Of Blessings and Light Poles

So I was walking down Franklin Street this morning and I got stopped at the light waiting for the little walking man to appear. I decided to take a look around at my surroundings. The gum spots on Franklin Street and I have a pretty close relationship- I stare at them intently while I'm studiously avoiding looking anyone in the eye because I don't want that awkward eye contact and because it's much easier to avoid a conversation if you don't see the person that you should, in theory, have a conversation with. Much easier than ducking into a store to avoid talking to Washburn. If you've taken Mechanics, you know what I mean.

But as close as I am with the gum spots, I've never had the chance to notice the light pole on the corner, where the signs for Franklin and Columbia were dismantled that eventful April Sunday. The pole has some history. It's covered in staples interspersed with nails and spotted with a few pieces of paper that have been separated from the fliers that previously decorated the dark wood of the pole. Hundreds of people, maybe, have stuck their slogans on this former tree and left them there for the world to see. Stoically it stands, surveying the street and the sidewalk, never commenting on its abuse as it remains there, unwavering, a faithful spokesperson for anyone with a staple gun and a printer to the good people of Chapel Hill and the hordes of visitors to campus.

Sometimes I feel like the light pole. I feel like anything and everything tries to stick itself to me, tries to make me represent whatever it is that they're proclaiming to the world. All those fliers for church events and the programs for concerts and the schedules for things and the clubs and the organizations and the opinions and the books and the movies and the pictures and the ideas, all these things are just stapled onto me, covering me up, wrapping me like some gag gift of a person.

And why wouldn't they? I mean, let's face it, humility out the door, I'm not a bad spokesperson. In the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty much always someone you wouldn't mind representing your cause or your organization. I'm pretty middle class and with a little bit of work, I can look much better. I might not be the best looking kid on the block, but I'm not terribly ugly, and there's nothing that airbrushing won't fix these days. I go to a great university, I make good (read decent) grades, I smile, I'm responsible, I have a diverse interest in things, I'm knowledgeable and I'm nice to talk to most days. I come from a pretty good place in society. My life has been wonderful and it's easy to see the ways I've been blessed. I'm pretty much a walking testimony of what God can do when He's feeling generous. Or, for those of you who don't really go for the whole deity aspect of things, I'm a product of what middle class suburbia and a couple of strokes of wonderful luck can do for a person. I have some prospects. I can be successful. Parents wouldn't mind it if their kids grew up to be me and that's just on potential. I can fit in in most groups and levels of society and even though I feel like an awkward bridge on the inside most times, I'm OK on the outside. So plaster your signs away. I'll be happy to carry your logos for you.

But see, that's the problem, I think. I have so much. No matter how much I highlight what I don't have in my mind, no matter how many nights I spend thinking about how much I wish for things in life to start happening to me again, I know that I have been uniquely blessed and looked after. I know that there is a future in my life and that everything, good and bad, will make me into a better person if I use it the right way. I can explain away my tiny little pains with elaborate dogmatic turns because life has been good to me and I try to ignore the thoughts of what I'll become when life isn't so good to me anymore. I can smile because God has always provided for me and when I chance it, I can see His hand in my life.

And why is that a problem? you may ask. The problem comes not in what I have, but in what others don't have. What makes me so special that I deserve these wonderful things? What's so great about me that I can have these wonderful people in my life to encourage me and make me better, to be my friends and help me see the world? Why should the money always be there for me? Why should it always work for the best for me? Why am I the one reading about the floods and the fires and the violence? I can tell you right now that I'm not any better than those people, people whose situation is so different from mine. They are still beautiful human beings and they deserve as much as I have, even more. So why am I so blessed? And why can't they be too?

No, this is a really big issue for me. Like, maybe they're blessed in different ways, like blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God kind of blessed. Or maybe they're really blessed through their trials and they're better and stronger people. Maybe they'll be given wisdom and courage so they can help someone else who's going through the same thing. You know, maybe they'll have a testimony about it. And anyway, it's all going to even out in the end, you know, the rough places will be made plain and every valley shall be exalted for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. And when all of those explanations don't seem good enough anymore, when I don't want to just trust that it's going to be fair one day, that grace is going to pour down on everyone, not just the ridiculously blessed, when I actually want to go make it fair, what then? Because I despair when I think about this.This haunts me when I let myself think about it. Do you trust that the kingdom's going to come or do you bring the kingdom to you? And if you bring the kingdom to you, why don't we do it more? Why is the kingdom so perpetually far away when we've had 2,000 years of history to bring it here, to the people who really need it?

Why are all the posters on Franklin Street? It's not like the light pole is going to go spread Your words to the people who need to hear it most.

But then, maybe it should.

A Request From Mali

Hi friends! This is from my... well... so Diata came from Mali and stayed at my grandparents house and became a facet of our lives for a couple of years. This is her story, so if you have connections, let me know and let's see what we can do about this.

Dear Friends,  
 I am writing you this email in desperation, needing your help. I am stranded in the land of Timbuktu. 
 
 My name is Diata Berthe. I am from Mali, West Africa (by the way, Timbuktu does exist and it is in Mali). I came to the USA with the help of an American family who have been my sponsors. I have been in the USA under an F1 student visa from July, 2003 to May, 2009. When I first went to the USA,I spoke very little English and did not have a high school diploma either. I started with an ESL program at SUNY Albany to improve my English. Then from there, I moved to Hickory, NC and enrolled at Catawba Valley Community College (CVCC) in their Early Childhood Certificate Program. At the same time, I attended GED classes for a year. I did this to improve my English. From GED classes, I changed to Adult High School at Caldwell Community College (CCC) to get my high school diploma, so I could study for an Associate Degree. 
 
  I could have settled for a certificate and be finished. But, I did not want to settle for a certificate only. When I enrolled in the Adult High School at CCC, I was doing college and high school at same time. I had to take 12 to 14 hours of college credit each semester in order to keep my student visa since I could not get a student visa for High School. I was forced to do both together because I wanted to succeed. I failed the first high school placement test, cried, but tried again a second time and passed. I then had schedule conflicts between my college and high school classes, partly because the two schools were almost 1 ½ hour drive apart. It was a lot of work, but I managed to do it. 
 
Even with all those obstacles, I managed to graduate with honors from Adult High School at CCC in 2007. In 2009 I graduated with honors again with two Associate degrees - Early Childhood Education and Elementary Teacher Assistant - from CVCC in Hickory, NC. 
After graduating, I decided to take one year off under an Optional Training Visa (OPT) and work at CVCC Day Care Center. I started that OPT May 15th 2009 and it was over May 14th 2010.  After the OPT, I renewed my F1 student visa for another year and was registered to return to classes in August 2010 to complete a bachelor degree. In between time, I decided to go home to Mali to visit my family during the summer and return in time for Fall classes.  I left the USA May 27th for Mali with a round trip ticket return date July 18th. Before coming to Mali, I sent many e-mails to the US Embassy in Mali asking them questions about how I could be sure I would be allowed to return to the USA to complete my education. I never did get any answer to my questions. Every time I asked them questions, I received an automatic reply telling me to go to their website to get my answers. The questions I was asking them were not answered on their website. 

  After many attempts I was finally able to schedule an appointment with the US Embassy in Bamako, Mali for June 8th as was required for me to be able to re-enter the USA. I had to pay $390 for the visa application and interview. At that interview they denied my visa. The Consul who interviewed me June 8th, told me that I did not prove to him that I had worked hard enough at school. He refused to look at my transcript. I was surprised he said that without even having opened my transcript to see my GPA.  I have a 3.72 GPA. He did not even explain to me why my visa was denied. I strongly believe that those Consuls do what they feel like doing with very little regard for the applicants. Having had to pay $390, I should have had the right to present my case and not be simply told "No! You are dismissed." 
 
On June 9th, I rescheduled online another appointment for July 13th at 7:00 AM and again paid $390. This was the earliest available date. When I went for that interview, I was told, along with seven others present, that they had changed their application form to a new one on June 15th (after I had already rescheduled). So, I was told to go back and fill up the new application form number DS160 instead DS156 and DS158 which I had already completed after downloading them from their website. When I finished filling it out, I went back to the Embassy, but by then it was 8:30. I could not see the Consul because my interview time was already passed. They had never tried to inform us the form was changed even if they knew we had appointments and would all be sent back and have to reschedule for a later date. I wonder how many others were victims of the same problem. 

  Again I had to schedule a new appointment. The earliest appointment time I could get was July 26th at 14:00, although my return ticket was for July 18th. The travel agent worked hard to reschedule my departure date for after the 26th, but Delta Airline wanted over $4,000 to reschedule. Congressman David McHenry's office in Hickory, NC asked the Consular Office to give me an expedited interview for before the 18th, but the Consul, Jason Chiodi, flatly refused. July 26th, my visa was denied a second time although many friends in America and other countries had sent emails to the Consul on my behalf. The Consul who did my second interview, Jim Wilson, was more polite than the first Consul. He took time to tell me the reason they would not give me the visa. He told me that it took me too long to finish my two year degrees. When I explained to him why it took me longer, he told me that he understood, but he still did not give me the visa. 

 To my surprise, what the second Consul said was different from what the first one had said. When they denied my visa at my first interview, I wrote an e-mail to the Congressman's Office in Hickory to see if they could do something to help me. They were told by Consul Jason Chiodi that I did not show enough proof that when I would finish my education in USA I would return to Mali. At my second interview, I went with as many proofs as I could. After presenting all those proofs, I was told that it took me too long to finish with my two year degrees. They said that they denied my visa under section b214, whatever that is, I do not know. To me it seems they are changing their story from one interview to the next. I need your help to straighten out the story they keep changing. Why did I have to wait 1 ½ months longer and pay another $390 to be told what I could have been told at my first interview? Students are not rich. 

During my second interview, I told the Consul that I have all my belongings, important documents, my debit card, a car and motor scooter back in NC and that I was taking care of my sponsor's affairs in the USA. They are Americans but currently live in Indonesia. I was told that someone could send me my things by mail. I have been living in Hickory with an elderly couple, both in their eighties, and helping them with household responsibilities.

The questions I have is if millions of Americans travel during different holidays, why me going to visit my family after not seeing them for nearly 7 years should become a big problem, as if I had killed someone. The reason I am sending this e-mail to you, is that I need public support for my case. I know that this does not only happen to me, plenty of international students are in my position. 
 
Why should a student who comes to the USA not be able to return home part way through their education to visit their family knowing for sure that they will be allowed to return to the USA? What if they need to go home for an emergency? For example if someone in their family is terminally ill and they would like to see them one last time. If they dare leave the USA, they may never be allowed back in, even though they already had a valid visa, are properly enrolled in school and have a scholarship or have already paid their tuition for the next semester by the hard work of their parents. Their fate is always in the hands of an embassy staff member in their home country. That person does what he/she feels like doing. Can that be called a fair system? Why can't the USA issue exit/re-entry permits to students who already have valid visas like many other countries do for their foreign residents? The foreign students in the USA are only free if they stay in the USA. They don't have the right to go back to their home land and return to the USA easily. When they are in the USA, they have many challenges to overcome. I want to add that all students coming to the USA to study are not criminals and they should not have to feel like they are prisoners in a prison camp or cannot leave the country like people in communist countries. American people pride themselves in saying that all people in their nation have freedom, but the way Embassy workers treat people does not reflect that. 
 
To me this system goes right along with their new law that says you cannot open a bank account in the USA without a Social Security number. When foreign students first come in, everybody knows they will not have a Social Security number to open a bank account. Plenty of those students are forced to ask their teachers or their friends if they can use their bank account to deposit or transfer their money since they cannot open their own bank account. Talk about a system! Perhaps they are expected to bring along enough money with them for the four years of their studies and keep it under their mattress. I went to the USA in 2003 and I could not get a Social Security number until 2007 and that number is not even working right yet. When I worked at CVCC and it was time to run my SS # in the system to get my pay check, it shows that it is an invalid number. I have been to the Social Security office, the IRS office, and then even to the Congressman's office, trying to solve that problem and did not get anywhere. I was told I should hire a lawyer to help me. Why should I, as a poor student, have to hire a lawyer to help me correct an error in the Social Security computer system? 
 
I would have plenty more stories to tell about the problems foreign students face when they go to the USA. I will stop here for now. I am pleading for your help with my case. I know many other foreign students are in my situation and this issue needs to be addressed and a solution found. Now, I don't know what to do. I am asking you to take my case to the public in order to intervene for me with the Embassy so I can return to finish my education. 

Thank you for taking time to read this e-mail. I hope to hear from you soon. 
Sincerely, 

Diata Berthe

Soapbox

So, nothing against South Caldwell, Home of the Spartans, and nothing against Caldwell County, where our native speakers tend to loose and L when we pronounce it (and an R in library... so frustrating),  but I feel like I got the tough end of the stick when I watch this video from Oprah.

Now, my school wasn't that terrible (and the merca was cleaned up super fast out of those locker rooms), but we didn't have an Olympic sized pool (yeah, half hour daily bus rides to Lenoir for swim team!) or a cardio room, so the comparison was just ridiculous. I had to watch all this for my education class, as well as read a ton of boring stats on how poverty is going up in the South and how, nation-wide as well as in the South, the United States is on its way to becoming a majority minority county. All right, I say boring because I want to block it out of my heart. Not the minority part, I'm totes cool with the increasing diversity of the country, I think it'll be awesome, but I'm not up for watching more kids live in poverty. I'm not ready to see our school system become anymore shameful than it already is.

So today I bring you my blackboard post for my teaching class. I got on a roll and then I got on a soap box and then I brought in a personal story and then I jumped up and down on my soapbox and then I clicked submit. In this class, my goal is to get an A and fly under the radar, so I kinda want to take my post back. I don't want to sound like a self-righteous jerk. "You, yes you, are funding the corporate empire that is America that ignores its poor and needy and you don't even care enough to make a well-phrased yet passionate complaint about it." Holy schnikes, if you're going to lecture me about how much I care about students and education, jerk in my education class, I am going to walk away before I send a virtual punch in your direction. I know it's bad. I want to hear how you're going to fix it. I want to hear how you're going to care, as in a verb, a thing you do. Or maybe your school system didn't cover that tense, you know, the future tense where you go and do something. *Breathes heavily* Jerk.

Enjoy my soapbox.

 "One thought that really hit me as I went through this material is how blase I was about it. Through most of it, just reading the stats on the segregation or the majority of students living in poverty or reading the stories about kids going to classes in trailers, I was wondering why anyone was surprised by this. I kept thinking back to the video [Oprah!], where the suburban students were shocked at coming to the other school, at the cracked seat in the weight room and the leaking gym. I spent a fair amount of time in my high school weight room for swim team and we had cracked seats too. And with the tracking and de facto segregation, again, that's just how schools are. I kept thinking, "And your point is?"

What I'd like to see is not more revealing stories, unless they're directed at the people at the top of the pyramid who might not yet realize what it's been like here at the bottom, but ways to correct the disparities. I was encouraged by a couple of the stories at the beginning of the Kozol reading [The Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol, Chapter 7, Excluding Beauty] where teachers were still able to make a kid-friendly environment even though their school buildings were terrible. Teachers shouldn't have to work through that, but they should be able to, you know, to make the best of their surroundings.

Also, shout out to the band! It made it as one of the more racially diverse organizations [Clotfelter, Inside Schools, Chapter 5, Classrooms and School Activities]. Band can be like athletics- they raise their own money for equipment. I went to a school where the band director worked to raise the money for new instruments. The first french horn I learned to play on was duct-taped together (that's a great story) but I was still able to learn music well enough to place into the district band and into an ensemble here [at Carolina]. By my senior year of high school, I had worked up to one of the newer, better instruments and my old horn was only being used because our program and section had out-grown the instrument purchases [OK, so Childers bought a bunch of new mellophones my freshman year {I learned on an altonium, before he bought them, that was a party as well} so the french horn story isn't 100% true, but it would have been, if he would have just bought a couple of nice double horns... or bought replacement string for the ones that were there... and maybe did some welding... I digress].

So, I guess, coming from a high school with a ridiculously high drop-out rate, a middle school in a building that was built almost a hundred years ago and an elementary school where the academically gifted program was held in a trailer, I'm not surprised by the disparities between rich and poor and the segregation that still goes on. I'm just ready to see our nation move past it, to a time where success stories don't have to happen."

First

So I am eternally jealous of people who make connections with other people. I watch other people care about each other and I wonder why that's never me. One of my friends was talking about her insecurities and she said, "I wonder why I'm never the first in anyone's life." It was so perfectly me that I had to say it again.

I hate being made a liar even more than I hate being a liar. I went over to camp on Monday and helped out with the swim test (and swam more than I have in a year, darn you, UNC pools) and ran away to work. I went to camp on Tuesday and helped out at the pool and ran away to class. Just as I was leaving, one of my campers from two years ago came over and said, "Where are you going? I only came over here because you were here." I laughed it off and said, "Well, I'll be here tomorrow, so you can come over here tomorrow."

I wasn't there tomorrow.

My older brother came back from China on Thursday. He made it back to North Carolina on Friday. I spent Wednesday cleaning out his room in the basement, discovering a new telescope (yes!), and inhaling loads and loads of dust. And making friends with spiders. I'm going soft in my old age- I almost felt bad tearing down their homes and shooing them out of the basement. So I didn't go to camp on Wednesday. I didn't go to camp on Thursday. I'm trying to decide what I actually did this week. I worked. I threw ice cream. I made tips. I deck brushed that entire backroom floor and my shoulder still hurts. I wallowed in self-pity, I think.

I went to camp on Friday. Friday mornings are the opposite of Sunday mornings, in my book. They're the last chance I have to see these wonderful people who have come into my life and the day that I have to decide whether they get to come into mine. Other counselors would give away their phone numbers and their addresses. It took me four years to give away my address and my phone number, and even then, it was to the kids who I trusted enough, the ones I wanted to know outside of the five days a year I saw them. So I guess the reason I'm not first in anyone's life is because no one's first in mine.

I really came on Friday morning to see this one camper again. It's her last year and she wants to go to UNC and she smiled and hugged me when I showed up at lunch on Monday and she was one of the hardest campers I ever had to deal with, which makes her one of the best. She left and I hugged her goodbye and that was that. And then she friended me on Facebook and that makes me smile immensely.

But I was watching a group of kids after everyone else had gotten picked up and while the staff was having their meeting. I really wanted to sit in on the meeting, to tell the counselors that morning devotions really do help, because you're putting something in at the beginning of the day. I mean, I love to sleep and even I would recommend that half an hour. And I recommend sleeping and praying and talking with your campers, getting to know them, loving them, caring for them, working with them because that's what you're here for. I wanted to share four summers' worth of rather hard-won wisdom. I watched kids instead, so I guess I was really meant to learn instead of teach on Friday.

Israel has been coming to camp for four summers. I remember him. He can do awesome flips on the trampoline, I found out, but he alternates between wanting you to love him and shutting off. For instance, I did a flip on the trampoline (OK, it's half a flip, I land on my butt, but it's the best I can do) and while the girls were trying to reenact the weird sideways twist I did (darn bulging disk), Israel said, over and over again, "No, that was tight. That was awesome." Here's this kid who gets big and tries to push everyone around the second anyone even thinks of making less of him, and he's complimenting my pathetic little flip. These are the best kids, you know that? They are wonderful, I don't care what you say. They will never be high risk as long as there's someone there to love them like they deserve to be loved. But you will label them and you will talk about them in the staff room and you will pass them on the street and shake your head. Are they first in anyone's life? Because that top place is sitting there open in theirs. Someone has to love them.

One of my campers called me today. My freshman year of high school (I swear, five and half years is penance enough) two guys called me, within half an hour of each other, to ask me out. The first one said that he loved me and I think I laughed. Hopefully internally. You don't love someone when you're a freshman in high school. I've since convinced myself that you don't love someone when you're a freshman in college either. I told him that I must be first in a long list of girls and I said something else. First in a list. So that ended that one. The next one called me and i said that I couldn't go out with him because I was in love with someone else. And you know, I think I was, but that is a long long story, but that ended that call. And ever since, I always tend to wonder where I am on someone's list when they're calling to ask for something.

I didn't wonder when Hannah called because it doesn't matter. I'm in her life, no matter how failingly,and all I want to do is help. She told me to pray because her cousin, she's been praying, and she feels like He's not listening. I mean, what do you tell someone who says that God's not listening? "Oh, what a coincidence, He's not listening to me either"? "Oh, you just need to pray harder"? I will never say that. "You just gotta have faith." I wish they didn't sound so empty. It was weird, the second I hung up, I prayed. And I had no clue what to pray for and I had no clue if it's going to work or what it's going to do, but these words came to me and I said them to the great powers in the sky. And why on earth would God listen to me? There are so many more qualified, more faithful people for Him to listen to, better people who are honest and true and less stubborn and obedient and unquestioning. There are people who don't have reasons to list for why God shouldn't listen to them. Why should He listen to me?

Because He loves me. And you. Everyone. And in some cases, it's this love that would be pathetic coming from anyone else, because it's never going to be returned. They don't even know He exists. Some people get confused, some don't care, some don't need it, some don't want it, some have somebody else. Some love Him, some don't and that's your business. Mine is to be amazed. Amazed, because, no matter what happens, He listens. You and I and six billion other people break His heart daily and He listens and He loves and He never lets go. That doesn't have to change your world and I'll never understand why it doesn't change His, but it stops mine from spinning.

Great thing is, He doesn't want to be first. He only wants to be everything.

Sparrows and Pennies

I have such wonderful people in my life and am so many kinds of happy, I'm not entirely sure I can think straight. So some random thoughts from me to you.



The soul is healed by being with children.- Fyodor Dostoevsky
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So there's this episode of Doctor Who with the new Doctor and he's trying to get Amy to decide whether she really wants to travel with him or whether she wants to be with Rory (which she really does, goodness knows why). They flip back and forth between these two different realities and she finally realizes that she wants to be where Rory is when he dies in one of the realities. I have decided that I need this for my life.
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I forgot what I was missing.
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Notre Dame de Paris. Mon Dieu.

Pour tous les hosannas et tous les alleluias
Mais celle que je prefere
Parmi toutes ces femmes de fer
Ce sont les trois Maries
Qui sont mes meilleures amies
Il y a la petite Marie
Pour les enfants qu'on met en terre
Il y a la grande Marie
Pour les marins qui partent en mer
Mais quand je sonne la grosse Marie
Pour les amants qui se marient
C'est pas que j'ai le cœur à rire
Je l'aurais plutôt à mourir
De les voir si joyeux
De les voir si heureux
Moi qu'aucune femme ne regardera jamais dans les yeux
De les voir convoler
De les voir s'envoler
Au milieu des étoiles sous la voûte des cieux
Toutes les cloches que je sonne
Kyrie Eleison
Hosanna alleluia dies irae dies illa
Toutes ces cloches de malheur
Toutes ces cloches de bonheur
Toutes ces cloches qui n'ont jamais encore sonné pour moi

I'll love you, Quasimodo. Ah mon coeur!
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My first camper ever is going to be an eighth grader. I'm so old.
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Text from me to Sarah: "A middle aged man just rode his shopping cart down the parking lot in front of me. His wife with their baby in a stroller just followed and laughed."
From Sarah to me: "Yes! There is hope for humanity!"
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You spoke to me! I'm delighted.
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The bishop in Les Mis is my favorite Victor Hugo character. I want to be him. Also, Victor Hugo? Wonderful. Next on my reading list is Notre Dame de Paris, which is the real life version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is not like the Disney movie. I'll ruin it for you- Phoebus is a jerk. Jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk. Also, his name is much more amusing in French.
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Why, yes, I am a BA. It says so on my ring. Also a ninja. With feet of steel.
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And a fairy lightsaber. Dollar store victory!

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I'm finding everything I'll ever need by giving up being everything.
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See, I just needed you to be awesome so I can remember how unimportant I am.
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No, really, my pride is going to be the death of me. It's a stubborn little sucker, I'll give it that.
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"And our heart is restless until it rests in You."
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Fireflies: inside jokes that somehow still delight my soul. Also, the favorite pet of children of all ages.
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Eustace and the dragon is my favorite story in the Chronicles of Narnia, closely followed by Edmund's role in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I like redemption stories.
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"'In our world,' said Eustace, 'a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.'
'Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.'"
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Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters has to be better than the real thing. I swear, if someone doesn't propose to Elinor soon, I'm going to put the book down. And if the Colonel doesn't marry Elinor, I am no judge of Jane Austen's plot lines. (*Note- I am no judge of Jane Austen's plot lines.*)
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I have wonderful friends. You know who you are.
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I have wonderful parents. On Facebook, my dad posts on my mom's wall (she's taking an education class):
Not doing too much homework tonight while on facebook, now are we ???
Comment by my mother: No just had to check it out before bed. Are you coming?
Comment by my father: watching tv. be there soon

Presh!
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My two rules that I contributed to camp today:
5. Be Awesome.
9. Love God.

I think I have a new motto.
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Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. (Matthew 10:29)

Nauseous

Did you know that most of us use the word nauseous wrong? Nauseous is actually an adjective. The word you should use when trying to say that you feel sick is nauseated. So, when an EMT asks you why you puked all over the ground, you can say that you felt nauseated. And then you can talk about how nauseous (having the quality of making someone nauseated) this distinction is. Hopefully the hypothetical EMT is sympathetic and not bad looking and that will make this a winning situation.

I learned this from someone who also was adamant that a lot was two words, not one as is common use in the world today. I made the comment that other things had changed over time and become acceptable as words in the English language simply because of their common use. Like Klingon. Or ain't. Which is in the dictionary. This person did not approve of this attitude toward grammar or language development; clearly, she was a prescriptive grammarian. In her eyes, things should not become acceptable over time.

Alot shouldn't be added in the dictionary, she said. It would be making something that was intrinsically wrong socially correct. It's like saying that one day homosexuality will be right, because it will have become socially acceptable.

At this point in time, my politeness and my wit failed me. She sat turned around backwards in the bus seat as we pulled into the church and smiled at me, like this was a point that clearly we all agreed on. I sat there for a few long seconds and then said, "Your reasoning is absolutely right."

It's a good thing God didn't write the dictionary. We'd have a whole lot more people unfairly banned from churches and ordination than we do today.

Some Nobelity

"There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run towards the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness."
-Rumi

A human being divested of all dignity, a human being deprived of human rights, a human being gripped by starvation, a human being beaten by famine, war and illness, a humiliated human being and a plundered human being is not in any position or state to recover the rights he or she has lost. -Shirin Ebadi

_____________________________________________

For as long as space endures
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world.
-Shantideva

I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, that together we succeed in building a better world through human understanding and love, and that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings. -The 14th Dalai Lama

______________________________________________

It sounds like a dream of a remote and unknown future; but life is not worth living without a dream and without working to make the dream reality.- 1964 Nobel Peace Prize Presentation Speech

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. -Martin Luther King, Jr

Warning: Politically Sensitive Material

So sue me. I think that Gaza should be free and that it is an injustice to remove people from their homes and put someone there in their place, no matter what the politics are. I believe that peaceful solutions should be tried before any military action is taken and that countries shouldn't start a war for purely national gain. I support our troops. I think women should be allowed to choose and I think that murder, all murder, is wrong. I believe in second chances, but I also believe that you have to earn your second chance. I believe that every person on earth has value because they are a human being. I believe that you can't own a human being, you can't pay for a human being and that you have no right to make anyone feel like they are worth less than anyone else. I don't know about money and market systems, but I know we, as Americans, have a lot (and a lot of debt) and that we don't all share. I know that we waste and I think that we should all recycle, we should all drink out of reusable water bottles, we should pass lighting ordinances to save money and save the stars, and I know that we have to find and use something other than oil to make our world go round. I'm not a vegetarian, I think the drinking age should be lowered to 18 at least, and that you should support the arts.

I don't know what values America was founded on- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Equality (of white male property holders)? Freedom? I watched a video bringing that to my attention, and I have to admit, I don't have a canonical answer for what America stands for. The speaker referenced this speech by Lincoln and I'm going to re-post that version because it is worth reading. I agree with our 16th president: "It is not 'can any of us imagine better?' but, 'can we all do better?'"


Annual Message to Congress --
Concluding Remarks
Washington, D.C.
December 1, 1862

One month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln sent a long message to Congress which was largely routine, but also proposed controversial measures such as voluntary colonization of slaves and compensated emancipation.

Lincoln devoted so much attention to preparing the message that his friend David Davis said, "Mr. Lincoln's whole soul is absorbed in his plan of remunerative emancipation." The concluding paragraphs shown below demonstrate Lincoln's passion for this plan and contain some of the most famous statements he ever wrote. Composer Aaron Copeland used excerpts in his evocative "Lincoln Portrait."

I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I, in the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great responsibility resting upon me, you will perceive no want of respect yourselves, in any undue earnestness I may seem to display.

Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national prosperity, and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here--Congress and Executive--can secure its adoption? Will not the good people respond to a united, and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means, so certainly, or so speedily, assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not "can any of us imagine better?" but, "can we all do better?" The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

Barefoot

If you know me, you know I hate wearing shoes. If you know the UNC campus, you know that shoes are a necessity. Today, to raise awareness about the importance one pair shoes can bring, some of us are going barefoot. Needless to say, there will be much foot washing later, but for now, wherever you are, for a little bit, take off your shoes and walk around somewhere. Think how easy it is to get a cut, a splinter, a blister, and then think about how easily that can get infected. Think of all the things you're walking through, unprotected. Then think about this:

- In some developing nations, children must walk for miles to school, clean water and to seek medical help.
- Cuts and sores on feet can lead to serious infection.
- Often, children cannot attend school barefoot.
- In Ethiopia, approximately one million people are suffering from Podoconiosis, a debilitating and disfiguring disease caused by walking barefoot in volcanic soil.
- Podoconiosis is 100% preventable with basic foot hygiene and wearing shoes.
(from http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=376663552429&ref=ts)

As a friend of mine has said, being aware of something makes no difference if you don't do something. So do something. Take off your shoes, feel some pain, and then help fix the problem. Fast for a day or two or five, feel hunger and go fix it. Think of the gross water you could be drinking and go help provide clean water for the millions who don't have it.

We can fix this.

Come on, let's go take on the world today.

"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more"

-Anne Frank (12 June 1929 in Frankfurt am Main – early March 1945 in Bergen Belsen)

The Little Indian Man

New feeling: legitimate sadness that I can't make it to classes today (ARG MYBACKNEEDSTOGROWUPANDLETMEDOEVERYTHINGIWANTTO). So, since I won't be able to get to my Modern Islamic Civilizations class today, I figured I'd retell a story my professor told on Thursday.

Now, you've got to get the mental picture right- my class meets in the auditorium of the Stone Center, so it's a big lecture class. My professor is a short and slightly rotund Persian man with more hair on his arms than on his head and a self-proclaimed Backstreet Boys complex. He clips on his mike and paces the stage, alternating between vaguely inappropriate humor and profound truths. As much as it has burdened my heart, I love going to this class to learn something new and to listen to Professor Safi lecture. It's good stuff.

So, after we've done a day on Partition in India and Pakistan, the next lecture goes into South Asian culture a little. I'm currently fascinated by Sufi performances like this . Anyway, after listening to some fun music, Professor Safi threw up a picture of the Taj Mahal and proceeded to tell us this story.

When you go to see the Taj, you've got to see it in different lights. You need to see it in the morning, you need to see it in the evening, because depending on the light that's hitting it, the building looks completely different. So me and my friends were traveling around India, back when I had hair, and we were going to go visit the Taj. We get to Agra and have dinner at this restaurant that claims that its founders were the chefs for Shah Jahan. I don't know if that was legit, but the food was. Anyway, we get back to the hotel and we get up at like 3:30, because we're going to go see the Taj at dawn. Imagine this, you've got to visualize it. Say the stage is the Taj. There's this platform at the back of the auditorium and between the Taj and the platform are these cascading fountains, rivers of water. And you stand on the platform and you take a picture and it looks just like this:



Now, any of you who travel know that any time you get to a touristy destination, what do you find? 200 Japanese tourists, who, regardless of the time of day, have been there for an hour before you have with their little fanny packs and cameras. So we get to the Taj, it's what, 4, by now and what do we find but 200 Japanese tourists in color coordinated shirts, waiting in line to get on the platform to take a picture. And they line up, 5 at a time, and they walk up [imagine a rotund Persian man imitating a Japanese tourist bouncing up to take a picture] and click. And then the next five walk up and click. And the next five walk up and click. Click. When you leave the platform, you're led right to a postcard stand that has photos that look oddly like this [gestures to the photo of the Taj Mahal behind him].

So we wait for all 200 Japanese tourists to walk up on the platform, and we're looking at our watches and it's almost time for dawn. We finally get to get up on the platform and we're getting ready to click, when this little Indian man comes up to us- swear to God- and says, "You will come with me." [Imagine a rotund Persian man -with a Persian accent- imitating an Indian accent] And we're like, what is this little Indian man talking about? We just waited, did you see the 200 Japanese tourists? We've been waiting and this is our only chance to see the Taj and the Little Indian Man says, "You will come with me now." And I don't know what it was, but we were like "We will come with you now." [in a hypnotized voice] And -swear to God- we hopped down off the platform and started to follow the Little Indian Man.

And he takes off, so we're following this Little Indian Man and we're talking to ourselves like what are we doing, this is our only time to see the Taj, this is ridiculous, and we're running to keep up with him because the Little Indian Man is walking fast and looking at his watch and saying, "You will hurry now" and we're like "We will hurry now." Now, he's going diagonally away from the platform, away from the Taj, towards this old broken-down retaining wall and we're still talking to ourselves. And now we're at this wall and the Little Indian Man turns to me and says, "You will climb the wall now." And I'm like, no, Little Indian Man, we just left the platform and followed you around, but it's getting to be dawn and we really want to get back to the platform before the next group of Japanese tourists come through, and he says, "You will climb the wall now," and I say, "I will climb the wall now." And so I do, I climb up this broken part of the retaining wall at the behest of this Little Indian Man and turn and look at the Taj.

Turns out that this broken part of the retaining wall is where the first sunbeams of the dawn come up and hit the Taj and it is from this location that you can see semi-precious stones start to sparkle. The whole building starts to sparkle and it doesn't look anything like this [points to the picture of the Taj Mahal behind him]. And so we climb up and see this wonder and talk to each other about this amazing sight. And the Little Indian Man says, "You will get down from the wall now." And we're like, But this is gorgeous, it's the Taj, and the lights, and it sparkles and [gestures at the Taj Mahal in his mind in front of him]... and the Little Indian Man says, "You will get down from the wall now." And we say, "We will get down from the wall now."

The Little Indian Man leads us across the way to a tree that's hanging off a ledge and he says, "You will climb the tree." And we're like, No way, that's hanging off a cliff, could you imagine what would happen if we fell? I'm not climbing that tree. And the Little Indian Man says, "You will climb the tree now." And -swear to God- I said, "I will climb the tree now," and climbed this tree. And here was a completely different angle, with a different light, and it was just as beautiful as from before. I turn to tell my friends and the Little Indian Man says, "You will get out of the tree now." And I do. For the next hour, we follow the Little Indian Man around to different places, climbing up on walls, hanging off ledges, climbing trees. He had this place mapped out, knew the best places to see the light as it reached the Taj and knew exactly when to be there. He had this itinerary of beauty saved away in his little Indian brain and he was showing it all to us. When we were done, we walked back to the platform and we see another group of tourists up on the platform, click, and walk away happy with their postcard picture.

And this was around the point in my life when I realized that if you are only looking for the the postcard picture, that's all you're ever going to see. When you want to learn, really learn about somebody or something, especially someone's religion, you have to be willing to go to some unexpected places, hang off some cliffs, climb some trees. And it really helps to have someone who knows the place along to guide you around. And that might be the single most important thing you learn this semester.

Thanks, Professor.

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.

Anger

I am so sick.

I hate this world. I hate it. When, when did we decide that it was acceptable, fine, commendable to ignore the needy in the world and focus always on ourselves? When did we decide that we could 'help' people by bombing their country, tearing their world apart and forcing ideas and systems of governance foreign to them on their lives? When did we decide that we could put down other people to the point that they actually think they're as worthless as we make them seem? When did we make the choice to stop seeing humanity and start seeing us and them?

When did we decide that it's fine to have people living on the streets, out in the cold, without a house, when we have so much extra room in our houses, extra guest rooms, huge living rooms, game rooms, multiple dining rooms? When did we decide that we could waste our money on food we don't even want, that we're going to throw away, that we're going to turn our noses up at, when there are people dying, dying, as in never get to eat another meal because they're dead, dying of hunger? When did we decided that we could ignore the rest of the world as long as we are fine?

What are our institutions, our places of learning, our high towers and money systems, banks and corporate offices schools? What are our sporting events? How much money there is laying around, how many resources used for these things, when we could save the world, fix so many problems with what is spent in idle pleasure?

I'm sick of it. I'm sick of spending hours studying things that don't matter, that I won't use, that won't make a difference in the world, or that only make a difference in my tiny sliver of the world. There is injustice and oppression. There is murder and genocide and starvation and disease and hate, hate, hate, hate and anger and waste. The waste of the entire human race, do you realize that? Do we realize what potential we have, what we could do, if we would just save us from ourselves? And I'm angry and I don't want to spend another day being less than this world needs me to be. If I'm going to wear a cross of ashes on my forehead, I want to be Christ to the world, not have to hang my head down and ignore the people who are freezing outside because I don't know their situation or how I can help them.

No, and I know there are noble things to follow in this society of ours. And I know there is good. But fuck it all, because that's what's keeping us complacent, keeping me complacent, that's what's stopping us from waking up and realizing that there are problems that need to be addressed. We're comfortable, we're fine, we don't need to do anything yet.

And I'm afraid to see what it's going to take to make us change.

From Sunday

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 were 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 liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
- Marianne Williamson

Sometimes People

"Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough, sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded."-The Dark Knight, Jim Gordon

I've been chewing on this for a little while, after I had my faith in a few people shaken. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded. Sometimes you need to see that people are worth saving. "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough." Maybe. Sometimes the truth isn't what's needed, I think. The truth, at a particularly bad time (like when you've just had your strength taken away by the god of the underworld in order to save the woman you loved only to find out that she had been working for him the whole time- that's a bad time to hear the truth) can be the defeat of someone.

But then there's always the redeeming truth. You know, it gets better, life gets better. And if it doesn't, one day it's going to be fair. And after it's fair, there's grace. So I don't really know what to do with this quote, which I love to listen to but not to hear. I figured I'd throw it out there, just in cases.

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.

Break in the Action

I'm promising myself that I'll get to that darn E&M soon enough (midterm on Tuesday, entire lack of studying, in way over my head, 30% of my grade, panic, panic, panic), but there's a lot on my mind and so I'll get back to studying when there's room for it.

I've felt a little bit of vicarious pain this week. A friend's grandfather died and she was really close to him and her step-grandmother is being rather unkind throughout the whole ordeal. One of those times when you really just want to make it better, but you can't. Another friend's aunt is in the ICU and I don't even know this woman, but I know that in this accident there's pain for another family that doesn't need it. Other friends are stressed out about school work, job work, auditions, concerts, papers, midterms part two, just life and you want to sit back and say that God is good and life is wonderful, but that sounds a bit hollow considering that you're jittery from coffee and complaining about the same stuff. Some friends are looking at life after graduation and some are just looking at life and it's not the bright frontier we always wanted it to be. Life's tough. And I'm not going to fix that today.

Hmm, but I've also felt some joy. My friends, I wish I could explain to you how wonderful it is to come out of that darkness that is doubt. Did you know that most of the psalms are songs of community lament? So says my Hebrew Bible teacher. In any case, they're not all happy, like Psalm 42, which I always thought was.

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
the face of God?
My tears have been my food
day and night, while people say
to me continually,
"Where is your God?"

But you can't just stop there, or a few lines from there. Read all the way to the end and you get the gist of my life. "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." The psalmist isn't over everything, he hasn't just been gloriously blessed, his problems solved and his dreams exceeded by the good that has just flooded into his life. Where is your God, people ask? And the psalmist doesn't know. He even asks God where He is, but it's not like God comes out of the clouds, surprise. Hmm, but "deep calls to deep," and God loves, my friends. God loves deeply. And it's so good to have that answer. No, it doesn't stop genocide. No, it doesn't heal all the sick. No, it doesn't stop the pain. But it helps me live through it. It carries us through so that when people ask where our God is, we can say that He's right here. He's been with me all along and now, with His help, I'm going to be a part of His making it better. Through me, He's going to fix the world. And if the world doesn't get fixed, that's not Him. That's the flaw of humanity, but humanity, even with its flaws, is worth fighting for.

I was walking back to my dorm after a meeting tonight and a friend was carrying my backpack because I'm lame (and so, so punny). We were talking about life and she said something like, 'There's no one thing that's making my life stupendous right now, but there are a lot of little things that are going right, getting me through the day.' And it's so true. Most of the time, we don't have the sun, but we do have wonderful stars, that are much farther away but much brighter, in and of themselves.

We kept on walking and we got to talking about my current position in our fraternity and she said, 'You're doing fine. Everything comes easy for you,' or 'You're good at everything.' And I'm sitting here thinking, What? I am an epic fail at existence. OK, maybe not epic fail, but there are so many things that I want to be better at. I don't think that anything I do is worth having done, which is crazy frustrating. It amazes me, every day, how much people can believe in you so much more than you believe in yourself. Eventually, though, you're going to have to shoulder that load yourself and know that you can do all things through Him who gives you strength.

Because the world's going to need that someday. From each of us.

Man, I take a midterm on Tuesday and turn in a problem set, take another one on Thursday and turn a problem set and a paper in early so I can get on a plane Friday to go to Dallas to settle this whole calling thing. Psh, and then there's a life after this weekend- I have another midterm on Monday, the Children's Radio-thon on Thursday, a concert the next Monday and then -breathe in- Thanksgiving -breathe out-.

But there's always another corner to turn and I'm hoping that it's coming this weekend. And if not, and if I'm setting way too much store on these few days, then the corner will be just down the block from that. It's always there. Such is life. Sweet, sweet life.

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…

God Save the People

From Godspell, of course, but the original hymn lyrics, attributed at bottom.

When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy, when?
The people, Lord, the people,
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they;
let them not pass like weeds away
Their heritage a sunless day
God save the people

Shall crime bring crime forever,
Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it thy will, O Father,
that men shall toil for wrong?
No, say thy mountains; No, say thy skies;
man's clouded sun shall brightly rise,
and songs be heard, instead of sighs,
God save the people!

When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy, when?
The people, Lord, the people!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
God save the people; thine they are,
thy children as thy angels fair;
from vice, oppression and despair,
God save the people!

Words: Ebenezer Elliott, 1850

A Melody

I met a guy.

Well, maybe 'met' implies too recent of an acquaintance. He's older than me and he's known my family since before I was born, so I guess I've known him my whole life. I didn't think about it like that though. I grew up with him but we never talked all that much until middle school when I found out how awesome he is. He's just... he's so observant of the world around him and so concerned for other people. It's inspiring, really. I love to hear him talk about what he's done. The places he's been! I mean, he's a world traveler and it seems like he's always gotten to know the people where he's been to an absurd degree. He can tell you about an orphanage in South Africa like he grew up there or a church in Scotland like he watched it being built. He's got all these stories and he knows so much about life. Life and death and everything, it seems like. I love talking to him. You should meet his father, too. They're so similar and it's just great to see how well they get along and how much they really love each other. There's so much to learn, but you don't get caught up in that so much. When he talks, you can tell that he really, really cares about people.

So we started talking in middle school, nothing too intense. Middle schoolers, they're an odd bunch of kids. They're like mini-adults seeing the world with a pretty messed up pair of glasses and they're always convinced they're right. I'm sure that everyone who saw me and this guy together sat back and said that it was something that was going to last, but nobody said it to me. It's like Simba and Nala: you know they're going to end up together for the rest of their lives but you kinda cringe when Zazu says so. You'd rather they just found out for themselves. I think the adults in my life just let me find out for myself that this guy was the one.

It came on so gradually. I'd known him as long as I can remember and I'd always loved being around him, but I don't think I can pinpoint the day when I decided that I loved him. I think I acknowledged it once in middle school, maybe more to myself than anyone else, though people saw it. I don't think that was it, though. I don't think that I really loved him then. We had an on-again, off-again relationship in high school. High school is so distracting. There are so many other guys, so many other things to do. The world is your metaphorical oyster in high school, or at least you think it is. So I was concerned with everything that happened in high school during the year and it's hard to say that I knew that I loved him then.

We did work at the same camp for a lot of summers though. That was amazing. It was like everyone else there knew him too, he was our common thread. He's always been around in my life. I could always call him or meet up with him somewhere, but it was wonderful having him around all the time over those summers. And even though there were distractions there, too, one of which I still carry around in my heart, I really felt like that's when I fell in love with this guy. He cared so deeply for all the campers and he was willing to do anything to make their lives better. He was in all the music that I heard. It's amazing how, when you're in love, it seems like every love song is written for you. I remember moments like that, when I'm singing along to a song that seems like it was written for me and him. I miss that so much.

But even then, I didn't say too much about us. I wasn't sure. I mean, I'd said that I loved him to a lot of people, but I don't know if I had realized that I wanted to spend my life with him then. Then college came and I didn't make the time to let him come visit as much as I should have and all that mess. I met some people who straight up hated him and that amazed me. I met some people who said that they'd met him, but they didn't talk about him like I did and that confused me. I still called him pretty often, though, and we talked. And talked. And talked. And I thought a lot about how much he meant to me. Last year, I decided that I wanted a ring- I wanted the world to know that we were together and I wanted to be reminded every second of every day that I was his. I've had twenty million seconds of cold feet in between now and then. What if someone better comes along and I'm devoted to this guy? I don't think that can happen but you never know. What if I'm at the altar, what if I'm already married and I meet my soul mate? These are questions you shouldn't have. You should be so in love that there's no question- you've already met the only one for you.

Some people get love at first sight or they look across a room and that's all they needed to know. Their stories are so much better. Some people figure out through the course of a crisis that the person they hated is really the person they loved more than anything else. I don't have that. I don't have that great love story. I know I love him but I don't know why and I couldn't tell you when it started. Lately, we've been taking a break, it seems like. I didn't see him keeping his promises to me and I've forgotten what is was that made me think that he and his father were so good. And he says that he's saved the world, but it has a Hiro-esque ring to it. Save the cheerleader, save the world. The world is still not saved. I mean, I know he's still working, but I never see him at it anymore. The love songs still ring true, but it's not like it was back then. I feel like I'm reliving some kind of former glory. Son, can you play me a memory? I'm not really sure how it goes. But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.

People have been asking questions about us. Some one straight up asked me last night, if I had to pick, would I say I was in love. And I said no. But I want to be, so badly. I wanna go back to what I had. But I've grown up. I don't think I can have the same kind of relationship I had in middle school or high school or even my first year here. I want something more, but I'm not willing to commit to it. I'm scared. I'm scared of what he and I can do together. I'm scared of where he'll take me- I won't let him travel alone. There's just so much to think about and it means so much more now, when I know what love means.

We had a good talk last night, though, after I got back from going out. I'm sick of hearing about him from someone else, because you know everyone colors the story their own way when they retell it. I'm going to reread his letters to me. They were so sweet when I first got them. He made me promise to keep them around, probably just for this very time, so I'd remember him even while he's busy in other places. I don't need anyone to tell me to love him. I don't need convincing to do that- goodness, it was so weird when people tried. I'm figuring out how to love him better and then maybe one day I'll be able to shout love from the rooftops instead of whispering confusion in the chapel.

Oh, by the way, his name's Jesus. Just in case you couldn't tell.