs after work today, and fast-forwarded to all of the epic battle scenes. The best example today was Narnia. The story culminates with the forces of good and the forces of evil squaring off on opposite sides of the field, charging at each other, and going for the throat. There are wounds, there are casualties, and there's naked aggression to spare. The Good are truly good, the Evil are venomous, and the difference is stark. The fighting is physical, it's visible, and if they don't fight, they die quickly and violently.

The truth is that the same things are at stake in this life, more even. Failure to stand up and fight results in soul-death, a worse death than that of the flesh faced on the battlefield. So why do I have so much trouble drawing my Sword and doing some hacking and slashing? My very soul is at stake, and I'm in danger of dying because I can't haul my butt out of bed a lousy fifteen minutes early to spend some time in prayer, or because I'd rather read science fiction than my Bible. All too often, I sin simply because it's easier than the alternative. This is the most pathetic way to lose a battle that I can think of (who really respects those who surrender without a fight, anyway?).

But the good news is that I think I've found the embarrassingly obvious solution: church! Now, I've been involved with different churches throughout the course of my life, and I don't think I've ever been anywhere that I wasn't regularly attending a service of some sort. They weren't always ideal situations, but usually those were due to external circumstances (i.e. the lack of a car in college, etc.). I've always made strides to keep God in my life in some substantial capacity, and I've long been working in various ways to make His presence more substantial and more central than before. I've never been a member of a church, though, and my involvement has usually been limited to Sunday mornings and Bible studies. My reasoning behind this has been that it hasn't made sense to become a member of a church I wouldn't be attending in a year due to my until-now-regular changes of habitat. I still think that reasoning holds up, but I think I took it a bit too far. I could have been more involved than I was, member or not, and I think that decision to hold back has probably cost me over the years (possibly in ways I'd be terribly disappointed to realize). My line was always "I'll get seriously involved when I finally settle into a career and moves somewhere I don't intend to vacate in a year." Well, that time is now, and so I'm feeling like I really need to put up or shut up.

So what have I done about this? Well, I joined a men's Bible study/accountability group (which will likely get its own blog post), I'm planning on taking the church membership class at Hershey (another dedicated post, especially if you take the time to look back to some things I wrote in April), and I'm going to find some way to serve at the church on a regular basis (even if the most interesting thing I'm qualified for is stacking chairs).

So, in short, boot camp is over, and it's time for war. It's time to take all of the spiritual knowledge I've accrued over the years through study, conversation, and teaching and start applying them more substantially. It's time to get out the hauberk and the claymore, and start slaying some evil.

And I'm excited! God's done big things with me over the years, and He's going to do even bigger things, even if I never see most (or even any) of them.

Fall Art

2007-09-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

It's a bit chilly this morning, even though the sun is shining with full force. There's a breeze blowing in my window, and my toes are feeling a bit nipped-at. I can see the trees swaying outside my window, and even a few leaves collecting on the ground outside. I can't help but be excited; fall is fast approaching.

Fall means the apples are good, the land is cool and clear, and the colors are vibrant. It means the summer doldrums are finally clearing out, and things are back to the life-and-death balance, with the old passing away and to make way for the new. Fall always seems to strip away the sooty, lazy, decadent pieces of my routine and replaces them with adventure and discovery. Fall is for tramping through the woods to find treasures or a quiet spot for reading my favorite Everyman edition. Fall makes me want to go shopping for local produce, read storybooks, and listen to old people. It makes me want to stay up late talking about the mysteries of God and creation.

Fall also brings along with it a taste for certain films and books that just seem to go with the time of year. Sometimes the correlation is obvious, sometimes I can't really articulate why they go together. For anyone who might still be reading, here's the short list (in no conceivable order):

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (and much of Eliot's other work)
Rushmore
Sleepy Hollow
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
Calvin and Hobbes (though this works just as well in the hottest pits of summer)
Dead Poets Society
This Side of Paradise
Edward Scissorhands
The Chronicles of Narnia
Till We Have Faces
Magnolia (and further, the soundtrack on its own)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (and a number of Hemingway's short stories)
The Corpse Bride / Nightmare before Christmas

There's plenty more, as well. I'm not going to write them all out, because I need to get a shower and go outside.

Delight and Pain

2007-09-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today my seventh graders asked me what it means to say that love is both delight and pain.

I'm two weeks into my new job, and they've been good, if overwhelming. My tendency with most long-term situations is to really pull hard at first, but then to gradually let off until I end up coasting across the finish line. This isn't intentional, I just lack stamina. When I think back to college, I'm convinced that many of the B's I got were actually A's going into the last few weeks of the semester. It's difficult to keep up a steady workload; even steel sags under its own weight after a time.

But I'm not there yet. So far, I've managed to find time to stay on top of my planning and grading, and I have yet to encounter a class period in which I was clueless.

Instead, I'm at the wonderful "discovery" phase, which is strangely like those first few weeks of a romantic relationship. Everything is exciting, everything is new, everything is good. The wonder of explaining the nature of things to children and seeing their faces light up with understanding affords a kind of joy I've only found in the eyes of girls who let me sit next to them on rotting logs and explain to them all about the strange things we found in the woods. In the classroom, the frustrations of unruly and uninterested students are present, but have not yet amounted to more than a challenge to be met and valliantly overcome. It's exciting to finally find myself in a position that seems to fit both my desires and my talents, and I hope with as much sincerity as I have ever mustered that this attitude will persist.

Unfortunately, after the wine and roses there always seems to be the crash of my knees against the ground, and the clatter of my armor falling about me. This is something I've never been able to avoid in almost any sphere of my life. Certainly my romances have all played out this way, but so have many other lofty goals. I was in love with college for a while, but I was more than ready to leave when the time finally came. St. John's was similar, shorter even. The "failures" here don't follow the same course. I've never ended a relationship myself, and never would have regardless of the difficulty they may have eventually posed. Those were failures I could not avoid; they were based on someone else's decisions. College wasn't a failure in the sense that I was a poor student, rather that I ended with a degree I had significantly lost interest in during my studies. St. John's was initially a place that held all the answers, but I came to weary of it, even, at times, to hate it by the end.

I can remember the exact moment I first had hope for permanence in my last relationship. We had been together for several months, and I was starting to think that maybe we would make it over "the hump," that point at which people suddenly realize their lovers are not actually perfect, which had before (and since, as I now know) proven insurmountable. I remember the moment exactly because we were at a wedding, and a friend of mine leaned over and said "you know, it seems like she really likes you," the clear implication being that she was serious about loving me. So I let myself hope, and three days later we went on a break from which we never recovered our footing.

So here I sit, two weeks into a new job, weary from early mornings spent scanning textbooks for lecture points and late nights spent assigning numerical values to children's thoughts, but exultant in spite of it all. Then I look out the window and see the rain, and I wonder how I will feel when it's turned to snow.

How do I explain love to a seventh grader? How can I explain both the delight and the pain of it? The closest my students come by way of example is that of a loved one dying. That's part of it, without doubt, but I come to think they've never really loved anything self-consciously. I hadn't when I was in seventh grade. Everyone loves his mother, but there's something so invigoratingly dangerous about choosing to love someone else, someone new and unfamiliar. There's a tragic vulnerability to it, and heartbreak is not something that can truly be explained. I ask questions and they dutifully write their answers on a page. I wonder if they'll think back to this class ten years from now and suddenly see what I'm hinting at?

And it makes me wonder how much I'll know in ten years, how many things I'll come to understand not through study but through fire. I think about the delight I have now, and wonder how far it will fade. I think about the searing pain of loss, and the dull, numbing pain that stays after the fire has gone. I think about the things I wanted ten years ago and how many of them still elude me, and I wonder how much of what I want now will come in the future.

And how will I then explain love to a twenty-five year old?

Changes

2007-09-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've probably used that title before. Oh well.

I'm sitting in my new apartment, writing this blog post on my new laptop, which is being broadcast to the world via my new internet connection. In my closet are a bunch of new clothes (I finally went shopping), I have a pile of work to finish for my new job, and I've been practicing a new song I learned to play on the piano (more Regina). On top of all that I've met a lot of new people this week, including 40-plus kids of varying ages, as a direct result of having at last begun my new job. All told, that's quite a bit of newness to digest.

And yet I don't feel very different. I'm reminded of the way I was always asked, when I was younger, if I felt any different on my birthday. I would wake up and suddenly be eight years old, an entire year over what I had been the previous night. Of course I never felt any different, which is an obvious side effect of being unable to easily compare my then-current self to me a year earlier. Sure, I could (and still can) compare the changes in my situation between the two time frames, but the state of mind is not so easy to recall. A year ago, I was heading into my final semester as a graduate student, now I'm heading into my first as a teacher. Back then I was living with four other people in a house that wasn't quite big enough for so many varied personalities, now I'm living by myself in silence. In both situations, though, I feel/felt just like me.

I don't know why it seems so strange that the line between childhood and adulthood is so thin; any logical appraisal of the situation would support such a phenomenon. Kids have this idea that grown-ups are in a different class of existence, like they passed some exam and were consequently let in on all of the myriad secrets that abound in this life. We adults just smile and nod, and wonder what they'll think when they finally get here themselves and realize that maturity is actually a continuum.

I look at my baby niece (already two months old!) and wonder where her life will take her. I wonder where she'll be when she's my age, and more importantly, who she'll be. I try to imagine her rearing her own children, or sitting in an old chair in a nursing home, staring silently out a window and wondering where all that time went.

And it all does seem to come back to Time. I've read a variety of different books recently and all of them feature time in some way. The best and most obvious example is in physics, where the nature of time is confronted directly, though often with little success. We worry about the age of the universe and we wonder why time moves in one direction but not another. I can't imagine things working any other way, but that's not a compelling argument for anything, even to me. I think about Eliot and his poetry, and how he seemed to ruminate on the nature of time. Sometimes it seems a friend, other times an enemy or even a predator. I think about the fact that I've officially lived a few months past a quarter-century, and that my life has really only just begun.

I think about permanence, the weight of decisions and mistakes. Having finally shrugged off my years as a student, I'm faced with the fact that I'm no longer bound by the two-year, four-year, or even twelve-year tracks that have previously accompanied me. Barring a catastrophic failure on my part (which is by no means impossible), the job I now have could carry me to retirement. I wonder if I'll actually want to do this more than a few years (of course I do now; we'll see how I feel next spring). I think about these days I'm passing in solitude, and wonder if I'll ever have a mate to share them with. I think about plans, and how all but one will eventually perish. Luckily, that one is better than whatever I've managed to dredge up.

And that's the answer, I think. It explains why I don't feel any different and yet I change. Like a piece of brittle metal, I'd splinter if I had less time to bend. The heat of circumstance softens me so that I can be molded, and burns away flecks of impurities as they rise to the surface. A man cannot expect to be Loved until he has been prepared to receive it. Otherwise, it pours through him like water over a rock, leaving him with a vague feeling but no lasting refreshment. But smelt the rock and shape the resulting metal into a bowl, and the water stays and cools. Likewise, the man gives himself up and God refines him slowly, and eventually he is made into something his Maker can actually love.

What will change over the next year? I don't know. I could excel at this job, bringing knowledge and thought to the kids under my care. Or I could fail miserably, all of my plans being rent slowly to shreds. Will I feel any different? Will I be any different?

New Place

2007-09-02T15:20:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks ago, I finally managed to move into my new apartment. I think I mentioned this previously; I'm too lazy to find out at the moment. I've been meaning to take pictures, but that still hasn't happened (and it's a wee bit messy at the moment, courtesy of all of my CCA resources). I'll post them when I get to it.

Living alone is really nice, though. I've been through a lot of roommates over the past six or seven years, each one replete with his (or her) own idiosyncrasies. I've lived with clean people, messy people, selfish people, selfless people, Christians and Nons. Roommates are people who generally teach me about myself one way or another, as they generally fall more to one end of the spectrum than me on any given issue (though not always). That gives me a wonderful set of scientific data points that I can subconsciously plot to figure where I actually stand on a lot of issues. For example, I would identify myself as both conservative and republican, but there are a number of issues on which I'm much more in the liberal camp (some environmental issues, for example), and a few on which I would actually consider voting democrat (if one could vote only on specific issues, that is). Also, I've definitely lived with people whom I would consider more conservative and more republican. In those situations, I'm able to place myself on a rough spectrum and thus get a handle on where I really stand, as opposed to where I purport to stand. Roommates frequently create tension which often mounts over time until it boils over, and when it does, I get to see myself react to an extreme and often unpleasant circumstance. That's when I get to see what I really think, as opposed to what I tell myself.

And so I would say it's been good for me to have roommates. I've certainly gained friends in the process (more friends than enemies, for sure), and I've grown as a person. I've even had some female roommates, who have given me a better understanding of what it's like to live with the opposite gender (in a word: weird).

Now I live alone. I have my own space, I can put things where I want them, I can buy things and not worry about other people losing/breaking/mistreating them, and I can leave my shoes wherever I want. So far, this has primarily manifested itself in me finally buying the flat-screen TV I've been saving a long time for, as well as an HD-DVD player (I then bought the Planet Earth documentaries, which are absolutely gorgeous and are most assuredly worth viewing even on a regular set, and this recommendation comes from viewing just the first episode). I've also spent far more time reading than I have ever done living with others (I've started a pile of all the books I've read since moving in, and so far the total is well over 1500 pages and rapidly climbing). I've read theology, fantasy, philophy, even theoretical physics, all in the space of a few weeks. I've been playing my piano (I even learned two new songs, bringing my total up to about six). I've even been thinking about writing some more fiction (I got some ideas from the theoretical physics, believe it or not). This is all, of course, in addition to the tremendous lesson-planning responsibilities recently laid at my feet.

I think I could best describe the situation best as "having a clear head." I feel like I've spent a lot of time dealing with roommate issues over the past six years, either directly or indirectly. I don't mean disagreements or anything terrible, though there have been a few of those. I just mean that living with other people exerts a certain amount of force on my psyche. It's not positive or negative, it's just there. Without roommates, things just seem simpler.

I won't say better, though. Living alone isn't better. It's not worse, either. It's just different. I'm not yet sure if I'll prefer it long-term, but in the short run it's worked out pretty well.

Communications Blackout

2007-08-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while, which is pretty standard fare for the way I've historically written. Partly this is because my new place does not yet have internet access. Partly this is because my interest has taken a little siesta. I think my recent bout of blog-posting has been the longest and steadiest I've ever had, but my interest in writing does tend to drift in and out. Usually it drifts out when I'm busy or excited about something, and this hiatus has been a bit of both. The "busy" comes from me recently moving into my new apartment (finally) and the "excited" comes from me finally starting work tomorrow.

My new place is great. I'm not entirely sure how well it will encourage a social life, though I tend to think not at all, but it's nice to finally have space that I can arrange and maintain however I like. This has led to a few purchases with a high gadget-factor (a flat TV and an HD-DVD player), as I now no longer need to worry about common-area mishaps or general abuse on my equipment. Part of me is regretful that I spent as much money as I did, but the other part of me keeps saying that I saved up a long time for such things (which I did), and that it's acceptable to occasionally spend some money on things for myself. It's easy for me to spend money on books, almost as easy to spend it on movies and music, and a bit harder to spend it on video games (though you wouldn't guess it by looking at my collection). Clothes, food, and the like are necessities and therefore don't really factor in much. It's the big purchases I have a love/hate relationship with. The "love" part comes from the fun of having nice, new things, and the "hate" comes from me constantly wondering how many of my missionary friends I could have supported with that money, or what Jesus would have spent it on (probably not a flat-screen). I generally allow myself one or two purchases per year of that magnitude; last year it was the laptop I'm using to write this post.

But I digress. Having my own space is a bonus, in my estimation, and though it is certainly nice to have people around to call me and keep me at least somewhat social, it's also nice to have my own territory. Also, living above a future coffee house, to which I will most likely have keys, will probably be a boon to making friends in E-town. But that's a few months away, at best. We shall see how the socializing progresses.

The work is going to be good, I think, though I'm honestly a bit apprehensive. I'm not worried that I lack the mental ability to excel at the work; I don't know if I've ever really been too worried about that. I am a bit worried that I lack the discipline to teach the way I'd like. I really don't mind planning, just like I never really minded homework in college (even the engineering homework was fine as long as it wasn't unnecessarily repetitive), I just never get around to starting it. For me, 80% of the battle in doing my work is just making myself sit down and do it. Once I get started, I get into it, and, depending on the work itself, often even get excited. I sit there planning my classes, and my head fills with all of these situations. I ask my students this question, and they answer this way, which leads me to that question, and they answer it that way, and then I ask one more, and they sit in silence for a minute until a collective look of breathtaking understanding begins to creep across their faces. This kind of excitement frequently slows down the actual planning process, but it gives me all kinds of ideas about how to approach my course material and how I can get my students' attention. However, before I get started, I usually spend a lot of time doing other menial tasks or reading or even just sitting on my butt for no real reason other than that I'm sure the planning process will be like pulling teeth. It's a weird dynamic; I know that once I get into it, everything will be fine, but each time I get to the point where I need to get into it, I forget that I actually enjoy the work and instead decide to finish King Kong (which, for the uninitiated, is like three-and-a-half hours long).

But again, I digress. I'm excited, and I'm at least somewhat prepared to get my feet wet. It's a job I think I truly believe in, which makes a big difference for me (despite how "touchy-feely" it sounds). Classical Christian education is important, and to be able to be involved in crafting the minds and mental skill-sets of the coming generation is a tremendous undertaking.

It might mean less blogging, though.

Also, in completely unrelated news, I finally decided I would get a facebook account, as I think it will probably help me keep in touch with people I no longer see regularly. So, look me up, if you want.

People are Broken

2007-08-01T07:48:00.000-07:00

So last night, against my better judgment, I stayed up late and watched a movie that has been living on my computer for a little while. It's called The Last Kiss, and it features my generation's everyman, Zach Braff. I've written about his other film (Garden State) in the past, and while he didn't write or direct this one, it's very similar in its execution even though it's is a lot darker.

After watching this movie, I came away with a few points worth noting: 1) weddings do strange things to people, 2) pre-marital sex is an absolute bitch, 3) people are selfish, and 4) people are broken.

First of all: weddings. I've been to a number of weddings over the past five years or so, including my sister's and most of my friends' from college. I've been in the single minority for a while now, and if my hunches are correct, this trend is only going to increase in the foreseeable future. This doesn't immediately bother me, as I have a love/hate relationship with relationships (the love being my original stance and the hate being the learned behavior), though it does give me a certain empty feeling about most of my accomplishments (i.e. who cares what amazing things I read and think about, or what crazy contraptions I build with my new Lego set, or even cares what I write, if everyone I know is on some transient trajectory through my life). Sometimes this gets me down, sometimes it doesn't bother me at all. Where weddings come in is that they generally force the issue, at least in my experience. When people are at weddings, they're generally forced to look at where they are in their lives, and inevitably a comparison is made. The single people are all painfully aware that they're single, the unhappily married are all disgusted at where their own wedding day eventually took them, and everyone else who has some underlying dissatisfaction with his life feels it prick undeniably when faced with the wedding ceremony's promise of perfect happiness for someone else. Rationally, people know that weddings are unions between imperfect people, but emotionally they think that everything will be good for the people getting married and can't help but compare themselves to that standard, regardless of its untruth. People have different reactions to this phenomenon (the wedding drinker, the wedding dancer, the wedding weeper, etc.), but regardless of the result, unhappy people are forced to look at their unhappiness at a wedding. The flip side of this is that happy people find weddings to be wonderful and hopeful and all of that. I'm somewhere in the middle, as I'm really quite happy with my life, though the prick does come from certain aspects that have me frustrated.

As someone with no experience in the pre-marital sex arena, this part is mostly hypothesis, but from observation of people I know who do have experience, I feel justified in making this point (or at least I'm arrogant enough to do so :). The film in question has an awful lot of sex in it, much more than I expected, and mostly what it does is screw people up. I'm not sure that the director intended to make sex the culprit for everybody's dissatisfaction, but that's the message that came through to me. I think the root of the problem with sex is arrogance, in that people think they're big enough to remove the attachment sex brings with it. I remember a line from a movie that I never saw to completion, where one character says to another (after the sex they had is proven meaningless) "when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise even if you don't." I think this is true, and I think it manifests itself in at least two ways. First, there are the people "put out" in order to get someone to love them. This is something I find horribly sad, and though I do think it's absolutely sinful, I have sympathy for them because they do want more than the sex, they just don't know how to get it and have resorted to a painful and unwise course of action. Second, there are the people who just want the sex. I have less sympathy for these people, though I think a lot of them were originally the first type but have almost completely numbed themselves from the loss it incurs. I say "almost" because the few people I've known like this have all confessed to having a vague empty feeling that, in my opinion, seems to be what's ultimately driving them into that behavior. As far as I can tell, it's that same behavior that causes the emptiness, so the effect is rather like someone trying to fill a hole by digging another one for dirt. Both types of people are unhappy, but in general it seems like neither attributes his unhappiness to sex. Instead he thinks "if only I can finally convince someone to really love me, I'll be fine," or he thinks "if only I can manage to burn away that last bit of me that cares about this girl I'm with, I'll be fine." I think both end up missing the point, and it always seems like these people somehow find each other.

The selfishness is something that I, as a selfish man, can definitely relate to. It's such a surreptitious ailment, since what people want always makes so much sense to them. It's the most natural thing in the world for me to want others to pander to my desires, and so when it happens, I often don't even realize it. Instead of thinking "oh, my mother made my bed for me, that was nice of her, I should help her out with some other chores," I think nothing at all because it doesn't occur to me that it was my responsibility in the first place (Author's note: my mom does not make my bed for me, I'm simply giving an obvious example for the point I'm trying to make). I see the world from my own perspective, and that perspective is like a fish-eye lens; my eyes make the world bend and squirm so that I see what I want to see more than what's truly there. I think this is standard to the human condition; I know it's standard to me. It's difficult to overcome, I think, because a lot of the selfishness people act on is difficult for them to see (and lots of people aren't even looking a lot of the time, myself included). It's work just to see the problem, and still more work to fix it. So people do horrible things to each other and can't figure out why they're not getting the love they feel they deserve.

The last point here is what I took away from the movie overall. There are no good people in the film, with one possible exception (and you'll know who I mean if you watch the movie), there are just people. They're all trying to be happy and they're all selfish and so they're all hurting; I'll sum that up by saying they're all broken. I guess the problem is that they're all looking for happiness in places that can't possibly afford it (in this case, relationships). I don't mean happiness in the sense of "happily married," I mean true, sustaining happiness, of the kind that keeps men going in the midst of oppression and hopelessness. That can only be found in one relationship, though I do think human relationships can sometimes (i.e. rarely) approximate that well enough to satisfy some people.

In this regard, the film does make one point explicitly that I think is worth repeating: what we feel is only important to us, it's what we do to the people we love that matters. This film extends this by saying that the only way to lose someone is to give up. The first part of that is great, though the second part is, I think, flawed. I like the first part because it takes the emphasis off of the "being in love" feeling that is all too ubiquitous in modern romances and puts it on what people actually do to each other. I remember hearing a sermon once (which I think was based on Jesus asking Peter three times whether he loved Him), in which the speaker made the point that if we say we love Jesus, but don't do what He told us to do, then we don't love Jesus. He exampled this by analogy to a dog-owner who says he loves his dog, and spends hours talking to it and petting it, but never feeds it or lets it out. Obviously, a dog owner who does not feed his dog is one who does not love the same, regardless of whatever squishy feeling he might get when he looks at it. I think the second half of this love paradigm is flawed because it assumes that the other person in a relationship is perfect, and will therefore respond correctly if given the right inputs. In the circumstance to which this notion is applied in the film, the point is that the man will be able to get his woman back if he simply works hard enough. That's a nice sentiment, but it's just not true. Just as I'm a selfish person who needs regular forgiveness, so is everyone else, and so even if I somehow manage to be far better than I am, and thus forgive every wrong ever committed against me, there's no guarantee that the person I love will do the same. Thus the "never give up" hypothesis, while it certainly has an attractively hopeful edge to it, is ultimately just not enough. For it to work, the person I love would have to be perfect.

And that leads to the obvious solution for lasting happiness that the movie does not make.

And he looked and beheld: another had been added to their numbers

2007-07-19T12:39:00.000-07:00

As of last Saturday or Sunday, betwixt the hours of 10 and 2, a tiny person was from my sister's womb untimely ripped, and thus I joined the noble ranks of men enjoined by the sacred bond of unclehood (for photographic proof, please visit laurenandkeith.blogspot.com). As the child entered the world and a cry arose from her lips, she was given the name Lily Montgomery Hammack, as henceforth she has been known amongst her clan. Though she spends most of her daylight hours in the gentle embrace of slumber, and most of her darkened hours arousing her mother from the same, already she exhibits family traits, most notably her large, almost luminescent eyes her ability to emit loud noises. Even at such an early date as this, we can only surmise that Lily's future holds greatness of the sort that all intelligent, God-fearing mortals command.

All ridiculous language aside, the past few days have been the first that I've ever spent much time around a baby, especially one of such a young age. I imagine I've held a newborn at some point in the past, though I can't think of a single specific instance. Still, holding Lily was entirely surprising, because she moves. I'm not sure what was so extraordinary about that experience, because clearly babies are alive and, though lacking in coordination, certainly maintain some amount of command over their limbs. I think maybe I was expecting her to feel more like a doll, which while mere facsimiles, do actually look somewhat like the tiny people they emulate. So when I was holding Lily for the first time, and she moved her legs and arms to situate herself (or for some other opaque, baby-reason), I was caught entirely off guard. I had exactly one thought for about ten seconds straight (a long time for me): she really is a little person. Not earth-shattering to many, I'm sure, but it had a strange effect on me. All I could think to do was laugh, though I stifled it pretty well.

I missed the actual birth due to being in Chicago with friends, which ended up being a lot of fun. I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy spending two and a half days in the sun watching a bunch of music shows with thousands of weird people, but the park had enough shade, the music was (mostly) good, and the people left me alone. More than that, it was good to spend time with friends who no longer live around here (and probably never will). Also, we got into the background of a picture on the Pitchfork music festival website (I don't have a URL and am way too lazy to go find it). You can amuse yourself with a little "Where's Dave," and I'll totally be impressed if you can find me.

Anyway, I'm back now, and spending much of my time reading through the books that I'm going to be teaching next year. I'm still living at home, but will hopefully be moving into my new, amazing apartment sometime in the next three weeks. I'll post pictures when I'm in and settled. I'll have a lot to write about when school starts, though I'm not sure how much I'll actually manage to put down on paper (or on the internet, I guess).

I'm now going to leave to go shoot giant ants with a rocket launcher. Life is good.

Catharsis

2007-06-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

This is me:

I now live here:

With these people:

Annapolis was good to me, and there are people there whom I already miss. But this is home, and this is where I want to be. I'm tired of moving, and I'm excited to settle down and get started on my new job.

To all my friends who are not here: thank you for being there when I needed you, even when I was a jerk. Thank you for helping me through tough times, and for telling me when I was being a baby and just needed to get over myself and grow up. Thank you for the good times, for the late parties and the early mornings, for the discussions about life and the nature of things, for the craziness and the memories. Keep in touch.

Confession

2007-06-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

The past fourteen hours have been a little surreal, and I'm still reeling from the utter lack of sleep they've created in me. I just woke up from a half-nap, and after writing this post I will most likely go back to sleep. Still, my internet connection will be spotty over the next few days, so I thought I should take advantage of it while it's still active.

Last night was strange because it saw a few random occurrences that more or less ruined my night's sleep (these have nothing to do with my overall topic here, but I'm going to write about them anyway). I was tired around 10 PM, so I went to bed. On my way there, I shook hands with one of my roommates who was finishing up his packing for a late-night exit, and he said he might have some mutual friends over when he was finished. I told him to let me know if they came over, and that I would get out of bed to come down for that, though I guess I didn't really think this would happen. Sure enough, when I was just about asleep, my roommate called my phone from downstairs to let me know that people were coming over. I'm not sure if this phone call actually woke me up, as I can vaguely remember having the conversation but not much else. A second call from one of the people coming over actually pulled me out of my stupor enough to realize I was supposed to get up and go downstairs, which I did. A few of us ended up downstairs, sitting on the floor of the dining room, talking and sipping wine for about an hour. I was sleepy, but it was nice, and I was glad I had gotten up. After goodbyes were said, I shuffled back upstairs, hoping to resume my unconsciousness, but instead I got another call. This time it was from a different roommate (who had also been downstairs), telling me that there was a guy passed out in the middle of the road as she was trying to drive back to where she was staying. She didn't know what was wrong with him, but wanted me to come down and have a look, so I got dressed and walked over. He wasn't really in the middle of the road, exactly, but he was definitely lying on his back sleeping. He looked like he had kicked off his sandals, and one of his big toes was bloodied up. He had his hands on his chest, and every so often two of his fingers would extend up into the air for a few seconds. He was clearly breathing, and didn't seem to be in any immediate health danger, though he was mostly unresponsive. We ended up calling the cops to get a patrol car sent around, and the cop knew how to handle things (the kid was just drunk out of his mind, it seems). The cop got him to wake up and asked him some questions (What are you doing here? "Waiting for someone," Who are you waiting for? "Illinois," That's not a person, that's a state, "Oh," etc.). The kid didn't have any ID on him, so the cop tried to figure out where he was from, and got mostly gibberish answers. I left to go back to bed before things were resolved, though apparently after I left one of my other roommates walked by and recognized the kid, who ended up spending the night on our couch downstairs. I was not particularly pleased about this, though I shouldn't have been surprised that this particular roommate was friends with someone who drank himself into oblivion and decided to sleep on the road.

Anyway, all of that is just to explain that I was up until about 3:30, which means I got less than four hours of sleep last night. So it was surprising to me that I was actually able to stay awake and pay attention for the sermon this morning, which was good as a sermon, and which gave me an experience I've never personally had in a church setting.

The text for the sermon was Ephesians 5:21 - 6:4, which is the passage about familial relationships. The topic was partly about marriage, partly about family, and mostly about the God/man relationship. It was good, as he made points about not idolizing marriage but looking at it as a step between being alone and being with God. He also mentioned how varied everyone's roles are in their lives, which I guess I had never really put together before: I have the potential to be simultaneously a son, a husband, a father, and even (in a spiritual sense) a wife. Currently I'm topping out at two of those four, at best, but it's weird to think about all the different angles people can see relationships from by virtue of the different roles they take on with different people.

Of course, it always seems that the marriage topic comes up when I'm in the middle of dealing with relationship messes, and my most recent relationship has come up in spades of late. I'm not entirely sure why, as it ended over a year ago, and over much of that year it hasn't been anywhere near my consciousness. Recently it's come up again and again, and I've realized how upset and confused I still am over it. I'm never very good at assigning blame where it should be assigned (I generally chalk most problems up to my own error, except when that's obviously not the case), and while I realize this might sound like a petty thing to be worried about, I don't think it is. The result is that I never know if I'm the one who needs to be apologetic and be analyzing the mess to see where I went wrong, or if I'm the one who needs to just say "Ok, she went crazy, she made up her mind to leave and there was nothing I could have done about it." Obviously, the fault is never completely on one side in these things, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about loving somebody and trying to figure out why that love isn't/wasn't returned. As far as I can tell, from talking to a reliable third party, my last breakup was largely not my fault, as their take on things was that she shouldn't have treated me the way she did (though there is a healthy recognition of errors on my side as well; I'm not removing my own mistakes here, and neither were they). That's the first time I've ever had anyone tell me that I was, essentially, the victim of somebody else's mistakes. I had kind of hoped that this sort of news would bring some closure, and I guess it does. More than that, though, it just brings up a whole host of other questions regarding the nature of love and relationships which give me little excitement about the prospect of giving it another go. This might seem strange to the regular reader, since I've recently written at least a few hopeful pieces about finding a companion and settling down and all of that, but I'm not contradicting that sentiment at all: I do want to find someone who will stick by me for the rest of my life, who will love me and have my kids, who will tell me when I'm wrong and listen to me when I'm right. I just find that I have less and less of an idea how to get that, as I can apparently do a pretty good job wooing a girl only to have her freak out and dump me without any good explanation.

But I digress. Marriage is definitely a big part of life, but it wasn't what was so strange about this sermon. Instead, the pastor spoke about the confession of sins that should come about in healthy relationships, and then he continued on to confess a particular sin of his own to the entire congregation. Now, I've heard this sentiment echoed plenty of times, and I've heard pastors get up and give all sorts of vague "confessions" about their own sin (of the "I've lusted, I've lied, I've cheated and worse, and God still forgives me" ilk), but this is the first time I've heard one own up to a particular offense that was clearly of importance to him. That takes courage, a lot of it. Though it saddens me to have to admit this, I think it's the first time I've ever seen a pastor give that kind of personal information from the pulpit. I have to say I was quite impressed by it. I thought about shaking the pastor's hand afterward and commending him on taking that kind of exemplary role in his congregation, but I decided against it, as much from cowardice as from a recognition that this is my last Sunday at this church.

This kind of honesty is refreshing. I've never been good at really admitting my own sins (I too follow the vague "I've lusted and lied" approach), though I do feel like I'm generally pretty aware of them in my own life, and I do regularly confess specific sins in prayer. I feel like this practice has rarely been modeled for me in my life, especially in the church setting (I know my parents do this sort of thing between themselves, even though I've only witnessed it on scattered occasions). In any case, it had a big effect on me, and it's something I'll have to think about more carefully going forward.

Serenity

2007-06-23T18:19:00.000-07:00

Geek out time.

On this, the first day of my freedom from the tyrannous ravages of employment, I spent most of the day helping various roommates pack up their belongings. It was a good day, if a bit sad. We've actually made this living arrangement work, for the most part, and I feel like we have a sort of "forged-in-fire" friendship that's hard to explain to people who weren't there. I wonder if this is the sort of feeling marriage engenders, though I imagine that's a bit deeper on the whole.

Anyway, I'm not really going to talk about moving and transience and the unbearable, quiet struggle between love and loss, growth and maturity, or any of that pretentious nonsense I usually whine about. I'm going to talk about the movie I just finished watching.

See, on this, the first day of my freedom from the tyrannous ravages of employment (as noted above), my only non-negotiable plan was to watch Firefly's swan-song and eat as much of a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream as I could stomach (I'd guess I ate about 60% of it). Well, mission accomplished.

I love this movie. It's the kind of thing Joss Whedon should be writing and directing continually (as opposed to ruining time-honored, and personally-adored film franchises). It's perfect for him because it knows exactly what it is, and is exactly what it should be. On the surface, it's a good space-caper, borrowing more than a few bits from Star Wars (band of attractive, scrappily-dressed brigands fights evil, pocket-protected empire, somehow wins, etc.) but still turning in something that feels original and well-crafted in its own right. Underneath, though, it's a film about the Old Ways, about good people, about sitting down for a meal around a long wooden table, about leaving well enough alone and just living life. Mal and company are outlaws, but they're not trying to hurt anyone or anything who doesn't deserve it (a point explicitly made several times over Firefly's short-lived single season on the air). They're not looking for a big score so they can live in paradise and have their every desire pandered to, they're just looking to make enough to keep Serenity in the air and food on the table.

I like this sentiment because it speaks to a fundamental truth of creation: progress is largely fictional. I'm not talking about the progress of individual people overcoming adversity and learning how to live as God intended, I'm talking about the kinds of things people on TV cry and wail about as they each push their own agendas: the stem cell research, the cloning, the bionic super-strength nano-bot muscle implants. At one point, Mal addresses his crew and explains how the Alliance killed a lot of people for the sake of "trying to make people better," (in this case, they're trying to eliminate aggression) which he then decries as an obvious lost cause. I like this because it is decidedly against a lot of utopian sci-fi (I'm looking at you, Star Trek), and because it's true. People don't get better that way, because people aren't robots and can't be re-programmed that way. Everyone finds a way to do as he pleases, and he will misbehave or follow the rules to the extent of his abilities no matter how much he's hemmed in. The film doesn't cast this in terms of right and wrong, necessarily, but I think it's still a point worth making.

I like Mal because he doesn't want to move up in the world, and moreover he doesn't see any value in that. He just wants the simple joy of a home, some food and some friends. He wants to take care of his and isn't afraid to break some noses and bruise some egos to do so. He's a good frontier-man, and it's refreshing to find this kind of character in a piece of sci-fi.

Serenity is great. It's Joss Whedon's single greatest work. It's a western in space. It's a beautiful fusion of old and new, with adventure we can relate to in a setting we can marvel at. It's about finding a place and finding a way to live and be, and I love it.

The First of Several Lasts

2007-06-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

So today is the last I'll spend as an employee of a small financial planning firm near the nation's capital (names have been left out to protect the innocent!). It's the first big milestone that marks the end of my time in Maryland, and I'm expecting a few more over this next and final week.

I've always been a bit quasi-sentimental about things, occasionally (read: more frequently than I'd like to admit) dabbling in full-blown romanticism, though when that part of me crops up, it usually takes me by surprise. For example, I was far more moved by the passing of my dear dog than I would ever have imagined beforehand. Likewise, these past few weeks have flown by with me primarily dreaming about how amazing it will be to live in E-town and teach at CCA, rather than taking the time to say a proper goodbye to my life here.

The truth is, in this case I tend to see the troubles more than I see the joys. Maryland has never been a favorite place of mine, but there are a lot of people here that I care about, stretching all the way back to my freshman year of college. I'm not going to see most of them before I leave (there just isn't time now), including many I would count among my close friends. I guess that makes me a lousy friend.

I'm never really sure how to end things. I enjoy processes more than completion, which is obvious if you consider how many projects I begin and then endlessly revise in order to get things just right. In some cases such a situation would be caused by perfectionism, but in mine I think we can exclude that. When I was a kid, my Lego creations were rarely finished, and continuously evolved until I needed pieces for a different model. When I create projects for myself now, I tend to spend an enormous amount of time reworking details before I even put anything in motion. And frankly, it's kind of amazing that I ever post any semi-completed thoughts on this blog at all (you can ask some of my friends about stories I've been writing for years now).

I don't know how to say goodbye. Not really, not to the people and things that I care about. I have no trouble losing acquaintances I have little investment in (which comprises a solid majority of the people I come in contact with), but friends are a lot harder. I remember when my best friend left town to go find his fortune out west; it was murder for weeks beforehand, and I don't think I handled much of that final interaction very well at all. I've never had a romantic relationship end well, partly due to the fact that it's never been my decision to end them, but also because I just don't know what to do when a person I care about suddenly disappears completely.

So this job has had its ups and downs. It's a good place to work; I have a window office and I get along with my co-workers. The commute's a pain, but I can't even complain about that, since I've been paid for it since I moved to Annapolis. I went through a half-hearted "I really need to quit this job for my peace of mind" phase, but I was never going to go through with it, partly because it would have been financially unwise, but also because I like it here. This is a good job; I have a good job. I could have made it a career, but that wouldn't have been the right thing to do. I've made the right choice, but once again that leaves me having to say goodbye to people and places that I've come to care about.

I guess I just don't like change all that much. Not this kind of change, anyway. Change can be good; it can be subtle and steady and open new doors and new possibilities. It can be like a tree growing and branching out in all directions, swaying in the breeze, growing fruit, and dropping seeds. Or it can be like a tree being constantly uprooted and leaving little bits of itself in the ground each time, such that it never dies, but it also never gets to be much bigger due to its constantly-changing environment. I love the former, but I'm getting very tired of the latter.

I want to find a place to live that I can freely love without worrying overmuch that I'll have to let it go. I want to find friends that are settled, with whom I can have a conversation on Monday that doesn't need to end at any particular date. And I'd like to find a girl who's actually willing to plant herself beside me and not run away whenever anything difficult crops up. In a word, I want roots. I don't expect guarantees, but I do hope for stability.

Packing

2007-06-19T04:37:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in a while, due largely to an increase in post-workday tasks. These tasks are mostly related to, and consist primarily of me putting my life into boxes.

This is a strange practice, one that often produces unexpected results and, occasionally, feelings. In the process of packing up my worldly possessions, I invariably find all sorts of things I've forgotten I own. Often these come in the "I can't believe I still have this" variety, as well as the closely-related but slightly less common version "I can't believe I saved this," and the still-more-extreme "why in God's name did I save this?" All manner of items populate those lists, but the bulk of them are on paper. I tend to save things whenever I'm not sure I can reproduce them, and looking over the piles of paper I've saved over the years, most of the pieces are, at this point, completely irreplaceable.

I have a lot of old papers I've written for school, as well as several notebooks from way back in my engineering days. The former are fun to read because of how simple (and none-too-well-constructed) they are. It's amazing to me how little it took to impress a lot of my college professors, which to this day is the most compelling evidence I can find for the worthlessness of public schools' humanities programs (I regularly aced papers I wrote in one sitting, not because my papers were brilliant, but because so many of the others were atrocious). The engineering notebooks are bizarre because I have no idea what they say. When I look at them, I can clearly see that they're all written in my handwriting, and in some cases I can even remember taking those exact notes. And yet when I try to make sense of them, I quickly get lost, able only to pick out bits and pieces of the (mostly math) figures that still have any meaning to me.

When I think about this last bit, I'm puzzled at how my brain actually works. At one point, it contained all of the knowledge and conceptual ability to manipulate what are now seemingly random figures. It's a strange experience because it's a stark example of something I've lost, something that I was clearly able to do at one point but can't anymore. True, I could probably study up and get back into it more easily than someone else could learn it from scratch, but that doesn't change the fact that I used to be able to do something and now I can't. At this point in my life, that realization isn't terribly frightening, simply because I can readily point to other skills that have grown since then (and all I have to do is glance over my essays from my freshman year for evidence on that one). At some point, though, my faculties will decline and will not be replaced by any other obvious abilities, which is, to me at age twenty-four, a strange thought.

Then there are the personal papers, the things people have written to me over the years. I found a letter from my father, written to me when I was in college with the purpose of encouraging me and spurring me on toward manhood. I'm not sure how well it worked at the time, but reading it now I think I've dealt with a lot of the issues I had back then, and generally (I think) in a good way. I found a letter from my brother, whom I've never really understood all that well, and who doesn't usually seem particularly interested in what I do with my life. It was strange reading that one because I see so much of myself in him, and yet much of the time I have no idea why he makes the decisions he does (and I don't say this derogatorily, just in the sense that we are very similar in some ways, and yet have entirely different approaches to most situations). I found a letter from a girl I knew in high school, with whom I had a strange and sometimes awkward friendship. She wrote me a letter before she moved out of state, which I was surprised and slightly puzzled by. I don't think I ever wrote her back, which, in hindsight, I really should have done.

And then there are the girlfriend papers, the ones that really puzzle me. I found a card a girl wrote me a good while back, and it said something about how she was so happy I was in her life, and how she was excited that we would be together and learn to love each other better. The card was dated about six weeks before she dumped me. It's strange because those words seemed like much more than just words at the time, and yet now it's hard to find any meaning in them at all.

I should probably throw things like this away, but I can never seem to do it. Something inside me bucks the urge, and I'm not sure if it's the moral high ground or not. Maybe I save them because I want to remind myself not to get comfortable in relationships, to remind myself that women are erratic and ultimately flighty, to remind myself of the pain I've suffered from being close to people and striving to love and be loved. Or maybe I save them because I want to remind myself of the good times, of time times that people cared about me, of the times when it really seemed a possibility that some girl would listen to me and care what I think and be stirred up by things and, in a word, love me. Or maybe I save them because for good or ill, I have strong memories tied to them, and if I threw them away, I'd be throwing away a part of my past, which I would inevitably forget. I honestly don't know.

Putting memories in a box is a strange notion, but maybe it's necessary. Maybe that's what things are really for: to keep an external record of life and its nuances. Maybe things get old and broken and stained because if they didn't, people would never learn anything from their mistakes for lack of memory. And maybe that's why people get old and stained and broken themselves.

Worship, Pt. 2

2007-05-30T04:57:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a about my post of a few days back, and I want to add little bit more. I wrote mostly about the musical aspect of worship, as that's generally what I think of when I hear the term used. However, as I arrived at the topic through listening to birds, I thought I'd add some ideas about worship as a lifestyle, as opposed to one specific set of actions.

When I think about birds, I wonder what their function in creation really is. As it seems safe to assume that they're not here to ponder the infinite mysteries of the universe (or really have any sort of intellectual impact on the world), I'm reduced to looking at what they actually accomplish with their lives. God clearly cares about them, as He made each one unique, and tells us in the Bible that He watches over even the least of them to see that they're fed and otherwise taken care of (at the expense of countless bugs and worms!). And all they do with their lives, as far as I can tell, is eat, sleep, sing, and make more birds. In these activities, God is pleased with them.

Now, when I think about humans pleasing God, I usually start by looking at how they spend their free time. As a notoriously lazy person, I frequently don't do too well on this account, as a lot of my free time goes into semi-or-wholly-worthless activities. Sure, I do my fair share of work, I take care of myself, I try to be a good steward with my money and other resources, and am generally a pretty well-rounded individual, and in my off-time I feel as entitled to a little rest and relaxation as anyone else. But then I go back to the birds, and realize that they don't really have any 'off-time.' Birds to bird-things constantly, because they're birds and that's what birds do. They wake up in the morning and start making bird noises, then they go and seek out some bird food to bring back to their bird wives and bird children. They do this all day long, and then they go back and get some bird sleep (which I guess they do whilst hanging on their bird perches, clever little buggers. I have enough trouble sleeping in a bed). God is pleased with what they do, because they live entirely within their natures.

They live as God created them to live.

Now, I know the Fall affected creation in myriad ways, and so I don't want to hold animals up as the standard of good Christian living (which, aside from being inaccurate for the reason I just gave, is also just kind of silly). Birds fight over housing and eat each others eggs, and those are activities that probably weren't included in the original design (except in as much as everything was included). Still, a bird's life has no lines dividing worship activity from any other sort.

I think we humans would do well to consider this as a model for worshipful living. Rather than dividing my time between 'work,' 'play,' 'worship,' and any other category that might arise, I should think more about doing all things for God's glory. Worship as music is certainly an important facet of Christianity because God loves music. But not everyone is particularly good at, or particularly interested in music. Such people are equally capable of worshipping to the fullest extent of the term in plenty of other ways. Doing things with excellence can be worship, provided said things aren't sinful, and here I'd include all manner of accomplishments that might not be obvious. Things like writing poetry or fiction are easy examples, but I wouldn't stop there. Designing a clever contraption, digging a perfect hole, even fixing a car can be worshipful activities if performed with the right intentions and with an eye for excellence.

I don't mean to equate bird-worship with human-worship here. God created man special, above all the rest of creation, and as such our worship seems like it should mean more than that of lesser creations (birds included). I think one important difference here is that our worship is voluntary. Birds worship in the sense that God created them and is pleased with (most of) what they do. But as they don't really have the ability to do anything else, the glory God gets from them seems less significant than it could be. Humans, on the other hand, do have a choice in the matter. God gave us, and only us, this choice. So when we choose to worship God with our lives, I think we do something more significant than the birds, simply because there is something else we could be doing.

I think the key is, just like the birds doing bird things, we humans need to do what God designed us to do. Everyone has strengths in some areas. Whether intelligence, appreciation of beauty, creativity, kindness, teaching, service, or whatever else, I think everyone has the ability to be truly excellent in some way. When we do the things that fit our nature and we do them for God and His glory, we worship. And when we can say we do those things as completely and as constantly as a bird who can think of nothing else to do, then we will truly be worshipping God in all things.

Worship

2007-05-27T03:09:00.000-07:00

It's currently 5:57 AM on Sunday morning. I did not set an alarm, and yet am completely awake, which only happens when I'm actually well-rested. This is due primarily to the fact that I wend to bed at 9:30 on Friday, and 10:00 last night, and thus am not exhausted.

What woke me up, however, was the sound of birds doing what birds do best. There were many different birds, of, I assume, many different types. I had no way to count or catalog them all, except when certain voices rose above the rest with a particular melody. After lying in bed for a minute, I heard a single call pierce through the merry cacophony: a rooster. The family house is situated right in front of an old farm, and though the owner doesn't keep any substantial livestock, he apparently does keep at least a few chickens. I've lived in this house since I was four, but this is the first time I've ever heard a rooster in the early morning, and certainly the only time I could conceivably consider myself to have been awakened by one.

What I heard most clearly was the sound of at least three mourning doves, birds with distinctive, easily-recognized calls. I know I was hearing at least three because their calls overlapped for a little while, producing an effect similar to "Row, row, row your boat" in round form. Occasionally they'd start so close to each other that their individual notes reinforced each other as if they were singing in a little bird choir.

What struck me was that all three birds sang exactly the same notes. Apart from the differences between a mourning dove's standard three or four calls (the most famous being the one that goes low-high-low, low-low), all three birds sang exactly the same notes in exactly the same order. I'm not a music expert, but I generally noticed none of the trilling that accompanies notes that are almost in tune but not quite (listening for this effect is the technique I've always employed for tuning my guitars. The effect is produced by a resonance between similar sound waves, as the interaction between their similar-but-not-quite-identical wave forms produces its own, usually much slower frequency pattern that the human ear hears as a soft, fluctuating trill).

The joy of listening to birds is a simple yet satisfying one, and it made me wonder about the way God responds to us as humans when we praise Him. In the case of birds, they sing for their own purposes (usually I imagine they're looking for some lovin', but as even humans are commanded to do that, i.e. be fruitful and multiply, I don't think that ruins my forthcoming analogy), and they sing using the prescribed method for their species. Humans, of course, have all manner of different musical abilities within a single species, such that we rarely accomplish the kind of complete accord that my morning mourning doves naturally enjoyed. But that accord which produces agreement also produces homogeneity, as a single note cannot produce a useful harmony. So while the birds have a natural ability to sing well, they also lack the ability to sing more than one or two songs.

This turns my attention to man's advantage: creativity. I do not have a great voice, nor do I have any above-average skills in playing any instruments (I used to play the guitar, and I've been teaching myself the piano, but neither have produced any great effects). But what I can do is appreciate the skills of others, and add my own limited ones to the fray. I can also write, though I've never written any music. The lyrics and content of a song matter as much as the execution (in my opinion), such that the most beautiful tune sung with no is just a melody, and likewise, gorgeous wording put to a single note is just a poem. I think pure melody can be pleasing to God, just as I think pure poetry can be, but I think that a fusion of the two produces the best effect.

I think about worship during church in its myriad forms. Most of the songs we sing at both my church in Hershey and my church in Annapolis are of the modern strain, and I have to confess I'm not usually thrilled. There are a few songs that have been written in the past twenty years that are worth a lot, and there are few that are completely worthless, but these days I find myself more and more interested in hymns. They tend to have strong melodies and, more important to me, better words. I compare a modern song I dislike, such as "I found Jesus," to a hymn I love, such as"How Firm a Foundation," and I'm left comparing the eponymous refrain of the former "I found Jesus" to the last verse of the latter: "that soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose / I will not, I will not desert to its foes / That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake / I'll never, no never, no never forsake." It might be a bit difficult to see the difference in perspective between these two choruses (chori?), since both seem to be in the first-person. The former is written about a man's active desire and seeking for Jesus, while the latter is about God's faithfulness to man (the perceived perspective jump in the hymn is a little jarring, since the 'Jesus' implies that the speaker is not, in fact, Jesus, and yet the 'I' is clearly God in some form, which makes. I think the best reading is to think of the 'Jesus' as being present to make sure the central point, reliance on Jesus, is carried through, even though that necessitates a little grammatical fudging). The first song is one of those songs I sing in what I'm going to call "Zombie-mode," while the second engages and moves me.

So what is my point in all of this? Well, I think people can certainly worship God through a song like "I found Jesus" (though I have strong memories of a pastor railing against this song, as he added his own words along the lines of "I found Jesus [No you didn't!] / I found Jesus [You weren't looking!] / I found Jesus [He wasn't hiding!]), and I don't want to belittle anyone who finds joy and praisefulness (I don't think that's a word) in such a song. However, when people use talent with words and music to write a song meaningful in both form and content, I find myself drawn into the experience, folded up into it. And that, to me, is the most exciting and fruitful form of worship.

So... Hershey? Annapolis? Let's get some more hymns in there. And a lot less Sandi Patty.

I Haven't Died

2007-05-23T08:40:00.001-07:00

It seems like the busy factor has been ramping up something awful of late, and I'm afraid it's not going to peter out for a while. I've had plenty of energy to get things done, I just haven't had much time. Hence some more blank space on the blog front.

This week I've been driving Mom's car around, with the goal of starting pack up some of my many personal items in the Market Street house. I've been agonizing over whether I should include my piano in this load, and though I don't want to part with it just yet (it's one of my relaxing activities), I can't think of a good reason not to pack it up. I can also think of at least one very good reason to do so: it's the single largest item I can put in Mom's car. I know the more I pack up now, the less I'll have to pack later, but my old friend Procrastination has reared his head once more. I could launch into a bit of character study here, but as this post will not be long, I think I'll save that for another day.

Other action items for this week include a little shopping (blech), trying to squeeze another two days of nutrition out of the food I currently own (a few packages of ramen, half a box of cereal, and two eggs) so I don't have to go to the grocery store and then leave town for another three-and-a-half-day weekend, agonizing over whether I should get my car looked at or just let it go another month until I move home (I'll probably let him ride. He's tough.), reading up on my bio for classes next year (probably not going to happen), visiting the Ram's Head for a beer and several free turkey sandwiches (see action point number two above), and sleeping not enough.

In terms of the shopping, part of what I need to do between now and the fall is revamp my wardrobe. I've been a t-shirt and jeans guy for a while now, and though I have a decent number of semi-nice clothing items, I'm going to need a lot more if I'm going to fit the schoolteacher schtick. That's probably a good thing, as I really do need to buy some clothes; my two pairs of jeans and two pairs of khakis are stretched pretty thin as things currently stand. There's a gigantic outlet mall about twenty minutes away, so I'll probably just putter around there and hope lots of things are discounted. I would normally go to Old Navy for this sort of thing, but I've decided I really should buy clothes of higher quality, as they'll hopefully last a long time that way.

The real issue with the wardrobe is the goal of dressing appropriately for my age. I like jeans, and I have one pair that I absolutely love (they actually fit!), but I want to look a bit more savvy than that. I think clothes really do say something about who a person is, or at least what he identifies himself with, and I want to make sure I'm attaching myself to something worthwhile. This probably means a few blazers and it definitely means some nicer pants. Shirts are always tough, though, as they almost never fit the way I want them to: if they fit across my shoulders, they're ballooning monstrosities around my waist, but if they fit around my waist then I usually can't breathe and my sleeves are up around my elbows. Maybe I'm just awkwardly proportioned. Still, I'm going to be a teacher and I need to look the part, even if that means I have to trudge through a mall for a few hours.

The food issue is perpetual, really, as I generally try to grocery shop as little as possible. I don't eat very much, as my roommates constantly remind me, but even I might have trouble making it on what I have left. I'm aided by the fact that I won't eat anything this Friday, since I don't eat breakfast, and I'll leave for Hershey straight from work. Still, that leaves today and tomorrow to cover. I think I might handle today by abusing happy hour munchies (wouldn't be the first time), and then handle tomorrow by putting all of my food into a bowl, heating it up, and hoping for the best. Good times.

My car has been having a few hiccups with the brakes, namely a little rattling when I brake at high speeds. Last time it did this, the brakes just needed to be turned, but I also noticed they've been squeaking a little bit lately. That makes me think I probably need new brake pads, or worse, so I'm a little worried on that front. My finances are fine right now, but if my car ends up needing some outlandish and bizarrely expensive repairs, I will be unhappy.

The reading up for bio is necessary, I'm just not sure now is the time to be worrying about it. That's all I have to say about that.

As for the sleep, that's always a bit of a catch-22. Last weekend, I worked on Dad's apartment floors for a good number of hours, but each night I managed to get some good rest in. Therefore, I was quite rested when I woke up for work yesterday, even though I woke up half an hour early. I didn't nap after work, even though I was reading whilst prone for several hours (usually a recipe for instant nappage). However, as I had so much energy all day, I was utterly unable to fall asleep last night, as I remember rolling over to see the clock well past midnight (I went to bed around 10:15). I also woke up early this morning, around 4:45. Today my butt is dragging a bit, which means I'll hopefully sleep well tonight, which means I'll have lots of energy tomorrow, which means I won't sleep tomorrow night, which means I'll be tired on Friday. You get the picture. A more regular sleep schedule would be nice, though I think a lot of the problem is that I just can't afford to get up later than 5:30. And yes, that does suck.

Anyway, I'm done for now. I hope to write something more interesting in the near future.

Update

2007-05-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, so once again, it's been a little while since I've blogged at all. I've been busy and kind of sick, so I do have an excuse. Still, I'm a little disappointed with myself of late. I have thus composed this update for all interested parties (read: this blog post is going to be meandering, and might devolve into talking shop).

First of all, I've been busy because I had my graduation last week. That means I'm officially a Master of Arts, though that moniker accomplishes little except to discredit other supposed "masters" when I realize that they could very well possess as little knowledge as I do (i.e. if I'm a master, then who isn't?). The graduation was good, though it felt a little bit anticlimactic, as I've been done with my course work for about five months now. Everyone else I know has been writing papers and attending lectures and discussions and generally been working diligently. My run-up to graduation consisted of me ambling over to the Graduate Office to pick up my robe about a week before the ceremony. Most of my family came down to celebrate, and we had a big party at the Market Street house. It was fun but a little sad, as I realized it was probably one of the last big parties we'll throw there.

I'm still excited to move home, and I still think it's the right thing to do, but I am starting to feel just a bit wistful about my "college years," which are finally, truly coming to a close. I remember how strange it was the first time I used the phrase "back when I was in college." I remember being surprised that college had actually ended, and that I could converse about it in the perfect tense ("I have finished my degree" rather than "I am finishing up my degree"). I always have this sense of permanence surrounding whatever phase of life I'm in. I remember thinking, for years and years, that the world was going to end in the year 2000, and that I would never really be a grown-up. I don't know if that was just a way to deal with the uncertainty of the future, or if it was just a strange idea I had as a kid. I do know that the world didn't end, and that I've gone through a host of experiences I never thought I'd survive.

I wonder how much all of that has changed me? It's a little strange going home, because the people there who still know me don't really know me, if that makes any sense. I've been away for so long, and I've done things I thought I couldn't do, and I've had all sorts of realizations about myself that are difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to explain. I wonder if the people I used to know will see me for who I am, rather than who they remember me being? Maybe I'm lucky there aren't too many people who will remember me from that time (one unexpected benefit of being generally unimpressive in high school).

Then I wonder what effect moving home will have on those changes. I sometimes find myself slipping into old habits when I'm there (for example: watching TV, which I haven't done for years), and I wonder if the old, cynical, insecure Dave will slowly resurface. I don't think that will happen, but familiar places have a strange way of evoking familiar attitudes, and most of the attitudes I sported back then are not worth revisiting.

I do sort of wish that the next six weeks would just pass quickly. I used to be afraid of change, and stalled it as much as possible. Now I don't mind the change so much as the process of change; I can get used to anything except flux. As I wrote a little while back, I feel a bit like I'm stuck between worlds, and I would very much like to be rid of that situation. I find it tedious and tiresome, as I can't meet new people and make new friends, nor can I really spend much time and energy on the ones I already have. Though I generally loathe the month of July, this year I find it more and more attractive, if only due to circumstance (definitely not temperature).

In other news, I still feel exhausted on a pretty constant basis. This week it was exacerbated by illness, which thankfully seems to be mostly in the past. I thought it was just allergies at first, but I've felt pretty rotten for the last few days straight. I was in bed by 9:30 three nights in a row, which is not normal for me, even though I get up as frustratingly early as I do (as an aside, I realized yesterday that even though I'll be teaching next year, I'll be able to sleep in over an hour longer than I can right now. The possibilities are really blowing my mind). Being sick is never fun, though I really can't complain about my health record, as it's way better than most people I know.

I wanted to write a little bit about that reunion I proposed a few weeks back. I think the total number of responses was four, which isn't stellar, but could easily be due to a lack of media penetration. At the very least, everyone I know who read the post responded favorably, so that's something. I don't have any substantial additions to make to that idea at the moment, except to note that I haven't forgotten about it. I've just been stressed and busier than usual, and have put that on the back-burner for the time being. I'm still hoping to work something out for late summer or early fall. We'll see.

Finally, I've been thinking about romance once again. I've been out of the loop for over a year now, and I feel like maybe it's time to give it another go. I write this without any proper knowledge of, and just a wee bit of dread regarding, the Hershey-area dating scene, but I think that change of setting will fix at least one of the major stressors in my last relationship: geography. If I'm going to live in PA, I might as well date a girl from PA. Of course, such girls lack that inexplicable attraction afforded by the simple fact of being born in parts unknown, but that mysterious quality has lost some of its lustre as I've grown up (Note: accents are still totally hot, though, especially British ones).

I wonder if this marks a shift in my perception of romance itself? I used to think it was all knights and damsels, drinking wine from jewel-encrusted chalices and staring longingly into each other's eyes against a backdrop of a flickering hearth, mounting a steed to gallop into a battlefield steeped in solemn valor and the honor of single combat, and gasping out beautiful final words into the sobbing visage of a soulmate after gloriously sacrificing one's self for a tragic victory out in the fields. Granted, I still think such things are romantic, and I'll go to my grave weeping over books like The Lord of the Rings. Still, I've realized there can be an awful lot of romance in even the most commonplace occurrences. I think romance is centered on the appreciation of beauty, and beauty can be seen everywhere, if we will simply look for it. Romance can be running through a field on a spring day and turning up rocks to see what's underneath, or climbing hills on a Saturday afternoon to see what's on the other side. It can be sitting in a room reading a book out loud, or going grocery shopping and each picking out just one exciting item. It can be sitting in a hospital room and holding a hand, it can be driving to the airport or housetraining a dog.

When I think about this, I wonder how God sees these things. I get stirred up at the prospect of sharing the things I see with other people (hence the blog, currently one of my best outlets for such practices, though it pales in comparison to actual company), and having those other people care the same way I do is always invigorating (despite its rarity). I imagine God's interest in having His creations recognize the beauty He's created can only be more intense than what I feel. I guess this might get at the root of why God created us at all. He doesn't need us for anything, not for companionship, worship, or anything else. And yet He decided to make us, knowing full well all the bad things we'd do and the sacrifice we'd cause Him to make. So I guess we're worth all that trouble, somehow. We must add something to His existence, somehow, though I recognize that statement could get me in trouble. I like to think God enjoys us discovering beauty in creation, the way a father enjoys his children hunting for the Easter eggs he's hidden. That's kind of a silly analogy, I guess, but it works.

Now I'm all rambled out, and I actually have some work to get done, so I'll post this and sign off. Hopefully I'll get a few more things written down this week. Hey, it could happen. :)

Tragedy?

2007-05-10T05:40:00.000-07:00

During the last class of my first semester at St. John's, my tutor's closing question was as follows: "is there a place for tragedy in the Christian tradition?" My immediate response was "yes," her answer was "no." As I remember, our differences stemmed primarily from our respective interpretations of the word "tragedy," her stance being that tragedy is final, and mine being that a circumstance can be quite tragic despite impermanence (she used the term "horror" in place of my "tragedy").

Ultimately, I agree that the end will be happy, but I'm not convinced that there isn't some amount of irrevocable loss in the interrim. I can defend this stance on a large scale simply by noting that if nothing is truly lost in the end, then the fall of man from purity into sin has little ultimate significance. And while this may very well be true from God's perspective, it jibes with my own life experience (and probably with most other people's). I'm reminded constantly of my own sin, and if that sin does not cause pain or sorrow to God, then I have to wonder why He cares. And if it does cause pain, then that pain, to God as atemporal, is perpetually present in some way. I understand that the notion of causing pain to an infinite, all-encompassing Being is a strange one, but to think that said Being is incapable of feeling loss seems to conversely imply that it is an It and not a He (and furthermore, reconciling the personality of God with His force and nature is difficult from pretty much any angle).

By way of a specific example, I'll consider the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. If there is no such thing as final tragedy in creation, then what, exactly, did God sacrifice by sending His son to die for my sins? The word "sacrifice," at least in every definition I can conjure, always involves personal loss. And while, again, I'm at a loss as to explain exactly how this works with an infinite, all-encompassing Being, I'm forced to argue that it does work, somehow.

Furthermore, I do have one explanation as to how this kind of loss could be explained. Jesus was a man, and as a man He experienced life in a temporal fashion: one moment before another and none repeated. He was also God, and God experiences things in an atemporal fashion: all moments are "now" and none of them are. For God looking at a completed creation, the moment of His son's (His own?) death is perpetually past, present, and future; his death is simultaneously about to happen, happening, and in the state of having happened. The Apostles' Creed (in at least one of its forms) contains the line "he descended into Hell," which, while I can't place any passage in the Bible that would claim as much (and thus recognize as possibly incorrect), only makes the situation more stark. Three days in Hell would be difficult enough for me, as I'd have to deal with some inconceivably nasty torments for seventy-two hours. But three days in Hell would be, in at least one sense, far more difficult for Jesus, not only because He both didn't belong there and had first-hand knowledge of what Heaven is like, but because for a Being that doesn't experience things temporally, my seventy-two hours would to him be as long as anything. When I think about things this way, I'm forced to confront the very real possibility that Jesus is still suffering for my sins in more ways than just being offended by them or frustrated that He had to do this painful thing a few thousand years ago: He might still be suffering because any time He has ever spent suffering in pain, shame and disgrace is for Him just as much "now" as the moment I'm spending here, writing this down.

I hope none of this sounds heretical. I'm aware that I'm talking about God, and that difficulties arise, both through my own errors and through my inability to communicate exactly what I mean. I do think the ending is a happy one, and I'm happy with my life in its entirety, bruises and all. The dark periods have been difficult, but I would go through any and all of them again if I needed do. And I very well might, especially if that's what it takes for me to become the man God wants me to be. Those situations have a way of resurfacing again and again, though each time they look less like demons and more like old friends.

And maybe that's the answer.

Schizophrenia

2007-05-09T05:36:00.000-07:00

So my blogging has hit a bit of a slump recently. It happens. Sometimes I have a lot of things I feel like writing about, sometimes I don't. Then sometimes even when I do, I can't seem to put things together to write coherently (assuming I ever achieve that at all).

This last point is what's hit me recently. I think it has something to do with me running myself into the ground repeatedly. I've spent a lot of time in my car, driving up to PA for one reason or another, and although I keep hoping that's going to die down, things keep popping back up for me to handle (not to mention other things I simply want to do). I think I've spent four of my last seven weekends at home which, while they're always a good time, compound my exhaustion. I can think of at least two more weekends I'll be spending there before my time in Maryland comes to a close (two out of only seven more). I've really been struggling to get up this week (and even as I write this I'm embroiled in a long, sense-sapping yawn), which is something I don't normally have trouble with even though I get up at 5:30. All of that compounds into a sort of haze through which my life is filtered. The effect is not necessarily negative or life-darkening as that metaphor might sound, but it does make me feel disconnected from things.

Right now I'm kind of in between lives. There's the Annapolitan Dave, who gets up early and works a semi-boring job, during which he frequently blogs (case in point!). This Dave spends his afternoons and evenings getting caught up on sleep and reading and going out with friends occasionally. Then there's the South-Central-Pennsylvanian Dave (S-C-P Dave from here on out), who exists only during long weekends, during which he tends to have very few plans and yet no free time. Annapolitan Dave has friends, while S-C-P Dave has family (though, thankfully, neither Dave has a girlfriend). Neither Dave currently has too much energy.

The net effect of that fusion (or disjoint?) is that I feel a little stretched out. When I'm home, everyone is hanging out and having a good time, and so I feel obligated to join in. When I'm at school, everyone is hanging out and having a good time, and so, again, I feel obligated to join in (though I've frequently denied that obligation, of late). The net effect is that I can't really commit to either place. I don't like that at all.

Anyway, this is all probably pretty boring to my intended audience, so I guess I'll stop. I'm just a bit worn out, and I'm looking forward to having my last weeks of work over with, and my move behind me, just so that I can (hopefully) catch my breath, and finally feel like a long-term commitment to something physical or relational (pretty much anything at all) is possible.

God goes with me wherever my life takes me, but not much else does.

Talent and Geeks

2007-05-02T05:20:00.000-07:00

So, if this woman was single and a Christian, I would totally marry her. Totally. Like, immediately.

And why is this, exactly? Talent! She's an associate editor for cnet, and is therefore knowledgable about all sorts of tech-lust-worthy items. And geekiness! How often does one find a girl who launches diatribes against Jack Thompson's... diatribes (I'm sorry, I know he might have some good points, but blaming violent video games for all the world's ills is too worthless to describe). As an editor for cnet, she must have access to all sorts of awesome tech stuff. Furthermore, she's the kind of person who likes weird animation and buys action figures. That makes her hot.

So hot.

Also, she is actually hot, which certainly doesn't hurt.

But let's go back and consider those first two points: talent and geekiness:

Talent is awesome. As someone who has a kind of random smattering of talents (and who has known people with all sorts of strange ones), I find talent to be a very interesting part of creation. God saw fit to give us each our own specific abilities, and while I don't think talent can be quantified or given a number-value, it does seem that some people just have more talent than others (i.e. God did not make us all "equal" in this particular way). Some people just have natural appreciations or abilities for things, such that they understand the way something works better than other people. This is true of all sorts of things: music, art, literature, sports, science, etc.

Talent, when combined with geekiness, manifests itself as interest. Take Ms. Belmont, for example. The girl knows her science stuff, and she knows it well enough to get on G4 and talk about the state of all things tech. She knows her stuff because (I imagine) she reads about it in her spare time, all the time. And because she knows her stuff, she's able to discuss it on a deeper level than simple explanation, to talk about it on the "why" level, rather than just the "how."

This kind of knowledge is fascinating to me. I'm not sure I know any particular things well enough to claim this kind of ability (which is something I've come to see as one of my serious intellectual weaknesses), and if I do, they're all things that aren't particularly important (i.e. video games, B-movies, Bruce Campbell, etc.). Therefore, when I see someone who's able to write or speak at length about any topic in more that a simply explanatory ways, I'm impressed. Most of my friends are a lot better at this than I am. But I digress.

Having a talent is important, but using it (i.e. being a geek) is just as important. I think it's interesting that in the parable in the Bible regarding the men with the money, our translation for the measure of money they were each given is "talent." One man gets ten, one man gets five, and one man gets one. Each of them do something with those talents, and are judged accordingly. The first two men perform according to what they're given, but the last man saves his talent and doesn't do anything with it. At the end of the day, the first two men are commended, while the third is rebuked and has his talent taken away.

When I think about this parable, sometimes I get worried that I'm not using my talents as I should be. I've always struggled with a certain amount of sloth, and though it hasn't reared its head so much in the past few years, it's certainly still around. My problem is that I frequently don't have to try all that hard to succeed at least pretty well, so if I slack off, I end up with a B instead of an A. Maybe this is not a huge deal, but when I think about that parable, I wonder if Bs are really all right with God. For someone whose aptitude peaks at a B, sure, but for someone who could have gotten that A with just a bit more work, I'm far less certain.

The other problem with me is that I have a pretty wide set of talents with no incredibly outstanding features; I'm pretty good at a lot of things, but not other-wordly at anything. This causes difficulties because it gives me a lot of options and doesn't eliminate too many of them. I would have made a good engineer, I could be a good financial planner, and I hope I will be a good teacher. While I do think teaching is ultimately the best fit I've found, I still have some reservations about my abilities (mostly regarding planning). I just hope it's enough that I'm being used to my full potential.

Of course, some people go way too far in the opposite direction, so that they're so worried about performance that they can't relax and enjoy life. This problem is just as serious and severe and has, I think, the same potential to be sinful (albeit in a different way). Still, I don't struggle with that so much as with laziness, so I'll leave that one alone.

In the end, I think trajectory is important. Back to Veronica Belmont, she's attractive because she's doing something she likes, something that excites and interests her, and that enthusiasm shows. That kind of interest is attractive to me, and that's just for tech stuff. When I think about someone who's interested in producing music or literature or art in such a way that she's drawn in and captivated by the work, I get goosebumps (for an example, go back to my xanga blog and look for the post I wrote about Regina Spektor. She's also so hot).

I guess it boils down to this: people are far more interesting when they're doing what God intended them to do. Veronica's the secular version, which is still way better than nothing. But a Christian girl like this? I'd probably have to stalk her.

Hypocrisy

2007-05-01T05:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.slate.com/id/2165259/nav/tap2/

I hate hypocrisy. This is, of course, a heavily ironic statement given that as I say it, I am a hypocrite in the act of being hypocritical. However, the fact that I'm a hypocrite doesn't mean that I can't also hate hypocrisy, which brings me to the main problem I have with it: it's an automatic argument-loser. Hypocrisy takes the truth and destroys its efficacy, even though it by no means destroys the actual truth.

I'll elaborate. In the article I've linked above, the argument is that abstinence education is ineffective and moreover, if I may be so bold as to interpret Mr. Noah's tone (and that of almost every abstinence opponent I've heard), foolish. Abstinence is seen at best as a quaint, fantasy-world solution to a modern, real problem (AIDS/other STDs), and at worst as a virulent attack on a people's ability to make their own "informed decisions" (note the irony: "informed decisions" which somehow occur without abstinence-related information). People who promote abstinence are seen as prudish and nasty, as people interested in dominating others, and, I imagine, frequently as closet sexual freaks (i.e. the "domination" complex, the desire to control other people for personal gratification, hyperactive sexism, etc.).

What bothers me, though, is that while all of these allegation might be absolutely true (though I'm sure they're not), they completely ignore the simple, obvious fact that the only fool-proof way to avoid contracting a disease through sex is not to have any. I've never been tested for AIDS or any other STD, and yet I sit here with complete confidence that I'm STD-free. Thanks to virginity, I don't need needles and blood tests to tell me I'm healthy. Moreover, the concept that I might get AIDS or some other nasty disease through sex has never even permeated my consciousness; I have never felt any fear or stress about my body, thanks to my lack of sexual activity (though admittedly, this is due in some respect to my complete lack of "game" ;). The strongest argument for abstinence is that it's as close to foolproof as any measure can be.

Of course, the strongest argument against it is that nobody really is abstinent. And here's where the hypocrisy rears its ugly, venomous head: when people like Mr. Tobias laud abstinence and are then found to have had dealings with known prostitution rings, the opposite side can immediately dismiss any logical, thoughtful argument Mr. Tobias might have with a smirk and a wave, simply because, well, he's a hypocrite. Read the article above, and note how much the author actually has to do to make his point: his entire argument covers two paragraphs, which make for a grand total of three sentences. The rest of the article is background information and a lengthy quote from Mr. Tobias himself. And what is that argument? "Abstinence programs don't work because Randall Tobias can't keep it in his pants." Sure, he provides a link to a study done somewhere that came to the same conclusion, but this seems an afterthought (and if you read the study, a total of four communities were used to run the study and no other parameters are given. Furthemore, the article was run by the Washington Post...). Mr. Noah even writes himself that he doesn't need to make an argument ("I quote this at great length because, well, why not?"), the implication being that everything Mr. Tobias said is completely invalidated by the fact that he hired a prostititute.

Now, I'm not defending Mr. Tobias at all, for all I know he really is a sexual deviant and gets his jollies from exerting control over people whose lives are more difficult than his. He certainly wouldn't be the first. The problem is that the obvious strength of his argument is completely destroyed by the fact that he's the one who said it; and if he's a hypocrite, then of course everyone else who agrees with him could be; and if they could be, then they gradually are; and if they are, then rampant sexuality and condom use are the only way to go. The argument, when outlined this way, is incredibly flimsy and includes no moral, or even practical wisdom (i.e. condoms don't work either, both because people who are "informed" still don't use them, and because they just plain old don't work even when they are used). And yet, abstinence advocates will have to fight tooth and nail to get past this mess.

Which brings me to the other problem I have with hypocrisy: hypocrites. I was talking to a girl I knew in high school a few weeks back. She's a pastor's kid, and we were talking about alcohol. I asked if her parents ever drank, and she said 'no,' though not because they felt compulsion not to, but because they just didn't like it (fair enough). I wonder, though, if pastors really should refrain almost entirely from drink, not because I think it's in any way a sin, but because they're in a very visible leadership position and thus need to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. I think it's a shame that this sort of thing even needs to be considered, but if the alternative is that all their work is nullified by the occasional beer, I think it might be preferable.

The same thing goes for elected officials and anyone else who espouses an important opinion. If you're going to hold a certain view point, then you'd better hold it. When you don't, you bring a storm on all of your allies and you make everybody's lives that much more difficult. More than that, you end up doing a great disservice to the truth.

And here I'm speaking to myself more than to anyone else.

Why am I such a jerk?

2007-04-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

So as anyone still reading this will know, I recently got a job, one that I'm very excited (and a little nervous) about. Things just sort of fell into place, which, coupled with also having a place to live next year, means I'm now at the point where I can sit back and enjoy a bit of a breather.

The strange thing is that I'm only now realizing how much stress I've been feeling the past few months. I don't think of myself as being particularly prone to getting stressed out, but it's quite possible that I'm just out-of-touch enough that when I'm stressed I don't realize it. Looking back over the past two months or so, I see I've blogged a lot of words, but I also see that I haven't spent much time at all with my friends. I've spent a lot of time in my room, and have generally stayed away from most social gatherings. Some of that was circumstantial (i.e. I've been in PA a lot trying to nail down a job), but a lot of it was self-imposed. Frequently, I just didn't have the energy to drag myself to another social gathering.

The strange thing, though, is the blogging vs. socializing trend. I've blogged a lot more than average over the past few months, and I've been social a lot less than average (yes, this is possible). When I think about how I felt over that same period, I don't remember being sad or frustrated or even recognizably upset in any way (other than normal ho-hum, day-to-day, run-of-the-mill angst). I would honestly characterize that time as me switching between being happy-and-overly-energetic, and happy-and-absolutely-drained.

Why do I blog so much when I'm stressed (and if you need more proof, just look at my old xanga site: notice the long lapses, and the subject matter that sparked my various returns)? Partly, I generally don't write letters. Partly, it's easier to blog and thus write for anyone who's interested, rather than single out a few people who may or may not want to know how I'm doing/what I'm thinking about.

Mostly, though, it's because this blog is basically a journal that other people happen to be able to read. Don't get me wrong, I love it when people talk about something I've written (or, heaven forbid, post a comment!). But I guess a lot of what I write here is more for me to write than for you to read. It's strangely cathartic for me to type my thoughts, even when they don't make a whole lot of sense (and though I do sell myself as being logical and sense-making, I'm well aware that I'm a lot more rambly and emotional than I would generally like to be). It's a way of solidifying who I am and what I'm feeling right now, almost like freezing a slice of myself in amber such that it can be picked up and examined later. Blogging has proved to be a great aid to introspection, though, again, similar to a journal.

The outward aspect of blogging is also intriguing. I'm pretty sure I've explained the title of this blog before, but I'll re-cap for anyone who might have missed it. The title is spoken by a character in a movie who, as he is dying, recognizes that his memories will be lost in the process. It's a strange and sad truth: everyone witnesses things that nobody else sees, and many of the memories generated from those experiences are never shared.

This is especially salient for someone like me, for whom relationships tend to come and go but rarely stay for long. I think about things I saw and shared with previous girlfriends, and how at this point the only other person who knows about those things is somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else. Maybe she thinks about those times occasionally, maybe not. If so, how are they remembered? And how am I remembered? If not, what do I do with those memories? The same holds true for friends, though to a lesser extent (mostly because I don't really have any ex-friends the way I do ex-girlfriends). I remember high school, so do they. I remember rooming with people at church events, which is strange because it gave me a glimpse into their private lives (and if I've learned one thing about people, it's that they do strange things when they're alone). I remember sneaking violent video games into the house and playing them after my parents went to bed. I remember the late-night conversations about life and the way things were. Those experiences are strange, because if everyone who witnessed them forgot, then that part of history is effectively erased.

Then I think about the things I've seen and done on my own. I take a lot of nature walks, and I invariably see all sorts of different sights. Once I saw a bee walking backwards, rolling mud balls with his hind legs (it took a few minutes of observation before I realized he was digging a hole). Another time I saw a tree shaking ice from its limbs in a warm breeze (and I could have sworn the tree was moving of its own accord). I even drove out to Great Falls once in the middle of December, and walked out across the snow to see the Potomac iced almost to a standstill (and where the water still ran, the gap was so narrow it blasted itself into the air in a continuous, raging stream). I can write about these things, and thus give others at least some sense of what I've experienced. Still, the awe and wonder of seeing those things gets lost in the shuffle, such that my writing is, even at its very best, nothing but the palest of shadows of the experience itself.

But I've digressed. The title of this post comes from my rather obvious self-absorption over the last few months. Now that I have a job and a place to live, I don't have too many stressors left to worry about (at least not until I can start preparing my actual courses and realize I have no idea what to do with this job), which means I'm feeling sociable once more. It also might mean my blogging will drop off again, though I'm going to try to keep that from happening.

I realize that this flip-flop is not me solving any of my inward-tendencies, but simply the removal of the stress that exacerbates my antisocial behavior. That is, the symptom has been temporarily removed rather than the disease cured.

To all of you who have hung around (and who've kept inviting me to things even though I've consistently refused to attend), thank you for your patience.

A (lot of) Prayer(s) Answered

2007-04-19T05:02:00.000-07:00

So later today, I'll be heading home to spend another weekend in Pennsylvania. It'll be the third weekend out of the past five that I've spent there (sorry, Annapolitan friends), and I'll probably be making the trip another few times before my tenure at Market Street finally draws to a close.

I feel like this trend of spending so much time back home is helpful in re-acclimating me to the place I'll be living for (quite possibly) the rest of my life, but at the same time it makes me a bit sad that I feel so disconnected from everything that's going on down here. The other night I sat and talked with one of my roommates for the first time in several weeks. It was a good conversation; we talked about the book of Job and what it says about God and man's position before Him. This sort of thing used to happen regularly, but recently I've been too swept up in my own issues to really spend time in community with other people.

"And what are those issues?" you ask. Basically there are only two: find a place to live and find a job to do.

The first one worked out pretty quickly and easily, thanks to family resources (i.e. thanks to Dad). I'll be living in an apartment in an old building (hardwood floors!) on the square in Elizabethtown. My intended apartment overlooks High Street, and it has enough space for me and all my stuff. It has its own kitchen, bathroom, and two closets, and one of the closets has enough room that I could store a bike in there. Furthermore, this apartment is on the second story of the building, above what will hopefully be a Kearns-family-owned-and-operated coffeehouse within the next year or two. I'm further excited about this because it gives us lots of space to do all kinds of stuff, and I'm already hoping to organize book discussions and film screenings there. Add in the fact that it's only about ten blocks from E-town college, and we have the makings of an important Christian cultural interface. And I live upstairs.

The second one has been more difficult. It's pretty easy to find an apartment when all one has to do is have a sit-down with his old man. There's knowledge and trust there, and my dad knows that I'm careful with my finances and that I've turned into a (surprisingly) responsible adult. Finding a job is harder, because not only do I have to talk to people I don't know (traditionally not one of my strong points), but I have to convince them that I'm not only good enough for the job they're trying to fill, but I'm also better than everyone else who's applied for it.

I've applied for a total of five jobs, and only been seriously considered for one. Two of those jobs were with Milton Hershey School, which is a place I think I could work. However, the most attractive feature of those jobs was the salary they command, and so I would have felt at least partly compromised if I had gotten either of them. The third job was with Teach for America, which I was honestly never more than partially interested in, and would always have been a backup plan. I gave a half-hearted attempt at a phone interview, but I could tell pretty early that I wasn't what they were looking for (and my experience there also shored up my conviction that public school is definitely not the place for me).

The fourth job I actually had an in-person interview for. It was a classical Christian school, and I wasn't entirely sure what to expect heading in. I had horrible visions of it being a shoe-string affair, where I might have the chance to teach well if I could do so without using textbooks or making copies, and be able keep warm in an unheated building. To my great relief, the school seemed to be well-run, with intelligent people in command and students who are clearly above average. Also to my great relief, the interview and practice lesson went quite well. I left the school with a pretty good feeling, and a "we'll call you when we know" for a send-off.

The fifth and final job only got back to me last week, and I have an interview scheduled for tomorrow. It's a school similar to the fourth, and I have the same vague fears about the school's quality (though I recognize they're just as likely to be completely wrong as last time) and atmosphere. Judging from this school's outward presentation, I think it's going to fall a bit more on the legalistic end of the spectrum (i.e. I'm more worried that I'm going to run into the kind of self-blinding Christianity that bothers me than I was with School Four).

The real story happened on Monday, though, as I was sitting at my desk at work. I hadn't heard anything from School Four (known as CCA from now on) since the interview, which I had been told to expect since they were on spring break the week after Easter (I interviewed the day before Good Friday, which they also had off). The headmaster there had told me to expect some communication the week they got back, either to tell me I got the job, to request a further interview, or to tell me that I sucked and should probably give up my dream of teaching and just start working at some labor job for all my brain was worth (or at least that's probably how I would have taken it). I figured it would be the middle of the week before I heard anything, at least, though after almost two weeks I was getting antsy (there are few things that trouble me more than an impending verdict over which I have no control and about which the outcome is entirely unclear).

I was sitting at my desk, at around 10 AM, minding my business and doing my work when the phone rang on two lines at once. I picked up line two for a standard interaction with a client. Line one was apparently the headmaster trying to get in touch with my boss, whom I had listed as a professional reference. My office-mate took a message for my boss, and when I realized who had called, I sat very still for a few minutes and broke literally out in a cold sweat. I'm not sure why I was suddenly so nervous; my boss loves me and was obviously going to give me a glowing review. And yet there I was, practically paralyzed as my boss returned the headmaster's call. Though I tried sincerely, I couldn't really hear what he was saying, so instead I just sat at my desk and prayed silently that everything would work out as it should, and moreover that I would be at peace with whatever resulted.

The phone call ended and my boss came into my office to put some papers in a pile. I asked him, with as much nonchalance as I could muster, what my possible-future-boss had asked. I was shooting for something easygoing, something with a mild self-deprecating jest, something like "So, did you tell Dr. Perrin what a lousy worker I am?" It ended up coming out more like "Didyousaygoodthingsaboutme, whatdidheask, doyouthinkIgotthejob?!" with a quick inhale afterward to refill my air-starved lungs. And while I was thoroughly un-cool, my boss had no such difficulty: "He asked a few basic questions, things like 'does David have integrity, does he work hard' etc. I told him you've always been clear that teaching is what you wanted to do with your career, and that we've been very happy with your performance." That sounded like a pretty good answer, so my anxiety eased off a bit.

At this point, I figured they were going to call all of my references, and as I knew at least two of them wouldn't pick up the phone at this hour, and are almost as bad as me at returning phone calls, I figured it would be a few days before I had any significant news. I went back to work, feeling kind of silly for getting so worked up about a simple phone call, and forgot all about it as I had several big piles of paper to move around on my desk.

Thus, I was completely unprepared when my cell phone rang about twenty minutes later. I opened the phone and didn't recognize the number. I honestly figured it was probably a wrong number; whenever I get calls from numbers with (717) area codes that aren't already in my phone, I almost always get somebody asking for Bill. I don't know who this Bill is, but he must have both a number that is similar to mine, and a lot of mildly-clumsy friends who don't use speed-dial. With this in mind I almost didn't take the call, but then it occurred to me that it might be some amazing young woman trying desperately to track me down after reading my blog (and looking at my gorgeous mug over there on the right), and that I could afford to explain once more that I am not Bill, nor do I know Bill, nor do I have Bill's number, if there was a chance of instead finding true love on a Monday morning. Instead, it was Dr. Perrin.

Now, everyone reading this post already knows who was on the other end of the phone, and indeed it should have been my first guess, but it honestly didn't occur to me. As soon as I realized who I was speaking to, I got that cold sweat again, and time did one of those things where it slows way down so that there's literally an hour of time in between each word coming through my handset. Also, it seemed like Dr. Perrin took about two days to say what I could have said in about five words, though again, I'm pretty sure this was me being crazy and not him being slow. In short, I was offered a position with a starting salary substantially higher than I was expecting (even hoping for), and a few extra perks I also hadn't planned on. On top of that, the preliminary course list they would like me to teach draws from all sectors of my education, so I'd have a diverse workload (including two literature classes!) and age group (7th, 8th, and 10th through 12th grades). I was close to accepting the job right then and there, but as I had already agreed to an interview this Friday, I said I couldn't in good conscience accept just yet. But I added that I probably would, and that I could let him know by next week, which he said would be fine.

I don't really remember much of the rest of the day. It just kind of skipped on by while I sat and daydreamed about all the cool teaching stuff I was going to be doing next year. I prayed for like an hour when I got home, thanking God for coming through better than I had even hoped. Then I called Mom and told her. Dad wasn't there, so I just told her to tell him, but she said she would have him call. She apparently also had Lauren call, which was nice of her, so by now everybody back home knows. I don't think I slept at all that night, as I was just lying in my room, making all of these ridiculous teaching plans in my head (and trust me, they were ridiculous).

Since then, that excitement has simmered but not worn off. I really want this last interview to be over so that I can say "thanks, but I'm no longer interested," and then call CCA and get all the juicy details about what I'll be teaching so I can start reading up and making concrete (i.e. actually use-able) plans. It's so exciting to actually have something to do with myself that involves my brain cells, and already I find myself wishing the fall would hurry up and just get here.

The real issue, though, is that this is an answered prayer. I've prayed a lot over the past few months that God would open just one door for me. I really only want one, because if I have options, I might not make the best decision. I probably would have taken a job at Milton Hershey, and though I might not have admitted it, a big reason would have been the salary. I might have even taken a job with Teach for America, mostly because it would have been available and I so wouldn't have had to keep looking. This job, though, I will take both because I want it, and because it's the right job to take. I'm convinced it's the right job, but I'm not convinced that I would have realized that beforehand.

I'm pretty lucky that God's a lot better at funnelling me into good decisions than I am.

Reunion

2007-04-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

I realized I put a semi-important call for response at the end of a post that started out talking about computer games. Here's a copy of the relevant information in a stand-alone post, so people don't have to wade through the nerd stuff. If you want my justifications for this bit below, you will actually have to read the post, though you can probably skip down about halfway, to the part where I start talking about memories/the past, etc.

COPIED TEXT:

POST SCRIPT: I think I might need to have a reunion of sorts. I was thinking just the CHESS people I actually knew, but that might not include some people I'd want on the list. If anyone reads this post (i.e. any of the people who would be included in said reunion: Hannah E, Ryan D, anyone I was in CHESS with. Basically, anyone in that nebulous homeschool community we all participated in) and is interested, post a comment (and all of you who still think CHESS was lame can probably get over it at this point; a reunion would be fun). If there's enough interest, maybe I'll see about setting something up later this summer, though I know a number of you are off in various places. Depending on its state of renovation, we might have a pretty significant venue open to us over in E-town. Also, anyone on that nebulous list up there (and if you think you might be on it, you are), please pass this URL along to anyone else on that same list, if you would. I would like to limit the group to people I actually had at least some interaction with, but that's not a rigid rule, and it's probably a bigger group than I currently recall. I'm just trying to gauge interest. Let me know; I need to start making friends back in PA.

Nostalgia

2007-04-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

Rainy Sundays are basically the reason blogging was invented. And reading by the window. And napping.

So yesterday, I went to BestBuy to pick up an album I'm already in love with (The Black Parade), and I happened to see a copy of Command & Conquer: The First Decade for sale. I couldn't resist the purchase: twelve classic computer games for $29.99 is nuts.

I used to play computer games all the time. I finally got tired of the endless need to upgrade and moved on to other things, but every once in a while, I have a hankering for some good old-fashioned computer games. This marks the first one (or the first twelve, I guess) that I've purchased in just under three years (the last one being the almighty Doom 3).

When I got home, I popped the disc into my laptop and installed just the first game (twelve is entirely too much history to absorb in one sitting. Besides, I only really played two of them all the way through). To the uninitiated, Command & Conquer released in 1995, and was the first game to really popularize the real-time-strategy genre (I'm going to discount Warcraft, as that one was always kind of a niche game that appealed to D&D nerds but not many others). The premise is simple: you use your mouse to control little army men and tanks, and blow the crap out of the bad guys. In order to build your army, you also construct buildings and harvest resources. The "real-time" moniker stems from the fact that most strategy-type games up until this point were turn-based.

I loaded the game, which, as far as I can tell, basically just means the disc copied the entire contents of the old CDs onto my hard drive, videos and all. Command & Conquer was famous for having these really cheesy cutscenes, which were acted out by real humans in front of green screens. Computer generated backgrounds were then digitally added in, to make the people look like they were in the midst of battles, etc. CG graphics were good enough to make tanks and cars that looked (sort of) like actual tanks and cars, but humans were way too complicated. The irony in all of this is that this is the exact same technique employed by George Lucas to make his equally-cheesy Star Wars prequels, only he spent half a billion dollars.

After installing the game, I played the first few missions, and immediately remembered all the ridiculous frustrations associated with those games. The interface never works quite right, the computer AI is almost always either way too hard or way too easy, and the pathfinding algorithms for the units are atrocious, leading to so many necessary re-loads thanks to tanks that decide, with no obvious motivation, that the quickest way to get to the box I'm supposed to pick up is to go straight through the enemy base, and furthermore, not to shoot at any of the scads of bad guys. Command & Conquer might be more accurately rendered Tank Babysitter, though I freely admit that probably wouldn't have moved nearly as many units off store shelves.

But most of you don't care about that stuff, so I'll drop the nerdspeak.

The point of my writing this is that it got me thinking about the past, and my connection to it. Since I moved my blog here to blogspot, I've gotten fewer comments than I used to, but the people commenting have gotten much more diverse (strangely, none of the people who used to call to my attention that they couldn't comment have commented. Hmmm...). So far, the list includes a girl I had classes with in high school (that's right, home-school classes!), her mom, a girl I see semi-regularly whom I've known since childhood (and a fellow Johnnie, though our time there didn't overlap), and the father of a good friend of mine from back in youth group who moved out to Colorado when I was in college. You'll probably notice a trend there: they're all people I knew years ago, back when life was different, when I was different.

It's strange the way it all has just come up in the space of a month or so. I guess it goes along with me getting ready to move back to my old haunts. Ironically, almost everyone I knew well back there has moved away, and the ones that haven't have had several years to change since the last time I saw them regularly.

Where does the past go? What happens to those things I remember so clearly? I remember spending hours at this homeschool group we used to go to on Tuesdays (Mrs. Bell, if you're reading this, I might be a teacher next year! Maybe even with an English class!). I always had to pretend that I hated it, but secretly I always liked it (I pulled this "pretend-to-hate-but-really-like" stunt a lot back in those days, most prominently in regard to ladies). The students there were all a bit strange, some a bit scary (I imagine I was on this list), most a lot nerdy (I was on this list too). I know at least a few of them are married, some to each other, including one girl I had a huge crush on for a long time (like, two years long, until she finally told me it wasn't going to happen in enough detail that I got the point. I was/am pretty thick). CHESS was fun because it was the one social event I had in which I wasn't "that strange homeschooled kid," as was the case in Boy Scouts and karate and youth group, etc.

I guess all those memories and experiences get factored into a man, become part of who he is, of who I am. It's funny how different they look a few years later, though. I remember getting my heart broken my sophomore year of college (same girl as above), and thinking the world was going to end. I literally didn't have the energy to get out of bed for a few days (though, as I generally skipped a lot of classes in college, that wasn't too out of the ordinary). Now when I think back on it, I wonder why I thought it was so important. She was a nice girl, and I'm sure she still is, but we weren't really right for each other for a whole host of reasons. On top of that, I made a horrendous mess of the whole affair, start to finish, in so very many ways. That's the beauty of hindsight, though; it helps me realize how selfish I've been and for how long, and how many people I've affected with it.

There are so many things I would see differently now, especially people. Maybe that's why it's a good time to move back. Maybe all of those things I couldn't wait to get away from in high school will end up being the very things I love about the place. Maybe this past month was just the beginning of the process of returning, of understanding, of finally seeing the places and people as they really are. Maybe memories exist because without them, we'd never see ourselves this way.

POST SCRIPT: I think I might need to have a reunion of sorts. I was thinking just the CHESS people I actually knew, but that might not include some people I'd want on the list. If anyone reads this post (i.e. any of the people who would be included in said reunion: Hannah E, Ryan D, anyone I was in CHESS with. Basically, anyone in that nebulous homeschool community we all participated in) and is interested, post a comment (and all of you who still think CHESS was lame can probably get over it at this point; a reunion would be fun). If there's enough interest, maybe I'll see about setting something up later this summer, though I know a number of you are off in various places. Depending on its state of renovation, we might have a pretty significant venue open to us over in E-town. Also, anyone on that nebulous list up there (and if you think you might be on it, you are), please pass this URL along to anyone else on that same list, if you would. I would like to limit the group to people I actually had at least some interaction with, but that's not a rigid rule, and it's probably a bigger group than I currently recall. I'm just trying to gauge interest. Let me know; I need to start making friends back in PA.

Home

2007-04-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

It's Friday. Since I'm not at work, I really have no excuse not to blog. I'm in a photo-mood; here are pictures. The other day, I wrote about the art of creation, and it occurs to me that several of the people who (might) read my blog have never seen where I'm from, so I thought I'd put up some pictures of the beauty found in good old south central PA.

Dogwood Drive is the street I've lived on since I was about four, neglecting the years since I went off to college. For the uninitiated, my house is off to the right side of the picture. It's actually probably visible through the trees to the right of that pine tree in the foreground, though that doesn't help since our house is dark brown and has wood siding. I took this picture in the fall of 2004, so I would have been in the middle of my last semester of college (I had to take one extra, thanks to my major-switching shenanigans).

I remember this day rather particularly. I had Butthead in tow (or rather, she had me in tow; she was still pretty spry and cheeky back then), and she crapped on someone's yard, which instigated a tirade aimed at me from the yard-owner's neighbor. He looked like he was pushing seventy, but he ran across the street and went off vehemently about how America's youth are so disrespectful these days, and how would I like it if random animals crapped on my yard. I said I was sorry, but that neighborhood dogs and cats crapped on our yard all the time. After all, they're animals, and that's what animals do. He said the crap on my yard was my problem, so I told him the crap on his neighbor's yard was his neighbor's problem. That didn't go over too well, and I ended up deciding to take a different route home, so as to avoid passing by him a second time. I can understand the need to respect other people's property, and I can understand that he was probably doing what he thought was his neighborly duty in looking out for the yard across the street. At the same time, I wish people could just be happy and let the little things ride. Besides, it's not like there aren't literally hundreds of deer that walk through those woods all the time, and they certainly crap where they please.

This was taken looking up a street in our neighborhood. I don't live in the woods, but there's a forest up our street in one direction, and several others in the opposite direction. I don't think it's possible to get to any major landmarks from my house without passing through at least one. I'm not sure exactly which street this is, but judging from the mailbox on the right side of the photo, and its startling similarity to the Davidsons', I'm pretty sure it's Primrose.

I spent a lot of time at the Davidsons' house growing up. Ryan was my best friend and partner in crime for quite some time. We went to the same private school for four years, though we were only in the same class once (first grade). We built a number of different forts in the woods behind his house, out of whatever we could find. We swiped loading palettes from construction sites around the neighborhood, which made easy, if unspectacular walls. We also built walls out of stone and mortared them together using clay we dug out of the ground (it was everywhere back there). We even found a spool of electrical wire (the kind they use for power lines) which was bendable and was good for lashing things together. It was just sitting in a big roll next to a telephone pole, and although in hindsight it was probably something the power company was actually going to use, we were pretty sure it was abandoned at the time.

I remember how I used to be anxious about venturing too far back into the woods, which at the time seemed enormous. Once, we walked back so far that we came across a hill that sloped down toward a mysterious house. I thought, at the time, that maybe the house had crazy people in it, or something out of one of those fairy tales. It never occurred to me that it was, in fact, one of the houses I drove by every week on my way to church. The idea that the back of that forest was actually connected to some other landmark was foreign to me.

I think this is why the world is a lot bigger to kids than it is to adults. When I look at a space now, I can put things together in my head to the point that I could draw a map and get most of the details right. As a kid, I didn't think this way. Walking into the front of the woods yielded an entirely different landscape from walking into the back, such that they might as well have been on different planets or something. I think the ability to put things together is a helpful one, but I also think it takes some of the mystery and magic out of things. I used to see that place as The Woods, but now it's just a forest behind the house of an old friend, or even just a bunch of trees in close proximity to each other.

While walking, Butthead found something on the ground. Naturally, her first instinct was to eat it. I dragged her away because I had no idea what it actually was, though it looked like soggy bread. She was disappointed, and maybe a little mad at me for stopping her. She got over it; she was pretty unflappable when she was out for a walk. So many things to smell and then pee on, after all.

It's amazing to me how different human instincts are from those of animals. If I found something edible by the side of the road, there's little to no chance I would sit down and start eating it (and the "little" is only left here on the contingency that I might be literally starving). Butthead had no such inhibitions. If it smelled like food, and it wasn't expressly forbidden, she was going to eat it. No thought for nutritional value or the possibility that it might be poisonous or rotten. I wonder if that's how it will be in heaven (or whatever you want to call it). In a world without the possibility for harm, why not eat anything that's edible? Furthermore, if everyone there only desires what is good and holy, then each could trust that his own desires wouldn't lead him astray. That would be nice. :)

This was taken around the bend on Steinruck Road. My sister and brother-in-law live in a house on the corner of the intersection between the road I'm on here, and that one in the picture (along the row of trees). The family house is roughly roughly a mile away.

This gives a pretty good idea of the rural setting I grew up in. You can see the cornfields in the distance, the stalks cut off about a foot above ground. Most of the corn on those two fields gets ground up for silage, as it's usually still standing well into the fall, and long after the corn kernels get too hard to eat raw.

Pictures like this make me a bit sad, because these fields probably won't be here in another five or ten years. It happened to the field behind my sister's house, it's happening to the fields just down the road, and it almost happened to the field behind our own house (and certainly will someday). The developers buy the land when the old farmers die, or when they just get too old to keep farming, and cut these gorgeous swaths of land into lots with postage-stamp yards. They move in their big digging machines and smooth all the character out of the land. Then they erect large, ugly, near-identical houses on those lots, give them stupid, meaningless names like "The Hills of Waterford" (who dreamed that up? The whole development barely exists on a single hill, and I've never heard the name "Waterford" used anywhere in Pennsylvania) and sell them for a fortune. People move into them, traffic increases, and the natural beauty of this place gets lost just a bit more. Twenty years from now, this place will be nothing but a series of developments. People like Bud Steinruck, for whom this road is named, will be gone, and in his place will be a host of middle-management types trying to beat each other out for the coolest lawn tractors.

This was taken just a few more steps down the road, looking a bit more to the right. This lazy creek winds across a number of farms, and frequently cows come here to drink. Once while driving past, I saw a whole herd running across this very field for some reason I'll never know. If you've never seen cows run, you probably can't picture how humorous the scene was. When bulls run, it's scary and intimidating. When cows run, it looks more like a bunch of rocks rolling down a hill with frightened faces painted on them.

I like this picture because of that reflection in the water. First of all, the reflection is remarkably clear (it was quite a still day, and the current here is practically non-existent). The tree shows up clearly, as well as the clouds overhead. Still, you can see through the reflection, into the water, even down to the creek bed in places.

I like reflections, especially this sort, because they show two different perspectives of a something simultaneously. In this case, I can see the sky and tree as they're reflected in the water, and also as they truly are. This reminds me of I Corinthians 13:12, rendered most beautifully by King James as: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known." Living this life is like looking at the sky through the water; a lot of the details come through the reflection pretty well, but the scum and muck of the water are visible in the depths. Death will be like lifting the eyes to see the true sky behind the pale reflection.

And what a sight that will be.

Pain

2007-04-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

Pain is problematic, in my mind, not because it exists, but because sometimes I want it.

I spent the evening listening to the new My Chemical Romance album, and while it's actually not very masochistic on its own, it brought back memories from when I used to lie in my room and listen to hard, sad music for hours on end. This album (The Black Parade) is, from only one listen, about death or loss or some combination of the two. It's surprisingly melodic, with one song even featuring the piano almost exclusively (I'll admit, I kept waiting for the guitars to grind onto the scene, but they restrained themselves). As I usually do, I found myself getting swept up in the loss and tragedy of it all, especially when hope flickers across the scene.

Purely happy music never moves me this way. Recently, I tried to listen to some of the praise and worship albums I own, and I only got through them a few times before I went back to Snow Patrol and Regina. The songs are just too happy; they don't reflect my life experience. I think about the songs I like to sing most at church; these days they're mostly hymns, and they all have lines about blood and sacrifice and being torn open. Also, hymns seem to be the only pieces of praise music that actually employ minor chords, which somehow seems fitting in church.

I guess pain seems so entrenched in my life that any artistic expression that doesn't incorporate at least some just feels pasty and superficial. And let's be honest, my life has been pretty damn painless compared to what plenty of other people face. When I think about the worst things that have ever happened to me, I'm left with a few breakups and lost friends, and most of those were probably my fault in hindsight. I have enough friends, various talents, plenty of opportunities, three great brothers and a great sister, a niece or nephew on the way, parents who love each other, and every physical comfort I could realistically expect.

So why do I like pain? I guess I don't really like it, but I do find myself dwelling on it time and again. I do think real pain is a product of the fall, and I don't think it will exist in the next life. So why think about it? Why waste time and energy on it?

I guess because it's so abundant here and now. For every picture I find, I can think of plenty of happy memories, but there are always some sad ones mixed in. A picture of my dog recalls how she used to hide under beds when thunder shook the house, or how she used to do her "zambino" act outside (usually near lakes or other bodies of water, though often in the backyard, as the spirit led), or how one time she was so excited to hike with her family that she walked the pads on her feet to ribbons and spent the next few days hobbling around with a perpetual grimace on her furry face. Then I remember that she died and that I'll never hear that familiar jingle in the morning as she prances into the kitchen, collar in tow, looking for her just reward. Then I look at pictures of my best friend when we were out at Yosemite and think about all the marvelous things we saw, and all the time we spent talking about jobs and church and girls and life, and how hard that last hike was up to the waterfall (and yet how it was worth it in the end). Then I think about the fact that he lives across the continent now, and that I'll probably never see him more regularly than the one trip I take out west and the one trip he takes back east each year. Then I look at pictures of girls I used to like and spend time with (I never threw any of those pictures away), and how they made me feel, and all the things I wanted us to do together. Then I remember how they each decided to go their own ways and leave me writing to my blog instead of writing love letters to them.

I guess I don't know what to do with all of that. I'm actually very happy right now, and have been for some time. I have things that I want to do with myself in the next year (teach!) and some leads on accomplishing those things (another interview next Friday!), I have a place to live lined up (in the absolute middle of a walkable/bike-able town), I'll be near my family and my home soon, and I have some more good times to look forward to here in Annapolis before I leave.

Maybe the sadness and the pain, to a man with ultimate Hope and security, are really just good motivation to go out and make things better. Maybe the pain is there to remind me of who I am and where I stand before God, and consequently to remind me of who God is and why I can stand before him at all.

The Art of Creation

2007-04-10T04:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, bumper-to-bumper traffic is impossible for me to like. Sometimes the constant stop-go-stop-go, foisting an inevitable gear-shifting frenzy on my poor old Honda, causes me to lose my cool and start muttering insults at other drivers on the road. Sometimes those muttered insults break through my thin veneer of civility and spill out of my mouth, crashing over my teeth like the sea on a rocky coast.

On the other hand, sometimes traffic helps to remind me to slow down and consider myself and my surroundings. This effect is most pronounced in the early morning, as mornings are when I find myself most cheerful. Traffic takes all the brain-power out of driving, as it reduces the whole operation to a one-to-one relationship between the brake lights of the car in front of my and my own brake pedal.

The simplicity of this situation is what lets me notice the world at large. The highway I drive along is hemmed in by trees on both sides. And after the past week of driving, it has become apparent that most of those trees are bradford pears. These trees have always been the first trees to bloom, no matter where I've lived, and thus my morning drives have all been encrusted with thick white blossoms. During a gust of spring wind, these blossoms stream from limbs and swirl about, eventually settling and gathering into whispering strands that glide over the surface of the world like a mother caressing her infant's delicate features.

This morning, I no longer noticed the blossoms; their time has nearly passed. Instead I spied the first hints of the other trees following along. Like dancing girls sidling up to one another just offstage, the heavy curtain barely containing their desire to burst forth and command attention, I saw faint bits of green permeate the host of dark, skeletal forms. Elusive, they seemed always on the periphery of perception; look any one place and you won't see it, but look everywhere at once and each diminutive bud adds its color to the gathering verdure. In a few weeks their collective presence will be impossible to ignore.

I continued to drive, and noticed the sun climb into view. Low enough to remain below the clouds, it hung blood-red and scarcely bright to the eye; I stared directly into it and felt no pain. Such a sun illuminates the edges of the world, and rather than overpowering fine details, calls attention to them. Clouds that normally would have seemed flat and uniform were fraught with curves and undulations. The tips of branches that make the ends of trees glowed red against a still-dark sky, as if the trees were stretching their twig fingers to hasten the fleeing night. The mist, still pooled in hollows in the forest, took a faint crimson hue as it also fled the coming day.

After parking my car and running through my morning checklist as I walked downstairs to the street, I walked by the gingko trees planted alongside my office building. I love gingkos because the veins in their leaves don't branch like most, and thus the leaves spready out uniformly from the stem, making them look like tiny ornamental fans. The smooth curves of the leaves are in contrast to the trees' branches, which all seem to point at right angles to each other. The interplay between the rigid angles of the trees' bodies and the graceful curves of their leaves makes a beautiful composition, such that neither facet of the trees' design seems out of place, despite its seeming incongruity with its counterpart. These gingko trees were beginning to sprout leaves, which, from a distance, gave them a knobby appearance. Up close, I could see the fine details that would later be present in the full-grown leaves, like the exquisite detail in a newborn child's hand, fully-functional despite its size. And like an infant, the trees were reaching out, stretching after months of stillness.

When I witness these sorts of images, I am reminded both of the importance of art, and of the importance of observation. God designed this morning, and every part of it that I witnessed. He sculpted the clouds, He caused the rains to water the trees, He brought the right combination of temperature and humidity to create the morning mist. He made the sun and the earth the moon, and decided how each would move about the other to keep life moving and developing. He grew each tree I saw from a seed that would have fit in my hand, and He placed each twig and branch exactly as it is and different from any other tree before. As a craftsman, He has no equal.

And yet He also watched this morning He made, watched it from every vantage point imagineable, and still watches from a place above time's current, which rushes me along, allowing me only a glimpse. If I had not noticed the sky or the trees, He would have. If I had not noticed the sun and the moon, He would still have kept them in their places. If I had walked briskly past the gingkos' still forms, He would still have given them their silent gestures. But by noticing, by watching, I can share some part of His ingenuity, His passion.

Not a bad way to spend a morning.

Breaking up

2007-04-09T04:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went to church with my family. The first detail I recall from the service is that everyone was there, including all the extensions (all the Hammacks plus a friend), and the one probable extension-to-be (John's girlfriend). It was neat to see everyone dressed and lined up; we barely fit across the pew. It gives me excitement when I think about all the potential my family has. We have artists, philosophers, theologians, scientists, and businessmen, and everyone in the family wears several of those hats (maybe all of them, even). Our family has grown in the past few years, and it will grow still more in the next few, both by adoption and by birth. My family is pretty tightly-knit; we don't always (or often) agree on everything, but I would go to the mat for any one of us (yes, Keith, you're included in that statement), and I know that sentiment is echoed in others.

So why would I title this post "breaking up?" Because the other thing I recall from the service is that I don't think I'll be able to attend Hershey Free on a regular basis.

A quick history lesson: I grew up in the area, and my family has been attending Hershey Free for as long as I can remember. I can recall bits of images from the church we attended before Hershey, but I'm honestly not sure if those memories are actually mine, or if they're simply composited from things my parents have told me about it. It was small and stagnant, as far as I can tell. If it still exists, it hasn't experienced any appreciable growth in scale, and although size is admittedly a terrible way to judge a church's health, that indicates to me that the church probably isn't doing too well. Hershey, on the other hand, has traditionally been huge. I remember a while there where we had to supply three services on Sunday mornings, just to accommodate everyone who showed up. I went to Sunday school there, I went to youth group there (during my tenure as a sullen teenager), and I've attended the main service sporadically ever since (i.e. when I'm home). I've definitely had some good times in that church, though I've also definitely had some bad ones.

Yesterday, though, I realized how often the service just makes me mad. I know it's a bit cliched to talk about the way Hershey does everything that looks good but has little depth, but I feel like I need to go down that road just one more time. Yesterday, during the Easter service, I spent the first fifteen minutes or so watching the choir sing (without their lyrics projected for the congregation to sing along, or at least follow the words), we sang exactly two hymns during a forty-five minute worship set (one of which was butchered by the recent addition of an ill-conceived "bridge" part that, apart from being in the same musical key, doesn't fit the rest of the song at all, as far as I can tell), there were a bunch of girls dancing on stage (which has always made me uncomfortable), and during the sermon I wasn't once asked to open my Bible (nor do I even remember Pastor Dave quoting from it, though I'm sure a few bits and pieces made it into the sermon). The sermon itself was more of a performance than anything I would even begin to call "teaching."

I know there's an obvious defense of this practice: it's Easter Sunday. This is the one service of the year when random people come to church, and so we need to do whatever it takes to hook them and get them to come a second time. The truth is, there was nothing in the service that would have hooked me. The whole thing had a manufactured air to it, not too foreign from a televangelism spot. I felt like I was watching "Christianity: The Informercial."

Still this doesn't explain my title. The truth is, there are many people at Hershey who love the Lord and go to that church to fall at his feet and worship. They listen to the sermon and get something out of it. They look at the people in the front of sanctuary and they see genuine praise, not the fake plastic people I can't see past. I can't walk through large sections of that church building more than once every few months; it houses far too many ghosts.

I don't think I can stay at Hershey, not because it's categorically a bad church, but because I'm too weak to see past the superficiality, the history, the bad experiences I had as a shy teenager. I do think the church has serious problems: I do think it needs a lot of internal work before it will begin to grow again, and I don't see any evidence of such work being done in any demonstrable way. Thus, I think I'm going to need to find a new church when I move to E-town.

I guess this feels like a break-up because I've been with Hershey for so long. We've had our ups and downs, and I even flirted with another church for a time (that church now holds its own ghosts). The relationship has been safe for a long time, I guess. I know that if I go to church, I won't hear anything particularly challenging, and I can just show up and leave without anyone bothering me. That's easy, but it's not good.

This isn't the kind of thing I want from a romantic relationship (or a friendship, for that matter) either. I don't want a woman who's going to be passive and let me do my own thing. I want a woman who's going to ask me what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, who's going to tell me when she thinks I'm wrong, who's going to read books on her own and come to me with her thoughts. I want a woman who will sharpen me, who will keep me from becoming complacent.

I want the same thing out of my church. I want to go to church and be confronted with thoughts other than my own, thoughts that might hit points I haven't already considered. I want a pastor who knows things that I don't know, and who tells me about those things regularly. I want a worship pastor who focuses on content rather than expression, who isn't afraid to sing a song written three-hundred years ago without adding electric guitars and a mambo rhythm. I want my church to sharpen me, not lull me to sleep for an hour every Sunday morning.

I want this because I'm too weak to do it on my own.

I don't think I am sinning in leaving Hershey Free. I never committed to this church in the first place, we've simply been "going steady" for a long time. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to marry that person you've been with for so long, but sometimes the right thing to do is to finally let that easy relationship go, and begin searching for the one that draws you out and shapes you into something more, for the woman who understands your weaknesses yet loves and supports you anyway.

A relationship with a church (or with a woman) should be dangerous, because it should force people to look critically at themselves and make difficult changes. These relationships buoy latent problems to the surface, and they refine us like gold passing through a fire. Lewis put it well in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when he speaks about Aslan through the mouth of Mr. Beaver: "Safe? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."

Our relationships should not be safe, I think. They should be good.

Update

2007-04-06T17:43:00.000-07:00

So I think the interview and practice lesson went pretty well. I'm generally pretty terrible at judging what other people think of me (especially women), so I honestly have little clue what they were thinking in terms of hiring me as a teacher. I don't think I made any major errors, either in comportment or in performance, so I don't think they hated me. That means that if I don't get the job, it'll probably be because they just had someone else who was a better candidate. I can live with that, but I would have been frustrated if I had been eliminated just because I made some stupid error. I can honestly say that I would like the job, though; that's definitely the kind of environment I'd like to work in.

It's in God's hands, now.

In other news, I don't have too much to say. However, I've been informed by my family that the spur-of-the-moment picture I put up on my main page is "goofy" and "a bad picture." I just shot myself in the face with my digital camera, and as far as I'm concerned, the picture looks like me. However, I'll give you all a few other pictures to look at. You tell me if any of these would work better (they're from a "series...")

This one prominently features the camera, so you know it's a self-portrait. You can tell from my hair that I either just woke up, or that it's a Saturday or holiday (or both!). Most Saturdays, I look like this until early afternoon. Sometimes later.

This one was taken just a few minutes later. Clearly, I'm pondering the loss of facial hair I seem to have just experienced. I think this one shows off my pensive, self-reflective side pretty well.

This one really steps up the awesome-quotient. This one, taken just an additional few minutes later, demonstrates my ability to be truly amazing. I guess there's a little bit of Sonny Crocket in there (the Michael Mann version, not the 70's version, courtesy of Don Johnson). This one's pretty tough to beat. And yet...

I'm pretty sure we have a winner. This one was taken about 9 months after the other three. You can tell I learned a lot during that time period. A lot.

I was going to let you all vote, but I'm pretty sure I know what you all would have voted for.

Frankly, there's only one choice.

Miscellanea

2007-04-04T05:22:00.000-07:00

My commute was less than ideal this morning. I will start this post with a short rant about bad drivers. Feel free to skip to the "Ok, I'm done with my rant now" part, if you don't want to hear me let loose.

I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Maryland drivers suck in inclement weather. In sunshine, they're not too bad, though they tend toward the city-driving "cut people off for fun" mentality. However, throw a little water their way, in any of its forms, and a generally-uniform populace immediately divides itself into two warring factions: the turtles and the hares.

The first category follows a thought process something like this: "Oh no! Water is hitting my car! I should go ten miles per hour, so as to avoid getting hit as much as possible!" This reaction is not smooth. Rain begins to fall, and suddenly everyone is slamming on his brakes and searching his surroundings wild-eyed for signs of oncoming threats. It's as if the reduced visibility suddenly opens the possibility that the road on which we're all driving might suddenly end in a cliff ten feet down the road, even though two minutes prior, and every day for the past year, we've all seen that the road is, in fact, present and accounted for. I can understand slowing down just a bit; that's wise and safe. But slamming on the brakes to cut more than half of your vehicle's speed in the space of ten seconds is reactionary and boneheaded. These people usually drive semi-ridiculous to ridiculous SUVs, which, ironically, are really the only vehicles with the proper weight and stance to drive in this environment at full speed.

The second category follows a thought process something like this: "What, rain? Who's afraid of a little rain? You guys are all wimps. I can still drive the speed limit. In fact, I can drive over the speed limit, since my cat-like refle-" This thought is not usually finished, since this is the point at which said driver's car hydroplanes off the highway and skids to a halt in the middle of the median (which is, thankfully, grassy in most places). Said driver will then undoubtedly get out of his car and stare at it, dumbfoundedly, wondering what in the world could have caused him to lose control like that. It's called water, buddy. 80% of the Earth is covered by it. This kind of driver is usually sporting a BMW 3-series, usually sporting summer racing tires (which are about as useful as skis when the roadway is not completely dry), and has probably neglected to take the "Carmax" sticker off the back.

My question is, why can't people be halfway intelligent and just ease off the gas a bit? The highways in Maryland are all properly graded, so that water rarely, if ever, pools up on the road surface. Forty-five or fifty miles per hours is perfectly reasonable under these conditions. Doing twenty is only less dangerous than doing eighty because the accidents involved are rarely as that destructive.

Ok, I'm done with my rant now.

In other news, I'm getting a little bit nervous about my interview tomorrow. I wasn't given very specific conditions regarding the practice lesson I'm to give, and I'm worried that my lesson will either go way over their heads, or bore them to tears. I thought about planning a few lessons and giving them the decision (i.e. Who's up for airplane physics? Ok, who wants Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity?). I may end up doing this, just to see how it works.

I guess the problem, which I've bemoaned many times in the past, is that I have too many interests to pick just one. I love math. I love science. I love literature. I love theology, philosophy, and even history (which I've traditionally not cared for). So when I'm tasked with teaching a class, and I'm told to teach on anything I want to, as long as it's aimed at above-average 8th or 9th graders, I have trouble narrowing this to something as specific as "polynomial division" or "vector operations" or "the historical implications of the Magna Carta." This problem is exacerbated by my lack of information regarding their recent studies, as well as their level of competence (i.e. I'm sure they're above average here, but I honestly have no recollection of what I could do when I was an above-average 8th or 9th grader). It's difficult to focus on any one thing long enough to teach it, especially when I don't know if it'll actually fly in the classroom.

At the same time, I'm confident that I'll either get the job or not get it. Obvious, I know, but what I mean is that I'm confident the outcome will be as it should. This is because having the "God's Sovereignty" card in my hand eases up a lot of stress that other people face on a regular basis. I don't really have to worry that I'm going to end up failing completely, simply because God probably won't let me. And if He does, it will only be because that's what's best for me at this point in my life. Win-win, pretty much.

Still, day-to-day anxiety troubles me sometimes. I get to thinking that if I really trusted God as I claim to, then I wouldn't feel even the smallest bit of anxiety. I feel like I've known people who fit this model, and though I don't remember any who were only twenty-four-going-on-twenty-five, I'm quite certain there are people with that much faith (and actually, I can think of one). Sometimes it makes me wonder if all of these little bits of anxiety are just the ends of long tendrils that extend to a core of unbelief that resides much, much deeper than I realize. I wonder if these little anxiety attacks are like finding a twig sticking out of the ground in the middle of the backyard, that, when pulled, turns out to be just the tip of one root of a massive tree a hundred feet away.

This leads me to wonder about spiritual growth. This is one of those things that's really hard for me to talk about using any kind of specifics. When I look at who I was, say, five years ago, I can point to substantial differences in the way I think and act. I imagine my parents would agree with that statement, and probably make mention of things I would miss. The thing is, I'm not sure how much of this change is spiritual, and how much of it is just that I used to be younger and more naive. I can point out that I used to hate calling people I didn't know, and that now it doesn't really bother me. I used to feel this crushing sense of inferiority whenever I met new people, now, frequently, I'm the one calling the shots. I could give some other examples, but I think the point is clear.

How much of this change is due to God, though? Or at least, how much of it is due to me being more in tune with God's plan for my life? Is it possible that I'm just a bit more confident, thanks to the fact that I realized I'm as smart or smarter than most people I meet, and that what other people think is usually founded on the same limited knowledge that I have about any given topic? I've spent time in my life praying for growth and understanding, but I've also lived long stretches without such prayers. It's hard to separate the true growth from the parlor tricks.

Then again, maybe it's just not something I should worry about. Maybe me worrying about it is a sign both that true growth is there, and a that I still have a long way to go.

That sounds about right.

Some scattered memories

2007-04-01T13:53:00.000-07:00

So I have a growing collection of pictures on my computer, and I've decided to be less selfish than the norm, and thus share them with the world. You'll immediately see that I'm not the greatest photographer in the world, but hopefully you'll get a sense of why I've taken the ones I've taken. I tend to take pictures of a lot of things, but I also tend to delete them as I go. The images here are further sifted thanks to my inability to upload five hundred pictures into one blog post.

The idea here is just that I'm going to upload pictures I like, and talk about them a bit. I don't know where this will lead. Here we go.

This is a picture of my best friend in front of an overturned sequoia (you're looking at its exposed root system). The tree fell down something like two hundred years ago, so I can only imagine how many roots it had back in the day. It has a name; I've forgotten it. This was taken last summer when I went to visit Aaron out in San Francisco. We drove a few hours to check out Yosemite National Park, which I have several hundred pictures from (many of which were taken by Aaron, who is a better photographer and has a better camera).

Apparently, sequoias, for as tall as they are, only have roots that go down some three or four feet into the ground (if you don't know, that's amazingly shallow; many trees have as much going on below-ground as they do above it). Thus, strong windstorms are actually quite hazardous to their survival. There are some obvious spiritual parallels about foundations and being grounded the the gospel. Frankly, they're too obvious even for me to point out. :)

This was taken our second morning out at Yosemite. We drove to this overlook, and spent most of the rest of the day hiking down into the valley, which was way, way down. I don't think we made it all the way across to either of those waterfalls, though we did see another one on our way. We only hiked something like twelve miles total, but it was all up-and-down, all the way (and most of the up- came on the way back).

Scenes like this evoke some pretty intense emotions in me. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I usually have this feeling of, I don't know, excitement? Amazement? I guess those are pretty obvious descriptions, and they don't really do the feeling justice. It's similar to the feeling I get when I read a piece of good fantasy: I can feel the creativity and it makes me want to get up and jump up and down, which I frequently end up doing when no one else is around. When I see a place like what's in this picture, though, I have this perception of glorious, perfect creativity, the sort of thing that's hinted at by Lewis but not fully captured (and he's probably the best example I've ever come across). To think that these mountains, trees, rivers, waterfalls, and animals are all things that God designed down to the most minute detail is something that literally takes my breath away. When I think about me being a member of the pinnacle of this entire creation, the magnitude of my position begins to hit home.

This is a bad picture of a waterfall that Aaron and I are perched on top of. The waterfall itself was pretty impressive, and Aaron's only about five feet from certain death, though that's kind of hard to see in this photo. Aaron has a strangely un-smiling visage here; I think I caught him off-guard.

I picked this one because it recalls one recurring theme of this trip (which my next photo will further support): I need my friends more than I generally think or admit I do. As I said a minute ago, Aaron's sitting about five feet from the edge, which is about four and a half feet farther than I was a minute before this picture was taken. Aaron's good at telling me when I'm doing something stupid, which ended up happening a lot during this trip. He would say things like "Dave, you're seriously about to die," as I would be climbing over a barricade (clearly set up to keep people like me from doing what I was totally doing) so that I could see all the pointy rocks jutting up at me out of the river hundreds of feet below. When he would say things like this, I'd have to stop and ask if he was right. I would usually conclude that, yes, his assessment of my imminent doom was appropriate, and that I should therefore return to the civilized path I had strayed from.

Here's another good example of Aaron saving my life. This picture was taken about twenty feet from this bear. Before I took this picture, he had been happily tearing a log to shreds. I'll say that again: he was tearing a log to shreds. With his bear hands (ha!). Said log was not one of those that's completely rotted through. No, this was a log. The sturdy kind. The kind you build houses with. In order to get this animal to turn around and mug for the camera, I made some semi-loud noises, some of which were akin to growling. Now, I don't speak "bear," but from his reaction, I'd say I might well have insulted his bear mother, or perhaps called a bear curse down upon him and his brood. Whatever I actually said, I definitely initiated a staring contest, which lasted a good ten seconds or more. Apparently, I was small and puny enough that Mr. Bear decided to let my insults ride.

This is another example in which I probably would have been even more ridiculous had my best friend not stepped up and told me I was doing something stupid. I don't remember his exact words, but they were something like "Uh, Dave? That's a bear." Once again, I was reminded of what I really should have known, but was too stubborn and stupid to realize: I was in danger.

I think this is why the Church exists, and not just a whole bunch of Christians. I've been realizing, of late, that I'm very much a lone wolf when it comes to my faith. I've filled out a couple of applications to work at Christian schools, and they always ask what church I go to, and the pastor's phone number. I dutifully provide these, but the truth is, none of the head pastors from any of the churches I've ever attended would know who I am by my name, and probably only a few of them would recognize me by sight. None of them would be able to say anything about me except that I seem like a decent guy, even though I wear dark sunglasses a lot. Pastor Dave probably knows my name, but that's only because my dad always speaks up at congregational meetings, and because he lives right down the street from us. Part of this is because I've moved around a lot, but part of this is because I just don't talk to people at church all that much. I've been thinking about this lately, and I've decided I should probably take a different route the next place I end up, especially since it will hopefully be the last move I make for a while. It scares me a bit, but I think I need to let go of that kind of lone-wolf pride I've generally held on to.

This was shot about halfway to the bottom of that valley you can see in that picture up above (the second one). This is a few hundred yards from the top of a waterfall that descends the rest of the way to the valley floor. Unfortunately, there wasn't a good place to take pictures of the waterfall itself. And although the current was amazingly tempestuous just before the fall, that didn't really translate in still photos. Instead, I took a bunch of pictures of water running over rocks. Luckily, it was sunny enough that my camera could go with a pretty quick shutter speed, which is the only reason why this picture doesn't look entirely like a blurry mess.

I think water is beautiful. You can't see too well in this picture (especially if you can't zoom in) but there are a host of water droplets suspended in midair over the mess below. I like the mental image I get from this (as my memory is more vivid than these pics, as it has my imagination for company), as it makes the river seem like billions of tiny pieces rather than one enormous whole. Also, it shows the power of small things in large quantities. I'll let you think about that one on your own.

I like this one for two reasons. First, the waterfall itself was amazing. This picture was taken from quite a ways away (five hundred yards?), and though I have a few zoomed-in details, this is one is the best I have of the whole thing. The second reason I like this is that it took us hours of climbing to get here. We walked about a half-mile from our car to the base of the trail, and then started climbing. The path was (luckily) cut into switchbacks, each of which was about a hundred feet long, and was inclined anywhere from thirty to forty-five degree (at times it was like walking up steps, except they were uneven and if you slipped you paid in blood). Thanks to the foliage, we really couldn't tell how many there were before the path leveled out. We could see a good three or four ahead of us, but that's about it. As it turns out, that was really very lucky, since if I had known there were forty-two, I probably would have given up.

And giving up would have been a real shame, since this is what was waiting for us. It turned out to be one of those experiences that was really quite unpleasant all along (it made me realize that "skinny" does not equal "in shape"), but when we finally got where we were headed, the troubles just sort of sloughed off like so much dead skin. We rounded the last corner, and the sight took my breath away in a way the journey couldn't.

I think this is why a lot of the time God doesn't tell me how tough things are going to be. I don't know what the rest of my life holds, but certainly a lot of it could be painful. All of it could be painful, and I still wouldn't have nearly the hardest life I could point to (just look at the apostles if you need a place to start). The truth is, if I knew about the troubles I would face going into decisions, I'd probably chicken out even more than I generally do (several female faces immediately pop into my head). If I'd known how much trouble Christianity was going to cause me just between the time I went for it and where I am now, I might not have made the decision I made. That's why I'm so lucky that God only shows me the next step instead of all of them, even though I grumble and whine about the future on a regular basis. I'm lucky God has a better handle on me than I do.

Last one for now. This one I'm honestly a little proud of. It's not all that good, I know, but I think I did a decent job with the framing, and there was just enough light that my camera didn't go too crazy boosting the ISO numbers, as it generally does in dark scenes. Also, I managed to actually hold the camera steady enough to get that little crescent of a moon to actually keep its shape.

This was taken the first night we made it up to the park. We arrived not long before sundown, and thus just drove around to get the lay of the land. There were plenty of good scenes just that first night, and when we pulled up to a scenic overlook to find this one, I had that feeling of excitement in full force for the first time. The sun was going down, but it was just the beginning of our time in this place.

It was just a hint, just a taste of what was coming. It was intense and satisfying on its own, but its real power lay in pointing to what was to come.

Changes

2007-03-29T05:36:00.000-07:00

So I was home last weekend, as the dedicated reader will remember from my recent update, and I saw the place we have over in Elizabethtown. It's right on the square, it's old, and I think it could become something interesting and exciting if we put enough effort into it. Right now, I'm planning on living in one of the apartments upstairs, and I have to admit I'm getting excited about that. I've been away from home for a number of years now, and I'm ready to be back.

Don't get me wrong: Annapolis has been good to me (certainly better than crappy Hyattsville ever was), and there are a lot of people here that I'll miss. I'm already planning on making semi-regular visits back here (and I take this moment extend a pre-emptive invitiation for people to come visit; there's a lot of guest-space in the Kearns family real estate holdings at the moment), and I fully intend to keep in touch. Of course, everyone knows I'm terrible at this, but at least my intentions are there.

Every time I have to drive back here, though, it gets a little harder. I always tell myself I'm going to leave right after dinner, and I don't think I've ever left before 8 PM (sometimes much, much later). When I show up at Market Street, for a split second I consider pulling away from the curb and driving all the way back to Hershey.

It's not that I hate my life here, it's that I love my life there. I guess this is a good life example of a healthy interest in the next life.

During some of the darker points in my life, I've frequently found myself yearning that it would all just be over. I'd think about the mess I was in, about all the drudgery and complications that seemed to hem and mire my every move, and I'd think about a world where those issues simply didn't exist. This desire for heaven, though not entirely unfounded, is what I'd call "unhealthy" (or at least pretty questionable).

Leaving this for the good example, I can look forward to the next life, not because this one is completely rotten, but because the next one is so much better. I can think about the things I love to do, and imagine doing them without any pointless restrictions or harrowing difficulties. I can think about the beautiful simplicity of a life without sin and turmoil, and I want to be there. I can look at the (very real) beauty all around me now, and let that excite me for a place that's still more full than this. A subtle difference maybe, and probably badly articulated, but I think it's substantial. I guess it's a "glass-half-full" approach, to use a tired cliche.

I guess the difference is that one is motivated by hatred for a current situation, while the other is motivated by love for what's to come.

In the case of moving to E-town, I'm excited at the prospect of finding a job I love (interview with CCA on Thursday. Pray! I want the job and I need the help!), finding the church God has for me, and settling down and finally making some use of what God has given me. I love that I won't have to move every year or two, that I won't have to drive two hours to see my family, and that I can be a part of what's going on there, instead of being the one guy who doesn't live in town.

Plus, as of July, I'll have a little niece or nephew to spoil rotten. That'll be new.

The Importance of Speaking without Talking

2007-03-28T05:18:00.000-07:00

I have certain music habits that probably annoy other people. I tend to have, at any one time, a few albums that I listen to ad nauseum. This does not nauseate me, but I imagine my roommates quickly tire of it. I know this is not the way most of my friends listen to music (Aaron and Jamin, we just do this differently. Sorry). I can't handle ten different albums at once. It's an offshoot of the problems I have with multi-tasking; I feel too divided, and I can't focus on any one thing long enough to do it well. This doesn't translate exactly, I know, since one doesn't really "do" a CD so much as absorb it, but you get the idea. I like the absorbing process.

A good album has all sorts of different layers, and the listener truly needs to spend time with the music in order to experience them. For the most appreciation, one needs to consider the music (which has many layers by itself), the lyrics (if applicable), anomalies in both, and the tension between them. What I mean by the first two should be obvious, and what I'm referring to as "anomalies" are the parts where the natural progression of the song encounters a discontinuity of some sort (i.e. an off-beat crash, a change in rhyme scheme, etc.). What I mean by "tension" is the way the music and the lyrics interact to produce an effect that is different from either part on its own.

A crass example of this last point might be Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side," as the song is up-tempo and happy on the musical front, while the lyrics to the second verse are, verbatim, "Always look on the bright side of death / Just before you draw your terminal breath... ." The tension here is between the grim subject matter (it gets worse in the song, as I recall) and the goofy, happy presentation. If the lyrics were sung in a dry, somber manner, the song might seem heavy-handed or overly pensive. If the lyrics were bright and airy, the song would be entirely fluff. As it stands, the juxtaposition of happy music and a recognition of death and loss gives the song a different feel than could have been achieved by keeping things uniform.

Now, while it might seem like I'm rambling, all of this does have a point. One of my current "listening to" albums is Snow Patrol's Eyes Open. The album is solid; there's only one track I don't particularly like (and I don't dislike it enough to skip it), and the album as a whole has a good flow to it. Recently, though, I've been unsure if it's a concept album, or if every song just happens to be about broken relationships. I haven't spent enough time reading through the lyrics to make a ruling one way or the other. If it is, then I think it's about a relationship that breaks and then finds resolution (though I'm still not sure what the resolution is). Regardless, the album builds well, and has enough variation in sound and word to tell a story.

The title for this post comes from my interpretation of the penultimate track, "Open your Eyes." Initially, the lyrics and music are decent, if a little generic. Of those lyrics, the important lines are "I want so much to open your eyes / 'cause I need you to look into mine." The song builds, with a bit of repetition, until it reaches its climax, in which the vocals drop out. The music hits with a serious amount of punch, and a string section is added to the fray. The effect, on me at least, is sublime: there's this sudden burst of sound and energy, with this sweeping orchestral backdrop, and all I can think about is jumping off a cliff or flying or running through the rain. What's going on in the song, though, is that the two people are finally looking at and truly seeing each other. All of that motion and energy is locked within the gaze of these two people, so that none of it is betrayed outwardly.

What I love about this image is that there are no words involved. It's a moment that's beyond words, such that an attempt to add them would almost certainly fall flat. The moment is amazing because it communicates so clearly what's happening, and yet says nothing explicitly.

I've recently been thinking about my own communication style. In a statement that will shock no one, I've come to the conclusion that I use far too many words far too much of the time. Furthermore, I frequently speak before I've completely made up my mind on a topic (hard to believe, I know, but true!), though that's really a different issue. The issue is communication and understanding, and when I have trouble getting through to someone, I tend to just use more words. This has -- how should I put it -- "not worked," on occasion. However, I feel like I'm generally just not nuanced enough (or frequently, taken seriously enough) to make silent communication work in most cases (just take a look at this blog, and its predecessor). For that kind of communication, I think both parties need to be honestly trying, something I'm frequently not so good at.

This idea of wordless communication extends into other art I like. I love Hemingway for exactly this reason. The first two-thirds of any of his books are generally pretty good, but his endings are always spectacular. I'm not sure how he does it, though, because his style is homogenous to a fault; he uses nothing but simple declarative sentences and rarely even varies their lengths. And yet somehow, he puts these undercurrents into his writing, such that you know what his characters are thinking and feeling without being told. He's an extreme example of a writer showing and not telling, and this technique produces stunning effects.

We also see this in the Bible. One of my favorite Jesus-related stories is the one in which a mob brings an adulteress to Jesus to hear his verdict. Of course, they're trying to trap Him, and of course, they fail. What I like, though, is his reaction; He begins drawing on the ground, and says nothing. When pressed, He gives His famous "let he who is without sin" answer. I've always wondered what He was drawing, so that such a simple answer would convince the entire mob. I can see them all standing around the woman, breathing fire and brimstone, slowly losing their gumption, eventually slipping away one at a time. Jesus gave no direct command, yet His will was made known with perfect clarity.

I can think of other examples, notably the passage in Till We have Faces where Orual is answered by the gods with nothing but silence, or the part at the end of June Bug where the main character helps the poor woman who lost her baby simply by sitting next to her, silently. In both cases, there's a force, a presence that silence provides that's more efficacious than any words would be.

I like that.

Hi... Atus

2007-03-27T05:06:00.000-07:00

...And a hearty hello to all the rest of you. I took a nice little break from blogging, which I'm going to chalk up to my decision to move my blog here. My primary reason is that xanga doesn't allow anonymous commenting, and I get a kick out of hearing what people think. Thus, people should now be able to comment to their hearts' content.

Some of you may remember my old blogspot account, which never really took off (and can be viewed here). That blog was never supposed to be a personal one, as it was mainly focused on film discussions. I only ended up writing a few, and though I may attempt to revitalize it at some point, I may just work that sort of thing into my general blogging (as I've done of late). That way I might avoid trying to mete out my thoughts into different boxes. I hate pigeon-holing, except maybe when it involves putting actual holes in actual pigeons. That could be fun, though I don't think they'd make very good eatin'.

I'm excited to be writing again.b An empty blog is like a blank page; it begs to be made into something more, to be given character. So I guess I'll open this blog with a little update, since I'm sure so many of you are clamoring to know the ins and outs of my illustrious life.

In the week since my last post, I worked a few days, spent a few days at home, mailed a job application, was requested for an interview (not for the same application), played an awful lot of Ghost Recon with Dan and Keith, played still more Castlevania by myself, spent a few hours talking to Dad about The Future, went and saw 300 a third time, watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica, had a long and mildly-heated discussion about said finale (bangin' episode, by the way), spent some time poking around at the future site of the Kearns' family coffeehouse (and possibly my next abode), read forty-two pages of Girl Meets God (I'd recommend it, Ms. Winner's a fine writer), read a bit of Gilbert's history of World War II, read an article on Regina Spektor (still hot!), went to church and immediately forgot the sermon (Pastor Dave: please let me use my brain; Pastor Bob: please do more hymns and don't mess with them when you do), read a chunk of the Bible (I'm in Isaiah), and slept not as regularly as I should have.

Consider yourselves updated.

As a side note, you'll notice I actually titled this post. Moving forward, I'm going to try to do so, at least when the practice adds something to the post (translation: I'll add titles only when I come up with something witty and/or poignant).

That's all for now. I have several topics I intend to write about in the near future, so stay tuned. And as always, please feel free to tell me what you think.