I Have To Go To A New Church?

Going to college forces you to leave a lot of things behind. Some of these things like clothes and pictures you get to choose to leave or not, but other things like friends or even your family you have to leave. Another thing that you can’t bring with you to college is your home church. As college students, if you’re looking for a new church to go to, you can either get lucky and find one quickly, or you have to do what my roommates and I are starting to do: church-hop. Church hopping is when you check out a new church every Sunday until you find one that you like or would want to go back to. In C.S. Lewis’ novel The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape, a demon who has been writing letters to his nephew Wormwood, references this act of church hopping as a way to bring down his patient. “The next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.” (81) He continues on to give reasons why this would be a beneficial thing for the demons, saying that churches become like clubs which could leave people out, and also that the searcher becomes like a critic to new churches until he finds one that is “suitable.” I believe that this tactic is easily applicable to today and can still work on people, simply through my own experience.

This past Sunday my roommates and I finally started checking out churches to go to. We went to a church that one of our old friends had gone to when he was in college. As soon as we got there I started judging the church “Wow this is pretty small.” “There are a lot of old people here, where are all of the younger people like us?” “This worship seems a little off.” “Is this a good sermon, I can’t tell.” These are just a few of the many thoughts that crossed my mind while I was at the service, thoughts that could ultimately lead me away from God. Just like any other church hopper, if I were to get into the habit of judging churches, I might never find the best one for me. I was putting myself in a position where I knew what was the best church for me, where in reality I should have just taken in the experience instead of judging it. No church will be like my home church that I went to for years, I just need to leave it up to God to show me where my right “fit” is for now.

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: Macmillan, 1943. Print.

 

3 in 1

People celebrate holidays for many different reasons. It could be for fun, to celebrate, to get over a rough day, to remember a good one, heck people make up holidays just to get over having to go to work. What it comes down to is people finding a certain day special enough to celebrate it. Everyone has their special days, whether it be birthdays, Christmas, Halloween, or even Easter. For me my family holidays have always been a little different because I am a triplet. So that pretty much means we get holidays x3 especially on July 1, our birthday. Our birthday has looked a little bit different over the years but the one thing that we can not get away from is that we were all born on the same day, so what do you do? Do you celebrate all at once? Do you give everyone their own individual party? My parents actually left it up to us. When we were younger we chose to have two separate parties, one for me, and one for my two sisters (because girls had cooties back then and we men didn’t want any of that.) Each of us even got our own cake.

Once the three of us grew up and my maturity caught up to my sisters we started having joint parties, because girls became a little more interesting than their cooties, and also leading to a singular cake. The past couple years our birthday has devolved into a family dinner and hanging out with friends, but in my eyes nothing really beats that. I still remember one of my favorite birthdays parties. My mom had taken me and my sisters out to lunch to celebrate, we went to California Pizza Kitchen. We had a party planned for a little later in the day so the three of us were excited, but we had no idea what awaited us back home. As we pulled into the back driveway something seemed a little off. I ended up being the one to open the gate, and get drenched with water. “SURPRISE!!!” It was a big group of all of our friends aptly equipped with water guns, water balloons and a hose.  Our parents had gotten us with a surprise party, and we didn’t even expect it. We thanked them by given them big wet hugs so that they could join in in the fun.

The Beauty of Netflix

The biggest thing that someone has in college is free time. This is also the biggest problem because we don’t know what to do with all of it. Something that my roommates and I have turned to is Netflix. Netflix is probably one of the greatest things ever invented, the amount of nostalgia that can be conjured up simply by scrolling through the titles is astounding. Our nights are extended way too easily with the simple suggestion of watching a movie. There is something about being in college that makes someone yearn for the past, maybe its a bit of homesickness, or even an overload of stress, but there are just some days where nothing sounds better than an old Disney style movie! From Atlantis to El Dorado, we’ve watched way too many. It is probably unhealthy how many times we’ve forsaken homework to watch an old movie, but their is something even more dangerous…..the t.v. series.

The other day I was walking into my room and as I was unlocking the door I hear my roommates yell “MATT! Get in here right now!!” They had just started watching the first episode of “The Walking Dead”. I had been eagerly awaiting the day where I would finally see the show, I had endlessly heard about how great it was, but I had never gotten around to watching it. I remember thinking to myself “Alright, here we go.” as I sat down and ended what would be my free time for the next couple of weeks. That was two weeks ago, I am now currently about to watch the season two finale. That’s a total of 13 and a half hours of t.v. watched and homework ignored, and I still have a whole other season to catch up on. I’m hooked, there is no hope for me. I am enthralled by the story line, the characters, and the fact that none of them are safe from death. {SPOILER ALERT- skip this next sentence if you haven’t seen the show and still want to watch it.} Just last episode they killed off Dale, who was arguably my favorite character. I raged. No one is off limits to the zombies, no survival tactic too severe for the group. The worst is just when you think a character is too important to the story-line: BOOM they’re dead.

The moral of the story is be careful what you watch, you never know what will keep you from remembering essays and other work that is due and force you to play catch up. So dear Netflix, I Hate You; But I Love You all the same.

The Road

“Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one.” This is what Screwtape says in his twelfth letter  to his nephew Wormwood, something that is all too real in our society today. Most people do not realize that the bad habits they are forming can be dangerous to themselves. Whether its smoking, drinking, or taking drugs, there are way too many bad things for people to get involved with. In a recent online article from CNN they state that marijuana is “safer” than alcohol. Sure smoking pot may not cause all of the same adverse effects as alcohol, but what they do not take into account is the fact that the use of marijuana can lead to the use of other, more harmful drugs. The gradual use of pot can lead to wanting a “better high” or a “bigger trip”, things that can endanger not only our self but also others. Things like doing drugs and being under the influence are not what God wants for us, and can (in harsh terms) take us on the road to Hell. There are many things that can lead us onto this dangerous road, so we need to be smart and careful in the choices we make in life.

Another way to look at this quote is from the perspective of the demons themselves, because for them the safest road for us to get to hell is gradual. It’s safe for the demons in the story to sit back and hide their identity from their patients by just doing little things to change them. If they were to make themselves known, or make a big show of something, they are in danger of being beaten. By that I mean it is sometimes in our darkest days where God’s light shines the brightest. The safest thing for the demons to do is attract us to new unknowingly hell-bound ideas gradually, because then it is harder for us to see the bad within them.  Also, the longer it takes for us to attach to an idea, the longer it takes to detach or leave that idea once it has solidified with in us. That is why for us as humans it is so hard to break from addictions because we have slowly grown into them. So be careful when you hear that any drugs are “safer” than others, because we have no idea where that road might take us.

What did they say?

“The first draft of anything is s**t.” Ernest Hemingway

            This is the story of anything I have ever tried to sit down and seriously write. I tend to process things verbally so my writing comes out as choppy and unorganized, which doesn’t sound very good to read. So taking advice from good ol’ Ernest, I always have to re-read or have someone else read an essay that I write. From experience I have learned that I need to take writing step by step, or to break it up into sections. In my junior year English class my teacher focused on our writing a lot. We would write each essay paragraph by paragraph and then put it all together in the end. This gave me more chances to look at my previous writing and realize, like the quote states so eloquently, that my first drafts are always……bad.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” Douglas Adams

            Procrastination is a terrible thing, a terrible thing that has haunted me for years. It is way too easy for me to say “Oh! This and that aren’t due until next week; I’ll just do them then.” Procrastination becomes a way of life, and the more you do it, the easier it is to procrastinate. Even now as I approach my 12:00 posting deadline I realize how much I put things off until the end. Sometimes people put out their best work under pressure, but for me that’s not always true. If we look at both quotes together, they actually are related. The first draft of anything won’t be very good, especially if you procrastinate. Also if you wait to do something you might only have time for one draft, leaving it at the Hemingway quote suggests, sub-par. 

Losing Your Mancard

To preface this story you’re going to have to know a little bit about me. I have three sister and NO brothers, meaning I didn’t have too many male influences in my life. Not only that, but as a triplet, two of my sisters are my age. Sure I had my Dad to look up to but he spent a large amount of his time at work while I was little. Taking into account my Mom and the fact that I shared a room with my sisters until I was 8, I was left surrounded by all girls all the time. Throughout my life I was subjected to the amazing law of “Majority Rules” which left me with far too much knowledge of High School Musical and the Disney channel. Needless to say, I tried hard to fit in with my sisters, and in some instances I took it too far. This was one of those instances.

Raising triplets is no easy task. You need to know where each of them is at all times so no one gets left out or even left behind. My mom was an expert at this and she knew how to handle most situations. Whether it was a cut, bruise, or hurt feelings Super-Mom knew how to deal with it. That being said, even super heroes need a break sometimes. As the mischievous little kids that we were, the three of us knew how to take advantage of mommy’s breaks. We were probably around the age of six or seven at the time so while Mom was downstairs we decided to play dress-up. “Let’s make Matt look like a girl!” exclaimed Teen (our affectionate name for my sister Christine). “YES! That would be so funny” agreed Kathryn. Not wanting to be left out, my young little voice shrugged “Sure, Why not?” They went to town on me almost immediately. Makeup, dresses, hairbands, nothing was held back. After the dust cloud of femininity settled, Matthew James Doherty was no longer, there stood a pimped out princess version of myself. Noticing that it had been quite for far too long my Mom went upstairs and saw the aftermath of a makeup war, and I was the only casualty. She got a huge kick out of it. My Dad on the other hand (who had just arrived home) was not as entertained. Looking like his fourth daughter kept me thoroughly embarrassed in front of my Dad. Through this I learned to avoid playing dress up, and to be okay being left out of certain games and situations when it came to my sisters.