some thoughts

• A large part of what interests me about poetry is encountering new ways of thinking about things (in general, new ways of thinking about things is something that I love). More specifically, I realized today that an easy way of generating that kind of poetry is through breaking collocation norms.  In linguistics, a collocation is when two words are found together often, and substituting a synonym for one of the words just doesn't work.  Or as the dictionary defines it, "the habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a frequency greater than chance."  For instance, Wikipedia has the example of the collocation of "strong" and "tea" in "strong tea" instead of "powerful tea," which is a phrase that people don't use.
• So, going along with that, I can see breaking collocation norms, changing up phrasemes, as a really productive way of forming poetry.  This is just a fancy way of saying that no one wants clichés.  But think about how much more interesting something can be by just substituting (loose) synonyms.  Like, looking through this list of collocations, what would it mean to say, "confess defeat" instead of "admit defeat"?
• similarly, I can see some good poems coming out of exploring/breaking/substituting language metaphors.  Like how in English (in many... most... all? languages), up = happy, down = sad. More specifically to English, illness = war (battle illness, immune defenses), whereas in Nepal, illness = eating (disease eats you).  Also in English at least, time = money (spend time, waste time), anger = heat (hothead, keep your cool), etc.

• I've been reading a lot of criticisms of capitalism in the articles and it brought to mind how Jesus' views and teachings were developing a pre-communist society. How I think I heard that Marx developed communism from reading about the early church in the NT [source?].
• I haven't really thought about critiquing capitalism until recently. But I can see how that structure of "the more productive you are, the more useful you are." is a really damaging idea.  It locks out those who can't work because of disease, disability, etc. It implicitly encourages euthanasia. It fails to see the humanity and the value of people just as people. And perhaps reflecting on those critiques can help alleviate my current existential crisis of not having a job, aimless yet again, failing to get off the waitlist of med schools, seemingly falling behind all my peers in career/romantic relationships/life/etc. Seeing how much we elevate productivity in our society and knocking that idol down a few notches could be good for my (and others') health.

Pedro, the guy I have a huge crush on, kissed me last night.

I move to Seattle tomorrow morning.

C'est la vie.

Say We Will Do Better.

Say We Will Do Better.

(Fourth of July:  we’ll spend $800 million on fireworks this year.

Because what could be more patriotic than blowing things up?

What better way to celebrate our independence than explosions masked with pretty lights?

What could be more American than shooting missiles into blackness?)

My father tells me that he’s put up

the flags already for the weekend

and then asks,
If someone asked you
whether your allegiance was to
China or the US,
what would you say?

当然美国啊!
(America, of course!)
我是出生在这里.
(I was born here.)
I respond.

Good. he says.
Always say America.
Don't end up in an internment camp
like the Japanese during
World War II.

But I think about
the Temple University professor,

Xi Xiaoxing,

who last year was falsely accused of

stealing US secrets for China.

Twelve FBI agents arrested him at home,

but they didn’t consult any experts

about his actual work

before doing so.

Or Sherry Chen,

the hydrologist with the National Weather Service,

who two years ago was falsely accused of spying for China

and was arrested by six FBI agents.

She accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in legal fee debt.

Both had all charges dropped.

Both were naturalized American citizens.

Both had received awards for their work.

Neither got compensated for our government’s mistakes.

And yet you know who invented modern fireworks?

Chinese people.

Always say America.

Say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Say it in English only.

Say the Bill of Rights.
Say your Miranda rights.

Say veterans.

Say 14% of veterans have PTSD.

Say let’s set off fireworks anyway.

Say 15% of veterans are Black or Hispanic.
Say homeless veterans.

Say 40% of homeless veterans are Black or Hispanic.

Say Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Say Go Richland Bombers!
Say Nuke 'em.

Say 3,500 gallons of nuclear waste leak at the Hanford site.

Say NRA.

Say mass shooting.
Say second amendment rights.
Say Sandy Hook, Emanuel church, Pulse nightclub.
Say my thoughts and prayers are with you.

Say privatized prisons.

Say mass incarceration.

Say 4.4% of the world’s population.

Say 22% of the world’s prisoners.

Say God bless America.

Say land of the free.

Say LGBTQ youth.

Say 5% of youth are LGBTQ.

Say homeless LGBTQ youth.

Say 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ.

Say LGBTQ people experience the highest number of hate crimes.

Say at least they can marry each other now.

Say militarized police.
Say Eric Garner,

Tamir Rice,

Rekia Boyd…
Say no indictment. No indictment. No indictment…
Say All Lives Matter.

Say Flint, Michigan.

Say Trail of Tears.
Say no refugees.

Say Holocaust.

Say no refugees.
Say mass deportation.

Say drone strikes.

Say 90% of drone strikes were not the intended targets.
Say All Lives Matter.

Say cultural appropriation.

Say racial profiling.

Say Blackface. Brownface. Redface. Yellowface.

Say skin bleaching.

Say white supremacy.

Say racism is over.

Say English Only.
Say ching chong.

Say no problemo.
Say Chinese Exclusion Act.
Say Mexicans are rapists.
Say immigrants are worthless.
Say Muslims are terrorists.
Say Make America Great Again.

Make America great again.
make america great again.

Always say America.

Always.

Megan tells me about her desire to see gay Christians mobilized to do Bible translation. She tells me that W should want me. That they should be sad that they don't have me. That PBT, the organization she's part of, should be sad that they don't have me. That I have all the right skills and that I'm the perfect person who should be a part of PBT.

For the most part, I think I'd much rather be a family physician. But I'd also really love having my job be just going to a place and practicing/learning the language of wider communication and then settling in to learn the minority language and do community development and other stuff with it. And I feel a tinge of envy that some of my friends will be able to do that and just devote their lives to it. Maybe someday. Maybe even both jobs.

---

One of my friends (~acquaintance) was at graduation and told me that she laughed out loud when they announced my name. Whereas the other graduates had descriptions like "So and so is going on to serve in Papua New Guinea as a translation consultant," I just had "David Wang, in absentia, is continuing his studies." That was because when the Dean of Academic Affairs asked what we were doing after graduation in an e-mail, I could only stomach ticking off the box "School." I didn't even respond to any of the e-mails asking if I was going to be present at graduation, which was last Friday.

---

Last night was my last night in Dallas. After a small going-away party that my grad school friends held for me, I drove across the street to GIAL, started walking around by myself at 10 PM and eventually began saying, "I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you." to so many doors, rooms, and buildings. I let the scenes of memory fade in and out, reflecting on the excitement I had to continue learning linguistics when I got here, how nervous I was that I would be an awful student, how happy I was during my first semester, and how invalidated I felt as a human being as second year went on. How maybe someday, I'll be okay enough to join a Bible translation organization.  But then again, I don't even know if I'll ever be okay enough to consistently go to a church anymore and not feel like I'm dragging myself to go each week.

I said "I forgive you" so many dozens of times as if saying it more would make it true. I forgive the people who (to me) didn't do enough. I forgive the people who left to do other things. I forgive the people who ruined my experience at the school. I forgive the people who were just ruled by a corrupt system that sees LGBTQ people as automatically lesser and "worse Christians." I forgive the people who just wanted me gone from campus already.

There's a hallway in one of the buildings where various important linguists or GIAL people have their headshots framed with a little description underneath them. One of the frames is a mirror, with a description that says something like, "This great future linguist graduated from a small but quality school focused on helping minority people groups." I've always thought it was rather cute.

I stood in front of that mirror and told myself, "I forgive you. I forgive you."

I forgive myself for coming here. I forgive myself for not doing more. I forgive myself for doing so much. I forgive myself for running away. I forgive myself for despairing. I forgive myself for wishing for non-existence.

I forgive myself.

Back to Blogging(?), Randomness, and Liberation Theology

I haven’t blogged in a while. And I still have what Ann told me at her wedding echoing in my mind—something to the effect of, “You should blog more!—which I felt honored by the fact that she wanted to listen to my thoughts more. Karen also told me that I should get back into blogging, and I thoroughly enjoy reading her blog, Ann’s blog, and so many others’ blogs.

I’m not entirely sure why I had such a precipitous drop in blogging. I think part of it is because blogging was a primary source to pour out my angsty feelings, and I don’t keep so many of those angsty feelings to myself right now. I suppose that’s a positive thing, as it signifies that I have people I can chat with about whatever I need.

Not that I couldn’t have done that in college. (A little bit of a sidetrack here as I explain a bit about my personality.) I’m pretty much an open book and have a sort of internal policy that if someone asks me a question about myself, I will pretty much tell them the truth, no matter how personal the question is (although I find myself kind of throwing this principle out the window when I’m in interviews… I’d like to say that my nervousness gets the better of me, but part of it is that I just want to look good too, and that sometimes results in a little embellishment of truth). Coupled with that is my priority for not giving people more info than they want and boring them with my personal info. I suppose the key is persistence and asking the right questions. If you’re just gonna ask me, “How are you?” I might not respond with much more than “Good” or “Alright” because I need to know that you really want to hear the long, drawn-out answer. Chances are I only hold back that drawn-out answer because I’m hesitant to believe that you actually want to hear about it. It also saves me the trouble of hashing through that answer only to be disappointed by your lack of interest, haha.

Anyway, even though I’ve used my blog primarily for the angst-relieving-ness (and I’ve stood by that because this is my blog and I feel like I should just write whatever I want to write), I also feel like I should also use it to update people and to process some more about my own life. I mean, heck, I was reading through some of my older posts/drafts, and that stuff can be CRYPTIC. I’m like, man, I wish I had given myself more clues to figure out what the heck I was all sad about here. But I didn’t, and now I don’t know what I was talking about or thinking about here. haha.

Moving on from that semi-explanation about why the lack of blogging, an update on my life. I’m currently writing this on a cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to the East Caribbean with my parents, grandma, and aunt and uncle. I work only occasionally, and spend most of my time playing games, watching TV, reading articles/books that interest me. Life’s pretty great, to say the least, haha. I graduated from GIAL in December, and am pretty much done with that school and its craziness. I’ve been pretty shaken-up by the ordeal and have developed a general mistrust of Christian culture, and conservatism to an extent as well.

Let me explain a little bit more about that. I figured out a couple weeks ago what some of my distaste in Christian stuff comes from when my church in Dallas invited a children’s choir from an orphanage in Uganda to perform. They were singing about how God was all powerful and so great and everything and the lyrics were in these flashy fonts and animation, and there were all these happy-clappy people in the audience singing along and I felt a little sick from seeing it all. I felt my head reel a bit. And a lot of general Christian sentiment (maybe they’re more Christian platitudes?) makes me feel much more uncomfortable than it did in the past.

It’s not like I don’t believe that God is all powerful and great and mighty and etc. I think the feeling comes from realizing that there are so many Christians who believe those same things, but think about other things in a completely different way than I do. And sometimes, I feel like, “Oh, how interesting that God works both in conservative and in liberal mindsets and that we’re all one big, beautiful, messy Body of Christ.” But usually I feel like those different ways of thinking can easily (and do easily) result in damaging practices. And the fact is that they don’t even notice—or really particularly care—that their way of thinking can be so damaging.

It’s made me hesitant to pray much, read my Bible much, and to a much greater degree, memorize Bible passages, because the administration at GIAL did all of those things and they still believed in their decision to discriminate against me and silence me. They prayed so much about their decisions, and chasing me away from campus without an apology was what they decided on. The faculty/staff who were upset that I was still even on campus probably didn’t have people challenging them or fighting on my behalf and what ended up happening is that fear won. Their fear of losing donors and losing other students besides me trumped their decision to act in a compassionate and considerate manner towards me.

The world suddenly became way more unpredictable to me. And although I can certainly see the good that going through my education at GIAL and persevering through those trials did for me, at the end of the day, it wasn’t at all what I thought was going to happen going into the school. I thought it was great that I was going to go to a Christian school so that I could better figure out my faith and sexuality—and while I think I did figure things out much more, I never imagined it would be partly from being oppressed for my sexuality.

Realizing the randomness that comes with humans/the universe was disturbing. There are no safeguards when it comes to humans. It doesn’t always matter that you prayed so much and “felt at peace” about the situation; you can still screw things up horribly. And I certainly don’t think you always “feel at peace” when you’re doing something that God wants you to do. Sometimes, you feel great turmoil. That doesn’t mean it isn’t the right decision. But even feeling turmoil can’t be some kind of reliable predictor of what to do. Sometimes, everything goes wrong even when you did all the “right Christian things.”

I don’t think that’s something that’s talked about much. I mean, that point about how you can still severely delude yourself about what’s right is usually glossed over by making everyone feel more at ease with reminders about God’s sovereignty and grace over all situations and it’s okay because everything will be fine in the end!!

This is where my slow and continuing crawl into liberation theology and racial minority theology would depart from the traditional mindset that I would go into.

I’ve been reading Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, & Queer Christians Are Reclaiming Evangelicalism by Deborah Jian Lee after I got a signed copy at the Gay Christian Network Conference this year in Houston (which, interestingly, happened on the third and four floors of the Hilton and the third floor of the George R. Brown Convention Center just a week or so after HCC hosted the Chinese Missions Conference in the same place [plus I think the 5^th floor of the Hilton]), and it’s been a book that I’ve been wanting to read for months ever since I read the title, haha. And some of the things in the book, which is mostly a journalist’s description of various movements in Evangelicalism, have been shocking. 

For instance, the fact that Billy Graham “declined the 1963 invitation to King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, responding, ‘only when Christ comes again will little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children’” (page 29). Although as Lee notes later, Graham did apologize for his actions and how they helped perpetuate racism. 

But that kind of focus about how everything will be alright in the end can seriously impede work that leads to justice. It certainly placates those who are too lazy (or too invested) to change the status quo, but it does nothing for the oppressed. And I heard a similar sentiment from one member of the administration. That people just weren’t ready for changes now, but the landscape would change radically in a decade and I should just be quiet and wait for that. Not really sure why that person didn’t just fight for the change that she herself thought was inevitable and (I think) positive. I guess it was just something she didn’t feel was important enough.

The point I wanted to note about white theology is found in this excerpt in the book: 

"What the schism [between how black and white evangelicals interpret the world] comes down to is a gap between how much weight each side gives to individual responsibility, on the one hand, and systemic oppression, on the other. Evangelicals focus on personal responsibility as a core element of their faith, Emerson and Smith note:  if you want to live a positive, moral life, you and you alone are responsible for maintaining a healthy personal relationship first with Christ, and then with others.

For white evangelicals, this position is absolute; any social problems are seen as rooted in negative relationships and poor choices. There is little room for any way of thinking that places the blame for social conditions outside the individual. We see this in the multitude of worship songs and sermons that focus on the individual’s personal faith narrative; collective sin is typically ignored.

On the other hand, black evangelicals value personal responsibility but also understand that unfair systems and history deeply impact social circumstances and the fate of those subject to these systems. This is evidenced in theology that emphasizes deliverance for the oppressed and a salvation that is collective—as opposed to individual—in nature. These themes have translated into the language of civil rights and cohesive community action, which has its origins in the black church.

The segregation of churches around these radically different perspectives has given rise to a white theology that, developed in isolation, routinely invalidates black beliefs. This, in turn, has helped feed white evangelical support of policies and institutions that carry out black oppression.”

I am trying to wrap my brain around that, around the idea that maybe the Gospel to me in my situation right now as a queer Asian person is a "theology that emphasizes deliverance for the oppressed." In a sense, I've already been delivered from GIAL through graduating, but in another sense, those wounds of spiritual/psychological abuse still linger in my head. I often feel like I am barely holding on to my faith, or at least, the communal, church aspect of it. I still go on Sundays and on Wednesdays every week that I can and I serve on the Hospitality Team once or twice a month, but in most of those settings, I sometimes feel like I'm barely able to participate.

I dunno, we'll see what happens. 

On Being Silenced

Please read this post first so you have context.

This is the a post that I wrote for the Side B Community on Facebook on March 2nd, 2015.  It's pretty much gotten as bad as it could get without me getting expelled.

---

March 2nd, 2015

I've been running out of straws for my school for a while now. I do still enjoy classes. And I was hoping to take a class called "Arts for a Better Future" over the summer where we learn how to empower communities using their arts, and how every community has arts that can be drawn upon for a better future. I wanted to do my final project on an LGBTQ community (either you all if that could have worked, or LGBTQ youth here in Dallas). Unfortunately, when I asked if I could do that, I got shut down by the Dean of Academic Affairs (the same person who gave me my probation) with no other reason than that that would be inappropriate based on my school's community standards (which they just implemented this semester—thanks to me! They also put in a dress code, also thanks to me—and yet the only relevant passage to gay people says, "GIAL community members are to demonstrate high moral character by behavior whose moral conduct is consistent with the standards of Scripture. This includes, but is not limited to, abstaining from sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage, homosexual behavior, child or spousal abuse, and from advocating any such behaviors.”).

Hypocrisy aside of how "virtually all communities have arts that can be drawn upon for a better future" as the syllabus for that class says, I just could NOT understand his reasoning for why. He said, “Since the ABF course presents the work of the students at a GIAL chapel near the end of the term, any project done with the LGBTQ community in mind is going to work directly against the stated Community Standards.” And I responded, “Oh, I didn't know that this class was presenting in chapel. Although maybe presenting in chapel is Applied Arts and not this class? This is an intensive class which meets for only one week on campus over the summer, from June 13 - June 18th. As far as I can tell from the syllabus, there is nothing about presenting in chapel, nor did I think there even was chapel in the summer during June 13 - June 18th. The rest of the class is online, so does that mean that students are Skyping in to present at GIAL chapel sometime during Session 1?

I'm willing to be flexible about how my research project is being presented to others. For example, if students themselves are not presenting their work as part of the class for a grade, and it's merely the instructors doing the presenting to illustrate the class, then I'd be happy to simply have my work left out, or talked about in more vague terms. We do that for work done in sensitive areas, so could we not also do that for this case?”

To which his only response was, “David, even if I am wrong about where the presentation is being made, the answer is still no.”

Oh ok. That’s not completely invalidating at all. I didn’t say that I was thinking about doing my project with you all, a Side B LGBTQ community, because I didn’t think that I had to screen out communities based on their sexual ethics for an academic anthropological endeavor.

Anyway, I had a highlight at the time of my school, where my Cultural Anthropology teacher invited me to speak for an entire day in his class about gender and sexuality. When I was taking his class Fall 2013, he allowed me to speak for 20 minutes or so about what being a gay Christian meant to me, and he enjoyed my presentation so much that he wanted to dedicate an entire day to it the next time he taught. So, this semester, he invited me to just speak about whatever I wanted, and I basically went to town with 160+ slides about most of what I could think about in terms of LGBTQIAP. I used a lot of excerpts from various bloggers in this group, actually, and it was glorious. Even though there were only five students in the class (and three friends of mine that I invited came), I thought I got through a lot of good, challenging info, and the students would have my presentation afterwards to look through the excerpts that I talked about and to mull over these issues. I had informed the professor that I was in tricky ground with the administration, and he responded that he hadn’t told anyone that I was doing this presentation, and to not say anything directly critical of the administration. So I didn’t, and we set up a time to talk about everything that had gone on with the t-shirts and the behavioral probation last semester since he was unaware of those things. The professor warned the class multiple times that what I was going to say was my views only, and not my school’s, and that he was taking full responsibility for what is said.
That presentation happened on February 13th. On the 19th, I received this email from the Dean of Academic Affairs.

“David, I understand that you were invited to speak in the Cultural Anthropology class the other day on homosexuality. I am disappointed that you accepted the invitation. You have disrupted the cohesion of the GIAL community again. I have received complaints and have a student who considered withdrawing from GIAL over our perceived acceptance and advocacy of homosexuality. This is unacceptable to me.

As far as I am concerned, your acceptance of the invitation to speak in Cultural Anthropology clearly violates the behavioral probation that says you will not be involved in any leadership positions at GIAL. I consider being a guest lecturer at GIAL a leadership position. In light of the behavioral probation and the new Community Standards you should have declined the invitation. In attempting to protect your privacy and reputation, I did not make the faculty aware of your behavioral probation. I assumed that you would self-police. Since I cannot trust your wisdom on the issue, I need to be much more explicit. So let me be very clear. You will not speak about homosexuality in any class or official meeting at GIAL. You will not make the issue part of any assignment you have in any class. If you do speak out, write about, or in any way advocate on any aspect of the homosexual issue, you will be asked to leave GIAL immediately.

I have spoken to you about this. I have put you on behavioral probation. I have told you that you cannot use the homosexual issue in your course assignments. Now I am telling you that you cannot speak at all on the homosexual issue at GIAL. If you dislike or disagree with any of this, you are free to withdraw from the school, but none of this is open for negotiation.

This is your final warning.”

Yay, I, and the rest of the queer community are simply "the homosexual issue" now! We are no longer human in his eyes.

I’m not sure what reaction you all feel from this, but it makes me want to throw up. I want to throw up, and then I want to throw up over the Dean, and then I want to throw up over the random anonymous student who complained, who didn’t even have the decency to come to me or the professor with their concerns.

And I am also just so confused and angry. I don’t think I quoted from someone who wasn’t Side B (minus statistics from various studies and an infographic about sexual/gender identity and sex)—not that I would have been opposed to doing so, since this is a COLLEGE COURSE ABOUT CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY. At the end, my advice to people was just to be a friend to LGBTQ people and to trust the Holy Spirit to guide their lives like we trust the Holy Spirit to guide us, and that if the person in question isn’t Christian, that maybe talking about Jesus and God first is more important than about sexual ethics. And I had a slew of statistics about LGBTQ health disparities and youth homelessness and said that maybe sexual ethics wasn’t the most important thing that LGBTQ people have to deal with?

And I guess that, perhaps with whatever descriptive talk I had about LGB identities, trans*, intersex, asexuality, and celibate partnerships that was just too much “acceptance and advocacy of homosexuality” for that student. Who, in all likelihood, since there were only 5 students and I know three of them, was a 40 or 50-something man or woman. I want to scream at that person, “GROW THE EFF UP. YOU ARE IN GRADUATE SCHOOL, AT A SCHOOL WHERE YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO BE CHRISTIAN.”

Also, using my behavorial probation as a reason for why I shouldn’t be a guest lecturer is just completely circumstantial. Confusingly, it implies that if I were not on behavorial probation, that I would be allowed to give this presentation, which I’m pretty sure is not what he wants. But in any case, it never crossed my mind, or any of the multiple people who I told about this presentation who knew about my probation that this would be in violation of my probation. The Dean probably isn’t aware that I already gave a shorter presentation when I was taking Cultural Anthropology.

Finally, it is so, so frustrating that he’s so scared of that student withdrawing, but he’s totally fine with just letting me leave the school.

Anyway, now I just don’t know what to do with this place. I really do not want to quit, as I plan on graduating in the fall, which is just so close. I was planning on appealing my probation, but it sounds like the Dean is ready to expel me if I make another move. I was also thinking about showing his email to my friends who were also in the presentation and asking them if they thought this was a fair assessment of what I said. I have friends/family who want me to go to local news or the accreditation agency or look into taking legal action/advice. But I want to apply to medical school, and making trouble or getting expelled could be really really hard to explain to admissions boards.

Anyway, what do you all think about this all? It’s vaguely reminiscent of Erskine College, except I’d argue that my school is currently taking the cake on “banning homosexuality.” Not as bad as the school that Katrina **** went to where they expelled a Side B student for coming out at least.

And please, prayers for everyone involved and for my cardiovascular health because this much anxiety and stress cannot be good for me.

On Behavorial Probation

I'm lazy/don't know if I want to rewrite and relive everything, but yet I feel like I should update people on what's been going on.  The following is something I wrote for a secret group on Facebook that I'm part of.  It's a group of (mostly) LGBTQ people who (mostly) hold to Side B ideals, which has been great and I've been learning a lot from them.

I wrote this back on Nov 7th, 2014, so pretend like it's 4 months ago...

----

Nov 7, 2014

So I was almost expelled from my graduate school yesterday.

Apparently, a couple of people in the dorm (just passing by, related to on-campus organizations, but not to the school) have seen me and the other gay student hugging, and deemed our hugging as inappropriate/too sexual/more-than-friends. So, they complained, and the Center that my school is on told my school that since we're students at this school, they should deal with it.

Instead of giving us a warning or something, the Dean of Academic Affairs (for some reason, the DAA handles disciplinary action and not the Dean of Students here?) asked us to meet him individually and gave us both a behavioral probation (my friend on Monday, and me on Tuesday), which I attached to this post.

Basically, we aren't allowed to be in each other's dorm rooms alone without the door open (reasonable--the rules at the dorm are no members of the opposite-sex in a room with the door closed), no physical contact that could be construed as intimate, and no being a leader at my school. Failure to observe these terms would result in expulsion. Since I'm president of the Student Body Association, I have to step down, technically immediately, although they're letting me finish out the term which ends in December.

I kind of want to resign immediately because of all of this, but at the same time, my school needs an SBA to be accredited and I don't want to just throw them under the bus for what they're doing to me. They see it as not "dragging me through the mud" but every person I've talked to about this has been outraged and perplexed at the administration as to why I didn't get a warning for doing something that I didn't even know could lead to behavioral probation. The only conduct guideline we have (besides you know, things that are against the law like abuse/sexual harassment) is in the Catalog as "their conduct should honor Christ in all activities on and off campus" which is what they're putting us under probation for. What infuriates me is that they don't know my, or my friend's, life. It's been a difficult semester (see my previous post about t-shirts), and the hugs have been tension/stress-releasing, which I think is Christ-honoring. Supporting my best friend here is Christ-honoring, I thought?

Also, you don't even have to sign a statement of faith to come here, so non-Christians can come to the school. Apparently, the DAA told us that non-Christians would be expected to abide by Christian moral standards (makes sense, they're an institution and can have whatever standards they want) as well, but I'm not sure how they will abide by what they deem as Christian ethics when the only conduct policies are the typical no abuse/sexual harassment, and "honor[ing] Christ in all activities on and off campus."

Anyway, the DAA was kind enough to let us take the document home and process it, and apparently he got flack for not just making us sign it on the spot. We asked about the appeal process on Wednesday, and he told us about it yesterday, but also in that email told us that we had to get the document back to him by the end of the day, or be expelled. In which case, we wouldn't be able to appeal, so we pretty much had to sign it, but we could write "Under protest" to indicate that we weren't agreeing with the decision/process.

Strangely, the DAA kept telling us that this was the "most redemptive" way he could think of, and the "most gentle" way to do this. He thought that the Center was extremely gracious--he thought they were going to kick us out of the dorm and my school would have to fight for us to even be students here, so I guess in light of that, this situation is better than that. But he also told us that he could have given us a warning, and the Center would have allowed that, but he chose not to.

Comments/questions/thoughts about the whole situation? Are they being unjust? I'd like to hear what you think. I've been in tears, anxious to the point where I can't sleep at night, and just scared. Like, man, I am SO close to being expelled. Never thought I'd say that. I wish I had known it'd be like this before deciding to come to the school.

Some friends have encouraged me by saying that God will use this for good. And I believe that. I can see an important conversation to be had about what is the conduct that is actually expected of students here, and for making rules about that. I realize that some people last time said to fight against them implementing a dress code, but I'd rather they put in a dress code than just put people on probation for violating some dress code in the administration's head.

But still... I'm tired of the Christian cray here.

Part of the Precipitate

In Solution Chemistry,
some compounds dissolve quite readily,
no matter what they're paired up with.

But there are not enough reactants
in this world
to let me be aqueous
all the time.

I am silver.

And the world is made up of Halides and Sulfates.

They can make anything part of the solution.
Except for me.
I am almost never soluble.


What happens when you're only seen as a precipitate?
When you draw out things people wish could stay hidden,
dissolved in liquid,
invisible.
When your very existence is something
others wish wouldn't happen?

What happens when you're never wanted?
When you're stuck in a liminal state
between two worlds
desperately trying to find your place
find your calling
find your voice

but no one wants to save you a seat
speak your name
hear you out.

When some say they're grateful for you
there will always be those who respond,
Oh really?
questioning your worth
wondering how anyone could see your benefit.

Because you're a troublemaker
you cause phase division
You are out
to promote your own selfish agenda
and raise awareness
about something no one else cares about.

One hundred eighteen elements to date
and you're the awkward combination of
quarks
that don't fit anywhere.

People appreciate the way silver
keeps the economy running
but they never care about it as Argentum
as Ag+
as 47 protons
and 60 neutrons
give or take a few.

But if you want me here.
You're gonna have all of me.
You'll have the pros and cons
the solubility constant
the electronegativity
the heat capacity
the reduction potential.

There are those
who will want to put me away
lock me up
only to be used
when they want
a coin of silver.

But I want to mingle
with the other elements
see what compounds I can draw out
see what solutions can come about.

I have worth.
Beyond just my market value.
But what happens when people only see you as a distraction?
When you're the crap at the bottom that they want to sweep away?

Yet even when a compound precipitates out
onto the beaker floor,
it's still part of the solution
if you'll let it be.

I want to be part of the solution.
Will you let me be?

Peter in the Garden by Melinda Selmys

"Christ’s action in the Garden is radical. When Christ reaches out and heals the High Priest’s servant, He does not see Himself as healing the enemy. That’s our category, our perspective. He saw Himself as healing the ear of the beloved: He had come to give His life for this man, just as much as He had come to give it for Peter. This is where we find the scandal of the Cross in Gethsemane. I suspect it’s also part of the reason why Peter got into such a funk in the courtyard outside of the High Priest’s house. Peter was ready to die for Christ, and to die with Christ: he had declared this publicly, and he proved it when he stood to fight at Christ’s side. To conceive of Peter’s denial in the courtyard as an act of cowardice is to miss the psychological unity of the narrative: Peter denies Christ here because something happened to his courage between the moment when he drew his sword and the moment that he said “I do not know him.” These words have a particular poignancy if we consider that, in a sense, Peter may really have meant them. Not “I don’t know the man” in the sense of “I don’t know who he is,” but “I don’t know the man” in the sense that He is not who Peter thought. In Gethsemane Christ confronts his most ardent defender with a mystery that Peter cannot understand, and that he is not yet ready to accept. The mystery of a lover who is willing to lay down His life for the sake of those who persecute Him.

… 

So what does the story of Peter in Gethsemane teach us? First, that our way is not Christ’s way. We are to sheathe our swords. Specifically, we are to sheathe them in order to provide an opportunity for Christ to do His healing work. So long as we are fighting against the LGBTQ community, or for that matter any opposing group within the culture war, we are wounding their ears: we are preventing them from being able to hear the message of Christ’s love. Not that Christ’s love for the servant of the High Priest comes in the form of a word. Christ says nothing to this man. He heals him. It brings to mind a saying of Francis of Assissi “Preach the gospel everywhere, and if necessary use words.”


Second, that if we sheathe our swords there will be a terrible darkness. Why do we take up the sword, why fight the Culture Wars in the first place? For obvious reasons. We want to defend America. We want to defend Christianity. We want to defend our children. We want to defend our way of life. These are all things that we love, and we do not want to watch any of them get nailed to the Cross. We feel about the death of any of these things much as Peter felt when he took Jesus aside and rebuked him saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” To which Christ replies “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”


When Peter sheaths his sword, and Christ tells him “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” Peter is plunged into a state of spiritual darkness and confusion. Up until this point he had a solid identity: he was a follower of Christ. He thought he understood what that meant, and what it demanded of him. Now he doesn’t know what to do. His courage has come to nothing, his saviour has been taken away from him, his desire for martyrdom has been denied. He is asked about his Christian identity, and he is in no condition to give an answer for the faith that is in him. Instead, he says that he doesn’t know what the people in the courtyard are talking about, the cock crows, he realizes his denial, and he weeps.


This is a very accurate psychological portrait of what it looks like to stop fighting the Culture Wars. It’s hard. So long as you have that sword in your hand, you know who you are. You have an identity in Christ: an identity forged and tempered in violence. It doesn’t matter that the violence is the violence of a com-box war, or a letter writing campaign, or a series of articles. The pen, after all, is mightier than the sword. We can imagine Christ in the Culture Wars crying “Peter, sheathe your pen.” He who lives by the pen, shall die by the pen? If we look at the state of the Mass Media traditional Christianity certainly seems to be dying by the pen.

Third, Peter’s story teaches us that there will be faith beyond this darkness. It provides us with a way forward, a way to be Christian beyond the Culture Wars. “Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep.” There’s an interesting detail here that you can miss in translation, which is that the first two times that Christ asks whether Peter loves him, he asks about agape, a form of love that is simultaneously more unconditional, but also less personal than philia. When Peter responds, he speaks of philia all three times. The third time that Christ asks, He rephrases the question in Peter’s terms and asks about philia, about the kind of love that we think of when we speak of intimate, personal friendship. It’s also interesting that Peter is hurt only this third time, when Christ throws his friendship, his affection into question.

So how do we feed Christ’s lambs, how do we tend His sheep? We start by listening. What are people in the LGBTQ community hungry for? What wounds do they need healed? What obstacles stand between them and the sheepfold? And then we remove those obstacles, and we heal those wounds, and we provide for those hungers.

This can be addressed to some degree in the abstract. We can talk about general patterns in terms of what LGBTQ Christians need from their parishes and from their faith communities. But the main thing that they need is love. Not just agape, but philia. Not just concern for their good, but comraderie, affection, friendship."

Read the rest here:  http://spiritualfriendship.org/2014/10/18/peter-in-the-garden-of-gethsemane/

Her testimony is CRAY CRAY.  seriously.

so a passing SIL person (the academic side of Wycliffe), who was living at the dorm that I live at and who is not related with the school, apparently saw me and the other gay student here hugging in the dorm kitchen and thought it was "too sexual/more-than-friends" or something and complained to the overall Center (which my school rents space from) and the Academic Dean told us this today and he said that it's apparently still working up the chain of command in the Center and who knows what their procedures are with this and whether they will just tell that person to calm down or if my friend and I will be kicked out of the dorm or if we'll be banned from being on campus (although my school would fight hard for us to be able to stay) and it's like... seriously?  They could do that from extrapolating from a hug?  The Dean doesn't even know the person's name or how long ago this happened.  Apparently the person didn't even know we were gay at the time, but it was just too much affection for two guys to share??

Like, person, you do NOT know our life situations or our sex lives or what's going on or anything about me apparently.

Just try and tell me that homophobia doesn't exist anymore or that it isn't unwarranted.  Part of me feels like it'll probably amount to nothing, but it is somewhat unnerving that something bad could happen.

And the psychological and spiritual manipulation is still continuing with the whole t-shirt fiasco.

i need to get out of here.

T-shirt Update

Thank you all so much for your support!  It really means a lot to me.  I'm still thinking of good things to say to some of you, but I will get there soon. I had a good conversation with the Dean, and it turned out to not be as serious as I thought.  But then, when I left, I realized that a number of things she said didn't quite make sense, so I sent her a follow-up email.  After about three weeks, she sent me a response (today).

Why Being Gay Is Not The Most Pleasant Experience

I haven't blogged in far too long.  As I told a couple of people who asked about it, I guess I reached a critical point where so much has happened that every time I started a post, I'd get overwhelmed by how much I needed to say that I just stopped midway through the post.

But I still do remember Ann telling me that I needed to blog more when I was at her wedding (back in September!  Wow, that was almost a year ago), and Karen has told me to just write short blog posts, so perhaps I'll try and do that more frequently.

I don't think I've mentioned on here yet that my grad school campus is by far, the most homophobic place I've ever encountered.  You would think that the spoken word poem that I shared at the school's talent show would be helpful for people to gain empathy and compassion for gay people, but instead, the school administration just told me that I crossed a line, and many of the older people were upset.  The admin wasn't gonna take any serious action, though, since there weren't guidelines in place for what should and should not be shared at the talent show, and I did do a legitimate art form.  No compliments for the effort and thought I put into my poem though.  =\

(I'm gonna paraphrase a little from what I wrote to someone in January, cause I'm lazy, and want to get to the meat of the turmoil I'm currently in)

"In my time here, I've had people be really scandalized when I wear Rice's gay-straight alliance shirts, question me about calling myself gay,  think I have a "spirit of homosexuality" in me that I need to get delivered from, and show me video after video of ex-gay people who claim that they are no longer gay (and when they say they're no longer "gay," I'm guessing they're just defining "gay" as being in a same-sex relationship, not defining it as having same-sex attractions). 

Not to say that I don't like my new grad school--I do. And I can tell that it's where God wants me to be, not just for the chance to learn more about linguistics and Bible translation, but also for the chance to be able to speak into people's lives about what being gay means, and to encourage Christians to be more open and vulnerable about what they're going through. Thankfully, God has provided me with another gay person on campus, and he has been a tremendous blessing to me." (which has become a hot mess in of itself, but I think is more resolved now, hopefully)

Recently, though I've just been praying that God would give me the strength to follow through with the vocation he's given me.

-------

In late March, I sent an email to Wycliffe (the major Bible translation organization on campus, although there is a smaller, newer one that grew out of Wycliffe called Pioneer Bible Translators), in regards to their Code of Conduct page, where they state that "Unacceptable behaviors include, but are not limited to, the following: . . . Inappropriate sexual identification and activity including, but not limited to: . . . Homosexual and/or cross-gender orientation."  Other gay person on campus decided to alert me to this because heck, I want to know sooner rather than later whether I can even join their organization if that's the case.

Here's part of the response:

 David, I appreciate your honesty. And I am happy to see that you are trying to be celibate from same-sex relationships and sex. But any homosexual activities or behaviors are violations of Wycliffe’s Ethics & Conduct Policy and prohibit you from applying. I do pray that God will give you great strength as you pursue holiness and endeavor to please Him in everything. I do not struggle with what you are dealing with, but am tempted in other ways. I am so glad that His Spirit lives in us and helps us in our weaknesses.

I would encourage you David to seek professional help, and set up sound, biblical accountability structures as you deal with these behaviors. May God's presence continue to lead you in discerning His purposes and plans for your life.

That's... great.  I mean, what does "professional help" even mean?  Do they realize that that the American Psychological Association discourages against reparative therapy, and even the American Association of Christian Counselors has taken out their mentions and encouragement of reparative therapy in their code of conduct this year?

To be fair, I could probably get a couple of different responses depending on who I talk to, and a couple of my professors who are with Wycliffe were really surprised that just having a "homosexual orientation" was prohibited.

I really should dialogue more with this guy, because I feel like he might be confused about something.  But I just haven't quite gathered the energy to do so.  Especially now, as I'm involved in yet another fiasco.

-------

Remember when I said that some people above have been really scandalized by my Rice Queers & Allies T-shirts?  I've attached a photo of both of them below:

The black one has gotten the most attention, and I guess it's what's gotten me in trouble this time.  

Today, the professor that I've mainly been in contact with about all these things (the cultural anthropology teacher who let me have a day in class to show a powerpoint that I compiled about sexuality during our couple of days about Gender & Sexuality!  That was a good day at least.) has told me that the administration doesn't want me to wear those shirts anymore. Their complete words that he gave me about it were: 

“ . . . we will be adding an administrative . . . policy statement to the effect of ‘Clothing must be free of pictures or slogans with sexual references, drug references, or anything else the administration deems inappropriate’ (although it may not end up exactly that wording). 

We also believe that the student’s wearing of the shirt in question was also in violation of the Student Handbook (1) Expected Standards of Conduct: ‘…conduct should honor Christ in all activities on and off the campus’ and (2) Modesty Standards: ‘… students are expected to dress in a manner that will reflect Biblical standards for modesty and purity. All students are expected to encourage each other in accord with 1 Corinthians 8:9 (“But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”)’

This paragraph on Modesty Standards also contains the clause that ‘faculty and staff are… encouraged to approach any student dressed inappropriately and request a change in attire or behavior.’”

This is frustrating and upsetting in so many ways. And painfully ironic, when you consider the fact that I go to a linguistics school, and they don’t like the way I use language to describe my experience.  Maybe they're worried about conservative donors pulling their funding (a reason they gave me after I shared my poem about why they were upset) or something.  I guess I'll probs talk to the Dean of Students about it tomorrow in the first step of the appeal process.

I can't really think of a totally rational response without tearing up or just getting emotionally distraught, so we'll see how the talk goes. I started writing a response so I'd have something to say, but all I have is below:

"As upset as this whole situation makes me, I am not some angry, radical queer guy who’s trying to offend everyone. I am your gay brother in Christ. I am just trying to let others know that people like me exist. The primary message of my t-shirt is that gay, bisexual, and trans people are human too, which I am pretty sad to see that the administration deems that message as inappropriate. My t-shirts don’t identify myself for me; I've seen straight people wear those t-shirts, and it has no bearing on their sexuality.

I have lived years of my life believing that no one else struggled with this and that I was alone in all of this. While I had come out in college, I still never had anyone I could share life with about this struggle. I spent the last semester of college wishing I was dead almost every day, imagining myself drinking bleach and dying in my dorm room bed. I would prep my teaching for Sunday School with my friend, and then just sit in the room in the dark by myself for an hour after he left. I felt hopeless. Life isn't sustainable when your only role models and companions are internet blogs. I came here, expecting that God was bringing me to an environment where I could be open about my struggles and to talk with other Christians and receive their helpful feedback in how to cultivate a life of celibacy and being gay.

The only feedback I get from this situation, and the administration’s response to my spoken word poem, however, is that I am unwanted. Being gay is too messy, it’s too much, it’s crossing lines and it’s upsetting people and it’s too much of a liability. At all the conservative churches and Christians I've been around, I've never felt as marginalized as I do here. I understand so much better now why there have been so many gay teen suicides. They feel unheard and unwanted because they are. So how many more queer people have to die before more Christians listen and reach out to them?"

Like I said before, this response doesn't actually address the issues very well, but I still don't really know what their problem with it is.  I guess I'll find out tomorrow.  I've compiled a looong list of excerpts of gay chaste bloggers for reasons why I identify as gay as opposed to "having same-sex attractions," thanks to all the people who've asked me that question here, and I expect I'll probably have to pull that out tomorrow.  

In the end, it might just come down to the fact that they want to preserve some conservative image of their school that supporting queer people (regardless of sexual activity) is not a part of.  If it comes down to that, I don't know whether to be a good advocate for queer people by trying to stand my ground, or just giving up and letting them have their way.  Either way, it's hard to envision myself walking out of this mentally, spiritually, and emotionally unscathed.

Please pray for me.

"Westboro Was Right" -- My First Spoken Word Poem!

I severely need to write and document what's been happening in the last few months.

But just so you kinda know what I'm up to, I performed the first spoken word poem I've ever written on Saturday at the talent show at my school, and I just uploaded it to youtube (my first ever [and potentially only ever] video on youtube!).  Results were really positive for the most part, and I got second place out of 16 acts! (although I did also perform Neil Hilborn's "OCD" which I actually memorized, and which is really good and you should definitely watch that one too.  The first place winner was expected... one of my friends made a skit that took scenes/lines from Princess Bride and made it all about phonology.  Too many people here who love phonology/linguistics and Princess Bride that I just couldn't compete!  If I hadn't voted for them and had voted for myself, the votes would have been 12 - 14.  Glad that people liked it!)

Here's the transcript:

In 1991,

I was born in Laramie, Wyoming.

Population: 27,000.

In 1998, a year after I left,

Matthew Shepard was studying in Laramie at the University of Wyoming.

That was the year Matthew was robbed, beaten, tortured, wrapped around a fence post and left to die because he was gay.

That was the year Westboro Baptist Church picketed his funeral with signs that said

"No Tears for Queers" and "God Hates Fags."

That was the year I turned seven.

That was the year he would have turned twenty-two.

Fifteen years later, it's 2013.

This is the year I turn twenty-two.

This is the year I graduate from college.

This is the year my life begins and I wonder what it would be like if this is the year my life ends.

But I don't have anyone to assault me as I beg for my life.  

My skull isn't fractured from the end of a gun smashing into my head.  

My face isn't completely covered in blood except for where I've washed the blood away with my tears.

But I am gay, like Matthew was.

And I can't help but wonder:  if there's no one to take my life,

then will I end up taking it myself like countless gay people before me?

Because Westboro was right:  there are no tears for queers.  

There are only tears from queers.

And there are tears for the nation when gay people no longer lose their jobs for what they find beautiful. There are tears for our media when queer people are represented on TV.  There are tears for ex-gay organization Exodus closing down, but there are no tears for people Exodus has hurt.  There are no tears for queers.

There is only the word no.  

There is only the vocation of no.  

The vocation of no-gay-marrying and no-gay-sex.

Queer means a calling to no family and no friends because everybody is too busy in their own straight relationships and families that there is no one left for queers but themselves.

Three years ago, I came out to my Christian fellowship, and for months there was only no.

No talk about homosexuality.  No asking about how I was doing with it.

Only silence.

Nothing.

When I remarked that in my church of over 900,

just statistically-speaking,

there had to be other gay people, there had to be someone like me, someone I could relate to,

I was silenced by others saying, "No, we are not a representative sample."

Last year, someone in my fellowship told me, "We would probably never talk about homosexuality if you weren't here."

Because there are no tears for queers.  

There are no tears for queers because there are no queers.  

Queer has no place, it's not real, it doesn't exist in the Church--we never talk about the queers except for when they are ruining our world.  

The Christians and the queers never mix except for when someone like me comes along and messes up everything. And if a gay person does somehow come into the Church,

and they aren't celibate,

then they might as well be dead--no, they better be dead.

They better be dead.

It is no longer 1998.

It's 2013.  I have turned twenty-two, and I am still alive.

But I find myself robbed, beaten by loneliness, tortured by the Church's disregard for people like me and wrapped so painfully around the posts whose only words for queers are how disgusting and disappointing we are.

And I am left to die because I am gay.

But this isn't just about me and what I feel.

I have always been the celibate gay Christian, the flavor of queer most accepted by the Church.  So I don't want you to tell just me that I belong in the church.

I want you to tell that gay guy down the street with the STD and stranger in his bed that he belongs.

Tell the girl with the wife and baby on the way that they belong.

Tell that genderqueer person, this lesbian trans woman, that pansexual man.

Tell them you want them with you, that you want them beside you to worship our Creator together.

Tell them Jesus doesn't say, "Get away from my church until you're no longer in sin, you fag." He receives them as they are.

Tell them Jesus forgives, and then says "Go and sin no more."

Never the other way around.

Tell them they're needed.

Tell them the Church isn't as strong without them.  The Body isn't complete without them.  We're not at our best without them.

Tell them God loves them simply because they are His.  They belong with Him.

We are all His.  We all belong with Him--even the gay people.

So thump your Bibles over that, shout that from the pulpit, scream that from the choir, have your words and actions rob us queers so fiercely of our doubt that we can't help but hope again.

Because if the Church isn't here... if you're not here, to show God's love to us... who will be?

I know Westboro was right about No Tears for Queers, but show us that they're wrong about God Hates Fags.

FYI

What is the percentage of people who identify as LGBT in the United States?

Think of a percentage before you move on--and write it in the comments too or let me know somehow what you thought!  I'm curious.


One person I talked to today--they did admit that they were ignorant about these sorts of things and knew they would be wrong--thought it was 30%.


Which would actually be crazy.  like nearly 1 in 3 people are gay?  But they weren't that far off from what most of America thinks.

Just for the sake of other gay people, for the consideration how same-sex marriage will impact straight couples, and for general knowledge, the actual percentage is more like 4%.  FOUR percent.  11% of people may experience some same-sex attraction, but the actual percentage of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is more like 4%.

I just consider it absolutely hilarious that a lot of people (like 35% of America) think that at least 1 in 4 people are gay (52% of America thinks it's at least 1 in 5... and I'm saying it's hilarious not in a derogatory way... just a... my goodness, I would NOT be so alone if that were truly the case), and yet they act like there are no gay people in the Church?  how does that even.

That would basically mean that we are so incredibly bad at ministering to a QUARTER of the population that none of them exist in the Church.  That would be so ridiculous.

The sad thing is that some people believe that there are that many gay people, and they apparently don't care that none of them are in the Church.

So I guess in some ways, it's good that the number is much smaller.  Good job media representation of gay people (actually queer representation in the media is pretty sucky, buuut, something must have gone right for people to think that over 25% of people are LGBT)!  But still, the number of gay people that people think exist in America is rather important for how people deal with LGBT issues and how much they think these issues will affect them and the U.S.

Just something to keep in mind and maybe try asking people what they think the percentage of people who identify as LGBT in America is.

My First Week in Dallas! (non-GIAL)

Kinda jumbly at parts because I just wanted to write things down since I have basically not written anything about my life in a public space for months.  oops.  Anyway...

A not-so-good introduction to Dallas, as it took a while for my luggage to come, and I was worried I wouldn't make the 2 hours of public transportation in time to arrive by 5 p.m. and talk with the office people about whether they had received my check payment and if they had any other info for me. So I took the Super Shuttle, which initially they estimated was gonna cost ~$30 which I thought wasn't terrible.  Then I found out that since we were going to a residential area, that was gonna cost ~$50 but i nope'd the heck out of there when we got to Downtown and spent just $20.  Then I took a 2-hour pass for $2.50 to get to GIAL.  It was still another mile away from the bus stop, and as I reached the last .6 miles or so, the road that led to GIAL did not have any sidewalks.  I started laughing at the utter patheticness of my situation as I was in around 95 or 100 degree heat, mild humidity (less humid than Houston for sure) but with the sun beating down on me as I dragged 40 and 60 lb luggage with a 15 lb backpack on the dirt and grass on the side of the road and the only sleep I had gotten last night was the few hours I was on the plane, and the only food I had eaten was at 6 a.m. CT and this McDouble sandwich at 3 p.m. CT that I had gotten after I missed the first train because both the electronic booths passing out tickets on my side of the tracks were broken.   And I was not going to make it by 5 p.m. because I had like 12 minutes to go and once I was at GIAL, I still needed to figure out where the Guest House is.  Fortunately, a guy pulled over and asked if I needed a ride, and I was like, YES PLEASE.  I made it on time, fortunately, so all was good.  I could see God looking out for me there!  phew.

I also tried to get groceries... too bad the nearest grocery store was 2.5 miles away.  But I lugged all that stuff back with my superglued Bolivian "Puma" backpack and got my workout for the week.  haha.

That was Wednesday, and on Friday, after extensive research, I spent 4 hours on public transportation and 5 miles walking to buy a car. (2 hours of transportation and 2 miles of walking were kinda unnecessary though, as I went to the auto place that had the cars I wanted, only to find out that the address they listed online was a different one.  The actual one was on the other side of town and another 2 hours of transportation/walking.  =\ ) When I got to the place, I tried out two '97 Honda Accords which were $1,600 and $1,800 each and probably sketchiest cars I will ever drive, and probably sketchier than any car you will ever drive.  The $1600 had a broken windshield wiper, the cruise control was broken, it made strange sounds while I was driving it, and even the little button on the gear changer (generally that silver-colored button that you press to change gears from P) was missing, so I dug my thumb in there to find how to change it.  And from the NMVTIDS report (2 dolla here!  but it gives way less info than Carfax/Autocheck... i just didn't want to pay that much for those vehicle reports.  And read this article if you don't know what those are.), which I later confirmed with the auto sale owner, there had been at least a 40,000 mile odometer roll back.
That all I could maybe deal with (bargaining points to drive the price down), even if I felt pretty unsafe already just from test-driving it... but as I was taking it into a shop for a pre-purchase inspection, I happened to notice that there were no keys in the ignition.  I was like.  wut.  I told the person I was taking it for an inspection, how could they forget to give me the keys??? How could I even drive this car back/have an inspection on this car?  Furthermore, how was I even driving this car right now??  Sketch.

So I drove it back and got the white Accord, which likely didn't have an odometer rollback and had good mileage.  It felt safer, but the brake still felt a bit heavy, and when the owner first started up the car, it made horrible screeching noises because the fan belt for the A/C was about gone.  I drove the car into the auto place I was gonna have it checked at (i just looked for the closest one that would give me a reasonable rate/time... $90 and a hour.  there was one place that apparently did a really through job they said, but they charged $250 and spent half-a-day!  I didn't need that kind of quality for my car...) and waited.

They came back to tell me that it was in really bad shape.  Like really bad.  Like so bad that even though there was a state inspection sticker on it, it wouldn't pass state inspection.  So bad that one guy said he was surprised I made it here in that.  The guy who had been handling my transaction began listing off all the problems, and there were so many that I began to zone out (not to mention I didn't understand like most of it).  He later gave me a photocopy of the inspection, and here're the ones I can read, which are half of the problems:  parking lights are out, battery hold down, belt oil soaked and slinging oil, valve over leak, transmission fluid overfilled, check engine light on, possible timing belt problem, cruise control broken, left tire cracked, radiator fan not working, transmission has multiple leaks.
It would probably cost as much to repair the car as it would to buy it.

Great.  That was really my last option, especially as we were nearing the closing times of both auto places, and this would mean that I would have to pay another $90 for another inspection on some other day and that car might not even work out, and UGH.  Maybe I can't get a decent car for such a low price?

Fortunately, after asking for my budget, if I just wanted a cheap car that ran well, he mentioned that they had a car that had none of those problems, and even better mileage than this car.  He showed it to me and it was a 1995 Acura Integra that had about 100,330 miles that they fixed up and were selling for $2500.

So after driving the Accord back, I walked the mile over, test-drove it, looked over the paperwork and bought another 2 dolla report for it, and bought it (my haggling failed, as it was hard to point out anything bad besides the slight dent that the guy had already pointed out to me, and since he had a list of all the repairs they had done on it [new 4 tires, new timing belt, so many new things done just a couple weeks ago], and apparently it wasn't listed yet and he was gonna sell it for $2700 [or so he says...], and that people would snatch that up immediately).
Unfortunately, apparently you need liability insurance already to drive a car, and I didn't have that.  So I couldn't drive it back, but I was at least able to make the last bus back to GIAL, so it was only 2 additional hours of public transportation and 1 additional mile instead of 1 hour of transportation and like 4 hours of walking.  Still, I had been sweaty to that nasty point when your sweat has like dried on your clothes and you have white lines on your shirt from the salt in your sweat--you know what I'm talking about?  Yeah, not pretty.  I had tried to clean myself up when I was at the auto shop waiting for the pre-purchase inspection.  There's my workout for the month, I guess, haha.  
Anyway, I got car insurance and will hopefully be picking up my Acura on Tuesday, today!  (just picked up my car--radio needs a code, but it seems alright... although I just checked kbb.com and it seems to be not a good price for what I paid for.  =\  I could've sworn when I was about to buy it and I was checking kbb.com, that it was actually around the right price.  Ah well.  Fortunately, a new friend and classmate offered to drive me over there, so I saved me a bunch of time.)


Went to a great church on Sunday--Mountain Creek Church, which is pretty much the closest church that I could go to which has its own facility.  I enjoyed it a lot, and was treated to lunch by one of the congregation members.  Although I found out at the end that it's a charismatic church (pretty orthodox in its beliefs though) so that'll be interesting to explore more.

Some highlights were that a couple girls got up to the pulpit and talked about the pro-life bill that had passed (she had been at Captiol praying and listening to the bill) and about the Trayvon Martin trial and just the fact that justice looks different.  Ok, I am absolutely butchering what they said... let me try again.

While I do think that a fetus is a human being and thus abortion is murder and a violation of fourteenth amendment rights for the silenced, I am wary of how pro-life people typically approach this issue.  There's that George Carlin quote that pretty much sums it up, "Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked." And this great spoken word poem:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOV7RyHjl5c.  I just watched that again--really really good.  The amazing kind of poem that inspires you to want to write poetry that's just that incredible and emotionally-charged.

Anyway, it boils down to, sure, abortion is bad and no one is pro-abortion and wants to kill all the fetuses, but when you don't set up an infrastructure for women with unplanned pregnancies, when the only legislation they have is poverty and no education and terrible jobs and no way out, how can you say that is life?  That is a societal injustice when people cannot take care of their children because of financial reasons.  They truly have no choice.

So the first girl reminded us to look at others with the eyes of God and see them as broken people like ourselves.  She mentioned how she was really promiscuous growing up and that one of the leading causes of that is fatherlessness and how we had to have compassion.  Her underlying message was one not of condemnation, but of love, and that she had been praying and felt that we needed to change how we were viewing and handling things.  Justice isn't how we've been doing things.  Justice looks different.  It looks different because He is different. I liked all of that.
From reading their website, I knew Mountain Creek was big on pro-life, but still not sure if they seriously partner with other organizations which support women with unplanned pregnancies.  Maybe they feel like it's better to focus on the anti-abortion side?  I think i'd disagree there.  It's like focusing on outlawing gay marriage and forgetting about the LGBTQ population.  What she said was a good step though.

Then, a second girl, who was black, asked to speak a bit, and she talked about how the African-American community was on the verge of rioting from the Zimmerman verdict, but how even though it was easy to get angry at what happened, that, like the first girl said, justice looks different.  That willingness to forgive and to not react violently... it brought me to tears and kinda solidified my desire to go to that church.  You could debate as to whether the imbalance that led to situations like the Martin case is "justice," but really at the end, God will judge everything, and He is the only perfect judge.  Looking back, that whole forgiveness deal was a great segue to what this guy who was invited to the church was gonna talk about, which I've written below.

The pastor then gave a pretty brief sermon, mostly for the sake of a guy who came to speak, Peter... something... but he had a really intense testimony.  Probably the most intense one I'll ever hear (the pastor of the church, who's probably around 70+ since he just celebrated his golden anniversary, said something to the effect that it was the most incredible testimony he's heard).

I'll give a short version.  He was born in a Nazi death camp in 1943 and was experimented on, but he doesn't remember that anymore.  Fortunately, he and his mother were liberated, but his mother passed him to this stranger before leaving, a Polish woman who was on the train with them as it was being liberated.  His mom promised she'd be back for him. After camp, life was even worse, as he was raped, tortured, and almost killed multiple times as a child by the KGB, and he eventually met up with his mom, and left his Polish mom (another shocker for him, since he didn't know that he had a German mom), even though his Polish mom was so good to him (she wanted him to go meet his mom though; she was Catholic and she'd made an oath to God to take care of him) and had endured so much persecution for taking care of a German boy (they had to live in the sewers; or maybe that was just their state of poverty), and she even offered herself to be raped by the KGB so he wouldn't get executed by a gun that they put in his mouth.

His mother in the meantime went to a US military base and she had married a black man in the US.  When he went to the US, he was still beat on by other kids (stepfather's race, and probably cause he didn't speak English either at the time).  His stepfather became an alcoholic and he ran away from home and was picked up by a Missouri (or Mississippi?) guy who would eventually become the state representative.  Life was good for a while and he lived for like 40 years in Florida, but then his half-sisters wanted him to spread their mother's ashes over the death camp.  He was like, No way, but eventually he went back.

While he was there, he felt that God was telling him to forgive them so that God could forgive his trespasses (Matthew 6:14), and he was like, What the hell did I do wrong?  But eventually after arguing over it with God, he said he forgave them, and then the Holy Spirit descended on him and he was able to pretty much became a Christian I guess.  Hmmm, I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but in any case, it was some pretty supernatural forgiveness going on, since he didn't sound bitter or angry at all during his testimony.  And he called us each to forgive and also to receive healing and prayer from the hurt that we had received, from whatever abandonment had happened to us.

Like I said earlier, after church, the head of missions pastor took me out to lunch with his wife and their daughter, grandson, and two close newlywed friends joined us.  That was nice to have a hearty meal after three meals of just eating bread (lol), and to have a ride back to GIAL.  As I was walking to Mountain Creek, in fact, someone else had stopped and given me a ride for the last leg up the hill, and offered to take me back to GIAL.  Also really nice.  =)


Finally, today as I was eating lunch with other students, I heard a, "NO WAY!" and looked up and saw Selena Y from Houston!  I had seen her name on the list of Guest House meal people, but I just thought it was some random Asian girl, and thought it was funny that I also knew a Selena Y.  She's apparently doing an internship with Wycliffe and is here until the beginning of August.  She sat with my classmates and we all just chatted for a bit.  Nice to see someone I know.  =)