Things that I have learned this year...

So, my sophomore year is going to be over in 4 days. AHH!!! It's one of the most frightening things ever, actually...I'm almost half done with college. I have three semesters left on campus. I'm not ready for it to be over yet!

So, anyways. I should be writing a paper for my New Testament class. But I would rather procrastinate. I've been thinking about how far I've come in the past year, so...here's all the things that I've learned.

1) Be independent. Having your happiness depend on someone else is BAD. Don't lose yourself in your relationship with someone else. You can be happy on your own, and you can have fun.

2) Find what you love and do it. I didn't realize just how much I loved religion until this semester. Find the thing that you're passionate about and that you can be really nerdy about for extended periods of time. And don't worry about how you're going to get a job with a certain degree, or how hard it is, or about your GPA. Just work as hard as you can and love what you do.

3) Have nice friends. They make life easier. And it's nice to have someone you can always spill your guts out to. However, maintain your independence.

4) Break out of your comfort zone. It's scary, but rewarding. And you grow so much. Do something that scares you.

5) You don't have to do anything you're uncomfortable with. Don't let people push you around. And it's okay if you have different value systems than the people around you, just stick with them. It's not your fault.

6) Communication is good. The end.

7) There is more than one way to live your life and to be happy. Being in a longterm relationship is not always the be all, end all that people make it out to be. There are advantages to being single too ^_^

8) People are generally nice. Don't be afraid to talk to them. You never know, someone that you meet really randomly could end up being a really great friend.

OK, that's it...words of wisdom from my sophomore year. It's weird, I feel like I've changed so much since a year ago. This time last year, I was kind of a wreck. Now, I'm almost an adult. I know what I believe and what I want, and I'm not too afraid to go for it. College is a good thing. I'm glad I'm here. :)

I've been thinking a lot lately about my future. Where should I go when I'm done with school? What should I do? A lot of people who know me will probably think this is crazy, but I've been having this urge to become a priest in the Episcopal Church. (for obvious reasons I can't become one in the Catholic Church...). In some ways this makes such perfect sense for me; it would be a way for me to put a lot of the things I'm passionate about together--God, studying religion, music, people, working with children, even travel and environmentalism--these could all be worked into a vocation. And priesthood would give me something to do with my degree of practical use--something that doesn't involve being in a classroom all day and writing obtuse articles about the Being and Nature of God that even I don't understand.

But on the other hand, would I really be able to be a good priest? What makes me think that I have anything helpful to say or teach to a congregation? What makes me worthy to lead a church? And shouldn't priesthood be a calling? How do I know if God is calling me for sure? And I'm pretty sure that no one I know can see me as a minister....

Eh. This is too much introspection for 2AM. I should probably go to bed now so that I can actually be awake for tomorrow. Goodnight world!

It's spring! Maybe it's because of that fact I have the urge to start cleaning out my life, both physically and mentally. The problem is, I'm too lazy. My goal for this weekend is to pack up all my sweaters and put summer clothes in my drawers, as well as putting away laundry and unpacking from my recent trip to NC. But I look at the suitcase open on the floor, and the clothes piled on my futon, and all the laundry that I have to do, and the whole thing seems so daunting. It's much easier to lie on my bed and watch episodes of "The L Word" or read whatever mindless fiction books I can find that I haven't read yet (not an easy task when you live in a dorm room...I'm used to having whole walls of books to choose from!).

That same laziness unfortunately applies to other aspects of my life as well. Maybe, it's not so much of a laziness as a fear of exertion, or an uneasiness about doing something that's hard. There are so many things that I should be doing, but I can't bring myself to actually get up off of my butt and do them. Instead, I sit here feeling mildly guilty and telling myself that it's okay, that I'm still a good person, no matter what mistakes I've made in how I've handled events in my recent life. I can't help feeling as if I'm avoiding accountability just a little bit.

On a completely unrelated note, it seems so strange that the year is already winding down to a close. We're getting to that frantic part of the year, where things just seem to keep going faster and faster like a giant snowball, and it's all I can do to keep up. I have at least one major paper due every week for the rest of the year, plus two scenes for my Shakespeare class, and assorted tests. But I like it--it keeps me busy. And, after all, I did bring this upon myself. And it's not going to get any easier; a future of 16 credit semesters stretches ahead of me. But despite my grumbling, I really do love college. And I love learning and I love religion, and I can even get excited about most of these papers, once I actually stop procrastinating and start doing them.

And now for the real purpose of this entry: free writing. I have to go to my professor/adviser with ideas for my final paper in Contemporary Relgious Thought tomorrow. For some reason, he's convinced that I'm smart, and I don't like to disabuse him...which means that I work my ass off in that class and hope that the results are at least mediocre. So, I need to come up with a topic and my ideas don't quite go together. Let's see if I can make a little bit of sense out of my jumbled ideas...

Logos Theology and Environmentally Sustainable Models of God (can you tell I'm a religion and environmental studies major??):
Logos theology is the idea of the Word of God incarnate in Jesus, or Christ. According to Scripture, the Word was present at Creation. Indeed, it was what created, in a way--everything was made through the Word, at least according to some readings of the Gospel of John. It seems to me as if this line of thought could lead to a type of panentheism...where God (or his Word) are incarnate in all of Creation.
Daniel Boyarin, a speaker who came to do a series of lectures a few weeks ago, talked about the historical existence or need for two Divine figures. Similar to Christianity with its trinitarian views, there was one transcendent God, and one more imminant God that ordinary people could relate to. Similar to Logos theology, where the Word acts as a second God, Sophia (Wisdom) and Enoch are other examples of "second" Gods. The more transcendent a religion's idea of God, the more this second figure was needed to help people identify with the Divine. What implications would this have for an environmental theology? Sallie McFague talks about God being purely imminant and the Earth being the body of God. Does this eliminate any need for the personal Messiah, since God is already purely present in this model? Or, are there still two Divine figures, only in this case, the imminant Godhead takes the form of the entirety of Creation?
Are either of these valid paper topics at all, or have I just been hearing about this stuff way too much and am making connections that don't exist?

an environmentalist extreme?

We all hear about the stereotypic radical environmentalists in the news who do crazy things like throw cans of paint at fur coats or chain themselves to trees to prevent them from being cut down. And at some level, this makes sense to me. We should do everything we can to prevent further degradation of the environment by humans. Ideally, we should do what will benefit the most people in the future, whether or not it's good for us; whether or not we'll go to jail, or in other ways negatively impact our own lives or living conditions.

But, although I'm pretty idealistic, I don't think I'm THAT idealistic. Besides, I've come to realize that we view everything through the lens of our own humanity. That means that while we're working to save the environment and fighting to maintain a feeling of connection with the natural world around us, we can't forget that we are human, and we also have a responsibility to our own kind.

So, although we should work to stop wetland destruction and to find alternative fuel cells, there are more important issues at stake. People are dying by the millions. And while some of their problems can be fixed by fixing environmental issues, we should work on saving the humans first.

People feel this desire to feel connected to the Earth around them. Through the Earth, we can find God; we can view Creation in all its glory and get a feeling for just how small and insignificant we really are. Well, that's all well and good, and I think that we should work at expanding our horizons and realizing that we as humans are not the only things with intrinsic value. However, I think that some people take this feeling too far and forget to see the value in the people around them. Instead of looking to find God (or worth, for those of us who aren't sure about the whole God thing) in the snowflakes falling outside the window right now or the trees in a forest, what about the worth of your annoying roommate? Or that person who just ALWAYS says something annoying in class? Or the poor who don't have enough to eat, or enough money to buy their children Christmas presents?

The point I'm trying to make is that people can take radical environmentalism too far. While it is good to care for the environment and to find truth and beauty and God in the world around us, we should also search for the same truth and beauty and love in the people around us. We should realize that while we are connected to the natural world, that same connection connects to all the other people around the world, and we should do our best to care for them too.

Making a Difference

What's your ultimate motivation?

I was asked this question recently, and my first impulse was to say something trite, like, "to save the world." It's a harder question than it seems at first though. Really, how many of us stop and think about the reasons for all our actions? Something about the question really stuck with me, and I've been thinking about the answer for the past few day. What is the motivation that drives me, that makes me, me? I would like to say that it is something noble and self-sacrificing, like working to save the world, or to help people, or to stop global warming, but I think that not only are those incredibly broad categories, they are also narrow at the same time and even shallow and single-faceted in a way. Because really, how can someone ignore self-preservation and the biological imperative for self-interest to focus solely on something like helping others? And wouldn't the aspect of life that makes them WANT to help others actually be their ultimate motivation, not the desire itself?

I would like to say that my "ultimate motivation" is the search for truth. This can take many forms, like not being very good at all the little white lies that we tell each other in our daily social interactions, to the more broad search for the truth about the meaning of life. I feel like in my recent life here at college, most of my choices have been striving to find the meaning and identity of God--is there a God, and if there is, who is (S)he? How can there be so many different ideas about religion--they can't all be right, can they? How do our ideas about God and religion affect our relationships with the people and world around us? It seems like the more I read and the more ideas I learn about, the more questions I have. But I keep searching, because even if there is no objective truth, I feel the need to determine some subjective ideas that I can accept, even if they aren't necessarily the opinions of the majority.

So, there's that--my overwhelming question that affects all my choices. But thinking about that leads to yet another question, can these ultimate motivations change? And if they do, are you still the same person you were? According to one of my best friends, you can't really change who you are--all you can change is how you go about accomplishing your goals. In other words, you can mature and change how you go about achieving said motivation, but you can't actually change what it is. I don't know how I feel about that. I feel like I've grown so much in the past year, especially, that I'm not at all the same person that I used to be. I don't think it would even have occurred to the me of last year to try to determine what was making me act the way I do. But maybe the fact that I wasn't aware of it doesn't necessarily mean that the motivation wasn't there.

So, what's your motivation? Has it changed, or do we continue to be driven by the same things throughout our lives?