(This is a column written by Sunny Beagle and Copper Caynine, a weekly highlight of local news in the fictional Fenceville Weekly Times.)
"It's summertime again! (It's way too hot to do anything.)
"Courtney got back from her camp last week, she seemed to have a really good time. Shot a bunch of people with water guns, and climbed a tall power tree. (C says this should be "electric pole". I'm not sure.)
"Dad's been working a lot lately.
"Cherry Kitten moved across town a few weeks ago, he seems to be settling in well.
"A bunch of meat chickens will be slaughtered soon, I'm hoping I can help. The egg-laying chicken who got attacked last week is on the mend.
"Merriment Alpine and Sarsaparilla and Little Ann Nubian had their pen scooted over to include fresh weeds to munch on, the people are busy taking lots of pictures of them. Skeet doesn't like them very much.
"Dad and Caleb have been mowing often, the area around the backyard is very well-cut.
"Ticks are HORRIBLE this year. They are NO FUN. At all. And inside, there's an infestation of flies, everyone is complaining about them.
"Wesley's been trying to teach everybody else how to play baseball, Trevor has been hitting the ball well. Reminds me of when we were little and he'd play ball in the backyard with Katie while Mr. Rae would watch and us Dog Club would bark encouragement.
"Everybody's been very busy recently. It can get kinda lonely, guarding the house without anybody to talk to. They went to Westville Tuesday, I think they had a good visit.
"Wesley has about two months left before he has to go back to that College place. He doesn't like it much. Hope he can get good and rested before then.
"Buttercup Alpine is kinda lost without Inigo around, sort of feel sorry for her. The big goats pick on her too much.
"Frolic Alpine is as jumpy and friendly as ever, exploring every little inch of The Place. The people and cats say her milk is very good, and I(Copper) agree.
"Mom's garden is growing really well, and she's started an inside garden for such funny-sounding stuff as bacteria, kabucha and sourdough.
"It would be Eclipse's birthday next Wednesday, doesn't seem like that long ago that she was born. That Ronald Reagan man had just died, his funeral was all over TV, he seemed like a good person. Must have been pretty important, too. Anyway, it was scary; and Wesley was freaking out too, which didn't help much. She wasn't too smart, but she was sweet, and a good babysitter.
"I don't really understand basketball all that well, but Sunny says the NBA Finals are going on right now, she wants the Spurs(whoever they are) to beat the Heat(who are supposed to be something between dogcatchers and Monstars). The Spurs won last night, I think, Wesley was amazed by this spectacular play late in the game.
"The barn is supposed to be cleaned out today, I think I'll check how that's going, then take a nap. Have a good week, everybody!"
Friday, June 7, 2013
Monday, June 3, 2013
So This Is 20...
It's almost summertime. And just past my birthday. Since I'm done with my online class now, I've had some time to plot out how this post ought to be written, just haven't quite had time to start typing it yet.
I've just felt kind of restless lately, not sure why. The dictionary defines it as "unable to rest or sleep; or uneasy." That kinda fits. I've actually been able to sleep some, which is good, but it hasn't been all that restful. And I've just been dragging throughout the day... Besides that, just somehow unsettled. I don't really belong here at the house with everybody any longer...drop in for visits, yes, but living here, not so much. My job(as student) is in Tahlequah, and I don't really belong there, either; but it's where I'm set for the next couple years, looks like. And I don't really enjoy it at all, but...again, it's where God has placed me for the time being, so I figure I ought to attack it and do as best I can. (See Colossians 3:22-24.)
It's been great to have the animals nearby. Three little doeling(female baby goats) to bottle-feed and play with, Frolic to milk, the dogs, cats, even chickens can sometimes be entertaining. REAL FOOD, especially fresh goat milk. It takes a while to get used to, but it's really good. And extremely healthy. Kabucha is, too, though not as tasty. (That's basically fermented tea.)
The wonderful fellowship of being involved with GBC weekly again, it's fantastic. Lots of good teaching, as always; but especially-good sermons from Hebrews 10 and 11 in particular.
Been wanting to write stuff recently, but just can't, quite. I'm not sure why. So I've finally had time to just read for the first time in forever, to actually learn. Discovered three more books in Brock and Bodie Thoene's "Zion Covenant" series that I didn't know existed, so I spent the weekend deep in WWII-era Europe.
They are such skilled writers, it's terrifying in how important what they did is. Not just because they are intense books, with a world as real as the one we live in now; but because these things actually happened, and they most likely will again at some point in the near future. And when it does, will we have the courage to stand up for the right things? What will our actions say about us? And though the sword might be ruling the day, the most vitally important weapon will still be the pen. Because it brings images and ideas to life, and those can never be completely killed. The truth will need to be spoken. And it can only be taught to those needing to hear by telling accurately what the tale was like.
And besides, I just love history.
There are some things that you know are sort of true, but you just don't want to admit that they might not be as fictional as you'd like. For example, well-meaning relatives asking that second of most-annoying-questions-of-all-time(just behind "Where are you going to/What are you going to do after college?"): "So why don't you have/When are you going to find a girlfriend?" Well....I don't know. Getting harder to laugh it off, too... I guess I've sort of realized that dogs aren't quite everything. Think I've gotten the knowledge out of what was before, enough so to make a bunch of new mistakes. When it's time, it'll happen. So I've just kind of been praying that I will become the sort of man able to handle well whatever God decides to throw at me, whatever that might be.
Done with that summer class in Film Appreciation now, really enjoyed about half the movies I had to watch, wasn't expecting that. But it's been about a week, and it feels like time to get started on something new. So I've just been trying to industriously clean everything I can see that I know what to do with. That isn't much, though. But the floor always needs sweeping and trash needs to be hauled up the driveway, so those are some useful things. And Amy often needs to be babysat, that can certainly be an adventure.
Might attend the Youth Tour reunion in July, I need to check on the registration on that...found out Tauri will be coming to NSU this fall, that's cool. Courtney's hoping I'll be chosen as a counselor for camp this year. Hard to believe it's already June.
I've just felt kind of restless lately, not sure why. The dictionary defines it as "unable to rest or sleep; or uneasy." That kinda fits. I've actually been able to sleep some, which is good, but it hasn't been all that restful. And I've just been dragging throughout the day... Besides that, just somehow unsettled. I don't really belong here at the house with everybody any longer...drop in for visits, yes, but living here, not so much. My job(as student) is in Tahlequah, and I don't really belong there, either; but it's where I'm set for the next couple years, looks like. And I don't really enjoy it at all, but...again, it's where God has placed me for the time being, so I figure I ought to attack it and do as best I can. (See Colossians 3:22-24.)
It's been great to have the animals nearby. Three little doeling(female baby goats) to bottle-feed and play with, Frolic to milk, the dogs, cats, even chickens can sometimes be entertaining. REAL FOOD, especially fresh goat milk. It takes a while to get used to, but it's really good. And extremely healthy. Kabucha is, too, though not as tasty. (That's basically fermented tea.)
The wonderful fellowship of being involved with GBC weekly again, it's fantastic. Lots of good teaching, as always; but especially-good sermons from Hebrews 10 and 11 in particular.
Been wanting to write stuff recently, but just can't, quite. I'm not sure why. So I've finally had time to just read for the first time in forever, to actually learn. Discovered three more books in Brock and Bodie Thoene's "Zion Covenant" series that I didn't know existed, so I spent the weekend deep in WWII-era Europe.
They are such skilled writers, it's terrifying in how important what they did is. Not just because they are intense books, with a world as real as the one we live in now; but because these things actually happened, and they most likely will again at some point in the near future. And when it does, will we have the courage to stand up for the right things? What will our actions say about us? And though the sword might be ruling the day, the most vitally important weapon will still be the pen. Because it brings images and ideas to life, and those can never be completely killed. The truth will need to be spoken. And it can only be taught to those needing to hear by telling accurately what the tale was like.
And besides, I just love history.
There are some things that you know are sort of true, but you just don't want to admit that they might not be as fictional as you'd like. For example, well-meaning relatives asking that second of most-annoying-questions-of-all-time(just behind "Where are you going to/What are you going to do after college?"): "So why don't you have/When are you going to find a girlfriend?" Well....I don't know. Getting harder to laugh it off, too... I guess I've sort of realized that dogs aren't quite everything. Think I've gotten the knowledge out of what was before, enough so to make a bunch of new mistakes. When it's time, it'll happen. So I've just kind of been praying that I will become the sort of man able to handle well whatever God decides to throw at me, whatever that might be.
Done with that summer class in Film Appreciation now, really enjoyed about half the movies I had to watch, wasn't expecting that. But it's been about a week, and it feels like time to get started on something new. So I've just been trying to industriously clean everything I can see that I know what to do with. That isn't much, though. But the floor always needs sweeping and trash needs to be hauled up the driveway, so those are some useful things. And Amy often needs to be babysat, that can certainly be an adventure.
Might attend the Youth Tour reunion in July, I need to check on the registration on that...found out Tauri will be coming to NSU this fall, that's cool. Courtney's hoping I'll be chosen as a counselor for camp this year. Hard to believe it's already June.
Monday, May 20, 2013
It's Tough On a Dog
One of the saddest poems I've ever heard...heard this on the radio one night as we were coming up on Speedy's gas station, never knew who wrote it until I just looked it up on a dog website; the listed author there was a Jean W. Sawtell. Reminds me of "The Giving Tree", one of my favorite picture books in all history. Mimi would have enjoyed this, I think.
"It's tough on a dog,
When his boy grows up,
When he no longer romps and frolics like a pup;
"It's tough on a dog,
When his boy gets old,
When they no longer cuddle on his bed when it gets cold;
"It's tough on a dog,
When his boy gets tall,
When he's off with the boys playing soccer and baseball;
"They no longer paddle through the mud and the bog,
Hoping to find a stray turtle or frog;
They no longer run through the grass up to their knees,
Or roll in piles of fresh fallen leaves;
"It's tough on a dog,
When his boy gets tall,
When he's off to school, and looking at girls in the hall;
"It's tough on a dog,
When he has work to do,
And forgets to play as he used to do;
"It's tough on a dog when
Instead of the woods or the fields or the pond,
His boy becomes a man -
And the man is gone."
It's tough on the boy, too.
"It's tough on a dog,
When his boy grows up,
When he no longer romps and frolics like a pup;
"It's tough on a dog,
When his boy gets old,
When they no longer cuddle on his bed when it gets cold;
"It's tough on a dog,
When his boy gets tall,
When he's off with the boys playing soccer and baseball;
"They no longer paddle through the mud and the bog,
Hoping to find a stray turtle or frog;
They no longer run through the grass up to their knees,
Or roll in piles of fresh fallen leaves;
"It's tough on a dog,
When his boy gets tall,
When he's off to school, and looking at girls in the hall;
"It's tough on a dog,
When he has work to do,
And forgets to play as he used to do;
"It's tough on a dog when
Instead of the woods or the fields or the pond,
His boy becomes a man -
And the man is gone."
It's tough on the boy, too.
Freshman Year Playlist
Well, I made a playlist of songs that went with graduations last year, and there was a lot of songs that seemed to scream for being included in a "Welcome to college" playlist. (Ones that I specially thought of, or were often stuck in my head, or both.) There could have been many more on this list, but I was tired of researching them all.
Track Twelve - "Where the Blacktop Ends", Keith Urban - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhsO7LnwyBI
My "Crank it up, I lived through another week!" Friday afternoon solo jam session.
Track Thirteen - "Supernatural", DC Talk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1BM07BKNQk
Yup. A fantastic song to play, by the way.
Track Fourteen - "She's in Love With the Boy", Trisha Yearwood - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUFObCZtGWQ
"There ain't a whole lot goin' on tonight/In this one-horse town" is a great description of campus on weekends...and so the rest of this song often glued itself into my mind way too often. Good song, but when it won't leave...
Track Fifteen - "Something Like That", Tim McGraw - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSThNgur0m4
That bridge....(!!!!!!!) It's wonderfully-written, and very true, but when it refuses to leave after dropping in unexpectedly...well, it's not pleasant.
Track Sixteen - "In The Light", DC Talk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWq1XYxtlRs
What we should always be seeking to do...and this pretty well sums up our journeys on the way there.
Track Seventeen - "Life Ain't Always Beautiful", Gary Allan - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VDNMtn0t2A
It isn't. Sometimes it just sucks. But it's worth it, the hard times will eventually lead to greener pastures at some point.
Track Eighteen - "Anyway", Martina McBride - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uLtyzRgmyI
Even if things seem to be going all wrong, keep your faith as strong as you can. God won't give you any more than He knows you can deal with.
Track Nineteen - "If You're Going Through Hell", Rodney Atkins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKybUusyP8
Hang on, things will get better at some point.
Track Twenty - That incredibly sad song from "The Fox and the Hound" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3oZ0Il4QH
I watched this too many times to count...
Track Twenty-one - "Bring It On", Steven Curtis Chapman - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYJMG1bts0c
Track One - "Never Grow Up", Taylor Swift - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1YGmOit8G0
Sometimes you just wanna be a little kid again...
Track Two - "Don't Forget to Remember Me", Carrie Underwood - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmAi_qJoPbU
This second verse, especially, fits the transition to college well.
This second verse, especially, fits the transition to college well.
Track Three - "Speechless", Steven Curtis Chapman - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH-1wj7_Q6k
God is So GOOD!!!
Track Four - "I'm in a Hurry", Alabama - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6slibTD9MF0
Students always are...it isn't much fun.
Track Five - Great is Thy Faithfulness - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k1WhFtVp0o
Yes. Yes. Yesyesyesyes. And yes. And thank you, Lord.
Track Six - In Christ Alone - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnWw24s5gG8
Very good reminder.
Track Seven - Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwFHsX6omvI
One of my favorite hymns of all time.
Track Eight - "Temporary Home", Carrie Underwood - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LraOiHUltak
Completely fits college; completely fits this whole life we live.
Track Nine - "King of the Jungle", Steven Curtis Chapman - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZFwLYvPi4c
I very often feel this way, and have to slow down and remind myself who is the King of the Jungle.
Track Ten - "It's a Good Day", FFH - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S-KdxH848I
And in his goodness, God puts rare surprises of blessings in rough times to keep us going. Those are good days.
Track Eleven - The Lord Is - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qkMs06XKaA
Another great, sound theological, song.
Track Twelve - "Where the Blacktop Ends", Keith Urban - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhsO7LnwyBI
My "Crank it up, I lived through another week!" Friday afternoon solo jam session.
Track Thirteen - "Supernatural", DC Talk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1BM07BKNQk
Yup. A fantastic song to play, by the way.
Track Fourteen - "She's in Love With the Boy", Trisha Yearwood - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUFObCZtGWQ
"There ain't a whole lot goin' on tonight/In this one-horse town" is a great description of campus on weekends...and so the rest of this song often glued itself into my mind way too often. Good song, but when it won't leave...
Track Fifteen - "Something Like That", Tim McGraw - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSThNgur0m4
That bridge....(!!!!!!!) It's wonderfully-written, and very true, but when it refuses to leave after dropping in unexpectedly...well, it's not pleasant.
Track Sixteen - "In The Light", DC Talk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWq1XYxtlRs
What we should always be seeking to do...and this pretty well sums up our journeys on the way there.
Track Seventeen - "Life Ain't Always Beautiful", Gary Allan - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VDNMtn0t2A
It isn't. Sometimes it just sucks. But it's worth it, the hard times will eventually lead to greener pastures at some point.
Track Eighteen - "Anyway", Martina McBride - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uLtyzRgmyI
Even if things seem to be going all wrong, keep your faith as strong as you can. God won't give you any more than He knows you can deal with.
Track Nineteen - "If You're Going Through Hell", Rodney Atkins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKybUusyP8
Hang on, things will get better at some point.
Track Twenty - That incredibly sad song from "The Fox and the Hound" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3oZ0Il4QH
I watched this too many times to count...
Track Twenty-one - "Bring It On", Steven Curtis Chapman - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYJMG1bts0c
For finals week. Or whatever else is thrown in our paths.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Freshman Year Down
Well, somehow or another I got through it. The semester ended last Thursday, and this online course I'm taking began Monday, so I won't really get a break until June. I kind of stumbled through finals, but did just well enough to squeak by with all A's again, so that's kind of nice. And crazy. (I got an A in math?)
Had a lot of sleepless nights and stressful days, but God guided me through it all, and he provided the aid I needed just when it was needed most, over and over again. Phone call here, email there, letter or card occasionally...
Far too many hymns to list were often remembered and their truth savored; and country music again proved why it's the greatest genre of all, since it's about life, and everything that happens in it.
Besides people, the other things that got me through the school year were a bakery; Chick-Fil-A; a blog run by a Mormon lawyer; reruns of "MacGyver", "Full House", and "Boy Meets World"; a YouTube channel run by a trio of homeschool graduates; my guitar Abby Lee and mandolin; and long walks through rain-coated streets. Many long walks.
Thankful for the prayers and encouragement of my GBC family, especially Dylan and Steven. Samara was helpful as well with getting through those first couple months. The large camp network was invaluable; prayers of Brother Larry and Miss Kathy; the advice and laughter, muddling through this mess of life alongside Daniel, Jessica, Amanda, Jon, Ash and Matt, just to name a few. And most of the YT gang was going through some of the same experiences I was, so we could compare notes and complaints. Staying in touch with Aubrey, Adam, Tauri, Ryan W., Chance, Lorene and Lisbeth, mainly.
And my family, of course. Nice to have relatives you can spend the weekends with; or drop in once in a while for dominoes, music and ping pong.
It was really cool getting to know Ryan and Shelly and their family, felt a lot like home.
"Home"...that's a hard concept to exactly understand. Where exactly is it? What defines somewhere as a "home" base? Why can multiple places feel that way at the same time? And what on earth is it that I've been searching for over the last few months? Something to do with this concept...
Tried going to the CCF meetings, it was the group that Mom, Dad and Ryan had all been a part of when they were in school, but that didn't work out so well. A big question I've been dealing with lately-ish is "When is no teaching more beneficial than poor teaching?" So it was an off-and-on type of thing, went occasionally out of guilt, but nearly always felt much more depressed leaving than when I came, and that was at a pretty good level already.
Found a pretty-good church within walking distance to attend when possible, Grace Baptist is about a fifteen-to-twenty minute walk from my dorm, depending on the weather, how much a hurry I'm in, and other things that come up.
Ran into my old neighbor Katie and her husband Trevor, who was on my basketball team a long time ago, one day during lunch, it was good to catch up with them. They tried to get me to come to the BCM meetings weekly, and I knew a couple other people who were part of that group, so I thought for a while about checking it out one night. (My classmate Mallory, Trevor's cousin Bree, my neighbor Stephen two doors down, and this dude named Andrew, a Media Studies major fixing to graduate.) So one night in early February, I think, I poked my nose tentatively in the BCM building, unsure of what to expect. It was good, and people were friendly. Good teaching would probably be nearby with some more in-depth sniffing, still need to check on that. But anyway, these people actually seemed like they were seeking to grow in Christ and encourage others in their spiritual walks, which was very appealing. Slowly getting to know some of those people, Stephen, Mallory, Daniel P., and the Samanthas(known to everyone as Blonde and Redhead).
Actually going to classes was an adjustment, for the most part I didn't learn much from fall semester. Enjoyed my psychology course, our teacher was this entertaining, common-sense-filled old man, and the community feel was interesting. A tight-knit group, with a lot of characters. The same could be said for Intro to Media Studies, lots of crazy things happened in that classroom. Comp I was a disaster, but we had one interesting day where we talked about Star Wars the entire time. Being homeschooled was slightly a disadvantage, as I had to quickly learn a crash-course in "How to Write an Essay". Thankfully, Jess was happy to explain how MLA format worked. My history class was fantastic, since my teacher loved the subject and wanted us to find out as many new things as we could.
This spring I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but Basic Writing was challenging and good; not completely relying solely on instinct in journalism any longer, have most of the rules down now. Comp II was a trial at times, but really stretched my writing and research capabilities, which was good. And like Dr. Fuller or Mr. Carlisle or Cassie, Jason wanted us to really learn our subject. Mr. Shamblin was a lot like Brother Larry, which made for an interesting experience, seeing him every day in two classes. Computers was required, but I learned some useful stuff, and I was able to understand most of the stuff we went over in math. There wasn't really anyone to compare myself to in any of these classes, so that was disappointing and frustrating, always having to race myself, instead of a friendlyish rival to compete with.
Also kept in touch with Alton, it's been kind of fun to listen to his take on life as a married person. Occasionally heard from Maddie as well. Mark Twain said once that "I can live for a week on a good compliment; sometimes even a month, if it's a specially-good one." At one point, she told me this: "To be honest, you're a lot stronger than you think." That echoed through my mind often over the months, helped a lot, in some odd way.
One of the biggest things I learned this year was how weak I am, how much I need God to guide me and keep me on the right path. And also that no matter how much we wish we could change others' lives, we can only control our own, and not too well at that.
Over the last year, I have graduated from high school; attended two weddings; hiked six miles through a dry river; observed with horror the apathy of college sports crowds; written about peanut butter, fairy tales, thunderstorms, goat milk and a beauty pageant; lost a couple of friends; choked down terrible food; X-rayed a cat; practiced songwriting; been invited to join a band and generally survived with most of my personality quirks intact.
The blog I mentioned is http://www.itjustgetsstranger.com, you must check out the Snuggie Texts first, and then proceed to whatever else of Eli's highly-entertaining posts you wish to peruse. You're welcome.
And the YouTube channel is the group called Blimey Cow, their videos can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/blimeycow Highly hilarious, with heavy doses of snarky commentary on the oddities of life and culture.
Had a lot of sleepless nights and stressful days, but God guided me through it all, and he provided the aid I needed just when it was needed most, over and over again. Phone call here, email there, letter or card occasionally...
Far too many hymns to list were often remembered and their truth savored; and country music again proved why it's the greatest genre of all, since it's about life, and everything that happens in it.
Besides people, the other things that got me through the school year were a bakery; Chick-Fil-A; a blog run by a Mormon lawyer; reruns of "MacGyver", "Full House", and "Boy Meets World"; a YouTube channel run by a trio of homeschool graduates; my guitar Abby Lee and mandolin; and long walks through rain-coated streets. Many long walks.
Thankful for the prayers and encouragement of my GBC family, especially Dylan and Steven. Samara was helpful as well with getting through those first couple months. The large camp network was invaluable; prayers of Brother Larry and Miss Kathy; the advice and laughter, muddling through this mess of life alongside Daniel, Jessica, Amanda, Jon, Ash and Matt, just to name a few. And most of the YT gang was going through some of the same experiences I was, so we could compare notes and complaints. Staying in touch with Aubrey, Adam, Tauri, Ryan W., Chance, Lorene and Lisbeth, mainly.
And my family, of course. Nice to have relatives you can spend the weekends with; or drop in once in a while for dominoes, music and ping pong.
It was really cool getting to know Ryan and Shelly and their family, felt a lot like home.
"Home"...that's a hard concept to exactly understand. Where exactly is it? What defines somewhere as a "home" base? Why can multiple places feel that way at the same time? And what on earth is it that I've been searching for over the last few months? Something to do with this concept...
Tried going to the CCF meetings, it was the group that Mom, Dad and Ryan had all been a part of when they were in school, but that didn't work out so well. A big question I've been dealing with lately-ish is "When is no teaching more beneficial than poor teaching?" So it was an off-and-on type of thing, went occasionally out of guilt, but nearly always felt much more depressed leaving than when I came, and that was at a pretty good level already.
Found a pretty-good church within walking distance to attend when possible, Grace Baptist is about a fifteen-to-twenty minute walk from my dorm, depending on the weather, how much a hurry I'm in, and other things that come up.
Ran into my old neighbor Katie and her husband Trevor, who was on my basketball team a long time ago, one day during lunch, it was good to catch up with them. They tried to get me to come to the BCM meetings weekly, and I knew a couple other people who were part of that group, so I thought for a while about checking it out one night. (My classmate Mallory, Trevor's cousin Bree, my neighbor Stephen two doors down, and this dude named Andrew, a Media Studies major fixing to graduate.) So one night in early February, I think, I poked my nose tentatively in the BCM building, unsure of what to expect. It was good, and people were friendly. Good teaching would probably be nearby with some more in-depth sniffing, still need to check on that. But anyway, these people actually seemed like they were seeking to grow in Christ and encourage others in their spiritual walks, which was very appealing. Slowly getting to know some of those people, Stephen, Mallory, Daniel P., and the Samanthas(known to everyone as Blonde and Redhead).
Actually going to classes was an adjustment, for the most part I didn't learn much from fall semester. Enjoyed my psychology course, our teacher was this entertaining, common-sense-filled old man, and the community feel was interesting. A tight-knit group, with a lot of characters. The same could be said for Intro to Media Studies, lots of crazy things happened in that classroom. Comp I was a disaster, but we had one interesting day where we talked about Star Wars the entire time. Being homeschooled was slightly a disadvantage, as I had to quickly learn a crash-course in "How to Write an Essay". Thankfully, Jess was happy to explain how MLA format worked. My history class was fantastic, since my teacher loved the subject and wanted us to find out as many new things as we could.
This spring I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but Basic Writing was challenging and good; not completely relying solely on instinct in journalism any longer, have most of the rules down now. Comp II was a trial at times, but really stretched my writing and research capabilities, which was good. And like Dr. Fuller or Mr. Carlisle or Cassie, Jason wanted us to really learn our subject. Mr. Shamblin was a lot like Brother Larry, which made for an interesting experience, seeing him every day in two classes. Computers was required, but I learned some useful stuff, and I was able to understand most of the stuff we went over in math. There wasn't really anyone to compare myself to in any of these classes, so that was disappointing and frustrating, always having to race myself, instead of a friendlyish rival to compete with.
Also kept in touch with Alton, it's been kind of fun to listen to his take on life as a married person. Occasionally heard from Maddie as well. Mark Twain said once that "I can live for a week on a good compliment; sometimes even a month, if it's a specially-good one." At one point, she told me this: "To be honest, you're a lot stronger than you think." That echoed through my mind often over the months, helped a lot, in some odd way.
One of the biggest things I learned this year was how weak I am, how much I need God to guide me and keep me on the right path. And also that no matter how much we wish we could change others' lives, we can only control our own, and not too well at that.
Over the last year, I have graduated from high school; attended two weddings; hiked six miles through a dry river; observed with horror the apathy of college sports crowds; written about peanut butter, fairy tales, thunderstorms, goat milk and a beauty pageant; lost a couple of friends; choked down terrible food; X-rayed a cat; practiced songwriting; been invited to join a band and generally survived with most of my personality quirks intact.
The blog I mentioned is http://www.itjustgetsstranger.com, you must check out the Snuggie Texts first, and then proceed to whatever else of Eli's highly-entertaining posts you wish to peruse. You're welcome.
And the YouTube channel is the group called Blimey Cow, their videos can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/blimeycow Highly hilarious, with heavy doses of snarky commentary on the oddities of life and culture.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Mom's Favorite Poem
This is my mom's all-time favorite poem, no idea where she found it or who the author was. But it just seemed to fit life this week, comes in handy pretty often as a motivational tool.
"Somebody once said that it couldn't be done,
But he with a chuckle replied,
That maybe it couldn't;
But he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he tried.
"So he buckled right in
With the trace of a grin
On his face.
(If he worried, he hid it.)
"He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done
AND HE DID IT!"
But he with a chuckle replied,
That maybe it couldn't;
But he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he tried.
"So he buckled right in
With the trace of a grin
On his face.
(If he worried, he hid it.)
"He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done
AND HE DID IT!"
Monday, May 6, 2013
Bloodlines
Been thinking on our mortality a lot recently...
Strange topic, I know. And slightly depressing and scary.
Went to visit Nano yesterday, which was nice. There's just something good about talking with her, because you know in the back of your mind, most people don't have their great-grandmas as long as I've had mine. And old people just have such a completely different mindset on life than we do now...
Meg the cat had kittens a few weeks ago, and they're just now old enough to be adopted. One of Mom's cousins wanted one, so she drove east to Tahlequah to drop off the kitten before going to Westville to see Nano. Since the track is about a ten-minute walk from my dorm, I walked down there and rode with her.
It was a good visit, we went grocery shopping and organized the medicine and looked through old picture albums. And also got a lamp from her neighbor's house and set it in the back room to await repairs.
Nano just seemed so frail. It's incredibly sad to see elderly relatives you enjoy being around getting older. Her spirit is well, but beginning to wear down and out. Her eyesight is failing, and she can't move aroud quite as well as she once could. Still very healthy for a 92-year-old, but on the other hand...
Seems like a lot of relatives' health are all crashing downhill at the same time...it's sort of scary, it'll be such a huge change, life will, when they're no longer here.
Anyway, like I was saying, we were looking through old pictures, extremely old photographs, most of them. From the '20s and '30s, slowly increasing to nine years ago. A lot of characters from the early old stories are there: Charlie the train engineer, Nano's dad; her brothers Marvin and Leo, her sisters Lois and Ina, this unusual neighbor named Aint Sairy... Then later, pictures of everyone and their various beaux, which go with stories of dates to church and not marrying a man because of his rough hands... And then pictures of Nano and Dado, and Mimi, my grandma, as a little girl, in all the various places that they lived. Seeing what these locations of the tales Mimi would tell actually looked like, brings a whole new demension to the stories.
Got me to thinking about the sort of people I came from.
I've never been able to keep most anybody very straight, unfortunately; the really great historians are all very distantly related, so I don't know much. Through my mom's side, the Morrises, Cagles and Lankfords, were mostly farmers and such, a blend of English, Scotch and Cherokee that originally started out somewhere in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, gradually moving west into Oklahoma. One of Mom's cousins is a congressman. The Lankfords were mostly the same; from Virginia into Tennessee, then to Oklahoma at some later point. Most of them were farmers or ranchers, and when electricity came in; they all jumped on that. Switching back to Mom's mom's side, Dado single-handedly wired the entire town of Westville for electricity in 1946. Back to Mom's dad's side, Papa Lankford was a preacher and carpenter, and fourteen generations back in our family forest you can find Thomas Jefferson.
I don't know much at all about Dad's side of the family; nobody else does, either. Irish blood is in there for sure somewhere, legend has it from a band of pirates. Cherokee and Creek blood came in there, too; the earliest I know of, those ancestors came from eastern Colorado, western Kansas and somewhere east, like North Carolina or Georgia. My dad's uncle is a senator, my great-grandpa (who I was named after) was a successful businessman in the optical field, and Dad's mom was a DJ.
But mostly, there's just ordinary people, who had to work extremely hard for whatever they got in life. The storytelling gene has been passed down through the years, I seemed to have picked up an extra-strength dose of that one. Humor has been passed along as well, which is a fantastic legacy, although one that doesn't mesh as well with the intense drive to succeed.
Whatever collection of personality quirks and histories go into making a person, well, here I am. It's impossible to tell exactly how much heredity and natural disposition vs. environment and circumstances go into making a person who they are, and even harder to assess your own personality and understand it, to accept both the strengths and weaknesses in their actual porportions in order to go through this life.
I like looking through old pictures.
Strange topic, I know. And slightly depressing and scary.
Went to visit Nano yesterday, which was nice. There's just something good about talking with her, because you know in the back of your mind, most people don't have their great-grandmas as long as I've had mine. And old people just have such a completely different mindset on life than we do now...
Meg the cat had kittens a few weeks ago, and they're just now old enough to be adopted. One of Mom's cousins wanted one, so she drove east to Tahlequah to drop off the kitten before going to Westville to see Nano. Since the track is about a ten-minute walk from my dorm, I walked down there and rode with her.
It was a good visit, we went grocery shopping and organized the medicine and looked through old picture albums. And also got a lamp from her neighbor's house and set it in the back room to await repairs.
Nano just seemed so frail. It's incredibly sad to see elderly relatives you enjoy being around getting older. Her spirit is well, but beginning to wear down and out. Her eyesight is failing, and she can't move aroud quite as well as she once could. Still very healthy for a 92-year-old, but on the other hand...
Seems like a lot of relatives' health are all crashing downhill at the same time...it's sort of scary, it'll be such a huge change, life will, when they're no longer here.
Anyway, like I was saying, we were looking through old pictures, extremely old photographs, most of them. From the '20s and '30s, slowly increasing to nine years ago. A lot of characters from the early old stories are there: Charlie the train engineer, Nano's dad; her brothers Marvin and Leo, her sisters Lois and Ina, this unusual neighbor named Aint Sairy... Then later, pictures of everyone and their various beaux, which go with stories of dates to church and not marrying a man because of his rough hands... And then pictures of Nano and Dado, and Mimi, my grandma, as a little girl, in all the various places that they lived. Seeing what these locations of the tales Mimi would tell actually looked like, brings a whole new demension to the stories.
Got me to thinking about the sort of people I came from.
I've never been able to keep most anybody very straight, unfortunately; the really great historians are all very distantly related, so I don't know much. Through my mom's side, the Morrises, Cagles and Lankfords, were mostly farmers and such, a blend of English, Scotch and Cherokee that originally started out somewhere in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, gradually moving west into Oklahoma. One of Mom's cousins is a congressman. The Lankfords were mostly the same; from Virginia into Tennessee, then to Oklahoma at some later point. Most of them were farmers or ranchers, and when electricity came in; they all jumped on that. Switching back to Mom's mom's side, Dado single-handedly wired the entire town of Westville for electricity in 1946. Back to Mom's dad's side, Papa Lankford was a preacher and carpenter, and fourteen generations back in our family forest you can find Thomas Jefferson.
I don't know much at all about Dad's side of the family; nobody else does, either. Irish blood is in there for sure somewhere, legend has it from a band of pirates. Cherokee and Creek blood came in there, too; the earliest I know of, those ancestors came from eastern Colorado, western Kansas and somewhere east, like North Carolina or Georgia. My dad's uncle is a senator, my great-grandpa (who I was named after) was a successful businessman in the optical field, and Dad's mom was a DJ.
But mostly, there's just ordinary people, who had to work extremely hard for whatever they got in life. The storytelling gene has been passed down through the years, I seemed to have picked up an extra-strength dose of that one. Humor has been passed along as well, which is a fantastic legacy, although one that doesn't mesh as well with the intense drive to succeed.
Whatever collection of personality quirks and histories go into making a person, well, here I am. It's impossible to tell exactly how much heredity and natural disposition vs. environment and circumstances go into making a person who they are, and even harder to assess your own personality and understand it, to accept both the strengths and weaknesses in their actual porportions in order to go through this life.
I like looking through old pictures.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Dead Week
They call this time of the semester "Dead Week", because everyone either dies or becomes a zombie. (That'd make a good plot for a pre-summer-blockbuster movie...) There are a few reasons for this. One, students are exhausted and completely out of all fuel. They ran out of energy three months ago, they ran out of will six-ish weeks ago, and they ran out of caffiene last weekend. Teachers are sick of grading papers. There are numerous presentations that have to be delivered and listened to attentively, and then there are those finals the next week.
Besides the zombies staggering around, there are those cramming the info they should have been studying the last four months into one week. And the frantic panicking they're all in, and only too ready to talk to everyone they meet about it.
Well, that pretty much explains that. How has my week gone? Let me think...
Monday morning we had a style quiz in Basic Writing, and that was it. We got our final stories of the year back, I scored a 95, which was all right, considering we couldn't go back and fix our errors afterwards. Then I had to give a PowerPoint presentation. It was on peanut butter sandwiches. (I was hungry and it was the first interesting topic that came to mind when we picked them on choosing day.) Most of the people laughed, pretty sure I included all the required elements, and Mr. Shamblin said it was good. Went for a run afterwards, then went to the last BCM meeting of the school year. That was good, it was held outside by the fountain since the weather was nice. Talked to Amanda, and that was pretty much all the day's news. Fell asleep about one in the morning.
Tuesday was a very long day. Of course, just about any day when you get three hours of sleep is going to be a long one. So I woke up at 4:30 a.m. with a horrible headache, pretty sure I had a fever, and I felt like I was going to throw up. And I had a math test later that morning. Another cause of the zombie thing is that being so tired and stressed, even more so than usual, your body just can't handle it and it just forces you to collapse, thereby through the enforced resting, it starts to repair itself. And that's great, but it doesn't really help when you can barely sit up and have important things to do. And it's cloudy and looks like it's going to rain, which also doesn't help. But, anyway, I drag myself downstairs and across campus to the science building to take the test, on geometry-like things, dealing with right triangles. I stumbled through it, relatively positive I completely bombed, but...I tried to finish it as best I could. Then it was time to go to the library, because I hadn't printed off my essay on social media that was due in less than two hours.
Over to Seminary Hall, I pass the time waiting for class by finishing G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy and reviewing my AP Stylebook. Jason had our second essays back, so I was a little worried about that. But the fairy-tale paper(See previous post) turned out pretty well. The rough draft scored a 90, and the final a 96. I missed one in--text citation in the first paragraph. In the comments, he wrote: "Great job! Your writing is direct and stylish." Which I guess is a good thing. Anyway, his comments are much more helpful than Mr. Deiter's were. Because he actually wants to make us better writers, to more clearly present our arguments, in order to improve our powers of persuasion. Since he wants to improve our writing, he's ruthless in searching for errors, as all good editors ought to be. This is why I've enjoyed his class. And he's funny. Strange at times, but a good teacher.
Thought about going to CCF, but it was canceled, so I walked back to the dorm, read Agatha Christie's biography, and then went to bed pretty early, hoping I would feel better tomorrow.
Woke up pretty early Wednesday morning, the new janitors(who are neither as good or as friendly as Darrell, the previous janitor) came through about 6:30, making enough noise as they clomped through the hall to wake me up. The sun was shining brightly, and I thought about going for a run before getting ready for class. Didn't think that would be such a good idea, though, since I wasn't feeling completely 100 percent yet, so I did math homework, raising my total score on that, which will count as a test-grade, by one point. And then I got into one of those classic comment chain conversations with Jon and Amanda on Nintendo games we played growing up. And there was a new Stranger post to read, which was an especially good one.
Two more style quizzes in Basic Writing, and we found out that this week's news blogs were optional for extra credit, because Cassie had a ton of assignments from her photography class to grade and needed time for those. More presentations to listen to in Computers, there was a very good one on gun control by a guy I'd never seen before, a large sweeping look covering nearly all aspects of the topic before coming around to blasting its' deficiencies in his conclusion. (Most people in this class I have no idea who they are. Same with my math class.)
Practiced volleyball for a while, then thought I might watch a movie. Finally remembered Mom's Netflix password, so I watched "Captain America" for the second time. It's a very good movie, full of good quotes and with a great story and characters.
Then I went over to Louise and Harry's, which was great, as nearly all times spent with Lankfords are. We watched TV for a while, a show on specialty hamburgers, and then played hymns on the mandolins. It was a good day. Kind of a strange happiness, of the rare intentional forced "I'm going to do things that sound relaxing and interesting" variety, as opposed to the "Random events that turn out in a nicely surprising way" type. But it was a nice day. It was really hot, though, not used to 84-degree temperatures for a while.
This morning had a kind of odd-but-fitting symmerty to the first day of math class. In January I woke up at 10:34 and galloped my ten-minute commute through a cold windy rain to get to class by the starting time of 11, and on the final day in May I woke up at 10:37, galloped my ten-minute communte through a windy, cold morning that was threatening to rain. We went over Tuesday's test, which turned out to not be as bad as I'd feared. Mr. Shamblin, as exhausted of teaching as his students are of being taught, messed up the grading for the tests, realized it on the second-to-last one, and was too tired to regrade them all over again. So though I earned a 78, it goes down as an 89 in the gradebook, and I pretty much just need to score higher than 72(if our final is above our lowest test, that lowest is replaced by our final score, which will then count double) to get an A, I think. My math could be off there, but I think I have an ouside chance of sneaking by somehow with all A's again. Don't think it's likely, but there is a chance. Just need to try to do the best I can on the finals, and then see what happens.
Stopped by Morgan's, it was pretty crowded this afternoon. This guy in his early forties with his three young daughters asked me for advice on what to get. After his daughters ordered, he asked Emily the clerk, "Are you guys out of cherry turnovers?" She nods dejectedly. "We just sold the last one like fifteen minutes ago." He frowns. "Can I beat that guy up?" Everyone within hearing distance cracks up.
I had to give a presentation on my last essay in Comp II, which I survived, more or less. Still not feeling great, but at least I didn't throw up. We found out several interesting things about our class: We are very much pro-spanking, very much pro-hunting, and very much anti-child beauty pageants. There was a lot of writing on my rough draft of the social media essay...and then I get to the last page, where I find a score of 98, and a note saying this would be acceptable as-is for the final if I wished. There are a few words that I'll rearrange for my own liking, the only thing Jason could find fault with was the title. "I was trying to find something to improve in here...the only thing I could think of was to make the title more interesting," he told me after class let out. He described it as a "perfect academic-style paper, the kind that these fifty-year-old guys wish they could write."
The Internet was out for most of the afternoon, which pretty much killed the idea of getting one last news blog in. And I couldn't get started writing this post until a lot later than I would have liked. But I did get to read Agatha Christie, so that was good. As I've been typing this, I've been watching the Los Angeles-St. Louis hockey game, and there have been snowflakes landing on my window. In May. SNOWFLAKES????? REALLY???? The Blues have just won, like I was hoping, and that's basically all the news that's happened this week.
Up next is finals, which I'm strangely unconcerned about. They're important tests, but the world won't end if I do badly. I'll just do the best I can, and see what happens. Not really that worried about two of them, the other two I'll need to do a little more studying for. And then I'll get to move out(Yay!) and have most of the summer off to rest and learn before thethird round of this war, er, I mean, this third semester of this college chapter in my life, begins.
Besides the zombies staggering around, there are those cramming the info they should have been studying the last four months into one week. And the frantic panicking they're all in, and only too ready to talk to everyone they meet about it.
Well, that pretty much explains that. How has my week gone? Let me think...
Monday morning we had a style quiz in Basic Writing, and that was it. We got our final stories of the year back, I scored a 95, which was all right, considering we couldn't go back and fix our errors afterwards. Then I had to give a PowerPoint presentation. It was on peanut butter sandwiches. (I was hungry and it was the first interesting topic that came to mind when we picked them on choosing day.) Most of the people laughed, pretty sure I included all the required elements, and Mr. Shamblin said it was good. Went for a run afterwards, then went to the last BCM meeting of the school year. That was good, it was held outside by the fountain since the weather was nice. Talked to Amanda, and that was pretty much all the day's news. Fell asleep about one in the morning.
Tuesday was a very long day. Of course, just about any day when you get three hours of sleep is going to be a long one. So I woke up at 4:30 a.m. with a horrible headache, pretty sure I had a fever, and I felt like I was going to throw up. And I had a math test later that morning. Another cause of the zombie thing is that being so tired and stressed, even more so than usual, your body just can't handle it and it just forces you to collapse, thereby through the enforced resting, it starts to repair itself. And that's great, but it doesn't really help when you can barely sit up and have important things to do. And it's cloudy and looks like it's going to rain, which also doesn't help. But, anyway, I drag myself downstairs and across campus to the science building to take the test, on geometry-like things, dealing with right triangles. I stumbled through it, relatively positive I completely bombed, but...I tried to finish it as best I could. Then it was time to go to the library, because I hadn't printed off my essay on social media that was due in less than two hours.
Over to Seminary Hall, I pass the time waiting for class by finishing G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy and reviewing my AP Stylebook. Jason had our second essays back, so I was a little worried about that. But the fairy-tale paper(See previous post) turned out pretty well. The rough draft scored a 90, and the final a 96. I missed one in--text citation in the first paragraph. In the comments, he wrote: "Great job! Your writing is direct and stylish." Which I guess is a good thing. Anyway, his comments are much more helpful than Mr. Deiter's were. Because he actually wants to make us better writers, to more clearly present our arguments, in order to improve our powers of persuasion. Since he wants to improve our writing, he's ruthless in searching for errors, as all good editors ought to be. This is why I've enjoyed his class. And he's funny. Strange at times, but a good teacher.
Thought about going to CCF, but it was canceled, so I walked back to the dorm, read Agatha Christie's biography, and then went to bed pretty early, hoping I would feel better tomorrow.
Woke up pretty early Wednesday morning, the new janitors(who are neither as good or as friendly as Darrell, the previous janitor) came through about 6:30, making enough noise as they clomped through the hall to wake me up. The sun was shining brightly, and I thought about going for a run before getting ready for class. Didn't think that would be such a good idea, though, since I wasn't feeling completely 100 percent yet, so I did math homework, raising my total score on that, which will count as a test-grade, by one point. And then I got into one of those classic comment chain conversations with Jon and Amanda on Nintendo games we played growing up. And there was a new Stranger post to read, which was an especially good one.
Two more style quizzes in Basic Writing, and we found out that this week's news blogs were optional for extra credit, because Cassie had a ton of assignments from her photography class to grade and needed time for those. More presentations to listen to in Computers, there was a very good one on gun control by a guy I'd never seen before, a large sweeping look covering nearly all aspects of the topic before coming around to blasting its' deficiencies in his conclusion. (Most people in this class I have no idea who they are. Same with my math class.)
Practiced volleyball for a while, then thought I might watch a movie. Finally remembered Mom's Netflix password, so I watched "Captain America" for the second time. It's a very good movie, full of good quotes and with a great story and characters.
Then I went over to Louise and Harry's, which was great, as nearly all times spent with Lankfords are. We watched TV for a while, a show on specialty hamburgers, and then played hymns on the mandolins. It was a good day. Kind of a strange happiness, of the rare intentional forced "I'm going to do things that sound relaxing and interesting" variety, as opposed to the "Random events that turn out in a nicely surprising way" type. But it was a nice day. It was really hot, though, not used to 84-degree temperatures for a while.
This morning had a kind of odd-but-fitting symmerty to the first day of math class. In January I woke up at 10:34 and galloped my ten-minute commute through a cold windy rain to get to class by the starting time of 11, and on the final day in May I woke up at 10:37, galloped my ten-minute communte through a windy, cold morning that was threatening to rain. We went over Tuesday's test, which turned out to not be as bad as I'd feared. Mr. Shamblin, as exhausted of teaching as his students are of being taught, messed up the grading for the tests, realized it on the second-to-last one, and was too tired to regrade them all over again. So though I earned a 78, it goes down as an 89 in the gradebook, and I pretty much just need to score higher than 72(if our final is above our lowest test, that lowest is replaced by our final score, which will then count double) to get an A, I think. My math could be off there, but I think I have an ouside chance of sneaking by somehow with all A's again. Don't think it's likely, but there is a chance. Just need to try to do the best I can on the finals, and then see what happens.
Stopped by Morgan's, it was pretty crowded this afternoon. This guy in his early forties with his three young daughters asked me for advice on what to get. After his daughters ordered, he asked Emily the clerk, "Are you guys out of cherry turnovers?" She nods dejectedly. "We just sold the last one like fifteen minutes ago." He frowns. "Can I beat that guy up?" Everyone within hearing distance cracks up.
I had to give a presentation on my last essay in Comp II, which I survived, more or less. Still not feeling great, but at least I didn't throw up. We found out several interesting things about our class: We are very much pro-spanking, very much pro-hunting, and very much anti-child beauty pageants. There was a lot of writing on my rough draft of the social media essay...and then I get to the last page, where I find a score of 98, and a note saying this would be acceptable as-is for the final if I wished. There are a few words that I'll rearrange for my own liking, the only thing Jason could find fault with was the title. "I was trying to find something to improve in here...the only thing I could think of was to make the title more interesting," he told me after class let out. He described it as a "perfect academic-style paper, the kind that these fifty-year-old guys wish they could write."
The Internet was out for most of the afternoon, which pretty much killed the idea of getting one last news blog in. And I couldn't get started writing this post until a lot later than I would have liked. But I did get to read Agatha Christie, so that was good. As I've been typing this, I've been watching the Los Angeles-St. Louis hockey game, and there have been snowflakes landing on my window. In May. SNOWFLAKES????? REALLY???? The Blues have just won, like I was hoping, and that's basically all the news that's happened this week.
Up next is finals, which I'm strangely unconcerned about. They're important tests, but the world won't end if I do badly. I'll just do the best I can, and see what happens. Not really that worried about two of them, the other two I'll need to do a little more studying for. And then I'll get to move out(Yay!) and have most of the summer off to rest and learn before the
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Fairy Tales - The Keys to World's Secrets
I'm pretty sure I'm the only college student on this campus who would write an argumentative essay on fairy tales.
I'm pretty sure Works Cited pages don't generally include works of Dr. Seuss or The Princess Bride.
I'm fairly positive that not many students give their end-of-year PowerPoint presentations on "The Art of Making Peanut Butter Sandwiches."
And I know I'm the only person on campus that carries a little keychain Snoopy on his backpack.
But, anyway, these are all things that have been done recently. My proof-readers all seemed to like this paper, which was good. But would my Comp II teacher like it? Would I have it written in the right MLA style?
Well...apparently so; I got it back this afternoon after earning a 96, the highest-scoring paper in class this round. I might decide expand some points later on, just because I love the topic, but we'll see. Anyway, here is how it went, if anybody's curious.
I'm pretty sure Works Cited pages don't generally include works of Dr. Seuss or The Princess Bride.
I'm fairly positive that not many students give their end-of-year PowerPoint presentations on "The Art of Making Peanut Butter Sandwiches."
And I know I'm the only person on campus that carries a little keychain Snoopy on his backpack.
But, anyway, these are all things that have been done recently. My proof-readers all seemed to like this paper, which was good. But would my Comp II teacher like it? Would I have it written in the right MLA style?
Well...apparently so; I got it back this afternoon after earning a 96, the highest-scoring paper in class this round. I might decide expand some points later on, just because I love the topic, but we'll see. Anyway, here is how it went, if anybody's curious.
We don’t understand this world we
live in. We try to figure out what makes it work, why things in nature happen
the way they do. We try to explain our own actions and reasonings. And we know
more than we did in the Dark Ages. For as Dr. Seuss wrote, “The more that you
read, the more you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll
go” (I Can Read). But we still don’t
completely understand everything, and we probably never will. As we grow older,
we lose track of the keys to get glimpses of this unforeseen knowledge. These
keys are found in fairy tales, and we need, we must, hang on to them as
grownups, in order to have a proper understanding of how the world works and
our roles in it.
Where
do we start, then, to find these keys and whatever adventures stem from them?
It would be a good idea to have a basic philosophy of life to keep in mind
while on the journey. According to Martin Cothran in his article “The Rhetoric
of Amazement”, this world is enchanted. He states that writers of imaginative
literature, like Dr. Seuss, take things apart and creatively reassemble them,
allowing us to gain a clearer picture of the world. Cothran elaborates in a
different article entitled “Is Fiction False?”; pointing out that novels, short
stories, etc. do not teach us truths by directly going from our questions to
some abstraction. Instead, we learn the truths of concrete realities by
experiencing what its’ strengths and weaknesses are, how the truth plays out in
practical reality.
In his book Orthodoxy, 20th century
English jack-of-all-trades journalist/mystery author/apologist/philosopher G.K.
Chesterton wrote an essay entitled “The Ethics of Elfland”. He opens by
describing that the classical idea of democracy is really the same thing as
tradition, as tradition is merely the democracy of the dead. In fact, he spends
two pages outlining that point. Since, therefore, they really are the same
thing; we ought to not discredit tradition merely because it is tradition.
Chesterton says that “Fairy tales are the entirely reasonable things. They are
not fantasies, for compared with them other things are fantastic. For Fairyland
is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.” There are some developments which are purely
logical and reasonable, for example, the fact that if the Ugly Stepsisters are
older than Cinderella, then Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Stepsisters.
However, the true test of fairyland is of the imagination; which separates the
rational from the irrational. We simply cannot fathom two plus three not
equaling five, so that is a rational fact. But we can picture the grass one day
growing blue; or a dog driving a motorcycle. These are irrational ideas. And
Chesterton argues that most of the world we live in is, by that test, an
extremely irrational place.
For
such an obscure character of history, G.K. Chesterton had a very large impact
on the twentieth century, influencing those such as apologist C.S. Lewis,
authors Dorothy Sayers and J.K. Rowling, and filmmakers Orson Welles and Alfred
Hitchcock. Ralph C. Wood reviewed Chesterton’s essay collection in his article
“Orthodoxy at a Hundred”, Wood said
that while Chesterton was often cantankerous, and quite a character, he sought
to amend the wrongs of his times “by means of a feisty and witty, punning and
alliterative kind of journalism” (Wood). In the course of doing so, “Chesterton
treats the most serious things in the lightest manner, probing depths when he appears to be
skating on surfaces” (Wood).
For
all the apparent pointlessness of activities such as ice skating, there are
some real uses and benefits, too. We may forget the particulars of a tale we
hear as children, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve forgotten about the story.
Nancy Willard explains this in a piece for Horn
Book Magazine. She says that while
the story one forgets about disappears forever, the story one forgets only
leaves for a short time. It will come back when needed; the stories don’t do
long goodbyes very well. They are a shelter to keep us safe, as well as a
station, sending us out into the world (Willard).
As
they send us out into the world, like any good guardian, they leave us pieces
of advice to guide us in our travels. For all the wonderful satire of William
Goldman’s cult classic The Princess Bride,
he makes very clear to drive one point home: Life isn’t fair. Beauty and the Beast shows us that a
thing must be loved before it is lovable in itself; that change can occur by
showing kindness to those who are undeserving of it. The Three Little Pigs teaches us that in addition to work-ethic, we
also need the proper knowledge and materials to succeed. Spider-Man and The Sword of Damocles both prove
poignantly that when given great power, we must be careful to exercise it in a
manner fitting such a great responsibility. Charlotte’s
Web shocks us by depicting how far the bonds of friendship can stretch us.
Fairy
tales have many depths and layers, almost like an onion, Willard notes. As we
grow, our depth of understanding increases, and much like Narnia’s Aslan, the
stories grow bigger the older we become. Chesterton outlined that when we are
very young children, we merely need tales, not necessarily fairy tales. Life
itself is so interesting, we simply cannot conceive that we ever might need
more depths than what we see. “A child of seven is excited by being told that
Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited that
Tommy opened a door” (Chesterton).
Stories and
fairy tales teach us about life. They show us how the world works, set an
example of how we should act. This sometimes means showing the other side of
that coin, the consequences of what happens when we fail or disobey. This is
why Jesus taught in parables, and the Greeks created their wonderful mythology,
because we are wired to retain the things we hear through story, and then think
about the tales we hear, and in doing so learn from them. Great ideas can be
passed on, traits of virtue live immortally in legends. We get our morals and
values from the stories we absorb and drink in, which makes the art of
storytelling the most effective teaching tool there is.
This subject could
easily take up whole volumes, as well as branching into other fields such as
psychology or theology. There is too much information to be bottled up and left
alone. However, I will sum up: This world is a mysterious place. We are all on
a long journey, and the keys to fulfill the quests we must face are found in
the stories we learn as children. Like Chesterton, these too are my attitudes
towards life; which I also felt before I could think, and which I too thought
before I could write.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Keep a-Goin'
Listening to DC Talk and trying to get started on studying...maybe this poem will help. From my "One Hundred and One Famous Poems" book, on page 135, is "Keep a-Goin'", written by Frank L. Stanton.
"If you strike a thorn or rose,
Keep a-goin'!
If it hails or if it snows,
Keep a-goin'!
'Taint no use to sit an' whine
When the fish ain't on your line;
Bait your hook an' keep a-tryin' -
Keep a-goin'!
When the weather kills your crop,
Keep a-goin'!
Though 'tis work to reach the top,
Keep a-goin'!
S'pose you're out o' ev'ry dime,
Gittin' broke ain't a crime;
Tell the world you're feelin' prime -
Keep a-goin'!
When it looks like all is up,
Keep a-goin'!
Drain the sweetness from the cup,
Keep a-goin'!
See the wild birds on the wing,
Hear the bells that sweetly ring,
When you feel like sighin', sing -
Keep a-goin'!"
"If you strike a thorn or rose,
Keep a-goin'!
If it hails or if it snows,
Keep a-goin'!
'Taint no use to sit an' whine
When the fish ain't on your line;
Bait your hook an' keep a-tryin' -
Keep a-goin'!
When the weather kills your crop,
Keep a-goin'!
Though 'tis work to reach the top,
Keep a-goin'!
S'pose you're out o' ev'ry dime,
Gittin' broke ain't a crime;
Tell the world you're feelin' prime -
Keep a-goin'!
When it looks like all is up,
Keep a-goin'!
Drain the sweetness from the cup,
Keep a-goin'!
See the wild birds on the wing,
Hear the bells that sweetly ring,
When you feel like sighin', sing -
Keep a-goin'!"
Nearly There...
Whew. It's been a long week. Getting closer to the end of the semester, but thee's a LOT to be done before then...and I have about zero energy to work at it. (Which I why I'm working on this post instead of studying, but...yeah...)
Well, after watching a cool movie called "Shattered Glass" last week in Basic Writing, we had a quiz on it Monday, which was an easy ten points. Working on a PowerPoint demonstration to be done this week in my computer class, hopefully that will go okay. Tuesday and Thursday in math were spent going over geometry for a mini-test Tuesday right before finals, and I've got a paper to write by Tuesday on the benefits of communication through social media. And then FINALS. (Creepy dramatic piano music here...)
And there was a lot of paperwork to fill out for various things, that was a headache. Necessary, but annoying. Wednesday was a little rough, more so than usual. Actually, this whole week has been sort of rough. Read through Jonah and worked on a post about that when I had a chance.
Pretty much given up on AI, think I'll watch the very finale when they tell who won, but I'm bored. Don't care about any of the contestants, and Randy and Mariah aren't helping. At all.
Went to BCM Monday, that went well. And I went running Monday afternoon for the first time in forever, and after about a mile or so I came on this concert by the fountain. These two older guys from here in town were playing, after a while one of them set his guitar down and picked up a mandolin. It was fantastic. They kinda reminded me of Dale, who was my guitar teacher and is a good friend.
Found a Bicentennial quarter in my change from Morgan's, which was good. And I got a graduation announcement from Ash, that was also good. (Mail is a very good thing. I can see why soldiers and people are always hoping for some.)
There was a dead squirrel lying on the ground by the volleyball courts last Sunday, I just checked and I think it's still there. Not the best enviroment to be around.
I think the paper I wrote on fairy tales turned out all right, but it was late being graded, so we'll see...I hate that feeling right after a test or right before you hand in an essay. Geometry is a lot like Maria von Trapp in some ways: It is very easy to like it, except when it's, um, difficult. Thursday was one of those times. We spent nearly an hour trying to solve one problem. After much head-scratching and complaining, somehow we more or less wound up with the right answer. We don't know why we got the right answer, we just knew we finally did. Classmate: "Will we have a question like this on the test?" Mr. Shamblin: "After we've spent this much time on it? You can bet we'll definitely have this type of question on the test." Classmate: "Great. (Moans)" Mr. Shamblin: "Now will you be able to solve it? I don't know...I hope." George(another classmate): "We won't."
As part of the faith-based floor's agreement with the school, we took part in a service project Thursday, helping with the weekly food ministry at First Methodist. That went better than any of us expected, and I can see why people hate working in restaurants and fast-food places. It's very stressful being a waiter! Stephen and I rode with Zach, cause none of us could remember how to get to the church. (Note to self: It's the gigantic one down past the funeral home and across the street from the library.)
Went to Grandpa and Robbie's Friday night, all three of us just collapsed. The school year can't end soon enough. Texted YT pals Adam and Aubrey, good to hear from them. The reunion is set for July, most of us all who went are planning on trying to be there. Also heard from Tauri recently.
Hollered at Jon, we swapped insults and bounced random plotting ideas of storytelling off each other.
Slept until almost noon yesterday, then was just dragging the rest of the time. Think I'm just exhausted from school and stress and sleep deprivation. My ponytailed neighbor Drew has kept me awake at least twelve of the last fourteen nights. And I haven't been able to sleep very well for a while now...I keep having these nightmares. And if they're not nightmares, then just ultra-stressful situations.
A Pixar marathon is needed....and also board-game-playing. I went and bought a Monopoly set for no reason while grocery shopping yesterday, not sure what that means, or why, since there's not really anybody to play it with. But it just feels better knowing there's a Monopoly set nearby, sort of like a Christmas tree.
Was able to pick up my guitar and just play for about an hour the other day; which was fantastic. Haven't really been able to do that very much here lately. And I've almost been resting this weekend (gasp!!!!)
Well, after watching a cool movie called "Shattered Glass" last week in Basic Writing, we had a quiz on it Monday, which was an easy ten points. Working on a PowerPoint demonstration to be done this week in my computer class, hopefully that will go okay. Tuesday and Thursday in math were spent going over geometry for a mini-test Tuesday right before finals, and I've got a paper to write by Tuesday on the benefits of communication through social media. And then FINALS. (Creepy dramatic piano music here...)
And there was a lot of paperwork to fill out for various things, that was a headache. Necessary, but annoying. Wednesday was a little rough, more so than usual. Actually, this whole week has been sort of rough. Read through Jonah and worked on a post about that when I had a chance.
Pretty much given up on AI, think I'll watch the very finale when they tell who won, but I'm bored. Don't care about any of the contestants, and Randy and Mariah aren't helping. At all.
Went to BCM Monday, that went well. And I went running Monday afternoon for the first time in forever, and after about a mile or so I came on this concert by the fountain. These two older guys from here in town were playing, after a while one of them set his guitar down and picked up a mandolin. It was fantastic. They kinda reminded me of Dale, who was my guitar teacher and is a good friend.
Found a Bicentennial quarter in my change from Morgan's, which was good. And I got a graduation announcement from Ash, that was also good. (Mail is a very good thing. I can see why soldiers and people are always hoping for some.)
There was a dead squirrel lying on the ground by the volleyball courts last Sunday, I just checked and I think it's still there. Not the best enviroment to be around.
I think the paper I wrote on fairy tales turned out all right, but it was late being graded, so we'll see...I hate that feeling right after a test or right before you hand in an essay. Geometry is a lot like Maria von Trapp in some ways: It is very easy to like it, except when it's, um, difficult. Thursday was one of those times. We spent nearly an hour trying to solve one problem. After much head-scratching and complaining, somehow we more or less wound up with the right answer. We don't know why we got the right answer, we just knew we finally did. Classmate: "Will we have a question like this on the test?" Mr. Shamblin: "After we've spent this much time on it? You can bet we'll definitely have this type of question on the test." Classmate: "Great. (Moans)" Mr. Shamblin: "Now will you be able to solve it? I don't know...I hope." George(another classmate): "We won't."
As part of the faith-based floor's agreement with the school, we took part in a service project Thursday, helping with the weekly food ministry at First Methodist. That went better than any of us expected, and I can see why people hate working in restaurants and fast-food places. It's very stressful being a waiter! Stephen and I rode with Zach, cause none of us could remember how to get to the church. (Note to self: It's the gigantic one down past the funeral home and across the street from the library.)
Went to Grandpa and Robbie's Friday night, all three of us just collapsed. The school year can't end soon enough. Texted YT pals Adam and Aubrey, good to hear from them. The reunion is set for July, most of us all who went are planning on trying to be there. Also heard from Tauri recently.
Hollered at Jon, we swapped insults and bounced random plotting ideas of storytelling off each other.
Slept until almost noon yesterday, then was just dragging the rest of the time. Think I'm just exhausted from school and stress and sleep deprivation. My ponytailed neighbor Drew has kept me awake at least twelve of the last fourteen nights. And I haven't been able to sleep very well for a while now...I keep having these nightmares. And if they're not nightmares, then just ultra-stressful situations.
A Pixar marathon is needed....and also board-game-playing. I went and bought a Monopoly set for no reason while grocery shopping yesterday, not sure what that means, or why, since there's not really anybody to play it with. But it just feels better knowing there's a Monopoly set nearby, sort of like a Christmas tree.
Was able to pick up my guitar and just play for about an hour the other day; which was fantastic. Haven't really been able to do that very much here lately. And I've almost been resting this weekend (gasp!!!!)
Jonah
Well, when I was little, before Courtney was born, in the rare times when I wasn't reenacting the latesr ballgame in the backyard, or inventing wonderful comebacks and fierce rivalries with the counting cats, or learning basic math while playing board games, I would gather up my stuffed animals, set them all in a row, and preach a sermon to the cottony congregation. They didn't complain much about the depth of teaching(or lack of), since I didn't know anyone cared about things like that until about five years later. And they didn't mind that it was always the same sermon over and over, about Jonah. (With maybe some David and Goliath occasionally in there, too.)
So, now fifteen years later, I'm sitting in my polar dorm room, with my homework mostly done for the most part, and wishing I knew people aroud here to do stuff with, where I didn't constantly have to keep my guard up, or pretend whatever was happening was interesting, or where I wouldn't feel like a burden to people. Just something...fun.
So, I guess I'll find Bruno and Fetch the Beanie Babies, Dusty the Webkinz, Traveler the random dog Amanda sent me, and Abby Lee the guitar, tell them to wake up, sing a hymn or two(quietly, very quietly. Sigh. They should be sung loudly and joyfully.) and then grab my Bible off the shelf and flip it open somewhere and study it. May as well be Jonah as any other place, right?
(Continued several days later, in much the same mood...)
"The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come before me."
But Jonah ran away from the Lord an headed to Tarshish. he went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord."
I'm interrupting here, in kind a William Goldman-ish way, to comment on these verses. If God has decided to destroy Nineveh because he's sick of dealing with them, they must have been a seriously wicked people. I don't really know anything much about ancient Middle-Eastern geography(or geography of anywhere at any time), but Tarshish is a long ways from Nineveh in the opposite direction. Maybe it's like having to be in Georgia and driving towards Oregon instead.
Anyway, the point is, Jonah is disobeying. And...did he really think he could hide from God?
"Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each one cried out to his own god. And they threw all the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, "How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish."
Whatever polythestic religion(s) the sailors had, they got this part right. This was bad. They were panicking, and knew somehow, way hidden deep in some mysterious way, they knew that God was the ruler of all.
"Then the sailors said to each other, "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity." They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
So they asked him, "Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?"
He answered, "I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land."
This terrified them and they asked, "What have you done?" (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)
Isn't this just unbelievable, Jonah's act of trying to run away in the first place? There must have been plenty of conversations between the sailors trying to figure out who this guy was, and why he was there. And again, proof that they knew about God's supremacy, by their incredulous question.
"The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What can we do to you to get the sea calm down for us?"
"Pick me up and throw me into the sea," he replied, "and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon us."
Was he trying to commit suicide, seeing as the running-away plan wasn't working? And that is a strange answer...
"Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not; the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they cried out to the Lord, "O Lord, please do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O Lord, have done as you pleased."
These sailors are looking like the best people in the story so far...they didn't want to murder someone, so they tried to get him away as fast as possible. But then when they see they don't really have that option, their prayer is heartfelt and genuine, obeying by doing something they didn't understand. Their hearts were being re-formed, changed drastically in a way that wasn't tame, but it was good.
"Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging seas grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sarifice to the Lord and made vows to him. But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
Still more proof that they were changed. And another example of God's providence, his directing of things that fit together well looking back, but that don't make sense at the moment.
But, anyway, that ends chapter one.
"From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.
He said, "In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, "I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple." The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seasweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God.
"When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
"Those who cling to worthless idols forfiet the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord."
And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Now, what he's saying is right...but...something just doesn't quite add up. See what's missing there? "I'm sorry for disobeying, please forgive me, Lord." That's kind of an important omission - if he would have said that, it would have been written down. But - it isn't.
He's depressed, and I think anyone would be, stuck inside a fish. But somehow this prayer is all about me, me, me...
Now to chapter three.
(Concluded a few days after that, while attempting to rest over the weekend and ignore this sickness that's trying to capture me...)
"Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."
Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now, Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go all through it.
I heard once that would be an estimated population of 120,000, which was ENROMOUS in that day. Something like New York City or LA nowadays.
"Jonah started into the city, going a day's journey, and he proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed." The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
Jonah probably loved that message, getting to talk about the destruction of his enemies' greatest city. But the important thing is that the Ninevites believed what he was saying and repented. Fasting and sackcloth don't really have modern equivalents, but they were signs of very serious prayer and repentance.
"When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclaimation in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything, do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."
"When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the desctruction he had threatened."
Wow. This is just amazing, so mind-boggling to consider: That a righteous holy God could forgive our sinful evil actions - Over and over and over...
This is also where most of the storybook versions we learn in Sunday School when five years old end. But it isn't actually the end of the story...
We still have one final chapter in this very strange little book.
"But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, "O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love; a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live." "But the Lord replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"
Uh... Really? So he runs away; reluctantly obeys and gleefully condemns the city, and then complains because God is merciful. And there's that suicidal tendency again. It's just so unbelievably petty. And then God's response, much like his answer to Job: "Do you have any real reason to be angry with Me?"
"Jonah went out and set down in a place wast of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its' shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."
How did he build a shelter? Out of what? And he's just going to sit there and watch for...nothing? Then God provides in his mercy a plant to grow to give shade, which Jonah does not in any way deserve. How did it grow over six feet in one day, anyway? Those aren't important, but curious questions that come up while reading...
God's mercy is also tempered with justice, so he killed the plant and raised up a might wind. And STILL Jonah doesn't get it.
"But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"
"I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."
But the Lord said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight andd died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their left hand from their right, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"
And that's it. The end. A reminder that God is God, and we are not. We usually don't understand his purposes, but he has a reason for them.
So, now fifteen years later, I'm sitting in my polar dorm room, with my homework mostly done for the most part, and wishing I knew people aroud here to do stuff with, where I didn't constantly have to keep my guard up, or pretend whatever was happening was interesting, or where I wouldn't feel like a burden to people. Just something...fun.
So, I guess I'll find Bruno and Fetch the Beanie Babies, Dusty the Webkinz, Traveler the random dog Amanda sent me, and Abby Lee the guitar, tell them to wake up, sing a hymn or two(quietly, very quietly. Sigh. They should be sung loudly and joyfully.) and then grab my Bible off the shelf and flip it open somewhere and study it. May as well be Jonah as any other place, right?
(Continued several days later, in much the same mood...)
"The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come before me."
But Jonah ran away from the Lord an headed to Tarshish. he went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord."
I'm interrupting here, in kind a William Goldman-ish way, to comment on these verses. If God has decided to destroy Nineveh because he's sick of dealing with them, they must have been a seriously wicked people. I don't really know anything much about ancient Middle-Eastern geography(or geography of anywhere at any time), but Tarshish is a long ways from Nineveh in the opposite direction. Maybe it's like having to be in Georgia and driving towards Oregon instead.
Anyway, the point is, Jonah is disobeying. And...did he really think he could hide from God?
"Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each one cried out to his own god. And they threw all the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, "How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish."
Whatever polythestic religion(s) the sailors had, they got this part right. This was bad. They were panicking, and knew somehow, way hidden deep in some mysterious way, they knew that God was the ruler of all.
"Then the sailors said to each other, "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity." They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
So they asked him, "Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?"
He answered, "I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land."
This terrified them and they asked, "What have you done?" (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)
Isn't this just unbelievable, Jonah's act of trying to run away in the first place? There must have been plenty of conversations between the sailors trying to figure out who this guy was, and why he was there. And again, proof that they knew about God's supremacy, by their incredulous question.
"The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What can we do to you to get the sea calm down for us?"
"Pick me up and throw me into the sea," he replied, "and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon us."
Was he trying to commit suicide, seeing as the running-away plan wasn't working? And that is a strange answer...
"Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not; the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they cried out to the Lord, "O Lord, please do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O Lord, have done as you pleased."
These sailors are looking like the best people in the story so far...they didn't want to murder someone, so they tried to get him away as fast as possible. But then when they see they don't really have that option, their prayer is heartfelt and genuine, obeying by doing something they didn't understand. Their hearts were being re-formed, changed drastically in a way that wasn't tame, but it was good.
"Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging seas grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sarifice to the Lord and made vows to him. But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
Still more proof that they were changed. And another example of God's providence, his directing of things that fit together well looking back, but that don't make sense at the moment.
But, anyway, that ends chapter one.
"From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.
He said, "In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, "I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple." The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seasweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God.
"When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
"Those who cling to worthless idols forfiet the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord."
And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Now, what he's saying is right...but...something just doesn't quite add up. See what's missing there? "I'm sorry for disobeying, please forgive me, Lord." That's kind of an important omission - if he would have said that, it would have been written down. But - it isn't.
He's depressed, and I think anyone would be, stuck inside a fish. But somehow this prayer is all about me, me, me...
Now to chapter three.
(Concluded a few days after that, while attempting to rest over the weekend and ignore this sickness that's trying to capture me...)
"Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."
Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now, Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go all through it.
I heard once that would be an estimated population of 120,000, which was ENROMOUS in that day. Something like New York City or LA nowadays.
"Jonah started into the city, going a day's journey, and he proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed." The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
Jonah probably loved that message, getting to talk about the destruction of his enemies' greatest city. But the important thing is that the Ninevites believed what he was saying and repented. Fasting and sackcloth don't really have modern equivalents, but they were signs of very serious prayer and repentance.
"When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclaimation in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything, do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."
"When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the desctruction he had threatened."
Wow. This is just amazing, so mind-boggling to consider: That a righteous holy God could forgive our sinful evil actions - Over and over and over...
This is also where most of the storybook versions we learn in Sunday School when five years old end. But it isn't actually the end of the story...
We still have one final chapter in this very strange little book.
"But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, "O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love; a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live." "But the Lord replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"
Uh... Really? So he runs away; reluctantly obeys and gleefully condemns the city, and then complains because God is merciful. And there's that suicidal tendency again. It's just so unbelievably petty. And then God's response, much like his answer to Job: "Do you have any real reason to be angry with Me?"
"Jonah went out and set down in a place wast of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its' shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."
How did he build a shelter? Out of what? And he's just going to sit there and watch for...nothing? Then God provides in his mercy a plant to grow to give shade, which Jonah does not in any way deserve. How did it grow over six feet in one day, anyway? Those aren't important, but curious questions that come up while reading...
God's mercy is also tempered with justice, so he killed the plant and raised up a might wind. And STILL Jonah doesn't get it.
"But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"
"I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."
But the Lord said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight andd died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their left hand from their right, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"
And that's it. The end. A reminder that God is God, and we are not. We usually don't understand his purposes, but he has a reason for them.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
April Swirl
It's mid-April already(or maybe that's "finally"? Been a long winter.) That means kittens, and goat-kids, and dandelions, and storms, and applying for next semester enrollment(Ugh.) and everyone on the planet getting engaged or married.
It's kind of a time of new beginnings, a weird crashed collection of events new and familiar, normal and unusual all rearranging into some new puzzle that will lead into life over the next year.
I enrolled for fall last Monday....wondering why I was doing this all the while, but, I don't know, I said I'd give it one year here, and I've nearly survived it. Pretty well scarred, but still breathing. God's been good, He'll carry me through this next semester too. Had that Steven Curtis Chapman song "Burn The Ships" stuck in my head, it fit well.
It's been rough, and not much fun. It's been dark at times, and maddenly solitary nearly all the time, covered who knows how many miles along the streets of town.. But I think I've gotten stronger from this experience. Not sure how, but it's always hard to judge your own growth.
Glad to have family like Louise and Harry or Grandpa and Robbie nearby, that's a blessing. Gotten to know Ryan and Shelly and their family, which is good. There's been a steady stream of encouragement from GBC people, and my camp friends.
Cody got married last summer, Alton in November, Phil a couple months ago. Julie's getting marreid this summer. From YT, Katie got married almost a year ago, and Amanda F. and Railey both got engaged. From camp, a lot of the older people at first have gotten married. Rae. Rich. Luke. Matt J. Kelsie, too. Pippa and Joe M. are engaged, Daniel is getting married sometime soonish-to-be-determined.
And it was one year ago that I graduated, wasn't it? Seems like shorter, seems like longer. Josh is graduating this year, so is Matt. And Ash made top of her class.
Was talking to Jessica the other day, the topic turned to birthdays somehow. She was freaking out about turning 20 in a few weeks, she didn't feel ready, smart enough, or whatever. That got me to thinking, too. I turn 20 next month.
Trevor asked me a question once while I was doing laundry one day, he said, "How long is it until you're twenty?" I think a minute. "About a year and a half, I guess." "Wow. I can't believe it - My brother being twenty...you'll probably, like, have kids or something by then!" [Time isn't exactly his strong point, neither is math.]
It's a funny story, but it's got a point: Things are changing. Really fast. One of these days, I will actually get married, graduate college, etc. In the next year, there will be unknown adventures and trials to get through, that will shape me further into who I'm supposed to be. Wasn't expecting to have this much time to pray, how tightly I'd have to claw my fingernails into the truth of God's word to hang on, how to live life this alone. But it's been okay, in some strange way. Like during Mimi's sickness, or Dado's decline, through the fire, or senior year of high school, freshman year has been one of those tough places I'll look back on later and just marvel in amazement at what was happening.
I wanted to escape so badly from here. I love the town, just detest the school. My dorm room isn't much, in the worst building on campus on arguably the worst floor, but it is a roof. The food may be horrible most of the time, and unhealthy always, but it's there to provide some nourishment. I may occasionally have to walk a mile to the gas station to get a decent meal, but I have two working legs and I haven't been hit by a car yet. So why have I often still felt homeless?
I'm not exactly sure. Maybe because I was thrust into an alien world, exploding with people and low on animals. Possibly because it seemed pretty Race of Joseph-less. Probably because of the apathy everywhere from everyone on everything that really means something. But while helping at that homeless shelter a few weeks ago, it somehow worked as a reset of my system. All the memories and flashbacks, being able to hear these people's stories, get to know and pray for them, in some way reminded me that "It will be all right. You got through the fire, I planned that out for your good, now just watch Me work this section of life out up ahead. Trust that I'll get you through." Isaiah 43:1-3 again.
But...yeah, somehow I came back not as scared, uncertain. I'm stuck here for the time being, so I may as well try to make the best of it as far as possible, right? We'll see where life leads, what's around the next bend.
Jessica said, in a kidding sort of way, "I don't wanna grow up! You can't make me!" "You don't have to, ya know." "Huh? What'd you mean?" Well...it's complicated. Or maybe it's actually very simple, and we invent the complexities. But, anyway...as far as I can explain it, it's like this: The things we learn as kids, the ideals and morals and models of the fairy tales and stories, those are the keys to understanding the life we live in as grownups. I don't have it completely figured out yet, but that's something I've discovered over the last few months. Actually, I'm writing an essay for my Comp II class on this topic, I'll need to post it on here when I get a chance. Except it's far too big for one essay. It seems too vast even for one entire book. But...anyway, we'll see. Hopefully I was able to get my point across without preaching, which seems utterly wrong, but that's how the rules work for right now.
I really need to wind this post up and get started on a last-second effort to study for tomorrow's computer test, which will be on a dull irrelevant(for my major) topic of Access databases that I don't understand too well. And then there's an orthodonist appointment Tuesday, and a math test Thursday. Several stories for Basic Writing that need to be spun, and another essay to write after this one gets finished. And then there's.FINALS.
Oh well. Worry about the next ten minutes, and then the next hour. Once those are done, begin again with that ten minutes....it'll be okay.
"KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON." - English WWII propaganda poster.
"JUST KEEP SWIMMING...." - Dory, Finding Nemo.
"I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN...." - The Little Engine That Could.
"PUT ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER..." From the song in the TV special "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town".
These are all phrases that students are reminding themselves of at the moment.
It's kind of a time of new beginnings, a weird crashed collection of events new and familiar, normal and unusual all rearranging into some new puzzle that will lead into life over the next year.
I enrolled for fall last Monday....wondering why I was doing this all the while, but, I don't know, I said I'd give it one year here, and I've nearly survived it. Pretty well scarred, but still breathing. God's been good, He'll carry me through this next semester too. Had that Steven Curtis Chapman song "Burn The Ships" stuck in my head, it fit well.
It's been rough, and not much fun. It's been dark at times, and maddenly solitary nearly all the time, covered who knows how many miles along the streets of town.. But I think I've gotten stronger from this experience. Not sure how, but it's always hard to judge your own growth.
Glad to have family like Louise and Harry or Grandpa and Robbie nearby, that's a blessing. Gotten to know Ryan and Shelly and their family, which is good. There's been a steady stream of encouragement from GBC people, and my camp friends.
Cody got married last summer, Alton in November, Phil a couple months ago. Julie's getting marreid this summer. From YT, Katie got married almost a year ago, and Amanda F. and Railey both got engaged. From camp, a lot of the older people at first have gotten married. Rae. Rich. Luke. Matt J. Kelsie, too. Pippa and Joe M. are engaged, Daniel is getting married sometime soonish-to-be-determined.
And it was one year ago that I graduated, wasn't it? Seems like shorter, seems like longer. Josh is graduating this year, so is Matt. And Ash made top of her class.
Was talking to Jessica the other day, the topic turned to birthdays somehow. She was freaking out about turning 20 in a few weeks, she didn't feel ready, smart enough, or whatever. That got me to thinking, too. I turn 20 next month.
Trevor asked me a question once while I was doing laundry one day, he said, "How long is it until you're twenty?" I think a minute. "About a year and a half, I guess." "Wow. I can't believe it - My brother being twenty...you'll probably, like, have kids or something by then!" [Time isn't exactly his strong point, neither is math.]
It's a funny story, but it's got a point: Things are changing. Really fast. One of these days, I will actually get married, graduate college, etc. In the next year, there will be unknown adventures and trials to get through, that will shape me further into who I'm supposed to be. Wasn't expecting to have this much time to pray, how tightly I'd have to claw my fingernails into the truth of God's word to hang on, how to live life this alone. But it's been okay, in some strange way. Like during Mimi's sickness, or Dado's decline, through the fire, or senior year of high school, freshman year has been one of those tough places I'll look back on later and just marvel in amazement at what was happening.
I wanted to escape so badly from here. I love the town, just detest the school. My dorm room isn't much, in the worst building on campus on arguably the worst floor, but it is a roof. The food may be horrible most of the time, and unhealthy always, but it's there to provide some nourishment. I may occasionally have to walk a mile to the gas station to get a decent meal, but I have two working legs and I haven't been hit by a car yet. So why have I often still felt homeless?
I'm not exactly sure. Maybe because I was thrust into an alien world, exploding with people and low on animals. Possibly because it seemed pretty Race of Joseph-less. Probably because of the apathy everywhere from everyone on everything that really means something. But while helping at that homeless shelter a few weeks ago, it somehow worked as a reset of my system. All the memories and flashbacks, being able to hear these people's stories, get to know and pray for them, in some way reminded me that "It will be all right. You got through the fire, I planned that out for your good, now just watch Me work this section of life out up ahead. Trust that I'll get you through." Isaiah 43:1-3 again.
But...yeah, somehow I came back not as scared, uncertain. I'm stuck here for the time being, so I may as well try to make the best of it as far as possible, right? We'll see where life leads, what's around the next bend.
Jessica said, in a kidding sort of way, "I don't wanna grow up! You can't make me!" "You don't have to, ya know." "Huh? What'd you mean?" Well...it's complicated. Or maybe it's actually very simple, and we invent the complexities. But, anyway...as far as I can explain it, it's like this: The things we learn as kids, the ideals and morals and models of the fairy tales and stories, those are the keys to understanding the life we live in as grownups. I don't have it completely figured out yet, but that's something I've discovered over the last few months. Actually, I'm writing an essay for my Comp II class on this topic, I'll need to post it on here when I get a chance. Except it's far too big for one essay. It seems too vast even for one entire book. But...anyway, we'll see. Hopefully I was able to get my point across without preaching, which seems utterly wrong, but that's how the rules work for right now.
I really need to wind this post up and get started on a last-second effort to study for tomorrow's computer test, which will be on a dull irrelevant(for my major) topic of Access databases that I don't understand too well. And then there's an orthodonist appointment Tuesday, and a math test Thursday. Several stories for Basic Writing that need to be spun, and another essay to write after this one gets finished. And then there's.FINALS.
Oh well. Worry about the next ten minutes, and then the next hour. Once those are done, begin again with that ten minutes....it'll be okay.
"KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON." - English WWII propaganda poster.
"JUST KEEP SWIMMING...." - Dory, Finding Nemo.
"I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN...." - The Little Engine That Could.
"PUT ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER..." From the song in the TV special "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town".
These are all phrases that students are reminding themselves of at the moment.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
American Idol Season 12 Top Seven - Rock Classics Night
Tonight was awesome - especially the "no ballads" rule. Course, I like old rock music, so that was neat. Lots of good quotes tonight.
Loved the intro, Mariah kinda looked like a statue, the girls were matching again...that was still weird...
Burnell Taylor - "You Give Love a Bad Name", Bon Jovi - They were making fun of his accent, that was hilarious. And that thing with his hands. And the cackle... Candice: "Is that his real laugh? I asked him one time. Cause it sounds like he's dying." He kinda was, though, when it came to the song...far too prettyboy for this one. The sparkly glitter on his sleeves? He was totally lost, mumbling all through, and flat. (Or at least that's what I heard. TV was messing up again.) Overall, it was hysterically awful.
Keith, once he'd finally choked back the laughter: "I'm gonna assume rock isn't your thing..."
Nicki: "You reminded me of a teddy bear, and I just wanted to hug you."
Angie and Lazaro - "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", Queen - Good most of the way through. Angie was shouting, Lazaro missed lyrics, it was very showy, but it fit the song.
Nicki: "That was, ummm.....nice. It was fun to watch, at least."
Keith: "You achieved that variety-show effect you were shooting for very well."
Kree Harrison - "Piece of My Heart", Janis Joplin - Everybody teasing "Mom", talking about how she's such a hugger and knows everyone on the planet, and their kids and dogs and sisters and cousins once removed... Song was right up her alley, she rocked it. She's a pro. TML was the only criticism I could think of.
Keith: "I can't critique a woman who irons everybody's shirts...but how hard was it to perform in those boots?"
"Well, not too hard...but I've got a pinched nerve, so that's kinda hurting, made it a bit tough." "Aha...knew it was something..."
Nicki, interrupting: "Girl, you could've had a pinched nerve, you could've got on my nerves, you could've got on several nerves, I wouldn't care. That was magnificent."
Burnell and Candice - "The Letter", by Someone - It's a weird, creepy song, Phillip did a better job. Candice was shouting and angry, (who's surprised?) but the harmony part was almost good.
Janelle Arthur - "You May Be Right", Billy Joel - She's horse-in-the-yard country, that girl you see in a cornfield somewhere, who talks constantly as if she's in a soap opera... She had fun. The verses were good, the chorus not so much.
Keith: "I LOVE those boots!"
"Thanks. I thought they fit rock week well, since they're all stoned."
Nicki, to Keith: "You can't talk about fashion, I'm the girl. And you stole my line. I was gonna say that I loved those boots!"
The fringe that Randy thought was so neat looked stupid, I loved how he was wearing her vest and Nicki her boots after the commercial break.
Lazaro Arbos - "We Are the Champions", Queen - Ricky Ricardo wears brighter colors than most girls...maybe all that ice cream at work got to him? And those Dramatic Poses...hahaha. I loved this. Seriously, the only thing I wrote down in my notebook was "YES." Looked a little like Fonzie (if the Fonz ever wore a bowtie.) That was, I think, even better than Michael Johns' version.
Keith: "That was a GREAT song choice. And then you did that matador thing at the end, (Australian guy doing a bad Spanish accent) 'I am done with the song.'"
Amber, Janelle and Kree - "It's Still Rock'n'Roll to Me", Billy Joel - Nice, overall. They were working together well, it was a nice song. Amber wasn't that good, Janelle was worse.
Nicki: "It put me to sleep, that was SO CHEESY."
Nicki: "It put me to sleep, that was SO CHEESY."
Candice Glover - "I Can't Get No Satisfaction", the Rolling Stones - The best part was the guitar solos. It was very boring.
Nicki: "I fell asleep on this one, too." And then the Ancient Booer impersonation...wonderful. "So bow, bow down to her if you want..."
Amber Holcomb - "What About Love", Heart - She talks to herself. Incessantly takes selfies. I like the song, it was a passably good karoke version, but the SCREAMING....! The best part was seeing Hollie in the audience.
Angie Miller - "Bring Me to Life", Effervesence - She has the eyes of Medusa, apparently, and looks like a retarded seal when excited about something. Amber: "I wouldn't wanna get into a staring contest with Angie...I'd lose." It was a dark performance, but cool. Good, but Mileylike. And the smoke machines were unnecessary.
My Rankings Tonight:
Lazaro,
Kree,
Angie,
Janelle,
Amber,
Candice,
Burnell.
Of the groups, the girls' trio was best, then Angie/Lazaro, and then Burnell/Candice.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Spring Break
It was nice to have a week off from school.
I went home for spring break a few weeks ago a day early, heading back Thursday night. Friday morning I tagged along as everybody went to go visit some friends, so I wandered around exploring, babysat little kids and had a conversation for nearly an hour on the problems with modern education. It was good to have a break, but it felt kinda weird to skip class.
Then it was off to Tulsa for Courtney's play practice, that was neat to watch. Made me sort of miss acting, I was tagging different characters in the cast with personalities they reminded me of(e.g, Cinderella is Mariah, that short kid is me, the girl in back is Annette, etc.) And so of course we ended up singing songs from "Down By the Creek Bank" all weekend...
Spent most of Saturday doing laundry and hanging out with the dogs and goats, things like that. Sunday it was great to be at GBC, nice to see everyone, and wonderful to be around so much good teaching.
The next few days went about the same way, trying to balance a little bit of school stuff with spending time with everybody who wanted to do things with me (e.g, playing Legos with Trevor, board games with Caleb, catch with Amy). I lost several games of Settlers of Catan, which makes me a perfect 0-for-13 since Christmas(when we got the game). I did beat Caleb, who was also sick of losing constantly, in a two-player game, but that sort of doesn't count, since it's easier. So I guess I'm technically 1-for-14, a .071 winning percentage.
Got nearer to caught up on stories, reread through Jan Karon's "Home to Holly Springs" and watched "Wreck-It Ralph". We now know what all the top creative people in animation were working on last year, that was fantastic. MUCH better than "Brave", which was appalling. It was a beautiful film, with a good soundttrack, but there was no story to it at all. You knew in the first three minutes the entire plot and what would happen when. And there wasn't really even any good one-liners or quotes.
No, "Wreck-It Ralph" was far better. You totally were able to enter the world, yet it totally meshed with the real world; full of amazing little background touches on inspection later on in future viewings; history (of various video games); amazing relatable characters(Pretty sure I know Vanellope); spectacular insults and jabs between characters; and I really ought to just write a review of it.... The end-credits song is done by Owl City, there's go-kart racing, and the Bad Guys Anonymous meeting takes place in the ghostroom in "Pac-Man". There. And I haven't even started on the actual story itself...
Well, anyway, went back to Tahlequah Wednesday night, everybody sat and talked at Grandpa's for about an hour, Harry and Louise came over, we got to talking about all the usual subjects(guns, animals, mandolins) and watched part of American Idol, the ever-stupid and omnipresent Beatles night. Nobody won.
Thursday morning I and four other people jumped into a 1995 Dodge van on its last legs for the two-hour trip to Carthage, it was a bit of an adventure getting there. We decided to follow the GPS' directions, which took us west for half an hour and north fifteen minutes in order to go two hours east. We went a different route on the way back, through winding wonderful little Ozark towns in southwest Missouri, far north Arkansas and far eastern Oklahoma. Anyway, it was an interesting experience.
There was only me, a guy named Tim who reminded me of an uncle I usually try to forget exists, and this guy named Brian who'll take over the leadership of CCF whenever Tom retires, and then Brian's two sons, aged ten and six. A lot of other people backed out for various reasons.
The place we were volunteering was called the Carthage Crisis Center, a homeless shelter for people in southwest Missouri/southeast Kansas. Began in 1997 with the dream of an Episcopal priest, nine churches in the community came together to jointly set up the facility. It was a lot nicer than what I expected; falling between a nice dorm(if such a thing exists) and a hotel. There were about forty people altogether staying there at the moment; about fifteen men, eight women, and five families.
We cleaned the laundry room Thursday afternoon; which was fantastic. I got to clean something!!! And it was helping somone - sort of. The group wasn't actually that helpful, I don't think, being far smaller than expected, and productivity could have been much improved. Anyway, it began snowing; great thick white flakes coating the sky and dropping on the ground.
Didn't actually get to visit with any friends while gone, but I did talk to Ash, Jed and Alton, it was good to hear from them.
Spent most of Thursday night trying to teach these eight-year-old girls, Gabby and Megan, how to play ping pong. It was...a lesson in patience for me, at least. Haha. Just trying to make their lives a little brighter, maybe someday later on they'll decide to start playing for real, and they'll remember that time at the shelter where that guy from some college somewhere took the time to try to teach the basics.
I can't remember where we were or why we were there, but when I was little I once found this ping pong table, these teenagers were playing. I watch for a while, when the girl asks if I'd like to play. The guy hands me his paddle, and the girl tries to teach me how to return properly. I didn't understand it at all, but that scene's always stuck with me, how cool they seemed, how they took the time to be friendly to a little kid they'd never seen and wouldn't ever meet again.
So the best part of the trip, I guess, was just getting to know the residents, how they came to be there, how I could pray for them. We met a man named Don at breakfast Friday morning, he and his family had their house burn last summer, they moved in with his mother, who died three months later, and then after that with a friend who turned out to be on drugs, and so they were all kicked out, leading to their staying at the shelter. Despite his struggles, the obvious ones, and then various health problems keeping him from his natural job as a plumber, including a terrible case of diabetes, he just radiated such an incredible joy, speaking of how God has used these trials to strengthen his faith and bind his family closer together.
There's just a different atmosphere in the whole state, some kind of healing property in the air. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how it seems to me. Everyday life can be rough, but that's when God's mercies and grace are most clearly seen.
The friendships between the residents was something amazing to witness, very hard to describe. Just unbelievable the way that life could (and will) go on, no matter where you happen to be at the moment. There was a birthday party thrown for a boy named Levi, he was turning seven, that was neat to watch, and inconceivable that we would be invited. Yet we were, and were welcomed as part of the family, no matter that our stay was measured in hours, as opposed to weeks or months. The kids all played together when they had free time, the mothers and other women talked and worked on various projects, the men cooperated well, each person doing his specific task with his team, and then dicussing the job market, politics or latest news of the Cardinals, Chiefs or Rams over meals.
Friday was mostly spent working in a warehouse, sorting through oceans of bedding that had been donated in the morning, bagging and boxing those, then stacking for later sorting. A lot of heavy furniture was hauled away to be either thrown out or stored in the basement waiting for the next garage sale(I didn't help as much with this part, obviously), then a food delivery truck dropped off a load of groceries, so those needed to be sorted through and stashed somewhere. That was a neat atmosphere down there, despite warnings that it was creepy and scary.
Overall, I kept getting flashbacks often; of that first shock and numb terror, and then the first halting steps at regaining control of our lives. I knew about having nowhere to go, that desperate clinging to whatever made a "normal" life at the moment, that sorting in cold temperatures through a deluge of items donated and saved, figuring out what can be kept and what to trash. Finding out so many new things about what a big God we have, how amazing He is.
I was amazed, though, how quickly I adapted to everything. I can usually adjust to new things suddenly, new places of living(NSU being the notable exception), but still, this place felt like home. What that says about me, I'm not sure, but, it did.
We had a place to go, and relatives swarming to assist any way they could. We had friends to encourage us and help us through. We had a budget-conscious contractor in charge of the remodel. We had a wonderful church praying and working with us. I had friends all over the country injecting humor and advice to give some stability. These people, they didn't have any of that. We could very well have been in the same situation, having to go somewhere like that.
It wasn't enough. Not at all, and I will never be able to pay back all the help that we received when we needed it. But that's why I went on the trip; any help I can give, whether directly or behind-the-scenes so others can focus on serving, I want to give. If I get the chance, I'm definitely going back.
Saturday I vacuumed most of the upstairs mostly single-handed, it was so good to be vacuuming a floor clean. Then it was time to leave after lunch, so I picked up(what else?) a local newspaper and a couple of energy drinks at the gas station. Slept in on Sunday, since it was the last day I could, and the semester began again with a vengeance, a terrible week followed, which made Easter look very appealing.
It was weird to have so much time off, but it gave me a lot of time to think, and dimly began to light a path towards confusing answers. It wasn't the best that could be expected of a mission trip, but it was something. Maybe the Lord was working through us in ways we didn't recognize.
I went home for spring break a few weeks ago a day early, heading back Thursday night. Friday morning I tagged along as everybody went to go visit some friends, so I wandered around exploring, babysat little kids and had a conversation for nearly an hour on the problems with modern education. It was good to have a break, but it felt kinda weird to skip class.
Then it was off to Tulsa for Courtney's play practice, that was neat to watch. Made me sort of miss acting, I was tagging different characters in the cast with personalities they reminded me of(e.g, Cinderella is Mariah, that short kid is me, the girl in back is Annette, etc.) And so of course we ended up singing songs from "Down By the Creek Bank" all weekend...
Spent most of Saturday doing laundry and hanging out with the dogs and goats, things like that. Sunday it was great to be at GBC, nice to see everyone, and wonderful to be around so much good teaching.
The next few days went about the same way, trying to balance a little bit of school stuff with spending time with everybody who wanted to do things with me (e.g, playing Legos with Trevor, board games with Caleb, catch with Amy). I lost several games of Settlers of Catan, which makes me a perfect 0-for-13 since Christmas(when we got the game). I did beat Caleb, who was also sick of losing constantly, in a two-player game, but that sort of doesn't count, since it's easier. So I guess I'm technically 1-for-14, a .071 winning percentage.
Got nearer to caught up on stories, reread through Jan Karon's "Home to Holly Springs" and watched "Wreck-It Ralph". We now know what all the top creative people in animation were working on last year, that was fantastic. MUCH better than "Brave", which was appalling. It was a beautiful film, with a good soundttrack, but there was no story to it at all. You knew in the first three minutes the entire plot and what would happen when. And there wasn't really even any good one-liners or quotes.
No, "Wreck-It Ralph" was far better. You totally were able to enter the world, yet it totally meshed with the real world; full of amazing little background touches on inspection later on in future viewings; history (of various video games); amazing relatable characters(Pretty sure I know Vanellope); spectacular insults and jabs between characters; and I really ought to just write a review of it.... The end-credits song is done by Owl City, there's go-kart racing, and the Bad Guys Anonymous meeting takes place in the ghostroom in "Pac-Man". There. And I haven't even started on the actual story itself...
Well, anyway, went back to Tahlequah Wednesday night, everybody sat and talked at Grandpa's for about an hour, Harry and Louise came over, we got to talking about all the usual subjects(guns, animals, mandolins) and watched part of American Idol, the ever-stupid and omnipresent Beatles night. Nobody won.
Thursday morning I and four other people jumped into a 1995 Dodge van on its last legs for the two-hour trip to Carthage, it was a bit of an adventure getting there. We decided to follow the GPS' directions, which took us west for half an hour and north fifteen minutes in order to go two hours east. We went a different route on the way back, through winding wonderful little Ozark towns in southwest Missouri, far north Arkansas and far eastern Oklahoma. Anyway, it was an interesting experience.
There was only me, a guy named Tim who reminded me of an uncle I usually try to forget exists, and this guy named Brian who'll take over the leadership of CCF whenever Tom retires, and then Brian's two sons, aged ten and six. A lot of other people backed out for various reasons.
The place we were volunteering was called the Carthage Crisis Center, a homeless shelter for people in southwest Missouri/southeast Kansas. Began in 1997 with the dream of an Episcopal priest, nine churches in the community came together to jointly set up the facility. It was a lot nicer than what I expected; falling between a nice dorm(if such a thing exists) and a hotel. There were about forty people altogether staying there at the moment; about fifteen men, eight women, and five families.
We cleaned the laundry room Thursday afternoon; which was fantastic. I got to clean something!!! And it was helping somone - sort of. The group wasn't actually that helpful, I don't think, being far smaller than expected, and productivity could have been much improved. Anyway, it began snowing; great thick white flakes coating the sky and dropping on the ground.
Didn't actually get to visit with any friends while gone, but I did talk to Ash, Jed and Alton, it was good to hear from them.
Spent most of Thursday night trying to teach these eight-year-old girls, Gabby and Megan, how to play ping pong. It was...a lesson in patience for me, at least. Haha. Just trying to make their lives a little brighter, maybe someday later on they'll decide to start playing for real, and they'll remember that time at the shelter where that guy from some college somewhere took the time to try to teach the basics.
I can't remember where we were or why we were there, but when I was little I once found this ping pong table, these teenagers were playing. I watch for a while, when the girl asks if I'd like to play. The guy hands me his paddle, and the girl tries to teach me how to return properly. I didn't understand it at all, but that scene's always stuck with me, how cool they seemed, how they took the time to be friendly to a little kid they'd never seen and wouldn't ever meet again.
So the best part of the trip, I guess, was just getting to know the residents, how they came to be there, how I could pray for them. We met a man named Don at breakfast Friday morning, he and his family had their house burn last summer, they moved in with his mother, who died three months later, and then after that with a friend who turned out to be on drugs, and so they were all kicked out, leading to their staying at the shelter. Despite his struggles, the obvious ones, and then various health problems keeping him from his natural job as a plumber, including a terrible case of diabetes, he just radiated such an incredible joy, speaking of how God has used these trials to strengthen his faith and bind his family closer together.
There's just a different atmosphere in the whole state, some kind of healing property in the air. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how it seems to me. Everyday life can be rough, but that's when God's mercies and grace are most clearly seen.
The friendships between the residents was something amazing to witness, very hard to describe. Just unbelievable the way that life could (and will) go on, no matter where you happen to be at the moment. There was a birthday party thrown for a boy named Levi, he was turning seven, that was neat to watch, and inconceivable that we would be invited. Yet we were, and were welcomed as part of the family, no matter that our stay was measured in hours, as opposed to weeks or months. The kids all played together when they had free time, the mothers and other women talked and worked on various projects, the men cooperated well, each person doing his specific task with his team, and then dicussing the job market, politics or latest news of the Cardinals, Chiefs or Rams over meals.
Friday was mostly spent working in a warehouse, sorting through oceans of bedding that had been donated in the morning, bagging and boxing those, then stacking for later sorting. A lot of heavy furniture was hauled away to be either thrown out or stored in the basement waiting for the next garage sale(I didn't help as much with this part, obviously), then a food delivery truck dropped off a load of groceries, so those needed to be sorted through and stashed somewhere. That was a neat atmosphere down there, despite warnings that it was creepy and scary.
Overall, I kept getting flashbacks often; of that first shock and numb terror, and then the first halting steps at regaining control of our lives. I knew about having nowhere to go, that desperate clinging to whatever made a "normal" life at the moment, that sorting in cold temperatures through a deluge of items donated and saved, figuring out what can be kept and what to trash. Finding out so many new things about what a big God we have, how amazing He is.
I was amazed, though, how quickly I adapted to everything. I can usually adjust to new things suddenly, new places of living(NSU being the notable exception), but still, this place felt like home. What that says about me, I'm not sure, but, it did.
We had a place to go, and relatives swarming to assist any way they could. We had friends to encourage us and help us through. We had a budget-conscious contractor in charge of the remodel. We had a wonderful church praying and working with us. I had friends all over the country injecting humor and advice to give some stability. These people, they didn't have any of that. We could very well have been in the same situation, having to go somewhere like that.
It wasn't enough. Not at all, and I will never be able to pay back all the help that we received when we needed it. But that's why I went on the trip; any help I can give, whether directly or behind-the-scenes so others can focus on serving, I want to give. If I get the chance, I'm definitely going back.
Saturday I vacuumed most of the upstairs mostly single-handed, it was so good to be vacuuming a floor clean. Then it was time to leave after lunch, so I picked up(what else?) a local newspaper and a couple of energy drinks at the gas station. Slept in on Sunday, since it was the last day I could, and the semester began again with a vengeance, a terrible week followed, which made Easter look very appealing.
It was weird to have so much time off, but it gave me a lot of time to think, and dimly began to light a path towards confusing answers. It wasn't the best that could be expected of a mission trip, but it was something. Maybe the Lord was working through us in ways we didn't recognize.
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