info for noobs

Today is the first day of the fall quarter, so I spent a decent amount of time reading introductory messages from classmates, reading about my professor, and looking over the syllabus.  What's (possibly) neat is that we don't have lectures to watch/listen to for this class.  We're just supposed to read a bunch of stuff and write about it.  It could be good.  I didn't end up having time to start reading officially for class, but I *did* print up the list of things I'm supposed to read, so I'm halfway there, right? 

I also read a sign that I hadn't noticed my previous 2 times at yoga.  It was just a few guidelines for new attenders, and thankfully I hadn't broken any rules.  Phew!

As a noob teacher, I also read e-mails from people telling me how I should be doing everything differently.  Awesome.  I know that this is a part of life, and it gives me a lot more compassion for preachers. 

The best part of today, though, was that I had the inaugural session of my Bible study with college girls.  Tonight it was just me & one student, but we got to have a really good conversation.  I really don't care how many show up.  I'm going to make myself available & be there consistently, and they can show or not show.  Tonight we started reading Ephesians, and being that predestination is mentioned, we got to go off on a great tangent on things we find difficult & how to look at them.  It was a good night.

Other than that, I looked at insurance listings to see if a certain chiropractor I want to go to is covered.  I actually had 3 in mind: one that I found doing a search for "sports chiropractor" and 2 recommended by the local running store.  The one I found searching is covered, so I'm going to try to get into him tomorrow.  In addition to my usual back issues, my knee has really been acting up, and now I pulled a muscle in my ribs or something.  Yesterday I checked to make sure it wasn't breast cancer, today I checked symptoms of a cracked rib.  It's not cancer, fear not, and even if it is a cracked rib, there's nothing to be done about it.  I sure as heck ain't resting for long.

Magazines in the bathroom

We went to a wedding today, so I read the wedding program, but not as attentively as I have others, and I read the order of events at the reception.  After noticing that the reception was behind schedule, I was exhausted, and the dogs had been alone for 6 hours already, we ducked out of there. 

It was almost a 2 hour drive, and I wanted to drive so as to not be bored, but I needed coffee, I tell you.  The city of Ukiah was my nemesis tonight.  I got off at one exit, where there was an alleged "Coffee Critic," but I did not find it.  Have I mentioned to you that strip malls without coffee places in them should be illegal?  Also taquerías.  Anyway, no coffee at that exit, so we got back on & went down farther.  Get off there- all sorts of stores- no coffee.  I finally was able to get a passable latte from the grocery store, but it was just not the same.  GAH. 

Now I sit here, not really feeling ready for teaching tomorrow night, but being scheduled to teach tomorrow morning, then church, then an event, then a meeting, then the group at which I'm teaching.  And I'm skipping a good friends bachelorette party right now and tomorrow. 

Perhaps a bubble bath will solve anything.  Calgon makes it seem true.

Sucked in!!!

I've been sucked in, friends.  I know there is no bottom to this pit.  I know that I will get more stress than answers.  I know that I could spend bazillions of dollars, but I've taken the first step down that dark road.  I bought 2 parenting books today. 

At least it was at the used bookstore.  What did I get?  I got What to Expect the Toddler Years and The Girlfriend's Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood.
I'm not going to start reading them yet, mostly because I have other things to read.  And why stress myself out so early?  Once I know more about when/if (more like "when") we'll be adopting, I'll look into them a bit more. 

Who am I kidding?  You and me both know that I'll be up late, thinking about everything, and I'll start looking through the Girlfriend one. 

In other reading news, I believe I am done with C.S. Lewis for a while.  I had to stop in the middle of That Hideous Strength because I just didn't care one whit and couldn't handle reading one more page.  What I'll likely read is one of the trashier books I bought today when I got the parenting books.

And you know what else?  This whole teaching/working/ministry thing is a little unfair.  I'm supposed to be on break from school & able to read whatever I want, but I feel like I have homework & need to read things for my teaching series coming up.  And I already have it planned!  But noooooooo, I want it to be good and helpful and..and robust.  Gah.  I should just return these highly overdue books to the library at school & then I won't be able to stress myself about it. 

Apartment ads

Today I've done a little bit of what I'm calling "homework," which is fleshing out my project so that I can actually teach it in a couple weeks.  So I'm skimming through real sex by Lauren Winner & making my 1st powerpoint.  I got my grade back on the project, and I got an A-, which is good.  I didn't know if I had enough detail in it.  My professor gave me a few notes, and I've integrated some of them into the outline already. 

Other than that, Seth & I looked at ads for apartments and houses and drove around a bit.  We talked to people at 2 different complexes, neither of which will work for us.  We looked again at the apartment our landlord has, and we still don't think it will work.  We did write to one person who had a very nice-looking ad on craigslist, so we'll see if we hear from them. 

It's hard for me not to get frustrated & just want to quit life & take a long nap to avoid everything.  I know we've just started looking, and I can't expect everything to fall into place already. 

It's mustard seed time!

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

Oh, I'm stuffed

I completely forgot to write yesterday, but that's really okay, because I'm not sure I read one, single thing. 

Today was a terrific day, and I've read a variety of things. I woke up at 8am, which was not as many hours of sleep as I may have wanted, but I was pretty happy to be awake early.  After breakfast and a bit of World Cup watching, Seth and I went for a run, which was awesome. 

Most of the remainder of the afternoon was spent reading.  Among other things, I started working on C.S. Lewis Remembered, and it is quite lovely so far.  This book focuses on the recollections of people who knew him in a professional setting, especially his students.  Even though I know he was a caring man and took time to write to people, I guess that I still had the stereotypical image of the cranky, English genius, but it seems that was far from the truth.  He was generous both with his money and with his time, helping students and colleagues alike with encouragement and his great knowledge. 

He would always take your little ideas seriously and help make the into something, with the result that young people often felt they had been in amazing form after sitting next to him of an evening.

This sentence struck me, and I realized that I want to be known for being like this.  Especially as I come alongside (sorry, hate that phrase, but it fits) young people and encourage them in their faith and now that I'm moving into teaching more, I want to help people to blossom and make them feel smart instead of just trying to show how smart I am.  This will take some heart adjustments, but I trust God with the tinkering. 

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. 

Saturday night

I had 2 parties to attend today, but I was feeling more motivated to work on my Bible study (better term) for tomorrow, so I skipped out.  I also knew, though, that I had to work out.  I'm trying to keep my new motto in mind: Depression can't hit a moving target.  I should have gone to the gym to do some backwards elliptical-ing, but I read to pass the time on that, and I wasn't in the mood to read anything.  I don't have a magazine I'm into right now, I don't have a book I'm salivating over, and I just didn't want to be distracted by anything.  So I took both dogs out for a walk, which was lovely.

In the end, I felt good about my preparations for tomorrow, so I headed to the second party.  We have a pretty low-key approach in our YA group, with a lot of group discussion and an open forum vibe, so I just needed to get my order of operations straightened out.  I'm still new to teaching, so I get a little nervous. 

Also, I didn't end up getting a satisfactory movie clip relevant to Hosea.  I wanted something more surprising and maybe edgy, something about loving in the face of rejection and hatred, but I couldn't figure anything out. I'm stuck with The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, which feels like a cop out.  I mean, I love it, but it's blatantly about Jesus, so using it to represent redemption isn't all that creative. 

Oh, well.  Have an awesome Sunday!  Read your Bible! 
 

A good day

Today I am finishing up Storm Glass and I started working more earnestly on my--can we just call it a "sermon" for ease of conversation? thanks--sermon for Sunday night.  Hosea is pretty heavy, and it reminds me a bit of Job, in the "Gee, thanks, God, for trusting me so much in this way!" sort of manner. 

I had planned on staying at church for all of Big Time (so, until after 9), but I just couldn't.  I did have a fantastic time talking, eating nachos, and laughing maniacally with some of my students, though.  We in the office had a slow night, so we just chilled, I watched some of the water jug baseball game out in the field, and then my comfy couch & book I'm almost done with called to me. 

So here I sit, on the web instead of reading, because The Internet is what I read the most.  Twitter, links people put up on twitter, links Seth sends to me, catching up on FB:  these are what I do the most.  But I have made better time for reading and have found a good balance between school reading and reading for fun.

If you'll excuse me, I have to find a way to look up movies about prostitution without finding porn sites. 

Prostitutes as Metaphors

I'm teaching at the young adult group on Sunday (actually, the next 3 Sundays, I think), and I'm starting out teaching on the book of Hosea.  For the summer we are having a focus on story, while also trying to draw together the Old and New Testaments, since not everyone understands their cohesion.

Hosea is about the prophet (Hosea), who is told by God to marry, well, a ho.  Some translations say, "a woman of whoredom."  (Best word ever?  Likely.  Whoredom.  Work it into your conversations, if you can.)  Anyway, God tells Hosea to marry this woman and raise another man's (men's? possibly) children.  It's a bit heartbreaking, and Hosea has to go and buy back his wife, I think more than once.  God did this as a representation of what the nation of Israel had done in it's relationship with him.  They had turned from their covenant with him and turned to worship other gods, basically whoring themselves out to whoever they thought would serve their purposes best.

The thing is, it isn't just about the old nation of Israel.  It's about all of us.  We're all dirty whores who look for security wherever we think it can be found, trying this and that, worshiping our own desires instead of trusting God and remaining faithful, even when we can't see what he's doing.

And the great thing is that, even though there is a covenant and rules and God always threatened to destroy Israel, his abiding patience and desire to be with them/us overcame his anger.  There was always, "But if you'll turn to me and obey my commands," and other conditions like that.   And Jesus did all the buying back that we need.  That's the best part.  "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8.  

He loves us in our whoredom, in our filth, in our stank.  He adores us and wants us and already bought us back from sin.  We have to choose to stay.