I know, I missed 2 days.

I know.  Friends, you have no idea...well, some of you have some idea.  Anyway, big stuff is going on in my family and I just have been too stressed, distracted, and nervous that I haven't been able to concentrate.

I have my sexuality project due tomorrow and I've barely been able to work on it with much thought.  Thankfully, I have most of it done, with a few spaces where it says things like, "And then I'll be talking about THIS REALLY GREAT THING FROM THAT AUTHOR" or "And then I'll go through THE BIBLE VERSES THAT ARE RELEVANT TO THIS POINT."  So, you know, I just have to flesh it out a bit.  And I only checked out, oh, 10 books or so from the library.  I will be skimming, I say.  But I really do plan on teaching this series, so I need to actually do the work.

On top of the family stuff, I've been really flustered by the college students this week, so, on Tuesday, I freaked out & ordered 4 books on college ministry from Amazon.  They came today, and I went up to church to show them to one of my co-leaders &  we're splitting them up to read, for now.  One of them, Ask Me Anything, I started reading for my project, and I'm really loving it.  It's one of those ones that I want to either be able to download right into my brain or hand out to every student and sit them down & make them read it immediately, quizzing them for comprehension.  So, um, it's useful.

I hope to get my project done & turned in on time, though I've let my professors know that I may be a couple days late.  Pray for me, Seth, & my family, will you?  Thanks.

My own words- they both delight and annoy me

Clearly, I'm fond of my own voice, be it verbal or written, being that I blog, post a lot online, talk a lot, and speak in public.  But I tell you, I was so sick of reading my paper.  I always do this: I work and work and cram and stay up, and the day the paper is due, I am so disgusted by the whole thing and tired that I don't want to read it one more time, even though I know that I should.  In a better-ordered world, I would get done ahead of time and give myself a few days of distance before going back to read.

Today was okay, though.  I stayed up all night, which went surprisingly smoothly, though the big dog was confused and annoyed.  Every time I got up to go to the bathroom or anything, he stood, walked towards the bedroom, and looked at me.  When I returned to the living room, he'd just give me the stink eye & plop back down on the floor with a sigh.  (Yes, my dog sighs.  He's like his mother.  Actually, both of my dogs sigh.  I wonder if I influence them too much.   Or maybe we need some more oxygen in this joint.)

Anywhoodle, I finished finished with my paper around 11am, but I was still up until noon:thirty.  I was only able to doze for a couple hours, but I eventually read the paper out loud, which was new, and it helped.  I changed a few things here and there and, overall, I think it's a good paper.  My introductory paragraph blows, but I wasn't in the mood to work on it anymore.  See?  My process isn't that great. 

What is good about my process is that it integrates a high-pressure situation and laziness in one (or two) caffeine-fueled all-nighters.  The reason it takes me so long is partially because I torture myself and it takes me too long to just freaking start typing the actual document.  Once I get going, though, it isn't a difficult process, it's just like pulling teeth to get me to focus & do it.  Especially as I get closer to the end and feel like I've accomplished something, I start going online to check FB or twitter after half a page- after a paragraph- after a good sentence- Oh!  I wrote "In the words of!" time for a break!  I annoy myself sometimes.

I have seen some improvement in my school habits over the past year, and I hope to do a better job in the fall.  Part of the problem was the quickness with which my professor wanted these papers, not giving us the expected month & a half after the end of class. 

So I am freeeeeee!!!  Kind of.  For a while.  I have my sexuality project due on Friday, but I'm excited about that & like it.  I don't think it will be very difficult.  (Famous last words?  I hope not.)

Oh, my itchy ears

Update: they're still itchy on & off, but I've been putting lavender oil in them, which really helps.  I could use olive oil, too, but the lavender oil needs to be used.  I guess that, when using q-tips to get the water out of your ears, you end up getting rid of a lot of wax, and wax lubricates your ears.  So, if you don't have any moisture in your ears, the skins dries out and it's like torture.  Now I know!

I have a suggestion

At our young adults group tonight, we were having a brainstorming session to see what subjects and issues the members of our group have on their hearts.  When we planned this, I think that we were a little afraid that people wouldn't really respond, and we also didn't want it to only be a list-making session.  We wanted some teaching content, too.  Reluctantly (I think), my fellow teacher offered to lead this session and try to come up with an introductory session and biblical basis for our as-yet-undefined series of talks.

She did an amazing job.  The whole night was powerful and awesome.  I love our group!  She had us look at Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council, showing that circumcision was a HUGE deal to the early church, something which was a crucial, cultural issue about the direction of the faith.  Our discussion, then, was about how all the issues we face should be formed and informed by our faith.  Nothing should be compartmentalized, and we need to, as a group, contend with different topics and discern how to apply biblical principles to  our culture.  It was a fabulous, powerful segue into our brainstorming.

And the brainstorming really wasn't that:  it wasn't people thinking and pausing and tapping their pens trying to come up with any old thing to say.  It was really a sharing session.  People talked about what was on their hearts and what they're struggling with right now, and everything had to do with our Christian life.  I expected controversial things to come up or even political things, but everyone wants to talk about how to live out our faith, how to stay strong in the face of temptation, how to surrender to God more.  It was awesome. 

Song lyrics!

I'm really tired, so this shall be a bullet-pointed post to sum up today.

• Training for youth group volunteers this morning, which was at the home of a family from church which was LOVELY.  They have a great yard, vines of their own & their yard backs up to a bigger vineyard, with a mountain behind.  Awesome.
• I'm going to have two other adult leaders for my small group this year, and our two student leaders are going to be a lot of fun.  All of the student leaders are really excited about leading and I think they're going to be really strong this year.
• My ears are really, really itchy.
• We had tacos for lunch at the training, and they were fabulous, I tell you. 
• I've started writing my final C.S. Lewis paper, and I'm going to finish it tomorrow, I say!  I'm going to go to bed early tonight, skip church tomorrow, and work on it all day. 
• Our college event was really good.  We had 7 college students show up for dinner, which was good, so about 14 of us total had pizza and talked, then we went to the church to play Rock Band.  Some more people joined us there, and it was lots of fun, of course.  The beauty was that it was an early night-- we started with dinner at 4 and the last of us taking down the xbox & putting the church back in order left church around 10pm.  We're all feeling old & tired tonight.
• I love playing Rock Band with the church friends, because everyone gets into it, especially a lot of the guys.  They're jumping up and down, screaming and singing, and acting like lunatics.  It makes me smile a lot.  
• I have the paper due Monday and my sexuality project due Friday.  Then I am freeeeeeeeeee!  Until the 30th of September, at least,  I'm going to see some family, read a ton, and clean a ton.  I'll have to restrain myself from blatantly throwing away half of our possessions, since I'm so sick of the mess.  I do hope to at least put a good amount of stuff in storage.  It will be grand.

Goodnight!  Oh, and my ears are still really itchy. 

Oh, that's why I'm so busy

Whenever I feel overrun by life and have to explain to someone why I didn't return their call or something similar, I feel like a bit of a baby.  I think, "C'mon, what do you really do all week that you're that busy?" 

Well, I'm in ministry.  I just realized that this week.  I'm not paid, and I have friends on my team helping me, but I'm the main voice for the college students right now, so I'm sort of a college pastor.  I've known (lightly) for a while that I was a pastor because a)we all are, kinda and b)I'm actually involved in ministry.  But as I fret about events, about meeting with and connecting with students both high school and college, as I search the web looking for articles to read and things to study and resources for drawing college students to church, I realize that I'm already doing it.

For the past couple years, I've thought of myself as an unemployed, part-time student who volunteers with a couple things at church, so I always try to justify my sense of pressure or overwhelmed-ness.  But I'm in my career already.  It's on.  Even though I'm still in school.  Even though I don't get paid.  I'm one of the teachers for young adults, I'm taking on some teaching (really more like facilitating/leading) roles for high school, I love all of these teenagers and twenty-somethings to bits and pieces, and there is a weight on my heart for them.  I'm in. 

So, yeah.  I'm busy.  Part of me can't wait for school to be over (only 1.5 more years!) so I can concentrate on ministry & possibly be paid to worry & read books and articles and listen to podcasts and fret and plan & meet, etc.  Another part of me knows, though, that it (ministry) will grow to fill whatever time I can give it.  It will suck my brain power and my heart and my time, and having more time will just mean more work and more heartache. 

I'm tempted to have a cheesy closing line like, "But it will all be worth it," or something like that for closure, but I'm more blank right now.  It is what it is.  It is worth it, as long as I keep it in perspective, because this is where I'm called.  God is making a way for me and I walk in it with faith and a nervous stomach.  I know that there will be exciting times and worn down times.  I know that I have no idea what God has in store. 

As I move into this new space, I'll need to realign some things.  Shift my baggage around a bit to get comfortable for the journey.  Learn to look at myself and my life in a new way.  Me & God can do this. 

Deep breathing, venting, talking to friends. Oh, and alcoholic beverages and loud music.

I was angry today.  Nutshell: I got one of my papers back and, though I didn't get a bad grade, my professor's comments and demeanor (is there such thing as a written demeanor?  I say yes.) just pissed me off.  I almost threw a tantrum, I tell you.  I yelled "I hate you!" and I do believe that a plastic cup was thrown into the sink with much force.  Gah.  I just had to get out of the house. So I went up to church where I knew I'd be able to vent at some people who have been in similar situations.  I listened the Deftones quite loudly on the way there, which was quite calming, and the venting helped.  I talked to my friends for about an hour, then got some alcohol & potato chips on the way home.  Yes, I felt like a lush stopping at the corner store to buy 2 cans of hard lemonade & a small bag of chips (a last-minute addition) at 2pm.  But it was lovely.

The paper that is due on Monday should be more pleasing to him, and I will be glad to be done with it.  I release all expectations.  I have always been fine with not getting As in seminary.  All will be well.  I should not have been surprised, yet I am flabbergasted.  That is all.

haunted

I may have mentioned this before, but we really want kids now.  Maybe I should take out the "really," because it comes and goes.  Today is a pro-kids day.  I see the assorted "First Day of School" pics on facebook, and while some don't do anything to me, others tug at me.  I looked at a family picture of a friend from high school, and in it, one of her three kids is kind of giving her a goofy look, and he's so cute and her husband is holding a baby and her older daughter is laughing and I just want that.  I wish I would have wanted it before or knew I'd want it now.

And then there are the days, like today, where I wake up from a baby/kid dream, and she (it's almost always a "she") haunts me all day.  One time it was a baby girl, but she was kind of big, and I was blowing on her cheeks and she was laughing and we were having such a good time.  I missed her all day.

Today, it was a little girl, probably 2, I think Hispanic, but maybe Arabic.  She is short and brown, with curly, dark hair.  In my dream, she was in a car with her dad, and he was waiting for someone to come watch her.  I looked at her for a bit, walked away, then walked back.  I sort of reached for her and said, "I'll watch her."  It wasn't much, but it was powerful.  I didn't think about her a lot throughout the day- just a time here or there, but then tonight, on the way home from the gym, I just really wanted her.  And I cried on my way home, and I'm crying now.  But it's late, and maybe I'm just tired.  But I don't like these days when I want kids so much and I can't do anything about it.  I just have to trust God and his timing.  And tomorrow, I may feel totally different and think that we'd be great continuing to not have kids.  I will admit, though, that the pro-kid days are multiplying.

It feels a little like this.

Not so bad

Today I read A Severe Mercy and it was nowhere near as bad as I thought.  See, based upon what I had heard about it and then after reading The Problem of Pain, I was starting to be afraid that Seth and I have been entirely too happy, so God is going to kill one of us or throw some horrendous hardship into our lives in order to strengthen our faith.  I don't know.  I realize that these aren't entirely new thoughts.  Sometimes, when I think about how great my life is, I get nervous, so I think about the list of things that have been hard or wrong or trying in my life, just to make sure they're there and I am not too happy.  It's messed up, I know. 

I thought it was done, but I guess that trusting God truly and knowing that he doesn't play mind games takes time.  As I'm writing this, I realize that this "too happy" nonsense had taken the place of the previous ingrained fear of "don't tell God what  you don't want to do, or he'll be sure to set you right on that course!"  You know, the old stories you'd hear about a man saying, "God, I'll do anything for you, just don't send me to Africa!"  And, of course, after kicking and screaming, the man finally goes to Africa, like God wanted him to, and all is great.  The is the kind of spiritual manipulation I grew up with!  I know I'm not the only one. 

So, the book wasn't all that bad.  I guess in my mind-games land, I saw that the couple in the book were actually quite obsessed with one another and worshiped their love.  We don't do that.  I don't know.  There are still things floating around in my head.  Once again, I'll let you know if I come up with anything concrete.

The Problem of Pain

Friends, I didn't write last night because I was tired & also because I was troubled.  I finished up The Problem of Pain, and one of Lewis's main ideas is that God gives/allows pain for our own good.  We get too comfy and think we're secure in our cozy lives, and we don't look to him at all.  He knows that what is best for us is to be surrendered to him, so he shakes us up a little.  Lewis also believes that we have to live by natural laws in order to have a stable universe, therefore miracles must be rare.  So, some things just happen, and some things (all things?) are allowed or sent by God to cause us to turn to him. 


This is all something I have to chew on a bit & work my head around.  It mostly makes sense, but then I get stuck again.  It's not as if the question of evil & pain is going to be completely solved, but I still want more.  One of the things I really like, though, is that he doesn't buy into that rubbish about it all being for God's glory.  When people offer that as comfort to someone hurting, it makes you think, "Well, bully for you, God!  I'm glad you're getting a kick out of this."  He points out that God is goodness and we are the objects of his love.  It is all for our good. 

Perhaps later, after my paper is written, I'll give you some of the gems I've come up with or the really great quotes from his books.  Later.

For now, I'm thinking I'm not going to meet all of my homework goals for the day again, and I think it's due to dairy.  Gah.  Yes, I'm getting over being sick, but it should be gone by now, and I think that gluten & dairy don't help. 

Movie thoughts & complaints

Being sick this past week, I watched a lot of movies.  Seven, to be exact, and I cannot remember the first one I watched no matter how hard I try, and I've been trying for a few days. 

But one of the movies I watched was The Bounty Hunter, and if you know me at all, you're surprised.  I really don't like romantic comedies (for the most part.  It's just easier to say that, like short stories & poetry, I don't like them.) and have very little tolerance for Gerard Butler.  But I realized that I also can hardly stand Jennifer Aniston anymore. 

I was trying to figure out what it is that irks me about her when I decided that it was the fact that she just keeps playing the same, just a step above Rachel Greene character in every freaking movie she's been in for the past 5 years or so.  And even her "real life" conversations and appearances just feel fake and forced.  I don't know.  So today, I happened upon this article on ew.com, in which Owen Glieberman talks about Jen and Michael Cera as the actors that most people harp on about always doing the same thing.  He calls the complainers on the carpet a bit because, if we think back to great actors of the past, such as my beloved Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, we will find that they were always the same.  He says that before "range" was such a big deal, that is exactly what people went to the movies to see-- their favorite actors being the characters they like. 

Being that he called out 2 of my all-time faves, I had to think about his argument a bit.  I do believe that one of the big differences is that at least for myself, and I would wager a good number of the movie viewing public of today, we did not see those actors's movies when they came out.  We weren't going to see 5 Cary Grant movies in a row and thinking, "Sheesh!  They're all the same!"  We pick old movies out of a hat and watch what tickles our fancy whenever we like.  And, yes, the movie-going public has changed, I'd wager. 

His reasoning isn't wrong, though.  He does fault the mind-numbing (he says "teeth-grinding") crappy writing of Jen's chosen genre, romantic comedy.  Meaning that if the writing of the movies were better, we would be happier to watch the sunny, perfect Jen character.  Possibly.  I think that, just possibly, she's been doing it for entirely too long, though.  She's still trying to do the cutesy, innocent but wild young thang, and it doesn't work anymore.

Michael Cera?  Love love love him in Arrested Development.  He's great.  But, seriously, none of his characters have been any different than George Michael.  At all.  At least Aniston isn't playing exactly Rachel.  And I do think that, were I to sit down and watch a bunch of Cary Grant movies in a row, I would tire of his fast-talking, suavely handsome shtick, and I would need a break.  I know I can't handle too much Kate in a row.  The woman grates!  That is likely, Mr. Glieberman, why she was considered box office poison for a good portion of her career. 

In conclusion, I finally looked up the movies I rented because it was bugging me.  They are as follows:
Death at a Funeral  Meh. 
The Book of Eli Meh that was boring to look at.
The Ghost Writer Stupid with pretty faces in it.
Leap Year  Not any worse or better than most romcoms.  I am slightly embarrassed for the actors, though.
The Bounty Hunter Gah.  Not as painful as I thought it would be, but bad.
Invictus kind of boring, but I was quite moved at the end & may have shed a tear.
The Proposal I had already seen it & it was kind of a back-up.  Hey- Ryan Reynolds is pretty.

Huh? Oh, yes.

I'm blogging early tonight, friends, as I actually feel plucky & writerly right now, so I thought I'd get to it.

My mind is fairly clear, so I'm slowly working on The Problem of Pain, and as with much C.S. Lewis non-fiction, I'm alternating head-scratching with vigorous highlighting.  There are times when I just want to shake him (if shaking a dead man would produce any desirable results) and say, "What does this mean?!  I think that you're just using a lot of words and not actually saying anything!"  He's the pinnacle of academic mumbo-jumbo somtimes, I tell you.  Quite often, though, the very next paragraph makes me get out the pen and the highlighter, and I underline and star and copy into my notes and read out loud to Seth.  "Aha!" I think.  "This is the answer to everything!" 

Life with C.S. Lewis.  What I'm doing for my paper is taking The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed and comparing them, trying to get a picture of his theodicy over time.  I've read AGO a few times, and I love it.  It is what you read in the depths of despair because it comforts you to know that someone who seemed to have it all figured out felt many of the same things.  Screamed and cried and wanted to tear God apart out of their pain.  This is my first time reading TPOP, and I'm learning a lot from it.  It seems that maybe this is to read more distanced from the grief, either before or after.  Things to remember and hold onto when it's time to move on.  Time to get back into life and re-engage with God and his goodness. 

I won't read about politics. I won't read about politics. I won't read...

Oh, friends, but is it ever hard.  This mosque near Ground Zero thing has everyone's panties in a knot and I have been thisclose to posting things on facebook and getting snotty and generally breaking my new rule. 

I have given in and read a few articles that people have posted on the non-panty-twisted side, one of which was basically a map of the area, what is already there, and a big "shut up" to the freak-out crowd. 

I find it difficult because it is one of the cases where I see people betraying much of what they claim to hold dear and just being racist, xenophobic.....people.  (Almost swore there.) 

So I'm going to keep away from the articles, even the ones I'm sure I'll agree with, because I just. cannot. handle. reading one word that comes out of Sarah Palin's mouth.  Among others. 

And I'm already angry and snotty and going against what I really think is important.  But it's my blog and I just wanted to vent a little bit. 

Now I'll go do something productive, like reading The Problem of Pain and work on explaining this whole theodicy thing once and for all.  You're welcome. 

sicky is crabby

Friends, I didn't blog yesterday and almost didn't blog today because I'm sick.  Yesterday I was able to make myself do some homework, but I haven't yet today.  I've watched 6 movies & have one more on deck.  I haven't liked any of them, even though I can't really remember what I watched yesterday.  Sinus Crab, I say.

So what did I read today and yesterday?  I finished The Necromancer yesterday, and of course it isn't the last book in the series.  Sheesh.  Today I have only read a tiny bit of some corny chick lit book I have, I've squinted at the redbox trying to read movie titles in the sunlight, and I spun around in circles reading aisle directories because my Target has been redone. 

Yes, I left the house today, and it was kind of meh.  Hot out.  Felt gross.  Now I'm sitting here, having bleached my hair, trying to decide if I'm going to listen to some lectures or not.  I'm thinking about doing next week's homework now so I can concentrate on the next C.S. Lewis paper when my brain allows me to concentrate. 

Fascinating entry, I know!!  I just didn't want to let another day go by without blogging.  There will be more coherent thoughts and interesting thoughts tomorrow, I promise.  Thank you for putting up with this.

Two! Two! Two for the price of one!

Oh, my dear friends, if you haven't visited Yosemite National Park, you need to do so.  I was there for 4 days and it was dreamy. 

This year, instead of having the big hike on the day before we left, we did it our second day out, and I think that worked well.  Everyone but one injured person wanted to do Cloud's Rest, so we all set out at the crack of dawn to climb 10,000 feet.  (Injured friend rode her bike around the valley all day.) 

My dear, sweet, 14 year old goddaughter could barely stand to be so pokey with me on the stairs & steep climbs, so we were hardly together.  In a nice turn of events, though, the groups did not all tear off into the mountains and leave each other in the dust, but everyone waited for the others at a few different meeting spots.  Also lovely was the fact that I wasn't in the back!!  For most of the time, there were 4 or 5 people behind me.  Awesome.  I could really tell the difference in being in better shape and being better prepared.

Nevertheless, I did not go all the way to the top of Cloud's Rest.  Around 2.5 or 3 miles from the top (according to the signs that LIE all along the trail), I was starting to get blisters on the backs of my feet, it was freaking hot, and all I saw before me was unrelenting steepness.  I turned to my friend, Tim, who was the only one around for miles & said, "You know, Tim.  I am totally over this and fine with turning around!"  This being his first gigantic hike up a mountain, he concurred and suggested that we find a shady spot to eat our lunch before heading down the mountain.  Splendid. 

The Cloud's Rest hike, once it splits off from the trail to Half Dome, is nowhere near as popular, so it was nice to have absolutely no one around sometimes. We ate our lunch, I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders, and refused to be guilted by those behind us who said, "We've made it this far, we might as well go on."  Go on, then!  Have at you!

Full of optimism and naivete, Tim and I slowly wandered our way down the mountain, stopping often to rest, drink, and enjoy.  I stuck my feet in the water at Nevada Falls, and we proclaimed the excellence of the John Muir Trail and chided Thomas for not having us go up that trail more often.  It was a happy time when we were more innocent.  In the end, the trail was still quite hard.  Not as painful as the Mist Trail would have been on the knees, but not the Dream Trail we had initially dubbed it.  And it ended up on the same, dreaded, hateful asphalt steepness that we had on the way up.  (See Yosemite post from 2 yrs ago for a pic.)

Due to our turning back, Tim & I had about 3 hours to kill before everyone else was done, especially because the Lunatic Thomas took our friend Andrew and my goddaughter up both Cloud's Rest and to the top of Half Dome.  Better him than me.  So Tim & I sat, staring into space, with our feet in the freezing river for about an hour.  I spent about 8 hours with Tim that day, and we had both good conversation and good silence.  I liked it.

We finally headed over to the parking lot (putting our shoes back on!  Ugh.) with the hopes that our 2 other friends who weren't on the mountain would be around.  (Tim's sister had turned back fairly early on in the hike, so she was wandering the valley with a walkie talkie, as well.)  We sat in the back of a friend's truck, and I made a little pillow out of my backpack and elevated my feet on her tool box.  It was lovely.  Eventually the bike riding friend came back to us, and we all chatted and looked at the pictures of the bears that she saw on her travels.

The three of us heard from Tim's sister, Valarie, and headed over to the pizza place to save tables for everyone for dinner.  It was a fabulous day, I tell you, and I loved the fact that I wasn't completely beat down because I took at least 5 miles off my hike.  What I missed, though, was the proposal on top of Cloud's Rest.  I really wish I would have been there, but I'm so happy for my friends. 

The next day we limped our way around the valley, looking at waterfalls and the Ahwahnee Hotel.  Some people biked, which I would really love to do, but I wasn't in the mood that day and let a friend use my bike.  I was quite proud of us for getting in at least 4 miles or so on our sore legs.  Of course, I walked in the river again for a bit when we all stopped for lunch, which was heaven for my calves. 

Oh, and we saw 2 bears, no big whoop.  There was a large male in a meadow, and I almost had to resort to bodily violence to stop my girl from getting as close as possible to get a good picture.  Then there was a tiny cub across the road in a picnic area.   Yes, he was very cute and huggable, were one to go in for that "maimed by momma bear" sort of thing.  Which, apparently, many tourists do!  Two different women were inching their ways closer and closer to the cub in order to...I don't know.  Hold it?  Eventually, the baby bear was surrounded by idiots.  The mom must have abandoned it, though, because The Darwin Awards got no new nominees and a ranger eventually came out with a small cage and was working on wrangling the cub when we left.  I tell you- you see many stupid people at the park.  "Let's Get Rabies!" seems to be a close second to the game of "Maiming is the Best!" only to be followed by "I Don't Need Water for this Hike, Do I?" 

That evening, we swam in the hotel pool next to our campground and had a lovely dinner together.  Different circles of conversation formed, and I had a great theology discussion with 2-5 people until the wee hours, when our neighbors started shushing us. 

Thanks to days of little sleep and lots of activity, there was also plenty of laughter, wheezing, and near-pants-peeing.  Laughing until tears is so rare and so wonderful when it happens.  Thanks to exhaustion, it happened a few times last weekend, and I almost felt like I had an ab workout.  Good times.  I love my friends and I love California.

I'm back! You can un-knot your panties now.

Oh, friends, I am so tired.  I'm sure that I've learned this lesson before, but I need to stop running myself into the ground.  I am not one who enjoys having something planned every day, yet I do it to myself all the time. 

You did not hear from me for the past week or so because I was in Yosemite for 4 days with my lovely young adults group from church and my lovely goddaughter #1.  It was magnificent and lovely, but also the tail end of a month solid of activities.  So, I came home from Yosemite with a flu/cold that I am currently working through. 

So today I worked on last week's homework which didn't get turned in on time, and read about rape, pornography, and eroticism.  Not a heartening group of topics, I say, but it all still urges me forward in my quest for transparency in the church regarding sexual subjects. 

My brain is too tired to think more, so instead of doing more homework, I shall read for fun.  Huzzah!  I'm reading The Necromancer, which may be the last book in a YA/kids series I'm reading.  I kind of hope it isn't, but also wouldn't mind if things were wrapped up here.  You know what I mean:  the cliffhanger can be sooooo annoying in a book.

over and over and over

It has been a "duh!" and "dangit!" kind of day, at least partially.  Multiple trips back and forth between houses because of keys left behind, going back out to the car because wallet is inside, realizing you're hungry when you're in the car about 2 minutes after leaving the house.  You know how it is. 

The final frustration was my paper.  Word is messing with my mind, I tell you, because I am just 2 lines or so over my page limit and NO MATTER WHAT I DO it's not getting any shorter.  I took out 3 full lines of a block quote.  I have taken out extraneous adjectives and adverbs (I'm bad about those).  I've put on my Hat of Succinctness.  Nothing.  When I look at the print preview, NOTHING HAS CHANGED. 

So I give up for now.  I will look at it again on Monday, when it is due.  I will let it rest.  If I can't figure it out then?  Oh, well. 

How many times does "moon" appear?

Today has been a busy day, but it's lovely.  After staying up most of the night and working a little today, I can be done with my first paper if I want to be.  I'll go over it a bit over the next few days, tweaking & maybe adding enough to make it a solid 10 pages. 

Three hours of sleep is all I got, and I drowsily donated blood and read some C.S. Lewis essays on fiction (now unnecessary) before heading down to SFO to get one of my goddaughters.  My head about exploded due to only one security line being open, but I finally obtained the girl and made it out of the city. 

In an effort to get my page length, I flipped through the Chronicles looking for another example of the things I already pointed out, but eventually realized I had a shiny, new point to make!  That was fun.  So I pulled up the trusty Amazon search and looked for "moon" in all of the books (well, the one, big copy of them all).  No, I haven't resorted to listing objects and the frequency of their appearance, but I had an idea that the Moon was sometimes more than just a moon, so I wanted to see all the uses.  Turns out I'm kind of right.  That's always  nice. 

Fun with fonts!

Oh, I do love messing around with fonts.  You're just lucky that there are only eight to choose from here on blogger and they're all kind of boring, or I'd be changing it up every time, sometimes within one post.

I taught tonight at the young adults group, and I think it went well.  I was just piling Bible verse on top of Bible verse illustrating that what God wants from us is all-out love for him and for our neighbors, who just happen to be everyone, oh, on the planet.  We are clearly charged to take care of one another, and our love for God is supposed to take up all of our being.  As one guy said tonight, it's a little scary because there are no loopholes out of this.  All of you.  Everyone. 

So, I decided to do a power point presentation because I had about 11 Bible passages, some long, and I didn't want people to have to flip all over the place and not really be able to look at the text and concentrate.  Naturally, every slide was in a different font.  In fact, most slides had 2 different fonts: one for the title and one for the text.  All the titles were the same, "What does God want from us?" but I started changing it up even beyond the font by putting it in different language.  Thank you, Google translator!  For the most part, I was able to double-check and figure out if the translations were right/close, except for with Welsh.  I was just going to have to trust that one.  I had Spanish, Welsh, French, Swedish, and German.  It was great fun, I tell you.

Here, you can look at it to see how crazy I went.  I even have 1 piece of clip art. I was into this. Core PPT
*note that one the slide with the link to the movie study, we just skipped through the preview & watched the short clip from lesson 4. 

I'm not a theologian

I mean, sure, I'll have a master's degree in Theology in about a year and a half, but that doesn't make me a theologian, and I'm fine with that. 

I really appreciate all that I'm learning, and the opportunity to read great thinkers and write about the stuff of God that people have pondered and prayed on for thousands of years, but over and over again I just keep thinking that it's all just trying to nail jello to the wall. 

The Bible isn't clear on many, many things.  If God wanted to spell some things out, he would have done so.  Am I saying that it is of no use at all to wrestle with questions and concepts?  Not at all.  But when complex, multi-layered arguments are constructed with very little biblical basis or evidence, it may be a waste of time.  At least, I feel like it's a waste of time for me to have to read them.  There are few things I hate more than wading through a confusing section of a book, hurting my brain trying to figure out what the author is proposing, finally coming to see their point a little bit, only to get to the end and realize that they were actually illustrating a view with which they disagree or that there is little to no biblical support for the muck and mire I just went through. 

Believe me, I get it.  With the Bible's annoying lack of clarity on so many things, we have to thoughtfully discuss and extrapolate and expand our beliefs into fully-fledged organisms.  The problem is that we then try to hold on to them so tightly and will fight people on them, and we construct miles of scaffolding to support them, when all we're really holding up is our own opinions, or those we've adopted from those who came before us.

Stop trying to nail jello to the wall.  Eat it.  Get it in you.  Digest it and let the sweetness become a part of you.  Put it in your mouth & swish it around and make kool aid out of it.  Just stop holding it and showing it off and getting everyone's hands all sticky. 

Feverishly scribbled notes

Today has been a long, great day.  I woke up naturally at 5am, thinking I would just pee & go right back to sleep.  Nay.  So, I finished The Last Battle (it always makes me so sad, though it shouldn't), then tried again.  Nope.  So I decided to embrace it and enjoy being up.  We had day one of the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit (WCAGLS- wickagles) today, and I was afraid I would crash at some point, but it was just to awesome. 

The friend I came out here with has never been to the summit before, so I told her to expect that we'd learn a lot, but also end up rolling our eyes a bit.  Ah, not today.  Opening video- we both teared up a bit.  Worship?  Great.  And almost all of today's sessions were about change, crisis, dysfunctional teams, and various other things that hit home so much that we often found ourselves looking at each other with an "oh, really!  I wonder who that could apply to!" look on our faces.  There was also one high-five when Jim Collins threw out, as if it were completely obvious, "Oh, and double your outreach to young people by changing your practices, but not your core values." 

The other two times I've gone to the summit, I've gone alone, so with four of us from church there, it is really great to have others go over this stuff with, to also share the inspiration you're receiving, and take it back to church.  During the first session, I realized that I kept wishing that some of our pastors were there, but we are here.  We four women, only two on staff, none of us in real positions of power right now:  God put us in that room to receive this vision and inspiration, and he wants us; he wants me to take it back and help make it grow.  I thought of it as a holy pressure.  I'm scared and excited. 

Tomorrow- day 2.  I looked at the books of a couple of tomorrow's speakers, and I'm excited by what I see.  And the four of us are going to get together and pray for God's vision and for strength and wisdom for our role in whatever God is doing.  Pray for us, please.  Our church- God's church- needs a lot of help. 

Voyage of the Dawn Treader, etc.

I may have read Prince Caspian today, too, but I was more interested in Voyage.  I found it quite difficult to skim because I haven't read it in some years (7 or 8) and, with the movie coming out soon, I wanted to read the details.  I did skim a bit, but found myself slowing down and wanting to savor.  I just about clapped when Lucy, Edmund, & Eustace got to the field with the feast laid out by the Lamb.  I love the imagery!!  And Reepicheep??!!!  He is seriously awesome.  Love him.

I just started on The Silver Chair, which I remember not liking.  It may be because I don't like villains & so I'm not real fond of the time spent with the giants and worrying about being eaten.  We'll see how I feel.  I'll likely skim a lot, because I'm really just looking for things about Aslan. 

My sister will be here in less than an hour, and I've been cleaning off & on today while trying to focus on reading.  I've had mixed results.  Sure, I read 2 books, but I wanted to finish all 7 by tonight. 

So, I'm going to read a few chapters, wait for Seth to call me from In-N-Out in Rohnert Park, I will place my order with him, then do some last-minute cleaning just so my sister isn't completely disgusted by our house.  I swear, if I didn't ever have company, my house would never be cleaned. 

Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia

As you may have seen coming from my previous posts, today was a breakdown day.  Not long after I woke up, I started thinking of all the things I needed to do today, and I was only able to talk myself out of crying for so long.  Thankfully, my dear husband was home, so he was able to hug me and knew I was going to cry before it started. 

After a run and getting most of the errands done, I was able to lighten up a bit and get a little homework done.  I finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and skimmed through The Horse and His Boy.  It makes me happy when the story obviously mirrors biblical actions and themes.  I love it when people are anointed with the Holy Spirit, and I really liked Narnia's Pentecost in The Magician's Nephew. 

I also love Lewis's writing style, especially when he talks to the readers.  You see a side of him that I would call silly, even though you don't often read about that aspect of his personality in biographies or letters.  The only glimpses of that you get are in a few letters or remembrances by students of his who write of him good-naturedly making fun of other professors and acting more like the students than an authority figure.  If you only ever read his theological writings and most biographies, you would have to read between the lines to figure out that he had quite the sense of humor. 

So tomorrow I shall press on with Prince Caspian get through the rest of the books.  Once I have all my data, it shouldn't be a difficult paper to write. 

I shan't blog tonight.

Entirely too tired.  Perhaps tomorrow I'll write a little bit about today, but I'm just brain dead. 

I've been lax in my writing exercises

But not in my physical exercises, I can assure you.
Nor in my homework duties.
You see, I've just been burnt out these past 2 weeks from class.  30 hours of class in two weeks + 1200 pages of reading + my other class reading & homework + figuring out paper topics + searching/buying/checking out books for said papers.

Thus?  My brain is mush when I get home and I haven't felt like turning the computer on and blogging at night.  I'm sorry.  I don't apologize to you, because I know you're cool with it, but I apologize to my future self and its writing abilities.

To celebrate diminished brain powers and lack of writing finesse, I shall pretend that this blog is my twitter feed and just blurt out some of my thoughts.  Enjoy!

• I'm reading Chi Running and worked on my form a little bit yesterday.  Well, a lot.  A planned 30 minute, light run to work on form turned into an hour and a half or so of being lost, being hot, having to poop, worrying about the dog, backtracking, resting in a park, and finally asking for directions.  My time was still pretty good, though, and I'm not very sore today, so I think the form worked.
• I think I'm going to do my first paper on Manifestations/Representation/? of the Trinity in The Chronicles of Narnia. So, I'm kind of skimming my way through them right now.  
• My right butt cheek hurts.
• I'm glad to be back in Sonoma County after being away for all of this week and most of last week.
• We didn't have the DVR set to keep more than one episode of So You Think You Can Dance, so we have to watch Wednesday's ep online, but I already know who went home on Thursday.
• You know what my 4 bookcases look like, yes?  Well, I currently also have 7 books on the back of the couch, one on the end table behind me, one pile of 13 on the kitchen table, another pile of 5 on the table, 6 on top of the bookcase in the kitchen, and I returned 8 to the library earlier.  Almost all of the books mentioned were/are for school.  
• I'm really really in the mood to go to Southern California.  Hmmm...one more...
• I love my life:  being in school, being in ministry, being in California, being in love, being in shape.  It's all good.

Unreachable

I'm staying at the house of some friends while I'm in class these two weeks, and the house must be lined with lead or something, because I get no cell reception (even outside, sometimes) and the internet doesn't work everywhere, like in the living room.  Well, it's temperamental and moody.

It's kind of a beautiful thing.  Sure, I wasn't able to get online last night and write this entry, but I also can't get any phone calls and spend less time online.  Fabulous.  Maybe I should climb on my roof at home with a roll of tinfoil.

I'm reading!  A lot!  Well, I'm also watching a lot of Angel, but that's really okay since I'm getting other things done, too.  Not that my phone rings much at home, but it does from time to time.  I get e-mails or facebook postings from people asking me to do things, and I should do laundry or clean the house or something.  Here?  It isn't messy, there's plenty of room to put the things away that need to be put away, and I can't do anything with anyone.  It's gorgeous. 

Perhaps I need to learn to block out my time better when I'm working on class.  The only problem with that is that I'm almost always working on class, and I do have a life, relationships, and ministry to consider.  But maybe I should block of certain days- maybe 2 per week, at least- where I never make plans and I don't answer the phone.  I also won't feel guilty about housework.  This is something to think about. 

I make lists & check them many times

Today I continued my quest for books for school.  Trusty list in hand, I headed north on El Camino Real, certain that I had seen a Borders somewhere.  After a fair amount of traffic and much self-doubt, I found it.   Now, I could have looked online to see if they had the books I wanted, and there I also would have seen the price.  But I didn't do that.  I just wanted to go.  Therefore, I found books that I wanted at much higher prices than I wanted to pay.  I mean, I'm not going to pay $13 or so for a 50 year old book that I should be able to find in a used bookstore, if I just had the desire to go from used bookstore to used bookstore looking. 
In the end, I used my trusty coupon and bought A Severe Mercy, which I told Sandra I would never read.  Oh, well.  I'm writing a paper on C.S. Lewis's views on theodicy (pain & suffering, why bad things happen to good people) and this book deals with that. 
I also stopped in at Barnes & Noble to see if they had any of the harder to find books, but they did not.  It was really difficult being in those stores without a) feeling like I could really relax and browse, b) buying a coffee, and c) having money to spend however I wanted.  Oh, bookstores.  How you torture me.
So, after yesterday's & today's quests, I have 2 books I want/need for papers, I've ordered 2 more online, I'll go to the library at school tomorrow to get a few more (even though I prefer having my own so I can write in them), and I may order one more if the library doesn't have it. 
And let's not even talk about my final project for sexuality, okay?  I'm pretending that's going to be easy.

Tuesday's blog is full of late

I didn't get home from last night until about 11:30, which is why I didn't write.  After class, I drove about 25 minutes away to go to Half Priced Books (LOVE!), where I expected to find all of the books I needed for my C.S. Lewis papers.  Alas, I was not so lucky.

This store is much smaller than the ones I'm used to, and I circled and circled in vain.  I almost made myself dizzy with my head turned to the side while I quickly scanned the shelves in any section I could think of that might possibly be holding what I needed.  (I may have also been looking a bit for something fun to read.  No luck.)

What shocked me the most was that they didn't have the main thing I was looking for:  The Chronicles of Narnia all in one book.  You've seen it:  giant paperback, Aslan on the front.  I swear, it used to be at Costco all the time (not anymore, though.  I looked.).  I almost asked the people sorting the used books if they had seen a copy anywhere.  I just couldn't believe that it wasn't there. 

With 15 minutes left until the store closed, I went back to the young adult section to creep over each shelf, bit by bit.  It may have been misshelved, you know.  As I crept past the shelves, I spied 3 books piled on one another on the floor.  The bottom one looked quite large, but, dangit, it had a white cover.  But I was desperate, so I moved the other ones out of the way anyway.  As I did, the font showed itself, and the letters took the form of the word "Narnia."  GET! OUT! 

I didn't actually believe it at first, because I had already given up hope, but there it was.  The complete Chronicles, but with Jadis (Tilda Swinton) on the cover instead of Aslan.  (That's an interesting decision, I must say.)  My heart nearly leapt, I tell you, and I cradled the book to my chest as I went towards the registers. 

In the end, I paid $9.95+tax, drove an hour out of my way, plus one $4 toll.  I could have gotten it at the Borders down the street for $14+tax (with my coupon), but where would the story be in that? 

Fallen

  The topic for my sexuality class this week is sexual abuse, and if that's not a pick me up, I don't know what is.  (Please, oh please, get the sarcasm there.)
I only had to read one chapter today, and it mostly talked about the effects of abuse and the characteristics of the perpetrators. 
We're going to have to watch a video about abusers, and I saw that one of our essays this week needs to be talking about our response when we hear about abuse. 

I usually immediately pray and say to God, "Forgive us."  It's a prayer I use from time to time when I'm struck by our corruption and what we will stoop to do to one another and/or all that God has given us.  It's my response to the oil spill.  Forgive us.  When people are cruel and unthinking and rash.  Forgive us. 

In those moments, I don't know if I want Jesus to come back soon or not yet.  Sure, it would be a relief to be done with all this mess, but there are too many people who aren't ready.  I want everyone to have a chance to know him.  So many people have been shown a really crappy image of Christianity and have never actually been shown or told Good News.  Forgive us.

La Biblia

I only had my Spanish New Testament with me at church this morning, which made it a little hard for me to follow along when we were reading aloud.  Not that I can't read it, but I opened my Bible in the middle of the reading, and we were going over part of the Sermon on the Mount where everything sort of sounds the same.  So I was looking and thinking, "Oh, this must be where we are.  But I don't totally get it.  Why is it translated that way?"  Then I realized I was on the wrong verse, which really cleared that whole thing up. 

I led the high school group at church this morning, and it went fairly well.  I didn't know a lot of the kids, so I was a little worried at first that they wouldn't listen to me at all or wouldn't discuss, but everything was great.  We read a few verses of the passage at a time, with the kids discussing some questions I threw out to them at their tables. 

Some of them even got pretty deep!  One of the questions they were discussing was "What the heck did Jesus mean by "don't let your left hand know what the right is doing?"  The quietest table of all boys said that maybe Jesus was talking in terms of the church as the body of Christ, so the hands would refer to other Christians, etc.  Holy cow! I had never thought of that.  I had just thought it was another example of Jesus being oblique and confusing on purpose or just to make a point. 

Seriously?  I love teenagers.

Blerg

It's entirely likely that I've used the title "Blerg" before, but it's how my brain is feeling today.

As my sister says, today was entirely too Saturday for class, yet there I was from 8am-3pm.  Ugh.  Rather than bore you with details about class, I'll let you know that it was long, though it did not drag too much, a smidge tedious at times, and now I'm home.

I read a bit for fun, I quickly looked over the notes for tomorrow morning's h.s. study, and now I'm off to bed after catching up on TV shows. That is all.

Random Swedish Words

Or are they made-up Swedish words?  We wandered Ikea for a couple hours tonight, which, as always, started out lots of fun and ended up kind of like a death march.  Or at least an exhausted, "Oh, I don't care anymore, can't we just go?" march.  Your pick.

As always, I get lots of ideas at Ikea, very few of which we can actually implement, being that we don't own our home.  We did get a couple CD/DVD storage boxes and racks, so that should make life a little neater.  Not necessarily space-saving (at least the boxes), but nicer-looking.

Now I shall go to bed and read a little bit of Mere Christianity, which I guess I should have had read by Thursday, but oh well.  It'll happen.

Midterm

I did my midterm today, and I was pleased by the questions I got.  We were given three cases and were supposed to tell how we would react or counsel the people involved.  Here were mine:

#1 was about a woman who recently read books about egalitarianism and accuses her husband of male oppression while he tells her she should be cooking and taking care of the kids like the Bible says. 
In a nutshell, I said I'd get them to both calm down and explain their positions rationally, and what they thought the other person was saying.  Without ever making it seem like the husband is being corrected, talked down to, or chided, I would guide them through the Bible to see what it has to say on their issue.  I think I'd start with Proverbs 31 and the picture of domestic life drawn there: woman works, makes her own money, has her own reputation and freedom, and her reputation and happiness bless her husband and his reputation. 
Then I'd look at the creation account and make sure they see that there is no hierarchy involved other than God over Adam and Eve and their dominion over creation.  From there, household codes in Colossians and Ephesians, if necessary, and a talk on mutual submission.  Get them on the same team.  I wrote for about 20 minutes on it, so I'm just recapping here.

#2 was perfect for me, because I was supposed to be talking with a young couple who live together and want to become members of the church.  They claim that they're already married in God's eyes.  It's perfect because this was me & Seth, but we were planning on getting married all along and never would have expected a church to let us become members. 
In this case, I was both good cop and bad cop, in that I identify with their situation and I understand where they're coming from, but they also can't pretend to not expect that what they're doing is frowned upon.  I'm sure that my professors expected me to use all the doom and gloom statistics about cohabitation that we learned, but being that they weren't/aren't true for me and Seth, they don't hold a lot of sway in my mind.  But I did say that I'd bring them up and point out that not everyone can be "the lucky ones." 

#3 was also good because it dealt with pastoral sexual harassment.  The situation was that I had been in an internship for 10 months with a pastor bugging me, and what would I do now that I'm almost done?  The first thing I said was that I'm surprised that I put up with it for 10 months!  I basically said I would tell him to knock that s@*% out, and I'd go to the elder board and then the denomination, if I had to.  I expressed the importance of protecting people, their souls, the church, etc etc. 

Hopefully, they'll like my answers and I'll get good feedback on my decisions.  As the time when I will actually be having more of these conversations draws nearer, I crave guidance. 

Yesterday blew by

First, a housekeeping bit:  almost always, my posts say one day, but they really count for the day before.  I just keep writing after midnight.  So, the blog claims that I posted 2 posts yesterday, but those were really Monday's.  Yesterday, I completely forgot and really didn't have time to write.  I got home from class around 11:30 and didn't even look at my computer.

Of course, I didn't really need to catch up on much because I had been online all through class.  Ah, the internet.  Don't worry, I'm still paying attention in class, it's just nice to be able to let my mind wander for a minute.  I mostly did stuff online when my professor was repeating himself or on a tangent.

Today I've been reading over my notes, handouts, and powerpoint presentations from human sexuality since I have to do my midterm this week.  I'm thinking that I'll do it tomorrow.  We have all the questions that will be on it, but I just don't have it in me to write out all the answers ahead of time and then simply regurgitate them onto the test.  We have 8 case studies to respond to and the site will randomly give us 3 of those.  I'm not completely slacking, because I have been thinking about the cases a lot, and they only serve to illustrate my frustration with this class so far.  We have to say how we would react as a pastor to these certain situations, and I feel like I don't know much more about that than I did 5 weeks ago, and that was what I was hoping would happen in this class.  Oh, well.

I'll let you know which questions I get and if I was able to come up with something intelligent and loving.  That's what my default will be:  reacting in love and mercy, without throwing out all biblical guidelines. 

I know you're reading this

I'm sad because two of my best friends, Ben and Sandra, are moving to Arizona tomorrow.  As they set sail for that land of sand and racism, I figured I'd take the opportunity to send out a love letter in the form of a blog to them.

I met Ben at church a few years ago, and I wanted to like him because I had heard good things about him and my friend, Tracee, liked him, but I just didn't get it.  The night I first talked to him, I thought he was a little bit bratty.  As I got to know him a little better, I realized that it was just that he doesn't always have the gift of making it clear when he's being sarcastic or joking. 
We really became friends on my last trip to Mexico, in 2008, where the gift of sarcasm brought us together.  As the only ones with that gift on the trip, we often sought each other out to make snotty comments or jokes that no one else truly got or appreciated.  Also, we were often the last ones awake, and we chatted by the campfire, with the only topic I really remember being movies.  It impressed me that he had seen Once and loved it. 
I may have also claimed him as my new best friend, which he took in stride (at least on the outside). 

In the beginning of 2009, Sandra came on the scene.  The news of this fairly serious relationship came as a bit of a surprise to most of us, but I think it surprised the two of them, as well, because it happened so swiftly.  Ben had been out of town (out of the country!) for about two months, and during that time he realized just how much he cared for her.  One night, when I dragged him with me to Barnes & Noble to buy a couple of the Twilight books (see! He's a good friend to a girl.), he told me about her and the conversations they'd had and his feelings.  I was pretty geeked. 
At the same time, I was nervous.  It's always a little bit iffy when your friends start going out with someone you don't know, because I think we've all had the experience of one of our friends going out with someone we don't like, or at least someone who we just don't mesh with. 
I can still see her face when I walked into church the first time I met her.  I hadn't seen Ben in a long time and I came up and hugged him from behind while he sat (which is really the only way to hug him, being that he's 12 feet tall & about as cuddly as a piece of plywood).  She didn't look at me strangely or in any sort of possessive way.  She turned with her huge-normous smile that she has and said, "Robin!" 

I got to spend time with her alone a couple times, and was impressed with how smart she is, how widely read, her heart for God, and her loving spirit.  It sounds like she'd be a boring sap, but that's the best part!  She's not!  She's awesome and funny and sometimes sarcastic and everything that Ben is and is not.  They are wonderful.  Once she moved here and they got married, it was like I had a 2-for-1 best friend package. 

So, I got that for almost a year, minus their excessive traveling.  It makes it a little easier that they traveled so much, because sometimes it felt like they were already gone.  But now they won't be back next Tuesday or in a couple of weeks, and I don't know who I'll have theological conversations with.  They just seem to be the only ones that it ended up happening with. 

I guess I'll just have to get a bunch of Obama stickers and some Che Guevara shirts and go visit them in Arizona. 

Oh, yay

Today I am tired, crampy, tired, kinda headachey, sad, and tired. 
I had my first class tonight, and it was fair.  The professor says that tonight and tomorrow will be a lot of loading on of information as background and context for C.S. Lewis' thought and writing, so Thursday on will be better. 
The good news is that a) we only have to read 1200 pages of material, and once we hit that point, we can stop.  b) The books don't necessarily have to be read in the order he has put on the syllabus, so I don't have to try to get through Mere Christianity before Thursday.  I could read it later and just fly through a couple short things first, if I wanted to.  c) All the reading doesn't have to be done within these two weeks. 
In sum, that is fabulous.  Now I just have to think of 2 different topics for research papers related to C.S. Lewis.  I have a few vague ideas floating around in my head, and I hope that they'll solidify (or clarify) themselves within a few days, because the papers are due sooner than I thought.  (Not by next week, but we don't have until the end of the semester, either.)

I'm also pleased because I finally finished the reading for this week's lesson in Human Sexuality.  I'm not quite sure why it was taking me so long, but I'm done now, so I can watch the lectures tomorrow, write my essays for the week, and maybe do my midterm on Wednesday when I don't have class. 

Now?  I'm off to lie in bed & finish Conservatize Me guilt-free, since a lot of schoolwork was done today. 

What are you trying to say, God?

You know how sometimes a topic comes up from a few different places and eventually you start to notice?  That happened to me today, but it was all within the space of less than two hours. 

I spent the night at a friend's house last night, and on my way home this morning, I was talking to God about my guilt about food and budgeting.   With the way we're trying to eat right now, I'm finding that we just can't afford to eat organic, local anything.  It's all just too expensive, and I feel tremendous guilt about that, especially the meat.  We have spent a great deal of money this month on food, and we're not done yet. 

This naturally led into feeling bad because we haven't been completely sticking to our budget.  Even though we are doing things very differently than we did before, and there is money set aside for things and we're mostly being wise, I get all tense about the times we do spend something that hasn't been planned for and I think that we're sucking at the budgeting and we're going to slip back into our old ways and God is completely disappointed in us. 

So that was the car.  Then I came home and read my Bible.  I'm going through a study bible/devotional thingy, so I was reading from Numbers 35 about the asylum cities that God had the Israelites set up.  In pondering what that shows about the personality of God, I thought of fairness, justice, loving, etc.  I saw that I don't have to feel guilty and horrible- he's not disappointed in me.  He is fair and loving.

Then, at church, Pastor Doug was talking about freedom from guilt.  Cool.
Then, at Core tonight, Christy was talking about the sacrifices and offerings set up in Leviticus & other parts of the OT, and in looking at Cain & Abel, phrased the lesson as "he doesn't want your blood, just your best." 

So I haven't completely wrapped my mind and heart about the application for this.  Yes, I obviously have the food & money guilt that I was mentioning, but it feels like this is about something more than that.  I need to sit with it for a while and pray about it.  It appears that I'm more infected & affected by guilt than I realize.  It's also possible that I expect too much of other people and place guilt on them instead of giving them grace and fairness. 

Oh, I do that.

Oftentimes, when people watch musicals they think, "Who does that?  Who bursts into song for no good reason?"  I think this all the time, too.  I'm really not a very big fan of musicals because I find them quite painful.

But I do burst into song for no good reason.  I sing about dinner, I sing to my husband (yes, he sings back), and today I sang about brushing my teeth.  I am one of those people. 

The difference is that I don't have serious conversations in song.  No marital spats, theological debates, or really anything that would take stomping, furrowing the brow, or pointing a finger while doing either of those things.  I am not Jean Valjean (24601).  I don't comfort my friends with heartfelt ballads about the pain they're going through.  (Okay, maybe I'd do this, but only to get a laugh out of them at the right time.) 

Perhaps I'm in a light-hearted musical about daily, domestic life.  I'll watch out for my dogs secretly practicing synchronized moves to complement my twirls and flourishes. 

Do I or don't I?

I started reading Conservatize Me by John Moe, and I'm a little mixed about whether or not I should keep reading it. 
It's not that it isn't good- he's hilarious.  If you ever look at my twitter feed over there on the right, you will quite often see tweets of his that I have "re-tweeted."  I feel like I just want to print off his twitter feed and give it to people to read because he is just that funny.
But this is a book about politics, which I have mostly sworn off.  The premise is that he, Seattle born and raised, pinko, commie, liberal, spends 30 days immersing himself in all things conservative (and stereotypically conservative) in an effort to understand "the other side" and to see if he could be converted.  
So he downloads lots of country music and even some Michael W. Smith, buys a power suit and some preppy clothes, only reads conservative newspapers and magazines, and travels to meet with some conservative heavy-hitters to see if they can convince him. 
So far, he is being surprised by what he finds, as am I.  He understands more of the points being made, and sees sense in much of the arguments.  In this way, this book is good for me, because it's like I'm on this journey with him, even though I was raised conservative and have a slightly different view than he does. 
The problem I ran into is when he finally met with some Christians.  I know there will be more, and it's not like he's trying to make anyone look stupid at all.  He is not being unfair.  But when he went to the Family Research Council, that's where he finally ran into a wall of irrational (and I would say, un-American) beliefs.  And I started to get angry. 
I don't want to be angry.  It's why I stopped watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and don't read articles that people post anymore.  I want to love people on all sides and get along and not think that people are lunatics.  Even the ones that are. (Believe me: I live in California.  There are loonies that subscribe to any ideology you can think of here.)
I'll read it for a few more chapters, and if I find myself getting angry again and can't pray through my know-it-all-ness, I'll stop.  Or I'll skip those parts and go to a funny part.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

I have nothing more positive to add about reading

I really want to be done with C.S. Lewis Remembered so that I can move on.  I have finally started skimming, and I am skimming with glee.  What are my fabulous plans?  Well, when I finish this, I think that I may have to split my time between Inside Out (Maria V. Snyder) and ChiRunning.  Of course, that will only last for a while, as my eagerness to not have to cram next week will have me either starting Mere Christianity, doing next week's homework for human sexuality, or both.  I do have to write my midterm for that class next week, so I'd like to get that done ASAP so that I can enjoy the C.S. Lewis class without stress.

What have I not been reading much of lately?  Oh, postings from my classmates.  It really grates on my nerves that this class is so fascinating and deals with truly practical, if thorny, issues, but barely any conversation is taking place.  We have weekly postings and are required to respond with some substance to at least two, but that is all anyone is doing.  They may ask a question or bring up something interesting in a comment, but no one seems to go back and read the 3rd level postings, so no real conversation is taking place.  It's really frustrating to me because I don't feel like I'm learning much from anyone or making any traction on figuring things out anymore.  I'm just getting a little bit of push on my boundaries by the readings & lectures (which aren't all that different).  I'm kind of sad. 

Sunshine, hearts, flowers, teddy bears

I feel like my internet presence has been a bit negative today, so I figured I'd blog a happy blog.  At least slightly happy.  Not pissy.

This most likely is only functioning as yesterday's blog, and we'll talk more later tonight when I'm done with today's reading.
All I really read yesterday was the assigned chapters in Authentic Human Sexuality or whatever the name of it is.  This week we're talking about singleness and sexuality, which is something near to my heart.  I do believe I'll be doing my final project on this subject, so you can expect to hear more about it, and I hope that some good conversations will happen both from this week's class discussion and if I end up putting a survey I'm designing up here.

I did go to the library yesterday, which was delightful, if overly tempting.  I got ChiRunning, which I'm pretty excited about in a "gee, I hope the first chapter is magical and fixes everything and I'm never in pain again and have a 9 minute mile" sort of way.  You know, realistic expectations and all.  I also got a Maria V. Snyder book, which I'm not certain I'll like, but I do like her; John Moe's Conservatize Me (I think he is freaking hilarious on twitter); and one of the C.S. Lewis books I need for class.  Oh, The Great Divorce, which I'm surprised I don't own, being that I love it. 

The problem with this lovely pile of books is that I want to read all of them.  Today.  And I shouldn't.  I need to read the C.S. Lewis books for next week first, y'know.  It makes sense. 

So, I'm off to read more of C.S. Lewis Remembered, which isn't a bad read, at all.  It's just going slowly because I actually want to read every word, which takes so much time.  I'm trying to get myself to skim.  C'mon, Robin.  Do it.  Skim the book and get it over with.

Go go go go go!

Skimming C.S. Lewis just feels wrong

But I'm doing it anyway.  Today I have been flying through Surprised by Joy, and I had wanted to wait to blog until I was done, I'm getting tired & just wanted to write already.

I'm skimming it because it's the autobiography of his faith life, he's really big on description and things that, for the purposes of my class, don't matter all that much, and I want it done and some other books of his done before class starts next Monday.

As always, it's a pleasant read, with only a few references to classics and things about which I know little to nothing.  He has spurred in me an interest in reading more classics, though.  Maybe I'll give The Faerie Queen a try one of these days.  I also like that he appreciates the Bröntes and Jane Austen; not segregating them into "feminine" literature as is done nowadays. 

Though his lengthy descriptions can sometimes be a bit tedious if you just want to get on with the action, in one chapter he takes the time to describe in some detail the view from one of his favorite walks overlooking Belfast, and it is just beautiful.  He purposely describes it for the benefit of those who have never seen it, in the context of his growing love of the beauty of nature.  Perhaps, just as an exercise, I'll set about writing a detailed description of something, just to stretch that aspect of my writing.  Don't worry, I won't post it here.

Power Point!!

No, I did not blog yesterday.  What are you going to do about it?  Nothing, that's right. 

I have had a crazy weekend, but it has been mostly good.  Yesterday, I read a scoreboard, and it was great.  Nineteen of us went to an Oakland A's game, which I was feeling pretty meh about, but it ended up being, to quote Napoleon Dynamite, "Flipping sweet!"  First 2 innings: boring, quick, no score, out out out, etc.  Third inning?  A's get 8 runs.  EIGHT.  Two innings later? 5.  We thought it would be a shut-out, but the Angels woke up for a little while and got one run, for a final score of 15-1.  Wow.  Best baseball game ever.  But there's more!  We then got to go down on the field (I sat in a seat instead, though) and there was an amazing fireworks display.  Seriously, it was awesome.  A little late night stop with friends at In 'n Out on the way home, and we were fat and happy.

I taught tonight at Core (the young adult group), so I read and studied for that a bit.  We talked about Leviticus 22, Hebrews 4, and Mark 5.  Cleanliness laws in the OT versus our freedom to approach God under Christ and his humanity, and how the woman with the issue of blood demonstrates this new order that Jesus kicked off.  It was pretty great, with lots of good conversation. 

And my movie clip?  Oh, I showed a clip from Elf, with the thin thread of relevance being the phrase from Hebrews "throne of grace" and Buddy the Elf accusing the fake Santa of sitting on a throne of lies.  It rocked. 

Tweets, man

I don't believe that I read at all today.  I'm a little sad about finishing Harry Potter, so nothing is really calling to me.  Once again, I did no homework today.

But I did catch up on my twitter feed!  I hadn't done that since Wednesday night, so I had a lot of crap interesting links and thoughts to read.  Now I sit here, not going to bed, and not doing homework, yet trolling through my twitter favorite posts, looking at posts and reading articles.  Motivation is not at an all-time high. 

I did work on this Sunday's Bible study, though, and that's something.  I'm switching from Hosea for now, since I felt such a crushing load of failure last time.  I know, I know- it wasn't that bad.  But I still wanted to step away from it.  I'm staying very simple this week.  Maybe it's better to say focused.  Not at all simple, being that I'm going into Leviticus, but I'm taking a small chunk and focusing on it.  As I did a little research to see if anyone could dazzle me with their academic prowess, I was able to rein myself in from straying from that focus.

Tomorrow?  A baseball game.  Not super excited about the game itself, but I'll have fun with my friends. 

Lupin and Tonks!!

Here I sit, at 2:15am, finishing up The Deathly Hallows, crying my eyes out. 

This time around, I'm noticing different people.  Lupin and Tonks break my heart, and I do believe that Neville Longbottom is my new hero.  It's just all so real and terrible and wonderful.  J.K. Rowling is truly an amazing writer.  By this book, it is not at all a children's book, and young kids surely should stay away from the movies when they come out.

What's extra heart-breaking is how we've seen these characters on screen for almost 10 years, so it's as if we really know them.  With Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint in my mind, I think back on Harry & Ron's first year and how little they were and just want to...I don't know.  It's almost as if they are really kids I know and in my care and I don't want them to go through all of this. 

Hopefully this braiding of fiction and reality will settle down again before November, or the movies are going to be very difficult to watch.  I'm definitely going into the last one with a box of kleenex, though. 

A strange day

I really don't know why it has been a strange day, but it had been.  I slept later than I wanted, and I went to the gym pretty early, but it was all a bit off.  My plans for the gym were changed in the middle being that I wore the wrong shoes, and I just got in a semi-foul mood. 

Reading:  I read a bit of Remembering C.S. Lewis at the gym, but my frustrating day made me just want to escape into Harry Potter. 
I also read a lot of food labels, as I went to Costco to stock up on more things we could eat.  While they don't really have a lot of alternative foods for a gluten-free diet, I bought a metric ton of fruit, which is lovely. 

Mel's Diner and the Deathly Hallows

Wait.  That's not right. 
Well, I didn't do any homework today, and that's fine.  All I wanted to do was read Harry Potter, so I did that as much as I could, even though I was quite busy most of the day.

What did I not read?  I did NOT carefully read the e-mail I received with my free pass to see Despicable Me tonight.  I did not read that the start time was at 6:30, so I got there and had friends drive into the city and meet me there around 7:30.  Boo.

So we had dinner.  Remember, this is only day 3 of our new diet, so I was a bit hesitant to go out to eat.  We went to Mel's diner and while our 3 friends were happily choosing which cheeseburgers they were going to get, Seth and I pored over the menu for quite a while, trying to find anything without gluten or dairy.  I really did want a burger, but nothing clearly stated that I could get it without a bun, and I realized that a patty with no cheese and no bun would be sad, indeed.

We ended up splitting a hot dog w/sauerkraut and a cobb salad w/o cheese and with Italian dressing.  When my friends got their side salads with blue cheese dressing, I looked at them longingly, completely expecting our salad to be disappointing when it came.  I mean, Italian dressing?? C'mon. 

But?  It was delightful.  Delicious.  We inhaled it.  I wanted another one.  Huzzah!  That was such a victory, due to both being out and the fact that I woke up this morning wanting nothing more than a baked good and a Coke. 

Now we shall share a mango for dessert, and it will be awesome. 

Busy Day

I slept in later than I wanted to, and I may have taken a nap on the sunny couch this afternoon. 

Those factors, together with the 3 hours of homework I did today (go, me!) means that I'm just now about to get to work on some reading for today.  Sure, I snatched a page here and there in Harry Potter, but I mostly was watching lectures, then I wrote my essays for the week and started on my next paper due next week.  It was a productive afternoon.  I also cleaned, made dinner, then Seth & I watched Remember Me.

So, it is 10:45, I'm a little bit tired, but Harry is tracking down Regulus' locket and the Death Eaters are amassing outside of No 12 Grimmauld Place.  How about this:  I solemnly swear I am up...no later than 1am.  Deal?  Okay.  Deal. 

Food labels

Today is day 1 of the no gluten, no dairy, no sugar diet.  After looking through the book a bit more and trying to figure out what to do, we went to the grocery store to stock up.  While the author wants us to stay away from all processed foods and sugar, we have to be realistic.  We will be eating very differently, but we know that going completely without snacks of any kind is crazy talk.  We have been looking at labels for years, so that wasn't any hardship, but we had to be a little more careful when spotting gluten.  Did you know that soy sauce has wheat in it?  What the heck?  We found some gluten-free soy sauce, though.

Also, as far as crackers and cereal goes, rice options don't seem to be all that healthy, so we had to do some more comparisons of nutritional info.  I mean, I'm pretty sure that rice krispies have very little nutritional value.  Also, some things do have a little sugar in them, or molasses or other fruit-based sweeteners, but we have to be honest with what we'll eat.  We're already changing a lot at once, and I'm still a little bit obsessed with food, so I have to have stuff around that I'm going to like.

In that vein, I am going to be spending money and living it up on grapes and sugar snap peas. I also bought yummy Frontera salsa, and it will be a chips and salsa kind of life.

We could have spent even more money and gotten bread made from rice flour and fake cheese, then just pretended that hardly anything had changed and had sandwiches every day, but we resisted.  I may buy some alternative flours or bread mixes in the future and get out the bread maker, but I want our habits to change into eating more salads & small snacks like fruit and nuts. 

Right now, we're not stretching that much, and it's great:  chicken in the oven, brown rice cooking in the rice cooker, and we're having tacos!  Huzzzah for corn tortillas! 

Oh, I'm stuffed

I completely forgot to write yesterday, but that's really okay, because I'm not sure I read one, single thing. 

Today was a terrific day, and I've read a variety of things. I woke up at 8am, which was not as many hours of sleep as I may have wanted, but I was pretty happy to be awake early.  After breakfast and a bit of World Cup watching, Seth and I went for a run, which was awesome. 

Most of the remainder of the afternoon was spent reading.  Among other things, I started working on C.S. Lewis Remembered, and it is quite lovely so far.  This book focuses on the recollections of people who knew him in a professional setting, especially his students.  Even though I know he was a caring man and took time to write to people, I guess that I still had the stereotypical image of the cranky, English genius, but it seems that was far from the truth.  He was generous both with his money and with his time, helping students and colleagues alike with encouragement and his great knowledge. 

He would always take your little ideas seriously and help make the into something, with the result that young people often felt they had been in amazing form after sitting next to him of an evening.

This sentence struck me, and I realized that I want to be known for being like this.  Especially as I come alongside (sorry, hate that phrase, but it fits) young people and encourage them in their faith and now that I'm moving into teaching more, I want to help people to blossom and make them feel smart instead of just trying to show how smart I am.  This will take some heart adjustments, but I trust God with the tinkering. 

One more thing.

IsawEclipseagaintoday.  

I swear, I'm not a freak or obsessed (anymore).  But I liked the movie a lot and a friend hadn't seen it yet, so I said we should go.  I liked it again, but did take a bathroom break during Bella's attempted seduction of Edward.  The actors just aren't all that adept at the intimate scenes. 
I'll have you know that on our way out, I ran into 3 friends who were seeing it again already, too.  Sure, they are 15, 16, & 17, but that really shouldn't make any difference or reflect at all upon my maturity.  Hey- I connect with teenagers.  It's what I do.  I'm staying plugged in.  Yeah, that's it. 

Um, spoiler alert?

Not sure that I have to warn people about a 3 year old book, but if you haven't read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and plan on it or plan on seeing the movies, you may want to skip this post.

Are they gone? 
As I told you before, the excitement of the preview being released finally got me to pick up the book and read it again.  I have previously only read it once, the day it came out, which was more devouring than reading.  Details did not stick to my brain parts.
I'm still pretty early on, just where all the pretend-Harrys are slowly showing up at the Weasley's house.  One thing I noticed is that the action starts with no holding back right from the beginning.  I had forgotten about Hedwig and what a blow that was and how I didn't believe it at first.  "Oh, she's fine." 
George has lost his ear and is making jokes with Fred, and I'm crying a little bit and wondering if I'll skip some pages later on in the book.  I love me some Weasley twins. 
I have a pretty busy weekend ahead of me, so I'm not certain that I will, well, should get much reading done.  If I do get a lot read in HP, it will be because I stayed up way past my bedtime or I didn't do as much homework as I'd like. 

Decisions, decisions.

Today's Blog!

It contains nothing!  I didn't really read anything! 
I mostly surfed the net while at work today, because it was too busy to get homework done.  So I guess I read twitter & facebook. 

I had a meeting at church, so I read brainstormed ideas from a white board & chose not to pooh pooh as many as I could have, being that I really have little idea what it takes to get a new service/worship night off the ground.  But I am quite opinionated, you know. 

Here's what I read today:  a transcription I was writing of a 12 minute video for I Am Second.  It wasn't really harder than I expected, but it did take longer, mostly because timestamps had to be noted every minute or so.

I also read...hmmmm...one page of HP & TDH, which I will work on more tomorrow, maybe.  After I have a meeting at church (different topic), work out, finish watching my lectures for this week, and write my essays for this week.  It is a cross-training day tomorrow, though, so I could read on the elliptical or bike.  I'll do that.

I hope you've found something fun to dive into this summer.  Let me know if you find something amazing that I'll like and I'll throw it on the TBR pile.  (meaning: kids or fantasy or, best of all, kids' fantasy)   

Finally!

Friends, that wasn't a long book (the one I talked about yesterday), but I just couldn't finish it quickly.  But, done it is.  Now I can listen to my lectures & write my essays for the week.

Tonight, I'm seeing Eclipse (3rd Twilight movie, in case you've been living under a rock), and I'll be going early to try to ensure that I get a seat somewhat near my friends.  Since I'll be there about an hour and a half early, I'll be taking Sea Glass with me, and I may finish it.  Well, maybe not.  I'm really enjoying it and don't want it to be over, since the next one doesn't come out for a few months.  I do have C.S. Lewis to read, though, so I can always do that, but it's nice to have some fantasy to escape into.

I also have Chi Running on the way from the library, and that should be interesting.  My problem with that, though, is that I'll feel like I really need to pay attention and read a little at a time to incorporate what it tells me. 

I've been a reading fiend lately, but that's totally okay with me.  I think I'm also going to put Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into the rotation, because I've only read it once and the preview for the movie made me all goose-bumpy and excited. 

Cheers!

Trying not to fight the change

Right now I'm plugging through Men at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional Roles & Modern Options for class, and I'm having a bit of a hard time.  At first, I was feeling pretty bratty about it, thinking things like, "Oh, poor men!  They have it soooooo hard!" and rolling my eyes at the different men's movements. 

What makes me angry is when men, especially Christian men, moan about society being all about women and how men are at a disadvantage now.  Um, hello?  No, they're not.  Women still make 20-30% less then men do, we're still expected to be more like men at work....but this isn't why I'm here right now.

Basically, I was blowing off all questions and issues that men may have.  Sometimes I get a glimpse and understand a little bit the stress that men are under, but I often think it's all their own doing with their machismo and weird ways of thinking and why don't they just knock it off?!  And this doesn't help. 
I want men to care about and try to understand women's issues, so why shouldn't I do the same for them?

So, I go back to my reading with a different frame of mind.  I will listen to these lectures with interest and compassion, and my eyes will look forward, not at the ceiling. 

It's only okay

I didn't write earlier, while it was still Sunday, because I had a headache and was busy feeling sorry for myself.  So there.  Harrumph.

I was feeling down because my teaching was only okay and I gave myself a stress headache beforehand and I was beating myself up about not being a perfect speaker.

I've only taught 5 times.  I know that no one else expects me to be perfect, but I feel like they're all quite ready for me to not teach anymore.  I don't know if they realize that I'm new to this and I have to grow and learn. 

My problem is that I have too many ideas that I think go together and flow, but they only really do so in my head, at least not without a lot more connection.  This isn't a new problem, but one I've run into writing papers- I get entirely too many sources- and here on the blog, where I quite often get long-winded when I don't mean to or want to do so. 

So I must learn to prune my works a bit and find the main ideas I want to express, keeping all the other stuff for a different work of its own, or as support for something else.  I don't have to express everything I'm thinking just this minute.

Reading:  I read my notes & parts of Hosea again, and I finished Out of the Silent Planet, which was pretty good, but Lewis went a little overboard with the descriptions.   I was often waiting for something to happen besides description of the flora.