Three black marks

Before we started walking, we were sliding down the slide.  When you get to the bottom, you just go back to the top.  You climb to the top because it's at the top that you ever find anything, ever see anything.  But then down, on down, on down you go.  Again, again, again.  It was never a roller coaster.

Maybe it is waves.  Peaks, valleys, frequencies.  I do know it pulses.

The losses wouldn't be losses if they weren't lost.

Cut.

Then keep moving forward.

-Zack

"After all is said and done, build a new route to China if they'll have you"

-Gil Scott Heron

As big as the sea...

There is scandal, mystery, and glory in Christmas.  The darkness breaks and hope awakes in the heart once more.  I sometimes feel odd, acting as if Christ isn't born at Christmas, or like he really just died on Good Friday.  Neither are true and the emulative nature of our holiest observances is a little immature and cultic sometimes.

But we need it, that feeling of dawn breaking , that heart-taking, soul-rending birth of hope on Christmas.  We need it every single day.  We need it, at least, once a year.  As play-acting as advent and Good Friday might be, without the birth of hope once more, without the renewal of knowledge as to what it really means, we miss so much of the point.

Darkness turned to dawn at Christmas, but sometimes, we forget that we're still living in that dawn.  We're actually living in a more glorious dawn, closer now to the completion and the Kingdom than we were when Christ became man.  But he took up dwelling among us for a time, and those 30-odd years were as magical as anything, as deeply and lightly as that word can be used when talking about Jesus.  God was here.  And yet, he still is.  We can't touch him, indeed, but he never left.

And that's what Christmas is...a celebration but also a remembrance and a re-embrace.

-Zack

"O shepherds, find thy goal"
-French Carol

365

One year ago today, though it was a Tuesday then, I met the woman I am going to marry.  I wouldn't have guessed it then.  I wouldn't have guessed it even as late as this past May, when we started dating.  Well, I probably could have guessed it then.  Because I knew in early May that our relationship would be God-ordained and I knew he was asking me to take the step of faith entering into a relationship with her would be.  But it was a step of faith not just worth taking, but one, I know, I was excited to take at the time.

But that doesn't mean it was going to be easy, and most certainly, it has not been.  Loving her is easy.  It's the easiest thing I've ever had or wanted to do.  But it's not easy when she's away, when she has to be away, or when I'm away, because I have to be away.

But nonetheless, it has been a glorious year, a great predecessor to the year to come...which, I do believe, will be even more spectacular.

-Zack

"And I never thought I would find her here
Flannel and satin, my four walls transformed
But she's looking at me, straight to center
No room at all, for any other thought"
-Vienna Teng

Callling Birds

I spent my day making this.  It was fun, but it wasn't much more than typing up stories I've already told 100 times.  It's still fun and exciting though.  It's all so fun and so exciting.

I've had to come to terms with something these last few days, although that's kind of a lie, because it's driving me nuts, so I haven't come to terms with it at all.  I don't think I'm going to reach my goal of 51 finished books this year.  The issue comes in grossly overestimating how many days I could read fully in December.  I always reset my numbers for the month when I get to it, and though I had 25 days in for December all year long, in reality, I had less than ten, and my 20 pages per book I was hovering around jumped up to around 60.  I'm at like 3 days to really read left in 2010 with 7 books to finish.  That's, on average, 67 pages per each of the 7 books I'm reading right now everyday to the end of the year.  I just don't think it's happening...I don't know if there's really enough physical time over 3 days to do that, to say nothing of the actual time I could allot for it.  But we'll see....I'm close to the end of a few things...we'll see what happens.  I'm not giving up, though I probably should.  I'll be very cautious with December when I set up next year in a couple of weeks, and I'll be shooting for less books on the whole.  50 last year was inflated by a semester of Children's literature.  Though I'm 7 books short right now, I'm well over my page total from last year.

I don't really have much of anything to say tonight.  I just felt like saying something.

It's hard to believe 2010 is so close to finished.  It's already winter.  This year flew by, but I'm sure 2011 will be even faster.  I'll be 24 before I know it.  I decided today that I'm the laziest person I know.  I'm going to try to change that, and updating this more often is part of that.  I think I'm a generally better person when I write more.  Experience doesn't lead to wisdom after all...it is reflected upon experience that leads to wisdom because there are plenty of old fools running around.  Look at my mother...she's older than me, very much a fool, and absolutely running around.  I'm sure, til the day either of us dies, she's claim that I don't understand because I'm so much younger than her.  I guess I don't know is she's right or not...but understand or not, nothing she's done this year, or at least very little, could be judged as correct, no matter how much anyone understands.  Her facebook religious views says "I have a relationship with my god" but that's a lie, even though her "god" is her self.  If she was at all in touch with even that, she'd realize that she's on a path of deceitful destruction that will end with her acknowledging wrong or with an obstinate barren loneliness; refusing to admit anything but pitiful to all.  C.S. Lewis said that there are, in the end, only two responses to God...you can tell him "thy will be done" or "my will be done."  The constant insistence on the latter removes life and humanity, little by little, as a creature created for outward connection and love becomes more and more focused on its own self and therefore, less and less as it ought to be.  The irony of sin is that it's so often done in the name of doing what one judges will bring his or her own self the most enjoyment, the best use of his or her own free will, but that very proclamation destroys the very soul who claims it.

Maybe I shouldn't post all of that on a blog.  I don't know.  But I'd rather not take it down now.

While I'm on the topic of self-centeredness, I officially withdraw any support I may have ever claimed of Senator George Voinovich...maybe I'm just uneducated, but I don't quite understand why extending basic rights to humans is bad for other humans who already have those rights.  Someday we'll strike the idea of other from our vocabulary, but we're far from it and Saturday's vote on the DREAM act proved that.  But we live in a broken world.  I just wish I didn't live in a state represented by someone breaking it so fervently.

-Zack

"It's like that sometime, I mean ridiculous"
-Kanye West

5 Golden Rings

It's nearly Christmas once more.  I love Christmas, but Christmas blogposts  are almost always, at least as I try to write them, about the past year and the coming year.  Right now, that's exactly what I feel like I should write about.  A lot happened this past year and a lot is happening next year.

But Christmas comes between.  Christmas.

It's hard to even know what Christmas is anymore.  Well, I know what Christmas is.  It's the day we celebrate Christ's birth.  But when was the last time Christmas was just a day?  Christmas is bigger than a day, and probably rightfully so.  But it's a feeling, it's a rhythm, it's a hanging in the air balance of the now and the not yet.  It's advent, it's trees, it's lights, it's peace.  It's gifts, it's love.

Wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas.  Christmas is, and that is all.

Christmas is the ultimate binary.  It's the breaking dawn, the coming day.  Darkness cannot be where light is.

It seems like Christmas is the time when it's socially acceptable to be a Christian, and it makes me hopeful, but I'm not quite sure why.  In China, they display pictures of Santa at churches, because it's an accepted Christian symbol, as a symbol of Christmas.  I don't think we keep in mind how Christian Christmas is because we spend so much time focusing on how Christian it isn't.  Not every does it for the right reason, that's for sure...indeed, far from it...but there's something somewhat exciting and hopeful about how the only day the world shuts down in the U.S. is to celebrate Christ's birth, even if so many people have no idea what that quite means and don't do anything quite in line with what he'd want.

To hear a lot of people talk, you'd think it'd be better if people didn't celebrate Christmas at all than to do it poorly.  Last I checked though, there aren't other things, good things, we'd rather people not do than to do it with the wrong motives or style.  I do with more people really knew Christ and could really celebrate Christmas with the right reasons and deference...but much like I'd rather people feed the hungry out of self-glorification than to not do it at all...I guess somewhere, in some ways, I'm alright with people observing a celebration of Christ's birth, even if for the wrong reasons.

So ultimately, I'm all for Santa, all for 24/7 Christmas music, all for Christmas movies and egg nog.  You can say they detract from Jesus, but only if you let them.  They, if nothing else, point to how big of a deal the celebration of Christ's birth is, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

As always though, I'm opposed to how Americans choose to spend their money.  But it's much less how they spend it and much more how they don't.  I couldn't care less about and indeed I'm completely for people giving gifts to each other.  But that doesn't change how little it would take, in light of how rich we, as Americans, are, to change the world, and we, time and time again, choose not to help out. 50 billion dollars would go to fight poverty if we would spend ten percent of what we spend on Christmas gifts on charitable work.  We're celebrating the birth of someone who said two things: love each other and feed the hungry.  We could at least try to do that in his honor.

-Zack

"I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish, pain, and sorrow
Leave your heart and let your road be clear"
-Emerson, Lake, and Palmer

On down the lines of Difference

It's the last day of classes here at Hillsdale.  It's the last day I'll be on campus this semester too.  There's direct correlation.

To say it's been a good semester is the simplest way to describe what I've experienced these last 15 weeks.  But it's far from that simple.  Simply though, I'll just say that everyday gets better here, or at least every week does and the net average of how much I enjoy it at Hillsdale, trying to do ministry here, improves every Thursday night.  I'm falling into some kind of comfort level with the students and I feel like I have real rapport with some key students in key situations.  I won't say it's been my best semester of ministry, but I was far from this effective my second semester at Wooster.  Of course, I wasn't on staff then either.

But it's not about my effectiveness, and at the end of the day it's far from about my own enjoyment of what I do. Everyone wants to enjoy their own job right?  But I struggle to even call this my job.  It's bigger than that.  It's bigger than calling it my career even for that matter.  It's, more, perhaps, than anything else, a place I am to be and a place I need to be.  Our regional director always reminds us that we're not chapter staff, we're campus staff, and I feel more and more all the time like my call is a lot less to be here for the students doing ministry as much as it's to be here for the ministry going on amongst the students.  There are enough Christians here that they don't need me, at all, to have a fellowship.  Some of them are better leaders than I could have hoped to be as a student.

But I've found that a student, no matter how skilled, is always going to be a bit nearsighted.  I'm sure I was as a student.  I'm probably far from the best staff worker in the world, and I'm reminded of that all the time because my staff partner here at Hillsdale definitely could be, but that's not really a question even worth begging.  If all I accomplish on any given day is helping students see things in a way they wouldn't on their own, then I've done something almost magical, and that's actually a fairly common occurrence.  Talent matters, experience matters, calling matters more.  But it's all a series of differences that we run along, that we base everything on.  I'm "effective" on campus because of the ways I can challenge students in the areas I differ from them, because of the way I see things that they don't. I'm also effective on campus because there are enough things I can relate to students on.  Both are required and in any given situation, in any given settings, your differences are a strength and a hindrance...but so are the commonalities.

I have no idea what the future holds.  I have no idea what series of places I'll be or what situations I'll someday find myself in.  But I'll have more or less similarities and differences with those around me and the crux will always be finding the leverage to do anything with them.

But it expands.  It's cultural.  It's values-system based.  Without the deepest possible diversity, we're not playing with a full deck.  And for that reason, I lament the separation in which we all live.

-Zack

And back again...

8 years ago, I was a sophomore in High School and I had this feeling.  Not quite eight years really.  It will be 8 years in March.  But it's close enough.  Eight years ago, this basketball season.  In many ways, eight years ago, tomorrow night.

8 years ago this past spring, the Ottawa Glandorf (my high school) boys basketball team lost two rounds before the championship round.  LeBron James was the reason.

This past spring, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the NBA equivalent of my high school when it comes to rooting interest, lost, two rounds before the championship round.  LeBron James was the reason in a different way, but he was on "our side" this time.

But now, tonight, the eve of the Ohio high school basketball season, I find myself in a similar sort of mindset I had going into the season my sophomore year.  LeBron James is the reason.

For the past 7 years, the man that stood in the way of a title for my high school (we won it during his first year in the NBA) was the sole reason I had any hope my NBA rooting interest had any hope of a title.  I was a turncoat, so to speak.  He was the enemy while I was in high school, but he was the King as soon as he left.  I have friends I graduated with that never liked him in the pros thanks to high school.  I bet they feel vindicated now.  Because I've turnedcoat once again.  You could say he did too, but while I disagree with his decision that he can win better in Miami, if he believes that he can, I can't blame him. But I'm most severely the turncoat again.

I know what it's like to root against LeBron and his team from high school and today, that's where I am again.  I thought, I think, I'm basically positive it will feel weird to see him on the other side, to see him going against "our guys."  But really, there's nothing new about that at all.  It's how I met him and it's how I'll leave him.  He entered my life as the villain, with his team of tattooed superstars with names from literature (Romeo, Scion, Joyce), and he's become the villain once more.

I never felt guilty about my turning-coat.  For 7 years, "we" had the best player in the world on our side and we had a shot.  It seemed personal poetic justice then, that he'd redeem himself by bringing Cleveland NBA glory.  But it was never to be.

There is still something poetic though, in his return to the other side.  It's somehow more orderly, somehow more normal for Cleveland to be on the other side after all of this. .

But even then...

It was a good ride.

-Zack

"you got that big fame homie, and you just changed homie"
-Kanye West

Shots across the sky

I think I've spent the last 11 months detached.  It was probably less than that, but a best it's been since March.  I've put my heart into very little and ended up with results.  Some good, some bad, but I basically left those up to whatever happened.  I haven't cared about much.  At all.  For a long time.

There are exceptions...the majority of my relationship that has turned into an engagement probably being the best example of that.  Others are more shameful and include Harry Potter and soccer.  But I've been spending a lot of time floating through things. I've always thought I'd get by on raw muscle-memory-like talent, like, for my whole life.  I don't want to brag or anything (believe me, I think of this as far from it) but since graduation, that's basically what I've done, with my level of mental engagement dwindling ever more and more, each and every day, I think.  It's why I've blogged less.  It's why I'm not at full funding.  It's why I completely lost steam by the end of ONS and why I probably won't finish my reading goals for the year.

I wish I could say that's over.  I can say I hope it's over.  I feel like it's over.  Already today, it has been over.

I don't know that I can actually describe what happened, not here at least...but some things just finally broke through, last night and tonight, and I actually feel like I'm becoming, again, or for the first time, the person I was supposed to be all along.

This comes though, I admit, at a time when ministry is at its best at Hillsdale as it has ever been with me there. People actually want to participate in evangelism and that's not been the case for pretty much the history of the chapter with few (but extant) exceptions. That might be a part of it.  But mostly, I just want to be real to more people than myself.  I want to be who God created me to be.

Today is World Aids Day and it reminds me of one of my favorite lines on Kanye's new album...in the second verse of the second track, Gorgeous, he says "I'm going to treat this money like the government treats aids; I won't stop til all my [people] get it"  I don't exactly know what that means because he's not naive enough to believe the government actually gives black people aids, but I think his sentiment might be eerily accurate...as Lil Wayne elucidates in the last track on Tha Carter III, 1 in every 9 black men are in jail, often for selling crack, which is prevalent in poor areas....globally, the darker your skin, the more likely you'll have aids, statistically speaking, but it's not because of race....it's because of poverty and a lack of education.  Why is there so much poverty?  I'm going to be blunt: selfish white republicans and a few assimilated non-whites and successful asian americans.  Right now, in Congress, they're trying to renew the Bush tax cuts.  For someone making minimum wage, that's trying to "save" them about 200 bucks a year, maybe, which they'd get back anyway in such a low tax bracket.  On the other end, those making millions save tens of thousands. All the while, they're fighting to cut unemployment benefits, basically telling struggling people they aren't allowed to feed their families.  All the while, they're supposed to be the party of "Christians" at least according to them.  I'm sure Jesus wants them self-identifying with his title after all, when they're saying they'd let him starve and get aids...."what you do to the least of these, you do unto me."   What does this have to do with aids?  Aids is prevalent amongst the poor because treatments and protection aren't as readily available.  Beyond that though, I'm going to jump back to Congress.  In the past decade, we've spent billions of dollars on wars that shouldn't have happened (In my opinion, that's all war), given billionaires tax cuts, and descried everything that might help humankind as "socialist."

But who is to blame?  We all are.  Why are people selfish?  They aren't actually serving Christ.  They aren't actually putting others above themselves.  I understand that people work for the money they have, it's "earned," but seeing human suffering you could do something about and choosing not to is its own kind of evil, regardless of how one received or earned money he or she has.  This is to say nothing about the advantages the successful have that have nothing to do with their own hard work, especially considering the cultural currency simply being white affords us people who are white.  In "Hell Yeah" by Dead Prez, the rapper claims "to me this isn't welfare, I call it reparations."  Honestly, we couldn't do reparations because no amount of money can pay for the destruction of hundreds of years of culture, thousands of years of honor, and lifetimes worth of pain.  If the U.S. took the cost of both Iraq wars and the Afghanistan conflict and wrote a check for that amount to all of the people oppressed during the past 236 years, it wouldn't scratch the surface of what's due.

But we're capitalists.  We make our own way.  I'm not even white by technical definition but I benefit and act like I am because that's how I was raised.  I can't begrudge it, it is what it is.  But if nothing else, I can start with myself and help others get decentered too, as I constantly decenter myself.

Post-modernism is not a culture.  It is not a release of truth.  It's almost nothing you've ever heard it to be.  It's a decentering and acknowledgement that the truth isn't something we can boil down to.  It's something so much bigger.

-Zack

"See I'm a poet to some, a modern day shakespeare...but that ain't the case"
-Eminem

Ever Moving Forward

I'm 23 now, which is new, since my last update.
That also means I'm a few days past the one-year-til-the-wedding day.  That's it's own sort of excitement.

Two major things happened in my piece of pop-culture interest:  the first part of the last Harry Potter episodes of movies came out and captured the emotion of the first half of the book perfectly (and that's the most you can really ask of the movies).  Additionally, Kanye West released his first rap album since 2007's graduation.  It's basically the best piece of hip-hop art ever crafted, and that's extraordinary as a "non-debut" album and a testament to Kanye's vision as an artist and supreme talent.  Most rappers have a breakout album and never quite re-achieve that greatness because their "flow" isn't as unique anymore.  Kanye somehow manages to create increasingly better music each and every time.  That's actually true of the Harry Potter movies too, but on a different level and in very different ways.

I don't really know what it means or what it looks like to adjust to being a new age.  I'm 23 now and this time last week, I was 22.  22 was one of the best years of my life.  Today was the Curry Night that marks one year since I started going.  It's been the fastest, most brilliant year of my life.  I couldn't have guessed I'd be where I am now, then, and I definitely couldn't have guessed it when I first took the relative risk of coming to Curry Night and my life began to transform.

It's a testament to the sovereignty of God.  I don't think random chance, on its own, would have brought everything together as it all came together.  It all came together.  Thinking back, that means Christmas will be here sooner than expected, and pulling that out, it means the wedding will be too.  Fast fast fast.  Life moves so fast.   But I don't mind at all.  Everything is always moving so fast.  But I don't mind.  The last year of my life showed me that that's alright.  That's a good thing.

Then, this weekend, is the Ohio State-Michigan game...and it's suddenly meaningless.  Of course I'll watch, of course it will feel epic as the blue and yellow helmets collide with the grey....but it's not what it was when even I was growing up....I can only imagine what it's like for my dad and people his age, that grew up with Woody and Bo.  It's all cyclical and it moves so fast.  Somehow those of us on the southern side of the state haven't fallen off like Michigan has, but that's probably some kind of luck.  Jim Tressel could have been the implosion Rich Rodriguez has been.  But he wasn't.  It's always so close to the edge...and that's just sports.

At some point in my life, I might just quit everything and turn to full time writing...I don't know how that would be possible, but there's got to be a better way to make time.

-Zack

"hatred and attitude tear us entirely"
-Kanye West

A Compelling Lesson

I've grappled with the issue of other religions for awhile now.  Not really that I believe their existence does any precluding of the Gospel or anything like that, or like there are so many paths to God that we ought to hold them all as equal and thereby not trust any of them, but from the perspective of perspectives.

I can't really tell someone that what they feel in their own religious, outside of Christianity, experience, is invalid.  I haven't felt it.  From their perspective, I've always thought, it is a real experience, and I can't really plausibly argue against that just as no one can really plausibly argue against my own experiences with Christ.

But I've come to realize it's really a pointless argument.  Jesus offers true life, true healing, and true transformation by a life lived with Him as Lord.  People can reject it or not on any logical or philosophical grounds they may choose.  But they are saying no to their own healing and that is on their own hands. That, or they are saying they are not broken, and chances are, at that point, they're lying to themselves.  Other religions exist, and honestly, I'm not informed enough to say that they do or don't offer anything specific.  But I do know Christ and what He can do, and it is definitely enough, for life and for eternity.  Is Jesus "for everyone?"  He's for everyone who will admit that they're broken, and he's for those who don't, but they won't admit it.

Christianity has definitely become something of a "religion" since its inception, full of culture and tradition.  It's not all bad, by any means, but what Christ truly offers isn't an alternative, easier to do religion in place of Islam, taoism, Hinduism, or whatever else.  He offers a form of healing and identity based on love, and that's something everyone needs, no matter where on Earth they were born or what their parents taught them.

-Zack

"come and see"

Lacking the Adjectives

I wish I had an adjective, for this right now.  It's like liminality without the vacuum.  I've long said we've got to learn to live liminally, and I'm not backing down from that. But it's the vacuum we've got to adjust to in doing that, because the feeling, this feeling I'm feeling right now, is exhilirating.  It's the reason, I think, more than any other (well, aside from liminality's simple existence as truest reality), that I've ever encouraged it.

It's something akin to standing, as I would imagine it, on the precipice, of all that is and all that is to cwas and ever wt will ever be in light of all that was and ever was meant to be.

But standing on a precipice is a metaphor we often use to describe being at the beginning of something.  More accurately, if we get all Hillsdalian on the words, it's probably describing the feeling of nearly diving.  I don't care about meanings, I just want a word to describe how I feel like I'm feeling now, and if I made up that word, it would be precipal.  But at least firefox says that isn't a word.

And while I feel like I'm standing on a precipice, that implies some waiting, and nothing is waiting.  Full steam ahead, everything is moving, constantly barreling toward eternity.  And that makes it sound like I've got no control...while it often feels like that, I don't think it's true at all, at least in the measured, self-control sort of way we ought to have as people who have ultimately handed all control over to God.  I'm not sure why I bother explaining things like that when I just mean to say what I mean and what I feel then leave it at that.

Here's a list:

The NBA season starts tomorrow.  It's basically a holiday I'm missing because of the ATM the next day.

I'm getting married next November.  Being engaged is culturally sanctioned and encouraged liminality.  That, in every other context, is a pure paradox, especially at Hillsdale.

I feel like I need to write more, for a lot of reasons, and one of them is because even Eminem is convicting me of that fact these days.

The simple fact of being here when everything else is there is by its very nature a sort of liminality.  That's always been true of my life when my physical location happens to be Michigan, but it'd be a lie to say it's not increasing every single day.

And everything feels like it's going to converge eventually, and that's a good thing.  It's the essence of why I need a new word.  If this were just liminality, I'd be feeling an incoherent disconnect, but if anything, it seems I'm somewhere in between that disconnect and some kind of coming together of everything that ever was or ever will be in my life.

I can't help but sort of slip into talking like Gandalf sometimes, or at least Stephen Dedalus...and that itself makes too much sense.

But we always need words.  That's the basic human struggle to reconcile to each other and to God, and it's the struggle that only finds its completion in and through Christ.  Words that are communication, words that are wholeness.  In the beginning was the word and until we got him, we had little, and yet he always has been.

Language is completely pliable, but the word that is the essence of God and is Christ, is somehow the only truly trustworthy thing we can know.  That is an underrated miracle.

-Zack

"right now we just ridin on love and shinin in dark"
-Lil Wayne

Light Place

So it's official.  But I guess I probably have some explaining to do.

Most people who read this, if not all, should know by now, but the story hasn't really shot forth with any degree of certainty at any point in time.....but I'm engaged now, engaged to be married, next November, next November 19th, in Findlay, Ohio, it would seem.  Oh, but it would do more than seem...it would be.  It is...to be.


I don't quite feel like turning this into any sort of story time.  There will be a time and a place for some kind of officiality for that sort of thing, on "theknot.com" or whatever...and it's just not my style.

But it happened and it happened wonderfully in a room that started some brilliant things in my life...twice now.

We were in the same room where my small group met Freshman year at Wooster.  It wasn't planned at all...it was just the best spot because all of the other buildings were locked.  I wasn't quite planning to make it happen quite when it happened...but it happened, I just knew it was the right time, so it happened.  I was glad to get the ring box out of my pocket at the time.


It has been a whirlwind ever since, and part of me has felt a little guilty because my outward excitement has been a bit less than most peoples, even though I'm one of the concerned parties...but it's because I've known it was coming for awhile now and ultimately had control over it.  Maybe it's a bit unfair, to that end...the guy gets no surprises.


But I already can't wait, for next November.  I already can't wait for the rest of my life.  Our lives.


Ah, to document those changes, to trace the shift.  I can't wait but I had no idea what to expect...not really, at all. 


God grows us deeper, he grows us stronger, he grows us together sometimes.  And when that happens, the only step to take is often forward.


-Zack

"Leave me wanting the rest of your life"
-Anberlin

Drawing to a Close

It's going to hit like a storm.  I don't feel ready.  I don't feel prepared.  But maybe, just maybe, that's exactly how I'm supposed to feel right now.

This Saturday, I'll be moving back to Michigan.  I'll be moving back to where God's called me, even if just for the coming year (but ultimately, I just don't know...).  It's crazy, to say the least, how fast this summer has gone.  And I don't feel ready for the coming school year.  Perhaps what's worse than that, is that I don't know how to feel ready.

I'm excited for what's coming.  I'm excited for the coming school year because I know great things will happen.  They always do.  But I just don't feel ready to embrace life on my own again.  I don't feel ready to embrace a regular schedule and the challenges that will surely arise....soon.

But I must be ready.  Because here we are and I can't think of anything more I could do.  I can't think of anything more I could prepare.  Really, right now, I can't even think of any more fund development work I could do.

It's just a matter of packing and a matter of moving....and I'm not packing all that much, I'm not moving many things.  Just my self...and my frame of mind.  Starting Saturday, I'm back in the saddle, so to speak.  The semester will probably be over before I know it, but right now, it feels like it will be here much sooner than I ever thought it would.

I enjoy working on a college campus and not being a college student...but it would be a lie to say I don't miss college....often.

It's hard to believe that as much has changed as has changed in the past year.  But it has.  And here we are, here I am.  Last August, I was hoping to make it on campus by October 1st.  This year, I'm definitely getting into the swing from the outset and that's the best feeling ever.

This time last year, I still had some $30,000 to raise (maybe more)....now, I have less than $9,000 for the rest of the year, and that's not keeping me off of campus.

Things are falling into place, so to speak, in my life, in my world.  But it's a constant journey and things falling into place is far from a reason to be at all sedentary.  Things will constantly be falling into place, and it's our job, in this world, to constantly be taking all of those falling pieces and seeing what we can do to improve, seeing what we can do to move forward.

I've called "Meet the Robinsons" one of the most overlooked movies of the past decade, and part of that comes from how great it is, all the way around.  But perhaps the most important part of my love for the movie comes from a simple phrase that sticks with me still: "keep moving forward."  It doesn't matter, so much, how we do it, it doesn't matter, so much what happens...but what matters is that it happens..that we always keep moving forward.  It is the sedentary life that kills much faster than the dangerous....or something like that.

The next year will be full of risks, of course, and full of challenges and opportunities.  But even in the face of failure, as long as I "keep moving forward" I'm sure I'll be okay.

But I can't neglect, despite all of that, that there's a lot more to it than simple forward motion.  I'm called to a divine purpose in this world, and above all else, I've got to keep that in mind, to seek daily what I'm to do from the word of God and by his will.  I know it's his well, because so much of my life wouldn't be what it is if I did it by my own.  But even so, somehow, someway, where I am is what is right..and I'll keep moving forward from there, by his good grace.

So this Saturday I'm moving, moving back to Michigan, and moving back to the place from where I can move forward in this grand adventure God's placed me on, even if just one semester at a time.

But between now and then, I've got to pack and I'll be packing away an amazing summer.  Who knows what will be next summer?  But I know from experience, and faith in that it's always been the case, it will be another glorious summer.  Between now and then even though, I've got another glorious year in the service of the Lord to get underway.

To God be Glory Forever,

-Zack

"We could do more than dream; we could start it off with this"
-Anberlin

To Span the Sea of Time

For most of my time on InterVarsity staff so far, I've often felt like I'm drowning; drowning in a sea of seemingly endless and dead-ended fund raising, drowning in having no idea how to meaningfully do anything on campus at Hillsdale, drowning in a sea of incapabilities to connect with students on some level, and drowning, perhaps overall, in a sea of personal failings and inadequacies.

I've told myself, all along, and not incorrectly, that I can cling to God, cling to his promises, cling to the knowledge that he wouldn't call me to something he wouldn't equip me to accomplish.  Cling is, most certainly, the most useful verb.  It comes and goes in waves, the thoughts that I can't even dream to have what it takes to be a "good" staffworker.  Largely though, I've probably been more in line with thinking I'm desperately skill-less than like I'm on the divinely appointed mission I, come to find out, actually am on and have been on from the beginning.

I realized today that we, I, probably pray the wrong way a lot.  Maybe I'm wrong in thinking and saying this, but it seems to me that we shouldn't pray for God's will in our lives as much as we should pray for his will in the world and pray that we would be used by him to accomplish it.  Maybe that's splitting hairs, but "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done; on Earth as it is in Heaven" doesn't even mention one's own life and work.  It's probably the least we can do, to pray in the same direction as Jesus.

So somehow, and I probably know less now than I did this time two years ago, going into my senior year at Wooster, God's got me on InterVarsity staff as part of his divine mission to redeem creation.  It's so heavy.  It's so true.  It's so much the only thing I can be doing with my life.  It's also so small, so meticulous, that my small striving in a small school is somehow interwoven with the eternity of all of everything.  But it is.  I believe it is.  Human's can't create their own grand-narrative theory because we're by nature full of holes.  But God fills them.  I don't know how, I just know he does, and I'd rather have faith in that than try to figure things out on my own, try to create a box by which to understand God and whatever it is he's doing.  I probably can't comprehend it and I'm ready to give up trying.  I'll simply be, and I will participate in this wondrous rush toward eternity.  Because he is Love, and deep down, love never fails.

-Zack

"But suddenly now I know where I belong
It's many hundred miles and it won't be long"
-Ben Gibbard and Feist    

Perchance to Dream

Summers come and go, and they mark the rhythms of our lives.  Turning the corner you could say, or the page, toward the rest of the year, to the rest of our lives; summer its own kind of space.  Where we go, who we are, who we will become; they trot out in parade fashion as the world rotates around an axis of summer as eternal transitional space.  Here, at least, in what we call the west thanks to how we chose, long ago, to be oriented.

It has been a full summer.  It has been a short summer.  And too, it has been a long summer.
August is a summer month if there is a summer month, but somehow, it is always the beginning of the end of summer.  I had a conversation with my supervisor today about how he is beginning to mentally turn the corner back toward campus ministry, and that's exactly what I've felt like I've needed to do because my mind and heart just aren't where I know they need to be for me to get back into the swing of Hillsdale life and work.  But, perhaps a little, I'm starting to turn the corner too.  But part of me never wants summer to end.  Even with more normal jobs, there's a sort of mystique about summer and I'm not sure I ever want to lose it.  (That's not to say I have an, in any way, normal job).

But there is so much to look forward to with the fall as well.

It will cool down.
Football will return (and eventually basketball too).
Order will come back as school picks up.
Ministry will begin again (and we'll see more tangible ways of God working in students that I've been missing all summer long)
Life will once more feel like it's moving.

I love fall because I love beginnings and endings.  Summer is a three month space of liminality and transition.  While I love it, I am looking forward to what comes next.  For whatever reason, it never quite feels like "what comes next" ever comes in the summer.

I often hear talk about "summer reading" but I'm so organized in my reading that I've been pretty horrible at doing it regularly without my more regular schedule.
What I've finished this summer:


How to Give Away your Faith
Undiscovered Country
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Hobbit
Snow Crash
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The Small Group Leaders Handbook
The Art of Loving
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
A Little Princess

That might seem like a lot...but it's only 1/3rd of my total reading for the year so far (and much less if you count pages)...that's about right as schedules go, but it doesn't quite fit the "more time to read in the summer" mantra.

Anyway, I recommend basically all of those books, especially Undiscovered Country, which is by Lin Enger.

I never really ask for comments, but I would love to hear what you've been reading this summer, if you feel like contributing.

My favorite movie from the summer is Toy Story 3...it's actually more a coincidence than intentional that it actually came out this summer.  I haven't seen much in theaters lately and would pick a DVD I've seen if any of them outshined Toy Story 3.

But none have, not quite.  It's pretty great.

Like life, I hope this gets more regular come fall.  But summer 2010, you will be missed.

-Zack

"When you run make sure you run to something, not away from"
-The Avetts

My mind is full of treasures, I can't unlock my own vault

I guess it's been nearly a month since I last posted.  The blog I most officially endorse didn't even exist the last time I posted.  It's this by the way. There are two posts now.

But I have some reason.  Well, thirteen of those days have no reason...at least ten of them I probably didn't do anything but waste time not fund raising amid the fund raising I was doing.  But since June 21st, I've been very much all over the place.  10 days in Wisconsin, 2 days in Wooster, 2 days in Findlay...about 13 hours at home somewhere in there.

All of it was great.

All of it was full.

Some of it was magical.

In Madison, I participated in InterVarsity's Orientation for new staff.  It was ten full, full, full days...but I've never been so energized to raise support, I've never been so in love with the mission.  I've never been so ready for what God's going to do on campus this year.  I'm not always enamored with being at Hillsdale, but after ONS, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter where I am: it is a privilege to be involved in God's mission in the world no matter what town or campus I'm serving.

Every single time a friend gets married, my life feels new.  It's nowhere near as new as it is for the married friend.  But life is attached to community more than we might realize (and some of us wish we would both realize and act in that direction more often).  I actually thought I'd be a lot more emotionally unstable last Friday than I was...that's good, but it will always take awhile to think about people as a unit that isn't just a unit but is, by definition, a unit exclusive to itself.

It really makes quarrels about women taking men from their friends seem ridiculous.  (vice versa as well).

I'm not quite feeling up to writing tonight...I just felt like I should and didn't really have anything else to do right now.  I should probably try to get some sleep, but I slept too much today already and that's going to be hard.

I should probably say something about LeBron, but all I can say is that I hope he comes back.  A lot more than a simple basketball player choosing a team is underneath...He's not just Cleveland's best chance for a championship since the mid-nineties Indians, he is probably Cleveland's best chance for a championship for the next 10-15 years.  I would hate to see that squandered....I can't blame him as a person for leaving..he can do as he pleases...but Cleveland needs hope for something.  Sure, it's just sports, but Cleveland is a city full of people that could use a lift, if even for a sports season...thankfully true hope isn't found in sports.  Even so, civic pride and reputation can go a long way and bringing the Kingdom to a place.

That's what I hope, pray, and act for at least.  Is it okay to pray that LeBron makes one decision or another? I don't know.  But when I pray he returns to Cleveland, it has a lot less to do with sports and a whole lot to do with a city and region of the world in desperate need of all forms of justice.

-Zack
"I guess every super hero need his own theme music"
-Kanye West

Bits that shine.

It's not as big of a deal when a friend gets engaged if you're not single.

I've probably mostly lied about being happy for friends that get engaged since I became single.  Not totally lied, because I have always been happy for them.  But to say that happiness wasn't undercut by at least a little jealousy would have been a total fallacy.

But I experienced what it's like to have a close friend get engaged and have it go FBO on this side of singleness, the less jealous side.  I'm not so jealous.  I'm about as happy.  And it's more of a non-issue.

I'm sorry for all the jealousy, engaged and married friends.  It was wrong and I was blinded to it by it.

It's really quite uncanny (although I don't know enough about the past to be certain) how obsessed our culture is with relationships.  Even the most affirmed, well-liked single people will feel the sting of singleness in our culture because we look, so often, upon relationships as the ultimate form of interpersonal validation.  It doesn't even seem to matter where we stand with God as it goes.  Even the most devout Christians seem to look at the world through the lens of romantic relationships, and it just increases more and more as the years go by.

I'm not sure what sort of comment to make on that because I'm right in there in the mix of it all.  "It is better not to marry" says Paul, but you wouldn't think that by looking around.  And like I said...I'm right there in the middle of it all.  Even though, by the time I finally ended my season of singleness, I had decided that desiring a girlfriend was getting me nowhere and to simply live life and let it come as it comes, it would be a lie to say that I don't think life is better on this side of that season.  We just want to connect with others as deeply as we can, and that means romantic relationships and I'm not sure, within our culture, there's a way around that.  Some misinformed 50 year old Christian would start talking about us as "post-moderns" like we're some kind of race that gets by on relational connection and needs to ween ourselves off of it and turn to Christ if they read that little synopsis there.  I don't disagree that we love relational connection more than our predecessors, but I don't think it's wrong, I don't think it's unChristian, and I definitely resist the othering "post-moderns" does.  Some of the people I respect most in my life say it though, like it's anything but reality.  I'm resisting a rant on post-modernity now.  I will say though, that we're in a cycle of desiring and probably brokenly trying to fill voids in our lives with people..and they're voids that people can only kind of fill some of the time.  There's nothing new about that...it's just that we, as a culture, are finally turning to community, to others, instead of to ourselves to fill that hole...and ultimately, that is good.  The truth will always be though, that it's a hole we can't fully fill with others, can't fully fill with anything in the world because nothing here is perfect and we're always already created to be filled with the love of God.

As is par for the course, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of "truth" and how it relates to and is related by notions of the post-modern.  I've come up with one line of dialogue: the post-modernism might seem to shun traditional notions of truth, but I don't see that to be the case entirely.  Post-modernism is, at its core, a realization that we're not going to find all of truth on our own, and just being honest about that very real fact.  Maybe it's a flouting of truth, but ultimately, it's a flouting of the notion of truth in pursuit of the actually attainable notion of honesty.

Maybe that's more than one line.

At the end of the day, I don't think we really know what we haven't felt, what we haven't experienced.  Even the most rationalist of Christians will admit that people aren't convinced to come to Christ by arguments...it's always about his drawing us.  So, to that end, it all starts with experience.  If you ask someone how they know God exists, no matter their long answer about manuscripts, the actual answer, the end answer, is almost always, maybe even always, based on a deep feeling they trust above all else.  That's how it is for me.  I'm just being honest.  I don't put my faith in Christ, my trust in the Bible because there are so many agreeing manuscripts.  It's because I've felt my life, my soul, my inner-being being nourished by its words, by encountering God.

Oftentimes, it seems to me, that Christians want less to show the world the love of Christ and so much more to prove a certain rightness.  And that when the Gospel falls on deaf ears...when people who don't care about your rightness want to feel love and all you've got at the end is an argument that doesn't matter.

So do I throw all objectivity out the window?  Most of it.  That's heresy probably.  But I don't see any validity in fallen man building anything upon the scriptures as we get them and the truth has always been that people look at scripture differently, person to person.  That's a chink in the armor, no matter how we slice it.  So I look at scripture as I look at scripture and I think it's as right a way to do it as I can.  I know people disagree with me on things, but as far as I can tell, there are enough who agree with me that we can get together and try to change the world.  Because I believe it says that's something we're to strive to do...through love.

-Zack

"You're wearing the scars that save"
-Kids in the Way

Discovery

Late late late.

And up against a wall.

But there I am, writing this again.

I will admit, this is probably a stand in, this blog that is.  A stand in for writing I should do that could be more important.  I will admit that this is probably not going to be as great of a read as you might have hoped, as you might have wished for when you decided to come see if I updated and might have got a little excited in seeing that I had.  But I will also admit that I'm glad you're here, reading this right now, because if I'm going to deflect writing other, better things, I might as well be writing for an audience.

It's a binary I guess, or many of them constructing the larger whole.  I could writer other better things for no one (immediately) with no sort of instant gratification at all, or I can write this, for you and others like you to read right away but it's a diversion from the better things I could be spending my time writing.

So why write this if I'm so convinced something else I could write would be so much better?  Mostly because I'm lazy and mostly because I enjoy instant gratification...also because I don't feel organized or devoted enough to anything else right now in order to spend the time writing it.

I also kind of feel duty-bound to update this from time to time.  That's not the fault of any of you...it's simply 6 years of conditioning.  I did, afterall, update my old (ancient really) xanga page daily for something like 8 months when I started it.  I'm self indulgent, so here's a shameful link to it if you want to see it: click these words!

I feel like I'm walking on a wall between two gardens right now.  Opaque metaphor is my specialty.  Luckily it almost always translates into "liminal."

But I digress.

Ever since I joined InterVarsity staff (or really, more correctly, since graduation which is now more than a year ago...wow), I have felt like my life is some kind of uneven collection of colored glass pieces (opaque metaphors about transparent material are really my favorite) that can sometimes pass around by each other and look like something with meaning, but mostly it's all just a jumbled bit of many things, often beautiful, but without any real unity, without specific purpose.  I shouldn't say without specific purpose because I haven't felt purposeless...but I have felt like my life, as a whole, is more a collection of things that share but me as me and don't really fit together to form a solidified whole.  I wonder if that's how all recent college graduates feel or if it's simply the real form of adult life.  I'm not sure but I am sure that if anything, it seems to become more and more the case as time goes on and that doesn't seem like its altogether completely logical.  The further I get from college, shouldn't more things fall into place?  Maybe that's the case in the long run.  But one year out, I'm still in the fracturing phase, or at least have been for awhile.  Maybe I'm not anymore.  But it was a good phase.  It was a good place to be.  It's not that I like things kind of seeming to fall apart or at least become disparate, but it seems to me that life is really a set of build ups, orderings, then fallings down and apart so that something somehow more glorious is built in its place.  Maybe that means I'm afraid of permanence and have given myself a transient lifestyle because I don't want to become something that will stagnate.  But If I think about myself in those terms, then I guess I'm well on my way to losing a bit of that transience, and I'm okay with that...but it's not happening, not yet.

Next year, I will have sort of 3.5 homes, depending on how you count...but all at once, will be somewhat without a permanent residence.  I'll be living in a cottage not far from Hillsdale during the week but probably won't spend many weekends north of Ohio, and my weekends will be pretty split up between different places in Ohio, depending on the ebb and flow of life.  I wish I had some sort of commentary on all of this, but I don't really.  I wish I could divine some deeper meaning from the lot of it, but all it really is is a collection of facts that are.

But from where I stand I stare boldly into that coming future and embrace all of it.  It's not time for me to have a home yet, but I will know when it is.  Maybe it's because God has brought me this far without any debilitating snags, maybe it's a naive refusal to be tied to places as places, maybe it's a faith that borders on irrationality.  I don't know.  But I don't fear anything and I don't worry.  And that's alright.

I feel like I'm being prideful and arrogant about all of that and I apologize because not only would that be wrong of me, but it's not even really something worth being prideful and arrogant about.

But I look forward to the summer and the coming year richly.

I'm at about 55% of my funding for next year, I think.  If anything, it's probably more than that.  It's shadow time, wherein the next fiscal year is close, when the new budget kicks in, so it's like a game of waiting and coin-flipping, to see what the final remaining balance will be and how much less I need to raise.  I don't know that that's actually how I ought to look at it because we're supposed to be striving for monthly gifts that sustain...I'm something of a one-time-gift magnet though, and I'm not going to insist on any specific form of giving if someone wants to invest in God's work at Hillsdale.

I've been learning and thinking some pretty simplistic stuff about God lately and I think it's simply things we've wanted to overlook:  Jesus' commandment is to love God and to love others...and that's all.  The entire wealth of Christian morality is derived from that and explicated in Paul's letters, but those are letters to people who are already Christian whom he is urging to act in ways that will best show that love to the world.

That is more radical than it sounds...as love often is.

-Zack

"strange how you fit into me"
-Vienna Teng

Back in the Saddle

It's summer.  Well, it's the school-year rendered version of summer, per the Hillsdale College academic calendar.  There are certain aspects of my job that make it feel more like a job than it often does, and when I think about the summer, that becomes one of them...it's full-time fundraising time once again.

But Fund Raising, I'm learning, isn't as bad as it sounds or seems and Faith goes a long way.  It might be the most "job-like" thing I have (depending on how you define "job"), but it can be one of the most exciting.  It's a risky, vulnerable business, but it's also highly relational and it's fun to get to catch up with old friends and family members as part of my job.  I also kind of like the regularity of my daily schedule.  It's not something I could or would want to do full time forever, but I am, at the end of the day, thankful for the seasons of life, even, as it may be, the seasons of fund raising in my life.

It helps, too, that this fund development season has a set end when school starts, unlike last year...of course, that's largely because of the work I had to do during that indeterminate season on my life last year following graduation.

And as I re-enter this season of my life, I remember what life was like this time last year, and even more what became my life by the end of the summer and the end of 2009; it is drastically different, to say the least, and ultimately, it is better.

There's a sort of adolescent growing period immediately following college graduation.  There's a lot of adjustment that, at least for me, had to take place in moving back home, but even more, there's an adjustment to the idea that college is over, that life of some sort or another is beginning again, much like it did when college started, but somehow bigger, somehow more powerfully so.  At least that's how it felt for me last year...and I'll admit that I simply didn't have the best immediate support network for all of that when it all started after I returned home from Chapter Focus Week last year.  Things were changing and things were hard and there was little I could do but turn inward and upward for support because everyone I knew was elsewhere in the world and going through much of the same as me (but, of course different and sometimes including marriage and or coming marriage).  Maybe it's ironic, maybe it's just exactly what God wanted for some reason, and probably it's both, but I definitely do have a much stronger immediate support network now, so to speak, and it's much less necessary for my emotional state going into and going through this summer, one summer removed from college...very much the same but intrinsically different from last summer.

Being tied to the school year is like a science experiment; there are certain things that always stay the same, and it's by them that you can measure the changes.  In the past year, much has changed, but here I am with some key similarities nonetheless....as I look at where I am now and where I was then, I can look on, look back, look forward even, and say that while the past year was one of the hardest I've ever lived, it's brought me to a great place.  God has brought me to a great place.  Maybe it's because of that very fact that I feel like things are more than fine right now; God worked in and through so much in the last 365 days, how could I not make it through what feels like so much less (but could very well be so much more if I look from the right angle) if I made it through, better on the other side, everything that has happened in the past year.

Thank you all, to whom this applies, for your prayer and support in the past year.  I couldn't have done it without you.  If you don't know if it applies to you or not and think it might not...it probably does...knowing my parochial readership.

One of the first students I met at Hillsdale (when I visited before accepting placement during my senior year) got married on Saturday.  I don't know if that symbolizes anything but in a way, it makes me feel old.  In another way, it makes me feel like Hillsdale only masquerades as a school without religious ties (and it's not the only reason I feel that way...), and in a third way, it makes me simply feel joyful.

This Saturday, a woman is getting married that I met long, long ago, many years before she met most if not all of her wedding party.  We used to talk a lot but now, other than the stand-in-for-conversation that a facebook friend request acceptance is, we've not talked since those years (about 8 of them ago).  She's mostly a friend of a friend now, even know neither of us knew any of those mutual friends all those years ago. I don't know that any of that means anything at all..it's just interesting and I like writing about interesting things and seeing if something more interesting emerges.  I don't think it's happening right now.

This Sunday, I hope not to disappoint.  It's a bit of a rigged jury though...I could fail miserably, and I've a feeling I won't disappoint.

I don't know why I share such vagaries.  I just do.

-Zack

"He brought me to a spacious place.  He rescued me because he delighted in me"
-Psalm 18:19

Great Life-giver

The past two weeks evaporated.  It often felt like they were going to last forever (and sometimes I hoped they would, just a little at least), but right now, it feels like two weeks were zapped from my life.  It's mostly because there's such a difference between being at Cedar Campus and being anywhere else that it almost feels like a dream...like I know it happened but the time it took to happen is unaccounted for in my mind.

Then I think about the physical exhaustion I had to overcome over the weekend and realize that it most definitely did happen.

And it was good.  It was very good.  Chapter Focus week is kind of more fun to staff when your students aren't there because it feels like you've got a vibrant social life for a week when you get to hang out with all of the other staff that don't have chapters there and, even without my bias, it's probably safe to say that InterVarsity staff are mostly pretty cool people to hang out with.  But I do have a bias, so I might be wrong.

That's not to say that the second week, when Hillsdale was there, wasn't great, because it definitely was.  Indeed, it was perhaps more great but in all different ways.  We had a very small group, by Hillsdale standards, but it seems that many of them at least understand the mission of InterVarsity better now...my main prayer request is that living that out on campus happens and, further, that it spreads.  The students we had are influential, but there is always the stark worldview contrast between me and Hillsdale students that translates into very different things from the same or at least seemingly same ideas.  There probably shouldn't be such difference between my worldview and that of the typical Hillsdale Christian Fellowship student, because we're all Christians...but sometimes it feels like all similarities end there....indeed, I think they often might...at least most of them.

I've been realizing, especially today and this weekend, that calling God the giver of life means a lot more than we let it.  Of course it means eternal life, but so often we act like eternal life is the only thing God wants to give us.  Perhaps it is the ultimate thing, but he wants to give us life to live abundantly now, here, in this life.  A rich, joyful, hopeful, free life is what he wants to give those who seek him in this life.  I think most people settle for so much less.  Many christians settle in and decide that this life must be terrible and look heavenward at all times, while non-Christians and especially irreligious people settle for a life that strives to be fulfilled by imperfect love from imperfect people and it can only lead to an unfulfilling life.  But God can and will grant a beautiful life to his children, if we would simply seek to see his world as he sees it, deriving joy from the beauty he places around us, in people, in places, in knowing that he loves us more than we can even fathom.  There's joy in the life he wants to grant us, if we would be open, and it's a joy that gives strength and hope, because he promises this world will be imperfect in its broken state.  But despite its brokenness, he offers hope for a brighter tomorrow and a better today.  It's amazing how far hope can get you, when it rests in the creator and sustainer of all things.  The best part about it is, perhaps, at least for now, that it's a joy that often, practically, comes from others, in the context of community.  God uses people to bless people with a rich life of love and hope.  To be close to God is to be close to others; it is some kind of profound, beautiful, mysterious circle that lets us constantly draw more and more and more into the fold of joyful, warm, loving embrace, if only we would stop pursuing the end and take a moment to love in the means.

-Zack

"What happened to the American dream?  It came true."
-Watchmen

O'er Yonder

Tomorrow is kind of the official beginning of a summer of some kind of adventure.  It is an adventure.  I know that, I feel that.  But it also feels like the step into a summer I know I won't emerge from the same person.  I don't know how much will change, in me, for me, but I know I don't stay too similar to myself for very long (usually in a good way, but I suppose that's not a guarantee and depends how you measure it) these days, and there are a lot of things happening so I don't imagine this summer will be anything like a getting back to or attaining any sort of status quo.  I stopped believing in status quo long ago anyway, so I don't mind that.

But let's lay down a littany of what's going on and deduce some things if we can.

I leave tomorrow for Wooster, which will probably always be a surreal feeling as long as I live.  Wooster is always going to feel like home in some way, and my personal sentimentality probably means that feeling will only increase as memories of anything less than pleasant fade daily and good memories become the focus of my recollections.

But I'm not going back to Wooster to wander around campus.  There is purpose and it is exciting.  I can't completely disagree with Parks and Recreation tonight though...."whenever a marriage takes place, two single people die" and with another summer of marriages and engagements already afoot, my social landscape will, once more, be rocked a bit.  It happens and it's good, but it's always a bit altering.

Speaking of single people dying, a sort of non-event will probably be taking place this summer (and if it doesn't, then that's an event in and of itself).  On June 16th, I'll have been single for the longest period of time since I started dating the summer before my junior year of high school.  That's not a huge deal, but if we put our amateur statistician hats on for a minute, you could say my time of singleness could very much be on the other side of the bell curve.  I could very much be wrong, but just based on the numbers, I can't be single much longer right?  That's never happened before, and while I could complexify my analysis and get specific about why I became unsingle in all my past seasons of singleness, and that would probably destroy my numerical analysis, science simply says I shouldn't be single for much longer.  So, this summer is a showdown between scientific meta-narrative and literal, post-modern facticity.  You know where I fall, and if I could write worth anything, you'd realize that I'm siding with the indeterminate length of single-living side of the argument.  That's probably right.  But it's been a long long long time.  I don't know what God has out there for me though, and it could very well be the case that I'll be single for much longer than the 20 months and 13 days that will have passed on June 16th.  But hey, even post-modern me is kind of rooting for science on this one.

Chapter Focus Week is soon and I'm legitimately staffing a track.  I feel unprepared because the more I prepare the more unprepared I feel.  Likewise, the more I don't prepare, the more arrogant I get and the worse things actually turn out.  So, in my feeling of unpreparedness, I'm probably going to be fine.  But pray for me over the next week, please.  Then, the second week, I'll be in the Hillsdale Leadership track.  Pray for that..mostly so no one draws any weapons and nothing turns to fisticuffs as leadership tracks can be wont to do from time to time.  That's mostly a joke, but pray for the cohesion of our group and the vision God will grant us.

June will be busy too....I'll be out of Ohio for 14 days en total and that's pretty busy by June standards

July isn't so busy after the first weekend. and August just means school is about to start again and I take the NSO plunge.  Ah.  Okay, life is joyous because I am excited just writing all of this.  But it also means I'll be on the other side of the beginning of classes this fall much quicker than it seems right now.  Maybe that's not true, maybe July will prove a long, relaxing month.  But I haven't even said anything about fund development yet, and that's going to be coursing through all of this and I'll have to do all I can *not* to neglect it between things.  God is faithful though, and I've never felt more called to this life, so I know he'll provide.  He always has, he always will, and when he stops that just means it's on to the next adventure...I don't see that happening any time soon though.  I know I had a post a few weeks ago about how I didn't know if I would stay on staff past next year, when I'll most likely be leaving Hillsdale.  That's still true, but I can't imagine stopping just after next year.  I'll be somewhere and I'll still be doing this, this thing I love which I have given up much to do but have gained so much more of such greater worth in doing.

I'm glad I can write that deeply, that joyfully, just about my professional life.  I don't know that many can do that.

But my life will change imperceptibly at the moment but majorly in the long run Saturday too, when my mom moves out and effectively ends what I guess was a facade of her life as a Christian mother and wife.  I probably shouldn't go into much detail here, and I don't have many details anyway, but I've got a brother and a father I've got to be there for this summer too, and right now, I'm just trying to do my best....pray for them and me too.

"If God did not will it, it wouldn't be so"

So let's not focus on that apparently unchangeable and unpleasant fact about the life of my family.  There are much worthier topics in the world, like how some people drift into your life by what looks like accident then 5 months later you realize that it wasn't a drifting at all but a divine appointment and there is no such thing as accident, much less coincidence.  And for that reason I hope.  And I hope because of love.  And I love because I have faith.  Because at the end of the day, at the end of all days "these three remain, faith, hope and love".

Just love.

-Zack

"The rhythm is so in sync and that isn't their only strength
They were humming a tune the sun and the moon, they didn't know what to think"
-Flobots

And can it be...

Christ lives, and so too shall I.

That's the opening line of one of my favorite hymns, but I like it best when I break my own rules about Christian writing and deconstruct the lines.  That line is at its best when it's not followed by the rest of the song, which is mostly about heaven and resurrection.  There is nothing wrong with heaven or resurrection, but right now, I'm not terribly close to either occurrence.  Christ's life most immediately allows me to live fully, to embrace all that life has to offer deeply and love completely.  Christ lives and so too shall I; right here, right now.

-Zack

"Gently lifting hands to heaven,
softened by the sweetest hush,
a Father sings over his children,
loving them so very much."

-Five Iron Frenzy

Stumbling

I want to write something right now, but I don't know what, and I don't know how.  I'm plunging through new depths of liminality these days, incapable of holding fast to more and more things I had relied upon, taken for granted.  We can build things of a sort, and maybe they're pretty stable, but as long as we can build them, they're not necessarily permanent, because we're far from perfect and the fallen world is tending toward fragmentation.

I wish I wasn't so right about all of this, I wish there were exceptions.  But there aren't.

God's it.  All of it.  The only one, the only thing, the only foundation we can stand on, the only thing we can cling to when life's winds pick up and threaten to blow all apart all we've built.

Inside his will though, upon the rock of his word on which we can stand, he gives peace, joy, hope, love.  It's not just a clinging in hard times.  It's a standing firm and high, higher than we ever could on our own.

This fallen world wants to fragment, and our fallen selves want to do that to, to follow our own lead, to fragment with it.  It's natural, but it isn't right.  He wants to give us so much more, but far too often we seek to build elsewhere, to stray from the foundation He is and create on our own.

I never thought these abstract forms would become so real in my own family.  But here we are, and until we get back on the rock, decenter all else and recenter on Christ, truly, there is no hope, because there was never supposed to be hope apart from Christ.

That sounds like bad news, until you reverse it; in Christ there is great, more than supernatural hope.  Hope placed elsewhere is little more than fanciful wishing, but hope placed in Christ is a promise that he will never let go.

-Zack

"Tell me why you lie, and what it is you do to keep your eyes so shiny"
-The Decembrists

Inward and Onward

As far as I'm concerned, next year is now.

That's not true, but this year isn't really hanging on by much anymore...just a dissipation into nothing as I turn my attention to what's on the way.

I used to write end of the year blogs in college, and I don't think I'll have it in me to do that as a staff.  Part of that is because I have prayer letters for that, and the other part is that years don't really end as much as new years arrive.  That sounds dramatic, harrowing perhaps, or at least confusing, but there's simply little to no time to transition between the two.  Prior to Chapter Focus Week, where the focus is on the chapter as it will be next year, we've got to make submit plans for the next year.  So right now, with an entire week left on campus (I say entire when I should say but one), I'm just thinking about next year and planning for CFW.  There's enough meditative space in my life (and enough is required to sufficiently plan for next year) that I don't feel too rushed, I don't feel like there's no due time to move from one to the next.  But there's a big difference between the months of summer that accompany even the most ambitious InterVarsity student as he or she moves between school years and the months of constantly-forward-looking work that accompany staff work.

I like it though, because I can't really function looking backward too much.  If anything, it's because I'm too sentimental and can get locked into thinking about what was (and won't be) and neglect to think about what will be.  That's why graduation weekend was so hard last year...I was completely diametrically split between the celebration and the saying of goodbyes.  There was no inbetween, ever.  After graduation, the last thought I had was how I had completed college... the only thought I had was how I was leaving.  They couldn't stay together for me, although they were both altogether true enough at that present moment.

And it's even harder right now.  Not the looking back thing, but the looking forward, because a big part of next year is figuring out next-next year.  Actually, that's often more on my mind than the coming year.  Indeed, it's a bit hard to believe in the 370 or so days that sit between me and then at the moment, and that is a problem.  It's often not that I don't want to be here (indeed, it's very much that I very much do), but there is a strong temptation to think that the next year here is an important bit of putting my life on hold.  I shouldn't but I do feel like whatever comes next will be a step toward forever, but until then, I have a mandatory year at Hillsdale with no legitimate bearing on what comes next...and the irony of that is that I don't even know that I won't be at Hillsdale for a third year (but if I am, I'll have to figure out something of a social life between now and then, because every weekend spent here feels like a hostage situation with little to no stockholm syndrome).  In the end, it doesn't really matter.  Well, it's hard to ever say that and really mean it or for it to be completely true (but then again, what is ever completely true?).  I mean to say though, that all the thinking, all the debating in my mind over what is happening, all the uneasiness or at least un-surety will fade, (and ought to out of faith already) and what is right will be apparent.

I have my dreams, I have my desires, I have my own ideas about what I would like to see happen.  I don't know that those are all completely invalid because I don't know that they're all completely born of my own desires without God's input.  More than anything though, I've just got to have faith, I've just got to pray, I've just got, often, to wait and see.  Because it's not hard for me to get impassioned about something and run toward it just to find out that my passion wasn't invalid but my running was.  Indeed, I've had and lost girlfriends and almost girlfriends that way....  I do trust though, that I'll know, when the moment hits and the time is right, that the passion is correct and I won't even be able to run fast enough to take in all God has for me, so He'll have to carry me there.

That's one large glob of a prayer request for next year, and I can't wait to take the steps and plumb the depths of the adventure God's got ahead of me to find out.  There is no waiting in this holding pattern here at Hillsdale.  There is no waiting at all in the shadow of the almighty.  No matter where we are, no matter what we are doing, this is an adventure and waiting is nothing more than his way of letting us experience where we are and what we're doing deeper.  We miss that.  We miss that a lot.

-Zack

"You can't memorize words you've always known"
-Flobots

Thursday Again

It's been awhile since I posted weekly, since I had been posting daily.  But, to be certain, my lent posts were very different from my standard Thursday-or-so posts.

I had a great spring break.  I felt like I spent it everywhere I could in Ohio, and I don't think I could have made it any better without adding a day in Cleveland.  It's been far too long since I've been in Cleveland.  I think I'll organize a day in Cleveland sometime this summer.  West Side Market, maybe an Indians game, wander around downtown for awhile.  Could  be fun, very fun.

I also kind of broke my keyboard en route from my parents house back to Hillsdale... the spacebar only works about 60 percent of the time now.  I'll probably have to get a new keyboard, but I definitely prefer this one thanks to it's special controls.

I don't exactly know why I shared all of that, because my life simply isn't that dull.

In two days I'm going to Michigan State to engage in a day of evangelism training and evangelism on campus in the afternoon. I'm looking forward to that for everything it is, but, one step back, I'm looking forward to seeing students seriously  share their faith and engage in learning how to live a life of evangelism amongst their peers.

God is doing great things on campuses all around us.  Next week is the largest evangelistic project InterVarsity has ever undertaken, at Ohio State.  Already though, the chapters there have seen 100 people give their lives to Christ this school year.  We had around 30 people come to Christ when we did the same thing at Wooster.  Mathematically, that could mean 650 people come to Christ next week at Ohio State.  That sounds insane.  But God is huge and wants to see life transformation, he wants to see healing, he wants to love and for his children to know love.  Pray for even more, perhaps.

Spring Break was great, but it went a long way to accentuating the blankness of my life in Hillsdale.  There are many things I don't have here; non-work-related friends, a church that actually feels like home, true community.  But in the words of Paul, even having those, as I do at home, I count them all loss for the sake of the Gospel.  And that's why I'm here.  It's true, life, on its own, might be "objectively better" in Ohio.  Why wouldn't it be?  It's where I'm from, it's where "my people" are, so to speak.  But it's not where God has called me right now, and I know that...that was accentuated over break as well.  There are many holes to my life in Hillsdale, but there's a bigger, more important hole in my life everywhere else.  The ministry I'm doing here, the ministry to which I am completely committed is important, is huge, is well worth all sacrifice to the point that it's not sacrifice at all, but light and temporary inconvenience.  Because God loves Hillsdale, and he wants me here to learn and demonstrate that.

I don't know though, that I'll be at Hillsdale past next year.  I don't know that I'll even be on staff.  All I really know though, is that God wants me here now, and he wants me here one year from now.  Beyond that, I don't know anything, but I don't know that I have to.

"Give me one more year.  I will dig around it and cultivate the tree.  If then there is no fruit, you may cut it down and use it for firewood"  That's a quote from a parable somewhere in Luke as well as I remember it, and it's how I feel about Hillsdale right now, kind of.  It's not that I'm not seeing any fruit.  It's not that, even, I require any amount of fruit to stay here for longer than next year.  But I do require God letting me know it's right for me to be here past next year.  That's the sort of fruit I'll be looking for next year.  Right now, I feel like I'll be moving on, using my experiences here as the firewood to drive me wherever I'm headed next, after one more year.  I don't know how right it is to pull apart scripture like that, but scripture or not, it's a story I can apply like that in my life right now...even if not, as such, as the word of God.

I'm also feeling a push, from somewhere deep inside and all around, to stop neglecting the intellectual and artistic gifts God has given me.  I don't know what that means.  I don't know that they're completely wasted by being on staff (indeed, I don't think they are).  But I do know I'm going to spend a lot more time writing this summer.  Over the next year, while I'm praying, thinking, journaling, pursuing the next step for me, grad school won't be completely out of play, and that's kind of scary to say, because I've always said seminary is my next academic step if there is one.  But I don't think that's true anymore.  Actually, I don't think it's ever been true.  You could say I've been coming to terms with the potential intermingling of faith and art a lot lately.    I've never not believed it, but I never thought it true for me; I always separated out my academic life from my faith to a degree...it was just necessary when I had to make honest decisions about time in college and ministry found itself opposed to academics.  But when I think about the story of that, the changing of my major and the all-nighters during "It Could Be U" because I literally had no time to do homework before midnight that week, I realize that God has always blessed me with a special relationship to literature, which let me get through college with more an InterVarsity major than an English when you count the time I actually spent.  But that blessing, I don't believe, stopped then, and I don't believe it was just so I could get through college as such.  I know this because I read 7-10 books at a time because I deeply miss the intellectual stimulation I had during college.  I know this because I cannot express myself but through writing.  I know this because even still, little gets me more excited than talking about post-modernity.  It's just a part of who I am, and I confess that I thought I would grow out of it, I thought it would fade as I got farther from college.  But it hasn't.  And it won't.  Despite all I am, I am "a person of letters" so to speak, perhaps even more than anything else save for a child of God, saved by grace and called to love.

So I don't know what all of that means right now.  But it could someday mean my life looks much different from how I imagine it now, how I have imagined it for so long.

As of yesterday, I haven't seen Meg for an entire year.  I don't know that that matters to any of you, but I remember days when I would count the days since I've seen her and if that number was bigger than 0, it made me sorrowful.  I would count the days til I saw her again, and no matter how many there were, I would say "only" and be hopeful.  But yesterday passed with no pomp, no reflection.  It's just been a year, and it probably should have been a year a lot longer ago, save for good friends made at the Urban Plunge inviting us to an event at Marietta, with me accepting despite knowing Meg would be there.  Actually, since breaking up, Meg has performed a dance every time I've seen her...at Fall Conference and then at the hunger meal in Marietta. I couldn't watch either time.

It doesn't really matter how right it was that a once strong couple ends their romantic relationship....there are just some things it's hard to see someone you once loved do, times when they're at their most beautiful, times you remember why your relationship ever began in the first place...times when they seem closer to God than you could ever hope to be.  Audrey sings, Meg dances.

It has been a long year. Sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrible, but in the end, marked by love.

If you read this before tonight, pray for an important leadership meeting taking place at 6:30.

Pray for the price of life at Ohio State too.

-Zack

"There's a whistle in your will"
-Jason Morant

L40: Wait

Why the middle day? If he had the power to resurrect, why stay dead one whole day?  There's retroactive poetry in the rising on a Sunday, or something like that depending on calendars and day calculation...but I only know how to work on that level, so I've always already flouted technicality.

I won't begin to know or try to figure out why there's a day between Good Friday and Easter, but I know it serves us well to observe today as something constant in our lives, in both the spiritual and practical sense.

It's the blankest day on the church calendar, and yet one of the most important.  Waiting, after all, is one of the keys to the Christian life.  The Kingdom of God is here but not yet, just as redemption is here but not yet when Christ has died but not yet resurrected.  Maybe today, as a remembrance of the day he actually did spend in the grave, is an analog for the space between ascension and return.

It doesn't matter, or at least matters very little, because metaphor is what you make it and it always has been.

I do know though, that of all I've felt called to by God, waiting, specifically and simply in general, has been the bulk of it.  We wait.  We wait in expectancy of what he will do, and he's promised us it will be glorious.  But yet, we must wait.  God places true value on the act of waiting, on the cultivation of patience.  "whys" don't apply, or at least I'm not the one to address them.  I just know it's the way things are, and I'll walk in it til he calls me to action, when he has called me to wait.

-Zack

"All I had was just a vision, all I had was my ambition.  Your love without condition kept me swinging when I'm missing"
-Mat Kearney

L39: Redemption

We live in a world that loves to break itself.  I feel it in me, from time to time, the urge to do something somehow self destructive without a second thought.  And the great lie, the greatest lie of all, is that it always starts as something good, at least for me.  I always think it's best for me, even at someone else's expense, but at least best for me.  But that's never true.  Acting on my own accord, to try, on my own, to find happiness, perhaps ironically, always ends in my own depravity.

But there is a hope, and today we celebrate it.  Heaven came down at Christmas but love is shown perfect and sacrifice supreme in Christ's death on the cross.  His ultimate selflessness lets us set right our constantly self-destructive selfishness.  It's counter intuitive, perhaps, but that itself is a mirage; his Kingdom his perfect and it's our broken world that's counter intuitive.  For now, it seems backwards, but I know it's right, that what's best for me is what's best for you, what's best for us, for me to give myself up, for me to become second.  Because that's what Christ did, that's what love is.  And in love, there is redemption.  In redemption, there is love.

We live in a world that loves the break itself, but God loves this world and loves to make it whole again.

-Zack

"No cars go where we know, between the click of the light and the start of the dream"
-The Arcade Fire

L38: Together

"No one claimed any of their possessions as their own"
"They had all things in common"
"What you do to the least of these, you do to me"

Thanks to a Wooster education and a set of key experiences, I'm more opposed to most forms of individualism than most these days.  That definitely isn't where I was when I got to college, but to say those are 4 formative years is an understatement.  Even, I think, if you come through college thinking most of the same things you come to college thinking, there's growth that happens by being around others and engaging thoughts, new or not, on a deeper level.

But I'm not trying to write about college right here.

There is real value in community and most especially community that is knit together in understanding and love, able to be transformative and transform the members of the community.  But it starts in love and it grows people together.

I don't understand exactly how all of Jesus works into the atonement framework of most theologians.  I know we're saved by grace through his sacrifice and it's the greatest form of love. But if that were 100% of the story, Jesus wouldn't have been here for so long.  He wouldn't have come and walked among us.  The rough and ready gospel just says he lived a perfect life, died, and rose from the dead.  I don't see any stipulation on that life except that it was sinless.  Maybe though, it was more than sinless, or, that is to say, that sinlessness is but part, and maybe but a small part of perfection.  Jesus came and calls people, me, you, us, to a life in which we give up things that are our own in response to God's love for us.  But he doesn't just say to hand them over and let them be abandoned.  Giving up self, in Jesus' terms, involves doing so for the good of others...other people.  Something about his perfect life knits people together on a truer, deeper, more sincere level.  That's the life I want.  I do not want to sin, but given the choice, I would rather struggle in a loving community than purify myself of all sin and be utterly alone.  If Jesus' life is any indicator, perhaps that would be a sin itself.



-Zack

"It's a sad situation when we have to resort to keyboards as a means of making relations"
-Gym Class Heroes