Do not think me gentle because I speak in praise of gentleness, or elegant because I honour the grace that keeps this world. I am a [wo]man crude as any, gross of speech, intolerant, stubborn, angry, full of fits and furies. That I may have spoken well at times, is not natural. A wonder is what it is. (Wendell Berry)

Monday, November 14, 2005

The Day That Nothing Happened

hey... kelly comes back in fifteen days. it's funny to think, but we've been roomates for a couple of months now, but i think we've only lived together for like three days. ive decided that im not gonna capitalize anymore. its a public institution that has far outlived its usefullness.
i couldn't decide what to write, although a new update is way past due. so i figured.. if i cant think of something now, i have to ride the wave of my previous creativity. thats right, were breaking out the old journals.
Friday, November 19, 1999
"Nothing happened. (smiley face drawn in)

let's analyze this. on the nineteenth of november, nineteen ninety nine, nothing happened. i dont know how many times in history absolutely nothing happened, but i trust the journal i wrote when i was thirteen as a historically accurate document. therefore, we have something amazing here. nothing happened. people got up, ate breakfast, went to work/school, had work/school all day, in the middle, they ate an ordinary lunch, probably went to the bathroom during the day, came home, watched tv, ate dinner, watched more tv, and went to sleep. the next day was probably much more exciting and fun. in fact, this november nineteenth, in five days, will be the six year anniversary of that day, the day where nothing happened. it will be a saturday, and i will be in barcelona- so that day of nothingness will obviously not be repeated. but i will celebrate it with dance and song. maybe i'll write a dirge.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Something To Think About

I was listening to a sermon by Ravi Zacharias and he gave this little tidbit of greatness that I want to share with everyone. And yes mom, I will post pictures eventually.

"One of the just men came to Sodom determined to save its inhabitants from sin and punishment. Night and day he walked the streets and markets protesting against greed and theft, falsehood and indifference. In the beginning people listened and smiled ironically. Then they stopped listening; he no longer even amused them. The killers went on killing, the wise kept silent as if there were no just men in their midst. One day a child, moved by compassion for this unfortunate teacher, approached him with these words: 'poor stranger, you shout. you scream. dont you see that it is hopeless?'
'Yes I see that,' said the just man.
'Then why do you go on shouting and screaming?'
'I'll tell you why, little boy. In the beginning I thought I could change man. Today I know I can't. If I still shout today, if I still scream today, it is to prevent man from ultimatly changing me.' " ~Some Jewish Guy whose name I dont remember

very interesting.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Question of the Year

At some point in life one must decide what one is going to do for, well, the rest of it. Some can skate by relatively easily without making many decisions that have an impact beyond the following hour or so, others have their whole life planned out by the time they're twelve. I was the first one. Even my decision to come to Spain was surprisingly not overwhelming because I have the fantastic habit of doing things without regard for the consequences; the consequence of this being the sick nausea I felt all of a sudden when I realized I was on a plane to Madrid and I was about to be in college. I couldn't eat anything for the next two days, had a good cry, and was fine.
I am about to embark on this decision making process once again. I can't decide if I'm supposed to stay in Madrid or double major in theology and Spanish in America or hop off to Morocco to live with the orphans or go home and live unemployed with my mother for the next twenty years. Each has its own pros and cons.
My rationalization for not caring and making a big deal about these decisions is this: I don't even know if the sun will rise tomorrow. Nothing is certain. I could die by the hands of the crazy lady in my building or be run over by a car (gruesome but possible, seeing as though it's almost happened before) or I could all of a sudden develope an affinity for economics or marketing and go that route (please, Lord, anything but marketing!).
In light of these facts, I can tell you exactly where I'll be in a year. Well, there are two options. One, I'll be here, or I'll be somewhere else. If I'm here, no problems. If I'm somewhere else, I will inevitably be in, or will have just gotten over, that state of shock I'm in every time I realize what I have just gotten myself into.
To be honest, I'll most likely be in that state of unbelief that I did it again and I have no idea what I'm in for. In the immortal words of Jesus, "don't worry about tomorrow, because today has worries of its own." Actually, I don't know if that was Jesus who said that, but I know it was in the bible...(trails off into theological discussions about whatever) Anyways, today has worries of its own, like going to bed now because its late, and the excuse I'm gonna use tomorrow when Prof. Matute asks me why I don't have my homework.

"Because the crazy lady in my building ate it."
"I was up till all hours writing in my blog"
" I had to sweep my floors really bad."
"I saved a small innocent child from almost getting hit by a taxi and then El Pais, the newspaper, saw me and I had to do interview after interview and then Stephen Speilberg saw one of the t.v. interviews and thought I was a natural and then I had to go make science fiction movies for him and then the mayor of New York...."

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Two Revelations and a Wednesday Afternoon

Ok. So before we get into my life, please open your bibles to Ephesians, chapter five. I recently discovered this dandy little tool on iTunes that will allow one to download sermons for free- its called Podcasts. Sermons come out daily from hundreds of preachers and I'm getting quite a few of them. So the one I heard this morning was by John MacArthur, author of the commentary in the John MacArthur Study Bible on which I have come to rely heavily for historical insight on the Word. John MacArthur was talking this morning about how as Christians we are supposed to act- we are supposed to be worthy of the name of Christ. The first verse in chapter five calls us to be imitators of God. Then it lists a bunch of traits that we would either possess or not possess depending on who we were imitating. Then it says in verse five, "For this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person- such a man is an idolator- has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." There are certian things we should cut out of our lives as Christians- they are all listed in the first couple verses of this chapter- but not because be wont be saved if we dont. Paul says we wont be inheritors of the kingdom of Christ if we live a certain way and Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is right now. Here inlies my revelation- We aren't being threatened with Hell in this verse if we don't obey, I think. We already have our salvation, thats why he is calling us Christians when he writes this letter. We are being threatened with the idea that our lives will produce nothing and absolutely no fruit will come of anything we do. Paul is talking about the result of how we live our lives now will be shown right now- not after we die and we see whats waiting for us on the other side. So thats important thing number one.
Important thing number two. Go back to verse one in this chapter. "Be imitators of God..."
I'm always frustrated on trains because when you ride on them at night, all you can see is your own reflection- because the light on the train is brighter than the light outside. So all you can look at is your own face, the face of the guy across from you when he's not looking and the old lady fidgeting to his left. This bothers me because I can't see outside and I would much rather be looking at the grass and trees and nature and bunnies. The only time I can see outside my own little car and all the nasty dim yellow reflections of myself is when there is a light outside that I can look at. It illuminates everything around it and then I can see all the nature and the beauty but as soon as I stop looking at the light- my own reflection floods my vision again and I have to go all squinty to try to see anything interesting. Look also at I John verse 5. "God is light and in him we have no darkness at all." Do you see where Im going with this? We can produce our own little nasty dim light that only shows the reflections of ourselves, because we we made in God's image, so we can at least get a match's worth of light out of us even though God's light is like the sun. There's still that image. But when were making our own light we end up staring at our own reflection and not physically being able to look beyond a fake reflection. However, along comes God's light and we see through our own reflection to what actually exists. Back to Ephesians- if we want to be imitators of God we have to look past our own reflection out into the real light- because if we are looking anywhere but straight at God, we will only see a distorted reflection of ourselves. Yeah, good so what does this mean? How do we turn this rediculous metaphor into something material that we can do, Victoria? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'll tell you. Go read James 1:22-25. Meditate on it. Focus on the whole idea of where you look. This will be exciting. Go do it.
Okay. So this afternoon I went out to Alcala to visit Jonathan and Tiffany (official shouting out). We went to this crazy renaissance fair and saw this falcon lady whose crazy birds almost pecked my eyes out. Not really, but really, who lets their falcons just fly around like that? Then all these dudes had their kids up on their shoulders because, "no really honey, get closer to the falcons, they dont have incredibly large, sharp talons or beaks and they probably aren't hungry after entertaining people all day." Although it was funny at one point- one of the falcons (really, how many times in your life do you get to type, or say out loud, "then.. one of the falcons..") one of the falcons flew on to the top of this merry-go-round thingie and would spin around and around and around- thats the kinda falcon I would be. Then we walked around to all these places and saw all this midieval spanish stuff that was cool, lots of wooden toys and food. Tiffany bought this bow and arrow thats supposed to be for her young nephew or something like that but those arrows offer no protection. I could kill a deer with one of those. Or a falcon. Then we went into this "tent of meeting" where we drank this mystical tea and ate these mystical cookies and I spoke some mystical arabic with the guy so he was happy at me and then he asked me for my mystical number... everything seemed very mystical. There was some dancing guy too, that was exiting. and mystical. While we were in this mystical tent, it started to rain, which made it seem more mystical, although that could've been the amount of sugar I had consumed up until this point. So after it died down we went and Jonathan bought the biggest loaf of bread I had ever seen, it weighed about as much as a small child, which is why he kept calling it "baby" and stroking it. After some cheese buying and the 'fake' bow and arrow buying we walked to the train station. I for some reason decided to wear these flip flops I have that have this tendency to suction to the ground when it rains. So about twelve times I almost tripped and fell and died. But I made it home okay and had theological revelations in the process.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

the life and times of cola cao.

i have a beef with cola cao; yes, the chocolatey powdered substance used to make the spanish version of chocolate milk- if you can call it that. see, there is cola cao instante (instant) and the normal cola cao. i bought the normal kind because they seemed to be out of the instant. the instructions on the normal kind say put a couple of spoonfulls of cola cao in a small amount of milk and mix it and then after add the rest of the milk. i did this. then i got this weird film about two centimeters thick on top of my cola cao chocolate milk drink. the darn stuff wouldnt dissolve. there was absolutely nothing i could do to get it to dissolve with the rest of the chocolate milk. i spooned most of it out, deciding if i drank it i might mutate into some foamy, non-dissolving beast but as i spooned it out, little did i know that i was just spooning out the flavor. now there is this little pile of chocolate-flavor non-dissolving foam-goo on the plate next to my sink. its just sitting there like that goo monster in ghost busters, with little airbubbles all over it.
in other news-
im really excited because i've been doing this bible study with some of my friends who arent christians here and its cool because one girl has been asking a LOT of questions lately and ive been telling her that maybe she should start praying so she gave me this weird look and changed the subject. yesterday she called me and told me that she couldn't sleep last night so she started praying and it super calmed her down and she fell right asleep and she was like, woah, it was great. and she also said that our last meeting where i talked about other religions and how they cant all be right and lead all to the same place made a lot of sense to her and she has more questions. so im really excited. pray for that- i want her to love Jesus.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Every one else was doing it...

Here it is folks. My first blog entry. Isn't the little guy cute? I've decided to begin this blog in order to write things. Not dumb things like stupid surveys. I dont like surveys but I answer them anyway and then tell my friends that they have to. And this is wrong and it vexes me greatly. I shall make this the blog of good stories, childhood dreams being realized, political ponderings and theological discussions. I now dub this College Blog. Livejournal was high school blog. This is college blog. I will no longer submit to social norms and being "cool," rather, I will express with this pen of mine (or the keypad) my heart to the nations.



plus marianna and kelly have blogs and i just want to be cool like them. let the games begin.