2010 Takeaways

Admittedly, this was a bit of a dead year for my blog.

Here are a few things I wish I had blogged about, but forgot/was too lazy to do so:

• I watched all six seasons of Lost this spring just in time for the finale.  A lot of people were upset about the lack of questions answered but I contend that it makes more sense when the prior seasons are in your head and even more importantly in light of the sin/redemption themes in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra.  Genius.
• Being busy is not the answer to boredom.  
• Being bored is not the answer to busyness.
• Kiva.org (and micro-loaning in general) is fantastic.  Micro-loans allow those in poverty to get a jump start on helping themselves rather than making them dependent on (potentially) degrading hand-outs.  I started lending on Kiva this summer and when I give once a month, the money gets paid back so that I can keep lending. 
• MAHE is great because 
• I get to work with DAs and DCs
• Classes are relevant and classmates are rarely slackers
• Teaching a Foundations of Christian Thought discussion group rocks
• Being co-hall-director in Berg for January
• I will lead a Spring Break trip to Russia (!)
• MAHE is not great because
• Thesis looms
• Group projects are confusing
• Sometimes I don't know what I'm really supposed to be doing 
• Conferences (blah)
• Thesis looms

I'm leading a Spring Break missions trip to Russia through Taylor this spring, so if you once kept up with my missions blog, it's getting going again, so check it out!

Working for a Living... Or was it the other way around?

It's a good thing that I didn't give in to the temptation to get a job this summer.

As I've learned over the past year, having freedom from an eight-to-five is much more than just a big summer break or the path to homelessness.

• Last summer, I was a bit leery about having two months open between CRAM and Sierra Leone, but it turns out that I was uniquely available to help when my friend at camp was diagnosed with cancer and I was able to help take her place.  
• After Sierra Leone, I had time to help out at Joy's House when they were in dire straits in looking for a front desk worker.  Who else could have filled in for two and a half weeks for any hours of the day? 
•  And when my mom got her new job, my making dinner for the family each night took a lot of pressure off.  I could help my dad with house maintenance (and cleaning up after our sump pump overflow).
• Who else had time to drive to Columbus to mow my grandpa's lawn every week when he had hand surgery?

  I thought (probably because everyone around me was telling me) that this couldn't go on and I'd have to get a "real job" for this summer.  I tried (halfheartedly) and it didn't work... and now I know why.
There's an old couple down the street here in Orlando who are getting their house ready to sell.  The wife just had major abdominal surgery and the husband simply can't do all the moving and cleaning that needs to be done.  Good thing I'm not tied up doing " my part for society" like serving that "needed" coffee or selling books.

Isn't that what work really used to be all about?  Someone has a need and someone else fulfills that in exchange for a need of their own being fulfilled.  That couple has money (I've got tuition payments looming) and I have 23-year-old back that can handle all the lifting (they don't).

People tried to tell me that if I didn't get a job I wouldn't be able to provide for myself but the Lord really knows what He's doing.  I did a little number crunching and found that since my last official paycheck I've gotten (from TU for CRAM in June of last year), my overall money has stayed within $200 of the original amount.  I haven't gone up or down in a year!  Those who know me know I'm not really interested in making any kind of profit, and this last year of being available to help when no one else could has been very fulfilling.



It makes me wonder if one could do this indefinitely...

In Euchre, Jacks are known as Bauers...

24.  It's getting cancelled and good thing too because it's been awful for the past three seasons!  Last year's was so painful that I planned on not even following this season...  Then I ended up having nothing to do on Monday nights at nine and so here I am, watching recycled scripts and foolish plot lines.  Wondering how I ever got to like this show so much and yet still be thrilled with it's cancellation, I decided to watch season 2 on DVD to see if it really was great or if it was all just new and interesting with that real-time thing.  I needed to know if I should have been laughing at it all along.

I just finished season 2 and here are my findings.

The earlier seasons of 24 are without a doubt quantifiably better than the more recent ones!  I had seen season 2 (years ago) and vaguely remembered it (recalling major plot twists approximately 30 seconds before they happened) but even with that it was still thrilling.  Here's a few of the major reasons why:

1. 24.  It's a ridiculous idea that the characters are up and in a constant state of adrenaline for 24 solid hours.  The characters of season 2 recognized this and acted like it was quite out of the ordinary to be up at 3 AM chasing down suspects.  In season 8, it's like the characters know they're characters in a real-time 24-hour TV show.  Lawyers pop up in ten minutes when hailed in the wee hours of the morning and parole officers drive from Arkansas like it's no big deal.  The out-of-the-ordinary idea that people would go for that long is acted out like it's simply ordinary.

2. Character development.  Season 1 and 2 we have someone to hate.  Passionately.  Sherry Palmer.  What a tool!  And also some CTU directors/Division dudes.  We worry constantly about Kim and her crippling ineptitude and amazing ability to attract bad situations and creepy guys.  But in the later seasons we laugh at the bad guys for being so goofy and we aren't emotionally attached to anyone to care if they live or die.  They all just seem to come and go so quickly or they're just moles.

3. Viewer Omniscience. We know everything in season 8.  We know who the mole is (hated her for a while and probably figured it out before it was revealed), we are shown everything and nothing is left up to speculation.  So much more was in the dark in season 2!  We were as scared and worried as the characters themselves, not knowing what was going to happen or where to get the vital information.  They give too much away nowadays.

4. Plot twists.  Ok, so they were still inventing the good twists back then.  I think it was season six that reused Article 25 of the Constitution to depose a President, but when season 2 was live, most of us had never heard of that Article.

5. The main threat.  In season 1 all that was in jeopardy was the lives of one federal agent's wife and daughter and a senator.  Ok, so the senator was going to be elected to be the best Prez the US has seen since Abe Lincoln, but still.  At stake 4 people.  The ante is massively upped with a nuclear bomb threatening 10 million. Maybe the writers went too big to quick and it got hard to top.  But when you haven't seen 6 six seasons of nukes going off in Southern California, it's pretty enthralling the first time around.

6. My favorite reason why: there's subliminal excitement mixed in.  At commercials and at the end of the show there's that clock with the famous "beep-thud".  It usually coincides with everyone in the room clenching their teeth and shouting, "AHH!  I can't believe that just happened!!!"  And in the earlier seasons (I think I first noticed it in 4 and re-confirmed it while watching the DVD of 2) they mix into the background sound/music that little beep.  Somewhere deep inside our heads it gets us juiced for something suspenseful when they really use it when people are just talking calmly.  Listen for it, you'll hear it.  And it gets your blood pumping because you're so used to the excitement associated with the sound.    It's gone in the later seasons.  :-(

Admittedly those 4 and 6 points of mine are good traits simply from being chronologically first, but my point stands.  24 is getting cancelled because they gave up.

March 25

I learned recently that today (the twenty fifth of March) was once held in tradition to be the date on which Jesus died (which we now celebrate according to a lunar calendar on various dates of Good Friday). It also has to do with the reasons of when Christmas would be celebrated.

Apparently people used to think that greatness was determined by the symmetry of one's birth and death- if you died on your birthday it was a good sign somehow. But being killed nine months before one's birthday wasn't really all that hot.  Unless you get Resurrected and redeem the whole universe.  Then you have this whole new dimension of death really being a new kind of beginning of the new birth and this idea in the liturgical year that there's a nine month gestation period between now and Christmas.  Then there's also something special about those three months between Christmas and now because that was that season that overlapped in the first and last years of Jesus' (earthly) life.

Then you get Tolkien, who notices everything and tries to show it to us in hidden little ways.  Go look through the index of your copy of the Lord of the Rings (if you don't have a copy, I don't know what you're doing reading this blog).  The big journey (of the Fellowship anyway) begins on December 25.  And Frodo destroys the Ring on March 25.  It's that fantastic three months of redemption that the liturgical year and Tolkien are trying to remind us of.

And you can even see vestiges of this in our society's traditions when we resolve to change ourselves for the better at New Year's, or commit to love each other better at Valentine's Day, or commit to sacrifice something for Lent.  It's all in that redemptive track reminding us (like every Sunday) that Christ has changed the world and we don't live in the same place anymore.

Now because Easter and such is followed on the lunar calendar, "Holy Week" is yet to come.  Now I don't know how all got decided when to do what, but what is important is that it got decided for very good reasons and those reasons are meant to teach us something, not just to be arbitrary.
 So remember that as we all consider what on earth the word Maunday means on Thursday.


* I learned all of this from these two books: The Liturgical Year and Tolkien: Author of the Century

Impatience and Lust

In his book Compassion, Henri Nouwen describes impatience (in this paraphrase of mine since I can't find my book to directly quote from) as a declaration that "now" is not good enough and as a failure to recognize a moment as full and rich.  We always think that if only this would happen now, or this other future thing would occur sooner, we would be satisfied.  But we find that when that thing finally comes, we're ignoring it only to look ahead further to the next thing that is just too far away.
And lust.  It's usually understood in one of it's more common specific uses, that of sexual lust, but the broader term here fits in with impatience.  That broader understanding of lust is the desire to believe in a lie.  Very often it is also a lie of future satisfaction that will take place if only we do something.  It's all very built on the "if only"- a declaration that something right now is not good enough.

A week or so ago, I thought to myself "if only I can hear back about whether not I'm into that masters program! Then, I'll be satisfied!"
Well, now I know.  I'm in.  Woo hoo.  Where's the satisfaction?  Impatience and lust whisper in my ear, "That's six months away!  Things will be so much better when it actually starts.  You'll be satisfied then... if only it can come sooner!"
False!  I will have homework and papers I don't want to write and other trash; they will come whispering again, "Just wait until summer or graduation when you can be free of all those terrible obligations..."  Again, false, real life exists and there will always be something to do and look forward too.  Where does it end?  Death?  Not ready for that.
I've got to start learning now that now is okay.  In fact it's great.  And I don't need to look for my satisfaction in something that is yet to come.  That's just gonna leave me empty and hungry and dying (literally) for the next thing.

You know that feeling you get when someone hints that another person whom you really respect likes you?  You get that kind of flutter and excitement and realize that you're important to someone really important.  Sometimes we forget that Someone Really Important thinks pretty highly of us and I think that's plenty to be satisfied about.

Mastering the Art of...

I realize I posted this news on Facebook a few days ago so most of you probably know that I've been accepted to MAHE. Hooray! Those of you still confused as to what this acronym means, educate thyself.

In a few weeks, I'll return to campus to apply/interview for my assistantship which includes choices like Sammy Morris Assistant Hall Director, Service Engagement Grad Assistant, Campus Ministries Grad Assistant and a bunch of other goodness. Wha?? Me, little ole me, doing something like assistant hall directing? No way. We'll see.

And yet, let us remember Ecclesiates 9:11

The State of the Union

Over the past few years I've tried to watch the State of the Union- it seemed like the "good citizen" kind of thing to do. It's honestly one of the president's most simplistic speeches and hardly directed to just the Congress anymore. The Constitution states that he is to update the Congress on what sort of state the union is in and then recommend things that should be done. It also says "from time to time"... not just every January a week before the Super Bowl.

It struck me that this whole "telling Congress what's up and how they should go about their jobs" is really something most presidents do all the time. And this yearly speech must encompass everything and make it seem like the prez hasn't been recommending stuff every Wednesday night anyway. So the result is that the speech is always overreaching in the scope of what anyone can really do because it's real success rate is the Congressional applause-o-meter and how well the American public can believe anything. The combination of all these factors leads to the myth that the president (via the government) can (and should) fix everything. What!?

Hmmm can and should make things better. All things? Sounds suspiciously like the power to do anything, aka omnipotence. Not to mention that the speech makes the president seem like all he wants to do is something good for everyone, aka perfectly benevolent.

All I'm saying is that language like this should hardly be applied to these human-led institutions that any fool's glance at a history book will tell you do not live up to this alleged reputation. The State of the Union is nice- it give you these good feelings about the future and makes you believe in the power of the executive office again, but a closer look has one realize that it is intellectually dishonest in it's continuing historical portrayal of government and in the abilities and rights of mortal man.

This being said, it's not totally awful either. Sometimes it may be the only time a year some average joes tune in to what their government is doing within its power and that education is worth it to keep the shenanigan going. We just need to keep our brains turned on and question even the nicer sounding speeches.

Re-getting-into-things

So I'm home. If you're lost and confused about what I'm talking about, refer to the link in the below post to see everything that went on in Sierra Leone.

Since I've been back I've hobnobbed with relatives, camp friends, Kelsie and her family, and those people living in my house. Brian and I are back under one roof for the first time since high school and now Taylor is living with us (to be in range of a non-distance relationship with Carly in Upland). So it's great, he and I drive up their often and visit the ladies and we hang out all week down here in Indy together.

And in the meantime, I had a few speaking engagements at Taylor- I spoke on the wing about my time in Salone, talked in one of Dr. Jones' history classes, and gave a sermon at church. It was kind of exhausting to do all in one weekend, but it's over and I think it went well.

I also interviewed to be in the MAHE Program at Taylor- a master's in higher ed and student development. We'll see in about a month whether or not I'm in. I'm still deciding what to do with myself in the meantime, but I'll let you know.

Also, would you mind taking a super short (two question) survey for me? Thanks! Click here.