Purpose

My favorite song will be, until the day I die, There is a Light that Never Goes Out by the Smiths.

The title comes from the quote: "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." said by Hugh Latimer before being burned at the stake for heresy. Heresy in the form of an evangelical revolution on college campuses in England.

I don't think there's even the slightest coincidence that InterVarsity has nothing to do with the Smiths but wouldn't exist were it not for the people that were responsible for the song's title...and I am sure there is absolutely no other job in the world I should have right now.

I just spent 3 days in Ann Arbor talking about the heart of what we do...seeing people decide to make Jesus Christ the Lord of their lives.

It was a long and exhausting few days....we basically put in 12 hours of time, stayed up til 2 a.m. or later (that part was optional, but the direct consequence of putting the three Wooster-tied staff in the same place for sleeping arrangements), and did it all again the next day. Thankfully, it was only three days....As it was, I slept til noon today trying to catch up. Thankfully, indeed, I could do that...I'm sure many of my colleagues couldn't.

It was a remarkable time though.

Spending time thinking about why we do what we do, I've given thought to why I do much of what I do. Some of the reasons are more opaque than others.

As far as this is concerned though, I'm not quite sure why I write this...each post seems to have its own purpose. Sometimes, I just need to write and sometimes I feel like feeling like I'm telling people things, so a word document on my hard drive wouldn't "scratch that itch." Other times I really do have something I want people to know. Sometimes, I think I write because I often wish many of my friends had blogs so I could see what's on their mind from time to time. I acknowledge though, that my relationship with the English language and writing is pretty unique....

J.D. Salinger died today and I don't know what to say. I'm not glad he's dead; I'm never glad someone is dead. But he's basically famous for the death of John Lennon and making a ton of emotional teenagers think they know anything about anything. It's a shame too, because what there is to like about the Catcher in the Rye is never what gets attention. As far as I can tell, Salinger was incapable of creating characters or plot, but he could build a compelling narrative out of literally nothing....but it's the nothing that gets all the attention. Ironic, probably....

I heard bagpipes on campus last night. You can take bagpipe lessons, and that's what was going on. I've been aware of the lessons, so I always thought I would feel at home when and if I heard the pipes....but the opposite happened...I just missed Wooster.

I met a guy on Tuesday that could play basically any song he'd heard on the piano. He was wasting that talent on a degree in engineering....sometimes, communism looks good.


-Zack

"Oh call my name, you know my name, and in that sound everything will change"
-Vienna Teng

Shifting

There's a very good chance my traditionally (mostly) reliable Thursday posts are going to become traditional and mostly reliable Friday posts. Thursdays are a lot busier these days and if you remember, the Thursday thing started when I was in college and there was a nice break for writing between two things in the middle of the day. There's still time on Thursdays, if I tried, but generally, Fridays are pretty calm (so far) and don't, at least, have anything regular going on. Then again, I can basically guarantee that I won't post next Friday, but we'll see.

I'm greatly looking forward to the next week...all of it.

I find myself looking forward to tomorrows a lot more often than perhaps ever before, and it's a different sort of looking forward and being excited about what is to come than I've ever experienced. It's not that I'm really longing for what is to come (although I am). More than anything, it's a calm, assured, peaceful, expectant excitement about the coming day, week, month, and so on. This life is such an adventure.

I've joined (I paid dues) the Hillsdale film society. It's strange because I don't know that anyone involved is active in HCF (Hillsdale Christian Fellowship...our chapter), but sometimes, I feel more at home among those students than with the Christian students.....they just...well, the film society students seem like Wooster students more than any of the other Hillsdale students I've met. It will probably go slowly, but I'm hoping to cultivate friendships out of the film society.

But there is a danger in reading that incorrectly; I absolutely love spending time with HCF students...it's one of my life's greatest joys.

I recently told someone that it feels like I live in a different world now, and not just because I'm in Michigan. I feel like the world is just different for me now. There's a different sort of purpose that pervades all I do, and I love it.

I still feel weird thinking about how I don't live in Ohio, but it's been less than 2 weeks.

Sometimes, it kind of feels like I'm in college again, with more responsibilities and without class. Like, for instance, how I'm "going home for the weekend" next weekend. That just sounds like such a "college" thing to say. But it's true. I even do a lot of the same things I did while I was in college, so it's not too far removed.

But the purpose or at least the time devoted to the purpose is quite different, and really, that's the best part.

Much is wonderful, but not everything....and nearly nothing is easy.

I'm still trying to find a church, and that's a harder thing to do than it has ever been. So much of me doesn't feel like it fits into much of Hillsdale (town and college) and that's definitely reflected in the churches in the area. I'm sure there's somewhere though, where God has intended me to plant my roots while I am here. It's a lot harder to not have a church home than I have ever realized. It was never an issue in college, save for a few weeks at the beginning of my first year...and my church in Wooster ended up being the bridge to my church back home (both of which I miss dearly). Not so in Hillsdale, and my typical roadsigns for finding a church have already been exhausted. But there has to be somewhere...

I live alone right now too. My roommate had his colon removed on Monday and he'll be away recovering for awhile. It's strange, because I've never lived this alone for this long for my entire life. But I'm doing alright. It's the realization of that (the living alone...I try not to think about it too much) that makes me think about how much I don't have around here...no church, no real "non-student" friends, and no real outlet for any sort of social life. But praise the Lord for facebook. Seriously.

So that's why I can't wait for the coming week....three days with other new staff at our regional training session and a weekend at home, seeing people I've barely known for 3 months but have grown to love and miss dearly.

Time is such a strange thing....

-Zack

"yours is the face that launched 10000 ships"
-Death Cab for Cutie

Like a Hurricane

We can't fathom it.
How wide
How long
How deep.

But we know it is. We know it is because we are feeling something, we are knowing something. We are being and we are being and we are doing something.

I woke up today. Maybe it wasn't then. But at some point this morning, it became one of those crisis days. One of those days when you start to question the meaning of it all, one of those days when you just spend too long thinking about the bigness of it all and realize that you're not really much against it. One of those days when clarity is all you long for, but you realize that we're still staring straight into that glass...the immortal glass. Darkly.

But there is a place of peace. There is a place of serenity. There is calm assurance, and it's not assurance of all you wish you knew. It's assurance that it's alright to not know. Because He loves us.

And it's a love that flows freely all of the time. It's a love that sustains, it is a love the enlivens.

The greatest of these is love because it is a love in which we can have faith, it is a love that gives us hope. It is a love that never lets us go.

-Zack

"Night into day
We have been captured again
A new time and place to make a million new memories"
-Mae

no room at all

I've tried to write something here, 3 or 5 times in the past couple of days.

I know what it's supposed to feel like.

I know how I want to say it.

But I have no idea what I want to say.

So for now I have nothing.

Sorry.

-Zack

"I'm afraid to move"
-Vienna Teng

Love is a word so small

Sometimes, and right now might be one of those times, I just kind of sit at my computer and try to come up with things to do, to delay one thing or another (now, and probably most often, sleep), hoping an e-mail or something will come through so I've got something I can at least tell myself is important to do before doing the next thing.

And sometimes it happens, but often it doesn't.

Right now I just don't want to go upstairs and read til I feel tired enough to sleep. I love to read, don't get me wrong. I have to read multiple books at a time to feel like I'm getting the most out of my time reading. But I've been reading a lot lately, and at least for me, reading is only one half of the give and take experience that makes up much of my life. If I read too much, I have to write to get to a place where I can read enjoyably again. It could be many things...the necessity to balance consumption with creation, the natural response to reading I developed as an English major in college, or just a natural equilibrium I've got to have in my life. If I write a lot for awhile, I can't for awhile, and in that time, I always read more.

But it's all inexact. I just know I've been reading a lot lately. I've finished three books since I moved to Hillsdale...and as always, they weren't the only things I've been reading...and it's not like I've done nothing but read. Not only is that logistically impossible, but it's psychologically impossible too. I've written a lot more too. I think I, at least for the week, struck a good balance between the two.

But right now, all of this, feels more like an attempt to dull a mental edge totally unrelated to writing and reading and to let me come to a place of mental peace and serenity so I can get to sleep.

But it's not that easy really...not really at all.

Things are really just kind of lonely here. Not even really in a bad way. Well, I guess I would usually differentiate loneliness, solitude, and alone-ness, and I did choose to say "lonely" but I don't feel like I'm just dying for human contact or anything like that. I've got a good roommate and it's my job to work with some of the most remarkable students on the planet. But it just feels like there's a sort of connection I'm missing in life. I don't know what it is. I think it has something to do with knowing or seeing. But that's both vague and as much as I can come up with to say about it right now.

Things are good here. Very good. But I do miss things from home and from Wooster, but that's always natural. I feel like I don't understand or just don't get something about something, but that's all I can say about that too because it's all I know of it...and it's strange.

I think I'm going to give up and go read.

-Zack

"He's unresponsive cause you're irresponsible"
-Death Cab for Cutie

The voice she loved most

In Prince Caspian, the true second book of The Chronicles of Narnia (to show how old I am, or at least how young I began reading, the commonly (and mistakenly) accepted reordering didn't happen til after I'd first read them, at least on the copies I had readily available to my perusal), Lucy (perhaps my favorite character in all of literature) wakes up to a voice Lewis describes as "the voice she loved most in the world." But she didn't know to whom the voice belonged. She just knew she loved it. It wasn't her father's voice, it wasn't her brother Peter's voice. But it was a voice, and she knew she loved it.

I cannot speak for Lewis (although as I re-read The Chronicles of Narnia, I learn that I often speak like Lewis), but his allowance for Lucy to love a voice she did not recognize, but to, at least, know the love, to feel the love for the voice (and subsequently, the voice's owner) reminded me of what it is like to know something deeper, something truer, something bigger exists. For some this means the knowledge that something like God exists without knowing God. I do believe we were created to be in communion with God, and to not be so leaves a true hole in our souls. But for me, even as I think and do my best to know God in the truest and deepest sense, sometimes, there's just a feeling that there is more than all of this to all of this. A feeling that deeper, beneath it all, rests something more glorious, more beautiful, more magnificent and brilliant than anything we can see now, anything we can touch now. It's just a feeling. Perhaps it's a hunch. But it's a form of knowledge that transcends words and it begins and ends with the love God chooses to reveal to us as he chooses to do so, when he chooses to do so.

The Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu laments the necessity of words. Words, to him, are but symbols of reality, never reality itself, and having to use them is a failure to always already experience reality.

I don't always disagree with Chuang Tzu on this point, but the world in which we live-indeed, the world in which we have been placed-relies on words and at least part of our reality hinges upon words.

But deeper than all the words we could ever use lies something more real than anything we've ever seen and anything we could ever hope to describe. There's got to be a reason the ancient Hebrew people weren't allowed to write the name of God, after all.

-Zack

"There's a man down here not worried or afraid
That some politician forgot all the promises he made
And he's raising the dreams in the graveyards
Where we've laid down our dead
His name is Hope"
-John Mark McMillan

Will you come alive, everyone?

I've never adjusted to a new place this well before. Maybe it's because all of my other new places were automatically stress filled silos of high-expectation.

It's not that I don't have high-expectations here. It's not that I don't have stress. But transitioning to Hillsdale feels more like the lift-off after a rocky ride down the runway then the turbulent landing that was moving home after college, or the typhoon of newness that was moving away from home for the first time when I first moved in at Wooster.

I wouldn't trade a second of my life for anything at this point.

It's unfair really, that I get to be a part of God's grand mission so readily, so openly, so quickly. I could list a lot of things not to like about Hillsdale, but I could list more to love, and one of the lovable things is a deep sense of passion and calling the student-leaders seem to share here. It is a humbling privilege to be a part of all of this, and I've barely even begun.

Sure, I miss home. I miss curry, I miss the library, I miss people I love. But I can feel, undoubtedly, that this, all of this I'm in right now, is more that just right. I don't know what more than right means, but I've felt rightness before and sometimes that's hard. There's nothing hard about this rightness. It's bigger than right.

Words are so insufficient.

For 8 days now, I've been learning not to sell myself short on my dreams, not to sell myself short on the bigness of the life God's placed before me. When I was but a first-year student, at the OVD Spring conference (if you don't know what that means, you probably don't care, and if you do know, I don't have to explain it), someone, (I don't know who and I don't know his role at the conference), spoke, I believe, as if from the Lord, and he said "the things you see in your dreams are not just visions of the sweet bye-and-bye. God intends something bigger for your life." I don't remember much from that conference, but I remember that moment.

I think I've been selling my dreams for pennies on the dollar. Or had been.

But there is life in pursuing them, there is life in the calling God has placed on our lives. I do no mean life as the opposite of death, but life as the act of being alive.

There is a place where dreams take flight, and it is beautiful, but you'll never get there on your own.

-Zack

"Get up out of bed for the sound of the song unsung"
-John Mark McMillan

And now we're flying.

-Zack

"at the end of the world you still belong"
-Anberlin

Know Who

I spliced a million different portions of lyrics out of "Closing Time" by Semisonic for this blog, with the title, and chose what I chose because it almost looks like a palindrome...but isn't. There should be a word for that, for phrases that have enough similar letters and enough similar looking letters that they almost look like palindrome. Maybe a "malindrome."

But I didn't do that all for nothing.

This is my last post from Ohio.

It might be my last regular post for awhile, because I don't know what my internet situation will be in Hillsdale.

Indeed, right now, I know very little about the life that treads, always, two or three steps ahead of me.

If you remember "Closing Time" you remember two sets of lyrics "I know who I want to take me home" (although it should be whom...) and/or "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." If you don't remember the song at all or have never heard it at all get informed.

I probably haven't made as much of the fact that I'm going to be living in a different state for the first time in my life as I could. It's strange, because I'll be living closer to "home" in Hillsdale than I did in Wooster...but it won't be Ohio. I guess, maybe, it's not a big deal, and Michigan is a beautiful state. But it's strange to adjust to just living in another state, or thinking about it, I guess, now, not doing it yet. I can't really even bring myself to say it....I'm from Ohio, I just am...and I always will be.


But I'm stepping out into the life, or perhaps just stepping into, like a large fur coat, that I've been heading toward for the 22 years, 1 month, and 19 days prior to right now. That's always true, but it feels like a real shift...like more than just the way every day is the continuation toward eternity...like this is a real step, and not just a mark time...but both are important. I've learned that.

I will admit though, that sometimes, I want to run the other direction....I want to run toward what would be easy, what would be seemingly more secure, what would be more, at least, tangible. But that is not the life to which I have been called.

I have no doubt that life will be better in Hillsdale, because I'll be doing what I've known God wants me to do, but I also know it will be far from easy.

In the long river of it all, it's hard to believe that this is all, ultimately, just a stepping stone although the leap seems large.

In any event, it is always true that God never pushes us off into the river....he makes sure we can make the leap first. That being said, it would be a lie to say he doesn't let us get our feet wet and sometimes, even, in our hesitancy, to splash around a little bit. The metaphor is going to fall apart at some point, but even when things don't go according to plan (and believe me, as far as I was concerned, waiting til January to move was far from "according to plan") things can't go anywhere but according to God's plan, in the end.... and I know I'm far more prepared for the leap now than I was in August.

Eventually, through all of this, I'll be prepared for the next leap too.

***

I had a dream between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. (yeah...I'm kind of a slacker...I didn't wake up til 10 this morning...). I was watching a movie in the dream, and at some point, the DVD froze so I had to watch a few minutes of it over after I cleaned the disc...after I put it back in, I somehow became one of the characters in the film, or at least that's what it felt like in the dream.

That's all unimportant actually...the point of the dream is that I don't think it was a real movie at all, but it's definitely going to become, if nothing else, a short story by me. It was a remarkable film.

-Zack

"when all the flames came rushing it was so beautiful still i wanted something more to say as i spread this blaze so i left that fire and started a new one (and then another one)"
-Mae

End of 2009 #4: My Tradition

I've had a blog for 5 years now, consistently...and 7 years total.

I have been spotty, at times, in my updating of it.

I've been better about that for almost a year now.... I missed few Thursdays this year, or at least since I decided to update on Thursday, and I've probably made up for all of those with a post or three each.

Throughout all of them, I've always had some kind of little award ceremony at the end of the year. It doesn't mean much, but I enjoy it.

And that's what this is.

It's kind of the one personal tradition I have in life (save for constantly failing at any sort of regular sleep pattern...if that counts).

So, without more introduction because the beginning is always going to be awkward, I give you the run down on things that meant something to me this year, in some way. Remember though, they're just things.... a year is more defined by people and experiences than any of these things ever could.

Also, a note: these are not all things that came out in 2009....many of them are much older. They are, however, things that I either first discovered or by which I was particularly impacted in 2009.

(other editions can be found here )

Book of the year: I've called this my hardest decision of this whole thing many times, and if that is true, then this year is especially hard, because I have never, since I've been keeping track, read so many books in one year. The totals came in at 13049 pages across exactly 50 books. That's 12 more books than last year and about 3000 more pages. For the lazy, that means the average length was about 261 pages per book...that's about the average length of any book...maybe a bit on the smaller end. The longest book I read was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and the shortest Missing May by Cynthia Rylant. A large portion of my books were, in fact, for my Children as Readers class (like, about 20 of them...) so I'm not sure that I'll get to 50 again next year without all of the time and compulsory reading English classes give...but, anyway, I think, as I think back on my total year, the year I read Harry Potter, it is impossible to pick a book outside of that series. Ultimately, I love Harry Potter more than any other set of books or individual books since the chronicles of Narnia, and my pick, as a result, thinking about the day after I finished it, I have to go with the final book The Deathly Hollows for my book of the year.
Runner-up: Love is an Orientation, Andrew Marin (after, to be honest, the other six HP books..)


Film of the Year: In my version of the academy awards, I use the movies I saw instead of the movies released. I only watched 71 movies this year...a far cry from last years 145...but I had 0 film classes this year, compared to 5 in 2008. The last movie I actually watched happened about two weeks ago too....whereas I averaged more than 2 per week last year (with a month away from all media at SLT...). But I did see some great movies this year! My winner and runner up are really kind of a toss-up, but I'm going to have to go with Once as my top film of the year. It's beautiful, watch it. Tonight.
Runner up: Everything is Illuminated

Director of the Year: I was incredibly close to eliminating this award this year. It was new last year, but I didn't quite expect it to last. However, in thinking about it, I did see, greatly enjoy, and kind of want to rewrite my I.S. about the films of Wes Anderson this fall.
Runner-up: David Yates (for Harry Potter)

T.V. show of the year: This is an interesting one...I don't watch much T.V. but I love what I do watch (mostly either on DVD or the internet, I will admit). Last year's winner (Heroes) has done nothing but disappoint...the constant favorite (the Office) definitely hit me in a big way this year as I basically watched nearly the entire series over the summer....Futurama (although thanks to the movies at least in part) even made a run for reclaiming its crown of old. But, and don't hate me for this, the reason I've not watched so many movies this year, and especially this fall and winter, has been thanks to the readily available copies of Gilmore Girls at the library. Perhaps it's something of a guilty pleasure...but even the campishness of the show endears me and the snappy wordplay, even idiotic at times, gets to me each time. And I'm not really all that attracted to Alexis Bledel, which I would normally expect from myself when I'm liking a show like that...but it's true...it's my show of the year...and I wish I could tell you why I love it so much, but I can't...so don't hate. You probably like Desperate Housewives or Seventh Heaven or Dawson's Creek or something...
Runner-up: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Now I move to music.

Last year, I decided to break it down by genre because it was so hard for me to listen and think about hip-hop/rap and the other music I listen to on the same playing field. 2009 definitely morphed that, and while I'll often listen to a playlist of one or the other, they do meld together far better for me these days....so my plethora of awards from last year have dwindled down to non-genre-specific things.

Song of the Year: Talk about hard. I listen to so much music all the time, it seems impossible to pick one song. But I've got to. I'm going to. I'm about to. This pick is more like a nod in the right direction and a beginning point than the defining song of my year, but it's the song I want to have my first dance as a married couple to (whenever it is I get married...). It is, perhaps strangely titled, but unflinchingly beautiful: Eric's Song, Vienna Teng (if you click on titles for my music awards, you can listen to the songs on Youtube!)
Runner Up: Never Let Go, David Crowder Band

Artist of the Year: This is probably especially hard because I've been all over the place with things I've loved...but when I really think about what has meant the most to me on so many levels, I can't not go with Mae Not only did I love them all year and love all of their new stuff, but dedicating a year's worth of song-sales to charity is a huge thing... I haven't encountered so much Kingdom-centered work in one place much in my life, and never so concerted, never so impassioned...and, for the purposes of these meaningless awards, never from a band.
Runner-up: Nas (warning: that is hardcore, socially active but still very gangster rap...and it's unedited)

Album of the year: Honestly, this isn't hard at all. It's Inland Territory by Vienna Teng by a wide margin. Every song is among her best, and the total album is a joy to listen to each and every single time. It's much harder to pick a runner up, to be honest...
Runner up: The Once Soundtrack by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

Sports Team of the Year: (note: this goes to the team I follow that did the best) I usually have to wait until Ohio State is finished with their Bowl game to decide this award. That wasn't the case this year and simply happened because they finally had a game on January 1st. (remember when all the bowls were on the first or earlier? Those were the days children!) It's a runaway for the Cleveland Cavaliers this year because they were and are the only team I follow in unsurprising and serious contention for the championship. That, and I love LeBron. A lot. Too much.
Runner-Up: OG Titan Football (for their surprising and surreal playoff run)

If you've read this in past years, you might remember that I said last year could be the last year for the video game of the year award, and I was right.... I didn't really play video games this past year, and doubt I will in 2010...

So, that means, that's a wrap.

I hope you have had a great beginning to your new year and a great ending to our whirlwind cultural gamut of holidays since October 31st. I know I loved them all.

Until next time folks!

-Zack

"Strange how you know inside me. I measure the time and I stand amazed"
-Vienna Teng