You're 10 years old. Your year begins at the start of September because that's when you go to school. Your mom buys you new notebooks, and you put five freshly sharpened pencils in your backpack and take your Power Ranger lunchbox and go to the first day of school. The weather slowly gets colder, and you look forward to Christmas then New Year's. Winter is long, but eventually spring breaks through. You celebrate your birthday in April, and you're proud of the extra candle on the cake, though you don't feel older. As it gets warmer, you count the days until summer. Your older brother graduates from high school, and you assume you never will because that's forever away. Summer comes, and you rejoice. It's time for fishing and bare feet and popsicles and long, sunny days playing by the pool.
Then it's the same thing again. And again. Fall, winter, spring, summer. School, summer. School, summer. Another year older, another year past. Your parents get older, and you don't notice. You get taller, but you only know because of the marks your mom makes on the wall with a pencil every few months. You get smarter, but you only know that because you found the first term paper you wrote in fifth grade, and it was pretty unimpressive. Morning, afternoon, night. Awake, asleep. Fall, winter, spring, summer. School, summer. School, summer.
Then suddenly you have a college degree, a job, a significant other, a car, insurance, and a receding hairline. Your older brother has two kids, and your parents call you to ask you how to use an iPhone. You don't notice you're growing up until you do. You notice it one day while you're walking from the parking garage to work, and you look down and see a 6' 0" frame, a tailored suit, polished dress shoes, one hand holding a cup of coffee and the other clutching a brief case. Is this who you are now? Are you really so different from who you were then?
When we are young, life is a circle. School, summer. Morning, afternoon, night. Fall, winter, spring, summer. Sometimes life is punctuated by great loss—like a death in the family—or a significant change—like moving across the country. But your parents or guardians are there to create reality for you, and it's a safe reality. The seasons march on. School marches on. We march on.
But when you glance down and see the tailored suit, the briefcase, and the size 11 black shoes, it makes you wonder: did the world journey around the sun 25 times, and this is the result? Did my upbringing and my environment and the passing seasons bring me here today? What in the world am I doing?
When you were young, you felt like a track athlete running lap after lap becoming stronger, smarter, better, with each circle. You weren't sure where in the bleachers your coach is sitting, but you could sometimes hear him giving you instructions. One day the track disappeared, and your sneakers fell silently onto the forest floor as you passed through a group of pine trees; you'd become a cross country runner. You realized life isn't a circle, even if it looked that way before. It's a winding path through the woods that you often have to make up as you go along. You don't know what you'll have to run through or where the finish line is, but you have to be okay with that.
The seasons still come and go. Jobs come and go. People come and go. But you're still a runner. It seemed like track before, but it was always cross country. You can't stay the same, so make sure you become better. Your Coach is the only one who is always there and doesn't change. So wake up. Each day is a new life. Nothing happens twice. Each moment is unique. A second chance is merely a chance that resembles another one. Even if you get up the same time each day and celebrate the same holidays and go the same places, you are a cross country runner, not a track runner. The path isn't a circle. It's a journey. Listen to your Coach. March on.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Interstellar: Why It Should be Called Interbookcase
At the beginning of the film, we see that the world has become dusty. Just after the credits is the appropriate time to mutter, "Oh, no. Not another environmental agenda movie." After it's established that the world is running out of food, Matthew Mcconaughey runs over half the farm to catch an IFO (identified flying object).
After that, he goes to parent/teacher conferences, where the conversation is conveniently directed to explain how the world became so dusty and to show us how much Mcconaughey loves space. The inciting incident occurs when a sandstorm adds some excitement to an inherently boring game: baseball.
Mcconaughey and his children go home, where his daughter Murphy tells him the ghosts are leaving her a message. He sees the lines in the sand and assumes in about 4 seconds that they are morse code and that it reveals coordinates. What else is he to do? He hops in his truck and drives to the location.
Surprise, surprise. The coordinates lead to N.A.S.A. Fantine, who is angry and now has short hair, explains how her father Alfred—who just happens to be Mcconaughey's acquaintance—is planning to save the world through space exploration. Fifteen minutes later, they are begging this trespasser to pilot an aircraft on a suicide mission. Because they can figure out how to send space ships through a wormhole but can't communicate with the astronauts they already sent up there.
Mcconaughey hates farming so much that he decides to accept the offer. He tells his grieving daughter that it's whatever. He'll be back sometimes, and in the meantime, she can entertain herself by looking at this neato water he gave her. He doesn't bother to stick around for more than 5 minutes. It's time for space! From this point on, we will call "Mcconaughey" Astronaut Farmer.
First the astronauts sleep for a while, and I was really disappointed that no one stayed awake to draw murals on the ceiling with condiments. Then they wake up and go to the immensely creepy Water Planet. The one dude stays behind and spends 23 years contemplating black holes because that seemed like a good idea. The other 3 land on the stupid water planet and try to get themselves killed. Only one dies. They leave, and Astronaut Farmer gets really mad at Fantine. Then they return to the ship, where the other dude is super excited to tell them all of his new thoughts about the black hole.
Then they go to the Frozen Planet to rescue Jason Bourne, who at first shares an emotional moment with the Astronaut Farmer because he hasn't seen another human being in just forever. But then he tries to maroon them on the island. But he will always remember this as the day he almost outsmarted the Astronaut Farmer. Ol' Jason Bourne should have stuck to assassinations because space clearly isn't his thing. (At this point in the movie, he blows up.)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Astronaut Farmer, Jr.'s, children have developed asthma. His sister Murphy, the scientist, tries to convince him that dusty-lung is very serious. When he won't let his children move to a safer location, she burns down his farm. Because that seems logical. Between shots of army trucks driving around, the farm burning down, and Murphy looking frantically at her favorite book case, we get the sense that things are really serious now. Since the movie has already been going on for 2.5 hours, it really needs to end. So we assume the world is totally going to end if Astronaut Farmer doesn't do something super sacrificial, like, right now.
Astronaut Farmer, the Black Hole Expert, and Fantine bemoan their stereotypical space fuel deficit and try to decide what to do. First, during the Dark Night of the Soul moment, Fantine realizes that her father, Alfred, was lying to them all along and only planned on saving the embryos. Black Hole Expert points out that the secret numbers, which are hiding inside the black hole, could save the day. "We must go deeper," he said.
So they decide to fly into a black hole because it's their only chance. They release the robot to search for the codes. The robot is all like: "Are you satisfied with your care?" And Astronaut Farmer is all like: "Yeah, okay." Then, completely unexpectedly, Astronaut Farmer leaps into a little ship and loses himself in the Black Hole because "It's the only way" or whatever. Then he discovers Interbookcase, a place where every single moment of his daughter's time in her room is represented by a physical space.
First he realizes that he is his daughter's ghost and that humans from the future—not aliens—built this structure and have been leading them all along. He uses morse code to send himself the N.A.S.A. coordinates in the sand. Then he uses morse code again to send his daughter the secret numbers from the Black Hole Expert. This is all completely logical because it makes perfect sense that humans from the future can build a structure that defies the fourth dimension, but they can't think of a better way to communicate than recruiting a farmer from the past to knock over books. Astronaut Farmer floats around for a while and wakes up in a space station, where he sees the boring game of baseball happening outside his window. He finally gets to see his daughter, who is now like 400 years old. She basically tells him to go away because she has a lot of other people waiting to talk to her. So then he leaves and finds Fantine on a very earth-like planet where there is no dust, and he doesn't have to be a farmer.
The movie should have been called Interbookcase.
After that, he goes to parent/teacher conferences, where the conversation is conveniently directed to explain how the world became so dusty and to show us how much Mcconaughey loves space. The inciting incident occurs when a sandstorm adds some excitement to an inherently boring game: baseball.
Mcconaughey and his children go home, where his daughter Murphy tells him the ghosts are leaving her a message. He sees the lines in the sand and assumes in about 4 seconds that they are morse code and that it reveals coordinates. What else is he to do? He hops in his truck and drives to the location.
Surprise, surprise. The coordinates lead to N.A.S.A. Fantine, who is angry and now has short hair, explains how her father Alfred—who just happens to be Mcconaughey's acquaintance—is planning to save the world through space exploration. Fifteen minutes later, they are begging this trespasser to pilot an aircraft on a suicide mission. Because they can figure out how to send space ships through a wormhole but can't communicate with the astronauts they already sent up there.
Mcconaughey hates farming so much that he decides to accept the offer. He tells his grieving daughter that it's whatever. He'll be back sometimes, and in the meantime, she can entertain herself by looking at this neato water he gave her. He doesn't bother to stick around for more than 5 minutes. It's time for space! From this point on, we will call "Mcconaughey" Astronaut Farmer.
First the astronauts sleep for a while, and I was really disappointed that no one stayed awake to draw murals on the ceiling with condiments. Then they wake up and go to the immensely creepy Water Planet. The one dude stays behind and spends 23 years contemplating black holes because that seemed like a good idea. The other 3 land on the stupid water planet and try to get themselves killed. Only one dies. They leave, and Astronaut Farmer gets really mad at Fantine. Then they return to the ship, where the other dude is super excited to tell them all of his new thoughts about the black hole.
Then they go to the Frozen Planet to rescue Jason Bourne, who at first shares an emotional moment with the Astronaut Farmer because he hasn't seen another human being in just forever. But then he tries to maroon them on the island. But he will always remember this as the day he almost outsmarted the Astronaut Farmer. Ol' Jason Bourne should have stuck to assassinations because space clearly isn't his thing. (At this point in the movie, he blows up.)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Astronaut Farmer, Jr.'s, children have developed asthma. His sister Murphy, the scientist, tries to convince him that dusty-lung is very serious. When he won't let his children move to a safer location, she burns down his farm. Because that seems logical. Between shots of army trucks driving around, the farm burning down, and Murphy looking frantically at her favorite book case, we get the sense that things are really serious now. Since the movie has already been going on for 2.5 hours, it really needs to end. So we assume the world is totally going to end if Astronaut Farmer doesn't do something super sacrificial, like, right now.
Astronaut Farmer, the Black Hole Expert, and Fantine bemoan their stereotypical space fuel deficit and try to decide what to do. First, during the Dark Night of the Soul moment, Fantine realizes that her father, Alfred, was lying to them all along and only planned on saving the embryos. Black Hole Expert points out that the secret numbers, which are hiding inside the black hole, could save the day. "We must go deeper," he said.
So they decide to fly into a black hole because it's their only chance. They release the robot to search for the codes. The robot is all like: "Are you satisfied with your care?" And Astronaut Farmer is all like: "Yeah, okay." Then, completely unexpectedly, Astronaut Farmer leaps into a little ship and loses himself in the Black Hole because "It's the only way" or whatever. Then he discovers Interbookcase, a place where every single moment of his daughter's time in her room is represented by a physical space.
First he realizes that he is his daughter's ghost and that humans from the future—not aliens—built this structure and have been leading them all along. He uses morse code to send himself the N.A.S.A. coordinates in the sand. Then he uses morse code again to send his daughter the secret numbers from the Black Hole Expert. This is all completely logical because it makes perfect sense that humans from the future can build a structure that defies the fourth dimension, but they can't think of a better way to communicate than recruiting a farmer from the past to knock over books. Astronaut Farmer floats around for a while and wakes up in a space station, where he sees the boring game of baseball happening outside his window. He finally gets to see his daughter, who is now like 400 years old. She basically tells him to go away because she has a lot of other people waiting to talk to her. So then he leaves and finds Fantine on a very earth-like planet where there is no dust, and he doesn't have to be a farmer.
The movie should have been called Interbookcase.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
'Nothing Left to Wish For': Thoughts on Thanksgiving
Before the movie Race to Witch Mountain (with Dwayne Johnson) came out in 2009, I watched the 1975 original: Escape to Witch Mountain. Two mysterious orphans—a brother and sister—possess strange powers, including telekinesis and mind reading. I felt that I had a special connection with them because I can read my sister's mind. (No, really. One time I told this kid at church I could read Katie's mind. I told the kid that Katie was thinking about a tuna fish sandwich. When we asked my sister what she was thinking about, guess what she said? A tuna fish sandwich.)
Anyway, the two kids stay temporarily in this huge mansion with these rich people. They don't know it yet, but the rich people want to steal their powers somehow. In the meantime, though, the kids have this huge house with all of these awesome toys and pretty much everything they could ever want. When I was 8, I thought the house in the movie looked like the coolest thing ever. But before the kids even figured out the nefarious motives of their adopters, the sister tells her brother why they cannot stay there. She says something like: "We have to leave. If we stay, there will be nothing left to wish for."
I didn't understand it. Didn't they want a family? Weren't all of the toys and the house enough to make them happy? Why would they leave? But they did. In my little 8-year-old mind, I thought about what it would be like to have nothing left to wish for. It didn't sound like a bad thing. So what was wrong with that concept?
Like birthdays and New Year's, Thanksgiving is often a time to reflect on the happenings of the past year. Some families might squeeze 10 people around a too-small dining room table—every inch of it covered in plates of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, turkey, and apple pie—and take a few minutes to share what they are thankful for. We're thankful for our families, country, friends, God, education, etc.
I'm thankful for some of the same things all the time, but every year I have some new blessings to count. For instance, this year, the Lord answered three of my prayers for this semester, all in ways I did not expect. All three were cases in which I noticed something was missing from my life, and I asked God to fill it. He did.
Thankfulness is kind of like binary code. The things you have are 1's, and the things you don't are 0's. Because you have, for example, food to eat each day, you might consider what it would be like if you didn't know where your next meal would come from. On the other hand, maybe you don't have a job, and you're looking for one. You think about what it would be like to find the right job because it's something you notice that you don't have. The reason we notice we have something to be thankful for or that we don't have something we want is because the people around us either lack what we have, or they have what we desperately want.
I don't think Binary Thankfulness really covers it because that's operating under the assumption that 1) we know what we need and 2) life is only about getting what we need or want. So many of my unanswered prayers brought me to praise God years later because my requests were foolish, and the Lord had different plans. So often God provides me with blessings I didn't even ask for, and I wonder how I didn't notice the emptiness in my life beforehand. I have found new joy this year in trying to give back. We are the hands and feet of Christ, and it is a great privilege to figure out how we can show the love of Christ to others.
This year I didn't get the first summer job I applied for, but I got to do a writing job from home and spend time with my family. I don't see my parents much because they live 13 hours away. I got to do some really neat work this semester in grad school, and I made some new friends. I could write an entire blog post about all of the things I'm thankful for, but it would take years to write and probably break Blogger. I'm primarily thankful for the people in my life: my parents, sister, extended family, professors/mentors, pastors/teachers, old friends who still put up with me, and new friends. I see a little bit of Jesus in each of my Christian friends, and spending time with them makes it easier to be like Him.
For the first 22 years of life, most people I knew did the same thing: go to school, get into college, go to college, and graduate. Now, though, people are branching out and doing different things. Some people are married. Some are having kids. Others are teaching overseas or pursuing artistic goals. Still others are moving up the corporate ladder or looking for the perfect job. Then there are a few like me who are incollege part 2 grad school. We all are doing different activities; we all have different blessings; we all make different contributions, and that is okay. Though it is important to use your time wisely, you don't have to do what everyone else is doing. Look at all the unique blessings the Lord has offered us!
I don't have everything. I'm not yet sure what I'm doing when I graduate (despite the 70,000 people who have asked me what I'm doing). I have so much to learn. I want to be a better writer. I want to understand people, ideas, health insurance, directions, savings accounts, taxes, and politics. I want to do things and go places and serve people and get to know God better. Who knows how much time I have left here on Earth? I want to live every day like it's the day the Lord has made. (Oh, wait... it is!) I am learning to be thankful for what I have without slowing down. How far I've come is no reason to stop. How far I have to go is no reason to complain.
Have you ever heard the saying, "If you had everything, where would you put it?" I always thought that was a stupid saying. Because if I owned everything, no one would be telling me to put my stuff away. I'd just walk around and think, "Well, I own that tower, and that beach, and that library, and that walrus. Oh, look, it's my collection of rare amphibians." But what does it mean to have everything? I'm certain that even if we all could wish for whatever we wanted, we would not be able to ascertain what is best for us.
At the end of the Escape to Witch Mountain (spoiler alert!), the two kids meet up with their long lost uncle and escape in a flying saucer. I'm pretty sure it was implied that they are from some distant planet, which is obviously different from Earth. Beside the fact that their adopters were going to try to steal their powers, the kids would not have been happy living in the Giant Mansion With Everything... because they didn't belong there. They belonged in a different world.
C.S. Lewis wrote, "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that we were made for another world." That is why—in this life—we will never be left with nothing else to long for. We do have Jesus now, but we don't belong in this world. Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to recognize the many blessings God has given us, even in this fallen world, even when we don't deserve them, even when we don't immediately recognize them. It's a good time to become the kind of people who serve others so that they will have more to be thankful for. And it's a great time to remember that this world cannot satisfy, but one day we will be with Jesus—the reason we exist, the reason we have anything, and the reason we can be saved.
"When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun."
—Amazing Grace
Anyway, the two kids stay temporarily in this huge mansion with these rich people. They don't know it yet, but the rich people want to steal their powers somehow. In the meantime, though, the kids have this huge house with all of these awesome toys and pretty much everything they could ever want. When I was 8, I thought the house in the movie looked like the coolest thing ever. But before the kids even figured out the nefarious motives of their adopters, the sister tells her brother why they cannot stay there. She says something like: "We have to leave. If we stay, there will be nothing left to wish for."
I didn't understand it. Didn't they want a family? Weren't all of the toys and the house enough to make them happy? Why would they leave? But they did. In my little 8-year-old mind, I thought about what it would be like to have nothing left to wish for. It didn't sound like a bad thing. So what was wrong with that concept?
Like birthdays and New Year's, Thanksgiving is often a time to reflect on the happenings of the past year. Some families might squeeze 10 people around a too-small dining room table—every inch of it covered in plates of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, turkey, and apple pie—and take a few minutes to share what they are thankful for. We're thankful for our families, country, friends, God, education, etc.
I'm thankful for some of the same things all the time, but every year I have some new blessings to count. For instance, this year, the Lord answered three of my prayers for this semester, all in ways I did not expect. All three were cases in which I noticed something was missing from my life, and I asked God to fill it. He did.
Thankfulness is kind of like binary code. The things you have are 1's, and the things you don't are 0's. Because you have, for example, food to eat each day, you might consider what it would be like if you didn't know where your next meal would come from. On the other hand, maybe you don't have a job, and you're looking for one. You think about what it would be like to find the right job because it's something you notice that you don't have. The reason we notice we have something to be thankful for or that we don't have something we want is because the people around us either lack what we have, or they have what we desperately want.
I don't think Binary Thankfulness really covers it because that's operating under the assumption that 1) we know what we need and 2) life is only about getting what we need or want. So many of my unanswered prayers brought me to praise God years later because my requests were foolish, and the Lord had different plans. So often God provides me with blessings I didn't even ask for, and I wonder how I didn't notice the emptiness in my life beforehand. I have found new joy this year in trying to give back. We are the hands and feet of Christ, and it is a great privilege to figure out how we can show the love of Christ to others.
This year I didn't get the first summer job I applied for, but I got to do a writing job from home and spend time with my family. I don't see my parents much because they live 13 hours away. I got to do some really neat work this semester in grad school, and I made some new friends. I could write an entire blog post about all of the things I'm thankful for, but it would take years to write and probably break Blogger. I'm primarily thankful for the people in my life: my parents, sister, extended family, professors/mentors, pastors/teachers, old friends who still put up with me, and new friends. I see a little bit of Jesus in each of my Christian friends, and spending time with them makes it easier to be like Him.
For the first 22 years of life, most people I knew did the same thing: go to school, get into college, go to college, and graduate. Now, though, people are branching out and doing different things. Some people are married. Some are having kids. Others are teaching overseas or pursuing artistic goals. Still others are moving up the corporate ladder or looking for the perfect job. Then there are a few like me who are in
I don't have everything. I'm not yet sure what I'm doing when I graduate (despite the 70,000 people who have asked me what I'm doing). I have so much to learn. I want to be a better writer. I want to understand people, ideas, health insurance, directions, savings accounts, taxes, and politics. I want to do things and go places and serve people and get to know God better. Who knows how much time I have left here on Earth? I want to live every day like it's the day the Lord has made. (Oh, wait... it is!) I am learning to be thankful for what I have without slowing down. How far I've come is no reason to stop. How far I have to go is no reason to complain.
Have you ever heard the saying, "If you had everything, where would you put it?" I always thought that was a stupid saying. Because if I owned everything, no one would be telling me to put my stuff away. I'd just walk around and think, "Well, I own that tower, and that beach, and that library, and that walrus. Oh, look, it's my collection of rare amphibians." But what does it mean to have everything? I'm certain that even if we all could wish for whatever we wanted, we would not be able to ascertain what is best for us.
At the end of the Escape to Witch Mountain (spoiler alert!), the two kids meet up with their long lost uncle and escape in a flying saucer. I'm pretty sure it was implied that they are from some distant planet, which is obviously different from Earth. Beside the fact that their adopters were going to try to steal their powers, the kids would not have been happy living in the Giant Mansion With Everything... because they didn't belong there. They belonged in a different world.
C.S. Lewis wrote, "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that we were made for another world." That is why—in this life—we will never be left with nothing else to long for. We do have Jesus now, but we don't belong in this world. Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to recognize the many blessings God has given us, even in this fallen world, even when we don't deserve them, even when we don't immediately recognize them. It's a good time to become the kind of people who serve others so that they will have more to be thankful for. And it's a great time to remember that this world cannot satisfy, but one day we will be with Jesus—the reason we exist, the reason we have anything, and the reason we can be saved.
"When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun."
—Amazing Grace
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