this week

has been great!

know why?



for the first time in a long time...I finally feel
like I'm in the right place.

"Nightclub" by Billy Collins

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don't hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else's can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o'clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

Rob Bell

I know I've posted about this before, but Rob Bell is a gift to this world from God. He is the only pastor/preacher/whatever you want to call him that truly speaks to today's world. God speaks to me through this man. I've been in churches where the approach is to tell the congregation what their getting wrong and that Jesus is better. It makes me feel either angry or guilty. Instead, Rob Bell talks about all the ways that Jesus is better and lets you see for yourself what needs to change.

Go check out his sermons on iTunes. Mars Hill Bible Church.

sometimes

I wish I had the words to say what I really think, what I really feel.

But it's like there's a block between my brain and my tongue.


And it's in these moments that I really wish that I knew how to write songs. Music usually seems to speak better for me than I do.

arrived...

...and only mostly unpacked.

At least the bed and the clothes are done.

addictions

I have a few addictions:

Online:
Questionable Content
Austenblog
Bitch in a Bonnet
Girls with Slingshots
OffBeat Bride (I'm not planning a wedding, people, I just like all the creativity flourishing)
YU + ME
Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space (I know it sounds weird, but it's rather entertaining)


On TV:
The Office
Dollhouse
Castle
Green Wing (albeit only on hulu and veoh.com, but still)



I will not have time for these things once I start school. Hmmm. Sad.

Oh well.

ray of light through the window

Something I've posted frequently on how I have trouble trying to reconcile my past and my present. The faith I was raised in vs. the faith I discovered through learning at Westmont. It's hard to see sometimes how the two fits together.

I finally started reading this book that I bought a few months ago. Jesus Wants to Save Christians. It has been absolutely revolutionary for me. The book shows how what I've learned at Westmont and the faith I want to ascribe to is truer to the Way of Christ than most of what I've experienced before. I've heard over and over throughout my life that evangelism meant handing out Bible tracts and going on overseas mission trips. And I've heard over and over again that evangelism also meant that you live like Jesus in your everyday life. But no one really explained what that actually meant. So if you never understand, it doesn't make much of a difference in your life when all you hear is that your faith is something between you and God and nothing more.

This book is about people. People in relationship to God as individuals and as a community. We are connected to that state of exile, which the Israelites experienced so much. Oppression by the empire, but this time, the "Christian" nation is also the Empire. It's humbling to be apart of such wealth when so many are so without. Living the Way of Christ is about not forgetting what God has done for me and to do everything to love and help those on the lower socioeconomic level. Because God sees the suffering. He knows what happens in these human derived systems of corruption. We are made in his Image. Yet how often do we actually live like we believe this is true?

So many strands of thoughts trying to make connection. Sorry if you can't follow. Go read the book. It makes so much more sense than I do.