Thursday, January 27, 2011

i love when my dad sings ...

my dad is a music man. he's not a musician, but he can sing really well - in spite of how i felt about his singing when i was a kid. you know those elementary school projects where you have to fill in the blanks about whatever subject they assign you? my brother recently found one of mine that had been a father's day project. some of the blanks were normal like "i love when my dad: takes us boating." but the very best one was, "i love when my dad sings: in another country!!!" i didn't understand why i wrote that at first, because my dad doesn't go to other countries, but my brother explained that i wrote it because i used to hate when my dad would sing. i was using sarcasm in second grade that now goes over my head, wow.

after i finished laughing at what a ridiculous thing that was for me to write, all the memories of my dad's singing came back to me. i have no idea why i hated it so much, because now i find great joy in his deep bellowing voice.

i remember one particular road trip where he was singing along to boxcar willie and i was whining in the backseat begging him to put on some better music. what's funny about me and boxcar willie is that for a long time i was under the illusion that boxcar willie was synonymous with willie nelson. so for years on end i thought it was the coolest thing that for my parents first date they went to a willie nelson concert. how lucky am i? i had super cool hippie parents who fell in love at sweet concerts of musical legends. "okay nooo chelsea," i was all too recently informed, it was actually boxcar willie, not willie nelson, and there's a difference. changed my whole perception of their first date. i mean what the heck dad, you're lucky you were a stone cold fox because what girl wants to go to a boxcar willie concert, blech.

when my dad listened to country music i also complained, claiming it gave me headaches. my brother always sided with me on this. growing up is funny, because now we both love country music. do we like it because we like it? were we conditioned to like it? do we associate it with happy childhood memories? happy is kind of a generous term for me to pair with whining along to boxcar willie or getting country music headaches in the car. but whenever there's a diner jukebox or a radio playing hank williams jr, elvis presley, waylon jennings, willie nelson or johnny cash - it makes me happy and makes me think of my dad.

that's the funny thing about music. i love the way it takes you back and stirs up emotions and memories. the way that listening to a certain album can make you think of one person or one season of your life. musicians get to play such a lucky role in people's lives. so many of our most intimate memories are synchronized to a soundtrack of complete stranger's voices and we don't even think twice about that. then when the people we love the most chime in with their own voices, the songs become all the more special to us. and whether we'd choose to listen to those artists or not, we cherish the melodies because of the memories, and the people in them.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

my modern philosophy saga

i left my first class period of modern philosophy thinking, 'i love love love this class, but i'm not going to get tooo excited because the last time i freaked out this much about loving a class ...' it was economics. and i loved it for the first week as i informed everyone that economics was so wonderful i was going to declare a minor in it. thankfully i never acted on that impulse because i ended up quickly losing interest in economics. reigning in my excitement seemed wise when i left the second class period of modern philosophy last week wanting to flip over my desk and shout to the class, "WE DO HAVE SOULS! DON'T BELIEVE THIS PROFESSOR! DON'T BUY INTO HIS LETHAL PHILOSOPHY THAT SAYS YOU'RE JUST MEANINGLESS MATTER WITHOUT A PURPOSE! YOU ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT!" sigh. oh to be so brave.

so what's the verdict on modern philosophy after three meetings? too soon to say, and yet i have quite a lot to say. (surprise! ha.) i love philosophy. i love learning how to think, studying logic, and examining the patterns of ancient thinkers.

luckily i also love a challenge, because this class will require me to work twice as hard. if i weren't a believer i could just blindly accept everything my professor is teaching me and regurgitate it for the exams. but i happen to love the Lord and have a fierce belief in - and loyalty to - the word of God and His plan for our lives. which includes each of us being created for a purpose with a body, mind and soul made to love God and love others. all of this goes completely against everything my philosophy professor has already pushed in just THREE days of class.

it's not fun listening to someone tell a room full of people that "those people who believe we have souls and a purpose are like people who would believe in a flying spagetti monster." or that "christians are like those people who believe in ufo's and other crap." ouch.

nonetheless, he is an incredibly intelligent professor and i have so much to learn from him. i want to gain as much knowledge and understanding as possible so that my faith will grow even stronger. this blog began when i completed the School of Biblical Foundations and Missions through YWAM maui. at the time i had no idea what a profound impact that little three-month school would have upon my life, and i continue to thank God for leading me to complete that school when i did. God's timing is so perfect. SBFM solidified my faith and replaced my somewhat secular humanist mindset with a biblical christian worldview. (i promise they don't pay me to write ads for them, i really mean everything i'm writing, cheesy as it might be.)

one of the most important concepts ingrained into me during SBFM was the need to THINK CRITICALLY. american education trains us to take information in without truly processing it, only to regurgitate it later for a grade. critical thinking is not only ignored, but often discouraged. (trust me, i asked a LOT of questions in school - and that behavior was rarely encouraged. God bless my parents for answering the brunt of my endless barrage of questions.)

so as i study each philosophy i try to figure out where it fits with a biblical worldview. then i look at what the implications of that philosophy would be if it were lived out to the fullest extent. ideas have consequences, and the conclusions of many philosophies are often very scary. (not to mention incredibly detrimental to mankind.) i want to understand the ideas fueling other people's beliefs so that i can better help them to know and understand truth.

"And as we have a strong doctrinal content, we must practice the content, practice the truth we say we believe. We must exhibit to our own children and to the watching world that we take truth seriously. It will not do in a relativistic age to say that we believe in truth and fail to practice that truth in places where it may be observed and where it is costly. We, as Christians, say we believe that truth exists. We say we have truth from the Bible. And we say we can give that truth to other men in propositional, verbalized form and they may have that truth. This is exactly what the gospel claims and this is what we claim. But then we are surrounded by a relativistic age. Do you think for a moment we will have credibility if we say we believe the truth and yet do not practice the truth in religious matters? If we do not do this, we cannot expect for a moment that the tough-minded, twentieth-century young person (including our own young people) will take us seriously when we say, "here is truth" when they are surrounded by a totally monolithic consensus that truth does not exist."
[Francis A. Schaeffer]

"For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."

[1 Corinthians 1:25]