Have you ever felt an inner energy? The kind of energy that is in your heart, your soul, and your eyes. Where you feel like you could run a marathon? Where you are so excited but you aren’t quite sure why? Where does this come from? What is this energy? It’s a natural high. Some would blame it on God, God gives them this energy. But I don’t quite catch that, because then why wouldn’t more people feel like this more often? It could just be a physiological change in our bodies, our hormones adjusting depending on the weather, time of day, time of the year. Or it could be something psychological. At the same time, why is there a need to ask questions about why I feel one way or another? If I feel good, shouldn’t I just accept that? But then, shouldn’t I get to know and understand my body and mind?

On a completely different note…
I am writing this paper about religion and politics. Specifically it deals with how clergymen use politics/religious lobbying and morality. It is an incredibly interesting topic, but at the same time I’m terribly confused as how to approach it. It needs to be similar to an article one might find in a scientific journal. I wrote one version and during the revision process my professor told me I needed to re interview my interviewee and get more of his research in my paper. So I did this, but still.. There is just very little dealing with his actual research that is interesting to write about, so I keep going back towards my opinions and whatnot, which is NOT what I should be writing on. There are moral implications within the research design, surveying, interviewing… But that only accounts for a small portion. Morality is a HUGE issue in religious lobbying. Different religious leaders want to enforce their religious beliefs on the government. They are not very successful with this, but what if they become successful? It worries me. Yes, religious lobbying can do good, look at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But at the same time, should morality be legislated? Isn’t that what some people want? They want to tell a woman that she has no choice, isn’t that a moral decision everyone should be able to make on their own? Should our laws be derived from a particular religion? This is a secular nation, supposedly. But the influence of religion on our nation is HUGE. We were founded on a religious backbone. Religion was why many of our founding fathers came here. It is in our bill of rights, it’s in our constitution, there may be a “separation of church and state” but there is still an interaction, a connection; they are most certainly intertwined. The question I need to get to the bottom to is how closely they should be intertwined…

I’m excited for winter to be here. We are experiencing our second-ish snow. It is rather gorgeous aside from the fact it’s not sticking to the ground. I can’t wait for there to be a foot of snow so I can build stuff with it, make snow angels, have snow fights, wear warm clothes, drink hot chocolate after spending time outside, and enjoy the beauty of whiteness all over campus. I don’t really like winter in general, but this year, I am looking forward to it. I think it will be a lot of fun; I think there will be lots of adventures.

I dislike the “how are you” and “whats up” friends. These are the people you often see walking across campus or down the hall. You have had maybe on or two real conversations with them in the past month so yes, you know them, just not well. So whenever you see them you feel obligated to be cheerful, to act like, hey, yeah, we’re good friends. So you engage in this conversation at least once a day: “hey!” “hey, how are you!?” “Good! How are you!?” “I’m good” “cya later!” “cya!” I mean wow, it gets old, right? Because it’s not like you have one of these friends, there are a couple, so this happens pretty frequently. It’s not that you don’t like the person, hell, maybe you want to get to know them, but it’s just really annoying to go through this short dialogue all the time. Then again, what else are you supposed to do? There’s not really enough time on the way to class to have a real conversation. And you don’t want to ignore people. What a predicament, right?

Action has power. When someone does something, you can see they are passionate about whatever it is they are doing. Words are always nice to hear. They are immediate satisfaction. They can be said anytime, anywhere, from any distance. But they aren’t reliable. It’s easy to say something you don’t mean. It’s easy to lie. It’s easy to put words into someone’s ear because you know it’s what they want to hear.

But when all of a sudden I was home and so were you, I could hardly breath. I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t have words in my throat. It made me think about how you feel, how I feel, how any attempts at relationships have been going. I didn’t realize in the last year how much you felt. You were never one with words. There was so many more actions. And now you did this. Something kind of big. Shocking. Sweet. Crazy. And it was just for me. So maybe I don’t totally understand you and your crazy self, but now I know, I know you care.