Not a reflection

Ever since transferring to UNH, I've been somewhat fascinated with the placement of the engineering building (Kingsbury) and the art building (PCAC). These two buildings are directly across from each other, yet hold two very different groups of students.
Engineering students take art classes to get As and to satisfy annoying graduation requirements.
Art students use Kingsbury for the cafe inside.

My favorite feature of Kingsbury hall is that the doors seemingly do not contain locks. The building is simply always open. I assume that this is the carefully planned result of faculty and administration acknowledging the wonky schedules and workloads maintained by their students, and I for one would not be able to complete most of my school work without constant access to the building.

The art building is a different story. It locks every night at around 11pm, and is not guaranteed to be open on weekends.

My story from Hurricane Sandy is that, while the University was closed for two days, Kingsbury remained open throughout the storm. I was able to quietly do homework with the building mostly unoccupied. However, the PCAC stayed locked from Sunday night.
I currently have an instrument inside that building and try to practice it every night, so I tried the door every time I walked by.
Every time I tried, it was locked.

Tonight (Tuesday), the door is still locked. But while walking by, a student inside opened the door for me and then quickly propped the door open with a rock. Not a large rock, otherwise "they might notice". I asked how she got inside and the response included "breaking in through the theater".
I notice that, while the building had been officially locked for 2 days, the music wing was quite full of students who had been forcefully kept from their instruments for too long and were becoming desperate to play them. It was downright lively inside.

But Kingsbury remained open and silent.

Somehow, Engineering students have a forsaken gift: a facility that is always available, but not always used. Yet across the street, Art students are waving their arms trying to get someone inside to notice and hold the door open for them.

I don't know what this means. I just know that there is something funny going on, something strange about the crosswalk between these two buildings.

Don't Forget Combined Services

There was a sort of combined worship service tonight at the Whit. I love going to events at other churches because I love to see how other churches do things.

Important note: I almost always walk out being happy that I am at the church I am.

They do these "combined" type events every now and then. The latest iteration is "new hampshire" churches. There were maybe 2,000 people in the arena, and they said about 170 churches were represented.
Pretty cool, especially since the vast majority of churches in our area are in that sub-200 congregation size.
Now there are lots of people who like to advocate for churches "getting together" and I honestly agree. America's church is very fractured, there are denominations inside of denominations, and it keeps me up at night that there are probably 20+ churches in Dover who do not communicate or collaborate or anything together.
HOWEVER, I am convinced that there is a good reason why we don't do combined "worship services" very often.

I walked into the Whit and saw what I was hoping to see: good sized line arrays, a Venue and a grand MA at front of house, and IMAG on a stage that could have been 60'x30'.
The music was familiar but mostly not what i'm used to.

Here are details that rubbed me the wrong way:
1/2 the stage was a choir.
the other 1/2 of the stage contained 3 percussionists, 2 or more acoustic guitarists, 3 keyboards, 2 violins, a bass, an instrument that I can't even identify, a varied smattering of vocalists, and possibly some others. Amongst all that I only ever heard 1 electric guitar at a time. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with 3 percussionists in a band,
But I have a personal vendetta against crowded stages and sloppy instrumentation.
All of those musicians were probably very good.
However I don't think I would have noticed if you had removed 2/3 of the people on the stage.
Another way to say it: You give a church a bigger stage and they figure out how to fill it with more people.
I don't have anything personal against choirs. I think they are pretty neat.
However I do not like my ears being pierced with the sound of 40 amplified voices that are louder than the entire 6-person rhythm section.

I think it all boils down to culture.
My church has gotten away from the culture of hanging flags inside our auditorium and waving streamers around. This event contained more than one middle-aged man waving a streamer and also 2 hand-held flags for the entire music set.
There was a dance element, which is cool except it was during a worship song which just felt weird. There was a kids choir complete with kid solo which always make me feel uncomfortable and weird. There were kids on stage waving streamers/flags/ribbons, which triple-whammeyd the squirmy-kid feeling inside of me.
There was a song in spanish. I have ALWAYS made fun of people who sing worship songs in other languages, because I speak ENGLISH and do not know what spanish words mean, therefore there is no point in having lyrics. I will let this one slide because I'm sure there were hispanics in the room and it was a pretty fun latin song.

The lighting director harshly reminded me of church volunteer techs. I did not appreciate his use of the blinders on the top of his rig, and the rainbow pixel-map across his backlight rig that he aimed at the crowd was just plain silly.

There are more things, tons of little details that I just plain didn't like.

It sounds like I'm being harsh.
And yes, I am.
But I can do that, because these people like what they do.
And I like what I do.
I'm not going to tell you that anything at this service was wrong, because there are very few wrong ways to do anything these days. And THAT is why there are so many different churches.

If there's any big problems in the evangelical or charismatic or non-denominational church in America, the biggest one is an identity problem. So many churches just plain don't know what they're going after.
They don't have a vision for the music, so they let 3 people play percussion: no vision = no reason to say no. But if we are able to define our identity, we can work towards fostering that identity. And different churches develop different cultural identities, which is good.

It just makes combined "multi-church" gatherings really awkward.

Any further conversations I have with people about "combined church" events will be about how we need to ally our ministry and forget about church services.

On Rhetoric

Stumbled into a UNH Cru vision-type meeting tonight. (I was told there would be free food, which makes both of my meals today pot-lucks. hashtag winner.)

They passed out a transcript of a speech that John Mott once gave about "Spiritual Awakening in a University."

Here's a paragraph excerpt:

"Is there not an urgent need for a spiritual awakening in the universities of every land represented in this Conference? ...Let us remember how many Christian students there are who, by inconsistent and sinful lives and practices, are dragging the banner of Christ in the dust. Let us reflect on the intense spirit of the world which in so many places is invading the Church... Let us not forget the terrible consequences which will follow if these students are not reached for Christ - the consequences not only to themselves, but also to the cause of Christ, and even to ourselves if we do not seek to win them. As we ponder all these facts deeply and prayerfully, are we not impressed with the great need of a spiritual awakening? "It is time, O Lord, for you to work."

This one paragraph in particular stuck out to me, because it sounds just like a lot of modern church rhetoric. Students need a revival, and there is an "intense spirit of the world" which is "invading the church"... sounds like a lot of things you hear people talk about in churches.
But what is striking to me is that this speech was given in 1898. 114 years ago.

Here are some things that come to my mind:

-Perhaps the Church has not done a very good job in the past 114 years of being influential in the lives of students.
-Perhaps this speech and its language has influenced 4 generations of christian ministry, and we have just been repeating the same words over and over again.

I don't think the former statement is true. I think that the church has and continues to have a tremendous impact in the world, especially on students.
However, I think that there is danger in the words about the "influence of the world invading the church". As soon as you start to read into that, you start to "see" places where the influence of the world has invaded the church. Modern music and production standards come to mind. There's a movement of people who believe that rock music in the church is satanic and surely a "worldly influence".


Here is what I think:
If the only influence on the church is generations of the church's own influence, then that church is operating in a vacuum and has ceased to serve its purpose.

A church in Dover, NH ought to look like Dover, NH.
It should not look like 14th century Europe.


Now it is very likely that Mr. Mott was not speaking about "worship styles", and was instead talking about "christians" living a worldly life. In that case, maybe his words bear repeating. Either way, his speech doesn't sound 114 years old. I think that the church should think more about its rhetoric.

On Using Soap

There's a strange phenomenon that happens in mens restrooms, specifically after urinal use.
Of the people remaining when you ignore those who don't wash their hands altogether, most of the remaining do this weird little faucet-dance. They turn on the water, stick their hands under it juuuust long enough to get them wet, turn off the water and then dry their hands as if nothing ever happened.

Soap is not frequently used.

I don't understand this.
Soap is provided in restrooms because it helps to remove things such as bacteria from your hands. When you use the sink, you invariably add bacteria to the mix, and getting your hands wet most likely attracts more of the critters.

I have read cases for not using soap, but they all require the use of scrubbing, which is something guys definitely do not do when they wash their hands.

I can think of 2 causes for this behavior.
One is that we are taught early on that we always have to wash our hands. However with no adult supervision, it becomes a routine "reflex" where there is no ambition to actually clean the hands, but the actions are part of muscle memory so the sink is used.
The other is that our society expects us to wash our hands when using the bathroom, and even though most men probably don't pass judgement on others who don't wash their hands after peeing, its seen as an acceptable way to pretend that there really is hand-washing going on.

Here's how I view it:
A complete waste of time.
Rather than accomplishing something practical and useful (Such as cleaning your hands), you are spending effort, time, and resources (water and paper towels) with zero net result. Those resources and that time and effort were destroyed, turned into heat, lost forever to the forces of entropy.

It may be trivial, but we do that same thing with so many other aspects of our lives.

Now, I'm an adamant believer that every christian song written about "going through the motions" is a song too many about "going through the motions", but we do that.
We waste time and energy in situations because we've been trained to think a certain way or are afraid of the societal consequences of being ourselves.

Here.

To answer my question for myself from the last time i blogged:
The music never leaves. It's as inseparable as your native language, and as recognizable as your name. Even when it doesn't feel like there is time to sit down and practice, everything you live is a song.
Am i disappointed that I have let my life "take over" and squeeze out the things I love?
Absolutely.
But then you realize that some things are just so integral to your being that they can't ever be squeezed out.
I will allow everything I do to be musical.
And in the meantime, I will force myself for one more year to play the "BS EE Degree" game, and 9 months from now let out a sigh of relief. And then start something new...

On Projects

Its summertime.
-Senior Project involves forcing myself to learn Python and think about SMT components.
-Thinking a lot about IT type things. Trying to rig up a distributed file system without spending money.
-Trying to become a better audio guy.
-Not sleeping nearly enough.
-Working full time for unrelated things.
-Not reading anything I planned on reading.
-Wanting to sell old textbooks and other stuff. Not discovering the time for it.
-Where's the music?

Theater

I had to write a 5 page paper on stage lighting for a class that I am pretty sure every student has an A in, regardless of how much work they did or how much they cared.
Here is a paragraph that I couldn't figure out how to fit in.

Engineering and theater have this in common: they both strive to make the world a better place by enriching the lives of an audience that doesn’t understand or know who these players are. But they are different in how they accomplish it. Engineers design products, services, and systems that allow people to do less and less by thinking less and less and knowing little about what is actually happening. The stage forces people to examine themselves, to think, to question what reality really is. For all I know, this might be a more noble cause.

Proof

I went to an Intervarsity meeting yesterday. The IV group at UNH meets on thursday nights, and because of band rehearsal I haven't had a chance to go. We read the second half of Mark 1, "manuscript style", where they just give you a page of text with the verse numbers removed. It is something I have only ever heard of Intervarsity doing. Must be some kind of centralized training.
Here are two things I gleaned from the study:

Mark 1:35-37:
"And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he[Jesus] departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, 'Everyone is looking for you.'"
I think that is fantastic foreshadowing for the next 2,000 years of history.

There are two ways to spin that.
1: Everyone is looking for Jesus.
2: Jesus' disciples keep trying to find Jesus and then telling him, "everyone is looking for you".
But Jesus keeps leaving and going to a solitary place to pray. These other people did not look for Jesus, his disciples did. Perhaps we too much have the mindset that everyone is looking for Jesus, when in fact, everyone is not, and it is the job of the disciples to tend to the ministry.



A little bit later in Mark 1, Jesus heals a leper. It's really pretty neat, because after he heals the man, Jesus instructs him to tell no one what happened, but to "go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for proof to them."(Mark 1:44)
Don't tell anyone that Jesus healed you, but follow the law that Moses wrote concerning leprosy. (Which is in Leviticus 14)

I think that we have forgotten some of this.
People who are not christians need proof of what Jesus does in our lives, whether it's curing leprosy or just some emotional healing. We need to show them proof in their terms.
Creating christian radio stations and an entire genre of books called "Religious Inspiraton" doesn't quite cut it. Heck, there's a whole section of Barnes and Noble for "Christian Fiction". What the junk is that?
Far too often, instead of showing people proof for Jesus on the terms of the law, christians show them the proof for Jesus by being lunatics.

Gay marriage is a terrific subject for this. Instead of being reasonable and showing the world that Jesus can heal broken families, the Church has for a large part fought a losing political battle that has alienated millions of people. The Church's definition of Marriage is not political. It is religious. Have marriage ceremonies in the Church. But for crying out loud, let gay people have hospital visiting rights.
Nonchristians do not appreciate you bringing your religious beliefs into politics, especially when it appears to impede the progress of social justice, which is something that Jesus particularly cared about. 

Bring the world some proof on their own terms, within their "law".

Complicated Explanations

The most profound quote I heard this week was from my stage lighting teacher. He's an old guy who has clearly done theater for his entire life, stagecraft and lighting and all that drudgery. "I remember working 62 hour days." Technical theater indeed.
But he was going over some terminology in class and had this to say:
"When you don't really understand something, you can only explain it in complicated ways."

That is to say, when you really understand something, you can explain it easily, and could write the Simple Wikipedia article about it. But when you don't understand something and someone asks you to explain it, you find yourself BSing some sort of answer that sounds like you know what you're talking about.
Example, I could probably explain calculus to a middle school student, because everything I've done in school for 4 years has been based on calculus. I could not, however, explain to you Spanish grammar. I could probably fake it because i long ago studied latin, but I really know nothing about spanish.

This observation is important to me because it really makes sense of so many "complicated" things in the world.
Economics, politics, theology, non-newtonian physics, the history of ancient cultures, global warming, global hunger, the weather. These things appear very complicated. There are all sorts of scientists dedicated to studying them, writing textbooks about them, debating the importance of different theories.
But the bottom line is, no one really knows how the economy works.
And that is dangerous for two reasons: One, lots of people have successfully convinced politicians that they do, in fact, know how the economy works. And Two, because of this, people/government try to control the economy based on their inaccurate models that don't really work. But this regulation is complicated because that is the only way people know how to explain the economy. The result is things like housing bubbles, debt crises, and inflation.

How about theology?
There are disgustingly long books written about theology. You can devote your entire life to just studying a single religion, and you would never even know what the guy down the street believes. Theology is complicated because it is invented by people to describe things that we don't actually understand. Think about the Romans. They had hundreds of gods, all responsible for little things in daily life, and the result was a ridiculously complicated set of social observances to make sure you didn't offend any deity.


Now, there is nothing wrong with studying complicated things. But I believe that there are far too many people out there who talk like they know more than they do. 
As an engineering student, I am surrounded by other students who think they understand how transistors work, but really, no one knows for sure why electrons behave the way they do.

This is one of the coolest things about Jesus. He said simple things. Short sentences. Little stories. Because He actually understood what was going on, so He could put it in simple terms. And christians have been complicating it ever since.

One million workers

I love this time of year because its when big companies publish fancy, good looking reports about how great they are. Apple routinely toots their own horn over their environmental record and their labor policies.
Here's a quote that caught my eye:
"Apple-designed training programs have educated more than one million supply chain employees about local laws, their rights as workers, occupational health and safety, and Apple’s Supplier Code of Conduct."
(from http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/reports.html)

Apple has literally Hundreds of factories in China working to produce your glass-coated consumer products. Imagine if instead of outsourcing all of that mindless labor, Apple opened a manufacturing plant in America?
There are certainly a million highschool dropout Americans who could benefit from a solid manufacturing job. Apple is really about the only American company that has enough financial resources to do something like that. And they don't, simply because everyone wants cheap electronics.
Instead, we're fueling economies that are at odds with us, putting the nail in our own coffin by being a lazy society that doesn't particularly want to work for a living.