sunday morning thought

from http://trevinwax.com/2009/03/21/how-scholarship-shields-us-from-the-bible/

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.

“Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship.

“Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.

“Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

- Soren Kierkegaard

recent reading

I used to just read the blogs of my friends to keep up with their lives--and I still do. However, lately, I've been enjoying reading blogs that are teaching me things, or that are written by people who are like me or that I want to grow up to be like. Here's a list of the ones I particularly enjoy lately:

twenty two words by Abraham Piper

http://www.twentytwowords.com

All posts are 22 words or fewer. Topics vary, but include: language, parenting, Christianity, random observations.

Sociological Images

http://contexts.org/socimages/

Images for use in sociology courses or discussions. They're interesting and show trends about the way we perceive or portray groups of people.

Geeky Mom

http://geekymom.blogspot.com/

teacher, wife, and mother.

See Jane Compute

http://scienceblogs.com/seejanecompute/

professor working towards tenure, wife, and mom

Yay for kind of connecting with some role models.

I was making tea at one of the coffee breaks today when I overheard a couple of professors talking to each other. One was saying how excited he was that his wife just got tenure, and how he taught at one school, she taught at another, and they were living somewhere about equidistant from the two. The other then said something like, "That's like me and my husband." And that made me smile. I'm forever worried about achieving work-life balance and trying to figure out what it looks like for me to be a professor somewhere and my husband to be working somewhere else and for there to be kids involved in there somewhere. But apparently, lots of people are doing it and are being fairly successful at it. I don't have a clear model of it to work from but at least I know that what I want has to be possible.

All right. Good night. Last day of the conference tomorrow.

appropriate for a conference attendance blog post

i am for serious going to use this template one day.

I got rejected from the IBM summer internship I applied for today. It was a quick rejection (I submitted earlier this week), at least they didn't prolong things. Oh well, I mostly wanted to stay home and do nothing all summer anyhow :)

In other news, my family is going to Alaska this summer for a bit over a week to celebrate my parents' 25th anniversary. I'm sure it'll be beautiful and all, and I look forward to the time spent with them...but we're going to be traveling in an RV while we're there and I don't know how I feel about being in such close quarters with them. I guess I'll have to get over it because that's what it looks like we're doing. And I'm not going to whine about it because I know how important it is to my parents for us to do this together and to enjoy it.

Today's a snow day. When I came out of my software engineering meeting, there were already a couple inches of snow on my car. Jason, Andrew, and I had a short snowball fight, then I went back to the apartment. Patrick & I went out and walked in it, then Bethany, Patrick, & I made apple cider and watched an episode of House together. We found out class was cancelled. I called home to let Mom know, and was getting sad because both my sisters were home and I wasn't. Well, Dad came out and brought me home. So now I'm here, and happy to be here.

I'm having such a hard time with homesickness lately. I know it makes no sense; I'm 20 minutes away most of the time. But I'm just thinking about how much things change next year. I've signed my academic year and summer away for a graduate assistantship, and I'm realizing that this is for real. I don't really want to move forward and be as independent as I'll have to be. I like it here, and in a whole lot of ways I think I'd like it even better if I could just go back home and be 17 again or something. As hard as I try to see opportunities and be excited, I am more terrified than anything. But I'm working through it and I'm trusting that I'll be ready for things when they come.

All right, it's bedtime.