Random Ramblings

“Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is…”

–C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity”

I think through the times of trial is when the content of our character is revealed. At that point, we must consider long and hard whether what we do is glorifying to God, or giving place to the devil. My prayer is that in adversity, my characther is glorifying to God.

(Amanda’s probably laughing to herself right now, since she saw firsthand what I’m capable of when I’m too competitive, which makes that statement truly ironic. =)

Tags: Personal, Religious by Andrew Laine
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I haven’t written a blog post in a while. Why? Well… I haven’t had a lot of time, nor have I really had a lot to say. But I’ve kind of felt the Spirit moving me tonight, as I get the feeling there are a lot of people hurting tonight and something needs be said. I’ll preface this by saying, I’m neither a terribly gifted preacher, nor an altogether dynamic layman, so don’t expect something the caliber of what you might get out of any one of the pastors at church.

A vote took place tonight at church, the results of which affect the very course of our church’s history. Some are heartbroken, others upset, and most are bewildered at this point. The expressions on the leadership team’s faces when they walked up on the platform said everything that needed be said: “What are we going to do now?”

I won’t go into the details of the situation, most who need to know the situation’s details already, but in short this vote decided whether or not Pastor Lindsey would be restored as our pastor. This great man, who shepherded us through the first seven years of being, seemed a shoo-in to return to the pulpit. Yet somehow, the vote slid below the required 75% mark required to pass. And now the congregation, too, is left wondering what just happened.

It’s incredible to view how God used the messages Pastor Lindsey preached to prepare us for it, even if we didn’t realize that’s how we were being preached to. The sermons that were intended, at the time, as a reasonable defense for why he was acceptable to return to the pulpit, wound up being some of the deepest spiritual truths imaginable for the time we were approaching – God sometimes has to teach us deep spiritual truths in the darkness.

In Isaiah tonight, Amanda and I were discussing the situation, and I let go with the comment that God makes in Isaiah 55-

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts
Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV)

What interesting about that (which I didn’t notice until Amanda pointed it out), is what all else was in that chapter of scripture. Further down the page:

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Isaiah 55:11-13 (KJV)

God’s words will not return void, but it shall accomplish that which he pleases… This verse, among many others, gives me comfort tonight.

The reactions of some is with great zeal and fervor, wondering what could possibly have possessed the 28% to vote that way, I’ve even seen some turning it into an “Us vs. Them” mentality, thinking that those who did not vote with the majority were somehow traitors that hated Pastor Lindsey. Paranoia starts to set in, people start wondering what someone else has against them, why would that 28% want to ruin it for the rest of us.

I think everyone needs to take a big step back, take a deep breath, and chill for a moment.

After tonight’s vote, there was no joy. There was a lot of weeping, red eyes, downcast faces. In looking around the room, there was no one who looked particularly happy. Think about it, folks. Who there was prancing around singing “Ding, dong, the witch is dead?” Who walked up to Pastor Lindsey and shouted “HA! You lose!”? Nobody. I didn’t see anyone gloating. What I saw was a room full of hurting people, people who didn’t understand what just happened, some looked angry, others shell-shocked, but when it came right down to it, no one looked like it had been an easy decision. I think that for the last several weeks a lot of prayer has gone in for everyone involved for God to reveal his will, and God did just that in a way that none of us truly expected.

God’s ways are not our ways. We aren’t always going to understand why things happen the way that they do, and God’s in no way going to be forced into revealing it to us right away. But we are still to be one body, and move forward with one accord. God revealed his will to us, what are we going to do with it? Are we going to strive together to continue on in his will, to discover what God DOES have planned for us? Or are we going to be, as Jared brought up in a recent sermon, like Jonah, and say “See God? That’s not how I would’ve done it. You really messed that up, if we would’ve just done this my way, this ALL could’ve been avoided!”

I’d like to put my vote forth – Let’s move forward and see how God can work. Like the children of Israel, he didn’t lead us to the edge of the Red Sea to watch Pharaoh’s chariots barrel down on top of us and utterly destroy us. He led us to the Red Sea so that we can witness HIS miracles, and HIS glory.

For those who had the majority vote – Don’t become bitter about it. The vote, even with the people involved, was still in God’s hands the entire time. God works in the hearts of the people, and to become bitter at those who you may not have agreed with is simply giving place to the devil. Paul wrote in Ephesians,

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
Eph 4:31-32 (KJV)
I don’t think a decision like the one that was made tonight was made lightly by any of the parties involved, nor do I think it was a personal attack on our pastor. I think everyone there tonight had approached it with much prayer and supplication, and – as I said before – the entire process was in God’s hands, not ours.

Additionally, those who voted with the minority – don’t gloat, or make it seem like those who were voting with the majority were wrong in voting how they did. This is a time where we’re being broken as a congregation, and now more than ever we need to strengthen ourselves for the trying times that are coming. We need to move forward and face the future, not spend time dwelling on the things of the past.

If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.
Phil 2:1-2 (KJV)
We can ill afford to sit back and do nothing, friends. We cannot begin to let bitterness seep in, or to think that God in some way has abandoned us. God was here before this time came, God’s still here now that the time is upon us, and God will remain with us in the future. Never lose sight of that!

As I think about all of the ways that I’ve grown under Pastor Lindsey’s teaching, there’s one thing that I think always stood out about his salvation story – When he talked about how the deacon who led him to Christ fell away, he began to question why he was even in it any more, and considered quitting. His pastor told him to get his eyes off of the man and get his eyes on Christ.

That, if you take nothing else from this, is going to be the big thing. Stop focusing on what men are doing, start focusing on what God wants us to do. The world is watching us, how are we going to handle the coming darkness?

Andrew
Psalms 84:11

Tags: Personal, Religious, Uncategorized by Andrew Laine
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Eventful day yesreday. Moved out to my mom’s, living out of a suitcase with a 50 mile commute to work in the morning. I won’t give the details, but here’s the highlights.

~Got pulled over for something, apparently I don’t look old enough to be my father and the DMV thinks my car has no insurance.

~Running around a luau for leftovers like a chicken with his head cut off.

~My car nearly overheated. again.

~”We forgot the barbeque!”

~Borrowing John’s truck to move the second big load & getting a better prayer life….

~”That’s an awful lot of neon for something that’s not a strip club…” -Me after viewing the Washington Roofing Company Signs in the middle of the night, which had a lighting setup that rivals most casinos in vegas…

~Final finish: 3:30 am

~Time up for church: 6:00 am.

Tags: Personal by Andrew Laine
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Ah, what a day. It’s funny, it seems like since I’m not intentionally trying to blog every day, now I have no lack of material (although I didn’t use yesterday’s). But tonight, I blog.

The morning started out with me getting to church for setup. I was a little shocked, I was there at 8:30 and the sound booth hadn’t even been rolled out. I go in, call out upstairs (figuring Dave was up there) and it turned out that Jared was up there. Dave’s father in law was in the hospital and so he was with his wife at the hospital. I’m sure you all know what this means: I’m the only non-choir-member sound guy there (and only one of two total sound techs in the building, as Kellie AND Dave are both in the ministry). This also means, being the only non-choir sound guy, that I was pretty much by myself the whole time.

Well, sound check went okay, but there was the proverbial wild card with the first special: The choir was singing to back up Kim. This is a wild card for two reasons:

1) We don’t run sound check with choir
2) The mics can be finicky about cooperating for the choir

Usually the choir sound check is the opener, during which I try to adjust monitors so she can hear them, and after which (during prayer) Miss Faith and I communicate by lip reading and frantic gestures to figure out what we can do to fix things. today was not a good day, because by the time the opener was over, I had cranked her monitor to +5 (which is max on the dial) and she couldn’t hear anything. So everyone bows their head and the frantic gesturing begins, I get my point across, and I unmute Kim’s mic.

Or so I thought.

You see, Kim usually uses one of the wirelesses, which happens to be the same one that Amanda uses, and since I set Amanda’s settings first, I set Kim on another microphone. However, when I unmuted it, I unmuted Amanda’s. Kim goes to start the song, I hear nothing, and I reactively flipped the other mute button off (I have the right instincts when something goes wrong, at least), then wanted to crawl under the sound booth and hide.

Well, after the service I found out that tonight we were going to do a run through for next sunday morning’s group ensemble (which involves two munchkin choirs, the teen girls, and a quartet of my sister, Amanda, Casey, and Kim). This is something that, normally, I would’ve let Dave handle because of the complex nature (and my own feeling insecurities about the job and not feeling on par with Dave, he is, after all, infinitely more experienced). But, recall, Dave wasn’t there and wouldn’t be there for the evening service, either. So, again, the task falls to me.

I did make the smart move of letting Glen mix the teen girls for the evening service (if I’d had to do that, AND the pre-sunday check, I probably would’ve cracked and declared myself emperor of the hundred acre woods…). Then, after the service, I took a seat at the back of the auditorium and waited for the large group to come, and come they did. It wasn’t quite what Miss Faith was hoping for, though, because we didn’t have the mics for the munchkin choirs (Jared’s getting those this week), and the choir mics are hung too high to pick up the teen girls (in fact, the majority of what I picked up through the choir mics was actually the piano…). The ladies quartet in the center couldn’t hear anything from the monitors, the teen girls couldn’t be heard at all, and the munchkins didn’t get mics to use because we didn’t have them yet. I think it’ll go well sunday, but there’s going to be a lot of playing by ear to get everything perfect, which makes Miss Faith nervous, I can tell…

Well, after all of this, I broke down everything, put it all away, and went to my sister’s house to pick up the birthday cake I left there yesterday. After that, I decided (being it was fairly warm outside) to grab a milkshake on the way home. So I went to Baskin-Robbins and got myself a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup shake. This turned out to be the randomness of the night. You see, for whatever reason, some genius at B&R decided that putting a big old dollop of hot fudge in the bottom of the milkshake. Let’s think about this for a moment.

First of all, hot fudge, for those who aren’t familiar, is rather thick when heated. when it cools, it becomes thicker. and, being in the bottom of the cup, it’s the first thing you try sucking down the straw, which doesn’t really work. Add to that the bits and pieces of Reese’s, which tend to clog up the straw all be their lonesome. So, take reeses bits, add hot fudge, and suddenly, I’m wishing Drain-O wasn’t toxic so I could get the blasted straw unclogged.

And now, here I sit, on the verge of going to bed, realizing in addition to 25 years disappearing, I have no bloody idea where my week’s vacation went…

Tags: Humor, Personal by Andrew Laine
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And now it comes to it: The big finale, as it were, after a series of sometimes humorous, sometimes rambling, occasionally pointless blogs between my third blogging anniversary and my 25th birthday. I admittedly had considered throwing this in sooner rather than later, but ultimately decided it’s more meaningful to end out with this one than to throw it in in the middle. Of the whole group, this one means most to me.

My grandfather’s name was Robert Avon Tjomsland. (Before you even consider any “Avon calling” jokes, keep in mind a) it’s my birthday, and b) I will end you. :-p) He was a great man, and a great example in my life. He was a devoted husband, loving father, and a wonderful grandfather. He passed away on April 17th, 1998, one week before my 15th birthday, my freshman year of high school. I still remember my parents coming to pick me up at school the day he went in to the hospital. He’d had heart surgery after a heart attack, and a cough that the doctors had said was a normal part of recovery turned out to be pneumonia. For any who know my inherent distrust of hospitals, now you know why: At 14 years old, I got to watch my grandfather pass as a result of someone screwing up (or at least, that was my mindset at the time).

Now older and wiser, I’ve come to understand that it was his time, whether I wanted to admit it at the time or not. Whether by pneumonia or a car accident, if God was going to call grandpa home, he’d do it however he pleased. But another perk in being older is I can look back on and cherish the life lessons my grandpa taught me while he was alive. Today, on my 25th birthday, I’d like to share a few.

1) If you want something, work hard for it – My grandfather was a child of the Depression. Everything he had later in life was a result of how hard he’d worked earlier in life. My grandfather worked with the CCC in his young adult years, went on to work construction most of his life. He paid his bills on time, he paid cash for everything. He even built a beautiful house out in Hebo, Oregon (which is the place I knew as a child). And after his heart attack, when he and my grandma decided to move closer to town, he paid cash for their new home, too. Admittedly, this is a lesson I wish I really would’ve grasped earlier in life, but having had that example at all is, in this day and age, rare. My generation tends to want everything handed to them on a silver platter. That’s why we’re into the “get rich quick” schemes, we want everything our parents had without any of the work it took for them to get it. And what’s sad is, more and more parents are giving in and giving it to them. Then we wonder why our kids are lazy. Gee, I wonder…

2) Don’t save things unless they’re useful. – My grandfather had an amazing shop when I was a kid. He had power tools, hand tools, nuts, bolts, screws, nails, everything you can imagine. If you ever needed a nut or bolt, Grandpa was the man, chances are he’d have it.

3) Don’t save the useful things unless you plan on using them. – To this day, my grandmother still has baby food jars of nuts, bolts, screws, and the like in her garage. She’ll never be wanting for any of them, but I think we could take all the walls off of the place and put it back together just with the stuff she has there.

4) Love your wife. – My grandparents were married fairly young, but they remained married. In fact, I don’t think there was ever a doubt in my grandmother’s mind that grandpa loved her. When he was older, at doctors appointments and whatnot he’d flirt with the nurses, but grandma didn’t mind; she knew he only had eyes for her. That’s another thing increasingly rare in todays culture: husbands actually telling their wives they love them. I’m no marriage expert (being, after all, unmarried), but guys, how often do you tell your wife you love her? If you haven’t said it since you got married, do yourself a favor: Go do it, right now. Seriously, step away from the blog, find your wife, give her a hug and a passionate, “I feel like I haven’t seen you in weeks” kiss, and tell her you love her. Then, and only then, do I give you permission to finish this blog. Go on, I’m not going anywhere. Do it. NOW.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way…

5) Take care of your family, even when it’s hard. – My family, for those who aren’t aware, is far from perfect. We don’t really define the dysfunctional family, but we certainly have had our moments (and will probably continue to do so). Grandpa was the proverbial glue that held the family close, and I think it was because of this: No matter how stupid the things you did, grandpa didn’t hold it against you. Even if he told you it was a bad idea, even if he warned you not to do it and you ignored it, grandpa wouldn’t say I told you so, he’d accept you back just as if you hadn’t done anything. Now, mind you, I think he thumped me once or twice when I was younger, but it was a loving admonishment, he got it over with and got on with it.

6) Be a servant in whatever you’re doing. – I think of all of the lessons I learned from grandpa, I picked up on this one earliest, even if I didn’t fully understand it at the time. If you asked my grandpa for help with something, he would be glad to help. I think this example is what got me holding doors for people at a young age (just ask my mother: On a cub scout visit to mentor graphics, while all the other kids were running ahead, I held the doors for the parents. True story. =)

Am I always the man grandpa was? Hardly. So many of the lessons I learned were kind of late-breaking revelations. But I hope someday, after a long, full life, that I can have my grandkids writing about the lessons they learned from me that I’ve passed on from him. I hope I’m making you proud, Grandpa.

Adios for now, kids, we’ll see you later.

~Andrew =)

Tags: Humor, Personal by Andrew Laine
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When I was in elementary school, I was a boy scout. I don’t remember if I asked to be in it or my parents just put me into it, but it was a fascinating time. We used to go out to our den leader’s house, which was out in the middle of nowhere (at least to me, in my older years I figured out it’s actually just outside of Sherwood). His family had this large piece of property, with horses and woods and trees and creeks. Growing up I liked going to the park and catching salamanders, so this was a lot of fun for me.

Sometimes we’d go on night hikes and learn about the flora and fauna in the great outdoors. Well, the flora at least. there wasn’t a whole lot of fauna that we saw while we were out there. I always enjoyed the random craft projects we had. Like making hurricane laterns out of a mason jar, a tuna can, and a wooden stick (because we all know how often hurricanes hit in Oregon). Or the bird feeders and bird houses.I also really enjoyed the pinewood derby and raingutter regatta, the organized competitions we did while in scouts.

When I was in scouts, I only ever got to go camping with the group once. I remember we went up to Mt. Hood and were camping somewhere off the Zigzag river. My dad went along, we got all the camping gear especially for the trip. Sleeping bags, tent, the works. We went hiking, avoided drowning ourselves in the river (as boys can be curious when it comes to fast moving shallow water and hopping from rock to rock, this one proved tricky). I also remember playing with (I think it was) Nolan Farr’s dog. It was a hyperactive dalmatian, I don’t remember its name, but I remember holding up a stick, him taking a run at me to take the stick, and then twirling out of the way like a bull fighter. I think I might’ve even said “Ole!” (not that I knew what it meant back then. Come to think of it, I still don’t know what Ole means… Aside from Jose Ole’s Taco Sauce…). That dog was crazy, no matter how many times I dodged him grabbing the stick, he still tried.

Memo to self: Go camping this summer. Michael, this means you, too. :-p

Tags: Personal by Andrew Laine
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Last Saturday, I got fitted for a tux for the first time since I was in high school. I love tuxes, I honestly wish I could concoct excuses to wear them more often, but alas, I’m not made of money and, as a result, my reasons to wear them are few. However, this is as good a reason as any: I’m one of the groomsmen in my roommate’s wedding next month.

My history with tuxedos dates back to early childhood: My sister and I got tasked with being the ring bearer and flower girl for my cousin Aaron’s wedding… Wait… scratch that and reverse it, I would’ve made a terrible flower girl… Anyway, at the age of… well… something elementary level that I couldn’t really remember if I tried (I got a G.I. Joe vehicle as a thank you, I can remember that much…). I THINK the bowtie was teal, though my mother probably has pictures somewhere to prove otherwise, and I wore it with a cumberbun. At that young age, I could tell you two things.

1) I love tuxes
2) I hate cumberbuns

Tuxes, in my mind, were just plain awesome. It doesn’t really matter what you’re doing, if you’re doing it in a tux, you were cool (this mindset is kind of paradoxical, however, because in high school I never understood the people who went bowling wearing a tux…). It would be a long time before I ever wore one again, because it wasn’t until Freshman year of high school that I got to do it again. It was a fairly simple setup, basic black tux, teal patterned vest and bowtie with a teal pocket square.

During high school, this was the only “classic” tux I ever wore.

My sophomore year, I had no tie, the collar stuck up like a clergy collar, and I had a dark navy vest with black tux. I got “reverend” comments all night, which admittedly got annoying after a while. I made a mental note to never wear that type of collar again.

Junior year was still tie-less, but instead of the clergy collar it had an oddly fascinating buttoned-down collar that just sort of laid flat against the collar bone. Silver vest, silver pocket square.

And then came senior year.

Senior year was my favorite out of the tuxes I rented, there was nothing classic about it. It was the “Zoot suit” tux. Long black jacket, silver pocket chain, silver vest, black tie, and a black fedora with a white band. If there was ever a tux I was tempted to keep, that was the one. I looked like something out of a 1930s mafia movie.

I don’t think I ever went to the school events for the social aspect (if you knew me in high school, I wasn’t particularly sociable). I think I mostly went because I got to play dress-up. I got the ability to feel “cool” because I was wearing something that I generally wouldn’t have been, and the tuxedo’s always been something of a status symbol for guys. Think about it. James Bond? Tux. Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca? Tux. Daddy Warbucks in Annie? Tux. There’s always been something of a distinct masculine elegance surrounding tuxedos.

And now, next month, for the first time since senior year, I get to don one again. Only this time, it’s not for a school social function. My roommate, who over the last two years has become like the little brother I never had, is getting married, and I get to stand up there with a front-row seat. Well, okay, not seat, more of a standing position. I think it’s my duty to backhand Randy if he loses the ring.

I’ve noticed something about roommates. The bad ones, you can’t seem to get rid of fast enough, and the good ones always seem to get married. I think there’s a correlation there, the good ones tend to be responsible, and tend to attract mates because they’re stable, whereas the bad ones tend to be more free-spirited (a.k.a. broke) and leave a considerable amount of worry in any potential mate’s mind that they might ruin their lives. Not to say this is always the case (I’ve known plenty of irresponsible people who have wound up married and, as a result, lived unhappily ever after when they figured out that “love will see us through” should’ve been “love and a stable budget will see us through”…).

Anyway, back to my roommate’s pending marriage. Brennan and I have been friends since we worked together at Christian Supply. He was one of my best employees, easy to talk to and joke around with (there are a couple of inside jokes regarding golf balls that I’ll refuse to explain but mention regardless), and through that we became good enough friends that, when he decided to move out on his own, and I happened to be in need of a roommate, we decided it could work.I’ve watched him grow quite a bit in the last two years, and our friendship has become fairly close. I’m honored to be in his wedding (unless you count my appearance as ring bearer, it’ll be my first time… At the very least, it’s the first time in my adult life). I know he and Leann will be happy in their married life, there are few couples I know of who seem more perfect for each other, and I do believe they’ll do well together.

Well, enough of my prattling on. I’m starting to feel like a grandfather, telling his kids about how things were in the olden days (and, to be honest, I’ll be kind of glad once my birthday is here so I can formally take a break from trying to recollect the stories on a daily basis… I might do it once a month going forward, though…).

Until tomorrow…

Tags: Personal by Andrew Laine
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Okay, so tonight I’m not going to keep with the theme I’ve been going for. When I started out, I did promise new bloggage daily, and that I have kept. However, in a moment of reflection, I thought I’d share something interesting.

At church, we recently were given the opportunity to submit our personal testimonies for a journal that the church published and gave out to us all. Quite a few people submitted something, and I was no different. After really toiling over it (including 11th-hour edits, as is typical with anything I’m submitting for publication), I got something that I felt good about submitting.

Well, it was set up in a daily format, with one testimony for every day for 40 days. I had no pick as to what date mine went on, but it was published as the testimony for April 18th. A date of virtually no significance to me, and it didn’t make a difference to me what date it was published on, I simply did it because I felt like God had given me the words for it.

Today at lunch, my mom and I got to talking about it, and she asked “What date was yours on again?” and I told her, April 18th. My mom pondered that a moment, smiled, and said “That’s my anniversary.” At first I thought she’d lost it, my mom and dad were married on (ironically enough) D-Day, June 6th 1981 (I think, I wasn’t really around then so I definitely wasn’t there…). But then she clarified. “I got saved on April 18th, 1981.”

Really, there are no coincidences with God.

Tags: Personal by Andrew Laine
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The series continues, with another random reflection on my life thus far. I’m writing this in my car (not driving, in case you were worried).

As much as I’ve always loved writing, I’ve always hated writing for assignments. I wrote for assignments, sure, and generally did fairly well on them, but there were always those exercises that I found to be completely pointless and demeaning to the student’s intellect. Stream of consciousness, for example. Let me get this straight, you want me, for a classroom assignment, to write out everything that comes to my mind for five minutes? Are you sure you want to subject yourself to that? Here’s how it will work: I’ll spend the first minute and a half going over how stupid I believe the assignment is, follow it with another minute and a half of why I don’t think this should be an assignment in the first place, spend ten seconds prattling on about some shiny object that caught my eye as I was rolling my eyes over the assignment, and by the end of five minutes you have a half page dissertation on why squirrels would be better off migrating instead of hibernating. You wanted what’s going through my brain in a five minute period of time? Congratulations, you now know more than you ever wanted to.

The other assignments that always bothered me was poetry. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to poetry, iambic pentameter is a beautiful thing, and I do enjoy the occasionally Shakespearean sonnet every now and then, but I generally don’t like putting the effort in to make my lines and beats match up when I’m writing. If I ever write you a poem, it’s either because I really care about you (in which case, I probably put a lot of time and effort in writing it because of how much I loathe doing it in the first place), or I’m just quick on the draw (like the time one of the girls in my PoliSci course at PCC got a valentines basket from a guy who was practically stalking her and, during the course of class, I wrote her a four stanza joke poem called “The Stalker’s Valentine” to commemorate it that started with the line “Roses are red, your screaming is shrill, if I can’t have you, then no one will!” and it rapidly devolved from there.) It’ll either take a lot of effort or no effort, poetry is not something that just flows from me. And before someone makes the comment that “you can write unstructured poetry”, that’s stupid to me. Poetry is supposed to have some kind of form, certain rules and guidelines, to just throw a series of nonsensical words together and call it a poem is a cop out (like taking a can of paint, sloshing it across a dead woodland creature and calling it “art”. That’s not art, that’s roadkill covered in fuschia).

Writing as a class is a multi-faceted enigma. On the one hand, you can teach the basic mechanics and give someone the tools to be able to write effectively, but at the same time you have to be careful to not teach that your method is the best and only method. I’ve thankfully had enough teachers and professors that didn’t stifle me, but I always had at least one person in the class who was hypercritical of how I chose to write stylistically. Writing is one of those things that doesn’t have to fit “the formula” all the time, even if its best that it lean that way. I’m sure there’s plenty I don’t do according to the rules of writing, but I’m not professing I know all there is to know about writing, either. I know I can write and I know I love writing. There are probably others who write better than I do. And that, dear reader, is why you’re stuck reading this. Because it keeps me out of trouble. :-)

Besides, the greatest words tend to be written:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” ~John 3:16

Tags: Personal by Andrew Laine
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I love the outdoors, but I never seem to find enough excuses to truly enjoy them. For our senior trip, we went to Lake Shasta, and I did get to enjoy quite a bit of the outdoors with 60-ish of my (somewhat) favorite people. Okay, admittedly, there was more than one I wished we could’ve chucked into the lake and “forgot” to pick up, but a nice time was had by (almost) all.

Senior trip wound up being the catalyst that really solidified my friendship with Michael, oddly enough we weren’t friends sooner in high school (in spite of being almost life-term yearbookers), and it wasn’t until he beat me at literally every board game we brought on senior trip except for Monopoly Junior travel edition that we got to really know each other (you can tell a lot by a man from how badly he destroys you at Risk). After high school, in an instant messaging conversation he commented that “Well, if it had been real monopoly that never would’ve happened” and thus, the legend was born (and, for the record, I annihilated him in that first game during Christmas break).

I don’t know who hasn’t noticed this, but I’m a pasty white Norwegian, which for those who don’t know what that means, I think the sun doesn’t shine on Norway for five to six months at a time, so our ancestors passed on the uncanny ability to burn easily. I learned this the hard way on senior skip day when I got enough of a sunburn to keep me out of school for three days on a cloudy day. Needless to say, going to Shasta’s 90+ degree weather was enough to make me invest in a crate of SPF-50 sunscreen, and I surprisingly only wound up with “wings” as my worst burn (caused by applying the sunscreen wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, the removing the shirt and putting on a life jacket, leaving two small red marks on my shoulder blades resembling tiny wings).

My favorite thing to do on the trip was kayaking. Every opportunity where someone wasn’t already using them, I would steal a kayak and go. Michael and I one afternoon took them out probably a mile or two around the lake, finding every opportunity to cut across the wake of the ski boats (because that was unbelievably fun). We at one point even found this campfire ring about two feet underwater (this is the time of year where the levels were dropping about a foot every day, so by the time we left I’m sure it was exposed). Kayaking is definitely something I hope to do more of later in life.

Absolute best moment of senior trip had to have been the day we had a group playing Axis and Allies (albeit the game itself was humiliating, playing as Russia and falling to Mr. Porter’s Nazi regime as he sang “Springtime for Hitler” from “The Producers”). While we were playing, David Sauter came around and found the buzzer from the Taboo game, and began buzzing it. This, as you might imagine, became really annoying really quick. So we all jumped up from the table in an attempt to tackle him, but to no avail, he escaped out the back and around the front of the boat (in spite of Mr. Westerberg’s best effort to block the front; He ran into the screen door). We got up and went back to what we were doing.

Now, David was notable for many things, but the most prominent was the afro he sported (nevermind that he was whiter than I am). So with all of the window shades drawn, with the sun on that side of the houseboat, it was fairly obvious as he tried to sneak around the side of the boat. I looked across the table to Justin, then around the table at everyone else. Justin followed my eyes, looked back at me and nodded, understanding the unspoken request. In an instant, Justin was out on the deck holding David in a waist lock while the other five of us pounced to help. With two people on his feet, two people at his waist, and Michael and I prying his fingers loose from the ladder, the six of us chucked David, fro and all, into Lake Shasta, then went back to our game. And Aimee, the staff photography editor for the yearbook, got the whole thing on film from the next boat over. Michael, being the editor assigned to the senior trip spread, ensured that one made the cut.

All that sun and I didn’t get horrendously sunburned. I must’ve done something right!

Tags: Humor, Personal by Andrew Laine
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