To John Mark: An Open Letter of Thanks

Dear John Mark,

Somewhere approaching six years ago, I had my first interaction with you. It was a terrifying moment in my life. I didn’t have a clue who you were, except that you were interviewing me for admittance into the Torrey Honors Institute. You introduced yourself, but I was not aware of your position in the program. I won’t go into the details of the conversation, but I do remember backing myself into a corner, saying what I realize now were naive things, and you let me into the program, for some reason or another.

Weekend Reflections: Blogs, Writing, Reflecting

It has been quite a bit of time since I’ve updated this blog. I haven’t forgotten, but I’d be lying if I said it was from a lack of interesting things happening. I’ve been doing a lot of writing in other venues (classes, preparation for other blogs, etc) which has taken up a lot of my time. In addition, the spring semester has been kicking off, and I was attempting to make the most of my January term class (and relative amount of free time) by spending time with friends. I’ve probably played more games than I have written posts in the last month, but the break was helpful for me.

Weekend Reflections: Sorry I Missed Thursday, Guys

So, I ended up skipping Poetry Thursday this last week. I did so without telling anyone on this blog, and I’m sorry. See, it just sort of happened. My school was doing a conference for the undergrads, and it gave me a couple of days off (where I only had to go to work and study), so I ended up taking those couple of days and, well, taking them off. My work schedule shifted slightly as well (due to a coworker attempting to attend these conferences), so I did not carve the time to write a poem out of the block of my day that I usually do.

All that said, I’ll be back with a poem next week. I suspect it will be more Epistemology, unless a lot of people e-mail me to tell me that the philosophy poems are bad or boring or something. Then maybe I’ll do something different. Maybe.

Last night I got to attend Man Up, a concert series put on by Reach Records and Reach Life Ministries. The concert was pretty awesome, and a bit unlike other times I’ve gotten to see the Reach crew perform. For starters, there are more members of Reach than there have been previously. Mainly, though, since the concert was to follow through with a movement/discussion of manhood, it centered around ideas rather than artists. You’d end up with 3-4 people on stage at any given moment (for the most part), performing songs from different albums and featuring one person more prominently than another. The experience was unique, but still managed to work. I had a blast, and probably made a fool of myself trying to dance and keep on beat. But hey, that’s what concerts are for (or, rather, that’s what I’m good at doing during concerts).

This week I have two midterms, both in philosophy, so keep that in prayer.

Christ Abide.

Weekend Reflections: “…that’s what makes us human”

My weekend hasn’t had many interesting things happen. Well, I guess the elevator not working at work for the second time in a week is exciting, if you’re the sort to get excited over malfunctioning personal altitude adjustment equipment in buildings filled with books. But I’m not really that sort, so the weekend wasn’t terribly exciting.

But I had a thought that I wanted to touch on, though I don’t have answers or really much direction. We’ll see what happens.

Someone today said “We all have vices, after all, that’s what makes us human, right?” The statement is similar to what we’ve heard in numerous other ways. Phrases like “to err is human, but to forgive is divine” or “Everybody makes mistakes…I mean, you’re only human” are commonplace. What got me thinking, though, is that my first instinct is to say “No, that’s isn’t what makes us human at all. That’s what makes us fallen.”

I don’t think humanity is ‘more human’ in any sense of the phrase when they act in vice or in error. In fact, I think while we were made finite and capable of growth, humankind was also designed to thrive in perfection. Adam was created perfect, and I think that created state is precisely what should define ‘human.’ Of course, we cannot expect everyone to have that standard now; after all, we are now fallen. Fallen humanity is different, fundamentally speaking, from perfected humanity. I don’t want to excuse my vices or my failures by stating that I’m simply acting as the thing I am (that is, human), but would rather push the vice out of me, recognizing that vice and failure is a sign of a ‘bad human’ and not a ‘proper human.’ To be properly human is to be a pure human, one uncorrupted by things ‘not human,’ which I think at least probably means sin.

Those are my sort of aimless thoughts. Any aimless thoughts you want to send my way?

Christ Abide.

On Receiving Advice

Recently, I was speaking to a good friend of mine about a situation that is not important to my point today. She gave me some advice, and it was not exactly what I wanted to hear.