Tidepools

Early finals week morning rolls around and a daily two hour nap comes to an end at 5am. There's a mad dash to throw clothes in a backpack, scurry down the road and jump in a veteran road tripping toaster. It's a slow morning on the highway. The fog is still rolling out of bed, the moon is still high above the destination on the horizon, and a purple sunrise glow makes the world feel trapped in a long steady yawn. Exhausted and stressed grumps are made cheerful by the power of loud Disney music, and the irony of singing "Under the Sea" on the way to the tidepools an hour away makes forgetting a weeks worth of responsibilities to come a guilt free task. It's time to chase a bus, bundle up, climb over rocks, hold giant squirming urchins, sea stars with too many legs, worms that stretch, bivalves and crabs of all shapes and colors, be curious, learn from the eternally wise, and laugh and learn and appreciate.

4/19/11

Motivational Homework Music

I get stuck on songs to the point where I listen to them on repeat for two days straight and then it kind of putters out from there. I've been listening to this song obsessively all week. Despite how you might initially take the lyrics, it has a back story and really is a song with a hopeful message: one that I unfortunately cannot remember well enough to recount for you here. I think it was the overall sound and feeling of it that kind of echoed what I was feeling all week and that's why it was so satisfying to listen to it when I was trying to get stuff done.

4/18/11

Pray Without Ceasing

This last week of school before finals was insane. The whole week starting Saturday I stayed up until 4 or 5am doing homework and studying. Normally, I tend to be a really unmotivated person, and I shut down when I get unhappy, but because of experiences going on around me I'd been forced to crack open my Bible for the first time in I can't tell you how long, and pray with complete reliance on God. My attention toward God was completely unrelated to school, but it was incredible to see that the more time I spent in communion with God, the more his characteristics rubbing off on me leaked into all other aspects of my life. This whole week of no sleep and constant business I felt a strength and motivation that was beyond me and it caused me to continue and be positive even when coffee was not enough to wake up my body and every inch of me was ready to collapse. If we can pray without ceasing and keep our focus on God, keep that communion with him constant, we will have successfully clung to the vine and he will produce good fruit in every area of our lives.

4/17/11

Guard your heart.

Disclaimer: This is one of those times where I have to remind myself that honesty is important and worthwhile, that I should fight to live without shame when it comes to talking about the truths of God, and in humility admit that I do not know everything but that I desire to seek truth, even through what would seem to some as unconventional avenues. I ask for respect and gentleness toward this subject toward me and toward others.

In the last year I have encountered the spiritual world in ways I was never convinced existed. I know a lot of people that like to say that paranormal activity is just a joke, a lie, and a hoax, or that it has nothing to do with God, but I've learned that that's not the case. I have had friends attacked and possessed and friends explain to me that they see the spiritual world and the battle that rages everywhere they go. It's become something very apparent to me and I now know that my role within this activity was what was symbolized in the putting on of my cross necklace. Because of my need to understand the way it is approached in our world and the realities of what is happening, I did some research on demonic activity. After a video interview with a Catholic exorcist who explained what he does and what is happening when he performs an exorcism, the quote below came onto the screen from Book 1, Chapter 13 of "The Prophecies and Revelations of Saint Bridget (Birgitta) of Sweden."

I don't know what I believe about the validity of Saint Birgitta's revelation. I wouldn't declare it to be truth, but I would not declare it to be lies. I do know that there are many ways for the devil to gain a foothold in our lives and because of the teaching and experiences of others that I've encountered, I think what Saint Brigitta says is very important and true. We need to be aware of our lusts, intents, desires, and actions so that we can keep them aligned with God's will. I write all this and record this quote to be honest about what is happening in my life, honest about the spiritual realm and what is happening within the universal Church, and hopefully open the door to conversation: I welcome people to ask me questions about my experiences and to tell me about their own for the sake of learning, understanding, and pursuing holiness.

Chapter 13

“My enemy has three devils in himself. The first sits in his sexual organ, the second in his heart, the third in his mouth. The first is like a skipper who lets water in through the keel; the water, rises by increasing gradually, and then fills up all of the ship. Then the water floods over and the ship sinks down. This ship is his body that is harassed by the temptations of devils and by his own lusts as though by tempestuous waves.


First, the evil lust entered into his body through the keel, that is, through the evil desire with which he took delight in bad thoughts. And since he did not resist through repentance and penance and did not repair his body’s ship with the nails of abstinence, the water of lust increased daily while he gave his consent to evil. Then the belly of the ship filled with evil desires, and the water flooded over and drowned the ship with lust so that it was unable to reach the haven of salvation.


The second devil sits in his heart and is like a worm lying inside an apple. The worm first eats the core of the apple and then leaves its filth there and crawls around inside the whole apple until it is completely useless. This is what the devil does: First, he destroys the man’s will and good desires, which are like the core where all the soul’s strength and all goodness reside, and when the heart has been emptied of these goods, the devil then leaves in their place in his heart worldly thoughts and desires that he had loved more. The devil now drives his body to what pleases him, and for this reason, his strength and understanding are diminished and he begins to hate life. This man is indeed an apple without a core, that is to say, a man without a heart, for he enters my church without a heart since he has no love of God.


The third devil is like an archer who looks out through the windows and shoots at the careless. How can the devil not be in him who never speaks without mentioning the devil? That which is loved more is mentioned more often. His bitter words, with which he hurts others, are like arrows shot through as many windows as the number of times the devil is mentioned, and innocent people take offense at his words.


Therefore do I, who am the Truth, swear by my truth that I shall condemn him like a whore to the sulfurous fire, like a deceitful traitor to the mutilation of all his limbs and like a scoffer of the Lord to eternal shame! However, as long as his soul and body are united, my mercy stands ready for him. What I demand of him is that he should attend the divine services and prayers more often, not to fear any humiliation or desire any honor, and that evil or bad words will never be mentioned by his mouth.

* * * *

Again, I ask for respect and gentleness toward responding to this, if anyone does. It makes me uncomfortable to post this, but at the same time I think it's important as I strive to document and be honest not just about spiritual warfare, but because of that, the importance of guarding our hearts

4/16/11

Tribute to Kim Zerkel

I don't know how this ended up happening, but I stumbled upon Kim Zerkel's Notes on facebook, and was awestruck by the quality of the ideas expressed in her poetry. She writes about what it means to be beautiful, what it means to be treated like a woman, addresses the idea of peace by asking "what is just and what is justice?", and also how we can feel like dirt but that God intends us to be moldable like clay. Here is one of my favorite poems by her:


Modern Hosea

There was a certain man,
God called to,
He showed her this girl,
Hosea,
the man,
sees her,
and knows,
she is the town "whore",
and she is to be his wife,
he never questions God,
and goes to woo her.

They become man and wife,
but this woman Gomer,
sleeps around,
and still shares a sensual kiss or two,
Hosea's parents and friends question him,
about his decision,
but he says,
"If God so wills,
we are one flesh,
she and I."

Hosea also knew,
love goes deeper,
deeper than any wrongs,
no matter how many times,
she tried to flee,
love always fought.

Israel,
Oh Israel,
come back to me,
your Maker,
love goes deeper,
deeper than wrong,
you shall be my bride,
and you make Me smile,
brighter,
than a groom in love.

Gomer,
come to me,
Hosea,
Your husband,
I see you as you ought to be,
close your wounds and open your heart,
let me love you,
I don't see you as a slut,
whore,
or anything the world sees,
come away with me,
let me show you real love,
the likes you never have know,

Israel,
come to me,
Your Maker,
let me love you,
I ask you,
remember who lead you to the promise land,
let Me embrace you,
My people,
sin no more,
and follow me once again,
though you fall and fall again,
I will catch you.

Please come to me....

*

This poem means a lot to me because I feel like people judge others so quickly without looking at the reasons behind why they do what they do or the fact that everyone deserves to be loved in their faults. Hosea being willing to show Gomer mercy, forgiveness, and love by looking past her exterior labels and that being compared to God's relationship with his people means a lot to me. Thank you Kim for expressing ideas in all of your poetry that challenges me and reminds me what is important.

4/15/11

Leadership

I went for a run with a friend and afterward sat on the stairs of my front deck in the cold and dark to talk about school. The more classes I fail, the more I find myself re-evaluating what I should major in and what I want to do with my life. I have so many things that I'm interested in that deciding on a major seems nigh impossible. I could go any direction. The more I think about times in my life where I've filled roles that have been most fulfilling and where I've felt most like me, the more I realize those times have been when I've been a leader. It's not because I'm a feminist who is determined to claim her right to "equality," but because I honestly feel that God has created me a certain way to fill a certain role. I think God has gifted me to be bold, confident, forward, honest, compassionate, and courageous in ways that come out strongest when I fulfill a leadership position. In a way, it doesn't really matter to me what I major in, as long as I can be a leader someday, because I think that's what I was created to do. Can you major in that? Can you major in leadership? 'Cause on one hand I want to major in something I'm interested in, but I also want to take classes that will best help me to be a leader. In knowing this, it begs a question concerning my role as a woman in the Church. If I know that I was made with qualities that best enable me to be a leader, and I know that as a follower of God I am made to play a role in the Church body, how am I to apply my leadership qualifications to the Church? Am I to only lead Sunday school or classes just for women because of the way Ephesians 5 has been interpreted by the typical church? I'm a leader. How am I to put that into the context of the typical marriage and Church body structure of the modern church without having limitations?

I just know I was made to lead.

4/14/11

Symbols

I was raised Catholic, so physical symbols have always been something very significant for my religious life, and that's also translated over into the rest of my life as well. The ring I wear on my right hand and the heart I often keep drawn on my left both have their own meanings for me. In talking to a friend the other day, he brought up the fact that he really felt strongly about needing to wear a cross lately. It reminded me of a conversation I'd had with another friend who suggested that the symbol of the cross is good to wear when you're in close proximity with the spiritual realm and demonic activity. After he brought up wanting to wear a cross again, I felt a strong desire to have one as well. I ravaged my room when I got home to find one, but came up empty handed: all of my crosses were back home in Alaska. The antique store popped into my head and I resolved to go the next day.

The next day I went to the antique store and picked one out. There were quite a few there, but I picked a flat one that had a black background with silver edges and designs on it. Generic and simple. I got home and my chain didn't fit through the hole on the top, and I had such a strong desire to put it on as soon as possible that I took a plastic twisty tie and looped it around as a mediator between the chain and cross. It's all a bit mismatched, maybe a bit cheap looking, but the second I put it on I felt a cleanness and lightness, not in weight but in purity, that was very all encompassing and peaceful. I felt as though I put on not just a necklace, but an initiation to a journey. It wasn't an ominous feeling of impeding hardship, but a matter of fact knowledge that something was changing and I was putting on a new period of life and responsibility: but it carried no weight. I've felt God on occasion before, and I clearly felt him in a way I hadn't felt for about two years. It feels like a weight pressing on you, surrounding you, a filling that carries the same intensity in your chest as intense worry, but without the negative connotations. It was a clear, clean, apparent reality that something was starting.

Symbols hold real power. Their role is not just spiritual, but also physical.

4/13/11

Spaghetti Self

There are a lot of things that put stress on my life. I'm finding a lack of value in what my life is geared toward right now, a lack of direction with school, a lot of worry for friends, a lot of tension in relationships, a lot of emotions stemming from all different areas of my life, and there has been a serious lack of compartmentalizing, organizing, and thinking through all of these different things as separate entities. Much like the way my desk in my room looks right now, I've piled everything into a messy heap and when it comes time to sort through it all, it turns into a giant disaster. Hence the spaghetti analogy:














When mind mixes with pain mixes with heart mixes with failure, and I try to pull myself up by the bootstraps, I feel like this. It seems nigh impossible to sort through myself when it all gets dumped together like a bowl of spaghetti. Have mercy: I can't be who I need to be like this, but let me get some sorting and cleaning done, and in time I'll be back.

4/12/11

Root of My Evil

I've always been a firm believer that people should not spend their money in a self indulgent or excessive way. That people should live simply and save. That we owe it to the people that are starving, in bondage, and poor to be wise with our money and give as much as we can to them. That exceptional mansions are to be appreciated, but that sacrifices need to be made in a broken world, and that those things are not for now.

For a long time I've believed in living in a way that is much more poor than necessary in order to give money to those who need it: like to the North Korean refugees. I argued this point heatedly with a friend and as the focus changed so did my heart.

What is it that people need more than money? There are poor people in America that still have more than the richest in other countries, but they are not happy. There are filthy rich people in America with large houses and full stomachs that are miserable. There are some that are also happy, I presume (and herein lies my problem: there are happy rich people). There are starving families in other countries, living in huts and on a prayer, that have joy. There are modern day slaves that are miserable and others that are happy. All because of a need that some have filled and some don't, and it has nothing to do with bondage or food.

It was said to me, and I know I don't have this quote right though the meaning still stands, "A North Korean in the sex trafficking industry who is saved is in much less need from me than an American who is not."

People need love. When I envision giving money, I envision giving it out of love, and in love. Giving money and saving does not inherently equal love. Living simply does not mean giving love. What does someone else gain by you cleaning out your room and getting rid of all the things you don't need? Maybe you give all of that extra stuff to a second hand store to so it can be available to someone who needs it? Do they feel any love when they buy your old faded volleyball shirt because they can't afford their own?

When it comes to the issue of money, it is not just about saving and giving. It's about how and why you save and give. Someone else told me the other day that it's not about how big your house is, but how extravagant. You can have a big house with lots of rooms, and you can use those rooms to house those in need and use that large house for the Kingdom in as many ways as you can imagine, and the problem does not lie in the fact that you own a large house, but in how extravagant and indulgent you make it.

This is not a well formed idea. My opinion has not completely turned around. But I think there is something significant to be learned from the fact that people do not need money, though sometimes money can help if its result is love. If its result is Christ. People have greater needs: a father who gives gas money to their child but never says I love you hasn't really filled a need or given love. Love through money is not in living simply, giving to organizations, or spending wisely. A belief in that can lead to a lot of judgment. Being overly conscious with your money is to make it into an idol both by obsessively saving and being frugal and obsessively gaining it and spending. Save, spend, and give.

Be wise with your love, not your money.

4/11/11

Humility

At church on Sunday, the pastor threw out there the fact that when he was 20 he thought he knew everything, and the congregation laughed their agreement. He then apologized to us in the front row who were all 20. I smiled because I knew it was true: I believe that I know a lot, and I know I don't know everything, but I still think I know what I'm talking about.

Later in the day it was very much proven to me that I do not know everything, and I do not know what is best. When I see someone in need, I asses the situation, decide what is best, and force it on others: this blew up in my face and the reality that I could not be wonder woman hit me hard. It was a harsh blow to learn that I don't have anything close to a good grasp on what it means to live for the Kingdom on earth in a humble way, or what it means to care for people. I came out of that day with a total loss of confidence and pride: which was good. I sat on a couch and the need for Christ's control, truth, and guidance had never been so apparent to me. I have no idea what I'm doing and there's only one source of truth to tell me how it's supposed to be done.

I do not know what is best.

4/10/11

Weeds

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

This Saturday at James Project we were doing gardening with a woman, and she quoted this to me. I can't tell you how much I appreciated it. I worked at a greenhouse this last summer and despite the fact that everyone thought I was insane, I really had a thing for the weeds. Some of them were just as pretty as the flowers we were selling, and they were obviously much more hardy, so why did we have to hate them so much? I started a little weed garden in the back greenhouse that frequently got demolished on my days off, but I always thought there was something we just weren't appreciating about the weed: cause it's just another plant.

This quote can obviously be applied to people. I don't intend to appreciate it in that way. I love weeds because I think they're overlooked. And I thought so before I knew Emerson felt the same. I feel very proud of this fact. And plus, who doesn't love a good dandelion? They provided us with "butter" when we were kids so we could tell who was boy crazy, they carry our wishes, and they provide children with a great way to get an allowance by pulling them up.

4/9/11

So, I guess I'm running a marathon.

I'm running a marathon because Eve ate an apple. It sounds absurd, but the farther I trace back my story, the more I realize it comes back to that fact. Whether Eve existed and she ate a literal apple or not, the point is that the human race made a big mistake and the world is not as it should be. Cancer is a part of that. My Uncle Dave got cancer and fought it for years. In support of him, his three daughters started participating in a two day, 120 mile, bike ride to raise money for cancer research. When my Uncle Dave died last spring, I decided I would join them. I had the same bike I'd had since junior high, and with a fervor I didn't know was in me, I trained obsessively the entire summer. My best friends pitched in and bought me a beautiful road bike and it was my ticket to freedom: I was literally unstoppable. I had no idea what I was capable of.
I brought my bike to school with me to Oregon, but bless Newbergs heart, all it does here is rain. I slid out once trying to ride in the rain and learned my lesson: no more biking in the Oregon winter. So I stopped exercising completely and the repercussions of this hit me like a ton of bricks, both physically and emotionally. With advice from a counselor and the forcefulness of close friends ringing in my ears, I started to run. An important side not here: I ran cross country in junior high, worked my butt of, consistenly came in barely infront of the last place person, accidently ran five miles maybe my freshman year of high school, and have not run any significant distance since then for the last five years: I loath running to the core of my being.
But me being me, I ran two miles cold turkey making sure I wasn't done until I was bright red and sweating and had to scoot down the stares the next day. But if you know me you know I live off the challenge, so I kept running and when someone suggested I could do three, I did three because I don't know how to back down. I called my older sister, and what do you know, she'd been doing a lot of running too. She told me she thinks this is going to be her thing, and that she's going to run a marathon on Decembe 11 in Honolulu: practically where we grew up, and why don't I join her? After biking this summer, I could certainly take up running. I live off the challenge: so I guess I'm running a marathon.

Because the world is imperfect and fallen, because my Uncle fought so bravely, because I discovered my potential, because I can, I am running a marathon. We won't talk about the fact that I found a 10 mile run mapped in my area and nearly had a panic attack at the thought or that I've never run more than five miles. I love unsermountable challenges. I was made for physical endurance, not intellectual. I am so okay with that.

4/8/11

Short Term Missions

A group of Thai dancers from Payap University in Thailand came to my small college down today. Payap University was the first private university in Thailand, and even though it's called a Christian university, most of its students don't claim Christianity as their religion, and majority are Budhist. They offer at least 40 majors, 10 in English (this sounds very tempting to me). They have a group that travels through America, and I believe through other parts of the world, and here was one of their stops.

They did one performance at a local Friends church in the afternoon that included traditional dances from different regions and provinces in Thailand, then performed a half an hour skit for us. They didn't speak any English to us, and had two Americans that work at Payap translate the skit and narrarate their history as they danced. What I found most striking about these people was the lack of language barrier. I don't know if that's the term I should be using, but it's true that when you encounter someone who doesn't speak your language, you project a lot of assumptions onto them about intelligence and pesonality, or lack thereof, because in our culture language has a tendency to equal those things. So what I found most striking was the fact that their vivacious and unique personalities were so apparent without words. You could see it in their eyes and in their actions: they were alive. No language barrier was about to stop these people from introducing themselves to us.

They came to Fox in the late evening. There was a long introduction that had to do with Payap and they didn't do their traditional dancing, and I regretted the fact that the students that didn't go to their earlier performance (which was all of them) didn't get a chance to meet the dancers. They performed their skit again which was based off of a real story and about the most feared bandit in the land who forces a young christian woman to marry him and his eventual conversion. After the skit, the youngest girl who plays the main character in the skit came forward and gave her testimony.

Everything about their evening performance reminded me of when I was in high school and did short term missions; especially the ones to bush Alaska. We would line up and introduce ourselves, perform skits, and give our testimonies they same way they had in front of a group of students at their school. It reminded me of going to Guatemala as well: how we would go to a completely new country and new culture (not that bush Alaska wasn't a different culture) and always try to keep humble minds. Sometimes it was hard not to preach down to people, as though it was our manifest destiny to go forth and preach "our" words. That's why it was both humbling and refreshing to see these people from Thailand come to America and preach to us and be missionaries to us. They were doing to me what I had done to students in high schools and youth groups and it really did mean something to me: it wasn't just a bunch of facts I'd heard before, but the real truth of God being taught to me. I never thought I'd be the one sitting in the audience, and now that I have been, I've found it to be an irreplaceable experience.


4/7/11

Engineering

We watched this whole video in my General Biology class today: it's called Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind. Whoever made this is fabulous and hilarious and I encourage you to youtube all the different parts of this video. I am dumbfounded. This was probably my favorite flower that was shown. I have no idea how this could have evolved: it must have been engineered. It looks and smells like the female wasp? The stem is engineered to bend back and forth? It's organized to carry out a plan. A complex plan with multiple steps. Remind me again why I want to be a botanist and teach?



I kind of hate to throw this verse out there, because I feel it's never done well and usually in ignorance and out of emotion, but as a biologist that has studied genetics and evolution, I see engineering in this.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1:20

4/6/11

Neighbors

I watched a documentary today about North Korean Refugees who have escaped to China and are in hiding there. They have to stay hidden because if they're found they'll be sent back to North Korea. I believe the statistic was that some 70-90% of women who escape to China are sold into the sex trafficking industry there, or are sold as wives to Chinese men. Their main goal is to escape up to Mongolia or back down to South Korea, while even others have America set as their final goal. One boy had swam across a huge river separating North Korea and China, and left his family behind. He couldn't tell them he was leaving for fear that they wouldn't let him attempt to escape because of the dangers, and when he reminisced about them he talked about how the government had so much control over everything the people did that they never had enough to eat. One meal a day maybe? Just corn? He explained that the way his parents showed him love was by giving him one extra spoonful of porridge because that's all they had to give. But it showed this same boy during downtime and his smile. It showed plenty of refugees, their faces blurred out for their own protection, and even through the blur you could see the biggest most free smiles I've seen.

I was struck by the fact that complete oppression and labor camps still exist, that many people in North Korea don't know that the world outside their government is different, that real adventures and heroes still exist, that "white man" does not have to be the hero, that freedom exists in the soul no matter how starved and beaten a person may be.

People may say that you can't care about someone for real without a relationship, but I really believe I care for these people. It's not about knowing someone personally, it's about knowing that the stranger has the qualities and the worthiness of your best friends and seeing everything you love about the human beings you adore in that stranger. I don't think it's unrealistic for Jesus to tell us to love everyone, because once you've known enough people and loved enough people you see the potential in the stranger. You know the stranger has something to love, and before you know them, you love them: you know there's something to know. It's only when you've looked into yourself and hated what you've seen, but discovered those things that make you worthy of love, that you can look at a stranger and already know why they deserve to be loved.

The documentary I watched was called "Hiding" and was presented by the nomads of LiNK. http://www.linkglobal.org/

4/5/11

Transgender

I was watching a long promotional video for the Oprah Winfrey Network, and falling in love with every show that would be on it, when a clip of a transgender male came on. He was making the transformation to be a woman, and it showed him after the transformation, a woman in her 50's standing in front of a mirror in just a nude colored bra and underwear. She stood staring at her rolls and her cellulite and tears came to her eyes and a smile spread across her face and she laughed and she said this was exactly how she felt she should be: that she was beautiful. I sat on my couch back home and cried. Cried because she could look at herself in the mirror not as a supermodel with perfect curves and smooth skin, but as a regular aging human being with fat and laugh for joy at the beauty of being a woman and being comfortable exactly the way you're supposed to be.

I searched for hours today to find that clip, and came up dry. But the memory of it will stay with me forever. When I look at my legs and wish they were smaller, and when I look at my belly above my jeans and wish it wasn't so blobby, I think of her standing in front of the mirror with joy.

I watched a lot of videos about transgender people today. People who can't help the way they are, people who know they're the opposite sex from when they're a child, parents crying and asking "who will love her? Who will accept her and love her as a lover someday?", christians demanding that they change their mindset instead of their bodies to solve the problem.

The world is not as it should be. People are born with disfigurations, diseases, mental problems, and hormonal imbalances. I have asthma and allergies: I cannot imagine someone telling me that God made me this way, therefore I should not seak to find restoration for my body and for my condition because He intends me to stay this way forever. I believe in seeking restoration, and I believe in seeking joy.

Jesus spent his time with the thieves and liers, the prostitutes and the beggers, the tax collectors, murderers, drunkards, gays and lesbians, and transgenders. He understood the why behind who they are. He loved them, accepted them, and he spoke truth and demanded righteousness. If Jesus spent his time with those people and they loved him, even while he demanded righteousness, and we attempt to spend time with those people and they hate us, there is a difference in the way we are approaching these people, and the way Jesus did. It's when we realize that we are these people that we can love, understand, and seek righteousness with them in their lives without judgment.

I want to love the mans daughter that he fears no one will ever love, I want to buy all of those who have had drinks thrown in their faces a drink at a bar. I want to take them out to dance at a club, I want to hold their hands in public, I want to go shopping with them, I want to laugh with them, and read the Bible with them, and find restoration as I share my life with them. I do not want to call them them, I want to include them in us.




4/4/11

Eskimo Kisses

There is a language that cultures speak, and acquaintances speak,
and friends speak, and lovers speak, and eskimo's speak.
We speak with kisses.
Knee kisses, shoulder kisses, cheek kisses, nose kisses,
forehead kisses, hand kisses, lip kisses.
Kissing is a language: let language abound.

4/3/11

Why?

I'm writing a paper about why patriarchy is morally wrong for my ethics class. I wrote the whole paper, let someone read over it, only to be faced with the realization that I had answered every question but the why. This is becoming a common theme in my life. The more people ask me to answer the why's, I realize that I have no idea how. When I observe myself and my actions, I can see what is right and wrong and act accordingly and often what the effect from the cause will be, but I never really get into the why.

Who, what, where, when, how. Why?

4/2/11

Helios

It was so sunny on Friday that I had to stop, sit down on a hot bench, and pull out my journal. I can't express to you how much I love the sun: God is in the sun. I sat there like a plant, letting the sun leak into my skin and fill me with memories.

*

I think I could be the sun's lover. If he'd have me.


4/1/11

Women of Marvel

UrbanBay Photo is doing a superhero series, and it made me wonder how many women super heroes there are. I could think of maybe four. I assumed there were no more than ten. So I wikipediad that shiz and discovered, my God, there are hundreds! I spent I don't even know how long on my couch looking through them all and reading there stories. Then I got to Sooraya Qadir aka Dust. A superhero woman from Afghanistan. If that's not empowering I don't know what is. She's not dressed like a sex toy or a rip off of superman or batman, but stands out as a woman of power and integrity in a patriarchal society that wants to silence and use her. She has power. I think that's what stands out to me. This women who is being oppressed has power and a voice, and I'm proud of her. I'm proud that she is not being ignored because of her culture and that her culture is being respected. I'm just down right proud.

3/31/11