theFreeWrite:

On every Corner

2012-02-07T19:47:00.000-05:00

I may have found a new spot to work at night. I'm locked out of my house right now, because I left my keys in my other coat, after walking the dog. I was going to drive to Starbucks (an impressive Starbucks). That's where I normally end up, if I've got time and I've got to write. But today, as I said, I'm locked out of my house. So I walked. In Lakewood, where we live now, there's essentially a coffee house of some sort on every single corner. I ended up in what sounds like and is a hotbed of 21st century Hippy culture- the Root. It's terribly crowded in here. Because I'm reading Les Miserables right now, I'm reminded that this is the sort of place where the French Revolution started.

No one here is starting the French Revolution. I can only hope, in some way, I'll get to be a part of what I envision as something of a Cleveland revolution.

But we're here, in a nice, alternative, sort of town on the west side of Cleveland. Lakewood's the closest thing to a college town lacking a college as I've ever been. It feels more like a college town than most towns I've ever visited. But it's still Llakewood. It's still, at its core, a nice-ish sort of place.

I can't speak for anyone else in here anyway. At best, most people are just hanging out or doing homework. I like the vibe in this place, and the coffee's pretty good. If it's always this crowded, I don't think I'll ever really be able to work here. But I can hang out here- it's like George House North, but far more granola.

This afternoon, I was on the East side. I missed my exit going to a Bible study to which no one showed up. I needed gas, so I stopped at a Marathon on E. 55th. That's in the heart of Hough- very much one of Clevelands formerly organized and now de facto ghettos. In this part of town, there's a gas station on every corner. As such, I wasn't surprised when someone asked me, the moment I got out of my car, if I could help him get something to eat. I wanted to. I always want to. I'm a remarkable sucker for anyone asking for anything on the street. But I had to get going, so I told him I'd talk to him after I pumped my gas. He waited for me, didn't get too close. I didn't have much cash on me, but he let me get him a corned beef sandwich (in Cleveland, more places sell those than don't). As we waited, I talked to him a bit. His name is Bruce. He's in the homeless donut hole, so to speak. He is waiting to get his birth certificate so he can get his i.d. and move into a shelter. As he put it, he's living on the streets right now, just him and God.

I don't know if I could have done more. I don't know if he would have let me anyway. I hope and pray he found somewhere to sleep tonight, even while I noticed, myself stuck outside for a bit this evening, that it's getting colder by the minute in Cleveland tonight. I probably won't see him again. But I'll pray for him, as often as I remember, as often as I can.

I left Bruce, as he walked across the street, toward Burger King, for whatever reason, I don't know. I left knowing that I had no idea what could be done for him. I don't know anything about the process to get the birth certificate and the id. I can't do much to anything to help with that, and I don't have any strings I could pull. I'm glad he got a meal, but what else and how, will his needs be met? He's not even allowed into the shelter right now.

I missed my exit. No one came to Bible study. And yet, today, in a completely accidental, some would say coincidental sort of way, I think I was glad for what I experienced, for where God placed me, more than I've been at all since leaving Wooster. I'm probably given to hyperbole, I know I often overstate. But no matter what I've done in my IV staff career, or what I've yet to do, I know my calling is to Cleveland, to the homeless, to the disenfranchised, to those in the midst of a struggle tied to legal red tape. And that's why I have to go to law school. It doesn't take a law degree to buy someone a corned beef sandwich, but I've been thinking, all day, about how I would at least have had the opportunity to do something more for Bruce today, and could do more for people like him in the future, if I had more knowledge, more resources. I was more excited to talk to Bruce today, to buy him a corned beef sandwich, than I've ever been for coffee with even the most stellar student. InterVarsity does great work, but I'm so sure, right now, that the rest of my life has to be directly tied and devoted to whatever "the least of these" means in Cleveland. InterVarsity fights for justice and raises all sorts of awareness. But all of that only matters when it is actually spurring students, upon graduation, into fields that do the same. Art, law, business, medicine, all require the hope and love of Christ if we're actually going to see the world changed. I'm glad for InterVarsity staff. I'm hopeful more and more will come on. But I know it's not for me. It's not how I'm wired, not anymore at least.

We're all made differently. At Urbana '06, it was all about "the calling you have received." It was there that I decided I was going into law for the wrong reasons, and that's the starting point of the journey that took me onto staff. But, in its own way, that's the starting point that got me back to a law career. I couldn't admit that I was doing the right thing, had I never abandoned it then. Now, I know, deeper than almost all else, that I'm doing the wrong thing to do anything else. Bruce needs people to fight for him. Legally, I'm not even sure he exists right now. Even so, even farther than that, he's one of the realest people I've ever met in Cleveland.

I don't want to sound like there's a dichotomy between staff/law/anything else as right/wrong/anything. It's not that. But we are who we are because that's the person God made us to be. It's a great thing to be on InterVarsity staff and say yes to God, saying yes to the field of vocational ministry. It's a dangerous and foolish thing though, to say yes to vocational ministry and say no to God at the same time. I said yes to God last fall, fully and finally. Today, in the person of Bruce, God answered a resounding "Welcome to reality" right back.

Pray for Bruce. Pray for Cleveland.
-Zack

Recognize

2012-01-09T14:19:00.000-05:00

This won't mean much to you if you're not from or live in Cleveland and or don't care about sports.

They say Cleveland is a football town; I can't dispute that. I'm not a Browns fan particularly (though I'd like to see them do well), but it seems nearly everyone else is in Cleveland. Not only are there few supporters of other teams, it's the Browns that get supremacy as the top-dog team among the four pro-teams(though no one actually counts the Lake Erie Monsters) in the city. If you listen to sports talk radio, even right now, the Browns get next to all of the headlines.

A few years back, at least this time of year, that wasn't the case. When LeBron was in town and the Cavs were title contenders, they were the toast of the town. That all changed, obviously, and the Browns came back on top despite their consistent inability to even be competitive.

The NFL is the most popular sport's league in the country right now. Football is the most popular sport. Last Friday, I was watching the Cavs hang with a solid Minnesota team, while in the workout room at our apartment. It went to the commercial so I was reading. During that commercial break, three other guys came in and changed it to the Orange Bowl; a completely meaningless game between a team from West Virginia and a team from South Carolina I don't know who the guys were and I had about 2 minutes left, so I didn't make a big deal about it, but to me, it was a telling experience: there are people who live in Cleveland's inner-city who prefer poorly played amateur football to a riveting game of professional basketball. Two years ago, that wouldn't have ever been the case. Had it been a Brown's regular season game, even this year when they were abysmal, that wouldn't have happened.

I could bemoan the evident lack of respect and pride in the Cavs I see around the city. I could excoriate these three people as representative for the whole city when I shouldn't. I don't know them. One was wearing a camo-style Indians hat, but other than that, I know next to nothing about them.

Whether or not Cleveland as a metro-area loves the Cavs as much as I do or as much as I believe we all ought is immaterial. I've watched at least some of every Cavs game so far this year though, and something magical is happening when they take the court to represent Cleveland. More than anything, I'm afraid the majority of the city is going to miss it.

Cleveland, as a city, has a certain character about it. There's something beneath the surface of the people here. It's certainly a blue collar town in its way, but it's not Detroit in that sense and it's not Toledo or Pittsburgh either. There's something else, something burning and delightful, but hard and tempered on the surface. There's a grit and a grime about the city and the people who live here. That sounds dirty and, in a way, it is a bit, but it's also a sort of resolve and drive that says, in the face of any amount of adversity, that we aren't going anywhere and while we probably won't live to see Cleveland become the metropolis it was once on the track toward, we aren't going to give up the hope that we can do something to propel this city forward. When I watch this year's edition of the Cavs, I see that play out on the court every night.

No matter the deficit, if these Cavaliers do anything, it's hustle. They don't give up. Last night, in the face of a 15 point deficit that turned into a 20 point loss, even more than halfway through the 4th quarter, players were running down loose balls like their entire point of being was winning the game. The style of defense, the tenacity and the hardness with which they play throbs with the spirit of Cleveland's heart. It is still true that each player is either young, lack talent, or both, but as a unit, they come together and operate like a free-wheeling machine hellbent on accomplishing nothing if not putting forth more effort than would seem humanly possible. Losses are going to happen. I'm hopeful for the playoffs, but I'm more doubtful when I'm honest. That's the way the game breaks. But, at least for 8 games, I've never seen a basketball team play that hard, for that long, relentlessly. When I think about their relationship to Cleveland, I can't help but be proud; they/we might not win every game and probably won't win a championship anytime soon, but at least I know they're trying. That is Cleveland as currently situated. The Browns might be what all of Cleveland loves best, but the Cavaliers are the epitome of Cleveland. As of now, it doesn't seem that most of Cleveland really knows or cares. I just hope the snowball rolls up and we all take notice while we still can.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about it all is the way LeBron's Cavs never quite characterized Cleveland. LeBron is hated for two things here that are really one: quitting in the playoffs and betraying the city. More than anything else, he is a quitter- not just for leaving and giving up on his goal to bring Cleveland a championship, but, more importantly and not muddled by his personal rights, he quit on the team during the Boston series his two years ago. Cleveland doesn't quit. Feeling as if he was one of our own then seeing him do the things he did drew such a vehement negative response because people who had thought they saw themselves in LeBron ended up seeing that he was never even close to one of us. He just represented us, and, when it mattered most, he did so poorly. LeBron's Cavs were always characterized by having at least one player better than anyone else on the other team. That's not Cleveland. We have very little to offer that is, on its own, better than any other singular thing in any other city in the world. But altogether, when you take the food, the lack of traffic, the symphony, the spirit, etc...it all adds up to something beautiful. LeBron's leaving cost Cleveland a legitimate title shot for years, but if these Cavs, at any point, do win a championship, it will be as a team far more representative of Cleveland as a place, as a collective. That will be many times more glorious.

-Zack
"I'm sorry but I just can't die for you but I can make 'em put their hands in the sky for you"
-Jay-Z

My 2011 in the things which I read, saw, watched, and to which I listened

2012-01-05T14:11:00.001-05:00

I've done this for as far back as I can remember (not totally true, but it did at least start in High School...my memory goes back before the internet was a completely public network). Previous editions can obviously be found on this blog, but also at dulacian.xanga.com, usually somewhere near the beginning of the year (obviously as well...).

Life is much more than entertainment and this list (and those like it) boil everything that happened, oftentimes, into a series of anecdotes about the things we do to spend our time. I'd argue that watching movies and reading, in the very least, are far from things I do for purely entertainment purposes. Even so, I got married, went to New York, moved to Cleveland, in 2011. None of those things will necessarily be reflected in anything I'm about to write.

...but then again, so much of life, I do believe, is in some way intimated, expressed, experienced via things like books and movies, at least in the way our, my, culture works today. So that's why I continue to do this, each and every year, despite how often I actually make a new blogpost. What I'm reading at a particular point in time influences how I experience and interpret the experiences I encounter while doing so. Likewise, the music we listen to inflects its own style upon the events taking place to it; that's why modern films have soundtracks. So with that in mind, realize, as you read this, that, more than anything, this is a list of the things that meant the most to me last year within their particular categories. It's not a necessary value judgment and most of these things didn't come out in 2011. In any event, enjoy the reading and feel free to count these as recommendations of some sort, within the context of whatever it is I say about the particular pieces.

Literature:

Book of the year: Every year, I generally say this is the "hardest decision." It's not an easy decision this year; see my list yesterday for evidence. But a short book with which I basically ended up at random, cut through the cloudy territory with its life-altering message, simple elegance, and generally entertaining style from cover to cover. For everyone everywhere, I wholeheartedly, from top to bottom, recommend and give my book-of-2011 honor(as if it matters, but whatever...) to Me, Myself, and Bob, by Phil Vischer. If you want to do anything in your life that's at all creative, out of the ordinary, or worthwhile, heed Mr. Vischer's advice. Do yourself a favor and read this book at the next available moment.
Runner-up: Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Author of the Year: One might think that the author of the year ought to go to the author of the book of the year. Though I could potentially argue that Vischer isn't exactly an author, what's more important is that this title goes more to the person as a writer than to the products he or she creates. Vischer created a life altering book, to be sure, but he's far from an author in any other means when it comes to books. He's a fine writer, but I read multiple books by other people and as storytellers go, he doesn't take the cake with his non-fiction. Anyway, I'm actually going in a direction I never thought I'd ever approach this year. Last year, I started reading the Dark Tower cycle, by Stephen King and while it's flawed, it's the most impressive series I've seen for adults, especially in the modern/post-modern era. Some books have sequels. Few of them are better than their predecessor. King created a new world (or many, depending...) and manages to make each novel better than the last. I like his style; it's entertaining and satiric; harsh and subtle; beautiful and inelegant, and so much more, all at once. So, for that reason, I can't go with anyone but Stephen King as my author of the year.
Runner-up: Marcel Proust

Motion Pictures:

Film of the Year: This isn't easy because I didn't watch nearly enough movies last year. I read more books than I saw films. I'm not even sure I liked most of them. Maybe it's just because it's the last one I saw and the first film I ever saw in blu-ray, but True Grit, by Joel and Ethan Coen is easily the best film I saw last year. I actually watched many academy award best pictures and nominees last year, but The Departed, though amazing, would have lost to True Grit were they the same year, A Serious Man though among my favorites just slightly less decentering than True Grit, and the Hurt Locker the most overrated film I've seen in years (it's good but if it weren't current-day American soldiers, it wouldn't have won. Granted, that makes it powerful and one could argue that that's the point. Even as such, True Grit just, for me, hits correctly on more aspects than The Hurt Locker and it's a more altogether impressive piece of art) Hugo, by the way, is excellent. It's odd though- people who love Melies want everyone to see it to give him his due, but if you actually love Melies, you'll also realize that it doesn't actually give him the due he deserves because, quite frankly, to make a movie praising a man for stop motion and editing technique innovation isn't going to sell. Scorsese is brilliant and he'd be my director of the year if I had that category, but, as always, he compromises for his audience at the wrong times. It's a much more impressive movie than book though, if that says anything. On the whole, it felt so conventional, which is sad, considering it's an homage to one of the most innovative men who ever lived. Sure, it's in 3D, but it's a bit gimicky (though seeing the Melies clips in 3d is brilliant) and provides an excuse for being carelessly shot most of the time. Okay, this wasn't suppose to be a review of Hugo or a simple elimination of the other films I watched from True Grit. True Grit is a masterpiece, top 4 or 5 for the Coens, and that on its own is enough for me to love it dearly for the rest of my life. (the top 3, in my exceptionally educated opinion, is: 1. No Country for Old Men, 2. The Big Lebowski, 3. Barton Fink) I'm also biased, and because this is my list, that's good enough.
Runner-Up: The Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese

Television program of the year: I watched more t.v. last year than I have perhaps ever watched. It's an easy thing to do when Alexandra gets home from work and we don't have long before bed because she has to work in the morning. For the early part of 2011, living in the cabin, I watched next to no television. After moving to Cleveland, it became a flood. Even so, for the most part, outside of sports, I don't really like most t.v. It's simple entertainment and adequate background noise to my reading. Even so, there was a show I had to see every episode of this year: The Next Food Network Star. Though the end of the show was a bit slow and disappointing, the first 5-10 episodes were the most I've ever enjoyed reality t.v.
Runner-Up: The Office

Music:

Song of the Year:
I feel like I'm compelled to pick what I'm about to pick here, but it wouldn't matter...there wasn't a moment this year that I was happier than the moment when Alexandra and I danced to What are you doing the Rest of Your Life, by Dusty Springfield at our wedding reception.
Runner-Up: I Want to be Well, Sufjan Stevens

Artist of the year
If this is a surprise to you, read a couple posts back: Kanye West. He's the greatest living artist still producing at his peak. Not just musically; I mean anyone, anywhere, in any medium. I don't know enough about classical music, architecture, or painting, but I do know Scorsese is past his peak (as are the Coens, whom I'd actually argue are the greatest living directors), and there are next to 0 up and coming directors doing anything as well as Kanye is right now. Rushdie has been past his peak for decades and Eggers, though brilliant, isn't, in my opinion, nearly as prolific or untouchable as Kanye. Kanye out-raps Jay-Z on most of Watch the Throne and he created the majority of the beats for it. He is, as far as I can tell, an auteur of auteurs when it comes to hip-hop.
Runner-Up: Sufjan Stevens

Album of the year:
This is actually harder than you may think. Of course I'm going with Watch the Throne, but Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons and Lungs by Florence and the Machine were absolutely worn out in my car's stereo this past year as well. Even so, near the end of the year, I checked something else out at the library, right before Harvest and well, it almost took first place. It's really more a fight for second place, and for that, I've got to defer to the next line.
Runner-Up: The Age of Adz, Sufjan Stevens

Sports:
Team of the Year: I've got to make up for last year. I went with the Reds for their playoff appearance and listed the Packers as the runner-up. They continued to make me look like a fool and went undefeated from that time til just three weeks ago, picking up a superbowl in the meantime. So, I've got to right the wrong, go with the Green Bay Packers, and wish them the absolute best in the playoffs- hoping for a repeat.
Runner-Up: The College of Wooster, Men's Basketball (for a first-ever national championship game appearance)

I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed reliving my year in print, screen, and sports!
-Zack

"And when you stand before the candles on a cake
Oh, let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make"

-Dusty Springfield

The First 52

2012-01-04T15:32:00.002-05:00

You're probably not as obsessed with me and my reading habits as I am (I should just take probably out of that....shouldn't I?), but this past year, I achieved at least some kind of milestone.

Perhaps you've heard of, have done it yourself, or have friend's who've tried, but it's been something of a fad in some circles, in recent years, to read 52 books during a calendar year- one per week.

I fell into the challenge; I always set a goal of one more book per year each year and two years ago, I read 51 books. Last year, even a few days early, I finished 52. I've got a fairly complex system I've been honing since college and it gets the job done exceedingly well (as long as I put in the reading time each day).

Law school might derail my goals for the foreseeable future. Indeed, I may have set the high for my life this past year. That's a bit crazy to think considering all that happened last year, but it seems unlikely that I'll get to 53 this year (though I'll try), which means I will only set my goal based on what I do this year. Who knows what that really means. In the end, I'm glad to have averaged 1 book per week in 2011. It will always be among my favorite years ever- perhaps my reading achievements will just be part of that. In any event, I thought, in honor of the sort-of accomplishment, I'd post the list, for posterity's sake (whatever that actually means...I don't know how much I want my kids reading blog posts from 2012 when they're old enough to read...).

1. The Gunslinger	Stephen King	216
Being White	Doug Schaup	183
My Name is Asher Lev	Chaim Potok	350
The Prayer Life	Andrew Murray	128
The Drawing of Three	Stephen King	463
Velvet Elvis	Rob Bell	177
Love in the Time of Cholera	Gabriel Garcia Marquez	348
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe	Douglas Addams	217
the Yiddish Policemen's Union	Michael Chabon	411
The Two Towers	J.R.R. Tolkien	447
Life the Universe, and Everything	Douglas Addams	232
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	J.K. Rowling	870
The Hunger Games	Suzanne Collins	374
Swann's Way	Marcel Proust	444
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish	Douglas Addams	152
God on Campus	Trent Sheppard	184
The Ragamuffin Gospel	Brennan Manning	224
The Wastelands	Stephen King	420
Catching Fire	Suzanne Collins	391
The End of Sexual Identity	Jenell Williams-Paris	144
The Giver	Lois Lowry	180
Mostly Harmless	Douglas Addams	180
Daniel Deronda	George Eliot	883
The Return of the King	J.R.R. Tolkien	340
Mocking Jay	Suzanne Collins	390
Justification	N.T. Wright	252
Me, Myself, and Bob	Phil Vischer	260
Radical	David Platt	217
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	J.K. Rowling	652
Of Mice and Men	John Steinbeck	107
The Golden Compass	Philip Pullman	399
Where Wizards Stay Up Late	Katie Hafner	265
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower	Marcel Proust	531
A Midsummer Nights's Dream	William Shakespeare	92
Heart, soul, Mind, Strength	Andrew Le Peau	195
Jurassic Park	Michael Crichton	399
Wizard and Glass	Stephen King	694
The Symposium	Plato	114
The Writing Life	Annie Dillard	111
The Subtle Knife	Philip Pullman	326
Daily Quiet Time for Couples	David and Teresa Ferguson	365
The Invention of Hugo Cabret	Brian Selznick	525
Love's Labors Lost	William Shakespeare	146
Forrest Gump	Winston Groom	248
The Sun Also Rises	Ernest Hemmingway	247
When Love Comes to Town	Paul Louis Metzger	275
Wuthering Heights	Emily Bronte	317
The Lost World	Michael Crichton	430
The Whore of Akron	Scott Raab	300
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	J.K. Rowling	759
A Long Way Gone	Ishmael Beah	217
52. Jesus Wants to Save Christians	Rob Bell	181

The number on the left is the pages ( I copied that straight out of my excel sheet). It adds up to 16972....also a personal best (and I read War and Peace in 2010, so that's an excellent average by my own standards).

Maybe this post is just me bragging...I don't know. If nothing else, you'll know what I'm drawing from when I do my "best of 2011" post tomorrow. You won't want to miss that...it's always my favorite post of the year (and it goes back to pre-Wooster as something I post in some blog somewhere), which I hope means it's enjoyable for my readers.

Until then,
-Zack

"Follow me now as I favor the ghost"
-Sufjan Stevens

This is not a review

2011-12-13T12:24:00.003-05:00

More an ode really, and a story.

Every year, from the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas day, I strive to listen to nothing but Christmas music. This serves a couple of purposes: it gets me in the mood for Christmas (and that's a mood in which I like to be) and it justifies to enormous collection of Christmas music I let stay on my hard drives and iPods throughout the rest of the year.

I love Christmas music so much. I can't wait, each and every year, to listen to every version of "The Wexford Carol" I can find; I can't wait to listen to the Veggie Tales Christmas albums. I can't wait to listen to Bach's Christmas work. I can't even wait to hear the Aspenglow, by John Denver.

But these past two years, I've had my share of inner-struggles to keep it up. In both instances, the challenge has been staged (quite unaware, I'm sure), by my favorite celebrity: namely, Kanye West. Last year, in mid-November, I recieved "My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy." It was the best rap-album I'd ever heard, and the most artistically progressive album I've listened to since first playing Sgt. Peppers on repeat 500 times my senior year of High School.

I was able to push back the urges. As badly as I wanted to listen to the album, I successfully listened to nothing but Christmas music for the appointed time period.

This year, well, things are a bit different. I've already failed. Kanye was the culprit again, with a new album. This time round, he's joined by Jay-Z on "Watch the Throne." My christmas-listening pledge never stood a chance. I got the album a few days before the wedding (though I'd listened to it many times on Grooveshark beforehand) and listened as often as I could til our last day in New York (the day after Thanksgiving). I was doing so well listening to Christmas music. If I found myself wanting to pop Watch the Throne into my car CD player, I just switched to sports talk radio.

But I gave in, on the way to the LSAT last Saturday. Scratch that- I didn't give in at all. I made a CD with Watch the Throne and two appropriate pump-up tracks to intentionally listen to on the way to Oberlin. But the hull was breached. I've listened to non-Christmas music many times since (and not even exclusively Watch the Throne).

I don't think it's just Watch the Throne's brilliance that led me to do what I did. It is brilliant. It might be the pinnacle of hip hop. It might all be downhill for the rest of hip-hop history. It might be Led Zeppelin's last album, so to speak, if Hip-Hop is rock and roll. Kanye and Jay-Z aren't retiring (Jay-Z probably will a few more times, but that's neither here nor there) so I could be wrong, but if, in 20 years, nothing has been released that approaches "Watch the Throne" I won't be surprised.

Just five years ago, that last paragraph would have been veritably impossible for me to write. Before I went to China, I almost never listened to Hip Hop and I rarely enjoyed it when I did. I won't recount that whole story because I don't think I quite understand what happened yet.

I can, however, account for why, exactly, "Watch the Throne" was exactly what I wanted to listen to when I was going in for a day long test that will determine my life's trajectory. Something happens, something changes, for good or ill, inside the listener in the words rhymed to a beat in exemplary hip-hop. I can talk for days and days about how Kanye elevates Hip-hop to fine artistry from an aesthetic standpoint, but ultimately, there's something of a mental exchange that always happens when the words are flowing and it vibes with the listener's soul in a unique way. I've heard taking cocaine likened to making one feel invincible, like they can do anything. In a similar way, getting lost in a good verse of hip-hop does that very thing to a listener.

I've loved music for as long as I can remember. But I've never needed music the way I need the second verse of this song:

No, that's not on Watch the Throne. It is, however, perhaps the most exciting minute in the history of music. And it's one person. All of Hip-Hop, even Watch the throne, defined for it's greatness as a collab, is a series of interconnected personal projects. Every verse is a one man show- even if its a tradeoff that creates the whole. The beat, the best beats at least, are the created by one person and rapped over, by one person.

Art, great art, the greatest art, is often defined as the truest possible expression of one individuals interpretation of the world or their inner being (and often how they interact). That's why Proust is wonderful (albeit dense and challenging) and Hollywood Action movies are universally panned. Part of it is motive: why is it created. Part of it is execution: how is it created. Hip-Hop is a basic equation: personal beat plus personal verse= track. But the applications are endless.

As a post-modern aesthete, what could be better than an unadulterated expression of a human's inner self in response to the outer world expressed emotionally? It's the ultimate post-modern art-form really; there is little to no impersonal rap...not even this:

I won't talk much about the applications of Waka Flocka Flame and his ilk, but I do believe there's an important space for that type of work in the body of Hip-Hop. It's expressing a side of life for someone, and as such, it's valid, even if it's incomprehensible and abhorrent to people like my mom (and I imagine yours...even if I don't know you, I can probably bank on that, ninety times out of ninety-one)

Though I share little in common with Kanye or Jay-Z, for the past 5 years, nothing has thrilled me more than their shared tracks. Watch the Throne is an entire album of my favorite type of tracks since roughly 2007. It's existence was exhilarating and experiencing it, even at the expense of a long-held Christmasrule, has yet to get old.

As the name suggests, it's something of a celebration of the opulence both artists lives are known to hold. But it's introspective at times too; if anything, it's a critique akin to the Great Gatsby. Unlike that work, which often initiates High School children to great literature, Watch the Throne really isn't for the uninitiated. If you're not a fan of hip-hop, you're not going to suddenly get it from this album. If you're easily offended, you'll still be offended. But if you like any form of hip-hop at all, how can tracks like this not drive you to the point of joyous delirium?:

That's the first track on the album. It just builds and flows from there, and by the end, if you're not at least rethinking how you approach entertainment, then that just means you've got to listen again. Or at least, that's what it means for me.

But part of it is all irrational. For some reason, God made me so that I'd connect with tightly wound hip-hop no matter the content and for me it's a semi-spiritual experience. That can't happen to everyone, but at least for me, it's a sort of indulgence I must take, and, in doing so, transport my soul to a different place, even for a few moments. And when I emerge? I'm only more and more the person I'm meant to be.
-Zack

"I don't even know what that means; no one knows what it means, it's provocative, it gets the people going"

Finding Eyes

2011-12-12T21:05:00.002-05:00

N.T. Wright, who is much more important to people who've never heard of him, I think, than he is to many who have, is famous for being the marquee voice of the "New Perspective" school of Biblical scholars.

I'm not going to write about that. I like the idea though; a new perspective.

I've read reviews, blogs, facebook posts, tweets, heard sermons, podcasts, Hillsdale-lunch-table addresses refuting recent Biblical scholarship, theological pondering, self-reconfigurement, when such things flew into the face of "tradition." Tradition, ancient dogmas, long-held beliefs, it seems, gain credence because they are such.

I may have been an English major, but I guarantee that's an indefensible defense in any lab or law room.

Other things that have long been established: forced prostitution. Slavery. Bigotry. Homophobia. War-mongering. Ethnocentrism. Toxic patriotic worship of the nation-state.

How long something has been around is a part of something's facticity, and nothing more. I've been around for 24 years. Does that mean I'm inherently more trustworthy than a 22 year old guy? How old was Benedict Arnold?

I am the biggest proponent of post-modernism as an ideology that you'll ever meet, so perhaps I'm biased.

But I didn't adopt it because it was the thing to do. As I learned and read and continue to read, I've realized that Foucault, Derrida, and Fanon weren't just flying in a face for the sake of the impact: they truly believed that their way of viewing the world improved upon the old way.

In that same vein, let me get a big arrogant for a minute: I don't choose to view the world through a post-modern lens: I do so because I believe it's the lens that best allows us to understand it (whatever there is, that is, that can be understood).

So if that's true, then I've got to ask, once more, once more forever over again, what happens when I hold to that belief while I hold to the belief that the Bible is the inspired world of God? I can't put my trained, cultivated lens on hold just because of what I'm reading. That's not possible and I've learned that, time and again.

And what does happen, what happens indeed? Things I'll never stop learning, never stop writing about for one. Today, I've been thinking about a few in particular: structures, systems, well, they're put on hold when you're looking through the post-modern lens. Face-value is the only value. So when Jesus says that the things you bind on Earth are bound in heaven and vice-versa, He meant it. What does that mean for me? It means Nietzsche and Jesus had a lot more in common than anyone would have ever guessed. This isn't an essay, and I don't feel like explaining that, but I will, for a moment: Nietzsche (about whom most Christians know little other than "he's a really bad guy who hated God!") considered morality a state of personal preference: we hold ourselves to what seems right and wrong based on our upbringing and perspective. The philosophy textbook I had called this individual perspectivism. It's not quite saying nothing is objectively right or wrong, but it comes close. Jesus doesn't say anything like that, but he does say, quite plainly, that God honors the things we establish as right and wrong on Earth.

What, wiggle room? That can't be Christian, can it? Well, why not? Even with a lenient, nearly-non-existent take on morality, who would ever say they've never done anything wrong? It's an experiential slippery slope to a tabula rasa, sure, but let's be realistic: do I have to acknowledge my sin based on someone else's rules or my own to come to confession? Be careful with your answer. If you're talking to someone who doesn't believe smoking is a sin and you do, but to humor you, they repent of it in asking Jesus into their heart, have they actually confessed anything? In my mind, smoking is a disputable matter, to use Paul's words. To use Paul's arguments, that means if I do it and think it's sin, it is....if I do it and think it's not, well, I'm in the clear. In other words, Jesus and Paul (who usually stand at odds in the traditionalist mindset; systematic theology is, far too often the study of how to be an exclusionist, racist, bigot and feel good about one's self) agree on something and it's something most American Evangelicals don't even believe.

That's just a bit...I could say more. I don't have time. I'll never have time. In any event, in any case, keep pushing forward...someday we'll find the river.

-Zack

"314 soldiers died in Iraq; 509 died in Chicago"
-Kanye West

Some things, they happened.

2011-11-28T18:58:00.001-05:00

I got married.
I went to New York.
I came back to Cleveland and realized that I don't ever want to live in a different city, almost immediately.
The NBA is back.
Urban Meyer is Ohio State's new coach.
I returned to CSU and held Bible study again and it felt good.
I turned 24.
Thanksgiving happened and I'm back into Christmas music

Other things, more minor things, happened too. That's in no particular order, but the top one should be where it is, that's certain. It was an incredible week. To say I can't believe it's already over is an understatement. But it's a struggle, to jump back into the grind. I don't know if it's good or dangerous that next week is already the last week of classes at CSU.

It's a good thing for my reading. I've still got to finish 10 books to reach my goal for the year. I'm only close to the end of three right now, plus Wuthering Heights (which I can't wait to begin on Thursday). I've got to finish 6 other books I've got hundreds of pages left in or haven't started yet (effectively having hundreds of pages left in them). I haven't failed yet since I started this reading schedule. I might fail this year. That happens, when you get married and plant a chapter in the same year. It's been a busy year.

I feel a lot more grown up now, than I did November 18th. Its got to be artificial, because what really changed? But what really changes ever? Isn't it just a mindset anyway? It's a good thing because I'd say it's about time.

We walked by Occupy Wall Street on Friday. It was small and kind of annoying. I'm all for the occupy movement in concept; if anything, I don't think they come out as anti-capitalist enough for my own taste. But essentially, that's where I see the broken link. Our system is broken because of Corporate greed, but corporations are greedy because the system rewards them for greed and favors the non-benevolent. It's impossible for the 99% to get their fair share within this system, so protesting at Wall Street isn't going to accomplish much, because this system is set up to benefit those who have and punish those without. As long as that's the case, it's game over before it's game on. Until people are people and valued a such (and not considered a commodity), our crick widens and our paddle dwindles further to oblivion.

But like I said, I got married. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'm only beginning to understand what it really means, but it excites me to the brink of frivolity just thinking about it.

-Zack

RePrint

2011-11-09T12:39:00.000-05:00

As you can see, if you've ever been here before, I've redesigned, retitled my "blog" once more. As I've developed a more regular writing schedule elsewhere and I don't use this like what the term "blog" has come to mean, with regards to a posting schedule and topic, I thought I'd leave the esoteric and grasp the pragmatic.

Nothing really changes except that I've accepted the truth about my blogging habits. I've never actually edited, at length, a blogpost before posting. I just sit down and create from the top of my head about whatever is striking me with enough force to generate a roll of thoughts. I like it. I want to keep doing it.

That's why I'm recreating this once more. Days pass and time goes on. You could say we're always learning. I like to consider learning the process of reclaiming the reality that truly is, locked deep inside of every person, everything, every experience, everywhere.

-Zack

Rough

2011-11-01T20:25:00.001-04:00

About one week ago, while we were walking Alexandra's dog, a red, fairly new Mazda 3 pulled up in a driveway behind us. We kept walking, figuring it to be the person who lived at that house. It was but a second though, before the car's driver beckoned us back "Hey, do you live around here?" she said.
"We do, but we're not really from around here" I replied, assuming she was about to ask for directions.
"Well, you should be careful walking around here, if you don't know, it's a pretty rough neighborhood" she replied.
I didn't know what to say at the time, so I just said "it's okay, we walk around all the time, there've never been any issues"
"Okay" she said, as we started walking again.

The driver was probably in her mid-thirties, obviously from somewhere else as she sped down the road and turned right on Madison as we continued our walk.

I still have no real idea what she's talking about, primarily because I have no idea what makes one neighborhood "rougher" than any other short of calling it such.

The truth is, I've never felt in danger walking around our neighborhood, between W. 98th and W. 85th, Madison, and Lorain. There have been a few loose, biggish dogs that have had me worried from time to time, but more kids wander around than anything else. It's an inner-city neighborhood, to be certain, but how does that preclude it, by that very fact alone, from being as safe as the corner of Columbia and Wolf in Bay Village?

I'm exaggerating a bit to make a point; there are generally more sirens in our neighborhood than there are in Bay Village. But even so, it's not so markedly unsafe that a warning to two white people walking a little white dog ought to be issued by concerned, upper-middle class women from Rocky River who got lost trying to get back to 90. I can't fault people for being concerned, but I can and have to fault them for perpetuating the stereotypes.

What makes an inner-city neighborhood rough is vastly different, as far as I can tell, from what gets it to the place of being considered "rough." In my mind, rough means dangerous- like, gang activity, drive bys, muggings and drug busts on the daily.

Some of that might or maybe probably does happen in my neighborhood to some extent. But it's not brazen and it's not to the extent that groups of fairly well-behaved and joyful children don't run about playing any number of games everyday after school. I've never once heard a gunshot and I've only seen cops driving through the neighborhood with lights on twice in ~6 months.

So why did someone stop to warn us? Because people in our neighborhood make, on average, less money than people in Rocky River. No one really owns their home in our neighborhood. People do own some things- pit bulls, mostly. I imagine it is a more dangerous neighborhood than others, but the roughness is primarily a matter of perception.

Until we stop thinking of neighborhoods as rough in and of themselves as a result of perception, they won't ever improve. Not because they're not improving, but because we're basing it on a felt (though imaginary) need to be better than someone else to be well off. Why live in the suburbs when you work downtown? Because it's safer. If it's not safer than somewhere else, then why live so far away? Sure, the houses are nicer, but the innercity houses can be improved too. But they won't be; as long as people believe the people who live in those houses are likely drug addicts, greedy, lazy welfare recipients without education, then they don't have to think those people deserve nicer places to live.

It's not that my neighborhood is actually all that rough or dangerous. But it has to be thought of as such, or else a lot of work, a lot of staring yourself in the mirror and admitting issues and prejudices would have to take place. It's so much easier just to call it "rough."

Maybe I'm naive and hopeful. I don't care. I just know that until we start believing that others are worth our time and investment, we, as a society, will continue to fall apart. A lot of people love Cleveland and want to see it renewed. I like to think I'm near the front of that line of well-wishers. But we'll never see it happen, Cleveland, if we keep believing that the majority of our city is "rough" and doesn't deserve our time. This city isn't just sports teams and restaurants. It's people. Believing in Cleveland isn't believing in some ethereal sense of civic pride from Strongsville. It's believing that everyone in Cuyahoga county has inherent value- from the poorest person at the corner of Carnegie and east 45th to the richest person on Lake Road in Bay Village- and living, breathing, acting, as if that is true.

-Zack

"In our weakness help us see
That alone we'll never be
Lifting any burdens off our shoulders"

-Jars of Clay

2011-10-27T13:37:00.003-04:00

The amount of necessary objective truths I believe in now is significantly smaller than it was when I entered college. I think though, that Earl Grey tea is best enjoyed in the afternoon- and I believe that to be objectively true.

I realize that's a terrible first line for my first post in well over a month. I hate that it's been a month; my most recent post was, of course, on the break-up of R.E.M. It was, literally, the first month of my life that they didn't exist.

That happens though, when you're younger than all of your favorite bands. Anymore, only the Red Hot Chili Peppers still make new music. It's not what it used to be, but I'd generally rather listen to their new stuff than the majority of the other things that actually get played on the hit radio stations. I'm not even opposed to pop music the way other people can be- I actually appreciate Lady Gaga quite a bit, and I can enjoy most hip-hop. But there's a poetry to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, even in The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie, that other songs tend to lack.

Once they break up, I'll probably create a new top 5 of bands that formed post 1983. That's a random year, but it's the latest year any of the five formed (in order of formation: The Beatles (1959ish), Led Zeppelin (1968ish), R.E.M. (1980), The Smiths (1982), and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1983). In actuality though, bands just aren't what they used to be- post-modernism saw to that. I still though, trust that the world is better for it.

I need to tell you about a book I'm reading; it's short, but it is magical. I'm not quite through- I will be soon, and I relish the opportunity to get back to it, hopefully later today. I'm learning how to write. Not like this, not simply by juxtapositioning words and creating shared shades of meaning. But how to actually live it; how to create, with words, the impression of my own soul that I've been chasing for years.

The book, you may have heard of it, is The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard. She's illuminating to me things I feel I've always known. She's drilling into my soul with a narrative that isn't narrating. I've sought, for years, the perfect narrative voice, free from artifice of plot and characterisation, driven by the goal to tell a frivolous story. I may have found it in Dillard. No word is wasted; no sentence useless. I guess, when they say opposite's attract, they're not lying.

I need to read her fiction as soon as I can; you do too, I imagine.
-Zack

"We'll never be short of redemption"
-Jars of Clay

Collapse into Forever

2011-09-24T13:18:00.001-04:00

2011 has been a veritable music armageddon for me. One of my top 5 bands broke up this past week, and one of my very close outliers broke up a few months back. (the top 5, in no particular order is The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Smiths, R.E.M., and The Red Hot Chili Peppers) I posted about the White Stripes when that happened. I couldn't not post about R.E.M.

I'm a little young to be a true R.E.M. fan. They formed a few years before I was even born. But that doesn't mean I haven't listened to everything they put out over and over again, entranced with their poetry and tact alongside honest expression of human experience, while, all the while, carrying the torch for progressive change despite the political apathy most music (especially in their genre) slid into after 1975.

Their final album, which I just heard straight through for the first time a few weeks ago, isn't their best. It's not even their fifth best. R.E.M. hasn't released anything as good as Monster since Monster and they haven't released a single track as good as the worst track on Automatic For the People (Monty got a Raw Deal) since Electron Blue.

But even so, Electron Blue exists.

There was, there will always be, something inspiring, critical, dangerous and seductive about R.E.M.'s music. There is a message of despondent hope, buried deep inside their overall ouvre that will forever remain unique to their sound. I'm content with the fifteen albums they released. If they only released Everybody Hurts, Losing My Religion, End of the World, and What's the Frequency Kenneth, they'd be a top 20 band in my mind with those 4 songs. But they have so much more. The One I Love is the realest, most succinct and glorious love song ever recorded, and I don't know that that will ever change.

There is a wanderer in the R.E.M. listener. Something longing, yearning, pining for a deeper, more honest, more useful existence. There is hope and tranquility, but it is otherwordly.

It does sadden my spirit, to know that Collapse into Now, a mostly boring album will be the last thing they ever release. But on the other side of that, I am thankful for all R.E.M. was and will be in me, for me, forever.

Soak into this video, let it soak into you, and ponder when, if ever, a band like this will come again:

Someday, perhaps, we'll all find our river.
-Zack

"3 and a half minutes felt like a lifetime"
-Better than Ezra

Eating (in) Cleveland: Noodlecat

2011-09-24T10:24:00.001-04:00

This past Tuesday, before the mid-point of 3 baseball games in 1 week (two in Cleveland, one in Cincinnati), my dad and I tried out one of Cleveland's newest Asian restaurants: Noodlecat.

Noodlecat, as I saw it, had amazing potential. It also has an outstanding location, in between Tower City and E. 4th. As a lover of the noodle bowls I had while in China, I had been anxiously looking forward to my first meal at Noodlecat. Unfortunately, it was an overall disappointing experience.

First, I've got to point out one thing: when it comes to food (especially Asian food, but all food in general), I prefer traditional Chinese styles, seasonings, and methods above all else. The complexities of the flavors within a deceptively simple set of dishes equals, for me, the perfect canvas for cuisine. Thai, Japanese, and Korean food are all similar, with different spices and a few different techniques, but if all of east-Asian food were a pizza, Chinese would be the crust.

Noodlecat, from the beginning, was a disappointment because it's not a Chinese noodle restaurant. It's primary focus is Japanese-california fusion, with some "traditional" dishes mixed in, all of them Japanese. I don't mind Japanese food, and indeed, I love sushi. But I will take a traditional Chinese noodle bowl with wheat noodles, carrots, onions, and chili paste over a fish-based Japanese soba noodle dish any and every day of the week. That's just the honest truth about my preferences. Soba noodles are chewy, stiff, and card-boardy all at once and completely unappealing in appearance. Unfortunately, Noodlecat only serves dishes with soba noodles.

It's also overpriced. I realize that it's "unique" and "Japanese" so you can charge whatever you want in that part of cleveland, but a little bit of nori, some onion and sprouts tempura, and a bowl full of fish sauce and soba noodles just isn't worth 14 dollars, even if that's not too far off how much it costs to make (which it isn't; not even if you buy every ingredient at Giant Eagle). There may have been more than that in my dish but it didn't taste like it. That's really my biggest complaint with noodle cat: it was a bowl of salt and soba noodles, with a soggy piece of "vegetable tempura" (which lacked any identifiable vegetables beyond the sprouts and onion) that was practically impossible to eat with chopsticks thanks to the now-turned-to-rubber breading.

So, I didn't like my dish much. My dad claimed to like his, but it looked to be about the same, with some different things going on. It claimed to be "surf and turf" but I think it just had clams and crab, so I don't know what the turf part of that was supposed to be.

I understand that Japanese food is a lot "fishier" than most. I also believe though, that, properly prepared, there isn't a type of food most people won't enjoy. Tempura, for instance, must be light and crispy. If it isn't, it's ruined. Granted, mine was served atop a noodle soup. I understand that, but if the food is ruined by its presentation change the presentation..

That's the bulk of my opinion on Noodlecat. I was also put off by their lack of any typical soft drinks. I understand the desire to go local/organic, but there's also a full bar in the restaurant. Concievably, you can't actually order whatever drink you'd like, because they don't carry things like Dr. Pepper and Sprite. No matter how good the organic cola is, nothing goes with spiced rum like regular Coca Cola. Ironically, this also made the experience markedly inauthentic: you can't go anywhere in Asia without the ability to order a Coke or Pepsi.

All of this was topped off by a waitress that basically treated us like idiots for trying to order regular pop and like second-class customers for not ordering an appetizer. Sorry, irritated waitress, for not knowing what's on the menu at a brand new restaurant, and for not having time before a baseball game to have a full meal.

No, I wasn't altogether pleased with Noodlecat. The food was filling enough, though I would have preferred the Jimmy John's next door, for half the price and ten times the quality.

-Zack

Over and again

2011-09-16T16:20:00.003-04:00

There are so many things I could say, so many things about which I could write, right now. It's been quite some time since I've posted anything. I've ate at a few new places, I've finished a couple books. I would really like to write about one of them..."Me, Myself, and Bob" by Phil Vischer. It's about the rise and fall of Veggie Tales, but more than that, I think it's about anyone and everyone who has ever attempted anything of any significance.

But right now, I don't think I can, I don't think I quite want to write about that yet.

I've been pondering, for a long time, a post about hip-hop and how I see its place in the world. But it doesn't quite feel ready yet- not for me to write, and not to face the world.

And yet...I've got to write about something. Just..something. Because I've got to write something.

Redundancy.

We're within 64 days of the wedding now. I should have more to say about that...I wrote so much about going away to college. I wrote so much about leaving Wooster.

But I have no idea what to say about getting married. I think, perhaps, it really is that unknown, or at least that indescribable, at least for me. It's exciting, but in ways I'm not sure I would have ever expected. All of what I would expect is there: the excitement to be joined, forever, with the person I love most; the person I believe, above all others, God ordained from the beginning of either of our lives, for each of us to be with for the remainder of our adult lives. I am excited that the reality that has always been will be realized and made public on my birthday this year. At times in my life, I've famously anticipated birthdays. But this one will always take the cake as the best, most important, most memorable. If one deserves the best possible day on their birthday, I can't imagine a scenario where I won't get to have that for the rest of my life. For that, I am thankful and excited.

But the bulk of the excitement comes from a different source from all the giddiness, even from all the relief that planning and spending on this whole thing will be over. It comes from a deep, placid, consuming desire and assurance that we, on the other side of everything, can, hand in hand, look out upon whatever the world is every day from November 20th forward, and know, whatever comes, we can, we will, face it together.

There will be and have been bumps and bruises along the way to wherever it is we're heading- but there is no shearing of the bond.

If you ask me today, how I know Alexandra is the one for me, the best, most honest answer I can give is this: it feels as if our wedding, though full of ceremony and celebration it will be, is, ultimately, nothing more than a making public of a reality that has been and will always be.

I love Alexandra; I love her so incredibly much. No matter what I say, no matter how hard I think, I can't come up with a list of reasons that trumps one single, solitary, deep and unyielding truth: I love her because every part of my being is convinced that no one else in all the world belongs by my side, nor I by her or his, even .008 percent as Alexandra and I are to be, joined together by God, for God, and for the good of Cleveland, Ohio, The United States, and the world.

-Zack

"The crown of thorns was worn, we put the tritons down
We found new forms of anchors, deep inside the ground"
-Flobots

Eating (in) Cleveland #4: India Garden

2011-09-06T13:14:00.000-04:00

Thanks to a-nothing-else-to-do viewing of the Cooking Channel's Spice Goddess (http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/spice-goddess/index.html) Saturday morning, Sunday became "Indian Food Night." Indian food holds and will hold a special place for Alexandra and I, as it was the food that brought us together (although, really, it wasn't the food at all, in and of itself). It had been a long time- too long- since we'd had anything Indian, and having absolutely no idea how to cook Indian food ourselves (lack of ingredients, time, and mastery overtaking the tips we saw on t.v.), we had to find a restaurant to satisfy our shared craving.

A shot in the dark on a google search later, and we ended up at India Garden on the west-end of Lakewood.

At first glance, it looks inconsequential-really, the building is little more than a two bedroom house converted into a restaurant. If there weren't a sign out front (in painfully orientalizing type-face at that), it wouldn't look like a restaurant at all. Even upon entering, the place is less than wholly outstanding in decor. It's dark in an almost-but-not-quite elegant sort of way, with few real decorations around, save for a few Indian scarves draped around the entrance. I'm actually amazed at the seating they cram into the small space. It was nearly 8 p.m. by the time we got there, so I imagine any dinner crowd had thinned, so it wasn't cramped, but I could envision a pretty tight dining room if enough diners were present; especially for their advertised lunch buffets. From the looks of the place, I wasn't sure what to expect. It didn't look like anything special, but experience has generally shown international food to be at its best when the restaurant looks to be at its worst. India Garden, in that respect, did not disappoint.

It was probably the best food I've had at an Indian restaurant, and I don't say that easily- I've thoroughly enjoyed most of the food I've had at any Indian restaurant. It probably wasn't as spicy as I generally like, but it wasn't bland. That's actually pretty high praise-without proper spice, food that's supposed to be spicy comes off quite bland most of the time. Perhaps this means India Garden has found a way to cater to the weaker American palette without sacrificing flavor. I ordered something called Chicken Jalfrieze. I don't really know what that means, but it was a tomato based curry with onions and cream. The pop of the coriander seeds within the sauce was perfect- not overpowering the total dish, but complimenting the overall bite. We only ordered regular naan, but it was excellent- wonderfully crispy outside giving way to the right sort of pillowy chewiness inside. For an appetizer, we ordered vegetable pakora. Pakora often means something like American onion rings, but with other sorts of vegetables. These, however, were a sort of vegetable mixture, ground up and fried as a sort of Indian hush puppy. I don't know enough about Indian cuisine to know if this is a variation common in parts of India or unique, but I enjoyed it because it complexified a generally simple dish. Instead of a stringent onion or pepper on its own, the pakoras featured flavors of onion, spinach, squash, and chickpeas all wrapped into one bite. With the addition of the green chili chutney, it was a splendid appetizer.

Aside from the delicious food itself, I must say something about the service: in addition to excellent and timely, the hostess and (multiple) waiters who served us Sunday night seemed to actually care about us as more than a table of customers. The hostess asked how our day had gone and told us, frankly, about her weekend and how she enjoyed spending the day with her daughter before coming in that afternoon. It's that sort of touch that makes me want to go back more than perhaps anything else. I can probably find more great Indian food in Cleveland. I imagine I can find better Indian food in fact. But most restaurants aren't going to provide the service and personality by way of their personnel.

In the end, I'm glad we chose where we chose, at random. I'm sure we'll try other places and some of them Indian, but I'm completely unconvinced we'll become regular patrons at any other Indian restaurant in Cleveland.

-Zack

Definition

2011-08-29T15:05:00.000-04:00

This was definitely not how today was supposed to go, not by a mile. All weekend long, I'd been getting myself pumped up for today; telling myself things like "your entire career could be defined by how Monday goes." That's somewhat pressuring, but it also helped me get excited. Today, you see, is the first day of classes at Cleveland State University. It was also supposed to mark the birth of InterVarsity's newest multi-ethnic ministry in Cleveland.

That didn't happen though, because, right now, I'm sitting in the surgical waiting room at Lakewood Hospital (a Cleveland Clinic hospital, by the way) while my fiancee loses her appendix.

No, this certainly wasn't today was supposed to go.

But this is how today went. My thoughts, my prayers, my heart are with her, in that operating room. But she just gets to sleep through it all. I'm not worried. I had my appendix removed when I was 3, and I lived and turned out alright (at least as appendices go....how I turned out otherwise is up to someone quite unlike the appendix removal surgeon). But I do hate to know the pain she's gone through these past 20 hours. I do hate to know that there's nothing I can do to take it away. Suddenly, even planting a potentially city-and world-shaking community pales a little bit....and I think that's because ultimately, I'm just a guy, and as much as I love my job and can't wait for the school year, I'm just a guy and I'm less the guy I'm supposed to be without the person I'm supposed to be with, in some mystical way.

Things can be rescheduled. Wednesday is now today, basically. If the chapter is toast for the year because we missed today, then the chapter was going to fail all along anyway. God's much bigger than an inflamed appendix and he won't let what he's called me to do in Cleveland fall apart so easily.

I think, perhaps, though it's but a two day swing, I wasn't quite ready for today. I felt ready. I had printed all of the flyers. I had made tea and bubbles, and bought milk, a blender, and ice cream. I was ready. But for whatever reason, I wasn't prepared. I hope to be by Wednesday, but that's at least in part in the Lord's hands.

I have, however, been so touched, in a way that I know will give my strength, by the facebook comments that have come in since I mentioned the situation in my status. Each in their own way, people I love, friends, ministry partners, students have commented and reminded me that though I may be embarking on my first sole-staffing campus, I'm far from alone. I always knew that...but today, God has let me feel it.

I don't think that's why Alexandra's appendix flared up today. But I do know it's an outcome God is bringing to fruition. In the midst of all that is happening (atop all that isn't), he's reminding me that he's in control, over top of, and pulling together all that will be InterVarsity at CSU, my impending marriage, and the rest of my life.

Perhaps today, in the measurable sense, didn't define my career. But perhaps, in the less tangible, but altogether more meaningful way, it is redefining how I believe in who I am.

I'm still sitting in this waiting room. I'm still waiting. For today, that's exactly what God had in mind.

-Zack

"What matters to them doesn't change anything"
-Imogen Heap

Eating (in) Cleveland #3:The Corned Beef Place across from Tower City

2011-08-24T14:28:00.000-04:00

I, in my lack of research that cost me an honors grade on my I.S., didn't realize that "Eating Cleveland" is trademarked by a real website. While I don't foresee that ever actually mattering, I'm officially sliding a parenthetical "in" into the title of these posts because I don't want google to confuse anyone.

Last Friday night, en route to the RTA station beneath Tower City, we were on the prowl. Failing to find a satisfying appetizer while out about time (which was more an effect of our cheapness than our ability), and on the way home, the urgency to find something to eat before we got back to the train was pressing from all sides. As you can tell from the title of this post, it wasn't until the very end of our journey that we actually decided on something.

I have no idea, actually, what the name of the place from which we got food actually is. I didn't catch it, and I'm not sure, if they have one, it's very well presented. The outside just advertises warm corned beef sandwiches, and that's what took us into the shop. It's basically a convenience store that operates a fairly diverse deli. With places like that, there are essentially two options: frozen food heated up and cheaply served for a maximized profit to the store, or something truly legit where expense isn't wasted on the surroundings for the sake of offering good food at minimum pricing. This nameless place (seriously, if you know what's it's called, let me know) is most certainly a member of the latter camp.

The menu featured everything from Gyro's to basically any combination of deli meats you could dream up, but as advertised, the warm corned beef with mustard is appropriately the number one seller, and I doubt I'll ever buy anything else if I ever get a chance to stop in again. I always try to get the "specialty" when I visit a new place, and especially a place that's wholly local in ownership. There might be better corned beef sandwiches in cleveland, but I am positive that they are transcendent, because the one I had late Friday night was flavorful, tender, and positively scrumptious. Though it was simple; just corned beef between rye with mustard, it was legendary. The amicable cook who freely conversed with the customers while preparing the food put at least 4 inches of meat between the bread. If this sandwich were a standard sandwich, Americans would eat 10x more cows per year, I think. It was terrific. My friend, who ordered the same thing, complained of a "dry" sandwich, but I think he ordered his without mustard. Maybe that's a bad sign, that the sandwich needs mustard to remain moist given the amount of meat. I'm not sure. Either way, I know mine was delicious. It's probably unhealthy, to eat so much meat in one sitting. I may have taken days off my life on Friday, so I doubt I'll frequent this unnamed establishment. But on the rare late night when I'm downtown, I can't imagine a better end to the night than a warm corned beef and mustard sandwich on the way back to the train.

-Zack

Merely Players

2011-08-22T13:26:00.001-04:00

Because it has to go back to the library today, I finished the final book of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy yesterday. Mockingjay, itself, was probably my second favorite of the three (though it was probably the best of the three...it just didn't have the mystique of the first).

I won't write specifically about the third book and I will try my best not to spoil any plot points. It's not well-written enough to keep you going if you know the end.

The first book is currently in the process of film interpretation and will be coming to a theater near you sometime next summer. I'm looking forward to that and I'll probably go see it, but I already don't expect a great movie. The trilogy's biggest strength is the narrator's voice and no first person narrator has ever been captured well on film because the camera is the narrator, no matter the voiceover, and the limits of a character's perspective are never captured on film. I'm interested though, in what will be captured.

I'm not, however, just going to talk about a movie that isn't out. There is so much I could say about the trilogy but I'm not sure where to start. It was, at times, hard to get through because parts of it are predictable, parts of it are excrutiatingly simplistic and unimaginitive from a prose standpoint.

But parts of it are breathtaking and I couldn't have been more satisfied with the last 10 pages. The first 900 of the series are somehow worth it (though let me say that, no matter how it may sound, many of those really aren't so bad).

As a concept, it's a top 10 of the last 5 years. Basically, if you don't know much about it, something happened and most of the United States was turned into a series of 13 districts and one capital (aproximately Denver). At some point prior to the start of the first book (roughly 75 years and change), the districts revolted and lost to the capital. That's a little far fetched probably, but it "happened." As "punishment" the districts have to provide 2 children each year to fight to the death in the Hunger Games to prove that the capital is so far reaching even the children aren't safe. Amazingly, I'm actually not simplifying the motives in any of that, but it's not as "contrived in a 6 year old's mind" as it sounds, though it often dips into that. This is no measuredly sketched picture of human depravity ala The Lord of the Flies, and yet Collins is a better story teller than Golding. She's probably the worst writer I've devoted this much time to in probably my entire life, but she tells a compelling story. That's why I want to see the movie. Because a troupe of Hollywood talent can't make it feel as flat as Collins. Maybe I have too much faith in Hollywood. But, if you pick up a copy of the Catching Fire and read any single page out of context and flow, you'll blush at the forced dialogue, I promise.

As I said though, it is a good story, and I do indeed urge you to take the plunge. Once you cut past the badly pasted artifice of prose, you'll find a jewel of human heart, right near the end of the final book, that you can and should carry with you for the rest of your life. The trilogy shouldn't be a trilogy. It should be one book because the second book could be condensed to 25 pages. The market doesn't work that way and the demographic couldn't tolerate it, so I understand. But, in better hands, this story could be the best rebut to War and Peace I've ever read. That doesn't mean much to most of the world because most people haven't read War and Peace (including, I imagine, Suzanne Collins), but it's essentially the same story in a different setting, with a very different result. Somehow, Collins created a poorly written trilogy that fits inside the thrust of literary history in ways few novels actually do anymore (especially YA literature).

I was ultimately disappointed in the trilogy, but I couldn't be happier with the story and most especially the ending. If all truly is well that ends well, then the The Hunger Games knows few peers among contemporary novels. Because I don't believe in pithy, untested phrases, I don't believe that. But it is worthwhile, and that's something most readers need to know in a world where so few make the time it takes to really read anymore.

-Zack

No Shelter

2011-08-16T17:24:00.000-04:00

We're reading "Radical" by David Platt this summer, in the Northeast Ohio area for InterVarsity. In a simple sentence, it is sorely disappointing. Until this morning, my opinion had swung back and forth while I was reading it (and I'm still not finished); unsure if I loved what it had to say in sum or disagreed in most ways. In other words, I couldn't tell if the good outweighed the bad, but now I can, and I am sorely disappointed that it's a best-seller and people are reading it, agreeing with it, and considering themselves radical for doing so.

I don't know how many times I can read about how big his church is and how many millions of dollars the building is worth and believe that I'm supposed to take his word on how to be a 100% disciple. He talks much about blindspots, one major being American Christianity's overlooking of poverty. To that, I say "here here good sir," but I must have missed the part of what Jesus said that includes it being okay to spend millions on a church building in the first place. I also missed the part that said church buildings are an inherent part of ministry...but I digress.

David Platt mostly, isn't the enemy. Really, Christians, generally speaking, shouldn't be considered "the enemy". There is only one enemy, and he doesn't have a body. My real grievances with the book are two-fold: it doesn't go far enough and it's constantly putting on the brakes when it comes to the words everything and everyone, and a wholesale purchase of the exigetical tragedy that is the belief that all of everything that ever happened is due to God wanting more glory. I understand that the man was born blind for God's glory to be shown...by Jesus, healing him. I won't believe that Hitler rose to power for God's glory though, no matter what "good" has come of it. I won't believe that evil takes place for God's glory. Because it doesn't. God didn't allow Adam and Eve to sin because he'd be more glorified for it. Okay, that's a bold statement with which many won't take my side. It's just too clean, too easy, too blindly-overlooking-the-rest-of-the-Bible to take a few statements here and there and craft not just a sterile theology but a lifestyle, even one to mostly good ends. It's God's will that none should perish, but, if you're to believe Platt and those like him, it apparently maximizes his glory if not just some but most do indeed perish, so what must be done must be done. That, of course, begs the questions: why then? Why do bad things happen if not so God can be glorified through them? Because God loves us enough to let us decide and, in doing so, we decide to hurt each other. He also loves us enough that he's provided a way for the evil we perpetuate to be forgiven and for us to be with anyway.

It's not that I don't want to ascribe glory to God. But I think we overlook what that really means. Let's jump into Foucalt for a little bit and hopefully you'll know what I mean. Actually, let's not. Let's jump to my neighborhood, the corner of West 85th and Willlard, Cleveland, Ohio. I walk, by myself or with Alexandra, our little Havapoo (Havanese-poodle mix...don't ask me..I'm a Jack Russel man...it's her dog), around our neighborhood every single night. She's a crazy little mutt, but we love her and I'm glad to have her around most of the time. Hazlenut is far from the only dog in our neighborhood though. She is though, one of the smallest. For some reason (actually, I probably know it more than I'll go into here), the majority of the dogs in our neighborhood are pitbulls. That might sound scary. I'll be honest, it kind of is. To see a dog that weighs as much as I do pulling its owner along on a very thick chain, trying to get to Hazlenut, presumably to devour our little fluff ball, is less than pleasant. Pitbulls are the most illogical dog to own. They cost more in insurance if you can even get insurance with them at your house. They might be profitable, but I don't think most of them in our neighborhood are used for fighting. In addition to the pitbulls, there aren't, percentage-wise, and average number of single family homes in our neighborhood, and I would venture to guess most of the single family houses aren't owned by the tenants.

I can't speak for many individual stories. I don't know many people by name in our neighborhood right now. The picture I'm trying to paint though, is of powerful, quite frankly, dangerous dogs kept in homes that aren't owned by those who live there. Beyond being something of an insurance nightmare, there's something deeper going on, or at least there's a metaphor within it. A pitbull may be an irrational thing to own, but what if you can train it? What if you're the only person it listens to? It's like a weapon at that point, whether you train it to attack or not. It's going to strike fear in others, whether they know it's vicious or not. It's a symbol of power in, quite frankly, the hands of those without much social currency. It's a piece of protection in a world preyed upon by slumlords and prejudiced utilities officers.

I think, oftentimes, we allow ourselves to craft our conception of God and theology along the same lines as the pitbulls in my neighborhood. If God's plan is to get glory for himself then we're still written into the script as a major actor. We're (humanity) still the ones who have to give God glory, so it's incomplete without us. God needs us and we're doing God's will when we're helping others glorify God too. That's why big churches, expensive worship equipment, and varied songbooks are so necessary. That's why the 10/40 window is more important than the Madison Avenue neighborhood of Cleveland. It's world domination or nothing. God wants glory and he wants to use us, and guess what? He's on our side! I'm meaning to sound a bit harsh on people with whom I generally associate on purpose: we've got to be positive we're doing what we're doing because it's right...not because we're giving into our personal will to power. If God is all about God's glory, he still needs us because in his omnipotence, he still can't glorify himself. We can, apparently, effectively outdo God because we can do the one thing he can't, which happens to be the one thing he wants most. If God though, as I believe, is all about showering his beloved creation with blessing, then a syngery exists when people are actively working to love each other and God's world well. Those aren't dichotomized opposites by any stretch. I'm saying though, that God isn't motivated by selfish glory hounding as much as he's motivated by his quite literally infinite love for his creation. The question comes back though: did God let Adam and Eve eat the fruit because he loved them? Finally, I do believe, that I can say yes to that: he allowed them free will. They chose poorly.

But I won't get too far ahead of myself. We need better language for what exactly Adam and Eve did. It's true, by Biblical translation they "allowed sin into the world." But culture and power-dynamics have greatly distorted what sin is or ever was. I'm not a greek or hebrew scholar, but I know sin, in concept, is the idea of missing the mark according to the traditional definition. That though, is an approximation for a concept found through the Bible. It's not a translation of the word used in Hebrew and Greek. If we examine what Adam and Eve actually did, it's obvious: they didn't choose to disobey God for disobedience sake. They chose to allow their interests to come before those of God. I'm a proponent of semantic hairsplitting as you may know, but it makes all the difference. Adam and Eve chose to do what was best, in their minds, for themselves; not for the world. Of course, even in that, they were incorrect. But God had to give them a choice to keep his desires first, or else they could never love. They would simply be his subservient creation with no will to love or, perhaps worse, be loved. Love is a dynamic choice in which the beloved and lover are constantly interacting and choosing to take part. It wasn't though, that the tree of knowledge was a "don't love God" choice. It was a choice to trust their own selves more than they trusted God. We were created to love God. We were created to trust God. The world was, initially, created to be stewarded by people who took God at his word because they knew his power, understood his love, and loved and trusted him back. But that's not what we've got on our hands now. That's sin: not being who God made us to be, not loving him and others as we ought; saying to him that we'd rather take our or the deciever's word for it. So often we mistake sin as breaking a commandment. We assume a law and call sin anything that breaks it. I don't discuss it much, but I don't believe in natural law theory, I'll just say that, and my reasoning is because it isn't Biblical. What is Biblical is a right way and a wrong way to live. The commandments, the law we assume that defines sin, was a covenant, akin to a vow. It has little to no bearing on what is or isn't sin...certainly, breaking it is (or was, for the OT jews), perpetuating the wrong way, but it's the same thing: deciding to live in a way that isn't trusting God first. God said, basically, through the covenant: "do all this stuff, and you'll be greatly blessed." To do otherwise is to inherently say that, either A. you believe God but want to suffer, or B. you don't take God's word on it and do what you believe will please you most.

Other than an (not as big of a deal as we want it to be because we want the power feeling objectively right affords us) opening for subjective morality, that probably isn't too Earth shattering. But read between the lines a bit: there's a right way, and a wrong way. There's not an alright way that's at least not wrong. It's one or the other, across every conceivable board. The rub, the deepest, darkest, most rash-leaving rub, comes from the fact that it isn't a lack of sin that Jesus most talks about: it's a lack of action. What condemns the pharisees? Not "sinning" and not taking care of the poor. We praise the widow because we don't read the Bible well. The widow, though valiant in her giving, isn't an object lesson in giving everything you have to Christ. It's an indictment of a system that builds huge temples and leaves the widow having so little. Read mark 12...it's true. We're so bound up in salvation not requiring works that we ignore James' stern remark that true religion is giving to the poor and marginalized...and not just giving, but actually caring for them. Part of me is very much a utilitarian universalist because I'm tired of arguing about how to get to heaven. God's powerful enough to let everyone in, so let's just shut up and start doing what he tells us to do. This is ultimately where I get worn out in reading the otherwise light-reading "Radical." It's a constant "don't worry, we're sharing the gospel while we're feeding the poor." Jesus said to love. He didn't say to do it with an agenda. He said they'll know we're his followers because of our love. That's the starting point. I can't help it but think it's incredibly unloving to only serve someone because you hope you get to share the gospel with them someday, so they can come to your church and worship God with you. It is loving to share the gospel, I'm not trying to say it isn't. But we've got to learn to love in ways that seem loving to the loved, and sometimes, no, all the time, that means laying aside any and every pretense. There's a balance, a limin to be stood within, wherein we've got to take risks in sharing the gospel, but we've also got to realize culture, context, and audience. I don't have the answer for every situation, but I know an honest, real love motivated by the love of Christ renders the question of when and how eventually moot.

There's nothing wrong with worship. I'm not trying to say there is. There's absolutely nothing wrong with sharing the Gospel...and no, I'm not really a universalist. I do think though, that we focus so much on getting to heaven that we ignore the hell people are already in. We go to church and worship because we're free from our misconstrued concept of sin and hell and we dangle that freedom on a string with no answer for the hell that is in the here and now, on the streets where the pitbulls are the only thing between you and an oppressive landlord. Maybe we focus on the gospel as getting to go to heaven so much because we have no idea how to live out the part of it that calls us to make heaven a reality here. Maybe we constructed our theologies about God getting glory through us for himself because we can't come to terms with him actually wanting us to do something about what is in the here and now, we can't come to terms with God calling us to love because he is love and wants to love through us. Make no mistake, if we were to see God's love transform the impoverished parts of our world (and my city), he would get plenty of glory, or ought to. But what's the motivation? Yes, I am basically saying that doing something for God's glory is either incorrect or at least incomplete. We are "to do all things to the glory of God," but we act like that's a pass to do whatever we want and claim some mystical ability to do it to God's glory. We are to do all things to God's glory, but what it is that we actually do matters too. God is love and God loves us, and he wants to love the world through us, for our own benefit and for the benefit of the world. If we do that to God's glory, then, my friends, we will see something real happen....not something artificial and hoped for in the worst possible ways. We've got to relinquish our theologies that favor us and those who look and act like us We've got to start loving, for real, no matter the cost...because that's what Jesus did.

To bring this full circle, I will close in saying that David Platt delivers a message the church needs to hear. But he does so in terms that still favor the American brand of evangelicalism that got us where we are. Maybe it's a step many need to take to get to a place of true radicalism that can change the world, but until we break out of self-favoring ideologies, we'll never actually renew the church...we'll just keep climbing and sliding down the same hill. The trick, dear readers, is to step to the side and get off the hill altogether.

-Zack

"Say hip-hop only destroy, tell 'em look at me boy"
-Lupe Fiasco

Erasing Black Lines

2011-08-12T17:58:00.000-04:00

I should probably provide a little bit of clarification before I get into the heart of this. I know, a week or two ago, I said I was going to try to post everyday. That's still true. But in all honesty, it's never going to be daily. I probably won't post on most if not all of Alexandra's days off. I'll almost never post when I'm away for a conference. This week was the Great Lakes East InterVarsity Regional Staff Conference. It was a wonderful three days exploring prayer toward authoritative vision, but it wasn't possible to write a post for this, and really, that's ultimately a good thing. It is, ultimately, a line from yesterday, as we were nearly finished, that is spurring at least the beginning of this post. As we talked about a few passages in Hebrews throughout the week that highlighted "Entering God's Rest," our Regional Director made the point that, too often in life, we live as if the dichotomy between "rest" and "activity" is real. In actuality, he said, we can be active in our work (professionally, domestically, whatever) from a posture of rest by living in the reality that God will and does give us the strength to do the things he has for us in life. We don't have to strive to achieve of our own strength and thus, a prayerful, God-ful life is one in which we can experience a form of constant rest even in our "doing." That has got me to thinking, for this blogpost, that we simply don't talk about the presentness of the Kingdom. We use salvation as our selling point. We talk about praying a prayer that apparently saves us from hell, then we talk about living a life in a "right" way so that we can please the God who saved us. At every turn though, it just feels like the Bible calls us to something larger than a heavenbound wish for Eternal life. Eternal life is promised. Don't just believe it; embrace it as a truth and move on to life here and now, where God has a plan for your life much larger than a simple assent that Jesus died and rose for your sins.

I'm coming to terms with the fact that the Bible doesn't tell us how to live a certain way because it pleases him. It does, most certainly. But God wants to give everyone on the Earth the best possible life right now. Right now is flawed and that doesn't happen, not by a far cry, but its obvious that he's given us the charge to make that possible. He's created one huge family from formerly irreconcilable groups of people, and the great mystery, as it says in Ephesians, is that we can be a true, authentic community no matter where we've been or who we were.

I don't know your personal experience of honest, real community, but I believe it to be a gift of God. I believe God's love is best loved through others toward one another. There's nothing better in the world. It's popular, at weddings, to claim that Marriage is great because it's an Earthly image of God's love for the church. I don't like that take because it denigrates marriage as nothing but a symbol. I don't like it either, because it's unbiblical. God's given us one another to experience his love and grace in the here and now...not as a symbol, but really, as the real love of God through one another. I believe marriage is at its best when it too is marked by God's love lived and shown to each spouse through the other. That's power. That's life-altering.

It's popular to say that Jesus didn't say make converts, make disciples. We act like that means don't have people "get saved" and leave them...help them know how to live a Godly life too! But really, a disciple is more than that. It's a person who does as his or her teacher showed them. Jesus created a small community of people and showed them a love that transcended where they'd been and what they'd done. As he traveled around, he invited people into that: to be the loved and the loving.

As I get ready to embark on another semester of ministry, I'm reimagining evangelism in my own way. The hole in our gospel is much larger than its incompleteness: it's its wrong intent. I'm not going to invite anyone to heaven this semester. I can't get them to heaven. Their faith can't get them to heaven. Only God can do that, after a death I hope to be much farther away than my annual review's due date. But I can invite them into a community of love and, I hope, show them how to get enough outside themselves to become full members of the community who can show others love as we add to our number.

-Zack

"Until the lion learns to speak, the tales of hunting will always favor the hunter"
-K'Naan

Eating Cleveland #2: La Strada

2011-08-04T15:14:00.000-04:00

About two weeks ago, prior to attending a rained out Indians game and just moments after deciding an hour wait at the Great Lakes Brewing restaurant would make us late for said game that never happened, my dad and I ended up at a quirky Italian/Moroccan restaurant on E. 4th street called "La Strada."

For those of you unaware, E. 4th is a short stretch of what used to be a normal street just a few blocks from the center of Cleveland (hence the low number), now populated with some of the finest dining in the city. It's also taken on a bit of an identity as the part of town to hang out in after and before games at the Q and Progressive field, which makes for a strange mix. It's nice though, and I've never disliked anything I've ate in that food court meets back alley. The coffee shop there, the Lake Erie Coffee Company, is probably my favorite coffee shop in Cleveland, at least so far. It's far too inconvenient to frequent from the semi-near west side, but the coffee and decor are outstanding.

This though, is primarily about our meal at La Strada. To anyone who knows Italian neo-surrealist film, that name means something, and I wasn't disappointed to find out that the connection was intentional If you go here: http://zacharybelchers4.xanga.com/ you'll have enough hints to understand the scope of what that means to me. To say nothing (yet), of the food, consider this: a faux renaissance opera house melding the grotesque (a large ceramic blue and white eyeball) with the regal (plush crimson curtains and expensive-looking bronze sconces) with a Charlie Chaplin film reel played on a section of wall above the main dining area, to a soundtrack of Pink Floyd's full Dark Side of the Moon album. To varying degrees, whomever it was that designed the visual stylings of La Strada successfully transports the patrons to a different place when they walk into the restaurant. It was fun, but from a purely Felliniesque standpoint, the mark is missed wildly. Fellini was and is successful because he allows the viewer to believe, even for a second, that what's on screen is real. At La Strada, the artifice oozes at each turn. It's quite the opposite effect of Fellini's impressionistic style. That's probably a split hair to a degree because I do appreciate that it wasn't just taking a name from one of the most important films of all time and not trying to be as unique as Fellini was and is, but the tie-in is more contrived than holistically experienced.

The food though, was outstanding. I would have hoped for more seasoning in the bread dipping mixture (simply a few drops of balsamic vinegar in a lighter-than-expected olive oil), but that is my only mark against the cuisine. The bread itself was excellent; warm, nicely crusted on the outside with delectably fluffy and moist inner body. My entree, a stuffed chicken atop risotto, was delicious. I prefer my risotto a bit cheesier and it had a strong lemon flavor I could have done without, but that would have made for a different meal. Taking it for what it was, it was excellent. The chicken itself (fully off the bone, tenderized, and wrapped around the filling) was delicious; stuffed with prosciutto, gorgonzola, and generous amounts of fresh basil, each bite, especially taken with the risotto, was, in its own way, wholly unique and delicious.

So. The food was good, the atmosphere strange, and the concept somewhat missed. Would I go back? Well, not anytime soon. It's a bit expensive and there are so many more places to go that are either cheaper or in the same cost-bracket. Maybe, when my culinary adventures around this city are through, then I will return to my favorite places. Maybe then, La Strada will come back around. I can't say I was disappointed, but, for as good as the food was, the experience itself, all told, puts a customer more on edge than it provides a comfortable space. I understand dining as an experience, but I don't understand melding the Phantom of the Opera, Pink Floyd, and Chaplin, then calling it Fellini. Antonioni, perhaps....

-Zack

Atop the Margins: Daniel Deronda

2011-08-03T13:59:00.000-04:00

Last week, I finished my first George Eliot novel: Daniel Deronda. It wasn't by design that I read her last work first. It was simply the best looking book I could find in my room when I was looking for a new book to throw into the rotation last December.

I feel like I ought to do some sort of penance for waiting so long to read any Eliot. Though Daniel Deronda seems to generally be regarded as her best overall work (not her most famous or significant though; that will always be Middlemarch), it's obvious at all points throughout the novel that Eliot is a master of the English language and deserves as much credit as we can give her.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of DD is its insistence on giving agency to British Jews. For as genuinely forward thinking I believe my favorite 19th century British authors to be, even Emily Bronte has her ethnic taboos to work through as a post-modern, 21st century reader. Eliot, as a white, provincial author, actually wants to give credence to the Jewish race and religion. What's more, she does so without turning her 800 pages into a treatise in favor of better conditions for Jewish people in England. She weaves her commentary into a real plot, with real characters; a move ultimately more affective than any vitriolic political piece would actually be. That is not, however, to put it alongside Huck Finn or Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Both of those emphasize the existence of the Other and try to convince the reader that "they" really aren't so bad after all. But Eliot, more skilled as a writer and at crafting a plot, does what she can with 19th century British sensibilities to blur the lines creating the other. The main character enters as both. He is always already the other and the privileged set. I haven't read Silas Marner or Middlemarch (though I know I must, very soon), but Eliot is ahead of her time by, literally, a couple of centuries.

As an English major with a particular penchant for Dickens, the Brontes, and Austen, I won't lie to myself or to any of you and claim that I can speak to the novels broad appeal to the average 2011 reader. I loved it, but it was probably more "boring" than Wuthering Heights, so be warned.

But if you do decide to pick up this veritable masterpiece, I urge you to finish it (as I always do). It is worth every second. Every word finds its place alongside others in ways you've never before experienced. Wrap your mind around Daniel Deronda and you'll be a better reader. Do so with an open heart, and you just might be a better person too.

-Zack

Thoughts on the debt

2011-08-02T14:00:00.000-04:00

I've tried to keep my generally uninformed opinion on the deficit crisis this country has been through, but I think I've got enough of a grasp and enough of an idea to chime in finally, even if cursorily.

As we all probably know, the deficit is at an all time high and without raising the "debt ceiling" we, as a nation, would default on our loans and the world would implode, or something like that.

As a died-in-the-wool liberal teetering on communist tendencies, I never wanted to see any social programs cut. I don't want anything that helps the disadvantaged to meet any sort of chopping block, and I proactively support increased spending to fight poverty and hunger here and abroad. This crisis, of course, isn't the best backdrop to trumpet increased spending on anything, and I'll even leave my disgust at spending even 1/3rd of what we do on defense out of this for the time being.

I don't though, as someone who has some money, has had money, and will deal with money for the rest of my life, understand how a deficit defeated by cut spending alone, without increased income, is a form of "balance." You've probably dealt with money before too. There are, of course, two ways to increase the number in your bank account: spend less and/or bring in more. The irrational, power-hungry, racist, classist, heartless tea party set is convinced we take in more than enough in taxes to fund multiple unjust, expensive, imperial wars and to pay down the deficit. The answer, of course, is selling our future as a nation short by defunding education for those who can't afford private schools and killing off the lower classes by literally making it impossible for lower-income people to pay for healthcare and food. Taxes, apparently, are a greater enemy than preventable disease and unjust suffering by millions around the globe.

It appears to me that they've basically won by dragging their feet. I'm going to vote for Obama and every democrat on the ballot next year, but I'm disappointed in all of them for giving in to the tyrants. The tea party runs on a platform of standing up for the commoner and fighting the special interest, and yet, the only constiuents that gain anything from their ideology are those with the most money. That's reprehensible and I'm ashamed to live in a country that watches out for the richest people first and hopes for trickle down. Trickle down doesn't work and it never will, because, if nothing else, we can always count on greed and human nature to take advantage of the powerless.

-Zack

"Let me tell you what little I know and if it's worth something, spread it indeed"
-K'naan

That Same Power...

2011-08-01T16:09:00.000-04:00

Paul said that the same power which raised Jesus from the dead is actively at work in the world today. I don't disbelieve that intellectually, but it's a truth I'm engaged in a constant struggle to actually embrace.

I want to be confident in that fact; I want to take heart in the promise that there's something larger than the power of life and death backing me up. But a lot of the time, I run from the fact. I run from the thought that it's at all something apart from me supplying the power; that it's not me. Because so often, so badly, I want it to be me. I can honestly say that I wish I was doing something, or that it was me unleashing all of the power. But it's not, and I'm just being real by saying that I wish it wasn't the case.

There's a little bit of Voldemort in all of us, or at least I know there is in me. Someday I'll write, at length, about Voldemort. But not right now.

I wish I could try harder and feel more prepared for CSU. I wish I could try harder and love CSU and the people in my life more than I do right now. I wish I could just try harder and be exactly what I need to be, when I need to be it.

But I can't. I'm only human, and I'm not foolish enough to have much confidence in much of anything I do or can do or will do. But God is. God Will. God is what we need him to be, when we need him to be it. He's even bigger than that though. He's everything, all at once, to the point that we can't humanly comprehend at all what that means. He's big enough, that with or without us, his purposes in the world are going to go forth and his present and coming Kingdom will continue to be and do just that til completion. It makes me, as a human, feel positively useless sometimes, if I let it. But God let's us be a part of it. His purpose is, for a reason that, too, is beyond me, to use humans. He's created us all for a purpose in that effort. Thankfully, that will be what happens no matter how much we screw up too. I apologize for tipping right and left on the free-will issue. The best way I can understand it is an incomprehensible coin with two sides that are both fully true.

God doesn't need me at CSU.

And yet, by His will, I pray he uses me in earth-shaking ways every single day. Someday I'll know what it means, that both have always already been true since this whole thing started.

For now, I'll just march on and do my best to let him be in control and use his power exactly how he wishes and in absolutely no other way.

-Zack

"Just listenin to 'Pac, ain't gon' make it stop"
-Lupe Fiasco

Across Grey Seas: The Lord of the Rings

2011-07-28T13:40:00.000-04:00

I finished my 1.5 year adventure in reading the Lord of the Rings once more this morning. It's something I'd not done in its entirety since the films came out, and I do find that I had trouble picturing anything but the actors as each of the characters. Thankfully, they were cast well enough and that wasn't too much of a problem. I'm always struck by how well Tolkien handles language. What he could do with a narrative, characters, and a cosmic-personal interplay is essentially unparalleled. The reader doesn't, by any means, fall in love with the characters the same way one generally does with Hermione, Harry, and Ron. Nor does the total experience transport the reader to a different intellectual plain like Joyce. But even so, he's somewhere in between, and much like my praise for Rowling, he created a world with sheer creativity most can only hope to approach.

The last two chapters, "The Scouring of the Shire" and "The Grey Havens" are among my favorite in all of literature. At it's best, The Lord of the Rings makes the reader long for a home somewhere dearer, grander, more real than anywhere of this world. In some ways, it's a strength of the series that Middle Earth could be our own world in a different age, but in a different sense, it's at its best when the ideals can become so real and otherworldly. Even as the shire is under the influence of evil when the protagonists return, the overwhelming power of good over evil wins out, and Frodo, having been transformed, even urges his friends "not to kill anyone if you can help it." My own ideological issues with the Lord of the Rings generally derive from how Christians use it to further our misguided support of real wars and use battle metaphors in a spiritual sense. But I was reminded these past few days as I finished the book that Tolkien was arguing against that in his own subtle way. The "War of the Ring" is a defensive battle as Mordor is assailing Gondor, as is Helm's Deep. Ultimately, the only offensive action taken by characters in the book is the attack on Isengard by the Ents, and their goal is to destroy the machinery destroying their homes, whilst allowing Saruman and Grima to survive. It is the destruction of the ring, the casting of the source of Evil to it's doom, that wins the war, and nothing else. There is violence involved, but Tolkien never really suggests that any amount of bloodshed is justified unless purely out of self defense. Even Frodo's decision to spare Gollum is redeemed. This speaks to both Tolkien's control of his narrative, but also betrays his deepest feelings about war and violence. With that in view, it compels me to keep up my own ideological fight against Christian millitantism. I didn't expect that when I embarked on this classic saga last March. I am glad to have found it, in the end. To think that Hillsdale holds these books that speak strongly against their interpretation of their own world view, in so high a regard, it is humorous. There is an enemy among their camp, from a most unexpected source.

Though they are dense and I didn't think it would take so long to get through all four, I am glad, as I have always been, to have experienced Middle Earth all over again. I will assuredly wait to go through them again, maybe ten years once more. But I will return, of that I am sure.

-Zack

Eating Cleveland #1: Taste of Tremont

2011-07-27T16:55:00.000-04:00

About three weeks ago, Alexandra and I experienced two firsts together: the RTA rapid and a Cleveland neighborhood festival.

I will ignore, for a moment, how somewhat annoyed I am at how Tremont sets itself up as a sort of inner-suburb, to mention that it is, by all means, what I would have loved the small towns I've lived in most of my life to resemble: small shops, good food, beautiful scenery, and a minute or two from three major sports stadiums.

The Taste of Tremont is what it sounds like. When I was younger, what is now known as "Fun Fest" in Ottawa was called "the Taste of Putnam." We basically ignored that most towns in our county had their own, better, town festivals and claimed them all because we were the country seat. That was basically some inflatable rides on mainstreet and a beer garden with horrific cover bands we could hear from my house. As far a I know, it's the same thing. Tremont, however, does something quite outstanding in comparison.

Along the main street in the neighborhood, virtually every restaurant and shop has set out a sampling of their goods and fare for purchase. It is, by all counts, a great place to go and spend a fairly reasonable sum on delicious food through a sort of progressive meal. I imagine thousands show up throughout the single day, and I doubt many leave hungry or disappointed. It was a hot day, but every drop of sweat walking from the Ohio City RTA station to Tremont and back after walking around the festival was completely worth it. In addition to the delicious food we got to experience the feeling as part of a larger community (which hasn't been easy in Cleveland; knowing few people and being detached from the places we grew up). Taking a few hours on a Sunday afternoon to do anything else will almost never be as enjoyable. We even bought a Jade Plant now named "Herbert," who lives on our windowsill. Even if we struck out and only bought bad food, I'd probably still have great things to say. I'm not sure though, that that would actually be possible....

All in all, We ate 5 things:
1. Pork spring rolls from Bac Asian American Bistro- fairly standard, but cooked to perfection and anytime a restaurant offers Sriracha as a dipping sauce, you know it's worth at least trying.
2. Baklava from the Istanbul Grill- suffered from the heat, but the filling was tasty
3. A pork platter (with corn on the cob and cole slaw) from the Ohio Farmers association stand- the "spicy" barbecue sauce was mild and the cole slaw far too acidic, but the corn was delicious and the pork itself absolutely succulent
4. Ice Cream sandwiches (chocolate peanut butter and raspberry cheesecake) from Scoops- I love that they have homemade, vastly varied ice cream sandwiches between decently sized chocolate chip cookies. I wish though, that a flavor like "raspberry cheesecake" wasn't made with a cookie involving chocolate. The chips overpowered the flavor (which was actually a swirl in vanilla ice cream). I can't complain about the texture though. All in all it was a great way to cool down in the heat, albeit a bit heavy to walk around after having ate it..
5. Mac and Cheese with Mint Lemonade from Lolita- This was no ordinary macaroni and cheese. It was a white sauce, probably a combination of 3 or four italian cheeses, heavy on marjoram and rosemary. There's always a chance mass-produced, chafing dish macaroni and cheese will be ruined by the conditions no matter how well it's made. This was certainly not the case with this though. The noodles were perfect and the heat didn't seem to negatively influence the dish at all. As for the lemonade, it was the most perfectly refreshing sugar-based beverage I've ever had, and I think that's because of the delightful mint-essence throughout. It was light and lemony, with a crisp mint finish. Very near perfect.

None of the food was anything but delicious. My favorite was definitely the mac and cheese from Lolita, but I'm biased by my affinity for the Food Network. I think my least favorite was the Baklava because it was too warm out and it fell apart while being too mushy. None of these were significant samplings to judge the overall dining experience at any of these restaurants, but each was good enough to draw me back at some point in the future.

It's interesting to me that Bac fashions itself as an "Asian American" Bistro. I don't know what that means; I suspect it means Asian fusion with some American items on the menu, but, perhaps, it is actually a claim on an ethnic food styling for people specifically Asian American in ethnicity? That would be interesting, to at least get their take on that, if it is indeed the goal.

Lolita is probably the place I'd most like to revisit because it's rare you get to eat food from a literally world renowned chef in your own backyard. It's also probably the most expensive so I might just have to settle on the establishment's offerings at next year's taste of Tremont.

In any event, I'm glad we went and I'll definitely be going back as many years as I can. If you're in Cleveland around the middle of July next year, I highly recommend the experience.

-Zack

Able

2011-07-27T16:23:00.000-04:00

Starting today, right now, I plan to post daily. The emphasis in the preceding sentence is on the predicate; "plan." I probably won't succeed in this, so I've actually set a goal to post 3 times per week. Generally speaking, it's not the best idea to start with failure in mind, but I'm being realistic. I'm getting married this fall, planting a chapter, and embracing a new city and all that goes with that. I won't have tons of time. Perhaps you're wondering why I'd even try. It's precisely because of all of those thing that I've got to try.

So, to get to this goal and to generally open my mind to the lot of you 15 or less readers in new and exciting ways, I'm introducing a few new "features" here...Starting roughly this month, I'll be writing about:
1. the places I eat in Cleveland. I've never lived in a city with more than 4 or 5 locally owned restaurants (and if you take out ice cream stands, that number is considerably smaller). There are so many amazing places to eat in Cleveland, and I thought I'd do my part in making that known.
2. the movies I watch. This is something that's been close to my heart since college and I never realized how much I love it til I haven't done it these past 2 years and change.
3. the books I read. I probably won't write extensively on most of them, but I read a lot and exploring where my mind is because of what I read is probably a healthy exercise.

All of this will, of course, come in the course of my usual ponderings on any and everything that comes to mind as I live out this adventure called life. Nothing is really changing, aside from the frequency and the variety. I hope, on the other side of all of this, you have a more enjoyable reading experience when you come here to read whatever it is I write.

-Zack

"It's kinda hard sayin this to your face, so I do it over snares and bass"
-Lil Wayne

Always

2011-07-22T02:52:00.000-04:00

I was, I will admit, fairly disappointed in the final Harry Potter film. The first of the two part adaptation to book 7 was, in many ways, the best film in the series, and I had high hopes for the second. If you read this: http://dulacian.blogspot.com/2009/08/art-coma.html you'll probably realize that I was bound to be disappointed.

One shouldn't ever have too high of expectations for a Harry Potter movie though. As movies go, only three of them even stand up as enjoyable on their own.

But there's a sort of magic to seeing the world of Harry Potter come alive that makes the unconscionable pacing, the terrible acting, and the saddeningly poor camera work null. The characters, the world, the wonder, are just too good to defeat, even with drastically sub-par filmmaking technique. Seeing a Harry Potter movie is experiencing a Harry Potter book in a new way for the first time. Reading any Harry Potter book for the first time was the most enjoyable reading experience I've ever had and the emotions those 7 books can conjure in me is indescribable and incomparable. Even getting to grasp at that for a bit over an hour or so while staring at a screen is worth every penny. No film, I think, could actually capture the Harry Potter experience, so I can't fault any of them too strongly. But I would have loved a better attempt, to be sure.

Even so, I will never stop reading, watching, altogether consuming everything Harry Potter, because there is a wonder there that isn't anywhere else, and it's more true than any fact, more beautiful than any sight, because it happens on the inside, from the inside out, as Harry Potter reveals something in us that has always been there. It's a beautiful mirror, if nothing else. It's a beautiful mirror we can't get anywhere else. Or at least it is for me. Intellectually, there are more stimulating experiences in film and literature. Technically, most people are better writers than J.K. Rowling, I sometimes believe. But spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, philosophically, and metaphysically, nothing else comes close.

As of now, there isn't anything left. No more movies. No more books. I do think they'll remake at least some of the movies, somewhere down the road in 20 years. But it will never be the same.

And yet, I would rather live with the failed attempts to rekindle and the memories, than to never have had them at all. I joined the bandwagon late, but I think that was good. More than anything else, Harry Potter showed me who I am, who I was, who I will become. If I were but 8 when I read the first book, I don't think it would have meant nearly as much. But perhaps I just want to rationalize my failure to grow up with Harry Potter, as so many of my peers did.

But we cannot change the past. I can't go back and tell 8 year old me to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone right after it came out. The question though, really, is if I would.....

The other day, Alexandra mentioned that she's looking forward to having kids at least in part because we get to relive the wonder of our childhood with them; things like catching lightning bugs and keeping them in jars; tea parties and action figures, believing in Santa. I wonder, in light of all this, if I will introduce Harry Potter early for my kids or not. That is a decision along way off. But in any event, perhaps then, Harry Potter will be a bit of wonder to relive with my kids, and grandkids, and, Lord willing, great-grandkids.

I will never stop reading, and I hope, someday, that means I will never stop introducing Harry, Ron, and Hermione to my own descendants, somewhere down the road.

It was, indeed, a disappointing film. But it was nothing if not a fulfilling experience.

I don't know how. I don't know why. It's just magic.
-Zack

"I'd rather be a comma than a full stop"
-Coldplay

Where the fall begins

2011-07-03T14:46:00.000-04:00

This is a post I've been wanting to write for awhile now, but because of professional circumstances, I just couldn't. Perhaps I still shouldn't. But I've got to understand my thoughts, and that means I've got to discuss them, and I do that best by writing. Somehow, this makes those thoughts seem official, so here I am, writing this now.

A few months before I graduated from Wooster, while I was riding the elevator to the third floor of Gault library, I realized that I didn't really believe insistence on personal property was an absolutely gospel-informed position to take. I wrote a post, one of the first on this blog, entitled "Am I a communist?" I don't know if I had an answer then. I've come down a little bit from it as I've let it slide out of my mind, but I can affirm that I probably, well, not really just probably, I am something of a socialist now.

That's a curse-word at Hillsdale and it should be unamerican enough that I wouldn't post July 3rd.

It all comes down though, to the foundations of economic ideology.

At its most redeemed, capitalism comes down to doing the best for yourself and hoping everyone else does the same, which means that everyone is better off. But it's still a system built on accumulating individual wealth. We become a product of our centers, and with a center predicated on making the most money possible, there's never going to be great fruit. That's a simple tenet. And thus, I can't be a capitalist. I can't say in consecutive sentences that I'm a Christ follower and a believer in an economic policy built on earning money. I'm not opposed to free markets, but I'm opposed to hunger, poverty, and the existence of the other.

So I've flipped it up. It's very imperfect in execution, but I'd rather have a foundation predicated on providing for the needs of the disenfranchised. Maybe it's just because it's a broken system, but capitalism today means pay raises for ceo's, not new jobs with money saved and earned. When your goal is to make as much money as possible however legally possible, there will often mean granting yourself a pay raise before you think about hiring more workers when the market isn't sustaining higher volume so expansion isn't practical. As investors, capitalism means putting your money in the best place to earn, but so often today, that means into corporations that perpetrate human rights violations on a daily basis.

Sure, communism has often failed. I'm shooting holes into a broken system in favor of a non-existent system. But all of those rhetorical facts against me, I can't get past where the foundation lies.

So what do I propose? A free market based on competition with higher personal income taxes on the richest 5%. The richest CEO in the country last year made about $85,000,000 in salary. Tax that by 60 percent and he still made more than 40,000,000. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/business/03pay.html?_r=2)

The critics say that stifles creativity and ambition. Well, I don't know about you, but I'd rather make $40,000,000 after taxes than $100,000 before. If we saw tax breaks leading to more jobs, I'd change my tune. If we saw non-profits completely funded, it'd be different. But the core is rotten. How could we ever expect otherwise from the fruit?

-Zack

"Can we just give love one more chance?"
-David Bowie

Answering

2011-06-12T09:07:00.000-04:00

I get asked, a lot, what it is that I do. I either stumble around with that til I've talked far too long and not given a good answer or, more recently, I use a rote answer which, at it's best, isn't actually too descriptive. But last night, just before I drifted off to sleep, something came to me that I feel like I can actually use: I help students realize how much Jesus loves them.

At the beginning and end of the day, if I'm doing anything else, I'm not doing something I actually want to do. It's not, ultimately, witnessing communities growing in love that will change the world. It's the love of Christ. That's expressed through a witnessing community, sure, but I hate the word "witnessing" anymore. If we can't strip the message down to fit any context, I don't want that message. I don't want a message steeped so much in systematic theology that I've got to fear the wrong questions that could tip over the system, because that system, well, it's man-made too.

But the love of Jesus isn't. It's not something we can comprehend, and that is something worth dedicating time to on campus. This isn't a change; it's a realization of what I should have been saying all along.

How we respond to Jesus determines how we live our lives. We can choose to love him back and make the world a better place by expressing that love ourselves, or we can reject it and ignore it. But love is a powerful thing; only love can really change the world. That's why the gospel is good news at all: because it is a profound message of love and it is that message that I want to proclaim on campus and call students to join me in proclaiming with their lives.

There are 17,000 students at Cleveland State right now that either don't know how much Jesus loves them or aren't getting to experience that love in the context of a loving community on campus. That's a travesty, because it's within authentic community that God intended us to experience his love and grace.

Maybe it's pride, maybe it's because God intends me to be different, but I never could quite rally around an answer someone else gave me for that question. Maybe it's because I didn't quite believe the answers I was trained to give. But I do believe in how much Jesus loves each and every student, everywhere. It's my job to proclaim that at Cleveland State and help students live in the reality of that love, right now. I can do that. What's more, I actually want to do that, and even more than that, I finally feel like that's what God wants me to do, and has been, all along.

-Zack

"Anything we can mess up we can fix up; Sword to plowshare"

-Flobots

Stitched

2011-06-10T12:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday may have been the best day I've ever had fundraising. It has nothing to do with an amount (because I don't know one yet). It has everything to do with vision. I was invited, a few weeks back, to attend a "supported ministries luncheon" by a church that, at the time, didn't support me yet. Yesterday was the day that happened.

What that meant, is that in 10 or so rooms, groups of 5 or 6 consisting of a mixture of ministry representatives and church members had lunch together, shared about the types of ministry in which we participate, and prayed together.

In Hillsdale, my only line of support, my only bit of community, was an hour away in Lansing. There were at least 50 people (and I do believe quite more) there yesterday. Just looking around, the message was clear: we're all in this together. We all do something different, but the idea is the same: the renewal of Cleveland, Ohio. I felt alone so often in Hillsdale, and largely, I was. That, however, will never be the case in Cleveland, and for that, I am so grateful.

Cleveland has so bad a reputation, but I was reminded yesterday, as I have often been in the past 5 years, that Cleveland has so much hope. I'm a part of that now proactively. I can't wait to see what God does via the chapter at CSU. It's so cliche to say we can change the world. But we can, and to believe otherwise is to believe less of God than he warrants. His love transcends sin and his love transcends how low Cleveland may be or have become. There are and will always be problems in Cleveland. But even more than that, there will always be a God in heaven who loves each and every one of the residents in that city so incomprehensibly much.

Perhaps the best part is that you can be a part of it too. As much as all of us who were there yesterday are in this together, we all, everywhere in the body of Christ, are in it together even if we can't see it or feel it as tangibly as I did yesterday. But you can't stand on the sidelines forever and leave it for everyone else. We really are a body, and you've got as much a role to play as I do, no matter how different it might be.

-Zack

"This is love, this is not treason"
-Flobots

The Woods

2011-05-31T17:16:00.000-04:00

I wish I could go to sleep and not wake up until June 16th, and that, in doing so, some satisfactory amount of money would be raised for me to go to the Chapter Planter's Cohort at the end of the month.

But it doesn't work that way. Even if I didn't have to do the work to make the results happen, I couldn't sleep for 15 days straight, no matter how much it might feel like I could sometimes.

But I've still got a long way to go, and it's taking all I've got to believe that I really can raise $15,000 by June 15th. It's taking all I've got to believe that that's at all possible. Honestly, I've no reason to believe it's possible beyond the fact that God can do anything. That is enough, but it'd be a lie to say I've got a plan that will get that much money. I don't. I don't have those sorts of contacts, that rich or supportive of a family, and no "church-I-grew-up-in" to turn to. In the most perfect world, where everyone I've got to talk to yet gives as much as I'm hoping they will, I'm looking at 11,900, and that sounds like and is a lot. I'll just be honest, I don't expect all of those people and churches to fulfill my wildest hopes. Like I said, I don't know how this is going to happen.

But God does. God knows how it's going to happen if he's planning to make it happen. And I've got faith in that, but I'll be honest that my faith in anything else just isn't there right now. Rebuke that lack of faith all you want; I'm just being real. God is bigger than my unbelief though. I'm confident that what he wants to make happen will. All the while, I'm doing all I can to not slide into the despondency that beset me while I was fundraising (rather unsuccessfully) in 2009. I do feel like I'm getting somewhere this time though, more than that time. But even so, as such, I'm not doing it fast enough. I raised $2000 last week, which would have been an incredible week...but it's not even half what I "needed" to raise to be on track.

But I'm resting in the truth that God's in control. It's his money and he'll raise it up for me if that's to be the case. I'm not worried, and I'm not afraid. At the end of the day, God's love for me and for all of us transcends all strivings for anything to do with money or material comfort or even physical necessity provision. Whether I'm in the cohort, whether I'm on staff with Intervarsity, whether anything this is or will be now is or will be at the end of the month, it's my life's work to proclaim that love. I don't need money to do that. Sure, "the worker deserves his wages," but whether we get what we deserve or not, God's love is bigger. That's what grace means, all the way around. There is no justice, there is no peace. There is only forgiveness, because love is broader, deeper, and more important than $15,000 or $150,000.

If you want to help make it happen, go here: donate.intervarsity.org/support/zacharybelcher If you don't or can't, then pray. That means more and will do more anyway. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, with or without money. But I could always use more prayers that I stay in Christ so that he can give me strength.

No, I don't believe Christians are justified in being capitalists. Sorry.

-Zack

"Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life"
-Mumford and Sons

The Precipice

2011-04-27T22:44:00.000-04:00

This is the 260th post I've started since migrating to blogspot. That doesn't mean anything to me, because I've got a large volume of unfinished, unpublished posts. That number doesn't mean anything to me, and I don't know how many actually-published posts I've got. I don't care either.

Tomorrow is my last day at Hillsdale. While the plan had been that I'd return for New Student Outreach in the fall, extenuating circumstances ended up dictating otherwise. I'll be starting at Cleveland State right away in the fall. I'm excited about that. Very excited. It will be the beginning of the work I feel like my life has been tending toward forever. I'll finally be doing something the feels like something I'm supposed to be doing. I'll be able to be me.

But I've got to get through tomorrow, and right now, that's got me pensive. I can't wait to move onto the life I'm more excited to lead. I can't wait to finally have a home again and be married.

But, for all its faults (and trust me, they are multifarious), I'm going to hold some slight place in my heart for the first campus I ever staffed. More than that though, because honestly, I think Hillsdale is an institution adding to the destruction of all that is good faster than they're making a positive influence in the world, I'm going to miss the people. Say what you will about the college itself and most of the people it attracts, at least 3 or 4 of the people it, at some point, for some reason, attracted, are people that I've come to love, and I will miss them, even if I enjoy my next place more on the whole.

It's where I grew up, where I first lived truly alone, and where, honestly, I had to be to meet and get to know Alexandra to the point that we ever started dating. God knew what he was doing even if, objectively, from the other side, I probably shouldn't have been placed at Hillsdale as a single guy from Wooster. But this is an instance where hindsight doesn't work like it normally would. As far as I can tell, I shouldn't have been placed at Hillsdale, but looking back, hindsight says it was the best thing. That's an analog for the Kingdom of God, it really is. He used Hillsdale in me, and somehow, he used me at Hillsdale. It turns out, in the end, that no matter how much you might want to leave somewhere, it's never really easy to say goodbye.

But I'm diving in. In just a few short weeks, I'll be wrapping up all association with Hillsdale students when Chapter Focus Week ends. That will probably be harder than tomorrow, because most of the students I'll miss the most are going. Tomorrow night, at 9:30 though, I'll sing the benediction with the whole crowd one last time, but I know I'll never forget it.

Truthfully though, I haven't been myself very often at Hillsdale. For all their trumpeting about freedom, I've felt nothing if not chained to closet what I wish I could say and do on campus. "Walking on eggshells" doesn't begin to describe how its always been while I've been on campus. I can't wait to get away from all of that.

And yet, I'll dearly miss some of the people. It's hard to believe that tomorrow is my last new day prayer, my last student appointments in AJs, my last Unite. I'm glad to be ending at the beginning of the year I think, because at least I'm not the only one going through all of the lasts this time around.

In related but entirely separate realms, this is quite possibly my last night living alone too. It's been a good run, but I'm a worse person when I'm not in more constant community. I'm looking forward to experiencing that again; something I've not had since moving to Hillsdale. Part of that is my fault, but socializing with people associated with Hillsdale college, when you're not one of them, is like grasping for straws with both hands tied behind your back. To not be an outsider to even some takes an eternity; to be accepted fully in the community requires a long-form birth certificate, extensive voting history, and panoply of republican candidate bumper stickers. The requirements lessen with age, but I'm far too young.

It's a war inside of me; wanting to not-leave the people I care about; the people I want to continue to see grow versus wanting to leave as quickly as possible for more fitting and enjoyable pastures.

The war ends tomorrow.

-Zack
"There is a designer, the lament and cry of my heart to see the beauty of love as it was meant to be"
-Mumford and Sons

The Window

2011-04-18T22:24:00.001-04:00

Presented with the facts, we just turn away and look at what we want to see; listen to what we want to hear; feel what we want to feel.

There's a subconscious power-struggle inside of me, between what I want to write and what I feel like I should write. Neither is really right.

I've never had a format I liked. The only lasting format was when I'd write daily updates and talk about what I did during the day. I can't and won't post daily on here and I wouldn't want to write about what I do everyday. It's probably more exciting than what I did during High School, but that doesn't make it actually exciting.

Because my last two posts were serious and spiritual, I feel pangs of regret that I don't really have the will to do that right now. I feel like I should keep that up. I feel like I should develop a theme and thereby, perhaps someday, develop a readership.

But that's not why I write this. In all honesty, I write this, recently, because I can't think of where to go in other things I'm writing during my designated writing-time each day. I write just to fill up an hour.

That's not to say I didn't mean the last two posts. But they were fabricated out of needing to fill an hour more than inspired by something passionately welling up inside of me. That's not to say, either, that I'm not passionate about what I wrote.

But I'm not passionate about writing theological, philosophical, sociological critiques, analysis, or whatever you wish to call anything in those veins that I might write.

I'm passionate about words; how they fit together and what they express. I don't believe in definitions; I believe in the supple arbitrariness of language, gaged by the understanding of the readers- so I strive for accuracy, but hate when people make arguments based on definition or mis-definitions. Words don't mean anything I don't mean them to because if they did I wouldn't use them as I did. The only reason knowing what a word means means anything at all is just so you can interpret what I'm trying to say. But you'll never quite know because you're not me. Nor will I ever know what you read when you read what I write because I'm not you. Italicized words mean much less when you use too many of them. It would hold then, that an italicized word has no real meaning on its own; just like the rest of language.

I don't know really, what that means for The Bible. I actually change my opinion on that every day it seems. But I do know that the meaning the Bible signifies is the word of God. What the Bible says, however, is a different matter. Most would say you can't divorce the two, but I don't see how to do anything else. If there's not meaning bigger, broader, larger than the words on the page, I don't know if I could believe the Bible as such. It's just another book at that point. Words don't do anything if they're not signifying a meaning apart from themselves.

There's a lot of hubbub about "accuracy" in translations of the Bible, but I don't quite understand why. Actually, I do understand why, but I hate the fact and would rather pretend not to acknowledge it than give it the thought-space in my brain. I don't really care, what the Hebrew says or what the closest English equivalent is or has been. I care what the Hebrew is signifying, and I want the best way to express that to a reader or hearer. But every reader/hearer is different. We're similar enough that we don't need personalized Bibles. But we're different enough that just reading the Bible isn't enough.

And so the circular castle circles back on itself and I've only got one thing to say: It all comes back to community. God created us all in his image and we're not going to find that on our own. He gave us his Bible but we all read it with unique eyes. Our best hope is to go at it together. Our best hope is to go at life together. Then we'll get closer, but not just because we'll know the Bible better together. It's actually a bit different, to some degree. When we're doing that, we're doing what I'll shout to the day I die: we're meant, above all else, to love one another. Love is done best in community. God didn't make language ambiguous because he's got it out for us. He did it because we need to love one another.

-Zack

"I swallow the sound and it swallows me whole"
-Florence and the Machine

The only Word I could Say

2011-04-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

For just about one year now, I've been thinking about what it means to be a Christian, in the simplest terms. I've been thinking through our systematized theology. I've been thinking through how we let it shape how we live. I don't have many real answers yet, but I'm finding that we've made up our own set of qualifiers, our own language, our own definitions. I'm coming to realize that we're not necessarily off-base biblically, but I don't think the reformation is done yet, if I could even claim what I see as happening, at least in my own thinking, as something joined to the long-line of reformers.

I read a blog-post by someone I respect dearly the other day that was a walk-through/series of meditations on the Sheep and the Goats passage from Matthew 25. If you read that passage (verses 31-46), Jesus talks about how the sheep, the true followers, are those who visit prisoners, feed the hungry, clothe the poor. The blog post describes this passage as a "hard passage" because it seems to fly in the face of the Evangelical "By-Grace-Alone" mindset. This blog's author goes on to rationalize this passage with the grace-alone tenet by saying that said actions making one a sheep and not a goat are the sign of an inner-change. Maybe that's true. But I don't see where it says that in this particular passage, and I don't see how people are judged for their works in the grace-alone passages. This isn't to say there isn't an inner change that can lead to good works. But Jesus doesn't count those who don't do his work among his true followers. As he says near the end of John: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." But what are Jesus' commandments? Are they to "have a personal relationship, keep a quiet time, hand out bulletins, teach sunday school, run a soundboard, lead a bible study?" Unfortunately, outside of a very broad interpretation of one word in the great commission, none of those general Christian expressions of good works and service to God are actually commanded by Jesus, even in their 1st century equivalents (whatever those may be). The greatest commandment is to Love God. The 2nd is to love others. What really, are the things Jesus does command- to meet the physical needs of others, as he does, to put others over self, to seek peace at all costs, to bring the disenfranchised into the fold- but expressions of love for our neighbors? Jesus' way is the way of love. That's all he did, all he could do. It's, per the 3rd chapter of John, the reason he came and his constant exhortation for all of us. I'm not sure what I'm saying because I'm not quite sure what to make of all of this, but I know, for certain, that even a hint of greed is the opposite of Jesus' way...and what's more, not just greed, but doing anything at all that comes at the expense of another, is not Jesus' way.

When I look at all Jesus did, the sorts of things he said, what often strikes me much of the time is how he seems to choose the people with whom he disagrees. The rich, who refuse to surrender their place of power from wealth. The synagogue leaders, scribes, pharisees, sadducees...though all different sects in their own way, they all refused to give up their power as religious leaders. But he never had beef with someone because they were a sinner. I imagine they were repentant sinners, but there are actually few accounts of repentance and I can't recall any where Jesus actually require it. By encountering Jesus; who he is, how he acts, what he says; those are when stories of repentance come about. I can't help but think it has much to do with the lack of judgment and condemnation he with which he handled them. It's about love. It's all about love. Jesus' love transformed people. Even at his sternest, he expressed love for the downtrodden.

Maybe I'm selectively reading. Maybe I'm just missing something. But I can't find a single instance wherein Jesus commands anything but love. This isn't to say he gives license to sin. If anything, it's more and more an implication of grace. Jesus seems to speak so little of specific sins simply because he openly acknowledges that everyone is a sinner. But even so, as such, as anything, they are in need and deserve love. In fact, as far as I can tell, it seems "evil" is most often identified by Jesus as an infringement upon another, less fortunate person. This isn't to say that personal sin doesn't matter to Jesus. But Jesus is much less concerned, it seems with the "personal relationship stuff" we've essentially fabricated through systematic theology in the last 80 years, than he is with proclaiming a new way, a new thing...the Kingdom of Heaven, come to earth and demarcated by the way people love one another and love God. It seems to me we've stripped the Gospel Jesus actually preached of much of its potency, of much of its point. Yes, Jesus said believe in me and you'll have eternal life. But more often than that, he told people about the Kingdom of God and urged them to live as if it's real and can be realized here and now in even some small way, ever increasing til the end of days. But that's not the Gospel we preach. We, I, InterVarsity, most churches, teach that Jesus came so we could go to heaven. He came so he could die so we could be made right with God. That's all true, it is, it happened, it's the result of his life on Earth, resurrection, and ascension. But it's so small a part of the larger story, at least content wise...and I can't help but think that that matters. It matters, it seems, that Jesus told people to love one another and to love God in real, tangible ways, but never told them "believe in me, do all you can to get close to me, and when I'm done, you'll go to heaven" He expressed something like that and it goes something like this "When I was thirsty, you gave me water, when I was hungry, you gave me food, when I was in prison...." yeah, the sheep and the goats thing. It's how we express our devotion to Jesus, beyond all else. If that weren't true, if Paul came along and set the record straight, as we often act preach in a twisted sort of way, why did Jesus say what he said? Yes, believing in Jesus, that he died for your sins and rose from the dead is all it takes to "get to heaven." But I don't just want to do what it takes to get to heaven. I want to actually follow Jesus. He said make disciples, not believers. Disciples do as their master did and as their master commands...and my master commands me to love. How that plays out varies depending on the person I'm engaged in loving at the moment, but I'm positive and convinced it means much more than a bridge or four circles.

-Zack

"When those men were ready to stone Magdalene, I hated them, I wanted to kill them. But the only word I could say was 'love'"
-Nikos Kazantzakis

Who (or What) We Think We Are

2011-04-06T21:33:00.000-04:00

Around Hillsdale and around InterVarsity, and around Christian circles altogether, we've created a ghost. We've created a standard not only impossible to attain, but impossible to define, at least correctly.

There are sermons.

There are books.

There are support groups.

But I'm beginning to think it might be a big mistake or at least a gross misreading.

I'm pondering the idea of "Biblical Masculinity" and I'm a bit puzzled as to from where the idea springs. I don't have a seminary degree, I'm sure there's a lot more I have to learn about the Bible, but other than the instructions in Ephesians for men to "Love their wives," I'm not so sure there's a lot for us to base an idea of what it means to be a man, biblically speaking.

"There are men in the Bible we can look to because they're called holy and Godly!" you say.

Yes, but outside of Christ, none of them are perfect and none of them are praised for things delineated as specifically good because they are men. Indeed, most of the lauding of people like David (an adulterer) or Gideon (a idolater later in life) have to do with where their hearts lie and their motives...absolutely nothing about "manly character." All of that being said, it's not even taking into account the fact that our Biblical stories exist because God wanted us to have a record about his faithfulness...not so we'll have people to pattern our lives after outside of Christ. If, in fact, we're striving to be like anyone aside from Christ, that's very near sin and extraordinarily unbiblical.

So where does it come from? If you have any insight, let me know. I have my suspicions though, and, as always, they're steeped in the ongoing lie the western church buys wholesale known as modernity.

As I outline within the first few pages of my I.S. (and onward), modernity is the increasingly defunct ideological pursuit of the best possible version of everything. It relied on ideas that things had thingness and they were at their best when best reflecting the truest version of that thingness. That is a load of crap, of course, as Foucault and Derrida would tell us. But still the idea persists and gets applied across the board. As it applies to the false gender dichotomy, the idea that something could be "more" manly than other things emerged, (or, of course, more "lady-like"). That was always incorrect because the idea of man and woman being intrinsically different was created for a patriarchal hegemony, but it somehow survived, especially in the Church. From the idea that something could be more masculine than something else the Church decided that wasn't always helpful but, if we baptize it in enough churchy jargon, maybe we can keep petting the ego of men by telling them they can still be more masculine than others, if they do it biblically. Newsflash: That's still harmful and has led to woman hating themselves, gay people being hated by the church, and men who are less up to the (totally baseless) standard we've established hating themselves too. So who benefits? As always, the patriarchal hegemony. That's not Christlike. That's the last thing Jesus would have ever wanted. And yet...it's what we call a biblical model. There are virtues we identify as manly, of course...how could those be bad? They aren't...but they're virtues if women have them too. Taking charge and being in control of a situation are completely gender neutral and should be...but we don't let them be...because that wouldn't help the hegemony.

Our Regional director in InterVarsity has a life's principal, that he'll never let a racially disparaging comment go unanswered. I try to do the same. I think I'm going to start striving to call shenanigans on the principal of masculinity, wherever it's found while I'm at it...it's harmful too.

-Zack

"Tell me tell me, could you ever really comprehend what goes on in his head?"

-Sons of Adam

laissez

2011-04-05T13:33:00.000-04:00

This time of year, students start to fade into the woods a bit. They're busy and their minds are less and less on ministry with each passing day. As staff, it's basically my job, this time of year, to keep them excited and to keep pressing onward, through Chapter Focus Week.

But this year, that's hard, because my mind and heart aren't really in the ministry right now either. The impending leaving of Hillsdale (and the unnatural amount of energy it takes for me to connect with a typical Hilldale student) pushes my heart to a different place. The coming wedding fills my hope for the future more than planning for a year I won't be a part of at Hillsdale. I know I should care more. I know I should love the people God's called into my life for me to serve at this time. But I just don't.

I can see, looking back over the last two years, how God has used my time at Hillsdale to steer my life.

But that feels over. The usefulness of Hillsdale in my life and very nearly my usefulness around here all feel spent. I honestly don't know how I'm going to have it in me to come back for a month in the fall, to say nothing of trying to care when its very far from the most important thing in my life over the summer.

But it's the task at hand. I've got to perform. I'm spent.

But thankfully, God's storehouses are always full. He can still pour out mercies and grace and rest. I've got to lean on him entirely right now, because honestly, I've got nothing inside of me to give to this place anymore.

-Zack

"We may make it through the war if we make it through the night"
-Portugal. The Man

Writing about Writing

2011-04-03T12:30:00.000-04:00

It's not been the most uncommon occurrence for me to say something, on this blog or its past incarnations, like this :"I've been feeling, lately, like I should write more."

I even went as far, at the beginning of the year, as making "write more" one of my new year's resolutions. If you're an at all frequent reader of this thing, you'd know that I've mostly failed that one. Actually, "frequent readers" don't really exist right now, unless they're more like "re-readers," because I just don't update all that often. Maybe I average once per week, maybe...but even then , it's irregular. Right now, obviously, it's Sunday. Last week, it was Monday. I don't honestly remember my last post prior to last Mondays, but it was probably a week or so prior to last Monday. That's my rough, poor, schedule.

But it doesn't mean any of the feelings have subsided. Actually, they just increase. It's oftentimes the only thing I can say I feel "right" doing. If I'm doing anything else, it probably feels like it's less of what I'm supposed to be doing. That can't apply across the board, but it's pretty close. Most of the time, I spend m days feeling like I'm not doing enough, feeling like I'm failing to some extent. But never, not once, in my entire life, have I felt like writing was a waste of time. I used to post on here every Thursday between getting off work at 11 and our Stewardship meeting at 12. I never once used that time for homework, but I never once felt like I should have either.

Everyone's got their thing like that, and I think mine is writing. But I don't know what that means right now.

-Zack

"Til we get our freedom we got to get over, we steady on the grind"
-Dead Prez

you know what it I.S.... (black and yellow and a number and your class year and a tootsie roll on the side)

2011-03-28T19:31:00.000-04:00

It's I.S. Monday. Thanks to last Monday I've been thinking about Wooster a lot lately. Heck, thanks to a movie I watched Saturday night, I've been thinking about my I.S. a lot lately even. (A Serious Man. It's like they read my I.S. and don't want to prove me wrong or something....). Today, thanks to a conversation that was pretty "Wooster-centric" that I had last week, I even kind of changed a students life with a story.

But that's not surprising. It should be the least surprising part to any of the previous paragraph. Wooster changes lives right? That's what Loren Pope said at least, in his book.

I can't argue with him. Who I am today, I am because of Wooster, perhaps more than anything else.

Check it:
I wouldn't be the Christian I am today without WCF. I don't even know if I'd still be a Christian. Maybe I would. Maybe, if I went to OSU and got involved in InterVarsity, my life wouldn't be THAT different. But who knows? I went to Wooster, and that's where I found out how to follow Jesus with my life and not just my words.

I wouldn't have ever met Alexandra. "But you met her at home!" you could argue. But I met her through a connection I made at a church I went to because I went to a church...in Wooster.

I wouldn't be moving to Cleveland. I wouldn't love Cleveland.

I wouldn't value everyone as a human. I wouldn't try to love everyone. I wouldn't look for the good in everything, if there' any to be found.

I wouldn't feel like someday, I could write a book. Why do I feel this way? Because, to some extent...I already have. It's 100 pages long and it's called "The Dude Abides: Exploring Post-Modernism Through the Films of Joel and Ethan Coen by the Decentering of Modernist Aestheticism in Le Politique Des Auteurs".

But all of that is just a list of things that immediately come to mind. There's more...much more. I'm more well adjusted to life. I'm probably smarter. I'm sure, really, I don't know all of the ways Wooster changed me, for better or for worse. Most of the time, I can't actually convince myself there was any "worse."

There's just a connection; an ever-present, overwhelming sense of communality and unity. "I Did It!" and so did you...even though I don't know your name or understand your topic or agree with your thesis of your thesis. You did it. I did it. We did it.

I miss Wooster a lot. Hillsdale is not Wooster, not by a longshot. I get told, far too often, that my education wasn't as good because it wasn't "Hillsdale." If that's true, then I'd rather have a worse education, because I wouldn't trade what I did have for those four years for anything in all the world, or for everything I am and have now because of them.

But I.S. Monday, then graduation, they're a starting line. Upward and onward, to somewhere and something...it's why we went at all, it's why we wrote at all, and it's where we're headed.

Today is about, primarily, the class of 2011. But to every single Wooster alum from years prior, it's our day too.

How quickly two years have gone...

-Zack
#27, class of 2009

Getting there

2011-03-19T14:46:00.000-04:00

I'll be getting married in about 8 months and 2 hoursish. I don't know how or when that will fully sink in (maybe in about 8 months and 1 year....)

But!

We have an apartment, officially...We're going to start moving Alexandra in on May 2nd....my move in date is over 6 months after that. But it's a step...and we're getting there, to the fullness we'll eventually embrace.

But even so, in between, there is so much to look forward to right now...in 45 minutes, Wooster plays in their first ever national championship game. I'm grateful for streaming live video today. I like when my teams at least get to the championship round...at least they get a shot and "could have beens" aren't applicable....in that vein, I've got high hopes for Ohio State's basketball team right now too...

But I'm also disappointed, very much so, in Ohio State's football team right now. I don't care how they do...I just hope the rules-breaking ends...

Today though, is festive...

Go Scots!

-Zack

"Don't say it's over, cause that's the worst news I could hear"
-The Avett Brothers

2011-03-11T12:49:00.000-05:00

I'm journeying into Cleveland this weekend, to look at apartments, hopefully picking one where we'll live, after we're married. It's a step, kind of a dream, and a step toward a dream.

It's fitting, then, that this is also the weekend of the Cleveland Urban Plunge. If it weren't for that InterVarsity urban experience (3 year veteran as a student myself), we wouldn't be moving to Cleveland at all, I don't think...or at least it played a big role, on my end, to not just being okay with it because that's where Alexandra's job is going to be, but actually being uncontrollably excited about it.

Already, God has been faithfully bringing in new funds to help jumpstart the ministry at Cleveland State. He is faithful.

-Zack

"cause I need freedom now, and I need to know how to live my life like it's meant to be"
-Mumford and Sons

Some things, they just don't make sense

2011-03-04T14:41:00.001-05:00

According to the majority of Americans who voted in November (If I'm supposed to believe that democracy works...), it's better for less than 1 percent of them to have 3 percent less taxes to pay on their hundreds of millions, but it's not right for teachers to negotiate for higher wages on top of their less-than-$50,000.

In fact, if teachers get to negotiate, surely, our economy will crumble...and yet, allowing a millions of dollars to come into the national treasury would be a wrongful infringement on the select-few's rights.

For one, that's not democracy. There are a lot more teachers than multi-millionaires in this country.

Further, Democracy, as the ruling party would proclaim, means letting the majority do what they want because they're the majority.

But what if the majority is wrong?

I don't know how to say they weren't, last November.

Capitalism and Democracy don't even jive with each other when it comes to worker's rights...Labor is the majority.

I could rail, and will continue to later, hard against the masochistic tendencies of the electorate, but what's the use?

The Kingdom of God is the only perfect society, and Jesus wouldn't have come if you could simply regulate its rule into existence. It's just so painful, that so man fellow-participants, or, should-be-participants in God's Kingdom align themselves with political policies that crush the equality and welfare of the disenfranchised. Greed and stepping over and on top of the less powerful are the name of the game in our "free-market democracy." If Jesus was for that, we're reading different Bibles.

" Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." -James 1:27

-Zack

"You could still be who you wish you is; it ain't happened yet and that's what a tuition is"

-Kanye West

The Middle

2011-03-01T14:03:00.000-05:00

The future starts today. Though I think of those who read this as a sort of ambiguous cloud, I recognize that I actually know most of you in person and the bulk of our relationship is completely offline. I prefer that, so that's not at all shocking to me. But even so, I feel like I make things unofficially official by writing about them on here. It's like a place to make announcements but it's off the beaten path of the information superhighway so that it's not like a facebook status or even a tweet (depending on who you are or how you roll, your own signposts, depending where they land, will differ....a celebrity's twitter is his or her most public form, probably followed by his or her blog, then facebook, provided he or she has all of those). So this is a bit of a cop-out, but I felt like I had to make it known so I could really get down to brass-tacks:

Today, I'm officially making real steps toward my future on staff in Cleveland. In a conversation with my supervisor, he suggested I step away a bit from duties at Hillsdale so I could concentrate on fundraising toward Cleveland. That doesn't mean a huge change...a few less hours on campus really. But it means I'm starting to craft the resources, make the contact, communicate the mission, for a new place.

But I'm very much in the middle; in between the here and now and the future.

The here an now is keeping on with the ministry through the beginning of Octoberish. The future is planting and building a ministry at Cleveland State.

The result is a task-list mixed with supporting and developing, as I can, what's here, and developing the support base for Cleveland. The other result is a bag of mixed emotions, even more mixed.

Here's a concatenation of a rundown:
-leaving Hillsdale (+) this is a hard place to work and students often seem to wish I wasn't around
-leaving Hillsdale (+) there is literally 0 financial support to be gained in the larger community. Alumni distrust InterVarsity and the town of Hillsdale is impoverished.
-Leaving Hillsdale (+) Capitalism is next to godliness here, and I believe, in reality, capitalism is the #1 reason American Christianity is growing more and more impotent, and we increase our embrace of the unbiblical and idolatrous ideology it truly is.
-leaving Hillsdale (-) There are some brilliant students here and working with them has been a joy
-leaving Hillsdale (-) I'll have poured 2+ years into this place and I'm leaving it for something unestablished
-leaving Hillsdale (-) I'm walking away from a ministry on the verge of exploding (in a good way) that didn't even exist when I got to campus..it's like sending Warren Buffet to college, if you're Warren Buffet's parents.
-Going to Cleveland (+) it's my favorite city in the world and living there, being there, breathing, eating, working there feels like something I was created to do.
-Going to Cleveland (+) I have friends there! Alexandra has a job there! Only an hour from Wooster!
-Going to Cleveland (+) I know people who care about Cleveland! I can fundraise all over the state I come from by working in the for which everyone has some kind of sympathetic city!
-Going to Cleveland (-) Chapter Plant! From 300 to 0. Yikes.
-Going to Cleveland (-) New church, new house, new routines, new...life. New things bring stress.
-2011 (+) New wife New life New beginning...can't count out the value of a fresh start and the excitement of getting to spend the rest of my life with the most incredible person I've ever met...

I don't know if those are balanced or what....It's a bit more complex than that, as shades of negative and positive seep in on every attribute. It does not matter though...I'm not trying to make a decision...this is a multi-faceted reality that I'm mostly very excited to embrace.

Today, is the beginning.

I don't know if what I do at Cleveland State will transform the city, but I pray it does. I pray that even one student I work with will decide to start working in the city for the Kingdom of God...one is better than none, and from one, is two so much? It's a snowball, but right now, it's barely a flake....

-Zack

"I’ma part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful
And I believe in the people."

-Lupe Fiasco

Of Diaries and Lockets

2011-02-16T18:53:00.000-05:00

I've decided that writing is a Voldemortian experience, but the opposite. It's like, for me, creating horcruxes. As I go about the process, it's like splitting up my soul and injecting a bit of it into whatever I'm writing. But it doesn't kill. For me, it gives life. Honestly, it feels like the best use of my time, at any given time. I don't know what that means and it's not really the entire truth because it's not like it's my job or anything. But I do know that, for my whole life, I've often felt like I'm wasting time. Playing video games, reading, even sometimes when I'm doing what I'm "supposed" to be doing because it is my job..it just feels like I'm taking time away from something else...that sounds vague, I know, but I'm not sure how to describe it. It just feels like I'm meant to be doing something else, a lot of the time, no matter what I'm doing. It's a semi-fleeting feeling when it happens, but it's not altogether uncommon, especially when I'm doing truly useless things, like watching television.

But I'm doing well with my sort-of-a-new-year's-resolution to write more. When I find time, which is thankfully common enough, I spend time writing. I've got about 4 "projects" going right now and it's alright, very alright. When I'm writing I feel like I'm fulfilling a purpose inside of me that's always been there. I have no idea what that means for my life, but it's nice, just to have the deep desire or instability gone from my inner being. Part of me wonders if I didn't decide to come on staff, at least in part, because it fed my subconscious will's necessity to write. I don't know if or really think that I'll ever make a career of writing, especially because that normally means writing for the sake of a magazine, newspaper, or television event. I could do that, but I don't think it would satiate the monster I've managed to put to sleep this year. I just feel like I'm a better person when I'm regularly writing, even if that just means I'll have a bunch of practically useless word files containing stories and parts of stories on my computers for the rest of my life. I don't care, not in the slightest, because it's the only real way I've found that answers a deep question that, up to now, had been spoken in an internal language I couldn't consciously decipher. I honestly think it may have been a sort of personality sickness that has always been a threat. Since graduation, I don't know that I've been the person I was or could be at college...maybe it's incorrect, I'm still learning myself. But up until May 2009, I had to write on various occasions, for classes. When that left my life, I think a part of me left with it in a more horcruxial way than writing is now. For whatever reason, I have to express myself in writing to survive, I have to splinter my soul in some way and insert bits of it into text documents on my computer...it's just how I was made when I was knit together in my since estranged mother's womb.

-Zack

"At the start, he was there"
-David Crowder

How we aspire

2011-02-11T15:34:00.000-05:00

I heard, on the radio yesterday, an off-handed comment about people younger than 30...in this particular broadcaster's opinion, there hasn't been a great thing to come out of anyone born in the last 30 years apart from facebook.

Whether or not that's true, I don't actually care. Whether or not I agree, that too, I don't care about. Actually, I think he's probably not too far off, all things considered.

"Great" is a loaded word that can easily mean "oppressive" as much as it means "exemplary." They say we don't have great novels the way we used to; like people just can't write now like they could 80 years ago or something. It's true, James Joyce hasn't been equaled in my mind for aesthetic skill, but there wasn't anyone prior to him that did either. The question isn't about greatness, it's about perception.

I believe the greatest living writer is Salman Rushdie and I'd say that 's nearly an objective truth. I don't really care to argue it though, at least not for the sake of actually determining who is the greatest author. Dave Eggers is up there too, but AHBWOSG is grossly overrated and "What is the What" is far from enough for him to stage any sort of coup, in my mind, for the title.

I'm not writing this right now in order to discover who the greatest living author is or isn't..I'm trying to get to the bottom of something, something about this concept of greatness that people my age or younger, or a bit older, supposedly don't grasp or at least don't accomplish.

We could argue merits of different artists and craftspeople and maybe we'll prove that facebook isn't the end of the story for our generation. Even so, new buildings are rarely architectural wonders. Function is over-coming "greatness." It's about ease and efficiency now...but who is to say there's nothing great about that? Even so, I'm kind of old-school about some things, and I lament the sorts of video games I grew up on no longer being made because things like farmville and angry birds are outselling everything. But it's all marching onward...ease and efficiency, not too much time, not too much commitment...just gratification in the fastest and most accessible way for the masses.

That probably sounds like a bit of an indictment, but I'm not convinced it is....We're the first generation to internalize post-modern ideals (misleading many to label us a post-modern culture...post-modernism is an idealogy, not a culture or a set of values..it's a set of assumptions about truth and reality), and one of them, perhaps my favorite of them, post-modern ideals that is, is the value and worth of all humans. People (colleagues and students of mine in particular) often accuse all things post-modern as a rejection of all in any objective form...there are those among us, the post-modern thinkers, that do that, but it's rarely actually the case. What's actually happening is a process of decentering...instead of centering on societal ideals, like the preminence of white men, the democratization of ideas, and the objectivity of experience, we break out of molds and let what actually is emerge. What I mean is that instead of thinking everyone ought to like something because it is "great," acknowledging that cultural artifacts are products of culture and they are understood through culture...meaning some may appreciate, and some may not...it's not a deficiency, it's just a real difference. Even educational advantages in art history are a part of the culture of art history when it comes down to it.

That's a fairly complicated way of saying that while facebook may be our greatest thing, it itself is great because it allows people to be themselves or try to be whomever they want to be...how people use it may be wrong and I do have strong feelings about the place of children on facebook or attention-seeking through it...but at the end of the day, it's a place where people can choose to claim their own voice and it is, for that reason, great. But it also establishes other ways for things to be great...sure, no one is ever going to write huck finn again, but we will write things that acknowledge that we can only see the world as we can with our own eyes...that's both a higher form of art, more generally appealing, truer, and ultimately, greater.

To those who have not internalized post-modernity as many of my generation have, it looks hazy, it looks lazy, it looks sub-par. But just because they don't have the eyes to see why it's great doesn't erase its greatness. Of course they are entitled to their opinions in the same way I am my own. Not understanding or seeking to do so though, will never be an excuse to criticize.

-Zack

"I couldn't bare it, to live for fear "
-Yo La Tengo

It always rolls.

2011-02-08T16:18:00.000-05:00

The Packers won the Super Bowl for the second time in my life on Sunday. That's the highest accomplishment for my favorite team in the NFL and it makes me happy, but I don't know if it makes me happy enough. It's definitely better than the alternative, but I feel like I should be happier.

Honestly, though I root for the Packers and always will, I might have been happier if the Browns had won it, for Cleveland's sake. Some things are bigger than football, and though sports aren't everything, a break-through for a team from Cleveland would mean a lot more to me no matter what team it was than even the Packers winning.

That probably means I'm taking my first steps toward "fan conversion" but I don't believe that. I can't imagine not being a Packers fan...but I honestly feel a little bit guilty for it, as I probably identify with the Cavaliers as my favorite team in all of sports more than any other right now.

The day after the Packers won the Super Bowl, the Cavs set the record for most losses in a row outright...they had set the record for most losses in a row within a single season on Saturday.

Though they have nothing to do with each other, I've definitely allowed the Cavs horrible year to poison the Packers' accomplishment. Honestly, I was more excited when the Packers beat the Eagles in the first week of the playoffs than I was at any other point. I honestly felt entitled to that Super Bowl victory because I didn't believe any team in the league was actually better than the Packers...being a Cavaliers fan, that kind of made me a Miami Heat fan translated onto an NFL skin. That's ridiculous...but it's sub-conscious.

I honestly believe losing hurts worse than winning feels good, which makes sports a sucker bet, as only one team can be champions at the end of the year in any given sport....the feeling of not-losing and not-winning, which can only come from not-caring is the "safest" way.

It's probably too late to stop caring now, and I'm moving to Cleveland next year so not caring about sports isn't really an option. I'll deal with it...

I think a bit of it might have to do with community too though...I'm not a part of the larger Packer-fan community...I'm not from wisconsin and I don't know many other Packers' fans around anywhere I spend time, much less am I friends with any of them. There's something special that happens when Ohio State wins and a big part of that is the fact that almost everyone I know loves the Buckeyes and I can enjoy it with them.

Indeed, I think that means I'm wrong...the glory of winning probably does outweigh the hurt of losing. Last June I watched the U.S.'s last second win in a world cup game in a room full of people who cared. I don't really care about soccer, but I couldn't help get caught up in the moment and cheer on our guys...heck, I don't even like the U.S. as a country very much a lot of the time....but it didn't matter then.

It always rolls back around...community, others, people, friends, love...those are why we live...they make sports better, they make life better...they make living equal more than some vapid dollar sign in the end.

I am happy the Packers won. I am hopeful that the Cavs might someday win again. Indeed, I am hopeful that Ohio State could win the Basketball championship this year. I'm in the midst of what could be the best year of my life...I'm getting married for one...and the Packers won the Super Bowl.

If anything, I just need to stop and realize that.

-Zack

"So I'm counting on your fingers, cause you've reattached the twitch"
-Bon Iver

Ethnicity 3: Heritage

2011-02-03T13:50:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting in the "Heritage Room" at Hillsdale right now. It's a fancy room off the side of the library here with semi-comfortable (although not terribly) seats, lots of "key books" which means hyperbolic, dogmatic, propaganda about how great the constitution is or was or how awesome the United States could be or (the worst) how capitalism is the best.

Heritage, they call it.

But I think that's as far off-base as you could get, thinking about what this all really is, and what heritage actually is.

Perhaps, as Americans, this is our heritage...a "celebration" of our past through the lens of the "great" things that make America America. That...and a lot of Eagle statues...I think there are about 12 of them in a room that's around 15 by 20 feet. I guess I can buy that. But I'm not sure I'm a fan of the assumption that all Americans, as Americans, necessarily share the same Heritage. Actually, I am positive that we do not. Indeed, it is one of our overlooked strengths as a country that we do, indeed, not share said Heritage.

That being said, it's an easy heritage for upper middle class white people to embrace. The Swiss-German side of me doesn't care that much about the Swiss-German part of my past (save for the oppressed Anabaptist bit), so why shouldn't people who are fully white and usually rich for generations embrace, fully, a heritage defined by a country that writes its own history as victors?

Well.....the truth, probably, would be a reason why that shouldn't be the case. I don't see any pictures of oppressed people groups on the walls...no paintings of the trail of tears or land traded for a few small pox blankets and a bottle of whiskey...I don't see any signs of slavery or any African men with but two-thirds their face. The American heritage, which is not just lauded but heavy-handedly worshiped here at Hillsdale, was built upon the backs of people who "don't look like us."

I'm probably being unfair, just because I'm sitting in this room. My own belief that ultimately nothing good can come from capitalism doesn't help. But there aren't even any signs of celebrated diversity in here. For a school that has nearly as many lincolns as they do eagles, Jim Crow is de facto the modus operandi.

As I try to figure out, more and more, what it means for me to be a person of mixed race, I'm beginning, more and more, to feel at least slightly more out of place at Hillsdale. Most of the time, I'm the least white person in the room. For anyone that has seen me or met me, that should be a joke...but it's almost always true.

I know I probably won't get to do or see much changing around here, but for the present moment, I'll be conscious of what it does mean to be who and what I am while I'm here..and I won't let an opportunity slip that could at least steer one or two student's ethnic journeys.....we're all on them or should be and the first step is acknowledgement.

-Zack

"If ever I wasn't the greatest...I musta missed it"
-Kanye West

Wanna play with my Tesla Coil?

2011-02-02T21:15:00.000-05:00

The White Stripes officially broke up today. That might not mean much of anything to most of you. Really, it doesn't ultimately much to me either. The recordings still exist and life goes on. But it's kind of a passing era for me, personally. I've liked bands that have broken up already and whatever. But the White Stripes were, if there was any, the band of my high school years. They, more than any other band, are forever linked to those times for me. I remember downloading videos of them playing live (pre-youtube...) and feeling like my mind was completely expanded by their free-wheeling, tight, explosive sound...from two people..one of them simply being a genius that, no matter how simplistic the concept, continuously provided a sound that was unique and refreshing....and unrelentingly artistic. They led me to the blues which led me to classic rock and to the blues...somewhere in that whole interchange I released all genre-allegiances and started listening to anything and everything. It probably wasn't that simple, but I know I wouldn't be the music listener I am today without the White Stripes...who knows, I might not be the person I am today.

While I was in China, there were two songs that I sort of clung to...one, which absolutely revolutionized how I listen to music was "X Gon give it to ya" by DMX, which got me listening to Hip Hop at all. But the other was Icky Thump by the White Stripes...probably their last great song (on an admittedly lackluster album).

There might not be another band made up of a divorced couple with no other members that somehow has a stage rapport with one another bordering on the intensely intimate.

And....well, there's this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8V4O9wBQc4

And this:

Anyway you cut it....it's a passing of a band that I let impact me, that I let, to some degree, become a part of me. I also realized recently that I'm as old as my mom was when I was born.

I'm getting older.

And yet, there is so much to look forward to....

-Zack

"Why don't you kick yourself out you're an immigrant too"
-The White Stripes

Identilation

2011-01-26T20:47:00.000-05:00

I feel like yesterday's post needs a bit of clarification because it's founded in a couple of days of training and a couple of basic assumptions.

The first assumption is that every person on the face of the planet is created in the image of God, no matter their ethnicity or gender. Indeed, it is the only biblical stance to take that every ethnicity and gender are required to fully encompass the fullest image of God.

This means, of course, that those of us who can identify as multi-racial individuals are every bit as made in the image of God as anyone else.

But if every ethnicity is expressing a certain aspect or aspects about God's image, we've got to know how to identify as whole members of every ethnicity we're a part of in order to be fully identified within God's Kingdom. He created me as the multi-racial person I am, and to that end, I can't become a fully realized human being in his Kingdom without knowing exactly what that means for me.

What's also true is that God has placed every person on the planet into a certain place that has a dominant culture and it's that culture to whom each and every Christian is called to be a minister. Our ability to function within a dominant culture is measured in what we call assimilation. An individual's ability to own his or her own ethnicity is identified as identity. People generally fall on a spectrum of identity and assimilation co-ordinates on a graph where one is the x axis and the other the y.

All of that means that the most useful people in God's Kingdom are those who can fully embrace the person God made them to be, including their ethnicity and the gifts it brings (so, having a high identity) and also those who are able to to function within the context of the dominant culture...having high assimilation. Because I look and was brought up white, I'm very high assimilation, and I can mostly claim to be a high identity white, but my failure to fully claim the wrongs of the white race in the past (specifically as they pertain to the oppression of native people on this continent) because I feel like a good bit of that was oppression against my own ancestors means I can't be a truly high-identity white person...and that means I've got to figure out how to have any degree of "highness" in my native identity.

I hope that clarifies some.

-Zack

"I put in work and it's all for the kids, but these cats done forgot what work is"
-DMX

Highs and Lows

2011-01-25T14:22:00.000-05:00

This week I've become estranged to myself.

We've been talking about ethnicity at InterVarsity's fourth "Formation" for new staff training event in Great Lakes East.

Today, I realized that I haven't a clue how to deal with my identity.

Perhaps I'm white. But that entails owning White privilege and I can't quite do that...because 1/4 of who I am, biologically, was oppressed near the point of obliteration...and I don't identify as Native because of that oppression, but in light of that, I can't quite own white privilege, I can't quite identify as fully white....probably because I'm not fully white.

But how can I identify as Native when I don't even know where to begin in saying much more than that it's 1/4 of my biological makeup.

So I'm in between, I've come up liminal in a discussion struggling to own what we are, because I feel like nothing.

But it's a lie, too, to say that I can't own white privilege. I look, act, and was raised to be white.

So I guess I've found myself on a journey now...someday, I'll find out what that means, as soon as I can figure out where to start.

-Zack

"If everything comes down to love, then just what am I afraid of?
-Addison Road.

The Melody

2011-01-23T23:28:00.000-05:00

I've realized that I have a strange memory. I don't know if it's altogether abnormal, natural, conditioned, extraordinary, or maybe even some kind of nuisance. I think it's unconsciously selective or at least subjective.

I remember all sorts of things well, very well. I can quickly take myself back to practically any day after a certain point in my life. As long as a distinguishing event took place, I can get there. Much of my life I have recorded, in writing, so maybe that helps. A lot of the time though, I just remember things. Certain types of things, I never really forget.

Sometimes, I lie to seem less extraordinary, or I withhold information. Maybe that sounds too pompous...I don't know. But it's true. In order to not be the person who knows everything all of the time, I often don't say anything when I remember exactly the fact being recalled.

Sometimes, it makes me pretty tactless. I remember details people don't, but I think I expect them to remember things just like I do. If you've been a victim of that from me, I apologize.

There are, of course, times when I remember things as they weren't, and that creates a problem as well; I rely too much on my memory and I argue, too quickly, too fiercely, for what I believe to be true even when it isn't.

But for some reason, I don't remember a lot of things. I'm not, however, sure if that's an issue with the content or my own effort. I often forget things I mean to bring along...very often. I often forget things I need to do. Generally speaking, I think I forget about thoughts and things having to do with the future. That probably makes me a less than spectacular planner from time to time. I'll resist delineating how that may or may not have to do with my MBTI preference, but it is unwaveringly certain that I'll rarely forget something that has happened but often forget things that have to do with events that have yet to take place.

So in light of, or perhaps retrospectively attached to, how well I generally remember things, I've started writing my life up to this point (or, perhaps, just as a designated end-point, the wedding on November 19th of this year). I figured out that it only takes me about an hour to write 1000 words about my life. That means I can write something novel length in just 50 hours, which means I can write for an hour each week and have something by the end of the year. What that, then, means, I have no clue. But I do know it will be an adventure. In some ways, I have bits of it written and have for years. In any event, I'm looking forward to looking back and tracing the line of God's faithfulness all the way through...that's probably the thought that makes it seem most massive.

-Zack

"When it comes to tools, fool, I'm a pep-boy"
-Rick Ross

All you see is

2011-01-18T16:08:00.000-05:00

Been here before. On either side. Feeling like I need to write and being totally in the dark about what to write. So I put on some Young Jeezy and listen to thoughts that might or might not be going anywhere...just like this.

I've started at least 3, maybe 4 or 5 entries now, since I last posted one. Part of that is because what weighs on my mind is unsayable, or unwritable, or unpostable, or all three. Or simply, in my limited powers, unexpressable.

This has been the longest Christmas break I've ever had. December 9th was my last day on campus. January 20th is my first back...and it's still 2 days away...but I don't have to tell you that...you can read a calendar. Part of me is anxious to get back, but part of me is also anxious about starting again and a little apprehensive. That's probably good....it's never good to be too overconfident going into anything. I kind of want this semester to be over as soon as possible. It's like a hump I've got to get over to get to the rest of my life.

But before I can get to the rest of my life, I have to get through it, and because of that, I'm pretty sure there's something worthwhile in my time remaining at Hillsdale. I'm struggling to rest in that reality because here, right now, I'm mostly looking past this semester. My work consists of getting ready for a wedding that's happening in November and in getting things ready for a semester that starts tomorrow. Disparity.

But there's something there. There must have always been or God wouldn't have called me to Hillsdale in the first place. I'm trying to figure out how to soak in the good, useful for the future bits of my time at Hillsdale, all while being useful, and also not dropping the ball in planning the wedding.

It's a juggling act that I might fail, but it will be impossible to really measure.

Ambiguity is an underrated gift from the Lord.

-Zack

"So much on my mind I just can't recline
Blastin holes in the night til she bled sunshine"
-Black Star

re:view

2011-01-09T16:36:00.000-05:00

Today started out well enough, but I'll admit that I'm feeling a bit disappointed and frustrated right now at things that really aren't that big of a deal and in light of many little facts that are piling up on their own.

The national staff conference was great, to be certain.

But right now, I'm tired. I'm kind of hungry but just paid far too much for a bad sandwich, and because of that, I've decided that I hate the St. Louis airport. I can't find my gum...I thought it was in my pocket, and I'm pretty sure it was, but now I don't know where it is at all. I don't really want to buy more gum, but I'll probably have to..I'm also worried, increasingly so, that I'll miss the entirety of the Green Bay vs. Philadelphia playoff game because it's apparently been decided to not show it anywhere in the airport.

But that's all just pointless venting. I did just have a great few days...God definitely met us in St. Louis and the world is, I'm sure, going to be a better place as a result of the conference we just went through.

Even so...I'm tired and I can't wait to get home. But even now, the channel just switched to the game, and even for something so slight, I know God is good...and has always been so.

-Zack

"I'm well on my way to almost everything"
-Gnarls Barkley

Takeoff

2011-01-05T13:31:00.000-05:00

I'm writing this in the midst of a two hour layover in Chicago's O'Hare airport, en route to St. Louis for InterVarsity's triennial National Staff Conference. This is my first time in Chicago, and it's sort of a bummer, to say the least, that I don't get to go out and see any of the city. I guess, in theory, I could, if I wanted to go through security again. But I don't, far from it.

So I'm here.

And I could read, but I've done a bit of that already and I know it rarely gets me motivated like writing does.

So I'm writing.

I'm looking forward to SC11 (as it's apparently going by these days), but I don't quite know what to expect beyond the descriptive marks on a page, a very ambiguous page, delineating our schedule for the extended weekend...or extended last half of the week, if this is work instead of retreat. Honestly, I'm not too sure how to think of it. In a lot of ways, I could say that a lot of the time in my job. Usually, I measure it by energy expended, so it's hard to tell. There's something intensely fulfilling about the "job" I do, but at the same time, it's often challenging work. I don't expect SC11 to be unchallenging by any stretch, but I don't know what to expect really, and i imagine it will be challenging in the best possible way. Right now, I mostly just know I'm looking forward to worship and to seeing people.

There's a guy a few feet from me practicing balance on one foot, dipping down to touch the floor. He's about 6'3", and I know he's on staff in the pacific northwest. I'm sure he doesn't recognize me, though I recognize him and a few others around from ONS. I'm probably being unnecessarily anti-social right now. I'll be plenty social the rest of the week.

A man just walked by, tall black hat set atop hopelessly fluffed out hair. Jewish, I imagine, and Hasidic. There was a time in my life when I had never been to an airport without seeing some Hasidic people somewhere. That wasn't true anymore after this past summer, twice, in Detroit and once, in Madison.

Of the seven books I'm reading, two of them are steeped in American Jewish culture, but are quite different otherwise. It's a culture I don't know much about, and it's also a culture I'll never really be able to wrap my mind around.

I do enjoy Klezmer bands though.....and like that, I distilled an entire race of people to a single thing I experienced once, in Wooster.

We've got to experience culture to be anything at all, but if we don't do it correctly, we'll start separating the people from the culture. So many people come back from other countries and talk about how they learned that no matter how far away you get, people, at the heart, at the same. That's true, but that heart is a lot deeper than we think sometimes. Most of the time, I think we immerse ourselves in a culture and try to figure out ways to cut away the culture and realize what lies beneath. But that's useless because, though something must lie beneath, we just cut away the things, mentally, that are different from ourselves, products of our own, often bigger and more prevalent, worldwide, culture.

Cross cultures to live. Cross cultures at your own caution.

And sometimes, stop the analysis and just be.

Abide in me, Christ said. We do far too little abiding and far too much attempting to ascertain.

But just abide. Just be. I'd tell you how to do it, but if it was something to "do" it wouldn't be abiding at all.

-Zack

"The system's broken, the schools closed, the prisons open"
-Kanye West

In Retrospect: 2010

2011-01-03T22:13:00.000-05:00

I've probably got a few long-term regular readers to be expecting this. For as long as I've had a blog, which is getting close, now, to half of my life, I've designated superlatives for different things in my life that have had any sort of significant impact in the last year. I think, generally, I've posted a lot less lately than I did at the end of 2009 and for most of 2010, though I've intended for the opposite to happen. That being said, I'm going to stick to this little tradition, even though right now I don't feel particularly up for doing it. But that's a terrible excuse, so I'm going to do it, because if I don't do it tonight, I'm not going to get to it. I leave for St. Louis on Wednesday, and I cannot wait to spend 4 days with the rest of the InterVarsity staff in the country. It sounds breathtaking thinking about it. All that being said, I might be most looking forward to reconnecting with staff I already know who are a bit more local. Perhaps that makes me less adventurous or something. I'm also feeling extraordinarily excited for our worship times, led by Andy Kim. He's my personal favorite worship leader, still on InterVarsity staff. He might be the best worship leader in the world though. The fact that he's in our biregion makes me a bit prouder than propriety would allow.

That's a lot of ado, so without further of it...my yearly superlatives.

Literature:

Book of the year: This is always the hardest decision. I read a lot of books and a lot of them mean a lot to me when I'm reading them. 2010 was typical to that end. I read a total of 51 books and over 16000 pages. My biggest accomplishment among them was War and Peace, but, though I read it for most of the year, I don't think I could quite call it my "book of the year," even thought it might influence my life and way of thinking for awhile. Near the beginning of the year, I read one of the most interesting, best written novels I've ever encountered. It stuck with me all year long, and I found myself comparing books to it all year long, always deciding that whichever book I was reading was never quite as good, the narrative never quite as strong or the characters as quirky and compelling. I think, perhaps in the easiest decision I've ever made for this title, The Ground Beneath her Feet by Salman Rushdie is my book of 2010
Runner-up: Peace Like a River, Leif Enger

Author of the Year: This is strangely new this year. Perhaps I never read enough in past years. But it just makes so much sense. I've taken to more series reading lately thanks, I think, to Harry Potter, so authors are more immediately important than they have been. That being said, I'm not picking an author of whom I've read a series this year. Salman Rushdie didn't just write my book of the year. He also wrote two other books I read in 2010, both of which were hot contenders for runner up (The Enchantress of Florence and Fury).
Runner-up: J.R.R. Tolkien

Motion Pictures:

Film of the Year: The first year I did this, I'm not even sure I had a movie of the year. I wasn't into movies and I was far from writing an I.S. about film. But things change and this is now one of my most contested awards. My film count has dwindled significantly since graduating from college. I watched over 150 movies in 2008, but just over 70 in 2010. Thanks to the Hillsdale Film Society though, I've been able to see some great films I wouldn't necessarily gravitate to on my own. I was especially surprised though, when they showed a film without any dialogue. It consists of montage and time-lapse photography to paint a picture of the chaos of modern life. It may not be the best way to spend a Friday night (or, as I learned, a Sunday afternoon) but Koyannisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio, more than any other film, impacted my life in 2010.
Runner-Up: The Terminator, James Cameron

Television program of the year: I don't watch much t.v. Indeed, short of the occasional sports game, I don't make it a point to watch anything. That being said, there are still a few things that I'll watch anytime I get the chance, and in 2010 Parks and Recreation was that more than any other show.
Runner-Up: American Pickers

Music:

Song of the Year:
This is incredibly hard. Actually, it's near impossible. I don't really know what direction to go with it and it's a chore of chores to decide a single song out of the hundreds I listened to last year. Music means a lot to me, as it does for a lot of people my age, and singling out a single song as my top for a single year is a preposterous proposition. But, even so, it is the proposition with which I am currently faced. Partly because it's so hard a task, but also because it's absolutely what I feel to have been the most important song to me this year, I've got to pick: Mystery, by Charlie Hall
Runner-Up: Airplanes, B.o.B. and Eminem

Artist of the year
With extremely varied taste, this is hard to pick. Depending on the time of day and my mood, I could enjoy something and someone radically different from one day to the next. Picking a person or band that illustrates a year of music listening for me will never be easy. That being said, I think, for his presence in so many places and for his re-emergence, I'm actually going to go with Eminem this year. I can't really believe it either.
Runner-Up: Phoenix

Album of the year:
And maybe the album of all time....My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West is, perhaps, as I've said before, the best piece of musical art ever to emerge from the hip-hop genre, and perhaps since the jazz age. Kanye is an artist with a vision for his art and anyone who says otherwise, doesn't understand and hasn't taken the time to try.
Runner-Up: Dreaming Through the Noise, Vienna Teng

Sports:
Team of the Year: This always goes to the team I follow that has done the best in the calendar year. This year is actually simple. It's cut and dry. Teams were either completely unworthy or obvious choices. The winner is the Cincinnati Reds for making the playoffs for the first time in 15 years.
Runner-Up: Green Bay Packers

And that's all folks. I didn't really have the energy to do this tonight, but I pounded it out anyway, sort of for posterity's sake or something like that. I hope you enjoyed reading it! Happy New Year!

-Zack

"Sweet Jesus Christ, my sanity"
-Charlie Hall

Three black marks

2010-12-29T00:18:00.000-05:00

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...

2010-12-23T11:31:00.000-05:00

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

2010-12-22T12:37:00.000-05:00

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

2010-12-22T00:16:00.000-05:00

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

2010-12-20T22:02:00.000-05:00

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

2010-12-11T08:13:00.000-05:00

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...

2010-12-02T14:02:00.000-05:00

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

2010-12-01T21:52:00.000-05:00

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

2010-11-24T00:24:00.000-05:00

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

2010-11-14T22:17:00.000-05:00

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

2010-10-25T22:20:00.000-04:00

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

2010-10-10T23:45:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-23T21:24:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-11T21:48:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-06T17:23:00.000-04:00

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

2010-07-05T22:57:00.000-04:00

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.

2010-06-08T16:16:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-31T16:27:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-20T16:32:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-18T00:10:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-29T22:14:00.000-04:00

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...

2010-04-27T11:42:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-19T23:25:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-16T16:45:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-08T11:31:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-03T10:17:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-02T13:26:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

"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

Counting with scarecrow fingers

2010-04-01T12:38:00.000-04:00

I just realized that the "post count" from the place I post counts stored drafts. I never bother deleting things I don't choose to finish or publish, but that means my few "landmark" posts, where I acknowledge that I've reached a certain number has been a bit inflated. You can add up the counters on the side by month or year and see that this is but my 157th post, not my 191st, as it will say in the blogger dashboard. That means I don't post around 5 percent of everything I start writing.

95% is still passing right?

-Zack

"We'll claim the stars as ours"
-Mae

L37: Faith

2010-03-31T15:59:00.000-04:00

I don't know that I have the faith to encounter God would have me encounter. To believe all he would have me believe. To trust in so many things it seems I've no practical hope of seeing.

But his faithfulness, mercy, and grace run deeper than my own unbelief.

I want to have the deeper faith, the faith required to do, to see, to be, to experience all he would have for me.

I've learned much from a life that, if all set before me, looks much longer than it feels. But perhaps the most important thing I've learned is that God calls us to bold and brilliant things but his grace is big enough that, for the present moment, he simply asks for the faith to take the next step.

And he builds on that.

Faith is not natural, and it is not granted.

It is grown.

-Zack

"Peel back our ribs again and stand inside of our chest. We just wanna love you"

-John Mark McMillan

L36: Reason

2010-03-30T10:24:00.000-04:00

I hate poetry because of the rules, and I probably hate it for that reason because I'm jealous of those who can write it when I can't. I do not, however, hate dance when that is still very much the case. I also don't hate singing or painting or drawing or film or any other art form in which I can engage, even if poorly.

But poetry, I hate, even at its most beautiful, I wish it could be sprung from the confines of meter and the shackles of rhyme and just be beautiful on its own. And maybe it can, and maybe it can't, and I'm doing all I can to actively rip beauty from the prison it inhabited so long ago. I feel justified in doing this, because artistically, poetry is somehow older than prose.

If you study dance, which I've not, you'll encounter post-modern dance, wherein anything is a dance if the dancer decides this to be the case. And I agree (and not just because I have an affinity for the post-modern). That's probably my biggest issue with poetry. Prose exists, and thus the least poetic poems are cast off as not-poems, or, as it's called so derisively "prose."

Perhaps more than I hate poetry, I lament it and my inability to create it. I believe in the ultimate pliability of words, the fact that anyone can do anything they want with a language and the passion, the fury, the beauty, will seep out if it is poured in with enough care. And sometimes that care takes the form of a poetic arrangement, and I don't have the skill to do that, so, perhaps, I lament that it works. Like post-modern dance though, the tenant still remains that artistic creation is more the product of an expressing heart than the end product itself. Sometimes that heart soars, it leaps, it flies, it screams, it cries, it aches, it dies, it beats and pulses with life, sorrow, death, and rage, and love. Perhaps mostly love. And hope. I hate that that heart can effectively be boxed into iambs. But it can.

-Zack

"these days, mercy cuts so deep"
-Jars of Clay

L35: Patience

2010-03-30T09:37:00.000-04:00

Uncertainty is both natural and naturally uncomfortable. We do long, I do long, to always know the next step, to know what happens next, to see what's coming, in order to plan or really just to know.

But that's just wanting something I ought not have yet. It's just desiring something that is not mine to desire.

Without uncertainty, there could not be faith, at least not a faith in the promise that the future is brighter, that the future is where we're supposed to be heading, and in the meantime, we're where we're supposed to be in the meantime.

Patience, though, is highly inconvenient when you live in the tunnel of time as we all do, some more than others. I'll admit that I'm highly impatient when it comes to not knowing anything, especially about my future.

That is probably its own form of an unholy lack of contentment, a lack of faith that what is now is what is supposed to be, even just for now.

Sometimes I'm less a fan of the now and throw all of myself into the next because the next might be better than the now.

There's a right place, somewhere in the middle of it all, of positively seeking real change, patiently looking forward to what comes next and being ready for what it may be (not holding too tightly to what is now because it might just be for now), and having the faith God asks of us to simply be where he has placed us and to know he's placed us there for a reason.

I'm not sure how to straddle all of that right now, but I'm trying.

-Zack

"the answer's obvious, we switch the consonants, change the sword to words and lift continents"
-Flobots

L34: Bright

2010-03-28T01:51:00.000-04:00

There are so many metaphors for God and for the life lived with him and to him. But there's one particular metaphor that I question in its symbolic use:

"Walk in the light, for you are children of the light and in the light there can be no darkness"

Maybe it's just because I think in metaphor too often that I substitute it for reality, from time to time. But I swear I've seen the light in people, not as something else, but really, as light. Light and darkness are a necessary dichotomy, but it's unfortunate that modern dichotomistic thinking gets to think about this one, because it's only a dichotomy because it has to be. Most of the time, it seems we think about the light as the absence of darkness, and I think it ought to be the other way around. Darkness is the absence of light. Suddenly, walking in the light isn't just a righteous life, but something more glorious, something more than just not sinning...something more than what it's not.

But maybe I just confuse what I want to see for what I actually see, but I know there are those in whom I've seen something, some sort of brightness, some sort of effluvial joy and it's a lot more than simply not doing bad things. There is certainly merit to the pure life, or as pure a life as we can live, but the glory of the gospel isn't that it stops us from sinning, it's that we can live a life no longer bound by the chains of our ultimately flawed personal strivings, and feeling that freedom, breathing in the glory of truth and grace...that is the presence of light.

-Zack

"See the most important parts are the ones that are unseen; the wings don't make you fly and the crown don't make you king"
-Lupe Fiasco

L33: Shepherd

2010-03-27T11:58:00.000-04:00

"The God of love, my shepherd is."
"What shall I want?"

It's not just that we're being led by the almighty maker and ruler of all. It's not just that we're in the hands of he who holds all in his hands, by whose will and word all came into being and all continues to be.

It's that that God, that maker, that ruler of all, loves us deeply.

I know I'll only ever comprehend the smallest bits of that love. If I could dive the depths of human experience and feel all the love all loving is ever rendered, I imagine I'd still have a very incomplete understanding of God's love.

But there's something reassuring about even knowing that we can't know how much he loves us. It suffices to say that we're, even collectively, too small to understand it.

And to know that someone who loves us that deeply, that completely, that incomprehensibly, is the one directing our paths, if we will follow, is, perhaps the best hope I can muster. Even when things are brilliant and hope seems less necessary, that's but an illusion; things are only brilliant when hope is at its highest.

Above all else, his love, his leading, his very being, compels us to hope.

-Zack

"I was born to shine"
-John Mark McMillan

L32: Again

2010-03-25T21:52:00.002-04:00

They, whomever they may be, say history repeats itself. I'm generally and principally skeptical of maxims, especially reductionist maxims, no matter how true they hold to be; that seems a process of dumb luck or conditioning.

But I do wonder how God uses experiences to prepare us for what's to come, if circumstances are to, at least on some level, repeat.

There are some things I never want to go through again and the Lord has graciously prevented them from repeating and I've gained lessons from those experiences that I don't think I'll need to relearn. But as God is omniscient, as he knows our future, and as he grows us through life experience, there's a certain place where lesson in principal and training intersects with preparation. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if God ever has us learn lessons we don't end up using. I don't know, but I do know he knows a lot more about our future than math teachers who remind students daily that they never know where they might need math in the future. God knows where we'll need what he teaches us in the future.

I don't know if that's exciting or scary. I'm pretty sure it's both. I'm not necessarily excited to need the knowledge I've learned from some life experiences, but I am utterly grateful he's prepared me for what is to come.

-Zack

"'Anyway' she says, 'I'll see you around'"
-Vienna Teng