Downshift

Once in the eighth grade, I did all sixty-some problems in the accelerated geometry textbook for a lesson because I forgot to write down which numbers to do.  I didn’t have the phone number of anyone in the class, so the only logical option in my over-achieving brain was to spend several hours doing what was suppose to be a half hour/forty-five minute assignment.  It was the only way I could still get my five homework points.

Yesterday, I realized that academic classes are the single least important part of my life right now.  My family, work, thesis, and (gasp) even my social life are all much higher on my priority list.

No doubt this is a good thing.  On the one hand, it means that somewhere between middle school and today, I appropriately toned-down unnecessary academic intensity.  On the other hand, it just reflects new priorities.

I was peripherally cognizant of this when I signed up and fought my way into easy (but respectable) courses this semester.  A lecture-based history course focusing on an era that I’ve already studied extensively is not challenge, especially when it has less reading and writing in the entire semester than what I’d get in three weeks of CSS.  I took a seminar on Political Thought in Israel, because I realized that if I do, I get an extra line on my diploma saying that I’ve earned a certificate in International Relations (a very nice thing to just stumble across).  Given my mediocre understanding of current events in the Middle East, I was surprised by how quickly I could do the reading and still make meaningful conversational contributions to the class.

By default, everything can’t be important, because then nothing is.  But the day when academics don’t matter (relatively so)?  I suppose I always saw it coming, but I certainly never expected it actually arrive.

In the present

Within a four day window, I started a new job, start my final undergraduate semester, will “finish” a chapter of my thesis, and will travel to North Carolina to attend a seminar having nothing to do with any of three previous activities.

I said I’d go to the conference because I was invited in October.  I remember the distinct thought, “It’s the first weekend of the semester.  What could I possibly be missing out on?”  I now have no less than three places I need to be this Saturday afternoon.

Knowing that this week would be uncharacteristically busy, I remember thinking that the drive back to campus in the evenings would be long.  Instead, I find myself wanting the road to be longer and wishing I could script the thoughts that come when I drive.  They’re always the most eloquent.

When I drive home, ideas come out in organized phrases that get strung together and rearranged like they would on paper, and in them is the reason otherwise absent in the momentous chaos and excitement that characterize this last week.  Slipping into mechanized motion (not zoning out, I promise), it’s so much easier to shut off the processor and just be.  And rest.  And pray.

Funny thing is, I don’t even know what that road is called or which way it goes.  It’s just the way home.  This is a slightly embarrassing fact, and I probably ought to look it up in case I need to give somebody directions sometime.  But it all sortof speaks to the point.

To that end, I will cope with the new phone that wouldn’t activate, the possibility of not being able to port my number, and the fact that the library closed at 5pm with all my books in it.  In doing so, I’ll funnel this week’s emotion and stress away from tense joints and toward my fingertips, step away from WordPress and back to Word, and finish draft one of chapter two, tonight. 

Crowd Harmonies, Healing & Hope

I hate it when the perfect words come out at the wrong time.  I never seem to have anything to take my notes down when the words come.

I have no idea how many hands passed over the ticket I took to this evening’s Night of Hope and Healing concert for Newtown other than to say it had to have been a lot. I got a facebook message an hour and half before the concert asking me if I was free.  I thought I’d just been invited to a fundraiser at a coffee shop.

Of course the timing was uncanny since I’d spent the last six hours in the library and was yet to interact with another human today, in addition to the much more important fact that the cryptic and thoroughly nondescript message indicated that it was some kind of memorial event.

We arrived an hour late and spent almost as much time looking for a parking spot as we did driving to Bridgeport.  As we walked out of the parking garage, I heard the traffic director yell at a guy the floor below that the lot was full and to send everyone else home.  Probably less than a dozen cars made it in after us.

Turns out that I mistaked coffeeshop acoustic guitars with Chris Tomlin, Mandesa, Laura Story, TobyMac, Casting Crowns, Louie Giglio, Max Lucado, and Stephen Curtis Chapman.  The truth is, I care very little about seeing these people live.  As far as the music, I’d just have well preferred to sit on my bed and looked out my massive windows with my ipod up a little too loud and quiet prayers falling out my fingertips.

But it really isn’t about the music.

It’s about the people and the worship and the healing.  At one point, a very specific moment, as I don’t know how many people sang the line of some chorus acapella, I remember wishing that they’d have dimmed the spotlight like all the other lights that had just faded.  It didn’t matter who was on stage, backstage, or in the crowd; it was the single loudest, most melodious and pleasing sound of praise I’d ever heard.

I know the night was for healing and hope, but the whole evening left what felt like a shaving over the top layer of tissue on my heart.  I scraped my way through AP bio some years ago, and while that’s as impressive as my science background goes, when I say layer of tissue on my heart, I mean that I am literally thinking about the muscle tissue making up the organ.

To me, this is an odd image, especially given the context of the situation.  I had the perfect words to explain it on our way out the building and they are escaping me now, but I think it comes down to that moment of praise.

I heard harmonies that rarely appear in choirs so large.  In our words melted anger and desperation, and while there was not yet resolution, there was hope, but it was not offered to or received by any one individual.  In simultaneous praise, came simultaneous peace.

Blessed at BK (Onething, Part II)

On our first night, I waited over an hour and a half for my whopper junior.  I felt so bad for the guy taking my order, I almost tipped him.  I just wasn’t quite sure how to do that at a fast food joint.

Ever since then, we’ve made it a point to ditch the conference sessions just a few minutes early.  The guys and I ran to one of the handful of cheap restaurants within a half a mile of the Kansas City Convention Center for each meal.

I’d have loved to eat better and I usually do, but what are you going to do?  My thinking was dominated by economics.  Four days without access to a grocery store is expensive.  Tonight, I had hoped that the little bit of my lunch that I had saved for dinner would be enough, but by 9pm, the leftovers were clearly no longer cutting it.  Somewhere in the middle of an evening talk, I peeled off in search of food.

So I walked back to Burger King.

It was a long line, but not nearly as a bad as the first night.  Before anything even went wrong, the people in front of me and I talked about BK’s hardworking staff.  I think the same group was working each of the three times I’d been there in the last four days.  Despite these hours, the manager was still all smiley and talked to a group at the register about how much money she had made during the conference, but she also said that the crowds were overwhelming.  I felt for the exhausted woman.

Then the computer went out.  I mean totally out.  The register was broken.  She pushed buttons, coaxed it, tapped it, did everything she could to get it going.  A minute later, the manager jumped up, and gave everyone in line free ice cream and soda.  When the machine didn’t come back to life, they locked the doors and gave us all a free dinner.

I’m might be still be a student, but I’m by no means destitute.  I could have afforded the $4 whopper junior meal, but not getting turned away when they could no longer sell us food lifted the exhaustion that weights you down at the end of a four a day conference.  The staff’s attitudes weren’t just coping, they were thriving and positive.

So here’s to a holiday spirit that doesn’t end on Christmas.  I tried to thank the BK staff, but I think they were moving too quickly to even hear me.

Before any of this, I kept thinking that 25,000 young people attending a Christian conference and infiltrating all the fast food restaurants downtown Kansas City is a lot.  I had hoped that the conference participants would bless the socks right off the restaurant staffs’ feet instead of wearing all the people out.

I don’t know if that happened, but I do know that the midnight worship set I missed at the conference was worth skipping.  The blessing I just received tops it.

Happy New Year.

Onething (Part I)

The annoying, plastic event wristband cuts at my sensitive skin whenever I type, but it also means that the guys and I have arrived safely to the IHOP Onething conference in Kansas City.  I had heard a lot about Onething, and, out to make sure that my international friends don’t get to see more of my country than I do, we all came together.

Last night, I weaved in and out of aisles of books, taken by authors more than the titles themselves.  While I hadn’t read much of what was on sale, I was able to piece together what I knew of different writers to pick out the books’ common themes.  I think it is funny what some people deem most important, and also made note of the differences between the book table here and what I know to be on display at Urbana.

I feel a bit more a observer than a student of the conference.  Maybe it’s the product of having planned enough events like this (obviously much smaller, but similar nonetheless), an initial distrust from having been well-intentionally played too many times, or simply the product of an increasingly inquisitive mind that asks more questions than finds answers these days.

I’m really hoping it is the later.

It wasn’t so much a critique as it was an analysis, but during the evening teaching last night, I kept thinking about the expository method.  It certainly wasn’t anything different, content or style wise, than what I have heard a thousand times, but my mind dissected every word, transition, and development.  The lens of thesis research isn’t exactly detachable, so even though this trip was suppose to be just because I wanted to come, I found myself applying all the reading I’ve been doing on contextualization and teaching how-tos.

It’s like this.  A couple of weeks ago, I spent the better part of 15 hours working through what I thought was a complex, multi-part paradox.  I wasn’t even trying to solve it.  I was just trying to organize bits of incompatible knowledge and identify the area of disconnect.  At the end of that very long day and 15 pages or so of scratch writing, I had before me about 200 words.  The next morning, I cut those 200 words down to a single, simple sentence.

Whoa.

So when I read a good book, or in this case, listen to sermon, analysis swirls.  Out of an interest in the content, I think about the words, cutting and summarizing and seeking to understand the core of the message communicated.  Seems like that’s all I’ve done today.

Travel, Researching Rhythms & Rhetoric

Driving begets lazy packing.

Between Spain, school, and summer jobs, I have moved every four months (a total of five times) in the last two and a half years.  Life in two checked bags and a backpack is rough, but I’ve learned how to manage.  The prospect of coming home for Christmas in a car was an unusual privilege, which I monopolized by bringing an entire bag full of shoes and half the contents of my carrel.

The trip was 755 miles, 13 hours, and was only interrupted by a twenty minute stop for gas and food.  I avoided calling my parents before the trip in a thinly veiled attempt to avoid my father’s criticism.  While I appreciated driving through Akron and Youngstown without any traffic and tried to convince him that it made travel safer, he was sure that I was putting my life in danger by driving alone in the middle of the night.  I’m sure that there is some wisdom in his concern, but either way, I made it home without any trouble at 2am on Sunday night.

The recent change of scenery has played a major role in my mental switch from writing back to researching.  The accomplishment of having actually finished (mind you, not just start, but finished) four books in the last three days, is refreshing.  These books, being much less theoretical than much of what I’ve been spending my time on lately, have given me an informational/factual framework to apply the theoretical texts.

This application has resulted an an ever-growing frustration with writers who never seem to bridge theory and reality in their own works.

Women’s roles in the church is a sticky topic.  I get that.  Defined convictions and careful study have informed my strong opinions.  Furthermore, when asked or the time seems appropriate, I will happily share my thoughts and likely do so with obvious passion.  But there is a rhetorical flair to it that acknowledges the topic’s sensitivities and the role of utopian ideals in implementation practices and the processes of change.

What I find most offensive is not the writers who disagree with me.  Writers who make the same case as me, but disavow the healthy, reconciliatory potential of their viewpoint by failing to constructively articulate their position are the most offensive.

Acknowledging that we don’t all agree does not mean that all answers are right or that we should treat them as such.  However, one’s own limited knowledge, wisdom, and experience combined with the relative importance of a given issue within the context of a mission matters.  This ought to shape our rhetoric.

Embody conviction with humility.  Then, say what you mean, define your terms, and don’t apologize.

Breaking without Recovery

Despite the affect of finals and furious thesis writing to my general health, the common, end-of-semester exhausted wave of immobility is yet to fall.  The last paper was completed with great expectation, but the familiarity of the end-of-semester load and realization that it isn’t actually done (thesis work and job searching this beautiful break) keeps that “what will I do with my life for the next month” feeling at bay.

Sometimes I just sit and think and write and think and draw and think some more, and now that colloquium is over, I can pretty much do this all I want.  My mind combs through books and conversations, ordering them and categorizing their arguments.  There are days where I will spend the whole day just trying to fill in the diagrams that I draw in my carrel, which are often a mix of color-coordinated arrows connecting loosely associated terms attached to a timeline.

These long days have a funny connection to graduation.  All this thesis work should be pulling me away from my job applications, career research, and networking opportunities, and who knows; maybe they are.  But it has been my evenings over these crazy old books (and sometimes the really old handwritten notes I find inside of them) that all those post-graduate life questions start to make the most sense.

I got the impression that second semester senior year was suppose to be frightening and disorderly.  After all, I am officially homeless in five months.  But instead, it is just very, very exciting.  My mind bubbles over with ideas and half formed sentences, but my heart races with the possibilities of where those ideas could take me.

Permanent Residency

The circulation doesn’t really carry to Olin’s attic very well.  My carrel smells a bit like stale corn chips and feet.

At last count, there were 83 books sitting on my little desk, illuminated by the meager light beneath the shelf.  It’s the kind of light that goes off if I sit and read without moving for too long.  The over-priced amazon white board sits to my left, its reflective surface making the light go just a little bit further and flashing my latest chapter diagram back at me.

I’ve discovered that if I angle myself exactly corner-to-corner, it is possible to fully extend my legs and take a nap on the floor, which is something of a discovery in a room so small that you can’t really open the door without hitting the chair.  On the plus side, at least the chair is comfortable.  Duly sun-faded and possibly as old as the CSS itself, but comfortable nonetheless.

The completion of chapter one marks a significant accomplish and one that I fully intend to revel in until I get Prof. Elphick’s comments back.  The research for chapter two is scheduled, the readings for chapter three started, and the logic for chapter four partially solved, meaning that despite long hours (pushing 8 hours in this chair today), I remain on track.

It’s a good thing I like what I do, otherwise this tiny, little office space might be just enough to drive me crazy.

A Reverberating Thought

“This is hard,” which is undoubtedly the point.

My chapter one thesis document is 17 pages.  Unfortunately, only 5 of those 17 pages are real text.  The rest is half sentences and scratch paragraphs that don’t fit in anywhere.  The perfect framework and outline in my head and somewhere deep in the trenches of an exponentially expanding Evernote notebook spirals out of my fingertips and onto MS Word without rhythm.  All the while, the date on my Macbook dashboard and unfilled Word pages shout back at me.  It’s like having the hiccups in the library–uncomfortable and loud.

I catch a shallow breath every time I think about the interviews I have not yet setup, the books I still have to find (let alone READ), and the emails people still haven’t responded to.  Other theses writers lock themselves away and just walk out 15 pages in hand.  Not clean, thoroughly unedited, but 15 pages nonetheless.  I can’t do that, at least not yet.

Now, to an extent, this good, at least in theory.  Instead of burying myself in the proper ordering of facts and theories and spitting them out, I’m laying-out the basics of my own argument, explaining how all those conglomerated facts will contribute to the point I’m trying to make.  Right now– I’m defining all those commonly used words that everyone uses differently (evangelicalism anybody?) and placing them in the context of my argument.

“How are you?” has become a question synonymous with “How much did you write today?”  That’s probably isn’t what my friends mean, but it’s all I hear.

All that said, the gnawing stomach-ache of stress is offset by writing-euphoria, the joy that comes with each new paragraph, and a deep passion for what I’m studying that sometimes makes me so excited, I can’t even focus.  So I know that what I’m doing is good.  It’s just going to take many long nights to get there.

I know I’ve stepped away from blogging this semester, but what can I say.  My thesis is knocking all the words right out of me.

And it was good

The beauty of Connecticut fall catches my breath.  The firestorm on the the tree beneath my bedroom makes me smile.  So does the quiet hope that wells up in my soul.

For every exasperated sigh I swallow in my carrel and long hour with an un-exhilarating paper are a dozen moments of sweet smiles.  Ideas excite me.  Despite the realization that most people don’t care, I am incapable of saying anything about my research without getting all bright eyed and smily.

And when the brillant professor I fumble my ideas to says that my argument sounds great, the fire burns brighter.  Likewise, I gladly give my time to the teaching that forces my thoughts deep into the recluses of my mind for reevaluation.  Ideas are like that.

In the last 72 hours, a friend and I hosted a make-your-own gourmet personal pizza night, complete with fancy cheese, fresh sausage, jalepenos, and eight of my closest-don’t-talk-to-often-enough friends.  Saturday, I drove to Providence for an ISI conference on the American University.  I’ve never wanted to read Plato so badly in my life.  I figure something like The Republic or The Odyssey ought to count as an appropriate beginning of the Western Cannon : )

Today was simply beautiful, and a few friends and I will be driving  up the Connecticut coastline in the morning as we run away with every last remaining precious bit of fall break.

This overcast night hides the moon from my bedroom window, but with a monstrously soft brown blanket draped over my shoulders and the quiet beat of my fingers, keeping time with the Bublé in the background, I just can’t help but feel at peace as the dreams and reflections that can’t quite make their way out dance on my heart.

Providence, Rhode Island