Strasbourg - Notre-Dame

The centre of Strasbourg is best known for it's Gothic cathedral Notre-Dame de Strasbourg. For those who don't speak or understand French it translates as Our Lady of Strasbourg. With it's 142 meters it's the 6th tallest church in the world. 

I never could wrap my head about how people used to build something so huge, but usually it took hundreds of years. This church was built through 1015 to 1439 and only completely finished in 1879. Gothic style in architecture has always been a favorite of mine. Gothic architecture can be best recognized by the thorough work and details, and it's sharp and vertical lines, which, due to the perspective, make the cathedrals look even larger from inside out.

Though the power of church has often been portrayed in negative light, the beauty of the architecture has never ceased to amaze me. An empty church can really be a point of rest in a busy modern city. Though Notre-Dame was far from abandoned. We were there at around 4pm, so there we quite a lot of people. I kind of dislike large groups of people, but sometimes you can't avoid them either. 

The day before our visit, we also took some outfit pictures. While my boyfriend was snapping pictures a large group of tourists couldn't stop staring. Kinda weird, Jeez, people can't just mind their own business!

Wearing: Zara dress & clutch, H&M sandals, Michael Kors watch, Ray-Ban Laramie sunglasses.

Oh, yeah, I'm a huuuuge leopard print lover, but only the 'beautiful' kind. You have a lot of ugly ones as well. I own numerous leopard pieces and every time I see a new one, I must restrain myself from buying it :)

And my ombre just blends in there!

Anyhow, this cathedral has left a huge impression on me which I like to share with you.

Inside you can find the extraordinary astronomical clock.

During summer nights the cathedral lights up during a spectacular light show.

Oh my Goth!

The fall is here and black is back from never going away. Much is change, but many things are still the same. Everyone needs some security to hold on to.

With this post I wanted to talk about the Goth issue. Many of you have probably noticed that the Goth image is more popular than ever right now. Fragile girls and boys wearing black torn clothes, adorned with crusifixes are a popular fenomenon. Today they're called nu-goth. Ok, so people love labels, and just plain 'Goth' not being enough, they decided to freshen it up. As fresh and 'new' as it may be, it get's a bit confusing for people who actually know something about the subculture. Don't get me wrong, I'm only happy to see these creatures on my computer screen, name or no name. I, myself, was never a fan of labels and I  refuse to categorize myself under any of them. If you really want to push me in box, you can call me alternative, I will not go further. I like too many different styles of music and dressing to fit into any category. I just have the freedom to be myself, every day, without feeling limited. And hope you do the same.

I do, definitely have a dark side, as I was always a lover of the macabre. So, this is another reflection of it.

Imagine, the woods, a hill with a small chapel on top, before it Jesus on the cross. Sounds like a beginning of a horror movie. But it isn't. The place looks just like I described it, and we pass it almost every weekend on our way home. It's mesmerizing, calm and peaceful. I wanted to shoot there for a long time and finally the moment has come. The outfit was just right. A little nostalgic, a little dark. 

I wanted to take my new dress from Forever 21 out. I looked for a perfect polka dot dress for ages. Combined with a little retro hairdo, and round sunglasses added a little edge to it, but still stayed romantic.

I'm happy with how the pictures turned out. The moment was just right, it was not too sunny or clouded, the forest was empty and still green. It was so calm and quiet. For a moment I just felt free of the daily world, routine and business of life. A place like this is kind of a sacred ground for me. It may be a surprise, but I'm religious. Only I don't discuss this part of my life, as it is considered private to me. 

Some day, I'll return there, for some new pictures, or just to take a walk.

I wore: Forever 21dress, Primark tights, H&M bag, Vintage sunglasses, Vecona brooch. 

Napping more than reading

I had intended to read this afternoon, but I napped instead.  As you know, I've been napping as escape from stress, and today was no exception, though I will add that I often doze on Sunday afternoons. 

I did read a bit, though.  I'm working on That Hideous Strength and I'm not engrossed yet.  There is a building menace that draws my attention, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be rolling my eyes a bit. 

I have a suggestion

At our young adults group tonight, we were having a brainstorming session to see what subjects and issues the members of our group have on their hearts.  When we planned this, I think that we were a little afraid that people wouldn't really respond, and we also didn't want it to only be a list-making session.  We wanted some teaching content, too.  Reluctantly (I think), my fellow teacher offered to lead this session and try to come up with an introductory session and biblical basis for our as-yet-undefined series of talks.

She did an amazing job.  The whole night was powerful and awesome.  I love our group!  She had us look at Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council, showing that circumcision was a HUGE deal to the early church, something which was a crucial, cultural issue about the direction of the faith.  Our discussion, then, was about how all the issues we face should be formed and informed by our faith.  Nothing should be compartmentalized, and we need to, as a group, contend with different topics and discern how to apply biblical principles to  our culture.  It was a fabulous, powerful segue into our brainstorming.

And the brainstorming really wasn't that:  it wasn't people thinking and pausing and tapping their pens trying to come up with any old thing to say.  It was really a sharing session.  People talked about what was on their hearts and what they're struggling with right now, and everything had to do with our Christian life.  I expected controversial things to come up or even political things, but everyone wants to talk about how to live out our faith, how to stay strong in the face of temptation, how to surrender to God more.  It was awesome. 

Song lyrics!

I'm really tired, so this shall be a bullet-pointed post to sum up today.

• Training for youth group volunteers this morning, which was at the home of a family from church which was LOVELY.  They have a great yard, vines of their own & their yard backs up to a bigger vineyard, with a mountain behind.  Awesome.
• I'm going to have two other adult leaders for my small group this year, and our two student leaders are going to be a lot of fun.  All of the student leaders are really excited about leading and I think they're going to be really strong this year.
• My ears are really, really itchy.
• We had tacos for lunch at the training, and they were fabulous, I tell you. 
• I've started writing my final C.S. Lewis paper, and I'm going to finish it tomorrow, I say!  I'm going to go to bed early tonight, skip church tomorrow, and work on it all day. 
• Our college event was really good.  We had 7 college students show up for dinner, which was good, so about 14 of us total had pizza and talked, then we went to the church to play Rock Band.  Some more people joined us there, and it was lots of fun, of course.  The beauty was that it was an early night-- we started with dinner at 4 and the last of us taking down the xbox & putting the church back in order left church around 10pm.  We're all feeling old & tired tonight.
• I love playing Rock Band with the church friends, because everyone gets into it, especially a lot of the guys.  They're jumping up and down, screaming and singing, and acting like lunatics.  It makes me smile a lot.  
• I have the paper due Monday and my sexuality project due Friday.  Then I am freeeeeeeeeee!  Until the 30th of September, at least,  I'm going to see some family, read a ton, and clean a ton.  I'll have to restrain myself from blatantly throwing away half of our possessions, since I'm so sick of the mess.  I do hope to at least put a good amount of stuff in storage.  It will be grand.

Goodnight!  Oh, and my ears are still really itchy. 

Oh, that's why I'm so busy

Whenever I feel overrun by life and have to explain to someone why I didn't return their call or something similar, I feel like a bit of a baby.  I think, "C'mon, what do you really do all week that you're that busy?" 

Well, I'm in ministry.  I just realized that this week.  I'm not paid, and I have friends on my team helping me, but I'm the main voice for the college students right now, so I'm sort of a college pastor.  I've known (lightly) for a while that I was a pastor because a)we all are, kinda and b)I'm actually involved in ministry.  But as I fret about events, about meeting with and connecting with students both high school and college, as I search the web looking for articles to read and things to study and resources for drawing college students to church, I realize that I'm already doing it.

For the past couple years, I've thought of myself as an unemployed, part-time student who volunteers with a couple things at church, so I always try to justify my sense of pressure or overwhelmed-ness.  But I'm in my career already.  It's on.  Even though I'm still in school.  Even though I don't get paid.  I'm one of the teachers for young adults, I'm taking on some teaching (really more like facilitating/leading) roles for high school, I love all of these teenagers and twenty-somethings to bits and pieces, and there is a weight on my heart for them.  I'm in. 

So, yeah.  I'm busy.  Part of me can't wait for school to be over (only 1.5 more years!) so I can concentrate on ministry & possibly be paid to worry & read books and articles and listen to podcasts and fret and plan & meet, etc.  Another part of me knows, though, that it (ministry) will grow to fill whatever time I can give it.  It will suck my brain power and my heart and my time, and having more time will just mean more work and more heartache. 

I'm tempted to have a cheesy closing line like, "But it will all be worth it," or something like that for closure, but I'm more blank right now.  It is what it is.  It is worth it, as long as I keep it in perspective, because this is where I'm called.  God is making a way for me and I walk in it with faith and a nervous stomach.  I know that there will be exciting times and worn down times.  I know that I have no idea what God has in store. 

As I move into this new space, I'll need to realign some things.  Shift my baggage around a bit to get comfortable for the journey.  Learn to look at myself and my life in a new way.  Me & God can do this. 

I'm back! You can un-knot your panties now.

Oh, friends, I am so tired.  I'm sure that I've learned this lesson before, but I need to stop running myself into the ground.  I am not one who enjoys having something planned every day, yet I do it to myself all the time. 

You did not hear from me for the past week or so because I was in Yosemite for 4 days with my lovely young adults group from church and my lovely goddaughter #1.  It was magnificent and lovely, but also the tail end of a month solid of activities.  So, I came home from Yosemite with a flu/cold that I am currently working through. 

So today I worked on last week's homework which didn't get turned in on time, and read about rape, pornography, and eroticism.  Not a heartening group of topics, I say, but it all still urges me forward in my quest for transparency in the church regarding sexual subjects. 

My brain is too tired to think more, so instead of doing more homework, I shall read for fun.  Huzzah!  I'm reading The Necromancer, which may be the last book in a YA/kids series I'm reading.  I kind of hope it isn't, but also wouldn't mind if things were wrapped up here.  You know what I mean:  the cliffhanger can be sooooo annoying in a book.

Fun with fonts!

Oh, I do love messing around with fonts.  You're just lucky that there are only eight to choose from here on blogger and they're all kind of boring, or I'd be changing it up every time, sometimes within one post.

I taught tonight at the young adults group, and I think it went well.  I was just piling Bible verse on top of Bible verse illustrating that what God wants from us is all-out love for him and for our neighbors, who just happen to be everyone, oh, on the planet.  We are clearly charged to take care of one another, and our love for God is supposed to take up all of our being.  As one guy said tonight, it's a little scary because there are no loopholes out of this.  All of you.  Everyone. 

So, I decided to do a power point presentation because I had about 11 Bible passages, some long, and I didn't want people to have to flip all over the place and not really be able to look at the text and concentrate.  Naturally, every slide was in a different font.  In fact, most slides had 2 different fonts: one for the title and one for the text.  All the titles were the same, "What does God want from us?" but I started changing it up even beyond the font by putting it in different language.  Thank you, Google translator!  For the most part, I was able to double-check and figure out if the translations were right/close, except for with Welsh.  I was just going to have to trust that one.  I had Spanish, Welsh, French, Swedish, and German.  It was great fun, I tell you.

Here, you can look at it to see how crazy I went.  I even have 1 piece of clip art. I was into this. Core PPT
*note that one the slide with the link to the movie study, we just skipped through the preview & watched the short clip from lesson 4. 

Feverishly scribbled notes

Today has been a long, great day.  I woke up naturally at 5am, thinking I would just pee & go right back to sleep.  Nay.  So, I finished The Last Battle (it always makes me so sad, though it shouldn't), then tried again.  Nope.  So I decided to embrace it and enjoy being up.  We had day one of the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit (WCAGLS- wickagles) today, and I was afraid I would crash at some point, but it was just to awesome. 

The friend I came out here with has never been to the summit before, so I told her to expect that we'd learn a lot, but also end up rolling our eyes a bit.  Ah, not today.  Opening video- we both teared up a bit.  Worship?  Great.  And almost all of today's sessions were about change, crisis, dysfunctional teams, and various other things that hit home so much that we often found ourselves looking at each other with an "oh, really!  I wonder who that could apply to!" look on our faces.  There was also one high-five when Jim Collins threw out, as if it were completely obvious, "Oh, and double your outreach to young people by changing your practices, but not your core values." 

The other two times I've gone to the summit, I've gone alone, so with four of us from church there, it is really great to have others go over this stuff with, to also share the inspiration you're receiving, and take it back to church.  During the first session, I realized that I kept wishing that some of our pastors were there, but we are here.  We four women, only two on staff, none of us in real positions of power right now:  God put us in that room to receive this vision and inspiration, and he wants us; he wants me to take it back and help make it grow.  I thought of it as a holy pressure.  I'm scared and excited. 

Tomorrow- day 2.  I looked at the books of a couple of tomorrow's speakers, and I'm excited by what I see.  And the four of us are going to get together and pray for God's vision and for strength and wisdom for our role in whatever God is doing.  Pray for us, please.  Our church- God's church- needs a lot of help. 

I've been lax in my writing exercises

But not in my physical exercises, I can assure you.
Nor in my homework duties.
You see, I've just been burnt out these past 2 weeks from class.  30 hours of class in two weeks + 1200 pages of reading + my other class reading & homework + figuring out paper topics + searching/buying/checking out books for said papers.

Thus?  My brain is mush when I get home and I haven't felt like turning the computer on and blogging at night.  I'm sorry.  I don't apologize to you, because I know you're cool with it, but I apologize to my future self and its writing abilities.

To celebrate diminished brain powers and lack of writing finesse, I shall pretend that this blog is my twitter feed and just blurt out some of my thoughts.  Enjoy!

• I'm reading Chi Running and worked on my form a little bit yesterday.  Well, a lot.  A planned 30 minute, light run to work on form turned into an hour and a half or so of being lost, being hot, having to poop, worrying about the dog, backtracking, resting in a park, and finally asking for directions.  My time was still pretty good, though, and I'm not very sore today, so I think the form worked.
• I think I'm going to do my first paper on Manifestations/Representation/? of the Trinity in The Chronicles of Narnia. So, I'm kind of skimming my way through them right now.  
• My right butt cheek hurts.
• I'm glad to be back in Sonoma County after being away for all of this week and most of last week.
• We didn't have the DVR set to keep more than one episode of So You Think You Can Dance, so we have to watch Wednesday's ep online, but I already know who went home on Thursday.
• You know what my 4 bookcases look like, yes?  Well, I currently also have 7 books on the back of the couch, one on the end table behind me, one pile of 13 on the kitchen table, another pile of 5 on the table, 6 on top of the bookcase in the kitchen, and I returned 8 to the library earlier.  Almost all of the books mentioned were/are for school.  
• I'm really really in the mood to go to Southern California.  Hmmm...one more...
• I love my life:  being in school, being in ministry, being in California, being in love, being in shape.  It's all good.

La Biblia

I only had my Spanish New Testament with me at church this morning, which made it a little hard for me to follow along when we were reading aloud.  Not that I can't read it, but I opened my Bible in the middle of the reading, and we were going over part of the Sermon on the Mount where everything sort of sounds the same.  So I was looking and thinking, "Oh, this must be where we are.  But I don't totally get it.  Why is it translated that way?"  Then I realized I was on the wrong verse, which really cleared that whole thing up. 

I led the high school group at church this morning, and it went fairly well.  I didn't know a lot of the kids, so I was a little worried at first that they wouldn't listen to me at all or wouldn't discuss, but everything was great.  We read a few verses of the passage at a time, with the kids discussing some questions I threw out to them at their tables. 

Some of them even got pretty deep!  One of the questions they were discussing was "What the heck did Jesus mean by "don't let your left hand know what the right is doing?"  The quietest table of all boys said that maybe Jesus was talking in terms of the church as the body of Christ, so the hands would refer to other Christians, etc.  Holy cow! I had never thought of that.  I had just thought it was another example of Jesus being oblique and confusing on purpose or just to make a point. 

Seriously?  I love teenagers.

Blerg

It's entirely likely that I've used the title "Blerg" before, but it's how my brain is feeling today.

As my sister says, today was entirely too Saturday for class, yet there I was from 8am-3pm.  Ugh.  Rather than bore you with details about class, I'll let you know that it was long, though it did not drag too much, a smidge tedious at times, and now I'm home.

I read a bit for fun, I quickly looked over the notes for tomorrow morning's h.s. study, and now I'm off to bed after catching up on TV shows. That is all.

What are you trying to say, God?

You know how sometimes a topic comes up from a few different places and eventually you start to notice?  That happened to me today, but it was all within the space of less than two hours. 

I spent the night at a friend's house last night, and on my way home this morning, I was talking to God about my guilt about food and budgeting.   With the way we're trying to eat right now, I'm finding that we just can't afford to eat organic, local anything.  It's all just too expensive, and I feel tremendous guilt about that, especially the meat.  We have spent a great deal of money this month on food, and we're not done yet. 

This naturally led into feeling bad because we haven't been completely sticking to our budget.  Even though we are doing things very differently than we did before, and there is money set aside for things and we're mostly being wise, I get all tense about the times we do spend something that hasn't been planned for and I think that we're sucking at the budgeting and we're going to slip back into our old ways and God is completely disappointed in us. 

So that was the car.  Then I came home and read my Bible.  I'm going through a study bible/devotional thingy, so I was reading from Numbers 35 about the asylum cities that God had the Israelites set up.  In pondering what that shows about the personality of God, I thought of fairness, justice, loving, etc.  I saw that I don't have to feel guilty and horrible- he's not disappointed in me.  He is fair and loving.

Then, at church, Pastor Doug was talking about freedom from guilt.  Cool.
Then, at Core tonight, Christy was talking about the sacrifices and offerings set up in Leviticus & other parts of the OT, and in looking at Cain & Abel, phrased the lesson as "he doesn't want your blood, just your best." 

So I haven't completely wrapped my mind and heart about the application for this.  Yes, I obviously have the food & money guilt that I was mentioning, but it feels like this is about something more than that.  I need to sit with it for a while and pray about it.  It appears that I'm more infected & affected by guilt than I realize.  It's also possible that I expect too much of other people and place guilt on them instead of giving them grace and fairness. 

Power Point!!

No, I did not blog yesterday.  What are you going to do about it?  Nothing, that's right. 

I have had a crazy weekend, but it has been mostly good.  Yesterday, I read a scoreboard, and it was great.  Nineteen of us went to an Oakland A's game, which I was feeling pretty meh about, but it ended up being, to quote Napoleon Dynamite, "Flipping sweet!"  First 2 innings: boring, quick, no score, out out out, etc.  Third inning?  A's get 8 runs.  EIGHT.  Two innings later? 5.  We thought it would be a shut-out, but the Angels woke up for a little while and got one run, for a final score of 15-1.  Wow.  Best baseball game ever.  But there's more!  We then got to go down on the field (I sat in a seat instead, though) and there was an amazing fireworks display.  Seriously, it was awesome.  A little late night stop with friends at In 'n Out on the way home, and we were fat and happy.

I taught tonight at Core (the young adult group), so I read and studied for that a bit.  We talked about Leviticus 22, Hebrews 4, and Mark 5.  Cleanliness laws in the OT versus our freedom to approach God under Christ and his humanity, and how the woman with the issue of blood demonstrates this new order that Jesus kicked off.  It was pretty great, with lots of good conversation. 

And my movie clip?  Oh, I showed a clip from Elf, with the thin thread of relevance being the phrase from Hebrews "throne of grace" and Buddy the Elf accusing the fake Santa of sitting on a throne of lies.  It rocked. 

Tweets, man

I don't believe that I read at all today.  I'm a little sad about finishing Harry Potter, so nothing is really calling to me.  Once again, I did no homework today.

But I did catch up on my twitter feed!  I hadn't done that since Wednesday night, so I had a lot of crap interesting links and thoughts to read.  Now I sit here, not going to bed, and not doing homework, yet trolling through my twitter favorite posts, looking at posts and reading articles.  Motivation is not at an all-time high. 

I did work on this Sunday's Bible study, though, and that's something.  I'm switching from Hosea for now, since I felt such a crushing load of failure last time.  I know, I know- it wasn't that bad.  But I still wanted to step away from it.  I'm staying very simple this week.  Maybe it's better to say focused.  Not at all simple, being that I'm going into Leviticus, but I'm taking a small chunk and focusing on it.  As I did a little research to see if anyone could dazzle me with their academic prowess, I was able to rein myself in from straying from that focus.

Tomorrow?  A baseball game.  Not super excited about the game itself, but I'll have fun with my friends. 

Today's Blog!

It contains nothing!  I didn't really read anything! 
I mostly surfed the net while at work today, because it was too busy to get homework done.  So I guess I read twitter & facebook. 

I had a meeting at church, so I read brainstormed ideas from a white board & chose not to pooh pooh as many as I could have, being that I really have little idea what it takes to get a new service/worship night off the ground.  But I am quite opinionated, you know. 

Here's what I read today:  a transcription I was writing of a 12 minute video for I Am Second.  It wasn't really harder than I expected, but it did take longer, mostly because timestamps had to be noted every minute or so.

I also read...hmmmm...one page of HP & TDH, which I will work on more tomorrow, maybe.  After I have a meeting at church (different topic), work out, finish watching my lectures for this week, and write my essays for this week.  It is a cross-training day tomorrow, though, so I could read on the elliptical or bike.  I'll do that.

I hope you've found something fun to dive into this summer.  Let me know if you find something amazing that I'll like and I'll throw it on the TBR pile.  (meaning: kids or fantasy or, best of all, kids' fantasy)   

It's only okay

I didn't write earlier, while it was still Sunday, because I had a headache and was busy feeling sorry for myself.  So there.  Harrumph.

I was feeling down because my teaching was only okay and I gave myself a stress headache beforehand and I was beating myself up about not being a perfect speaker.

I've only taught 5 times.  I know that no one else expects me to be perfect, but I feel like they're all quite ready for me to not teach anymore.  I don't know if they realize that I'm new to this and I have to grow and learn. 

My problem is that I have too many ideas that I think go together and flow, but they only really do so in my head, at least not without a lot more connection.  This isn't a new problem, but one I've run into writing papers- I get entirely too many sources- and here on the blog, where I quite often get long-winded when I don't mean to or want to do so. 

So I must learn to prune my works a bit and find the main ideas I want to express, keeping all the other stuff for a different work of its own, or as support for something else.  I don't have to express everything I'm thinking just this minute.

Reading:  I read my notes & parts of Hosea again, and I finished Out of the Silent Planet, which was pretty good, but Lewis went a little overboard with the descriptions.   I was often waiting for something to happen besides description of the flora. 

Fantastic!

Today, I read 3 things: the end of Redeeming Love, which was nice; Hosea, which is in preparation for teaching tomorrow; and the credits at the end of Toy Story 3.

It was lovely.  I woke up after sleeping for 12 hours, and I went straight to my book and finished it.  It definitely is a Christian book, but it is well-written and not afraid of dark places.  I did roll my eyes a couple of times, because it always annoys me in books when people hold onto grudges or cockamamie ideas longer than they need to just for the book to go on longer.   But I would still recommend it.

Then I got to work on the yard, which was a sweatier job than I expected it to be.  I tied up the little dog in the front and let Underwood wander while Seth put up the front screen door (yeah!) and I raked, picked up piles, and praise the Lord- cut down our yellow rose bush.  I wasn't sure if there would be room in the greens bin for it, because it was so freaking tall, but I was determined and it is GONE! 

I puttered around the back yard a little bit, picking up weeds and a little poo, hosing off the clothes line, and just getting a move on. 

Seth and I then walked into town and saw TS3, which was good.  Yes, I like the Toy Story movies, but I'm not in love with them.  I probably like the first one best.  We laughed a bit and I cried a lot at the end, though I was fighting it, so I got a headache.  I enjoyed the fact that the Gipsy Kings sang "You've Got a Friend in Me" in Spanish, and, although it wasn't in the credits, one of the pieces of music in a sad part definitely sounded like "A Heart Full of Love" from Les Mis. 

We walked to the post, office, split a burrito at the mall, I got a decaf coffee with a Starbucks gift card, and we played in Brookstone.  Lovely.  We played Rock Band, but only for 3 songs, because I was much more tired than I thought, with a bit of a headache. 

Tomorrow is church, helping friends with a luncheon they're having after church to talk about their missions in Mexico (enchiladas!), and teaching tomorrow night.  It will be a great day.  Smooches!

Ah, a read for fun day

I didn't do any homework today, and that was totally fine.  I would have read a little bit for school, but the book I need hasn't come yet.  Other than that one, of which I read as much as I could on Amazon, I'm pretty much done with my duties for this week.  We had an essay due tonight, and I appear to be the only one who has turned it in.  I was going to be all proactive and respond to others tonight, but there are none there. 

I had a lovely, social day, and had a good time at the gym tonight, and I read.  I'm working on Redeeming Love and I mostly like it.  There are sentences & scenes every once in a while that are a tad on the "corny Christian fiction" side, but not many, and I'm enjoying the story. 

This is the problem:  when I'm into a book, I'm kind of okay with not going to bed at a decent, human hour, because I want to read.  I've always been this way. 
I may need the help of nyquil tonight, because I was at the gym later than I expected (doing an  hour of cardio will do that) and I...well, I took a nap.  Kind of.  Fell asleep on the couch.  But I was so tired!!  I could hardly keep my eyes open.  Gah. 

Tomorrow we have a YA event at a park, where we'll be hiking (wandering in the hills, really) for a couple hours, then grilling by one of the lakes.  It should be lovely.

Also, I realize that YA can refer to teenagers, like Young Adult fiction.  That is not this group, though there are some teenagers involved. It's college and other young adults, up to around the mid-30s mark, meaning that I'm too old, but I'm a leader, so there.

Didn't blog yesterday, but slept AT NIGHT

thank you, nyquil. 
I didn't remember about blogging yesterday until I was safely tucked into bed at 11pm, and I decided to stay there, rather than get up & turn the computer back on to blog.  Sorry, blogging goal.

I had a good day yesterday, and I mostly read for school.  I continued to work on Authentic Human Sexuality, which continued to be really interesting and good.  It is really one of the best, most realistic Christian books on sex I've read.  Of course, it's written by a family therapist and a sociologist (my professors for this class), so you would hope it would be honest and realistic.  The section I read was still a basic introduction/overview, so I'll be interested to see how specific issues are dealt with moving forward.

I also started on Beyond Sex Roles, which is a nice complement to the class on women in ministry that I took.  At first, I didn't think it would have anything really new to add to what I learned there, but it's nice because it appears that he's starting from the creation accounts and may analyze every relevant passage in the Bible about men & women.  So far, I just read about Genesis, and I was both reminded of things I learned in my class and shown a new way of seeing some things.  It's pretty exciting.

I wasn't sure that this class was going to be what I wanted it to be, but it's going to great.  I think it's going to be very good for real-life issues in ministry, and just in life.  As I've gotten to know a little about some of my classmates (through our message board), I see that we all have vastly different ministry experience, but we all have similar questions on issues in sexuality that we're bringing to the discussion and we know that the church needs to address these issues more clearly and, well, at all.