Toilet Ethics

I can never understand the people who switch to breathing through the mouth when faced with foul air. Does the mouth filter alien flakes like the nose? No, only noses have designer hair follicles to trap the flakes. The mouth ingests, consumes, chews, speaks and kisses. It houses the miraculous instrument we call the tongue. An organ both strong and tender, ever moist and always naked. It bequeaths us one of life's greatest pleasures: the delight of food and savory drink. What goodness! No one should ever adulterate it with foul air! Grimace, scowl and holler if you have to, but leave the breathing and filtering for the nose!

Aren't You Glad You're a Comm Major?

The study of symbols, compared to other fields, is quite unique. How does one study something which has never not been? We have never existed without symbols; we are thrown into it from the moment we are birthed. I liken the average human's perception of symbolism to a fish's perception of water. Are we not prone to ignore that which is commonplace? Not to further complicate things, but to have meaningful discourse about symbols requires that we use symbols. Surely this would pose at least some problems, considering that the central doctrine of symbol-using is its arbitrariness and its lack of true clarity. That is why there exists the never-ending re-creation of rhetoric.

You must appreciate this then. Poet I.A. Richards was able to thrust aside the ordinariness of the concept of language to arrive at this profound statement: it is impossible to truly say what we mean. This is Richard's brilliant claim: words, like signs, point to a thing but is not the thing itself. This seemingly trivial statement should not be taken lightly.

Thus said, human communication is potentially a minefield of misunderstanding. Our world and our experiences confirm it. Both the encoding and decoding processes risk drastic mal-interpretation or mal-translation.

Instances of genuine shared meaning between sender and receiver turn out to be flukes or perhaps strokes of divine intervention.

Do This Without Ceasing

I'm here in my room listening to some Matt Kearney right after the weekly prayer group at our house- and my heart's quite content. I've come to enjoy this gathering very much. Sure, usually before it starts I feel really reluctant about meeting people. It's always easier to stick to myself. Easier to just be alone. (Not better, but much easier. And what became of my original demeanor? I've mellowed so much over the years). And besides, there's some kind of self-imposed expectation to make friends feel at home... in my home. Or being expected to lead the actual prayer time.

But as I was saying, Wednesday night is a pleasurable experience. The life of following Jesus with fellow messed-up friends... is a, um... blessed one. It has meaning and it makes sense. (I'm having difficulty finding appropriate adjectives to describe this). Let's try: a "peace that transcends all understanding." Or maybe "a feeling you get when you have done something very good." Not good in the sense that you've just done something moral, but good in the sense that you know you have done something you were made to do. Something God created us for. Love.

Call it anything you want. Prayer meeting, prayer group, hangout time. I'm just glad Carson suggested that weekly prayer meeting. I greatly encourage you to be a part of one. If you cannot find one, start one. If you're the only Christian in the area, start one.

Fear

I fear my Honors Project. I fear the expanse of the topic. I fear that I might be found out. I fear being ridiculed because of the shallowness of my intellect. I hate mediocrity but I am afraid mediocrity may be all that I can offer.

Tom Wright on the Bible and Christian Imagination

"Because through art, through music, through literature, through character, we are constantly creating a world in which it is possible to believe things that you can't believe any other how. When you hear a great piece of music, you realize your mind and imagination have been enlarged, and you can think thoughts that you couldn't have thought other how. And when you go through a great art exhibition, you see things which make you realize the world is a different place."

"And if we're not doing that, the world squeezes us down into its own mold, and as Paul says in Romans, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its own mold. Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discover and practice God's good and perfect and acceptable will." We need every single art that God has given us in order to be able to do that. The Bible is there to rekindle the Christian imagination after the long winter of secularism and rationalism has pushed the arts to the edge and said, "Actually, let's just get on and be functional and brutal."

More than Brutal Functionality

I am now convinced that man cannot live on bread alone. Man cannot live without beauty. We claim the role of creatures of reason, and yet are still driven by emotion. We, the seekers of pleasure, more and better pleasure, recognize excellence whenever we come across it. It seems that this yearning for beauty is nothing less than divine. The Fall brought us death in many ways, yet by God's providence, our capacity for beauty lived on.

Beauty is the reason you avoid repeating words or sentence structures in essays. It is why I use different words to describe the same thing. It's why we paint the insides of our houses. It is why dancers dance, writers write, painters paint, and poets pome. It explains exactly why we find song lyrics posted on blogs even if near no one gets it.

Art makes all of us do crazy (courageous) things, but what can we do? Man absolutely cannot live on bread alone.

If you can and are willing, will you say a quick prayer for my interview in Kansas City tomorrow? I will be taking a train and then walking one mile to the place.

So my train was 20 minutes late, but fortunately I was not late for the interview. No decision was made; there's more waiting to follow. After that, Meg and I met up for a date. She looked beautiful. We went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition and then to the Mango Room for food.

Just in Good Fun

During our date at the Mango Room, we ordered something called CWB Ribs. Meg ventured a reasonable guess of what CWB might stand for: Cooked With Bone. I thought, "Hey, that's very logical- I've never eaten ribs which have been de-boned." I resolved to ask our waiter what CWB stood for.

"Crazy White Boy," he said, "...because our cook is a crazy white boy."
Okay, good. I thought for a moment there he was calling me crazy. No, that doesn't make sense- he can't be referring to me, because I'm not white.

CWBs are proliferating. Just yesterday I scoured through Relevant Magazine and I realized that CWBs are all over the place, specifically the 'rocker' CWB type. You know? The kind who jams out and is part of a five-piece band hoping to make it big, but who scoffs at all things un-indie? I don't get why they bother taking glamor shots of themselves anyway. To me, it would make more sense to hire just one group of CWB-rockers to model and then exchange the band names. It would be so much more economical and time-saving, don't you think?

Here. I'll even give you a complimentary CWB recipe: 18-28 year-old male, long straight hair, tight t-shirt, girl jeans, black hair-dye, cheap mascara, a few handy silver rings (for your finger, ear, nose or lip). And don't forget this one last important piece: don't smile. Don't you ever smile when your picture is taken.

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