Morgan's Musings

Thursday, Oct. 24, 2002 - 11:08 PM

Ahhh...what a day, friends. It began with me in a clear state of mind, but it ended with a fog of conflicting beliefs. Let us begin with breakfast--Honey Nut Cheerios again, with ice-cold milk despite a planned power outage to put us off the generator and back onto the grid.

I then went to class. Phys. Geo. exam today. Cathy was there, beautiful as ever. She almost didn't make it to class today--she had an asthma attack brought about by an illness she had just recovered from. Poor dear. I also learned about her today that she had taken this class 2 times before and hadn't faired well, had already gotten a B.S. I believe, and wishes to be a teacher someday, because she loves kids. "Kids are just crazy!" she said in a jovial tone. Working with kids had gotten her ill probably, she told me, but she continued to do it as she loved it.

We chatted some more, and I worked up the nerve to ask if we could study sometime for the next exam in about 2 weeks. She graciously and hastily accepted, as I looked and smiled back.

With ease, I completed the test, and went to Art History. Jerry from "Large Group" was there, and persuaded me to come to tonight's meeting. I accepted.

Before Econ class, I talked to Katie, and her friend Nicole , mostly about our day at the park yesterday.

Rose was at Economics class today. Dimitri was not. Rose wore a dark orange sweater that caressed the gentle curves of her bustline. Her bright orange curly hair gave the superbly sensual scent of well, what else--roses. It was pure ecstacy. I complimented her on it multiple times, and she actually apologizes to me for the smell! I quickly insisted that it was more than welcome, if not a blessing for me. I just wanted to sniff every lock, bury my nose into her Rose-bush, down to the sweetly scented scalp, and just inhale erotically from there.

Returning to the dorm betwixt classes, I had the fun surprise of Andypants's good friend Emily being there on a visit. In town for the day, they were to see a movie later on. Andypants entertained us with music from his computer--apparently he has every song you can think of available to download-- "Ghetto Superstar", The theme to "Happy Days" , just whatever. I think he has a secret desire to be a disc jockey someday. "Disc Jockey". It sounds funny. Especially "jockey". "Jock-kee". Must be French...

Speaking about Europe, on my way back, I saw my neighbor down the hall, Marina. Pronounced just like the boat-center, she has brown hair with a tint of red, glasses, and a sexy Russian-esque accent. But she's not Russian. "I'm Belarussian," she tells me. From Belarus.

I then went outside and ran into Heather . We had a fun chat about our field trip yesterday where a shocking revelation was made--one of the guys in her group PEED in the waterfall!!! No lie!!! Being a self-proclaimed "nature freak", this "pissed [her] off," (no pun intended!). Eeewww. Katie and I hung out at that waterfall, and I splashed my hands in the water...EEWWWW...The fiend who shall remain nameless also threatened the lives of trees and bragged about his general dominance over nature. Heather also explained to me about an interesting ritual where she spun in place amongst the foilage, as if to screw or drill deeper into the natural enviroment, and get a better sense of it. I found myself doing similar things while at the park, not really knowing why, but now that I think about it, I had the same effect.

As freezing ran began to fall, I said my see ya laters and trekked off to Jewish history. Among other things we discussed, we got into a talk about Judaizing --this is when Protestant sects in the 1600's began to follow some Jewish customs to be closer to the Bible's beginnings. Among these, there was circumscision. The professor stated that it was done by Jews on religious command from God, but she also brought up how others have done it for health reasons & the like. Then a woman seated in front of me spoke up. "I'm 38 years old," she started out, perhaps to authenticate her experience on the subject, "and I think that men who are circumscised are just more cleaner!" The class erupted in laughter. "If they're not...I just won't...no,no!" she continued in her Jamaican accent. "...They don't smell." she added to the circumscision justification. If you think this was funny, a fellow classmate had brought her voice recorder to record the lecture, and got this on tape . Wow.

Then stopped by the Commons for a pizza and coke dinner. Watched news reports of the sniper suspect(s) on the giant TVs. I was surprised that they supposedly did it--they don't fit any of the "rules" for this kind of thing, but they broke all of the rules to start with. The evidence is strongly mounting against them, as the media gorges itself on the whole scenario, as the greedy pundits pop out of the woodwork, as they always do. I saw Jean & Nitapita while there.

Then went to "Large Group", arriving a tad late. "Large" and "Small" Groups are the core components of Agap� , the campus's Christian fellowship group. "Small Group" consists of groups of 3 to 5 students discussing Bible verses and delving deeper into the faith. There's also song singing & guitar playing. "Large Group" consists of many Agap�;rs who listen to a message from a pastor and discuss Bible verses. Still more song singing and guitar playing. That night, Jerry was playing the bongos to a song like this: "I'll always love you, I'll always sing to you Jesus," and so on. Two folks who I know but forget their names played guitars. I think everyone who is in Agap� plays a guitar. Like NASANate; he was there.

The message was delivered by Pastor Mike, Agap�'s former leader, and currently a doctor at Johns Hopkins. He also was a missionary. A Korean who moved to Brazil, and then Silver Spring , he then traveled to Africa, the South Pacific, & East Asia doing missionary work. One place was in Tajikistan . Sometime before the 11th of September, Taliban-backed terrorists bombed a church there that Pastor Mike was to arrive at. The Muslim fundamentalists rigged 4 bombs of shrapnel & incindiary types, as well as a final demolition one to do the most damage to the 2-story, 1000 member strong church. When the dust cleared, he said in graphic detail that 10 died and many more were hurt, "But by God's divine providence," he said, 2 bombs did not detonate, saving many lives. He also said that despite the attack, four weeks later, 1,200 Tajikistanis filled the same church. Another story of devotion he mentioned was that of a young Tajikistani woman who went to that church. Over mere beliefs about things that happened centuries, millenia ago even, she was repeatedly beaten and raped by her Muslim neighbors, until she was barely alive. Yet she continued to be Christian and go to the church.

This led me to thinking about how religion causes sundry problems throughout civilized times. Jews get attacked by Christians. Christians get attacked by Muslims. Occasionally, Muslims get attacked by Christians, or in the case of Israel, Jews attack Muslims and Muslims attack Jews. I can not think of a circumstance where Jews have attacked Christians ,with religion as the primary cause, in modern times.

By now my head was spinning with the above thoughts. Jenny then called. I tried to get her to talk less politics and more about herself, but she is just as fanatical about LaRouche as many folk in Agap� are about Jesus.

This seriously irked me. Both organizations want me to be a strong follower of their ideologies. With some points they clashed, but others they shared common ground, yet refused to admit it. I may discuss this in detail later.

In a freakishly foggy funk about who/what to believe, I began to prattle on about how I felt to an Andypants who didn't quite get it at first, and an alcohol-infatuated neighbor. Later on, Andypants and I have a breakthrough of a conversation about the whole religion/little bit of politics too, where he said basically that one should believe what they wish to believe, it's often not worth trying to change someone's mind on the above topics, and that moderation, not zealousness in any one concept, is the key to happyness.

Thank you Andypants. I understand now. Goodnight.

Next time--More on NASANate, Agap� vs. LaRouche--Battle Royale, Weekend Review

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