I Guess Y'all Just Get Used To It
In my new job, I deal with customers who call in with questions about their barbecues. Sometimes, during the calls, while I wait for my computer to look up information, I engage in small talk with the customer. I find that the easiest thing two strangers can talk about is the weather, and often they initiate it. A guy asked me the other day how the weather was, and since it was just above 0 Celsius with the sun shining, freshly fallen snow, I told him we had great weather. He complained about his situation, and upon my prodding he said he was calling from California. "When it gets under 70 (Fahrenheit), I don't even go outside," he said. I replied, "Well it's a balmy 35 here today." Doing metric conversion on the spot is an asset at his job. He thought for a bit and then said, "Well, I guess y'all just get used to it up there." Those words came back to me as I picked up a few last-minute Christmas gifts at the mall. This season I've had trouble getting in the mood for Christmas and I'm abnormally apprehensive about our upcoming holiday family time. Over the last few months, as the mall I occasionally work at has become increasingly decorated for Christmas and increasingly busier approaching the holiday, it was only today that the prospect of Christmas and all in entails brightened my mood. As I pondered these words of Yankee wisdom, it came to me, as much as we adapt to our physical environment, so too do we adapt to our social environments. While I cannot excite myself with the prospect of opening gifts and eating candy, there is still much to look forward to at Christmas. Sure there are more family politics each year, and I am continually more aware of crap I didn't know about as a kid, but as I type this blog entry, there are family members awaiting my arrival back home, and tomorrow, as we exchange gifts in our traditional way, it will still be Christmas. My faith does not exist in the same way it did as a teenager, and my understanding of God is not as in tune as it once was with my member church back home, but I can still gather to worship with them on this Christian holiday. I need not be haunted by the ghost of Christmas' to come, but take in the pleasant spirit of Christmas present.

   [ posted by William @ 4:56 PM ]

Adam as an Allegory
I've recently initiated a self-guided, chronological walk through the stories of the Bible's significant men. My first stop was in Genesis 2 and 3, reading the story of Adam. Long ago, I wrote off the creation debate as irrelevant, so I wasn't looking to strengthen my position on either side of the argument. I fully believe that God is fully capable to have created the earth in 6 24 hour days, and if he did, any scientific/intellectual problems created by that would simply be an example of another human/divine misunderstanding. If God chose to "create" the world through a billion plus year evolutionary process, in no way would that take away from the love God has for us, or the salvation he offers us. My purpose was rather to try and see the story from Adam's eyes, to see how he felt. I wanted to see what God expected of these men, and to see how God communicated with them. Adam is really only special, because he was the first man, he got to name the animals, and because he had open communication with God. The fall reveals that he was a particularly weak man, not only because he sinned, but because he was so weak about it. Rather than focusing on the historical accuracy of Adam's story, I focused on a matter of current relevance, male/female interaction. It seems to me that if Adam and Eve is only a story, if it's only in the Bible because that's the way it happened, then it's easier to write off the outcome. Now if this story is in the Bible to convey a message, then that message is harder to dismiss. I'm not saying that woman submitting to men is proven that much stronger in Genesis, but you certainly can't write off both the historical accuracy of Adam and Eve, and the modern relevance of the curses to the genders after the fall.

   [ posted by William @ 9:37 PM ]

Mien Kopp Overfloweth
I feel as though I am reaching the limit of my capacity to remember stuff. It seems that learning new stuff for my new job in Customer Service, plus learning the names of people at the office, isn't enough. I also am still working at Sport Chek, but only often enough that I forget the names of a lot of my co-workers between shifts. I am volunteering with a Sunday school production as well, so that's a whole other group of names to remember. There was an analogy taught to me where the brain is compared to a cup. The lecturer said that studying for longer than an hour at a time doesn't help, because the brain only takes so much, and after that, you're just overfilling your cup. So many times recently, I've heard the name of a person that I just met, or some explanation of what to do in a certain situation, and my brain just says to me, "Sorry, no more room in this cup." That hasn't really happened since I was studying in University, and that was while cramming, this is just from going from place to place. The trouble is, that I can't see myself retaining this information either. Sport Chek can only be so much longer, my new job is only a one year plan, and I can only assume that I won't be at my current church forever. That could then also be my problem maybe I'm just putting in my temporary memory, when I'd be better off trying to put it in the long term. People at work always tell me how good of a memory I have, but I'm afraid I'm losing it too fast. Good thing I don't have any drug related brain loss, I'm losing enough to age.

   [ posted by William @ 4:32 PM ]

Where have all the Bad people gone?
There was a time when it was easy for us to spot evil people. On an international level, sure we can call dictatorial leaders evil, or even heads of heartless multinational corporations. It's still easy to see who the bad guys are in books, on TV, and in professional wrestling, but in our every day lives, the antagonist doesn't show himself so readily. It seems to me that everyone I hear about is "a nice guy." I'm not trying to claim a monopoly on the title, but it really gets thrown around too readily. At one level, I read articles about Saddam Hussein being a warm and loving father, and hence "a nice guy." Slobodan Milosevic was a co-operative and friendly prisoner, another "nice guy." Hearing about the departed, you'd think everyone on earth lived a friendly and courteous life. Fundamentally, you're not allowed to hate "nice guys," and I recently caught myself talking about a guy that I didn't particularly like (and had every reason to despise him) and I said that he was "a nice guy". So what's the criteria for this new cliche? Someone who's good to their kids? Someone who's never been to jail? Well, to borrow a page from the book of Chris Rock, "You're supposed to be good to your kids!" and "You ain't supposed to go to jail!" Do we have such low expectations for our fellow humans that people meeting essentially basic moral code are classified as "nice guys?" Has our post-modern moral relativism stripped us of our ability to recognize evil in our midst? Maybe I'm old fashion, but I think we all need to work harder to earn our "nice guy" title and have higher expectations of other "nice guys."

   [ posted by William @ 11:27 PM ]

Innocent Questions
I'm not ashamed to admit that I used to watch and like Ally McBeal. That was of course in the most feminine time of my life when I was watching Ally McBeal and Felicity on a regular basis, as well as joining the girls lounge for the occasional episode of The Wedding Story. Besides clearly being directed toward the female demographic, there were parts of the show that I liked. She came across as being a bit neurotic, and sometimes things that she thought became part of the show, like the dancing baby, and the back-up singers. With me, sometimes when people ask me certain questions, I answer calmly and usually with a certain amount of wit, but deep down I want to cry out in anguish, "I don't know!" And these aren't difficult questions like "Why do good things happen to bad people?" or "How am I as a modern Mennonite living separate from the world?" Those questions have their own deep answers, but they are always asked with depth in mind. The questions that shake me the most are always asked in pure innocence, almost as if they were only for conversation sake and the answer didn't even matter. It's these questions, "What are your plans for the next little while?", "Why are you working here?", "Is your life taking it where you want to go?", "Are you ever going to get a girlfriend?", or "Why do you still hang out with Daif Duncan?", that make me wish I could freeze frame and tear my shirt open and let out a primordial gargle of torment, but instead I make something up to make them and me happy. Of course I only rob them of hearing the truth and continue my own self delusion.

   [ posted by William @ 10:11 PM ]

GRT, yeah you know me
Until recently, I would have said that I hate Toronto, but still in many ways, I do. Being a proud country boy, I despise the city, and stay only as long as I need. I live in Kitchener-Waterloo, which is still a big city, and I rely mostly on public transportation and the kindness of friends, to get around. I hear a lot of people that complain about the GRT (Grand River Transit), and one excuse that they offer up is that it's not as good as the TTC. Well people in Toronto complain about the TTC all the time too. I have used public transit in five different countries, and they always complain. Why? Why do people complain when their pittance of a fee doesn't guarantee them perfectly on time service, clean and comfortable seats, and a pleasant social atmosphere? I love the bus. If everyone loved the bus as much as me, there would be more of them, fewer cars, and better routes and schedules. Say what you want about unreliable schedules, they are close enough, and nobody I know is so bloomin' important that they can't afford to wait another 15 minutes for a bus. Sure the bus doesn't always smell the greatest, but it's public vehicle. I know lots of private vehicles that smell way worse, and they only carry one person. And then people complain to me about the weird people they have to deal with on the bus. This one irks me the most. I've had all sorts of encounters with people representing innumberable disorders on my GRT excursions, and I'm better for it. One woman asked me if I was Jesus. A guy in a wheelchair asked me to flex for him, and squeezed my muscles when I did. I've had long talks with the sad and the twisted, the old and the young, the straight and the gay, those addicted to drugs and those addicted to Jesus, the teenage expectant girl and the aging lonely widow, the quiet war veteran and the vocal peace activist, etc. Why do people complain about taking the bus? I think deep down it's because they cannot be satisfied until they live far enough from the fringe of society that they no longer have to deal with those fringes.

   [ posted by William @ 10:14 PM ]

Dream, Dream, Dream
I saw a Star Trek episode with my brother recently, where the computer generated holographic doctor was told by a friend of non-earthly planetary origins, that he believed that dreams came from another place. His traditions stated that dreams were not created within the individual, as I have always believed, but came to us from another land entirely. What brought on this admission of nerdish viewing? I ate supper at 11 the other night, but was so tired, that I went to bed almost immediately after. That, for me, is always a bad sign. My all-time wierdest dreams happened in similar circumstances. This time, I was with some friends, discussing computer fonts (yes, apparently I really am that big of a nerd). One of the girls then showed me a font, the font name written in that particular font, and asked if I knew the meanings of it's origins. The answer turned out to be the punchline of a rather sexual joke. The girl (who, upon relfection, looked as much like Alyssa Milano as she did herself) then winked and gestured to me in a rather provocative way. The dream ended there, without any further actions or consequences that would make our friendship awkward, but it left me wondering. It wasn't whether or not I was attracted to this girl, but where this kind of joke came from. It wasn't really a joke that I would normally even laugh at, let alone generate on my own. I like to think that dreams can come from other places, partly to leave room for the Holy Spirit to inspire me with prophetic visions, but partly also to take away blame for my capacity to generate such filth. A little self-analysis helped me to realize the logic process that could have led to me "hearing" that joke. It comforted me to know that I didn't need to re-evaluate my theory on dreams, but alas, reassured my fears that I am not immuned to telling bad jokes, if only in my dreams.

   [ posted by William @ 10:43 PM ]