The Resting Rock

plants

2011-08-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

I've been trying my hand at houseplants this year. The first attempt was about a year ago, with two plants from the supermarket. I just used topsoil from the garden and they dried up while I was gone over Christmas.

This spring I tried again with some cuttings from neighbors, wild English ivy, and a couple of orchids. I've had mixed success. I could imagine that growing plants is like raising children. It takes a lot of attention and care and you have to be paying attention and know when to prune or discipline, but there's also a lot of waiting and being patient and realizing that there is nothing I can do. I just have to wait.

It's a lot of fun, though, to watch a plant really take off. My little spider plant just sent out a little spiderette!

hanging out

2011-02-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

I'm not very good at "hanging out." I kind of prefer a set agenda, or at least a pretense for coming over. Definitely prescheduled, too.

It might have to do with growing up living so far away from other kids my age. We usually had to make plans beforehand and then we would ride home on the bus together.

In high school, one of my friends who had moved to our rural area from a larger city invited me over. We walked over to her house in town and got a snack, watched some tv, lounged in her room. It was so unusual! We weren't "doing" anything. We didn't have a plan. We weren't going to study together. It wasn't a sleepover. I felt like what we were doing had no purpose. Years later I realized what we were doing. It was "hanging out". And I had never experienced it before.

And I still lack the social ability to casually hang out. I want to have an idea, like making cookies together, or watching a tv show together, or going for a walk. Part of this is that I like creating memories and tend to measure quality time by joint experiences. However, it's also because unscheduled together time can be boring and uncomfortable for me. And how can I know if the other person is having a good time or not? I fear that people initially may find me interesting but later become bored with me.

I highly value being able to spend unstructured time with people, and I have experienced it in my life. But it's not natural for me.

So if anyone wants to help me practice, I've got some beer in the fridge.

bacon and burning fields. And chocolate.

2011-02-23T10:19:00.000-08:00

I recently lowered my life age expectation by making and ingesting several "chocolate bacon cupcakes." Very delicious. Amazingly, you can put chocolate and bacon together and it forms yummy flavors. It's not just a joke.

Some farmers in the fall will burn the stubble in their fields or the grass growing along the road in the ditches. It can help prepare the field for spring planting and also prevent snow buildup from blowing across the roads. Burning fields have a distinct smell, a very good smell, actually. My high school's senior class survey consistently listed "burning fields" as a favorite smell.

Driving along these fields one fall, my brother took a deep inhale and said "That smells so good. If they could make perfume out of burning fields for women, guys would be all over them. Also bacon perfume."

Someone should probably inform Bath and Body Works of this.

Be kind to the missionaries

2011-02-19T09:44:00.000-08:00

I was at my alma mater a few weeks ago, visiting some friends. On Sunday I ended up running into a lot of people I knew from college, and most of them knew that I had been in Mexico for a few years. But it seemed that most didn't know I was back in the States permanently. [I actually ran into the converse of this when I was preparing to leave Mexico. I told my friends there I was going back to the US and they thought it was just a trip or vacation.] Perhaps I was a bit sensitive, and definitely people were busy trying to get to where they needed to be on Sunday morning, but I have noticed that we feel uncomfortable around people who have done long-term missions work. I think that most people don't know how to interact with them.

This is unfortunate. Probably most of us don't have corresponding experiences to be able to really understand what it's like to live cross-culturally and all the highs and lows that come from that. I think that a lot of Christians have a skewed view of missionaries - that they have a particular calling on their life, are more spiritual, trust God more, they know what their life purpose is. This isn't necessarily true.

I definitely was a "missionary" for two years in Mexico; I went with a Missions organization, I raised support, the organization engaged in specific Christian evangelistic work. Honestly, though, I moved to Mexico because I wanted to live in a Christian community, because I wanted cross-cultural experience, because I wanted to learn Spanish, because I didn't want to jump into the rat race, because I wanted to learn to trust God. I didn't feel a call, I didn't experience a burning need to tell people about Jesus. Honestly, I never wanted to be a "missionary." I think that a better definition of my time was simply that I was living in Mexico.

So from my experience, missionaries who are back visiting in the US experience awkward situations. Others know that they have this different life experience that they may or may not identify with. But a big aspect of it is, I think, that for the most part missionaries rely on the donations of others. Raising support was one of my biggest challenges while in Mexico. I don't like asking for money; I felt uncomfortable when someone said they wanted to support me but then nothing came of that; it was difficult feeling like support only came a few specific people; I imagined that others saw me as being nice or writing update letters just to let them know that I needed money.

Yet, I learned to be more generous with my own money as people were generous towards me. I tried to trust God for providing for me through other people. I wanted to be faithful with the work that I was doing and a good steward of my resources.

It is hard to keep up with all the acquaintances we have in life, if they're in another country or moving to a new location. And I'm sure people feel odd when they know someone who is either directly or indirectly asking for money or support. I wish that we didn't have to feel that though. Living cross-culturally can be stressful, including returning to your native country. Raising support can be a constant struggle.

One other thought about missionaries is update letters. We were required to send out update letters at least quarterly, and I receive some weekly updates from missionary friends. I struggled with writing a good update letter for a wide audience that accurately portrayed my life and experiences. I didn't want to feign joy (with all of those exclamation points!) or seem disproportionally depressed, (even if I was struggling with things). How to honestly express my experiences? I think that this another area that is difficult for missionaries, to give such frequent reports or updates of their life.

So people become missionaries for a lot of different reasons and there are many different philosophies of what a missionary can or should do. But from my experience, they really are regular folk trying to straddle two cultures, with a lot of demands or expectations placed on them. My guess is that they feel as awkward as you do when you see them there on Sunday morning.

Abbi Valentine

2011-02-13T16:25:00.000-08:00

My cousin has a band called Upsidedown Cat. She recently made this fun music video for the song "Abbi Valentine." Since tomorrow is el día de amistad y de amor, I'm posting it so that you can enjoy it.

Abbi Valentine official music video from Laura Cat on Vimeo.

happy groundhog day

2011-02-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Groundhog Day...again.

Cute little breakfast

2011-01-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

When I was a child we had a high chair that you could disassemble into a table and chair. To create the high chair, you set the table on it's side and put the child-sized chair on top. It was easy to put together and take apart.

One day I decide that I was going to make myself a little breakfast. I didn't think of as being "my size" or "child-sized." Thinking back, I didn't conceptualize myself as being short. I was my height, which wasn't relative to the adults around me. I was just the right size, and the table and chair were "little." They were "cute."

So I set up the little table and the little chair. I got a small baby spoon and a small bowl. I poured myself some cereal and got out the little container of milk from the fridge. I had everything set up, sitting by the doorway into the kitchen. I was so proud of putting all of these cute little things together.

I took a bite of cereal. I think at first I was confused. It tasted bad. Really bad. My eyes filled with tears. Mom saw me and pointed out what was wrong. The little carton of milk was buttermilk, and it doesn't taste good on cereal.

We had rules that we had to eat all of our food, and I was sad thinking of finishing the bad-tasting cereal. But my mom was gracious; she let me pour a new bowl of cereal. I had to use the big carton of milk, though, and it sort of ruined my cute little breakfast

Middlemarch

2011-01-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

I recently finished the book Middlemarch by George Eliot. I've rarely read such a powerful character-driven novel. Centered around the town of Middlemarch in England, the book looks at the intertwining lives of various people. Plots are there, but they're more devices for us to look into the lives of the people involved. It's about ordinary people, where life pretty much goes on day by day and character is developed by small, daily choices. Marriage isn't the perfect ending that it is in Austen's work; the end towards which the whole book moves. In fact, in Middlemarch we start with a marriage between Dorothea and the middle-aged Casaubon and see how Dorothea's young idealistic hopes of being able to help her husband in his study are crippled by his distrust of himself and, consequently, those around him. Marriage isn't a place to end, but a place to begin.

Having breakfast with my dad recently we talked about books. He'd just finished The Fountainhead by Rand and described the protagonist an Individual - someone who makes their own choices and nobody can unduly influence him. He's his own man, strong jaw, decides for himself. Eliot tried to do the opposite here - nobody is on their own and the choices we make affect others. We are tied to others and at times confined by how our actions will touch upon them. Character matters, and character flaws don't go away as time goes on. At the end of the book I wondered how she would "tie it all up," as it wasn't a puzzle that was just missing a last piece and then it would all make sense. Character is more like a woven sweater and the flaws or missteps have to be corrected. And that takes work.

Eliot also has a genius for description and turns of phrases. Prosperity can be a "pale shade of bribery." The question "why?" is an "inconvenient word." Casaubon distrusted his wife, and "what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?" And if we could know what everyone around us was really going through "we should die of the roar that lies on the other side of silence."

It was simply marvelous to read.

2010-12-26T13:14:00.000-08:00

We were listening to music in my brother's car, driving in to celebrate Christmas with my Grandpa.

My brother asks, "If 80 seconds make up a minute, 40 minutes make up an hour, and 20 hours make up a day, how long would that day be?"

A few seconds later his fiance replies "64,000 seconds."

Another story

2010-12-23T12:53:00.000-08:00

Henry Anderson was a stocky sort of boy. He liked to explore the forests surrounding his village. His friends, especially Timothy, his best friend, had him do daring things, such as steal pies from windows.

One day, though, Timothy was very onry. He and Henry had gotten caught stealing pies. Normally, this wouldn’t have bothered Timothy, but Henry had babbled that it was all Timothy’s fault, and Tim had to chop wood for the widow for a week, instead of just the normal beating.

This is the beginning of a story I wrote when I was 11 years old. I think it was supposed to be about Henry, who grows up to be a dreadful tyrant, and his first wife Meghan, who is banished to the woods and takes in other's forsaken children. I didn't finish it.

My favorite Disney princess was Cinderella

2010-12-23T12:40:00.001-08:00

I have been going through some of my old notebooks and binders. When I was in high school I very carefully went through everything and meticulously organized it, saving everything. I had saved just about every letter I received from the time I first really started having pen pals, in third grade. I saved all of my stories, everything I wrote, notes from friends, pictures my little sister drew for me. Now I'm trying to get rid of it.

It feels a little like betraying my 10-year-old self, as I throw away letters I kept for years. But I think it will be okay to get rid of them. I just finished copying into the computer the first chapter to an American Girl-esque story that I had written. It's heart-rending! The first, and only, chapter I wrote is about Amanda's family moving to San Diego and her tearful goodbye from her best friend Lexy. They "hug as if they would never let go" and talk of writing and visiting. At the end Lexy waves until the car is out of sight and then runs home to burst out crying.

And that's the end of the story. I was always drawn to the meloncholy; don't know why. I wanted to be Cinderella, the poor orphan whom everybody overlooks. Maybe she'll find her prince, but the point is that she's so pitiful. I feel a little incredulous at my childhood self. Why would I be drawn to a story like that? Why would I write about the wrenching goodbye of childhood friends? It wasn't my personal experience. It was a romantic (in the literary sense) vision for me, conjuring up a so-sweet longing inside.

Mostly it's interesting to remember things, especially some of my personal thoughts from high school. I notice things that I still deal with, such as trouble falling asleep at night, difficulty understanding my friendships, and too much pride in my school work.

Another thing that I remember, reading through my life, is that I never felt like a child the way that I sometimes think about children today. I never thought, at 10 years old, or 15, that I was acting like a kid or needed to grow up. My problems were fully real to me, and I felt fully alive. I don't know if that makes sense. I guess I remember that I always felt like I was right at the tip of my existence, like the head of a comet, with the tail of my days and years continually stretching out behind me. Now I find that I need to rediscover that childlike joy and ability to be fully present where I was.

dinner

2010-12-23T10:39:00.000-08:00

Last night I had dinner with my parents and my two foster brothers. I had gotten in on the train in the morning and was just meeting the little six-year-old for the first time. I was enjoying supper; there were potatoes and sausage and fun conversation. Mom was going to pour some milk and my little foster brother wanted some, but then exclaimed to my her:

"Hey! You've got my glass!" His mug said "Army brother." Mom's said "Navy Dad." They switched. Then I noticed that my other foster brother's mug said "Army sister" and my dad's "navy mom." I think everybody had the wrong mug. I had a foster care mug.

I think things have changed since I was young. The six-year-old had taken too many sausages and couldn't finish them. So mom took them and he took more salad. I remember once sitting at the table for hours being forced to finish my spaghettios.

Afterwards I learned that Katie will get a bigger part of the inheritance because she always said "thank you very much for dinner; it was very good" after every meal. If I had known that, I would have been more polite, too. The six-year-old liked dinner, too. According to him it was

"very good! better than a.......chicken leg!"

straight lines

2010-12-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

Once I was in the tractor with my dad. It was quiet. Then he said:

"Straight lines. My life is full of straight lines. The straighter the better; on curves you lose."

Then it was quiet again.

signs of my parents

2010-12-01T07:27:00.000-08:00

Cups of tea, half drunk. Some of them sitting by her desk, her chair, on the table, by the pot of tea still brewing. When you open the microwave and there's a mug inside, now cold again.

that's my mother.

Flowers lying around, in different stages of drying. In the summer they'll have been picked for my mother from the garden or along the road. In the winter, the bright pink blossoms of the Christmas cactus.

that's from my father.

yellow pages

2010-11-15T06:54:00.000-08:00

We were in the northern part of the city, at a dinner party with some friends, and needed to figure out how to cross the river to find the restaurant where her sister was playing.

"I know the name of the place; can we use your computer to look it up?"

"well, you can, but I don't have internet."

quiet for a few seconds...

"does anybody have an iPhone?"

"we have a Garmin in our car."

"well, look, here's a big map of the city on the wall."

we trace the roads down to the general area, but still don't know the exact address of the restaurant. The host remembers he has a yellow pages in the closet, and brings that out.

"here's the address! and the phone number."

Good old Yellow Pages

lace

2010-11-13T07:39:00.000-08:00

I remember a piece of lace that I really liked. It came from an easter dress that my mom had made. She made three dreses – one blue for herself, an orange one for my sister, and a pink one for me. There were puffy sleeves and a puffy skirt, made out of a satiny fabric with a lace front piece. I felt so beautiful, at 5 years of age, in this delicate easter dress.

But this particular lace came from my mom’s dress. There were pieces from all three dresses, but the largest was blue and I would wear it with whatever I was wearing. It was a veil or a cape or a skirt. There was a day when I was outside playing, wearing my blue lace. I wasn’t wearing anything besides the blue lace. My brother was in kindergarten, and all of a sudden I see the big yellow bus on the curves of our driveway. I remember running as fast as I possibly can to the trees, terrified that Daniel’s classmates and the students on the bus would see me.

Over time the lace got smaller and smaller. I wasn’t sure why this was. I was growing, though. So it became a doll’s wrap and I cut it up and used it to cover shelves and now it’s completely gone, as far as I know.

Life Goals

2010-10-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

In a junior high Family and Consumer Science class, we were each given a piece of paper with questions dealing with what we would like to do when we grew up. We were supposed to think about what we saw ourselves doing in the future.

I sat there and sat there, and I couldn't see myself doing anything. Well, other than watering the flowers outside of my cottage as I walked around in sandals and a sundress. That's what I saw in my head. So I wrote that down. I don't remember the teacher's comments when she saw that my life goal was to own an English-style cottage with sloping roofs and ivy up the side and to water my plants and sit and read in the sunshine. Doctor? Teacher? No, it didn't llamarme la atención.

Currently I am not doing that. I'm pursuing a graduate degree and working as a research assistant. And often I feel a little lost, like I'm a little minnow trying to swim upstream with a bunch of muscled salmon. That sounds a lot lost. Okay, maybe like a little kid trying to use the big words and use the same gestures as the big kids, trying to fake my way through until hopefully I actually do start to get it, do understand, can make my own sociological analyses and feel confident about them. Right now I think I'm just pretending.

Recently I took a personality test through the Enneagram Institute, and I turned out a 9, a peacemaker. Several of the graduate students I've talked to are 4s and 5s - Individualists and Investigators. I haven't met anyone else who identifies as a Peacemaker; easy-going, receptive, complacent. These make me wonder if maybe I am lost; maybe my personality doesn't prepare me to be a world-class sociological researcher.

Then why am I here?

When I took my first sociology class as an undergraduate student, it opened my eyes. I learned so much. I started thinking about my assumptions and prejudices. It changed me. I think it made me a better person. I continued with sociology, planning on doing social work. After an internship where I realized that it was mostly paperwork and a lot of redtape and dealing with unhappy children and unhappy parents, I thought maybe I could try something else. A lot of my professors, and friends, had been mentioning graduate school for a while. I started to take them seriously. I'm smart. I'm doing well as an undergraduate. Maybe I could be a professor and help students view the world in a different way as I had been helped. I read Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and felt excited by his encouragement in the value and validity of Christians working in higher education. I wanted to be part of that.

So here I am, halfway through my first semester. I have research projects that I keep sludging along with. I have three papers staring at me like a mountain in the Black Hills and I have my little MacBook of a pickaxe as I try to create Crazy Horse. But I'm also working as a teacher's assistant in an introductory sociology class, and I like that a lot. I was able to lecture on a couple of topics. I've had one-on-one interactions with some of the students, explaining on a personal level the nuances of a particular sociological concept. I like that.

We'll see where I end up. For the time being I will continue chiseling away at my future publishable papers, thinking about how my life experiences and my individual personality meet up.

Colder than it ought to be in March

2010-10-16T07:33:00.001-07:00

My mother has started posting family stories and memories, which has started me thinking about my childhood. So I think that I might start to post my own personal stories every once in a while.

I'm going to start with an essay I wrote my freshman year of college for a required writing course. It's the story of getting stuck with my brother and sister during a blizzard once and what happened afterwards.

I was having a bad evening. It had been a long Saturday at a high school speech meet, and my mind was simply exhausted. I just wanted to be home, but my speech coach was telling me to stay in town. She didn’t want Kathryn, David, and I trying to drive the seven miles to our home on the rural North Dakota gravel. The last time I had stayed in town because of the weather I didn’t have a toothbrush or any clean clothes. I stayed with a friend whose mother wasn’t very pleased that she had to put up me and my sister on such short notice. I didn’t want to impose myself and my siblings on them like that again. The only thing I desired was a mug of hot chocolate, one of my big warm sweaters, and my house. So, against the wishes of my coach, I got in my dad’s “Toreador Red” Ford pickup with my brother David and sister Kathryn and started to drive home in the late March twilight.

I remember being able to see a few stars as we started silently driving home, but it wasn’t long before the north wind picked up, and the snow began to fall harder. It was an Alberta Clipper, which can come fast and cause a lot of problems for those on the road. After a couple of miles we had veered slightly off the road several times, but were still headed home at about fifteen miles per hour. We were all looking out of the windows, trying to see glimpses of the tan gravel underneath the blowing snow. There was a lot of tension in the pickup, heightened by Kathryn’s continual reminders that I was driving off the road. All three of us were in high school and could drive, but I was the oldest and felt it was my responsibility to get us home safe. I didn’t think Kathryn would feel comfortable driving in such strenuous conditions, and David, well, David was a freshman in high school and I didn’t trust him with much of anything.

All at once the wind blew so much snow in front of us that I could see nothing. I turned too sharply, and we hit the ditch. However, I wasn’t very worried. Dad’s pickup has pulled itself through mud and snow many times before. We began working to get unstuck, but I had really pulled a good one that time, and apparently we weren’t about to go anywhere. I was thankful we were on the right side of the narrow road; if by any slim chance another vehicle was driving by, we wouldn’t be much in the way. We didn’t have a cell phone with us, but my dad did have a farm radio in the pickup. We tried using that to get a hold of someone at home, but no one was there. I figured we would probably be spending the night in the pickup, so I started thinking and planning that way.

I actually felt kind of excited to spend the night in the pickup cab, stranded in the middle of a blizzard. I wasn’t alone and we had food. My brother had brought to the speech meet three tuna fish sandwiches, a family favorite, and only eaten one. I figured they would be sufficient to keep us from getting too hungry. We all had winter clothes along, but in truth not much more than coats and gloves. In the morning the weather had been very nice, promising spring would be coming soon. We hadn’t planned on being marooned on the side of the road overnight. The three of us cuddled together to keep each warm with our body heat. We prayed that we would be safe through the evening and that our parents wouldn’t worry too much. We began to lighten the mood by joking and laughing. Kathryn, I think, was the most upset about our little mishap. I don’t think she was feeling very adventurous that evening and wasn’t looking forward to spending the night in the pickup.

Before long, though, it got pretty cold, and we decided we would turn the engine on for a little while in order to heat the cab up again. I had been loath to do this earlier because I remembered hearing stories of people who suffocated themselves by turning the engine on when the exhaust pipe was clogged up with snow. Carbon monoxide filled the cab instead of venting outside. David said he would check the pipe, but getting outside proved to be a bit of a challenge. We were stuck at a good slant, and while it was possible to get out through the driver’s side door, it was very awkward. The passenger side door wasn’t about to be opened in the least; it was jammed right up against the snow. So David climbed out through the back window and checked the pipe, which was free. We turned the engine on and listened to the radio while hot air blew through the vents.

A little while later I sensed that my bladder was full and that I probably wouldn’t last too much longer without relieving myself. David and Kathryn made fun of me, but I was determined to take care of it. I climbed out the window and went to the leeward side of the pickup. The wind was very strong, pushing me as I walked into a run. I went to the bathroom in the middle of a blizzard and hurriedly climbed back into the relatively warm pickup.

While I had been out taking care of business, David had come up with an idea for getting us unstuck. He vaguely remembered from someone that if you build a snow ridge perpendicular to the tire, it will give the wheel some traction and allow it to pull itself out of the snow. David tried it once, and it didn’t work. I wasn’t as optimistic as he that it would work and told him to get back in the truck before he froze. He wouldn’t listen to me, and I began to get very frustrated with him. I had reconciled myself to staying in the pickup all night, and didn’t want to let go of that safe situation. If David spent too much time outside, I thought he would freeze. The idea had taken hold of him, though, and he wouldn’t stop trying to build a ridge for the tire. There were a couple times where the wheel almost made it, and David would shout for joy; however, every time we came fell back in the rut I lost a little more hope and tried again to tell David to get back in the cab. He wouldn’t listen: “One more time, Karen. We can do it, I know it. Just trust me.” David said that over and over again. “Just trust me. You never trust me with anything. We can do this.”

And he was right. The pickup, roaring like a mad bull, charged the snow ridge and pulled itself out of the ditch. David was ecstatic, “I was right! We did it! Yes! Thank you, Jesus!” He climbed back in the pickup and we set off again. I was amazed and ashamed at my lack of faith, both in my heavenly Father and in my younger brother. I was content to stay there, stuck in a rut, when the possibility of freedom only required determination and work.

It took a long time, since we still had about halfway to go, and the wind hadn’t let up at all. We kept at it and continued driving, making it safely home. I couldn’t remember how long we had been on the road. There were quite a few worried messages on the answering machine from our speech coach, whom we called and pacified. We called our father, who was at a meeting, and David told our story. He was so proud of what he had accomplished. That night my respect for him rose quite a bit. He wasn’t just my little brother, constant and annoying. He was growing up, and would someday be able to take care of himself and his family the way he had taken care of me and my sister that night. Even though the drive home began as something mundane, it ended up marking a transition in my relationship with David. It was a journey we began separately and ended together.

I've made it.

2010-10-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

A friend just used a picture that I had taken of her as a facebook profile. I think that this has never happened to me. I feel that I have arrived as a photographer.

But the feeling is fleeting. I'm just an amateur. I know that. And there are some moments that you really can't capture anyway.

Such as the light today, filtering through the opalescent peach-colored leaves.
Or when we were sitting in the patio at a cell group on Tuesday night in Mexico, singing a hymn and the light all around us turned pink. Even though we couldn't see the sunset, it was reflected on every face, with calm.
Or at camp, walking back up the hill to retrieve a forgotten item and the sunlight illuminates the mosquitos and flying mites and outlines the trunks of the trees. And it's a secret place because no one goes up there at that time of day to see what I see.

I could have taken a picture of each one of those moments, but it wouldn't have been the moment itself. And I don't think that the best photographer in the world can really capture those moments, anyway. They just have to be experienced.

Gesundheit

2010-10-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

I was in class during my undergrad when somebody three aisles over sneezed. The student on the other side of me said softly, under her breath, like an automatic habit, "bless you." It wouldn't have been heard by anyone farther away than me. I wondered if she felt compelled to say bless you after somebody, anybody sneezes; a compulsion that forced the words out at a whisper during class.

Then began an increasing awareness of how people responded to sneezes, how the responses to sneezing were different than those for coughing. I noticed how people would say "bless you" or God bless you" or "Gesundheit" or "salud." I noticed how common these remarks were, and how people seemed to take a personal interest in your sneezes, asking if you have allergies.

All of this was different for me, but I wasn't sure if it was a general North Dakota thing, or just my family. We always ignored other people's sneezes; just pretended it wasn't happening. Sometimes we'd even apologize for sneezing, like my mother saying "oh, excuse me!" after a particularly loud sneeze or a series.

I have a tendency to stop my sneezes before they happen and, until I actually tried to "open up" and "let the sneezes out" I continually received comments like "was that a laugh or are you crying?" "are you okay?" "You need to open up when you sneeze. It's not good for you to sneeze like that!"

So other people bless you with health or God's protection, wondering if you're okay. I always thought you should smother your sneezes or at least apologize for inconveniencing other people for the noise.

Counting heartbeats.

2010-10-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I am sitting reading an article or a book, and I am sitting so still that I can see my hair vibrate from my heartbeat. So I slowly move one hand to check my pulse, and sure enough - the vibrations are from my heartbeat. So I sit even stiller and try to notice other vibrations. Maybe my scarf will shake, maybe I can feel the pulse in my hands or legs or hear it in my ears. I become aware of my breathing. I think "I need to exercise more."

I like being aware of my heart as it just keeps pumping pumping pumping. It's steady and faithful. My fingertips are pink and my toes aren't cold. When we studied the circulatory system in biology I would imagine my arteries breaking off into smaller and smaller vessels, ending in tiny capillaries so small that only one red blood cell could pass through at a time. I would close my eyes and feel my heart beat and think about being alive and how my body takes care of me; my heart pumping without me ever asking it to; my lungs working with air pressure to move oxygen in and out of my body.

So sometimes I get really distracted when I'm reading articles or books for class. It's more fun to count my heartbeats.

my neighbor

2010-09-22T06:31:00.001-07:00

My little neighbor's name is William, but his hair is longish and combed nicely; sweeping across his forehead. I assumed that he was a little girl and was confused when he said that his name was William. Walking into the house I asked Amy "Is that little girl's name really William?" Instead of switching my gender assumption - oh, a little boy with long hair - I thought "that's odd that a little girl would have William as a name."

Calvin and Hobbes

2010-09-17T19:49:00.000-07:00

One year for Christmas my siblings and I decided to get a Calvin & Hobbes book for my father. But instead of wrapping it and putting it under the tree we secretly read it in bed - throwing it under the pillow when he came in to say goodnight. When he finally received it, it was already well-worn and chuckled over, having made the rounds among his loving children.

Another year for Christmas my dad put a big, heavy present on my lap. I opened it up and didn't know what to say; I was astonished at seeing the "Complete Calvin & Hobbes" sitting there. My dream had come true! What had I done to merit such a wonderful gift? And how can I take care of this with so many siblings - oh wait? It's a family gift? For all of us? ahhh. well I am sure that we will all truly enjoy it...

Today I received my own Calvin & Hobbes book - "It's a Magical World" - which contains the latter years of the strip. And it's my own, my very own. Given to me by Natasha for no other reason than that she loves me.

On compassion

2010-08-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

Perhaps watching a dog slowly die from old age isn't that much different than watching a human being die.

Without getting into a discussion on the nature of personhood and the differences between humans and animals, and without getting into arguments concerning the wishes of the dying or the unending pain they may feel, you can find a fundamental similarity in the fact that we all die - all organic beings. Our bodies stop working, and if it's from old age, they often do so in a slow and perhaps painful manner. Maybe it can be more painful or uncomfortable for those watching than for the one doing the dying.

Our dog is dying. We've had her for 14 years, as I figure it and for the past few we've seen her get slower and stiffer. Dad would give her ibuprofen for her arthritis. Now she's deaf, but she can still see, and often lies under the porch or in an out-of-the-way spot.

At one point there were a lot of flies bothering her, especially on her ears. I think that they could sense her dying more than we could.

I talked to my mom about putting our dog to sleep. She said she just couldn't do it. She wouldn't be able to do it. To take it out behind the house and pull the trigger. She can't do it. She does her best to make the dog comfortable but wants to let her die on her own.

My mother has watched a lot of people die. She works in a nursing home, where the medical smells mixes with the knowledge that people don't go there to get better; they go there to die. She's thought a lot about it.

I believe that there's a lot of compassion involved in taking care of a person - or an animal - when death is right around the corner. It seems easier to actively end their misery by whatever means. It's often called compassionate to do that. But what I've been realizing as I watch our dog die is that it takes a certain quality to be around a dying being and to let death come on it's own without hurrying or helping it along. And I think that that quality is worth nurturing, despite how difficult it is.

So our dog lies by the dryer and I do my laundry and smell the sick smell and rub her head from time to time. She doesn't appear to be in pain but just lies there.

open spaces

2010-06-29T13:23:00.001-07:00

we drove up from the center of Zacatecas to the Texas/Mexico border yesterday. As the road became wider and the land more open, I felt my soul open up. I hadn't realized how much I had missed the clouds and the wide sky and the green-gold grass on the sides of the highway. I wished that I hadn't already purchased plane tickets but could instead rent a car and keep on driving. I'd drive right through the great plains, through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. what a way to go home. I'd see the seasons rewind, from the harvests already in progress in the south to the still growing and green oceans near my house. I could merge onto Route 281 and stay on it, jumping off right before Canada. Driving 70+ mph, watching the land unroll before me, letting the memories come back, listening and thinking and praying. That's how I'd like to go home.

We're still sitting here, waiting, on the tip of Texas. My flight doesn't leave until tomorrow but we wanted to leave time in case of traveling troubles. I'm not used to the water-saturated, super-heated air and I feel lethargic and annoyed outside. Now a tropical storm is rolling in and the rain comes in gusts and cools the air.

hot chocolate

2010-06-11T19:01:00.000-07:00

I love hot chocolate. I grew up with it, putting mugs of 2% milk in the microwave and heaping spoonfuls of Nestle Quik powder into the steaminess. It is a decided comfort item for me, as the small amounts of caffeine won't keep me awake but the warm liquid soothes and calms. On those evenings in high school when I made my own dinner you could often see a mug of hot chocolate and a plate with eggs and bacon and toast beside my homework. That's still one of my culinary favorites.

In college I tried to like the sludge that came out of those cocoa machines and I tried to like the SwissMiss packets added to hot water. But nothing compares to hot, almost scalding, creamy milk - so hot so that the chocolate blends in with a particular rich flavor and so that you have to drink it slowly. Made on the stove also increases the restfulness of the event; slowly stirring so the milk won't burn, thinking about the day, winding down.

I remember when we got our new microwave and I put the milk in, surprised when it came out after four minutes all frothy and boiling over. I'd never paid any attention to microwave strength before but suddenly it became imperative to find the perfect amount of time to get the temperature just right.

I've tried putting in mint or cinnamon, but the perennial favorite continues to be just plain hot chocolate. So rich.

--Please remember this if you ever invite me over to spend the night.

March

2010-03-31T05:52:00.000-07:00

I grew up in North Dakota, where the month of March is still tightly gripped in Winter. And yet it's not the same as January or February; the days are getting longer and there's a certain quality on the wind. It's almost like a kiss. A soft, gentle, kiss from Spring even as Winter continues to rule over the northern plains.

I took the kiss on the wind as a promise, that something was about to change, and I began to love March.

So all through high school, which others around me continued as in the midst of winter, I had a secret friendship with the wind and the air and the sun in March. I would read favorite authors and re-read favorite books. I would take long walks in the growing evenings. I liked celebrating the little holidays of the First Day of Spring and St. Patrick's Day. March became my favorite month.

In college, I began to celebrate Lent, and as Ash Wednesday almost always falls in February, and Easter almost always in April, March was almost always caught completely in Lent. And I was caught up in legalistically denying myself. I also missed the so-slow, ever-so-slow turning over of winter to spring. The change was quicker, somehow, in Chicago, and tulips were sometimes already peaking the beginnings of their green leaves through by the end of March.

Now I've moved to Mexico, where there is no early spring and where March is completely buried under Lenten rituals in this Catholic country.

So I find that for the last few years, I miss early Spring. I miss the awakening joy. I miss home.

Faith Indiana Jones Style

2010-02-12T06:49:00.000-08:00

I'm struggling - currently, though it's always an ongoing struggle for me - with trusting God. I feel that he's calling me to do something, but instead of being still and quiet and humble and a willing servant, I don't want to do it, and I'm trying to rationalize or justify going ahead with my own plan.

There are moments when I say I will obey, but I'm astounded to realize that I'm still not trusting, even in those moments of surrender. I'm not quiet or still or humble. I'm rearranging my plans in my head, trying to think how it will work, what I have to do. I still want to be in control. I say I will obey God, but I don't want to trust him completely.

Indiana Jones was able to garner enough faith/courage/desperation to step out onto the invisible plank over the deep abyss, but once he got to the other side, he threw dust and pebbles over it so he would be able to see it when he came back that way. The irony of that moment has never left me, and I think of it sometimes in relation to myself. Maybe I'll take a little first step, but after that I'm sprinkling dust and pebbles so that I'll be sure to know my path, to plan my path.

MLK Jr.

2010-01-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

I read a two-part article today in the online edition of First Things.

Here are the links:

Obama's Niebuhrian Moment Part I,

Obama's Niebuhrian Moment Part II.

The articles begin with a comparison of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and the political theology of Reinhold Niebuhr. It concludes, however, with an analysis of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Peace Prize speech and the suggestion that this may be a better pattern for us to follow than that of Niebuhr.

I recommend reading it.

Also, today is King's birthday. I think it's important to remember great men and women.

fear

2009-12-30T01:45:00.000-08:00

I'm flying back to Mexico today after a nice Christmas vacation at home. At times, I've been experiencing high levels of worry and stress as I think about things like flying back, making the right decisions about next year, relationships. Last night, I didn't sleep very well, and worried all through my dreams.

But perfect love casts out fear, and God loves me. I can trust him because he is good. He is good in the little things and in the large things.

Sometimes life seems so long.

I'm loosing my mind - letting it loose.

2009-12-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

Many people, close friends, well-educated, and well-meaning, use lose and loose incorrectly. More specifically, they spell loose when they mean to use lose.

Loose means, as an adjective, that something is not tight. Or, as a verb, to let something go.

Lose, on the other hand, is a verb which means to be deprived of something.

Loose rhymes with goose. It does not rhyme with choose.

Lose rhymes with bruise and with choose. It does not rhyme with nose, nor with chose.

This is all said in the best of intentions.

journal

2009-09-04T21:12:00.000-07:00

I finished a journal today. It doesn't matter how long I have had a particular journal; it always feels like I am saying goodbye to an old friend.

I wasn't expecting it to end - I thought I had a few more pages. It was a little too sudden for me today.

It's rather full of angst and confusion; but it was with me through some difficult times. I feel very grateful momentarily.

Pictures

2009-05-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

I bought a new computer recently and it comes with fancy photography software. I am jealous of the pictures I see on there. The smiling people with the beautiful lighting. Mine never turn out so well. Eyes half closed, faces only partly in the picture: things like this occur frequently in my pictures.

I suppose that I could practice more with my camera, read a few photo-taking tips online. I do not like always pulling out my camera. I am also suspicious of how a picture seems to verify facts. "I have the picture that I was at Mount Rushmore, therefore I was." Some moments can't be captured, they can only be experienced.

I'm also pretty lazy at uploading them to my computer, let alone sites like Facebook or Picasa.

But if you are interested, Most of my uploaded pictures are stored at Picasa.

Re-enchanting the world.

2009-01-21T20:19:00.000-08:00

While I do not consider myself to be a literary critic or snob or anything of the sort, I must admit that I rarely find a book that truly delights me. I read a lot of books that I find "interesting" or "thought-provoking" but little that stirs something inside of me. However, today I did finish one that quite delighted me.

I took a class my senior year at Wheaton called Modern Mythology with Alan Jacobs. We read The Lord of the Rings and The Princess and Curdie and a crazy book by Charles Williams called All Hallow's Eve. One book we didn't read, but which was recommended to us, was Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Dr. Jacobs said that this book was a cross between Jane Austen and Harry Potter. I'm not a Harry Potter fan (and I found that if most of your HP knowledge comes from Wikipedia, don't mention this to a room full of people discussing the end of the seventh book.) but I do enjoy Jane Austen to a high degree. I probably would have forgotten about the book had I not found a used copy for $1. Hence I bought it and brought it along with me to Mexico.

I can't remember when I started reading the book - probably in November, but I finished it this morning. The paperback is a 1006 pages of closely set type and several pages have digressive footnotes that can take up half the room on the page. The story, which wasn't at all dull to begin with, began to pick up steam halfway through as numerous different story threads started to weave together. I thought it was quite addictive and read the last 500 pages or so just this week. At the end I wished it continued, to keep me in the world.

The basic plot is of two English magicians, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. The story begins in the early part of the 19th century and covers a time of about 10 years. It interweaves true British history with an additional, magical past. An extremely powerful English Magician, known mainly as the Raven King, ruled a kingdom in Northern England for 300 years but in the past half millennium English magic had slowly fallen asleep. Norrell and Strange wish to wake it up.

Clarke creates a host of characters, Englishmen, Fairies, day-to-day and enchanted, and the story darts back and forth among them. Plotting her novel in the midst of one winter after another (skipping summers) gives the magic a cold feeling, and the tone is quite matter-of-fact, tongue-in-cheek at some points. this, I think, succeeds in keeping the novel from being a little over the top.

One of the things that fantasy novels do for us is re-enchant the world. When I was a young girl I played Fairies with my sister every season - like the Fantasia fairies that brown the leaves and skate frost upon pond. We had a huge, tree-covered yard and when I went to college I realize how enchanting my childhood had been. Overgrown woods full of unexplored haunts and mystical vistas. Scope for the imagination and room to believe that the world is more than scientifically-explainable processes. I think many of us lose this as we grow, but fantasy brings it back. It reminds us that the world is a big, beautiful, hard place and returns a sense of wonder to us.

Jonathan Strange has brought a sense of that wonder back - visions of stones speaking to water and trees greeting a returning king. A world in which much is possible and mundane things may in fact have an incredibly important significance.

Actually, I missed some stuff because it seemed so mundane at the time. However, because the book was so large I had trouble going back and finding it so that I could read it again. I do not know if the book will end up being a long-time favorite, but, whether it was the story or the world or the ideas that drew me, I can truly say that I have not enjoyed a book like this in quite a long time.

an exercise in humility

2009-01-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

I am currently applying for graduate programs in sociology. Actually, I'm about finished, with only two due dates ahead of me and my active roles all completed. I am applying to nine Ph.D. sociology programs and have already received notice that I have been accepted into one program (as I haven't heard from any others, that makes it 1 for 1, I guess).

When I came down here to Mexico it was for several reasons, but one was that I wanted to practice trusting God, if that makes sense. I wanted to leave my comfortable and under-control life and let God lead me with cultural struggles, raising money, unsureness about the future. Looking back on my journal through the past year I can see that I have grown in how I trust God, but I still don't trust him completely, as these applications have shown. I was a little bundle of intrusive worries - worries that would subside as I focused on my work or my friends, but which surfaced with pinches of awareness in how I still had to finish this and send that off and oh no! I don't think I changed that information before I attached it to the email!

Currently, as I have finished my part, these worries surface when the online status updater lacks my GRE scores or my transcript. What in tarnation? That should have been there since October. I have to stop and tell God again that I want him to be in control. I place this application in his hands. There's not much I can do, but I want to practice trusting.

I also have to practice humility. I didn't start off needing to, as I didn't have much confidence in being accepted (I thought I had weak research experience.) There was a huge difference once I heard from the first school, though. It began with a grateful acknowledgement that now I have an open door to receive a Ph.D. But before long I was thinking "ah, this personal statement is fine. It's already gotten me into grad school," and expecting to hear positively from all of my other schools as well. Is there such a thing as gluttony of schools? I can only attend one at a time, but I want to be accepted into all of them.

Oddly, I think often of the people with whom I attended high school, thinking how I will increase in their estimation. People for whose opinion I have cared little, but over whom I still desire superiority. Odd the workings of our human nature, hm?

Isaiah 26: 12 - Lord you establish peace for us. All that we have accomplished, you have done for us.

I shall also have to be careful in my social life, for, as Jane Austen says "A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can." (Northanger Abbey)

Found

2008-11-16T13:04:00.000-08:00

I watched the movie August Rush with my friends Elizabeth and Juan the other day. It's a recent movie about a young musical prodigy who is eleven years old and has never met his parents. People tell him that he'll never find them, but he keeps believing, because he hears something that tells him they're still alive.

The movie has some wonderful music in it and some deep themes that resonated quite clearly within me. For all it's faults, I thought it was a worthwhile movie.

August's parents meet only once and don't see each other for eleven years, but during that time they are depicted as not being completely whole - they are missing something and know that they are really missing the other person. Though I think the movie would say it was because they are true soulmates, I think it speaks to the union that happens when we make love, a connection that cannot really be broken.

Another part that touched me was when the title character was asked what he wanted to be more than anything else in the world. He replied, 'Found.' More than anything, he wanted to be with his parents. The music that he heard reminded him that he didn't belong in the orphanage. It called him to a greater purpose. The Spanish title of the film is ¨Escucha tu destino¨ Or ¨Hear your Destiny¨. I thought it was an appropriate title.

For its faults, I don't think that the director really knew who was the main character. There is the love story between the parents, but aspects of their characters could have gone much deeper. And August, though the Title character, seemed distant and unknowable for the most part. And yet I think he is the person we should most emulate: being still to listen for the music all around us, waiting, and hoping, and looking to be Found.

update on blogging

2008-08-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know if anyone is still reading this blog, considering that I haven't written in it since the middle of June and I have instead been writing at my Mexico blog.

I keep thinking about this blog, though, and about the nature of blog communication, and the pictures in my head when I think about my two blogs.

I like this blog, quite a bit. It has been my first one, and it's kind of special. I have really enjoyed thinking about how to tell my stories in a coherent and entertaining or thought-provoking way. I have also enjoyed the correspondence back and forth with people who comment (usually my friends or family but once someone I had never met).

This brings me to my second thought, the nature of this type of communication. Many of my friends who are in different parts of the world (as I am) use blogs as places to update their friends and families about their journeys. But instead of sending the update directly to their email (or, are we in the dark ages, their actual mail box) they post it in a impersonal, public space. It now is the responsibility of the friend or family member to check the blog. There are a couple of advantages - the writer can update however frequently he or she chooses, and if someone doesn't want to hear how things are going, they just don't go to the url. Or, if someone else, who didn't originally hear about the blog, finds the link on facebook (*ahem) or some other place, they can jump right in, reading all the way to the beginning if they so choose.

Finally, despite the fact that this is an incredibly public space, it's also hidden. I didn't tell many people about this particular blog, and unless someone finds a link through a search or browsing blogs, only my specific friends know about it. Conversely, my other blog, is much more publicized. I really have no clue how many people read it, but the address is on about 750 bookmarks (along with my face) that I sent out into the world and it goes on a lot of my update emails (I do sometimes send those out as well). This blog was named "The resting rock" and when I think of it, I see a rock or a cave behind a waterfall - the kind that is occasionally splashed on but in general is calm, a place to sit, semi-protected from everything else around it. My Mexico blog, on the other hand, is sun-bleached, and dusty. There's a lot of action and it's visible to a lot of people.

On driving to Fargo, June 12

2008-06-12T20:34:00.001-07:00

I drove down to Fargo with my dad tonight. Tomorrow morning I fly out, heading to Fresnillo, Mexico.

After stopping for beef in Grand Forks (Texas Roadhouse), the drive to Fargo was really peaceful. South, the light pink and pastel orange sunlight reflecting off of the rainclouds had an ambient look to it: soft, like the subtle changes of the aurora Borealis. North Dakota mountains hung in the distance. (of course, these are not real mountains; merely the illusion of such caused by bilious cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon.)

Later, the setting sun crusted the western clouds with gold. Dad and I talked about television reception and drove into the rain. Tomorrow he will return, and I shall fly through clouds. See you on the other side.

mahwidge

2008-06-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

I was a bridesmaid in my friends' wedding this past weekend. It was a new experience for me and was quite enjoyable as well as thought-provoking. I've known both of my friends for a long time and it's fun that they married each other.

All the bridesmaids and groomsmen had pieces of tape marking where they were supposed to stand. I used to have a mark, but it walked away. I stood there, watching things progress, when I realized I wasn't in line with the rest of the bridesmaids. I inched my way over but found that now my view was blocked by shoulders on the steps above me. Now all I could see was Kent, the groom. I had an odd feeling. It was not at all like Kent was saying the vows to us, but there was an aspect that we were hearing the vows the same way Monica did. I couldn't see anything but Kent. I didn't see Monica's reaction. I couldn't see Pastor Rick saying the vows for Kent to repeat. I felt like the big brother behind the bullied kid in school, or the invisible friend of a second grader, or imagine this:a bridesmaid standing up with her friend at her wedding. I was there to support her, to hear the vows and be a witness to them, to encourage them in their marriage and to remind them of the promises they made to each other.

At the wedding I also had a sense of the deep profundity and ancientness of the ceremony - connecting a man and a woman in an intentional and purposeful way. We were dancing on the edge of something incredibly meaningful and established. I pray that Kent and Monica spend the rest of their life relishing and learning more about that dance and the deep deep love it comes from.

You're so vain

2008-06-06T20:47:00.000-07:00

I found out that my littlest sister is vain (actually a tad narcissistic). In a real tangible way, I realized this when I drove the car after she had. The rear view mirror was angled so that it reflected whoever was sitting in the driver's seat. My sister moves the mirror so that when she glances up, she can see herself, checking her hair or her make-up.

It was about a mile down the road before I realized that the mirror was tilted incorrectly, and it wasn't because I wasn't glancing up. I know to use my mirrors - side of the eye, side of the eye.
I didn't realize it because I guess I'm vain as well. I was looking up and checking out the color of my hair and the freckles on my nose.

So I guess I have something to work on.

Philistine

2008-06-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

I am more satisfied with the fact that I have successfully collected a Kodon* for each semester of my time at Wheaton College than frustrated by the fact that I have not read everything in them or understood most of what I have read or seen.

I keep because of the expectation for future reading, but this potentiality excuses me from having fully read them now.

*The Kodon is Wheaton College's biannual student publication of art, music, and literature.

Otto

2008-06-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

I found out that one of my friends at the nursing home passed away last month. I sent him a letter, and it was returned to me, stamped "unable to deliver." Since he was 101 and lived in a nursing home, I checked online to see if I could find anything. He was born August 1906 and died May 17, 2008.

Otto Schoerner was one of my favorite people to visit at the nursing home. Almost every week he would say, in his soft, slightly accented voice, "oh, I would love to join you [in a weekly activity], but you see, I'm legally blind." He would take my hand and say "now you're from North Dakota? Karen?" He remembered each of us volunteers because of where we lived. Otto was always encouraging. He had lived as a missionary in China for 20 years, before international conflict kicked him out of the country. When he heard that I would be living in Mexico for this next year, he was very excited. Often he would pray for me and kiss my cheek.

He had wonderful stories, about being born in Pennsylvania but getting stuck in Germany with his family during WWI. He proposed to his wife by letter in 1938, and it took months for the letter to get to her and for him to receive a reply.

I took a picture with him the same night I took one with Dee and Jim but I didn't post it because it turned out poorly (Otto couldn't sit up and his dear face is only partly in the picture). Despite the lack of pictures online, you can read a little about his life in this newspaper article written after his death.

If I stand

2008-06-01T23:50:00.000-07:00

George MacDonald asks why can't two things exist in the same place at the same time? Why do what we see and feel, the material things, have the tyranny to push out things that we can't see or feel?

"There's more that rises in the morning than the sun, and more that shines in the night than just the moon."

In a spectacular Rich Mullins song (and he has many), he sings "there's more that dances on the prairie than the wind, and more that pulses in the ocean than the tide." His words speak of a transcendence that draws us to a higher way of living.

The focal point of this song is found in Rich Mullins' reaction, his response. In the chorus he says "if I stand, let me stand on the promise that you will pull me through. If I fall, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to you." A belief that there is more to this world than the eye can see, that two things really can exist in the same place at the same time, brings a desire to live in the full awareness of that second world. If I stand, if the choices I make bring great things, let it be because God is the one allowing me to stand. If I fall, I am not finished due to my own weakness, but fall on the grace of the Lord Jesus.

"If I sing, let it be for the joy that has borne in me these songs, and if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home."
Let the joy found in this life be because there is eternal joy, and if there is sorrow, weep, because not all things are as they should be, and we long for the day when the second world fully bursts through into this one, restoring what has been broken.

Enjoys: long walks on gravel roads

2008-05-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

Being home seems at once the right place to be, and at the same time incongruous with the rest of my life. What I mean is this: I came home after graduation, and I fit right in. My bed is still as uncomfortable as ever, I drink three cups of tea a day (it's like a comfort blanket). Shanna still keeps me awake at night, (last night it was recording my name in a gravelly voice on her phone and then playing it back to me, right in my ear.) These are things that fit like a glove.

At the same time, this is just a pit stop. I'm moving to Mexico in two and a half weeks. My clothes don't have a drawer in which to belong, because Shanna has usurped all the space in the room upstairs. My stuff sits in peripatetic piles, piles that I carry from place to place but have no final destination.

I feel comfortable at home, content, yet there is a restless corner inside, because I know I will not be here long. Unsure how the next step will turn out, let alone the step after that, I want to be fully present, here for these next few weeks, and still fully prepared for what happens next. I will keep you updated as to the success of this venture.

Cloverfield

2008-05-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

My brother wanted me to watch the thriller Cloverfield, so I put it in one evening. The premise of the movie is a home video, shot to record the going-away party of a twenty-something. The video records much more than people’s farewells – apparently something is attacking the city (how many times has Manhattan been destroyed? By giant gorillas, giant lizards, global warming, asteroids?). You don’t really know what’s happening, what the giant monster wandering through the streets is, wreaking havoc and causing pandemonium. You just follow the youngsters, reveling in their distress, pain, loss. Manhattan looks like a warzone.

Why do we make movies like this for entertainment? There was recently a huge earthquake in southern China. 40,000 people are dead. Burma suffered a tidal wave and subsequent flooding. Tens of thousands gone, there as well. There is chronic war in Iraq, Sudan, multiple places around the world. The events depicted in Cloverfield happen to real people around the world (barring the alien monster, of course). Are we so numb to the pain of the world? To the real loss and suffering elsewhere? We not only transplant that destruction into our own cities (because it’s more exciting when it affects a place that we’ve visited) but we do it for entertainment. For pleasure. For a thrill. I doubt that watching Cloverfield inspires many Americans to care about people around the world who experience tragic events such as earthquakes or war. My guess is that they snuggle deeper into their chair and relish the safety they possess.

When something really does happen in New York City, say, attacks by extremist terrorists, we make that into a movie, too. So we can sit, enjoy buttered popcorn, and watch real events mesh into sensationalized thrillers.

David, my brother, I don’t really like the movie. Sorry.

Wake up

2008-05-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

I woke up three times this morning.
At six, Shanna's radio alarm went off. My eyes were heavy, and I couldn't keep them open for long, but the tree outside my window was radiant, showing off its yellow-green leaves and reflecting the blazing east, which was obscured by the turn of the house.

Later, at eight, my phone alarm went off. I woke up, contemplated my life, the sorry state of my messy room, and what I plan to do today. I dozed a little more.

I got up at 8:10, however. Because the dog, who wanted to be let out of the room, kept bounding up on my back then scooting around my head, sticking her nose right into my face. She dropped a tick on the bed, and I felt it tickling my arm. When I decided that the tickle wasn't imaginary, I got up, found it to be parasite, and ground it to death between a rock and a shelf.

Then I got up.

Farsighted

2008-05-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

I just opened a new blog, for my time in Mexico. It's address is karen-in-mexico.blogspot.com. I titled it "Farsighted" from a Five Iron Frenzy song. It's about hope and dreaming, and seeing possibilities. You're welcome to check it out, though I still need to fix it up a little bit, and I probably won't be adding much to it for a while still.

Funny, blogging was rather a joke to me not that long ago. I tried it as a gimmick, but have grown to like it. I like having a venue to sharing my thoughts, and it provides me with a space to think through how to express myself. I've always had a little bit of a difficulty formulating my thoughts and articulating them accurately. And now, leaving here to spend at least the next year in Mexico, blogging provides a way to provide updates without inundating those of you who do not wish to be so overwhelmed with the details of my escapades.

My own personal time-machine.

2008-05-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

Driving home from Illinois is like going back in time. Well, actually, maybe it's more like pressing the rewind button on a video tape. The leaves on the trees move backward, getting smaller, disappearing back into the branches. The tulips pull their petals in and scoot back toward the earth. Going north in the spring time is friendly, not menacing, because it means I get to experience the blossoming of spring all over again. Going north in the fall, however, is sad and lonely. It's pressing the fast forward button. The leaves have fallen already and you lose the experience.

I drove home yesterday and today, and while noticing the changes in the trees, I spent a solid three and half hours of the time listening to a dramatization of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I didn't leave early enough to drive the dawn, plus I was going north and west, not east, but it was still a voyage nonetheless. Eustace makes me laugh, and at times I slapped my knee (yes, I will acknowledge this. I laugh aloud to myself when I'm driving alone.) I can't get over how ridiculous he is. He is on such an amazing adventure and he can't see it! He just wants to find a British Consulate, as if you could find one of those in Narnia. The transformation he undergoes, though, metamorphizing into a dragon, is rather potent. When I heard the lonely dragon cry of Eustace when he realizes what has happened to him, I felt sad with him. Later, when Aslan tells him that he needs help undressing his dragon skin, I heard the growl of the lion as he sunk his teeth deep into the scales and skin enclosing Eustace. I could imagine the terror and the hope Eustace felt, for though the teeth of a lion hurt, he could not rid himself of the dragon skin he so desperately desired gone, and needed someone stronger.

conversation snippets

2008-05-12T00:41:00.000-07:00

One of my Aunt Kathryn's classmates (from the class of 1943, here for their 65th college reunion) "We graduated with Billy Graham, and we hear so much about his life, but God has done great things in so many of our lives."

The person a few spaces behind me in line for commencement, "the alphabet is a confusing place to be."

Grandpa, holding my hand, "when your dad was a little boy in church, he would be restless, and I would take his hands and rub his fingertips. Quieted him down. Life is good."

Commencement speaker, Akiko Minato, "We are united in Christ, Galatians 3:28, and we are called to be peacemakers."

Tyler Fulton, "Karen, if I don't see you again, have a nice life."

graduation

2008-05-11T23:06:00.000-07:00

I graduated today, summa cum laude with a bachelor's of arts in sociology, minor in Bible/Theology. I am no longer an undergrad and my tassle will always hang on left, at least everytime I wear my tartar board hat from now on.

Rehearsal for graduation consists of a motley group of 500 or so 22 year olds, anxious to be done and annoyed with one last "stand here, walk here, say this, know this." Graduation is a bit of a farce, no? We are taught for years to be an individual and then are given matching robes and caps so that assimilation appears complete. It is during rehearsal that our personalities come forth, through our hairstyles and t-shirts, rather than the actual ceremony. And what about the fact that we do not receive our diploma at Commencement? We are given a nice case, but our diploma is mailed to us later, after verification that we have completed our course requirements. My family traveled 840 miles to see me receive an empty case. Why is graduation so important?
For Baccalaureate I feel odd dressing up in the blue graduation gown, but after I walk to the library, where we line up, I would feel odd if I had chosen instead to wear my regular clothes. The gowns separate us. They take us out of our everyday lives and pronounce that something different is taking place, at least for now.
I could not stop myself from smiling after Baccalaureate. It was a beautiful windblown day, rainy. I won't forget it. We were so dignified in our caps and gowns, and the wind said "don't take yourself too seriously."
Coming of Age ceremonies in many cultures have some things in common. First, in order to acknowledge a change, the initiates are separated from the rest of the group, given specific instructions or a challenge, and then reinserted into the wider community. On Sunday, I was someone different. I was given a physical representation of a less ostentatious change - the gown, the diploma case all represent the academic achievement that I have worked on for the past four years. What if I had chosen not to walk for my graduation? I would have still achieved the same, but there is meaning in this ritual, and that is why my family came, why professors dressed up like watermelon jolly ranchers, and why Dr. Litftin shook 560 hands. I think the bizarre thriller-type organ music we processed to made it even more pregnant with meaning and circumstance.

Quite amazing

2008-05-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

If I am ever in charge of a large group of children, or probably any size group, I will not let them loose in a shrub maze. On Friday my roommate Sarah Davis took Natasha and me to the Morton Arboretum, a huge plant park southeast of here. They had a maze garden and we walked through it while dozens of elementary aged kids skirted by us. Most were enjoying themselves, but after running around for a while, I began to see disconcerted looks or even tinges of fear as the kids said "you go that way and I'll go this way," looking for a way out. I don't know which of the leaders had this brilliant idea but I'm sure they enjoyed the arduous process of disentangling the children from the verdant web.

Argument clinic

2008-05-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

Kathryn and I seem to be arguing a lot lately. The most current quibble was about jay-walking. Let me set up the situation.

After sharing delicious coffee smoothies at the Stupe, Kathryn and I walk back to our respective houses. At the corner of University and Howard we pause before we go our separate directions. I will go straight on University a ways before skirting through a parking lot and the secret passage. She will turn North on Howard to where her house sits. Diagonally across from our talking spot is the sidewalk that leads up to the Smith-Traber dormitory, where freshmen and sophomores live, as did Kathryn the previous two years.

Many students find it more convenient to walk diagonally across the intersection instead of making a right angle at the crosswalks. Apparently they’ve taken geometry and know that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. And they’re busy; it shaves a couple of seconds off the total trek time.

I have a tendency to be quite irritated when I think people are being rude or inconsiderate. For instance, when someone interrupts a conversation to talk only with one person in the group without acknowledging the others – though perhaps they recently actually met the other people in the group – I consider that rude and have a hard time letting go of my annoyance, shrugging it off. I’m working on this. So as Kathryn and I stood there, chatting about our computers and wireless cards, I noticed a Traber-type casually walking straight across the intersection, holding up a car that was waiting to go straight. I mentioned to Kathryn how rude it was for students to do that when cars were waiting, and she disagreed with me. She thought that cars could wait – they have a stop sign, the pedestrian has the right of way, it only takes a few more seconds. She said that I had standards that I expected everyone to conform to (funny, Kathryn – my standards happen to be the law!). What I would appreciate is for students to walk diagonally only when there are no cars waiting. When there are vehicles, either walk completely in the crosswalks or let the car go through and then skirt across the intersection. (So I guess my standards aren’t completely based on what is legal, but more on what is pragmatically most useful to all parties…I shall have to muse more on this).

In a preemptive response, let me tell you, my faithful reader, what Kathryn’s rebuttal was so that she cannot skewer me in the comments section: “But you’ve never lived there!” Apparently, walking across that intersection several times a day gets tedious, and it is easier to go straight from point A to point B than to walk in the crosswalks. Her claim is true: I have never lived in either Smith or Traber dormitories, and I do not have the existential experience of having to cross two streets every time I need to go somewhere on campus. Judge between us, my readers: is that sufficient reason to put ourselves and our desires before those of others? Cars can wait, but so can we, the pedestrians. Being rude isn’t the ultimate sin, and sometimes may even be necessary, but I think that being considerate has a lot of parallels with putting one another’s needs before our own and laying down our rights. It’s a place to start.

I do need to stop being ultra critical. People may not realize their rudeness, and I should never assume that they are being so on purpose. And the title of my post is from a Monty Python skit: check it out.

Not a finished product

2008-05-06T16:04:00.000-07:00

We had a song on a kids tape when I was growing up, and the words were
"He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be.
It took him just a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient he must be - he's still working on me."

Five days until graduation! I'll be all shiny and clean and one of 550 other blue-gowned graduates. Like Wheaton is a tube of toothpaste that annually shoots out a big glob of educated young adults. Not finished, in process, a step along the way.

It's an interesting feeling to be graduating and thinking that I should be somewhere I'm not - like I should have squeezed more out of my education. Similar to the feeling that I should be writing incredibly profound and insightful things in my blog - that one day I'll put it in a book that will bring hope and joy to millions.

I leave with you this thought "God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal, 'the Lord knows those who are his.'" 2 Tim 2:19. I do not have to prove myself, I do not have to act like a finished product. He's still working on me, and he knows those who are his. I rest and trust in his work, delighting in the adventure he has set me on.

The first step of the adventure I have some idea about - at least locationally I'll be in Mexico. Step by step, because he's still working on me.

Orion

2008-05-02T17:37:00.000-07:00

Two falls ago my sister and I were preparing to leave for college. It was a full day drive - all 13 hours with a short "layover" in Minneapolis. We were leaving early in the morning.

I remember waking up around 4:45 after having slept poorly. I felt resentful, groggy, and sullen. The car had been packed the night before, so I finished a few last minute items and walked out to the car.

I wrote in my journal for that day "I stepped outside and felt refreshed and beloved. There was a delicate crescent moon, waxing, the whole sphere visible by earthshine. Orion and the Seven Sisters. A cool breeze."

Dr. Jerry Root spoke in our last chapel today. He talked about measuring time by Orion. Knowing that when Orion rose in the early evening in late summer, school would be starting soon. And in the spring, when Orion fell behind the sun, knowing that students would disperse like the delicate seeds of a dandelion when a breeze blows through.

"with anticipation"

2008-04-30T14:35:00.001-07:00

Accolades do not prepare us for mediocrity. Unexpected recognition says "you are better than you think you are." Well, thank you very much, but that's still quite terrifying. What do people expect of me now?

Today I sat on stage in chapel and shook hands with President Litfin because I was inducted into the Wheaton College Scholastic Honor Society. Chapel attendance was pretty thin, but there were still quite a few people who witnessed the event. I'll put this on my resume, too, so from now on this event will shape the way people think of me and what they expect of my life.

A book that I had signed by a professor said 'To Karen, with anticipation of God's leading you.' I like that. That's helpful. Wherever God leads me, that's the way to go, that's what to expect; that's what Dr. Treier expects, at least.

It's interesting how one accolade leads me to desire others. I entered a paper contest and went to the award ceremony today. I didn't win, but part of me really wanted to win, to continue to recognition that I have begun to garner.

But another part of me also wants to sink back into a comfortable anonymity, only a few people knowing how fantastic I really am, but without the pressure of having to be excellent and to be one ahead of everybody else.

And I don't want to forget what Paul says in Galatians - are we trying to win the approval of men, or of God? May I always ultimately seek approval from God.

Saying goodbye

2008-04-29T15:06:00.001-07:00

I went to the nursing home last night. I've been going there since I was a sophomore, and though some of the residents are different, there are a couple of them who I have known since that time. Included with this post is a picture of me with Jim and Dee. They're both very sweet, very consistent. They come every week. They're not very talkative - by that I mean it takes them a while to say anything that they're wanting to say. It takes patience to listen and to hear what they have to say.

Dee in particular exhibits a quiet trust. She's never been married and has no kids of her own. Her nephews come to see her every once in a while. She's had a stroke and is almost completely non-ambulatory. She can move her arms a little but doesn't have a lot of strength or mobility in her hands.
She's very encouraging to the other residents, and always loves seeing us.

Once last year I had a rose with me, and I gave it to her. Her eyes were shining the rest of the night. It's difficult to say goodbye when I know I won't be coming back next fall. I may very well never see any of my friends at the nursing home again - at least in this life. Saying goodbye also makes me think about everything that I could have done; the times that I was bored and wished I was back at school, how I didn't always have patience to listen to their words.

I'm really glad that I kept going to the nursing home. The first semester I went, I thought about stopping after spring break. But the other students who went were encouraging to me, just when I saw them randomly at the dining hall or around campus, so I decided to keep going. Knowing how I was encouraged by my fellow students has been a reminder to me to be encouraging to others. Often I think that I will let people decide for themselves what they will do. Maybe we all need to be a bit more encouraging regarding good things in our lives.

Isaiah 43

2008-04-27T07:44:00.000-07:00

When we come to Jesus, we are not promised instant change. It is not a Jesus pill. It is a relationship. Regeneration happens over a lifetime, though sometimes the changes are immediate. Trusting God does not mean that it will all work out the way you plan. Trusting God means that you know that all things work together for good, even when we cannot see the good at this time.

Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name - you are mine.
When you pass through the waters I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.
When you walk through fire you shall not be burned. And the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel,
Your savior.

Walking with God does not mean that we are always in the green pastures - he leads us through valleys, through the waters, through the fire. But he promises his presence and that will be enough for me.

squash it with a panini machine!

2008-04-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

I almost cried tonight.
I went to the dining hall with Natasha and Kathryn and made myself some supper. I went to the deli line and pulled out a tortilla wrap. I put lots of tasty and delectable items on it, rolled it up, and went over to the panini machine to squash and toast it. It was beautiful. It wasn't too big, which meant that I could roll it tightly. None of the stuffings came out.
None of the fillings came out because I've learned! Last week I watched the lady in front of me - how she rolled hers. I thought "oh, so that's how you get it from falling it all apart."
I carried it solemnly back to my table. After prayer, I bit into it. So delicious.

This is where the sorrow arose.

I am graduating in two weeks. I have only eight more meals left on my dining card. It took me four years to create the perfect wrap, and now I have to leave.

Let my panini failures be a lesson for my friends who retain the privilege of Anderson Commons! I would be glad to show you the ways of proper wrap making (if you don't already know) but time is running short!

So this frog hops into this bar...

2008-04-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about sex way too much recently. Being a TA for a professor who's teaching Sociology of Sexuality might do that for you.

I'm beginning to think that we do not know how to order our sexuality. Christians, Americans, young, old. How we teach sexuality to the young, how we think (or fail to think) about it in our own lives. We err either by licentiousness or by denigrating the body. In truth, God gave us bodies, with all of its emotions, desires, faults, and beauty. We order our sexuality out of honor for God. Our bodies are good, created by God. We are to bring glory to God with our whole lives, by moderation in our pleasures and chastity in regards to our sexuality (both married and unmarried)

Related to sex and sexuality is the simple fact of embodiment. I have a physical body that has needs, desires, problems, issues. I am never disembodied. I sit and study and my body causes me discomfort. I can forget about it for a time, but it doesn't let me ignore it for long. I have to pee or I'm hungry. Prosaic reality after reading Shakespeare or Paul.

What happens when we fail to use our bodies rightly? Related to sex, yes, but related to everything else that our bodies do? Is it wrong to not take care of our bodies? And then, what does "not taking care of our bodies" mean? We will all decay and our bodies will lose their strength, so to what level should we attempt to maintain health, and when do we gracefully let our bodies age?

Right now I kind of like my body. I'm young, spry, etc. It doesn't cause me too many problems. As I grow older I want to give my body grace and have patience with it. But what if I get arthritis? What if I get cancer? What if my body ages in a way that is painful?

I think that God gave us bodies for a purpose. We will never be disembodied spirits but will exist in resurrected bodies. they are not to be hated, as some soiled cloth that we must live with for a time but will eventually discard. We will be renewed but still embodied. Recently I wondered if we will still have internal organs in our resurrected bodies. It's odd to think of myself having a liver. I've never seen it, but I guess it's pretty important.

Paul says that he beats his body and makes it his slave, and as I struggle between these dichotomies of making the body everything or of nothing, there are many verses (such as this) that I am not sure how to understand rightly.

It's probably right for us to think seriously about embodiment and sexuality, especially as we live in a culture inculcated with sex and obsessed with a young, firm, trim, body. But there are other aspects of life that are also important. So many things to think about.

I should only tell funny stories on this blog. Thanks for reading.

Still knew how to fight.

2008-04-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

I got to meet some older adolescent boys at an organization where I interviewed at today. These kids were living in a transitional living program, helping them with the changes between the foster care or correctional system and living on their own.
We were sitting on the porch, talking. I asked them where they were from.

"I'm from the Hundred's. South Side."
"I grew up in Uptown."
"from the Cabrini projects"
"that's not too far from here." (me)
"just a couple of blocks over."

"I'm from a farm." (me)
"I know a kid who grew up on a farm. Still knew how to fight. Asked him about it. Said he and his friend got really drunk, locked themselves in the barn, and then fought their way out."

I guess you can learn how to fight anywhere.

Doppler

2008-04-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

One of the purposes of this blog is to attempt creative writing.
Attempt is the operative word. I'm learning.
-------

A drive down the highway reveals the change. When the spaces between trees are compressed by the speed, a Doppler effect of color results. The grey branches are quite visibly crayoned in by Spring. The green buds raise their eyebrows suggestively, saying, aren't you glad you waited? Aren't we worth it?
It was at this time last year that the snows came in and said in high piercing laughter, "Just kidding!"
Oh, the leaves came, but it was hard to wait. After the first tantalizing smiles and wake-up yawns, to be slammed back into sleep was almost cruel. For it was a sleep trying to remember a dream and the brow was furrowed by its mental labor.

Fresnillo

2008-04-19T11:52:00.000-07:00

I have pretty much decided that I will spend the next year working in Fresnillo, Mexico at a church. It's an Anglican church, and that's really attractive to me. I've grown up in low-church settings, but taking Historical Theology this semester has brought the fullness of Christian tradition to my attention. I want to learn more about that, walking through the Church calendar with a community.

The organization is called Christ for Children, International. I will be working especially with the kids in the church and in the neighborhood, organizing and leading Kids Clubs. I've taken three years of Spanish, but it will be an exciting challenge to learn how to effectively communicate the gospel cross-culturally and linguistically. Working with Mexican kids will also probably be a lot different than working with the Midwestern elderly, as I do at the nursing home. God's always leading us.

I'm also really excited about the community that I'll be joining. It's quite scary and sad to leave my friends and community at Wheaton. I know that no community of Christians is perfect, but I think that this will be good for me - to step into this rather than step out on my own (though I am never really alone).

Etiquette dinner

2008-04-15T18:40:00.001-07:00

Natasha and I attended an etiquette dinner tonight, put on by Career services. They fed us a fancy five course meal and told us what we should and should not do at formal dinners. I felt a bit distracted during the meal and wasn't so conversational as I could/should have been.

But Natasha had lots to say afterwards. In her own words (and with gutteral punch):

"booooring! It was so boring! Hierarchy enforcing. People who are polite feel fake!"

But we had cheesecake for dessert! And even though it was way too rich and creamy, a little bit was wonderful.

And etiquette is about making the other people feel welcome.
RSVP means reply if you are or are not attending. Let them know.
I learned so much!

Visissitudes of the mind

2008-04-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with the word avuncular floating around in my head.

The portly professor laughed in his quintessentially avuncular manner.

Even as I have been fully known

2008-04-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of speaking publicly in the sociology/anthropology department chapel today. I'm copying and pasting my speech so that you can read it.

-------------

My name is Karen Hooge and I’m a senior sociology major. I want to be known and I want to be loved. I want others to care about me, about me truly and to accept and enjoy me in that knowing.

I spent most of my time at Wheaton wondering what the hype about community was.

And when I finally start to understand little pieces of it, the number of credits I have says I have to leave. I want to be known and yet I’m so scared. I don’t want to leave the people who know me.

At one point during my sophomore year I had a slight altercation with an individual on my brother floor. I had thrown a piece of crumpled up paper at a friend who was sitting a ways away and hit this individual instead. He looked at me and said “I don’t even know you.”

I don’t care.

Yet I cared more than I thought I should. It bothered me.

Did I feel sheepish because I was clowning around?
But he was so derisive. "I don’t know you. I don’t care that I don’t know you. And I don’t want to get to know you."

Well I have other friends who know me. Other people who care about me.

I think I was thrown into a small existential crisis as I began to scour my friendships and wonder who really did know me. Sure people enjoyed my friendship, but there always is a point where they don’t understand me fully. And I’m not just talking about the antics and the words and the appearance of myself.

But who knows my thoughts and my foibles. And how I enjoy feeling that other people are envious of me And how rejected I felt when I didn’t get accepted into Teach for America.. And how I got up in the middle of the night to hold my roommate while she cried even though I was really tired. How there's more of the functionalist in my sociological thought than I would care to admit. And how I wanted to stop praying when faith didn’t make sense but I was too scared not to. And all my failings and flashes of brilliance and on and on.

Did I even know them?

And did I want any one to know all of this? Wouldn’t they think I was small and petty and disgusting and selfish? That I was pretentious and self-righteous.

1 Corinthians 13. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Even as I have been fully known.

I came in a freshmen and all my prior years were unknown to the people I was living and eating and studying with.
I leave as a senior and all of these years will be unknown to the people I will meet and live and talk and share with.

But God knows all my years. All my days. My thoughts. I have been fully known and I am fully known. I will continue to be fully known.
I can rest in that. I don’t have to prove myself to my friends to my family to myself. God knows me. God sees me. And God loves me.

So it’s just me and God then, booyah. Not quite.

For some reason I need the body of Christ. After taking away my dependence on human acceptance because I see I am known by God, God gives me back to community. For we are social beings, but more than just our innate need for others is the call to Christian community. I do not choose the Body of Christ; I am chosen. For this reason, I cannot say to someone else, “I don’t need you.” Oh but I do say this. I say it in many ways. I say it by ignoring you as I walk by you and by not giving you the opportunity to share your story with me.

I am still afraid of being hurt if you reject me so I guard myself. I am also afraid of the awkwardness of not knowing how to handle something you share with me. I do not seek to know you, and I do not allow you to begin to know me.

But 1 Corinthians 13 still calls me. I have been fully known. I can be open and honest and vulnerable with the Body of Christ because I know that there is eternal acceptance beyond the human acceptance. When we let each other down there is forgiveness because there is one who holds our hearts.

When my own faith struggles and falters I can lean on the faith of those around me and those throughout time. And when others struggle, they can lean on my faith.
I can accept your vulnerability and failings because I know that you also are known truly and loved by God. I do not see you as you are, but one day I will, and I can love you.
I am frightened to leave a place where I have discovered community and being known but I am not crippled, because the integrity of who I am – all the pieces seen and understood together – is held by God and not by myself or by the people around me.

I’d like to end with some verses from Colossians 3 which have been meaningful to me in dealing with community.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you so must also forgive. And over all these things put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Arteries that don't pump life

2008-04-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

I had an interview today in Chicago, and I took the Eisenhower Expressway into the city. I could not help but notice how the outbound traffic was backed up for miles and miles. I wondered if it would still be slow when I was finished with my interview.

On my way back, I decided to check out the traffic before merging onto a possibly slow-as-molasses traffic artery. And yes, the traffic was still barely moving. But I know my way around Chicago well enough that I found another road that would take me back towards Wheaton. This road wound through several neighborhoods, and the demographics of pedestrians and languages on the signs changed as I drove. Often the affluence of the neighborhood was apparent through architecture and the level of street cleanliness. Why are some areas so poor and others so wealthy? Why are these economic distinctions so often closely aligned with race? I would not have seen any of this if I was mindlessly cruising the Eisenhower with its tall stone walls blocking out most of the surrounding area.

Though I by no means am intending to imply that all people who use the Eisenhower Expressway are consumeristic, materially-driven suburbanites who only care about getting where they are going. But I was struck by the way that we are so used to the unpleasant and the disturbing being blocked for us. We know that urban areas often have more economic difficulties than the suburbs, so why remind us by daily assailing our eyes with such unpleasantness? It is easier to shrug it off and continue with making money and driving home as quickly as possible.

What is important in our lives? What are the foundational driving forces that provide the impetus to our actions? Are people really important or do money and security precipitate our choices more often than we care to admit? Does American society build people or do we build on people?

This post is also informed by thoughts on Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed.

Interview Schminterview

2008-04-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

I have an interview this afternoon! I will be going to a place called Geneva Foundation which works with adolescent boys who are aging out of the foster care system. It seems like a neat place. If they like me today they'll ask me back for a second interview, so I won't know for a while if I have a job offer.

So many choices. Americans are faced with a plethora of choices and then supposed to choose wisely. If things don't work out, it's our own fault because we could have chosen something else.

My choices are bifurcated. I can apply for and accept a job here in the Chicago area or I can do something totally different; go to Zacatecas, Mexico, and spend 13 months working with kids there. I would be going from a safe comfortable place where I can make my crockpot meals, chat with my roommate, take the El to work, and make wise financial choices. Or I can go to Mexico, a decision which would cost me at least $17,000.

I do not want my life dictated by monetary concerns. Good stewardship, yes. Wise choices, yes. But generosity! Values! Concerns! What is important in my life and do I allow these values to change the way I act?

"we could really use the help down here."

Michael W. Smith

2008-04-07T00:52:00.000-07:00

No comment.

running

2008-04-05T15:49:00.001-07:00

Funny how the effects of things can linger. Thursday afternoon I went jogging with my friend Anna for a time. She's a runner, I'm not. I stretched, yet my muscles kept reminding me days later of the trauma they underwent. She was encouraging, kept a steady pace for me to follow, and we started walking when I was about to fall over.

I've heard many sermons and devotionals likening the Christian life to a race, and have memorized Paul's metaphor in 1 Cor. 9. They've never really resonated with me because I'm not a runner and don't terribly enjoy steady consistent running (though bursts of speed can be good for the soul). I wonder if Paul was ever an athlete and if he knew from experience what it was like - the long-distance mindset, pacing oneself, being afraid to stop for a second because once you stop your muscles vehemently resist beginning again. Perhaps if I really was a runner I would understand the analogy to the Christian life.

As it is my picture is based more on Isaiah 40:31 - soaring on wings like eagles, running and not growing tired, walking and not fainting. Sometimes life is smooth, sometimes steady, and sometimes all you can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other. And God sustains through it all.

"I called you because you are poor."

2008-04-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

I've been applying for jobs in the social service sector of Chicago, jobs where I will be "helping" people who are "less fortunate than I." We've been talking about this in our sociology capstone course, particularly because our discipline of study has given us tools to be able to help others. Yesterday one of my classmates shared the following passage from a book by Jean Vanier entitled Befriending the Stranger. Vanier founded the l'Arche communities, which work with people with disabilities. He has this to say about being in community:

God's ways are not our ways; God's choices are not the choices of society.
God chooses "the poor, the weak, the needy",
those who recognize their poverty -
not just a material poverty but an inability to cope with life.
...
the problem is that we refuse to admit our weakness, our needs, our poverty
because we are frightened of rejection.
We have been taught to be strong, to be "the best", to win in order to become "someone".
Since society tends to marginalise those who are weak we think that weakness means rejection.
So we try to hide our poverty for as long as we can
and to pretend that we are strong;
we build up an appearance of being in control.

We need to hear that gentle, inner voice of God who tells us:
"you do not need to pretend.
you do not need to hide your weakness.
You can be yourself.
I didn't call you to community first of all to help others
Or to prove that you were generous or efficient.
I called you because you are poor,
Just like the ones you came to serve,
And because the Kingdom of God is promised to the poor."

Hi, I'm Bob. Would you knock me out please? (now with pictures!)

2008-03-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

Baby steps around this office, Baby steps get on the bus.

Baby steps to graduation.

I'm not sure which number it is (in the baby steps to post-collegiate life), since I've already finessed my resume and had several interviews, but I bought a suit on Friday. It's Italian. Now I just need the attitude that "I'm exactly what you need for this com-pan-y."

What I need is a tailor. The pants are too long. Kathryn!

Uke

2008-03-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

My ukulele has an odd habit of never being quite in tune, but I think that one which was perfectly tuned would fail to sound like a ukulele, at least as I know it.

I have always enjoyed making music, even though I've never been very stellar at it. I learned to play the guitar a couple of years ago, and soon after picked up my mother's ukulele and started to play that. At first all I played were little melodies that I picked up, most notably "Somewhere over the Rainbow." Slowly I began to learn proper tuning and chords (which, I noticed embarrassedly two years after I started playing, were ridiculously easy - I should have learned them right away).

I also bought a case for the little instrument. It makes it look like I'm carrying around a 3/4 violin or maybe a mafia-esque assassination tool. The case came with a little book of chords and songs, which I have since added to my repertoire.

It's much easier to carry around a ukulele than a guitar, and while it doesn't have the variations possible on a guitar (the ukulele has a range of just under two octaves) it definitely provides a base for singing, and the ability to pick out simple tunes.

I play it to calm myself, to entertain friends, to lead a song during class.
I also like the ukulele for its esoteric qualities. Most people don't know what it is, thinking it's a baby guitar (no, it will not grow up into a full-size) or a mandolin. There's a part of me that relishes in things that not everybody else knows about. 90% of Wheaton students play the guitar to some extent (my best estimate). I don't know anyone else who has a ukulele.

I am not sure if the ukulele is my attempt to live simply and leave my dad's guitar at home, or if it's a way for me to retain a sense of individuality in this community, or if it's simply something I enjoy. I can make music almost anywhere. Perhaps not the best quality, but it makes me smile.

"A shout out to my mom for giving me birth and letting me play her ukulele. I'll tattoo your name on my arm someday."

Just keep swimming, swimming swimming.

2008-03-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

Is trust like letting go and floating,

Or is trust like swimming,
swimming when you don't know how far shore is, or even which direction, and it's starting to get dark, and you're getting tired.

But you keep swimming.

Here at the end of all things

2008-03-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

I'm celebrating a fake holiday today.
It's March 25, and the Ring has been destroyed.

What a great day! An emblem and embodiment of evil and power and control has been done away with, due to the tremendous efforts and sacrifice.

I'd rather we celebrate our New Year on a day like this, when the seasons are actually changing, and the March wind blows a change, than a cold, bitter day in the midst of winter. This day has meaning.

"...the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach." (The Return of the King pg. 199)

"They stood now; and Sam still holding his master's hand caressed it. He sighed. 'What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven't we?' he said. ...But even as he spoke so, to keep fear away until the very last, his eyes still strayed north, north into the eye of the wind, to where the sky far off was clear, as the cold blast, rising to a gale, drove back the darkness and the ruin of the clouds." (Ibid, 229).

The only way out is through

2008-03-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

Lent is difficult for me. I have too much of the Protestant in my theological blood. I prefer the Resurrected Christ, without problems. Christ is Risen. He is Risen Indeed. For this reason, my cross is empty - there is no suffering, emaciated figure hanging there to bring me discomfort (or is it comfort in disguise?).

At Lenten services I know the priest won't dismiss us with a "Go in peace." We are meant to leave troubled by our sin and the great sacrifice it precipitated. I don't want to dwell on suffering. I don't like thinking of myself as a vile sinner, saved through the grace of God but still struggling.
And I don't know what to do with the God-man. Behold, the Creator, stooped in dust, bloody.

I feel like Prince Humperdinck, muttering out of the side of my mouth "skip to the end."

But the only way out is through.

Do I cheat the Resurrection of its power when I neglect what it defeats? If I don't understand death, how do I know true life? How do I know how to feast, unless I first experience the fast.

14 digits

2008-03-07T13:09:00.001-08:00

There are little things about living at Wheaton that I will miss. Little, rather insignificant things except for what they represent - belonging.

For instance, I really enjoy typing my fourteen digit ID number into the computer to access my library account. I have it memorized. Likewise, I like turning the dial on my CPO lock, waiting for the expectant catch when it clicks and I can open it.

I enjoy textures - running my finger along the groove in a brick wall, resting my unfinished carrot on my lips while I chew. Likewise, what I like about the above things are the tangible feelings they give my fingers - I like watching my fingers move quickly across the key pad and like feeling the tug of the lock as it catches. It is easy for me to think about how I'll miss them because I like them at such a basic (though not quite visceral) level.

Both of these activities are privileges of belonging to this community. Once I graduate my library account will be disabled and my college post office box will be given to an incoming freshman. This is the way of life - it keeps moving and changing. It is easier to think on these trappings of belonging rather than on the true substance of the community that I will miss. My future has a bend in the road which I cannot see beyond so I busy myself enjoying opening my CPO box.

Narrow, man

2008-03-04T13:02:00.000-08:00

The ladies sitting across from me in the computer lab are the culprits. They are the epitome of Why It is Not as it Should Be. They and their negative comments are the reason that so many are afraid of change and daring and trying something new.

"I saw my TA and he was growing this mustache!"
"yeah, I heard that it's 'Mustache March' or something like that."
"...Permanently grossed out."

Thanks a lot! There are those of us who think that facial hair of different varieties is a nice addition to a man's face but because of your peer rejection the cultural climate is anti-mustaches.

I just have to get out of here. Narrow-minded people.

Cardinal

2008-03-01T21:33:00.000-08:00

This morning as I walked from my townhouse through the secret passage I heard a bird rapidly spewing "tew tew tew tew tew." I hadn't heard that in a while but it sounded like a cardinal. I scanned the trees for the flash of red, and was rewarded with a vision of a tiny red paint stroke in a naked tree across the parking lot. Would I have been able to see it if the tree had been lush and blooming?

I guess there's not much really exciting about this post. I was happy to see that the cardinals are returning. I am also, as always, glad that it is March. The turning of seasons has always been a fun time for me, and especially the beginnings of spring. It's also Shanna's birthday tomorrow. Sixteen years old. I'm so glad to know you.

Helcaraxë

2008-02-21T16:55:00.000-08:00

To the north of our townhouse is a "secret pathway" as a friend of mine calls it. We can skirt alongside the car, between one fence and then over another, then walk between a row of trees and a 30 inch high concrete wall. We come out in a college-owned parking lot and the path is a nice shortcut when heading to campus. The parking lot and the ground on the other side of the short wall is a lower spot on campus and recently, when we had a lot of rain last weekend, became a thinly iced pond. The temperature dropped and the water froze. This made for a precarious walk across the parking lot, but what was really interesting was the way the deeper ice in the depression by the wall cracked and broke, with sheets of ice beginning to rise above another like the outcomes of miniature and frozen plate tectonics.

The sparrows keep singing though, and that makes me smile.

Free pizza

2008-02-20T19:45:00.000-08:00

When one changes one's meal plan at the college dining hall, when lunches and suppers become more sporadic and need a little more planning than walking in and swiping a card in order to enjoy a banquet of Medieval proportions, then the words "free food" have more than just a passing allure.
I know it's been said "there's no such thing as a free meal" but there are ones that have less pecuniary payout on my end, even if I do contribute by cleaning up or some other way.
It is within my best interests not to chase after free meals like a ravenous, tight-pocketed fool. I would lose self-respect, for instance. Nonetheless, I cannot deny that I think twice about going to an informational meeting about digging ancient dust in a city where bombs are falling (aka Ashkelon) when they say "free pizza!" And by thinking twice I mean that I actually consider going to the meeting.

But even if I do go and stuff my face with hot, greasy, delicious pizza at no charge to myself, Kathryn would never allow me to spend the airfare money just to follow her around the whole summer and complain (which she knows I will).

Benefit of the doubt

2008-02-17T14:47:00.000-08:00

I like to give people a little bit of leeway when I'm determining what their actions or words mean. I'm a rather trusting person and I hope for the best about a lot of people. I try not to jump to conclusions (though I do, I admit) and try to remember that I shouldn't assume things - there's so much about a situation that I don't know.

Things that I take for granted about what it means to be a Christian - that being a Christian is more than just going to church on Sunday but should be an all-encompassing rethinking and reordering of every aspect of our lives - I am learning aren't held by all the people around me calling themselves Christians.
Part of being a Christian means having integrity. I don't think that integrity is a nice by-product that some people may have, but is rather something we all need to strive for. Let our words and actions match up. If we say we will do something, do it. People watch us, in our lives, and we are a witness at every moment.
I'm not talking about a legalistic terror of mistakes or a strive to be perfect in a self-created way. I'm talking about intentionally working towards the integration of our words and actions and beliefs, being a whole person where all parts of our lives connect and support each other. Acknowledging our mistakes and being honest about our failings. Rejecting pretension and the compartmentalization of our lives.

We are forgiven people, but our redemption is not so that we can get lost in the wilderness. We were set free for a purpose, to be God's icons in this world. Our actions matter, our words matter. If we believe something, it needs to change us.

ASL

2008-02-12T18:16:00.000-08:00

I'm taking an informal class on American Sign Language. The one rule is that there is no voice allowed. For an hour each Tuesday evening I exist in a semi-silent world (the only sounds being the natural ambient noises that I cannot shut out). My communication is truncated to rudimentary phrases and laborious finger-spelling. As our teacher prays (we don't close our eyes during prayer) I can comprehend generally that he is talking to our Lord and includes the class and our learning in his thanksgiving and supplication. Learning motions and signs for words makes me consider how I think - do I think in individual words or phrases? Do I hear the words in my head as I think? How does a deaf person contemplate? Do they see written words as they would when writing or typing? Do they envision signs?

After an hour, spoken words are an affront to the silence. We have labored together to communicate and at once give it all up for the ease of our native tongue. Perhaps the affront is actually guilt at the feelings of relief that I can speak once again.

Lame-o

2008-02-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

what a lame blog! Why am I writing this? I feel so shallow about what I write, or so trivial, or trite, but it's only because I don't feel comfortable writing more seriously on a digital raft that floats out into the nebulous dark waters of the internet.
I would like to be able to express my thoughts and experiences in a cohesive and careful way, so perhaps I shall continue practicing that way. But in the mean time, my faithful or sporadic or unintended readers, my apologies.

Moving target

2008-02-08T00:06:00.000-08:00

I want my center to be in Christ and I want to live in the reality that my identity is found in Him. Yet as soon as I center myself I allow myself to be distracted. What I need is a staple gun, to staple myself to Jesus, yet I'm afraid I'd just take out the binding ligatures. I run around in my life saying "Jesus help me" as if I'm playing tag with him, getting so close and then jumping just out of reach.

What I need is for Jesus to staple himself to me, 2 Tim. 2:13

Ashes to Ashes

2008-02-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

But the steadfast love of the Lord never fails.

Merciful God, you call us forth from the dust of the earth and name each of us as your beloved children. Now look upon us as we enter these Forty Days bearing the mark of ashes:
sign of our mortality,
reminder of our end.
Bless our journey through the desert of Lent to the font of rebirth.
May our fasting be a hunger for justice, our acts of charity, a making of peace; our prayer, the chant of humble and grateful hearts. When we come to Easter and behold the empty cross, renew in us the certainty of your unfailing love; assure us again that neither life nor death
can separate us from you.

Strobe sight

2008-02-06T14:23:00.000-08:00

I'm walking on water but it's the slushy kind. The wind's blowing the snow directly in my face. Soft kisses? Or perhaps tiny slaps? The snow induces rapid blinking and the shutters of my eyes open and close several times a second. I can just see enough not to run into another and to recognize familiar shapes and jackets. It's not cold enough to bring on fits of shivering and I can't help but grin as the words "hold your head high! Hold your head high!" play over in my mind. I don't even know the rest of the song.

Windsor

2008-02-04T18:40:00.000-08:00

I played Scrabble tonight with Pauline, Winn, Louise, and Dee. Louise has a day-lily named after her. Pauline and Winn graduated from Wheaton in 1945 and knew my grandmother, Anna Hess Lander. What is it like to live at a nursing home with a college friend sixty-three years after graduation? As Simon and Garfunkel say "Can you imagine us years from today? How terribly strange to be seventy" let alone 85. We make choices in our lives and are responsible for those choices, but in a grand sense life just happens and we respond in a right way. These ladies have lived for so many years and have done so many things in their lives.
I'm only 22 and am so worried about what will happen in the next few months, the next few years. If my life isn't settled by the time I'm 30 I'm lost. But here they are, 85 years old. Life happens and you take it one day at a time.

Otto gave me three kisses, and he's 101.

The snow car

2008-02-04T14:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday after the snowfall our townhouse neighbors decided it would be fun to bury a car. We watched from our window, surmising that they were probably just playing a practical joke on a friend.

This afternoon a young lady was out there pushing all the snow from her car, so we went out to help. She said that she did know the guys but that they didn't know this was her car. Apparently they just chose the smallest car in the lot to turn into a giant snowball.

Natasha has said, previously, that she would like to go over and ask these fellows what goes on in their heads. They have done other unhelpful things like throwing broken furniture on our lawn, being inconsiderately loud late at night, etc. I should like to know as well.

The snake and the mouse

2008-02-03T12:19:00.001-08:00

We have a little mouse in the kitchen - quite a cute one, in fact. I've seen it three times, which is three times more than anyone else.
We also have a pet snake and we joked about letting loose the snake to catch the mouse, so it was rather humorous when Sarah Davis came into my room with a sheepish grin on her face asking if I had her snake, Mayzie. Of course I didn't, but we looked briefly and assumed she would show up before too long.
Yesterday evening we had a bunch of people over because it was Groundhog Day and I didn't want to tell everyone that we had both a snake and a mouse loose in our townhouse, so I kept in on the D-L for quite a while, but towards the end of the movie Sarah Wilcox went upstairs and noticed a coiled "plastic snake" on the stairs. She thought we set it there to guard the stairs and keep anyone from going upstairs, but then remembered that we had had a snake last year (Sarah Wilcox found Mayzie when she escaped last year too).

Aside from a few shudders and unpleasant expressions, Mayzie's reception went quite well. That snake doesn't know how lucky she is: we're setting traps for the mouse.

Reading ahead

2008-02-02T17:46:00.000-08:00

I really need to pay more attention to what the exact reading assignment is for each day. Twice now I have read information that is not needed for several days while neglecting the immediate assignment. It's all good stuff though; good stuff. I was reading a Catholic theologian talking about the need for racial reconciliation, and his treatment of the subject is quite good. He goes beyond mere insights or principles and seeks after concrete practices we can follow that emphasize, theologically, that we are the chosen people of God and part of that community. There were some aspects of the article that I was confused about and will continue to muse on those. Hopefully the class discussion in several days contributes to the elucidation. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, Slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all.

But now I have no time to read Monday's stuff because it's Groundhog Day, believe it or not, and things are about to get hopping around here. I know everyone is really excited about this day, even though the hog saw his shadow again, of course. But despite the prediction here tonight we will bask in each others warm hearts and hearths.

Career Fest

2008-02-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

Today Natasha and I went to a Career Fest, booyah. It was crazy. There were a lot of different employers there, but I was only really interested in the human and social services. It was good experience, definitely, and a couple of the employers seemed interested in my resume, so I guess I've got something going for me.

Mostly it was good experiential knowledge because I've only ever gone through a real interview process once, and that was with Teach For America. It can be a bit daunting to think about stepping out from my nice, sheltered enclave at Wheaton and merging with the work outside of here, so it was nice to feel like perhaps I do have good stuff to offer and can do good, meaningful work after I graduate.

Tomorrow's Groundhog Day, and the rodent will probably see his shadow because the forecast is sunny, but that's okay because we can eat the hog afterwards. ;)

2008-01-31T19:50:00.000-08:00

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Snow

2008-01-31T16:05:00.000-08:00

Generally I like Weather, or at least I can enjoy it for a time, even if I don't like being out in it for long. Today it's started snowing and it blows right in your face. Part of the reason I like Weather is because you can't control it - it will do what it will, and my job is to respond (by the way, I am capitalizing Weather in the vein of C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength). My favorite part about the snow is letting the snowflakes land on my glove and then looking at them. I also appreciate the way the freshly fallen snow covers everything, although its stark whiteness doesn't last long in the suburbs. Last night I was looking at the swirling eddies of windblown snow against the wide street and wished I were a poet. They looked like wispy ghosts or like the foaming ocean water against the rocks on the shore.

Today a Rich Mullins song, "Hold Me, Jesus," played on my computer (it was on random). It was a welcome reminder of the assurance I have that God is in control and his plan is best. Yay Rich Mullins!

Windsor Park

2008-01-28T17:51:00.000-08:00

On Monday nights I lead a college ministry to a nearby nursing home. We go over and for an hour and a half visit and play games with residents. Every time I go, I don't regret it, though sometimes I feel a bit lackluster before we need to head out. Tonight was especially encouraging. Two new volunteers came with us, and they were very engaged with the residents. It was neat to see them. We also got to spend a lot of time with different residents - since we go in the evening, some are already getting set for bed - but tonight there was a good turnout. I played a game called "Shake loose a memory" with Dee, Florence, and Jim. We rolled the dice and picked up a matching card. We read the back of it - "keep this card if you have ridden a motorcycle," "keep this card if a doctor delivered your children in a hospital." If you'd done it, you keep the card, if not, you lay it back down. It was a joy to see Jim read the card, pause, and then a smile spreads across his face as he remembers planting a garden or being bit by a dog (it wasn't a serious bite).

Concerto competition

2008-01-25T19:11:00.000-08:00

I've played piano for a number of years; I started when I was in first grade and took lessons until ninth grade. I still play occasionally but my passions and interests have generally changed. This afternoon I went to the conservatory's Concerto Competition, where several of my friends dazzled me with their virtuosity and talent as they played instrumental solos with the college orchestra. I watched my friend Jon relish the swell of the music as he played the piano with abandon, I thought of all the hours he must have spent practicing, closed in a little six by seven room and how everything was worth it to be able to create that moment of absolute wonder.

Another young student had won a composition competition, and three musicians performed his piece while he sat in the audience with us. I tried to imagine what it was like for him, a college sophomore, to be able to express music from within him, and then to place it outside of himself, relinquishing it and letting someone else play it. What if they didn't play it the way he heard it in his head? Or what if their hand slipped and the notes got messed up? The journey from creation to translation to interpretation and it was over in ten minutes.

Greek exegesis

2008-01-24T20:50:00.000-08:00

Dr. Gerald Hawthorne taught Greek at Wheaton for many years; he taught my dad in the '70s. I met Dr. Hawthorne my freshman year when I frequented his church near the campus. He and his wife, Jane, were very welcoming and I ate at their house for Easter. Dr. Hawthorne had trouble remembering who I was, which was fine; no hard feelings.

Today I was sitting in the library, reading a text about the Apostles' Creed when I came across Dr. Hawthorne's name. Some Greek translation he had worked on had relevance to the topic at hand, and I paused momentarily to think about Dr. Hawthorne's life work. As he has an office at Buswell library, I have often seen him there, and today, as I was contemplating "I believe in God the Father, the Almighty..." Dr. Hawthorne walked into my field of view. He got a cup of coffee and a Twix bar from the machines against the far wall and slowly made his way towards me. After picking up a book to peruse, he came to a chair near mine and asked "Is anyone sitting here?" I answered, "No, go ahead." "Thank you, April!" was his cheerful reply.

I'm not sure who April was, but I smiled and went back to my book.

paper explosion

2008-01-23T15:43:00.000-08:00

My plan this afternoon was to go through old class notes, bank account statements, receipts, letters, etc., and either throw away or neatly categorized. I don't like having lots of things around, but I hate the thought of throwing something away that will be useful in the future (particularly for taxes or grad school). After three and a half hours, I am taking a break and creating this blog, the inspiration of my dear roommate, Natasha. Though it will probably not be as profound or interesting as some, perhaps it will provide insights into my life for friends and family.

This last week has been quite difficult. I've been in the process of considering my future and I worry that I won't use the gifts and opportunities that God has given me to their fullest potential. It's a heavy responsibility to have a life. I've been considering happiness and the difference between happiness and contentment, as well as what is most importance in life - a relationship with and obedience to God. Romans 8:28 says that God works all things for the good of those who love him. This "good" isn't necessarily happiness - it's being transformed into the image of God.
As I've been considering happiness and contentment I've also wondered about the connection between choices and trust. I can pray for wisdom and guidance, but I don't always have solid assurance that I'm making the right one. Trust is an uneasy adventure.