I'm thinking about selling my nice little '96 Honda Civic and using a motorbike for transportation instead. What do you think? Here are the pros and cons I can think of regarding this decision:
PRO
-Chick(s) dig(s) it.
-Better fuel economy.
-I'm hardly ever hauling more than myself when I drive right now.
-Insurance is MUCH cheaper.
CON
-Driving in a safe manner takes more intentionality than a car.
-Hauling any kind of cargo (groceries, etc.) can be tricky (but not impossible).
-Probably won't be able to offer rides anytime soon.
POINTS I DIDN'T MENTION ON PURPOSE
-Riding in bad weather. I already do this on my bicycle and feel the transition to motorbike won't be horribly difficult. This will be my year-round transportation just like my bicycle is.
-Start-up cost of bike and gear. Sale of my car will pretty handily cover this. I'll probably make money on the deal even if I buy really expensive (read "quality") safety gear.
Any I missed? Discuss.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Where the Skyscrapers are Silos
This is where I live, now. Its all so.....different. On the way down to Enid, OK to spend some time with Katie's sister Samantha I actually mistook a collection of grain elevators and silos for skyscrapers. For some reason, I thought Enid was a little bit on the larger side as far as towns/cities go. When I saw this cluster of buildings jutting out of the landscape my city-fied brain automatically thought, "Ohhh, that must be downtown." I actually fooled myself for about ten seconds as my brain desperately tried to make sense of these rather odd-looking skyscrapers. As soon as I noticed a rounded top on one of the buildings my brain switched gears and the urban landmarks quickly settled into the agrarian outposts they actually were.
This is where I live, in the Great Plains. The wind blows strong and often brings in heavy rains and thunderstorms. Only at school did I see lightning like this, so fierce and spectacular. Nearly every evening the clouds roll in, the weatherman warns to watch out for severe storms. The land is flat, so flat, with nothing to stop the wind. It just blows on through, sometimes barely stopping at all on its way to who knows where.
My recent trip back to Portland made me realize just how much I miss that land. Just stepping off the plan I could smell the difference. The cool, damp, fecund air; you can smell the green in it. On the way up to Mt. St. Helens, following a winding pass up the mountain, vast forests standing guarding the road on either side. These forests were completely destroyed just a few decades ago in the eruption and now they cover the mountainside like a verdant carpet, demonstrating the resiliency of life in this land. It was all so.....green. Its not as if Kansas is void of grass and trees; these things just don't define the land the same way they do back home.
To be able to so easily walk through forests, enjoying the shade of the tall, rough-barked Douglas Firs and the elegant beauty of ferns, this I desire. For now, though, Kansas is the place God has called me and this is the life I have. I make the best of it, trying to enjoy the creation for what it is. I don't know, though, if I will ever be able to get the mountains, trees, and water out of my blood. I think I may be suffering withdrawal symptoms for the rest of my life.
This is where I live, in the Great Plains. The wind blows strong and often brings in heavy rains and thunderstorms. Only at school did I see lightning like this, so fierce and spectacular. Nearly every evening the clouds roll in, the weatherman warns to watch out for severe storms. The land is flat, so flat, with nothing to stop the wind. It just blows on through, sometimes barely stopping at all on its way to who knows where.
My recent trip back to Portland made me realize just how much I miss that land. Just stepping off the plan I could smell the difference. The cool, damp, fecund air; you can smell the green in it. On the way up to Mt. St. Helens, following a winding pass up the mountain, vast forests standing guarding the road on either side. These forests were completely destroyed just a few decades ago in the eruption and now they cover the mountainside like a verdant carpet, demonstrating the resiliency of life in this land. It was all so.....green. Its not as if Kansas is void of grass and trees; these things just don't define the land the same way they do back home.
To be able to so easily walk through forests, enjoying the shade of the tall, rough-barked Douglas Firs and the elegant beauty of ferns, this I desire. For now, though, Kansas is the place God has called me and this is the life I have. I make the best of it, trying to enjoy the creation for what it is. I don't know, though, if I will ever be able to get the mountains, trees, and water out of my blood. I think I may be suffering withdrawal symptoms for the rest of my life.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Getting Off Work Early
There are a number of things I have enjoyed about my job at Cessna as compared to Micron. The biggest difference so far has been the quality of the two managers I've had here at Cessna. These guys have simply been fantastic bosses showing not only respectable engineering prowess but top-notch people skills. I have deeply appreciated the more personable approach from my leadership here; they make work so much more enjoyable and fulfilling.
Case in point: I got off from work early today. One of the planes our group has been working towards FAA certification finally achieved that goal today. As a small reward, we all got part of the afternoon off. Its small things like this that make my managers so great. The loss to the company is pretty small, just a few hours of work on a Friday afternoon. In my mind, though, this mini-holiday is a wonderful treat and an excellent way to show that management appreciates my work. I feel quite blessed.
Case in point: I got off from work early today. One of the planes our group has been working towards FAA certification finally achieved that goal today. As a small reward, we all got part of the afternoon off. Its small things like this that make my managers so great. The loss to the company is pretty small, just a few hours of work on a Friday afternoon. In my mind, though, this mini-holiday is a wonderful treat and an excellent way to show that management appreciates my work. I feel quite blessed.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Church and State
Remember what I said about the radio program "This American Life" a few days ago? Well, the show this past weekend (June 4-5, 2005) is well worth listening to particularly if you have a desire to try to be culturally relevant as a Christian. The show is titled "Godless America" and it explores the recent trend of what I'll call "fundamental Christian activism". Over the course of an hour two stories are run; the first dealing with Christian activism in the public forum and the second with one woman's grappling with some of the more unseemly sides of the Bible.
Putting the second half of the show aside (it is told in the vein of a personal story rather than strict journalism, per se), the show does a decent job of looking at both sides of the problem. Put better, this show is very typical of what the program as a whole does quite well. Rather than looking at the big topics of the day from the perspective of the movers and shakers in this world, "This American Life" looks at it from the perspective of the ordinary, everyday person. So rather than examine in detail court decisions regarding the separation of church and state, we hear how one high school biology teacher feels like she was forced by her principal to take an oath confessing the supremacy of the Bible in her life.
If you are of the Christian persuasive and take your faith seriously, this will not be a comfortable show to listen to but I still think it is very worthwhile. Ira Glass does a good job of not caricaturing the Christian faith by calling extreme practices the norm. I don't think there will be any confusion just where he stands on all of this but his bias is actually the best reason to listen to the stories he has assembled. Though I can't say for certain, (especially now that I live in a culture that is highly overtly Bible-Belt-ish), I would be willing to bet that his viewpoint is the viewpoint of many who are on the outside looking in. Ira Glass communicates very clearly how he feels about the growing tide of Christian activism in the public forum and does it in a way that is neither inflammatory nor stoked with rhetoric.
(The second half of the show is a monologue by a woman who, after examining the Bible and realizing just how un-candy-coated some it is, has walked away from the faith. Man, I wish somebody (aside from her unhelpful priest) could have been there to help her understand some of these uncomfortable passages. She raises a lot of good questions about the nature of God as revealed in the Bible but, sadly, doesn't seem to have found any answers. )
For me, the story resurfaced a question that has been dormant in my mind for a while but is one I REALLY need to pull up the frontal parts of my brain again. Putting aside all the rhetoric from both sides about the religious views of the Founding Fathers and the words actually used in the Constitution we are left with the following reality. Our nation was founded on the unique principle that church and state should not be joined at the hip as was commonly the case throughout much of Europe. I'm talking about state governments mandating a religious orientation and taxes going to fund the promotion of a particular religious establishment. Again, setting the details aside, I think this is something that nearly everybody in the good ol' USA thinks is a pretty darn good idea. Religious freedom is something we all value; none of us desires to have other people telling us what is and isn't the right way to believe. We all want the right to decided for ourselves what is an isn't correct without coercion from others.
In the same breath, though, there are many people of many different beliefs that are quite convinced they have THE ANSWER and fit would just be best if all believed the same way. And sometimes, every so often, these people form a majority; this is the politically-active Christian church as it stands today. From a nationwide perspective, on average, Christianity has a slim majority. It may or may not feel like it where you are living now, but let me tell you, down here in the Bible-Belt, its pretty clear.
Given this situation, what's the best course of action for the church? The Constitution will probably prevent a radical transformation of our country into a church-run state but what level of activism is appropriate and beneficial? Are we, the church, doing ourselves any favors by drawing the line where we have drawn it? From a national perspective, there are significant political efforts underway to do everything from get the the Ten Commandments plastered on every public building in existence to making homosexual marriages illegal. What kind of image of Christ do we present by being so active, so militant in pursuing our agenda in the public arena?
Personally, I see both sides of this. The church has a very important role in demonstrating and guiding society (aka people) to Christ and we need to be making a stand and letting our secular culture know that we do not approve of the choices it makes at times. Case in point: homosexuality. The Bible is VERY clear about homosexual practices and, even though it is unpopular and will probably be even more so as time goes on, the church has the responsibility of making it clear how God sees this. Our society needs to know that this is not the direction we need to be heading and that there are some very serious consequences to these choices. The church is in a world of hurt when it abandons this role.
On the other hand, these are just my personal religious beliefs. I know there are a ton of people out there who see differently and cramming my faith into their lives isn't doing either of us any good. They get upset because they feel they are being forced to believe something they don't and I'm upset because they are stubbornly refusing the truth. Is this doing either of us any good? More importantly, from the Christian perspective, have I brought this person any closer to a right relationship with God by my actions? Its hard to imagine how we do any good in with such a militant or forceful approach. It seems to me that we are only hardening the soil while trying to plant.
What to do? Do we pursue the goal of Christianizing the nation or do we verbalize our dissent while no actively hindering the path others have chosen? The only answer I have right now is "yes". As I puzzle over this more and more, I have reached the tentative conclusion that in the public forum, the church cannot forsake its role as a lighthouse to society but also cannot take up the role of steering the endangered boat as well. Christians in government are good but not for the purpose of Christianizing our culture. I think we, the church, could all agree that we don't just want people to act like they have submitted their lives to Christ because thats the accepted, cultural norm, we want them to actually do so. Constantine already tried all of this and it didn't work out so well in the end. As always, people are changed through personal relationships and something a government can never mandate.
That's what I got for now. Again, try to listen to the radio program; its a good thing, trust me.
Putting the second half of the show aside (it is told in the vein of a personal story rather than strict journalism, per se), the show does a decent job of looking at both sides of the problem. Put better, this show is very typical of what the program as a whole does quite well. Rather than looking at the big topics of the day from the perspective of the movers and shakers in this world, "This American Life" looks at it from the perspective of the ordinary, everyday person. So rather than examine in detail court decisions regarding the separation of church and state, we hear how one high school biology teacher feels like she was forced by her principal to take an oath confessing the supremacy of the Bible in her life.
If you are of the Christian persuasive and take your faith seriously, this will not be a comfortable show to listen to but I still think it is very worthwhile. Ira Glass does a good job of not caricaturing the Christian faith by calling extreme practices the norm. I don't think there will be any confusion just where he stands on all of this but his bias is actually the best reason to listen to the stories he has assembled. Though I can't say for certain, (especially now that I live in a culture that is highly overtly Bible-Belt-ish), I would be willing to bet that his viewpoint is the viewpoint of many who are on the outside looking in. Ira Glass communicates very clearly how he feels about the growing tide of Christian activism in the public forum and does it in a way that is neither inflammatory nor stoked with rhetoric.
(The second half of the show is a monologue by a woman who, after examining the Bible and realizing just how un-candy-coated some it is, has walked away from the faith. Man, I wish somebody (aside from her unhelpful priest) could have been there to help her understand some of these uncomfortable passages. She raises a lot of good questions about the nature of God as revealed in the Bible but, sadly, doesn't seem to have found any answers. )
For me, the story resurfaced a question that has been dormant in my mind for a while but is one I REALLY need to pull up the frontal parts of my brain again. Putting aside all the rhetoric from both sides about the religious views of the Founding Fathers and the words actually used in the Constitution we are left with the following reality. Our nation was founded on the unique principle that church and state should not be joined at the hip as was commonly the case throughout much of Europe. I'm talking about state governments mandating a religious orientation and taxes going to fund the promotion of a particular religious establishment. Again, setting the details aside, I think this is something that nearly everybody in the good ol' USA thinks is a pretty darn good idea. Religious freedom is something we all value; none of us desires to have other people telling us what is and isn't the right way to believe. We all want the right to decided for ourselves what is an isn't correct without coercion from others.
In the same breath, though, there are many people of many different beliefs that are quite convinced they have THE ANSWER and fit would just be best if all believed the same way. And sometimes, every so often, these people form a majority; this is the politically-active Christian church as it stands today. From a nationwide perspective, on average, Christianity has a slim majority. It may or may not feel like it where you are living now, but let me tell you, down here in the Bible-Belt, its pretty clear.
Given this situation, what's the best course of action for the church? The Constitution will probably prevent a radical transformation of our country into a church-run state but what level of activism is appropriate and beneficial? Are we, the church, doing ourselves any favors by drawing the line where we have drawn it? From a national perspective, there are significant political efforts underway to do everything from get the the Ten Commandments plastered on every public building in existence to making homosexual marriages illegal. What kind of image of Christ do we present by being so active, so militant in pursuing our agenda in the public arena?
Personally, I see both sides of this. The church has a very important role in demonstrating and guiding society (aka people) to Christ and we need to be making a stand and letting our secular culture know that we do not approve of the choices it makes at times. Case in point: homosexuality. The Bible is VERY clear about homosexual practices and, even though it is unpopular and will probably be even more so as time goes on, the church has the responsibility of making it clear how God sees this. Our society needs to know that this is not the direction we need to be heading and that there are some very serious consequences to these choices. The church is in a world of hurt when it abandons this role.
On the other hand, these are just my personal religious beliefs. I know there are a ton of people out there who see differently and cramming my faith into their lives isn't doing either of us any good. They get upset because they feel they are being forced to believe something they don't and I'm upset because they are stubbornly refusing the truth. Is this doing either of us any good? More importantly, from the Christian perspective, have I brought this person any closer to a right relationship with God by my actions? Its hard to imagine how we do any good in with such a militant or forceful approach. It seems to me that we are only hardening the soil while trying to plant.
What to do? Do we pursue the goal of Christianizing the nation or do we verbalize our dissent while no actively hindering the path others have chosen? The only answer I have right now is "yes". As I puzzle over this more and more, I have reached the tentative conclusion that in the public forum, the church cannot forsake its role as a lighthouse to society but also cannot take up the role of steering the endangered boat as well. Christians in government are good but not for the purpose of Christianizing our culture. I think we, the church, could all agree that we don't just want people to act like they have submitted their lives to Christ because thats the accepted, cultural norm, we want them to actually do so. Constantine already tried all of this and it didn't work out so well in the end. As always, people are changed through personal relationships and something a government can never mandate.
That's what I got for now. Again, try to listen to the radio program; its a good thing, trust me.
Friday, June 03, 2005
Concrete vs Abstract
An interesting idea popped up this last weekend as Katie and I were hiking. Katie asked if I had ever considered visiting Israel for any reason. I should pause before going any further and say that Katie is EXTREMELY interested in all things Jewish. She's taken a trip over to Israel, participated in an outreach ministry here in the US directed towards Jews, and has a nearly constant latent desire to go head over for a long-term stay in Israel. In some sense of the word, she feels "called" to the Jewish people and since I do not share this calling we've talked about this desire she has and how it impacts our dating relationship. In fact, we've talked about it a lot. If I ever feel that things are going too well between us, I bring this up as a topic of conversation so as to muddy the waters between us and keep us both off-balance. It usually works pretty well.
Katie, on the other hand, did not bring this up question about visiting Israel for the reason of creating relational strife. She was simply curious if I had ever wanted to visit Israel for the purpose of better understanding the Bible. I thought about it a second and concluded that I had almost NO desire to visit Israel for this reason. In fact, I had always kind of looked at these spiritual vacations with some disdain or skepticism. I mean, seriously, "walk where Jesus walked"? How is that going to help me understand God or build my faith in any way? What benefit is there in visiting the land of the Bible? It's not like the culture/language/geo-political structure/economics/dirt of Israel today have much of a resemblance to those of any time in the Bible. To me, these trips have always seemed self-indulgent vacations for relatively wealthy Christians in the West.
Katie's response to my answer changed my whole perspective. In a very simple way she showed me what I was missing in all of this (aside from an attitude check). "I'm surprised by your answer but I guess I shouldn't be. You're an abstract person and I'm more concrete."
....
What? Where did that come from?
Slowly, with great deliberation, my brain started to churn on these words. Katie was, I knew, referring to a personality book we had recently finished reading together titled "Please Understand Me" by David Keirsey. Keirsey used the Myers-Briggs (aka MBTI) model to discuss personalities and people. At the beginning of the book he outlines four fundamental personality types defined by the combination of two factors: how we use tools (cooperative vs. utilitarian) and how we use words (abstract vs. concrete). Rather than trying to explain the differences here, let me show you by way of example how the concrete-vs-abstract factor plays in with Katie and I. (No promises I'm going to get this explanation to totally line-up with Keirey's actual personality theory. Have grace on me, Mark M.)
For Katie, because she is a concrete-word person, she uses and understands words in a very, well, concrete way. Maybe "visceral" or "experiential" would be good synonyms here; words have a very definite meaning that is referenced to actual, "real" things she has experienced in some way. When she thinks of "hard" she doesn't think of a concept as much as what "hard" means as a function of experience. She thinks of hard things and how they have impacted her world.
I, though, deal with words in a totally different way, abstractly. I think of the, uhmm, ideas behind the words. I think of words in terms of what they "mean" in an abstract way not so much how the words interact with reality. When I think of "hard" I'm thinking of what it means for something to be "hard", what "hard"-ness can mean in this context, or what other words I associate with "hard". To some extent, abstract-word people live in an ideal word where words are concepts and are used as such.
This difference has come up all the time between Katie and I as we try to communicate; the classic difficulty comes up when we are having a disagreement of some kind. In an attempt to make a point or illustrate more clearly how I see things I'll tacitly start taking in an analogy or metaphor. Early on, this ALWAYS threw Katie (though she's much better at following me now) because I wouldn't clearly state that I was going to speak abstractly. She would, true to her character, start interpreting my analogy/metaphor in very real, experiential, concrete, terms. In short, she was supremely confused as to the sudden change of topic and what it had to do at all with the problem under discussion.
So what does this have to do with visiting Israel? Well, for Katie and all other concrete word-users like her the words in the Bible have concrete connotations. When she reads those words she is trying to understand what is being said in terms of experiences. This means that if real, concrete experiences can be closely associated with the words used in Bible then her level of understanding increases significantly. So for all those concrete-word users (which, if I remember correctly from the book, are the vast majority of the people in the world), visiting the Biblical lands DOES bring greater meaning to the text. In Katie's words, "It helps me be able to have a picture in my mind when I'm reading. I can better understand what the Bible is talking about now that I've been there."
What a revelation this was to me! This changes my perspective completely! In exactly the same way that I could see no benefit to "walking where Jesus walked", there is tremendous benefit for people like Katie. Visiting Israel really was a faith-building venture; to see Jerusalem as it is today and visit the significant sites of the Bible (even though they aren't in many ways what is described in the Bible) provides that concrete-ness to bring the text to life. People like me don't need that experiential basis to feel like we are understanding the text, we are trying to understand the Bible in terms of this network of ideas that we associate with all the words we read. To us, the Bible IS the ideas and the text is a construction of words to communicate those ideas.
So all of this becomes another brick towards a better understanding of Katie. I can promise you, though, that I'm going to be re-learning and more fully learning it for a while. Thankfully Katie is very patient with me; I need that to understand crazy concrete-word users like her. (Seriously, words as experiences? How crazy is that?)
Katie, on the other hand, did not bring this up question about visiting Israel for the reason of creating relational strife. She was simply curious if I had ever wanted to visit Israel for the purpose of better understanding the Bible. I thought about it a second and concluded that I had almost NO desire to visit Israel for this reason. In fact, I had always kind of looked at these spiritual vacations with some disdain or skepticism. I mean, seriously, "walk where Jesus walked"? How is that going to help me understand God or build my faith in any way? What benefit is there in visiting the land of the Bible? It's not like the culture/language/geo-political structure/economics/dirt of Israel today have much of a resemblance to those of any time in the Bible. To me, these trips have always seemed self-indulgent vacations for relatively wealthy Christians in the West.
Katie's response to my answer changed my whole perspective. In a very simple way she showed me what I was missing in all of this (aside from an attitude check). "I'm surprised by your answer but I guess I shouldn't be. You're an abstract person and I'm more concrete."
....
What? Where did that come from?
Slowly, with great deliberation, my brain started to churn on these words. Katie was, I knew, referring to a personality book we had recently finished reading together titled "Please Understand Me" by David Keirsey. Keirsey used the Myers-Briggs (aka MBTI) model to discuss personalities and people. At the beginning of the book he outlines four fundamental personality types defined by the combination of two factors: how we use tools (cooperative vs. utilitarian) and how we use words (abstract vs. concrete). Rather than trying to explain the differences here, let me show you by way of example how the concrete-vs-abstract factor plays in with Katie and I. (No promises I'm going to get this explanation to totally line-up with Keirey's actual personality theory. Have grace on me, Mark M.)
For Katie, because she is a concrete-word person, she uses and understands words in a very, well, concrete way. Maybe "visceral" or "experiential" would be good synonyms here; words have a very definite meaning that is referenced to actual, "real" things she has experienced in some way. When she thinks of "hard" she doesn't think of a concept as much as what "hard" means as a function of experience. She thinks of hard things and how they have impacted her world.
I, though, deal with words in a totally different way, abstractly. I think of the, uhmm, ideas behind the words. I think of words in terms of what they "mean" in an abstract way not so much how the words interact with reality. When I think of "hard" I'm thinking of what it means for something to be "hard", what "hard"-ness can mean in this context, or what other words I associate with "hard". To some extent, abstract-word people live in an ideal word where words are concepts and are used as such.
This difference has come up all the time between Katie and I as we try to communicate; the classic difficulty comes up when we are having a disagreement of some kind. In an attempt to make a point or illustrate more clearly how I see things I'll tacitly start taking in an analogy or metaphor. Early on, this ALWAYS threw Katie (though she's much better at following me now) because I wouldn't clearly state that I was going to speak abstractly. She would, true to her character, start interpreting my analogy/metaphor in very real, experiential, concrete, terms. In short, she was supremely confused as to the sudden change of topic and what it had to do at all with the problem under discussion.
So what does this have to do with visiting Israel? Well, for Katie and all other concrete word-users like her the words in the Bible have concrete connotations. When she reads those words she is trying to understand what is being said in terms of experiences. This means that if real, concrete experiences can be closely associated with the words used in Bible then her level of understanding increases significantly. So for all those concrete-word users (which, if I remember correctly from the book, are the vast majority of the people in the world), visiting the Biblical lands DOES bring greater meaning to the text. In Katie's words, "It helps me be able to have a picture in my mind when I'm reading. I can better understand what the Bible is talking about now that I've been there."
What a revelation this was to me! This changes my perspective completely! In exactly the same way that I could see no benefit to "walking where Jesus walked", there is tremendous benefit for people like Katie. Visiting Israel really was a faith-building venture; to see Jerusalem as it is today and visit the significant sites of the Bible (even though they aren't in many ways what is described in the Bible) provides that concrete-ness to bring the text to life. People like me don't need that experiential basis to feel like we are understanding the text, we are trying to understand the Bible in terms of this network of ideas that we associate with all the words we read. To us, the Bible IS the ideas and the text is a construction of words to communicate those ideas.
So all of this becomes another brick towards a better understanding of Katie. I can promise you, though, that I'm going to be re-learning and more fully learning it for a while. Thankfully Katie is very patient with me; I need that to understand crazy concrete-word users like her. (Seriously, words as experiences? How crazy is that?)
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