its me and the moon, she says.

i started thinking about this year, its almost over. im not sure how i feel about it. a lot of this year was difficult. but, it was pretty joyous too.

this year i:
x told a boy i was in love with him. (silliness.)
x lived in montana, brazil, and maryland.
x forgot how to smile, and remembered.
x experienced two of the best weeks of my life.
x learned a lot about trust.
x learned it was okay to cry in front of people. (thank you)
x lived. loved. grew.
x embarked on a new adventure (well, i will at 8am Saturday morning.)

alice in wonderland-esque.

i remember watching the sunrise on a mountain on my birthday, and it feels like i hardly blinked from that moment. I'm getting older, I feel younger. Tonight I feel like i'm in highschool. It's hard to describe what that means to me. I envy people who went to regular highschool. who did all those things you watch in tv shows and movies. homeschoolers. we've managed to not share a 12-year experience with 95% of our generation. and yet, i didn't miss any of it.

i had a lot to say, it being 3:25am and all, I always do. but, it all seems like the kind of things you speak in whispers, not click out in tiny pixels. I want to lay outside on my back patio and look at the stars and breathe out tiny halos of frost. I want to remember how much this moment and eternity matter.

i'm just the kind of person that keeps a lot inside. i have to, because i'm constantly thinking... i don't think that'll change.

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus

There is something about a hymn that will tear through all the layers I've pulled over my heart and pierce me. Today I went to church with Claire and it put together a lot of things I've been thinking about lately. Humanism in Christianity, how religion isn't a dirty word despite its bad reputation-- Jesus followed traditions, Jesus didn't hate organized religion- he hated hypocrisy. He didn't abolish the synagogue-- He completed the things God set up. God set up traditions, rememberances, etc. I miss the awe and reverence of churches that don't feel the need to be relevant. Jesus Christ is always relevant. And He is the message.

I think it's really easy to get caught up in "loving" people and forget that the most loving thing you can do for anyone is introduce them to God by your actions AND words. We forget that the power is in Christ, not ourselves. "For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God." I've been thinking about how the things I'm cynical about need to sharpen me to hope, pray, and change. Knowing God. That's the call. To love, to worship, to become Theocentric- not self-absorbed. It's hard, it's bloody, it calls for the death of myself... and that's a scary thing no matter how much my Spirit yearns for it.

Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I'm blind. Sometimes I choose look away, more content with mud pies than a holiday at sea. But God, He's relentless. He refuses neutrality, He will not allow anything but Himself to satisfy me. I long for the consolation of Jesus. I had completely forgotten about Advent. About the longing for God, for the Redeemer and Saviour to come. It's so beautiful. How do I ever forget the cost of Christ taking human form, that God should be humbled on my behalf for love of me? It's amazing. And when I stop looking at myself in introspection I am overwhelmed by His greatness. That wonder and awe and worship and light return. I am so thankful for His presence.

Come Thou long-expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.

Israel's strength and consolation,
Hope of all the saints Thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

Come Thou long-awaited Emmanuel.

Born Thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.

By Thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By Thine all sufficient merit,
Raise us to Thy glorious throne.

Come Thou long-awaited Emmanuel.

there's a monster in me

A friend and I were talking about Frankenstein, then I read this article in Geez! Magazine and it all echoed the same thoughts and I thought some of you would enjoy them:

"I say it with trepidation, but in some ways these homeless men, these addicted and infirm, these societal cast-offs, were strangely akin to the creatures of my Saturday night passion [classic monster movies ] Alien in appearance, ominously "other" their humanity blurred by sundry ravages of experience-- and yet I was drawn to these men in ways I couldn't fuly understand. Beneath their disfigurements and diminishments, there stirred a quality of humanness that touched me deeply."

"... What moved me was more than pity or lofty idealism. In the deepest parts of my heart I longed to know, to touch, and affirm what is sacredly, inviolably human in all of us -- especially when that humanness is assulted, vilified, or violated. .... Unconciously I was recieving from them [the monster movies] mysterious lessions in accepting the human spirit in all its harsh and alien forms. ... We label, fear, and discriminate against those whom we percieve as different, abnormal, or deformed. Just as the monsters in old movies do, they manifest some supposed defect of our humanness or some threatening "otherness" that we don't want to face."

"In a culture that prizes physical beauty and perfection, we don't want contact with the disabled and infirmed. ... [During the mob going after the monsterscene] I usually cheered for Frankenstein's monster to escape. I habored some instincitve sympathy for the misunderstood creature who has been needlessly tormented. .... What about the real monsters in our midst? Do they really exist? Are they the malformed, the abnormal, the different... the ugly. Or are they simply our own shadow side, the acute and painful awareness of our own deforminites, our own flaws and diminishments? In this interplay of life and art, I suppose we are not so muh afraid of imagined monsters are we are of the parts of ourselves that we do not want to face. Like Dr. Frankestien, perhaps it is we who create the monsters through our fears, our prejudices, and our refusal to open up to the sublime mystery of our humanness in all its forms."

fall and freedom

Every once in awhile I become so aware of life's beauty I am overwhelmed by emotions. joy. ectasy. affection. delight. awe.

[rocks state park in prose]
Oh for a thousand days like this
the pale yellow leaves floating, sinking through the air as if it were water
like a school of jellyfish swimming through the sky
the eruption of butterflies in my stomach as my legs dangle over the side of the cliff,
knowing there is nothing between my perch and a free fall into gems of ruby, golds, and bronze
sitting on the edge of eternity, bravely mocking death by grinning at it
the wind gently brushing the tangles out of the trees, in ribbons of yellow and red
the air chilled to make each breath almost painful, like a splash of cold water
--awakening.
the ache that beauty carves inside of me... a taste of "realities beyond"
and each moment captured only by snapping the eyes shut for one moment of memorization,
no cameras to crystalize and encapsulate, only this moment to inhale this memory
a smudge of birds, like tiny black arrowheads darting across a swaying wheat field
and the sunbeams, warm but distant, greet my face from miles away with winking eyes.
the trees are friends, tall and bent, stoic witnesses of generations of earth's children
but it's the silent companionship that plunges deeper than any words could dig
and if I died this minute it would be with a smile of contentment, complete resolution...
and on the other side of those sunrays kiss is the face of the Son, ever nearer.
oh, for a thousand days like this.

... freedom, it's the scariest thing, the deep beckoning void that dares me jump. It's much easier to settle for less than the love of God that chases away every fear. I've been thinking of it often lately. The threat of being absolutely free and how we shy away from it, are scared to be radical. But every fiber of my being yearns for it. afraid or not... I can not evade His call. My heart can settle for nothing wholer than union with the Holy. If I really really comprehended God's love I would be absolutely free. It is to cross that place of no return. But at the same time, there is nothing I want more. It's like those butterflies-- that terrifying leap of abandonment, that must be repeated every time we build our own places of safety, every time our heart begins to think it can save itself. Faith must risk our reputation in believing. That is the demand of God-- absolute trust, absolute dependency-- eyes closed, bold leaps into the air because it is with the wings of faith we fly.

"The great spiritual task facing me is to so fully trust that I belong to God that I can be free in the world- free to speak even when my words are not recieved, free to act even when my actions are criticized, ridiculed, or considered useless; free also to recieve love from people and to be grateful for all the signs of God's presence in the wrold. I am convinced that I will truly be able to love the world when I fully believe that I am loved far beyound its boundraries." - Henri Nouwen. (genius.)

agitated heart

I feel really spacey lately, its frusterating. I feel distracted but I'm not sure from what or by what exactly... trying to figure that out. Education seriously bothers me lately. My one teacher will never say someone is wrong, and we can have completely contradictory views. [Thank you, postmodernism.] It's like all this noise filling my head and I want to throw it up. I don't know, its hard to explain, I guess just learning a lot of things that aren't neccessarily truth, just philosophies and screwed up worldviews that weary me.

I don't know what I'm learning. I feel like I'm going to have to sell myself to something to live out my passion. I don't mind work, I enjoy it, I like it... but what's the point of a pointless job for pointless success or possessions, what life is in that? Farmers. I think they have nice lives, free of consumerism, living off the land, working to live and eat. Honestly, I wish so much I could do something tiny like make pottery or jewelry, grow my own food, and live simply so I can love. serve. write. pray. play. travel. worship. I don't want this huge complex world, but how do you divorce yourself from it?

Sometimes I think about all the people living as dead people and I just can't stand my life in light of that. It all means so much more than I can comprehend. And there is more, listening to the Spirit of God, a life of serving and loving. and not just love that is kind, but love that dares to be selfless and true. Love is representing Jesus in a way that makes Him known (not just seen.) I'm afraid I'll lose my heart for the world admist living in it. I'm afraid slowly the apathy and complacency will creep in and I'll look back on my life and realize I didn't "fulfill God's will for me in my generation." (thats a scripture about what King David did.)

America is a baby nation, 231 years old, a smart-alec with a good heart and an entitlement complex. "Instant success without commitment." I want to study the 60s-present, maybe then I'll understand how to hold onto America, how to throw her a life preserver. *ah my idealism, it'll be the death of me.* I like the lyrics by Brave St. Saturn, "the bravest thing of all is always hope." My heart is agitated, in motion... agitated because I love these silly kids, children of the great America (of whatever age.) Emos with faces and hearts hidden beneath bangs, trying to sing out their emotions, knit up their hearts... gangsters with psuedo-families aching not to be orphans... my hope in Portland is to work with the Youth for a Mission base that reaches out to the runaway teens and artists. I've discovered that I really love teenagers and I want to mentor and just live life with them... I want to stumble and scrap my knees, and bleed, and in the end intercede in the lives of people. I love America (and the world) .... but I love our messy, ugly, beautiful, idealistic, realistic, selfish, needy country... all of us strange creatures. And I need to live like it all matters, I think a lot of times I want to live like it doesn't. But it's not true. For the past couple months I've been wrestling through a thousand thoughts on politics and life and the future and ... there's just this thing in my heart that won't go away.

I don't know what it all means, I don't know what all the little words I feel like are brands on my heart amount too... but I just want to live in the presence of Jesus, and be defined by that. I fail so often. I am the worst at loving. But I want to spend my life figuring that out. I don't want to waste this. Mmmmm. So... that's my life right now, I'm going to class, spending way to much time thinking, and trying to live in this moment with God. Messy. It's messy. But, that makes it more exciting I suppose. I like in the Chronicles of Narnia where they say, "Of course He's not safe, but He's good." I want to be like God in that way too... I don't want to be tamed, definable, or "safe" but I want to be so good.

I feel like there is something on the tip of my tongue, that if I could just put into words would be a piece of this puzzle, but it's elusive.

Also, I hate how because I am always laughing people assume I don't take things seriously. In my writing class tonight they were giving me a hard time because I am always "chipper" and giggling but I write these intense/sad stories. Matthew (a guy in my class) was doing impressions of me hearing tragic news clips and being like "oh thats so bad hehehehehe." Why is happy the equivolent of shallowness to so many people? I need to make a shirt that says, I may be giggling but I'm still thinking. OR something. It's the most frusterating stereotype. I'm either the girl in the corner reading a book [my extreme stereotype- thank you, Angela ;)] or the giggling one.

Sometimes I feel that by speaking, I am actually concealing who I am. Like tonight at Bible study, I "had" to say a high and low point. I didn't want to, and so as I listened to myself speak, it just wasn't me, as I know myself. And honestly, my highpoint was coffee. asdfj;aks;ka.

So... maybe someone else gets it?

because I didn't feel like myself yesterday

and tonight I do.

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it." - Anais Nin

i want to be taken seriously.
not a replacement, not a consideration.
earth-shattering romance.
if i fall in love at all, i want it to be a steamroller.
i want it to flatten my fears
lay flat my insecurites
and steam right past them
I want to thresh them out on the floor
a love that makes me freer and braver.
bold. breathtaking.
love rich as the oldest wine
deep as the galaxies
scary as hell.
mysterious and invasive.
hide and seek.
love that has no expectation to be the cure,
because we already know the Healer.
love that shares life.
its a high demand, but I wouldn't have any other form.
love that dares to waltz in the field. [claire, you understand.]

but... more than that,
I want to love. till it breaks every selfish bone in my body.

the non-existence of normal

I think it is entirely possible that God's purpose for some people is to always be different. To remind people that there is no such thing as normal.

I don’t think there actually is anyone who’s normal. Normal is the word we use to mean the stereotype of perfection, what people should be like, what we wish our lives looked like. Why do we have an idea that there is normal? Engrained in each of us is a sense that we’re broken, that life isn’t exactly what it ought to be even though it seems to be the same for all of us. If normal meant, as it is, then we’d all be completely normal; but when we say normal we mean we want to be different than the state everyone finds himself or herself in—we want the pain and brokenness of life to be gone. So when we want things to be normal, what we're really aching for is redemption.

The dictionary defintion is: conforming to the standard. And standard... well, that's a grade of beef immediately below good. [thank you webster]

Somehow we’ve come to believe we only matter if we can prove it, we live in shame and guilt, with hidden thoughts that whisper if we really revealed all we are, all the darkness and light of our soul to someone else—we’d be rejected, we feel that no matter how much we’re appreciated, no matter how much we’re loved- it’s not enough. We’re too much and not enough at the same time, and no one would ever love us without conditions. There’s a place inside us that’s too dark to be accepted. We relate to the wrong people in stories. We want to be the heroes, the good ones, but we’re the ones who are jealous, insecure, bitter, betrayers. Yes, we’re a generation that’s needy—but we’d be the last to admit it. Neediness has become a great sin.

Which is ironic, because you can't recieve grace without realizing you're needy. And you can't be humble without dependency on God. Thinking that are sins are too great for God to forgive or change is the sneakiness sort of pride.

But maybe the hope for our generation is the death of the American dream. We don’t believe it anymore, the dream of our parents—we don’t believe in that idea of satisfaction. So we’re wanderers, a generation of seekers, but that leaves the necessary emptiness- hope for the hopeless, the position of helplessness is the death to the self-saving mentality that blocks us from redemption— hunger is the condition of redemption.

We're not normal, and we're needy. And thats where Love introduces Himself.

mustard seeds

[A Letter to Progressive Christians in the US by Will Braun]

"What if the church focussed on everything except politics? No matter who is president or how slow the Democratic strategists are to “get it,” much else can happen: communities can organize, non-corporatized food can be grown on church lots, fossil fuels can be avoided en masse, churches can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enemies can be boldly loved, massive consumer pressure can be exerted on the bad boys of business, and Christians can be a calming, defiant presence in places of violence. Of course policy changes would help in many cases but the point is that there is more power to be discovered and shared at the bottom than grasped for at the top. That’s the paradox."

... "As nice as the resulting eye-brow-raising stories are, the halls of power can easily become a preoccupation. So I believe the church’s political engagement must start, finish and always be directly tied in with its presence on the margins, where primary energy should be exerted... Religion can go so many places politics can’t, so why are we headed to Capitol Hill? I want religion to be everything politics is not: gracious, fearless (the powerful are so paranoid), beautiful, trustworthy, healing and strong in weakness. Let’s trust the paradox."

"http://www.geezmagazine.org/article/a-letter-to-progressive-christians-in-the-usa"

thinking

Most of this was originally a letter to my dear friend Mr. Robertson but I wanted to open up the conversation to any opinions. I do qualify that with, I don't want to argue with anyone but I love a lively discussion. And feel free to only respond to a part.

In the car ride home tonight my mom and I were discussing lots of thoughts and these are some of mine... political institutions are chained to their procedures and an institution can't change a person, the person has to change first. I think one of the biggest problems in America is bad education-- the population not only needs to be challenged but taught values-- especially not selfishness.

Also, capitalism is in someways based on greed or self-ambition and I think what America needs is to find balance from its individualism... but what is an answer to capitalism that actually works, a free market with caps... the best of both words... getting over consumerism. I don't think we can put our faith in a political position but, if the people were changed and living from things like ... to risk sounding a bit communist or socialist-- the brotherhood of man-- what could that look like? The funny thing about politics nowadays is its much more like philosophy-- good ideas that can't get accomplished because democrats and republicans alike are fighting-- always fighting. (Good thing I'm Independent, huh? [teasing.])

And how do you teach tolerance and acceptance in the face of one truth... I suppose it's something like, all people are entitled to believe what they want (even if they happen to be wrong...) because it's the churches job to get out there in the streets and love like Jesus. That will reach people not a government.)

Another tanget, what would a peaceful response to the opression of Iraqi people look like (I'm not saying thats why we went to war, but as a lover of peace I am wondering what the creative answers to war are... because often sanctions hurt the people not the governments.) I think one of the loveliest things would be if culture could stay intact without nationality... so that instead of thinking of what's best for America we could just be humans. What would government look like under God? That is what I wonder. The UN can't save the world, but how much should our allegiance be to our country over the world?

What does a truly organic walk with God and total surrender and obedience to Him look like in every sphere of life-- culture, politics, education, health, etc. It's confusing and a question I'll be seeking to answer (and follow the implications of) for my whole life.

Other thoughts still, the death penalty... is that something God's given authority too through government? And in someways its more humane (although the method isn't) then having someone spend their whole life in prison (and I think prisons need major reforms as well.) Ah, there is so much I want to change (but not through politics) ... I hope to find my voice, to tell stories that disturb people into action. I really believe that is my role, to be a storyteller (among other things: an intercessor, a lover, a worshipper, an artist, a wanderer, etc.) I think the world's biggest hope is for the church to rise and sink to her knees.

I love the emerging church. I love the expressions of life and creating from hope and joy vs. the HUGE artist mentality of creation from despair... I love the emerging church, but I hate how I see the spirit of judgement and close-mindness that they hate emerging in them... they judge the traditionalist, they judge them and call them "religious" without knowing their hearts the same way the tradionalists see them as rebellious without knowing their hearts. erg. I've seen it in myself, in wanting the old to be open to the new I am often really saying, "the new way is the right way, change." instead of finding the value and worth of both... and you know, the old generation doesn't always need to change -- we both need that acceptance, tolerance, and understanding. Love. I very much want to reshape the church, but not with chronologial snobbery (which is technically a logical fallacy. haha.)

I have one last thing to throw your way... my heart is torn between America and communities of artist, and the unreached... how do we deal with that quote, "why should some hear twice when some have never heard?" I still ache to go to the Middle East someday (and to Europe and Africa too...) Maybe it's just seasons... but I feel almost like I'm settling for an easier life, even though its things I am very passionate about. There's probably no right answer, it depends on God's leading... and maybe He'll take me to the world someday.

Whitman

O' Pioneers!
O you youths, western youths,

So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,

Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?

Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?

We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson.

Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind;

We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,

Fresh and strong the world we sieze, world of labor and the march,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

-Walt Whitman.