And He set me on fire....

Call it what you will.  Purification, destruction/rebuild, dismantle.repair, redemption.  In any event, it's the process, the process we all know about, or at least should want to if we don't but don't really want to at all, that can best describe the week I've had.  And I'm not sure of the details I want to go into.  But remember (never forget) this: God is faithful.

I'm going with purification right now, but any and all apply. God made the addition of ash to soil directly tied into an increase in soil fertility, and it may just be because he knew all of the sermons it could turn into.  But I don't know how much we hear about the pain....let me assure you, there will always be pain.  Birth pain, growing pain, just pain.  I can't account for all the pain, but I'm sure God can, and never forget (always remember) this: God is faithful.

The Cavs will probably sweep the Pistons.  

I feel like I'm not making much progress in fund development, but I think I am.

And I am incredibly excited about Chapter Focus Week.  I'm a bit apprehensive about trying to jump into a culture I know little of (and fit in less), with Hillsdale and things, right after graduation.  But It's a definite, positive step toward the future, and if nothing else, that is what I need right now.  I will always love post-modernity in theory, but I am, right now, always already fed up with living liminally.  Really, I think I'm mostly a modernist because I cannot create without a ridiculous sense of self and reflexivity.  But I don't believe in many if any of the propositions of modernism, almost and especially modernist theology.  Well, that's hard to define because there are maybe 3 of us in the world that would try to decide what exactly modernist theology even is...and we're post-modern and want to dismantle it because of the harm it does, not necessarily because of its positions.  And I'm post-modern because I'm lazy and don't want to explain things, but I could write for hours without saying anything, mostly because I don't believe one can really ever say much of anything at all without some sort of outside spark, perhaps even deep within, but necessarily other from the individual.  Ah, the other, how I barely knew thee before I wished to be with thee and destroy thee.

I had a dream in which I learned about a sort of (possibly imaginary) drought, in which it is always hot and unbearable during the daytime, then, at night, it will rain, but it will never rain enough to sustain anything.  I think I have important dreams on Wednesday nights.... I can definitely relate to a feeling of drought, barrenness, not complete but, indeed never satisfied, definitely, right now.  It's attached, I do believe, to this liminality in which I'm living as what's essentially a lame-duck senior.  But there's a lot more to that...like Saturday-Sunday afternoon...when a very intentful prayer was very much half-answered.  Sometimes it feels like God is teasing me.  But I think that feeling is really him telling me to have faith.  Faith deeper, more extreme, more reckless than ever before.  And that isn't easy...  

But I know he is faithful, and that reciprocity is enough of a promise.  It's got to ultimately be my faith in his faithfulness that nurtures the thirsty land I am.

-Zack

"Before you say that a part of you has died remember the fire is on the inside"

-Mae  

Have you ever seen the light?

No.  Not when I knew what it was at least.  But yes.  

I've become obsessed with themes of movement lately.  I don't know why, and I don't realize it, until I try to sum up thoughts or feelings.  I could give you a list of reasons probably; obstinance toward moving on, waiting to move up, being in capable of moving on, thinking of moving past, envisioning movement toward or away from this or that.  

It's all movement.  

Lip Sync was bad last night and the judges were worse.  

This is being simul-posted on facebook now.  I'm still not sure of that decision on my part.

The NBA Playoffs start this week.  They're my favorite playoffs by a lot.  The NBA is second only to NCAA Football in my personal hierarchy of sports leagues, and I would like the NCAA less if there was a playoff (although I am one of few...actually, I would like it most if it went back to the pre-BCS style....just like I would like baseball if they scrapped divisions and playoffs and just played the World Series at the end of the season between the winner of both leagues)  I'm not terribly positive why I think the NBA gets it right with playoffs but none of the other leagues do quite so well....I would shorten the first round, but that's about it, and I don't think I could support that even, when it comes to non-1-8 seed match-ups.  The NFL has too many divisions....if you're going to let six teams in, have 2 or three divisions and take the top 3 or 4 teams in the conference after those winners....having two wild card teams with better records than division winners is ludicrous...because 16 games is too short for a four division sport, and football is too violent to have a true playoff without the most meticulous care to make sure the right teams are there....and it's just wrong right now.  The NHL is pretty fine I guess...if I followed it more.  I actually really really like the point system.  I might follow Hockey more when I move to michigan, since they love their red wings up there...maybe not in Hillsdale though....  I'm not even going to start talking about the NCAA basketball tournament.  I don't think a team that doesn't win its conference should be able to win the national championship, I don't think there should be conference tournaments unless you're going to have to win it to get to the national tournament.  Really, I just hate trying to appease public opinion when it comes to sports.  Prove it on the field.  I probably seem backwards with College Football then, but until a playoff could happen in which every conference winner (and NO ONE) else would be allowed in, it's just too big to have a legitimate playoff... so the opinions of the media and coaches should decide the national champion.  That, and I don't think national championships in college football should mean as much as they do.  There's more to the sport than that, and the ESPN/ABC have done their best to make us forget.  Bo never won a national championship...I don't care, because his goal was to win the Big Ten, beat Ohio State, and win the Rose Bowl each year.  That's college football...win the conference, beat your rival, win your bowl game.  It's too localized and too spectacular a sport to weigh down with national implications.   But it's a little late.

Okay, that's all about sports.  Sorry....

But the Go Cavs!  nonetheless

Light actually does, undeniably, exist as a binary to its opposite.  It's opposite, indeed, cannot even exist in its presence.  

Theoretically, as is everything else.  Even though that's harder to prove, I don't want to be anything but in, around, and through all that is light, so I'm not striving to exist as anything but the opposite of everything I don't want to and am not supposed to be.  That's what redemption is.  There are just two sides, and they are defined by being one side or the other.  Christ said all those that are not against me are for me, and that's what redemption means.  But we're all kind of fragments really, a sum of our parts, if you will....sure, they make us unified, or something, but you're not walking with the Lord if you think you're totally redeemed all at once.  It's a process.  God gives us pennies, when all we want is a dime...in the end though, we'll always end up with at least 11 pennies.  And when we are fully redeemed, we aren't anything at all attached to the world, and at that point, we're forever, perfectly, wholly in the light, where there can be no darkness. What would happen if everything were illuminated, and darkness ceases to exist?  Someday, we'll find out.   Light, right now, is light because it isn't dark, but if you spend long enough in the light, the necessity of a word for dark will cease, and all darkness will be but a memory of what was, if even that.  And we construct our understanding of the world on the words we use to describe it.  That's why light is necessarily the opposite of dark...because that's the only way we can understand it...that's why we can only understand good as the opposite of bad.  When bad ceases to exist, perhaps good will too, but I suspect, then, words will be different too, so what is good now will not be good, it will simply be, dizzy, light, and free of all that it could be that it isn't now, as it is trapped, tied, bound to its reliance on the existence of bad.  Right now, I am but Zack, the only Zack that is me, and therefore different from everyone else.  But someday, perhaps I will be Zack because of something essential.  But maybe then, I won't be Zack at all.  I don't really believe in essentiality, not in this world.  There won't be the need to believe in it in the next.

Read the Name of the Rose and watch Howl's Moving Castle.  Then you'll be in my aesthetic viewpoint for the week.  Or at least the biggest part of it.  I've done my best to fragment it, so that will never be possible.  Just working to develop difference and identity, that's all.  Actually, that's not even true at all.  My identity is not mine to craft.  I just have a short attention span, so I've seen about half an our of like, 4 movies this week, and the last hour of Howl's Moving Castle.  And I've read about 350 pages....and only about 80 of them have been The Name of the Rose.  

So bigness wins, that's democracy.

But bigness is an inherent fallacy.  I've proven that through me, but democracy proves it better every day.

I'm going to have a lot to learn next year, just about living on my own.  I realized yesterday that I've never done my taxes.  I've never paid a monthly mortgage.  I've never bought my own food for a sustained period.  I've never owned a car and had insurance or any sort of retirement to think about saving for.  But it's coming soon....

....at least I have a job

-Zack

"Take me home tonight, I don't want to let you go til I see the light"

-Eddie Money

Rather I was there....

There's something here, something in this in-between, this in-between of what is now and what comes next.
3 books, 3 papers, 1 exam. That's it, that will be all it takes for me to be finished with this undergraduate degree I've been kind of not caring about for 4 years. But I've been caring enough...I think though, that I've mostly been caring about being here, right here, in this very moment, in this very place. I don't mean the computer lab. I just mean in Wooster, more than anything.

But it's closing. I don't know if it's a door, a window, or a chapter.
It could be all or none. I've got a lot more leaving Wooster than I had coming in, but I think I've got a lot less leaving this year than I had coming in. Indeed, I know I do. Well, maybe. I've got some clarity. I've got a destination, and it is beautiful.
But even so, everything is still kind of like waiting.

At least that's how I feel right now. Tomorrow, I might feel something different from this. But now, "this" is what it is, what I feel. Waiting. I don't know how much weight to give feelings...ever...because I know sometimes it matters a lot...and sometimes it matters none. They, I mean, more than it.

There are many ways I could track my life, many movements, many waves. But they're all supposed to be leading to the same thing, right? That's what I think at least. Maybe not. But I think they are, that's how God works. I'm not sure that's how it works for people trying to forge their own path in life. If there's anything I learned from trying to do that for myself, from time to time, is that there's no such thing as unity when humanity gets involved too much, or tries to control things on their own. We can't see reality for what it is on our own (if at all) and walking with the Lord is being able to see more and more of what truly is, what truly exists. But to walk on one's own is to walk in a space based on one's own interpretation, not on what actually is. Of course you can't make true progress when you can't walk in a true direction. We all exist in relation to each other. That's truth if there's truth this side of heaven. So how are we to make our own decisions when I see you and I know you and I act based on who you are, but who you are to me is not you (and who you are to you isn't even you), and I'm supposed to act based on a ton of incomplete if not totally false knowledge? Oh, you know that's impossible. So why even move? Why even move at all? Indeed, without Christ, we're not moving, we're not moving anywhere...we're just sitting still and everything is moving around us, but we feel like we're moving, it's called frame of reference. But to God, through God, when he's not just the frame of reference we're moving based on, but what moves us at all...then we can actually do it, we can actually know, we can actually see, and actually be known. That's where our Lord and Savior meets post-modernity, and it's why the world has always been post-modern and we just didn't know it. The catch is, has been, and always will be, that without Christ, there is nothing. No peace, no reconciliation, and most importantly, no love.

So don't walk in the fallacy of thinking you can walk on your own at all.

I know I can't. I've tried, and failed a lot. But there is a lion, and there is a light. And they are one.
-Zack
"Postcard says wish you were here and I'd rather I was there"
-Rise Against

Stagnation

Movement is not easy anymore.  Progress does not come simply.  Since turning in I.S., I've lost motivation, I've lost purpose, I've lost desire...to work on things toward graduation.  I've got to finish a paper, write a paper, and read...then I'll have completed a Bachelor's Degree at the College of Wooster.  I don't want to do any of it.  I've never really wanted to do schoolwork, per se, but, I can't even see much importance in it anymore.   Indeed, it feels quite "pointless" although the point is quite clear.

Thankfully, I don't feel this way about my remaining time with Wooster Christian Fellowship.  This probably has to do with the fact that the sort of stuff I'm doing with WCF is the sort of stuff I'll be doing at Hillsdale...at least in theory.  I'm still coming to terms with how different Hillsdale will be.  

I've been trying to get a letter out so I can officially start fund development...I mean, I guess the beginning stages are "part" of fund development, but I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere, waiting for things to fall into place before I can send out my letters.  I've had my first appointment though...so that's cool.  I'm just a bit a weary to schedule more until I've got a few more things in place for the effort.  That brings me to a first for this blog: a prayer request:  I've got to raise around $43,000 for the year, 34,000 by August first so I can get on campus at Hillsdale. My goal then, is to have $3600 a month in faithfully committed support.  Right now, I'm at $0. Pray that the commitments happen and that I can really hit the FD (fund development) trail hard in the meantime.  If you feel like you can be part of the answer to this prayer, check out www.intervarsity.org/donate and search for me..."Belcher" is probably the best choice because I'm not sure how my name is spelled in the database.  Part of me has this like, Obama/wikipedia-style grassroots hope for my ministry.  It would be really cool if I had 360 people supporting me at 10 dollars a month...that would be a sense of calling.  The chances of that happening are pretty slight probably...and then I start doing math and figure out that I should probably try to get a few big donors, a few smaller ones, and a few smaller yet, with the smallest like, around 25 bucks a month or something.  That's what we're told to do at least.  If, however, you would like to join the world-changing God will be doing at Hillsdale and can't do more than 10 a month, I would love to talk to you about making that number 359. More than anything though, I would love your prayers.

I cannot come to terms with a few things in my life:

College ending.  If I could realize that I've only got around 4 weeks left with everyone that has meant so much to me for the past 4 years, maybe I would be being a better friend.  But I can't come to terms with that...I don't want to, I know that, although I should do it anyway, and it would make things better on the whole.  

God loving me infinitely, and that mattering.  There's nothing new about God's love theology.  But who hasn't felt like that love wasn't enough to fill relational holes in our hearts?  But it is.  I'm trying to realize that.

And Patience....

It gets it's own section, but it's largely wrapped up in the other two.  What comes along with leaving college is the fact that much of my life is very in between right now.  It's not even all that uncertain...just very in between.  I don't feel ready for what comes next, but I feel like I've kind of outgrown where I am now.  So I pray that God grants me patience and helps me realize what he still has for me here.

On the flipside, I'm really excited that I get to keep up with people as a part of my job.  Sure, I hope college friends join my support team financially for the financial side, but moreso, I'm really looking forward to having reasons to call Audrey and Mark or Mike and Elyssa (and others, just examples there folks) in the future as part of my job.

And I'm glad God does love me that much, and I've just got to learn to usefully deal with it.

And I'm glad God has timing that makes things perfect...because I'm imperfect, and my timing would mess everything up, most certainly.

All in all, as long as God is on the throne, how can I complain?  For even the worst that can happen will turn me over to him.

Until next time, have a blessed Easter.

-Zack

"And this journey's hurting in ways we accept as part of fate's decree"

-Vienna Teng

Change is Here

I've been talking about change for awhile now.  And here it is.  Other than the look, you may be wondering what's different.  Indeed, if you've not been here before right now, it doesn't even look any different.  But the differences are, as they ought to be, deeper than the skin.

I'm an impulsive blogger.  Sometimes, at least.  I've had this Thursday posting appointment for quite awhile now, and it's gone well, and I certainly feel like it's something I need for self expression.  Maybe this will all change when/if I get married, because I'll have someone to tell everything to without writing it all out.  But until that happens, well, here I am.

This tendency has led to all sorts of self-serving posts.

Right now, right here, I'm turning from that style of writing. 

With this blog, this internet-journal if you will, I plan to explore my own life in ministry for the benefit of my readers.  Part of this is, indeed, driven by my service with InterVarsity and will work as a way to keep people more in the loop than the more standard monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly prayer letter.  Indeed, I imagine I'll probably post at least once a week.

This does not mean that the former style of semi-artistic non-fictional semi-prose is going away.  It will be around, maybe kind of, but the overall point of this, which I'll refer to as IPK for the time being, is shifting from inward, self-serving, to outward, God-loving, keeping people supporting my ministry, as it gets underway at Hillsdale this summer/fall, abreast of what's going on with me and the chapter.  It's going to be fun, it's going to be an adventure, and I want you to be a part of God's great work alongside me...hopefully this will make that possible beyond prayer and financial support (although both of those are far more important than your reading of this). 

Will this lead to self-censorship?  Maybe, but I hope not.  This is going to be a lot more public now...more people will at least know about it, although there will be no guarantee of any sort of readership, by any means.  But I do plan to tell people about it and put the address with things I send, just like a company website or something like that.  It might be a bit rough in the beginning because there's a divide between the old posts and the new, but you've got to start somewhere....and I don't exactly have the biggest support team at the moment anyway.

To be quite honest, I don't quite know what all of this means quite yet, or what it's going to look like.  I'm going to try to figure it out, and really, as readers, you're going to have a part in that too.  It will, largely, be shaped by the people reading and (hopefully) commenting.  It would be really cool if the comments formed a sort of forum for discussion, but that's both unlikely and probably more unfavorable than I think right now.  

Speaking of comments, I realized today that I had it set so that only registered users could comment.  That's been changed now, if you want to post a comment and don't have an account, you can now.  You should get an account though.....a google (gmail) account works, and the utility of Google docs, calendar, and gmail is mind-bogglingly high.  I highly recommend it.

Okay, that's the sort of business end of the blog's new look and hopefully developing feel.  

So where am I now?  

Physically, the McCreight Lab in the basement of the Gault Library, in Wooster.  I installed the computers here, so I feel like I have a bit of a tie to them.  It's usually really full at night, so I don't get to use the lab too often...but Thursday mornings are pretty quiet around here, and it's a nice lab for what I do Thursday mornings (which is, of course, this, right now, writing).  

Otherwise, I feel like something big is going to happen in my life soon.  I don't know what.  I just know I woke up with a sense of eager expectation that can only come from God, and I can't quite figure out for what... but I know I'm excited and I know something is afoot, as they say.  

I'm in the beginning stages of fund development right now.  Fund development might sound like a fancy way to say fund raising, but they are actually different.  Fund raising is more of a one time thing, for a specific, terminal goal.  Fund development is the long-term process of developing relationships for financial support in an ongoing ministry or mission.  I'm working on sorting out potential donors and writing letters right now.  Hopefully, next week, I can send out the first wave.  You might get one, depending on who you are.  Well, you probably won't get one next week, because the first wave will be churches, I think.  In any event, that's where that is.  It's a bit scary, feeling like I have to ask for my salary, essentially.  But that's not really how it works.  I'm raising support for the ministry of InterVarsity, and I work for InterVarsity, getting paid by them for what I do.  The money I raise, while it does end up in an account earmarked for me, is raised around the core commitments and mission of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and I'm asking people to partner with that mission as it is being played out at Hillsdale College.  Maybe that sounds semantic.  Maybe, just maybe, it is a bit semantic.  But in any event, the work of the Lord is a worthy cause on college campuses because, while it may sound cliched, college campuses are the locations through which the future leaders of the world and the Church pass, and ongoing ministry in that arena is key for the future and present spread of the gospel through the world and locally.  Developing Christian leadership, one of InterVarsity's biggest goals is key for the future relevance of the faith in society.  

And Hillsdale, where I'll be, is key in its own particular way.  God has a specific mission for the people that go through Hillsdale.  That's true of everywhere, but Hillsdale is unique because it is not uncommon for the graduates of Hillsdale to go on to important jobs in politics and leadership in the country.  Having the privilege to work with students that will become graduates and eventually shape world politics and policy is exciting.  It's really not about me though; God's vision is larger than my abilities, and he would work and move in a place as multiplicatively strategic as Hillsdale with or without me.  I stand in awe of his blessing to let me be even a small part in his work at so important a place.

-Zack

"Here it comes, a beautiful collision"

-David Crowder