This is the way the world ends...

Ah, December 21, 2012. A day that will live in infamy as the day that most of the modern world said that the Mayans said the world would end. The power of hearsay is so amazing...but I digress.

Amidst all the talk of the world ending, a single line kept coming into my mind: "This is the way the world ends; not with a bang, but a whimper."

These are the concluding lines from TS Eliot's "The Hollow Men," a poem that has been constantly popping into my head for the past few months. It is a combination of allusion and symbolism that creates such a fearfully wonderful view of how it all very well might end.

As I am a complete and total geek, the following is my analysis and interpretation of the imagery and symbolism presented in Eliot's "The Hollow Men". I would like to emphasize that this is my own interpretation, and I therefore reserve the right to be wrong about it. I also encourage any and all readers who wish to disagree or add to my analysis to do so civilly in the comment section (I do love a good literary discussion!)

Casting My First Ballot

I recently got talked into being interviewed for a local newspaper's piece on first-time voters. It didn't take long to realize that I was the only one in the piece who was 23 years old. That's right; do the math. I was 19 during the last presidential election. So why is this my first time voting?

Brace yourselves. I'm about to utter the words that most political or faux-political people hate to hear: I CHOSE to not vote.

My Blind Date with Heaven

Note: In June of this year, I became a catechumen (a person officially preparing to be received into the church) of the Orthodox Church in America. The following is a journal entry from April 2012 about the first time I stepped into an American Orthodox church. If you have questions about the Orthodox church, why I chose to convert, or anything along those lines, I'd be happy to try to answer them (or find someone who can answer them, as I'm still learning myself.) I'd also suggest looking at the Orthodox Church in America website.

Unique is the new Normal

I have the magnificent pleasure of volunteering with a rambunctious group of high schoolers twice a week. We get together and talk about theater. We play improv games. We plan how to make the school administrators clean up the stage. We even put on small plays for the entertainment of the faculty, staff, students, parents and friends who choose to come. (Well, we have only done one to date, but I speak in good faith that we can do another one. We've only been at this for one full school semester, after all.)

But we also get to have some pretty deep conversations, too. For example, today when I asked the question why they wanted to do theater and be a part of drama club, one of the answers that came up was that they felt like they could be themselves when they were in our club meetings. They could be wild and crazy and not have to worry about what people thought when they acted silly. One of the students observed that "normal" according to our society was the person who walked through life knowing no one's name, doing nothing of note and living in a generally neutral manner. It made me start wondering (and allow me to place some emphasis on this):

Since when did we start conditioning ourselves to believe that "normal" is this robotic lifestyle?

Bless those who persecute you...

When I sit down to write on this blog, it is usually because something has been constantly filling my brain for hours (sometimes days) at a time. I actually sat down to write this blog yesterday and had to walk away because I just wasn't ready. Here's hoping I can do it justice this time around.

My mind has been overwhelmed lately with the various reactions I have seen to the alleged attacks against American Christians (mostly political in nature).  I say alleged simply because I do not know enough about the situations to make legitimate assessments. I noticed the reactions of one particular gentleman who I follow on various social media sites because he and I are alumni of the same university.

In studying the reactions of him and his followers to the political actions of recent days, I noticed a trend. Indignation, entitlement, and sometimes even pure malice filled many of the posts. It made my heart ache to read so much anger from people who openly said they held their opinions because they were Christians. It just didn't seem right.

I started mulling over it in my head. No matter how I tried to analyze it, my mind kept returning to the same thing: a Bible verse about blessing those that persecute you.

The saddest thing in the world

I have a good friend who loves to ask me hypothetical and philosophical questions (mostly to divert the conversation from talking about himself, but perhaps he also genuinely wants to hear what I have to say; I guess only time will tell). The other night, he asked me what in this world made me saddest. After bantering about why in the world he would want to know the key to making me as sad as possible, I finally settled back and thought of my serious answer.

Spontaneity, Solitude and Starlight

There are few things in life as calming to me as a clear sky on a summer night in the mountains of Tennessee. Tonight, as I was driving home, I had the sudden urge to see the stars, so I kept driving. I drove about 45 minutes to Chilhowee and wound my way up to my favorite overlook.

Never go back the way you came

It was a cool night in Cleveland, and the greenway was beginning to darken rapidly as the sun set on the western horizon. The electric lights left a haze in the air as a friend of mine and I stumbled upon a new section of the paths that neither of us had ever explored. 


We walked for a little while, simply taking in the amusements to be found along the new path (various exercise stations that made for great fun and hilarious photos). As we started to head back to our car, we spotted one more path we'd never taken and decided to see where it led. 


We emerged on one of the main streets in Cleveland, just a few blocks from the parking lot from which we had started. It was a much shorter walk than the meandering paths we'd left behind, so we started walking down the bustling street. 


As we started walking, we talked about what we'd learned about the greenway that night, and our conversation arrived at an interesting consensus that I've thought about a lot since that night: Never go back the way that you came.

Parcheesi'd

Playing Catch-Up: A Year in Review

In the past 10 months since I last posted on this blog, a lot has happened. Consider this the "catch-up post" that will allow me to start sharing my stories and lessons and musings again, now that life is finally getting back to normal and I can actually spend time writing again (Praise the Lord!).

Many significant things have happened, but there are 5 important ones that will be flavoring my stories from this time forward, as they have changed my life completely.