I will never eat Subway again

So there are many reasons for my infrequent writing, but the first and foremost would be this:

Technology has decided to hate me. In this semester alone, I have experienced a personal technological breakdown: first my camera, then my phone, then my iPod, and the finishing touch this past week, my laptop. It began when my internet stopped working, but at least that was temporarily manageable. Most recently, it has stopped showing any image on the monitor all together. I feel a bit like a laptop pirate these days, seizing open computer time from my friends whenever a brief opportunity arises. I never realized how dependent I am on my computer until now, and I'm seeing how difficult it becomes to write papers, submit school assignments, talk to friends, and keep up with the outside world.

I went to see Twilight at midnight on Thursday with my friend Rachel, which I realize is ridiculously cheesy and probably aimed at a demographic far younger than me, but I simply don't care. I had to go see it after just finishing the book, and midnight just seems to be an ideal time for watching a movie about vampires. This younger demographic I mentioned became quite evident when the movie began. High-pitched squeals of teenage girlish delight filled the theater when the dashing male lead made his first appearance, and continued through most of the movie. Despite a few loud admonishments from the few adult members of the audience (myself included), the shrieking and giggling at every moment that even hinted of romantic tension continued throughout the film, much to my chagrin. Ugh, teenagers. My personal favorite was when an irate adult yelled that they should all be in bed because it was a school night.

I was delighted to walk out of the movie at 2:30 AM to find beautiful white snowflakes falling thick in the cold night air. My exuberance(which led to some parking-lot twirling and jumps of joy) paled in comparison to that of the hoard of high-schoolers charging out of the theater with screams of excitement. Sadly, all the snow had melted by noon the next day, but still, it was a nice way to welcome the holiday season.

And speaking of holiday season....my house is now decked out for Christmas! I came home tired from an afternoon of boring work on Friday, only to be marvelously surprised by the twins, who had spent the afternoon putting up festive decorations around our living room. Peaceful strains of James Taylor crooning "Have Yourself a Marry Little Christmas" floated through the air and the sound of a whistling tea kettle rang out from the kitchen, while sparkling white lights and shimmering ribbons filled the room with holiday magic. It was quite the heart-warming scene discover upon coming home.

That evening, we enjoyed the cozy glow of our twinkle lights as we watched The Painted Veil. This is a recent movie, starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts as a bitterly unhappy married couple during a deadly epidemic of cholera in 1920' s China. The cinematography and music are both absolutely stunning, and I found the story deeply moving. Two people, utterly flawed and horrible, make their lives mutually miserable through infidelity and isolation, but are still forced to co-exist as a married couple through this horrific cholera epidemic. I won't give away the ending, but I would suggest seeing it for yourself.

My friend Peter came home from the Navy for a couple of days at the beginning of this week, and it was wonderful to get to see him after so many months. Monday night, we called our friend (and his girlfriend) Rachel, who is serving as a missionary in Kenya right now. It was incredible to hear her beautiful voice from across the globe, and it made us miss her terribly.

Then came Tuesday....ugh, yuck. As far as I can tell, I got a bad case of food poisoning (and as far as I can deduce, Subway was the culprit. I hate you, Subway). I've spent the past couple of days being very, very sick, curled up in a ball on my couch, and surviving mostly off of saltine crackers and Gatorade. I'm just hoping for a miraculous recovery at this point so that I can eat at least a few tiny bites of Thanksgiving dinner!

Pilobolus and Prayer

Good gracious, I am glad this week is over. Sickness has been spreading around my friends like the plague, and me and one of my roommates were the latest victims this week. Massive papers due at the end of the week were just the icing on the cake.

There were some wonderfully bright spots to this week- in particular, Tuesday, the day of Pilobolus at UNCG. If you have never heard of them, well, you're missing out on some spectacular stuff. They're a famous modern dance company that combines stunning athleticism with visual grandeur. You might have seen them doing some silhouette work at the Academy Awards or in some car commercials. A Pilobolus performance = dance meets circus meets gymnastics meets awesome. Not only did they perform Tuesday night, but they also taught a class for my dance department that morning, which I got to sit in on. They all seemed incredibly nice, very full of energy....and built like steel. You'd have to be to do their choreography. It's the most high energy, high intensity, strength-demanding dance I've ever seen. Hence, the majority of the company is also male, though I've gotta say, the two women definitely held their own in the strength department.

Another great part of the week was 24/7 prayer at my church. Starting this past Sunday, my small church was open 24 hours a day for people from all over the city to come and pray. Though people were free to come in at any time, people also chose to sign up for timeslots during the day, so that at least one person was there praying at all hours of the day or night. Me and a few of my friends took a midnight-2:00 AM shift, and my breath was taken away as I walked in. You could pray as you work on a mosaic, knit, weave on a loom, paint, play music, write on walls, collage, read books, write in books....I can't even describe the environment, but it was a very engaging and beautiful way to commune with God. My church is the most vibrant, loving, artistically and intellectually stimulating church body I've ever seen, and I just consider myself incredibly blessed to get to be a part of it.


Speaking of blessings, I spent Saturday night with some wonderful friends, as we decided to celebrate Christmas early with a mushy romantic holiday movie. We realized we would only have a little over a week after returning from Thanksgiving break to celebrate the best time of the year ..and that simply isn't enough. So we all broke out our our best Christmas pajamas and headed over to my friend Sarah's house for some delicious homemade apple crisp and hot chocolate, which was divine. I'm so excited that the holiday season is upon us!

Election Reflections

Boy, it's been a crazy week. In the university environment, political tensions and passions rose to a fevored pitch by Monday. Professors pleaded with their students to vote, and it was no small secret who they supported. Tuesday was filled with an air of anticipation and excitement. My roommates and I dragged ourselves out of bed at 6:00 in the morning to go vote. I got to my polling place by 6:30, where I stood in line for an hour and a half before being able to cast my vote. It was incredible to see a huge campus ballroom packed with students eager to vote so early in the morning. Despite my extreme fatigue from getting four hours of sleep, I felt energized by the pride I felt to be a part of such a monumental event. After voting, my roommates and I made a celebratory election breakfast, with chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled eggs and as always, coffee! After a day full of classes, we headed out to take advantage of election freebies, such as free coffee at Starbucks and free ice cream at Ben and Jerry's....mmm, nothing says democracy like dessert. We gathered in my friend's living room to watch and listen to election coverage all evening, which was interesting, since we were all pretty much politically split down the middle.

After the election was called, we sat up to watch the concession and victory speeches. When we left my friend's house (quite late), there was pandamonium in the streets of our neighborhood. People were running out in streets, honking horns, screaming and chanting. It was pretty a pretty wild experience. I found out the next day that the celebration on campus got so crazy that the police had to block off the streets and move the excited crowd into my neighborhood. The next day, it was practically a campus-wide holiday. My English professor started crying in front of the class in joy, and my dance teachers didn't even teach their normal classes in the spirit of celebration.
I wish I could say that I felt strongly one way or another.....I had friends who were jubilant, and others who felt defeated and bitter. Here's my confession: despite all the pressure from both sides, I didn't vote for Obama or McCain. I followed politics closely for many months, and researched the issues and the political positions of both candidates. I felt that I needed to feel passionately about one or the other....but I could never get myself to that point. Both had extreme flaws, and both had stances I admired. In the final couple of weeks before the election, I realized that I could not give my vote to either of these two men in good conscience. I heard a lot of dejected people lament that they simply had to vote for "the lesser of two evils." Why vote for an evil at all, I asked? Just because these are my only two options does not mean I have to support one of them. Casting my vote is not merely a one time decision. I need to be able to support and accept the consequences of putting this candidate into leadership for the next four years. In voting for Obama or McCain, I knew I would be voting against my conscience. I'm not saying this is a universal standard... I believe that some people would be going against their conscience by not voting. I only have a couple of friends who made the same choice that I did, and I have many friends (and family members) both Republican and Democrat, who felt that they were voting according to their highest sense of principle, and I fully support their decisions. I know they did what they believed was right in voting for Obama or McCain.

After I had settled on this decision, I found a really great article by one of my favorite musicians, Derek Webb, who articulated many of my feelings concerning the relationship between Christianity and voting. You can read the full article at http://www.patrolmag.com/times/922/how-shall-we-then-vote, but here are a few portions that I found particularly compelling (emphasis mine):

"Depending on when you’re reading this, we could be on either side of one of the most evocative elections in our country’s recent history. It shouldn’t really matter, as this writing isn’t necessarily about our current election but rather on living an honest and integrated political life....Ultimately our problems will not be solved by the right man (or woman) in the White House. It simply doesn’t work that way. We live in a democracy, a representative form of government, where it’s as much if not more our responsibility to love and take care of our neighbors than our politician’s responsibility. Real and lasting change comes from knowing and loving the folks who live in the houses that sit next to ours rather than saving all of our longing and hope for the voting booth.

Now that’s not to say that we shouldn’t make informed decisions, be involved in the process. Of course we should. I mean, if your conscience allows, you can even vote.

Some would say that not voting is giving your vote over to those who seek to use the governmental process for evil. I would actually argue the opposite. By voting, especially when based on just one or two issues, you’re giving your ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ to that party’s entire platform, which likely goes far beyond the statement you’re trying to make on these few issues. This is certainly more perilous and less nuanced than abstaining altogether. No party can co-opt a vote that isn’t cast.

Others would say, ‘Jesus said to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Therefore we have a biblical obligation to vote.’ And of course Jesus said that. That’s why I pay my taxes and try to drive the speed limit. These are among the laws of the land. But my conscience doesn’t belong to Caesar, therefore I don’t render it unto him. Caesar cannot force me to violate my conscience. Voting is a legal right, like carrying a gun or having an abortion. And I can abstain from doing anything that I have a legal right to if it violates my conscience.

Some say that we’ll never completely agree with the agenda or platform of a politician, that if we wait for a candidate that we line up with 100% we’ll never vote. I completely agree. There are many issues upon which I can disagree with a politician that don’t amount to a crisis of conscience. So there will always be necessary and acceptable compromises to make when engaging in the system of politics, but never when your conscience is on the line.

These matters of conscience are serious and should be considered at great length. I have many friends who have considered the issues of this current election in all their nuances and have chosen to vote for either Obama, McCain, or a 3rd party candidate, and I support them in doing so. Again, we are diverse members of one body in our following of Jesus. It would be suspicious if we all reached identical conclusions to such complex problems. So again, maybe there is no conflict of conscience for you in this election. But if there is, be at liberty not to vote.

Our ultimate hope is not in politicians or powers or governments, but in a day coming when all things will be made right. And our ultimate concern isn’t success but faithfulness. So if you find it necessary to abstain from voting in this election because to do so would be a violation of your conscience, be at liberty to remain faithful and leave the worry of success or outcome to God."

"The Times They Are A-Changin'"

Friday was Halloween, as you may know. My friend Rachel and I planned to dress up as vampires, but we discovered that cheap teeth are remarkably unadhesive. After about twenty tries of sticking lots of nasty putty in our mouths, we gave up. We settled instead for wearing black and putting ghostly white makeup on our faces...so I think ultimately, we just looked really sickly all night. After passing through a massive police checkpoint (which I'm sure caught loads of drunk students), we cruised around downtown in my car a little after midnight, marveling at the ridiculously long lines outside of every night club. Not surprisingly, every line was filled with dozens of girls wearing the most minimal amount of clothing possible...I could only laugh and feel a bit of pity as I watched them all shivering in the freezing cold. Sorry, you brought that one on yourselves, ladies.

This has also been a weekend of memories. My old friend Michael Way, who is currently in his first year of grad school for cello in El Paso, TX, came up to visit. It was so good to see him (despite the massive fear that he induced for me all weekend). Michael has a bad reputation for enjoying the experience of scaring the living daylights out of his friends (particularly me, the jumpy one). I actually barricaded my house doors Friday night, and walked on eggshells for the rest of the weekend, I kid you not.

Then right after he left, I got a call from another familiar voice. My good friend Andrew and his new wife Katherine (is June new? I suppose not) came up for the evening to spend a couple of hours with us tonight. For a couple of hours, everything seemed just like it used to be: we ate stir-fry and drank Paul's delicious coffee while we all talked about music, movies, politics, relationships, education, television, faith....all the usuals. I just wished it could stay like that, but it had to end, so abruptly. I used to take it all for granted, and now the moments with all these people are precious. I wish I could go back to those years when we were all together, but I can still find happiness in seeing the ways my friends' lives are growing in new directions, to see the ways they are all making a difference in the world in their new locatations.

I miss so much of the way things were, and it's just hard to watch everyone growing up.
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Currently listening to: "Chicago," by Sufjan Stevens....."all things go, all things go"