full of sound and fury

the end of this story

2009-12-03T18:23:00.004-06:00

In case you were still wondering, I've decided to put this blog to rest, for good, forever. It is kind of sad. Although I haven't updated it for almost a year, it was my channel of expression for a good few years of my life. I spent so much time with that stupid HTML code to get it just right!

Lots of things have changed. I'm married to an incredible man! I'm graduating college very shortly. In short, life is just at another stage. I just wanted to thank you all for your kind reading and commenting. If you're reading this. If you write on a blog, and no one sees it...??

But, amongst the tears and waving of handkerchiefs, the good news is that Justin and I are going to be starting our own blog. Well, mostly me, because he doesn't really like to write on blogs anymore, but I still get those urges all the time, and he'll probably write some, if I promise him cookies. He is a good writer, and no one except me would ever know.

So, even though our new blog isn't written in yet, it's already "there." Turn the Page.

gifting

2009-01-04T21:28:00.007-06:00

first of all, if you're reading, could you be so kind and leave a comment? i hate saying this because if no one comments, then i look lame. i guess this blog is lame. but i do know how many hits i get per week...and it's not too shabby. still, i want to know who exactly you are. so make yourselves known, if you dare. :)

i really enjoyed gift-giving this year. i did something a little different: i tried to generally not buy commercially produced stuff. i tried to make gifts, purchase handmade ones, and re-use when i could. i did fairly well. i certainly don't think there's anything wrong with businesses and retailers but it actually felt kind of good to buy local and/or handmade and/or reused. it was actually refreshing, and i felt like i was snubbing the million lame and stupid commercials. take that, Verizon! hiyah, Target and Walmart and Sears and RadioShack! i can do it all myself and i don't need your help! here are some of the things i bought:

-a french press coffee maker for Dad - from the Mill (made in brazil, but at least i supported a local business...?)
-necklaces, candles, and soap from Ten Thousand Villages - for various people (handmade, fairly traded stuff from various countries)
-professional framing on an photo collage Mom had made 18 years ago (did it myself, using a frame someone had left at our shop)
calendar and book of my photography
-a knitted hat for Justin (i mean, i knitted it myself)
-a DVD set of Bonanza episodes for Johanna (ok, that one might have come from china, come to think of it.)
-a sterling silver guitar pick (handmade by a guy in Canada, found on Etsy.com)
handmade purse for Rachel (actually i bought a simple purse at a thrift store and embellished it myself)

i stayed far, far away from "popular gifts" and attractive advertising. and the interesting thing about this was that i didn't set out to do it this way. the noncommercial aspect was just one step in the decision process for each gift i decided on. i was really trying to spend less, too...and doing homemade stuff can definitely cut down on what you're paying for (though it's easy to get carried away!).

so, knitting is fun. i spontaneously decided to both learn to knit hats - and knit a hat - in the week immediately preceding Christmas. it turned out rather well...i'm still going to get a photo of Justin in his hat, but here's the best photo i have. here you can see the fleece lining before it was trimmed up:
it was quite the process. i had to learn to Purl, Cast, SSK, Reduce and Bind. but my hands ended up sore and my shoulders were tense and my eyes were strained. i definitely can't do it for more than ten-minute increments. but it was fun, though imperfect - a few Purls where there should have been Knits, and a few accidental 2 Stitches when there should have been only 1. but it was soft and warm, and it was my first try.

we are who they were

2008-10-31T09:15:00.007-05:00

have you ever wondered why we do the things we do? maybe you and me individually, maybe our entire culture today? why are we like this?
can we - individually or as a whole culture - develop independently of and differently than those who have lived before us?

i've come to be convinced that the understanding of current times, at least in a very large way, lies in the past. the study of history illuminates today with a clarity and wonder that cannot be otherwise imagined. the more history i learn, the more i understand about today, my culture, myself. i make no exaggerations. then was another time, another place, another culture. but we would not be who we are without the ideas, expectations and behaviors set in place by those very long ago. we are who they were.

many of us believe we are independent thinkers (which, ironically, is an idea given to us by some who lived before we did). but, how we think is in a very large way determined by the history of older civilizations. the way of thinking in thirteenth-century French romances has bled into your mind whether you've ever read Lancelot stories, and the influence of ancient sages like Plato - removed from us by miles and millenia - permeates our schools, churches, families, and deepest perceptions. ever read any Shakespeare? even if you hadn't, you've used the words and phrases and metaphors he invented. the very language we speak, our tool of fundamental communication, is a product of stone-age nomads, Roman military maneuvers and road-builders, and rosters of warriors, crusaders, emperors, despots. the way our classrooms are set up - the very concepts of teachers, students and exams - is a result of decisions and controversies made by pompous theologians and traveling humanists during the renaissance and the reformation. and the ideals of freedom we hold so dear, often as dear as our faith? they showed up in the sixteenth century, in books by bands of enlightened rebels usurping the Christian conviction that God raises and removes kings.

my friends, we - you, me, our culture, many cultures - are a conglomeration of them - the ancients, the rebels, the teachers and the poets.

yes, you and i carry the marks of poets and writers in our minds indelibly stamped in our very cores. and if there is one thing i've learned in my literature and history studies, it's that those who write are the tools of radical change throughout history. the written word has the potential to become immortal.

since the lives and texts of ancient times affect us so strongly, so also will our lives and ideas affect those far after us. the postmodernist culture is the forerunner for another kind of culture, whether or not they will know about how postmodernism worked. those who write the books today will be history that is studied and embedded in peoples' worldviews. the way our churches work, what our priorities are and how we influence our surroundings, will be the mark left on future christians and pagans - even if they didn't learn history about us. whether or not they will know about us (perhaps they, too, will be mad with the idea that they are independent), they will be patchworks of all that have come and gone - of our culture, of you and me, who are ourselves blends of ancient expressions.

it's something to think about.

Calendars!

2008-10-22T21:56:00.004-05:00

So this week's post will be a shameless plug for the calendars I've created and which are currently for sale. I have more coming soon (so check back), but all the art on RedBubble has free shipping this week (type 100000masterpieces in the promo-code box)! Woohoo! :) So take a look at them if you need a cool gift for someone, maybe for Christmas...? I've created four already, all priced at $25. I can also customize them with any of my photos you've seen here, on Facebook, or on my photo web site. Thanks for taking a wee looksie! :)

See all my calendars here

Everyday Mysteries

The Year of the Leaf

A Bouquet

Still Life & Structural

Rocky Mountain Columbines

Summer in the Outer Banks

a collage of wisdom

2008-10-15T22:44:00.000-05:00

you might be tempted to be angry with me for not posting for so long, but the reason is that i have been out, in the world, collecting quotes from my varied travels to share with you. my backpack is full of scraps of paper with jumbled words on them, just waiting to be immortalized in...nonphysical electronic text. anyways, in all their glory, the unedited wisdom of the mass of humanity around me.

in class

"My interpretation of this text is that whenever we see a reference to a genie, we should immediately think of Allah." -student in English class

"The only way people can fly is by growing angel wings." -same student

"What's the cube root of four sixteenths?" -student in response to the question "Do you have any questions?"

"How our human conversations evolve from the tooth fairy to serial killers." -English professor

"That chair is the color tan. Yucky tan." -Computer Science professor

"If you want to see a real master at work, just watch Steve Jobs at a press conference." -Computer Science professor

"The opening ceremonies of the Olympics kind of frightened me. If 2000 men can drum in synchronization, they can take over the world." -Renaissance History professor

During an exam review for Computer Science class:
Student: "Can you define a string again, please?"
Professor: "Let me show you. 'Hi, I'm a cow.' That's a string."

family/Mary

"Nikki, can I interest you in a big cup of shut up?" -Dad

"Looks like you need to have a better coefficient of friction." - Justin, when the stack of books was too heavy for the small bookend

"Looks like the eye of the hurricane is right over Jamaica. Well, I bet they are good at evacuating, because there are a lot of really good runners there." -Mary (during the Olympics)

Mom: "Mary, you need to need to listen to what I'm saying."
Mary: "I'm trying, but you just keep blabbing, on and on and on..."

"I think this jacket makes me look really sisticated." -Mary

Mom: Wait until I'm done on the computer, then we can turn on the debate."
Mary: "I think this presidential election is just a little more important than our entertainment!"

"If I ever get acne, I am DEFINITELY using Proactiv because it is so effective even on tough acne." - Mary after seeing countless Proactiv commercials

While Mom was scrambling around to get everyone ready to go somewhere, Mary called from upstairs and called down to Mom: "Mom, I've never understood what lips were for."

"Russia's way more powerful now that they took over Atlanta." -Mary

radio/TV/newspaper

"Barbers always know everything about who people are going to vote for. They're the best pollsters. Who needs a $25,000 poll when you can get one for $15, and a shave too?" -NPR

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." - Barry Goldwater

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers." - Richard Feynman, physicist

overheard

"Justin Timberlake is bringing verb conjugations back." - overheard on campus

"I am the queen of nonchalant bluffing" - girl on the bus

"You're kissing him right now, aren't you?" - a guy talking on his cell phone

two years later, and no different

2008-09-27T19:36:00.003-05:00

i'm publishing this again because it's one of my favorite posts ever. i keep trying to write something like this lately, but i keep coming back to this one...and it says everything i wanted to. i realize it's a little sad-sounding, and that's okay but unintended (at least for this year). i think i was generally more melancholy back then than i am now. anyways, here it is, just over two years after i first published it......

here are these midwestern fall-transition days again. you know....the ones that aren't quite autumn yet and only feel like fall in the evenings. but there are wisps of smoky, spicy fall air blowing around in the wind every so often. and part of you is stuck in what you love about summer, and yet...it's just time to move on.

to me, summer is so much of, simply, what i love about being alive. driving with my windows down and my sunglasses on is one of the greatest pleasures i have in life, and i don't mean that in a depressing way. no matter how the day is going, pulling out those aviators and cranking up some tunes and flying down Normal Avenue is about the highlight of my day. it embodies what i love about summer...which means "carefree" and warm and different every day and fun and laid-back. people aren't worried about school. you play volleyball and hang out late into the evenings because it's light outside. you worry less about responsibility and more about being alive and free because you only have a few summers of your life to feel like that.

but then those evenings get a little shorter, just to remind you that they're not there forever. then labor day comes, and football starts, and before you know it, school is back, and downtown is crawling with hoodie-clad students. and even if it hasn't gotten real chilly yet, you know the dead icy winter is inevitable. like any good parent, mother nature likes to give us a bit of warning before playtime is totally over.

then the evenings are dark at 7pm and you feel tired even when you have no reason to feel tired except that it's dark. then you leave places early because you have homework. then you realize...fall is here.

fall is melancholy for me. i'm sure part of it is all those fall colors...all the colors that mean emotion in my mind, like deep orange, goldenrod, and crimson. but i think one of the reasons i tend to get so pensive each fall season is because it makes me aware of time. time passing so tediously but so fast i can almost hear it. summer is when time stops and all is light and exciting. but fall means winter, and winter means another new year, which just makes me think about how i am 21 years old already, and why i still feel sixteen, and how i still have to accomplish so much, and how i feel like time is moving around me while i remain still...like standing in the middle of a river, grabbing frantically at experiences and events as they surge by but wondering what i'm missing when my back's turned and knowing most things won't ever come along again.

water/color

2008-09-12T00:40:00.014-05:00

this post is dedicated to rainy weather, humidity and thunderstorms.

this week, it rained. the humidity peaked at 97%. the sky was mute and colorless and it matched the gum-spackled cement. on days like this, i long for a drop or two of color.

i wished i could have had a more aerial view of the streets, maybe from the top of a parking garage, to take photos of the bright umbrellas floating along down the sidewalks, like watching leaves trickle down a stream. they would have looked really good against the dismal grey...

i am a sunny summer girl, through and through. i live and breathe for summer, for flip flops and putting my hair in messy braids, for the glorious long evenings and warm nights when you can frolick outside at midnight without getting cold. i usually don't like anything that obscures the sun and/or its warmth; and because so much of my thoughts and feelings are made of colors, the slushy grey months can be depressing. but this week i made my treks across campus and gleefully trampled through clear puddles, and somewhere in all of that, i realized that i was actually - thoroughly - enjoying the rainy days. could be that my enjoyment has to do with my gleeful rain boots - grey with bright cheery umbrellas on them. they remind me of my mind-photo of the umbrella rainbow, which is looking and sounding better and better each time i mentally revisit it. another delight of rainy walks is hearing the thwit-thwit of the raindrops on my umbrella - a bright green color, might i add.

so i guess if everything were bright, sunny, colorful...then the really great colors of my umbrella and boots wouldn't stand out. there isn't any reason to appreciate colors except for the possibility of less color. i think the reason today's raininess was so satisfying is that i have been under the sun for months, and hardly noticed the colors anymore. the brightness of summer doesn't feel as bright after four months of it. and suddenly, the smallest scrap of color, the tiniest molecule of heat, is a greater delight than all the millions that preceded it.

and today, as i stepped out the back door of my wonderful new workplace, i noticed with new vigor the brilliant bright sky, the pillowy clouds and the way the sunlight gets trapped in them and finds its way out again, and felt the warmth on my skin as i discarded my work jacket. life is good. :)

"Red Boots" by Heather Rivet

one month later, she lives

2008-09-03T01:29:00.004-05:00

i guess it's been one month exactly (almost) since i posted last. well, that means nothing except a lame introductory sentence to a milestone blog post. which is only a milestone because of...never mind.

i am writing this late night to tell you about my car mileage experiments. i like experiments a lot, especially the kinds that last for months and yield unbelievable results. this one isn't quite unbelievable, but it is significant enough for me to share it with you at 2am.

i drive a 6-cylinder car, automatic transmission, something like 3.6 litre engine. the gas mileage usually attained from my nice little car is not wonderful...usually somewhere around 230 miles to the E-point on my tank (i hardly ever figure out how many miles per gallon i get - nothing in this post will refer to MPG, but instead to Miles Per Tank). my last two or three MPT were not 230, but 280. that's right, i got an extra 50 miles out of my $50 tank of gas. and a good thing too.

here's a side note. i have been taking the bus a lot, which significantly increases my own personal miles per gallon. by going to school via the bus every day (or almost every day), i get around 12 free daily miles that don't ever come out of my own tank. this makes my own MPG around 50. but this is just a side note, since i said i wouldn't talk about MPG. i just wanted to mention that my personal MPG is way higher than my car's MPG. i think it's a good thing if you can get a better mileage rating than your car, especially if you can do it and not have to pay for parking either. double bonus.

anyways, here are some of the ways i have been significantly increasing my tank mileage.

by doing a LOT of coasting. you would be stunned how far you can actually get without pushing the pedal at all. sometimes it means *gasp* going under the speed limit. but if i'm not around any cars, i don't worry about that. you might see me crawling at 20mph down 70th Street as i approach the turn-in to my neighborhood. i can also go for about a half-mile on 70th street without ever hitting the gas pedal OR going much under the speed limit.
not allowing my tachometer to (hardly) ever go above 2000 RPMs (actually it should be said RsPM). now, this is a kind of arbitrary number that i chose after a lot of observation and experimentation, and i'm sure every car's different, but it's been working for me. basically keep your tach as low as possible...or, let it shift into a lower gear before you ask it to do more. this means very slow acceleration, especially on hills. you might have to wait to pull out into traffic until there aren't going to be cars on your tail. that will let you accomplish this little trick without getting a lot of honks (or birds) from other drivers.
not running my A/C unless absolutely necessary. it helps that my car only blows air on Maximum - so it's easy to leave it off at risk of being flattened into my seat by the vents' force.
trying to brake as little as possible. this sounds bad, but what it means is let gravity slow you down instead of making your car do the work artificially. if there's a hill coming up, just use that. this will mean timing the stop lights a lot more carefully. you want to do as little start-stop as possible. one way you can do this is by slowing down way before a red light so that, when it turns green, you can get back up to speed without ever having had to stop. i am no expert, but i am convinced that this is better for your engine that stopping it and then getting it going again. mostly, just try and keep the tach at a stable place, and don't let it fling itself up and down.
making myself stay in the slower lane so i'm not required to quickly speed up to keep other drivers happy.
not using E-10 fuel (seriously).
timing stop lights correctly. i already mentioned this but it's important. whenever you can, time your arrivals to intersections so that you have to slow down and speed up as little as possible. this takes practice and a lot of attention to the road. just be aware of other drivers, please. :)
doing these things not just sometimes, but ALL the time. i'm trying now to see if i can get my MPT to 300. i don't think i can, but i keep getting closer.
keeping my windshield free of insects and bird poop, to reduce wind resistance.
installing a pair of wings so i can glide instead of drive, when possible.

ok, now that my tiredness is catching up with me, i will cease and desist from making any more list items. hopefully these little things (which are really intrinsic and don't need a lot of technical know-how) can inspire you to get a better MPT. most people i know realize that they are getting poor mileage out of their tank, but they continue to drive the way they are used to driving. gas doesn't have to be quite as much of a tyrant as you think. i am just showing you the proof that a few changes in habit can make some real differences in how much money you end up spending at that wretched Pump.

i will end with the hopefully obvious and unnecessary disclaimer that when using any or all of these methods, you need to be really careful of other drivers and how you drive. don't make people mad! to be a good MPT driver, and also not make people mad at the same time, requires brain usage while driving. beware!! (i HATE bad drivers.) i think, though, that these few little changes potentially have the effect of making you a better, more aware driver. you have to be constantly on the lookout for stop lights, traffic patterns, and intersections...more so than if you were not also paying attention to your tachometer. :)

so that's it....i'm off to bed...let me know if you end up using any of these ideas, and if they help!

Of Oceans And Such

2008-08-02T18:30:00.001-05:00

It wasn't as I expected it to be. It was loud and roaring, instead of soothing and calm. I don't know what I really thought it would be, but my conception of The Ocean was NOT at all what I discovered it to be.

Maybe it's all the time I spent at lakes and creeks and rivers. I thought The Ocean would be a kind of calmly lapping entity, lulling nearby vacationers into light naps and tranquil memories. Mostly I just imagined a soft rhythm.

I can't believe that, in all my travels in my life, I missed it. I've traveled to lots of countries and most states. But somehow it slipped by. Sure, I've seen it before from airplanes and from distant seaside cliffs in Maine and Lima, Peru. But I've never been to it, in it.

Never did I expect what quickly became clear: The Ocean had it out for me. ME, an innocent first-time observer. I didn't expect The Ocean to do its best to knock me off my feet, use its swirling foam to make me dizzy and weak-kneed, or viciously pull me at breakneck speeds through sand-swirled tides. I fully anticipated to be afraid of what was inside The Ocean: jellyfish, sharks, or other unknown terrors...but I was betrayed. The Ocean itself hated me and wanted me dead. How many times I tumbled through the waves, dragged by my bodyboard, while I could feel The Ocean mocking me with every crashing wave. How many times I expelled salt water from my lungs and surreptitiously attempted to pick sand out of my more personal areas, even as I knew T.O. would have Round Two waiting for me when I ventured back in. And How. Many. Times. I jumped back on my bodyboard and pretended to know the right way to jump on top of the insidious waves and, still helpless but not sputtering, allow the moon's gravity to pull me to the sandy beach, while I knew at any time the wave could, quite literally, turn on me and render me a limp rag just waiting to reach shore so I could emerge coughing and half-sneezing salt and pieces of dead fish out of my mouth and nose.

I also felt T.O. to be full of contradictions. A thousand times yes, it is beautiful, without doubt. In a way, it is peaceful. It is also deadly and cruel. Untold numbers of sailors, passengers, and explorers have met their end at the hands of T.O. and all its more native inhabitants? T.O. is also one of the great rhythms of the universe. The earth's seasons warm and cool, the sun rises and sets, people live and die, and the ocean swells and recedes. It is constant as history; and yet it is unpredictable. Ocean science is absolutely foreign to me, but I know very learned people are fooled, stumped and deceived about T.O.'s behavior and effects. We are still learning about it and dying by it, even when the ancients wrote the same things we write about its infinite constancy.

All of this can be misleading to you. Don't misunderstand me - T.O. was wonderful. I loved being in it, hearing it, feeling its power - even when that power accomplished nothing for me except permanently impaling every seam of my swimsuit with millions of grains of sand. I am SO glad that I spent so much time in it and beside it. It made me feel very small and insignificant, and led me to marvel at the power of a God who could - and WOULD - create such majesty. How could it be that such a God would so love us, when we are so finite? We die, and the ocean keeps on rolling and thundering. It's outlasted everyone, and will continue to be older than every person on earth, until the end of time. And it is humanity which is the peak of God's creation and the object of his fullest love.

What do you think?

A Salad Of Thoughts

2008-06-28T16:15:00.006-05:00

isn't this a beautiful salad? i don't normally like salads unless they are covered with things to make them taste less like salad. but since it has been so long since i posted and i can't decide on just one thing to write about, i decided to create a salad of thoughts for you to read as you like. it ain't a melting pot - they all don't blend together and the ingredients remain separate.

i am a waitress now. it is a strange transition from government administrative work to food service. actually i have been able to put into practice a lot of the skills i learned at my last job. the main one is being nice to people who are not pleasant people, and being a good cog in the giant machine. i guess that's what a job is, when they all come down to it. one difference between the two jobs is that i did not wear a kimono when i worked for the government. another is that most of the people in my former job spoke english as a first language. and no one put raw fish into my mouth despite my objections at the Capitol, either.

so if i could be the voice of all waitresses for a minute, i would ask you to please realize that MANY things can go wrong with your food that are not our fault. the cooks can lose your ticket, the pop machine can be broken, the bartender might have accidentally used vodka instead of tequila in your margarita, the owner might have turned the air conditioner to full blast to compensate for the hot grills. none of these things should logically result in low tips, but they do. can't you realize that? also, if you come to our place and are annoyed that we seat you with other people, just deal with it and don't come back if you don't want to, but that shouldn't result in 0% tip.

i have more to say! if you are a jerk to a waitress, they will all remember you next time as the guy or girl who was a #$!*%. and...you will probably get great service. see, we remember your face, how much you tipped or didn't tip, how you drank too much and flirted with us in front of your wife and family, and ordered tons of food you didn't eat and had to be thrown away...but we will grit our teeth and serve you with friendly smiles. we hate you, but we will be your slave anyways because it is a contest to see if we can be the one to make the #$!*% finally leave at least 10% gratuity. (you should also know that if you leave a poor tip AND got great service, we will probably all know it by the time you hear us say "goodbye, thanks for coming in." and if you cannot afford to leave a tip, perhaps you should quit eating at pricy restaurants. times are tough, eh? then stay home.)

waitressing is actually a very easy thing to do. or should i say, it is 10,000 very easy things to do, and could you do them all at once please? and in the right order, don't forget. and if you are really good, you COULD do items 7004-9934 all together, but don't confuse them with items 4007-3994. and item #1? don't even think about doing it second or eighth, because that will create an additional 1,000 tasks interspersed with all 10,000 of the original ones. and for every party of ten that divides the check after telling me it was all together, you can just tack on an additional 15,000 tasks. and you probably expect me to be quick with those checks because you didn't ask for them until you had to leave immediately. i hate you.

i have stopped taking the bus so much because since they changed the routes, my bus is ALWAYS late. i like using the bus, and i like how they pretty much buy my gas going to and from campus - a good 15-mile roundtrip every day for me. (if you pretend to care about the environment, you'd better be using the bus whenever you can before you come whining to me to boycott plastic bags.) it is strange that taking the bus makes me feel independent, like i don't even need a car to get around. it is actually the opposite - i am subject to the schedule and weather. but it makes me feel like i did when i was in other countries.

i hope this doesn't sound snooty, but i also like how the bus has given me more awareness of the people in society's margins. the people with low incomes who ride the bus not because they are lazy students but because they probably don't have cars. i have learned when to ignore people and when to make friendly eye contact. i have seen some very scary people and some very adorable old men and women. there is a woman who carries a large crucifix in front of her and refers to herself as "we." there are people my age lost in iPods, wearing drab colors and not picking up their feet when they walk. there are tired mothers with dirty babies and there are snippy bus drivers. i suppose i sound like rich white people who like to have cultural experiences to write about so they can come across as more understanding.

the other day i actually told someone i was a photographer. i have never said those words before, because in my head it sounds presumptuous. when i said it - it was an artist in a gallery who asked me whether i was an artist myself - i felt strangely different, like my love of photography had instantly and officially changed from a hobby, something i like and something i do, someone that i AM. how weird is that? i have a long way to go before i really start applying that identity to myself. but it was a surreal moment, an unforeseen corner i'd suddenly rounded in life, when usually all i observe are straight roads stretching to the flat intersection of sky and earth.

so, speaking of photography, i have had some exciting things happen. i got an infrared filter for my birthday, and while i have yet to take any very good pictures with it, i have plenty of ideas in my head that i can't wait to explore. i had one of my photos selected to be in a photography book, which is on sale now. i have sold several prints online, for marginal profit but increased confidence in my work. AND i was contacted through RedBubble by a woman who found my images to be full of meaning relating to her family, and is buying a large number of prints to use to decorate her home. each photo represents one person in her family and a few characteristics which are unique to that individual. this project has been a challenge for me - most photos are being reworked in Photoshop so they will form a cohesive single work of art - and it has also been wonderful to communicate with this woman and discuss our families and lives. she has looked through thousands of images and suddenly found all the right photos in my single gallery - she believes she was led to my work. how exciting is that?? oh, and Justin is going to get me a custom made book for my work - but i feel like i should wait for the summer to be over, so i can include colorado and north carolina (and the rest of summer in Nebraska) in the book. i cannot wait to get it done! it'll be great to have something to show people when i talk about my art.

the music i have been hearing lately:
some of the songs from robbie seay band's new album
a few select songs by creedence clearwater revival
the 1812 overture
anything by Mew
some random choral stuff - a few Requiem tracks, Veni Veni Immanual, Carmina Burana

two weeks from today, i am leaving for North Carolina's Outer Banks. i am so excited about this trip - it's about a week and a half long - and the chance it will give me to see where Justin and his family have so many memories. it's an honor to be included this year, and i can't wait to see a part of the country i haven't before. from what i hear, our itinerary will include a lot of sleeping in, sunning, eating, swimming and for me, photography. then the week we return, we'll leave for a family reunion (my family, not Justin's) in Colorado. another few days there and we will be in nebraska for a month or so before we go camping with the onefaith group right before school starts. it is quite the agenda - but i am so travel-itchy and i can't wait to see and photograph everything i can.

hope this made up for all the time i left you blogless. :) next time i think i will write about why i photograph and how it thrills me, and about the intersection of art and photography - how they are the same and not the same. if i feel so ambitious. thank you so much for reading and sticking with me. i would love to hear your comments about any of the above.

50 things i dislike

2008-05-12T01:05:00.004-05:00

to contrast my ancient '100 things i like' list...but for brevity's sake (and so you will believe i am 2/3 positive and only 1/3 negative) there are only 50 things i don't like.

1. the way seafood smells before it's cooked
2. speakers/mics/headphones that crackle
3. ingrown toenails
4. chapped lips + no chapstick
5. when people smoke. everyone hates that they do it, and so do they, but they still DO!!! AAARRGH!!!
6. tight socks or shoes
7. white sheet cakes
8. the fact that people can be poor singers and still be on the radio
9. drivers that are completely oblivious to the fact that they're driving
10. the cheap jerks who leave bad tips, or no tips. if "times are tough," DON'T EAT AT PRICEY RESTAURANTS.
11. off-brand yellow vanilla ice cream
12. people who think they're really good at something when they're not
13. overuse of smiley faces on the internet
14. tripping on things in front of people
15. being misguided or mistaken
16. finding a tiny spot of dried toothpaste on the corner of my mouth
17. trying to eat substantial food off soft, pulpy paper plates
18. garish and over-noisy baby toys
19. paying money for stuff i won't ever use (e.g. student fees for the bug center)
20. no variation on anything
21. the word 'sickle'
22. remembering that i have a nice wad of cash...in my OTHER jeans
23. when people constantly and knowingly use phrases and terms that no one else will understand
24. when there is nothing to photograph
25. 1990s fashion
26. too many fake flowers
27. when dentists pick at your teeth with that sharp thing
28. the combination perm/mullet my parents gave me when i was 10
29. when the weather restricts where i go and what i do
30. lack of real creativity in most peoples' weddings
31. dyed hair (usually), especially fakish blonde highlights for guys
32. when i have to do stupid things just to satisfy others' expectations
33. not learning anything in class on any given day
34. beige
35. having to see peoples' lower backs and butt cracks when i sit behind them in class
36. death and decay
37. how some people can fall asleep anytime they try
38. emo haircuts (yes, they ALWAYS look bad)
39. small talk and its cemented role in normal society
40. not knowing how to do something new
41. wondering if people like me
42. how the few things i do like about winter (mittens, fireplaces, sweatpants) aren't available or appropriate during summer
43. when i lose an eBay auction by like 25 cents
44. the shortness of life and how quickly it is gone
45. how there are old people who are neglected and miserable and just waiting to die
46. asking stupid questions and then trying to cover it up with something funny or ironic
47. the smell of dead grass or flower-water too long in the vase
48. those gums that toothless babies have (creepy)
49. milk with anything other than cereal or chocolate cake
50. too much clock-ticking going on in a given room

another man's treasure

2008-04-26T23:09:00.009-05:00

garage sales are one of the reasons i love spring and summer so much. a garage sale is the intersection of some of my favorite things: lack of snow and ice, good bargains, random old stuff, and talking to strangers. anyways this weekend was like garage sale heaven because my neighborhood had their (semi-?)annual garage sale weekend. so apart from the fact that had taken me five minutes to drive the five blocks OUT of the subdivision that morning, it is pretty fun because everyone gets really neighborly all of a sudden and everyone's kids get together to make a killing on lemonade and there is a common feeling of good cheer and peace on earth, similar to the season yuletide.

there are always several kinds of garage sales. there are usually a few people who, because the neighborhood is having a sale and they don't have to advertise, just throw out a few bins of old junk and hope to make a few bucks with no effort. there is never anything good at these sales, because these people aren't really trying to get rid of stuff...they just want a little profit. ubiquitous items would be VHS tapes, brass decorations and cheap paperback books.

then there are the young-parents yard sales, where they sell millions of pieces of baby clothing for only about half of what they paid for it at Gymboree, always neatly folded in little rows to show you what good quality they are. there is always a very narrow and specific size of clothing available, usually something like "2T-4T." and you can buy playpens and garish wiggly primary-color toys and other baby stuff that has undoubtedly been slobbered and pooped all over. these are, to me, extraordinarily boring and i would suggest never attending a sale which mentions the word "exersaucer" in its advertisement. oh yeah...usually these sales happen at a particular stage of life at which the new Dad is shedding his single-guy persona, so you might also see some neon beer signs, a weight bench, and tons of action movies (on VHS of course).

there are also the "craft sale" garage sales when people just sell stuff they've made or put together. usually there are tons of wooden cutout things and signs with "funny" sayings on them, and wreaths with roses and strands of pearls in them, but little of actual interest unless you are the kind of particular person who loves country stuff that might have been created 15 years ago.

there are other kinds as well, but my favorite is the 'throw-it-all-out-there-junk-sale' usually given by older people. old people always have decades worth of stuff to get rid of, and they are usually actually trying to get rid of it as opposed to just making as much money as possible, which means stuff is not overpriced and they will give it to you for even less than the little red dot says. they also usually like to talk. all my favorite elements converge in these garage sales for the perfect saling experience.

so, in honor of garage sales and to try and make this post good (you might not see another one for another month), i wanted to show you the things i purchased today. notice the shift to center-alignment, which is a sure sign some pictures are headed YOUR WAY.

so, exhibit A is actually two things: one plump little antique pitcher complete with original glass stopper, and a print from a 1940s calendar, which i will duly mat and display on a shelf with my other similarly awesome stuff. the bottle was $0.50 and the print was free because old people finally moving to their summer cabin in Okoboji (where all their friends ended up living) are awesome.

next are these beautiful old books. i am getting quite a collection of old books, and i'm quite happy about "guests of the heart" in particular. all three of these are in great condition but this one is inscribed in the front cover (i love that people used to do that) from one friend to another...commencement 1887. the other two are insignificant but quite lovely and in very good condition. i paid $0.25 for each one. people are always willing to sell very old books for very little money...this is a universal flaw in humankind that i am willing to exploit to the fullest.

i feel kind of ashamed to say that i bought two purses. the first one was, admittedly, an impulsive purchase. but i do really like it, regardless of whether i get my fifty-cents' worth out of it.

this one here is pretty awesome. it's from the gap, which of course means extraordinarily high quality and timeless classic appeal. well at least it is suede leather in a cheerful green color, and perforated with tiny stars. the color is not minty green as your computer might show it. it set me back exactly $1.00 (USD).
it's weird to buy seeds at a garage sale, but i did it. as i dug through a bin of seeds at one sale today, i imagined myself as a painting, wearing in a floppy hat, with a spade in hand and a smile on my face, lovingly turning up dark fertile earth in a ray of blessed sunshine; and after months of tender care and building anticipation, gratefully partaking of earth's bountiful harvest. all the while, i knew i would probably never plant them. price: $0.50 each.

next i will show you my asian wall hangings of questionable vintage. supposedly they are at least 50 years old, or so the guy tells me as he relates to me his illustrious career of public school-administration. after he went to Guam and bought some bamboo cups which he is also now trying to get rid of (and which i almost bought). $1.50 apiece.

oh yeah, Mary was certainly excited about her finds, especially Patch. if you come over, i'm sure she will tell you how she rescued this animal of ambiguous gender from a heap of moldering toys headed for shibalba. price: unknown and not relevant.

i also was very excited to purchase some china. these plates are obviously not the same pattern, but they are all the same size and go together very well. there are two of the plain white ones, one of the scalloped one on top, and three of the one on the right; a perfect set of six. :) i am very happy about these. the first two cost me $0.50 for the three of them, and the others were $3.00 each.

oh yes, and who can have a truly successful day of yard-saling without consuming multiple glasses of overstrong koolaid? i am a firm supporter of the lemonade industry and happily paid my $0.25 and $0.75 to strengthen the koolaid economy.

total spent: 17.75.

why, thank you for reading! and thanks for sticking with me even when i hardly ever post any more.

statistics

2008-03-02T16:11:00.008-06:00

in lieu of a post i actually have to think about, here are some interesting statistics gleaned from the tracking software installed on this site (so yes, i know where you live and maybe even how often you visit my page).

i started using StatCounter on October 13, 2005; but, my blog was started on September 28, 05. so it's not exactly accurate to the exact beginning of the site.

total number of page loads to date: 9,192
unique visitors: 6,308
returning visitors: 2,962

that means 3,346 people have come across my page, never to return.

the record number of unique visits on one day appears to be 54 visitors, on June 5, 2006. that was right about when i left for Ecuador, and i think i had sent out an email to a lot of people (relatives mostly) who supported me or would be interested in my trip. i didn't actually have a post dated June 5, which is kind of weird. but apart from that day, the average number of visitors per day is around 5.

i have been found many times through google searches. for example, if you search for "sound and fury update," my blog comes up at #5. :) if you search for "God Loves Beauty Festival bible christianity," one of my posts is also on the first page. i'm number two on the search "what does full of sound and fury mean." i'm on the second page for the google search "warmer climate snow patrol sound effects." also, if you search for "pca doctrine" my site will come up eventually. (but it won't come up anyplace within the first 19 pages - that's when i got tired of clicking through it. yes, someone was THAT curious about PCA doctrine.)

i've had visitors from all over the world, but unfortunately the detailed stats are only kept for the last 100 page loads. i've had visitors from all continents (and i think from all states), and while of course most of my hits are local, there's always a curious concentration of visitors from Amsterdam.

of my last 100 visitors, 59 used firefox 2.0, 18 used safari, 16 used explorer 7.0, and the remaining 7 visitors chose to desecrate my page with explorer 6.0.

the least popular month was May of 2007, when a paltry 117 unique ISPs were logged. the month with the highest number of unique visitors was January 2008, when there were 387. interesting, eh? especially since...

and i had over a thousand MORE hits in 2006 than in 2007. i wonder what i am doing differently now.

oh yeah, plenty of people click from links to my page from friends' pages, so for anyone who has a link on their page, thank you! :) most effective referrers are Curtis and Johanna; runner-up is the onefaith web site.

anyways, there are infinitely more little factoids i could share with you, but that's about all the interesting stuff i could find. so just make sure you all keep coming back so i can keep tracking you. :) thank you to all my faithful readers!

a "rotation"

2008-02-02T17:47:00.000-06:00

so it is apparently the thing to do, to let people know what kinds of music have been played on my iPod and/or computer and/or car stereo lately. i've considered the origin of the term "rotation" and i'm assuming people used it when talking about the albums or CDs that were, necessarily, rotated on and off the player.

anyways, i tend to like songs individually in most cases (as opposed to the whole album). so here are a few songs which have arrested my attention in the past couple of weeks when i have used my iPod on the bus and while i walk across campus and pretty much anytime i would rather not have to acknowledge the presence of my fellow man around me. you might notice that some of this is "indie" music. it's true. (speaking of cool things, i know it's really cool to like music that most people haven't heard of or that isn't played on the radio, so i'm trying to get on that wagon too.)

the funeral - band of horses . one amazing song that gives me goosebumps.
bleecker street and el condor pasa - simon and garfunkel. lots of simon and garfunkel has been played lately, but these one keep coming back.
twenty two fourteen - the album leaf. like little shiny dots and even romantic in my opinion...a beautiful and gentle little song.
warmer climate - snow patrol. just a soft pastel that doesn't make any sense to me and doesn't need to.
priests and paramedics - dave bazan. a little morbid, but it makes you think about life and death and how you view those things.
i'll make a man out of you - mulan soundtrack. so i happen to love mulan, and this song is my favorite from the soundtrack. :)
poeme pour catherine - martin tillman. melancholy and emotional and beautiful. piano + cello (one of my favorite instruments).
156 and snow brigade - mew. i actually could recommend almost all of this album, but these two are is currently my favorites. they have an intense feel to them.
look at you girl - chris ledoux. i am not a fan of country music by any means, but this song just makes me happy, okay?
everyday - carly comando. an amazing piano song with a lot of dark tones and deep notes.
fire on high - electric light orchestra. just the second half of the song...but it's really awesome.
you can't hurry love - the supremes . does anyone need to justify listening to this song? it puts the dance in ya! :)
i summon you - spoon. mostly i like it for the guitar parts.
such great heights - iron & wine. again, a song that doesn't need explanation. it's just a great song.

lack of content

2007-12-22T23:55:00.000-06:00

i just realized it's been a whole month since i posted anything on this blog. allow me to shamelessly plug my other blog, the one with pictures. i've updated that more frequently while neglecting this one. my head does not hang in shame, however: i Have Been Busy.

so as you probably know, Christmas is two and/or three days away. this is what i would like to talk about today: when you say "Christmas" do you mean Christmas Eve or Christmas Day? (i'm ignoring you people who believe it is an entire season.) are you saying one of them is Christmas and one of them is not Christmas? are they both called Christmas on your calendar? oh...yes. they are.

i am here to suggest that Christmas is TWO days, and not just one.

now, please be open-minded.

some people might hold the idea that Christmas Eve is not actually Christmas, even though Christmas is in the title. and, if it is not Christmas, why does Santa come that night?

you see, if Christmas is actually two days, then we must endure the silliness of referring to Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Day Afternoon, Christmas Day Night, and Christmas Eve Morning. this hooliganism is what has led me to my theory that it is actually not two days, but one 48-hour day. the astronomical inconsistencies in my proposal are negligible, and even president bush, for all his shortcomings, has noticed this and given the government ALL of christmas off of work.

thus, please re-form your vocabularies and concepts of truth to reflect this important holiday reality. thanks, and have a merry christmas!

Immigration

2007-11-22T01:40:00.000-06:00

i really can't believe i'm writing this, because i've all but tired of political issues. you might not have realized that, but as my passions shift from the harsh political to the abstract personal, i am devoting less energy to that which governs peoples' lives and more to what governs their heart.

still, the illegal immigration to our country is something i've thought about quite a bit lately. i have something of a new perspective on it that i've never read anywhere before...so maybe someone else thinks this way but i've never heard of it before. i'm going to try and be brief, but i have many more thoughts that aren't contained here. so ask questions if you have them.

so here is my "silver bullet" or the main point. i think my responsibility as a christian is different than the government's responsibility as...a government. i am saying that perhaps i am to behave one way, and the government is to behave another - and both are right, but neither can have it both ways. does that make sense? i am not the government so i am not obligated to behave as the government (although i am bound to obey any laws that don't require me to do wrong). and the government has a completely different set of goals and priorities that cannot - and maybe shouldn't - match up with my own.

my government's responsibility is not to care for aliens and sojourners. sure, there is the basic obligation to do no injustice, but maybe that's all. the government's main responsibility is to protect its citizens. and citizens means just that - those who are legally, fairly documented to live here. to those who do not take the proper steps to live here legally (morally), i would say our government owes them little but basic human rights. so no, i don't believe it's the government's role to have caring hearts towards those who are not even supposed to be here.

thus far i probably haven't stepped on any toes, at least any conservative ones. my guess is that most conservatives would strongly agree with my last paragraph. BUT, as i said, i am coming to believe that the obligations of the government are not those of the church. when we try and figure out how a christian should relate to this issue, the starting point is NOT the current law of the land and how we can adhere to it more closely. the starting point is scripture, particularly the breathtaking number of passages exhorting us to do good to foreigners. we are to obey our government, yes...but i am not aware of any laws requiring us to personally deport immigrants, turn them in, or to ban them from our society. and if there are laws to that end, i believe we would probably be fully justified in breaking those.

from scripture, i can find nothing except that believers are to care for aliens (also called sojourners or foreigners). there's an inexhaustive list of verses at the end of this post, that i believe demonstrates this end quite capably. so i'm taking it as given that my first and greatest responsibility comes from the bible, and not from manmade laws. THAT is my reference point, not the facts about immigration reform or burdens on society or high insurance or who will pick crops or the feasibility of a fence between us and mexico. sure, we can discuss those things and they are all valid issues, but all of that has to be viewed in light of what we should already be convinced of from scripture.

the government has their role, and i support that fully. as a resident of this country, i think laws should be enforced, and i think the government should be extremely careful about immigration. that is their job. but being a citizen of the United States is not my first job. it's not my starting point. my role as a resident of the Kingdom of God is different, potentially opposite, but not more or less valid. i wouldn't be upset at my country for tightening immigration laws, because that's what they should do. but that's not what i should do; it isn't my role. my job as a believer precedes my role as a citizen. my job is to love and serve and share Christ with aliens, but i wouldn't get angry if they were sent away because that is also justice, but from another place. my justice to an alien probably looks 100% different than the justice doled out by federal legislators - but that does not mean one or the other is more or less right. it means we are here to do different things.

so that's all i'm going to say for now, except one disclaimer. if i was in constant contact with an undocumented immigrant, i would definitely encourage them to take the steps to live/work here legally, especially if that person claimed faith in Christ, as i would try and encourage them to live rightly in every area of their life. there are so many hypothetical situations i could talk about, but i'll leave any more questions to my readers.

here is my incomplete list of verses speaking of our obligations to aliens. the initiated reader might also consider the heap of verses reminding us that we are all aliens in this world, just as the israelites were aliens in egypt.

Malachi 3:5 "Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me," says the LORD of hosts.

Ezekiel 22:7, 29 They have treated father and mother lightly within you. The alien they have oppressed in your midst; the fatherless and the widow they have wronged in you. ...The people of the land have practiced oppression and committed robbery, and they have wronged the poor and needy and have oppressed the sojourner without justice.

Jeremiah 7:5-7 For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor walk after other gods to your own ruin, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.

Deuteronomy 27:19 Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow.

Deuteronomy 24:14, 17 You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens who is in your land in your towns. You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan, nor take a widow's garment in pledge.

Deuteronomy 14:29 The Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance among you, and the alien, the orphan and the widow who are in your town, shall come and eat and be satisfied, in order that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.

Deuteronomy 10:18 Your God...executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing.

Deuteronomy 1:16 Then I charged your judges at that time, saying, 'Hear the cases between your fellow countrymen, and judge righteously between a man and his fellow countryman, or the alien who is with him.

Numbers 9:14 If an alien sojourns among you and observes the Passover to the LORD, according to the statute of the Passover and according to its ordinance, so he shall do; you shall have one statute, both for the alien and for the native of the land.

Leviticus 23:22 When you reap the harvest of your land, moreover, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field nor gather the gleaning of your harvest; you are to leave them for the needy and the alien. I am the LORD your God.

the internet is no cure for boredom

2007-11-15T11:53:00.000-06:00

sorry it's been so long since i posted...that last one took every ounce of writing energy i had, and then i had to borrow from the future. so here is something that i promise will not challenge you, make you think, or take the weekend to read through.

i usually have a lot of time on my hands every day, when i have little to do but explore the internet. i recently concluded that the internet is not updated as often as i would like, because i have a very brief attention span and because sometimes i look for updates to things every minute. so i want you, faithful readers, to suggest cool things for me to view on the internet...that are never the same twice. or at least, are frequently updated.

i have this dull little menu of pages to visit every day. it goes something like this, but not in any particular order. facebook, asyetunnamed, boundless, the drudge report, fox or cnn (if i feel like reading news), various photography sites, christianity today, and friends' blogs. needless to say, there's not a minute-by-minute update on most of those sites. i just get this ADD thing going where i need a new page every few seconds or i will get bored. i don't think it's healthy, but i also don't know how to make it go away. (internet ADD is quite similar to radio ADD, which i also suffer from.)

i'm not saying everything is boring, but i need some new material that will always be new. YouTube and TV shows are generally out, as i can't sit at work with headphones in all day (on most days). any suggestions to help cure the boredom?

yeah. it's pretty long.

2007-10-23T12:49:00.001-05:00

When was the last time you saw a photography exhibit in the foyer of your church?

Not just a display of pictures from the latest missions trip. But something you'd see at the state fair or at a museum.

I'll get back to that in a minute. First, consider the first words of the Bible: "In the beginning God created everything." Before we know anything of God's mercy, justice, anger, love, or plan for history, we know him as the Creator of heaven and earth. He is A Creator. He Makes Stuff. And in one of the most gloriously transcendent (and somewhat ironic) gifts of all time, he has bestowed on humanity one of his own characteristics: we, the created, long to create. We are made to create because God is -- in his very first words to us -- The Creator. What could be more perfect than endowing that creation with the very reason we exist in the first place?

Before I go on, you might be thinking that you're not creative or not talented. I'm pretty sure no one got overlooked in this. We're all given differing levels of creativity, as well as areas of particular skill or enjoyment. We're not all meant to be symphonic composers, Broadway thespians or professional photographers...but we all enjoy and find fulfillment in some way of creativity. It could be one of those areas or it could be bringing order to a page full of numbers, gardening, designing buildings or rockets or microchips, building web pages, writing, dancing, organizing, singing, acting, carving, decorating, landscaping...so many things can fall under this broad umbrella of creativity. (If you still don't see yourself as creative, I'd venture to say that you just don't realize it, or you haven't come across it, or that it's been stifled in some way.)

Because it is one of God's own characteristics, the gift of creating is a gift all on its own. I don't think it's a stretch (or maybe it is) to say that art is the same way. Remember those verses I put up before? I think they tell us that God loves beauty and art for their own sake: "for splendor and beauty" as King James says. The sashes and robes of the Jewish priests weren't all useful, and they weren't even all symbolic...because they didn't need to be. They were made for beauty. There is a huge case to be made, I think, for appreciation of art -- beauty, expression, aesthetics, design -- as an end in itself. Thus I am re-thinking what I said before: that art must convey truth. It often does, but I think it does not need to.

The world does a grave disservice to the gift of art, as well as the gift of creativity, when we treat it purely as a medium for our own messages and agendas. Sure, there are places for most media to convey specific themes or be persuasive, like documentaries. But for other, more subjective art forms, the conveyed message might be an emotion, a feeling, a fleeting memory, a virtue, a relationship...things that are far more abstract than informational. I suppose that can be included in my idea of truth, but maybe a better word would be real. Emotions certainly are real. And maybe (an experienced artist could tell me) there is a difference between the personal and the public art, a difference between what is made to be purely an expression of self, and that which is meant to communicate something to others. Someone could address that.

Still, there's the idea that some very legitimate art isn't beautiful, and didn't require skill to make. Maybe where it is not beautiful, it makes up for it by being true. And maybe if it is neither, it's okay too. It has still been created. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm still missing something. But it seems like if we are really supposed to appreciate art for its own sake, then it doesn't even need to carry a message or be anything else. This is when you might have the process of the artist being worthwhile as well. (I'd personally appreciate it quite a bit more if the art was beautiful or truthful, but that's just me.)

So I could just stop there, but I want to try and apply these ideas (dangerous, I know) to the state of the arts in the Christian realm. At least from what I've seen, too many Christians fall prey to the common temptation of treating art simply as a medium to convey a message We might think that the only reason it must be "well done" is to be taken seriously -- to be heard and accepted. This is bad enough, but there is an added offense of keeping the artistic abilities that do exist within Christendom solely personal, individualized. Did you remember ever seeing a photography display in the back of your church? I would guess never. This is because, in my opinion, the body of Christ as a whole does not generally appreciate art and creativity unless they are used a) in worship music; or b) as a spoon to feed the gospel to unbelievers. The arts are usually nothing except the necessary packaging to get people to listen. Don't get me wrong - I'm really grateful that that potential exists, and I'm glad God's ideas can be used to promote God. There's a place for those types of ministry, to be sure, and one wonderful element of the arts is that they can convey messages effectively. So don't think I'm knocking VBS skits. But since art and creativity are already gifts from God, why do we not celebrate or at least appreciate this divine gift of creativity for what it is - nothing less than a manifestation of God's personality? If it's really a gift, it doesn't need to be added to. From what I've seen, art is commonly thought of by Christians as useless/neutral at best ("Art? That's entertainment and decoration"), and degenerate at worst ("Just look at Hollywood"). We have an idea of "christian art" that sways our thinking about all the arts.

Why is there even such a thing as "Christian art"? I will say that if something worthy is well done, it already has God's appreciation. If art and creativity are truly gifts to be celebrated in their elementary forms, then it doesn't matter if the creator is a believer; God, in his unbounded love and grace, doesn't give gifts only to his own children. We have also deceived ourselves into thinking that there is no true talent outside of Christendom, and that if something would be glorifying to God then it must originate in the mind of a Christian. Yes, I would imagine that God takes the greatest delight when art is made with God's love for it in mind. But we should not think of ourselves as too good for "secular art" because, in a way, there is no such thing. Art is God's already; it was his idea and every time it is used, he takes delight. Art does NOT have to have a cross on it or a Bible verse stamped under it to be "godly art," as a stroll through the Christian bookstore would have us believe. And if it is beautiful, as much art is, it already reflects the beauty and truth of God. Every good thing comes from God, so even if it is not "Christian art" (or "Christian music"), if it is something worthy well done, it can't come from anywhere else.

I can hear you all protesting now, and I concur: there's much to dislike in modern entertainment and art culture. The effect of human immorality is pervasive and God is saddened when "his idea" is used to promote (portraying it is another story) sin and selfishness and the truly degenerate nature of fallen man. There is truly much to oppose, but that doesn't mean the arts are immoral. And we surely don't have the right to come up with our own definition of what art is.

So, what have Christians done in response to the corruption of God's revelation? Passionately rebeled against this perversion of God's gift to mankind? No, we do what we always do. We retreat. We run away. We might be genuine in our motives, but essentially the message is "Fine, we're going to have our OWN movies, our OWN music, our OWN plays (and schools and businesses and organizations and politicians and everything else), so we don't have to look at the trash everywhere else." (I am not saying I necessarily disagree with any of those, but that's another blog.) When we do this, we, quite necessarily, slap the label of Christian^tm on things so we will know what's in OUR domain (and so the Christian^tm Stores will know what to carry). But folks, listen. When something is already A Christian ____^TM, does it have to be any good? No! It doesn't NEED to be good because it has already been sanctified by a Christian^tmCompany, and because it carries the gospel message (or at least some watered-down version thereof). Thus we end up with mediocrity in almost every area of creativity. Our pathetic Contemporary Christian Music^tm exists more or less to provide an sound-alike alternative to Secular Music, and therefore has no need to improve its overall creativity or skill level; as long as you accurately parrot the mainstream sounds, Christians will listen to you and your "positive message." And even if you can't sing (Dave Crowder Band, anyone?), you can still be a Worship Band^tm, using your horrible voice to glorify God. Right? I constantly have to add disclaimers and this paragraph is no exception. I do think there is a place for music that is explicitly Christian, that carries the gospel message and calls people to live rightly. But I am just saying that it doesn't have to do any of that to be good music, or to have God's ultimate appreciation.

I could probably write for another hour about the state of Worship Music in general. I don't think God necessarily dislikes trivial songs if they are genuine, but I sure don't think he appreciates them as much as the ones that, for example, took years to compose. This is getting away from the main point of this blog, so I won't dwell here. But just take a look at the acoustic-style songs usually sung at church or youth group, and you will see that the majority (not all) of them are very poorly written, and take very minimal ability to perform. Even those complex tunes to older songs are being redone until they can be played with three chords by an eleven-year-old. Are people genuine? Yes. Does that mean everything they do is automatically approved to the highest degree? NO! Why do we settle for mediocrity and downright poorness in the place where we should have the highest standards of all: our worship of God? Why do Christian singers re-record the SAME SONGS over and over again? I can't help but think it's just because the market is good for those songs. I'm not doubting their sincerity in worshipping God with their music, nor the sincerity of those who buy it. But from an artistic and creative standpoint, it is mindless drivel.

Do you see what we've done to ourselves? "God just wants your heart." "Can't judge it if it's genuine." If it's Worship, it already has the stamp of Righteousness^tm, so it doesn't need to improve. The result is, almost everything that is called Christian^tm ends up being of poor quality. We claim to serve a God who is imaginative and creative. We are surely not too good for that ourselves. Yes, sincerity is very important, but why do we not see that God loves our creativity, the art we make, and the skill it takes to actually do it well?

If there's any doubt in your mind that God wants skilled workers, go read this passage. Read this one too. And this one. This verse, this verse, these verses, this verse, and this verse all speak of the appreciation God has, and that we should have, for skillful work within the church. Over and over, the message is, if it is done to God, it needs to be done well. Worship Music is the poster example for something that is not generally done well, yet claims in its very genre-title to be all about God. Something is very wrong with that picture.

(I don't want to overlook the fact that churches often provide opportunities for everyone to hear musical talent. "Special Music" is an essential of most churches, giving vocalists and musicians the opportunity to share the skills they have developed, using the beauty of worshipful arrangements. I am not downplaying that at all. I just wonder why there are not parallels for all kinds of art. Where are the photography exhibits? Why does it sound absurd to have those in the church?)

Let's think about the art available in our Christian Bookstores. The few pieces of painting-artwork that I've seen are mostly just those glowy Kinkaid pictures in gold frames, maybe with Bible verses tacked onto the bottom. Never mind that there's nothing inherently "Christian" about them until they have that little plaque with a tiny fragment of a "pretty verse." (You know the ones.) Then you might have some eagle paintings, a few other "inspirational" Bible pictures, mini-statues of the cross and fishes and everything Christian^tm. (Maybe I'll write another day about Commercial Christianity. Or someone else could pick up there.) And any more, as far as entertainment in the Christian Bookstores goes, "Christian" has come to mean little more than Family Friendly. "If a four year old can't watch it without being traumatized, you'd better not watch either." Where is the creativity, the celebration of God's gift? Why does it all have to be explicitly Christian? It doesn't. What we have done is turned a delight of God into a commercialized conveyor belt.

Back on track here: are you using your talent merely as a spoon to feed people your message? Or do you appreciate your craft for the essential of what it is: a revelation of God, straight to your heart? Is your mind preoccupied with "How many people can I convince of Message X in this [book, film, poem, song, photo, sketch]?" or do you enjoy the process and the product as gifts in and of themselves? Again, I'm not saying there is no room for conveying truth and opinion through art. I'm just saying it is far more than a medium, far more than the spoon that holds the real goodies. Art is something that God appreciates because he is an artist. He delights in the works that we create, and the discipline it takes to hone a skill. Are you good at the art you produce?

I'll probably re-read this in a week and disagree with some of it. But that's part of what YOU are for: to help me see where I need correction. I hope you see that I am honestly trying to figure this out, and I especially hope you tell me if I'm wrong. Hopefully this will get you thinking. Thank you so much for reading both parts of this little series...it is truly an honor to have you read what I have written, and even take the time to let me know what you think.

for glory and for beauty

2007-10-17T12:49:00.001-05:00

You shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. For Aaron's sons you shall make tunics; you shall also make sashes for them, and you shall make caps for them, for glory and for beauty.
-Exodus 28:2, 40

i really don't know how to start this. my writing skills are a little musty. the nascent joy of photography has recently superceded my drive to compose with words, and composing with light and color has suddenly become far more pleasing. the result is that i have forgotten how to write (and have neglected my blog). :) so please forgive me if this is unclear or disorganized. i'll do my best.

lately i have been thinking a lot about art, beauty, creativity, and christianity. my mind keeps coming back to those verses above, i think because they demonstrate that some things exist only to be beautiful, and that those things are approved by God. so here are some of my thoughts about all of this.

not only is beauty a reflection of God, i would say that it glorifies him in merely being beautiful. beauty doesn't have to be symbolic or explicitly meaningful to be valuable. Keats might have been a little carried away when he said "Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty...that is all you need to know," but i think he was onto something. beauty isn't only truth, but beauty reflects truth, because neither truth nor beauty can come from anywhere but from God...and God is truth. not every truth will be beautiful, because sometimes truth is ugly (for example: the crucifixion, the selfishness of humanity, the reality of failure or betrayal). but everything that is beautiful is true already.

how is this idea of beauty related to art? disagree with me if you'd like, but i'd say that art, in a similar vein to beauty, always attempts to capture or communicate an element of truth. art points to truth just like beauty points to God. often, a work of art will use beauty or aesthetics in general. so beauty is not the same as art, but rather art can use beauty to promote its message.

side note: it's a point well taken that art has recently tended to neglect beauty and treat ugliness and absurdity as the major truths to be conveyed. (This viewpoint is not totally illegitimate, but neither is it modern.)

since we're talking about art, there is another element to art that can't be ignored. it is skill. God gave two men the broad skills they'd need to work on the art in his temple. he appreciates the skill involved in creating and if it is done for him, it must be done well. so i would say that art reflects God only to the extent that it is truthful and is done skillfully. in other words, it needs to be good...not just done well, but something worthy done well. so the idea behind the art needs to be truthful, and it also has to be communicated well. BUT...going back to what i said before: it still doesn't have to be pleasant. some truth is just plain horrible.

an example of this would be a painting of a gruesome rape or murder. perhaps the artist was highly skilled, masterfully weaving color and emotion to communicate the horrors of the scene. who would want a painting like that? it might be communicated well, but the thing being portrayed is ugly. yes, but i would say that it is still art, because in all reality people are raped and murdered. and it is a highly skilled work: is there anything missing? does this mean my definition is off? (i didn't say i'd buy it.) tell me what you think. i'm told that Rembrandt's paintings often convey tragedy or sorrow, yet he is one of the best artists in history, and many of his works are biblically-themed.

ok, so let me try to distill all of that (i know it's a little confusing). beauty is not the same as truth, but it points to truth. art is not the same as beauty, but art (like beauty) tries to capture or communicate truth, often using beauty as the means to accomplish that end. art must not only point to truth, but do it in a skillful manner to be truly "good" and to be the most glorifying to God. and although truth is often effectively conveyed through beauty, a work of art need not be beautiful to be truthful.

so assuming you both read and comprehended everything so far, you are probably asking, what's the application here? think about these questions. if art is something worthy done well, is the church any good at it? are you any good at it? is entertainment all to be considered as art? here's a clue as to the content of my next post. try applying that principle -- something worthy done well -- to the mass-production "christian art" that hangs on our walls, or the cookie-cutter "christian worship music" coming from our iPods, or the "christian movies" that barely pay for themselves. if you couldn't tell by now, i rather think the state of "christian art" is pathetic, as is the existence and use of the term "christian art"...and i'll talk more about that (and human creativity) in my next post.

in the meantime, please tell me what you think of this, especially if you disagree. these thoughts haven't been "bounced off" anyone yet...so i might be all wrong. i hope not, because this took a long time. :) talk to me!

carrot cake

2007-09-28T15:40:00.000-05:00

anyone here like carrot cake? i do and i don't. it's one of those things that i have to eat without thinking...like scallops or hot dogs. i have to disengage my brain from my taste buds, because it tastes good (well, scallops taste good) but you really can't dwell on what you're eating because you might not like it. so for some reason that no one will ever know, carrot cake is pretty good, at least in my opinion. i really have no idea why anyone would have ever made it in the first place. because why, WHY, of all the things you can put in cake, would you grind up some carrots and throw those in there? (zucchini bread also falls into this same category, but i don't like zucchini bread.)

i think the main attraction for me is the frosting. not the store kind, but the kind i think is made of cream cheese, and is off-white and really thick and creamy. i think the frosting is actually the main course and the cake is there to balance flavors and lessen the intensity. so often the cake-to-frosting ratio is severely unbalanced in the direction of the cake.

i remember my first piece of carrot cake. i was too young to know what it was but i liked that it had a frosting carrot on top. i ended up eating the fake carrot and leaving the rest. i remember feeling a little insulted that no one told me what was in it really.

any thoughts about carrot cake or other weird foods that end up being good? anything you have to eat without your brain?

notre dame, my house, displacement theory

2007-09-18T15:00:00.001-05:00

well, faithful readers, it's been an incredibly long two weeks and i feel that i have much to share, even though i don't do much of the what's-happening-in-my-life stuff. i guess the main thing is that i moved into my parents' home. i'd lived in that lovely duplex for almost exactly a year, and to save money i decided to move back* into my parents' home which, as felicity would have it, is three blocks away. that actually doesn't have anything do to with actual felicity but i wanted to use that word. so you probably thought you learned a new word just now but i used it wrong. ha.

*i didn't actually ever live in this house because they moved into it after i had already moved into my duplex. so i can't really move "back" into it, at all.

actually i wanted to share some observations about my new abode compared to my other one. (while writing this i typed out "adobe" instead of "abode" like three times.) for anyone who doesn't know, my new home is filled to the brim with seven people not including me. two of those people are completely displaced because the basement, including their bedroom-in-the-making, isn't yet finished. so that displacement results in them and their stuff spilling over, into the rest of the house. most of the spillage is contained in the basement, but jim's clothes are in johanna's closet, there are a few ill-placed bookshelves and endtables and lamps here and there, and there are several bins of what appears to be laundry (actually, joshua's clothes) scattered in odd places. i guess now he has a good excuse for wearing what he does: he honestly couldn't find anything else.

one good thing is: the colors i picked out for painting my room turned out really well. especially now that most of my furniture is moved in, it's looking really really good. (pictures will appear when all is arranged and decorated.) one wall is a kind of grayish teal -- "Beguile" -- and the other walls are a grey-beige color -- "Notre Dame." now according to more versed connoisseurs of college football, i should NOT support any connections or relations to the team called Notre Dame. at first i thought it was because they are catholic, but it turns out there is somthing worse than being catholic: being a good football team. instead of irking those connoisseurs (i've always said it's never good to irk a connoisseur) i decided that the color shall be pronounced "noch-ra dohm" instead of "note-er dayme." this satisfies the many potential problems associated with having three walls dedicated to a football team that no one likes.

there are some things i'll have to get used to, being back under a roof with seven other people. these things include being spied upon by my youngest sister, being barged in on in the bathroom (i lock doors now), having windows, a pink Rubber Ducky in the shower, five other individual menus of shampoos and soaps in the same shower, the ever-present sounds of Murder, She Wrote and Perfect Dark (and Slappers Only) reverberating through the house, and the not-unrelated need to sleep with earplugs and an eye mask. oh yeah...and to be fair, it won't take long to get used to a cup of coffee and a fresh breakfast quiche eagerly offered me in the morning before work, the feeling of being much closer to my family, and, oh yeah...let's not forget the utter lack of rent/utility/food bills each month.

in the last couple of weeks i've also bought a new camera which, if you spend any time at all near me, you probably already know because i have been carrying it around like a needy infant. i have been extremely tired because i've had a million little things to do, and i get distracted easily. also the park, and nature in general, beckon more loudly now that i am able to capture their beauty more accurately with my new camera. so that makes it much easier, and much more enjoyable, to not get things done.

i'm also trying to sell some things on eBay. mostly some used CDs and books. you should all buy them.

to know God

2007-09-06T12:16:00.000-05:00

a little story was related to me at a recent gathering. some friends of mine were recently in Kenya doing "medical missions" or sharing God with people even as they treated their physical illnesses. while they gave shots or performed exams, they'd ask "do you know God?" answering this question, an old grizzled african man said with a smile on his face "yes, I know God...and I know him well." this made my heart churn in a new way. could i say that i really know God? do i know him well?

someone might ask me "do you know this person?" and i could say something like "i know them" but i am quick to add a disclaimer, "well, i know who they are, but i don't really know them." obviously, we can know who a lot of people are...i have quite a few "friends" on facebook, all of whom i know to one degree or another. but very few of them are confidants, very few of us are mutually involved in most areas of each others' lives and know what each others' desires, motives, passions and struggles truly are. if i had to pare down my facebook friend collection to the ones who met those criteria, the list would probably contain fewer than 10.

i think i have ceased to think of God as a person. not a person like us; i'm not about to be saying God is equal to his creation. but i think of him a big sky-being who, being perfect and incomprehensible, also has no personality. when i think of him this way, i am not making him more, but less.

my point is that we have degrees of "knowing" our friends, based on how well we know their personality and character. the old saying is that you can't really know someone if you only know about them. the same is with God, and we have all heard this before. many of us would say that we know God, or the safer phrase, "i am a christian." to actually KNOW God requires us getting to know him. this means reading his letters to us, talking with him, and above all, listening. "becoming a christian" takes a moment. but to know God? accepting Christ is only the first baby step. forgive me if i am overstepping my bounds, but...there is so much more to life than "being a Christian"! yes, it's enough to get you into heaven, but is it enough to fulfil your purpose in life?

if "knowing God" means knowing a list of his characteristics, or a one-time acceptance of his gift of saving grace, then maybe we really do know God. yes, Christ is the bridge between God and man. but we can't end there! if our chief end in life is to be a christian and accept Jesus, then we know God as we know an acquaintance on Facebook. we've been granted access to read about their favorite music, their interests and friends and hobbies, yet we've never taken advantage of that connection, and really talked with them about personal things. God is not a person like us, but he is an individual. i think when i only focus on how large and supreme and omniscient and perfect and all-powerful he is, i remove all the nuances of personality and character from him. in my mind, i often picture God as a large bright spot in the sky, with not so much as a distinct color to the brightness, let alone a personality. he has no face, no eyes, no smile or laugh. this is a stunted view, to say the least; and it is probably more of a dangerous view. the minute we start seeing God as so "otherly" that he has no personality, that's when we become bored and "used to" our "christian walk with God." i'd get bored quick if a friend had no personality and was in such a different social sphere that we had nothing in common; why do i think i am above that in relation to my creator?

maybe the reasons we don't like to ascribe "human" traits to God is because we can only see the earthly, corrupted versions of those traits. love is twisted and wrung dry, until it means little but sex and passive leniency and a warm, vague feeling of happiness. justice is warped until it excuses the violence of war-crazy politicians and hate-filled fundamentalists. mercy is either seen as spinelessly weak, or preeminent at the expense of justice. our preverted sense of humor can turn the most despicable and heartbreaking things into laughing matters. but don't forget the one who first thought up the (uncorrupted) characteristics is the one who appreciates them the most.

how many of us would say we know God? how many would say we know him well? to know him, we must treat him much the same way as we treat our close friends: ask questions, study what he creates and writes and says, ask others about their experiences with him, listen to his voice. if we are created to know and love God, then even if we are already christians, we might be falling vastly short of our greatest purpose, both for in this life and the next.

numbers and the beatles

2007-08-07T00:31:00.000-05:00

it is no secret that i hate math -- really hate it. hated it in high school, and am hating it currently because i apparently didn't do enough of it in high school to facilitate a career in English and writing. you see, the state of nebraska would like all of its potential writers to know about quadratic equations, complex numbers, inequalities, graphs of equations, graphs of functions, inverse functions, graphs of polynomial functions of degree greater than 2, zeros of polynomials, complex and rational zeros of polynomials, and trigonometric functions of angles, thank you very much. just in case. even though everyone knows you forget what you don't use in a matter of months, regardless of how much you paid for it.

tan: that is why technical schools are usually a much better option than 4-year degrees, because you don't have to learn all this stuff that's completely irrelevant to what i actually want to do. why do schools do that?? i guess i am just more practical than "having a broad view of the world" and "breadth of knowledge" and all that. just learn what you need to, and why would you pay money and waste time learning the rest? oh, and i am the walking antithesis (reciprocal?) of that statement, as you are about to find out.

so anyways, as you've probably figured out, i found out that i have to take two more math courses before i'm admitted to the university next semester, so i'm in a brief 5-week class to brush up on my beginning algebra skills before i dive into those courses. but oh wait, i never had any of those skills, so this class is a mild form of torture, from 8:30-9:30 five days each week.

(to give you an idea of how elementary (literally) the course is, today we learned what polynomials were, and last week what the origin of a graph is, and which direction the X and Y axes go. and yes, i DO remember this from school. vaguely.)

a few days ago, we were discussing an elemantary principle of graphing. as is my habit when i don't feel a need to listen, i zoned out for a while. but my attention was arrested by the line on the graph that represents a simple equation such as x+y=6. most of you know this, but no matter what number you plug in there for X and Y to satisfy the equation, the dots will always line up into a perfect straight line on your graph. i was suddenly in a trance and couldn't stop thinking "WHY does it do that??" i was struck by the beauty and order of mathematics and numbers and how they all relate to each other in an infinite number of ways. (i like thinking about mathematics in a more abstract way, which allows me to appreciate it without actually knowing how to do it.) but think about it: numbers are just things people made up, using their own minds, yet they are solid logical facts, REAL STUFF, and no one, EVER, argues that 1+1 does not =2; or that 1=0. it's more than obvious. but numbers still seem to exist for their own sake. there is so much order and design in math, it makes it hard to see why any mathematician could ever be an atheist. (of course, i could say the same for musicians, scientists, doctors, and anyone else who studies reality.)

to me, math is like the beatles. i know the parallel there is really obvious, but i'll explain it anyways. just like with a lot of music, i can appreciate math without actually liking it. do i like most beatles music? no, because it sounds like everything else, or worse. but others insist that the beatles were original pioneers of their time, and brave and courageous trailblazers (you'd think they were talking about the Founding Fathers). so i begrudgingly yield the beatles a bit of lazy appreciation, even though i still own zero (which, as i learned, is a bit of a debated "number") of their music and don't care to change that fact.

so i can appreciate the order -- and, alright, beauty -- of math and the beatles and what each has apparently done for the furtherance of the species, without actually enjoying the music, or wanting to ever see a set of numbers again. ever.

You Probably Don't Have "The Gift of Singleness"

2007-07-30T14:04:00.002-05:00

here is an interesting article from one of my favorite web sites, Boundless. i don't mean to be constantly plugging this site so i'm sorry if something is repetitious. this may not apply to all of you, but i have heard the "beautiful gift of singleness" mantra so many times and agree with this article about why it is wrong. i don't post this for anyone in particular, and like i said, it probably doesn't directly apply to most of you. the post-script at the end refers to comments on the original article, which was posted in the form of a blog at the link above. all the italics were in the original article; all bolded terms are my own. -nmt

You Probably Don't Have "The Gift of Singleness" by Ted Slater on Jul 30, 2007

This topic has been hashed and rehashed for centuries, and I hesitate to bring it up again. I don't want to open wounds or incite contention. I don't want to hurt anyone or lead them to feel condemned.

For no particular reason, though, I found myself awake in bed late last night, wrestling with this issue. What is it? Who has it? Is "singleness" a gift? And so on. I believe the Lord laid it on my heart to raise it again in order to dispel misconceptions about it and to stir up hope and renew your motivations.

The term is drawn from 1 Cor. 7:6-9:

Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

It is clear that the "gift" refers to a freedom from "burning with passion" in order to focus all one's energies on serving others in a perpetually non-married state, unencumbered by the joyful responsibility of spouse and kids. I can't relate to this gift, but a few (such as Paul, Jesus, John the Baptist, "eunuchs," Manuel Arenas and others) were given this gift so that they might best serve God and others in that capacity.

So what is the "gift of singleness"? It is not singleness itself. If you find yourself single, you most likely don't have the "gift of singleness." Your state is a gift -- but only as much as life is a gift; it may sound harsh, but there's nothing uniquely special about your singleness itself.

The state of singleness is not a sin -- though some singles' motivations for prolonging it are sinful, and the temptations to sin sexually during an extended season of singleness are heightened, often resulting in sexual sin. Calling singleness a "gift" facilitates prolonging this season of sexual temptation, and that contributes to the problems of sexual sin plaguing single adults.

The thing is, just as singleness is not itself "sin," it's also not a "gift."

Too many people say, "If you are single, then you have the gift of singleness." That sounds cute, and affirms those who are single, but it's unbiblical and meaningless and unhelpful. It's just wrong. Again, Paul clearly says that if you "burn with passion," then you don't have the "gift of singleness" and you "should marry." Would Paul command those with the "gift of singleness" to reject that gift and instead pursue marriage? No, he wouldn't. And so "if you are single, then you have the gift of singleness" is pure unbiblical vapidity.

On the other hand, marriage and kids are gifts, things given to us by God and clearly considered blessings by Scripture.

God wants people married. I'm not a "marriage mandate" advocate by any means, but I do see how God expects people to marry. He's commanded it in Scripture (Genesis 1:27-28) and affirms it by putting into the vast majority of us the passionate desire to "know" (in a sexual sense) another person intimately. The only way that desire can be fulfilled in a God-honoring way is within marriage.

If you desire marriage, if you "burn with passion," then you do not have the "gift of singleness." If you burn with passion, take that as a sign from God that you should be preparing for married life. And if you're at a "marrying age," with the blessing of your parents or mentors, you are free -- even encouraged -- to pursue it. As Paul wrote, you "should marry."

(I can hear the complaints already, from women who are "older" and discouraged that they're still single, from men who continue to be rebuffed by women they pursue, by those whose careers inhibit their being able to be in marriage-minded relationships, from those who live in small towns or attend small churches where there are few options. While you're free to express your complaints below, my hope is that you'd instead try to dig into what Paul is saying in the passage of Scripture I referenced above, that you'd humbly and prayerfully examine your heart in an effort to determine what God would have you do now. My intention is to inspire hope -- if you feel that passion, then God is for you, and eager to conspire with you to bring about the end for which that passion exists: marriage.)

the office

2007-07-17T13:33:00.000-05:00

no, silly, not the t.v. show. i mean MY office...the one that i live in for a third of every revolution around the sun. or, eight hours a day. so naturally i have plenty of thoughts and blogfodder (is that a word?) about this place of employment. due to my contract, i can't mention my employer or my coworkers by name, so i guess i just have to talk about other things.

well, the inspiration for this post, which was going to be entitled "paper clips," was the experience of running dangerously low on paper clips this morning. okay. i like paper clips. and i mean the new, shiny, smooth perfectly shaped ones, and not the old tarnished ones that smudge your papers and make everything scratchy. i also don't mean the ones with little grooves on them that tear up your paper.

the paper clips here come in little boxes, which i never knew, because when would anyone actually buy paper clips in real life? paper clips have always existed, and will always exist. they are like matter, which cannot be created or destroyed. at my house, we never gave a second thought to where they came from, or how they got into the bottom of the "organizer" in every drawer, haphazardly covered with more frequently needed household items. i never remember purchasing paper clips; we just took them for granted. because only a fool would buy what is always there.

so imagine my surprise when, as a newly minted state employee, i first had to go down to Accounting to pick up some more paper clips. i probably said something like "aren't those just in the bottom of the drawer here?" and not only are they ALL shiny and perfectly straight; they come in -- glory of glories -- a little box. now you have to understand that i really like boxes, especially little ones. it's mostly because i like things to be organized, and sometimes i wish i had more little things so i could get some little boxes to keep them in. (the other reason has a long scientific name that i can't remember now.) it's a great experience, now, to cut the paperclipbox so that it has no lid, allowing me to easily access those beautiful paper clips whenever the state of nebraska should require such a task.

oh yes. today i ran low on paper clips. it had begun to irritate me that in the little lidless box were not only paper clips of a uniform size and shape, but a variety of clipping tools in a variety of sizes and shapes. this could not be. so i made the short trip to Accounting to replenish. i kind of like going to Accounting, and not just because that's where i pick up my pay stub every two weeks. i like it because they are amazingly, frighteningly organized down there. except for the women themselves and the occasional plant or other desk ornament, everything in the room could neatly fit into a large grid, if you could superimpose a grid over your glasses or something, and look through it. everything is on a perfect horizontal shelf, perfectly arranged in vertical stacks, themselves perfectly spaced from other stacks. it's how i would imagine being in a computer, if that experience were possible, only more colorful.

and i am sorry to be so anticlimactic once again (i know, i was just building to something) but i usually can't get endings right, which always makes me want to write about endings to have some kind of closure, and to help obscure the fact that i can't write endings or at least distract you enough to make you forget. i don't think it's working today. so i guess that's where today's story ends. sorry, i was going to write more about my office but the paper clip part got too long and no one is probably still reading anyways.

"where did all these calvinists come from?"

2007-06-29T13:18:00.000-05:00

please don't be afraid of the title...i am not going to talk about calvinism here. not this time at least. it's just the name of this article which talks about the sudden popularity of reformed doctrine (calvinism), particularly among those in their 20s and 30s.

the article was referenced at a blog i often read (the entry itself is pretty useless because it just rehashes the article, and then all the comments are just a back-and-forth about calvinism itself), and i posted a comment something like this in response to it. well, it was a lot shorter.

I have also noticed this current trend and have often wondered why it is happening. Whatever we think about calvin or spurgeon or reformed teachings, it's good that there is an increased longing for a return to sound doctrine. Someone mentioned that this trend is a backlash to the megachurches. I doubt it is to the churches so much as the watered-down message that often comes from their pulpits (some PCA churches are very large as well). I am very glad to see this "backlash," whyever it might be happening. And I think it is a good commentary on our generation. The fact that young people are rejecting feel-good theology is a great thing and I don't want to diminish it.

It is also telling that the churches teaching sound doctrine -- those not catering to culture and not desperately trying to appear relevant and mainstream -- are the ones actually attracting the greatest number of young people (I mean something like the 18-35 crowd). The irony here is that it's actually a trendy, hip, cool thing to be "reformed." It's so weird. Sometimes I think some people are "reformed" just because all their friends are, or, come Sunday morning on campus, that's where the cool, indie-sounding music is.

What I don't understand, though, is why it happens to be almost solely the Reformed style of doctrine that is attracting all these people. It's a little insulting to the rest of us, actually. Everything sound is doctrine, no matter if it was popularized by John Calvin/Spurgeon or not.

It concerns me a little, too, that the denomination Presbyterian Church of America (PCA), the biggest mouthpiece for reformed doctrine in the USA, will gain too much credit. After all, a denomination is STILL just a denomination no matter how cool it is. I am concerned that reformed-doctrine adherents will develop a denominational bent. (This is certainly possible in any denomination.) They could paralyzed from attending churches of other denominations, or nondenominational churches, who may teach doctrine that is just as sound, but who may not strictly adore -- I mean, adhere to -- the works of John Calvin and friends...in other words, be PCA.

I guess it's a little ruffling because my church (around 1,000 people) teaches sound, often difficult doctrine, all the way down to preschool-age kids. And somehow because we're not PCA we don't draw nearly as many "college kids." Just having PCA on your church sign is enough to attract a nice, hip group of trendy young people who like to sing revamped hymns -- oh yeah, which also just happen to come from a PCA music label (after all, the PCA has a monopoly and both good teaching AND good music). Okay, so I get annoyed with the PCA sometimes. ....AND, this is quickly becoming a rant so I will end here.

so what do my readers think of this? the article linked above says that the reformed trend is largely due to the prevalance of Spurgeon's writings and how often they are recommended. any thoughts about that? any correlating or rebutting experience with the PCA?

home again, home again, jiggety jig...

2007-06-24T16:57:00.000-05:00

...or so that rhyme goes, the one that i think of whenever i hear the words 'home again.'

so yes, i am safely home and i realize i only posted one time during my peru trip. well, once i even typed out a HUGE post, probably like four pages double spaced with one inch margins in twelve point font, and then the demon computer i was using decided to send all the stuff i had written to shibalba, or the place of death, fear, and generally not returning. that would have made two posts, anyways.

anyways, the gist of what is now residing in a cave in guatemala is like this. we came back from huanuco on a bus (the same way we had gotten there two weeks ago), except something was wrong with this bus and it stopped working somewhere around 13,000 feet in a tiny mountain village, about a third of the way into the eight-hour journey to lima. the bus people tried to fix it by pouring dirty streamwater into it, and i don't know why that didn't help, but after three hours, they decided to call huanuco to send another bus. since we were already nearly tres horas into our journey, we waited for nearly six hours to get on another bus. there was a little cafeteria place nearby where we were able to use the bano and get things to eat, but we pretty much just waited and tried to sleep. there was some nauseatingly loud spanish music playing in the bus cabin, and we finally told her to turn it off. "no mas," said the gringos, alto y estupido. "we all just want to dormir," said andy in his spanglish dialect. thankfully she understood our attempts and the music hopefully went to shibalba forever. here are two of the things i saw from my seat on the bus:

you'd think it couldn't get worse than being six hours late to our cozy hotel in lima. but we had to get there first. not too soon after we left the village, the sun slipped behind the andes in a fiery farewell. this is pretty much my last view of the peruvian countryside:
it soon became dark, and while the new bus driver kindly wanted to get us to Lima ASAP, he did it by unkindly driving at breakneck speeds. through canyons. twisting and turning and passing on dark mountain turns. lurching forward and slamming on the brakes. we were all doped up on dramamine, and drowsily trying to sleep (we couldn't really) and most of the people upstairs (double decker bus) lost their lunches at some point on the second leg of our trip. we finally pulled into lima around 11:15 and then after our taxi driver brought us to the wrong hotel, we all were finally able to drag our woozy bodies into bed and sleep until who knows when, because no one had an alarm clock and no one was planning to get anyone else up.

so we all eventually woke up and got going out of the hotel around noon. our flight left for Houston at 11:30 that night, so our afternoon in lima consisted of seeing the ocean, shopping in an outrageously expensive mall and shopping in a market. the ocean was neat. i haven't seen it for a long time. i especially like the way it sounds. here is a picture of it:
at the mall there i ate some KFC nuggets, which were SO good! :) we walked about 30 minutes to get to the Inca Market, where they sold tons of alpaca and other really cool stuff for pretty cheap, and you are expected to bargain with them all. here is a picture of it:
i tried to bargain sometimes but my espanol wasn't too great so i paid too much for some things. oh well. i got some neat things for myself and the Fam.

our flight went pretty well, and we flew through the night and arrived in houston early saturday morning. then we flew from houston to omaha, and got back to lincoln around 1:00 p.m. i slept from 4 to 7 that evening, and then from 8 to 8 this morning. i hadn't slept at all the night before.

so. what did i learn from the trip, is the question of the hour. well, that and what did i do, how are the rosengrens, are you planning to be a missionary, did you go the jungle, did you bring me anything. the answer to the last three questions is no (if you are my family, the last one is yes). the rest i will talk about later, because i am trying to unpack now, and i have people coming over in 40 minutes. so i'll post more later. BUT...thank you all so very much for your thoughts, prayers, and financial support (if applicable). i know that God used us all in a very real way while we were there. more on that later. i look forward to giving you more insights from my trip. and hopefully i'll find time to put some cool pictures on my photoblog too. thanks so much for reading, everyone!

some pictures from Peru

2007-06-17T15:22:00.001-05:00

hello everyone, i am not going to write too much right now. but i wanted to share some pictures from peru, and some of what we've done. we are staying in a town of about 90,000 people, in a small valley about 6500 feet high.

some out-the-bus-window shots between lima and huanuco:

the view from right outside the missionary's home:

me and a little orphan baby named Johnny:

someplace in town, with a couple of three-wheeled taxis:

in the meat market, which smelled REALLY bad:

part of the outdoor market:

a hotel we ate at:

that's all for now folks, i'll give you more pictures when i have the time. right now it's time for a siesta. :)

almost home!

2007-06-08T22:24:00.001-05:00

i have no pictures for you tonight. i just wanted to reaffirm that i am alive and well, and that our trip has been highly successful in terms of famous sights seen (for justin and i), for research accomplished (for dad) and great times spent together (for all three of us, but particularly justin and i). i just want to let you know what we've seen in the last couple of days...

in the two days since i last posted, we have visited arlington national cemetery, the jefferson memorial, lincoln memorial, capitol, supreme court, senator hagel's office, the senate gallery to observe some debate, the library of congress and the national aquarium.

we did all that with a metro pass and a lot, i mean a LOT of walking. i am really sore from walking many miles each day and doing tons of standing in line and walking slowly and respectfully through all kinds of places. i have a lot of really great pictures of stuff, and hopefully you'll get to see some of them soon.

oh yeah. i got another "illegal" picture, this time of the gutenburg bible. yeah, i saw it and decided to take a nice picture of it, and i did, right before justin turned me around to the "NO PHOTOGRAPHY OF THIS EXHIBIT" sign about two feet away from me. i am really shocked that we weren't thrown out of the nation's capitol.

so today we are someplace in ohio spending the night, and tomorrow we drive home!! tonight we relaxed in a jacuzzi after eating a classy dinner at Bob's Big Boy Burgers. or something to that effect. anyways, it'll be nice to have an extra day before we turn around and get on our plane to Peru, on tuesday. i am so exhausted and everything from the waist down is sore. but it's also a good kind of bubbly, airy feeling that you get after sitting in a hot tub for an hour. :)

east coast, so far

2007-06-05T20:50:00.000-05:00

we're getting ready to spend our fourth night on the eastern fourth of the united states. :) okay, we've done a lot and seen a lot since we left on saturday morning, and i really haven't felt like posting anything on here. in fact, i'm making myself type now because i still don't feel like it. but blogging is like smoking or crack or country music...it sucks you in and you can't get away from it.

(just in case anyone has no idea what is going on here, justin and i are accompanying my dad on a week-long research trip to pennsylvania and washington d.c.)

so we drove almost a thousand miles on saturday, leaving home about 7.30 and getting to pittsburgh, PA late that evening. we didn't really see or do anything cool the first day, we just drove forever. monday we drove a few hours to gettysburg (pictures follow), which i've been to a couple of times before, but it was a lot better now that i am older and can understand it better. we stayed that evening in carlisle, at the army war college where dad had an appointment with someone the next morning. our room there was super nice (pictures follow). then we drove to fort meade, MD, where our reservations were for the next night. on the way, we drove through a lot of amish country and stopped at a few village stores. which brings us to today. our hotel is south of d.c. but it's about a 30 minute metro ride to the downtown area. so today, after we traveled from fort meade and checked into our hotel, dad went his own way to do whatever it is he does. justin and i plan to visit plenty of famous attractions in d.c. and this afternoon we got a good start by visiting the air and space museum, the national archives, the national sculpture garden, and the old post office & tower.

i know this is a really dry post, but we have had a lot of fun. so here are some pictures of our trip so far.

in front of Pickett's Charge memorial.

a bit of the amish countryside

at the gettysburg museum

firing the cannon

my bed in our super awesome room at the army war college

hey look everyone, we're in washington d.c.!

the moon rock had an effect on justin.

missiles at the air & space museum

pretending to be samson in front of the national archives

hello? at the national archive entrance.

the columns in front of the national archives.

pondering the unfathomable mystery of this highly creative and artistic "sculpture."

this one was kind of cool...

the illegal picture (i accidentally used a flash in the national archives).

the national archives, from the sculpture gardens

i doubt i'll post for a few days, but tomorrow we plan to see the washington monument, jefferson & lincoln memorials, and arlington national cemetery. we're staying here for three nights.

oh, and i also got a new wallet.

my superwallet

2007-05-29T15:03:00.000-05:00

i want to tell you all how awesome my wallet is. it appears to be nothing fancy, being a nice dark red leather with an inner lining of manmade materials. but it has superpowers like a boomerang, because every time i lose it, it comes back to me.

rewind two years or so. i lose my wallet in the dead of winter, shortly after i bought it. after it didn't turn up for a couple of months, i got new cards and drivers' license and social security card. a full five months after i lost it, someone returned it to me. (his name was Butch or Spike or Beast or something, but whatever it was, i was kind of afraid to go to his house by myself.) i had apparently dropped it in a gutter a few blocks from a friend's house, and it got covered with snow. after the snow melted the wallet was discovered, crusty and soggy but still very full of important things like $46 and a valid duplicate drivers license, although i decided to keep my newer one as the picture was a lot better.

on friday, i sat my wallet on my car roof after paying-at-the-pump for some (really expensive) gas. then i drove off without retrieving the wallet from the roof. a few hours later i discovered my error, and retraced my earlier route (nearly 15 miles!) trying to find it. then, for the second time, a stranger contacted me and told me she'd found my wallet.

now, i've had this wallet for a long time, and it's been through a lot, such as traveling to several countries and spending a lot of time in a slushy gutter. the pockets inside are a little stretched out and things kind of fall out of it if you're not careful.

anyways, the lady said most things had fallen out of my wallet, and were scattered all over the side of the road. she took the time to hunt until she found all she could. she put it all in a bag and returned it to me. isn't that awesome?

i don't have much faith in humanity (fallen nature and all that), but my guess is that most people would return a wallet to its rightful owner. i don't know if everyone would take the time to pick everything up. anyways, it's pretty neat that strangers have been good to me all this time. i actually planned to put the wallet into retirement last week when i bought a new one. but the new one didn't work very well, and i had to reenlist my red wallet to active duty. then i almost lost it again. the moral of the story is, it's only when you lose something do you realize how much it's really worth. :)

sorry, worms

2007-05-08T16:15:00.001-05:00

i always end up feeling sorry for worms in one way or another...

the first, and perhaps most obvious, reason needs no explanation except this horrific picture.

secondly, i feel sorry that they are kept in the fridge in shredded newspaper, up to a whole before a fishing outing. this is just prolonged torture, or at least i can hardly think of anything worse than being cold for a week straight. and in newspaper too.

also, i always feel really awful for the worms who crawl onto the sidewalk when it's rainy, only to become stranded and die when the water dries up. i've been told they come out because they would drown in the mud. but i don't know why they don't go back to the dirt when the sidewalk starts to get dry. and don't tell me they can't feel it either, because they are covered in little sensitive hairs. so i'm just saying i do feel sorry for them for this one, but not too sorry.

i don't like putting worms on fish hooks, but only because i hate to see them recoil in pain when i pierce their body multiple times. i try to believe they will die quickly because they will drown.

so this is for all the worms that i've hated on. i'm sorry. we're all sorry.

(anti)aging

2007-05-04T11:33:00.000-05:00

i think one of the most pervasive and most obvious obsession that currently shapes our country (and other developed cultures as well) is youthfulness. in the way we look and act, we are completely taken with appearing younger than they actually are, and it's not limited to those over 50 or 60. we see commercials, advertisements, TV shows and articles about collagen boosters, microdermabrasion, glycolic peels, chemical resurfacing, and other words that should be confined to a course in organic chemistry. Botox appeals to women and men in their 30s. makeup products aimed at 20-30 year old women contain chemicals supposed to "minimize fine lines and crows-feet" later on in life. nearly every brand of skin care contains an anti-aging line. Ivillage notes that "90 million Americans have used a product to reduce the visible signs of aging."

americans are petrified of old age. why wouldn't we be? it's our own fault, you know. we're the ones who dump our parents and grandparents in bland, institutional old folks' homes and marginalize their entire generation into an irrelevant burden. in most Asian countries, growing old equals more respect, not less. in south american countries, older family members traditionally live with the younger ones until they die, with homes growing larger and larger to accomodate more people. if we had treated our elderly better than we do, maybe we wouldn't be so paranoid of getting there ourselves.

but, i digress. it's a true statement that old folks have never been thought of as especially outwardly beautiful. since the beginning of time, physical beauty was almost synonymous with youth. it's also true that the standard of beauty has become sky-high in our society, but i see that as a completely different issue. it's not even that there's some different standard of beauty...there are cultural differences, of course, but there has always been physical beauty and ugliness. no one, not in japan or ecuador either, would probably say that people grow more outwardly beautiful as they grow old. the difference between them, then, and us, now, is that we currently attribute a disproportionate amount of value to the same kind of beauty we've always desired. it's a universal fact that outward beauty fades as time takes its toll, and no one denies that. but those in other cultures don't care nearly as much about it, and i think people in other times haven't cared nearly as much about it, either.

there's another undercurrent in the anti-aging hype that i want to address. it's the survivalist instinct, the fact that all civilizations now and before are aimed at preserving life as long as possible. obviously, no one is really under the impression that our lives can be extended indefinitely by using skin products and special diets and exercise. everyone knows that death is one of the two certain things in life. so why do so many of us pursue the chimaera of youth, knowing deep down it will always evade them? maybe the answer at the heart this issue of longing for eternal youth is found in Scripture. we weren't ever meant to die.

God originally created people to live forever, not just in a spiritual heaven, but physically, on this earth. it should come as no large shock, then, that we all long to do just that. that isn't a wrong desire; it's God-given! it's just that in some western cultures, that longing is coupled with a system of superficial valuation, which makes life miserable for the middle-aged (who spend gobs of money trying to outsmart the appearance of old age) and the old-aged (who are now devalued because they can't attain the standard of beauty) alike.

any thoughts, questions or rebuttals are welcome. thanks for reading!

the great dish debate

2007-04-17T13:18:00.000-05:00

when you wash dishes (not in a dishwasher), do you wash them with clean water or with dirty water? (i've had this conversation with a few people and it always seems to go nowhere. by putting it online i can ensure having all the talk time to myself, as well as the last word.)

most people fill up the sink with clean water and a few squirts of detergent. then they proceed to wash each dish in the soapy water which, as expected, gets dirtier and dirtier with every dish cleaned. that process doesn't get anything clean, save for the few at the beginning that actually got the clean water. how can something get clean if the water rinsing it is full of food? you're basically washing a dish with soup. dinner soup. (dinner soup is made by mixing assorted pieces of whatever-you-had-for-dinner into a soapy water base.)

the same principle goes for taking baths. whoever thought up the sick and twisted idea of bathing for cleanliness should be made to bathe in his own sweat. what good will it do you to wash off the day's dirt, sweat and grime, and then sit in it?? worse yet, why would you use that dirty sweaty grimy water to "wash" off the rest of your poor body? you're just relocating your dandruff to the rest of your body, and, bonus! your foot fungus can get into your ears too. what a nice relaxing way to end your day.

i don't care how much soap you dump into the tub or the sink, it doesn't change the amount of gunk floating around in there. my mom believes that liquid soap in dirty water actually cleans the water itself, neutralizing germs and even liquefying food particles. she used to get upset with me when i'd do the dishes, because i liked them to be clean at the end. she thought i took way too long. (then she'd usually end up doing them herself, and i was okay with that because it DID take a long time.)

here's how i would (and do) wash the dishes in the absence of a dishwasher (and, might i add, ONLY in the absence of a dishwasher). put a tiny dribble of soap on the dirty dish. wash the dish with a clean rag or sponge. rinse the dish with clean water. set it aside to dry. repeat with each dish.

those who mock me are quick to point out that this wastes water. my response: are you really willing to sacrifice cleanliness for an infinitesimal decrease in your water bill? you can use old water to wash your toilet or the garage floor if you want, but your dishes?? the scoffers and doubters also think my way is too much work, boo hoo hoo. no, i don't enjoy handling the soap bottle 25 times, but i enjoy eating with particle-free tableware. i suppose cleanliness is a losing fight, though...anyone who tries to clean themselves with their own grime won't be persuaded to wash dishes correctly.

justice >=< mercy

2007-04-13T12:55:00.000-05:00

Micah 6:8 (NAS) What does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

we all probably know that verse or sing it or have it on a frame or magnet. it's one of those popular verses that everyone seems to know. and, it is one of my favorite verses. i've always liked it because like a sieve, it filters out all traces of legalistic and insincere "religion," and we're left with the unadulterated, timeless Message. law is nothing, and right living towards God is all.

i've recently been wondering again: how do the concepts of Mercy and Justice relate to each another? and, like we're commanded to do in that verse, how can we have both Justice and Mercy? how does our understanding of those qualities affect how we live?

maybe my judgment is skewed by the fact that sometimes i read Machiavelli at bedtime. :) but, it's always seemed to me that Mercy is basically the antithesis or counterpoint to Justice...like they are mutually exclusive. for example, in my mind, while it might be Merciful to let a young, scared father off for stealing food for his family, it is certainly not Just...because Justice seems to demand that he pay the full penalty for his crime, regardless of circumstances. and when someone has wronged me, Mercy asks me to forgive, while at the same time Justice urges that they be amply punished for what they've done. so you see my mental dilemma...when one is present, the other apparently can't be.

i may have said this to some of you before. but, when i looked up the word "justice" for purposes of a different study (that became forgotten at the time), it almost always appears in the context of justice to the poor, to the widows and to the downtrodden. not to the offenders, the murderers and the sinners. which kind of blows my mind, because Justice seems so...hard, fast, sturdy, and set in stone, like laws. that's what it reminds me of: laws. the cold, hard hand of justice (you know, Republicanism and political realism), tempered by soft, compassionate Mercy (like liberalism and universal health care and such).

we'll come back to that in a second. Micah 6:8 has also gotten me to pondering the multifaceted nature of God. keep in mind that God is Just and Merciful, and a lot of other things too...in perfect, complete, complementary equality. no characteristic can override or trump another. so while Justice requires that God to punish us for our sins, his Mercy compels him to offer a way out. Mercy always seems to get the last word. should we conclude that Justice is not being done; that our God can't be both? no. somehow they coexist.

there's something else that's hard to accept, because it's a little ironic. while my nature would rather someone be brought to Justice than handed Mercy, i'll admit: i'm really glad God had Mercy towards all of us and chose to offer the gift of salvation.

so, the question is, how could i call that gift unjust? because like i said before, it's unjust to allow people to not pay the penalty for their transgression. right? but shoot, if God has done it, it is Just already. so there is no question. God can be perfectly Just and perfectly Merciful at the same time.

(it still doesn't seem Just, from my admittedly un-divine perspective, to allow one person to take the penalty for another. it just doesn't seem right. i know Christ was perfect. but the whole principle is something i don't understand. it just plain seems wrong. i'm sure there are multitudes of philosophies that try to ration this out but i haven't read them.)

so when i have Mercy towards someone, how can i not undermine the equally divine ideal of Justice (and vice versa)? as i am not perfect not all-powerful, and my character elements do not perfectly harmonize with each other...how does this work out in my everyday life? are my concepts of Justice and Mercy are flawed? it was pointed out to me that when i say Justice, it sounds as though i actually mean Judgement. of course Judgement cannot work very well with Mercy.

someone else said that we should all view Justice through the eyes of Mercy. or, allow Mercy to temper and direct the Justice we seek. i think this might be the key. because it seems like Justice can never be un-merciful, or it would somehow not be Just. and i think Mercy must always have the aim of Justice. so Justice is the higher, more "authoritative" attribute.

so Justice not only allows Mercy, but encompasses it. anytime we carry out an act of Mercy, it is to be within the scope of Justice. and anytime we act out Justice, it should be through the "glasses" of Mercy, like our Savior who, lest we forget, had perfect, divine Mercy on us all.

i still wish i knew what the balance was, or what exactly it looks like. and by this point you have probably figured out that i do NOT have all the answers. (i figure can get you to read more if i don't tell you that until the end. sorry to keep you.) so, any comments or additional thoughts are, as always, more than welcome.

Matthew 23:23 (NLT) What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things.

creepy brain stuff

2007-04-04T10:17:00.000-05:00

have you ever thought that maybe your brain doesn't work right? but you wouldn't know, because it's your own brain? i'm not talking about something like the matrix, where someone else is controlling or guiding you without you knowing. i'm talking about memory problems, or psychological disorders, that result in all kinds of really weird stuff.

i was just reading an article that talked about amnesia. do people with certain kinds of amnesia know they have it? do they realize that they can't remember stuff?

what about people who are mentally handicapped, to whatever degree? do they realize their brains don't work properly? do they think they are regular, functioning citizens?

the obvious point here is, is our own perspective accurate? did you ever think that maybe you're actually in some institution somewhere, but you don't know it? because your mind is perceiving it as normal, as regular everyday life, and it seems free and open to you, because something is wrong with you.

i'm not trying to make this deeper than it needs to be (i'm not about to wonder about the nature of reality and truth and false memory and all that), but all i'm wondering is, if they think the world is normal, and that THEY are normal, then we could be in the same boat and we wouldn't know.

kind of along the same lines (but also totally different), do you ever think about the fact that our own minds don't understand our own minds? brain surgeons don't understand everything about brains, even though their own brains are the ones trying to figure it out. and, it's my brain that tells my heart to keep beating, but even though it's MY OWN brain, i, MYSELF, can't tell my heart to turn off.

any correlating thoughts about brains, minds, consciousness, subconsciousness, sigmund freud, memory, perspective, wikipedia, a basketball, What About Bob, death, the difference between psychologists and psychiatrists, the bible, God, abortion, evolution, Archaeopteryx, the left wing media, indie movies, dreams, clowns, M. Night Shyamalan, history, truth, or reality are welcome.

now if you'll excuse me, my friend in the white jacket is saying i need to get back to that nice basket i've been weaving.

updating

2007-03-29T12:29:00.000-05:00

i haven't posted in a while. that's for no reason really, except that i've been busier at work and otherwise. :) i know you are all just wilting from the lack of sustenance graciously provided to you by this blog, and thus i feel it's my duty to continue provision of that life-giving brain food you have all, no doubt, come to depend on.

so, here are a few things that have happened in my life since March 7th (date of last post).

I...

...made some summer fun-plans. these are currently including, and not limited to:

going to chicago for a weekend in July. this is a plain fun trip.
going to peru for two weeks in June. this is a missions trip. which will hopefully be fun.
possibly going to Florida with The Fam to watch a shuttle launch. there is potential for fun here, mostly because of the Florida part.

...applied to the university, hopefully to start this fall.

still don't know what my major will be. right now i'm "Undecided - General." any suggestions are welcome. current possibilities: political science, philosophy, english, psychology. not really too serious about the last one, but it would be neat, i think.

...remembered how very much i love spring flowers.

...decided i don't really care much about the death penalty, at least in this state.

and, i am tired of hearing about it.
i hate politics.
and stupid people. er, i hate it when people are stupid.

...learned far more than i ever have before about the beauty of the unconditional, forever love God pours out on all of us. and how that aspect of God's character is displayed in human relationships.

...thought pretty hard about getting my hair cut, but in the end, i didn't. at least, i haven't yet.

but it might happen, sometime.

...finished paying off my car. you (may) have no idea how great a feeling that is! i will get the title transferred to my name as soon as we get to a...title place...?...and sign on all the appropriate dotted lines.

...listened to some more of the Heaven book. thoughts are forthcoming.

...have gotten spring fever, or whatever they call it when you are overly anxious for warm weather.

i have also gotten nervous because it could still snow, or be cold.

...learned not to put too much faith in people. or maybe i'm still thinking about that one, and trying to decide how much is too much, and how disappointed i really should be when people i already know are fallen human beings fall, further than they are expected.

...still haven't done my taxes.

...canceled some store credit cards that had been the bane of my financial life for several months.

...was sick for the third time this winter.

the first time it was strep, and then i had some kind of gross coughing disease.
this time it was rhinosinusitus, a.k.a. a sinus infection (the rhino part is kind of neat in the other term).
really, who can blame me for hating almost everything winter brings?

the X-Treme grocery trip

2007-03-07T13:55:00.000-06:00

it's a well-known fact that i have a lot of material in my Blogger Dashboard, just waiting to be finished or posted. actually, a lot of my half-baked posts consist of a sentence or a thought that just needs expanding. some of them are raw ideas or stories that i think have the potential to be funny or thought-provoking or whatever i feel like being at the time.

a blog can be a LOT of work, especially when you have untold masses of people relying on you to be funny, thought-provoking, serious, light, personal, etc etc etc. if you're not, no one will read what you wrote. it's a huge personal responsibility. anyways, i thought this time i'd just present you with some raw material from my Dashboard, and you can get what you want out of it. i'm tired of doing all the work. except, of course, color-coordinating some of the words, for maximum effect with minimal effort.

i made a twenty-minute trip into hy-vee the other day. my body has never been so confused and doesn't know whether to sweat or make goosebumps or turn my fingertips into raisins or just start bruising all over.

starting out, of course, i walk out of my warm home, into the cold air, into my warm[read:always VERY warm] car and again into the freezing winter air. that's just getting to Hy-Vee, and that's enough to make me go into cardiac arrest. but then just as my heart recovers from the shock, i step into the giant roaster that is the entryway of all grocery stores in the winter. it is basically a human-size broiler with a fan on it, meant to warm you up for the one second you're under it. (and that's all it probably takes for most people, but i enjoy standing under it for a good amount of time.) and i stood there for a minute or two, and warmed up all the way down to my kidneys. ok, i'm good, right? well today, this grocery visit made necessary trips through the fridge section, the bakery section, and the freezer section; the temperatures of these areas are 60 degrees, 98.5 degrees and 30 degrees, respectively. i then hobbled to the checkout area, which, being near the front doors, is served by pulsing blasts of winter air intertwined with the 3,000-degree heater air. then i had to go under the broiler again (which thawed and then evaporated all the frozen sweat on my body), then out into the winter cold, then into my still-warm car.

no post-post commentary. i'm tired.

heaven #2

2007-02-22T15:55:00.000-06:00

i listened to the first 45 minutes or so of Mr. Alcorn's Heaven book. the main idea i've taken away so far is the idea that since humans are created with bodies, our bodies will be eternal. i guess that's kind of a foreign idea to me. after all, it was c.s. lewis (whom i greatly admire) who once said something like "you are not a body with a soul. you are a soul, and you have a body." in other words, a body was something we are trapped in, encased in; and when we die our body ceases to be an important part of who we are. and this is the view i kind of automatically took, evident in a few earlier posts.

mr. alcorn does not take this view. he believes in the idea of an eternal, physical body. this does make sense because we have the scriptural fact of a new earth. that definitely makes more sense to me. i guess i never thought about needing a new earth if we don't have actual bodies to live in it. also there are verses about the dead in Christ being raised to life again. so, a new conclusion: in the new earth, our physical bodies will once again be perfect. mr. alcorn talks about how we were created with physical bodies, even in our original state of perfection. they were physical and perfect. the pre-fall body, and earth, were perfect. bodies do not, then, need to have "shucked off."

there is a word for this kind of anti-physical philosophy, that everything physical is bad and everything spiritual is good. (i can't think of the term right now, although i think it begins with an A.) but, that's not right the right way to look at it, because we were made to be eternal, perfect, physical creatures. and that's hard to wrap my mind around because i have thought the opposite for so long.

my assumption is that the "new heaven" refers to a heaven without jealous angels and other such things. because heaven itself is currently imperfect. so if there is a new heaven and a new earth, i think they would have to be easily accessible to each other, or even kind of overlap each other. before the Fall, God himself just walked around on earth with Adam, in constant peace and harmony and communion with all of his Creation. it was all physical, but God dwelt there anyways. there was nothing to taint it, and no sin to drive his perfect character away.

so a new heaven/earth would probably "coincide" with each other, or at least have all the properties of each. a physical population of people, living in a place accessible by physical and spiritual beings alike. ??? the other option is that heaven is itself a physical place, which doesn't make much sense to me right now, but seems to be a pesty little idea that won't go away.

i hope all of this made sense to you...i kind of typed it in less than five minutes. feedback=welcome!

a HUNDRED things i like

2007-02-13T12:05:00.000-06:00

(another quiz-ish post. this is the last one, i promise. it's just that they are so much easier than actually writing anything.)

1. fuzzy blankets and lots of pillows
2. flip flops
3. sunshine
4. phonographs and scratchy-sounding records
5. dark chocolate
6. my birthday
7. wild flowers
8. staying up all night
9. being outside in the middle of the night
10. road trips
11. ancient cultures
12. history
13. intense music
14. photography books
15. eyes
16. old books
17. music that i've listened to so many times i feel like it's my friend
18. sparkles
19. russian history
20. language and everything involved in it
21. pizza with extra cheese
22. jeopardy (the show, not actually being in it)
23. purple (the eggplant color)
24. worn in jeans that still fit just right
25. good hair days
26. my family
27. driving in huge puddles and, oops, splashing the fancy cars that try to go around them
28. cozy, snuggly anything
29. thick hearty soup/stew
30. midnight phone calls
31. bells (all sizes)
32. colorado
33. when appliances work just like they're supposed to, or are really easy to clean
34. road trips
35. watching something when you don't really care about it, so you can still talk to your friends
36. seeing/feeling people laugh really hard
37. laughing really hard
38. medieval-era stuff
39. asian food and chopsticks
40. quilts that remind me of stained glass windows
41. hearing people i know talk on the radio
42. christmas trees with the silvery strands of tinsel, and white lights
43. fresh breath
44. perfume
45. cologne
46. coming inside from the cold
47. roller coasters and the flight simulator at the SAC museum
48. baby animals, especially puppies and bunnies
49. texas hold 'em
50. fossils
51. farmers markets, and fresh food in general, and the idea of eating plants that grew from the ground
52. having a lot of books
53. glass bottles
54. funny movies/tv shows
55. tadpoles and tiny fish
56. the word "jurisprudence"
57. when people say they have "scads" of something
58. chicken enchiladas
59. beautiful acoustic guitar music
59. hot lava
60. aviator sunglasses
61. when it's raining lightly at night and the streetlights shine through the mist on your windshield and look like glowing jewels
62. spontaneously deciding to do fun things
63. concerts
64. honeysuckle-scented stuff
65. pistachios
66. acorns
67. squirrels and chipmunks
68. classical music
69. dancing by myself or with my sisters
70. Kramer
71. never ironing anything
72. wales
73. paid holidays
74. free money (see above)
75. putting lemons down the sink disposal so the kitchen smells clean
76. Micah 6:8
77. mittens
78. the word "ants"
79. spinning wheels
80. freshly ground coffee
81. fishing
82. the smell of fresh lakes
83. the sound of water patting the side of the boat, or soaking into the sand
84. getting text messages
85. constellations
86. the family i stayed with in ecuador
87. hearing people speak in other languages
88. cathedrals or large majestic buildings
89. when people do nice things for me
90. artwork
91. when, as young children, we made a giant model of the inner ear, using boxes that we could then crawl through to observe the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, among other things
92. a sunroof
93. homestar runner
94. scallops/lobster with butter and lemon juice
95. deep conversations
96. white herons wading in swamps
97. dignified old people
98. the jungle
99. daffodils
100. four-wheeling

quiz friday!

2007-02-09T10:44:00.000-06:00

just a little lite entertainment for a friday afternoon...

***Your EQ is 87***
50 or less: Thanks for answering honestly. Now get yourself a shrink, quick!
51-70: When it comes to understanding human emotions, you'd have better luck understanding Chinese.
71-90: You've got more emotional intelligence than the average frat boy. Barely.
91-110: You're average. It's easy to predict how you'll react to things. But anyone could have guessed that.
111-130: You usually have it going on emotionally, but roadblocks tend to land you on your butt.
131-150: You are remarkable when it comes to relating with others. Only the biggest losers get under your skin.
150+: Two possibilities - you've either out "Dr. Phil-ed" Dr. Phil... or you're a dirty liar.

What's Your EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient)?
http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyoureqquiz/

***Your Blog Should Be Green***
Your blog is smart and thoughtful - not a lot of fluff.
You enjoy a good discussion, especially if it involves picking apart ideas.
However, you tend to get easily annoyed by any thoughtless comments in your blog.

What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?
http://www.blogthings.com/whatcolorshouldyourblogorjournalbequiz/

***Your Power Color Is Lime Green***

At Your Highest: You are adventurous, witty, and a visionary.
At Your Lowest: You feel misunderstood, like you don't fit in.
In Love: You have a tough exterior, but can be very dedicated.
How You're Attractive: Your self-awareness and confidence lights up a room.
Your Eternal Question: "What else do I need in my life?"

What's Your Power Color?
http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyourpowercolorquiz/

***You Are 31% Feminine, 69% Masculine***
You are in touch with your masculine side.
You are not overly sensitive and not easily moved.
Occasionally, though, something will get through and touch your heart!

Are You Masculine or Feminine?
http://www.blogthings.com/areyoumasculineorfemininequiz/

***Your Personality Cluster is Introverted Thinking***
You are objective, honest, and credible...
Intellectually curious, with many diverse interests...
More inclined toward ideas than people...
Fiercely independent and unapologetically unconventional.

What's Your Personality Cluster?
http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyourpersonalityclusterquiz/

heaven

2007-02-08T00:13:00.000-06:00

so for christmas my dad got this cd set called Heaven (by randy alcorn). i think it's probably a book on tape. it is actually on some of those new fangled compact discs, as the youngsters like to use nowadays. i've decided to listen to it, because i have not thought too very much about heaven, and i think there is probably plenty about it in scripture that i'm not aware of. so i'm going to put down some of my very basic thoughts about it, for three reasons. one: to prove my claim that i haven't really thought much about it. two: to give myself something of a sense of accountability to ALL OF YOU, so i will actually follow through with it. three: so when i'm done, i can compare these thoughts (and any others you've left me) with what i've heard on the compact discs, and we can all learn together.

i guess my first thought is that we don't really think or talk or hear about heaven much. (i'm not blaming anyone for my ignorance, i'm just observing.) isn't heaven what this christian life is mostly about? it's what comes at the end of the journey for those who believe in christ. something i've noticed is that we don't really sing about it anymore either. take a look at most of the older classic hymns, and most of them have lines or often an entire verse (usually the last, naturally) about "crossing the river Jordan" or "going home to see my Jesus." see?! it sounds old-fashioned, doesn't it??

and while heaven is definitely not talked about enough, i think there's another wrong way to look at it: as the point, or the end, of our lives. (by end i don't mean the literal end; i mean as the goal.) the true goal should be to glorify God, whether we "get to go to heaven" or not. that sounds so unusual, so perhaps it's not true after all. or maybe we have never really thought of what it'd be like to not be going to heaven. i think that's kind of how some evangelists end up sounding, even if they don't mean to: "heaven is what you want, right? God is how you get there." that's surely not the best way to look at it.

this is a guess. but i'd think we would see a more heavenward emphasis in those geographic areas where material possessions are not present at the grossly gratuitous levels seen in our country. that seems pretty intuitive: when there is less to love on earth, we are forced -- or perhaps more fully allowed? -- to long for what is not on earth. our relative wealth and comfort, then, are potential blockades in the way of a true Christ-centered life. ....AND i guess that's something that's been said a million times before. :)

as for what heaven is actually like? i never really tried to imagine it because i know it is literally "outside my mind," but i just have this bright white-gold color in my mind, i think from a picture in a kids' book. i think of gold and brightness and misty floaty things and sparkles and, weirdly enough, silence, or just a vague chorus of angel-ish music coming from nowhere in particular. this doesn't sound that fantastic to me, honestly, but my hope is that mr. alcorn will show me some scripture and give me a little more to work with.

i do think that heaven will be full of things our minds literally can't comprehend or even come up with right now. life is full of small traces of eternity, found in everything from plants and colors and science to relationships and emotions and music. perhaps the reason for this is so we will be able to understand more when we get to heaven -- so we will have a reference point for all those brand-new concepts i think we'll be learning. that is only a guess and a pretty fanciful one at that.

heaven is, of course, a great mystery. "no eye has seen, no mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him." BUT on the back of mr. alcorn's tape box it says: the next time you hear someone say "we can't begin to imagine what heaven will be like," you'll be able to tell them, "yes we can." i don't know about that, but i'm anxious to find out what he means. thanks for reading (once again this is far longer than i intended); any thoughts are welcome.

burning at these mysteries

2007-01-25T17:01:00.000-06:00

there is so much i want to know about life, and people, and minds and souls and reality and truth and God. the more i know of something or someone, the more i realize i don't know. and i wish i knew! i wish, i wish, i wish i knew. and that goes for the events in my own life too...i just wish i could get the answers to a couple of key questions about the future. that's all i want. i don't need to know everything...just some stuff. you know??

once, someone told me i should "enjoy and appreciate the mysteries and unknowns of life." fine, i will appreciate it while it is here, but no way am i going to love it just because. i don't mind eroding away the mystery, because human beings are not set up to appreciate it as an end in itself. yes, it is a means, a process, and a road. and don't get me wrong...i love all the learning and wondering and deciding that comes on that road, but...a road never exists just for a road's sake. there is always a destination. in the same way, i never want to leave things unknown merely for the sake of The Unknown. what's so appealing about that? what if a mystery book led you through all these paths and turns, then left the ending out? you'd be disappointed, because human minds seek resolve, and mystery is simply unresolved-ness. questions are for discovering what is real and true. and there would be no real questions if there was nothing really worth finding.

beautiful things

2007-01-06T02:24:00.000-06:00

beauty is something we all appreciate whether we realize it or not. it is in a shiny new muscle car, in a stack of books set just-so on the shelf, in the precise majesty of a Blue Angels performance, in the coordination of a suit and tie, in the academic aesthetics of architecture, in the rhythm of a cookie-cutter top-40 hit, and even in the order and logic of a computer program. we surround ourselves with it even though we perhaps don't realize it. beauty is the why we take extra time to create beyond what is functional or practical, and concentrate on what is pleasing. despite its uselessness, beauty is a gazillion-dollar industry because of its great power. yet it is still free to anyone.

i am certain that most people see their lives as normal or typical or bland, and don't see most things as full of wonder or beauty or amazement. i am just as guilty of this as anyone else. but lately i have been so easily impressed that my life seems so much fuller. please bear with me because i know i sound like a hippie or like your general fluffy weirdo. but this is very real to me. :)

we forget that the sky is different every single day...or that the dreary little crowds of sparrows might be the most joyous creatures we come across all week...or that we walk quickly, distractedly, every day, through a masterpiece of architecture and design...or of the miracle of healthy, tasty, plentiful food growing in the ground...or exactly how amazing it is to have a friend, or more than one friend even, who appreciates and accepts you as you are...or even that the bodies we inhabit -- our very selves, down to the core of what makes us human -- are made in the image of God himself.

and what more, exactly, could we ask for? life really is full of wonder and beauty. stop and think of the multitude of blessings God has placed in your life. almost everything is a gift just waiting to be noticed...put here, already, for our amazement and fulfilment. the gifts are far too many to count because so many of them are simple and childlike. and it is not silly to see the world through the eyes of a child. it is far more wonderful. once we get used to being alive, and used to life and people and problems, we forget that there is beauty in all kinds of people, weather, circumstances, relationships, terrain, and problems.

perhaps our expectations are simply too high. it's much too difficult to impress us anymore. sure, we might loftily appreciate the works of great artists or spend a lifetime traveling to the grandest places on earth. but the real treats are for everyone. no admission can be charged and no gas or plane tickets are needed to see them.

christmas!

2006-12-24T23:02:00.000-06:00

well, christmas is here, or nigh here anyways. i guess i don't have an incredible amount of words to tell you (although i might surprise both of us) but i feel like i should because a) i'm in another state; b) it's been forever since i posted anything; and c) i mean, hello, it's christmas, which at least deserves some kind of commemoration in my mind at least. so here are some christmas-related ramblings that probably don't cohese very well (yes, cohese).

was christmas ever "magical" for you all when you were kids? i don't think it ever really was for me. christmas was about packing, traveling, sleeping bags, the farm, sledding, and the lucky rides back up the sledding hill on the snowmobile. i don't really remember much "wonder" or all that stuff that kids are supposed to experience, i guess. i think the coolest memory i have is when we used to make a big deal about decorating the tree, including who'd put the star on. most of the ornaments on our tree in years past were made of construction paper, glue sticks and hand-colored nativity scenes with glitter and pipe cleaners holding them together. we didn't really have any classy, nice ornaments, except a set of spun glass ones that i always wanted to put on as soon as i was old enough to realize they were special (they only went on the high branches). we'd make hot cocoa, and mom used to make homemade caramel popcorn balls, and we'd turn on either the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album, or the Amy Grant Tennessee Christmas one. and we just took like all day long to decorate the tree. anymore, we -- they -- put it up in shifts, with whoever can be bothered long enough to untangle the lights (their perpetual tangly-ness running contrary physical properties of the universe) or assemble the fake tree branches and bend them into a shape that looks more like a tree and less like a green egyptian pyramid. and, no one cares who puts the star on except Mary, so she always does it, which of course makes her care less about caring about it. :)

i think most christian families try their best to de-commercialize the whole gifting part of christmas...which is kind of antithetical if you still give the gifts, but whatever, i'm never telling my family that. in my family, we always read the biblical account of the "first christmas" and prayed and probably a few other things like that. when we were really young, a couple years we had this thing (it came from a book, i think) where we built a mini manger out of sticks, and whenever you did something nice for someone throughout the month of December, you got to put a yellow (straw-colored) piece of yarn in the manger. on christmas we put "baby Jesus" in the manger which, if we had been decent little citizens, was nice and cushy soft with yarn.

i don't remember believing in santa, either, even though i know my parents told me he was real. do you people tell your children (or will you tell them) lies about nonexistent people? i can hardly comprehend wanting to build up piles of nonsense that will supposedly make life more magical for my children. actually, i think my parents just kind of told us about santa in an offhand way, but i never believed them very much because we were the ones who bought the presents and wrapped them and put them under the tree anyways. so, maybe that's why my christmas wasn't magical, you say. well, i had something better than santa. i believed in The Elf. that's what my family heritage fantasy creature is. not Papa Noel, or father christmas or whatever they call him other places. no, The Elf was a little person (so we were told) who snuck inside our house each night in December to put a small gift in The Calendar for each of us kids. yep, we got a little present EVERY FREAKING MORNING. sure, sometimes it was orange TicTacs or a quarter or a candy cane. but i mean, that sure got these lazy homeschooler butts out of bed during a month where the "public school kids" were all sleeping in and sledding all day (so it seemed) while we were inside doing A Beka math and science in the wee cold hours of the morning. at least, that's how i like to remember it.

back to what i was talking about, though, i don't know if i'll tell my kids about santa or the tooth fairy or other fake things. i probably sound like the lady on Miracle on 34th Street who had a creepy, perfectly sensible robotic daughter. but say what you want about happy childhoods, i just can't find a way to justify lying to my kids about stuff that won't really ever matter.

anyways, i am just a few miles from canada and even further from common existence, it seems. there have been many deer on the river but no northern lights. tomorrow i will snowmobile on the back trails, and i don't care how sick i still am or will get. and i will sleep! oh, sleep.

i just realized how much i really did ramble. sorry. well, merry christmas!

import: "The Snake"

2006-12-05T20:32:00.000-06:00

background for this story: for [home]school one day, Mary's assignment for English one day was "write a story about a snake." all the children still living at home proceeded to compete with the eight year old child for the best snake story. here is Johanna's story.

The Snake

Once upon a time there was a snake. He was a sad little snake, because he had no spots. None of the other snakes had spots either, but still, he wanted them because once he had seen a polar bear with spots.

The snake, whose name was Phil, had been pondering the subject of spots for quite some time and finally realized that he was a little hungry. He spotted a tree with fruit hanging from it.

Phil was not particularly fond of fruit, so he decided to go gallivanting after mice instead. And since mice have never been seriously accused of being incredibly smart, Phil ate his fill.

After Phil had eaten as many mice as he could find, he was still hungry, so he ate his family and Bigfoot, leaving the bones. After he had eaten every living creature he could find, Phil went to the far ends of the earth, eating the creatures of the earth and causing extinction of everything except, well, Phil.

But when he was finally through with his rampage, Phil realized he had acquired spots somewhere along the way. Why?

We'll never know. Snakes have always been a mystery.

the in-between times

2006-11-26T14:23:00.000-06:00

i've been realizing more and more how much i like commercials. not all of them specifically, but just in general. i guess the reason for this is my really short attention span...i like getting "the whole message" in a minute or less. automatically cuts through the superfluous stuff. (i use the word "superfluous" whenever possible.) and to me, a lot of commercials are funny, either because they actually are funny, or because they're falling so short of successfully being funny.

the commercials during sports events are sometimes more interesting than the sports events. i find that if i'm doing something like typing on my computer while i'm watching the game, i won't look up until they cut to a commercial break. with sports events, you have a lot of really funny ads which, for some reason, don't usually do a good job of advertising any kind of product, much less of making me want to buy it. but that's the marketing department's problem, and not mine. i just like to laugh.

what i really don't like are the manipulative kinds of commercials. and don't get me started on campaign commercials (which, ok, i actually don't have much of a problem with, but it's pretty popular to say you hate them, so i thought i'd try that out). i mean the ones that appeal to patriotism, family values, etc, to sell things like garden tools or trucks or checking accounts. we've all seen the beer commercials that are basically a montage of holidays and families and snowy farms with some music in the background, and the screen just says "BUDWEISER" or something like that. there are also lots of truck commercials that are full of the same kind of thing...patriotic country music, mud splashes, semi-rugged terrain, and american flags flying all over the place. oh....and who really thinks banks are supposed to be all family-oriented and stuff? life insurance commercials, alright, the family-playing-in-the-backyard template (although overdone) does fit the product. but a bank doesn't need to convince me that they love my family. what you never EVER see in bank commercials is how secure they are. i'm just thinking, do you have locks on your doors? a good safe? is my cash underground, or like sitting out in the open? people assume that just because a bank is freely giving of their friendly small-town smiles, they know how to keep money safe. i just want to know that when i send in my dollaz, they're not going anywhere. when you go looking for a new bank, you don't tell yourself "i need someone who can take care of me throughout the various stages of my life" or "i just want someone who will understand me and my family." no. for those things, you need a therapist, not a bank.

do you people like commercials? which ones are your favorites? un-favorites? general and specific thoughts?

accomplishments

2006-11-18T15:54:00.000-06:00

we all want to change the world in some way. me, i always figured that my assigned venue was either writing or politics. seeing as how it took me about eight attempts to write that last sentence -- and also because i just used the phrase "seeing as how" -- that leaves politics.

i've had a job in a political realm for...let's see...over four years now, with some time off here and there. and you'd think four years is not nearly long enough to initiate the changing of the world. you are (if you think that) wrong. while many of my projects are very subversive in nature and (obviously) therefore secret, i am going to share some of the changes i've managed to provoke in my time there.

my main project in the works right now is two-pronged. first, i've been gradually converting the entire building to military time, by using 24-hour time in verbal and written communication whenever remotely possible or vaguely relevant to conversation. example: me, to a random person: "hey, do you have the time? i have to be someplace at 16:00. is it past 15:30? oh wait, here's my watch. oh good, it's 15:20...whew, only 15:20. any later, like 15:25, and i'd be late." OR "i was actually home by like, 23 last night." once it's in their minds, they'll start using it in important documents.

secondly, i am also subversively changing the date system. i just really hate when people write dates like this: 11/17/06. first, those ridiculous slashes are just plain messy and (in my opinion) completely unprofessional, especially in handwriting when they are very easily mistaken for 1s. so i write the date one of two ways, either 17-11-06, or 17 Nov 06. spaces and dashes can't be mistaken for for any other numbers. oh, and i bet you didn't even notice the way i converted the time format, did you?? likely you were taken aback by the boldness of using dashes or spaces instead of slashes. and you failed to recognize that i am actually using the much more sensible day-month-year format, instead of month-day-year. and of course i use that (far more reasonable) format on all the permanent records i prepare.

other smaller achievements thus far:
-i converted one of my coworkers to the FOX news channel (we still have no idea why they capitalize all of the letters).
-i came up with an innovative, brilliant plan for organizing the tea bags and napkins in the coffee room.
-i left a lot of really funny quotes and drawings in the Page Notebook for future young (bored) servants of the Legislature to appreciate. and....i'm not really sure what that accomplished, but i'm sure it counts for something.
-most people, i think, have it in their minds that everyone in a political building is boring and ugly. this is mostly true, but i've taken it upon myself, as my civic duty, to flirt shamelessly with all the guys who are there on tour, to convince them otherwise. surely many of them have gone on to become politicians or dynamic community leaders.
-i've beat plenty of people in political discussions. these people are not senators or decision makers, but you know what they say about the trickle-up effect.
-i helped to initiate approval by Management of colored t-shirts underneath the white shirts we as Pages were required to wear. the boys got to wear colored ties, so why shouldn't we be able to have just a tiny bit of color in our wardrobe??
-i "accidentally" spilled scalding coffee on a senator who was running past me on his way to vote on a bill. he missed the vote, and my side won by ONE. (our state does not, therefore, have expanded gambling, and also the gas prices came down.) i always have coffee with me now, just in case (but the particularly liberal legislators have begun carrying Tide Bleach Pens and edging up against the opposite wall when they see me in the hallway).

see, we can change the world. it takes some time, but it helps to have small milestones to help measure your success!

The Pac-man Pie Chart

2006-11-16T16:40:00.000-06:00

just thought you all might appreciate this one.

a park of thoughts

2006-11-11T16:32:00.000-06:00

the fruit of this week's brain activity:

language is a very good thing. like i said in my last post, we use it to exchange information and ideas that bring us closer as human beings. essentially, words are no more than spoken versions of thoughts. ideas and thoughts in our brains (before we let them out) seem to me like spiritual things, because in some sense they aren't physical, even though you can map them out on a colorful graph with technology how it is. but when we take a thought and try to cram it into the little box called language just so we can share it with someone else, there are endless chances for it to be warped in the translation. anytime you take something complex -- like a beautiful painting with depth and every conceivable shade of color -- and try to reduce it into something more formulaic or express-ible -- like turning that picture into 8-bit color -- most of its significance and beauty will be lost. that is why music is so universally moving, because it lends a taste of the eternal. it somehow supercedes the dimensions we're cramped in, and gives a tiny glimpse of what we were made to be.

sometimes the richness of some of life's experiences are cheapened or dulled by trying to find words to wrap around them. language is a clumsy barrier to communication when you're trying to convey something that is so far beyond our fabricated dialect that it does your thoughts a crude disservice to try and describe them.

that's why learning to communicate is so hard. humans are complex, colorful paintings, somehow residing, if partly and temporarily, in a rigid 8-bit world. like an entire symphony being played on a simple child's recorder.

this is why sometimes i think dying will be like breathing a sigh of relief, like shucking off a really uncomfortable outfit...we won't be confined by the physical anymore. i hope that doesn't sound too morbid. but think about it.

i've had these and so many others of these interconnected thoughts swarming around in my mind lately, and it really helps to type them out. (there was a LOT more that i'm not posting right now.) i know the last few weeks of posts have been a little weird. i am usually long winded because my brain is like this great big park where all the sidewalks connect and meet each other and you can get to anywhere by way of any of the sidewalks.

2006-11-02T14:04:00.000-06:00

what is it about the simple exchange of data that creates this exclusively human bond called friendship? why do people care about small stuff like movies and music and clothes and tv? and why do we rely on the exchange of this meaningless information to build human relationships? aren't we all far worse off for it? why don't we just talk about real things all the time? is it that we can't handle it? do we all need buffers? are we just incapable of revealing important thoughts and ideas to people we don't trust? are we just afraid they'll judge us or think we're too "heavy"? how does that casual information exchange foster any real trust in people? ...and why does it all take so long??

guitar

2006-10-27T14:06:00.000-05:00

you ever get that feeling that if you ever got around to trying something, you just KNOW you'd be SO good at it?

that's how i feel about electric guitars. to me electric guitar = loud guitar, which just seems like it'd be easy. stupidly easy. mindless even. i even hear the strings are easier to push down (i mean, depress). i know all my electric guitar-playing readers will probably tell me otherwise. but seriously, it's set up just like a "regular" guitar, so as long as i can do all the chords and stuff, why should it be any more complicated? let's go over all the parts of an electric guitar that are not found on an acoustic guitar:

some knobs or buttons
a lever

i think the big mistake i'd make when learning to play, is simply making lots and lots of noise, and then thinking the noise makes me successful. and it would be successful to some extent. the electric guitar does not seem to me like a delicate art, because if you make a small mistake it will probably be drowned out by the loudness of the rest of it. but maybe it is far more exquisite than i have observation powers to detect.

i think another reason i feel electric guitars to be less delicate is by the generally not delicate appearances of those individuals who play them. usually the acoustic people are more like poets, and their choice of instrument corresponds better to their own nuanced sensitivity. but the electric guitar people tend to be loud all over. they are also like their instruments, and perhaps the small imperfections of the rocker-folk (inability to sing, etc) are also overshadowed by the loudness of everything else about them.

(did i just sweep every guitar player, ever, into one of two giant stereotype boxes? yes, yes i did.)

anyways, i just need someone to lend me an electric guitar and amp so i can try it out myself. because there are way too many expensive things to buy in life (camera, ipod, car, house), to not just borrow stuff if you can. so, this is a call to anyone with a spare electric guitar sitting around, to give it to me. :)

my roommates, however, will most likely (understandably) try to deter you so let's try and keep this guitar business to ourselves, ok? (said nikki on her public blog.)

this time of year (2006 Edition)

2006-10-25T22:52:00.000-05:00

i can't believe i've had a blog long enough to have an annual installment of something. it's almost like having a child who turned one sometime in the last month or so, except you forgot exactly when his birthday was, and it's not like anyone really cares anyways. last year around this time i wrote about stuff that annoys me this time of the year. there are still plenty of things i don't like about fall, halloween and winter. but even though it took me a while, in the interests of fairness and equality, i did come up with a few things i do like about this time of year.

-scarves and mittens.
-the greater prevalence of fire in general.
-how watching Thanksgiving Day football is somehow the most perfect thing in the world after consuming mountains of food (and how at our house the girls make the food and the boys (usually) clean it up).
-snowmobiling.
-shiny smooth acorns.
-scraping ice off my car...oh wait, i HATE that. With a passion. right.
-coming in to where it's warm (the only remotely good thing about cold).
-the ukranian bell carol and auld lang syne.
-cold-weather drinks such as cider and russian tea.
-when the sun shines on the snow and makes it sparkle like crazy.
-new years' eve, and the pre-midnight countdown.
-how my mom still uses old holiday decorations because she knows we remember them from when we were kids, even though some of them are kind of ugly.

been to:

2006-10-20T14:44:00.000-05:00

36 states. that i know of. i can't ever remember being in north/south carolina, louisiana or alabama , but there are a lot of these i don't remember, so the number could be as high as 40.

i know the spacing isn't right.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

small things i like about today

2006-10-17T16:05:00.000-05:00

-getting out of my car and smelling spruce trees
-gently kicking an acorn (for no good reason) and watching it shatter into a thousand pieces (for no good reason)
-facebook
-the frenzied excitement of a sudden good idea
-accidentally knocking the little box of paper clips over in a perfect 10.0 flip, and the resulting puddle of paper clips under the box
-having oatmeal for lunch
-trailing my fingers on the "soft" stone walls as i walked up the stairs
-squirrels
-listening to the purse contest on the radio with my coworker
-the red folder on my desk (it's the best color red ever)

edit (the one i forgot earlier) -wearing thin soled shoes so i can feel the cracks in the sidewalk when i step on them.

to be known?

2006-10-15T15:37:00.000-05:00

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. -c.s. lewis

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. - 1 Corinthians 13:12

the roomies and i had a conversation a few weeks ago which included, among many other things, the subject of being completely known.

being fully known, as A put it, is like "sitting across from someone and feeling like i'm sitting across from myself."

my family knows me pretty darn well. and that's the way it should be. apart from them, i've known only a few people who i'd describe in the way A did, one in particular. after only knowing me one or two short months, this *particular* person was able to make accurate, thoughtful observations about my character, my personality, and my faults....some of which i'd never realized before. i can't even begin to tell you how incredible that was. most of you probably know a few people like that in your lives too. you'd just never believe someone could understand you and realize what made you tick...and still be excited to see you every day. but wait....i've digressed into a pleasant batch of memories that don't need to be explored here any more.

it's no surprise to any of us that even those humans most "perfectly suited to us," like our spouses and closest friends, will and do fall drastically short of meeting our deep needs for relationship and connections. that's not the way it was intended, but that's how it turned out, because our once-ideal world is scarred with sin and shortcomings.

i think i can't stop writing cliches. so here comes another one. we all want to know and to be known. human beings are created with an innate (not external or conditioned) desire for relationships. at the end of the day when solitude dissolves our masks of independence and self-sufficiency, we all want to be understood, complete with our vulnerabilities. we want to be loved with those flaws. yet, we have a really difficult time showing those flaws to most people. and here's the kicker, the classical problem: humanity is, itself, fatally flawed. weird, huh...the thing that we want to be loved in spite of, is the exact same thing that keeps others from loving us in spite of it. it makes my head spin too.

this desire for fulfilment in relationships, is, i think, part of what it means to be made in God's image. God is like that towards us. God doesn't need us for anything, but he wants us to be close to him. he wants a relationship with us, his creation, purely and simply because he loves us. which is an unbelievable thing all by itself, but that's the only relationship that will ever completely fulfill our human thirst for that closeness. and on this earth, it won't ever be perfect (see the verse at the top). our salvation is a perpetual progression, and not until the other side of eternity will we fully know God. even then, i suppose i have my doubts. but that's an idea for another day. :)

i think it might have been CS Lewis that came up with this; i sure didn't. it's called the Argument From Desire. that desire to be known is a brilliant, vivid, constant evidence of how much we need God, and even of the most basic fact that God exists. it is truncated, distorted, and sometimes smashed beyond recognization by others' cruelty and our own bitterness. but it's a clear leftover of the days of perfect communion with God, reminding us now that we were created to be with him.

a general point made against the Argument from Desire is "the fact that you desire something doesn't prove the existence of the thing." they say "you might desire to be a unicorn, but that doesn't mean it's possible to be a unicorn, or even that unicorns are real." the implication within this argument is twofold: one, that the longing for closeness is something externally influenced; and therefore, the existence of the object of desire is not proved. so it's critical to remember that the desire for fulfilment in relationships is universal and therefore innate, and has nothing to do with outside conditioning or observation. on the contrary, the external circumstances we observe are peoples' relationships falling apart all over the place. we even see people swearing off certain kinds of relationships, because breaking those connections is so deeply hurtful. wouldn't you think that if our desire for relationships was an externally effected one, we'd all have sworn them all off by now? yet even after our hearts break and people desert us and our friends betray us, we keep seeking or longing (actively or not) for closeness. and [here] is where the Lewis quote (from the top) fits in. he said it a lot quicker than i did. :)

sometimes i think we want to know people chiefly because we want to be known ourselves. if that's the case, i'd guess for most people this cold, pragmatic approach is subconscious, not a specific "i will love this person because i desire love myself." and then i wonder if we were created chiefly to love, or to be loved, which sounds like something CS lewis would talk about. but that's all getting into the whole 'is there an unselfish motive' argument which is kind of silly so i won't explore it now, although on the other hand it does kind of point, in another way, to the twisted sinful world we live in (as if we needed more evidence).

wow. this goes so much deeper and longer than what i've put here. but i'll leave it there. so in short (i never really say anything in short), that's one more way that God reveals himself to us. there are so very many ways, but this is one of the most explicit. there's an unmet longing or a "God-shaped hole" inside everyone. grr, that's a cliche. sorry.

realpolitik, supposedly

2006-10-09T06:47:00.000-05:00

most people that know me would tell you i can be a bit excitable, if not passionate, when the conversation turns to the arena of politics. this is not false and not an exaggeration.

however, due to a few recent conversations, i've decided that i need to clarify some of my very broad views on what, exactly, appeals to me about politics. usually when i tell someone where i work, the question is "So you're interested in going into politics, then?" it's hard to know what to tell them. so here are some very brief thoughts.

although it's taken me a while to pinpoint it, this is the way i see it: politics is simply large ideas expressing themselves on a large scale. i've written about this before, and it's a watery understatement: ideas are huge. a real idea will have the same reasoning behind making people kill and die and live. i hope i don't get negative points for referencing a movie, but...just watch V for Vendetta. :)

in our democratic process (which i realize is a rather narrowed view of how ideas work, but hey, i do live here and i think it works alright), if an idea is big enough -- if it has enough supporters -- it deserves to be considered. if it's big and good, it deserves to be applied. and politics is merely the medium through which we consider and -- if they're good -- apply our big ideas.

that's why it's so ridiculous to say "you can't legislate morality." on the contrary, dear ignoramus, that's about the only thing we can legislate. i doubt there's a single law in the country that isn't somehow tied to moral concepts like: don't take something that doesn't belong to you; don't harm people if they aren't a threat to you; keep your family together if you can; authority should be respected...i could go on and on.

and a little tidbit to keep you thinking: where does separation of church and state come into this, if every law is essentially the large-scale expression of a value judgment? (This idea-trail is a Stub. You can help Nikki's blog and her thought process by expanding it.)

anyways, there's a lot more to it than that. but this is why i don't get so excited about party issues, elections, or arguments in congress, or other things that don't have ideas behind them. real politics is ideas working themselves out on a grand scale. ideas are what i care about. and i've discovered the only reason i think twice about politics is because i have a lot of convictions and i want to change things. and a lot of those things need to be,and can only be, fixed through politics.

on the other hand, one reason i've become so disenchanted with much of the political arena lately is because, at least if we're talking about idea-centered politics, i'm (slowly) realizing how useless it can be to change a law without changing people. legislation merely reflects the will of the people (at least in most cases). my perennial example: abortion. is it a problem that our country gives permission for people to kill their children? absolutely. i'm not diminishing that and people should continue to work wholeheartedly to undo that sickening wrong. however (and a lot of organizations and people might disagree with me), the problem of permission is a shallow surface problem. the real issue is, why do people want abortions? once we deal with that on a grand scale, the issue of whether they're legal or not will (more or less) either take care of itself, or not be much of an issue.

hunting and fishing

2006-09-30T16:01:00.000-05:00

i don't have, nor have i ever had, any desire to go hunting -- as in, killing things not because they are a danger to someone or because i might starve if i don't, but killing animals that are just living their lives innocently without trying to hurt me. it's not the animals' fault mankind has this urge to kill things for fun. they're just trying to eat and sleep and procreate.

and you know what? they're pretty darn good at those things, too. which is why hunters spend untold millions of dollars every year trying to outsmart the "dumb" beasts with every manner of add-ons: odor neutralizers, rifle scopes, hidey-tents, camouflage clothing, animal calls, and other expensive, unnecessary and sometimes disgusting miscellanea...each one an attempt to make up for the fact that -- in a masterpiece of divine irony -- God has apparently spared us the outfitting and instinct of the "lower" species.

besides, with all that work and money put into the sport, how is it even any real conquest if you kill the animal? you're pretty much taking away any element of sporting when you tip the scales so far in your direction the fox/rabbit/turkey/mulie has next to zero chance of surviving. i just don't understand how anyone would feel any sense of victory or achievement if they had to buy all this extra junk.

i think real hunting is a gun at most -- along with the intellectual qualities of stealth and skill and observation and patience.

but really, i don't have a moral problem with hunting in general, as long as you do it fairly, legally and with all sportsmanship. i'm not an animal-rights person, and especially if you could use the meat, go and kill something, and don't feel guilty. God gave us all pointy teeth. we're clearly meant to be carnivorous (or omnivorous at least). does anyone really dislike a nice juicy steak? i'm not against the idea of killing...just do it in a fair way, having respect for the other creatures God made.

my stomach always turns, though, at the idea of ME hunting/killing anything breathing. that includes squirrels, rabbits, pheasant, deer, or anything that isn't hurting anyone else.

so by all counts, you'd think i should abhor fishing. it seems far less sportsmanlike than typical hunting. in fishing, you use an invisible string to dangle a deadly razor-sharp hook in the water, which is disguised by a tasty little piece of fish food. this could be likened to putting some nice fresh corn in front of your deer stand at twilight, then shooting the deer when he comes over for a meal. but that's called baiting in the mammal-hunting world. you can't do that, at least that i know of. as in, it's illegal, and as far as i'm concerned, totally unfair and should be anathema to any real sportsman.

so i don't get why it's ok with fish. i guess they are not mammals, which means maybe they're more like shiny bugs, and less like people or pets. anyways, inexplicably, fishing is one of my favorite things to do. i love sitting in a wooden boat in a peaceful lake or river, listening to the water crinkle and the birds flutter and chirp, and having whispered conversations with your fishing buddy/ies.

i know that's inconsistent. but i'd like to point out that even most vegetarians -- ostensibly the most animal-friendly of all of us -- make exceptions to allow fish in their diet. i think i'll be the first to ask...could it be that the vegetarians know something we flesheaters don't? are fish actually large water-bound insects? (if so....gross!)

since i don't have any moral issues with eating animals, i surely don't have them with fish, either. i guess it's the method of capturing them that should bother me. it seems wrong to make a distinction, but it seems completely intuitive at the same time. this is really confusing, so...does anyone have any thoughts?

strangers & eyes

2006-09-27T12:52:00.000-05:00

i started to touch on this a little in a post a few days back. but i didn't say nearly as much as i wanted to. so here goes.

i like to watch people interact with strangers. and i like to interact with strangers myself. a conversation with a stranger is, i think, one of the best kinds. it's just a tiny tip of a great mystery that is another person's life. you'll likely never see them again, but that's what makes it so fun.

i did this little experiment last year. i looked every single person i saw in the eye. this includes everyone i saw on the street, in class, in the hallways at work, in cars even. :) i didn't stare, i just looked. sometimes i smiled; usually i didn't. i figured that'd be too weird for most people, and it'd probably get me too much unwanted attention.

it was an interesting time. i felt a lot more connected to people in a way.

one of my primary conclusions: to most people, eye contact is a personal invasion, however subtle or minor. upon meeting my eyes, most other eyes would immediately drop to the ground, or look at a slightly different angle (so it would appear possible that they'd never really looked at me). clearly, they believed they were invading my space as well.

a few scattered individuals looked right back at me. and kids, of course, never had a problem with eye contact. babies especially. how is it, anyways, that babies know to look you right in the eyes? if babies and kids do it, it must be something we teach them -- something innocent and automatic that our older, "wiser" influence overrides and overpowers -- as they get older. i don't know how. i'm sure a lot of it is teaching them to be scared of strangers, which is good.

but i think how people interact with strangers says a lot about them. strangers can't do anything for you, they don't have any expectations you feel compelled to meet, you don't know who they are, and they probably feel the same way about you. so how you talk to them, interact with them, or look at them, probably reveals the most basic, fundamental kindness and respect you have (or don't have) for human beings in general. it shows what's left when the fake/habitual veneers of politeness, kindness, and civility are stripped away and you have no other reason to esteem them except for how you treat people for simply being people.

i think eye contact can be difficult for people, especially strangers, because the eyes (of course) are "windows to the soul." and it's so, so true. so much can be given away by a quick gaze or instantaneous aversion. people feel vulnerable when someone's looking into their eyes. that's why they six seconds, or so, that's as long as most people can maintain eye contact before looking away. when the occasional stranger would hold my eye contact for more than an instant, it was a sign of openness. and that's scary to most people.

now, there are rare instances when i don't want to look into someone's eyes for one reason or another. so i might just stare at the ground like most other people do. i don't look strange or different, because everyone does that, but i feel unbelievably self-conscious and powerless. i think the constant eye contact became more of a signal to the people i was looking at: i know my surroundings. i know where you are. i know you're walking towards me. i know you're creepy. i know you're looking at me. i know who you're looking at. etc. so it became stressful for me to NOT look someone in the eye, and it still is.

so that's what i learned during my little experiment in human interaction. i didn't really figure out anything profound or novel. but it was definitely a good habit to get into. i'd recommend it highly.

i don't really know where i'm going with this. these are just garbled thoughts. say it with me now: "i don't have a journal, you know."

in love with slim 2

2006-09-26T12:23:00.000-05:00

it's been my longstanding opinion that jimmy john's is quite possibly the best sandwich place in lincoln. reasons for this opinion:

a) they are fast. so fast you'll freak, technically.
b) their bread is perfect.
c) they give you free Hellman's mayo packets.
d) you pay less for a plain sandwich (i always get it plain anyways. but anywhere else, you pay the same price).
e) they deliver.
f) they have funny signs.
g) some people i know work there.
h) the roast beef is perfect.

and i hate to admit this because i just made a far-reaching statement about the general best-ness of jimmy john's. but i am not a qualified evaluator...because i've only ever had one single item from the menu. it's a Slim 2, meaning plain roast beef, on that unbelievably good bread that i could just eat plain, with mayo on the side. the slim 2 is the first jimmy john's sandwich i ever tried. and it's so good, i can't pass it up when i go. i can't believe anything else could be better. you know...if you're completely satisfied with what you've got, don't waste time trying to improve. and if i did go and get something that wasn't better than my Slim 2 with mayo packets, i'd feel like i wasted that precious opportunity to indulge. not to mention the money.

i always savor those last few morsels of the sandwich...when i am getting full but still wish i had an extra few bites. the bread is extra crispy at the ends, and i always have to smush the mayo packet to get the last few greasy blobs out, and i just want the taste to last forever. i think i get a slim 2 at least once a week. sometimes twice. you'd think i'd get sick of the slim 2, but i don't. i can't imagine not liking it.

that beckoning sky

2006-09-24T22:57:00.000-05:00

my sister and i went to the air show this weekend. we saw some F-16s, a Stealth Fighter and Bomber, the Blue Angels, a partial reenactment of Pearl Harbor, Mustang P-31s, the Red Baron Pizza Squad (or something) (i still haven't figured that one out), and many, many other historic airplanes and airplane acrobatics. i had a kink in my neck before long, and i'm pretty sure i looked like something of a cross between a country tourist in a city full of skyscrapers and a giddy teenager in love.
i love airplanes, and i always have. my untold (before now) dream was to be a pilot...although i never really put any thought or effort into that career, being quite positive it would always remain nothing but a dream. because as much as i'm fascinated by airplanes, strangely enough, i never felt drawn to learn much about them. i'm perfectly content to leave them in the Mysteries category (along with cars and tax stuff) and simply be in awe at them. the sky is the beginning of space, and as far as we on this planet are concerned, it might as well be infinite. an expanse of mystery and pure physics. (the poem linked in the title of this post is one of my favorites. it was written by a WW2 pilot, and was made famous when it was quoted by Ronald Reagan.)

in other weekend events, friday night was the Mother of All Steak Nights (that name didn't really catch on for some reason) and we (all thirty of us!) gorged ourselves on steak, chicken, asparagus (perfectly cooked and seasoned, might i add), potatoes, garlic bread, and a plethora -- that's right, a plethora -- of assorted desserts. there was also a good amount of poker playing, guitar playing, computer-stuff-doing, et al.

today (sunday) the ecuador team drove to a small town to give a presentation about our summer trip. :) i was way more nervous than usual, with my hands and voice shaking and for some reason i'd felt compelled to grab a pen before i went to the front. so i had the large handheld mic, the suddenly-unwanted pen, and a crinkled bulletin with a few vague notes scratched on it...all cluttering up my hands and doing their best to jump to the floor. but other than my part, which wasn't horrible but wasn't great either, the others did really well (4 of us spoke). the trip was fun. i had fun. plus there was a potluck afterwards with these awesome potatoes.

that's it for now. i'm unbelievably tired because, like usually happens on the weekends, my sleep schedule is drastically altered and my sleep debt becomes bloated, much like the national debt. so with interest, i owe myself 10.58 hours of sleep each night this week. i'm off to pay some of that now. thanks for reading!

the Office, and other stuff we do

2006-09-22T23:28:00.000-05:00

so last night was the season premiere of the Office. after bible study, a bunch of us went to watch it. it. was. awful. not even funny, and definitely beyond the 'appropriate' line of humor that was rarely crossed in previous seasons. i really hope they aren't planning to push the line the rest of the year, because i doubt i'll be watching much of it in that case.

so. moving on to other issues. we all have those awkward/rushed moments when you walk by someone you sort-of know, on the sidewalk or in the hallway. they're going one direction and you, the other. you know them just well enough that you should acknowledge them with more than a polite smile, but not well enough for either of you to actually break your pace and start a conversation. or maybe you don't really want to talk to them, but want to maintain a veneer of civility for whatever reason.

from my own experience, those little exchanges usually end up something like:

-hey.
-hey.

OR

-hey, how's your new office?
-it's great, i love it.
-good.
-......take care.

OR

-hey, how's it going?
-great, and you? [which is a completely wrong sentence, but you couldn't appropriately correct it while still keeping an acceptable pace]
-good
-great.

there are bugs in this meticulously crafted system, however. every now and then, your mind might get mixed up on which prefabricated conversation you're having. like so:

-hey, how are you?
-the office is great.
-...good.

or you might even jump ahead, assuming your fellow man has spoken their part already. then a conversation might go like this:

-hey, how's it going? great.
-it's...great.

that happens to everyone, so don't feel bad if your mind goes frozen. it doesn't matter because their mouth is probably also on autopilot so they probably don't even hear you.

however they turn out, i really don't like having these forced "conversations." sometimes, though, i see no way around them. you can't ignore everyone, but you can't have long conversations with everyone either. even if time weren't an issue, you don't know most people well enough to get by the heys. so i have tried to think of alternatives (which oddly end up being less palatable than the brief interchange itself).

the main tactic i've come up with is called Pretend To Be Absorbed In Something. that Something could be the papers in your hand, your iPod (just pretend you can't hear and see at the same time), an ant, your fingernails, or anything in the sky. but, that approach only works if you see them first, without making eye contact; that way it's plausible that you really didn't notice them, because of course you totally would have said hey if you did. however, the other person -- if they suspect your subtle attempts to avoid eye contact yet still not appear unfriendly -- might even be a bit thankful you took the initiative to avoid an obligatory-yet-loathsome five word conversation. it might even be the start of a beautiful friendship in which, by mutual agreement, neither burdens the other with the responsibility of continuing this awkward experiment in human communication.

there are many, many other options, such as The Too-Busy Basketweaver, The Birdie, and The Twist And Shout. i'm sure you want to know what all these mean, but there just isn't time right now.

this is too long already. but, i suppose *here* is where i should insert some thoughtful social commentary about human relationships and how our culture is horrendously self-focused, etc. i can't really think of anything like that right now, even though the iPod thing drives me nuts (is your music really so much more interesting and important than the humanity all around you?)...i could talk about that forever. BUT this is a post of observation and of sharing vital life experience with all my blog-friends, and not one of ranting about social constructs. that will, most assuredly, come later.

"quiet in the grasp of dusk and summer"

2006-09-19T22:55:00.000-05:00

here are these midwestern semi-fall-transition days again. you know....the ones that aren't quite autumn yet and only feel like fall in the evenings. but there are wisps of smoky, spicy fall air blowing around on the wind every so often. and part of you is stuck in what you love about summer, and yet...it's just time to move on with life.

to me, summer is so much of, simply, what i love about being alive. driving with my windows down and my sunglasses on is one of the greatest pleasures i have in life, and i don't mean that in a depressing way. no matter how the day is going, pulling out those aviators and cranking up some tunes and flying down Normal Avenue is about the highlight of my day. it embodies what i love about summer...which means "carefree" and warm and different every day and fun and laid-back. people aren't worried about school. you play volleyball and hang out late into the evenings because it's light outside. you worry less about responsibility and more about being alive and free because you only have a few summers of your life to feel like that.

but then those evenings get a little shorter, just to remind you that they're not there forever. then labor day comes, and football starts, and before you know it, school is back, and downtown is crawling with hoodie-clad students. and even if it hasn't gotten real chilly yet, you know the dead icy winter is inevitable. like any good parent, mother nature likes to give us a bit of warning before playtime is totally over.

then the evenings are dark at 7pm and you feel tired even when you have no reason to feel tired except that it's dark. then you leave places early because you have homework. then you realize...fall is here.

fall is melancholy for me. i'm sure part of it is all those fall colors...all the colors that mean emotion in my mind, like deep orange, goldenrod, and crimson. but i think one of the reasons i tend to get so pensive each fall season is because it makes me aware of time. time passing so tediously but so fast i can almost hear it. summer is when time stops and all is light and exciting. but fall means winter, and winter means another new year, which just makes me think about how i am 21 years old already, and why i still feel sixteen, and how i still have to accomplish so much, and how i feel like time is moving around me while i remain still...like standing in the middle of a river, grabbing frantically at experiences and events as they surge by but wondering what i'm missing when my back's turned and knowing most things won't ever come along again.

the post where i preach like...a...preacher....?

2006-09-17T22:44:00.000-05:00

i get really bent out of shape when i hear about people that i respect putting crummy stuff in their heads through such events as watching crummy movies, listening to crummy music, et al. (i know people have different definitions of good and bad, and i'm not getting into that now.)

to me, it is a big deal what people like to watch/listen to, and it says a lot about them because it is purely a choice. no one is forcing us to watch/hear much on a regular basis, especially if we also choose to keep copies of it in iTunes.

ok, in no way do i want to sound like a goody-goody or like "i make better choices than ALL of you." but generally i try pretty hard to not put crummy stuff into my head.

i really like Arrested Development, and while not being horrendous, it does have its share of dialogue and situations that i really wish weren't there. so generally, i've decided to mostly watch that on my own because it can get kind of awkward, i think.

i was just talking with a friend about this. (so if YOU are reading, this will all be familiar to you. :)) i think i said something to the effect of, my knee-jerk reaction when i hear about people watching a bad movie or something is to lose a bit of respect for that person. but then, i wonder if people think less of me for my decisions too...? it's sobering but i think something we could all ask ourselves without dying or becoming paralyzed. :)

i definitely don't think AD is the worst show in the world. in fact, it's quite tame compared to a lot of things. i like a lot about it...it makes me laugh almost like none other. but i guess, even if i take away that awkwardness factor and watch it alone, how much do i still, clearly, value that laughing? do i really think it's worth the crap i have to have in my brain after i watch it? long after i'm done laughing and done reciting one-liners with friends, i still remember the parts and the lines i don't want to remember. so why is that so valuable? why is the temporary entertainment better to me than a pure mind? and how come the "dwell on things that are pure, lovely and good" thing never really comes to mind when i'm picking out a movie or watching tv or listening to music? and how come the bad things are the ones that'll stick with you the longest? how come that's what we'll all end up dwelling on after all??

sure, you might say, but you hear all of that, and more, every day...at work, at school, etc. it's true. but i don't have a choice there. it's a matter of what i'm choosing to hear or watch. that's why it's so telling about my character. do i choose to overhear other people saying stuff i don't want to hear? no. but do i choose what i am watching and listening to? yes, in almost every case.

part of it, sure, is the coolness factor. AD is cool and a little indie and all that, whatever. it's always fun to make it a social thing...to have fun tv parties and laugh together about the show. and it's also NOT fun to say "let's not watch this" or whatever.

ok, i just reread this and i sound nagging, annoying, judgmental, goody two shoes, holier than thou. (take your pick, i've got more.) and also probably pretty stupid because i picked a fairly tame show as my example of what i should maybe stop watching. so even though i could keep going, i'm going to stop. i really don't want to sound like "i am making all the right choices and you should too." well, i mean, you should, but that is your decision. ok, well, i'm sounding like that again. anyways, please don't get mad because these are just some very initial thoughts skimming over this issue.

the last frontier

2006-09-17T17:17:00.000-05:00

Space is cool. i wanted to be an astronomer when i was younger....not too long ago, really. (when i realized it involved math, i immediately decided to pursue a career in the nonmathematical fields of writing and thinking.)

so don't get me wrong. i love space, i loved learning the planets unit in school, and i even know how to tell time by the stars (at least i used to), and i made my little sister memorize Jupiter's moons and the distance to the moon (238,000 miles) and to Proxima Centauri (3.2 lightyears). AND i'm not even joking about any of that.

still, i don't understand why we have to spend mind-boggling amounts of money to learn more about space. isn't it cool enough as it is? aren't there people who could really use the money? this Onion article nicely summarizes my feelings towards this issue.

i think the space program, whatever it's called, should be drastically/dramatically cut from our government's budget. if private citizens and organizations want to fund things, go for it. that's cool. i just don't really like so much tax money going towards billion-dollar "exploration" programs that aren't even exciting...not that being exciting would be worth THAT much anyways. i think that money could be better used elsewhere, such as feeding people, keeping them out of gutters, national security, war, etc.

read about the federal NASA budget here. according to that chart, our government gave NASA over 15 billion dollars in 2005 (if i'm reading it right). and they're projected to get over 16 billion in 2007.

if the government just kept that, and stopped NASA totally, maybe they could give us all complimentary subscriptions to the Russian Space Exploration channel. that way, no one would have to give up their habits of watching CGI images of satellites roaming around, and also a fuzzy blue blob, aka the possible atmosphere of Neptune, 24/7. oh wait, no one cares about that anyways.

but seriously. why are we even really concerned about social security? there'd be a few bugs to work out, but i bet we could just give the space money to the old folks as they retire.

or we could give it to africa. or we could buy an oil-producing country and make our own oil. or we could hire more people and make the borders secure. or we could give it to the war. we could give it to all our cities and counties in the form of economic development grants. OR...we could just keep on collecting Mars rocks and taking boring blurry pictures of white specks until they'll all be sold on ebay for $0.99 each.

just now the news said "Astronauts Complete Third And Final Space Walk." um, so? hey, i'd love to walk in space. it'd be like flying. but it's really not all that exciting to hear about anyone else doing it. i think the vast majority of americans only care about space because deep down, we'd all love to spacewalk, and because of that very reason most of us wanted to be astronauts when we were little. but notwithstanding the pseudo-popularity of space exploration, it's certainly not worth billions of dollars each year, and certainly not at a time when we are in war, and while there are people starving all over the planet. how about this: once everything is perfect on our own planet, we start worrying about the others. k?

so, all that to say, space is really cool, but definitely not worth the money we feed it, and there are plenty of ways that money could go to better use. i hope you agree with me.

ooooooh boy!

2006-09-12T11:03:00.000-05:00

so, it's just been firmly established that my new roomies and i have some *ahem* differing theological views. a recent conversation went something like this:

A, casually [we'd been talking about a related issue]: so, what do you both think about predestination?

me, proudly: i'm a zero point calvinist. er, one point, sort of, but i believe it for different reasons than calvinists.

L, carefully: i believe in predestination, and that people can't be saved unless God's planned it for them.

A, sheepishly: i'm a five point calvinist. yeah, definitely.

i'm trying not to get too excited here. but, it's been a while since i had a good predestination conversation, probably because i've run out of friends who want to talk with me about it. which is a bad sign. i truly have been rethinking some things...attitude, tactics, motives...because i really enjoy talking about calvinism and all that, but i think it's mostly because i've had a decent amount of practice and can generally anticipate where the discussion is going. but clearly, i've turned the issue of man's will and God's sovereignty into more of a game -- a simple yet complex puzzle that some people don't think is solvable -- rather than a crucial theological study whose consequences reach deep into the way we see our world, ourselves, our salvation, and our God.

still, it's going to be interesting and, dare i say it, even...fun? should i try to not have as much fun as i do? or is it good that i enjoy thinking about it? because there are a lot of people who, sadly, just don't think about this much, either because it confuses them or because they simply don't think it's that important.

more information can be found in an earlier post on predestination/free will.

a picture post.....[something weather-related]

2006-09-08T22:15:00.000-05:00

this will be the last post full of pictures!

after we stayed in wales for two days, we traveled to oxford to visit Katie, and we stayed in her dorm room that night. oh! but before i tell you anything about that, here's a picture i forgot to put up in the Wales section. this photo has accurately captured the guilt i felt after i murdered someone, or at least ate a lot of mulberries from a public tree. a LOT of mulberries! they were some tasty eating!

right, so we were in oxford. so katie gave us a mini tour of the city and we saw a lot of neat buildings...such as this one: the pub where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to hang out and discuss (among other things) their writings. we went inside and saw the table where they always sat. that was really cool. it's always amazing to be where famous people have been, especially people who are famous for good reasons.

this is a library. there are books on all sides, and also under your feet.

you guys are not going to believe this. there was a Krispy Kreme donut shop inside Oxford castle! it was quite the cultural experience to eat a jelly donut that you bought at a krispy kreme in a castle.

somewhere in Oxford.

this is a grave marker for a group of christian martyrs that were burned there hundreds of years ago. it's just there in the middle of the street, and people can drive and walk over it. kind of eerie, i think.

a street in oxford (compliments of natalie).

again, somewhere in Oxford. i lost the names of all these large buildings and monuments and cathedrals.

that evening, we ate at an Italian restuarant and met some nice people later on. ;) read more about the oxford experience here.

the next day, we made our way to london. you can read about our london escapades at the last link, and also at this one. here is a picture of Westminster Abbey, one of the best places I visited on our whole trip, and which we stumbled upon completely by accident.

now i am inside the palace. here's a contraband picture of Queen Elizabeth's casket (i took it shortly before they grabbed me and told me "No Pictures"). back in the day, they made death masks of important people when they died. so her face on that marble is exactly what she looked like at the time of her death. that is so surreal...i hardly know how to explain it.

another (illicit) photo from inside westminster. those flags are family crests hanging above the Knights' Seats, which have been there for almost a thousand years, and people from those families still sit on the seats for knights' meetings. i guess i don't know what you'd do at a modern day knights' meeting. (play chess maybe? ahaha!!) but the wood on those seats was all worn down and smooth. which was really cool, and then i thought to myself...wow, a thousand years' worth of butts, right there. :)

here's the view right outside Westminster. that's big ben, and the parliament buildings are close behind it. in front of big ben is an anti-war demonstration that was coagulating when i came out of the building. there was an angry man yelling about how america might as well be hitler, or something. i decided we maybe shouldn't hang around to make friends.

the next day we took the subway all over the city! it was really easy to navigate and it was fun at first. but then you are crammed with 50 people inside a tube car for 20 sweaty, airless minutes, and you realize that last year about this time, some terrorists blew some people to eternity on this very system, and the security is STILL absolutely zero, you start to get a little claustrophobic.

one place we traveled on said subway was to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham palace. it's supposed to be really neat. they have a parade every day. all the guards carry large assault rifles (why, i don't know; it's not like the queen really does anything). so here's the sign on one side of the courtyard...

...and here's the sign on the other side! we were extremely disappointed because we'd picked a "rare exception" to visit the stupid palace, which wasn't even very impressive on its own. oh well. we did get to see the guards, which was *Kip voice* pretty cool, i guess.

this is buckingham palace in all its prudently solemn yet disappoingintly bland mediocrity.

the gates outside the palace were more interesting than the palace.

later that day we saw the tower bridge. this was pretty neat. we went on it and up into the tower, and learned about its history and how they built it, etc. it was probably close to the most fun we had in london.

a view from on the bridge. you can see the Tower of London on the left hand side there. (when i was trying to find it, i kept looking for a tower, and eventually realized it wasn't really a tower. although it probably was when it was built.)

a street in london.

oh, you'll like this. we got to see london bridge, and walk on it even! here it is. wow. WOW! are you impressed yet? we weren't, either. (even wikipedia calls it "a dull edifice.") i don't even know why it's famous, and after seeing it, i hardly care. isn't that awful?

so as i said, no mas! no more pictures of my summer excursions! so if you're one of those people who only reads this for the trip pictures, and don't care about my real life, you don't need to come back. :) i'd really love you to, but i won't be offended if your IP address never appears again on my spying program. and i'm not spiteful, so i probably won't even blog about you behind your back.

thanks for reading once again!

Kansas

2006-09-05T09:51:00.000-05:00

the kansas concert this weekend was, in a word, amazing.

to begin with, i was more than a little skeptical about the skills of musicians who are probably 60 years old, and the Superbowl image of Mick Jagger's flabby arms and tight black jeans made me hope, wish and pray that Mick was more of a creepy anomaly, and less of a standard "past-his-prime" rock star.

good news: there were no tight black jeans, i didn't see any old-man bellies, and i wasn't quite close enough to be slapped with arm flab. we had pretty good seats because we were in line almost an hour ahead of time. which is SO hardcore, right?

i didn't know many of the songs they played (so maybe i'm not as hardcore as i thought i was). but it was OK because the songs were awesome anyways.

they have a violinist -- an electric violinist -- and you wouldn't think a 60 year old short guy with poofy blond-grey hair and purple striped pants could really play anything, especially an electric violin. but he was absolutely, stunningly good. and it's hard to describe rocking on the violin." but, he did that.

Kansas is one of those bands who don't just pass the standard song formula...you know, the two-verses-a-bridge-and-a chorus-you-can-repeat-forever-if-needed formula. but clearly Kansas knows what they are doing. they are masters. that's right, MASTERS. from what i can tell. and you know how i, a relative classic-rock amateur, can tell they're masters? a) because they're old and still touring. younger people haven't been around long enough to become really, truly good. and, b) because they had so much instrumental time. because they can. do you ever hear of Three Doors Down or Fall Out Boy or John Mayer doing instrumental concerts? nope, because they probably couldn't if they wanted to. (well, maybe John Mayer could, but it'd be boring and no one would come.) there's probably not enough talent to fill up 2/3 of a concert without singing. clearly somewhere along the timeline of the evolution of rock, someone said "maybe if our music is extra loud, and we all wear tight t-shirts and some jewelry, that'll compensate for our not being all that good." can you tell i've had enough fake-talent concerts? (ok, you got me...in decades past, kansas did play concerts in their spankies.)

so, this one time before the show started, i tried to go up and say hello to one of my friends in the front area. i started to run...for no reason, really. then these two security guards grabbed me (stopping me rather dramatically) and yelled in my face, "PINK BRACELETS ONLY!" i was really startled and confused, and i probably stammered "ah, uh, can i go talk to my friend--" and they yelled "NO! NO! NO one goes up there unless you have PINK BRACELETS!!!" then i walked away, apologizing profusely and embarassed because everyone in the first three rows was staring at me with wide eyes, surely wondering who was this insane person who tried to break her way through the guards, Red-Rover style, to get to the front without a pink bracelet.

anyways. it was perfect weather (the arena is covered but outdoors) and the encore consisted of probably their two biggest hits ever (dust in the wind and carry on, my wayward son). they left the stage, the lights went out, and those moments when you wonder if they'll come back onstage seem like forever, and the crowd gets louder, and just when you think it couldn't get any louder, a few string-plucks into the acoustic "dust in the wind," it did. much louder.

...and then she smiled.

another tsupid tsunami

2006-08-24T17:39:00.000-05:00

did you know the words "stupid" and "tsunami" start with the same three letters? weird huh. but you'd never think of that, because they're in different order. in the subject line of this post i have altered the spelling of the word "stupid" to illustrate this phenomenon.

anyways, i'm getting kind of tired of posting pictures, and you're probably tired of seeing them, because i took too long to put them up after i got back. so i won't put up many more, because there are other things to talk about. but since i already built this post, here it is.

after our day tour of Scotland, we took a night train from Edinburgh to Cardiff, Wales. cardiff was a very pleasant place to stay. this is our first view of that fair city. note the Starbucks next to the Pure Rugby store. so you can get your joe after picking up your fave scrum sled. (i just used the words "joe," "fave" and "scrum" in the same sentence. ha!)

then we toured this "museum" of Welsh history where they'd brought old celtic buildings from all over the country to this one place so you can see them all. this, however, is not an ancient welsh building, but a cork tree, which was soft and spongy and oh so huggable.

this IS an old welsh building. it's a farm house from 1620 or something. they painted stuff red back then because they thought the color red scared away evil spirits. but, i was thinking, satan is red in every picture you see. how does that work? :)

this is the stadium close to our hostel. it's build like a giant ship. kinda strange, but whatever. our hostel is kind of behind that tree on the left.

this is natalie waiting patiently at a bus stop. this was right after we toured an old Manor and felt somewhat transported back in time because everyone there was dressed in period clothes, and the whole place seemed just like it hadn't changed for three centuries. read about it in this post.

this is Cardiff Castle and Moat, also close to our hostel. we didn't ever go inside this one, but we walked around it and it was really pretty in the evenings.

this is a little welsh village we drove through on our way to somewhere.

oh, right! that Somewhere is probably Caerphilly Castle, in a town called Caerphilly. (that'd be pronounced carefully - i mean, not that you pronounce it carefully, but like the word carefully. never mind.) this was the best castle of all. it was old and crumbly and rocky. for further information on this and other Wales attractions we saw, read my earlier post about wales (same link as before). in this picture, there is a man walking in a weird way, with weird (tight black) pants on.
this is the inner courtyard of the castle, and natalie next to the well. sadly, the well had been filled in, but i thought it would be neat to throw stuff in it and NOT hear it hit the bottom. but maybe that's how it got filled up in the first place. :}
here's me in the great room. i liked the great room.
i also had the opportunity to be in a grand fireplace without being burned up.

while i was in said fireplace, even though flames were not burning me up, and there weren't any flames at all, i made this face:

this castle was cuddly and huggable too!

natalie on a ruined wall.

we did other cool stuff in wales too. actually this is the only place we stayed two nights (other than london).

anyways. on to more important things, such as eating and wrestling. thanks for reading, friends!

today's tsunami warning level: HIGH

2006-08-18T12:13:00.000-05:00

so, scotland.

i took a lot of pictures in scotland. here are many of them. oh, and we're back to center-alignment because the Ireland pictures in left-align had some spacing issues, as you might have noticed.

so un-pause and rewind your mind to the image of natalie and i, having had no sleep the night before, staggering off our shuttle to be greeted with the beautiful skyline of edinburgh. (it's pronounced "edinbruh" or "edinburra" said really fast.) these pictures definitely don't do it justice, but we were duly impressed.
i actually took one this later on, from a turreted, cannon-bespeckled roof on edinburgh castle. but it can better fit in the "edinburgh skyscapes" section of the tour. here are some pictures of the streets we walked down during our search for a hostel...

and here, natalie has a bit of shut-eye as she walks down a "close" (a narrow alley connecting two larger streets).

and, looking the other direction down the close. i really like how dark and tall the buildings are. they're pretty much all like that.here's a guy bagpipe-ing near our hostel. i like how the crowd just walks by...you could take him out and you'd never know he was ever in the picture.

here's natalie being swept off her feet by william wallace. the blue striped face didn't really do it for me, but she liked it.
for some reason there was this church with a red door that said Bedlam on it. i thought it was cool.

we visited Edinburgh Castle. that's the famous one up on the hill for those of you who know your scottish castles. but it's not much how you'd think of a castle. most of it was like a museum, but some parts of it were really neat, like dungeons and siege chambers and dark, ancient looking stuff. that does it for me.
this is a stained glass window inside the oldest standing building in edinburgh. it's St. Margaret's Chapel, which was dedicated in 1090 or so. and it's not magnificent or dramatic. it's rectangle-shaped and really small, with a tiny altar in the front and tiny windows. this window is about a foot and a half high. it was very cool to be there, and even though we visited zillions of chapels and abbeys, it never got old to be where people have been worshiping for centuries.
this is the inside of the chapel. i found this picture on the internet (i only took the window one because i feel weird taking pictures inside churches).
this is the view from a little turret-window on the roof of the castle. that's the scott memorial down there.
this is the roof and matching cannons.

after staying a night in edinburgh and visiting all the aforementioned sights (plus a lot more), we took a day tour of the Highlands, Glen Coe and Loch Ness. it was about eleven hours in all.

the first cool thing we saw on our tour was a highland cow. they are like hairy versions of texas longhorns. although, have you ever seen a Siberian cow? i'm thinking they look like normal cows. you'd think they'd be shaggy, but they're not, i don't think, even though siberia seems a lot colder than scotland. i guess there's only enough gene-pool to go around.

this is a place called Glen Coe. it's "way better than the pictures." it's this valley with these green sloping mountains on all sides. it was beautiful, stunning, and breathtaking...but not the jagged, rugged kind of stunning. it was peaceful and foggy and it smelled really good.

some tourists taking pictures. glen coe from inside the bus.

here are some other assorted pictures taken from a speeding tour bus. they'd be good, if they were, well, any good. so sad. i did like that it was cloudy/misty most of the time...but i wish we could have stopped every ten feet or so to take pictures. that would be a great bus tour. "alright, everyone buckle up, again!"

there were lots of sheep in scotland. LOTS of them.it was rainy and foggy when we were in St. Augustus (the town next to Loch Ness). here is our umbrella and corresponding view from underneath it.
and this is the mighty (not all that impressive) Loch Ness! no monsters sighted.

this is loch ness again, but with us next to it. the rain stopped for about 20 minutes while we were next to the lake.

ok, back in the city (our bus tour got back around 8 that night). this is the Walter Scott monument. it's almost black in color and is quite stunning, i think. it's right in the middle of the city. this is as close to it as we got. i took this while we were waiting to cross the street to get on a train to Wales.
this might not look like much, but this is our very last view of Scotland. this is the ghetto train station (i can't remember what town it's in) where we waited for our connecting train to Cardiff, which we weren't sure we could even get on because we didn't have reservations. a security guard felt sorry for us and let us sit inside for a little while. the train guy did let us on, but for double the price. grr.

The Monsoon is Down

2006-08-14T17:14:00.000-05:00

to keep you entertained whilst i build another picture post, here's another funny conversation that took place recently at our house.

scenario: my sister and my dad are on the computer, and a little MSN-Messenger window pops up.

dad: why are all these people blogging us?

sister: they're not blogging, they just signed into MSN.

dad: MSN? is that a chat room?

sister: heh. and you don't even know what a blog is.

dad: yes i do. it's when people get online and they talk back and forth to each other.

sister (speaking slowly): no dad. you're thinking of chatting. a blog is like an online journal.

dad (smugly): yeah, right. you don't even know what BLOG stands for.

sister: um, it's short for a web....bb...log.

dad: see, it IS the web!! talking back and forth!! i TOLD you!

the first wave

2006-08-11T12:43:00.000-05:00

here is the first tsunami of pictures in what looks like it will be a great monsoon of photography. as usual, i'll get the rest up when i can, which could be a long time. :) you know you love me, you know you do!

there is no cropping, tilting, saturating, etc., because i simply haven't had the time. if i find any good ones i'll put them on my photoblog. sometime. hey, do you know the ten commandments of procrastinating? 1,

i'm just putting the ireland pictures up for now, because this is taking a lot longer than i thought. so...for historical accuracy, here's what happened: natalie and i flew into london and katie met us at the airport. the three of us then flew to Cork, ireland. from there we made our way up the southern coast to dublin...

when we arrived in cork, i immediately attempted to communicate with the natives. i asked the shuttle driver (taking us from the airport to the city center) "if you had one day in Cork, what would you do?" the driver replied, "I would leave." we didn't understand his indigenous tongue and promptly decided to stay an entire day. anyways, this is a picture of cork...

...as is this. you can yawn now. well it's kind of a cute little city, like for families of four, etc.

there was one cool thing about cork. they had a very nice cathedral (St. Finbarre's) with quite the history, none of which i can remember. but it was very long, i think.

oh look, and i took a picture of the history! and there it is.

another view of the outside of the cathedral. i think that dog was born in 1197 and has been haunting the place ever since he died an untimely death shortly afterwards.

the church people weren't really excited about us taking pictures of the inside, so i don't have very many.

"kneel to pray." the other side of the kneeling-pillow said "stand to think." the clear implication is that thinking is the opposite of praying. we saw the National Youth Choir of Wales perform here that night. ok, that was a very cool thing in cork. they sang pieces of the Requiem and did some cool father-son pieces that were written at different times. er, anachronisms. :)

hey look, a yellow street, let's explore it! (we ended up in someone's backyard or driveway or something.)

after a few hours of wandering, we decided to give Cork the thumbs down (of course except for the concert that night). we are smiling because it's still funny, then. also, keep in mind that at this point natalie and i had been awake since our first flight left at noon the previous day. well, sort of. anyways, this was our first full 30-hour day.

the next day, we took a rather ill-advised trip to a town called New Ross. our plans to explore the area were dampened when a woman told us we needed a car to get to anywhere cool. she told us to get right to dublin. we learned from our first mistake of not listening to the natives, and indeed got right to dublin.

this picture is the *ahem* river in New Ross, which smelled bad and was full of trash.

in dublin, we all slept in a queen-size bed. it's a long story. i was in the middle. tee hee. this is the ghetto-ey little "yard" outside our hostel/hotel room. in this picture, i have captured the expressions of serenity and peace on katie and natalie's faces. clearly they are inspired by the blissful scenery, and are resolving to be better people for the rest of their lives.

this is us the next day at Dublin Castle. you can see the different sections of it that were built at different times. this castle was cool to walk around but we didn't go inside.

"look at this guy! he's just reading his paper but little does he know, there's a CASTLE behind him!"

a pretty section of road in dublin. the temple bar is in there somewhere.

for the record, the temple bar wasn't that exciting (although we didn't see much of it), and i also heard that the people who live in dublin won't go near it. it's ONLY tourists.

this is St. Patrick's Cathedral and katie.

and this is Christ Church Cathedral. it's massive and it has these ruins that are over a thousand years old.

and we all know we can't keep natalie away from those sexy
red heels, even in dublin.

a typical dublin street. narrow with straight high buildings.

this is the grand finale to the ireland segment of our trip. natalie and i stayed at the dublin airport that night because the shuttles didn't run that early (katie flew back to england that night). and hey, it saved us some hostel money. neither of us really slept because of our resolute quest for a good soft spot. then we realized that we had neither a clock nor a way to wake up in time for our 0630 flight. we managed by not sleeping at all. we did make a cozy little camp next to the arrivals sign, though. it had a great view of the first floor.

at long, long last

2006-08-10T23:55:00.003-05:00

i know i have promised to post pictures from both of my trips this summer, none of which have ever appeared, doubtless leading many of you to doubt that i actually went to these far-off lands. well in this post i will dispel all your skepticism with some well-chosen photography. meaning some of it will even have me in it, to further assure your mind that i didn't get these from some more fortunate traveler's web site.

so, first of all, here are some from my Ecuador trip. later i will post my other trip pictures. sorry this has been a little un-coherent (hehe) and out of order. i'm not going to explain any ecuador stuff again. but here are the pictures, complete without clever or ironic or sarcastic narration, because i'm not capable of any of that.

this is right outside where we worked for the first week. the street is a typical residential street...the government doesn't care enough to keep it up, and neither do the residents. everyone has walls up to keep criminals and dogs and trash and general riffraff out of their yards.

this was taken in a town called Banos (which, strangely, didn't have very good banos). this is a Quechua family who was there for whatever reason. i think they were selling something. that is pretty typical traditional Quechua dress (at least for the quechuas in that area) although i think they generally wear long skirts.

this is right outside our little down-time camp close to the town of Shell. that's the jungle, right there. that tree, there, is a jungle-tree, and that's jungle-fog and a little jungle-dead-end-trail! isn't that amazing? we were in the jungle. this is still so cool.

this is your standard inspirational waterfall. all it needs is some mist and a fragment of a bible verse from the Living translation, and i could sell some calendars and bookmarks. i even probably hopped over this inspirational waterfall. that's not too reverent. (i'm not trying to be funny or cute, really...if it comes across that way, it's because it's like 2am and i'm listening to simon and garfunkel.)

this waterfall is a bit more dramatic. also, it has a cool wood-rope bridge next to it. we stopped next to the road to see it.

the little dialogue my brain goes through each time i look at this picture: oh look, a nice little squirrel, running on the phone wires in a forest. except, it's not a forest, it's a jungle. and it's not a squirrel, it's a monkey!!

this is mitchell holding a baby python. i held it too, but i looked bad in my python picture. that sounds like i'm making an i-didn't-actually-hold-the-python joke, but it isn't. :)

juan-phillipe, ben, elissa, and natasha on el trampolino.

this is a billboard at the site where the Inca indians surrendered to the spanish conquistadores in...15-something. right there, where we were. the spaniards told them they'd always be well taken care of. famous last words...

mount chimborazo and assorted rocks.

this is a princess bride-esque scene in the quecha village of Colta.

here's another quecha person. this guy's taking a little siesta after his amazing goal.

a few of our little quechua friends. we played with them on this mountain for a while one afternoon. the guy in the front is enjoying a plantain.
justin taking a high-resolution picture of "the equator." also, in this picture justin does not appear to have eyeballs.

another day at EXACTLY greenwich mean time

2006-08-06T15:13:00.000-05:00

just so you can see it: a link to westminster abbey 360-degree views. click on ''panoramic views'' and then click the small links under the map to get a feel for the place. if you care. if not, ride on. :)

so today = another so-so day in london. how sad. i'm in one of the biggest/most famous cities in the world and it bores me.

we leave for home tomorrow. i don't think i've ever been so glad to be going home. not that our trip has been bad at all, but it seems like well over a month when...yesterday was here. and i am having trouble remembering entire days, entire castles, etc.

i don't know how far we walked today in our futile search for good souvenirs. here is our Epiphany of the Day: london is not cultural. it's just like america, only they talk a little differently and have a longer history. ok, a longer and somewhat cooler history. the history seems to be pretty much what sets them apart. on the other hand, in scotland/ireland/wales, we were able to buy very cool stuff that was cultural and cool, because they had these distinct cultures that carried over into the present. here, all the souvenirs are either little statues or keychains of fuzzy-hat guys, big ben, the london eye, and the tower bridge; and a hundred thousand t-shirts and baseball caps that say MIND THE GAP; and of course pens, postcards, shot classes, and red metal telephone booth coin-banks. not exactly the cultural/unique assortment i was looking for. but it is sunday and i think a lot of the cute little stores we wanted to visit were closed. tomorrow morning we're going to The Map Store. probably one of the coolest places i've seen so far (at least from the outside).

things we did do today:

ate ice cream that was actually frozen whipped cream (so deceptive)
went to the ''famous'' places called picadilly circus and oxford street which are supposed to be good shopping streets (that means exclusive, expensive stores with clothes and watches and leather stuff, not souvenirs)
probably walked at least five miles, likely more
rode dozens of miles of tube (underground train) which was surprisingly simple
visited harrod's, like the biggest mall in the world or something, quite unimpressive really
walked a LONG way to buckingham palace, only to realize today is one of those ''rare occasions'' when they don't have the changing of the guard ceremony
took pictures of the weird fuzzy-hat guys anyways
walked a little ways out onto london bridge, which was incredibly boring and seems to be one of those things that is pretty much just famous for being famous
walked to the tower bridge and walked across it and even went up into the tower

i just want to be home with people i know, where i can drive my own car on my own schedule wherever i want, and go to my own job and wear my other clothes and not pay for internet or sit in a smelly tube car ever again. :)

i have learned a lot so far. it's been such a whirlwind i think many of the lessons probably flew by me as i read a street map or a bus schedule. i guess that's how most of life goes. anyways, i am still really enjoying the compact self-sufficiency and portability my backpack brings. but, it weighs a LOT more now. :)

also, like i said before, england does not seem to be a cultural place at all. i kind of thought it would be this way, but this reinforces my desire to NOT study here or anywhere else that could commonly be confused for home. booooring.

i shall not write again until i am back home. it might be a while. :) once again, many thanks for your prayers, which will also be appreciated tomorrow, as we cross the ocean once more.

officially almost done

2006-08-05T15:24:00.000-05:00

last night we traveled to oxford from wales. it was a lovely trip, although very boring and a little frustrating at the end as we weren't sure what to do when we arrived in oxford. but we found katie's dorm just fine. it was really fun to see her, although it's always like a wrinkle in the time-space continuum when you see someone you know from one place, in a totally different place. it's like a strange anachronism.

i like the word anachronism. ana-means not, or against. chron- refers to time. and of course we all know our favorite suffix is probably -ism. i know mine is. i won't even bother explaining it. so, an anachronism is something that is out of its time. and there isn't really a word that means out of space. but that's the closest thing i've got for you right now.

just in case you didn't come here for a linguistics lesson, here's what happened today and yesterday. after we got to katie's dorm she showed us around parts of Oxford. we took lots of awesome pictures, which isn't saying much since i think the plentiful architecture makes it almost impossible to take a bad picture. i will post some of these later.

after our mini-tour, we went to this pub with katie's oxford program friends. they were supposedly having a disco but the place was really stupid and small and loud and smoky. so natalie, katie and i, and a couple more girls, ended up at a nice little bar with a couple of cute guys. hehe. that doesn't sound like me. here, bars and pubs and clubs are a completely accepted aspect of culture, far more so than in the US, at least the part of it i'm from. i mean, the part of it from which i am. :) so when i say ''we went in this bar'' it doesn't really have the connotation amongst christians here that it *might* at home.

anyways, we had a lot of fun and the guys were complete gentlemen and they were very intelligent. one guy was from italy and wasn't as proficient in his english. but it was fun trying to communicate, especially when the light bulbs come on quite dramatically and everyone has a good laugh. there was also plenty of culture-, language- and accent-mocking going on. we learned a lot about stereotypes of americans in england and how most english people have never been to scotland. what?? it was a fun evening and after we all returneth to the dorm, we talked and made fun of ireland some more. hehe.

this morning natalie and i took a bus to london. it wasn't quite two hours. we had quite the afternoon, for, thou recallest oure right honorable strategie of fynding travelle brochures, and decyding upon a hostell, when we do arrive atte our good destynation? well, that didn't work out so well in london. they don't like tourists and we asked three people before someone was able to direct us to a tourism information center. long story short, we wore the heavy burden of our backpacks until nearly six in the evening. i don't even want to guess how many miles we walked. once again, the confusion was not our fault. but fear not, for amidst our wanderings, we stumbled across westminster abbey. which must be nothing less than divine providence, for the abbey was pretty much the one place i REALLY wanted to see in london, and we accidentally found it. so i went inside by myself (natalie wasn't very excited but i think she just wanted to go hang out with the hippies in the antiwar demonstration going on outside).

i don't know how much you know about the abbey. but just in case you've never heard of it, it's world famous and it's been there in some form or another since 1066. pretty much every royal person in England since that time has been crowned there. i can't even begin to tell you how beautiful and rich it is. the audio tour plays choir music and i am not a teary person but....yeah. :) i spent almost two hours inside and could have spent a lot more.

i hope to tell you more about the abbey later, but the internet cafe is about to close so it will have to wait. oh, we did find a hotel, finally, and are planning plenty of shopping tomorrow, last-hurrah-style. :)

oh, and while i was waiting in line for the abbey, i heard Big Ben chime two pm. :) it was beautiful. also there was a massinormous anti-war demonstration going on right outside the abbey. oh yeah, that's the one i think natalie went to while i was busy being pious and ponderous in the abbey. curiouser and curiouser.

i will be very glad to be home.

ME

a pleasant day in wales

2006-08-03T16:29:00.000-05:00

today was our first day to relax somewhat. yes, it was a full day, but we slept until like 8.00 and took in two very pleasant attractions. first we visited a place called Caerphilly Castle. this one definitely took the prize for coolest castle so far. true, we've only been inside a couple, but when you think ''medieval castle'' you probably think of this one. features of Caerphilly Castle include, but are not limited to, the following:

a moat
concentric defense structure :)
it was built in the 1500's and is still mostly like it was then
it has some ruined/fallen walls, some crooked ones, and some perfectly intact ones
lots of outer walls and watch towers
you can climb on it and explore it
acres of green picnic-ready grass around the moat
no overly zealous tour guides telling you NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING
nothing that says NO PHOTOGRAPHY
windy circular stairways that you can go on
no gold/velvet/plush/delicate stuff behind red silk ropes
a very impressive Great Hall with fireplaces bigger than people

that was this morning. the afternoon was spent at a place called Llancaiach Fawr. (we still have no idea how to pronounce it.) it's an old mansion circa 1540 that has been fully refurnished (with the servants and everything) to appear like it did during the civil war of 17-something. everyone was in character as servants, cook butcher, recordkeeper, etc. their heavy welsh accents and medieval-english vocabularies made it hard to understand and it seemed really cheesy at first. but they took us through the manor and explained what each room was for, as well as a lot of the actual history of the place and of Welsh life in general. we learned a lot and the people were really funny. what a family-friendly attraction (except for a few of the jokes...we didn't get all of them). :)

i really like the language here. it's europe's oldest living language and it sounds old and mysterous. it reminds of me of the language in Lord of the Rings. for example, mae mynediad i'r digwyddiadau wedi ei gynnwys yng nghost y mynediad os ni nodir fel arall simply means admission to events is included unless otherwise stated. i just like to look at it. and it's quite the experience to hear someone speak it. all the road signs and brochures are in both languages.

the rather unpleasant part of our day was spending probably five hours either on buses or at bus stations. oh the horrors of public transportation and infinitely confusing bus schedules. :)

the towns here are so lovely. the streets are clean and 'tidy' and the houses are all made of stone and the people are very willing to help us. a lot of people have just come up to (you'd almost think we look/sound foreign) and offered guidance to bus stations, hostels, etc. also, most people smile as if by default. this seems like such a pleasant, happy area. several older couples have started conversations with us and are (almost annoyingly) eager to divulge the treasures their country has to offer. it seems to be a shame that this very proud but unpretentious people, with their unique and distinct history and language, can't even claim Wales as a sovereign nation. no, i don't know a whole lot about it. but i think they should be.

that's today's news. thanks again for your prayers and thoughts.
MOI

oh, give me a home...

2006-08-02T11:42:00.000-05:00

well, frequenters of my little corner of cyberspace, here i am, finally, communicating to you from a secure undisclosed location deep in the heart of Cardiff, Wales! sorry you haven't heard from me like i promised. but time being the insanely precious commodity it is here, blogging is normally the last thing on my mind (at least, the last thing next to ''clean clothes would be nice''). so in the interests of said precious commodity, i'll just share some observations and thoughts about the trip so far.

so far we've been in seven airports and two foreign countries (four countries if you still think Scotland and Wales are real countries). we've talked with people from all over the globe...canada, australia, russia, the middle east, france, norway, chicago, germany, and of course the bonny scots, irish, british and welsh.

i kind of like living out of my little backpack. i didn't take one of those insanely large ones because even though it'd be nice to be able to sleep in it like a snail, i like to be able to travel standing up and not lying on my back with my arms and legs wiggling around like a centipede. anyways, i like it because i never have to be without anything. if i need it, it's right there. No 'i left it at home' or 'it's still in my car.' it's total, utter self-reliance. which is tiring. also, we have been to spontaneous and beyond...which is also exhausting unless you plan it right. :)

some impressions of where we've been so far...

ireland in general: let's just say we don't blame our ancestors for LEAVING ireland. (no really, i know there's good stuff to see, we just missed it...ALL...and managed to spend plenty of money in the process.) people=not friendly, and not customer oriented at ALL. (are they communists?!?)
dublin: a fun city, lots of night life and loud people from all over the globe...very energetic but full of the super-commercialized irish culture. which doesn't feel like real culture at all.
airports: no fun to sleep in, even with a nice sheet set. especially if someone already took those nice cushy cafe booths or that nice dark corner under the stairs. i still hate airports.
edinburgh: so full of history and stuff to learn, you don't know where to start. it's overwhelming, and you have bagpipe guys and William Wallace wandering around raising money for cancer research. a beautiful city, with a lot of different layers of history within it and the inspiration for a lot of famous literature.
scotland in general: very, very friendly and helpful. i could listen to them talk forever. they are not too fond of the english for obvious reasons, and their country pride seemed a lot more genuine and less garish than that of the irish. the tour we took of the Highlands was awesome...with giant green mountains, clear lochs, and fog-shrouded castles perched on the mountainsides.
the mostly deserted ghetto bus station in Scotland where we spent an hour and a half in the rain waiting for our connecting train that we didn't even have tickets for and we hoped they'd let us on anyways, while trying not to stare at a couple making out: i don't want to talk about it.
hostels: no bad experiences so far, except for sharing a queen bed between the three of us.
airplanes: kind of fun, really, especially when you sit next to a cool british woman who gives you her phone number in case you run into trouble in London. and the food was even good.
wales: the people here are very friendly and very beautiful....the kids especially, with their fair skin and clear features, are quite lovely. the country itself is pretty but not so remarkable so far, with most of it reminding me of midwestern US.

well friends, foes and countrymen, thanks for reading. the weird computer i'm on doesn't have a USB, so pictures will have to wait. i should be back on the precious banks of the mother country in six short (but oh so long) days. in between now and then: London sometime, maybe oxford sometime. who knows. :) your prayers for our safety and wisdom are very much appreciated!
cheers
ME

the best laid plans...are about to happen

2006-07-26T18:28:00.000-05:00

so, i leave for england tomorrow morning. flight leaves around noon and i pick natalie up at 6 a.m. we arrive in london early the morning of day after tomorrow. so by this time tomorrow, i will be somewhere above the ocean. i will update as much as i can whilst i am there. cheers!

the weekend

2006-07-25T11:48:00.000-05:00

ok, i just found this (17 august 06) and realized it hadn't ever been posted. so if you happen to read through my archives on a regular basis, that's why it mysteriously appeared like a ghost-letter from the past. :)

last week's weekend was lived to the fullest. here is a skeletal overview of it.

friday i stayed over at natalie's house. she and i and a bunch of our friends went to these campgrounds and took several hours to light a decent fire. then we walked in the dark to the edge of the lake and followed this little peninsula into the middle of the lake. we laid down on our towels (i don't remember why we had towels) and watched the stars. it was a perfectly clear night and several shooting stars were spotted, as well as two satellites, four airplanes, and possibly a constellation of Bob Dylan. by the time we returned to our campfire, the coals were nice and glowing, but we ate our chocolate and marshmallows cold and raw because we were too lazy to cut marshmallow sticks for s'mores. :) it was a good evening and we didn't get back until 3 or so.

next morning, i drove a car full of people several hours to kansas city. we visited this nice italian restaurant at the Plaza and had some cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. we then proceeded to the wedding. which was...a normal wedding, i guess. short and to the point. after this i went to Worlds of Fun. believe it or not, i'd never been there before. we did all the big fun rides such as the Patriot, the new one, and it was great. one of the boys i was with got a little sick from one of the rides, and the stupid rent-a-cop thought he was drunk. (he must have been pretty NOT busy, too, because he felt the need to call two-thirds of the park staff over to see what a good cop he was for finding the real bad guy.) anyways, Grant got better and we ate at the Waffle house down the road. which was itself an experience, because the waitress called us Hon. i love it. it was nearing one a.m. by the time we got back to the hotel, and we were planning on driving back for church the next day. justin did a good job of keeping me more or less awake during the three hour ride. i got back to natalie's about 4 and slept until 10:25. church was at 11...and i made it in plenty of time!

that's my weekend. it was fun. i hope you liked reading this distilled version of it. i have nothing profound to say, either.

some news

2006-07-18T10:35:00.000-05:00

i don't think i told you all that i cut my hair off. it was real long, now it's not. at all. it's above my shoulders. i miss the rest of it, a lot.

in other news, i'm officially moving into town at the beginning of september. i'll be living with two other girls from my church, in a really nice duplex which is mostly furnished (except for my room, obviously). my bedroom is in the basement, which is nice because i don't like the morning light to disturb my sleep. i'll have most of the basement to myself, more or less...there's a living room area, and a kind of rec/exercise area by it. i also get my own bathroom, which will be a First in my life! if i had to take a snapshot of every major life event, past, present and future, they might go something like this:

a) my DNA coming into existence
b) being born
c) learning to talk/walk
d) starting school
e) becoming a christian
f) getting my own bathroom
g) graduating college
h) getting married
i) having kids
j) dying

i have a big family, ok? we never even got our own time in the bathroom! WE HAD TO TAKE BATHS AT THE SAME TIME!!! (ok, not....really)

i'm currently in that semi-giddy state that i always thought would come right before moving in someplace. you know, i get to ask all these questions like "what colors will the bathroom towels be" and "should i get some new stuff for my walls" and "do i need a new bookshelf." you think i'm being sarcastic, but i'm not. i'm seriously excited about this. don't be surprised if i become Ms. Domestic in the months to come. i might not hang out with you because i'm so excited to have my own bathroom. toilet bowl cleaning is way more exciting when it's your OWN freaking toilet bowl!

why do you people not comment any more? is it because i'm not posting stuff that takes you ten hours to read? 'cause i can do that again too, if you want. :) i still have lots of thoughts. i don't keep a journal, you know.

i'm doomed

2006-07-12T16:14:00.000-05:00

in my constant perusal of travel sites, i find lots of interesting places to go. you know, cool little restaurants or cheap hostels. today, though, i have found one place which i'd like to stay for at least a month, preferably two or three. it's a little bigger, and it'd be hard to miss. it's called Iceland.

i hope you don't picture iceland as a giant barren glacier, because it's not. it's the land of fire and ice. FIRE AND ICE, people! volcanoes, mountains, northern lights, whales, green cliffs...just peruse yourself a few of these pictures and THEN tell me you'd rather spend a semester in london.

i thought the history, zeal and beauty of Scotland made it the coolest place i'd ever want to go. then i discovered the complexity and uniqueness of russia. now i am trying to figure out how i can take a month off of work next summer to be in rugged, intense, brilliant iceland.

in other news, i leave for england in two weeks and one day, exactly! (although, after looking at the pictures of iceland, the lands of anglo-saxony in general look a little boring and stuffy.) however, something tells me i will love the southern coast of ireland, and now that we're thinking of scrapping our little Paris outing (due to time constraints), maybe we'll have time to head up to the northern end of scotland, or take a ferry ride to the Isle of Man. it's like the slogan for missouri or some other lame state. "possibilities: endless!"

flowers

2006-07-10T16:31:00.000-05:00

just a few thoughts...

*******

anyone who knows me knows that i like flowers. a lot. i can't explain why i like them, because for except for use in bribery, they are completely useless. my (dominant) utilitarian side balks at the thought of spending money on something that is expensive, useless, and which will die in four days or less.

nevertheless, flowers usually get me thinking. why do i like them? it's simply because of their beauty. when i stare at a flower i realize: God made that flower just the way He wanted it. its purpose and highest calling is, simply and magnificently, to be beautiful.

with its poetic symmetry, perfumed stamens, and delicate boldness, a flower shouts to us that our God is truly beautiful; that he loves us enough to give us these millions of tiny tokens of his love; and that there is so much more to life than the practical. beauty is not primarily to be used. it is to be enjoyed, marveled at, appreciated, and loved. it points to something greater. the mystical qualities of beauty are a lot like those of music, but physical beauty is for our eyes instead of our ears. it is spiritual, and can't be accurately measured, completely described or fully understood. so despite a flower's seeming insignificance, it has been given the task of proclaiming the character and love of God, which is revealed through his creation (Romans 1:12).

God alone creates beauty. yes, we mortals can reproduce it through our canvas and clay and words on a page. but when you really consider it, all our attempts at creating beauty -- painting a sunset, for example -- only end up copying something that is already there. "Even King Solomon, in all his splendor, was not clothed like the lilies in the field."

so next time you drive by a ditch full of wild daisies or (if you're lucky) someone hands you a bouquet, you might stop and consider how each one is a gift from God...maybe useless; maybe not.

hehe

2006-07-05T15:23:00.001-05:00

i want you to tell me all the things that are wrong with this conversation. i can count at least 1,553.

scenario: last night i'm laying in bed, almost asleep. my brother was still up. i heard my name floating through the hallways. it's jim. for the record, jim is 18 years old. 18.

jim: nikki! nikki!

me: *wondering what the emergency is, as jim wouldn't wake me up for anything less. right?*

jim (still through the door): are you awake?

me: i guess....yeah.

jim: how do you spell ...(inaudible)...?

me: suspicious?

jim: no, ...(inaudible)...

me: conspicuous?

jim: no! *opens door*

me: wha...?

jim, loudly: HOW DO YOU SPELL VICIOUS?

me, after a few seconds of silence: you did not just wake me up to ask me this.

jim: well, how else would i find out?

me: *groaning* v-i-c-i-o-u-s. [i can't believe i actually told him.]

jim: *writes it down* oh, ok. i just couldn't remember, was it v-i-s-h, or v-i-s-c-h, or...

me: or you could just look it up on the computer, or in a dictionary.

jim: but we don't have Microsoft Word on this computer.

me: *groaning louder* why not try the internet.

jim: oh, they have that on there?

music fix

2006-06-30T15:55:00.000-05:00

today i bought four CDs on amazon. they are as follows, and i quote:

keane - under the iron sea
johnny cash - 16 greatest hits
frank sinatra - reprise - the very good years
nat king cole - the greatest hits

(end quote)

i am thoroughly happy about this recent purchase. the total including shipping: $33.

amazon is so sneaky though. whenever you look at something, they give you little pictures of other appealing "items similar to the one you just viewed." so i usually end up buying a few things, all great deals, but when i got on there to find a Sinatra CD, the others hadn't even crossed my mind (well except for the Keane one). that's just how they work...it gives me goosebumps how they can manipulate people like that!

yes, i made it out alive.

2006-06-27T09:23:00.000-05:00

hey all! so sorry i haven't updated this since i got back from ecuador. i kind of hit the ground running and went to work the next day...where i actually had to *work* (huh??) on stuff that had kind of piled up. i am currently sort of sick of sharing about my trip, because everyone i know has been asking me about it, of course with varying levels of interest and time available to spend listening to my stories. but i know YOU all want to hear a little more than my now-standard response "it was a great experience" that i've reserved for the polite coworkers that know i was away for two weeks and are vaguely suspicious that it was "some kind of religious thing." hehe.

so, the day after my last post, we packed up *some* of our stuff...make that *one backpack* for the entire next week...and made the several-hour trip to our camp in Shell. on the way, we stopped at a catholic church in a town called Banos. the church was pretty much built as a shrine to Mary. Banos is built at the bottom of an active volcano (whose retarded idea was this?!?) and the church contained giant murals recounting stories of how Mary saved faithful catholics from the fury of the eruptions. the church was, of course, very beautiful and ornate in the tradition of historic catholicism. but it was very sad and a little surprising to see the bold idolatry that is the south american catholic church. in their view, mary is the way to heaven, and Christ doesn't really factor in (so his death didn't really accomplish anything). it's north american catholicism that has been watered down (disguised?) to make Mary far less prominent or essential to salvation. i haven't decided if that's good or bad. i mean by all means, get further away from misplaced faith. but i think a lot of the watered-down stuff is very misleading. the point of Christianity is simply Christ's death and resurrection. Mary doesn't significantly factor into the equation, apart from the fact that her virginity means she didn't contribute her own sinful nature to her son. that's an important fact, but it has nothing to do with how we can know God!

so after that philosophically stimulating little excursion (and a wonderful lunch of street-purchased croissants and cheese) we drove another hour or so to our camp near Shell. it is an empty summer camp which is carved out of the jungle and let me tell you, there were some STRANGE noises coming from the trees at night! the camp was incredibly beautiful with several buildings and an outdoor basketball/futbol court. mountains rose up on all sides and they were almost always shrouded in fog (due to the high humidity). we were there for two days, relaxing and just having fun. we visited a jungle-animal wildlife refuge and some other cool places, including a much-hyped but somewhat-disappointing waterfall which took a long rainforest hike to find, but oh well, the hike was beautiful. :)

then we drove up, up, up to a high mountain village called Colta. this was the national-geographic-esque part of our trip. the people there are farmers and the village consisted chiefly of mud huts. everywhere there were women in bright shawls, men in striped ponchos, and herds of pigs, cows and chickens. some little kids even carried littler babies on their backs. we did a lot of work here, but one afternoon (after a delicious (or not) lunch of guinea pig and Coca-cola) we visited an after-school program for about 300 local kids. this was amazing. at first the kids (probably ages 5-12) just kind of stared at us, our white skin and colorful hair. but once they saw that we were friendly, they mobbed us! it was just plain fun...we played duck duck goose, futbol, and the most chaotic game of freeze tag EVER. then they all lined up and we sang to them, and they sang to us. that afternoon was definitely one of the highlights of the entire trip.

after our time in Colta, we visited Mount Chimborazo. now, they tell me that if you measure from the center of the earth (as opposed to from sea level), Chimbo is actually the highest mountain in the world. measured from sea level, it's only marginally smaller than Everest. it took us a couple of days, but we made it to the top! ok not really, but we did hike up to over 16,000 feet and we still had a giant mountaintop towering above us. while we were here, tourists kept asking to take pictures with us! or more like they'd walk over and put their arms around us. i think the only english words they knew were "pretty" and "charming" and "thank you". we definitely laughed about that for a long time.

i don't really know how to wrap this up, except to say we were all very blessed by the trip, particularly the hospitality and generosity of the local people that we stayed with. denise and i are going to get some gifts for our family...we already got matching "MOM" and "DAD" Nebraska mugs for Mauricio and Amanda. what a cool family to stay with!

well that's all for now...i have a lot more to say but due to the perceived short attention span of most of my readers, i am generally trying to cut back on the length of my posts. at least the non-crucial ones. :) thanks for reading, friends.

from ecuador

2006-06-12T18:31:00.000-05:00

hey all! i can hardly believe our trip is almost half way done already...it's been so, so full, but so, so fast so far. we've done a tone of painting,moving furniture, and pouring concrete...all helping to drastically improve the Wink's home. Denise and i are staying at a family's house, about 15 minutes away from here. they are an amazing family with a lot of great stories...many of which we will probably never hear because of the very frustrating language barrier. Mauricio (our "dad's" name) was a in the Colombian army and they have traveled all over the world.

yesterday was a lot of fun...the Winks have church in their house every sunday and about 30 people were here. we did a bilingual Bible study with a capella songs in three languages. it was amazing to hear people singing praises in other tongues...it just makes me so excited for all the singing in heaven one day. after the study, we ate a ton of food, and then went outside and played frisbee and "futbol" (soccer) with some other ecuadorian college-age kids. it was SO much fun! then after the crazy outside games, our group went to "our parents' house" (mauricio's) for filet mignons. that's about the quality of food we've been fed ever since we arrived!

after the filets, we (like 30 of us!) were ushered into their computer/TV room for a little karaoke session (in spanish, of course). then someone turned on "la bamba" and the karaoke quickly evolved into a freestyle dance party, and from there it morphed into a salsa dance lesson! so we all got up and laughed and tried to dance the salsa, and tried to sing in spanish...and laughed at ourselves long into the night. it was one of the coolest things ever.

two nighs ago, we hiked (probably 3 miles) down into this beautiful green jungle-y valley on the outskirts of Quito. there's this really nice restaurant in the bottom, with a river running by it and horses running freely in the wind. :) after a little jumping on the trampoline (yeah, they had a trampoline) we ate beef tenderloins, which were very dramatically served to us on hardened lava rocks....so they were smoking and sizzling when they brought them to us. it was wonderful.

tomorrow we drive to Shell. this is the town that Nate Saint, Jim Elliot & company flew out of when they first had contact with the auca indians. it's right on the edge of The Jungle and hopefully go into it each day.

much more to come, friends! i have to go now. thanks for your prayers!!