New York City Romance

I always suspected that I would never fall in love here. There's too many attractive, interesting people, and everyone is constantly running around, partying, playing games...

It's hardly the environment to find someone exceptional, because there's always the idea you could easily find someone else.

For me, falling in love requires something powerful - the mysterious connection between two people that violently excludes the possibility of anyone else interfering with it. It's that thing people say comes once in a lifetime. You could go on a hundred dates and never find it, or you find it once and lose it, or never notice it even when it's right under your nose.

Is it safe to say we're all too busy for love? Building our own mini empires?

Busy busy blob

GREAT excerpt that makes fun of American busyness. Mediated pgs 179-181.
..."Nowadays, in our more competitive schools at least, twelve-year-old have appointment books and family lives are scheduled as if they were presidential campaigns going into the last week before an election"

GREAT excerpt about the driftedness after college 182-183

About trying to find your keys "205"

Now I think it's interesting...that the multiplicity of options in the "blob" makes us have to invent ourselves. The focus is on us. Invention is a possibility. We "flatter ourselves" but is it really our fault? How much of self invention is necessary? Biblical? Harmful?

I Get Free Things

I think when Jesus said, "you have not because you ask not," what he was trying to say was...

Don't just go into Jamba Juice and accept that the deal is 10% off. Ask for 20% off!

I don't know...worked for me. And the next time I wore THESE glasses. 50% off.

Sucka what.

An Angel Rides in the Whirlwind and Directs this Storm

What you do is as important as anything government does. I ask you to seek a common good beyond your comfort; to defend needed reforms against easy attacks; to serve your nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character.

Americans are generous and strong and decent, not because we believe in ourselves, but because we hold beliefs beyond ourselves. When this spirit of citizenship is missing, no government program can replace it. When this spirit is present, no wrong can stand against it.

After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson: “We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?”

Much time has passed since Jefferson arrived for his inauguration. The years and changes accumulate. But the themes of this day he would know: our nation’s grand story of courage and its simple dream of dignity.

We are not this story’s author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose. Yet his purpose is achieved in our duty, and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another.

Never tiring, never yielding, never finishing, we renew that purpose today, to make our country more just and generous, to affirm the dignity of our lives and every life.

This work continues. This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.

God bless you all, and God bless America.

Voiceless cry of modernity

The Scream, by Edvard Munch has become the universal symbol of the modern condition. These visual rhythms suggest the resonating sound of the voiceless cry described by Munch in the notes to a preliminary drawing for the painting: "I walked with two friends. Then the sun sank. Sudenly the sky turned red as blood. . . . My friends walked on, and I was left alone, trembling with fear. I felt as if all nature were filled with one mighty unending shriek."

(846 The Humanistic Tradition)

American middle-class apathy

"But there is much to be said for giving up such grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable, a life without the old longings; selling stocks and bonds and mutual funds; quitting work at five o'clock like everyone else; having a girl and perhaps one day settling down and raising a flock of Marcia and Sandras and Lindas of my own. Nor is the brokerage business as uninteresting as you might think. It is not a bad life at all" (9).

The Movie Goer

Glory rooted in earth.

Sometimes I wonder how humans are supposed to make decisions. I feel like I'm guided by everything, everybody, nothing and nobody.

So at the end of the day, what is it that compels you to do things? The Holy Spirit (and are you sure it's the right one)? The Bible? (which interpretation?) Mentors? Parents? Habits? NY times bestselling authors? Friends? Freudian subconscious psyche... (oh god)...

In historical consciousness, there appears to be two extreme approaches to man's "search for guidance."

1) The first is dogmatic. The socialist, the Marxist, the communist, the Islamic terrorist, and the crusader religionist... all of them sacrifice freedom for the sake of order--whether it's through textual dogma, a vision of a purified race, or whatever.

2) The second is relativistic. These are the existentialists and the Nietzsche supermans who say, "We're really just making it all up." You gotta create your own reality as best you can.

But today I discovered a rich little grain of truth in Genesis that sheds some light on the whole discussion. It made me believe that maybe man was never intended to be held by the hand of God--never intended to be slaves to dogmatic principles and orders, or have one supreme nay sayer about what to do and what not to do.

In Genesis, we see that we were originally created to be "imago dei" decision makers and rulers over the earth. We were glorious. We still are glorious.

BUT, sin has added ambiguity to that authority we were created to exert. We're fallen. We screw it up sometimes.

So the truest description of human nature bridges tensions between our inherent glory and our ruined-ness. The glory part of us wants to rule, but the ruined part of us makes reality, information, and human action distorted, disordered, and confusing.

The problem is...our glory is still rooted in sin and earth.

Nothing will ever seem 100% clear 100% of the time. But we still have to make decisions and exert authority. So I guess we just have to cope with the reality of being glorious and ruined--always hoping for perfection but never expecting it.

Tensions are "Both And"

"In 1927, Heisenerg's principle of uncertainty stated that the more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known. In scientific terms, this idea replaced the absolute and rationalist model of the universe. Einstein's theory of relativity revealed that time and space are intervals of duration and length that cannot be described as absolutes."

If science can balance the predictable and the unpredictable, theology can put it's big boy pants on too.

I like the Bible - especially it's apparent contradictions. It's much easier to be a reductionist, which is part of the reason why I can't take certain academics seriously. They drive home in the classroom what they don't teach to their children.

The Bible isn't about figuring out the HTML code of morality and inserting it into the universe. It balances tensions well, because it would rather us be wise than stupidly clinging to a narrow-minded set of principles.

The Look

Stephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Stephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.

Socialism described succinctly and alliteratively. Mmm.

Comparing socialism to capitalism:

"Society, according to the socialists, should operate entirely in the interest of the needs of the people, communally and cooperatively, rather than competitively."

pg 748, The Humanistic Tradition

Heinrich Hene's "You are Just Like a Flower"

"You are just like a flower,
So fair and chaste and dear;
Looking at you, sweet sadness
Invades my heart with fear.
I feel I should be folding
My hands upon your hair,
Praying that God may keep you
So dear and chaste and fair"

Trust

"Handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all He says. There would be no sense saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus, if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because he has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you."
-C.S. Lewis

Learning to see again...

"The harsh light of suburban living tricks us--our lives are anything but flat. One simply needs eyes to behold its thickness. The discipline, then, is learning to see again."
-Death by Suburb, David L. Goetz

Rejection. Sort of a rant.

Rejection sucks. It doesn't matter what happened--whether it's your boyfriend, or a crush you went out with once, it always feels the same when they aren't texting you back or you see them with another girl. Everything, just...sucks.

The whole time you're shopping for groceries you're saying to yourself, hmmm...wouldn't it be nice if "so-and-so" was doing this with me? But you can't contact them. Can't sound desperate. So you push the thought away, buy your groceries, and start walking home, and vow to never speak to them again.

You see a cab pull over and decide that you deserve a more comfortable ride home than the gritty subway to resurrect you from the general feeling that everything sucks. He rejects you too.

Then you just stop. Really? The cab driver too? And it's raining? There's just no real reason to go home anymore. Why write a paper. Why scratch the next thing off your to do list. You start throwing a small pity party in the street like a statue wishing something exotic or loud would happen just to get your mind off of it.

Of course, ALL you want to do is text him...and of course...it's the one thing you can't do. But the thought of talking to anyone else at the moment feels disappointingly sub-par. So you resort to thinking about him, until gradually a small glimmer of hope arises at the possibility that...he could be missing you too, at that very moment.

Interesting... although, a bit pathetic... that the best consolation in the moment you feel like everything sucks is the notion that someome else desires to be with you. Humans are relational to the core.

When something happens that reminds you of your frailty--you're very raw vulnerability--you realize how shallow the paper pushing, clean, professional atmosphere is. What we're really after is loving and being loved, and that always involves the messy, risky, deep stuff that real living is made of.

Love.

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
I Corinthians 13

Encouragement.

“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, cringing, and fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power, love, and a sound mind." 2 Tim 1:7

“The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace, Because he trusts in You." Isaiah 26:3

"God wants all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." I Timothy 2:4

He works all things together for the good of those who love Him.
His power is made perfect in our areas of weakness.
You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom.
"Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you."

Stillness

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abby

Poetry is...

"the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Emotion recollected in tranquillity"

William Wordsworth, a romantic poet who saw nature as a vehicle of redemption.

Love Without Fear

while i don't have stars in my eyes when i look at you,
i love that i can see clearly.

while i don't get butterflies when i'm around you,
i love that i love you freely.

when i think of the sounds you bring to the world,
i love that i still love silence.

when you read like a poem that's misunderstood
i love that i always find new words you rhyme with...

if i miss the warmth of you when you're gone,
i love that i never feel frozen.

if i look on silver or platinum rings,
i love that our love is golden.

our love is a shadow of love without fear
it borrows a love from which love was made;

if i ever went looking for loves to replace
your love, I'd find my love was misplaced.

Finding purpose in work...

Genesis 1:15 "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it."

Work is a major theme in the early chapters of Genesis. This word "till" (translated "abad" in Hebrew), has multiple meanings--usually "to work," "to serve," and "to worship." Used all together, they indicate that humans are meant to simultaneously serve and worship their creator through working the land. When sin entered the world, our concept of work and worship and life in general were dramatically altered...but in a state of innocence, these activities were naturally done to God's glory.

Work was then--and still is today--an integral part of the human design. But if you take a look at the creation mandate above, working was only 1 of 4 purposes God gave to Adam and Eve in the garden. The other three were 1) to be fruitful/multiply, 2) to have dominion, and 3) to "keep" the garden. So I guess it's fair to say that we find about a quarter of our fulfillment through doing work. That means it's completely natural to find immense amounts of purpose through the work that we accomplish. The new forms of culture we help cultivate.

Work was a reality pre-fall. We were created to be most at home when we are engaged in cultural activities--when we are free to interact with the earth: guiding and shaping the marvelous raw material from which we were originally shaped...and making something new.

(inspired by Plowing in Hope, 42-47)

Calling is Passion and Suffering.

In order for the culturally creative movement Jesus sought to unleash to flourish, the brokenness of culture had to be faced head on. And so Jesus accepted the calling of the cross. "The strangest and most wonderful paradox of the Biblical story is that its most consequential moment is not an action but a passion--not a doing but a suffering" (142 Culture Making).

When we think about what we should do with our lives, the question is usually centered around just that--doing. But maybe it's less about doing and more about passion--and dogged commitment to that passion.

Maybe more important questions to ask are, "what am I passionate about seeing happen in the world?" and "how much am I willing to put my own life on the line to see that it happens in the world?"

God's "culture making" demonstrated through the history of Israel

The cosmic story of the universe starts in a garden (Genesis) and ends in a city (Revelation). Revelation 12:2 says, "And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." But the history of the nation of Israel fills a large majority of the "middle section" between the beginning and end of things...and it shows

The story of Israel as a nation has always been the story of their perpetual attempt to be perfectly unified under the lordship of "the one true God." By fluctuating between long periods of failure and renewals, Israel demonstrates this perpetual cycle of trusting in God and then resorting to relying on their own strength.

But God's heart--for Israel then and Christians all across the globe today--has always been to redeem his people. The cosmic story eventuates in what theologians refer to as the "New Israel", or "the New Jerusalem"...in which people who have chosen God will finally be in perfect harmony with one another and Him. Essentially, it's the tower of Babel minus the rebellion. Power, unity, and beauty without the sin that messes it all up.

But even more beautiful than the outcome is the means through which God desires to create this city of the redeemed. For instance, he picked the nation of Israel to be his chosen people, even though they were the "fewest of all nations", and always weaker in might than those surrounding them. Today he still uses the weak things of the world to confound the world. Christ was a simple Jewish man (a minority race in the vast Roman Empire) who flipped the century on its head and virtually shaped most of the West up until the 1700's with his teachings.

God's early culture making was decidedly not with the mighty and powerful. He began with "the fewest of all peoples' in the most unlikely place. He chose to redeem people through love and sacrifice instead of political muscle or military force. Foolish things that confound the wise because, in the long run, they are most lasting.

I picture the redeemed city as one that is made to last. It is built from the bottom up with the real stuff of life...with the kind of people who get their hands dirty and help in obscurity...who don't need credit, but need to see that the job gets done. Love that is committed. Faithfulness that doesn't look out for its own first. Genuineness. Honesty.

It's those "weaker" things that prove to be stronger in the end.

Reminded of brokenness.

It was just after sin entered the world that we realized our human nakedness. It was after sin we felt the need to clothe ourselves.

It was after sin took root in the culture that people built the Tower of Babel to reach God. Because of sin, they were driven by the incentive to not need him.

So I think God, his single intention being to cleanse us from our sinful emptiness, wants to always remind us of our nakedness. Face the truth of brokenness. Keep us in a position of dependance. Because we're burdened, hollow, shallow, and unsatisfied when we cover it all up and try to do it alone.

God delights in our creativity

...because he designed us for it.

Andy Crouch in Culture Making: "In the following verse we see God "making room" for his image-bearers to begin to grow into the vast cosmic purpose that was disclosed in Genesis 1 (to rule and have dominion). God is perfectly capable of naming every animal and giving Adam a dictionary--but he does not...

So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. (Gen 2:19)

...He makes room for Adam's creativity--not just waiting for Adam to give a preexisting right answer to a quiz, but genuinely allowing Adam to be the one who speaks something out of nothing, a name where there had been none, and allowing that name to have its own being.

Adam, like his Maker, will be both gardner and poet, both creator and cultivator. The creator simply watches, listens, and it is good" (110).

Men in Suits

Men in Suits are seriously attractive. Baha. I love this web writing project.

Except this ad is definitely for a competitor...treason....

Mehwell.

“But that is the beginning of the new story, the story of the gradual renewal of a man, of his gradual regeneration, of his slow progress from one world to another, of how he learned to know a hitherto undreamed of reality.”

-Crime and Punishment

Boldness has genius

When Howard Schultz joined the management team of Starbucks early in the game, his ideas completely revolutionized their branding--and consequently--the entire coffee culture of America. The 8th chapter of his book Pour Your Heart into it is titled: "If It Captures Your Imagination, It Will Captivate Others." It begins with a compelling quote by Goethe that I think is worth remembering:

Whatever you can do,
or dream you can...
begin it.
Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it.

True Joy of Life

"This is the true joy of life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." -George Bernard Shaw

The Gumblers - A Children's Tale

These are the gumbler stories I tell
Of life in a murky, blackened realm,
Alight with only a beam from above
That glowed on the ground around a well
The gumbler's hearts were black as night
But the water they held was clear and bright
Clink, clunk, clink, clunk
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

There were three gumbler girls with scrawny hips
And lipsticks that smeared on their thin-cracked lips,
With grim-green necks all draped in jewels,
They drew a slew of gumbler fools
To bewitch them all with bubbles twinkling
Between their fingers, fat and wrinkling.
Click, clunk, click, clunk,
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

There was a giant mole with crooked hands
Lugging buckets of water to lands
Where gumblers wanted more than their share
Promising one day a bucket he’d spare,
So gumblers came from far and wide
Fastened their chains, and followed behind.
Click, clunk, click, clunk,
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

One of the gumblers chased the mole,
Then fell right into a mercury hole!
Everyone sighed and clucked and said,
“He should have seen that crater ahead,
We’d help him get out, if only we could,
But one mile more and a bucket we’ll hold...”
Click, clunk, click, clunk,
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

That poor gumbler sat all night in the pit
Where no one else saw him throwing a fit,
What would he do without any light -
No water to fix his eyes through the night?
He clenched his hand into a fist
Resented every drop he missed
Click, clunk, click, clunk
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Except this time, this one did,
And he knew not to look to the lighted sky.

He wept and wept until he saw
Such a sight he had never seen at all
A gumbler who did not look like the rest
For she held no bubble of happiness
With hands scot-free and skin aglow
Her eyes were locked on a heavenly flow.
Click, thrive, click, revive,
Was the time a gumbler ceased to cry,
His eyes were at rest, and his face, alive,
When he gazed for love of the lighted sky.

Ridiculous Admissions Questions

Alexandra just turned to me and said, "Leah, you will not believe it. This prospective student just asked me if we have an acquestrian program at Kings."

"Um...yes, have you see the mounted policemen on horseback? They're all King's graduates..."

Politics, Philosophy, Economics and Horses.

Adding one more word to the already wordy major. Can we handle it?

Reaching the Grandparent Market Niche?!?!?

John Donne

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto Your enemy
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to You, imprison me, for I
Except You enthrall me, never shall be free;
Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me.

Donne used techniques that have been donned (no pun intended) with the name "metaphysical poetry." Typical, that I love his style. /All things metaphysical. Always.

What he does is provide dramatic contrast through frequent and unexpected shifts of viewpoint, to ultimately come to a dramatic synthesis of discordant images. He always includes intriguing paradoxes that link sinfulness with deliverance, conquest with liberation, and imprisonment with freedom. This was a revolutionary development in European literature during the 17th century.

We love you, Donne.

(The Humanistic Tradition, pg 564)

First Love

"I lacked some essential confidence in the world and in myself. She came, as time passed, to suspect this fact about me. I do not know that she had words to describe the fact to herself. Or she only had the easy words people gave her: wanting to have a job, sutdying law, doing something.

We went different ways in the world, as I have said, but I had with me always that image of the little girl on the waters of the bay, all the innocence and trustflness, under the stormy sky"

-All the King's Men (pg 467)

The Church as Exclusive; The Kingdom of God as Inclusive

"The church is not coextensive with the Kingdom of God, and in two respects..." (20 Reappropriating Niebuhr's C&C)

First, the church's inclusion of hypocrites and false prophets shows us that not everyone in the church is submitting to furthering the Kingdom of God in the name of Jesus. At the same time, there are people outside of the church who have put God first in their lives and have dedicated their lives in service to Him, although they have not joined a church yet. But their lack of self-consciousness as a Christian does not in any way omit them from belonging to the Christian family.

It's like the quintessential "unofficial" artist. A man who loves to paint with wild colors and finds the most joy in the act of painting, yet does not refer to himself a painter. If that man did call himself a painter it would probably open up more possibilities. He would assume the identity in a new and exciting way, connect with other people who share the same passions, and create a platform to affect people with his art. In sum, the painter man would produce WAY more art with his newfound confidence and resources...all because he decided he would be a painter.

The analogy is incomplete in several ways, but I feel like it's similar to the way people love Christ but have not yet committed to being a part of the institutional church. Although they are undoubtedly living less effectively in the wrong identity, this does not mean their actions and influence is not furthering the Kingdom of God.

If we looked at things through this lens, I feel like we would move past the limited horizons of the "what's godly, what's not godly" discussion into the "lets make lasting stuff happen" decision. This writer's quote on the subject basically says what I just said in a better way times 100, in about a third of the length.

The influence of God's Kingdom has been spreading, bit by bit, wherever individuals, groups, nations, and transnational realities have been influenced for the better. In our day, for example, the increased profile of universal human rights in national and international politics--with particular attention to women, children, and the poor--is an example of the spread of the influence of the Kingdom of God incognito, so to speak. It is obvious that the international order is far from Christian in its identity and conduct. In that crucial sense it is clearly not the Kingdom of God. Nonetheless, the Kingdom of God is partially and mixedly, but also really, present in the extension of these values into spheres previously not deeply shaped by them.

We see the marks of the Kingdom of God, then, wherever light penetrates darkness, wherever good makes its way against evil or inertia, wherever beauty emerges amid ugliness or vapidity, and wherever truth sounds out against error or falsity. ,

We will be gardeners.

"What is most needed in our time are Christians who are deeply serious about cultivating and creating,  but who wear that seriousness lightly--who are not desperately trying to change the world but who also wake up every morning eager to create" (12).

According to Ken Myers, this nebulous undefinable thing we call culture is "our relentless, restless human effort to take the world as it's given to us and make something else" (23).

And by making things, we shape the horizons of the possible.

Literally, nothing would be possible for human beings without culture. Everything from language to interstate highways to egg omelets is a product of cultivation and intentionality. Our existence here means we will be culture shapers.

...which is really cool, because embracing the responsibility to create culture is most central element of your human design. "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it" (Gen 2:15). Andy Crouch in Culture Making says, "Without the task of gardening--cultivating, tending, ruling and creating using the bountiful raw material of nature--the woman and man would have nothing to do, nothing to be" (35).

We were always made to fulfill this noble, kind of exciting mandate to create, participate, and share. The question is, how will we go about doing it?

What's your "garden?"

Knives and Thieves

I thought that by now this would leave
You're like a thousand knives held by thieves
Just let me die quickly or please
Come and take me away with you
Where I can breathe

The beautiful shape of those eyes
Play over like print on my mind
They color me so sweetly tonight
The walls around us fall in
Just in time

So let us burn it all down and see
Us lying on the cold ground floor
Let us burn it all down and see
I pictured us something more

Run in Rain.

I wish to run and never stop.
I wish the slaughter of the rain would
Whisper secrets I have almost lost.
I hate to look upon the skin I'm in.
In hopes of dying I resolve to
run and never stop.
I will run in rain until I'm not.

Sophia Ashworth

He Makes the Intricate Seem Straight...

'Lead then,' said Eve.
He, leading swiftly rowld in tangles,
And made intricate seem strait,
To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy bright'ns his
Crest, as when a wandring fire
Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night
Condenses, and the cold invirons round,
Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame,
Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends
Hovering and blazing with delusive Light,
Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way
To Boggs and Mires, and oft through Pond or Poole,
There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr.
So glister'd the dire Snake, and into fraud
Led Eve our credulous Mother, to the Tree
Of prohibition, root of all our woe..."

John Milton, Paradise Lost book IX

Starvation After Fill.

I was hungry, but not starved. Walking through the forest, my legs were tired, but I could go on. The air was chilly but not freezing.

Then I passed a house with broken shutters
And would have kept on going but--

A boy outside with brilliant eyes played thoughtfully with nature's toys.
Curiosity slowed me, I thought the colors interesting
Then in stillness, surrounding me, were memories of a million joys.

Stopping let my body feel its longing to rest.
The sweeping scent of food was one I knew that I could not forget.
The air seemed colder now for thought
of the spell a crackling fire brought
Years ago.

I didn't want to be trapped, I had places to see.
What if stopping there meant that I would never leave?
Fingers rested on the knob, debating what to do...

Then vidid flash of poverty, freezing in the snow
Thrown out from inside, the nights of resting warm
When that gnawing pain of hunger made me
Vomit--but never could I die from it--
Only wait in it.

That is why I started moving.

I will not forfeit motion, my saving grace from hell
I've learned to love the chill of morning, fatigue that keeps my legs from stopping.
I'd rather have hunger unrealized than starvation after fill.

Laugh.

Unconscious.

I live unconscious until the daylight fades
And night brings these merciless moments to haunt me, I know that no matter what I choose, how often I move, who I love, or how deeply I sleep, I can't remove this life, this soul, this presence.
So I document each night's consciousness from year to year, in a little book with blank ink script. When the scent is strong enough to be caught, my eyes flutter closed and drink of scenes:
Things I know and always forget.
Things I love that make me regret all daylight motion.
Here I lie in consciousness,
Until I am unconscious again. 

Transparency

Imagine the ocean -- all of that massive fluid covering our planet.
Transcend the sea green waves where our boats skim along the surface into the quiet world beneath. Dolphins, buried mountains, quirky sea creatures, forgotten civilizations all build a world that is veiled to our eyes. The depth is unfathomable; we could never reach the bottom.

That hidden world is just like the human soul. It's easier to stay above the waves and never think of the richness underneath.

We are not all as simple as we seem.

The Romance of Wisdom

I tiptoed around 5 friends crashed in 500 water, stepped outside, and breathed in the beautiful new york city morning air. Hello, south street seaport. In a lovely coffee shop about 2 blocks away I realized (after reading my book for some time) that wisdom and romance are STRANGELY similar. haha. Here are the reasons why:

1. The mysterious nature and pursuit of wisdom makes it romantic. I picture it like a strong, somewhat reserved, (super hot) man. You can sense he's got something going on, and you don't know what it is, but you want to find out. Well, wisdom is something that unfolds to you, and has to be pursued. When you catch a glimpse of its beauty, you're hooked.

2. The idea of it is beautiful, but the practice of it is even better. Most people have checklists and general qualities they like in the opposite sex, but true sexual attraction transcends that. Chemistry is the unexplainable "x" factor everyone tries to figure it out, but really, you can't. Somewhere along the line you just find someone life seems better with than it is without them. You want to spend time with the whole person, not the combination of their qualities. Wisdom is the same in the sense that it comes most alive when you see how the principles in Proverbs bring depth, peace, and beauty to reality. You want to walk in them, share them, experience their fullness, and shape your values around them.

3. And there's the surrender aspect. The best romance is built on two people's selflessness and discipline--and that involves sacrifice. aka: not doing what you want when you want. I think wisdom works in a similar way. Even if you don't "feel" like changing your lifestyle...eventually you surrender...because you know by experience that it's better.

Illusive.

Wonder wells with dreams in my watery eyes
A touch, a wrinkle, a smirk.
All feeling was forgotten until the bright-eyed phantom came
And said he'd deliver
We press our gaze through blurry windows
Escaping in its soft, but brilliant light.

We light it up and live to love and
wisp away like paper
Illusive,
Transient as feather.

Like birds who fly from place to place
With sweeping grace to spiraling down
We lit it up and lived for love and
Sang a lovely song
Dreaming,
Waking to a hollow sound.

The Gumblers - A Children's Tale

These are the gumbler stories I tell
Of their lives in a murkey, blackened realm,
Alight with only a beam from above
That glowed on the ground around a well
Those creatures loved the liquids bright
So they cupped them in bubbles of silver delight.

Clink, clunk, clink, clunk
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

There were three gumbler girls with scrawny hips
And lipsticks that smeared on their thin-cracked lips,
With grim-green necks all draped in jewels,
They drew a slew of gumbler fools
To bewitch them all with bubbles twinkling
Between their fingers, fat and wrinkling.

Click, clunk, click, clunk,
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

There was a giant mole with crooked hands
Carrying buckets of water to lands
Where gumblers wanted more than their share,
Promising one day a bucket he’d spare,
So gumblers came from far and wide
Fastened their chains, and followed behind.

Click, clunk, click, clunk,
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

There once was a gumbler who chased the mole,
Then fell right into a mercury hole!
And everyone sighed and clucked and said,
“He should have seen that crater ahead,
We’d help him get out, if only we could,
But one mile more and a bucket we’ll hold!”

Click, clunk, click, clunk,
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

That poor gumbler did sit all night in the pit
Where no one else saw him throwing a fit
He knew not what to do with no light
On which to fix his eyes through the night
He wailed and—yes—he cried, he did,
For waterless, he had never been

Click, clunk, click, clunk,
Was the time I heard a gumbler cry,
His eyes were dull and his face was sunk,
And he knew not to look to the lighted sky.

And that gumbler was sad until he saw
Such a sight he had never seen at all
A gumbler who did not look like the rest
For she held no bubble of happiness
With hands scot-free and skin aglow
Her eyes were locked on a heavenly flow.

Click, thrive, click, revive,
Was the time a gumbler ceased to cry,
His eyes were at rest, and his face, alive,
When he gazed for love of the lighted sky.

The Bible--practical liaison to the Kingdom of God

On the divine side, I assume that God has been willing and competent to arrange for the Bible, including its record of Jesus, to emerge and be preserved in ways that will secure his purposes for it among human beings worldwide. Those who actually believe in God will be untroubled by this. I assume that he did not and would not leave his message to humankind in a form that can only be understood by a handful of late-twentieth-century professional scholars, who cannot even agree among themselves on the theories that they assume to determine what the message is.

The Bible is, after all, God's gift to the world through his Church, not to the scholars. It comes through the life of his people and nourishes that life. Its purpose is practical, not academic. An intelligent, careful, intensive but straightforward reading--that is, one not governed by obscure and faddish theories or by a mindless orthodoxy--is what it requires to direct us into life in God's kingdom.

-Dallas Willard

On Historical Methods

"Professional historians are not bloodless templates passively registering the facts: we actively and imaginatively project. Our rationality cannot be extricated from our sentiments and feelings, our hopes and fears, our hunches and ambitions."

-Dale Allison, New Testament scholar, quote in reference to inadequate scholarly attempts to uncover the "historical Jesus."

He always says it right.

While I believe that actual miracles can and do happen, I am sympathetic with those who believe otherwise, and I applaud their desire to live out the meaning of the miracle stories even when they don't believe the stories really happened as written. (I find it harder to be sympathetic with those who take pride in believing the miracles really happened but don't seek to live out their meaning.) 68 A Generous Orthodoxy --Mclaren

God is a fan of union: friendship, family, and marriage

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.

The Divine Side of Prayer.

I'm sure my frustrated, venting prayers look so ridiculous while I'm praying them--especially walking the streets of New York--knowing any person watching thinks I'm talking to myself. Outloud.

Have you ever prayed a prayer something to the effect of this:

"God please take this distraction away. Really, it's bugging me. And I want to obey you, but how can I obey you when I don't know what you're saying? And I want to worship you first, but (long sigh), I just love concrete things more than abstract things. And right now, Jesus seems abstract. So here's my list for tonight: I need this distraction gone, and I need to know that you are real. Help me be okay with the reality of hell, and please show me if I'm really supposed to do music...(longer more exasperated sigh) see, now I'm praying too many things--there's no way I'm going to remember which answers I'm waiting for. Especially with three papers due tomorrow, which, shoot, I haven't started. Yeah, by the way, please help me with those..."

Something inside of me shrinks when I hear people use the phrase, "the power of prayer." Partly because it sounds cliche. Don't get me wrong--I think prayer has great benefits. It makes me verbalize what it is I really desire. It concentrates my will toward those things. In group prayer, it could even concentrate the group on a unified goal. All good things. But there is still this gnawing feeling that I don't really believe prayer invites anything divine into the human side of things.

Why do I think this way?

Simple: I never pray.

But tonight shockingly reminded me that the "power of prayer" lies in God's ability to facilitate in hours what would have taken me months.

First, a phone call from my mom turned my heart away from the distraction. Then, in the back corner of a dimly lit coffee shop, tears welled and wouldn't stop falling from my eyes. Francis Shaeffar's book The God Who is There renewed my faith in a God who does exist, even though the inconsistencies in modern philosophy makes it really hard to believe in him.

The idea that faith and rationality are mutually-exclusive is one that we still haven’t recovered from today. Today, the former is seen as a product of optimistic, “wishful thinking”, and the latter as more of a pessimistic, accurate perspective. This precept is not even true, and yet it keeps thousands of rational people from committing to a belief in Jesus. As a result, most people have developed an understanding of the world that is fragmented, void of an overarching narrative, and meaningless. Schaeffar says, “When we speak of being under the line of despair, we do not mean that these people necessarily sit down and weep, but that they have given up all hope of achieving a rational unified answer to knowledge and life (23).

So the distraction removed, my faith in God renewed, and all of it happened in a way that replaced my worry about hell with a desire to bring people freedom, in this life and the one to come. And to top it off, a few days later, the music stuff was confirmed.

Ha, all that being said, I think I'm going to pray more.

Elegy

Elegy
Dylan Thomas

"Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cool kind man brave in his narrow pride."

Dream.

I woke up at 5:30 and immediately started tracing the chronology of events in my dream. I knew this one was different. I didn't want it to escape me.

I distinctly remember being frustrated about what I wanted to "do with my life." Dr. Jackson was talking me through it.

"Write down all the things you're interested in doing," he said.

"See that's the thing" I moped back, writing just about every artistic interest I've ever had, "Whenever I think about the gravity of the human condition, I just want people to meet with God. Developing these skills seems really trivial..."

On the top left corner of the scribbled list with words, scribbled-out words, and circled words was the phrase "meet with God."

He circled it in bold and pointed emphatically, as if about to prove a point, "Just focus on this one. Just focus on this one"

He started to blur, I was making excuses until I stopped.

It sort of made sense.

But things in dreams always make a different kind of sense than waking life.

Science and Religion See the Deep Order of the World

"Yet the rational transparency and rational beauty of the universe are surely too remarkable to be treated as just happy accidents. Belief in God can make all this intelligible, for it sees the deep order of the world - a world shot through with signs of mind, one might say - as being indeed a reflection of the truth that the Mind of the Creator is revealed in this way."

"The Creator has not filled creation with items stamped ‘made by God’. God’s existence is not self-evident in some totally unambiguous and undeniable way. The presence of God is veiled because, when you think about it, the naked presence of divinity would overwhelm finite creatures, depriving them of the possibility of truly being themselves and freely accepting God. It will be a recurring theme in this book, that, out of love, God has self-limited the exercise of divine power to give creatures the space to be themselves."

http://www.questionsoftruth.org/can-gods-existence-be-proved/

The ache.

The ache
is to have
experienced you
and forced myself
to silence the thought of you.

The sadness
is to know
your nearness
is so distant
that while you live,
I live without you.

The arts as a means of redemption

Jane Addams (1909) was concerned for the youth of her generation who loved the illicit pleasures that lowered the quality of living. But she didn't blame them. Their love of play was just misplaced. Because when the arts become absent in society, vice is what we turn to...

It was society that "cared more for the products they manufacture than for their immemorial ability to reaffirm the charm of existence” (1003). Boys and girls were worked to death in a city void of artistic atmosphere and high culture.

She advocated a connection between music and morals, saying that it would "fit to this gross and heavy stuff the wings of the mind, to scatter from it the clinging mud of banality and vulgarity, and to speed it on through our city streets amid spontaneous laughter..."

"It would thus bring charm and beauty to the prosaic city and connect it subtly with the arts of the past as well as with the vigor and renwed life of the future" (1007 APT)

Weltschmerz.

I watched person after person pass by through the large Starbucks window. My heart hurt and my eyes began to water. Taking time to think about how many people go through life completely lost is a painful recognition of reality. How could Christianity be the hope of world when it seems like it's only the hope for a minority group? How could that possibly be good news?

This guy must have seen me crying, but he came up to me regardless and asked if the seat across from me was taken. I wasn't feeling anything close to light--or chatty, for that matter--but I listened to his happy description of New York sightseeing adventures and the like. A few seconds of silence followed...so I thought I'd be real.

"I'm actually a little sad right now."
"I can see that," he answered.
My mouth curved sardonically, "You must have seen my crying."
"Yeah, what was that all about?" (his German accent made the depressing subject seem almost adorable).

Since he was German, I figured I would explain how I was feeling in a word only the German language expresses so accurately: Weltschmerz. By definition, it means an overall weariness and sadness at the collective absence of hope in the human condition. My Weltschmertz seemed a foreign concept to him, but he said he was also a Christian. Not only that but some sort of youth minister back in Germany.

Which is why I was confused at his self admitted statements that were in COMPLETE contradiction with his belief system.

1. He said truth was different for each person.

2. He couldn't answer the question, "Who is Jesus?"

3. He doesn't believe it's necessary to read the Bible.

Now, I'm not saying my newfound German friend is not saved, does not love God, (etc) because I don't think salvation depends on a verbal formation of the correct "theological ideas." But that doesn't negate how powerful and important those ideas are. How important it is to know who Jesus was and is. How critical to think it is necessary to read the Bible, because the Bible gives a description of the world that is different than what most people will tell you. The truth in it allows you to suck the marrow out of life and love people in ways you thought weren't possible.

So his self-admittance to being a Christian, but apparent inconsistency with a real Christian understanding of things depressed me. Not just because of him, but because I know that the majority of people would agree with his three statements above.

And they miss out on the unimaginable freedom truth brings.

After we talked for awhile my German friend opened up about how he had just broken up with his girlfriend of a year and a half. I noticed him shaking. Somewhat. And I hurt for him. I knew he needed Jesus in a very real sense, but I also knew he probably wasn't confident enough in the reality of His existence to look to him.

A Plan.

God, thank you for the church. I think the cure for Welschmerz might be knowing that God has a plan.

When my heart was dark for feeling the weight of so much mercy, Jonjon said..."Chin up--Christ is about a wiley plan of sabotage!"

Ha, what an adorable way to describe it all.

I hope someone has a plan.

Creative Limitation

• Robert Frost: writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
• Principles of Creative Limitation in STORY. By defining your genre, you can reach a higher intensity with LIMITS than complete freedom. "Genre conventions are the rhyme scheme of a storyteller's 'poem'" (91).

I know this principle of creative limitation isn't restricted to the art of storytelling, but bleeds into all realms of art, business, morality, and life.

Even in Middelmann's class, it's so interesting that all the modern philosophers were searching for freedom by creating an organized perception of reality. In the search for truth, the goal is freedom. It's just that complete liberation doesn't give people what they're searching for. I'm reminded of why my heart belongs to God. Besides being truthful, Christianity practically brings the freedom it ensures. It doesn't make lofty promises, but gives you an accurate perception of reality that allows you to live in the tension of brokenness and the inherent hope for Utopia.

Thank you God for limits. Help me know them well so I can live creatively, and wisely :)

Be.

Let the small-minded write,
Let the wise love,
The simple read,
And the captured hearts be.

Light.

It's like all my thought became bent on encountering it. To embark on this strange, awful journey. I didn't know what light would look like without my shadows. For years I wondered whether it was cool, gentle blue, or searing-red fire. No one could tell me, no matter who I asked or where I looked.

But the more I dreamed the less it mattered. I was made weary by activity, driven to solitude--where it fell upon me. I heard it again. Felt it. Believed it. Wanted it. Missed it. Knew I needed it.

Zoe Life: It is God Who is Working in You

C.S. Lewis says the height of what we know here is biological life: the ability to feel emotion, think, reason, and imagine all included. But what we are incapable of enacting on our own is a different sort of life-the life that is found in God-which he gives the name zoe. When Jesus bridges that gap separating us from the source of all goodness and life, God calls us his children, and invites us to participate in this new kind of spiritual life.

The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together into one amazing sentance. The first half is, 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling'--which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, 'For it is God who worketh in you' (122 Mere Christianity).

"I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at the first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes" (123 Mere Christianity).

"Handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because he has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of heaven is already inside you" (121).



Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.