acting in the wings

Today I watched All About Eve, a movie from 1950 about an aging stage actress and the younger woman who conives her way into the leading lady's role.  I thought it was particularly interesting that in a film all about plays and stage acting, there was never a single scene of the stage performances - we never see any part of the plays or of the acting on stage.  I'm pretty sure it's because everyone gives their best performances off stage. 

Basic Math

i don't really get what's going on. i don't understand it.

i've been keeping up on the current conflict between Hamas and Israel, and a lot of things just don't make sense to me.

To start out, here are some things i do get:

• Israel is an actual nation. It has, you know, a real army and stuff. It has national sovereignty and the right to protect itself from attack.
• Hamas is, well, a terrorist group who broke a truce. They do not recognize Israel as a nation, and therefore, lasting peace is not a viable option as long as they are the dominant governing body in Palestine, so something probably needs to be done about that.
• The paradox there is that Israel does not recognize Palestine, so i guess lasting peace could also not happen while Israel is the dominant governing body of...itself. Israel has the advantage in this respect though, as they are, in fact, an actual nation capable of being recognized.

here are some things i don't get:

• Last i heard, there have been 2 Israeli deaths as the result of Hamas' mortor attacks. There have been over 315 deaths as the result of Israel's attacks into Gaza, which Israel refers to as self-defense. i am under the impression that attacks are typically retaliated against based on a "proportional response." That would mean, basically, a life for a life. (This is the same sort of principle that support for capital punishment is frequently based on, but that is a subject for a different post.) My powerful math skillz tell me that 315 does not equal 2; these same math skillz tell me that this response is therefore not proportional. Now, that's fine and good if Israel decides they want to handle this one differently, that's their right. And it's fine and good if each of the 315+ people dead are members of Hamas, as they are the targets of Israel's attacks. But what if they're not? We can't know for sure, i don't think, and isn't the chance that Israel may have killed a couple of innocent folks who may never have even thrown a rock at a fence enough of a reason to step back a second and rethink what has surely gone past the category of self-defense? i'm certainly not saying Israel is wrong. Actually, i'm saying Hamas is wrong. i'm just also saying that maybe Israel should maybe back off a little bit. They made their point.
• All that said, i don't understand why the media isn't being just a wee bit more objective in their coverage -- i'm hearing phrases like "a truce expired 10 days ago" when i should be hearing "terrorist organization Hamas broke a truce 10 days ago" and seeing headlines like "Israel pounds Gaza for third day" and little reminder of the fact that is is a response, even if it is a disproportionate one. It's kind of like how the media coverered the democratic nominees for the presidential candidacy, except instead of Obama, there's Palestine (his supporters are like the pro-Palestine protesters: overly emotional, and probably farther removed from the problems they're talking about than they're willing to let on), and that makes Clinton like Israel (who people will accept if they have to, since it seems like there's no way to get rid of it). Is that a fair analogy? Probably not. But given the example set for me by most major media outlets, i'd say i'm still doing alright.

But oh, i don't really even know what i'm talking about, aside from my crazy idea that we shouldn't go around killing people as a way to solve problems. i mean, i guess i just haven't learned from all the other times when it worked so well! Oh wait...no, that must have been something else.

i know this wasn't the cheerful holiday blog i may have predicted on facebook, filled with tales of London and Amsterdam and skiing in the Alps, but hopefully there's still time for that. Maybe i'll even reach far back in the bag of illusions (tricks are what a whore does for money) and write about something else, like the election, or my semester or something. Who knows? No one. Who cares? How many is less than no one?

Living in a box

Wow, it's been a while, blog. i've missed you.

It's finally Christmas break, and i have to some to sit and be still and contemplate the many mysteries of the universe. i had a pretty fantastic semester at UNC with the Achordants and the small group, and the friends, and the classes, etc. But now i'm home, which means i can read Newsweek articles on msnbc.com and then post my commentary here. i just took a trip to London to see some plays, and i'll be back to talk about those later, but this struck my fancy, so i thought i'd get it out of the way while i'm around.

Barack Obama has selected Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural ceremony. This has apparently upset some members of the gay community, because Rick Warren, a Christian (zoinks!), is less than supportive of gay rights. To help settle this, Newsweek had two gay writers do a sort of article debate about it - Chris Crain in support of the decision, and Leah McElrath Renna against it.

Basically, Crain insists that we look at what unifies us, rather than what divides us, claiming that Warren represents the beliefs of many Americans, including the foundational Christian beliefs shared by President-elect Obama. Renna, on the other hand, claims that by selecting someone who doesn't recognize gays and lesbians as spiritually whole people, but as people who choose to be sinners, Obama has selected an inappropriate person to be the "spiritual representative of our nation as a whole."

For the most part, i side with Crain on this. Although i understand the complaints of those who may call him an appeaser and maintain their frustration with Obama and his selection, his arguments at least focused on the unity that Obama has been emphasizing, and he calls out Renna for encouraging disunity among Americans, gay and straight alike (an accusation i have been more than happy about making towards the many many Obama supporters who have managed to live through the cognitive dissonance it must have required to actually be an Obama supporter, seeking change and unity, except for, you know, that other half of the country, eewww).

i just wanted to point out that Renna fails to take into consideration the fact that Warren very likely believes that no one is spiritually whole, and that we are all sinners because, that's sort of what Christians believe. Not that Renna went out of her way to actually talk about or even speculate on what Christianity itself actually holds to be true. She mainly just focused on what she thought. Furthermore, i'm bothered by the fact that she gives the position of giving an invocation at the inaugural ceremony so much credibility. i was a bit surprised to discover that America even had a spiritual representation of our nationa as a whole, our very own direct line to God, who must be an American. i mean, if he wasn't an American, why would it be so important to represent the entire nation to Him?

But then, i wonder who Renna would have selected as a better "spiritual representation"? Is there anyone out there is atheist, agnostic, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu out there? Also, if that person could be gay and straight, black and white (no, wait, Obama's got that one covered already), a man and a woman, American and...well, no, only American (since that's apparently all that matters to God), then will that person please stand up, because i bet you meet Leah Renna's standards for who would be best to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration. Or no, how about this? If you can just be a Christian who agrees with Renna's opinions on this one particular issue, then i bet the entire gay community would feel better. Kay, thanks :)

Do you see, Leah Renna? No one will ever make you happy, which actually makes me kind of sad. Your sadness is a virus, and it is infecting me, so i'm going to leave now, before it spreads further, but before i do, i thought you should know, that gaping (cross-shaped?) hole in your soul cannot be filled by a woman. Or a man. Or a pro-choice, gay-rights activist Christian. Or Barack Obama. Or debating issues that have little importance aside from what you assign to them. i hope you've figured out what i'm getting at by now because i don't really feel like spelling it out any more.

Just because you put yourself into a box doesn't mean you have to make everyone else live in one, too.

(And before anyone does try to put me in a box on this, please feel free to get in touch with me about anything you'd like me to clarify about my faith, my opinions on Obama, who i actually don't mind very much, my views of homosexuality, etc. i can't guarantee i'll have very good answers, but i'd rather talk to you about them than let you draw conclusions based on this one entry.)

Singing my song, all day long at Hogwarts.

i am so bad at this lately.

i don't know why.

i partly don't have interesting things to talk about, or rather, don't have interesting things to say.

and when i do have something to say, it's frequently of a nature or pertaining to relationships in such a way that i shouldn't put it online for people to read. things more appropriate to journal entries.

hopefully i'll get on here with substance soon. maybe the election will bring something out of me.

dark/light

So yesterday i walk into class and i see 4 faces behind computers, illuminated by the eerie blue of their computer screens. All the lights were off. And i wasn't sure why. So i turned them on. i wouldn't take the time to say anything about it, except it's not the first time i've walked into the room and turned the lights on. It just doesn't quite make sense to me - why would you choose to sit in the dark when the light switch is just a few feet away?

Expanding Your Horizons

Today in COMM 140 (Media Criticism) we were talking about sexuality in media. There was a lovely moment when the roles in the classroom were switched and the students got to become the teachers. You see, our professor is gay and he was confused when someone mentioned the "reverse cowgirl" position. After we explained the concept to him, he was able to go home with the satisfaction of having learned something new.

Jump-starts

As i sit here ignoring my homework, waiting for a friend to come over so that we can finish watching the 2nd season of The West Wing, my favorite television show, i find myself thinking about the many guest performers on the show who go on to have bigger roles in different shows. So i thought i'd take a minute to make a list of all the ones i could think of. Mostly as a cure for my boredom, but hopefully as a cure to yours as well.

• Edward James Olmos, Battlestar Galactica (admittedly, he wasn't a nobody - he did get an Oscar nomination back in 1989)
• Jorja Fox, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
• Lisa Edelstein, House
• Reiko Aylesworth, 24
• Ian McShane, Deadwood
• Emily Procter, CSI: Miami
• Terry O'Quinn, Lost
• Mark Harmon, NCIS
• Felicity Huffman, Desperate Housewives
  
• Mary Louise Parker, Weeds (again, not an unknown - she was already a Tony-winning stage actress)
  
• Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men
  

And i'm sure some others i can't think of right now. Not to mention some already prominent names like Taye Diggs, Matthew Perry, Alan Alda, Jimmy Smits, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Glenn Close (later on The Shield, currently on Damages), William Fichnter (currently on Prison Break), Philip Baker Hall, and Tom Skerritt, plus Elmo and Big Bird.

It's a really cool show.

Important events

So i guess i'll do an obligatory 9/11 blog entry now, this being the first 9/11 of this blog.

Someone had the great idea of assigning all the COMM 140 classes readings about 9/11 for today.  Because, you know, dwelling on things often helps. 

i remember 9/11.

i was in seventh grade.  That was a pretty long time ago, i feel like.  9/11 happened before a lot of other important events in my life.  It happened before i...

• was in any major drama productions
• started playing jazz on my saxophone
• became a Christian 
• moved to Germany
• started high school
  
• traveled to Israel, Japan, or many of the countries in central Europe
• ever thought about college - i was just getting out of that phase where every son wants to be like his dad and i thought i was going to be in the army

And then there's this one, which i think is a pretty big deal.  9/11 happened before i met any single person i am currently in continuous contact with, other than my family.  i don't talk to, or even remember, a single person in that 7th grade civics class.  When i sat there at Saunders Middle School in Dumfries, VA, calmly thinking, "Hey, i wonder if today was one of the days when my dad had to go to the Pentagon?" i had no idea that years later i would know Jon, Sarah, Bethany, Hatch, Kellie, Sperry, Dan, Lori, Joel, Brittany, Matt, Will, Mereda, Rachel, Wyatt, Kevin, Seth, or Jesus.  My life is completely changed from what it was then, and it has nothing to do with those airplanes. 

What am i saying?  Often i am unsure, but this time i think i'm trying to make some point about how 9/11 is something completely in the past for me.  As far as my own personal life is concerned, i've moved on.  Was it a big deal?  Yes.  Did lots of people die unnecessarily?  Yes.  Are our soldiers still dying overseas?  Yes.  Unnecessarily?  i think maybe so.  For the life of me i still can't figure out just what we're doing in Iraq.  But that's a different thing altogether and i don't know enough to get into it right now.

So let's call this my conclusion.  It was stupid idea to read about 9/11 on 9/11.  It doesn't enhance our understanding of media more than it would on any other day, it just combines that understanding of media with a bunch of twisted memories that for all practical purposes no longer have tangible effects on most of our lives. 

Maybe i'm way off base.  It certainly wouldn't be the first time., and please tell me if you think i'm being an insensitive jerk about this.  But right now, this is what i'm feeling.  Let's move on as best as we can.  i apparently already have without even trying.

The Moral of the Story

i just took a look at msnbc.com and saw a link that asked, "What can men learn from the tortoise?"  My curiosity led me to an article called "Discover the Secret of Slow."  This is what i learned:

Apparently, men are impatient.  We want quick answers to our problems.  If we take our time, slow down a bit, then a lot of things in our lives could be more enjoyable and efficient. 

Oh wait, i didn't actually learn that from the article.  i learned that from life and, you know, living.  But i guess the guy who wrote the article decided he needed to write about it anyway.  He gives all sorts of examples from slowing down when you eat (you'll get full off of less food and lose weight!), to not getting angry so quickly (because when you get angry quickly, other people tend to not take it so well!).  He even took a moment to let us know that if we slow down while having sex, the woman we're with will enjoy it more - fortunately, he takes the time to remind us that if she enjoys it more, there's a better chance of it happening more often, so don't worry guys!  This tip is self-serving too!  (So that we're clear, i don't plan on needing this last piece of advice for a good long while - no ding-ding without the wedding ring.) 

i'm just a little baffled that someone got paid money to write this article.  As if we can't just look around at the world, see how fast everything is moving without benefit, and take that as enough of an indication that we need to back off a bit.  We are an inherently selfish race, we want things quickly, we want them now, and we don't want to share.  Perhaps that's what baffles me so much about this thing.  It says, in effect, that if we don't take our time, our selfishness takes over, gets in the way, and we aren't able to get what we want.  It seems to me that the solution to this problem is to be less selfish.  But the writer disagrees.  He thinks the solution is simply to be as selfish (if not more), but to be slower about it.  Because then our selfishness actually pays off! 

Wow.  The tale of the tortoise and the hare has been around for an awfully long time, and this writer thinks he has finally unlocked the secret moral of the story.  People think our problem is our impatience.  But i'm pretty sure it's not just all in the timing.  If our motivations and desires aren't pure and just and righteous, then it doesn't matter if your actions are fast, slow, or indifferent because the outcome can't possibly be the best available option.

i is just another pronoun.

For a rather long time now, in my journal writing or my note taking, i have been writing the word "i" without capitalizing it.  i am unsure just how this diminished literary self of mine came about, but for whatever reason i quite like it (or i probably would not continue to do it).  i noticed a couple days ago, though, that here in the blogosphere i have continued to capitalize the first person singular.  i'm gonna stop that too.  "i" is not a proper name, it is merely another pronoun and therefore deserves no special treatment as far as i can tell by the rules of grammar.  So i'm going to refer to myself the way it makes sense to me.  In lowercase.  And i guess i thought you should know.

A perfectly normal form of human behavior.

I like to keep things on the down-low. I don't like to advertise my junk. I like to work my stuff out with a few close friends (my inner circle) and once I've worked through it, perhaps I'll relay the information to some other good friends (my outer circle) if it serves a purpose. (NOTE: these circles are not planned or intentionally structured, so their labels are the result of observation, not design. Don't get all uptight if I include you with or exclude you from a given notion of relationship.) Let's call this whole process the result of my INFJ personality.

Seth and Dack are two UNC members of my inner circle. But on Friday they both went away for a Psalm 100 retreat where they would sing songs and get to know the new members of their a cappella group. But that was okay, my circle was still unbroken.

Until Sunday afternoon, when Joel and Wyatt, who I would describe as the other two UNC members of this inner circle, simultaneously decided to go back to their homes to spend the afternoon and night with their families. Well that was all well and good, and I'm glad they got to see their families, but I had just a little bit of an existential crisis. I didn't know what to. I was a little lost, and more than a little confused. I just wasn't quite sure how to function with all four of them away from the campus at the same time. But that was okay, because I found Kevin. Kevin had been planning on going out to a friend's lake house in Hickory for the night, but did not want to drive out there alone. He extended an invitation, I accepted, and off we went to meet Andy, Joseph, Noah, and Mike. We arrived, played some Smash Bros., had us a good time.

And then on Monday, we went out on the lake. Which brings me to my primary story. We went tubing, which consists of holding on very tightly to an inner tube that is being pulled behind a speedboat that Andy is steering like a madman and (I'm convinced) actually trying his hardest to throw you off the tube. And I noticed myself thinking as I observed Kevin or Joesph or Mike out there on that inner tube, occasionally lifted from the water or swung out to the side of the inner tube, barely recovering their strength in time to climb back on a keep going, that this looks like it could only be act of one lacking mental senses. It looks straight up crazy. Why would someone do this? It wasn't particularly painful, not especially unsafe, but nonetheless, surely it wasn't quite sane. Of course, it's easy to have that opinion from the boat. Once you are actually out there on the inner tube, those thoughts of insanity disappear rather quickly and as the engines rev up, you find yourself thinking instead, "Why, this is a perfectly natural form of human behavior."

Sometimes it's the action that seems least beneficial, least acceptable, least intellectually sound, that is in reality the best action to take. Maybe it's the risk, maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe it's just the company you keep. I don't know what it is, but putting yourself out there in the hands of a crazy man driving a boat, just doing your best to hang on for as long as you can, having no choice but to trust the circumstances and other people, well, that seems like the kind of exhilaration that we don't see enough of nowadays.

Thanks guys. It was a good time.

Unfettered Men

So this is the first of what I think will be at least a few separate posts about the beginning of the year.  The topic of discussion is the small group biblia study I'm leading with Mr. Amazingface, Wyatt Bruton.  Although it is considered by some more boring individuals to be the Olde Campus (Upper and Lower Quads) Men's biblia study with InterVarsity, we all know that it is in fact the Unfettered Men of the Hill.  It was important to Wyatt and me that that idea remained a solid part of the group.  So in our first meeting, we talked a little bit about what we want the group to be, sort of our vision for the guys over the course of the year.  Wyatt put it best by putting it simply: we want to be a Community of Men.  That capital "M" is important, and even provided the inspiration for the title of my last post, because attempting to define Man, rather than just man, is ultimately what we want to do.  What does it mean to be a Godly Man, living in righteousness, following the words of Christ?  Now, this may sound like the premise for an IV LifeGroup, a more topical sort of environment, but it isn't!  It is a biblia study - this semester we're looking at Mark, and part of our goal is to use Christ's life as an example for how to live as a Man.  Hopefully we'll find ample opportunity to create links between Jesus' life and ours, not only in terms of general lifestyle, but also masculinity and brotherhood.

But that's not all we hope to accomplish!  See, that was only the "Men" part, but we're also a Community - pay attention here because this is where the Unfettered part becomes important.  To be Unfettered is to be completely unbound by anything that might be tripping you up - that means that we want the guys in our group to be completely uninhibited in their love for Christ and unashamed in their love for each other.  A guy need guys to talk to, to be vulnerable with.  Not all the time, obviously, just when he's got a problem with his self-esteem.  It can be extremely important at certain times, and we want to make sure we observe those times so that we can ensure that the members of our Community can be free from bindings and shackles and those things that can eat away at us.

So yeah.  Community.  Being there for each other, supporting each other, enjoying each other's company, following Jesus' example in brotherhood.  Men.  Stepping up, being responsible, taking action when action is called for, following Jesus' example in lifestyle and manhood.  That's what we'd like to see happen.  Maybe it won't happen for everyone, maybe it won't happen on the deepest levels, and that's okay.  As long as we are constantly striving to follow Jesus and better understand and help and love our brother, then we'll know that in that striving, we're doing at least one thing right.

Capital "M"

My goodness, this is rather a difficult thing to keep up with now that i'm back at school.  There is so much to write about, I fear my face will quite literally melt with anticipation and/or otherwise excitement.

Consider this post merely a declaration of intent.  I intend to relay the events of the past week or so, including Unfettered Men of the Hill, the minor emotional roller coaster that was a cappella auditions (think Busch Gardens, not Carowinds), an enjoyable trip to a lake house (which did not, in fact, involve Keanu Reeves sending me letters from the past), and perhaps a few other goodies.  We shall see. 

But now the hour grows late and we've tarried here for too long.  Fly, you fools.

From the Top

Whoa. It has most definitely been too long. A lot has been going on, I just haven't found the time to sit down and say something substantial about my own life, let alone think about any topics or issues worthy of commentary.

I moved in about a week ago and got to see most of my friends pretty quickly. I had a birthday. I've been helping out InterVarsity with a bunch of new student welcome sort of stuff, which is so much fun, getting to know the students coming here for the first time, leaving home for the first time, comparing how I was to how they are, answering their questions, and mostly just getting to know them and show them a little bit of love on a campus where it's so easy to feel lost and forgotten in the crowd. Plus, I've been preparing myself mentally and emotionally for co-leading a small group biblia study this year with Wyatt, my friend and brother. Once everything settles down in a few weeks, I think we're gonna have a solid group of guys.

My classes are all gonna be pretty tough - they'll need a lot of concentration and reading - but they're all things that I want to take and that I'm interested in, so hopefully all the work will be worth it. Here's a quick class run-down for anyone interested:

COMM 140 - Media Criticism - basically analyzing media from an intellectual rather than emotional viewpoint (reading text and articles)
COMM 270 - Rhetoric and Social Controversy - I think it's the same idea as 140, but focused more on speeches than on visual formats like film, television, print (reading text and articles).
DRAM 283 - Theatre History/Literature III - focused on drama since 1900, starting with expressionism (lots of reading, plays and text).
RELI 103 - Intro to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament - taking this with Dr. Ehrman, and I'm really looking forward to learning more about this part of the biblia, since the history often gets overlooked or simplified into "Bible stories" (lots of reading, text and basically the whole Old Testament)
RELI 401 - Elementary Biblical Hebrew - self-explanatory title, an intro level language class looking at ancient Hebrew as it appears in the original texts, not modern Hebrew, so I have to learn to read it, but not speak it. (probably the only class with more busy-work than reading)
PHYA 231 - Beginning Social Dance - basics to several ballroom/social dances, waltz, rumba, cha-cha, tango, swing, foxtrot. I think I'm the only non-senior in the class.
MUSC 211 - at the moment I'm in the men's glee club, but I plan on auditioning for some a cappella groups, and if that works out for the better (like, I get in one), I'll drop this.

So yeah, I'm looking at a busy semester, but I really do think there's gonna be good stuff happening in these classes, so I'm doing my best not to get anxious or worried about what they're gonna look like down the road.

Until something in my environment grabs me by the gut and screams out its desire for my action and input, I just don't have any commentary type stuff to write. I mean, there's probably stuff, but nothing that's really drawing me right now. So I'll let someone else do the writing for me. I read a book earlier this summer with some decent thoughts and passages in it, more of an inspirational sort of thing than a theological or lifestyle type book I was looking for, but that's okay. I found this chapter, and it did grab me by the gut, and I knew that I would be sharing these words with you here, because I knew that I wanted these words to motivate me and encourage me and exist in me as I began this year.

"It's quiet. It's early. My coffee is hot. The sky is still black. The world is still asleep. The day is coming.
In a few moments the day will arrive. It will roar down the track with the rising of the sun. The stillness of the dawn will be exchanged for the noise of the day. The calm of solitude will be replaced by the pounding pace of the human race. The refuge of the early morning will be invaded y decision to be made and deadlines to be met.
For the next twelve hours I will be exposed to the day's demands. It is not that I must make a choice. Becuse of Calvary, I'm free to choose. And so I choose.
I choose love...
No occasion justifies hatred; injustice warrants bitterness. I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves.
I choose joy...
I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical...the tool of the lazy thinker. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God.
I choose peace...
I will live forgiven. I will forgive so that I may live.
I choose patience...
I will overlook the inconveniences of the world. Instead of cursing the one who takes myplace, I'll invite him to do so. Rahter than complain that the wait is too long, I will thank God for a moment to pray. Instead of clinching my fist at new assignment, I will face them with joy and courage.
I choose kindness...
I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone. Kind to the rich, for they are afraid. And kind to the unkind, for such is how God has treated me.
I choose goodness...
I will go without a dollar before I take a dishonest one. I will be overlooked before I will boast. I will confess before I will accuse. I choose goodness.
I choose faithfulness...
Today I will keep my promises. My debtors will not regret their trust. My associates will not question my word. My wife will not question my love. And my children will never fear that their father will not come home.
I choose gentleness...
Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If i raise my voice may it be only in praise. If i clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If i make a demand, may it be only of myself.
I choose self-control...
I am a spiritual being. After this body is dead, my spirit will soar. I refuse to let what will rot, rule the eternal. I choose self-control. I will be drunk only by joy. I will be impassioned only by my faith. I will be influenced only by God. I will be taught only by Christ. I choose self-control.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. To these I commit my day. If I succeed, I will give thanks. If I fail, I will seek his grace. And then, when this day is done, I will place my head on my pillow and rest." -- Max Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name

Much love. Out.

Travelin' Light

So I’m back in America, after a rather annoying trip. I’ll keep what could be a long story short. My Sunday flight from Frankfurt to Washington, DC was fine. I was enjoying my 3 hour layover at Dulles airport when they announced that my flight to Raleigh was cancelled. I had them put me on a flight to Charlotte (where I could have also been picked up). That flight was also cancelled. So they put me on a flight to Raleigh leaving the next morning, rather than that night, because the flight leaving that night was completely booked and had a long standby list. It was about 10PM when I saw the night flight to Raleigh was delayed, and I, not particularly looking forward to spending the night in the airport, decided I would try my luck with the standby list. I was the next to last person let on the plane, which left around 11PM. Through all of this I spent some of my time praying (that I would work out some form of travel plan that was safe and efficient, that I would have food and money enough, that no one would try to steal my stuff, that I would be patient and peaceful as I waited for this thing to work itself out, that my checked bags which were in some sort of airport baggage limbo would make it to Raleigh when I did, and most of all that I would avoid acting like that crazy lady flipping out at customer service because the airline wouldn’t pay for her hotel. Seriously, she needed to chill.), some of my time laughing (because seriously, what else could I do? I think it was after my second flight cancellation that the ordeal stopped being serious and started being just plain comical to me.), some of my time taking pictures and strolling the concourse, and some of my time playing rummy with this girl Emily who was in Intervarsity at the college in Michigan from which she just graduated. All in all, it was more exciting than bothersome because solving problems and working out bad situations is kind of fun for me. Weird, I know, but I can’t help it. I’ve always loved being wrong, loved making mistakes, loved being put in positions where a solution is needed and needed quickly because those are the time when I get to face challenges and grow and learn. It’s cool for me.

My sincerest thanks go out to Seth who picked me up in Raleigh and gave me a place to stay that night, and had to suffer through the many changes to the plan, never knowing just what it was he would be called upon to do until the final phone call which went something like this: "Hey Seth, I’m getting on an airplane right now. Can you pick me up in about and hour and a half? Great, thanks!" He’s a good friend and brother.

Anyway, after an incredibly deep sleep I got to have lunch with Seth and some other close friends of mine (Daniel, Joel, and Wyatt, in alphabetical order), before getting on a train to my grandma’s house. Then today I went to the mall to grab lunch and catch up with yet another great friend, Rachel White, who is amazing. It’s all been so wonderfully overwhelming to get to be back with my friends again, and it’s not even everyone yet!

As I surf the television channels at my grandma’s house, though, I am recalling a few things I didn’t particularly miss about America. There was a commercial that would allow me to have a baby’s voice singing Daniel Powter’s "Bad Day" as my cell phone ringtone, for instance, which seems to me quite simply masochistic. I also saw one of Ben Stein’s Clear Eyes commercials and I thought to myself, "This man had an Emmy award winning game show on Comedy Central. He was a speech-writer for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In 1976 Time magazine speculated that he was Deep Throat, the confidential informant in the Watergate scandal. But boy, my eyes sure are itchy, so thank you Ben Stein for offering me this product."

Not to mention Maury. Today’s show was about married men who pay for sex. There was guest on the show who would take his video camera out into his community and catch men with prostitutes and put the videos on the web so that everyone could know what they had done. Part of me says, "Way to help clean up the streets of your community. You obviously care a great deal about the environment in which your children grow up and you’re doing something pro-active about it." Part of me says, "Seriously? You couldn't find a real job? Or, you know, a life?" And another part of me says, "What about forgiveness? What about privacy? What about loving sinners? Does this actually contribute to solving the systemic problems of men unhappy in their marriages, women unable (or unwilling) to obtain legitimate professions, and the decreasing levels of morality in society today? Or is it just a way to embarrass those men and ruin their marital relationships, put these women in jail where they probably receive no counseling or sincere examples of how to better themselves, and eliminate our cultural immorality on a strictly cosmetic, outward level without addressing the true underlying problems in the lives of these people that lead to their poor choices?"

Unfortunately, I don’t have very good answers to any of these questions, but I’m almost finished reading a book that offers the beginnings of answers. It’s called Kingdom Come, by Allen Wakabayashi. It’s basically about Christ’s more socially based goals such as missional outreach, the appropriate image/behavior of the community of Christ, etc. etc., rather than the individually based goals of living without sin, accepting Jesus into your heart, etc. etc. It’s about how we The Church need to be making a greater effort to present God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. Once I finish reading it, I’ll be back with some of the things I like and dislike about it, which will hopefully help explain it’s premise and goals a little better than I just did.

Until then, as-salamu alaykum, and rock on in the Olympics, America!

Ameerika Can't Stoppt Me Cuz I'ma Comin Back

I'm leaving the Fatherland tomorrow. I'm getting on a plane and going back to Ameerika (as it was spelled in one of my favorite graffiti messages, in big red letters on the side of a German building: STOPPT AMEERIKA!!!!!). But today I went downtown and took some pictures of old Heidelberg with my new camera. The album is on facebook.

It has been a week since my last post, which is a bit of a long time, but I couldn't think of anything to write. That is, until yesterday, when MTV Deutschland played a video I haven't seen in an awfully long time. Fatboy Slim's "Praise Him." Please please please go watch it here on youtube.

Since you've now watched it (right?), I won't bother summarizing the joyful experience that it is. It is a tremendous celebration of our freedom of expression, the emotional catharsis of dance and movement, and perhaps best of all, an example of people truly comfortable in their own skin doing their own thing on their own terms. It focuses on individuality without focusing on the individual, and therefore avoids narcissism or self-interest. It is simply the self.

That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing(s) I noticed were the lyrics. They are few, so they weren't difficult to pick out:

We've come a long long way together,
Through the hard times and the good,
I have to celebrate you baby,
I have to praise you like I should

I have to praise you
I have to praise you
I have to praise you
I have to praise you like I should

And that verse and chorus pretty much just repeat themselves a lot. So part of me wondered, hey, why can't this be a praise & worship song? I don't know. But it seems like it should be. Simple, to the point, all about deflecting attention, acknowledging the best of times and the worst of times. Looks like worship to me.

Anyway, I was particularly struck by this video yesterday, and I thought I'd share it with you.

I'm really looking forward to getting back to the States tomorrow. That is, I'm totally completely incredibly jaw-droppingly ecstatically stoked and pumped and crazy wicked awesomely excited about getting back to the States tomorrow. I mean, hey, much love to Germany, but it's been awfully tough being away from meine freunde this summer, and I can't wait to see them again.

I'll probably be here again once I get back for a sort of summer-in-review thing, tell you what books I've read, which movies I've enjoyed, music I've discovered, that sort of thing. I'm anxious to see what this year is going to look like, what relationships will form and change, what God is going to do in my life, in other lives, on the campus. I've got good feelings, and my flight tomorrow just brings me closer. I'll see you all on the flip side. Peace until then.

All children, except one, grow up.

Peter Pan is a wonderful book. Madly and deeply, it contains incredible truths tucked away in its fantasy because of course, for the child in each of us, fantasy is truth. And good form is the ultimate virtue.

A Sort of a T&A Q&A

About a week ago I went to the library and checked out the 1st season of a show called Nip/Tuck. I have wanted to see the show since I first heard about it coming to the F/X channel four or five years ago. It is set around the lives of two plastic surgeons in Miami, and I was initially interested by the medical aspect of the show – the plastic surgery is often displayed quite graphically, and about half of the plot in each episode revolves around the character(s) getting the operation – who they are, why they want to change themselves, what their situations are. In fact, early in each episode we see the doctors’ consultations opened with the line, “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself.” And that kind of story fascinates me*.

But there is a problem, and the problem is this. The other half of each episode takes place in the personal lives of the doctors, and the majority of the substance of those plot lines deals with who they are flirting/sleeping with, who their friends and family are flirting/sleeping with, and consequently how each of them rationalizes and justifies these sexcapades. That kind of story does not fascinate me.

Generally, I am fine with sexual content in television shows and movies, however strong, as long as it benefits a story or a character’s development in some way. It always bothers me a little to hear people make statements wholly condemning sexual content in entertainment, arguing that it will inevitably affect the viewer in some negative way**. Because you know what? I enjoyed the movie Atonement, and I like going to the library, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s okay to bang my girlfriend against a bookshelf. I love Moulin Rouge in all its colorful musical candied-apple-of-my-eye-candy majesty (I’ve put some sort of pun there, I just know I did), but that doesn’t mean I’m going to find me a hooker and write sheet music for her after making music between the sheets with her (okay, I definitely made a pun there). And just because I’ve recently gotten into Battlestar Galactica doesn’t mean I plan on seeking out a planet from which mankind was recently eradicated and impregnating a robot disguised a human. I have morals, people! But that doesn’t mean the characters in the television shows and movies I watch have to as well.

Unless, of course, the sexual content stops contributing to the plot, and instead becomes the plot, because that’s when we’re left with little more than a glorified, illustrated romance novel. That is what I believe was happening in Nip/Tuck. It just wasn’t doing it for me (perhaps because the characters were only doing it for themselves) so I only got through 9 out of the 13 episodes in the first season. Which is unfortunate, because the surgery scenes were really cool.

*No promises, but maybe I’ll get into my opinions on people’s desires to change themselves (externally or internally) later on. I’ve been talking to some people a bit about that lately, and maybe once some more stuff gets talked about I can turn that into something on here. We’ll see.

**Yes, sexual content that is too graphic or simply too prevalent can negatively affect people’s hearts and minds. But not necessarily everyone’s. The point I’m trying to make here is about knowing yourself and being responsible – if you know something will cause you to stumble, stay away from it! But don’t assume that just because it is a problem for you then it is a problem for everyone.

Bartlett/Powell '08

When Obama found out that he couldn’t bring non-military press or his campaign staff to visit the wounded soldiers at Landstuhl air base, he decided it wouldn’t be worth his time. What would be the point if there is no way to exploit the situation for the sake of his campaign? I mean, someone from Washington actually caring about the soldiers? What good would that do? After all, he never voted for this war, so I guess he doesn’t really need to give it an emotional investment. We’re all a little tired of it, so maybe if we ignore it, it will go away.

Apparently the only thing that will be on McCain’s agenda when he becomes president is to reform government and the way things are done in Washington. He thinks the government needs to work with the people. We need to work together. Just what it is that we are supposed to be working together to achieve still escapes me.

They speak without having anything to say. Why can’t someone just say something? Something that lets us know they care about America and not just the presidency? They haven’t convinced me yet that they have my interests at heart. And since they don’t care about me, how dare they expect me to care enough about them to give them my vote in November? I just wish they would stop insulting my intellect and passion long enough to tell me what they plan on doing with the country I live in.

The Fear of a Name

There’s this guy at work. I’ve talked about him before. So here’s what happened.

We were sitting at lunch and somebody brought up reality shows, then somebody mentioned Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Then somebody mentioned this one episode where they build a new house for a family who had adopted 15 or so children, many of whom have various disabilities. (Note: Because I don’t know the details of this particular episode, from here on out I’ll be talking about it as a strictly hypothetical situation where a couple adopts 15 disabled/special needs children.) We all agreed that these were very good people and admired their selfless and loving actions towards these kids. I couldn’t help observing, however, that since a new house was apparently necessary, the parents seem to have taken on more than they could handle. I said that I thought it was a little irresponsible, both socially and personally, for them to have done that – the excess of children made it difficult for them to sufficiently care for each of them the way they needed and deserved.

Well, my fellow laborers thought that I was a heartless pig after this comment. They interpreted “irresponsible” as “bad parents” and when I said the parents couldn’t care for them efficiently, they thought I was saying they hadn’t done anything to better the kids’ lives. Now that was not at all my intention, but before I got the chance to explain that, someone (knowing my Christian faith) reminded me that Jesus tells us in the Bible to give up our worldly belongings, to pick up our cross. At this point, the guy I mentioned at the beginning of this story abruptly stood up and said, “Well, I’m leaving.” The very mention of the Bible made this guy leave the table and the conversation (which was a shame because he agreed with me about the parents). How does someone get to the point where the discomfort at the mention of a book is so great he has to remove himself from the conversation? It just baffled me.

After that, I pulled the guy who brought up the Bible and more fully explained my position – that is, that these people’s hearts were clearly in the right place, but that they were ultimately unable to give the kids the lives they deserved because they had adopted so dang many of them, and that that was ultimately irresponsible. I also mentioned that although we are told to pick up our crosses and are expected to suffer for Christ, the crosses we bear should not cause others to suffer on our behalf. We were cool.

But I still can’t get over that one guy. I mean, it’s consistent with so many other things about him – he doesn’t laugh at comedians, people who professionally make people laugh, because to him, “they’re all the same.” (He doesn’t even laugh at Demetri Martin. I mean, does a person who can’t laugh at Demetri Martin even have a soul?)

I guess I don’t really have anything more to say on the matter. It just confuses me how someone gets to that point. To be so worn out with the idea of religion, when you aren’t even exposed to it all that much. But then, my real question is probably more like how do we wear people out with religion before we even get the opportunity to expose them to spirituality?

Just things I’ve been thinking about.

(And by the way, if anyone disagrees with what I was saying about the hypothetically huge family, let me know, and I can try to explain myself a little better.)

Stuck to my chair, not the floor.

This past week I watched Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Rear Window (1954) and it still absolutely amazes me how older movies can suck you into the story and the atmosphere in just minutes. Meanwhile, half of the stuff on the silver screen today is total schlock. So much "entertainment" today is just made for cheap thrills and cheap laughs. What so many of these old films had was the ability to fascinate. Movies can enthrall you, I promise they can. They can do more than just leave your eyes and ears numb with special effects and loud explosions. Sure, we have modern classics (Pulp Fiction, Schindler's List, The Lord of the Rings, to name a few), and sometimes the "popcorn movies" are exactly what we need to relax, but I feel like my generation is losing it's touch with quality, with depth, with the tremendous sensation of entering the world of a movie and leaving the theater with more than just sticky shoes from the guy who spilled his soda behind you. I want more than sticky shoes.

Here are some recommendations if you want to get a feel for what I'm talking about, and though I obviously can't promise that each of you will like every one of these movies, but I think I can guarantee that at the very least they will fascinate you.

Older (before 1990): The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, Casblanca, Psycho, West Side Story, The Color Purple, On the Waterfront, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Nashville, Vertigo, Raging Bull

Newer (1990 and later): Almost Famous, Fargo, City of God, Gosford Park, Trainspotting, Magnolia, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Once, In America, The Insider, Goodfellas, Philadelphia

(Just so we're clear, my criticism here is not of people or their taste, but of the industry whose products so limit the reach of our taste.)

Good hunting.

Love is made complete among us.

"Emotionally, I find that the experience of true Christian fellowship helps me believe . . . In a few significant friendships, I have felt loved with a love which could only come from God. The friends who love me in this way help me believe that Jesus was not only love (1 Jn 4:16) but also truth." -- Disciplemaker's Handbook

This applies to many of my friends on some level or another, but to be perfectly honest, I've got about seven people in my head right at this moment that made me want to post this. I hope you know who you are because I love you too.

That Little Flame

I watched Lawrence of Arabia four nights ago, but it's taken me that long to figure out how to blog about it. I started the movie just knowing there would be something deep and profound that would jump out at me and make me want to start typing immediately. That didn't happen. I was really conflicted - the only things I could think of were either too small to matter that much, or too big for me to condense here. I think I finally found a way to tie the movie together along the same strain as the other movies I've talked about here.

T.E. Lawrence was a British officer stationed in Cairo during WWI, while the British were fighting the Turks in Arabia while the French and Russians were fighting the Russians in Europe. He was assigned to Arabia to find prominent Arab leaders and determine their long-term goals in the region. (In other words, the British wanted to know what resistance they would face when they claimed Arabia as their own, those naughty imperialists.) Well, the Arabs just wanted the Turks out of their country so that they could live peacefully. Lawrence quickly assumed a major role in Arab independence, made it a passion of his, and discovered that he was pretty dang good at what he did. With Lawrence's aid and strategy, Arab forces were able to take Turkish held cities and territories, and bomb the railroads so that their entire transportation system was regularly thrown out of whack. (Many hold that Lawrence was an important contributing factow in the development of the insurgency warfare that some Arab group so prominently employ today.)

But through all of this, one simply has to wonder why he did it at all? Why was this such a passion of his?

I think one explanation can be found in lyrics from a song from the Tony award-winning musical Avenue Q (which features such classics as "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist," "It Sucks to Be Me," and "The Internet is for Porn").

Purpose, it's that little flame that lights a fire under your ass.
Purpose, it keeps you going strong, like a car with a full tank of gas.

Helping the Arabs fight for their independence from the Turks was Lawrence's Purpose. It's what he wanted to do and he had all the skills and motivation to do it, so he did it. He knew it was what he was meant to do, he knew that in this particular area he was somewhat extraordinary, so he did it with everything he had to give.

He went through pain and suffering on the way, though. From the scorching deserts to the persecution of his fellow officers who thought he went a little crazy ("What?" they thought,"He wears their clothing and actually treats them as equals? Absurd!"). From the pains of warfare to, at one point, being taken captive by Turks and subsequently beaten, whipped, and raped. Why would someone put up with all of this? Just to fulfill this Purpose?

Because there's another aspect to this Purpose thing, something that comes from Lawrence himself. He would put out matches with his thumb and forefinger, and upon being told by one who tried it himself, "It damn well hurts!" Lawrence casually responded, "Certainly it hurts. The trick is not minding that it hurts." He went through all the painful stuff because he had to in order to do what he was meant to do. Eventually though, it did get to him - he no longer wanted to be extraordinary, he just wanted to go home. Of course, he couldn't do that, he had to finish the job he started. And here's where things go a little fuzzy. Is he only staying out of his arrogance and pride? Has he gone a little insane? Or a little bloodthirsty? What effect would he really have, given England's aspirations of colonization?

Let us now shift with almost no transition to a discussion of Jesus.

He came here to save us. To forgive us and to teach us. And he went through death so that he could fulfill that Purpose. The apostles were meant to spread the good news about Jesus, but they had to put up with jail and persecution and execution to do it. Because it was their Purpose.

We came here to....
We put up with....
Because it was our Purpose.

Plenty of us don't really know yet. Indeed, we may not know until after it's already happened. But just as in Reimagining Evangelism, where Rick Richardson stresses the importance of honing in on our specific spiritual gifts so that we may use them to their fullest potential, we must also follow God into places where we have things to do for him, regardless of what pain or suffering may await us. Which would suck, except we're supposed to rejoice that we should be so worthy as to be persecuted in the name of Jesus (Acts 5:41).

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not making Lawrence out to be some sort of Christ-figure. I'm just pointing him out as an example of the zeal that we should perhaps admire in terms of following Purpose. But he is also a warning. He wanted too much. He wanted to do it all himself. He was prideful. And the weight of taking on the mission almost entirely on his own shoulders led to a form of inner destruction that I can't sufficiently explain - you'd have to watch the movie to get what I'm saying, but I think that eventually it just broke his body, and broke his heart, a little bit too much for him to be effective. He tried to go beyond his Purpose, and then lost himself.

So what am I saying? I often am not sure. But to sum up, we all have a Purpose, and we have to follow it no matter what gets in our way. But we cannot do it without help from God, or we will fall. (I know you're all wondering why I can't just write that at the beginning and save you the trouble of reading everything else. And I don't know the answer. I just do what I do.)

I will definitely have this movie (and all the others I've written about here) at school next year, and would love to share them with whoever is interested. Maybe we can hit up Murphy 116 every now and then, because really, all of them deserve big screen viewing.

Until then though, peace be upon you.

Ready for Love

Did you ever hear a song without really listening to it? And then later when you take the time to listen to it, you wonder why you’ve never heard it before?

I was listening to India.Arie’s Acoustic Soul album the other day, which I have heard a few times before, but a song started playing that forced me to look up from the book I was reading (Reimagining Evangelism, see previous post) and actually listen to it, to take in the words and the music. Before any of you continue reading, please listen to the song here. The lyrics are below, but don’t even look at them until you’ve listened. Then I’ll explain why I was struck by the song.
_______________________________________________
Ready for Love

I am ready for love
Why are you hiding from me?
I'd quickly give my freedom
To be held in your captivity

I am ready for love
All of the joy and the pain
And all the time that it takes
Just to stay in your good grace

Lately I've been thinking
Maybe you're not ready for me
Maybe you think I need to learn maturity
They say watch what you ask for
Cause you might receive
But if you ask me tomorrow
I'll say the same thing

I am ready for love
Would you please lend me your ear?
I promise I won't complain
I just need you to acknowledge I am here

If you give me half a chance
I'll prove this to you
I will be patient, kind, faithful and true
To a man who loves music
A man who loves art
Respect's the spirit world
And thinks with his heart

I am ready for love
If you'll take me in your hands
I will learn what you teach
And do the best that I can

I am ready for love
Here with an offering of
My voice
My eyes
My soul
My mind

Tell me what is enough
To prove I am ready for love
I am ready
_______________________________________________
India.Arie may have written this song about human relationship (I doubt it), but there are a few things about the words that really stand out to me. First off, this is truly a love song. She is singing about a real, true, deep relationship between her and someone else. It seems like so many songs today throw around the word love without any comprehension of its meaning or implications. Take Maroon 5’s “Shiver” – I doubt if the shivering the title refers to is a warm fuzzy feeling in the heart. (In fact, I do not believe Maroon 5 is capable of writing songs about topics other than messy breakups or sex in its various forms, but I suppose everyone must write from what they know, whether that knowledge serves any purpose or has any substance.) Or if you’ve listened to the radio in the last few months, you’ve probably heard Usher’s “Love In This Club” – the “love” Usher is singing (singing?) about here definitely does not refer to deep emotional connection between two people (though I’m sure there is a deep connection made in some other way). And now look at this song. “I am ready for love/Here with an offering of/My voice, My eyes, my soul, my mind.” Almost as important as those body parts mentioned are those left out, which are apparently insignificant (or at least less significant) to the kind of love this woman is singing about.

The other thing that got my attention is this. Until the line the specifically mentions a man, I could have sworn this song was a prayer. I thought this language portrays almost exactly the kind of love we Christians always talk about approaching God with – that’s why I started listening in the first place. “I am ready for love/All of the joy and the pain/And all the time that it takes/Just to stay in your good grace… I am ready for love/If you'll take me in your hands/I will learn what you teach/And do the best that I can.” Isn’t that precisely what God wants from us? Our best efforts according to his teachings?

It’s difficult to imagine a man turning away a woman who comes to him with these pleas for love, but I find it near impossible to imagine God turning us away if we come to him with this same offering of love and devotion – “If you give me half a chance, I’ll prove this to You: I will be patient, kind, faithful, and true.”

Let me know what you think about the song. I hope you see where I’m coming from with the God stuff, but honestly, I think that part of the reason this song resonates with me probably comes from the human aspect as well (except, you know, for the "man" part). Oh well, we'll see how that goes later on.

Much love, real love.

Don't Pity the Fool

When we were on a break at work the other day, my fellow laborers and I started up a discussion about world events, globalization, the Arab-Israeli conflict, etc. You know, normal stuff. Someone posed the hypothetical question, “Isn’t there just a way we could get everyone to be nice to everyone else?” I responded, “Well, I’ve got an idea,” and (only half-jokingly) pulled my Biblia out of my bag and held it up. When another member of this discussion saw it, he responded strongly, “No! You can’t solve the world’s problems just by forcing everyone to have the same religion as you!”

Well, I wasn’t sure exactly how to respond to this, and fortunately someone else started talking before I had to. But I can say that my heart hurt a little bit because upon seeing a guy holding a Bible, the first thought that came to this person’s mind was of an objectionable and oppressive force. You see, I’ve been reading Matthew lately, and all I was trying to say with my little gesture was that if people observed the Sermon on the Mount a little more closely, then everyone probably would be nicer to everyone else. I was talking about a lifestyle change, not some tyrannical crusading “religion,” as my friend indelicately put it.

I just finished reading a cool book I bought at Rockbridge called Reimagining Evangelism by Rick Richardson. Richardson reminds us that our faith is a journey, not a product, and in our witnessing we should be more like traveling guides than traveling salesmen. His goal is to “rebuild trust in a post-Christian society.” I’ve got a feeling that this broken trust may be partially responsible for my friend’s reaction to my Biblia. A few of the points I found particularly useful or interesting relate to the way he suggests we approach seekers and skeptics about faith.

He emphasized the need for us to identify our specific spiritual gifts and use them to their full potential, but to recognize that we cannot (and therefore should not) try to do it all. Too many Christians look at non-Christians as projects, which does little more than cheapen the whole experience. At Rockbridge, our chapter’s coordinating team was asked to make a goal for the chapter: to set a specific number of people they wanted to bring to Christ over the course of the upcoming year. Our c-team refused to do that, and I couldn’t have been more proud of my friends that day. We are supposed to do what we can with what we have, and the rest is up to God. He sets the number, not us.

Richardson also talks about the need to open up about our own trials and struggles and resulting transformations, rather than speak from a place of moral authority (a place that not one of us has to speak from anyway). “When trust has been broken, leading with strength merely lengthens the distance between you and others. Broken trust is rebuilt as you show and share your humanity and your needs. An open, trusting heart is what melts the hearts and defuses the defenses of others.”

Basically the book has a lot of good stuff in it, more than I have taken the time to get into here, but I think a lot of it comes down to not insulting the people you’re trying to care for. There is a reason they have rejected faith thus far (in general, or specifically Christianity) and it is the reason we should be looking at, not just the rejection. When talking about the actual question and answer regarding the choice to accept Christ, Richardson sums up with this:

“Post-Christian people don’t want to hear the question popped in cliché ways and with a one-size-fits-all approach. And they will be offended if it seems as if you need them to respond more than they want to respond. Evangelism is not about sales but about spiritual guidance. It’s not about getting “in” instead of being “out.” It’s similar to getting married, becoming one with the God who loves us and will transform us. So let’s not ask post-Christian people to mark their choice with trite responses. Prompt them to use their own words and to mark their ignition in a significant and meaningful way.”

So many people are just like my friend - they think they know what Christianity is by the words they've heard used to often in church or on television. But so few of them understand the truths behind those words because it seems like no one ever takes the time to really explain it to them, let alone let them try to figure it out for themselves.

Please feel free to ask me more about the book or whatever else may relate to this topic. I’m always happy to learn more.

And now for something completely different!

I feel the need to clarify something about my last post. I may have misrepresented my current living/family situation. For the most part, I have a good relationship with my family. As good as anyone else’s, I’ve always assumed. Any anger or frustration that I wrote, explicitly or implicitly, pertains almost exclusively to the particular incident involving Paris (because I am right, and they are wrong).

Sometimes, I wonder about the potential sinfulness of self-pity. I have talked with some folks about this in the past, and I think it’s probably something we all experience occasionally. We all slip into selfishness from time to time, and if we’re not careful, that can turn into a “woe is me” sort of attitude. Although I don’t think that is the case with my situation this time, I realize that it is close and could be seen that way. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it’s a sin to be a little angry when you don’t get something you want, or to share that frustration with others. I just think that pitying yourself, or looking for others’ pity, is non-productive attention-seeking selfishness and can therefore become sinful.

Got any thoughts? Leave your comments at the sound of the tone!

That’s it for now everyone, I’ll be back soon, hopefully with my next and final movie. In the meantime, check out this song from Justin McRoberts!

Shalom.

Traveling Alone

I just finished a pretty good book called Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. It's about a 13 year old British kid named Jason. There are thirteen chapters, one for each month he's 13, going from January to January. It's pretty nifty. Because each chapter reads kind of like a short story, I can't really explain the book better than that, except to say that it can be funny or scary, happy or sad, but it constantly keeps you involved and concerned for the main character. Here are a few out-of-context quotes that I made sure to remember:

• "Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right."
• "Often I think boys don't become men. Boys just get papier-mâchéd inside a man's mask. Sometimes you can tell the boy is still in there."
• "Beauty is immune to definition. When beauty is present, you know. Winter sunrise in dirty Toronto, one's new lover in an old café, sinister magpies on a roof. But is the beauty of these made? No. Beauty is here, that is all. Beauty is."
• "The sequence of doors we passed made me think of all the rooms of my past and future. The hospital ward I was born in, classrooms, tents, churches, offices, hotels, museums, nursing homes, the room I'll die in. (Has it been built yet?) Cars're rooms. So are woods. Skies're ceilings. Distances're walls. Wombs're rooms made of mothers. Graves're rooms made of soil."

So there's some pretty nifty stuff in there.

I've been working at my community theater, but we're running out of projects because we work so quickly and diligently! We'll see what happens next.

I miss my friends. I hate thinking that I won't get to see any of you until the middle of August. But I guess another way of looking at it is that I'm half-way there. I had hoped to go to Paris to meet my friend Jon for a day or two, but that isn't going to work out, due to reasons beyond my control. That is to say, my parental units axed the plan. They've got some problem with me traveling alone - apparently it isn't safe. Which, really, is just stupid because I'd only be alone for an hour or two before meeting up with Jon, and Paris isn't anything I can't handle. Anyway, I'm pissed about it, but what can I do? Keep sitting around here, I guess, even if that means growing increasingly frustrated by my family, like usual. I think the problem may be that I'm traveling alone already.

Which reminds me, by the way, I'm sorry to anyone I haven't kept in touch with as well as they would like because that probably means I haven't kept in touch as well as I would like, either. I just don't realize it. I'm gonna try to get on that this weekend. But then, I suppose if we haven't been in touch, you probably aren't even reading this. Oh, whatever.

Happy birthday to Ian and Wyatt and whoever I may have missed.

Much love.

The Truth is Truth

We all know about Mohandas Gandhi. He preached non-violence in the face of British imperialism, playing a crucial role in gaining India's independence, and he remains one of history's most inspirational political and spiritual leaders.

So now that I have my next movie to talk about, I don't really have much to say. I doubt that many people reading this have seen Gandhi, the 1982 biopic directed by Richard Attenborough (the old guy from Jurassic Park) and starring Ben Kingsley in a stellar performance. But you should. It is a wonderful film with strong messages about injustice, independence, marriage, and obviously non-violence, among others. Since Gandhi is pretty straightforward and since Gandhi is pretty straightfoward, I'll just leave you with a quote that pretty much sums it all up.

"Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Let The Sunshine In

A little while ago Alex Kirk was blogging about trees.

He had a pretty interesting post about the difference between cutting down a tree and getting rid of its roots, the analogy being about sin – should we change our hearts or our behavior? This stuck with me for a bit so I was thinking through all sorts of questions and ideas about it. Which is more important? Which is more effective? What is the cause and effect relationship, if any? Alex wrote, “…clearly the Lord talks about the essential nature of the internal world and the need for a renovation of the heart…But on the other hand, sometimes I just need to stop sinning.” Obviously, changing our hearts is more important (and permanent), but, as Alex pointed out in his arboreal quandary, what if we can figure out what the problem in our hearts is?

All of this flowed into a conversation I recently had with a friend about habitual sin – those things we know we shouldn’t do, but keep on doing anyway. There is a correlation between sinful behavior and a sinful heart, but which do you focus on when you’re trying to grow and make a strong change in your life? Wouldn’t behavior modification be a quality remedy then? This question can only be answered efficiently on a case by case basis, but I think the solution can be found by looking at motivation for the behavior change.

If I stop sinning just for the sake of it or because my Biblia told me to, then I’m not getting closer to God, not really. My head is in it, but my heart isn’t. But at the same time, if I’m chipping away at my heart without knowing which chunk I need to chip, I could do some serious damage. There must be some sort of balance in the approach, perhaps even beyond our control, if we hope to maintain a successful fight against sin.

In some roundabout way or another, this leads me to the next movie in my little film analysis series: Schindler’s List. In case you’ve been living under a rock since 1993, it’s the true story of a Nazi factory owner named Oskar Schindler who employed Jews out of the ghettos and labor camps and was eventually able to save 1,100 of them from likely death at the hands of the Nazis in Auschwitz or elsewhere. I won’t waste time explaining how brilliant the film is, as many before me have already done that.

I want to talk about it because of the trees.

Initially, Schindler employed Jews because they cost him less money than Poles, and let’s not forget that the only reason he even wanted a factory was for the government contracts. Basically, he was a war profiteer exploiting Jewish labor. But very slowly he stopped seeing laborers and started seeing people – perhaps it was the one armed press operator who was so very grateful for his job. Or maybe the young boy who promised to learn everything he could about enamelware production. Eventually he grew a little protective. They were his Jews. He started working the system so that he could keep the ones he had, and get more. When the war was nearing an end, all of his laborers were going to be sent to Auschwitz, and he was able to open his own camp in Czechoslovakia, but the only way he could get his Jews was to pay for them. He bought them. He bought their lives because he cared for them.

I feel I haven’t been terribly clear in making my point about changing our hearts and changing our actions. Schindler went through a process. He started out by changing his behavior for the wrong reason. He saw the good in this new action, and as a result his heart changed a little. So he continued doing a good thing, but now for the right reason. And his heart became more invested. As his actions became more radically good, his heart was unable to turn away from this thing he was doing. He grew into a state where he was compelled to do the right thing because his conscience and heart would not allow him to do anything else. It was a state of righteousness.

I am not claiming that stopping the behavior is the solution to every sin. There is plenty of argument that after we change our hearts the behavior will change naturally. I agree with that, too, in certain situations. I am only saying that we can see more clearly without sin, and an environment in which we keep a steady fight against habitual sin makes it easier for us to truly change our hearts in the long run.

Roger Ebert wrote, “The power of Spielberg's film is not that it explains evil, but that it insists that men can be good in the face of it, and that good can prevail.” We have to stand in evil’s face and reject it. Whether our hearts are in it before or after ultimately doesn’t matter. As long as they get there eventually, we’ll keep standing. And in the meantime, God will hold us up.

Let me clarify that I do not intend to use Schindler to show him standing up against the Nazis or even as a savior to the Jews. I only wanted to bring this man and this story up as an example of a man faced with two choices: one potentially righteous, one potentially wicked. Which one did he pick? Which one do we?

So do we cut down the trunk of our sinful actions or pull up the roots in our sinful hearts? How much does it matter as long as nothing is blocking the sunlight?

If anyone has not seen this movie, please go out and rent it, or even better, read the book. I’d love to hear thoughts and questions from anyone reading this. As usual, I’m really asking more questions that giving answers. And when a topic is as case-specific as I believe this one is, there are bound to be plenty of valid approaches from which we can learn.

Treading Water

Over the next week or so, there are several movies I plan on watching and then writing about. I'm not sure why, but there are couple that have been on my mind lately, and I feel like there is a lot that can be said about and learned from their stories.

So I'm going to start out tonight with Titanic.

I recently watched Titanic for the first time in a long while. I first saw it sometime in high school, I think in 10th grade. I was not allowed to see it when it came out, unlike nearly everyone else in my 3rd grade class, because my parents are from an extremist over-protective sect of parents who irrationally believe it is not okay for an 8 year old to see breasts and floating human popsicles on a giant screen. What's up with that? It doesn't matter, though, because I have seen it now. And you know what? It's a really good movie. It bugs me that it has such a bad reputation nowadays. Of course, I understand why it does. I mean, not many people remember much other than the drawing scene and Leo screaming "I'm king of the world!" But that's a shame. I was recently talking to a friend about this movie, so I'm gonna relay some of my comments from that, but first I need to explain something else.

I have always been drawn to depressing movies. I think this is partly because I have a high tolerance for depressing events in cinema. Death does not scare me or bother me, and it never has. Violence on screen doesn't make me cringe because half of my mind is thinking about the make-up involved. I just don't get as uncomfortable during sad things as other people, and I certainly never cry during movies, with one exception, which some of you already know is The Fox and the Hound (and I challenge anyone and everyone right here and now to try watching that old woman leave the fox in the woods, saying, "Goodbye may seem forever, farewell is like the end. But in my heart's a memory, and there you'll always be," without crying just a little bit).

But I digress.

That's why I dont' have a problem with depressing movies. But that's not why I'm drawn to them. I believe that learning by example works best when the example is of how not to behave. In a sad/traumatic/depressing movie, usually there is a string of events leading to some tragic conclusion, except we (the audience) see the ignorance of those events and the human choices behind them. We see just how avoidable those tragic consequences are. And then it drives us crazy that such horrible things can grow from such simple mistakes. I believe it is fair to say that the greatest sin is Pride, or, because technically no sin is greater than another, it is at least accurate to say that nearly every other sin is rooted in Pride. Pride says that we can do things better than God, and it makes us want to try things on our own just to prove that we can do it better than God. It spurs competition among brothers, wars between nations, arrogance, greed, and condescending hatred. Pride leads us to reject God and his ways. And when you take Jack and Rose out of the picture, Titanic is a tremendous example of human pride leading to a devastating end.

The little hints of Pride are dropped all throughout the film, from Rose's comment about the male preoccupation with size, to the importance of making headlines with the speed of the ship, to the assumption that an iceberg will be noticeable enough to avoid. We see the pride growing as we see the fall coming. And then the fall comes, and you say, "You fools, you could have stopped that crash." And then the movie continues, and only at the end of the sinking do we see that even we were premature because those bodies are out there floating, most of them half-frozen. And we say to ourselves,"We fools, we thought we learned the lesson already, that pride leads to the fall. But even we couldn't see past that. We couldn't see the consequences." But there they are, the consequences, all 1,600 of them. And the toll that pride took is clear.

There is, I think, an image from a single shot that sums up my point. It comes when about 1/3 of the ship has dipped into the water, and for just a couple seconds, the camera steps completely away from the action. We see a wide shot not of the people, or the ship, but of the Atlantic Ocean. We see the black sky at the top of the screen, just below it the wide horizon, and in the middle of the screen, rather small, there's this thing that looks kind of like a rowboat. It's just sitting there, a little crooked, and some of the lights are on. Then it looks like a spark flew out, like an ember popping from a fire, and you realize that it's a flare. And for a few brief moments all we see is this boat surrounded by a blackness that stretches out in all directions. We see now that however titanic that ship Titanic looked when it was docked, out there it's barely a canoe.

You see? We think we build unsinkable ships all by ourselves, but as soon as we try to take that out on the water, the darkness takes over, the ship starts rocking like a catamaran in a thunderstorm, we're tossed out, and that water is so cold. We could swim for a lifeboat, except in our pride, we forgot to build enough, and now we have to use all of our energy to tread water for hours on end. And so we are alone, cold and growing weak in the dark.

That's what Pride does. I think that's what the story of this event has to teach us, and I think that's what truly makes the movie so heart-wrenching. Sure the love story is romantic and tragic, but we've seen the Lady fall for the Tramp before. What breaks our hearts is seeing all those Ladies leaving all those Tramps out in the water to die because they're afraid of getting their own boats rocked a little.

If you haven't watched this movie in a while, try checking it out again sometime. Try keeping a few of these things in mind, not as any sort of authority on the film's analysis, but as a different outlook, a new perspective. And remember, depressing movies aren't made only to make us cry, they can make us learn, too, but only if we can see through the tears and find out what's really causing them.

I'm gonna leave you with some of Jesus' words about who should be building our ship:

"They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." (Matthew 23:5-12, ESV)

Happy sailing.

Tomorrow

I got that job I was hoping for. I prayed on it, and God, with the help of some people working the phones, delivered for me.

I finished Mere Christianity. I actually had trouble putting it down. Several passages really stuck out to me, but I'm not going to put them up here - read it for yourself and find your own passages. I will say that his explanation of the Trinity by explaining the process of prayer is simple, elegant, and among the finest explanations of the Trinity I've heard or read. I am still going through American Pastoral, and started When God Whispers Your Name by Max Lucado (seriously, how do you pronounce that guy's name?). It's designed as more of an inspirational read, I would say, rather than a theological one, but that's totally fine with me, and he has been saying some good stuff - more like healthy reminders than some intense study. We never know how God is going to talk to us, our temporary life, things like that, and emphasizing the personal nature of our relationship with God and Christ, so that we don't get lost in with the crowd. It's worth picking up if you want something a little more low-maintenance.

I have now seen every episode of The West Wing, my favorite television show ever. Please do yourselves a favor and follow these instructions:

1) Find a copy of Season 1 at your local library or entertainment store
2) Watch.
3) Upon completion, find next season and repeat step 2.
4) After 7 seasons, repeat process in full.

I promise you won't regret it.

What's next?

Someone buy me a short plaid skirt and knee-high socks.

I have been giggling like a young schoolgirl periodically throughout the day.

Do you want to know why I've been giggling like a young schoolgirl?

Well, I'll tell you. It's because I got the 7th season of The West Wing from my community library today, and I've been watching it. Hee hee hee hee hee!

So the other day I overheard a conversation among some Christian high schoolers I know:

High Schooler #1: If you were a professional photographer and a gay couple asked you to photograph their wedding, would you do it?
High Schooler #2: Probably not.
High Schooler #4: Yeah. Because you don't wanna look like you're supporting gay marriage.
High Schooler #1: Well, but it's not really supporting it. I mean, supporting it would be like making the cake or something. You'd just be photographing it.
High Schooler #2: But still, we shouldn't support gay marriage.
High Schooler #1: I don't really understand how you could be showing God's love, though, if you said no.

(High Schooler #3 was silent on this issue.) I believe #1 redeemed herself for the ridiculous cake-making comment with her observation about God's love. I fought the urge to insert myself into the conversation, but from what I could tell, the deeper question (which I'm sure none of these students quite grasped immediately...except for maybe #3 in his silence) is whether/when/how we show God's love, and whether/when/how we show God's judgment.

For me, the answer is simply that God does not empower us to show his divine and perfect judgment and it is therefore only his to show. We would surely only muck it up. However, God does empower us - indeed, he commands us - to show his love. So though I may agree or disagree with the event itself, I would not run a straight-weddings-only photography studio.

I might even open up a bakery next door.

Much love.

Fruit flies like a banana.

Sadly, I have very little to say which is deeply profound tonight. Actually, probably nothing of that nature at all. Just a brief update, mostly about some movies and books.

Earlier today I watched a film from Senegal called Moolaadé. It is about a woman who refused to allow her daughter to go through the tribal "purification" ceremony. That is, female circumcision. As a result, a few years later 4 young girls come to her home seeking protection, or a sanctuary, invoking the right of moolaadé. The woman does not refuse the girls, and must stand up to the tribal leaders, both the men in charge and the women who perform the ceremony, in order to protect them.

Please understand that I generally hate using clichés (and seeing them used), but this really is a powerful and moving film. Yes, it goes a little turbo-feminist at the end, making it's point very (very) clear. And usually I hate it when movies or books get obvious (this is the reason I continue to put off reading Orwell's Animal Farm). But there are exceptions to every rule, and sometimes a point simply needs to be obvious, for although no counterpoint truly holds any validity, that counterpoint is so often the standard. For more information about female genital mutilation and the efforts to stop it, check out http://www.equalitynow.org/.

Also, I strongly recommend checking out The Triplets of Belleville (that's a link to the trailer), an insanely quirky French animated movie. Don't worry about the language barrier, though, because there's almost no dialoque in the entire 80 minutes. I can't really explain why it's so cool or appealing, only that it is. The only thing more I can do, I think, is refer you to Roger Ebert's review of it, which also recommends without explaining why, but does so more eloquently than I can.

I finished reading Pride and Prejudice, which was enjoyable in spite of my Y chromosome. I then backtracked to American Pastoral (I posted a passage from it here), and I'm going to finish it this time. It's kind of like Pride and Prejudice on a really bad acid trip - everyone's dysfunctional, no one listens to anyone else, and just for fun, there's a little bit of radical youth terrorism thrown in. I'm also into Mere Christianity, which is so far much easier than I expected it to be - I thank J.I. Packer and Knowing God for what I believe was a very good preparation for this and whatever other more dense works I read in the future.

By the way, at the moment it's looking like that job I was hoping for at my community theater isn't gonna work out, due to system errors I don't feel like getting into. There is still hope, but there's a good chance I could end up bagging groceries for tips this summer. Which, given my desire to do something actually productive with myself this summer, will be absolutely *insert sarcastically optimistic adjective here.*

That's it for now. Thank you Dack, Jon, Ian, and K-Barge for being online (and just for being cool).

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

I finished watching the TNT miniseries Into the West today. It's about the American conquest and colonization of the western territories from 1825-1890, focusing on two fictional families, one white and one Native American, over their generations.

And do you know what? We screwed the Native Americans...monumentally.
We never viewed them as people or human beings, only savages. I'm not entirely sure what I mean when I say "we." I'm fairly certain I don't mean "the white man," even though it was mostly white men doing the screwing. I mean, the whole situation was due in large part to the notion of manifest destiny and the expansionist campaigns of the government and military. But the problem was more deeply rooted than policy.

When arrogance and ignorance are combined as the driving force behind an entire nation's skewed sense of destiny, what hope can there possibly be for the ones who stand in the way?

Tonight I also watched Bobby, the movie about the people in and around the Ambassador Hotel the night Robert Kennedy was assassinated. At the end, over the images of people's immediate reactions to Kennedy being taken away in an ambulance, plays the recording of one of Kennedy's final speeches, delivered in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 5, 1968, the day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. I've put the text below, or you can watch the scene from the movie here.
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On the Mindless Menace of Violence

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.
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I couldn't think of a better conclusion to this whole violence discussion I've been having on and off this slate than with these words, surely among the finest ever spoken. Although Kennedy does keep his message mildly restrained within the American borders, I believe his sentiments are universal nonetheless. I am sure this conversation is not done for good (indeed, I do not wish it to be), but I hope that if anyone wants to keep it going, they can perhaps look to this speech for a "broad and adequate outline" of what we should look like, a foundation of basic human dignity.

Now, moving on.

Today in church a woman introduced her husband and son, explaining they don't often join her because they "are a mixed religion family: Protestant and Catholic." I found this amusing. I won't explain why, just in case you don't get it. I wouldn't want to spoil it for you.

When we sang the Doxology, an ambulance drove by. It is very difficult to sing the lyrics "praise God from whom all blessings flow" as an ambulance is rushing someone to the ER. For my musically inclined readers, know also that it was made more awkward by the fact that German ambulance sirens are based on a tritone - they alternate the notes of an augmented 4th. Imagine that playing over the oh-so-consonant Doxology. It was difficult on my ears and my heart, but it was definitely an interesting way to put the lyrics and just what God's blessings are into perspective. My vocal muscle memory kicked in, so I was able to sing along and think a prayer for whoever was in that ambulance at the same time. It was an interesting conflict of interests thing, but I'm sort of glad it happened. Like I said, a little perspective is good. We don't have to put ourselves in danger in order to not be safe.

Then the chaplain gave his sermon. Which was awful. Seriously, it was terrible. His central message was that Jesus wants us to go out and witness to people. Really. That was about all he was trying to say. He took 30 minutes trying just trying to explain that, and in the process, I'm pretty sure he said that the people who followed Jesus were "caught up in the moment," which to me makes it sounds like Jesus was some sort of fad. He also made it seem as though Jesus did not have compassion for anyone until later in his minstry. Earlier on, you see, Jesus enjoyed his solitude, until one day he suddenly saw the multitudes and was overcome with compassion for the harrassed and helpless, so he sent his disciples out. And let's not forget he was able to mention both John 3:16 and the armor of God, which, despite their importance which I do not deny, are probably the two biggest cop-out preaching references in the Biblia. It just wasn't very good, and I'm not sure I can keep going on Sunday mornings. What's the point of going to church if you don't get anything out of it?

Anyway, that's been me lately. By the way, I finished Knowing God. It was an intense study, but I definitely want to go back to it sometime. I jotted down a few of its basic foundational ideas, but I don't have that paper on me. Just check it out if you get a chance, you won't regret it. Once I finish Pride and Prejudice (hopefully sometime tomorrow), I'll be back into American Pastoral so I can maybe finally finish it, and I'll start Mere Christianity. I also want to get a hold of some foreign films at the library I haven't seen. Moolaade, The Lives of Others, Nowhere in Africa, The Triplets of Belleville, Joyeux Noel, Pan's Labyrinth (which I have already seen, but want to see again), The 400 Blows, and maybe some Akira Kurosawa stuff that I really should get around to.

That's it for now. As always, send me your feedback if you have any.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.