So this is what being a peace studies kid means

I rarely cry in movies. When I do, it's just a tear or two escaping my eyes.

Tonight, I sobbed into my boyfriend's shoulder, not just once, but several times.

We went to go see Casino Royale. He'd seen it and liked it, I had heard it was a decent Bond movie. $3 a piece through the student union board. I'm so glad now that none of our friends could come with us.

Throughout the first 2/3rds of the movie, the violence seemed excessive, but I could handle it. I wasn't enjoying myself, per se, but I was still chuckling at the jokes. Then Bond gets captured. The torture scene was the most graphic one I had ever seen. Even now, it's replaying in my head, and I'm crying again. The way he slumped in the chair, the moans. The fact that he was naked and stripped of his dignity. I know he wasn't really being hurt. I didn't even like his character that much. But I just finished reading The Human Security Report 2005, which gives as detailed statistics as we know them about things like torture. It didn't bother me severely to read it- I was more just trying to get through the raw data to be able to use it in a paper. It's different to get a visual and audio representation of a little bit of the suffering you've been reading about for a semester.

Anyway, I lost it. I cried the hardest I've ever cried in a theater. And then I couldn't handle the rest of the violence in the movie, either, and it didn't help that the ending message was something along the lines of trust no one but yourself, love doesn't work as an alternative.

O God, hear my voice and grant our world your peace.
Hear my voice,
it is the voice of the victims of all wars and violence;

Hear my voice,
it is the voice of all children
who suffer when we put our faith in weapons and war;

Hear my voice,
for I speak for those in every country
and in every period of history
who do not want war and are ready to walk the road of peace;

O God, hear my voice and grant our world your peace.

Send us your Holy Spirit,
instil into the hearts of all people
the wisdom of peace,
the strength of justice
and the joy of fellowship

so that we may respond
to hatred with courage and love,
to injustice with dedication to truth,
to suffering and need
by the compassionate sharing of ourselves,
to war with the non-violence of Jesus,
who brings hope and peace.

O God, hear my voice
and grant our world your peace.

Amen.

from http://www.carmelite.com/prayer/peace.shtml

Whoa, I'm taking care of myself?

I was just thinking about my study habits recently. I'm in the midst of the craziness of midterms. At one point, I had two exams and three papers in three days, but now one of those papers has been moved to Monday. My schedule for the week now is Intl Relations exam Wednesday, Continental Poli Thought paper due Wednesday (already done), and Peace Studies paper due Wed (also done). I had a Spanish midterm this morning. Granted, I lucked out that my English paper isn't due until Monday (along with a Spanish composition and a major Peace Studies paper), but I'm actually on top of things. And I relaxed while working really hard, which is the amazing thing. I went to a basketball game and a concert on Saturday (both of which were fabulous!) and to a hockey game friday night. Since when do I give myself that much time off? Go me! Oh, and I worked 16.5 hours last week, so maybe I might start making money now!

Sometimes a pat on the back or two is necessary for sanity.

Ups and Downs

So the day started off very well with me getting a lot done and then Joey bringing me Chickfila for breakfast midway through the morning. He now has a trump card when I'm annoyed with him ("but I brought you Chickfila"). He had to brave two cab companies, both of which took advantage of him. But the food was good!

I've been working hard trying to get everything out of the way. I wanted to go to a basketball and a hockey game today, but I ended up just going to the bball game. I've got an extremely busy week ahead of me, so the more I can get ahead, the better.

I lost thirty bucks today, fresh from the ATM. I don't know how. I was more than a little unhappy, so much so that I missed the first ten minutes of the bball game to go back and look. It was really windy though, so any hope of no one picking it up was dashed by the fact that it would have been blown away. It's not that huge of a deal. I am pretty short on money right now, but seriously, it's not like I have to worry where my next meal is going to come from. I just hope that my $30 makes it to someone who needs it. P.S. the basketball game was awesome.

In other news, life is sometimes very difficult to bear with patience. You do everything right and you still end up in a bad place. Nothing can fix that. You deal and try to ignore it when it gets to be too much. Sometimes that's all there is left to do. In the end, you remind yourself that things will get better, people do care about you, and no one can take away your smile unless you let them. And on your way you go.

lenten thoughts

Lent doesn't start until Ash Wednesday, of course, but my lovely seasonal black book has already started as of yesterday. Every little (insert liturgical color) book starts off with a page urging you to examine your goals for the special Church season. Then the rest of the book has daily six-minute meditations on appropriate scripture for the season, plus a page of tidbits and trivia.

In thinking about my goals for Lent, the usual suspects came to mind. Give up Starbucks! (With, as my boyfriend pointed out, the ulterior motive of saving money). Give up chocolate! (with the ulterior motive of eating more healthily, which I need to do anyway). Joey is very good about pointing out the shortcomings in my shortcuts. So tonight I sat still for a bit and thought about Lenten goals for real. Let me tell a short story first so my thoughts make more sense.

Last Sunday I worked my first recital for the music department. The audience filed past me into the auditorium, taking a program each. One was an old man wrapped in many layers of mismatched winter gear. I couldn't figure out from looking at him if he was homeless or just a little eccentric. Another worker told me that he'd been warned that this guy comes to most, if not all, recitals.

The performer had ordered two vases of flowers, one for the stage next to her and one for the back table near the entrance. The man kindly took a program from me and continued on, but drew up short at the sight of the flowers. "Real flowers!" he exclaimed, and proceeded to bury his face in them, breathing deeply. The joy on his face was heartwarming, even if I was a bit shocked by his behavior.

While thinking quietly tonight, I realized, I want that kind of joy. The joy at things as simple as a vase of flowers in the middle of winter. Not only do I want it for myself, but I want to be able to transmit it to others. I struggle a lot with finding ways to love certain people in my life, especially when overt gestures of love are harshly criticized. The key, I concluded, is prayer. Prayer for them can only help our relationships, and prayer can deepen my appreciation of little gifts and ultimately lead to joy.

I tend to sideline prayer. In a life in which everything is mentally scheduled, prayer just doesn't make it very often into my daily routine. It's hard to find a spare moment, especially when I have the energy to focus. I also struggle with feeling fulfilled in prayer, like I'm holding a conversation with someone who loves me, not just a wall. So maybe I don't try because I don't want to feel so inadequate. I don't want to face nagging doubts about whether God is really there. It's much easier not to try.

But as I've seen, I miss out on so much without a good relationship with God. So, my Lenten goal is to try. Not to feel better, not to necessarily find joy, but just to try.

Happy things

Sometimes you just need to make a list of everything that's going right in your life to remind yourself that life really does rock.

• friends calling and text messaging to offer love and support
• a boyfriend who takes such good care of me
• Rector and RA who genuinely take an interest in my life and want to help
• lots more events during weekends on campus this semester- Ragtime, Chinese New Year Celebration, Brazilian carnival
• (slowly) learning how to dance and look good while doing it
• pierogi at the dining hall
  
• throwing my first party (dedicated to happiness and love, not drinking)
• feeling like the songs I'm playing for guitar class are actually sort of pretty
• having enough self-discipline to sleep at normal hours and not waste weekends sleeping
• lots of apples-to-apples playing
• random memories about special people in my life (Mr. Bird making fun of the afternoon announcements girl, who liked to yell into the microphone and scare him)
  
• singing the salve regina when no one's in my room
• feet of snow, and jumping in huge piles of it
• Joey finding a latin translation attributed to our deceased and dearly loved latin teacher on a polish website
• lovely pictures sent via cell phone from my mom
• quiet library space and time to get work done.

Yeah, life is good.

to be humble

I'm finding that humility leads to being trampled on and used, which makes me think that I've got the idea of humility wrong. How do you put others first while still taking care of yourself?

Note to self

There is absolutely nothing wrong with me that a couple of hours spent with a good novel in a completely empty, quiet, softly lit dorm room won't cure.

More than anything, I miss my huge comfy Queen Anne-style reclining chair that I got for my seventeenth birthday. I also deeply miss the quiet and solitude of my room. It's so strange how you can be around tons of people and feel lonely, but be alone and feel complete. That was an emo thing to say.

I have my first Spanish test tomorrow, and no, I am not ready. I am also deathly afraid I will oversleep because I have been not sleeping well.

Spring break plans are still up in the air. My current favored plan is going to Chicago via train for the first weekend, hanging out with my favorite Northwestern girl, then swinging through a grocery store on my way back and holing up in my empty dorm, assuming I can find a job for the week on campus. There were jobs offered over fall break that paid pretty well. I need the money, and the time alone to do whatever I want (i.e. cross stitch and read happy books that aren't about running the world or war or dead babies) sounds pretty freaking amazing. We'll see.

Brr.

I got an email from my mom yesterday that read something like this: “You haven’t called and you aren’t even updating your blog. Are you ok?!” The answer (which, being a good daughter, I told her in a phone call last night) is that yes, I am ok, just taking “real” college classes for the first time (not intros) and that keeps me very, very busy, especially with everything else I’m doing on the side this semester. But it’s a good busy, really.

The weather is extremely cold- last night we watched WeatherBug, hoping that we would get up to a whole degree, not just .4 of one. But it’s definitely manageable. I can’t stand being outside much more than the 10-15 minutes it takes to get from building to building, but I can handle that. The weirdest part is when you’re outside, the mucous in your nose starts to freeze, and suddenly it feels like you have very huge boogers in your nose. It goes back to normal soon after getting back inside. I really thought the weather was going to be a lot worse that it has been so far. I was expecting feet of snow, driving wind all the time, and the rumored permacloud (solid cloud wall for months). We have a foot of snow and the natives here are like “wow, I can’t believe we got so much so fast! This hasn’t happened in years!” I mean, schools are cancelled, and have been for a few days. Oh. Ok. Maybe I overdid the worrying. There is also no permacloud to be seen. It’s about half cloudy and half sunny. The wind is bad when it’s here, but it’s not omnipresent.

Maybe I should be thanking God rather than complaining. Hmm.

Of course, Joey is coping much better than I am. Only Joey would complain, when it is literally 1 degree outside, that he got too hot on the way over from his dorm. Yes, in one degree weather, my boyfriend managed to be overdressed. Good grief.

The Dorm Formal Pictures

AAAHH

Life has been SO FREAKING BUSY lately, but maybe things are starting to settle into a routine for the semester? Just so that my loves back home won't think I've fallen off the face of the earth, here's what's going on in my life- maybe soon I can start posting something coherent again.

Friday I fell on the uber-slippery ice and smacked my tailbone, so I spent most of Friday afternoon/evening/night chilling on my futon trying to be comfortable. Joey even ordered in dinner for me. But the upside was I got to watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith instead of decorating the dorm for our spirit week, which was a pretty good tradeoff. I love my understanding RA.

Yesterday Joey and I attempted to navigate the public transportation system and get to Target, despite our respective injuries (his foot/shin has been having issues since the March). We ended up spending all of the morning and the first half of the afternoon on this endeavor. It was necessary, but it makes me really really want a car. I got Chick-fil-A at the mall to console myself. It worked.

Last night was my dorm's formal, which was infinitely better than the halloween dance and pretty much a blast. I'll try to get pictures up later. I looked decent considering my mom's best friend wasn't around to do my hair. The best part was that it snowed many inches last night before the dance started but after the plows had retired for the day, so we trekked over to the dance, which was held in a building about ten minutes away, with me wearing sweatpants under my dress, boots, and a parka and trying to keep my hem out of the snow. Good times.

Right now I'm holed up in the library doing homework. In between everything else, little of that has gotten done this weekend. Tonight I'm lectoring at our dorm's spirit week's closing Mass, at which the president of the university happens to be presiding. Apparently there's a wine and cheese reception to follow? I kid you not. They better have grape juice for us little ones.

I think that's everything. OH and I watched ND beat Villanova yesterday in men's basketball, which was ridiculously intense. Tomorrow night Joey and I start our Latin dancing class- I'm pretty excited. Ok, now maybe that's everything. Back to work. :-)

Hesburgh rocks the casbah

Tonight the extraordinary man known as Fr. Ted Hesburgh hung out in my dorm's chapel and shared a few stories and words of wisdom. My favorite:

"Yeah, they've got bright kids, but you're bright kids. Ok, they've got some stuff that we don't, I guess- like dope."
-Father Theodore Martin Hesburgh, on Harvard

The best part is, he has every right to say that because he worked there for a while as chairperson of the board of faculty or something like that. He's my hero.

Good grief, I misspelled the title of my last post.

I'm back (again)- this time from a long weekend in D.C.

Stories and details might be forthcoming if homework allows, of which there is currently a large amount. And by large, I mean ginourmous.

But the upside is, I just spent the weekend touring DC and protesting about a cause I believe in (the annual March for Life was yesterday) with some of the best friends I have at ND. Totally, completely, 100% worth it.

Committments thus far this semester

Subtitle: Not to impress anyone, but so I can look back on my insane self and laugh.

• 5 classes, plus P.E. (none are only freshman now. all were last semester. I just launched myself into real college classes)
• Take Ten- working in a local community learning center to teach violence-prevention and conflict-resolution techniques.
  
• Latin dancing class with Joseph.
• Freshman Peer Leaders Small Group (and occaisionally Big Group), Right to Life, Peace Fellowship, Four:7, and maybe Amnesty.
  
• Working 3 hours/ week in the music department, plus weekend events.
• Guitar II- an extra expense, but if I don't continue now, I'll lose what I've learned on the instrument all over again, and I WILL NOT take Guitar I again. Ew.
• Maybe photographing for Scholastic?
• And of course basketball games, hockey games, Chicago trips, and everything else that comes with being a ND student.
• Maybe I should make time for Joey and friends, too.

I'm scared and excited.

Very full weeks

So I know I haven't posted for over a week, and normally this is blasphemy, but I promise I've been super busy. Really. Early Wednesday I left for my Urban Plunge experience in Mobile, AL- an educational seminar on urban poverty in which I was exposed to just about every major charity in Mobile. I got back late Friday night, at which point I ditched my suitcase, threw my toiletry bag in my other suitcase, and took it with me camping near Rutledge, GA, arriving at our cabin around midnight. I hung out with my beautiful Girl Scout friends, then came home early Sunday morning to shower, wash clothes, and go to Mass. Mom repacked my stuff ingeniously such that all of my belongings and a sleeping bag fit into two bags. Then Dad and I were off to the airport, and the rest of the day Sunday was spent travelling back to Notre Dame. Today I bought my books, freaked out at the price tag, re-bought my books using many gift cards on Amazon.com, unpacked all of my stuff, caught up on email, watched Moulin Rouge, and made cappuccino cookie dough milkshakes.

Tomorrow classes start again. Fortunately I have only one class tomorrow, as my other one isn't meeting yet. But this one class happens to be known as Continental Political Thought, and it involves ten large books by authors like Weber, Nietzsche, and Marx. Plans for later in the week include more first classes, breaking it to my Monday professors that I won't be in class on Monday, and a trip to D.C. to walk in the March for Life, a huge abortion protest and rally.

I should probably be intimidated, but right now, I'm too tired.

Random List of Things

• More people at church thought I was already gone than knew that I was still here. Maybe I'm being subconcsiously asked to leave? [just kidding. the real reason is that most of my friends at church are starting to show their old age through memory loss- Greg, I'm looking at you ;-) ]
• I've only seen my blogging pal and writing inspiration Bego in person once, and very briefly, while I've been home. But I've read all of her blog entries while I've been on break.
  
• I discovered while at the cabin in the mountains that it is very very easy to become used to staying up late with Joey and falling asleep against him on the couch when I was just too sleepy to stay up any more, knowing that in an hour or so he would wake me up and make me go sleep in my real bed. Now he's in Florida and I miss that way more than I thought I would. Good thing there are parietals at ND, or I could really learn to live like that.
• I started my very own Blockbuster card tonight. Wait, all that means is I get to pay my own late fees. Crap.
• I've been buying books much more than I've been reading them. I've only finished one book over break. I blame Merton and his denseness and the weirdness of the other book I'm reading.
• BUT in defense of my spending habits, I didn't buy any movies or CDs when out shopping with Joey last night, even though he did. I think it's been a year since I bought a CD, and I've never bought any music on iTunes. I just borrow my friends' CDs and stagger when I open CDs I get for Xmas and my birthday.
  
• Being a Girl Scout lent me a lot of prestige in the mountains, especially in the areas of fire-building, smore-making, and horseback riding. I left the fishing to the boys, though.
  
• Joey spent a Barnes and Noble gift card on a Snoopyopoly game last night, and it's amazing. The most expensive property (next to Go) is Joe Cool's sunglasses.
  I'm such a sucker for all things Peanuts.

How to destroy my self confidence in ten seconds or less

Tomorrow afternoon, I depart with the Boy for some quality time in the mountains with him, his parents, his older brother, and his brother's girlfriend. In the days leading up to this trip, I have been very excited about it, mostly because I hope it will be fun and relaxing and good for all relationships involved.

Then, on the phone with the Boy tonight, he dropped this beautiful comment:

"And there's a hot tub at the cabin, so we can enjoy that..."

The ironic thing is, I asked him when we were still up at Notre Dame whether or not I ought to bring a swimsuit home in my limited suitcase space. We decided no, that was silly, why would I go swimming in December? Yes, dear readers, both of my swimsuits are hundreds of miles away in Indiana.

It's not that huge of a deal, really; I could potentially wear shorts and a t-shirt in said hot tub, or procure a cheap suit tomorrow sometime. But it triggered a whole host of other issues. My legs aren't shaved, I'm out of shape, I've gained a little weight during the food fest that my break has become, etc. These led to feelings of discomfort, anxiety, and general unhappiness, of course accompanied by natural envy of Joey's brother's girlfriend, who is gorgeous and will have no problem looking great in a bikini. I'm worried about how I'll look in a one-piece. All of this sent me reeling into a fanatically depressed anxious introverted mental fetal position. It doesn't take much to push me off the edge, huh?

So now I find myself hopelessly awake at 3 AM, worried to pieces about my ability to be generally cheerful and fun to be around with people I'm apparently not all that comfortable with for days. I'm ok with Joey's parents, but I haven't spent nearly enough time around Eric and Meghan. Yes, you read right, somehow a minor swimsuit incident led to a complete loss of faith in my social skills.

What else is there to do at this point but blog about it, laugh at myself, and hope that someone else will laugh with me? I'm obviously not backing out of the trip based on something so minor. I will end up being ok, probably embarassing myself a few times and never entirely relaxing around Eric and Meghan, but parts of it will be fun. This is one of those beautiful times in life when you bite the bullet and hope for the best.

I spend way too much time organizing my life

I end up going overboard with the whole internet/ connectivity/ online organization thing. I just get so excited at starting new ways to share things- thoughts, photos, opinions, wants. It's silly, but can lead to good things if done in moderation.

That being said, I spent quite some time this evening exploring 43things.com, and its interconnected sister sites, 43people.com, allconsuming.net, and listsofbests.com. This is New Years resolutions to the extreme, and much more. It's all really pretty interesting- people swap opinions on books, movies, food, places, destinations, other users, famous people, and lists. Just go browse around, it's much more fun to look around than to read a description.

I also have decided to give this photo-a-day-for-a-year trend a try. It might actually happen, it might not, but when better to try than the first day of the year? I started a new blog just for these photos- flashbulb365.blogspot.com.

At this point, I know at least Maria, Joey, and my mother are snickering at me, but I love doing stuff like this. It's like looking at the first clean page of a beautiful notebook or filling a plain piece of cheesecloth with stitches. It's so exciting to me. :-P

Yep, I'm ready to go back.

Being home is nice for a while, but eventually exuberance at my return starts to fade, and I remember why I loved the idea of going far away to college in the first place. I love my family and my high school friends, but right now I also love that I will be mostly out of town for the next couple of weeks and then back at school. So it goes.

Love.

Sometimes I find myself in a beautiful state in which I can't love everyone enough. In these moments of clarity, which are the closest thing I have to being in touch with God, I realize how much I love everyone and that if I could maintain this state of love, I could maybe convince others to love too, and the world would slowly become a place in which everyone loved and was loved. And that would be heaven. These moments have been coming with more frequency and intensity. At the same time, though, I know how much I fall short of being able to love like this every minute. When I am touched by this feeling, I want to call everyone on my cell phone and thank them for living, or hug everyone at Mass during the sign of peace and make them feel how much I care about them. I could never keep that up, though, because I am not perfect. So I say that this is when I am the most in touch with God because I think that's who God is, and who God's calling me to be. Phrases like "Everlasting Love" start to make sense, in that moment. And the more times it happens the more I want to find a way to make it keep happening, so that my whole life will be lived for and in Love. To me, God is the one who shows me how to love, motivates me to think that this life is the one I should be living, and forgives me when I can't quite make it there. And from there, everything else begins to make sense. Christ's birth. Christ's sacrifice. The Trinity. The Chrurch. These are all topics for other posts, and I couldn't possibly explain everything now. I want to live like this and share this and be this. I don't know if it even makes any sense, but this mystery in my heart is so deep and true that it has to be right, somehow. And I feel like I have to share it as much as possible.