Time

Happy belated Thanksgiving.

I'm thankful for time.

The time I get to have after I've made a mistake to see that it was a mistake.

The time to see my views morph, change, become frustrated, be different than what I've been taught, and be different from what I read.

The time to spend with friends who show me why the world is a place that I want to be a part of, instead of just resenting it.

The time to experience pain so that I know of the reality of the atonement.

The time to teach and see it help others learn about the world.

The time I have to read and learn.

The time to just chill with the fam, while trying to figure out politics and football.

The time I have to enter discussions that sometimes end well and sometimes don't.

The time to view the beauties of the world that God has made.

The time to see my friends change over years and decades and still be friends with them and use them for fashion advice and just advice in general.

The time to experience other cultures and countries.

The time to dream.

The time after a lie to realize that's not who I am.

The time to see the talents of others.

The time to learn how to rely on others.

The time to change what I have done wrong.

The time to learn who I am.

The time to find love.

The time to help save the world.

Lucky for me I have time to be a better person every day.

God bless.

C.S. Lewis

I have been meaning to do a post on C.S. Lewis after an incredible symposium from a traveling scholar. His name is Christopher Mitchell and is from Wheaton College. He's amazing-too bad I ruined the tone of the presentation.

Mitchell did a great job of explaining how Lewis was born into a loving family, which was destroyed by his mother's death and his own trip to what can only be the stereotypical scary boarding school. He didn't enjoy it.

So, he got mad at God. Lewis was mad that God didn't exist. He was mad that God might exist. He was mad that if God did exist then it was unfair that Lewis got the life he had, and that he wasn't asked whether he wanted it or not. Thus, Lewis became an atheist.

Lucky for Lewis he was an oxford prodigy who did very well in his studies of the classics. Throw in World War II for life experience, and Lewis began to rethink religion. Eventually some of his most athiest friends became Christian, and so too did Lewis.

What I found interesting was that Lewis recognized that his education was based in the intellectual ideas of naturalism (you know....Darwin). Well, what Lewis claims is that there is such thing as an arch of humanity, or myths across cultures that reflect the most deep human truths. This he calls imagination. The unexplainable. And that is where one finds religion.

After doing a lot of research on myths, Lewis delineated on the true myth which is frequently alluded to in all cultures and that is Christ's atonement (this was verified by the history channel's show yesterday which talked about how almost every religion has a redemption story and a good vs evil theme). Though, he makes note that conversion is more personal and the moment of conversation is almost impossible to express in words.

Lewis is brilliant.

And he claims that those who aren't Christian are such because of two reasons.

1. Chronology of snobbery (the idea of disregarding the information of past generations)

2. Lacks a satisfactory theory of knowledge (something Lewis deeply related to)

Ok, so how I changed the tone.

After this amazing lecture on Lewis someone brought up how Lewis--the creator of The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe hated children!-can you believe that? Anyway, I referred to a documentary called Shadowlands about how he really didn't like women much either. Keep in mind this is front of many many people.

Now, the presenter stops, says twice that it was a really good question, and quickly disregards talking about Lewis' relationship with women. At that point he was done taking questions....oops. (FYI it was 45 mins after the presentation was supposed to be finished).

My friend just said "way to go Sarah."

Anyway, I heart the presenter and C.S. Lewis (though I wish he liked women and children a little bit more.)

Mitchell also said that Lewis, as an atheist during conversion, said that the literature that spoke the most to him were works by authors who had religion in their lives. It was as if they had tapped into a deeper meaning, and after this realization, look at the works Lewis produced: The Great Divorce, Mere Christianity, and The Screwtape Letters.

Lewis said this about it "A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading."Great literature reflects Christ.

A quote to leave you with "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. "

PS: Happy Sunday-and I am way excited for the new Narnia movie.

Miracles are happening.

Logan has a downfall that drives me crazy. It doesn't have radio stations that I like....oh wait, it actually only had two stations: spanish polka and contemporary 90's rock. I hated both of these so I had to resort to listening to the only cool cd in my car-Phil Collins (because I always forget my ipod). I now know all of the lyrics to "I'll Be In Your Heart." Well this morning I got in my car and I heard the faint buzz of K Bull 93.3....I cocked my head and I kept driving. The closer I got to main street the clearer the music began. Yes my dear friends, I now have radio in my car. All of my presets work. Hallelujah. And now i'm just praying that it's not just a result of the weather up here...which was my friends rationale. One thing I don't get though is why not everyone is talking about this. I think it's a miracle and no one has even noticed. Lift up thine eyes Logan friends.

In other news BYU beat the Aggies last night in basketball and it was a great game. I was sad I didn't go but a bunch of us grabbed dinner and watched the cougars roll. Jimmer-will you marry me?

Thank you cougar fan, and formally employed student, for making my day with that thought. Just like the big brother who doesn't know there is a rivalry with the younger son, I am still shocked by the rivalry that USU is convinced is happening between the "other blue school."

'Arry Potter?

For those who follow my blog-you will remember my post about zombies vs humans. Well I have found a college game to trump all games....

Harry Potter's famed game Quidditch is real. Or at least it is really being played. Here are some of my highlights of how the game is played:

One guy is dressed in yellow and is released as the snitch and immediately starts to hide (for some reason this just creates images of some squirrely old man behind a tree...but to make the game cooler I am choosing to think a Jude Law look alike is really drifting between large rocks, trees, and the yacht he wants to take me away on).

Instead of bludgers there are people carrying kickballs and throwing them at other people.

Each player has to keep a broom between their legs.

The game is ended once someone tackles the person in yellow.

If you don't believe that this really exists, go to the official association quidditch website here. Apparently it's sweeping the nation and is at like 64 different colleges.

The Harry Potter movie is coming quickly and my midnight ticket is purchased. I am so excited. Now all I have to figure out is how to learn how to write like J. Rowling. She's my hero. It's not uncommon for me to claim that she brought back literacy to the masses....a claim I'll stand by until I die. She's done more for literacy than basically all English teachers combined. I heart her. To all the unbelievers-Hogwarts exists.

Turns out one of my eyes doesn't work...and i'm dyslexic.

I'm dyslexic--did you know that blogging world?

Please quickly get rid of the stereotypes of dyslexic people that you are conjuring in your head (it's a little rude).

Ok, just to be fair it's a self diagnosis of being dyslexic but i'm literally 99.9% sure it's true and here is why.

I can't spell. Originally, I wanted to blame my teachers but that's not entirely fair and my mom is a kindergarden teacher and you think if I could be taught how to spell she probably would have tried it. Anyway, I have never been able to spell and it's frustrating and embarrassing. It's not just normal frustrating and embarrassing, it's like "you're a college English teacher and you can't spell? Higher education is going to the dogs" embarrassing. But, never one to be deterred, I decided to do what I love, which is to teach, read and write, and enter a profession that mandates one impossible skill-spelling.

So about an hour ago I was sitting in my office talking to the other instructors and saying that I can't spell and it's beyond just not being good at it. It's an irreversible problem. So, to convince them I turned to the internet (which of course we can trust) and found one of the most hilarious and descriptive article by a writer who is incapable of spelling but other then that is very successful. After a lot of mocking from editors from the Washington Post he went to a specialist and got tested. Turns out he has a mild form of dyslexia.

In the article he wrote "I have some of the symptoms of dyslexia: horrible spelling, serious difficulty remembering names and numbers, a failure to learn the rudiments of a foreign language in spite of two years of college French and a summer in Normandy. But I'm missing the big one -- profound reading trouble." If I were to have written this same statement I would have said this "I have some of the symptoms of dyslexia: horrible spelling, serious difficulty remembering names and numbers, a failure to learn the rudiments of a foreign language in spite of three years of ASL in college and three years of French in high school. But I'm missing the big one--profound reading trouble. In fact, that's one of my strengths."

Apparently, what he and I have is " the underlying threads of dyslexia, but you've (WE'VE)compensated for it really, really well. When you (WE) have time, you (WE) do well. But when you have to do things very quickly, it's not automatic. Your autopilot, for spelling and for reading, just isn't there. As a youngster, Shaywitz says, I (WE) was probably getting just enough information and pleasure from reading to push through some amount of dyslexic drag. And the more I (WE) read, the more compensatory tricks my brain wired into itself until I (WE) became fluent, at least under relaxed conditions. It's only when the heat is on that my (OUR) reading goes a little wobbly and, even more often, my spelling collapses in a heap.

--emphasis added.

If he has dyslexia, based on the symptoms, I do too.

If you too are interested in self diagnosis, or a hilarious read, go here

Humans vs Zombies

(I did not take this pic...you can find it on google images)

There is a new disease infecting USU. It's worse than swine flu, and far more entertaining. It is called humans vs zombies and it has 800 participants (like, that is the real number on the website). Basically every freshman on campus starts out as a human and slowly gets infected by being touched by zombies. The only way to ward off the zombies is to stun them with sock balls or nerf guns (which, fyi Cache Valley is completely sold out of). It lasts a week long and at the end of the week the winner is whoever stays a human. The students can only play outside so basically students are running around like mad to get indoors. While traveling outside of classes they travel like packs of rats with nerf guns and identifying bandanas. It's pure madness, and entertainment. I have never been more on board for a college campus game. It makes you remember that college is cool....(or at least colleges that let students do things, unlike BYU sometimes).

In response to the exciting conversation of humans vs zombies in class, I brought up the exciting event of voting (which I did by absentee ballot). The response? 25 blank stares, and 3 students asking about voting for what. It broke my heart. Apparently the democratic process doesn't exist to zombies...or humans for that matter.