there's a thousand ways we could start over.

so, it's a new semester. that's pretty cool. as much as i absolutely loved last semester, especially in terms of academics, the idea of starting fresh is always thrilling. the whole tone, schedule, tendencies, everything of each semester are so different. and the exciting thing is that so far i am pretty deeply in love with most (potentially all) of my classes. biomedical ethics, modern logic, global ethics, zoology, women's chorale, social psych. i wish i was taking more psych classes, but it's okay because i am having a philosophy-laden semester and that's fun! reading is pretty much my natural state these days.

one of my goals for the semester has been to expand myself in terms of social circles, etc.- i'm just getting a little tired of doing the theatre groupie thing and being surrounded with overly dramatic and judgmental people. i just want to be around people that are positive and build other people up. so i'm trying to keep my eyes open for opportunities to make friends and create community.

that being said, i hope i can actually make it happen.

i tend to kind of talk about this a lot, but i'm really afraid that i'm using up all my life's luck in my first two decades. seriously? nothing really horrible has ever happened to me. ever. every time something tragic has happened to someone at our school or whatever, it's never been anyone close to me. i've never been in a bad car accident. i've never even gotten a ticket. no one i have been deeply, personally, intrinsically intertwined with has truly suffered, at least not when i was old enough to feel it in my bones. and i'm simultaneously ridiculously grateful for this and really, really terrified. because this is not how the universe works! people don't get to only have good things happen to them forever. this hinders me in my quest to be the best friend ever because it's impossible for me to relate when people have these tragic things happen to them, or when people carry around this baggage from things that have happened before. i just am at a loss for words.

love edifies.

so, today i just started reading my textbook for the biomedical ethics class. and one of the issues i just read about in the introduction is about the importance in ethical theory of action judgments v. virtue/character judgments. like, does it make someone more moral if their BEHAVIOR is moral, but lacking in the virtuous motivations, or if their CHARACTER is moral but their action is not. This is something I think about a lot, but never seem to resolve. I'm not sure if it's still valuable to do good things for the wrong reasons, because the good things could still have a good impact. Like, is it still valuable to do volunteer work if you do it for personal gain? Rather than just to, say, serve a dinner to a person who otherwise wouldn't eat? I mean, the person still gets fed. So do the ends justify the means? I really don't know.

I've just been focusing a lot lately on improving my motivations. Like, stopping to ask myself why I really want to do something, and if it is going to hurt or help the situation. I've been reading this verse a lot lately, 1 Cor. 8:1. Knowledge puffs up but love builds up. I try to remind myself constantly to do everything I can to build people up.

In other news, classes start tomorrow. Let's do it.

the broad spectrum.

i really dislike arguments. i really dislike tension, and people yelling, and anger. usually the things that people get upset about, i just laugh at. and the more people argue, the more laughable i find them. i'm not impressed by wordplay and well-spun logic.

so, that being said, what does it mean to be open-minded? does a liberal political perspective automatically mean you are more tolerant of others? or only that you are tolerant of people just like you? i don't see much tolerance for conservatives. and that's what tolerance means, right? it means having an open heart to EVERYONE. that means i'm supposed to love rush limbaugh and ann coulter and my host of conservative friends just as much as i love jon stewart and barack obama. i'm supposed to be just as respectful towards people that think the earth is 2000 years old and people that have no wiggle room on abortion and people that think the government administered AIDS as i am towards people who believe in health care reform and middle class tax cuts and gay marriage.

that's hard to stomach. but that's what jesus calls me to do, right? jesus calls me to love, period. and that doesn't mean i have to think they're right, but it means that i owe them a level of respect and decency regardless of the fact that we disagree. and that's why i am so frustrated by established, educated people who make childish, inappropriate remarks about other people or their beliefs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPoWOw8Jm5w --> olbermann slamming robertson and limbaugh? really? yes, i agree that robertson and limbaugh's statements about haiti were inaccurate and far-fetched and close-hearted. but to state that you would actually condemn them to hell and to call them empty souls?

the god i know wouldn't want me to do that, i don't think. the god i know would want me to interact with compassion with everyone- regardless of political or religious affiliations. my god wants me to open my heart to athiests and agnostics and every religious trend because that's the only way i can bring heaven to earth. is that right? i don't know. but that's what i'm thinking about today.

i like songs that remind me of love.

"my love is my whole being, and i've shared what i could

but if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own.

if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own.

well my heart is bigger than the earth, and though life is what gave it love first

life is not all that it's worth, because life is fleeting

but i love you, and my love surrounds you like an ether in everything that you do

but if you get a little love, you can get a little love of your own.

if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own.

if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own.

if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own.

well if you are what you love

and you do what you love

i will always be the sun and moon to you

and if you share with your heart

and you give with your heart

what you share with the world is what it keeps of you."

noah and the whale

an opportunity to stop.

i'm sitting in market street coffee with my friend morgan, being a big cliche. sitting in my skinny jeans on my macbook drinking coffee and blogging.. sometimes it is refreshing to be a stereotype. at least i feel like i have somewhere to fit. 

i've been ruminating lately on the value of being still, and what i can learn when i eliminate. also, i've recently become obsessed with douglas coupland, a canadian writer who writes for the new york times (www.coupland.com/couplandisms). he is one of this new class of writers who manages to just write about random things that have been on their minds and somehow make it stimulating and relevant. anyway, he said this: "sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure". 

not surprisingly, this made me think about Jesus.

i feel like jesus has really been showing me lately what i can accomplish, and what kind of peace i can achieve, when i just STOP. or slow down. it's a lot easier to examine my life when it's not whizzing by me at top speed. and i'm such a work-under-pressure, busy busy kind of person that it's sometimes hard for me to be still and not feel guilty about it. because we are so hard-wired to PRODUCE! that's something we talked about when i was in the dominican republic in the summer of 2008- because in the dominican, and i'm sure in a lot of other countries besides the U.S., there is so much less value placed on what you produce and so much more on the time you spend just BEING with people. um, hey, that's all i ever want in life, hence my constant refrain of how i want to be a professional friend when i grow up. 

it is so much easier to appreciate the hugeness of God when he's the only thing i can see. 

when i'm not shuffling, organizing, reorganizing, distributing, being distracted, WORRYING- there's just me. and what makes me happy. and right now, jesus makes me happy. 

jesus commands me not to worry. and sometimes i wish he would shut off the power a little more and force me to be comfortable in the darkness.

not an obligation, but a celebration.

Here's the thing. 

I'm just looking for a place to talk about Jesus. 

And I think it is both scary and fascinating that it is very likely I will always be the only one who reads it. I'm getting a little burnt out on the accessibility of my life these days. I'm kind of tired of having everyone be able to see, read, judge nearly every aspect of my life (big shout-out to Mark Zuckerberg, young entrepreneur, creator of Facebook and ruiner of privacy). And that is why I am starting this blog when I already have an online journal that I have maintained since I was in 8th grade. Because I want to talk about Jesus without fear.

And really, it's January 3rd. It is a new year and a new decade. And I want 2009 to be the last year of my life in which I was not completely devoted to my faith. I had coffee with a good friend from high school recently and she reminded me of one of those obvious truths that never work when you just tell them to yourself: Nothing is going to change unless you take steps to make it happen. It is remarkable how much more jarring that is to hear it from someone else than to whisper it in your own mind for 3 months. 

So I guess, I will get out of 2010 what I put into it. And right now I am full of joy in the Lord and I am ready to take that out of my head and put it into action in my life. Sound like a plan? Great.

a couple thousand words.

these are a few of the people who are my microsystem.

this is ldl. she is one of my roommates, and one of my best friends, and probably the person I have the most complicated relationship with. we frequently want to punch each other in the face, but we love each other no matter what.

these are the three girls that keep me centered when everything else is a rollercoaster: katie, cecily and melinda. they are all smart and kind and beautiful and loving and nonjudgmental. they are the people i can turn to in my guilt and my joy and my shame and my pride.

the group of people commonly referred to as my VT family: drew, donnelly, cassie, ashley, jennie, ldl, molly, sammi, carly, ray, dylan, and me. and scott, who was behind the camera on this one. the dynamics of this group are ridiculous. and they all have a lot to do with my faith in practice- way too convoluted to explain now, but in time.