A stone from memory lane: Interim in college

 

Like I've said on here many times, I don't like recalling past events and putting them in boxes (like "the summer of 1963," or "freshman year of fill-in-the-blank"). But for Interim I'm willing to make an exception, mostly because the events that happened each year were for a large part contained and separated from the rest of the year. I'm really not sure how that happened, but I'm rollin' wit' it.

 

January was probably my favorite month of the entire calendar year while I was in college. Unlike during the semesters, I only had one course I had to worry about; and unlike during the summer, most everyone I knew was around, so I could still hang out. In a weird way, it was like being at camp, but I wasn't so damn busy all the time (maybe except for the last couple of days when projects were due and final exams were forthcoming). Today I'm going to talk about Interim (or J-term, as some of you may take to calling it) from all four years, another break from my normal pattern of not categorizing.

 

Freshman year: January 2005

 

If I had to sum it up in one word (or acronym, in this case), it would be "FCA." It's a story I've told many times, but it's one I don't mind telling again and again. After a year-plus of being in exile from church and any semblance of a connection with God, I somehow wandered into their meetings the first week of the term, and the rest snowballed from there. I mostly remember just receiving all this communal love and not knowing what to do with it. Unfortunately, some of the folks I did embrace then I ended up burning bridges with later (not sure why, although I do believe it was a very stupid move on my part), but at the time it was just what I needed.

 

The first weekend after the first week of classes, FCA had a lock-in at a church in town, which I gladly went to, hoping to relive some of the few remaining positive memories I'd had from my first church. I don't remember what all we did, but I do remember us playing Sardines, Set, and a bunch of other awesome games.

 

A couple weekends later we went to Lon's house just outside of town. Lon was a guy who had been severely injured in a work-related accident, and as a result received worker's comp. With the money, he bought some land (I think? maybe he'd already owned it) and built it up so to host local Christian groups of all ages. St. Olaf FCA, I believe, mostly went there during the winter to play broomball, a game I'm not skilled at but still enjoy.

 

But it was the worship service at the end of the night that had a lasting impression on me, in which I was taking in a very different way of singing praises to God. People had hands up, were worshiping freely in ther own way, and in between songs anyone could get up their and speak their mind. That surprised me, but in a good way, and it ultimately moved me to get up there and speak.

 

Of course, I also had a vision of God, who I believe told me to speak in front of everyone. It was weird, because I believe I had an out-of-body experience while doing so (I'd heard about people having them, but never really believed it was possible). But it was good, because I knew God wanted me back in the faith, and he wanted me to just put myself out there, something I would never have done otherwise.

 

I also took Detective Fiction as my course for the term, but these days it's more or less an afterthought. Well, I take that back; I met Kevin from that class. Adam was in it too, though we didn't really know each other all that well at the time.

 

Sophomore year: January 2006

 

Compared with freshman year it was quite a downer. Although, to be honest, just about every month and/or semester that came after was a downer compared with Interim freshman year. I will say I had the best class ever, Speaking of French, in that we never had any homework outside of class. I spent the rest of the time working out (I finally started lifting weights and adding some muscle for the first time in my life), and I started hanging out with Pat and his roommate Matt.

 

I will say, by this time, the honeymoon period with FCA was over, and whatever it was that I was craving from my early Christian explorations wasn't being fed. I suppose there's something to be said for the novelty of it all, but even then I was still down on some other things. But as I'd mentioned in the previous paragraph, all wasn't lost, as I finally started hanging out with some people that would become some of my best friends.

 

Plus, my roommate was studying abroad, so I had the room to myself, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

 

Junior year: January 2007

 

There isn't a whole lot I care to remember from Interim junior year. I took Electronic Music, which was a required course, but in spite of the intriguing subject matter I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy the course. I think my issue with it was that it was going at too fast a rate for me, especially when we were in the lab trying to follow the professor's directions on how to set everything up on the computer. I suppose the one good thing from this term was that I realized that I could go from happy to burnt out in only four weeks. That, and the rest of the time I was in school this particular professor (he was also my comp prof and my advisor) and I made more of a conscious effort to understand each other.

 

Around this time I finally started really reading the Bible. Here, I'd been going to church my whole life, and by this point finally participating more actively in the faith, and yet I had never really sat down and read Scripture. I mostly remember I started with the Gospels, figuring that the most important stuff would be what Jesus himself said. You can read some throwback posts of my reflections at the time here, [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2007/01/jesus-would-be-appalled-at-mainstream.html”] here, [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2007/01/judgments-of-attitude.html”] here, [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2007/02/misconstrued-connotations-of-power.html”] here, [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-is-lent.html”] and here. [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2007/02/throwing-tradition-against-rock.html”]

 

It's kind of interesting, I was very much a rookie when it came to understanding Scripture and trying to interpret the very things that were said. This was also the year I (briefly) returned to the Episcopal church, so you can probably guess what my denominational bias would have been at the time.

 

Senior year: January 2008

 

Kind of on a broader note, this was the year that was the odd one from all the others. I don't really know how this happened, but I'd made a lot of friends (especially those in the faith) who were a year ahead of me, so I spent pretty much all of my last year in school wandering and lost as a result of their absences. I recall spending the fall semester trying to adjust to this new reality, and by springtime I was ready to be done / resigned to my fate.

 

But Interim was a welcome change from the black cloud that seemingly dominated the year. Well, OK, maybe "welcome" is too strong a word. I still had struggles, and once again my roommate was gone (although this time my roommate was one of my best friends and not just some dude I agreed to room with like I did sophomore year). I took Musical Acoustics, which I thought was an OK class.

 

But what made this Interim sort of refreshing can be alluded to the story I wrote in this post. [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2010/03/faraway-state-of-mind-2.html”] It was "refreshing" because the things that went on during the first couple weeks were the kind of things that pretty much never happen (at least, as far as I've noticed). Being involved with people, hanging out (and I mean, really hanging out), and experiencing new events and thoughts that I'd never really experienced... it gave me quite a bit to think about, but even more so, it helped me to forget what had been clouding my coconut just a month earlier.

 

[Kind of a post-script: Knowing what I know now, I almost want to go back and change the name of Jed's lab partner. Given what ended up transpiring between that character's real-life inspiration and me (which sort of was explained in the story), I'm not sure I want history to repeat itself.]

 

* * * * * * * *

 

I'm not sure if I like writing about "memory lane" stuff this often. I knew I needed some perspective before I could look back on my college years and talk about them. But I also realized that if I really wanted to talk about college, I should talk about my experiences at the schools I attended before it. The other thing was, one of the purposes in telling some of these stories was to relate how God had touched my life at that point in time. Some of these incidents are pretty crystal-clear to me (i.e. the hailstorm in August 2006 [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2010/07/stone-from-memory-lane-god-sent.html”]); but for others, like when I graduated from college, [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2010/07/stone-from-memory-lane-end-of-college.html”] there didn't seem to be much in the way of God's influence (although I was in the midst of my second exile from the faith at that time, which probably clouded my thinking in that respect).

 

It's just that I'm continuing to learn things about myself, some of it the stuff I already knew, but this time actively learning it instead of passively learning. I mean, when I posted about the spiritual warfare in the last month, I had a mini-flood of memories of similar events and reflections from what had happened before. But as I'm learning and re-learning these things, I have a tendency to look back at big events or big chunks of time and see what I've picked up on them that I hadn't before. And, sometimes it's really cool, this type of discovery.

 

As far as the rest of this series is concerned, I'll either go on hiatus or become motivated to tell some more stories. I have no idea which way this will go.

A stone from memory lane: end of college

As some of you may know, I dreaded college graduation for more than two years before it happened. I'd been a student of some sort my whole life up until that point (at least the part that I remember), and outside of a few temporary work positions in school I'd never really had a job. Needless to say, being jettisoned into the real world scared me.

As others of you may know, in many ways post-college life has been the best for me. I actually had a job for part of that time, which was nice, but more importantly I've been the most social in my life in the last two-plus years. (Um, let's make that two years, minus a month maybe.) Something about this whole development thing, plus the pact I'd made with God five-some years ago about being the person he'd wanted me to be. This growth/development thing has been a process, and unfortunately I wasn't going to reach the summit or anywhere close to it while I was still in school.

But no matter. Part of this development has been my awareness about things in life, whether immediate or distant, personal or public. In other words, it's something that never would have happened if I hadn't gotten off the bubble.

Ah yes, that bit of woulda-been controversy. A classmate of mine delivered a speech at graduation about how St. Olaf isn't a bubble. Why? Because they've been very good about exposing us to what's going on in the world, i.e. news, opportunities, that sort of thing. Therefore, because of the things that were just listed, St. Olaf isn't a bubble.

I basically kept thinking "what?" as I was listening to this speech. OK, certainly, we're not ignorant of what goes on in the world or our own community, but many of us aren't present in the world to really experience it. The fact is that most of us spend the vast majority of our time on a campus doing things that college students do, and quite frankly we don't have time to be in the real world unless we decide that's the most important thing. There's a difference between watching a ballgame on TV and going there in person. What St. Olaf offered was akin to watching a ballgame on TV. The only way we could be considered "not in a bubble" is if we were watching it in person, which, as a BM Theory-Comp major, I didn't have the time to undertake such opportunities. Big difference.

[I might add, working as an extra in a movie and seeing folks like Ron Howard, Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Winona Ryder and the rest in person made what would otherwise be a "magical" experience (i.e. watching and knowing something via the TV) seem real and mundane. One scene I was sitting out, I got to actually tune in to the dialogue that was going on and notice the minute differences between each take. I took in the whole creative acting/filming process from a technical standpoint in what they were trying to accomplish. To be honest, the whole experience just felt like another day at the office. It just so happened that Vaughn and Howard happened to be co-workers or bosses or something. It was still a cool experience in all, but everything just became more humanized.]

The night before graduation, some friends of mine (Pat, Kevin, Austin... don't remember who else was with us) and I camped out in Kevin's room and just chatted about what it was like being done with college. I don't know about other schools, but at St. Olaf they have a tradition of setting out lanterns (each one has a graduating senior's name on the ribbon attached to it) across the green during Senior Week, and then the night before graduation we find our own, light them, pick them up, and ultimately take them home. I recall we spent the rest of the night in Kevin's darkened room lit exclusively by our lanterns. It was rather eerie, almost like the last night of summer camp, where brothers who had bonded over the course of time would suddenly be sent to their separate homes across the region.

The morning after graduation, I remember heading out to the ball fields with Kevin to play some catch, and I recall he commented something about the last thing we ever do as college students is play catch. It made sense to me, given that this was how I spent a good chunk of the fun part of my childhood. I suppose at the time it meant more to him, cherishing those last moments and truly making them worthwhile, but as the years have begun to roll by I'm starting to look back and really see their value for myself.

I recall returning to Chicago later that evening utterly confused about where I was and where I thought I was supposed to be. What was this thing people called home? I sure as hell didn't know. It kinda seems ironic that the last two months I was in school I was ready to get the heck out of there. I was done. And now my wish was granted. Huh?

I still wanted to get back to Minnesota. As my Chicago-area friend Jeremiah had commented at the time, I indeed was "gung-ho" about returning north. Nothing against Chicago, but when the majority of people I knew and wanted to be with was elsewhere (i.e. Minnesota), that's where I was going to go.

I just realized something: I don't know how to end this post. That's the problem with stories that don't have endings... yet.

When do you stop praying?

During a conversation with my former landlord in Northfield, he gave me the Biblical passage to reflect and pray upon whilst dealing with trials: [Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. James 1:2-6, NLT [“http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%201:2-6&version=NLT”]] Spiritual warfare aside, what's caught my attention from this passage is the idea of praying to and asking God for what we need, specifically stuff that is the most important in our lives. The last sentence talks about being steadfast in this asking, for which it is easiest to be when we're praying for something, like a job, or a church opportunity, or something more general like life direction. There's also praying for other people, whether it's for something big like their struggles, or for something smaller like hoping a friend's business deal is a success. There's also praying for simple things, like safety while walking through a sketchy neighborhood at night, or down the hill a bit, perhaps not getting pulled over while in a rush to get to the hospital.

But one thing that's sort of pricked my consciousness is prayer for things that somehow might mean something to me, but outside of said meaning doesn't really bear too-too much on my life. For example, something like hoping your guy becomes President of the United States, or your favorite team winning the championship. Things like these fall under the "nations making much ado" category from Psalm 46:6. [“http://bible.oremus.org/“] I mean, I'd love to see the Cubs win the World Series soon, and my arguments for it are 1.) they're my team, and 2.) they haven't won in ages. But outside of that, that particular baseball team and I have practically no bearing on each other's existences. I mean, just because I decide I'm going to someday write a post praying that the Cubs will win a particular game doesn't mean that Derrek Lee will magically run onto this page and feel so moved to post a comment.

I was in a conversation with my dad this morning over what will symbolically be the end of the 2010 Free Agency Season. LeBron James, the last of the big-name players yet to have publicly state his team for the next several years, could still play for the Bulls. But is this something I should even bother to try to pray for? Some say no, for when we step back we realize that sport is but folly in the grand scheme of things. Even if the man chooses the team I really don't want him to go, the Miami Heat, my life will still go on and I will be focused on things that were always more important anyway. I suppose if what I consider to be the "nightmare scenario" were to occur, the worst thing that happens is I lose motivation to follow the NBA for a few years.

When I was at St. Thomas, one of our priests for my last couple years, Father Griesedeck (sp?), prayed with us before many of our games, whether in soccer, basketball, or softball. Sure, he prayed for safety and fun, and that's all hunky-dory, but he also prayed for victory, which as middle schoolers I'm sure we all loved. But looking back, I have to ask: is it right to pray for victory, especially when lives aren't hanging in the balance? When do you stop praying? Where is that line that divides things that are worthy of prayer from things that aren't?

I'm tempted to pray that Mr. James will choose Chicago's professional basketball club as his next primary employer. I'm also tempted to pray that, barring the first option, that he will return to his previous employer in Cleveland. Problem? Temptations aside, there's the divided loyalty on my part: 1.) I want him in Chicago, and 2.) I want him, for the sake of the little remaining good that is left in sport and for the long-suffering city of Cleveland, to return to the place that's nurtured him in so many ways over the first 25 years of his life.

Mr. James will make his announcement in less than two hours. Worlds will collide. The Sears Tower, the Empire State Building, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum will all collapse when he announces he's joining his buddies in Miami [note sarcasm]. In other words, the nations will make much ado, and the kingdoms will be shaken. But honestly, that's about all that's going to happen. If you ever saw God touch the earth, you'd see it melt away; and if that were to happen, there would be no more LeBron James. Or Cleveland Cavaliers. Or the National Basketball Association. Or the United States. Or even the entire freaking earth.

That being said, I'm not going to pray about this, because even if Mr. James were to join my favorite basketball team and lead us to the championship next year, my life will still be the same. It stayed the same when the Blackhawks won the Cup last month. So I have decided that this is when I stop praying, because in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter.

Job and spiritual warfare

I recently re-read the Book of Job, spurred by a conversation I'd had with a friend not too long ago, in which she alluded to Job while referring to me (I think it was right after I explained what spiritual warfare was). I've been relatively familiar with the story since I took my first-year religion course at St. Olaf in the spring of 2005: Job has family, wealth, and possessions; God then takes all of it away (including his health), which, after some negative prodding from his friends, leads Job to challenge God's will. God, of course, will have none of it and challenges him back. [Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. Job 38:2-3 (NLT) ["http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job%2038:2-3&version=NLT"]] The Almighty, of course, then continues and asks him: [Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? What supports its foundations,and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Job 38:4-7 (NLT) [“http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job%2038:4-7&version=NLT”]] Eventually Job gives up and repents (although I'm thinking he still doesn't understand why the things that happened to him did), and God restores everything two-fold.

The entire episode is a bit strange. You have an exceedingly well-to-do man who is completely faithful to the Lord, and in spite of it he has all these random bad things happen to him. I remember a few years back trying to understand it, but failing and getting upset at God that something so random and so cruel could happen and I would've had no right to complain (see this post [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2006/06/wake-up-call.html”]). The response was a vision in which I was driving down a road and flames surrounded me on all sides. Of course, at the time I thought that it was a vision of hell and where I would be going if I continued to vent my frustrations on it.

What I didn't know (and I probably could've guessed) was that Satan apparently is involved. The little fart crashes a "heavenly beings" meeting, and suggests that God tests Job's faith, which God does, except he orders him not to take his life. Getting back to the vision from the previous paragraph, this knowledge opens up a new and better angle on the vision, in that it wasn't God's idea at all that Job should suffer. Instead, He merely accedes to the challenge, which I still find odd.

Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face." The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger." Job 1:8-12 (NIV).

I spent a few days wondering about this Job allusion, since I sure didn't think I was anything like him. But after chatting about it with a couple of friends and re-reading the story, it became clear that the man dealt with a lot of warfare, some of it spiritual. And then more stories from years past flooded my memory. Here's another one:

Sometime during that spring semester in 2005, I went to FCA and filled out a name tag with "Job," kind of as a joke. After all, the Book of Job had been a prominent topic in the religion class that I was taking that semester (the prof was the pastor of the Moravian Church in town, and I have to say, in some ways she was kind of "out there"). I showed my name tag to one of my friends from class who was there, and he got it.

But putting "Job" on my nametag was more than just a joke. Yup, you guessed it: spiritual warfare. Sometime not too long before that evening I had fallen for a female who also was in that class, and for the first time in my life I was going to do something about it (something about thinking she was "the one" had to have contributed). Except, of course, I became so damn nervous that I suffered insomnia the night before I was planning on asking her out on a date -- that's right; I didn't sleep a wink. I'd spent the entire night going over and over again in my head how I was going to go about it. Right before class the following afternoon, I'd realized how much of a wreck I was and aborted the mission. I would no longer be able to really talk to her after that, knowing that I would've had a chance if I'd just given it more time. As far as I was concerned, I'd blown it. That's spiritual warfare for ya: lies, lies, and more lies. But it's what happens to people who have the propensity to be quite gullible. I've learned that I'm apparently quite a war zone.

A stone from memory lane: God sent the hailstorm

 

Monday, September 4th, 2006 was the day I was to drive back to St. Olaf for the start of junior year. Both my parents had come to help me load the Jeep (she wasn't Gracie yet) for the trip. It was, shall we say, a rather emotional day. For I didn't want to return to school, [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2006/09/school-starting-soon.html”] not after what had transpired over the summer. I wanted to stay home, maybe take the semester off; anything but return to school. I thought I was done at St. Olaf.

 

On Thursday, August 24th, 2006, the town of Northfield was hit by a hailstorm so massive, rumors were that those working on the Hill on that particular day were ordered into the basement of whatever building they were in. Many of my peers' cars were totaled. There was on instance where a hailstone had not only shattered the rear window of a car, but forced itself all the way into the speaker underneath the rear dashboard. Now that was powerful. When I did return to the campus, I was able to see for the first time the extent of the damage that this particular storm had caused. [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2006/09/hailstorms-fire-and-facebook.html”] And I was quite shocked, even in expecting to see what I saw.

 

I was supposed to have lived in Ytterboe Hall (a dorm made up of pods, basically) junior year. I was set to join a "God Pod" (as a few of my friends who were in it liked to call it), in which I would have spent a lot of time studying Scripture and playing Dance Dance Revolution (or DDR for short), and I would have lived next door to two of the "four friends" that I talked about in this post. [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2010/05/stone-from-memory-lane-end-of-junior.html”]

 

Except, the person I was supposed to have roomed with was my roommate over the previous summer, in which things started going awry about a month in. It wouldn't really do me any good to go into specifics, largely because this is something that's been put to bed for a few years now, but I will say the experience made me realize that there's a huge diversity among people who are (or claim to be) Christian. I'd grown up somehow thinking that everyone was like the Episcopals, and the differences were mostly in Sunday morning worship/Eucharist/Mass/etc. None of this political crap, for instance, where people claim God supports one particular American political party over another.

 

The experience had gotten so bad between my roommate and I (we'd get into arguments over each other and how the other needed to change), that I grabbed another room to stay in for the remainder of the summer. [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2006/08/about-me-huh.html”] Of course, it meant I would be on my own for the following school year, so Ytterboe was out.

 

I'd realized what a bad influence my ex-roommate had been on me, so for the rest of the time the both of us were in school I tried to avoid him. I wasn't going to do so completely, but I also didn't want to deal with him or any of that crap resurfacing. But then I knew I had to do something else: forgive him. It sure as hell wasn't easy, but I knew God didn't want me hanging on to these thoughts for the rest of my life. So I forgave him, and understood that it was in the past.

 

A couple years later he tried to rope me into a pyramid scheme. At the time I wasn't sure what was going on (he was trying to offer me a job with some sketchy online company which supposedly had his name on it), but another friend of mine happened to be right next to me, and he warned me of it as soon as I got off the phone. At that point I realized that even though I'd forgiven my ex-roommate for the crap he'd pulled, I wasn't going to be dragged down into this ever-continuing cycle. So I removed all contact from him, removed him from my phone, removed him as a Facebook friend... just cut the cord.

 

And if there had ever been any doubts about it for me, all I needed to do was look up Matthew 5:29, NIV: [If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.] [“http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5:29&version=NIV”] Technically this particular passage is referring to adultery, but it applies here as well. I mean, joining a pyramid scheme in the search of wealth is kind of like committing adultery on God. As this passage from Luke 16:13 (NLT) says: [No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.] [“http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2016:13&version=NLT”]

 

Back to the hailstorm. My ex-roommate's car wasn't spared. One of things that had bugged me was his lack of regard to safety at times while driving, especially when he was trying to show off. I was almost pissed at his car, and a sticker on the side that said "Fired Up For Jesus!" that showed itself in time to be quite hypocritical. But I guess God too was pissed, because he sent the hailstorm and completely totaled it. (tongue-in-cheek-face)

 

As for junior year, well... on the evening of September 4th, a friend who would become my roommate after college called me to tell me "welcome home... for the next nine months, anyway." If I recall correctly, we met up at the Rueb N' Stein for dinner shortly thereafter ... I met the third of the "four friends" (chronologically speaking) over the second half of the summer when the roommate troubles were at its peak, and the fourth at the Episcopal church in town a couple months later. And as I would soon realize, this particular school year would become the best I'd ever had ... This is testimony that God restores, more fully and completely than ever before.