women's division III ncaa soccer championship

i'm listening to the wheaton women's soccer team in a penalty kick shootout to win the championship.

and the shot...soon...

they made it.

wheaton has one chance, if they make this they win. last kick. it's tied right now. come on...

wheaton just won the national championship.

you have no idea how excited i am right now, and i'll get to celebrate with them very soon.


(sigh)

this is awesome.
very very very awesome.

thanksgiving

i'm here in sunny costa mesa with my parents and my brother. yesterday we went to disneyland, which was pretty fun. i've never liked roller coasters or rides resembling them, but yesterday i went on all of the ones that my dad and brother went on. it was really fun to ride with them, and i enjoyed the rides themselves. last night we just hung out at the apartment. i watched a bunch of episodes from season one of the oc. the more i watch that show the more i think it actually has some really good things to say. granted, last night i watched a few of the steamiest episodes, and i think there are better ways those could have been done, but on the whole i think the show has a lot of value. today we're just haning out, watching football, and eating. i'm looking forward to a nice rest of the day.

one other note: i went to bed at three o'clock pacific time this morning, which is roughly 24 hours after i got up to go to the airport yesterday. it was great.

happy thanksgiving. in a trite end to this post i'm going to give some general thanksgivings, so here it goes:

things i'm thankful for:
oregon
sports
music
church
work
friends
family
creative outlets like writing
reading
days at disney-related theme parks with my family
video games
trips to california
trips to illinois
rock shows
U2
cars
clothes
money to pay for things i need
not enough money to make it easy for me to fall into materialism (the vice, not the metaphysical viewpoint)
learning
resting
the oc
other forms of media that make me think, laugh, smile, cry, get frustrated, or open my eyes to the way others feel or think
etc.

temping: day two

i don't think i said exactly what i tought yesterday. four periods, and they went like this:

first period: ninth grade algebra
second period: college prep for seniors (imagine if there were a class in which you worked on scholarships and applications and other college related things...that's this class)
third period: international studies (this class was made up of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors...insane)
fourth period: same as the last one, with a different group of students

today i was at another tiny school, this time teaching p.e.

actually, i thought i was teaching p.e., and i did some, but then it changed. in the morning i taught p.e. for first graders, then kindergarteners, then 2nd/3rd/4th graders, then 5th/6th/7th/8th graders. those are all of the classes this school had, four of them, broken up as i've shown. there was no feild, no track, no gym. there was very little in terms of equipment. it was rediculous. but i'm still the best sub ever, so it worked out. then, in the afternoon, i took over in the 2nd/3rd/4th grade class. they were hellions. it was amazing. but i survived, and it was far better than making sandwiches, and i made more money, which is nice. now i have a weekend, then two more days of subbing, then thanksgiving in LA with my brother and my parents, then two more days of subbing, then a trip to chicago, then nine more days of subbing (tempered by another weekend) and then i head to roseburg for christmas. i'm quite looking forward to the next few weeks, what with all my traveling and hopefully getting into some real high school classrooms.

in the aftermath

today was only a half-day, which is too bad. but i still got paid as much for a half day as i would have for a full day at quizno's, and it was fun, and i'm the coolest substitute teacher ever. hopefully tomorrow will only improve on today.

temping, for real

tomorrow morning i will become ned shnee...um, mr. s. after waiting for so long on the certification, and then applying to districts on monday only to find out that i wouldn't be able to start subbing until january or february, i was terribly distraught. on tuesday i ran across an online ad for substitute teachers, called the number, and proceeded to get hired by them today. it really is like a temp agency. most schools or districts have substitute coordinators. the place i was hired by serves as a sort of third party substitute coordinator, in which schools call them when they need subs, and their hired subs call when they want to work. you may be wondering how i'm so sure they'll need me tomorrow. well, they told me that they've had more assignments than teachers this whole school year, so that they are trying to recruit new subs all the time just to cover their "client" schools. all this is to say that i'm finally doing what i want, and i can't wait for it.

of course, i will wait, because sleep will be good tonight before heading into a classroom tomorrow for the FIRST TIME EVER. but sleep will only come after choir practice at my church.

roper show

i just got back from the roper show at asu west. it was quite good, though reese had some classic off-key vocals on several songs. i hung out with one of the guitar players, stephen till, for a while both before and after the show. i also talked to reese for a while, which was very cool, especially since i never had that chance when he was in five iron. it was pretty funny to see just how obsessed all the kids there were with reese. the grandest personality cult of out time, i might say. also, he shoved the microphone in my face for the vocals on part of one song, which was a lot of fun. i'm a wreck, i'm too old to go to shows with a bunch of junior high and high school kids, so i think i'll sleep now...or soon...or never...but hopefully soon.

interview with a favorite wheaton prof

this interview happened sometime last year, but my roommate luke just found it. all you have to do is click on the title of the post and you'll find it...it's that easy. dr. jacobs, the interviewee, is an english professor at wheaton. i had him for african lit my very last quad (half a semester) of school, and wished that i could go back and be an english major just to learn from him for four years. as luke said, jacobs doesn't really say anything earth-shattering, but the eloquence with which he speaks on a great breadth of subjects is fantastic, and i think it helps me think about my personal faith, as well as our corporate faith as the body of Christ.

one note: there is no way that jacobs called stanly hauerwas stanly harakas, and i think that's pretty shoddy journalism by pbs. it's always good to see one of my favorites quote one of my favorites.

an apology

i just wanted to say i'm sorry that the last chunk i posted about cornelius isn't very good, i'm afraid. i like it, but i don't think it's very good. once i start revising everything, when the whole story is out, i think it could become good, but not yet. also, i realized the other night that someone could probably steal my writing. i don't say this because i think it's so good that someone would want to, just because the paranoia hit me and i needed to at least put it up so that if someone does steal my story he or she will feel badly about it later.

i've been writing this in our new living room. the walls aren't new, but having furniture, and having pictures up on the walls, makes it feel new and extremely livable, quite a contrast with how it was before.

The Unauthorized Autobiography of Cornelius Scott, Installment Two (2)

Since I told you that “the second explosion happened…” I suppose I should tell you that the third explosion happened in such-and-such a way. Of course, I defy convention, since I never learned it very well, and instead I’m going to tell you about a summer trip I took with Jake and Emily.

When I was seven mom decided that it would be good for me and my twin younger siblings—my brother Jake and sister Emily—to spend some time with my aunt and uncle on their farm. Mom thought that the fresh air would do us much good. (This is fairly ridiculous, since Roseburg is hardly a big city, and in fact has very little pollution—or anything else—to make the air not fresh.)

The procedure was that we would drive halfway across the state, and so would they. On the side of the road in the middle of nowhere mom would hand over the goods, namely, me Jake and Emily, and then my aunt would return to the farm with her new hired hands. (Then again, hired probably isn’t the right word, since we didn’t get paid anything.) After that we would live normal farmers’ lives: doing chores, painting fences, pulling rye, pulling weeds, riding horses, breathing “fresh” air, and doing anything else imaginable to make the time tolerable.

The plan went off splendidly, almost without a hitch. Jake, Emily, and I loaded into the car with mom and drove across the state. Once there, our aunt helped move us into her giant truck, where our cousin Elizabeth was eagerly anticipating our company. We rode together, the five of us, the rest of the way across the state. When we arrived at the farm there was no lack of fresh air, and our two weeks there were filled with horse riding, rye pulling, fence painting, chore doing, and anything else we could think of to make the time tolerable.

This wouldn’t be a very interesting part of the story, my story, if it hadn’t been for that little hitch. As I said already, mom, Jake, Emily, and I drove across the state to meet my aunt. There were no problems on that trip: no giant pot-holes to blow tires out, no crazy drivers to push us off the road so we could plunge into the Umpqua River, no black ice in the mountains to surprise us and send the car careening into some tree trunk. And the drive the rest of the way also occurred without incident. (Well, there was one incident—I threw up, but I’ll get to that, and besides, kids throw up in cars from motion sickness all the time.) And as surprising as it may be, there were no accidents with horses or hay bales or pigs or goats or any other dangerous farm implements during our stay. My attempt to build suspense has no doubt left you a little restless, as I’m sure you’ve spotted the very moment that the hitch occurred, and have just been waiting for me to say so in order that you might feel smug. I hope that you do feel quite smug, because you were right all along: something happened between driving halfway across the state with mom and driving the other half with our aunt.

Once we reached the middle-of-nowhere spot on the side of the road, mom pulled over next to our aunt’s truck and the two of them began unloading us and our stuff. I was expected to help, since I was (and still, for that matter, am) the oldest. Since I was helping, I grabbed a favorite toy of mine to keep me company in the truck. As much as I enjoyed Jake and Emily and Elizabeth, their intellects weren’t quite enough to keep me entertained. I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you how old they were, since I haven’t mentioned that yet. Jake and Emily were almost five, and Elizabeth had just turned five. This is the perfect age for an older brother or cousin to constantly entertain with his showmanship, as will be explained in a few short moments, but not for them to keep me entertained, hence my grabbing of the toy, which was a dart gun. It wasn’t the type with sharp darts, the kind some mean children shoot at neighborhood cats, or stereotypical warring tribes from Africa put poison on and use in battle. Instead it had suction darts.

Once we were all settled in the truck, mom and our aunt took a break to catch up leaning against mom’s car. For a while we just watched them, but after approximately five seconds this loses all appeal for anyone under the age of 83. As the three in the back were getting quite restless (as I’m sure you are too, once again, since I seem to be delaying the climax of this little vignette) I decided to entertain them myself. I pulled the dart gun out, and with a mind as clever as any entertainer—alive or dead—I invented a show for them. The show consisted of me shooting a dart into my own mouth. I did this by putting the dart in as normal, but then turning the tube around and sucking on it instead of blowing on it to shoot the dart out. The trick was that I didn’t just do this with my teeth together: that would have had no entertainment value. Instead, I used all the force I could muster with my mouth wide open on each self-inflicted shot, and then right at the last second I would jam my teeth together, effectively catching the suction dart before it lodged itself in my throat.

My entire audience found this incredibly amusing, especially my brother Jake, who nearly had his head cut off by his seat-belt strap at least three times. With each shot I would become more daring, tempting the shooter, who happened to be me, to hit his target. It finally happened after 11 or so shots. My teeth weren’t quick enough to close, and the dart slid between them and down my throat. There it lodged, never to release itself.

This last shot was more humorous than any I had previously attempted, and once again resulted in Jake’s near decapitation. Emily and Elizabeth also found my fake choking to be quite funny. Of course, I would have found fake choking funny too, but the real choking going on in my seat was anything but comical. After struggling for some time to dislodge the dart, I gave up and accepted my fate.

I died the exact moment I gave up. Of course that’s not true, but I thought I had died. There was a flash of blinding light and a huge crash from behind the truck. I thought they were the signs that I was entering the after-life, but they were really just signs that lightning had struck a telephone pole. Mom and our aunt were of course quite startled by the lightning, and rushed to the truck to make sure we were okay. To their shock, and also to their surprise, I wasn’t okay at all. They hadn’t expected to find a choking child in the front seat.

The Heimlich maneuver feels a lot differently than you’d think it does, but it works. Once the dart came shooting back out of my mouth—an event that once again landed Jake in convulsions of laughter—I could breath again. All that fresh air I breathed for the next two weeks couldn’t compare with the sweetness of that first breath. After that I was fine, other than the after-effects that produced the vomiting incident I’ve already told you about.

Once again an explosion tied mom and I together, but this time it didn’t save the lives of our whole family, just mine. There had only been a few clouds in the sky when mom and our aunt started talking. They didn’t notice—being outside—nor did we notice—being inside—the clouds multiplying and becoming much darker. Maybe they didn’t. We still aren’t sure, but mom and I do both remember the explosion when the lightning hit the telephone pole, and of course neither of us could forget the extremely lucky timing of that event. Once again I was saved by an explosion.

apartment furnishings

luke brought back a couch from mesa, today, and then we got several shelves from his classroom. now the apartment is feeling a lot better. also, i've put a few pictures up already, pretty soon i'll put the rest up. tomorrow, we're bringing back an end table from tim and lisa's in fountain hills, then we'll go to goodwill, pick up a chair, coffee table, and an entertainment center that i scoped out today. by tomorrow evening, the apartment should be a lot more livable.

and in case anyone is anxious, soon i'll be putting up a second installment of cornelius scott.

temping, again

next week will be my last at quizno's, and i may not even be able to work the whole week. the reason for this is simple: friday i will be certified to substitute teach, and then next week i'll be attending orientations and hopefully getting into the classroom. this all makes me quite happy.

the verchant of menace

tonight i saw scottsdale christian academy's production of the merchant of venice, or as my friend ian called it, the verchant of menace. i had forgotten just how funny shakespeare is. it made me think that i might start reading his whole works once i finish with salinger and hauerwas, since my grandma gave me a whole set of his plays. i don't have much else to say on this. oh, hopefully very soon i'll have a second installment of very rough fiction for you, dear reader, to loathe.

The Unauthorized Autobiography of Cornelius Scott, Installment One (1)

This story isn’t anything new, or even terribly original, but it certainly is twisted, and that twistedness lends it, if nothing else, credibility…maybe even originality, after all. I should first clear up a misconception you’re certain to have: by twisted, I don’t mean in the manner of a pirate’s dagger—you know, the type with the metal handle that appears to have been woven from hell-forged gold—or even in the manner of some mad scientist’s mind. No, the twisted I mean is the type you would see on the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the freezer, the one that is “2TWISTED!”. It’s the combining and intertwining of two previously existing, and apparently tasty, flavors to create a new one. That’s the sort of twisted that this story is. I’m not saying that I stole this story from someone. In fact, this story is very much mine. But the way I tell it will make you think at times you’ve heard it before, as I can’t help but say things that PK said in The Power of One, or that Asher Lev might have said, or that Anthony should have said in Bottle Rocket. In fact, this whole introduction sounds a bit too much like Holden Caulfield.

I suppose that a real introduction is in order, one in which I introduce myself, since I really am the story. My name is Cornelius Scott. I was born on February 18, 1981, exactly nine months after the eruption of Mount St. Helens. I’m sure you want to know why that is of any significance, since there were certainly numerous other babies born around that time, and some on the very day of its eruption. Well, it seems that I was conceived the day that St. Helens erupted, thus continuing a familial trend. My mother was born in St. Helens, the town, on August 7, 1959. I was conceived in Roseburg, Oregon, on May 18, 1980. Roseburg exploded on August 7, 1959, and St. Helens blew up on May 18, 1980. My mother and I are forever tied to explosions, especially ones that produce tremendous damage and tragedy, and we’re tied to them together.

The second explosion of my life came just before I turned two. Being a curious toddler, I was doing what curious toddlers do: roaming around the house searching for something new to put in my mouth. My father was at work, and my mother was in the kitchen working on dinner. I was free to eat anything I could find, so I did. After trying an assortment of treats, including yellow play-dough, which does not taste like buttered popcorn, I finally settled on the perfect bit of nourishment. My parents have always claimed that I was smart even as a child, so it must have been the knowledge that charcoal contains vitamins and minerals of all sorts that led me to eat the ashes in the fireplace.

I ate to my heart’s content the remnants of a fire that my parents had snuggled by the previous night, or perhaps the night before. Finally, having thoroughly gorged myself on this feast of squalor, I wandered into the kitchen to see what my mother was cooking for dinner. She was having quite a time mixing, cutting, marinating, and in all manner of other ways preparing what would become our dinner, so she didn’t notice at first the black drool coming down my face. It took quite some time before she turned to see me with my face covered in soot. Of course, she didn’t know that it was soot. She had no idea what my face was covered in. Always giving me the benefit of the doubt, she finally decided that I had come across some of my father’s grape gum, and that this produced the black drool now ruining my face. This answer was quite enough for her, and so she let me play a bit longer until my father got home and could help her clean me up.

Dad got home only a few minutes later, heard mom’s story about the grape gum, laughed with her, and then set out to get me cleaned up and ready for dinner. His amusement stopped, however, when he felt the gritty truth of my pre-dinner meal while wiping my face off. In a panic, my parents rushed me to the hospital, having finally noticed the tracks I had left from the fireplace to the kitchen. As it turned out, there really were quite a few nutrients in the remains I had eaten, much to my two-year-old delight. With the knowledge that I had built up my immune system in order to fight off poisons of other kinds, we drove home.

The steady scream of sirens and the steady stream of fire engines didn’t seem peculiar until we were only several blocks from home. By that time we could see the smoke billowing above the neighborhood and the flames grasping for any chunk of fuel they could get. A house in our neighborhood was burning. A house quite close to our own was on fire. As it turned out, our own house was not only burning and on fire, but had exploded. It seems that there was something wrong with our gas line. We had never had any trouble with it before, but something about the change in weather, or its age, or just happenstance, had led the line to break in some way. Mom had forgotten to turn the stove off when we left for the hospital. This meant that the gas continued to flow, but at a rate that was quite dangerous. In addition, it didn’t only flow into the heating element in the stove, but off into other parts of the house. When it had finally seeped back into the kitchen, it only took the pilot light in the stove to send the whole house up.

So at the age of almost two we moved out of our house—our charcoal house—and into a new one with gas lines that were properly maintained. This is how my mother and I unknowingly conspired to produce not only another explosion, but a reason to be in the right place when the wrong time came, just as she had been in St. Helens instead of Roseburg, and I was started in Roseburg instead of St. Helens.

the coming fiction

i'm working on my first great work of fiction. depending on how the writing goes and where the characters take me, it will either be a short story or (gasp) a novel. we'll see. i'm posting rough drafts, which is somewhat scary. please rip the chunks to peices. that means you, jacob and krispin, but also anyone else who feels like it. i'll accept any form of flattery, too, but i really would prefer criticism. i think there's a pedro the lion song called criticism as inspiration. that's what i'm looking for, i suppose. and on with the show...

spilling my guts

i wrote this after seeing the movie garden state. i know that i posted something the next day at the library similar to this, but this is what i wrote when i came home. it's pretty raw, and so i'm not sure what anyone will think of it. i say that because i'm not sure what i think of it. in the original version i swore twice, and right now i'm trying to decide if i keep those in. hmmmmmm...no, i don't think so. i don't know what i'll do with them, make them socially acceptable to christians by changing them to things like "darn," or make them the same only without the letters by using symbols. maybe i'll find the meaning and see if i can't use other words. also, i'm debating whether to leave in the most personal thing i would have ever posted on here...again, i don't know whether to do it or not. i think not. we'll see. i'm not telling you my final decision on that one. without further ado, here is something i wrote a while back:


i think i’m beginning to understand what it feels like to be suicidal.

that’s not to say that i want to end my life, which seems like the proper meaning of the statement. i think it has something to do with desperation—a feeling that i’m not living at all, just surviving—and not knowing how to act on it.

so instead of wanting to end my life, i want to truly begin it. no more surviving. i can’t stand this going to work, making a little bit of money, wondering why i’m not doing something else, thinking about people from wheaton or from roseburg or from God knows where else, all the while not thinking about home because the only home is the idea of being with these people. for the most convoluted sentence i’ve written so far tonight, that one may hold the most meaning. of course i’m ripping off garden state, which i just saw…alone. and i’m also ripping off some of stanley hauerwas’s ideas about community. but the last time i was back in roseburg i said that it wasn’t really going home, it was going to roseburg. and when i visit wheaton soon it won’t be going home either: it will be going back to wheaton. but when i’m with luke i’m home. when i’m with eric and alec and griff in wheaton i’ll be home. when i’m with julie or ashley or jacob or aj or val or krispin or my parents or any number of other people in roseburg i’m home. when i'm with my brother or patrick who-knows-where i'm home. the question, then, is why can’t i be home right now?

maybe i can’t be home right now because i’m alone. but i’m in the apartment that i’ve paid for—this isn’t some place i’m living in for free, some hostel that’s allowed me to mooch off it’s benevolence. no, it’s much more like a motel room: a place i can stay for a few months while i figure everything out. but, in all honesty, it won’t be figured out when the lease runs out in six months time. no, i’ll be as confused/undecided/content-to-not-know/ready-to-find-out/messed up as ever. what will i do then? if i go back to roseburg i could survive a while longer working at the mill so that i can pay for grad school. if i go to honduras i could risk everything to see a friend i sometimes think i love, but who is very busy actually living. maybe that’s the trick: if i go there, i’ll have to live. there’s no surviving in honduras except for really living, because the former will just wear you down until you can’t keep it up anymore. i think that’s "the power of one" coming through, bryce courtney’s words and ideas being eschewed by me as my own. that’s the trick; maybe i’ll go to south africa. i think there are too many tricks in the last few sentences, because there really isn't any trick to figuring all of this out.

the problem still persists: when will i ever be home? of course there’s the nice christian answer, and one that i sometimes believe—and wish i believed this very second—that i’ll truly be home when i’m in heaven with God. but even when i look for that, i can’t picture it. i can’t taste it. i don’t think it’s like what many preachers say, that we get a taste of heaven when we’re worshipping God together. i think i got a taste of heaven tonight watching garden state, because it showed me what looked like real love, and real choices to make love work. as a human with a finite grasp and no real understanding of the immensity of God, his gift to us of love-for-each-other is the thing that most makes me think of heaven. at it’s best this sort of love is a reflection of God’s character. i don’t believe that there can be an “at it’s worst” of real love-for-each-other, because if it's real, i mean really real, the way God intends us to love, then it can't be done badly.

from a long time ago, but just now published

i must begin this post with a sincere apology. i said that i would be offline for a while, but now it seems that it may be longer than expected. the service i was going to go with has no more available ports, so i’m not sure how this situation will be fixed. in addition, i put my phone number up and said it would be up and ready for incoming/outgoing calls on october 20th. well, i’m writing this post on the evening of the 20th, and my phone still isn’t working. i suppose this apology is more because i’m unhappy about not being in contact with anyone, but in case anyone decided to try it, this apology is for you as well.

in addition to writing this post, i’m watching the red sox beat up on the yankees in game seven. this is one of the most enjoyable sporting events i’ve ever watched, and the only person i can share it with is you, dear reader. it was great to have luke here last night, and i can’t wait until he moves in for good, but it’s a bit lonely now that i’m by myself. i really wish that anyone from home or from wheaton could come visit me. that’s not to say that having luke, ian, james, adam, and the lovings here isn’t great…or that once i have a phone and can get in contact with ross that won’t be really fun. i just wish i were in contact with all of those friends i’ve made in the last, well, i suppose in the last seven years.

i’ve enjoyed the lap pool here at the apartment complex each of the last three days. it’s been fantastic, and i’ve really enjoyed getting back in to the pool. in addition to that, today was my third day of work at quizno’s. the first day i hated it, but since then it hasn’t been as bad. i received a raise on the second day of work, so that now i’m earning $6.00 an hour. it’s terrible pay, really, but until i’m subbing…ahem…temping, it will make me enough money to help take care of living expenses.

i don’t think i really have anything else to say right now, it’s quite too bad that i have no idea when this will be posted…it could be a long time from now, but i think i won’t add anything to it, instead i’ll make a post correcting anything that is wrong because of posting so long after writing.

hauerwas #3

in the essay “reforming Christian social ethics: ten theses,” hauerwas makes ten claims about the way ethics should look. here i quote the third thesis, which can be found on page 112 of the hauerwas reader.

3. The ability to provide an adequate account of our existence is the primary test of the truthfulness of a social ethic.
No society can be just or good that is built on falsehood. The first task of Christian social ethics, therefore, is not to make the “world” better or more just, but to help Christian people form their community consistent with their conviction that the story of Christ is a truthful account of our existence. For as H. R. Niebuhr argued, only when we know “what is going on,” do we know “what we should do,” and Christians believe that we learn most decisively “what is going on” in the cross and resurrection of Christ.

i don’t have much else to say about this entry, i think hauerwas nails it on the head, and i need to take this to heart when i think about the ways i act and the ways i think about actions and ethics. the first task cannot be to change things, but to understand what it means to be in relationship with Christ, both as an individual and in community, because they are both of utmost importance.

more posts soon

i ordered netzero dial-up internet yesterday. i should get all the stuff to make it happen by friday, so then i won't have to come to the library to make posts, and i can use my own computer, which already has some stuff on it that i want to post. that's all i've got, since i can't wait to get out of the library.

the art of grad school searching

the title of this post may be misleading, because i don't actually know the art of grad school searching. i've now requested info from princeton theological seminary, in addition to my duke application that is under way, and the wheaton one i plan on doing. lastly, i'm trying to find a seminary on the west coast to which i would like to apply. i think that i'll end up with fuller, but maybe there's another one out there that would suit me even better. it's taco tuesday, which means that in about an hour i'll be heading up to del taco to join scores of students and teachers from scottsdale christian academy for the "three tacos for $.99" bargain. yes, every tuesday. it's nice, i'll tell you, but it would be nicer if i didn't have to figure out the sales tax too. i just finished reading catcher in the rye. i had read it once as a junior in high school, and i still think that it's amazing. i'm continuing on in the works of salinger and reading his nine stories next. in addition to that, i've finally started reading hauerwas again. he is just amazing. here's a quote from what i read yesterday:

I was raised a Methodist. That means before I was twelve I had already had all the experience I could take. That is the reason I sometimes suggest that there are some words that certain religious traditions should never be allowed to use. Anglicans should never be allowed to say "Incarnation" because they usually mean by that "God became human and said, 'Say, this is not too bad.'" In like manner, Methodists should not be allowed to use the word "experience" because they usually mean that salvation consists in having the right feelings at the right time and in the right place. Rather than our confrontation with God being an occasion for challenging our endemic narcissism, the emphasis on experience thus only underwrites our fatal narcissism.

that's from the essay "Casuistry in Context: The Need for Tradition." it's just the first paragraph. i know that it's pretty heady stuff, but he really is amazing, and as much as i have decided to apply to more places than just duke, i sure would choose to study there if i get the chance.