homesick for everywhere

Deepest ache of our soul
Brightest catch of stars,
The reason I am homesick for everywhere.
The roaring quake of our fear-
Fear built of awe- and too much goodness to fit;
Burst through crafted cardboard boxes
and name-tags we've put on.
Bring the shining of morning mists,
The comfort of fire in the winter snows.
Use the notes that grab the words
from our gut,
and rip and toss-
the ones that make us see the world different.
Those notes that move our love,
Form the insides and define beauty to our eye.
The moments that contradict, the movings with no explanation.
The fairy dust our feet float on
Clouds that grow above our nature
The truth that rests outside our words
Gathers in the precision that remains indescribable......

and falls from the heavens like the grace we call snow.
Left to lie, for all to decide.

looking around......

and here are some other reasons why I don't support the US government.

tell me where any of that sounds like Christ or what he lived.

I really should be studying right now. Instead I am listening to music to drown out the so-called music from downstairs (at the space) (yeah, tonight isn't exactly....amazing.... so far. )
and I just read this:
http://www.truthout.org/110508R
very disturbing. evidently lots of civilians get killed in war. ....who knew?
yeah, i should probably go a little easy on the sarcasm or i will start to sound really cynical.

must go before i type something i regret

for those of you who might feel the same as me :

http://www.patrolmag.com/times/922/how-shall-we-then-vote

and this shouldn't be offensive, he isn't saying don't vote-simply that not voting is not wrong. Thank you derek webb.....for shedding some common sense on this subject. : )

pumpkins and gold

I am full of 'wishes' right now, (for lack of a better word) shall I make a list? hmmm.... I think I shall, and it will go something like this:

1) that I had a tree house to escape up into tonight, in a huge tree-the kind with golden leaves (this time of year) and a deep dark trunk, and curvy elegant branches that reached toward the moon.
2) that my computer would break. I wouldn't be typing this. ...maybe i shouldn't wish for it to break? ....maybe just that i was in a time and place where there were none.
3) the kind of rain they get in Oregon and Ireland.
4) that roof in india,....and the warm breeze.....
5)to be with a few people that are just content to be. nothing elaborate.
6) to be in a fairy tale.
7) a very small cabin with a fireplace, hot chocolate or tea....blankets, and someone to have good conversation with....or good silence with. take your pick.
8) a good book(story), a deserted house, no plans, free time without a limit, and ....a blanket....and a seat by a window.

....I will be honest, most of my idealizing involves coziness, and one form or other of either blankets or something warm to drink, or preferably both.

As to #6, I would like to hold out hope that I am already in one. Even though it always looks different than I would expect.
that's kind of the point, right?

well. nothing elaborate for tonight. The city just always makes me long for escape, or at least simplicity.
And the country....well, it sometimes made me long for the city.....at least I used to think
at the time, but I don't think it was ever quite as true as I thought.

oh and I forgot #9 ....so here's #9

9) a pumpkin patch, hay ride and don't forget: a maize maze. oh bliss.

and no, i'm not one of those 'ten-point people'

there's only 9.
deal with it.

I found me.

so I joined this website called relational tithe a couple months ago...finally, after contemplating it for a few months before hand and just never getting around to it. A few weeks ago I get an email from a girl, saying she just joined, and also just moved to new haven. She did a search to find others around here..... and I guess I was the only one. ....this is where it gets interesting.
we are both erin's as it turns out. We decided we'd meet up for coffee sometime this week, etc.... talk about jesus and relational tithe and all that good stuff i guess..... I sent the email asking if sunday would work out, this is what I received in reply (any of you who know me...... tell me how funny this is, I thought it was hysterical when I read it.....) enjoy:

"sunday at 3 is good. i'm familiar with chapel st so i should be able to find it. by the way, i'm a redhead, in my 20s, that way you won't have to ask everyone in the place if their name is Erin."


wow. Does God have a sense of humor or am i just halucinating?

politician rabit trails.....I'm writing in Jesus

To vote or not to vote…..

Propaganda. Hype. Hysteria.
Obama, McCain. Let us all look to the gods to better our situation. Let us place all our hopes in them.

I was reading a magazine, a recycled-green-supports-organizations magazine, and this months feature: 1,565 reasons to vote.

And I can give you one reason why I absolutely will not:

My faith is only placed in one human being ….who also happened to be God, and there isn’t room enough on a ballot to share with someone else. In the end I will be held accountable for the way I have lived, for who I have chosen to follow after- who I imitate.
I refuse to push my responsibility for living the way I should onto Obama, McCain, or whoever the hell ends up getting elected. They are already responsible for their own actions, God help us all.
I refuse to idolize or immortalize a human.
I refuse to follow the gods of america.
I refuse to give myself that easy of a cop-out. I have not done my ‘duty’ until I learn to live in a way that actually embodies what I claim to believe and stand for, it is not simply fulfilled by a check in a box.
I refuse to give respect to grown adults who can’t help but slander one another in an effort to win votes-the excuse of politics is no good- you are who you are all the time- if you slander, you are a slanderer.
I refuse to accept the idea that we can be our own saviors, or that all the things that are broken can be fixed without God.
I refuse to vote for a system that is completely contradictory to what Jesus lived. …..We will keep searching for solutions to our mistakes in ways that still allow us our comfort, greed, and generally no change in anything (with the possible exception of brands….) to ease our own conscience.
(the funny part, is that i have friends i very much respect who would agree with the majority of the above, ....but are voting. i know they are doing so with good motives.)
The most important decision you make on November whatever, 2008 won’t be who you vote for to be president of the United States of America…..it will be who you chose to be that day, who you chose to follow that day, whether you learn to love your neighbor as yourself and your God with everything you are.
All this election crap. It’s just dust and ashes….and it will blow away on the wind just as easily.

In ten years the entire world could change. It’s highly doubtful, but still not impossible, that the country you are in could no longer exist as the country it is at the present moment. What will you have then? What will your vote matter then? What will your chasing after the wind accomplish?


If you want some honesty- here it is:

I walk by people everyday that are broken, and some days I am too busy or cowardly or concerned about myself to stop and try to help.
I am terrified of what it means to live like Jesus did. I am terrified, and I am not sure if I really know what it means. But I can’t tear my eyes away. I can’t stop staring at how He lived.
I am even more terrified of not giving everything it costs, I am even more terrified of being a pretend plastic manikin who speaks empty words that were meant to bring life and beauty and fails to live them, fails to be them.
I’m scared of this ideology we all hold so dear and how it creeps into who we think we are. This comfort we grasp at, this selfishness we breed. And we justify ourselves by saying we are civilized, our way of life is right, and that everyone else should be brought up to our standard. The world is crumbling at our feet, because, as it turns out, we have actually recruited too many people to live up to our standard. And as it turns out, it was also never possible to recruit the entire world…..you see, greed breeds injustice, and for greed to stand someone has to feel the pang of injustice….which means not everyone can live up to the standards of greed.
I sat and wrote something in a journal today.

‘sick of all this so-called justice movement, sick of all this green campaigning - mostly-because the majority of the world is trying to do it without love. It’s funny that the whole world seems suddenly so interested in things of merit. And funnier still that that could pose a problem. “make me good”, they cry, “but none of this jesus person” …and as long as I can still be good- fashionable, trendy, well-thought of, and comfortable, well, everything is ok.
But it’s not.
People don’t really want to be good. They just want the appearance of it.

………..
And some Christians don’t really want Christ, they just want to appearance of having Him.”

…… and right after I wrote it, I stared down at my white dress, scarf, coat, …… and wondered if that was me?

I am not saying you can’t be fashionable or have nice things. But I kind of am too. I think you can have them if no one else is in need of them. If you’re excess doesn’t cost someone else. If your possessions don’t, in essence, possess you. But I think it’s a very fine line to walk…. And I think I would rather live too simply than to live too extravagantly……

I think I need to repent for the way I live, for my actions….and for my lack of them.

I think everyone who calls themselves a christian needs to repent…. At some point and time we have endorsed, participated in, or ignored the actions of our culture and the actions of our churches.

I think the cry of some lady on the street who most of the people within earshot of probably thought was crazy- the cry of ‘God have mercy on us’ ….is much closer to the truth than the majority of sermons I have heard in my lifetime.

I don’t mean to be a downer. I think we’d all be a bit more joyful if we learned what it is to be content. What it is to trust. What it is to be free from judgment, from ourselves and others. What it is to be loved. And how to love.

I’m still terrified.

But I’m even more terrified of never finding out.

the unimaginary

so, this is the beginning of.....well, i'm not sure yet. it's a beginning,..... of something. I just felt like writing something fictional one day and this came out. it's kind of about humanity in case you didn't pick up on that.





I used to write, long fairy tales filled with adventure and air you could barely stand to breathe-but not for want of anything, only because of the amount of reality it contained-it was too concentrated, and filled with themes that are sometimes deemed imaginary simply because they are unseen. The air pounded with them; I used to paint, sprawling scenes of the obvious, and yet somehow people missed it in the midst of the ugliest chaotic greed. They saw only their lust and neither the destruction it caused, nor the beauty it violated. Staggering imagination was lost to the eyes of the sleeping; I used to sing to the heavens, one resounding theme…the echoes of the birds and streams and sky. The sun and moon and trees spoke their various notes, and it all became one mixed melody of aching good and heart-breaking melancholy.
And one day the music stopped.
The paint didn’t flow.
….and the ink ran dry and cracked.
I lay staring in the early morning grey at the reflection of a face I didn’t know. I knew whose face it was, but I no longer knew the person staring back with an expression void of wonder. I had become one of ’them’. Call them what you will, a ‘member of the human race‘, ‘an adult‘, ‘responsible‘, ‘successful‘….and most dangerous of all ’normal’; All the adjectives fit, even when the definitions did not. The very words in their heresy made me want to rip modern dictionaries apart….. The dictionaries people carry around with them constantly. The ones they use as a reference and scale to measure themselves upon. The one they treated as law, and the people who dare violate it, as much worse than the ordinary criminal. Those dictionaries. They all deserved to be burned til even the ashes blew themselves out of existence. For those who would defy the monotony and days void of color- those who would dare actually live with wide open eyes-there lay a far worse type of scorn. Scorn built of fear. And I had escaped that scorn, only just, so that I might have the pride of staring into this empty face.

blah. I want to go on an adventure.
hmmm.... well, not right now. I have no high aspirations with a headache. but in the morning maybe.
and maybe then I'll even get really inspired or something and actually write.

well. The months have passed and summer is nearly over, and I am faced with the reality of having been in the same place (with the exception of India for a month, and illinois for vaca.) for nearly a year. And it seems odd. It always seems odd. Every time a year has passed I glance at the memory of a year ago....and I don't seem like the same person. I'm rarely in the same place..... It brings joy and pain. And autumn always seems to be my time of reflecting. Maybe autumns were created for that. The only reasons I say it brings 'pain', which I guess isn't the appropriate word for the description, 'pangs' would be more accurate, is that when I look back I always find moments I wish I could return to again, things I could capture for an eternity. The pangs aren't really bad, they remind me that someday I will look back with an aching heart on these days, these moments, and want to recapture them. They remind me to face each day with the appreciation appropriate for it. I won't ever be able to come back to them, not the same way, not with the same eyes, and not as the same person. My moments won't ever be repeated, and I can't live or stay in them or I will miss the ones happening right now.
I'm not even sure where these words are taking me, I just know sometimes we forget that we are actually alive. We forget what it feels like to breathe deeply, to look and be bewildered by a blade of grass, growing from this stuff we call dirt. we forget what it feels like to lay in the shade of a tree with the clouds and the breeze giving us a concert. We forget to hear the song in the morning as the sun walks it's course..... And suddenly we are less human than we were before. We look at our days with a lazy eye and we fail to be amazed.

running in circles

"I wanted to kick something. I wanted to go purchase everything ridiculous that didn't matter just to prove my frustration. I wanted to use American commercialism to vent my anger, my only purpose being to show its emptiness. I walked around with my camera, shooting black and white melancholy photographs for hours instead." "....And then I remembered that this whole trusting God thing is so much more complicated than what I would like to think. My love for God is not built of the 'fluffy' stuff.... with the small amount I see, and when the injustice bellows around me, there are times where I wonder if anything is sane. including myself. Sometimes things simply don't make sense, or else they make too much. Explain to me evil. It's quite possible- and yet sometimes completely inconceivable.
I really wonder, often, why we are thrown into this huge, horrible broken world of a mess. I mean, we weren't consulted, we weren't asked. Maybe it really is true that God wanted (not needed) us to help fix it, and in doing so, to learn more of Him and His character.

maybe it's easy right now for me to hurl questions at the sky. Maybe it's harder to wonder what God is doing with all of this. How will he possibly bring good, and how will we have any eyes left from crying to see it? Perhaps it is even crazier to trust that God is somehow making His love known, brightness in all this midnight black.

somedays I want to just go and hide my head back in the hole from which it came...and bury it in the sand. And somedays I wish for 'the easy life' (you know, the one that is non-existant) of being sheltered, being blindfolded, being surrounded only by those who love you, by those who only have small discrepancies .... And it will never be. I wonder what I have gotten myself into, and how can I possibly handle it all?... I guess I can't, it's too big for me, and that is why I must do it.
I want to live without my head buried in the sand. I want to live with my head out of the hole- and smile. because then it means something.
......And what it means, that is what changes the world, that is what changes the broken shards of glass. Only that. "

I was walking down the rainy sidewalk yesterday, contemplating, and yes, shooting black and white melancholy photographs in an attempt to release frustration. One form of injustice now brings them all to the front of my mind, and it has become an impossibility to ignore them. Instead, I write. I hash it all out with God. Every time. All over again. And the one thing He always leaves me with is this: Hope.

much about india.....to come soon. I love it here. ....but don't I always when I travel? so I guess it isn't much of a surprise.