The world is a fun and exciting place today!
The center of our galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/21/space-raspberries-amino-acids-astrobiology
A giant star screws up stellar evolution theories: http://www.physorg.com/news198924098.html And here's some background on Eddington luminosity/ the Eddington limit, if you're interested: http://www.sciencebits.com/SurpassingEddington
The universe: a device contrived for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers. -Arthur C. Clarke
Also!!!!! A Very Potter Sequel premieres tonight!!!! Too bad my first planetarium show in front of real people who I didn't invite and who aren't predisposed to like me is tonight. You win some, you loose some. If you want to watch it for me: http://www.teamstarkid.com/2010/07/tonight-is-the-night/. And if you haven't seen the original A Very Potter Musical, there's still time! http://www.youtube.com/user/starkidpotter?blend=1&ob=4#p/c/C76BE906C9D83A3A
Showing posts with label stars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stars. Show all posts
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Observations.
I'm not super coherent right now (it's summer and I still procrastinate until the night my paper is due to write it... tsk tsk) due to lack of sleep and a lot of time spent around children, LEGOs and stars so I figured I'd let you in on some of my observations over the past few days. Enjoy!
Love your life.
_____________________________________________
If the guy sitting across from me in B-ski's isn't dating or married to the lady he's with, he should be, with the way he looks at her. Good sir, you are in love, in case you hadn't noticed.
____________________________________________
The best sound in the world is the sound that kids make when the lights go down in the planetarium dome and the stars come up. Happy wonder and amazement. Favorite.
____________________________________________
There's an artificial ring around Earth... of satellites and space debris. We would be the planet with the trashy ring.
____________________________________________
Dear Boy, I have decided that this song describes our nonexistent relationship.
____________________________________________
Dear Future Boy, I have decided that It Ain't Over will describe our relationship.
____________________________________________
First public show tomorrow, first public show tomorrow, first public show- what do you mean, my laser pointer technique needs work? What am I supposed to do, sit around in the theater and practice drawing circles on the ceiling? And get paid for it? ... I love my life.
____________________________________________
Brown hair really stands out on white legs. I really have to shave.
____________________________________________
Tiberius- what an awesome name for a dog.
____________________________________________
The entire point of my story about my camper tackling me during Park Ranger is to point out the fact that children can be the sweetest things- the game stopped on the dime after I hit the dirt and several of my campers rushed to my side, picking up my water bottle and sunglasses and helping me up. Too bad I missed out on telling that part to my boss, who now thinks I'm complaining about being beat up by a 4th grader.
____________________________________________
I want God to be wasteful too.
____________________________________________
If one of your campers shares your boss's boss's last name, chances are you should check on that before he walks up with your boss's boss while you're trying to subdue a munchkin uprising over whether an octopus can really predict the outcome of the world cup.(I cheered for Spain the whole way. Now if only I had made bets on that, I wouldn't have to worry about my job security.)
____________________________________________
I never knew air could be so solid before. Should you have to feel like you're pushing and invisible wall as you walk outside? A solid, invisible, sweat-creating wall.
____________________________________________
My education class wasn't entirely useless- I was reminded of tricky situations that you should be aware of too: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/19/ncschools.resegregation.rally/
____________________________________________
I have never worked so hard to build a poorly functioning trebuchet than I did today, after my camper said, "This'll be my fifth failure this week!" No, young sir, you are not going to fail this time, even if I have to make an oddly shaped contraption out of your base and hold it in place as it swings wildly, almost nailing your fellow builder in the head with a tiny LEGO connector piece that I couldn't find later.
____________________________________________
You're talking to me! You're talking to me! You're talking to me! And... now you're gone.
____________________________________________
I desperately wish you'd never leave.
____________________________________________
I talk about raptors a lot.
____________________________________________
So do these guys.
____________________________________________
I compulsively sing along to songs I hear that I know.
____________________________________________
You know that the light that hits your eyes from stars is coming from an incredible distance- little photons that have fought the vast emptiness of space to reach you here. The least you can do is look up.
____________________________________________
Love your life.
_____________________________________________
If the guy sitting across from me in B-ski's isn't dating or married to the lady he's with, he should be, with the way he looks at her. Good sir, you are in love, in case you hadn't noticed.
____________________________________________
The best sound in the world is the sound that kids make when the lights go down in the planetarium dome and the stars come up. Happy wonder and amazement. Favorite.
____________________________________________
There's an artificial ring around Earth... of satellites and space debris. We would be the planet with the trashy ring.
____________________________________________
Dear Boy, I have decided that this song describes our nonexistent relationship.
____________________________________________
Dear Future Boy, I have decided that It Ain't Over will describe our relationship.
____________________________________________
First public show tomorrow, first public show tomorrow, first public show- what do you mean, my laser pointer technique needs work? What am I supposed to do, sit around in the theater and practice drawing circles on the ceiling? And get paid for it? ... I love my life.
____________________________________________
Brown hair really stands out on white legs. I really have to shave.
____________________________________________
Tiberius- what an awesome name for a dog.
____________________________________________
The entire point of my story about my camper tackling me during Park Ranger is to point out the fact that children can be the sweetest things- the game stopped on the dime after I hit the dirt and several of my campers rushed to my side, picking up my water bottle and sunglasses and helping me up. Too bad I missed out on telling that part to my boss, who now thinks I'm complaining about being beat up by a 4th grader.
____________________________________________
I want God to be wasteful too.
____________________________________________
If one of your campers shares your boss's boss's last name, chances are you should check on that before he walks up with your boss's boss while you're trying to subdue a munchkin uprising over whether an octopus can really predict the outcome of the world cup.(I cheered for Spain the whole way. Now if only I had made bets on that, I wouldn't have to worry about my job security.)
____________________________________________
I never knew air could be so solid before. Should you have to feel like you're pushing and invisible wall as you walk outside? A solid, invisible, sweat-creating wall.
____________________________________________
My education class wasn't entirely useless- I was reminded of tricky situations that you should be aware of too: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/19/ncschools.resegregation.rally/
____________________________________________
I have never worked so hard to build a poorly functioning trebuchet than I did today, after my camper said, "This'll be my fifth failure this week!" No, young sir, you are not going to fail this time, even if I have to make an oddly shaped contraption out of your base and hold it in place as it swings wildly, almost nailing your fellow builder in the head with a tiny LEGO connector piece that I couldn't find later.
____________________________________________
You're talking to me! You're talking to me! You're talking to me! And... now you're gone.
____________________________________________
I desperately wish you'd never leave.
____________________________________________
I talk about raptors a lot.
____________________________________________
So do these guys.
____________________________________________
I compulsively sing along to songs I hear that I know.
____________________________________________
You know that the light that hits your eyes from stars is coming from an incredible distance- little photons that have fought the vast emptiness of space to reach you here. The least you can do is look up.
____________________________________________
Monday, June 28, 2010
Tortilla Chip Castles in the Air
Galileo did not go blind from looking at the sun. Just thought you should know. Please ask me for extensive details about the actual causes of his loss of sight as I just spent an hour reading up on that. Because I'm awesome like that.
So I recently went to lunch at Pancho's with the wonderful Isaac-O and we had fun times. By the end of the meal we were attempting to build towers out of our chips (it's harder than it looks) but before then we were swapping stories about the little sweethearts that we get to deal with when we work with kids and talking about college and education classes and teachers and things like that. I'm not really sure where this came from, but at some point along the way, Isaac asked me if I had invented a time machine yet. I said I hadn't but I had learned a couple of reasons why you couldn't really invent a time machine. He said I invent a time machine and go back in time to tell myself not to be a physics major. I contended that if I went back in time to tell myself not to be a physics major and I listened to myself, I would never invent a time machine and therefore never be able to go back in time and tell myself not to be a physics major. This is the compromise story we came up with (with some embellishment). Imagine that music that always introduces a daydream or a back flash playing as the scene fades in a ripple from a booth at a Mexcian restaurant to the blue rectangular practice rooms of the South Caldwell band room.
High school Addie Jo and Isaac are shooting the breeze at some convenient break time. "So, Jaddie-o," Isaac says, "What do you plan to do with the rest of your life?"
"Well, Isaac-O, I intend to study astrophysics because it's just so much fun to say," Addie Jo replies with a laugh. Suddenly the scrap pieces of music and drill charts swirl around in an inexplicable and instantaneous tornado. Dramatic music based around the sound of magical wind swells and then drops off as the papers settle back to the ground, calmed by the arrival of two figures from a different place, if not a different time.
"Who are you?" Addie Jo demands as the figures approach the two friends. Isaac lists the other questions he might have asked, such as "Why did an inexplicable and instantaneous tornado occur?" or "How did you get here?" or "Are they going to clean up the papers? 'Cause they're all over the place and the tornado was not my fault."
The shorter figure flung back the protective black hood and swiftly declared, "Don't be a physics major."
After a few moments of silence, which the high school students assumed were for dramatic effect, the second figure pulled back his hood and said, "I told you it would take more than that to convince yourself to change your life plans." He proceeded to shrug off the rest of the black robe, revealing a faded button-up plaid shirt over a t-shirt and jeans. Isaac admired the fact that future him still enjoyed wearing converses.
"Maybe I just didn't understand me," the first figure replied. She turned back to her past self and said, "Don't be a physics major. Find something else to do with your life. Just tell everyone that you wanted to be an astrophysicist. That way you can still say it all the time. Trust me, your life will be much easier." She pulled her long hair out of her robe before taking it off and folding it over her arm. Addie Jo noted with satisfaction that her future self got away with wearing flip-flops before she realized what was going on.
"Wait a hot second. You mean to tell me that you came back from the future to tell me change my life? How did you get here?" she demanded of her future self.
"My question exactly," said Isaac.
"She built a time machine-" Future Isaac started, but Future Addie Jo cut him off.
"Don't tell her that! Then she'll want to do it! I mean, think about it- if you told yourself that you made a time machine, why would you want to change anything? Your future self has to be pretty awesome, if I may so say myself." She paused to smirk. "Besides, I think we might be early," she added, looking intently at her past self. "We don't have the same face."
Future Isaac contended that they did and that he was right. After a quick discussion, the story came out. After a discussion at lunch one day, Isaac had stated that Addie Jo should build a time machine in order to convince her past self not to be a physics major, since it had added unnecessary stress into her life. Since actors are better at conveying confident scientific information than scientists are, Addie Jo had believed him that such a thing could be accomplished and set out build a time machine, a task that she achieved in a remarkably short period of time, given the current financial crisis in the sciences and the lack of research on the topic. They both recalled that at that first fateful discussion of time travel, Addie Jo had insisted that her past self would immediately change her mind if given the opportunity.
"Then why did you come, Future Isaac?" asked Isaac. Future Isaac shrugged. "To see what would happen."
"Listen, past self," Future Addie Jo began again, "You don't want to be a physics major. I know why you picked it and I know what you're thinking, but it's not going to turn out the way you want. You're just not suited to it and you're not going to want to work through it and all it will give you is pain and suffering."
"And a time machine," Addie Jo retorted.
"I didn't remember that you were that snarky," Future Isaac interjected.
"If I told you that someone else would invent the time machine and you just made a cheap copy of it, would you change your mind?" Future Addie Jo asked herself pleadingly. Addie Jo turned to Isaac. "Am I really that bad of a liar?" Isaac shrugged and tried to look innocent. "Yeah, I guess I am."
"Well, you know, it was a lot of work and I never got any credit for it. I mean, seriously, the flux capacitor by itself-"
"Flux capacitor? Really?"
"Listen, maybe you can tell yourself to be a little more creative with names. It'll be your idea if you don't change your mind now."
"Oh, well, by all means, if thinly veiled copyright infringement is my future, I have to change my mind." Addie Jo rolled her eyes.
"Gee, if self-depreciation is my past, maybe I should go back and change it, too. Oh wait, I can. Too bad you can't do anything about your future," Future Addie Jo practically snapped her fingers in her past self's face.
"Maybe I will," Addie Jo said.
"Good."
"Fine."
"Change your mind."
"I just might."
"No, seriously, change your mind. NASA shuts down your senior year of college and the graduate programs in astrophysics are some of the most competitive in the country. You'll live on chicken Ramen and peanut butter and jelly."
"Ah no! I hate the chicken kind!"
And with that fateful statement, Future Addie Jo started to fade from existence, swept away by the changing mind of a child. All the attention was turned to Future Isaac, who had confusingly in place.
"Why don't you disappear too? If I'm not going to build a time machine, you can't come back," Addie Jo said definitively.
"You must not have changed your mind all the way. See, look, you're fading in and out," Future Isaac replied. He and Isaac paused to watch as Future Addie Jo, hands on hips and glaring eyes, flickered in and out of existence while her past self changed her mind.
"But I built a time machine!" she said in protest. Finally, the flickering stopped.
"Oh, crap," said Future Isaac. "Quick, remind yourself that you need to charge your cell phone so you can go to Pancho's," he implored his past self.
"Charge your cell phone so you can go to Pancho's," Isaac reminded himself confusedly. Future Isaac laughed and then faded determinedly away.
"I don't even like Mexican food," Addie Jo said to Isaac as they stood up to start cleaning up the papers that had inexplicably flown around the room. "Apparently you don't like chicken Ramen either," Isaac commented. "It's just so salty," Addie Jo contended.
"So what are you going to do with your life now?" Isaac asked Addie Jo as they turned to leave the papers in a pile on their way out to the student parking lot.
"I dunno. I always wanted to be a photographer..." Engrossed in their conversation, the two friends headed out into the spring humidity, both failing to notice the photograph that fluttered down from an untraceable height. Their distraction was probably all for the best- no good discovering an iconic image fifteen years before it was taken.
So I recently went to lunch at Pancho's with the wonderful Isaac-O and we had fun times. By the end of the meal we were attempting to build towers out of our chips (it's harder than it looks) but before then we were swapping stories about the little sweethearts that we get to deal with when we work with kids and talking about college and education classes and teachers and things like that. I'm not really sure where this came from, but at some point along the way, Isaac asked me if I had invented a time machine yet. I said I hadn't but I had learned a couple of reasons why you couldn't really invent a time machine. He said I invent a time machine and go back in time to tell myself not to be a physics major. I contended that if I went back in time to tell myself not to be a physics major and I listened to myself, I would never invent a time machine and therefore never be able to go back in time and tell myself not to be a physics major. This is the compromise story we came up with (with some embellishment). Imagine that music that always introduces a daydream or a back flash playing as the scene fades in a ripple from a booth at a Mexcian restaurant to the blue rectangular practice rooms of the South Caldwell band room.
High school Addie Jo and Isaac are shooting the breeze at some convenient break time. "So, Jaddie-o," Isaac says, "What do you plan to do with the rest of your life?"
"Well, Isaac-O, I intend to study astrophysics because it's just so much fun to say," Addie Jo replies with a laugh. Suddenly the scrap pieces of music and drill charts swirl around in an inexplicable and instantaneous tornado. Dramatic music based around the sound of magical wind swells and then drops off as the papers settle back to the ground, calmed by the arrival of two figures from a different place, if not a different time.
"Who are you?" Addie Jo demands as the figures approach the two friends. Isaac lists the other questions he might have asked, such as "Why did an inexplicable and instantaneous tornado occur?" or "How did you get here?" or "Are they going to clean up the papers? 'Cause they're all over the place and the tornado was not my fault."
The shorter figure flung back the protective black hood and swiftly declared, "Don't be a physics major."
After a few moments of silence, which the high school students assumed were for dramatic effect, the second figure pulled back his hood and said, "I told you it would take more than that to convince yourself to change your life plans." He proceeded to shrug off the rest of the black robe, revealing a faded button-up plaid shirt over a t-shirt and jeans. Isaac admired the fact that future him still enjoyed wearing converses.
"Maybe I just didn't understand me," the first figure replied. She turned back to her past self and said, "Don't be a physics major. Find something else to do with your life. Just tell everyone that you wanted to be an astrophysicist. That way you can still say it all the time. Trust me, your life will be much easier." She pulled her long hair out of her robe before taking it off and folding it over her arm. Addie Jo noted with satisfaction that her future self got away with wearing flip-flops before she realized what was going on.
"Wait a hot second. You mean to tell me that you came back from the future to tell me change my life? How did you get here?" she demanded of her future self.
"My question exactly," said Isaac.
"She built a time machine-" Future Isaac started, but Future Addie Jo cut him off.
"Don't tell her that! Then she'll want to do it! I mean, think about it- if you told yourself that you made a time machine, why would you want to change anything? Your future self has to be pretty awesome, if I may so say myself." She paused to smirk. "Besides, I think we might be early," she added, looking intently at her past self. "We don't have the same face."
Future Isaac contended that they did and that he was right. After a quick discussion, the story came out. After a discussion at lunch one day, Isaac had stated that Addie Jo should build a time machine in order to convince her past self not to be a physics major, since it had added unnecessary stress into her life. Since actors are better at conveying confident scientific information than scientists are, Addie Jo had believed him that such a thing could be accomplished and set out build a time machine, a task that she achieved in a remarkably short period of time, given the current financial crisis in the sciences and the lack of research on the topic. They both recalled that at that first fateful discussion of time travel, Addie Jo had insisted that her past self would immediately change her mind if given the opportunity.
"Then why did you come, Future Isaac?" asked Isaac. Future Isaac shrugged. "To see what would happen."
"Listen, past self," Future Addie Jo began again, "You don't want to be a physics major. I know why you picked it and I know what you're thinking, but it's not going to turn out the way you want. You're just not suited to it and you're not going to want to work through it and all it will give you is pain and suffering."
"And a time machine," Addie Jo retorted.
"I didn't remember that you were that snarky," Future Isaac interjected.
"If I told you that someone else would invent the time machine and you just made a cheap copy of it, would you change your mind?" Future Addie Jo asked herself pleadingly. Addie Jo turned to Isaac. "Am I really that bad of a liar?" Isaac shrugged and tried to look innocent. "Yeah, I guess I am."
"Well, you know, it was a lot of work and I never got any credit for it. I mean, seriously, the flux capacitor by itself-"
"Flux capacitor? Really?"
"Listen, maybe you can tell yourself to be a little more creative with names. It'll be your idea if you don't change your mind now."
"Oh, well, by all means, if thinly veiled copyright infringement is my future, I have to change my mind." Addie Jo rolled her eyes.
"Gee, if self-depreciation is my past, maybe I should go back and change it, too. Oh wait, I can. Too bad you can't do anything about your future," Future Addie Jo practically snapped her fingers in her past self's face.
"Maybe I will," Addie Jo said.
"Good."
"Fine."
"Change your mind."
"I just might."
"No, seriously, change your mind. NASA shuts down your senior year of college and the graduate programs in astrophysics are some of the most competitive in the country. You'll live on chicken Ramen and peanut butter and jelly."
"Ah no! I hate the chicken kind!"
And with that fateful statement, Future Addie Jo started to fade from existence, swept away by the changing mind of a child. All the attention was turned to Future Isaac, who had confusingly in place.
"Why don't you disappear too? If I'm not going to build a time machine, you can't come back," Addie Jo said definitively.
"You must not have changed your mind all the way. See, look, you're fading in and out," Future Isaac replied. He and Isaac paused to watch as Future Addie Jo, hands on hips and glaring eyes, flickered in and out of existence while her past self changed her mind.
"But I built a time machine!" she said in protest. Finally, the flickering stopped.
"Oh, crap," said Future Isaac. "Quick, remind yourself that you need to charge your cell phone so you can go to Pancho's," he implored his past self.
"Charge your cell phone so you can go to Pancho's," Isaac reminded himself confusedly. Future Isaac laughed and then faded determinedly away.
"I don't even like Mexican food," Addie Jo said to Isaac as they stood up to start cleaning up the papers that had inexplicably flown around the room. "Apparently you don't like chicken Ramen either," Isaac commented. "It's just so salty," Addie Jo contended.
"So what are you going to do with your life now?" Isaac asked Addie Jo as they turned to leave the papers in a pile on their way out to the student parking lot.
"I dunno. I always wanted to be a photographer..." Engrossed in their conversation, the two friends headed out into the spring humidity, both failing to notice the photograph that fluttered down from an untraceable height. Their distraction was probably all for the best- no good discovering an iconic image fifteen years before it was taken.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Sparrows and Pennies
I have such wonderful people in my life and am so many kinds of happy, I'm not entirely sure I can think straight. So some random thoughts from me to you.
The soul is healed by being with children.- Fyodor Dostoevsky
_____________________________________________________
So there's this episode of Doctor Who with the new Doctor and he's trying to get Amy to decide whether she really wants to travel with him or whether she wants to be with Rory (which she really does, goodness knows why). They flip back and forth between these two different realities and she finally realizes that she wants to be where Rory is when he dies in one of the realities. I have decided that I need this for my life.
_____________________________________________________
I forgot what I was missing.
_____________________________________________________
Notre Dame de Paris. Mon Dieu.
Pour tous les hosannas et tous les alleluias
Mais celle que je prefere
Parmi toutes ces femmes de fer
Ce sont les trois Maries
Qui sont mes meilleures amies
Il y a la petite Marie
Pour les enfants qu'on met en terre
Il y a la grande Marie
Pour les marins qui partent en mer
Mais quand je sonne la grosse Marie
Pour les amants qui se marient
C'est pas que j'ai le cœur à rire
Je l'aurais plutôt à mourir
De les voir si joyeux
De les voir si heureux
Moi qu'aucune femme ne regardera jamais dans les yeux
De les voir convoler
De les voir s'envoler
Au milieu des étoiles sous la voûte des cieux
Toutes les cloches que je sonne
Kyrie Eleison
Hosanna alleluia dies irae dies illa
Toutes ces cloches de malheur
Toutes ces cloches de bonheur
Toutes ces cloches qui n'ont jamais encore sonné pour moi
I'll love you, Quasimodo. Ah mon coeur!
____________________________________________________
My first camper ever is going to be an eighth grader. I'm so old.
____________________________________________________
Text from me to Sarah: "A middle aged man just rode his shopping cart down the parking lot in front of me. His wife with their baby in a stroller just followed and laughed."
From Sarah to me: "Yes! There is hope for humanity!"
___________________________________________________
You spoke to me! I'm delighted.
___________________________________________________
The bishop in Les Mis is my favorite Victor Hugo character. I want to be him. Also, Victor Hugo? Wonderful. Next on my reading list is Notre Dame de Paris, which is the real life version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is not like the Disney movie. I'll ruin it for you- Phoebus is a jerk. Jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk. Also, his name is much more amusing in French.
___________________________________________________
Why, yes, I am a BA. It says so on my ring. Also a ninja. With feet of steel.
___________________________________________________
And a fairy lightsaber. Dollar store victory!
___________________________________________________
I'm finding everything I'll ever need by giving up being everything.
___________________________________________________
See, I just needed you to be awesome so I can remember how unimportant I am.
___________________________________________________
No, really, my pride is going to be the death of me. It's a stubborn little sucker, I'll give it that.
___________________________________________________
"And our heart is restless until it rests in You."
___________________________________________________
Fireflies: inside jokes that somehow still delight my soul. Also, the favorite pet of children of all ages.
___________________________________________________
Eustace and the dragon is my favorite story in the Chronicles of Narnia, closely followed by Edmund's role in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I like redemption stories.
___________________________________________________
"'In our world,' said Eustace, 'a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.'
'Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.'"
___________________________________________________
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters has to be better than the real thing. I swear, if someone doesn't propose to Elinor soon, I'm going to put the book down. And if the Colonel doesn't marry Elinor, I am no judge of Jane Austen's plot lines. (*Note- I am no judge of Jane Austen's plot lines.*)
___________________________________________________
I have wonderful friends. You know who you are.
___________________________________________________
I have wonderful parents. On Facebook, my dad posts on my mom's wall (she's taking an education class):
Not doing too much homework tonight while on facebook, now are we ???
Comment by my mother: No just had to check it out before bed. Are you coming?
Comment by my father: watching tv. be there soon
Presh!
__________________________________________________
My two rules that I contributed to camp today:
5. Be Awesome.
9. Love God.
I think I have a new motto.
__________________________________________________
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. (Matthew 10:29)
The soul is healed by being with children.- Fyodor Dostoevsky
_____________________________________________________
So there's this episode of Doctor Who with the new Doctor and he's trying to get Amy to decide whether she really wants to travel with him or whether she wants to be with Rory (which she really does, goodness knows why). They flip back and forth between these two different realities and she finally realizes that she wants to be where Rory is when he dies in one of the realities. I have decided that I need this for my life.
_____________________________________________________
I forgot what I was missing.
_____________________________________________________
Notre Dame de Paris. Mon Dieu.
Pour tous les hosannas et tous les alleluias
Mais celle que je prefere
Parmi toutes ces femmes de fer
Ce sont les trois Maries
Qui sont mes meilleures amies
Il y a la petite Marie
Pour les enfants qu'on met en terre
Il y a la grande Marie
Pour les marins qui partent en mer
Mais quand je sonne la grosse Marie
Pour les amants qui se marient
C'est pas que j'ai le cœur à rire
Je l'aurais plutôt à mourir
De les voir si joyeux
De les voir si heureux
Moi qu'aucune femme ne regardera jamais dans les yeux
De les voir convoler
De les voir s'envoler
Au milieu des étoiles sous la voûte des cieux
Toutes les cloches que je sonne
Kyrie Eleison
Hosanna alleluia dies irae dies illa
Toutes ces cloches de malheur
Toutes ces cloches de bonheur
Toutes ces cloches qui n'ont jamais encore sonné pour moi
I'll love you, Quasimodo. Ah mon coeur!
____________________________________________________
My first camper ever is going to be an eighth grader. I'm so old.
____________________________________________________
Text from me to Sarah: "A middle aged man just rode his shopping cart down the parking lot in front of me. His wife with their baby in a stroller just followed and laughed."
From Sarah to me: "Yes! There is hope for humanity!"
___________________________________________________
You spoke to me! I'm delighted.
___________________________________________________
The bishop in Les Mis is my favorite Victor Hugo character. I want to be him. Also, Victor Hugo? Wonderful. Next on my reading list is Notre Dame de Paris, which is the real life version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is not like the Disney movie. I'll ruin it for you- Phoebus is a jerk. Jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk. Also, his name is much more amusing in French.
___________________________________________________
Why, yes, I am a BA. It says so on my ring. Also a ninja. With feet of steel.
___________________________________________________
And a fairy lightsaber. Dollar store victory!
I'm finding everything I'll ever need by giving up being everything.
___________________________________________________
See, I just needed you to be awesome so I can remember how unimportant I am.
___________________________________________________
No, really, my pride is going to be the death of me. It's a stubborn little sucker, I'll give it that.
___________________________________________________
"And our heart is restless until it rests in You."
___________________________________________________
Fireflies: inside jokes that somehow still delight my soul. Also, the favorite pet of children of all ages.
___________________________________________________
Eustace and the dragon is my favorite story in the Chronicles of Narnia, closely followed by Edmund's role in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I like redemption stories.
___________________________________________________
"'In our world,' said Eustace, 'a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.'
'Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.'"
___________________________________________________
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters has to be better than the real thing. I swear, if someone doesn't propose to Elinor soon, I'm going to put the book down. And if the Colonel doesn't marry Elinor, I am no judge of Jane Austen's plot lines. (*Note- I am no judge of Jane Austen's plot lines.*)
___________________________________________________
I have wonderful friends. You know who you are.
___________________________________________________
I have wonderful parents. On Facebook, my dad posts on my mom's wall (she's taking an education class):
Not doing too much homework tonight while on facebook, now are we ???
Comment by my mother: No just had to check it out before bed. Are you coming?
Comment by my father: watching tv. be there soon
Presh!
__________________________________________________
My two rules that I contributed to camp today:
5. Be Awesome.
9. Love God.
I think I have a new motto.
__________________________________________________
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. (Matthew 10:29)
Friday, May 21, 2010
Romeo, Save Me
We will return to your regularly scheduled blog at some time in the near future mostly because I know no one wants to read my complaints about the patheticness (which should totally be a word, spellchecker) of my life and partially because I've finished watching all the episodes of The Office and won't be faced with the distracting romantic known as Jim Halpert every day. So really, I'll return to normal (which is apparently an enormous hatred of all men-kind, according to my roommate) after I get this all out.
First off, universe, what is with all of the marriage hints invading my life? No, really, I want answers. OK, part of that's my fault because there have to be at least 4 weddings in The Office (by the way, the first episode I saw was Jim and Pam's wedding and I had no clue what was going on; so much better the second time; LOVE!) but, really? I counted 12 status updates that had to do with marriages, I have two awesome friends who are getting married and are definitely not at fault here at all, I've heard marriage hints on the radio and then there's this site, LoveGivesMeHope. It's like MLIA, except super sweet. I can't call it pathetic, but it's the kind of stuff that you read when you either want to cry and/or make that awwww noise that you make around babies or small cute creatures such as hedgehogs. You laugh, but really, hedgehogs, the cutest things ever. Anyway, half of the stories on this are cute old couples and I cry when I read about old people who've been together their whole lives. The worst one? Actual tears on my keyboard over this one:
My grandpa is 85 years old.
Today, I just found out that ever since his wife, his true love, had died, he put roses on her grave every Sunday.
The drive is 2 hours away from where he lives. She was 29 when she died.
Listen, I want that. Well, I don't particularly want to die when I'm 29, but if I got to live with that kind of love for whatever amount of time, I wouldn't mind. The worst days of my life are the days when I'm afraid that I'll be alone for the rest of my life or will live out my days with a husband I don't really love. I can see that happening, too, that's maybe the worst part. I can imagine a future alone. I can't see a future with anyone. There has to be something wrong with me because your answer to "Where will you be in five years?" shouldn't be "Alone."
It's just frustrating. I know I'm not old. I know that I don't need to worry about stuff like this. Some people go to college expecting to find "the one" (oh, no, I just became one of those people who puts quotes around "the one") but I also know that plenty of people don't get married straight out of college like plenty of people don't get married straight out of high school. You wait for your professional career to settle down, or you wait until you find somebody who makes you change that around. People meet people in grad school or at work or just going out somewhere... it happens all the time and you just have to be patient.
At the same time, though, you wonder what you're doing wrong. I mean, should I try harder to find someone, really put myself out there? I could dress up more, expand my wardrobe to something beyond jeans and a t-shirt and stop buying shirts from the guy's sections (but really, the best shirts are from there- my cookie monster shirt, my Led Zeppelin shirt, my glow-in-the-dark Batman shirt, my Star Wars shirt), wear make-up more often, actually care about my hair... smile at a guy every one in a while. It's just that there really hasn't been anyone (loml excluded, but really, eventually I'm going to have to stop lying to myself) worth dressing up over. I mean, I do go to Carolina, and while the gender ratio isn't that bad, once you take out the athletes, the frat boys, the guys who are taken and the guys who remove themselves and other guys from the dating pool, it's slim pickings. I just don't think learning to walk in heels is going to help that much.
Most of the time I complain about being single so that people will contradict it and make me feel better about myself. It's one of like three things that I do this for. You know, I like being independent. I like having my own space, my own thoughts, my own feelings, no matter what they are. I like being able to choose to do whatever I want to on Friday night without having to consult someone. I like having complete use of my phone without having to text somebody super frequently or, worse, call them (idea-since no one really uses italics anymore, can they just be the universal sarcasm indicator? Because then the whole last sentence would have to be in italics). I like having something to talk about other than my relationships. It makes me a deeper person and people can hear about the things I'm really interested in, not just some boy they've never met and don't care to know about. Really. It's great. And it totally gives me time to practice my witty comebacks and piercing remarks that I'll need in case I ever have to have a heated discussion over something significant, like the best kind of coffee or the proper placement of a television with limited available spacing. Why would anyone ever give this up?
Have you ever seen me on a clear, dark night? I get left by the people I'm walking with because I can't tear my eyes away from the sky. It's kinda pathetic, but I love looking at the stars, drinking in as much of the sight as I can before clouds take it away or dawn comes to remove it more permanently. I can see why people in love stare at each other. And I know that there's more to love than what we've made it into, more than mushy Valentine's Day crap. It's something fierce, it's supposed to change you, it's supposed to bring out the heroic, the best parts of humanity and make life on Earth something worth living, not just something you have to sit through until you get to the next good thing. It doesn't belong just with the lovers, it carries throughout the world into families, through the Church, through people helping people, caring for people, making a difference, loving the planet we're all stuck on, dreaming up ways to make this whole place better, making it the way it could be, not just the way it is. Love isn't some intangible thing that just floats around, waiting for a breeze to blow it into the hearts of unsuspecting young people high on hormones, it's this crazy combination of emotions and determination that drives you to become someone worth becoming, to bring people up with you, to lift us up where we belong, regardless of who we are.
I don't know who lost that, or when, but I want it back.
First off, universe, what is with all of the marriage hints invading my life? No, really, I want answers. OK, part of that's my fault because there have to be at least 4 weddings in The Office (by the way, the first episode I saw was Jim and Pam's wedding and I had no clue what was going on; so much better the second time; LOVE!) but, really? I counted 12 status updates that had to do with marriages, I have two awesome friends who are getting married and are definitely not at fault here at all, I've heard marriage hints on the radio and then there's this site, LoveGivesMeHope. It's like MLIA, except super sweet. I can't call it pathetic, but it's the kind of stuff that you read when you either want to cry and/or make that awwww noise that you make around babies or small cute creatures such as hedgehogs. You laugh, but really, hedgehogs, the cutest things ever. Anyway, half of the stories on this are cute old couples and I cry when I read about old people who've been together their whole lives. The worst one? Actual tears on my keyboard over this one:
My grandpa is 85 years old.
Today, I just found out that ever since his wife, his true love, had died, he put roses on her grave every Sunday.
The drive is 2 hours away from where he lives. She was 29 when she died.
Listen, I want that. Well, I don't particularly want to die when I'm 29, but if I got to live with that kind of love for whatever amount of time, I wouldn't mind. The worst days of my life are the days when I'm afraid that I'll be alone for the rest of my life or will live out my days with a husband I don't really love. I can see that happening, too, that's maybe the worst part. I can imagine a future alone. I can't see a future with anyone. There has to be something wrong with me because your answer to "Where will you be in five years?" shouldn't be "Alone."
It's just frustrating. I know I'm not old. I know that I don't need to worry about stuff like this. Some people go to college expecting to find "the one" (oh, no, I just became one of those people who puts quotes around "the one") but I also know that plenty of people don't get married straight out of college like plenty of people don't get married straight out of high school. You wait for your professional career to settle down, or you wait until you find somebody who makes you change that around. People meet people in grad school or at work or just going out somewhere... it happens all the time and you just have to be patient.
At the same time, though, you wonder what you're doing wrong. I mean, should I try harder to find someone, really put myself out there? I could dress up more, expand my wardrobe to something beyond jeans and a t-shirt and stop buying shirts from the guy's sections (but really, the best shirts are from there- my cookie monster shirt, my Led Zeppelin shirt, my glow-in-the-dark Batman shirt, my Star Wars shirt), wear make-up more often, actually care about my hair... smile at a guy every one in a while. It's just that there really hasn't been anyone (loml excluded, but really, eventually I'm going to have to stop lying to myself) worth dressing up over. I mean, I do go to Carolina, and while the gender ratio isn't that bad, once you take out the athletes, the frat boys, the guys who are taken and the guys who remove themselves and other guys from the dating pool, it's slim pickings. I just don't think learning to walk in heels is going to help that much.
Most of the time I complain about being single so that people will contradict it and make me feel better about myself. It's one of like three things that I do this for. You know, I like being independent. I like having my own space, my own thoughts, my own feelings, no matter what they are. I like being able to choose to do whatever I want to on Friday night without having to consult someone. I like having complete use of my phone without having to text somebody super frequently or, worse, call them (idea-since no one really uses italics anymore, can they just be the universal sarcasm indicator? Because then the whole last sentence would have to be in italics). I like having something to talk about other than my relationships. It makes me a deeper person and people can hear about the things I'm really interested in, not just some boy they've never met and don't care to know about. Really. It's great. And it totally gives me time to practice my witty comebacks and piercing remarks that I'll need in case I ever have to have a heated discussion over something significant, like the best kind of coffee or the proper placement of a television with limited available spacing. Why would anyone ever give this up?
Have you ever seen me on a clear, dark night? I get left by the people I'm walking with because I can't tear my eyes away from the sky. It's kinda pathetic, but I love looking at the stars, drinking in as much of the sight as I can before clouds take it away or dawn comes to remove it more permanently. I can see why people in love stare at each other. And I know that there's more to love than what we've made it into, more than mushy Valentine's Day crap. It's something fierce, it's supposed to change you, it's supposed to bring out the heroic, the best parts of humanity and make life on Earth something worth living, not just something you have to sit through until you get to the next good thing. It doesn't belong just with the lovers, it carries throughout the world into families, through the Church, through people helping people, caring for people, making a difference, loving the planet we're all stuck on, dreaming up ways to make this whole place better, making it the way it could be, not just the way it is. Love isn't some intangible thing that just floats around, waiting for a breeze to blow it into the hearts of unsuspecting young people high on hormones, it's this crazy combination of emotions and determination that drives you to become someone worth becoming, to bring people up with you, to lift us up where we belong, regardless of who we are.
I don't know who lost that, or when, but I want it back.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Missing Meteors
It's funny how easily conversation in college turns to what you're going to do. I'm going to fail this exam. This summer, I'm going to New York, on a mission trip, to work, to save, to party, to sleep, to visit grad schools. Next year, I'm going to apply to grad schools, to have an easy semester, to have a terrible semester, to do better, to focus more on my studies, to audition, to not audition, to study abroad, to stay in Chapel Hill, to be a leader, to be a follower. After college, I'm going to get married (!), go to med school, grad school, law school, to teach, to be unemployed, to move back in with my parents, to take a year off. To do what?
Now, this isn't a post about doing something now, though it is another tragedy of our time that so much potential is locked away in institutions and dowsed with alcohol while the world outside suffers and we learn how to think, make mistakes, describe the Hydrogen atom mathematically, start a business, get inside people's heads, understand the meaning of the actions of various Romans over the course of the Republic and Empire. It's a wonderful mixed bag that you get in college, but for a good example of someone rightly fed up with the negatives of this bag and willing to be something different, I recommend the words of this friend. For the wonderful and blessing thoughts of a good friend doing what she has been called to do, prayerfully, lovingly and in full remembrance of the awesomeness of God, I recommend her words.
I had a good conversation with a friend about what I wanted to do. It came out of talking about classes and, in particular, my teaching class. Guys, I don't want to teach physics. I could go the whole "I hate kids" route, but that would be another lie. I go the "I hate high school route" but that wouldn't be any more true. I don't have an aversion to teaching and I'd love having my own classroom, but it would be my classroom. It wouldn't belong to the kids and I wouldn't be focused on the people I was teaching. I would be teaching. I would hop into their lives as necessary and I would take advantage of every situation to be a positive influence, but it would be me, teaching. Does that make any kind of sense? I'd go home at the end of the day full of myself and miserable.
Now, I could make a conscious effort not to do that, but I fear that I would end up being that anyway because I'm not called to teach high school. You know that fear that you're made for something bigger? Now, there is nothing bigger than teaching, than changing a life, than making a generation prepared to meet the world around them, so I should probably change bigger to different. Can I get an amen from someone who has felt the Spirit move but has been entirely unsure of the direction that it's moving in? We are blessed, we are anointed... to do what?
Same good conversation, we talked about what it's like to be "called". Oh. my. lanta. Being called. What does that even mean? (I feel like a Juno reference is inappropriate here... yeah, you know what I'm talking about.) Like, a mystical voice called you out of heaven and said, "Insert name here, I call you stop world hunger because you've finally all gotten the resources and it disgusts Me to see that you waste so much food without a thought to millions of my children who are starving." Does that happen?
Because, for me, being called is this sinking feeling in my stomach that comes from disobedience (or at least the intention of disobedience). I think about things I said I'd never be, things that I know that I could be, things that I think that I should be, and my stomach just sinks because I know what I'm supposed to do and I don't want to do it. I'm supposed to actually listen to God and obey what He says. I'm supposed to put myself aside. I'm supposed to follow Him anywhere, and in the Easter happiness that has lived in my life, I never remember where anywhere can lead. And all these people have all of these stories about life and how they weren't doing the right thing and then they finally figured it out and I don't want to be that. I mean, I kinda do, because then I'd have a story to tell someone, but if I hear these things, I feel like I should fix my life, learn from their mistakes, improve the human race instead of continuing to make the same mistakes that the ancient Israelites made. So I could go where I'm supposed to and find a way to make it seem like something other than taking people with potential who care immensely about God and the world He made and locking them away in a tower for another three years learning how to think, how to pray, what this dead ancient white guy said, how to deal with what this person is saying now, how to run a church, how to preach a sermon, how to serve God in this wonderfully organized, easily dying system.
Don't believe me when I say I've got it down.
I want to share a lesson with you.
Every year, the Earth, flying through space, with go through clouds of debris- maybe the tail end of comets, what have you- and this cloud of debris will cause this thing that we call a meteor shower. I love the beauty in the idea that a cloud of space dirt comes down to Earth as something worth staying up all night to see, but maybe that's just me. We have no control when this happens. We have people who call the planetarium demanding to know why we scheduled a meteor shower on a school night. Oh sorry, we say. We'll just change Earth's position in her orbit around the sun so your child can stay up on a Friday night instead of a Thursday night. Makes total sense.
If you know your astronomy, or if you listen to the weather report, you know that meteor showers get their names, like the Leonids or the Perseids or the Geminids because of the constellation they appear to originate from. The Leonids look like they're raining down from Leo, etc. But they don't really. Once again, they're just pieces of space dirt falling to put on a show for us. Some people wish on them, so for them, a meteor shower is like driving through town and hitting every single light yellow. It's just a great opportunity. But opportunities come from a lot of places. And if you're staring at Leo, hoping to catch all the meteors, you going to miss some.
Funny how you can be looking where you're told to look, the entire time, and miss the best part of the meteor shower.
Now, this isn't a post about doing something now, though it is another tragedy of our time that so much potential is locked away in institutions and dowsed with alcohol while the world outside suffers and we learn how to think, make mistakes, describe the Hydrogen atom mathematically, start a business, get inside people's heads, understand the meaning of the actions of various Romans over the course of the Republic and Empire. It's a wonderful mixed bag that you get in college, but for a good example of someone rightly fed up with the negatives of this bag and willing to be something different, I recommend the words of this friend. For the wonderful and blessing thoughts of a good friend doing what she has been called to do, prayerfully, lovingly and in full remembrance of the awesomeness of God, I recommend her words.
I had a good conversation with a friend about what I wanted to do. It came out of talking about classes and, in particular, my teaching class. Guys, I don't want to teach physics. I could go the whole "I hate kids" route, but that would be another lie. I go the "I hate high school route" but that wouldn't be any more true. I don't have an aversion to teaching and I'd love having my own classroom, but it would be my classroom. It wouldn't belong to the kids and I wouldn't be focused on the people I was teaching. I would be teaching. I would hop into their lives as necessary and I would take advantage of every situation to be a positive influence, but it would be me, teaching. Does that make any kind of sense? I'd go home at the end of the day full of myself and miserable.
Now, I could make a conscious effort not to do that, but I fear that I would end up being that anyway because I'm not called to teach high school. You know that fear that you're made for something bigger? Now, there is nothing bigger than teaching, than changing a life, than making a generation prepared to meet the world around them, so I should probably change bigger to different. Can I get an amen from someone who has felt the Spirit move but has been entirely unsure of the direction that it's moving in? We are blessed, we are anointed... to do what?
Same good conversation, we talked about what it's like to be "called". Oh. my. lanta. Being called. What does that even mean? (I feel like a Juno reference is inappropriate here... yeah, you know what I'm talking about.) Like, a mystical voice called you out of heaven and said, "Insert name here, I call you stop world hunger because you've finally all gotten the resources and it disgusts Me to see that you waste so much food without a thought to millions of my children who are starving." Does that happen?
Because, for me, being called is this sinking feeling in my stomach that comes from disobedience (or at least the intention of disobedience). I think about things I said I'd never be, things that I know that I could be, things that I think that I should be, and my stomach just sinks because I know what I'm supposed to do and I don't want to do it. I'm supposed to actually listen to God and obey what He says. I'm supposed to put myself aside. I'm supposed to follow Him anywhere, and in the Easter happiness that has lived in my life, I never remember where anywhere can lead. And all these people have all of these stories about life and how they weren't doing the right thing and then they finally figured it out and I don't want to be that. I mean, I kinda do, because then I'd have a story to tell someone, but if I hear these things, I feel like I should fix my life, learn from their mistakes, improve the human race instead of continuing to make the same mistakes that the ancient Israelites made. So I could go where I'm supposed to and find a way to make it seem like something other than taking people with potential who care immensely about God and the world He made and locking them away in a tower for another three years learning how to think, how to pray, what this dead ancient white guy said, how to deal with what this person is saying now, how to run a church, how to preach a sermon, how to serve God in this wonderfully organized, easily dying system.
Don't believe me when I say I've got it down.
I want to share a lesson with you.
Every year, the Earth, flying through space, with go through clouds of debris- maybe the tail end of comets, what have you- and this cloud of debris will cause this thing that we call a meteor shower. I love the beauty in the idea that a cloud of space dirt comes down to Earth as something worth staying up all night to see, but maybe that's just me. We have no control when this happens. We have people who call the planetarium demanding to know why we scheduled a meteor shower on a school night. Oh sorry, we say. We'll just change Earth's position in her orbit around the sun so your child can stay up on a Friday night instead of a Thursday night. Makes total sense.
If you know your astronomy, or if you listen to the weather report, you know that meteor showers get their names, like the Leonids or the Perseids or the Geminids because of the constellation they appear to originate from. The Leonids look like they're raining down from Leo, etc. But they don't really. Once again, they're just pieces of space dirt falling to put on a show for us. Some people wish on them, so for them, a meteor shower is like driving through town and hitting every single light yellow. It's just a great opportunity. But opportunities come from a lot of places. And if you're staring at Leo, hoping to catch all the meteors, you going to miss some.
Funny how you can be looking where you're told to look, the entire time, and miss the best part of the meteor shower.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Sisters, Stars and Smiles
This was one of those exhausting weeks that you're glad to see gone, but hate to see leave and given the chance, would live all over again. I might tweak some things, but I'd live it over again.
I worked twice this week at each job (and should have picked up tests to grade as well... hmmm...) and left the planetarium and Cold Stone tired but happy. You know, that tired that you get when you've accomplished something and that good feeling in your stomach when you know that you've done something right? It's a wonderful feeling to counter the tired feet and aching head.
I had a midterm and a problem set due on Monday. I got a different midterm back today and got an A- (can we please talk about this for a second? I'm so delighted- the only A's I've seen in my recent life have been the ones that start my name). For Monday, though, I felt semi-confident about the midterm (though if someone wants to correct my argument about Pompey's eastern tour and its military and constitutional implications, I'm happy to listen) and I know I did terribly on the problem set, but I finished it and I knew what was going on and that is something. I might have been completely lost in class after that, and the rest of the semester before that, but I can work with the Schrodinger Equation in spherical coordinates, I finally know what the Hamiltonian really stands for and I am getting to be a beast at angular momentum quantum mechanically, so take that, physics!
We polished handbells on Monday, and I played handbells on Wednesday and felt better about a lot of the things we're doing for the concert. We're playing Pictures at an Exhibition (love love love!) but the part for the bass bells is intense. I'm quite proud of myself (though Patrick worked out how most of the hard stuff would work) and my left arm is getting semi-buff because of it.
High point of the week? Tuesday night. Why Tuesday night, you may ask. Well, on Tuesday night, we at the Iota Tau chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota initiated twenty new sisters. If you've been listening to my life, you've probably heard that number before, because I say it often. I am so proud of my sisters in the chapter for forming a group of people that someone on the outside would want to be associated with, and I am so proud of the former members-in-training for having the guts to stick through all of this, to have the sisterly love required to change their schedules when necessary and just for being awesome in general. They are such a great addition to the chapter. You cannot believe how excited I am for next year. In addition to that, they played the Alma Mater on kazoos at their musicale. You don't get much more epic than that.
Speaking of my awesome sisters, we had formal at the planetarium tonight. So. Much. Fun. Before, my wonderful roommate/mermaid fixed my hair and did my makeup and we watched You've Got Mail and picked up the chocolates that littered the floor from the battle the night before. After attempting to exude confidence as I had been taught, walking in my heels up to the planetairum, I had the amazing privilege of being able to do a show in the theater for my sisters and their dates (holler praise for people who laughed at my jokes) and I loved the response. I mean, maybe it's feeding my ego, but I love it when people appreciate what you do, you know? And my boss was a fan of it as well, and very positive, and this bodes well for my future employment as a rambler in the theater at the planetarium. This makes me quite happy. You know what also makes me quite happy? Dancing to the Electric Slide (oh, camp days :D), belting out N*Sync, waking up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy (judge away, please) and attempting to remember the marching band Thriller dance and failing. Such good times.
I also had a chance to do something I've always wanted to do- conduct the marching band. It was once, for less than five minutes, but I had quiet cheers from my friends and sisters before I even climbed up on the ladder and more from my section and friends when I introduced myself. I loved being up there. I loved listening to the band playing to the beat that I was laying out (let's forget that it was absurdly slow, that I botched the transitions [thank goodness for drummers who can recover] and that my ending cutoff was a slight mess) and I loved standing on the ladder, looking out over the band. You might not be as excited as I am, but you're probably not in marching band and it probably doesn't matter much to you. And if you are and if it does, then you know what I mean. It's such a great feeling. I wish I had been a better candidate so I'd have another chance to conduct the band, but as it is, I'm perfectly happy to preserve my memory and leave the real life conducting to someone more suited.
So it's one in the morning on a Friday night and I am exhausted three ways from Sunday. The spring football game is tomorrow, I've got to have a problem set done by Monday, the new exec board is meeting on Sunday (dear sweet baby Jesus in A major, I've got a leadership position), there are books to be read and papers to be written. But I figured I'd sit back for a second and write it all down, because if you don't, you forget that life is for the alive and you'll spend your entire memory wasting away and wondering when that boy will wake up and see you as the answer to his questions. If you don't stop to think about the things you've been given, you will never have the chance to thank the Giver.
Happy resurrection life, my friends.
I worked twice this week at each job (and should have picked up tests to grade as well... hmmm...) and left the planetarium and Cold Stone tired but happy. You know, that tired that you get when you've accomplished something and that good feeling in your stomach when you know that you've done something right? It's a wonderful feeling to counter the tired feet and aching head.
I had a midterm and a problem set due on Monday. I got a different midterm back today and got an A- (can we please talk about this for a second? I'm so delighted- the only A's I've seen in my recent life have been the ones that start my name). For Monday, though, I felt semi-confident about the midterm (though if someone wants to correct my argument about Pompey's eastern tour and its military and constitutional implications, I'm happy to listen) and I know I did terribly on the problem set, but I finished it and I knew what was going on and that is something. I might have been completely lost in class after that, and the rest of the semester before that, but I can work with the Schrodinger Equation in spherical coordinates, I finally know what the Hamiltonian really stands for and I am getting to be a beast at angular momentum quantum mechanically, so take that, physics!
We polished handbells on Monday, and I played handbells on Wednesday and felt better about a lot of the things we're doing for the concert. We're playing Pictures at an Exhibition (love love love!) but the part for the bass bells is intense. I'm quite proud of myself (though Patrick worked out how most of the hard stuff would work) and my left arm is getting semi-buff because of it.
High point of the week? Tuesday night. Why Tuesday night, you may ask. Well, on Tuesday night, we at the Iota Tau chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota initiated twenty new sisters. If you've been listening to my life, you've probably heard that number before, because I say it often. I am so proud of my sisters in the chapter for forming a group of people that someone on the outside would want to be associated with, and I am so proud of the former members-in-training for having the guts to stick through all of this, to have the sisterly love required to change their schedules when necessary and just for being awesome in general. They are such a great addition to the chapter. You cannot believe how excited I am for next year. In addition to that, they played the Alma Mater on kazoos at their musicale. You don't get much more epic than that.
Speaking of my awesome sisters, we had formal at the planetarium tonight. So. Much. Fun. Before, my wonderful roommate/mermaid fixed my hair and did my makeup and we watched You've Got Mail and picked up the chocolates that littered the floor from the battle the night before. After attempting to exude confidence as I had been taught, walking in my heels up to the planetairum, I had the amazing privilege of being able to do a show in the theater for my sisters and their dates (holler praise for people who laughed at my jokes) and I loved the response. I mean, maybe it's feeding my ego, but I love it when people appreciate what you do, you know? And my boss was a fan of it as well, and very positive, and this bodes well for my future employment as a rambler in the theater at the planetarium. This makes me quite happy. You know what also makes me quite happy? Dancing to the Electric Slide (oh, camp days :D), belting out N*Sync, waking up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy (judge away, please) and attempting to remember the marching band Thriller dance and failing. Such good times.
I also had a chance to do something I've always wanted to do- conduct the marching band. It was once, for less than five minutes, but I had quiet cheers from my friends and sisters before I even climbed up on the ladder and more from my section and friends when I introduced myself. I loved being up there. I loved listening to the band playing to the beat that I was laying out (let's forget that it was absurdly slow, that I botched the transitions [thank goodness for drummers who can recover] and that my ending cutoff was a slight mess) and I loved standing on the ladder, looking out over the band. You might not be as excited as I am, but you're probably not in marching band and it probably doesn't matter much to you. And if you are and if it does, then you know what I mean. It's such a great feeling. I wish I had been a better candidate so I'd have another chance to conduct the band, but as it is, I'm perfectly happy to preserve my memory and leave the real life conducting to someone more suited.
So it's one in the morning on a Friday night and I am exhausted three ways from Sunday. The spring football game is tomorrow, I've got to have a problem set done by Monday, the new exec board is meeting on Sunday (dear sweet baby Jesus in A major, I've got a leadership position), there are books to be read and papers to be written. But I figured I'd sit back for a second and write it all down, because if you don't, you forget that life is for the alive and you'll spend your entire memory wasting away and wondering when that boy will wake up and see you as the answer to his questions. If you don't stop to think about the things you've been given, you will never have the chance to thank the Giver.
Happy resurrection life, my friends.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
A Raft
[Disclaimer for Rachel, should she end up reading this: He's all yours, once I forget that I've read this book. And you're more than welcome to beat me down if I've read a moral into something that had no moral value at all. Just sayin'.]
I am in love with another captain of the guard.
Due to the wonderfulness that is fall break, my homework and required reading has gathered the most minute amount of dust possible as I spent my evenings, or what was left of my evenings after work took its toll, reading a book. Not to plug Terry Pratchett or anything, but I adore the Discworld and its characters, most of all Death, the anthropomorphic personification of, well, death, and Sam Vimes, captain of the Night Watch. I love Death for his weird humanity and I love Vimes just because. Maybe because I'm a sucker for a guy in uniform, maybe because he's a cynic or maybe just because he's adorable to me in a million ways I can't precisely explain. I love to dive into stuff like this, just escape from everything in a way that's more mentally stimulating than TV but a lot less mentally strenuous than the problem sets that I should probably be doing this very instant. And the Disc is quirky and amusing, but it's got a soul, somewhere in there, and morality and odd physics-y magic and superb characters. I listen to Vimes' optimistic cynicism and I smile and know that the lesson is hidden somewhere deep and if it had been said out loud, it would have been mocked. And so I love it.
But it's dangerous at the same time. Reading and made-up worlds are not safe grounds for my brain to live in. I could almost be there, running with the watch to the palace or climbing deeper into the depths of the Library with the Librarian. And it makes me think and that is a dangerous pastime as well. It's much safer to immerse myself in whatever subtlety is involved in whatever weird math I'm supposed to understand to finish my E&M homework than to let my mind swim unsupervised in the ocean that is creative, fantastic thought. I can't muse on the nature of humanity any more safely than I can spend hours imagining a castle far away surrounded by distant blue mountains and a clear river. My heart's much too invested in either topic and the brain goes astray when the heart takes the wheel.
Oh, but should it be that way? Should I have to limit my dreaming because eventually it'll take me places I don't want to go? I know it's like flying-- there's always that risk that you'll come crashing back down to the earth. But I'm not Icarus, I'm not dumb. I know my limits and I know when the wax will start to melt. At the same time, my limits are so low to the ground that I feel like it's not even worth the effort to take off at all. And then the familiar cycle of accusations come around again, mostly directed at the ceiling. Why would I even have the ability to think and to dream like this if I wasn't allowed to use it to its full potential? Why give me a mind that can think like this and visualize and imagine if that's the worst thing I can do? And believe me, it's not a good thing for me to be too romantic. It's much worse than having my head in the clouds. It's more like building ice cream castles in the air and then insisting that I be allowed to live in them. It's not safe. But building the castles is such a gift. Maybe I'm supposed to use it for something else? Oh, what else? What am I supposed to do with my life?
Man, two years ago I had it figured out. Four years of undergrad (and I could totally take this physics major on) and then a couple of years of grad school and doctorate work and then I'd have a PhD in astrophysics and I'd be doing research and life would be grand. It'd be hard, sure, but everything in life is hard, you just have to try harder and you'll win. Follow your dreams, people. You just have to be determined.
Can I just say that those are all lies? I mean, not the 'everything in life is hard' bit, I'm sure that's good across the board, but you can't do whatever you want. Or maybe you can do what you want, but you definitely can't do what you thought you wanted. And so here I sit, a couple of classes away from a degree that I honestly have no intention of using but was so sure was right for me and I have no clue what I'm going to do with my life. I've had this awkward and uncomfortable conversation with a lot of people recently because I keep on meeting new people and everyone wants to know what your major is and the most natural response to physics, after a sympathetic groan, is 'What are you going to do with that?' Me, I'm going to frame it up as exhibit A for proof of the stubbornness of my pride and then move on. But to what? There's so much you can do through the church. It's not all being a pastor or a chaplain, there's tons of options out there. See, when God calls you, He doesn't send down a nice little post-it with a profession and a list of goals and He doesn't defend Himself or try to convince you to come, He just says Follow Me. I mean, what are you supposed to say to that? 'No, I can't speak well.' 'But I am just a child.' 'You can't mean me, Lord.' 'But how do I know it's really You? How do I know that this isn't some cosmic joke or twist of fate or weird chemical imbalance that causes me to think that there's really a higher power out there that gives an expletive about what I'm doing? How do I know?'
I mean, it's almost painful, talking about this call stuff. I guess I invite it, because I tell people I'm going to Dallas, but I don't explain why and of course they ask and then I have to explain that it's a conference for young people interested in ministry in the United Methodist church and that's met with a much different response than physics is. There's the 'Oh, that's wonderful!' or the judging silence where people reevaluate me and decide if they really want to be around me anymore or the surprise. That's my favorite, the surprise. I guess I look and sound like a God-hater because I'm a thinker. And it legitimately breaks my heart when I have to tell a little kid who came to a planetarium show and asks me how the planets were created that they were formed out of a protoplanetary disk when the Sun was very young because it can rock your little world when you find out that the universe didn't pop into existence fully formed, but I can't lie. You can't sit back and say we don't know when we do and say it's God when we can see a cause. I don't like the god of the gaps. That's not who I plan on serving. Now, I know that in the Planck time at the beginning of the universe, the laws of physics that we have right now can't explain what's going on, but I'm not going to say that that's God because one day people might get it, God might let us in on a couple of things and we'd understand how awesome He is by what He's made, but that doesn't mean that God is the answer to the question today. And He's bigger than our science, you know? Happy International Year of Astronomy- it's the 400th anniversary of the first time that Galileo turned his telescope to the sky and started to see things that caused a verifiable uproar. But the thing is, he needn't have. Caused an uproar, I mean. If God's existence is called into question by a couple of rocks orbiting a bunch of gas super far away, maybe He's too small. And maybe we'll forever have to be rethinking Him because I don't think we can understand Him. I mean, He's not a superhuman, He's not some mirror for us to reflect the best parts of us onto. He's God. He's holy. He's set apart. He is apart. I know that, for a fact. But if He's loving and He made us all to be loving, where did we go so very wrong?
But that wasn't the original point. The original point was Sam Vimes. Sam Vimes, who claims the city for his own and attempts to impose some order on the chaos and tries wonderfully hard at being a hero despite his insistence that he's not hero material. And maybe he's not, you know, maybe he's just a literary vessel for the idea that whenever the common good man tries to save the day chance and a little messed up dragon must come and save it for him. But he has such faith in good, such idealism that is protected by the cynicism, that you can't help but hope that he's right at the end of the day, that the good in people and in the world will really float on the sea of evil and not be consumed.
And I like that.
I am in love with another captain of the guard.
Due to the wonderfulness that is fall break, my homework and required reading has gathered the most minute amount of dust possible as I spent my evenings, or what was left of my evenings after work took its toll, reading a book. Not to plug Terry Pratchett or anything, but I adore the Discworld and its characters, most of all Death, the anthropomorphic personification of, well, death, and Sam Vimes, captain of the Night Watch. I love Death for his weird humanity and I love Vimes just because. Maybe because I'm a sucker for a guy in uniform, maybe because he's a cynic or maybe just because he's adorable to me in a million ways I can't precisely explain. I love to dive into stuff like this, just escape from everything in a way that's more mentally stimulating than TV but a lot less mentally strenuous than the problem sets that I should probably be doing this very instant. And the Disc is quirky and amusing, but it's got a soul, somewhere in there, and morality and odd physics-y magic and superb characters. I listen to Vimes' optimistic cynicism and I smile and know that the lesson is hidden somewhere deep and if it had been said out loud, it would have been mocked. And so I love it.
But it's dangerous at the same time. Reading and made-up worlds are not safe grounds for my brain to live in. I could almost be there, running with the watch to the palace or climbing deeper into the depths of the Library with the Librarian. And it makes me think and that is a dangerous pastime as well. It's much safer to immerse myself in whatever subtlety is involved in whatever weird math I'm supposed to understand to finish my E&M homework than to let my mind swim unsupervised in the ocean that is creative, fantastic thought. I can't muse on the nature of humanity any more safely than I can spend hours imagining a castle far away surrounded by distant blue mountains and a clear river. My heart's much too invested in either topic and the brain goes astray when the heart takes the wheel.
Oh, but should it be that way? Should I have to limit my dreaming because eventually it'll take me places I don't want to go? I know it's like flying-- there's always that risk that you'll come crashing back down to the earth. But I'm not Icarus, I'm not dumb. I know my limits and I know when the wax will start to melt. At the same time, my limits are so low to the ground that I feel like it's not even worth the effort to take off at all. And then the familiar cycle of accusations come around again, mostly directed at the ceiling. Why would I even have the ability to think and to dream like this if I wasn't allowed to use it to its full potential? Why give me a mind that can think like this and visualize and imagine if that's the worst thing I can do? And believe me, it's not a good thing for me to be too romantic. It's much worse than having my head in the clouds. It's more like building ice cream castles in the air and then insisting that I be allowed to live in them. It's not safe. But building the castles is such a gift. Maybe I'm supposed to use it for something else? Oh, what else? What am I supposed to do with my life?
Man, two years ago I had it figured out. Four years of undergrad (and I could totally take this physics major on) and then a couple of years of grad school and doctorate work and then I'd have a PhD in astrophysics and I'd be doing research and life would be grand. It'd be hard, sure, but everything in life is hard, you just have to try harder and you'll win. Follow your dreams, people. You just have to be determined.
Can I just say that those are all lies? I mean, not the 'everything in life is hard' bit, I'm sure that's good across the board, but you can't do whatever you want. Or maybe you can do what you want, but you definitely can't do what you thought you wanted. And so here I sit, a couple of classes away from a degree that I honestly have no intention of using but was so sure was right for me and I have no clue what I'm going to do with my life. I've had this awkward and uncomfortable conversation with a lot of people recently because I keep on meeting new people and everyone wants to know what your major is and the most natural response to physics, after a sympathetic groan, is 'What are you going to do with that?' Me, I'm going to frame it up as exhibit A for proof of the stubbornness of my pride and then move on. But to what? There's so much you can do through the church. It's not all being a pastor or a chaplain, there's tons of options out there. See, when God calls you, He doesn't send down a nice little post-it with a profession and a list of goals and He doesn't defend Himself or try to convince you to come, He just says Follow Me. I mean, what are you supposed to say to that? 'No, I can't speak well.' 'But I am just a child.' 'You can't mean me, Lord.' 'But how do I know it's really You? How do I know that this isn't some cosmic joke or twist of fate or weird chemical imbalance that causes me to think that there's really a higher power out there that gives an expletive about what I'm doing? How do I know?'
I mean, it's almost painful, talking about this call stuff. I guess I invite it, because I tell people I'm going to Dallas, but I don't explain why and of course they ask and then I have to explain that it's a conference for young people interested in ministry in the United Methodist church and that's met with a much different response than physics is. There's the 'Oh, that's wonderful!' or the judging silence where people reevaluate me and decide if they really want to be around me anymore or the surprise. That's my favorite, the surprise. I guess I look and sound like a God-hater because I'm a thinker. And it legitimately breaks my heart when I have to tell a little kid who came to a planetarium show and asks me how the planets were created that they were formed out of a protoplanetary disk when the Sun was very young because it can rock your little world when you find out that the universe didn't pop into existence fully formed, but I can't lie. You can't sit back and say we don't know when we do and say it's God when we can see a cause. I don't like the god of the gaps. That's not who I plan on serving. Now, I know that in the Planck time at the beginning of the universe, the laws of physics that we have right now can't explain what's going on, but I'm not going to say that that's God because one day people might get it, God might let us in on a couple of things and we'd understand how awesome He is by what He's made, but that doesn't mean that God is the answer to the question today. And He's bigger than our science, you know? Happy International Year of Astronomy- it's the 400th anniversary of the first time that Galileo turned his telescope to the sky and started to see things that caused a verifiable uproar. But the thing is, he needn't have. Caused an uproar, I mean. If God's existence is called into question by a couple of rocks orbiting a bunch of gas super far away, maybe He's too small. And maybe we'll forever have to be rethinking Him because I don't think we can understand Him. I mean, He's not a superhuman, He's not some mirror for us to reflect the best parts of us onto. He's God. He's holy. He's set apart. He is apart. I know that, for a fact. But if He's loving and He made us all to be loving, where did we go so very wrong?
But that wasn't the original point. The original point was Sam Vimes. Sam Vimes, who claims the city for his own and attempts to impose some order on the chaos and tries wonderfully hard at being a hero despite his insistence that he's not hero material. And maybe he's not, you know, maybe he's just a literary vessel for the idea that whenever the common good man tries to save the day chance and a little messed up dragon must come and save it for him. But he has such faith in good, such idealism that is protected by the cynicism, that you can't help but hope that he's right at the end of the day, that the good in people and in the world will really float on the sea of evil and not be consumed.
And I like that.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Rings
I went to a debate this evening between Bart Ehrman, an agnostic religious studies professor here, and Dinesh D'Souza, an author who was presenting 'the' Christian perspective. The title of the was 'God and the Problem of Suffering.' I have to say, the agnostic clearly won. I liked his points better, he had better (and unanswered) questions and he seemed much more open. Ehrman doesn't believe in the God of the Bible, the one who intervenes so often in the Old and New Testaments. He said that he couldn't know if there was or wasn't some bigger power up there and while D'Souza said something about science proving the existence of a creator and made one of his few nice points by mentioning his idea of the 'hiddeness of God,' which has apparently increased since Adam and Eve, D'Souza never flat out said that there must be a God and that God must be the one talked about in the Bible. I hated that he didn't say that. I mean, I don't know how the God of today that doesn't stop genocides and earthquakes lines up with the God of the Old Testament who talks to people, brings Israel out of Egypt and heals the sick.
But at the same time all this debate was going on, this little story was waiting for me to read it:
http://news.aol.com/article/california-nasa-telescope-sees-giant/706628?icid=mainhtmlws-maindl1link3http://news.aol.com/article/california-nasa-telescope-sees-giant/706628
There is a giant ring around Saturn and it is glorious when viewed in the infrared. Now, I'm not saying that this proves that there is a God and I'm not saying that this somehow undermines the problem of suffering, because that's a big deal to us confined to this Earth with the people we're confined with, but doesn't that make you wonder? I mean, I can see galaxies and maps of the universe, but they're all just big numbers to me. I've stopped seeing them as huge and just started seeing them. But this... makes me small. Makes us small. A billion Earths would be needed to fill in the space inside that ring. A billion copies of our planet. One billion.
From JPL (NASA)
The point is, my friends, that we are tiny and we should be thanking God for every nonsensical second of our existences that He decides to care for us, because He doesn't have to. Does He answer prayer? Does He work in our lives? Did He step down out of His heavens to bring us to Him? I mean, I don't know, but I do know that the One who sees things on scales much bigger than this and can control it is not the Person I want against me. I am so glad that by His grace, He's for me.
But at the same time all this debate was going on, this little story was waiting for me to read it:
http://news.aol.com/article/california-nasa-telescope-sees-giant/706628?icid=mainhtmlws-maindl1link3http://news.aol.com/article/california-nasa-telescope-sees-giant/706628
There is a giant ring around Saturn and it is glorious when viewed in the infrared. Now, I'm not saying that this proves that there is a God and I'm not saying that this somehow undermines the problem of suffering, because that's a big deal to us confined to this Earth with the people we're confined with, but doesn't that make you wonder? I mean, I can see galaxies and maps of the universe, but they're all just big numbers to me. I've stopped seeing them as huge and just started seeing them. But this... makes me small. Makes us small. A billion Earths would be needed to fill in the space inside that ring. A billion copies of our planet. One billion.
From JPL (NASA)
The point is, my friends, that we are tiny and we should be thanking God for every nonsensical second of our existences that He decides to care for us, because He doesn't have to. Does He answer prayer? Does He work in our lives? Did He step down out of His heavens to bring us to Him? I mean, I don't know, but I do know that the One who sees things on scales much bigger than this and can control it is not the Person I want against me. I am so glad that by His grace, He's for me.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Peut-être
Is a discovery ruined if you know it's going to happen?
It's certainly not serendipitous if you know that this is the time when you're going to 'find yourself,' whatever that means, but does that mean that you don't find yourself? Is the person you were going to be lost in the gap between what could have been and what happened just because you were expecting a change? Or do you force the change to be a different change than it was planning on being? Because I kinda like the idea that I can mess up change's eternal day planner by just thinking about it.
I think I'm expecting life to be something that it's not. I think life is rebelling a little. Since I want it to be awesome, since I have such high expectations, life is doing its absolute best to prove me wrong because goodness knows the universe would explode if Addie Jo was right about something for once. But maybe it's all for the best.
I was recently told that I seem like a big picture person. I like that. I love the phrase 'at the end of the day.' If, at the end of the day, there really is a God that for some crazy (and I mean legitimately insane) reason loves us, who are so very tiny and insignificant in comparison to Him, then believing in Him now is worth it. It gets me ready for what I'm sure will be the surprise of my existence when I finally get to know Him as He knows me. It helps me put this life in perspective. It inspires me to change to world into something better than what it is. It helps to bring me into relationships with others that I would totally shun if I didn't know that we were all looking for something bigger.
That doesn't explain me, though. In my philosophy class, we were talking about absolute space versus relative space and Leibnitz insists that if space were absolute, if we were all sitting on some big invisible 3-D coordinate grid, God would have to be arbitrary and that just makes everything bad because God is reasonable. Newton says, 'Screw you, Leibnitz, I'm right and you're wrong,' and that's all I got out of philosophy the past three weeks. But, as my professor put it, 'God is the elephant in the room,' and we took Him out of the argument. You ended up with the same result. I kinda want to do this with my life, theoretically. Take God out of it and see if you get the same result.
I mean, He's the elephant in the room in church. Or maybe that's the Holy Spirit. Jesus wasn't this nice, happy kid all the time- he said a ton of stuff just to throw people off balance (ref. placing a kid in the middle of the disciples and telling them to be like the kid). The Holy Spirit is something we're all not really comfortable with believing in. Yes, of course I have God living in me. Doesn't really jive with living with the rest of the world- they don't have God living in them. I am obviously more informed and better than they are. It's all the Holy Spirit's fault for being this big, mysterious thing that we don't get. So take it out. Take out God. Just leave Jesus as this guy who said a lot of good things and started an organization with a couple of good ideas and explain all this worship stuff as traditions and social constructs that make people comfortable and happy.
Minus God, I'm still an overly-vocal and quirky Sunday School teacher. I'm still VP-M of SAI, with all the odd phrases I throw into emails and life. I'm still a dying physics major, with all the disdain and sarcasm that must be piled on top of the unsure and fundamentally shy student who tries to sit in the corner and take notes at 1/10th the speed of light. I'm still in band, I'm still a vocal football fan, I'm still a thinking person, I still breathe. I still miss someone I have no right to miss and who does not miss me back. I'd still watch the puddles gather rain and sing and read and laugh and smile and cry. 'I apply my personality in a paste.' (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). I read Shakespeare, I watch Doctor Who, I listen to Relient K, I stare up at the stars and wish I could be one, watching the millenniums pass by as I slowly burn away and die in a glorious explosion while people an indeterminable distance away stare at my dissipating form and sigh in wonder.
But please explain to me how this little thought experiment works. I've got a bit of an epistemological issue with it. How can I say for sure that I am all those things without God? How can I say I am all those things with God? One of the guys in my learning community maintains that he knows the truth, as a Christian, but he can't prove it to anyone else. Whatever the universal truth is, he says, we can know it, but we can't prove it to someone else. God is everywhere, or He's nowhere, and they're the same thing, just stick a negative sign, by convention, in front of the second one. How can you, a human, say that He's one or the other? How can you say that you know the truth? I don't want to fall back on warm-fuzzies here, I want cold, logical facts. And the cold logical fact is that you can't.
So we get to choose. A, B or C. God exists, He doesn't, maybe. Great thing about this test- no one can tell you you're wrong. Not so great thing about this test- no one can tell you that you're right. Oh, one of them is right, but a long time ago, the test stopped being about whether God exists or not and started being about who had the better argument and was therefore the better person. So I choose to believe that God exists, that there is this eternal, omnipotent entity who for some miraculous reason loves me and cares about the state of my soul not only because you can't prove me wrong but also because I feel it. When logic fails, you have to lean back on the wonderful and terrible things that you feel and somehow the combination of that teaches you.
And I think I am that combination. I know who I am, under the layers of quirks I put on in order to make myself interesting, maybe only to myself. I think, I lean on what learned people can tell me and what makes sense out of what the learned people have told me and I learn about other things so I don't lean too heavily on the words of one agenda. But thinking leaves you alone and then you have to breathe, sit and listen, look up and wonder. You can't leave out one, though. You can't have too much of the other. And I don't think I'm the ideal balance. On any given day, my brain tells my feelings to stop being so pathetic and on another day, my feelings will tell my brain that it gets no choice in the matter. But I'm not leaving either one of the two of them at home and that's the important thing.
Is this a discovery? I think I was expecting it. So maybe I'm wrong. But I may be right.
It's certainly not serendipitous if you know that this is the time when you're going to 'find yourself,' whatever that means, but does that mean that you don't find yourself? Is the person you were going to be lost in the gap between what could have been and what happened just because you were expecting a change? Or do you force the change to be a different change than it was planning on being? Because I kinda like the idea that I can mess up change's eternal day planner by just thinking about it.
I think I'm expecting life to be something that it's not. I think life is rebelling a little. Since I want it to be awesome, since I have such high expectations, life is doing its absolute best to prove me wrong because goodness knows the universe would explode if Addie Jo was right about something for once. But maybe it's all for the best.
I was recently told that I seem like a big picture person. I like that. I love the phrase 'at the end of the day.' If, at the end of the day, there really is a God that for some crazy (and I mean legitimately insane) reason loves us, who are so very tiny and insignificant in comparison to Him, then believing in Him now is worth it. It gets me ready for what I'm sure will be the surprise of my existence when I finally get to know Him as He knows me. It helps me put this life in perspective. It inspires me to change to world into something better than what it is. It helps to bring me into relationships with others that I would totally shun if I didn't know that we were all looking for something bigger.
That doesn't explain me, though. In my philosophy class, we were talking about absolute space versus relative space and Leibnitz insists that if space were absolute, if we were all sitting on some big invisible 3-D coordinate grid, God would have to be arbitrary and that just makes everything bad because God is reasonable. Newton says, 'Screw you, Leibnitz, I'm right and you're wrong,' and that's all I got out of philosophy the past three weeks. But, as my professor put it, 'God is the elephant in the room,' and we took Him out of the argument. You ended up with the same result. I kinda want to do this with my life, theoretically. Take God out of it and see if you get the same result.
I mean, He's the elephant in the room in church. Or maybe that's the Holy Spirit. Jesus wasn't this nice, happy kid all the time- he said a ton of stuff just to throw people off balance (ref. placing a kid in the middle of the disciples and telling them to be like the kid). The Holy Spirit is something we're all not really comfortable with believing in. Yes, of course I have God living in me. Doesn't really jive with living with the rest of the world- they don't have God living in them. I am obviously more informed and better than they are. It's all the Holy Spirit's fault for being this big, mysterious thing that we don't get. So take it out. Take out God. Just leave Jesus as this guy who said a lot of good things and started an organization with a couple of good ideas and explain all this worship stuff as traditions and social constructs that make people comfortable and happy.
Minus God, I'm still an overly-vocal and quirky Sunday School teacher. I'm still VP-M of SAI, with all the odd phrases I throw into emails and life. I'm still a dying physics major, with all the disdain and sarcasm that must be piled on top of the unsure and fundamentally shy student who tries to sit in the corner and take notes at 1/10th the speed of light. I'm still in band, I'm still a vocal football fan, I'm still a thinking person, I still breathe. I still miss someone I have no right to miss and who does not miss me back. I'd still watch the puddles gather rain and sing and read and laugh and smile and cry. 'I apply my personality in a paste.' (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). I read Shakespeare, I watch Doctor Who, I listen to Relient K, I stare up at the stars and wish I could be one, watching the millenniums pass by as I slowly burn away and die in a glorious explosion while people an indeterminable distance away stare at my dissipating form and sigh in wonder.
But please explain to me how this little thought experiment works. I've got a bit of an epistemological issue with it. How can I say for sure that I am all those things without God? How can I say I am all those things with God? One of the guys in my learning community maintains that he knows the truth, as a Christian, but he can't prove it to anyone else. Whatever the universal truth is, he says, we can know it, but we can't prove it to someone else. God is everywhere, or He's nowhere, and they're the same thing, just stick a negative sign, by convention, in front of the second one. How can you, a human, say that He's one or the other? How can you say that you know the truth? I don't want to fall back on warm-fuzzies here, I want cold, logical facts. And the cold logical fact is that you can't.
So we get to choose. A, B or C. God exists, He doesn't, maybe. Great thing about this test- no one can tell you you're wrong. Not so great thing about this test- no one can tell you that you're right. Oh, one of them is right, but a long time ago, the test stopped being about whether God exists or not and started being about who had the better argument and was therefore the better person. So I choose to believe that God exists, that there is this eternal, omnipotent entity who for some miraculous reason loves me and cares about the state of my soul not only because you can't prove me wrong but also because I feel it. When logic fails, you have to lean back on the wonderful and terrible things that you feel and somehow the combination of that teaches you.
And I think I am that combination. I know who I am, under the layers of quirks I put on in order to make myself interesting, maybe only to myself. I think, I lean on what learned people can tell me and what makes sense out of what the learned people have told me and I learn about other things so I don't lean too heavily on the words of one agenda. But thinking leaves you alone and then you have to breathe, sit and listen, look up and wonder. You can't leave out one, though. You can't have too much of the other. And I don't think I'm the ideal balance. On any given day, my brain tells my feelings to stop being so pathetic and on another day, my feelings will tell my brain that it gets no choice in the matter. But I'm not leaving either one of the two of them at home and that's the important thing.
Is this a discovery? I think I was expecting it. So maybe I'm wrong. But I may be right.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
A Day in the Life
Scheduling may just be the bane of my existence.
It's 9 o'clock and get down off of Prometheus (my bed), stepping next on Maxwell (my chair) and landing a little less than solidly on Hades (the floor). I next walk over to my closet, hitting Paul (the shelves) with the door, possibly knocking Maurice (the microwave) and Victor (the refrigerator) a little out of place. I make sure that George (my window- Christine's is Fred) is closed before I change and make my way out the door, laughing a little at Clifford, the futon with a blue cover, whose alternate personality is the Enterprise when the red cover's around. You might say my room has a little bit of personality.
I head out across campus up to UUMC, which is a lot closer than it used to be, so coming in for morning prayer on Wednesday mornings is a lot less of a big deal. Since I don't have class until 2, I contemplate walking over to Hill to get PMA grilled cheese but decide that it's probably better to get back to my room and do some reading. I glance at the random quote of the day as I open my door- it's Beatles week this week. Then, for the next couple of hours, I dive into Joshua and Judges for my Hebrew Bible class, as well as some extra readings that have to be done before I can write my paper that's due Friday.
I start packing in a panic around 1:15, grabbing book after book off of Albert (my bookshelf) and cramming them all into my backpack. Feeling like an unbalanced turtle, I leave my room again and walk out of Grimes, behind Hamilton, behind Lenoir and in between Greenlaw and Bingham, weaving in and out of crowds in front of the UL and down, across the street in front of the Bell Tower, to the Stone Center for Reli 103. After a decently interesting lecture (my professor had on the most awesome coat the other day, so today's normal attire was a slight disappointment) at a whirlwind pace about the history of ancient Israel from the time of the patriarchs to the time of the judges (with a little bit of an overview mentioned these guys named Saul, David and Solomon, whoever they were), I motor out of Stone Center, up past the construction, through the arch in Caudil Labs and into the bottom of Dey Hall. I slow my power walk down in Dey to listen to snippets of French and Spanish as this is the more pleasant part of my marathon from the Stone Center to Phillips. Up, out of Dey, around the back of Gardner, cutting in front of Carrol while admiring the new journalism hangings between the columns and over and up three staircases to make it to the second floor of Phillips.
Ah, Phillips. Who can help but appreciate your exposed pipes and wires, your less-than-bright lighting, your freezing classrooms and your colorful personalities? I drop off my bag in 265 and rush over to the bathroom and am reminded of the kvetch I keep meaning to send in- 'You erased the bathroom graffitti in Phillips! Now where am I going to find amusement and solace in the midst of my physics induced panic attacks?' I was my hands thoroughly, because the sign on the door told me that this would stop me from getting the death plague (also know as swine flu) and walk back into class to collapse between two friends on the front row. After a decently boring lecture on the statistical probabilities involved in thermodynamics at various levels of particles, I dash out of 265 to make it down the hall to 275, where I have my Astro 291 problem solving session. We talk about the differences between frequency and wavelength in the various forms of the Planck function and get hung up on parsecs and AU in an easy question about parallax and then I leave early to speed over to the Kenan music building, walking into Symphony band rehearsal late.
I sigh a small sigh of relief- Symphony band, like bell choir, is what I do for me, the little bit of stress relief and entire lack of pressure for a couple of hours a week. Even though I utterly fail at parts of the Holtz suite in F and mess up large parts of the Esprit de Corps, even though I've played it before, I'm still a little bit happier walking out of symphony band than I was rushing in. If we had had bell choir practice, I would, at this moment, be figuring out my position and learning to read below the bass clef, since I'm (crosses fingers) switching bells. But, since we don't start until next week, I have a second to come here and give the world an excuse for my lack of contemplative thinking. In a world of emails and instant messages and texts and Facebook (and blogs), where am I supposed to sit back for ten seconds and give my heart a rest from the weight that's sitting heavy on it? Where do I go to get away from a hall that is wonderfully social yet never peaceful? Out on campus at night? To a library? To a study lounge? By the time I've got time to stop and breathe and wonder, the sun is far gone and the stars are blocked by the lights that make campus that much safer.
So I stop and I breathe and I wonder at my life. Then I dive back under the water, reading, writing, talking, thinking until there's no point in keeping my eyes open and I crawl back up on Prometheus, who may have just used the day to regrow his liver instead of the night. I think tomorrow I'll let fire burn during the day and find a chance, just some small chance, to think about better gifts to humanity.
It's 9 o'clock and get down off of Prometheus (my bed), stepping next on Maxwell (my chair) and landing a little less than solidly on Hades (the floor). I next walk over to my closet, hitting Paul (the shelves) with the door, possibly knocking Maurice (the microwave) and Victor (the refrigerator) a little out of place. I make sure that George (my window- Christine's is Fred) is closed before I change and make my way out the door, laughing a little at Clifford, the futon with a blue cover, whose alternate personality is the Enterprise when the red cover's around. You might say my room has a little bit of personality.
I head out across campus up to UUMC, which is a lot closer than it used to be, so coming in for morning prayer on Wednesday mornings is a lot less of a big deal. Since I don't have class until 2, I contemplate walking over to Hill to get PMA grilled cheese but decide that it's probably better to get back to my room and do some reading. I glance at the random quote of the day as I open my door- it's Beatles week this week. Then, for the next couple of hours, I dive into Joshua and Judges for my Hebrew Bible class, as well as some extra readings that have to be done before I can write my paper that's due Friday.
I start packing in a panic around 1:15, grabbing book after book off of Albert (my bookshelf) and cramming them all into my backpack. Feeling like an unbalanced turtle, I leave my room again and walk out of Grimes, behind Hamilton, behind Lenoir and in between Greenlaw and Bingham, weaving in and out of crowds in front of the UL and down, across the street in front of the Bell Tower, to the Stone Center for Reli 103. After a decently interesting lecture (my professor had on the most awesome coat the other day, so today's normal attire was a slight disappointment) at a whirlwind pace about the history of ancient Israel from the time of the patriarchs to the time of the judges (with a little bit of an overview mentioned these guys named Saul, David and Solomon, whoever they were), I motor out of Stone Center, up past the construction, through the arch in Caudil Labs and into the bottom of Dey Hall. I slow my power walk down in Dey to listen to snippets of French and Spanish as this is the more pleasant part of my marathon from the Stone Center to Phillips. Up, out of Dey, around the back of Gardner, cutting in front of Carrol while admiring the new journalism hangings between the columns and over and up three staircases to make it to the second floor of Phillips.
Ah, Phillips. Who can help but appreciate your exposed pipes and wires, your less-than-bright lighting, your freezing classrooms and your colorful personalities? I drop off my bag in 265 and rush over to the bathroom and am reminded of the kvetch I keep meaning to send in- 'You erased the bathroom graffitti in Phillips! Now where am I going to find amusement and solace in the midst of my physics induced panic attacks?' I was my hands thoroughly, because the sign on the door told me that this would stop me from getting the death plague (also know as swine flu) and walk back into class to collapse between two friends on the front row. After a decently boring lecture on the statistical probabilities involved in thermodynamics at various levels of particles, I dash out of 265 to make it down the hall to 275, where I have my Astro 291 problem solving session. We talk about the differences between frequency and wavelength in the various forms of the Planck function and get hung up on parsecs and AU in an easy question about parallax and then I leave early to speed over to the Kenan music building, walking into Symphony band rehearsal late.
I sigh a small sigh of relief- Symphony band, like bell choir, is what I do for me, the little bit of stress relief and entire lack of pressure for a couple of hours a week. Even though I utterly fail at parts of the Holtz suite in F and mess up large parts of the Esprit de Corps, even though I've played it before, I'm still a little bit happier walking out of symphony band than I was rushing in. If we had had bell choir practice, I would, at this moment, be figuring out my position and learning to read below the bass clef, since I'm (crosses fingers) switching bells. But, since we don't start until next week, I have a second to come here and give the world an excuse for my lack of contemplative thinking. In a world of emails and instant messages and texts and Facebook (and blogs), where am I supposed to sit back for ten seconds and give my heart a rest from the weight that's sitting heavy on it? Where do I go to get away from a hall that is wonderfully social yet never peaceful? Out on campus at night? To a library? To a study lounge? By the time I've got time to stop and breathe and wonder, the sun is far gone and the stars are blocked by the lights that make campus that much safer.
So I stop and I breathe and I wonder at my life. Then I dive back under the water, reading, writing, talking, thinking until there's no point in keeping my eyes open and I crawl back up on Prometheus, who may have just used the day to regrow his liver instead of the night. I think tomorrow I'll let fire burn during the day and find a chance, just some small chance, to think about better gifts to humanity.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Summer Well... Spent
I saw my last firefly of the summer. A flash, seen out of the corner of my eye, was like a door closing in my face. And now that I'm doing my first laundry of the year in the bottom of Manly in a room that feels like summer hasn't left the building, I feel like reflecting on what's on the other side of that door. Things I learned this summer (in no particular order):
1. You can do many, many, many things with LEGOs. Many things. Trebuchets being my favorite, of course.
2. All children under the age of 12 think that you are over the age of 35, at best.
3. Kickball is intense and there is a real strategy to Mancala.
4. Sidney Carton is quite possibly my favorite hero in a novel.
5. You can survive off of pasta, Parmesan cheese, water and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for at least a month and a half.
6. God really is good, all the time.
7. You may not smoke, eat or drink while practicing the organ at Wesley.
8. The lights in the alley in between Newman and Wesley stay on until 12 AM.
9. Campus is gorgeous at dawn.
10. Sometimes you think that you'll ruin something just by being there.
11. Sometimes you're very wrong.
12. Where you are is where you're meant to be. If it's not, you wouldn't be there. If it's not where you're going to be, you won't be there.
13. Your heart can break and rejoice in the space of 2 seconds.
14. Mephibosheth was spared by King David. Go read about it in 2 Samuel.
15. I really don't know my summer constellations.
16. I don't know what it's like to be in love, though I do know what it's like to love Someone you can't see.
17. The Star Theater is cold. Bring a jacket.
18. Spider bites are TERRIBLE.
19. You can't swipe guests into the pool.
20. Campus is much more apparently hilly on a bike.
21. Pluto's official designation is a 'plutoid.'
22. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is AMAZING, as is Godspell.
23. The roasted almonds are in between the pecans and the walnuts and cotton candy ice cream with butterfingers mixed-in is more popular than you would think.
24. Wesley really is like my pre-college life: The downstairs looks like South, the upstairs has the same amount of random stuff as my house, and the sanctuary reminds me like the old sanctuary at St. Luke's.
25. I should like very much to defy gravity.
Everyone asks how your summer was the first time you see them when you get back to school. What am I supposed to say? Boring? Incorrect, as I was quite busy and engaged. Unproductive? Also incorrect, I made a good little chunk of change and read a couple of books. Interesting? Perhaps, but that's not its defining feature. Oddly painful, comforting, restricting and freeing at the same time? Yes.
But I want something to show for it, something that will make me remember and make me forget, something that will cement it into my mind and be my defining triumph, like the lift in Dirty Dancing. I probably simply want to prove to myself something that cannot be proved.
For now, though, I'll carry on with school, my jobs and my friends, sit back and label the memories as summer and my summer love as God. One day that'll change, but only when the change doesn't matter.
1. You can do many, many, many things with LEGOs. Many things. Trebuchets being my favorite, of course.
2. All children under the age of 12 think that you are over the age of 35, at best.
3. Kickball is intense and there is a real strategy to Mancala.
4. Sidney Carton is quite possibly my favorite hero in a novel.
5. You can survive off of pasta, Parmesan cheese, water and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for at least a month and a half.
6. God really is good, all the time.
7. You may not smoke, eat or drink while practicing the organ at Wesley.
8. The lights in the alley in between Newman and Wesley stay on until 12 AM.
9. Campus is gorgeous at dawn.
10. Sometimes you think that you'll ruin something just by being there.
11. Sometimes you're very wrong.
12. Where you are is where you're meant to be. If it's not, you wouldn't be there. If it's not where you're going to be, you won't be there.
13. Your heart can break and rejoice in the space of 2 seconds.
14. Mephibosheth was spared by King David. Go read about it in 2 Samuel.
15. I really don't know my summer constellations.
16. I don't know what it's like to be in love, though I do know what it's like to love Someone you can't see.
17. The Star Theater is cold. Bring a jacket.
18. Spider bites are TERRIBLE.
19. You can't swipe guests into the pool.
20. Campus is much more apparently hilly on a bike.
21. Pluto's official designation is a 'plutoid.'
22. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is AMAZING, as is Godspell.
23. The roasted almonds are in between the pecans and the walnuts and cotton candy ice cream with butterfingers mixed-in is more popular than you would think.
24. Wesley really is like my pre-college life: The downstairs looks like South, the upstairs has the same amount of random stuff as my house, and the sanctuary reminds me like the old sanctuary at St. Luke's.
25. I should like very much to defy gravity.
Everyone asks how your summer was the first time you see them when you get back to school. What am I supposed to say? Boring? Incorrect, as I was quite busy and engaged. Unproductive? Also incorrect, I made a good little chunk of change and read a couple of books. Interesting? Perhaps, but that's not its defining feature. Oddly painful, comforting, restricting and freeing at the same time? Yes.
But I want something to show for it, something that will make me remember and make me forget, something that will cement it into my mind and be my defining triumph, like the lift in Dirty Dancing. I probably simply want to prove to myself something that cannot be proved.
For now, though, I'll carry on with school, my jobs and my friends, sit back and label the memories as summer and my summer love as God. One day that'll change, but only when the change doesn't matter.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Yellow Light Epiphany
Dear Boy,
Thanks for this summer. You probably don't know and won't know how much you changed my plans. You don't know how many hours I spent letting my heart ache pointlessly over you or how many people I asked for advice on what to do about you or how long it took me to realize that you are not what I really want in my life today, but I know. I wasted those hours, I started those conversations and I waited my two years- let me go check my email to find the exact date- to figure out what I figured out today.
You know, I may have loved you. There are times that I've been afraid that I did and there was a whole week of happiness induced by that thought. I knew all along that you never loved me, though. You take the taste out of peanut butter, as Charlie Brown might see it. Maybe I preferred it that way. You were safe and you were unknown to most of the people around me. You could be my mysterious excuse to not talk to someone else. You were safe. You left my heart in a confused mess, but you were safe.
I probably should apologize- I'm sure this is making you uncomfortable. My pen sees it as revenge for having to smile when you mentioned past girlfriends when I've never even been on a date or for the times when I was sure you were saying things to make me size up your opinion of me, knowing that I would fall short. I'm not the girl you want and you probably never thought of me outside of the times that you saw me. I had one painful evening when I could imagine us seeing more of each other. Maybe that's the night that I began to realize that you must become part of my past as much as I am only a part of yours.
Ever since high school, I hit the ceiling when I go under a yellow light- you get a wish when you do. I often waste mine- a wish for a car, for a boyfriend, for a perfect day. Not that these things are inaccessible, just that they don't come by wishing. I realized today, after musing under a yellow light, that neither would you and, upon further examination, I realized that I wouldn't want you to.
Would you believe in a love at first sight? I'm certain that it happens all the time. But it doesn't mean a relationship, as it's just a glance. Destiny is worked out by us and love remains unrequited when left idle. So here's to you- you cured me of my ridiculous obsession with love and helped me grow up, all the while being true to yourself, which Shakespeare tells us is the most important thing.
Still, if you want to spend a couple of hours talking about my favorite books (a question of yours which I never answered satisfactorily), listening to Beatles' songs (just to see where I'm coming from), looking at the stars again (before the constellations I know set), or talking about our awesomely blessed yet superbly separate lives, I'm not at all opposed to putting off packing every little thing until one in the morning. Just in case you happen to be a Hawk Nelson fan, too.
With best regards,
Your Ordinary Girl
Thanks for this summer. You probably don't know and won't know how much you changed my plans. You don't know how many hours I spent letting my heart ache pointlessly over you or how many people I asked for advice on what to do about you or how long it took me to realize that you are not what I really want in my life today, but I know. I wasted those hours, I started those conversations and I waited my two years- let me go check my email to find the exact date- to figure out what I figured out today.
You know, I may have loved you. There are times that I've been afraid that I did and there was a whole week of happiness induced by that thought. I knew all along that you never loved me, though. You take the taste out of peanut butter, as Charlie Brown might see it. Maybe I preferred it that way. You were safe and you were unknown to most of the people around me. You could be my mysterious excuse to not talk to someone else. You were safe. You left my heart in a confused mess, but you were safe.
I probably should apologize- I'm sure this is making you uncomfortable. My pen sees it as revenge for having to smile when you mentioned past girlfriends when I've never even been on a date or for the times when I was sure you were saying things to make me size up your opinion of me, knowing that I would fall short. I'm not the girl you want and you probably never thought of me outside of the times that you saw me. I had one painful evening when I could imagine us seeing more of each other. Maybe that's the night that I began to realize that you must become part of my past as much as I am only a part of yours.
Ever since high school, I hit the ceiling when I go under a yellow light- you get a wish when you do. I often waste mine- a wish for a car, for a boyfriend, for a perfect day. Not that these things are inaccessible, just that they don't come by wishing. I realized today, after musing under a yellow light, that neither would you and, upon further examination, I realized that I wouldn't want you to.
Would you believe in a love at first sight? I'm certain that it happens all the time. But it doesn't mean a relationship, as it's just a glance. Destiny is worked out by us and love remains unrequited when left idle. So here's to you- you cured me of my ridiculous obsession with love and helped me grow up, all the while being true to yourself, which Shakespeare tells us is the most important thing.
Still, if you want to spend a couple of hours talking about my favorite books (a question of yours which I never answered satisfactorily), listening to Beatles' songs (just to see where I'm coming from), looking at the stars again (before the constellations I know set), or talking about our awesomely blessed yet superbly separate lives, I'm not at all opposed to putting off packing every little thing until one in the morning. Just in case you happen to be a Hawk Nelson fan, too.
With best regards,
Your Ordinary Girl
Saturday, August 8, 2009
A Folk Tale
There once lived a beautiful Princess in a castle in the clouds, the daughter of the powerful Sky King and Queen. The Princess sat at her loom every day, weaving the cloth of the rainbows and gazing out her window to see the best places in the sky to place her beautiful cloth. It happened one day that she saw a Herdsman far below one day as she looked to cast out her cloth and immediately fell in love with him. She left her castle in the clouds with her work unfinished to meet the Herdsman.
The Sky Queen was very proud of her daughter's work, and very jealous of her daughter's time. When she found that her daughter had left the heavens for a man on earth, she called the Princess back up into the sky and locked her in the castle far away from the herdsman. But the Sky King took pity on the lovers and brought the Herdsman to his kingdom so the two could be nearer each other. To appease his wife and to keep his daughter weaving the rainbows, he placed a river between the Herdsman and the Princess so they may never truly be together. However, it is said that once in a year, blackbirds and magpies are allowed to fly up to the sky and make a bridge across the Milky Way to let the two lovers, called Vega and Altair by us, come across and meet each other. If there is a rainbow in the sky that day, the Princess has thrown her weaving away early, in a rush to meet her love before the sun sets and the bridge disappears.
The image below is a picture of the summer triangle take by the Hubble. The two bright stars on either side of the Milky Way are Vega, above it, and Altair, below it. Vega is in the constellation of Lyra the harp, for the more curious of you, and Altair in Aquilla the Eagle. The other star, the third brightest in the picture, looks like it's leading the Milky Way forward. It's Deneb, in the constellation of Cygnus, the only summer constellation besides Ursa Major and Ursa Minor I can point out with any reliability. If you look at the photo for a second, you'll see two stars above and below the Milky Way near Deneb, and three stars in an almost line pointing right. They're the arms of the Northern Cross, the rest of Cygnus the Swan.
There's a river between me and my Love. Maybe the world put it there, maybe I did, maybe it's been there and I keep on running back across it because life on the other side isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Somebody back in the day linked up a bunch of stars together in their mind and called it Cygnus. There's a black hole in that part of the sky- I've looked at its noise with a radio telescope. That black hole got the constellation stuck in my mind and I think it's wonderful how a week of research a summer ago and a Japanese and Chinese fable told to me a week ago serve to keep it always in my mind that there's a cross in the middle of the Milky Way, when I have such a tendency to forget that it's been in the river all along.
The Sky Queen was very proud of her daughter's work, and very jealous of her daughter's time. When she found that her daughter had left the heavens for a man on earth, she called the Princess back up into the sky and locked her in the castle far away from the herdsman. But the Sky King took pity on the lovers and brought the Herdsman to his kingdom so the two could be nearer each other. To appease his wife and to keep his daughter weaving the rainbows, he placed a river between the Herdsman and the Princess so they may never truly be together. However, it is said that once in a year, blackbirds and magpies are allowed to fly up to the sky and make a bridge across the Milky Way to let the two lovers, called Vega and Altair by us, come across and meet each other. If there is a rainbow in the sky that day, the Princess has thrown her weaving away early, in a rush to meet her love before the sun sets and the bridge disappears.
The image below is a picture of the summer triangle take by the Hubble. The two bright stars on either side of the Milky Way are Vega, above it, and Altair, below it. Vega is in the constellation of Lyra the harp, for the more curious of you, and Altair in Aquilla the Eagle. The other star, the third brightest in the picture, looks like it's leading the Milky Way forward. It's Deneb, in the constellation of Cygnus, the only summer constellation besides Ursa Major and Ursa Minor I can point out with any reliability. If you look at the photo for a second, you'll see two stars above and below the Milky Way near Deneb, and three stars in an almost line pointing right. They're the arms of the Northern Cross, the rest of Cygnus the Swan.
There's a river between me and my Love. Maybe the world put it there, maybe I did, maybe it's been there and I keep on running back across it because life on the other side isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Somebody back in the day linked up a bunch of stars together in their mind and called it Cygnus. There's a black hole in that part of the sky- I've looked at its noise with a radio telescope. That black hole got the constellation stuck in my mind and I think it's wonderful how a week of research a summer ago and a Japanese and Chinese fable told to me a week ago serve to keep it always in my mind that there's a cross in the middle of the Milky Way, when I have such a tendency to forget that it's been in the river all along.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Fireflies
Today has been a lovely day, I think. I get woken up to drive one dog to the vet, only to find out he has Parvo (PS Who knew what Parvo was before Cinco got it? Not me). I got called by the other dog's name twice, confirming my suspicions that my parents bought her as a replacement daughter. My dad Cloroxed the yard and I enjoyed the look of my new, nice, clean room. I also did dishes and moved furniture and other 'womanly' things, but we won't go into that right now.
I got back from the vet a little angry, just because they had to keep Cinco and he might not make it and my mom cried and I hate pets because all you end up doing is loving them for the fraction of your life that they're around and then cry because they're gone to whatever dog heaven awaits them, if indeed it's different from our heaven. And since I was upset, I began to attack my ceiling with an almost vicious vigor. I had noticed that my stars as well as my comets had dust tails and decided that the glow in the dark sky needed a make-over. Just as a postscript, it's not an astronomy obsession to have a star-ridden ceiling- it was Stephen's and Jackson's when they had to share a room, back in the day. Geeze, I would have thought I lived in a post-modern Haunted Mansion, the amount of cobwebs I had. And as I much as I enjoy the analogy of scrubbing clean a room that looked at least tolerably neat before, I'll spare your intelligence. I don't think my mood was lightened in the slightest by this idea- I was too busy being angry at the dust in the first place.
The slightly funny thing was that I had just made the point the night before that it was much easier to be patient when it was just me and God (though I'm not always patient then) and I wanted to know what He was going to do to help when I woke up the next morning and had to help get the house ready for my grandparents to come up for Jackson's graduation. I've perfected the angry hand clench as a means of keeping my mouth shut, but I'm sick of having to keep anger bottled up. Listen, I know that most everyone has heard me outburst at least once- I can rant all day long (probably 9/10ths of why I have a blog)- but I really don't say everything I think. It's like that one guy on House who thought terribly mean things and then ended up saying them all because he had some mental disorder that started out with a nosebleed and then Kutner said it was like the Sorting Hat- we are who we are because of our choices. And at the same time that I was thinking about how angry I was and priding myself on keeping it all inside, I was berating myself for not being good enough and upset about the dog and a million other things. Honestly, one person shouldn't have all this on their minds. And still, twenty problems were not solved and I just wanted to fly away, since I don't run anywhere- though I'll walk quickly in your general direction if you need me.
Well, the momentary agitations left, sprinkled with little bits of encouragement from college and old friends and somehow it ended up being dark enough for me to start noticing the fireflies as I sat on the porch swing with my mother after reporting to everyone the results of the phone call saying that Cinco was wagging his tail and vomiting and apparently this is all a good thing. See, in one of my pissy, emo days where I fought with God over every little thing because I was convinced that He could not have anyone's best interest at heart, I sat on a bench just in front of the Old Well, facing Franklin, watching the darkening quad. I sat on the bench, quite cross, and stared at the empty air in front of me and asked God for one little firefly. I figured it'd lighten up the air, it'd certainly make me happier and it wouldn't be that big of a deal. One out of season firefly, no trouble at all for someone who's got the entirety of theoretical physics worked out in His head, completely ignoring the whole you shall not test the Lord your God bit of the Gospels. So needless to say, I stared at this little bug, not really listening to anything my mother said because I need something to make my life more than ordinary.
Then Jackson started a fire in the fire pit, driving away all the bugs by us and we sat and talked about random things, because nothing in my life can make sense. I did dearly intend for this to end up being encouraging, or at least make sense, but sometimes random epic fails are wonderful, like too many red sprinkles on a cupcake, something that would only bother those of us who are looking. I'm glad it's not June 5th anymore, but nothing promises that June 7th will rise above June 6th. But the great thing is that the Person who I doubted (doubt?), who has provided for everything, no longer seems like a stingy King sitting far away, withholding blessings from people not in His favor. He became human, and this helps me understand Him, though only a little.
Oh my God, it is so much better to be in love with You. You're much more patient with me when I leave and though You don't like the dust, You are much better about remembering that stars shine. And I forget.
I got back from the vet a little angry, just because they had to keep Cinco and he might not make it and my mom cried and I hate pets because all you end up doing is loving them for the fraction of your life that they're around and then cry because they're gone to whatever dog heaven awaits them, if indeed it's different from our heaven. And since I was upset, I began to attack my ceiling with an almost vicious vigor. I had noticed that my stars as well as my comets had dust tails and decided that the glow in the dark sky needed a make-over. Just as a postscript, it's not an astronomy obsession to have a star-ridden ceiling- it was Stephen's and Jackson's when they had to share a room, back in the day. Geeze, I would have thought I lived in a post-modern Haunted Mansion, the amount of cobwebs I had. And as I much as I enjoy the analogy of scrubbing clean a room that looked at least tolerably neat before, I'll spare your intelligence. I don't think my mood was lightened in the slightest by this idea- I was too busy being angry at the dust in the first place.
The slightly funny thing was that I had just made the point the night before that it was much easier to be patient when it was just me and God (though I'm not always patient then) and I wanted to know what He was going to do to help when I woke up the next morning and had to help get the house ready for my grandparents to come up for Jackson's graduation. I've perfected the angry hand clench as a means of keeping my mouth shut, but I'm sick of having to keep anger bottled up. Listen, I know that most everyone has heard me outburst at least once- I can rant all day long (probably 9/10ths of why I have a blog)- but I really don't say everything I think. It's like that one guy on House who thought terribly mean things and then ended up saying them all because he had some mental disorder that started out with a nosebleed and then Kutner said it was like the Sorting Hat- we are who we are because of our choices. And at the same time that I was thinking about how angry I was and priding myself on keeping it all inside, I was berating myself for not being good enough and upset about the dog and a million other things. Honestly, one person shouldn't have all this on their minds. And still, twenty problems were not solved and I just wanted to fly away, since I don't run anywhere- though I'll walk quickly in your general direction if you need me.
Well, the momentary agitations left, sprinkled with little bits of encouragement from college and old friends and somehow it ended up being dark enough for me to start noticing the fireflies as I sat on the porch swing with my mother after reporting to everyone the results of the phone call saying that Cinco was wagging his tail and vomiting and apparently this is all a good thing. See, in one of my pissy, emo days where I fought with God over every little thing because I was convinced that He could not have anyone's best interest at heart, I sat on a bench just in front of the Old Well, facing Franklin, watching the darkening quad. I sat on the bench, quite cross, and stared at the empty air in front of me and asked God for one little firefly. I figured it'd lighten up the air, it'd certainly make me happier and it wouldn't be that big of a deal. One out of season firefly, no trouble at all for someone who's got the entirety of theoretical physics worked out in His head, completely ignoring the whole you shall not test the Lord your God bit of the Gospels. So needless to say, I stared at this little bug, not really listening to anything my mother said because I need something to make my life more than ordinary.
Then Jackson started a fire in the fire pit, driving away all the bugs by us and we sat and talked about random things, because nothing in my life can make sense. I did dearly intend for this to end up being encouraging, or at least make sense, but sometimes random epic fails are wonderful, like too many red sprinkles on a cupcake, something that would only bother those of us who are looking. I'm glad it's not June 5th anymore, but nothing promises that June 7th will rise above June 6th. But the great thing is that the Person who I doubted (doubt?), who has provided for everything, no longer seems like a stingy King sitting far away, withholding blessings from people not in His favor. He became human, and this helps me understand Him, though only a little.
Oh my God, it is so much better to be in love with You. You're much more patient with me when I leave and though You don't like the dust, You are much better about remembering that stars shine. And I forget.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
With Thanks to David Crowder and NASA's picture of the day
So I've got this problem. I want everything to be nice and wonderful and disgustingly sitcom-esque. And, as evidenced by my adjective, I apparently have a problem with nice, wonderful and sitcom-esque worlds.
I've got this other problem. I think maybe Paul might have mentioned it. I want to do good, promise I do, but I keep on failing. A lot. It's quite obnoxious. What I want to do, I don't and what I don't want to do, I do.
But the harder I try the more clearly can I feel
The depth of our fall and the weight of it all
And so this might could be the most impossible thing
Your grandness in me making me clean.
Did you ever see a such a colorful hybrid as the human? Made to be light and yet covered in dark. Or, better, made to reflect light and covered in dirt. Imagine dusty old mirrors and smile because dust is dead human skin cells, entirely our fault. Well, at this point, debatable as the dust could occur because of the situation of the mirror, etc,. but we're going to let that go for the aesthetics of the analogy.
See, this dirt thing, this dust thing, I seem to have a bit of a problem with it. From whence does it come? And what purpose does it serve? Should there be any good reason why we should have dust? I mean, couldn't God make a universe without dust? He's good a stuff like that. Making universes, I mean. Well, He's good at everything. Over achiever.
I get really mad at it too. All these philosophical problems I have are just excuses not to face the music. It's really scary music, though! It doesn't sound pretty, it's definitely atonal and clashy. It's not even haunting or heart wrenching. And all these metaphors are ways to dress up this abominable separation and if I don't say it, I will never admit that there hasn't been a full half hour that I've been able to have a conversation with God that doesn't turn into a lengthy string of accusatory shouts in months. I feel so fake. I am so fake. I want to fix it, so badly, but every time I get to fixing it, I get so mad that it was broken in the first place (forget that I broke it, He shouldn't have left the three year old alone in the china shop) that I never get two sincere words of apology in edgewise.
The heart breaking makes a sound
I never knew could be
So beautiful and loud
Fury filled and we collide
So courageous until now
Fumbling and scared
So afraid You'll find me out,
Alone here with my doubt.
Here it comes, a beautiful collision.
And I don't want this cycle of death, yet I smile when I hear that a song of immense faith is followed by a song of immense doubt. Oh, God, where are you now? He always waits until I need Him and maybe I'd feel better if I was the one that was right for once, but then again, probably not. And my life is bright sunlight all around me framed by huge storm clouds just waiting. There is nothing more beautiful to me because I know that the storm is just water around dust, grace covering humans, it just takes some looking to see.
I've got this other problem. I think maybe Paul might have mentioned it. I want to do good, promise I do, but I keep on failing. A lot. It's quite obnoxious. What I want to do, I don't and what I don't want to do, I do.
But the harder I try the more clearly can I feel
The depth of our fall and the weight of it all
And so this might could be the most impossible thing
Your grandness in me making me clean.
Did you ever see a such a colorful hybrid as the human? Made to be light and yet covered in dark. Or, better, made to reflect light and covered in dirt. Imagine dusty old mirrors and smile because dust is dead human skin cells, entirely our fault. Well, at this point, debatable as the dust could occur because of the situation of the mirror, etc,. but we're going to let that go for the aesthetics of the analogy.
See, this dirt thing, this dust thing, I seem to have a bit of a problem with it. From whence does it come? And what purpose does it serve? Should there be any good reason why we should have dust? I mean, couldn't God make a universe without dust? He's good a stuff like that. Making universes, I mean. Well, He's good at everything. Over achiever.
I get really mad at it too. All these philosophical problems I have are just excuses not to face the music. It's really scary music, though! It doesn't sound pretty, it's definitely atonal and clashy. It's not even haunting or heart wrenching. And all these metaphors are ways to dress up this abominable separation and if I don't say it, I will never admit that there hasn't been a full half hour that I've been able to have a conversation with God that doesn't turn into a lengthy string of accusatory shouts in months. I feel so fake. I am so fake. I want to fix it, so badly, but every time I get to fixing it, I get so mad that it was broken in the first place (forget that I broke it, He shouldn't have left the three year old alone in the china shop) that I never get two sincere words of apology in edgewise.
The heart breaking makes a sound
I never knew could be
So beautiful and loud
Fury filled and we collide
So courageous until now
Fumbling and scared
So afraid You'll find me out,
Alone here with my doubt.
Here it comes, a beautiful collision.
And I don't want this cycle of death, yet I smile when I hear that a song of immense faith is followed by a song of immense doubt. Oh, God, where are you now? He always waits until I need Him and maybe I'd feel better if I was the one that was right for once, but then again, probably not. And my life is bright sunlight all around me framed by huge storm clouds just waiting. There is nothing more beautiful to me because I know that the storm is just water around dust, grace covering humans, it just takes some looking to see.
Starlight is white or blue or red or yellow, but it's just a pinprick of pure light until it's blocked by a cloud of... dust... And then the Universe is beyond beautiful.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Broken Toes
I think it's a bit ironic that House, the confirmed atheist, has helped me understand God a little more. Well, maybe not so ironic and maybe not so unexpected. God seems to delight in using the opposite of what we expected, the meek inheriting the earth and all.
In the episode I saw tonight, a doctor in the Arctic had fallen suddenly and mysteriously ill (as they all do) from a break in her toe that was leaking marrow into her system. House, in doing the full body exam over an internet camera, didn't make her take off her socks because she hated having cold feet. At the end of the episode, he's lamenting his mistake to Robert Sean Leonard (!) who plays Wilson but is better known in my life as Neal in the Dead Poets Society and My Lord Lackbeard (Claudio) in Much Ado. Anyway, Wilson comforts House, saying that House actually cared about his patient by not wanting her to be in discomfort in the first place. House insists that he could have solved the case days earlier if he would have just had her take off her socks. When Wilson says that House was cared for the girl, House replies, in Hugh Laurie's amazing sarcastic American accent, 'If that's love, I want nothing to do with it.'
Note to the world: This is not the original love of God. This is not the love that doesn't force itself on you, the love that compelled my Jesus to stop the angels and die on the cross, the love that offers everything and demands only acceptance. That love is given freely and that grace cleans. What I'm talking about now is the perfecting love, the sanctifying grace, the hard stuff for me to deal with. I don't want trial by fire. I don't want to be broken to be made new. I don't want this. I didn't sign up for this. Sure, I want to grow in faith, doesn't everyone? I just thought it was something you're supposed to do. I never realized what God really wants from me.
I was reading the passion story (for what must have been the tenth time this week) and I threw a tiny fit when I came to the crowds once again. I can't take it. They shout Crucify and I scream at them. How could so few stir up so many to cause so much suffering to my Lord? I claim possession of Him and call Him my Lord because His death was my fault and His death led to my life. If they would have seen what they were doing, who they were killing, what happened because of their cries... they would have yelled on. 'Ashamed I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.'
Because I hear them yell crucify and I know that I would yell right along with them if I was there. I watch Jesus walk, watch the Romans grab a passerby to carry the cross when He can't, watch them nail Him to a tree and wait for the time, I know it's coming, when He yells 'Eloi, Eloi...' I always used to have a problem with this. Why wasn't God more obviously present when Jesus was in such need of Him? I know He never left Him- why wasn't He there more? I would shake in quiet rage at this. If God couldn't be visible for His only Son on the cross, what ever made me think He would be here for me in my tiny pain? 'It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished.' Jesus, having never felt the separation, the blocking effect that sin has between us and God, suddenly had all the sins ever committed in all of eternity upon Him. It's the worst possible feeling ever and He had the worst of the worst as His only experience with sin. Of course He felt like God abandonned Him. No one can see the stars through a thunderstorm.
And so my every sin heaps pain on my Lord. No, I know He's already felt it all. that the sins I commit tomorrow, the next day, a year from the now, the very day of my death, all those have already been piled on Him. I just want to limit my pile now. And here's where the love comes back in. I've told Him, time and again, that I want to be better, that I want to stop causing Him pain, that for once I want to be the person He made me to be. And He smiles because He sees that I really do want to try and I know He shakes His head because He knows when I'll fail. But His love is now not the kind that lets me sit with my socks on and a broken toe unnoticed. He must see into every area of my life and bring to light the things that must be taken away from me to make me perfect as He is perfect. And this is painful, much more than cold feet and discomfort. He is pulling everything wrong in my life, getting rid of my status quo and making me right. And I asked for it.
So this is love. He loves me too much to let me hide these things, no matter what the original discomfort is. House is right. Like Holmes, he usually is. A love that is unwilling to make me take off my socks, that is willing to let me die rather than cause me a little pain to fix my problems, is no love at all and I want nothing to do with it. I'm glad God's love is much better than that. I don't want to leave it.
In the episode I saw tonight, a doctor in the Arctic had fallen suddenly and mysteriously ill (as they all do) from a break in her toe that was leaking marrow into her system. House, in doing the full body exam over an internet camera, didn't make her take off her socks because she hated having cold feet. At the end of the episode, he's lamenting his mistake to Robert Sean Leonard (!) who plays Wilson but is better known in my life as Neal in the Dead Poets Society and My Lord Lackbeard (Claudio) in Much Ado. Anyway, Wilson comforts House, saying that House actually cared about his patient by not wanting her to be in discomfort in the first place. House insists that he could have solved the case days earlier if he would have just had her take off her socks. When Wilson says that House was cared for the girl, House replies, in Hugh Laurie's amazing sarcastic American accent, 'If that's love, I want nothing to do with it.'
Note to the world: This is not the original love of God. This is not the love that doesn't force itself on you, the love that compelled my Jesus to stop the angels and die on the cross, the love that offers everything and demands only acceptance. That love is given freely and that grace cleans. What I'm talking about now is the perfecting love, the sanctifying grace, the hard stuff for me to deal with. I don't want trial by fire. I don't want to be broken to be made new. I don't want this. I didn't sign up for this. Sure, I want to grow in faith, doesn't everyone? I just thought it was something you're supposed to do. I never realized what God really wants from me.
I was reading the passion story (for what must have been the tenth time this week) and I threw a tiny fit when I came to the crowds once again. I can't take it. They shout Crucify and I scream at them. How could so few stir up so many to cause so much suffering to my Lord? I claim possession of Him and call Him my Lord because His death was my fault and His death led to my life. If they would have seen what they were doing, who they were killing, what happened because of their cries... they would have yelled on. 'Ashamed I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.'
Because I hear them yell crucify and I know that I would yell right along with them if I was there. I watch Jesus walk, watch the Romans grab a passerby to carry the cross when He can't, watch them nail Him to a tree and wait for the time, I know it's coming, when He yells 'Eloi, Eloi...' I always used to have a problem with this. Why wasn't God more obviously present when Jesus was in such need of Him? I know He never left Him- why wasn't He there more? I would shake in quiet rage at this. If God couldn't be visible for His only Son on the cross, what ever made me think He would be here for me in my tiny pain? 'It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished.' Jesus, having never felt the separation, the blocking effect that sin has between us and God, suddenly had all the sins ever committed in all of eternity upon Him. It's the worst possible feeling ever and He had the worst of the worst as His only experience with sin. Of course He felt like God abandonned Him. No one can see the stars through a thunderstorm.
And so my every sin heaps pain on my Lord. No, I know He's already felt it all. that the sins I commit tomorrow, the next day, a year from the now, the very day of my death, all those have already been piled on Him. I just want to limit my pile now. And here's where the love comes back in. I've told Him, time and again, that I want to be better, that I want to stop causing Him pain, that for once I want to be the person He made me to be. And He smiles because He sees that I really do want to try and I know He shakes His head because He knows when I'll fail. But His love is now not the kind that lets me sit with my socks on and a broken toe unnoticed. He must see into every area of my life and bring to light the things that must be taken away from me to make me perfect as He is perfect. And this is painful, much more than cold feet and discomfort. He is pulling everything wrong in my life, getting rid of my status quo and making me right. And I asked for it.
So this is love. He loves me too much to let me hide these things, no matter what the original discomfort is. House is right. Like Holmes, he usually is. A love that is unwilling to make me take off my socks, that is willing to let me die rather than cause me a little pain to fix my problems, is no love at all and I want nothing to do with it. I'm glad God's love is much better than that. I don't want to leave it.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
21 cm
Hope can see heaven through the thickest clouds.- Thomas Benton Brooks
If you haven't seen the video 'Indescribable,' I highly recommend it. Louie Giglio uses astronomy pictures of the amazing, indescribable universe that our God has created to help us see how big God is and how small we truly are. He also uses an audio clip of a pulsar taken using a radio telescope, which is even dearer to me now because I spent a week using a 40-ft radio telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The universe is crying out in ways I've barely begun to explore. Noe, while the audio can be more impressive, you can make images or map regions in the sky based on their emission of waves at the frequency you're observing at, which was one of the projects of my week participating in ERIRA (Educational Research in Radio Astronomy, don't ask me to pronounce it).
I actually got to make a whole observation by myself while everyone else was on a hike. I was observing the Crab Nebula and the region of space around it. I can show everyone my strip chart, a physical recording of the data I took. On it you can clearly see the Crab Nebula as a large couple of spikes near the beginning and later the moon which spikes off the chart. If you look at the chart between the two bigger events you can see small spikes that make the data look like the top of Batman's masks, which made me think of camp (though I never quite understood why we picked Batman to be our superhero... anyway...) and in the middle of m data you can see a bunch of messed up data when the weed-eaters came by and I had to put that to a stop. I think it was right over a supernova remnant too, sadly.
The point of this sojourn into the world of radio telescope data is that I was by myself, turning a knob back and forth to make the telescope do sweeps of the sky to get a map of this region for three hours. Three hours of turning the knob, doing something for a few minutes before the computer with the nice green screen and red letters beeped at me to tell me to turn the telescope around. When you're there with a group of people, you converse and get to know them better and it's a fun time, except when you're sleep deprived. When you're by yourself, it can get tediuous and since I really hadn't taken a second to do it before, I brought my devotional with me. I opened it to the last time I read something (I was a few days behind- days tend to get a little confused when you sleep at the wrong time, I think) and the next day's devotion was just on the other page. I turn my eyes to the other page and the quote at the top of this note is a little side qoute listed right under the scripture that goes along with the message. And it just floored me. Professor Reichart kept on saying the whole week that this is what the universe would look like if you had 'radio eyes' which I thought was lame at the time. There are enough good things to see here, with the eyes we have. Why would we need radio eyes? The greathing about radio astronomy is that you can see things that other people can't. If a star explodes behind a dust lane, you don't see it in the visual, the wavelength is too short and it's blocked by the dust. But it still emits in the radio end of the spectrum and radio waves pass through the dust. Using a radio telescope allows you to see through the clouds in space to something that's giving off marvelous light.
So when God put that quote in front of me, that "[h]ope can see heaven through the thickest clouds," I kinda wanted to jump up and down and dance for Him and I wouldn't have expected me to. I hate the word 'hope.' I hate the idea of hope. Hope is the thing that trusting people have, the quality that allows them to put their trust, their whole heart into something with the idea that their trust will be rewarded, that they won't have hoped for no reason. Hope is a characteristic of the naive and I strive to be anything but naive. So I hated hope, especially since hope is what broke my heart last year and hope is what's tearing at it now. But my Lord had just placed it in front of me, so I figured I'd better have another look at it, in light of what I was doing right then. How did we, astronomically and scientifically, see through the clouds? We looked at the universe in a different way, at a different wavelength. We built different telescopes. We had 'radio eyes.' How can I see past the things that distract me here, the things that scream the injustice of the world and the things that rip out my heart? How do I see past the child whose father won't see her for the wonderful, truly amazing person she is, who won't even calim her? How do I see past the girl who is still in a group home, waiting to be adopted even though she's the sweetest, kindest child you've ever met? How do I even begin to get past the lives destroyed by war, for whatever reason? Hoe do I see past my selfishness, my pain, the things that make me want to run from my Lord insto of to Him? These things that tear me up, that break the heart of my Father, how do I see past them? How do you hope when you know that there are children out there two steps away from joining a gang, who are pulled down by everything the world has to throw at them, who have no safe or love-filled home? How do you hope for them, to see past the clouds that block out heaven?
Hope isn't what I've made it out to be. It's not some mystical trait or some mysterious feeling. It's a different way of looking at the world. It's seeing the world in light of the goodness still to come. It's changing your eyes so you can go through the clouds (they're not going to magically leave, that's not what Christ has promised us), so you can see through to the marvelous, glorious light that waits for us. Hope is knowing that there is going to be a better day, even if it's not tomorrow or the next day or the next day. One day my God is going to make things just and fair on that day my Savior is going to rain grace down again on me and take me back home. you just have to have hope, to see the Universe a little different (OK, a lot different). When we can see heaven, we can work to make this messed up, fallen world more like heaven, no matter how hopeless this place is. I'm going to hope for tomorrow because I can see what I hope for, I can see that the kingdom that's going to replace this one is worth working, striving, dying for now.
If you haven't seen the video 'Indescribable,' I highly recommend it. Louie Giglio uses astronomy pictures of the amazing, indescribable universe that our God has created to help us see how big God is and how small we truly are. He also uses an audio clip of a pulsar taken using a radio telescope, which is even dearer to me now because I spent a week using a 40-ft radio telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The universe is crying out in ways I've barely begun to explore. Noe, while the audio can be more impressive, you can make images or map regions in the sky based on their emission of waves at the frequency you're observing at, which was one of the projects of my week participating in ERIRA (Educational Research in Radio Astronomy, don't ask me to pronounce it).
I actually got to make a whole observation by myself while everyone else was on a hike. I was observing the Crab Nebula and the region of space around it. I can show everyone my strip chart, a physical recording of the data I took. On it you can clearly see the Crab Nebula as a large couple of spikes near the beginning and later the moon which spikes off the chart. If you look at the chart between the two bigger events you can see small spikes that make the data look like the top of Batman's masks, which made me think of camp (though I never quite understood why we picked Batman to be our superhero... anyway...) and in the middle of m data you can see a bunch of messed up data when the weed-eaters came by and I had to put that to a stop. I think it was right over a supernova remnant too, sadly.
The point of this sojourn into the world of radio telescope data is that I was by myself, turning a knob back and forth to make the telescope do sweeps of the sky to get a map of this region for three hours. Three hours of turning the knob, doing something for a few minutes before the computer with the nice green screen and red letters beeped at me to tell me to turn the telescope around. When you're there with a group of people, you converse and get to know them better and it's a fun time, except when you're sleep deprived. When you're by yourself, it can get tediuous and since I really hadn't taken a second to do it before, I brought my devotional with me. I opened it to the last time I read something (I was a few days behind- days tend to get a little confused when you sleep at the wrong time, I think) and the next day's devotion was just on the other page. I turn my eyes to the other page and the quote at the top of this note is a little side qoute listed right under the scripture that goes along with the message. And it just floored me. Professor Reichart kept on saying the whole week that this is what the universe would look like if you had 'radio eyes' which I thought was lame at the time. There are enough good things to see here, with the eyes we have. Why would we need radio eyes? The greathing about radio astronomy is that you can see things that other people can't. If a star explodes behind a dust lane, you don't see it in the visual, the wavelength is too short and it's blocked by the dust. But it still emits in the radio end of the spectrum and radio waves pass through the dust. Using a radio telescope allows you to see through the clouds in space to something that's giving off marvelous light.
So when God put that quote in front of me, that "[h]ope can see heaven through the thickest clouds," I kinda wanted to jump up and down and dance for Him and I wouldn't have expected me to. I hate the word 'hope.' I hate the idea of hope. Hope is the thing that trusting people have, the quality that allows them to put their trust, their whole heart into something with the idea that their trust will be rewarded, that they won't have hoped for no reason. Hope is a characteristic of the naive and I strive to be anything but naive. So I hated hope, especially since hope is what broke my heart last year and hope is what's tearing at it now. But my Lord had just placed it in front of me, so I figured I'd better have another look at it, in light of what I was doing right then. How did we, astronomically and scientifically, see through the clouds? We looked at the universe in a different way, at a different wavelength. We built different telescopes. We had 'radio eyes.' How can I see past the things that distract me here, the things that scream the injustice of the world and the things that rip out my heart? How do I see past the child whose father won't see her for the wonderful, truly amazing person she is, who won't even calim her? How do I see past the girl who is still in a group home, waiting to be adopted even though she's the sweetest, kindest child you've ever met? How do I even begin to get past the lives destroyed by war, for whatever reason? Hoe do I see past my selfishness, my pain, the things that make me want to run from my Lord insto of to Him? These things that tear me up, that break the heart of my Father, how do I see past them? How do you hope when you know that there are children out there two steps away from joining a gang, who are pulled down by everything the world has to throw at them, who have no safe or love-filled home? How do you hope for them, to see past the clouds that block out heaven?
Hope isn't what I've made it out to be. It's not some mystical trait or some mysterious feeling. It's a different way of looking at the world. It's seeing the world in light of the goodness still to come. It's changing your eyes so you can go through the clouds (they're not going to magically leave, that's not what Christ has promised us), so you can see through to the marvelous, glorious light that waits for us. Hope is knowing that there is going to be a better day, even if it's not tomorrow or the next day or the next day. One day my God is going to make things just and fair on that day my Savior is going to rain grace down again on me and take me back home. you just have to have hope, to see the Universe a little different (OK, a lot different). When we can see heaven, we can work to make this messed up, fallen world more like heaven, no matter how hopeless this place is. I'm going to hope for tomorrow because I can see what I hope for, I can see that the kingdom that's going to replace this one is worth working, striving, dying for now.
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