Jill: Jesus told us to turn the other cheek. You think they let soldiers do that?
Chris: Yeah, but police ain't in the habit of forgiving people either, or judges. Are you saying they can't be Christians?
Jill: I know police sometimes shoot people, but they don't set out to do it. They tell people they're under arrest; they don't just pick people off. Not if they're good cops.
Chris: OK, maybe not...
Jill: Do you know what soldiers do when they go overseas? Even if they have wives or girlfriends back home?
(Chris shrugs his shoulders.)
Jill: They have sex with whores! Sometimes the Army even pays for 'em! Is that what you want?
(Chris gets a panicked expression on his face.)
Jill: And the things they push on soldiers. Did you know they used to give soldiers cigarettes? And the drinking that goes on, unless it's in a Muslim country. And they even give soldiers speed to keep them alert! How is it OK for Christians to...volunteer for that?
Chris (hands raised): It was just an example. I just meant my career path may need a bit of roadwork.
Jill (grips her hands together): Well, I hope you aren't afraid of a little hard work!
Chris (smiling): Never really had to do more than a little. I guess a
lot
might wear me out. But there's people on the streets lookin' for work, so I guess I can't turn my nose up at it.
Jill: I guess that's one thing this place has, is plenty to do.
Chris: I just hope it gets us somewhere.
*****
Well, we didn't really get to talk too much after that. The counselor in charge of the kitchen, Counselor Horner, came in and decided he could speed us up and get us more efficient. He wasn't really bossy about it, and it wasn't like he was blaming us for being too slow, but he kind of took charge in a way that made carrying on a personal conversation sort of pointless, especially cause there was an audience.
Our meditation this morning was on Ruth. It seems that when Ruth "lay at the feet of Boaz," feet weren't exactly feet, and it wasn't just her loyalty Boaz liked.
Counselor Steele brought up Rahab again, and said that women in the Davidic lineage went through a lot of trouble and broke the rules more than once, both for survival and to ensure they had offspring and a husband so people wouldn't call their kids bastards.
He said people like to put women down as whores even when they're just trying to keep body and soul together, or when they're just trying to let a man know there's a good woman in the vicinity, and not pass up an opportunity.
He said men need to thank God he created women, and delight in them. And he said women need not to hold themselves above other women, not scorn the choices they make.
He said if Ruth had been a virgin, she wouldn't have known what to do to catch Boaz's attention, but if she'd been a whore, she wouldn't have been taken in by Naomi in the first place.
I've started to notice that a lot of our meditations are on sex. I guess I haven't read the Bible as much as I ought: I never guessed it had
that
much sex in it. I don't know why, but I'd always focused on the parts tellin' me what not to do. I guess I didn't want to get in trouble.
My meditation didn't go much of anywhere. I was thinking about what Jill might do to show me she was a good woman -- how she could maybe entice me.
But like I wrote earlier, I'm not even a real high school graduate. I don't think it's up to her to impress me.
Counselor Jameson agrees with me, I guess. She didn't think we needed to practice kissing this time, which was kind of a relief, specially since I kept thinking about her naked the whole time we talked. She said it was more important to project confidence, but in a persuasive way, than to worry about if I was a good enough kisser.
This was puzzling to me. Hadn't we gone to a lot of trouble to practice kissing if it's not a big deal? But I didn't question. It's not cause I don't have any doubts, but confidence sure seems like a good thing to have, so I'm willing to focus on that if I need to.
Counselor Jameson told me that to show confidence, I'm gonna have to learn to be an actor, just a little bit. She said this would help my writing, cause anyone writing a screenplay should have some idea how it'll feel for an actor to say the lines he wrote. It almost sounded too obvious, and I was red that I hadn't already thought on that, but I haven't even been trying to write a screenplay more than a few days, so I think I'll give myself some slack just this once.
So she's gonna get ahold of some movies to show me, so I can see what sort of acting makes you look confident. But in the meantime she gave me some exercises.
She said the first one is a simple relaxation technique I should do when I'm lying in bed tonight. I could've used it all last week when it was taking me hours to fall asleep, but oh well.
I'm supposed to say the words, "Relaxed, calm, tranquil," to myself with my eyes closed. I'm supposed to concentrate on what the words
look
like in my head. That doesn't mean how the letters are shaped, although if I see the words like they're printed on paper or even in big cartoons like they used to show them on Electric Company, that's great, too.
But even if they don't look like words in my head I should pay attention to the images that do come up. It may be as simple as a color, it may show up as a painting or someone's face (which I don't think is likely, specially not a painting; the only paintings I ever saw were in magazines and books, and those I only saw in doctors' and dentists' offices; Art history wasn't a course at any of the schools I attended); it might even be a memory of a place or a time I'd like to get back to.
The trick is to hold that image in your head without trying too hard. Every so often I can repeat the words if I need to. But the point is to find a place in my mind that's safe and calm, that I can get to when I need to. That gives me something to build upon. I'm curious to try it.
June 19
Well, I don't know if those relaxation exercises put me into a trance or something, but I went out like a light last night. I even overslept, but that was OK apparently. Everybody else in the cabin had gone on to do their morning activities and I guess the counselors had said to let me sleep cause I don't remember anyone even trying to wake me up.
One thing I noticed when I woke up was I had a green wristband around my left wrist, one of those stretchy cloth ones I've seen people use when they're jogging. It had a Post-it attached with "Please do not remove" written on it, and it wasn't until I reported to the kitchen that anyone explained what it meant. (I'd completely missed breakfast AND morning meditation.)
It seem we're all being evaluated in terms of our progress spiritually, and like Counselor Gunn said, "Some people need a boost, and some need more of a challenge." So we all get wristbands of different colors, and every so often we'll get pulled out of the normal course of activities based on the color, and we'll get more individually targeted instruction. I felt like I was getting pretty hands-on instruction already, but maybe this'll spread it around more evenly.
I was glad to see Jill had a green wristband too. I guess someone thinks we're pretty equal. When she said she missed me at breakfast I was kind of glad but then worried cause I couldn't really explain why I'd missed. I guess I could have told her about the relaxation exercises, but actually I was pretty fuzzy about just what did happen last night until I read over yesterday's entry. So I just said I slept pretty hard and she seemed to be OK with that.
Today we made dough for pizza, which was fun, mainly cause I was happy we were gonna have pizza. One of my high school friends worked at Pizza Hut and he certainly sounded sick of it the last time we talked, but almost anything can be fun if you don't have to do it every day.
It turns out you have to let the yeast swell up the dough before it's ready for cooking, so we got a lot more supervision than we did when it was just vegetables. I was kind of worried we'd keep getting yelled at for not being fast enough, but we had Counselor Giovanni supervising us, who's a really beautiful dark-haired woman who looks maybe a little old to be here, like in her thirties, but is just as nice as can be.
She just made sure we kept aware of when the yeast was ready to be mixed with the dough (we had a mixing machine, which made it a lot easier) and when the dough was ready to be rolled flat and fit in the pans, and then she took it to the oven room, where I guess they put on all the toppings before they baked the pizza.
It got to be such a routine I almost wished I could put on the toppings and cheese and sauce and stuff, just to give me something more to do, but she said part of this was learning to stick to your own task and "let the other parts do their part," like we were all one body, which I guess is the same thing Paul told people to do, so it must be a good idea.
Counselor Giovanni was almost flirtatious with me, calling me "handsome" and "cute." But she made sure to draw Jill into it, telling her "your boyfriend" this and "your boyfriend" that, but always keeping a smile in her voice so Jill wouldn't feel the need to correct her.
At one point, she whispered something to Jill that made her just blush all over the place, but I could tell she wanted to smile, too. It must've been pretty good, too, cause she wouldn't even tell me what it was, just kind of giggled when I asked.
Then, when we'd made our last batch of dough, we were all pretty messy, and Jill apparently thought the flour on her wrist band made it look tacky, so she made as if to take it off, and Counselor Giovanni got kind of upset. She said we should never take them off unless we were getting ready to put another one on, and that we should always go to a counselor and let them know if it needed changing.
