I feel a bit sluggish at the moment...I need to take some more of that MaxGXL pill. That stuff gives me instant energy! 😱
Brit Lit class was pretty funny. We were on the subject of lucid dreams and my professor was telling us that she had a lucid dream only once before and she was thinking, "OH! I'm dreaming!
: This is great, I read somewhere that you can control your dreams! *squeee* ^.^ ....now what?" 
She told us that she just couldn't think of anything to do in the dream world and then said, "Well, I heard that you can fly in your dreams, so...I flew. 🙂 But wow what a lack of imagination, huh? I'm finally able to lucid dream and I just think 'oh I guess I can flyyyyy'" XD Hahaha! I swear my Brit Lit professor tells the funniest stories. I also like how she laughs at her own awkward statements and jokes. Only three more class meetings left! 8D Yatta~! 
OH, and my Amazon books came in the mail yesterday. I bought six of them with the $80 I received from my memmaw and Dad...as well as the money I got from my step-sister saved back from Christmas. 😀 I bought:
- White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture by Chrys Ingraham
- Lesbian Couples: A Guide to Creating Healthy Relationships by Ph.D. D.Merilee Clunis and Ph.D. G. Dorsey Green
- A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith by Brian D. McLaren
- Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden
- Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
- Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
I'm reading the first one at the moment.
: The two novels by Sarah Waters are lesbian romances set in the Victorian era. In fact, they're so famous that they were made into two films. 🙂 I've seen a few clips from Fingersmith and it looks like a very sweet movie. 
Here's the trailer in case you're curious:
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I'm a big fan of period pieces and young lesbo love so it's a win-win for me!
And yeah, definitely watching this one after I finish the novel, of course. Oh, and yesterday I happened to be pawing through one of the novels I had to read for my online classes last year called "Hunting for Hope" and I came across probably one of the most beautiful chapters in the book. It was funny because at the time I was reading it, the author's words didn't affect me that much...now they mean more than I'll ever be able to express and provide a nice possibility as to the potential of the universe and mankind's place in it. Here's my favorite excerpt from the chapter:
"I believe that Creation is holy. It is worthy of our wonder, our study, our devotion and love. It is the work of a Creator whom we can apprehend directly, if fleetingly, in the depths of our own being, a Creator who transcends all categories and labels. We perceive the Creator in wildness, in beauty, in art, in the surge of ideas, in communion with our fellow creatures.
We meet the Creator as we would meet another person, as a center of consciousness and will and desire, yet one that overflows every limit we can imagine. This divine Being contains all lesser beings, as the ocean contains whales and fish. There is love in this enveloping presence, but also toughness; there is terrifying power as well as serenity; there is tremendous wisdom along with burning curiosity.
I believe that Creation is not finished, but rather is a fabulous experiment whose outcome not even the Creator foresees. Because the outcome is unknown, the Creator is passionately interested in its unfolding. Our universe may be one of many, each one obeying different laws, but is the only one we humans can witness. However simple the forces that set our universe in motion, and however simple the rules that govern the evolution of those forces, the deepest impulse behind this Creation appears to be a drive toward complexity. Cosmic history reveals a gradual movement, not without occasional reverses, toward higher and higher levels of order, as matter organized itself into atoms, atoms into molecules, molecules into organisms, organisms into societies. The life on our own small planet is most likely only a sample of life in the universe. Every living species manifests the yearning of the Creator to take on form, to explore the possibilities in matter, and every species is therefore precious.
However precious it may be, everything that springs into existence eventually dissolves back to the source, making way for new gestures of being. We humans are not the endpoint of evolution, not the favorite darlings of the Creator, but only clever players in the ongoing drama. Nonetheless, we may be useful, even crucial, to the work of Creation. We have been given the distinctive and perhaps unique ability to discern the laws that govern the universe, and to express what we discover in words and images and formulas. The search for understanding and the struggle for expression are therefore the most vital of our pursuits; by comparison, the scramble for wealth, power, status, and pleasure is a mere sideshow. We matter as individuals, as societies, and as a species in proportion to what we contribute to the evolving self-awareness of the universe.
Our part in the cosmic story is to gaze back, with comprehension and joy, at the whole of Creation. Our role is to witness and celebrate the beauty of things, the elegance and order in the world, and the Ground of Being that we share with all creatures. We do this through painting and storytelling, through dancing and singing, through science and mathematics, through the raising of buildings and the launching of telescopes into space, through the shaping of poems and pots, through our neverending talk. In however small a way, each of us helps to push outward the margins of consciousness. If any part of us survives death, it will be the ripples of new perception that we set moving in the ocean of being. All that we perceive, think, and feel is gathered up in the mind of the Creator, and the Creator, in turn, ponders and probes the universe through us. Even these sentences, even your thoughts as you read them, are filaments that flicker in the great Mind.
There, in brief, are the answers I would give now to the questions that have haunted me since my brush with death on the operating table. Of course they are always subject to change in light of new evidence and insight, but for the present they are the ones I try to live by. If elements of my vision seem familiar, it is because I have drawn images and ideas from ancient spiritual teachings, as well as from modern cosmology. In a secular age, I need make no excuse for borrowing from science. I can justify my borrowing from religion by appealing, again, to faith: I believe that a holy power calls to us, that it provokes our wonder and reflection, that it responds to our seeking.
While the world’s religions differ from one another in details of worship and doctrine, they all point more or less directly toward the same center. This congruence may be explained psychologically as a projection of human need, or biologically as an adaptation to a perilous environment, or metaphysically as a response to a potent reality that commands our attention. Since our plight as fragile creatures on a risky planet influences everything we do, there is clearly some truth in the psychological and biological explanations. But we can approach the whole truth, I am convinced, only by making the metaphysical claim. I believe the source and goal of our longing is really there, at the heart of the world.
Even if there were enough room, this would not be the place for me to explain all my reasons for believing as I do. I have sketched a few of the reasons in earlier chapters, but I would have to multiply these narratives of hope a hundredfold in order to trace our history of my search for the sacred, and I would have to stretch the boundaries of language to even a hint at what I have found. I am no mystic, no seer, but an ordinary man seized by awe. I can’t prove that anything I say about ultimate reality is true. I can only echo the words of a genuine mystic, Martin Buber, and confess that “nothing remains to me in the end but an appeal to the testimony of your own mysteries, my reader, which may be buried under debris but are presumably still accessible to you.’ My aim is not to persuade you to accept my vision, but rather to invite you to clarify your own.
At least by now you will understand why my reading of the cosmic story fills me with hope. It is reassuring to feel we are not alone in a hostile universe, but rather we are allied with a creative power which seeks us out, which strengthens and inspires us, which needs our eyes and ears and tongues. We are not puppets tugged by invisible strings, but free players in the drama of Creation. We learn the script as we go, and we also help to compose it, we and all our fellow beings. In our search for knowledge and our struggle for expression we are carrying on the Creator’s work, and in that work we are aided by the Way of things. To recognize the possibility of such aid is to believe in grace. So we are justified in feeling not merely human optimism, based on a confidence in our own intelligence and skills, but cosmic optimism, based on the nature of reality.
I have not suffered from that childhood nightmare of a hammer slamming the incandescent ‘I’ for decades, but plenty of adult nightmares have crowded in to fill the vacuum. Sometimes when I cannot sleep, or when I wake in the morning before dawn, I walk downstairs in the dark. I could turn on a light in the hall, but I don’t want to disturb my wife, Ruth. So I make my way down the stairs without being able to see where I am setting my feet, yet I never doubt that the steps are there. In mild weather I often continue on outside, and if the night is moonless or overcast, I walk without hesitation over the invisible ground, trusting the earth to bear me up. To live boldly, to work effectively, we need to feel a similar confidence in the Ground of Being. We don’t have to feel that it is benevolent, any more than we have to believe that the stairway or dirt is benevolent, only that it is steady, reliable, and at least in part, knowable.
This argument for trusting in the Way of things may sound cerebral, but in my own experience the trust itself is visceral. Pascal, who knew the downward tug of despair, also knew the upwelling of hope: ‘In spite of…all our miseries, which touch us, which grip us by the throat, we have an instinct which we cannot repress and which lifts us up.’ If we are going to be lifted up by hope, we must feel it in our guts, through and through, the way we feel the smack of beauty or hunger or love. I cannot look on this magnificent Creation, cannot read the story of the unfolding universe, without feeling a surge of gratitude and expectation.
‘We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery,’ Thoreau reminds us. ‘May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it, a little? To devote your life to the discovery of the divinity in nature or to the eating of oysters, would they not be attended with very different results?’ Whatever its source, Creation is a marvelous feat of generosity, an exuberant outpouring. I see that lavish gift in Ruth’s face, in the wren pecking for bugs on my windowsill, in the October rain bringing down yellow leaves from the tulip tree in our front yard, in the pumpkin glowing orange on our neighbor’s porch. The outpouring never ceases, but only changes form. We honor this continuing gift by our own acts of charity and compassion. We honor the Creator by cherishing every parcel of Creation, especially those living things that share the planet with us, the beetles and bison, the black-footed ferrets and black-eyed Susans.
Because we have achieved an extraordinary power to impose our will upon the earth, we bear a solemn obligation to conserve the earth’s bounty, for all life. This means we should defend the air and water and soil from pollution and exploitation. It means that we should protect other species and preserve the habitats on which they rely. For our own species, it means we should bring into the world only those children for whom we can provide adequate care, and then we should provide that care lovingly and generously. Since we carry on the work of Creation through acts of inquiry and imagination, we should safeguard the freedom of thought and expression. Since every single one of us may contribute to the growth of consciousness, we should work to guarantee every human being the chance to develop his or her potential.
The price of hope, in other words, is responsibility. In exchange for the gift of purpose, in exchange for grace, we are called to account for our lives. I am aware that anyone who looks for divinity in nature may be dismissed as a wishful thinker. I may well be the dupe of my own craving for direction. And yet it seems to me far more wishful to believe that the universe requires nothing of us, that we need be guided only by our appetites, whether for oysters or for some other delicacies, than to believe that there is a sacred authority to which we are answerable. My reading of the cosmic story implies that we ARE answerable, to a high and rigorous standard enforced by an ultimate power, and that in our best moments we may answer well."
Isn't that just beautiful? I may be a Christian, but I love expanding my mind to new ideas and possibilities regarding the universe...and this explanation just clicks with me, it sings to me. And what's really eerie about "Hunting for Hope" is that it's set in southern Indiana...the place of my residence.
The author himself lives in Bloomington, I think...which is where I'll be headed soon! XD So even those little facts make the book even more special to me. The whole purpose behind the book is to find what gives the author, Scott Sanders the most hope so he can help cure his son of his cynicism, doubt, and depression. Each chapter is devoted to a different source of hope like beauty, skill, fidelity, wildness, etc. I recommend it to every single person out there. EDIT: I've just discovered that Mr. Sanders is STILL teaching at IU.
: OMGOMG I might get to meet him! 
And now here are two of the songs that happen to be stuck in my head at the moment. lol I thought I'd share them so they can be stuck in your head, too! Ain't I nice? 😀
Epilogue by Kamelot:
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Seasons in the Sun by Nirvana:
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Bye for now, friends!
Current Mood: joyous
And it also...