Lent 5

Maybe I'm biased, but I think music is the most powerful force humanity has. Music can entertain. Music can inform. Music can heal. Music can empower. Music can change the world. 

I had a professor in undergrad who was fond of saying that music was the second most efficient language (only next to binary code), because by utilizing only twelve notes, one can express the entirety of human emotion.

It's been a really long day. I left my apartment at quarter to 8 this morning, and I didn't get back until 10 this evening. But through music, whether it be teaching my children's choir new music, singing a beautiful and powerful anthem in church, humming tunes stuck in my head, or listening to fantastic choirs perform everything from Bruckner to Hogan at Choral Arts Society's annual MLK Tribute concert, I was able to get through it all. 

Today, I saw God in music. 

Lent 4

So today it snowed pretty hard in the DMV...well hard by DC standards anyways. As a result, I spent most of the day inside doing some work, baking some cookies, playing a board game, and mostly just enjoying the pretty big snowflakes coming down. It was a quintessential snow day (except for it being on a Saturday meaning that there was no school to cancel), and it was fabulous. 

Today, I saw God in the snow. 

Lent 3

So for those who are following this Lenten journey and want to know, today was a better day. 

Just like yesterday, I can't put my finger on one thing that made today better. All I do know is that even though I'm lying in bed with an aching body and wheezing lungs from my run a couple hours ago, I'm feeling pretty good. I'll take that as a win. 

Today, I saw God in a better day.

Lent 2

Blah. 

That's how I've felt all day. I don't know if it's the cold weather or if I just got up on the wrong side of the bed, but I've been just been in a foul mood today. I can't think of any one particular thing that was especially terrible. I guess part of it is that some of the things that I usually depend on to give me joy, left me feeling frustrated, so all I was left with was the tedium of my day-to-day life. 

As a result, I had a real difficult time figuring out what I was going to post today. It's tough to see God when you feel like you've got your own personal grey cloud following you darkening all the light. I thought about posting about my posessed heater that got me to go to the gym this morning. I thought about posting something about body positivity (I'm sure I'll get to that soon though). 

Yet as I look back on my day, I realize there was a glimmer of joy that burst through all the grey. I got a note that was absolutely lovely and affirming. I didn't know how much I was going to need it when I got it, but reading those words provides me with some clarity as to who  I'm called to be and gave me a moment of respite in this drear day. 

Today I saw God in kind, affirming words. 

Lent 1

Dust you were.  Dust you are.  To dust you will return.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the 40-day season of Lent that leads up to Easter.  While dust is on everybody's (or at least everybody who goes to Ash Wednesday services) mind, I thought it would be a good time to dust off (see what I did there?) this blog and start posting again.

A couple of years ago, I took on the practice of posting a God-sighting once a day on this blog, and at the suggestion of one of my Covenant Discipleship group members, I'm going to take it on again this year.  For those who weren't following me on this journey two years ago (or for those who are not familiar with American University's United Methodist-Protestant Community, from which I have taken this term), a God-sighting is when you see God breaking through into our life and working in us and around us.  That said, God-sightings don't have to be large and grandiose events of biblical proportions; the point of God-sightings are to see the mundane, day-to-day moments as God-filled.

So with that in mind, here is my God-sighting for today.

I have a love-hate relationship with mornings.  On the one hand, I find the early morning to be still and peaceful.  There's nothing quite like stepping out into the cool morning air and watching the sunrise.  On the other hand, I love sleeping, and sometimes (ok, most of the time) that love for sleep causes me to just keep pressing the snooze button on my alarm.  You can see my dilemma.

But this morning was different.  This morning when my alarm went off, I got up and pressed the snooze button.  But as I was making my way back to my bed, I somehow had enough wherewithal to remember that I was planning on going to an Ash Wednesday service this morning.  As it turned out, if I had kept pressing the snooze button, I would have missed the necessary buses I needed to get on in order to make it to church on time.

So today, I saw God in a rare moment of clarity in the wee hours of the morning.

A letter to me

May 2, 2014

Dear Ian,

You've had one hell of a year. Downright shitty. In the course of the past 9 months, your dad lost his job, your parents got divorced, and you just found out that your mom has breast cancer. On too of that, you had to adjust to a new school and you had to deal all of the stresses and pressures that being in the sixth grade entails. It feels as if you've been abandoned by everybody, including God, and it's gotten to the point where you just want to throw yourself out of your bedroom window and ending it all.

But don't you dare do it. I know that everything unbelievably sucks right now, but I'm here to tell you that it gets better. It gets so much better. You may not realize it right now, but there is a whole community of people around you that loves and cares for you deeply. And you're going to go so far over the next ten years. 

You're going to find your saving grace next year when you start doing theater. You will more fully develop your love of music and the arts in middle and high school. You're going to get to play freaking God! That's pretty awesome!

You're going to start taking voice lessons in a couple of years. Singing is going to open all sorts of doors for you.  Believe it or not, in nine years you're going to get paid real money to sing. As a job. Like a real person. Over the next ten years, you're going to sing in venues that range from a stage in Disney World to a 10th century cathedral to a museum with a giant sex apple sculpture. 

Speaking of travel, you're going to travel all over the world in the next ten years. You're going to see Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and Russia. Each one of those trips were fantastic. All I can tell you is that you better take more pictures than I did (oh, and reformatting your memory card doesn't add more space, but instead deletes all your pictures. Keep that in mind). 

You're going to go to high school and find a community through your church that will foster so much growth in you. You will meet people there who you consider to be some of your greatest mentors and friends. It's going to really suck when you graduate high school and leave them behind. 

But guess what. You're going to go to college, and you're going to find a community there that will love and support you no matter what. They're going to be there to celebrate with you in your victories and to stand in solidarity with you in your trials. Through both this community and the one in high school, you will see the face of God and get a glimpse of his love for you and for everyone. 

Now to be honest, at first you're not going to be excited about where you go to college (and no, I'm not going to ruin the surprise by telling you). But trust me, going to this college to study music is one of the best decisions you will ever make. 

It won't all be roses and sunshine. You will fall in love and get crushed. Hard. A lot. But you will learn so much from each heartbreak. So don't give up when life gets you down. The only thing I'm going to say is to have more faith in yourself and don't be so hard on yourself. It's okay to show some emotions from time to time. Now that you're the man of the house, you may think that you have to have it all together, but you really don't. 

I could give you all sorts of advice (like your tux pants fell behind Zugelder's black cabinet in the front of the choir room, or if you get drunk in front of your friends you will act silly and your friends will film you and next thing you know everybody knows what your naming your first born child, or that there is not in fact a shower in the men's room of Kay). But I want you most of all to know that even if you don't feel it right now (and I know that you don't), you are loved now, and you will continue to be loved immensely. 

You have an amazing ten years in front of you. To be honest, I kind of envy you. It sucks now, but it will get better. I promise you. You have so much to look forward to. You are strong and you with help from your family and friends and by the grace of God, you will be able to withstand any shit that life throws out. 

So buckle in and enjoy the ride. It's gonna be pretty awesome. 

Sincerely,

Ian C. Urriola

How I Met Your Mother Debrief

So How I Mer Your Mother came to a close this week. The finale has received fairly mixed reviews. I, for one, am a fan of how it ended. Most of my friends, not so much. Someone posted a link to the Time magazine review of the finale (the writer of the review was also not a fan) to my wall to attempt to show me why my opinion is wrong. I was going to leave the following few paragraphs as a comment to the post. But then I figured a) wouldn't it be better if I had this in one centralized place and b) I haven't posted to my blog in a while. So here you have It; my thoughts on the HIMYM finale (albeit, a little ranty, but my thoughts nonetheless). 

Here's the thing. The final episode spanned 17 years. For 10 of those years, Ted was with Tracy and as far as we can tell, they had a great life. So to say that it should be called "How I Met Your Mother who died right away and then I hooked up with your abut robin again" is to say that if your loved one dies, you can't ever move on with your life ever. 

Also, the story did end with Ted meeting Tracy. The two kids were the ones who, after hearing the story in its entirety, then told their father to pursue a relationship with Robin (six years after Tracy died, an acceptable period of mourning if I do say so). 

Maybe Ted was subconsciously thinking it the whole time, but he was still very much in love with Tracy during the stories he told during the finale (and I would argue that he as a narrator was very much in love with Tracy during the whole series). Tracy is, was, and will always be "the one" for Ted. How Ted and Tracy met was just as magical/fate filled (if not more so) as how Ted met Robin. Ted and Tracy's paths constantly almost crossed, just barely missing each other until they finally met at the train station. Ted met Robin through a round of "Haaaaave you met Ted?" which has it's merit. But the universe constantly put Ted and Tracy in the same place at the same time, but life prevented them from meeting (the club on St. Patrick's Day, the Econ class, Tracy's apartment, neighboring rooms at the farhampton inn, the wedding reception). For most of those times, Ted overly romanticized Tracy more than he ever did with Robin ("those were the most beautiful ankles I've ever seen"). Also, Ted flat out refuses the advances of Robin in the episode before the finale (when she realizes that it was actually Ted who found the locket), which showed that he was over her in that moment. So to say that Ted didn't really love Tracy for those 10 years and he was still harboring a crush on Robin the whole time also misses the point. In fact, one could argue that it wasn't until Ted was finally able to get over Robin that he was able to find his "perfect" girl. 

 But life goes, on even through tragedy. This has been a recurring theme throughout the run of the series. Marshal's dad died, just as Lilly got pregnant with Marvin. Ted got left at the altar. Marshal and Lilly had to work past a summer of separation.  Barney had to come to grips with his father. The way they dealt with some of those at times were silly. Other times, they treated the issue so seriously you would mistake it for a drama. But when all was said and done, the story would continue and the lives of the characters would go on. So why can't we be ok with Ted moving on with his life six years after his tragedy?

Another flawed criticism is that the finale of the episode brought every character back to square one in terms of character development. We got to see Barney go from being happily married to divorced to regression to his old ways which led to a tragic (albeit oblivious) downward spiral to redemption through fatherhood. Remember, Barney grew up not knowing his father. His daughter almost had the same fate until Barney reluctantly went in and met his daughter, which transformed him on the spot (probably subconsciously realizing that he didn't want to what his father did to him). In the same vein, we also have Ted and Robin who do get together again. But they're also totally different people. From 2013-2030, Robin has gone through the ups and downs of a marriage, a divorce, lost contact with her first friends she made after moving to NYC, and traveled all over the world for her job. During that time, Ted met the love of his life, had two children with her, moved into the suburbs, married her and had a ten year marriage, went through his wife's sickness and death, and went through a grieving process. Both Ted and Robin are completely different people in 2030 than they were in 2013, let alone in 2005 when they first met. What may have not been a good fit in your 20's may be a good fit in your 50's. 

In the end, while there were flaws to the finale (using stock footage from 2005 provided for a visually clumsy final five minutes) I maintain that it was the perfect way to wrap up this sitcom, and I want nothing more or less from it. 

Although I do want to know what happened with that goat...