mud + spit + oaks of righteousness

Have you seen the way that I journal? 

It's a bit nuts, I know, but it helps me to make sense of all the thoughts inside of my head. I'm hugely visual, and, when I have time, I pretend to be intellectual. (Okay, pretend might be the wrong word.) I love times with my Bible and all of the resources that I use to understand it more fully. To me, reading the Bible void of context, without knowing the people, the time, the place, seems frustratingly incomplete. For me to know the Lord more completely, I need to STUDY. Which means resource books laying everywhere, multiple colors of pens, dictionaries and blank paper. Occasionally, when I am disciplined enough to participate and open enough to receive, I get some strange and beautiful insight into my life that makes me know + love the Lord all the more. For now: 

1 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 3 Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." 6 Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud 7 and said to him,"Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.               [john 9:1-7, esv]

I can't separate this passage, with all of its rich meaning, from what I feel stirring in my own heart about family and restoration and freedom from my assumptions about the nature of God. This blind man could be any one of us, with physical ailments or emotional baggage, and the world asks (and us right along with them), "Whose fault is it?" We need someone to blame, something to make sense of why things are the way that they are. A perfect God would never allow causeless imperfection, so it must be our fault. The disciples thought this way initially. (More extreme, we think that imperfection=the non-existence of God, but I'm not getting into that.) Blindness because of sin. Cause and effect reality, void of grace. Credit it, maybe, to ancient philosophy: Sickness is a product of sin; he is blind because of something he did, or something his parents did. Sin stalks through the generation. It's what they believe. It's a sad and cruel way to understand God, inaccurate and damaging, giving evil far more power than it deserves. How shaming, how isolating, to think that He keeps record of our wrongs through the generations, forgetting that forgiveness is His constant gift + His mercies are new with the morning. We've heard the phrase though, and it's frightening:

generational sin

This line of thinking is not foreign to me, with anxiety and fear of the legacy of divorce in my family. But I love this passage, because in the competition between cruelty and compassion, the character of Christ is revealed. 

I love that this passage draws us back to the earth, back to the way the world works: "In this world, there will be suffering, but take heart, I have overcome the world." This is the way the world works: we were born into a world full of sickness and sin (separateness from God + the things of God). God loves us no less for it. We were born into families that conditioned our behavior, for good or for bad. God loves us no less for it. We were born unable to see, through no fault of our own (Jesus said so), and God loves us no less for it. Ultimately, His purposes win. His purpose: healing. Relational + physical. For this man, it was physical and immediate. Drawn back to the earth, almost to force us to reevaluate the goodness/badness of nature, that tendency of ours to blame creation. We come from the earth, fallen, and yet the Lord uses His creation to grow and heal us. He uses mud. 

Mud + Spit. It's gross, especially by our standards of modern medicine, but I can think of nothing more beautiful. (Yes, I think weird, unbeautiful things are beautiful.) The thing about spit is this: it's typically an insult, an image of revulsion or rejection, and yet Jesus uses it to heal, to pause and reverse the natural workings of the world. To bring a person out of isolation, to include this blind man in His kingdom. Mud + Spit. Nothing more natural, more "of the flesh," something so socially undesirable used by the Lord to heal, used to glorify and reveal His character. Brilliant, actually.

This passage makes it seem so simple: anointing and washing and complete, immediate healing. Yet I find, in my life, a struggle to "maintain" healing--constantly falling back into my areas of poor health. My issues are not birth defects, but learned behavior--you can call it generational and you'd be justified in doing so. Generational legacies of divorce, of selfishness, of Jesus-less-ness. Things many families deal with. It is learned behavior, engrained deeply and passed down in years of parenting. God loves me no less but He calls me to healing, a process of unlearning and creating new legacies and it is a struggle to do so. You'd be crazy to go back to the habit of blindlessness once the world of sight had been opened to you. But what about the comfort of self-service? The pattern of avoidance? The habit of abandonment when things get hard? And many, many others. Those are difficult habits to break. Entirely impossible to do it along, despite the allure of self-help book and therapy and the practice of yoga (all good things, but an incomplete form of healing). You'd have to step into an entirely new identity, an entirely new family.

Source: alisonyinblog.com

One of the many things that I love about the Lord is His intentionality. Here, I would have been stuck. It's the longing of my soul for as long as I can remember: Oaks of Righteousness and generational restoration. It's heavy on my mind these days. I think about the ways that I have been gathered into the families around me, welcomed and wrapped up with friends that are second family, and how I feel the tension of that adoption: Will it last? Is it strong enough? Will it define me? Is it only blood that binds us? I think about the ways that my life, a marriage, a welcoming heart could be a mode of this restoration.


It's as if Jesus knew this longing for family and understood the tension of adoption when he says, "You are heirs with Christ in salvation." And more: "You have been grafted in." Grafted in, married in to a family of righteousness, made so by a desire for Him.

In the midst of reflection and anaylsis, comparing and contrasting what I want vs. what I have (and I need to emphasize comparing: in many ways, my actual family is a dream come true). It is easy to hope for simply an earthly family. One that prays genuine prayers before meals, one that seeks transformation by Jesus, one growing in the fruits of the Spirit. It's natural to find that and cling to it for the life that it gives, to want to be grafted into that family, already in existence. To want them at my wedding, standing next to me in support, to be in the waiting room when I give birth and to act as family until the very end; to want spiritual parents and wise + righteous counsel. It's easy to forget that they have been grafted, too. I have not been grafted into them (though they may be the tangible representation of what Christ has done), but we, separate branches, have been grafted into THE Oak of Righteousness, with THE head of the family. We come from the same broken world and God loves us no less for it. From Him, new branches shoot out--a new family and a new identity, that the weight of who God is would be revealed. 

sweet, sweet malawi

i'm going to Africa today
that's an unusual sentence
but it's true
in twelve hours, i will be on a plane headed east, east, east
until i find myself standing in Malawi
on ground that we have waited for
prayed and prepared for



there are a billion things going through my mind right now
please forgive my scatterbrained-ness...
did i pack enough underwear? i hope the person next to me for 31 hours of travel likes cuddling. i hope i don't get typhoid. please don't let me get typhoid. call mom. call dad. eat mexican food. are we ready? i hope we're ready... am i qualified? adequate? justified in going?

i can't help but reflect on the same feelings i have every time i board a plane to jamaica:
i love this place [GOD loves this place]
i love these people [GOD loves these people]

doubt still creeps in, though.
is this trip more than a sign of my privilege?
this kind of travel, this kind of expense--is it frivolous?

there is a still, small whisper telling me "no."
love cannot be frivolous.
not lovey-dovey love.
but love.
love that overwhelms poverty and all of its friends.
love that stands against abuse and neglect and gender discrimination.
love that lifts up the oppressed.
love that affirms the value of every human life.
love that is renewed after the image of its Creator.
love that carries justice with it.
that love is God's very character and no, He is not frivolous.


He is not frivolous in giving out love that empowers even just one beautiful woman who needs to know her worth or love that pushes God's hopes for humanity to reality and redeems our brokenness. i'd raise thousands of dollars for that. i'd stock up on long skirts and malaria pills.
i would travel the world and back again for that kind of love.


somehow, i am a part of this
i am a small part of a small team going to a big place with a big dream
more than anything, it is about His love
His purposes
His dreams
His BIGNESS
and the plans that HE has, that go far beyond our 18 days and our conference and the resources that we can supply

so that is my prayer as i leave for Malawi
that i would be small, and He would be Big


and that i'd see a giraffe...


many, many more thoughts to come
please pray :)

why my shirt said "love"

"If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do that...but love your enemies, and do good, expecting nothing in return..."

(Luke 6:32ish)

i wore my "love" shirt yesterday, specifically and intentionally. because i woke up frustrated. i woke up thinking about this verse, thinking about my heart, and remembering the ease of love in jamaica. it is easy to love in jamaica, and i fall quickly into it. it is not so easy here. here is where real life happens. here is where the longevity of my love is tested--where i see if i am truly patient and kind; if i truly turn my heart against envy and pride and any sort of selfishness [hint: i'm not and i don't, but i'm working on it]. and this is the place where i see and overthink and analyze and attempt to discern the "love" around me.

i wore my "love" shirt yesterday, specifically and intentionally. the one with the flowers and the dove and the word "love" spelled out, front and center, to hold myself to some sort of higher standard. because i have decided to be about love. i have decided to be about Jesus, who embodies all that love is: patience, kindness, goodness, humility, selflessness, gentleness, forgiveness, grace, meekness, reconciliation, and on and on and on. i have a different standard to live by. and so does anybody who claims to be about Jesus. we are not called to get there apart from Him, but we are called to a new and different standard:

one that asks that i open myself to a world besides my own. it asks that i engage in conversation, that i listen, that i respond selflessly, patiently, with humility and kindness
(and for more than ten days in jamaica)
(and for more than two weeks in africa)
(and for more than the twenty minute difficult phone conversation each month)
(or the visit to difficult family members).

it's a life lived toward a new standard, worked out in day-to-day life, when friends annoy you, or conversations wound you, when you want to scream and cry and punch somebody in the face, but you choose to love instead.

i wore my "love" shirt, specifically and intentionally, because i'm not quite there and i just needed a little reminder.

{in love, there is freedom}

why i write (how i pray)

i don't quite remember when i started to write for my soul. probably somewhere around the time that i started to seriously consider Jesus. sometime after my "dear diary" notes about my ultra-crush on justin jones. after my winnie the pooh phase. sometime before now. i have evidence of this stacked high in an old oak trunk in my bedroom in northern california. pages and pages are added with every visit home. by now, there must be thousands.

i could never quite figure out why i love to write. my introverted side uses it as a tool to process before my extroverted side explodes the words from my mouth. my input side likes to collect phrases and stories. my crazy-brain loves it for the focus and attention it requires. my heart loves it for the clarity it provides. more than those things, though, i write (and love to write) because it is the purest and most creative worship that i can bring.

i've never been great at traditional prayer, or at least my perception of it. i can't sit still long enough, i twiddle my fingers too much and, with nothing grounding me to my thoughts, they come and go within seconds. i thought that was the only way to pray.

enter: writing. writing is my creative and prayerful worship. from scribbled notes on unlined paper and doodled truths, to letters written on a vintage typewriter--i meet with YHWH on those pages. give me the chance to put pen to paper and suddenly, stillness of heart and mind, openness to the Lord. the pages of my journal are full of Divine-human interaction (isn't that at the heart of prayer??). you can read my heart's transformation from cover-to-cover. you can see praise and hope and longing and the ongoing process of change.

i write my dreams--the dreams placed intentionally in my heart by the Lord. i write my hopes. i write my struggles. i document the way that the Lord speaks into these things, changes them and uses them by showing me Himself. david danced before the Lord; that was prayer. he wrote psalms that we pray, even to this day. i write because of the Lord, with the Lord, for the Lord; that is my prayer. certainly not the only form, but the one i love most.

how do you love to pray?

"You are called into prayer either that you might collaborate with Him in bringing His will to pass, or that you might be able to get a larger vision of what He is like."

--John White//Daring to Draw Near

decisions, decisions

here i am again, making plans. (yes, it's 5am. yes, it's still dark outside. don't pretend you're not awake doing the same...) i've gone over my checklist for what feels like the thousandth time--contacts and addresses and deadlines for plans A, B, C. before you go on thinking that i'm just a control freak (which i am), let me just say that plans A, B, and C have nothing to do with my fear of being plan-less and everything to do with my

ridiculous, consistent, ever-present inability to make a decision.

for example:

last weekend, i made my server choose which beer i would be drinking with my pizza

(in my defense, my knowledge of "good beer" is incredibly limited)

(unfortunately, she chose wrong)

last night, i made my server decide between veggie spring rolls or a veggie tempura sushi roll

(in my defense, i had sushi for the first time six months ago...i'm still learning)

(fortunately, her opinion was awesome)

if i can't even decide on basic food and drink, i'm sure you can understand how dating (choosing someone to share your entire life with!) would be difficult and how choosing the direction of that entire life would be close to impossible. (but i mean, really, why can't they just combine three graduate programs and charge me 1/3 of the price?!)

currently: looking for grace in my decision-making process...

72 days. here we go.

by the time you are reading this

i have retreated into the land of jobs and birthdays...weddings, graduate school applications, and books to help me "Master The LSAT!" (...the exclamation point does nothing to relieve my fear)

i will retake my place as a functioning member of society in october

(we're celebrating: october 9th, 5 pm, Rose Donuts...want to join??)

i have hopes to come up for air and blogs and birthday cake when the need arises (now, for example)

but if i seem emotionally absent, distant, or a bit frazzled, please forgive me

in the meantime, wish me luck

and pray for my brain

(and my sleep schedule)

and i'm sorry if i'm cranky

via

[this could be me for the next 72 days...

...with the very important exceptions of:

birthdays and weddings all over the place

where i will be all smiles and laughter and joy :)]

my story, preface

sometimes you just need to switch things up

sometimes that includes babbling details that few know

about your love for pancakes and family breakfasts and story time

about reading your bible in french

and writing letters to your husband

about dreams of graduate school and real life work clothes

tattoos and new friends and harry potter trailers

and the next stamp on your passport

inspirational poetry

the challenge of a summer reading list

bike rides and fireworks

and falling in love

welcome to my story

we will focus on all of the above

obsessed

(how many posts about jamaica is too many posts about jamaica??)

by now, i'm sure that you know that i'm obsessed with jamaica. (if you don't, my apologies: i obviously haven't articulated myself well enough.) if i'm not in jamaica, i'm wishing and hoping and planning ways to get back. 20 of the 28 pictures on my wall were taken in jamaica to remind me of jamaica. (as if i need reminding...) if i'm not talking or blogging about jamaica, i'm thinking about it. i can bring it up in any conversation, with any group of people, and relate it to almost any circumstance. it's almost like i'm in love.

the person makes you forget about your ex. could losing a passport with the stamp of every other explored country be any more symbolic?

always remembering the person. see above paragraph.

always showing concern. read the news/pray. daily.

a characteristic about that person attracts you. uninhibited joy, simplicity, wisdom, strength, dance, fresh fruit, community...to name a few...

go well together. if not, we probably would've ended things by now...

loyal to only each other. weelll....this one gets a little complicated. we're currently in a long-distance relationship and i currently live in america...

sharing special moments. so many. just trust me on this one.

learning to compromise. compromise? eh...i'll take what jamaica gives me

prioritizing importance. i have yet to turn it down...

thinking about the future. currently researching travel costs, non-profits, living expenses. i think me and jamaica are in this for the long haul :)

(obviously more about jamaica to come)

*all credit goes to Ezine Articles for an (almost?) exhaustive and (almost?) accurate list of the signs of being in love.

jamaica, a preview

for the first time in three weeks, i'm not sweating. it is, i know, not very ladylike to talk about sweat, so you can imagine my relief that it is no longer a part of my daily existence. neither is mosquito repellent. ptl. my arms and legs are covered with the marks of a three-week battle with the most annoying insect on the planet, and they still itch, just to remind me of what i've left behind and do not miss.

everything else, though, i'd take back in a heartbeat. because after only twenty-seven hours of not being in jamaica, i'm already homesick and aching to be back in the place that shows me so much of life. already, i've looked through my pictures at least twenty-six times. i scroll through them, as if looking long enough will put me back in that place, with that sweet girl sleeping on my chest, or that funny girl challenging me to a dance off, or those beautiful girls playing in the ocean for the first time in years.

i wasn't sure, yesterday, if i should hurry out of customs so that i could journal and cry in privacy, or stay as long as possible at the baggage claim, standing with the last (and few) jamaicans that i'll see in who knows how long. i just wanted to stay and let their accents linger in my ears before being drowned out by the sound of my life in america.

i'm hesitant to post pictures to facebook or update my blog and, with the click of the "submit" button, officially end the trip. friends and family can read lots of words and scroll through lots of pictures to look at three weeks of my life, as if it can be reduced to one hundred and ninety one photos contained in one album with brief captions, as if, even the third time around, the impact of this place is not so much more profound.

not to worry: the pictures will be posted, just not yet. i so want to share the place that brings me so much joy and life, but for right now, i'm savoring these memories for myself, protecting them in my heart. the stories and lessons will come, i promise, but slowly.

a preview of stories to expect:

• jolene, the aspiring jeweler
• my aversion to goodbyes
• potlucks and babies and fruit straight from the trees
• listening and talking and how i feel about both

and of course, summer updates, reading lists, recipes, etc etc are all in the near future as well!

tbiytc

the best four years of my life officially ended on sunday. mary e. lyons shook my hand and handed me a (fake) diploma. we celebrated our college degrees with cake and pizza and margaritas, reminders of just how proud we should be.

i am proud, and blessed, and excited. even still, i spent the majority of the weekend dragging my (very tall, very cute) heels (with aquamarine toes peeking through), trying to slow down time, coming up with alternatives to graduating and transitioning out of college because it all went too fast and we just need more time:

we can cancel our futures and move into a beach house together for endless sleepovers and snuggling

we can finish finals and have a mandatory hang-out semester, with a dramatic decrease in tuition and lots of volleyball

we can avoid the countdown, ignore the looming goodbyes and just pretend that everything will stay the same forever

or, we can graduate. because did you know you can't stop time? ...something about physics and scientific constants and nonsense that i somehow missed between lectures on tupac and social construction. and i always hated that cliche: "the best four years of your life..." they said it over and over again freshman year as if it became more true with each repetition; every time, i would think back to maher 311: four very different girls living in one very small space, crying tears of homesickness and loneliness, missing family and friends and the ease of high school weekends.

no matter how many times you said it, no matter how many variations it took, it could never come true...

...until it did.

i could spend hours and hours telling stories of how friendships formed and community shaped and trips/retreats changed my life and friends became family and san diego became home and home became a place that couldn't quite fit me anymore. i could write a million blogs to explain why college was actually all that everyone said it would be, to try to do justice to four very full, exciting, hilarious, difficult, real, beautiful years of my life. i could try to explain the profound heartbreak of friends packing boxes and pushing bags into too-small trunks heading north or the feeling of hanging my graduation gown and cords in the back of my closet, or clearing my dining room table of finals review sheets only to be replaced by applications to graduate school and LSAT study guides and professor recommendations. but i'm not sure that there are enough words so that you can understand or that the internet can hold my billions of sentences.

so i will say, in minutes or less, that time went quickly. i'm not exactly sure how we got here so fast. i came to san diego a little girl. i guess i'm a grown-up now. a grown-up saying goodbye to four incredible years and all that they held. life doesn't slow down so that i can dwell on (very) tearful goodbyes or final drives away from campus...dwell as i might, life keeps moving in the only direction it knows. forward. how wonderful that i can say with ninety-four percent certainty (and two percent fear and four percent hope) that the best is yet to come and i will handle the future in a way that only four years at USD could have taught me to do.

starting with: jamaica (round three) on sunday. stories to come :)

if i could...

...i would tell you that i'm sorry
i'm sorry that someone made you think that your story doesn't matter
that your heart and your dreams and your voice don't matter
...i would tell you that they do
...i would tell you that what we need,
exactly what we need,
is the story that only you can tell
the dreams that only you can imagine
the heart that only you can share
...i would tell you that i'm scared too
...that i don't know either
...that i'm sorry she damaged you
...that i'm sorry he hurt you
...that your heart deserves so much more
...that we're all a little broken
...i would tell you that you don't need to be what you think i need
or what you think they want
...that i am content to just have you be you
we are content to have you be you
the worst version of yourself
the best version of yourself
so you can stop fighting with yourself
...i would tell you that who you are now is just a glimpse of who you will be
but that you are more wonderful than you know
...i would tell you that i don't know how to love you well
but i'm willing to try so that you can love yourself
please love yourself
care for yourself
believe in yourself
because i care for you
i believe in you
for you
with you
and i will keep believing in you, for you, with you
until you believe in you, for you, with you.

home

home [hohm]

-noun
1. the place in which one's domestic attentions are centered
2. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household.
3. any place of residence or refuge

-adverb
1. deep; to the heart

2. to the mark or point aimed at

what a home should be: stories, memories, places, available, ready, tangible, real, comfortable, challenging, encouraging, cozy, loud, funny, open, stuffed with love, portable, big, kind, forgiving, full, light, delightful, colorful, mine

i have a sudden urge to pack everything up and move to portland, to seattle, to boston but to never leave this place, even when my friends have sent their boxes to nebraska and africa and colorado and nicaragua and the very ends of the earth. i have spent four years building this place from the very ground all the way to the sky. i built other homes too, to shelter my heart wherever it goes, and it feels all too unnatural to begin pulling nails from support beams and fill holes with stucco and cover walls with primer to create a new canvas, a blank slate, for ages 22-25 and it feels all too unnatural to cram too many people and stories and memories into one little room when what i need is an open field, with wild flowers, stacks of pillows and an eternal nightlight.

i wonder if life is constant building and rebuilding of homes, shelter for your heart, for the place that you're at at one exact moment in time until time reaches its destination and starts again and you bring the home that you've packed and folded and carried with you to a new place, to start again

what my next home should be: strong, full of adopted babies and dreams and accomplishments, perfected imperfections, rest, exploration, adventure, leisure books, cookbooks, notebooks, bravery, new, stories, memories, comfortable, encouraging, delightful, forgiving, mine.

twenty-four + one

twenty-four hours in a day never seemed quite like enough. twenty-eight, i think, would make things much more manageable. one extra hour for flipping through pages and highlighting and typing responses. one extra hour for folding and organizing and disinfecting. one for laughing and storytelling and listening. one for quiet:


one to sit with a blanket and a cup of tea and ignore the to-do list that has reached two-pages
one to avoid the "i should shower ats...." and the "will i have time fors...?"

one to sit with a blanket and a cup of tea and my journal.
one to sit with a blanket and a cup of tea and jesus.


this morning, i woke frustratingly early. and since there are only twenty-four hours in this day, i left my bed unmade, i stepped over sweaters and socks on the floor, i didn't touch the dishes or plan an english lesson, i didn't turn on 30 day shred or go on a run, i didn't transcribe interviews or analyze data, i didn't write poetry or edit papers.

i sat in the stillness of morning in my near-empty home, after 148 long hours and too much cherry coke and moments of joy mixed with crankiness mixed with longing.

i sat with cs lewis and was happy.

"Happiness had not come to her early in life. A thousand years of it would not have made her blasee. Her palate for all the joys of sense and intellect and spirit was fresh and unspoiled. Nothing would have been wasted on her. She liked more things and liked them more than anyone I have ever known."

--CS Lewis, A Grief Observed

(Can this be about me??)

woulda, coulda, shoulda

All The Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin' In The Sun,
Talkin' 'Bout The Things
They Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda Done...
But All Those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All Ran Away And Hid
From One Little Did.

- Shel Silverstein

meet my friends woulda, coulda, and shoulda



they've been around for quite some time
sometimes we sit and remember
all those woulda-coulda-shoulda things

crushes kept secret
adventures turned down
opportunities lost


it is april 11, 2010 and there are 42 days until i graduate from college
there are so many things that have yet to be crossed off of my list
i have six weeks left
what am i to do to make all these things a did?

1. find courage
2. be brave
3. go on adventures
4. take every opportunity for every fun thing
5. tell secret crushes

yikes.

any other suggestions??

synonyms/antonyms

fear [feer]
-noun

1. a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid

2. a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights.

3. concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone's safety.
4. reverential awe, esp. toward God.
5. that which causes a feeling of being afraid; that of which a person is afraid

synonyms: anxiety, aversion, the jitters antonyms: bravery, dreams, love

Synonyms (including, but not limited to): lighting an oven with a match by myself, difficult phone calls, snakes, parrots, eels and cockroaches, God (see definition four), hereditary divorce, the day that a family member dies, accidentally taking something illegal though airport security, dating, forgetting birthdays, Voldemort, forgetting anything, leaving the straightener on and accidentally burning down my house, hoarding instead of giving, bouncing my rent check, giving bad advice, blood, reading poetry aloud, small planes, infidelity, gas stations alone at night, etc, etc, etc.

But I would need a billion bony fingers on a million bony hands to count the things that make me an antonym (AKA: what I love): jumping out of a helicopter at 14,000 feet, traveling alone, my ever-changing opinion, giraffes, Harry Potter (duh), Beverley (Zamibia), Mohammed (West Bank), Monicah (Kenya), mangoes, crushes, photography, solitude, journaling, kisses, birthday parties, Catch Phrase, babies, difficult phone calls, God, rejecting family legacies, life, remembering, good hair days, giving instead of hoarding, a challenge, listening, talking, food, reading poetry aloud, faithfulness, security, my job, "I Want You Back"--Jackson 5, summertime, not knowing if I can do it and doing it anyways, sing-a-longs, unstuckness, etc, etc, etc.

To Be Continued...

to reevaluate

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

--Mahatma Gandhi

My eternal frustration is Christians who do not look like Christ.
(Myself included.)



Things to be reevaluated:
(or: How does Jesus feel about...?)

1. privilege and power
2. redistribution of wealth
3. gender roles and feminism
4. the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized
5. the oppressed in our midst
   
6. apathy
7. our pathetic justifications to avoid the challenge of thought and change

I have my opinions. I'd love to know yours.

wants.

i could stay in bed all day
lie under piles of fleece and cotton
ignore my mostly-green door
(a portal to an outside world, to which i owe a fragmented existence.
i am no longer fully here.)

i am struggling to stay afloat
in a sea of wealth and privilege
in a place i have chosen
a life i have chosen
a life that has been given to me

if i get out of bed:
i will begin my mental list of today's wants
words on lined paper, awaiting the strike of ink
to smother them into black
what i want:
a new journal
new toms (to replace my slippers. defeating the purpose. yet, the want remains)
a new book (but, to my right sits a bookshelf filled from edge to edge with ink filled pages so far unread)


so i can stay in bed all day
turning pages to wash me of the guilt
of even the luxury of books
fifteen books

and if i read, then maybe,
just maybe,
there will be no space in
my mind or
my heart or
my schedule for

the longing to hear kids singing michael jackson at the top of their lungs

or

the aching to sit and listen to the story of a heartbroken and forgotten girl.
and i could sit and offer ears for hours, until the sun hides behind blue mountains, not understanding the point of her suffering or my privilege.

and i won't have time to listen to our soundtrack--call on me, or a thousand miles away--i won't be able to think about the boys who taught us to dance, or the people we now call family.

or

maybe. i'll forget the moment, driving through pot-hole ridden streets in a place so green that new life is all i can see, and i'm sitting in a van, surrounded by beautiful people on every side, hearing pieces of wisdom, stories of Jamaican experience, with Bob Marley playing in the background.

because if i remember, my heart hurts all the more
and i start crying all over again
celebrating what is such a beautiful new home
grieving what feels like such a profound loss
but i don't want to forget the contentment of that moment,
even in discomfort.

discomfort as we drive past
tin-roof houses and
piles of corregated steel;
goats collecting trash in road-side ditches and
uniformed children begging for a meal
(a meal. i eat three of those a day.)

and all these images are flashing by
and the last week is replaying in my head
and all i hear is music drowning out the noise

redemption song. a song of freedom.
as it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end.

but then there's the earthquake
and i can't make sense of it.
the news reports
and the thousands dead.
millions affected.
and jesus is suffering with them
while i stay bundled up in my cozy layers
in my cozy house on the beach
with the iPod that i should have left behind
in the country that i can't wait to escape

and my mom--she sponsors a haitian girl
so i guess that makes her my sister
and they're not sure if she is dead or alive
she could be burried under piles of rubble
or crying in the streets

and here i am, planning out the next three years
moving in a way that feels directed by God

and in the back of my mind comes that nagging voice:
"law school" "intellect" "use your brain"

i want to shut the voices down.
i want to hear utter silence.

what i want to do:
be in jamaica.
play with sanka.
dance with kids to michael jackson songs for hours.
listen to taxa talk.
play whatever games they want to play, for as long as they want to play them.
adopt. now.
hold orphans and cook dinner for the poor and
dig through piles of rubble to find that one.
that one dearly beloved child of God.
give away everything, without the want to gain it all back again.

and my wants can only be fulfilled because i swim in a sea of wealth and privilege.

so what am i to do?

i keep having to stop myself from posting things that sound more like complaining than anything else. i'm being whiney today and i need to knock it off.

i keep hoping to run into the perfect person for the perfect hug amidst my exhaustion and stress. it's like playing where's waldo, and i'm losing.

i really just want to snuggle.
and journal.
and sleep.

p.s. i feel nervous to actually post anything because i have 18 followers and i don't want to let anybody down. yikes. 18 is a lot of pressure. also, i've been daily running out of time and am anxiously waiting for thursday, when i can sleep and write and dream again. :)

stop.

STOP!

stop.

stop with your prodigious words
and the eloquent manner in which you speak.

stop with your volumes of theology
your "thou"s, and your "the Lord sayeth unto me"s
your elementary answers to complex questions
that do nothing but frustrate my faith

who are you trying to convince?
i want to stuff my ears with a billion cotton balls when you start to speak
i want to count your words then politely ask you to divide it in half.

i've had enough.

stop, stop, stop.

sit in silence,
and just whisper to Him
oh, how i need You.


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*I'm trying to learn to pray simply.

tonight

tonight, five of us sat around a table in the slp
we ate food and studied scripture
and i realized, for maybe the first time, how necessary my people are

i basically exploded on them
i wasn't angry
well, not at them, at least

i exploded frustrations and struggles that i've been having
with my faith, God, religion, with Christians, and ultimately, with myself
questions about the inerrency of the bible,
about the bible as a cultural document
about "self," and convenience and comfort
the character of God, and my own character
whether i trust Him, or love Him enough, whether i believe enough

i exploded, and i needed to explode
i needed to explode with people who engaged me
who didn't try to force feed me formulaic answers
or dismiss my questions as weakness

i needed that conversation
and that passage
and those people

i needed tonight