"The thing which is not"

The past 6 months I've been struggling to put me finger on a bother I could not seem to apprehend. I realized it this week and it's a worse feeling knowing what I thought I wanted to know. Here's the great tension I've been feeling... There seems to be some kind of arguable chasm between intellectualism and faith. For reasons I have yet to fully understand, this breaks me. It's like Neo-Classical versus Romanticism. Logic versus passion. Structured reason and belief seeded in emotional inspiration. The two are so different in my mind it is hard for me to grasp how (if it is possible) both kinds of thinking can rest in that big iconic symbol we call "Faith".

Does a person have to sacrifice faith to gain intellectualism?
I don't believe so, but I have no proof of why.... Grasping at faithful straws.

Steak

Lately I've been getting these calls from the same 404 phone number. They call at least a couple times a week and never leave a message... ever. I was annoyed but today I thought, "whoever this is, they are incredibly persistent about whatever information they don't want to leave in a message." I chose to put my ponderings to investigative efforts and typed the phone number into google to see what I could find. Apparently TONS of other people have been getting these "stalker" calls. I laughed out loud when I read all the angry comments about how many times the mystery number calls and never leaves messages. One poor schmuck just said, "8 calls.... 2 days."
Anyway, from what I can tell it is a steak company trying to telemarket their stuff. Persistent steak selling.

Dad

My dad is 52, balding, and has been described as "A tomato with legs". I love him for reasons children tend to love their parents... Maybe it's a defense of the psyche to love your parents. You find yourself so much like them without trying, and if they've lived that long, they must be doing something you should be doing. Anyway, everyday I find myself more and more freakishly like my dad. There are some striking differences, though.

My dad informed us on our way to the Esterline Christmas party of a few points of interest concerning his evolving musical tastes.
His favorite song used to be "No Diggity, No Doubt" until this year... now it is, "All the Single Ladies" (But he also likes the Lollipop song)
Whether or not he understands what he is listening to is unclear. Then there is my personal favorite quote from the day:
"Lil' Wayne is the greatest musician of all time"
-- personally I might have gone with something more cliche like The Beatles. Or what about someone like Mozart? Or even my favorite Louis Armstrong? But as I mentioned earlier, I'm only 21, what do I know? Lil' Wayne it is.

When I saw him today he had a dead deer just lying in the grass of our front lawn. I said, "Dad, why's there a dead animal in the yard?" He said, "I'm going to take the fur for a nice coat". He won't. But the image of him wearing deer fur kind of makes me laugh. When I asked him where Grandma Kresse was and why she wasn't at Christmas he said, "oh she went missing about a year ago... No one's seen her" I asked, "Why didn't anyone tell me?" He replied, "Didn't think it was important. Someone will find her eventually." "Is anyone LOOKING for her?" and he thought for a minute and said, "I think so..."

I don't know why, but some of the things he says (in retrospect) are too funny for me not to record. There are too many stories he has told me. I never know what's the truth, actually. It's a bit ridiculous.

Sconsin and Chicago

A foot and a half of snow and a few inches of ice, and a 6 hour trip suddenly became a 39 hour epically ridiculous extravaganza. A lot of things can happen when you are with your brother and sister on vacation. Here a few I would like to remember:

1... When Tyler lit his hands on fire... Twice.
2... Frost-bitten limbs and the German pub
3... Fried macaroni and cheese bits/Macaroni and cheese pizza
4... The cart escalator
5... The "Farting Man" in the cheese store
6... Watching 3 days worth of television shows and movies I have already seen and didn't want to watch again
7... "I don't follow traffic laws in parking lots-- Stop for who??-- Assholes."
8... After hitting another car, "They're called 'Bumpers' for a reason. If you weren't allowed to hit them they'd be called something like... 'Don't-touchers'"
9... The foot-soaked journey around Chicago at night looking for boots
10.. Running into Brianna's older brother who was also stranded in Chicago

Silences

Tonight I played in the snow with some old high school friends.  It was good, because playing in the snow is pretty much always fun.  I have changed since high school.  I used to think about that and be sad, because I thought it was a bad change, a change into someone I didn't want to be.  Maybe that's true, but I don't think it is that way.  I'm certainly different.  Maybe I'm more comfortable.  I can't put my finger on it.  Anyway, I seem to be impervious to awkward silences in conversation.  I don't even notice them, actually.  It's not uncomfortable and I usually don't realize the quiet isn't a social normalcy until someone starts filling the silence with pointless words.  Words.  That reminds me...

"Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words... Hearing the dark voicelessness in which the words are the deeds, and the other words that are not deeds, that are just the gaps in people's lacks, coming down like the cries of the geese out of the wild darkness in the old terrible nights, fumbling at the deeds like orphans..." 

About a year before I became Christian I freaked out about the meaning of words.  Why do people fill silences?  What's so bad about the quiet anyway?  Everything I talked about with people seemed pointless, and I guess it was, because what I really was looking for in the words was a meaning I wasn't finding.  Everything else just seemed silly, a waste of energy and time.  Sometimes I get that itch still.... Like hearing the same lesson 80 times and you feel like scratching your skin right off because you're so mentally bored you have to find some way to fill the intellectual void.  My lack of conversation contributions have little to do with a lack of interest or attention span.  I just can't seem to find a purpose in so many words and so much talking all the time, I guess.

Stress Ranting

Four professors are looking at my research paper. I found out tonight. I am seriously horrified. I have written so many papers in the past couple years I can't even remember what I've written and what I've just thought about. But those are nothing compared to the monster I have been working on this week. I don't know why, but I was stressed about this one from the get-go. I suppose that's good. I usually procrastinate and do something off the top of my head the day before and end up hating it. This is different. First of all, I found the topic interesting and did a mildly acceptable amount of research. I pulled in primary documents, travel narratives, young adult fiction, poetry, movies, a speech, and even a classical reference from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Then, when I thought I was too annoyed to play around with it anymore than I already had (It's seriously a mess. At least my BS work is well organized) Dr. Hartley called me to ask me about it. He's an old English professor I had from the summer. I really like him and sometimes I run into him and we talk about literature and stuff. But then he called me and it seriously freaked me out. He wants to read my paper, "if that's okay" (and of course it is... who would say "no, that's not okay you creep" even if they were terrified??) He specializes in the stuff I am currently researching so it's incredibly intimidating, even if I didn't already respect him. Plus, he is friends with Dr. Creary and Marlene De Le Cruz-Guzman (both professors I have had for different classes and I babysit for them). They want to read it the paper too...

So in addition to the professor I was originally writing the paper for (Dr. Godwyll, who is incidentally, the CARE education partnership leader and the decisive judgment for my future) I also now have 3 other professors ripping apart my paper. Yikes. I don't get stressed, but I'm stressed. Criticism from the people you respect is tough, and I am a total coward. I wanted to be challenged, and now I'm shaking like a leaf.

I love Jews

I have a strange affinity for Jews. That sounds weird. Probably because it is weird. Not to like Jews, but to like a person for the main reason that they are Jewish. It's like loving a person simply because they are Hispanic, and I am fully aware of how ridiculous it is, but I'm just coming right out and admitting that for whatever reason every Jewish person I meet is a delight. Anyway, there's a Jewish guy who sits next to me in my Education class and I can't stop asking him questions.

I asked him why he felt it was significant to study scripture in Leviticus and Numbers, specifically, scripture explicitly describing things such as different types of offerings and numbers of clans and things like that. He just kind of shrugged and says without much thought, "It's always important to know one's history. It's how we learn who we are now and how we got there. You can't completely understand US politics without having basic knowledge of US history first." I guess I knew that, all along. The old testament is kind of like the biography of Jesus before Jesus. Plus, it helps to understand the context of Jesus. Man, I really love talking to Jews.

On another note: I watched John Tucker Must Die tonight... By the title, I always thought it would be like a kung fu movie. It wasn't. Not even close. But it made me laugh pretty hard in a couple places so that was good. Also, I have 19 books checked out from the library currently which is my new high record. It's sad to think about having to take all of them back.