Needing God

China is on my mind. More specifically, Chinese people who continue to amaze me and encourage me and be there for me, despite the distance. Which brings me to this reoccuring thought: what happens when you meet people who are living out the fruits of the Spirit far better than you (the Christian) ever has, and they don't profess to know Christ? How do you approach the Gospel to these people?

Obviously, the Gospel is about freedom and redemption and more than anything else, love. Love between God and people. Love between man and women. Love between children and parents. But isn't it moreso about making meaning in one's life? After all, if we sell the Gospel as something to simply "make you happier" or "make you more successful" or (God-forbid) "make you feel blessed all the time," then what happens when these things are not so after one trusts in Christ? What happens if these three things feel as if they fly out the window of people's hearts the moment they become disciples?

I don't know how to word this, or how to tell people who don't know God about this yet, but I want to try and play with this idea as my way of talking about the gospel from now on. I want to talk about how it's more about giving meaning to things, and less about feeling safe and happy and quaint. How it's about living in and on a certain kind of paradox. One that understands pain and suffering but does not delight in it; one that embraces mystery without embracing an ignorance on tough questions; and one that realizes life is really about loving people and loving God, no matter how many people choose to do the exact opposite. We live on the opposite ends of a spectrum, when really we should be living in the middle. Not the lukewarm middle, but the middle that teeters on balancing mercy and grace with justice and peace. The middle that does not believe in blind love or blind faith, but rather, faith that doesn't marginalize and love that doesn't compromise. I realize, this is the ideal...and we will never (ever) get there. But as I like to tell my students when a few of them have approached me and told me that hope, in the end, turns into hopelessness I say, "No, I don't think it does."

Maybe it turns into a smaller kind of hope...a shred of hope that seems so thin and fragile it appears to not be hopeful at all. But in truth, it is still called hope. And it is still worth clinging to (I think) no matter how many future wars come or how many Tsunamis hit or how many children in orphanages die believing no one loved them. Just because these things are so, doesn't give us right to live less. But it should give us reason to live more.

At least, I think that's what it's all about.

And The List Goes On...

Are there any must-see movies from 2005 that you think would make my top ten list?

Right now, I'm doing my pathetic end-of-the-year scurry to try and see all those films I've missed from this past year and it's overwhelming. From "King Kong" to to "Munich" to "North Country" to "The Constant Gardener" to "Brokeback Mountain," there just seems to be an awful lot that came out in the past 2 weeks that are already being talked about as potential Oscar favorites.

But then again, I guess that's how every year goes.

So far, the list of potential ten-best-films is as followed: Crash, Millions, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, Me And You And Everyone We Know, Mysterious Skin, Walk The Line, and maybe (just maybe) Cinderella Man.

Oh, and "My Summer of Love" (although it won all sorts of international awards and critics' prizes) will not be on my top ten list. Although it was at times, an interesting look at love---with its disturbing portrayal of an older brother redeemed by Jesus juxtaposed over his younger sister, lost in a sea of girlhood fascination---the movie was at its best, only somewhat interesting. However, I do love how ambiguous the film played out to be. We need more of that in American movies today.

Behind the Times

Being in China for only 4 months does things to you.

First, for someone like me, it makes you way behind when it comes to movies. My knowledge of what's out there consists of Narnia, King Kong, and Harry Potter. I had no idea their was a sequel to Cheaper By The Dozen, another end of the year movie by director Ang Lee, nor did I ever even hear of Jim Carrey's latest "See Dick and Jane Run" or whatever it's called.

Second, which is related to the first, it makes me feel like I'm behind and there's no use even trying to catch up. It's not everyday that my sister Tiffany is talking on and on about all these indie films she saw in L.A. while I'm sitting there listening to her thinking "I've never even heard of that movie! But it sounds so good!" I can't remember the last time where she---or anyone in my family really---saw an indie, arsty-fartsy movie before me. It's disconcerting for someone who sees the last 6 or 7 years of their life through the lens and grid of what has happened in the world of cinema (i.e., 1999 was the year of "The Matrix," "Magnolia," "American Beauty," and my senior year of high school; and 2002 was the year of "About Schmidt" and "Punch-Drunk Love," and the best Fall semester I ever experienced at Taylor---you get the picture). And so now, it makes me feel like I have little to offer people now when it comes to movies.

Maybe I didn't realize how much my useless movie knowledge was the springboard for half of my conversations but I'm realizing this is true. And so, I've resorted to something else I feel I can talk on for hours---boring people to death---and that is China. So for those of you who haven't been around me in person lately...watch out. Because my "In China..." stories are shooting out of me like slippery watermelons.

What a pretty sight, huh?

Pudding and Alvin and Me

Today, I ate with the cutest Chinese student couple I've ever seen. They're both non-English majors, but through a series of weird and random encounters, I met up with them finally for lunch after my classes.

Their english names? Pudding and Alvin. And I'd like to add that Pudding is the boy and Alvin is the girl.

All afternoon, the three of us connected in ways and on levels that people who I can speak perfect English with never could. It is odd when you realize although someone does not understand your words exactly, they still understand your meaning. And yet, so many of my English-speaking American friends I have trouble with communicating with? Why? We both speak the language! Maybe we should both start speaking in the simplest of words? Maybe we should always dumb the language down until our friendship is worked up enough to withhold the burden and fickleness of weighty three-syllable+ words?

Whatever the reasons, I had a fun time explaining to Pudding and Alvin why their English names were so funny. Telling them that Alvin was a little boy cartoon chipmunk's name was hard, but eventually, it clicked inside both their heads. And that's when the light flickered on in Pudding's eyes!

"Oh! I know your mean! You think "why are our names a 'food' and an 'animal?'" Pudding said.

"Exactly," I said. "You understand me exactly!"

And in the freezing, brisk Linyi City air, we walked and laughed and talked and mumbled in our broken Chinglish knowing that no matter where the conversation turned, we could always count on bringing it back to smiles with me asking them two simple words: "food" and "animal???"

I've yet to see Chinese people laugh so hard.

Mary

Recently, I've been taken aback---at times, to almost tears---when thinking about the Christmas story this season. Being in China doesn't help, as the usual Sunday church-going experience is gone and the constant reminders of Joseph and Mary and Jesus are not scattered in manger scenes all over the city. But still, a song will play on random from my iTunes and it will send me swimming in a mixed bag of emotions---all concerning this teenage girl.

Most of the time, we miss the real Mary at Christmas time I think. We see her as this calm, ever-giving, ever-willing woman who's merely the passing point from the heavens to the Earth. But in reality, she wasn't this at all.

She was however, this very young girl who just happened to believe in the impossible. To believe the radical call to obey what some angel named Gabriel told her in a dream to believe in. And it wasn't some fairy tale bit-of-magic-sort-of-dream, but it was the ordinary and extraordinary dreams we humans have all the time. The ones that make us believe in something greater out there.

But lately, I've wondered about what kind of thoughts and emotions must have been running through her head and heart that night and the following morning. Obviously, we've all had times where we feel God has spoken to us---from the tiny moments through our conscience as a 6-year-old to the loud and outragous repeated calls to love He stirs up in us each and every day---but the rational part of us tends to always question this voice. And rightfully so! For how many crazies and loonies have there been out there who thought they heard the voice of God but really only heard themselves talking very quietly? Or more importantly, how often do we write off the crazies and loonies out there (Mary would be one in our day, no doubt, making every CNN and FOX news headline from China to Cairo to Chicago) as merely fools fooled by themselves?

I believe in the mystery of the Gospel, but what does this look like? Is it some ambiguous whirwind of supernatural phenomena, or is it simply the acts of love that often go unseen in the world today, everday?

I don't know, but right now, I'm humbled by the thought of anyone who behaves like Mary today.

Psycho

You should try listening to some really intense instrumental music whenever you next post to your blog. Right now, I'm listening to the theme song to "Psycho," starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins and it is hilarious. I keep bobbing my head from side to side, and picture myself driving alone with some scary police car following me. And my eyes stare into the movie camera---penetrated, focussed, and frightened.

It doesn't do wonders for inspiring good thoughts worth reading on a blog though. Oh well, songs over. Happy hump day.

There's something to be said for the day or moment or second you finally realize your walk is not matching your talk. The time when everything and everyone gets to look at you---the real you---and see that your shortcomings and mistakes are, in a word, hypocritical. I know we all have many times in our lives where these times come up but how often is the evidence so blatantly contrary to how we say we live? How often does the evidence make our insides turn, our minds cramp up, and our heart sink and sink and sink?

I had one of these surreal moments this past weekend. The ones you tell yourself you will never have, because you are a good Christian. A good, balanced Christian. But I guess even Christians should never say never. Because when you do, you find yourself doing exactly what you told yourself you would never do. After this whole escapade occurred, the smell of justice was in the air and my name was up. And then I finally got what my self-righteous attitude had coming to it: a wake-up-and-smell-the-reality check.

And for the first time in my life, I woke up from a night of drinking---way too much, of course---and realized I had puked somewhere between the time of getting undressed for bed and the time I lay sloshed and sound asleep, on top of my blankets. And then I saw the trash can sitting next to my bed I did not put there, and the towel under my face hiding the puke I evidently spew up hours earlier that I also did not put there. Which was enough evidence to make me think: one of my friends did this for me and so, they know!! They know how pitiful and ridiculous and pathetic I looked at 3 a.m. lying fast asleep, unconsciously munching on bits of vomit spattered all over my pillow. I became the evidence that my words could not hide over anymore, and it felt unnervingly shameful.

But I guess we all need these moments that remind us again of how fallible we are. We need to be told again and again that 'yes, you are imperfect and you still make mistakes and you still are failing to live up to what you speak.' But it sure is difficult facing this fact. Especially when you're the one everyone's looking at. Like a dried up french fry you find under your car seat looking undesirable and cold and just plain pitiful, I felt like I was even smaller than this.

And so, to reach a new level in how-small-can-I-be, I decided to write you all this and confess via the blog world of just how stupid and selfish I really can be.

Even in China.

Blogger is so much better than Xanga.

It feels good to be back. Even if no one is out there, it's nice to hear and see my voice illuminated by the blogger template rather than the annoying xanga one. Although I will try to keep up with xanga blogs I like to read, I don't know how well I'll do with keeping up at posting there now that I can post here instead.

Happy Weekend. Bye.

I think I finally realized and put into words what relationship I have with the Bible. I know that sounds weird to just come out and say, but I've been thinking a lot about this lately and it has really been bugging me.

Part of me loves it, part of me hates it. Does this make sense?

Whenever I read something beautiful in it, I underline, I say 'yes,' I am personally reaffirmed of the faith I cling to and claim to be apart of. However there are those moments when I find myself hating it. I hate the way it looks at me sitting on my nightstand. I hate how when sometimes I read it, I want to run away from my conscience after finishing a certain sentence. I hate it for the way it makes me feel sometimes inside, even though most of the time, this is a good way of helping me grow.

But ironically (or paradoxically) I think what I hate the most (and have come to love the most too...if you give me a long enough time) are those times when the words sting so close to home and scrape so sharply at my own life. The moments when I read and can hear the ringing 'this is for you' in my head and heart. I can hear my body ache because of it.

And this may not be pretty and it may make me sound like a looney boy, but I don't mind it really. It's what I've come to accept as me, living the paradox, and its best if I stop pretending it's something that it really is not.

I miss the blogger blogs I used to read.

So Nate, and Chalupa, and Liz....well....I guess you three were my favorite ones (now that Tara has joined xanga:), I hope you can email me your posts or do something so that I can read what is going on in your life.

It sucks not being able to read them here.

The Xanga alternative

Because blogger is hard to post to while in China and even harder to read other blogs from here (I haven't been able to access one blogspot blog while over here---ugh!) I've decided to cave in and write on a xanga blog while in China.

Even though I'll try to keep writing on this one whenever I feel like writing to a different audience, I think that one will be easier to post to. So all your blogspot people, please know that I am still one of you...I just must avert to xanga for a few months.

Here is the web site address:
http://www.xanga.com/nevillekiser

My first day of teaching in China

Last night, I didn't think I was teaching until a week from today. But China had other plans.

At 9:00 a.m. this morning, I awoke to the sound of knocking on wood and soon realized there was someone at my door. It was one of the Chinese teachers and she had my schedule for this week of teaching (not next week). On the contrary, I was teaching this week. In fact, I was starting this afternoon (yes, that means 5 hours from now...I told myself). Did they just forget to tell me this? None of the other American teachers are teaching today or this week!

Oops. Oh well.

Of course I wasn't mad, only a little shocked. But then that wore off and I got excited. Two two-hour classes in the afternoon of sophomore english majors is not a bad thing at all for a Monday, and so, I think---looking back on it---it was a pretty wonderful day.

I learned that in China, students will not leave the classroom---even after the teacher has dismissed them---until the teacher leaves first. So when I dismissed my first class and they all sat staring at me as I put away my things near the front of the room, I felt like I was grabbing one two many cookies out of the hidden cookie jar. Everyone was looking up at me...smiling...and so, I reassured them: "You are free to go! Class is dismissed." One girl picked up her purse and pulled out her cell phone. I think she knew deep down how stupid I was.

And then of course, in the next class I somehow found myself singing the chorus to R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly." Don't ask me how my students got me to do that, but in the first week of classes at any college---with all the lame introductions and 'my name is' ice-breaker games---something like this is inevitable. And then there was the moment when one student asked, "Do you think you are handsome?" and another asked, "Do you like yourself?" Yes, these questions threw me because they tend to only come up between friends (if ever at all). But I just kept wondering why these two kids weren't psychology majors instead. I mean, come on---what kind of personal, prone-to-self-destruct question is that?

When the second class ended, the sore throat from talking slow slow slow english had went from marginal to a scratchy dry high kind of pain. But despite this, I still couldn't help from smiling. Walking out of the class room with Chinese faces gleaming and smiling at you, and giggles and hand-to-mouth laughs constantly overtaking the entire room made me wonder why I didn't come to teach english in China sooner.

China at last!

I have only 2 minutes to write but I wanted to say that I think I found my new home.

I'm trying to find something I don't like about China and so far, nothing comes to mind. We're off to Beijing in a few minutes---taking the train up there for a few days---but I'll be back soon as I now am connected to the internet from my room.

At last, again...I feel as though I have a pulse. It's almost sick to realize how dependent we Americans are on the internet.

10.5 hours 'till departure

I love China already and I'm not even on the plane yet.

Can you tell I'm excited? Well, I am. I'm smiling right now actually! Seriously. I am.

Blake and Annilee's 60th anniversary was a success! A weekend filled with West Virginia oddities, found in the small town between Ripley and Charleston, I was amazed at how much L.A. already has tainted my view of the rest of small-town America. It's getting harder not to see the very scary side of small towns (i.e., the pride in one's own ignorance) and so, I've resorted to not speaking or making any comments whenever such thoughts come to mind.

Among other things, I read the most daring and provocative and depressing book I've read in a long time over this past weekend: "Mysterious Skin" by Scott Heim. I don't recommend it to the masses...only to those of you who saw "Irreversible" and "Requiem for a Dream" and thought it was "nice."

Only a few more hours of packing, and my road to China will begin. First start? Interstate 94 West toward Chicago.

All the way from Harlem

"I loved my friend
He went away from me
There is nothing more to say
This poem ends as softly as it began
I loved my friend." -Langston Hughes

I think this is the first time ever I've left on my last day of working at any particular job while almost crying in the middle of the employee parking lot.

Maybe it's due to China. Maybe it's due to the pictures I see with co-workers, wrapped up in giggles and oversized grins, reflecting the inner child inside of us all. Maybe that's why it's so hard not to cry.

Smashed

Maybe I haven't let the book fully set in yet, but after recently finishing "Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood" by Koren Zailckas, I thought 'people need to read this book.'

Not because it paints a frightening picture by juxtaposing alcohol up against other "more harmful" addictive substances. Not because it will probably fuel the paraonia already in most parents minds when it comes to wonderfing if their teenagers or college-agers still living at home are closet drunks. No, this book should be read for the very reason Zailckas writes in her introduction that she wrote the book: for the utter commonness of her own story. There is nothing terribly extreme or extravagent about Zailckas' experiences, but at the same time, her experiences are as harrowing sometimes as the darkest parts found within and beneath all of us. It's as if she's hitting the world (America in particular) over the head and going, "this happens all the time...why!?" Why is drinking part of what it means to be an American teen? Why is it that at age 21, it's expected that you get smashed and people look at you in almost shock and disgust when they hear you don't? What's wrong when someone is always asked for a reason they're NOT drinking, instead of those who do drink excessively in social situations? I'm all for drinking--believe me. I drink on occassion with friends, but these questions and so many more that Zailckas raised to the surface got me wondering 'what does drinking do to one's identity or more importantly, one's self-concept?' Especially when a kid starts at age 14, like Koren Zailckas did.

Even though the book runs a tad long, it sill reads (most of the time) like a fast-paced fiction novel---building up tension, heightening awareness, and brimming with greater and deeper insights the more pages you jumble through. And to top it all off, Zailckas never falls into the trap of self-deprecating writing. She manages to entertain, inspire, and tickle the annoying hairs on the back of your neck enough to keep you smiling, chuckling and shaking your head in awe throughout the book. So read it...and see for yourself.

14 days

14 days from today, I'll be on my way to China. I feel like a two-year old whenever I've tried recently to express how happy and excited I am to people about this trip, so we'll just leave it at that.

In light of my upcoming trip to China, the floor at the hospital where I work at decided to throw another "Neville Day." That is the name that someone came up with months ago and it just so happen to stick. So, for the past week everyone has been asking when "Neville Day" is. It's pretty ridiculous, yes, but it's good to see so many employees get so excited over a potcluck party that makes it okay to eat three kinds of chocolate cake in one setting. Carol, one of those huggable nurses that just can't figure out when to quit beating a dead horse, was frolicking up and down the halls all morning awaiting the noon-time splurge fest of chocolate, chocolate syrup, chip dip, hot dogs, and diet pepsi.

"Are you ready honey?" She asks me whenever she passes me in the hall. Her face can barely bottle up all the joy.

"I'm gettin' there!" I'd say.

Once the "Neville Day" potluck party began, Carol was nearly bouncing of the walls as others decided to throw some hot dogs on the George Foreman grill. At the sight of this, Carol exclaimed "Make sure you brown them really good! I like my weiners brown!" and then laughed uncontrollably, as if she was in third grade and had just told the naughtiest joke to her best girlfriend. And then, she danced the waltz out of the break room to get some more ice for the diet pop. Everyone else just kept asking if she was drunk.

Once the party was well underway, Carol admitted to sucking down three cups of coffee a couple of hours before noon. This, a co-worker named Flo informed me, is "all she needs to get going. Once she's gone there ain't no stopping her no more." And this is part of why I love working at the hospital. People eat a little too much sugar, perform a little too many blood withdrawls, and start one too many IV pumps before going sailing into a mental state of euphoric oblivion. And of course, everyone merely shrugs and accepts this as normal behavior. After all, if there's one thing you learn after working at a hospital it's this: vocational norms and public displays of indecency don't exist.

For a change, weddings this summer have been my beacons for worship. Normally this isn't the case (at least, not in my experience). All too often, they are cheapened down ceremonies of people's so-called "loves" finding each other with little or no accountability from family, friends, God, or the Church. Obviously, I'm not talking about people's lack of reverence for sacred spaces (because I'm not sure if that should even be a priority) but moreso I'm talking about the attitudes, motives, intentions, and thoughts found inside most of the people gathering around the wedding altar. But this is not the way it was meant to be. This is not what happens when the full spectrums of joy and pain, love and hate, cruelty and forgiveness come together under the recognized and received grace of God. What happens when we enter into this grace (or rather, receive and accept that it is already there and realize how we can do nothing without it) is how every wedding I attended this summer mirrored so beautifully.

Instead of splintered communions between strained faiths or no faiths at all, there was love. Instead of sharing a meal with a total stranger being as agonizing as getting fillings at the dentist, there was peace. And instead of self-centered receipients in attendence, there truly seemed to be the Holy Spirit dancing between the bride and groom.

It's no wonder then that at each one of these joyous occassions, I found myself soaring like a baby bird flying successfully for the first time. I found myself meeting and making new friends---not ones to be easily forgotten but to be quickly cherished. And now, I thank God for it all.

Take heart, and expire.

Due to confidentiality rights of patients, all people in the medical field are trained to speak in code. There is a symbol for everything, an acronym for every position placed properly within the hospital hierarchy, and every person/patient is reduced to a number (i.e., if you want to talk about Mrs. Roberts, please simply refer to her as "345 Bed 1"....OR if you want to talk about her roommate Miss Smith, simply say "345 Bed 2" seeing how she has a window bed).

And another issue that cannot be talked specifically about in hospitals? Death.

As absurd to me as this seems (after all, we all are going to die) employees are trained not to talk about patients potentially dying. Even though it is a hospital and it seems this would be the safest place (if any) to talk about such a thing (i.e., I realize saying things like "she is dying" or "he only has 2 more hours to live" may seem out of place and a bit creepy for say, a high school locker room discussion or a grocery store checkout lane but at a hospital? Can't this be a safe place, if there ever should be a safe place, to talk about death?

I'm not advocating momentary morbid conversations all day long, plus the weekends. I'm simply wondering 'why' we westerners think we must be so "proper" and "professional" and "reserved" and "calm" and "collected" and "put together" when it comes to the subject of death?

All this to say, today I overheard one nurse tell another nurse "285 Bed 1 has expired." Which in farmer talk means "the milk has gone sour." However, in hostpital talk it means a "this person has died." As soon as I heard this while walking by, I stopped, looked at the nurse and then walked on. I don't think I like the idea of referring to people as if they're all gallons of milk just waiting to be thrown out. I don't necessarily think it's healthy to be reduced to a number and treated as if you're the one product that just didn't make it into the big supermarket aisle display this Easter season.

But alas, I have no alternative language code or system to offer the medical field so maybe I should just shut up. Maybe I should be walking around room-to-room while working at the hospital, labeling patient's foreheads with my human-expiration/death-date stamp. "Oh I'm sorry 265 Bed 1, but you're probably going to expire tomorrow so please---eat your over salted pieces of bacon and try not to think about it."

Karl Barth is sooooo smart.

How does one reconnect with God? How can we reverse the flow, and go against the way we were born into this world? Were we crying when we came into this world because we knew---ever so clearly and simply---what it feels like to be separated (in some sense) from God's heart?

Conversations lately have been wild, as I feel almost embarassed at how blunt and obvious so many people in my life have been when it comes to approaching me about my own faith. Case in point: today at work, one of the receptionist ladies who answer phones, do patient charting, and a host of other things, asked me "tell me what was the best single thing you learned while at school/seminary last year?" Now, understand this: up until this point, the most contact I've had with this woman is a fair 'hello' exchange from time to time. But here she is, asking me the most radical thing I learned last year at seminary and wouldn't you know I had to think for five minutes before even answering. My response, now looking back, wasn't so great even though she seem to accept it as legitimate and marginally profound. And now that I think back again, I wonder why I didn't steal from the great theologian Karl Barth when giving my response. Because after decades of theological research and intense epistemological debates and creation/evolution talks, and liberal/conservative protestant discussions, he was asked what (out of it all) was the greatest thing he came to know.

"The greatest thing that I've ever learned and known is that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Sometimes I need to be just taken back to square one and remember who it is I'm actually living for. Yes, Jesus loves me...and Jesus even likes me (something Brennan Manning taught me to accept) and this I've come to know and love and cherish and cling to when I'm feeling alone and depressed, and depend on when I don't know where to go or who to turn to. It is the "it" in the gospel that blows me to pieces. It is in the form of grace and yet still, it hits me almost every time.

U2

I have a new favorite U2 song: "So Cruel" from their Achtung Baby album. Oh my! I've heard this song before but this is the first time I heard it and felt like I got it! And ironically, it was playing on the radio last Saturday night after talking to my childhood best friend from third grade for 2 hours.

Thank you again Tara for allowing me to see the light, again and again.

Welcome Home

South Carolina is just as beautiful as I remember it, and coming back for a wedding of one of my beloved childhood friends has been the thing I needed to do. Running into old faces, and friends I used to ride bikes to swim practice with, and my best friend from 3rd and 4th grade who I haven't seen since my family moved away from South Carolina, almost 13 years ago...has all been nostalgic to say the least. It's been like one of my favorite movies "About Schmidt," as the melancholy feelings and bittersweet recollected memories parade around in front of me in the form of ticking clock. I know I'm getting older, every day, every hour, every time the sun goes down below the trees. I realize this is happening but I don't think I'm comprehending it. I think most of the time, I like to live as if it's not happening. And although I don't think it's possible to live always aware of our finitude and of our own everyday reality, I do think it's possible to at least try.

Whirlwinds

Tody is one that is flying---by both bad and good winds---and I can't seem to figure out what the heck is even going on! Work was a blur. And I realize when I say that, I sound like Lindsay Lohan from "Mean Girls," but it was. I left it going, "what in the world just happened today?" Everyone's temperature seemed to be boiling at both ends of the spectrum---one minute people were laughing and giggling, the next they were in fits of rage or squabbles of tears. What is going on here!?!

I know people bring their home to work and vice versa. I realize that amongst me at work there are nurses working who have husbands that beat them, and there are those of us who are extremely lonely and confused, and there are others who continually find themselves living in fear, in anger, or in a state of being where nothing makes sense---at all. I realize we all bring our own worlds to the big world of work and we all attempt to continually throw bits and pieces of our worlds into the wide open melting pot. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised at days like today. And maybe you're reading this and wondering what the heck it is I'm really talking about.

It's so hard to explain really, but I"ll try in one sentence. You ever have the kind of day where near strangers began to ask you about the ultimate questions of existence, where persons are opening up to you about serious personal issues they have at home, where another woman seeks out your advice on whether or not it's "okay" for her to be a lesbian, and where in the midst of it all, you're constantly being torn between the thought of doing the work you're at work to do, and doing the kind of human work you know deep down really needs to be done?

Well, if you get that you know what kind of day I had. Not bad, not necessarily good---just befuddling and confusing and fascinating, all at once.

Gay marriage, Abortion, and Enron.

Maybe I'm so far off it's not even funny or maybe I'm just angry and wanting to think outside the Christan norm...but a discussion with my small group tonight made me think about this central question: is the Church apart of the the main "battle" going on in the world today?

Of course, it's hard to read such a question without hardly any context but immediately I thought 'no...it isn't!' Even though I generally frown upon such language (i.e., "we've got a battle to fight today, and the Church must fight back!") I understood the question and still found myself disagreeing. Consider the past presidential election for instance.

Were the two main issues (gay marriage and abortion) evangelical Christians rallied behind really the ones central to the global Church's concerns at large? Meaning, were these issues the main battle going on in the world today? Were these the biggest hindrances to people coming to Christ? Or coming to God?

Once again---like in the good ole' scary Bible times---people who know very little about God and don't even pretend to call themselves Christians generally seem to be the ones fighting for justice, for peace, for love. So when the Enron scandal came out, how did the Church respond? Did it speak vehemently and passionately against this corporate scandal of injustice, lying, cheating and stealing, like it did when it spoke about abortion and gay marriage? Or was it merely just another story of man wanting too much money and the Church believing that there were other more pressing issues out there? Could it be possible that maybe, the Church missed the boat---again!?

In the New Testament, it's no surprise to the average person that Jesus addressed the problem of greed and the love for money as the single greatest threat to knowing Christ. Yet, when was the last time you heard a sermon on America's equating salvation with earning more money? When did the Church last picket corporate criminals who steal from middle and low income familes just so they can take another week of vacation in a year?

Somehow, most of us Christians (including myself), don't seem to be too concerned with that whole "sell everything you own and follow me," command that Jesus gave. No, we're on America's side for the most part. After all, how dare we question this Christian nation's values? How dare we suspect that the things that America holds to be its dream is not at all what we Christians should be living or dreaming for?!

Elliot Fox Hoeflinger

I finally got to meet and see my beloved godson Elliot Fox Hoeflinger, and he is just as beautiful and wonderful and near-perfect as I imagined. Seeing Dave and Lindsay (his parents) was a blessing in and of itself, but Elliot added a little extra bit of wonder to the evening. I hope someday I can be like my friend Dave Hoe...not just because he's cooler than I'll ever be but because he really is (and tonight, watching him with Elliot and Lindsay and in just about everything) I saw the selfless, love-filled Dave Hoe I remember from Taylor freshmen year.

In other news (as if some of my friends confirming of this thing wasn't enough) I've finally come to terms with something about myself: I'm not a cynic, despite always saying "maybe I'm a cynic" in every other post. No, I'm an idealist. So whenever something coming from me sounds purely cynical, know it's really just my idealistic mind meeting up with my idealistic heart in order to construct an idealistic world.

Failing the Test: The Story of Abraham and Isaac

Recently, I've been thinking about something I read in a Madeleine L'Engle book ("The Rock That is Higher") more than a year ago that until now had dismissed as just merely something I didn't believe. The story of Abraham and Isaac is one of the most common ones to the Christian Orthodox and Jewish traditions, and rightfully so. Having to sacrifice your son is never something I'd like to be challenged to do in the future, and so, I used to not feel any connection to Abraham and the entire story surrounding God's request that he should sacrifice his son.

But then, it came up somewhere else---in another book---and I decided to revisit the story again and see if I really agreed with the "new interpretation" that was out there in so many Christian scholar circles today, on this particular story.

Simply put, many Christian and Jewish scholars today are saying (what Madeleine wrote over 10 years ago about) that perhaps Abraham actually failed the test yet God honored and fulfilled his promise to him anyways. Yes that's right...you heard what I said: Abraham failed the test and God intervened just before his son was to be killed.

If you read more closely and you seek out the character of God more thoroughly in the Old and New Testament, it seems very against God's nature to request such a thing. I know, I know...many of you are saying, "But he was only testing Abraham---to see if he really feared God, and loved God more than anything." But I'm thinking more now, "Was he?" It seems this tenth test of Abraham was really a test of whether he would choose law over love. And sadly, instead of choosing love Abraham chose law, and didn't even go as far as to question God's motive on the matter. Was Abraham simply obeying or is there such a thing as discernable obedience? Why didn't he question God who had called him to keep his commandments (which how could he forget, included "Do not murder") when God was asking him to violate one of these commandments? All throughout the Old Testament it seems Abraham and so many others wrestled with God and argued with Him whenever He would ask something shady or unreasonable of someone. I mean come on, God changed his mind a number of times because of people like Abraham who wrestled and duked it out in the relational life pool of ideas with God. Is it ironic or mere coincidence that Jacob, the man who wrestled with God is whom Israel is named after? God's chosen people's very name suggests the fact that they "wrestle," and yet, Abraham (this time around) doesn't do anything of the sort! Something is seriously messed up here, isn't it?

Perhaps I'm merely trying to understand the infinite too hard with my finite brain. Perhaps I really don't understand this kind of God---a God that would ask me to murder someone I loved so dearly. After all, if this happened today would not 99% of Christians be telling the Abrahams out there, "That is not God telling you to kill your son! That's someone else! Don't listen!"

From my perspective so far, it seems that you don't have to change a lick of scripture to come up with this interpretation of the story. It seems that Abraham could've seemingly failed the test, but yet, by God's grace was given what was promised to Him anyways. And if I'm not mistaken, wouldn't that be more in line with the God we Christians proclaim to serve? Wouldn't this interpretation make more sense when it comes to years and years later and Jesus is about to be crucified, and it is uttered (and compared) "Are you sons of Abraham or sons of God?" Or metaphorically speaking, do you live for the law or live for love?

I'm still thinking on this a great deal, but when I read this again recently and did some more research on it, I came to see it as a much more freeing and grace-filled interpretation of a sacred story that's been agonized and studied over year after year for thousands of years. I'm gonna keep searching, but for now this is just another thing in my life in which God's grace grows and my need for mercy extends even greater.

Behind the Times

I just saw the music video for the song by Beck entitled "Dead Weight," and although it's almost a decade old, am I so lame of a person to want to have it and listen to it now again and again? I know great songs can be enjoyed whenever but it always seems like that when it comes to the music world, I'm years and yeard behind the rest of the world.

But at least I enjoy it still even though most people would simply scoff and say, "Oh my gosh! That song came out like last summer! It's so old!" To which I always smile and say, "I know....but I really love the old songs! What can I say?"

Get to know your co-workers.

"Sometimes you see things and...well...other people, they can't see them."

One of my many favorite lines from the movie "Millions" seems to appropriate today after I got to know one of my employees at the hospital a little better. She is one of those wonderful older women---vibrant, very alive, and a very hard worker---and she also wears a necklace key change thingy that says "Jesus Loves Me" on it repeatedly (one phrase after the other) and is vehemently not a fan of George W. Bush. She makes me smile whenever I get to talk with her.

So today, she's sharing with me about herself, her past and her life basically and it saddened me to hear her story. Hearing how she struggled with physical and emotional abuse for years and years until finally, after 30 years she left him (she forgave and forgave and forgave and just kept letting him "come back"), I was angry with the world again but yet, too upset and sad to really do anything about it. I stood there listening, and watched as my respect grew even more for this woman---a 52 year old child at heart---and I thanked God again for being able to see someone I thought I knew...in an entirely different light. And this goes on all the time and I seldom choose to notice it. Maybe I don't want to see how I see people because it makes me think about the way people might see me. I wonder how so many people could be wrong about me, and I think about the few who I feel "get me"...like few people in this world do.

And I suppose that is how life is generally supposed to work. We see people the way we want to see them until they give us reason to see otherwise. And when those few people in our lives give us that other reason, they no longer become simply other people---dancing in the sea of the census---but they become our friends, and the ones who will hold our hand when we will leave this world, and be with us as we slip into the next.

This is why today, I'm happy to be alive.

The Giver lives in Our Town

In Mrs. Vavra's sophomore American Lit. class, we gathered into small groups and read certain plays from the past century during our "20th Century Theater Month." My group read Thornton Wilder's obscure play "The Skin of our Teeth," in which Sabina and a host of other colorful characters crash historical events on the stage. Many people don't know this wonderful play, because many have only heard of Wilder's more widely known play "Our Town," which semi-inspired "Dogville" (the movie by Lars Von Trier, starring Nicole Kidman). Anyways, so right before I left L.A. I found a copy of "Our Town" for a quarter (oh I how I love thrift stores in L.A.---I miss them already) and decided I'd add it to my summer reading list (a list I have laughably yet to really even officially start).

So now I'm reading "Our Town," and it is simple but lovely. It may seem strange that I'm reading a play before I go to bed, as it's not your typical Mary Higgins Clark or Dan Brown summer fiction reading type-of-a-book, but for me---honestly---I love that I'm finally getting to read it and so many other classics like it because I feel like I robbed myself back in high school by sliding through and hardly reading a thing! If it weren't for Miss Smith, my senior year A.P. English teacher, I might have even escaped high school having not read "Hamlet!"

But back to books I'm reading or have been reading: "The Giver" by Lois Lowry...I skipped it in 5th grade but came across it recently and said "I need to read this Newberry medal award winner!" and so I did, and again it made me so happy. I don't know if I would've appreciated this book or many others for that matter, had I read them when I was "supposed to." So perhaps now is my time---as the writer of Ecclesiastes would probably agree---and today is the day when I will see the beauty in so much literature that I blindly and foolishly scoffed at during my early childhood years.

So here's to a summer reading list sprinkled with bits and pieces of the classics! And by the way, don't be surprsied if I start quoting famous dead literary geniuses and turn into a high school english teacher by the end of July. As you all know, I tend to get caught up in whatever it is I'm currently reading and someeeetimmmes take my happiness a little too far.

Hospital hugs

My first day back working at the hospital yesterday went wonderful minus a few things. I enjoyed seeing many old faces, scrubbed out in their appropriate hospital uniform attire. Since I've been gone, Robin gave birth to her first baby boy and he's almost six months old now! I saw pictures and ooo-ed, and awww-ed respectively. And then there is Pat, who since I last left has chosen to die her hair a very horrible brown color and at first sight, I was tempted to tell her that I much rather preferred her beautiful silver-colored hair, as opposed to her present choice, but instead I say nothing and hug back. Some thoughts need to be spoken; others must be taken through the ringer before coming out of the huge hole in one's face. Otherwise, there probably would be very few people with friends here on planet earth.

Case in point: nurse Jenny saw me and didn't recognize me at first. So when it clicked in her head, "Yes, this is Neville. From last summer. You remember!" she gasped and blurted, "Oh my gosh! I saw you from behind and I thought you were an old man! What with your receding hair and all!"

She said it like it was Kalamazoo Gazette front page news. Like it was the given common sense we all really must recognize, and point out. She hugged me tight, laughing and giggling, and I have to admit, my gut reaction was to give her a noogie while trying to rip chunks of her own hair out of her head---you know, just so she could feel what it's like to have "receding hair." But then I thought, 'she's probably right.' After all, my hair...styled with gel and sticking straight up, and getting longer every new day, probably resembles a 42-year-old doctor's head more than my own 22-year-old one. And so, I keep hugging Jenny back, and I smile, and I think of how fun it is to be 22 years old and already losing your hair.

I guess I should've never made fun of all those Rogaine commercials I saw when I was young. God is surely getting back at me...in a very smart, and clever way. Oh well---that's life: God-1, Neville-0.

And yes, I AM keeping score!

Only seven more to go.

I already have three movies lined up to go on my top ten list of 2005, and while this may sound dorky and lame, I feel like a big burden has been removed from my life because of this. It's usually so stressful trying to dig through all the cream and the crap when it comes to narrowing down all the movies I've seen in one year, but this year seems to be looking up as it isn't even July yet (e.g., Most of the "good" movies don't come out till' summer or fall or around December 31st)!!

So here we go, if I had to make it up right now:

1. "Millions"
2. "Crash"
3. "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room"

I'm such a dork. Goodniggggghhhhhhhht.

Power, please.

I've been thinking about power a lot lately, and how so much of what we do everyday really comes back to our need for it. I don't like to think that I have this problem too, because really, it's much easier to look at the corporate criminals tied up in the Enron scandal and see them as the real power addicts. But essentially, that is to fall into what Madeleine L'Engle dubs judgmentalism and it is too crowded of a road to walk down already. Every time I feel the urge, the need, the must-ness to be right, I'm struggling with power. Every time I look at someone else, and envy and and envy and envy whatever it is they have that I don't, I'm struggling with power. And every time I let control lead, and allow certainty to continually pave my way, I'm giving in and buying into whatever lie power is marketing and advertising.

It is indeed everywhere we turn here in America. You don't have to look too long or too hard before you find it or see it. Power is what so many of our conversations are really about and it's sad to see and understand and comprehend how this very thing can rip the Church apart--and the world too, for that matter.

But still, life seems worth the risk. The risk of living for love is a "fearful gamble," (again, Madeleine L'Engle's phrase---not my own) but it is one I'm ready and willing and wanting to repeatedly make.

Come into my pole barn, please.

The garage sale / yard sale / pole barn sale signs are all over town today. I guess you know what that means: I'm not in California anymore.

Here's to frenzy Friday garage sales and much fun-in-the-Michigan-sun. And as Kelmo "Moselle" Blomgren would like to say...."Boo-yeah!"

The bread, the wine...the pretzels, and diet coke.

There's something about the Eucharist that transcends into all meal times I think---as long as people are open enough to sense it.

Tonight, after flying back from David and Kelly's wonderful wedding in Minneapolis, I had a two-hour plus conversation wtih Dot, a sixty-something-year-old Catholic who was exactly who I needed to talk with after these past few crazy weeks. It was the first real, amazing, transparent, affirming, Catholic / Protestant background dialogue I've ever had where it never turned into any sort of debate or argument. As we sat there, me in seat 16D and she in 16E, we said nothing until the breaking of the pretzels and the serving of diet coke. Up until then, we had both been reading or in our own little American Airline world...trying not to make contact with one another I think. But then, the food came and the pretzels were broken and the diet coke was served to both of us, and we couldn't hold back any longer. And God, I think, had something to do with all of this.

She shared with me about the rich tradition and meditative worship of the Catholic faith, and I shared with her my sunday school class Protestant upbringings, and told of how much I valued these memories today. She needed help with her parish in these ways, while I needed guidance in Protestant problems and it went on and on like that until our plane landed in California. We said our goodbyes, blessed one another and gave the kind of hug Jesus would be proud of, no doubt, and when our own little ways.

And after that wonderful moment, I thought again of how wonderful it is to be apart of something as radical and as breathtakingly beautiful as the Church of Christ. And I thought about the bond Dot and I shared---both spiritually and emotionally---and the common ground we walked on and talked on together. And I thought about the way we laughed at ourselves and joked about the silliness God must look down upon at us in---so often and so frequent. It was the perfect ending to two near-perfect weekends of two events where close friends were pulled together as one by God and by the Church.

I usually never say things like this, but I'm so looking forward to meeting Dot again--wherever and whenever that may be. If it won't be till' heaven, I'll be just fine with that.

And so, the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine proves to be more than just an act or sympbol or practice we meditate on when we remember Christ's sacrifice for us---for really, whenever there is a meal being shared by the people belonging to the open-wide-arm hold of God, and there is fellowship and food and laughter exchanged, there Christ is...affirmed and remembered in spirit, in act, and in action. And the world is really, as Bjork would say, "full of Love"---again.

My paper from heaven!

I don't think I've ever had the freedom to write a paper this random.

I like when the professors are open to ideas and are not as strict as to where you decide to take your paper. For me, I wanted this one to be crazy---something no one had ever written about before---and so, I'm writing a missiological and theological discussion (written both informally and formally) about Lesslie Newbigin (the great India missionary / evanglelical / theologian), the Church and its relationship with the film industry, AND drawing from three films ("Amelie," "Pieces of April," and "Millions") as springboards for theological dialogue and discussions.

It's either going to be really cool or really bomb---I'll let you know how it goes once I'm done with it. Good night.

The Playboy Mansion

Yesterday for work, I had to run something to and pick something up from the Playboy mansion. Yes, that's right---I was actually there (not inside the mansion itself, but on the premises). I entered the gate, I saw the little white bunnies (yes, actual bunnies---not women) playing in the fenced-in dirt sections near the entrance and I realized that it really does take up half of a mountain off of the infamous Sunset blvd.

My mom and dad will be so proud, for sure.

After 7 years, Nate & Erica are one.

Nate and Erica Shorb. It's official. And it's done. And it was beautiful. And it was very, very good. And I think I just fell in love with Coopersburg all over again. And yes, I cried when "One April Day" by Stephen Merritt was played as Erica walked gracefully down the aisle. And yes, I suppose that makes me somewhat of a strange groomsmen. But I don't care. There was too much of an affirmation of love in the room to react any differently I think.

Some people make getting married easier. I know that marriage itself is not easy at all, but I do know that some people are blessed to enter into the union of marriage having already practiced quite beautifully what it means to be one. For Nate & Erica and their wedding this past weekend, I kept thinking about how I never thought of them as two and wondered whether or not that was why this wedding seemed so unique and special to me. Perhaps it has more to do with this being the first wedding I've attended where a very close friend was the groom---I don't know. Whatever it was though, somehow I'm not worried at all for Nate and Erica. I'm just anxious to see what God will bring into their lives and to see how much love they can keep giving away.

Some people are just better at being selfless I think.

I hope you know!

Contrary to what some people may think, the previous post regarding palm trees, too much sun and Tom & Yvonne Shorb was not in any way written with the intent of receiving something in return. I know Yvonne makes the meanest and yummiest cheesecake I've ever had (and believe me, I've had a lot---just look at my gut)...but my love for these two people is not because one of them makes delicious food; it is because they are truly two of those kind of people who you really need to meet and once you do, begin to fall in love with immediately.

So Yvonne especially, take that for what it is: a compliment and nothing more. I'm not expecting a cheesecake out of you this weekend (wow, that sounds a little strange now doesn't it) so if you try and pull a fast one and make one, rest assure you'll be wearing it before I'll be eating it.

Good night all...and good morning to the rest of you.

Burnt by the Sun

The title of this post is borrowed from a Russian film that won the Academy Award for best foreign language film a few years back, and although I never saw it, I always wanted to and liked the title of the film---despite its implied simplicity.

Yes, I was out in the sun yesterday for Memorial Day. Yes, I was out a little too long. I hate whenever I happen to want to go outside and read under the sun, and then get the suddenly immediate feeling of being really really tired. And then, time gets fuzzy...and I can't seem to remember if it's been two minutes or two hours since I last looked at the clock. Time is very weird sometimes. It must be its own entity or something because I swear sometimes, it's just playing me for the necessary fool that I am.

This weekend is Nate and soon-to-be Erica Shorb's wedding, and as I've told them already, I think I'm getting a little too excited for it. I'm a little worried what I might do at the reception, as it will be the first time in quite a long time that I've been around any Taylor people or my beloved Tom and Yvonne Shorb---two of those wonderful people that everyone in the world should meet at least once. And I think the fact that I'm taking a red eye flight from California to Pennsylvania makes it even more exciting. There's nothing more thrilling than going to sleep in one part of the world and waking up in another. Obviously, I realize this "change-of-worlds" is happening from within the U.S. borders, but still, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited about it. I know it may sound like America is the world as I know it, but believe me when I say that's not at all true.

The sun is out today and the palm trees are trying their best to look beautiful. I never knew this until I moved here, but there are many people---especially mid-westers and east-coasters---who find palm trees especially ugly. Why? I haven't the faintest idea. To me, they seem to be pretty cool and beautiful too. I can think of few sights more beautiful than the gazing up at the L.A. night sky, while driving on the 110 freeway...where the palm trees silhouette themselves into the dreamy, starry heavens. After experiencing several of those moments, I think maybe this is why God made palm trees so unusually tall and awkward. Because other than mountains, there's not a whole lot in creation brave enough to face the sun and the clouds and the stars so closely, and so beautifully.

So please, give palm trees a break. They may be no "maple" or "oak," but they're still pretty wonderful even if some people don't particularly care for them at all.

Loving people is hard; but loving Christians is harder.

It’s scary the way we Christians today view church and pastors similarly to the way we view Hollywood and celebrities. It is no longer God’s church, it’s man’s church. In Orange County, you’ll find Rick Warren’s church; in Minnesota, take your pick: Greg Boyd’s church if you like women in ministry, John Piper’s church if you don’t; in Chicago, there is Bill Hybel’s church—where most mid-west pastors sadly envy to one day be working at; in Virigina, there’s Jerry Falwell’s “homosexuals are taking over the world” church; and in L.A., there’s Erwin McManus’ church vs. John McArthur’s church—with its own big, phat McArthur Bible. And of course there are many, many others. Every book-writing evangelical Protestant pastor of a mainline church seems to be Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts for the shameful subculture of Christianity. But this can’t be right, can it? This can’t be what God had in mind.

I’ve been thinking so much lately about church unity, I feel my frustrations are running out of places to hide. Why do we keep splitting and starting new churches based on denominational differences? Why do we end the argument and discussion and conversation on such controversial matters as if to say, “well, we’re not going to agree so we might as well part, and go our own separate ways.”

No! Why not stay until we agree, or continue the conversation within the fellowship of the Body until we become continually edified through our attempt to be unified? Do we have so little faith in God’s power to seriously work through a church united, as opposed to a church divided?

Jesus said that a kingdom divided against itself will not stand, but fall. My question is simply this: how many churches in America today—separated from one another so much that unity even under the roof of one church is not even possible—are slowly falling? Or more appropriately, how many of them have already fallen? It seems somewhat silly when you think about it to just up and leave whenever disagreements come up in churches. After all, we’re human and fallible and differences come with the territory of being human. Likewise, it seems silly to leave the conversation or debate from within a Church community and say, “let’s just agree to disagree.” Why? Who told us this is a valid response? Who sold us such an easy-way-out? Because it certainly wasn’t Jesus!

Maybe I’m being too much of an idealist, but need I remind you that there are roughly 74,000 different Christian denominations present in the world today? Could this fact signify that maybe be this “let’s just agree to disagree” mentality is flawed? That maybe, to some degree, the really important issues worth arguing for should be wrestled with and through until unity becomes the selfless communal goal all members of the body of Christ are aiming for?

"Take the risk, and just jump!"

Sometimes this feels how most relationships seem to work.

Either you're keeping something from someone you're trying to get to know, or you're thinking about telling them but fear how they might respond in return. Every time I get in this pickle, I usually go through the same thoughts that inevitably lead me back to square one. And every time I happen to be daring and stick my neck out and just jump into the dangers of a loving relationship---and tell what I know I should tell, and be honest about what's been hiding behind closed doors---I am usually relieved, and the burden leaves my mind like a ship off to sea, far far away from the harbour.

I hope tomorrow I will jump when this time comes around.

Dating 101

Yesterday, I had a beautiful conversation / discussion with Greg, a friend from Taylor I work with, about L.A. and dating. We were talking about how so far off the "norm" is here when it comes to what's acceptable or expected if you're dating someone, and got kind of depressed about the whole thing. Sure, I love my generation but I wonder how much its hurt us to not have a steady, positive, consistent, dependent and altogether loving model on which to build our own romantic relationships on. I'm talking of course about the rampant divorce rate that's skyrocketed in the past 50 years or so, as one afternoon of listening to Dr. Laura can tell you no doubt. You'll hear kids---of parents who are divorced---calling in to try and make things right...trying to mend the wounds and broken bonds their parents have inadverently created within their own family, and it's just really sad.

I know this sounds like I'm a fundalit (Madeleine L'Engle's word creation of a "fundamentalist" and a "literalist") but it seems that the norm in today's society is not something I'd be too happy to always cling on to. Greg and I talked of how we don't think we'd want to be classified as being on the same lines as most people in L.A. when it comes to dating, partially because relationships are usually seen as "the end all answer to solve all of my problems." But as Greg paraphrased so aptly, from that lost-long-Disney-feel-good-heart-tugger "Cool Runnings," "If you're not good enough without this person, you'll never be good enough with this person." I guess he was basically saying that there are some places where only God to go, and I guess for the most part, I'd agree.

The problem comes when you become a "fundalit"---and you start naming where God should and shouldn't go, or where God should or shouldn't be---and that is a sad day, indeed. We Christians talk too much about what God isn't and project too often what God is only as seen through our own eyes. I realize that this is somewhat inevitable---when talking about the infinite, the finite explanation is as far as you'll get---but it still bothers me (even though I'm guilty of this too). I just wonder if it's even possible today to talk about God purely, without limiting Him or Her to a gender, or angry judge, or timid lover, or passive referee on the sidelines?

Time for Time

Before the plethora of summer movie crap hits theaters, do yourself a favor and see the movie "Millions" if you can. If that's not possible, it comes out in July on DVD I believe, so you better watch it then or else. It's definitely one of the most beautiful---looking and sounding---movies I've seen in months, and asks the kind of smart questions few movies nowadays do.

In the movie "Dogma," the title character Bethany who works in an abortion clinic is asked to do the unthinkable: be the driving force, and the person to accomplish and carry out God's work on earth. It is not unlike Mary's own calling to be the mother of Jesus, as I'm sure Mary encountered her own fare share of first century equivilents (like in "Dogma" with the scary teenagers skating around viciously with hockey sticks in hand trying to keep Bethany from completing her calling). But if Mary wouldn't have had the courage and bravery and loyalty and patience and ability to say "yes!" then this world may still be waiting for the Messiah to come.

Sometimes I wonder if all of us get a call from God to do something brilliant and great and history-shaping-and-changing, and that the number of people who truly respond is just so small it's hard to see God working in the world because of ourselves. Instead of God being the problem, maybe we are. Maybe we settle for the main road rather than running toward the seemingly inconceivable and ridiculous path because we are too short-sighted to see and know any better? We think of time as being oppressive but I'm not really sure that it is. And maybe that's where a fundamental flaw in our thinking lies: because we age and grow old and change with the seasons, we think we're running out of time but really we're only spreading ourselves out deeper and wider into it. It's hard to not think in terms of life and death, but I think getting this idea down is one way to begin to think right about our world and our path in this crazy thing we call "life."

Congrats to all 2005 Taylor University grads...

Yes, today is the day you've been waiting for and now it's so gone already. Four years working toward this moment and how does it feel? Anti-climactic, perhaps?

Whatever bittersweet emotions come about, know that this moment only reinforces what so many movies---Kill Bill, Cast Away, A Very Long Engagement, About Schmidt, and many more---have been telling us all along: the gem of it all is found not in the arrival but in the process. It's the pursuit of wholeness, or rather, the wholeness of pursuit that is, perhaps, the bigger, better thing.

Good day, all. Kiss the Taylor grass for me in front of Morris if you can before you head out. You'll be glad you did.

Spontaneous Combustion and the 2005 Taylor grads

We all need to do something unplanned every once in a while and today, I was feeling I needed to do that very much. Amidst a load of papers due and books for class to read, I felt the urge to do something that would normally take planning and run with it to make it happen. Sadly, I was the only one up for such a thing, and so, my spontaneous thoughts were flushed down the toilet.

In light of the soon-to-be-graduates of Taylor University, I just wanted to congratulate all of you---especially the ones I really like---on accomplishing four years of education in so little time. And I also wanted to remind you that from here on out, it will be an ongoing battle of learning to live strictly by the book and by the planner, OR choosing to live with purpose and meaning and spontaneous fervor and a willingness at any moment to drop every-thing in life you own and possess, and immediatly run, run, run into the horizon of endless dreams and sunsets; into the place of irrational baby giggles; and into a world where you live for love, and people, and not for schedules or money.

I hope none of you choose the latter of those two. Good day and congrats.

Go Bo Go!

Oh, and I hope the final A.I. round comes down to "The Vonz" and Bo. But after tonight's show, I can't say I'd like to have anyone but Bo win. I'm sorry but he's the only one out of the three that I never felt nervous for while they were singing. That tells me to put my money where Bo goes, and so, I'm pretty much there. Go Bo Go!

Challenging the Fundamental Bunny

For someone who's as careful about what they say as I am, it's no small feat to come out and question the general political stance of my beloved Christian brothers and sisters. Asking "But Why?" may sound simple, but for me, it's not. It's much easier for me to rage and complain and object and scoff on the inside---because I always win the argument when I do that---than it is for me to tell a person what I'm really thinking or wondering at the moment.

And so, lately, I've tried to do just that, and can't tell you what a thrilling and freeing feeling it is. I hope I can keep this up because I'm really starting to like doing this.

(And sorry for beating around the bush---as this post doesn't really delve into "what" exactly I did do---but I'm taking my cue from "Mean Girls" right now and trying not to talk about people behind their backs. But wow, it's much harder than I thought it would be.)

Come to Me

Every now and then, I come to the Bible and see it as alive again. I know it always is alive theologically speaking but most of the time, I don't think I really believe that. If I did, I would be reading it much more often than I actually do. That's not to say I should beat myself up for not reading it enough---because that would turn into being legalistic---but it is something when you realize again the very power and love that once drew you to God in the first place, is still well and active and living and moving.

When I read Jesus' words, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest," I can't think of a better way to sum up the entire empty space of ultimate need that all of us feel eventually in life. The kind of need that cries out "I'm tired...I'm fed up....I'm sick of trying to do things my way...I'm sick of trying to always be right...I'm tired of always trying to look presentable...I'm at the end of my rope, and I need help, please!" Everyone has these feelings and although I don't think I was necessarily feeling any of those things last night when I read this verse for the first time in a very long time, it did still give me comfort and hope and was the very words I needed to hear at that moment.

Madeleine L'Engle once wrote, "Our faith is a faith of vulnerability and hope, not a faith of suspicion and hate." I think my big goal in life right now is trying to make that a reality. Choosing the words that will build up, instead of the ones that would tear down. Looking for ways to find joy and peace and ways to bring people together, instead of living and breathing in the self-righteous and self-centered pompous air of judgmentalism. God is God over all creation, and His love stretches from and to "all corners of the cosmos." I just think I tend to forget that every morning I wake up. I keep forgetting and God---don't ask me why---keeps reminding me and loving me, despite this. I wonder if there will ever come a day when I remember all day this simple truth: that God loves me, this I know, for the Bible, tells me so.

How likely? Very likely.

In response to the comment on my previous post:

"Yes, I would like to think that should such a horrible thing happen, I would move heaven and hell and re-arrange whatever pieces in what I usually call my life to take care of this kid---despite how irrational and illogical it sounds---because I guess in the long run, making sure this kid grows up to know he had two parents that loved him very much is (I think) more important to me than dallying along with my so-called life-plans."

It seems silly to try to speak definitively on the matter (because really, it is in the end one of those decisions that must be made again when and if it comes to your world, face-to-face, in the heat of the moment). I'd like to think that reflects what my friend Dave means to me---doesn't laying down one's whole life for a friend also constitute laying down a very much alive life too?---but maybe I'm just being wishful. Either way you look at it, what I said I meant and so, that's all I really can say at the present moment in time. Sometimes the best decisions in one's life are the ones he never makes because they sound so absurd, so hard, so illogical and so totally selfless. To me, this sounds like one of those decisions; so how could I say "No!"???

All is full of Love

Bjork was so right, even though so many times love doesn't seem to be anywhere around us.

My freshman year Fall semester roommate Dave Hoe called me up yesterday and as soon as I saw his name light up my cell phone display, I thought I was about to hear the good news: the baby had been born!!!

But the baby had not been born, although the due date is tomorrow. Two previous trips to the hospital were false alarms, and so, little Elliot Fox (yes, they already named him) still sits, hangs, grips, and kicks inside of Lindsay and waits for his time to come. Waiting to enter the world is a pretty big deal; I wonder if he knows what he's getting himself into? Not that he really had a choice I guess.

After talking to Dave about how excited he was to become a father, I got sad and wished (or at least part of me did) that I was becoming a father soon too. And that's when he asked the question that stumped me:

"Neville, Lindsay and I would like you to be the baby's Godfather?"

I was stunned, and couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

"Are you serious or is this a joke?" I asked.

"No, I'm serious."

"Well, what would that entail?" (dumb question, I know---but hey, I'm not Catholic even though I wish I was, and so give me a break)

"Well, should anything happen to Lindsay and me, we'd want you to raise Elliot."

"Oh, absolutely!" I said. And that's how it happened. I became a Godfather for the very first time, and I was thrilled. I didn't think about it; I didn't project and prophesize into the future and think hard on what that would look like for me or what I so-call-my life; I just said 'yes!' It was the first un-selfconscious decision I've made in quite a long time, and it's one that reminded me again of God's love for us all and how he gets us all to love each other and care for each other and help one another, despite ourselves.

And so, I sit here on a Sunday night, quiet for the first time in days, and think of the joy-peace that only Love can bring. It is sobering and depressing and uplifting and more beautiful than the sixteen mountain tops I see driving into work every other day. It confirms the fact, or more importantly...truth, that all is full of Love and there is no ounce or inch of creation that God does not hold to be his own.

Wipe Your Feet At The Door

It's been an ongoing discussion for centuries: how do you open up the church doors---both literally and figuratively---to the world it so often blasts and condemns?

When a prostitute comes into church, in need of guidance and community and love and friendship, what do we do?

"Oh yes, we can help! God can help!"

And for the next few months, the prostitute obstains from prostitution. But then, she slips back--she goes back to her old ways on Saturday and returns to church on Sunday. Intervention, please!!!

"I'm sorry Mary, but if you're going to prostitute you can't be apart of the church." And so, Mary is shamed and looked down upon and thus, leaves thinking she is an outcast for good.

My question is this: how is Mary's problem different from the entire Church's wrestling with sin? Do I get asked not to come when I've slipped back into habitual sin, or addictive behaviour?

This situation happened recently at a friend of mine's church and I was so distraught over what I heard. "They did what???" Yes, they told her she wasn't able to participate in the "benefits and blessings" of the Church if she kept on sinning. This is not helping people think that our doors are open to everyone. I wonder what would happen if God would've asked this church member who asked the prostitute this, "Have YOU given up your life of sin? Totally, and completely?"

The same thing goes with the whole homosexuality controversy, and the belief that people must change first before they are welcome (or at least, admit they are struggling and detest what it is they seem to be caught in). I'm not really sure what The Church is trying to protect? I understand the importance and value of character, integrity, and reputation, but there's a difference between the Church's reputation and what the Church often projects as its reputation. Quite possibly the biggest reason why people are turned off from Christianity is hypocrisy; yet, haven't we---as the Church---created this problem? Instead of saying we are weak, and poor in spirit, and tired, and confused and in need of redemption, we say to the world: "We have answers! We have THE solution! We can make you into a better person! We can make you acquire blessings! We are almost perfect! We are for what's "right," not what's "wrong!" We are against abortion! We are FOR life! We are FOR war! We are way better than you, but if you come inside you might be able to be as good as us!"

Sure, I'm taking some things to an extreme but this seems to be it. We offer ourselves as models instead of God, and in the process, the world looks at us and laughs.

I know we're in a paradigm shift. I know this is radical and hard to articulate and hard to really work and live out in the way church is done, but we've got to do it: we need to stop asking people to wipe their feet at the doors of our sanctuaries, and start letting the carpet and pews and each other get a little messy.

Back to Life

It's funny and unsettling the way certain things in life become tainted. For instance, with all the recent L.A. freeway shootings I find myself (especially at night) not driving side-by-side by any car for too long. I'll either slam on the brakes or change lanes immediately just out of fear that I might get shot.

And then there's that little thing where I look at the time--as I did this morning--and see that it's 9:11. In an instant, I remember again and think for a second about it--and then I go back to life. Or at least, the thing that I so-call life. Maybe seeing 9:11 on my cell phone clock and fearing for my life on the L.A. freeways is more Life than I'd like to think.

Whatever it is, it's definitely more than a feeling.

World On Fire

I know back in high school I never cared for Sarah McLachlan but now, I think I might be having a change of heart.

When I saw her music video this past week in class for her luminous song "World On Fire", I was taken aback: this is not the Sarah McLachlan I remember.

And so, Sarah has been playing a lot in my car lately and that, so far, has been a pretty wonderful thing. But really, you should check out the video and see for yourself. After my professor showed it to our film class, every pastor in the room wanted to know "who is this singer" and "what's the name of this song again" because they wanted to show it in a church service I think. Yes, it really is that good...even though at first, I thought it was going to be "just another world outry for help." It's not. By the end, the music and images from around the world get to you---another reason for it being a pretty wonderful thing.

Bye, Bye Constantine

I just watched American Idol from tonight and my jaw literally dropped and hung open for a good 15 seconds. Although, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy Constantine is gone (I'm sorry ladies and girls and guys who thought he was cool but I couldn't stand the guy).

But the real question is this: why does America have such an obsession with a blonde guy from the Ukraine named Anthony who sings Celine Dion songs as-flat-as-can-be AND an ex-woman abuser named Scott who seems to sing even worse than the previous week, every time, every new week, guaranteed!??? Is it because, like my co-worker pointed out, we want the normal, average one to win out?

Wake up America! Let's stop voting for the ones that suck just to be funny. This is serious! This is a not a joke. This is not some insignificant childhood talent contest. This is American Idol!

Madeleine L'Engle has a new book!!!

I know I can't buy it right now because I'm trying to save some money, but you can bet your pretty socks and old school shirt I'll be buying "The Ordering of Love" by Madeleine L'Engle (published this past March) as soon as I can.

Maybe I'll have to wait 'till summer, but I'll get it.

The Warrior vs. The Gardener

The other day in class I heard a wonderful suggestion from one of my classmates (who was quoting some famous other I think): instead of Christians thinking of themselves as warriors, a better example would be to think of themselves as gardeners. Now, at first I thought "that probably isn't very attractive to too many people," but the young man went on.

Gardeners know when to be patient and went to prune. Gardeners know when you've had enough food and water, and know when you're all dried up and in need of some life. A good gardener removes the weeds that could potentially choke the plant. And most importantly, they don't treat a 10 year old plant the way they treat a 10 month old one.

I like thinking of Christians as being gardeners rather than warriors. Having worked at a greenhouse all throughout high school, it seems like it takes much more dedication to be a gardener Christian than it does being a warrior Christian. Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not undermining the whole warrior mentality---I'm just trying to point out that perhaps being warrior-ready may not be the kind of person were supposed to be. After all, what happens when you've been a warrior-Christian your whole life, only to realize your biggest roadblock in living and sharing the gospel out was the way you were to others and the way you were to yourself? Each person, each Christian is different. And we'd be silly to think that one "method" or "approach" would work for everyone.

A Wrinkle in the Rye

Imagination is a pretty wonderful thing.

This afternoon, as I was enjoying a beautifully breezy walk down 18th street, I started thinking about some really good books and specifically, the really good characters from these really good books. Still, undoubtedly one of the greatest adolescent characters in all of literature is probably Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." But what about a female counterpart? Although my reading in literature is relatively narrow, I think Meg Murry from the "A Wrinkle In Time" book series is a lovely choice to counter Holden's cynical, sarcastic and dry-tempered dispositioin. So good in fact, I got to thinking how they might even get along (should they ever find their way out of their own pages and into the other person's world). Holden and Meg, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G...etc, etc. Holden would hate that I'm saying this about him and so would Meg for that matter. Which is why maybe, things would work out between the two of them. I imagine a first date at the most expensive hotel bar/restaurant in NYC, with Meg being their right on time and Holden coming 10-15 minutes, casually late. The conversation goes something like this.

HOLDEN: Sorry, I'm late. I like your glasses (he's lying of course).
MEG: That's OK. Thank you!
HOLDEN: You want something to drink? I'm having a Coke. With a little rum of course. What'll you have?
MEG: That sounds good. I've never tasted Rum before. Mrs. Whatsit likes it though.
HOLDEN: You like to dance (he pulls out a cigarette)?
MEG: Um, yeah. But I've only danced before with Charles Wallace.
HOLDEN: Who?
MEG: Charles Wallace. He's my younger brother.
HOLDEN: Well, will it kill you to dance with someone other than your brother?
MEG: Hey! Don't make fun of me!
HOLDEN: I wasn't.
MEG: Yes you were. You're just like the kids at school, aren't you? Just another one of THEM!
HOLDEN: You know something? You make a guy wanna be way the hell away from you.
MEG: You're pathetic. I thought you were one of the smarter boys at school.
HOLDEN: I'm way the hell smarter than you are.
MEG: I don't have time for this.
HOLDEN: No kidding. This kills me.
MEG: What does?
HOLDEN: Nothing.

Okay, so maybe things wouldn't work out after all. It sounded good at first.

Dogma Saved Dogville!

Essentially, these three movies on grace (and faith) came to mind yesterday, as I thought about the infamous 4/20, and the Columbine shootings from 1999. Also in 1999, "Dogma" came to us, with its Catholic Kevin Smith spinning the Buddy Jesus and a foul-mouthed cast onto the screen. Oh, and Alanis Morisette as God...yes, grace exists indeed. Then there's "Saved!", the 2004 faith-comedy that gets better and better on repeated viewings. However, there may be no need for a repeated viewing of "Dogville" necessary, seeing how it's three hours of how a woman named Grace is constantly abused, used, manipulated, and taken for granted throughout. All three of these movies are about grace, and much more; and like grace, it isn't always pleasant to see the way humans respond to this undeserved gift.

I know many people probably hated one or more of these movies, but I'm getting to the point where it's okay to recommend something if you feel something is worthy to be seen there, even if others don't necessarily agree.

Happy Thursday. Remember grace.

What Are You Looking For?

Okay, I've been compiling and mentally noting "great, stand-alone" chapters from books I've read over the past few years and one keeps coming up again and again. So, instead of waiting for me to publish my illegal book which would include all these random chapters, why don't you just go to Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com or go to someone who already has it, and read this chapter for yourself.

The book is called, "A Stone for a Pillow", by Madeleine L'Engle and it is the second book in her "Genesis Trilogy". The chapter I'm referring to is called "What Are You Looking For" I believe.

Here's ways to get the book: for Taylor folks, Nate Shorb has it; for Fuller folks, I have it; for Michigan folks and everyone else, well...you might just have to buy it.

L.A. Beauty on a Saturday Night

Most people see L.A. as some big, disturbed, and God-awful place. Some people see this also, but choose to see the diamonds in the rough amidst all the smog and 7th-grade-work ethics and the force that is the film industry. Last Saturday, I saw more of the first and tried my best to see the latter---but it wasn't easy.

The whole concept of bars and dance clubs and bars within dance clubs seems to mirror most of what's wrong with human existence. Occasionally, you'll go to a place like "A Clockwork Orange" on Hollywood Blvd., and believe there is still hope for the world of dance clubs after all. But most of the time, should you be such a person to visit these places even on occasion, you will see hundreds and hundreds of people trying their best to connect with someone. At the club I visited with some friends Saturday night, I had never seen such an overtly "I want you, do you want me?" atmosphere. It was in 99% of people's eyes and half the time I was freaked out by it, while the other half I couldn't help but giggle at the entire ridiculousness of it. But it should be noted that generally, Christians and the Church don't pay close enough attention to what's going on at these places and that, in some sense, is unfortunate. As I looked across the room last Saturday night, with nearly everyone holding at least one drink (some people had two--one in each hand) and with nearly everyone making wicked glances and lame passes throughout the crowd, I couldn't help but think of how relevant Jesus' whole emphasis on sharing wine and sharing bread in community really was. Here, we have a community of people made up of individual people trying to connect to other individual people for one night, and perhaps two at best. So, if and when they "hook up" with some perfect stranger, they experience a small taste of this promise of Christ; they experience how it feels to temporarily fill this human need that craves intimacy with others. For one night, they are no longer alone, no longer lost in the sea of L.A. faces. They believe they matter and believe they are now valued, and in some sense, they believe someone is loving and approving of the real them.

Now, I'm not trying to sound humble or anything, but at that moment on Saturday night---when all of this came flooding into my head---I actually felt grateful NOT to be one of the more attractve people in the room (possibly for the first time in my life). I actually was content with being OK looking physically because frankly, it seemed like all the really attractive people just had too many people wanting their attention and no one who really wanted them for anything more than how they looked under the dim, trancy lights. And I thought of how most of the time, we think the most beautiful people have the luckiest role in the world, and of how we all gawk over magazine covers and sexiest-person-of-the-year stories as if that's all that mattered. But really, I don't know if I'd want to be them---not even for a Saturday night. I have a hard enough time letting people love the whole me. I can't imagine what it must be like to have this distractingly beautiful physical self that would prevent people from ever wanting to even get to know the real me. This is why I think it must be hard to be so pretty.

So to all those people I saw on Saturday night---now safely at home in their own world of thoughts and inhibitions and fears and frustrations---I think maybe, it's not so bad just being me. I have enough problems to sort out in me without wishing I was somebody I'm not.

Over the Hill Hour

For those of you who read this blog in hopes of seeing how I'm really doing...I am sorry. As I look back over the last few weeks especially, I feel my blog is turning into sad happenings and depressing thoughts even though this doesn't really communicate how I am completely. Does that make sense? I guess I'm just picturing a friend's mother reading it and going, "oh dear! what's wrong with neville now?!?" I assure you that for the past few weeks life here has been fairly wonderful. Do you ever get into those moods where you know you're enjoying life and you know you're experiencing it and you know you're not in one of those funk moods of dismal depression? Well, that's how I feel right now and although I can empathize with those who don't feel like this right now, I'm rejoicing in the small fact that I am--genuinely and almost quite literally--happy.

Having said that, I pulled my first official all-nighter last night since I came to Fuller last Fall but let me tell you..it wasn't one of those happy college all-nighters where you pull an all-nighter by talking to friends about life, life, and life until the wee hours of the morning. No, this was me and a computer and Mr. John Wesley. I was trying to write out his doctrine of salvation and once 5:44 a.m. rolled around, I could quietly exhale and rest in the thought that I was done. The sun was just about to rise and I thought, "I can pretend I am just waking up! That's it!" So I did. And I brushed my teeth. And I took a shower. And I yawned and squinted into the bathroom mirror as if I wish I could go back to sleeping (even though I didn't even get to sleep) and for the first hour or so, I think I had more energy this morning than I have in the past 5 mornings combined.

And now, my 40th hour of being awake has just come as I feel like I've lived very very very much this past day and a half. I feel like I've done so much and yet, time is still inching along. Maybe that's why we need sleep. Because if we didn't have it, we'd all go crazy because none of us would ever say again, "time flies when you're having fun," because time, to us, would never be flying---it'd be dragging.

Bon soir mes aimees.

It's just a game.

I turned on the TV for 5 minutes today while I was grabbing a quick bite to eat in the middle of writing this very tiring paper on John Wesley's doctrine of salvation, and of course the headline news story at noon was very disturbing.

Apparently, a 13-year-old kid from Palmdale, California was killed last night by another 13-year-old because he was being teased about losing a baseball game. The angry boy couldn't take the post-game teasing anymore, and so, picked up a bat, swung it to the boys side, then to his neck and then to his head. One of the coaches saw and said, "When I heard and saw the blow to the head, I knew the boy was going to die."

And so, this shocking news brings me out of justification talk and sanctification talk and most other post-reformation theological terms that seem to be flooding around in the brain at the moment and I wonder how this boy's parents must feel today. Last night, there son was playing baseball. And yet, before he has time to walk out of the park, he is dead.

Is this what it looks like when we abuse the will and are blind to grace?

Picking up the Pieces

I go back and forth on my own free will. Some days I believe life is what I do with it; other days I believe life is what happens to me. But either way life seems to take me or I seem to take it, I try to remember we all are not yet whole; not quite fully human.

Virginia Woolf once wrote, "Arrange whatever pieces come your way." I wonder how many pieces come my way that I don't see. Or I wonder how many pieces come that I don't recognize as pieces, and how I see them only as obstacles that lie in my way. I know I'm the type of person to play it safe, and I know I tend to think of my movie friends and my real-life friends as sort of guideposts to better living (did I just say that?)...but really, as I listened in church today I was struck by the amazing amount of ways a person can screw up their life. I wonder if God really thought this through good and hard or if it was one of those spur of the moment decisions like going to Taco Bell to eat or running to Wal-Mart for deodorant. I know God is God and God is grace and love and so much more than I can even put into words, but you have to wonder.

I used to see God as angry judge, righteous fire-thrower, and eye-squinting-crazed dictator, but I don't think a God who gave us so many ways to screw up our lives could be THAT angry of a God. A God like that could not have the patience and mercy necessary for such repeated tolerance. Constantly hearing prayers of lament and sorrow and pleas for forgiveness and then, only to hear the very same thing again 2 hours later from the same people. Multiply that a couple billion times and there you have it: God everywhere, taking in every complaint and every step toward self-centeredness that we humans take and holding them all on the tip of his thumb, staring at them tiredly no doubt saying to himself, "yeah...I guess I can forgive them again--they're worth it in the long run."

And Love, yet again, keeps going.

Time

Time seems to be a theme popping up in so much of my life right now.

Finally, after years of putting it off, I'm reading Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time," which is giving me even more reason to consider L'Engle my now official favorite author. Other dimensions such as space and time are dealt with in incredibly adventurous ways and remind me how time is so constraining and limiting for humans.

Last night, a group of Fuller students and I talked briefly about universal salvation and tossed around ideas of God bringing all creation back to himself eventually--in His time perhaps.

Today at work, a co-worker and I discussed the Catholic and Protestant traditions, and wondered together how much we owe to our faith tradition' ancestors, and how time--while people change through it--really seems to repeat the same thing and produce the same kind of problems again and again (which makes me think of Ecclesiastes, as I'm reminded there is a time for everything and that there is nothing new under the sun).

Tonight, my sister Blakeley called me to tell me she had talked to an old friend we grew up with back in South Carolina and then sent me some recent pictures of the guy...and I couldn't believe it. I've never experienced time really standing still, although I can imagine what it must feel like because after I saw that picture something clicked: it was the icing on the cake of coincidences, and I suddenly realized how fast time was moving and how all of us are affected by it.

The movie "Irreversible," which is arguably one of the most disturbing films I've ever seen, begins with a quote from some famous philosopher that reads, "time destroys all things." When I first read that after seeing the movie with my friend Tara, we debated later if we agreed with the statement. Essentially, I had trouble with the quote while Tara (the older and wiser of the two of us) saw much truth in it. I didn't like how it seemed to give "time" such power but Tara rightfully recognized the quote for what it was really saying to us all: that even though we try as hard as we can to go against it, and to un-destroy the effects of time, all our efforst are really pure folly and useless and ridiculous.

One of the reasons I admire the writer Madeleine L'Engle so much is that she seems to have one of the best perspectives on time I've yet to come across. She doesn't try to fight time, she just accepts it and let's time do its work while she does her's. It seems so simple of a thing but yet, laying in my bed tonight, thinking of all the events of the past day or so, I couldn't help but realize how bad I am at accepting time's work in my life. How rigid and resisting I am toward time and how more incomplete this makes me at the end of the day. And so I lay there tonight, with my hands folded over my chest and my eyes staring up at the light and fan whooshing around the dust in my room, and I was still---very still---for what felt like eternity. I did nothing but it felt like something terrifying because I was constantly thinking of that friend from South Carolina. I hardly blinked and just kept lying there---in one of those moments where you're totally aware and honestly physically petrafied, and so, your body seems like it's almost afraid to movie. I kept thinking about aging old and being 80 someday and sitting in the same position with the same feelings. And I thought, "it's never going to slow down, is it?---it's only going to go by faster and faster." And this made me (for the first real time perhaps) really fear the thought of growing old.

Now I think I may know what so many other people in the world are always complaining about.