Yet Another Star Wars Rant

I’m finishing up my degree here at BYU, in my third week of classes now, and I have to say my studies are pretty eclectic at the moment. Italian grammar, Welsh grave inscriptions that reference King Arthur, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays, the bombing of Hiroshima, and Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. My brain is a funny place right now. Not least because every day this last week was a Star Wars day. Good mix.

Every day this week, I went to the fourth floor of the BYU library where they have “Media Viewing Rooms.” I remembered these rooms from before my mission. I remembered them being kind of low tech, with only about 5 chairs total, but you could reserve a room to watch a movie in them for a small group. Before I left, they had dvd players, but no blu ray. Upon remembering this magical little place, I looked up to see if they had blu ray.

The website said they did.

I reserved a room.

Upon my arrival, Monday afternoon, I step into the room and what do my wondering eyes behold? A GIANT SCREEN TV. IT’S BEAUTIFUL. IT’S AT LEAST 3 TIMES THE SIZE OF THE ONE WE HAD AT HOME. IT NEARLY COVERED THE WHOLE WALL.

Needless to say, I was a little excited. I reserved the same room every day of the week (you can only reserve it for a maximum of 4 hours per day, so I was limited to watching one Star Wars film each day).

But then, on Friday, I couldn’t reserve that particular room. No problem, I thought. One of the other rooms will do just fine. So I reserved a different one.

Well, Friday I found out that room doesn’t have a blu ray player, neither can it have one at all because the TV has no HDMI hookup.

“Well,” said the very helpful attendant trying to assist me. “It looks like this won’t work out….You could just use the small theater next door. The person who reserved it didn’t show up, so it’s available if it won’t make you feel weird.”

“Is there anything wrong with it?”

“Oh no,” she said. “It’s just usually for 40+ people, but it should work fine.”

So she leads me into this other room. Dude, it’s AN ACTUAL THEATER. The screen is THE WALL. IT’S BIG. BIGGER THAN I THOUGHT. LIKE AN ACTUAL THEATER. AND I GOT TO HAVE IT ALL TO MYSELF.

IN SURROUND SOUND!!!!!!!!!

So I watched The Empire Strikes Back in a private theatrical viewing all to myself. “The only improvement would have been if a hunky guy showed up with a large popcorn,” said Mom.

She speaks truth. It was one of the coolest movie-viewing experiences of my life (even without popcorn or a hunky guy). 

Watching the entire series from beginning to end (again), a lot more things jumped out. Like Vader’s sly dealings with the Emperor.

Persevere

Persevere:
Patient endurance of hardship:
Persisting in a state of enterprise in spite of difficulties and discouragement.

“Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”
Hebrews 12:1

So a bunch of us missionaries were on our way to leadership training in Lyon (very cooly referred to as Jedi Council by my mission president) when I receive a phone call from my mission president.  We small-talk for a sec and then he asks me a question about a letter I shared with him a couple weeks back. It was a portion of my pep-talk letter to my brother, Connor, in which I shared my personal difficulties. Apparently he loved it and wanted me to read it at Jedi Council.

Even though I was slightly freaked out, I said yes cuz I didn’t want to decline and weird out his presentation. So I prayed about it that night and felt good, but that didn’t remove my nerves the next morning. This would open me up to huge vulnerability.

Yikes.