see you in six weeks.
after the work of love,
a wedding,
and a road trip.
how i love movement. oh dear. i may never stop.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
...time to go again...
see you in six weeks.
after the work of love,
a wedding,
and a road trip.
how i love movement. oh dear. i may never stop.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
something sort of grandish.
"On the day I was born, said my father, said he,'I've an elegant legacy waitin' for ye...
Tis a rhyme for your lips
And a song for your heart
To sing it whenever the world falls apart..."
the land of this movie, Finian's Rainbow, has been my dreamworld for a long time. Oh, please see it... and if you don't like it, don't tell me. It's too much a part of my fabric.
It weaves a profound and lasting magic; its earthy-commune-train riding-field frolicking, dusty-colored beauty has made it a picture of Home for me since I was only leprechaun-height.
thank you, Lord, for filmed happinesses that remind us what happiness is.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Here, you can borrow it...
currently reading, and want other people to enjoy...
Following Jesus in the Hindu Context: The Intriguing Implications of N.V. Tilak's Life and Thought
by H.L. Richard
Show Me the Way: Readings for each day of Lent
by Henri J.M. Nouwen
also thinking about the prophets, what a "prophet" is/was; and about what needs to be tossed out of my life and way of thinking and grasping for fulfillment. I don't want to waste my life chasing empty, 'harmless' hankerings.
Hosea is right for this moment.
Hinduism is on my mind. Have been doing some good reading on it for my degreeprogram. I'm surprised at how much this subject interests and compels me. Not that it's only one thing... Anyone want to go to India with me?
Saturday, April 15, 2006
guess who just rode into town?
Sunday, April 02, 2006
possibilities
"'...must I hold that what is not communicated to consciousness does not exist? I think in a line--but there is the potentiality of the plane.' This perhaps was what great art was--a momentary apprehension of the plane at a point in the line."
(from Many Dimensions, by Charles Williams)
(from Many Dimensions, by Charles Williams)
Sunday, March 26, 2006
endless paperwriting
I can't seem to mesh with writing this paper...
and I'm typing truths that I would rather live out than write about
ah, but writing and living are pretty inextricably intertwined for me.
when i write it, i understand it...at least a little better
I am slow to be deep these days.
when will i start really living these things out?
when i finally believe in grace.
think they'd accept a term paper written in the form of abstract poetry and disconnected sentences?
ah, wait, that would be a blog, not a term paper. sigh.
"When I pray, I pour my nebulous self into the concrete forms of words, and it begins to make me real.
And so humankind has poured themselves into words since the beginning; and since the beginning God has met us there, in the middle ground, the land of words, pouring Himself into them so that we can catch some semblance of who He is. This is prayer: meeting God, communicating ourselves to Him, and above all, being overwhelmed by His communicating Himself to us, putting us in our beautiful place."
this is my favorite part of what i've hammered out so far
because it's the only part that wasn't hammered out--just flowed naturally.
Do you think it's true? Is this how you see prayer?
the paper's on prayer in the earliest Old Testament Scriptures--the Pentateuch and Job...
why is my mind half asleep, unable to leap in?
guilt? farness from prayer?
undeniably, constant distraction is a big part of the problem. you know, folks, it may be time for a media fast. no more blogreading or websurfing or rhapsody-surfing-and-listening. Do I really need to discover yet another band I like? Not as much as I need to be in a room empty of everything but my soul and the living God.
not at all, in fact.
God help me to kick the addictions; Godhelpme wake up to the comfortless motions i go through out of habit, turning to knothole-mailboxes long abandoned, still thinking I will find delight there. how long can I be so stupid?
Oh, a long, long time.
a lifetime if it weren't for Jesus...Jesus, take my hand. pull me up.
and I'm typing truths that I would rather live out than write about
ah, but writing and living are pretty inextricably intertwined for me.
when i write it, i understand it...at least a little better
I am slow to be deep these days.
when will i start really living these things out?
when i finally believe in grace.
think they'd accept a term paper written in the form of abstract poetry and disconnected sentences?
ah, wait, that would be a blog, not a term paper. sigh.
"When I pray, I pour my nebulous self into the concrete forms of words, and it begins to make me real.
And so humankind has poured themselves into words since the beginning; and since the beginning God has met us there, in the middle ground, the land of words, pouring Himself into them so that we can catch some semblance of who He is. This is prayer: meeting God, communicating ourselves to Him, and above all, being overwhelmed by His communicating Himself to us, putting us in our beautiful place."
this is my favorite part of what i've hammered out so far
because it's the only part that wasn't hammered out--just flowed naturally.
Do you think it's true? Is this how you see prayer?
the paper's on prayer in the earliest Old Testament Scriptures--the Pentateuch and Job...
why is my mind half asleep, unable to leap in?
guilt? farness from prayer?
undeniably, constant distraction is a big part of the problem. you know, folks, it may be time for a media fast. no more blogreading or websurfing or rhapsody-surfing-and-listening. Do I really need to discover yet another band I like? Not as much as I need to be in a room empty of everything but my soul and the living God.
not at all, in fact.
God help me to kick the addictions; Godhelpme wake up to the comfortless motions i go through out of habit, turning to knothole-mailboxes long abandoned, still thinking I will find delight there. how long can I be so stupid?
Oh, a long, long time.
a lifetime if it weren't for Jesus...Jesus, take my hand. pull me up.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
go here, go here!
http://www.wartoft.nu/software/seterra/
Download this program. It's what you've always dreamed of!
Okay, maybe it's just what I've always dreamed of.
I can finally be as geographically intelligent as I ought to be.
This was probably invented ten years ago. But we're together now, and that's all that matters.
okay, that was the whole reason for this post. It was a reflex to the joy of Seterra. Now I feel I must justify it with further content. I'm running on bookstore and geography adrenaline, have no depths to share at this particular moment.
music. Try Derek Webb, particularly "New Law" on the cd Mockingbird.
Download this program. It's what you've always dreamed of!
Okay, maybe it's just what I've always dreamed of.
I can finally be as geographically intelligent as I ought to be.
This was probably invented ten years ago. But we're together now, and that's all that matters.
okay, that was the whole reason for this post. It was a reflex to the joy of Seterra. Now I feel I must justify it with further content. I'm running on bookstore and geography adrenaline, have no depths to share at this particular moment.
music. Try Derek Webb, particularly "New Law" on the cd Mockingbird.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
when I close my eyes I see...
I can't help it.
I have to post about The Weather Project.
I found out about it via other, wiser blogs (Spiro's, Kristina's)
and it swept me away. I saw one picture and dreamed about it that night. In the dream the installation was in Moscow and I was desperate to find it.
It is one of those things that makes me lose my breath because I didn't know these things were really possible and really going on, these constructions of otherworldly Experiences, glimpses of the wonder. Things I dream and look for even the palest facsimiles of, and suddenly...wham. There it is, a full-blown dreamworld. I can't help but ask why more of these things are not in existence, and why they are confined to the label of Contemporary Art when they do; can't they just be Wonders? I suppose to get the money to create such a thing, you have to be part of a Set of some kind....
why, oh why, oh why, are millions of dollars put up for hideous, standard-issue skyscrapers
instead of for more and more breathtaking Surprises? Oh, human race, where are our priorities??
Look at these... http://www.olafureliasson.net/exhib_proj.html
I am particularly drawn to "Mediated Motion."...
does anyone know of more people making experiencespheres?
Any simple poorfolk out there dreaming these into existence?
I had a dream of one once, to be lovingly planted in a dark shack on the side of a country highway in the south.
I think it's the Incarnational beauty that appeals to me-- like God in flesh, Jesus in hay, and like Christ in me, like the Holy Spirit Himself stooping to live in this shabby person. You enter the molding shanty and suddenly, unexpectedly, you find the closest thing to Home you've ever known.
And a p.s.: Thank you to Philadelphia's finest residents for a weekend that reminded me that God is a Person, Alive and now. Just by being people. I've been dissolving away; God used you to tell me I could materialize again.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Sun's gettin' shinery, to spotlight the finery...
spring, spring, spring.
when you walk the same roads every day for several months
you see the world turn.
you see the story of Seasons unfold,
and it amazes you how quickly it cycles.
suddenly that tree whose bare and curlicued silhouette I have admired since November
is dropping sweet-smelling pinkish petals.
today I think
that God invented this storycycle to show us something magical:
the remembering of what we thought was obvious.
"Oh!
The grass is green!"
"Oh!
The sky is blue!"
"Oh! The trees have leaves!"
Statements that are taken as classic examples of the ridiculously obvious...
become new emotional realizations,
and I am forced to laugh at myself
and to remember that the obvious
is not.
Obvious, that is.
The sensation is delicious, the warmth in the air and the suddenly-green patches of ground, and the purple-flowered trees.
So many "obvious" things He has to remind me of all the time
All the time.
And so the globe keeps turning
and I trip along
walking to work on the same two roads.
when you walk the same roads every day for several months
you see the world turn.
you see the story of Seasons unfold,
and it amazes you how quickly it cycles.
suddenly that tree whose bare and curlicued silhouette I have admired since November
is dropping sweet-smelling pinkish petals.
today I think
that God invented this storycycle to show us something magical:
the remembering of what we thought was obvious.
"Oh!
The grass is green!"
"Oh!
The sky is blue!"
"Oh! The trees have leaves!"
Statements that are taken as classic examples of the ridiculously obvious...
become new emotional realizations,
and I am forced to laugh at myself
and to remember that the obvious
is not.
Obvious, that is.
The sensation is delicious, the warmth in the air and the suddenly-green patches of ground, and the purple-flowered trees.
So many "obvious" things He has to remind me of all the time
All the time.
And so the globe keeps turning
and I trip along
walking to work on the same two roads.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Four
1. (click on the pictures)
(found a precious, precious gem of a site .)
"An ocean voyage...a real journey ...Very exciting. As a luggage problem."
deep-sourced wonder floods my surface again when I enter this world. I remember now...
2. Put an old banjo in your room; lean it against the wall. Wooden floors help, too. Every time you blow your nose or sneeze, ethereal chord-echoes will resonate through your space.
3. Half-handed Cloud, I think you are wise and special.
4. This is not my absolute favorite piece of hers, perhaps because it is sad and not celebratory, but it is trueandgood and it is a message I need to whisper and whisper to myself today. From the collection "Why I Wake Early: New Poems by Mary Oliver"(thanks to liz for sharing Mary with me. I think hers is the most Homeish poemwriting I have ever read.):
What Was Once the Largest Shopping Center in Northern Ohio Was Built Where There Had Been a Pond I Used to Visit Every Summer Afternoon
Loving the earth, seeing what has been done to it,
I grow sharp, I grow cold.
Where will the trilliums go, and the coltsfoot?
Where will the pond lilies go to continue living
their simple, penniless lives, lifting
their faces of gold?
Impossible to believe we need so much
as the world wants us to buy.
I have more clothes, lamps, dishes, paper clips
than I could possibly use before I die.
Oh, I would like to live in an empty house,
with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass.
No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass.
And I suppose sometime I will.
Old and cold I will lie apart
from all this buying and selling, with only
the beautiful earth in my heart.
(Mary Oliver, c.2004)
(found a precious, precious gem of a site .)
"An ocean voyage...a real journey ...Very exciting. As a luggage problem."
deep-sourced wonder floods my surface again when I enter this world. I remember now...
2. Put an old banjo in your room; lean it against the wall. Wooden floors help, too. Every time you blow your nose or sneeze, ethereal chord-echoes will resonate through your space.
3. Half-handed Cloud, I think you are wise and special.
4. This is not my absolute favorite piece of hers, perhaps because it is sad and not celebratory, but it is trueandgood and it is a message I need to whisper and whisper to myself today. From the collection "Why I Wake Early: New Poems by Mary Oliver"(thanks to liz for sharing Mary with me. I think hers is the most Homeish poemwriting I have ever read.):
What Was Once the Largest Shopping Center in Northern Ohio Was Built Where There Had Been a Pond I Used to Visit Every Summer Afternoon
Loving the earth, seeing what has been done to it,
I grow sharp, I grow cold.
Where will the trilliums go, and the coltsfoot?
Where will the pond lilies go to continue living
their simple, penniless lives, lifting
their faces of gold?
Impossible to believe we need so much
as the world wants us to buy.
I have more clothes, lamps, dishes, paper clips
than I could possibly use before I die.
Oh, I would like to live in an empty house,
with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass.
No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass.
And I suppose sometime I will.
Old and cold I will lie apart
from all this buying and selling, with only
the beautiful earth in my heart.
(Mary Oliver, c.2004)
Sunday, February 12, 2006
do you understand that I love you
From Mark Haddon's the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, p.87:
" And Father said, “Christopher, do you understand that I love you?”
And I said “Yes,” because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.
And then he held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan, and I held up my left and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other. "
maybe the hardest thing about pouring your life and time into the life of an autistic child is that they may never love you back in a way that matches what you know as love. they may never love you back in a self-conscious or recognizable way. They may never love you back, period.
loving them teaches us something by experience that we could maybe never learn just by word-age:
It must hurt Jesus when He pours His love on me.
the autistic and "borderline autistic" boys I get to spend time with each day are different from fictional-Christopher in many ways. but they help me understand some of the manifestations of Christopher's mind and heart--and he helps me understand some of their inner logic.
And logic it is. Every child and every person with disabilities (which is every human being) has an inner world that makes sense; everyone takes part of what they see in the world and magnifies it to be the guiding principle of their world. We just all take different parts. And some people's piece is less commonly chosen than others. Like the "Facts" piece that autistic people choose to the exclusion of most other pieces.
Some days i want to take a radio and hold the white noise up to my ear and rock back and forth for hours and hours and hours.
Noises everywhere, the magic of movement and patterns and the madness of people, the number of things to explore and understand, the myriad of different perspectives and the wordswordswords swirling...Every day the world is so overwhelming that if I didn't know I had a YHWH who loves me and understand it all, I think my head and heart would explode.
this is one way I know that I have stopped looking at YHWH Jesus--I get very overwhelmed and frightened. The world is huge and hollow and I am completely useless within it. This is how I felt last night during the second half of a symphony concert because my mind began asking what I'm doing because I'm getting old...and I looked around at so many heads, so many minds facing Beethoven's 2nd, so many lives, so many people scraping their niche into the world, and I am alone...
and then I realized that that is a lie; I am not alone. I know I have been drifting from a deep connection to my Abba Father lately. So my thoughts were beginning to grow in a climate of coldness, aloneness.
And this made me remember that it is the love of Jesus that gives me the hope to exist and the courage to continue and it is the only thing that gives me any joy about living or the future at all. And the difference it makes is not small. The joy I have about living when I remember I live in that cocoon of Love...is HUGE.
my love compared to His is almost no love at all, certainly barely recognizable as Love.
He holds me in a safewarmcocoon of perfect Love
I rarely see it.
And what I do see is just a strand, just the Face, just the Facts, and the depth is so much more, something I don't even have a language for.
I barely see it.
I am overwhelmed by what fills my limited field of vision
I groan
I rock.
He sees the whole, mindblowing, magnificent, infinite Picture
He sings over me.
This is how we know what Love is. . .
do read mark haddon's book.
and do listen to copland's appalachian spring today. it's a magical moment, that moment of total silence in the performance hall just after the last strains have slipped away...
" And Father said, “Christopher, do you understand that I love you?”
And I said “Yes,” because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.
And then he held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan, and I held up my left and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other. "
maybe the hardest thing about pouring your life and time into the life of an autistic child is that they may never love you back in a way that matches what you know as love. they may never love you back in a self-conscious or recognizable way. They may never love you back, period.
loving them teaches us something by experience that we could maybe never learn just by word-age:
It must hurt Jesus when He pours His love on me.
the autistic and "borderline autistic" boys I get to spend time with each day are different from fictional-Christopher in many ways. but they help me understand some of the manifestations of Christopher's mind and heart--and he helps me understand some of their inner logic.
And logic it is. Every child and every person with disabilities (which is every human being) has an inner world that makes sense; everyone takes part of what they see in the world and magnifies it to be the guiding principle of their world. We just all take different parts. And some people's piece is less commonly chosen than others. Like the "Facts" piece that autistic people choose to the exclusion of most other pieces.
Some days i want to take a radio and hold the white noise up to my ear and rock back and forth for hours and hours and hours.
Noises everywhere, the magic of movement and patterns and the madness of people, the number of things to explore and understand, the myriad of different perspectives and the wordswordswords swirling...Every day the world is so overwhelming that if I didn't know I had a YHWH who loves me and understand it all, I think my head and heart would explode.
this is one way I know that I have stopped looking at YHWH Jesus--I get very overwhelmed and frightened. The world is huge and hollow and I am completely useless within it. This is how I felt last night during the second half of a symphony concert because my mind began asking what I'm doing because I'm getting old...and I looked around at so many heads, so many minds facing Beethoven's 2nd, so many lives, so many people scraping their niche into the world, and I am alone...
and then I realized that that is a lie; I am not alone. I know I have been drifting from a deep connection to my Abba Father lately. So my thoughts were beginning to grow in a climate of coldness, aloneness.
And this made me remember that it is the love of Jesus that gives me the hope to exist and the courage to continue and it is the only thing that gives me any joy about living or the future at all. And the difference it makes is not small. The joy I have about living when I remember I live in that cocoon of Love...is HUGE.
my love compared to His is almost no love at all, certainly barely recognizable as Love.
He holds me in a safewarmcocoon of perfect Love
I rarely see it.
And what I do see is just a strand, just the Face, just the Facts, and the depth is so much more, something I don't even have a language for.
I barely see it.
I am overwhelmed by what fills my limited field of vision
I groan
I rock.
He sees the whole, mindblowing, magnificent, infinite Picture
He sings over me.
This is how we know what Love is. . .
do read mark haddon's book.
and do listen to copland's appalachian spring today. it's a magical moment, that moment of total silence in the performance hall just after the last strains have slipped away...
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
riding the rails
Cold Water (Tom Waits)
Well I woke up this morning
With the cold water...With the cold water...With the cold water
Woke up this morning
With the cold water...With the cold water...With the cold
Police at the station
And they don't look friendly...Well they don't look friendly...Well they don't look friendly
Police at the station
And they don't look friendly...They don't look friendly...well they don't
Blind or crippled
Sharp or dull
I'm reading the Bible
By a 40 watt bulb
What price freedom
Dirt is my rug
Well I sleep like a baby
With the snakes and the bugs
Well the stores are open
But I ain't got no money...I ain't got no money
Stores are open
but I ain't got no money...Ain't got no money...Well I ain't
Found an old dog
And he seems to like me...Seems to like me...Well he seems to like me
Found an old dog
And he seems to like me...Seems to like me...Well he seems
Seen them fellows with the card board signs
Scrapin up a little $
To buy a bottle of wine
Pregnant women and
The Vietnam vets I say
Beggin on the freeway Bout as hard as it gets
Well I slept in the graveyard
It was cool and still...Cool and still...It was cool and still
Slept in the graveyard
It was cool and still...Cool and still...and it was cool
Slept all night in the Cedar grove
I was born to ramble...Born to rove
Some men are searchin for the Holy Grail
But there ain't nothin sweeter than ridin the rails
I love 47 but I'm 24
Well they shooed me away
From here the time before
Turned there their backs
And they locked their doors
I'm watching T.V. in the window of a furniture store
Well I woke up this morning
With the cold water...With the cold water...With the cold water
Woke up this morning
With the cold water...With the cold water...With the cold
in my head today, and the ridin' the rails line has cycled through my whole bloodstream. Ever have days of study and abstract thought that weighs you down to the point where your gratitude for the gift of study and philosoph-ication turns into a general feeling that you wish hadn't been blessed with all of it?...because now you can never really just turn your back on it or pretend you don't have it.
Never really be able to live a directly emotive, experiential life because you are a half-wise, half-"learned," analytical half-scholar, with bits and pieces of understanding about worldview and theology and the history of mankind.
the grass is always greener
again.
found an old dog and he seems to like me...
ironic because as usual a random dog came running out at me on the walk to work. and back from work. different dog each time. they don't seem to like me.
Cat had five kittens. miraculous.
Had a little pretend-market-day with my class today. They were hilarious and wonderful and they so enjoyed the farce of commerce... they gave me $20 change for $20 and went through all the stages of discovering the joys of selling and buying, with none of the actual gain, greed or monetary awareness. We wore straw hats and sold apples, instruments, and candy. What more do you need?
Well I woke up this morning
With the cold water...With the cold water...With the cold water
Woke up this morning
With the cold water...With the cold water...With the cold
Police at the station
And they don't look friendly...Well they don't look friendly...Well they don't look friendly
Police at the station
And they don't look friendly...They don't look friendly...well they don't
Blind or crippled
Sharp or dull
I'm reading the Bible
By a 40 watt bulb
What price freedom
Dirt is my rug
Well I sleep like a baby
With the snakes and the bugs
Well the stores are open
But I ain't got no money...I ain't got no money
Stores are open
but I ain't got no money...Ain't got no money...Well I ain't
Found an old dog
And he seems to like me...Seems to like me...Well he seems to like me
Found an old dog
And he seems to like me...Seems to like me...Well he seems
Seen them fellows with the card board signs
Scrapin up a little $
To buy a bottle of wine
Pregnant women and
The Vietnam vets I say
Beggin on the freeway Bout as hard as it gets
Well I slept in the graveyard
It was cool and still...Cool and still...It was cool and still
Slept in the graveyard
It was cool and still...Cool and still...and it was cool
Slept all night in the Cedar grove
I was born to ramble...Born to rove
Some men are searchin for the Holy Grail
But there ain't nothin sweeter than ridin the rails
I love 47 but I'm 24
Well they shooed me away
From here the time before
Turned there their backs
And they locked their doors
I'm watching T.V. in the window of a furniture store
Well I woke up this morning
With the cold water...With the cold water...With the cold water
Woke up this morning
With the cold water...With the cold water...With the cold
in my head today, and the ridin' the rails line has cycled through my whole bloodstream. Ever have days of study and abstract thought that weighs you down to the point where your gratitude for the gift of study and philosoph-ication turns into a general feeling that you wish hadn't been blessed with all of it?...because now you can never really just turn your back on it or pretend you don't have it.
Never really be able to live a directly emotive, experiential life because you are a half-wise, half-"learned," analytical half-scholar, with bits and pieces of understanding about worldview and theology and the history of mankind.
the grass is always greener
again.
found an old dog and he seems to like me...
ironic because as usual a random dog came running out at me on the walk to work. and back from work. different dog each time. they don't seem to like me.
Cat had five kittens. miraculous.
Had a little pretend-market-day with my class today. They were hilarious and wonderful and they so enjoyed the farce of commerce... they gave me $20 change for $20 and went through all the stages of discovering the joys of selling and buying, with none of the actual gain, greed or monetary awareness. We wore straw hats and sold apples, instruments, and candy. What more do you need?
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
badly drawn boy. and such.
it's two years old, but i didn't catch it back then. the album 'one plus one is one' by Badly Drawn Boy. Excellent stuff and it just spoke my heart this morning as I was listening...I couldn't believe it...
the song "This is THAT new song" and its stream-swimming image and its evocation of something my heart is missing and wishing for. ...
the song "summertime in wintertime" was so crazy right-on where my mind was on my walk home yesterday, when I looked at the beautiful bare treetops and thought "January" and realized that I may have been permanently programmed by my school years to live for summertime and Christmas, and everything inbetween just feels like waiting...and how ridiculous it is to live that way, to live looking ahead at all the "events" of the coming months, waiting for those, instead of stepping fully into NOW, TODAY, completely awake and alive and taking advantage of my time with Jesus on this earth... why would I drift through days and weeks, waiting for something to wake me....
I saw a thing on PBS tonight full of old photographs that made me mourn for the long-gone days when the US was a "real place." i probably need to explain that. A place where we let there be dirt and poverty and hard work and personal contact and DIFFICULTY in surviving and... I know some of these things still exist in this country, especially among immigrant populations, inner cities. but why is it that so many of us are cut off from those worlds? did tv do this to us? did it all change when the architects stopped putting front porches on houses?
why is it that I feel like this country is a collection of concrete buildings with closed doors that sometimes squeeze open to let you in or out, but "don't let any dirt in or any strangers in..." and don't let the rest of the world in; don't let us see that we're just one small part of it. People buzz from place to place in climate-controlled motor vehicles, and I don't know what they're doing and they don't know what I'm doing, we just pass each other at Target. and it's near to impossible to BREAK IN anywhere...
maybe everyone feels this way about their home country. Maybe I just like wearing "foreigner glasses"; maybe I just feel more able to blunder about and meet people and maybe the grass is just always greener on the other side...
maybe it's me.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
flights tonight
today I've been listening on and off to the album "Blue Trees" by the band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, some songs from "From the Lion's Mouth" by Nedelle, some Raffi and some Brazilian music. I think sharing this stuff is a strange way of trying to get other people to enter my head without having to actually explain what's going on in it. Which, of course, will not work.
This week studies have been focused on the beginning of Time, the Creation event, the appearance of life. Amazing, amazing, amazing. So much we don't know. So much that God did in ways that we have never conceived of. Not as simple as we are often led to believe... and yet I think the greatest scientific law He set in motion was Love. And that element was most important to Him, too, even though He is the mathematical genius who set up all that thermodynamics, cosmology and geology discover about the universe. Otherwise Jesus wouldn't have lived the life, and died the death, that He did. Remind me to write something on here about the ten pre-Creation dimensions and how they relate to the presence of God. Very amazing stuff.
Longing for a beautiful place, for mountains, oceans, beach, sky, magnificence.
Made a t-shirt today.
Wondering why I don't really fit into the church as I continue to encounter it in the States;
knowing that much of it is my fault but not sure how to change myself.
Saw Polanski's Oliver Twist last night. Not bad.
Finished Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Enjoyable. Especially the chapter "December 2001: The Green Morning." Perhaps just because I am a treelover.
Quote from delightful little girl at daycare on Friday as we talked about the many countries in the world... "Why do they call them crunchies? Maybe because there's so many people and they get all crrrrunched."
Sunday, January 22, 2006
drifting, dreaming, in an azure mood...
I'm learning over time what my heart-language is... it's the poetry of little things.
last night playing rummikub with my mom, wittily insulting each other as we have made our rummikub tradition (I took the cheese-approach, e.g. "Cheeseface". She took the leech angle, e.g. "leechlips.") ... and suddenly Billy Joel's "The Longest Time" came on and we inevitably broke into muppet-dancing. You know, arms outstretched, puppet-style, head back and mouth wide open, whole body bouncing. Man, that's a great song.
So these are the moments that sparkle. And they hurt a little in their magicalness, because everything passes...
Well, I think it’s time for another Voyage through Musical Space, courtesy of ye olde Archos Jukebox and its random mp3 selection capabilities.
Today it seems to be in a very relaxed and magical mood… let’s see what it comes up with.
1. Rufus Wainwright – I Don’t Know What it is
I must start with this one today…and as I listen, the reasons reveal themselves like happy surprise fireworks (that sounds like a Japanese product – happy surprise fireworks) .
This song captures perfectly the feeling of the last dream I had this morning…my friend Bonniemunchkin was in a wheelchair, and was leading a parade (at Disney World, Bonnie! :-) )… and a group of evil people were trying to find her and claim her. I had to reach the end of the street and get to her first…flinging myself through buildings and under railings, with the help and support of some guy whose face I never saw…I did get to her first, and all was well. I woke up with a sense of adrenaline, purpose, companionship. Strange.
My favorite line…”is there anyone else who has slightly mysterious…bruises…”
And then there’s the line that I hear dear, wise Melissa in… “Is there anyone else who is through with complaining about what’s done unto us…”
And then it makes me smile to hear Rufus sing “chugging along”…because my dear brother has recently used that phrase to refer to himself, and it makes me laugh because it’s such a stolid, proletarian phrase for philosophical Popo to use…
And of course, I will always, always hear you, my Melanie, in this song. It’s one of our songs…that line "you gotta be there"...that's about you.
2. Claude Debussy – Nuages
Beautiful. I should read more about Debussy. I think I’ve read about him before but probably have blocked it all out of long-term memory in favor of my imaginary vision of someone who could write such delicate, breathtaking stuff as this cloudmusic.
3.Mary Poppins soundtrack – Stay Awake
Though the world is fast asleep…though your pillow’s soft and deep...
4. Cliar – The Para Handy set
This is a group I heard live in Edinburgh, Scotland. They sing in Gaelic and they are quite magical. Like elfincreatures singing, but after a draught of ale in a warm pub. Maybe. Or maybe just like really talented Scottish people.
5. Carousel soundtrack – What’s the Use of Wonderin’
What’s the use of wondering if the ending will be sad…
6. ‘Wonders of China’ narration from the Circlevision360 movie at Epcot, Disney World.
I love these things!! They are the experiences that first made me believe that the real world could be magical, and though they make the world of travel look like a comfortable dreamworld, still, still, they are right in some way—maybe it’s what travel should be. “The Li River winds like a silver snake/through scattered dragon’s teeth/Whoever looks on this loses himself in eternity.”
7. Lawrence Welk orchestra – South Rampart Street Parade
Enjoyable as ever, Mister Welk and his strange, cultish little happy family of pleasant singers and dancers clad in bright orange gowns in flammable fabrics.
8. Styx – Fooling Yourself (the Angry Young Man)
Don't you feel kind of embarrassed for the Styxguys when you hear this song? it’s so naïve and innocent and...sweet. Did they intend it to be tough and rock-ish? “How can you be such an angry young man…when your future looks quite bright to me…”
9. Beach Boys – Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)
Oh Jukebox. You are in such a charmed mood today. :-)
10. Gustav Holst – The Planets: Saturn
I love this suite.
11. Bert and Ernie – Upside Down World
I hope you’ve seen “Follow that Bird.” I think it’s really cheap on dvd. Go buy it. Now!
“It all looks so funny that I’ve got to frown…’cause a frown is a smile when you turn upside down…”
12. Gone With the Wind theme
13. snippets of Satie and Stravinsky (Rite of Spring), respectively. Short ones.
14.Willy Wonka (the original one) soundtrack -- Wonkavator (End Title)
I think this is pretty much the most happifying track on my whole jukebox. “Hold on, everybody…here it comes!” CRASH… and they’re soaring over Charlie’s village. Perfect.
15. Jim Croce – Time in a Bottle
“I’ve looked around enough to know/That you’re the one I want to go through time with…”
16. Lauryn Hill – Oh Jerusalem
Good, good songs on the Unplugged album. This album is such a unity, I don’t like listening to the songs when they come up on random. But for today I’ll make an exception.
17. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong – They Can’t Take That Away From Me
I think this song is pretty much permanently etched on my musical memory, in every detail.
18. Allison Krauss – Jewels
19. Audra McDonald – Come Down From the Tree
The songs she chooses for her albums are lovely meldings of lyric and melody. And her honest singing makes them even better.
20. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Submarine Voyage full ride audio, from Disneyland… man, this is good stuff. That all-knowing Captain Nemo voice speaking to you through the speakers as you press your kid-nose up to the cold, foggy round window, fully believing that you’re about to be submerged miles below the surface…“Dive! Dive! All ahead full, steady as she goes…on our voyage through liquid space.”
21. Tangerine Dream – Fairies
22. Cat Stevens – The Wind
23. Ella and Louis – A Foggy Day
The Archos is sort of limited in its selections today, but I don’t mind…the last time I sang this song, I sang it with an Icelandic girl, bumping along a dirt road in Ghana in the dark, with a 7-year-old Ghanaian girl with a German name on my lap. Oh, world. And oh, the little ways God reaches into strange places with bits of Home that he knows we need.
And on that note, we’ll shut down for now. No, wait, there’s a certain song we have to end with…
24. The Jam – A Town Called Malice
Go, Billy!
And Mel, I love you forever.
Always be yourself.
last night playing rummikub with my mom, wittily insulting each other as we have made our rummikub tradition (I took the cheese-approach, e.g. "Cheeseface". She took the leech angle, e.g. "leechlips.") ... and suddenly Billy Joel's "The Longest Time" came on and we inevitably broke into muppet-dancing. You know, arms outstretched, puppet-style, head back and mouth wide open, whole body bouncing. Man, that's a great song.
So these are the moments that sparkle. And they hurt a little in their magicalness, because everything passes...
Well, I think it’s time for another Voyage through Musical Space, courtesy of ye olde Archos Jukebox and its random mp3 selection capabilities.
Today it seems to be in a very relaxed and magical mood… let’s see what it comes up with.
1. Rufus Wainwright – I Don’t Know What it is
I must start with this one today…and as I listen, the reasons reveal themselves like happy surprise fireworks (that sounds like a Japanese product – happy surprise fireworks) .
This song captures perfectly the feeling of the last dream I had this morning…my friend Bonniemunchkin was in a wheelchair, and was leading a parade (at Disney World, Bonnie! :-) )… and a group of evil people were trying to find her and claim her. I had to reach the end of the street and get to her first…flinging myself through buildings and under railings, with the help and support of some guy whose face I never saw…I did get to her first, and all was well. I woke up with a sense of adrenaline, purpose, companionship. Strange.
My favorite line…”is there anyone else who has slightly mysterious…bruises…”
And then there’s the line that I hear dear, wise Melissa in… “Is there anyone else who is through with complaining about what’s done unto us…”
And then it makes me smile to hear Rufus sing “chugging along”…because my dear brother has recently used that phrase to refer to himself, and it makes me laugh because it’s such a stolid, proletarian phrase for philosophical Popo to use…
And of course, I will always, always hear you, my Melanie, in this song. It’s one of our songs…that line "you gotta be there"...that's about you.
2. Claude Debussy – Nuages
Beautiful. I should read more about Debussy. I think I’ve read about him before but probably have blocked it all out of long-term memory in favor of my imaginary vision of someone who could write such delicate, breathtaking stuff as this cloudmusic.
3.Mary Poppins soundtrack – Stay Awake
Though the world is fast asleep…though your pillow’s soft and deep...
4. Cliar – The Para Handy set
This is a group I heard live in Edinburgh, Scotland. They sing in Gaelic and they are quite magical. Like elfincreatures singing, but after a draught of ale in a warm pub. Maybe. Or maybe just like really talented Scottish people.
5. Carousel soundtrack – What’s the Use of Wonderin’
What’s the use of wondering if the ending will be sad…
6. ‘Wonders of China’ narration from the Circlevision360 movie at Epcot, Disney World.
I love these things!! They are the experiences that first made me believe that the real world could be magical, and though they make the world of travel look like a comfortable dreamworld, still, still, they are right in some way—maybe it’s what travel should be. “The Li River winds like a silver snake/through scattered dragon’s teeth/Whoever looks on this loses himself in eternity.”
7. Lawrence Welk orchestra – South Rampart Street Parade
Enjoyable as ever, Mister Welk and his strange, cultish little happy family of pleasant singers and dancers clad in bright orange gowns in flammable fabrics.
8. Styx – Fooling Yourself (the Angry Young Man)
Don't you feel kind of embarrassed for the Styxguys when you hear this song? it’s so naïve and innocent and...sweet. Did they intend it to be tough and rock-ish? “How can you be such an angry young man…when your future looks quite bright to me…”
9. Beach Boys – Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)
Oh Jukebox. You are in such a charmed mood today. :-)
10. Gustav Holst – The Planets: Saturn
I love this suite.
11. Bert and Ernie – Upside Down World
I hope you’ve seen “Follow that Bird.” I think it’s really cheap on dvd. Go buy it. Now!
“It all looks so funny that I’ve got to frown…’cause a frown is a smile when you turn upside down…”
12. Gone With the Wind theme
13. snippets of Satie and Stravinsky (Rite of Spring), respectively. Short ones.
14.Willy Wonka (the original one) soundtrack -- Wonkavator (End Title)
I think this is pretty much the most happifying track on my whole jukebox. “Hold on, everybody…here it comes!” CRASH… and they’re soaring over Charlie’s village. Perfect.
15. Jim Croce – Time in a Bottle
“I’ve looked around enough to know/That you’re the one I want to go through time with…”
16. Lauryn Hill – Oh Jerusalem
Good, good songs on the Unplugged album. This album is such a unity, I don’t like listening to the songs when they come up on random. But for today I’ll make an exception.
17. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong – They Can’t Take That Away From Me
I think this song is pretty much permanently etched on my musical memory, in every detail.
18. Allison Krauss – Jewels
19. Audra McDonald – Come Down From the Tree
The songs she chooses for her albums are lovely meldings of lyric and melody. And her honest singing makes them even better.
20. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Submarine Voyage full ride audio, from Disneyland… man, this is good stuff. That all-knowing Captain Nemo voice speaking to you through the speakers as you press your kid-nose up to the cold, foggy round window, fully believing that you’re about to be submerged miles below the surface…“Dive! Dive! All ahead full, steady as she goes…on our voyage through liquid space.”
21. Tangerine Dream – Fairies
22. Cat Stevens – The Wind
23. Ella and Louis – A Foggy Day
The Archos is sort of limited in its selections today, but I don’t mind…the last time I sang this song, I sang it with an Icelandic girl, bumping along a dirt road in Ghana in the dark, with a 7-year-old Ghanaian girl with a German name on my lap. Oh, world. And oh, the little ways God reaches into strange places with bits of Home that he knows we need.
And on that note, we’ll shut down for now. No, wait, there’s a certain song we have to end with…
24. The Jam – A Town Called Malice
Go, Billy!
And Mel, I love you forever.
Always be yourself.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Every burden shall be lifted...
So I'm not sure how to communicate what God gave me by taking me to Ghana, at least not on a blog. But I can't imagine just skipping over that here, odd and inconsistent outlet for random thoughts though this has been... so I am just going to go ahead and post a copy of the letter I just wrote to thank the people who have blessed me with support and prayer to make the trip happen and flourish... it says what I want to say.
I am listening to the Innocence Mission album "Befriended." Do give it a listen. Especially the song "Look for Me As You Go By." All of it, though... this music speaks peace into a confused and tired mind tonight.
Anyway...Here's the letter. Some of you may get it in the mail, too. :-)
"Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:28b-31)
Red dust coating my sandaled feet; the feel of a child’s hand in mine; bright-heat days and cool-breeze evenings. The musical sound of a laugh from the throat of an otherwise silent little girl. The whispers of fifty people praying at once merging into a wave of God-focused sound. The rustle of sleeves as a deaf woman leads a signed song of worship with graceful hands, her eyes closed, her smile radiant. . . These moments will never leave me. And as I thank God with all my heart for them, I also have you to thank, dear family in Christ.
Thank you for your financial and prayer support of my trip to Ghana with Handi*Vangelism Ministries International (HVMI). God has blessed me immeasurably by taking me to Ghana and letting me see Him in His people there. He multiplied the blessing by ten thousand by sending Melissa McDevitt with me; I wish you all knew her, and I hope you, too, have the blessing of such a steady, patient, inspiring, funny, wise and God-loving friend in your life!
Over the past four weeks, things have not always been easy—are they ever? J But through all the challenges of interacting cross-culturally, through our frequent confusion about what was going on and what our role should be, through every low and high moment, Melissa and I felt the love and presence of God. I know that your prayers were being constantly answered. He carried us through by infusing us with simple, inexpressible peace—and He gave us one another to lean on.
The first ten days of our time in Ghana were spent at Handi*Vangelism Ghana’s annual Deaf Camp Meeting, held this year in the rural Volta Region, at the Volta School for the Deaf. The camp included daily Bible studies, teaching and discussions, as well as local outings, sports and lots of dancing (the deaf campers and staff were amazing dancers! It was so beautiful to watch them express the rhythms and joys God has put within them, as they participated in Ghana’s very musical culture regardless of their “disability.”)!
After camp, we returned to the H*V Ghana ‘Rehabilitation Center’ in Accra. Over the next 11 days there, we were introduced to the various key areas of H*V Ghana’s ministry. We participated in services at Hope Community Chapel, the church H*V Ghana has established in the Center to serve as a beacon of Christ’s love in the community. We played with the children who are living at the Center (all children of parents who live on the street, usually children of people with disabilities) as they wait to be placed in foster families or reunited with estranged family members. We went to the streets and met some of their family members and many of the people who participate in H*V’s weekly street fellowship service. We saw H*V’s new land, where they plan to build a newer, larger ministry Center, with space for on-site vocational training and disability training for churches and individuals from all over West Africa.
At a gathering of H*V Ghana staff in Accra, I shared the verses that appear at the top of this letter. These words of Jesus are my favorite verses because of the hope they give me: hope about who God is—He is love. And hope about my life on this earth—when the busy, title-focused world overwhelms me with its to-do and should-be lists, I cling to the words and example of Jesus: to love is enough. These verses have come alive to me over the past year as God has proven to me His unconditional love for even me. As I began to believe in that love, He began to fill my life with opportunities to learn to love others as He does. This trip to Ghana has been for me a culmination of so many lessons and so many dreams. To love is the greatest thing. It is what Jesus did—and does. And it is how I will spend my life.
In the ministry of the men and women of H*V Ghana, and the staff (composed of both deaf and hearing people) of the Deaf Camp, I saw the same heart that God has given me. I saw people ministering with their whole lives, in the everyday, not just through official jobs and scheduled events. I saw a place that people are drawn to because there they find truth, acceptance and unconditional love.
How can I put in words for you how happy God has made me in and through this trip? I can tell you that I am praying to return to Ghana and the ministry of HVMI, if it is His plan for me. A big part of my heart is there; maybe it always has been there, waiting for me to come find it. There is such a clear need—children who have no one reaching lovingly into their crucial growing-up years; this is work for the Body of Christ. I don’t know what God has in mind for me; but as I’ve seen His plan so far, just a step’s worth at a time, He has proven over and over that He knows and loves me better than I ever could. So my eyes are on Him…not on me.
For now, as I go back to work and studying in the States, I want so much to thank you for your love, your support, your encouragement. God has used you to answer my prayers in ways better and deeper than had ever asked or imagined. I pray that each of you will experience the blessing of loving others more and more this year—and that you will know what a blessing you have been to me.
In Jesus,
Kate.
I am listening to the Innocence Mission album "Befriended." Do give it a listen. Especially the song "Look for Me As You Go By." All of it, though... this music speaks peace into a confused and tired mind tonight.
Anyway...Here's the letter. Some of you may get it in the mail, too. :-)
"Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:28b-31)
Red dust coating my sandaled feet; the feel of a child’s hand in mine; bright-heat days and cool-breeze evenings. The musical sound of a laugh from the throat of an otherwise silent little girl. The whispers of fifty people praying at once merging into a wave of God-focused sound. The rustle of sleeves as a deaf woman leads a signed song of worship with graceful hands, her eyes closed, her smile radiant. . . These moments will never leave me. And as I thank God with all my heart for them, I also have you to thank, dear family in Christ.
Thank you for your financial and prayer support of my trip to Ghana with Handi*Vangelism Ministries International (HVMI). God has blessed me immeasurably by taking me to Ghana and letting me see Him in His people there. He multiplied the blessing by ten thousand by sending Melissa McDevitt with me; I wish you all knew her, and I hope you, too, have the blessing of such a steady, patient, inspiring, funny, wise and God-loving friend in your life!
Over the past four weeks, things have not always been easy—are they ever? J But through all the challenges of interacting cross-culturally, through our frequent confusion about what was going on and what our role should be, through every low and high moment, Melissa and I felt the love and presence of God. I know that your prayers were being constantly answered. He carried us through by infusing us with simple, inexpressible peace—and He gave us one another to lean on.
The first ten days of our time in Ghana were spent at Handi*Vangelism Ghana’s annual Deaf Camp Meeting, held this year in the rural Volta Region, at the Volta School for the Deaf. The camp included daily Bible studies, teaching and discussions, as well as local outings, sports and lots of dancing (the deaf campers and staff were amazing dancers! It was so beautiful to watch them express the rhythms and joys God has put within them, as they participated in Ghana’s very musical culture regardless of their “disability.”)!
After camp, we returned to the H*V Ghana ‘Rehabilitation Center’ in Accra. Over the next 11 days there, we were introduced to the various key areas of H*V Ghana’s ministry. We participated in services at Hope Community Chapel, the church H*V Ghana has established in the Center to serve as a beacon of Christ’s love in the community. We played with the children who are living at the Center (all children of parents who live on the street, usually children of people with disabilities) as they wait to be placed in foster families or reunited with estranged family members. We went to the streets and met some of their family members and many of the people who participate in H*V’s weekly street fellowship service. We saw H*V’s new land, where they plan to build a newer, larger ministry Center, with space for on-site vocational training and disability training for churches and individuals from all over West Africa.
At a gathering of H*V Ghana staff in Accra, I shared the verses that appear at the top of this letter. These words of Jesus are my favorite verses because of the hope they give me: hope about who God is—He is love. And hope about my life on this earth—when the busy, title-focused world overwhelms me with its to-do and should-be lists, I cling to the words and example of Jesus: to love is enough. These verses have come alive to me over the past year as God has proven to me His unconditional love for even me. As I began to believe in that love, He began to fill my life with opportunities to learn to love others as He does. This trip to Ghana has been for me a culmination of so many lessons and so many dreams. To love is the greatest thing. It is what Jesus did—and does. And it is how I will spend my life.
In the ministry of the men and women of H*V Ghana, and the staff (composed of both deaf and hearing people) of the Deaf Camp, I saw the same heart that God has given me. I saw people ministering with their whole lives, in the everyday, not just through official jobs and scheduled events. I saw a place that people are drawn to because there they find truth, acceptance and unconditional love.
How can I put in words for you how happy God has made me in and through this trip? I can tell you that I am praying to return to Ghana and the ministry of HVMI, if it is His plan for me. A big part of my heart is there; maybe it always has been there, waiting for me to come find it. There is such a clear need—children who have no one reaching lovingly into their crucial growing-up years; this is work for the Body of Christ. I don’t know what God has in mind for me; but as I’ve seen His plan so far, just a step’s worth at a time, He has proven over and over that He knows and loves me better than I ever could. So my eyes are on Him…not on me.
For now, as I go back to work and studying in the States, I want so much to thank you for your love, your support, your encouragement. God has used you to answer my prayers in ways better and deeper than had ever asked or imagined. I pray that each of you will experience the blessing of loving others more and more this year—and that you will know what a blessing you have been to me.
In Jesus,
Kate.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
dreaming of Africa...
Just wanted to let folks know I've arrived safe and sound. Back in the States yesterday, back to Texas this afternoon. It may be awhile before I get caught up on email...
Thank you a million times over for your prayers and encouragement. My time in Ghana was deeply wonderful, a colossal gift from God. I can truly say that I love it there-- as Keith Green would say, "you put this love in my heart"... and I am praying to go back.
More to come, either here or in emails.
love to you all.
Thank you a million times over for your prayers and encouragement. My time in Ghana was deeply wonderful, a colossal gift from God. I can truly say that I love it there-- as Keith Green would say, "you put this love in my heart"... and I am praying to go back.
More to come, either here or in emails.
love to you all.
Friday, December 16, 2005
"I am not looking to be understood anymore...I want to understand."
Have you seen the movie "Brother Sun, Sister Moon," about St. Francis? Recommendation of the day. I am eager to read some good stuff about Francis when I get back.
I am leaving TX on Sunday afternoon, headed for PA for one night, then flying out of NYC on Monday night...with a (too-short) stop at London Heathrow, then a landing in Accra, Ghana.
Thank you for your prayers; a priceless Christmas gift they are to me. Pray that I will listen and obey the Holy Spirit in all things at all times, and that I would radiate the goodness and love and truth of God in ways beyond anything I could ask or imagine or generate. With openness to learn and a mind following Jesus' track for it.
Please pray for the kids I'll be meeting, too. And the dear kids I'm leaving behind!
Merry Christmas and happy new year, one and all. God's peace and the the riches of poverty be yours until we meet again.
I am leaving TX on Sunday afternoon, headed for PA for one night, then flying out of NYC on Monday night...with a (too-short) stop at London Heathrow, then a landing in Accra, Ghana.
Thank you for your prayers; a priceless Christmas gift they are to me. Pray that I will listen and obey the Holy Spirit in all things at all times, and that I would radiate the goodness and love and truth of God in ways beyond anything I could ask or imagine or generate. With openness to learn and a mind following Jesus' track for it.
Please pray for the kids I'll be meeting, too. And the dear kids I'm leaving behind!
Merry Christmas and happy new year, one and all. God's peace and the the riches of poverty be yours until we meet again.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Particularly for a girl in the Ukraine who digs music...
So I'm going to turn the venerable old Archos Jukebox mp3-er on and set it to 'random' and see what it sings...I shall just let it run till I have to leave for work.
let's boogie.
1. Town Called Malice (The Jam) -- any good session has to start with this, no?
2. Horn Concerto No. 2 in E flat (Mozart)
3. The Phony King of England (from Robin Hood)... and down with that scurrrrrvy Prince John!
4. I'm Troubled (Flatt & Scruggs). Good banjoing.
5. Rain Must Fall (Queen)... oh, Mel, I could just see you tapping your feet Billy-style to "Don't Stop Me Now" on a Ukrainian bus. Delightful.
6. Someone to Watch Over Me (Chet Baker). Chet Baker, James Dean and my dearest brother are somehow linked in my mind.
7. Free--Take My Life (Jill Paquette)
8. Here with Me (MercyMe)
9. Limes (Little Women ST)...from you, Mel! :-)
10. Mr. Yunioshi (from the Breakfast at Tiffany's ST)... have you seen the movie? Mr. Yunioshi is a staggeringly embarrassing part of it. :-)
11. The arrival of Tinkerbell (Hook ST; wow, we're on a soundtrack roll)... also from you, Mel-o. You know, for many years of my childhood I could not fathom that Captain Hook and Dustin Hoffman could possibly be the same person.
12. It is Well With My Soul (Hymns in the Vineyard)
13. When Summer Ends (ST of Lewis & Clark documentary). I love PBS documentaries that pick you up and make you an invisible participant in another world within the world.
14. We Are What You Say (Sufjan Stevens). This man makes good music. First song I heard was "Holland" while on a roadtrip with Popo; we went to Holland, Michigan, where we were born. I think Sufjan takes the title for best Holland, Michigan song of all time. I'm not sure he has any competition there, but even if he did, he'd take the title.
15. As I Love You (Carmen McRae)
16. Playmate (Willie Nelson)...what a great album 'Rainbow Connection' is. Willie's voice is like a homey shed to live in. The best of forts.
17. When You're in Love (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers ST). Tak...
18. On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)
19. I Love to Boogie (T. Rex) Okay, so I cheated and picked this one on purpose, but it's almost time for me to leave for work and the Archos missed the boat on this one.
Goooo Billy! Spin it!
Okay, I'm off to "work," or as I like to think of it, "chatting with two-year-olds."
keep dancing.
i love you forever; always be yourself.
let's boogie.
1. Town Called Malice (The Jam) -- any good session has to start with this, no?
2. Horn Concerto No. 2 in E flat (Mozart)
3. The Phony King of England (from Robin Hood)... and down with that scurrrrrvy Prince John!
4. I'm Troubled (Flatt & Scruggs). Good banjoing.
5. Rain Must Fall (Queen)... oh, Mel, I could just see you tapping your feet Billy-style to "Don't Stop Me Now" on a Ukrainian bus. Delightful.
6. Someone to Watch Over Me (Chet Baker). Chet Baker, James Dean and my dearest brother are somehow linked in my mind.
7. Free--Take My Life (Jill Paquette)
8. Here with Me (MercyMe)
9. Limes (Little Women ST)...from you, Mel! :-)
10. Mr. Yunioshi (from the Breakfast at Tiffany's ST)... have you seen the movie? Mr. Yunioshi is a staggeringly embarrassing part of it. :-)
11. The arrival of Tinkerbell (Hook ST; wow, we're on a soundtrack roll)... also from you, Mel-o. You know, for many years of my childhood I could not fathom that Captain Hook and Dustin Hoffman could possibly be the same person.
12. It is Well With My Soul (Hymns in the Vineyard)
13. When Summer Ends (ST of Lewis & Clark documentary). I love PBS documentaries that pick you up and make you an invisible participant in another world within the world.
14. We Are What You Say (Sufjan Stevens). This man makes good music. First song I heard was "Holland" while on a roadtrip with Popo; we went to Holland, Michigan, where we were born. I think Sufjan takes the title for best Holland, Michigan song of all time. I'm not sure he has any competition there, but even if he did, he'd take the title.
15. As I Love You (Carmen McRae)
16. Playmate (Willie Nelson)...what a great album 'Rainbow Connection' is. Willie's voice is like a homey shed to live in. The best of forts.
17. When You're in Love (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers ST). Tak...
18. On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)
19. I Love to Boogie (T. Rex) Okay, so I cheated and picked this one on purpose, but it's almost time for me to leave for work and the Archos missed the boat on this one.
Goooo Billy! Spin it!
Okay, I'm off to "work," or as I like to think of it, "chatting with two-year-olds."
keep dancing.
i love you forever; always be yourself.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
where the treetops glisten...
what. on. earth. Snow. Are you kidding? So it's more like a sheet of glazed snow coneage. More ice than snow. But it is officially snow. It is making driving impossible. And it is here. In Texas. I didn't think it was possible for snow to fall anyplace I call home. This is new. Apparently I am not a human heat wave. Merry Christmas!
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Sunday, November 27, 2005
He's always been faithful.
I saw somebody this weekend that I hadn't seen for a long time; just ran into him at Starbucks. I won't bore you with all the details but it rattled me somehow, made me look back at the last five or six years and I suddenly got scared. This guy is in his first year at Harvard med school. He was wearing the Harvard t-shirt and everything--the whole 9 yards. :-) We were old school rivals in a way, back in the day, and we've taken such different paths since then. It was weird to see somebody 'grown up' after several years, yes, but something more than that shook me up inside and I couldn't shake it...
It's not that I'm ashamed of the path God's taken me on since high school. Working for Wycliffe in Canada and the U.S., traveling North America and Europe, Bible school at Capernwray in England, time in the Philippines with God and my grandfather, precious time with my family, cementing my best-friendship with my brother, counseling at Handi*Camp and now going to Ghana for a few weeks to minister to kids with disabilities there, my job here working with kids I love profoundly... there are so many things I wouldn't have missed for the world, and some very, very precious people that I would never have given up meeting. And I'm happy with the distance-ed program I'm doing now to get the infamous degree.
I used to struggle with feeling inferior because I didn't take the "normal" path. But now I think of who I would have been if I had kept my nose in the textbooks and gone straight from academic pressure in high school to academic pressure in college for four incubatorial years (is that a word?)... and I know it wasn't the right place for me. It wasn't God's place for me. And it wouldn't have made me more like Him or showed me what I was supposed to see of Him. Which is all that matters.
Back to the guy. Running into this guy scared me not because I'm really ashamed of the last five or six years, but because I am aware (and ashamed) that I have not been living up to those years recently. It took me some serious reflection to figure this out.
I don't have a 'field' yet. I'm not three years from becoming a surgeon. I'm not sure what I'm here for specificially. But I know WHO I am here for, and I have not been living up to that with all my heart and soul and passion. I was unsettled by this encounter because I suddenly felt unambitious and sedentary. I have been passionless and robotic lately. Meeting up with this guy and looking back on my past five years helped me to realize once again that I am excited about God, and that is who I am. That is who He has made me through the odd variety of things He's taken me through. And I need to express my gratitude for the gifts of the past five years by being unashamed and living out the lessons with joy. With all the energy and excitement and strength that other people pour into their goals.
Just because I don't have a specific earthly goal of my own to be ambitious about doesn't mean that I can't be just as alive, passionate and confident as superstudents...I can be MORE so, because I get to be passionate about the Living God who is worthy of receiving ALL the combined weight, color and noise of ALL the earth's passions.
I'm not sure why I'm writing about this here, really; it's kind of personal and I'm still in prayer and thought about it. But for whatever reason, here it is. I guess I just want to shout that I'm AWAKE again (!) because God is worth shouting about!...God has given me some amazing lessons and experiences and people and places and trials and joys over the last few years, and I want to live up to them, seize them and share them and live out what I DO know, even though there is so very, very much that I DON'T know. It's time to stop focusing on my weakness, real and true though it may be, and begin focusing on His strength again. It's a fine balance, isn't it, remaining aware of your own weakness yet not wallowing helplessly in it? The strength of Jesus Christ is in me, and I am proud of that. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses...I think I ignore the words "boast" and "gladly" there too often.
So running into this very nice future surgeon helped to shake me awake from a stupor I've been in for weeks...God has some amazing and unexpected ways of working. I can be excited about and proud of what He's done in my life and where He's taken me.
This is long. And wordy. Shall I toss it out into the great unknown? Sure, why not.
God is so good. He is so forgiving and so beautiful and He is love and He is mystery and He is justice. I will live in the bright orange joy of that forever.
in celebration of the completely undeserved grace of God to me over the past five years; a quick fly-over...(with way too few pictures of important people and places...I don't have a lot on my computer :-) ):
Sunday, November 20, 2005
the point.
do you fail all the time, spiritually?
I do.
do you disconnect with God and start living on autopilot, like a sleepwalker? I do.
do you sometimes just want life to be like your dreams, bizarre though your dreams may be, just because it's easy and there you just are, without choosing?
I do.
Are these necessary cycles? Am i "doomed" (destined?) to repeat them forever, just so I can come to Jesus freshly again? Maybe. Sort of.
Do we make a big enough deal of the fact that this is the POINT? The point of Christianity? That we fail and fail and fail again and are loved and forgiven and loved and forgiven, ad infinitum...?
Do those of us who are passionate about Jesus get so caught up in being 'revolutionary' and passionate that we forget to talk about this? So caught up that we forget to tell everyone at the rallies and the worship sessions that when they go home, they will fail? Have "passion for Jesus" and "vision" replaced "works" as the words that blind us to grace?
Maybe we should talk about our failing, acknowledge it, and spread the word that it is forgiveable, that it is forgiven every day, that it is taken into account in God’s mind long before He gave Himself up for us, and long before we decided to get ‘revolutionary.’
Revolutionaries weeping in miserable repentance…are there more of them out there?
Repentance is good. Conviction is from the Holy Spirit.
Hopelessness is not. Self-hatred is not. Giving up because you didn't live up to your own vision-- giving up to sink into a sleeplife--is not of Jesus.
How often do we really hear and get that this is the whole point: we will fail and God knew that and He loved enough to pay for it so He could forgive and we could live joyfully...over and over again. See, that makes me want to come back.
That makes me want to wake up: The father running out to meet His son, His daughter, not to scold, but to embrace and say "let's go on. I love you." This is the message we're spreading, this is why we can be joyful, not militant, in our passion for Jesus.
I keep learning this over and over again in a million different ways. Maybe someday it will sink in permanently and become the fiber of my being. We're all "disabled," folks. And no one's hiding it from God.
I do.
do you disconnect with God and start living on autopilot, like a sleepwalker? I do.
do you sometimes just want life to be like your dreams, bizarre though your dreams may be, just because it's easy and there you just are, without choosing?
I do.
Are these necessary cycles? Am i "doomed" (destined?) to repeat them forever, just so I can come to Jesus freshly again? Maybe. Sort of.
Do we make a big enough deal of the fact that this is the POINT? The point of Christianity? That we fail and fail and fail again and are loved and forgiven and loved and forgiven, ad infinitum...?
Do those of us who are passionate about Jesus get so caught up in being 'revolutionary' and passionate that we forget to talk about this? So caught up that we forget to tell everyone at the rallies and the worship sessions that when they go home, they will fail? Have "passion for Jesus" and "vision" replaced "works" as the words that blind us to grace?
Maybe we should talk about our failing, acknowledge it, and spread the word that it is forgiveable, that it is forgiven every day, that it is taken into account in God’s mind long before He gave Himself up for us, and long before we decided to get ‘revolutionary.’
Revolutionaries weeping in miserable repentance…are there more of them out there?
Repentance is good. Conviction is from the Holy Spirit.
Hopelessness is not. Self-hatred is not. Giving up because you didn't live up to your own vision-- giving up to sink into a sleeplife--is not of Jesus.
How often do we really hear and get that this is the whole point: we will fail and God knew that and He loved enough to pay for it so He could forgive and we could live joyfully...over and over again. See, that makes me want to come back.
That makes me want to wake up: The father running out to meet His son, His daughter, not to scold, but to embrace and say "let's go on. I love you." This is the message we're spreading, this is why we can be joyful, not militant, in our passion for Jesus.
I keep learning this over and over again in a million different ways. Maybe someday it will sink in permanently and become the fiber of my being. We're all "disabled," folks. And no one's hiding it from God.
Monday, November 14, 2005
GOD talks about Himself.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Sunday, October 30, 2005
east of eden
I saw the Elia Kazan movie 'East of Eden' this afternoon. It's a film interpretation of Steinbeck's novel, which I haven't read; I imagine if I did, the people and atmosphere I would picture as I read would be very different from the film.
But that doesn't mean this isn't an excellent film. It really is. I'd say that's mostly because of James Dean, though the whole thread of thought about Cain, Abel, acceptable offerings, and the dangers of self-righteousness...that's pretty important as well. . . . . But there's something about James Dean. I found a commentator that I think captured it pretty well. (Does anyone care about this? It doesn't matter. I'm sharing it anyway... Maybe you've seen a James Dean movie and maybe you've been drawn to him. )
So the commentator (Rosey Golds) writes:
"...with traditional Hollywood actors or those from the British theatre tradition (Lawrence Olivier for example), you feel … safe. As if nothing can go wrong. You feel you're watching great art through a great 'performance'. And, oddly enough, this distances you from the performer. You simply don't have to worry about them. You know that even if something disastrous or humiliating happens to their character, they'll still manage to retain their dignity. Not so with James Dean.
Dean is authentically awkward, authentically demoralized. . .To watch the Method actor is to engage in voyeurism. To watch the Hollywood actor is to watch a 'presentation'. The Method actor's spontaneity, his deep introspection and vulnerability, the fact that he has drawn his character from his own life experience results in an audience genuinely flinching at what they see. James Dean was one of the best actors at making people flinch — and one of the best at being humiliated. It is this humiliation that is the key to his charisma."
I think that is a very good attempt at capturing the man and the character(s) he plays in words. He does make you flinch. Like real people do. People shouldn't be easy to 'figure out.'
Maybe if I am easy to figure out, I'm putting on a stock character instead of letting my unique and God-created character out. Like Hollywood acting vs. Method acting.
Sometimes I try too hard to make myself 'understandable.'
Friday, October 28, 2005
Toledo
from the Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach song "Toledo"...
But do people living in Toledo
Know that their name hasn’t traveled very well?
And does anybody in Ohio
Dream of that Spanish citadel?
Monday, October 24, 2005
Go saddle the sea
Go saddle the sea, put a bridle on the wind,
before you choose your place.
(I found this little quote in a book for young folk called 'Go Saddle the Sea,' by Joan Aiken. I've read a couple of her kids-ish books on the side for amusement and general non-televised entertainment lately. Anyway, back to the point. I don't know if this is a real proverb or one invented for the book, but it caught my imagination and my experience and clothed them in imagery. The whole idea of widening perspective in order to be able to see where and whom you truly are. It also makes me want to cross an ocean in an open boat with magical people.)
before you choose your place.
(I found this little quote in a book for young folk called 'Go Saddle the Sea,' by Joan Aiken. I've read a couple of her kids-ish books on the side for amusement and general non-televised entertainment lately. Anyway, back to the point. I don't know if this is a real proverb or one invented for the book, but it caught my imagination and my experience and clothed them in imagery. The whole idea of widening perspective in order to be able to see where and whom you truly are. It also makes me want to cross an ocean in an open boat with magical people.)
Sunday, October 23, 2005
louis and lions
As I sit here with Louis Armstrong sailing through the air, hot coffee in my belly, the glow of a lamp against a gray and windy evening, and the joy of Jesus in the room...
A couple more thought-inducements from Charles Williams's 'The Place of the Lion,' before too much time elapses and I forget the spirit of the book:
Anthony considers going to the little club of dabblers in metaphysical philosophy, to talk to them about combating the descent of the Archetypes upon the world:
“Some of them might help: they couldn’t all want Archetypes coming down on them, not if they were like most of the religious people he had met. They also probably liked their religion taken mild—a pious hope, a devout ejaculation, a general sympathetic sense of a kindly universe—but nothing upsetting or bewildering, no agony, no darkness, no uncreated light.” (P.74)
How often is that me? Wanting the reality, the truth of God, of Jesus, to come in a watered-down, gentle sitcom-with-a-laugh-track form...something smaller than me... when really it is so much greater; really it is something than can swallow me whole. Something where I can finally lose myself in the beauty of my real purpose--worshipping the Greatest.
Anthony to Damaris about the REALITY of the situation, the REALITY of “ideas”:
“What I think is of no matter,” he answered. “Have I pretended it was? It’s the thing that matters: the truth is in the thing. Heart’s dearest, listen—the things you study are true, and the philosophers you read knew it. The universals are abroad in the world, and what are you going to do about it? Besides write about them.”
“Do you seriously mean to tell me,” she said, “that Power is walking about on the earth? Just Power?”
“Yes,” he answered, and though she added before she could stop herself, “Don’t you even know what a philosophic universal is?” he said no more.
(P.106)
Damaris is so sure that "ideas" are containable, are different from Reality. She will find out in a terrifying way that God is not just an 'idea.'
For now we see through a glass darkly...
face to face someday!!!
A couple more thought-inducements from Charles Williams's 'The Place of the Lion,' before too much time elapses and I forget the spirit of the book:
Anthony considers going to the little club of dabblers in metaphysical philosophy, to talk to them about combating the descent of the Archetypes upon the world:
“Some of them might help: they couldn’t all want Archetypes coming down on them, not if they were like most of the religious people he had met. They also probably liked their religion taken mild—a pious hope, a devout ejaculation, a general sympathetic sense of a kindly universe—but nothing upsetting or bewildering, no agony, no darkness, no uncreated light.” (P.74)
How often is that me? Wanting the reality, the truth of God, of Jesus, to come in a watered-down, gentle sitcom-with-a-laugh-track form...something smaller than me... when really it is so much greater; really it is something than can swallow me whole. Something where I can finally lose myself in the beauty of my real purpose--worshipping the Greatest.
Anthony to Damaris about the REALITY of the situation, the REALITY of “ideas”:
“What I think is of no matter,” he answered. “Have I pretended it was? It’s the thing that matters: the truth is in the thing. Heart’s dearest, listen—the things you study are true, and the philosophers you read knew it. The universals are abroad in the world, and what are you going to do about it? Besides write about them.”
“Do you seriously mean to tell me,” she said, “that Power is walking about on the earth? Just Power?”
“Yes,” he answered, and though she added before she could stop herself, “Don’t you even know what a philosophic universal is?” he said no more.
(P.106)
Damaris is so sure that "ideas" are containable, are different from Reality. She will find out in a terrifying way that God is not just an 'idea.'
For now we see through a glass darkly...
face to face someday!!!
Sunday, October 16, 2005
points of communion
places on the earth where God lifts the veil of everydayness from your eyes and you are stunned into silence by the way things really Are.
night after night
alone under a pink mosquito net
but not alone at all.
There You were.
And here You are.
(southern Philippines, October-November of last year.)
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Charles Williams
have you read any Charles Williams? One of the Inklings--you know, "the C.S. Lewis group." I guess it could just as well be called the Charles Williams group. Anyway. His book "War in Heaven" has been an answer to prayer for me. Continues to be. Challenging and terrifying and wakening. Now I'm reading his "The Place of the Lion," which is more excerptable, so I want to share bits.
There is a character called Damaris; she's a scholar working for a Doctorate in Philosophy who plays around with ideas endlessly, writing papers and making diagrams and having discussions...but with no sense of the Reality behind those ideas. Until the Truth begins to break in on the visible world in a whole new way. Amazingly, there is someone who sees into the innocent, ignorant heart of this woman and loves her, even as she treats him very callously, as an 'idea'... These are his (Anthony's) thoughts on her at this time of incredible change in the universe:
“But she wouldn’t, she would go on thoughtfully playing with the dead pictures of ideas, with names and philosophies, Plato and Pythagoras and Anselm and Abelard, Athens and Alexandria and Paris, not knowing that the living existences to which seers and saints had looked were already in movement to avenge themselves on her. “O you sweet blasphemer!” Anthony moaned, “can’t you wake?” Gnostic traditions, medieval rituals, Aeons and Archangels—they were cards she was playing in her own game. But she didn’t know, she didn’t understand. It wasn’t her fault; it was the fault of her time, her culture, her education—the pseudo-knowledge that affected all the learned, the pseudo-skepticism that infected all the unlearned, in an age of pretence, and she was only pretending as everybody else did in this lost and imbecile century. Well, it was up to him to do something.”
from p.73 of The Place of the Lion, by Charles Williams
There is a character called Damaris; she's a scholar working for a Doctorate in Philosophy who plays around with ideas endlessly, writing papers and making diagrams and having discussions...but with no sense of the Reality behind those ideas. Until the Truth begins to break in on the visible world in a whole new way. Amazingly, there is someone who sees into the innocent, ignorant heart of this woman and loves her, even as she treats him very callously, as an 'idea'... These are his (Anthony's) thoughts on her at this time of incredible change in the universe:
“But she wouldn’t, she would go on thoughtfully playing with the dead pictures of ideas, with names and philosophies, Plato and Pythagoras and Anselm and Abelard, Athens and Alexandria and Paris, not knowing that the living existences to which seers and saints had looked were already in movement to avenge themselves on her. “O you sweet blasphemer!” Anthony moaned, “can’t you wake?” Gnostic traditions, medieval rituals, Aeons and Archangels—they were cards she was playing in her own game. But she didn’t know, she didn’t understand. It wasn’t her fault; it was the fault of her time, her culture, her education—the pseudo-knowledge that affected all the learned, the pseudo-skepticism that infected all the unlearned, in an age of pretence, and she was only pretending as everybody else did in this lost and imbecile century. Well, it was up to him to do something.”
from p.73 of The Place of the Lion, by Charles Williams
Sunday, October 09, 2005
eat a brownie, wear a cape.
When the weather changes, something goes funny in me. Does this happen to you? After months and months of feeling heat envelop me when I step out the door, suddenly--very suddenly--there is cold, and it seeps into the house and makes me wear socks and borrow a polar fleece cape of my mother's.
Something about the change...first it's exciting, a little unsettling but exciting...makes the world feel like something completely new. Knocks me off balance. Reminds me of Canada, of England, of Europe, of Pennsylvania. Places that I just pass through. It shocks me that the feeling of these places can penetrate where I live. Surely I should expect it by now, the switch from hot to cold. Yet it shocks me deep every time. Suddenly I can't seem to just get on with things as I normally do; I'm stumped. I wander around aimlessly. My hands are cold. That's weird. Basic questions about my own existence take the place of specific concerns and plans. I look at things that I'm supposed to do, or am planning to do, and I think 'what??' What are these things?
Cold makes me feel like there should be a special event tonight. A concert or a party or a family get together. Must be that Christmas instinct. On the planet Winter, I feel like an alien.
...And all this because it's dropped below 80F.
Don't laugh at me, people from cold places. It's been in the high 90s and the 100s here since forever.
time to eat a brownie.
Something about the change...first it's exciting, a little unsettling but exciting...makes the world feel like something completely new. Knocks me off balance. Reminds me of Canada, of England, of Europe, of Pennsylvania. Places that I just pass through. It shocks me that the feeling of these places can penetrate where I live. Surely I should expect it by now, the switch from hot to cold. Yet it shocks me deep every time. Suddenly I can't seem to just get on with things as I normally do; I'm stumped. I wander around aimlessly. My hands are cold. That's weird. Basic questions about my own existence take the place of specific concerns and plans. I look at things that I'm supposed to do, or am planning to do, and I think 'what??' What are these things?
Cold makes me feel like there should be a special event tonight. A concert or a party or a family get together. Must be that Christmas instinct. On the planet Winter, I feel like an alien.
...And all this because it's dropped below 80F.
Don't laugh at me, people from cold places. It's been in the high 90s and the 100s here since forever.
time to eat a brownie.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
happythought
I never thought that I could fly
Over the moon in ecstasy
But nevertheless, it's there that I'm
Shortly about to be...
I've got a golden ticket,
I've got a golden ticket,
I've got a golden chance to make my way...
and with a golden ticket, it's a golden day.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Your love broke through...
this morning I spotted a book on the shelves of the wee church library in which I was sitting for a 'newcomers' class at the church I'm going to. I'm not totally sure what I'm doing in the class. But I think God sat me right beneath this book.
I had to check it out. I think I've seen it other places before. Isn't it funny how a book's time in your life sometimes is a long time in coming?
It's the book 'No Compromise. The Life Story of Keith Green.'
It's not the best writing in the world, and maybe it's not even the full-color picture of his life. But it's a person's story, told from the heart. So I'm almost done with it, have hardly been able to put it down today. Testimony books and I are like that.
Melanie, dear one, if you find this, know that your reconnecting me with Keith's music has been a blessing to me. How I miss you.
He's been gone since before I was born. Yet in his philosophy, his passion, Keith feels like the friend I wish were here; we cry out about so many of the same things. So this book was a challenge today, a challenge, a comfort, a friend. Maybe I'm not so crazy after all. Maybe I could even be even 'crazier' and it would be okay...
So many of us find grace, really find and hold onto and treasure GRACE--Abba-love--as a next-phase in our walk with and toward Jesus. Isn't that interesting? It's like a next-stage after striving so hard, wanting so much to be better for Jesus, and then realizing how broken you are and how impossible that is.
I like what Keith wrote in 1980 in his journal: "I used to think discipline and self-control was a natural by-product of a supernatural holiness and revival. but now I see that lack of self-discipline is keeping my holiness (which I already have in Jesus) from controlling my life an coming to the surface. This is a brand-new view, and I believe I've isolated the enemy's greatest stronghold in my life at this time... Discipline is not holiness--nor the way to holiness--it just helps you maintain it."
And feelings are not God, are not always right. But what a gift from Him they are. I wonder if we are so eager to keep ourselves from drowning that we disregard them as a precious tool that He uses if we place them in His hands. It's a tricky tightrope. But God sings. God weeps. God inspires. Let's let ourselves FEEL, as well as know about, His holiness and His glory.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
pieces d'aujourdhui
I am about to eat a Limited Edition coffee flavored KitKat. Food with "limited edition" on it always intrigues me and then always ends up at BigLots. Go to Big Lots. You'll see.
It feels as though half of my heart is far far away in the Ukraine.
it is.
Walking to work today I found the word for how I have been feeling. Expectant. It's not a bad feeling. Just restless, uneasy, unsettled. When I realize what the feeling is, I actually realize it's a good feeling. But it's easy to mistake it for unhappiness. I feel like something's going to happen, like things are going to change, like the world is strange and God is stirring up my insides and the way I see. I like being able to hold onto an awareness that the world is strange. That's a blessing. But i also feel like I'm living some strange life that was assigned to me. Who's skin am I in?
Music today... Hem's CD "Rabbit Songs", which is so nice to study by and have as background to live against. Delirious's "Find me in the river".
Today's reading... Genesis, from Jacob and Esau to the end of the book. What a crazy, crazy bunch of people. What a crazy, crazy story. It's not the story we've been told, told in bits in Sunday School. It's so much stranger and bigger and more cohesive. Things aren't packageable in little wee lessons with corresponding flannel figures and easy morals for the day. This stuff is pre-Mosaic law, pre-temple, pre-a lot of revelation of God. Whom were these men, these 'patriarchs,' worshipping? Whom were they hearing, wrestling, questioning?
El. YHWH. God Almighty.
How little they knew OF Him compared to all the revelation we are privileged to have today, through the Word, through Christ Jesus. Yet how much they KNEW Him, the real Him.
How far we have to go. How much more of Him is there yet to be revealed?
Work thoughts: Do you think kids are really supposed to be put in large groups as they are in daycares, etc.? maybe it's just that I'm not made to be a leader of large groups of kids, but I'm not so sure that it's even right or natural for things to be this way. If I ever started any kind of childcare it would be a new breed where every kid or every two kids had just one adult assigned to them, and group-coming-together activities were planned creatively, cooperatively and joyfully.
It feels as though half of my heart is far far away in the Ukraine.
it is.
Walking to work today I found the word for how I have been feeling. Expectant. It's not a bad feeling. Just restless, uneasy, unsettled. When I realize what the feeling is, I actually realize it's a good feeling. But it's easy to mistake it for unhappiness. I feel like something's going to happen, like things are going to change, like the world is strange and God is stirring up my insides and the way I see. I like being able to hold onto an awareness that the world is strange. That's a blessing. But i also feel like I'm living some strange life that was assigned to me. Who's skin am I in?
Music today... Hem's CD "Rabbit Songs", which is so nice to study by and have as background to live against. Delirious's "Find me in the river".
Today's reading... Genesis, from Jacob and Esau to the end of the book. What a crazy, crazy bunch of people. What a crazy, crazy story. It's not the story we've been told, told in bits in Sunday School. It's so much stranger and bigger and more cohesive. Things aren't packageable in little wee lessons with corresponding flannel figures and easy morals for the day. This stuff is pre-Mosaic law, pre-temple, pre-a lot of revelation of God. Whom were these men, these 'patriarchs,' worshipping? Whom were they hearing, wrestling, questioning?
El. YHWH. God Almighty.
How little they knew OF Him compared to all the revelation we are privileged to have today, through the Word, through Christ Jesus. Yet how much they KNEW Him, the real Him.
How far we have to go. How much more of Him is there yet to be revealed?
Work thoughts: Do you think kids are really supposed to be put in large groups as they are in daycares, etc.? maybe it's just that I'm not made to be a leader of large groups of kids, but I'm not so sure that it's even right or natural for things to be this way. If I ever started any kind of childcare it would be a new breed where every kid or every two kids had just one adult assigned to them, and group-coming-together activities were planned creatively, cooperatively and joyfully.
Monday, September 05, 2005
Melanie, I miss you.
that's really all that's on my mind and heart right now
except for my prayers for you and my thoughts of where you must be and my wonderishness at how you are feeling and what you are experiencing.
be well, dearest friend. it is well with our souls.
except for my prayers for you and my thoughts of where you must be and my wonderishness at how you are feeling and what you are experiencing.
be well, dearest friend. it is well with our souls.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
pieces of today
last dream of the morning: a dream of love and acceptance, a person who saw and cared. a hand held.
waking up: I am a new creation, no more in condemnation; here in the grace of God I stand...
studying: on the 'theology of relationships' that flows through Genesis 2-3... "Yahweh, the true Creator God and God of Israel, created humanity personally and desires only good for them. Of course this original fellowship was ruined by sin, but this does not make ours tory of the original relationship irrelevant for later readers. The same Yahweh revealed here is the Yahweh who delivered the Israelite readers from Egypt. His care and concern have not changed though the ideal circumstances have. He still wants to be with His people."
(from From Creation to the Cross by Albert H. Baylis).
thinking: reading Genesis really makes you sensitive to any pettiness in yourself. A wide view, a big picture, an all-of-time sense, the Big Plan... this makes one feel small in a very good way. A way that is enveloped in the sovereignty of Yahweh. What grace He shows, to want to be with His people. His people me, His people you, His people Israel.
music: I can see that my hands are trembling, I can see that my legs are weak...and I know that my heart is hurting, and I know that my soul, it aches...and I know that it seems I'm failing but I will overcome... (how?) OH LORD, I AM STRONG IN YOU, OH LORD I'M WISE IN YOU. OH LORD, I AM FREE IN YOU, so I will overcome.....
...and on the road to beautiful, my seasons always change...
...a love where there doesn't have to be a rule for it...
You're a revolution...I wanna be revolutionary...
How great Your love for us, how great our love for You...
(Charlie Hall, Andy Smith who has the honor of being Mel's brother, David Crowder band)
We ARE on the road to beautiful, to seeing God face to face, directly, as in Eden but even fuller, better, purer. Our road to beautiful is bigger than any one of us. My job today is to love, and to be free in Jesus.
work: six little wee babies exploring tiny pieces of the world, their attention and energy totally focused on a bouncing Tigger or a little piece of plastic... how little we change as we grow.
why is it that many people can so easily love a baby, yet they are so cold and unaccepting of different adults...when we all have the same shortcomings and nearsightedness? Babies seem to love just about everyone. Become as little children...
waking up: I am a new creation, no more in condemnation; here in the grace of God I stand...
studying: on the 'theology of relationships' that flows through Genesis 2-3... "Yahweh, the true Creator God and God of Israel, created humanity personally and desires only good for them. Of course this original fellowship was ruined by sin, but this does not make ours tory of the original relationship irrelevant for later readers. The same Yahweh revealed here is the Yahweh who delivered the Israelite readers from Egypt. His care and concern have not changed though the ideal circumstances have. He still wants to be with His people."
(from From Creation to the Cross by Albert H. Baylis).
thinking: reading Genesis really makes you sensitive to any pettiness in yourself. A wide view, a big picture, an all-of-time sense, the Big Plan... this makes one feel small in a very good way. A way that is enveloped in the sovereignty of Yahweh. What grace He shows, to want to be with His people. His people me, His people you, His people Israel.
music: I can see that my hands are trembling, I can see that my legs are weak...and I know that my heart is hurting, and I know that my soul, it aches...and I know that it seems I'm failing but I will overcome... (how?) OH LORD, I AM STRONG IN YOU, OH LORD I'M WISE IN YOU. OH LORD, I AM FREE IN YOU, so I will overcome.....
...and on the road to beautiful, my seasons always change...
...a love where there doesn't have to be a rule for it...
You're a revolution...I wanna be revolutionary...
How great Your love for us, how great our love for You...
(Charlie Hall, Andy Smith who has the honor of being Mel's brother, David Crowder band)
We ARE on the road to beautiful, to seeing God face to face, directly, as in Eden but even fuller, better, purer. Our road to beautiful is bigger than any one of us. My job today is to love, and to be free in Jesus.
work: six little wee babies exploring tiny pieces of the world, their attention and energy totally focused on a bouncing Tigger or a little piece of plastic... how little we change as we grow.
why is it that many people can so easily love a baby, yet they are so cold and unaccepting of different adults...when we all have the same shortcomings and nearsightedness? Babies seem to love just about everyone. Become as little children...
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Oi! Dancin' boy!
What do you call a happy muffin? :-)Oh, Mel, I miss you.
Life is moving a little too fast for me all of a sudden, and I am feeling a little more alone in it than I really am. Maybe it just takes a little time to adjust when you change places and when you are just getting used to having this incredibly joyful treasure of a sisterperson in your life again, and the in one swift motion, she's gone. Again. Makes me a little scared to get so close to a person, because it's so confuzzling to lose them. Knocks the wind out of me. It's so much firmer, stabler...and colder... to just be separate from everyone, to think that I'm on my own, that no one else but Jesus really really really truly cares or understands. And it's true in a way--He understands as no one else can and He's always with me in a way no one else can be. There's nothing like the relationship I've been given with Him.
Yet guess what, Kate? Human relationships can be so blessed by Him, so used by Him, so wonderful--more so than I ever really believed till, as the song says, 'till there was you.' It's honestly a little bit of a scary revelation because it means the possibility in the world of so much more pain than was possible when I was so much more cut off, so much 'safer' by being on my own island. But it's a beautiful revelation at the same time. More beautiful than scary. Because it's a window into the love of God, that He would give me a friend like you and a friendship like this. To realize that depth and wonder and seeking God wholeheartedly can be found not only in solitude, but in glorious 'running partnership.' We knew this before. But this past week has given me the gift of feeling it again, and to a new depth. BE STRONG AND COURAGEOUS, says the Lord.
I love to booooogie on a Saturday night.
And on we go......
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