WHOLEHEARTED

"But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it. "

-Numbers 14:24

remember this on the hard days:

"we're a mystery that will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before—"

-e.e. cummings

Love Songs

This blog post may make me sound like a hater of love who is badly in need of a therapist to work through childhood trauma or something.

love songs leave me skeptical. and cynical of whatever it is we as a culture and a generation call love. I'll rock out to them--moved by the beat and taken into the emotions of the words--yet right after that, I'll start to think how ridiculous it would be to ever actually say some of those things to another person. Or to feel that way for someone else. Call me hard, but I can't think of telling someone that I can't survive without them. It sounds so weak to me--so lacking in wholeness. Which means maybe I have a problem being weak? Or maybe I just want to know real love. I'm not sure.

Maybe I'll schedule that counseling session asap to figure this out.

"go not abroad at every quest or call of an untrained hope or passion."
-george herbert

The pace of this last year has literally taken my breath away at times, sometimes from weariness, sometimes from the occasional battle with anxiety about the next step and how all the details would sort out, sometimes from moments of incredible beauty.

Last Christmas and New Years I was in Ireland. The Irish have jokes about people like me--the obvious American who wants to claim the Irish heritage as my own based on great grandparents who lived there three generations ago. I still find it incredibly revelatory to connect with my genealogy--to know what motivated those who went before me.

Then, I was off to Rwanda, right at the beginning of my final semester of college. A fifteen credit work load and a part time job couldn't keep me from that adventure. It changed my life.

As soon as college finished in May, with my hard work to earn that diploma pushing me onto the next phase, my feet led me all over the place. I was up in Indiana making a documentary, across the country in Seattle, exploring mountains and a new culture and even Vancouver, in Delaware working a crazy schedule where I felt like I grew lifetimes older, in California to road trip the coast with my sister--a drive that I will never forget, in Virginia Beach to visit people I've missed greatly and cheer my friends on at a film festival, where their film took the award for best film. And finally the last bit of travel for the 2010 marathon--a trip to Houston to attend a beautiful wedding and catch up with dear friends (Misty Boggs!).

Now I am home. Christmas Eve is tomorrow and I am very much looking forward to the candle lighting service at church. That's one of the few traditions I hate to miss, which says a lot. Then, it's forward march into 2011. A whole new year. A chance to grow and laugh and love.

A chance to allow that hope and passion to get trained so that when the time comes, I'll be ready for the quest.

I hope the training comes easily, even if it is rigorous. I hope that the mission finds me...or at least whispers a hint as to what road it is down. Is that taking away from the brilliance of faith? I'm not sure. I just know that maybe the reason I'm not certain of the focus is because there is still a bit more training needed. I don't want God to let up, if that's the case. A flash in the pan is not the life I want. Faithfulness and longevity...that's what I want to mark my life on this quest. And courage. And most of all, love.

Today I drove to a familiar childhood place nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains. They may not be as large as the Rockies out west, but to me, they feel like home. As I was looking out over the landscape, with the farmland resting so peacefully, surrounded by mountains, I felt tears come to my eyes. For some reason that familiar sight brings me into a chamber of praise, where I can't help but remember how faithful my Father God has been to me my whole life.

I look up to the hills. Where does my help come from? From the Lord.

Amen.

2011 is going to be full of Him. And that makes it already full of brilliance.

I Heart Revolution [excerpt from film]

"It's not hard to see that there's this great inbalance and that things aren't right. You know, I know that, but for me I suppose it really hits home if I stop and think about this moment. Because it's happening right now. In the same moment, you have a generation who are sitting around, entertaining themselves, watching reality television--which to be honest, is anything but real. While you have a child who is being prostituted being closed doors and robbed of their innocence. It's not fair that we can go about consuming every single material option that comes our way while the widow, the orphan are stripped of life's basic dignities because they're victims of a conflict that simply isn't theirs. It's not fair that there is a generation who are choking on their obesity, while at the same time there are 30,000 children who will die today for lack of food. It's not fair that we have no problem spending three or four dollars on what is basically glorified tap water in a bottle with a fancy label, while we have entire communities that suffer at the hands of disease because the only water that they have access to is foul and polluted. It's not fair that we can sing and dance and jump around in our freedom and in our liberty, while at the same time the slave remains captive, out of sight and out of mind. It's not fair that we can sit and watch the evening news from the comfort of our living rooms, and pity those who live where the storm hit or where the ground shook or where the water rose, and simply feel sorry for them and then change the channel, and get on with supper. Is it fair to walk past the homeless man and give him nothing in the assumption that he'll spend it on booze or cigarettes? Or to suggest that he should go out and get a job? Who are we to judge the alcoholic or the prostitute or the addict or the criminal, as if we are any better? Who are we to forget the downtrodden or the oppressed or the marginalized, while we go about chasing the dream? We see this inbalance and say 'that's not right' or 'that's not fair' but all too often that's all we do. Because for us to do anything more is actually going to cost us something. And if that's where it ends, perhaps then it's fair to say that that when we ignore the prostituted child, that we actually lend our hand to their abuse. That when we ignore the widow and the orphan in their distress, that we actually add to their pain. When we ignore the slave who remains captive, then it's us who's entrapping them. That when we forget the refugee, then it's us who's displacing them. That when we choose not to help the poor and the needy, that we actually rob them. Perhaps the only fair thing to say is that when we forsake the lives of others, we actually forsake our own."

this may be your finest hour

I've been thinking about the original Moravian movement frequently over the past few weeks. Even when facing potential ship wreck and martyrdom, they were full of joy, earning the reputation of being a HAPPY PEOPLE. Everyone who came into contact with them noticed the light of God that was in their lives.

"Be joyful always;" Paul said. [1 thess. 5] Paul, the one who was nearly beaten to death several times while preaching the gospel, shipwrecked, left to die...publicly beaten and put in jail, where he SANG joyfully to the Lord, even without any promise of rescue. [acts 16] For him to say, "in everything give thanks" is a heavy statement considering his personal history.

As I think about the letters he wrote to the church, acknowledging the spiritual warfare of this life and the moments of sorrow that bring us to tears, he still always exhorted them to live in joy. Considering what the early church faced, this was no small feat--I would even wager that it was impossible on their own. Revelation must have filled their hearts that THE VERY BLOOD OF CHRIST was pulsing through their bodies and that the SPIRIT OF GOD--the very life of God! was inside of them, enabling them to walk as sons of God, full of power, love, a sound mind.

Reading about the "heroes" who have paved the way for my generation and the present day church, I find myself coming to the conclusion that a theology that does not result in joy, but instead encourages and even prides itself in doom and gloom and piety, is not correct. To live with an inaccurate conclusion of the heart and intent of God is a sad way to exist. Sacrifice produces JOY if it is done out of love. When we are in love with God, nothing is too difficult.

I am not sure what is ahead in the history of our nation, but I have a sense that the church needs to allow the Holy Spirit to lead them into the truth of who God is in an urgent way. That we would be known as happy people when those around us are in fear as the kingdoms of this world start to shake! That the light of God in us would draw the seekers to the Giver of Life! That very moment of shaking could be the church's FINEST HOUR if we only just take God at His word...that if He is FOR US...it doesn't matter who is against us. Ah, what joy! What strength in joy! To stand fast, with joy unspeakable--that is the narrow way.

"...the humanitarian theory [of punishment] wants simply to abolish Justice and substitute Mercy for it. This means that you start being 'kind' to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which no one but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties. You have overshot the mark. Mercy, detached from Justice, gro...ws unmerciful." - C.S. Lewis - God in the Dock

“Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore.

“Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity; and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.

“Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push us into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.”
--Prayer of Sir Francis Drake

something to ponder

"Do we form no friendships because our friends might be taken from us? Do we refuse to love because we may be hurt? Do we forsake our dreams because hope has been deferred? To desire is to open our hearts to the possibility of pain; to shut down our hearts is to die altogether...In the face of this quandary most people decide to bury the whole question and put as much distance as they can between themselves and their desires. It is a logical and tragic act. The tragedy is increased tenfold when this suicide of soul is committed under the conviction that this is precisely what Christianity recommends. We have never been more mistaken" (John Eldredge ~ Desire)

California

This is my second day in Redding, visiting my little sister for Thanksgiving break.

I came here to share in an adventure with my sister who I love dearly, but I also felt like God had it in HIs heart for me to come here at this time. I am ready for a refreshing from the Holy Spirit, but also for a bursting of dreams and a leading into what is next.

I guess in 12 days I will have more to write on the subject of what God is going to do while I am here tons of miles away from what is familiar.

I am excited and so very thankful.

inspired by Julie Meyer (a sermon I heard her preach)

"David, along with Joseph, had an unbelievable promise. SOMETIMES you step right into that promise. Sometimes first you go to jail." -julie meyers

When the story comes full circle, may we look back with the eyes of papa and say, "GOD set this up for good."

What is written about your life in the book that lasts for eternity? Even in the jailhouse, what is your testimony saying?

Hard questions I am asking myself. I want my heart to be full of faith, even when the dream does come right away. Even when no one is looking, our Father is watching.

"We live for the promise, and we set our hearts to get there, but sometimes God sets up divine delays. And in that divine delay, that is the place that God is looking into you to see what is really in your heart. Because He not only creates us to be great, but he wants us great on the depths of the inside. That's true greatness...greatness within us, no matter what season we are in."

"God is always about restoration. Always, always, always."

Even when you feel overlooked, God knows where you are. And God is the only One that counts.

"And David behaved wisely in all his ways. And the Lord was with him."

Psalm 27:4 "One thing I ask of the Lord, and this is what I will seek all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord." <------who David was at the core, regardless of what he achieved or lost...a lover of God.

Don't let what you do define who you are. Be a lover first.

Psalm 75 "Promotion does not come from the east or the west or the south. It comes from God. God raises one up. God presses another down." <----it's the hand of God. And in the season of God pressing you down, that's where He tests your heart. Can you still be a lover there? Will you still believe? How will you set your heart in those moments?

Psalm 84 "Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the valley of baca [weeping], they make it a spring. The rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength..." <-----the key to walking through the Valley of Baca is to KEEP walking. Don't build your house on "poor me" street.

"This too shall pass..." both in the hard times and in the times of favor.

Remember: this season will one day be your history in God. So make it a good one.

do not be moved...

...by fame, favor, finance.

Set your heart. Be lovesick for Jesus.

That's where the ideas of heaven come from--the ideas that change the atmosphere and transform culture.

May the righteous make a statement for God in every sector of society, bold in what God has placed in their hearts, totally surrendered to Him.

nothing less

I wanna be the real deal. In a time when the church is following the lead of the world, trading sincere love for marketing schemes, I ant to be genuine. I want to love from a deep place--I will see that love set people free. The sacrifice Jesus made will not go to waste in my life.

Abba, teach me how to live from the heart, even if it means I get mocked. Work courage of conviction into my heart There's no time to waste...

I don't want polished human ability. I want the raw life of the Spirit.

pick up a pen

take out paper.

dream big, even the big that is scary.

write it down.

teach them to long

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” ( Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

thank you, Audrey

‎"Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain." --Leo Buscaglia.

"Big thinking precedes great achievement." -Wilferd Peterson

Lessons with Anne

My time in Delaware is coming to an end. In less than two days I will pack up my car and head home, back into the unknown.

Next door to where I am staying lives an elderly lady named Anne. She has the most beautiful white hair and a smile that is so full of love. But don't let the smile fool you, because that lady has zero time for beating around the bush. She tells it to me like it is, and I love her for it.

Over the past few months I would stop in to see Anne--mostly to talk about Jesus with her and to catch up on life. I don't think I've experienced fellowship like that in a long time. Her relationship with Jesus is so real and so alive--and her discernment is right on, too. There were days when God would be dealing with me about something, and I would walk into her house and she would know exactly what was going on. Then we would pray, and I would feel things shift. I think she was part of the reason I made it through the past few months of hard work. Her prayers are potent.

Tonight I stopped by for the last time while living in Delaware. I went knowing that I may never see her again after this visit--until heaven. It was a night that I will not forget, one of conversation that was full of wisdom, as she shared with me stories from her years of experience. I felt like I was living in moments that gold could not purchase--it was that precious.

As I was about to leave, she gave me a gift. It was a picture of a geranium that she purchased years ago while living in Connecticut, from a local artist. This morning she found it and thought of me. I cried a bit. When I asked her about the type of flower, she said, "It's what you are. It can grow anywhere." I will never forget that moment of encouragement that brought such life to my spirit.

She said lots of other things--I need to dedicate a whole post to just her words of wisdom. But even without the words, her spirit delivers the message--one of freedom and of living life from the heart. I am so thankful that I met her on my journey. Her face is one that I will never forget.

psalm 119:32

"I shall run the way of Thy Commandments, for Thou wilt enlarge my heart."

Amplified says," I will not merely walk but I will run the way of your Commandments,

back from a hiatus

"the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart."
-proverbs 20:27

My blog hiatus is now over, and it may take some time to actually formulate words again. I'm sure there are many thoughts from the past month or so that will eventually make it onto the computer screen...

That being said, it's been a busy few months. My stint in politics is over, and I feel myself craving academia and art and adventure. I'm thrilled by the idea that there are no limits--that God is faithful to my heart because He's the one who formed it and placed dreams on the inside of me. Sometimes I wonder if the times He takes us through that are uncomfortable and "out of our element" are partly meant to remind us of what we are meant to do, creating an intensity inside of us that will pursue that call even when things get rough.

I wonder exactly what it means to have the inner depths of the heart searched out; if it is both a purging and a stirring. I'm sure that it is full of paradox, just like the Kingdom.

The purging of the last few months came at high levels of heat--working long hours in close quarters, seven days a week. There were times where I felt like I was observing myself from outside of myself, wondering what choices I would make and if I would pursue love. I failed multiple times, wondering if the prodigal child really does make it home to the Father in the end, scared that I would allow myself to harden up when things didn't go how I may have desired.

But God is faithful, and He is always there, ready to give a big hug. He gave me lots of hugs over the past few months, and for that I am still alive. :) Some of those hugs came in the form of real flesh--people who have become like family to me--people who I would give my life for if it was ever necessary. I don't think money can buy that kind of an experience; one where I am challenged to love more deeply and more fully--and where I get to experience that same kind of love from others. It's better than all the gold in the world.

There is so much more to write, I'm sure. It will come...

For now, I am just going where I feel the Holy Spirit lead, and I know that it will continue to be more than worth any sacrifice that must be paid.

God, thank you for your faithfulness.

"I was conscious that in some strange way I was instinctively speaking and feeling in harmony with the great majority of the population.
Such moments are as unforgettable as they are rare. They must be seized to change history."

The words of Margaret Thatcher.

writing is good therapy.

I bought a brand new journal a few weeks ago. Since then, I've barely written in the pages, which is not normal for this daily journaler. Maybe that's why i feel disconnected from life and a little bit sad.

what really matters?

"our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter." -tim kizziar

__________________________

I've been pondering this concept for months, so when a friend sent me this quote by tim kizziar, my heart connected with it immediately.

Hard work and lofty goals are the American way. And yet, the very ethic that this nation celebrates and has boasted in, is the same one that can take people down paths they were never ordained to travel. In the end, maybe they made money, maybe they impacted lives, maybe they did cool things--but imagine what could have been had the proper time been given to sitting and dreaming and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit--and then leaving that dreaming session ready to risk everything for the things stirring in your heart.

I think a few have taken that path. I want to live life that way--dreaming and risking and loving--succeeding at the things that matter.

excited for autumn

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting
and autumn a mosaic of them all."
- Stanley Horowitz

Will He Find Faith In My Heart?

Oswald Chambers’ Utmost for His Highest has a way of speaking to my heart daily in an almost prophetic clarity.

This morning, nine years and a day after the tragedy of 9-11, I’m remembering with the vivid detail left after a bad dream. Sitting in Child Development in ninth grade, I was a fourteen year old girl full of the normal mixture of big dreams and deep insecurities. As I was trying to pay attention in class while also feeling distracted by my own thoughts, our teacher broke the news to us that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. My dad showed up at my school to get me out early, afraid that the army base right by our house was also a target due to its high level of chemical warfare research.

The details of the day poured through the airwaves, with every news station unable to report anything else. I heard from my uncle that friends who he went to law school with and worked on the upper floors of the WTC couldn’t be found. The Pentagon, just an hour from where I grew up, was also hit. Would we lose someone we knew personally? Only time would tell, as the rescue teams reported to the scenes to save all that they could, some even giving their own lives for the sake of another.

Bravery and love combated the fear of the attacks. And our hearts broke for those lost. And we made vows to never forget. Yet, vows are hard to keep when comfort returns and we revert back to the numbing existence of modernity that no longer remembers with the same intensity the pain of that day.

And that leaves me with questions. Why did it happen?

There are mysteries of life that I do not understand—secrets that stay hidden from me for the time being. Whispers of future tense come occasionally, revealing something about the heart and intent of God, but often I’m left with the sense that I know nothing. The wisdom and knowledge that I am purposing to cultivate in my life fall short in tackling the events of 9-11. Sometimes there are no answers. Just tears and a heart that hopes we remain tender towards others, loving more and more with each day.

Oswald Chambers wrote about confusion in his September 12th excerpt. I felt it applied both directly and indirectly to my thoughts and my questions about God’s friendship and His faithfulness and the way He works.

The Shrouding of His Friendship. Luke 11:5-8. Jesus gave the illustration of the man who looked as if he did not care for his friend, and He said that that is how the Heavenly Father will appear to you at times. You will think He is an unkind friend, but remember He is not; the time will come when everything will be explained. There is a cloud on the friendship of the heart, and often even love itself has to wait in pain and tears for the blessing of fuller communion. When God looks completely shrouded, will you hang on in confidence in Him?

I want to hang on to Him in confidence. Chambers continues and ends with this,

The Strangeness of His Faithfulness. Luke 18:1-8. "When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" Will He find the faith which banks on Him in spite of the confusion? Stand off in faith believing that what Jesus said is true, though in the meantime you do not under stand what God is doing. He has bigger issues at stake than the particular things you ask.

Will He find faith in my heart?

soon

Let's travel the world with just a big dream
and a few dollars.
With just faith and a lot of heart.

when will the words flow again?!?

I want to write so bad and yet I'm experiencing terrible writer's block.

I just don't understand.

overnight alterations

I returned home to Maryland tonight after my fourth week of work up in Delaware, in which I've been challenged (in a way that I hope is causing me to grow) and also blessed by new friendships with individuals who I am honored to know.

Not only have I felt myself growing and changing, but over the course of a week, the dynamics of my family have altered in ways that I knew would come, just not this soon.


My little brother was hanging out with his friends when I opened the door and dragged in my bags. He yelled, "Hey!" and gave me a big hug, asking me about my job and how I was doing. He just started his junior year at a new high school. He's working, playing soccer, and driving himself around. I didn't expect for one summer to change him in such dramatic ways, nor did I anticipate that the seven years between us would one day come to feel so small. My little brother isn't so little anymore. The tenderness and care that were present in him even as a little boy are now coming out in this young man who is growing into a leader. I am so proud of him.


After catching up a bit with him, I went downstairs to do a load of laundry and started to look for a clean, semi-cute outfit to wear while my clothing was in the washer. I couldn't find anything, and that's because the fashionista in the family, my sister Brianna, left this morning for California. She's one day into her cross-country roadtrip to Redding, where she will attend Bethel for a year. I miss her already.


I started thinking about the random technological devices in my house, and realized that the essence of another was also missing. Siobhan led the way to California a few years ago, and she just moved back a week ago after spending all summer at a camp up in New York. I think she has the west coast bug and probably won't be coming back east for a long time. I was able to see her for a few hours while she was home, and amazement does not even begin to describe my reaction to how much she grew over the summer. This gutsy sister of mine started sharing the journey that God's been taking her on in learning to believe in herself and stand up for the things that He's placed in her heart. I started to tear up. Her courage challenges me. She's faced hard things in life, yet there is this feisty boldness that she is walking in that refuses to give up. It's incredible.


My heart may be feeling the intensity of these changes so deeply because of how close all of us are to each other. I consider my siblings to be some of my best friends in the whole world, and maybe that closeness came from sharing experiences (a number of them painful) that no one else may ever fully understand--and having to learn how to fight for one another, even on those days when we don't necessarily "like" each other.

I wasn't prepared for everything to change so quickly, even if that is the normal progression of life. Childhood feels even further away with each growth spurt, yet I know that no matter how tall we may grow, both individually and as a family, we will never be too tall to kneel down and remember the days of tent building, hide & seek, tickle monster, homework, strange school experiences, telling jokes that only we got, midnight swim sessions, prank calls, random adventures. Even the days of hurting for each other during the personal battles that hit in those awkward growing up years (and still hit from time to time)--and realizing that sometimes rescue comes in the form of a hug, a passionate prayer, and an emergency trip to the ice cream shop.

I'm excited, though. I'm excited that the home front is becoming an empty nest and that we are all coming into our own--learning to fly at our own stride. There is no telling the stories that will come our way in the next year--the great adventures that we will find ourselves in as we are continually surrendering to the grandness of a story bigger than ourselves, into the hands of a Father who orders each of our steps. In that I will trust, even in the moments where the changes leave me feeling a bit in the dark. He is faithful to our hearts. And that is a forever kind of faithfulness. The kind that has no comprehension of an end.

---


Wait on the LORD,
And keep His way,
And He shall exalt you to inherit the land; [Psalm 37:34]

"I hate them for making hate necessary, and I'll do what I can to end it." — Michael Collins, revolutionary founder of the Irish Free State

“The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.” - Thomas More

"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.” - Thomas Aquinas

"I would never wish my upbringing upon anyone....but I wouldn't take it back for the world."

-Mary Kate Olsen

"For broken dreams the key is dream again and deeper"
C.S. Lewis

Every minute
of every day
of every life
is a full library.

-Colquhoun

yes.

"The time had come for me to site my building, to fix this dream of mine to the earth."

-Michael Pollan

I would like to build a place like this

"...the 'hut dream.'...it’s a wonderful idea...It’s a very poetic idea: that we’re drawn toward it. We have a dream of huts. And you see it in children who will make a hut out a blanket and two chairs, or even just underneath a table.

You know, I built a literal hut. But even in a modern office building, where everybody has these little cubicles made out of God knows what. People turn those into huts."

-Michael Pollan, author of “A Place of My Own"


Excerpt from "A Place of My Own"

Is there anybody who hasn't at one time or another wished for such a place, hasn't turned those soft words over until they'd assumed a habitable shape? What they propose, to anyone who admits them into the space of a daydream, is a place of solitude a few steps off the beaten track of everyday life. Beyond that, though, the form the dream takes seems to vary with the dreamer. Generally the imagined room has a fixed terrestrial address, whether located deep within the family house--or out in the woods under its own roof. For some people, though, the same dream can just as easily assume a vehicular form. I'm thinking of the one-person cockpit or cabin, a mobile room in which to journey some distance from the shore of one's usual cares. Fixed or mobile, a dream of escape is what this probably sounds like. But it's more like a wish for a slightly different angle on things--for the view from the tower, or tree line, or the bobbing point a couple hundred yards off the coast. It might be a view of the same old life, but from out here it will look different, the outlines of the self a little more distinct.

In my own case, there came a moment--a few years shy of my fortieth birthday, and on the verge of making several large changes in my life--when the notion of a room of my own, and specifically, of a little wood-frame hut in the woods behind my house, began to occupy my imaginings with a mounting insistence. This in itself didn't surprise me particularly. I was in the process of pulling my life up by the roots, all at once becoming a father, leaving the city where I'd lived since college, and setting out on an uncertain new career. Indeed, it would have been strange if I hadn't entertained fantasies of escape or, as I preferred to think of it, simplification--of reducing so many daunting new complexities to something as stripped-down and uncomplicated as a hut in the woods. What was surprising, though, and what had no obvious cause or explanation in my life as it had been lived up to then, was a corollary to the dream: I wanted not only a room of my own, but a room of my own making. I wanted to build this place myself.

start from the center

"start from the center, at the very heart of the circle from where the whole thing derives is source and meaning: and here we come back again to that forgotten, outcast word, the soul."

-from "The Poetics of Space" by Gaston Bachelard

"In Memory of W.B. Yeats"

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining Voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

-W.H. Auden

… & how I feel your heart beat slowly out there in the garden
as we both see the
dove
in the
youngest acacia,
& how it is making its nest again this year, how it chose the second ranking
offshoot
again, how the young tree strains at the stake in the wind, & within,
the still head of the mother sitting as if all time
came down to
this, the ringed neck, the
mate’s call from the
roof, & how we both know not to move—me inside at the window, deep
summer, dusk,
you in the line of sight of the
bird, & also
of the hawk changing sides of the field as
usual,
& the swallows riding the lowest currents, reddish, seeking their feed.

-Graham

The Violinist at the Window, 1918 (after Matisse)

but I pick it up again, the
violin, it is
still here
in my left hand, it has been tied to me all this long time—I shall hold it, my
one burden, I shall hear the difference between up
and
down, & up we shall bring the bow now up &
down, & find
the note, sustained, fixed, this is what hope forced upon oneself by one’s
self sounds
like—this high note trembling—

-Graham

"Positive Feedback Loop"

we

shall walk

out into the porch and the evening shall come on around us, unconcealed,

blinking, abundant, as if catching sight of us,

everything in and out under the eaves, even the grass seeming to push up into this our

world as if out of

homesickness for it,

gleaming.

-Jorie Graham

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

Carl Jung

In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

-From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (Malvalio)

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
- Mark Twain

‎"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it." - John Adams

"Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger and Courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are." - St. Augustine.

"The capacity for unclouded enjoyment, she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools; an inviolate peace of spirit is not the achievement of a drifter; to be able to laugh like that is the end result of the most profound, most solemn thinking."

-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

sometimes the only safe place for my thoughts to go is into my new brown leather journal.

there are a lot of thoughts that need to be kept safely right now.

The capacity of the life of the heart...

has me on a search.

Burn out or grow in passion--that's the question, the choice.

I'm amazed that a heart has the ability to go through intense warfare and still, if it chooses to go the route of healing, become both stronger and more able to love.

That paradox is a miracle to me, that pain can bring forth depths of beauty that no poem can adequately describe.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who can’t read & write,
but those who can’t learn, unlearn & relearn.” – Alvin Toffler

Men are only as great as they are kind.
-Elbert Hubbard

Those who live in his shadow will again raise grain, and they will blossom like the vine. His renown will be like the wine of Lebanon. O Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you I am like a luxuriant cypress; From Me comes your fruit. Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; Whoever is discerning, let him know them for the ways of the LORD are right, and the righteous will walk in them, but transgressors will stumble in them.

-hosea 14:7-9

"Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
-Henry David Thoreau

This morning, I felt like God said to me,

"If you were only supposed to love those you find it easy to love, it would be a much wider road. My way is the narrow way. Follow Me."

He started exposing my heart to the weightiness of the cross--and how the unforgiveness and offense that I've allowed to enter my heart have no right to be there--and they will only destroy me. A clear heart is the best way to live--a heart where the rivers of living water flow without any blockage.

I read this right after that conversation. It's from the book Viktor Frankl wrote after he lived through the horrors of the Holocaust,

"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true." (Man's Search For Meaning)

That small paragraph holds such food for thought. As I read it, I feel the standard for my life being raised, but only because I know that Jesus does this with me every day. He loves me fully--He is fully aware of my essence and believes in my tomorrow--and fights for me today. Only because of His love can I love. I want to embark on a journey that discovers the fullness of love and life that is found in Him.

“Only those who look with the eyes of children can lose themselves in the object of their wonder” -eberhard arnold


I am learning...

"The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing."
(psalm 34:10)

Holding Patterns and Purity

The other day, my brother and I walked down our street (isn’t it funny to call a street “ours”?) to pay a visit to the local lemonade stand that some of the children in our neighborhood set up.

Personal protocol for such an adventure: go with bare feet and extra change—even when walking across gravel.

As we paid our 50 cents (and hopefully a little extra), memories of childhood days spent dreaming and risking came at me like a wave—I saw that distant picture of a little girl with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I remember the days of my own summer lemonade stands. I believed that such an endeavor could bring in record amounts of money to fund our (meaning my younger siblings who helped hold up signs for their bossy big sister) addiction to sugar. And it did. After a hard day of sign waving, shouting to get the attention of our neighbors, and replacing the lemonade after hitting a jackpot of thirsty customers, we would evenly distribute that hard earned change to each kid, put it into a plastic baggie, and walk a few blocks to the local candy store to purchase cowtales and now&laters.

In my heart, there was an innate knowing that the sky is the limit. Dream a dream. Put action to that dream. Nothing is impossible.

These days my ambitions have seemingly grown beyond earning a few dollars by selling lemonade. And everything feels far away and impossible. (Maybe that’s what happens with the transition into a grown up world—a world that some kids know from too young of an age )

Unfortunately, ambition seems to be less appealing than advertised.

I’m not really a fan.

Maybe a kid who makes and sells lemonade for a chance to go buy a candy bar that evening holds a secret that beats out ambition. Maybe it’s in the simplicity of the endeavor. Maybe it’s in the lack of worry about whether the business will succeed or fail. After all, there’s still dinner waiting at the table when the day comes to an end, regardless of whether any customers come by that day.
In a world where success and failure define how we view ourselves and operate, what a miracle to have eyes that glow with the raw pleasure of being free and able to execute a marvelous plan well and not care whether it succeeds or fails.
That’s what I want.

I write this while my life feels like it is in a holding pattern of sorts. I’m not sure what is ahead, but for now it is in waiting that I am expecting brilliance. The last month of summer is here and the last few months are filled with stories of brokenness and growth and deep down joy.

Dreams are starting to stir again. But more importantly, I feel faith expanding in my heart to make the leap from dreams to action—the risk factor that’s been missing the past few years.

Dreams for the nation of Nicaragua—for the people that I fell in love with at twelve years old. Dreams of filmmaking and medical missions and being a voice of truth. Dreams of family dinners and laughing children and bedtime stories. Dreams of living a life fully surrendered to Jesus, found daily in the amazing story of his death and resurrection. Dreams of sailboats and cool summer nights and friendships full of God’s love. Dreams of travel and adventure and growing a garden full of fresh vegetables and flowers.

And as these dreams are returning, I’m noticing now the wisdom of God to bring us into holding patterns. He takes those moments where the dreams are not coming and life is mundane to teach a lesson deeper than the emotions of a stirred up dream. In the daily grind there is brilliance in the cultivation of character—in learning that a dream comes attached with a price to pay that is not for a heart that is easily dismayed. Until I have the character to walk out the weight of a heavenly dream, there will not be a foundation to keep me steady when the waves hit and the wind blows. And that puts the fear of God into my heart.

"you were not meant to sit in the shade of life."

"Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when it is, of course, the cross."
~Flannery O'Connor

the sound of your goodness

"Over the brokenness, into the emptiness, You are singing again. /Words of redemption and songs of deliverance, healing that comes in Your name./Echoing down through the ages, hearts are freed at the sound of Your voice./It's the sound of Your goodness, the sound of hope filling the air./It's the call of Your kingdom, awakening faith on the earth." (kathryn scott, "deliverance")

over the hearts where hope's been destroyed, louder and louder, it is Your voice.

(http://www.myspace.com/kathrynscottmusic)

----------------------

for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
- George Eliot,
Middlemarch

We do not want you to copy or imitate us. We want to be like a ship that has crossed the ocean, leaving a wake of foam, which soon fades away. We want you to follow the Spirit, which we have sought to follow, but which must be sought anew in every generation.
-First generation Quakers

I've Found a Historical Soulmate! :)

writing by Eberhard Arnold. (http://www.plough.com/ebooks/pdfs/EberhardArnold.pdf)

Do not be surprised that I talk with you as if you were still right with me. For what does the present know of what is yonder? You are not dead; no, you are alive in the Spirit...

And now we are together again, my friend, at Sannerz, in the Rhön, and in my study on the banks of the Neckar:

The people come and go, young and old, looking for refuge in their need. They are wrapped up in themselves, unnatural, cramped and stiffened, exaggerated, without a goal beyond themselves. And yet your house has an open door; no one is first asked who he is...

We work in the fields and in the house. Together we toil for an understanding of the people and events around us. I see the roguish glint in your eyes, your mischievous smile and waggish beard, your cheerful laugh when the peculiarities of human life force themselves upon us. We are often wearied with dull, commonplace talk, but we also laugh freely and heartily, in gales of truly Homeric laughter...

That was your gift. Your wit was pithy, but free of poisonous hypocrisy. You had no love for stuffiness or sweetness. About you there was no penetrating smell of “Christianity,” no cliquishness, no sentimentality. To seek out heretics was just as foreign to you as was the addiction to straighten out everyone according to your own way. You valued other people as long as they were earnest, and you came to terms with the insincere. You found a way with the most pigheaded peasant and with the most stubborn “man of God.” You were a brother to them when they needed you, and your manner was at all times cheerful, genuinely animated by trust.

You lived life from the center and from the depths. You did not inherit Christ from others, but from out of your own inner experience and encounter. You were one who was truly freed by Christ, who was changed by him. You were free of anxiety. Your faith was no mere acceptance of truths, no flight of fear, but certainty. And therefore there was nothing of conventional Christianity in you, for you knew precisely that Christ was no “Christian.”
You opposed all appearance, all posturing and all self-righteousness. You were not concerned with dogma, but rather with the life of Christ, with the community of brothers and sisters in the sense of the primitive church.

You took humanity for what it is. You were as distant from illusion as from misunderstanding. You knew demonic powers and the weight of the age, but these things came to you not in isolated recognition, but as a binding call to help your brothers.
You knew the power of the church community within the great current of a completely different world. But you never recruited. Whoever was called, heard, and thus came to you; some to live with you and your friends in community; others, touched by your insight, to remain as good friends...

Let me embrace you, my friend! You are present - a witness of the new life in Christ; a man of kindness, a friend of freedom, a brother of knowing love - but yet one of such decisiveness that you discern and separate spirits.

We had no financial basis of any kind for realizing our dreams of starting a new life. But that made no difference. It was time to turn our backs on the past, and start afresh... to burn all our bridges, and put our trust entirely in God
like the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. This trust was to be our foundation - the surest foundation, we felt, on which to build.

-Emmy von Hollander Arnold

This past year has been an interesting chapter of my journey. One common thread that has shown up often over the last several months is the idea and practice of honor. I'm convinced that honor is a direct reflection of love, and that to the degree that love is present in my heart, that is the degree to which I will honor my fellow man, regardless of upbringing, appearance, race, etc.

Luke 10:25-37

The story of the good samaritan challenges me every time I read it. Stories have a way of sticking with us, so the percentage of remembering a story beyond the time of first hearing it seems higher than the hearing of straight facts. Therefore, this parable has a potency in its virtue that disrupts my life often, challenging me when I don't want to be inconvenienced because I've heard the story once...and it won't leave me alone.

When something won't leave you alone, it's probably wise to pay attention to what it's teaching you.

And so the story goes. A man who is beaten up and left for dead on the side of the road. People walk by, seeing him, but not really "seeing". They have no compassion for the man because, well, he's just not worth their time and in their minds, quite possibly, their thoughts tend towards "society is better off if he is dead." Maybe they have families at home on their mind or maybe they are in the middle of formulating their next sermon for church about how to become richer or how to feel good about yourself. Those self help gurus with all their expertise in religion and law and the betterment of society just walk on by. To be fair, maybe the two men who passed by were simply afraid of what would happen to them if they did help. But fear is the biggest enemy to life, so I'm not sure if that justifies their response...

In enters the Samaritan, who has earned the description of "good" throughout the ages. I'm not sure why Jesus chose a Samaritan to embody this lesson of kindness, except for that in making the compassionate one a samaritan, a race hated by jesus' target audience, Jesus was turning expectations upside down. To have a hated man become the hero of the story must have challenged mindsets. Yet, Jesus was showing the capability of man to walk in such deep love, that even when hated and rejected, he still chooses to honor and serve.

So he stops. He bandages up the man bruised and dying by the side of the road, takes him to a place where he can heal, pays for his expenses.

And in this lies the challenge that I feel--to live with honor towards everyone--even towards those who may hate me the most. because in reality, what right do I have to even be affected by hate, in light of the Cross? How can that be something that even permeates my mind when I am living in the Light and Love of God?

As love becomes the blood that courses through my veins, my thoughts are affected, and thus my behavior. A culture is created in my life, and it directs the way I behave, regardless of the inconvenience of the "situations" that present themselves to be Jesus to the broken. Why? Because the culture I carry is in essence who I am. I can't not be that person, even when the most heartbreaking things happen...

And in these thoughts I realize how cheap words are. I'm glad I could somewhat write out what has been stirring in my heart, yet it means so little as merely words. When it is lived out--that's the real mark of glory--the real supernatural.

I want to talk less and just live. Live from the heart. Live from a place of love and honor for all--where the Spirit leads me and my feet follow His. His feet are always moving towards the broken. His heart is always groaning with a longing to restore and renew.

And so I walk. Slow, steady, faithful...eyes on Him...knowing that one day I will stand before Him and I want to look into His incredible eyes of love with no regrets.

learning to be steady...

a brilliant consequence of slowing down.

To be Simple. [this man's words are changing my life]

To be simple, to be genuine, to have nothing to do with anything forced, unnatural, or artificial - these things have been of consuming importance to us from the very beginning of our life together. We wanted to live close to creation and nature. We longed to be so natural in our belief in God and in our understanding of His creation that no religious influence of any kind would be able to divert us from a childlike and simple way of living.

We realized that life in Church community is not possible unless it is completely natural. We knew that the common life would be lost if it were lulled into some form of artificial piety, if we were to adopt a language full of pious words that did not spring from deep roots, did not come genuinely from our hearts.

As with language, so it is with everything else. One legacy of the Youth Movement is our attitude toward nature. It was not just romanticism that made us rejoice in meadows and flowers, woods and mountains. To experience nature helped us to come closer to the beginnings, to creation itself. We would have nothing to do with anything that did not spring straight from the innermost source.

Now it is my sincere longing that our common life spring directly from the ground of the heart, just as it is given to each one of us; that all false piety, all hypocrisy, be ruled out and what is natural be allowed to grow. We ask God to grant us a life full of this inner vitality, as alive as the plants, the stars, and the animals; as full of vitality as the birth and development of a child. May this be given in the life of each one of us. Then we shall know true faithfulness.

We should appreciate work on the land, especially in farm and garden, because of its closeness to nature, its intrinsic genuineness. It provides us with our daily food from God’s hand, which gives us strength to cope with all that the heart and mind are called to do.

Eberhard Arnold - March 1935.

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." -Acts 1:8

I have always been a "to the ends of the earth" kind of person, always wanting to travel and go to places I've never seen. This longing for other lands and people will never go away, I'm positive, yet this summer it is my "Judea" that has been growing in my heart. God has been showing me my city--my "land"--and giving me a heart that loves the place of my roots. It needs life just as bad as any other place. And even more than that, there is such a vibrancy to this city that I never noticed before. Maybe I missed it due to familiarity, which was rubbed off my eyes while away for two years. I'm not sure. All I know is that while I still have a desire to fly, there is a more present desire to love my land and to invest my life in the portion that God has given to me at this point.

what is my destiny?

simply this:

to become a son of God. In becoming a son, I am becoming love. In becoming love, I am becoming an ambassador for a Kingdom that turns the table the changes the climate...darkness to light.

that's it.

So...be a son. Be passionate about the things God has gifted you with and allow Him to develop His character in you. And never ever ever dishonor another person just because you do not understand the things that stir their heart. For too long, giftings have been shut down because the church cared more about control than about releasing people, more about their way being right than about going low in order to serve. We need to change that culture.

Because the condition of your heart is reflected in how you think and that=the culture that your life carries (the presence that you carry when you walk into a room). How you think is directly reflected in how you treat people. Judgment and condemnation are not the spirits I want to walk in. Sons honor and restore...

just some thoughts.

Lend me your eyes...

"...I can change what you see."

My heart is overflowing with stories today. I was reading an article about Faith Church in Budapest, Hungary and how God is moving in a former Communist nation to bring freedom from the past. I read a story about a family who was known through Hungary for being one of the cruelest crime families, yet when God got ahold of them, they were changed--even unto their very name. No longer is their last name one that evokes terror. God totally changed the definition that they existed from. That's the Gospel.

I've been thinking about the way the decisions we make have such strong consequences. I wrote a few weeks ago in my journal:

"There are some journeys you embark on that never let you go back to what once was. There are some doors you open and enter that destroy your identity and take your name. Only Jesus can restore your name."

He is the one who can come and restore identity and redeem a name that has been wrecked by sin and shame and guilt...which means that we all are in need of restoration. But I think it is so incredible that a whole family in Hungary is no longer known for their crime, but for their love for Jesus. That's amazing.

I think that when we give God our eyes, He does change what we see. He changes how we think and how we live, and then as our lives begin to take on His character and likeness, everywhere we go, His presence is bringing life and light. It's true. I know it.

arm linked with legacy

My grandma and I went on a trip to the bank today right before lunch. As we left the house, she put her arm inside of mine, and we proceeded down the sidewalk. Slowly I helped her get into the car.

As we finished up our errand with the bank, she asked if there was a McDonalds close by. We drove across the street for some food and caffeine (yep, she definitely drinks just as much coffee as me). As I helped my almost 90 year old grandma get out of the car, she once again linked her arm inside of mine, and tears welled up in my eyes. In the flash of a second, the blink of an eye, I was struck quiet by the realization of the immense honor I've been given to have this woman in my life. In her there are stories and experiences that stretch to a time in history that feels so distant from today--and yet here she is, her arm in mine, the sacredness of her story right beside me and now inside of me.

I am in awe of this woman and her strength--I am in awe of God and His goodness to allow me to have this opportunity to have her arm linked inside of mine.

Summer holds so much happiness, like lightning bugs, swimming pools, outdoor porch sleepovers, late night movies, shorts, no-make-up days that last for weeks, tanned skin, natural pedicures, outdoor concerts, random camping trips, ultimate frisbee, enough time to read good books and spend time with good friends...

Yet, even in summer, sadness occurs. There are still things that happen to prompt grief...

A few weeks ago my dad was the on call clergy for the city detention center. Every year he volunteers for two weeks and rotates with other pastors. While on call, he received a phone call from the jail.

A 21 year old boy found a way to hang himself.

From what I hear, he was a good kid with a really sweet spirit--lots ahead of him once he kicked the drugs. And my heart broke for his family--and for a kid my age who didn't find life worth living anymore.

My response was, "That's it"...whatever it takes to give at least one person hope and a chance to believe that their future can be better than their past...

God, break my heart for the things that break Your heart. And as You do, give me the faith and courage to obey.

remembering

Tomorrow morning, one year ago, my little sister woke me up with the words,

"Caitlin, get up. Mr. Booth died."

My first thought was, "No way. I was just with him in Nicaragua." I figured that if everyone just went back to bed, when we woke up later in the morning we'd all realize that it was all just a dream and that he was still at home with his family, enjoying a nice meal and some pleasant laughs.

It wasn't a dream. Early that morning, he was in a helicopter that hit an electric line. An explosion occurred instantly and no passenger made it back home alive as the copter spun down to I-70, under an hour car drive from Mr. Booth's home.

And we were left with the question of why.

Since that question will never be answered here on earth, I'm just left with an ache that misses a friend--and that still grieves for the family members who are left to grapple with the pain.

Challenging Spoken Word

Click Here

Rinneadb Aisling Duinn--We Saw a Vision

In the darkness of despair, we saw a vision. We lit the light of hope. And it was not extinguished. In the desert of discouragement, we saw a vision. We planted the tree of valor.
And it blossomed.
In the Winter of bondage, we saw a vision. We melted the snow of lethargy.
And the river of resurrection flowed from it.
We sent our vision aswim like a swan on the river. The vision became a reality. Winter became Summer. Bondage became Freedom.
And this we left to you as your inheritance.
Oh Generations of Freedom, remember us, the Generations of the Vision...

-Liam MacUistin, 1976
Inscription on the wall of the National Garden of Remembrance, Dublin, Ireland

my inspiration for today

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
Chinese Proverb

J.B.Phillips on the early church

“It is impossible to spend several months in close study of the remarkable short book, conventionally known as the Acts of the Apostles, without being profoundly stirred and to be honest, disturbed. The reader is stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in human history. The newborn church, as vulnerable as any human child, having neither money, influence nor power in the ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully and courageously to win the pagan world for God through Christ. The young Church, like all young creatures, is appealing in its simplicty and single-heartedness. Here we are seeing the Church in its first youth, valiant and unspoiled -- a body of ordinary men and women joined in an unconquerable fellowship never before seen on this earth.

Yet we cannot help feeling disturbed as well as moved, for this surely is the Church as it was meant to be. It is vigrorous and flexible, for these are the days before it ever became fat and short of breath through prosperity or muscle-bound by over-organisation. These men did not make "acts of faith," they believed, they did not "say their prayers," they really prayed. They did not hold conferences on psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick. But if they were uncomplicated and naive by modern standards we have ruefully to admit that they were open on the God-ward side in a way that is almost unknown today.

No one can read this book without being convinced that there is Someone here at work besides mere human beings. Perhaps because in their very simplicity, perhaps because of their readiness to believe, to obey, to give, to suffer, and if need be to die, the Spirit of God found what surely He must always be seeking - a fellowship of men and women so united in love and faith that He can work in them and through them with the minimum of let or hindrance. Consequently it is a matter of sober historical fact that never before has any small body of ordinary people so moved the world that their enemies could say, with tears of rage in their eyes, that these men "have turned the world upside down"! (Acts 17:6)
J.B.Phillips: Preface to "The Young Church in Action"

--
"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." (Yann Martel, "Life of Pi")
--
"But because God was so gracious, so very generous, here I am. And I'm not about to let his grace go to waste."

"Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it--because it does." (Paul, 1 Corinthians)
--
"Let the great rebellion of our generation be one of purity...to see beauty with our hearts and not our eyes, to see love as a virtue and not a feeling, to value mankind equally, to be fearless, radical and transparent." -King Charles
--
"The best journeys answer questions that in the beginning you didn't even think to ask." (-Jeff Johnson, 180 South)

missionaries, physicians, storytellers. I was thinking back on my childhood, and those were the people who inspired me the most. I think it has something to do with the stories I heard being full of invention and adventure--stories that painted a picture of people who refused to live within a box or take the safe route through life, who wanted to help others and live from a place of deep love.

poem by Carl Sandburg

The Road and The End

I SHALL foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.

The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.

The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face.

But Grace, we all know, can take the place of all we owe.
So why not let's Forgive everyone everywhere everything all the time...

-mewithoutyou {Bullet To Binary (pt. Two)}

In Your light,
I learn how to love.
In Your beauty,
how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest
where no one sees You,
but sometimes I do, and
that sight becomes this art.

-Rumi

Joshua Slocum

Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail around the globe alone. This is an excerpt from his book Sailing Alone Around the World:


No one can know the pleasure of sailing free over the great oceans save
those who have had the experience. It is not necessary, in order to
realize the utmost enjoyment of going around the globe, to sail alone,
yet for once and the first time there was a great deal of fun in it.
My friend the government expert, and saltest of salt sea-captains,
standing only yesterday on the deck of the _Spray_, was convinced of
her famous qualities, and he spoke enthusiastically of selling his
farm on Cape Cod and putting to sea again.

To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go. The tales of rough
usage are for the most part exaggerations, as also are the stories of
sea danger. I had a fair schooling in the so-called "hard ships" on
the hard Western Ocean, and in the years there I do not remember
having once been "called out of my name." Such recollections have
endeared the sea to me. I owe it further to the officers of all the
ships I ever sailed in as boy and man to say that not one ever lifted
so much as a finger to me. I did not live among angels, but among men
who could be roused. My wish was, though, to please the officers of my
ship wherever I was, and so I got on. Dangers there are, to be sure,
on the sea as well as on the land, but the intelligence and skill God
gives to man reduce these to a minimum. And here comes in again the
skilfully modeled ship worthy to sail the seas.

To face the elements is, to be sure, no light matter when the sea is
in its grandest mood. You must then know the sea, and know that you
know it, and not forget that it was made to be sailed over.

I have given in the plans of the _Spray_ the dimensions of such a ship
as I should call seaworthy in all conditions of weather and on all
seas. It is only right to say, though, that to insure a reasonable
measure of success, experience should sail with the ship. But in order
to be a successful navigator or sailor it is not necessary to hang a
tar-bucket about one's neck. On the other hand, much thought
concerning the brass buttons one should wear adds nothing to the
safety of the ship.

I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes;

I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,
I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it leads....

-sara teasdale

excitement!

a good friend of mine just found out she is going up to NYC to work on a film set as the 2nd AD (applause is in order) and it is a...PAID...job! woo-hoo! (after working on unpaid student sets for 12 hours a day, many days in a row, that's a really big deal) :) Dreams do come true. I'm super happy for her and for the fact that all of her hard work and passion is finding an outlet "out there" in the "real world".

well done you. :)

when i congratulated her for the second time today, she told me that she put a wallpaper on her phone that says,

"NEVER GIVE UP on something you can't go a day without thinking about."

♥ ♥ ♥

who has my affections,
what shapes the motivation of my heart?

society? a society that has no feelings for me, that wants my time, money, affection, in exchange for a chance to run around a rat wheel in an attempt to climb the ridiculous ladder of success. right. that incredibly secure ladder--the one that will fall over at the slightest blow of wind.

not worth it. at all.

"But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." -mt. 6:20

why serve a dead idol when there is a living, loving God who is madly in love with me, longing to be the One who forms my affections and shapes the motivation of my heart...

See how the fearful chandelier
Trembles above you
Each time you open your mouth
To sing. Sing.

-donald justice

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

-T.S. Eliot

"...sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness."

-Galway Kinnell

are we there yet?
...home, home, home, home.


Today I was thinking. Not too hard, just general spacey thoughts about how faithful God has been and how brilliant He is at restoring. As I recall all of the times He's saved me from me, I realize that I do not at all understand this mystery we call grace. All I know is that it hovers over me, and with a single word from Abba, wraps all around me, invading me in the most brilliant of ways by making dead things come alive as ashes turn miraculously into beauty.

"Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure."
-Rumi

...and there's nothin' you can do about it.

"Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.”
-Henry David Thoreau



Today I was reading Anne Lamott's Travelling Mercies. This excerpt stood out to me:

"All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But what I've discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without direct experience of grief, will not heal it...We are a world in grief, and it is at once intolerable and a great opportunity. I'm pretty sure that it is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed--which is to say, that we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace...

and then, finally, grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination."

(the moon rising over the Cliffs of Moher)


Gather out of star-dust
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust
And splinters of hail,
One handful of
dream-dust
Not for sale.
-Langston Hughes

"And here in dust and dirt,
O here,
The lilies of his love appear."

-George Herbert

180 South Trailer

I want to see this so bad!

The Road: A Broke Down Melody [Matt Costa]

thinking about hope

it's this force that brings good out of suffering and wholeness out of brokenness...

maybe the point of this crazy hope is that God really does set men free and invites them into the pages of the best story ever told.

stumbled upon this tonight:

"THERE'S ROOM IN THIS BOAT FOR YOU. That day the storm wakes him. Rumble of boots on the stairs and riot clang of sticks against shields fades with his dreams. Uneasy, blinking at the darkness, only the thunder rolling in, the first fat drops against the window. Ten, fifteen minutes go by. Something is wrong, some long-gone thing is missing. Suddenly he's afraid. He thinks, time is winning. Anvil-topped cloudcover on the mean and naked city, water high in the gutters and rising higher. No eyes lift to meet his. Androids? Machines made of expropriated bodies by order of the lunatics enthroned in the palaces of fascism? Placid faces ready to split and reveal maniac souls instructed by interstellar transmissions to slit his throat and eat his nose. This is a hole as deep as the Andes are high. He half expects the alleys to disgorge squads of boy soldiers in tattered party dresses and drugstore Halloween masks. A smell under the city stench like the coming of winter under the autumn breeze, faint but sharp and electric. A thin buzz in the ears, his mouth dries out, there's a metallic fuzz on his teeth. It's started, and today he knows. He swings between urgency at the thought of the pit opening up and swallowing everything and elation, euphoria, and the trip leaves him lightheaded. He worries over the things inside him that would crumble to dust if brought into the light. One more long day down, stepping out into the shadow of the skyscraper where he works. A man camped out in a doorway--bedroll, backpack, battered boombox. Hand out, or a cap, or a cup, he doesn't look just tosses in a buck. "Need new nine volts." The bum pats the radio. Blown speakers, sounds fuzzy and thin. Another dollar and the bum shrugs. "I was just passing through," he says. "You know." It bursts from the radio like a rider breaking the treeline in the distance, a lone voice and guitar, a messenger with a dispatch from the hours before the flood. Full, alive, angry, urgent, plunging deep and pulling up out of despair on the wing of joyous beautiful moments. This is a missive from a pilgrim like you, no return address or postmark, unsigned. It is a call to arms, a yell from the swamp, an echo of the dreamtime. It is a message from the resistance that will turn Caesar's guts cold-- Their game is rigged, it sings, but you cannot lose if you will not play. The devil doesn't want us to know, but we'll walk in the garden again. You are foul, but split you open and roses spill out. They are many, it sings, but in the end it only takes one. Listen. Fight. Dance like you got no bones. The sun will die but one fire will burn beyond time. There's still Love at the end of the world."
-- Ray Kranjcec

Check it: http://www.myspace.com/samrobertsband

"Does not a son know the father's heart? Does not a bride know her husband's eyes? And don't best friends tell each other secrets? This is why I am alive...

to know You.

Nothing's better than Your presence. May my love be poured upon Your head, Your hands, Your feet."

-Rick Pino

"i am richer than the richest, for You have given me Your love."

our decisions in times of battle

will be with us the whole journey

honor [shawn bolz]

love came down [brian johnson]

-----

"Another kind of leader must arise from among us. He must be the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will be many) he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom. Such a man is likely to be lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the one and the salvation of the other. But he will fear nothing that breaths with mortal breath." -a.w. tozer

♥

"Love looks into the future and sees possibilities that do not currently exist. Love is larger than the moment; love is larger than the present tense...compassion breaks the cycle of violence and creates new life."
-Jon Foreman


"Love is the final fight."
-John Perkins

in.spir.a.tion

Check out my friend Ashley's incredible blog:

No Coward Heart

Open up the heavens,
let Your glory fall.
Open up our hearts,
that we may know You.
-ian mcintosh

Your glory changes hearts. Change my heart, God. I want to see You and to know You.

The honors of this world...

what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?
- Joseph Addison.

trying to learn how to build

bridges instead of walls

A Product of Forced Tutoring

Downtown
Middle of winter, midnight
Voices still echo on the street
But none come and whisper
"Are you okay?"

Sitting
She stares out from her spot on the bench
Like a bird who is ready to fly
Yet the teacher left too soon
She, the forsaken

Hope
springs again with the reminder
All is not as it should be
but there is good left
a rescue at the break of dawn

it's a promise

"I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places....." (Isaiah 45:2&3)

Love is a dangerous idea. Grace is a dangerous idea. Forgiveness is the kind of idea that will mess your life up, for the better, but there’s nothing safe about loving your enemy. That’s what I want for my life. Let’s not be safe. Let’s be real and raw and alive.

- Jonathan Acuff

make each day

your masterpiece

woah! uh.maz.ing.

Check out this article from Sound Loft! [click here]

A little bit of Edna St. Vincent Millay

An Ancient Gesture:

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.


Afternoon on a Hill:


I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!



Modern Declaration:

I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things, never having
wavered
In these affections; never through shyness in the houses of the
rich or in the presence of clergymen having denied these
loves;
Never when worked upon by cynics like chiropractors having
grunted or clicked a vertebra to the discredit of those loves;
Never when anxious to land a job having diminished them by a
conniving smile; or when befuddled by drink
Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled the fingers of
their alert enemies; declare

That I shall love you always.
No matter what party is in power;
No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied
interests wins the war;
Shall love you always.

Learning from Wooden

I took a trip to the library today with Siobhan. She needed a break from the house and I just felt like meandering among books for a few hours. I picked up one with various stories written by individuals who became successful in life. Towards the back of the book, there was a chapter written by John Wooden. The more I learn about him, the more I love him. Even after death, he will continue to influence lives. That's legacy.

In the chapter written by him, he began to share about how his dad impacted his life. Abraham Lincoln said, "There's nothing stronger than gentleness," and Mr. Joshua Hugh Wooden lived out this principle of strength. When John graduated from grade school, Mr. Wooden gave him a card with a verse on the front by Reverend Henry Van Dyke. His dad said to him, "Son, try to live up to what you'll find in this card."

This is the verse:

Four things a man must learn to do if he would make his life more true
To think without confusion, clearly
To love his fellow man, sincerely
To act from honest motives, purely
To trust in God and Heaven, securely


On the other side of the card there was a seven point creed....

Be true to yourself; help others, that's where you get your greatest joy; make each day your masterpiece; drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible; Make friendship a fine art/ build a shelter against a rainy day
And, pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.


John Wooden must have taken his dad's words of instruction seriously.

I want to take them seriously, too.

summer fuel

Listen
Learn
Live
Love
Laugh

amazing

http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/switchfoot/sound-john-m-perkins-blues--218681915

Good Word

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLPydDXUD6c

Bill Johnson, Your Personal History With God

"I was just doing what I could with what I had where I was." -Bob Dylan

Making and climbing the ladder at the same time.

Hopeful Street Art is Something I Like...a lot