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.

-----------

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.