So i've joined two small groups at RPI this week. Really looking forward to how they unfold.
On wednesday nights there's a group on the subject of prayer. Yesterday we covered a bunch of ground, but spent the most time on John 17.
Throughout the chapter, Jesus is praying to God before he is turned over to the chief priests. A lot of verses stuck out at me. Here's the first 3 of them:
"After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: "Father, the time has come. Florify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." [John 17:1-3, niv]
Traditionally, humans think about "eternal life" as never dying. Living forever. Immortality.
Christians usually recognize this as something that can only be achieved by "knowing Jesus".
But that's not what Jesus said in his prayer; He didn't say that "they get eternal life by knowing you".
No, he defined eternal life as "knowing you".
That's so awesome.
Eternal life.
If you're looking forward to living forever and not having to worry about mosquitoes, you're living a sad shell of a life. What we ought to be looking forward to is getting to know Jesus.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Reality
I don't know if i've talked about this before, but i think about it all the time.
I have a very difficult time holding on to "reality".
I don't think that this is a deficiency on my part.
I think we all have trouble with this, i just don't know how many people actually think about it. And i can't possibly describe to you what i'm talking about, you just have to experience it on your own.
But tonight I spent almost an hour laying down on a hillside listening to worship music.
When you climb a mountain, one of the first things you do when you get to the top is look down- or out- at the view. You usually see an expanse of landscape, lakes, trees, and other mountains for miles and miles. It's beautiful.
It's a sight that makes many people think about God and how big he is, and that He created all of this beautiful world. Old ladies buy posters of mountains and hang them on their wall because they wish everything was as pretty as a view of a lake, or a sunset.
The view from the hillside I was on tonight is pretty much exactly that. You can see for miles and miles. Except the view is of downtown Troy, NY. (that's the actual view from next to where i was laying down)
At night, this view is one of the dingiest looking things you've ever seen.
It's all yellow streetlamps and roads. Police sirens and ambulance horns are an almost constant drone. That's pretty much the best way to describe Troy: Dingy.
The sky above troy tonight was a beautiful deep, velvet black, peppered with a few stars. After looking between "up" at the night sky and "down" over troy for a while, I decided that it's one of the coolest contrasts i've ever seen.
That's where I start to lose my grasp on reality.
I think that in America today, we are one of the worst reality-recognizers of all time. Our culture is escapism. Books, tv, movies, sex, our jobs, and video games are all ways that we forget about how we are living beings on a tiny blue planet hurtling through space.
That's what I think about when I look up at the sky- when you look up, you see the vastness of the universe. When you look down, you see the pitiful, dingy mess that mankind has made on our little blue planet.
Do you think that when God looks down on our planet, he sees Troy NY as just as beautiful as the mountainside in north western new hampshire?
I think maybe He does.
When I look at Troy, i see dingy. When I look out from a mountain top, I see natural beauty.
When God looks down at the landscape, He sees his handiwork, his Creation.
When He looks at Troy, I bet he doesn't even notice all the buildings falling apart, or the nasty smell of the streets. Because inside Troy are 50,000 of his best creation of all- 50,000 desperate human beings trying the best they can to live within the walls that we've created for ourselves that we call "reality".
I met a guy a few weeks ago on the bus to walmart.
He was having a lively conversation with the bus driver.
When we got off, he put on a visor and went to work.
He doesn't have time to go to a hillside and look at his city and think about the ridiculous boundaries that we put on our lives through our culture.
His "reality" is completely different from mine.
He knows all the bus drivers on his route because he probably doesn't have a car and probably works 14 hours a day to pay his bills. or his alcoholism. or both. or neither.
I walk around the RPI campus ignoring homework, watching people, and looking out at Troy.
These two lives are so different, we might as well consider them to be in different universes. We would have never met or affected each other's lives if we hadn't crossed paths on that bus. And two weeks later, all i have is a brief memory of his existence- an awareness. That's it.
God knows all of us, even when we don't know him, or choose to ignore His love.
That's so powerful.
The end-all point in Hinduism is Nirvana: the point where you simply cease to exist because you've somehow broken out of the endless chain of reincarnation. Buddhists claim that they know how to reach Nirvana, or that they know how to strive for it. They say that they know how to break out of our earthly "reality" and enter into the true, real, truthfulness of the universe.
Here's what I think.
I think that as soon as you realize who God is and begin to notice His Love for each and every one of us, at the moment when you stop thinking about reality in terms of your little personal mundane life and start to think about it in terms of everything, of how only God could possibly encompass everything- that's "Nirvana". I think that's the point where the Hindus 5,000 years ago were trying to get to, where Buddhists think they know how to get to. A realization of reality.
Closing thought:
As I lay down on that hillside, the wind was blowing in my face. It was cold. It was amazing. We spent money on fog and hazers, and HVAC systems that can move cold air to enhance the experience of a live show. Youth church services are like that a lot- we use fog at Uturn because it looks cool.
But when you're outside, looking at a city, you don't need atmospheric effects.
You have the atmosphere around you.
I have a very difficult time holding on to "reality".
I don't think that this is a deficiency on my part.
I think we all have trouble with this, i just don't know how many people actually think about it. And i can't possibly describe to you what i'm talking about, you just have to experience it on your own.
But tonight I spent almost an hour laying down on a hillside listening to worship music.
When you climb a mountain, one of the first things you do when you get to the top is look down- or out- at the view. You usually see an expanse of landscape, lakes, trees, and other mountains for miles and miles. It's beautiful.
It's a sight that makes many people think about God and how big he is, and that He created all of this beautiful world. Old ladies buy posters of mountains and hang them on their wall because they wish everything was as pretty as a view of a lake, or a sunset.
The view from the hillside I was on tonight is pretty much exactly that. You can see for miles and miles. Except the view is of downtown Troy, NY. (that's the actual view from next to where i was laying down)
At night, this view is one of the dingiest looking things you've ever seen.
It's all yellow streetlamps and roads. Police sirens and ambulance horns are an almost constant drone. That's pretty much the best way to describe Troy: Dingy.
The sky above troy tonight was a beautiful deep, velvet black, peppered with a few stars. After looking between "up" at the night sky and "down" over troy for a while, I decided that it's one of the coolest contrasts i've ever seen.
That's where I start to lose my grasp on reality.
I think that in America today, we are one of the worst reality-recognizers of all time. Our culture is escapism. Books, tv, movies, sex, our jobs, and video games are all ways that we forget about how we are living beings on a tiny blue planet hurtling through space.
That's what I think about when I look up at the sky- when you look up, you see the vastness of the universe. When you look down, you see the pitiful, dingy mess that mankind has made on our little blue planet.
Do you think that when God looks down on our planet, he sees Troy NY as just as beautiful as the mountainside in north western new hampshire?
I think maybe He does.
When I look at Troy, i see dingy. When I look out from a mountain top, I see natural beauty.
When God looks down at the landscape, He sees his handiwork, his Creation.
When He looks at Troy, I bet he doesn't even notice all the buildings falling apart, or the nasty smell of the streets. Because inside Troy are 50,000 of his best creation of all- 50,000 desperate human beings trying the best they can to live within the walls that we've created for ourselves that we call "reality".
I met a guy a few weeks ago on the bus to walmart.
He was having a lively conversation with the bus driver.
When we got off, he put on a visor and went to work.
He doesn't have time to go to a hillside and look at his city and think about the ridiculous boundaries that we put on our lives through our culture.
His "reality" is completely different from mine.
He knows all the bus drivers on his route because he probably doesn't have a car and probably works 14 hours a day to pay his bills. or his alcoholism. or both. or neither.
I walk around the RPI campus ignoring homework, watching people, and looking out at Troy.
These two lives are so different, we might as well consider them to be in different universes. We would have never met or affected each other's lives if we hadn't crossed paths on that bus. And two weeks later, all i have is a brief memory of his existence- an awareness. That's it.
God knows all of us, even when we don't know him, or choose to ignore His love.
That's so powerful.
The end-all point in Hinduism is Nirvana: the point where you simply cease to exist because you've somehow broken out of the endless chain of reincarnation. Buddhists claim that they know how to reach Nirvana, or that they know how to strive for it. They say that they know how to break out of our earthly "reality" and enter into the true, real, truthfulness of the universe.
Here's what I think.
I think that as soon as you realize who God is and begin to notice His Love for each and every one of us, at the moment when you stop thinking about reality in terms of your little personal mundane life and start to think about it in terms of everything, of how only God could possibly encompass everything- that's "Nirvana". I think that's the point where the Hindus 5,000 years ago were trying to get to, where Buddhists think they know how to get to. A realization of reality.
Closing thought:
As I lay down on that hillside, the wind was blowing in my face. It was cold. It was amazing. We spent money on fog and hazers, and HVAC systems that can move cold air to enhance the experience of a live show. Youth church services are like that a lot- we use fog at Uturn because it looks cool.
But when you're outside, looking at a city, you don't need atmospheric effects.
You have the atmosphere around you.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
opportunity land
during the weeks leading up to going off to college, I began to really dread leaving. I'm definitely homesick. And i definitely believe that my place in the world isn't in academia, or troy, ny.
I did, however, know that I couldn't stay at home.
I could have gone to UNH.
One major reason that I didn't is because I knew there would be a tremendous ammount of stress trying to give my all to my studies and at the same time wanting to give my all to uturn. It would split me into two pieces that would leave me an empty shell of an overstressed human being. By going somewhere that I don't know anyone, It ought to be easier to focus on schoolwork entirely and get it over with.
It's also proven to be a sea of opportunity:
Opportunities to get involved with technical theater, opportunities to have a job at one of the most acoustically perfect performing spaces in America, opportunities to give what I know and can do to other churches, to new people, to work with lights on campus, to join IEEE, to meet in 4 weeks double the amount of people that i've built relationships with in the first 18 years of my life.
And to learn like crazy.
My primary objective anytime i'm not in class (i have 17 hours of class each week and therefore 95 waking hours each week where I'm not sitting in a lecture hall) is to simply absorb everything I see and do.
I pay special attention to venues. I've seen more venues in a month than i've ever seen in my life- the RPI playhouse, each lecture hall, each church, each of the 4 theaters in EMPAC.
Every space is different, and seeing how different spaces can be utilized is really inspiring to me.
so that's that.
opportunity land.
I did, however, know that I couldn't stay at home.
I could have gone to UNH.
One major reason that I didn't is because I knew there would be a tremendous ammount of stress trying to give my all to my studies and at the same time wanting to give my all to uturn. It would split me into two pieces that would leave me an empty shell of an overstressed human being. By going somewhere that I don't know anyone, It ought to be easier to focus on schoolwork entirely and get it over with.
It's also proven to be a sea of opportunity:
Opportunities to get involved with technical theater, opportunities to have a job at one of the most acoustically perfect performing spaces in America, opportunities to give what I know and can do to other churches, to new people, to work with lights on campus, to join IEEE, to meet in 4 weeks double the amount of people that i've built relationships with in the first 18 years of my life.
And to learn like crazy.
My primary objective anytime i'm not in class (i have 17 hours of class each week and therefore 95 waking hours each week where I'm not sitting in a lecture hall) is to simply absorb everything I see and do.
I pay special attention to venues. I've seen more venues in a month than i've ever seen in my life- the RPI playhouse, each lecture hall, each church, each of the 4 theaters in EMPAC.
Every space is different, and seeing how different spaces can be utilized is really inspiring to me.
so that's that.
opportunity land.
On no grounds for Arguing
i read this verse last night and i love it.
Paul is in Corinth and, as the usual, people are trying to persecute him and the people people with him.
"'This man,' they charged, 'is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.'" [acts 18:13]
Read that again.
"this man is persuading people to worship God in ways contrary to the law."
Paul wasn't preaching against God.
he was preaching a different way to worship God, a way that the Jews didn't see as part of their custom.
They didn't like that.
But like it or not, he was still preaching that people worship God. And, in fact, to worship him in better ways.
Sometimes people in the Church have a mindset like that.
"it's not what we're used to."
but it might be better.
Just be glad that people are worshiping God, don't try to put 'em in "jail" because of it.
Paul is in Corinth and, as the usual, people are trying to persecute him and the people people with him.
"'This man,' they charged, 'is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.'" [acts 18:13]
Read that again.
"this man is persuading people to worship God in ways contrary to the law."
Paul wasn't preaching against God.
he was preaching a different way to worship God, a way that the Jews didn't see as part of their custom.
They didn't like that.
But like it or not, he was still preaching that people worship God. And, in fact, to worship him in better ways.
Sometimes people in the Church have a mindset like that.
"it's not what we're used to."
but it might be better.
Just be glad that people are worshiping God, don't try to put 'em in "jail" because of it.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Missing
I've been to three church services in a row away from home, and one college campus service.
What I miss most is jumping.
Not necessarily actually jumping, as much fun as it is, but what motivates people to jump around during a worship service- the energy, the all-out total abandon of praising God with everything.
This week as well as last week I attended a church of 1200 people that meets in what used to be a strip mall.
The building is nice.
But I wanted nothing more than to break out of the acoustic worship set and start jumping around like a maniac.
I miss it so much.
I want to be in a church like Hillsong, with crazy energetic people and members that don't stand around, ever.
I guess i'm pentecostal or something.
What I miss most is jumping.
Not necessarily actually jumping, as much fun as it is, but what motivates people to jump around during a worship service- the energy, the all-out total abandon of praising God with everything.
This week as well as last week I attended a church of 1200 people that meets in what used to be a strip mall.
The building is nice.
But I wanted nothing more than to break out of the acoustic worship set and start jumping around like a maniac.
I miss it so much.
I want to be in a church like Hillsong, with crazy energetic people and members that don't stand around, ever.
I guess i'm pentecostal or something.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
On Unexpecting
've definitely learned a lot in my first few weeks at college.
There are a number of things that i didn't expect, or that i hadn't considered before leaving home.
However, one thing that I was actually a bit worried about was alone time.
Living with someone else, in a building full of hundreds of other people, sharing a bathroom with 3 others, i was figuring that I wouldn't have much time to myself.
And sometimes that's true. when 7 people are in my dorm room playing xbox, there is no privacy.
But i was not at all expecting the level of privacy that I have here. First of all, my roomate frequently has classes when I don't. So I find myself with the room all to myself during most of friday afternoon, which is pretty neat. But other than that, there's an important note about RPI: There's 2 kinds of people here. People who go out every night to party, and people that never leave their rooms.
The easiest way to get privacy is to just start walking around campus, because no one ever does that.
And that's really cool for me, for two reasons:
1) I can't accomplish anything when other people are around me. Can't think, can't write, can't do homework without someone helping me, can't read.
2) I am much better at thinking and talking when i'm walking around. I pace when i talk on the phone. I can't avoid it.
So that works out really really well for me. If i want to get alone, I just have to start walking around campus. It's also really neat because I can pray outloud and not worry about anything. I love walking alone because it's like i'm hanging out with God, one on one. The added bonus of talking out loud is a big plus.
Anyway, Today was pretty unexpected.
I went to my first RCA (Rensselear Christian Association) meeting. It was different then i expected. Worship wasn't as energetic as i'm used to, and much less refined. But still very deliberate. Instead of a sermon, they had a few reams of lined paper and pens, and we wrote letters to servicemen/women in honor of september 11th. Pretty thoughtful.
The meeting started at 7. At 8, I had been planning on going to a concert at EMPAC. But as i was sitting in the RCA room, trying to decide if i should leave early for it, I just sort of felt like I should stay.
I left at 9 and wandered towards the empac building to see if anything was still going on. People looked like they were beginning to leave, so I kept wandering through the campus.
Then I noticed something that i've never noticed or thought about before.
the RPI campus has a church on it. Except it's really just a church building, a 150 year old massive stone church. In 1977 the school turned it into the computing center. And to do it, they actually built a building inside of it. with interior walls and everything. It's very interesting. really. The building is open 24/7.
As I was walking by the VCC, that is, the church, I looked up. They kept/restored the stained glass windows in the church. And the windows were working opposite of what they were designed to do. They were lighting up the night sky from the inside of the church.
It was very, very cool.
And unexpected. I've never seen stained glass light up the night.
I started walking back to my dorm. When i was pretty close, one of the guys from RCA was walking towards me. I waved.
He invited me to Friendly's.
Friendly's after youth group is/was a tradition back home.
I felt like I should go.
I went. They paid for me dinner.
Then they invited me back to an upperclassman dorm and we watched a bunch of episodes of the flight of the conchords.
Today was unexpected.
For the first time in a month, I feel a little belonging.
RCA made me pumped to visit home there. I can't go anywhere without being completely overwhelmed by plans, ideas, and details. Everywhere. Its nuts.
There are a number of things that i didn't expect, or that i hadn't considered before leaving home.
However, one thing that I was actually a bit worried about was alone time.
Living with someone else, in a building full of hundreds of other people, sharing a bathroom with 3 others, i was figuring that I wouldn't have much time to myself.
And sometimes that's true. when 7 people are in my dorm room playing xbox, there is no privacy.
But i was not at all expecting the level of privacy that I have here. First of all, my roomate frequently has classes when I don't. So I find myself with the room all to myself during most of friday afternoon, which is pretty neat. But other than that, there's an important note about RPI: There's 2 kinds of people here. People who go out every night to party, and people that never leave their rooms.
The easiest way to get privacy is to just start walking around campus, because no one ever does that.
And that's really cool for me, for two reasons:
1) I can't accomplish anything when other people are around me. Can't think, can't write, can't do homework without someone helping me, can't read.
2) I am much better at thinking and talking when i'm walking around. I pace when i talk on the phone. I can't avoid it.
So that works out really really well for me. If i want to get alone, I just have to start walking around campus. It's also really neat because I can pray outloud and not worry about anything. I love walking alone because it's like i'm hanging out with God, one on one. The added bonus of talking out loud is a big plus.
Anyway, Today was pretty unexpected.
I went to my first RCA (Rensselear Christian Association) meeting. It was different then i expected. Worship wasn't as energetic as i'm used to, and much less refined. But still very deliberate. Instead of a sermon, they had a few reams of lined paper and pens, and we wrote letters to servicemen/women in honor of september 11th. Pretty thoughtful.
The meeting started at 7. At 8, I had been planning on going to a concert at EMPAC. But as i was sitting in the RCA room, trying to decide if i should leave early for it, I just sort of felt like I should stay.
I left at 9 and wandered towards the empac building to see if anything was still going on. People looked like they were beginning to leave, so I kept wandering through the campus.
Then I noticed something that i've never noticed or thought about before.
the RPI campus has a church on it. Except it's really just a church building, a 150 year old massive stone church. In 1977 the school turned it into the computing center. And to do it, they actually built a building inside of it. with interior walls and everything. It's very interesting. really. The building is open 24/7.
As I was walking by the VCC, that is, the church, I looked up. They kept/restored the stained glass windows in the church. And the windows were working opposite of what they were designed to do. They were lighting up the night sky from the inside of the church.
It was very, very cool.
And unexpected. I've never seen stained glass light up the night.
I started walking back to my dorm. When i was pretty close, one of the guys from RCA was walking towards me. I waved.
He invited me to Friendly's.
Friendly's after youth group is/was a tradition back home.
I felt like I should go.
I went. They paid for me dinner.
Then they invited me back to an upperclassman dorm and we watched a bunch of episodes of the flight of the conchords.
Today was unexpected.
For the first time in a month, I feel a little belonging.
RCA made me pumped to visit home there. I can't go anywhere without being completely overwhelmed by plans, ideas, and details. Everywhere. Its nuts.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
On Hearing
I have a textbook for my digital media class titled, "Audio Culture, readings in modern music" by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner.
It is a compilation book of essays written about modern music.
The assignment I just read was incredibly interesting. It was about how, over the years, silence has steadily been removed from our society. We fill our lives with noise, which makes it more difficult for important sounds to have any meaning. The author referenced "signal to noise ratio" a few times, but giving it a new meaning in what we hear with our ears.
Very cool.
What was most interesting to me, thought, was a paragraph that i'm going to reproduce here. Read it all. I dare you:
"We will not argue for the priority of the ear. Modern man, who seems to be in the process of deafening himself apparently regards this as a trivial mechanism. In the West the ear has given way to the eye as the most important gatherer of information. One of the most evident testaments of this change is the way in which we have come to imagine God. It was not until the Renaissance that God became portraiture. Previously He had been conceived as sound or vibration. In the Middle East the message of Mohammed is still heard through the recitation of his Koran...."
"Clairaudience" from The Music of the Environment by R. Murray Schafer
how cool is that?
I've heard it said that blind people have a much easier time interacting with the world than deaf people. Because the ears are, inherently, much more useful than the eyes.
Think about this.
All art conveys emotion. That's what makes us look at it or listen to it. But visual art and musical art are inherently different: most people can't look at a bunch of colors on a piece of canvas and understand what the artist was thinking. Visual art usually represents something: pictures of objects that we already recognize, shapes with lines that our eyes follow to perceive thoughts, and colors that influence our thinking.
Music is different.
You don't have to recognize sound for it to convey emotion.
You could be a time traveling blacksmith from the 1650s and listen to ambient electronic music and still feel the emotions of the composer, without ever knowing what you were listening to.
Our ears are rooted to our subconscious. They are sensitive.
So many problems that people have with God would be nonexistent if we were better at using our ears instead of our eyes.
You can't see God. But you can feel him. Like you can feel wind.
And you can hear wind.
God's name in Hebrew was a bunch of "breath noises"-no vowels. His name was literally breath. Vibration.
God is much more fundamental to life than what we can see.
It is a compilation book of essays written about modern music.
The assignment I just read was incredibly interesting. It was about how, over the years, silence has steadily been removed from our society. We fill our lives with noise, which makes it more difficult for important sounds to have any meaning. The author referenced "signal to noise ratio" a few times, but giving it a new meaning in what we hear with our ears.
Very cool.
What was most interesting to me, thought, was a paragraph that i'm going to reproduce here. Read it all. I dare you:
"We will not argue for the priority of the ear. Modern man, who seems to be in the process of deafening himself apparently regards this as a trivial mechanism. In the West the ear has given way to the eye as the most important gatherer of information. One of the most evident testaments of this change is the way in which we have come to imagine God. It was not until the Renaissance that God became portraiture. Previously He had been conceived as sound or vibration. In the Middle East the message of Mohammed is still heard through the recitation of his Koran...."
"Clairaudience" from The Music of the Environment by R. Murray Schafer
how cool is that?
I've heard it said that blind people have a much easier time interacting with the world than deaf people. Because the ears are, inherently, much more useful than the eyes.
Think about this.
All art conveys emotion. That's what makes us look at it or listen to it. But visual art and musical art are inherently different: most people can't look at a bunch of colors on a piece of canvas and understand what the artist was thinking. Visual art usually represents something: pictures of objects that we already recognize, shapes with lines that our eyes follow to perceive thoughts, and colors that influence our thinking.
Music is different.
You don't have to recognize sound for it to convey emotion.
You could be a time traveling blacksmith from the 1650s and listen to ambient electronic music and still feel the emotions of the composer, without ever knowing what you were listening to.
Our ears are rooted to our subconscious. They are sensitive.
So many problems that people have with God would be nonexistent if we were better at using our ears instead of our eyes.
You can't see God. But you can feel him. Like you can feel wind.
And you can hear wind.
God's name in Hebrew was a bunch of "breath noises"-no vowels. His name was literally breath. Vibration.
God is much more fundamental to life than what we can see.
Friday, September 4, 2009
on belonging
so i was thinking a little bit as i was walking across the rpi campus today.
(sidenote: first blog post as a college student)
I was thinking about belonging.
I've been plenty of places during my short life on earth: i've been through private middle school, public highschool, private highschool, juggled churches, and now i'm a student at a university with a ~$800m endowment.
And what i've realized is that i've never really "fit in" anywhere, the exception being cwc.
In middle school i was the kid that threw pencils at people.
At somersworth i was the fattish kid in the corner that didn't talk to people.
At BA US i was constantly stretched in every direction and couldn't ever focus on academics. And all my friends weren't in my grade.
At RPI i'm the kid in engineering that doesn't want to be an engineer, the kid with a bicycle that doesn't use it because i enjoy walking, the kid that is completely lost in physicsII and mostly lost in calcII, the kid that gets locked inside stairwells in EMPAC, who misses job interviews because the interviewer's phone didn't ring, who doesn't go to frat parties, whose laptop needed reimaging 10 minutes after he got it because vista lets you create limited user accounts when there are no administrator accounts on the machine, the list goes on.
So i'm thinking, maybe its not that i don't fit in here.
Maybe it's that i just don't like fitting.
Example:
In highschool, I amassed a collection of geeky tshirts because a) they were funny and b) no one else had them.
Now i go to a school where everyone wears geeky tshirts and i no longer wear them. because other people do.
But i think that there are advantages to being somewhere that you don't fit.
Mostly, people remember you.
I missed my job interview at EMPAC today because i was supposed to call the guy's cell phone so that he could open the door for me. I called it at exactly 4:40, the time of my interview, and it went straight to voicemail. Thinking that he was running late, I just hung around in the hallway for a little bit.
There was a stairwell next to me.
I started looking out the window.
The door shut behind me, and it locked.
And i soon discovered that every door leading to the inside was locked.
So i ran down 6 flights of stairs as fast as i could, luckily there was an outside door at the bottom, and then ran back inside the main entrance and up 6 flights of stairs again.
Then i waited where i was before.
At 5:17 he came out the door.
me: "are you heading out?"
him: "yes, did you want to meet with me?"
me: "yeah i had an interview at 4:40"
"well it's 5:..." (shows phone clock)
"yeah i thought you were running late"
"i've been standing here by the door, you were supposed to call.."
"i did..." (takes out phone) "it went straight to voicemail"
"oh... well i'm sorry about that, how about you email me for another time slot"
"okay, sorry. thank you"
then we left. But with any luck, my unfortunate exchange will help him to remember me next week when i get an actual interview. maybe.
anyway, some parting thoughts:
psalm 119:19 says "i am a stranger in this world"
and that's how i feel every day.
But i don't mind it too much, because i think that i'm supposed to be here.
also, in verse 11 says, "i have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you"
and that's also how i feel- that through the daily troubles of college life i have nothing to worry about because I have God's word hidden inside of me, forever, holding a spot that cannot ever be usurped. And if i rely daily on it, nothing can go wrong because i'm convinced that inside of God's will, there is no wrong.
(sidenote: first blog post as a college student)
I was thinking about belonging.
I've been plenty of places during my short life on earth: i've been through private middle school, public highschool, private highschool, juggled churches, and now i'm a student at a university with a ~$800m endowment.
And what i've realized is that i've never really "fit in" anywhere, the exception being cwc.
In middle school i was the kid that threw pencils at people.
At somersworth i was the fattish kid in the corner that didn't talk to people.
At BA US i was constantly stretched in every direction and couldn't ever focus on academics. And all my friends weren't in my grade.
At RPI i'm the kid in engineering that doesn't want to be an engineer, the kid with a bicycle that doesn't use it because i enjoy walking, the kid that is completely lost in physicsII and mostly lost in calcII, the kid that gets locked inside stairwells in EMPAC, who misses job interviews because the interviewer's phone didn't ring, who doesn't go to frat parties, whose laptop needed reimaging 10 minutes after he got it because vista lets you create limited user accounts when there are no administrator accounts on the machine, the list goes on.
So i'm thinking, maybe its not that i don't fit in here.
Maybe it's that i just don't like fitting.
Example:
In highschool, I amassed a collection of geeky tshirts because a) they were funny and b) no one else had them.
Now i go to a school where everyone wears geeky tshirts and i no longer wear them. because other people do.
But i think that there are advantages to being somewhere that you don't fit.
Mostly, people remember you.
I missed my job interview at EMPAC today because i was supposed to call the guy's cell phone so that he could open the door for me. I called it at exactly 4:40, the time of my interview, and it went straight to voicemail. Thinking that he was running late, I just hung around in the hallway for a little bit.
There was a stairwell next to me.
I started looking out the window.
The door shut behind me, and it locked.
And i soon discovered that every door leading to the inside was locked.
So i ran down 6 flights of stairs as fast as i could, luckily there was an outside door at the bottom, and then ran back inside the main entrance and up 6 flights of stairs again.
Then i waited where i was before.
At 5:17 he came out the door.
me: "are you heading out?"
him: "yes, did you want to meet with me?"
me: "yeah i had an interview at 4:40"
"well it's 5:..." (shows phone clock)
"yeah i thought you were running late"
"i've been standing here by the door, you were supposed to call.."
"i did..." (takes out phone) "it went straight to voicemail"
"oh... well i'm sorry about that, how about you email me for another time slot"
"okay, sorry. thank you"
then we left. But with any luck, my unfortunate exchange will help him to remember me next week when i get an actual interview. maybe.
anyway, some parting thoughts:
psalm 119:19 says "i am a stranger in this world"
and that's how i feel every day.
But i don't mind it too much, because i think that i'm supposed to be here.
also, in verse 11 says, "i have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you"
and that's also how i feel- that through the daily troubles of college life i have nothing to worry about because I have God's word hidden inside of me, forever, holding a spot that cannot ever be usurped. And if i rely daily on it, nothing can go wrong because i'm convinced that inside of God's will, there is no wrong.
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