Bond snob, at your service

If I have to explain why it’s bad that the new Bond film will center around a game of Texas Hold’em, rather than baccarat, then you wouldn’t understand anyway.

I smell a backdoor nominee

I can’t shake the nagging feeling that Samuel Alito was Bush’s real first choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. The whole Harriet Miers hubbub seems suspiciously like a farce to play out for a month or so to set up a backdoor nomination for Alito. It just seems so convenient… how to nominate someone who’s male and conservative without triggering outrage? Easy, nominate a female with an unknown history (to be able to simultaneously and plausibly dodge accusations of appointing a conservative, or not appointing a conservative) who also happens to be subject to accusations of cronyism and inexperience. Stir up enough ruckus to get her to withdraw the nomination, and bam: suggest the man you wanted all along, having nominally satisfied those who wanted a mainstream judge, or a woman, nominee.

Now the fun comes into the spin that both parties are applying to it. The Democrats are trying to portray it as Bush kowtowing to right-wing extremists, and the Republican strategists had to foresee this. Perhaps the reasoning is that gaining a solid conservative on the Supreme Court is worth the loss in prestige to a lame duck president? Perhaps it’s a gamble that this solidifies the conservative base enough to overcome any losses from the moderates? It’s still early, but it’s shaping up to be an interesting nomination. This is why politics is so much fun.

T-shirts and volleyball

Intramural volleyball tonight! We lost, but still great fun, and we actually did better than we had thought. Post-volleyball discussion: transportation T-shirts. That’s right, and I think we might actually be serious about it this time. You know what they say, if you don’t have enough free/activity related T-shirts to wear for an entire week, you aren’t doing enough…

Methodist club!

Two meetings for church tonight, but I can say that I haven’t been this excited about church in a long time. This year the college group leadership circle has divided into smaller subgroups that plan a particular area like worship or recreation, and if you ask me, that’s a stroke of genius: everybody can focus on their passion. It’s so great when the whole leadership group meets and we’re all so excited about our ideas, and I’ve really felt a difference in the entire group because of it. Everything just seems to run so much better, and I don’t think it’s just a one time thing. I’ve been in a lot of places where people start off excited but either get burnt out or lose the excitement after a few weeks (or days), but we’ve been going for several months now and things just keep getting better.

One of our goals has been to do more with the larger congregation, and it made my day when, at ad council, several people remarked that they’re so glad that college students are volunteering for Sunday School teachers, or proctors, or for homeless shelter, and that they’ve never seen the campus ministry so visible before. They love our idea for an overnight prayer vigil for the whole church. Things are going so well, I’m super excited about things we have planned, and I hope that this never stops. I have a good feeling about this year.

Camping: Kerrville-Schreiner State Park

Amazing camping trip this weekend. There’s more to be said about it when I have the time, but until then you can see Ashley’s pictures (warning: many many pictures of deer and butterflies) and read Jamie’s blog entry on the trip.

Mmmmeme

I met with Bill today, and it turns out much of my anger yesterday was misdirected. I’m surprised by how similar our visions for College Sunday are. And the best news: Shelley’s on for preaching. This meeting could not have worked out better. While Bill may not have known it, I experienced reconciliation this afternoon, and not just because things are going my way.

Also, Lauren, Lily, and Kate have recently posted the “20 things to 20 people” meme (Lauren twice). Here goes mine:

1. I really think that you are who I would be if I didn’t grow up in a Christian home.
   
2. You changed my life and didn’t even know it. At the time, I didn’t either. I wish I could remember to take the time to let you know.
   
3. You told me the same things I had heard my whole life, but you were the first person who made it make sense.
   
4. You are incredibly awesome and I have so much respect for you. I hope you realize that even though I joke about it I’m totally serious. Stay alive. Don’t die.
   
5. I wish I wasn’t three years older than you. I think we could have been great friends.
   
6. I don’t think you have any idea how much compassion I have for you.
   
7. I wish I knew you better. Maybe then it wouldn’t be so awkward when we see each other.

8. I wish I knew myself better. That would make things so much easier.
   
9. I hope you don’t hold a grudge. I know I don’t.
   
10. I admired you so much in high school. Why did you have to destroy all that in college?
    
11. You are the most amazing, loving, clear-headed woman ever. You truly deserve all the happiness you’re experiencing right now.
    
12. No matter what you say, I still think you should be an engineer.
    
13. Be confident in yourself. You are so creative, so intelligent, so funny, so pretty, and so loveable, and true enough, you say that you are. I wish you would believe it.
    
14. I would help you more if I thought it would do any good, but I’m afraid I’d get sucked into a black hole. The time has come for YOU to pull yourself together.
    
15. You’ve been through a lot, but I know that your life will turn out marvelously. I wish I could be a better friend for you.
    
16. People only see one side of you, and judge you for that. Now the rumors have spread so far that I’m worried that nobody will take the time to see the rest.
    
17. You are such a paradox. I can name dozens of reasons why I shouldn’t like being around you, but somehow you manage to turn all of my preconceptions on their heads.
    
18. You saved me from myself back in high school, and you opened up a whole new world to me. I owe so much of who I am today to your class.
    
19. Thirty years from now, I want to be in your shoes.
    
20. I really hope this is just a phase. You’re far too old to act like this, and you need to get your act together.
    

Loooooooooong rant

I need to learn how to deal with leaders or managers that think differently than me.

Case in point: I’m really really frustrated with worship planning at church, mostly due to poor communication between Bill, the college pastor, and Sara and I, who help plan services. Some big differences in how we operate doesn’t help matters either. Last year I would help out from time to time and e-mail songs by Thursday, which was enough time to print the bulletin before Sunday. So a few weeks ago Sara and I plan this awesome worship service, sent it to Bill on Thursday, only to find out that he changed his deadline to Wednesday so he went ahead and did it himself. OK, whatever. Next week we plan another service, sent it on Wednesday, only to find out that because it was a busy week he already did it himself, and decided to “incorporate our suggestions” by choosing one song from our plan and overruling the rest. OK, that’s frustrating, and due to poor communication, but again, whatever.

So now we’re getting ready for College Sunday at the end of October. This is going to be a big deal. We want to get the main congregation and the college group to do more with each other, and to kick it off we want to have a spectacular service, which is going to be student led throughout. Shelley volunteered to preach, and is getting ready to send out themes and ideas to the rest of us planners. I talked to her tonight, and she is so excited about this.

Maybe she won’t be after someone breaks the news to her that she won’t be preaching after all. That’s right, tonight Bill told Sara and me that he’ll be preaching, but Shelley can still give a short “witness or testimony.” Apparently certain members of the congregation wouldn’t accept someone other than an ordained person preaching.

Bullshit. That didn’t stop a high school senior from giving the message on Youth Sunday in the spring. If there’s one thing I wanted from College Sunday, it was to be different than Youth Sunday. Although many don’t realize it, college ministry is a whole different game from youth ministry — it’s about raising up leaders for the church, not entertaining teenagers. And for that reason, I wanted College Sunday to be distinct. I wanted it to demonstrate the value of this ministry. While the high school sermon was decent for high school, and something about the difference in generations in the church, I was looking forward to an intelligent, insightful sermon delivered by a student that would make the congregation say “Wow! That’s quality. That’s a whole order of magnitude above Youth Sunday. That’s a future leader of the church.” But instead, the signal that’s going to be given is that we’re less competent than the youth. They can preach a sermon, but one of us? No way, the congregation couldn’t take it unless Bill gave the main message and Shelley gets pushed aside to give some little “testimony.” Sorry, Shelley, you can’t get the roast but we’ll throw you a bone to chew on.

But maybe that’s the problem. I had a vision for College Sunday. I had a dream. But it’s not about me, and it’s not about my ideas. My voice isn’t the deciding one, and I should never have presumed it to be. Color me disillusioned, but perhaps rightfully so. I’ve always been overly territorial about worship planning, and hate not getting my way. I need to be more humble about this, and this is a fitting lesson.

This whole College Sunday issue is another example of poor communication between the three of us. However, more fundamentally, I think that Sara and I view things in a much different light than Bill does. We’re planners. We would love nothing more than to sit down at the beginning of each semester and plan out every single week all at once. Scripture, music, whatever. Nothing that couldn’t be changed later, but at least an outline. Bill likes to fly by the seat of his pants, figuring things out as he goes. That works fine for him, but when multiple people are involved in the worship planning process that causes friction. When we found out that he would be giving the College Sunday sermon, we asked him what he’d be speaking about. He didn’t know, and when we told him that we needed to know to plan music, he responded with something like “pick whatever songs you want, it doesn’t matter.”

Ignoring the fact that that’s about the most offensive thing you could tell a worship planner (nothing makes my day like hearing my job trivialized), that runs contrary to the whole point of College Sunday. College Sunday needs to be more than good. It needs to be perfect. It needs to make the congregation say “Damn, that was AWESOME. Not only did the sermon speak to me, but every element of the service, every hymn sung, every prayer, every bit of liturgy, every line in the skit backed it up. I feel inspired/challenged/whatever the sermon was supposed to make me feel. Campus ministry is worth supporting, and the church needs it for its long-term survival.” To do that we need themes, we need unity, and most of all we need planning. The last thing we need is to just pick some random songs we like. But although the passive aggressor in me wants to respond by picking the cheesiest, most sentimental, most unsingable, most irrelevant, least intelligent songs that aren’t even in the hymnal (after all, they don’t matter, right?), my Christian side tells me that I need to respond in love. I need to sacrifice my personal dreams and vision and earnestly seek what God wants this service to be. I need to learn how to deal with people who see things differently than me, but whom I can’t agree to disagree with because of the nature of our relationship.

The only thing that’s clear to me right now is how much work lies ahead of me regarding what I thought would be a simple job. But the real work for me isn’t in the worship planning — it’s learning humility, learning how to work with others, and learning how to take the initiative in establishing communication without being overbearing. That’s a much taller order and not at all what I bargained for… but then again, isn’t that how God works?

It’s all relative

Two unexpected things happened recently. First, through little fault of my own, I saw an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen on MTV. Second, I actually had an intelligent thought while watching the show. I apologize in advance if this seems stuffy or moralizing.

The premise of the show is to showcase the lavish, over-the-top parties rich parents throw for their daughters’ sixteenth birthdays. We’re talking parties that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unsurprisingly, there is always drama and the episodes usually paint the daughter as a spoiled brat out of touch with reality. We, the viewers, are supposed to find some combination of envy, entertainment, and disgust by watching the whole mess, and for the first fifteen minutes I found myself solidly in the latter category, as I sat back and clucked my tongue at this bratty kid’s demanding behavior — obviously she has no idea how people really live. Obviously she has no appreciation for the luxury she lives in.

And then it hit me. Am I the same way? If, say, a poor person from a developing country were to watch my life through a show called, say, My Super Sweet Spoiled American, how much of my life, and the things that bother me, would appear completely ludicrous or ungrateful for my surroundings? What, he gets upset when H.E.B. is out of fire roasted canned tomatoes and he has to buy — horror of horrors — the plain variety? Boo hoo, poor little rich Steve actually has to go to the bank to get quarters for laundry since the stupid machines don’t accept anything else. And his computer at work only has 131 songs on it instead of the 2,000 he has at home. How can he survive? You get the point.

This comes on the heels of a discussion about thankfulness from Bible study on Wednesday, where Bill proposed that, according to Luke 17:11-19, gratitude is the key manifestation of faith. Maybe God is trying to tell me something.

On a completely unrelated note, I think our lives would be much enriched if the following words were used as often as possible: bombastic, bourgeois, grotto, pedantic, pedestrian (as an adjective), proletarian, schadenfreude, robust, soiree, wax (as a verb), and most any pretentious foreign phrase (although, as Clayton is apt to point out, pretentious use of foreign phrases is never apropos). Feel free to e-mail me if I need to add anything to the list.