Culture

Its practically impossible to escape what is surrounding you. Don't believe me? Try seperating yourself from your shadow on a sunny afternoon (Peter Pan couldn't do it!). Or try to out manuever the "floaties" in your peripheral vision. Sorry folks, it ain't gonna happen. They are there to stay.

The same can be said for the culture we live in. Many times this is a pretty cool thing. I love how excited small southern towns get about high school football. TV commercials promoting Halloween and Christmas are lots of fun. And who isn't grateful that we actually get to chose who we marry (or to not get married) as opposed to being in an arranged ceremony?

The dangerous thing about culture is the effect it can have on the way we view the world. We graduate from college and consider ourselves financially uncomfortable to be making less than $30,000 dollars per year. How soon do we forget that very few people in the world will ever own that much money! Or maybe we are excited to hear that our best friend has started dating this great girl, until we see her for the first time and are shocked to find that she is black. We find ourselves fixated on and heartbroken over a hurricane that overtakes one of our countries cities while barely noticing the thousands of slaughtered children in Africa, sometimes at the hands of other children with M-16s strapped across their little chests.

Its hard to get around. Our culture socially constructs our worldview. I've viewed the world through the lense of my culture. You have too.

The good news is that hope exists. Yes, even for you and me. Christ called those who followed him to live life counter-culturally. To turn the other cheek. To consider others better than ourselves. To pray for those in persecution while blessing those that persecute. To forfeit the freedom of life itself, so that others would see the glory of God.

And yet, as hard as it is for us to see the world through this lense, doing so only brings our vision clarity.

Went to the Chapel and I Didn't Get Married

Ah, yes. Wedding season has officially come to a close. As for me, I have been in 4 weddings in the past 9 months. I was only a spectator in this last one, and for that, my wallet has been thanking me.

I enjoyed seeing my good friends Justin Bourlon and Robyn Hopper tie the noose...I mean knot...this past weekend in Rogers, AR. Fortunately, the ceremony went off without a hitch and I was able to reunite with several college buddies. Unfortunately, I caught the garter.

If you don't know Justin and Robyn, their story is one of the few "hopeless romantic" stories I've ever known that actually worked out. Before they started dating, Justin pursued that girl for 2 years (I like to tease Robyn who was an all-conference cross country runner in college that Justin was the only race she couldn't win). Despite the hurdles Justin had to jump to finally get her to go out with him, he persevered. And ever after all the times it looked like things would never work out the way he wanted, he persevered. And even though some of his closest friends told him he needed to give up, he persevered. Because of that perseverence, Justin is now honeymooning in Jamaica with his wife.

Even though most stories don't end as well as Justin's did, the point here is not the outcome or even Justin's specific situation. Life throws us many discouraging barriers, but its how we react to those barriers that defines our character. I'm not much of a hopeless romantic, but I'm proud to say I have friend with the character that Justin does. That guy really pushes me as a man.

Until next time
dm

Back to School, Back to School, to prove to dad that I'm not a fool...

I just had my first week of class in grad school. My classes are Monday and Wednesday nights from 6:00-9:00 p.m.

My Monday night class was quite interesting. How a professor is able to lecture for 2 1/2 hours straight is rather amazing to me. Ah, the academia world...
More importantly, I learned what the word "arbitrary" means. Learning new words makes me happy. Look for heavy uses of that word in posts to come.

I was quite saddened to read in my syllabus for my Wednesday night class that my first assignment would be due the following week: read 3 chapters, an 8-page article, and write a five page response paper to the reading. My response was reserved for a 5-line paragraph I read in the article. Not my best work, but I've been out of the game for over a year, I'm just happy to have completed my first assignment.

Well, I'm going to try to make peace with the fact that keeping a full-time job while working on a master's degree isn't easy. Don't feel sorry for me. During college I was a P.E. major with a minor in Speech Comm. I had it pretty easy my last 2 years. Its my time to pay the reaper. Look for continued improvements in my diction as the semester goes by...

dm