Shots fired into the sky are now returning; where .. will you hide?

Alternate title: Still can be great, part two.

As literature nerds (no, I'm not good enough to be one) know everywhere, East of Eden is a retelling of the story of Cain and Abel while the actual biblical account plays into the story quite a bit.  This has been relevant for me since there has been some discussion of greatness in the story and based on my previous posts, its something I've wrestled with lately as well.  One of the excerpts includes comparing the King James version of Genesis 4 versus the American Standard version.  The Chinese character, aptly named Lee, picks up on one main difference in verse 7, namely the wording of "Thou shalt rule over him (sin)" versus "but do thou rule over it".  This encourages him to go back and study the actual Hebrew script to see why this ambiguity and difference of meaning exists.  When he does this, the actual interpretation he finds is, instead of Thou shalt or do Thou is actually Thou mayest, leading him to say,

"Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, 'Do thou', and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win."

And further on,

"And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing - maybe more important than a star.  This is not theology. I have no bent towards gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul.  It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe.  It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest'."

I'm not going to claim this is anything overly special as its just a posturing of free will over predestination.  However, this is something I desperately needed to read after this week, since I've been struggling through idleness.  As a man, greatness is not something you can grasp or embody.  However, greatness does come through choice.  If I want to be happy or great or whatever, I can't depend on anyone else for that.  That can only come to me through Christ in myself, but with that, there still needs to be action on my part.  Instead of lazing around the apartment in the morning and just not doing anything, I need to make the conscious decision to be disciplined and run from temptation and to make myself the person I want to be.  I've thought about this a lot recently in terms of other people and what I want to tell them, but its hit me hard recently as I wallow in my own filth (not literally).  Instead of looking at others, I need to take care of myself first and make sure things are okay with me.

There is more to this still though.  Greatness does not come easily or grant ease of life.  To quote from earlier in the book,

"“It's because I haven't courage,' said Samuel. 'I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called his name - but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It's not an uncommon disease. But it's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.'

'I'd think there are degrees of greatness,' Adam said.

'I don't think so,' said Samuel. 'That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other - cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I'm glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He's suffering over the choosing right now. It's a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn't that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be.”"

Have I made my choice?  I don't know.  In some things, such as math, I know I've chosen mediocrity as I couldn't handle the loneliness of greatness in those things.  But for life as a whole, I can't say.  Get back to me when I'm on my deathbed and I'll let you know.

The words are too feeble, they can not contain

Few words, just a couple pictures.  Stop what you're doing and go to Utah.  It will B-L-O-W your mind.

Still can be great

A few weeks ago, I was told I was a great man.  I believe there was some authenticity in the statement, but I don't believe it was full authenticity and it was partly said simply to placate me.  It did get me to thinking though about what it means to be great.  You can certainly define what it means to be great in your own way here.  I was originally going to write a post asking if you had the audacity to be great.  When I consider the things I'm actually good at (math, running, etc.), its all things in which I don't actually consider myself great.  I put in a ton of work on them on I became very good, but certainly nothing where I can't easily find people who are better.  The original post would've been a call to see what you can do to best improve yourself and see if you'd be willing to put in all that time to make yourself awesome at anything.

Instead, hike southern Utah.  You'll understand what great is and where your place in it lies.  Its amazing God gave us something so awe inspiring.

I'm kinda over getting told to throw my hands up in the air

Before you say anything, the title is from Local H's cover of Lorde's Team so no worries, I'm still not necessarily listening to good music even though it is a fantastic cover.  As was promised earlier, here are this year's summer goals, once again, in no particular order.

1) Hike Utah's Mighty Five - Luke and I have this all set up already.  I am excited, oh so excited.

2) Explore Kentucky.  At a minimum, I want to visit Mammoth Cave, hike Red Rock Canyon and tour a distillery.

3) Drink homemade beer.  This is mostly a hope that I'll be out in the pacific northwest during August.

4) Do actual mathematical research on expanding spectral deferred correction.  I have a faculty development grant for this so it should at least have a decent amount of work put into it.

5) Catch up on scripture memory.  I'm going back through the scripture memory plan that URC put out a couple years ago.  I've got the first 10 weeks done or so and I want to get caught back up to the point where I'm on track for the year at the end of August.

6) Get involved in church sports.  I'm already on a church league softball team but I should check out the Wednesday night volleyball as well.

7) Watch the original Star Wars trilogy.  I've never done it.  I'm not sure if I actually will this summer.

8) Build a wine glass shelf so my living room is slightly classier.

9) Complete P90X2.  I tried before. I hurt myself.  I want to make up for that and I want something to do other than running and poorly planned out lifting.  I may take pictures and post them on facebook.

10) Eat no fast food within 75 miles of Anderson.

Truth, covered in security

Be forewarned.  Usually, my posts are 98% thought out before I even start typing.  Tonight, I have a few things I want to cover, but mostly, I'm writing to get these thoughts out of my head and I'm interested to see what all comes out.

First off, yes, I know, its weird to have a post entitled with the same thing as the motto of my entire blog. For the musical reference, go here. However, that's the whole point to this post.  I don't know if I can legitimately keep calling this blog "Truth covered in security".  Things are certainly no longer covered in security.  When I first started, it was just because it was a fun thing to do and a way to keep friends updated because we didn't have facebook and I was in grad school and everyone else was back in Chicago.  Originally, it was named after Local H (who else?) and called "I'm all wrong and all the kids are right."  In the last few years though and especially once I started this again in Indiana, I've been very forthcoming with a lot of things.  I can trace this back to people like Heather and Steph - people I probably shouldn't be good friends with because we don't have a tremendous amount in common, but I dearly love them both like sisters because they're such good people.  The thing I admire about them the most is just how open and honest and real they are and they never held anything back.  They were upfront with their emotions and their struggles and their joys and it was so incredibly refreshing because they didn't try to be anyone other than themselves.  Couple that with the breakthroughs I had in my men's small group at URC where there was a similar feeling and that's something I knew that I had to have.  I had to become open out everything with me.  I don't want to live in shame of anything.  Shame can not win if you do not allow it to fester by hiding it and denying what you've done.  First off, let me say, I don't believe shame is a bad thing.  Shame is the moral equivalent of pain as it just lets you know something is wrong.  If you take care of it, seek forgiveness and learn from your mistakes, the shame should not haunt you.  Once you learn that, the release of shame just becomes so incredibly freeing that its beautiful.  This is what I've set out to do and I think I'm doing it fairly well.  I think this speaks to my spiritual maturity that's occurred over the last few years as I've even further established who I am.  It says something to me when I can put things on here that I know are going to be unappealing to my mom, just because she's the one person in the world who I'd currently want to have believe that I'm perfect.  If I can put that stuff out there, then I know I'm not holding back.

That said, this blog will never just become a free for all.  I try to only write about my thoughts and opinions and experiences and sometimes that means I write about those close to me or even those who I interact with on any given day as they shape my experiences.  Mostly, I try to keep from ragging on others and with a few regrettable exceptions, I definitely stay away from doing that to friends. (Yes, I know which post you're thinking of and it's now been edited.)  I don't know how long this blog will even last.  While its just me, it'll certainly continue to exist because its an easy way for me to reach out to my support system which is spread out all over the country which is great for traveling, but pretty sucktastic for actually being a support system.  If I get married and have kids and life gets really busy or if my wife becomes uncomfortable with this blog, at the least it would become password protected or even possibly just given up completely. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Finally, I started up church league summer softball yesterday.  It was great to get out there again even though I only know one guy on the team and he's the sports ministry director at our church.  He's a really good dude though and I look forward to getting to know the other guys better.  The game was a blowout because our team doesn't suck, but we were placed in the bottom league because we were new and the leagues our Euro-soccer style where you have to earn your way up.  I started off poorly by popping out to catcher and lazily flying out to right in my first two at-bats.  I also botched a soft line drive by timing my jump incorrectly early on.  It was just early jitters though.  I ended up playing decent defense but that'll improve as I get back in the swings.  After those two early outs, I ended up reaching base the other seven times I batted including a couple of home runs (one was a four base error) and a walk.  I hate walking but none of the pitches were close.  The only disappointing thing about this league is that once again, I don't think any of the other guys on the team are single, which isn't a big deal, but I'd just love to happen some single guys to connect with.  I mentioned a possible singles ministry to my pastor as I was interviewing for membership at my church on Sunday, so maybe something will eventually happen with this, but I'm not holding my breath.  Additionally, playing church league sports will be part of my summer goals, which will be the next post that comes up once exam week ends in a few days.  I can't wait until my summer goals are simply 1) Be an awesome husband. 2) Be a kick-ass dad.  

You're only feeling stronger 'cause your body's getting numb

Based on the events from earlier in the week and the lack of goal work last month, I was going to originally skip doing a monthly goal update for April.  Then I had to go and rock the Indy Mini Marathon this morning so I want to brag about that and now I have to post.

1) Work harder - apparently all those winter miles paid off as I did this morning's Mini (aka half) Marathon in 1:33:12, a 7:07 pace.  I wanted a 7:20 pace and would have been thrilled with a 7:15 pace.  I started off doing 6:45 miles for the first four miles or so and then I just kept pumping out 7:00 miles for the next several miles.  I started to fade a little around mile ten as my hip started to feel a little discomfort but by then, I had built up enough of a buffer that I could have done 8 minute miles and still made 7:15 pace.  I am thoroughly pleased with this morning's results.

2) Play harder - uh, does running count?  If not, I don't really have much.  Wait until the end of May.

3) Travel more - see category 2.

4) Read more - this was the biggest failure of the month.  I may have read 30 pages of East of Eden.  I also knocked out about 75 pages in Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper.  I averaged 3 pages a day.  That's not good.

5) Drink better beer - the only thing I've had in my fridge this month has been the previously mentioned Smitten, which is totally decent and Triton's Sin Bin Ale which is totally mediocre and definitely not worth the price it goes for.

Next thought on this week.  Some of you may know that about six months ago, I had been struggling with not being disciplined in several areas of my life and had tried and failed at finding a way to improve on them.  It was then that I created a basic system on how to rate how I was doing.  I had six categories I check every day - devotions in the morning, devotions at night, not overeating, not drinking to the point where it affects me, working out, not viewing sexually explicit material.  If I did all six of those things, the day was worth $2.  If I got five of six, it was a $1 day.  Four or less and the day was worth nothing.  I didn't know originally what I would use the money for, but now that has created my Vegas fund for the coming trip which might not be the best use of it, but oh well.  Any way, despite the craptacular nature of the start of the week, this has actually been a really good week based on those criteria.  Since the start of this system, I've probably averaged roughly $1 a day with my best week being $11.  This week, assuming I do devotions tonight, will end up being a $13 week.  The only blemish was overeating on Friday, but that's a result of my desire for community and going out to lunch with all the other science profs.  Today might have qualified as a poor eating day, but I'm letting myself get away with it since I did run a half-marathon this morning and go for an hour long walk tonight.  I certainly don't expect $13 weeks to happen very often, but this was a most welcome week for it, especially since I had had two very poor weeks before it.

Final thought for the night.  Is it possible to not date someone because you've become too comfortable with them?  Hear me out on this.  Last night, while trying unsuccessfully to go to bed at 9:00 so I could be up at an awful hour for this morning's run, I thought about a lot of things and one of them ended up being this topic.  Namely, I have a friend I've known for several years now who is Christian, very intelligent, attractive, incredibly athletic, and really easy for me to talk to.  Depending on when you knew me in life, you either know who this is immediately or have no idea whatsoever.  We never dated because we never really broached the subject, mostly because we were friends but not particularly close friends and mainly just did stuff together with group stuff.  Additionally, when we first met, she was seeing someone and since we never really talked about things of this nature, I never knew when that was over.  There were a few other reasons I wouldn't have initiated anything, including that I thought she was out of my league, but its become obvious to me that those things were wrong and I'd be very surprised if she wouldn't have gone out with me.  I know she is single now, but even if I had the option, I don't know if I'd take it.  Part of it is the long distance thing that I really don't want to do, but I also wonder if part of it is that I wouldn't get the excitement of getting to know someone new.  When that happens, you get caught up in the rush of discovering and finding out all of these amazing things about them and its just a lot of fun.  Sure, you'll eventually find out the bad stuff, but depending on how good the good is, the bad stuff either doesn't matter that much or you'll find ways to work through it.  With this girl, I know there'd still be a lot of things to discover, but I somewhat feel like I know her already and since it hasn't happened yet, I don't know if it ever could.  Its definitely not a friend-zone situation since I'm fairly certain we've both wanted something at some given point.  I don't know.  My brain does weird things when I'm trying to find a way to force myself to relax and go to sleep.

We'll take her up and fly her blind and fall asleep to the engine whine

Alas, the feel good posts don't last.  Sunday night Tori called me up and told me things weren't going to work.  It didn't come from completely out of nowhere, but it did catch me totally by surprise as I certainly didn't think things would end this fast.  She gave me the courtesy of discussing everything so we finally got that in last night and we talked it out and now we're officially over.  Tori explained all of her reasons for wanting to end it and they are very legitimate reasons, but right now, I can't say I feel the same as I think they are all things we could work through.  She's totally right in that there are a few ways in which we are completely different and perhaps this is for the best, but right now this one stings as I truly believe there could have been something great between us and for at least a little while, I know she felt exactly the same way.  The way she handled things showed a great deal of maturity, but that's cold comfort when what you're desiring is rampant optimism combined with dedication.

We're not leaving this relationship on bad terms because we don't like each other.  Maybe eventually someday we can be friends. (Edited for obvious reasons).  Right now, all I can do is keep praying, thank God for the great/intense two months that we had together and start to move on while I rekindle the hope of finding the absolutely amazing woman God has planned to be my wife.