what’s going on in vancouver? :: an update

I’ve been meaning to write a post of this nature for a while, but I got a special motivator this afternoon to sit down and do it. So, without further ado, let me pass on the first bit of news:

Come fall, Carolyn will be a wide-eyed white-coat. (Carolyn was accepted to medical school today!)

Carolyn got word from Albany Medical College in New York that they’d love to have her in next year’s class. This is a tremendous relief to both of us and some really exciting news. She has been working hard for the last three years (and especially hard in the last year) in order to pull this off. Studying for the MCAT’s in the basement of the UM library in Missoula – scrapping together every volunteer hour and elementary school blue ribbon for the primary application last summer – writing navel-gazing introspective essays until her fingers bled last fall (I dare you to ask her what her greatest strengths and weaknesses are) – flying all over the country this spring to interview at seven schools. And all this in the midst of a full load of classes at Regent. I’m quite proud of her, to say the least.

Albany, you say… What’s in Albany? Apparently not much… But there’s a medical school!

We still haven’t heard back from two other schools (Michigan State and UC Irvine) and she’s on a few waitlists, so I wouldn’t book your plane tickets to Albany just yet. But getting in somewhere is the first step, eh? Exciting stuff.

In other news, we’ve been rattling around Vancouver since the semester ended at Regent a few weeks ago. I’m trying to find time (in a totally unstructured schedule!) to work on my thesis and finding it quite a challenge. Between a lack of discipline and all the little stuff that keeps popping up, I seem to sit down to the task all too seldom. But, slowly, slowly, I’m putting together a thesis on the source of Bonhoeffer’s ethics. I’m really enjoying it. He presents a strong challenge to the modern ethical paradigm whereby we apply some system or another to our conundrums in order to come to a solution. He’s suspicious of the whole thing (in a very christocentric manner), and brings some good Lutheran antipathy to self-justification to the table. The exciting bit is that his suspicion (and his christocentricity) doesn’t lead to a withdrawal or a separation; we find Bonhoeffer right in the thick of his country’s problems – precisely because he expects to find Jesus there. We should all study so hard as to understand the world as he did.

Carolyn, when she’s not somewhere else answering questions, is working on a comprehensive paper about modern notions of personhood and their outworking in bioethical issues (especially at the end and beginning of life). She’s been wrestling admirably with a philosophical monster – Charles’ Taylor’s Sources of the Self in order to get a grasp on various modern pictures of just what it means to be human.

In about a month or so, the two of us are planning on migrating south for the summer to work for Sierra Treks, that matchmaking backcountry outfit where our star-struck eyes first met. We’ll be measuring out cheese-powder and polishing backpack frames in Lincoln, Oregon for about a month before we head further south to lead a few trips in the Hoover Wilderness (and proposed [but not yet Congressionally approved] additions). Both of us are really looking forward to a quieter/slower summer where we can catch up with ourselves a bit and enjoy some time in the woods.

Other than that, we’ve been busy lately helping out a friend of ours who used to live on the street. He was recently hit by a truck on his bicycle and broke his femur. He’s slowly healing (from many hurts) and needs a good bit of help in the meantime. Your prayers for Ken are much appreciated.

Our much-beloved community here at 3920 Broadway is slowly disintegrating/graduating/immigrating. That has been the cause of a few tears, a few heartaches, and a few good parties. We’ll certainly miss all the antics.

If we owned a digital camera, I’d put up pictures. Alas, we’re happily stuck in the photographic stone age.