Hear me speak what’s on my mind
Let me give this testimony…

I came across an article from an old issue of The Wittenburg
Door that brought back a flood of memories from my youth group days, not because the article described my experience so much as touched on names, desires, and longings that usually went unspoken–albeit centered around that “righteous fox” of the CCM world, Amy Grant. The article is called “Sex, Amy Grant, and the Quest for the Righteous Fox,” and it’s one of the best growing-up-evangelical short articles I’ve ever come across, mostly because it is so exact in describing what was going on in a lot of earnest Christian teenage guys’ minds at the time.

Unlike the author of that article I did not have fantasies about meeting Amy Grant backstage and having her falling in love with me. Not at all, considering that I loathed most CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) in the same years that the article’s author sighed over Grant’s album covers. But curious to see what this guy saw in her, I searched Youtube for Amy Grant videos just now, and along the way, I somehow stumbled on this concert video–not of Grant, but another CCM giant and her sometime writing partner, Michael W. Smith:

More memories began flooding back. In this video, “Smitty” as he is known to his fans is playing at the Patriot Center, at George Mason University. I remembered the very first rock/pop concert I ever attended was seeing Michael W Smith (Jars of Clay, opening) at the Patriot Center, at George Mason University. Was I actually at this concert? The date seemed about right–1993, the year I entered youth group and I remember distinctly a bunch of us young youth group kids making the trek to see this Bryan Adams-cum-Elton John-and-Billy-Joel soundalike play for tens of thousands of Christians (even if a few his songs did play on mainstream soft rock radio). I immediately began writing a comment on the Youtube page to shout out–hey, I’m in that crowd somewhere. This was my first concert, even if I grew to loathe this sort of music later…

Then I remembered: Jars of Clay opened at the concert I was at. And I also remembered–Jars of Clay didn’t release their first full length album until 1995. They almost certainly couldn’t have been on the 1993 tour. And I remember being older than 12 at the concert I went to, and if it was in May 1993–that was before I entered youth group altogether.

Rats. That wasn’t my concert after all.

Then I thought: how the heck do I still remember the exact date of Jars of Clay’s first release? Why, when I listen now to “Place in this World,” does it seem pretty tuneful and well-constructed and not retch-inducing like it used to be? (Even if it sounds almost exactly like a Bryan Adams power ballad?) Why does the chorus of Amy Grant’s “Every Heartbeat” get stuck in my head and “El Shaddai” turn out to have actual Biblical and theological substance? (Well–I do understand the Hebrew now, maybe that helps.) Amy Grant and Smitty also actually wrote a song together that we still sing from time to time–”Thy Word”–and while it has some of the things I still don’t like about most praise songs, that song is probably the main reason I remember Psalm 119:105. In the King James rendering, of all things.

My friend Matt once said that one day, we are going to look at all those cheesy CCM and praise songs that filled our ears as teenagers, and think of them the way our parents do when they hear the Beatles or the Stones–with nostalgia, recognizing late that there must have been something to them if we still remember them so clearly and so distinctly all those years later.

I’m going to go put on Jars of Clay’s first album. For old times’ sake. “This is the one thing/the one thing that I know…”

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything of substance, so this is a cheerful reminder that the school that I attend is not just any old grad school but a seminary. Which means that one of the main things they are training me to do is preach sermons based on solid Biblical study and prayerful reflection.

Last quarter, I took a preaching class, where I had to preach two sermons for a grade. All that painful Greek and fumbling through the lexicons was really aimed at adding up, somehow, God willing, to something like…
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1.) Start early. Very early.
2.) Write down the page number for every piece of evidence you want to cite from your sources, so you don’t have to hunt a morsel of information among a dozen thick volumes.
3.) Formatting and stylistic issues take much longer to fix than one thinks.
4.) Have a good idea of the topic you want to write about before doing the bulk of the research.
5.) Start early. For heaven’s sake, start early.
6.) The paper that results from all night writing sessions is unlikely to be one’s best or most coherent work.
7.) Systematic theology is not English literature. It is much harder even for IB-trained monkeys like me.
8.) Listening to music only helps if the music is familiar and thus non-distracting.
9.) Start early. Two weeks is barely enough for an acceptable paper as it is!

One down, two to go–fortunately, they are due on March 17th. Which means I better start them this week.

Still in catch-up mode this week. I’ve been busy working on other assignments this week, including preliminary research for the paper for my New Testament class. I’m also taking an exegetical methods class, and that class requires a paper, too–but I have a good idea of what I want to do there. Here, I must give a public thanks to moritheil for hosting a debate on a particular point of Thomas Aquinas’s view of the final judgment. The poking around I did for that entry (you can see my comment further down in the post) turned out to be the preliminary research I needed for my exegetical paper, which is going to be about the definition of “the saints” and what Paul meant when he said “the saints will judge the angels.”

Look for a short podcast coming this Friday–with commentary on blasphemy (with regard to the Muhammad cartoons that have caused such consternation), and maybe (if I have time), the audio production version of a short story. Stay tuned–it’s definitely something for the long haul.

Looks like I’m turning in the paper late after all. I decided to turn it in late after I realized that I couldn’t do a good job on it if I rushed it last night. Fortunately, the penalty for late papers isn’t very heavy–5 points off (out of 100) for every week it’s late, for a paper that’s worth 30% of the final grade. (Yes, week, not day. This is much lighter than the late penalty for computer science projects that I had in undergrad.) I figured that it was more important to do a good, thorough, job on it, especially considering the subject is theology. It is a bit humbling, though. I always thought of myself as being naturally good at writing papers, but all my previous experience was in English literature. This was my first theology paper, and there was tons more research and reading to absorb than I’m used to.

And for those who are immediately thinking, aha, he procrastinated again!: well, your assumption would normally be quite justified. Except I actually started doing this a week before the due date, which is far earlier than I normally start doing papers. I anticipated that this one would take longer (and I even managed to check out bunch of books from the campus library before a lot of people did on the subject). Who knew it would take even longer than a week? Plus I had other assignments due…all that got in the way.

So I’ll be working this week on finishing the paper, and hopefully doing a great job with only a five point handicap. I can handle that.

In other news, I managed to grab some pictures of the LA Chinatown parade last weekend! Unfortunately my new DSLR camera didn’t make it in time for it, but I still managed to get some pretty nice pics with my little pocket Casio. I didn’t stay for long because I had to do my paper, but I got enough.

Here’s the mayor of LA, shaking hands with the crowd and saying “Gong he fat choy” (the show was run by the Cantonese speakers and so no “hsien nien quai le” heard anywhere):

And finally–here is Miss Chinatown 2006:

Click here to see all the pictures.

Anyways, this will be yet another busy week, as I have to not only finish the late paper, but also start preliminary research for my New Testament paper too (by Thursday). Plus other smaller assignments…it’s going to be an intense next few weeks, especially now that I know I need at least two weeks to finish a paper.

There is a Danish film called Ordet (directed by Carl Th. Dreyer in the mid 1950s). In it, one of the characters is a crazy young man named Johann (shown above). Johann was a former seminarian who has since lost his wits. His family considers him crazy because he believes he is literally Jesus Christ, and he is depicted in the movie speaking in Biblical and quasi-biblical language to everyone he meets.

One of the people who is offended by him the most is the new Lutheran pastor in town. Puzzled, he asks Johann’s older brother what made him crazy. “Was it a bad love affair?” he asks.

“Nope,” the brother replies. “It was Soren Kierkegaard.”

From the scourge of the all-nighter,
and the pestilence of procrastination,
and the plague of theological excess,
O Lord, deliver us.
Kyrie eleison.

Warning: theology nerd material to follow. Enter at your own risk!

The man above is James DG Dunn. He may not look it, but this is a very big guy in the field of New Testament studies, and one of the leading lights in a burgeoning, controversial school of thought loosely called the New Perspective on Paul. The seminary lecture hall where he appeared tonight was packed, and I was smart enough to come 30 minutes early to take a seat, close enough to the front to be able to snap some decent photos. (Most came out blurry. The one above and the one below are the two best ones.)

The world of famous theologians is a small one, so “fame” is a relative term. Being a famous theologian, as Dunn is, still means that no more than a few hundred or thousand people have heard of you, a good number of them your academic peers, and the rest of them the impressionable students who were forced to read your book by your academic peers. Such was probably the case tonight, because the Fuller professor who introduced Dunn, Don Hagner, inquired how many people in the room were there because they were members of his current class on Romans. About a quarter of the hands went up.
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• 74 degrees, partly cloudy. ‘Nuff said.
• You can tell it’s the day of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena by the number of limos driving down Colorado Boulevard. And the airplanes flying big banner ads above. And all the people wearing USC shirts. I’m told that tickets were still available even today–for $4,000.
• I had trouble finding parking for the gym because of said football game. But find it I did, and I kept my resolution so far.
• There is no test in Systematic Theology I, because my prof remembers being “scarred for life” by the British examination system growing up and wishes not to subject us to the same experience. But I am being graded for my notes, which have to be turned in at the end of the course. They will be graded for not only completeness, but for spelling, grammar, and neatness, and must include a total of 15 pages of critical responses to the ideas in the notes. This is a new experience, to say the least. I actually have to take good notes now. This also makes having a working laptop imperative…
• Which is why I replaced the hard drive of my used laptop today. The old, 6 GB one it came with froze every 2-3 hours. That’s unacceptable when I have 3-4 hour long class sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thank God (literally) for Newegg, and their near-insant delivery times: I ordered the hard drive on Monday, and it arrived today! It helps that they’re based here in LA.
• I may have to replace the battery too, because it lasts less than 2 hours and plug space has to be fought for in class. I swear, at least 2/3 of the class has laptops, and the sound of everyone clicking away is a…new experience for me. If I wasn’t such a computer addict already it’d drive me nuts.
• My class is crowded beyond belief. And the desks are small. My laptop barely fits on it, and it’s an average size one. Pity the poor owners of the Powerbook 17″ (the LapZilla) or the behemoth Dell desktop replacement units.
• (For those who get it ) My systematics professor is what you would get if you took JI Packer and Karl Barth and put them in a blender. Seriously. They’re his two biggest influences. And he was actually Packer’s successor at Tyndale Hall for 17 years.
• He’s funny. Surprisingly so.

Celebrity handprints outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater

Writing Progress

Slow. Still have some ways to go in the outline; mostly on the sequence of events for the plot. The main thing I’m working on is making sure my protagonist isn’t too passive and that the plot points are not only logical but meaningful. If that’s too much creative writing workshop jargon, let’s just say that I’m trying to make sure everything makes sense to me before I embark on the great jungle that is the actual writing. If I learned anything from Robert McKee’s writing book, Story, it’s that structure matters a great deal and needs to be fixed before drafting–unless you want to rewrite the whole thing from scratch again when the first draft has serious structural problems. That’s been the case with all my previous stories, and I’ve often been too lazy to rewrite the whole thing unless it was for an assignment. I think that’s one reason why I’ve never managed to publish a story for real even though I’ve been writing fiction for well over half my life. So I’d like to get at least get one or two things right the first time, to save on work later. For the sake of my laziness at least.

I’m also considering taking a screenwriting course in the Winter, from UCLA Extension. I’m told by a good friend in class that for a community college, UCLA Extension is an excellent place to take film-related courses (he studied film formally at USC and knows some of the teachers at UCLA Extension), and it’s relatively affordable for college-level courses. (Half the price of seminary courses.) I see screenwriting as a natural extension of my fiction writing skills. I’ve also been slowly branching out to film for the past couple of years, which is, alas, so much more influential than novels and short stories. But I’m a storyteller. Whatever medium it’s told in, I want to tell stories. Might as well join the moviemaking bandwagon here in LA!

Harry Potter in Hollywood

The cover of the British edition of the first book, with the REAL title of the book. And they said a book with the word ‘philosopher’ wouldn’t sell!

I’m not a huge Potter fan. While I enjoy the books, and I enjoyed the last movie The Prisoner of Azkaban, I do think their extreme popularity is unwarranted. They’re fun stories, with very likable characters (Hermione–my kind of girl ), and with a strong moral backbone. I also don’t worry too much about fictional depictions of magic; the Christians who object to the depiction of magic in them would have problems with all fantasy, including Lewis’s and Tolkien’s, if they were consistent about it. There’s no invocation of spirits or witchcraft in that sense, unless it’s being made fun of or downright evil. (I am also a fantasy writer myself, natch. So there’s an element of pure self interest as well!) The books are also surprisingly clever and erudite, especially if you know a little bit of Latin and medieval literature; JK Rowling may have been a single working welfare mom when she wrote the first book, but she was a single working welfare mom with a degree in literature.

But they’re not especially well-written, nor particularly original overall, despite some delightful little details and some compelling world-building. Harry is also not a particularly compelling hero because he’s awfully passive. (I can identify with that weakness, alas, so I like Harry, but I like him more than I admire him.) He’s someone who’s more thrust into his role than someone who actually makes lots of decisive moral choices, except at the climaxes of the books. The books also largely follow the same plot, though they grow increasingly dark and complicated (and in my mind, better) with each installment. I look forward to the last book. The series still has the potential to be truly great, and would be quite a good coming-of-age cycle if the last book fulfills the promise of the series.

So I’m not a huge Potter fan, and this was in fact the first Potter film I’d ever seen in the theater rather than on video. I went mostly because I wanted to see the famous Grauman’s Theater and also to meet the folks from the film group of my church. And to take pictures, of course. Unfortunately, a lot of them were blurry and unusable, so I had to throw a lot of them out. But I’ll share what I have here.

We ate at Mel’s Diner before we went to see the movie. The original Mel’s Diner in Modesto, of course, was first made famous in George Lucas’s nostalgic film American Graffiti, and has since become a chain. After that we picked up our tickets and waited in a block-and-a-half line that wrapped around the corner, with people dressed in Hogwarts robes and striped scarves and wizard hats. While in line, I saw a limo drive up, rap music pouring out of the windows. I have no idea who was in it or if that person was famous.

Grauman’s Chinese Theater has, as the name implies, a faux Chinese theme. The interiors have fake Chinese paintings on the walls and lanterns. It was built in the 1920s, and has more or less maintained its current form since. The theater was called Mann’s Chinese Theater for many years, but its original name was restored recently.

The screen inside is gigantic. It’s the biggest screen I’ve ever seen, bigger than DC’s biggest screen in the Uptown Theater. Moreover, it’s a digital cinema, so the picture was razor sharp and fluid from almost any viewing angle and distance. When the THX logo appeared before the movie, the sound roared without a crackle or distorted pop. It was thrilling. I would not expect any less for Hollywood’s most famous theater.

The movie itself was roughly, as a film, the equal of the previous film–a rollicking adventure with good special effects; actually, some of them impressed me as much as the Lord of the Rings. It’s been a few years since I’ve read the book, so my memories were blurred and I didn’t notice any gigantic deviations from the book, aside from the dropping of some subplots. I have since learned there were quite a few changes, ones that have made some fans quite unhappy. I watched it mostly as a film, rather than an adaptation of a book, and I think it worked quite well as a film. I left the theater feeling satisfied. It was quite late when the movie ended and I went straight home–but not before I snapped a few more pictures.

This is the lobby of the Kodak Theater, the theater where the Oscars are now held each year. Imagine the red carpet running down the hall leading to the curb.

This, of course, is the famous Walk of the Stars on Hollywood Blvd. People deserving and undeserving have their own stars.

This is the other famous movie theater on Hollywood Blvd., the El Capitan. Many first run movies premiere here as well. My church is sponsoring a Chronicles of Narnia prescreening here in December. Alas, I will be back home in DC already by then.

Greek status: bad. Bombed today’s quiz purely because of lack of time, studied properly and thoroughly day before. Really, really need to do well on final to get A in class. Will find out how I did on last Friday’s midterm on Wednesday, and not expecting something great. Hope for score in the 80s at least.

Novel Outline: still ongoing. Lasting much longer than thought, though ideas much better developed than prior to writing. Excited by new ideas. Hope to be done this week.

Novel retitled: A Chain of Wishes. Considered The Wishing Chain as well. Former title more symbolic and pun-filled.

Self-discoveries: am lazy and procrastinating, and will use Internet far more when deadlines loom than when nothing to do. Caught in horns of dilemma–without deadlines, nothing gets done, with deadlines, procrastination massive and harmful. Applies to both self-imposed deadlines and school deadlines. Roots in unwillingness to face momentarily unpleasant tasks.

Times will write in telegraph style in future: never again.

Harry Potter premiere and pictures report: Wednesday. Short review: lots of fun.