Hello! Welcome back to the weblog of Jonathan Lipps. It’s been quite a little hiatus, forced on us when my web hosting company decided to erase all my data. I can’t remember a 6-month period, what’s more, that I wouldn’t have rather had a weblog to write in, about the things that have been going on. Hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll be able to catch up on some of the more major life changes and whatnot. ...

In a shocking move of endearing humility, I am about to give the floor over to someone else. That is, I think Immanuel Kant has something to say which I would like him to say in his own (translated) words. This is from part 3 of Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, at 6:103. “The only faith that can found a universal church is pure religious faith, for it is a plain rational faith which can be convincingly communicated to everyone, whereas a historical faith, merely based on facts, can extend its influence no further than the tidings relevant to a judgment on its credibility can reach. Yet, due to a peculiar weakness of human nature, pure faith can never be relied on as much as it deserves, that is, [enough] to found a Church on it alone. ...

This quarter was supposed to be easy. I’m taking two classes, both of which are undergraduate courses, and one directed reading. A total of 10 units–the fewest I’ve ever taken. I was supposed to have lots of free time to hang out with friends, go on trips, make money at my jobs, write music, and go cycling and running in the beautiful spring sun. But somehow, I’ve turned into the biggest bundle of depressed stress I’ve been in a few years. I can’t possibly have as much work as I had in previous quarters, but somehow it seems all I’m doing is work, and somehow I’m still behind, yet without even the trade-off of hanging out with friends. Recently, I also found out I have to re-write a paper from last quarter in order to graduate, so all of a sudden it’s like I have an extra class. ...

Last summer, I interned for a company in Orlando called Excelsis. The hallmark, perhaps, of that experience, was never quite knowing what exactly Excelsis was doing (or, since it is more or less a start-up, what it aims to do), or what I was doing for Excelsis. Accordingly, it was always very difficult to answer either the question, “Oh, so what do they do?”, or the question “What do you do for them?” I fabricated a set of answers to each that I felt reasonably honest in giving, but you would be surprised at how much they varied. At different stages before, during, and after my internship, I described Excelsis as a publishing company, a think-tank, an academic consortium, a distance-learning provider, a networker, a producer of theology curriculum, a software development house, and various other things. In fact, I think the problem was that the object of my analysis was just plain vague–I’m not sure Excelsis knew what it was! ...

Since I have been unable to go to church, for the past year or so, without feeling various degrees of discomfort and displeasure, I decided to forego it this Easter in lieu of a different kind of worship. You see, I thought that the best thing to do to commemorate Christ’s resurrection would be that which most uses the benefits of it. If we are right in the matter, Christ rose again to institute the redemption of humanity, so I wanted my act of worship to be an outpouring of my own redeemed humanity. ...

We are all longing, no doubt, for those glorious days when I used to actually talk about things, instead of relate events. My hope is that those days will return, but before they do, I feel I have a duty to discharge–namely, telling about my many spring break adventures. This could potentially be a long entry, so for those short on time I have embedded pictures, which are easier to read than words. ...

I am on my way, in just about two hours, to Park City, Utah, with my suitemates. We’re going to do some skiing (snowboarding for me), and some hardcore lounging about. In keeping with that latter spirit, we’ll be driving to Orange County for the second half of next week; may sun and good times prevail! But since I felt it was a bit mean to have all that fun without even saying anything at all about Thailand, I thought I would leave you with this word: Elephants are large beasts! It’s true. I didn’t see very many bigger beasts in Thailand except for, obviously, larger elephants than the ones to which I referred in the last sentence. And the sky, if you count that as a beast. Also, I don’t know what my friends were talking about (see previous post), but I didn’t see any hookers at all. Just in case you were worried that I might be led astray into wantonness. And by saying I didn’t see any, that is not to imply that the not seeing was the failed result of a looking for. There was no looking for either! Oh well, I should stop talking about hookers, none of which I saw, wanted to see (qua hooker of course; qua human I would want to see them just as I would any other person. Hookers are people too!), or tried to see. And now, the end. ...

By “rest”, of course, I mean “non-awesomeness”. I knew I couldn’t make it through a quarter without going on some crazy trip, but apparently Tahoe and Joshua Tree weren’t enough. The Sunnybrook house Last weekend I went home to say goodbye to our house (above), which we’ve lived in for almost exactly 4 years. On the way there from San Jose I passed through San Luis Obispo, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and Chicago, IL, for a total of 15 hours in airports and 9 on planes. At least the horrible travel experience wasn’t a complete waste: I wrote this awesome paper, a 20-page term paper for a philosophy of mind class, which I’m afraid will be ripped to shreds by my professor despite its inherent awesomeness. The highlight of the Orlando trip was not being stuck on planes, obviously, but sitting in the hot tub for hours 3 nights in a row. Goodbye, sweet hot tub! ...

It is my opinion that movies have become, as a matter of fact and whether we like it or not, the premier storytelling vehicle of our time. This is not to say that books or music cannot convey stories compellingly–indeed, my favorite book, Tolkien’s Silmarillion, and the songs of my favorite band, Pedro the Lion, are good counterexamples to such a claim–only that the ubiquity of film (whether or not such ubiquity exists only because it is self-reinforced) and the immediacy of the transition from screen to mind tend to vault it (film) to the forefront of storytelling devices. Therefore, as my friend Phil [entry closest to this date] intimates, it’s about time someone got around to making a movie that effectively tells the story of the Christ. ...

My trip to Joshua Tree this past weekend ended up being a legitimate adventure, replete with traveling, beautiful scenery, good companionship, physical and emotional hardship, and fight-for-your-life experiences! I thought I would chronicle it here (with pictures!), partly for your entertainment, partly for my own informatic scrapbook purposes, and partly as a record of God’s goodness in keeping me alive. Pictures, as usual, will be linked in brackets. At 6 AM last Friday morning, Dan and I woke up ready for the 8 hour drive to Joshua Tree. We were hoping that the odd start time would allow us to avoid much of the weekend traffic in the city areas and getting into Joshua Tree itself (we also wanted to score a decent campsite in the park, and those are preciously hard to come by on a Friday night). There were no incidents on the way there, and we made pretty good time, despite numerous stops, at Carl’s Jr for lunch, WalMart for the requisite 2 gallons of water per person for the weekend (there’s no drinkable water in Joshua Tree, or any water at all, really), and the Five-Ten outlet in Redlands for some sweet deals on rock shoes (I got some brand new Huecos). We got to the park, situated at about 5,000 vertical feet amidst the Mojave desert, just before sunset. As luck would have it, we were able to find a smallish campsite in Hidden Valley, the most sought-after campground in the park, so we set up the 2-man tent Dan had brought and settled in. ...