Babies

Babies are sick... it seems like all of them at the same time. Yesterday I just cried. Mitchell has an ear infection, Hollis just had his surgery, Malea's nose is runny, etc. etc. etc. Even Jaret seems to be having a really hard go. It just kills me. I want to be magic. I want to be Mary Poppins and give them a spoonful of sugar, yummy medicine, tuck them in and make them all better. Why can't I make them better? It makes me so sad.

(Although I do have to say today God gave me joy in my heart in spite of it all. Plus I got my first unsolicited "I love you" from Hayes... we were eating lunch and she just looked at me and said, "Joy, I love you." She's coming along. My precious girl.)

'tis so sweet?

So the song says that trust in Jesus is sweet.

Maybe one day I'll agree but I have to admit that, while it's not necessarily torture, it is hard.
Slowly but surely my life is reducing - the days I have left till WR, the time I have to make money, the distillation of thoughts & feelings that have long percolated in my semi-consciousness, demanding release...

I was reading Psalm 81 and verse 10 struck me: "Open wide your mouth and I will fill it."
I immediately got a visual image of baby Mitchell. When he's in his little chair and I'm feeding him, he will look around the room and get distracted... but as soon as he's done swallowing, even if he isn't looking at me, he opens his mouth for the next bite. Of course I am there, ready, spoon filled, waiting for him to open his mouth so I can give him more food. I love it when he eats. I love it when he's satisfied and laughs at me, and (his newest trick) claps his little hands.
I think this is what God means to say with this verse on his provision.

"And which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish will give him a snake? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him?" (Matt 7:10-12).

This childlike dependence is the essence of trusting God. Effort doesn't allow me to reach this place... surrender does. And that's hard: because I can't make it happen, I can't control the process of my sanctification by building virtues into my life... I can't have my way in my timing...

I can't do it. I need God. I can't make it. I need God.

I really want to be in a sweet place of dependence and trust... I'm not there yet. But everyday I think I yield a little more.

Really really ridiculously white thighs

So apparenty I am related intimately to the David Beckhams of Port Charlotte. They are getting so cool. Yikes. I can't keep up!

(Nick got kicked out of the game AND put in the newspaper for some slide-tackle move - kicked out of the game! Yeesh! He really is my brother.)

Jimbo

So cute. So fun. You are such an amazing man! I love you so much and am so proud to call myself Jimmy's little sister. I'm looking forward to being around you more next year!

The rest A's

I'm bored of this self-evaluation thing so I'm just gonna finish up. I just got this weird jolt of energy/nerves about World Race. YIKES. This is so really happening. Yikes yikes yikes. I think I feel excited - which is great. And I need to get serious about fundraising because... well, I have no money. So. God help me.

2. I am afraid of - failure... further, imperfection. I'm afraid of screwing up.
3. On a daily basis, I need - alone time, moments with God, and perspective.
4. I am good at - leading (projects), school/academics, working with kids, discipline, expressing myself in words.
5. I am bad at - organization, money stuff, negotiation, diplomacy.
6. I believe (with all of my heart) - in God, in eternity, in the spirit world, in my family's love.

Moi in a nutshell. Kinda.

Answer 1

"I understand life when________."

I think this means, "what do I touch base with to remind me of reality... who I really am and where I really fit in this world?"

And the answer to that is my family.

I don't say God because God can be very confusing... very big and very mysterious. He doesn't always "bring me home" in the sense that I feel safe and at peace.

But my family does.

One conversation with Mom and life starts making sense again. One hug from Dad and it's really actually okay. One crazy laughing session with my brothers or a gossip session with Faith and I remember who I am and where I fit.

Dad, Mom, Jimmy, Fatz, Nathey, Snook and Soo. My luvelies.

Home base.

Stuff of life

I think we all know that we are some kind of mosaic: a compilation of our many - sometimes varied or contradicting - thoughts and experiences. The puzzle pieces that make us up, at some point, become either obvious or obviously ignored by us. It's "the unexamined life is not worth living" concept.
So lately as I've engaged in World Race and talked with new people I realize something: I don't know how to explain myself anymore. I've distanced myself from consistent psychological self-evaluation (which has been good). I think, though, that I need to nail down a few things before I initiate what will surely be the most stressful experience of my life.

So here are the questions I want to ask & answer:

"I understand life when__________."

"I am afraid of__________."

"On a daily basis, I need_________."

"I am good at___________."

"I am bad at___________."

"I believe (with all of my heart)__________."

I think those're the basics. I'll start thinking them through. I actually might not mind comments on this post if anyone wants to share their own musings.

Sounds like blasphemy, sure nuff.

So I'm in year 2 of my obsession with African-American literature... finally getting around to the more popular novel stuff. In incredible similarity with my recent epiphanies I read this:

(enjoy it and think of it in this context: two black women talking, impose the accent, etc.)

Quote -
You telling me God love you, and you ain't never done nothing for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that?

But if God love me, Celie, I don't have to do all that. Unless I want to. There's a lot of other things I can do that I speck God likes.

Like what? I ast.

Oh, she say. I can lay back and just admire stuff. Be happy. Have a good time.

Well, this sound like blasphemy sure nuff.

She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.

"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker
(this won the Pulitzer Prize)

My advice? Read this book.

Begin again

Divinely, Dr. Smiley was at my parent's house this weekend. I even took Monday as a personal day... and I'm beginning again. I feel free from my fear: fear of regret, fear of decision-making, fear of judgment. Everyday I can wake up and begin again. He is and He loves me. That is the biggest question I could ever ask ("am I loved?") and the answer is emphatically, YES. I receive that truth. I will fight the good fight... the good fight, btw, is the fight you win.

Here's the story of my life: I will live, then I will die and be with Jesus forever. Everything in the interim is adventuring with Jesus.

Peace? Indeed.

This song speaks - go listen to it if you can at Keyofdavidministries.com

"I will not fear as I wait for the dawn/You keep on holding my hand/
I'm crying out from the depths of my soul/In words I just can't understand/
You have set my feet upon a rock that's not moving/
You have placed a song of hope in my heart and I'm singing/I'm playing/

Lord, do not hold back your lovingkindness/
Lord, do not hold back your mercy/
You are the way and the truth that guides us/
Everyday you are the one who preserves me/

God the great Artist designed you and me/With his will and purpose in mind/
But I keep on striving and trying to be/Someone I've made with my pride/
Now the fires of hell burn hot and try to destroy me/
I run to your will, O God, I know you'll restore me/And reform me/

Lord, do not hold back your lovingkindness/
Lord, do not hold back your mercy/
You are the way and the truth that guides us/
Everyday you are the one who preserves me."

"40" by Jason Upton

"Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us."
Psalm 62:8

How I feel

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH uggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr uuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I mean, seriously. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

"how do you feel?" .... "an-gry."

(Chris Farley right before he destroys a whole restaurant after being served Columbian decaffeinated coffee crystals rather than regular coffee...)

This has been a "surprise, you're drinking decaf coffee crystals" kinda week. Yuck.

A million colors

Laura and I had some great conversations last night. On the way home I was listening to Katie Melua's new cd and this really struck me. Ethics... morality... standards... such a challenge to navigate in a postmodern (or neomodern for Jesse etc.) society.

If a black man is racist/Is it okay?

If it's a white man's racism/That made him that way?

'Cause the bully is the victim/They say

By some sense they're all the same

'Cause the line between
Wrong and right

Is the width of a thread

From a spider's web

The piano keys

Are black and white

But they sound a million colors

In your mind

I could tell you/To go to war

Or I could march for peace/And fighting no more

But how do I know which is right?

And I hope he does when he sends you to fight

'Cause the line between

Wrong and right

Is the width of a thread

From a spider's web

The piano keys

Are black and white

But they sound like a million colors

In your mind

....Remember forever the guns and the feathers in time

"Spider's Web" by Katie Melua
(on album "Piece by Piece")

Can I just say

I am friends with some of the most amazing people alive. Laura came in town last night from Pennsylvania... I got to talk to Nick and Jesse... I just saw Leah, CW and my brother... I really am in relationship with awesome individuals. I like that they are all their own brand of eccentric, artsy, intellectuals... I like that they would love each other if they ever met... I like that they are really true friends, that they value the depth of relationship I crave, that they are invested in the exchange of ideas and art... they care deeply about the apparent chaos of society's current philosophy and have wild dreams for its revolution or improvement... God is with them... and through them God is with me.

I really really love you guys.

Bone weary

(photograph by EW Carter - you should check him out, some of his stuff is this haunting Victorian era-esque portrayals)

I'm tired. I've been traveling like a crazy person and, while I love it, I'm so so so tired. Part of it is staying up through the night talking with Leah, part of it is sleeping in beds of questionable hygiene in random hotels in SC, part of it is hanging out and having fun and for that I have no excuse, part of it is sleeping two nights with a 2 year old who rivals a thrashing alligator in her sleep and a 7 month old who likes to snuggle aka drool exessively and hit his head repeatedly on the headboard... and part of it is emotional.

I always say to my kids when they cry or whine, "life isn't easy for a little guy" because, however easy their lives may seem, they really aren't. Imagine not being able to say how you feel or explain why you're crying. You can't help yourself to what you want or even ask for it. That's not easy.

I think the same kind of compassion needs to be extended to us, as adults, toward ourselves: "life isn't easy for..." me? Well, anyone really. Life isn't easy because there is love and disappointment and exhileration and sorrow and these extremities, vital as they are, only contribute to the weariness we can feel. Experience is wearying.

I think this may be why the Sabbath is mandated. It also may be why on the 7th day and in the ultimate Sabbath of heaven, the rule is rest. We need to rest.

So, I'm going to watch Harry Potter today and only exercise for 30 minutes and NOT feel guilty about it.

I miss my mommy.
I miss Leah (oh, and if you're reading this, I think you have my camera).

Love you all so much.

Song for the moment -

"But I look at you warm in your dream/While your mobile dances above/And I think to myself it's a beautiful night/And I know everything's gonna be alright/Yes, now I know, it'll be alright."

"Everything'll be Alright (Will's Lullaby)" by Joshua Radin

Hannah banana bobana

My friend. I love being a kid with her and making jewelry and gossiping about Hannah Montana. I mean. This is cool stuff. :)

Blank and the giant

"The woman that I love is forty feet tall..." -Citizen Cope

The first line of this Citizen Cope song haunts me. I like this thought. It is so meaningful and invasive. Instantly my heart feels it... the disproportionate reality that clashes with my expectations of what people should be... my consistent (and not always beneficial) obsession with things and people "larger than life."

(photo from movie adaptation of Dickens's "Great Expectations")
It's so easy to fall in love, so easy to stay in love, with an illusory idea or person. It is that one, that giant or giantess...

I'm in love with that.

Incidentally, this song is called "Pablo Picasso" - as we all know, I'm completely obsessed with Picasso right now... his perception of reality was just this skewed... light, dark, swirls, colors, marred visions of reality, mixed-up images of humans, breasts, eyes, noses all out of place... too big, too strange to be real. That's what life looked like through his eyes.

Bigger than real. More than normal. Beyond rational? Brave, beautiful... like, for instance, 40 feet tall...

"... she's a movie star, she's all in the papers and everywhere I go, people hand me quarters/And they pat me on the back, they treat me like I'm famous/I never leave her side, 'cause dude it can be dangerous/And when the night arrives the light hits her features and/...."
(more of the CC song)


Wreaked. Marred. Squabble but it's what I see.

The point...

...of that last post was basically this: I realize that both viewpoints presented were largely unrelated. The philosophical underpinning of my comments and musings was this: everyone needs a purpose to get behind. Beyond a "spiritual calling" I think that having a purpose, something to fight for, is necessary to living a passionate life.
And here's the thing (where I think Greenpeace has helped me) - the motivation for effecting change is the betterment/improvement/conservation/preservation of one's environment. Whether we are believers fighting for the Kingdom of God or environmentalists fighting for the beauty of the earth, we align ourselves with causes that are meaningful, both intrinsically and which assign our lives deeper meaning.

It is not just the calling of some but really the need of all to become involved with a cause. The causeless are aimless and aimless people are dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Extreme? But I think true.

Does that make more sense?

Greenpeace

Late but here nonetheless...
It's still a bit obsessing (?) to me...

Here are two different views:

1. From the Greenpeace (history of) book. This begins with Canadian ecology and runs through whale defense and forest support, etc. The major history.
This is rather lengthy but worth the read:
"World changers, artists, and social misfits stumble upon history and make the best of it. Or they make a mess of it. In either case, they 'touch the flesh of the matter,' as Greenpeace strategist Ben Metcalfe once dreamed. Or they discover the soul that has no name and enter the eternal battle between spirit and matter. They're on spirit's side but in matter's grip. 'Imagination is seizing power,' proclaimed the Paris students in 1968. 'Our tears prove we are connected to the suffering of others,' said pacifist Joanna Macy. We shall not be moved. Blessed are the peacemakers. Let freedom ring.
World changers aren't planners. The planners come later, with critics and social philosophers to mop up and win awards. Bureaucrats arrive to invent systems. World changes are the mothers weary of seeing their children abused and fathers who have had enough of petty tyrants. Rosa Parks, the seamstress who refused to sit in the back of the bus. Jesus. Buddha."
(Greenpeace.... by Rex Weyler)

A different vantage point:


“We wrestle to free ourselves from macrocharity and distant acts of charity that serve to legitimize apathetic lifestyles of good intentions but rob us of the gift of community. We preach we prophesy, and dream together about how to awaken the church from her violent slumber. Sometimes we speak to change the world; other times we speak to keep the world from changing us. We are about ending poverty, not simply managing it. We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.We fight terrorism- the terrorism within each of us, the terrorism of corporate greed, of American consumerism, of war. We are not pacifist hippies but passionate lovers who abhor passivity and violence. We spend our lives actively resisting everything that destroys life, whether that be terrorism or the war on terrorism. We try to make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so the few can live as they wish. We believe in another way of life- the kingdom of God- which stands in opposition to the principalities, powers, and rulers of this dark world.”

Shane Claiborne’s book “The Irresistible Revolution”

There're people in this world - I am in relationship with some of them - who are willing to do whatever it takes, to join whatever cause is most effective, to live their every breath for the sake of oppression, preservation, redemption.
I once heard a friend claim that war is the absolute opposite of God's will because it destroys human life, animal life, and destroys the earth. What could be worse?

There is so much to say. But what makes me really glad is that, ultimately, the Kingdom of God underpins every redemptive sentiment. So I at least know I am right there. God is the ultimate redeemer. We're in. So do what we know to do... at least as much as we know thus far.

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” James 1:22

Save the whales etc.

"Soldiers dying of leukemia because people are dumb----". -Leah on hydrogen bomb testing north of New Zealand back in the '70's.

I'm reading the history of Greenpeace. So much to say but not yet... it's still percolating. The hippies and the hobos - I want to be among them. These are the people who are moving and shaking. I have a great quote to tell you when I get my book back.

For now, it's a little crazy/amazing to me how many of us (my friends, that is) are on the same wavelength with this stuff. Two major quotes to come and then I need phone calls.

Hell or highwater

8/1/06

"I can see a light that is coming
For the heart that holds on
And there will be an end to these struggles
But until that day comes
Still I will praise you
Still I will praise you

Oh no You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me."

Part of "You Never Let Go" by Matt Redman (on Passion 06)

Exodus 14:10-14 -
"10 As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. 11They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? 12Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, “Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians”? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.’ 13But Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. 14The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.'"

Whoa.
How often do we - because of its accompanying suffering and sacrifice - question whether or not we really want salvation? I mean, the idea of freedom from slavery is alluring... who wouldn't jump at the idea?
But then I find myself standing in an impossible situation - an impass on one side and an enemy on the other... and I don't feel so free and I certainly don't feel safe.

God alone is my hope.

right where He wants me to be but I have to admit to frequent second thoughts.

But I've made my decision.
And I'm going with God...
He is truly my only hope
And my salvation.
Blind faith is over-romanticized
Very terrifying
And here I stand
Completely in the dark
My only hope is that pillar of fire in the distance.

Ah.

So he has made a way for me -
Be it through the water and wilderness -
Onward I go.

Joy

Oh joy.
That's often said as a kind of sigh. (I'm admittedly not a huge fan of that fact, or the word "killjoy" but that's besides the point)
Mom used to grab me and do the "dance of joy."
Joy is said to be the more enduring feeling of elation - as opposed to fleeting happiness. Most of us spend our lives seeking it...
Hoping that one fabulous person, one perfect situation, one anticipated moment will leave us with an aftertaste of joy.
The hope of joy fuels our ambitions - everything from weight loss (when I'm thin I'll be joyful) to career goals (when I succeed I'll be approved of... and people who are approved of are joyful). It's a kind of contented satisfaction. Peace with who I am and peace with the world.

And this much I know. These past two weeks have been really chaotic - my world turned upside down almost thoroughly. My house is empty, my heart is recovering from a major blow, Leah's been out of town, the family's been in transition... uncertainties at every turn and enough pain for complaint or at least stress. That's the scene but here's the surprise: I have joy.

Somewhere deep enough is a reservoir of joy within me that is sustaining me. I am not losing hope. I am not losing life or perspective or energy. I am very much okay. More than fine. And I am that way because I have joy.

Surprising. Pleasing. Bit of a shocker but I'll take it.