Wow…two days in a row! i must be on a roll! Well, not much new happened today…yet. i am still waiting for my beloved (that’s pronounced “be-lov-ed” not “be-loved”) to finish her Bible study with her friends. i found out which Philosophy classes will be offered in the Spring (my final semester!) i’ll get to take PHIL3400: Metaphysics (oh yeah) with my primary professor and PHIL3334: 19th Century German Idealism (Hegel, etc with Kierkegaard even though he was Dutch) with my secondary professor. All of the other senior-level offerings are industry-specific junk 
i’m waiting to find out which History classes and which English classes will be offered. i’m hoping HIST2302: The Emergence of Christianity, HIST3588: Religion in America, HIST4301: Ancient Near East, or HIST4304: Ancient Israel will be offered, as well as some good Literature class (i need to get that one in before graduation…). Additionally, i will be taking a 3000-level German class. i may audit the Homeic Greek class, as well as a low-level Anthro class (Fads, Fallacies, and Human Origins) for the hell of it. That’ll be my course load next semester: 12 or 15 hours of credit and some auditing here and there for fun. woo hoo!
And, for the record: 15 days!
Monthly Archive for September, 2004
So, we are now one-third through the semester. Just had my first tests in most of my classes. Midterms are barreling down on me: a 15-page thesis must be perfected, a few take-homes, and a pain-in-the-rear Physics (he doesn't give any help and we have 25 equations to memorize and apply). All of these will be coming in the next two weeks. Immediately after that, my wonderful, beautiful, amazing girlfriend is coming to visit. She is quite enchanting and i miss her much.
She'll be seeing the really old French Quarter, Vieux Carre, plantations, and other interesting sights. i can't wait!
What a joke. A voluntary evacuation! “We really want you to leave so that you have a better chance of survival, but we're not telling you to do so.”
Well, that is what Southeastern Louisiana is like right now. Hurricane Ivan has most of the markings of the “Perfect Storm” that'd annihilate New Orleans with a landfall expected early Thursday. What most have feared for many years is that a category 5 hurricane (much like Ivan) would come slowly from the south right around 90 degrees W (not unlike Ivan) and stall right before making landfall (as most hurricanes do). This would allow the winds to pump water through the Rigolets and into Lake Pontchartrain. This increase of water would be held by the hurricane levee systems. Then, as the hurricane moves northeast, it would move so that the winds shift southward, thus pushing the now filled lake's water into the bowl that is called New Orleans…about 30 feet worth (deep, that is) of water across the city. Then, as the storm moves on, Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River connect. FEMA estimates that this would leave around 40-60 thousand people dead. Always a comforting thought.
So, we're waiting until tomorrow to see if the storm turns north/east (which would be REALLY good for us). If it does not, we are loading a U-Haul with all of our dogs, packing up the van, and driving out to some relatives' house in Alexandria (in north central Louisiana). i'll be trying to keep everyone here posted.
Last night, i wound up going on an all-state retreat for free. My campus minister practically begged me to go on the retreat and that he would foot the $10 for the night. So, i went. In the the worship gatherings, i realized that for many people (myself included) that the worship music isn’t a means of worshipping God, but rather nothing. We learn these songs and sing the songs without considering the words. We have begun to worship the music and not God. When people raise their hands or dance, it is a result of the waxing and waning of the music, not the movement of God. It has become so predictable: fast song, fast song, slow song, prayer, slow song, fast song, prayer, message, slow song (altar call), slow song (more altar call), fast song, prayer, goodbye. And, people get more “spiritually focused” (i.e. they begin kneeling and raising their hands) on the slow songs. i have decided to practice silence during worship. i remained silent for all of the three gatherings…no singing at all. i also remained fairly still (i did stand sometimes) and focused on God and not the songs. Wow, now that was an interesting experience. i think i want to practice contemplative prayer more often.
i did get to know others in my group that i have seen for a year now. It was the first time that i really got to know them and they me.
We also had two optional seminars that i attended. The first one (on Friday night) was entitled, “Apologetics: How Can I Trust the Validity of the Bible.” It dealt with textual criticism. i feel kinda bad because i asked most of the questions and practically steered the conversation. My questions: (1) How early is the first complete (or nearly complete) manuscript we have of the NT? (it was Fourth century) (2) What about the process of translating the NT Greek into modern day English? After all, the German “er hat ein Voegel” literally translates as “he has a bird,” but really means, “he’s crazy.” How can we understand the idioms of a language dead for over a thousand years? (Comparison with other documents. The two “extremes” of translations– word-for-word and thought-for-thought — both have their application and are acceptable in their application, but not necessarily in the other’s.) (3) How can we trust the authenticity of the person of Jesus when compared to religions contemporaneous to Christianity such as Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and the Egyptian mythology? (All religions are a search for truth and the idea of a resurrected divinity restoring mankind to a lost level of privilege was popular in that region in that time period.) Pretty good i think. Also, the presenter happens to be a PhD student at the seminary in New Orleans and would like to hang out with me and discuss some other things (we spoke for another hour afterwards about Open Theology and Existentialism). Pretty cool.
My other seminar was “Apologetics: Creation vs. Evolution.” The presenter had too much info to get through in the hour, so she wasn’t able to dwell on anything for longer than three syllables. i spoke with her afterwards and enlightened her to the occupation of Teilhard de Chardin (she quoted him as being a “bad” evolutionists)….as he was a Jesuit priest (and the archaeologist who dug up and found the Peking Man). Not as interesting as the other one.
In the 18 hours i was there, i became known as the “guy who asks deep/difficult questions.” i’d hate for them to meet a devout athiest.
In four weeks, My super-really-cool-ultra-wonderful girlfriend comes down. Yay! And, for the record, that secret i’ve been keeping away from her is about to be revealed.
