Jordan, ‘10

There is a church a block from my dorm that freaked me out the first month I was in town.  It has a tower on the side of it and at the top metal bars act as supports to keep the stone structure that comes to a peak from collapsing in on the tower.  Obviously, I don’t know what parts of churches are called.  In any case it freaked me out because one night as I was passing by and lightning flashed in the distance I had a vision of Dracula.  It was straight out of a Bram Stroker dreamscape.  It’s funny, though.  I love dracula–I love the idea and the novel and some of the film adaptations so I should have liked the fact that the church reminds me of it.  But I didn’t.  It’s a creepy place to pass by. 

I found out it was a Greek Orthodox Church when I decided to write a novel about it.  And then it closed three days later.  Quite the coicidence.  However, for the past three Sundays I’ve walked by the church and its large congregation of Indian patrons.  It’s alive again with the sound of children and the presence of so many colorful saris.  Unfortunately, it would have been much more interesting if it had transformed over the semester into a Hindu temple–I might have actually gone to a service if it was one.  Sigh, it’s a Christian church but it’s still beautiful and I’m no longer freaked out when I pass by it.  The smiling faces definitely improve the aura of the place. 

It’s funny to think that one religion can move out and another can move into the same place of worship.  What does that say about religion in general, though these two have a lot in common?  I think it’s bizarre that people who claim they believe in an omniscient, omnipotent being try to pigeon-hole It into a single religion.  How can a single religion–a manmade construction subject to man’s faults–encompass an infinite force?  Faith I understand.  Possession I don’t. 

 At St. Kilda this weekend (yet again sans camera), I saw a ship that was straight out of Pirates of the Carribean sail away into the mist under a  red setting sun.  It’s been really foggy here too.  Every morning the world outside my window looks like the Stephen King story The Mist–I can’t even see the road at the bottom of my building.

 And I’m done with classes.  The exam period began yesterday and I have a ten-page paper due next Tuesday.  My parents arrive in seventeen days and my birthday is in one month and twelve days.  I still don’t want to be twenty. 

reflections in a thousand faces, each its own,

Jordan

This is the only part of the church that I find beautiful–this either the tree of knowledge or the tree of eternal life but either way, it’s eye-catching.

Quotes of the week:

“God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper.” - Richard Buckminster Fuller

“God loved the birds and invented trees.  Man loved the birds and invented cages.” - Jacques Deval