Maybe a Little Cryptic

Psalm 127:1-2 (NLT for a change):

Unless the LORD builds a house,
  the work of the builders is wasted.
Unless the LORD protects a city,
  guarding it with sentries will do no good.
It is useless for you to work so hard
  from early morning until late at night,
anxiously working for food to eat;
  for God gives rest to his loved ones.


Our little group at church has to remember that this summer, with everything we try to do. Let us throw ourselves into it. But let's not forget for a moment that we're the hands here, not the brain.

And let's not forget Jesus telling us that the poor will always be with us. There's plenty we can do, materially and spiritually alike. But if two or three or five people could fix everything forever, just by working hard and wanting it enough, by now we'd have seen more cities turned around. I wonder if I thought, in junior high, that all that was missing was workers. I wonder if I thought that apathy caused poverty, that it was just a question of whether structures were in place, just a question of lack of money.

I keep thinking of the semester that Charles and I graded for Schneider. I watched her try to teach 120 kids at once, read their papers, and almost despaired at the idea that maybe teaching was long stretches of disappointment alleviated by the occasional bright spot, the fraction of kids who care enough and manage somehow to learn (assuming always, which one can't always do in college or anywhere else, that the material's even worth learning).

I never realized that helping people is, in the long term, probably always like that. I kept thinking that a better organization would solve my problem - InterVarsity, Mercy Ships. But these days, looking around, I'm not so sure. I've come to believe that all service is like this - slow work toward change, few real takers. Every big thing built on a million little things. What God's view looks like from eternity, I can't yet say.

But when I look at my life, the work that I do and the benefits that I have, the friends around me and the possibilities, I sometimes marvel. I don't have the depth of friendship that I had in junior high or early college. I don't have the certainty of faith that I had then, either.

But increasingly this is the life I've always wanted. It isn't as breathtaking as I expected. The knowledge of its importance, to what degree it even is important, doesn't infuse me and make everything feel like spring winds, the way I guess I thought it might. But it's real and, though clumsy and not representative of anyone's best effort every day, it's right. And today I rejoice at the wonder, little by little, of God's master plan.

!

I missed this blog's eight-year anniversary yesterday because I was busy grading papers and playing trivia. So here goes: it's been eight years. Crazy, huh?

For this next year, I will try to write real posts instead of what are increasingly-often essentially just blogged-out tweets.

Well, anyway, I'll try to try.

ugh.

That's all. I just wanted to say it into the not-quite-void. Tomorrow will probably be better.

*whew*

So some of them came out a little overinflated - next semester I'll have to spell things out better for both myself and them, and I've come up with some good ways to teach grammar so that I can be more stringent about grading it (since in the real world they have their professional lives to think about) - but the grades for this semester are done. They look like CB's, at least what I imagine hers are like based on how she hinted that they tended to look: almost evenly split between A's and B's (well, those ranges, anyway), and then a cliffdrop into F's for the people who were missing major assignments (mathematically it just didn't work out for them - although my plagiarist nearly passed, and I actually wonder if maybe he should have, repugnant as the idea is to me). Which is to say, no one passed with less than an 83. I wonder whether that's a good, bad, or indifferent thing.

Anyway, it's done, thank heavens, and I'm going to go out and do stuff and then play trivia. The end.

!!!!!

I found my selected-computer-folders CD from 2005! The one that had so much of what I thought I'd lost forever after my old computer died and the Circuit City guy erased my secret folders when he fixed it! I have it! I have it! It's back! It's back!

So I've spent half the night reading, reading, reading stuff I'd written (or AIM conversations I'd been part of), much of it in high school. And carefully not reading some of the stuff I know is probably lame.

I have to say, not to be self-aggrandizing, but for an eleventh-grader, some of it is dang good. One of the best is about an RIT hockey game, a really big one. Next year it'll've been a decade since it happened - ruddy crud. But maybe I'll post it up sometime.

If You're Familiar with Either of These, You'll Know How Funny this Exchange Is

Reverend Matt, trying to get Reverend Anne to watch 24 with him: "This is a story about the search for true love, babe. After he shoots this guy, [Jack and the girl] go away for a romantic weekend away."

Anne, later, trying to get Matt to watch Babette's Feast with her: "But, sweetie, after the dinner, the tanks roll in and all the old ladies shoot up the town. It's actually a huge battle!"


So my plan to do anything productive past this midafternoon - including, but not limited to, riding my bike and grading the last essays - which at least some of my students would like to receive back on Monday, but which, since they only turned them in on Wednesday, they very probably will not - was ruined by what was accidentally an epic over-three-hour nap. And clearly I have done nothing since waking up at eight PM except go on Facebook, start to read Terry Pratchett's Night Watch (I don't believe I've ever read any Terry Pratchett, but Carrie loaned it to me months ago and said I should), which is good so far, and eat and eat. Sigh.

I'm so glad the semester is over in a week. It's ending all right, but I'm still so very, very glad indeed.

Best Geekiest Security Question Ever

Changed some privacy information in the e-mail address I've had since early high school and was surprised at first by my security question (which I just changed so that I can tell this story): What's Drew's middle name?

I stared at it for a second, surprised I'd ask such a thing - have I ever known what my cousin Drew's middle name is? I can give his last name without too much thought, but his middle? It couldn't be him. But what other Drew did I know? The guy who writes Toothpaste for Dinner? But even his last name isn't public, let alone his middle.

And then I realized who I was talking about.

I made the account in, if I remember correctly, ninth grade. Think about what I was obsessed with in ninth grade. And it's totally the kind of secret question I'd write.

For I still, a decade later, remember Ryan Stiles's response in Whose Line is it Anyway?'s game "Scenes from a Hat" to the prompt, "Little-Known Facts About our Host, Drew Carey."

Said Ryan, looking confused, "What kind of a middle name is Allison?"

Bitlet

Ben is playing Disney songs as he practices the guitar. He's just moved from "A Whole New World" into "Hakuna Matata." But who knows, maybe it's a birthday present for Kelly, whose party will be tomorrow night.

(And he's just falsettoed his way through, "When I was a young wartho-o-o-o-og!")

I really don't have anything else to say. I'm gonna go back to grading now, I think.

Small Victory

Today, finding myself with an extra half-hour of class because so many people skived off on their presentations, I led my students in stylistic tweaking, including changing paragraphs that overrely on the verb "is" ("The ice cream shop is on Main Street. There are eighteen flavors. Some of these flavors are...") to ones based in more specific verbs ("Located on Main Street, the ice cream shop offers eighteen flavors, including...")

And by the time class ended, one of my students had rewritten a telegraphic paragraph into something that was so much more lively that I wanted to applaud.

Finally, something I can teach in five minutes, get the writers who need it to grasp it right away, and show the others in a demonstrable way how much of a difference it makes.

I feel oddly humbled, like God gave me that moment as a gift (especially in that I didn't plan to teach that today and that getting my students to participate is often like pulling teeth), and figured that I would record it to show you what else teaching, every once in a while, can be like.