an interview meme
Here's how this works: if you would like to be interviewed, leave me a comment that says, "Interview me!" I'll come up with five questions for you. You must answer them truthfully, and you must post the answers on your blog or MySpace, with an invitation to others to let you interview them. My questions come from my good friend Tracy.
1) what is your favorite thing about yourself?
I think it’s the fact that I am always in search of more truth--truer truth, if that makes any sense. Sometimes this causes me more pain than it feels like it’s worth. My biggest spiritual lows are during the times when I start to question what I believe, and I begin to sift out the lies I tell myself to stay comfortable, or the cultural biases that have been handed down to me by different teachers. But somewhere deep inside, I believe that this is God’s refining process, and the more I let myself go through it, the more like Him I will be in the end. I know lots of people who never struggle with their faith and who don’t seem to care that they don’t, and on many days, I wish I could be like them because God doesn’t hurt them as much. But honestly, I’m glad that God has made me this way because I believe it is one of the few really good and useful parts of me.
2) so i hear you've lived and traveled a lot in your life (*grin*)... what places are among your favorites? and why?
I guess compared to some, I have traveled quite a bit. I have been in 35 states and nine countries. These are my favorites, in the order they occur to me.
Camp Vermilion in Cook, MN--I love Verm because of how much I grew while I was there. I learned to like the outdoors and love kids (both of which I kind of hated before going to work there...seriously, how did I get hired?). I treasure every moment I get to spend there now that they are so few and far between. I love the way camp feels easy-going and urgent at the same time. When you spend a whole summer at camp, you do without things like regular showers, a comfortable bed, air conditioning, high speed Internet, and thirty restaurants within a two-mile drive of your house and you start to really appreciate a good conversation, the swing that overlooks the lake, watching dragonflies eat up the mosquitoes, having a young kid ask you about God, raiding the kitchen for leftovers in the middle of the night, or the basic pleasure of real activity followed by real rest. We have so little time to make a difference to our campers, to wake them up to what life with God can be like, that all that is unnecessary begins to fall away and all that is valuable rises to the surface.
St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN—I tried to pick just one location at Olaf, but I couldn’t. I love too many of them. Ytterboe Lounge, where we would have our campus-wide Thursday Night Bible Study; Mellby Chapel, where some of us met every day during Chapel time to pray for our school and for each other; the Cage, where I was introduced to the deliciousness of grape jelly on a grilled ham and cheese sandwich (thanks, Matt!); the Pause, where the Selah service happened every Sunday night; Mellby lawn, where we spread out our blankets and studied or played Frisbee; the choir room, where I sang in Manitou and the St. Olaf Choir for four years; my friends’ Ytterboe pods and my own pods, the sites of many games, movies, and community life experiences; the CAN office, where I would go to eat a quiet lunch in the middle of a crazy day; the old Caf, where Scott Soden smashed a plate of spaghetti sauce into my chest while I was wearing a white shirt; Mellby 101, where we watched The Matrix pretty much every week for an entire semester; Skoglund Center, where we had Christmas Fest; Boe Chapel, where we held weekly worship services and where the Ole Choir home concerts were…and lots more.
The Spindlers’ cabin, somewhere in Wisconsin—During Easter Break of my sophomore year of college, a group of friends and I went to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. It was exactly like every other Midwestern family’s summer cabin: small, cozy, fitted with a few modern comforts like electricity and indoor plumbing, and on a lake. But on this particular weekend, as Forrest Gump said, God showed up. We took off our watches and hid all the clocks as soon as we got there, and we spent a day hanging out, cooking our own food (which, being young college students, was still kind of new and exciting to us), building fires, going on walks, and enjoying being away from school. On Good Friday night, we celebrated Communion—without a pastor! Another first—listened to “Thief” by Third Day, and then began silence. We were silent all day on Saturday, except for the laughing that happened when we tried to put a puzzle together on the kitchen table without speaking. I went on a walk with my friend Liz, and we held hands. I sat next to each of my friends at some point during the day and prayed for them. Sunday morning, one person got out their clock to set an alarm so we could be awake in time for the sunrise. We got up in silence, walked down to the lake, and broke our silence together with singing as the sun rose over the water and we remembered that Jesus is alive. It was the best Easter ever. The next year we tried to do it again, and God showed us that he is not at our beck and call, to give us spiritual highs as a reward for jumping through his hoops. But I will always remember how close to him and how clean I felt that weekend, and I hope I can feel that way again someday.
Nordsjællands Efterskole, Sjælland, Denmark—This was our first boarding school in DK. One night early in the week we stayed there, some of the students invited Tracy and me to a Christian gathering kind of like a chapel service. One of the teachers, I think, gave a small talk, and then there was music. It was here that we were introduced to the yellow Fællessang book and my favorite Danish praise song, “Herren velsigne dig og bevare dig” (the Lord bless you and keep you). I really miss hearing a large group of Danish kids singing praises to God in their own language.
My parents’ house at Christmas time—This one is probably my favoritest of favorites. Christmas time in the Tripoli family starts sometime after Halloween, when the first Christmas music starts getting played in our house. We really get cranking the day after Thanksgiving, however, when we decorate the house. Some years, we’ve even put up our tree this early. We have a smallish, cozy house, and we absolutely festoon it with Christmas goodness. But nothing tacky. We have no singing Christmas trees (“Hi, I’m Douglas Fir!”) or anything like that. We do have garlands wrapped in strings of lights and golden leaves which we hang above each window and on the staircase. We put electric candles in each window and make sure that they are turned on at even the slightest hint of darkness outside. We have multiple Nativity sets in porcelain, wood, and pewter. We have a collection of angels and a collection of Santa Clauses. We have some small straw figures of women and donkeys, some tiny little Christmasy gnomes that are older than me, we have a village of collectible houses that get their own table covered in batting for the snow, we have a bunch of random small figures that used to go on the ledge in the kitchen, but now my parents have an adventurous cat that likes to steal them, so we might have to find a new place for them next year, and we have our stockings, handmade by Mom. We listen to choirs singing carols and crooners old and young. No pop stars need apply to get in our Christmas music rotation—the poppiest thing we have is Michael Bublé or Mannheim Steamroller. Our tree gets tinsel or ropes of beads in alternating years. We have a half a dozen large boxes of ornaments—about a quarter of them get on the tree every year, and it’s usually the same quarter, but we can’t bring ourselves to get rid of any ornaments, ever. My favorites are the blown-out eggs with the sequins glued on them. We bake a million cookies—sugar cookies with sprinkles, ricotta cheese cookies with frosting, and the king of Christmas cookies, chocolate thumbprints—and drink gallons of hot chocolate, eggnog, and apple cider. We put on our knitted slippers, cover ourselves in blankets, and watch our Christmas movies. A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Scrooged, Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, Holiday Inn, White Christmas, The Christmas Toy, A Christmas Story, A Charlie Brown Christmas. There’s a word in Danish, hygge, that has no real direct translation in English. It means fellowship and coziness, and usually food is required. I’m pretty sure that you could put a picture of my house at Christmas time in the Danish dictionary next to the word hygge and nobody would object. And if they did, so what.
3) what computer programs do you use the most in a normal work day? which ones do you hate? which ones do you love?
Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, Quark and Adobe Photoshop CS are the main ones. No contest, I hate Word the most. No matter how many times I turn off the auto-formatting features, they always seem to turn themselves back on and create a nuisance. I think I would have to say that I prefer Quark to Photoshop, if only because I still don’t really understand all the things Photoshop can do. It takes me twice as long to get something done in Photoshop because I spend so much time trying to find the right drop-down menu or the right commands to do the stuff I want to do. I don’t have many graphic design responsibilities, which works out well because I don’t have many skills in that area (you know…skills), so Quark is just about my speed.
4) when you daydream... where do you go?
Off the road into a ditch.
Honestly, I am a big fan of superheroes—Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, the X-Men, etc. I’ve never really gotten in comics, although I’ve known some guys who were REALLY into them (hi, Brandon, are you reading this?). I love a good superhero movie, though, and so when I really need an escape from reality, I like to imagine myself in those stories. Not as one of the heroes, but as the girl on the inside, the one person who knows all the secrets, the one who is waiting at home when the super guy is done saving the world for the day. I’m usually not even a romantic interest, just the one person who knows the real man behind the disguise.
5) name one or two defining moments/time periods in your life.. and explain a bit of detail on these events/times and how you changed through/because of it.
The first one that comes to mind is the night I decided to follow Jesus, and since it’s a long story, it’s the only one I’ll tell. When I got to college, I got off to a slow start making friends. I assumed I’d fit right in with the music kids, like I did in high school, but the music students at Olaf were kind of snobby, and I felt self-conscious around them. In my corridor were mostly girls who wanted to drink a lot and hook up with guys—something I wasn’t really interested in. My roommate and I didn’t really hit it off, either. I had a boyfriend back at home who was still pretty new to me as a boyfriend (not the smartest life decision, to start dating someone just before moving a half a country away, but the heart wants what it wants, you know?), so I spent most of my social time e-mailing or calling him instead of getting out and making friends. One night in early November, my roommate went out to the library while I was in the bathroom, and she accidentally locked me out of our room. I had nothing to do, so I wandered down to the lounge to see if there was anything going on there. I heard some guitar music coming from the lounge area, and I thought, “Great! People sitting around making music. Sounds like fun.” When I peeked around the corner to investigate, I saw a small group of people, only one of whom I recognized. It was Liz, my next door neighbor, who I had talked to only a couple of times.
“Hi, Katie! Do you want to come to our Bible study?”
I had been a church kid all my life, but I had pretty much given up on God around fifth grade, when I got caught in a denominational tug-of-war between my family’s UCC church and my Catholic school. I spent most of high school serving on various church committees, singing in the choir, and seething inside at the hypocrisy of it all. I wasn’t so excited about the “Bible” part, but I needed something to do, and I figured I could blend in and speak the language okay, so I said, “Sure.”
Right away, I knew there was something weird about these people. They spoke about Jesus as if he were a real person that they could go and have coffee with, and they were completely sure that being a Christian was the only way to get to heaven. I made it my mission to show them how silly and narrow-minded they were being, so I continued to go to the Bible study week after week and attack their beliefs with every intellectual and philosophical weapon in my college freshman’s arsenal. To my amazement, they listened with patience, disagreed with intelligence, and never budged from their position. They also really seemed to like having me in their group, for some reason. I started hanging out with them on weekends, watching movies, singing songs, laughing a lot. They never brought up spiritual stuff outside the small group unless I did first, and I never, ever felt judged, even though I was frustrated that they were so impervious to my brilliant arguments.
Once, Liz invited me to go to “Thursday Night Bible Study,” a campus-wide Bible study that was taught by Gary Gilbertson, a local pastor from Northfield. I don’t remember what he taught about that night or what made me want to go and talk to him afterwards. I made Liz introduce us because I was too shy to do it myself, and after shaking his hand, I just said, “Why Jesus?” His crinkly eyes lit up, and he settled into a comfortable perch on the edge of a couch.
“Do you believe that there is a God?”
I heard myself say, “Yes.” Really? I do? Well, I guess I do. I mean, even after I gave up on religion, I found myself praying to God that he would exist. Which is probably the dumbest prayer anyone can pray. So, let’s start with “yes” and see where this goes.
“Do you believe he is perfect?”
“Yes.” Huh? Okay, well, I can live with this. Maybe I’m just one of those cool pan-spiritual people who can believe in a God of some kind without having to subscribe to all the limiting Jesus mumbo jumbo.
“Do you believe that you are perfect?”
“No.” Duh.
“What do you think you ought to do about that?”
“…” I had nothing. It hadn’t really occurred to me that I should do something about that. God’s perfect, I’m not, so what? Does God care that I’m not perfect? Shouldn’t God be the one to do something about that, if he cares so much? Gary explained to me that he does care and that he did do something, and that’s “why Jesus.” Jesus died to take away our imperfections. His power works in us when we believe in him.
I don’t remember much else of that conversation, although I think it went on for awhile. As I walked back to my dorm, after another conversation with my small group leader, I was turning Gary’s words over in my mind. It made sense. It seemed like it could be true. If it was true, I should get on board, right? I mean, it would be stupid to try and fight City Hall. So why was I so reluctant? That’s when the light dawned inside me. For maybe the first time in my life, I could clearly see and understand myself.
What was freaking me out wasn’t whether or not Jesus was the only Savior, or what the current state of my eternal soul was. What I was most afraid of was losing myself. Somehow, I had become convinced that if I decided to “get saved” or become “born again,” I would instantly gain three hundred pounds, drop fifty IQ points, develop a drawl, and find myself deposited in a doublewide surrounded by hound dogs and pregnant teenagers. I didn’t want to become a person I wouldn’t like. But I wanted to know the truth and to ally myself with it. How could I be sure that doing one wouldn’t lead to the other?
That’s when God spoke to me. At least, I’m pretty sure it was God. I’d never had an idea like this before in my entire life, so it had to come from somewhere. This was the thought that came into my head: You can’t be sure. There are no guarantees. If you did have to become the kind of person you find distasteful, would it be worth it? As this thought came and went, I stopped smack in the middle of the road, in the crosswalk between the student center and the dorms. And I prayed a very strange “sinner’s prayer.”
“Jesus, I don’t believe in you. But if you are what my friends say you are, then I want to follow you. I want to know what is true, and I’ve heard that it’s you. So, from this moment on, I’m just going to live as if I believed in you. I hope that if you are real, you’ll let me know that I’m on the right track, somehow.”
I stayed in the crosswalk for a couple of moments, keeping my eyes open for any angel choirs or lightning bolts, but nothing happened, so I walked back to my dorm, my head spinning. What had I just done? Who had I just made a deal with? I headed toward my room and found myself knocking on Liz’s door instead.
“Liz, I think I just became a Christian.”
If you know Liz, you won’t be surprised to know that her reaction was loud. She jumped up from her chair, shrieking and hugging me, and then dragged me down to the lounge with some of our Bible study members (most of whom she had woken up) to pray for me. I felt incredibly conspicuous and uncomfortable. I didn’t have the heart to tell Liz that I didn’t really believe in Jesus; this was just something I was maybe trying out for a while. For the next couple of weeks, Liz introduced me to every single Christian she knew as “my friend Katie who just got saved,” which made me cringle a little every time I heard it. Saved? Saved from what? I hadn’t really gotten that far yet. All I knew was that ever since that Thursday night, I had been unable to sleep, secretly convinced that I had just done something that would get me in major trouble. I shared this with Nate, one of my Bible study leaders, and he grinned as he said, “Yeah, that’s just Satan. He’s pissed because he lost you.” Um, who in the what now? Satan? This was getting ridiculous. I’m not worth having a spiritual battle over, but even if I was, I wasn’t interested in heaven and hell, particularly. I just wanted to have a solid place to rest my mind when the world stopped making sense. Which it suddenly had. I started to think that maybe I’d made a mistake, after all.
One morning, I woke up and thought, “Maybe I should read the Bible now.” So I started reading it. As I read, it occurred to me that I believed everything in this book was true. This is particularly interesting in retrospect, because I don’t think that the inerrancy or inspiredness of the Bible EVER came up in the weeks of discussion I’d had with my friends. This sudden change of mind had come from some completely other source. I didn’t think much about it, and I went on about my day.
It might have been that night, or a few nights later, that the Christian Activities Network at school had their annual Jesus Fest. They had guest preachers and musicians come in to lead some worship, give some talks, and facilitate some prayer. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was basically a tent revival meeting in a dorm lounge. I remember feeling lost, like I had joined a class in the middle of the semester and couldn’t catch up. I didn’t know any of the songs, I wasn’t familiar with the theological terms that were being used, and it took me twice as long as anyone else to find the Bible verses the pastor was quoting. At the end of the first night, the last song at worship was “Jesus Loves Me.” Finally, a song I knew. As we sang, something happened. I can’t really explain it in a satisfactory way. I don’t think I was really looking for this to happen, which is why I think it was a true experience. Suddenly, without warning or preface, I knew that Jesus loved me. If you’ve never gone from disbelief to belief in something, with no proof or evidence, in less time than it takes to read this sentence, you might not think that it’s possible. One minute I wasn’t thinking about it, the next minute, I believed. A real live conversion. Hallelujah.
I couldn’t stand up, I was so overwhelmed. I sat down on the floor and cried for awhile. Some people came and prayed for me. When I was done crying, I got up and left. The music was still lingering in the background. I don’t remember much of what happened after that. I don’t think I “went home, praising God.” It took me a very long time before I was comfortable articulating my faith in front of anybody. I still wrestle with doubts today, and I’ve learned that a lot of what I thought was truth is not; it just came attached to the truth, like barnacles on the hull of a ship. There are days when I am terrified that Jesus might not really love me after all. On those days, I remember the first leap of faith I ever made, and I say, “Jesus, I’m still going to try to live as if I believed in you. If you’re real, help me believe it.” And sometimes he acts, and sometimes he waits a really long time before he acts. This is the most difficult, confusing, frustrating, painful relationship I’ve ever been in. But, it’s true. And it’s worth it.
posted by Trips @ 2:26 PM
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