random anxieties of existence

one of my favourite things about having a blog is the ability to see comments people leave me. have no fear! if you leave a comment it will still eventually appear. unfortunately, due to mass advertising i now have to moderate my comments, so your wise and profound thoughts won't appear untill i have a chance to read them. but they will appear! i also had to take down the sidebar comments form because it was causing pop-up ads, and no one likes pop-ups except if it's a pop-up children's book. those are still pretty cool, but i wasn't able to integrate a pop-up children's book into my site.

In case you're interested, the Dominican University College has included my photo a few times on their new website at www.collegedominicain.ca . To see the pics, go to admissions or cost of studies or student association (there's a couple of other places too) and wait for a second for the image on the right to change. You should then see my happy mug peering out of the screen at you. It's pretty glamorous, I know, but I'll try not to let it go to my head :)

6 out of 10 was the average of the German quiz I received back today. 60%. Apparently that's a fairly average mark for a language class; according to my professor. I've never thought of myself as average. Generally I'm a bit over par when it comes to schoolwork, but today it was there, staring me in the face. Keith Dow is average.   Incidentally, three out of the four marks I lost were mis-translations of the word "Teil" or "part." Where the sentences contained "Teile," which is plural, I mistook for "Teil," one singular part. The truth is, I don't like thinking of myself as one part among many. I recognize that I am a part; there is no way to avoid this in being distinct in the world. I merely fail to make the necessary connection that there are numerous other parts; that I am not as distinct or unique as I sometimes would like to think I am.   One of the things that I most enjoy doing, and that which I've occasionall...

I had a German test on Friday. It's only another couple of days until I find out how terribly I actually did on it. The problem is, teachers never mark tests according to our humanity. They don't say "Keith, there were a few things that need to be worked on but I'm sure you'll have them down by next time." No, they mark us like machines. You are and always will be 7.5 out of 10. This particular quiz mark will never change. There is no next time for this one. You cannot improve.  It's the same idea as a SIN number; the system gives you one number, and that number is you to them. The name "Keith" is flexible enough to encompass my varying fluctuations and to allow for improvement or decline on my part yet particular and specific enough that when people hear my name they are able to point me out in a crowd. A number, on the other hand, is absolute. In a closed all-encompassing system, a number represents a specific point which will never be diffe...

As some of you know, it wasn't long ago that that my car was broken into and the culprit ran off with my CD/MP3 CD player. At the time I was quite happy about how I handled it. My roommate's car had been broken into that night as well so I had a foreboding feeling that mine had too. So, when I found that it had, indeed, been broken into and my CD player was gone, I wasn't completely unprepared. In fact, I was quite relaxed about the whole thing.  At first I think it was out of a genuine unattachment and the feeling that the situation was out of my control. It wasn't long, though, until I transformed this loss into an opportunity to upgrade to an all-out MP3 player. Now I realize that, instead of turning to God in this situation that was out of my control, I turned it into an opportunity to assert my dominance over a world - and ultimately a God - that (Who) can't be controlled.   My attitude reminds me of the United States in their insistence on rebuilding the ...

remember those scratch-and-sniff things? of course they still exist, but i haven't smelled one in a while. now all we have are those horrid cardboard car scents: those leaves of aesthetic tragedy. the one i'm thinking of has a strawberry scent. it might have been strawberry shortcake - that little red-headed girl with strawberries painted all over her ginormous hat, a hat ten times the size of her head. this reminds me of those markers you can buy that smell, too, often like berries of some sort. i can remember the blueberry ones the best. which scents do you remember?  when Jodi and i (and sometimes Justin, Dan, Kaia or some other participant) would take empty milk jugs and stealthily place them on Mark Vust's doorstep (our Resident Director), i would sometimes smell the rotting milk. it didn't smell good. i'll give you that. but it was certainly a powerful scent. smelling things reminds me of how much i love life. like when i'm in a forest ...

this left shoe of mine is very squeaky today.  his brother glides quietly along the polished floors, polite and well-behaved, as though lost in profound meditation in these silent monk corridors, while he obnoxiously shouts echoing obcenities at passers-bye that have the ill-fortune to be in the wake of yet another disrupting college student.

"In order to reach God, freedom, and immortality, speculative reason must use principles that in fact extend merely to objects of possible experience; and when these principles are nonetheless applied to something that cannot be an object of experience, they actually do always transform it into an appearance, and thus they declare all practical expansion of reason to be impossible. I therefore had to annul knowledge in order to make room for faith."   Dogmatism in metaphysics: "Encourages them (youth) quite early and strongly to reason with ease about things of which they understand nothing and into which, moreover, neither they nor anyone else in the world will ever have any insight"

Today I received this envelope in the mail. It says on it "Opening this envelope may change your life!" My first reaction was "Yeah right. Whatever." Of course I didn't think it would for a moment. Then I realized just how wrong my perception was. Unconsciously I was thinking "I mean, it would be nice if it changed my life, but it's really not going to," instead of "If this was true, it would be the worst thing that could happen to me!" I'll let Paul elucidate:  "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption throu...

so reads the cover to fight club, the movie of a man who meets someone who he thinks is everything he wants to be only to find out that someone is his worst nightmare and that someone is himself.  you see, on this globe there will always be a part of us which is that someone we once thought we wanted to be only to find out that he is everything we have grown to hate. that demon within started feeding with the first forbidden fruit and hasn’t stopped feasting since. he has grown oh so fat that one is scarcely able to step around him upon encountering oneself, especially in a culture worshipping self-indulgence and painless existence. the fattest demons are those who use the lie that alcohol will make them disappear. they are the ones that command constant drink or else their dictatorship is too painfully real.  in the Christian’s life, such rulers have been cast out by the throne of grace. all-too-frequently, however, the empty hole where they used to be still resembl...

"When one grows older, everything becomes so miserable. God in heaven has to sit and wait for the decision on his fate, whether he exists, and finally he comes into existence with the help of a few demonstrations; human beings have to put up with waiting for the matter to be decided... Youth understands immediately that there is a God."   "There was a thinker who became a hero by his death; he said that he could demonstrate the existence of God with a single straw. Let the thinker keep his demonstration; give youth the straw-it cannot demonstrate. But why is demonstration necessary at all when one has the straw and-God! When one grows older, along comes the demonstration, and the demonstration is a prominent traveler whom all look upon with admiration."   -Soren Kierkegaard in "Think about Your Creator" in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

"Do not take too much control of the young, nor of the infant, but do not therefore do the opposite, either; do not make it prematurely old, lest it drink the bitterness of not being allowed to be young when one is young, and for a second time drink the bitterness of not having been allowed to be young when one was young."   -Soren Kierkegaard in "Think about Your Creator" in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

"Indeed, nothing is more loathsome than to see the miserable beggar whose eyes and countenance implore everyone for the flattering falsehood that he still seems young, or to see the poor wretch who despite his advanced age still bolsters himself with the lie that he has youth ahead of him, or to see the weakling who has no other defense against the years than a feeble wish that he were still young."   -Soren Kierkegaard in "Think about Your Creator" in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

I just finished possibly the best pecan tart I have ever eaten. It was crumbly, but it was oh so delectable. Yesterday night I went downstairs to cook a late supper, settling on my usual fare - microwaved hot dogs on bread with a cheese slice. Upon entering the kitchen, I noticed that on the stove-top were a fantastic-looking pie with crumble on top, which I found out later to be peach pie, and a pan of melt-in-your-mouth pecan butter tarts. Now, I would like you to get a glimpse of how much I like butter tarts. Years ago I decided it was a prerequisite that the woman I was to marry had to know how to make butter tarts. That's how much I like butter tarts. Since then, reason has poked its hideous little head into the play-pen of my mind and has pointed out that perhaps this is a superficial and idiotic prerequisite to have, so I have dropped it as a requirement. Anyway, so I was there nuking my very unhealthy dinner in the microwave, and Trina comes upstairs to check on her ...

Understanding my distaste for unexpected expenditures, you can imagine my discomfort taking Arfy to the mechanic. As a general rule, though, if your car's radiator fan is not working and you can't drive more than 15 minutes without overheating and having your coolant boil and explode out of its container, and if overheating can cause your engine to warp and seize up, rendering your car useless - it's probably a good time to see a mechanic. In the case of a mechanic, the unexpected costs are generally the result of finding out that your car will explode into a million pieces unless you have this, this, and this replaced. In my case it was probably true. I think that's why I tend to have an overwhelming urge to put off going to a garage for as long as possible, basically until even I can tell I'm not going to last long driving the car, because I know they're going to tell me something is more wrong with my car than I first thought.   "How are you?" ...

I'm part Scottish, but sometimes I think I must be full-blooded. My proof for this is an intriguing cost-saving substance called "skim milk powder." While all other kids growing up 'got milk,' my sisters and I were sat in front of an over-diluted pail of this watery white substance that had the audacity to claim the name of 'milk' while every sense receptor on my tongue screamed the falsity of such an association.  For the longest time I probably wondered if my mom merely printed her own blue bags with 'milk' written across the side wherin she could deposit these powdery grains of dried food colouring, because I had never seen one of these bags outside of our house on God's green earth. To this day I haven't seen anyone actually drink the stuff besides the Dow clan, but I have seen the odd bag here and there, tucked in the deepest, darkest corners of grocery stores. I think they're made just for my mom, though. Possibly by my dad, who...

Today I had the privilege of going to a conference in Toronto with Dave Hood and Dan Carlson, two guys that I respect for their fellow geekiness and love of books, theology, philosophy, history, and literature/language.   The keynote speaker was Ravi Zacharias , a tremendous speaker and apologist who not only has a captivating intellect but also a stunning delivery of profound truths. During one session that he wasn't speaking I was coming in a little late, so I slipped around back of the pews in the large church auditorium and into my seat. As I'm rounding the back of the pews to come up the far side of the isle, whistling the song that everyone else is singing (don't ask my why I was whistling... I really have no idea), the door opens and who to my wondering eyes should appear but Dr. Ravi Zach, with a faithful minion at his side.  I go further up to my seat and, little do I know, this white haired Indian man is following me. I sit down. He sits down. Beside me. O...

Perhaps we should all be Jedi Knights. Their principle of non-attachment, which is strikingly like the Buddha's attempt to rid himself of earthly desires, is very appealing. "We will have to find out the cause of sorrow and the way to escape from it. The desire for sensual enjoyment and clinging to earthly life is the cause of sorrow. If we can eradicate desire, all sorrows and pains will come to an end." This makes a lot of sense. Actually, it makes perfect sense. He is right. It can be scary admitting Buddha is right, because what if he's right about everything? Well, even in this case, perhaps he is only right insofar as what he says is true. Does that mean his route is the best path to take on the proverbial road to enlightenment? Right now it might appear that way. You see, I realized recently that I became very attached to something I owned. It's my Bible. Or, was my Bible. (Give me a moment to regain my composure...) I had my NIV study Bible for at least ...

First, in order to proceed beyond matters of great consequence, I must put before you a choice. It is, perplexingly enough, the choice between life and death, blessings and curses. It is this. What is the following picture to you? Did you say: A) A hat or, B) A boa-constrictor digesting an elephant? Only if you answered B you may proceed to read the rest of this post, because "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye" (The Little Prince). In fact, it would be best if you read The Little Prince before reading this post. I don't think you'll be lost, but it'll just make everything mean a whole lot more. The Little Prince I read this charming book with Darcie not long ago, a book about a tiny prince who leaves his tiny island and his temperamental and arrogant rose to explore the galaxy and search for friendship, only to discover that it was his tiny whimsical rose that he truly cared about and found j...