I basically spent the entire day (5 hours) writing a 3 page summary. Five hours!!! That is unacceptable! I can't believe it took me that long! It was kind of weird though because I don't think I've had to summarize anything since I was like in high school. My brain kept wanting to write and essay, it was really hard actually to just summarize the reading. I think I was making it harder than it had to be.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 45 (Papers Papers Papers)
I basically spent the entire day (5 hours) writing a 3 page summary. Five hours!!! That is unacceptable! I can't believe it took me that long! It was kind of weird though because I don't think I've had to summarize anything since I was like in high school. My brain kept wanting to write and essay, it was really hard actually to just summarize the reading. I think I was making it harder than it had to be.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 44 (Study High)
Monday, September 28, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 43 (Brain Fried)
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 42 (What a Difference a Dot Makes)
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 41 (Run, Charles! Run!)
OMG! I am SO out of shape...but if you've been reading this blog you already knew that. Some of us took the ferry to the city today. Since I had managed to convince my family to come last night instead of today, I was able to take my brother and sister with me. Tasted a pawpaw for the first time today, sorta tastes like a mango. We spent some time at Pier 39, then had lunch at Joe's Crab Shack. The food was okay; typical of a chain seafood restaurants, too salty and ever so slightly freezer burned. We decided after that we wanted to catch the 4:40 ferry back to Larkspur, but we didn't realize quite how far away we were from the ferry when we started heading back. We started walking faster and faster; I was at the front trying to keep up the pace. But all of a sudden, everyone was running past me saying we only had 3 minutes to get there, and I started running too. We were going pretty fast because we were seriously short on time, but my stomach started to hurt and I had to slow back down to a walk. Besides, there were still four people behind me, and if they didn't make it on the ferry, then I wasn't going to get on it either.
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 40 (Chinapino Invasion)
I went with Amber to Credit Cars so that she could once again achieve vehicular independence. Isn't Credit Cars a shady name for a dealership? They seemed like they were actually pretty decent people, and Amber was able to drive off with a car. Of course, one of her taillights wasn't working and she thinks it needs new brakes, but the person who helped her fill out her paperwork said all repairs would be free. Not exactly sure how that works, but we'll see.
I went to my aunts' house after that to pick up my brother and sister who had just arrived with my parents. We tried to leave right away to get to Lydia's birthday party, but my aunts insisted that we eat dinner first. We finally got back to my apartment an hour and a half after the party started, but it was still going strong, so everyone had a good time.
Now, it's time to sleep. Night all!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 39 (My Fair City)
Finally! We had a poetry slam at Holy Grounds, the seminary coffee house. It's been over two years since I've done spoken word, so I got really excited when people started talking about maybe having a poetry night. I'm hoping it becomes a weekly thing; maybe it'll get me to start writing poetry again! I performed my favorite of the poems that I've written; it's kind of the poem that started it all for me. I had been hanging out with Poet's Jazz House, a poetry group in L.A., for a while when one of the members happened upon some traveling poets from Canadia. They performed some of the coolest poems I had ever heard and I really wanted to write something along the lines of what they did. So, this is the poem I came up with, which I performed tonight for some of my new seminary friends:
My Fair City
My family moved to Camarillo when I was in the third grade,
We were the third family to move into a neighborhood of fourteen track homes surrounded by fields and orchards
Like a fairy tale village in the countryside,
As the years went by,
Trees were cut down and houses grew,
And I want to say that it was like mushrooms popping up in the middle of the night after it rains,
But it didn’t happen that fast,
It was slow,
And insidious,
Like a fungus growing underground where nobody can see it,
And we don’t have as many fields and orchards anymore,
But my dad says that we live in a green belt,
And it can’t change that much,
But people are greedy,
And they’ll roll over for a few million dollars and what that can buy them,
So now instead of mountains,
We have a skyline of million dollar homes,
And they’re threatening to turn Hill Canyon into a golf course,
But luckily,
I still have my slice of wilderness across the street where I can go running the morning if I want to,
But I went there to play with my kids one time,
And a cop told me I couldn’t be there after the sun sets,
And I thought to myself,
This is where my taxes go,
So that a cop can patrol a park in the middle of nowhere,
Because people go there to party at night where their neighbors can’t complain,
And while we have gang injunctions,
Graffiti on churches,
People breaking into my car,
And my fair city is competing for the coveted “Most Dangerous City in California” award,
I pay my taxes,
So that a fat cop,
In a uniform that’s too tight,
Like too much pork sausage stuffed into a greasy casing,
Can tell me that I can’t play there,
And I wonder,
What is happening to this city that I live in?
The innocence is seeping away,
Like a piece of fruit that’s been sitting on the counter for too long so that the insides are bursting out,
And all the sweetness is rotting,
And it’s attracting flies,
And I just want to knock it off the counter onto the floor,
But I can’t,
Because the seed in the middle’s put down roots,
And it’s stuck there,
And it’s growing,
And it’s going to keep on growing,
And growing,
And growing,
Until it become this enormously huge peach cobbler gone horribly awry,
And I live there!
And if you come to visit me,
Then you’ll say it’s pretty,
And it is pretty,
But pretty doesn’t cut it,
Because just beneath the surface it’s still a piece of rotting fruit,
And it’s still sweet,
But the flavor’s off because you know what it’s supposed to taste like,
And in spite of yourself,
You’re gonna pick up that fork,
And you’re gonna eat it,
Because you know that if you don’t,
Then someone else will,
And that doesn’t make it right,
But that’s the way the world works,
And if you don’t like it,
Then you don’t have to live there,
But they haven’t started selling trips to the moon yet,
But I’ve read,
That in a few years,
For a few million dollars,
You will indeed be able to buy a trip to the moon,
But the only ones able to afford to make that trip,
Are busy eating my peach cobbler,
And I can’t find my fork.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 38 (The "Pretty" Side of the Call)
Started the day with a little bit of Lectio Devina. We actually did the prayer exercise instead of just a lecture, and it felt really good. I felt really connected to God while we were doing it.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 37 (Make Crack Like This)
Monday, September 21, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 36 (Calling)
There's been a lot of talk recently about each of our callings, which is a strange Christian concept for those of you unfamiliar with it. It's even strange for us so-called insiders. Apparently, this is even strange for European Christians in general, as our Old Testament professor, who is from Switzerland, humorously tried to explain to us on the first day of class.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 35 (B Average)
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 34 (Surprise Visit)
I got an interesting call this morning. It was my dad telling me that my mom was in town. My mom lives 7 hours away from me, so this was not something I was expecting to hear. Not that it was a bad thing, just a little surprising considering that she, my dad, and my sister and brother were planning on, and still are I presume, coming to visit me next week. My mom had called and left a message last night about coming up to see me. I hadn't listened to it because I wanted to keep the message icon on my phone so that it would remind me to listen to it and call her the next morning. Apparently, one of my aunts was coming up here to visit a friend, and my mom hitched a ride. Also along for the trip was one of my Filipino cousins that I had never met before, of which there are many. I don't mean "many" in the traditional sense, I mean "many" in the Filipino sense, which means there's like 50 or so of them. I'm pretty sure this number increases exponentially every year. It's estimated that by the year 2014, 1 out of every 7 people will be a member of my family.
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 33 (Balcony Conversations)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 32 (Chinese Chicken Salad)
Per serving:
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 31 (Flash Cards)
I spent 3 hours today making flash cards. 2 1/2 for Old Testament, 1/2 for Hebrew. Flash Cards. Do you know what happens to your brain after you spend 3 hours making flash cards. Things start to get really weird. I felt like I had been on a boat for a week and had just stepped onto land when I decided it was time to stop making flash cards so I could do the reading for Church History. Which I am in the middle of doing now. I feel like this is a test. To see if we have what it takes to be seminarians. I feel like I'm whining all the time, but seriously, I have time for nothing else except to read and study and survive.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 30 (The Placebo Effect)
Another Tuesday, another trip to Berkley for "Drugs and Jesus" at Star King. This is going to be an interesting class. First of all, as much as people like to smoke marijuana around me, I have not actually done it myself. Second of all, I'm a naive sheltered Presbyterian boy from Santa Rosa Valley, CA that doesn't know the first thing about drug use, their effects, or even for the most part what they are when people mention them by name. I have the foggiest of vague ideas of what ecstasy is. I don't know what it looks like, I don't know what it feels like to be on it, how much a hit normally costs, how to recognize when someone is using it, or anything at all. So, I sit there and I listen to all of these people talking about their experiences with drugs and I feel like I have nothing to contribute to the class. All I can talk about is wine, and when you compare that to someone's trip to Amsterdam, what is there to talk about?
Monday, September 14, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 29 (9)
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 28 (Drowning)
Yes, my study habits have carried over from undergrad. I did walk away with a 3.7, so this might just work out. When one of the second-year students was telling us during orientation that he read about 6 hours of homework a night, I totally thought that was ridiculous and that I would never do that. Well, I haven't actually "read" anything, and I've already spent more time "reading" than that today. One of my classmates said someone calculated the amount of work that the professors expected us to do and it worked out to be more than 24 hours per day. How does that math work? If I was going to be good, I would continue "reading" after this post, but I don't know if I have enough strength left in my arms to turn the pages. Do the teachers actually expect everyone to read all of this? And if so, was I missing when they passed out the time turner necklaces?
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 27 (God as a She)
I was woken up this morning by the Apocalypse. Well, that's what I thought anyway. It was actually a bolt of lightning that struck incredibly close to my apartment, and since rain and lightning were the furthest things from my mind given the recent weather and the fact that I was ripped out of a deep sleep by one of the loudest noises I had ever heard in my life, I came to the natural conclusion that the world was ending. Thunder lasts a while, and when you don't know what it is, it sounds very scary. It sounded like the nearby mountain was being ripped in half. Then I saw some flashes of light, realized we were having a lightning storm, and breathed a sigh of relief. You need to understand that I hail from Ventura County, where thunderstorms are very rare. I've probably only watched one or two of them in my entire life. The flashes of light and thunder made it difficult to go back to sleep, so I opened my front door, pulled up a chair and watched nature's light show for a while. This was perhaps not my wisest moment, as I live on the top floor of a four story apartment complex and the railing is made of metal. But, I figured if lightning did happen to strike right there, it would probably find me no matter where in the apartment I was. The Native Americans of the area where afraid to go to the top of Mt. Tamalpais because they thought a witch lived on top of it. I can only imagine what they made of lightning strikes and thunder.
I went to the Russian Orthodox vespers service tonight with 3 of my classmates: Julie, Terra and Tom. It was an absolutely beautiful service, but not really my speed. I'm more used to drum sets and electric guitars when I go to church. Nevertheless, it was quite beautiful with all of the candles, incense, icons and chanting. The funny thing is, as "conservative" as the worship service, and I assume the denomination, was, I found it to be very affirming of women. They had icons for the virgin Mary and for Mary Magdelene, women reading scripture and the female voices were the most dominant and sometimes only voices in the choir. Now, as a Presbyterian, I have no problem with women being pastors or of the idea that God is neither male nor female, but I did have issues with referring to God with a feminine pronoun. It was more of a English language limitation thing than anything else. I'm still not sure if I'm 100% OK with it, but I think I'm pretty OK with it now.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 26 (Calling All Brown Coats)
Today was a shiny day! Inara saved the cap'n and Zoe from the sheriff and the townspeople got their medicine. Not to mention the fact that everyone is safe from Niska for another day.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 25 (San Anselmo Heat)
Yes, believe it or not, it does get hot in San Anselmo. It's not the dry desiccating heat of the desert, nor is it the humid bacteria-fostering heat of the jungle; it's the moist, delicate heat of a coastal city that doesn't really understand what heat is. And, no matter where you come from, you will get acclimated to the area you are living, and whatever the residents there consider to be hot, one day, you too will think of it as hot, even if it is 20 degrees cooler than what was considered hot in your old life.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 24 (Alef Bet Vet)
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 23 (Star King School for the Ministry)
I took my very first classes today as a seminary student, and I'm hoping I'm not going to be overwhelmed by it all. Four classes today: Old Testament, Hebrew, Improv and The Sacred and the Substance, otherwise known as "Drugs & Jesus."
Monday, September 7, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 22 (Settlers of Canaan)
Last day before classes start. It was pretty lonely today actually; I guess I'd gotten so used to running around like a chicken with its head cut off that I forgot how to be by myself for a longer than a few hours. I've always thought of myself as an introvert, and I suppose if I had to categorize myself, that's what I would be, but I actually do need to have people around me. It can't be too crazy, like when I'm trying to host a party of over a hundred people, because that gets me wound up for sure, but it's nice to just have people around.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 21 (Mission Bay Community Church)
Today was pretty laid back compared to yesterday's 12 mile hike through the mountains. Slept in "late" which means I woke up at 8:00 with the SFTS bell tower. Did some laundry. (Stupid machine ate my quarters!!! >_<) AND, I finished filling out the Inquirer forms! WOO HOO!!!! It truly wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. There weren't even any essays to write/plagiarize from myself. I don't know why I put it off for so long. Although, I have been getting the sneaking suspicion that I need to look the forms over again, just in case.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 20 (Seminary to the Sea)
We did a 12 mile hike from the seminary to Stinson Beach today. I was a little unsure of this adventure as I had never intentionally hiked anything so long before, but I figured it would be a good bonding experience with the class. I have to say that it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I didn't really have the right shoes for it, but my Perry Ellis shoes that look like bowling shoes worked surprisingly well! My feet didn't start getting sore until the last mile and no blisters! I didn't realize we were supposed to bring lunch, but when people heard I didn't have anything to eat, it was like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Food came flying at me from every direction and in less than five minutes I had way more food in front of me than I could eat. Gotta love Presbyterians and their relationship with food! Catholics have the crucifix, Protestants have the casserole dish...
Friday, September 4, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 19 (The Examine)
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 18 (The SFTS Seraphs)
My incoming class just might be a little psychotic, and I'm not helping (BWA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!)
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 17 (How Ridiculous Can a Denomination Be?)
More fun and festivities today. Went on a hike up Mt. Baldy; the view from the top is amazing! You can see Berkley and San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge from up there. There's also a really great view of Mt. Tamalpais, the "sleeping lady", which I was able to make out, but the image is pretty "abstract" and one of the guys with us just couldn't see it.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 16 (Harry Potter is My Life)
I can't believe it's only Tuesday; this orientation thing keeps you busy! Filled out a bunch of forms and had my picture taken for the second time, not counting all the shots they got of me talking to our new Roman Catholic dean at the get-together earlier tonight where I was sweating like a pig. I really need to see a doctor about this blood pressure medication because this sweating side affect is really starting to get on my nerves. I can't get over how cool it is that we have a Roman Catholic sister as the dean for our Presbyterian Seminary!
Anyway, I'm starting to get to know my classmates and I'm starting to realize just how liberal this school really is. I don't think I necessarily have a problem with it, I mean hey, they accepted me right?, but they seem to be awfully fond of pushing the envelope. I might even come across as looking pretty conservative once all is said and done. Everyone keeps telling me that seminary will radically alter my views, and maybe it will, but I come from a pretty solid and apparently conservative Presbyterian background, so who knows?
After the get together, five of us threw together an impromptu dinner of onions, olives, zucchini and anchovies with some fettucini. It turned out really good. I even tossed in a 99 cent jar of mixed wild mushrooms and it worked out great. I was a little scared of the mushrooms because I had never tried them before, but I figured if I was ever going to use them, now was my chance. It was so great cooking in a normal sized kitchen again instead of my tiny Oxtaby one.
Our class consists of, but is not limited to, a pastry chef, a math teacher, a business major, a med student and 2 marines from California, Alaska, Montana, Colorado, North Carolina and Korea. I've already registered for 17 units. Every day has been more strange and exciting and wonderful than the last. And, magical. Here is some evidence that I might have accidentally enrolled at Hogwarts:
1. The administrative building and one of the classroom wings are actual castles.