The Light starts to Burn

If you've visited this over the past few days, you've noticed a series of 3 short posts. They're the first three of 40 5 minute thought explorations I'll be undertaking til Easter. There's no set theme, there's no real connection between them. Mostly I'm doing it to keep my mind running throughout the day or to process things from the day before going to bed. There's not time really, to go too in depth or get all that narrative or meta-prosish in 5 minutes, so I honestly just sit down and start writing as I think. I hope they're at least slightly interesting, but I completely understand if they're incomprehensible too.

This week, I've been learning how far from a Calvinist I am...and it's happened by encountering many of them. Ancestrally, I can't really win with Hillsdale...students are taught to celebrate the American heritage that includes stealing the land upon which this country was founded from one side of my ancestry, while religiously, a vast majority of the Christians here align quite sharply with the group that persecuted the other side of my ancestry to the point of fleeing Europe for the United States.

But thankfully, just as there is no Greek, Roman, Slave, Free, Male, or Female in Christ, there is no Calvinist, Anabaptist, Native American or White Immigrant American either. That means I either keep my personal details to myself or do my best to look past the uninterrogated views that are seemingly held by so many and lay aside any objections I might have for the sake of the Gospel. There's no need to rehash distant past conflicts now. Someone did say, at Bible Study Wednesday night, that "people don't seem to like the Anabaptists much around here" and that doesn't really make sense to me. I mean, I guess pacifism can be contentious, especially at the neo-con capital of the world, but disliking pacifists is kind of the funniest thing I've heard or had the chance to think about for a long time..... I didn't stretch that conversation too far, so I don't know what the actual grief was, but I'm also not sure what it could be once you get past incorrect preconceptions. But, chances are, that's the real issue anyway, as it so often is.

I'm caught somewhere between believing my life is some grand adventure and some slow roll toward chaos. I kind of like it like that, but I do wish I had more than just a group of people that aren't too sure I'm at all necessary to turn to for all social interaction. It will come though, I'm sure...I'm also incredibly impatient.

I kind of can't wait for Chapter Focus Week. Semester go a lot faster when you don't have class. February is almost over and I can barely remember any time passing between now and its beginning. Really, since moving to Hillsdale, time has been completely unclear for me. It seems like both forever ago and a recent event. Sometimes I feel like I've been here forever, but I don't know that I've really ever felt like I actually live here. I kind of live an episodic yet repetitive life...sort of like the "The Monkees" wherein every episode is different, but similar enough that you can hardly tell them apart. That happened in college too I think, but my life was people-centric enough that variety seeped in and I can think back and piece together whole time-space referenced memories. I don't know that I can really do that at Hillsdale, at least not yet.


Mostly I just know I need patience. My life is ridiculously contrasting, going back and forth from really amazing to really dull without warning.

Mostly, weekends are the dull part.

-Zack

"Listen to the girl as she takes on half the world, moving up and so alive"
-The Jesus and Mary Chain