Saturday, April 08, 2006

An obligatory update

Funny how shaking up the appearance of this page always helps motivate me to post something.

Since last I posted, I've been visited by several frends, mostly unexpectedly, and made a few visits of my own.

Davio and I celebrated our birthdays with little fanfare on March 11. The older we get the harder it gets to top last year's act. Later that night, Ben, Aaron and John came for an unexpected and pleasant one-night visit where all the world seemed to become crystal clear for one night. Those guys have a way of making me breathe differently. Forgive me Ben if I've not quoted you accurately above. The next morning, I rolled over another year on the old odometer and turned the grand age of 28. Paul Miller, another March 12 birthday, made his obligatory two-minute "hey-how's-it-going-got-to-go" appearance before speeding away to the airport with Ben. I visited Atlanta for the first time in three months to celebrate Faith's 11th birthday. A mighty Alaskan sea captain named Tim, who attended Bryan for a year, got off a tugboat in New Orleans and made the drive to Tennessee for a 10-day stay here. An old roomate Brent made his usual no-warning visit with his wife and 5-month old daughter. During his visit he found the final piece to a 1,000-piece puzzle Kati and I had been working off and on for nine months. I can't express the immense joy felt when he looked to the floor and said, "huh, a puzzle piece." Below is the finished product, the third and final installment in a series of 19th-century Italian posters I've worked and framed.

The office became aware of my imminent departure (sometime in June) and remarkably only expressed sadness (not fury) that I will be leaving shortly. I've hurt my back somehow. Other than that more R.D. interviews. More games to attend. More stories to write. One amazing phone call from a psychotic baseball mother...pretty much just the usual.

Oddly, I came to the realization recently that the end of the Bryan semester is just four weeks away, and my time at the newspaper will be ending soon after that. The thought of having free time again is surprisingly frightening. I'm not sure how I'm going to decompress. The year has been such a whirlwind but has also such a blessing. My thoughts recently ventured back to where I was this time last year, in an isolated apartment where all my space was my own and I never had to worry about interruptions, and I can't help but smile. Compared to where I am now, it was all very boring. Who would think that pounding feet upstairs, constant clothes washers coming into my apartment and listening to a weather radio into the wee hours of the night for tornado warnings (like last night) could be so welcoming and feel like home.

Kati and I also recently turned over a year of dating. It's amazing and scary how much the Lord teaches you about yourself, namely you're shortcomings, when you're trying to lead someone else...we've both undergone huge growth in the last year.

And while seeing the faithfulness of God time and again, I've been frustrated recently by the depths of depravity I'm faced with every day. Most of it is directly related to sexuality. I cannot turn on a television, check my own email or even drive down a road without being bombarded by it. Sex is a game it seems. It's a status, a power play to get respect. I walk into the local schools and everywhere I look I see kids dressing provocatively, and I can't help but think that it can't just be for apperance sake. Surely it's acted out to some degree. Maybe I reaching that point where I've gotten too old to remember that things were not all rosy when I was younger, but I can't imagine things being this bad before. Maybe I'm turning into Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown...I cling to Faith in these times.

Lots of this current feeling was invoked by a recent trip over to myspace.com. For whatever reason, myspace had become the crockpot of sexual nastiness, where anyone seems perfectly comfortable to post revealing and suggestive photos of themselves for anyone to view. Comments must include vulgarity and profaneness, but on the whole there is very little actual written word. And the disturbing thing is the way many Christians portray themselves to the public. I don't see salt and light. There's so much that seems to be concerned with fitting into the masses. Is this really what the postmodern church looks like? I set up a myspace some time ago, to keep contacts with friends that blog on myspace, but I'm seriously battling the thought that I should shut down the page. It all leaves an incredibly bad taste for me to digest. Maybe I'm not looking past the grime to see the good? Where is the boundary between "in the world" and "of the world."