rejoice, and again i say: rejoice!

it's been an interesting few weeks.

I got an e-mail a week and a half ago that said some one had nominated me for this Outstanding Graduating Student award. I still can't really believe it. There are many, many very qualified classmates of mine, who are very outstanding and who are very busy with leadership roles in extracurriculars. I play praise songs weekly for our small group, and that's about the extent of my extracurriculars these days. I talked to several trusted people about it, and they all confirmed that it's ok to wonder about who really deserves this award that is given based on GPA, leadership qualities and community involvement. And some one else might win it. Will likely win it. Might. I dunno. But it's also ok to turn in the necessary essays and feel honored that some one somewhere thought of me when they were putting down nominees.

I haven't told very many people in my nursing class. In fact, only two. It's just weird. I know how competitive nursing is, how much gossip goes on. I'd rather avoid that if possible. If I win it, haha...well then I'll tell people. As it is, at the advice of an instructor, it's going on my resume: she pointed out that it's an honor and worth noting.

We had a practice NCLEX exam recently. I took it last week. My score took me by surprise. I scored about a hundred points higher than alot of people I consider smarter than I. I sat there looking at the computer screen kind of wondering if there was some mistake. There have been scores I've heard of that are a hundred points above mine, too. It's all relative, I suppose. Nevertheless, I scored above a recommended score that they want us at, at this point, taking the test cold, without studying. I felt blessed.

I applied to a hospital system in Dallas two weeks ago. They e-mailed me last week saying that I got an interview. I read more about the hospital and the more I read, the more I got excited. It's a pretty well-known one; my Dad got excited when I told him. We'll see how that goes. That feels like a blessing, too.

All of this within a few days has been huge. I've been praying about it, about receiving the blessings while not getting mixed up. It feels really good to be valued, to be successful in these things. But I am reminding myself that God gives me my significance. That I don't need to chase a career ladder to be valued and whole. That I already have all that I need, and so it frees me up to pursue these things well.

Rejoice with me! :) It has been an exhausting, good few weeks. I stayed up till 5:30 on thursday morning doing a nursing report, the last one of its kind for nursing school. slept till 7:30 and then went to class. :) haha. God was good there, too. I didn't fall asleep till I got a nap that afternoon.

Cory is still gone. It feels strange to have a friend that close be gone. It feels like several friendships are changing. I feel lonely these days. I'm aware of the slope, still wondering about my angle of repose. Even as I start to descend.

anatomy of a lie

"Hey...what is 'economics of botany'?"

The girl wasn't reading it anymore but i had been curious since i saw the front of the textbook, twenty minutes ago. It sat on the table between us while she filled out a thick stack of forms, while i tapped away on my laptop. Facebook. I was on facebook, putting off my studies.

Her face lit up and she started to explain. Turns out if you're minoring in biology, you can take a biology class where you study plants. And in one class, you read a book entitled economics of botany. turns out.

We talked for a bit and i found out that she worked in a greenhouse and that she named her plants, just like me. We discussed green thumbs and careers and majors and plans after our graduation in may, and what we were doing in the student union on a thursday afternoon outside the starbucks.

She was fun to talk to and i enjoyed the conversation. Eventually i returned to my "work" and she returned to hers. I redeemed a half hour by catching up on some e-mails and facebook messages and then packed up my things. She looked up.

**

See, i've been reading this book, dear reader. It's called [anatomy of a lie] and it is a woman's exploration of "lies and why good people tell them." I was assigned to read it back in high school, after i betrayed my parents' trust and got caught one time. I remember it being extremely convicting, but in a thoughtful way. Over this past Christmas break, i picked it up and packed it into my bags to go back to austin. I started it a couple weeks ago. I'm a slow reader. It's not a long book.

The author explores the nature of lying from the standpoint of a woman who believes in God and is a Christian, but also believes that Nazis shouldn't be allowed to kill Jews if those Nazis come knocking and demand to know where those Jews are hiding. Who believes that Hebrew midwives play into God's plan by lying to Pharaoh about sparing firstborn male children in Egypt so that Moses can be set adrift in the Nile "in a sweater poorly knit," as the band mewithoutyou sings.

She asks some good questions and invites the reader to wonder whether our little white lies really do matter, with the implication that yes, they really do matter. What if the lies we tell to smooth over conversations or minimize awkward interactions end up robbing us and those around us of authentic, raw, honest encounters in our everyday life? (And these white lies are intended to deceive. There is a "not revealing" information in the moment that is not dishonest; she is not talking about that. Intention to mislead.)

But i've been wondering about when i'm tempted to lie, and when i intend to deceive. Is it to protect me? Is it to protect those i love? (questions the author of [anatomy of a lie] asks as well.) And wondering whether all of these deceptions are just a big effort for me to take control in my life. Because the fact is, when i lie, i manipulate a situation. I provide false information that i want the other person to act on, because i want a certain response, a certain outcome above the one that just might happen if the other person(s) have an accurate view of the situation. I take away others' freedom by lying. They are no longer free to interact on the basis of reality. When some one asks me, "how far have you gotten on [insert assignment/project name here]?" And my answer is an attempt to smooth over their disappointment, i am really taking hold of a situation and attempting to steer it, with participants and all, to a my particular goal. And those participants, those people, i am manipulating them. I am not meeting them face to face. I am not being willing to hold everything that they might feel if they are fully present in the situation. I'm not giving them that chance. And i'm not letting them have the chance to hold what i feel, either.

the idea is that lying to save some one's life may be understandable. but is it right? the question is bothering me, because i know if it came down to it, and there was a secret police officer facing me across my kitchen table and innocent people hiding in my basement and that police officer was questioning me, i would say, "i don't know." or something else. but i'm wondering if that's just me not taking God seriously when He says He works everything out to good. because God didn't say "thou shalt not...except when the other person is evil, or you know they will hurt some one." because what God did do is He gave us rules for living and then promised He would love us and have our best interests in mind, and that sometimes it would be hard, but that He can do anything and that everything would eventually be redeemed.

**

"Hey. This is kind of random. But can i ask you a question?" And the girl said sure, and as i sat there with my backpack all packed up, ready to walk out of the student union and away from this girl i met a half hour before, i asked her for her thoughts. "Is it ever ok to lie?"

"Sure it is. When your parents are asking about things that are none of their business, and you're 21, so it's legal....When things might be awkward otherwise....Oh yeah. To save a life. Definitely."

She listed off scenarios without hesitation. my frontal lobe disagreed with nearly all of them. And i sat there convicted. Because the principles in my mind were so different from her everyday practices. But i had a feeling that she was probably more honest about her marriage of mindset and actions in her life than i was in mine.

Been thinkin about that. God's forgiveness is awesome. He had it for Rahab, He had it for the Hebrew midwives. He had it for David. He has it for you and me. And I've been turning it over in my head. Where I can be more truthful in my life, more consistent. As Mark Johnson says, to be one man in every situation. I think it might lead to some difficult conversations with friends over this semester where I'm tempted to step back and distance myself instead of stepping in and risking rejection or alienation or misunderstanding while I come clean where it may lead to good. And I hope it will lead to deeper dimensions in those relationships.

this is to commemorate that i have been to a bunch of coffeeshops here in austin. usually when i study, i gravitate toward starbucks. their decor reminds me of a desk, nice and bland and non-distracting. i've also been to the coffee bean and tea leaf, a couple locations, but i shan't include those in this list either. perhaps i'll put a note by each one, a fun fact. (part of me writing this is so i don't forget.)

lava java- near campus, now closed. a cute girl and a guy who always seemed high worked there in the mornings when i went.

good bike cafe- a trailer in a bike shop parking lot, their loose leaf tea was amazing on freezing winter days. also now closed.

spiderhouse coffee- near campus, a hipster hangout. they have attitude. and it's a little dirty. it's worth going to see whether you like it or not.

cafe medici- across the street from campus. their latte's are amazing. chairs are uncomfortable, and it's not a good place to have private conversations; tables are close and walls are echo-y. nevertheless, a good place, especially if you can grab the couch.

la tazza fresca- this place has historically been my favorite coffee shop here in austin. colored lights hang from the ceiling, old tinny jazz plays through speakers overhead, and weird paintings of cats, women, the moon, or all three hang on the walls. it's small and if they're busy, be prepared to wait for your drink, but they sell wine and beer and also pizza, and sandwiches, and calzones, and cake and pies. and hookah. they have hookah. their chai is to die for. and they have espresso cubano.

jo's- i went to the one on 2nd, they also have a location on south congress, which is a bit funkier. i remember nothing special about the place, but i know somebody who regularly uses it as a study spot. something about the "right level of ambient noise."

jp's java- a favorite study spot near campus, i never could enjoy this place. their drinks are expensive, loud noise level, and their latte was mediocre. my friend likes their sweetened iced coffee.

mozart's- THE town lake coffeeshop experience. if you can, go there. their coffee and coffee drinks are mediocre, and they know it, and they're ok with it. they're a little more expensive because they have one of the sweetest spots on the lake imaginable. you can sit outside or in. a good place to study if you can find a table. when it's raining on the lake though...oh man. then it is a divine place to sit. (note: ordering a cafe au lait gets you a free refill and then unlimited refills on brewed coffee the rest of your stay. they don't tell you that at the counter.)

cherrywood, on e. 38th- a hipster hangout if i ever saw one. pleasant.

cafe bennu- another popular study spot, open 24 hours. their specialty mocha lattes are pretty amazing, made with different types of chocolate and named after famous novels, i.e. "the great gatsby." but they are like $5. other drinks are good too. they have cords suspended from the ceiling, hanging over each table so you can always find a place to plug in your laptop. cool.

quack's- in hyde park, north of north campus. to be honest, i've only gotten a peanut butter cookie here. it was delicious. and i tried cory's...tea. i'm gonna have to go back. it's a bakery/coffeeshop. mobbed with studious macbook users taking up halves of tables.

austin java- they have several locations. they're cool. go there. if you get food, try their spicy african peanut soup. they have vegan cupcakes, too. now you have to go.

genuine joe's coffeehouse- good chai. interesting mix of wall decor. a good balance of different types of seats: comfy chairs, bar seats, little tables, bigger tables...

jeanie's java- on south congress, way south. disappointing. jittery neon walls and two, maybe three tables. though my friend did get their pb&j smoothie, which tasted like...a blended up sandwich.

flightpath coffee- another favorite study spot around here, really retro with 70s style tables and vinyl chairs, and pastel colors. i'm not the biggest fan, but they do sell beer and it's kind of a hipster hangout.

epoch coffee- on north loop blvd, driving distance from campus. another 24 hour place, ALWAYS crowded. but if you can find a seat, a good place to hang out or meet some one. (as in, meet up with some one. not strike up a conversation with a random...)

irie bean- on south lamar. miss-able. the muffins and coffee were good, but the place wasn't anything special, and the semi-rasta vibe was weird. guys at the bar talking to the barista about their latest video game escapades. hm.

thunderbird coffee- i went to the koenig lane one. cafe au lait was watery but the chai and brewed coffee were both solid. baristas friendly. good layout, and they have npr coming through the speakers when i got there at 7 a.m.. bonus cool points for that.

halcyon- downtown, so you have to hunt for parking. but this place is known for having s'mores that you make yourself over a sterno burner, apparently. i went in the morning with my family for brunch, so i didn't experience it. a bit more urban than most coffeeshops, though appropriate for downtown. still cozy. a pitbull dogwalking parade went by in the street while we ate there.

progress coffee- east of 35. my roommate said it's a busy study spot; i found it uncrowded when i went. i'll be back again. unremarkable but in a good way. a good place to sit and think.

dominican joe's- on south congress, dominican joe's can be HARD to find parking at. usually busy. a great study spot if you want to make the drive. if you see a girl with a textbook open there, odds are good that she is a) a Christian, b) a nursing student or c) both. don't ask me why. they partner with a faith-based nonprofit to trade with coffee growers in the dominican republic. their honey nut latte is pretty sweet, but if you're in the mood, don't let that phase you. faze you? fase...

pacha coffee- this place is tiny and crowded and very hard to find open, since they close at 7 pm. they're on burnet and the one time i managed to get inside and get a seat, i was overwhelmed. they have bright patterned tiles up and down their walls, and ethically treated everything. they have bulgarian yogurt from a local farmer's market. my table was microscopic and i kept getting distracted from my reading by everyone who knew everybody else in the coffeeshop. overwhelming and awesome.

houndstooth coffee- i went to the one on north lamar. just the other day. can't believe i haven't gone before. their coffee is expensive; i paid close to $5 for a regular latte. it WAS possibly the best latte i have ever tasted, though. they gave me the choice of two different espresso beans. kind of loud and a bit cramped, but a neat place. next time i'll do the $3 small coffee.

monkey nest coffee- also on burnet, i found this place last year and didn't tell anyone about it for a while. it's like the graduate student study spot, full of older students poring over their books and laptops. their standard chairs are comfortable and their tables are marble, i think, and good-sized for studying with others. a premium study spot, though they close at 10 pm.

still to be tried:

kick butt coffee near st. john's

once over on s. 1st

dolce vita on duval (near quack's)

la boite on s. congress

the science of enjoyment

to my left, outside the window, a mother is putting her kids in their car seats, leaning over behind the open door. an iced something drink and a juicebox of milk (can i say that?) sit on the hood of their tahoe. starbucks is worth a whole lot of "deft maneuvering," as the band Cake would say. and that mom. although she might replace the noun "starbucks" with "caffeine induced sanity." what am i saying. i don't know her. i'm just a college kid at a coffee shop.

the clouds are white and pale-gold and billowy, and grey and streaky. today is a rainy day, whether or not any makes it to the ground.

our small group read through ecclesiastes 1-3 last night when we met. we took some time to think and journal over it a bit, and then we all shared what we got out of it. ecclesiastes can kinda hit me like a ton of bricks sometimes, and it definitely did last night. it's like all of the pessimistic ideas and negative philosophies i've believed in my worst moments are packed into a wave of overwhelming despair, written by a poet, in words that travel along my neurons and jump synapses in my brain with ease. racing along the white matter and into the grey matter.

(SCIENCE TANGENT...side note: did you know, dear reader, that neurons [read: nerves] have long, sheathed middles? the sheathes are myelin, and they help signals travel along them faster. myelin is white. at one end of the nerve, you have the axon terminals, a little spidery thing that releases chemicals that float to the next nerve. [this is a synapse: the gap that neurotransmitters, chemicals, must float across from neuron to neuron.] at the other end you have the neuron's cell body. so the next nerve receives chemicals at it's cell body, through dendrites. dendrites are arranged in a spidery way as well, around the cell body. the parts of nerves that don't have myelin, the beginnings and the ends, are grey. the reason your brain is called "grey matter" is because this is where many nerves converge, where tons and tons of information feeds into a huge network, where you reason and process and make judgments and imagine. the other place you have grey matter collected all together is your spinal cord. which is why you sometimes find executive decisions made without your brain being consulted, why you jerk back from pain before you have time to realize the pain consciously. the spinal cord makes reflex-based decisions.)

not only that, but solomon has a reputation, to boot. i can't just shrug off his naysaying and say, "yeah, but it's just one man's opinion," because he was termed by God to be The Wisest Man...Ever. i mean, wise men can be wrong, but they're usually not wrong when they're writing a book of the Bible.

so after i started reading, i started thinking. i found some good perspective on my problems. "People will say, 'Here is a new thing!' But it has been before, long before we were born" is how the english contemporary version puts 1:10, i think. it's humbling, thinking that in another time there was a young man pondering his future, wondering about his loose ends and his colors in array, seeking a passionate life and not knowing where it ended...there was a man like this, long before i was born. it has been done before. and before that. and before that. there are people with stories very much like my own, who have come and passed away as God's children, each one feeling fully alive and urgent in the moment, each one wanting specific things for their lives and stories. that's cool for me to read. it's encouraging. and humbling. and it makes me admire God.

AND i noted that the book is not about becoming a noodle in life.

that came up in discussion. i think after i face my fears, voiced in ecclesiastes' despairing verses, after i "look my demons in the eye," as ray lamontagne phrases it, i can track with solomon. because in the end, solomon's words to tear down the meaning of searching for meaning in small and temporary things in life....they're just that. they're to tear it down in the eyes of those who are chasing those things. solomon sinned in some of his search for meaning, what with the multiple wives/concubines business. but take out the sin, and most things he enjoyed and did aren't sinful, you know? i get to remind myself of that. how can it be sinful to enjoy God's creation, to plant fruit trees, to use money that has been earned by honest labor, to find goodness in the way music sounds?

solomon didn't become a monk after he wrote ecclesiastes. he didn't self flagellate, i don't think. and even if he did, Jesus and his oenophile-friendly miracles would indicate that God is pleased with pleasure. He's not surprised at serotonin. dopamine wasn't created in a lab in hell. evil is not original, my friend mark johnson reminds me; it's just twisted. solomon's search for meaning in earthly experiences ended so badly and left him so miserable because he enjoyed things badly. he didn't do a good job at it. he was no good at having fun. like the guy at a party who throws out one last joke that turns a hilarious idea into something disgusting, or just disgustingly worn out...solomon would be that guy. he'd be the guy puking on the roller coaster because he wanted to ride it six times instead of five, while his friends watched from the ground, happy with their five rides. solomon wrote ecclesiastes because he tried to eat a lot of food at a pool party and start a chicken fight in the pool after his last plate of potato salad. he would be the guy that you're at a bar with, and he's not even present; he's looking in his lap, texting people to see if somebody else is coming, or line up a hangout for afterward. as c.s. lewis describes in Perelandra, solomon probably persisted in turning from the good that was, because it is not the good he expected. in this way, the good that was became something not-very-good at all. and from what we read in ecclesiastes, solomon tried alot of things. and he used his money to enable these efforts. solomon was selfishly pursuing his own pleasure for a long time, i think. one translation says he planted orchards. another says he planted a forest. either way, it was a while.

i have a friend in canada whom i went to Bible school with, in germany. his name is steve. steve told me about the principle of diminishing return. it's why he passed up seconds on dessert sometimes. it's the idea that there's a point where having more of something leads to incrementally less enjoyment as you have more. the first brownie is awesome. you want a second one. but the second one will not be as good as the first, and if you try to stuff a third (or an eighth, however you work,) in before your brain gets the signal from your stomach that you're full, you'll end up regretting it afterward. each brownie was the same with the same ingredients, you know? but you tried to make it more than it was intended. you can't stack brownie happiness.

our brains work this way too, incidentally. like...more directly. cocaine users need more cocaine to achieve the sensations they felt with their first experience, and more as time goes on. the cocaine triggers dopamine which rushes into the synapses, but with each hit, your brain releases less dopamine. it's why people overdose. usually it's not because they're greedy. it's because their brain is being rewired and they want what they once had.

so where does this leave me? i don't know. they are good reminders. i want a good job, and i'm beginning to fill out applications for RN positions at hospitals. it's a good reminder as i have hopes and hinge things on those hopes. it's a good reminder for me with food, because i really, really like sugar...and that has come back to bite me at times. and it's good to remember that solomon even said that wisdom was meaningless. i can be worshipful and happy even when i haven't churned my life through the gears of my thinking-head for a while. mhm.