IC XC

I miss certain things. as the weather was warming up (before we got winter blasted) i started to miss Biola very much. this general nostalgia remained for a number of days until I attempted to actually remember some of the things i missed. try as i may, i couldn't conjure one image to mind of something at Biola that i actually missed. when i thought about my actual expereience at Biola i didn't miss it that much anymore.

The place that i could see in my mind's eye was the very same place that i saw when i was a highschool senior wanting to go to Biola, i.e. a paradise Biola that I had imagined. It was a place of perpetual spring time (not unlike southern California) where everyone was a realist, where everyone was as cool and smart as me (i know right?). I do miss many of the friendships that I made, but i'm not sad that Torrey is not apart of my life right now. Having that expierience at Biola gave me a glimps of the fundamental flaws of Christian Education (a topic for another blog), but i'm no pedigological uber minch.

rather than aggiate my pompous ass by listing the things i don't miss, here's some of the things that i do:
Reynolds Sessions
Biking to the Beach
Tours of L.A.
Telling noble young christian college students that morals are relative (tee hee)
Driving up and down PCH with my May 26th Friend, David

i miss a place of timelessness. I miss the place where I stood overlooking the ocean for 30 seconds, or 15 minutes i don't remember really. I miss the place where I was in love. In short, I miss a place that I've never been to. It's easy to say that I miss heaven, but i've never been there either and have relatively no associations that term, but i think that's what i miss. maybe one day i'll get there. I miss a place that i can make my home, that i never have to leave.

it is so frickin' cold in my room. housing services came to turn out heaters on over a month ago but my roomate's bed was in the way so they didn't do it. it was ok for the most part, it is warm enough in southern california that a heater is quite "necessary" but when the outside air tempurature is a bitter 50 degrees and your room is in the shade . . . it makes a difference. so at i night i look like a ghetto homeless person wrapped up as best as i can in two blankents wearing a hoody sweatpants and slippers with my face buried in my pillow. i'd like to be able to leave my door open and get some of the heat that's rising from down stairs but then i'll be kept awake by the sound of people on my floor yelling "AAWWW YEAH" every time they kill someone in halo.

i only have one more final left in "modern philosophy". i've found that out of all of my dedication to academia that this final has been the hardest thing for me to study for in a very long time. i just don't want to and i know i have to. i keep telling myself i'll study with a group when they get together, but apparantly every one else in the class who has not yet taken the final feels the same way i do about studying.

i leave for home the day after tomorrow. i don't know exactly what this holiday season is going to be like. obviously its going to be a little depressing not being able to kiss Sarah under the mistletoe like i was looking forward to. but she knows how i feel about her and about this whole situation. both of us though are still looking forward to what the future has. she and i are both at a time when making decisions in obedience to christ is paramount. we talked a little last night about our individual spiritual struggles. C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (particularly chapter 12) is especially appropos to describe where she and i are/have been in the past several months. good ol' clive staples knows his business. we're both trying or at least trying to try. rich mullins in prayer/song said "do you remember when you lived down here where we all scrape to find the strenghth to ask for daily bread?" it's true.

having the faith to ask for daily bread is one of the most difficult starting places for me. as soon as i feel like i've got things under control and my life headed in a promising direction i let go, then i wonder why i failed. josh rio and i spoke about the how even willful obedience to God is something that we need grace to do. and grace is given freely when we ask. so the vicious cycle has to start somehwere i guess. i suppose it starts with being broken and humble. i'm certainly broken . . . humility, i hope, will come in time. obedience, i've found, is hardest when God sais X and my emotions say ~X. i didn't know that Christ would ever actually ask me to do something that i could not even fathom as being helpful and could only see as being painful for the rest of my life. i realized that i never actually had to do anything for Christ in my life before now. as far as i was concerned that was ok. i figured i could just keep living my life with the externals of christianity (if even in some sense i did love god), believing the universe was autonomous and that as long as i loved god, i could do what i wanted and would be blessed. it's heresy unfortunately. it's such a sexy heresy but whatever.

-i love you

been really busy this week. busted out several papers and a paper proposal. stayed up until 4am writing that epistemology first draft. i hope i do well. the final grade will be an average between this draft and a second. It was a pretty funny experience all around. i went over to a friend's apartment where me and three other guys bitched about writing the paper.

two of the guys there are converts to the orthodox church. it got me really interested. i went to orthodox church of america's website to see what it's all about. sounds legit. i don't think i'll ever convert but i can't blame them for converting. imagine being apart of the original church body that goes back to antioch and greece. sounds really cool to me.

i walked back to biola after that, it wasn't to bad, about a mile. it's raining out now. i love the rain.