July 3, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized
at 11:47 pm
by Ryan
I have a group of friends that hosted a 4th of July party today (yes, on the 3rd of July; don’t ask). For the invite one of the group rewrote the Gettysburg Address to fit the concept of a party invitation. In response, though I never gave them the card (oops), I put on a thank you card a rewritten version of “O Captain! My Captain!” (which, of course, was about Lincoln and thus fitting for the invite). My words are below.
O Captains! My Captains! our cheerful day is done;
The party lasted out its time beneath the falling sun;
Its end, I hear, is very near; the people are exhausted;
They show good cheer and drink their beer and drinks from vessels frosted.
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the moisture in my eye,
When finally comes our time to part
And I must say goodbye.
O Captains! My Captains! rise up to words of praise!
Rise up–for you we raise a cheer–for you we give hoorays;
For you I write these words of thanks–for you the yard is crowded;
For you we come together at this feast so highly touted.
Here Captains! dear ladies!
The time to go is nigh;
For now, as sure as Hades,
We all must say goodbye.
My Captains do not answer, on couches they relax;
I scarcely think that they can stand, so deeply were they taxed;
The yard survived us safe and sound, its job is closed and done;
The victor yard, we hope unscarred, comes in with object won.
Exult, O halls, and ring, O phones!
But I with wistful sigh,
Collect the words I now intone
As I must say goodbye.
Also, here is a limerick I wrote in my time running my department’s weekly party. The party is called “TG” to explain some terms. This is edited to correct mistakes in the original email (and to fix a few rhythm problems).
There once was a student in grad school
Who learned every* fact, theorem, and rule.
All day he did work,
Then got out to shirk
And went looking for proof he was still cool.
He went to the first bar he passed
And talked to a lovely young lass.
She seemed a hard sell,
But he thought it went well
Until she said she’d put him in a cast.
The pattern continued all night
(Even after they turned down the light).
Everyone he would meet
Would soon get to their feet;
He thought, “Man, this just can’t be right.”
Since he’d already made reservations
For his plans during summer vacation
He thought maybe he
Should go to TG
And practice casual conversation.
The plan couldn’t have gone any worse
(Bet you didn’t expect that this verse!)
The chances were nil
That he’d pick up this skill
And the women he met were all terse.
But while there he would always have fun,
He could sit, eat, drink, and talk a ton.
He made some new friends,
And to this day he sends
Emails about TG to everyone.
I hear there will be one this Friday,
and the room can’t be far out of your way.
We’ll have beer and food,
So please don’t be rude;
Just stop by at TG–you might stay.
*Note: The student cannot officially claim to have learned any facts, theorems, or rules. He needed a rhyme, though, and he does have poetic license. Honest. Maybe it’s in his other coat. He swears he saw it just yesterday.
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June 3, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized
at 1:22 am
by Ryan
I want to keep these in an online (and thus more accessible and durable) format, so here are two poems I wrote recently, or at least one and a half.
First, a poem for a friend who moved away:
Take heart! Keep your heart
on this day that we part;
let not a tear slip your eye.
Just let sadness pass
and instead raise a glass
to the joyful times gone by.
To touch our lives so
before you had to go —
a great gift it was we had!
If there is loss here
then our loss is more dear
so for us should all be sad.
Take heart! Keep your heart
on this day that we part;
sweet sorrow it need not be.
If leave here you must
then please leave here and trust
that ever your friends are we.
Go forth from this place
with an uplifted face
and please with fondness recall
the time you did spend
in the City of Wind
and the joy you brought us all.
Second, a few lines written as goodwill for a friend who got married; with more time, there may be something here:
May the Lord in love and grace
Bless you both in every way.
That when you see each other’s face
You see the love you share today.
May your love help you to weather
All the trials life will give
That you will find your days together
Are the best you ever live.
May naught on earth dissever
The holy vows you share
That you spend your days forever
In each other’s loving care.
I won’t follow these up with a promise for more frequent posts, but maybe leave everyone with the hope that there are more to come.
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August 27, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
at 1:44 pm
by Ryan
In the world of political discourse, liberty is naturally opposed to equality of outcome. This is because, as one friend put it, the freedom to succeed is also the freedom to fail, and since some will thus succeed while others fail, the natural result of liberty is inequality of outcomes. For lovers of liberty, this is no problem—equality of outcome, they say, is not the equality that matters; rather we should care about equality of opportunity, of treatment, or any other “of ___” such that the phrase means that the reins of the government do not weigh differently on different individuals. Indeed, true liberty necessitates such an equality. However, some in the discourse have become enthralled with the concept of equality of outcome, ignoring the fact that, for instance, the only way for Michelangelo and myself to have the same outcome as artists would have been to cut off his hands (inequal treatment), and even then I would wager he wins. As charges of socialism abound in the current environment, it is worth pondering the natural tension between liberty and equality. As a lover of liberty, here is a defense of liberty. I leave the defense of equality of outcome to one who prefers it. (Note–when used hereafter, equality means equality of outcome.)
One of the most powerful rhetorical clarifications in modern history was that of FDR when he announced his four freedoms, two of which were positive—freedoms “of” something—and two of which were negative, or freedoms “from” something. We think of the most fundamental civil rights, the freedoms of our First Amendment, in terms of the former: freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press. We will be a much happier people and much better nation when we recognize instead that the most powerful way to recognize these freedoms are instead as freedoms from these various things. We did not throw off the British chains of tyranny and taxation to burden ourselves with new chains of speech, assembly, religion, or the press. The most powerful and effective consequence of our right to affirm, to say “yes”, is the ability to say “no” instead; indeed, without this ability, the “yes” is meaningless. The most powerful part of our freedom of religion is not our freedom to believe any religion we choose but the freedom not to believe those we do not choose. The fifth amendment right against self-incrimination recognizes and affirms this basic principle: the most powerful part of our freedom of speech is not the set of words we are allowed to say but the sets of words that we are allowed not to say.
Making these decisions, the decisions of what to affirm and what not to affirm, can be difficult. It should be. Liberty, and success under liberty, accept no payment short of the best we have within us. Liberty requires courage, equality accepts cowardice. Investments follow the same basic principles, whether they are investments in business or investments in the future of humanity. Without risk there is no reward. Without failure there is no success. Here again the negative is the important part: the freedom to succeed necessitates the freedom to fail. Accepting this freedom is an exercise in courage. Any cowardly person can huddle in squalor with the rest of mankind, but in doing so no glorious monuments of mankind would be built, be they cathedrals or skyscrapers. To advance, to improve, we must venture out—out into the vast ocean in search of new continents and new riches; out into the cloudy skies with the kite that will revolutionize the world; out into the night to hang lanterns in a church or to ride the countryside with warnings of danger. To advance, to improve, we must venture out into a world of danger. And when we lose our courage, when we lose our nerve, when we demand safety nets at every turn, then we fall back to the equality those nets ensure.
People like to talk about gains and losses, assuming that the gain of one is the loss of another—that gains, therefore, prevent equality. This assumption clearly is not true—even in helping my friends do various things while accepting no payment, I gain better friendship and make everyone’s life a little better. However, there is truly one area in the affairs of man where the pie is fixed, where the game is zero-sum, where the gain of one is the loss of another, and that is in the ability to influence or control the actions or decisions of another. Here another’s gain in the ability to control my actions is indeed my loss. By broadening the concept of gain, though, even this analysis is wrong. For in considering the broader effects we see that my loss here is society’s loss, my gain society’s. Forget the dull concept of economic multipliers; the greatest multiplier is the one that takes the gains in one man’s life and extends them over all he encounters.
Our fathers sought two things in founding our nation, equality from God and liberty from man. For a time, they achieved both. Sometime after, we changed our desires to be liberty from God and equality from man, and in all the years since we have achieved neither. The fears that changed our desires led to the fall, for there are only two surefire ways for equality, two ways to make all buildings the same height. One is to raise all to the same height. This option is generally unaffordable. The other is to lower all to the same base. This option we should hope to be generally unacceptable. But when fear of Icarus’ fate makes us put away our wings, we trap ourselves in the prison he died having at least escaped.
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June 9, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
at 4:59 pm
by Ryan
One of my favorite lines in the original Star Wars movie is one that is almost never recognized for being so perfectly placed. While one of the Y-wing bombers is making his run down the trench of the Death Star, he gets warned about enemy pilots nearing him and feels obliged to put everyone else at ease. He accomplishes this feat by drawing out the phrase “Almost there…almost there…” The tone of voice passes on a sense of hope-specifically, hope that no one else will call him on the fact that it will be about 5 more minutes of screen time before he gets anywhere close to being “there” (the end of the trench, in his case), which in the battle is a very long time.
As it turns out, Evanston is “almost there” for Chicago. With Northwestern’s campus being on the lakeshore and having a little island that juts out into the water, this makes for some great views. Here’s a fairly boring shot of Chicago from the north Lakeshore. Imagine the sunset, when the sky is painted colors that, as Terry Pratchett so perfectly stated, professional artists would call “tacky.”
That line, chosen as today’s blog post title, is also appropriate as I contemplate the end of this first year. In the exact same way as the pilot in Star Wars, I can say “Almost there” about classes, about summer, about prelims, about any number of things. I am, in fact, almost there. Almost, but not quite, and it’s the not quite that perfectly fits the movie frame as well-a few days, a few weeks, seems short but in effort left to be put forth is a very long time.
The TAs for our classes have been wonderful. One of them, probably my favorite TA all year, was giving us advice and discussing with us where we are after this first year of classes. He told us that we should all feel as if we have grown a lot as economists, and he’s right, we have (well, we domestics who knew nothing until this year have; I’m not too sure about a few of the students who already have masters degrees). He also made sure to qualify that we may not have grown as people, and there again he was mostly right…
Now, as the “almost there” implies, we are on the home stretch. That wise TA referred to this first year as a marathon, and we’re at the last half-mile or so. The problem is that the last half mile is an uphill sprint. Now the difficult work begins. Now the panic begins (or continues for those of us with average ability like myself who have worried all year). Now the fun begins.
Because now is when the pressure starts. In sports this time is referred to as the time “when the lights come on,” when everyone is watching and what happens matters. Adrenaline starts pumping as the tests get distributed. Determination meets panic with that first glimpse of the questions, and the victor of that split-second stalemate often determines the outcome of the battle. Cool, level-headed reason? That is the first casualty of this vicious war. This is thinking as hard and fast as you can, searching the back recesses of your mind for that problem that was kind of like this for inspiration, for that day in class when he mentioned that one term, what was it again, I know it was about this. Telling yourself that you don’t have to get done with all of the math in the first 5 minutes but knowing that if you don’t try then you won’t get done with any of it in the whole 2 or 3 hours. Thinking during each test that each problem is only a battle, not the war, and you can lose a battle but win the war, then realizing that each problem was more like a skirmish and each test a battle, but this is a war that must be won with total victory. As the battle rages, the effort drops with fatigue, and the warriors consult the clock in a vain attempt to coax more of the eternal scarcity: time. 5 minutes to go.Almost there…
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April 26, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
at 5:54 pm
by Ryan
So I totally failed at my promise to update this more often. You people need to hold me accountable-stop paying for your subscriptions until I publish more.
You were paying for your subscription, right?
Given that I wanted to write this as a break from studying for my second and third tests of the quarter, this won’t be long. Thus, instead of deep thoughts, we’ll have random (read: really, really shallow) thoughts.
- (Women, please ignore this point.) Have you ever really gotten a good look at your own nose and ears? I think of myself as a fairly observant person (though I know a certain commenter would disagree), and I randomly noticed and paid attention to those this past week to great surprise. For instance, I could not have told you the proper shape of either of those two on me. After paying a little more attention to how they look, you get a better appreciation for how cartoons and comics have approached drawing them-they look less ridiculous than a first look a would suggest.
- I have been saying for years that I would be in much better shape if I had just found a product like an exercise bike that would connect to my television or video game and demand exercise so that I could keep watching/playing. It turns out there already was such a product. Alas, my brilliant ideas have, as usual, been stolen by others.
- Food Network (and cooking shows on other networks) have finally gotten back into my tv schedule, and I’m starting to understand why they drive me crazy: everything on there looks so tasty, then I remember that a) I don’t know how to cook in half those methods; b) I always wind up watching them either right after I’ve had something terrible (so I feel regretful) or when I haven’t eaten in a while but don’t have time to make something right now (so I get jealous); and c) the shows always make me think that I’m going to be one of those guys who can prepare his own meals (well, beyond making sandwiches, steaming rice and veggies, and grilling meat-which is actually a pretty tasty meal in its own right). Right now, I’m watching a show profiling steakhouses, after having eaten what I must say was a rather terrible lunch, and that does not make me a happy camper.
- Apparently, weather works on a 1-week cycle here during spring. 3 weeks ago we had rain from Saturday night through Monday night, and then a week of sun, and then the same. That same pattern is still holding right now. The problem with this is that I am on a softball team that is supposed to play on Mondays, and it looks again like we will be canceled, so I still haven’t played a game. That said, at least the practices are good exercises?
- And finally, a correction to a George Bernard Shaw/Bobby Kennedy quote: Some people see the world as it is and ask why. Others see the world as it could be and ask why not. I see both and ask, “Why aren’t more people laughing?”
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March 18, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
at 12:35 pm
by Ryan
A few regular readers have requested that I put something up here, as it’s been officially more than one month since the last post, and let’s be honest, that was hardly a groundshaker. Fear not, you visitors of the blogoshpere (not to be confused with the Blagosphere, which is the sphere around former Illinois governor Rod Blago-something-I-can’t-spell into which no politician will enter. The sphere has a radius of about 40 feet, based on pole-touching commentary (“I wouldn’t touch that with…)). Today, you feast again. And by feast, I mean you get to read and then think “Well, that’s another (3-10 minutes, based on reading speed) of my life that I’ll never get back.”
I just finished my finals for this semester, and I must say that I felt about as well as I did last quarter for two of the classes, and much better than I did about the third. Fortunately the third was my worst last year, so I should be looking for a better grade distribution this quarter. We’ll see.
I feel obliged to point out at this point that I’m operating on minimal sleep over the last 5 days, since I had 3 finals over the past 3; last night, I had maybe 4 hours of sleep, so I’m not entirely sure my higher brain is actually functioning right now. In other words, this post was written almost entirely on autopilot.
A few weeks ago, one of my fellow grad students mentioned that in his time getting a philosophy degree in undergrad, he came to realize that the last 40 years of philosophy focus not on the traditional primary question of philosophy, how ought man live, but on a more basic question: ought man live? He has since parlayed that into jokes about waking up at 7 to go to 9am classes that put you to sleep, saying that on some of those days he finds himself in class wondering if he answered the question wrongly. But the very fact that this question can be asked, let alone receives the full intellectual force of philosophy in discussing it, is disturbing to me.
My favorite author, G.K. Chesterton, wrote in Orthodoxy that there was a danger inherent in man’s ability to think, and that was the ability to think things that end up destroying the capability of man to think. Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged, a book much in vogue right now amongst conservative pundits and followers of political discussion, discusses man as being capable of, through thoughts that ignore or dismiss reality, bringing about his own destruction through actions he believes are for the best. (Ayn Rand believed that redistribution-”looting”-was the thought, because it brings about the gradual destruction of the society that makes modern life possible. I’ll ignore the veracity of that claim for now.) Chesterton, though, was concerned with precisely this question, that we can think ourselves out of being thinking creatures, and so think ourselves out of existence, in a way. He wrote, to paraphrase, that there is a thought that makes further thought impossible.
If ever there were a thought that makes further thought impossible, it must have come from the mental process that originates with considering the question “ought man live” to be a legitimate, non-trivial question. If ever there were a self-evident truth, it must be that the answer to “ought man live” is an unequivocal “yes.” Oscar Wilde wrote that man does not appreciate sunsets because man cannot pay for them (to which Chesterton brilliantly responds that man can pay for them-man can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde). Generalizing the sentiment, behind the question of “ought man live” is the thought that man does not fully appreciate the joys, the benefits of life because man cannot pay for them; to which my reply is “surely at the very least one must pay for these joys by living.” Chesterton made arguments about ordinary morals justifying extraordinary sentiments; that now I must start off by claiming that ordinary life is necessary to justify ordinary sentiments is unthinkable.
I admit that I am unabashedly pro-life, and my justification for it is that every moment one has alive is one more moment in which one can realize the beauty and joy of existence and in so doing be motivated to find one’s own method of payment for the ability to experience something that great. For myself, this realization came after reading Orthodoxy and stopping to think about everything in the world. As a cynic by experience and pragmatist by nature, I am sometimes astounded to notice how generally happy and pleased I have become with the world-I remarked to a friend earlier this week that I must be the most upbeat cynic in the world. All of that comes from the fundamental realization that existence is wonderful. I say realization, not belief, because I do not accept that this is merely a belief but insist it to be a truth.
Some men, through the force of their personalities, have conquered unconquerable foes, won unwinnable battles, or beaten unbeatable odds. I will never be one of those people, I have resigned myself to accept. But I do sometimes hope that the force of my love for life can inspire others, if not to greatness, than at least to understand the beauty I see in and the joy I take from the world around me every day.
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February 17, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
at 12:11 am
by Ryan
We all are tested at times. For me, at this particular moment, the tests were literal ones: macro, micro, and metrics (or as I like to call them, the 3 Ms of economics). If you are lucky enough to know when you are being tested (and thus know when you are finished being tested), you can do what any sane person would do: celebrate. Which leads me to a question: what do you do when you finish midterms? If your answer was “drink a bottle of wine (over about 6/7 hours, so no serious side effects) and score 672,000 on Text Twist after playing it from 4:10-11:30”, then give yourself a gold star. If you just guessed “play Text Twist,” or “play video games” in general, I suppose you get a silver star.
Come up with my entire afternoon somehow and I’ll grant a platinum star.
So now, after 2 weeks of, well, adrenaline and sleep, I get to relax. The problem is, I’m slowly starting to forget how to do that. I suppose I know that it involves not doing things that take effort, either physically or mentally, but most of the things I enjoy doing involve effort in one of those two dimensions. I suppose I’ll remember how this works at some point.
Well, 12:15 is time for bed even for grad students whose classes barely start before noon, so that’s all for now. More soon.
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February 5, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
at 11:30 pm
by Ryan
- There are plenty of examples of parts of the human body being used as meteorological instruments–feeling in your bones when it will rain, the hair hygrometer (I think that’s the right instrument; I keep a meteorologist in the family to let me know when I make mistakes), etc. My contribution: using your nose to determine how cold it is. And no, this isn’t a “how long until you can’t feel it anymore”–that would just be silly. This is “how long until your snot freezes”, and over the last few weeks I tuned it to within about a 5-degree margin of error. Of course, when I arrive at my destination and warm myself, I no longer have a frozen snot problem but a runny nose problem.
- I think some syllables and words transcend culture and language to make the human brain think a certain thing. My example for the week? Consider the Greek letter psi. What is it’s shape? Well, a professor of mine today, in trying to identify one on the blackboard, said “that symbol, psi or pitchfork, whatever you want to call it” (this is the same one who referred to a lowercase xi as “squished bug”). So what do we get when we spell that syllable a little differently, as sai? Why, a Japanese weapon that looks like a miniature pitchfork. Remarkable.
- When I receive those email messages that ask you to fill out details about yourself, send them to x new people, and let them continue it, I often consider just waiting until I get x people send it to me, filling it out, and sending it back to them. This way I would respond, as directed, but stop the chain as well. Unfortunately, I either never get that many forwarded to me, or when I have gotten them it’s been so long since the first that I fear I’d just be restarting the chain. So of course, I never respond to them.
- If I weren’t typing this tonight, then tomorrow my bedroom would be the cleanest it has been since I moved in (i.e. when my mother organized things in the beginning). For some reason I, like many others I know, will only feel like cleaning when it’s the lesser of two evils. In this case, that is preparing for midterms.
- Since I started college, I have often considered absurd jobs I could try if I decide my path at the time isn’t what I want to do. I think my favorite choice was country music writer. The twist? The songs would all be written about philosophical concepts. My favorite titles so far (I never wrote the songs, just the titles): “Walking ‘Round the Cartesian Circle” and “All Dogs go to Platonic Heaven”. I could do this with economic concepts too (one of my classmates was trying to rewrite “Lump” to be about lump-sum taxes), but even fewer people would care about those than about philosophy songs.
- I have a fantastic tv capable of hi-definition, plenty of videogames, a computer, dvds, can record television shows at will, have plenty of music options, and between the phone and internet can talk live to friends whenever I want. Why, then, am I often most entertained by books I’ve read a thousand times and television shows I’ve watched almost as much?
- During my year of work between college experiences, I made fun of my friends in law school when they had to take tests. Now, they all get their revenge. If revenge is a dish best served cold, it’s even better when they get to serve it to me during winter in Evanston.
- Speaking of tests: I remember back in junior high school taking a test one time when apparently students from another class were in the hall making noise outside our room. Everyone else in the room was complaining about being unable to focus, but I didn’t even know anything was going on until I finished the test. I used to think this was because I could focus better than most people. Since last semester, I’ve reconsidered that result. I had 2 types of midterms last year: difficult and insanely difficult. I realized during the latter that I was spending more time gazing around the room and looking at minutae like the clock, out the window, etc. during the test. So my revision is that I can focus well when I know what I’m doing, but when I’m confused it’s all up for grabs.
That’s all for today. Sometime soon I’ll try for a real post, but with midterms happening (unfortunately) that may be a while.
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January 21, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
at 2:47 am
by Ryan
When we come at the end of time,
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance…
“The Fiddler of Dooney”, William Butler Yeats
There is a profound message to be found in the statement “the good are always the merry.” Though perhaps a historical analysis would reveal good men of the more reserved type, perhaps the dour type, when we think of good we instinctively think of merriment, of smiles and laughter. Indeed, if it weren’t for this association, the old joke about the final resting place of St. Peter’s rejects being more fun might not be so amusing.
Of the many reasons to associate the good and the merry, perhaps the strongest reason comes from the term “innocent”. We use this term for many things, but the relevant one to this discussion is the meaning “free of guilt”, or perhaps “free of sin”. When we think of good people, we think of innocent people, people free of guilt, free of sin. The best examples we have of innocence in this world are children. Religions consistently tell us to take special care for children, and many laws are enacted to attempt to keep them pure, unsullied, as long as possible. Perhaps the best known religious leader in history (Jesus, not John Lennon, in spite of what one of my friends may think) demanded his followers come to him like children. We associate youth with purity, new life with cleanliness and blamelessness–with innocence.
Thus having established the hard part, it is easy to see why we associate goodness with merriment: seriousness, graveness, are things learned, not instinctive states of being. In our times of purity, the times before the scars of other’s sins–and our own–are engraved in our minds, in our emotions, and in our souls, we look out upon the world with joy and laughter. The world, other people, are things to be celebrated. And then we learn that not all is good, that there is pain and suffering, and that by causing those in others we can sometimes prevent it in ourselves. But for a time, that time many adults spend their whole lives chasing again, we can be happy and carefree.
And this is why the good are always the merry. When we adopt the approach that causing pain and suffering can alleviate our own, we must always be calculating and calibrating our behaviour so that we minimize the pain to ourselves. But this is the opposite of carefree–indeed, it is a world where every action of ours is weighed to figure out if it will lead to pain for ourselves. The good, though, they need not worry about their actions, or, if they are truly good, those of others. When one doesn’t seek to cause pain or to avoid it himself, one can be carefree. The good certainly don’t seek to cause pain, but more than the rest of us, since they are willing to forgive, the need not seek to avoid it either.
My parents tell me that when I was very young I was also very merry, laughing and smiling at everything. For much of my life that was no longer the case. Only recently have I begun trying to be merry, to view the world with joy and approach life as a celebration. Though perhaps an attempt to prove not that the good are always the merry but that the merry are always the good, another quote comes to mind, from the West Wing: “‘Act as if ye have faith and faith will be given unto ye.’ To put it another way, ‘Fake it ’till you make it.’” Perhaps be becoming merry, I will someday also become good.
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January 8, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
at 1:55 am
by Ryan
Monday morning on the way to campus I finally felt as though graduate school was real and I belonged here. As I walked to campus listening to music that due to the potential for embarrassment I will not disclose, I realized that I was genuinely looking forward to getting back to classes and spending time with my classmates. Once I realized that I knew that I was where I belonged.
I again don’t have much to say, mainly because I haven’t had a chance to sit down for one of my meaningful posts in a while. My holidays were filled visiting old college and high school friends, and when I say filled I mean filled. Most of my days were initially triple booked with my either splitting time amongst different groups or waiting for someone to have to cancel so that I knew which plan to follow. It was hectic, it was exhausting at times, and it was a lot of fun.
For everyone who got me Christmas gifts, thank you very much. Though I barely remember what day it is and so probably don’t remember what anyone got me specifically (except my parents, for whom I picked out most of my gifts to myself), I do remember those who gave me a present and am quite appreciative of the thought that went into it. For those of you who didn’t get me a gift, what is wrong with you? Leave a comment and I’ll email you my address…
With nothing else to say tonight, I’ll add something I initially wrote 4 years ago when I studied abroad in London and have recently updated/edited. It’s a poem and a prayer. I like it and that’s all that matters to me. Enjoy:
“Dear God,” I write, I ask, I pray,
“I’ve troubles in my life.
Help me to struggle through the day,
To move despite the strife.
This world, I find, is hard on me
And difficult to bear;
Refreshen me and make me see
Your presence everywhere.
Uncertainty, despair, and fear,
I offer all away
Then turn to find you, always near,
And on my knees I pray.
I’ve problems, worries, heartaches too,
And insecurities;
They’ll vanish when I turn toward You
So Father, help me, please.
I dissapoint–I sin, I fail–
I am not perfect, Lord;
And yet, when You I turn and hail,
I know I’m not ignored.
Your grace is plentiful as rain,
Your love outlasts the day.
So Lord, I offer You my pain,”
I write, I ask, I pray.
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