And Now Introducing...Mr. Junior Chairperson

I have no idea where this semester went. We're already in mid-term season and spring break is next week. I had meant to write about Spiritual Life Week which was last week. It was probably the best one that I have been here for so far. We had Tony Campolo speak on campus all week long. Out of the three days that he was here, I heard him speak 5 times. He just has such great stories and insights to share. I think one of the things that I was most impressed by about him was how confident he was about all of his beliefs and opinions. At one of the speaking events he went through a bunch of different "hot button" issues like the war and gay marriage and everything in between and gave his insights in what it means to respond to those issues from a Christian perspective. His big thing was that he wanted to be known as a "red letter Christian", someone who takes the words of Jesus seriously and views their entire lives in lights of those words. Even though I was somewhat skeptical about some of his ideas for how we should react or what we should do in these situations, just the fact that everything he said seemed to have been contemplated, weighed, and thoroughly thought out really gave him a lot of credibility in my mind. That's the kind of person I want to be: intentional. I want to be intentional about what I think and believe instead of just letting other people impose their thoughts on me.


Other exciting news: I was elected as Junior Chairperson for the May Day Celebration this year. I am not sure exactly what all that entails at this point, but I am pretty pumped just because I don't think I have ever really won anything by election. From what I do understand, I think I just have to look nice, read off some stuff before the dance, and be at the front of the line when people are walking from place to place. I'm not exactly sure why I'm excited about this. Maybe it's just because I love May Day so much...well, I do now that I'm not wearing crazy leiderhosen and prancing around.

That's all for now. I am supposed to be updating next week througout Camerata's spring break tour, but I may not have access to a computer until I get back. Stay tuned.

Volvo's are Dumb

I want to update on my past weekend before I get around to talking about this week. As I mentioned before, this past weekend I spent in Pittsburgh at what was called the Jubilee Conference. Basically it was three days of worship, large group seminars, smaller group workshops, and Christian exhibitions. I was really excited to be back in Pittsburgh and get to see my church family. But, more than that, I was also really anxious to just be able to get away from everything else going on in my life recenter myself. I realized last week that I just haven't really been worshipping lately. For the class Christian Worship, we have to attend various worship service traditions so for awhile now I have been going to worship but spending the entire time trying to analyze what was happening. Added onto that is the fact that I am working in the sound booth for the chapel services offered here every Thursday. I love these services, but it is really hard to simply worship when I'm trying to make sure the violin can be heard or that the awful buzzing noise is taken care of. So, I was really excited for this past weekend to just be able to be open myself up once again to the presence of God through worship.

I definitely think this happened, but it wasn't until Saturday night. I spent most of Friday worrying about getting there, finding my host family's home, trying to find food, getting lost in downtown, being angry about how much I had to spend on parking, and on and on. At first it seemed like the weekend was just going to be another endless cycle of worries getting in the way. But Saturday came, I found the place without getting lost, I felt ok about paying $10 for parking because I'd be there all day, and I knew a little better what was actually going on. Saturday night during the evening group worship session I finally felt the presence of God again. As someone planning to go into ministry, I know that this will be a constant battle I will have to fight. I think it's good that I am realizing the need to make sure I find time to worship without distraction now instead of getting to my first year in a job somewhere and burning out.

Besides this, the speakers for the weekend were pretty good. The lady who wrote a book called "Finding God Beyond Harvard" read part of a chapter during her message and I was completely blown away by the experience she described. They had already sold out of the book at the book table, but it's definitely on my list to check out. The other speakers included Chuck Colson (one of the guys sent to jail for Watergate who had a radical conversion experience and completely turned his life around) and Donald Miller. These two were a really interesting contrast, one being more the older generation, the other being more the postmodern-searching generation. Both were really inspiring. The only "sound bite" I can really remember from either of them is that Donald Miller talked about how our lives are like stories and we should evaluate what goal the main character of our stories is fighting for. Stories about overcoming obstacles to get that Volvo don't really do much for the reader because that's dumb. We should be living heroic lives that have real goals ahead of them. Our lives should be page-turners. I'm sure he said it all much more eloquently than I ever could within the confines of this blog.

I did get to spend some time with my church family. It's always good to see all the kids and the adults I spent the entire last semester growing to love. It hurts to leave every time, but for some reason I keep finding excuses to go back. Maybe my work there, in some way, isn't finished.

I'm going to go try to figure out something to live for besides the Volvo...because that makes for a pretty dumb story.

Life Rolls On

Quite a bit has happened since the last post, so I'll try to fit it all in. The weekend in Cincinnati with Camerata was a lot of fun. It really made me look forward to all the awkward moments with host families I can expect on tour. Don't get me wrong, the family we stayed with was really nice, but going through the same routine of trying to get to know people and asking the same questions and giving the same exact answers while trying not to do something embarassing like fart in the car or leave a dirty towel somewhere they would find offensive is the stuff that life is made of. That was two weekends ago, but this past weekend we went on Sunday morning to Berne to sing at a church. On the way there the back row of the van played Jeopardy using the fog on the windows as the gameboard and making up categories as we went. It was probably one of the most fun trips I've taken. Besides that, we experienced the other greatest part of tour: the potluck. Oh, how the Mennonites know how to potluck. I've never seen so many kinds of potatoe casseroles. Tour is going to make me fat.

This past week was Camp Week and one of my friends who used to go to Bluffton came back for a few days to recruit people to work at her camp. It was good to hang out with the old group again. It seems like I always end up being really good friends with a lot of upperclassmen who eventually decide to graduate. So what do I do, make a bunch of friends that are underclassmen. And what do they decide to do? Leave me for a semester abroad. I can't really blame them though. But life rolls on and it's all good in the end.

This coming weekend I am going to attend the Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh. I learned about it while I was out there, and it sounded like this amazing opportunity to spend a weekend worshipping and growing in my faith. Now I'm nervous. It didn't really phase me before that I would be the only one going from Bluffton, but now I'm not so sure. I looked at pictures from last year's conference and there are a bunch with groups of people huddled around huge banners with school names on it. In my head I'm picturing me with a tiny Bluffton penant alone in the corner. Obviously it won't be like that and everyone will be friendly and open. But it will be a stretch for me to make myself get to know other people for the weekend. It's not that I'm shy. Large groups of people just make me nervous sometimes. I do know at least two people I met in Pittsburgh will be there, so in the end, it'll be all good...as long as it doesn't snow 10 inches between now and Friday.

'Bout that Time

So it's about that time in the semester where it's not quite the beginning any more and it's nowhere near the end. I had my first quizzes in some of my classes, I've started to figure out the subtle nuances of each professor, and I've even written my first paper by now. I think all this means is that now we've hit the dangerous "cruise control" portion of the semester. I've got the weekly routine down and now the trick to keep from going insane by turning the radio up to keep me awake or make sure I keep some good company in the front seat. (Ok, so maybe the "cruise control" analogy has gone far enough...) Honestly, though, I think there is a big danger about this time of the semester. There's no longer that sense of wonder and awe during classes. Pizza and pasta every night for dinner gets old, and believe it or now, I can only play so much Guitar Hero before it gets boring (or my wrist really starts to hurt). So what do we do about it: mix things up.

That's why it's so great to always have something different going on on the weekends. This weekend Camerata (the touring choir I'm in) is going to Cincinnati for the whole weekend. Some of the other people in the group are bummed about having to doing choir stuff all weekend, but I'm secretly really excited about it. A lot of my really good friends are in the group and it will be good just to hang out and have some fun. It's kind of like a mini-pre-tour before we go on real tour over spring break which I'm also really excited about. I guess what I'm trying to say in the end is that sometimes when it seems like everything is the same as it was the day before and will be the day after, it's nice to have some fun stuff to look forward to. Here's to a great weekend.