ordinary day
Mood:  lazy
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Today I am back at work and taking a quick break to do some blogging. The church Reunion I went to last week was lots of fun. I deepened some friendships and made some new ones. I left feeling much more energised and refreshed than I normally do, which was nice. I also left with a sense of purpose and a renewed commitment to school and to pushing my ideas and thoughts to their limits, and maybe even beyond that. Of course I have some fabulous pictures - most of them were taken by other people, but I don't think they'll mind if I share them here. I'll check with them and see, and hopefully soon I will post some lovely pictures.

musings
Today's work lunch discussion was great, a healthy disagreement about war and politics and a great discussion of the extreme democracy in the US. Of course, as usual, our discussion trapsed off into a bunch of barely connected directions, but that is one of my favourite things about lunch with people from work - you never know where it might lead. I was able to talk about what I'd learned about in my recent class on Community of Christ Theology. Even Christianity in the US was democratized during the revolutionary years. With the belief in the free and equal rights of every person politically, came the corollaries that areas like law, medicine, and religion could be accessible to everyone too. What right did an educated elite have to tell people what was right and wrong, how to be healthy, and what and how to believe? The extreme of this is evident today in many ways, but most notably, in reality television. Reality TV is democracy in action - anyone, no matter who they are or where they're from, can be on TV (but only if they make it through the selection process). Well, our lunch discussion never quite made it into the realms of reality TV, but I never did get the chance to bring around our discussion about the war in Iraq at the end to our discussion of democratization in the beginning. The war in Iraq, according to Bush's speeches, is a religious crusade, and the religion they are crusading to promote is American-style Capitalist Democracy.

Now this is about as political as my blog gets. Usually I save this stuff for lunch table discussions at work and school. I really do like talking about this stuff though, and any chance I get I like to hear a variety of opinions. It's no fun if everyone agrees all the time! That's why I love our work conversations, because usually there is some healthy disagreement. When there isn't I am disappointed.

home again
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I am procrastinating about my Proverbs exegesis paper and so decided that writing a blog entry is a very productive way of using procrastination time. I am home again and trying to decide what home routines I want to fall back into and which ones I want to try to break. This morning Mom and I went for a good walk by Burnaby lake. It's so nice to have wildspace within a couple of minutes walk from our front door. It was enough of a walk to break a sweat and work the muscles a bit. I think I am going to try and make it a regular thing to walk with Mom.

Last night I finished reading the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It was a fabulous book, I sometimes forget how much I love science fiction. It made me want to go devour a bunch of Ursula K LeGuin books. I think it's probably good for my brain to read fiction on a regular basis, to get out of the heavy, thick academic stuff my brain usually gets lodged in. I think my next task will be to finish Glittering Images which instead of reflecting back my love of science, reflects back my love of theology.

I wish it was as easy to write a paper as it is to write stuff in my blog :) Unfortunately I have to actually prove what I say and can't just write about what I think. I shouldn't complain too much though, I really do love the sayings I've chosen from Proverbs 30. I love them because they capture my imagination and inspire me. They make me want to reflect on my theology around God and Wisdom and Creation. Perhaps three of my favourite theological topics. Well, I just love theology, I don't think I could pick three favourite topics.

Now it's time to procrastinate by eating lunch!

pictures pictures
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Kat & Mary

Shannon & Kat

Indep MO adventures
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Greetings from the midwest. Things are quite the adventure here, the Community of Christ seminary is different from VST, but there are also some surprising similarities.

I'm staying sane by not taking myself too seriously. As a result of a bus conversation at least a month ago, probably longer, Kat and I travelled to three stores to find L'Oreal Colour Pulse temporary hair dye - gone in 8-10 washes. Yesterday Kat, Kat's sister Mary, and I dyed our hair. Fun times. Mine is hardly noticeable because it's so dark to start out with. I am too lazy to go throught the process of putting pictures on here, so go to:
http://spaces.msn.com/members/shanneranner/
to see pictures of us and our hair. My colour is called "Copper Blast", but there's not much blasting going on on my head in the pics. There is also a picture of a beautiful storm cloud we saw during our layover in Denver.

I will try to remember to take pictures at conference and post them.