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I've been visiting churches for the past few months, and I've promised to do a thorough sweep of them all. I haven't forgotten, but I do have one more church I'd like to visit before I do a broad sweep of the Austin area congregations. A brief trailer for each church I've seen - large/mainstream Evangelical, Episcopalean, emergent-but-not-really, Korean...so stay tuned.

In addition to this, I've been reading one of the best books I've read in a while - C.S. Lewis' "Miracles". I hope to write on this one in a bit too - I wish I had read this sooner, like at Rice when I was questioning the validity of Christianity (instead of the random slew of poor-quality literature that I read instead). In particular, I took a humbling message from one of its chapters that talked about the validity of ideas despite misinterpretation (I confess I've probably been a bit of in intellectual snob in my treatment of other Christians =\ not something I'm proud of). Anyhow, in a future post, I'd like to do my best to convince any readers of this blog to read this book as well, because I found it very stimulating, with just the right balance of intellectual rigor and accessibility.

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Thus, this post acts as sort of a placeholder, awaiting more important and thoughtful posts. Ironically, my time in Austin (cue sermon-like tie-in to actual content!) seems to feel much the same - for now, my years here at UT feel like they're just being used to wait it out until I get a job, or (God willing) get married, or move back home, or experience a more important event in my life than just work and grad school.

As the novelty of being somewhere new wears off, I'm finding myself spending more and more time alone. It feels hard to go out and meet people - there hasn't been a Friday night large group for post-grads, and investing a chunk of time into hanging out with one person can be awkward if they're not someone you know well/feel comfortable with. I don't feel like I should try to invest in a college group on campus either, otherwise I could see myself just trying to relive college instead of moving on and growing. Whatever the reasons (and I'm still sorting thru these), I find myself alone at home a lot, doing a social thing maybe once a month at best. Currently, I'm blogging because I feel fairly lonely, which is a pretty terrible reason to blog (still, perhaps something constructive may come out of this - especially if anyone has any comments/advice, they'd be much appreciated).

In trying to reason why I feel so lonely here, I came up with the following chain of logic: I don't feel very connected to Austin (tied in to investing in Austin is the church search as well...), so I'm not too motivated to connect myself to Austin either, and therefore have not built a stable group of friends to be around here either.

I got an email from a friend commenting on how hard it was to invest in a solid church community given that he would only be around the area for a few months. Somehow, though I will probably be here a good few years at least, I seem to have motivations similar to someone who's just passing through a town. Since I have friends in Houston, family in California, it's difficult to see myself giving either of those up to stay here long-term. The whole feel of Austin seems much too "cool" as well, and I don't really feel like I fit in well with "cool" kids (hence I loved Rice).
In the end though, I still believe I should make the most of my time here. While I don't THINK I'll have the college experience all over again, forming deep friendships everywhere I go, I KNOW I won't get anything done isolating myself either.

Any thoughts/experiences/advice on adapting to a new place?

old (therefore young) version of billy graham

http://theologica.blogspot.com/2009/03/billy-graham-at-harvard-47-years-ago.html

Here's a set of audio clips I found interesting for the following reasons - one, they're Billy Graham at Harvard, speaking to a much different and more academically oriented audience than he typically does. Secondly, it's interesting to hear what kind of talks evangelicals gave 47 years ago compared to today. Graham's style has definitely carried over to most churches, and you can hear that in the talk as well. You can see the way he approached and interpreted issues of his time as well (Communism, moral flippancy, etc).

good Neo-Reformed post

Featured: a good post on the recent Neo-Reformed discussion.

For those not familiar with the whole Neo-Reformed issue, here is a summary from the article introducing Scot Knight, a Christian author who recently wrote a heated blog post on the subgroup of evangelical Christians he calls the "NeoReformed"

Who are the NeoReformed? According to Scot, the NeoReformed represent a particularly aggressive group of people who embrace Reformed theology and demonstrate an attitude of exclusion reminiscent of pre-evangelical Fundamentalism. The NeoReformed see anyone outside of their circle as unfaithful to the gospel and only pseudo-evangelical. Therefore, they exalt peripheral doctrines to “central status” and then ”demonize” others that disagree.

While a lot of others wrote of Scot as an arrogant raging lunatic, I couldn't do so completely. I agree that while a lot of his accusations of the group seem like over-exaggerated blanket statements, I have interacted with a lot of people who fit a similar description.

The article does a great job of sifting carefully through the issue fairly. I hope you find time to read it and leave some comments/thoughts if you have anything to say.

blog etiquette

so, a question - when someone comments on your blog, is the correct blog etiquette to
1) comment on your blog in response and expect them to check the post again?
2) comment in response on their blog (which would be on an unrelated post)?

thoughts?

nostalgia

I came back to Houston for LNY yesterday, and I miss it here. A lot more than I realized while in Austin. UT's college experience seems very different from what I experienced during college, and I think I know more of why I was so drawn to Rice now.

There's a sense of welcome here that stems not only from Rice, its atmosphere, and the friends I still have there, but from the 20+ years of my life that I invested here. I know this place, and in some sense, it knows me - the house I grew up in is still here, and though Jimmy and Pat have made changes to it while they've lived here, I can still remember when my parents and I built parts of it. Austin is so new; but new is not the way most people would want to describe their home.

Since then, it seems things have been pulled apart with family and I both moving away. Nostalgia hits hard whenever I come home and open up old boxes to find old memories that I had nearly forgotten, and I toy with the idea of either transferring to Rice for grad school or finding a job in order to move back home.

Is it easier for people who moved away from home for college and then stayed in the same town after graduation? Is it as difficult adjusting to post-college life?

foodie habits

I've recently discovered this manga called "Mixed Vegetables". The story involves two students at a culinary school, one who is a prodigy at sushi working in a pastry shop, and the other one a pastry lover working in a sushi shop. And there's a comedic romance between them too involving their chef dreams - I couldn't believe it. Cooking and comedy and romance. Together in one manga. It's like a dream come true (incidentally, I am not gay).

But seriously, after starting to really watch what I eat and focus intently on cooking healthy good food, I think I've become a foodie. Telltale signs...

1. All the movies I watch more than once nowadays are food related (God of Cookery, Ratatouille, Babette's Feast, Chocolat). I have a lead on several others that I want to check out as well now...
2. I follow several cooking mangas/animes (Addicted to Curry, Mixed Vegetables, Cooking Master Boy, Yakitate)
3. I actually taught my mom how to cook something this Winter Break, and she got me a wok for Christmas.

I'm not sure what it is about having a weird obsession with food - there's something I really enjoy about it, not just eating it, but sharing it with others too, and even the whole preparation process is fascinating to me. I feel as if I could fall asleep listening to the sounds of a kitchen (dishes being laid out, the sounds of whisking, iron spatulas clanging against frying pans, gas stoves burning hot, soups and sauces boiling, onions sizzling, etc etc). Every part of the food preparation process seems much more glamorous than it used to =P.

Does anyone else identify with this, or am I just weird?

"high school never ends"

I've noticed UT feels a lot like high school. Not academically, but in the social environment. To put it a little differently, take Rice: it's been described as being a school for all the kids who weren't cool in high school. All the nerds and geeks and such suddenly congregate together in this safe haven, and voila! a new social order is born. Suddenly, it's alright to suck at sports, to really enjoy learning, to have weird random hobbies, to be different.

Admittedly, this wasn't perfect. Rice would probably be perfect for someone who is really enthusiastic, outgoing, a little geeky/nerdy/quirky/etc. However, though these kids fit in at Rice, others often didn't - for example, I know that a lot of athletes felt out of place because they were different from most of the Rice population. Different senses of humor. Different goals in life. Different worldviews and senses of fun. However, in my opinion, the people at Rice tried to reach out to everyone, and even if the athletes didn't fit in, I've seen students trying to reach out and befriend them, talk to them. The atmosphere at Rice felt, for the first time for me, welcoming.

UT is not Rice. If Rice is welcoming, open-minded idealism, UT seems more like efficient, result-driven pragmatism. Example: Rice has no business major and emphasizes research heavily. Even its engineering program is criticized for not exposing students to "real-world" materials by focusing too much on a theory-heavy curriculum. I get the impression that some Rice students would balk at the idea of "schmoozing", resume-padding, and getting a job through connections as opposed to merit. (For the nerdy reader) I get the impression that at Rice, it was OK to write code in Matlab, because it was for *research* and didn't have to have a specific industry application. None of these impressions strike me as being true for UT.

The reason I think this is a problem goes back to the types of people who are at Rice. You didn't often find mean or cold people; you didn't often get the impression that people would step all over each other for. I'm not saying I find that here at UT, but unlike Rice, I hear premed stories where students are so cutthroat towards each other that I'd fear any of them becoming doctors. And most unlike Rice, I don't see a welcoming hand extended from people towards others below them. I'm sure this happened at Rice too, but I feel like it's much more common at UT for an IM basketball team to make fun of their opponents if they're winning. There's a lot less good sportsmanship, and in general respect for others than I'd like here.

Perhaps I'm just glamorizing Rice too much. I loved it there, and felt like I was really a part of Rice. I feel kind of like I'm just at UT; it hasn't especially welcomed or taken me in, and I haven't really invested myself in it. Maybe UT is just a large school and I haven't found the right sorts of people yet. Perhaps it's just a matter of examining how I perceived things at Rice psychologically. Whichever it is, though I'm glad to be at UT, I miss Rice.

Footnote: "High School Never Ends" is a song by Bowling for Soup. It's pretty funny.