150

I started this just over 13 months ago, and it's taken me that long to reach 150 posts. I don't feel like I post so much, but I guess that means I average around 2.5 posts/week. That's more than I would expect, but perhaps not completely surprising.

Hillsdale's spring break is still four weeks away as of tomorrow. That's quite the haul from the beginning of the semester in mid-January, and I always thought it was long when we had to get to the second week of March at Wooster. But, at least, at Hillsdale, once you get to break, you're really close to the end of the school year. I don't know that that's necessarily good, but coming off of break and seeing 6 more weeks of class isn't much fun either.

It's all just pointing to the fact that balance doesn't get enough credit in our lives or our structures. Of course, balance and Hillsdale are often complete opposites so that's no surprise.

I don't completely know how long I'll be on staff in general, but I do know I'll almost definitely still be at Hillsdale next year. I'm mostly fine with that and excited to continue on in the work God has started this semester, but if I stay on staff much past next year, I can't fathom staying out of Ohio for a singular reason: the Cleveland Urban Plunge. I've gone three years in a row, so I don't really mind missing it for this year and next, and obviously, there's no gurantee I'd get to staff it if I was on staff in Ohio, but at least there would be a chance. More than anything else, even more than MAC or China, I often think "if I could just get these guys to go to the Urban plunge" this or that would be different. It's a truly transformative time, each and every year, and I went three times. I remember a student, during the fall of my junior year at Wooster, claiming to "not need a full week of an Urban Plunge" and thinking that she couldn't be more incorrect. She did go though, eventually, and I would imagine she now realizes the error of her earliest statement.

And it's not like each year I went was particularly good....my second time around, I kind of wished I hadn't decided to go. But looking back, I know it was the right decision (and for the record, it had nothing to do with the program itself, but rather an unfortunate concatenation of participants).

I should probably back up and explain what all this fuss is about. It's really quite simple: God loves people, all people, and his heart breaks in the face of injustice. When you get many people together (as is the case in an urban center) and they are subject and exposed to much injustice (as is the case in Cleveland and many of our nation's cities), the result is a nearness and fullness to God's love and passions that you're not going to encounter on your own and you're not even going to encounter on an urban service project, because far too often, people like me, or at least people like who I was, feel like they're making a lasting difference and saving the world on service projects. But at the Urban Plunge, we, quite simply, encounter God and see what we can learn of his love for the city. What happens though, is realizing that that love is the same for all people everywhere and, no matter how downcast any group of people or any inhabitants of a particular place might be, there is always real hope for the present and future in God.

And I can explain it all further, but that's it in a nutshell, and no matter how much you think you grasp it, I say whole-heartedly that understanding what I've written is nothing like actually experiencing it.

I went three times after all.

My life is so strangely gyroscopic right now. I kind of look forward to weekends for rest and renewal, but on the other hand, I kind of loathe weekends for their blankness.

-Zack

"Everything changes when you come around"
-John Mark McMillan