mooooovin' on up

spent a hectic but good day packing up and moving into my new home. went from a basement suite on my own to an attic bedroom in a house with four other people (right now it's only 2 other people - long story). anyway, it was slightly chaotic and tiring, but there were laughs and love and togetherness also - community life in a nutshell, i'd say.

looking forward to summer evenings on the deck barbecuing and drinking beer and long conversations.
in the meantime, many boxes to unpack and getting settled.

Beer: Proof That God Loves Us

"Portuguese gym-goers urged to drink beer"
Click on the title link to go to this article. Take that, Atkins diet. Let's all move to Portugal.

done and done

tonight several of my good friends graduated from regent college. good stuff - definitely an occasion to be celebrated ... and mourned a little bit. celebrated because it it quite an accomplishment, and good to acknowledge a significant period of life that involved a lot of growth and challenge. mourned because, it is an ending, a loss as everyone moves on to a new life and set of circumstances. such is life - a lot of joy and sadness mixed in together. it continues to surprise me how i can simultaneously feel these emotions, and at how life can be so simple an so complex at the same time.

some moments can be blissfully simple - friends gathering around a table to drink beer, eat nachos, laugh and enjoy each others company - doesn't get much better than that for me. and other relationship so complex, like in how to communicate - really communicate with each other - and walk alongside each other as we all grow and change, as we butt heads and annoy and hurt each other. and somehow in the messiness of that friendships grow and become richer too.

perhaps i'm just being sappy and thoughtful because i've had good bit of beer. but that would just be making excuses - i really can be quite sappy whatever state i'm in.

so here's to regent college class of 2005 - good friends, good laughs, good times. glad to be friends with them. best of luck. (i don't know why i wrote that. none of them check this blog, but what the hell)

it also boggles my mind that i will be in their position on the graduation stage next year. between now and this time next year, i will have written a thesis? damn.

stick a fork in me...

... for i am done. one more semester of international graduate school of christian studies under my belt. i'd just say seminary but my school likes to insist that it is a grad school and more than a seminary. don't ask me why, we just do.

i mailed off my last paper last night from the seven eleven (post offices are parts of established business instead of in their own buildings here), spirited there by my friends (dave was dressed in his pajamas). then we plundered the candy section, i bought myself a celebratory falafel (had skipped dinner while writing furiously) and watched "waking ned devine" and drank wine. slept in today, met up with my friends sara and mollie, we painted the walls (a nice warm earthy red) at jacob's well, a ministry in the Downtown East Side (one of the poorest areas in Canada). manual labor is good after a long semester of thinking hard. went out for burgers and beer afterwards and then sat around visiting with each other. the first 24 hours of my term break have been spent very well. looking forward to another summer in beautiful vancouver.

I'm old

I lied. I didn't pull an all-nighter. I got bored and tired at 3 am and went to bed. Have been loitering/working on my paper in a coffee shop for the past, oh, 5 hours. So so close now...

Meanwhile, outside it is in the upper 60s and sunny. Nature is taunting me...

All-nighter, baby

Am being throttled to death slowly by my final paper. What makes it worse is that I'm really into the subject, just to tired and lazy to put much effort into the writing. it would just be better if i didn't care at all. shoot.

on other fronts, i babysat this morning while my friend Rebecca taught an ESL class. hudson, her son and my little buddy, is three years old and in the middle of potty training. so most of the time, i was in the church nursery bathroom with him, trying to convince him to poop. see, he hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet, and has been making himself sick by er... witholding. i could tell he was in some degree of discomfort, but everytime i tried to get him to sit down, he would burst into tears, which would also make his little brother everett cry. it was quite different from my regular grad-school discussions. though, as my friend marybeth once told me while she was trying to potty train her own son, there's a weird sermon illustration in there somewhere. sometimes, even though it is the best thing for us, we just can't let go of some stuff. even if we would feel so much better if we just relinquished control and let go. as it is in the bathroom, so it is in the rest of life. and god's just sitting there with us in the bathroom patiently.

that's too weird to ever put in a sermon. but it is good for a laugh.

ugh.

one paper left. after friday i can write a post that is longer than 3 sentences.

it's kinda like liger, but different

check it out - a wholphin. yes, a whale-dolphin hybrid. weird. click on the title of this entry for the link.

Remember Alf? He's back ... in pog form

talking about the simpsons, alf, and pogs is the only thing that has made me feel kind of smart this week.

ugh

i know it's finals because i just ate top ramen for the first time in many years. i also didn't bother to put it in a bowl, but proceeded to eat it directly out of the pot.

feeling ulcerous

just turned in paper #1 of three due this week, plus an exam on wednesday. my stomach is churning some serious acid here. in the midst of hating life, part of me is really into what i am learning. the grading part of academia kind of sucks.

rowing - the return

As of tuesday, I will be back out on the water again. it's been oh, about 5 years since i had anything to do with rowing. perhaps i've just needed that long to forget about the pain and mentan anguish. so now all i remember at the good things. i'll be coaching at the thunderbird rowing center, for this corporate challenege event. kind of a teambuilding thing for different companies. basically just a fun introduction to the sport for these office flunkies.

i'm really really excited about it. as much as i can be in the midst of final papers and exams. ugh. but it will be good to be outside, on the water and coaching - something i love to do. and it will be good to get out of the christian bubble i find myself in at school.

also thinking about running a half marathon at the end of june. guess i want to exercise my body as much i've been exercising my mind lately. can't wait to escape the library.

insomniac thoughts

i wrote this for some of my online ponderosa camp friends.. thought i'd just post it here too because i don't have time to write it all over again, and i'm still kind of mulling it over...

hello.
tonight i was tired because of freakin' daylight savings time. so i figured i'd try to go to sleep early instead of working on my research paper. it is now 1:30 in the morning and i could have been working on my paper instead of tossing and turning. frick.

it is our last week of classes this week. today was our final session of "empowering the church... really-long-titled-class". we basically spent the whole semester examining the identity of the chuch (which is shifting and changing with the ever-changing culture), trying to deal with being in a post-modern, post-christendom (christianity as a guiding force in world culture) culture, and figuring out the mission of the church (announcing that the kingdom of the triune god has come near). it was fabulous, and maybe a few of our questions were answered (do we need to change? yes), lots more were raised (like how the heck do we do this?), and we are learning to live with that tension.

so, for our final class, there was an open sharing time for students to share what they'd learned from the class. then one of our professors preached about the wounds of Christ - how these wounds signify that God has suffered and is suffering with us. and these wounds bring the promise of healing. and these wounds empower us to do his will. then our profs anointed our hands with oil and blessed us. quite powerful stuff.

as i watched my classmates go forward, one of my profs., darrell johnson, encouraged us to pray for each other. as i prayed for these people, some of whom were friends, some acquaintances and some strangers, i was struck by 2 things. 1) that these people had never before appeared so beautiful to me than at that moment. because they were open to doing God's will and approaching Him with open hands to receive blessing. because they were moved to leave their regular lives, and come to school and pay to get their spiritual/intellectal asses whupped on a daily basis. because they loved God, and love His people. 2) that these people were also a ragtag bunch of misfits, if not a total freak show. these were the people God was raising up to do his mission? i wanted to laugh, not out of derision, but out of joy/astonishment. because, were it up to us, we would pick people who looked like brad pitt and jennifer aniston, that ooze charisma like bill clinton, had big muscles like shaquille o'neal. instead, the lowly, the meek,the poor, the seemingly foolish... these are the people that make up God's church. if that is not some sign of God's sense of humor i don't know what is. if that is not some sign of God's universal love, i don't know what is. if that isn't some sign of God's mysterious wisdom... you get the idea.

anyway, that's the best i can do for quarter to 2 in the AM. thoughts?

for all the problems the church has, God's will is still being accomplished.

ay dios mio

Image-7666028CA35111D9
Originally uploaded by audmo.

procrastinating. at word 2023 of a 3750 word paper. it's due on friday. so i think i'm hanging in there okay. of course, i have yet to come up with an overarching point to the paper so that could be a small problem later. but i won't think about it now.

instead, consider how SWEET i look with an afro. this was at our annual regent ball (or as i like to call it, the regent prom) they went zany this year with a "foolish formal" theme since it was on april 1st. rented out a 5-pin bowling alley, and had a major dance party. i felt like i was at summer camp, what with all the dancing, cross-dressing men, and nasty thrift store skit closet-esque clothing. i really think costumes need to be incorporated more into social events. i love it.

on other fronts, i am leaving behind my solitary existence in my 1 bedroom basement suite and will be moving into a community house with some friends on may 1st. yay for friends! and living above ground - i've got dibs on the attic loft space, kind of a greg brady bachelor pad thing going on, with less blacklight.

i've gotta buy myself an afro wig.

writing and writing and writing

paper time. ugh.
and i freely decided to go back to school.
however, i think it's ultimately a good thing that i am here. the momentary (3 weeks worth) of torture is but a small price in the big picture. (what i'm trying to convince myself of right now.)
deep, cleansing breaths...