Music and the Student Center

Funny story:
We are told to keep our flats locked at all times, because the rate of theft in Australia is pretty high. Being accustomed to Houghton standards, and not really seeing much of a difference between Houghton and Kingsley in that respect (the events of last semester aside...), I don't usually lock the flat. Tucker and Scott usually do, but I just don't care.
So last night around 11 I went in and changed out of my jeans into my pink scrubs and grabbed a blanket before going to the student center to watch Moulin Rouge with Ellen and Jeremiah, since Ellen had never seen it before. And as I walked out I though "My key is still in my jeans pocket. Oh well, they won't lock the door... And if they do, the window is partly open so I can open it the rest of the way and crawl in."
Oops. I got back around two, after e-mailing my Houghton roommate, and not only was the door locked but the window was closed. So I asked Jeremiah to be my alarm clock, and then went to sleep on the beanbags in the student center. It wasn't fantastic, but it wasn't bad either.

The problem is that I most definitely have a cold. It goes through worse times and better times, but to say that I'm healthy would probably be a lie. I have had a cough for about three weeks, and yesterday my throat felt like sandpaper. Stess, sleep deprivation, poor sleep on the ground at Wilson's Promontory (the southernmost point of mainland Australia), and springtime allergies don't make for a good combination. I just got some allergy medicine, so hopefully that will help me out a lot.

The other night was definitely a melancholy night. Without being too specific, I got a pretty long e-mail from a friend that I hadn't talked to in 10 months, and the e-mail itself as well as the situation on the whole have really messed with me emotionally. It's hard to not have talked to someone that I used to be really close to - something I excel at, unfortunately - and then to have them e-mail you out of nowhere. And when they include some insights into some of your former friendships with other friends that you are no longer close with, it just does something to you.

I actually ended up spending most of Monday night in the student center with Jermiah and Ellen, and Becky was there for several hours as well. We were all kind of in a melancholy mood. Jeremiah and I played piano for a while, and then he played and Ellen and I just sat there, and then I left just as Becky came in. When I got back (all of 5 minutes later) she was really upset about the conversation she'd had with her boyfriend, so we all gave her a group hug and then just talked to her for a few minutes. From there we just sat for a while, and then ended up playing a word association game as we all laid on the floor - which we did for two and a half hours. It was so good for our souls to just sit with each other and be in community, to know that we were loved and cared about, but not to have to worry about trying to make ourselves understood and explain everything that we were going through.

I suppose that goes a bit against the last post I wrote, but only in part.

Anyways, we had a conversation in my Life in the City class the other day about the negligence of Christian songwriters - particularly those who write the 'worship' songs that we sing in 'worship' services. It has to do with the fact that songs about Christ abound, but when it comes to songs about how we should live - specifically how we should live in regards to other people - not much exists. I don't know how well those songs would fit into our 'worship' 'services', but I've learned and thought so much about both of those two terms that I don't think not fitting in is a bad thing.

Along those lines, if you want a taste of some excellent songwriting that has a lot of the theology that I find myself coming to believe, get Todd Agnew's cd "Better Questions". It's absolutely fantastic, and flows right out of his last album. I suppose that if I cared to take the time to do it, I could compare the journey that his songwriting is taking to the one that I am taking in what I believe, but it would likely be a stretch.

I do however plan to start a blog when I am finished here in Australia about the "Theology of Song". Basically I just want to take a bunch of my favorite songs that really get me thinking and write some theological thoughts / biblical reflections out on them. In my head it would be amazing to take a set of Foolish Things songs and make a devotional out of them, but we'll see how that goes. Their new cd comes out in January, and I'm mad excited :-)

I have been rediscovering how much music means to me. I've spent a lot of time playing piano, trying to sightread Chris Rice's collection of hymn arrangements. It's slow going most of the time, but I enjoy it nonetheless. I've also spent some time trying to put some of my own theology and my own questions into songs as well. I have even taken a step out to just play and sing some of the Psalms during my devotional times - it's definitely an interesting experience.

Ellen described herself yesterday as "Not quite to the point where I'm so stressed out that I'm no longer stressed." I myself have reached that point! I have something like 30 pages of writing due next week, as well as a 10 minute and a 45 minute group presentation, of which I've done virtually nothing. It's quite exciting to know that in two classes more than 50% of my grade lies on next week. And by exciting, I mean that it's frightening and it makes me feel awful.

I've been reflecting a lot on what it means for me to be a student. In one sense, that part of my current identity dictates a good portion of what I do. As such, it means that I need to spend a lot of time working on schoolwork, because I should be doing whatever I do as for the Lord, and not for men. However, student is not the totality of my identity. I just don't know where to find the balance, and I fear that most of the semester has been too far on the anti-social schoolwork side. I'm trying to be slightly more social in my schoolwork - reading around other people instead of just in my room alone - but I'm not sure how I feel about that yet, since it's harder to concentrate.

I have three or four weeks worth of pictures to put up, but usually can't bring myself to get down to the library and spend all the time to do it. I was planning on going down there for when it opened (which is RIGHT NOW), but can't because I can't get into my flat to shower, change, get my stuff, etc. I think it's going to be the last straw that makes me ask for an extension - which I hate doing, and I never know if it's because it requires more humility than I want to show 0r if it's because it makes me feel lazy - on my major History paper, because with no weekend and so many other things due, 2300 words with min. 12 sources isn't likely to happen.

Well, hopefully Scott or Tucker is awake so I can go shower and figure out what to do with my day, after I do my devotions. Research will likely take up most of it, until I eat dinner with all the guys at Bekah and Melissa's flat. They decided that they should make a meal for us since they'd been so anti-social all semester. Who are we to argue with any reasoning behind a free meal?

The finish of this week, a weekend at Hal's Gap with an aboriginal community, next week with most of my major assignments, a weekend in Tasmania, the last week of classes, a trip on Great Ocean Road, a free week (Sydney? Brisbane? Cairns? Melbourne? Who knows where I'll be?) and then I'm headed home. It's hard to believe how little of the semester is left!


Oh, and the new sets of pictures. It doesn't include last week, but there are around 300 pictures from that week, so I'll have to have far more time to wade through them before putting them up.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011164&l=991f6&id=100301115

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011165&l=cddd3&id=100301115

Apology

Although, I could apologize for the rest of my life and never have apologized for all the things that need apologizing for. I think that word has been used quite enough times in one sentence, so we'll see how I can manage without it.

Anyway, this week at Kingsley is Mission Focus Week, and the guest speaker is Mary Fisher, who has given some fantastic lectures thus far. She has talked about the missional nature of the church, and the missional message of the church. Both messages were profound and provocative and gave me much food for thought. Her basic message so far is that we need to understand the Bible in its totality - shocking, I know! - and understand how ever since Genesis 4 the story of humanity has been the story of God's recreation of the whole world. Mind you, not just human hearts and souls, but the whole world.

My mind doesn't stop its own internal musings while these messages are going on, and this morning I realized that I have failed one of the Biblical commandments: Always be prepared, in season and out of season, to give a reason for the hope that you have.

If you come to understand the hope that we have as being the fulfillment of this life - as I am fast coming to through my theological studies - in the next life, then the hope for this life must be grounded in the particular and unique person of Jesus Christ. And we must live in relationship with Him to be able to communicate the gospel of His salvation through the Kingdom of God for the whole world to other people. And if we do not, then our faith is dry and bland and empty, like an unused teabag.

So, my apology is this: that I have not taken time to understand and to be able to communicate - much less actually communicate! - the reasons for the hope that I have. I have all sorts of ideas and beliefs about the church, about community, about faith, about life, about heaven. But I very rarely communicate them to anyone. They are left in my own head, like toys in a toybox, never to be taken out and used and shared with other people. I don't often enough allow myself the vulnerability to say what I think about these things to or in front of other people.
The problem is especially highlighted if you were to see me in classrooms. I will very often make a connection with something else that I have learned or experienced, and I will crack up. And laugh hysterically. Tonight I had to put my head between my knees to keep from totally disrupting class - which I'm sure that I've done anyways, at least for some people. But my ideas and my thoughts remain my own, and I don't share them with other people. I don't express them. I don't write them out. I don't allow other people to interact with them, and thus with me. I keep things to myself, so that I can enjoy them, and I rob other people of the ability to enjoy them and think about them with me.

This picture of me paints me as very selfish and self-centered. What is the purpose of my learning and my classroom experiences if I can't articulate and share them with other people? What is the point of being able to connect my classes together, and connect them to my life and to my faith and to my worldview if I don't articulate them to other people?

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that I want to parade my ideas around and say "look at me and how much I've learned and put me on a pedestal!" But if I can't and don't learn how to express and share the things that I'm learning, what's the point? I haven't engaged myself in community. I haven't learned in community. I've learned, and been surrounded by other people, but it's most definitely not the same thing.

It's also related to another thing that I've been learning - or at least trying to make much more real in my life. That's how I need to BE, and not to DO. Granted, this is something that I've struggled with and tried to apply at so many times in my life. But to tie up this whole thought process from today, I've realized that for what it matters, I am a student. And as such, I need to relate my identity as a student, and what I do as a student, and what I learn as a student, to other people, and I need to use that as a way to love other people. And if I can't use that to express the hope that I have - or if I can, and don't - what good does that do anyone but myself?

More Stress Information

Really, calendars are my problem, I decided. I was sitting here talking with Amy Palmer about a Daniel Fast that she's doing - who thinks about fasting anymore?! - and the schedule came up, since we were talking about when we want to try to do a harp-and-bowl cycle on Kingsley campus sometime. We were going to do one next week, but we will be traveling on the weekend to Wilson's Promontory, which is supposed to be some fantastic photography :-) Our other free night, Wednesday, will be taken up by a performance of Titus Andronicus that I am going to - that we thought was tonight, and then wasn't. Anyways, I was saying we could do it the first week in November, but we have a lot due that week - Our final paper and project for Australian History (we are actually in the same group for our presentation), a book for Life in the City, and then I have a church report for Christianity and Postmodernism. AAAAHHHH!

How did this happen? How did I end up with a knowledge of when all my major assignments are due? That isn't supposed to happen 'til the end of the semester! Granted, that's only four weeks away or so... But still! I can say what I have due every week for the rest of the semester, and that's just ridiculous. Should I have so much of the future in mind, or should I be more concerned with the present?

As we were working on our IS today, another point was made - I often lose sight of how much work I actually accomplish. I read two books and wrote two papers, one on a movie that I had to watch, in the space of two days. That's a huge accomplishment! And instead of being grateful that I was able to do that much in such a short time, I was too focused on what I still have left to do. I'm so worried about how things will turn out and about the grade that I'll get on them that it's causing me all sorts of undue stress.

Part of the problem (I can't remember if I've said this here or not) is that I don't have non-school activities to keep my school-activity-time focused. I feel like everything I do is either goofing-off and free time, or it's doing homework. I don't have soccer or working out or koinonia or music or the cafeteria or chapel or theater to do just to do. Everything that I do, whether it is running a couple miles or spending time playing the piano, usually sightreading, or reading my Bible, seems to be geared towards some end, some goal, some growth in my life.

Shouldn't that be a fabulous thing? I'm growing and changing and challenging and stretching myself. I'm trying to be conscious of how I love the people around me. I'm attempting to become more like Christ. I'm using my gifts and talents and resources to become more well rounded.

Somehow, I have missed out on the "play" aspect of this semester. Yes, I've done a lot of amazing things. But it almost seems as though they are all things that I should be using and internalizing to understand and shape my identity for the future. What happened to playing cards just because it's fun? Why do I have to now think of it as something that I can do to interact and build relationship with those around me? Why can't I just sit and watch a movie? Why do I have to tear it apart and analyze it? Why do I have to run for fitness, instead of having the option to play soccer just because it's fun?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to growth. And one of the quotes that I have held onto since Great Ideas in high school - one of the few, as the more I think about it I hated that class, especially senior year - is Chesterton, saying "The Christian life has never been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."

The other quote is one that is also from GI, but also from a dear friend: "We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we do, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future... So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so."

Now, in theory, I'm all for learning and growing and changing. It just seems like everything in my life right now, especially in academics, is geared towards that. What can I have and hold onto that it is just me, and not what I am growing into? What can I do just to have fun, without worrying about what will allow me to have fun or joy or happiness later? And how do I balance that with the very real needs of doing homework and assignments that I have now?

I'm very much excited for Christmas break, to come home and relax and let my mind slow down a little. Granted, that may not be what God has for me, but I'm hoping. For some small part of it, at least.

For now, I am trying to live out two things that I have read and learned in the last couple weeks. The first is Biblical, from 1 Peter: "Cast all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you." The other is from one of the books from my Independent Study - the idea that lamentation to God is still a very vital and important part of worship, because it is giving Him His proper place in your life - the place of Lord. It is claiming the promise that He is in control of your life and will bring you to the end of it allright.
No, I'm not presuming to know when that is, or how far away it is - but if God is for us, who can be against us? He is in control, and He provides for and loves the sparrows, so who am I to worry about something as trite (on the eternal scale) as homework?

Not easy, but I'm trying to learn.

Stress and homework!

I seem to be really bad at timing... Or keeping track of time, anyways. I barely feel like I've gotten back from break, but here it's been two weeks already... Geez.

Sometime, maybe tonight, I will devote a period of time to a longer post, but for now these are the assignments I have due this week, and I'm freaking out.

2 papers for Engaging Australian Culture
Movie review for Christianity and Postmodernism - I just watched the movie
Paper for my Independent Study... By far the biggest thing
A book review for Life in the City - I haven't started the book yet.

2 weeks from now I have both my major assignments due in Australian History, as well as another for Christianity and Postmodernism. And a paper for Australian Literature. And another book review for Life in the City.

My head hurts... Keep my stress level in prayer!