Yes, it is.
Spring Break this year pretty relaxed, even if I did spend about 45 hours or so at work. I was able to get caught up on most of the stuff that needed to get done by the early part of week so that I could spend the latter part of the week playing with other projects I've had floating around.
I spent a couple hours with our microbiologist learning some basic biology stuff for the Oaxaca trip this summer. Over the last couple months, I've been slowly gathering up supplies and knowledge about the types of things we might be able to do, but I'm just really, really short on biology knowledge. So she helped talk me through some of the things that she could think of that might be good to do down there. For example, it would not have occurred to me that you could make an incubator with a light bulb and an insulated box. It's just like an easy bake oven or Alton Brown's mega bake oven. I need to do a little experimentation with a 9 volt battery and different bulb strengths to see what types of temperatures I can generate. The aim is to get it around body temperature overnight using a battery since we won't have access to a live power outlet overnight. She also showed me the basics of doing environmental swabs and talked me through some microscope slides and things like that. She also offered me some of her lab protocols to help me remember what I did. I'll need to take the time to translate it to Spanish so that the kids down there will have a chance at understanding it. (Horray for Google translate!)
I also got to spend a reasonable amount of time working on the EdReady problems that I said I'd have done by December. Fortunately, the organization I'm working with is very patient and this isn't a rush project for them, so even though I'm late I'm not causing any harm. But I've been not that effective at getting that done as I had wanted to be (because of all the other things going on), but I'm back in a place where I think I'll be able to put in consistent time and hopefully by done by the end of the semester. Or maybe by the end of summer.
I also got to put in some more time to look at the machine learning stuff. There are two things that I'm doing. One of them is simply going through the process of programming these learning algorithms so that I have a good understanding of the mechanics behind everything. I'm also taking programs that already exist and am working on trying to apply that to solving problems for me. What's my problem? After many years of dabbling extremely loosely in horse racing, I've decided that I'm going to try to give it a real run, but with an AI program doing most of the work. Unfortunately, I don't really know what that means just yet, but I've at least got some ideas. The first thing I'm going to need to do is figure out how to store the data in a way that's useful. Then I'm going to need to train it to look for patterns between the information in the Daily Racing Form and the output of what actually happened. And then I'm going to need to have it estimate probabilities so that I know whether the wagering odds are in my favor based on what the computer thinks is going to happen. I'm not optimistic that I'm going to do that well. But we'll see what happens.
I also got to have a couple interesting conversations with one of our math students. He's one of those students who has a lot of inherent intuition and excitement, but not a lot of discipline. He's the sort of student who can understand most things he's seen pretty quickly, but is too lazy to actually do the work (and so he gets really poor grades). But he also stops at getting the general sense of something and doesn't care that much for the details. I'm trying to talk with him about how he can get to the next level and get the type of "mathematical maturity" that he needs to be successful. It's kind of interesting, because I haven't really had to work with a student in quite this way. The approach I've taken is to throw him little curve balls to help give him an intellectual challenge to help him to see why it's important to focus on those details. He can't understand some of the things I'm telling him unless he slows himself down to think carefully enough about things. We'll see how that goes.
The last couple weeks, I played basketball with the guys from church. I think it's been over a year since the last time I did that. I definitely feel slower and out of shape, and my decision-making isn't that spectacular, but I'm also not completely disappointed. I think I need to do this more often. At this point, it's more about discipline than anything else.
I've already mentioned some missions-related stuff up above, but we're also in a very good place with the missions kiosk. It took a while (4-5 hours), but we were eventually able to get the kiosk software to work for us. This means that we're really just waiting for the physical installation to happen. I still have a little bit more work left to do on the website, but that's pretty much it. For the Oaxaca trip itself, I have an informational meeting in a couple weeks, followed by a visit to UNLV's InterVarsity group a couple days later. We're hopefully going to have a much bigger group of people, which will make things more exciting. But the extra people also necessitates a much more thorough training process (because the chances of internal conflict are going to be much, much higher).
Lastly on the topic of church, I have decided to pull the plug early on my plans to wait until summer to make my final evaluation about whether I will remain at the church. Unfortunately, the upcoming sermon series has me far too disappointed with the direction and vision of the leadership that continuing forward is going to be worse than just leaving now. In the end, it's coming down to a different idea of what a church environment is supposed to look like and feel like.
Several months ago, I talked about looking at two areas for improvement. The first is the Sunday morning environment and the second is the discipleship environment. The discipleship environment has not improved at all, and I think the Sunday morning environment has simply gotten worse. The upcoming sermon series is basically a series on comparative religion ("What's the Difference? Exploring the differences between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam"). It's already tough to make that into a helpful sermon series, but the third sermon is titled "Why they hate us." Not only that, but a mass email went out linking this sermon series to the ISIS attack in Brussels.
There are lots of things wrong with that. That attack is in no way an attack on Christians or Christianity. Belgium is a pretty secularized country. They don't really represent an "us" in the way that America considers itself to be a "Christian nation." Also, it's feels kind of blind to the fact that there really are Christians who are under attack just for being Christians. Europe is not one of the places where that's happening. And the conflation of ISIS with Muslims is like thinking the KKK represents Christianity. It's just not intellectually honest to try to make that comparison.
It's hard for me to express how much disappointment and frustration I have that this is even happening. Did nobody in the church think that this was a bad idea? From the elders who are supposed to keep the pastor accountable to the staff that typed it up, was there no real discussion about this? Is the office environment so toxic that they don't even talk about this sort of thing? Or is the consensus that this is a good idea? Or did the pastor override all objections and push this forward in spite of people pushing back? I don't know, and none of the possibilities makes me comfortable. I don't have an optimistic outlook for how this is going to go down because I know I'm not the only one who is tired of this sort of thing. Church attendance has been down all year, and I can't imagine it getting any better after this series.
The follow-up to that series doesn't make me feel much better. It's going to be a sermon series built around the Christian movie "The War Room." First of all, I'm not a big fan of Christian movies because they just aren't that good. And the theology is often superficial. And based on what I'm reading about it, this follows the script to a T. Christianity Today's review is titled "Lazy Writing, Cheap Restoration." I know that there's a subset of Christianity that loves this sort of stuff. But that's not me, and that's not my faith, and I just don't want to be a part of it. And that takes us to summer. So I'm done.
Where does that put me? I'm going to spend my last planned Sunday sermon at Life Springs on Easter. Because in spite of all my disagreements and disappointments, the resurrection communicates that even though I may not want to be part of this church, we're still all part of the Church. And we're all grounded in the same ultimate claims of what's real about the universe around us. My staying for Easter probably has much more symbolic meaning to me than any practical measure I could apply. I'm not leaving angry. There are a lot of people that I hope to stay connected to at some level. And I hope I'm wrong in my estimation of what's going to happen there in the next few months. I want it to do well, even if it's not a church that I would want to attend. I'm still going to finish the kiosk and go to Oaxaca, but those are my last responsibilities.
And from there, I don't know. There are a good number of churches in the area, so it's not like I don't have options. I'm just going to start exploring churches a couple weeks at a time and see if there's a place where I feel comfortable. Maybe there will be chances at Life Springs, and I'll find my way back there in time. Or maybe I'll find a new church, and restart the whole process of getting connected to people, and looking for opportunities to serve. I'm still going to stay connected to Adventures in Life and still plan to go to Oaxaca in future years. I'll still aim to go at the same time Life Springs goes because of existing friendships with people who are likely to still be there.
I want to end on a positive note. It's Friday, but Sunday's coming.
