Full Version of Melissa Ramer's TeenTalk Guest Column for May 2016

Readers – As the column is named “Teen Talk,” it seems only appropriate to occasionally feature teen writers from CMC congregations. If you’d like to guest-write a column, or know a teen you’d like to recommend, email me at hshenk@rosedale.edu

I stood in the Rosedale chapel, a thirteen-year-old, watching as campers and counselors raised their hands in worship. All week I had seen these same people bursting with passionate love for Jesus. And I wanted it. I wanted their passion, and I wanted to be a part of what they were so excited about.

If you’re anything like me, you play by the rules. You go to the right church, wear the right clothes, say the right things, and live the common, Christian life. But if you’re like me, you’ve always felt that Christianity as you know it isn’t enough. Honestly, Christianity scares me sometimes. I’m afraid to be different and share my faith. I’m afraid to be involved in a lifestyle that calls me to sacrifice everything for the One who has an incredible purpose for me—a purpose I’m constantly fulfilling. But wait, doesn’t that sound exciting?

What if instead of seeing Christianity as a safe ticket to Heaven, we saw it as a call from the omnipotent God of the Universe to help Him change the world? When He was on earth, Jesus introduced a radical lifestyle that has changed the lives of millions. If “Christian” means “little Christ” aren’t we called to the same thing? I’m not daring you to be a World Savior, but I think God wants every sinful human who puts his or her trust in Jesus to see life as a chance to join Him in the biggest, most important mission of all time: showing the world that in Jesus there’s still hope for humanity. He could do it without us, but He made a conscious decision to involve you and me in His work. I don’t know about you, but I want to join in. And not just skin deep. I want to be fully engaged and recklessly wholehearted when it comes to this mission.

I know you’ve probably heard this before, but it can’t be overstated. I want to beg you, as a young adult, to rethink Christianity. Every generation has the potential to change the world. Why not ours? Psalm 24:6a says, “This is the generation who seeks the Lord.” Let’s claim that for our generation. Let’s claim it for ourselves and for every teenager who dares to accept the calling of Jesus. I know it won’t bring instant change, but I want to claim that verse every day. I want to throw away mediocre Christianity every day. And I have to fight myself every day to remember that it’s my responsibility to show this world hope.

I can’t change the world if I’m using my parents’ faith as a “Get into Heaven Free” card. I can’t change the world if I’m waiting for someone else to bring relief to my community. And I can’t change the world if I’m waiting for others to be Jesus to those on my college campus. It’s up to me and you to initiate change.

Maybe you’re reading this and saying, “Sure, Melissa, it sounds great, but it’s unrealistic and illogical.” But this is what I say to you, today: the message of Christ is illogical. And God isn’t bound by the limits of ‘realistic.’ Creating a child inside the womb of a virgin is unrealistic if you ask me. And check this out: “Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we could ever ask or think.” (Eph. 3:20) That’s a game changer, friends. Our Incredible, Invincible God is asking you to exercise reckless faith and show the world what hope really is. And that is beautiful.

I want the passion I experienced in the RBC chapel four years ago to become my lifestyle. I want my whole life to be about the mission my counselors found so exciting. I’m ready to throw mediocre, box-checking Christianity out the window and make sure it can’t survive the fall. I’m ready to say, “Yes, Jesus, yes,” all day, every day, for the rest of my life, no matter the cost. I’m afraid and insecure and too weak to do this. But our Savior is strong enough to lead a whole generation on this mission. And I believe that generation is our generation—a generation that includes you.

A high school senior from Bealeton, Virginia, Melissa Ramer’s greatest passions are music and people. Also a runner, logophile and writer, Melissa writes for a growing audience through her personal blog. Melissa’s desire is to live radically with joie de vivre for the glory of her Savior.

If He'd've Followed Her Advice, She'd've Been a Jobless Widow...

One of the myriad benefits of marriage is that a second set of eyes is introduced to the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of your mind and behavior, and the owner of those eyes is able to tell you things about yourself you didn't know, and don't believe. You're compelled to believe them, of course, because it's your spouse saying so, whereas if anyone else had told you so, you would've scoffed, sobbed or attempted some violence.

Anyway, one of the things that Courtney has discovered about me that I initially didn't believe, is that I'm a little morbid. According to her, my mind is filled with death and darkness, torture and tragedy, and a keen sense for hopelessness and suffering, even in the small things.

After Courtney noticed, a bunch of other people crowded onto the bandwagon of noticing that my mind is predisposed to darkness. Some of them noticed this because I periodically request prayer at church for conditions that resemble anxiety and depression. I say 'resemble' because they never last quite long enough to qualify, and if diagnosis is a bingo card, I'm always two spaces short.

Anyway, people at church notice, and they're extremely encouraging, and will ask me about all the darkness and disorder in my head, from time to time. And it was in one of those conversations that I had an epiphany.

Reading dark stories, telling dark stories, pondering horrible questions based on dark stories, and the horrifying nature of human history, until I just feel wretched--I have a reason for these behaviors.

It's the same reason that I'm compulsively driven to challenge my fear of heights. Also the same reason that I try to lean into my doubt, and carefully study the best objection I can find to the things I believe most firmly. 

It's because I've discovered that when I run from my doubt, when I scroll quickly past the Facebook links about why the historical Jesus didn't exist, or had fifteen wives, or was a pretender who faced legal action brought by the Hindu deity Krishna for copyright violation, or whatever, or don't pursue the conversation when my atheist friends deride people of faith, that my doubt becomes a looming darkness that consumes my mind. My fear is bigger, badder, and harder to answer than my questions, but I don't want to run from it. I don't want to run from it, because I believe that on the far side of my questions, I'll discover and rediscover something true, over and over, each time I look.

I've also discovered addictive adrenaline in the raw terror I feel in high places, and a glorious sense of satisfaction when I know that I took my dread firmly in hand and subdued it, and crawled out on that beam, or climbed up that rock-face, or dangled my legs off the edge of the cliff for three endless seconds before spasmodically chickening out. But each time I do it, I can dangle my feet longer, and I can breathe easier. On the far side of my fear lies a richer experience of life, and a deep satisfaction with overcoming myself, even in a small way. 

Similarly, I'm drawn to stories of darkness, and to horrible questions about the dark side of human existence, because I believe that if we look straight into the darkness, and don't flinch, we'll see through it. I believe that a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. 

And maybe that's naive; certainly life hasn't gone out of its way to make me miserable. I've not yet had any reason to endorse Job's wife's advice on handling adversity ("Curse God and die!"). But I know some people who've gone through things I can't imagine. And those veteran souls seem to think that if you stare straight down past the floorboards of the universe, that underneath all of the chaos and tragedy, at the very root of it all, you'll see something different. And that it makes the rest of it seem a little more worthwhile.

So if it seems like I'm too focused on darkness, or in love with sorrow, I promise it's just because I'm hoping for a glimpse.

A Reaction to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game

Well. That was fun.

I speak, naturally, of Ohio State's wholly unexpected triumph in the national championship of college football. When the roll is taken of those who saw this coming more than three weeks ago, I confess that my name won't appear thereon.

There's something particularly zesty about a sporting triumph that I'm afraid a lot of people are missing, based on my Facebook wall. There's still some SEC-taunting (of which I wholeheartedly approve, don't get me wrong), but it verges on sounding just as obnoxious and ignorant as was all of the chest-pounding from the Southeast, as though one national championship, and a great story make for a dynasty. Also, I've noticed people snarkily taking shots at it (the whole "sportsing sportsers!" angle), and the "This doesn't matter. There are more important things in life." followed at last by attempts (few, and far between, thank heavens) to compare the post-game revelry in Columbus to Ferguson.

Since my readership isn't super high on this blog, it strikes me that posting here is a way to say the following quietly:

1) College football is cyclical. The only problem I've had with the SEC is the patently mindless belief that they've always been better and will always be better, and are better by birthright. Enjoy it for what it is, but don't let it write your biography. Nick Saban will be back, Mark Helfrich will be back. At some point, we'll lose to them, again. And then, at some point, we'll beat them again, too.

2) Not that many people seem to require a reminder that there are things in the world more significant than football and football championships. Probably, most of us spend more time worrying and thinking about money, grades, time and relationships, much less economies, ecosystems, terrorism and epidemics than we do celebrating or stressing about football. A joyless salvation ain't.

3) Those who scoff at sports on social media seem to me to by their very scoffing sacrifice any right they have to be irritated when sports fans mock their correspondingly not-that-important interests and hobbies. Those who don't have hobbies, interests, or things that they get all wrapped up in that aren't massively important should note point 2, above.

4) Bizarre as it is to me that people riot to celebrate victories, last night wasn't actually that wild in Columbus, nor particularly unusual for a large American city following a major sporting event. No one got hurt, there was no serious damage, and fewer than ten arrests. Attempts to derive trenchant political commentary by comparing the two seem like they have about the same amount of a point as dragging a couch into the street and setting it on fire. Funny, in a way, but not helpful.

My own take: how awesome was that? A third-string quarterback and a close-knit team overcoming adversity (and not adversity of the Jameis Winston self-created variety) and the betting line to win the first championship of the new era of college football, and in the process knocking down the king gorilla of the jungle's loudest chest-pounding posse? Two games that were as agonizing to watch as they are fun to remember? The glorious feeling of somehow being identified with having won something, and triumphed over all comers? Fleeting as it is, it's pretty exhilarating, and it makes me appreciate having been created as the kind of being who can watch other people play a game a thousand miles away, and still come out of grinning ear to ear for the next month based on the result. 

Existentialists, Elephants, and the Encroaching Threat of Directional Nihilism.

Welcome to another edition of the world’s recently reinvigorated foremost source of text-based misery. Here, at the outset of the second edition of the second incarnation, I’d like to mention some interesting facts about Existentialists. Soren Kierkegaard once went on record as being deeply in favor of repetition, and extended his approval and endorsement even to others who willed repetition. All of which is to say, if you came here hoping against hope that last week was a painful reminder of the bad ol’ days, but that the sun had dawned anew, you have only The Existentialists to blame for this vicious repetition of The Saturday Address. It is their view that you should enjoy, nay, that you should will this.

Not that The Existentialists will mind very much if you blame them. For one thing, they’ve always seemed to have more enthusiasm for misery, despair, and hopelessness than a rock band of suburban teenagers, so they’d probably appreciate the compliment, and for another thing, they’re all dead.

And actually, just presently, both things make a lot of sense to me when I consider the fact that The Existentialists were, as near as I can figure (having only a rough knowledge of them, their work, and biographies) involved in academia for most of their lives. It is no surprise to me—embroiled as I am in the dreadful second quarter of a semester—that this made their outlook somewhat dim.

Anyway, I was all set to unleash another piece about my present ills, one that was going to center on another way in which the necessary conditions of doing my job have rendered me unfit for life, and ill-suited for academic endeavor, but the truth is, I have not yet achieved a Kierkegaardian enthusiasm for repetition, and just can’t bring myself to put the needle back down in that particular groove.

Instead, I’d prefer to talk about elephants.

Here is the thing. Here are two things, in fact. First thing: I don’t know almost anything about elephants.

Second thing, giraffes, not elephants, are the rulers of the Saturday Address jungle, and we are great respecters of tradition.

So I’m not going to talk a) about other unfortunate bits of my development which render life difficult and miserable, or b) about elephants.

What is left?

This is actually a pretty good question. What is left?

According to Dictionary.com, it is “of, pertaining to, or located on or near the side of a person or thing that is turned toward the west when the subject is facing north.”

That is to say, there is no context-independent definition of left. Left is a word which carries no meaning by itself. To understand that something is left, we must know what object it is to the side of, and which side of the orienting object we are viewing the scene from. Because after all, if we were on the other side of the object, that which is on the left, would be on the right.This is not, of course, to say that left is arbitrary. It isn’t, at all, but it is extremely context-sensitive.

This context sensitivity of left illustrates several important points, but because my wife is waiting on me to finish this so that we can leave for Cincinnati, I will restrict myself to the most important principle we can gather from this brief discussion of relative directions.

Always remember, friends, outside of an orienting context, we cannot tell who, or what is right. And without something being right…

…there is nothing left.

Have a good week.

Three Hanses Together Take Time to Talk About Taking Time to...Focus.

After eons of wondering whence my modest ability to write short stories, long stories, poetry, academic papers and Russian-novel-length emails had gone, I have uncovered  (stumbled across, really) the dread cause of it all. It is the same reason that I now find it much more difficult to read long books, watch movies instead of tv shows, and study for exams. It is not, as it happens, crippling self-editing tendencies. Self-editing has become a crippling tendency of mine, in that I’ve now re-written the preceding sentence thrice, and this one twice. Still, I’m getting better. Sort of. Watch me: I’m going to leave those two sentences alone, now.

Yes, here at the beginning of the second paragraph it still seems as though the third time through, we conquered the self-editing habit. Oh. Bother. I reread the first paragraph just now, and rewrote that second sentence. And pointed it out in the sentence. Just so any confused readers are aware, there are now two distinct timelines in play—the one where I wrote about two-and-a-half paragraphs on Thursday, the 25^th of September, and the one I am writing now, on Friday, the 26^th. Timeline 3, speaking. I’m writing on Saturday, and in italics. Any readers not presently confused should just hang tight, because I’m about to mention (Thursday self is, that is) the main issue, which led to the whole thing not being done yesterday, and will almost inevitably lead to a multiplicity of timelines, and possible parallel realities. Any readers objecting to such a plan are encouraged never to a) read comic books, or b) watch films, especially films based on comic books.

Leaving it (self-editing, and multiple timelines) lightly aside, let us proceed to the true cause of my constant inconsistency. This is it: I’ve become good at multitasking. I discovered yesterday (Wednesday)—by way of a class lecture—that multitasking and single-tasking skills are inversely proportional. That is to say, as a person increases in their ability to concentrate on manifold objects and events more-or-less simultaneously, they lose the ability to concentrate on one object or event for very long at all.

This seems pretty unfair. Pretty predictable, perhaps, but pretty poor per principles of parity. That is to say, it is as though learning to juggle carried with it the danger that you (a trained juggler) couldn’t really be trusted to hold anything—a baby, for instance—for fear that you might involuntarily juggle it. This, as far as I can tell, is not the case at all. I know some jugglers (including—no jest—the president of a large association of Christian jugglers). As far as I can tell, not a single juggler I know has ever involuntarily juggled anything. In fact, I can think of only two instances wherein the juggling skills of my friends, the jugglers have ever amounted to anything resembling a real drawback. In one case, as I recall, the current president of the Christian Juggling Association juggled (intentionally, mind you) a number of machetes, and one of them ended up doing an impression of the double-bladed sword of scripture (separating flesh from bone). The impression was pretty effective, and his hand was pretty ineffective for the next couple of months. In the other case, I witnessed a friend attempting a juggling trick that involved not only a pattern of keeping balls suspended in the air, but also bouncing them off of the ground. He happened to misjudge the angle of the bounce, and was compelled by the ball to join it on the floor in a writhing heap.

Anyway, you see what I mean? It is very difficult to get anywhere if, instead of writing straightforwardly about how multitasking has ruined me for concentrating on a single task and theme, I go off on tangents about juggling injuries, and multiple timelines. What I meant by those stories, though is that the problem was not that they started involuntarily juggling their dinner plate or steering wheel or whatever, leading to disaster, it was that they made mistakes while juggling, on purpose. But apparently, this is not how mental juggling works.

 Incidentally, I’ve now written past the end of the Thursday timeline, so everything you read from here on out will be Friday. Unless I get distracted again. I did.

At any rate, I’ve started working on being able to concentrate on one thing at a time, again, so that I can do so when the moment calls for it. That is, so I can write enormous, bloated blog posts that call to mind the wretched years when those of my friends who didn’t have the necessary technical savvy to get ‘em sent straight to the Spam folder spent Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings weeping on account of the Saturday Address. Also, so I can write papers, and stuff. I just wrote a paper. Between that last sentence, and this one.

My first real step toward this was forcing myself to not read a book, browse the internet or try to write poetry while watching Thursday Night Football on CBS. I ended up multitasking, anyway; by midway through the fourth quarter, I was simultaneously watching football and snoring. Still, it was progress. Now I’m writing this, and watching football. Progress erased.

My one concern, which wasn’t really addressed in the classroom, is this: I need to be good at multitasking. Working as a restaurant server requires that I concentrate on sixty things in one minute, whereas writing, reading, and studying for exams requires that I concentrate on one thing for sixty minutes.

I have not yet done any research on the point, but I am intrigued—can I reacquire a skill at single-tasking without sacrificing my livelihood-required ability to multitask? And if not, which is better in the long run? Is it better to be able to do a bunch of little things at once—in a world where it is increasingly demanded—or to be capable of sitting down, and giving my senses, mind and emotions more time and opportunity for developing skills I already have, and developing new ones.

For instance, I don’t know how to juggle, and I’d like to learn.

It's What They Do With Their Cars That Makes Me Nervous About Their Guns

Patriarchal family dictatorship having largely slunk off the stage, missed by few, regretted by fewer, I would not, could not, forbid the thing. But I tell you this: if any child formed of my genes and/or raised in my care proposes to link their future and plight their troth with a person who merges late and/or drives on the shoulder in traffic jams, I will campaign against the match. 

It's about the easiest way to demonstrate that you don't give a damn about anyone but yourself.

A Revelation and A Resolution

              The past year and a half has been one of the most exciting and beautiful of my life. In gas station parking lots, on pew kneelers in a catholic cathedral, and in a copse of trees awash in ashy failure, I’ve begun to discover just what it means to belong to another human, and to be entrusted with a human soul. My faith has been challenged more directly and more ambitiously than ever before, and has continually emerged from battle refreshed and renewed.

               Through the record-setting heat of last summer and into the heavy woolen winter, I worked two jobs, averaging more than 45 hours a week, and managed to take a full load of courses more intellectually ambitious than any previous semester of my collegiate career. In order to complete projects and study for exams, I was frequently obliged to burn the midnight oil until relentless daylight seared my irises, already dyed pink by contact lens irritation.

                And in January, I stumbled out of it with a 3.85 cumulative GPA, and onto a plane. From January to May, five of my best friends and I rampaged across the South American continent in an ancient station-wagon, taking life as it came.

                I came home, swept back into my arms a woman for whom the adjective ‘incomparable’ was personally crafted, slid a ring onto her finger and set a date.

               I say this not to toot my own horn. Goodness knows there are resoundingly more popular venues for torn-tootling than this blog.  I say it to give myself perspective: my life is awesome.

               I say this because through all of it, I have been consistently distracted.  I let the most miniscule uncertainty or tension in a friendship upend my world. I let my perfectionism become writer’s block, and my writer’s block become a monkey. The monkey, suffering no similar creative blockage, has purchased a saddle and become a relatively nimble horseman at my expense, since.

               I’ve known, throughout, that my life is awesome.

                But somehow, despite maintaining a mostly-proper outlook of the big things, I’ve allowed myself to lose the intense gratitude of the remarkably blessed.

               This evening, due in part to John Wayne, King of the Apes, and some minor unpleasantness that has arisen regarding my employment, I began to compose a sad, sad, song.

                No worries, I shan't be sharing.

                Anyway, the upshot was something along the lines of the endless endurance required to live, and the way in which we all get stretched out further than possible, until God—having unfairly extended our rubber-band souls to the point where the gritty grains begin to show—lets us snap back together. Fulfilling my role of Faithless Israelite 1, I was on the point of expressing doubt as to whether He was ever going to stop stretching.

                  And then it hit me like a musket-ball between the eyes. An archaic truth, unearthed in millennia past, and a personal mantra for me since roughly my twelfth year of existence: it’s all in your attitude. It’s all in perspective.

                   It’s odd to me that I’ve been so close to right this whole time, all the while allowing a pessimistic and thoroughly unindomitable frame of mind to overwhelm the sunniness in which my soul was made to bask. It leaves me more than a little embarrassed, let me tell you.

                  It also fills me with gratitude that a certain Someone was willing to extend the revelation while I was soggily sobbing in verse form.

                  And finally, it allows me to repeat my epiphany for your benefit, and for my own when the time to be reminded comes again: how good or bad your life is is not entirely in your control all the time, but most of the time, it is. And when the skies seem black, and cares attack, and you essay to count your blessings….Count ‘em, count ‘em, count ‘em. And put some soul into it.