Because Education Wasn't Cutting It

Education today is billed as "the answer" for just about everything.  Low socio-economic status?  Get an education!  Community falling apart?  More money to education!  Freak el nino patterns?  Education!

When education is pushed and pushed and pushed as the solution, as how to achieve a better life, how to equip people to succeed, how to solve societies over-arching problems, how to elected w/ out a real platform, why take an opposite view?

I know christianity tends to run counter culture quite a bit, and they even emphasize enjoying it.  (I'm not knocking it, I do it, the punk movement did it, the civil rights movement did it.  Ok, so maybe the civil rights movement had a point.)  This choice to run upstream in this case, however, perplexes me.

According to WELS, according largely to christians overall, the solution, they key, the magic bullet is not education, but faith.  Faith.  Take it even further, define it a little bit more and you get a "child-like" faith. 

The exact example of a "child-like faith" given this Sunday was a four year old kid who asks their father what the shell of a turtle is for.  The father tells the child that the shell is so that the turtle can fly.  The turtle has only to tuck it’s head and legs into the shell and it metamorphoses into a flying saucer of some sort.

What I hear them saying, right after providing this example:

"isn't it wonderful?  A child doesn't look at their father and say, Dad, that's not true.  No.  that kid will take what dad said and believe it." 

Does this seem dangerous to anybody else?  Not just as given, but also applying this to one's spiritual life.  Strikes me as pretty sketchy.

At some point in life, that child, having not seen any turtles take off in flight will (hopefully) start questioning what their father told them.     We encourage that learning and growth, it's going to happen, it needs to.  The idea that turtles travel by converting into flying saucers is in no way beneficial to the child's growth.

The question is at what point in a christians life does an unquestioning "child-like" faith become detrimental?

It is really really easy to fool or mislead someone who has child-like faith, the ability to learn something and accept it as true. 

"if our reason & understanding contradict the clear word of scripture, then scripture wins.  Hands down."

 If a person believes that the bible is truly the unerring word of God, that it contains no biases, no twisted or accidentally misconstrued ideas or contents, if they believe that the person teaching them is not accidentally changing the message in any way then sure, go for it, have your child-like faith.  That's a pretty big step, at least for me it would be.

I think a large part of the danger comes from the opportunity for biases, for temporary beliefs based on recent activity or events, reactions to culture to be superimposed or adapted to the lives of those learning.  If  the "this is the word, and therefore it is right" logic is applied to anything when does the person become empowered in their own right?

Is it a pick-and-choose situation?  When is a person encouraged to have the child-like faith?  When does the church want you to think for yourself?  What is the criteria for identifying and responding properly in each situation?

Snow Snow Snow!!!

It's snowing!  Snow, snow, snow, snow...  Lots of snow, probably slightly higher than a foot right now.  It's rumored that the snow is going to continue until Tuesday and we are projected to get four feet!  The roads are closed, the mountain I'm sure is rocking, heck who wouldn't be up there for free ski?  Here are some pictures I want to share.

This is my car.  Covered in snow.  It actually got shut in the parking lot today by the plows.  That car's not moving until spring.

This is main street.  When I tell people that I live in Gunnison they always respond with a story about the crazy snow it gets.  This is my first chance to really see a snowstorm like this in action.  I know I'm fully geeking out, but it's cool that there is so much snow  the snowplows are forming a barrier with the snow in the middle of the street.

Trees are falling all over the place.  It's insane.  Not just little limbs but serious tree pieces.  This picture is of part of a huge tree that happened to fall apart while I was walking.  Pretty cool.  I'm glad that it didn't hit the car.

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Crested Butte is getting a lot of snow.  This morning when I checked the snow report they got 20 inches in 24 hours!  I wish I had gear.

In other news, these are my newest thoughts (hair-brained ideas) on/for the future:

Option 1: I save, win, or otherwise legally obtain approximately $6000 and follow through on living and working in New Zealand for a year.

Option 2: Work on a cruise line.  I still get to travel, have a fun job, work recreation and programming, both things I love.

Thoughts?

Written On A Snowflake -OR- Know When to Shred Stuff

I'm at work. Settling down into the front desk, the 80 square feet of space that will be my workplace for the next six hours. Surrounding me is an astonishing amount of holiday decorations. Everything is clearly christmas oriented, but some might be inclined to grant leeway for the attempt at a "Happy Hanukkah" sign and tinsel-ly star of david. Heck, there is even a tree, decorated as only work study students can. All of it gives me a distinctly anti-holiday feeling. What is more annoying are the decorations that refuse to stay put and insist on falling. Particularly the snowflakes. It figures that snowflakes would fall off the ceiling. In yet another attempt to reuse and thereby reduce waste the snowflakes are made of paper taken from the recycling bin.

One of the snowflakes fell off the ceiling. Deciding to pick it up and possibly even hang it back up I lean down, pick it up, and idly look it over as I stand up again. Oh, it's an email. Wait a minute, that is MY NAME on that email. What's going on here?

Intrigued I start to read what I can of the e-mail, inserting likely words where scissors have shaped this document into a crude replica of a snowflake. Turns out, it really is about me, most of it anyway. The recipient is a friend, someone here at the school. The sender is an acquaintance, I know them, have had conversations with them, and have written some correspondence back and forth previously, but not on the topic that they are talking about here.

They are talking about me. They are talking about church. [I have been attending this church, more details later] They are talking about this amazing opportunity, a chance for me to "hear the word of God in all it's truth and purity-straight law and straight gospel, no beating around the bush and no strings attached".  I suspected that this was going on, and really this isn't a big deal.  The big deal, the concern, the minor alarm going off in my head is all about her intentions.  Why is this person approaching this this way? Am I just a mission? Is this one of those "you are my friend and I don't want you to go to hell" things?

Should I talk to them about it? Would it be totally out of line to request to read the pieces of the email that I am not seeing? I would like to see how it ends. This edition anyway.

Why wouldn't you just shred something like that?

A Short Start

I know. I've royally screwed up on blogging lately. Lot of things happening. Lot of things that I should be doing but don't, or just put off, or forget about. Let's face it, this whole updating the world thing just hasn't been high up on my priorities list lately. Oops.

Small updates:

- Thanksgiving was fun. It is quite a shock to recognize that I am not the individual I thought I was. I thought that because I had spent so much time examining who I am, what I do, what distinguishes me from my family that I was an inherently unique person. WRONG. I spent a weekend surrounded by people that looked like me, talked like me, reacted in a similar way to situations, etc., etc., etc. Kind of frightening at times (read: ALL THE TIME).

- I'm turing 25 on Friday. Have plans, we'll see how they work out.

- 75% of my stats class failed the most recent exam. I am in that 75%. We are in big trouble. You know you have a cool prof though when he works out a deal for people to drop the class and still recieve a "W" if they can't hack it. AND he helped organize huge class study sessions until the end of the semester. It's not all roses though. Today he handed out some serious assignments and set exact specifications for the rest of the semester. If these assignments aren't done perfectly on Monday - you're dropped. If you miss a class - you are dropped. Dropped like... something bad. Think of an example yourself.

- I'm really enjoying learning about pedagogy. I even find myself not only comparing teachers, but also looking at departmental views on education and standard practices compared to another department. It's my little geeky thing.

- After hearing one time to often about the six free counseling sessions available at the student health center I think I'm going to take the plunge and check it out. Can't hurt me, right? Might even help. I'm simutaneously touched that my friends are this persistant, and terrified. It sounds horrible, but I don't want to be like my mom.

- I have really really awesome professors.

Well, THAT Sucks

My parents and I don't really get along. That is no surprise to anybody, except maybe my Mom. I'm not sure.

So it's been a little while since the last post. There is a story behind that. Let me see...

A little while ago at Western State it was parents weekend. When I decided to transfer here I didn't really tell my parents. Well, until I sold my car in an effort to acquire one that was more suited to the weather and mountains. Then they found out. I didn't invite them to visit the school with me, didn't get their opinion, none of that. But I have wanted them to see the school. I did want them to see that I was doing well and that I could succeed in an academic environment.

If you ask them, they'll tell you that they have always known that I should succeed. One of their favorite games throughout middle and high school was holding standardized test scores in one hand and my report card in the other. Moving on in front of the other they would pointedly say, "THIS doesn't match THIS". (standardized test scores were decent)

So I invited them to come up for Parents Weekend. I told them that they should see the school at least once before I graduate.

The first big challenge to this weekend was preparing them for the fact that everyone calls me Alex. See, my name technically isn't Alex, I've just been going by it for the past 5 or 6 years. They don't call me Alex, they don't want others to call me Alex. My dad may or may not have a history of yelling at people (my boss) on the phone when she asked for "Alex". Actually it went pretty well, no freak-outs in that regard at all.

So they come up, see the campus, have a good time. We all go to the football game and right in the middle of the 3rd quarter my mom decides it's a great time to tell me yet again how much she hates the fact that I am "choosing" to be gay and that "I know it's a sin" and how she is "just waiting for me to wake up and realize how much damage I'm doing to myself". She even had the audacity to drag my little brothers and sisters into the equation! She told me that "they hate you for doing this". I couldn't believe it! I did have some pretty good remarks, but those don't need to be posted here.

I don't know why, but for some reason that really hurt. To my core those remarks stung and stuck.

It took me most approximately 5 years to even acknowledge that I was queer. It took longer to be able to say it out loud, longer still to be ok and realize that I can be a good person and queer at the same time. It took separation from my parents, a complete examination of what I believe, why, what I want to do, who I want to be. I re-created my life and I enjoy what I do.

I thought that my parents were getting so much better. I thought that they had made so much progress from when I first told them. Turns out I was wrong.

I don't know what happened. My life, my personality, my identity all came crashing down (seemingly) when my mom said those hateful, hurtful things. I became totally despondent. I was almost the definition of apathy. I went to class, barely. Socially withdrew from everything, stopped caring, stopped working on everything. I barely functioned. I knew that this could kill my semester academically, and I knew that I didn't want that to happen, but I just didn't care.

So now I'm feeling better. I'm attempting to dig myself out of this hole. I'm in big trouble as far as my classes go. I don't know how to tell my profs what happened, why I stopped... well, everything...for so long. Do they need to know? Would they care?

Here is the question: If I had this crazy depressed episode just from a day spent with my mother, what will happen at thanksgiving?