The New World

I just saw an amazing film.
The New World, directed by Terrence Malick.
It is a masterpiece and a moving poem. And I am very glad I've seen it.

shall we go for a ramble?

this image stops me and makes me look:

A wanderer is man from his birth
He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time.

-Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) from ‘The Future’ (I found it in ‘Off the Beaten Path,’ an anthology illustrated by Laura Stoddart)

Yesterday while studying I took note of the songs that came randomly upon my mp3-er, and thought, You know, a playlist, randomly generated, can speak. how? I think sometimes it is God using the mechanism. And sometimes it is one's own mind, drawing a common thread of conversation out of all the intentions poured into each work by each artist.

Yesterday I got Keith Green ("You"), as I was reading about Acts and the early ekklesia, God's assembly, God's body of people on the run sharing the Story, the happy news. And I bubbled up with joy at the thought of joining them, of getting out there...and it's all right outside my front door.
Then there was Lauryn Hill...Just Like Water
and I read this quote in some class reading: "he here glimpsed a life which had found the inward victory and peace to which he was a stranger." It was about Saul-who-became-Paul. . .
"cleaning me, He's purging me, and moving me around."
He is, He is.
Recently I have been gracefully yanked back to the center of the world, back to the cross and the resurrection, back to the core of what makes a 'Christ-ian'. What a joy to be a baby Christian over and over, in the sense of rediscovering the Most Important. Am I living in such a way that really demonstrates that I believe I am forgiven, ingrafted, loved, free, rescued?
this is the voyage.
I can't tell you how HAPPY it made me to recover a Simplicity, a single focus to direct my life on. Thank you, Lord. I like it when things are simple.

so then there was "Somewhere," an instrumental version, from West Side Story.

I keep hearing car doors close and thinking it's family members. One of these times it will be.

The Blue Danube Waltz. I fell in deeplike with Straussmusic while watching treetops dance to it in the wind, out the top half of a shuttered window on California Street in Huntington Beach, California.

Azure Ray came on. 'How You Remember.' Followed by Bing Crosby with 'Any Bonds Today?' Noooot so connected.

'One of the Fairest Portions of the Globe' from the soundtrack of a Lewis and Clark documentary. A voice says, "It seemed as if these scenes of visionary enchantment would never come to an end."

I'm going to L'Arche in January. This is good. I will be happy to live, to have community, to serve and learn. I don't know a lot of specifics; they don't interest me right now, the logistical things people ask me about. I keep saying we'll jump and we'll see. that's from a movie, and not an art-y one. but a goodun.

I believe I like Mindy Smith's music. Do you? She has a new album out. I haven't had time to listen to it intentionally yet, but there is a ridiculously catchy song on it that says "What if the world stopped turning, what if the sun stopped burning..." oh, do listen to it. I think you'll like it.

The song "the beautiful briny sea" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks came on. That song is full of the most delightful words. "serene...through the bubbly blue and green...Far from the frenzy of the frantic world above, two beneath the blue...could even fall in love." Shimmery, shiny, bobbing, bubbly.

Do you like the look of a dark room with a lit closet? I like to turn all the lights out at dusk time except for the one in the closet. It makes it seem like a secret warm fort. Isn't there a poem--is it by Emily Dickinson, or Robert Frost? I'm a little ashamed not to know off the top of the head--about looking into a lighted window or door from a dark street. Catching a glimpse of the life inside.

"I Just Want to Praise You," a recording of Melanie and me singing it in the old Stable at Capernwray, came on. How grateful I am for this girl. Mel, listen to that track if you have it handy. It made me think back on our friendness and say thank You, thank You, thank You.

well, now I shall tell you what I'm reading, because I did some of that this morning and wanted to share so much of what I took.
-Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day ...have you read anything by him? This is my first, sort of an accidental purchase, and his writing thus far (just started the book) is so insightful. I keep bracketing and underlining things because they just have to be responded to.
-John Piper’s The Passion of Jesus Christ, 50 reasons why Jesus came to die. This has been on my shelf for years; got it for free at a church. And it was for this time. I am very thankful for it right now.
-Laura Stoddart’s anthology of travel quotes, Off the Beaten Path. Her drawings make me smile.
-Too slowly, I am reading Jean Vanier’s Our Journey Home. Why am I taking it in such small chunks? Not sure.
-In pieces, as part of my course, I'm reading Mission in Acts and the Perspectives Reader ...I highly, highly, highly (does it make sense to repeat that three times. Really high) recommend them both.

I'm volatile these days. Pits suck me in quickly and easily. And then I'm extra grateful for sudden upsweeps that renew my perspective and remind me what joy is. (That seems to be the easiest thing for me to forget.)

Delighted in: rarebird and the many pretty rabbit trails down which it takes one. Tell me what you find.
Thinking about... forts and childhood.
Today I want to: break from school till tomorrow… make shirts, tidy my room, go for a walk, write.
How kind He is. Wonder where we’ll go.