January 31, 2004
who would have guessed?
obsessive compulsive
Which Personality Disorder Do You Have?
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Three Weeks Down
Maybe I should post more often.
So. I have lots I could write about, enough on my mind but I'm not sure what to say. Strange eh?
Missions Week was fairly good this year. Our Speaker was just great!
I am reminded again of a little seed that lies inside. I wonder right now...there is that parable of the seeds that fall on rocky soil, good soil, ground, and such. I wonder if that same principle might apply to the seeds that such things as Missions Week plants amongst folk. For some people, the seeds of a call to go overseas is so strongly planted. I don't feel a strong call. Yet. But I have to admit that something tugs inside at the thought. A tug that might become a yank or a harder pull at a different time. Maybe it'll be for a short-term summer trip sometime in the future. Or it's just a reminder that I need to support prayerfully and materially as I can those who do go outside the country and even those who sacrifice all within the U.S. I'm a little familiar with that...my family lived on missionary support for a few years when my dad took the job at Camp Redcloud. Or this gentle tug is one that will pull even me into the world of missions, maybe to Russia. I may have posted sometime last year about this strange fascination I've had with Russia--from the time I was a little girl. In a series of stories I wrote in third grade, I moved my main character to Russia and had her build a life there. I worked with Russians at Poker Alice Pizza. One of my favorite studies was into the legend of Anastasia. It's interesting to think about all the little things of my life thus far. Maybe I should pick up learning Russian just in case.
Wow, there's a lot I could write about iny life. I need to start writing down some things that aren't in journals about my childhood and stuff. I know I was going to post more about my life as an introvert at some point...but than, that would also be a good one to combine into one post about my life in Lake City. Hmm. I'm feeling inspired to write about that. I maybe start that somewhere and than post a finished product here. We'll see.
Yeah, this is fairly fragmented I know. That's what happens to my mind after midnight at the end of the week.
I sit here listening to Jars of Clay and Juliana Theory. "Hardest Things" by JT finished and now I am listening to "Worlds Apart" by JoC...my favorite song by them. There's something else I could write about--the effect various songs have had on me at approriate times of my life. For example, "World Apart" hit me my sophomore fall...many of you were beginning to get to know me at that time and also know this as a major semester of trials and such. I believe I also was introduced to the passage in the gospels where it talks about those who have a faith in Christ being broken on the rock but those without that faith being crushed. I think it was the first time I fully realized that I have to be broken to be molded into a new creation. Sometimes broken a lot. At any rate...these two ideas--asking God to take my world apart and asking God to be broken both were strong for me--I'm thinking it was early in the semester, maybe even before the heart stuff started. Hmm, I need to think on that timing a bit more.
Gotta love my brains flow eh?
I am going to leave off here for now and start to try a bit of writing on my lake city life.
January 28, 2004
darn you wilson
when you're supposed to be doing homework.....
My best score so far is 323.5
January 27, 2004
Thoughts from Devos
These two passages have been shared in class devotionals the last two days. I will mostly let them speak for themselves and of course recommend you to look at surrounding verses.
The first I give to you, particularly remembering Monday night:
Job 22:29:"When men are brought low and you say, 'Lift them up!'
then he will save the downcast."
Again I say, read the entire chapter for that one.
and the second from Dr Woodring:
Isaiah 57:1-2 "The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart; devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away
to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death"
Back to reading for homework...
January 26, 2004
Chapel Thoughts
I may have to expound on some of these later but here are some thoughts I had regarding chapel in general:
Most recently (or I was just able to put actual words to it):
There are chapels which are more like student assemblies.
and there are chapels that are true Christian fellowship.
In testing the Spirits, we should remember to test our own when listening to someone. For in some ways, I think that it's worse not to listen to a person because we dislike them or are of different persepectives than it is not to worship because one doesn't like the music or style or leaders.
I caught myself automatically freezing and getting ready to find something wrong when two people were up on the stage today and realized that in doing so, I could very well miss something God is saying.
New Personality?
I took this test last spring and came up very different than this (ENFP) Maybe it's just the time of night I've taken this test or maybe I've changed. Maybe I have more than one personality!
Your Type is
ISFJ
Introverted Sensing Feeling Judging
Strength of the preferences %
44 1 33 11
ISFJ type description by D.Keirsey
ISFJ type description by J. Butt and M.M. Heiss
Qualitative analysis of your type formula
You are:
moderately expressed introvert
slightly expressed sensing personality
moderately expressed feeling personality
slightly expressed judging personality
I only find it odd that the "S" is there with such a weak preference.
January 24, 2004
Pirates!
Your pirate name is:
Mad Anne Rackham
Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr
January 23, 2004
Ughhh
I'm going to get this done as quickly as possible so forgive any errors.
It's going to be a really long day tomorrow. I'm being required to go to an education reading conference. The first of many for the rest of my life I'm sure although probably not all on reading. 830-230. yeah, 830 in the morning. Brrrr.....Groan. After that I have Stats at 235 and History of Math from 340 to 5
Long, long day. If I have to, I'll skip out of the conference after lunch.
Doctrines made my head hurt today. Woodring ended class with sort of the food for thought--although we were already stuffed--in which we could wonder how the duality of Christ--being fully God and fully man--affected His relationship in the Trinity. It's not enough to deal with the "contradictions" His affords between being fully God and yet have fully life of a human on earth--dying and not omnipresent and such. No, we had to hear that no one can figure out how to even conceptualize the relationship of all this to the Trinity. He also reinforced today that many things are defined by what they are not.
I also learned that the author of my History of Math book would have made a good subject of study for Historiography. This guy is biased towards the Babylonians over Egyptians. I also discovered again how nicely the ovens in the apartments bake! There are yummy triple chocolate cookies cooked to my own standard of perfection FOR Bible Study tomorrow night.
That's all. Goodnight. I'll probably post more on my own strange social life this weekend.
January 21, 2004
God & Time
Yesterday in Doctrines we were discussing the deity of Christ. One particular hard bit to understand is how Jesus could not know something (the hour and day , Mark 13:32 i think) and yet still be fully God and thus omniscient? and somewhere in my interesting mind I began to formulate an idea...God is not bound by time or anything. He can step in and out; he's omnipresent--everywhere here on Earth and everywhere in Heaven. If Christ is fully God as we believe he is, could it be possible that his person was "connected" between Heaven and Earth and through all time even as walked upon the Earth? maybe what makes the Christ we know on earth fully God is also to consider the Christ in Heaven before and after his earthly time. Fully Christ is more than just Christ upon the Earth and the cross. It would make a circle in a way if I'm understanding my own mind right--what makes Christ fully God while also being fully man is this "internatural" connection; making Christ fully Christ who is fully God and fully man. Would this require one to belive that Christ on earth, separate from his heavenly being, was not fully God, or gave up some part of his God-self? (and one at this point is ready to give up trying to understand with the finite human mind, like being blind and trying to understand "purple"--to steal an analgoy Woodring gave us) This is a bit hard to explain, so bear with me. God is not bound by time.
Of course, understanding Jesus is fully God requires the recognition of the distinction of roles and functions of each member of the Trinity. That is how Woodring tried to explain to us how Christ did not the hour of his second coming although God the Father does--it's God the Father's role to determine that. At any rate. I'm going to do something else now.
I was continuing these thoughts today during another class...and was reflecting on how God's eternality and omnipresence could be also thought of as God working in every second of Earth's existence in all lives and everything all at the same time...what would be the same time to us anyways. For example at the same moment I type this and God is causing the wind to blow and sun to shine, God could also be causing rain and night many years down the line or listening to the prayer of someone from a hundred years ago--all in the same moment that I am typing. Sort of infinite multi-tasking across time. I guess part of these thoughts come from a remembrance of a section in Charles Williams' Descent into Hell where Pauline take the burden of an ancestor who was burned at the stake a century or two earlier. We think of time as a line. God could see time as a dot.
Going with the Flow
Well, I was going to put this off until tomorrow but because I'm thinking about this now after reading the others, I figure I'll post until I'm tired enough to sleep.
Socially, I am one of those who does far better in small groups and I think I always have been. Lots of people overwhelm me. I'm content to be by myself as necessary, but yeah, I do have this relational aspect. You could say I'm an extroverted introvert.
In my earliest younger days, I wanted to be friends with everyone and tried to do so yet I generally had the smaller group of friends whom I played with. Oddly enough, I think it tended to by guys. In the neighborhood, it was me, another boy and another girl, both were my age and we spent many afternoons, evenings, and weekends together. I think I would probably have been described, and still described somewhat, as fairly talkative and definitely one who liked to display my knowledge. I have clear memories of relating the minimum elevation of mountains and that 1991 was a...what's that word again? it's there in my brain......aghhhh, anyways, you know, something that can be read backwards as forwards. *Insertion the next day: palindrome! it's really funny that i remembered that 12 hours later just all of a sudden...*
This little bit of constantly displaying knowledge was perceived as bragging by all else and by the time i was in upper elementary school, I was becoming fairly disliked. Add to this that I had glasses and tended to become a teacher's pet. *sigh* I also tended to group as friends with the other strange ones who had their quirks. This continues even today :-p I was Miss Rules and and I was known to be a tattle-tale...anyways. I always had a few friends around though and I think I generally was accepted within my church age group.
Along came junior high. I realized that friends don't last forever and that they don't always like you. That hurt a lot--trying to pursue a used to be friendship that the other didn't want anymore. I also tended to be fairly dramatic with things....if I thought long enough, I could probably recall more details surrounding the "Cold War" from Orchestra. It didn't help that I wanted to be the best in just about everything and I sort of tended towards that route. I have a competitive streak. At this point, my little bro was having his own issues socially in school, far worse than I and sometimes that would come back upon me as my success would haunt him. Bus rides....*shudders* If it weren't for those two or three friends on the bus...sometimes just the one.
I was involved in middle school--basketball, student council, and a few other things. At functions that involved a lot of people, I found a few good friends and hung out with them--dances, parties, school lunch. Church was interesting during this time. I was in AWANA and had a close group of friends there...bonded much by the trials of our 6th grade leader and a sucky Sunday School. We made our own fun--sleepovers, team things, Bible quiz success and dreaming about next year when we were a part of the youth group.
Alright, I'm going to have to pick up on this later. Ya see, when I start remembering back, I remember lots of different things and it gets harder to stick with one topic. Besides, it's rather late for the weakly me and I haven't been doing well health wise the last couple of days. Today was a fairly bad day with the heart--enough to concern me. Maybe it was just reminding me that I'm not a perfectly healthy. So now that my eyes are beginning to close other minute or two, I'll crawl into bed.
January 20, 2004
A Defense
existentialism, as from dictionary.com,
"A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts."
I'm definitely not an "existentialist loon." How anyone could call me that after simply reading a comment I made on another person's blog talking about God and trusting in him, I don't know. I don't regard the existence of humans as unexplainable. It's pretty explainable through God's word. Free will plays a role along side predestination and God's hand upon our lives. Yes, humans are free to choose and are responsible, but we also suffer acts not of our own choosing but of another person's choice and always in God's knowing and perfect will. I don't stress individual experience and I didn't know that the universe could be indifferent or hostile...although humans can. I know that the Creator of the universe is neither indifferent or hostile. What I believe in isn't existentialism; I believe in God...
January 19, 2004
Looking for Inspiration
I feel the need to post, but what to say here I do not know.
Here is a thought from The Purpose Driven Life:
"The problem with living sacrifices is that they can crawl off the altar."
He also mentioned a book called Sacred Pathways that I am going to look into getting because it talks about the different ways people relate to God based on personalities I guess--naturalists, sensates, traditionalists, ascetics, activists, caregivers, enthusiasts, contmplatives, and intellectuals.
I've noted lately that as good as daily Bible readings and a good church and such are good, they aren't "enough" for me in a way. I don't see them as the cure-all keys for faith although they are great helpers. I think that everyone relates and loves God in their own way, and it sounds like this mentioned book might shed more light for me on this idea. So, as soon as I decided to add another charge to the credit card, I'll order the book. Like when I'm getting paychecks again.
I'm off to other stuff right now.
Silly Quizzes
So, in the boredom of waiting for Josh's lab shift to be done, I started taking those crazy emode quizzes. Apparently, I have a strong bit of precognition according to the test of ESP and my IQ has gone up two points since the last time I took it. In fact, they labeled me a "visual philosopher" in the line of Plato with exceptional math and verbal ability. Yeah. I'm an observe as according to the personality test and a team player for my part in coroporate culture. And finally, according to some random anonymous commenter at Lisl's blog, I'm an existentialist loon. What do ya'll think?
January 17, 2004
First Quiz of the Year
Which Part Of The Body Are You?
Congratulations! You are the Adam's apple. Prominent and comfortable with being constantly exposed, you are the first to visibly react to the unexpected.
Now that you know your place in the body: go and serve!
Which part of the Church body are you?
On that Special Roommate
It's great to have my Lily back as a roommate. I guess it could be possible to have a special connection with more than one college roommate (excluding spouses if one gets married.) But my experience and observation seems to be that if lucky, there will always be that one special friend where it clicks like no other. Lily and I have similar schedules and living preferences and we have fun together. Sharon was fine as a roommate; it was just not the same after Lily though. Lily and I have that bond that ties across more than numbers. Maybe it comes from having gone through a fair bit together. I hope everyone is as blessed to have at least one special person in their life as Lily is to me.
It'll be fun to go on the adventure of living off campus with her next semester if all works well. We'll probably end up looking at bringing a few others along with us in apartment life...but we'll see how that goes later on this semester.
Anyways, I really should be getting into bed now.
One Week Down
Well, one week of school down. Regarding classes:
History of Math is going to be great. Interesting & Fun!
Planning & Assessment is going to be boring and nerve-wracking.
Senior Seminar will be...interesting.
Cults could be interesting classwise, material for sure.
Statistics will be boring to sit through most of the time and hard to stay awake.
Doctrines II will be fabulous as Doctrines I was.
I have at least 6 major papers to write and 2 presentations to give.
However, grading will be considerably less and Common Grounds should be less work.
It'll still be a busy semester not even considering my life outside of school...
January 16, 2004
Too good not to pass up...
From The Magic of Numbers by Eric Temple Bell:
A good ringing [grape juice] glass with spoons, knives, and forks of
assorted sizes offer an excellent opportunity for rousing your dinner
partner to the wonders of science when she is about to expire of boredom.
January 14, 2004
January 13, 2004
First Day
Two classes down. Far too many to go. Four papers so far to write in the future. Much reading to do. The realization that not a single one of days is like any of the others for a class schedule. Close, but different all of them.
Mondays: I begin with Sadistics at 930. Than it's off to chapel and than the trek to Planning and Assessment for Grades 8-12. I get a nice lunch and nap break before History of Math at 340.
Fridays are just alike except the nap gets shortened due to an Honors Seminar class for Senior Stuff. I'm not really sure what it's going to be like yet.
Wednesdays are best because after Lunch, I'm free!
Tuesdays I don't have to be up until 11 which is a chaplain meeting. Doctrines II is at 130 and than it's nap and dinner time until Cults from 6 to 9. I really am not a huge fan of classes that go over two hours, but it'll be fairly interesting methinks.
Thursdays I think I am working from 915 until noon. Doctrines at 130. Out of Class and free again. Blend in Homework and grading, and of course time with friends and boyfriend, and you have my life. Well, This is still the simplified version.
Doctrines will be interesting on more than the content level. You see, Jenny, Lisl, Kelly, and Amanda are all taking it also. If you know them at all and me....with discussion of some confusing and things of disagreement among great Christian minds, class won't be boring.
Cults I think will be okay. I"m glad we got the it changed from a 2k level to a 3k because trust me, it's going to be as challenging as other 3000 Bible classes I've taken. I would also assess that It's just as much a good Bible elective too from looking at the syllabus and seeing how the class looks to progress. It's actually more work than Doctrines is. Or so it looks.
Well, that's all for today. Ice cream is good. Boyfriend and his love and forgiveness are even better.
Gnite.
January 12, 2004
Ready to Go
Ta da! So after discovering I was missing a simple slash, we fixed the problem, or rather they fixed the problem, and my new home for the insanities of my brain has been created just in time for me to start the semester and thus probably not post quite as often as one does when on break.
To come, no one really knows. I can't say that my brain works always in lines of numbers and shapes and such, sometimes it runs like a teacher and other times, well, it just jumps from train to train at high speeds.
At an rate, I must be off for one of the too many things I have to do in my life. I really should slow down more. Let's hope that dropping some coffee cart hours helps to keep the health going this go round.