Tuesday, December 13, 2011

MEGAMIX.

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This is the sick megamix I'd make right now if I had resources to do so. Thankfully, Grooveshark exists. But, for your enjoyment, in no particular order:

Veiled in Darkness - Bifrost Arts
Happy Xmas (War is Over) - Polyphonic Spree
A Stone Would Cry Out - Sam Roberts
Sim Sala Bim - Fleet Foxes
Terrible Love - The National
Frank, AB - The Rural Alberta Advantage
By Your Hand - Los Campesinos!
The First Day of Spring - Noah and the Whale
Lofticries - Purity Ring
Blood Pt. 2 - Buck 65 Remix (ft. Sufjan Stevens & Serengeti)
Sleepless - The Decemberists
Tightrope - Yeasayer
Brackett, WI - Bon Iver
No Names - Saintseneca
Call it What You Want - Foster the People
Forests and Sands - Camera Obscura
Wildfires - Ohbijou
Jesus - Welcome Wagon
Upward Over the Mountain - Iron & Wine
Seeplymouth - Volcano Choir
These Old Shoes - Deer Tick
Basket - Dan Mangan
Do You Realize?? - Flaming Lips
You Should've Seen the Other Guy - Nathaniel Rateliff
Halfway - Milagres
Kids on the Run - Tallest Man on Earth
I Hurt Too - Katie Herzig
Will You Return - Avett Brothers
Vesuvius - Sufjan Stevens
Curs in the Weeds - Horse Feathers
Home - Mumford and Sons
The Honest Truth - Typhoon
Snakes and Ladders - Basia Bulat
Neighbor Song - Aunt Martha
Transatlanticism - Death Cab for Cutie
Left & Leaving - Weakerthans

I now expect you to make this into a Grooveshark playlist and listen to all of it. And love it.

GO.

Also, I have successfully completed The Catcher in the Rye, so now I can feel like less of a horrible English student. I'd edit the book list from my last post, but I don't feel like it.

Fare thee well.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

I Like Books.

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Good day, friends. Well, I've seen these lists going around on blogs and Facebook for years now, and finally decided to face my feelings of inadequacy and take the plunge. This is actually the most comprehensive version I've seen floating around, so I'm posting it more as a prompt to remind myself of the books I need to read/finish.

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Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Underline those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or have only read an excerpt, and mark with an asterisk those of which you've seen a film production.

1.
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2.
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien*
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4.
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)
5.
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7.
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8.
Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10.
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11.
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott *
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell *

22. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams *
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll *
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame *
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32.
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33.
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36.
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis *
37.
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden *
40.
Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown *

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46.
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery *
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert *
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58.
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64.
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66.
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding *

69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71.
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett *
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens *
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86.
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White *
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91.
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94.
Watership Down – Richard Adams *
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98.
Hamlet – William Shakespeare *
99.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl *
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo *

21 out of 100. Ouch.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Good Dreams

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I have been pondering lately if I am strong enough to love with no expectation of love returned.

Can I give myself to another, in order to benefit them alone, and not out of selfish pursuit of gain and affirmation? Could I love someone unlovely because the centre of their being is worth it?

I pray that when I find you, I will have the courage to do it. I pray that I will know, and you will know, and we will find so much joy in the knowing. You will smile at me and I'll echo it back to you, and we will revel in loving each other. We will spend a day on the couch in the living room, your head in my lap, and I will touch your hair as we talk about dreams and technology and Fleet Foxes. I will love the sum of you as you pursue the core of me. And when all of the chasing is through, we will be content to be still together, to sit side-by-side and breathe the same air.

Your love will be joy to me, and I pray that my love will inspire and encourage you, strengthen your heart and even greater still, remind you that I am not enough. I pray that my love will show you that love from our Father springs forth eternal, and it's His love that leaves us all breathless.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

The Owl and the Tanager

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Foolish I pinned
My hopes on you
Foolishly they remain
Sight unseen, I'm placing bets
Waging my funds on your heart
Before our hands touched
Can I know
Before knowing you?
Can I love before sitting shoulder-to-shoulder
tense as we feel the current running through the thin cloth of our sweaters?
Can I place my heart before you to accept
Before our eyes meet, lips met?




Thursday, September 15, 2011

Your Hands Are Cold As They Find My Neck

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"For truly we have attacked ourselves in ways far worse than that in which we were attacked!"

I am the liar.


Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Parallax

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I want to stand in the abyss.






(courtesy of http://www.xkcd.com/)




Wednesday, August 24, 2011

It Yet Looms Yellow in My Mind

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i have never seen the moon this large
looming sweet on the horizon
like a pebble you reach to find beneath the rush of a stream
like the golden face of a clock, ticking
grown sickly pale with time
and don't we all?
but tonight i will leap and feel my foot strike earth
record with joy the tickle of the dew-wet ferns as they brush my leg
in the jumble of my memory (so much like my mother's junk drawer, all the pieces entangled)
as i breathe "i will remember this; i will remember this"
to coax my mind into releasing the needle to cut this moment into memory's fickle vinyl
and i will spin with the next step, i will note how my limbs look, bathed in the cool glow
how the yellow globe of the moon makes us here below shine strangely blue
like a mix-up occurs in the millions of miles from there to here
colour lost in the atmosphere
and i will record it all
so that years and years from now
when my body wanes thin
and my hair is wispy white
i will play it back
i will remember how the wind felt on my hands
i will recall how i was breathing hard
and how later when sprawled, exhausted
on the hill, prickly with August grass
i spoke a small prayer in gratitude
for the rising of the yellow moon

Monday, July 11, 2011

We would turn everything into songs in those days

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I hope that scientists will give me a call when they invent time travel so that I can transport myself back to 1969 and convince Arlo Guthrie to marry me.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Coming Before the Altar, My Body is the Prodigal

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I have spent the great majority of my life completely detactched from my body.

Sure, it was great when I was a baby and everything was one with everything else and my body was an offshoot of my mother and the lines blurred between outside and inside -- even still, I was connected, whole within myself and whole reaching out and joining, breaking, re-joining with other. A whole relating to wholes. Babies don't think about themselves. They just are; they are simply connected with a body that simply is.

I've had brief moments of this wholeness and connectedness with my body since then. However, the majority of my life has been spent regarding my own body from afar, seeing it only in a mirror where I judge and persecute myself for how it looks. My body is an it, it is not ME because I won't allow it to be.

I am uncoordinated and clumsy, which is great for a laugh, but perhaps reflects the distance I've instated between my mind and body. I am ashamed of my physicality. I refuse to acknowledge it.

Have you ever had the experience of looking at a photo of yourself and coming to the stunning and sudden realization that hey, that's ME.... that's actually what I look like? I feel like my existence is running on two parallel tracks, with my mind churning and spinning and travelling forth as my main understanding of who I am, and my body on an entirely different track -- a plane where I can only experience my body in the context of how others view it. It's not mine, it's a signal, a picture of who I am that I present to others for their scrutiny. It is others, it is the world that has the final word on what my body is doing, how it looks, and how it relates to "me" as a soul trapped within the confines of the muscle, bone and skin that make up this physicality that is, in reality, as much "me" as my mind.

I've spent so much time telling myself that if you only lose some weight, if you only find some way to clear up your skin, if you can grow your hair a bit longer or style it nicer, if you can apply your makeup just right -- then, maybe someone will love you. Body, you're failing me. Body, you're getting in the way of what I want to be, what I want to accomplish, you're getting in the way of me finding a man to love me. You're preventing me from living. There is ugliness in my mind -- that, I can deal with. I can even live with it and adapt to it and cope with it so that it doesn't bother me any more. But ugliness in regards to my body -- I refuse to acknowledge it as mine, it disgusts me because it's not something that, like my inward ugliness, can be hidden away. The world sees it. Thus, I divorce my body from myself on a daily basis, severing the connection between mind and body so that I can revile it too, I can hate my body because the world does, because the world tells me I am not beautiful enough, not skinny enough, not the right shape, not ever, ever going to fit into their pretty clothes. If it's not really "me", I can join in with the world, I can bend down and pick up that stone, feel the weight (the hate) of it, and cast it first.

My mind screams
BODY why did you betray me like this why did you sabotage me and ruin my chances why are you so fat no matter how little i eat or how much i exercize you are still fat you are still ugly and you deform the clothes i wear to try to hide you you are the fat friend that the others confide in because they know you're trustworthy just like in the movies they see you and they hate how you look but they pity you so they stay you ruined everything

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I am going to reclaim it. Even if I never find someone willing to love both my body and my soul, I will. God told me I am fearfully and wonderfully made. There is WONDER in how my body is formed. I am coming before the altar, I am laying my dual nature down. I am witnessing the remarriage of my two selves. I will be both combined.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

We Set Sail With No Fixed Star in Sight

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If I can accomplish one brilliant moment of pure beauty and goodness on this earth for the glory of God, all this heaviness of sin will be worth it.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

We Will Meet Him in The Air

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Oh Father, how I long
To see past the endless drag of days
To see the grace by which you may
Redeem your lost ones, Heaven's song.

When in a brief hiccup of time
You'll draw us upward, upward still
To meet you there, your children will
Behold your face, and cross the line

Where scripture in its beauty says
We in an instant will be changed.

Oh, to be spirited away with You
This is the deepest echo of
My soul, to climb as like a dove
Into the sky, into the blissful multitude

To escape the bonds of sin and then
Be free of controversies, that
Confuse and pain us, endless lists of who begat
Whom, which some would urge points to your Word as tainted by the folly of wicked men.

And then the argument arises
Of who wrote what, and to what laws
We must adhere, and which flaws
Of ancient men are proof enough to cancel what the Spirit advises.

The paradigm shifts and down we fall
Into the rabbit hole, and we shudder, adrift --
Rejecting wisdom and those holy gifts
The doctrines we had held in closed fists seem not to matter at all.

This is the state You find us in
When you return to do your work
Sinking fast in mire and murk
But You, oh merciful One, will rescue us from sin.

Oh for that day to swiftly come
When you draw us away from earthly bonds
Oh, then we'll praise with endless songs
You, the great Victor who has won.

After Storm 01/06/11

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Most of all, I want to know that you are there and that you feel it too
That you see the lightning arcing like a cut through the night sky black
Feel the thunder shake and grumble rippling up through your feet and legs
Gasp when the wind gusts in through the screen and brings with it rain, small like mist
That you see and feel and hear all of these things and return praise, always always
Knowing along with me, feeling along with me the worship that comes from seeing the might of the Alpha and Omega
I want to know that you are there, and you feel this happiness that is so acute it feels like sad
I want to know that you feel it too

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Ariadne Leads Him to the Dawn

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I am Ariadne, and I will help you find your way out.

hold tight to the unraveled edge of the string and I will pull you
I will wind that highway of twine into a bright red ball
I will reel you in

In all of this that we construct, I will be to you an outstretched hand

as you hurdle over barriers and walls that I create
as you seek the prize within the turns and corners of the labyrinth

I am Ariadne, I am the architect and I will beckon you and draw you back
with markers and signs I will lead you
you who bears the heavy load of truth and reality on your shoulders
I will guide you to see around and through the lies of time
I will show you the crafty traps of memory and the twisting depths of days
I will give you the key and show you the door
I will break you from this jailhouse of linear pacing and bring you to the way

And you will know the red ribbon of freedom

Friday, May 13, 2011

Play Nice, Niceans. (Awful Joke)

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So. The Council of Nicea. After a friend made some comments about how the Bible is unreliable because of the fact that fallible men compiled it, I did some research. Which was fun because I like research and also I'm a nerd. And here is the results, copied from an email I sent.

Apparently, we (the Church) have been duped -- there seems to be no evidence that the proceedings at the Council of Nicea included the deciding which books would make up the canon of the Bible. From the accounts we have, it seems like the main topic of discussion at the Council was the relationship between God the Father and Jesus, which was in response to a cultish uprising led by a man named Arius who believed that Jesus was not God. There's a bit of an outline here: http://www.equip.org/articles/what-really-happened-at-nicea-

They came up with the "Nicene Creed" that we now know about, which outlines that the Father and Son are the same being in two forms. Not a new belief, but they codified it so that the new congregations springing up all over would be unified in this (most important) point of doctrine. There is a list of other canons that were discussed by the bishops in attendance, such as church disciplinary matters (including the notion that at this time, there was no one church who was appointed as "head" above the others). The heretical Arius got the boot, along with his followers.

So, the idea that the books of the Bible were decided upon at the council simply are untrue. This source outlines possible sources for the myth: http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/nicaea.html, along with some useful commentary on the actual events by some of the bishops who were there. This source: http://www.christian-history.org/nicea-myths.html gives a handy overview of the fables many in the Church believe about Nicea, and gives rebuttals for them. The inset box entitled "The Real History of the Bible" is useful. Basically outlines the fact that the Bible as we know it has stayed relatively unchanged since the time of the writing of the NT. In the second century, there were other additions, and 2 Peter, James, and Hebrews have been called into question -- but I think it's important to keep in mind that "called into question" does not mean necessarily that these were false teachings/scriptures. Just because someone questions something doesn't automatically mean that the consensus of all early Christians was that it was heretical. I think often we fall into the trap of the "fallacy of tradition", in which we believe that because X is old, X must be true or better. True, the early Christians were closer in chronology to Jesus and the New Testament writers. However, this does not mean that every thought they had was correct or to be accepted on par with what the NT teaches. I understand that humans are fallible, and thus we can expect some error in works written by humans. However: I also think that if God, in choosing the Bible as the main vehicle through which He communicates to His people (He communicates to us through many things, I know, and I don't mean to constrain God to words on a piece of paper, but in the Bible His words are clearly stated), God, in His sovereignty, would see to it that the canon of the Bible is exactly what He wanted it to be. It's about this Bible the prophet Isaiah records God saying "the grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever" (Isaiah 40:8), and to which Paul refers to when he says "all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16), and it is "living and active" (Hebrews 4:12). I don't believe that God would allow the folly of men to override his means of communicating to us.

Oh, one last thing -- I found the reference I was thinking about where Peter refers to Paul's letters as Scripture -- it's 2 Peter 3:16 - "He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." so there's pretty good support in there for Paul's letters being authoritative words from God. And a bit of a warning, too.

Ummmm, sorry for this huge post. I hope you were all able to make it this far. If you did, congratulations!

Love and cannons (HA! Like canons, but different! I'm hilarious!),
Tiffany

Monday, May 2, 2011

Remove from Me My Heart of Stone

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We lost two important people in a matter of days. David Wilkerson, author of "The Cross and the Switchblade" and regarded as one of the forerunners of street ministry as well as the founder of Teen Challenge died in a tragic car accident. His sermon prompting Christians to anguish in prayer for the things that hurt God's heart totally wrecked me this weekend. Then, today, news of the assassination of Osama bin Laden is spreading, prompting responders online, even Christians, to respond by heaping more hate on an already hate-filled situation. What does wishing bin Laden a great time in Hell do for us? What does it accomplish, to as one person on Facebook wished, proclaim "I want to watch him be killed"? It hardens our hearts, makes us bitter and lulls us into thinking it's okay for us to live in the Grace of God that saved us from sin and then turn around and laugh that a man died, possibly while still rejecting the claims of Christ. Is this not a disgusting, twisted sense of self-righteousness that spews forth this kind of judgment? Is it not God who decides who goes to Hell? Am I not, in the deepest, ugliest recesses of my heart just like him? How can we believe in a God that says in Ezekiel 18:32 that He does not take pleasure in the death of anyone -- wicked or not -- and then rub our hands together, relishing the warm feeling of revenge, when someone evil is murdered?

Today, I am sorrowing for the death of another human being who's fate rests in God alone, not my opining or conjecture on where he might be right now. I am also sorrowing for the Church who is so seduced by the world that we feel it's okay to celebrate the death of another person, no matter how bad, no matter how sinful and the extent of the horrible and wrong things he did. We declare "an eye for an eye", spitting in the face of a Jesus who died for us all. I recognize the urge in my own heart to say "Good!" and feel justified that one who instigated the killing of so many has now been killed. And I reject that urge to sorrow with the Lord over the death of a man that HE made, a man who God knew from the womb and a man whom God never gave up on.

The death of a saint in Christ and a world-renowned terrorist -- both are pushing me towards anguish and towards a heart more attuned to Him today. May it be the same for you.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Somewhere, in Some Misstep I Chose This

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Dear Blog,

Thanks for being an outlet for my angst so that I don't have to annoy my friends with my mopey, emotional outpourings.

Thus, here begins another sad post.

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I want to say it's not your fault
it's not your misstep that caused this ache
To tell you that your absense is not helping with this hurt
but rather making a dull pain more heavy
giving accent and outline to a fluttering soreness
I want to ask you to stay by me
to tell me that it will be alright
this will all be alright, and it will pass
I want you there to hold onto when I feel like I am slipping from this edge
and feeling its' sharpness
and feeling the keeness of knowing that you can't dance this dance with me
you can't comfort me when it's the pain of this new distance that has settled, like a mantle, over my shoulders

I would carry it for you

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Monday, April 4, 2011

A Girl Drowning, Making Movements Towards the Shore

2 comments
I'm at a time right now of spiritual awakening... but I can't tell if it's for the better. So many questions. I have been in the desert, and it isn't like this. It's not a cup of water to quench the thirst; it's a flood. There's so much that I'm almost drowning. I wrote this about a week ago -- things that perplex me but that perhaps don't have answers. Hmm hmm hmm.

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Have I just been sleeping all these years?

How are there so many facets to the Christian faith that I've been blind to or ignorant of for so long??

Are we to choose, is the choice made for us -- for all of us, before the world began? Was Luther with his 99 theses overreacting when he nailed them to that door?

Are we individual worshippers, or is the congregation a necessary institution? Is it a support and help, a place to serve, or a cumbersome entity that prevents real worship for fear of offending/embarrassment/commitment?

Should we be looking inward to work out our personal struggle with faith and the effects of the Holy Spirit on our own souls, should we be looking internally to purge our sin? Or should our focus be outward, in the world, not dwelling internally but being the hands and feet of Jesus to a dying world? Should we be concerning with serving, or having our own spiritual thirst slaked?

Can we reasonably enjoy the good things here and now, or is it vanity, knowing that there are more and better things to come? Should we forsake pleasure and comfort at all costs to show the world that in Christ our satisfaction lies, is it "soft" to live this Christian life enjoying the same comforts as the world does, and showing them that they can sacrifice without really sacrificing, as we do? Can we truly be "in the world, but not of it"? Where does relevancy play a part, if at all? Do we make Christ relevant to the world, or do we transform the world by showing them the Messiah himself? Should we make ourselves like monks and turn away from the material things of the world, or does this only serve to alienate us from the people we're trying to reach?

Where does tradition lie? How can we know when we've overstepped the boundaries from practices that please God into those that disgrace Him by turning worship into empty and legalistic ritual?
Do those feasts and traditions laid out in the Old Testament mean something to God, is his name honoured when we follow them? Or is it all "old covenant", passed away, ritual that meant something but now is overshadowed by the pursuit of Christ and Him alone? Can we participate in tradition with a clear conscience, is it always bad, or simply a situation in which we must be aware that performing certain acts does not endear us more to God, but instead may act as a catalyst in our own hearts to prompt us to further worship?

Can we confidently say "by faith alone"? Where do our works play a role? Is it neither here nor there, but a mashing together in the middle? Do we perform works because we want to be counted among the sheep or because it's a natural outworking of the love of God in us that prompts us to serve and do right?

What is the Old Testament to us? Is it for Israel, they who missed the boat in ages past and are now milling about in stasis until the End of things? Or is it alive and vibrant for us still, the ones who are grafted in? Can we pin some of our hopes on Israel, should it be us who serve them in the fulfillment of Tanakh prophecy or is it simply a waste of time, an addition of "Jesus PLUS" that we should sidestep? Can we in good faith ignore the everlasting covenant that marries Israel to the land, that God established to lead his first chosen ones homeward? If they are still the chosen, what are we? Co-chosen? Somehow secondary? Co-heirs, or simply helpers along the way to guide Israel and make her jealous?

Does God punish his people here on earth? Does he judge the nations now, does it prove logical to punish the people for the directions their leaders give? Does He punish those who love him, or are we spared by His blood? Does he punish the unbeliever here? Or is it a punishment to be unfurled once the curtain drops?

Is Heaven a place to construct and build while we still breathe the air of this earth? Can we definitively say that Hell is eternal, that there is no further chances once that final journey is undertaken? Does this accord with a God who IS love? Can a God who's love is victorious ransom those who have seen the desolation of the other side, in the end reclaiming all souls to Himself, He who is not willing that any should perish? Can it be that love always wins? And is it really a victory if it redeems those who do not wish to be redeemed?

Is this all "fire insurance"? Do we love God because we wish to escape the punishment of Hell, and if this Hell is not an eternal pit, does this free us from this binding? Are all the things I do on this planet simply to avoid the guilt of doing wrong, is it all because humans need a place to belong, is it because I love God and want to glorify Him? Can we ever hope to overcome our selfishness and act purely out of love? How much of what I do is even worth anything, if I can't even discern my own motives?

Why must it all be on a sliding scale? Are there black and white areas, is there always a space to choose, or is only one perspective correct? What does true Christianity look like? Can we get our cues from the early Church fathers? The Bible only? How can you serve, be in a congregation -- without the unity of a common doctrine that all can agree on? How did the pursuit of Christ grow so many appendages -- so many that it is impossible to see the body for the arms?

Francine Rivers and I = BFFs

2 comments
Francine Rivers is the bomb. I've loved everything I've read of hers -- The Mark of the Lion series, Redeeming Love, Sons of Encouragement (though I'm not done that one quite yet). One time, I emailed her and she emailed me back. It was an exciting day in my life. Thus, this contest excites me greatly: http://www.tyndale.com/blog/?p=1042

Winning all of her novels? A dream come true. Winning any of her novels? Still pretty awesome. And posting right here about the awesomeness of this contest? One entry in the contest, baby.

Shameless I tell you!

Peace friends.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

The World is a Nosy Jerk

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When the world tells you:

how to look
where to live
what to wear
how to think
where to walk
who to befriend
when to act

that you are:

too loud
too short
too fat
too ugly
too lazy

not brave enough
not stylish enough
not focused enough
not strong enough
not happy enough
not perfect enough


... tell it to shut up.

That's my advice for you.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

We Say Things That Are Unsayable and Mostly True

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Hello friends,

Here is a new poem for you. I'm quite pleased with it. I named it "3 Mile", but I'm not entirely sure I like the title. So, here you go.


I have so many thoughts inside
Standing next to the reactor at 3 Mile Island
My hand mirrors yours
And we stare into the depths of the eyes of revolution
With a stringy folk ballad twisting in the air above us
And my skirt making fluttery noises on my leg, now yours
The hurricane wind makes waves in the sunset air
Teaching a stray strand of hair to limply lean on my face, yearningly
I turn to you, our eyes lock like bank vaults
And your gaze grabs me like an octopus hug, and we see each other in confidence
We say things that are unsayable and mostly true
And we're falling in love with the brains of dead writers
And we're tasting the sulfur and the ocean on the air like cotton candy
And we're stretching taller, arms spread wider
And we're balancing here on the pinnacle, on a chair balanced on the pinnacle of the point of the highest tower
And we stand as one flesh among the debris
Yard sale of the discarded
Handbags and vending machines and moose antlers and spice racks
Dotted with lampshades and pool cues
And now we are fading, and the music notes fall around us like bombs
But you know, it doesn't matter
Because my hand is a perfect mirror, imperfect
Of yours.

01/03/11

Now you should listen to this song:




With love and reassuring shoulder pats,

Tiffany