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.