A Hundred and Forty Winters.

I’m giving a speech tomorrow afternoon in a class at CSU.  It’s a speech commemorating trees.  I thought trees would be a good topic because I’ve been writing about them so much lately.  Below is a manuscript of the speech if you’re at all interested in reading it.  It contains excerpts from earlier blogs and thoughts from just this afternoon and together, it’s a speech I can’t wait to give.  I would love input on it too if you have something to say!

Hope you enjoy:

You were the crib they laid me in when they brought me home from the hospital for the first time.  And when I took my first steps, I walked on you.  Today I sit in chairs made from you and write on pages they made from you.  You are the podium I give this speech from.  In death you are those things.  When you’re alive, I climb you, I rest under your shade, you tell me when the seasons are changing, and when its winter, you drop snow on my head as I walk under you. I walk under the trees.  You see I don’t understand trees, because they mean more to my life than I know.

A month or so ago when it snowed for three days straight, I was walking to class with a knit hat and the most waterlogged thrift store shoes ever when I came upon the oval.  I found it barricaded, with caution tape tied from tree to tree all the way around, disallowing me to conveniently cross it diagonally.  As I walked a good third of a mile around, I watched as trucks cleaned up a number of enormous branches that had fallen from these huge trees sometime that last night while we all slept.  Enormous gashes in the trunks from missing limbs left these trees looking dismembered and bullied.  God must have walked through the oval while we slept in heated homes. I imagine him  carefully stepping over the trees we planted and stopping now and then to bend over and pull a few thousand-pound branches from those hundred-foot trees like a kid might pull the legs off a grasshopper.  He had a good reason to do it cause he knows more about trees than I do, but I was still sad. I mentioned it to a friend of mine, asking why they didn’t fall to pieces like that last year when we got our first really big snow.  She said that our trees have a sort of tree cancer.  It’s a bug or a mold or something that kills them from the inside and I guess a lot of Colorado trees are dying from it.  I wonder what feels like for these anciently living organisms to feel suddenly and strikingly mortal after all they’ve seen.  Because of this sad tree disease,  the trees in the oval are terminal, and have become a lot weaker than they were in decades past when they stood up straight through the winter, arms raised to heaven.  Two world wars and a hundred and forty winters later, they’re falling apart and we aren’t allowed to walk under them for the first time ever.  I’m not really a tree-hugger, I never found myself caring about them before, but suddenly I was heartbroken for these dying trees.  How long have I known them?  Maybe three years?  Weren’t they planted like in 1870?  That year African-Americans could finally vote, Virginia rejoined the union, and they found and named Old Faithful.  My great grandparents were probably twenty-somethings or younger, still unaware of  the beautiful families they would found in the fifties. Some of their chidren before me would also walk under these same trees as CSU students, long before RamCT or automated text messages on our phones from the school when the snow’s grown too deep for class. I wonder if the trees were at a more climbable hight then? So why is my generation the one to watch these trees fed piece-by-piece into noisy woodchippers as their dry branches fall on sidewalks and cars?  The next generation will probably just jump from stump to stump.  With all this I mean to say that trees during their lives are remarkably beautiful.  I’ve resolve to appreciate them now, before I notice them dying.

Let’s think about some other trees.  Trees that have already been dislodged from their places.  This isn’t another “Save the Trees” speech, because I’m telling you that trees are irreplaceably useful in their death.  I live in a house made of trees.  Trees turned that were turned into two-by-fours for framing, and trees turned into wooden siding and wooden floors to walk on.  I would never want to live in a house made of metal, or a house made of plastic! The bed I sleep in was fashioned from a tree, bought by some great grandparent of mine.  All of my guitars and drums were once strong trees, birch, maple, spruce, ash.  Those are instruments by which I express who I am, and no other material could do that for me.  I know I talk a lot about music a lot, but I want to tell you about a specific tree that remains incredibly useful in it’s death.  Sometime during the 18th century, a house was built in England.  An old oak tree was cut down an used to make the mantle over the fireplace.  Almost 200 years later, in 1963, a 16 year old boy named Brian May went out with his dad and salvaged that beam from the house that was long abandoned.  From that piece of wood they fashioned an electric guitar.  They painted it Red, filled with electronics, and named it the “Red Special”.  No guitar has ever sounded like that one.  In 1970, Brian May joined a band called “Queen”, and for the next three decades as the band’s popularity grew to enormous heights, Brian would play this guitar for millions of fans in thousands of concerts, night after night.  He wrote “We Will Rock You”, and “Bohemian Rhapsody” on that guitar, and still plays it today.  It’s easy to forget that hundreds of years earlier, the guitar that gave him such a unique and recognizable sound was a little Oak tree, somewhere in cold England.  That tree lived through all four King Georges, two of the King Edwards, and was cut down sometime before Elizabeth II became queen.  Does it make sense that the corny sound of “We Are the Champions” was being grown in the ground before our country defeated theirs across the sea, to emerge as real champions in a land of liberty?

These may seem like far-fetched conclusions, but I will tell you that your life has been unmistakably marked by the trees, in ways you don’t even consider.  When I was a kid living in Southeast Colorado, I planted a row of pine trees with my dad on an empty prairie next to the house we built.  Like the song we shared two days ago in class, someday I’ll go back and see those trees.  If they stood the test of time, they’ll be towering over the house we left only a few years later.  Roots deep in the earth, enduring rain and hail, they mark the ground out there with pinecones they’ve dropped to continue their legacy, and spread it with time.  Trees are beautiful while they live, telling the seasons apart, and they’re beautifully useful in their death, constructing the world we make our homes in.  Like these trees, people, us, are living things God made beautiful.  While we’re alive we’re beautiful, making our homes. After we’re gone, the families we’ve created and been apart of have begun construction on history and it’s next great chapter.  Some day they’ll write about that chapter of history in history textbooks, textbooks they made out of the trees.

There must be some mistake.

I learned some things today in the white wonderland that is Fort Collins that made me sad, especially after all my tree-talk the other day.

I mentioned in my last post that the “the oval”, a large circular drive that forms the perimeter of a small sort of park, is filled with a hundred or so trees, all over a hundred years old.  Today, walking to class with a knit hat and the most waterlogged thrift store shoes ever, I came upon that oval.  I found it barricaded, with caution tape tied from tree to tree all the way around, disallowing me to conveniently cross it diagonally.  As I walked a good third of a mile around, I watched as trucks cleaned up a number of enormous branches that had fallen from these huge trees sometime that last night while we all slept.  Enormous gashes in the trunks from missing limbs left these trees looking dismembered and bullied.  God must have walked through the oval while we slept in heated homes, carefully stepping over the trees we planted and stopping now and then to bend over and pull a few thousand-pound branches from hundred-foot trees like a kid might pull the legs off a grasshopper.  He had a good reason to do it cause he knows more about trees, but I was still sad.

I mentioned it to a friend of mine, asking why they didn’t fall to pieces like that last year when we got our first really big snow.  She said that our trees have a sort of tree cancer.  It’s a bug or a mold or something that kills them from the inside and I guess a lot of Colorado trees are dying from it.  I wonder what feels like for these anciently living organisms to feel suddenly and strikingly mortal after all they’ve seen.  Because of this sad tree disease,  the trees in the oval are terminal, and have become a lot weaker than they were in decades past when they stood up straight through the winter, arms raised to heaven like a charismatic.  This year, the heavy wet snow is heartless, felling branch by brittle branch and making it unsafe for the first time since Barrack Obama spoke underneath that canopy, to walk through the hallway of leaves I’m so normalized to.

I don’t know why I’m suddenly such a tree-hugger, but I’m really crushed by this.  How long have I known these trees?  Maybe three years?  Weren’t they planted like in 1870?  The year African-Americans could finally vote, the year Virginia rejoined the union, and the year they found and named Old Faithful.  My great grandparents were probably twenty-somethings or younger, still unaware of the alcoholism and abuse they would engage in later to set the stage for the beautiful families my grandparents would found in the fifties, consequently determined to build homes free from these vices.  Some of their descendants before me would also walk under these same trees as CSU students, long before RamCT or automated text messages on our phones from the school when the snow’s grown too deep for class.  I should ask Uncle Dan what the trees were like then.  I should ask Uncle Jim if this makes him sad.

I bet they weren’t concerned for the trees back then, they seemed strong.  They were probably at a more climbable height anyway.  So why is my generation the one to watch these trees fed piece-by-piece into noisy woodchippers as their dry branches fall on sidewalks and cars?  The next generation will probably just jump from stump to stump, uniquely aware of the blue sky that was hidden to us in the oval by a green patchwork canopy of leaves the size of your hand.  But they won’t be aware of the shade we had when we would play frisbee after work on summer days.

I guess eventually they will plant new trees to fight through the cold, dead roots that stretch a hundred feet underground, to establish a new network of life.  But for another fifty years kids will bike around them, not under them.  I imagine one or two of the old trees will survive, and kids will just think it’s a monstrosity because although it used to be surrounded by friends its size, now it stands out and is contrasted as huge beside the saplings.  The pictures on the CSU website will be of this tree.  Pamphlets and brochures show kids studying under it, amongst the little trees transplanted from some tree farm.  It’s like an anomaly, a living exception that would teach us as much as we could understand if it could talk.  Maybe someday I’ll walk by those trees with a young Raab of my own, to leave him here like I was left here, a wonderful part of life and an adventure I’m still enjoying.  I’ll tell him about what the trees looked like when I went here, we’ll talk about how nice it is in Fort Collins, and then I’ll hug him and hold on as tight as my Dad held onto me. I’ll pray for him to know God and to be courageous like Joshua.

When I return home, there will naturally be a void.  Kind of like the void the trees left when we cut them down.  But he’ll return on occasion, far from forgotten, unlike the trees.  I dramatize everything.  Music people are the worst at doing that.  Now I’m caused to remember that those trees are still there as we speak, even if they’re looking a little grey like the sky the last couple days.  No one’s cut them down yet.  I don’t have a son, praise God in Heaven, and  I’m actually the one who returns home, on occasion, to see my lovely parents.  Hmmm….life is good for me.

The character of God is different than trees, because even the oldest, most majestic trees we can think of can be destroyed from the inside by little beetles or mold or whatever.  They eventually topple over and we send them in pieces to wherever dead trees go to become paper.  I assume all trees get turned into paper when they die.  God is different though, because we can climb in His branches, build a treehouse amongst the strong limbs, and live in peace and childlikeness in His great comforting love, without the fear of anything bringing us down.  No beetles, fire, or irresponsible teenage drivers could bring down this great tree.  We’re safe, we’re warm and cared about.  I am sure that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:38-39) We’re safe amongst these branches.

If  there does come a day when I leave a little Raab kid who maybe looks a little bit like me, at this great university or some other one, I’ll tell him about trees, and about the ones in the oval, and about how God isn’t anything like them.  Because His beauty is something unaffected by seasons or fires or anything people do or even the way people see Him.  He is Himself and He’s unspeakably brilliant and we don’t understand Him and that’s why it’s entirely appropriate to worship Him with every second, every moment, and every single thought.  That’s the God I serve.  THAT is my soon coming King.  If you’re looking for me, I’m up in His branches, holding on as tightly as He held onto me.

Why Are You Looking Grave?

Today was wonderful.  Light and easy.  I woke up the first time at eleven and noticed that it had snowed.  The sky was grey and gloomy so I went back to sleep.  When I woke up again at one, the sky was blue, the sun was warm, and most of the snow had already melted on the roof outside my window. I put on some Paul Baloche and began my day on a very good note.

Everyone comes home from winter break tomorrow.  Phil’s been playing shows with his sister, recording with random people, and hitting up bars with Bon Iver.  He’ll be back home in the middle of the day I suppose.  We would usually go play raquetball, but my stupid knee is unreasonably messed up right now.  My mom thinks it just needs a loot of Advil, but I think there’s something else wrong with it.  Here’s hoping I’m wrong.  Alyssa comes home tomrrow too, along with Amanda and Reandra.  I love those girls.  Barry will be back from a missions trip on Thursday, Kyle and John on Friday (I think?).  Classes start next Tuesday, and I’ll be back into the swing of things.  

As much as I adore break for the chance it gives me to relax and catch up on sleep, I’m pumped to have my days occupied again.  School and work are good things to spend your day doing.  When I hate them, like everyone does sometimes, I try to remember to be thankful to be working and thankful to be learning.  That’s a blessing.

This post was rather meaningless and sort of stream-of-consciousness.  That’s okay.  Listening to Mew at 1:30 in the morning can make you write that way.  I adore that band, by the way.  Way to be creative guys.  Way to be from Denmark.

 

That’s all.

Make it ever New.

College students are of a different mind than most people.  It’s a selfish, compulsive, and erratic mind.  Day to day it’s class after class, test after test, event after event.  No time to think things through.  It’s a life driven by the hope of future success and financial comfort.  It’s bragging about your brains and showing off your ambition. We are made to believe that our course of study is an addition to who we are as people.  I’m Barry the chemistry major!  I’m Heather the human development major!  Jered Communications!  Philip “Political Science” Waggoner.  JD the… Physicist?  (False.)  We are forming our future exam by exam.  Writing ourselves future paychecks by writing ourselves good essays and turning them in on time.  It stresses us out (It stresses me out), and we obsess over it to the point of exhaustion.

But we are kids.  We throw parties. We throw frisbees.  We like video games and cartoons.  When we get the newspaper we glance at the cover and go straight to the Sudoku and the comics at the back.  Really.  Our loves are temporary and unstable.  Relationships are bipolar and advance much too quickly.  We live in tiny rooms and ride bikes everywhere, eating in cafeterias and drinking coffee from the cart in the library on campus.  Our world is not real.  The future will confuse my generation.  My generation will be confused why Barrack Obama didn’t get elected even though they wore Cold-War era propaganda style t-shirts with their “Messiah” on them every day and went around in their cars from house to house stealing McCain/Palin yard signs.  My generation is confused about our prayer habits and alcohol-free parties.  We are kids who don’t understand.

 

I am kid and I don’t understand.

 

I don’t understand what I’m learning.  I can’t calculate the magnetic field vector of a cylindrical solenoid in three steps like the Engineering boys can and I don’t know how to write a C++ program that will calculate the increasing value of rare Wizard Of Oz books.  It means nothing to me.  I am crippled by my apathy.  I don’t how to study.  I can’t lock myself away in the library for five hours like my room mates.  I do not care enough to ever do something like that.  They do that almost daily.  

 

But I led worship this morning at my church and it was great.  I sang “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” and meant it from my heart.  I led “Create In Me a Clean Heart” from an electric piano and felt so much at home.  Tonight I played drums at Youth Group and it was a blast.  I am myself under such circumstances.  This weekend I missed my own cousin’s big wedding for a Calc test that I hopelessly flunked.  I was bitter and I felt like I failed my family in two ways.  Solving integrals at two in the morning I am depressed and tired.  I look at my Physics homework and roll my eyes.  I don’t care and I’m not concerned.

 

But I need to care.  I need to be motivated!  I need to do everything as unto the Lord!  He’s given me an INCREDIBLE opportunity to succeed at a great school.  I am amazingly lucky to have a University Education, or even live where that’s a feasible option.  I need God to make me care?  (That would not be a smooth operation)  So I say to myself:

 

Change my heart, oh God

Make it ever new.

Change my heart, oh God.

May I be like You.

 

You are the Potter,

I am the clay.

Mold me and make me,

This is what I pray…

Change my heart oh God, make me ever new.  Help me play this part, help me shine like you.  Amongst a people who seek satisfaction in losing themselves as they establish themselves, may I be clay that only the master potter can shape.  I am fully confident in a bright future full of blessings and favor.  He has promised me that.

I keep stalling out.

Falling behind is an awful feeling.  How did I get here, all tied up?  Pride hurts like hell, head hurts from thinking, heart heavy inside from not feeling adequate.

 

I keep stalling out, I just can’t keep up.  There’s alarming doubt, am I good enough?  But you keep coming around to convince me it’s still far from over.

 

I don’t know why I thought I could do something like this.  Why did I assume I was cut out for it?  Why didn’t someone tell me that getting a degree like this was really really hard?  I would have to quit everything else in my world at this point to get by in this field of study.  Maybe I need to do that.  I trust God, but I don’t trust myself even a little.  I do not understand what I’m learning.  The math is way over my head but everyone else gets it.

 

Sean’s recent post was heavily convicting the other night when I first read it.  I’m created to be a musician.  Music makes sense to me.  Physics is like a language I don’t speak.  It would be an amazing blow to my pride to bow out of the program and chase music, but if God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble, maybe there will be grace for me?

 

I say all these things all the time.  This thought process is alive and spinning in my mind all the time, even though I never act on it.  I claim that I want to drop out, but I won’t.  At least not for now.  Can’t imagine the repercussions of a decision like that.

 

Pray for me, friends.  I’m a fool for having such ambition without the natural capacity to achieve it.

I’m not ready to talk about it yet.

So the Buffs beat the Rams Sunday night.  Old news by now.

 

However the game was great fun.  Lots of Rambonding, Ramrejoicing, Ramrecovery, and, at the end of the day, a greater sense of Ramfandom.

The boys are moving in.

This is an exciting time.  All summer I’ve enjoyed a slowlazy Fort Collins where the pace is easy and the homework is light.  This is not the city at its best.  Over the next two weeks, the masses will return for school.  Approximately 26,000 students attend my university, and over the summer the majority of that group goes elsewhere to work and play in between spring and fall classes.  The third week of August sees the grand homecoming.  Traffic will worsen, jobs will get gobbled up, classes will be held, and my house will be filled with guys.  Eleven total live in my house (Ten the landlord knows about), and every one of them is a God-fearing outdoorsman or musician.  I’m so excited to live with these people.  Our house is big, old, and classy, and will soon be full of laughter, mischief, and body odor.  I can’t wait.

 

Kyle’s been up here over the weekend, and now Dustin’s permanently moved in (He’s the one the landlord doesn’t know about…).  Phil’s back for good on the 23rd, and John’s summer class just ended, so soon they become real residents.  These are my people.  While I love and miss my real family ever so much, these kids are my family right now.  We lift each other up, beat each other up, eat each other’s food, and use each other’s stuff.  Our cars are parked diagonally out front, and our music library’s are shared through our Apple base station network.  Responsible parties are planned well in advance for the year, and playlists have been made for the events.  Class schedules are set in stone, and the train is making it’s predictable journey earlier each morning.  I love this city, I love these people.

A few things.

• Chelsea Hartling. My secret crush freshman year. My prom date senior year. Lived in Kansas last year. One of my favorite friends every year. Now a blogger.  She just started her blog and it’s under construction, but welcome her to our world?
  
• Radiohead just put a whole bunch of live videos “From the basement” up on iTunes. It’s $ 8.00 for ten really good videos. Do it.
• Someone offered me $15 dollars for all five of the pedals I have for sale. I suggested $20 for the crappiest of them all and $300 for all five. He offered $15 period. I emailed him to make sure he was serious and he was. I love craigslist.
• Just got a job at Noodles & Company. I was there today for an hour and a half to shadow some people so they could see how I work and interact with customers. They then sat me down, bought me a delicious meal, and offered me a job. I accepted and walked home in two minutes. That’s a hook up for free noodles and not having to drive to work.
• An olde Cameron At Bay song has been in my head all day next to Viva La Vida. Sean whatever happened to that creepy awesome circus song? “Mothers lost their children in the fire..” or something scary and thought provoking. That song is great and we need to record it someday. For now I will just sing what I remember of it to myself.

So that’s today.

I’m at a place of decision making, as usual, and I need some serious prayer. I have everything set up for me here at CSU, but I don’t feel like I know that I’m where God wants me. Not fun. I need him to give me a word or something. I’d love to stick around here, but I’ll leave and go do whatever he wants (Missions, Vegas with Debbie and the Woods, School of Worship, etc…) at the drop of a hat. I would seriously start packing up my car now if he said to. I want to be where I am the most effective. Making Noodles will be fun, but I want to be making disciples and making albums. I just need a word from God. I can do those things here if he wants, but I’m not settled here and it doesn’t feel like home. Pray for your friend JD? Much love.

So I should be studying for finals.

Blogging has become a wonderful distraction to me.  When I have a lot on my mind I can come write here.   Avid bloggers say “amen”.  In approximately seven hours I sit down for possibly the most important test of my life so far, the Final exam for PH141, a Physics course at Colorado State University.  Having recently decided to follow physics as a course of study, I am now required to get no less than a C- in any physics class I take.  If I do well on this final, it will be no issue.  If I fail, I retake the class.  But my God will provide as he always has. I love being able to trust that; I can’t imagine how much more stressed I would be if I felt like I was controlling my own destiny without any external help.  I just sounded very Calvinistic, didn’t I?  Ok, so my performance IS directly related to how many times I take this fairly impossible class, but I can trust God to make it worth it to me in the case of a retake as opposed to being mad at him for “making me” get a D or whatever.  If I have to redo the course I will come out with a mastery of it that will carry me through other more difficult courses.  A win win, right?  Maybe now I’m just pep-talking myself.

 

Well a wiser student would be sleeping now, because he or she would have finished studying, finished their crib sheet, and written their due-in-the-morning comp paper by now.  But here’s JD, pumped up on caffeine from the delicious raspberry affagato (less-serious coffee drinkers look that one up) he just consumed at the Alley Cat with his friend Ashley when he should have been getting work done, trying to cram all of the above into the next seven hours, hopefully along with a couple hours of sleep to carry him through a couple hours of panicky test taking in the morning.

 

One thing I can say about this lifestyle is, although sometimes lonely and sometimes overwhelming, it is so full.  I mean I am living so crazy, so alive right now that nothing at all could slow me down.  Freshman year of college is over in a matter of hours, and that puts me 25% of the way through my college career, making me statistically more likely to “succeed” in life than the 99% of the world who will never make it through this much of a college degree.  Scary.  Mildly pressuring. Also very humbling. These days I find myself envying the satisfaction of so many of my friends who are doing exactly what they want without any kind of higher education at all.  Here I am learning about big, big ideas that have little to do with music.  I feel like I’m trying to manufacture some kind of artificial interest in the subject maybe?  Even though this is fascinating stuff I’m learning, the passion I have for music and worship makes this degree feel like a petty backup plan in case I don’t “make it” or whatever in music.  But I am counting on, I am counting on God!  This University certainly feels like the right place to be.  Campus Crusade (still hate that name) for Christ needs my help playing drums right now, and there are many lost people (i.e. Keller my roomate) who I have been able to reach out to in ways I didn’t think I could.  That doesn’t mean Keller “got saved”, but now he has a better understanding of what Christians live for and why, whereas before he just thought of it as a pious crutch.  So I’m in my place tonight.  I really should not blog anymore, I should finish this paper and get some sleep. 

 

At 9:00 AM tomorrow my physics final is over.  If I pass, I pass.  The important thing is I will be up all night tonight with my lover.  I will take my test tomorrow with that lover beside me.  I will walk out of the Clark building with that lover.  I will get on my rickety old bike and ride back to Summit Hall with my lover waiting for me there when I get back.  Three, maybe four years from now I will graduate from this loud and often trying place with that same lover next to me.  I will grow old, and my lover will remain ageless.  I will die, and go to be with that one great love I was blessed to have through all my days.  Regardless of how I do on this terrifying test in the morning, on that day my love will still say to me “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

 

So what am I so stressed about?

 

 

Definitely needed another homework distraction.

So today I start blogging, behind the trend as usual. I’ve started to read blogs from friends of mine like Sean Brage and Mark Thomas, both men who’ve influenced me more than a little in my life, and I’ve loved reading about and getting caught up on their thoughts and ideas. So here’s the first blog.

A friend of mine whom I went to elementary (pity I had to spell check THAT word) school with met up with me for lunch at the brand new “Academic Village” dining hall on campus here at CSU (also had to spell check “academic”, that’s fantastic.). I’ve known Caleb for years, but today as we enjoyed some entirely sub-par food he opened up to me for the first time and I really got to hear about his life. People like Caleb should be exciting to Christians. He was raised in a Christian home, but like so often is the case, he lost his way some time in high school. Through a lot of prayer from his friends and his family, he found a church up here in lovely Fort Collins where he’s been getting back into his faith. In this next month he will be baptized in the Poudre river and re-dedicated to Jesus. Beautiful. His life isn’t easy right now, his girlfriend of 14 months broke up with him a few day ago and he’s obviously really hurt over it. But I am so encouraged that his faith is new and he is seeking God even while he’s hurting. Love it.