Of Raindrops and Mudslides...

Yesterday, as I was heading home from the library after several long hours of studying for Tuesday’s theology test, I was suddenly struck by a note-worthy craving for some type of Good Earth tea—something with a bit of punch on the fore-end, and a zingy afterbite…oooh yeah.

Now obviously I could have chosen to ignore the craving, but we recently watched a lovely video in our psychology 201 class about the stages of pregnancy, and one of the things which very strongly came out was the fact that some pregnant women have cravings—most of which are apparently life-threatening and relationship-destroying things if not instantly fulfilled. Therefore, although I didn’t feel that my situation was life-threatening or relationship-destroying in urgency, I decided I ought to start practicing the whole finding-creative-ways-to-fulfill-a-craving thingamajig, just in case some day I were ever to wake up and find myself with child and dying of a particularly awful craving for mint toothpaste. (Always best to set some sort of historical precedent BEFORE one is actually placed in the situation, you know).

So I dropped my 300 lb backpack in my room (I seriously think they started making textbooks and laptops heavier in the past five years), kidnapped a few trusty friends who were up for a bit of psychotic shopping, and we set off in the rain, huddling under our umbrellas like a bunch of shriveled Chinese grandmothers wearing Inuit mukluks…

It’s uncommonly difficult for two people to walk under the same umbrella, we discovered, even if that umbrella happens to be a massively-huge golf umbrella with double layers and a highly-sophisticated plastic hand grip.

But we made it to WalMart, greeted the greeter, and set off to find the tea aisle feeling rather proud of ourselves. (Thea is directionally challenged, so it was a good thing her friends had come along to help her with that part, or she might still be wandering the aisles of the electronics section looking for tea bags… )

Walmarts in Wisconsin have lots of tea…presumably because Wisconsinites have highly-developed palates when it comes to the art of tea consumption. Walmarts in Virginia, however, do not. This is presumably because everyone in the south drinks a somewhat nasty substance known as “sweet tea,” and therefore, they do not have refined palates when it comes to the art of drinking real teas. Thus, when I finally entered the longed-for tea aisle, and stood before the measly little selection of nice cardboard boxes, I discovered that there was not a single box of Good Earth tea to be found in Lynchburg’s pitiful excuse for a WalMart. Alas.

I hardly knew what to do. I lowered my head and had a moment of silence for the death of my tea dream. (the WalMart clerks were just relieved that I had finally stopped talking out loud to myself for a few seconds…apparently this is NOT normal shopping behavior). And then I thought a whole bunch of friendly thoughts about WalMart, and the state of Virginia, and after that, it was all good. So my dear little friends and I picked out some other items, just to show WalMart that we weren’t the kind of people who hold grudges about poorly-stocked tea aisles.

As we were meandering up and down the long cart-racing tracks of which WalMarts are composed, we perceived (due to the dull roar) that the heavens had opened above Lynchburg, and that what had once been a gentle sprinkle had turned into a regular ark-requiring torrent outside. Heh. Good thing people aren’t made of sugar or earthworms…neither of which seem to do very well in the rain.

The sole male member of our party wanted to walk half a mile up the highway to get something hot to eat, because he hadn’t made it to the cafeteria before closing time that night…a sad occurrence which tends to leave people feeling rather hollow in their innards.

So off we went, with the rain trying in vain to dissolve our umbrellas, and the little rivers in the parking lot successfully soaking through our boots. We nearly got run over on three different occasions, and each time, we made a mental note to ourselves of the fact that walking on highways in the rain without a sidewalk after dark is probably one of the more high-risk behaviors engaged in by Lynchburgian college students…oh well.

One fine young chap from campus stopped to ask us what on earth we were thinking, to be thus walking around in the rain, and he offered all of us a ride in his truck. However, the only available riding space happened to be in the very-much-open bed of his truck, and therefore, we decided that, rather than riding home in the moving kiddy pool which had magically appeared in the back of his truck, we would simply take the risk of walking on our multiple sets of feet.

Which we did. Only, rather than walking back all the way that we had come, Thea thought it might be a smart idea to climb up the embankment behind the restaurant and take a short-cut through the woods. It wasn’t a good idea. But we did it anyway.

Virginia has a lot of…dirt. And when dirt gets wet, it makes…mud. So we were trying to climb up the 20 foot embankment behind the restaurant…which was made out of dirt. Which had become mud. And it was so, sooo fun. But very, very dirty.

Gabi, my Argentine roommate, had come along for the grins and giggles. At this point, she was thoroughly convinced that the concept of climbing the embankment was a ludicrous aspiration, but one worth attempting nonetheless. After a few memorable near-death sliding experiences, we had made it up the first embankment…and found ourselves facing a very, very long set of train tracks. I like train tracks. They’re so…solid.

Directly on the other side of the train tracks was a ditch. Only it was raining really hard. So the ditch had become a stream…which was significantly wider in some places than in others. Being intelligent college students with stunning deductive and inductive reasoning skills, we naturally looked for the narrowest point in the stream at which to cross. But we couldn’t find it. So we ended up just finding a slightly skinniesh looking section and jumping. And…Gabi kinda didn’t make it and landed in the water, but by that point, our boots were so thoroughly soaked it didn’t really make a hill of beans’ worth of difference.

There was another embankment right on the other side of the stream…so we linked umbrellas, got a run at it, and half-hauled, half-pushed each other up to the top, where we landed in a delightfully slimy stretch of reddish-brown something-or-other (which may or may not have had substantial nutritional value for the resident earthworm population, none of whom were visible at that moment…perhaps they were all out practicing the breaststroke in the local earthworm swimming puddle. Btw, the earthworm population? Desperately in need of qualified lifeguards. None currently appear to exist.)

After shaking ourselves off doggy-style and wringing out our rather bedraggled umbrellas, we raised our precipitation-filled eyes several centimeters and discovered that we had emerged from the woods almost directly in front of our dorms. Oh, life is full of beautiful surprises!

As we walked back into the dorm, Gabi looked at me with eyes full of wonderment. “Thea, in all my life, I have never done something like this. My mom would have said it was crazy, but really, I had a lot of fun!”
I assured her my mom probably would have said exactly the same thing. Apparently moms are kinda the same in every culture—who ever woulda thunk it?!

But regardless of whether or not I am lacking in saneness, it was a memory-making experience, which, although sadly lacking photographic evidence due to the lackage of underwater cameras available for use, shall remain a part of our Liberty experience.

Thank God for sane mothers, warm showers, crazy friends, and WalMart.

Tonight I ought to be doing homework. (Technically, I am, because it's the thought that counts, and I've been thinking about homework for more than thirty minutes now.)

But tonight something else happened, too. It was profound, in a small, insignificant sort of way. You see, we have a box of oreo cookies sitting on top of one of our dressers here in the dorm room. Occasionally my roommates and I don't eat them, despite the fact that they are very much there--and we feel proud of ourselves in those moments for our tremendous exhibition of self-control. At other times, however, we do eat them--and we rejoice in the fact that mankind has discovered the toxic process of extracting unhealthy sweet substances from sugar cane and corn products in order to pollute the world of food with substances which are both deleterious and delicious.

Tonight I opted out of having self-control, and having thus purposed to myself to indulge in a circlet of chocolatey greasy sweetness, I opened the top of the oreo box and pulled out a cookie. Only this cookie was unlike any oreo that I have ever seen. It was subtle, but definitely there.

Every oreo has an Oreo imprint on both the top and the bottom of the round black crunchy sections, as everyone knows, because someone decided long ago in a faraway factory that people would enjoy oreos just that much more if they happened to have little ridges all over them. Which apparently, people do.

However, with this particular oreo, one side was perfectly smooth...like the inside of the cookie is supposed to be, if you happen to be one of those individuals who opens your oreos to scrape out that weird greasy sickeningly-sweet white stuff in the middle (I used to do that, I confess, but I've matured since then).

And that's when I realized that somebody, somewhere, had gotten distracted during their long day at work...and they'd flipped the top of the oreo so the wrong side was up. Only I'm ok with smooth, so I wasn't sure I considered it wrong at all...just different.

I sat there staring at this oreo in silent wonder, thinking about the process of making these cookies (a process which has most likely been outsourced to India by now) and wondering about the cute little woman who doubtless was daydreaming about her wee kiddos back at home and thus accidentally inverted an oreo.

Or maybe it was a socially deviant teenager who wanted some cookie-eating person somewhere to receive a subtle message that would tell them it was ok to be different, to stand out from the crowd.

However that may be, as I sat there holding this cookie, I was reminded of the fact that life is kind of like a box of oreos. All the days look more or less alike from our vantage point...an endless series, kind of like the brown circles that stretch on in neat little rows inside of an oreo box. But, just like the cookie in my hand, each day has something unique, special, and memorable to offer to the person who takes just a moment to consider what exactly it is that makes this day special.

I stood a moment longer, mouth watering over the faint chocolatey scent of the cookie, mentally wandering back through my day. There had been a lot of people in it. There were the hundreds of people walking down the sidewalks as I was on my way to class this morning, most of whom I didn't know...but many of whom had smiled back and exchanged a friendly good morning. (I love America. People smile here. They wave. They say hi. So friendly. Just amazing! It's beautiful. Warms my heart every time).

There were the myriad classmates...many of whom I do know...with whom all manner of meaningful or simply psychotic conversations had taken place that morning. I had taken part in discussions on everything from the destructive powers of racism to the unfortunate nature of the fact that earthworms are so stupid that they inevitably come rushing to the surface to breathe during rainstorms and then end up drowning in mud puddles despite their best efforts at survival. (What can I say? Stinks to have no brain. Fail!)

There were the teachers, some of whom earnestly desire for us to learn many deep. profound, and life-changing truths, and some of whom merely earnestly desire for the day to come in which their students will stop asking inane questions.

But throughout that whole day, no two people interactions had been exactly alike, as far as I could recall. And no two of them had been exactly like any two that had taken place any other day in the past...presumably because no two people are exactly alike, and on top of that, every person is a little different today than he was yesterday.

And as I ate my unique oreo with great relish, I marveled over the fact that our lives are, in truth, remarkably complex, no matter how simple they may appear from the outside, for mankind himself, in the very essence of his person, is inimitably intricate and complex beyond our human capacity to fully know. And there are millions of such people on our planet, several of whom we brush shoulders with on a daily basis.

I wiped some brown crumbs off the dresser top, thinking solemnly of how little we understand the incredible treasure of human intellect and personality to which we are exposed hourly. Behind every smiling face is a broken person yearning to be fully known, mercifully cared for, unconditionally loved, and completely accepted. But so often, when I witness the seemingly endless streams of humanity around me, I fail to look for the uniqueness of each individual. I see just another long row of oreos--identical, uninteresting, not worth my time.

As I pack my bag to head to the gym, I am reminded of what an incredibly gracious thing it is that God searches the depths of every single human heart...that He cares enough to know details...to know (and care about) the subtle differences between all the human oreos in all the boxes in all places throughout all time. Wow.

May God give us the character to be people who notice the details and care.

And may God give me the self-control to break a rapidly-forming oreo addiction. Oops.

So there are a number of important questions that I've been asking myself this semester. But two are especially pressing, given recent events here in Lynchburg:

First of all, should I be concerned that when someone flushes a toilet on campus, the water pressure in the nearest drinking fountain is significantly reduced?

Secondly, if two people are running down a very long flight of stairs together, and the second one falls into the first, creating a domino effect, how does one ensure that he lands on top when the final destination is ultimately reached?

Oh, the mental agonies! College brains are ill-equipped to wrestle with such deep, meaningful, and impactful questions (the second question being especially impactful).