Of Statuses and Zombies

Facebook statuses can be really inspiring.

No lie. Some people put the best bible verses up there in wonderful translations, or they put crazy encouraging song lyrics up, or occasionally just life testimonies that are powerful, even in their simplicity. If you don't have some Christian friends on Facebook, go and grab a couple and friend them just for the happiness they will randomly pour into your day.

Especially Wednesdays, apparently. I just scrolled down and counted about five status updates that were God/Jesus related. Also, got wind of a sweet Augustine quote today- when you sing, you pray twice, or some variation around there. Regardless of the actual intent, I like the idea as it comes from that little excerpt and the snooty snob in my head who hates things when taken out of context can get over herself. But yeah, cheerfulness and faithful hearts abound on my newsfeed right now and I love that about my life.

At the same time, I look at my status updates and they're not anything like that. Why am I not so uplifting and encouraging? I took a screen shot of my newsfeed, which included my status, just to get a sense of the discouraging face-palm that is my status. Here you kids are talking about God making a temple out of this land, or about the way He leads you through valley or the joy you're experiencing and I'm complaining, again, about the love of my life. He's a pretty common theme in statuses and would probably be the biggest thing in a wordle of my life. And you know, I don't think it's a bad thing to think about the people you care about, even if you care about them more than you're supposed to. I just think that somewhere along the way, God should be glorified in something that I do. Why not take the easy route? A status can even be copied and pasted. Ten seconds to bring a little bit of happiness into the world instead of a little bit of sadness.

And I can't do it. Selfish little soul of discontent and quiet sadness, I can't take the least little bit of time to share some goodness with the people around me. No one cares about my loml. My loml doesn't even care that he's my loml. You know the best thing about Zombieland? No Facebook status updates. Yes, I think in a zombie apocalypse, the best thing about it would be that my protests against the world's oppression of hopeless romantics and silly girls with flowers would be over.

But the bright side of all of this is that I don't have to wait for a virus to mutate and spread throughout the world making us all into brain-craving drooling cannibals (though it probably wouldn't work out anyway) to stop my status from being a burden. I can choose to be better now. And you know, I don't think I can come out of the negativity rut by myself- none of us are in a vacuum- but I think that I don't have to live in the rut.

Did you know that 80% of the thoughts you think are negative? Don't do that to yourself, friend! Carve out a new path for your thoughts and sing a new song. Best lesson I ever learned from my former college roommate? That no one is ever too good for someone else- we all have worth just because we're human beings. Don't you dare think of yourself as anything less. You're worth something, dammit.

Now go live like it.

All I Know About Spiderman I Learned From StarKid Productions

OK, so I have many many things to say and no coherent way to say them. I have like three posts in my brain that I really think are worth the time I'll spend on them when I spend it on them, but this is not going to be one of them, so feel free to stop reading at any point and time. I promise, you're not missing much.

First off, can I be a terrible, horrible, shallow person for like ten minutes? Because I'm going to. If you've seen A Very Potter Sequel (I'm going to ruin a small small section of it for you if you haven't) then you know Hermione's scene at the end with Draco and you know her little speech. "I know that I have the lowest self esteem out of anyone at Hogwarts, but... but I think that I can do better. No, don't feel bad. Listen, you're always going to be a stepping stone on my journey to feeling good about myself. So thanks for being there, for me to step on." And this speech comes off just as mean as it does here in the show, I promise you. But if you understood where Hermione was coming from, maybe you'd think it was OK? Nah, nope, it's still terribly mean. (PS I hope you appreciate how hard it is for me to go back into the I-work-with-kids-on-a-daily-basis-so-I've-learned-the-nice-way-to-say-things way of speaking because the more accurate word is a little bit inappropriate for general audiences.) But the thing is, I understand what she's saying. And it's not that she knows that Ron likes her (you never tell a girl you like her, it makes you look like an idiot) and it's not that she's confident that there's going to be someone else, it's just that she doesn't want what's been offered. And you know, maybe we all have dreams that are a little too big for our potential and you know maybe we all can't have a real love of our lives and maybe we're all just waiting for a time that won't come or an awkward explanation of the Mary Jane and Peter Parker romance that somehow ends up with Ron as Mary Jane but is still super precious and incredibly endearing. Oh, just go watch it.

A friend of mine is turning 21 in a little bit and she's kinda worried about the party on her birthday. There are now three guys in her life who will probably be expecting her attention throughout the evening and she's a little exasperated. I would be too- it's not like we've ever had so much as one guy wanting our attention. And it's flattering- let me jump off the feminist bandwagon for a second to say that it's really, really nice when a guy pays attention to you and it's very easy to feel like you're worth less because you're not as pretty as the girls who normally have all the guys at the very least looking at them. There are so many beautiful people here and they're all accomplished and they're all going to go do great things or at least make a ton of money and if you step back, you realize that you don't belong and you're very amazed that you got here in the first place. So to get attention from any guys here always seems like a big deal to me.

I really dismiss out of hand anyone I don't see on a pretty regular basis. I've realized that I'm a terrible conversationalist. I have to be in your world to have any idea what you're talking about or to even care enough to add something more than the occasional "yeah" to the conversation. So if you think that our friendship is going to grow over Facebook, you're mistaken. And I think I can do better than someone who can only message me and learned everything he knows about me from my profile. However, if I once knew you pretty well and I want to keep up with you and have some idea of what's up in life, as well as have the chance to come visit you or see you before we all grow up and join the real world. then Facebook is a perfectly acceptable method of communication. I need to figure out some good etiquette, some nice way of saying that I'm just not that into Facebook stalkers, because it's vaguely disheartening to know that the kind of  guys I attract are guys I haven't had a conversation with in real life.

And what silly distractions guys are! I should be able to ignore you and focus on whatever's in front of me, not ignore what's happening right in front of my face to say hey to you. Though I'm glad you generally speak to me first. Arg, it's so frustrating! Sometimes you think it's you, that you're just not allowing yourself to be happy (which, let's face it, do I really have time to go chase down a guy? Do I have time to be chased? And after the chasing is done, do I really have time to commit to a relationship? Then again, if we're being honest, I probably spend as much time moping about my loml as a relationship takes up, so I probably do have time...) and then sometimes you think that it's just the guys that are around you, but most of the time I'm just fed up with the fact that I still get to dream about a first kiss. What is my life?

Sorry, that was all very shallow and I feel really bad for feeling it and if I could get rid of it without massive amounts of effort I would. But it's really enough to make you want to scream "Bitter and alone!" as you speed down a highway. Because, you know, some of us aren't looking for anything small. We're not looking for anything cute and momentary and like everyone else's Saturday night stories. When we tell someone that they mean something to us, they mean something to us and there's no way of dumbing that down, but I don't know how to tell you that. I don't want Prince Charming. I don't want to marry a doctor. I don't want someone who's gorgeous but a jerk (though I do have a propensity to like jerks and hope they grow out of it... poor Snape [starting at 2:50]). There are plenty of fish in the sea (oh wait, there's an oil spill, never mind) but you know, I don't want just anybody. And I'm willing to test out a couple of somebodies, but I know that there's one person who's going to light up my world and make every cliche not so terribly cheesy and false. I'm not searching desperately for The One, per se, I just have faith that my future's been provided for.

Which seems unfair. But that's a story for another post.

Shoes (Or, Sometimes I Think God Cheats)

So Saturday morning me and two of my awesome friends decided to watch the sunrise in the mountains and spend the rest of the day in silent meditation. Yup, that's what I said. Silent meditation. Well, we got to watch the sunrise  (great story- pictures soon?) and we did have a good morning of silence, which deserves its own blog post. After one friend almost rolled down the mountain and suffered a severe flesh wound or two, we called off the silence, ate lunch and shopped before returning home. I came back to homework and another long, long story and didn't sleep until late, which was not cool because, as you all know, the sun rises rather early and Blowing Rock isn't particularly close to Hickory and friends make four hours of sleep dwindle down to three at best. Totally worth the lack of sleep, but I paid for it last night going into this morning.

I had to work at Cold Stone today (note the video of the Cinnamon Challenge on BookFace- it might really be the best thing I've done while working at that store; that and the fact that I caught and ice cream and threw and ice cream and didn't fail [!] today) so I was driving myself to church, which means not waking up at 7:30 to leave at 8... 15 to go with my mother but rather that I could leave whenever I wanted to. I could leave at 9:45, like I intended, to be at church in time for Sunday School, or I could leave at 10:15, like my second plan was, to be able to be down at church in time to learn the anthem to sing in the choir, or I could leave, last ditch effort, at 10:45 and be at church in time for the 11 o'clock service. Sleep is powerful. I left around 10:52, wearing my new purchase and a pair of brown flip flops that I picked out specifically to wear to church.

Ironic, you might say, if you knew me, because then you would know that I don't wear shoes at church. The story behind the lack of shoes in my church life is this: I live in the choir loft. One of the top ten weirdest feelings in my world is when I sit out in the congregation at my home church. I mostly sit back and think, "Oh! So that's what the choir loft looks like from the other side. Huh." So, naturally, I adapted to life in the choir loft. Most of my church shoes in high school were heel-ish things that made little clonking noises when I walked. I spent a lot of time walking from where the brass players sat up two rows to where I stood to sing. It is not, in my opinion, good manners to be clonking all over the place during prayers or when a pastor is talking, so I'd take off my shoes in the choir loft so I could pretend to be a ninja... in a white, flowy yet constricting choir robe... when I walked from place to place. One Christmas-y service, I'm sitting with my french horn in my lap and there's an awkward pause in the service. It's a service of lessons and carols and the awkward pause is not because we're supposed to be singing a carol, because I have a list in front of me and I'm playing on the next one so we are definitely not starting it yet. So Ron looks down and hands me a piece of paper and says, "Will you read this?" and I take it and say sure and he says, "Now?" The reader for the lesson had mixed up the service times and wasn't there to read the lesson. So, in my choir robe and without shoes, I walked up to the pulpit and read the lesson and walked back and played my french horn. Apparently feet are very visible in that space in between the choir loft and the pulpit. And so a legend was born.

I brought my shoes to wear to sit in the congregation this morning because everyone else in the congregation would have them on and I'd be walking in late and blah blah blah. I left them in the car. Explanation? None. I then snuck into the service late and realized it was a communion service, but (tragic organ chord) it was too late. I became engrossed in the hymn and the sermon and then it's too late to retrieve the shoes because it's communion time. It was the offering that did it- they moved the offering up before everything and I got confused and then I was stuck in the service. So I walked up to get communion barefoot, which isn't that bad- people don't point out your feet if you look up and act like you've got shoes on like everyone else- and I make it back to my seat without criticism. I dunno why I'm always nervous about being barefoot in the congregation. I guess I think they know what's up in the world of propriety and that the choir members love me enough to ignore it, but I'm always iffy about the congregation.

I intended to sneak out of the service as well, because, due to my oversleep and then that long story that kept me up later than was necessary, I wasn't in a super talkative mood. We have a new associate pastor and she was at the back shaking hands on the way out. I felt bad, because I got out of wearing a name tag because I was late. Well, no, I didn't feel bad because I got out of wearing a name tag- I hate those. I felt bad because now the new associate pastor won't know my name. But I smile and she shakes my hand and then points to my feet and says, "Barefoot. That's the best way to go to church. I used to go barefoot all the time until my mother yelled at me from the choir to put my shoes on." And I smile and say something like "Sweet!" or "Awesome!" or "Good call!" because those are my approving exclamations and walk away to the nursery to say hey to my mother (who stopped fighting the where-are-your-shoes battle long ago [PS she doesn't wear them either]) and then abscond some animal crackers before speeding away to my current place of employment.

See, but the point is, the new associate pastor will now know me as The Girl Without Shoes. I fully intend to take advantage of this. She doesn't think I'm going to be a teacher, so I'm not going to leave a conversation with her convinced I'm going to be a teacher. She doesn't think I'm going to be a pastor, so I'm less likely than usual to leave a conversation with her thinking I'm going to be a pastor. She doesn't read what I write, so she won't make me feel like I could really do this writing thing. She hasn't known me since high school, so she has no preconceptions about astrophysics (PPS- I bought a particle physics book and am super excited about it! Because me and physics is like that Jackson 5 song- "When I had you to myself, I didn't want you around..."). She doesn't know that I'm going to be a senior in the fall, that I really need to get on this decision-making thing, no matter how much I want to ignore it. She doesn't know that her comment and the sky tonight have swayed me back in one direction. She just knows that I appreciate bare feet on holy ground.

I think she knows the most important thing about me.

Quotes

I'm practicing for my day of silent meditation on Saturday which I am surprisingly pumped for. I know you're probably waiting for words that are from me and not from anybody else, but as I just realized, every other word of mine currently is the word awesome, so I clearly need a break to stop the chaos. But. Quotations abound in my life and a friend of a friend of mine (Ah Facebook!) had several wonderful quotes that I figured I'd share. And, since I'm revamping my quote section of that book of faces (hahah did anyone see that episode of The Office where Jim wrote book on his face and Darryl didn't get it so he said, "Yes, I am popular social networking site, known as BookFace"? ... And that's why I suck at telling jokes) I'm going to put mine on here as well, with the open invitation for anyone to share other awesome ones. The end. Well, except not really. But you know what I mean. And cut.

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“I love UNC. I love the quad in the spring and the arboretum in the fall. I love the Pit on a sunny day and Graham Memorial Lounge on a rainy one. I love Roy [Williams] all the time. But what makes UNC truly special is not our beautiful campus, our distinguished reputation or even our basketball team. It’s us—the student body—who make UNC what it is.”
- Eve Carson

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
-Marianne Williamson

I believe in Christianity as i believe that the sun has risen, not because i see, but by it I see everything else. - C.S. Lewis

Don't be wishing you were somplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God's place for you, live and love and obey and believe right there. - 1 Corinthians 7:17

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
-scarlet letter


“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” -Einstein

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly …”
Theodore Roosevelt
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Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
Romans 11:33

And this life sentence that I'm serving,
I admit that I'm every bit deserving
But the beauty of Grace
Is that it makes life not fair.
-Relient K

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. They've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
-Neil Gaiman

In essentials we have unity, in nonessentials liberty and in all things we have charity (love).
-John Wesley

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

George: I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing this.
Rube: Well, if somebody else were supposed to be doing this, I’d be sitting here talking to somebody else.
George: But I don’t know anything. About anything!
Rube: You think I know anything? When I’m supposed to know something, I’ll know it. When you’re supposed to know something, you’ll know it. Be patient, you’re learning. Just smell some roses already.
-Dead Like Me

Maybe it's easier to like someone else's life, and live vicariously through it, than take some responsibility to change our lives into lives we might like.-Tish Grier

A phrase of great power, and wisdom, and consolation to the soul in times of need. Allons-y! -the Tenth Doctor

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
-Moulin Rouge!

When life gives you lemons, make grape juice and let the world wonder how you did it.

When life kicks you, let it kick you forward.
-Kay Yow (1942-2009)

Me: I think my Prince Charming fell off a cliff, so I'm not expecting much.
Nick: Eh... you've still got one... he's just slightly
deformed

Come on, we're gonna take on the world today!
-Sarah Henson
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Post-Its

It's my last night in my dorm room. Normally this is an occasion of quasi-happiness, because I'm always ready to go home and sleep in my own not-lofted bed. But tonight, I'm going to be alone and a little sad, since my super awesome roommate has moved out and my super awesome hall mate has gone home. So, while other people are doing school years in review, I figured I'd share with you the documentation of our year- the post-it notes stuck on Clementine, our mirror.

By the way, Facebook calls blogs "drunken scribblin's" in pirate. Accurate, Facebook, Accurate.*

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Laughter is the sunshine that warms the face. -Victor Hugo

Don't Do Drugs.
Stay in School.
No sex on the Enterprise.

Marry me Juliet, I can make your bed rock.

Are you suggesting that tiny men rape cats?

I hate sewing. I'd rather be a whore.

He must practice on melons or something.
Your mom's melons.

He's massively athletic. I'm kinda pathetic.

(About a piece of lettuce)
It will come back to you in the middle of the night and stand on your face saying LOVE ME, LOVE ME.

Our window is conveniently placed not only for Palestinian entry, but also for normal conversations. **

-Slow down!
-You just want to live!
-I want to live to be your lesbian lover!

I mean, I know I can't talk in straight lines.

I'm like the kiss of death. I draw people out of the closets they didn't even know they were in.

Drink your wine like a good girl.

You're supposed to entertain me. Dance Monkey, dance!

(About going to Istanbul)
-Now we just need money and a place to stay and a job around the time that we go.
-We got this.
-Maybe.
-Prostitution handily takes care of all those problems.

That Beatles poster is really trippy upside down. It's just like… whoa.

Prophecy mutates. Ninja turtles.

-I'm thinking of getting a futon.
-You should, that way you can name it something awesome and not have sex on it.

Just as a point of clarification- is sex on Clifford alright?

I ate your cake. I'm a horrible person.
I'll make you a new one.

Don't sledgehammer the wall and eat it. -Notes from the hall meeting

How much hot stuff has been on our carpet? Besides me?

The suicidal clock isn't up yet. It's OK to come it.

You're opening an umbrella on Friday the 13th. Do you want to break Clementine? Would that make you happy?

I had a brain wave but it ran away screaming and crying.

Fudge-monkeys in a biscuit.

(Points to shoes) See, I don't think a man could make me this happy.

Me and my mermaid throw chocolate at each other.

It's the only way to keep that last bit of sanity.
Maybe I don't have to be good but I can try to be
At least a little better than I've been so far
-The Avett Brothers

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*People of legal drinking age do occasionally occupy our room and most of the alcohol related ones are jokes anyway.
**Which don't happen in our room.

This Is My Father's World

I have friends who classify other friends of my with a single adjective on the front of their name, like, say, "Happy Pam". Well, I'd call this "Happy Hymn." We sang it this morning and it makes my heart happy, so I figured I'd share it with you.

This is my Father's world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
his hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world,
the birds their carols raise,
the morning light, the lily white,
declare their maker's praise.
This is my Father's world:
he shines in all that's fair;
in the rustling grass I hear him pass;
he speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's world.
O let me ne'er forget
that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father's world:
why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King; let the heavens ring!
God reigns; let the earth be glad!

-Maltbie D. Babcock

Rock

Happy almost Easter.

Sorry about the lack of enthusiasm there. In addition to trying to remove the exclamation point from my life (because I am developing a sincere dislike for people, especially former speakers, who use exclamation points in a book) I'm just not excited. You see, for me, Easter last year was a big deal. Big. Huge. It was the end of a terrible season in my life. I want to say that Easter Sunday that Sunday was an epic experience, where light flooded back into my life and all the past wrongs that had ever happened were set right. That'd be a lie, so I'll try to avoid it.

But the point was that I could talk to God again. I could pray, and not in the angry, despairing, fearful, useless words that had defined my life before. I always get a little creeped out by mystics- I'm not really sure what to do with people who love God that much and in that way- but the easiest analogy is like getting back together with someone after you've had a fight. You know, you can talk again and each person forgives and forgets enough to function together. You put away the things that you argued about in the first place and focus on the reasons why you like being around the person. It's not a lie, per se, you're just willing to love the other person while they work on fixing the things that made you angry.

Well, God's not going to change, so guess who needs to fix themselves in this argument?

The really frustrating thing is that a year later, I'm still the same. Well, I'm a little different. The outside pain that I wouldn't let myself feel is creeping in. And I can't sit down in front of God and say that I've failed to hear the cry of the needy, because I have. I think I've been under the impression that hearing is enough. Goodness knows it's not. Imagine if God had only heard the cry of the Israelites in Egypt.

But doing is difficult. It's this rock in between me and God right now, because I'm not willing to do. But what do you do about the things that stab your heart? How do I do anything to help the more than 4. million. Palestinian refugees? Crying over their stories is not enough, but inviting them to live in my dorm room that has seceded from the residence hall isn't particularly reasonable. What do you do about abusive parents? Abusive boyfriends? You can't catch them all. How do you get a world that can feed every one of its citizens to wake up and realize that global hunger needs to be something in our shameful past? My heart breaks over the big things, the things that I have minimal control over. What are you going to do? You gonna beat up everybody?

But there must be something I can do, something beyond the small things I do.

And I'm really afraid there is.

You see, I don't want to go to the cross. I don't want to follow Christ to the cross on Friday, because I know that I've got my own cross that I have to pick up, my own mission for the redemption of humanity that no one else is going to do. And I don't know what it is yet, but the potential scale of it scares me to death. I can see the cross. And I don't want it.

See, I'm one of those people who said a long time ago that I'd follow You, Lord, wherever you lead. And I'm one of those people that says now, not there. I'll follow you anywhere but there. And there. OK, and maybe there too. Oh, and there's definitely out. Here, I've got this sharpie, how about I just mark off sections of the world that we won't go to, people we won't talk to, things we won't do, because I don't want to go there, no matter who's leading me there. And I know that I'm doing this. And I don't want to fix it.

Give me a church. Stick me in tower for another three years of education. Keep me in middle class America. Surely there's enough of a field there for me. And there is, I don't mean to knock anyone's calling, but there's also many other places that I am unwilling to go. I can't resolve this with God. One of us has to change. I'm pretty sure I know which one of us it'll be too. So I'm waiting on something to break, because I know it's coming. I'm sure it'll come at probably the most inopportune moment, but how do I fix this? How do you break your own arm? Because that's what bending on this is like for me. It's a beat down of a vital part of my pride, my fear and my humanity.

It's hard to see how far you've grown when you've shrunk.

Out There

Disney Lyrics Day! Out There from The Hunchback of Notre Dame
I think, though, that if we all had the patience and contentment of Quasimodo, our prayers would be much shortened.

Quasimodo:
Safe behind these windows and these parapets of stone
Gazing at the people down below me
All my life I watch them as I hide up here alone
Hungry for the histories they show me
All my life I memorize their faces
Knowing them as they will never know me
All my life I wonder how it feels to pass a day
Not above them
But part of them

And out there
Living in the sun
Give me one day out there
All I ask is one
To hold forever

Out there
Where they all live unaware
What I'd give
What I'd dare
Just to live one day out there

Out there among the millers and the weavers and their wives
Through the roofs and gables I can see them
Ev'ry day they shout and scold and go about their lives
Heedless of the gift it is to be them
If I was in their skin
I'd treasure ev'ry instant

Out there
Strolling by the Seine
Taste a morning out there
Like ordinary men
Who freely walk about there
Just one day and then
I swear I'll be content
With my share
Won't resent
Won't despair
Old and bent
I won't care
I'll have spent
One day
Out there

But I Don't Want to Be Quiet

Saturday, I vacuumed up the needles and shards of colored reflective sharpness from the tree, dumping the last insignificant bits of Christmas out of the house in a pine smelling hurricane of dust and ornament debris. Happy end of Christmas break.

I had a 4 o’clock exam on the last day of exams. I walked into Phillips for my 12 o’clock around 11 and walked out afterword to miss the snow and eat pizza and walked back in around 3:30. The world got dark, my weekend plans at home were ruined by a lack of desire to drive up the mountain in the snow and I followed friends around until the Love Feast came Sunday evening and then we drove home. Me and my little brother bought the tree on Tuesday. Between decorating it and taking it down, I spent less hours with this tree than any before it.

Christmas doesn’t really start until I get home. I force my little brother to help me get the boxes down from the attic (that was a party this year with my back), I ask incessantly about the tree and I decorate it and the living room by myself after my older brother puts the lights on the tree. I got home really close to Christmas this year and I left the day after. I missed my tree time. At least one night a year, I turn on the best oldies station I can find and sit and watch the lights of the tree in the window, thinking about the reflection of my life in the music. It’s sappy and wonderful and my soul feels more (or less) human after my time with the tree.

But I just feel tired now, I think. Package me off, shove me in a freezing stadium to watch another great Carolina loss, drive me up to Chapel Hill to play basketball game after basketball game, drive me back and pack me up to head off to Atlanta, bring me back and watch me sleep. I learned a good little bit about driving in Charlotte and about the stadium there. I learned that it is not the best idea in the world to leave me by myself for the vast majority of a couple of days and so shall be seeking company for most of the rest of my life. I learned that I missed my best friend, that I’m insanely jealous of her life in Chile and that it’s not just my father that has a pile of physics questions to ask me. I learned that three nights with 5 hours of sleep pushes a person to the exhaustion point but not to the habitual life of the living dead that a week does. I learned that I listen to sermons and I respond better to worship music when I can worship through a sermon. I learned that January 2nd 2010 was a palindrome. And I learned that even though my heart breaks, I can walk by the pile of packaging that I know is a person frozen more deeply to their bones than I am by the piercing cold snap wind. That tires me.

I loved going on Passion. It was 21,000 Christian peeps descending on Atlanta for a Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning of worship and concerts and workshops. Wonderful. We had this thing set up downstairs where you could package bibles, pay for translations, fund small business loans for women in South America, help pay for a well, package meals, do so much more. We did great stuff there. But we clapped for it like we had cured cancer or solved global poverty. And I’m not saying that we should expect to do something like that, just a bunch of college kids in town for one weekend, but then again, shouldn’t we? Should we really limit God like that?

And I’m guilty too. I’m jealous of the time I didn’t have for my weakness, pretending that time spent in front of the bright bulbs of a Christmas tree is more important than the host of other things that I could be doing. I was recently told that I needed to be more positive about myself and I’ve thought about that. You know, humility is easy when you don’t think much of yourself, but they normally call it self depreciation at that point. I feel like it’s time for an inspirational turn-around statement. Too bad I don’t have one.

Like, I feel like I should be eternally proving myself to God, but that’s not what I’m doing when I feel like doing good in the world. It’s like I’m driven to it. I hardly ever plan on it and it’s generally given out of my ridiculous overabundance. And I don’t talk to Him because I feel like I have to (and my stomach twists around a little at the remembrance of days when I have), I talk to Him because I need to. Sometimes I need to get out anger and frustration and sometimes I need to work something out in a prayerful state because it’s a little easier to see the lies then. Oil and water. And thank goodness I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t give Him lip service. If I can’t mean the words of a hymn or a song, I won’t sing it. I don’t think the little bundle of resentment and questioning is much better but I won’t pretend around the One who knows it all anyway. I want to be honest. It’s a new feeling.

One of my favorite little things about being home is that my windows in my room face west and in the afternoons light streams in, glorious and gracefull, and the frigid white and navy of my room warms up and admits a heart again. It’s not the cold morning light that demands faithfulness and exacts guilty penance on the tired soul, it’s light that’s grown up, having lived a full day, to send love back out on the world just when it needs the confidence and strength to face the light’s absence. And there may come a day when I understand morning light, but I’d rather be afternoon light. My brain might say that the added redness is just the scattering of the longer wavelengths of light in the additional atmosphere that the light must travel through to reach my eyes later in the day and it may explain the weakness of the sunlight on a winter’s morning due to its changed angle and intensity on the ground and it may object to even presenting the idea that afternoon light is older, as if the photon that finally got released from its long journey from the sun’s fusing core is any different in the evening than in the morning, but my heart tells it to shut up just about now. One of these days, our understanding of nature is going to stop being just science and the afternoon light will help us see the worth of everything, everyone.

Ever see the brown of a normal North Carolina winter as the earth sleeps and the sun bathes a river with its last light of the day? Quietly glorious.

To Be Taken Entirely Seriously, in an Slightly Overly Dramatic Fashion

Can I say that I'm miserable? And it's entirely my own fault. Do you people spent this much time in self-reflection? I am an unmotivated failure who has spent too much time trying to remove the stress in her life to actually be stressed, up until the time when I can no longer keep myself calm. Maybe I should have picked something that was more within my reach, something that I actually have a skill and talent for, but that would have seemed like quitting, like I wasn't good enough to finish the major I'm in. Which I'm not. I don't care enough to devote my every waking moment to it and I'm not smart enough to breeze by without really working and reworking and then working a couple more times the practice problems so I can gain the skill set that is applying physical principles to physics problems. I am not a critical thinker. You tell me to do something, I do it, this is my life. I am the eternal lab tech of life: I run test after test with instructions that were given to me without the thought that one day I might think up an experiment of my own. And it's my fault because I'm lazy. And then I whine because I'm lazy and horrid and apathetic and pathetic and too prideful to admit any of these things to anyone but myself including God who knew them in the first place.

And let's just talk about God for a second. I swear, He let me pick this absurd choice in life just so I would know that I can make sadly low grades and still breathe, that I can fail and fail and fail again and so I would know what it was like to be unable and unprepared to do something that I set out to do but never put my mind to. Don't get me wrong- somewhere deep in the recesses of my exhausted and pained brain, I do like physics, a little. Not enough to date, you understand, but just enough to have the occasional vaguely pleasant conversation so I'd remember why we weren't spending the rest of our lives together. I really think that this is one of the ways we can get to know more about the Person who put all this together and the ways we mess it up. I love it when people talk about atoms and subatomic particles and quarks and quantum fluctuations in the fabric of space-time in the inflationary epoch which might have lead to the large scale structure we see in the universe today. I love thinking about the way particles communicate with each other, never having to open tiny mouths and say words that might confuse others in order to change the temperature of a system or the concentration of a solution or the density of a gas cloud that may collapse in order to put new pinpricks of light in our night sky far in our future or deep in their past. It's epic, how it was all built up, so skillfully, so perfectly, so that we can look out and wonder.

And ignore.

How wretched I am! I was walking down Franklin the other day and I saw a homeless man in his wheelchair and I was looking so intensely at the ground that he said, "Look up, girl, it's going to be all right." And I smiled and said thanks and walked by and bought my Christmas presents and walked back by and never said another word. Cold callous heart. But I don't know that it would help. I don't know what to do to help and so I just shut down, I just bow my head and shut off and never do anything to help anyone. And then I sit in church on Sunday and I can't think of anything to say to my Lord because I ignored Him before so why should He listen to me now? What right do I have to stand before Him, to sit sadly on a white wooden pew and pretend like this is the most important thing to me? He may have been beating down my pride this semester, but other things took its place and they weren't His and then there's no point. It's like cleaning out a fridge, getting rid of the milk that's going to go bad and the salsa that's been bad, only to shove a pizza box and embezzled cheese back inside. Man, good thing I had to defrost my fridge, otherwise I'd been stuck with that stuff.

Well, I say good thing. Me and my roommate complained about it for weeks and didn't want to do it and waited until the last possible second to get rid of everything. Then I sat down with the Clorox wipes and set to wiping everything out, but because it's been so cold, the skin on my fingers is all cracked and bleeding and it wasn't exactly pleasant to rid the fridge and freezer of its grossness. It's never a pleasant job anyway but this turned it into a slightly painful unpleasant job. Funny thing, though, we didn't change anything on the outside- the Cinderella magnets, campus health magnet, football (arg) magnet and NASA magnet all stayed in place. Even Galileo and his tiny stuffed telescope could keep their home while a major overhaul occurred on the inside. But it'll smell a lot better in there and now it's open to better keep more desirable things safe from ruination by the outside world.

We were also talking about how we should probably clean out the fridge more often, like every time we vacuumed or something like that, just so it never got this bad again. How true. If we'd go through more often and make sure that old pieces of cake, outdated containers of yogurt or moldy macaroni and cheese (of which there was none in my fridge, I'm happy to say) got thrown out before they started stinking up the place and if we wiped down the inside every once in a while, it'd never be this bad. It's just when you ignore it and put other things in the way [like exams, you know, things that in no way determine your future life despite their detrimental effects on an already ailing grade point average (3.5 math and physics GPA to write an honors thesis, no wonder there's only been one in the past ten years -insert hysterical giggle here-)] that life gets messy.

And I'm trying to decide how sad it is that the perfect metaphor for my spiritual life (and my real world life, let's be honest) is a mini-fridge.

Happy snow day, all. May we remember, amidst the exciting potential of the first white Christmas of my life and all the craziness that we put upon ourselves this time of year, that the little baby whose birth we celebrate came to fix His world which we broke. Thank God He comes every year.

Fitting

This has been the year of fitting into black dresses that weren't bought for me.

I first encountered this problem earlier this semester, right around my awesome and wonderful birthday, when Christine, Pam and I went to the opera. Having never been to an opera that wasn't put on by the opera class at UNC, I had nothing, I felt, that was appropriate to wear. Christine had been Target shopping online but one of the dresses she had bought didn't suit her the way she wanted. I tried it on and through much effort and lack of breath, I got into it and looked pretty good in it. I wore it to the opera and it sits in my closet as my current little black dress.


I had to once again go dress hunting this week because I needed a formal dress for the Jupiter Ball at the Planetarium. Miranda and I wandered down to Time After Time, the thrift shop down Franklin. I had gotten my Halloween costume for last year from there and that had been a nice dress, so I figured I'd try my luck. Fifty bright pink, purple, green and yellow dresses and about three million and two sequins later, I found a formal length black dress. It looked like it might could fit, so I walked back into the dressing room and proceeded to try it on. That was an adventure in itself and there were many moments were I was sure that I was going to get stuck like that forever and have to ask someone to come in and cut me out of the dress, but I got it on. And I looked pretty good in it. I wore it for six hours last night and it's hanging up in my closet as my back-up formal dress.

And after all, why shouldn't I be able to wear those dresses and look good in them? It's what I've been doing my whole life.

I swear, my whole life I've been looking for something to put on that'll make me look nice and fit the world I'm stepping into and my whole life I've found something that was never mine but that I looked pretty good in. I've paid for my black dresses and smiled at the compliments, all the while knowing that I can't really breathe or be functional in them, and those things were made to be looked at in, not to pick up programs around the Star Theater in, tell me you. All my life, I've been looking to see how I fit into the clothes that someone else has worn.

And the annoying thing is, I fit. OK, maybe it's not easy to get into it, but I'm close enough, you know? And the people around me think that I'm great in what I've been in. Imagine, then, what I could look like in a dress that was actually made for me, tailored so well that I'm not sure that I wasn't made for the dress instead of the dress being made for me. Imagine what each of us would look like in clothes like that.

Now you all know that I'm not talking about dresses anymore. Maybe you're one of those people who follows my life with intense anticipation... OK, since those people don't exist, maybe you know that I went to Exploration a week ago yesterday and maybe you've been wondering what I learned, if I decided anything. I hope you haven't been impatiently awaiting a blog post on it(since apparently I can only express myself in writing mass distributed across the internets) because then I would have to use the excuse that I needed time to reflect on it. Really, I don't think I did. I don't think I even needed to go to discern what I was supposed to do. I'm pretty sure I've known for longer than I want to admit that I was going to end up settling on ordination and living my life out in the church (don't judge). But let me 'splain.

See, I'm kinda angry at the church at times, like a lot of my friends are, because it's not living up to what it's supposed to be. OK, my friends are generally angry at her because she's full of hypocrites and judgmental liars and because she has a long history of hate and violence. And in some sense, I am too. But I have no room to talk; to quote one of the speakers at Exploration, "The church is not perfect but I am the church too." Man, I needed to go just to hear that (and to get an exorbitantly large amount of free bags and pens and to have my nice new blanket given to me and taken away from me and you know how attached I get to things I sleep with [yeah, I went there {anyway}]). The speaker before that, and really the speakers the whole weekend, talked about how we can change the church by the way we live our lives and the way we lead, regardless of whether you end up ordained or as a lay leader. I was watching the NOOMA we're going to watch in Double-C tomorrow and Rob Bell says that you have to own up to your name, to your past, good and bad because it's yours. We as the church have to own up to our collective past, good and bad, and work to make our future better, to help heal wounds and loosen the grip that history has on us. We are the church. "Church, choose to do something different."

Which I can do. Listen, kids, we can change the world. Listen, everyone, we can change the world. We can be better. We can help build the church into what she was meant to be, we can help the kingdom come on Earth, we can be a force for good, might for right, as TH White's King Arthur might say. We don't have to sit still and let a load of good organization, good connections and good people go to waste. We have such potential. Don't let anyone tell you different. "When the wind blows, things move." Things are moving, my friends, and I'm excited.

Because I know where it's coming from. It's the same place that hope and wonder and bushes that are not consumed come from. It's where love comes from. It's where this crazy, stupid, heartfelt, wonderful idealism comes from. It's from this deep, deep well of living water and we have to tell some people about it. How bad I am at this! How inadequate! There has to be someone better. You know, there always is.

But I'm thankful. At least I know my dress fits.

Realized Love From Down the Hall

He's tugging. Can you feel it?

Here is a testimony to God loving you in your lives, my friends. Or a testimony of God loving me in my life when He knows, when He knows that I don't deserve it. What kind of wonderful miracle is He working when He chooses now, when I am fully and occasionally painfully aware of how what I'm doing is so very wrong, He chooses now to pull me back to Him?

One of these days, I'll find a way to say what I'm feeling right now. And I wonder where do these dreams go, when the world gets in your way? The love of my life just waltzed in for a day yesterday and I could have floated through my day, but I have a friend who has a story that just kills that joy. I have no right to be happy. And so I'm not.

But this, friends, this is more than a boy paying me attention that I never thought I'd get again. That's gone so fast. But this, this is a pull, this is a tug, this is an Almighty storm come down to bring me back to Him. Because it doesn't matter about everything that my head put in my way. My heart came home, my heart searched better than anything my head could ever have done. My heart listened. And it's hard to ignore a hurricane, but we're so good at it, aren't we? My friends, God is good. And maybe it doesn't seem like that right now, and maybe it doesn't seem like He loves you, but believe me, He's working on you. He's working. He's working.



David Crowder Band, How He Loves (courtesy of Pam, who lives down the hall)

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all

Yeah, He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves.

We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

Falling

The nature in Chapel Hill wishes us a happy fall. It's been freezing some mornings, but the trees are pretty, when the sun decides to show his face. And of course you know it's only this cold because we don't have a football game this weekend. We'll have a heat wave come Thursday. But for now, the cold that tends to seep into your bones, only banished by hot coffee and warm blankets makes me want to write.

I'm a sucker for fall, I'll admit it. I fall back in love with the world in this season. I live in the summer, but I love in the fall. That's probably what stirs up what is most likely an unfortunate desire. I want to tell stories again as the leaves change. I want to gather around a camp fire and let the ghosts that hide in my mind run free. I want to sit under a tree and watch her leaves fall as my pencil records the stories in my head. I want to give voice to the wind and life to the characters waiting in the wings. I want to be poetic, sarcastic, creative, effective, amusing, intelligent, true. I have a story that I think should be told, because it's too good to be sacrificed to the whims of my inhibitions. I have a story that I know should be told, that's been told thousands of times and hopefully will be told thousands more. And there's so much else to distract a person!

There's my religious studies class, for example, Intro to the Hebrew Bible. Did I mention that my professor, who has spent the entire semester so far convincing us that every word of the Bible cannot be historically accurate and who references Harry Potter at least once a week, is an ordained Baptist minister? Did I also mention how much hope this gives me? I mean, he said, "I'm a Baptist," not, 'I was a Baptist but now I've seen the light.' I just needed to know that it's possible to sit in light of all of these difficult issues that intense study of the bible brings up and still have a faith. It gives me hope.

Or how about Carolina basketball? Late Night this year was pretty expletively fun, I must say. It's about that time. Time for me to try to hide the fact that I adore Carolina basketball montages and their sappy music and time for me to attempt to once again keep my sports-related temper on the DL (which is going a lot better during football-- I haven't thrown my hat once). Also, I had a friend who Patrick Moody said hey to after Late Night. And I looked up at the stars as I walked up from the Dean Dome with a couple of friends and I gloried in the night and wondered what I had done to be happy again.

There's fun times with Christine and Pam, there's an awesome, awesome Birthday, there's Wesley lunch on Mondays, there's SAI (and then some more SAI and then after that I might have some more SAI), there's House, there's band, there's football, there's the planetarium and laser shows and observing next Saturday night at Jordan Lake you should totally come it'll be tons of fun and hopefully not super super cold, there's Caribou coffee and classes. All these wonderfully positive things in my world are such fantastic distractions from that fleeting urge in my soul to soar invisibly through time and the world I see to the places it will be from.

Oh, but then there's doubt. Then there's the deep questions, the Traveler Unknown that I wrestle with until the break of day, the One whose name I know is Love but I can't seem to make real. I don't understand, I don't see why when I call out through the desert, I only hear my echo. I don't see why when I seek, I don't find and I don't find and I don't find and I can't live my life like this. If I immerse myself in the night sky, will You be there? If I sing all those songs that twist my heart into pieces, that used to mean You were standing right beside me, will You be there? If I force myself back into Your words with a heart open to everything, will You find me here, speak to me, take my breath away? Will You tell me if I'm right? Will You fix me if I'm wrong? Will You love me and let me see it and show me how I can know that You really love every
one
else
too?
Will You show me how to fight for You and for justice and how to be righteous? Will You explain to me why You saved me? Will You come back to me? Will You bring me back to You? Because I've got to know if this is real, or I've got to at least find the faith to be able to live it until I know it's real. God, Lord, I've wanted to shout with joy for such a long time. Do my chains fly off, too?



Life is a tragedy full of joy.
Bernard Malamud

Lessons from a Fountain

I'm sitting by the fountain in Bynum circle, watching the leaves float by and catching them before they get stuck in another loop in the fountain's current. It's late and it's kinda cold. The stars don't reflect this far down. I'm surrounded by the earth bound arcs of the stone benches that surround the fountain. The trees lean over the benches, protecting them but blocking the light from me.

I sit and watch my hand's shadow in the dim lamplight as I dip it into the water. It's funny, it looks like a hand before it hits the water and then after it's been in the water a little while, but if you let your fingers skim the surface, you only get the shadows of the distortions your hands cause in the water. I sit here, watching the water make a bracelet around my wrist's shadow, for a little while.

I think what we do in life is like that, sometimes. Right when you jump into something, all you can see are the ripples. It's like you've lost yourself for a second in what you're doing. But after a little bit, life settles down and you can see your imprint again, unless you just sit on the edge, forever disturbing but never jumping in.

Then again, sometimes I think the world that's in the relationship between us and God is like that. We think we're something else, we can even see a distinct shadow out of the water, out of God. And then we think that everything's coming to an end, we're not who we were, we can never get ourselves back, when we start getting into the water. But then the water settles and we come back. And it's not the same, it's different. But it's not wrong either.


Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.
--Soren Kierkegaard

A Day in the Life

Scheduling may just be the bane of my existence.

It's 9 o'clock and get down off of Prometheus (my bed), stepping next on Maxwell (my chair) and landing a little less than solidly on Hades (the floor). I next walk over to my closet, hitting Paul (the shelves) with the door, possibly knocking Maurice (the microwave) and Victor (the refrigerator) a little out of place. I make sure that George (my window- Christine's is Fred) is closed before I change and make my way out the door, laughing a little at Clifford, the futon with a blue cover, whose alternate personality is the Enterprise when the red cover's around. You might say my room has a little bit of personality.

I head out across campus up to UUMC, which is a lot closer than it used to be, so coming in for morning prayer on Wednesday mornings is a lot less of a big deal. Since I don't have class until 2, I contemplate walking over to Hill to get PMA grilled cheese but decide that it's probably better to get back to my room and do some reading. I glance at the random quote of the day as I open my door- it's Beatles week this week. Then, for the next couple of hours, I dive into Joshua and Judges for my Hebrew Bible class, as well as some extra readings that have to be done before I can write my paper that's due Friday.

I start packing in a panic around 1:15, grabbing book after book off of Albert (my bookshelf) and cramming them all into my backpack. Feeling like an unbalanced turtle, I leave my room again and walk out of Grimes, behind Hamilton, behind Lenoir and in between Greenlaw and Bingham, weaving in and out of crowds in front of the UL and down, across the street in front of the Bell Tower, to the Stone Center for Reli 103. After a decently interesting lecture (my professor had on the most awesome coat the other day, so today's normal attire was a slight disappointment) at a whirlwind pace about the history of ancient Israel from the time of the patriarchs to the time of the judges (with a little bit of an overview mentioned these guys named Saul, David and Solomon, whoever they were), I motor out of Stone Center, up past the construction, through the arch in Caudil Labs and into the bottom of Dey Hall. I slow my power walk down in Dey to listen to snippets of French and Spanish as this is the more pleasant part of my marathon from the Stone Center to Phillips. Up, out of Dey, around the back of Gardner, cutting in front of Carrol while admiring the new journalism hangings between the columns and over and up three staircases to make it to the second floor of Phillips.

Ah, Phillips. Who can help but appreciate your exposed pipes and wires, your less-than-bright lighting, your freezing classrooms and your colorful personalities? I drop off my bag in 265 and rush over to the bathroom and am reminded of the kvetch I keep meaning to send in- 'You erased the bathroom graffitti in Phillips! Now where am I going to find amusement and solace in the midst of my physics induced panic attacks?' I was my hands thoroughly, because the sign on the door told me that this would stop me from getting the death plague (also know as swine flu) and walk back into class to collapse between two friends on the front row. After a decently boring lecture on the statistical probabilities involved in thermodynamics at various levels of particles, I dash out of 265 to make it down the hall to 275, where I have my Astro 291 problem solving session. We talk about the differences between frequency and wavelength in the various forms of the Planck function and get hung up on parsecs and AU in an easy question about parallax and then I leave early to speed over to the Kenan music building, walking into Symphony band rehearsal late.

I sigh a small sigh of relief- Symphony band, like bell choir, is what I do for me, the little bit of stress relief and entire lack of pressure for a couple of hours a week. Even though I utterly fail at parts of the Holtz suite in F and mess up large parts of the Esprit de Corps, even though I've played it before, I'm still a little bit happier walking out of symphony band than I was rushing in. If we had had bell choir practice, I would, at this moment, be figuring out my position and learning to read below the bass clef, since I'm (crosses fingers) switching bells. But, since we don't start until next week, I have a second to come here and give the world an excuse for my lack of contemplative thinking. In a world of emails and instant messages and texts and Facebook (and blogs), where am I supposed to sit back for ten seconds and give my heart a rest from the weight that's sitting heavy on it? Where do I go to get away from a hall that is wonderfully social yet never peaceful? Out on campus at night? To a library? To a study lounge? By the time I've got time to stop and breathe and wonder, the sun is far gone and the stars are blocked by the lights that make campus that much safer.

So I stop and I breathe and I wonder at my life. Then I dive back under the water, reading, writing, talking, thinking until there's no point in keeping my eyes open and I crawl back up on Prometheus, who may have just used the day to regrow his liver instead of the night. I think tomorrow I'll let fire burn during the day and find a chance, just some small chance, to think about better gifts to humanity.