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."