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...
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
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......
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
thank you for your prayers
having a pretty hard time emotionally; camp training starts tomorrow. no time to post, but thank you for your prayers...
love
kate
love
kate
Friday, May 20, 2005
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Sent two by two -- you and Jesus
"He wants Peter to feed his sheep and care for them,
not as "professionals" who know their clients' problems and take care of them,
but as vulnerable brothers and sisters who know and are known,
who care and are cared for,
who forgive and are being forgiven,
who love and are being loved.
Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead...[but] laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life.
We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for. The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God."
Something to chew on. I'm putting it up as a way to help myself chew on it longer and get this thought deeper into me-- and myself deeper into this thought.
It's from Henri Nouwen's 'In the Name of Jesus.' How broken we all are, especially me, and how loved! How small are the differences between our levels of brokenness and wisdom, when compared with the huge gulf between us and the holy, all-wise God. We're all in the same boat, all 'handicapped'... and yet Jesus makes something electrifyingly beautiful out of us when He brings us together in His love!
not as "professionals" who know their clients' problems and take care of them,
but as vulnerable brothers and sisters who know and are known,
who care and are cared for,
who forgive and are being forgiven,
who love and are being loved.
Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead...[but] laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life.
We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for. The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God."
Something to chew on. I'm putting it up as a way to help myself chew on it longer and get this thought deeper into me-- and myself deeper into this thought.
It's from Henri Nouwen's 'In the Name of Jesus.' How broken we all are, especially me, and how loved! How small are the differences between our levels of brokenness and wisdom, when compared with the huge gulf between us and the holy, all-wise God. We're all in the same boat, all 'handicapped'... and yet Jesus makes something electrifyingly beautiful out of us when He brings us together in His love!
Monday, April 25, 2005
Monday, April 18, 2005
Cathedrals
(a song by Jump, Little Children)
In the shadows of tall buildings
Of fallen angels on the ceilings
Oily feathers in bronze and concrete
Faded colors, pieces left incomplete
The line moves slowly past the electric fence
Across the borders between continents
In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is
In the shadows of tall buildings
The architecture is slowly peeling
Marble statues and glass dividers
Someone is watching all of the outsiders
The line moves slowly through the numbered gate
Past the mosaic of the head of state
In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is
In the shadows of tall buildings
Of open arches endlessly kneeling
Sonic landscapes echoing vistas
Someone is listening from a safe distance
The line moves slowly into a fading light
A final moment in the dead of the night
In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is...
In the shadows of tall buildings
Of fallen angels on the ceilings
Oily feathers in bronze and concrete
Faded colors, pieces left incomplete
The line moves slowly past the electric fence
Across the borders between continents
In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is
In the shadows of tall buildings
The architecture is slowly peeling
Marble statues and glass dividers
Someone is watching all of the outsiders
The line moves slowly through the numbered gate
Past the mosaic of the head of state
In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is
In the shadows of tall buildings
Of open arches endlessly kneeling
Sonic landscapes echoing vistas
Someone is listening from a safe distance
The line moves slowly into a fading light
A final moment in the dead of the night
In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is...
Saturday, April 02, 2005
"He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind..."
I am reading the book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Have you read it?
Entering its world intensifies a longing I'd forgotten I had, one I didn't know how to voice. It's a longing for life to be this way, for people to see this way and speak this way -- slow and wondering. The world my heart sees and rejoices to be alive in is the world she is writing about. It stands at odds with the world we've built, of busyness and titles and papers and 'success'.
It's a longing for other people to see the existing marvelous, to help me live there by joining in. I still hope and plan to live seeing this world of bizarre and uncountable Created wonders as the real one. Partly because I just don't have it in me to live in the busyworld.
While watching Tinker creek on a sunny evening when the sunlight would suddenly catch the scales of a fish and flash, while petals float along the creek surface...she writes,
" So I blurred my eyes and gazed towards the brim of my hat and saw a new world. I saw the pale white circles roll up, roll up, like the world's turning, mute and perfect, and I saw the linear flashes, gleaming silver, like stars being born at random down a rolling scroll of time. Something broke and something opened. I filled up like a new wineskin. I breathed an air like light; I saw a light like water
... When I see this way I see truly.
I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return from the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth-- Ailinon, allelulia! "
What a world of unwordable wonders we live in, and how often I stumble through it without seeing.
Entering its world intensifies a longing I'd forgotten I had, one I didn't know how to voice. It's a longing for life to be this way, for people to see this way and speak this way -- slow and wondering. The world my heart sees and rejoices to be alive in is the world she is writing about. It stands at odds with the world we've built, of busyness and titles and papers and 'success'.
It's a longing for other people to see the existing marvelous, to help me live there by joining in. I still hope and plan to live seeing this world of bizarre and uncountable Created wonders as the real one. Partly because I just don't have it in me to live in the busyworld.
While watching Tinker creek on a sunny evening when the sunlight would suddenly catch the scales of a fish and flash, while petals float along the creek surface...she writes,
" So I blurred my eyes and gazed towards the brim of my hat and saw a new world. I saw the pale white circles roll up, roll up, like the world's turning, mute and perfect, and I saw the linear flashes, gleaming silver, like stars being born at random down a rolling scroll of time. Something broke and something opened. I filled up like a new wineskin. I breathed an air like light; I saw a light like water
... When I see this way I see truly.
I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return from the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth-- Ailinon, allelulia! "
What a world of unwordable wonders we live in, and how often I stumble through it without seeing.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
"Do you love me?"
"Knowing God's heart means consistently, radically, and very concretely to announce and reveal that God is love and only love, and that every time fear, isolation, or despair begin to invade the human soul this is not something that comes from God. This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without any conditions or limits."
-Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus
-Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus
Thursday, March 03, 2005
To be fully known and yet STILL fully loved...
From Don Miller's In Search of God Knows What:
"It must have been wonderful to spend time with Christ, with Somebody who liked you, loved you, believed in you, and sought a closeness foreign to skin-bound man. A person would feel significant in His presence. After all, those who knew Christ personally went on to accomplish amazing feats, proving unwavering devlotion. It must have been thrilling to look into the eyes of God and have Him look back and communicate that human beings, down to the individual, are of immense worth and beauty and worthy of intimacy with each other and the Godhead. Such an understanding fueled a lifetime of joy and emotional health among the disciples that neither crowds of people jeering insults, nor prison, nor torture, nor exclusion could undo. They were faithful to the end, even to their own deaths.
People don't go out and get tortured and arrested for somebody who doesn't love them... I know in my heart that they were not living the lives they lived or dying the deaths they died because they were doing something "right." Sure it was right, but these guys must have been loved by Christ, and their motivation came primarily from this idea. There is no other explanation for their devotion...It is true that it is a powerful occurrence to have somebody look you in the eye and say you are worth something. ...[Jesus] went around looking people in the eye to tell them they were beautiful, that He stood as a rock for them, a Being who, for the rest of their lives, they could look back to and hear in their minds, and envision in their memories, God saying to them the world had been lying, and you are indeed beautiful."
......................
I want to spend time imagining this, letting it become real, God Himself, Jesus Christ, looking back at me, even me, directly, and loving me, even while He knows everything in me; cutting to the core and saying "I LOVE YOU." When I try to follow that thought, even for just a second, I get this twinkle, this briefly overwhelming rush of sensation that says "now THAT is rest. now THAT is motivation." It says "this is HOME."
"It must have been wonderful to spend time with Christ, with Somebody who liked you, loved you, believed in you, and sought a closeness foreign to skin-bound man. A person would feel significant in His presence. After all, those who knew Christ personally went on to accomplish amazing feats, proving unwavering devlotion. It must have been thrilling to look into the eyes of God and have Him look back and communicate that human beings, down to the individual, are of immense worth and beauty and worthy of intimacy with each other and the Godhead. Such an understanding fueled a lifetime of joy and emotional health among the disciples that neither crowds of people jeering insults, nor prison, nor torture, nor exclusion could undo. They were faithful to the end, even to their own deaths.
People don't go out and get tortured and arrested for somebody who doesn't love them... I know in my heart that they were not living the lives they lived or dying the deaths they died because they were doing something "right." Sure it was right, but these guys must have been loved by Christ, and their motivation came primarily from this idea. There is no other explanation for their devotion...It is true that it is a powerful occurrence to have somebody look you in the eye and say you are worth something. ...[Jesus] went around looking people in the eye to tell them they were beautiful, that He stood as a rock for them, a Being who, for the rest of their lives, they could look back to and hear in their minds, and envision in their memories, God saying to them the world had been lying, and you are indeed beautiful."
......................
I want to spend time imagining this, letting it become real, God Himself, Jesus Christ, looking back at me, even me, directly, and loving me, even while He knows everything in me; cutting to the core and saying "I LOVE YOU." When I try to follow that thought, even for just a second, I get this twinkle, this briefly overwhelming rush of sensation that says "now THAT is rest. now THAT is motivation." It says "this is HOME."
Monday, February 21, 2005
No, Kate, you are not humble. It's even deeper. Keep going.
while personwatching at an outdoor theater in Illinois last summer, I saw an example of what love is not, and then turned and saw that in myself.
I want to think about humility tonight so I'm reingesting what God showed me that afternoon.
Wrote:
Love is not petting someone for agreeing with your opinions, boosting your ego, making you feel right or powerful or better than any other human being.
Don't seek this self-glorification in love--you won't find it in the real thing. You don't deserve it in anything. And no one deserves to be your flunky.
Love seeks to glorify God together.
Love learns, is open to growth
is humble.
Love for God's created ones is not buying and settling up for yourself first, living in comfort and building up your identity, prettying yourself and priding yourself on your opinions, tastes.
Humility is deep, deep, deeper still...
Look, see the danger of priding yourself on understanding, or on having opinions, of trying to "make something of yourself"
only God can make something of me.
subtle traps; pride is so see-through and empty.
and all beauty is found in holiness
its Source.
everywhere you see beauty, feel the tingle of tender color in a breeze, a breath, a strain
is a clue, a hint, a taste, just one hue
of the explosion, the color cloud
of the Glorious Son of God.
I want to think about humility tonight so I'm reingesting what God showed me that afternoon.
Wrote:
Love is not petting someone for agreeing with your opinions, boosting your ego, making you feel right or powerful or better than any other human being.
Don't seek this self-glorification in love--you won't find it in the real thing. You don't deserve it in anything. And no one deserves to be your flunky.
Love seeks to glorify God together.
Love learns, is open to growth
is humble.
Love for God's created ones is not buying and settling up for yourself first, living in comfort and building up your identity, prettying yourself and priding yourself on your opinions, tastes.
Humility is deep, deep, deeper still...
Look, see the danger of priding yourself on understanding, or on having opinions, of trying to "make something of yourself"
only God can make something of me.
subtle traps; pride is so see-through and empty.
and all beauty is found in holiness
its Source.
everywhere you see beauty, feel the tingle of tender color in a breeze, a breath, a strain
is a clue, a hint, a taste, just one hue
of the explosion, the color cloud
of the Glorious Son of God.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
generations
Was looking at some old pictures today, of my grandparents when they were newly married and in missionary training in Mexico, of my dad when he was a college kid coming out of the jungles of Bolivia to go to college in the frozen north of the U.S.. I looked at my mom's wedding book, at the program from their wedding, the songs picked, the Scriptures read. And their faces, their choices, their ways of thinking and being and treating one another... all of this got me thinking about how tremendously true it is that our choices have untraceable ripples.
The way my grandparents chose to live, chose to be within their family, their personalities and ways of looking at the world... these things have permeated my life through my father. They're a part of who I am too, or they've shaped me to resist them. They've shaped so many things. Who I want to be and who I don't want to be, what I think is important and what I have decided is not important. And back and back you could go, and see why my grandparents turned out as they did, and theirs before them, and back and back...
What a tremendous plan God has. Absolutely tremendous and so incredibly, incredibly intricate. The details He has to orchestrate to shape personalities, the events that individuals experience as so so big in their lives, and then they move on, and either remember or forget, and die. But their reactions, the results, the Selves they could never have consciously put together on their own.... these have infinite effects.
The Sara Groves song "Generations" actually spontaneously started playing in another room of the house--by someone else's choice, not mine, right after I'd been looking through these pictures and thinking about this. "Remind me of this with every decision...generations will reap what I sow... I could pass on a curse or a blessing to those I will never know..."
To me right now this is a reminder that even when I may feel there is no one here for me to lead by example, no one for me to be an example to or to help or consistently serve, still I am affecting someone. Of course I am responsible to God, but I AM having an impact on people, too--the 'audience' that will be affected somehow so many years from now, by who I choose to be. I choose to be a Christ-follower in these moments, to let God shape me in these moments that will add up to years, because it is Right. But it's good to know too that it goes even beyond Him and me.
I want to pass on a blessing somehow by being God's, by being joyful, by being a lover of Jesus, by loving others deeply. That's going to be used somehow. It's a thread that God can pick up and weave into His delicate, intricate, tremendous and beautiful Plan. This whole thought is so crazy-amazing.
The way my grandparents chose to live, chose to be within their family, their personalities and ways of looking at the world... these things have permeated my life through my father. They're a part of who I am too, or they've shaped me to resist them. They've shaped so many things. Who I want to be and who I don't want to be, what I think is important and what I have decided is not important. And back and back you could go, and see why my grandparents turned out as they did, and theirs before them, and back and back...
What a tremendous plan God has. Absolutely tremendous and so incredibly, incredibly intricate. The details He has to orchestrate to shape personalities, the events that individuals experience as so so big in their lives, and then they move on, and either remember or forget, and die. But their reactions, the results, the Selves they could never have consciously put together on their own.... these have infinite effects.
The Sara Groves song "Generations" actually spontaneously started playing in another room of the house--by someone else's choice, not mine, right after I'd been looking through these pictures and thinking about this. "Remind me of this with every decision...generations will reap what I sow... I could pass on a curse or a blessing to those I will never know..."
To me right now this is a reminder that even when I may feel there is no one here for me to lead by example, no one for me to be an example to or to help or consistently serve, still I am affecting someone. Of course I am responsible to God, but I AM having an impact on people, too--the 'audience' that will be affected somehow so many years from now, by who I choose to be. I choose to be a Christ-follower in these moments, to let God shape me in these moments that will add up to years, because it is Right. But it's good to know too that it goes even beyond Him and me.
I want to pass on a blessing somehow by being God's, by being joyful, by being a lover of Jesus, by loving others deeply. That's going to be used somehow. It's a thread that God can pick up and weave into His delicate, intricate, tremendous and beautiful Plan. This whole thought is so crazy-amazing.
Friday, February 11, 2005
on hiding in words
From the poem "House of Words," by Herbert Morris
"I, finder of refuge, maker of refuge,
in words, whose life, indeed, was spun of words,
spun and respun, spun once more, then respun,
a life which has itself become a refuge
(words, in a world bordered by blood, on one side,
by the tumult of passion on the other;
the thinness, yes, the thinness of one's life..."
I hide in words and abstractions. And I put barriers between myself and the living God by doing this. When I feel far from Him again, feel unforgiveable and give up on myself, I can look back and see that I've slipped into making Him an abstraction again, making Him a concept in a labelled jar on a shelf, or making Him a trunk full of baggage that is not really Him. I get tired and fireless when I follow a 'lifestyle' or a 'conceptual framework' or a discipline rather than following Jesus. Jesus is not an identity for me or a word for me to throw around like a common label. He is a Person. And He goes deeper than words. Really. Deeper than these words. Deeper than any catchy turn of phrase or dramatic sentence. He's REAL. What a relief to know there is actual purity in the universe. Pure intent, pure motives, pure honesty, pure communication, TOTAL purity. I think that's part of the definition of holiness.
"I, finder of refuge, maker of refuge,
in words, whose life, indeed, was spun of words,
spun and respun, spun once more, then respun,
a life which has itself become a refuge
(words, in a world bordered by blood, on one side,
by the tumult of passion on the other;
the thinness, yes, the thinness of one's life..."
I hide in words and abstractions. And I put barriers between myself and the living God by doing this. When I feel far from Him again, feel unforgiveable and give up on myself, I can look back and see that I've slipped into making Him an abstraction again, making Him a concept in a labelled jar on a shelf, or making Him a trunk full of baggage that is not really Him. I get tired and fireless when I follow a 'lifestyle' or a 'conceptual framework' or a discipline rather than following Jesus. Jesus is not an identity for me or a word for me to throw around like a common label. He is a Person. And He goes deeper than words. Really. Deeper than these words. Deeper than any catchy turn of phrase or dramatic sentence. He's REAL. What a relief to know there is actual purity in the universe. Pure intent, pure motives, pure honesty, pure communication, TOTAL purity. I think that's part of the definition of holiness.
reservations
blogs are a little scary to me. I'm wary of wallowing, of dramatizing, of getting self-centered or trying to sound a certain way for whoever. Because these are things I know are in me. these are reasons I stopped doing just about anything artistic for public consumption.
i just set this up so i could comment on Mel's blog. But I find myself weirdly drawn to it, I guess just the desire to create something. This isn't going to be a consistent thing. I don't have the time, energy or desire for an online obssession. I don't like what it would do to me. I don't really want to be aware of an audience while I write, other than the Audience of God.
But the urge I feel to share thoughts of God in order to make myself think, and maybe, who knows, to get some True Thoughts from other people... this is pretty strong today, and so for today at least this is an active Thing. Sporadic, it will be. Mostly things I have already written, it will be. Stopped if I become self-focused, it will be. Mmmm. The pull of sharing is strong in you, young blog.
i just set this up so i could comment on Mel's blog. But I find myself weirdly drawn to it, I guess just the desire to create something. This isn't going to be a consistent thing. I don't have the time, energy or desire for an online obssession. I don't like what it would do to me. I don't really want to be aware of an audience while I write, other than the Audience of God.
But the urge I feel to share thoughts of God in order to make myself think, and maybe, who knows, to get some True Thoughts from other people... this is pretty strong today, and so for today at least this is an active Thing. Sporadic, it will be. Mostly things I have already written, it will be. Stopped if I become self-focused, it will be. Mmmm. The pull of sharing is strong in you, young blog.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
for Mel
Hey Mel, this is for you. I am now official so I can become a PostingWhirlwind on your blog. I love you and I thank God for you. Thank you for your sistership.
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