Halloween

Okay, before I blog about what I was going to today, I really want to thank everyone for their encouraging comments on my last post - Stephen/zeh Reindeer, Josh, Mrs Stauffer, Robyn, Lady Kyleian and - last but oh my gosh certainly not least - Erin. I feel so amazingly blessed to have people who will support me like you guys...and occasionally make me cry. Not referring to anyone specifically, of course...but if I was I might name a certain dweller in a hole south of Cleveland. THANK YOU!

And seeing as today is Halloween - I figured I might as well post my opinion on a) why I celebrate Halloween, b) why I don't think it's wrong, and c) why I don't think there's a right or wrong about it. I shall start off by quoting my favorite pirateoftherings: "I'm not big on Halloween. I am, however, all for International Free Candy Day." That pretty much sums up my opinion in a nutshell. A couple Sundays ago we learned about the origins of Halloween from Pastor Bryan, and how its roots are in Samhain, a pagan holiday honoring the god of death, which eventually morphed into the day before All Saints' Day, namely All Hallows' Eve. Obviously, we do not celebrate Samhain, and would never dream of doing so. However, is Halloween really still the pagan holiday it originated in? Let's see. In the normal North American kid's Halloween, they make up a costume in October, maybe a movie character they like or a concept they think is clever, and they put it on on the night of October 31st and visit various neighborhood homes, which will be handing out candy. I've trick-or-treated since I was four years old, and I can say with certainty that I was always majorly excited for Halloween. Candy, right? Can't be a bad thing, really. Unless you're a dentist, I suppose. Anyway - there are definitely things about Halloween that I don't subscribe to. For example, dressing up as ghosts/witches/skeletons/demons/devils, etc, or decorating your house spookily. I think that's, whether we know it or not, glorifying something not affiliated with God and therefore not worthy to be glorified. Also, it scares the little three-year-olds dressed in clown costumes, and really, in my opinion it's all about them. So I guess basically what I'm saying is - do I think it's okay to celebrate evil things, remember pagan rites and subscribe to a religion I don't support? Of course not. I am, however, entirely okay with carving a pumpkin or two and handing out chocolate bars. There are no negative effects to be had from that, and it makes little neighborhood kids happy. Are people going to see Christians positively if we turn up our noses and keep our houses dark on Halloween? I don't think so.

At the same time, I can see why Christian parents wouldn't want to celebrate Halloween. It's not a Christian holiday in any sense of the word. It makes perfect sense to me why you might want to avoid that. Also, if straying into that kind of thing is a spiritual stumbling block (heh, my mom's phrase) for you, then by all means avoid it. Don't be tempted. Your opinion is just as valid as mine. I remember comparing it to Harry Potter books in youth Sunday School - some Christian parents are cautious about HP as well. I've read them all, enjoyed them, and they never hurt me. That's not to say they couldn't cause someone else to fall away from God. Sometimes these things are a matter of personal opinion and choice rather than right or wrong.

~Sil

[someone wanna give me a quote? :D]

Costa Rica Reflections

Okay, so I was rereading the journal I kept in Costa Rica today. Yes, I should have been doing science. That's not the point. Anyway, I was kinda thinking about how I didn't blog a whole lot about Costa Rica, and I think the reason was that I got back from that trip feeling like I had more questions than answers, and I'd discovered more negative qualities about myself than positive. It was an amazing experience, but at the same time, it was a bit...I can't think of the word. I'm SO glad I went, and I think my absolute favorite time of day while we were there was just before dinner, when we were all sorta hanging around, doing random things...just chilling. There was such a sense of family and fun and...I loved it. With those memories, though, I think that reading back I realized that I learned stuff I hadn't necessarily anticipated. At various times I learned I'm jealous, selfish, afraid, self-centered, high-maintenance, proud...I learned how flawed I am, how insignificant I am. It reflects so much on how I need God. I think part of the reason I felt so confused was that everyone I've ever talked to who went on a missions trip came back glowing and praising God and so willing to talk about how amazing it was and how blessed they were, and when I got back all I wanted to do was sleep. Really. It was an awesome experience, but I think I maybe subconsciously wondered what I'd done wrong, that I wasn't reacting like that. I actually had such a rush of Costa-Rica away-from-home-sickness reading that journal! I missed everyone so much.

Anyway - in one of our devotions while we were there, the guy who was doing them (Marco) said that in the grand scheme of things, a lot of the time it's the people who go on the missions trip who are more affected by it than the people they serve. It's true. And looking back, I don't know if I would do it differently. I think God meant for me to learn that about myself; I think he meant for me to realize just how pitiful my attempts to be self-sufficient are. I could have done without the lying in bed at night wondering who the heck I was - another big, and slightly strange, discovery was that my idea of fun is different from everyone else's, and my personality, and basically everything that I am seems incongruent with everything everybody else is - but it was really an invaluable experience, no matter how many crazy confused questions about myself I came back with. And also that it would be good to figure out a bit more about myself sometime.

It's actually a bit like some of my characters, the ones I've made up. I made them, therefore when, for example, someone says, "What would Merrin do if ___?" I should know right off the bat, right? But more often than not the answer comes up like, "Well, she'd think this, but she'd probably do that. I'm not sure what her perspective is on ___, she hasn't told me yet." Sometimes my own characters surprise me (Merrin wants to cry at the strangest times. Not even kidding. I'll be sitting there writing her and all of the sudden she's crying and I'll be going "wha...?") so is it really much of a shock that I surprise myself as well?

And there are my ruminations for the day.

~Sil

"No, you lived in a hole south of Cleveland for ten years. Elvis lives there now."

EDIT: A school assignment today was to describe someone in ten lines of iambic pentameter. I'm pretty sure the iambic pentameter went out the window early on (I like to say I just, um, altered it to suit my specifications) but as members of my family might appreciate this, I thought I would post it.

My sister is a curious piece of work
She tends to sing and dance with loud and very
Raucous abandon, to which we sigh and roll
Our eyes observing her try to replicate
That bizarre phenomenon that is popular culture.

My brother finds her trivial and trite
His eyes roll more than all of us together
We call him by the name of Ben the Irked
And should she utter long and loud a phrase
He grumbles and professes to be concentrating.

Clothes!

I went shopping yesterday!! And, teenage girl that I am, got new clothes and am pretty majorly hyped about them. I'm allowed to be a typical teenager sometimes...especially considering how I'm mostly not. Anyway...got four shirts, a skirt, a pair of ballet-flat-ish shoes and (the most exciting part) jeans! As in, pants! As in, pants that FIT me! This may, in fact, be the first time in my life I have had two pair of jeans at the same time. My other pair is flared a bit, too, and these are semi-skinny-ish jeans, which makes for good variety. Also got a cute skirt patterned in white/grey/black and a shirt of similar material (but different colors). Those and the jeans were from Reitmans, and the shoes and another one of the shirts were from Old Navy, and then I got two AMAZING fuzzy warm sweaters from Stitches. They're SO soft. I'm pretty hyper.

So, after that fit of girl-ish-ness, in other news...

We got school off this week, which was a nice break. Got to do some reading, laze around, sleep in. All that good stuff. Started The Mists of Avalon, which is an...interesting book. As Arthurian stuff goes, it has a lot more of the magic-y side then some - I've read version that discounted the magic entirely. And I think there's at least some, especially talking Morgan le Fay and Morgause and Merlin and stuff. The family tree part of it is also a bit altered, but I suppose it is everywhere. In this version, Viviane/Igraine/Morgause are sisters, and Morgaine is Igraine's daughter. Igraine is married to Gorlois at first, but he dies and she remarries to Uther Pendragon. Arthur/Gwydion is her son by Uther. Galahad is also Viviane's son, and synonymous with Lancelet (which is how they spell it here). Morgause is married to Lot and has Gawaine that I know of. So I can keep track of it so far. I've also decided that I LOVE Celtic/Arthurian names. Stuff like Galahad and Gwydion and Gwenhwyfar and Uther Pendragon and Gawaine and Morgaine and...all of it...is so fun to say! I can just see myself wanting to name a daughter Guinevere (or Gwenhwyfar or whatever) and not getting a whole lot of support. Heh.

Oh! And cool thing - my teacher phones on Wednesday morning cause she needs my mom to sign something when I come in for my lesson, and it turns out that what she's signing is paperwork for someone who's giving out awards for top RCM exam marks. So I got 90 on my grade 8 piano, and am tied with someone else for highest Grade 8 exam mark in the Edmonton area. The prize is $100, so either we'll split it, or the other student's paperwork won't be in in time and I shall get it. So that's pretty cool - one of those things that makes you feel sorta warm and fuzzy inside.

~Sil

"I don't watch random things because of piano."
"What was the last inane television show you've seen that featured a guest piano player, Melda?"

Election Time!

So, if you've been paying attention to the news (er, and if you're Canadian) you'll know that there's a Speech From the Throne and a new budget being voted on thus Thursday (three votes in the House Of Commons total), and there's a very good possibility that the Liberals will vote against one of the three. Meaning that Parliament will then dissolve, meaning - guess what! - an election. It's an exciting prospect, not just because I love elections (yes, I an a nerd, and door-knocking makes me excited) but because the Conservative Party of Canada is at about 40% in the polls, meaning that we could quite possibly attain a majority government this time around. Which, if you're hardcore Conservative (and I am) is a very good thing.

CANADIANS - watch the news on Thursday! You'll know if it's election time!

~Sil

"See, the fluctuation in my sound waves isn't visible with the naked eye."
"I noticed that when I observed your sound waves with my naked eye."

Global Warming

I was wondering to myself what I would post about today, and simultaneously complaining to myself about the weather, because it's way too warm, and those two things combined...well. You can see from the title.

I'm aware that my opinion about global warming isn't the usual save-the-polar-bears, buy-an-environment-friendly-car, we're-all-killing-the-world type opinion, and feel free to disagree as much as you would like. Here we go.

First of all, I'd like to ask any of you out there who believe in the theory of evolution why you're worried about global warming. I mean, according to that theory, the world is always changing and species are always evolving, so even if the polar bears DO go extinct, isn't that part of nature? If the world really is warming, isn't that just part of the world slowly going from one stage to the next one? Personally, I believe that IF the world really is getting warmer (and I don't think it is, long-term) and IF species are going to go extinct - that's nature. To quote my mom, nature isn't a static thing. It's always changing.

As to why I don't believe the world is getting warmer, I have two reasons for that one. The first one is that, as I'm sure you'll discover if you ask your parents, scientists were predicting another Ice Age fifty years ago. Only fifty years ago. And now they're wailing about global warming. I don't know about you, but that makes me less inclined to believe them. The second one is that we've been recording yearly temperature averages for, oh, about a hundred years. Without going into how long the world has existed, that's a hundred years out of at least two thousand. We have no idea how worldwide temperatures fluctuated before that - NO idea. The same goes for polar ice caps. Sure, they may be melting somewhat, but how long have we been measuring their size? About fifty years. Again, out of two thousand. That doesn't strike anyone else as being a bit early to jump to conclusions?

I'm looking for feedback here, just so you all know - I AM interested in other opinions. In fact, I'm intrigued. Anyway, last point is all the guilting that goes on about releasing carbon dioxide into the air. Did you know that humans are responsible for a total of 2% of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere? Natural causes, such as volcanoes erupting, are responsible for 98%. We're not killing the world, at least not in that respect, the way everyone seems to think we are.

That would have made a horrible essay...I don't have much of a structure or a conclusion or a thesis statement, but bear with my randomly stated objections, guys :)

EDIT: HAH I managed to blog about my global warming skepticism on Blog Action Day, which is supposed to highlight environment-friendly blogs, without knowing it. If that's not hilarious, I don't know what is.

~Sil

"I'm sorry, Erin. I'm proud of you. In fact, I'll tell you what. I'll take you out for lunch. At McDonald's. Your treat, of course. I'll even pick you up - if you give me gas money."

Quiz meet!

I'm off to a quiz meet this evening and tomorrow! Edson, Alberta. Quizzing on Galations chapters 1 through 4, and I'm pretty hyped. For you (uncool) people who don't know what a quiz meet is, it's a thing the Christian & Missionary Alliance churches of North America do, along with a few Baptists and other denominations. The majority is, however, Alliance. In Alberta, we currently have between 250 and 300 youth (grades 6-12) in quizzing, which means we memorize Scripture all through the year and meet five times throughout that year to compete on it. Here's a picture of people on our quizzing benches:



There's four seats to a bench (and therefore up to four people on a team unless you have a sub) and three benches in a quiz. What happens is that the seats on the benches all have triggers underneath them, so that depending on how/where you sit on it, you can control whether your trigger is on or off. The quizmaster (cool name, eh?) reads the question like this: "Question number one. Question: Paul, an apostle, sent how?" and the quizzers can 'jump' (eg get off their seats to make their trigger go on) any time during the question, but as soon as their light comes on the quizmaster stops mid-sentence. So you might get something like: "Question number one. Question: Paul, an apostle, se - Amy?" Notice how these people are leaning forward in order to have the best shot at being the first off their seat:



And that is quizzing. And I am excited.

~Sil

Heather: So what kind of stuff do you read?
Me: Well, I've done Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Canterbury Tales and Hamlet.
[pause]
Bill: So...have you seen High School Musical?

Mere Christianity

I was picking a topic out of the figurative Topic Hat, because much as I'm sure you guys would like to hear trivial details of my personal life (except not) I hesitate to ramble too much. In any case, this conveniently rose to the surface of my mind. Perhaps because it had already been up there.

Anyway, for this youth Bible study semester, we are doing Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Little bit of history - it was adapted from a series of radio broadcasts in 1943, and originally appeared in three separate sections: The Case for Christianity, Christian Behavior, and Beyond Personality. Pretty sure Mere Christianity is considered a definitive work on Christian apologetics.

So, at Bible study we're through the first section of the book, which started out with a explanation of the existence of something called Moral Law. This, he explains, isn't a law like other laws - law of gravity, laws of thermodynamics, etc - because it is not scientifically predictable. When you drop something, it will always fall down. It will never fall up or sideways because the law of gravity makes it fall down. Moral Law, however, is different. It's something we're all born with, and it's essentially an inherent sense of right and wrong. Everybody uses the words 'right' and 'wrong'. If someone steals something from you, that's obviously wrong, and even if you aren't affiliated with any religion you'll still call it wrong.

So by calling it wrong, you imply that there was a different thing that should have happened that would have been right. If you believe that there is no inherent good or evil in the world, then you really have no cause to be upset, because if someone stole something from you - "That was wrong!" Well, there's no good or evil in the world, right? You believe that, so why are you still upset? So, Moral Law is something everyone is born with. You could probably call it a conscience (incidentally, I'm very curious as to why the word 'science' is in 'conscience'). You can ignore your conscience, but it never stops being there. In fact, a way to tell if you're doing something right or wrong is if you're trying to justify it to your conscience. If it's right, you shouldn't have to convince yourself that it's right.

That was the first section. The second section, which we started last night, is rather more complicated. The basic gist of it is that evil is a perversion of good. Nothing can be evil without the good being there, because without good, evil would not be considered evil. Which goes back to what I said before. If someone steals something from you, you instantly think, "that's wrong", meaning you're comparing it to what it should have been. Darkness is just the absence of light; cold is just the absence of heat. For all you LotR junkies - it's like Orcs and Elves, or Trolls and Ents if you're really hardcore. The Elves existed before the Orcs, because Orcs are twisted, mutilated Elves. Same with Ents/Trolls. Also, Lucifer was originally good before he became Satan (like Melkor, who was good before he defied the Song of Iluvatar and became Morgoth). He was, in fact, an angel - and although what he did was evil, it was through a desire to be like God that he did it; through a desire to be something good. Personally, I believe this answers a question frequently asked by either non-Christians or people who have experienced a loss - why did God let this happen? If God loves me, why did ____ happen? And it's because we live in a fallen world. We live in a world that is perverted by evil. If Eve had never eaten the apple, and if Adam and Eve had stayed forever in the Garden of Eden, they might have lived forever. Because with no evil, maybe there was no death - and no need for God to separate himself from us, either. But since Eve/Adam did, there is evil in the world, and that means death and misfortune happen.

Wow, that got long. But I'm REALLY intrigued by this book, it's absolutely fascinating. Lewis effectively converted HIMSELF to Christianity - he worked himself around to it logically. I feel really lucky that he decided to impart such brilliant logic to us :)

~Sil

"The first thing they said to him was: 'You can die skydiving.' And the second thing they said to him was: 'You can die skydiving.' And the third thing they said to him was, 'IF you die skydiving, you take that responsibility on yourself.'"

Thursdays

I love my Thursdays.

Dictionary
Thursday |ˈθərzˌdā; -dē| noun the day of the week before Friday and following Wednesday : the committee met on Thursday | the music program for Thursdays in April | [as adj. ] Thursday morning. adverb on Thursday : he called her up Thursday. • ( Thursdays) on Thursdays; each Thursday : the column is published Thursdays. ORIGIN Old English Thu(n)resdæg [day of thunder,] translation of late Latin Jovis dies ‘day of Jupiter’ (god associated with thunder): compare with Dutch donderdag and German Donnerstag.

That was random, but yes, origin of Thursday. See, on Thursdays I normally get to stay home ALL day (unless I'm babysitting or there's a board meeting). I know I'm a hopeless homebody, but I really enjoy it so much. Also, Thursday afternoons leave me either home alone or home with my brother, making the house lovely and quiet, which I also enjoy. This Thursday I do have to pick up the little boy I babysit from school and stay with him and his sister for a couple hours...but there are worse ways to make $20 a day. And the last good thing about Thursday - it comes before Friday. Which comes before Saturday. And those are probably my two favorite days of the week.

In other news...got Rondo Alla Turca yesterday and was SO hyped! It's a pretty hard piece but I've wanted to play it forever. I also updated my links to add Meril's Random Randomness (Aerlinn from A-U) and Inkhearties, which contains news about the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke. And I was grating orange zest last night and hurt my thumb. You know just how exciting life is when I'm reporting THAT. That's okay, I like a non-exciting life sometimes.

And in case not *everybody* has heard, though I would think you had - NATALIE AND BRYAN ARE HAVING ANOTHER BABY! (Bryan's our youth pastor and Natalie's his wife, for the benefit of those who are not intimately acquainted with my acquaintances) And, as the capitals indicate, I'm extremely excited about it. Oddly, I never remember being this excited for any of my siblings' births. It was always like, "Oh, mom's pregnant again. It better be a [boy/girl] because the last one was a [boy/girl]." Okay, maybe not. But you get the idea.

~Sil

[Jamie has been very funny lately, so I've quoted her twice]

Jamie: Oh Kjan. I really have no idea what I'm going to do with him.
Joy: I find it extremely amusing that you would even attempt to do something with him.
Jamie: Well, I haven't yet, which is probably the source of the problems. There's just no knowing what he'll do next, really.
Joy: I would have to agree. I've completely given up trying to predict him.
Jamie: So have I, sadly. I really don't think that's how the character/author relationship is supposed to work.

"So every now and then, I start to get the impression that I might be capable of passing as a relatively sane person. Then I get an idea that serves to completely and utterly disprove that notion. Something like "I should throw a fully-decorated pirate party next weekend" or "I should write a novel for that competition that ends tomorrow" or, most recently, "I should make my own Eowyn costume, despite having absolutely no prior sewing experience, no sewing machine besides my grandma's 40-year-old monster, and less than two weeks before Middlefaire.""

Mary-Sues

The definition of the above: a fictional character (generally female) who is unbelievable in her talent, beauty, youth and spitfire personality. MY definition, anyway. See, lately on A-U, we've been discussing how to avoid making characters you create Mary-Sues. This test is very helpful, and names many characteristics that, when found in compilation, make up a Mary-Sue. However, where's the limit? At the end of the test it gives you a rough estimation of scores to help to determine whether or not your character is a Sue. But personally, I think a character without any of those characteristics is going to frankly be a very boring character. A Mary-Sue would, for example, be a 16-year-old who can pwn anybody, male or female, with any weapon you choose to name, all the while being extremely beautiful, spouting witticisms at every turn, and generally possessing a dark and tortured past that she 'keeps secret' but, strangely, seems willing to relate at the slightest provocation. She's probably also royalty a) in disguise, b) stolen away from her family, c) having run away from her family, or d) watched them get killed by [insert villain here]. Whereas a NON-Mary-Sue is probably into her thirties, isn't someone you would look twice at, has a decidedly normal past, no psychological problems, and therefore has about the depth of a kiddie wading pool. Personally, I would prefer the first character. So it can be rather increasingly hard to find the delicate balance where you're not unrealistic, but at the same time you still possess a degree of excitement in the character.

And I still haven't really decided where exactly that is. I think it varies person to person. Anyway, there's my snippet of introspection for the day.

~Sil

"I've decided I now hate anybody with the name Connell."
"Why?"
"Well, two of the recent anti-Conservative letters written lately were by someone named Connell!"
"Seems like impeccable reasoning to me."