roses, cars, and colors

So, last weekend my friend Rose came to visit me. It was pretty awesome. I got to see a friend who I don't get to see often enough, and she got to see where my world has been for the last three-and-a-half years.

And what was the most interesting thing we did when she was here? We watched Cars. And dyed our hair. Rose, Katie, and I. Neither Katie nor I had ever dyed our hair before. She went for a natural black: I went for a reddish-brown. Rose went a darker brown, and got a haircut to boot.

As you can see, my hair isn't so much reddish-brown as it is ORANGE.

So, I washed it vigorously the next morning and it faded some. Now it's what I like to call a "violent strawberry blonde." In dim lighting, you can't really tell it's been dyed.

So I'm a temporary redhead. My blonde should be back in a month or so.

glow sticks and the french language

A few random thoughts (four to be exact):

1.
I haven't written here for about a month, unless you count the post on Halloween that I wrote 15 minutes ago but dated as being written 4 days ago just because I wanted to make it a separate post. (I know, nerdy of me.) A lot has happened: papers, pumpkin smashing, mid-terms, studying, visiting friends, the Car Rally. Now that the second half of the semester is starting, I feel like I have a little bit of breathing room, but not too much. I really need to work on minimizing distractions, and getting my rocks into the jar before I start adding gravel and sand.

2.
It's been cold recently. It even snowed a few days ago. This brings me great joy. Although it's been a bit warmer in the last couple of days, I'm hoping that this early freeze means we're in for a cold, snowy, and fun winter. I took these pictures a couple weeks ago while I was on on one of my morning runs in the frost.

Note that this picture is entirely and completely posed. I normally don't have such a victorious grin on my face as I'm running, nor do I look at the sky. I find that it's more useful to keep an eye on the ground ahead of me. It prevents painful and unnecessary things from occurring (falling on my face, for example).

3.
In church this morning, Pastor Bill made a distinction between knowing information about God and knowing God personally. It was a passing comment; it wasn't the main point of the sermon, but it made me think of French. In French, there are two different words for the verb "to know," as opposed to English's one. Savoir (pronounced saav-woir) means to know about, to know intellectually: You'd say "I sais that Courtney is that short girl with blonde hair in my Hist o' Christ class. She is a Theology major, and she lives in a Theme House." But connaitre means to know personally. You'd say, "I connais Courtney: I sit by her in Hist o' Christ and we laugh together at the professor's jokes. We like to go ice skating together, and talk about life." I think that the distinction is an important one, and I'm sad that it's been lost in English. We shouldn't just know about (savoir) God... we need to know (connaitre) God.

4.
These last few days I've had several different "moments" when I'm convicted, either by something I'm reading or thinking about or hearing. But it's not a complete conviction: I'm almost-convicted. It's hard to describe. I feel like if I could just force the concepts that I'm mulling over into my head and heart, it would have a big effect on the way I live and operate, whether it be physically, emotionally, or spiritually. But it's like that conviction is just beyond my grasp. Today the perfect illustration came to me. In the middle of the sermon, I suddenly thought, I feel like a glow stick. I've got all these truths bumming around inside of my head, and all I need is a SNAP! and they'll break through their little intellectual barrier and combine with my life, causing me to glow.


So I'll end with this picture that I took while I was home for Fall Break. Calm; peaceful; beautiful; glowing. All I need is to be bent until I snap. If that makes any sense at all.

afterthoughts on halloween

This was the first Halloween in my Whitworth career that has taken place on a class-day. Every other year it has occurred over Fall Break. So it was kind of fun to have the opportunity to dress up and wear weird things to class. The students who dressed up were definitely in the minority, but it was fun nevertheless. Here are a few pictures for your enjoyment:

This one is of my friend Mary and I, before we went to a costume party at the Piano Theme House on the 30th. I was a farm girl; she was a 70s girl with a fro. We made a cute couple.

This next one is of my friend Michelle and I. We have both of our Tues/Thurs classes together in the same room (Christian Anthropology and World Religions), so we both wore costumes. I'm in one of my mom's old dresses from the 70s with a viking hat on my head, and Michelle is wearing this awesome orange dress that I found once at Value Village. I definitely wore that viking outfit all day. It was glorious.

Later that evening, we had a friend over to our house to make some pies and watch Hocus Pocus. I can't remember what exactly brought it about, but Katie and I ended up augmenting our costumes by using pillows to make us look pregnant and dancing in the kitchen while we cooked (I know, I know... just don't ask.) I think this picture is pretty funny. Pregnant women in the kitchen making pies: the epitome of the housewife stereotype.

So, in summary: as much as I dislike the connotations that surround Halloween, I've gotta admit that it provides a fun excuse to dress up, goof around, and eat candy.

still waters

Last weekend was full and good. I went to the Spokane Symphony with Jessie at the opera house downtown on Friday night, which was beautiful. Saturday morning, I went to Green Bluff with Chelsea. Green Bluff is a farming community just north of campus, and they are hosting the Apple Festival right now... some farms just have U-Pick fruit, and some have shops, live bands, food, and booths. Chels and I went from farm to farm, with the goal of finding this caramel applesauce that I had had three years ago. We finally found out which farm it was at (Hansen's!) and ended our morning by sitting at a table under a weeping willow and eating warm applesauce with twangy Christmas music playing in the background. It was simple and good. Saturday afternoon, I headed downtown with Jessie and a bunch of her friends from camp and played laser tag. We got owned by a bunch of 8-year-old boys with code names like "phantom" and "what now", but it was really fun.

Sunday morning, Mary and I made breakfast for some Whitworth Choir folks, and then we sang at Whitworth Presbyterian Church. It was wonderful... it seems like no matter what is going on in my life, I can't help but be joyful after we sing. It was my first performance with the Whitworth Choir, but it felt like home. We hung out as a choir afterwards for about an hour (still dressed up in our formalwear) and had our picture taken professionally, and just had a good time doing it. It was, as Mary said today, an honest performance, and I feel like it has set the stage for my week so far.

After I got home on Sunday, I was still running on high from singing. It was a melancholy high, if that's possible... I felt like I was calm and happy, with a subtle undercurrent of joy. So I made myself some tomato soup, curled up with a blanket on the floor in the middle of our living room, and sat. I didn't pray; I didn't read my Bible; I just sat, for what seemed like about an hour, with God. It was beautiful. I finally read some... my passage in Ecclesiastes was 3:1-15, the "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven..." passage. Part of it really stuck out to me, and I kept thinking of the choir as I read it: "I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time." I copied it over onto a notecard, and that was that. I proceeded to go and clean my fishtank.

And then there was today.

Frost.

7am. I rolled out of bed, changed into my jogging clothes, and when I stepped outside there was frost. My breath came out of my mouth in little puffs of cloud. I can't really describe how I felt. I felt like my oatmeal must have felt this morning when it got so excited in the microwave that it just started glopping out over the sides of the bowl. I get the feeling sometimes in choir when we hit a chord just right: it's like a tight knot of joy, somewhere in between my diaphragm and my throat, that's just waiting to bubble over. And nothing else really matters: I'm just content to be in that very moment. So, I went for my run. The frost melted away, and the day turned into one of those crisp, sunny, red-and-golden autumn days. Beautiful.

When I got to choir, Marc had us sit in a big circle and told us that today was going to be a debrief day. He mentioned that one of his favorite passages in the Bible is in Ecclesiastes, when it says there is a time for everything (coincidence? no...) and, moving in a circle, he had everyone share where they were at in life, and then something about yesterday's performance. It was incredible. We only got through about a third of the choir, but I was blown away at how everyone was so open and honest with where they were at in life. Some people cried; some people were joyful. But really hearing from these people, beyond the passer-by dialogue of "howareya?" "fine", was really moving. I was teared up for most of the hour. And I kept thinking: God has made everything beautiful in its time.

I've been thinking about a lot of things lately - what comes after graduation; what a healthy balance is between classes, relationships, and activities; what will motivate me to practice piano about 3x as much as I'm doing now. I've been thinking about confidence, trust, and openness. I've been wondering what my place is.

Today all those issues are still at the back of my mind, but I'm at peace. And at least one of those questions has been answered. My place is here. Now. Today. Living and learning and serving with the people God has put me with, doing the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

Nancy Drew and Winnie-the-Pooh

I babysat for my three little cousins last night. Mary is at that stage where she is talking constantly, but you only occasionally can understand what she's trying to say. And she's so earnest while she's talking to you... it's really sweet. It reminds me of Boo in Monster's, Inc.

Anyway... after dinner, we watched Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin. Maybe it's a sign that I've been in school for too long, or maybe it is just a sign that the Core program at Whitworth is doing its job... but the whole time we were watching it, I kept thinking things like "Mmm, this scene really illustrates the faith vs. reason debate" or "Wow. You can tell from this song that Pooh is an empiricist, but Rabbit is an authoritarian." Yeah, I know. Nerdy.

Then, later, one of the things the kids wanted me to read to them before bed was a chapter out of a Nancy Drew book. So I read them chapter one of Nancy Drew and the Bungalow Mystery. As I was reading, I came across this sentence: "Just then, Nancy saw a giant wave bearing down on them. She met it head on, hoping to ride the crest, but a deluge of water almost inundated the girls..." I had to stop reading because I was laughing. Deluge!? Inundated!? I'm sure I didn't know what 'deluge' meant until SAT prep tests, and I wasn't sure what inundated meant until now. And the kids probably think that Nancy was hoping to ride a tube of toothpaste. All I have to say is this: people just don't write like this for kids anymore, and it's a sad thing. No wonder they're struggling to bring WASL scores up.

Just so you know...
deluge- a great flood of water; inundation; flood
inundated- to cover with water, especially floodwaters
crest- the foamy top of a wave