Last weekend, I traveled up to Newcastle to spend a wonderful few days with some fellow Trojans. The main highlight of the weekend was getting to see my long-lost roommate Jesse, getting to catch up over a pint of cider, and exploring the rape-trails, stone henges, arc de triomphs, the rainbow bridge, and the other fantastic Newcastle edifices at night. We sported £8-Newcastle United jerseys to one of their premier league games, and watched them snag a thrilling come from behind draw in the 93rd minute. We got to watch 'the world's longest play' (Antony and Cleopatra) being performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The next day after the rest of the USC students left, I took a lone-ranger journey out to the coast of England and walked through the ruins of a 13th century priory that was surrounded by a quaint town that was hosting a farmer's market (with legit farmers, mind you). I then stopped by the excavated ruins of a Roman fort, and a small portion of Hadrian's wall. There wasn't much left of either, but just seeing the foundations of the fort and the wall stirred my imagination to envisage the small Roman garrison constantly watching the hills to the north for signs of the barbaric Scots.
The past week has gone by in a blur with plenty of reading (Chesterton, McGrath, papers on Schumann's symphonies, original texts by Wagner, papers on Indian healthcare... the list goes on). Football has got me more and more excited has our first match comes in just two weeks from this Sunday! I'm playing wide receiver and loving every minute of it. I get my helmet and jersey this Sunday, and I can't wait to don them and start hitting people.
Well, I must be off. Tomorrow I head out to York on another all-expenses paid trip by USC (I love USC-I've had two pints of cider, six meals, three plays, and soon to be two weekends all on the school bill!). Fight on!
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Blessed
Blessed. Not the single-syllable, rolling-of-your-tongue, flippant 'blessed' as in 'you're blessed to have a Wal-mart within walking distance' but the two-syllable, slightly awkward sounding 'BLESS-ed' as in 'We are the blessed, being privileged by knowing God's love.'
I think that word would have to describe my past few days. From going to the horse races at Ascot with my mom, younger brother, and friends from USC to being able to stand in an operating room and watch a lymphoma biopsy to joining the football team here and getting to take guys down and get taken down, I have been very blessed. Today, I lay down on a bench in the sun, propped my feet up and read about patient-doctor ethics for an hour.
There's something intensely therapeutic about studying here. To start with, I'm not quite as frenetic with scheduling things here. Currently, I'm only involved in a Christian group and the football team. I love both and am excited to get a chance to meet people and make good friends in both. It's amazing how much peace you begin to feel when you have time in which you can pursue the passions of your heart.
Quick recap of the past few days:
Saturday: Horse racing-picked up £8 on Dux Scholar and Pausanias. Good horse names whatever they mean. Had amazing fish and chips that night.
Sunday: Football practice! Some great runs and got hit a few times. Church was fun. Said goodbye to Johnny and mom :(
Monday: Went to see a lymphoma biopsy, met with the Student Life (cru) staff leader and did some sharing on campus-which turned out amazingly! 1/2 off food at the slug and lettuce pub-wonderful Chicken Tikka for a pub.
Tuesday: Had lots of lecture on cancer, which was fascinating. Went on a Tesco shopping spree, had pub quiz night (I won a pack of giant playing cards!), and watched the first half of City of Angels with some friends.
I'm amazingly tired, so I'm going to get to bed now so I'm rested for 5 hrs of lecture and football practice!
I think that word would have to describe my past few days. From going to the horse races at Ascot with my mom, younger brother, and friends from USC to being able to stand in an operating room and watch a lymphoma biopsy to joining the football team here and getting to take guys down and get taken down, I have been very blessed. Today, I lay down on a bench in the sun, propped my feet up and read about patient-doctor ethics for an hour.
There's something intensely therapeutic about studying here. To start with, I'm not quite as frenetic with scheduling things here. Currently, I'm only involved in a Christian group and the football team. I love both and am excited to get a chance to meet people and make good friends in both. It's amazing how much peace you begin to feel when you have time in which you can pursue the passions of your heart.
Quick recap of the past few days:
Saturday: Horse racing-picked up £8 on Dux Scholar and Pausanias. Good horse names whatever they mean. Had amazing fish and chips that night.
Sunday: Football practice! Some great runs and got hit a few times. Church was fun. Said goodbye to Johnny and mom :(
Monday: Went to see a lymphoma biopsy, met with the Student Life (cru) staff leader and did some sharing on campus-which turned out amazingly! 1/2 off food at the slug and lettuce pub-wonderful Chicken Tikka for a pub.
Tuesday: Had lots of lecture on cancer, which was fascinating. Went on a Tesco shopping spree, had pub quiz night (I won a pack of giant playing cards!), and watched the first half of City of Angels with some friends.
I'm amazingly tired, so I'm going to get to bed now so I'm rested for 5 hrs of lecture and football practice!
Friday, October 8, 2010
Give me something sacred
The last few weeks since I arrived here in the UK have been absolutely bizarre. They have been challenging, but oh so stimulating.
To be honest, I often feel very lost here, though I've never been late to anything because I've had trouble finding a location. So much of my life has been changed ever since I came here. Something deep in my soul wants to turn and run. I've heard numerous analogies about building up walls around one's heart, and those ring true, but the desire to clam up that I felt was more organic. It's like the natural overgrowth that will consume a garden if it's not carefully manicured. It's a suffocating aura, and I've felt it's cloak hover over me more than once in recent days. I wonder if this wish to hide is in any way related to Adam and Eve's urge to cover themselves with fig leaves after they sinned. They felt adulterated and unwhole, as if who they were was something shameful. Who they were is not shameful, but what they did was. At this point in my life, I oft struggle with knowing that God loves me as a person and that that fact should be more than enough to give me joy every day. As Tim Chaddick's Reality sermon titled 'The Infinite Value of God' says, God is the most valuable thing we could ever know, and once we find that we should know that we have his riches.
These identity battles have plagued me before when big changes have come in my life, and I ask that God would help show me his rock solid truth in his time.
Sunday, I strolled through the spires of Oxford under a pristine blue sky that quickly ferried clouds from horizon to horizon. We stopped by the church were C.S. Lewis attended and took pictures with the fabled lampost that inspired the Narnian landmark. On the drive back to London, grey clouds dotted the sky in an almost evenly-space, yet still irregular pattern. The sun pierced though the lattice to cast shadows on rolling hillsides covered in green patchworks.
Last night, I listened to Needtobreathe sing over an hour of beautiful music. I don't know their new album very well, but their lyrics, passion, and music created an intoxicating mix. I'm a trained musician, but the love of music that permeated my life in my late high school years has been fading for several years and has been altogether absent for the past few months. Somehow the concert revived a part of me. I miss being the passionate person I used to be, not because I want to go back and re-live those green dock-light memories, but because those memories remind me of the passion that feels like my own sacred soul-secret.
Today, I raced with my brother down the Greenwich slopes that overlook London. We laughed and yelled and almost fell more than once in the soft mud. Some of the summer garb of the neat rows of trees graced the geometric network of footpaths that we had temporarily strayed from. The splotchy tufts of grass on the hillside formed a confluence with a thick green carpet as we reached the bottom. I wanted to lie and roll in it, but the knowledge of the mud that lay underneath the surface and the potential damage it could do to my new jacket kept me from indulging my whim.
Here, I've felt homesick and very at home at the same time. I can't nearly describe the sentiment, but I think some of it relates to these words of C.S. Lewis that were read by the Vicar in Oxford.
"In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." -The Weight of Glory
I seek that ultimate density that sinks through all other aspects of my life, that other-worldly material that cleaves through my spirit, that fire that burns away the flesh wrapped around my heart, that truth that catches our frantically cast anchors and never lets go.
Hey now, this is my desire
Consume me like a fire, 'cause I just want something beautiful
To touch me, I know that I'm in reach
'Cause I am down on my knees, I'm waiting for something beautiful
Oh, something beautiful
-Something Beautiful, Needtobreathe
To be honest, I often feel very lost here, though I've never been late to anything because I've had trouble finding a location. So much of my life has been changed ever since I came here. Something deep in my soul wants to turn and run. I've heard numerous analogies about building up walls around one's heart, and those ring true, but the desire to clam up that I felt was more organic. It's like the natural overgrowth that will consume a garden if it's not carefully manicured. It's a suffocating aura, and I've felt it's cloak hover over me more than once in recent days. I wonder if this wish to hide is in any way related to Adam and Eve's urge to cover themselves with fig leaves after they sinned. They felt adulterated and unwhole, as if who they were was something shameful. Who they were is not shameful, but what they did was. At this point in my life, I oft struggle with knowing that God loves me as a person and that that fact should be more than enough to give me joy every day. As Tim Chaddick's Reality sermon titled 'The Infinite Value of God' says, God is the most valuable thing we could ever know, and once we find that we should know that we have his riches.
These identity battles have plagued me before when big changes have come in my life, and I ask that God would help show me his rock solid truth in his time.
Sunday, I strolled through the spires of Oxford under a pristine blue sky that quickly ferried clouds from horizon to horizon. We stopped by the church were C.S. Lewis attended and took pictures with the fabled lampost that inspired the Narnian landmark. On the drive back to London, grey clouds dotted the sky in an almost evenly-space, yet still irregular pattern. The sun pierced though the lattice to cast shadows on rolling hillsides covered in green patchworks.
Last night, I listened to Needtobreathe sing over an hour of beautiful music. I don't know their new album very well, but their lyrics, passion, and music created an intoxicating mix. I'm a trained musician, but the love of music that permeated my life in my late high school years has been fading for several years and has been altogether absent for the past few months. Somehow the concert revived a part of me. I miss being the passionate person I used to be, not because I want to go back and re-live those green dock-light memories, but because those memories remind me of the passion that feels like my own sacred soul-secret.
Today, I raced with my brother down the Greenwich slopes that overlook London. We laughed and yelled and almost fell more than once in the soft mud. Some of the summer garb of the neat rows of trees graced the geometric network of footpaths that we had temporarily strayed from. The splotchy tufts of grass on the hillside formed a confluence with a thick green carpet as we reached the bottom. I wanted to lie and roll in it, but the knowledge of the mud that lay underneath the surface and the potential damage it could do to my new jacket kept me from indulging my whim.
Here, I've felt homesick and very at home at the same time. I can't nearly describe the sentiment, but I think some of it relates to these words of C.S. Lewis that were read by the Vicar in Oxford.
"In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." -The Weight of Glory
I seek that ultimate density that sinks through all other aspects of my life, that other-worldly material that cleaves through my spirit, that fire that burns away the flesh wrapped around my heart, that truth that catches our frantically cast anchors and never lets go.
Hey now, this is my desire
Consume me like a fire, 'cause I just want something beautiful
To touch me, I know that I'm in reach
'Cause I am down on my knees, I'm waiting for something beautiful
Oh, something beautiful
-Something Beautiful, Needtobreathe
Monday, October 4, 2010
A Magical City
Every place you visit has a certain quality. You may not put your finger on it right away, but give it some time and thought and eventually something will jump out at you like whack-a-gopher creatures. For me, Los Angeles is a city that begs for exploration. Switzerland is my epitome of raw beauty: alpine-climbing, family-loving, champagne-drinking, landscape-photographing beauty. Orlando is a city of a charm that never fails to make me look inside myself. Two weeks into my stay here, I can say that without a doubt, London is a city of magic.
Two days ago, I went to Covent Gardens to meet a good friend who shared two years at USC with me. Standing beside her was a girl I never met before. When she introduced herself to me, her last name caught my attention. It was the same last name as a family that my dad's co-worker had told me to look for in London. The co-worker had lived in Swaziland for 30 years, and the family she referred had spent a large portion of those years with her. So on a whim, I asked the girl standing in front of me if she was the 'so-and-so's who used to live in Swaziland. She was. 'Only in London...' I muttered to myself.
Finding someone in a room of people is not always easy if you only have a surname to go by. It becomes slightly more difficult when the pool of people is expanded to a metropolis of over 7 million and you have no way to contact them. Only in London would those odds be spited and a fellow Trojan be hanging out with a girl she met at a conference in South Korea who also happened to be the daughter of a family that used to live in Swaziland with my dad's co-worker. Only in London would you eat lunch at your vicar's house, and then realize that they are old family friends with yet another USC Trojan classmate that you baked 6 pumpkin pies with in one night (a sure sign of strong friendship). Only in London could you sit down to chat with your friend in a church courtyard, check the posting on the church's door and discover that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the world's leading religious figures, was lecturing inside. And where else could you nonchalantly step inside a church that took your fancy as you walked through the city and find the burial site of John Newton, the writer of 'Amazing Grace' and one of my personal childhood heroes?
In other cities you might get email addresses to make those connections, or look up lecture series to find Rowan Williams, or search for John Newton's bones. In London, these things happen to you.
Two days ago, I went to Covent Gardens to meet a good friend who shared two years at USC with me. Standing beside her was a girl I never met before. When she introduced herself to me, her last name caught my attention. It was the same last name as a family that my dad's co-worker had told me to look for in London. The co-worker had lived in Swaziland for 30 years, and the family she referred had spent a large portion of those years with her. So on a whim, I asked the girl standing in front of me if she was the 'so-and-so's who used to live in Swaziland. She was. 'Only in London...' I muttered to myself.
Finding someone in a room of people is not always easy if you only have a surname to go by. It becomes slightly more difficult when the pool of people is expanded to a metropolis of over 7 million and you have no way to contact them. Only in London would those odds be spited and a fellow Trojan be hanging out with a girl she met at a conference in South Korea who also happened to be the daughter of a family that used to live in Swaziland with my dad's co-worker. Only in London would you eat lunch at your vicar's house, and then realize that they are old family friends with yet another USC Trojan classmate that you baked 6 pumpkin pies with in one night (a sure sign of strong friendship). Only in London could you sit down to chat with your friend in a church courtyard, check the posting on the church's door and discover that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the world's leading religious figures, was lecturing inside. And where else could you nonchalantly step inside a church that took your fancy as you walked through the city and find the burial site of John Newton, the writer of 'Amazing Grace' and one of my personal childhood heroes?
In other cities you might get email addresses to make those connections, or look up lecture series to find Rowan Williams, or search for John Newton's bones. In London, these things happen to you.
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