Prosetry

New hagah posts:

• Blue and White (prose)
• The Silver Chair (poetry)

Dichotomy

Warning: prepare for rambling. Finals week does that to you.

I've decided that the complete lack of blog posts in November proves that my decision to refrain from tackling NaNoWriMo this year was the correct one. November is crazy enough by itself without attempting to cram fifty thousand extra words into it. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoyed NaNo while I did it and even wrote a whole post on why I did it last year. It just took me that year to learn that it's okay to say "no" sometimes. I still wrote a bit at the beginning of November, although I didn't even try for a novel. Given all the crazy projects I was working on for the past month, though, I don't regret it.

Classes are over for the semester, and I'm a paper, a project showcase, and three finals away from wrapping things up. Leading up to this week has been an odd sort of feeling. I've been both extremely excited for the end of the semester and extremely sad that it's coming. I suppose "bittersweet" would be an appropriate word here, except that seems to imply some sort of connection between the bitter- and sweetness. It's odd because there isn't. There's the strong sense of bitter and the strong sense of sweet, and there's very clearly no connection between them.

To be specific, I have a few classes I really don't want to end and one that I really do. (There's also one I'm pretty neutral about, but that's neither here nor there, as it were.) There's also the straight-up odd sense of "it's finals week! Now I can finally relax from all the busy craziness!" (I blame all the projects for the-class-which-will-not-be-named, personally.) I mean, I have plenty of work to do, but the break from routine schedule is nice. I'm sure this is more of a typical feeling than I make it out to be, but who knows.

Here's the real point of this post, I guess: I'm still here. I really just wanted to post something on this blog so that I remind myself to keep it going. In the midst of all the busyness and crazy, life goes on.

So does finals week, for that matter. But we'll get there.

It's just a matter of time.

More Fiction!

New hagah post:

• The Janitor's Daughter (fiction)

IST: Ordinary Miracle, Sarah Mclachlan

I like to think that when God does miracles, He doesn't always do the supernatural type. I think He often works through the coincidental, the trivial, the mundane. We just don't always recognize them for the miracles they are.

I think it's a miracle when I look out my window and see for just a second a sky filled to the brim with different shades of cloud over trees ranging from green to red, a blue jay, and a rabbit.

I think it's a miracle when people build relationships on strong foundations and know that they can talk about anything and everything and know that there's no judgement, just love.

I think it's a miracle when I can curl up inside, watch the rain mist over the ground, stay warm and cozy and dry.

I think it's a miracle when we learn in chapel how to dance an Israeli dance and it doesn't matter if we mess up or what because we're just here to celebrate our great God.

I think it's a miracle when I can funnel my thoughts into words and my words into a device that will send them almost instantaneously to someone I care about, whether they are steps or miles or half the world away.

I think it's a miracle when people living in a community they didn't even arrange themselves can grow together and love one another and have good relationships with each other.

I think it's a miracle when I can take joy in something simple and laugh at silly things.

I think it's a miracle when my sister folds a piece of paper into a crane or a flower or a bear or any one of a hundred other things.

I think it's a miracle when we're invited to join in a story so much bigger than ourselves, when we can run and not grow weary, when we can rest, be still, and know that He is God.

What miracles are hiding around us today?

Doubts and Conversation Hearts

New hagah posts:

• God Even Uses Candy Conversation Hearts (prose)
• Nagging Doubts (poetry)

Inner Soundtrack: Sleepless Night, Fernando Ortega

This week at my floor's Bible study, we talked about how sometimes God works "behind the scenes," so to speak. We also talked about some times in our lives when we'd seen concrete answers to prayer.

I didn't think much of it during Bible study, but earlier that day, I'd gone to the registrar's office to fill out a form that would change my program of study from undecided to a Writing major with minors in Greek and Computer Science. I'm still not positive that this will be my exact program, but I needed something down before next week so my ducks would be in a row for academic advising. Since I think I'll most likely be doing something like this, I went and filled out the form so I could think about getting into the right classes next semester.

Filling out that form changed not only my course of study, but also my advisor. This had me a little worried. My current advisor was in the Classics department, which I needed for my minor, but I would also need an advisor in the English department for my major.

When you've only had two professors in the entire department and only liked one of them, getting an advisor in the department can be a little unnerving. I was a little bit afraid that I was going to be assigned to that prof whose personality clashed so badly with mine. More than a little bit, if I'm being completely honest. The only other profs in the department that I'd sort of met where about three who had given guest lectures in my English class. One of them stuck out to me as one I liked -- maybe she could be my advisor, I thought. But I didn't know, and since I wasn't sure at the time if I would keep my old advisor or not, I didn't fill out the advisor request line on the form.

As it turned out when I submitted the form, the registrar's office only specifically assigns advisors for majors. I could keep meeting with my current advisor on my own, but my primary advisor would change to a prof in the English department. So I handed over the form and spent a fair amount of time praying that night while I was trying to sleep that I would get an advisor who would understand me and who would be someone I could work well with.

I got an email the next morning that my program -- and my advisor -- had been updated. I went to the Calvin website and pulled up my program requirements. Lo and behold, I had a new advisor. And out of more than twenty professors in the English department, the registrar's office had assigned me to that one who had given the guest lecture in my class -- the one that I'd liked.

Some would call it a coincidence. But after all that, I would call it anything but.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

Matthew 6:25-27

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.

Totes Legit Presh Adorbs

The other day I was sitting in my room studying when my RD came by putting up signs in the hallway. She had her one-year-old daughter with her, and since my door was open, our "dorm baby" (as the little one is often affectionately called) came wandering in for a visit. She is adorable.

I have this rocking chair on the floor in my room. Since I don't feel like describing it, here is a convenient picture:

Our little friend discovered the rocking chair, and it fascinated her. So my RD, RA, and I watched as she investigated the chair and realized to her delight that it rocked back and forth. Then she figured out that it was a rocking chair, and after a few tries, managed to actually sit down in it and tried to start rocking back and forth. Except she was too little, so mostly it just wiggled a bit. She was sad then, but I was still pretty impressed with her for figuring out what it was and how she was supposed to use it. Also, that was the most adorable thing I've seen all week. Or possibly all month. Either way, it made my finals week a whole lot better.

And now for something completely different:

Yes, that is a hippo in a rocket ship.

The end.

For the Sake of Humanity

Warning: minor rant ahead. Proceed with caution, and please, take with a grain of salt. I don't think rants are ever completely bias-free, and this one is no exception.

I am an English major. I am also, among many other things, a reader, a writer, a young adult, a student, and a person. But the main thing you ought to know for the next few paragraphs is that I am an English major. I'm an English major who will specifically be going for either writing or linguistics. In other words, grammar is quite important in my line of study.

Attention world: I am an English major, and I am sick of the grammar police.

I know, I know, English majors have a reputation for being the grammar police. I will not deny that I have been guilty on many an occasion. But sometimes I read things that make me want to find the nearest wall and hit my head against it a few times.

Now don't get me wrong – I'm against bad grammar as much as the next English major. I volunteer to edit papers and other writings for my friends, and I do correct a lot of grammar in those cases – because that's where grammar correcting belongs.

Recently I read a few very interesting articles on the Internet about very different topics (one was regarding the suspect of the recent bombing in Boston and the other was about being a writer). After reading the articles, I scrolled a little further down the page to the comments. I still don't know what kind of decision that was, but whatever the case, I glanced through a few comments. I'm sure the visible comments have changed by now, but two of them stopped me. On the article about writing, one commenter pointed out an obscure grammar error. The one that stopped me on the other article was a single line about how obnoxious she found the writing style.

I wish I could sit down and have a cup of tea with these people. I wish we could just have a conversation about these things. I wish they could see that they missed it.

It breaks my heart that these two people who took the time out of their days to read through those articles completely missed the point. There were so many things they could have said, could have thought – they could have agreed or disagreed with these writers and their articles, either one – but instead, they missed it.

I don't mean to say that they're wrong or that they don't have a point, because there's a time and a place for those things. On the other hand, though, I can't help but be sad for them because of what they could've seen, but because they were too caught up in preferences and protocol, they missed.

So please, be willing. Be willing to look beyond the errors and opinions and dig a little deeper. Be willing to be see meaning beneath the surface mechanics. Be willing to push through and search for truth even when the particular form is a little tough for you to swallow.

Doing this isn't easy. I've tried, and I don't always succeed. It's hard. But if you do, I don't think you'll regret it.

Please, don't miss it.

Arrrrrrrrrrgh

No, I am not a pirate.

There is nothing quite like being woken up at 2:30 in the morning by a fire alarm. Especially one that is super loud. And reverberates through the hallway. And flashes. Right above your bed.

My residence hall kind of has a reputation for being the one with all the fire alarms. Last year it was because of faulty wiring. This year, it's because people are stupid. (The wiring has been fixed, but we've still managed to have more fire alarms go off than the rest of campus put together.)

As far as I can tell, three questions remain:

1. Who makes mac and cheese at 2:30 am? (Answer: college guys.)
2. Who burns mac and cheese at 2:30 am? (Answer: also college guys.)
3. How on earth do you burn mac and cheese? (Answer: unknown.)

Of course, this the same floor of guys that put a big lump of frozen bacon in a pan at 1:00 am last semester and seemed to think it would cook. And left the room while the bacon was just sitting on the stove. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

But seriously, how do you burn mac and cheese? I mean, if it was stovetop I could understand, but how many college students make stovetop mac and cheese? (Answer: only the ones without microwaves. How many students at my college do not have access to a microwave? (Answer: none.))

Needless to say, there were some grumpy people standing outside at 2:30 in the morning. Because it was late. And cold. And raining.

Oh, college...

My Day In Stick Figures

As much as I love the rain, I'm a little afraid to go outside for the rest of the day. It's okay, though – know what the weather forecast just told me?

Figures.

An Inverse Relationship

So my dear, adorable, wonderful little sister got me a present. Which was very nice of her. However, my dear, adorable, wonderful little sister has a rather different method of wrapping her presents. Let's just say it starts with a shoebox-sized present and ends up being a jewelry-box-sized present sitting in a sea of empty boxes, magazine pages, wrapping paper, and a fair amount of tape.

Sometimes I think her thought process goes something like this:

All that to say, it's one thing to go through all of those layers and get a present. It's another to get a flea. Or, in my case, a broken crayon. But I guess it's okay, because after I got down to the crayon, she very kindly pulled out the actual gift: coloring books.

I am nineteen years old, and my sixteen-year-old sister gave me coloring books for my birthday. I am legitimately excited. Don't judge. (Coloring is very relaxing, you know. Plus, they're Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph coloring books. It's hard to get more awesome than Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph coloring books.)

I never liked coloring books when I was little. In fact, I like them a lot more now than I did then. Whenever I got coloring/activity books, I always did all the activities and ignored all the coloring pages. Now I'm finding that I ignore the activity pages and just do the coloring pages.

Coloring book inversion. Who would've thought?

Spring Break

...if you can call that spring.

But all the snow and wind outside just means I get to stay inside and read a book, watch a movie, play the piano, make dinner, and actually have time, which college doesn't like to give me very often, to do things. Or just to do nothing.

Right up until break, everything was go. Study for the tests, finish the readings before class, get the homework in on time, pack up everything, arrange the rides, wash the dishes – just go right from one thing to the next to the next. And all of a sudden, it's over. For now. Break. A little breath in the midst of all the rushing.

So I'm just sitting here, listening to the wind whip the snow against the house, and the world is screaming, "You have time now! Do things! Don't just sit there! Go!" The world seems to say that doing nothing is a waste. It's tells us it's wrong to sit down and listen to the wind and watch the trees flow with it. Even in our times of rest, we're supposed to be doing something to relax.

Sure, there are things to do and people to see. But sometimes, it's okay to do nothing too. To take a break, look out the window, listen to the wind, breathe slowly, and simply be.

Sometimes, I think it's in those breaths between the rushes that we can really see.

Weird

I think my tastebuds are broken.

It's a Thursday morning, and I'm tired. It's a cold Thursday morning, so I decide I want something warm to drink. I have a fifteen minute break before I need to leave for my next class, so I head over to the coffee shop and pick up something that sounds pretty good: a vanilla and peppermint white mocha. Vanilla, peppermint, and white chocolate. What's not to love?

Well, it tastes like coffee. As in just coffee. If I hadn't seen them putting the other flavors in, I'm not sure I would believe they were there. I happen to run into one of my friends, who asks me what I'm drinking. I tell her and let her have a sip because she loves these. Her response is something like, "What coffee?"

Apparently, I have just purchased the coffee drink with the least possible coffee taste in the entire coffee shop, and all I can taste is the stupid coffee. My friend drinks coffee slightly more often than I do. I hardly ever drink coffee. All that to say, she doesn't drink much coffee either. And yet she can taste all the other flavors and hardly the coffee.

I have weird tastebuds.

Then my other friend and I walk across the Beltline to our class only to discover an empty room when we get there. She checks her email on her phone. Class is cancelled. (It's like a snow day! Only not. At all.) That was also weird.

So now I'll get to have lunch before English instead of after (weird), I can get started studying for my Greek quiz before this afternoon (weird), and yesterday I read a thing for my cancelled communications class about some people who literally worship Michael Jackson (extra weird).

Also, coffee is weird. I can't figure out if I like it or not. I think I would like it more if I could actually taste the other flavors, which is what I was drinking it for in the first place. As is, it's just kind of "eh." It smells good, anyway.

Long story short: things are weird. Like Thursdays. And coffee.

Sabbath Day

I really like Lent. Which I guess is a little weird, because it isn't a particularly happy season, but I really do like it. I like its reflectiveness, its challenge to us to think about things we normally push away in favor of sunshine and rainbows. I like its preparation for and expectation of Holy Week and the resurrection.

Traditionally, Lent involves giving something up. Certain foods and technologies are popular things to do away with for the forty days of Lent. One of my friends and I were talking about what we were going to give up before chapel on Ash Wednesday. We each wanted to do something meaningful, and as our pastor challenged us during chapel, something that will help us grow closer to God. My friend mentioned a thought she'd had, I asked her if she wanted someone to take the challenge with her, and she said, "Let's do it."

And so I came to be giving up doing homework on Sundays for Lent. I think this will be an interesting challenge – hard in some ways, as I'll have to be disciplined enough to work on more of it than I usually do on Fridays and Saturdays – and one that's good for me. In all honesty, I'm not very good at remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy. I don't always set it apart from the other days of the week. I go to church, sure, but other than that... too often it's just another day.

Lent is a time of repentance and renewal, preparing us for the Easter resurrection. It lasts forty days – if you actually grab a calendar and count, though, the total number will be more than forty. This is because, as my devotional book tells me, the Sundays during Lent aren't counted in the forty days. Why not? Not because Sundays don't count as a day, but because Sundays during Lent are resurrection celebrations that occur throughout the season. They're Sabbaths. Time for rest and renewal. During this season of Lent, my friend and I have challenged each other and ourselves to set them apart. To remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, and to hold one another accountable to that. It might not be easy, but easy isn't the point. The point of Lent isn't giving something up, however easy or difficult it may be. The point is rising again on Easter Sunday.

"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."

– Exodus 20:8-11

Challenge accepted.

Treasures of Darkness

One of the girls on my floor invited me to come with her to another dorm last night for one installment of a weekly series called "Equipping Your Prayer Life." The RD who leads the sessions opened with this verse, which he'd read that morning in his daily devotions:

I will go before you
     and level the mountains,
I will break in pieces the doors of bronze
     and cut through the bars of iron,
I will give you the treasures of darkness
     and riches hidden in secret places,
so that you may know that it is I, the LORD,
     the God of Israel, who call you by your name.

                            Isaiah 45:2-3 (NRSV)

Before I left for college I worked at a resale store. Probably my favorite thing in that resale store was a cardboard box that one of the workers used to keep on the shelves behind her counter in the back. Scrawled on the side of box in black Sharpie were the words "treasures of darkness."

I have no idea who wrote that on the box or why that person wrote it on that particular box, but there it was. I stopped by the treasures of darkness box almost every time I worked, since I needed to get something out of it. Which begs the question: what was in the box?

Answer: rags.

I will give you the treasures of darkness
     and riches hidden in secret places.

Thanks, but no thanks. I used to go to the treasures of darkness box to grab a rag before I went to clean the bathrooms after we closed the store for the night. I think I can do without any more treasures of darkness.

Riches tucked away in secret places sound good to us – or even "hidden treasures," as another translation renders the words "treasures of darkness." We don't expect to open the lid of the treasure chest and find a pile of worn, stained, bathroom-cleaning rags. If that's what treasures of darkness are, most of us would probably pass.

And I know that Isaiah probably didn't have rags in mind when he spoke of treasures of darkness all those years ago, but I find the connection intriguing all the same. Maybe I shouldn't pass up on those old rags so quickly. Maybe they really are a treasure in a way, a treasure hidden in the darkness because we definitely don't expect them to be a treasure. Maybe the purpose they serve – the purpose they can only serve when hands like mine take hold of them – can be a treasure in itself.

I don't know what happened to the treasures of darkness box. It vanished after the back room was cleaned out one day and the rags were relocated to some bins below another counter. I missed that box. It always made me smile when I saw it, just because I thought it was kind of funny that the rags were kept in a box that said "treasures of darkness."

Maybe there was a little more to that than I used to think.

Sunday Afternoon Adventures

Standing in a tiny gas station for forty-five minutes is actually more interesting than you might think. It's not something people often have the opportunity to do without being given some extremely odd looks, unless you happen to be an employee. Which I'm not, but when you're helplessly waiting for your brother to change a flat tire, it's a pretty good reason to stand in a tiny gas station for an extended period of time.

I can't say I particularly wanted to be standing in that gas station, and Sunday afternoon isn't an extremely busy time of the week. All the same, it's interesting to see the people who come in and why they do. In the minute or so I saw them, I got a tiny glimpse into their lives. I'd wonder where they'd been this morning or yesterday afternoon, what brought them out into this wind-blown snowy weather, what they might be thinking about these two girls standing in a gas station. Some of them seemed familiar with the lone employee working and made friendly small talk as she rang up their usual purchases.

I felt a little out of place in that gas station, standing there watching the progress on the car as the people came in and out. Somehow, though, all these people and I are the same. We're all human beings, made in the image of God. Our paths crossed for maybe a minute, and odds are they won't cross again. If they do, we probably won't even know it.

Yet I have to wonder: what made me feel out of place? Why is it so hard for us to realize at times that no matter where our paths start or lead, we are all people made in God's image, woven together by our common humanity?

Bathroom Cleaning: Now With Added Fun!

It's kind of a good idea to clean your bathroom on regular basis. If you don't, it's gross and nasty, and then when your RD tells you it's time for bathroom inspections, you have a lot of work to do.

...or you can clean your bathroom on a regular basis and still have a lot of work to do. Which is how I came to be standing on a chair in the shower, scraping soap scum off the ceiling. Seriously, how do you get soap scum on the ceiling? It must not be that difficult, because there was more up there than there was on the rest of the shower combined.

Well, I assume it was soap scum. Whatever it was, it's something that shows up under a blacklight. Apparently they use blacklights to inspect the bathrooms (fact: when they actually inspected the bathroom, they didn't), so we borrowed one from the front desk. Which is how I came to be standing on a chair in the shower, scraping soap scum off the ceiling in the dark.

I guess it makes it more interesting?

The inspection was during my class time, so my lovely roommate was in the room for it. When I got back from class, I found that our RD had come and gone and left a note in the bathroom. We passed! Huzzah! It even said our bathroom was pretty much spotless!

Except for this one note on the bottom of the paper:

I mean, I kind of saw that coming, but still...

Blast.

So Much Awesome

I apologize for the number of times I mention my Greek class on this blog. I know not everyone is particularly fascinated by the grammatical constructions of ancient Greek (and believe me, although I'm definitely at least kind of a nerd, I'm not always fascinated by them either). If you're sick of my going on about Greek, feel free to skip this. If you're not, great! Please read on.

In my Greek review class, we've been slowly making our way through the original Greek of John 8. Today, our prof showed us Codex Sinaiticus online. And it is pretty much the most awesome thing I have seen all week.

Codex Sinaiticus is the one of the oldest and most complete manuscripts of the Greek Bible that we have today, including much of both the Septuagint (Old Testament) and the New Testament. It was probably copied some time in the fourth century. These days, it's on display in a museum where people come to look at old manuscripts. Except they're usually more excited about the Beatles manuscripts on display next to it.

This is what John 1:1-38 looks like in the ancient Greek of Codex Sinaiticus. It isn't very easy to read (for a Greek beginner like me, anyway) because books back then were written as was convenient for the scribe, not for the reader, since they were so valuable and took such a long time to make. Hence, the letters are all capital, there's no punctuation, and there are no spaces between the words. But I can recognize the letters and some of the words, especially since the museum people have kindly transcribed it into lowercase words with spaces. And that's just so awesome. I'm looking at a manuscript from some 1600 years ago, and I can read it. I can pronounce "Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἧν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἧν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἧν ὁ λόγος. οὗτος ἧν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν." I know that it means "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning."

The Bible is so cool.

I don't really know if I'm a grammar nerd or a classics nerd or a Greek nerd or a Bible nerd or what. Whatever I may be nerdy about, I'm not ashamed of being a nerd. In fact, I quite enjoy it. Why? Because:

College Kids

Yesterday I finished a book I've been in the process of reading for a while. (That's how books tend to go with me at college: when I have time, I start a few chapters, then I don't have time for a while, then finally I do have time and read the rest of it even if I don't quite remember the first part.) The book is called Quiet, and it's about introverts, of which I am one. This has gotten me thinking a bit about being who I am as an introvert – and being an introvert at college.

In the book, the author explains how in Western culture, the extroverted personality is the ideal. If that's the case, then college in that culture is the land of the extrovert. Think about it: what's the image of college portrayed in the media? Staying up late, blaring loud music, constantly checking phones, doing crazy events around campus, dancing, partying, blah, blah, blah. You want to be the person who's always on the go, has places to be and friends to hang out with. You don't want to be the person who stays in the dorm, reading a book on a weekend and going to bed by midnight. If that's the best thing you can come up with to do on a Friday night, you must be sad, strange, nerdy, or – heaven forbid – antisocial.

We seem to have this idea in our heads that if we want to be quiet, especially on a college campus, there must be something wrong with us. But as it turns out, one third to one half of us are introverts. We naturally like environments that aren't exploding with stimuli. We might be perfectly happy to sit in our dorm rooms with our headphones on and play solitaire on the floor for an hour or so before we go back to running about like the campus squirrels – and there might not be anything "wrong" that makes us that way. It's just a matter of being different.

So yes, I go to college, but I'm not exactly your stereotypical "college kid." It's fine that other people are. In fact, it's great. Go ahead – stay up late, dance to your loud music, do crazy events around campus – and enjoy it. Do. Be your extroverted self, because this world needs both introverts and extroverts. I'll join you sometimes. We can learn together and learn from each other. Just know that when I retreat to the quiet of my room, it's not because I'm antisocial. It's because I'm a different variety of college kid.

Hiatus

As the dates by the side of this post will show, I haven't written on this blog in a while. I had a very busy November and December (NaNoWriMo + papers + research project + finals + etc.), and then it was Christmas break and I was home. In short, life happened.

So now I'm back at school, learning about C.S. Lewis for our three week interim (known in some circles as a J-term). Hopefully I'll be writing a little more often now. But (home)work before pleasure, as they say.

I suppose the point is I'm here. Sometimes I write stuff. Sometimes I have homework. Sometimes (when I have time) I do both. Lately I've been overusing parentheses (as seen in this post).

Please excuse my rambling. In conclusion, here's a brief limerick I heard this summer at Harbor Choral Festival. It made me laugh. If you know limericks, hopefully it will make you smile too.

There was an old man from Milan
Whose limericks never would scan
When told this was so,
He said, "Yes, I know,
But I always try to fit as many syllables into the the last line as ever I possibly can."