On Organization, Humility, and the Symphony

Organization. Some call it an acquired skill, I call it a gift. I feel, also, that organization spans three primary areas: Cleanliness, Hospitality, and Social Endeavors. While various family members, friends from adolescence, music teachers, and others whom crossed paths with me might deny this, I feel that I am, in fact, organizationally gifted. This particular trait was simply waiting to be discovered (unleashed, if you will) and it's on the verge of doing just that. I can recall a number of times in high school where my parents travelled for the weekend and left me with responsibility over the household. While I would often leave and hang out with friends, a yearning for cleanliness always harbored in the back of my mind. When I felt this, I would clean the house (more like straighten up, but the unprecedented effort was still put forth) - just on a random, strangely-conjured whim. In high school, I seldom kept my bedroom clean; it really disgusted my parents and siblings. I hypothesize this: Because I appearantly viewed my room as a more of a sleeping/dressing/stuff-keeping area (I did not spend much time in it as my computer, trumpet, keyboard, and comfortable homework spots were in the basement), it was hardly appealing to keep clean. Contrary to this, the house - the fully-utilized living areas - did seem more important to maintain in presentable condition, for obvious reasons. There was, however, another strong reason for a sparking of the "clean me" impulse...

...girls.

My parents are gifted with hospitality. For about 4 years we would typically host a family or two for dinner 1-2 Sundays per month; sometimes more, sometimes less, but that's irrelevant. My sister would commonly joke with me, "Peter, you know that we'll be doing the SAME thing when we're their age - it'll be impossible not to!" Organization, then, can also be an inherited gift. Sure, you can say that it's upbring and "training" in a way, but I'll maintain that its a gift - I've seen people without it. Well, hospitality is something I've always enjoyed, and it seems that even more trying circumstances, like hosting a party where several girls are invited, bring out that inner-organizer more. I remember freshman year, around the time of final exams, Jessica and I decided to study geometry together. Not, "study" as so many probably expected, but, actually, study. Because I was so euphoric about this little, mundane, 2-hour long session (which of course felt like eternity, *ahh...*), I spent the better half of the morning and afternoon cleaning the basement and other parts of the house. Now, this wasn't simple straightening-up, this was an all out annihilation of anything unpresentable. I remember chuckling to myself and with my mom, "well, hey, if you ever need the house clean, just let me invite Jessica (or other girls of 'emotional signficance' for lack of a better word) over." I've felt subject to good presentability for quite some time; I blame, but now thank, my sister for this - I've never worn a brown belt with black shoes and pants since. This ideal of presentablity has stuck with me as I've gotten to college, too. My room is, generally speaking, pretty clean; I usually clean it once a week, and even then it's only a bit of putting stuff away. A couple weeks ago when I had peers over for hot chocolate and tea after the soccer game, I came up about ten minutes prior to make everything spic and span. I can't not have a clean room when people, particularly girls, come over. Its part of embracing a servant's heart, and honoring my sisters. When applicable, the occasional mindset of impressing and pleasing the guest(s) may find its way into the equation too, admittedly.

So, now onto the area of organization which really inspired this topic: social organization. I was recently admiring my social organization skills after having almost executed the perfect planned outing to the symphony on Wednesday. The lone element that made it imperfect was that one of the group members was about 20 minutes late to the meeting place. Well, the eight of us were then ten minutes late arriving to the Symphony Hall, where we had to stand in the lobby for twenty minutes awaiting the end of the violin concerto before we could be seated. So, since I was so concerned and into the organization that I put into this (with pretty much nobody else) I felt almost violated, and started to assume the sassy, immature mindset of, "um...okay, this is my event and you're being selfish and ruining it for me; they're not even appreciative of all the work I put into making it happen." Yeah, I was pretty much a mentally selfish jerk, so I prayed for a while and just asked God to relieve me from the selfishness and bitterness I was feeling. Well, Ellie is an awesome person and somehow knows whenever I'm feeling like junk for some reason or another and spoke nice encouragement. We finally got to go in, sit down, and right at the end of the first movement of the Brahm's 4th Symphony, I let out a huge, fulfilling sigh of relief. There were other, minute reasons for my feeling crummy, too. But for the most part, they were beautifully alleviated.

:-)

So, through this event and mental rollercoaster, I learned, once again, the importance of humility. I was a selfish, impatient, and mostly unpleasant chap at the beginning of that night, and could tell my friends weren't that thrilled. But, the music soothed me and I realized my faults of self-centeredness. Funny how that works. After the symphony, we hung out at Starbuck's for quite some time, and I had my first cafe latte - another step down the path of developing a keen taste for coffee.

Here are some pictures, courtesy of Mindy:

Lizzy, Mindy, Chris, Jason, Joe, Peter, Ellie, Brent

'Giddy'up

Lookin' good in Pink

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Remember Jim Wallis speaking in chapel (previous post)? Well, I got on TV, briefly.

It wasn't the most thrilling news story - more disapproval of the republican party - but, certainly neat for North ParkUniversity to be part of the footage.

"With guru-like organization skills, ought come humility."

haha...what an inherently funny, self-contradicting statement.