the LIFE in learning

I'm pretty sure I have already shouted it out the whole world by now, but for those of you who do not know yet:

I'm taking French!!!

It is a unique and beautiful language. Unique in the way that it is the only language that has a category of phonetics called "la nasales" (check me. it might actually be masculine, le), where you basically sound like you are speaking inside the "guitar body of your head" as my teacher put it. It's beautiful because it is the language spoken in Paris, where people fall in love, right?

My teacher is a 60-some year young lady, Mademoiselle Lonay. She is animated, and quite romantic. Much expected from a French teacher. I think I am going to like her.

My class is made up of a variety of people. There are several high schoolers participating in Running Start, as well as women whose families are from Morocco, or people learning for professional reasons... I really like the diversity. It makes things more interesting.

The first day I met a young lady whose Grandfather is the mayor of San Luis Obispo. Woohoo, it's a small world!

On Tuesday night after class I was sitting waiting for the bus sorting out this storm of thoughts and emotions about this new experiences of GOING TO SCHOOL! I was absentmindedly watching people walk from their classes to the bus stop or wherever they were going for the night. Some were coming from the Math and Science building holding their Physics texts, Calculus texts, Biology... I got so excited and started listing all those classes in my head that I wanted to take. Chemistry, Sociology, Psychology, Literature. It would be so cool to take these classes and study these topics with people. Really I'm not sure if I'm more excited about the class itself or the people. Each mind is so different and I think it's the human beings that fascinate me. That's the best thing about school, hands down.

I look at people with an unusual fascination, I think. My deprivation of human contact in my schooling years has not necessarily been a bad thing, because I don't take people for granted now. Studying in solitude has cultivated my self-driven nature, as well as caused me to observe people and the way they learn in a new way. They are foreign specimens to me. People are new cells which I have discovered on this organism called earth. They wiggle and dance and function uniquely, making up the body of society....

This seems to be the topic of study where my mind is most naturally inclined. I guess it would technically be called sociology: the study of social patterns, how people live and interact with each other, how they grow and develop, how they learn... The funny thing is that I am originally repulsed by groups of people, but once I get among them I cannot help but watch them, and love them.

This study is very dry without a large injection of LOVE from Jesus. Without staying at the source there is no love to flow. Without adopting the world-view of God, and identifying myself with HIS interests in people, whatever I learn has very little meaning in the big picture of life. We are meant to be his Body, a society of believers, with Christ as the Head. The Lord is jealous for our hearts! He wants his purpose to be fulfilled in our lives, and as I adopt this mindset, every study I take on--French, Chemistry, Sociology, Physics--will have LIFE! It will make sense in the big picture. My eyes will see the beauty of the way God intended things to be.

This is the most amazing thing about life. I have this fire burning to see people at their best, and the means to approach it, if God wills. Without God, my coaching means nothing. In fact it is only by his power that I have the energy and love for the people in my gym. I have experienced days when I have been completely empty, every movement I coach has become incomprehensible and shrouded with confusion. How exactly is the way the body is supposed to work!? I can't see it clearly! Then it comes, the touch. The power of God. I see things clearly. It is all so simple. Words just flow, and peoples' beauties are so alive. Ahhhh, I see! Under the tarnish, is a shine... and this is what must be conceived. It is what is seen by God (holy, blameless, free from accusation). The holy being, identified with Christ is the goal. And it is finished.



"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." Hebrew 12:1-2