Clairiver's Travels

I (relatively) briefly parted ways with solid ground last evening after bidding my parents good-bye and boarding a Boeing 737. The trip itself was relatively uneventful - no harried racing to the terminal for my transfer in Atlanta, no missed flights, no lost baggage.

The wait for my ride was much more eventful (I guess I'm actually glad it was about an hour late).
First off, I was there by the Delta passenger pick-up at the Pittsburgh airport. This guy smoking a cigarette came up and informed me my ride was waiting - that there were people dressed like me in a rig a ways off. I was puzzled, especially noticing the red van he was referring to (expected my brother in a light blue Toyota Echo), but I went and looked and saw there was no visible male in the vehicle. I was kind of stuttering around, saying I didn't think that was right, when the lady driver (her name is Elizabeth) came around and we talked a bit. Said she was waiting for Harvey Yoder, the author of "God Knows My Size." Later on she stopped by again and gave me a card for her Russian Baptist church in town, thinking I might want to visit (which I would if I was around Pittsburgh for any good period of time).

I hadn't seen her for a while, when I noticed a respectably dressed, bearded man who seemed to glance in my direction a time or two. Shortly, he came over to me, wondering if I was Elizabeth; I told him what I knew and not long later she showed up again. It's not every day I get to talk to a book author (not that it really means anything, but it's sort of fun).

I was sitting there waiting some more, when a girl asked me what time it was. I let her know, and then asked her where she was from, as a sort of typical conversation starter. "Israel," she said. Wow! It's not every day I meet someone from Israel, either. She didn't have that much of an accent, so I wasn't previously tipped off to the fact that she might be foreign. It is apparently common for Israeli youths to go travel the world after they get out of military service, so she went to Central America for a couple months (went scuba-diving north of Honduras) and then came to PA to visit her sister.

My brother - the one and only - showed up while I was talking to her. We made tracks for Faith Builders Educational Programs (Guys Mills, PA) where I am now.

I got the GRAND tour (guide = my brother, who is very thorough - we even went into the walk-in freezer and got cooled off for a bit) of the facilities; met some people I had heard about and seen pictures of; saw JG, PG and RB (who are teachers at my home church school) and PG's girlfriend RK. The presence of RB was a complete and very positive surprise. Hope the Pennsylvanians don't feel over-run by Oregonians...

Now (time here = 4:12 pm, unlike what's posted) we're off to Lake Erie for a picnic - hopefully I will hold up inspite of my long, sleepless night.

Early Morning, Drive Ahead

It's 12:40 am. I'll be homeward bound in a few minutes.

Late Night, Tomorrow's Plans

It's gonna be a late night here in the lab. I grew some bacteria in the wrong type of media, and then some of the vial caps came off in the shaker/incubator, making the cultures unsterile. So, my dad is coming down to keep me company and conduct me safely to my car at 11 or 12 or whenever I am done.

I could have come in tomorrow to redo the technique, but I wanted tomorrow to get ready for my trip. I could have had one of my fellow researchers do it tomorrow, but I wasn't ready to swallow that much pride, or perhaps to shirk that much duty. I hope the lateness of the hour does not engender further mistakes this evening - the next couple steps in the procedure are easy enough, but knowing me...

I picked up a goodly stack of books at the library today - Persuasion by Jane Austen, The Hobbit by J.R.R.Tolkien (it is time I made a personal decision about his writings instead of just hearing about them), The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters by C.S.Lewis, Canyon Winter by Walt Morey, and Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. The later has often drawn my attention because (this will sound silly) I like the word "mutual." I know virtually nothing about the book, but Dickens has never completely let me down - we'll see.

Tomorrow I'm off to hill-billy western Pennsylvania. The excitement is mounting.

Create Opportunities for Failure

"Too many people go through life without ever having made an intense enough effort to be called a failure." Minoru Yasui

That's a quote carved into the stone outside the main college library here at Oregon State. I suppose failing to make an intense effort is failure in itself, but at least there is no particular object that was failed at.

Here's how the quote applies to my life...
When I used to play chess with my brother I would start to worry about losing. Rather than playing valiantly, losing, and knowing that I had lost in spite of concentrated effort to win, I would start to goof off and let the game go downhill. That way, my pride was not at stake in the face of a loss - but what's the point in playing if I'm not going to try? My brother put up with a lot...

It takes me forever to get down to writing poetry/stories because the task looms large and frightening. I guess I kind of feel (a bit subconsciously) like a rough draft should need little editing, but the reality is that it's much better to just go for it, get words on paper, and come back later to tweak and refine. As a case in point, last night my brain was lacking in energy and I felt like I had very little inspiration. I had previously written sort of what I wanted to say, but the idea of writing those thoughts in poetic rhyme and rhythm was daunting. Once I began, however, the words flowed relatively easily. Funny. Hopefully I'll remember that scenario next time I want to write something.

I really don't mind studying for my classes all that much - once I begin I actually sort of enjoy the subject matter, and it's really neat to know once it's learned. However, I often have some sort of block from studying. Maybe because I'm stressed about the upcoming test and don't want to face it, maybe because (strangely) I don't want to feel like I'm striving for something that I will be proud about, maybe because it seems like studying is something I don't like when in reality it's not all that bad (and part of it is sheer laziness). Next term I should sort through whatever strange psychology creates my study block, and see if I can whip it.

Character First

I finished "The Marquis' Secret" yesterday. It was a good book for the philosophical Christian content, but was rather lacking in regard to its romances. For example, the main character was initially attracted to a girl because of her physical features and at that time she wasn't even a Christian. Handily, she became a Christian before the end of the book and they were wed. My idealistic opinion is that a man and woman should be attracted to each other primarily because of their character qualities. Physical attributes have their place, but for a book to promote attraction to a person based (at first) solely on looks is rather bad.
Another couple was wed at the end of the book, and the matching for that couple was even worse. The man was attracted to the girl again based on looks, perhaps, and possibly her personality. He was a fine Christian guy, I guess, but she was far from it. Her reasoning ability and character were extremely questionable up until the second to last chapter of the book, where she made a miraculous conversion to reason (I suppose the author assumes she also became a Christian) and was wed to the Christian guy. What an absurd and awful romance model for anyone to follow!

Christian commitment and character qualities should always come first in marriage partner decisions, followed by personality and interests, and finally by looks (yeah, as if I have any practical experience in the partner-choosing realm). I will not fail to comment that a pleasing countenance is often produced by a shining character - that aspect of looks could be included in the analysis of someone's character. When a couple has lived together for 10, 20, 60 years, the degree to which they love each other with TRUE love (not groundless infatuation), the extent to which they work together as one flesh in God's kingdom, will have very little to do with the looks they genetically inherited. They just are not that important.
Okay, off the soap box...

Doin's

A bit of cleaning, and my "steal" of last week (the sewing machine) operates passably. The thread tension adjustment needs some help, and I haven't gotten the hang of the foot peddle (the speed on my treadle machine is easier to control). Nonetheless, I got some large portion of a dress completed on Saturday and have hope for the machine's future.

Saturday evening, my dad and I shot some baskets at the Hubbard city park. My performance was sadly hampered since I pumped up the balls too much - they provided little mercy for anything but swishers.

My old eyeglasses calmly met their demise the other day, so I am now attempting to get used to my small, new, bottom-rim-less glasses with Featherwates lenses. They produce a slightly blurry vision for middle distances, but hopefully I will adjust.
The stores surrounding Lenscrafters should pay them a percentage of their proceeds - if many of the eyeglass buyers are like me, they go shopping elsewhere during the one-hour wait period before the glasses are available.

My purchased pieces of DNA (primers) appear to have worked! Not that any of you care... but I might post a picture of my results.

Research Details

Out of couch at 3:15, early morning spin to Portland International, crash at my parents' house for a few hours of much need zombie protection, off to OSU for some lab work - the story of my morning.

Research has picked up a bit. Yesterday I received five agar plugs of bacteria in the mail. Two were Escherichia coli containing plasmids (circular, non-genomic pieces of DNA) which I'll call A and B. The plan is to chop out part of plasmid A using restriction enzymes (DNA scissors) and add it to plasmid B. We plan to clone viral genes into the modified plasmid B, and the DNA sequences in the added piece of DNA from plasmid A will enable our virus genes to be transcribed and the eventual protein to go to the outside of the bacterium. It is important to have the protein on the bacterial surface so the horse can mount an immune response against it.
We plan to initially use E.coli (we got some plain old E.coli as our third agar plug) to stick our modified plasmid into, and then move on to Listeria monocytogenes once we have the virus gene(s) in the plasmid(s). L. monocytogenes (bacterium in the fourth and fifth agar plugs) is the bacterium that will finally be used as the vector and immune-stimulant for the projected virus DNA vaccine. The two L. monocytogenes strains we received have genes knocked out of them in order to decrease their pathogenicities. L. monocytogenes can cause a pretty awful illness with an overall death rate of 20% in humans, so the decreased pathogenicity is a very good thing.

Today I received the pieces of DNA (primers, or oligonucleotides) I ordered on Wednesday. I set up two polymerase chain reactions with them to amplify the E5 and E6 genes from bovine papilloma virus 1. Here is an animation of the polymerase chain reaction and here is a text description of the process.

"I'm a goin' home..." (ref. New World Symphony by Antonin Dvorak)

Softball and Sewing Machines

Yesterday evening I visited a friend and played softball with youths from her church. 'Twas an evening sans pareil. There was plenty of the yack factor, and it was great fun singing along as she played the piano. We topped it off with some good ole' laughing bouts. Hm, here's a good place to "tell one on me." We arranged early in the evening that I would take her to the airport Friday morning. Prior to going to sleep, she was delineating the planned busy-ness of Wednesday night through Friday morning, and along with that came mention of her Friday departure. I here cluelessly asked, "Are you going with someone?" and she thereby lost it because, clearly, I was supposed to be taking her.

I did very little at work today - ordered some pieces of DNA and went to a lab safety class. In between times, I tootled off to a local second hand store and investigated two portable sewing machines. I purchased one (a Sears Kenmore model 28 - the linked picture is not precisely what the machine looks like, but it is very close) for $10, thinking it a pretty good steal although the bobbin case was missing. I then went to the sew and vac place in town and purchased a new bobbin case for $9.95. Strange that I should pay the same amount for a part as for the machine itself.
The point in buying a portable sewing machine is that I will be at J & O's quite a bit this summer, and will not have access to the treadle machine I normally use. My wardrobe is pathetic and needs a major boost, so hopefully this machine will help do the job. Besides the fact that I more or less needed such a device, I enjoy messing around with old sewing machines, figuring out how to thread them and wind bobbins and all that.

Suffering

An excerpt from "The Marquis of Lossie," which is the unabridged, noncopyrighted version of "The Marquis' Secret" by George MacDonald. Don't swallow it whole, but there are some valuable thoughts here.

For speaker background, he does believe in God but is here speaking theoretically.

""All I say is, that, if I had reason for hoping there was a God, and if I found, from my own experience and the testimony of others, that suffering led to valued good, I should think, hope, expect to find that he caused suffering for reasons of the highest, purest and kindest import, such as when understood must be absolutely satisfactory to the sufferers themselves. If a man cannot believe that, and if he thinks the pain the worst evil of all, then of course he cannot believe there is a good God. Still, even then, if he would lay claim to being a lover of truth, he ought to give the idea--the mere idea of God fair play, lest there should be a good God after all, and he all his life doing him the injustice of refusing him his trust and obedience."

""And how are we to give the mere idea of him fair play?" asked Clementina...

""By looking to the heart of whatever claims to be a revelation of him."...

[Speaking of Jesus' crucifixion]"Now I ask whether that grandest thing, crowning his life, the yielding of it to the hand of violence, he had not learned also from his Father. Was his death the only thing he had not so learned? If I am right, and I do not say if in doubt, then the suffering of those three terrible hours was a type of the suffering of the Father himself in bringing sons and daughters through the cleansing and glorifying fires, without which the created cannot be made the very children of God, partakers of the divine nature and peace. Then from the lowest, weakest tone of suffering, up to the loftiest pitch, the divinest acme of pain, there is not one pang to which the sensorium of the universe does not respond; never an untuneful vibration of nerve or spirit but thrills beyond the brain or the heart of the sufferer to the brain, the heart of the universe; and God, in the simplest, most literal, fullest sense, and not by sympathy alone, suffers with his creatures." ...

""If God feels pain, then he puts forth his will to bear and subject that pain; if the pain comes to him from his creature, living in him, will the endurance of God be confined to himself, and not, in its turn, pass beyond the bounds of his individuality, and react upon the sufferer to his sustaining? I do not mean that sustaining which a man feels from knowing his will one with God's and God with him, but such sustaining as those his creatures also may have who do not or cannot know whence the sustaining comes. I believe that the endurance of God goes forth to uphold, that his patience is strength to his creatures, and that, while the whole creation may well groan, its suffering is more bearable therefore than it seems to the repugnance of our regard.""

Be Reasonable!

It bothers me when people do not act based on reason - people in reality and "people" in books. Acting out based on passion/anger can lead to unchangeable results in a very short time. For instance, the painter in the book "The Marquis' Secret" who brushed dark paint across a portrait just because some girl he loved didn't express proper appreciation for it. Passion should not be allowed to rule.

On the other hand, the book is more amusing because of some of the absurd/irrational/dramatic actions of its characters. Maybe I'm a little strange, but I even find the overdone romantic stuff (there's nothing particularly bad) to be comical. (In real life my response would be "yuck, yuck, YUCK," but in a book it's funny partly because the author meant it to be serious.)

Along the Metolius

The weekend went approximately as planned. Friday evening I arrived at BK's and was driven to JK's pond by one of my Sunday school students. It was neat to be able to connect with him on an outside-SS basis.
We (I and the other Hopewell youth girls) had an enjoyable time eating and talking by the campfire and pond - we stayed out until 10 pm discussing whatever funny or serious subjects struck, breathing smoke, getting bits of ash on our coverings, being photographed. Then we all piled into BK's Bronco (four in the front, five in the back) and headed for her trailer on a couple farm lanes.

The next morning most of the girls went to Ketch's Variety Store (or so was the plan) and I headed off to Brownsville Mennonite to join youths from that church on the annual Bible Mennonite Fellowship youth hike.
After a bit, L, R, C and I made tracks toward Sisters in a Camry. We joined some Sheridan youths at the junction between 20 and 22 and proceeded to the headwaters of the Metolius River. The river basically issues from the ground at that site (i.e. it is spring-fed - which reminds me of yesterday when I was going on about people being "not very deep." So much for conserving words and speaking in positives - "shallow" would have provided exactly the same meaning. :) ) I wonder if the Metolius is connected to any lava caves.
People ate lunch/fed it to ground squirrels and we drove to a parking lot across the river from the Wizard Falls Fish Hatchery. We began our hike there on the eastern side of the river and headed north. It was a pretty easy hike - nothing strenuous - conducive to conversation - provided top drawer (since I use the word "fabulous" too much) views of the river. We made it to the Lower Bridge and then headed south on the west bank, a bit worried to be in Palestinian territory but enjoying ourselves nonetheless. We figured they would honor our nonresistant stand. I took some pictures - including one of CS walking the siderail of the Lower Bridge (thanks for having good balance!). Look for a few some time in July.
We fed the fish at the Fish Hatchery and watched a couple of my neighbors try to obtain a quarter from one of the fish-watching deck pier supports. The water south of the fish hatchery bridge was top-notch - green and foaming. Take a look here.

It was a fun day - thank you to all who made it so!

Refrigerators and Relativity

Yesterday I received permission from my old research advisor to snoop around in her lab and find some stuff to use for my current research project. (I'm targeting the same disease as last summer (equine sarcoids which are thought to be caused be bovine papilloma viruses 1 or 2) but have a different approach in mind.)
It was kind of strange being in there. Not much has been done in the lab since I left it last fall - it was moved to a new room, but my tubes of extracted plasmid were still in the refrigerator's freezer, some tubes of old polymerase chain reactions (I don't know how they escaped my clean up last fall) graced a rack in the refrig - there was even an old bottle of cell culture media bearing my initials (it should have been gone long ago).

Maybe this is just slightly like the theory of relativity (I'm practicing my eastern thinking here). In a way, both I and the lab refrigerator have experienced the same period of time, but in a way it could seem like we haven't. The refrigerator is like the astronaut who goes into outerspace and exceeds the speed of light. Little time seems to pass, and the astronaut accomplishes little and changes little. He then reconoitres with the earth bound (myself in this instance), who has been through and accomplished much (comparatively) and aged to some degree.

Today I tried to cool a solution in a beaker using hot water. I was at it for a while before I realized the hot water spigot actually resulted in hot water.

I finished reading "The Fisherman's Lady" early this morning. Author George MacDonald had good insight into the workings of people's minds. He also used some delightful metaphors, and created colorful characters (like Miss Horn who tended to state, when some emotional subject or occasion arose, that she was glad she was a woman without feelings - it obviously wasn't true). The book was too dramatic/contained too many unusual occurences to have been real, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Ah, tonight I am going to BK's for a grand old girls sleepover. Tomorrow I may go hiking with CS and some other Bible Mennonite Fellowship youths.

Christian Classics

One of the major premises of David Bercot's book "Common Sense" is that we need the early church writings to properly understand Scripture. He suggests that there wouldn't be such an issue with people having different ideas about Christian doctrine if we all used the early church writings to help us understand unclear Bible passages.

He "has a point" on a number of levels - clearly, the "second generation" Christians were much closer to the oral teaching of Paul and the other apostles. The context they existed in enabled them to better interpret the epistles - some things that are somewhat obscure to us may well have been crystal clear to them.
Like the apostles, they were "eastern thinkers" - their reasoning is therefore quite different from ours at times. Quoting Bercot, "Without a doubt, eastern thinking often stands in stark contrast to western rationalism. The eastern mind is much quicker than its western counterpart to grasp allegorical truths that are prefigured by actual historical events. The eastern mind will often believe incomprehensible spiritual truths that the western, rationalistic mind rejects." pp. 95, 96 This is something I would really like to research - it could provide some fine tuning in how to understand the New Testament. Maybe it would help some things jive. From the glimpse I've gotten of eastern reasoning, it's sort of '"free association," there's a poetic beauty to it that I wouldn't mind adding to my trains of thought. (An example of some of this: Matthew states in 2:15 of his book that Jesus's coming from Egypt fulfills the passage in Hosea which states "out of Egypt I called My son." For the time when Hosea was writing, it seems that he was referring to the nation of Israel - Matthew is applying the prophecy to Jesus. To a western thinker, it seems somewhat illogical to make that application - but I think I begin to grasp some of its beauty and poetry.
So, I think the early church writings are worth a read - maybe in much the same way that C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell are worth reading, with a little added benefit in one area and a little detraction of benefit in another.

Problems with looking to the early church writings:
Bercot brings up the fact that Paul instructed the Thessalonians to follow the traditions they received by "word" (he interprets that as "word of mouth"). And I ask, how would we know which oral traditions, which we may now have in the form of some early church writings, are the correct ones to follow? One of the major issues Jesus had with the Pharisees was that they were following a bunch of traditions God did not see fit to have recorded in His written word. We could run into a similar problem today. Besides, some of those oral traditions may have been the best way for God's main principles to be fleshed out back in the first and second centuries - such applications may not fit our present day situation).

More Pictures

This is a picture clipping from the Ladies' Tea at Brownsville.


These are my maternal grandparents, the ones who visited last weekend.



This is what happened to my dad when I was absent so long on Saturday.

(Do I really want to allow comments on this post?)

Graduation Festivities

Last Friday I finished my public health final around 3:30 pm and drove off toward Portland. My mom was graduating with a MA in Teaching from Portland State University.
I felt like riding public transportation to PSU. I am a bit nostalgic about such transportation because I worked at Oregon Health and Sciences University two years ago, and rode the bus almost every day to work. The youth identity-creation aspect of some bus occupants is of people-observation interest and, furthermore, it may have been hard to find parking near the graduation place.
So, I parked at the Barbur transit center and caught a bus to PSU. I tend to have an olfactory memory that associates various aspects of my history with certain smells. Anyway, I was riding along in the bus and somehow the bus smell aroused memories of reading "Crime and Punishment" (by Fyodor Dostoevsky) in the bus two years ago. Funny how things like that work.

I joined my grandparents (maternal - from Nevada City, CA) and father on the bleachers in the nick of time, and watched my mother graduate.

Saturday was a time of pleasant busy-ness. Breakfast and visiting with the grandparents, wandering around Coastal Farm and Home, attending the Graduation Open House for BJS of "by-log" fame, singing with CS down at L & R N's, and eating supper with the grandparents.

Worthless factoid of the weekend: I did not eat at home for 48 hours.

El Verano

Summertime is here again -
The tests are done, the grades are in.
I passed them all, four less than ten -
But in my heart there's some chagrin.

***
This summer holds great prospects. I'm staying in the same place I live during the school year - I'll actually be around people this summer (unlike last summer when I lived by myself in town)! It's strange to be on the Smucker farm without school nagging at my soul.
I've got plans for my free evenings... reading books by the Big Muddy (currently in progress: "Common Sense" by David Bercot and "The Fisherman's Lady" by George MacDonald (someone said he's as good as C.S.Lewis - I beg to differ, but he's good enough; can't say yet whether I'd recommend the book)); sewing; visiting friends (should I include any of you?); writing.

A Bit of a Grin

I was exercising yesterday in the gym here at school (wearing a dress and long stockings, in case you are worried). There is a window on the second floor that looks out on the baseball field, and there was a game in progress. A man entered the room and began using an elliptical trainer next to the window. After a bit, he began rooting for the players - "Go get 'em, buddy!" "Yeaahhh!!!!!" (said very loudly) Of course, the only people who could hear him were his fellow exercisers.
It was rather amusing.

Beyond the Chrysalis

The topic for Sunday evening's talks: manliness. Prime opportunity to "don the spiritual umbrella," allowing all the advice to slide off the nylon fabric and miss my head? Hardly. A large majority of manly character qualities transfer very well to women. Even "leadership" qualities can be applied appropriately to a Christian woman's life in the (school) teaching and child-training realms. Umm, and those in the world who are not avowed spinsters would do well to know what to look for in a spouse.

What makes a good man?
Strong horizontal relationships with good quality peers.
Ability to buck up and accomplish things, even if you have to start from scratch.
An active interest in the salvation of lost persons.
Genuine excitement about God's Word and its application to our lives. (ES read parts of a story entitled "Missing in Action." Brief synopsis: a lady visited a Mennonite church. The SS teacher was all excited, but got very few comments out of the other men. There were no testimonies offered after a special service. The men hardly did anything in the way of tract distribution/other outreach. It could make one desire to reach into the paper and shake such dead Christians - plant a fire under their bench-warming selves - something. Those techniques, however, being impossible, I will shake myself because I need it, too.)
Engagement in upbuilding entertainment as opposed to that which militates against godly character, or is just not beneficial.

Where are the men? The women? Too many have not yet matured and remain in the chrysalis of spiritual stagnation (mixed metaphor again...).

Killing Trees

I effectively killed a small tree by printing out anesthesiology notes this evening. I was planning to study the lectures on my computer, but I did ill to my computer power cord (tripped on it as it reached across the gulf between my desk and my bed - I guess I haven't learned to employ proper occupational safety measures) and it started sparking in a lovely manner. Rather than chance frying my computer by using a sparking power cord, I came to school to print off the lectures. I study better on paper than on a computer screen, anyway, so it's okay as long as I have enough time.

I suppose I'll have a visit to the Apple Computer Store in the near future - hope they have power cords for such antiquated iBooks as mine.

Toxicology Final Exam and Grades

This is vet school for you (actually, it's a kind of extreme example of what has become more common since our first term when the class averages hovered around 90%). I know these stats pale in comparison to engineering classes, but anyway...

Modified quote from Dr. Cope:
Dear Class
The summary stats for the final exam are roughly as follows:
Written Exam mean = 61/100 SD = 11
Practical Exam mean = 21/30 SD = 4
The overall summary stats for the course are roughly as follows:
Mean = 78%, SD = 4%

The grade cutoffs for the course are as follows:
A≥ 85%... B- ≥ 60-less than 70

The total number of people for each grade are roughly as follows:
A = 3, A- = 18, B+ = 22, B = 5, Incomplete = 1

The Push of the Wilderness

Last night at church we listened to a tape entitled "The Push of the Wilderness," by Merle Beachy. He used Proverbs 24:30,31 as his main text:

"I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down."

He reminded us that Christians must make a continual effort to keep the world from encroaching into their hearts. Proceeding through our lives in a hum-drum manner, with no vision or no umpf applied toward any vision, will not get us any good place.

(If you liken sin to disorder and Christianity to order, then the Christian life can be said to follow a modified second law of thermodynamics. With no outside intervention (i.e. God's power), the heart will tend toward a state of increasing disorder.)

It's easy for me to forget that I am in a real war between two opposing kingdoms. I must lift up my hands, strengthen my knees, watch and take heed, strive to attain the mastery, fight the good fight - if I am to keep the faith and be used of God.

***
As a side note, I found myself looking up toward the speaker in the ceiling on at least one occasion, as if there was a person there...

An Exhilarating Auditory Experience

Thursday night I went to hear the Linn-Benton Community College Chamber Choir. The dynamics and vocal control were quite impressive. Both of those qualities shone in the song "Zeregleent Gobi" by Se Enkhbayar - a song about the rise and fall of the Mongolian empire, as if it was a mirage over the sand. The soprano soloist even managed an accent for the foreign words (of course, she could actually have been foreign...). Watching the conductor is one of the joys of attending concerts and the choir's Hal Eastburn did not let me down. I'm glad I went.

The Last of the Gustafson Stories (For Now)

The two quizzes in surgery lab today produced one less class to worry about. There may be a final next week, but I am happy with my grade and therefore do not have to take it. This is fabulous, considering the six other exams scheduled.

At the beginning of the term, Dr. Gustafson informed us that he wanted the course to be fun. I was skeptical - it fit into the category of professors referring to drawings of molecules as "cartoons" (cartoons are supposed to be humorous, not just artwork depicting some science fact). Well, Gustafson successfully proved the worthlessness of my skepticism. Principles of Surgery has been possibly the most humorous, enjoyable, and practical class I have taken.

I made a bit of a mis-step in surg lab today - one of my superiors was demonstrating the use of surgical staplers, and couldn't get the two parts of one together (he had 24 eyes bearing down on him - I reckon he would have figured it out in the absence of an audience). I started itching to get my hands on it and see if I could make it work. As I looked longingly at the parts, I realized what may have been the issue. When the superior had completed the stapling demonstration using other staplers and the crowd had mostly dispersed to the rest of the room, I picked up the two stapler parts, pulled a lever away from one part and put the pieces together. Hmm... I think it would have been better to wait until more of my classmates were gone, or perhaps to have suggested pulling up the lever to my superior instead of doing it myself... Oh, well...

One plus of the imperfect scenario was that I got to use the stapler on some tissue at the suggestion of the superior. It was pretty neat.

Mennonite ≠ a Religion

Some people get riled up about calling Christianity a religion. I don't think it's an issue - religion may be defined as:

1. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power... regarded as creator and governor of the universe.

That is a rather simplistic definition of Christianity, but it certainly fits (correct me if I'm wrong).

It does bother me, however, to hear "Mennonite" referred to as a religion, as if "Mennonite" is separate from Christianity. Now, it may very well be a case of semantics, maybe the people who speak thus really do realize that "Mennonite" is a Christian denomination. On the other hand, if people do regard "Mennonite" as a separate religion... it may not be that big a deal if they have never met a Mennonite in person (even at that, there is room for concern - shouldn't we be widely known for living for the Christian God?). But it would be pretty sad if a non-Mennonite was somewhat well acquainted with Mennonites (maybe had them living next door and associated with them a bit) and still regarded my denomination as a separate religion. Where's the light for Christ in such a scenario? Or maybe it is just a scenario, maybe it doesn't really happen - I hope so.

If we really have the Light, the hope, the joy, and the power, the world should know. Otherwise, we may as well be hermits in the Himalayas.