Colons, Links, and (Guess What?) Greek

Every now and then I have this thought, and usually it goes something like this:

"Greek is so awesome! Class today was so interesting. I wish [name of friend] could have been there; I bet they would have found our discussion fascinating. Maybe I'll go write about Greek on my blog. Oh wait, just about every other post on this blog is about or somehow mentions Greek. I need to write less about Greek. I thought I was an English major. Maybe I should write about something English-y. Or something about life. Or... you know. Something that's not about Greek. [At this point, anywhere from one to several minutes pass as I watch my cursor blink on my screen.] ...Curses. I'm just gonna have to write about Greek."

Here's the thing, though: I am not a Greek major. And honestly, I don't really want to change my major to Greek. (Now watch me eat my words a few months from now. It'll probably happen, knowing my track record. Maybe I'll double major or something. And now I'm getting ahead of myself. Please excuse the rabbit trail.) Don't get me wrong, I think Greek is awesome -- just look at all those posts I linked back there for a small sample -- but my real love lies in Biblical Greek. (Sorry, Plato. I'll probably put up with you for a semester so I can get my minor, but that's about it.)

As long as I'm overusing colons, here's the point of all that rambling: this post is going to be about Greek. Surprise! I'm sure I've given my if-you're-sick-of-me-talking-about-Greek warning before, but if you are, go ahead and skip to the end and read the new hagah post (which, incidentally, is entirely unrelated to Greek and to the rest of this post) linked there. If not... cool. Let's talk about Greek. Actually, let's talk about my Greek class.

Usually in Greek 205, we work on slowly translating our way through the book of Mark. Sometimes, we take rabbit trails. Sometimes, we take a lot of rabbit trails. They're usually important or relevant rabbit trails, though, and they're almost always interesting.

Example: today was a day of extended rabbit trails that took us through how Scripture is translated, the relationships between translations and interpretation, the implications and possibilities of human agency, the dating and authorship of some New Testament books that scholarship says could be vastly different from our traditional beliefs, what these verses from Revelation 22 could mean for how we look at the canon of Scripture, how the canon became canonical, the place and purpose of the Apocrypha books, and generally a big bundle of interesting things. And near the end of class we even translated a little Greek. Basically, way too many fascinating and huge topics for one fifty-minute class period or one blog post.

In short, there are a lot of things we don't know. And "a lot" is an understatement. "Things are always more complicated than we make them out to be," as our prof said near the end of our discussion. I do know this, though: I am blessed beyond what I could tell you now to be in a place where we are, as our prof frequently reminds us, a "Greek family" -- a group of people who are willing to struggle through texts and interpretations and ask deep questions about things we value and are just beginning, in some small way, to understand.

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New hagah post: Remember (poetry)

Kick-Off

That's the opening track from the first CD I ever owned by my favorite band. It seemed appropriate for this post, and there's a number of reasons for that. It's a new school year. I haven't posted anything for a month or so. I do hope you're not sick of me. And, well, I'm thinking of trying something new here to see where it goes.

So let's be more specific: this year, I'm starting two different series of posts on this blog.

The first series I'm calling inner soundtrack. I've had a number of ideas lately surrounding various songs that I know, and so I'd like to frame some of my thoughts on this blog with those songs. Those posts will all accordingly be labeled "inner soundtrack," and you can find a link to all the posts with that label off to the right below the blog archive.

The second series is a little bigger, as it's one I've been thinking of for quite some time and have finally decided to give a try. Between college and a dry creativity well, I haven't written much lately. As I'm working on deciding on a major, likely in the English department, I've decided I want to start writing again, especially since that's one of the majors I'm considering. To that end, I'm starting my hagah series. Essentially, it's a place for me to share my creative writing endeavors with my friends and family. One of the reasons I've held off on this one for so long is because I have a slight paranoia about losing my works to the Internet, as it were, but I think with the settings and small audience I'm looking at, it'll be okay.

Since hagah is larger than inner soundtrack and requires a fair amount of organization (at least for my own sense of calm), it has its own site. I'll be posting links here whenever I update it, so don't feel you have to go out of your way to check it. I've been considering it long enough that I think of it more as its own project, so there's a welcome page on the site that explains a little more about the thought behind it. You can find the main page of the hagah site here.

And, as I've promised to link here whenever there's a new post on hagah, here are the pieces already available there:

• The Storyteller (essay)
• deeper and deeper... (found poem)
• Once, There Was a Place (speak aloud poem/prosetry)
• spearmint clouds (poem)
• Child of the King (short story)

I'm curious to hear your thoughts, both on this and on inner soundtrack once I get it going. Let me know, okay?

Lessons Learned from Working an Entry-Level Office Job

I still have a few weeks left of the aforementioned office job, but while I've been there I've been doing some thinking. And this is some of what I've thought. Who knows, there may even be more to come.

1. The value of my college education. Not to say I didn't appreciate school before, but I'm extra grateful for it now for several reasons. I get to study things I like, I have a varied schedule, and it means I won't be working at this job level for the rest of my life.
2. How to entertain myself when I can't do anything to entertain myself. This includes making mental lists, like this one, and a ton of imagination.
3. That I have a strong dislike of staples. Not the office supply store chain. The evil pointy metal things that jam up the scanner and give me headaches.
4. And that the staple remover is my new favorite office supply. I can tell that I've been at work too long when I see it next to the pile of mangled staples I've pulled out of papers and imagine it cackling gleefully.
5. How to send an email without agonizing over it for twenty minutes. Story of my life, right there. I'm better at short emails now. People get and send them all the time. I just had to figure that out.
6. The importance of menial tasks. Yes, they're tedious. No, no one wants to do them. But they have to be done, and when they are, they can make a world of difference.
7. How to take joy in the little things. Who knew sheets of paper that are actually not eight and a half by eleven for once could be so exciting?
8. That I appreciate variety. The days I enjoyed the most were the days my tasks changed up a bit and kept me doing different things.
9. How I tend to take technology for granted. Things like computers, networks, copy machines that can sort and staple, and Google searches make things so easy. I am infinitely spoiled to have grown up with them.
10. The encouragement of being valued. Similarly, I was reminded that I don't enjoy busywork. The moments that meant the most to me were when I knew I was doing something useful and that my work was appreciated. And even when I feel like the unknown shadow in the corner, I know there's Someone who sees the shalom I'm trying to bring and values me whether or not I succeed.

All to the Glory

Sometimes, living out my mittens can be a little tedious. Mittens aren't always very glamorous. Like spending my days at work uploading product pictures to the company's website. It isn't very glamorous. I complain about it on occasion (good-natured complaining, I hope – if that's possible?) to my friends. But it's a summer job, and it puts food on the college tuition payment table.

More than that, though, doing this work makes me think about my mittens. Can I bring shalom into the chaos of something like this? Does this dull work of downloading and uploading pictures of products even do that? Can a company website really use some shalom? Is this something I can do to glory of God, as if working for the Lord, not for men?

I've come to think the answer is ita. ναί. Si. Hai.

In other words, yes.

Never Have I Ever... Until I Did

This past school year has been full of surprises. Not necessarily in the sense of completely out-of-the-blue unexpected, but more in sense of looking back and thinking, "Oh. That happened? Huh. That never would have happened last year."

I guess it goes to show that while I'm just one short year older, I really have changed. College is different. I don't want that to be lording it over my high school friends -- as in "ha ha, college is better than high school; I'm so grown up because I've gone to college for a year" -- because, among other equally important reasons, that would show more than anything else that I'm not grown up in the slightest. And I don't pretend that I've learned everything there is to know about the world or even about college in just the past eight or nine months or so -- I still have a long way to go.

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I'm an introvert. I know "introvert" is not synonymous with "shy," but I tend to be the shy kind of introvert. I don't like putting myself out there, and I don't like talking about myself. I'm not generally spontaneous, and I like having my ducks fairly well in a row as far as planning goes.

So as I walked across campus on the Monday of finals week, I was trying to figure out just why on earth I was doing so. My friend works in our campus's audio/visual department, and she had recommended me for a job. I was heading over to A/V to ask for my friend's boss, introduce myself, and find out about applying.

I could have just emailed her about it. No face to face communication, no being put on the spot, and a computer network between us. But when I sat down to write the email, I didn't know what to say. So instead I decided to walk over and say hello, which then turned into an impromptu interview -- and a job for this fall.

A year ago, I never would have done that. Six months ago, I never would have done that. Just this semester I was terrified of one of my profs for the first three weeks of class. Before now, I would have forced myself to agonize over that email for half an hour and then finally sent it off, fingers crossed -- or maybe never sent it at all. I wouldn't even have considered walking over to A/V to introduce myself.

But, against all odds and everything I've been for the past nineteen years of my life, I did.

Sometimes, I guess I even surprise myself.