End of November

If the first 11 days of being 22 are any indication, it's in the running for the best age ever.

But that's probably mostly happenstance.

Details potentially forthcoming.

Have a happy last day of November. It's traditionally my favorite month, and of 2009, I think it ended the best of the 12 thus far. Here's to December being even better (?).

-Zack

"Kind of like missionary week, without the food"
-Veggie Tales

They had to count them all....

Come into the liminal. It's impossible to live here, but it's impossible to leave. It's the only firm ground in our decentered existence. And it's the place I find myself, tonight. I almost titled this "conflicted" but I wasn't sure what I'm conflicted on, beside the fact that so much of me is conflicted on so much of everything. And that is liminal.

this is liminal.

The beautiful and impossible thing about liminality is that the moment you've sufficiently determined how something is liminal...it isn't anymore. It's a feeling.

A postmodern feeling.

And a feeling is the most tangible reality of post-modern thought anyway...

Welcome to my Ph.D dissertation, if I ever write one.

But we're leaving that.

My life is interesting, but my life is beautiful too...and it's mostly beautiful because I get to spend it with beautiful people...and this isn't even a prayer letter where I would be getting paid to say that no matter how true it is.

Well...kind of paid. Payment is sort of post-modern with InterVarsity...

Okay, I feel like I should say something.

I learned, from a friend tonight, of a song by Garth Brooks about a guy being thankful that he didn't end up with his high school sweetheart because of how much more he loved his wife....apparently, this was a realization brought on by seeing said high school sweetheart years later. Moments before finding this out, I kind of had that reverse thing happen to me... I saw a picture (okay, the picture above, if you haven't figured that out....) of a former girlfriend with her new boyfriend...and it's a weird feeling, but it's a feeling of peace too...because they just look more right together than she and I ever did. I don't know how or why or why so often God does it, but it seems that people look right when they end up together (the only married couple (to my knowledge) that read this would be example #1 in a case study on the topic). Of course, I don't know that this former girlfriend is going to marry this new boyfriend, but they look right together, so I wouldn't be surprised. It's strange though, to see her, even in a picture, with someone else. But it's right.

Part of me feels a little jaded... I lost the race to the next relationship, but that's a dumb feeling that I don't really have... I just kind of talk about having it because it's something at which I can kind of laugh. I don't think I'd ever been beat before though...well, maybe once, but she never really told me about it so I can't quite count it and it was before facebook so there's no proof. It doesn't matter, and if anything, it just means I've grown up a lot since I started this whole dating thing 7 or so years ago. (as a slight aside, it looks like I'll probably be beat to marriage by all of them, and, if nothing else, it's the case that all of them are in relationships right now and I'm not....forever proving the tortoise right in the face of my hare's lifestyle)

I don't know why I always circle back to relationships on this thing...it just happens, and I guess it's where my mind is a lot of the time.

But there are pages to my life's story right now that I'm just kind of leaving out...and I think I'm going to keep it that way for now.

December is going to be interesting, I hope and pray.

But right now, I mostly just hope and pray people leave my house by 9:30 tomorrow night...

-Zack

"I take everything I learn and teach myself some disregard"
-Relient K

Giving Thanks (and the inverted word adventures! Okay...not really)

I might not have much time to post tomorrow, so I wanted to say something tonight, even though I feel exhausted.

This is, of course, the second straight night that I've felt exhausted and been incapable of sleeping. Last night was the second straight night of weird dreams...who knows what will happen tonight. I know I just can't sleep much right now. It's a rhythm I get into sometimes...where I get too much sleep for awhile, then I just don't need so much sleep for a few days..then it catches up with me and I manage to get "normal" for awhile...it's kind of bi-yearly, but I'll probably never be great at normal sleeping.... among various groups of people I'm known for both staying up later than everyone and getting up earlier.... it just depends.

Anyway...

This is officially my thanksgiving post, because right now, it's officially thanksgiving.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year:

College Graduation.

Friends, family, and other faithful donors that have committed to giving more than $13,000 toward ministry at Hillsdale

The sovereignty of God despite our own life plans (and indeed, sometimes, in line with them)....

And other things too, I'm sure.

I think my least favorite nickname for any Holiday is "Turkey Day" for thanksgiving.

Gratitude, it seems to me, is one of the most sacred acts in which we can partake...to God and to others. Removing the meaning from Thanksgiving is almost as egregious as taking the meaning from Christmas or Easter, but I don't think we think about it like that all that often. It is, afterall, one of our most "irreligious" of Holidays. Ironically though, I think it is the Holiday we can, by its very nature, do the most "Christian" action through... giving thanks is a charge given in the Bible a lot more than going to church at midnight or 6 am.

Far too often, indeed, much of the time, we make Thanksgiving into a feast for feastings sake...like it exists for the turkey, like it's an excuse for something or other...but there's more to that, at least reflectively.

At that, it's also one of our must individual and reflective holidays, and I like that...although there is something altogether wonderful about the "other-centeredness" that at least should be a large part of Christmas.

Anyway, this is something of a tangent... I guess I'm just asking that, if you're reading this, you're' remembering that giving thanks is important....moreso than it may seem.

I've got other things to be thankful for too...

I'm thankful for love. Well, that's misleading, at least in the cultural context through which most of you are reading this... I mean, more directly, that I'm thankful for all of the love that seems to have caught hold of so many of my closest friends this year. Marriages and engagements abound, and new and reconciled relationships aren't non-existent either. Perhaps the most memorable moments of 2009 are couched in those events.... Mike and Elyssa's wedding weekend, the night Paul and Alicia called me to tell me about their engagement, the news that both Audrey and Meg have sufficiently moved into happy relationships.... I guess if you don't know all or any of those people, that's kind of meaningless to you...but it makes me happy, and I am thankful, to be a member of a sort of group of people that is good at finding love. It's kind of ironic and maybe a tad refreshing, that I'm something of an odd-one-out at the moment, when, in the past 4 years, I had been pretty good at being in relationships. Actually, I'm thankful, too, that I can say I'm thankful for the happiness in these areas for others.... I haven't always been.... oftentimes, indeed, my least favorite thing in the world has been seeing people happily in love... but I'm happily past that now.

Okay, this is getting remarkably self-indulgent....

Sorry about that..

I am also thankful for curry...perhaps, at the moment, most immediately, out of everything else.


And although I am leaving soon, I'm thankful that it seems the end of my time in Ohio (for now that is.... I have a strong suspicion I'll be back before too long) is going to be full of reasons to want to stay..... that hadn't been the case at all since graduation.

Okay, still with the self-indulgence. I'm truly sorry for that....especially because I'm self-indulgent and ambiguous. But last night was one of those nights that makes me want to reach out and hug the world and scream the end of "In My Life" from Les Miserables from every rooftop. And now, I've swung from self-indulgent and ambiguous to over-the-top and ambivalent.

It seems I don't control my styles so well around midnight...and I most certainly don't control much of anything so well, when so much of what I want to say is so wordless deep inside of me.

Some people write because they have something to say... I write because I need to discover what it is I have to say...and sometimes, things are just too complex or at least too unclear inside of me for any sort of description to take shape.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving....as a day, and as an act.

-Zack

"Truth is given by God to us all, in our time, in our turn"
-Les Miserables

So, I'm 22

And I'm glad my age is alliterative again. It's one of the best things that happens in one's life ever 11 years.

22 is a randomly significant number to me....

But that's not important at the moment.

Well, I guess if I was ever going to talk about it, now would be the time. I'm probably not ever going to talk about it.

One year ago today was one of the most eventful and exciting Birthdays I've ever had.

Today has been....lower key.

But that doesn't mean it has been bad.

Last year, I went to Chipotle with Mark and Audrey for dinner.... they paid for me even though I didn't ask them to do so. Tonight, my parents are taking me to dinner, paying, expectedly.

Last year, I had like, 5 drinks that I didn't pay for.

This year, I doubt I'll have any drinks, and if I did, I would most definitely be paying for them myself....of course, that probably won't happen because I had to pay for license plates today...and they are not cheap. That, and I'm not sure I would just go buy a bottle of wine or something and drink it in my room by myself after the office...because that's probably what would be happening.

It's a big week for Ohio State athletics.....it's one of those weeks where I kind of wish I went to Ohio State.... tonight, we've got a basketball game against North Carolina, in which Ohio State wins because they have experience and UNC doesn't, although UNC will probably be better at the end of the year.... it should make for a good ranking til sometime in January though.

Saturday is, of course, the Michigan game. It's the Michigan game about which I'm least enthused in recent memory. The only thing that matters is that it's Michigan...which is important, BUT there usually so much more, and it's that so much more that crafted this rivalry. Ohio State can lose and will still make the Rose Bowl. Last year, they were playing for the BCS berth at least. Actually, I'm going to go out on a limb and pick Michigan in a close upset.... it pains me to say it, but they're playing for everything, Ohio State is playing for nothing, and it's in Michigan. Rich Rodriguez won't get fired after next year's 3rd straight bad season thanks to the squeaker over the Big Ten champs that happens this Saturday.

While I'm on the subject of sports, I should mention that I will be surprised if the Cavs don't make the finals this year. They will probably have the 3rd or 4th best record in the East, but that team is too deep... if everyone is playing for everything, like happens in the playoffs, they aren't going to be beat. That does, de facto, mean I'm picking them to win it all. There's no way whoever comes out of the quickly-becoming-a-joke western conference, where the College of Wooster would be the best defensive team in the conference, is going to win it all this year.

I don't know if anyone who reads this cares about sports at all....but I do, and sometimes, I just need to say something, if you haven't noticed.

I won't say anything about the NFL, because the only thing I like about that league is the fact that they football and I like football. I hate the media surrounding it, I hate the rules, I hate the personalities, and I hate the passing game. I hate Brett Favre because he's a Viking. I love the Packers, but I hate that they don't have a running game. I started loving them because of their tradition and because Brett Favre was always as good as he was atop a true smash-mouth rushing attack. But now, they get less than 100 yards a game on the ground...and it's infuriating. My NFL version of "love the sinner, hate the sin" is "love the sport, hate the league."

But I love the game of basketball to the point that I could watch two small high schools from West Virginia play and I would probably enjoy it to some degree.

Some day, I'll either write an essay or a long blog post about hip hop. Or maybe a series of posts.

But I love that too.

-Zack

"I'm the reason Dre feel comfortable retirin"
-The Game

I'll be 22 in 2 days.
It will be thanksgiving but one week after that.
Then, Christmas starts, and I'm excited about that.
I've been putting together my Christmas music library for awhile now, and it's going to be great.
I find that I read a lot more around Christmas, and I think a lot of that has to do with how well reading and listening to music go together for me. I want to listen to Christmas music, so I do that, and read while I do it. A few years back (well, sort of every year since but never as much as the first time) I listened to the Veggie Tales "A Very Veggie Christmas" about 8 times per day between Thanksgiving and Christmas..and that was when I had it on cassette and had to flip it half way through each time. I'm sure I'll listen to it quite a bit this year too, but it will be joined by Christmas music hopefully as diverse as my music library, ranging from the Benedictine chants from Christmas to a free CD of Holiday favorites Speedway gave out years ago when you filled your gas tank (to top it off, it was sponsored by Coca-Cola).

I can't wait to start seeing Christmas specials on t.v. again either.

It's going to be a good month.

And it's going to be topped off by finally getting to move to Hillsdale.

-Zack

"While you were building your empire, I was still sleeping"
-Vienna Teng

Stained White

It seems like most people that read this probably fall into the group of people that have seen the second Chronicles of Narnia film: Prince Caspian. I've only seen it once in my life so far (which was while it was still in theatres), but I should probably think about seeing it again, because I remember it having the sort of beauty I've found only in Narnia. I once had a dream about the animated BBC production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and that dream was about that beauty. As I think about it now (because, actually, of my random stumbling upon of "The Call" by Regina Spektor on Grooveshark last week), I realize that it's a sort of beauty that has had a profound impact upon my life.

The essence of the beauty is simple. Indeed, it is summed up in one word: special. There's a subtext to all of the Narnia books predicated on the hard back of the wardrobe. Narnia, as a non-allegory, lets itself be many things, and I think, what we all love about it, is the thing least often discussed, even if it comes out almost explicitly at times. The children do not simply love Narnia because of the great things that happen in the realm. Part of the glory of Narnia within each of the children from "our" world that get to go and come back, is how it is their own unique experience. It is something they know was real, but it is something that cannot simply be explained to be understood. It is something that, outside of their minds, might not exist at all. But it does, deep, somewhere, it does, although there is no proof. And that is a form of true beauty, at least to me. The most important, most wonderful, most impacting experiences of our lives are the irrational things we cannot explain to others...things we might, indeed, find embarrassing to talk about. But they are real. They are beautiful. They are, sometimes, more real than anything else..and I think that's how we relate to God, and how he relates to us. I can't verbalize the most important experiences I've had with God. The skeptics always chalk that up to his non-existence, but that is because they have no such experience. How can I expect them to understand?

And it's one of the most beautiful ways we can relate to one another. It happens on many levels, but the most basic, or, at least, most easily understood by the majority of the people that read this, is the sort of innate connection you might have felt, from time to time, with people you've never met, but, because you have both had a life-transforming encounter with God, you feel like you've already got something great in common. It goes deeper than that too, especially when you start talking about romance.

It is, perhaps, the most simplistic form of beauty in the world, but I think it's one we all recognize on some level, and I think it is, somehow, the beginning and ultimate end of love.

If any of that actually means something, then it means I've lived a hard 9 months moving toward learning it, or at least learning how to say it. The most scarring personal rejections, it seems, come from one side thinking more of that specialness and wanting to pursue it further...or perhaps seeing it when it does not exist. I've been there many times.

There's a second side to it all though, and that's the way it makes memories matter. Everyone has a past, and part of that past is probably a set of good memories. Take, for instance, one of the last nights before graduation in May. I went to see star trek with some good friends. No matter how many times I see that movie again, I doubt any of them will mean as much as that night did, because it had that set apart, special quality about it. It was more beautiful because of its specialness than any other viewing of that film could be. Even if I see it under wonderful circumstances (like, for whatever reason, I were to watch it on my honey moon or something like that...), that would then be a divergent memory, in which both would have their own special beauty....the complexity of it is such that both can be great, beautiful memories with similar circumstances, but, they will be different, and even with a similar sort of beauty, have a totally different beauty, because the beauty is based upon specialness. Even other times in life, where wonderful memories happen, like when I went to China, and sometimes never grow into anything (like all of the relationships in which I invested while I was there, with people I may never see or hear from again), it will always be something to me, thanks to its own special beauty.

I've been realizing, in the past two weeks, that that sort of beauty is good and even if it seems to be all anything ever amounts to, it is still a good thing to which something can amount. I need that right now, when everything is temporal, as I make new friends at church and have new experiences with old friends around here. I might be leaving soon and everything will change then, but it does not mean everything here is meaningless....even if that meaning is somewhat ethereal.

I don't know how Lewis captured that, but he did, and it's been shaping my life for years.

-Zack

"Shine with all the untold, hold the light given unto you, find the love to unfold, in this broken world we choose"
-Vienna Teng

Still slacking, I know, but I've got a lot of ideas.... just no time to write right now.

I love homonyms.

Anyway, maybe tomorrow night at this point.... but here's the options:

1. the economy, which has two subsets, including communism and the two times I've had an idea that would be great for our economy
2. my relationship to LeBron James
3. What it means, exactly, to love Ohio State Football
4. My life recently and what it's meant for me internally

It will be about one of those.

Or something about all of those.

Maybe none of those...but I doubt that.
-Zack

"We will find illumination in unnatural light
You will travel a thousand miles without leaving my sight
We will find we never knew hatred ran so deep
Such a wide, wide chasm of faith to leap"
-Vienna Teng

I don't know how many people actually come around on Thursdays or Fridays to read my latest weekly posts.... but just in case there is anyone out there wondering what's up, there's something coming...probably tonight sometime.

I'm feeling terribly uninspired right now...that might not change, but, historically, I do most of my writing on Friday nights, so I'm counting on something coming through between now and then.

-Zack

"once, but not anymore"
-Glen Hansard

Eyes full of Tinsle and Fire

I had something to write about earlier in the week, but it's been resolved by people far better at that sort of thing than me...but the issue was at the heart of much of my heart... If you wonder enough, you can read through posts here and figure it all out: http://morethanservingtea.wordpress.com/

I love being on InterVarsity Staff....

I am a big seasonal candy fan. If you've known me during a December, you've probably heard me talk about my love for peppermint flavoring...you might even remember my adventures with peppermint whipped cream from Sophomore year.... I even once spoke at our large group about candy canes...But it doesn't end there...not at all! I'm also a big fan of candy corn...but I've heard a lot of people speak, quite disparagingly, about the stuff recently. It puzzles me as to why...but I guess all things can't be for all people, and that probably exhibits itself most often when it comes to food.

While we're on seasonal matters, I should mention that I've been thinking about Christmas and Thanksgiving a lot recently. Personally, they are the countdown days to my move to Hillsdale...and I can't wait for that. But even more, and probably on the national scale, I think we just need Christmas, as a country right now. More than ever before, I've heard comments (both passive and utterly lamenting) about the earliness of Christmas advertisement and products from stores this year. I'm somewhat in the middle on that; I never tire of Christmas, but I don't want to see that happen either. I know why it's all happening though, and the answer is simple; Christmas is giving the economy hope. That's not rocket science....it happens every year to an extent, but it's especially happening this year, wherein we've been in an economic struggle that killed Christmas or at least harmed it, from an economic standpoint, on all sorts of levels. Companies are trying to prevent that, and hoping to get it going as early as possible and, therefore, keep it going as long as possible. Unfortunately, I don't think it will actually work. Much like the Cotton Gin and the Civil War happening at the same time (and independence movements in Africa along with the dwindling colonialism's favorable economic model), the economy is steadily improving to the point that Christmas is going to do better, economically, than it did last year. That's going to give companies reason to believe that extending the season works....even if it doesn't. Christmas might be starting earlier than ever this year...but I'm predicting that it's never going to get later again...thanks to happenstance, not effort.

But I do love Christmas...quite a bit. It offers hope beyond the economic sense, of course...and even if it's mostly a veneer in some cases, people at least feel like they should love others more...maybe, with enough of that, they actually will. And I love Christmas T.V. specials of all sorts... they're all the same plot, but I don't care...there's just something about them... And I love christmas music. And I love Thanksgiving and New Years...probably more, as days, than Christmas itself...I consider them the bookends of the season though... And Egg Nog, and Ham....it's just a great season with great things. Presents are okay, but I love the life that is the Christmas season more than presents, definitely. I also love Midnight services on Christmas eve....the list goes on and on and on...and it all starts, modestly enough, with 47 cent boxes of candy corn from Wal Mart, thanks to the markdown from Halloween's departure. I'm not a huge halloween fan for a lot of reasons, but I love when it's over because the cheap candy means great things are coming (and I love candy corn...which shouldn't even get marked down...it should be a staple on ever coffee table at every Grandma's house for every Thanksgiving meal). I love Caroling too, which I'm going to miss immensely this year...even if I get to do it, it won't be in Wooster. Wooster is an amazing place for those couple of weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter breaks. Sure, finals is in there...but so are Lowry Christmas cookies and 25 Christmas parties the night following the last day of classes. If you're still in Wooster and reading this, put whipped cream on a lowry Christmas cookie..it's heavenly....especially if it's shaped like an angel.

But, until all of that comes...I've got to stick to the money-raising..well, even during all of that.

And I know God will sustain me.

In case you were wondering, I did not vote, nor am I altogether pleased, that the gambling issue passed in Ohio. I'm a pretty libertarian guy, but I'm not a fan of voter-condoned gambling and all that goes with the construction of casinos, especially in Cleveland....if you've got to build a casino, build it where the wealthy live, not the poor....at least it won't look so much like the exploitation that it is, if it's in Olmstead Falls.

Maybe it's foolish, to long for a perfect world...but maybe it's foolish to long for anything less.

-Zack

"They said I'm foolish
Fleeting hopes in borrowed dreams,
They said forget her,
The moon is far beyond your reach"
-Brave Saint Saturn

A New Pace

I'm not sure what to write about right now, because I don't want to write about capitalism...but that's the most interesting thing I've come up with this week.

I don't know what it's like being you, (and I'm sure you don't know what it's like to be me...none of us really know what it's like to be anyone else) but I spend a lot of time just thinking, and I come up with things; sometimes theoretical, sometimes moral, sometime philosophical, and sometimes fictional. I've lost a lot of things that I just never wrote down and forget...usually, I figure that means it wasn't too important. But this capitalism thing has stuck with me for a couple of days, so it might be important. But this isn't the space for it, not right now.

I think I broke my finger last week....but it still seems to work alright, it just hurts if I press on it too hard, or it ends up the first finger on the bottom of the handle when I'm lifting a coffee mug by the handle. It had been swollen for the first few days, but it's back to normal size and it works alright. I don't even know why I'm talking about all of this.

I wonder what it's like for other people that read Salman Rushdie. Each and every time I read anything he's written, my literary world is blown to pieces and reassembled, all the while, I feel personally built up and enlightened. That might just be me though... You should read something by him though, if you ever get a chance. It will probably be long and you've got to have an at least somewhat open-minded approach, but it's the pinnacle of literature at the moment, even though most of this stuff isn't terribly new. I'm reading "The Ground Beneath her Feet" right now, which came out ten years ago. I've never read an author with so sure a grasp of both language and experimentation all at once, with a definite flair for the implicit post-modern. That's probably the most understated and misunderstood part of post-modernity: being explicit is particularly modern because it's assuming you can actually understand things from direct words about them. That's why some "emergent" churches, including the one I attend, seem a bit borish...They always have catchy names, but the names always carry direct meaning, when post-modernity is built upon the concept that words only have understood meaning, and the forcing of a definition upon a word (and, ergo, the word's user/hearer) is both impossible and an act of treason to the language. I'll admit though, that I'm probably the second least explicit person you could ever meet, and when I decide to get explicit, I usually bury it in words and commas. That's really why my I.S. is so long. The first least explicit person is the woman I hope to marry, because women, by our cultures establishment of gendered necessities in romantic relationships, at least in the reckoning of a man, will always be less explicit than men.

I think I talk about post-modernism so much because it's a less explicit (but ultimately more powerful) cultural critique than something more straightforward (like my new-found thoughts on capitalism).

Did I mention last week that I had bubble tea, last week? I don't know how available it might be where you are (it's not terribly available, in general, it seems), but it's my favorite dairy product. Okay, that might not be true, because I love some kinds of cheese to a great degree. It's definitely my favorite dairy beverage, which probably isn't saying much (but I am counting milkshakes and smoothies...) because it's probably the most complex dairy beverage (which is interesting in its own right, in that it originated from a culture with little dairy-consumption on the whole). This is, of course, predicated on thinking that it has always been made with non-soy milk...I guess I don't know if that's the case, but I would assume it is. I could probably use wikipedia, but I'd rather keep this blog free of non-college approved sources.

I didn't say that last part about wikipedia as "tongue-in-cheekly" as it might have sounded, or even, you wanted it to sound, depending on who you are. My roommate last year always talked about how he wished wikipedia was an acceptable source. His argument was that it must be, because so many people make sure the information is correct all the time. The better argument (against it) is that the trustworthy information is already linked to an acceptable source, so you can still use it anyway, and just cite (and hopefully read) the original source instead of the wikipedia page. Wikipedia doesn't even trust itself as a source....how many times have you seen "citation required" after some claim? That's there for a reason...


I've been all over the place in this, which is fitting, because I've not been physically all over the place this week, as I was last week. "All over the place" is a strange saying....look at the assumption it places on the unity of the world....

I haven't talked much about my getting-to-Hillsdale adventures on here for awhile...

Right now, I'm at 61%, and I need to get as close to 100% by the end of the year as I can, because I am definitely starting on campus at the start of second semester.

If nothing else, it's exciting that I've got a concrete piece of life to count on, which had certainly not been the case since graduation.

I'm out of words to say, even though I don't feel like I've said anything at all.
-Zack

"Can't wait forever is all that you said, before you stood up"
-Glen Hansard

Inherent Necessity

Last year, wait, really, one year ago today, I went to a concert. It was the best concert I had ever been to; it was Anberlin headlining with some great opening acts, in one of my favorite places to see a show, the House of Blues in Cleveland. I have a lot of personal reasons for really loving everything about that night (one of them, rather innocuously, being that I caught a drumstick at show's end, and that was quite the thrill).

But it was at that show that I began to realize who many of the people in that crowd were, who, indeed, even I was,in the great cultural flow of the United States.

If you're not familiar with Anberlin, I can best describe their music as "post-punk, indie,with shades of emo." I don't really believe emo exists as a musical genre because, at this point, it's been applied to basically everything from hardcore punk bands that sing about relationships to the heavier side of soft rock (ala The Fray). But many would call Anberlin "Emo" so that might help you understand their musical style. Quite honestly, they're one of very few "rock bands" I like these days, at least current rock bands. This post isn't about Anberlin though...it's about their existence and the existence of bands like them.

Genre issues arise often in music; from questioning validity (pop vs. hardcore punk) to just simply having no idea what to call something (hence the radical diversity and even, the existence of, the "singer-songwriter genre"). But I noticed something, standing there in that glorious throng of concert goers, one year ago this evening, something that undid what I had always thought with regard to the arguments and perplexities of genre-pidgeon-holing. It just doesn't matter, at least not there, not at that Anberlin concert.

There were four bands that night and they each had their own differences. I could probably assign genres to each of them if pressed, but for that night, I just don't think it mattered. The music sounded different but the message was always at least a variation on the same theme: we want to belong, we want to belong somewhere, despite our flaws, we want to love, despite our past, we want to be loved. It comes out all over the places and in many different ways. It's prevalent in all forms of music, of course, but I had never realized it until that night, that the music I was listening to and seeing performed live, was the anthem of a generation of people (kids, really, most of them younger than me) with no rallying cry and very little cultural currency.

Another common thread? Nearly everyone in that room was white. Not just the crowd, not just the H.O.B. staff, but the bands too.

For the last 50 years, white culture has been maligned and entirely justifiably so. 3/4 of my ancestors, and, most likely nearly all of yours (although I don't know who really reads this..) has become the ethnic majority in much of the world through the lie of innate superiority. That was eventually revealed as a lie, and the public discourse at least tries to be racially friendly these days. That is great. But what now exists is an entire generation of people- white people- my age and younger (and probably older too) that have largely grown up ashamed of their past. Even after civil rights, we represent cultural imperialism and hidden racism; corruption and greed; venomous humanism and destructive concepts of sexuality. This is true of other races as well, to an extent, but in America, the majority culture represents the major mood of the country, and I'm finding that it has nowhere to fall for support. That's where the most important side of post-modernism comes in. We don't just strive for community and experiential truth because we have given up on absolute truth and sound. We strive for community and experiential truth because we just need something that makes us feel whole, makes us feel human, because the truth of the past says we've been wrong forever. If we don't live in the moment and the future (and if that future doesn't look right), then the world looks, quite rightfully and understandably abysmal, because we have seen time and again how great individuals fail. At least together, at least, even, in failing together, we are together, and there is something to be said for love that transcends failure. Celebrating success is natural, but loving despite certain failure is beautiful. That's a paraphrase of Jesus actually, and a post-modern idiom.

From Matthew 5: "⁴⁴But I tell you: Love your enemies^i]"and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?"

The Kingdom of God is about decentering the reality we see. Post-moderism is about decentering the reality we've created. Put the two together....you've got the Christian worldview in a nutshell. Christianity is, essentially, the filtering of all things through the knowledge that God is over all, through all, and in all, in light of both the world's fallen state and the redemption through Christ's death and resurrection. It is the decentering of the world we see, by claiming it to be truly God's, and the decentering of the world we've created, by realizing that we see it with fallen eyes, and we must recenter it on God to actually know anything....and anything we know we only know through God's decision to allow it.

All of this is to say that white people of my generation are necessarily post-modern because our shared history has left what has been held as cultural centers and points of meaning to be worthless and ultimately harmful to the larger world. That is good though; with white culture, the culture I'm a part of, acknowledging that it is not the center (Post-modernism being, in its purest, most succinct form, the decentering of conceptions of reality), actual reconciliation can take place. There is no longer the either-or dichotomy, wherein helping others comes at the power-cost of the helper, or the empowerment of the downtrodden at the cost of the untrodden. Certainly, equaility has its hardships and cost, but they are transparent; while a white CEO may need to lose much of his power over his corporation to enter a co-CEO partnership with a black partner in business, the reality is that diversity has true, intrinsic value in allowing for the true wholeness of all humanity to be expressed. This is the unity of Ephesians; this is the chorus of all nations from Revelation.

-Zack

"If you are thinking, you are winning"
-Flobots

The Long Road Home

I'm in Wooster today, for the first time since June, and on campus for the first time since graduation. It's good to be here, but it's at least slightly strange. Things are slightly different, but always somewhat the same. The people change and the place progresses...but there is a sort of unchanging undercurrent, and it makes it feel eerily like home while being a place I've not been for so long. Sometimes you might hear the expression "you can never go home again" and I mostly agree, because home, at least as a place, will never be the same when you return. But Wooster seems to deny that maxim to some extent. But not entirely..... they moved some chairs that I had always used for long periods of reading...essentially destroying one of my favorite spots on campus... and people are so important to places, and so much of my love for Wooster has so much to do with the people, that as the people change, the place will certainly mean less and less...but there is something about being here too....there's a certain wonderful peace and a definite feeling of familiarity, even in the face of what has changed since May, that are beautiful and lovely.

I've been away from home since Monday, and it is great. I had been in Ann Arbor (which, despite the football team, is becoming one of my favorite cities) for an InterVarsity training event until yesterday, when I came to Wooster. I like being away from home, but it's a high-function sort of life right now (to a degree. today is definitely more relaxed) and I'll probably crash when I get home. But I do love seeing people I definitely do not see as much of as I would like or used to (and indeed both). It's strange, because sometimes I think of my life as transitional right now (and it is), but sometimes, I think of that as the reason that I don't see good friends with any degree of regularity. The reality of it all though, is that I'm not going to transition to a life where everyone lives close and I see everyone all the time or anything like that. In reality, I'm transitioning further away from everyone and everything than I already am. Life is a pulsing ball of energy.... it builds up then releases over and over and over. It builds up for 18 years, then releases everyone to college....then it builds up once more for 4 years, and releases everyone into the real world. Maybe that's why marriage is such a great thing...finally, in life, you find someone you want to keep for more than the building up of that energy ball, because for our entire lives, we're learning that eventually, that ball is going to release and you stand a good chance at losing everyone for long periods of time, and even then, it's never the same. Or maybe it's more... it's not just that you've found someone you want to keep around, but indeed, it's someone you feel like you must keep them around, like the scattering that comes with the next pulsation will be too much to bear, like it will destroy you if it flings that person too far from you.

That's how I feel about my life right now. It was a slight pulse I had no capacity to avoid, but the flinging was destructive and I'm doing what I can to put it back together, if I can.

I think I'm going to walk around campus a bit, because that sounds fun.
-Zack

"If love feels right
You work it out
You don't give it up"
-Tracy Chapman

Walking Further

These weeks get long, when progress doesn't come and I'm not sure what to even do to move forward and work toward more progress. Sometimes it feels like I might never get to move on with my life.

But I know that isn't true, and prayerful patience is a good, appropriate, and productive response, when times get hard.

Lately, I've been reading a book that chronicles the history of InterVarsity. Technically, it was assigned for what will be the most refreshing three days of training I've ever experienced next week, but I have enjoyed greatly learning the past of the organization I work for and love so much. There are problems I never knew about and pieces of the past that I would have never guessed. There are also instances of ideas I've had already being tried and failing or succeeding, which is interesting in its own right. Throughout it all though, it has become remarkably clear that God wants a voice on campus, and no amount of organizational or administrative (or financial) hardship is going to prevent that. Before InterVarsity were organizations that did great things before falling apart in the face of theological uncertainty and a release of the gospel from the center of their purpose. Even so, it was not long thereafter that InterVarsity came along. Even if and after InterVarsity falls away (which I pray does not happen in my lifetime), God is going to raise up a new witness on campus. I've always considered the campus among the most important missionfields on Earth, and it is clear, from the history of InterVarsity, that, on that point, God agrees.

(if only I could find more people that decide to agree with their finances as well....)

I still have some snacks from the Urban Plunge. They're those little (well, maybe I shouldn't assume anything you might know about Chinese snacks...) individually packaged gelatin snacks that taste somewhere between the exact same, flavor to flavor, and remarkably strong. I like them passably, I guess... but I always forget and don't eat them too often. That, and no one else ever seems to want one. That's why I have so many.... someone bought them on the scavenger hunt then about no one else ate any of them during the week and no one else was willing to take them home.

Ah, the Urban Plunge reminds me of many great things....almost none of them have to do with the events of the plunge, but those were great too. If I ever get a choice to move back to an Ohio campus, I might let the Cleveland Urban Plunge swing my decision back to the Buckeye state. But I haven't even got to do anything in Michigan yet... I know I'm speaking too soon.

I feel like this is the political part of a blog-post from me, where I'll say something, usually ending in some kind of scathing remark about right-wing bigotry. But I've got nothing today. Nothing original at least.

My parents are spending the night in Toledo tonight because my mom has her State Nurses Board test at 8 a.m., and she, quite understandably, wants to be well rested. If you think about it, I'm sure she would appreciate your prayers, even if she doesn't know you're praying for her. I have been for awhile, but I've never told her, and I don't know if I could. I don't know why, but there's a sort of spiritual screen between my parents and I. It's not that we believe too many different things (well, we do differ here and there, definitely, but the essentials are essentially the same), but there's a sort of hierarchy of spirituality within my family that I definitely broke out of at college and now I'm not sure what to do with it at home. It's common, in IV circles, to say that a student has "made his or her faith his or her own," and that definitely happened to me, but I don't think my parents are all that enthused about it. I'm an un(and under)stated rebel against and unstated level of control they want to have over the spiritual lives of our family. They don't really go to church anymore on the excuse (and I call it that although it might be more legitimate than I am willing to give it credit) that they can't find a good church around here (the church they were going to dissolved and became a small group, which either dissolved as well, or they had to stop attending when my dad found a job), and I definitely feel a bit of resentment, week to week, when I ask them for the keys so I can go to church. Thankfully, they don't feel like they can really say anything all that disparaging about the fact that I'm regularly attending church, but I definitely feel resented for it. That's just part of the total spiritual environment at home, wherein it feels like mom and dad are spiritual enough for the rest of us, and they like it that way. Of course, the end result has been two other siblings that have turned, quite sharply, from faith, and me, who has transcended their "rule," which should be a good thing, but they treat it like a bad thing. Their attitude is reflected in their reaction to anything I have to say about InterVarsity. It's as if they resent the fact that I have been able (and heck, I'm just going to say it: called) to ministry then neither of them has; it's as if, in their mind(s), I think I'm better than them, when, in reality, in their eyes, that's impossible because they are the spiritual leaders of the house and everyone "beneath" must stay that way. That's probably a more accurate reason as to why they'll probably never give any financial support and why my mom always wants me to "put InterVarsity in the right place in my life; not as most important, but as something that might happen and focus on other things until it can." It's frustrating. I feel like I can't be myself at all because anything I could have to say about God is going to be taken as a challenge of their spiritual authority. My family has huge authority problems... if there is ever a question about something my mom says, it's automatically an affront to her place of authority. And there's definitely a trickle down....my sister is the same way, because "she's older." I just ignore it and move on the best I can. It's going to be hard to come back once I finally get to move, but hopefully time away can heal relationships.

I don't mean to make my family sound terrible. They aren't that bad.

Have a wonderful weekend, and watch the Office tonight!

-Zack

"The little cracks they escalated
And before you know it is too late
For making circles and telling lies"
-Glen Hansard (Once)

The Facebook Status I was afraid to post.

"By being an American President that considers peace, goodwill, and humanity more important than cultural imperialism, Barak Obama is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. Being the most powerful man in the world and caring at all about the rest of the world is both rare (see the last 150 years...) and important... more so than we might realize from within the United States. Thankfully, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, primarily, by non-Americans. "

If I weren't facebook friends with my parents, I would probably have posted it.
If I weren't on staff at Hillsdale, I would probably have posted it.
But I am both of those things, so I did not.

-Zack

"Tonight I'm gonna break away, just you wait and see"
-Poco

Issues with Prepositions

I recently started following another staff-member's blog... she's actually in my area, at Albion College. When I get to Hillsdale, she'll be the closest staff, geographically, and at the other "small, liberal arts school" in the mid-michigan area. When I first saw her blog, I thought "that's funny, we have the same title." But we don't. Her's is titled "Pursuing the Kingdom" while mine, as you can see, is in the passive voice and uses two prepositions (well, inasmuch as "in" is a preposition... it's sort of a shadow word that floats between grammatical designations without much regard for "used-as" denominations). That probably reflects on how stilted my writing style is; on one hand, it drips of legal proceeding and long, feels-like-run-on-if-they-aren't (but often are...) sentences, and on the other hand, I have a high regard for the usefulness and legitimacy of the vernacular. And I say things like "legitimacy of the vernacular...."

I don't know if I have much to share today. Well, I don't know if I have much to write today. I just know I was sitting at my computer, as I do, seeing what I can do to further the Kingdom of God (which, still, means raising money), when it came into my mind that "it is time to write." Because it's Thursday, that meant writing my only regular entry into this blog. I think I spoke of my aversion to the word "blog" in one of the earliest posts since I switched to blogspot after xanga, but it's really grown on me in the past few months. I don't know if that's an example of such an event or not, but it reminds me of how the best way to get God to convince you of something is to tell him how much you're against it. One of my colleagues, the colleague many of you know best (and the colleague I know best) once said he went to China in part because he had written out a veritable checklist of reasons he didn't want to or couldn't go. Unfortunately, telling God how much I love raising money and would hate to get to campus hasn't yielded any results thus far... Of course, God knows our hearts, and I haven't actually prayed that prayer because I know it would be a lie. I do enjoy Fund Development more than I ever thought I would, but it's gotten long, and arduous at this point, and sometimes it feels hopeless. But all in God's time...all in God's time. That's the phrase that repeats in my mind more than any other at this point in my life.

I have recently realized that there is an Urbana this year. I've known that for years, I've been registered for months, but it finally seems real again. I think Urbana '06 is such a mental, emotional, and spiritual signpost and romanticized artifact in my personal history that it's hard to believe something like that could ever happen again. After all, there is no clear time when I'll be going back to China (but I cannot wait to do so), and I will never be at SLT as a student again. Indeed, no one will, as it's now The InterVarsity Leadership Institute: IVLI. But Urbana is coming, and I will be staffing it, but so much of the magic, well, that's probably exactly the wrong word to use, but I would love to reclaim magic as an emotion instead of a demonic thing that I'll use it, of Urbana is seeing all of the people there to worship the Lord and allow him to guide their lives. That's not going to change no matter my role.... that, and it's so large that staffing it isn't going to change my own perception of it unless I end up leading worship, speaking, or directing it (which I would be amazed if God ever allowed me to even think about doing one of those things...), because it is so large and there are so many staff that my small part isn't going to be big enough to overtake the larger perception of Urbana... not like at SLT or a conference, where you're very much behind the scenes and in front of the crowd for much of the time. But, I haven't recieved my assignment yet... I could get something that greatly changes how I experience Urbana. Of course, at this point, I probably won't be having my travel reimbursed, and I don't know if that also means I won't actually be staffing it... if that's the case, I'm still going. Missing Urbana is not just the equivalent, but the absolute epitome of missing the biggest party of the triannum.

I've been told, recently, that my open honesty without much prodding or reason to be so open was interesting and unusual. Maybe that's true, I don't know. As far as I can tell, if I weren't open, I wouldn't be alive. I guess that just goes along with who I am, and probably who many of you are, and maybe even with the level of trust that builds itself into personal confidence that comes with a Wooster education. I know who I am enough, and what I can do enough, and what is off-limits enough, to be able to allow the rest of everything to flow freely without much fear. That, and with about 6-7 years of blogging experience at this point, I'm pretty good at sharing relatively inconsequential things with anyone who will take the time to read them. Of course, if you were to plunge the depths of other blogs, perhaps specifically xanga.com/dulacian, you'd find that I have had my issues with saying too much sometimes...

I watched a brilliant film yesterday. It's called "Once." Maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't. It's an Irish film about a street performer and an effort to make it big. But it's about a lot more than that too, and it's beautiful. It will take a lot to list anything else as my favorite movie of the year, come January 1st.

I've also been reading an atrocious book; 2die4, by Ryan Dobson, and yes, his dad is who you think he is. Perhaps that should have tipped me off to begin with, but my issues are less with why I dislike his father's ministry and more with the fact that Ryan Dobson should not have a public life, or he should try to have one that is actually Ryan Dobson. Why do Christians look hypocritical? Because there's nothing real about people like Dobson jr. His book is less than 100 pages of the most manufactured "hard-core, extreme sports, thousand-foot-krutchified" garbage I've ever encountered. I am a book snob and when it comes to Christianity mixed with books, I get pretty high-brow. But there's no reason to believe that's the only reason no one should spend money on "2die4." It's not even theologically sound or anything short of troubling, which is absolutely preposterous considering it's basically offering a k-2nd grade understanding of spirituality. Here's a paraphrase (far better written than the book is apparently capable of producing:) "It's a good thing that Christians are dying for their faith because that means Jesus will be back as soon as possible." It's the old "the world's not perfect so the only moral issues we should care about are homosexuality and abortion" argument. He basically says that because the Bible says martyrs are always going to exist, we should do all we can to die for our faith too and let Jesus come back sooner. I'm sorry Mr. Dobson, but wrong is still wrong and we are unequivocally called to come out against injustice. That's like saying Judas was in the moral right. No, he wasn't, it doesn't matter. Of course he had to do what he did, but that doesn't make betrayal right. It's like saying Nebuchadnezzer was right for throwing Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the furnace because it led to greater faith in God in Babylon. No, that's just not the case. Just because God can and will redeem bad actions and injustice for the better, doesn't make them right from the beginning. It's spiritual "ends justifies the meansing" and it's preposterous. Yeah, technically the a-bomb that killed hundreds of thousands in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have saved a raw number of lives, but that doesn't make killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians right (especially since we don't actually know the casualty count that "might" have happened had the war stayed non-nuclear).

Pray, act, and strive for peace and justice.

-Zack

"Fight with our hopes and our hearts and our hands
we're the architects of our last stand"
-Flobots

Warning: This post is just about sports

I was uncharacteristically quiet about football on facebook this week. There are 3 reasons:

1. Ohio State played a night game against Indiana. Indiana isn't a big enough deal to make anything of in the morning, and I didn't get to facebook much throughout the day...ironically, unlike a lot of people, I tend to stay away from facebook on weekends because I find myself there a lot of the week, while I'm working... sometimes it's for work, sometimes it's to kill time...it's often in between.

2. The Packers didn't play yesterday, they play today.

3. I am a big bag of mixed emotions about tonight's game and that's why I'm even writing this right now. Well, that and it's very on my mind and I budget 4-5 each day to write if there isn't anything else that must be done by the end of the day.

As you probably know, if the title didn't keep you from reading this, Brett Favre used to be the quarterback for the Packers. That's an understatement though... he wasn't just the quarterback for the Packers, not to me. He really was a childhood hero. I've loved the Packers since I loved football, which has been most of my life but not all of it. God was kind enough to let me be born at the perfect time, when the Browns wouldn't exist as I came of Football-fan age, and I was sort of a fan free-agent... it was the year before the Packers made it to their first superbowl with Favre, and I always heard about Reggie White in church, so I decided I liked the Packers.

Initially, and still to an extent, I was a defense guy. My favorite player was Reggie White, then LeRoy Butler. But of course I loved some guys on offense too... Bubba Franks, Dorsey Levens, Ahman Green, Antonio Freeman, Javon Walker... Samkon Gado even I loved all those guys, some of them more than Favre at times. But Favre always stuck around. He was the superman... the constant that delivered when others left or retired. And he became a thing of personal legend and mythology. When the critics said he was washed up, the Packers got back to the NFC championship game. It's been said, a lot, that he throws a lot of interceptions but makes a lot of great plays, so "you live and you die by him." That happened a lot, and I think part of the love I have (or had?) for Brett Favre was having to live and die by him, every Sunday. It wasn't easy to lose on his interceptions, but it was better than having a sterilized, weak, cautious guy with no superbowl rings by a long shot.

But now he's a Viking. In my lifetime, the Vikings are the Packers' biggest rival. Sure, it will always be the Bears, but they haven't been too great for awhile and there's a certain respect between the Bears and Packers... but the Vikings are the team the Packers hate, and I think it's mutual, because the rivalry isn't something of old... it comes from trading blows and ruining seasons year in and year out.

I should feel really heartbroken, really betrayed.

Part of me does.

A lot of me doesn't (and part of that a lot is the part that acknowledges it's just football and it's not ever Ohio State).

I find it hard to hate Brett Favre because I don't know if I want to return his disloyalty with my own.... I'm probably far too moralistic about the whole thing, but why return wrong with wrong? There are so many good memories...so many incredible memories... not even just in seeing him play, but in my personal life, largely because of him. I remember how he came through with one of the best games by a quarterback of all time on Monday Night Football while I was in High School, the night after his dad died and one of my friends had me over just to see how I crumbled when the Packers lost to the Raiders. But that night, as much fun as it was seeing that, was more about cultivating and nurturing a friendship I hold to this day than it was about Brett Favre... but it was because of Brett Favre.

It's just hard to hate someone that I feel has done so much for me. And of course it wasn't really for me, and of course he has done things that are just for him and all about him... but even so, I hold a place in my heart for him (my football heart...as much as that matters, which is probably very little) that I can't get rid of... it's kind of like when you break up a great relationship... no matter how bad the breakup is, there's always a little part of your heart that appreciates the good times, even if you could never get back together. At least I do...but I'm highly sentimental, if you haven't learned anything else about me from this yet....

I will be rooting for the Packers tonight... team before individual, and especially team before traitor... but I will always hope the best for Brett Favre, as far as it doesn't hurt the Packers. Unfortunately, as a Viking, that will be rare... and he brought it upon himself.

Follow me on twitter for updates throughout the game (after Heroes...): @dulacian

-Zack

" if it hits, better make it worth the fall"
-Keri Hilson

Reprising the Now and Not Yet

I've come to terms with things this week. Well, these past two weeks. Many things. Or, at least, important things.

One of them, perhaps the most important, is that I've been creating urgency about Hillsdale. The world's not ending while I'm not on campus. Sure, it would make my life a lot easier if all of my funding was in and I was on campus right now, doing my thing and getting paid and preaching the Gospel. That's what I'm best at, because it's what I've been doing for the last three years. But I'm definitely not best at raising money and I'm definitely not best at being patient, and I am very very far from being best at letting things go to God and trusting in his divine timing. I'm working on it though.... I'm working on it mostly, right now, aside from the baselines stuff of prayer and Bible Study, by being diligent and unworried, all at once...a sort of divine passivity, I believe I heard our Regional Director refer to it once or twice. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing as faithfully and diligently as possible, and God will provide, maybe even with miracles, when it's his time to do that....and he knows when that will be. He wants me here right now, and he might want me here into next semester. I've come to terms with that, and it's made my life a lot more peaceful. All that being said, I'm not going to stop working as hard as I can.

I've also come to terms with the fact that it's been a year, well, will have been a year, since Meg and I ended our relationship, and it was good that it ended then as well as being good that I've not ended up in a relationship since. I might not be in a relationship by May either, which would be the longest I've been single since I started dating between my sophomore and junior years of high school. Even so, that is good. I've learned a lot about myself, a lot about what I need from a relationship, and a lot about, even, what I want in a relationship. With regard to this, I've let myself succumb to unspoken and unintended peer pressure. No one really cared, and no one said anything, but I felt a bit of pressure (probably, even, self-applied), when I was one of the few WCF graduates outside of committed relationships or engagements (or, as last weekend showed us, near engagements...). Sometimes, when I think about the "facts," I can make myself feel left out or behind, when I think about how many classmates I have that are now married, or how many of them are engaged, or how many of them have told me they plan to be engaged soon...or at least are with the person they intended to marry. But I'm where I'm supposed to be. I know that. I only know that though, because I know God's put me here for a reason. The past year has been hard for many reasons a lot of the time. But God's been pulling me along, as if by a string, the whole time, and what could be or would be that has not been was never intended to be. I'm single now for a reason. I'm still in Ohio now, for a reason. If I'm totally honest, I want both of those facts to change as quickly as possible. But very little of either is in my control...and I'm alright with that.

I'm compiling a "top 100 songs of the decade" playlist on my computer. It's been fun so far, but right now, I've just been adding songs to a playlist in a sort of "nomination" capacity. The hard part will be making decisions and cuts. I'll probably post the list on facebook with a few explanations, when it's finished. I might post it here too...I don't know. Even in going through all of the songs I've got (through artist name starting with R) (the most important stipulation is that I have to have the song on my computer...), I have no idea what the song of the decade might be. That's generally unimportant...but I'll come up with something...probably arbitrary.

I'm in the process of developing a daily routine...like, a precise daily routine. I'm pretty "NP" as they say in the Meyers-Briggs world, so schedules don't really come naturally to me...but structure is good for everyone. What I enjoy most is that the book that's compelled me to do this ("Ordering your Private World", by Gordon McDonald) says it's good to schedule time to write and read into your day if it fits and fits your occupation. I think it fits mine...and since I do often run out of things to do in the mid-afternoon, it fits nicely, and I can do it (like right now), without feeling like I should be doing something else...because I have the time scheduled in to make sure I do what I have to do. That's basic, and probably something most people already know...but I've been coasting through life on talent alone til now, and I'm enjoying working through life on developing skill and personal growth.

The NHL season starts today...or tomorrow...this weekend, sometime, for sure. Since I don't live in Michigan yet, I can still be a Canadiens fan. Well, I might stay one anyway....but I might change too, if the Red Wings and their fans become compelling while I'm there.

I don't really care about Hockey though...

I think that's all I've got for now. I feel like I had more to say in this week's post at some point earlier in the week, but I forgot it all now.


Recommendations for the week:

See:
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton version...yes, there are other versions more readily available than you might be inclined to believe)
The Best Years of Our Lives (Old movie about 3 men coming home from WWII. Aside from it's pro-war bent that sometimes appears, it's a remarkable film)
Everything is Illuminated (incredible post-modern road film starring Elijah Wood, directed by Liev Schreiber. You won't be disappointed)

Watch:
The Office. the wedding is next week

Read:
The Land, by Mildred Tyler
Ordering Your Private World, by Gordon McDonald

(Although I doubt you missed it, I'll tell you anyway; I consider movie-viewing an act of seeing and television-viewing an act of watching...I have a reason, and I might explain it sometime)

avec la paix,
-Zack

"Home, where I wanted to go"
-Coldplay

Pure: an addendum

I had never posted any sort of addendum to my blog posts. I was and probably still am something of a brash little writer who doesn't think anything I say ever needs correcting, ever needs furthering. That really doesn't work well in the long run, because I'm far from a thoughtful writer. I just explode for a few minutes and a composition appears on the screen. I wrote this way in college, and after my sophomore year, I even stopped any degree of careful editing after the fact.

But here's a second addendum in just over as many days. The tide, indeed, is turning, and maybe that's because I'm becoming a better person and a better writer. I hope that is the case, at least.

I said in my post "pure" from last Tuesday that we can sit around and think about "what-ifs" forever. That's true....we could. But I did an inadequate job of intimating the sovereignty of God through all of that. I made what is not and what will never be a dream-like fantasy, and it sounded like I longed for it. Maybe then, I did. But it was a faithless longing and truly has no place in my life. Not only has God decided otherwise, but he has done so for the best of reasons....not even just the "best possible," because we don't use best possible to really mean best possible most of the time, but really, the best, the absolute, fulfilling all of your wildest dreams best. I apologize for my lack of faith, and I hope you do not do the same mistake in thinking about your past as I did last week.

The truth is, we don't know ourselves as well as we think. I thought, last week, that if, perhaps, our lives had never diverged, Katarina and I might have had something. But the truth is, that probably wouldn't have happened, because who I am and who I am becoming is not what's perfect for her, and she's not what's perfect for me. I've definitely come to realize in the past week that my disclaimed blueprint is even a large fallacy, and I didn't do a good enough job of saying that in my disclaimer. I have a strong suspicion that whoever I end up with will be wildly different from me...perhaps a republican that thinks foreign films are stupid and wouldn't read Pride and Prejudice for payment. I dread my future if that's the case, but if it is, and it still could be, I know God loves me enough that I would love that person more than anyone else in the world....from right here, without any scrap of rationality, but love, nonetheless....love is probably more inherently irrational that we admit most of the time anyway.

So I apologize to you, my readers, for presumption. God knows me, he knows you, and he knows Katarina better than any of us know each other or ourselves...and the same goes for his love. He's got the perfect person in mind for me (and you), and she could be wildly different from anything I imagine, but for whatever reason, and it doesn't have to be a reason I could ever know, she's the one for me and will make me unimaginably (from here) happy.

-Zack

"This life is ours for worse or better, and these dreams are ours to share together"
-Mae

Sabbath Ponderings pt 2.: Walking Downhill

For the past two weeks, the pastor at the church I've been going to (which I would call "my church" if I could commit to it for a long period of time...but my entire life is too up in the air, and that truly is unfortunate) has spoke on two remarkably well known passages: The Great Commission last week, and The Good Samaritan just today.

Both times, he's said something about the context I've never heard, but it was quite illuminating.

Last week, with the Great Comission, it was the fact that "go into the world and make disciples of all nations" could be accurately, perhaps even more accurately, translated "while you are going into the world make disciples of everyone, not just jews" The not just jews part wasn't at all new...that's kind of the point, but the "while you are going into the world, making it something you're just doing, something that's just happening as you live life...that struck me. It made it a lot easier to apply it to everyone. The former argument had just been "trust me, Jesus didn't just say this for these guys or missionaries and pastors today, but for everyone." But the truth is, we're all already going into the world. It's just life... we're not living a sequestered life with other Christians 100% of the time. I've always said that you should take Jesus with you everywhere you go, and that's kind of my catch-phrase sometimes (which I probably stole from someone, I admit), but now, Jesus said that too...directly, to everyone.

Today, with the Good Samaritan, the ground-breaking insight had to do with the priest and the levite that passed the mugged-man by.... because they were going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, they weren't on duty. There was absolutely no real excuse for them to not touch the guy... I've often heard that they didn't want to have to purify themselves before they could get back to work, but the way things worked was that if they were headed toward Jericho, then they already had a few months off, since the priests and Levites lived in Jericho but worked, in multi-month shifts in Jerusalem. Jesus was basically saying that these men were upstanding and moral, or should have been... their station in life was a key to their presumed character, not some kind of out we like to give them, looking at it with limited Biblical knowledge a lot of the time.

-Zack
"And how could such a thing shine it's light on me and make everything beautiful?"
-David Crowder

I feel like I should have an addendum to last night's post, so that's what this is.

I was pretty wrong about this weekend.

It's been good.

But what isn't good? The movie "The Goods." I strongly recommend avoiding it....

It's funny sometimes, maybe even a lot, but it's also mostly a waste of time.

I'm not sure why comedy films seem to insist on a generally low level of quality.... but they seem to. Maybe it's just because unless I'm invested in the franchise to some degree (Harry Potter), I tend to stay away from the corporate, hollywood cash-movies, except for when it comes to comedy....and for good reason; I haven't seen an action film of that ilk worth watching since Chronicles of Riddick, and that has a sort of underground, graphic novel vibe so it's not even quite the huge, overblown production things like The Dark Knight (most overrated movie ever, by the way) or Spiderman 3 tend to be....to say nothing of the non-licensed material stuff....like Surrogates, which might be the worst movie of the year by leaps and bounds, if The Goods isn't.

That being said, despite the crudeness, Judd Apatow is a brilliant director and his movies actually are pieces of art....not all comedies are trash (and you have to differentiate between the Apatow written and the Apatow directed... that should go without saying, but we, as a movie watching country, have suddenly started giving ridiculously undue amounts of credit to screen writers...but tell me this: how much better is The Forty Year-Old Virgin than Pineapple Express? The answer? They aren't even close.... but Apatow wrote the latter and directed the former, and it really does make all the difference in the world).

But anything with Will Ferrell in it (and he has a bit part in the goods) or that looks like something he would be in never fails to be a laugh-a-minute train-wreck of a film.


So.... I used an addendum to last night's post as a cover for talking about film.

Sue me.

I spent the last year using a graduation requirement as the same thing.

-Zack

"Restoration frees us here"
-David Crowder Band

Sliver of hope evaporated. No homecoming for me this weekend. That does equal a pretty dull weekend, I think.... but all of my weekends have been dull since one short-story worthy night in late July, so there's nothing new there.

As dull weekends go, I'm getting used to them, but one things you've got to get used to about them is that, as dull as they are going in, there are ways for them to be surprising.

The most surprising thing is I often don't know how I'm going to respond to it emotionally. Some say emotions are largely about Entry Posture (that's IV-speak for your frame of mind going into something), and I do think that's true (both because it is true and because I'll hopefully get paid to say it's true someday)... but emotions are kind of wild-card for extroverts... maybe they're wild card for everyone, but it's a lot easier to predict when you'll have free time to be alone to recharge than it is to predict extrovertable moments, especially on weekends which, after four years of college, are hard to dial down to mundanity (which isn't a word, but I believe it should be, so it is).... probably, additionally, especially on a weekend when I kind of feel like I'm being held out of a huge party going on in a place I long to be every couple of hours (that's a bit of hyperbole, but at least daily, it does sneak into my mind that "I wish I was in Wooster," and that happens even more often if I think about people and in times when I am fed up with the overall lack of extroversion, out-going-opportunities, and things of that ilk, that I certainly took for granted in college. I've always been a sort of borderline Introvert, but I've learned in the past two months that that's more a cultivated taste for refined alone-time than it is actual introversion. The truth is, without ample opportunities to process outwardly, I get naturally depressed and just want to sleep all of the time. Yesterday, I wrote the longest facebook message of my life (which is quite the feat, considering many of you have probably received the longest facebook message you've ever seen from me...well, maybe that's not true...but if you ask my past two girlfriends, they'd verify that...), and after the about two hours I spent composing it, I was in the best mood I've been in since leaving the Wooster caravan after Chapter Focus Week. It had been too long, since I had that sort of chance (and I probably took advantage of it, and I'm not totally sure the recipient of that message is all too pleased with it's length right now... the downside of being an extrovert with a ridiculous penchant for producing voluminous amounts of text without thinking is that you often take advantage of people and use them to get your extroverted fix.... not that I even intend to do that, but it happens without my thinking about it...I just get to writing and don't come up for any sort of air or reflection for a few thousand words....and I often have sentences of parenthetical statements embedded in much shorter sentences), so I just kind of exploded into a facebook message. Actually, there were a lot of "too long" things about that... it wasn't just my lack of social interaction leading to it.

Why am I even writing this right now? Let's be honest...if anyone likes to read this, is liking reading this right now, it's just because you're a good friend of mine and are interested in what I'm writing because it's me. There's nothing interesting here and it's just thinly veiled, near-emoesque complaining.

But I'm writing because I feel like I have to...because I don't have any other option to let anything out.

Last year and last semester especially, and really, largely in the last 3 years at Wooster, I would "read" in Common Grounds...not because it was a good place to read....it often wasn't, but no matter who was there, it was a place to talk to people. This often got awesome...this often got drastically unawesome... but it was something to do that was preferable to reading alone...always would be, even when I had to get the reading done by the next day...especially even.

Of course, it is not the exclusive need of an extrovert to have people involved in his or her life, to engage in social activity. But it's a need I feel acutely, and I know being an extrovert has much to do with that.

There must be balance, that's for sure....

And right now, my life is remarkably unbalanced to "space to reflect" side... especially when I'm not that good at "reflection" on my own in the first place.

That's why I have a blog. Not because I have anything important to say a lot of the time, and not because I really care that someone is interested in what I have to say (or feel that they should be...although sometimes I do)... really, I just need a place to talk, to feel like someone is listening....and I can't trick myself into believing that about a word document...or even God really. I have a healthy, oftentimes written (on my part) conversational relationship with God... but I don't feel like it fills the extroversion need.... I wonder if that merits exploration..... if it does, it doesn't tonight...but it probably does, by someone, sometime....maybe me, some day

-Zack

"I'm making plans to be with you, but have they come unglued?"
-Mae

Open

I'm becoming a fan of one word titles again. I always have been, but I'm insisting upon them once more.


I think too abstractly, I think.

When I sat down to think about what to write for this week's weekly post, I thought through my life this past week (well, primarily since Sunday), and I started thinking about how to make it a linguistic lesson about reality.

I think I hide behind abstractualizing my life.

For instance, the post I almost started writing was about the difference between "letting go" and "giving up." But I'm not going to write that. I don't want to turn this into something truthful but ambiguous. It would largely defeat the purpose of why I would even write about phraseology in the first place.

That being said, I'm not sure how to write about what I even mean by all of that, because it's still very ethereal, very epiphanized but not realized here in my mind.

And now I kind of want to explain that...but it's kind of an essay, not a quick explanation.

Okay, I've got to get through all of this, all of these trappings of intellectualism and truth and just lay something bare, for my own sake.

I think I've finally realized how important it is to release things to God....not just saying "I'm not going to worry about it, because I know God's got it under control" but actually giving him control. The thing is, he's going to take and be in control anyway, if you try to live by his will... but there is something to be said of a true mental, emotional, even sometimes physical, release of control. I have been chalking much of my future up to faith recently...it's what happens when you've got to rely on unknown things coming through to move forward in life...but even so, I think I've been having control issues. I always think about what I can do. I want to know the next steps. But I've realized that it's not about next steps that I take. It matters that I take steps in faith, and God will provide. I've actually noticed that with my fund raising. I'll do a lot one day, and none of my work will pay off directly...but it's those days that things happen, even things I don't expect or from people I've struggled or been unable to contact. It's just about faith, it's always been about faith.

And it's not just about fund raising (which is hard to say...you mean there's more to my life right now? yes...there is, there really is). There are other things in my life that I've held onto, things I've tried to control, things I've worried about if I don't do something or make progress. But I realized this week that I've just got to let go of my control of them....and I don't mean giving up. None of this is about giving up. I'm certainly not giving up on fund raising (and I'm not stopping work with it either)... but I'm letting go of thinking I have any control over it. That was a wrong thought from the beginning.

Homecoming is this weekend in Wooster.... I still have a sliver of hope that I can make it. If I do, and it applies to you, I hope to see you there!
-Zack

"Lord please have sympathy
And forgive 'my cool young history'"
-Lupe Fiasco

Pure

Her name was Katie when I knew her. I guess it still is, but she seems to go by Katarina now, and I had forgotten that her full name always was Katarina. When I finally did figure that out, this post started forming, but its taken me nearly two years to write, even though I just started actually writing it moments ago.

It seems people are more who they become when they are younger than I would have ever guessed. Or, at least, trajectories can be set. Or perhaps it's just an elaborate mosaic, slowly becoming my life, and an isolated incident.

I don't even remember what it was back then, but I remember it happened...maybe we were just the same age, in the same place, at the right time in our lives. I don't even know how old I was anymore.... 10 or 11 maybe? That sounds so young...my goodness, I hope my own kids are much older than that, but I know it happened before 1998...so before I was 11. Anyway, what I'm talking about was my very first crush. That was Katie. And it wasn't really just one of those dumb "I can beat you up" crushes.... I might write my total girlfriend history at some point, and that would actually stretch back to 1993, in Kindegarten. But Katie was different than those little things earlier in life. She was the mind-shift that put me on the path that would actually lead to my first girlfriend 5 years later. She was the first girl I legitimately "liked" in an at least similar style as to how I would "like" a girl today.

I think it's safe to say I'm a very different person now, than I was then. That was 11 years ago, almost 12. I'm a very different person than I was 2 years ago, afterall. I'm sure she is too. But our changes seem to have mirrored each other. That's proof for the sovereignty of God that I'm not sure many others will just see....it's one of those things in my life that I'll be able to look to forever and say "God always knew something we didn't, and always does."

No, I don't think I'll ever date Katarina. I'm sure I won't. As interesting a bit of storybook-wonder as that would be, it won't happen.

I found her on facebook almost two years ago. It took her over a year to accept my friend request. I was pretty sure she never would, but eventually, she did.

I know it doesn't mean anything. But it's just strange how similar we've become even though we're so different from how we were then. It makes me wonder what might have happened had we had the chance to really grow up together. Our older sisters are about the same age and they used to be best friends (our parents were good friends too, and our younger brothers...so maybe it just made the most sense). Both of our families were homeschooled back then and we met at church. Eventually, both our families left that church and we stopped hanging out with them. Obviously, because I was 11 and she was 11, nothing was ever official or really admitted from either of us, and we parted from each other as our families parted company via the changes in church attendance.

I wish there was more to this story, but my life isn't quite a movie or even a novel. There is no first kiss story, no first date story... I can't even think of any real time where we did much but argue with each other...because that's what 11 year olds do when they like each other. I like to think that had we been able to make it to 15 and still in contact, I would have had something of a high school sweetheart...I might even be married now. But that's all just a dream that clearly was never meant to happen. Who knows, really, how different my life is as a result..... There's a lot in my life that has changed by things that often don't happen.... who knows how different my life is because I ended up a year ahead in school.... or because my sister didn't realize she wouldn't stay at OSU-ATI for even a full quarter.... but you can't sit around wondering what life would be life if not for this or that....because the life one has is the life he or she is supposed to have, for whatever reason.

It's just interesting that, after all these years Katarina has very much, at least as far as I can tell from facebook, matured into someone, if things fell right, I could actually see myself with.... she's very independent, very literary, has been to europe, and her religious views sound like something I would say. Of course, she lives in New York now and has a boyfriend...it's just interesting to think about, that's all.

*disclaimer: that little list there, "literary, independent, europe, religious views sounding like me" is not a blueprint for the girl I'm looking for.... I don't have one of those, it's just that I know myself and I know the sorts of people I get along with best....and they happen to be post-modern, artistic, and adventurous. (but if I'm just going to be shallow, then I'll just add that freckles don't hurt either) *end of disclaimer

It just makes me wonder how much of who we become is coded in who we always are.... Katarina would be a very good friend now, if she went to Wooster and our paths crossed, I'm sure of it....and I haven't really talked to her for years.....and I'm a very different person now. But God always knew who we would both become.

That just makes me wonder a lot of things actually..... and I don't even know how to articulate it. It just seems that there is something about people, something about souls, that either does or doesn't resonate between them, and it just works or it just doesn't work...and nothing ever changes about that.

This is not to say that people cannot drastically change...because I know they can....I have. But it's interesting to ponder what that means for past, present, and future, when God is guiding you and He always knows the beginning, middle, and end of every story.....and my facebook friendship with Katarina has let me realize and reflect on that. I don't know what I would say, if I ever got a real chance to say anything to her. I sent her a facebook message back when I first requested friendship, but I don't think there's much reason to do that again. Just an artifact of my life at this point, I guess... Her birthday is interesting though.......

But I think I'm out of things to say for now.
-Zack

"Time will turn and tear us apart"
-Anberlin

Wherever you are, wherever you've been

I'm reading the books of Samuel right now. I kind of arbitrarily pick the next Bible book I read, but I at least like to think it's somehow spirit led. It only kind of matters, because I know I'll find something worth knowing at every turn.

Before Israel had a king, they had "judges." That's why we have a Bible book called "Judges." But a judge wasn't a king. He was kind of a prophet with an army.

Really, quite honestly, prior to having Kings, God really was the "King" of Israel. They only did what he told them, or they were punished for it (Judges, the book, is basically about people listening to God and winning or not listening to God and losing... really, I guess that's what the Bible is ultimately about too, in very differing ways as it progresses).

Since I'm reading 1st Samuel right now (I'm about 8 chapters in), I've been thinking about what that sort of set-up would look like in the modern world.

It's kind of frightening...I think I separate the Biblical rule of Israel from modern politics. And I think that's probably a good thing. Just think about it...what if there was, instead of democracy (or even fascist or Socialist totalitarian dictatorships, or juntas, or what have you) we had someone that claimed to be the voice of God leading our countries.

I wouldn't buy it for a second. I guess that's probably why, eventually, Israel wanted a king.

There, of course, are a lot of differences between now and then. For one, Israel had a single religion and were officially God's chosen people back then. They knew, culturally, familially, traditionally, spiritually, and a bunch of other "-ally" ways that someone amongst them was a prophet who would speak when God warranted.

That, and without the blood of Christ and his present and coming Kingdom, there wasn't the separation between Government and God and the overall inclusiveness of the covenant that we have today.

Anyway, it's just an interesting thought...to think that I would probably be one of the unfaithful in Israel back then...at least with my current rationality.

Of course, it is always a huge flaw in any thinking to try to apply your own worldview to an older system.... indeed, it's why many are anti-Bible in the first place, to say nothing of the pretty common (mis)conceptions about medieval or other pre-modern people.

*****

We didn't have internet at our house yesterday, and I realized how much I use it to maintain my sanity. Aside from not really being able to work (which was really kind of nice, but I have a problem with not doing things when I know I ought to...that's how I.S. wasn't really that bad...because it was far worse for me mentally to procrastinate), I realized that I feel very trapped at home much of the time. College definitely spoiled me, by basically always putting me in situations wherein I wasn't alone to at least some extent. Even in other internet free-times of my life, I have been in community, whether it be in China, at SLT, or any other conference. I cannot wait to move and start working on campus...for so many reasons.

****
I'm glad the Office is back on....it makes my Thursdays. Actually, Thursdays are kind of nice, because there's not really a lot for me to do on Fridays...Thursdays are kind of my demi-Friday. I do have stuff to do on Friday...just not as much generally and the week finally wraps up. Working solely at home (aside from FD meetings, which I don't really count as part of my "work day" since most of them aren't during the work day) makes life particularly interesting, because it both never ends and seems to never begin. I do a decent job of structuring my day, but e-mails come in all the time, and phone calls have to happen in the evening. It's just...part of doing what I do, and I think I mostly enjoy it. I'll probably enjoy it more when it's not my parents' house from which I'm working.

****
Books I've recently finished:

Love is an Orientation, Andrew Marin, IVP: A spectacular look at the Christian-GBL dialogue, and how we ought to elevate and change it.

The Dangerous Act of Worship, Mark Labberton, IVP: A spectacular look at what it means to truly worship and live a life driven by worship. It's written by a pastor and even though it seems to try to be geared toward everyone, I think it's best use would be by a pastors looking to revolutionize their church structure and purpose. As such, I especially recommend it for anyone involved in ministry...everyone in general too...but mostly those in ministry.

What I'm reading now:
The Major Plays: Anton Chekhov
The Iceman Cometh: Eugene O'Neill
The Ground Beneath Her Feet: Salman Rushdie
The Land: Mildred Taylor
War and Peace: Count Leo Tolstoy
Ordering Your Private World: Gordon McDonald
For Christ and the University: Keith and Gladys Hunt.

I'm reading two of those for InterVarsity training...guess which two!
My favorite of the bunch is The Ground Beneath her Feet... probably because Rushdie is my favorite author out of almost any bunch.

****

I'm watching the third season of Heroes right now; trying to finish before the new season starts Monday. I don't know if there is a single original idea in the entire series...it's basically an amalgamation of Watchmen, X-men, and, to a lesser extent, even Spider-man and Captain America. But it does it all well....very well. Even though there's only one character I truly loved (and she came and went all within the third season, even though I've not even finished it yet), the other characters are good enough and interesting enough that I want to find out what happens....and it's among the boldest and best-shot things you'll ever see on T.V., most especially network T.V., and of that, even NBC. Speaking of T.V., I'm hugely excited that the Office and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia are back. They make Thursday so good....well, last night at least. Community, the new show after the office, is pretty good too... it's a good filler before changing to FX at ten for Always Sunny. Speaking of things on at 10, as much as the world seems to love Jay Leno's new show, I kind of hate that it exists. Aside from never being a fan of Leno and being very happy that Conan now fills an earlier and better timeslot, I just think calling it quits to keep doing the same thing everyday is a dumb career move and a sad excuse for NBC not having enough material to fill their timeslots. Do they even realize that between 10 p.m. and 1:30 A.m. they have three hours of the same format of show? And the half hour in there is the always bad local news? Oh well. In general, I care (and basically exclusively watch) about NBC far too much. Back when we lived on a farm, we only got NBC, Fox, and PBS...so of the standard networks, NBC became what I know and, essentially, what I stick with through good and bad, even though I don't have to do that anymore.
****

I think I've just run the gamut of things from my life I can possibly talk about without talking about sports. My sports thought for the moment? Delonte, I thought you were my boy.

Oh, I didn't say anything about music. Here, listen to the music here: www.myspace.com/mae....it's a whole CD, and it's my current album of the year.

Have a good weekend.
-Zack

"But all you need is faith
And hope will bring the brighter day"
-Mae