He Leadeth Me

I seriously can't get enough of this hymn!!! Here's the background from cyberhymnal.org:

As a young man who re­cent­ly had been grad­u­at­ed from Brown Un­i­ver­si­ty and New­ton The­o­lo­gic­al In­sti­tu­tion, I was sup­ply­ing for a cou­ple of Sun­days the pul­pit of the First Bap­tist Church in Phil­a­del­phia [Penn­syl­van­ia]. At the mid-week ser­vice, on the 26th of March, 1862, I set out to give the peo­ple an ex­po­si­tion of the Twen­ty-third Psalm, which I had giv­en be­fore on three or four oc­ca­sions, but this time I did not get fur­ther than the words “He Lead­eth Me.” Those words took hold of me as they had ne­ver done be­fore, and I saw them in a sig­ni­fi­cance and won­drous beau­ty of which I had ne­ver dreamed.

It was the dark­est hour of the Ci­vil War. I did not re­fer to that fact—that is, I don’t think I did—but it may sub­con­sciou­sly have led me to real­ize that God’s lead­er­ship is the one sig­nif­i­cant fact in hu­man ex­per­i­ence, that it makes no dif­fer­ence how we are led, or whi­ther we are led, so long as we are sure God is lead­ing us.

At the close of the meet­ing a few of us in the par­lor of my host, good Dea­con Watt­son, kept on talk­ing about the thought which I had em­pha­sized; and then and there, on a blank page of the brief from which I had in­tend­ed to speak, I pen­ciled the hymn, talk­ing and writ­ing at the same time, then hand­ed it to my wife and thought no more about it. She sent it to The Watch­man and Re­flect­or, a pa­per pub­lished in Bos­ton, where it was first print­ed. I did not know un­til 1865 that my hymn had been set to mu­sic by Will­iam B. Brad­bu­ry. I went to Ro­ches­ter [New York] to preach as a can­di­date be­fore the Se­cond Bap­tist Church. Go­ing in­to their cha­pel on ar­riv­al in the ci­ty, I picked up a hymn­al to see what they were sing­ing, and opened it at my own hymn, “He Lead­eth Me.”


words:

He leadeth me, O blessèd thought!
O words with heav’nly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be
Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.

Refrain

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,
By His own hand He leadeth me;
His faithful follower I would be,
For by His hand He leadeth me.

Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom,
By waters still, over troubled sea,
Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me.

Refrain

Lord, I would place my hand in Thine,
Nor ever murmur nor repine;
Content, whatever lot I see,
Since ’tis my God that leadeth me.

Refrain

And when my task on earth is done,
When by Thy grace the vict’ry’s won,
E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee,
Since God through Jordan leadeth me.

I like Christmas songs*

*with the exception of Christmas songs.

People think it's strange that I like Christmas music - love it, in fact. I've finally realized why. Most people associate Christmas music with songs like this:

"I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
I don't think Santa Claus will mind, do you?
He won't have to use our dirty chimney flue
Just bring him through the front door,
that's the easy thing to do"

Rant:

Songs like this are annoying to me. They grate on my nerves. I know that they're amusing, nostalgic tributes to a quaint American tradition. That's one way to look at it.

Another way to look at it is that America has trivialized Advent until nothing about it resembles what Christmas actually stands for. So these are songs that are really annoying in themselves, but they also represent the materialistic travesty that Christmas has become. So twice as annoying.

The Christmas songs that I do love are quite different. They speak of the haunting majesty of Advent, of the shadow of the cross hanging over the lonely stable. Plus the words are poetry in themselves. I mean, people don't speak like this anymore:

"Shepherds why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong? What the gladsome tidings be, which inspire your heav'nly song?"

This is what I mean when I say I like Christmas songs.

seriously.

I can't decide which I'm amazed by more -- Charles Wesley's hymns or just Christmas carols in general.

"Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris'n with healing in His wings"

seriously.

overwhelmed - in a good way, I think

Well, this week is Thanksgiving break, and I get a whole glorious week off of school. Yet somehow my emotions never quite match my situation. I should be ecstatic, but I've just been feeling kind of blah. Not important.

Anyway, I have spent a LOT of time on facebook today, befriending my fellow ∆ 2011 CMs! It's overwhelming and amazing to meet so many awesome people that I'm going to be sharing the next two years of my life with. I've met a few people that have turned out to be friends-of-friends that I didn't even know about!

My task tonight is to learn how to do long division with polynomials. Wish me luck!

emotional roller coaster much?

Since getting into TFA, I've been on quite the emotional roller-coaster.



I got the email, and I was so relieved that I came as close as I ever have to hyperventilating. I was sitting on the floor in a hallway in the Humanities Building, and I sunk down against the wall and almost started crying

The relief gave way to shock and disbelief. This still hasn't worn off, but there's been some sub-categories of emotions since then.

Once I found out about all of the tests I have to take and the math I have to learn, my relief gave way to abject panic. I have to learn calculus, which I haven't even studied, and I haven't thought about math in YEARS.

The panic sort of wore of and I realized that I can study, so I ordered a test prep book and bought a graphing calculator, one of the last things on EARTH I thought I'd ever spend $120 on.

While waiting for my test prep book to arrive (hopefully it will tomorrow), my mood has become restless anxiety. I want to start preparing as much as I can, but there's really nothing helpful I can/should do right now. I'm not moving for seven months, and it'd be pointless to do a lot of the things I want to do.

And the dumb TFA blogging website won't let me create a blog, which I've been dying to do since like May. Maybe it's God telling me to CALM DOWN.

I'm bored at the moment, and yet I still don't want to go to work in an hour. And I'll probably be all cranky at work and want to leave.

Blech.

applying to Teach For America?

on my way to my final interview!!!

The application for TFA is no laughing matter – it’s a months-long process, with lots of anxiety and impatience. But it’s well worth it.

My tips for you:

Before the application:

-read the website, and make sure you’re on board with what TFA stands for
-work on a draft of your resume. Try to keep it one page, talking about your leadership experiences, academic achievements, and extracurriculars. They have sample resumes posted on TFA’s website – I just followed the format of that one.
-work on a draft of your letter of intent. It’s supposed to be under 500 words. I wrote several (8) drafts before I found one that was half decent.
-make sure you have your SAT scores and grades handy; you’ll need them

Written application:

-have other people read your resume & letter of intent
-be consistent throughout the whole application – you’ll be asked about it during all stages of the application process
-check and double-check everything you write, just in case

Phone interview:
-RELAX; my interviewer was SUPER nice, and it felt like a conversation more than an interview
-be ready to talk about every item you’ve listed on your resume
-have responses in mind for the standard job interview questions about yourself – strengths & weaknesses, etc.
-if they don’t call you at your appointed time, don’t freak out – just email admissions and they’ll take care of it. This happened to me twice!
-have a big window of time open before and after your interview, so you’re not flustered
-have a thought-out question to ask at the end, if you want.

final interview:

**order your transcripts early! If you don’t, you’ll only have about 2 weeks to get them in, which could be nerve-wracking**

* make sure you force yourself to eat beforehand, even if you feel too nervous to eat! The nerves will eventually wear of, and it’ll be hard to think when you’re starving!

Lesson plan:
Make sure you:
-can do your setup in one minute, including writing your name, the grade level, the subject, and the objective of the lesson. I had to practice this several times before I could write fast enough.
-TIME YOURSELF. It seems obvious, but it’s really important. Now matter how awesome your lesson is, it makes you look really bad if you go over time. 5 minutes goes by fast – try to make sure you can get through your lesson plan in 4 ½, just to be safe. They’re really strict on time – 5 minutes isn’t just an approximate estimate.
-make sure everything in the lesson is age-appropriate and realistically feasible in the classroom setting
-have a very specific, measurable objective
-be familiar with what they’re looking for in a lesson plan (I highly recommend reading teaching as leadership)
-practice your lesson plan in front of other people – they’ll spot things that you won’t
-get comfortable with your props, and make sure they work. -Don’t rely too much on technology.
-practice it over and over and over again. I did at least 3x a day in the weeks leading up to my interview, and each time I did it, I grew more and more comfortable.

Group problem-solving activity: Don’t freak out too much if you don’t say a lot – just make sure you get a few good points in, and tie in the articles if you can.

Written activity: take your time and answer carefully.

Personal interview: be ready to answer the standard job interview questions, and be ready to talk about everything on your resume. Don’t be surprised if they ask about the same things that your phone interviewer asked for. Make sure you frame your answers in a way that shows that you have the 7 qualities that they look for in a candidate – that’s what they’re looking for out of you during the whole interview. What helped me also was having some ideas of specific things I wanted to do in my classroom.

What I did to prepare (besides what TFA explicitly told me to do):

-read Teaching as Leadership (and the articles, obviously)
-arranged to miss class on the day of my interview (it was ALL DAY)
-ordered and uploaded my transcripts
-submitted my placement preferences
-read through the state standards for first grade and decided on something to teach on (you can pick any grade. It just looks really good if you have an objective that’s specifically aligned to the state standards)
-researched age-appropriate vocabulary/activities
-re-read TFA’s mission, etc. on the website
-wrote a page on how I embodied each of the qualities they’re looking for:
-critical thinking skills
-leadership & achievement
-ability to influence and motivate others
-perseverance in the face of challenges
-organizational ability
-respect for students and families in low-income communities
-desire to work relentlessly in pursuit of TFA’s mission
(I made up an acronym, LAPCROW, so that I could remember/keep them in mind)
-made sure I had specific examples from my recent past of each quality


Obviously you don’t have to do all this – I’m just listing things that helped me in my application process.

and it was all worth it

10,000,000 bread baskets made

1,598 deposit envelopes methodically stuffed with 10 bills

60 paychecks from Mimi’s Café

194 nights at home with my cats, plugging away at homework

34 dinners out with minimal food ordered

2 approximate per-day visits to mint.com

324 bus rides

6 missed bus rides

4 months of TFA-obsessing

1 invitation

ALWAYS good to hear.

or read.

"Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be either a sound Christian or a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

The first step is to recognize the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day." -C.S. Lewis

Abraham Lincoln

was the most amazing man. Seriously. Here's just what I underlined from Lincoln's Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk. Really good book by the way.



"A person with a melancholy temperament had been fated with both an awful burden and what Byron called 'a fearful gift'. The burden was a sadness and despair that could tip into a state of disease. But the gift was a capacity for depth, wisdom -- even genius."

"Often understood as an emotional condition, depression is, to those who experience it, largely characterized by its thoughts...Oppressed by these thoughts, people often become hopeless."

"...Lincoln struck out into his own intellectual territory, slashing through thickets of medical theory, philosophy, and theology. He arrived tentatively at his own idea, that melancholy arose from natural, sometimes beneficent forces. Talking about it in plain human terms was his first step toward claiming his own ground as a person who, through no fault of his own, needed help."

"It is a signal feature of depression that, in times of trouble, sensible ideas, memories of good times, and optimism for the future all recede into blackness."

"In contrast, Lincoln said, harsh condemnation could no more pierce a man's heart than a rye straw could penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise."

"Calvinism saw human beings subjected to a harsh and wrathful God; Lincoln proposed that people could shape their own lives by the exercise of will."

"Drunkards, Lincoln said, should be 'pitied and compassionated, just as are the heirs of consumption and other hereditary diseases."

"...in particular, he named three kinds of troubles that could beset a person with a nervous temperament: poor weather, isolation or idleness, and stressful events."

"Suffering was not a punishment from beyond or a malevolent infestation of the soul. Like the earth turning on its axis or energy passing through a conductor, it was a part of the natural world, to be studied, understood, and, when possible, managed."

"[The avoidance of idleness as a treatment of melancholy] has been often repeated. The idea is to try to set the mind on a concrete project, something outside oneself. Otherwise, the morbid, self-accusing, hopeless thoughts can take on a life of their own, creating a frenetic powerlessness, the mental equivalent of an insect trying to work its way out of a spider's web."

"What is striking about Lincoln's therapies is that they did not dampen, but rather highlighted, the essential tension of his life. Had he chosen to take high doses of opium, he might have found relief from his pain, but at the expense of a great loss of energy. Had he devoted himself to a guru or medical practitioner -- spending months each year taking the water cure or attaching himself to a talented mesmerist -- he may have found comfort in someone else's prescription for him, at the cost of a vision that he'd already come to understand -- that is, his desire to do something meaningful for which he would be remembered."

"Lincoln didn't do great work because he solved the problem of his melancholy. The problem of his melancholy was all the more fuel for the fire of his great work."

"What distinguished Lincoln was his willingness to cry out to the heavens in pain and despair, and then turn, humbly and determinedly, to the work that lay before him."

"He is an example of what William James calls the 'ripe fruits of religion' - also called saintliness and enlightenment. Earlier I described it as transcendent wisdom. People who are guided by a sense of something larger than themselves will look past the petty concerns of the self - the wounded pride that comes from personal insult, for example, or the wish to seem stronger or better than other people."

"Lincoln was the first white man of power who did not manifest superiority"

"When a depressed person does get out of bed, it's usually not with a sudden insight that life is rich and valuable, but out of some creeping sense of duty or instinct for survival."

"If one desires to 'stir up the world,' it is easy to be impatient with work for the sake of work. Yet no story's end can forsake its beginning and its middle."

just because

I have been seriously neglecting this blog. So, quick Elsa's life update.

I'm midway through the semester, and I've got to say, I can't WAIT till I graduate. But my classes aren't too bad. I found out that I can take my last 2 classes over intersession, and I'm praying that CSUF won't change their minds and decide they like me too much to let me graduate. It'll make for a very hectic 3 weeks in January, but, as my mom says, "You like doing crazy stuff like that." The only, um - interesting - aspect of this plot of mine is that I have to pay $1560 on 11/8 when I register. So we'll see how I come up with that money.

My TFA application process is finally DONE! After obsessing about this since basically March, I can finally take a step back because I know my part is done. BUT the downside to this is that I have to wait till 11/9 to see if I got in or not. 18 days - not like I'm counting or anything. My interview went REALLY well, and I don't think I could've been any more prepared than I was. So I'm hoping to get in but still trying not to get my hopes up, which makes for an interesting combination.

My group fitness certification thingy came in the mail on Friday, which was kind of anticlimactic as I am too busy to begin teaching anyway. I'm very intimidated by the idea, and I'll probably wait 'till I finish school to start teaching, just so I don't go crazy.

Work is okay - a necessary thing at this point. I learned this week that PMS and waitressing do NOT mix well. But I get to babysit this weekend instead of working, which makes going back on Monday much more bearable.

I adore my two cats, who are sleeping contentedly on my bed and cat-ottoman (the ottoman they have adopted, which is now permanently covered in white hair), respectively, and I'm REALLY enjoying the cooler weather - finally!

And, on the brightest note, I get to visit a very dear friend in less than a week.




I wish it looked like this here.

woah.

"My first monastic Triduum occurred well over a decade ago. This Easter, it was I who preached the homily at the Resurrection Eucharist. What can one add to a liturgy that celebrates the resurrection promise into fact? I tried. The scripture for the day was simple enough: the story of two disciples running to a vacant tomb, then returning to their homes (John 20:1-10). For them, I suggested, the resurrection had not yet occurred - for when it does, one can never go home again. Even Judas could not escape the Easter event. He hanged himself. But tradition tells us that on Holy Saturday Jesus "descended into hell." This time it must have been Jesus who kissed Judas, repeating the same words as in the garden: 'Friend, why are you here?' But this time they became a resurrection invitation to Judas: 'Follow me.' Jesus knows the way out, even out of hell. Together they walked, and all of creation walked with them - through the Red Sea to death's other side. If at easter the slaughtered lamb becomes the Good Shepherd, then God's final word to everything must be 'Yes!' (2 Cor. 1:19)." -W. Paul Jones

for the beauty of the earth

written by Foilliott S. Pierpont.

For the beauty of the earth
For the Glory of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies:

'Lord of all, to Thee we raise
this our grateful hymn of praise.

For the beauty of each hour
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale and tree and flow'r
Sun and Moon and stars of light

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child.
Friends on earth and friends above
For all gentle thoughts and mild.

For each perfect gift of Thine
To our race so freely given.
Graces human and divine
Flow'rs of earth and buds of heav'n.

For thy church that evermore
Lifteth holy hands above,
Offering up on every shore
Her pure sacrifice of love.

my favorite of the Screwtape Letters

so amazing I just had to sit here and type the entire thing out - written by C.S. Lewis of course.

don't read this if you don't know the premise of the book, because it won't make any sense.

My dear, my very dear, Wormwood, my Poppet, my Pigsnie,

How mistakenly, now that all is lost, you come whimpering to ask me whether the terms of affection in which I address you meant nothing from the beginning. Far from it! Rest assured, my love for you and your love for me are as like two peas. I have always desired you, as you (pitiful fool) desired me. The difference is that I am the stronger. I think they will give you to me now; or a bit of you. Love you? Why, yes. As dainty a morsel as I ever grew fat on.

You have let a soul slip through your fingers. The howl of sharpened famine for that loss reechoes at this moment through all the levels of the Kingdom of Noise down to the very Throne itself. It makes me mad to think of it. How well I know what happened at the instant when they snatched him from you! There was a sudden clearing of his eyes (was there not?) as he saw you for the first time, and recognized the part you had had in him and knew that you had it no longer. Just think (and let it be the beginning of your agony) what he felt at that moment; as if a scab had fallen from an old sore, as if he were emerging from a hideous, shell-like tetter; as if he shuffled off for good and all a defiled, wet, clinging garment. By Hell, it is misery enough to see them in their mortal days taking off dirtied and uncomfortable clothes and splashing in hot water and giving little grunts of pleasure - stretching their eased limbs! What then, of this final stripping, this complete cleansing?

The more one thinks about it, the worse it becomes. He got through so easily! No gradual misgivings, no doctor's sentence, no nursing home, no operating theatre, no false hopes of life: sheer, instantaneous liberation. One moment it seemed to be all our world; the scream of bombs, the fall of houses, the stink and taste of high explosive on the lips and in the lungs, the feet burning with weariness, the heart cold with horrors, the brain reeling, the legs aching; next moment all this was gone, gone like a bad dream, never again to be of any account. Defeated, out-maneuvered fool! Did you mark how naturally -- as if he'd been born for it -- the Earth-born vermin entered the new life? How all his doubts became, in the twinkling of an eye, ridiculous? I know what the creature was saying to itself! "Yes. Of course. It always was like this. All horrors have followed the same course, getting worse and worse and forcing you into a kind of bottleneck till, at the very moment when you thought you must be crushed, behold! you were out of the narrows and all was suddenly well. The extraction hurt more and more and then the tooth was out. The dream became a nightmare and then you woke. You die and die and then you are beyond death. How could I ever have doubted it?"

As he saw you, he also saw Them. I know how it was. You reeled back dizzy and blinded, more hurt by them than he had ever been by bombs. The degradation of it! -- that this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits before whom you, a spirit, could only cower. Perhaps you had hoped that the awe and strangeness of it would dash his joy. But that is the cursed thing; the gods are so strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange. He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he ha supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not "Who are you?" but "So it was you all the time." All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered. Recognition made him free of their company almost before the limbs of his corpse became quiet. Only you were left outside.

He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a Man. You would like, if you could, to interpret the patient's prostration in the Presence, his self-abhorrence and utter knowledge of his sins (yes, Wormwood, a clearer knowledge even than yours) on the analogy of your own chocking and paralyzing sensations when you encounter the deadly air that breathes from the heart of Heaven. But it's all nonsense. Pains he may still have to encounter, but they embrace those pains. They would not barter them for any earthly pleasure. All the delights of sense or heart or intellect with which you could once have tempted him, even the delights of virtue itself, now seem to him in comparison but as the half-nauseous attractions of a raddled harlot would seem to a man who hears that his true beloved whom he has loved all his life and whom he had believed to be dead is alive and even now at his door. He is caught up in to that world where pain and pleasure take on transfinite values and where all our arithmetic is dismayed. Once more, the inexplicable meets us. Next to the curse of useless tempters like yourself, the greatest curse upon is is the failure of our Intelligence Department. If we could only find out what He is really up to! Alas, alas, that knowledge, in itself so hateful and mawkish a thing, should yet be necessary for Power! Sometimes I am almost in despair. All that sustains me is the conviction that our Realism, our rejection (in the face of all temptations) of all silly nonsense and claptrap, must win in the end. Meanwhile, I have you to settle with. Most truly do I sign myself


Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

quirks

I'm a quirky person. !Que sorpresa! Unique things about me:

-I really really love going to the dentist - especially getting fillings!
-I also really enjoy clearing dishes from tables at work, as long as I don't have to wash those dishes.
-I dig hymns.
-I absolutely hate being solicited. I don't think that's unique about me, but I hate it nonetheless.
-I get overstimulated going to Walmart and amusement parks. but not Target.
-in order to pay attention in class, I have to be working on something else while simultaneously taking notes.
-in my novel-writing, when I get writer's block, I tend to do destructive things to my characters; it is usually during these times that my characters get smallpox, sprained ankles, or limbs amputated.
-I've worn my purity ring since I was 14, and I still think it's romantic and not weird. Well maybe a little weird.
-I love the Barbie movies. And I'm not ashamed.
-I wear one necklace all the time, and I rarely take it off.
-I hate sticky things and being sticky - this hatred is genetic. I'm also borderline OCD about the cleanliness of my hands.
-I also HATE checking my voicemail. even if it's from someone I know - even if I know exactly what the message will say - I still go days without checking it.
-I carry my purple nalgene with me everywhere I go, and I drink water constantly.
-I have no desire to ever visit or live in NYC.
-I have a list of "things to buy when I have money", including a box of tools, pantyhose, the TV series Liberty's Kids on DVD, and an ice cream maker
-I only write with black pen - anything else messes up the congruency of my notes.
-I'm a sucker for a man wearing flannel
-I'm inordinately proud of my SAT scores. Ask me, and I'll tell you.
-Despite my best efforts, I hate reggae and rap.
-I don't like alcohol and have no need to "learn to like it". But I do love a good Shirley Temple!
-I still have the burning desire to learn Latin.
-I was born with two teeth. Don't know what that says about me, but there it is.
-I listen to Christmas music all year round.
-I love step aerobics classes
-I kind of have a big crush on Abraham Lincoln.
-I look forward to going to see "A Christmas Carol" at the South Coast Repertoire every year, all year. And I always cry when Scrooge realizes that he can change.
-I have the first 4 seasons of Home Improvement on DVD.
-I desperately want to be able to draw, but lack the patience to practice.
-I'll eat almost anything for breakfast, and it often grosses my family out.
-I enjoy talking with a fake lisp.
-When I read a novel, any novel, I can't turn off the English major portion of my brain - so I analyze. And highlight. There might also be sticky notes involved.
-For me there's nothing more relaxing than a movie and a puzzle.
-I tend to read books over and over again instead of reading new ones.
-I'll answer a letter (complete with pretty stationary and a wax seal) before I'll answer an email.
-I have a weird obsession with birds.

there you go. that's me, in all my weirdness.

"Faith to be healed I surely have
(And faith can all things do);
Thou art Omnipotent to save,
And Thou art willing too;
The God who in thy feeble days
Of flesh didst show thy power,
The sick to cure, the dying raise,
And bid the grave restore."

-Charles Wesley

a youtube video

ALWAYS gives me goosebumps.

monkey bread recipe

taken from http://www.momswhothink.com/easy-recipes/monkey-bread-recipe.html


Monkey Bread

Ingredients:

4 cans refrigerated biscuits
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter (3/4 cup)
1/2 cup white sugar
2 Tablespoons cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins (these are optional, it's great with or without them)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 9-10 inch tube pan.

2. Mix white sugar and cinnamon in a medium sized plastic bag. Cut the biscuits into halves or quarters and place six to eight biscuit pieces in the sugar cinnamon mix. Shake well.

3. Arrange pieces in the bottom of the greased pan. Continue layering until all the biscuit pieces are coated and in the pan. If you are using raisins, place them among the biscuit pieces as you are layering.

4. In a small saucepan, melt the butter with the brown sugar over medium heat. Boil for 1 minute. Pour over the layered biscuits.

5. Bake for 35 minutes. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a plate. Pull apart and enjoy!



Icing Recipe

Ingredients:

1/2 pound cream cheese
1/2 pound butter
1 pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Directions:

1.Allow cream cheese and butter to get to room temperature.

2. Beat butter and cream cheese together in a large bowl with a mixer.

3. Slowly add in the pound of powdered sugar.

4. After all the powdered sugar is added mix for 12 minutes (do not mix less than that).

5. When almost done, add in the extract and lemon juice.

some non-fiction books I'm reading

that C.S. Lewis, man...

"Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be even a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith." -C.S. Lewis

a fictional book I'm reading right now

SOOOO good!

more NT Wright

"If evolutionary optimism is squelched by, among other things, the sober estimates of the scientists that the universe as we know it today is running out of steam and cannot last forever, the gospel of Jesus Christ announces that what God did for Jesus at easter he will do not only for all those who are 'in Christ' but also for the entire cosmos. It will be an act of new creation, parallel to and derived from the act of new creation when God raise Jesus from the dead."

favourite quote (at least one of them)

“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun – which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one’s eyes.”
- the Secret Garden

NT Wright rocks my socks

"Death is the last weapon of the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the redescription of death; it is its overthrow and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it. Despite the sneers and slurs of some contemporary scholars, it was those who believed in the bodily resurrection who were burned at the stake and thrown to the lions. Resurrection was never a way of settling down and becoming respectable; the Pharisees could have told you that."

"It was time for the evil which had dogged Jesus's footsteps throughout his career - the shrieking maniacs, the conspiring Herodians, the carping Pharisees, the plotting chief priests, the betrayer among his own disciples, the whispering voices within his own soul - to gather into one great tidal wave of evil that would crash with full force over his head.

So he spoke of the Passover bread as his own body that would be given on behalf of his friends, as he went out to take on himself the weight of evil so that they wouldn't have to bear it themselves. He spoke of the Passover cup as containing his own blood. Like the sacrificial blood in the Temple, it would be poured out to establish the covenant - but this time the new covenant spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah. The time had now come when, at last, God would rescue his people, and the whole world, not from mere political enemies, but from evil itself, from the sin which had enslaved them. His death would do what the Temple, with its sacrificial system, had pointed toward but had never actually accomplished. In meeting the fate which was rushing toward him, he would be the place where heaven and earth met, as he hung suspended between the two. He would be the place where God's future arrived in the present, with the kingdom of God celebrating its triumph over the kingdoms of the world by refusing to join in their spiral of violence. He would love his enemies, turn the other cheek, go the second mile. He would act out, finally, his own interpretation of the ancient prophecies which spoke to him of a suffering Messiah."

camp nostalgia, man.

In the grown-up world of paying the bills, saving for tuition, and buying my own toothpaste, I feel a sense of pride in my growing up - some of the time. But more often than not I miss not having to worry about money. I miss CAMP. And not just the place - I miss family camp as an institution, and being on staff as a way of life. I miss:

-greeting everyone at the terminal at the beginning of the summer and marveling at how pasty we have all become over the year
-sitting and planning for hours at a time during orientation, then spending the evenings drinking hot chocolate concoctions & watching fashion shows and waterfront skits and the like
-Saturday afternoons: playing on the pier, eating strawberry popsicles, laying on the beach, and taking a "real shower" in the bath pavilion
-the first week of family camp, where everything is dicey and plans are frantically revised
-afternoons/evenings in the lounge, with someone always playing a guitar, someone always sleeping, and someone always eating the ever-present communal junk food
-Saturday evenings: Christmas parties, coffee houses, bunco, scavenger hunts, and watching "adult movies" like Princess Bride and Man from Snowy River
-writing letters
-Tuesday-afternoon babysitting
-dance nights
-wacky cake
-endless hikes to the cross with children of all ages, after which I am always winded and the children don't even break a sweat
-singing (sometimes endless) rounds of "I'm in the Lord's army"
-saying the memory verse at every meal
-birthday skits, mostly planned at the VERY last second
-hiking scar, jumping in the ocean, taking a beach shower, then rushing up canyon to get dressed and serve dinner
-Sunday morning church - everyone in staff shirts and in various states of exhaustion
-never wearing makeup & never needing it
-wearing makeup on banquet night and being surprisingly insecure about your appearance, then having all the boys notice how pretty we all look :)
-ABALONE
-watching the same movie for 6 consecutive friday nights but never seeing the whole thing straight through
-sleeping on the beach
-stashing away a cinnamon roll for after the hike but eating oatmeal before the hike
-grugs
-sneaking in to watch "Sex Has a Price Tag" with the high schoolers
-freeze dance
-blowing all the campers away when the staff demonstrates the rain dance
-Paul Friesen cookies
-hanging out with kids in the afternoon
-the bear hunts growing more and more elaborate as the summer goes on
-the dreaded mid-summer cold epidemic, characterized by all staffers pumping airborne
-ponytails, cutoffs, rainbows, t-shirts, and hoodies
-singing "the Butterfly Song" about a thousand times and still loving every fuzzy-wuzzy bear and bird in the sky
-the din of various musical acts practicing for the talent show on Wednesday afternoons
-brown bread day
-making several banners and several of each of your kids' crafts for the summer
-staff small groups, always featuring candy
-eating large quantities of tater tots during the kids' banquet
-jamming to Disney music while mopping the main deck
-getting more and more creative with s'mores
-Paul Friesen-isms
-the excitement of Sunday evenings
-being completely exhausted & marveling at God's faithfulness
-under-dogs: just as terrifying to you as they are to the kid
-learning to love having dirty feet
-the inner quietness that comes after a month with no internet or TV
-the glory of Big Olaf's on Wednesdays
-the anxiety and stress of packing up a summer's worth of possessions that have accumulated over the summer and finally paying one's snack shop bill
-consuming large quantities of the glorious kids' banquet appetizer mix
-looking forward to doing laundry
-the inevitable game of limbo and/or freeze dance during the kids' banquet
-taking your kids to the bathroom at the outhouse and worrying that they'll fall in
-worship at the cross with the high schoolers on Friday nights
-cheering your kids on during the swim test
-finding the rocks on the beach surprisingly comfortable after a few weeks
-having your clothes always smell like campfire
-the increasingly-um...creative - kid's skits during the morning session
-leftover desserts in the staff fridge
-finally mastering "I know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly"
-owning every piece of camp merchandise in the store
-the variety of books that are in the staff lounge library
-making bracelets
-pushing a kid on the swings until your arms go numb
-swinging until your legs go numb
-not missing your cell phone
-knowing that once you're a CBS staffer, you'll always be a CBS staffer

Frederick Buechner.

I can't believe I just discovered him. I just read Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale and while I want to type the entire book into a blog entry, I'll have to settle for my favourite parts.

"Truth itself cannot be stated. Truth simply is, and is what is, the good with the bad, the joy with the despair, the presence and absence of God, the swollen eye, the bird pecking the cobbles for crumbs. Before it is a word, the Gospel that is truth is silence, a pregnant silence in its ninth month, and in answer to Pilate's question, Jesus keeps silent, even with his hands tied behind him manages somehow to hold silence out like a terrible gift."

"Pilate asks Jesus what is truth...and what Jesus hits Pilate over the head with is Pilate himself. Jesus just stands there in silence in a way that throws Pilate back on his own silence, the truth of himself. What Jesus lets his silence say is that truth is what words can't tell but only tell about, what images can only point to. The weight of these sad times is the weight of their eloquent silence, and even when you turn the sound back on again and Eric Sevareid or Shakespeare or Billy Graham starts putting words to things, behind the words the silence of the stones cries out like thunder."

"...in addition to particular truths, the prophets spoke truth, too, and that was when they were most truly prophetic...They put words to things until their teeth rattled, but beneath the words they put, or deep within their words, something rings out which is new because it is timeless, the silence rings out, the truth that is unutterable, that is mystery, that is the way things are, and the reason it rings out seems to be that the language the prophets use is essentially the language of poetry, which more than polemics or philosophy, logic or theology, is the language of truth."

"[The prophets] put words to both the wonder and the horror of the world, and the words can be looked up in the dictionary or the biblical commentary and can be interpreted, passed on, understood, but because these words are poetry, are image and symbol as well as meaning, are sound and rhythm, maybe above all are passion, they set echoes going the way a choir in a great cathedral does, only it is we who become the cathedral and in us that the words echo."

"To see [Jesus] weep is not a comely sight, especially this man whom we want to be stronger and braver than a man, and the impulse is to turn from him as we turn from anybody who weeps because the sight of real tears, painful and disfiguring, forces us to look to their source where we do not choose to look because where his tears come from, our tears also come from."

"The absence of God is just that which is not livable."

"Jesus shares with us the darkness of what it is to be without God as well as showing forth the glory of what it is to be with God. He speaks about it, and perhaps that is much of why, although we have not followed him very well these past two thousand years or so, we have never quite been able to stop listening to him."

"The tragic is the inevitable. The comic is the unforeseeable...Bored to death by his comforters and scratching his boils and facing the undertaker's unpaid bill for the multiple funeral of his children and entire household staff, how could Job possibly foresee that his bloodshot eyes would indeed behold, and by no means as a stranger, the one who laid the foundations of the earth and at whose work the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

"The comedy of grace as what needn't happen and can't possibly happen because it can only impossibly happen and happens in the dark that only just barely fails to swallow it up."

"The folly of preaching Christ crucified, preaching the king who looks like a tramp, the prince of peace who looks like the prince of fools, the lamb of God who ends like something hung up at the butcher's."

"It was not the great public issues that Jesus traded in but the great private issues, not the struggles of the world without but the struggles of the world within."

"It is the all-or-nothing ones who are held up as shining examples of what it is to have faith, to have life, to have courage or whatever it is it takes, and the better-be-safe-than-be-sorry one who gets it in the neck for taking the faith or life or courage or whatever it is he's been given and tucking it under his tail and sitting on it like an old grad on a hot water bottle at the fifty-yard line on a chilly October Saturday."

"People are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light. They are prepared to go on breaking their backs plowing the same old field until the cows come home without seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy Texas. They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour's work as for a day's. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the lamb, and when the bridegroom finally arrives at midnight with vineleaves in his hair, they turn up with their lamps to light him on his way all right only they have forgotten the oil to light them with and stand there with their big, bare, virginal feet glimmering faintly in the dark."

"The good news breaks into a world where the news has been so bad for so long that when it is good nobody hears it much except for a few. And who are the few that hear it? They are the ones who labor and are heavy-laden like everybody else but who, unlike everybody else, know that they labor and are heavy-laden."

"Rich or poor, successes or failure as the world counts it, they are the ones who are willing to believe in miracles because they know it will take a miracle to fill the empty place inside them where grace and peace belong with grace and peace."

"That is the Gospel, this meeting of darkness and light and the final victory of light. That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, the one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still. To preach the Gospel in its original power and mystery is to claim in whatever way the preacher finds it possible to claim it that once upon a time is this time, now, and here is the dark wood that the light gleams at the heart of like a jewel, and the ones who are to live happily ever after are...all who labor and are heavy laden, the poor naked wretches wheresoever they be."

ALWAYS inspiring.

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it...At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in." -C.S. Lewis

life update, yo!

I've been seriously neglecting this blog. And as today I'm sick of reading and really have nothing else to do, I'll write. I just finished my second-to-last (PTL!) semester at CSUF, and am looking forward to graduating in December. I have a cat now!! Her name is Aravis and I got her in April - she is THE best cat ever. Seriously. I'm still waitressing, and I like it most of the time. I recently achieved my goal of running a half marathon. And I'm trying to finally STOP biting my nails.

I'm spending my summer going to the gym, working, reading all of the teaching books I can get my hands on, and applying to Teach for America. I would really love to get in - it's not likely, but I'm going to do the best I can. If (wonder of wonders) I did get in, I would start teaching next fall!!!

Whether or not I get in to TFA, I'm going to move away in one year. I made that decision when I joined the gym, actually. I will have finished college and had one extra semester to save up, and there will be no reason for me not to move out. I don't want to be treading water until I'm 30, and so I'm going to launch myself in one year, even if it means just going to camp. Knowing that gives me motivation to work hard towards my future. I'm also working on getting certified to be a group fitness instructor - another good job skill to have when I start teaching. A little intimidating, but it's something I want to do.

Having just realized that I'm an open theist (I know I know - "Grab yer torches! We've got a heretic on our hands!"), my views on "God's plan for my life" have completely reversed. I'll probably write a whole new blog entry about it, so for now I'll just say that it's a GOOD thing, and I still believe in Jesus. I no longer believe that God knows my future. He knows all of the possible paths I could take, and all of the contingencies that those paths could possibly have, but he chooses not to determine which ones my life will follow. This puts the responsibility on ME to do my own life. I'm still praying and reading my Bible and seeking counsel on life decisions, but I'm not going to wait for God's magic stamp of approval on every decision I make - I already have a hard enough time making decisions as it is. So I'm doing what I want to do and what I think is right.

Oh, and I just saw this on another blog & thought it'd be fun. You post ten quirks or unique things about yourself.

1. I get overstimulated by amusement parks, malls, and Walmart. but not Target.
2. I really really really really love hymns.
3. I love the Barbie movies. And I'm not ashamed.
4. I dislike shopping for clothes, but I'll drop $60 at Borders without a thought.
5. My favourite C.S. Lewis books are Mere Christianity & Great Divorce.
6. Even though I only lived in Canada a year and a half and don't live there anymore, I still enjoy using Canadian spellings like "colour" "honour" and "favourite".
7. I wear one necklace all the time, and I rarely take it off.
8. I hate sticky things and being sticky - this hatred is genetic. I'm also borderline OCD about the cleanliness of my hands.
9. Despite my best efforts, I hate reggae and rap.
10. I've worn my purity ring since I was 14, and I still think it's romantic and not weird. Well maybe a little weird.

to add to the list of my favourite hymns...

it's called "He Leadeth Me" by Joseph H. Gilmore. Here's the background story on it from the very amazing cyberhymnal.net, a website that I frequent.

"As a young man who recently had been graduated from Brown University and Newton Theological Institution, I was supplying for a couple of Sundays the pulpit of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia [Pennsylvania]. At the mid-week service, on the 26th of March, 1862, I set out to give the people an exposition of the Twenty-third Psalm, which I had given before on three or four occasions, but this time I did not get further than the words “He Leadeth Me.” Those words took hold of me as they had never done before, and I saw them in a significance and wondrous beauty of which I had never dreamed.

It was the darkest hour of the Civil War. I did not refer to that fact—that is, I don’t think I did—but it may subconsciously have led me to realize that God’s leadership is the one significant fact in human experience, that it makes no difference how we are led, or whither we are led, so long as we are sure God is leading us.

At the close of the meeting a few of us in the parlor of my host, good Deacon Wattson, kept on talking about the thought which I had emphasized; and then and there, on a blank page of the brief from which I had intended to speak, I penciled the hymn, talking and writing at the same time, then handed it to my wife and thought no more about it. She sent it to The Watchman and Reflector, a paper published in Boston, where it was first printed. I did not know until 1865 that my hymn had been set to music by William B. Bradbury. I went to Rochester [New York] to preach as a candidate be fore the Second Baptist Church. Going in to their chapel on arrival in the city, I picked up a hymnal to see what they were singing, and opened it at my own hymn, “He Leadeth Me.”"

and then here are the words:


"He leadeth me, O blessèd thought!
O words with heav’nly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be
Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,
By His own hand He leadeth me;
His faithful follower I would be,
For by His hand He leadeth me.

Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom,
By waters still, over troubled sea,
Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me.

Lord, I would place my hand in Thine,
Nor ever murmur nor repine;
Content, whatever lot I see,
Since ’tis my God that leadeth me.

And when my task on earth is done,
When by Thy grace the vict’ry’s won,
E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee,
Since God through Jordan leadeth me."

This hymn has really been hitting me hard lately, and hearing the story behind it makes it that much more moving for me. I had just posted this Oswald quote earlier today: "Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading."

My life isn't particularly dreary or anything right now, but I love the thought that "By waters still, over troubled sea/Still 'tis His hand that leadeth me."

fun Oswald quotes!

Every time we pray our horizon is altered, our attitude to things is altered, not sometimes but every time, and the amazing thing is that we don't pray more.

We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.

Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.

If you have ever prayed in the dawn you will ask yourself why you were so foolish as not to do it always: it is difficult to get into communion with God in the midst of the hurly-burly of the day.

When a man is at his wits' end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get in touch with Reality.

God's silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses, we are in a very elementary condition of grace.

Pray because you have a Father, not because it quietens you, and give Him time to answer.

is there really more to it than this?

Marks of the True Christian

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.' To the contrary, 'if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.' Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.

-Romans 12:9-21

favourite tweets

I guess Twitter is blogging for lazy people like myself. So here are some snippets from the past year or so of my life, in tweet form.

Friday night: 1. Janey is terrified of ceiling fans. 2. chocolate frozen yogurt with almonds is the best. 3. everyone should read Orthodoxy.
9:28 PM May 1st, 2009 via web

gets to write a paper on A Christmas Carol!!!!! (nerd alert!)
8:03 PM May 7th, 2009 via web

||Renaissance Faire tomorrow!!!!!
7:30 PM May 16th, 2009 via web

♥ Rob Bell.
7:02 PM Sep 29th, 2009 via web

"put that thing back where it came from or so help me! so help me! so help me! and CUT!"
4:10 PM Oct 2nd, 2009 via web

"you have come to fight as free men...and free men you are. what will you do with that freedom?"
1:36 PM Oct 3rd, 2009 via web

"you calm the storms, and you give me rest/ you hold me in your hands, you won't let me fall."
4:08 PM Oct 5th, 2009 via web

"one thing I can tell you is you've got to be free."
4:48 PM Oct 7th, 2009 via web

I loooooooove Heavyweights. Fantastic movie. "Lars?! What kind of name is that? Where are you from?" "Far away."
8:06 PM Oct 18th, 2009 via web

♥ Doheny.
4:12 PM Oct 20th, 2009 via web

is shopping for sealing wax on amazon. Nerd alert!
7:46 PM Oct 20th, 2009 via web

I'm watching Heavyweights yet again. "When I sleep at night, I make a very disturbing sound. Don't be alarmed. I am fine."
10:43 PM Oct 30th, 2009 via web

watching Friends with her sickie brother, and once again trying to be productive.
10:11 PM Nov 2nd, 2009 via web

Mere Christianity blows my mind every time I read it.
5:29 PM Nov 3rd, 2009 via web

"Your goodness must have some edge to it - else it is none." -Emerson
8:17 PM Nov 3rd, 2009 via web

I like National Treasure. Don't judge me.
12:37 PM Nov 5th, 2009 via web

I might just go on a C.S. Lewis binge.
10:25 PM Nov 5th, 2009 via web

"Thou and Thou only, first in my heart"
11:01 PM Nov 10th, 2009 via web

well stab me in the retina!
7:19 PM Nov 15th, 2009 via web

I'm watching the Barbie Nutcracker DVD with Anna and thoroughly enjoying it.
3:04 PM Nov 16th, 2009 via web

the blinking cursor mocks me.
12:02 PM Nov 18th, 2009 via web

♥ G.K. Chesterton.
8:25 AM Nov 21st, 2009 via web

♥ Handel's Messiah. Seriously. I want the score.
5:02 PM Nov 30th, 2009 via web

"you are the strength that keeps me walking/ you are the hope that keeps me trusting"
5:45 PM Dec 3rd, 2009 via web

"He gives all. He asks all."
11:14 AM Dec 6th, 2009 via web

I think I'd make a good x-wing pilot.
6:06 PM Dec 10th, 2009 via web

I like the word "tacit."
10:04 AM Dec 16th, 2009 via web

"Explosive thermonuclear processes on white dwarfs and neutron stars produce novae and bursters." Blech.
12:22 AM Dec 17th, 2009 via web

I nearly wrote "Elsa Stanlie" on an exam today.
5:06 PM Dec 17th, 2009 via web

Craig, at a very busy Mimi's Cafe last night: "I officially hate Christmas Eve. 86 Hope, you guys."
11:33 AM Dec 25th, 2009 via web

My dad loves dates & anchovies. Not together. But he's still pretty weird.
12:41 PM Dec 29th, 2009 via web

just paid $9.99 for 116.9 MB of religious sentiment.
4:56 PM Jan 7th via web

"you can't be serious! you ran a woman over this morning!" "everybody inside the car was fine, Stanley!"
7:26 AM Jan 10th via web

I might just watch Prince of Egypt.
2:15 PM Jan 22nd via web

Cat Stevens & John Milton make an interesting combination.
6:04 PM Feb 16th via web

"Yet I argue not/Against heavns hand or will, nor bate a jot/Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer/Right onward" -John Milton
3:32 PM Feb 24th via web

Martin & I are debating bunny names.
8:08 AM Mar 2nd via web

sometimes I wish I lived before the Industrial Revolution.
1:19 PM Mar 3rd via web

don't be shy - just let your feelings roll on by
3:50 PM Mar 5th via web

it's officially time to listen to Christmas music again. At least I held out 'till March this year.
9:19 PM Mar 6th via web

I have read so much today. My eyes might just fall out.
10:12 PM Mar 15th via web

"Drawing and quartering is the combo plate of executions." -Dr. Blaine
9:11 AM Mar 17th via web

"you learned all the songs, memorized the verse, took the bread and wine, and even got the shirt - it's time"
11:23 AM Mar 21st via web

I shouldn't be allowed to use toasters - they're clearly dangerous for me.
10:26 PM Mar 25th via web

"We are, in short, to love and serve without judgment, without condition, and without any consideration of what's in it for us." -Greg Boyd
6:00 PM Mar 30th via web

hanging out with Ted, hole-punching, the Office Season 2, and teacher blogs.
9:11 PM Apr 7th via web


...also, for the millionth time - I love the Braveheart soundtrack.

Greg Boyd

Is seriously so cool. I'm reading his Myth of a Christian Nation, and I want to copy out whole chapters of it. Here's a particularly good part - he's arguing against the religious right's idea of "taking back America for God," and all of the social implications it has.

"I, for one, confess to being utterly mystified by the phrase. If we are to take America back for God, it must have once belonged to God, but it's not at all clear when this golden Christian age was.

Were these God-glorifying years before, during, or after Europeans 'discovered' America and carried out the doctrine of 'manifest destiny' - the belief that God (or, for some, nature) had destined white Christians to conquer the native inhabitants and steal their land? Were the God-glorifying years the ones in which whites massacred these natives by the millions, broke just about every covenant they ever made with them, and then forced survivors onto isolated reservations? Was the golden age before, during, or after white Christians loaded five or six million Africans on cargo ships to bring them to their newfound country, enslaving the three million or so who actually survived the brutal trip? Was it during the two centuries when Americans acquired remarkable wealth by the sweat and blood of their slaves? Was this the time when we were truly 'one nation under God,' the blessed time that so many evangelicals seem to want to take our nation back to?

Maybe someone would suggest that the golden age occurred after the Civil War, when blacks were finally freed. That doesn't quite work either, however, for the virtual apartheid that followed under Jim Crow laws - along with the ongoing violence, injustices, and dishonesty toward Native Americans and other nonwhites up into the early twentieth century - was hardly 'God-glorifying.' ...

If we look at historical reality rather than pious verbiage, it's obvious that America never really 'belonged to God.' As we've said, when the kingdom of God is manifested, it's obvious. It looks like Jesus. But America as a nation has clearly never looked remotely like Jesus...The fact that was largely done under the banner of Christ doesn't make it more Christian, any more than any other bloody conquest done in Jesus' name throughout history (such as the Crusades and the Inquisition) qualifies them as Christlike."

and this is another good part, in which he argues that Christians have no right to act as the "morality police" of America, especially on issues like gay marriage:

"Do evangelicals fear gay marriage in particular because the Bible is much more clear about the wrongfulness of gay marriage than it is about the wrongfulness of divorce and remarriage? No, for the Bible actually says a good deal more against divorce and remarriage than it does against monogamous gay relationships. Doe they go after this particular sin because the research shows that gay marriage is more damaging to society than divorce and remarriage? It seems not, for while one might grant that neither is ideal, there's no clear evidence that the former is socially more harmful than the latter - especially given the fact that divorce and remarriage is far more widespread than gay marriage. But in any case, the point is completely irrelevant since the present issue isn't over gay unions. The issue is only over whether these unions should be called 'marriages.' To the best of my knowledge, no one has shown that the social welfare of our nation is significantly harmed by what monogamous gay unions are called.

Why then are so many evangelicals publicly obsessed with cracking down on this particular sin? There are undoubtedly a number of reasons, not least of which is that the loss of the traditional definition of marriage is a poignantly symbolic indication that the quasi-Christian civil religion of America is on the wane. And as we've said, many evangelicals believe that preserving and recovering this civil religion is their central kingdom duty. Whatever the reasons, however, outsiders have the impression that evangelicals go after this sin because it's one they don't generally have.

We evangelicals may be divorced and remarried several times; we may be as greedy and unconcerned about the poor and as gluttonous as others in our culture; we may be prone to gossip and slander and as blindly prejudiced as others in our culture; we may be more self-righteous and as rude as others in our culture - we may even lack love more than others in the culture. These sins are among the most frequently mentioned sins in the Bible. But at least we're not gay!

So despite the paucity of references to homosexuality relative to the sins we minimize or ignore, and despite empirical evidence that some of the sins we minimize are far more harmful to people and to society than this sin (for instance, greed and gluttony arguably kill millions!), this is the sin evangelicals as a group has decided to take a public stand on. Why? Because by drawing a line in the sand on this point we can feel that we're doing something righteous. We're standing up for truth and godliness; we're defending 'God and country'; we're playing the role of moral guardian that (we believe) God has called us to play.

Tragically, the self-serving and hypocritical nature of this moral posturing is apparent to nearly everyone - except those who do the posturing. And just as tragically, it causes multitudes to want nothing to do with the good news we have to offer. While the church was supposed to be the central means by which people became convinced that Jesus is for real, activity like this has made the church into the central reason many are convinced he's not for real. If I had ten dollars for every time I've encountered someone who resisted submitting to Christ simply because they 'can't stand Christians,' I'd have a fairly robust bank account...

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the church should publicly take a stand for gay marriage, nor am I trying to influence how evangelicals vote. Some may feel it best for society to outlaw gay marriages - others to allow it. In a democracy you're asked to give your opinion on such matters, so give it according to your conscience. I'm simply maintaining that, in our role as public representatives of the kingdom of God, Christians should stick to replicating Calvary toward gay people (as toward all people), and trust that their loving service will do more to transform people than laws ever could."

"I Will not Take My Love Away" - Matt Wertz

great song.



I will not take my love away
When praises cease and seasons change
while the whole world turns the other way
I will not take my love away
I will not leave you all alone
When striving leads you far from home
And there's no yield for what you've sown
I will not leave you all alone
I will give you what you need
In plenty or in poverty
Forever, always, look to me
And I will give you what you need
I will not take my love away

favourites from A Severe Mercy

Seriously SUCH a good book!

the Gap by Sheldon Vanauken

Did Jesus live? And did he really say
The burning words that banish mortal fear?
And are they true? Just this is central, here
The Church must stand or fall. It's Christ we weigh.

All else is off the point: the Flood, the Day
Of Eden, or the Virgin Birth - Have done!
The Question is, did God send us the Son
Incarnate crying Love! Love is the Way!

Between the probable and proved there yawns
A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd,
Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse,
Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns
Our only hope: to leap into the Word
That opens up the shuttered universe.

"Christianity now appeared intellectually stimulating and aesthetically exciting. The personality of Jesus emerged from the Gospels with astonishing consistency. Whenever they were written, they were written in the shadow of a personality so tremendous that Christians who many never have seen him knew him utterly: that strange mixture of unbearable sternness and heartbreaking tenderness. No longer did the Church appear only a disreputable congeries of quarrelling sects: now we saw the Church, splendid and terrible, sweeping down the centuries with anthems and shining crosses and steady-eyed saints. No longer was the Faith something for children: intelligent people held it strongly - and they walked to a secret singing that we could not hear. Or did we hear something: high and clear and unbearably sweet?"

"It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian'. The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing."

"The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians - when they are sombre and joy-less, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths. But, though it is just to condemn some Christians for these things, perhaps, after all, it is not just, though very easy, to condemn Christianity itself for them. Indeed, there are impressive indications that the positive quality of joy is in Christianity - and possibly nowhere else. If that were certain, it would be proof of a very high order."

Oswald forever!!! :)

"Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading."
— Oswald Chambers

"A man who would live for Christ in a turbulent world must draw his life from the very depths of God Himself, not from the froth and foam of surface experience." - Oswald Chambers

"Yet I argue not
Against heavns hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward."

-John Milton

kingdom

"This, in a nutshell, is the primary thing God is up to in our world. He's not primarily about getting people to pray a magical 'sinner's prayer' or to confess certain magical truths as a means of escaping hell. He's not about gathering together a group who happen to believe all the right things. Rather, he's about gathering together a group of people who embody the kingdom - who individually and corporately manifest the reality of the reign of God on the earth." -Greg Boyd

gahhhhhhhh

I've been reading this passage over and over again for the past week:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him, and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.'" And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

John 1:1-18

interesting

"...Jesus was saying that the law isn't what is important. Love is what is important. If we love God, love our neighbor, and love ourselves (in that order), then we can live far above any set of rules or regulations. We have freedom to live apart from any legalistic standards when we live by the spirit of love. Paul echoed this form of 'freedom with responsibility' when he wrote:

"Everything is permissible" - but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible" - but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. (1 Corinthians 10:23-24).

Paul was saying that you can do most anything, but it isn't always in your best interest or in the interest of others. Focus not on what is 'allowed,' but on what is best for all involved.

QUESTIONS OF COMPROMISE: don't ask
-Are my actions lawful?
-Will anyone find out?
-Would anyone condemn me?
-Is this socially acceptable?
-How can I get what I want?
-Will this hurt anyone?

QUESTIONS OF INTEGRITY: do ask
-Are my actions loving to others?
-Is this something I'd be proud of?
-Is this my highest standard?
-Is this in line with my convictions?
-What is my motive for wanting this?
-Will this benefit others?
We must look beyond the movements to the motivations behind our actions. By doing this, we no longer have to concern ourselves with the law because we are acting by a higher standard, a standard of love." -Shannon Ethridge

a classic

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." -the great C.S. Lewis

faithful

Trusting God's plan has been a challenge lately, and this song always helps.



Morning by morning I wake up to find
the power and comfort of God's hand in mine.
Season by season I watch Him amazed,
in awe of the mystery of His perfect ways

All I have need of his hand will provide.
He's always been faithful to me

I can't remember a trial or a pain
He did not recycle to bring me gain.
I can't remember one single regret
in serving God only and trusting His hand

This is my anthem, this is my song, the
theme of the stories I've heard for so long.
God has been faithful, he will be again.
His loving compassion, it knows no end.

being good

from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

"Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam - he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts. And that has practical consequences. As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body. Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not. A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble - because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.

That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or - if they think there is not - at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it."

pretty song

It's in Emma and I think it was originally written by Handel.



Did you not hear my lady
Go down the garden singing
Blackbird and thrush were silent
To hear the alleys ringing

Oh, saw you not my lady
Out in the garden there
Shaming the rose and lily
For she is twice as fair

Though I am nothing to her
Though she must rarely look at me

Though I can never woo her
I'll love her 'till I die

Did you not hear my lady
Go down the garden singing
Silencing all the songbirds
And setting the alleys ringing

Surely you heard my lady
Out in the garden there
Rivaling the glittering sunshine
With the glory of golden hair.

Thomas Merton, man.

If I could, I would type the entire Seeds of Contemplation into this blog entry, but I'll have to be satisfied with a little snippet:

"Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.

This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the radius of God's will and God's love - outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

We are not very good at recognizing illusions: least of all the ones we have about ourselves - the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin.

All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life trying to accumulate pleasures and experiences and power and honor and knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself up with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.

But there is no substance under the things I have gathered together about me. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am a mistake.

The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God."