“May 14
“Just when I had almost caught up, I come to two days too full to do more than read a page or two. Wednesday included a trip to the DMV and finishing my last BSF lesson. Thursday was my next-to-last BSF day, and then getting ready for the weekend because ACen begins today! What an interesting birthday this will be. Happy 34th to me!”
“I have a lot of areas of my daily life which could stand for me to be more Christlike but ‘today’ makes my answers seem to need to be totally different because today will be anything but routine. I suppose I should try harder to talk of spiritual truths (perhaps The Passion of the Christ) with people we meet, familiar and not.
“I suppose I should avoid Anime Hell tonight because there are some parts that are violent, profane, vulgar, and sacrilegious. I just really like the film strip dub and the grad student home movie (I also like ‘Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown’ way more than I should).
“I also should try very hard to be Christlike about going to Denny’s on my birthday. It is best for the group because of all the choices, and I do like the food okay, just not a lot – but it’ll be okay.”
“Lord, help me to keep in mind these resolutions I have just noted. Please give me the strength to behave like You in each of them. Guide me particularly in conversing with others. Make my conversations uplifting and even fruitful.”
Dearest Rachel –
Yes, convention weekends were always interruptions in our daily routine, to say the least. So when you were trying to do this daily journal, Anime Central would throw a wrench into things. Add to that that we’ve both celebrated a birthday or two at the convention at one point or another, and that adds an extra unusual layer to the whole experience.
I know what you’re saying about being Christlike when it comes to not getting your way; particularly after this week, when very little has gone as intended. And I know it got under your skin to celebrate your birthday at a place as bland and inoffensive as Denny’s; for some reason, the only way to get everybody in the fanfic community to agree on a place to eat at, was to agree on a place that nobody particularly cared for in the first place. It was something of a shame, but what else could we do? It took several years after this before we finally learned to decide on having Chicago style pizza brought in, and eating it in our room.
Ironically, that decision from years later also took us away from the likes of Anime Hell. We still went to the Midnight Madness later on that night, with its anime parodies, but our Friday evening hangout sessions generally precluded attending Anime Hell after a certain point. Sometimes, these things resolve them selves. Granted, I kept the links in here, as some of the things you remember have now migrated to YouTube, but I will warn the curious that they are not for everyone.
There was a year in which some university students were putting together a documentary about otaku culture, and we were interviewed on camera for it; how we balanced our fandom with our relationship with each other, and our relationship with God. Some people seemed to think that you couldn’t enjoy anime within the framework of our faith. I don’t remember what we said at the time, necessarily, but I think that we’ve been given so much to enjoy by Him, including this – why not enjoy it?
Not to mention – and especially for you – we would meet and encounter so many people that we would never get the chance to if we were not part of this community. Just by what you wrote on this day, you had that reminder in the back of your mind that this was an outreach. We rarely made any direct efforts to talk to people about our faith, necessarily – hey, there’s enough to do on a weekend like this – but I recall several times around a table in our suite that you would be engaging someone or rather in such a discussion. We may not have done it often, but you did not neglect your commission when the opportunity arose.
Letters to Rachel 