december is here, and so am i

So, a few updates that are short. Very short, I guess, but stuff y'all would probably care to know.

1. I failed at NaNoWriMo this year. Sadpanda times, indeed. I'll have to try again next year.
2. I finished my senior paper. It's notbadokish. If you like reading 40 pages of boring, it's online over at Books & Papers. It's the first entry under papers, titled "Finding God's Agenda for Homosexual Students."
3. I defend said senior paper on Thursday afternoon. I have no idea what that means, but I'm pretty sure it'll be a gimme putt.
4. I will be done with college a week from Monday. That's just crazy stupid.
5. I will be moving out to El Segundo, California, during the first week of 2008. If any of y'all know anybody out there who wants to throw money my way in exchange for some work, let me know. ;)
6. I love Miles Davis, green tea, and Febreze NOTICEables air fresheners.
7. I plan on writing much more once school is fading into the background...it's scary how soon that is.

Anywho, in the meantime,

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

A Sentence for September (21/30)

I'm relatively certain that before this senior paper thing is said and done I'm going to omit the last hour and a half of work from it.

A Sentence for September (19/30)

If this ship is going down, I'm going to ride it at least 'til my feet get wet.

A Sentence for September (11/30)

Letters encouraging young students looking to go into ministry--students like me--to join the ORU Minister's Alliance read a lot like young mafioso's offering "protection."

5 Things

5 Things that are different about my experience in Tulsa and El Segundo

1. Tulsa: Nasty river bed. El Segundo: Beach.
2. Tulsa: Moderate level of traffic. El Segundo: [almost] No traffic. Los Angeles: tons of traffic.
3. Tulsa: Everyone acts like a Christian. (Nine times out of ten they are a Christian) El Segundo: Everyone acts like your friend. (Nine times out of ten they are your friend.)
4. Tulsa: Gas costs $2.80 a gallon. El Segundo: Gas costs $3.39 a gallon.
5. Tulsa (particularly ORU): People wear quite a bit of clothing. El Segundo: Everybody wears less.
   

5 Things that are the same about Tulsa and El Segundo

1. People are really nice.
2. There are oil refineries nearby.
3. I live in a safe, affluent neighborhood only a few miles from a city or neighborhood nationally known for poverty and crime. (North Tulsa and Compton)
4. Me.
5. I live really, really close to really loud things. (The other guys at ORU, LAX here in El Segundo)

5 Things that I've done in the past 48 hours that will make ridiculous stories

1. Thursday 9:00pm-11:00pm: Finished Uturn, set the stage for Sunday, and then headed to In-N-Out with the sibs and some of the cool kids here in El Seg.
2. Friday 7:00am: Left the house with the sibs for a full day at Disneyland (pictures here, if you haven't already seen them).
3. Friday 10:30pm: Returned from Disneyland. Pretty much straight to bed.
4. Saturday 2:20-7:00am: Woke up, showered, and went to church, where I ran camera 2 on an insane program for the youth group here. I'll have to tell you about it someday.
5. Saturday 9:00pm: Remember that I need to do laundry in order to have something to wear to church tomorrow. Decide to write something to force my body to stay awake.
   

5 Things I'm worried about getting done this week

1. Script for a theatre/video thing for summer camp.
2. Outline for teaching coming up in a week and a half.
3. Catching up on Summer Greek.
4. Keeping my ministry journal up to date.
5. Whatever that other thing was that I was thinking about but forgot.
   

5 Things I've spent too much time doing in the past week

1. Staring at ceilings looking for inspiration instead of just writing a script.
2. Driving to LAX (even though it's only five minutes; four trips there in a week [eight if you count the In-N-Out runs, which I do] is still quite a bit)
3. Trying to figure out who I know in Southfield, Michigan.
4. Reading sports news.
5. Thinking...

5 Things to Close

1. Peace,
2. love,
3. and joy
4. to
5. you all
   

A Toast of Sorts

I was thinking in the shower the other day, and I realized that in a shade past a week, I will have completed my third year at ORU....which is pretty trippy to say the least. I've met some pretty amazing folk here, engaged in some pretty ludicrous exploits, and grown and changed in more ways than could be written.

In fact, all of those ideas require more space than what I really want to take today, so instead I'm going to encapsulate each of these three years in a single word...a word starting with 'g'. They are as follows:

1) The Year of the Guitar
2) The Year of the Girl
3) The Year of the Game


It's amazing to me how distinct my experience has been in each of these years, based almost exclusively around the people who've surrounded me. Year one down here is best summarized by the year of the Faith of Abraham, that amazing band that never quite was. It's difficult to describe anything I did during year two without including the name of at least one of a small cadre of girls.

But this year, this year was all about sport for me. Up to this point, I had only played one season of basketball intramurals here at ORU (if y'all will recall, I was sidelined with a broken hand from what would have been my sophomore season on the hardwood). This year, I started in every game of football, ultimate, volleyball, c-league basketball, and soccer that Brigade played in, and I coached our b-league basketball team.

It's been a blast.

My aforementioned meditative shower was the shower following our first round 1-0 playoff loss and it was then that I really realized that it was over. And I was only quasi-sad. I am sad to not be playing sports anymore. But, at the same time, and as cheesily as I can write, the memories will last forever.

So here's a shout out to all my teammates, all our fans, and all our opponents: It's been a great season of sports with y'all, and I can't think of anybody I'd have rather gone through it all with.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Reflections on a Good Friday

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

-- Book of Common Prayer (which you can get in PDF form here, towards the bottom, right above the "Fonts" section)

ORU is loud. St Dunstan's is quiet.

ORU joyfully and noisily anticipates the Resurrection. St Dunstan's mournfully and gratefully looks upon the Cross.

The Body of Christ. The Bread from heaven.


Hmm.

And this article about Christianity found me rather agreeable. Peculiar, indeed.


Peace, love, and joy to you all.

A Parable Recast for ORU

There was a man, a student here at ORU, who was out one evening jogging on the outdoor track. As he came by Lake Evelyn on his fifth lap, he was ambushed by a group of gang members who beat him up and took his watch, wallet, and iPod before vanishing into the night. Bloodied and bruised, the student crawled up the sidewalk toward Evelyn Roberts Drive.

Just then, a Head RA was heading back into the dorms. As she drove by the man, her headlights illuminated the now collapsed pile of broken bones and bloody clothes. She knew that he needed help, but she was running late for a meeting with the Dean and her Dorm Director, so she continued on into lower lot. As he vanished from her rear-view mirror, she consoled herself with the notion that since he was a man, she really wasn't supposed to intervene anyway.

Then, a Head Chaplain drove by the man. He, too, was running late, for a meeting to plan his missions trip to Zanzibar. Remembering that one of the chaplains he oversaw was a nursing major, he determined to call him and have him come help the man. But, since it is is so unsafe to use a cell phone while driving, he decided to wait until he had stopped to make the call. When he pulled into his spot, he saw the Head RA, an old friend from one of his sister wings, and they began chatting. By the time the Head Chaplain reached the doors to Towers, he had completely forgotten about the man.

Just then, a baseball player came roaring around the curves on Evelyn Roberts Drive in his Ford pickup. When the player saw the man lying on the side of the road, he was moved with compassion; in his many years of playing baseball, he had suffered many injuries. Though exhausted from a long day of practices, he pulled his truck over, moved some contraband from the passenger seat of his truck, and helped the injured man get in. He called security, drove him to the hospital, and helped him fill out all of the forms he needed to. When the man's RA and chaplain arrived, the baseball player was already gone.

Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? ... You go, and do likewise.

As a random side note, while I was thinking this through I came to the conclusion that if I was to break my jaw, they'd probably have to not make me shave for a couple of weeks. Hmm....


Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Big Talk, Small Talk ~or~ If You Think I Find You Terribly Dull, It's Prolly Cause I Do

Last night I decided something. I'm not sure that I'm right, I'm not sold on the idea, but maybe, so here goes, we'll throw this out and see if the cat licks it up. In this world, there are big talkers and there are small talkers (and maybe [probably] a third category who does both).

I suck at small talk. Chatting with people about their major, or their name, or the news, or movies that are coming out, or the weather, or even sports is arduous for me. Painfully so. I think this is part of the reason why I hate meeting new people so much. Certainly, I am, at least somewhat, a shy fellow myself (and I just said 'fellow,' which means I win). But I just really honestly don't care about your surface level opinion about the next big thing to come out in movies. I think it's wasting oxygen for me to want you to agree with my tres intellectual observation that the weather's been different lately.

I much prefer big talk. Finding out who people actually are, what drives them to these opinions that they have about movies or music or whatever. I strive to get to a point where I'm hearing what people are passionate about--and I listen and remember these real things. If I don't remember your major, but I remember your passion, I count that as a win.

And so I think that people can get the wrong impression about me. I think that I often come across as wholly disinterested in other people. Which is only half true. I'm just incredibly underwhelmed with this prospect that knowing you is knowing that you think that Apocalypto is too bloody for somebody who makes Jesus flicks. That doesn't interest me at all. But the essence, that really, really, really does.

I came to ORU hoping that it would be a place of gut-level honesty and real transparency. And, more than most places I've been in life, it is. But it's still a place filled with small-talkers.

Small talkers can be wonderful people. And small-talk is something which I probably ought to get better at, and I'm actually trying to (to cut off that whole perception that I really don't care about other people). But small-talk works for about fifteen minutes. When you spend days, weeks, months, and years trapped in these small-talk relationships, it should be no wonder that everything seems shallow and meaningless.

I guess I just want meaning in life, in everything in life. And me telling you that I'm from Colorado Springs, that's pretty meaningless.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.