adventure

Hey! I've got some adventures to tell you about! (mostly because I don't have much else to write about)

First of all, no classes on Fridays or Mondays gives me plenty of time for adventuring when I''m not reading what seems like hundreds of books or banging my head against the wall because I have no idea what I believe. So, between classes on Thursday, my roommates and I went on a little mountain biking excursion just to find lots of trees fallen over on the trail and a splattering of pine needles that made the wheels just spin and spin so we couldn't get very far. We all had a good fall...with battle wounds to show. The downhill ending was splendid. So exhilarating.

Yesterday, after chapel, one of my professors, and about 5 of us students cleared the trail of fallen trees. Chain saw, axe, rolling trees, knocking trees down...all good...and good for the earth too, I promise. Then after lunch, instead of taking that trail mountain biking, the prof and maybe 7 of us students decided to drive up maybe a thousand feet and take a trail from there back to camp. After driving through snow, we realized the trail we would be riding on would be more or less covered with snow...but we went anyway. So, we ended up kind of walking our bikes several miles through the snow, and trying to ride whenever we had 20 feet of dirt. At least we could all that at the absurdity of it all. BUT...once again, we had a thrilling downhill ending to the ride. (and more battle wounds to show!)


Ok...so those sound kind of lame now...but they were fun...

today was a fantastic day...and I felt like writing why.

First, I woke up at my usual time...6 am. I love getting up early here, well I love getting up early all the time, but it is especially nice here because most everyone sleeps in later than that, so I have some time alone in the quiet. BUT, today the sun was out, which is more exciting than you think because the sun hasn't been out in days (maybe even weeks...yea, let's go with weeks). So, I cleaned up the place a little (okay, a lot. art journals were due today, so a mess was made all through the night), ate some breakfast then practiced for chapel worship.

Ahh....then the infamous Dating Chapel by Tom, our art professor and "campus pastor"...it was whatever though (full of wisdom, though. a wise man of God, for sure)...I basically agreed with him. Had necessary conversations in the sun, on the roof with a friend. Then, ahaha...a climax of my day...a beautiful bike ride around the lake. I forgot how much I love to ride a bike. But, riding a bike in the mountains is oh so different from anything else. Uphill, downhill, trees, sky, mountains, water, the cold air blowing, warm sun...so freeing. Played some disc golf and ate dinner. Then, another important thing, I filled out an application to work as a backpack guide during the summer at the camp I live at right now (sorry if this is a surprise for family members...I can tell you more later, if you want) if my Summer Plan A falls through. Basically, I would just do what makes me feel most alive all summer long! We'll see...

Then, we played a game in the dark. It was called something or another. Fugitive? maybe. Anyway, I chased people through the forest, trying to tag them with my flashlight. I got scraped up on my knees--I love when that happens. I feel like a little kid again.

So now you know just about everything I did today. I bet that's exactly what you wanted to hear. sorry...I just needed to tell someone how wonderful of a day it was.
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I always get this feeling after a month or so of knowing people. It is a terrible feeling. For the first month, usually people start to like me and want to know me...but then I get so nervous around this time that I just get boring and no one will like me anymore. They will either get bored or annoyed with me...at least that's how I feel. Meh... doesn't feel to good. Not too bad either though. I can deal.


My blogs have been sub par lately. I have a plan to make them better.

Since lately I cannot think of what to write, I will start writing various things about myself, my current life, or things I am thinking that people reading this may or may not be interested in. So, here goes.

Something not so interesting to me...My life right now includes a class called Plenary. The word, plenary, is somehow connected to the word "fullness". This word is sometimes heard at conferences and such to describe something that everyone must attend. At school, every student must attend it (every student being all 36 of us). Its purpose is to connect what I am learning in all my classes, teaching a "Christian perspective of truth and life"....meh, this explanation sucks. I am taking a bunch of Humanities courses (which I might explain as classes that delve into the question of what it means to be human). The goal of all this, this type of learning, is to make me a seeker of truth in order to honor God in order to make me a better lover of wisdom, of God.

(my roommate, Michelle, just told me to write about her because she says, "I'm interesting. I mean, I freakin' live with you, people should know about me. Tell them I'm folding my laundry". So interesting...folding laundry.)

Something n my mind the past 2 days: Do I agree with protestant doctrine? Catholic doctrine is looking much more like truth to me than the doctrine I have grown up believing without ever doubting. Do we have free will (Catholicism) or is all the work in salvation done by God (protestantism--no free will/predestination)? If the idea of God is innate (as Descartes proved), then Aquinas' idea of God being revealed through reason (which happens within) seems much more believable than Luther's argument the God's will is exclusively revealed in the bible (something external). Okay, this is starting to look more like the paper I need to write for tomorrow than a blog. sorry. (by the way, all that stuff just written is just a thought process...not my actual beliefs or even an accurate understanding of those philosophies/theologies).
I guess I am thinking how easily I jumped into believing all that the church told me without any reasoning/questioning behind it. I just think how much stronger my argument for believing in God would be if I had first doubted if there was a God, doubted that phrase "personal relationship". ahhh, I need to stop this now... stopping. now.

a terrible post with a terrible title.

meh...I feel like I should write something...but I don't really have words to explain anything right now. If I did write, it would probably end up being very much like a history of the past week of my life...and you don't want to hear this: I went backpacking. in the snow. in Yosemite. it was good.

so maybe I'll come up with something better later.

oh, I do have something to write about, but now I have to read and read and read and write before tomorrow. and eat breakfast.

this was a terrible post.