I’ll put the emphasis on the evidence, begging for the proof.
Sometimes the hardest thing to believe is the truth.

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I asked God for the chance to do things wrong. I wanted to come to him the way “real” sinners do, desperately needing his redemption. This was probably foolish of me, but it was what it was, and I wanted it. Because if one does nothing wrong one’s whole life, then one does not need God, and I wanted to need him. I wanted to feel that need for him. And then I wanted to feel anything at all, and that led me to do things wrong. Isn’t it funny how God can give us exactly what we ask for?

I am only a small, lost little girl. The older I get, the littler I realize I am. I realize that I am not going to grow any bigger, and I am not going to find my way. Sometimes I’ve wondered if there is even any way to find. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a world in which God did not exist. In some ways it would be liberating: We could do whatever we wanted, no guilt! The Bible says this isn’t true freedom, but in a world without God, what the Bible said wouldn’t matter. I am not saying this is the right way to look at things, only one way to look at them. I do not think it is the right way.

I’ve been feeling aimless since I started thinking like this. In a world without God, what am I supposed to live for? What’s left that even matters? Love? But then, without God, what is love? Do we expect to love by ourselves? We can’t do it. Most people in our culture don’t even believe in love anymore. The young and idealistic do. The couples celebrating their fiftieth anniversary do. But so many of those in between just can’t fit it into the routine functioning of the world. They just don’t see it there. And without God, there is nothing to see.

Here is what it comes down to. I cannot cope with a world devoid of love, and I do not wish to cope with a world devoid of God. There are things I can never see with my eyes, but it wouldn’t be faith if I could. Anyone can believe their eyes. It takes something different to believe your heart. I am still learning this. Sometimes I am still dumbfounded by what my God has done. I am human. Perhaps I am wrong. But I would rather be happy than right.

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"The essence of prayer is song, and man cannot live without a song." ~ Heschel

Savior
He can move the mountains.
My God is mighty to save.
Forever
author of salvation
He rose and conquered the grave.
Jesus conquered the grave.

Sarah: let's play the state game.
Mandii: umm..... Charizard. NO! That's my groin slash ovaries!
Sarah: I'm pretty sure your ovaries are up here.
Mandii: then it's my groin.
Sarah: I'm pretty sure you don't have a groin.
Mandii: wrong!!
Sarah: What have you been hiding from me??!!
Mandii: the real reason heather moved out is......
Sarah: eewwww!!!!

Moving right along....

Many things happened today. And yet, nothing at all really happened until dusk had fallen. I went to evening chapel, which I always do when it's offered because it's more worship-centered than regular chapel. Even though I have a sort of love-hate relationship with the band, I generally enjoy hearing them play, even though they usually pick songs I don't know. I've really gained an appreciation for traditional hymns while here. Everybody knows them, and if you don't, well hey, the music is there in the hymnal for you to sightread, so no problem. I mean, it's not like contemporary worship songs are hard to pick up (far from it), but always focusing on learning the proper tune distracts me from the purpose of worshipping.

Tonight was just like any other night in that respect, but I still found myself drawing really close to God. I just sort of allowed the waves of music to wash over me and focused on feeling God's presence instead of trying to decipher the melody that matched the words on the screen - which, I might add, were more about "me" and how God made "me" feel and made "my" life better. This tendency in contemporary worship is another reason that I'm starting to prefer hymns. But words aside, and the fact that the praise band played fantastically tonight aside, and really, the fact that I was in a room filled with people aside, I was just drawn in.

And then they had this prayer up on the screen about calling yourself things like "rejected" when God has "adopted and accepted" you, and I just started crying - not sad tears at the reminder of my recent rejection, but happy tears that the same rejection had set me up to feel so vastly loved by God in a way that I can't remember feeling ever before. I found myself kneeling during the last song, before which most of the others had left. I forgot that I was in a classroom in the basement of the library, that anyone else was in the room at all, and that people had to be making that music that continued to move me even after the prayer. It was beautiful. And all I could do was cry, and pray in my head over and over, "Thank you, Jesus. Thank you."

After that moving spiritual experience, I met up with John, a friend I met during Winter Retreat, to play guitar. He's just learning to play, and wanted me to show him some stuff, which I did to the best of my ability, but I don't consider myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination, nor am I really a teacher - that's my mom. It was fun, regardless, and we did work our way through a couple of praise songs (which I chose specifically because of their simplicity). I borrowed Andrew Piercey's acoustic guitar because I only have my electric on campus. It's much slimmer than mine and has a better cutaway. I'm sort of jealous. Shh, but don't say anything about it to my acoustic guitar. She's pretty. But overweight.

John and I laughed about my chord book being from 1977. Then we realized that it was 10:00 and we weren't allowed to be in my room anymore because visitation hours ended at 10, so we hurriedly packed up everything and went to find somewhere else to play. But there were people in my lounge, so we checked the first floor. And the classroom in the basement. And the sketchy-ish smaller classroom in the basement. ALL were being used! Then we found an open storage room filled with chables (those chairs with desks attached) that looked about as old as my chord book, stacked precariously enough to avalanche at any moment. Perfect.

But we had just set up camp and started playing when Maddie came in, looking bewildered, and asked if the room had been open when we got there, then told us we shouldn't be in there and suggested we go play in a lobby somewhere (even though I'm pretty sure there are rules against hanging out and making noise in the lobbies). Because clearly the reason we were in there was because we wanted to make out, right? The guitars were just a cover. Obviously. So we went and sat on the hard floor in the basement lobby and played there. Curse those visi-freakin-tation rules, BAH!

We were joined by Andrew (not Piercey) and Sarah Mac, and we all played and sang some random praise songs and the one from Juno, "Anyone Else but You." I think we did a better job with it than the recording on the soundtrack (not very hard to do). I don't particularly like the original, either. But it's a really cute song, and really easy to play! We got some food at Claymore and said good night.

Then Sarah and I launched an idea we had all talked about between songs, which was starting a movement to break social norms - do things like stage a musical in Lane, or be a close-talker for a day. Things that would mess with other people and make them feel awkward, you know? We created a Facebook group called SICK PIE, which is an acronym for Spontaneous Infringement of Cultural Kustoms, Paradigms, Institutions and Expectations (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28588915550). So far we have about six members, which is impressive considering that the group is barely an hour old, and it's the middle of the night - how many people do you really think are chilling on Facebook when there are things to do, like cramming, or sleeping? So I'm pretty stoked to have this excuse to make a complete arse out of myself... just so long as SICK PIE gets big and backs me up! I think we should make stickers featuring our group picture (a piece of pumpkin pie saying, "I put vegetables in your piiieeeee!")

Going to sleep now. I may not have class until 11:25, but I was sort of hoping to get breakfast at Lane since, you know, I haven't bought food for my room since before break. I was going to get some on the way back up, but Sarah and I hitched a ride with Joe, so my parents weren't there to take me grocery shopping. Sad day. Now I have no food. Almost literally. Depending on when I wake up tomorrow and whether the dining hall is still open, it may soon become very painfully literal.

WARNING: SPOILERS!

Okay. You know the kinds of movies I'm talking about when I say that you've been waiting for them since before anyone said a word about their being made. Since you finished reading the book, you've not only wanted to see the cinematic interpretation, but direct, star in, or film it. Right? And then you start seeing commercials, and you plan your trip to the movie theater months in advance so you can see it the very day it comes out. Maybe it was Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings - heck, maybe it was both. Personally, I've always had this love for Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. I know that seems oxymoronic. I'm a Christian. I'm supposed to hate atheists and atheistic art, right?

Wrong! I'm supposed to love everybody because they're created in God's image, and HE loves them. And I will never learn to counter wrong worldviews if I refuse to come into contact with them. And on top of everything, it's just a great book. Francis Schaeffer says we can recognize someone's technical mastery even if we disagree with their worldview, and Pullman. Is. A. Master. The Dark Materials trilogy is a fantastic work of imagination - fantastic in more senses than one. "Fantastic" means that it's FANTASY, i.e. not true, and if I approach it with that mindset, then no harm will come to me. New Line Cinema's Ileen Maisel says: “It’s a story of a young girl’s journey to self awareness and understanding the price of free will." With that in mind, one could potentially interpret the killing of God in the Amber Spyglass as a figurative killing of God when humans choose to follow their own imperfect wills rather than God's perfect will. I know that's not how Pullman intended it, nor how most will interpret it, and I am all for getting the artist's intended message out of a work rather than coating it with our interpretations (even if we think they're better). But I really would rather think of it like that. Anyway, on to the real point of this post.

IT SUCKED. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY OR YOUR 1 HOUR AND 53 MINUTES. I mean, it was passably good up to a point. I know that I can't ask a movie to be exactly the same as a book. The major plot elements remained the same, the actors seemed to fit their roles, the animation wasn't too overdone, and then... Chris Weitz left out the last 100 or so pages of the book. Oh, except for the obligatory fight scene from chapter 20 or so, when the panserbjorne go at it. They moved that up. When the credits started rolling, I basically shouted - yes, shouted - "WHAT?! Where's the end??!"

I was nearly in tears as Lyra was telling Roger all the wonderful things they were going to do and how she and him and the witches and Lee Scoresby and Iorek Byrnison were going to save the worlds from the Magisterium, because we all KNOW that Roger is killed at the end! I was waiting for that catharsis to happen and didn't really mind that three of my guy friends would see me blubbering all over the place. And then, abruptly, it just - ended. Right there in Scoresby's airship! YOU CAN'T PUT A HAPPY ENDING ON A BOOK IN A TRILOGY NAMED "HIS DARK MATERIALS." I wanted that catharsis and was sent away unfulfilled, and I think I wouldn't have been much more fulfilled even if I had never read the book. PLUS, where does this put them when it comes to the second movie? That is, if they even bother making it, which I hope they don't, because this one was not worth it, and let's face it, there ARE people, especially young ones, who will get horribly twisted ideas about God and the Church if the series is completed. If the trip to Svalbard is left out, and Roger doesn't die, there is no premise for The Amber Spyglass. If Asriel doesn't kill him to get into the city in the aurora, Lyra gets stuck in her world. And if these things get tacked onto the beginning of The Subtle Knife, the narrative flow will be choppy at best, because TSK opens with Will in his own world, and then he meets Lyra, who has already crossed into another world via the gate Asriel opened by splitting Roger and his daemon at the end of the first book! So in short, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING, WEITZ??? Way to decimate one of my favorite stories of all time.