Tree of Life

His wisdom is profound, his power is vast.
Who has resisted him and come out unscathed?

On The Tree of Life

"Jack's parents represent the film's broader dialectic of what Mother describes as "two ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of grace."

As the stern, business-minded Mr. O'Brien, Pitt represents the way of nature, valuing a competitive, almost Machiavellian approach to life. He's big on the idea of ownership, control, and being a self-sovereign man ("You have control of your own destiny," he says). As the loving, compassionate Mrs. O'Brien, newcomer Chastain embodies the way of grace. She nurtures the kids, cares for them when dad's mad, and is quick to forgive. In parallel scenes of waking the boys up from bed—mother by playfully slipping ice cubes down the back of their pajamas; father by ripping their covers off—we see the contrast clearly."

(McCracken, Christianity Today)

Coffee and Sweatshirts

I can't wait for fall. Crisp air, coffee,
sweatshirts, friends, romance,
beauty, leaves and leaves,
falling everywhere.

Liberalism Undermining Tradition

Matthias is one of my favorite nerdheads EVAR.

He wrote his senior thesis on how tradition has been undermined by the core principles of Enlightenment liberalism.

We're going to talk about it over coffee soon, but I want to write out some of his main points, weaving my thoughts into it. (NOTE: these are Matthias's thoughts I'm building on. I'm putting it in my own words so it makes sense to me later)

First of all, tradition is a beautiful thing. We can't live our lives without it. Everything we do, from going to school and getting married down to our ability to speak and process information--has to do with traditional values and customs. It's extremely ordinary and pervasive--so much so that it goes unnoticed.

However, tradition is necessarily exclusive. It makes some desires superior to others, and thus, is not compatible with "equality of preference" proposed by Hobbes in The Leviathan. He writes, “Whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it that he for his part calleth good… For there is no such finis ultimus, utmost aim, nor summum bonum, greatest good, as is spoken of in the books of old moral philosophers.”

Hobbes's equality of preference rejects the ancient interest in the "greatest good" because it is seen as a monster oppressor to the individual's wants and desires. The problem with this is congruency. You simply can't have tradition without the exclusivity that comes with it--exclusivity to the opinions, wishes, and desires of certain minority groups or outsiders.

What happens when preference rules? Kalb writes that to “make freedom truly universal and equal is to make it featureless… it becomes an abstraction defined and redefined without limit by government officials, whether welfare administrators or Supreme Court justices.”

As a whole, Matthias's paper begs deeper questions about the nature of equality, morality, and truth. How do we define them? How important is it for us to have absolute answers in these areas? How important is it that we all agree? If we don't...what happens to tradition?

Ask him to send you his thesis!

Coffee dates with Mel

Reasons why Melanie Herrera is beautiful:

-She looks for cosmic truths in ordinary situations

-She is guided by her heart AND her head (rare combo)

-She goes against the grain

-She's silly, absurd, thoughtful, and perfectly lovable

-She invites challenges

-She's not out to prove she's right, but to keep thinking, observing, living, and growing until she is fully confident that she has discovered what life is all about.

This girl...is a gem.




(^^ Sunday school diagram? heh)

Goodbye Doubt, Hello Hope.

My beautiful, undignified friend Jessi Marquez is starting a "Kick the Habit" campaign for the month of August. The idea is to get rid of some nasty mind trap you've got yourself in and overcome it.

So I'm kicking doubt.

When doubt shows up, it manifests itself in mental and emotional states of fear, worry, and self-centeredness that weigh on me and suck up my time and attention. Time and focus are precious things that should be guarded--not hoarded selfishly, but protected--because they are vehicles through which your life is poured out on others, through love, sacrifice, and work. I'm tired of watching amazing opportunities pass me by because I have given doubt the authority to dwell in my mind.

Over the past few weeks, I've been slammed with it (as well as all of its crippling corollaries). BUT, for the first time in my life, I've experienced the reality of invisible arms of strength coming alongside and beneath me, giving me the ability to stand firm and not be shaken. That strength, I believe, is rooted in hope.

I've been intrigued by the concept of hope this whole summer. The virtue of hope isn't emphasized much, but it's right up there with faith and love in Corinthians 13. Faith itself is described as being "sure of what we hope for." What do I hope for? How can I be absolutely sure of what I hope for?

...by anchoring it somewhere solid.

We can set our hope on things that are momentary and flaky, or continuous with promise. Hope deferred can "make the heart sick" when it doesn't come through, or it can regenerate the spirit with sureness and confidence. So, growing in the virtue of hope means to rightly divide between the real deal and it's smiling counterfeits.

Practically, kicking the habit of doubt means standing on the promises of God when my whims and emotions tell me to do otherwise. I give Christ full control over my thought-life. I'm putting time in my schedule to remind myself what it is I'm hoping for--by reading things that inspire me, remembering God's call on my life, and moving in that direction with the small lamp set in front of me.

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him."

HOPE-fully (ha), by the end of this month, I won't be the slave to doubt I was at the beginning.

Knowing God

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love,
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love,
I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love,
I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others, 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.

But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.




I feel most at home in empty auditoriums. Something about the stillness, the barren deadness after a show, the anticipation for the next show, the oddness of it being vacant after being filled with so much life...it draws me into a transcendent peace and contentment. Laying on the floor of a dark stage after hours, I feel as if I'm every age I'll ever be all at once.

"All the world's a stage," Shakespeare put it, and he's right. Sitting alone in an empty theatre is humbling. You remove yourself from the normal functionality of the thing (action, excitement, adventure) and reflect on it. When the curtain's down and the people are gone, things look really different.

Same with life. When you draw away from the activity and let yourself be still--look long out a window--embrace the quiet--invite back all the memories you suppressed--you see it all from a different angle.

Today I was thinking about the whirlwind of the past three years I've lived in New York. New Yorkers look at people from the country like they're stupid because they don't "know things."

What is knowledge? My head grew large in New York, but my heart and spirit might have suffered. Maybe they weren't fed well enough--ironically--in all of the excess information about ideas, concepts, God, politics, religion, the world. I thought thinking about those things brought me closer to the truth (and they can), but none of it matters if I don't know God. Know as in love.

God is love. Knowing him is knowing love, and without it, there's no meaning.

Suffering and Beauty.

"To possess true beauty, we must be willing to suffer. If Christ himself was perfect through his sufferings, why would I believe God would not do the same with me? Women who are stunningly beautiful are women who have had their hearts enlarged by suffering. By saying yes when the world says no. By paying the high price of loving truly and honestly without demanding that they be loved in return. And by refusing to numb their pain in the myriad of ways available. They have come to know that when everyone and everything has left them, God is there. They have learned, along with David, that those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs (Ps. 84:6).

Living in true beauty can require much waiting, much time, much tenacity of spirit. We must constantly direct our gazes toward the face of God, even in the presence of longing and sorrow. It is in the waiting that our hearts are enlarged." (145 Captivating)