just the facts.

(From yesterday)

I started school today. For the first time since Christmas I actually have something to think about other than work! It's a little weird. I had a small moment of panic sitting in English class when the teacher started talking about all the various kinds of assignments... suddenly it all came back to me just how hard it is to keep everything straight and what it feels like when you realize in class that something is due that day. I really don't know how this year will go, because I'm usually terrible at school, but I've become a lot more dilligent and orginized in other areas of my life since I was last in school, so I'm hoping it will be different. I guess we'll see.

So let's see. I'm taking chior, English Litterature, and Art Appriciation. Today I just had English and Chior. Chior is a lot different this year (Matt, we miss you! For the first time in forever we're actually short on GUYS), but I'm supper excited because all the leaders from last year are gone and instead of walking around in other people's shadows I get to be a little more confident and help lead my section- which, by the way, might turn out to be the soprano section. For whatever reason Mr. Owen asked me to switch sections once everyone was arranged. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but at least he trusts me to handle the higher notes.

My English Lit teacher is a vast improvement on my English 101 teacher, the Communist Feminist Wicken that I'm sure you've all heard about. This teacher is a nice older lady with a perky sense of hummor. And it sounds like this class is going to be very multi-cultural and diverse, so it should at least be informative and interesting. I don't think it will be exactly challenging, but that's okay for my first quarter.

On the other hand, Art looks like it's going to be much more intelectual than I thought. I won't know for sure until I go to class tomorrow, but the text book is pretty hefty.

This past weekend I traveled to the East side of the state to visit Carolyn and witness the baptism of someone I've never met before... Carolyn and I have talked a lot about our churches and she thought this would be a good oporotunity to see hers. The Calvins were visiting friends down there too, so I was able to travel with them. I drove the first two hours with Dan and Christina and wrote in my journal, and then we stopped in Ellensburg and picked up Jacob, who had just dropped all his stuff off in his dorm room at Central. The rest of the family followed in the van at a pace that, well... allowed us to see the scenery in great detail. :-)

(From today)

When we got there we had dinner at the Petersons' and then I drove home with Carolyn (another 45 minutes) to Clarkston. It was dark and I couldn't see much but it was pretty clear that we were driving through nothing but fields and hills most of the way, which is pretty cool if you ask me. Then we started passing water, which looked amazing with the lights from the harbor reflected in it, and we drove into the city and stayed at Carolyn's new appartment, which is super cute.

Saturday we walked around downtown Lewiston (which is actually in Idaho), got our nails done (my first manacure ever!), had a picnic, blew bubbles, rode on the swings, made scones, watched High School Musical 3, and went to Carolyn's work. She works in a brick backery and there was live music. I started out reading Mr. Darcy's Diary, until Libby showed up. We talked for something like three hours... turns out she's a writer like me and we had plot lines to hash through and various characters to analize. :-D

Sunday we went to Carolyn's church and then to a park called Hells Gate (seriously) for the baptism. I thought it was really cool that they did the baptism in the river. And then they had an out doors communion service and a picnic. I got to talk with Laural and Katie and Nathan and Dexter and Sarah, which was awesome. I knew someone from almost every family in that church. Rueben has the CUTEST little girls.

Then after saying goodbye to all the Calvins except the Kina and Jake, Carolyn and I went to her parents house and helped her mom get crafts ready for Kids Group or something like that while Dan, Kina and Jacob toured Clarkston. And then we all went to the Peterson's again for the night. We watched a couple movies on creation, both of which were actually quite interesting. And then the Calvins, Dan and I went up on the roof to see the stars. The Peterson's house is really cool because it's backed into a hill, so you can litterally just walk right onto the roof from the backyard. And the stars out there are absolutely breathtaking!

Monday morning Dan had us up bright and early- and believe it or not, Kina, Jacob and I actually were ready on time. This breaks records! We went to the park for breackfast and ran into Dan's old PE teacher. And then we went to see the school where Mr. and Mrs. Peterson work. We even got to play with the instruments in the band room. And then we said goodbye to the Peterson's and took off to tour Pullman.

I will not put you through the list of every place we went in Pullman, but highlights were Bret and Cristine's house, caged grizzly bears, and a resturant that served hamburgurs I actually liked. :-) And then we had to say goodbye to Carolyn and head off for our side of the state again. On the way home it hit me suddenly that I was taking a road trip with friends, which is something I've ALWAYS wanted to do. The ride back was especially fun, I'm not sure why. I made a crossword puzzle with song lyrics and I was the only one who brought CD's, so the music was great. :-)

We stopped twice, once for gas and once to drop Jacob off in Ellensburg. I'm super jealous that he gets to live on campus and go to this amazing school. His doorm room is bigger than my bedroom, which is saying something! After that Kina had to sleep because she works at 3:00 AM, so I just sat in the back and listened to my music blarring through the speakers (Dan is a very patient guy...). Every now and then if I turned around and looked through the back window, if we had just gone around a bend in the road so that the other cars were still out of sight, all I could see was the outlines of trees against the stars. It was a weird disjointed feeling, but amazingly cool nonetheless.

And now I'm at work, trying to adjust to normal life in the northwest. I think I want it to start raining again... it feels about time for a rainy day.

what the world needs now is love, sweet love :P

Okay, here's an ethical/moral question to ponder: how important is doctrine, really?

I mean, I 100% believe that theology is the framework for everything that you do. Ideas have consequences and what you believe about God has big consequences. There is only one correct answer to any doctrinal/theological question, and it is our responsibility to do everything we can to deduct that correct answer.

But as we all know, people come up with different answers to these questions all the time. And unless they are doubting that Christ is the Son of God and that it is only through Him that you can be saved, or perhaps the inerency of the Bible or other equally fundumental principles of the Christian religion, it would be absurd to say that such a person wasn't trully a born again child of God because they interpreted the scriptures differently. So in that since, it almost doesn't matter what you believe about things like the Sabbath or Dispensationalism or whatever the issue is.

However, as our pastor was saying on Sunday, the goal of being a Christian is not just to get to heaven. Our Goal is to become as Christ-like as possible, to conform ourselves to the likeness of our Savior. So you could stand to reason that any incorrect doctrine has some sin mixed in with it, or at the very least will cause us to sin because of the way we live in reaction to that doctrine. Which would make us not conforming to the image of Christ, and thus crippling ourselves in the very purpose which we are here to accomplish.

Taking all of that into consideration, how accepting should we be of Christians with other doctrines? I mean, obviously we should love them and treat them as our equals and not burn down their buildings or anything, but what amount of "incorect" doctrine can we put up with in the organizations that we support with our money and time, or the people that we fellowship with as Christians, or the books that we read?

I guess this is something of a pet peeve of mine, when people allow doctrinal differences to get in the way of unity between the churches and ESPECIALLY ministry work. I hate the mentality that I have to constantly be picking my way through a mine field of people, books, and oporoutnities to find the ones that are Conservative Reformed Baptist Evengelical, and only then can I get involved. Because it seems like there are a lot of great things out there in a wide variety of backgrounds and we could all learn a lot from each other if we could just get past our differences. I mean, that sounds so touchy-feely, but really, we Calvinists could learn a lot from the way Armininists evangalize so energetically, even if we don't want to teach the same doctrine. And we could learn from the carismatics about worship. There's even a lot to learn from the Mormans- I'm just saying, when we box ourselves in to our own little way of thinking, we become prey to all the potential pit falls of that way of thinking. And they ALL have pitfalls.

So I don't know, maybe this is just my feeling side wanting us to all just get along like hippies.

But I would love to know, what issues would make you say, no, I'm not going to read a book by a person who believes that, or no, I'm not going to fellowship with a church that believes that, and what would you be willing to overlook?

thought

You know what I've been thinking about? Joy. It just occured to me the other day that joy is one of the fruits of the spirit. Which is incredibly interesting, because that's basically saying that if you are a true mature Christian, you will be joyful. And I find that this more or less rings true with the really strong Christians I know.

It's awesome, too, because if we were all really joyful, that would set us apart from the world like nothing else. It would be such an obvious difference, and not the kind of difference that drives people away, either. So in other words, SMILE, JESUS LOVES YOU!!! Haha, sorry, couldn't resist.

Another weird fruit of the spirit is peace. Elizabeth reminded me of the verse that says, "And the PEACE of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." And I guess it's true, if I really believe the things I say I believe, they should give me enough comfort to be at peace with any situation.

And then there's Self Control. I'm so terrible at this. It's just weird to me to realize that these are Christian traits. Not just irrelevent, nice-person characteristics, but Christ characteristics. I thought that was interesting.