activities

It's fun to hear about people's different activities...growing bellies, growing smells, growing ideas, etc. The last couple of days I've spent thinking about the choices we make in our lives and how that effects not only our lives but the lives of others. At this point I'm not ready to give you the particulars on what has made me be a bit more introspective in this manner, but it's been food for thought. On a generic level, how does my tone of voice affect my niece's response, how do my food choices affect my global neighbors, how does my vote in an election matter, how does sharing part of myself affect someone else, and the list could go on and on. Clearly Hollywood directors have capitalized on this similar notion and made it into best-selling movies like "Pay It Forward." However, I think Hollywood has some of the same downfalls as the Bible. People go to movies in order to enjoy themselves, escape reality, or something of the like but frequently leave knowing that the couple doesn't live happily ever after and that what they just saw on the screen is not applicable to their lives. Unfortunately people think of the Bible the same way. For instance, tomorrow's assigned reading for my class is 1 Corinthians 11 where Paul is speaking about the necessity of women being veiled and all these other rules which don't seem to apply today. In looking at the social context in the first century (when the letter was written) it makes more sense, but does it translate to 21st United States? I clarify by saying the United States because there are two students in my class from different countries in Africa and they add invaluable stories from their home countries which simply don't translate to the lives most of us experience. For instance, Barson works in several churches in Madagascar which are at least 25 miles apart and his mode of transportation are his legs. He doesn't have a car or a bike; he walks. If he were to expect a United States person to do the same thing, he would simply be met with strange looks. How do his choices affect him and the people around him?

Overall my month of January has been the least eventful of the latest posts. I've been to several movies (highly unusual for me), read some good and not-so-good books, hung out with Katherine, gone cross-country skiing, enjoyed some beer with a professor, started rehearsing with my new favorite choir (www.globalharmonychorus.org), and have enjoyed taking one class focusing on the apostle Paul.

Hopefully some of my ramblings have made sense - like the rest of the posts, it's a glimpse of what's going in our lives. And Breanna (or anyone else) if I have misused the word affect/effect, too bad! There was a string of days I was sick in the 5th grade and that probably when I missed that grammatical lesson, just like in the 8th grade when I missed the first day on clouds in science class and was confused since that day forward.

One more thing: I have a musical recommendation for all of you, it's MPR's Radio Heartland. Here's the website in order to listen online (free!)http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/radio_heartland/ Or if you have a digital radio you can go that route too, but I absolutely love this mix of music!