Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Reflections on Newtown

I went to the church I grew up in the past weekend.  It was the first time in months, and it left me with a deep reminder of why I'd needed distance; the pastor referred to the Newtown shooting multiple times, but his analogies and references were subtly insidious.  Some of his rhetoric had the undertone of Mike Huckabee ("We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?").  Other allusions to the tragedy seemed to be couched in religious appeals, seemingly as an attempt to tug at heartstrings in a way that felt contrived.

Anyway.  I felt really unsettled.  

However, I found these two responses on the interwebs - and felt like this resonated with my desire to simply mourn for the lost, and grieve and pray for the suffering of the families and Newtown and the brokenness of our nation.  No explanation - no manipulation. Just...

Loss of the Innocents

God can't be kept out

Thursday, December 13, 2012

unspoken, internal, nebulous justification

via an email I wanted to write, but didn't send.  Just:

It's not about the make up grade - it's about the fact that in undergrad I goofed off and spent a lot of my time on  extracurriculars, which was well and good.  I was a slacker-of-a "B's get degrees" type-kid, but I was blending learning and doing, and that was fabulous.

But -- for graduate school I had really envisioned digging in and developing better academic habits and truer discipline.  However, the nature of all-things-quotidian have made that quest completely and utterly unfeasible. 

 So. I rewrote this paper - not for the A -  but to, in some small way, reach at that goal. 

 And this whole joke of an attempt is shoddy, and will still garner a B,and I'm sorry you have to waste time re-reading this, but I needed to do it -- not for the grade, but for a continued glimpse at the attempting to be the student I might have been.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Semisonic syndrome.

Some days you have nervous breakdowns...

...other days you listen to Closing Time on repeat and pretend it's still 1998.

But then, they hit that line 'every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end' and, whilst rolling your eyes at how trite that is, you get pulled back into 2012.


Closing Time on loop.  I'm pretty sure I'm coming unhinged.