today was a series of strange happenings.
i woke up at 6am. normal. my toilet was running. so i had to turn the water off. i was glad that at some point in my life i learned to do that. it was not weird to have a running toilet, and it was not weird to turn the water off. and it was not even weird to be thankful that i knew to do so. it was weird to be aware at 6am that i was glad to know to turn the water off. i'm not usually aware of anything at 6am.
continuing my day...
for the past few mornings i have left for work, and been stricken with panic halfway through my drive. "did i lock the door? i don't remember locking the door. i don't think i locked the door." but it's too late to turn back at that point. i get so used to my routines that i don't remember going through them. so this morning, continuing with the weirdness, i had enough presence of mind to tell myself "you are locking the door. you are locking the door. you are locking the door."
then i realized i forgot my cell phone, which i never do, so i had to go back in and get it. and lock my door again. "you are locking the door again. you are locking the door again."
weird.
i went to hear tim keller speak.
not weird.
but i went there straight from work, so i got there way early. so i brought a book and a flashlight. i don't know why i didn't just go in way early, but i actually thought ahead to bring a flashlight. and a book. beowulf. so i read beowulf in my car, with a flashlight.
weird.
also weird: i strategically picked my parking spot so that i'd be one of the first to exit. a few minutes after i pulled in, they blocked off my section of the parking lot so no one else could get in. they wanted to fill the back section up first. so i sat there, feeling like a criminal, in the middle of an empty parking lot, reading beowulf with a flashlight.
i went in eventually, blah blah. one of the first sentences out of his mouth was "to use augustinian language..."
and my immediate thought was "oh my gosh. i love being here right now."
and then...
"don't forget to go to the bathroom here before you leave. your toilet is running."
weird day.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
MLIA
my night vision is not so good.
tonight i saw a guy walking down the street carrying what i thought was a boombox. like in the 90's. turns out, it was a case of beer. i was disappointed.
and a different night i thought i saw a bride and groom walking down the street. but it was just someone carrying a large, white, trash bag.
shrug.
i am so angry with my subconscious self.
there are only a few ways a 25-year-old single girl can deal with the fact that she's single and doesn't want to be.
she can totally lose her mind, stalk a guy, make him feel uncomfortable, and cry a lot.
she can "take it to the cross", gaze at Christ, and remember He is captivating, satisfying, and lovely. she can remind herself that she is more than ok, she is loved by God.
that is, of course, the best method.
i usually choose to ignore the desire all together. i am such a robot, you have no idea. if i meet a guy i like, i talk myself out of the crush within a week. successfully. you don't believe me, because you can't do it. but i can.
the one flaw with this gift is that i have not yet discovered how to control my dreams. ugh. last night i dreamed i got engaged. UGH. and it was, like, enjoyable or whatever. but then, you know, i woke up.
hey self: suppress what i tell you to suppress!
however, the night before i had a more awesome dream. both of these were the result of cold medicine. i have the best dreams on cold medicine. so lucid.
so this other dream was about the end of the world. oh yeah.
a few friends and i developed this indestructible pod thing, and all climbed inside when it started flooding, which we knew was a clue that the world was ending. we even had glass windows to look through, and watch all the people drowning (sorry?), and even those did not get broken.
but then we were floating by all these people eating dinner. people i know! people from church, people from college. none of them cared at all that the world was ending. i was like "thats weird." all those people i respected thought nothing was amiss.
so we kept floating along.
and eventually landed...in a desert. then we realized "crap. the world did not end. it was just a flood. now we're stuck in the desert." but, we also discovered that someone had put a million dollars in our pod, because they knew it wasn't really the end of the world, and we'd need some money to get back when we figured it out.
~ the end ~
how many of your dreams have plots and conclusions?
tonight i saw a guy walking down the street carrying what i thought was a boombox. like in the 90's. turns out, it was a case of beer. i was disappointed.
and a different night i thought i saw a bride and groom walking down the street. but it was just someone carrying a large, white, trash bag.
shrug.
i am so angry with my subconscious self.
there are only a few ways a 25-year-old single girl can deal with the fact that she's single and doesn't want to be.
she can totally lose her mind, stalk a guy, make him feel uncomfortable, and cry a lot.
she can "take it to the cross", gaze at Christ, and remember He is captivating, satisfying, and lovely. she can remind herself that she is more than ok, she is loved by God.
that is, of course, the best method.
i usually choose to ignore the desire all together. i am such a robot, you have no idea. if i meet a guy i like, i talk myself out of the crush within a week. successfully. you don't believe me, because you can't do it. but i can.
the one flaw with this gift is that i have not yet discovered how to control my dreams. ugh. last night i dreamed i got engaged. UGH. and it was, like, enjoyable or whatever. but then, you know, i woke up.
hey self: suppress what i tell you to suppress!
however, the night before i had a more awesome dream. both of these were the result of cold medicine. i have the best dreams on cold medicine. so lucid.
so this other dream was about the end of the world. oh yeah.
a few friends and i developed this indestructible pod thing, and all climbed inside when it started flooding, which we knew was a clue that the world was ending. we even had glass windows to look through, and watch all the people drowning (sorry?), and even those did not get broken.
but then we were floating by all these people eating dinner. people i know! people from church, people from college. none of them cared at all that the world was ending. i was like "thats weird." all those people i respected thought nothing was amiss.
so we kept floating along.
and eventually landed...in a desert. then we realized "crap. the world did not end. it was just a flood. now we're stuck in the desert." but, we also discovered that someone had put a million dollars in our pod, because they knew it wasn't really the end of the world, and we'd need some money to get back when we figured it out.
~ the end ~
how many of your dreams have plots and conclusions?
Monday, November 9, 2009
conversations with 2 year olds.
girl: whats that?
me: what do you think?
girl: i don't know.
me: it's a bird!
girl: it's a parrot.
why bother asking.
me: what do you think?
girl: i don't know.
me: it's a bird!
girl: it's a parrot.
why bother asking.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
ugh, rat cage.
“Perhaps a lunatic is simply a minority of one.” – 1984, George Orwell
i have so many thoughts swimming through my head. i just finished reading “the irresistible revolution.”
it’s nice to know i’m not as crazy as it sometimes feels i am. that’s hard to break down. example: i voted third party in the last election. some people’s comments made it seem like i was naïve or didn’t put enough thought into my vote. i’m not crazy.
i am taking two major thoughts away from this book.
1) the vision and drive to help eradicate poverty in other countries, and even in our own, is coming largely from unbelievers. this should not be. but if we don’t cry out, the rocks will, right? and they have been…
2) “Almost every time we talk with affluent folks about God’s will to end poverty, someone says, “But didn’t Jesus say, ‘The poor will always be with you’?” Many of the people who whip out this verse have grown quite insulated and distant from the poor and feel defensive. I usually gently ask, “Where are the poor? Are the poor among us?” The answer is usually a clear negatory…Far from saying in defeat that we should not worry about the poor, since they will always be among us, Jesus is pointing the church to her true identity – she is to live close to those who suffer.”
that’s a big one for me. i hear that objection a lot. and it has always been unsettling. anytime you get worked up about poverty, someone says that! as if that’s an excuse for not weeping for those who suffer. not just donating money or serving dinner to homeless people on thanksgiving, but actually grieving the fact that people live in poverty. are the poor with me? not just out in the world somewhere, but sitting on my front porch or in the pew next to me at church.
it is hard to have passions and dreams that other people explain away, or don’t feel themselves.. it is discouraging to feel hope for change, but not know how to bring it about. this book has definitely helped me process a lot that has been stirring inside me for the past few years. which is too long. when i graduated, i had a super hard time trying to find a job. even though i have one of those magical college degrees. so i began to imagine how hard it must be for people who don't have one...which opened the door to a lot more questions.
and now i can never go back to ignoring poverty, or how it happens. or blaming the people in poverty for not working hard enough.
i don’t feel like saying anything else. i don’t really know what to say. or do. but i’m so glad i go to a church that has the same crazy dreams, and can help me figure it all out.
just read these quotes. believe it or not, i narrowed it down.
Meanwhile, many of us find ourselves estranged from the narrow issues that define conservatives and from the shallow spirituality that marks liberals. We are thirsty for social justice and peace but have a hard time finding a faith community that is consistently pro-life or that recognizes that there are “moral issues” other than homosexuality and abortion, moral issues like war and poverty.
We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.
If you ask most people what Christians believe, they can tell you, “Christians believe that Jesus is God’s Son and that Jesus rose from the dead.” But if you ask the average person how Christians live, they are struck silent. We have not shown the world another way of doing life.
Sometimes we speak to change the world; other times we speak to keep the world from changing us. We are about ending poverty, not simply managing it. We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.
We try to make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so the few can live as they wish.
It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle.
Once we are actually friends with folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity.
When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive. She ceases to be something we are, the living bride of Christ. The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. Both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get clothed and fed), but no one leaves transformed. No radical new community is formed.
As we consider what it means to be “born again,” as the evangelical jargon goes, we must ask what it means to be born again into a family in which our sisters and brothers are starving to death….It also becomes scandalous for the church to spend money on windows and buildings when some family members don’t even have water.
I’m convinced that God did not mess up and make too many people and not enough stuff. Poverty was created not by God but by you and me, because we have not learned to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Look into the eyes of the ones who are hardest for you to like, and see the One you love.
While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness (after all, it is a fruit of the Spirit), I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.
…what is crazier: one person owning the same amount of money as the combined economies of twenty-three countries, or suggesting that if we shared, there would be enough for everyone?
Someday war and poverty will be crazy, and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist. Some of us have just caught a glimpse of the beauty of the promised land, and it is so dazzling that our eyes are forever fixed on it, never to look back at the way of that old empire again.
i have so many thoughts swimming through my head. i just finished reading “the irresistible revolution.”
it’s nice to know i’m not as crazy as it sometimes feels i am. that’s hard to break down. example: i voted third party in the last election. some people’s comments made it seem like i was naïve or didn’t put enough thought into my vote. i’m not crazy.
i am taking two major thoughts away from this book.
1) the vision and drive to help eradicate poverty in other countries, and even in our own, is coming largely from unbelievers. this should not be. but if we don’t cry out, the rocks will, right? and they have been…
2) “Almost every time we talk with affluent folks about God’s will to end poverty, someone says, “But didn’t Jesus say, ‘The poor will always be with you’?” Many of the people who whip out this verse have grown quite insulated and distant from the poor and feel defensive. I usually gently ask, “Where are the poor? Are the poor among us?” The answer is usually a clear negatory…Far from saying in defeat that we should not worry about the poor, since they will always be among us, Jesus is pointing the church to her true identity – she is to live close to those who suffer.”
that’s a big one for me. i hear that objection a lot. and it has always been unsettling. anytime you get worked up about poverty, someone says that! as if that’s an excuse for not weeping for those who suffer. not just donating money or serving dinner to homeless people on thanksgiving, but actually grieving the fact that people live in poverty. are the poor with me? not just out in the world somewhere, but sitting on my front porch or in the pew next to me at church.
it is hard to have passions and dreams that other people explain away, or don’t feel themselves.. it is discouraging to feel hope for change, but not know how to bring it about. this book has definitely helped me process a lot that has been stirring inside me for the past few years. which is too long. when i graduated, i had a super hard time trying to find a job. even though i have one of those magical college degrees. so i began to imagine how hard it must be for people who don't have one...which opened the door to a lot more questions.
and now i can never go back to ignoring poverty, or how it happens. or blaming the people in poverty for not working hard enough.
i don’t feel like saying anything else. i don’t really know what to say. or do. but i’m so glad i go to a church that has the same crazy dreams, and can help me figure it all out.
just read these quotes. believe it or not, i narrowed it down.
Meanwhile, many of us find ourselves estranged from the narrow issues that define conservatives and from the shallow spirituality that marks liberals. We are thirsty for social justice and peace but have a hard time finding a faith community that is consistently pro-life or that recognizes that there are “moral issues” other than homosexuality and abortion, moral issues like war and poverty.
We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.
If you ask most people what Christians believe, they can tell you, “Christians believe that Jesus is God’s Son and that Jesus rose from the dead.” But if you ask the average person how Christians live, they are struck silent. We have not shown the world another way of doing life.
Sometimes we speak to change the world; other times we speak to keep the world from changing us. We are about ending poverty, not simply managing it. We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.
We try to make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so the few can live as they wish.
It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle.
Once we are actually friends with folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity.
When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive. She ceases to be something we are, the living bride of Christ. The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. Both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get clothed and fed), but no one leaves transformed. No radical new community is formed.
As we consider what it means to be “born again,” as the evangelical jargon goes, we must ask what it means to be born again into a family in which our sisters and brothers are starving to death….It also becomes scandalous for the church to spend money on windows and buildings when some family members don’t even have water.
I’m convinced that God did not mess up and make too many people and not enough stuff. Poverty was created not by God but by you and me, because we have not learned to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Look into the eyes of the ones who are hardest for you to like, and see the One you love.
While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness (after all, it is a fruit of the Spirit), I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.
…what is crazier: one person owning the same amount of money as the combined economies of twenty-three countries, or suggesting that if we shared, there would be enough for everyone?
Someday war and poverty will be crazy, and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist. Some of us have just caught a glimpse of the beauty of the promised land, and it is so dazzling that our eyes are forever fixed on it, never to look back at the way of that old empire again.
november 7th.
what do you do when one of your best friends gets MARRIED, and you can't go to the wedding?
you feel sad that you can't be there.
you think about how the word "congratulations" is not quite enough to convey what you feel.
you steal a picture of them off of facebook to put on your blog, and don't really care how creeped out you would feel if someone did that with your picture.
you remember how a few months before they started dating, you totally called it. which is more impressive when you remember that you didn't know her name, and he lived in another country at the time.
but mostly...
you thank God for something so wonderful, and rejoice with them from halfway across the country.
and once again request that their first daughter be named allison. or renee. just because.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
b.s.
don't know why this song is in my head today. i've never even seen the movie.
there's one movie coming out i'm excited to see. arrested development.
i thought about that today because a new teacher at our school is from england. and we were talking today (and she is so nice!), and she was talking about england. so i started talking about how i've never been there, but i really love english/british writers. because they're so smart. and funny.
and it reminded me of a few episodes of arrested development. when michael dates a mentally disabled person who has a british accent, he just doesn't notice because of her accent. because it makes her sound smart.
best mocking of stereotypes ever.
there's one movie coming out i'm excited to see. arrested development.
i thought about that today because a new teacher at our school is from england. and we were talking today (and she is so nice!), and she was talking about england. so i started talking about how i've never been there, but i really love english/british writers. because they're so smart. and funny.
and it reminded me of a few episodes of arrested development. when michael dates a mentally disabled person who has a british accent, he just doesn't notice because of her accent. because it makes her sound smart.
best mocking of stereotypes ever.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
