This class has been an emotional experience in and of itself and with my last post I seek to address my feelings surrounding it. The main thing that strikes me is the environment for discussion that it created. For me, the academic and the personal have always been two distinct realms that I have been always reluctant, embarrassed even, to blend together. They were two seperate parts of my life.

I think the greatest thing I have learned is that there is comfort in destroying barriers and looking for applications of the academic in the personal and vice versa. I feel more confident in my voice when it is distinct, personal, and unique to me. I also feel more secure in my personal life looking at it from a different angle. Altogether, it has been a very positive experience.

Power. It plays out in countless ways in every aspect of our lives. We want to control our little corner of the world we live in. We want everything around us to conform to our presence. We don't want to look outside ourselves, not because we are opposed to what we might see, but because it would somehow loosen our control.

Yesterday I became engulfed in a major argument stemming from a relatively minor issue just because of this concept. I saught to impose my will on other's actions, while seeing any disagreement to this as a personal attack against my person. Why would they ignore me? Is there something about me they don't approve of? Can't they take me into consideration? This led to an essentially circular discourse where I would accept nothing less than total submission, but was so unwilling to trust those whom I loved. When it came down to it, I didn't even have a reason. I had reasons to be concerned, but not reasons to not trust. It had to be a moment where I would let go. So many emotions of frustration and just anger stem from an otherwise passive emotion of caring for someone. You wish to protect them, you worry about them, you ask them to keep themself safe, you impose rules to do so, they reject rules because they are based on a senseless need for power and lack of trust, this leads to anger. In the end, the caring nature at the heart of the conflict won out, but the sheer variety of responses to something of the like amazes me.

When it was all said and done, presenting to the class, discussing was an enjoyable experience. It first allowed me to collect my thoughts on where I was going/had gone with my blogging, but most importantly let others react. It became less my inner dialogue and more an outward discourse. What was most important to me was that other's could identify with what I had to say, others are seeking. I don't want to go so far as to say this was a therapeautic experience for me, as I don't see my goal as one of finding peace within myself but instead finding where that peace fits within a societal context. Initially this was a very confusing experience for me, but after hearing others it seems perhaps the seeker is a place within itself. Your niche is what you decide it to be, not what is dictated by a structure. It is the ultimate statement for agency in an age of increasing structural powers. I find contentment in that idea.

I had this odd experience on the bus the other day. Usually I sit with the Daily Texan or a book to read, my Ipod playing, and totally in my own world oblivious to what is going on around me. I get on early in the route, so there are a lot of empty spaces to spread out. As the bus gets closer to campus, it gets increasingly crowded so I eventually have to give up the extra seat i was using to stretch out or put my stuff on so those getting on can have a seat.

On this particular day, I had just looked up to see a flood of people getting on, casually making eye contact with one of them. My eyes quickly moved to look out the window, but i grabbed my backpack and tucked it under my legs to clear the space next to me and sure enough they sat down. Not a word was said, not even any more shared glances, just empty space. Should I take of my headphones to open myself to conversation or should I remain closed off? Would it be awkward to make such a gesture, in effect signalling that I want to be open? Is that kind of openness bad? Are we expected to have our bubbles? More questions than answers came running through my head so I decided to go with the easy road and remain oblivious, turning to look out the window and wait for the trip to end. It was a potential conversation missed.

Today was the last day of Kid's Korner, the after school kid's tutoring program I help out at. We had a christmas party where we just gave the kid's free time to do what they wanted. They could play games in the gym, decorate cookies, play educational games on the computers, color different pictures. It was basically just a relaxed atmosphere for kid's to be kid's for a couple hours.

In an earlier entry I introduced Daniel, one of the kid's I spend a lot of time with. Over the course of the semester, he has grown rather attached to me. Each time we break for homework time, he is insistant that I be the one to help him. It has also, as he understands it, given him the license to act up more because he believes he can get away with it. The more trusting he becomes, the more he believes he can push the boundaries of what he is able to get away with. That or he has just become more boisterous in general.

Today was a particularly interesting situation to deal with. His latest way of dealing with problems is to run from them. He will take off in the nearest direction and force someone to chase him. Today, even with the cold weather, he had the same strategy. I saw him running out the door with another helper following and knew what was going on so went outside after him. Perhaps I was just playing into his game, but couldn't see any other way out of it. He is usually shouting, running and screaming, or otherwise a fairly loud child, but when angry he becomes very silent. He would run under a porch and just sit, knowing I was too tall to effectively come after him. "Daniel, what is wrong?" No answer. "Daniel, do you want to come back inside?" No response. At one point I was able to chase him down and grab hold of him to stop him running away and he screamed, "I hate church, I never want to go back." "Why, Daniel? Did one of the other kids say something mean?" Nothing. This cat and mouse routine continued for about 15 minutes until he finally gave up and I just took his hand and walked him back to the church and he returned to his normal, loud, jovial self. He increasingly has these fits, but they never last more than a few minutes and they end as abruptly as they begin. It seems to me that his anger isn't really at the program, my best guess would be one of the other kids said or did something to upset him as that has been the case in the past, but their consistent nature seems odd. It is something I can't explain.

Vocabulary. It's an odd feeling when in a conversation I am on the same page emotionally with someone else and yet words and distinct concepts are difficult. I have already stated in an earlier blog how me and my girlfriend Emily come from different religious backgrounds. I am Christian and she is Jewish. Since I take several religiously focused classes, lead a bible study, and am otherwise thinking about religious issues often the topic is approached between the two of us from time to time. In my presentation and in other entries I have discussed how religion becomes both an emotion and a knowledge based system and my frustrations with reconciling the two under set definitions or identities. I find that in this interreligious dialogue I am forced to focus more on the emotional experience and pass by much of the terminology because it is not shared. We both have different vocabularies of addressing the topic. At times this can be frustrating, other times it can be liberating. On the one hand, it makes the conversation difficult, on the other, it forces me to look outside of any preconcieved notions I have, look outside of myself essentially, and form a new common vocabulary based on the experience itself. I could no longer explain myself, my faith, in the ways I had always been taught growing up and instead form my own vocabulary, our own vocabulary, to address something we both feel but express in different ways. Here I also must be careful not to oversimplify the situation and say that our feelings or our spirituality are the same because there are differences that have to be accepted. However, it is a dialogue of acceptance and growth in both understanding and our relationsip.

It always amazes me how much emotion can be attached to theology, or really any attempt at an intellectual conception of spiritual matters. For me, it bridges two concepts rarely related to each other: knowledge and emotion. The first seems to be housed in concepts, models, objects. They are devoid of life, housed in books, and simply exist in some timeless realm of words and phrases. Emotions on the other hand aren't bound by words and situational. Religion for me has become the combination of these two concepts.

I lead a bible study that embodies this combination. Well, to be more accurate, I co-lead a bible study with the pastor of the Wesley Foundation, the methodist campus organization that I belong to. In that relationship I constantly see this contrast, I try to understand systematically what it is we are reading each week, he asks what it means to me emotionally, what it makes me feel, what it makes me think about. We both see things a little different, but there is a feeling of acceptance that we are looking at the same thing, working toward the same goals. In leadership, both become necessary and we as a team work well together.

Last week we were reading a passage in Joshua, where the Hebrews were in the process of capturing the land of Israelites from the Canaanites and other inhabitants already present. Part of God's command as stated in the texts is that each town they conquer, they completely eliminate those present killing men, women, and children. Having these immoral, harsh, and otherwise cruel orders ascribed to a God otherwise related to such emotions as love, compassion, and mercy was difficult for many. Those who could justify these actions did so on a largely intellectual level, clearly God must have some higher understanding, some higher reason that we can't understand. God is just, so by ordering the deaths of the Canaanites they must have done evil. On the opposite end of the spectrum, those who could not justify it were more focused on the emotional aspects. They saw the continuing possibility of redemption in those people, couldn't they have been given another chance before they were killed? God is a concept, an idea, and it becomes an emotional being assigned human attributes. The difficulty is once an attribute is assigned, anything in contradiction seems hard to justify. It is a classification of someone, something, some idea held in common and yet not. The difference in these approaches and the response both emotionally and intellectually is interesting.

Why do I feel nervous when addressing the topic of religion? What is it about this topic in particular that makes it so taboo in general society? Any belief system is inherently public, in that it is gained, practiced, or both through an open atmosphere of discussion and worship and yet remains relegated to a strictly private sphere. This experience does depend on the personalities involved, but in my experience it's particularly applicable.

I have been asked many times, what is your major? When are you graduating? What are you doing after graduation? In essence, what do you want to do with your life? Usually I tend to blow of the question. "Maybe grad school", "Maybe look for a job", "I don't know, I haven't thought about it" are all typical responses. In reality, I do plan on going to graduate school in theology and am in the process of becoming an ordained minister through my church. However, I am very reluctant to bring this up in conversation. Why?

Several thoughts come to mind. First is a fear of being immediately classified based on whatever opinion someone has of the church. It's a topic that everyone has an opinion on, good or bad, and by saying that is where I plan to work I see myself as immediately being grouped into that opinion and I don't feel that any of these preconceived notions are capable of representing me. I also feel that by merely mentioning the topic I am breaching an entirely different level of conversation. Bringing religion into the conversation, even if not intended to be a jumping point into deeper conversation, somehow betrays the strictly superficial level maintained up until then. Altogether, it is a complicated experience and comes down to a comfortability issue. Are these concerns real, or merely fears in interacting with others on a personal level? At this point, I feel the latter.