Study break before I go insane with boredom.

Okay. I’ve been out of the blogging world awhile. It mostly comes from this new ability I’ve found to go to bed when I need to instead of blogging. It’s made my week a good deal better. I’ve been reading the same book all day. I read about 130ish pages out of what could be the most awful depiction of the war on Drugs in Colombia that I’ve ever read. It makes me tired….that and the sun. I sat out in it for a couple hours in my folding chair on the patio outside my room. I think that by tomorrow I ought to be more brown. Hurray for the hispanic genes! I still have a good 50-60 pages left to read and a response paper to write. I guess that means that I’m using sparknotes for my other textbook again…Note: This is only the 2nd time in college that I’ve used spark notes. Not so bad.

So. Last week was delightful. I took a midterm. I did very well. It was one of those times where it was as though I was reading from memory and writing it down. I guess history just stays in my head well. That’s good. Nothing spectacular to report as of the week. If there was, odds are good that I forgot it.

I had dinner with my friend Daniel Skiffington today. We shared a wonderful conversation on our way to buy teriyaki about US foreign policy and the role of Christians in the world. Essentially we came to the conclusion that people need to know that Jesus loves them and simultaneously need to experience that love. We can’t just say, “Jesus loves you.” andleave them to starve. People don’t eat bibles. As I said to my friend Josh Anwaythis weekend (who I will mention again later) “When Christ died, He didn’t solve world hunger. He reconciled man to God. At the same time though, He actively healed the sick and fed the hungry. It seems like God’s primary goal is what cannot be seen (a relationship with Him), but at the same time He cares about the things that can be seen. I think that I need to learn how to focus on the most important thing that cannot be seen and still care about the things that can.” Maybe the doing both is somehow interrelated…I guess it’d make sense that caring about other people flows out of a relationship with Jesus.

However, these days I wonder whether even that is a given. We’re all so nonchalant about violence that we let our kids play games like Call of Duty 4 in which the horror of the war in Iraq becomes an under-the-carpet reality through a video game. Can we teach our children to love others if we say it’s okay for them to kill video game terrorists? Don’t get me wrong. I like Halo. Aliens don’t have souls and aren’t real. It’s okay to kill them. On the other hand we cannot say that with people.

I watched the rundown again. Great film. You should see it. I also saw 27 Dresses. I regret that decision. Don’t watch it….or if you’re a girl…watch it. You’ll probably swoon or something along those lines while you watch the false love story of people who don’t exist. I came to a realization. Perhaps an obvious one, but still. Chick flicks are always a love story.  In the same way man movies are always about men being victorious over evil after they’ve killed it. Why? It would seem that at the heart of every woman there’s a girl who wants to be loved in an extravagant fashion. So much so that they pay to watch fictional characters experience it. Why do men desire to see evil destroyed in a victorious fashion?…That one’s harder. At least I think so. It’s harder to see these sorts of things from withing the project (as the saying goes). You figure it out.

I went to the Mennonite church today. It was great. The worship service leader (they seem to be informal about who leads) was this guy who was really awkwardly funny. It made me smile. He was very genuine. They made Ben Climer, Zach Brenneman, and I stay for their potluck lunch afterwards. It was wonderful. We actually got to talk to people at a church service…and sing hymns that had meaning. High five to the mennonites. There was a kids story during the service called “The kissing hand”. When the title was read one of the little boys who was about to listen made a loud noise of disgust. We all laughed….because kissing is gross. He’s right. We could all get cooties.

After we got back to school Ben, Zach, andI drove around the ashton parking lot until “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” was over. Journey is amazing. We sang along and I felt like the happiest jackass in the world singing Steve Perry in the goofiest falsetto possible. Those boys are amazing. I am blessed to have them as friends. We went and got juice in Gwinn afterwards. Juice is great!

I talked to my friend Josh Anway(see I told you I’d mention him again) this weekend and we went out to Top something doughnuts on queen anne and had one of the best conversations I have had in a long time. He made this connection that “everyone lives by faith” it was aggravatingly accurate. His point was that you have no way of proving whether or not other people or things like saucers actually exist. You can touch them, see them, and experience them…but at the end of the day you have the opportunity to disbelieve in their existence. You could claim that everything is in your imagination. You have to have faith that the coffee cup is real…because it might not be. Now, at some level I think this is intellectual silliness. The coffee cup exists. Still though, I can’t prove it to you. At the same time how does this make our reality any more real than our imagination?…Oh my. I’ll stop now. I don’t want to finish this chain of reasoning. I’ll just get irritated. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) that Josh Anway is a thinker.

I came to another realization today. I love it when you ask God questions before you go to bed and you know the answers when you wake up. I’ll cut out the question I asked to spare myself embarrassment on the Internet, but this morning I awoke realizing that just because there are lots of attractive girls here at school doesn’t mean that I have to date them. I can just be their friend. If something else comes out of that then I guess I’ll go from there. I know it makes me sound absurd. But hey, I’m not perfect. Remember, about a month ago I realized that in baseball the point is to swing at the ball and not just swing for the heck of it. Sometimes you don’t get the obvious until you ask or someone tells you…or in this case…both.

Last thing and then it’s back to finishing the evil that is my reading. I got flashed today. Yes. It’s true. Daniel Skiffington and I were on our way back to his house with teriyaki to go and passed a bit of a party. There were people with red cups on the lawn of a house and a woman shouted something somewhat unintelligibly at us. We looked over in response to the yelling and then in a very girls-gone-wild-esque manner she bore her right breast to us……………………Ummm…Yep. I saw a boobie. It was a large one….I gave her some sort of wave as though to acknowledge that “Yes ma’am. I see your exposed mammary gland.”

Skiffy and I looked at each other in semi-shocked surprise.It was indeed an awkward moment. That the first time either of us had seen a real live female breast (apart from when we were babies I’m sure)…and we experienced it together. No high fives were given. I do not live in a world that is sculpted by American Pie thank you very much. Well…Thought I’d share that with you….Goodbye now.