Dorienne's Log

I will finish Flight this week.

I will finish Flight this week!

I’ve taken off an entire week from work and I am determined to make the best of it. Aside from cleaning the house and reading in general, I am going to finish Flight this week. My goal was initially my birthday, but I can get it done this week. By the time my birthday rolls around, I will be knee deep in school work and before I know it, the day will have come and gone and the book still won’t be done. Then will come the depression that I couldn’t achieve one of my goals and so on and so forth. I will finish Flight this week…

I’ve been writing a lot recently and thinking about other projects as well, specifically Luka. There is a part of me that wants to dive right into him, but I know I shouldn’t until (if) I’m published. I’ve heard it’s kind of taboo for a writer to begin with a series of novels, not knowing if he or she will ever get signed for a second book. Luka will be a monster five-book process and as much as I want to get to it now, I suppose I’ll just have to wait.

Something fun I’ve been doing in Flight, however, is fleshing out my original characters. That is the trouble with fan fiction. Many of your characters are already set, so if I made any real changes to their personalities, I would be betraying the character. With my own people, however, I can shape and contort them any way I see fit. One benefit of fan fiction, though, is that I can see myself reusing some of my original characters in completely original work. I’m sure I’ll use “Maya” in some other capacity and I’ve already found a use for “Deondre Meekham” and his uncle…It’s just fun to watch this little literary world I’ve created evolve almost on its own.

And speaking of evolution…This week’s Sunday School lesson was on Genesis 1:1-25. The first verse is the most profound and the best:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Just wonderful if you really sit down and think about it. God was there before all; before everything that was or ever could be. It’s almost like if you believe in just one verse, you’re halfway “home” already. What interested me most about the lesson this week was the discussion I had with other teachers on the subject of “day” in this first chapter.

I have been raised in a pragmatic world full of scientific thinkers and although I’ll cannot say what I’ll “never” do, I do no think I will ever see “day” in Genesis as a set of 24 hours and here’s why. A day, the way we as humans see the earth, is comprised of the rising and setting of the sun, around which we revolve as our solar system spins around our galaxy in our corner of God’s universe. Simply put, a day to the earth means that the planet has made one full turn on its axis causing the sun to “rise” and “set.” In Genesis 1:3, God says “Let there be light.” and there was, however, God had not yet created the sun and stars and other entities that create light as we think of it today. Light was there, separate from the dark, because God spoke it, without needing anything to produce. Light was because God wanted it to be.

What is of most importance to understand, however, is that God exists outside of time. Thousands of year or one second could pass to God and it can have the same significance. HE is outside of time. So, God called the light “day” and the dark “night” because humans are finite, practical creature that do exist within the bounds of time and so needed something upon which to understand their world. This is where the concept of “day” comes. If “day” in this biblical sense, was created before the entities by which we measure a day, how can we honestly say that the “day” so referred in Genesis 1:5 meant 24 hours?

Unless God comes before me himself to tell me different, this is something I cannot believe. Science tells and shows me that everything that is on the earth was created over the course of millions of years, not 168 hours. What is important and should be remembered about this text however, is that Genesis is not meant to be a scientific doctrine that dictates every single step God took to create the world. Its purpose is to let us know that in the beginning, God was there and he created everything in the universe. We can argue that evolution is the mechanism used by God to get us where we are today, but God is and always will be the driving force behind everything. He is the answer to the “why” when one asks, “Why did said fish mutate in such a way that it could survive outside water?” or “Why said animal laid an egg with a hard shell that could live outside water thus giving us the first land animals?” There is always a why when it comes to evolution and where the atheists answer the question with pure dumb luck and/or fate, I will always answer it with God.

When you think about it logically, it makes a little more sense doesn’t it? Honestly, which would you believe: that everything this is or was in the world came to be because God has created it in his master plan or, that every beautifully complicated organism from the smallest microbe to the largest whales was founded out of some primordial “ooze” and evolved out of chance? When stood next to one another, one of these options holds far more credence than the other.

Phew…I hadn’t meant to carry on like that today, but when the spirit moves you…:)

Leave Xanga for two weeks and they change everything on you…

Oh well. I’m back and again, nothing much has been happening.

All my “friends” hate me now. It happens, but I know when I’m right and this is one of those situations. A-B is effectively screwing me over for the rest of this year and the next, but I will hold my head high and smile nonetheless. This week is going to be excruciating there. I have so much to do it’s really just ridiculous. They do this every year. The “let’s wait to until the last second and ask Dorienne to do a million tasks at once” attitude is getting old. I have to teach, that which is difficult enough to learn for my own needs let alone teach when no one else knows what’s going on. The whole thing just makes me sad and I’m in desperate need for a vacation. Luckily for me, I’m having surgery again and I’ll have plenty of time to “rest.”

I’ve just been feeling so low and useless lately and I’m not sure what, if anything, I can do to remedy the situation. I think I’m just ready for a change. I’ve been here for far too long and I need to see some new faces and do some new things. I think I just feel especially down today, because I was just soooooo tired in church today and I left immediately after the service. The Lord’s Supper service just kept going on and on and on. I had half a mind to just get up and walk out; I was just so tired I could barely focus. I understand how important communion is. I really do. But I have yet to see the significance of saying the same exact things over and over again in a hundred different ways month after month. It’s always the same people there every single Sunday. We all know what’s up. It’s getting to the point where I’m considering not attending the first Sunday’s service, just to avoid these annoyingly long lectures about communion. Every month, I just feel like, “Please! Just give me the cracker and the juice and let me be on my way!”
I think I’ve also been annoyed with church recently, because last week our pastor made such a big to-do about coming to afternoon service as well as morning service, and when I showed up, it had been cancelled. I drove ALL the way down there and then had to drive ALL the way back. Then yesterday, I got to our 10:30 choir practice at 10:33 and waited another 20 minutes before anyone else showed up. Our director was even late. And today in Sunday School, the little booklet they give us, said something I thoroughly did not agree with in regards to evolution versus creation, blah, blah, blah….I honestly don’t see why science and religion feel they must mix. You can’t test faith. You can’t make experiments on it. It is what it is. Science is based on testable, reproducible facts. Religion is based on faith. Why must the two be set in comparison all the time?! Why is that I can’t believe in both evolution and creation?! Why can’t anyone else agree with the idea that evolution is what got everything on this Earth to this point and that God is the “why” behind everything?! Why is this a principle that is so difficult for people to understand?! Science is the “how” of anything in the world and faith is the “why” behind that “how.”

Sigh…

I just feel so very sad and I don’t know why.

Maybe because it’s another September and I’m coming ever closer to another birthday without feeling that I’ve accomplished anything. The other day at work, I told everyone that I felt old, like I was closer to my late 30s than my early twenties and they all just laughed and said that I was “cute.” Why? It’s not like they ever felt fifteen years older than they were at my age. So, what’s with the laughter?

I set some goals for myself in my last entry and it was like the next day, that I went back on those same goals; the McDonald’s one anyway. I haven’t had any more since then, but it’s very discouraging to have a goal fresh in your mind and squelch on that goal when you feel trapped. Oh well.
I’m going to work out this week. In one form or another. I need to lose at least ten pounds before my surgery. I’ve told myself that to keep from gaining an exuberant amount of weight like I did with the first surgeries, I was only going to eat when I needed to take pain medication. We’ll see how well that’ll work out.

Okay, time to uplift myself….
Today I will:
Do all my laundry
Clean the bathroom
Finish the subdomain for the wedding pics
Clean my room
Make this stupid video thingy work
Work on my book
Study for next and winter quarter’s

It’s a good list and the best part is that it’s quite doable!

I’ve been reading all about the conflicts in the mideast all morning.

I don’t think I was going anywhere with that, it just must be said because it got me to my present state.

I think it’s highly far-fetched to think that my single prayers have reached God and that He acted in my favor, but still….Though Israel has yet to cease fire on Lebanon, the US has at least made some comments to the world that sound as if we do not honor what Israel has been doing to the Lebanese people, and that’s a start. Sometime, either last week or simply last weekend, I found myself praying “God, please speak to your children of Israel. Please, speak to your children of Israel,” because I wholeheartedly disapprove of their actions. Yes, two of their soldiers were taken, and yes, Hamas has been making life more and more difficult for them, yet I still can’t see how Israel has the right to simply start bombing.

The US did the same thing following September 11th, and we were wrong too, but several things must be considered. First and foremost, terrorists, I use the name loosely, had used planes full of civilians to take out a major symbol of US economic growth and overall global power, killing more than three THOUSAND people in the process. For many of us, the wounds are still fresh and I know the thought of those events occurring in my life that Tuesday, never fail to bring a tear to my eye. More than three thousand people loss their lives in one day. Not three thousand soldiers, not three thousand active supporters of an imposing regime, three thousand people who had families and homes and were just living their lives. They were no more guilty of any unbeknownst atrocity committed by the quiet powers that be in the US, than the smallest child who has no knowledge of a world outside of its parents.

Second, the existence of the US has never come into question. Yes, there was a thriving populace of people living on this soil, before the word “America” was first uttered, but how many other countries have developed in the ways of the US? How many other countries were founded by invaders who not only remained, but remained long enough to outnumber and drive off the remaining indigenous peoples living on the land? Few if any, and none have gained the sheer might as the US.

Also, the US is not a secular nation. Granted a vast majority of its citizens are Christians, however, there are also Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Agnostics and numerous members of smaller religions. The US’s War on Terror, is not a war against Muslims, it is not Christians against Muslims, it is one country (our allies notwithstanding) fighting against those who would want to take away the freedom live one’s life as one chooses if only given the chance. The clash between Israel and the rest of the region, comes down to Jews versus Muslims, in its simplest form. You cannot expect to setup a Jewish state in a region where everyone is Muslim and expect complete harmony. It must also be considered that when we (the US) went into the Middle East, it was to a) finish what was left undone in the early 90’s and b) to remove an unjust leader. Yes, the situation in Iraq sucks right now, but it will get better. A civil war in Iraq will most likely take place before it does, but Iraq will be a democracy and the type of place where someone, be they from Ohio, Amsterdam, Ghana or Thailand, could visit and experience the country and its history without fear of being killed due to secular violence.

Now, even with all of this in the US’s stead, if we decided that we were simply going to begin bombing another sovereign nation over two soldiers, that international outcry would be such that all of the world would gather up in unison against us. Economic sanctions would be put on us, the UN would be in Washington trying to help oust our leaders, the list goes on. Two kidnapped soldiers are not worth the hundreds killed and the altered lives of thousands. I don’t care how long this issue has been occurring. It is unjust and a complete exaggeration. Don’t get me wrong: I believe that Israel has a right to exist just as much as I do to vote, but they do not have the right to just start bombing civilians over two soldiers. How many American soldiers….the hell with that, Americans period have been kidnapped by militants in Iraq? Are we bombing that nation off the map for those kidnapped souls? Of course not. Why? Because, as unfortunate as it sounds, the lives of the few who had been kidnapped are not worth the potential loss of life if we began a ridiculous bombing campaign in civilian-populated areas of Iraq.

(Phew)

With all this flowing through my mind, I began to pray that God speak to the children of Israel and stop the carnage. Reading BBC News today got me to Google Hamas and then to Wikipedia and then through a course of clicks that got me reading about the Prophet Muhammed, which of course got me thinking about Jesus and why I follow Christianity. While I believe, that every human being has a right to follow whatever religion they chose and also that Christianity is what is right for me because it has been proven countless times to me, while perhaps it has not for others, I can’t imagine someone who has heard of Jesus’ miracles and then of the Prophet and choose the latter instead. Granted, I don’t know a lot….well anything really about Islam, but that which I do know does not present the greatest picture to me. From what I have about Islam, which granted may be spotty at best, women are not equal to men in any regard, however a woman is the mother of Jesus and she is revered and, from what I understand about Catholicism, which is again very little, she is prayed to and she prays to Jesus on our behalf and He speaks to God. That’s quite a difference in my mind. So while, I sat reading about the much debated biography of Muhammed’s life, I wondered if I were exposed to something else first, say Islam for example, would I have jumped to Christianity upon hearing about it? Of course the answer is yes, and really it’s through knowing even the little that I do about the Bible. I would rather ask for blessings for One who is clearly not of this world. Jesus calmed stormy seas, turned water to wine, raised the dead, made the lame walk and the blind see, healed the sick, and not to mention the whole-dying-on-the-cross-for-the-sins-of-humanity-and-rising-in-three-days-to-ascend-to-heaven-thing. Jesus worked miracles; was a miracle, He came from a virgin mother. I feel confident when I think that the Bible stories alone, would bring me back to Christianity as they always have.

Other things happened this week too. I read an article about this physicist who has created a new mathematical theory that would challenge Einstein’s Relativity and also the idea of dark matter. Dark matter has always made me raise an eyebrow because claiming that celestial bodies moved about the universe due to it, sounds a lot like someone saying that the Earth is flat because one doesn’t feel that he or she walks on a curved surface. It was really an interesting article and it got me thinking about the universe in total. The Big Bang Theory is basically that “once-upon a time” there existed this dense ball if you will, that consisted of all of the matter in the universe. That ball exploded spewing matter across the universe as well as energy. This of course had me wondering the why question to which I can find none but secular answers. I guess that’s good because it keeps me a Christian, but I want to know. Why did that ball of matter burst? What was there before that ball of matter? How did it get where it was? Are there other great balls of matter somewhere that we just can’t see yet? All these questions and no one has answers or will ever answers, at least not in my lifetime, though I do plan on living until at least two hundred….

I’ve learned something interesting recently: class is important, and I think this bit of knowledge will help me be a better student. Just hearing people’s reactions about me missing class makes me rethink how I perceive going to class. It shouldn’t be taken for granted and I can never be at a disadvantage for hearing the material one more time. I think I’ll start to go more, besides it’s time that I stop letting everything else get in the way of what I need to do.

That said, I’ve got packing to do. We’re moving and hopefully life will be great.