It's Like I've Gone Insane

I was wearing my favorite ever boyfriend jeans yesterday. You know, these ones:



It was beautiful out. My students were wearing shorts. I was taking Lizzy for super long walks just to be outside.

Today, it looks like this:



Seriously, guys. The slippery walks WERE hard to walk on.

In my head, I know that it's still January and that I should just be glad there was a day when I could break out those comfy jeans. Unfortunately for most of you, my head is not in control of my emotions, my thought processes, or most of my reactions/decisions. And the part of me that's in charge of all that is screaming "WHY ISN'T IT JULY ALREADY???"

I'm pretty sure January has lasted for at least 63-87 days. It cannot possibly be only 27 short days since December. It cannot. Because December was months and months ago.

Lizzy and I will be locking ourselves in the apartment until it stops snowing. For good. So probably not til June. Or July. My students can probably fend for themselves.

Beauty and the Beast

Katherine and Jenn and I went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D last night. Which was, of course, amazing.

Though I do feel bad for the 8 other people in the theater, because we were squealing and giggling and singing and drinking soda out of buckets. Also, there were some previews that were really funny, and then a short film about Tangled (the Rapunzel Disney movie, which was, by the way, also amazing). Jenn and I were laughing hysterically during all of these, and I think I snorted once or ten times.

It's interesting watching one of your favorite childhood movies as an adult. Because you pick up on all sorts of things that are fairly sketchy. For instance, a LOT of the women in that town Belle lived in were sporting some serious cleavage.

Also, if you are listening to the lyrics in Gaston's "This Is Why You Should Love Me" song (which I just titled, because I don't actually know the title), he is even more horrible than we thought. Apparently every last inch of him is covered in hair. He gives us a little glimpse, but Katherine and Jenn and I were throwing up into our popcorn at the thought. One of his bragging points is "expectorating," which means "to discharge matter from the throat or lungs by coughing or hawking and spitting." Ew. Also, he decorates with antlers.

What a catch.

We also had a lengthy discussion about the Disney princesses and princes. Specifically, that Belle is obviously the greatest. Hands down. But that she got stuck with the ugliest prince. People get all up in arms about how the moral is that if you love someone they'll turn into a handsome prince or something, but people. Have you LOOKED at that prince? He and Belle have the exact same hair. From behind, it'd be hard to tell the difference. Also, light shoots out of his toes. Which is never okay.

Katherine and Jenn both argued for Prince Eric, but I say Prince Philip. Either way, what we know is that they have names, which is more for Beast/Prince, and both of them seem to understand the value of good hair. Who's your favorite prince?

In conclusion, go see Beauty and the Beast. It's fun to be a kid again.

(P.S. I tried (not very hard) to find pictures of the Disney princes to show you. I was horrified (and laughing a lot) to find the only ones were of the Disney Princes as Chippendale strippers. I'm not kidding.)

Case of the Mondays

I've been trying for hours to come up with something useful or important or even interesting for you to read. I've had fleeting thoughts of posts about Lizzy to posts about how I finally started watching Downton Abbey last night.

The thing is, I'm exhausted. Life has caught up with me and I'm tired. I've got some weird form of insomnia that makes me unable to get to sleep before midnight, sometimes later, even though I have to wake up early in the morning. And I can't seem to focus on things, which makes teaching interesting.

I don't know what exactly happened that hit me like this. Things are going well, for the most part, so it's not like I've had some big crisis or traumatic event. Sometimes I think maybe it's because I haven't gotten a break or a vacation in over a year. But then I think, "I know LOTS of people who haven't had a break or a vacation in over a year and they don't seem to be quickly wearing down." So maybe it's not that, or maybe it is and I just really need some quality beach time.

Yesterday, in hopes of cheering myself up, I figured out how many days it is until exciting things. All the countdowns were really high, though, so I ended up being more sad than happy.

And while I'm not necessarily running around full of joy and good thoughts, I wouldn't say I'm sad. It's not like depression. It's just an extreme weariness. A tiredness that sleep can't help.

It's a case of the Mondays that has lasted for about a month.

Hopefully something will give. I'll finally get a good night's sleep, or maybe it'll just be unseasonably warm for the rest of the winter.

Thank You, LFO

The other day, I decided to just put my iPod on shuffle. Not on a specific playlist, just the whole thing. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but see, a while ago my friends and I were being very nostalgic about 90s music. Not good 90s music. The boy band, bubblegum pop kind of 90s music. And somehow, I ended up downloading some...interesting songs.

Like Summer Girls by LFO.

Do you remember that song? It was THE summer song (since we were all still pretty sad that Will Smith's Summertime was getting old), and all the girls just loved it. I was in high school, so I blame bad judgment. I also wore those tattoo necklaces and regularly put glittery butterfly clips in my hair. Anyway, at some point in high school I actually bought the cassette. Did you know that Summer Girls is BY FAR their best song? Even in high school I quickly realized the rest of the music on that tape really, really sucked.

(By the way, can you remember those lyrics? I remembered some, but I looked them up. Here's the full song. What we really need to discuss is how horrifically bad they are. "Hip hop marmalade spic and span." Hip hop marmalade? Like the jam? I mean, jelly? WAS THAT WHAT YOU WERE GOING FOR? That this is a hip hop JAM? OMG. Also, what's with the random pop culture references? "Macauley Culkin wasn't home alone" and "Michael J Fox was Alex P Keaton" aren't necessarily romantic.)

Anyway, this song came on my iPod while I was driving to work, and I literally lost vision for awhile because I was laughing so hard I was crying. And then I got really excited to go home and watch the video (which was MUCH worse than I remembered--I had totally forgotten about Big Teeth Man who mostly just looks like he's going to assault you), and while I did that, the list of videos on the side were just calling my name.

For example: Do you remember 3LW (which apparently stands for 3 Little Women. Which is better than what LFO stands for. Lyte Funkie Ones. You can't make this stuff up.) and their song?

Or O-Town? Specifically, Ashley Angel (for those of you who had better taste in high school, or are not of the generation, that's a dude)?

But guys. I remember all these mostly with disdain. This is not good music. Though, neither is most of what gets played on the radio today. HOWEVER, I was then confronted with something special. Magical, even.

2gether.

Ah, yes. The MTV mockumentary band. Now that, dear friends, is good music.

"I know my calculus. It says you + me = us..."

Next week, I'll do something to restore your faith in my judgment. For now, let's just all laugh.

In Unrelated News...

Hello and welcome back to not so serious topics. I'd talk about serious topics, but I've been trying to figure out how to teach Theological Method in one day (instead of, I don't know, an entire semester), so all I see right now is the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Oh, and my official "nerd card."

Thus, a list!

1. Today, Wikipedia, among many others, is shutting down their site to protest the SOPA/PIP acts. You can certainly click on any of the links those sites have up, but here is an article that goes to great lengths to explain it. Basically, I have to side with the Bloggess when I say I don't support it because I don't think dogs should have weapons. But you can go here to sign the petition to end SOPA/PIP. Do it. It's good for you.

2. I taught my first class yesterday! I mean, my first college class. I have taught other classes before. Anyway, it went well, I think. My students may disagree, but they laughed at my jokes (I'm almost positive at least half were real laughs) and they participated in our mini discussions. Most importantly, no one walked out. At one point, a girl got up to throw something away and I was absolutely convinced she was walking out. I literally stopped mid-sentence and stared at her. It was awkward.

3. Have you all been watching The Bachelor? No? Just me? Well, I'm going to talk about it anyway. Monday night, one of the girls I KID YOU NOT said, "On a scale of one to ten, I'm going to throw up." Now, you may or may not have known me long enough to know the phase I had when I liked to quote Gymclass Heroes when they said, "On a scale of one to awesome, I'm the sh*t." I have these things to say on the topic of comparing the two sayings:
a) On a scale of one to awesome, being the sh*t is completely rational. Because the sh*t may, in fact, be correlated to an 8. Or a 12, even.
2) On a scale of one to ten, throwing up is not completely rational. Throwing up is not another term for 5. Or even 7. I know that 7 eight 9, though I did not know that my third favorite elementary school joke would ever be used in an argument, but I do not think that 9 then threw up 10 and made this saying logical.
III) I am deeply, deeply concerned that a woman who is currently working on her PhD made the decision that she should not only be on the Bachelor, but that she should actually say "a bridge is connecting two opposites." I agree with Knox McCoy when I say I do not believe she should ever be eligible to receive her doctorate.

4. I know this is my second reference to my class, but guys, I made a reference to Dogma. Specifically, this guy


5. On Sunday, I was rollin with Ant and E (those are his words, friends, not mine. Mine would be "I went around Denver with Anthony and Erika. Also, I'm very white.") in Denver. We were doing research for Anthony's book (which is going to be pretty fantastic, so you should read it. You know, when it's done.), and suddenly, Anthony says, "Oh, no!" Because, dear friends, he had just driven over a squirrel. This conversation ensued:
Anthony: I think I just hit that squirrel! Oh, man, I totally did!
Erika: What are you doing?
Anthony: I'm going back to hit it again!
Erika: Why???
Anthony: Because it's not dead! I need to put it out of its misery!
Erika: I'm sure it's dead, Ant. Just keep driving.
Anthony: No! It's not! It's still quivering! Seriously, I think it just got up and performed the monologue from Hamlet. I just don't know where it got that skull from...
Erika: Anthony, you cannot go back to hit it. If you're going to go back, at least kill it so that we can preserve the meat and make squirrel stew later.
Anthony: We don't live in Ohio, E.
Erika: Oh, you're right. Coloradans don't do that. My bad.
Anthony: Okay, I'm going to hit it again...here goes.
Kristy: On a scale of one to ten, I'm going to throw up.

I hope you all have a great Wednesday! I'll be making power point presentations for class. There will definitely be explosions in it, and probably some clips from LOST.

Good Theology

I know, it's been weeks of silly, light hearted posts. Sometimes I'd pretend like I was being serious, but it was a rouse. Sadly, school starts up this week (for CCU anyway), which means as of tomorrow I am officially a COLLEGE PROFESSOR and can no longer be silly and frivolous. I will now be using unnecessarily big words, I will only talk about theology and the German theologians you've never heard of, and I will be wearing a LOT of tweed.

Just kidding. :)

But seriously, today's post is a bit more serious than usual. Because I am a theologian, and thus I have a responsibility to address something when it starts to bother me. Maybe I'm using the word "responsibility" fairly loosely, but whatevs.

If you're on facebook, or the internet at all, you've probably seen that video Jesus > Religion. It's the hottest video since last week's hot video about Tebowing. Or something.

I had to watch it and think about it for awhile before I could really form an opinion. What the speaker is saying is interesting, and he's extremely talented, which ropes me in and makes me want to believe him. And I think that some of his points are valid, some are intriguing, and some really need to be talked about. But as a whole, I came to the conclusion that I didn't agree. I felt like his overall message was missing something.

I used to very loudly exclaim that I was a "Christ-follower" NOT a "Christian." I was all about telling people I loved Jesus, but I wasn't religious. Because I felt the church had done a lot of shady things and I was fresh out of college so I liked being all anarchist and whatnot. Plus, you know, I have an English degree, so I'm all about raging against the machine (wait...that's a band...that I like...whatever) and protesting and such. I wanted to live my life free of the "restraints" of what I saw as the Big Bad Religion.

Then, for reasons too complicated to explain, I went to seminary.

In case you're not aware, seminary is where they train PASTORS. Yup. Like, work in a church pastors. And other such religious people.

That's when I started going a little crazy dying my hair and getting whale tattoos and whatnot to make sure that EVERYONE knew I WAS NOT RELIGIOUS. I even wrote a whole paper about how I don't like church. For my professor who was a pastor. (I got an A. Take that.)

The thing is, I'm still not what one would call a "follower" of social norms. I like social norms. Without them we're all of a sudden living in Kevin Costner's The Postman and I have to start wearing fringe. I am not actually an anarchist, either, I just like to tell people I am. But what I learned in my time at seminary is the difference between what I was calling "religion" and what the Bible tells us about.

My friend Denise is pretty good with Old Testament things and is very smart, and so she usually finds good articles before I do. (Also because she's not a slacker like me.) So she posted this to facebook, which is a response to the Jesus > Religion video. I read it, and for the most part, I agree with it. (I never fully agree with anything. It's my leftover anarchistness. But also, I really don't agree with ALL of that article. Such as his understanding of sola fide, which I can get into a long discussion about later.)

That's about when I decided to write you an unreasonably long post about the video. So you can go blame Denise or that other blogger.

When we say that we hate religion, or when we say that Jesus came to "abolish religion," what we're doing is reading the Bible 100% through our cultural lense. We're looking at what religion is today, or simply our own perception of what religion is, and we're making a judgment about religion for over 2,000 years. We're also saying that we, regardless of our degrees, IQ, or occupation, are much smarter than 2,000 years of theologians who spent their life researching what we have made a judgment about in 10 minutes.

I am not that smart. And no offense, but I doubt you are either.

When I was in my Theological Methods class, we discussed the Creeds. Specifically the Nicene Creed and the Apostle's Creed. These creeds have been passed down for millenia, and have been substantial in shaping the Church and the practices and beliefs of the Christian life. They are very important (so go read them at least). But one student argued, "They are not the Bible. We should not place so much importance on them."

I understand where this student was coming from. Our #1 source for theology should be the Bible, because that's God's revelation of himself to us. However, it's really hard to understand the Bible. Firstly, because we are reading translations, so some words are different and may not fully convey what the original text said. Second, because the Bible was written a long, long, long time ago in a different country. These people hadn't even heard of FRIENDS or LOST or any of those shows I accidentally base my life on! I know, I'm sad for them, too. But they were coming from a totally different place, and we tend to forget that they weren't exactly like us. Thirdly, God is complicated, y'all. I know, because I took a whole class just called "Doctrine of God" and it was REALLY HARD. And I left pretty sure I didn't even remember how to spell God. Which is sad, cause it's three letters.

Luckily, God didn't JUST give us the Bible. He also gave us the ability to read, study, research, and learn. He then gave some people A LOT of those things, and they spent literal YEARS doing that. (I. Would. Die.) They sat in libraries, studying, reading, learning. Talking to each other. Arguing. Some even DIED over this stuff.

What I get really mad about is how lazy we've become. We are a culture over-saturated in information, with the ability to read ANYTHING WE WANT. So we read Harry Potter. (Don't worry. I love Harry Potter. You can, too.) We watch tv, and we read 10 paragraph articles on the internet. Because bullet points are, obviously, the best way to learn. (Sarcasm...) We ignore all those people who came before us. Those men and women who, from numerous cultures and time periods and difficulties and churches, spent their whole lives trying to figure this stuff out and then wrote it down so we could read and argue and learn, too.

My favorite paragraph in this article, (this one...seriously, go read it, and then ask me about sola fide so we can talk about it, and anything else you want) is the very last one. He says, "So, please don't get your theology from the internet." Which is true. Please don't get your theology from me, either. Get it from Martin Luther, who hated what the church had become and decided to DO something about it. Get it from Karl Barth or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who both lived in Germany during Hitler's reign. Bonhoeffer died in a concentration camp for his beliefs, so he's got some serious stuff to say. Get your theology from Augustine, who struggled through a serious bad boy past to become one of the most influential theologians of all time.

I know you don't have tons of time to read up on all this. I also know that Karl Barth wrote a 13 volume systematic theology, so it's not light reading. But I also know that there are pastors out there with masters or even doctorates in this stuff. There are others, too, who have studied and know a bunch. And I know that the good ones (like me, hehe) would die of happiness to sit down and talk with you about ANY of this.

If you don't know where to start, or if you just want good recommendations on books, PLEASE ask me. I have a decent starting point of knowledge, and I'm friends with about 20 people who have doctorates in this, so I can find out whatever you need. And if you're totally intimidated by any of this, don't be. Because what Jesus wanted was for his people (that's all of us, btw) to come together and be a body. Not just individual people walking around doing their own thing. Some of us are fingers, some are ears, some are livers. We weren't meant to do this on our own.

In short...nope...long, that was really, really long...that's what I learned in seminary. I had some bad experiences with church. I knew people who had REALLY BAD experiences in church. I also have a personality that screams "I WANNA BE UNIQUE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!" so I get not wanting to identify as "organized religion." But what I learned was that life like that is small and, no offense, ignorant. So be part of the body. Embrace the Church. Love Jesus AND religion.

It's Friday!

Oh, Rebecca Black. I just have no words.

That's not true at all. I have words. Words like "ridiculous" and "freaking hilarious."

It's Friday, guys! Guess what that means? It means a lot of things, but right now it means I'm going to write you a list! Because it's what I do best.

1. This particular Friday is extra exciting because not only is it Brunch Day with Ashley and Denise, but it's Go See Mission: Impossible 4 Day. The middle part of the day is Get Your Lesson Plans Done, Worst College Professor Ever Day. That part is less exciting.

2. Tomorrow is the Bronco game. I am...terrified. Because we're probably going to lose, but I wish we wouldn't. I am doing all the things I can think of to please the football gods, but since they don't really exist, it's rather difficult. I only know one source of comfort to turn to in times of trouble like these.

Sigh...I miss him.

3. My New Year's resolution this year was to instate a laissez faire attitude about many things, which really lasted about .02 seconds because then Matt called me with Other People's Drama (Matt and I love Other People's Drama as long as we don't have to touch it with a ten foot pole), so my second resolution was to stop being fat. (Somehow "stop being fat" sounds easier than "get skinny.") So far, the diet is going exceptionally well, I must say! I haven't even cheated yet! However, the working out part is less good because my gym membership expired. And I keep walking past my apartment's workout center and thinking, "There are three people in there. That is too many. I'll come back when no one is there." And then I don't go back.

4. Lorelai Gilmore is still my hero, but now she pretends her name is Sarah. But it's okay, because I really love Parenthood, too. But still, I love Lorelai a lot, and when I was trying to see if YouTube would recommend something to me other than Buffy videos, I found this gem of Lorelai and Ellen playing Pictionary. This solidified in my mind that my ultimate goal is actually to become Lorelai.

5. Approximately one person will care about this, but guys, it's the FINAL SEASON of One Tree Hill. I watched the first episode of it today and I have things I need to say. Things mostly revolving around the words "what?" and "seriously, what?" It was easily the most confused I've been during a one hour drama, and I own the entire series of LOST. The episode started with a bunch of people talking about murder, a building on fire, and Hailey looking at a dead body. WHAT? And then, the rest of the episode DID NOT REFERENCE any of it! I imagine that's some future thing going on, but this is not how OTH normally operates. It makes me long for the days of Lucas Scott narrating the show with some great literary quotes and the massive amounts of basketball. I can only imagine what Joel McHale will say...

The rest of my brain is filled with whether or not I should pretend to be a student and then freak out my class when I stand up and start lecturing. Or if I should lecture with a British accent and then slowly phase it out. Or if I should go buy some tweed...

Happy Friday the 13th!!