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?!?!?