Detour:

The reason nothing has been new here since January:

THE WORLD RACE.

I leave in 19 days! If you happen to enjoy things I write, they will all be here.

So ignore this blog, and go to that one!

-Katie

Spoiler Alert

If you haven't read all 7 Harry Potter books, seen Slumdog Millionaire, or heard about last year's Oscars, I wouldn't advise you to read any further. If that's really the case, I'd also advise you to get electricity and friends. (That goes more for the Slumdog part than the HP part. I know I'm a geek there.)

The real title of this post is "What the heck does Harry Potter have to do with Bollywood music?"

You know me well enough to read this; you know how I feel about Jo Rowling's epic tale. I grew up with Harry. But, when I was not-so-secretly reading Goblet of Fire under my desk in 8th grade English class, neither Harry nor I grasped the depth of the story. There was the bad guy and we knew he had to be defeated, but no one knew how that would come about.

Not until one of the final chapters of Deathly Hallows does it all come together. There had been hints of it before, maybe it should have been obvious. In short, sacrificial love was the thing stronger than death. It saves Harry as a baby, and it saves everyone he loves once he chooses it himself.

Ok, seriously. What the heck does this have to do with Slumdog and its music winning Oscars?

You remember that scene. You probably cringed in fear and disgust.

Little Jamal's face, so determined to get to the one he loved, even if just for a moment. He almost didn't hesitate. It took a flying leap into excrement, but he met Amitabh Bachan. That scene stands as a metaphor for every choice Jamal makes for the rest of the film.

Teenage Jamal so determined to get to the one he loved, he burst into a room full of armed gangsters. Adult Jamal finally within reach of her, lying through his teeth to those same men just to get to where she lives. His character never wavers; his own safety is never his concern.

When "Jai Ho" won Best Original Song, giving Slumdog its 8th Oscar, composer A.R. Rahman said something I'll never forget. Rather than rambling a list of thank-yous, he stepped to the microphone and said,

"All my life I have been given a choice between hate and love. I chose love, and I am here."

That's it. Love wins. That's the story they all tell.

That's all I can do. That's the only story I have to tell. So let's go.

-Katie

A Big Picture

Weekend Status: youth group purity retreat.

Happy reunion with the beautiful middle schoolers I worked with over the summer!

Insightful/awkward conversations about love, sex, and dating!

Dance parties!

And if I hear "Party in the USA" one more time... I really might throw up.

In the middle of all of these conversations and teaching, there's Haiti. We've been praying for quick aid and necessary rescue each time we get together with the students, and they've even raised money to send over. Even with that recognition, it's weird to me to have such a personal topic of focus this weekend. Before this morning's talk, we stopped to pray for our Haitian brothers again, and Casey (pastor) asked me to look up the death toll.

They've only found 50,000 bodies, but the highest estimate is that over 200,000 people died in the last 5 days from this one catastrophe.

The kids ended their prayer and the worship band started playing. I didn't sing; I read through that article...

...and looked at these pictures...

...and wondered what living a life of purity has to do with Haiti?

How can we focus on ourselves and our relationships when everything in those pictures is really happening right now?

God-centeredness. That's what these things have in common.

When it comes to purity, all I've really been able to tell these girls is that a focus on glorifying God will lead to right decisions in relationships.

When it comes to Haiti, hope, help, and compassion, a focus on God being glorified pulls us out of the "How could this happen?" despair and moves us to act, to pray, even to go.

In other words: we quit thinking about ourselves.

We start thinking about the end for which we were created.

We start loving. Really loving.

-Katie

Unity

in the truest and deepest sense is so hard to come by.

Since I found my "family" in college (read: the people that I am, by default, always... always with), I've felt some level of belonging. It was occasionally clouded by the knowing in the back of my mind that we'd likely part ways as we graduated. I still resist that thought as strongly as possible. Read any of my past posts; I like to hold onto people I love.

As much as this group has given me a (fleeting) sense of belonging, it just occurred to me that something may be missing. Yes, we're all following Jesus. That's our foundation, that's how we all met, it's an unspoken truth of us being together.

It's the "unspoken" part that makes me think something's missing. Yesterday I was with about a dozen of those people for over 12 hours. I loved it, I love them. But Glory is still on my mind.

Passion is a rare thing (the event and the emotion). Being with 21,000 people I don't know still gave me a sense of belonging. First of all, we had matching wristbands. And t-shirts. Who wouldn't feel like a solid part of it? :P

What I actually mean is that there was a sense of purpose that brought us together. We heard of those who were oppressed, poor, in need, and as well as we could from Atlanta, Georgia, we fought hard to love them. And it worked.

I know that kind of excitement and effort is concentrated in an event and can't really sustain from day to day. But the purpose can. That's what is missing from our constant hanging out here in Manhattan. There's love, there's fun, there's even that important common ground, but unless we're at a leadership huddle on a Sunday night, our purpose is laid aside.

So I'm taking this and trying to apply it to what to do once I leave Manhattan at the end of this semester, maybe sooner. In the most basic terms, that's what I'm seeking: a clear purpose and those who share it.

I think most people call that a job...

-Katie

Why I'm Not Going to Grad School

The Bookend Café in Hale Library is normally a happy place. This week, however, there's been a big, sad sign on the door that says "Espresso Machine Broken! No espresso drinks, sorry."

As I stood in an understandably shorter line with my Anthro friends for some pre-Theory soup, a normal K-State student walked up to the register (Uggs. North Face. Bump-It: 5 points!) She asked,

"So... does... a white chocolate mocha have espresso in it?"

The barista very politely answered her question while I rolled... my... eyes... so far into the back of my head that it actually hurt a bit.

Is there espresso in a mocha?

Are you alive?

I was on the verge of mocking such ignorance until I remembered a much more patient day of realization that the difference between espresso and coffee isn't actually common knowledge. That's why there's a name for people who know all those things. I just happen to be a snob. (Thank you, Bri.) I read a lot of things about the things I like. (Thanks, Dad.)

For a few moments, in my mind, Ms. Mocha was the most ignorant human being on Earth. In reality, she's just another consumer who buys what she likes and is not required to think about the anatomy of her sugary concoction. That is ok.

The more I read, the more I know, the more I rattle off on tangents about things that are irrelevant to most people, the more I think most people are really... really... stupid.

I'm already an impatient person. If I continue to rise up in the Ivory Tower, it will alienate me from people I could otherwise really love and really accept and kindly help understand that yes, Virginia, there is espresso in your mocha.

-Katie

Idealism

...suddenly has a totally different meaning.

I've been called an idealist before because I wanted to do so much, all at once.

Learn another foreign language (or five).

Create things that would change peoples hearts and minds.

Inspire them to love.

Learn to love better.

At my advising appointment this morning, my professor asked where I wanted to be in five years. And I... had... no... idea. Just fear.

Forget idealism, the only important thing about that word at the moment is that it's the opposite of materialism. That consciousness determines existence, as opposed to existence determining consciousness. Now that I'm actually weeks away from graduating, the furthest I can see myself is Christmas break. I don't even remember what my dreams are, I just want to be done.

I just want to have time to clean my room. Or cook my own food. Or fix my clothes or buy new clothes. Or actually talk to the people I live with and love.

This is the most awful paradox I've ever found myself in: I'm too busy studying how to understand people to love any of the people around me.

I really... really hope this is temporary.

-Katie

Well, it's happened again.

I can't get more than a few pages into readings for Theory before the weight of... life... just gets to me. The past 2 lectures add up to about 10 pages of notes and a very cramped writing hand, but I have a great grasp of capitalist ideology. And I hate it.

Check out part of this article on Indian assimilation in the 1800s:

"get the Indian out of the blanket and into trousers,--and trousers with a pocket in them, and
with a pocket that aches to be filled with dollars!" (from an 1896 legislation)

It goes on to contextualize this:

"Realist reform aimed, first, to grant Indians certain kinds of property rights, but also, second, to make them aware of the property that they did not have."

What the hell?! Our government worked to plant seeds of SELFISHNESS in these peoples minds so that they would become part of an American system. They previously had NO CONCEPT of personal property, and giving them one was apparently of the utmost importance. I hope that makes you feel as sick as it does me.

Look at that last quote again: "to make them aware of the property that they did not have." The worst part of that is that simple advertisements do this TO YOU every day. You may be perfectly fine with what you have, and really not wanting for anything until a clever commercial comes on, and suddenly your positive self-image is shattered and you need to update it.

I can hardly get dressed in the morning without running through these concepts of materialistic identity construction. When I say that I hate money, it's not just because I'm a codependent college student. That abhorrence has a lot to do with what I'm trying to say here.

Long story short... don't drink Coca Cola.

-Katie

(quotes taken from Elliot's article "Ethnography, Reform, and the Problem of the Real: James Mooney's Ghost-Dance Religion" 1998)