Wall of Text

Much Ado About Nothing

2012-02-22T02:20:00.020-08:00

I suppose it is time.

Since October 1. Hum. Well, I briefly dated/flinged--flung?--a girl named Belle. Basically the first date went fantastic, which introduced super high expectations, that were later not met. It's entirely possible they were impossible to meet. Belle and I are still friends, though it took a couple months.

In the last couple days in Rwanda, we headed back toward the airport. On the way, we visited some orphans and widows, doing missionary work like a cop eats a doughnut. The woman my group met with was 51 years old and had an amazing, tragic story. Her husband was a fisherman and died drowning when she was in her early twenties. By then she had two kids, but her parents and parents-in-law disowned her. She couldn't afford the house she was living in, and had no where to go, so she lived, quite literally, under a mat for ten years. The neighbors took pity on her kids some nights and gave them food, some of which they smuggled in their shirts, so that's how the woman survived. There was something about her owning the house they'd lived in, but not the land it was on, and the man who owned it refused to part with it. He was planning on leveling the house, but since it was government-built, it was illegal. When we met with her, she was in the process of getting the government to step in. My favorite part was that she let us take the bench in her house, and pulled down some mats for herself. One of the mats, when unrolled, revealed a giant spider. I pointed it out, expecting her to whack it with a shoe, or ask me to. Instead, she slapped it, bare-palmed, it curled up, and she brushed it aside. My sister would have run to Uganda at the sight of that spider.

The day before we left the country, we had a one-day "retreat" for the World Relief staff. It was based around the five or six sections of the Lord's Prayer. We put out large sheets of paper with the section name at the top, then went around and wrote prayers that fit the section for World Relief and otherwhere. (Otherwhere passes spell check?) It was a fairly powerful experience. Afterward, it began to rain pretty hard. I walked out into it, getting soaked. The Rwandans thought I was crazy, which amused my team and me.

The day after we got back from Rwanda, I had tickets with my Microsoft team and Swood to see the Seahawks. We were to meet at a bar in Seattle, but I managed to leave my wallet in my bags, still packed, at home, and my 16-year-old face couldn't convince them I was 24. Our tickets were for seats literally the furthest from the field, the nosebleeds of the nosebleeds. We lost the game, though had we made the hail-mary field goal we would have won or gone into overtime. I don't remember.

When I went back to work, everything had changed. The two remaining members of the original project I was on had left to go work with my old boss. We had one new member, and two or three more on the way. Our code base had moved to an entirely different system. Seriously, I'm gone for two weeks and the team falls apart.

Within two weeks, I had to do my commitments. My boss helped me with those, and midway through, I realized, I'm not going to do these. It made setting them a bit easier, when then and there, I decided I was going to quit my job.

Obviously the next question was "What now?" The only thing that came to mind was teaching high school math, so I set my course, and looked for colleges. The only college that fit my schedule was SPU. For UW, I'd have to wait until the next October to apply, and start in spring of '13. Western, which would have been my first choice, had no Seattle satellite campus, and I don't want to leave my church. When I talked to HR about leaving Microsoft, she recommended CityU, but my sister is there.

A few weeks later, at one of my one-on-ones with my boss, he told me, as a friend and in no official capacity, that I should start looking for a new job. I started talking to people about my decision, outside of work (and with Athena). My Rwanda trip team (we're still meeting once every two to four weeks as we did pre-trip) was all very supportive, everyone saying I'd make a great teacher. My psychiatrist said she hears people frequently say they want to quit their jobs, and she always tells them to keep them, but in my case, that I should go for it. The only two people I told that weren't thrilled were my mom and Luke's wife--both teachers. My mom didn't want me to drop out of the computer field when she knows that's one of my (if not my) biggest passion, and she's been teaching for 35 years, is burnt out, and angry at what the government is doing to the system right now. Luke's wife is a second or third year teacher, and at the time, had been having a very rough year. Both of them are junior high teachers, whereas I want to teach high school.

I gave my two weeks' notice two weeks before Thanksgiving. My boss gave me the best compliment he could have: "Oh, I expected you to say you were going to Google or Amazon." My last day could have been the Wednesday before, but Microsoft has a long standing tradition of a farewell lunch, and I figured that everyone would be out of town, but be back by Monday, so that was my last day. Those two weeks were hard because it's Microsoft policy not to tell anyone except HR and your boss if you're actually leaving the company as opposed to changing groups. I spent a lot of it messing around with a MSR gadget, teasing out the peculiarities and attempting to train the guy who would take over my project. I spent a lot of it rereading QC too. The rest of my time, I spent talking to Vin on facebook. She is a wonderful person.

The person I hadn't told, come Thanksgiving, was my grandpa. I was not really looking forward to that conversation, but I've got a bit more ... I don't even know the word ... than my mom or sister. Hostility isn't quite right; indifference; rebelliousness. Combine those but only take certain portions of each: hostdiffousnessity--the attitude of I'm doing this, and I know it to be right, so you can condemn me or not and it won't bother me either way. It's being a teenage daughter, except right. Anyway, I don't even remember how it came up, but I ended up telling my grandpa I had given my two weeks' notice and was going to become a math teacher. His response was, "Good for you!" My jaw almost dropped. I know he and Grandma knew that I wasn't happy there, in fact they were the first to know, even before me, but they'd always tried to push me toward Amazon or Google. When my mom had told him she wanted to be a teacher, he was disappointed, though my understanding is that it was because of the pay they received.

Thanksgiving went well for me. Well in general, except for my cousins and sister, I think, and except for one or two parts, it went well for them too. Good food, good company, an interesting game of Apples to Apples--interesting because some people played it literally, my sister and I didn't, and my two cousins were too young to understand "Woodstock." "I like the bird." But, as the party was breaking up, my grandpa said goodbye to my sister asking, "So, are you on track to graduate?" Since my sister's taken five years to graduate, he's quit supporting her financially (or so I've heard). His concern can be interpreted as aimed at her success rather than her wellbeing. Then, he turned to me and said, "Follow your dreams!" A few moments later, when he was out of earshot, my eldest cousin turned to my sister and said in a bitter tone, "Or, you can just not go to college and have no expectations placed on you at all!" Good ol' family politics, I guess. Still, beats presidential politics.

My goodbye lunch was bittersweet, half because I was leaving and would miss the people who attended, half because half the people I wanted to attend were out of town still. I'll admit it's a little selfish to wish the guy were at my lunch rather than at Disneyland with his family. A little.

Of the process for leaving, I was most upset that they didn't let me keep my badge as a memento. I was tempted to leave it home that day, but my good nature prevented it.

The SPU program officially starts in late July, so I had/have eight months of unemployment. What allows me to do this, and to live while in college without a job, is my recently converted buy-a-house fund, a large sum of money sitting in MSFT stock. Assuming Microsoft doesn't go out of business, or drop its value by half, I should be fine for living for 36-40 months, without taxes. What I don't have is the $17k needed to go to school, so I'm hoping to take out some loans for that.

Everything just kind of fell into place for this decision. Last June, I'd planned on moving into a house I wanted to buy by February, so that's when I set as the end of my lease. As "luck" would have it, February is when Bob's roommate is moving out. (It's now one week until the end of my lease and she still hasn't so I need to do some more prodding.) Rent at Bob's place is a couple hundred cheaper per month. It's not huge, but it's some. SPU's program is 14 months, which is about the amount of living money I have, and it's somewhat targeted at people leaving the tech industry who want to teach math and science, which is me. My mom's an alumnus so I think that will help with admissions and tuition a little bit. A dozen other small things have just left me feeling at peace with this decision. It's where God wants me to be right now, and that's enough. It's quite the turn around from where I was a year ago.

Christmas was good, mostly because I got to see friends from all over. Vin came back, so we had lunch together at a place in Seattle. Denna, whom I'm renaming once again to Nicci (having reread The Wizards First Rule, and deciding Denna doesn't really fit--and I'm not choosing Nicci because she's Death's Mistress [one should hope not], but because she turns into a dear friend of Richard's, though not his wife) visited, and I spent a day barhopping with her and her sister, brother-in-law, and roommate and his friend. That day, my iPhone was stolen from my car seat through my window. I forget that Seattle is not Redmond. It was really being used as a glorified iPod, since I've been using my Windows Phone for over a year. Still, it would have been nice to keep, sell, or give away. It's missing the chip that makes it act as a phone, so they'll have a little more trouble using it. After the barhopping, I took the ferry over to Port Orchard and hung out at her parents' house, with some of her other Port Orchard friends. I'd been hoping to get a chance to talk to her one on one, but it didn't really happen. At the end, it was me, her dad, and her. Her dad and I played a game of chicken, and I lost. I was a little disappointed, until the next morning when Nicci told me that a lot of wounds between her dad and her were mended and that they were on significantly better terms, which were my prayers while driving on the way home, and had been for months before. God is good.

Frank was also in town, and the Quad had a good night of Apples to Apples, and dare I say it, Quelf. They are the only three people with which I could play that game, though perhaps on a different timeline, it'd be interesting with Goose as well. Much blackmail material was generated.

A lot of people, people older than me mostly, have suggested that I should become a technology teacher, or assume that's what I'm going for rather than math. It's really hard, and repetitive, to try to explain that there's a difference between computer science and technology, the same as there's a difference between math and accounting. I would love to teach computer science, but first I'd have to find a school that actually teaches it. That might involve working for a few years, and then coming up with my own curriculum. I don't know how good the AP CS curriculum is, but that might also be an option.

In order to become a masters student, you have to take the WEST-B and WEST-E tests. WEST stands for Washington Educators Skill Tests. The B is basic--reading, writing, and math. The E is endorsement, so in my case, math. I took the endorsement test first, and it was fun. I got something like a 78, but it's a pass-fail test with a 70% bar. The WEST-B, I got in the high 80s/low 90s for reading and writing, and a 98-ish in math. The scores they give you are on a 100-300 scale, so calculating, I'm guessing, is not a straight percentage.

In order to take the WEST-E, you can't bring anything except a calculator, and they give you lockers for your wallet, watch, cell phone, and anything else on your person. I thought I'd be smarter than that, and leave all my stuff in my car. Of course, that stuff included my keys. And my wallet, which normally has my backup car key. I do so love when I outsmart myself. One of the women who worked at the testing center was super gracious, and let me use her AAA membership to unlock my car. She even gave me a little cash for lunch while I waited for them. It's so great to meet people like that.

The SPU application was due February 1, but to beef it up a little, I was encouraged to volunteer at a couple schools. I set myself up to volunteer in a math classroom at a high school in Kirkland, but the Monday that week was Martin Luther King Jr Day, and Tuesday through Friday were snow days. The Civil Rights Movement strikes again! The next Tuesday, I went back to Port Orchard and volunteered in my favorite junior high math teacher's classroom on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Wednesday was insane. Because of the snow, the kids were rowdy. Also, because of the days missed, they had pushed back the end of the semester to that Friday, which meant the kids' grades were basically set in stone. No failing student was going to pass, and no high A student was going to get a B. No passing student cares that much about a percentage point or two, nor will they fail. The kids basically had no perceivable incentive for listening. Further, Cedar Heights's schedule is such that on Wednesday, he didn't have a plan period. Last, and probably foremost, he's a little too lenient when it comes to keeping the kids quiet, so when he gives that inch and lets them talk during homework time, they take that mile and don't shut up when he's trying to teach. In one period, he even lost his temper and sent two instigators outside for the rest of the period. At the end of the day, I was wondering if I even wanted to teach anymore. Also, that day, my car was towed because it was parked awkwardly, yet a legal 6" from the curb. Neither that, nor the $216 it cost to get it out of impound, helped. I decided to tough it out and stay Thursday. I wouldn't say it was a night and day difference, but a world of difference, nonetheless. The biggest thing, probably, was that I was ready for it. Second, he had his plan period, and during it, I went to my mom's classroom to see how she teaches. Her classroom management (crowd control) skills are significantly, well, better. It helps that she's been teaching longer, and also that her classes are all of a single grade, and thus she can reinvent her teaching style each year, whereas the math teacher's classes are mixed-grade, and students have expectations year-to-year. Also, apparently, the class I visited third period was her best, most respectful class. I finished that day thinking, "Ok, so this can be done." Still, the experience confirmed in me that I want to teach high school and not junior high.

It was good to see all the teachers I grew up with. Having lunch with them was fun, and interesting. I got the feeling that these particular days were hard for most of the teachers, probably due to the end of the semester, and a lot of the time was spent "discussing" student behavior. One interesting comment was that a girl had asked another girl out and was rejected. She ran out of the classroom, hurt, and I think went to the counseling office. The comment was that the girl who asked the girl out was committing sexual harassment. I'm thinking, "Really? How is that different than a guy asking a girl out?"

Friday was best of all, despite the Friday mayhem. During third period, I again visited my mom. She was teaching persuasive writing. The entry task was to pick a topic on the board and write a note to their parents trying to convince them of something. The topics were like "push back my bed time" or "let me dye my hair" or "give me more allowance". After a few minutes, my mom collected all the papers then redistributed them to other students. The task then was to write a reply as their parents, countering the arguments. I looked up at the board, read through the topics, and asked, "Do you realize you just put some kids on the wrong side of 'quit smoking'?" It got me a good laugh. I made a few more comments like that, and asked my mom at the end if I had been too disruptive. She said no, that having me had been good.

Some Saturday in January, I went to see Goose's play. She played Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. The part fits her almost perfectly; Goose is a nicer person. I went during a matinee because it was the last day, and I know that casts have parties after the last showing, which was that night. I wanted to see her afterward, but I didn't want to impose, having not seen her in a little over a year, and that being when she broke up with me. The play was fantastic, I thought. It was no new epiphany, but Shakespeare was brilliant. It kicked off a bit of a Shakespearen binge for me. I didn't actually do a whole lot--I read a little bit, enough to discover that so much is lost without the acting--but I thought about it a lot. Someday, I want to write a play, a comedy I'm sure. It always comes back to plot, though. It's the same reason I haven't written a book yet, either. The only thing I seem to be able to write about with any degree of skill is myself.

Most of the binge happened on facebook, and a friend of mine, a girl I almost went on a date with but then she got married, posted this clip on one of my statuses. I don't normally put youtube in my blog, but this is worth it.

Seeing the play also kicked off a bit of me wishing I was with Goose, and I tested the waters, confirming that she is, in fact, dating Benedick. I know that she's not the one for me, but sometimes things are hard to know. Later I told a friend I hadn't talked to since high school, whom I randomly chatted up on facebook, "She'd be the one that got away, if I weren't completely certain there's a girl out there whose better for me."

On the 31st, I turned in my SPU application. That's right, a full day before it was due. First time in my life. That afternoon, before turning it in, I had lunch with my old Microsoft pals, one to have lunch with them, and two, to get my letters of recommendation (which were incredibly kind) signed. It was a good thing they were signed, too, because they almost rejected one on account of it not being in an envelope. Alas, I had forgotten to print out the second half of my written thing, which was a list of teaching experiences I'd had, so I emailed that to them that night. All that's left now is an interview on March 10, and then waiting one to two weeks for an application letter. I got the feeling there were 100+ applicants per year, but ALL of the interviews, which are required in person, happen on the 10th between 8 and 4pm. I'm just trying to imagine how 100 people get interviewed in 8 hours without a LOT of interviewers. Anyway, I'm not too worried. If this is what God wants, then I'll be accepted. If not, then since I think God has me where he wants me right now, he must have a plan to get me to where I need to go next. Plus, it's not like I'm not an ideal candidate for the spot anyway. The only thing I could have done better, perhaps, was to double-major in math, but I took enough math to cover all the requirements for the MTMS (masters in teaching math and science) without taking any other courses.

As for girls, as there must always be a for girls, I'm a bit put off right now. A day or two ago, I was angsty and frustrated, and way too into it, applying my girl-situation to my identity, where it does not belong. So, once again, I'm at a place where if I find a girl, cool, if not, I have other things to worry about--even though I really don't, having money and no employment. Moving! Right. Good. I was worried I had nothing to worry about. Anyway, all that's really happened since Belle is a few girls I met for lunch, none of which went spectacularly. This latest one, I met in Bellingham, and I thought it went well enough to warrant a second date, but she did not. What was great about it, though, is that it got me to Bellingham where I met with Rufus and Solomon. It'd been entirely too long since I'd talked to either of them, and seeing them again was both wonderful and nurturing to my soul. Solomon is so sincere with his Christ-like love. While talking with Rufus at the VU, I saw a good six or seven other people I knew from back in the day, pastors and friends and Fir Creek counselors. I have no doubt that the reason I ran into this girl on eHarmony was to get me to Bellingham. Besides, who wants to date a girl that enjoyed The Phantom Menace and wanted to see it in 3D? *dog with shifty eyes*

The meeting with Solomon spawned off an email thread, largely about girls and what to look for in girls when looking to marry. I've read it a few times now because he is incredibly insightful. If I get his permission, I'd love to post it on my blog, or maybe a link to it. If not, well, sucks to be you, I guess.

I guess saying I only met a few girls for lunch isn't fair. For a little while, I was kind of seeing this girl. We met up a few times. She was the first girl I've ever really been on a date with that was (more than a year) older than me, though not much older. I'm not really sure why we dropped out of contact, but I think we both felt we should. I don't know. Looking back through nostalgia-colored lenses, I miss her a little. Or maybe (matter-of-factly) I'm just lonely.

The rest of these past months is just keeping busy. I refuse to get bored while unemployed. I've volunteered at my church and also at that Kirkland high school, though they have no place for me in the classroom right now. For my church, they have me doing repetitive menial tasks, which so far I've actually enjoyed. When they set me up to do some data entry, they showed me the software suite they're using, which only lets you search for one member at a time. I noticed that it runs on an .mdb (Microsoft Access) file, and told them I could whip together a quick program that lets you see all the people who are members in a list at once, along with all the people in the list who are new. Tomorrow I'm going to work with the volunteer coordinator to put together a rough spec, since my initial one-hour version doesn't quite do everything needed.

If I'm going to make that meeting, I should probably end this post now. I've been getting up, most days, at 8:30--quite a feat when I don't have anything to do during the day--and reading my Bible while sipping Frappuccino. I was never good at reading my Bible regularly, so I'm determined to make this habit stick.

World Relief University

2011-09-26T21:40:00.001-07:00

Today I met wisdom incarnate. He's the former Bishop of Rwanda, having recently retired. He spoke for an hour or so at the beginning of a day dedicated to explaining the vision and execution of World Relief Rwanda. This is a man who represents and leads the entire country through the Anglican church, a man who speaks to hundreds if not thousands at a time, a man who speaks to and councils presidents and ambassadors, here to talk to the twelve of us.

He didn't speak on behalf of World Relief, but he definitely agreed with their work and methodology.

The Rwandan government relies heavily on the Church to care for the most vulnerable. That is Jesus' mandate for the Church, and the Church therefore, presumably, is the body most fit for the task. Is it the government's duty as well? Yes, I think it is, but in the US, the Church often shrugs off its responsibility, its core purpose, because we can rationalize that our government has already taken care of it.

It's entirely foreign to me that government should rely on the church to do anything. It seems to me our government tries to do what would make our lives better, avoiding at all costs any relationship to the church; the church is a hinderance, not an asset. Recently I was considering whether it might not be a good idea to completely remove marriage, a religious notion, from our laws. Let the church handle religion. Hearing Bishop John's telling of how the Rwandan government and church work together, complement each other, may have turned me around on that. Of course, it's easier when 90% of the population claims to be Christian.

The Bishop talked a bit about the US, where he has lived in the past, and some of the Church's failures there. One of those failures, he said, is not being able to talk about Christianity in the schools. I assume he means students not being able to, but he didn't specify. I asked him how the church could not fail in that regard and he said it needs to change its attitude; it needs to be more humble. He said the Anglican church has figured out everything, and it leaves no room for the Spirit. He then asked if he had answered my question, which I felt he had not, so I asked how that would change the government's position on religion in the schools. Essentially he said the government doesn't value the church because we no longer have anything of value to offer. "The church doesn't do magic. If you put salt in a pan and heat the pan with the food and serve it immediately, the salt won't have added any flavor." He suggested that if we humble ourselves and serve rather than rant, in a generation or two, we may see change in how people view Christianity. It's certainly food for thought.

Another culture shock that I mentioned previously is Rwanda's view of Sex. "Professor" Maurice, my translator on Thursday for the pastoral retreat, talked a bit about the Mobilizing for Life program they have which teaches faithfulness and abstinence to combat AIDS. I asked a devil's advocate question, as I do so often, "When the US, historically, has taught abstinence only, it's failed miserably. It doesn't reduce the amount of sex, it reduces the amount of safe sex. (Thank you CJ Craig.) What do we expect to happen here?" In the last three or four years, the number of sexually active youth in areas where the benefits of abstinence has been taught has dropped from 33% to 12%. Maurice talked about a lot of testimonies. Pastor Phil said there are statistics to support this as well. He went on to talk about the many supporters of Rwanda, whether they be governments or organizations, that all have agendas for Rwanda and Africa. They all have their own ideals. Much of what comes in is helpful, from financial aid to education to entrepreneurial spirit. But with the good also comes the bad and the ugly, and just because the US can't keep its dick in its pants, doesn't mean the rest of the world can't. Since then (two hours ago) I've been thinking about what could cause this separation in values (and abstinence is a value in Rwanda). I know it's not belief in the Bible, as this education is still being taught to the country and roughly one in three pastors aren't even "born again." It's not ancestral roots (they're not being taught it by their parents) as polygamy is an issue here. I'm left thinking it's our media, our advertising, our obsession with sex in the first place. They have no sex appeal ads because they have no ads at all. I'm not blaming the media outright as the media wouldn't present what we don't want to see. There's a Jack Johnson song about this called "Cookie Jar".

These two pointed questions earned me the prestigious Hardest Questions award during graduation from World Relief University.

I overheard at the end of Bishop John's talk, on the way to tea that Rwanda is, too, materialistic. Americans put their faith and trust in the objects they own. Rwandans put their hope in the objects they think would make their lives complete. I guess Americans do that as well. It's an interesting thought, to be sure.

What I've learned today is that life as it's meant to be is hard. In fact, it's impossible. The amount of forgiveness, the metaphorical seventy times seven, for every possible way someone can sin against us, whether that be accidental, misunderstanding, cruelty, thievery, rape, or murder of loved ones... how can you? With the 1994 genocide raw in everyone's minds here, it makes all of this that much more real. The amount of healing through forgiveness that's happened in the last 17 years is phenomenal. Selling your stuff to support those in need? I can easily give, and in fact enjoy giving, out of my abundance, but ask me to sell my tv, or laptop, or car to help someone? Not happening. LIfe, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? God gives us life and the liberty to do with it and fail as we please in our own pursuit of happiness. Life is the one thing we, as Americans, feel we have as our own. How can we give that up completely? It's impossible. "With Christ all things are possible." It's hard to comprehend, much less believe, much less act on.

On lighter topics (and it is now this entry's tomorrow, about 18 hours since starting it), we left our hotel in Musanze yesterday morning. Before leaving, we walked up to the Catholic church about five minutes away and prayed for the region. Dyanah didn't walk with us. I thought she was being lazy since she got in a car that was to pick us up at the church. It turns out she was leaving, so I missed my chance to hug her goodbye. Nothing grieves me more than missed opportunities for relationship, romantic or not. To my future girlfriends, never tease me by offering a kiss and then denying it because of something, legitimate or not, I did. It tears me apart.

The ride to our new home, where the day-university class was held, was about 40 minutes long, bumpy and upward. (We're just about to leave this place, and I just carried my bags up the stairs to where the SUVs are. To give you an idea of the elevation, not only am I winded, which would be normal, but everyone else has mentioned being winded too.) We got some beautiful shots of waterfalls and people working their fields. The retreat center we went to has the most glorious view I've ever seen, tenfold and then some. It overlooks a large lake with several islands in the middle. There's no electricity to the islands, so there are no power lines crossing the water or anything else to mar the scene. Not that I've ever been a poetic writer, but I doubt anyone but a poet laureate could capture the view. Or a photo. With the world's best camera. Yeah, you really should just visit.

Glory be to God, we had a bathroom door in our room.

It has rained fairly frequently, so we haven't had much opportunity to see the whole thing unclouded, nor have I had any time to journal outside.

Because I don't believe I've yet stated it, and it really is one of the main points of this trip, I'm going to attempt to explain World Relief's purpose here in Rwanda. "To empower the local church to serve the most vulnerable." We've (the world) found that dumping money in Africa hasn't worked. In fact, it has worsened the situation by creating a dependency on those who've tried to help. The old give a man a fish, teach a man to fish. The only way Africa will ever succeed in betterment is if it does it itself, if it owns it itself. World Relief believes the best organization to serve the "most vulnerable," the poor, the widows and orphans, the down-and-out, is the Church, as it has been called by Jesus to do so. Further, with 90% claiming faith, it's the largest social network in Rwanda, already in place.

Jesus calls himself the groom and the Church his bride. World Relief sees itself as the maid of honor, the woman whose job it is to help the bride to have everything she needs, and then to step out of the way.

World Relief doesn't supply any financial incentives for pastors to join in their programs, except in the beginning for a free lunch and transportation. The pastors or other Rwandans own everything they do. World Relief just supplies training (trainers of trainers) and curriculum. If people think of a program as World Relief's, they'll become dependent on the organization.

This kind of thinking is difficult for task/results-oriented people and organizations. "89¢ a day will let this child go to school." That organization will, unfortunately, never go out of business, never succeed in its goal of saving Africa. Even organizations that agree with World Relief's way of doing things are often pressed by boards for results and will pay for food and transport for every meeting. Now pastors aren't going to the meeting for the benefits of the meeting, but for free food and the extra money left over after expensing transportation. Once again, they're taught that white people will give them money.

It calls into question, a bit, our (Bethany's) partnership with Living Water International. Wells are great, but it'd be better if the Africans paid for them. They also break fairly frequently, so that's another opportunity for African business. Elizabeth has mentioned this to LIving Water (whom primarily in the past has been sponsored by organizations and companies that want to boast they've put x wells in Uganda), and said Bethany is more interested in a relationship and partnership with the people our wells have gone to, and that we also want a maintenance plan in place for those wells. It sounded like, from talking to her, they were noncommittal. She said she'd call again when we get back.

Last night at our team time, Richard tried to make joke to tease me about Dyanah, but accidentally said [Caleb] instead of Jordan. After a team-wide fit of laughter directed at Richard instead of me, Elizabeth asked if there was romance there and I shrugged indicating a little. I guess she had no idea. She had even pointed out at breakfast one day that the only two other single people on the trip were women too old for me, and "I guess you'll just have to find an African."

This morning before our mostly-daily devotion, we did a quick highs-and-lows. At the end, I appended a sappy, half-joking low that I didn't get to hug Di goodbye. This unfortunately coincided with a side-effect of my Vyvanse, watery eyes. I don't know if anyone noticed or thought I was tearing up over it. Amongst the laughter at my bringing this up, I heard someone say I was doing it wrong, that I was supposed to be embarrassed so they could tease me. Ha.

We spent some time debriefing. I've said it before: I don't really come with expectations because I don't know what to expect, and I don't want to be disappointed. The disappointments I've had were minor, a missed hug, paying more than I'd meant to on a souvenir chess set, not having as much a-few-on-one time with the pastors on Saturday. I spent the last twenty minutes of that debriefing time writing this, which is really debriefing in itself.

This whole trip we've been examining poverty. This trip is based on a book called When Helping Hurts. At the beginning, it does a deep dive on the various forms of poverty. It's essentially when our relationships to God, self, community or environment are out of whack. This is to say that we ourselves are quite poor as well. We don't lack materials, but our relationships to ourselves and to our communities are really screwed up. To God, I'll leave on a per-person basis, and in Washington, we're at least trying to be environmental. Anyway, financial poverty affects all four relationships, at least in the theory presented by the book. I asked the group whether it was fair to say that Jesus experienced no poverty. The consensus was that he did not. Then I asked if he was materially poor, which he was. I'm still thinking that out.

When we came back from personal reflection, Richard said something profound (or maybe this was sometime else). He said, "it's much easier to sympathize with people when they act against us when we recognize their actions as their own poverty."

Last night, the Nertz crew played a couple games. Lindsay crushed us in the first 100-point series. She wanted to go to bed but we prevented it and I actually dealt her cards for her so she had no choice. It was only a 75-point round and it looked like Richard was going to finally win, but I passed him up in the last hand. Tonight, however, our dear Richard finally won, and won big, two 100-pointers in a row. After the first, he took off his shirt and ran and danced around. I'm surprised he didn't give a speech. I'm glad he finally won. I was starting to feel bad for him, but I never let anyone win. My mom never let me win growing up, and I really appreciate that.

During last night's games, some wild African dogs tried to get into the room we were playing in. We shut the door just in time, but until after the games ended, they puppy-guarded us. We waited and watched for a few minutes as they ran around the yard playing with each other. It felt like they were waiting for us, and then, miraculously, they just left. We hightailed it out of there as quietly as we could, back to our rooms. About 80% there, when Richard knew we were home free, he stopped suddenly to freak out Lindsay, who had been significantly the most nervous about the run. Good times.

I'm running out of pages in this 100-page notebook. Most of the left hand pages are empty, so don't you worry about losing a second of Rwandan play-by-play. Except about Saturday. I just really don't have anything to say about that day.

Legend

2011-09-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we met with a few pastors from various churches in the area to make reminder-to-pray bookmarks to disperse to Bethany. That's all I have to say about that.

The rain just stopped. People are again walking the streets. That's the first thing you notice in daytime Rwanda. There are people everywhere. They don't have cars and so they walk. Bicycles are fairly common. They all have flat beds behind the seats for carrying people, bags of potatoes, or bundles of bamboo-looking branches. You could close line six people at once. Buses and vans are there too. The most common mode of quick transportation is paying a motorcyclist to taxi you. People carry everything on their heads. They necks must be made of cement (steel bends when compressed). When it starts to rain, everyone just takes shelter, squished together under the nearest eve until it stops.

The roads aren't near as crazy as in Jamaica. While pedestrians don't have right-of-way, at least drivers will slow down and try to avoid them. They honk if a pedestrian or bicyclist is ten seconds away. Cars slow down around curves or when they're about to hit pot holes. Not so in Jamaica. Drivers aren't afraid that cutting someone off will cause an accident. Perhaps the speed limit naturally enforced by the pedestrians and road quality allow for quick braking.

Though people crowd the city streets of Seattle, this is somehow different. People look more comfortable around other people. They look used to walking and taking whatever time it takes. Seattlites are determined unless they're playing the tourist for the day.

My pen just dried up. Nearly the entire thing was spent in this journal. I hadn't planned on that possibility happening. I don't think I've ever written a pen, start to finish.

On Friday night, a new translator arrived for the weekend named Dyanah, or Di. She and I have been a little bit of an item, an innocent, two-day African fling. She's stick thin--compared to her, I look average--about 5'9", with a face softer than most African women have. I was surprised that her accent nearly matches mine. She's going into international business, in the hopes of traveling the world a bit.

The last two nights' events conspired against our Nertz tradition. No riveting writing to add there.

As it is Sunday, we all went to church, or rather three churches. The church we went to was Baptist, I believe. It's a church Elizabeth visited when she was here in January. Since then, it has gained windows, doors, a roof, and a floor, half of which was still drying today.

When we got there, a choir was already singing and dancing. As the rear half of the floor was dying, the front doors were locked and everyone entered by a side door near the front. We were seated in chairs immediately to our right, clearly reserved by for esteemed visitors.

The choir sang a couple songs, each five to eight minutes long. We clapped. Di complained to me yesterday that all the music here is now synthesized rather than made with real drums or instruments. Such was the case here. When the music died down, the pastor welcomed each group: men, women, children, pastors from the Congo, visiting pastors from nearby, people who have been gone a while but have returned, new people, and us. He gave a short sermon on Daniel 1. More singing happened by a second choir, lots of clapping, lots of dancing. The pastor had us go to the front and introduce ourselves. More singing happened and this time the pastor invited us to join in the dancing. I wish I had, just because it's a bit of a fear of mine. Ballroom dancing and swing I love; when I don't know what I'm doing, I can't make myself move. The running-in-place the dancing men were doing was pretty simple, but I still wimped out. Next was time for testifying. Someone had gotten married this week and an aunt was proud and praising Jesus for it. Something happened for a guy that I don't remember, and to thank God, he was putting 50,000 franks in the offering this week. That's about $83--very generous here, about two weeks' wages. Each time someone went up or sat down, including when we introduced ourselves, the keyboardist played the same short tune giving it a talk show flavor. A second pastor came forth to give a half hour sermon on a few different verses scattered throughout the Bible. The long and short of it was that people need to return to God, and until that happens, don't expect any miracles. Next was tithes and offerings. We each put in our 83¢ we'd been told was an appropriate amount. More singing and dancing. The three hour service ended around noon.

I was in my Sunday best, slacks, black dress shirt, shoes, and tie. Di said I looked "stunning."

This morning I had a debilitating headache. Marie gave me some Advil and I skipped breakfast in lieu of lying down til it took effect. Thus, I missed the announcement that we ought to bring a change of casual clothes. It turned out not to matter as stopping back at the hotel before lunch was both on the way and the more logical choice.

We had lunch at Lava Cafe, which I think the other members of my team nicknamed Lava Java. They serve white people friendly food. I got what the menu made sound like a tri-tip dip. They forgot my au jus, but all-in-all it was decent. Di ate my fries complaining for the umpteenth time that I don't eat.

After lunch, we went to a national rainforest as tourists. What appeared to be a park ranger gave us a tour of the forest, complete with history and legend. We took a ton of pictures. Di stole my camera saying I don't take enough shots. I'll be the first to admit that. Africans take pictures slightly diagonally. We got a good shot or two of the two of us with arms draped over shoulders. Right at the end of the tour path, it began to rain. Heavily. It was a mad dash across volcanic stones and under vines, Indiana Jones style, to the SUVs. The rain stopped thirty feet from the start of the trail. One of the legends or historic stories had to do with a pool or spring that dried up when someone tried to tamper with it. Four snakes appeared and the tamperer disappeared, never seen again to this day. Seven days later, the pool returned to normal. We saw that pool then left for home.

I'm all stuffed up with a sore throat. I think Marie gave me her cold. I don't much feel like eating dinner, which is in fifteen minutes, but I want to say goodbye to Dyanah. It's been fun.

This is Africa

2011-09-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

I'm wearing one of my favorite shirts. I believe I only have two button-down white shirts, and while one looks nicer, especially untucked since it stops at waist height, this one has memories. I wore it on one of my last days in Costa Rica when I couldn't take feeling dirty anymore. The women in the kitchens at the camp thought it was a shirt worthy of weddings, which I found mildy depressing as it's a fairly average, low thread count dress shirt. Anyway, that was the day of the obstacle course with the mud pit, and despite taking the shirt off well before the event, there's still a mud stain at the bottom, just right of center.

Mud is the reason I'm wearing it now. Today we "shadowed" four pastors to get a sense of their daily lives. To get to our pastor's house, (and while I'm thinking about it, the "mini-barn" that our group's Savings Group met at was actually a house) we drove down the main road ten minutes, at which point the pastor, who had been waiting for us, got in the SUV, then fifteen minutes up a rough dirt mud road, across a few log bridges, one of which looked to be pieced together with wooden fence slats that made cracking sounds when we drove over it and definitely had a few missing pieces, that is, had holes, up to a point where we had to walk up slick red dirt. His house was at the end of a ten-minute climb.

The pastor we were visiting was one of the ones in my small group from yesterday. His name is John Peter, a good ol' two-parter first name. His neighbor, wife, son (about four years old) and infant daughter were there with us. Shorty after arriving, his dad joined us. We sat in their front room around a couple small tables of mismatched height. The room was smaller than my tiny apartment kitchen. Mothers here are not at all shy about breast feeding.

We talked for a while about his church. His congregation is fourteen people. The Anglican Church, at least in Rwanda, feels instability reduces complacency, so he moves churches about once a year. The one he currently leads is a two hour walk from his home. He has to be at his church three days a week, and on off days, he walks down the hill to find pick-up jobs and/or do blacksmithing. Our translator, Ngoga, is some sort of liaison at the national level for World Relief Rwanda, and did some filling in to give our questions context. He also did his fair share of asking both parties his own, very helpful questions and then translated the responses. As the pastor's wife, his wife is the president of his church's mothering group and helps with encouraging women in their marriages and resolving disputes.

After about an hour, we went outside to look at his land. My apartment is pretty close to half the size of his entire property. In his garden, he has a couple banana trees, probably there naturally, and has planted beans. He'll harvest about 30 kilos (do your own damn math), while he cooks about a kilo a day. Since he can't grow beans consistently, given the seasons, he can't come near to living off them. Our translator, whom at the time I only knew as our translator, gave him several different ideas on how he could more efficiently use his land. All he really said was, "That's possible," nothing committal or excited. Lindsay, Christine, and I talked amongst ourselves as the pastor and Ngoga talked, about taking a soil sample, figuring out what would grow best there, and buying seeds of something not native, and therefore in low supply, to Rwanda. He could sell that crop for a high price in the market due to being rare or exclusive. There's a hot sauce on our dinner tables that is super spicy with no added flavor that I could discern. The factory that makes it is only a short distance from his house, and is in constant need of peppers. Ngoga suggested he grow these instead of beans, then use the profits to buy beans or whatever else. Like I said, he didn't sound enthused.

I have to admit, as frustrating as I find his attitude, I take the same one at my job. I'd rather deal with working around the bugs than fix them.

We went back inside and minutes later it began to pour. The rain lasted a few minutes, then began again, coming in waves. We ate lunch, it now being too rainy to safely get down the hill, and there being no point in skipping lunch in order to beat the rain for the sake of the drive. Our meal was surprisingly American with ham sandwiches. There was also passion fruit, which Lindsay bit right into, when it's more of a pomegranate experience, pine apple, and some sort of meat pie. We'd come with several aluminum sack lunches, but not quite enough for everyone in the room, as several neighbors had joined us. We made sure they all got one before we did. The four of us visitors shared the remaining two.

They asked us a few questions. One was whether we have poor people in America. They're always shocked that we do. We got to share about Bethany's Tabitha Ministry, a homeless women's shelter, and other programs that serve the homeless. When we'd finished our lunch, and it stopped raining, I prayed and then the pastor prayed, both translated. The pastor, his wife, Anna the infant strapped to her back, and his brother, walked us down the now slick and muddy hill to our SUV. It took quite a while, and at the end, our shoes were coated with the red, sticky mud. The journey down, even with four-wheel drive, was still a bit terrifying. I don't usually get scared by things like this, and I didn't this time either, but it was definitely a dangerous trek, especially with the rain that started back up a couple minutes before we made it to the car. I'm surprised we didn't get stuck in the mud.

When we got back, we tried to figure out what to do with our shoes, clung to by mud as they were. We tried to clean them off in puddles or wiping them in grass, the effect of which seemed to only be to color the ground. When John got back with my room key, I washed them off, then showered, and changed into this white shirt. When I exited the room, to head to our team time, a guy was collecting shoes to wash for us, mine now more wet than dirty. Maybe he has a hair dryer. On the bright side, we discovered we have a balcony, when looking for a place to put my wet shoes.

We debriefed a bit as a team and with our translators who were all more than translators, hearing each other's experiences, and asking questions about World Relief and the culture of Rwanda. All the information was interesting and I'm sure important to someone, but I've always had a broken filter when it comes to judging importance, and can't recall much of it now. I remember that Ngoga said he lived 100 KM from here. I remember Richard saying the foreign aid fund the US put toward stopping/helping the AIDS epidemic in Africa is almost gone. I remember Josh Lyman repeating a statistic that 81% of Americans think the foreign aid budget was too high and 72% think it should be cut, meaning that 9% of people are so bat shit out of their minds that they think the foreign aid budget is too high and shouldn't be cut.

The majority of our team went out for coffee at Lava Java. I sacrificed the experience to journal (now) for the sake of you fine folks, and not because my only available shoes are dressy ones. I doubt they'd have hot chocolate anyway.

If I moved to London, I'd have to spell color with a u. Eww. Accents, right.

Last night after our team time, a bunch of us went to play Nertz. When more people than decks arrived, we transitioned to Uno. Around 10:30 (totally just made that time up), Richard headed for bed, saying if three people were left, he'd play Nertz, obviously indicating himself, Lindsay, and me. We played one more round of Uno, then dispersed. I went up to find him playing on his laptop hoping "those Uno playing clowns" would leave, allowing for his "game of destiny" or GOD, to commence.

Well, at least he didn't come in last? I was slow at first but quickly gained momentum, slightly buffeted in the second to last round, making it a seven-point game between the two of us, Lindsay 10 points behind him. I got my remaining three points and twenty-one more. He suggested we play another 100 point series. Bad move, man. In seven games, I won with more than their scores combined. We'll see what happens tonight. I'm not convinced it was more than just luck as I don't think I was playing any differently, nor much faster, if not slower. Bring it.

Accordion

2011-09-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

Today was fantastic. We had our Pastoral Spiritual Retreat, which World Relief used as a preamble for their Church Empowerment Zone (CEZ) kick-off ceremony.

It was a mix of improv and planning, all overseen by, suffused with, saturated in the Holy Spirit. The three of us had prepared three passages of Scripture about the Kingdom of God on Earth and Bible study-esque questions to go along with each.

The first, Matthew 6:25-34, talks about not worrying. God will provide. Susanna presented this first passage and then we split into men and women, three groups of each. We figured women would be more likely to talk if their husbands weren't nearby. Caleb and I got Pastor Maurice as our translator. He was invaluable as an interpreter as well as a facilitator. I don't know Caleb's ability at crowd control and keeping people interested and talking, but mine is wanting. What I'm good at is asking good, usually hard, questions.

The question that got the most memorable responses for the first set of verses was: How has God shown/demonstrated his provision in your times of need? One man said he felt bringing us, our team from Bethany, to him was God's provisioning.

The second set was the Beattitudes (Matthew 5:3-12). Besides the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm, it's probably the most well-known Scripture. The pastors were all well versed in it. "In what ways has God comforted you in your times of mourning?" Evidently "mourning" is translated as "times of trouble or need." They had some seriously miraculous stories. One man was in a sinking boat and couldn't swim. He sank but the water pushed him back up without explanation and people rescued him. Another, during the genocide, was wounded by knives and about to be executed, when a soldier appeared out of no where and commanded that he be spared. Yet another's wife was seriously ill and so he sent her to the States to be treated. The doctors gave her a very short time to live. They said she wouldn't survive the plane trip home and that it would be better if she were to be buried there. The pastor prayed that she would survive the trip home so she could say goodbye to her family. A doctor traveled back with her and couldn't explain her successful journey. She lived another three weeks and made peace with everyone before she passed away. He is now at peace about it and happily remarried.

A different translator switched out with Maurice because John had had a terrible time with him, and we wanted at least one session to go well for his group. He says it was a night and day difference, and that he couldn't get them to shut up. Our group was marginally worse, but they had already opened up a bit so it was fine. This was the same translator that was with the group with the bad experience at the Savings Group, as well as the one that didn't translate the beauty comment at the church yesterday.

This passage was Luke 13:18-19, Jesus comparing the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed, among the smallest, which grows into one of the largest trees. We asked: what would Musanze be like if everyone lived with "kingdom values?" That question refined to "How could Musanze improve or grow?" followed by "What would this change?" They answered that if people gave more time to serving, more people would become Christians. On the flip side, we asked, "How is God's Kingdom visible here in Rwanda and Musanze?" which boiled into "What could the people of Bethany learn from the churches here?" One pastor pointed out that they'd never been to Bethany, but that the people here are very hospitable and welcoming, and are open to hearing the word, even nonbelievers. Both are very true. Seattle is neither.

Caleb improved a question asking what gets in the way of seeking first the Kingdom of God. One of the pastors revealed they, or at least he, really got it. He said that even if someone had material wealth, and everything needed or wanted, it wouldn't be any easier to follow God.

At the end of each batch of questions, we returned as a large group to share with everyone the key points each group had discussed. Brevity is not a concept known to African pastors.

At lunch, Lindsay, John, and I talked to the interdenominational committee head. He had tons to say. Good stuff. He asked if Lindsay and I had fiancé(e)s yet. Neither of us do, but Lindsay has a boyfriend, which is not really a concept here. Children are assets here and in many other places in Africa and Latin America. You get married to have lots of children who can work the land. Romance takes a back seat, at least in rural areas. We've visited a couple rural areas, like where the Savings Groups were yesterday. Where we're sleeping is semi-rural. The result of that part of the conversation is that he's going to pray that I find a financée. I'd said "In London" before I realized no one at the table would get it.

Two days after conception, moving to London seems significantly more farfetched. Still... the accents.

After the retreat ended, World Relief held the CEZ ceremony. The phrase "new history" was used a lot. A good concept, especially considering Rwanda's history. This is the first time I've felt like I was witnessing history, or rather, a part of it.

We just got back from a walk. Elizabeth, Amelia, and I went through the market while the rest of our posse went around, having seen it yesterday. They compared it to Pike Place; it reminded me more of the food court at the Kitsap Fair, though I couldn't tell you why. It was a little discouraging to see that every table held the same foods. Specializing and offering unique items just isn't built into them yet. Sometimes I hate competition, but it's the only way that their economy will improve.

On the walk, Elizabeth convinced Christine that some black goats on a distant hill were gorillas. When the ruse was over, she convinced Christine to pull the same stunt on us. I'm glad I never found where the goats were or my gullibility would probably have kicked in. Like Princess Leia, I'm far too trusting. Poor Alderan.

Today was... I can't even put it to words. I don't get excited. I never see what other people see in order to describe a day or event as amazing. But I'm surprised at how well, how important, the retreat went and was. I just have this sense of... off comfort. A sense that something has changed or unlocked. That things are starting to move.

I'm glad God used me to make it happen.

Been There, Done That

2011-09-21T13:46:00.001-07:00

So far today we've visited a few different places. First was a program for teaching the benefits of abstinence. In Africa, with AIDS, and I suppose a lack of condoms, abstinance is of dire importance. I guess it didn't occur to people before? I suppose, without the Bible, if we didn't have rampant STDs, maybe we wouldn't consider abstinence either, at least not by choice. Damned non-nerds. After a number the church did on Africa in the past 50 years, a lot of Africa doesn't link sex to AIDS in the first place. Let's fix that. The program appears to be effective. My one qualm is that all their answers for the why of abstience seem to be based in fear. At the end, they gave us a chance to ask the girls questions. I asked what methods they'd been taught to avoid having sex. They've clearly got the why down; I asked the how. I got the feeling they didn't understand the question. Maybe it was lost in translation. Maybe sex is different here.

We next visited a barber who was a success story of a micro-loan. I guess Dietrich was particularly fond of him. He's taking care of his 11-year-old (half?-)brother whose parents had died. We almost left without praying for him, which I found sillly, so I stuck my neck out and was volunteered. Totally fine, but... why was it nearly overlooked? One of the women in my group thanked me for praying afterward and said she'd felt the same way.

Bob is an amazing translator. The amount of words he can remember before needing to flush the buffer is remarkable. He seems like a generally great guy too.

The third place we visited was a church doing an adult education class on marital fidelity, or faithfulness as they put it. A few different couples stood up and expressed why they thought fidelity was important. The first couple said because not being faithful could lead to AIDS, and accidental babies. Fear based, again. They did give a couple abstract benefits, but nothing concrete. The pastor then said, as we were under a time crunch, that any new answers should be new, not repeats. The next two couples gave repeats. One couple out of the five(?) that spoke shared that there had been infidelity, and, in fact, that it had brought AIDS into their marraige. That took guts.

The church building was shoddily built. A cement floor, brick walls that left dust if you leaned against them, a tin roof with holes. Something in me, though, thought it was beautiful. I could also feel God's love for it. Strongly. As we were getting up to leave, I asked the translator to tell the pastor and the people there that, but he must have misunderstood, or perhaps thought I was mocking him/them with the beauty remark. I did what I could.

The first and a half place we went was to visit some pigs that World Relief had microfinanced to the program that trained the girls in the ways of abstinence. The girls take care of the pigs and then sell them and keep the profit. What I think is important to remember is that they were cute (the pigs, not that the girls weren't) and that Elizabeth tried to touch a pig's head. It freaked out in fear, invoking in Elizabeth the same reaction.

After these trips, Bob sat next to me at lunch. That's significant, maybe? Not sure. Check back later.

After lunch we split into four groups and visited these community savings groups. Basically each village creates their own mini-bank. Each week they have a meeting, pay dues into the pot, then buy between one and five shares. If more than one share is purchased, the whole group claps for them. We left before the next part, but after purchasing shares, people of that group, only, are allowed to take out loans. The person must say what the loan is being used for--it must be used in a way that generates more money--and present a plan for repaying the loan with interest. At the end of nine months, all the loans must be repaid and the villagers receive their share of the increased pot. Everything is very private outside the group, even giving people numbers instead of using names in case people overhear from outside the building, but within, it's completely open to avoid corruption. The only involvment World Relief has is to buy the pots (metal boxes with lockable latches) and supply the curriculum books.

The walk to and from the miniture barn where our group's meeting was held took about 15 minutes. The surrounding country side was among the most beautiful, I'll venture to say, there is. Washington, the Weyerhauser State, has mountains of untouched evergreens. Here, every square foot of hill is cultivated with rings of road and cut-backs. The varying colors are outstanding. Set in Washingotn mists, Weyerehauser might still take my vote, but putting our evergreens in Rwandan sunlight wouldn't touch this.

The story of the Savings Group the three of us visited has many tellings. One would include me nearly falling on my butt, catching myself on my hands just before contact on the way down. This preceded our interpreter coming back to hold my hand while he walked in front of me. This is not the right telling, which has more to do with a rooster somehow making it to the top of the wall in the building, and pushing off some metal instrument, nearly hitting Lindsay on the head. That one, I think all can see, is the better one.

It's about dinner time.

Last night I played Nertz with Richard and Lindsay. It was back and forth between her and me, with Richard trailing. The second to last game, Richard beasted pushing both of us negative, making it a four-point spread between the three of us. I made my first big speed-through the pile and triumphed with 101 points. The whole time we were trash talking each other. It got brutal. The game ended. The scars remain. The game will return.

At dinner last night, Richard had had a three hour nap and was giving Kathy, who had stayed up taking care of their baby Sahara, a hard time saying he was pumped and ready to be active. Kathy said she needed sleep and a few seconds later, Richard said, "Been there, done that." What Richard hadn't heard in those few seconds was Kathy say, "You can go sleep with Caleb." Since then, "Been there, done that" has become a bit of a team motto. Reminds me of Jerkfest '08.

Tomorrow is the "Pastoral Retreat" that Richard, Susanna and I were tasked with preparing. They're confident we've got it all planned out. I'm confident we can wing it if they're wrong.

Three of our four Savings Group groups had good experiences. Our group was very deliberate about the order of things, about keeping order. There are rules about talking that induce small fines to the pot. Every week, the whole group remembers the total in the pot, both, I think so they know no one is stealing, and so they can feel a sense of pride in what they have accomplished. Not remembering the correct total at the beginning of each meeting induces a small fine to the pot. Being late to the meeting induces a small fine to the pot. They asked us what we thought of their process. I was seriously impressed. I doubt many people in the US have that kind of will power to save even when it's hard. I wanted to match today's funds ($26) as an encouragement. I asked the translator if he thought it would be insulting, but it didn't get that far, because the two girls stopped me. We had been given strict instruction not to give money to someone in need. This was not just giving money to someone for doing nothing, though. This was me offering to help people who worked hard for it, to encourage them to keep at it. A guy named Phil, one of the two white people who work at World Relief (and until the day we get back, the head of World Relief Rwanda), told us about how giving money encourages the attitude of "if we ask a white person for money, he might give us some." They didn't ask. He also told us about kids who would come up when he parked and say they'd guard his car for him. He gave them money for doing so, even though they obviously couldn't beat off people who would steal his tires, because it encourages an attitude of working for money. All that aside, and I do think I was right, only because they clearly believed in this system and their own ability, and because they didn't ask for it, I think they would have declined anyway out of a sense of pride. I go back and forth on whether I can fault them for that. In January, Dietrich tried to give a different Savings Group money, and they refused.

The fourth group visited a Savings Group that did not go as well. Theirs had been running since March, whereas ours started this past August, and they clearly didn't believe in its effectiveness. Kathy was out taking care of Sahara, leaving Richard and Christine in the room. The question was asked, "Are you going to financially support this group?" At that point, the translator was supposed to say that that was not the point of the visit, that we were here to pray for them and see how this curriculum was working. He did not. Richard, experienced in Africa, danced around the question. Another question, similar in nature if more indirect, was posed, complaining that too many loans had been taken out and now no one could afford the dues, and also the only person who had taken out a loan was the president of the group (sketchy and inconsistent). This time the translator interceded with a twelve-minute-long story of how he'd carried beans an extra five miles to make 50¢ more, and then traded the beans for potatoes and walked another three miles for a little more. Up hills both ways. Pastors here are extremely long winded. Anyway, I would not have even considered giving money to that group. It's unfortunate.

Nertz was just played again. In a heroic, last stitch effort, I pulled into second place after trailing the whole game, significantly, as Lindsay crossed 100. Richard is frustrated.

Small Print

2011-09-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

I'm in Rwanda. I still haven't figured out why. So far it's been good: beautiful, easy, no problems during travel. Everyone's getting along.

One of our tanslators is a 22-year-old named Bob. He's studying computer science, so I sat by him on the bus ride to Musanze. It's more of a software engineering major than computer science, so that was deflating. His first language is English since that's what they teach in schools now. I always assumed the accent came from English being the second language, rather than it being taught by other people with the accent.

Kinyarwanda has 17 tenses/conjugations. I think it was meant to be my native tongue but something got gunked up in the works. With the youth learning English in school, it wouldn't surprise me if the native tongue disappears in the next couple decades or perhaps generations. As convenient as that would be, it's still sad.

We were told to bring nice clothing and not wear jeans. I haven't seen much evidence that that was a necessary rule. Still, I do like my new kahkis. Built in bug repellent and SPF 35. Only $88. It's a steal at half the price!

With narcolepsy and the associated meds, breaking jet lag has been a breeze, though I had hoped to get further through The Sparrow, the book Porter recommended to me, on the plane rather than sleep the whole time. It's a decent enough story with a barely-too-slow pace, but I'm not a fan of third person omnicient, especially when each small section seems to be nearly third person limited... so close.

The countryside is gorgeous. Land of a thousand hills, indeed. On the way from Kagali to Musanze, I saw two or three soccer fields, but those were seriously the only flat patches of land. Whenever I think of hills, I think of Mullenix road. The hills are similar, but several dozen times more numerous.

Before boarding the plane from Nairobi (which, despite being clean, is the trashiest airport I've seen in my scattered travels) to Kagali, a couple English girls came over to our group to coo over our trip leaders' baby girl. Since then I've been entertraining the idea of moving to London for a year or two because "I like the accents." Obviously it would take more than that (though precious little), but it might be a valuable experience. I keep thinking "It's been too long since I've had an adventure," a completely ironic thought in Rwanda.

Something about mission trips makes them not an adventure to me. Maybe it's that they're thoroughly planned. Maybe it's that I feel there's no risk, a valid thought or not. I think it has something to do with the fact that God told me to come here. I always hear the stories of the people in the Bible that God called to action. It's hard to argue they weren't living adventures. I wonder how they felt about it at the time. Maybe adventures are on the greener grass and in-hindsight-only. Anyway, we'll see if this idea persists past October the first. I wonder if Denna would move with me.

And I'm back! It may have not looked like much to you, but between this paragraph and the former, our group met with members from the inter-denominational committee. Such a thing would be fantastic in the states. ♫That was a joke. Ha ha. Fat chance.♫ Sad times.

A bunch of other stuff has happened since June. Go figure, right? I had my third (of three) poor annual reviews. I still have my job, at least until January, much like last year. Having my new boss, I think, will increase my odds of improvement. Also, we've all moved into a team room, rather than individual offices. Besides making me less likely to visit facebook, it's significantly decreased my blocked time. On the other hand, I get a little more distracted by conversations on the other side of the room. Enter headphones. Overall, it's an improvement.

All my life I've procrastinated until a few nights before something was due and then did it in a fraction of the given time. In sports, soccer and racquetball come to mind, I've always been terrible, and then once in a somewhat-rare while, I'll do something perfectly that looks almost expert. I only blog when I sense I'm in the creative writing mood, and my writing will be good. I've thrown out dozens of stupid blog posts. I wonder if I'm actually just an average guy with sparks of brilliance that have kept me near the top.

A few weeks ago, I got really bored on Tuesday night and retook the eHarmony test of humanity. This time I passed and so am now quantifiable. Either they've relaxed their partitioning algorithm, or I've changed enough in the last year as to be considered datable material. I was curious to see my answers from last time (on a different email address) and emailed customer support. They said I could look at/change my answers by clicking a link that the old account couldn't see, and then scolded me for making a new account to alter my first answers, saying I needed to be true to myself or the system would fail. ... I didn't reply to that email.

Within moments of starting my profile, a girl sent me an icebreaker. I thought maybe it was the same scheme I suspect Match used in order to get me to buy a subscription. I bit. Turns out she had actually sent it. We went on what I felt was a very successful, fun first date. She went to church with me the following evening. Everything seemed great, and then she just sort of stopped talking to me. Still haven't figured out why. Kinda bites. It doesn't matter though; I'm moving to London because I like their accents.

The moon here splits horizontally. While we waited for our bus to pick us up from the Kagali airport, I drew diagrams until I figured out why. Looking at them, though, I think the moon must wax upward, like filling a tub, and then wane downward like draining it. Unless I've seriously never paid attention, the moon in Washington waxes right to left, and then wanes right to left. I've yet to reconcile these.

In the last week, I keep thinking I'm starting to understand why God wants me here and what he wants to teach me, but then when I try, I still can't put it to words, and it slips away. I have noticed that I'm at the 3pi/2 of the sin curve of the closeness I have with God. I don't much pray, or rely on him, not that I've ever really understood how or what that means. But I'm almost blatantly denying him access to my life. I pick and choose what use he is to me, a utility rather than a king. Today I tried a new food I knew I wouldn't like. I thought, "What's the worst that could happen? I don't eat the rest, and I get rid of the taste with Fanta." How much more should I give God my life and decisions with that attitude when I know he is for me? I guess he did get me here. So that's something. With my means, it's really not much.

My mom would freak if I moved in with Denna, much more in London.

Three days before I left, well, first at one of our meetings it was suggested that we bring day packs that wouldn't draw attention, so we could carry money without a high threat of mugging. We all brought $100 cash, which is a month's wages here. Those Nike drawstring backpacks you see everwhere were suggested, rather than full blown backpacks, but we should aim to not all have the same Nike one. I was almost certain I'd seen a microsoft one, but the company store didn't have them. They must have been swag at some conference. So, I looked online at a few designs. I didn't really like any of them, but there were ads everywhere for designing and printing your own. Obviously shipping would take too long, so I looked up a couple stores in the Redmond area. The two I visited three days before the trip didn't have the bags in stock, so rush delivery was like $15. The bag itself was about $2.50. Printing was about $15. $32.50 bought me a Protoss Akilae Tribe cinchbag. No regrets. I was hoping I'd get stopped by a knowing stranger in Sea-Tac. There's still time.

Being in a new, beautiful country makes me want to be alone and observe the countryside, or to play my violin (which I contemplated bringing, but ultimately did not). Or blogging in my notebook (now transposed to the blogosphere). But being alone in some capacity. Not much of a mission trip attitude to take. I'm so bad at talking to new people unless they share the exact same awesomeness I have.

Dark clouds are rolling in (not a metaphor). My favorite color is the blue-gray-purple of the eastern sky at sunset. People always look the wrong way at sunset, even if there is more activity in the west. The east is more serene.

Done for today. Subject to change without notice.

Handholding

2011-06-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

I should be spending this time addressing support letters, but I just care about you all so much.

"Support letters?" you ask. Yes, after quite a lot of nagging, and someone dropping off the Africa trip, I am on the mission trip team to Rwanda this September. It appears I've not even mentioned this in my blog before, so I suppose this begs some explanation. Sometime last September, Dietrich briefly mentioned Uganda in his sermon and that the church was planning to head there soon. As with my trip to Detroit, I inexplicably had the thought, "I want to go to Uganda." I have to admit, I couldn't have even pointed to Uganda on a map. I spoke to him after the sermon about the trip. He said that there was a small trip, two or three people, going in January, sort of a reconnaissance trip, and there'd be a bigger one in June. I talked to Elizabeth, our pastor of missions, telling her that I have no real idea why I want to go other than I felt like God was calling me to.

Come January, the small trip happened without me on it (no surprise). A community group began that would plan the trip. I'd just finished leading a study group, so this trimester I wanted to do something else, either activity or service. I did notice the trip's entry in the catalog, but it did not say anything about joining the trip, only planning it and learning more about Africa. I suppose I probably should have joined it anyway, but I didn't. I instead joined an Eastside Community Service group, which was also focused on starting an eastside Bethany campus, which really has nothing to do with this paragraph. As it turns out, in order to go on the trip you were supposed to join the group. Shocker, right? My foreshadowing skills are unparalleled. Two weeks into the community group season, I happened to talk to Elizabeth and found out that I was not on the shortlist, but if someone dropped out, perhaps I could join the trip.

Maybe this is bad to admit, but at the time, I didn't want to be part of the group. I hate planning things, and I get stressed if things I've planned don't happen. Mission trips are notorious for going differently than planned, and I'm not sure having me during the planning phase would have been beneficial. Anyway, I am glad I was part of the Eastside Community Service group, and I'm not sure I had time to do two groups. Ok, that's bunk. I'm not sure I wanted to use more of my free time to do a second group. So, to cut the remaining story short (read 'out'), someone dropped out of the trip, and I took their spot among the twelve.

We've met three times as a group now, since I've joined. The people are splendid, seriously some of the nicest people I've ever met. One of them is Mark's sister. She's so proud of her brother; it's really sweet. The eldest guy has been on the Bethany missions board since before I was born. He's friends with my counselor, so small world I guess. The woman who's done most of the planning is amazing. I've not been on a more organized trip, and the first two I went on were planned by people who do this every year. Anyhow, I'm actually fairly excited to go, and I don't get excited about things. I think it may have to do with the people on the trip rather than the going itself. I'm also interested and slightly anxious about why God wanted me to go; and I do trust that he wants me to go, even if the trip is to Rwanda rather than Uganda. If you're interested, the support letter I should be sending out, rather than writing this post, is here.

Work is going. We've more finely tuned my narcolepsy meds, so I've been getting more done at work, especially since the meds are more often used for ADHD. I've been slightly more focused. At the moment, I'm working for a partner team that's a man down. I hope to finish that work by Wednesday, realistically, but it's taken a lot longer than I'd hoped. On the other hand, I've been told by other people on that team that of the three portions of this feature, I'm the furthest ahead. I just hope that message is relayed to my boss.

A few months back, Microsoft did a massive overhaul of how it will measure performance. Previously we were measured on a two-axis scale, and now it's been condensed to one. They've replaced stock rewards with greater cash rewards, and the top 93% of employees will receive at least a 5% raise, as well as a larger annual bonus. The tech market as a whole is growing its salaries, and Microsoft wants to keep its employees. My boss, while delivering this news, said that everyone in the room (my team) was going to get at least some raise, and these raises begin in September. Annual reviews happen in August, so it would follow that, at least at that point, my dismissal was not in the works, and that means promotion.

I am enjoying work a bit more lately. There are a few reasons for that. One, I'm no longer the owner of the project I'd been working on for two years. I still help out a little bit, but all the bugs are being assigned to Chell. Two, my team just came out of a transitory phase, where we were trying to figure out what was next. We've always had a pretty clear goal in mind, but now we have good ideas on how to achieve it. Third, we have a new PM intern that I'll be working with as soon as I finish with the other team. Dory's pretty awesome. And though that previous sentence makes this sentiment self-serving, it seems like she's nearly a female version of me. She calls me her dev.

Evidently it's been way too long since I've posted. I haven't yet mentioned Portal 2 and that was like eight years ago. I loved it. I beat it in about 8 hours, went back and beat Portal 1 in one hour, then beat Portal 2 again. It's that good. Porter and I have had lunch a few times, per usual, and one time we ended up talking about Portal, which he has never played. He thinks it's a dumb game because he's walked through doors before. Swood made the point on facebook that that's like saying he doesn't need to play Tetris because he's moved boxes before, a statement Porter later agreed with, saying that's about how he feels about Tetris. I could go on, but I'll just say, with regards to the game, that Cave Johnson is my hero.

Things are being patched up with my dad a bit. A few Saturdays ago I went surfing with him. Dietrich had given an object lesson where he contrasted surfing with rock climbing. When climbing, you can stop at any point along the way and figure out where to go next, call someone on the cell phone, have coffee. When surfing, when it's time to go, you have to go or you miss the wave. He then compared this to when God calls you to do something. When he says go, it's time to go. Anyway, before conveying this image, he asked for a show of hands of people who surfed, and though it'd been at least seven years, I found my hand raised. I think I was the only one that service, so he called me out by name, and sounded surprised even. It brought back a nostalgic feeling, so I facebooked my dad, and set up a surf date. The trip there was mostly good conversation. I noticed a side of him I hadn't before, a function of an influential moment he had as a kid. At another moment, I'd been telling him about my StarCraft and Prayer community group coming up (I'm leading it). I asked him if he had any idea what StarCraft was and he thought he'd seen a commercial for it and asked worriedly, "Doesn't it have something to do with warlocks?" I realized quickly he was thinking of World of Warcraft, a distinction that set his mind at ease, so I didn't mention that I also have played that game. I still find it funny that StarCraft doesn't bother him and WarCraft does, simply because StarCraft uses "energy" and WarCraft uses "magic." Anyway, today was Fathers Day, this Wednesday is his birthday, and this coming weekend will be the first of either of those I'll have celebrated with him in four or five years.

I was sore after surfing for a few days, especially my left arm. The Wednesday after surfing I had my Rwanda trip shots in the same arm, so I'm sure that didn't help. I still have to find out whether I had Hep A or B shots when I was a kid. I think I at least had Hep A. But for the next 10 years I'm immune to Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Tetanus, and Polio. So in your face, bio-terrorists who happen to try to get me sick with any of those four!

Luke just got married yesterday. I don't think I've ever been so excited for someone. However, when he gets back from his honeymoon, I fear I must inform him that I checked facebook right after I got back from the reception, and at that point, his wife hadn't changed her last name. I'm worrying that something fishy's going on, since it's not official yet.

Swood just bought a house. I'll only be able to complain about his slow elevator one more week. I'm looking forward to seeing his new place. Alexander also bought a new place. All my friends are either getting married or buying houses. And for the first time, a couple weeks ago I met a Microsoft employee (albeit an intern) who was younger than me! I might as well start making arrangements for my coffin to be sized, or maybe I should be cremated. I haven't decided.

My battery's dangerously low at 33% and it's five til midnight. That's my cue to end this post (aka, I don't have a lot of material left until I figure a couple things out; I might have a follow-up post in a week or two).

Sucker Punch, Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age

2011-03-26T20:36:00.001-07:00

If you've not seen Sucker Punch, stop reading this right now. Watch the movie, and then come back.

I watched Sucker Punch with Swood last night. The movie itself was very good. It was shot well, very imaginative, interesting, and hard. There weren't a lot of lines in it. The main character talked only a couple times. The same could be said of Wall-E, and I only know one person who didn't like that movie.

I've heard that they had to cut a bunch of the movie in order to keep it PG-13. It looks like they'll release a director's cut but according to this article, it won't quite have the scenes I'm hoping they'll have. It didn't need more action; it needed more gut wrenching or perhaps more explanation. I should clarify; Sucker Punch was plenty gut wrenching, but if there are 18 minutes more, I expect that some of that should also be gut wrenching.

I know the point was to let your imagination do the work to convert the actions in the brothel to actions in the asylum, so maybe more explanation would ruin it. But maybe it wouldn't. I want to know how the other two girls (Amber and Blondie) died. I can't imagine the orderly would shoot them. Also, how did Blue "own" Dr. Gorski (the dance instructor) in the asylum? The opposite was true when Sweat Pea escaped. In the asylum, Baby Doll had to distract the guards. In the brothel, she was distracting patrons. Why would they keep her from escaping? I would expect in order to live with themselves, they would have to convince themselves that these women chose this lifestyle and were free to leave. Why would they stop her?

I'll definitely see the movie again, but probably not until it comes out on Blu-Ray. I want to figure out who told the story, who the narrator was. At the beginning, I assumed it was either a grown up Baby Doll, or just an arbitrary narrator. At the end, I started to think it was Sweat Pea, since she's the only one who saw the Wise Man/bus driver or the soldier boy who ended up in the bus line in front of her. It wouldn't explain how she knew anything about Blue being arrested, but the narrator in 300 didn't know anything about the story after he was sent back either. Sometimes you can't over think things, and this is one of those.

On a last note, I'm surprised that they showed Baby Doll's face at the end. Swood said she gave a meaningful blink, perhaps implying that she was more herself than she should have been, but I didn't notice that somehow. Also, that implication would take away from the movie being a tragedy a little, like the opposite of Magneto still having a little of his powers left at the end of X3.

Only three times in my life have I felt the urge to kill someone. In none of these cases did I know the person, nor was I near them. The first time was watching Call+Response with a couple women from the church I was attending. The second was hearing stories before my trip to Costa Rica last year, about children who had been sexually abused by their fathers or foster fathers or uncles or anyone, really. The third was last night.

The first scene brought forth such a visceral reaction in me, I needed to see the stepfather dead. I began to hope this movie would go V for Vendetta style and somehow, she would kill everyone who deserved it. I began to add people to the list, though in the end, it turned out to only be three: the stepfather, Blue, and the cook. Dr. Gorski was added and then removed. Of course, that's not what happened.

In Knights of the Old Republic you have a good/evil, light side/dark side (being a Star Wars game) meter. Various actions throughout the game make you a better or more evil character, and your decisions somewhat affect the rest of the storyline. This implicitly gives you a goal of doing the right thing every time or the wrong thing to push your character in one direction or another, and based on that meter, the storyline changes and you either take over the galaxy or save it. Taking a middle of the road approach has no benefits. This goal to be fully light side or fully dark side made decisions easy. If someone deserves death but there's an option to let them live and be arrested, you've got your light side choice. If someone stands in your way, but you are strong enough in the force to Jedi mind trick them into jumping off a cliff, you've got your dark side choice. (Admittedly, I choose that one every time, even though I go light side. It's way too hilarious, and they had just beaten up a homeless person.)

Mass Effect is similar, except in both cases you're trying to save the galaxy. Things just change based on your approach. Either you're a peacemaker, a Paragon and only kill when necessary and after every peaceful solution has been exhausted, or you're a Renegade who threatens and sometimes tortures people to get results. Some actions require a certain amount of Paragon points or a certain amount of Renegade points. What's interesting in Mass Effect is that they're not mutually exclusive. If the game were long enough, and therefore you had enough opportunities to gain enough morality points, you could be full Paragon and full Renegade, giving you the power to do anything to achieve your goals. In Knights of the Old Republic, dark side points are negative light side points.

In Dragon Age, there is no meter. You have literally hundreds of decisions to make, you make them, and they affect the storyline, not your character. You can spare someone's life, and they might go kill someone important. You might spare someone's life, and they might turn their life around and help you later on. Your character is no more evil or good than the person behind the keyboard. Your companions care about your decisions and will either become your friends or your rivals, but those characters are also neither completely good nor completely evil, and so are also bad indications of whether you made good choices.

What is a good choice in that game? You can make choices based on your own sense of justice, or if you've played through already (or have a walkthrough), you can make choices based on what you know will happen. You can make choices on what you know will make your party members like or dislike you. Your choices are just your choices.

I know that I immerse myself in games like this a whole lot more than other people. I cannot make myself play Knights of the old Republic as a dark side character. I actually feel guilty any time I see that red icon indicating a gain of dark side points, even when I try to do what is right. In Dragon Age, you have to live with the ambiguity of not knowing whether you made the "right" choice, and then with the consequences of your actions.

Life has no meter. You can choose to make the best actions in your eyes, actions that preserve, or you can make destructive, and often fun, choices. You can make choices to expand your horizons, choices that don't preserve the status quo, and also don't break your moral code, or you can choose to sit back and do what you've always done for fear of looking the fool.

Denna and I took a trip to the Grand Canyon last December. The website said that we had to have a wide-rimmed hat for the mule rides to keep the sun out of our eyes. It snowed, however, and there was no sun. Our snow jackets were sufficient, but Denna and I donned our cowboy hats nonetheless. We looked like total fools, dorky tourist parents, but I smile every time I look at that hat in my rear view mirror.

I don't dance. Sometimes I wish I danced, because people always try to get me to, but I have such a fear of looking like a complete idiot that I don't. I know that if I did, and I likely would, I would develop a terrible tic.

I often lean toward not dancing than toward wearing ridiculous cowboy hats. Preservation isn't always good.

Life has no meter. Sometimes you know you've made an evil decision, and you feel guilty. Often your decisions are just ambiguous. More often than I'd care to admit, I make a decision that should be ambiguous, and feel righteous about it.

Last night I prayed on the way back from Swood's. God, how can you abide the stepfather? He does not deserve the air he breathes. I wanted him to die. At first I was upset with myself for wanting revenge, but then I realized he hadn't actually done anything yet. He obviously had the intent, but vengeance would be getting back at him. So what is that feeling? Righteous fury? Were I in that scene, and had I pulled the trigger, would I have gained light side points or dark side points? She did have a third option. She could have fired a warning shot at the ground, then told him at gun point to walk with her to the phone, then dialed 911. He would have been arrested, her sister would have lived. He probably would have gotten off, as intent is not enough to convict someone, and restraining orders are only paper walls. Would I have pulled the trigger? If my sister were in danger.... I'm sure I could easily plea self defense, but what about the meter?

There's a freedom in having no meter. You don't have instant feedback about guilt. Life is certainly harder without one, but also a lot better. "Perfect victory."

God, how can you abide the stepfather? He does not deserve the air he breathes. Let's be clear. God hates death. He hates rape. He hates evil. But did I not kill Jesus? For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Did I not do to him what slavers do? A man does not simply become a slaver. He's twisted by need into a monster. In the end, he might not even see himself as a monster. And yet God loves me.

Justice begs mercy. At the INN several years ago, they were doing a sermon series that tackled seemingly contradictory virtues. At the end of each sermon, they nailed a piece of paper to the door, Martin Luther style. (wikipedia says that nailing probably never actually happened.) "Justice begs mercy" is the only thing I remember from that series, but it has stuck with me. Castrating a rapist, while poetically just, isn't actual justice. An eye for an eye doesn't help the person who went blind first. We long to make things right, but a loss of purity cannot be regained without God. God makes things new. We attempt to balance the loss by inflicting the same loss on the perpetrator. The only way to have justice is to admit that we can't achieve it, and what's left is resentment or mercy. Those are our options. Resentment only hurts the resenter. Mercy is not the same as pretending it never happened. It's not the same as reconciliation. If someone raped my sister, or killed my mom, or crippled my friend, or me for that matter, perhaps he belongs behind bars to prevent him from further damage, but when he got out of prison, has he really "paid his debt to society"? Will I feel like things are ok between us now? Of course not. I might have mercy on him in order to move on in my life, but without a miracle, I would never be reconciled to him. I would not become friends with him. God does not always call us to reconciliation. He does call us to mercy and forgiveness.

Life without the meter is better than life with it. We would be slaves to the meter. It would be easier, perhaps, to do what is right, but far harder to do what is Right. In Knights of the Old Republic, you are pulled along by your decisions. In Dragon Age, you are forced into the freedom to make your own decisions, your own path. In life, we have a God that knows that's how it is. That's how he designed it. Best of all he loves you and wants you to make the decisions that are best for you and best for everyone else. Those decisions are his path for you, crafted not for mass distribution via Steam, but for you individually. He wants to help you make those decisions, and knows full well we probably won't.

But there is perfect victory. In the end, the earth will be perfected, made new. In the end, we will be perfected, made new. As in Sucker Punch, perfect victory requires deep sacrifice. That sacrifice is God's own son. Baby Doll made that sacrifice and Sweat Pea survived and lived on her behalf. It was a good ending, debatably, but it was not perfect. In life, Jesus made that sacrifice and we survived. Jesus rose again. He defeated death. He gave a meaningful blink. This was no tragedy.

Celebration

2011-03-08T23:45:00.001-08:00

Much good has happened since that last whiny post. God stepped up, not that I believe he hadn't been stepping up the whole time, but something happened this time. It's probably a combination of my own faith and/or mood, God's timing, and the faith of several others. I feel much better about life and my relationship with God.

That was about two or three weeks ago. Now it is now, and now is Fat Tuesday. I'd not heard of Fat Tuesday until a couple years ago, possibly right after I dated Denna. I also hadn't been aware of Lent or Ash Wednesday until my first year of college. For some reason the churches I grew up in didn't observe it. And not until today did I put it together that Fat Tuesday was a pre-Lent celebration.

I'm sure a lot of Christians now see the celebration as a "gotta get all my sinning out today before we go a'fasting tomorrow." Maybe that's how it is, especially down in Louisiana. I wouldn't know.

I wonder how it started. Sure, there's wikipedia, but I'm at Arby's right now without internet connection. Sure, there's my cell phone, but my battery is almost dead. Any other bright ideas? Punks, ugh.

My point is, what if it really was a pre-Lent celebration? What if that's all it was? What if it wasn't meant to be lewd? Drinking's no sin in moderation. If I've gathered correctly, the original Lenters fasted from food for the 40 days leading to Easter, like Jesus did in the desert. Before such an undertaking, you'd want to eat up, and honestly, you'd probably want to beer up, to take some of the sting of fear of the ordeal out of you, if only for a day.

I lied, that's not really my point. My point is, the church doesn't celebrate anymore. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, God set up like seven celebrations throughout the year. They were in observance of him and his provision (God has a bit of an ego), but they were celebrations nonetheless. The church, as I see it now, has three celebrations: Christmas, Easter, and the Super Bowl. Christmas and Easter have a ton of tradition and pomp and circumstance. If you don't do them right, you're in sin. There's no freedom, which is especially ironic for Easter. Christmas has traditions that are frowned upon by the church. They "distract from the true meaning" of Christmas.

Church will be there for you in many ways. To mourn with you in sad times. To support you in lean times. To pray for you in hard times. When do they party with you?

I just feel like celebration is a very important part of life, especially the Christian life, and I don't know how to do it.

Dead

2011-02-09T21:56:00.001-08:00

This morning, at 8:20, I woke up with a migraine. Marvel had a 9:00 meeting, and we would have been fine, but it was past the point where he could take the bus, and I wasn't about to drive him to work when opening my eyes caused pain. I'm not sure if he made it there (ie, drove himself -- he doesn't have a parking pass yet, since I always drive). I sent an email to my team saying I was out sick with the migraine, but suspected it would die down if I slept some more. It didn't until 4:45, and even now (9:40), it's not all the way gone. I ate "breakfast" at 5:30, and drove into work to see if I couldn't at least get a little done. Very little has.

Yesterday, after my weekly counseling appointment, I had a bit of a panic episode. I don't know if I've had a panic attack before, but if I have, this was one of them. Rather than going to my community group and my weekly meeting with Luke, I left work a little early and went home to sleep. I have no idea how well I actually slept, because I had a dream within a dream. The outer dream was about having fitful sleep. There was also some reality TV recording going on at a family friend's house. And some sort of hover board/possibly being accused of murder.

Goose broke up with me a couple weeks ago. In fact, it's been about the same number of days since she broke up with me, as our relationship lasted. (I didn't actually do the math.) I think (I would hope) that I'm over the worst of it. The worst part is that I lost a girl who would have been an awesome friend. She and I both agree we would make great friends, so when she was performing the break up, it was sad that things weren't working out, but at least we could hang out sometimes, and the loss wasn't as great. I pretty much fall for that every time. Some of my exes and I are on great terms now, but I don't see them regularly, and in all but one case, that was after a lot of time apart. Denna's the exception because we broke up on good terms, and because she lives in Texas, so it's not like I was losing any time that we'd normally spend in close proximity. But, even had Goose and I been emotionally able to spend time together as friends, she started dating a guy within a few days. That added a whole new layer of awkward, and was also a fist to the stomach of my pride and esteem. Even with all of those things against us, she's in college and I'm out in the real world. She hangs out with people who are around her in classes, in dining halls, in clubs. I have to schedule meeting times with people, because that's what you have to do in the adult world if you want to see someone. Scheduling time to see someone a 30 minute drive away feels awfully similar to a date, when you don't have friends in common. Anyway, it's been hard. A few times I thought I was done, and then it got worse than it had been up to then.

I took a sleep test back in early December. I got the results the day I was supposed to leave to Arizona. I have symptoms consistent with mild to moderate narcolepsy. The pills they put me on seem to have very little effect. Maybe I've been more awake, but I don't feel like I've slept any better, any deeper, and it's still as hard as ever to drag myself out of bed. What I have noticed, is panic attacks or whatever it was I had yesterday. I've had three (two while still dating Goose). I've also been more consistently depressed. Since I've been on my mood stabilizers, I've very rarely been depressed, and never woken up depressed, much less three days in a row.

I should probably switch meds. I'm not sure which meds, nor how to coordinate my doctors, but this is clearly wrong. I'd rather be as tired as before (which, as I said, seems to be as tired as I am now) and not wish I weren't living, than awake and terrified of nothing in particular and hating every aspect of life and the fact that I'm stuck living.

Work's been interesting, ish. I got put on a bug in our actual service, rather than on the web side of things. One night in particular on this bug was really fun, the most fun I've had in like 6 months working here. That bug, which I thought I'd finish in a couple days, took a couple weeks. It took so long that finally checking it in felt good and not good at the same time. We had some really dirty soccer games, and even if we won, I still felt like we lost. I've told my dev manager and my new dev lead-to-be that I don't want to keep working on the project I've had for the last two years. Hopefully I'll get moved soon. Mid-year reviews are soon, probably next week. I'm a little anxious about those.

My sister wanted a new phone for Christmas, and I got her one. We went to the AT&T store a couple weeks ago, and she got an iPhone4, but they were out of stock, so they shipped her one. Apparently, the delivery guy didn't get a signature, and the phone was stolen, so we had to go back to the AT&T store and wait a while until they got their information in order. Ashley even called ahead of time and the person she talked to said everything was in order; all she had to do was show up with me (since it was on my account). It still took them the better part of an hour to figure everything out. Afterward, since I was there anyway, I asked if they could take a look at my phone and why it wasn't charging properly. They said I had to go to the service shop a few blocks away. I talked to the guy there for about 20 minutes, and in the end, he said that he'd have them ship me a new phone, battery, and charger, since they couldn't diagnose which was at fault. I'd get those in the mail, and then I'd ship back my current phone, battery, and charger at no cost. Sweet deal. Only, I got the package yesterday, and all that was in it was a phone. I hate customer service.

On the other hand, in order to pay for my trip to Arizona, I sold a bunch of stock. I actually sold it twice, once before the trip, and then, having forgotten about it, again after the trip. I had the money deposited into my bank, but something went wrong, and they sent me a check. I never saw the check, but then, I don't keep a close eye on my mail. I called Fidelity up, explained the situation, and within minutes, everything was right. It was the best costumer service I've experienced.

Church is going. Luke feels about the same as I do about our bible study now. It needs a reorg of sorts. Instead of having 20-40 guys in a room and splitting into randomly selected groups, we should have a bunch of small groups of people you actually get along with and really get to know them. Since that's on the radar, I think I'll keep going with it as-is, at least until I feel beat up enough to leave, as I've been feeling in the past. I have a lot of complaints, but not a lot of constructive feedback or ideas on how to make things better. I'd like to change that.

I can't believe it's already the end of Wednesday. Monday I checked in my two-week bug fix. Yesterday I tried to get my coworker's project up and running and failed. Today I was in bed fighting a migraine. When I came in, I successfully figured out what was wrong with getting the project up and running (stupid hosts file), so at least there's that, but now I've got to make a bunch of changes the guy didn't have time for before he left on vacation. Who knows how long that will take. It's basically running down every possible code path and looking for places things could fail in order to make good error messages. I don't think the code paths are all that deep or broad, but I'm also not sure. Things apparently take me seven times as long as I originally think, and I don't have that much time this time. Tomorrow, I'm having my weekly Friday time with Swood (on Thursday), and on Friday evening, I'm leaving for the PCEC annual retreat.

I'm not really sure what I'm hoping for out of it. Last year I met Porter, so that was a huge blessing. There's a large chunk of time on Saturday for doing whatever you want, and it's a 45 minute drive to Crystal Mountain. I don't know if I'll bring my snowboard. I probably should. I hate "should." I hate feeling guilty about doing whatever in my free time. I haven't been up to the mountain this year, and it would be fun. I'm not sure if I can fit my board in my car since I'm driving people with me. I could probably go with a coworker some weekend, if I pass this opportunity up. Ugh. Why is everything so complicated and guilt-ridden in my mind? The speaker this year is a pastor more "spiritually attuned" than most people at our church. People at Bethany aren't usually very comfortable talking about spiritual gifts or demons or spiritual oppression. This guy is. I met him once, but it was kind of awkward between us.

I feel so dead right now. Life is monotonous and sickening. My main purpose in life seems to be not dying, because it would hurt people. And not trying to think about it.

To some degree, wanting to die is a way of cursing God. At what point does being honest with God become blasphemy? A few weeks back, the sermon was on intimacy with God and being honest in prayer. As a gesture of honesty, I purposely left my bible under the pew. It wouldn't really affect my ability to read, since I normally just read online, but it was a gesture, a symbol.

I have two souls, it seems. One that wants Good. One that can recognize love, at least to some degree. One that can feel affection from the simple act of playing cards with my mom, or a hug, or a kind tone. And one that is dead. One that can see acts of kindness and feel nothing. One that is scared of love. One that hates life, and having to live it. Trying to reconcile the twos' thoughts in order to speak them hurts and leaves me confused. It's pushing together two contradictory feelings and thoughts. The first knows that my mom loves me and can feel that as it happens. The second knows that my mom loves me but only because it's the truth. Where they agree is the matter of God's love. Both know that he loves me because it's the truth, but neither can recognize it.

An acquaintance of mine FB posted the two words "Psalm 77" the other day. The song talks about parting the Red Sea, and how that comforted him, but what I find interesting is that he never saw that. This song was written generations after that event. I also liked verse 19. "Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen." By "liked" I mean "found frustrating."

I don't know; I'm such a mess right now. I just want to feel life. Actual life. The life I'm living. Is that really too much to ask? I know that I am loved. Can't I know that I am loved? Can't I see it? Feel it? Taste it? I'm blessed with a great job, my dream job. I have plenty of friends. There are so many interesting things out there. Why am I bored? Why do I hate life? Why am I sick? Why do I always lack energy? Why am I always hungry, even when I can't eat anymore? Why can't I make myself move? Why am I discontent? Why am I not fulfilled? Why don't I see what people who want to live see? Why is everything empty?

Too Far Gone

2010-12-31T20:02:00.001-08:00

It seems the only time I get to write anymore is on flights. All I'm saying is that if you want to keep reading, you might try sending me places. A trip to Europe wouldn't be out of line.

I'm so terribly grieved to say I never saw the Poofy Jacket again. It appears we just were never meant to be. Our connection was only physical and when there's not depth, it just doesn't last very long. Hence, I was feeling a bit shallow about it. I talked to a couple people about her, namely my counselor and my community group pastor. I really should name him. For the time being, let's call him Porter.

Both of them said that there's absolutely nothing wrong with getting excited over a (small) physical touch like that. Touch is an important part of a relationship and life in general. It was some food for thought. Porter added that he didn't think I was a wuss for not talking to her after the service given the circumstances, but that he'd get on my case if I saw her again and didn't man up. This is because if I didn't, I'd be falling for an infatuation rather than the real thing. That makes sense.

Porter used to be a campus pastor. Every now and then one of his interns would get pious and tell him that they had a crush on one of the students, and request to avoid them in future events. He would then say, all right, that student is going on this trip and I want you to lead it. Also I see they're signed up for this retreat, and so you should help plan it and attend. This would confuse the intern, but in all but one case, they'd come back saying, oh man, I am so over them. In the one case where that didn't happen, the two got married.

I had a small crush on this girl I rarely saw, and I didn't want it. I applied Porter's story and the next time I saw her, hung out with her a bit. By the end of the night, I was so over her. Great girl, but not at all mine. She mumbles.

I don't remember when this particular conversation with Porter happened, but it's noteworthy. He has this notion of the resume and the interview, related to dating. The resume is compatibility on paper. Are you both Christians? Do you have similar interests? In short, is it a "smart" match? The interview is how well you get along. Do you have fun together? Can you maintain a conversation? Is it easy to maintain a conversation? The interview is essentially chemistry. You have to have both for a successful relationship. For me, Denna is a great interview, but the resume doesn't work (ie, she's not a Christian). Vin has a great resume, but in person, we just don't feel it. Both are great people, and I'm super blessed to have them in my life, but neither is a good match for me.

Thanksgiving was great this year. My mom and Jack have moved into their new place and it's beautiful. The view, somehow, looks even better behind glass. Maybe it was the knowing, before the place was finished, that it wouldn't be as good as we were seeing it because it would be behind glass, and now we know what it'll look like. It could also be that every time I had the view before the house was completed, there was dust in the air and/or it was dark out. Or rainy. Anyway, the view is good. Company was great too. I didn't hear any of the usual family politicking, though apparently there was some. Ignorance is bliss, my friends. As is selective hearing.

Sometime between the Poofy Jacket and Thanksgiving, my counselor and Porter both suggested online dating to me. It took me a while to get past caring about the stigma. STIGGMAAA. My counselor suggested eHarmony. Porter suggested both eHarmony and match.com. For me, he sided with match because he trusts that I'm not a shallow person who would only look for looks, and eHarmony doesn't allow you to see pictures until you've talked a few times. My counselor was talking about eHarmony and said they have a pretty rigorous personality test before you are allowed in. That night, mostly out of curiosity about the test, I sat down to join eHarmony. It's about as rigorous as the personality quizzes I used to take for fun and out of boredom in junior high. I clicked submit on the last page, and well, I'll let you read it.

I found it funny rather than depressing, and five minutes later had a match.com profile. Out of spite.

I found several girls I was interested in. The first one seemed good and match.com said that she had added me to her favorites, but obviously, in order to contact her, I had to buy a subscription. I figured I'd bite the bullet and then forget about it. After I had paid for the subscription, it said this girl had viewed my profile -- nothing about favorites. Well played, match, well played. I emailed the girl saying I knew it was short notice and asking if we could grab coffee between church and church the next Sunday (this was Friday). She replied on Saturday, I think, saying she'd have liked to but that she was busy. I asked if she'd still like to get together sometime later, and she said yes. After that I became a little obsessive. It was not healthy. I don't know if she knew I was checking her profile whenever I was idle at a computer or not. (Match tells you how many times your profile is viewed, but it's not broken down by whom, and it also tells you who's viewed your profile, so if your profile doesn't have much traffic, it's pretty easy to put 2 and 76 together. However, I've noticed the number of views doesn't seem to increment correctly.) To be fair, I wasn't looking at her profile much. I just have this thing where whenever I find a new site or am excited about something, I just leave it open on my computer, sort of a comfort thing. I don't know. I'm weird. At any rate, First Girl didn't reply again, either because she's a jerk or figured out I was a little bit obsessive. After her, my flare died down and I was able to think again. Bob helped a bit with that, calling me out on it.

That between church and church thing was this: Porter and I were doing a community group -- that much my religious readers ought to already know -- and I seemed distinctly unqualified based on that facebook note/post in August. Oddly I don't remember the name, and since it was on facebook rather than written on my machine, I can't find the file. Anyway, being unqualified is the mark of a Christian who can be used. Qualified people can be too, but who considers themselves qualified? Porter wanted me to get up and basically share the story of that blog post and the events leading up to it in front of the church at three (of five) services. Then he drew the connection to the community group, and prayed over me. Honestly, the hardest part for me was shrinking my blog post to 700 words or whatever it was, so it would fit in the bulletin. My head pastor, Dietrich, has written a couple books now, and said he sympathizes. That made me chuckle a bit.

On match, I finally did meet a girl. She was cool, and we talked on the phone a bit. We connected on some odd things, like the correct rules for Rummy. I facebook stalked her a bit and discovered I'm not physically attracted to her. This made me feel super guilty because I was always the guy who prided himself on looking at the personality rather than the book cover, even if, now that I think about it, nearly ever girl I've had a crush on was pleasing to the eyes. Mostly that's because they were always one-sided. As long as it's not going to happen (attractive or not), why not choose attractive? Anyway, this bothered me for about a week. I talked to several people who all said that's just the way it is, that physical attraction is something needed in a relationship, and if it's not there, it's not. I saw her anyway. I visited the day before Thanksgiving, risking life and limb to the snow covered roads. I should say road, singular, as the only road with snow on it was the one her house was on, which is why she was afraid to go out to the movie with me. We hung out, watched a couple movies, and talked for a bit. It was good, easy, simple. And then I realized something. I could do with her looks. But it was boring. I don't think she'd ever challenge me. She's a great person, but I need someone different. And after that, I realized I don't need a girlfriend. For the first time since before I reconnected with Denna, I was content being single. Dietrich, a week or two prior, gave some advice that Paul gave: if you're single, don't be eager to be in a relationship, and if you're in a relationship, don't be eager to be single. Be content where you are, and live in the moment, essentially. God uses both facebook relationship statuses. In Dietrich's words, "Don't search, but don't hide either." The girl and I got together one more time, but whatever had been there was gone, and we petered out.

I changed my match profile to say that, that I was content being single, and that I wasn't searching, but neither was I hiding. That I probably wouldn't visit match very often, but that the droves of girls visiting my profile shouldn't be dissuaded by a "last online 3 weeks ago."

Work's gone well, but has been kind of hectic. My boss went to head a new group, so right now I am without a dev lead, and report directly to my dev manager. On top of that, it's been December which means productivity drops to about 35%; everyone's on vacation. I had an audio addictive flare with Sixpence None the Richer. I listened to, several times, the whole collection on the Zune Marketplace via a 14 day trial of Zune Pass. I'm still on the fence for purchasing a subscription. I'd be less on the fence if my new Windows Phone (awesome, by the way) worked with my car stereo. I don't know if it's the software of the phone, software of the stereo, or either of the hardware, but both the phone and the stereo know they're linked, and just no sound comes out. I know, I know, #firstworldproblems.

On one of my last days of work, I met with one of my friends from church who also works at Microsoft. She's been called to go to Mexico as a medium-long term missionary. I'm excited for her, and also impressed that both of us so clearly felt God's desire here. She made fun of me for being a pastor's pet. Hey, if there's someone out there who's an expert on what you're interested in, why not hang on their every word? Swoon. I told her a story, which I think helped her accept her calling, but also really freaked her out. It's an in-person story, so if you know me, you can ask. If not, well, get to know me.

The Sunday before Christmas was night 1. A girl named Goose found me on match and said I seemed sweet. I get a text message whenever someone emails me on match, and I had just finished playing me some violin, so I got online. She was still on, so rather than replying, I just IMed her.

<rant>Match.com's chat client is the worst thing ever conceived. Take clubbing baby seals, mix it with choking some puppies (not chihuahuas), light a hot girl's hair on fire, and eat asparagus, then multiply that all by the golden ratio to the power of the sum of the third hundred digits of pi, and you'll almost have how awful this chat client is. If we waited for software to start self-evolving, then the first bit of software, the bacteria of software evolution, would be significantly better than the match.com chat client.</rant> Goose and I quickly switched to facebook chat.

Goose. is. amazing. She is smart (smarter than I am, but not intimidating), creative, clever, hilarious, ridiculous and silly. She's a 5'8" theater and art history double major, who watches a lot of movies, loves plays and musicals, enjoys nerdiness, and slips into character with me. Seriously, we both spontaneously went into character for the upcoming conversation, and she wouldn't let me break it (I edited it slightly for typos and the time I tried to break out of character, as, aside from being awesome that she refused to let me leave, it didn't add much). The following happened over text message on night 3.

I'm home
As in "Honey, I'm home!"
you'll just love what i've whipped up in the kitchen for you
Macaroni and watermelon! My favorite!
don't forget the sour skittles pie for dessert
With ice cream and barbecue sauce??
you know it! happy anniversary sweetie!
Aww shucks... You're the best! You probably think I forgot, don't you?
well, if i know my jordy...
Then you know I got you a mobius slip'n'slide!
just what i've always dreamed of! i hope you'll enjoy the tomagotchi i got you- it's a panda!
Dinner, pie, AND a panda? How did I ever live without you?
i have absolutely no idea how you got along without me, darling, but thankfully that era is long gone.
And yet it still feels like only yesterday *dreamy eyes*
after all these years, we've still got it
And always will
oh darling, this is the best anniversary ever. after dinner, i reserved an entire ice rink just for the two of us.
(at this point she had me, but I struggled on after 5 minutes of thinking)
I know... I saw it on the credit card bill and had a willow tree uprooted and brought in so we could skate under its boughs
i saw that on the bill too, so i got 800 doves to rest in its boughs and coo softly from on high
And I had roses tied to each of their feet
such a devious one, going behind my back, ive always found that an alluring quality
Not half as alluring as I find that devious smile you get
*sigh*

She out-sappied me. This has never happened before. Fey read it and said, "... Holy crap. When's the wedding?"

I never thought someone like me existed before.

She's in Idaho right now for Christmas with her family, but is coming back on Monday. I intend to pick her up from the airport, and I'm allowed to as long as I talk to her dad first. I love it. As you might have noticed, this means we've not actually met yet, but we've done the Google version of Skype for a cumulative total of several hours, on top of quite a bit of instant messaging and some phone calling and SMSing, though we've sworn off supracursory txts.

Of course if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. There are a few kinks to work out, but I'm confident. Recently I watched Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann again with Marvel. So in that spirit, WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE? I figure I can give up because of a couple large challenges or I can just find a bigger drill. RO RO FIGHT THE POWA!

It's funny how I'm thinking if I tack on "Of course, I'll also be praying a lot about this," it sounds less manly. But I will, and it shouldn't. I feel a lot more carefree than the people in the know think I am. I'm sort of just along for the ride at this point. I know if the worst should happen, for this girl, it's both totally worth the risk, and totally worth the loss. And, at the very least, she's set a new low bar for whomever I end up with. It's a damn high bar. Marry extraordinary or don't marry at all.

A couple weeks before this, I'd realized that I hadn't seen Denna in over a year, and that I hadn't had an adventure than longer than that, and that seeing the Grand Canyon with my good friend Denna would be an adventure. So I did. Photos can be seen here. Most of the story is there, and it's still fresh in my memory, and for some reason that makes me want to type it up less. Most of the story can be read in picture captions. Long story short, nothing went according to plan, and I don't even feel like I've seen the Grand Canyon yet, but it still went great. The part that wasn't documented for want of photos, was that in the morning, Petrolex went off to work, and her brother and sister-in-law made us breakfast. At the rental car area, Denna and I said our bittersweet goodbyes and boarded busses to separate terminals. At my gate, I met a woman from Washington who lives on the east side (of Lake Washington) who teaches violin and guitar, and is a ski instructor. How awesome is that?

If you hadn't figured, that's why I am (was) on an airplane writing this post. I'm about to take my connection flight from SFO to SEA. I'd post this now, but someone doesn't offer free internet.

The Poofy Jacket

2010-10-10T02:41:00.001-07:00

This perhaps has been the longest week of my life so far. And now for an equally long blog post. I think that means you're going to be bored for most of it.

Hmm.

Good luck.

Two Thursdays ago, a dear friend of mine was in an accident up in Bellingham. She was trying to turn right, when she noticed a family wanted to cross the street at the crosswalk, so she stopped. Behind her, a car driven by a sixteen-year-old with two friends wasn't paying too close attention and rear-ended her, pushing her car into the family. A four-year-old died. The girl who did the rear-ending hadn't yet had her license for six months, and so wasn't supposed to be driving other people around. She's, last I heard, being charged with vehicular homicide because of this. There's just nothing good about the situation. I can't imagine a guilty verdict will make the family feel better. And I can't imagine what either my friend or the sixteen-year-old must be feeling right now.

The following Saturday I already had plans to be in Bellingham for a Fircreek counselors reunion. The night before, Bill sent me an email that Kaleo wanted to have a prayer meeting for this friend, and for Dwight Clark (an 18-year-old who had been kidnapped a week prior), and for Bellingham in general which seems to be facing evil circumstance after evil circumstance. I'm glad I had the reunion scheduled, because I'm not sure I would have gone to the prayer meeting otherwise. Had I known the full effects of that meeting, I would have, but I don't think my mind was there yet.

The reunion was good. I think besides the guy hosting it, I was the only counselor for quite a while. The rest were CITs. Later, a bunch of counselors came, but Mango, nor a couple of my other favorites from this year were there. I'm kind of glad they weren't because it let me get to know a few of the people I hadn't known that well. Also, it let me be funniest guy at the party, which is always a good esteem booster. I was killing that night; either that or they were going heavy on the pity laughs. What I found interesting is that not one of them laughed at a single dirty joke I told. Trying to convince Manxxx that she was trying to ask me out made them laugh several times.

After the reunion, I went to David's place where the prayer meeting was held. I got there first, right at 9:30. I sat down on the couch. Over the next ten to fifteen minutes, about thirty people poured in. The couch, meant to hold three or four now sat five, so we were squished together. When most of the people had arrived, Kaleo welcomed people in his typical rambling method. He said he'd never really organized something like this, but felt that with the various dark events that had happened in Bellingham lately, that a prayer meeting was needed. Bill suggested that we split into smaller groups to pray then come back and pray corporately.

That's what we did. Our group got a little bigger in the middle of prayer when Jeremiah, Scott, and eventually the girl in the accident and her boyfriend joined it. We were surprised, but happily so, to see her come. I'd find that overwhelming, only two days past, but I've always considered her a strong person.

After the prayers, most of us hung around for a bit and talked. The person I'd been squished up against on the couch was KK. I realized, sitting there, that I don't get touched very often. Several years back there was a book published that posited that there were five love languages, basically five categories for how people feel they are loved, or attempt to show love: service, words of encouragement, touch, quality time, and gifts. Denna says that the one I speak most fluently is words of encouragement, but also says she's biased considering most of our relationship was online. My mom says that it's quality time. I think it's touch. It's been nearly two years since Denna and I broke up, with no consistent sources of touch since then, so I think I've gone a little stir-crazy.

Sunday, Hime was supposed to go to church with me, but she and her dad were working on a project and it was taking longer than they expected so she had to cancel. The week prior, we were supposed to go, but I had to go to the morning service so I could attend Athena's birthday party, and she could only do an evening service. Anyway, I got there like I normally do: fifteen minutes early. There are some things I to get super early for, and some things I get to a minute or two late. Very few things are there that I get to on time. Church and church-related things I usually get to early. Also, when I was in orchestra, I got there rather early. Movies, I usually get to a few minutes late, to Swood's disapproval. I took my seat in my usual spot: sixth row from the front, five seats in from the left, in the middle pew section. You know the spot; it's the spot you wish you'd been early enough to get unless you got that spot in the 9 or 11 o'clock services, in which case, props to you my friend. Like normal, a couple sat on the left side of the pew with a few seats between us. Three girls sat on the far right side of the pew. As the service started, they asked people to scooch in. So both of the inside people of the ones I just mentioned ended up sitting next to me. I didn't have to move from my spot, because well, like I said earlier, you know. During the songs before the sermon, the girl to my right accidentally bumped my arm. I find that when someone accidentally bumps another person, one or both people flinch and give each other more room. I usually don't. I don't know if that's because I have a very small bubble, or because I like to be touched, or because I like to go against stupid social norms (and try to keep with smart ones), but for whatever reason, I didn't. I stood steady. Steadily. A few minutes later, she did it again. I'm pretty sure that time too was on accident. But then she must have noticed that I still wasn't giving her any extra space. She was standing with hands in her black poofy jacket, elbows out a bit, and she slowly touched her left upper arm to my right, kind of testing the waters to see if I'd move. When I didn't, she pressed a little further until there was no question that we were pressing our arms together. Shortly thereafter, the sermon began.

It was a good sermon, for those of you who haven't just clicked the link and listened to it, and it is a far better listen than this post is a read, so what are you still doing reading this run on sentence? It was on how almost everyone will say that Jesus was a good man, that they're fans of him. Very few will say, "Man, I've got a problem with Jesus" (unless they actually start to take a deep look at what he says, I suppose). So lots of people are fans, are admirers of Jesus, but few are followers of him, are his disciples. At the end of the service, for the evenings, we always have communion, so the pastor, Dietrich, sort of segued into it suggesting that maybe some of us realize that right now we're only admirers of Jesus and that, "and no one will judge you," you shouldn't take communion with us. I think he said it better than that; the quotes were the only bit I remember word-for-word. So, like normal, sometime during the next song set, I got up. But I noticed it was right after her two friends got up, and she didn't. That, to me, took some courage. Over the following days I involuntarily took some time to overthink what else it might mean, that maybe she's not a Christian and was visiting with her friends, who appeared to be SPUers, but then, if she's from SPU, she'd be uncommon to not be a Christian. This is where my thoughts are folly. What it might mean really doesn't matter to me, but I still think about it.

On a side note, as I was just about to take a crack at a Seattle sports team at random, something stuck out to me a few weeks back while Dietrich was speaking. He said that the church is the bride of Christ, and like any groom, Jesus will take great offense when someone badmouths his bride. I think I do that too often. Self-examination is good to a point, and even perhaps corporate examination, especially if you're in a position to lead. But I think most of what I've done is insulted the church simply so I could attempt to put myself in a nonbeliever's shoes, when perhaps a lot of nonbelievers don't believe the insult I'd just thrown. Again, self-examination is good. Berating is bad.

After everyone who would had taken communion, there were two more songs, and they had us stand. Once again, the Poofy Jacket subtly pressed her arm into mine. I was torn between freaking out that I was being distracted from worship, and excited that a girl wanted to touch me. I realized the next day while at my counseling appointment that that was the difference between sitting next to KK and touching this stranger. KK, while she didn't mind her thigh being pressed against mine, didn't necessarily want to either. There just wasn't enough space, and had there only been three of us, we'd have had our own cushions. I only stole a couple of glances at the Poofy Jacket. She's short, probably shoulder height. She's not white or black, I want to say asian but I didn't look long enough to know she wasn't hispanic. She has tiny hands, maybe two-thirds the width of mine. And what little I remember of her face was pleasant to look upon.

At the end of the service, obviously, I wanted to say hi to her, introduce myself, perhaps comment on the impressive blood circulation in her left upper arm, though that was probably compounded by the over-insulated jacket. The friend to her right looked to be pouring her heart out and I wasn't about to interrupt that for a phone number. Also, I'm glad I didn't have a chance to do that circulation line.

I stuck around, hoping to say hi to a friend, and also waiting for pastoral Q&A to start. I took the occasional glance back at her. Most of the times, she was looking at me, and I quickly changed my focus. I was surprised to see that she and her two friends stayed for Q&A as well. I did have the chance to try and talk to her after it ended, but I don't do well with tricky things like introductions to cute girls when other people are watching me, so I didn't really attempt.

Thus began perhaps the longest week of my life.

It was silly, really. Sunday night I was still feeling guilty that I allowed myself to be distracted from worship for the (comforting and exciting) touch of a stranger. I asked a wide range of friends from Denna to Kaleo to my mom, then Monday my counselor, and all of them said I shouldn't feel guilty. Still, why was I thinking about this girl whom I don't know and couldn't even for sure tell you what continent her ancestors were from? In my defense, I'd like to say I can rule out, with relative certainty, Antarctica. The more I tried to not think about it, the more I kept remembering that warmth against my arm, and the subconscious knowledge that she was touching me on purpose, and hopefully feeling as good and confused about it as I did.

On Monday night, Marvel and I hung out with his friends. Originally we were going to watch How I Met Your Mother, but that fell through when dinner took a while to be served. Then we went out and played some pool. It seems like a new tradition has been born. Monday nights are now more official than they were last week.

On Tuesday, I had my Spiritual Journeys class, and afterward, went to Luke's for our weekly get-together. We decided, after last week's very productive post-Bible study discussion, that we should do that discussion before Bible study, so if things got quiet, he'd have more ideas to fan the flames. Thus, we moved our weekly thing from Thursday to Tuesday. We discussed 1 Samuel 24, which is about the first time David lets Saul (who's been trying to kill him) live when he had the chance to defend himself and off Saul. We probably went down twenty rabbit trails, but it was a good discussion. One of the things that finally clicked was why God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. I always found that perverse, and didn't understand the significance of the command. Sure, this was the son that Abraham had been promised, and it had to be hard to let that go. What I hadn't realized before was that Abraham had been promised descendants that outnumbered the stars, so killing Isaac meant that God would have to deliver on his promise again with a new son, and his wife was like 90 years old by this point. The question of faith was whether he trusted God to do it again. The main point of the David/Saul story seemed to be that if God promises you something, it's not your job to figure out how he's going to accomplish it. You just let it happen, and do what God tells you. Do not, on the other hand, do what you think he needs done. If God promises you'll be king, it doesn't mean you get to kill the current king when he falls into your hands.

For praying for each other, I told him the story of the Poofy Jacket. I worried that she'd become the Slutty Pumpkin from How I Met Your Mother. Some years back, on Halloween, Ted was up on his roof for a costume party, wearing a hanging chad costume (back when hanging chads were funny, so, 2005), and met a girl in a slutty pumpkin costume. They hit it off, were having a good time, and then the next time he turned around, she was gone, and he didn't know who she was. So, from the next year on, on Halloween, he would go back up to his roof in a hanging chad costume and wait and hope that the Slutty Pumpkin would show up, essentially wasting his Halloween. I'm a little worried that I'll be looking for the Poofy Jacket at church and miss out on what I love about church. I don't think that will happen, but I worry it will.

Wednesday night, Marvel, Swood, and I saw The Social Network. It had Aaron Sorkin written all over it. I loved it. If you've seen it, you loved it and I don't need to describe it to you again. If you've not seen it, you need to see it because you will love it, and no words I have will truly capture it in the meantime.

Thursday was Bible Study. It was good, not quite as good as the first week, but much better than the second week. Most of the people talked, and some of the questions weren't so straight forward as to be literal as they were last week. Bo showed up. He's a great guy. He went to Jamaica with me a few years ago. It was unexpected to see him at the Bible study, but certainly good. He didn't talk much in our group, but then, he's never really talked much. After Bible study, I went to Swood's to watch our weekly TV. We got through all but Glee.

Friday after work, I headed back to Port Orchard to visit my mom and Jack. They're living in a friend-from-church's house while the friends are living in Kansas. In exchange for living there, they're taking care of their dog. Yes, I did just use all three "there"s naturally in one sentence. Soon, my mom's new place will be finished so they'll move into there and take the dog with them until the friends get back. It was good to see them. We were sad to watch the Giants lose in the tenth. I notice I ask a ton more questions when I'm around my mom. Just inane stuff like, why do new dogs know to bark at doorbells for the first time? It drives Jack crazy. I asked so many questions this time, I was almost driven crazy myself.

Today, I got up, visited the new place, then drove to Swood's to watch Glee and lose at Smash Brothers. After that, I drove in the rain to my aunt's for Canadian Thanksgiving. That was a great time. I usually kind of clam up around them, or at least around my cousins. I think they're old enough now that I've become more comfortable talking to them as people rather than as children. After my sister and Grandma left, the five of us watched Airplane. I'd never seen it start to finish. I was surprised at how many of the sex jokes went right over my cousins' heads. Good thing, too. A few of them, when my aunt and uncle and I laughed, they wanted to know why it was funny. My uncle was quick on his feet and gave a reasonable, clean, alternative explanation for why something was funny.

On these many trips to and from Bellingham, Seattle, Renton, and Port Orchard, I found myself designing a traffic simulation program in my head. I have this vision of drag-and-drop creating SR-520 West from Redmond to Seattle, with source nodes for freeway entrances, and sink nodes for exits, with various rates of entry for each of those sources and various probabilities for each sink as a destination, and then just watching what happens around the 405 exits when the rate of entries increases for rush hour. It'd be cool to spot the points where you switch from left to center before the 405 exits, switch to right immediately after the 405 exits, and then from right to center to left, right before the 3-person HOV lane begins. The following SMS conversation happened earlier today:

me: Hey, I wanna write a visual traffic simulator with drag and drop road generation… You want in?
Bob: Hell yes.

Good times.

On the way back from my aunt's, I'd been pondering something that had been bothering me off and on all week. What if Hime, misunderstood as my girlfriend, scares the Poofy Jacket off? It's kind of stupid to even be thinking that far, but that's what I do. I think too far. Then, as I was pulling into my parking spot, I had a long in coming epiphany that this is Abraham and Isaac. This is David and Saul. If God wills it to be, it will be, and it will be again if it needs to be.

I'd been debating whether or not to tell Hime about this, because I don't know how she'd react or what would happen on Sunday at church or even what I should tell Hime at all. I finally decided I wouldn't tell her, and I'd trust God on it. She happened to be online, which she never is, so I started talking to her, just to see if she was coming to church with me. She's sick. I'm sad she's sick, and I really do want her to come with me, but I also laughed a little that it made this whole thing moot. I'd be counting my chickens if I put too much stock in this, but I have to imagine that Abraham laughed a little when he was stopped and given the ram. Isaac does mean "laughter" after all.

Anyhow, it's 2:40, and while I am going to the evening service, I should get at least some sleep.

Ponytails

2010-09-19T02:55:00.001-07:00

Well, how about we take an ol' whack at the blog again, shall we?

I just got back from a Kina Grannis concert with Swood. It's his birthday. She's pretty good. I think I've said before that I don't usually enjoy female singers as much as male ones. I'm not sure why that is, but most of the female singers I do like, are among my favorites. Part of what makes Kina good is that she's adorable. I think if I just bought a disk of hers without seeing her on tour (or online), I wouldn't enjoy her singing as much.

July 7th marked my second year at Microsoft, so kudos to me. The granola kind, preferably. Why does "preferably" not have a double-r? I hear all the full-time employees at Microsoft get a free Windows 7 Phone when they come out, and a slate after that. I'm looking forward to those.

I started playing StarCraft II after I swore I probably wouldn't buy it. I've been playing with a new friend from church, Luke (so named because he's getting his doctorate). I first met him at the PCEC retreat last February, but we didn't really get to know each other until we started meeting on a weekly basis to talk and pray for each other. He and I had been playing a protoss/terran combination, but the added rock-paper-scissory didn't compensate for the his terran-protoss skill gap, so we switched to two protoss. For a while we just played against computers, and got used to how best complement our strengths. When we moved into the 2v2 bracket, we won two out of five and were placed in a bronze bracket, where we seem to be doing fairly well (better than 50% win rate).

Today I finished my last 1v1 placement match, winning three or four of five, placing me incorrectly in a gold bracket. I'm just going to have to wince and take gold ranked beatings for a while until it moves me down into silver, where I think I should be playing.

It's such a complex game. Like, I don't even think at the same level as a lot of people who play. I don't really scout because I wouldn't know what to look for. I pretty much always have a few skirmishes with the beginner ground units and then mass void rays, and then one way or another the game ends. I could look to see if they have detectors in their base (though, you can't tell with a probe if you're playing against a protoss, though I suppose you could look for the robotics facility), but I just don't think to, and I doubt I'd go dark templars if I did. Maybe dark templars and void rays. The key though is always void rays.

I was noticing while playing through the StarCraft campaign how the combination of hair color and style play at my book-cover impressions of girls. Sarah Kerrigan's pre-zerg hairstyle is super attractive to me and always has been, but I'm realizing it has to do with the color of the hair as well. If it's red and ponytailed holding the hair up, I tend to think she's smart and cute; blond is ditzy but fun; light brown is earthy (and perhaps the most attractive to me); deep brunette for some reason I can't picture; and black almost says dominatrix (reminds me of Lady Deathstrike in X-Men 3). I wonder where I came up with these notions. If it's just gathered at the bottom in a ponytail, none of this applies. Weird. Now I kind of want to play the Sims to see what a brunette with this hairstyle would look like.

It seems I'm still the utmost authority on the web of the ISCFP interview experience. Another person, Vicki, found this blog and asked me what it was like. Unfortunately, it's been such a long time since I did it I couldn't help her much. Also, when I did it, they'd given us a group problem to solve. We each came with our own ideas on it, and then sort of combined them. They've since changed it so that they aren't told the question ahead of time. Her interview is on Monday. I'm worried though, because she can't spell and thinks there's a 'p' in 'thanks.' Besides, bad spelling can lead to indecent thoughts. Observe:

I got the interview
Congrats!
spanx

Don't mind if I do.

There's a bunch of other things that have happened lately. It's 2:30 so I'm going to cut this short. In June, Marvel got a job as a vendor at Microsoft, and had planned on commuting from Tacoma each day until he found a place. I said screw that and gave him my spare room while he looked. A week or two in, we just decided it'd be easier for both of us if he stayed. The help with rent is nice, plus I do like having someone else around. He and I went through the West Wing faster than (I know, I know, I caved and watched it again) I've ever watched it before. Now we've moved onto How I Met Your Mother. We'd hoped to catch all the way up before Monday's premier, but seeing as how season 5 doesn't come out on disk until Monday, that seems difficult. We're almost done with season 4 though, which I think is quite an accomplishment if tv watching can be considered a feat.

I volunteered again at Fir Creek in July. It was fun, and a bit different. I'm not sure if that's because Hime wasn't there this year, or that some of the novelty was gone or what. I also don't feel like I got to know the counselors as well this time. It's hard to believe that last year was only a week. I think what I missed most was Sharpeedo and Snorlax. This year was good too though. Monkey ran the woods zone. It was a very, very different experience than it was with Hime. He had the kids build a super stable bridge out of sticks across the creek. There were a couple great new guys I met. One is attending MIT and was a bit of a role model for me, which is cool considering he's a couple years my junior. Another is aspiring to be a stand-up comedian. I offered him the few bits I've written, but he said he thinks only I could pull them off. I know for certain I could not pull them off. I can't even pull off a knock-knock joke. I see the punchline in my head, and dyslexitize it. Since I'm not going to pursue a career in that field (though at times it has appealed to me), I figure I'll give you a taste of what you're not going to miss.

Cash
I don't carry cash on me anymore. Plastic is just way too convenient. You know who does carry cash on them though: murderers. Ever watch Law & Order, and they have the murder weapon and trace it back to where it was bought? They always ask, do you have a credit card number? No! They paid with cash. I was in New York a little while ago for my nephew's birthday party. His sister had bought him a goldfish, so I was going to get him a fish bowl. I went up to the register with the bowl and pulled out a twenty. The guy leaned in and said, "Dude, we've got some heavier bowls in the back. This one will shatter before it does any real damage."

HOV Lane
I'm a fan of the HOV lane. That lane is sacred, isn't it? On some of the older freeways they have it on the right side of the road. I guess they put it as the slow lane because think that the most common carpoolers have kids and will want to go slower? Not the case. Anyway one night I was staying in a hotel that overlooked one of these freeways. I happened to look down and I saw this guy push a dead body out of his car into a ditch. It was dark and he didn't see that there was a policeman behind him, who turned on his lights and pulled him over. The cop gave the guy a ticket for no longer having a carpool and drove off.

The second one needs to be shorter. The hardest part of writing a joke is keeping the backstory short enough, though, it can be longer as long as there are warm up jokes along the way.

Last Saturday I bought a new violin. It's beautiful in both sight and sound. I tried every violin within and slightly above my price range in the store. None of them were close. A few of them sounded good when played by Nikkie, who was helping me look, but I didn't like them as much. This one was about a thousand dollars more than I wanted to spend, but when you're getting something that will probably last you the rest of your life, it's good to get one you love. I'd never realized how passionate I am about playing the violin. I knew a surprising amount about what makes a violin good, and how depending on how it's treated, it'll either get better with age or fall apart completely. It was enough, anyway, to impress my counselor. I wonder if I should get good(ish) again and join an orchestra or something. The only thing is I don't like playing it past around 9:00 because of my neighbors. I also don't much like playing when I have a roommate around, just as a courtesy I guess. I really want to a buy a house. The violin put me back a bit, but I think it was worth it. I also won't be buying a house in the next 11 months, so it hardly matters.

Alright, really going to bed now.

Listening

2010-08-24T00:38:00.000-07:00

I'm helping lead a Community Group at church this October, and we'll be going through a book called Can You Hear Me? by Brad Jersak. I'm reading it ahead of time so I can actually lead rather than just follow along.

In the first chapter, he said some things I don't agree with, or at least take with a grain of salt. I'll be the first to admit I'm skeptical of almost anything related to the Holy Spirit. Some people see demons under every rock, and a lot of times, I think they see what they want to believe. They could fairly say I don't see because I don't want to believe.

I don't know why I don't want to believe. It'd be great if I saw miracles every day, and perhaps I do, but I don't recognize them. I've heard some people say "I prayed and sure enough, God got me a parking spot right near the front of the grocery store." Really? That one I don't buy, not unless there were some other circumstances like "He was going to die unless he got his insulin shot from the pharmacy immediately," but I'm guessing in that case, you park in the fire lane in front of the entrance anyway. My point is, I don't want to believe in the frivolous ones. I feel like there are too many things that were going to happen anyway, even things that demons could cause, things that might make us prideful but are "good," that they can't all be miracles.

The scriptures say that every good and perfect thing comes from God. I take issue with that verse, not that it's not right, but that I have a hard time rationalizing it. Every good thing? It almost seems like a copout, like God is just categorically taking credit for every good thing in the world. I know he's entitled, but I don't want him to be. I can't put my words on exactly how that seems unfair to me. I suppose it's a good thing that I don't get to decide what God is entitled to.

Anyway, this is not why I started writing tonight. It's well past midnight and I should be asleep. But I was reading that book, and chapter two, at least at the beginning, is about scripture. Chapter one suggested that often times verses will speak to us, that certain words will pop out of the page or seem highlighted as if God was saying them directly to us. I have vague recollections of this happening, and yet remain skeptical. How can that be? Anyway, I thought I'd put it to the test.

Some more background: recently I've felt everything I just wrote and more. I'm questioning things for the sake of questioning them. I'll forget things I've learned just so I can blame God for my current sense of abandonment. I don't want to understand, because if I do, then I have to take responsibility for my actions. And my actions suck.

I was talking to a friend, or more an acquaintance, a couple nights ago. She's probably the most educated, spiritual, dedicated woman my age that I've met. After a brief discussion on Matthew 8/Mark 5, we jumped into everything I don't understand about God that it seems like everyone else understands, and I therefore blame on God. To be fair, several of them I think a lot of people don't understand and either don't care that they don't understand (it's actually not that important, not a ship-stopper as Microsofties might say), or won't admit that they don't understand. I think that's a rather large issue with the modern church: the fear of saying "I don't know." We come off as hypocritical and holier than thou, rather than authentic as the broken people we are; but that's a post for another night. Most of them, though, were things I'd learned once, things I should have learned or figured out, things that had I been reading my Bible more than twice a month, I might know. She went through and explained every one, at least to the point where I couldn't come up with any more questions. I began to feel cornered a couple times and switched topics to another of God's many inadequacies.

About a month ago, while at camp, I started reading Hebrews--a good of place to start as any since the last time I chose an arbitrary place to start. I got through chapter three that week. Then a few nights ago I read chapter four.

Tonight I decided to put God's highlighting, word-popperouting bit to the test. I figured I'd just continue in Hebrews 5. It seems like if I chose some place at random, God's hand might be involved and I didn't want that for this test. Here's the text (skimming is allowed):

Every high priest is a man chosen to represent other people in their dealings with God. He presents their gifts to God and offers sacrifices for their sins. And he is able to deal gently with ignorant and wayward people because he himself is subject to the same weaknesses. That is why he must offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as theirs.

And no one can become a high priest simply because he wants such an honor. He must be called by God for this work, just as Aaron was. That is why Christ did not honor himself by assuming he could become High Priest. No, he was chosen by God, who said to him, “You are my Son. Today I have become your Father.”

And in another passage God said to him, “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.”

While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God. Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him. And God designated him to be a High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.

There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen. You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.

Really God? Really?

As I wrote this, I realized talking with that friend was also God talking to me, batting down any excuse.

I know what comes next, but I'm not good at humbling myself. I don't know what I think will happen if I don't. It's like there's this stupid, shortsighted, vain little devil inside of me who won't give up. I think it would be better if God crushed me utterly, than allowed me to continue on this ho-hum venture of luke warm failure and ignorance. Free choice is a bitch.

Anyway, now I will pray, but I know it will not be whole-hearted because God does not own all of my heart as he should.

Enthusiastic by Association

2010-05-12T23:58:00.000-07:00

Oh, where to begin. Well, first off, I should not begin with "where to be gin," as I originally wrote. Alcohol and I don't mix. Besides, gin and tonic rolls off the tongue much better than gin and Jordan. Then again, I said be gin, not be mixed with gin. Now I can't even keep my own story straight. Good luck deciphering the rest of this post.

I suppose I ought to start out with the most exciting news in my life. That's right, I finished reading Eldest for the fourth time, and have since traversed 232 pages into rereading Brisingr. The Bumblebee of Life once again inspired me as no other writing has. I'm pretty sure on one of the pages I most recently read, Paolini got switched up on which entity, Eragon or Saphira, was talking (thinking to each other in italics). It was like six paragraphs back and forth with no ", Eragon said," and suddenly Saphira was asking questions of Eragon, and Eragon was answering with what only Saphira should have known. PS, I didn't notice that Eragon was just Dragon with an E until halfway through my fourth read of the first book. Also, I once thought that "I am" was the shortest complete sentence. It's actually "Be."

I started seeing a counselor, mostly because after the E/Dragon thing, I realized my brain wasn't functioning as well as it once was. Maybe I'd always been mistaken, but aren't most counseling sessions an hour long? The ones with this guy are 45 minutes, which usually run a little late. So far, and yesterday was my fourth session with him, he's really only been getting to know me rather than talking me through things or giving advice or whatever, not that I'm an expert on counseling. Yesterday I ended up saying something I didn't expect to. That's happened a few times before when I talked with Solomon or other counseloresque people, but this was slightly different, as in hindsight, I'm not sure what I said was true. I ended up saying that the nondescript sickness that I always feel, as described in the second paragraph of Restless, might as well be synonymous with shame. It seems like it would be true in the abstract, but not when I think about it concretely.

This brings me to another important if not mind-numbing point. It's the idea of absolute value verses relative value. I bought A Few Good Men on BluRay the other day, because it was on sale for $10 at Fred Meyer. Seemed like a good deal to me, and I love that movie and don't currently own it, so I bought it. After I bought it, I looked it up on Amazon, who was selling it for $11, but it occurred to me that if it had been on there for $7 or something, would I have still thought it a good deal? Clearly, at some point, I thought the movie was worth $10. Would the value of owning the movie be less if I found a better deal? This is obviously a simple case, but I think it can easily be applied to our lives in bigger ways. It also reminds me of the parable of the workers in the vineyard.

Do cats have adam's apples? Kotenok, get over here.

I was thinking about it a couple Sundays ago, and I think my goal for counseling, though I've not mentioned this to him yet, is to be able to say that my relationship with God is amazing, to really think that. I know that it is, for why should the creator of heaven and earth die that I might have such a relationship? But I think I take that for granted. If God is good, the ultimate good, he loves us as much as he says he does, and has the chance to save us, I don't want to be so arrogant to argue that it would be required of him to do so at the cost of his own, or own son's, life, but it seems to me to be the logical choice. I think for that reason, I take it for granted. I would never argue that I was worth that sacrifice, but that too is folly, for God said I was, and I shan't argue with him. I guess if I really beheld the gravity, the enormity of the relationship I have, I would repeatedly fall on my knees and cry out in thanks and ... disbelief? There's some irony. And if it were truly as intimate a relationship as it ought, I would feel more stable in it, and more thankful and awed. I would say it's amazing. As it stands, it simply is.

On the other hand, a couple times I've tried to live without it, and I couldn't do it. I feel like I'm stuck in limbo, "wrestling" with an impassive god. And I know that is not his nature, so why do I feel that it is? Why does the evidence in my life point that direction?

Well, that took a depressing turn. While I'm at it, I might as well write the rest out of my system. My counselor said something at the end of our session yesterday. It didn't immediately throw me off, in fact, it elicited an odd sense of pride. Today, I felt jumbled though, badly enough that I felt physically sick and stayed home from work. I watched Minority Report for the first time in a few years. The scene where Agatha, John, and his wife are all at his wife's house, they're up in Shawn's old room, and Agatha is talking about the life Shawn could have had actually brought a couple tears to my eye. I rarely get choked up over movies, especially action movies. I'm not sure why it happened, but it was just immensely sad to me. Also, the scene where the murder was supposed to take place and Agatha is reliving the present was done incredibly well. I really felt for Agatha, and it was hard to watch. I've probably seen the movie a good six to eight times. I'm not sure why this was the first time I had such emotions about it. Or, I'm not sure why I had emotions about it this time. I haven't decided which.

So, I maybe exaggerated a slight amount, the teensiest amount conceivable, in fact, if exaggeration were tangible, I'm pretty sure I would have split the atom, when I said that the most exciting thing in my life was finishing Eldest. Maybe. God save us all if Stephen Colbert ever happens upon tangible exaggeration. The earth might just gain enough mass that the sun would start orbiting it. Anyway, if there is something more exciting than reading a book for the fourth time, it's this.

A few weeks ago I went to the eleven o'clock church service because the Costa Rica team was having a post trip thank you party for our supporters up in Bellingham. At this particular morning service, it was rather full, and I ended up sitting next to a girl named Kaylee. The lead singer in the worship band said something about playing an old song, and then started the chords for Shout to the North. I commented, "Old? This was written like eight years ago." Kaylee laughed at that. After the service, I asked her and her cousin if they wanted to go out to lunch. I've been out to lunch with several people after church services both at Harper and LatR so this was no big deal to me. They checked the time and her cousin's schedule, and then we went to Chipotle in Northgate. Kaylee's got to be one of the most interesting people I've met. If she had more character, she'd have to appear on the USA channel. She's super bright, laughs at corny jokes, and can hold her own in a banter. You can't ask for much more than that. But wait, there's more. Call in the next thirty minutes and she'll own Firefly and Serenity on DVD. That's nerdier than I am! Her one flaw is that she's not seen Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Of course, having no room for improvement, for growth, would also be a flaw so, damned if you do, damned if you don't, and damn the torpedoes!

So, I may have laid it on a little thick there (really got into the groove, which I guess means I've found my muse for writing hyperbolically), but really, based on first impressions, she's a great person. A week later, I asked her out to coffee, and she suggested the following Friday. The next day, coffee changed into dinner, and the day after, dinner into dinner plus Iron Man 2 with friends. You've got to admire someone who was looking forward to Iron Man's sequel more than I was, especially someone of the female persuasion. I don't think I'll say much more than that tonight, lest I too stumble upon tangible exaggeration.

It's now getting late, and I have three unequally viable choices. In order of descending meritoriousness they are go to sleep, read more Brisingr, and watch A Few Good Men again. I did get five hours of extra sleep earlier today, so I'm not too tired, but tomorrow might be painful if I'm not awake. We're having a morale event (I almost forgot about it) at 10:00 in Seattle. I hate driving in Seattle. I hate parking in Seattle.

Stranger than Fiction

2010-04-17T01:29:00.001-07:00

Bah, I can't write fiction. I try from time to time, and it's always boring. Part of the issue is that I really only want to write something if it's not been written before. And part of the reason is I have no talent there. I'll stick to what I'm good at: writing paragraphs upon paragraphs of unread text so it looks like I have a life, at least one interesting enough to write about, so long as the readers don't actually get past the first paragraph.

This time I thought I had it. The last few attempts have been attempting fantasy, but I don't have any good ideas of magic systems (which are my favorite part). I'd rather learn than teach, read than write. I also tend to get hung up on the plot, which was the case this time as well. This time I thought I'd write the story of boy meets girl (because that's never been done before), but only write during the moments they're actually interacting. The first "chapter" was five lines long, from the moment a mutual friend was introducing them until the moment after they shook hands and got distracted by other friends at the party. The second chapter was just the friend confirmation email from Facebook. For the third, I was attempting to write an instant message chat log. I actually wrote a program to generate the HTML for me. It turns out talking to myself on paper isn't as fun as talking to myself aloud. Five minutes into the "conversation" I alt+F4'd without saving.

On a side note, I couldn't figure out how to get a WebBrowser Winforms object to autosize, nor make it scroll to a certain point on the page (i.e. the bottom). Using LINQ's XDocument and XElement objects, though, made the page generation itself a breeze. Even ctrl+z was simple. I just kept a stack of each of the XElements I'd added, and then to undo, popped the stack and called .Remove() on the object, which removed itself from the XDocument. Magic!

I think maybe the hardest part for me, writing fiction, is creating a character other than myself. I just can't leave my own head. I think most authors, at least in their early works, write with the main character being the author. Alexander, for instance, gets woozy from the height of a chair unless he's over water, much like his character Longshark (whom, in my head, I pronounced Lawnshark) in his latest story. I would guess that Paolini acts quite a bit like Eragon, at least in his inquisitiveness. But then both them have supporting characters that are quite different from than the authors. I just end up writing copies of myself, or possibly my friends, though it turns out the way I perceive my friends is a lot more like how I perceive me, than it is how they actually are. They wouldn't say this. I would. Bah.

I do wonder what happens if you add an element to multiple XDocument objects, because .Remove()'s documentation says it removes the element from its parent, and in this case, there are multiple parents. I could try it, and report back, but I'd rather wonder than know in this case. All my friends would too.

So yes, I keep attempting and failing fiction. Mostly this happens when I reread Eragon. Two thoughts always come to mind while reading that book. One, this was make a great MMO. It really would, but the whole magic system would be incredibly complex. You'd have to write a run-time compiler for it, and then you'd have to convince people the game is fun enough to play to learn a completely made up language, and then you'd have to figure out the whole "an expert might say water and conjure something completely unrelated, like a gemstone, because he can see the link between the two" thing. After all that triviality comes the part where you have to enforce no deceit when someone speaks the ancient language. The other thought is always, "I can do this." And time and time again it proves untrue.

The last few weeks I've been thinking about something that the pastor said, that when we want to feel good about ourselves we revert to doing what we do best, specifically mentioning writing, among other things. I think that's true of me, not that I'm saying I'm necessarily a good writer, only that I take pride in it. The sermon he said this in was on Easter, and about "giving God the pen" of our lives, letting him dictate what will happen in our lives. I think God gives us certain aptitudes, and it would be foolish not to use what God has given us, so I'm wondering what God wants me to write. There is this blog, but I'd like to write a book someday too.

I guess if I want God to answer a question, like what does he want me to write about, I should ask him--I should pray. I certainly don't pray religiously. It's a habit I should get into. Hime and I call each other best friends, but we haven't seen each other since her birthday in January.

I'm in bed now, or rather, on Bill's couch in Bellingham the day after I started writing this post. Before I let it slip another day, I think I'll just post it now, short and sweet.

Four Words

2010-04-04T16:07:00.001-07:00

He is risen. He is risen indeed. It's Easter right now, so happy Easter if you happen to be reading this post today, or if you happen to read it some Sunday between March 23 and April 27 in the future, and that day also happens to be the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring of your current year. Yeah.

Easter is the most important day of the year, with Christmas a close second. I don't think that's a very popular opinion, but it's mine. It is the day Jesus Christ conquered death. It is the reason we have The Good News. If I have my metaphysics right, Good Friday was the day our sins could be forgiven, but no one would believe it had Easter not happened. Or maybe I have them wrong, and it is in the act of rising again, conquering death, that we may have victory in Christ as well.

I don't think Easter is celebrated correctly. I don't really know how to explain it, but the fact that Easter is so diminished in the minds of modern society, on par with Groundhog's day or Valentine's day, speaks to the fact that it's important, and that someone or something wants it suppressed. Because it's fun to blame the greeting card industry, I'm going to do just that. No one buys Easter greeting cards, probably because so few really appreciate the resurrection of Christ. Without cards, there are few ad buys, and without the media, there's little hype. Any church that tried to make an Easter awareness commercial would probably be pegged (by me) as a little silly. But no, I can't legitimately blame the card industry. While I've never been one to find the devil under every rock (or really almost any rock), leaving no stone unturned leads me to find Satan at work here.

I find myself frustrated this morning. I go to the evening service at church for two reasons today -- one, I normally go to the evening service because I like to stay up late on Saturday evenings, which I did last night; and two, because we were asked, if we weren't bringing friends that would not normally go to church, to go to either the early morning service (not happening) or the evening service, so that there was space and parking at the nine through eleven o'clock ones. I'm frustrated because this is the first Easter that I didn't go to a morning service followed by brunch or family time of some sort, except for the Easter I was in Jamaica. This morning I got out of bed at 12:30 (having been awake for two hours before that), tagged some photos posted by Courtney from Costa Rica, and then got Arby's. It was not exactly my traditional Easter morning.

Somehow I associate tradition with observance, and so I don't feel like I've really observed Easter, the most important day of the year. Even the fact that you go to Easter service in the morning is observing that Christ rose in the morning, that the stone was found rolled away in the morning, and that the rest of the day people could marvel at it.

I actually feel guilty, like the traditions were something I was supposed to do, or else I'm in sin or something. I know that's absurd but that's still how I'd describe it.

Anyway, there's no good reason to feel bad on Easter unless you mock its meaning, and I don't believe I've done that.

This week went pretty well. Last summer, after Fir Creek, I was pretty burnt out at work for another week and a half. Somehow after the trip, I was actually doing better than I had been before the trip. I'm not sure if I was burnt out from working harder than I'm used to (three big features, basically on my own), or because it was the last few days before vacation, or because I had a feature dropped on me and it was still in black box, mountain mode because I hadn't really had time to evaluate each part to realize it was only a medium sized hill. Anyway, when I got back Sydney was my acting manager because my actual manager is on vacation (for his kids' spring break). Sydney split my feature into three parts, and I ended up with about a third the work I was expecting to do, and of that work, I'd already done about a quarter, whereas I hadn't touched the other two parts. That made it much easier for me to get back into the groove of the faster life, and on Friday I made a ton of progress. I still have to write tests (which undoubtedly will uncover another thirty necessary changes [anecdotal edit: I did indeed introduce a bug where renaming a databases shrunk it to the minimum size]), but I made it to the jiggle phase. That's where you put all the pieces loosely together and then jiggle it until it all fits. This is not an official software development term. Yet.

We had a preview feature in our last release that I wrote. Now that it's no longer a preview feature, I had to tear all the code out. It felt weird deleting a bunch of code I wrote, when I had a meeting scheduled to discuss how that code would work after they deployed it (they haven't yet released the last release with the preview feature).

I'm looking forward to work tomorrow.

Friday night, I went to Swood's for our weekly hangout time. I've never been to a Good Friday service before, and because I was at Swood's, I didn't go to one this year either. Next year I think I'll try to make it. I had a good time at Swood's, though. It might even have been better that I went there than church. Hanging out with him is therapeutic for me, restful. We ended up watching The Men Who Stare at Goats. It wasn't what I was expecting, but still pretty good.

It got me thinking about a couple things. I think everyone (or at least, of the one person for whom I can speak from experience, it's true for this one person) likes to pretend at some level that they can do things they can't. I pretend to use the Force to change traffic lights, which may or may not coincide with me watching the other lights of the intersection. I wish I were telekinetic. When I go by street lights, they turn off a lot more frequently than they do for other people I've talked to. That's either because I'm more observant to it than other people, or I really am special -- and what an amazing super power that is, especially as it's involuntary, sporadic, and makes it harder for me to see. I like to play the game in my head, but I would never actually believe it like the people in the movie did, at least without some hard evidence. This knowledge fuzzes the line for me between game and spiritual gift. I believe that all Christians have spiritual gifts, and absolutely believe that the Spirit can give them and take them away at will for a given situation. But I do also believe that some are persistent regardless of the situation. Hospitality and teaching are two such gifts, and really, I think most are like that. But it makes me wonder how much of these gifts was there to begin with? Why do we call them spiritual gifts now that they are Christians, when they probably had the same personality before they were Christians? A few times I've taken spiritual gifts tests, which are essentially aptitude tests. They don't very well cover things like the gift of healing as they assume those are more self-evident. I've consistently scored high on discernment and prophecy, and very low on every other one. So, this blurred line makes me wonder if it's actually gift, or merely the game I play in my head. It's disconcerting.

The other thing, though only roughly related, that the movie got me considering was something talked about at the PCEC retreat in February. The speaker had talked a small bit about superstition, and how so many people have it engrained in us, whether we recognize it as superstition or not, that we'll say things like, "It's going well, but I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop." I do this a lot. I play this game of karma in my head, this game of balances, and for some reason, I can't accept that there is good without there being bad to come. Maybe it's just a common pattern in our lives, so we accept it as fact or fate. We have days of sun, and eventually they're followed by days of clouds or rain, and so we think that if it's sunny, soon it will be rainy. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. This, I think, weakens blessings.

It's almost time for me to leave for church. This is perfect as I have nothing else to say.

¡Viva Feliz!

2010-03-30T00:32:00.000-07:00

The trip is over. I haven't journaled as much as I expected. We're on the flight back to Charlotte, then have an hour layover in which to grab our bags, rush through customs, recheck our bags, and board another plane to SeaTac.

After our adventure on the way here, US Airways is giving us a $400 voucher, so I might be making another trip here soon, possibly to visit Denna again. We'll see. She's supposed to come visit me here soon, too. I haven't looked at the details of the voucher, but if they're smart, it'll have no restrictions.

We were at the orphanage from Sunday (which I've already posted about) until Friday morning. We split into five groups: painting, groundskeeping, construction, pulling nails, and a miscellaneous group that taught, made trinkets for kids and other things. Most of the groups changed jobs from day to day except for the construction group, because they were building cabinets, and it was beneficial to work the project through to completion. I was on pulling nails the first day and painting the second day.

Kaleo is a great guy. He's the biggest morale booster I've met. He can be a bit obnoxious and sometimes says things that seem to have no connection at all (though after a lengthy discussion, he usually brings it back home), but you can't be mad at him. It's impossible. He was able to just mumble his way through conversations in Spanish, knowing very little himself. Anyway, during the first day, we were pulling nails, and as if I were pumping metal, he'd start shouting for that extra little adrenaline boost. During one of these chants, he decided to call me JJ, despite my name having a single J in it, and it stuck. It actually helped a bit because it disambiguated the other Jordan on the trip.

There was another guy, Derek, that was with us the first day. He's fluent in Spanish and was our main translator throughout the trip. He didn't actually fly down with us because he'd been in Honduras for a year or two, and this trip was his last hurrah before returning to Whatcom County.

The last member of our group was Bill's girlfriend, Jane. She and I have always gotten along really well. She just has one of those personalities. We got a bit closer this trip, because she was the other person in my orphanage house.

Before lunch, while we were unnailing hardwood floor boards, the businessman turned missionary who started the chicken farm (he did not start the orphanage) came and took me to attempt to fix their wifi repeater. I did my best, but I wasn't really happy with the way it turned out. I know there's a way to do it where you can name the repeater's network the same as the router's and then laptops will switch between the two seamlessly, but at least I got it working with [mynetwork] and [mynetwork2]. The signal was still a little weak in the house we all slept in, but it was usable, though, we couldn't get Jeremiah's laptop to connect. I'm not sure if it was just an old machine or what.

The second day Jane was transferred to the miscellaneous group, and I don't know where Derek went. Kaleo and I switched to painting. That was pretty unremarkable except that I don't particularly like painting. I talked to Kaleo a little bit, and asked if he thought it meant something if a girl asked if you were seeing someone.

In the evening, we visited the homes again. Our mom was keen to my tastes that night and gave us the best chicken I've ever had, and a good portion of salad. It was the first time in a long time that I ate too much. That night or the next, I think the next, we had a translator who, for Jane and me, was one of the staff members. We played a "game" called Get to Know You or something. Basically, it was just some open ended questions on 3x5 cards and each of us in the house answered two. At team time, it sounded like every house had a different experience with that game. Some had kids bouncing off the walls that didn't take it very seriously, and some wanted to each answer "Who's your best friend?" with their personal reasons for why God was.

That night, the businessman gave his testimony during our team time. It was a lot more powerful, I felt, than most testimonies, at least resonating with me because it wasn't this huge turn around in his life, and mission work was a struggle for him. He wouldn't trade it, but he would in a heart beat if God told him too. It makes me feel a little better about working at Microsoft rather than out on the field, because I really do think God got me that job, and I can't imagine he would have if he didn't want me there.

The next morning we visited a slum called Los Quitos.

It's crazy how like-minded our group is. At team time each night, we went through our thoughts of the day and our struggles. Several struggles per night which hadn't been priorly voiced received head nods all around. Every struggle I've had has been had by most if not all the rest of the group.

Wednesday night, we all felt bad that when we visited the slums, we were thinking, "This isn't that bad." It was that bad. It just wasn't what we expected, which was African poverty. Los Quitos is a thirty thousand person shanty-town run by two organized gangs with drug rings and prostitution. The streets were so unsafe that the staff that were with us told us to remain on the bus.

Here's where my experience diverges a bit. Tuesday night I was not at all looking forward to the visit. I have a hard time going to a place on a mission trip with no real objective to make lives there better. The way I saw it, we were going to observe poverty and to break our own hearts. From my point of view, this feels wrong. Wednesday morning the exact same sentiment (minus the wrongness) was expressed, along with a strong argument as to why this is important. I agreed, but I still was resisting going. I hate to say it, but part of it was my shoes. I bought shoes on the way to visit Denna last December. I don't mind spending too much money on shoes because I wear them virtually every day for a year and a half until the insides are full of holes and causing blisters. Then I spend too much on another pair to abuse. The businessman had said that we shouldn't wear our nicest shoes because we might end up stepping in something icky. Well, I only have my shoes and my flip flops, and I'd rather lose a pair of shoes than have to wash icky off my feet. We'd been expecting to walk around the town. Then the staff member told us that there was a miscommunication and that it wasn't safe. I was relieved (for more than just my shoes). Everyone else was severely disappointed.

During the discussion that night, we talked about it. We felt awful because we were touring a shanty town in a tourist bus, as if they were animals on safari. But it really wouldn't be too much different if we were walking around, twenty-two obvious Americans with cameras taking pictures and walking into shops, talking to people in English. Something struck me about the place, though. People compared the slums to other slums: Derek to Honduras, Kaleo to the Philippines, several to Africa. I compared it to pictures from Hoovervilles during the Great Depression. The difference I noticed was that these people had some hope in them. They weren't broken, despite their poverty. They're there because they think (probably mistakenly) that they have a higher chance at a better life there than where they came from. (A lot of the people are illegal immigrants from Nicaragua.)

My favorite part of the trip was visiting the site of the new building the orphanage's organization has been promised by the government. They were given it five years ago, but have been struggling to get the money. It's a four million dollar building, and they're halfway there. For an organization this large in the US, two million dollars would take very little time or effort to raise. As soon as she told us what that fenced area with trees was for, it suddenly struck me how much healing will happen to that community when this building is built. I seriously can't describe it better than to say the areas where this organization has buildings are like lights in an otherwise dark place. When I get back, I will do my best to get Microsoft to recognize the organization for the GIVE program (though I heard it already does), and then get people to donate to it. Two million dollars. Seriously, it's not that much, and the results far outvalue the costs.

After Los Quitos, we visited one of the organization's day care centers. I was feeling a bit depressed after the slums. I didn't have any real "this is awful" thoughts while there, but just being in the area was disheartening, I think. Among the last things I wanted to do was to be in a noisy cafeteria surrounded by kids who don't speak English. I sat back as much as I could while the soon-to-be teachers of the group hand fed toddlers. Eventually I moved to putting cups on tables. I didn't eat lunch that day. First, the meal was nowhere near my limited palette, and second, I wasn't hungry even had they been serving sloppy joes and banana cream pie. (That was a total exaggeration -- I would have been all over sloppy joes and/or banana cream pie. They might have lifted my mood a bit.)

The night before, I had asked the businessman why there were only 20% new kids each year if kids only stayed one to three years, when 20% would require a five year rotation, on average. Evidently this stuck out to Jeremiah and Bill, and on Wednesday I was switched over to the construction team because the second cabinet would have tricky angles. However, there was some sort of assembly that day in the building with the cabinets, and we switched to other jobs. I took up the brush again.

Wednesday night was our last night in the houses. Saying goodbye to our mom was difficult. She's such a great woman with a larger capacity to love than I've seen in anyone. She's a single mother, the only one in the orphanage, with a thirty-year-old son we didn't meet, and a teenage son, who's an inspiration, of her own, and then five foster boys and five foster girls. I have no idea how she does it.

Thursday we did work. We built an entire shelving unit save the doors, and finished up the one from Monday and Tuesday. I loved working with my group. Monday or Tuesday night I had a lengthy talk with Jane's sister, and Thursday she and I ended up doing most of the cutting for the cabinets. Joe did most of the measurements and design, and the other two members worked primarily on the doors from the first set. The wood we were given was ridiculous. The 2x2's (or that's what we called them; they were 4cm by 4cm) were almost all either bowed or twisted length-wise. With nails, we got them as close to straight as possible, but the next morning, the whole cabinet and twisted a bit. The wall wasn't flat, and half of it had another concrete part sticking out of it, and of course it wasn't parallel with the rest of the wall, nor was the wall parallel with its opposite in the room. Considering all that, I feel we did a pretty good job. Channeling Kaleo, while Jane's sister was doing some hammering, I said "Do it KK!" realizing a moment too late that her name starts with C. (I'm rather slow, so she had to point out the discrepancy.)

Thursday night was our best team time. The two staff members I keep talking about gave their testimonies, and then a couple of us did. Testimony in Costa Rica is quite a bit different from what it is in the US. I like their version better. In Christianese, your testimony is just the story of pre-Christ, how you came to Christ, and what differences he's made since then, and it's usually a little prepackaged. People who've been Christians all their lives don't typically have "an amazing testimony," as say my dad did until six years ago. (Wow, has it really been six years?) In Costa Rica, it's an abridged (or less abridged) version of their life's story, where Christianity is a part of that, but also how they met their spouse, how they came to work at the orphanage and whatever else seems important at the time. I spoke that night as well, one because I kind of wanted to, and two because no one else seemed to. It surprised me though, what I said. I talked about how I became a Christian at three, and never really had a defining moment. I talked about my tick disorder and bipolar disorder, and how I've been suicidal from time to time. And I talked about new life, and how that's a new concept I've been throwing around in my head. I wasn't sure how they're all related, but I knew they were. What surprised me is that I didn't mention my parents' divorce at all. Bill's sister talked as well. She told roughly the same story that Bill told two years ago in Jamaica. Back then, I was having trouble keeping all 30 people straight, and I remember wanting to check in again with him about it, but until she started sharing, I'd completely forgotten about it. I felt retrospectively awful about that.

One of the things I liked about Jamaica was that after team time, we could stay up a little late and get to know people better. Between being exhausted and needing to get up at times I wasn't even aware existed, we didn't get to stay up very late. The other thing I liked in Jamaica, and I know this is rare, was that we were almost always one big group working on a single project. In Costa Rica and in Detroit, we split up into smaller groups to tackle lots of projects. I don't feel we got to know each other as well as we did in Jamaica as a result.

On Friday morning, the two staff members debriefed us and then prayed over us in Spanish. They are great women, especially the older one. And the younger one. After that, the cabinet crew finished four of the six doors remaining (also discovering the overnight skew), while other people did work on other projects, worked on making bracelets for the kids, and packed and cleaned. It was kind of inspiring to me to see everyone working on a day with no planned work.

Between work and dinner each of the nights, we played a different sport: first baseball, then soccer, then basketball, then soccer again. While warming up for the baseball game, one of the kids was purposely throwing the ball hard and uncatchable to someone as basebally challenged as I, and one throw hit my wrist and unclasped both sides of my watch. I was ok with this; I'd just go to Fred Meyer's and get the jewelers to fix it for me or something. Usually they do that kind of thing free of charge. Then one of the kids noticed it was broken and tried to fix it. He put the clasp on backwards (not the end of the world), and as soon as I put it on, it broke again. During his second attempt, he dropped one of the pieces in the clasping mechanism, and that was the ball game, so to speak. I might get it fixed, or I might go get myself a nice watch. I liked the watch my mom gave me, but it wasn't as water resistant as it claimed, and eventually I had it replaced with the one that just broke. I didn't like that one as much. I, of course, don't mean to say I was irritated with the boy. I was appreciative that he wanted to try to fix it and nearly succeeded. I'm just telling the story. For the rest of the trip, I've been using it as a pocket watch.

We just boarded our second plane. It was mercifully delayed eighty-three minutes, so getting through customs and grabbing a quick dinner was easy. We ended up sitting next to a (strange) girl at the gate who was from Bothel and actually was going to high school with Joe's cousin. It's a small world after all.

Friday afternoon, we, all the kids, and a bunch of other our-aged volunteers got on two large busses and headed to Bible Camp. They were both overly full and the counselors (called captains at this World Cup themed camp) had to stand, but some of the rows with only two kids invited us to squeeze. One of the kids from my house fell asleep on my lap. He was my favorite kid I think, though he reminded me of my cat in that he's always vying for attention. That can be draining. Our bus got lost on the 40 minute trip, and ended up sitting in traffic for another half hour.

There's too much to write about when it comes to camp. I wasn't one of the captains very often. I was on staff, and mostly worked in the kitchen. The way they had presented it was "creative team" and that we'd be setting up activities. That wasn't quite the case, but it was still fun. Meals were the best times for me. I loved all the dashing around trying to fill 130 plates in a matter of minutes with seven people all occupying the same space, then moving plates that were in reserves up to the front so they didn't get too cold. After the first meal or two, we added another parameter, meal size. Small kids got very small portions, bigger kids got medium, and captains got huge ones. I think the best part of being on staff for me (semi-jokingly) was that after everyone had eaten, we got to fill our own plates, so I didn't have to get stuff that I wasn't going to eat anyway.

We were so drained at the end of each day that team time was severely diminished. People were burnt out on the first day of camp. I burned out on the second day. Mission trips are sprints to missions' marathons. Sprints for more than a week are difficult. It was kind of interesting to see how different people reacted to burning out. Some got emotional. Some slept a lot. Some cut themselves out of activities and such. I forsook God. On my average day, I think I think about God fairly frequently. On mission trips, it's a whole lot more frequently since I'm around people who like to talk about him and who pray. When I burned out, I completely tried to rely on myself. It didn't go too well.

On the first evening of camp, one of our group's favorite kids, whom we would see just wandering around from time to time, found a very large frog (they were common), picked it up by its arms, and flung it Mario-Bowser style yelling, "¡Viva feliz!" The captains couldn't keep a straight face long enough to scold him.

It was a very structured camp with close to no free time. I think the only free time was immediately after meals, which was also medication time. Gringo (green-go) (us, as opposed to tico) captains really just followed the kids around since we didn't really know what was going on. There really wasn't much disciplining either, and the kids seemed to know where the line was. Every now and then, one would act out and a tico would step in. The rest of the time, we were huggers and jungle gyms.

The activity yesterday was sort of a multi-station obstacle course, but the main event was the mud pit. Almost everyone, everyone who wasn't running one of the other stations, was forced in, and covered head to toe. In the first station, spinning in a circle around a pipe and then trying to shoot a goal, I fell after shooting, and skinned my knees. I hope the mud didn't have anything in it my immune system can't fend against. When the pictures get posted to facebook, perhaps I'll link a few. Scott, by the way, is an amazing photographer. He, his girlfriend Justine, KK, and I were the main gringo staff members. The tico staff members were mostly much older than us.

At the end of each night, we all went to the stadium. There they recapped the day with pictures, and sang some songs. One night they played a Moses movie or something. I was feeling crowded and need to be alone for a bit, so I'd left before that started. Last night, though, they all said goodbye to us. The presentation and subsequent hugs must have gone on for thirty or forty minutes. A lot of the kids, and most of the gringo counselors were crying. To my surprise, I was swarmed. I didn't realize I had even been noticed by some of the kids that latched onto me. After all the hugging, one of the girls from my house came up to me and I carried her a bit. Then she told me that since her mom wasn't there to say goodbye, I should call her. That wasn't really feasible, and Jane and I had said our goodbyes to her already, more than once. We'd also written letters to her, though they hadn't been translated yet when we'd left. I hope the letters bless her. I told the girl to tell her my goodbye for me.

I didn't get emotional during the event. I don't know if I kept my distance or what. Not to be morbid, but it felt a lot like Justine's funeral (actual Justine, not aliased Justine). There was a lot of weeping there, too, but I felt surreal and almost happy. I have about eighty more people to get to know in heaven someday. Justine (aliased) was the other gringo that I noticed wasn't in tears. I can't speak for her, and maybe she felt as the others did, but she's the other one that is more business-minded, and less teacher-minded.

Today was pretty uneventful. I count that a plus. I had been looking forward to dropping by Swood's place between the airport and home, but because of the flight delay, I think it'll be too late. Plus I stink like nothing before smelt. I feel bad for the dude next to me. So now I'm looking forward to a nice long bath, some reading, and tomorrow, a clean shirt followed by my mom's place and kitties.

I've decided I really hate being infatuated. I can't think straight, can't act myself, seem unable to break out of my need for approval. It gets in the way of real relationship with the girl, and it gets in the way of my relationship with God. On top of that, I can't really evaluate the merit of a potential relationship with the girl objectively. I find her attractive because I'm attracted to her.

That need for approval, though, I feel is the most disturbing. I fear I'm projecting my lack of a father onto this helpless (in this area) girl. That's not fair, nor healthy. When that approval is granted, as in the case of Denna or Fey, well, I don't know. It actually seemed to go pretty well. But in both those cases, it had nothing to do with me earning the approval. They just liked me before I could attempt to impress them. My mating feathers are ugly and dim-witted. I'm only attractive when I'm confident and not trying to impress, or at least, not trying to leave that kind of impression. Even when I'm confident, I like to be funny, and that's a sort of attempt to impress. I just care less about the results, and thus am more confident. Rinse and repeat.

I need to shave.

Italian Sausage

2010-03-21T23:43:00.000-07:00

Fifteen minutes to journal? Bahahaha.

It's the end of day one: our free day. Typically we'd like to have these at the end of the trip, after all the team bonding, but this was the only way the schedule worked out, and we all are pretty bonded anyway.

Last night we got in around 9:00pm, and it took about an hour to get through immigration, customs, and onto the bus. Customs was far more lax than I've seen in any other country or Hawaii. The customs officer just took each of our forms, briefly glanced at each, and had us throw our stuff through the x-ray scanner. I don't think there was even anyone on the other end in case something was caught.

From there we took a trip with this guy who helps sustain the orphanage. The story goes that he's a brilliant businessman who did quite well in the US, then spent time in Central America, and decided to either start or significantly help this orphanage and a couple others in other countries. Rather than do the administrative stuff, though, he started a business whose profits go to the orphanage, and it's now one of the largest chicken farms in the country.

We got to the orphanage, which is a collection of houses, and got a few instructions. Mostly we just unpacked, found beds, ate pizza, and took in our surroundings. Then we sang a single song as chosen by Joe, and went to bed. (Also I had Jeremiah, who was excited about his alias, read Finally Done Right. He approved of my sharing his stories.) I realized when I took off my shoes before bed, that I'd been wearing them for thirty hours straight. That's a smell I'd like not to repeat.

I've yet to shower since Friday morning, but I plan to after these fifteen minutes are up.

Today we went to the beach. There was an adventure on the way there. We lost a human. There was a tourist pit stop on one side of a bridge. The river beneath the bridge homed several very large crocodiles, and the crocks hang out there because people "fish" for them with whole chickens. Seeing them in the zoo is one thing. Seeing them uncaged, if a good 30 to 40 feet below us, is something else.

From there we went to a ritzy, almost American, grocery store to get drinks and fruit and whatever else. Then we started heading to the beach. Almost there, someone asks, "Where's Leigh?" We do a quick count and realize there are only twenty-one of us. Questions abound. Did anyone see her at the grocery store? I have a vague memory seeing her there next to the cakes, vaguely remember her smiling at me. Someone else remembered talking to her there. So we did a quick u-turn and headed back. Someone asked another relevant question: "Who sat next to Leigh between the bridge and the grocery store." No one raised their hands. I then lacked confidence in my memory. Five guys jumped out and raced into the store. They were long in returning, and without success. Then we stopped and prayed.

Poor Jeremiah was frantic. I've seen him stressed a couple times when things like broken planes came up, but this was an entirely different level. If we hadn't all been feeling worried about Leigh, Jeremiah's flailing would have been funny. (Some of us thought it was funny despite. There was a mix of panic and humor to avoid panic.)

We got back to the crocodile pit and one of the merchants waved us in. Out comes a laughing Leigh. She said that she was uncharacteristically calm about the whole thing, not worried at all. Phillipians comes to mind. Prayer in thankful supplication leads to peace that passes all understanding.

The beach was great. I don't think I'd ever successfully caught a wave while bodysurfing before. A board is still easier and less saltwater-up-the-nose inducing. (This is as far as I got in the allotted 20 minutes.)

After an hour or so in the water, we went looking for food. We ended up at a bar on the beach. It's pretty common in the US for friends to just join a table before ordering, and for people to be indecisive, and then if the table gets too big, to split into two. It doesn't happen all the time, but waiters wouldn't think it too horrendous, would they? Anyway, this is not the case here. Here, you sit down, you order, you eat, you pay, you leave. (I'm exaggerating.) To cut a boring story short, the waiter was not happy with us, and was doing everything he could to hide his vexation. It occurred to me that "funny in that awkward not quite used to our culture sense" was us this time. Also, I still feel like the normal one.

Joe, Derek, Fifa, and Bill were just freestyle rapping in one of the guys' bedrooms. They're amazing. I lack the sense of beat, the ability to talk, and the rhyming to be even close to starting. Other than that, though, give me a few days and I'd catch up. They each took a turn on the way home from the beach too. Crazy folks.

On the way home, we stopped by a fruit stand. I sampled a couple things I didn't recognize, but didn't buy anything. Lots of people bought mangos. I don't know if I'm missing out or not by not getting any. I just didn't want any. Do you force a "cultural experience" for the sake of the experience? Will I be any better or worse off for doing it? I've had other mango before. It's alright, but among my least favorite fruits. It's not sweet enough.

Something I realized about myself on the drive back was two more situations where I don't act myself. I don't actually maintain a list, but if I did, bipolar episode would be on it. These additions are one, when in groups larger than five or six, and two, when I'm around someone with whom I'm infatuated. The first case, I think, is what made youth group and bible studies always so awkward for me. It has its exceptions, like at the end of mission trips and conferences when I'm really close to everyone, or at Fir Creek when I'm most myself around a few counselors regardless of the twenty kids around us. I think maybe I don't try to impress kids, so they don't count toward the quota. The second case is probably why I've only ever found a girlfriend when I wasn't really looking for one, or was looking at the wrong girl. It's quite irksome, because around someone with whom I'm infatuated is the time I most want to act myself.

We got back, and even as we drove up, droves of kids ran out to the bus. I'd kind of hoped for a shower before dinner, but that was pretty out of the question, especially if everyone had similar hopes. It's fairly common knowledge that mothers in Central America will be offended if you don't eat what's on your plate, and before Wednesday, that was my greatest concern about the trip. I don't do well with rice or beans or potatoes. That's a lot of what they eat here, especially the first two. I was told to tell the mom "un pico," "a little." I'd planned on just swallowing it with a gulp of water.

So we got our three person group house assignments, only Jane and I were the only ones with only two people. (I believe Leigh's boyfriend, the guy who had his mind changed, was originally in our group.) That also left us without a translator, but it worked out perfectly because our house is the only one with a longer term volunteer from Connecticut who's been here a couple months. She's now 85% fluent, and helped us get through dinner. I told the mom that I really only eat a very little amount, especially of rice and beans. She gave me the same portion as everyone else, with a slightly diminished portion of salad. Also, instead of water we got something I don't recognize. It looked like apple juice from concentrate but poorly stirred, and it tasted a little like barley tea, which to me tastes like watered down ash, thus eliminating my swallow-it-like-a-pill method. The salad was fantastic, though different from any I've had before. The only beans I tasted, and I almost couldn't keep them down, were what had been stuck on the apple slices in the salad. The rice must have rated an 8 where 1 is already amazing, because I really enjoyed the taste, overpowering the texture that usually gets me. Still, it's a starch, and like the starches I normally enjoy, it filled me up quick, and an hour later I was starving. This is why I brought a years's worth of granola bars, energy bars, and dried fruit.

Anyway, she didn't seem offended at all that I couldn't finish. In fact, when I mentioned that I don't even like rice, but enjoyed hers, we began the ever-entertaining conversation about how picky I am. She told me on Tuesday I would have toast and jam and fruit. Bless her. Tomorrow night the moms of the orphanage are meeting, so there will be subs, which causes chaos enough. Adding us to the mix would be problematic. So! our group is having a barbecue.

My house has five boys, five girls, and two older children-by-birth. The kids kept trying Spanish on me. I'm impervious. Two of the boys have the same name. During dinner, they kept trying to ask me questions, but I was at a loss, and Jane and our translator were at the girls' table. Every now and then the girls' table would quiet and I'd have a turn being able to understand a question. Eventually they gave up and the kid closest to me just imitated my eating and drinking, which was rather entertaining. After dinner, we got a tour of the house. I was freaking out a little internally because I had no idea what to do next. Normally they have devotional after dinner, but because it's Sunday, they had church already. What am I supposed to do with ten excited kids that I don't understand? Then one of the boys pulled out a chess board. Awesome.

They seemed like normal kids to me. I hadn't really thought about, in regards to everyday-living, how a sexually abused kid would act, but I think if I had, I would imagine them reliving the trauma continuously. Thank God this is not the case.

At eight o'clock, we left and gathered for team time, which ended with fifteen minutes for journaling.

Finally Done Right

2010-03-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

This hat has history. I couldn't find my hat today, while I was packing. It's my hat because it's the only one that has ever fit me well, so well, in fact, that when my dad, with a similar problem, offered me $50 for it, I refused. But the hat I have on me has history. I got it at my first Mariner's game, with Luigi and his family, back when the King Dome was still standing. We won that game 17-4, and were leaving right as a grand slam was hit. I got to see it, but everyone else with us left prematurely and missed the indoor fireworks. I remember before the game, Luigi's dad insisted that we get candy at the store. I tried to refuse, but he almost seemed angry. I later learned that's just how he acts.

We're on the plane to Charlotte right now. Why we have to go all the way across the country when Costa Rica is only halfway across, I'm not sure. Houston or Dallas would make a lot more sense to me.

It still has yet to really hit me that we're actually on our way there. That's just how I am, but it's certainly a lot closer on this trip, than it was at the airport (or on the plane) on the way to Jamaica. I think it mostly was the last meeting we had, last Wednesday. We got a secondary education professor from Western, who was also a trauma specialist, to talk to our group. He was really down to earth, and you'd probably think he talked weird if you didn't realize the gravity of the whole situation. I walked in ten or fifteen minutes late. Traffic on the way up from Redmond was a bit worse than the last two times. So, it took me a few minutes to fully grasp what was being talked about.

What I say next is ... hard. I can't remember if I blogged about it or not a year ago, and I know that if I did, it wouldn't have been the full thing. A year ago, though, a couple women from LatR and I went to see a "Rockumentary" about human trafficking. I guess I'll just out and say it. I wanted to kill the slavers and the people who used their slaves. How can man have sunk so low? Sunk, past tense, is probably the wrong word. It seems like this has been an issue since the beginning. But how in this day and age, with all our talks of equality and freedom and liberty, how can we allow this to go on?

In the fifth season of the West Wing (skip this paragraph if you plan to watch it and haven't gotten there yet), Donna is on a trip to Gaza, and on her last day there, her car gets hit by a road-side bomb. She almost dies, but makes it to the hospital in time. Meanwhile, Josh is distraught, and while senior staff and national security are talking outside the oval, they're all talking about possible retaliation. Josh says, "We need to kill them. We need to kill the people who made the bomb. We need to kill the people who planted the bomb. And then we need to kill everyone who was happy about it."

I hadn't realized at the time that human trafficking was just another humanitarian fad. It makes me sick. How can we sit idly by? I know it's easier. I'm guilty of it. But why is this not a high priority in Washington, where we hire people to do hard things with our hard-earned money? The thing is, it's not even just an issue abroad in "remote countries" in Africa. It happens here. It happens in the liberal, well-adjusted city of Seattle, and in Tacoma. I'm sure it happens in every port, which I guess means it happens in Bellingham, and possibly Port Orchard. You can't hit more home to me than those four cities.

Anyway, human trafficking was not intended to be the focus of this post, not that my posts ever really have a focus. Except the last one.

Since that night and until Thursday, I'd never felt that urge to kill again. Then one of the guys, we'll call Jeremiah, who went to Costa Rica this past summer, told a couple stories about the kids we're going to "help." The first was a kid who was reading a book while sitting on his lap. Then one of the adults came in and said something in a raised voice (in Spanish), and the kid scampered off to his room. Evidently that kid wasn't ready for physical touch yet, after his abuse. He couldn't yet associate any touch at all as non-sexual. In the next, a girl of five, her first night at the orphanage, woke up in the middle of the night, stripped, and walked into her foster parents' room. She got up on the bed, and woke the man, and said, "I'm ready." At the age of five. Trauma, by definition, cannot be put into words, and clearly mine have failed. How can we, mere privileged kids in and just out of college, help these kids? There's some small, though it ought to be large, comfort that it is God who is helping, and we are merely his vessels, or vassals.

It didn't really hit me until the next day, but on the way to my mom's to drop off my cats, I began to think a bit more about these stories. I thought about what kind of people could do this to these defenseless children. And I decided they should die. This is a disturbing thought coming from someone who professes himself a Christian. If this isn't the first post you've read of mine, you know that I've had some pretty dark thoughts. This was not these. This was not tainted the same way bipolar thoughts are. I was listening to Brave Saint Saturn, and especially during the Anti-Meridian songs (Starling, These Frail Hands, Invictus), I just burst into tears on the freeway. These are just two stories from one guy, while still in Washington. How much harder will this be among the actual victims?

Raise your souls up to the sky
Why must helpless creatures die?

I've never agreed with people who value children over adults. A life is a life. There's the notion that children are innocent, but none are innocent; all have fallen short of the glory of God. I would say, however, that sexual abuse, or really any abuse, against children is worse than it is against adults, because adults have at least some capacity to know they don't actually deserve this, to know that this is not what love is. Kids say, "I'm ready."

I don't know, don't think, that even with the opportunity, I would or even could actually kill someone. I think it would be easier to light them on fire with my mind, but 22 years trying (to light inanimate objects) with no success is a discouraging precedent.

There is no good segue to nicer things.

After the meeting, I ended up eating at Courtney's and her roommates' place for Saint Patrick's Day. I used to hate corned beef. This was rather good. I still abstained from the cabbage though. Bill and Scott ate quickly and then went off to their Bible study. After that began talking, card games, and drinking. It was just a genuinely good time. We listened to some good music, and a lot of bad music. (Such were the opinions of the other males in the room. I didn't really care one way or another, though if I were alone, I'd probably not listen to any of what was played early on. I did try to analyze some of the music theory -- common beats, sequences of notes, et cetera. If only I knew any music theory.)

There was a girl there, I gathered a foreign exchange student, who was quite funny in that awkward not quite used to our culture sense. There was nothing wrong with her sense of humor, but she had that and then the other thing as well. There was one point during the evening though, that we were talking about drugs (not the helpful kind), and she said that back in her home country, she did some. It's not like she went on and on about it or anything, but I could tell she was trying to explain it all because she was feeling judged, and in fact, at the end, apologized for it because she "didn't want [us] to judge [her]." At that point, every Christian in the room erupted, broken from our trances, with "we're not judging you." Yeah, we were. It wasn't deliberate but, well, let's face it, we've never been in that situation (at least I haven't), and it wasn't a healthy situation, and I have some amount of pride that, by choice, I've never been in that situation. I don't think any of us straight out thought, "you bad person you," and truthfully the reason we were in the trance was because we couldn't relate. For me, though, it was something else entirely. It was like we responsible Americans were her parents or moral superiors somehow. Like, we knew drugs were bad and we wanted to teach this poor person from another country how to live. That's something I have to continually work at. People who aren't as fluent in the language as I am aren't stupid, but subconsciously, I somehow see them as slower. Sometimes it makes working at Microsoft hard.

I got one of the guys there hooked on Seabird. Their second disk is as good as their first, if you've not bought your copy yet. Before we listened to them, we were listening to a group called the Black Keys, I think. What little I heard of them, I enjoyed, so I might have to test an album of theirs when I get back.

We're now at Charlotte Airport. Some of us are trying to sleep. I tried for a while and gave up. A bunch of us got Jamba Juice for like three times the normal price, but alas, I set mine on a chair, and it fell somehow. Then the bottom got punctured, and I ended up being able to drink about half of it. I suppose there are worse fates in life.

My knees are killing me. They just do that sometimes, but it's unpleasant. When this happened when I was younger, my mom said I was growing. I don't think I'm growing anymore, at least not top to bottom. A few hours later now, Leigh, after reading what was written before this point, gave me Tylenol and I feel much better.

It's completely irrational, but over the past couple weeks, I've had this sinking feeling that I won't be returning from Costa Rica. Again, just a feeling. The odds that it comes true are close to nil, and probably independent from the feeling entirely, like rolling two dice and ending up with the same number.

Another many hours later now. Maybe my irrational fear (though to be quite honest, I was never afraid; indeed I was quite at peace) had some merit. Shortly after the paragraph before this one, they announced that the plane (757) that had just arrived was undergoing some between-flight tests and had some mechanical difficulties. This meant they had to find a new plane and a new crew for us. The one they found, for two hours later, was an A320 which is a good fifteen seats fewer in capacity. They basically held a raffle, and those who couldn't fit would have to fly tomorrow. I believe six of us did not keep our seats, including our fearless logistical leader, Jeremiah. Meanwhile, they allowed the ability to volunteer one's seat for a night in a hotel, meals, and $550 in US Airways credit toward one's next flight. Some of these volunteers got on the next plane that day that had a stop in Florida. The rest had to wait until tomorrow. Twelve total volunteers came up, and all six of our people were lucky enough to receive the newly opened seats.

Of course, the new plane didn't quite leave on its newly scheduled time, maybe 45 minutes late. We got into the air, and then about 45 minutes into the flight, at 17,000 feet, the plane started a sharp turn. The turn continued 180 degrees, my stomach hating every bit of it. Then the pilot spoke over the intercom that there was a minor hydraulics failure, that it wasn't a big deal, but because the runways in Costa Rica aren't as good as the ones in Charlotte, we were turning around.

People were pretty upset at this point, as you might imagine. Surprisingly to me, I kept my cool. I guess I kind of figure that I donated this time, these eleven days, completely to God, and if God wants us to spend it in airports, that's up to him. Our group, mostly, was just tired, rather than angry. Some passengers, though, had booked non-refundable $3000 cruises.

The next, hopefully final, plane got in on time, but we started boarding when we were supposed to be taking off. I don't remember much after boarding, because mercifully, I found sleep. I do remember the pilot (a new pilot) saying over the intercom that we had roughly a 45 minute delay while still on the tarmac because two people hadn't reboarded. On international flights, by US law, if people don't board, but do have checked bags, they have to locate the bags and remove them from the plane. I agree that it's both safe and practical to do that, but today just wasn't our day for traveling. It turns out the people who got to Costa Rica quickest were the first ones to volunteer with the stop down in Miami. That last plane is where we are now, with about 90 minutes remaining.

One of the guys who was supposed to come on the trip felt very strongly, suddenly, a few weeks ago that he should not, and instead should spend spring break recording with his dad (he's a music artist). Before boarding the circular flight, Leigh talked to him on the phone, and his grandfather, long in coming, could possibly die today, so we prayed for that situation, and also thanked God that he did not come on this trip. From what little I heard, it sounded like the guy was fairly ready for this, but his dad was a wreck. A psalm came to mind, but I don't think it's very fitting for the situation. Joe disagreed though, when I told him about it.

The Lord reigns
Let the earth be glad
Let the distant shores rejoice
Clouds and thick darkness surround him
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his thrown
A fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side
His lightning lights up the world
The earth sees and trembles
The mountains melt like wax before the Lord
Before the Lord of all the earth,
the heavens proclaim his righteousness
and all peoples will see his glory!

Going back to before the trip, on Thursday I had to drop off my cats at my mom's place. Thursday night was lonely, and Friday morning, I kept thinking that my cats were the cause of noises, or that it was odd that they hadn't run across my keyboard that morning and woken my computer up from hibernate mode, or that their food dish was empty so I had better feed them. I hadn't realized how much I like having my cats. Sometimes I wish I had only gotten one of them, because they are a handful and a half, but to pick now would be incredibly difficult.

I told my mom about the murderous (or castraterous) thoughts. I guess I hadn't told her that the orphanage we're helping is for sexually abused kids. She kind of calmed my nerves a bit. I knew I wasn't psychotic--I didn't revel in the execution of their deaths--but the thoughts still worried me. The people whom I've had read this so far seem to have similar thoughts. They never outright said thoughts of execution, so maybe that's just me, but certainly of anger and grief. Thursday night, my mom told Jack what the orphanage was geared towards, and he pretty immediately said that the abusers should be castrated. He's a pretty dang liberal guy, too. That helped a bit.

On the way home, I stopped at Swood's to watch our weekly TV. At four o'clock on Friday, I was several hours done packing, just watching Law & Order repeats, and txted him, inviting myself over. We watched Dulalalala (a confusing, yet entertaining anime) and played some Smash Bros, before I headed to Minnie's to pick up another guy on our trip, onto my grandpa's, and finally to the airport.

I think that is probably enough for one post. We should be landing here soon. If I have internet access tonight, I'll post this after having Jeremiah read it. I haven't asked permission to retell his stories.

Bunny Crab Cow

2010-03-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

I really feel like writing (hence the post), but I seriously have nothing to write about. This has happened before, and I usually end up writing quite a lot, and it's usually fairly good, yet I'm apprehensive about this. So I guess I'll see if this gets posted, and if you're reading it, then I guess it did. Unless, I decide to have someone else read it before I post and you're that person, and then they say, "This is crap," and you never get to read it. I'd say "But I digress," but I'm seriously considering making this the primary focus of this post.

I've been having really vivid dreams lately, though I don't remember much of them in the mornings. The vivid dreams part has happened before, but the not remembering at least most of one is new. If there's a purpose to the dreams, not being able to remember them kind of defeats it. The latest one of which I still remember bits and pieces included Hime and a high school rival of hers fighting over something, but then joining forces when a pig on a motorcycle showed up singing a show tune about being the real measure of a man -- a Persian man -- riding straight up a large totem pole and breaking off all the decorative limbs. That would actually seem pretty normal to me except that the vivid portion was the entire song he sang, and how it was actually as decent as any other garden variety show tune, and yet has never been written. Something similar (in my mind) happened when I dreamt that my pastor was talking about his sermon series and how a lot of what he was talking about was covered in such-and-such books (including Mere Christianity which I'm currently reading) but the "such-and-such" were actual titles and authors that sounded right. Of course now I can't remember the titles to find out if they existed and thus I divined them. I doubt it. I don't know which would be crazier -- that they actually exist, or that I pulled book titles out of thin air while dreaming. I don't think I could even do that while awake.

Is it still epiphany if someone teaches you the thought that came? Is epiphany the part where everything clicks together, hits home, or is it the spontaneous, "So that's why cats sniff fingers!"? Anyhow, every week at church something new makes sense. Romans 8:1 stuck out to me tonight. "Therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ." For whatever reason I always took this to mean when we died, or from God's perspective while we're still on earth. That's not what it says though. It says there is no condemnation period. Not from other people, and not from ourselves. All we need do is confess our sins. I think a lot of people don't confess, or put off confessing, for fear of condemnation, but if there is none, what is there to stop us? And if there is nothing stopping us, then "He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." What's great about that verse (1 John 1:9) is the word cleanse. It's not just forgiveness, not just -- there really is no other word as deep as forgive -- but to clean, purify, makes us new. Anyway, I found tonight's sermon practical and eye-opening. One thing he mentioned is that people in Christ are quick to confess and slow to justify. I frequently find myself imagining being pulled over because I'm speeding or whatever, and rather than just telling the officer, "Yeah, I was wrong," I end up on this logical tirade about the spirit of the law and how it was actually better that I was doing whatever it was that I was doing.

The last few nights I've been pinging random friends on facebook that I haven't talked to in a while if ever. It's got me thinking about all the friends I don't still talk to, and even the ones I now only talk to over the internet. It got me kind of depressed, because I have a lot of friends that I care dearly about, but will probably never see again. That's a sobering thought. And then it suddenly struck me that I'll see them in heaven. I don't know in what capacity, but sometimes it doesn't even matter if I'm talking to them, and just being around them would be nice. Proximity is an interesting thing.

I'm leaving for Costa Rica on Friday. It's so weird to me that it's happening this week, and is no longer a while into the future. I think the oddest part is that it actually happened. This wasn't organized by an organization that does these regularly or anything. This was a couple guys being asked by another guy to organize a trip of twenty or so people to come do some work for an orphanage, and five months later, here we are. The whole work situation around the trip (mostly just taking vacation) has got me thinking about last summer with the summer camp, and whether or not I want to do it again this summer. The few I've talked to are strongly in favor of it. First I'm not sure I have enough vacation. I probably do. I should have had about four and a half weeks by then had I not gone on the mission trip, and the mission trip is only 9 days, so I should still have three weeks left. Yeah, there's nothing stopping me there. I guess I'm just feeling non-committal right now. Also Hime has a job at a bank now, so she won't be there, not that she's the sole reason for me to go. I wonder how she'd react if I did go again, while she couldn't.

I've been thinking lately about my future children, sometimes a son, sometimes a daughter, depending on the instance. Wondering what it would be like if my son ever asked how many girlfriends I had before "Mommy." Would I go into all the details of each relationship, Ted Mosby style? I can't imagine answering a flat seven or whatever the number would be by then. I suddenly feel weird. I'm going to stop writing now.

Theory for the Moment

2010-02-27T02:00:00.000-08:00

I ate too many Thin Mints.

I was doing so well in early January with the frequent posting. No longer being on vacation was probably the reason for that end. Yet another thing the masses can blame Microsoft for. Microsoft: multipurpose scapegoat.

Lots of things have happened. Thirty-six, in fact. But where to begin, or rather, where to continue after my dramatic, yet enlightening first sentence.

I'm getting more plugged in at church. That's been good. A few weekends ago, I attended a Post College/Early Career retreat at Cascades Camp in Yelm. Ashley used to go there for summer camp when she was younger. I can see why she enjoyed it so much more than Miracle Ranch, though, we stayed in hotel-quality rooms, whereas I'm pretty sure she was in lodges. My goal for the trip was to meet people, and considering I went and literally knew not a person there, it would be hard not to call that a realistic goal. The theme of the weekend was "change," which was perfect seeing as how this is the first time in years that I've felt relatively stable in my situation. I spent a lot of the time wondering if God had a reason beyond meeting people for me to be there, and on the last evening, it occurred to me that my circumstances aren't changing, but I am. At least, at the time I thought I was.

The first night, the speaker asked if anyone trusted him simply because he was a pastor. I did, so I raised my hand, not realizing that he was asking for a volunteer. So I went up there and we did a trust fall, only I had to close my eyes. And then he started walking away, and I could tell he was walking away because he kept talking as he did it. Then he told me to fall back, and it turned out he had silently got another guy to stand behind me. It fit his talking point pretty well, basically saying that we need to trust God even if he doesn't catch us the way we expect, or it doesn't look like he will. I feel a little deceptive though, because when I heard him starting to walk away, I figured it out pretty quickly that he was getting someone else, which still would have been a major trust thing--not blind faith, but trust that he was doing as I had figured--except that I heard the guy snicker quietly at something the pastor said, confirming my suspicions. What's weird though, and one person I talked to noticed this, is I still involuntarily tried to catch myself. Since I'd been called up there, everyone knew my name, and for the rest of the weekend, I was trying to play catch up with an already-feeble name-remembering mind.

I think I can remember at least four or five people, besides the people in my small group, that I got to know at least a bit. The rest really were a blur. Somehow my synesthesia came up in one of the ice breakers, and the girl who was my teammate in Team Nertz got really interested in it, along with three or four others. I'll break my aliasing rule here with the first person I told about it, who was Sarah (and not my teammate). The first time she asked what color her name was, I said green. Then she got the other girls around me and asked again and I said red. That really bothered me, even though I had told them that it's not deterministic. It bothers me that I feel like I'm making all this up, even though I know I'm not. So it kept eating at me into the next week until I figured it out. It depends on how the person says it. It seems to alternate between hunter green and burnished red, and it all depends on the inflection of the first syllable. Exaggerating for effect, if the person says "sear-ah", it's green, but if they say "sarr-ah" it's red. Obviously, it's just "Sarah" and "Sarah," but I guess I pick up on very minor differences in the sound.

The next Friday after the retreat, the PCEC group had an Olympics Opening Ceremony get together at one of the guys' apartments. I think about half of us had been on the trip, and the other half were new. I got to know a couple people a bit better.

I had been hoping my Nertz partner was going to go to the Olympics thing. She had expressed interest, and she seemed cool for the time we spent together. She, like everyone else does at one point or another, called me Justin by accident. So from then until the end of the trip, we were Team Justin, as Justin was neither of our names. After Nertz, we played some Taboo, and it's like our minds were melded on a few of the rounds.

Also, outside of the PCEC group, I attended the church's Foundations class, which is required for membership, and is basically a three-lecture series on the history and vision of the church, followed by twenty minutes of question and answer time with the pastor. On the second week, a question was brought up, and the pastor kind of dodged it because he was going to cover it in the third week, but then there were technical difficulties in the first two (simultaneous) services and he had to give his sermon twice, meaning he couldn't do question and answer time with us, and we never got the answer. The church's core beliefs don't mention Heaven or Hell anywhere. Clearly the pastor believes in both, and teaches regularly with both in mind, so it's kind of odd that they don't show up in the list. At the end of the third week, I filled out the form for beginning the membership process, and one of the requirements is getting involved in some sort of ministry, so that'll be good for me, even if I don't know what it'll be yet. I really don't want to do powerpoint. When I meet with my membership sponsor, I'm sure we'll go over some options.

I just remembered another reason I haven't been posting lately, and that's that I accidentally lost my blog layout while trying to make a couple minor improvements. Every single time I think, "do I need to save this?" and choose no, I end up losing it. You'd think I'd learn. The mistake was having three versions of the template open at once, and one was very old. I accidentally copied that old version into the official template box, thinking it was the one with my new changes, and clicked save, because the preview button wasn't working. It was something like that anyway. Somehow I didn't have the newest version with my newest changes open, and so I lost them. Then I got sad and didn't post for a while.

A couple months ago, I started watching the West Wing again with the Agathons. I believe I've mentioned this before. Then Christmas break happened and they were out of the state and we were all busy, so I didn't see them for a bit. Meanwhile, I needed my fix, and now I'm more than halfway through the last season. Again. They're still in season 3, I believe, and I'll go back and watch it with them. I'm so weak willed.

Swood and I went snow boarding a few weekends ago. Neither of us had been up since my parents took us up to Crystal my first year in college. We didn't last very long either, so very out of shape. He had a better excuse than I did, which was that he was trying out some used boots that his coworker was trying to sell, but they were too small. I just ran out of steam suddenly on like my 5th or 6th run. It was fun, and worth the money, but I wish I had more endurance in the calves.

I was really hoping I'd get a promotion back in January. It didn't happen though. Maybe I was hearing what I wanted to hear, but it seemed like I would have, had we had the budget. My boss says that if I maintain my current direction, he'll submit my candidacy for promotion in July. It's not that I really need the money, or even want it (though I do want a house soon), but it's not good to stay at my level for more than a year, and it'll have been two for me.

Work is going well though. We're expanding a bit, so I get my own office again here soon. I'm not quite eligible for a window office, but there's no surprise there. I think the bar is four years for this coming shift. We got a new member on our team whom I really like. He transferred from somewhere else in Microsoft so he has more seniority than I do, so it's interesting being more senior within the group but less senior as a dev, and seeing what he inherently understands and what he needs explained. Recently, I've been put on some more challenging tasks, specifically having to do with C++. I finished three major tasks this milestone, checking in the last one early today. My boss gave me a box of Thin Mints as reward. Then I ate too many of them at Swood's place.

I started up WoW again. I just renewed my subscription a couple days ago, starting my second consecutive month for the second time ever. Usually I'm bored after the first month. I got my druid from 10 to 56 in the first month, and now he's 58 and ready to move into the Outlands. Soon I will have bird form and be able to laugh at all the people who had to spend 600g on flying mounts. Seriously, why bother with any of the other classes? Druids are just going to be better anyway.

I also restarted Mass Effect since the second one just came out. Helo has played it through a few times and told me none of the side quests are worth it. Now having beaten it without doing a single side quest, I can see why he says that. The first time I attempted it, I got so very bored wandering around doing things I didn't really care about for no real incentive. Then I got stuck on one of the missions, though at the time, I thought I had chosen a planet at random for a side quest. On the second time through, it turned out it was the mission to save Liara. Go figure. Also, I accidentally pressed the R button (rather than the R trigger) while in the Mako and discovered its cannon. That would have been useful before. That game poses some interesting decisions. One of the things I don't like about the Batman movies, even though I think they're great, is that he's placed in impossible and unjust situations with no right answer. This game has a few similar spots. I bought the second one today, and if you've beaten the first one, you can load your character into the second one and it changes the storyline a bit. I talked to Helo and asked him a few questions about the decisions I made. One was right at the end, and I don't much care for the consequences so I think I'll load right before the final boss and change some history before going on. I wonder what the second game will do with it. Maybe the first history disappears, or maybe it says "I see what you did there." My guess is the game does an autosave behind the scenes as you beat it, and then whatever happened in that save is what gets loaded into game two. Since there's only one autosave slot, the first history would be overwritten. On a side note, Amazon has gotten amazing. I bought Mass Effect 2 this morning around 11am, and it was at the base of my door when I got home at 4:30.

I've been doing less reading than I did over the break, but it's been a different type of book too. When the pastor blogged about Taproot Theater's rendition of the Great Divorce, I decided to read the book. It's really short, but now one of my favorites. I wanted to see the play, too, but I never got around to it. The theme of the book is that Hell is as much man's choice as it is God's wrath. It went through numerous scenarios of how these various people all decided they can't like Heaven. The first guy doesn't want to be in a place that accepts murderers even if they have repented and he and his victim are on good terms now and everything. Another guy just wants what's due him, but can't see that no one is due Heaven. It's quite brilliant.

After that, I picked up Mere Christianity again. I first started reading it in 9th grade, but then school ended, and with it, silent reading and I never picked it up again. He starts it out well, and the way he laid down his arguments reminded me a lot of a transactional database, quite possibly because I work with them. In a transaction, you do a bunch of work and then commit it all at once, so that if something bad happens in the middle, you're not in this inconsistent, wrong state. It just reverts back to how it was before you started the transaction. So, Lewis starts out by doing a bunch of quick transactions. He makes a statement, and then proves it. Commit. Statement, commit. Then a he starts taking a little longer, and he builds up quite a bit, then brings it back home to connect with what he already has committed, and adds that to his database. You can also think of it as like a construction project. He builds his foundation first in quick, flat layers, then starts to build the framework. However, after he has this framework, he kind of abandons it and assumes the building is built. He starts a new transaction and makes a bunch of arguments, then never ties them back down to what he already has, and moves on without ever committing. That bothered me a lot. Now I'm into chapters where I don't agree with at least a portion of what he's saying. It's not necessarily bad to read something you disagree with, but when you're going in, expecting to agree with it all, even in a "I know it's right even if I don't like it" sort of way, it's a little discouraging. The latest thing I've disagreed with is that he says that God only looks internally at your decisions, and not at the outward magnitude of the consequences. If you were brought up in a horrible, cruel fashion and end up murdering a thousand people, but refrain from the ten thousand deaths a "lesser man" would have committed, that person is actually better in God's eyes than the silver spooned man who lets his neighbor go hungry. (Lewis didn't actually say this, but it's what I extrapolated.) I think God must look at both the internal struggle and decisions as well as the size and depth of the consequences.

Before these two books, I was at the beginning of the second book in A Song of Ice and Fire. The first one, Alexander loaned me, and I need to give it back to him. The second, I bought in electronic version from Barnes and Noble. I don't have a Nook, so I've just been using my phone, but the LCD doesn't do great things for the eyes for sustained reading like that. I really want an eReader, but I'm not sure which one I want to get, nor am I sure I have the money right now.

'Tis the season to do your taxes. I tried out the online version of TurboTax and wasn't particularly impressed. The free version seems well and good, but because of my stock awards and sales, I'd have to upgrade to the $15 version or whatever, only, when I had it connect to Fidelity to download my information, it got it wrong and basically counted twice all the income I had put into stock, and so ended up saying I still owed the government $1100. When I manually corrected it, it dropped down to $188, but I'm not sure that value is right either. Tomorrow I'm going to my mom's and until last year, she'd always done our family's taxes herself, so she has some experience. I'll see what value I (or we) end up with, and if it's not less than 0, Swood's dad offered to do my taxes for $20. The only reason I might still owe money like TurboTax said, is that I sold a bunch of stock to give toward the Costa Rica trip in December, but didn't donate it all until January, so I can't count it towards last year's write-offs.

Well, it's getting late, and despite the short length of this post, I'm heading to bed.

Fingernails

2010-01-02T04:59:00.001-08:00

It's 3am. I guess now's as good a time as any to start a blog post, a post whose predecessors took an average of four hours apiece. I'm sure this one won't take that long, because I already have it all written out in my head. They say people can only keep track of seven things at once. I've got 3700 words, so beat that with a trout and smoke it.

First off, I think I should write a bit of a disclaimer here. I'm by no means an authoritative voice when it comes to theology. Super Mario RPG, yes, theology, no. What I've written, and will likely keep writing, are just what I'm dealing with, my thoughts in the order the neurons send them to my fingertips. I'm sure that early in most paragraphs, I make a faulty assumption, and then the rest of the paragraph can and should be disregarded entirely. Also, though I always thought I did, I don't enjoy arguing about close to anything, among the least, theology. I like discussing it, but as soon as it crosses some invisible line I can't even define, I get frustrated and no matter how right or wrong you or I may be, I'll basically completely ignore any further statements made. This, of course, is not relevant, as no one has really read my blog except those couple whom I've asked to, and they didn't argue. Still, just a warning. This is the last one you get before I release the hounds. The hounds of silent treatment. Their bite is worse than their bark.

That said, I did have both Bill and my mom read Always Winter, Never Christmas. They had some interesting insight, my mom especially. She pointed out something I knew even as I typed, that my view of God--a general rather than a father--is almost exactly how I view my dad. I don't really know what to make of that, but I suppose as of twenty-seven hours ago, I am free to pick a counselor of my choosing, so perhaps I shall get on that.

One thing I've considered in regards to my free gift paradox is that accepting Christ into your life is a change. The gift itself is a changed life, so how can changing your life be a cost? If I give you a Wii, is it a cost that you now have to own a Wii? When I was quoting Paul, saying that we're being given a gift and a call to die, I was speaking of dying to one's self, so we can live as Christ, live by the spirit. I had hoped that was obvious, but neither Bill nor my mom, smart people each, read it that way.

I did, in fact, get the answer I was looking for when I purchased Birthright per my pastor's suggestion. It was as he said in his email, too, though the book had more explanation. The night I read the answer, I tried to summarize it and post, but words failed me. I'll try again, but I bet I won't get it right, and you should just go buy and read it yourself. Essentially, being "born again" isn't just metaphoric or ceremonial, but literal. Jesus spells it out, but for some reason I thought he was talking somehow abstractly whenever I'd read it. It turns out Nicodemus was smarter than I am. God makes everything new, and when we're born again, we literally have a spirit born in us. I haven't figured out whether our spirit was dead and the Spirit breathed life into it, or if there was nothing there at all, and our spirit is then birthed, but it's one or the other. It's interesting that he uses the word "born" rather than "revived"--or more accurately vivified, as our spirits were never alive in the first place. That leads me to believe that there was nothing there, and then there was, like a baby. However, there are a ton of verses that say things like "while we were dead in our transgressions," which push me the other way. Anyway, this is just half the answer, and it's one or the other, so I'm not worrying about what was there before, and am instead considering what's there now, and why this is significant. It turns out that this spirit is what is eternal, what lives on with God in heaven. At the same time, it is who we truly are. It's what God made us to be, and it's not a clone. I've not studied too much, nor gone much further in the book, but I would assume this spirit, then, has all of our personality, but perfected, and all of our quirks, but without sin. We have a holy spirit that is each of us, when we become born again Christians, a child of the Holy Spirit, a child of God. Somehow this is harder for me to grasp than the Trinity. So, freedom from sin--no longer being slaves to sin--means that we can now live lives that are truly ours; we can be ourselves, but who we are has in fact changed. It is in our heavenly nature to now be sinless, and when we do things that agree with our nature, we're… happier people. More joyful people.

In explaining this, Needham walked through several different scenarios, or rather one scenario played out with different approaches with outwardly the same outcome. He asks us to imagine being tempted to watch something on TV that invokes some sort of lust--sexual, material, what have you--and you resist. In every one but the last one, and I've played all of them out at one point in my life or another, you're left feeling guilty. It's a come from behind victory that you probably couldn't pull off again, and leaves you weakened. It's concave up. We want an oppressive victory, oppressive toward the fallen, sinful nature, a victory where we're on the top looking down, grabbing and smothering evil, rather than trying to stand up under it. In all the first run-throughs, the thought process leads to denying our own sin nature, this nature we have engrained in ourselves. In the last one, we're agreeing with our heavenly nature, and being true to ourselves, which is what makes this a victory. It reminds me of a sermon I heard at Life at the Ridge about a year ago. "We can't say no to something unless we know what we're saying yes to."

While this is a fairly major break through for me, until I've devoted a lot more thought-time to it and really start living it out, I don't think much will improve in my spiritual life. Also, I really need to start having quiet times. I hate that phrase because it's a cliché, but what are you going to do? I need to read my Bible and I need to pray. I was telling my mom, as she and I worked through my last post, that I felt like God was a manager who put instructions on a poster up on the wall, and then skipped town. I know what I'm supposed to do generally, but not specifically, and not like I know what I'm supposed to do at Microsoft under the fairly constant guidance of my Microsoft manager. "I want my weekly one-on-one." My mom quickly responded that I can't meet with God without talking and listening to Him.

I just have such trouble reading the Bible. It's dry and deep, and I never seem to pull out the meaning that I'm supposed to. Maybe it takes practice. I also find myself distracted a verse or two in, thinking about just about anything else. Sometimes, it's a completely different point about God, and I end up on rabbit trails. I don't then know whether that was divine intervention or unholy intervention or neither.

Last Sunday I'd nearly given up. There are some dark thoughts people can think up, and I was thinking up some of the darker ones on Saturday night. Frustration with faith and life can so easily lead to hopelessness and despair. I almost didn't go to church. I'd gone to the Christmas eve service four days before, and the friend that usually goes with me now was busy. I concave-up convinced myself to get in the car, though, and God met me at the service. It was no mere coincidence that the sermon was "The Gospel as Longing." It talked a lot about joy and what it means. It didn't offer the answers I'm seeking, not wholly, but during communion, God met me and gave me the hope to carry on.

I've been procrastinating on getting Microsoft acquainted with Mosaic. Mosaic is Bill's church and the front for our rogue mission trip to Costa Rica. I've got until the 15th of this month to convince them that this is a philanthropic fund, rather than a religious one. Hopefully I can just email MS Give and give them the phone number of the guy at the church and they can iron out the details in an hour or two on a phone call I don't need to hear. Hopefully. Else, we're going to need a bunch more money than we expected. I trust God in this, but I don't trust my procrastinative nature.

It's 2010 now, if you hadn't noticed. Though, perhaps for you it's 2011, you futuristic hoodlum with your year-late-reading ways. That's right, back in 2010 we were silver tongued. Nuance is our weapon of choice. I have a lot to look forward to this year, which is a sentiment you'll seldom find from me. Final Fantasy XIII has been released in Japan and Swood never ceases to throw his bilingual hackery in my face. I have to wait until February, or more likely March when it won't be sold out, to play it, and then in the English lameness. Swood showed me the same clip in Japanese (translating it for me) and in English, and it's just sad. Why don't good English voice actors exist for video games and adult cartoons? They exist for robots in live action films, though admittedly, all the good ones have English accents. Anyway, I'm hoping against hope that they let you switch to Japanese with English subtitles. I've seen at least one game that lets you do this, but I can't remember now, which.

I predict The Old Republic will come out this November, with no actual basis for this release date. I think if it doesn't, by the time it's released, there will be something more exciting on the horizon. It's kind of a law of gaming that you need to get something released within two years of conception, else it'll be outdated before it arrives.

Iron Man 2 comes out in May. The first Iron Man movie is probably my favorite super hero movie yet, so I have high hopes for the next one. Also, while I never really minded the original actor for Rhodey (while some people found him whiney), getting Ocean's Basher to play him shall be great.

Speaking of good movies, I saw Sherlock Holmes the other night. I was grinning basically the whole time. It's so very clever. Somehow, Denna fell asleep when she saw it the night after I did. I don't get that. Maybe it's just a different sense of humor. She said it just never got good. I'll admit it doesn't have the same flow as other action movies, but I don't think it's meant to either. The bickering between Holmes and Watson is great, as is all the dialog, really. I don't know. I don't get her sometimes. She doesn't like Demetri Martin. It never would have worked between us.

Toy Story 3 is coming out. Pixar has yet to fail me, though I never saw A Bug's Life 2, and Ratatouille wasn't my cup of tea. Toy Story 2 was great, arguably as good as the original. During one of the orchestra summer camps, we played a piece written to be played during the short for that film, and we played the actual piece sung by the cowgirl doll about being neglected by her kid. Anyway, yet more high hopes.

The last three in my list are a bit bigger. Windows Mobile 7 is supposed to be released this year. I have high expectations for this, and I'm confident it'll look as nice or nicer than the iPhone and be more functional than either the iPhone or the Droid.

Costa Rica, as already mentioned, is in March. I'm actually a bit anxious and antsy about it. I wasn't this way at all, if I remember right, about Jamaica. Then again, I'm a different person from who I was two years ago. I remember telling Lulu like six days into the trip, that with the way my mind works, that day I'd finally decided I should go on the trip. She didn't get it. Oh well. But yes, I don't know what to make of this trip. I expect it will be good, and I am looking forward to it, but I'm also worrying for some reason. I think I feel a bit more like one of the leaders since I was one of the first to say I'd go on it, but I have really no idea what's going to happen there, nor do I want to be one of the leaders so, yeah.

Last, and least probable, I'm making it a goal to make big steps toward owning a house by this time next year. I don't like paying rent. I don't like having a litter box. And perhaps most of all, I don't like noise complaints. For some reason, they just get me at my core. Yesterday I bought a Wii Fit, both for the fitness aspect, and the unrealistic hope that someday I'll figure out how to program with it. I tinkered with it a bit before going with Swood to Hime's New Year's party. When I got back, I decided to play with it a bit more. I actually had considered the noise, and thought that between the pad itself with its springs, the feet covers on the bottom of the board, and the carpet, that it wouldn't make a whole lot of noise for the people downstairs. I guessed wrong. So, at three in the morning, an angry neighbor knocked on my door. She could have been less rude, but then, I did wake her up at three in the morning. I apologized, but I don't get the feeling she accepted it. So, I guess that's a pre-quiet hours toy, like my violin. I suspect they'll still get angry when I use it, though. I don't know exactly what I should do in this situation. I spent $100 on a new toy, and I have every right to use it during the day, but at the same time, I don't want to make enemies. They do live in an apartment. Noise comes with that. Also, the minigame I was playing involved a lot of swift running in place. I think that most of the stretches and pushups and things won't make much if any noise, so maybe there's the happy medium.

After watching Sherlock Holmes with Swood and Nikkie, and not realizing that it was already 12:30am, I suggested Swood and I hang out, so we drove to his place and watched (500) Days of Summer. They advertised it as a chick flick, but it's an excellent movie. It's got a lot of good dialog like Lucky Number Sleven. The last line in combination with the subsequent facial expression is one of the best things ever. I purchased it tonight, and it should arrive here on Tuesday.

I've been spending a ton of money lately. This is worse than good. I remember I was in the same habit this time last year. I wonder if it's just the time of year. Last year I bought a TV and a vacuum. This year I spent about $200 more on Christmas and then bought myself two Blu-Rays, the two expansions for Dragon Age, Wii Sports Resort, and Wii Fit at a time that money already wasn't that high. As always, I'm by no means hurting for money, and I have a heftyish savings to fall back on, but I'd rather not. Alexander says that most banks have a direct deposit deal where they'll give you 3-5% interest on your checking account, in which case, with a little will power, you just put all your money there and nothing into savings. I'm fairly certain Chase does not have this deal, so it is time to find a new bank.

After the movie, Swood and I stood around and talked of old times. All of two to four years ago. The golden days, some might say. Mostly we tried to remember the names of everyone that lived on our floors. We came close. Also, the next day I was going to Seattle to hang out with Vin, and Swood mentioned that I should park in Tukwila and take the Light Rail into town, thus saving money on parking, but costing an extra hour of travel time. The drive to Seattle is about the same as it is to Tukwila.

I ended up at the meeting fountain about ten minutes late and no one was there. I couldn't imagine that they'd already all met and then left to go off some place, and I couldn't get ahold of Vin on her cell phone. Some ten minutes later, Vin and her friend walked up. They'd been in a minor car accident, and Vin had left her cell phone at her home and had her friend's with her. Go figure. So we stood there a bit longer and some eleven of us showed up in all. I knew about half of them, I think, so I made some new friends. Three were particularly interesting, but not interesting enough to rename yet. Sorry. It's 4:30 and my creativity wanes. One was the guy that walked up with Vin. One was a girl with more spunk than she knows what to do with. She just seems fun loving without being a thrill seeker. Her mom works at Microsoft, so we had a brief conversation about that. She's also, evidently, outgoing enough to make new friends without being forced to talk to them. I don't really know how else to put it. The first guy is kind of shy around new people, but everyone else was talking to other people, so he and I ended up talking. The girl seemed to make a point of knowing everyone in the group. Sometime around six, she and her friend left the group, and the rest of us ate at Red Robin. After that, a couple more departed, and the remaining seven of us went to one of their houses twenty minutes north to play board games and whatnot. The third guy who was interesting was the guy who drove me to the other guy's place, and then afterwards, drove me all the way back to downtown Seattle so I could again ride the train, even though he was headed north. At the guy's place, we did a group-effort crossword puzzle, then played Yahtzee followed by Clue. It's certainly a good memory, that day. It was good to see Vin too, though I'm realizing it'll most likely never be more than friends.

She was telling me she's at a confusing point in her life because four months into the trip, she feels like Philadelphia is home, but then she came back to Seattle, and Philadelphia hardly exists in her mind anymore, but neither does Seattle feel like home. The trip, she says, has changed her a lot more than she expected it would too, and she's trying to figure out who she is. I guess now I'm blogging her life more than mine, but. I don't know. It gives me pause, and it's food for thought. Part of me wonders. Should I not have jumped right into corporate Microsoft? A lot of my friends from Western are going into nonprofits. I don't think I was called to be that person, but I admit it's appealing. I believe Microsoft and my working at Microsoft both will do more good for the world than my working at a nonprofit, but in my mind's eye, nonprofits have an instant gratification that donating vast sums of money and releasing business software just don't have. I think that's probably not true, and like with any job, satisfaction comes over a long period of time, but still.

I'm finding I'm returning to being content while single. For the past several months I have certainly not been. I'm pretty sure the word that best described me was desperate, but I'm not sure if that's entirely fair. But yes, at the moment, while I'd like to have a girlfriend, it's not really my primary focus. I'm realizing again, that what I'm constantly looking for in a girl probably won't be found there, but in God. Also, I used to think that Vin was perfect for me. As far as personality goes, she really is the girl of my dreams, what I always expected would be my perfect match, and yet, hanging out with her doesn't feel like a good fit. She's a great person, and a great friend, but we'd be hopelessly indecisive together. We don't have that flirty banter I had with Fey or Denna, even though she and I share more in common than I did with either of them. I'm starting to think that looking for specific traits and commonalities and whatever else in a person to heuristically decide compatibility is just folly. There's an X factor that you just have to find from hanging out with them over a long while. And perhaps I'll eat these words later, but I don't think any of the girls I currently know are a right one for me. I like one of the lines from (500) Days of Summer. The guy is being interviewed about his girlfriend of like ten years, and he says that the girl of his dreams would probably have a bigger rack and be more into sports, but that his girlfriend is better than the girl of his dreams.

Well, it's now 5am. See? Two hours, not four. Though, it's now definitely tomorrow morning and no longer tonight. I need to sleep.

Always Winter, Never Christmas

2009-12-24T02:16:00.000-08:00

As you've probably noticed, this site looks exactly the same. Of course, if you're one of those hoighty-toighty RSS feeders, you can't tell, but rest assured, if you visited the site yesterday and then again today, you'd not notice a difference. That took a lot of work, let me tell you. I was thinking about adding digg, and if digg is successful, possibly ads to my blog. See if I can't make a little money off this wailing wall of words. But first things first: how hard is it to add digg to each post? Turns out it's five lines of code, but, for lack of motivation, I hadn't changed my layout to use the new Blogger API, and digg, at least the code I found, requires use of one of the new features. So, it took me about four hours, but I finally got everything back to the way it was from one of the other sample layouts blogger offers. There is one major difference besides the added digg, and that's that comments are now only displayed on the item pages themselves, which is irritating. Since I hardly ever get comments, to my displeasure, I always liked having them right on the main page. Therefore, I have amounted more evidence that Google is evil.

It appears I've evaded the important topics for two nights, and now, this third night, there's no avoiding them. I've run out of all the other padding. I suppose I could make up an entire boring scenario that has nothing to do with anything and contradicts any number of statements previously written while I wait for good ideas to pool, but then you'd be as frustrated with me as I am with Bleach.

Pandora truncates "Casting Crowns (Holiday)" to "Casting Crow...". My mind extended it to "Casting Crows" and I immediately pictured throwing birds like paper airplanes. And then I saw "Casting Crow" and imagined a sorcerous raven complete with robe and pointy hat.

Oooh! I've thought of two. Take that, actual content! First, my thermostats are all messed up. It's either like 65 degrees or 80 degrees with nothing in the middle. It's rather frustrating. I don't mind the heat, though it keeps guests away and I have to water my cats more often, but I do mind the doubled electricity bill.

Second, during the Microsoft GIVE campaign this year, we were trying to come up with a theme for our group's code names. A lot of people had ideas (I was not among them), and most of them sucked. So, the last day of the campaign, October 30th, we had a contest, and whichever faction donated the most money that day got to choose the theme for future code names. It quickly became a bidding war, and in the end, our small group donated just under $15k, and Microsoft matched all of that. All in a day's work when there are generous people competing over something relatively small. I am proud to be a Microsoft employee, and even more so to be on the SQL Azure team.

As I said in part one of this chain of posts setting the record, the gold standard, if you will, of blogged days in a row, Heaven has been pushed down on the stack of books I'm reading. The top of the stack is a book called Birthright by David Needham. One Sunday after the church service, I went up and talked to the pastor again. He gave me his email address and apologized for not responding to my facebook message. Liked I'd suspected, it just got misplaced somehow. So, I re-emailed him that one question, and three others. He answered the first one by recommending that I read Birthright.

It's amazing how well the prologue of that book fits my experience. Basically he'd lived his spiritual life academically, but didn't really have the joy that seems so abundant in other Christians. So one day in college, he skipped all of his classes, and went out into the wilderness to pray all day. And nothing happened. I've not done that exact same thing, but I can easily imagine a similar situation. I recognize his frustration, and so I got my hopes up.

Chapters one and two were alright, if a little depressing. They covered what it means to be human (versus being an animal) and the nature of the Fall. When I read, I take each bit of information and reevaluate it against what I already know, think, or have learned. With information on a new topic, or fiction, when the world is relatively simple and new, reading is a lot quicker (though still tedious). When it comes to reading about Christianity, it's very slow going, because there's a lot to process. And on top of that, it might pique some dark spot in my knowledge, and cause me to stop and run down a rabbit trail, usually resulting in a question, and ten minutes later, having to reread the paragraph that caused the interruption.

Processing and reevaluating also means, "suppose this is true; now what are its implications?" So then those implications also need to processed and reevaluated. I'm a fan of the depth first traversal, though I frequently experience stack overflow. I just don't have enough heap memory for a breadth first traversal. Ok, that's enough computer science for now. Anyway, I suggest this method of reading when it comes to important topics, and do not when it comes to finishing reading a book before the quiz tomorrow in CP English, because you'll never finish in time.

A bunch of things in chapters one and two didn't feel quite right. They didn't fit into my already-dug "trenches," as the book describes it. For reading it, I've found I had to think of it as completely hypothetical, then evaluate it as a whole when I'm done, to replace whatever trenches I already have if it turns out his thoughts are more right than what I already have, else I'm going to end up chiseling the walls with a butter knife, and that's just not structurally sound.

Chapter three was pivotal. He reiterated what he'd said in the prologue, again bolstering my hope for some crucial secret I'd never been taught, nor figured out on my own.

Actually, the first portion of chapter three was really interesting. He said something that makes complete sense to me (no chiseling required) that I'd never thought of before. He describes salvation as a "screen" (and uses quotes every single time he mentions it as if we'd forgotten in the last two sentences what he was talking about), and when we accept Jesus' gift, death, and forgiveness, God no longer sees us, but sees a screen, displaying Jesus. God sees Jesus' righteousness rather than our sinful nature. Essentially, we're not seen at all. This leads me to ask a question. Didn't Jesus take all of our sin? Doesn't that make him sinful and us holy in the eyes of God? So wouldn't that make that screen of his a sinful one? I think the answer is no, because Jesus was God and so when he descended to hell, he was able to atone for the sins there, and now is holy again. As for seeing us as holy, I think that's what he means by the screen in the first place. Maybe it's more like a super powerful sin vacuum cleaner that pulls the stains off us as soon as we put them there before God gets a chance to see them. Anyway, this is all a little trivial in comparison to the point he was making, and the point I said makes complete sense to me, that the screen is a completely external process. When we accept Christ into our lives, there is no immediate internal change. We are seen as holy, but are still of the flesh, still fallen.

Then he went onto two internal changes that do happen. The second one becomes the primary focus of the book thereafter (I've not read that far yet), but the first one, while seemingly small, is a bridge to the second. This first internal change is this: that we are no longer enemies of God. God is now a father with open arms, and we love him for that. Alas, this is where my hopes crumbled, because that's not my experience. I love God because he is holy and good, and I love good things. But I've never really felt like he was proud of me, or that he cared at an intimate level. He's like a war general that cares about his troops three levels below him, and wants none of them to die. He makes his orders and brilliant stratagems to that affect, and if given the chance to save those soldiers' lives by dying himself, would do it in a heartbeat. But that's not a personal love. That's not the love of a father, and not what Needham describes.

When he was going over this, like many times before, I tried to imagine God as a man with open arms. An overwhelming image appeared in my mind's eye. It was an irrepressible darkness deserving the fear of the Lord. I don't know what to make of that. Something happened, then, a few minutes after I let the image slip. I tried again, and this time (and every time since) it was a blurry image of a figure with open arms, with white-blue light surrounding him. But it was entirely foreign, and not of love, at least that I could recognize. Embracing this figure would be like clasping your hands, then shifting the top hand down one finger. I don't know what to make of that either.

Anyway, I'll keep reading, but once again I've gotten my hopes up and then they were dropped and broken.

Now I've arrived at an age-old philosophical debate, and this one has a known right answer if you're a Christian. I'm just not sure I've seen evidence of this right answer. In fact, this answer caused the reformation and split the church off from Catholicism. Is salvation a free gift? I know that it is not earned. There are any number of arguments against that train of thought. What merit could man possibly bring forth to earn salvation? Further, if he could, potentially, what need of salvation would he have? So, the answer is a resounding 'yes,' salvation is absolutely a free gift.

There's an old word play. Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don't deserve. It is "by grace you have been saved through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9) There's a bit there: "through faith." That faith has to come from somewhere, doesn't it? Is it still a gift if we're required to supply this faith ourselves? This presents a chemical simile. What if faith is like a catalyst. It's not used up, not exchanged, in the process, but still required for the reaction of salvation to occur? Another thought comes to mind. What is faith? Maybe we do have to supply it, but what if it occurs naturally from simply wanting the gift in the first place? I've heard two definitions of faith. One, that faith is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see," (Hebrews 11:1) and two, that faith is the substance of things hoped for. Those might actually be two ways of saying the same thing. If we take this second definition, then hoping for salvation, and acting on this hope by naming ourselves Christians, produces faith in and of itself. This is what "accepting the gift of salvation" is, so faith isn't irrelevant, but it's not an issue, I don't think.

This topic brushes on the 'how' of being saved. There's a lot of theological debate on this one too. Romans 10:9-10 puts it simply.

That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

Justified was a word that Needham talked a lot about in the first half of chapter 3, what spawned his screen idea. I suppose it's ironic, then, that the believing in your heart is what produces the external effects, and confessing with your mouth spurs the internal changes.

It just seems like, though, that with salvation, always comes the need to change our lives. My friend David put it this way, "I usually side on the 'salvation is a gift from God, but that gift should be reason enough to be life-changing' side." However, John (the apostle) goes so far to say to cease sinning. It's a do, not a should. (He doesn't mean completely, I don't think, as that's impossible in our fleshy bodies, but perhaps to get out of the mindset of it's okay.) Paul makes a similar point in Romans 6.

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

See, now I'm confused. We were given this gift in order that we might die? We're now losing our lives for a "free gift." Even Jesus turned people away for various reasons. What about the man in Luke 9 who is hyped up about miracles, but Jesus knows there's more hardship than glamor? What about the wealthy man in Mark 10, when Jesus tells him to give away all his possessions if he wants to follow him? At this point, I believe we're in a paradox. I'm okay with paradoxes. If we're going to argue that it's a completely free gift, and that this isn't a paradox, then God needs to do all the changing of our lives himself. All of it. In my experience, he doesn't. It probably contradicts free will, which he has promised us. The number of times I've prayed for change in my life above and beyond myself -- a total makeover of my life without letting me get involved. It's never happened. The only option left to me is that this is a paradox. What gets me is that we continue to preach that this is a free gift, and it is, and we preach that we need to quit sinning, change our lives, kill our lives, and we never want to point out that these appear to contradict themselves. The sermon on Sunday, for example, was on "the gospel as gift," in a five-week series titled "the gospel as ...". He spent the whole sermon arguing that it is a free gift, much like I just did but with different verses. And in the last five minutes switched to "now what can you give?" Wait, what?

I was going to write a bit about God's love. I'm not sure that I have much to write, though. Wait, that sounds bad. There was a "sermon" given in Bellingham on God's love. It wasn't a sermon, though. That church does things differently (not wrong), and some weeks they have more of a discussion or forum, rather than a formal sermon. (Other weeks they have service projects rather than meeting at the church at all. It's actually a really cool idea. It's not my thing, but it's a really cool idea. I wouldn't mind doing the service projects, but I get the most out of a good speaker and a good worship session. That and service are what build me up the most, and I see church as the place to go to be built up. Really, I think, glorifying God should be what the rest of the week is about, but perhaps that's a different blog post.) Anyway, the pastor got up and said that he could talk for thirteen hours on the topic of God's love, and then he sat down and had everyone else talk. I've just never heard a satisfying sermon on God's love. I'm not certain I've heard any sermons on the topic specifically. It's a rather large topic. I'm not sure what you'd talk about specifically, aside from John 3:16. I find it frustrating. I don't even know what I want in order to be satisfied. Like pornography, I know it when I see it. I say I want something concrete, but what's more concrete than God sending his only Son to die in our place? I say I want something I can directly apply to my life as an action, but any time someone has taken me up on that challenge, I'm not satisfied with their answers (or they give my favorite answer: just give it to Jesus). One time I was told to journal....

I was talking to Courtney last night about Birthright and about my lack of joy. Defining joy has always been a challenge too. It's obviously different from happiness. We're expected to have lasting joy. Happiness is by nature fleeting and circumstantial. I guess that means that joy is not circumstantial, and so must then be based on something permanent, maybe knowledge? I would say faith or hope, but I find both of those fleeting -- hope more than faith. After all, hope crashes and burns due to circumstances, like getting to page 61 in a book. Do joy and disappointment, then, not contradict each other? I go round and round in circles. I get frustrated trying to define joy, trying to decide whether I have it or not. And then I remember it's moot. Whether or not I'm missing joy, I know I am missing something. I feel like Anakin feeling he's being denied some knowledge of the force. So I feel really whiny, and a little bit paranoid. But if this is it, I'm not satisfied, and I refuse to believe that an infinite God is not satisfying.

One thing that always comes to mind is the excitement I see in other Christians. I think I touched on this when I was still hanging out with Paul. (I need to call him again, and grab coffee or something.) They're just so happy about what Jesus has done in their lives. Why am I not? Am I merely ungrateful? If I am, can I change? If I can, is that not just forcing my own happiness? Think happy thoughts! I guess I've been excited once or twice, like after Challenge a few years back. Maybe I just notice when Christians are excited, and I don't notice when that excitement fades or falters.

I know for one thing that I don't feel forgiven. I know that I am as take it at your word knowledge. Isn't that rather core? I don't doubt my salvation, and I don't doubt that I'm forgiven, but why do I still feel guilty all the time? Why can't I forgive myself for things? I would think that if I truly realized the enormity of my situation, my grievances and the mercy and grace given instead of justice -- if I took that all into perfect perspective, maybe I'd be touched deeper down. But I'm pretty thick. It takes a lot to shake me. How can I not take something for granted when I already do? I can think about the cross and the sacrifice, but then I just feel guilty again, which is the cause of this issue in the first place, right?

Like I was saying, I was talking to Courtney. She and I had a rather blunt conversation with straight forward questions. I'm still trying to decide whether it was refreshing or awkward, but whatever. She asked me if I see God's love in my life. And I don't, at least not in the moment. I see God's influence in my past, the brilliance of the General's orders after the battle is over. The biggest example of this is my not getting into Harvey Mudd, and being forced to go to Western, where I roomed with Swood and got involved in CCF and the INN, and ultimately landed my dream job at Microsoft. Had I gotten into Harvey Mudd, I wouldn't have been near my family during the divorce, and I would have taken four years instead of three to graduate. I would have been looking for a job right in the midst of the recession.

She gave me a few examples of how she sees God in her life. Part of it seems to be an assuredness that whatever happens, God is in control. That's probably another thing I take for granted. Other things are like her "wonderful family." To be blunt, I don't have a wonderful family. I love my mom and sister dearly, but we are really broken and dysfunctional. Or she's thankful that she gets to go to college. I'm thankful for the experience -- in hindsight -- but it really was expected of me. It was a stressor, even if it was something I wanted to do, and something during which I was relatively carefree. Maybe this is a bad example, but imagine you're a prince. You want to be king, because you'd be a good king, but you are going to be king, and there's nothing you can do about it. Since the age of five, I was going to college. It was hard for me to count that a blessing, in fact, I never really even considered it.

So is this what joy is? Being content with what you have, and the knowledge that you'll be taken care of one way or another, even if not in this life? That raises an interesting question -- why bother feeling that you'll be taken care of in this life, if you don't know that for sure? This is morbid, and I don't know exactly why I just thought of it, but one time I was feeling especially suicidal, and my dad got fed up and told me that if I tried to commit suicide and it wasn't God's will for me to die yet, then I wouldn't. Later I was replaying that conversation in my head, and I really wish I had responded, "So how about we try it out, and if I die, it's what God wanted."

The last thing Courtney suggested was writing down five blessings. Blessings are tricky. At face value, they're things you're glad about, right? So if I roll a Yahtzee, is that a blessing? I don't think so. So then they're probably deeper than that. They're things, though. They're not necessarily material, but they're still temporary. The people Jesus healed still died eventually. How good an idea is it to get attached to a something you'll lose? Are thankfulness and attachment the same thing? God gives, and God takes away. I'm afraid to be thankful of things, I think. Yet, there are things I'm thankful for. Swood is the first that comes to mind, followed quickly by the rest of my close friends. He's probably first because I see him on a regular basis, and he's the least likely to leave.

I run into this issue a lot. I'll be working on something or thinking about something, and I'll think about praying for or about it. Sometimes I don't want to, either because I want to do it under my own esteem, feeling I'm more than capable of doing this mundane task I do all the time, or because it's something I don't really worry about (like a plane crashing or something completely random like my sister getting small pox [just made that one up]). But now I feel like if I don't pray about, and then something goes wrong, it was my fault, or even that if I don't pray about it, something will go wrong, despite a complete lack of evidence for this. Should I then pray about every little thing? The Bible does say to pray without ceasing, but I've always been taught that means to live your life as a prayer. Also, I kind of figure that if God is listening in on my thoughts, and I've now devoted twenty-five paragraphs to God, along with all the thought that went into them while writing, as well as the two months since the last post when I was actually doing all this thinking, is that not prayer? Is thinking about God fundamentally different from thinking to God? I'm not sure I've ever read in the Bible that praying in your head "counts." Every time I've read about someone praying, it was aloud. Unless I'm in a group of people, I never pray aloud. God's omniscient, so this shouldn't be an issue. But at the same time, prayers said aloud are typically more focused and less prone to tangent than thought is. Does that make them more powerful? Have I just reduced prayer to magic, if heartfelt, words?

I believe that is enough pondering for one post. It's late again, and I'm driving home tomorrow morning. I haven't seen Luigi in maybe over a year, and I am looking forward to it.