meanwhile, in world literature...

she says, has anyone ever heard the name or term machiavelli before and where?
i know this... i know this... this is my chance to add to the class discussion
i blurt out, tupac!
what!
tupac!
oh, i've never heard that before. i'm not sure i know what you are talking about.
what! don't know what i am talking about?
all eyes are on me now...
quickly i scan the room looking for some kind of confirmation from another student but they're shaking their heads no. some say i'm thinking of something else.
i plead my case further.
didn't mackiavelli say something about staging one's own death in order to maintain or gain political power? makaveli, although spelled differently, was the name used for two of tupac's videos released after his so called death. weird...
the teacher says she is not sure. never really heard of that.
what's going on here? am i the only thug in the class? i really don't even listen to rap music.
maybe tupac is a little before their time. i probably am one of the older students in the class.
i slide down into my chair and refrain from offering any more obscure references for the rest of the day.

i think i am done for now...

i have been typing a paper on faith transcending reason represented by beatrice and virgil in dante's divine comedy. plenty of good intentions here but i think i have entered a realm i'm not quite capable of handling. i kicked off my holiday break by going to the library to do some research for this paper and i had to end my thanksgiving festivities a little early today to come home and type. i guess that's what happens when you put the paper off for so long. i'm close to being done. i should have it knocked out tomorrow. i picked up the smashing pumpkins machina album from the library and i've been listening to it while i've been typing. it's pretty good. man, i'm tired.

definitely done for now...

dark to light...

9:00am. this seems to be my start time nowadays. i had such good intentions on getting up at 8:00 but somehow i ended up hitting the snooze button...six times. i slid on my running shorts, laced up my asics and went for a run around the block. Today was literally just that. A run around the block. I haven't gone running since Monday and who knows when the last time I ran outside was. Usually it's on a treadmill, nice and flat terrain in an air-conditioned room with a tv in front of me. It's cool and brisk this morning. A mist escapes my mouth when I breath. i stretch out and take off down the road. I feel good.

I felt good...

My legs are burning now. The mist is thicker with each heavy breath I take. I’m not doing so hot. Almost home.

Home now. Sweating like crazy. I make a shake and then get on the computer to check my e mail. I get one from a friend who brings so much encouragement to my day. She reminds me that we are God's workmanship, His poem, His masterpiece, His creation. this comes from the book of Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8-10 which ironically is the theme verse for our youth program at church. it's funny how you can sometimes preach all year on a certain topic and then forget to apply it to your own life. she also mentioned the contrast of light and dark (epheisans 5:8-10). it's because of our darkness that we are able to see the light. i realized this a little more clearer one afternoon earlier this year while sitting on a pinic table at pine cove looking out over the lake. it had been rainy all day but as the sun was setting the clouds started to break and the contrast of the dark rain clouds and the bright light of the sun was incredible. i quickly sketched out the trees in front of me. it was where the darkest of dark met with the lightest of light that the sharpest, most clear contrast could be made. it was radiant and intense as the light over took the darkness.

i was once a child of darkness but now i am a child of light. Praise be to God who causes all things to work for good to those who are in Christ Jesus and who will perfect His good work in us until Christ's return.

because i have a test...

it's now close to nine o'clock in the am. brent and i have been watching the line at starbucks fluctuate in length for about a half hour. we exchange a few more lines from saturday night live then decide to line up with the masses for our fix. i try again to explain to brent that a soy chai will not make him a woman but he still won't try one. we returned to our seats outside only to find that the magazine i had strategically placed on the table beforehand was now covered by some man's book. clearly he does not understand the coffee shop code for reserving tables. i wanted to toss a coffee bomb his way but instead i collected what belonged to me and found another table. he looked pretty established so i let him be.

brent and i talked more about life, church, the flowerplex. we talked about being honest and transparent. we talked about the kids in our youth group. i told him i'm having a hard time moving on, moving away from the past. i'm having a hard time trusting God and seeing myself washed clean by His grace. like when it seems like God is giving me something my reaction tends to be, "are you sure you want to give that to me?"

some baristas joined us outside during their break. i had my copy of relevant magazine sitting on the table and one of them asked me if she could read it after noticing mase on the cover. she said she grew up listen to him and was excited that he was a "preacher" now. she asked me if she could hold onto the mag for a day to read the article. i told her she could have it. hopefully she will read more than the mase article.

the rain is coming down harder now. my chai is cooling off. i looked at my watch. it read 10:05. i need to leave for school.

the windshield wipers on my car move a little slower these days which is impairing my vision and making the drive difficult. there are moments during the drive when everything in front of me is a gray blur. the rain is coming down hard. my wheels catch and drag in the puddles on the highway. i thought for sure that the backwash from the mack truck next to me would send me into a flat spin like maverick in top gun and send me off into on-coming traffic. if it wasn't for my test in world literature i would have left the drive for someone else.

the test today is all essay. the teacher gave us four pieces of text from the various works we have read in class. we had to pick two of them and identify the name of the work, the author and the significance of the writing. i knew all of them, picked the two i thought i knew the most about and then started to write. hopefully i wrote enough. i've never been good at that whole writing thing.

the drive back home after spending a grand total of thirty four minutes on campus is much the the same as the drive to school. rainy. i took it slow. however despite the fact that i was traveling under the speed limit most of the time the trip didn't feel any longer. maybe it was because i couldn't see anything. or maybe its because the sweet tunes from jimmy eat world spinning in my dash preoccupied my thoughts. who knows. i'm home.

i'm a big fan of the cooler weather. even though my blood is thin and the circulation to my phalanges(sp?) isn't that great causing serious frost bite, i am enjoying these cool, overcast days.

i'm heading to fort worth with some good friends this afternoon to do who knows what. so i'm bringing a camera.

my mom asked me if i want to go get some coffee saturday morning and then go look for a dog at an adopt a pet. i feel like a little kid after writing that last sentence but i am excited none the less. our current dog isn't doing so hot. i'm afraid this winter season might break her spirit.

lets see...what else. i got nothing. today's been pretty good so far. got a fat review sheet for my world lit test on monday so i need to get crackin' on that.

ok, i'm out...

can i get an AMEN!!!

today for class we had a local pastor come in and give the lecture. he kicked things off talking about virtues and then opened things up for questions and discussion. for the next hour we were hit with his three points to this, five concepts of that, seven sources for this, 40 days of (insert relevant word here) and a barrage of amens. oh, and i can't forget about his acrosstic for "WORD". i don't know what it is but i just shut down when someone says, "let me give you my five points to living a virtuous life. " and why are we still using cute acrosstics to define or clarify other words? i'm somewhat frustrated now not only with the pastor but with myself for thinking he could have giving a better lecture.

sometimes you have to wait until the end of the season to see the fruits of your labor...

this past weekend was an incredibly busy one for me. brent preached in big church which left me in charge of the high school sunday school. i've never taught high school before so i was a little nervous. to make things even more crazy, most of the youth staff were out enjoying honeymoons and what have you so i had to sort of build a crew to help me out. thankfully my buddy jude came through and taught the junior high sunday school while i took care of the announcements and the high school lesson. hey, announcements are a big deal at our church. i really think that being able to do the announcements is one of the spiritual gifts. well not really but a lot goes into announcement time for the sunday school classes. but all in all i think things went well. for high school we've been on this head to heart series and looking at how the christian walk fleshes itself out. so for sunday night i thought we would just have a night of prayer and praise. give the students a chance to reflect on their spiritual walk and what that means to them. i had the kids get into small groups and i told them to first get to know each other and then pray for each other. i don't know how many of them really got around to praying but hopefully a little bit of unity developed. i think the night went pretty well.

on top of having to prepare for sunday i officially became a wedding singer this weekend. what originally started out as me backing up william on guitar for three songs to be played as people filed in at the beginning of the wedding turned into three songs to be played during the ceremony in addition to twenty minutes of prelude music. so saturday morning, the day of the wedding at around eleven, william and i with guitars in hand were trying to come up with enough wedding appropriate music to play before the ceremony that would last twenty minutes. i really only know worship songs and he just freestyles so we did our best to combine to two. we came up a little sort in the prelude and had to repeat a song and we farted on some chords during canon in d but i don't think anyone noticed. a woman did ask william and i if we had a business card. we'll be kickin' off our wedding tour next month.

some other randomness:

-i helped another turtle across the road today.

-during a class discussion on friday a girl mentioned that the jewelry store james avery will be discontinuing much of their jewelry with crosses on them because that particular symbol is no longer popular. that's kind of a sad thought really. the cross no longer being popular.

-when the guy last night at wingstop asked me for my name so he could write it on the order i told him my name was bono. misunderstanding what i said he repeated back to me "boner". i told him no and decided i should probably change it to "the edge". he looked at me kind of funny but said ok. when i finally got my order the guy informed me that my new name was "bonito". i guess somebody thinks i'm cute.

-i love eggnog lattes.

freshman guys bible study: part three...

only two guys showed up tonight for bible study. maybe its the weather or maybe they all have to study for a test. maybe they've come down with a bad case of CRS disease. it was kind of disappointing. but whatever the cause of their absence may be we made the best of the evening by watching "aisha" videos on ebaums world, played a few rounds of halo, and then hauled off to goatman's bridge out in copper canyon for a little late night scare. we were going to go to the bridge last week with it being halloween and all but we never made it. plus we wanted to get some info on the whole goatman story first. legend has it that if you drive out to the bridge at night and honk your horn 12 times the goatman will appear. its still sketchy as to how the goatman came into existence to begin with but i heard that long ago a man was hanged from that bridge wearing the head of a goat over his. when whoever murdered the man returned for the body the only thing left was the rope still attached to the bridge. the goatman was gone. but strange things have occurred since then to motorists who have crossed that bridge. cars have stalled out. doors locking and unlocking randomly. and some have seen what looks to be like lanterns floating about six feet off the ground over the creek below the bridge. ok, now i am a little scared. i think i just wet my pants. here's an interesting, non-scary fact about the bridge: it was built in 1884 by the King Iron and Bridge Manufacturing Company of Cleveland, Ohio, and stands alone as the last remaining Pratt Truss Bridge in Denton County.

so that's all i got. i hope the boys had fun. next week we'll spend more time in the word.

roll out the red carpet...

I was trying to remember a dream I had earlier in between the snooze on my alarm clock when I was chased out of bed by the guys coming to replace our carpet. I was close to getting up anyway but when some strange man charged into my room with a tape measurer and a box cutter I figured, why fight it, I'm up. Our house is a wreck right now. My bedroom has relocated to the living room/dining room/garage. My stuff is everywhere. Hopefully this will all be over soon. One thing I have learned so far from this whole experience is to buy lighter furniture.