coming soon...

now that mars hill graduate school has moved into the heart of the city, this small school with a relational emphasis is getting a chance to test it's high wishes of relationality with the other. As the students and professors are leaving their cars and climbing aboard busses, a few of us will be starting a new blog called "riding the bus." It will have stories, reflections, frustrations, questions, pictures, etc. from the riding the bus. Look for it in the next week.
Note: If you are a MHGS student interested in contributing, let me know. Or if you don't want to join the blog but have a thought, a poem, a question, a picture etc. that you want posted, email it to me and I can post it for you.

Here's my first thoughts:

And the Beat Pounds On

Day two on the bus.
I am listening to Damien Jurado.
And the dancing guitar passes time
One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-one-and…
I don’t need you anymore
I’m independent there is nothing to say

A girl sits next to me
The aisle divides us like the Great Wall of China
Men were killed – built into the wall
Slowly starving and suffocating in isolation
One-and-two-and-three-and-four…
I don’t need you anymore
I’m independent there is nothing to say

Her eyes are wide and her hello kitty boots are pink
And warm and small and holy
She watches me typing on my computer
Gently bobbing my head to the music playing in my own world
One-and-two-and-three-and-four…
I don’t need you anymore
I’m independent there is nothing to say

The song ends
A new one begins
One-two-and-three-and-one…
She thinks I don’t see her as she mimics my gentle head bobbing
The gentle waltzing rhythm and its earmuff like bearers separate us

I read a sign
It preaches the ten commandments of the bus:
“Respect other passengers’ privacy.”
It’s not an unwritten rule – it is a written
Written,
Printed on shining, colorful, appeasing paper
Cut from a 300 year old tree, recycled, recycled, recycled and finally static
Resting isolated, silent, like the rest of us
Its shrill silence preaches next to the burnt-out prophet
A picture of a doll eating a dead rat and the words,
“Kissing a smoker is just as gross.”

I stop to listen to Damien:
His voice is old and comforting
He reminds me of the days when
He and I rode solo in my car and I
Sang along as thought the world ended
At my broken windows and bumper-sticker ridden tail
The map of my world – of my tightly confined reality
Reads “Monsters lie here”
Now I, like Ferdinand Magellan stepped off the edge of the safe world
And my first mate sings: “I play the movies in my head.”
And the beat
Goes
On
One-and-two-and-three-and-one

I play the movie in my head.
I am on the bus. and
One
The music plays. and
Two
The music builds. and
Three
The music drives. and
One-and
My deep thoughts or voiced-over angst speaks
In beat and in turn
With the music.

With the music.

With the music.

And I’m not even listening as Damien strains his gentle voice.
The movie presses on
The screen pans to show thirty people
Raptured in the most uncreative and maddening aspect of film: montage
We all sit, bobbing our ignorant, inhuman heads
Each to the same beat
Each to the same fucking song
Each to the same bullshit imaginary movie
One-and-two-and-three-and-one-and
In this moment we are “we” fucking twisted as it is
The guitar strums pound more like death metal than folk
ONE-and-TWO-and-
The soundtrack is maddening.

I scream at the top of my lungs
But like in a dream when you are sure you woke up
And you tried to eat breakfast and
Brush your fuzzy teeth still rancid with the night before
And comb the entanglement from your hair
And shower off the memory of your unwanted dream
Only to realize you have not moved at all
All that comes from my valiant scream is
“ding”
And the lighted sign behind the bus driver sings:
“Stop requested.”

love your enemies eh?

You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you
may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and
the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those
who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing
that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others?
Do not even pagans do that?

i've been thinking a lot about yesterday and about my post.

i don't know the answer to this question and i really don't even want to ask it....but...

what would it look like to love that man? to not be drawn into his violent, angry world, but to somehow love him with the same creativity and passion that the art show shows for invisible children?

i found myself saying - outloud to my mom [who was there]: "this is why i never leave the city anymore." dogmatism. othering. us and them. NOT LOVE.

is it reasonable to ask me to love that man - in that sacred space i worked so hard to bring about and placed so much hope in? no. not reasonable - but right anyway.

not so much fun storming the castle.

The Pitiful American god

If they were American?
What would you do?
What would you give?
Where would you protest?
What polititian would you write hounding letters too?

If he were your son?
If he were Jesus?
If your
salvation
depended
on it?

But, they aren't American.
He's not your son.
He's not Jesus. [1]
And salvation is a free gift.

So you greedily take it
You say, "pitty" and

Become an irreligious goat [2]
With a dead faith, [3]
In a starving, dehydrated, naked, homeless, and lonely God [4]
Whose arms refuse to take Guns from the hands of children. [5]

Manger art re-opened today. There's nothing like doing some good in the world to bring out the hateful people.

A man walked in with his pre-teen daughter. Looked at all the art, and seemed receptive enough. So, I engaged him:

Me: Hi. How are you doing today?
Man: Fine. Are you a newe shop?
Me: No; we're just here for a stay trying to raise money for Invisible Children. Have you heard of Invisible Children?
Man: No. [Interested look on his face]
Me: Well, it's a charity that works with kids affected by the war in Northern Uganda. There are kids forced to fight and...
Man: So you're raising money to help them to fight?
Me: No. [bewildered] No. Invisible Children helps to keep kids safe, get them PTS counseling, offers schooling...
Man: So, you're raising money to train child soldiers?
Me: No. To keep kids from being soldiers and help kids that have been rescued from being soldiers...
Man: [Again interrupting] So what about the kids in America?
Me: Well, there is a lot of need in the worl...
Man: The kids that hang out at the court house all day dealing and doing crack
Me: Well, there certainly is a lot of need and we don't deny that, but this charity is one that our hearts are heavey fo...
Man: So you don't care about American kids?
Me: No! [Firmly, angrily - though hiding the anger thus far] It's just tragic that 5-year-olds are given guns and...
Man: But you don't care about 12-year-olds with crack.
Me: No sir. It is not that we don't care it is just that...
Man: You'd choose African kids as opposed to American kids.
Me: No! [Finally gritting my teeth and losing my grip on the anger rising] No! not opposed to anything.
Man: I'm just being devils advocate.

He stoppped, looked around and announced: "Well, this art is all pretty violent and unimaginative. Only one piece struck me as remotely interesting." He motioned for me to follow him over to a piece Ed Traub has on display entitled "Passover." Assuming he knew what the painting is about and revealing why he maybe thought all the art was "violent," he asked if Ed had ever seen blood and bone scraped across the pavement like that or if it was from something he saw in a movie. I told him that, as the peice was called "Passover," I didn't know if that's what it was supposed to be.

His jaw dropping and conversation ending response:
"Ahh, the Jews. They were the first terrorists you know, back in 1946. They're good at terrorism. Yeah, those Jews are really good at it."

If my life were an episode of scrubs, my head would have exploded, I and my body started running around like crazy only to finally rest with my hands on his neck. Then the scene would cut back to reality as I stood blankly though politely next to the man and said, "Hmm. Well, thank you for stopping by."

What can I say? So much. Soooo much. There are simply no words. And every once in a while, I begin to believe this brand of thinking is extinct. And if it is extinct, then maybe the Kingdom is coming. And if the Kingdom is coming then nothing is in vain...

So I sat for 6 hours today. Sold nothing. Had my heart trampled - and my hope with it. Was it in vain? Was it/is it worth it? Why can't I have the answers to these questions? Why can't my illusion that the world is changing be true? Why is it not Americans that suffer for American ignorance - at least there would be some justice-ish substance in the world?

I need the will and strength to go on - but I suppose I know I can't live ignorantly anymore. So, I storm the castle despite my disbelief that "true love" will win this one.


1. Matthew 25:40
2. Matthew 25:32-33
3. James 2:26
4.Matthew 25:31ff
5. 1 Corinthians 12:27

a sparkly wig and no blank canvasses

cleaning my room - cleaning the clutter, the old mail, the ticket stubs, random notes, cards, and old pictures, i came across some pictures from my childhood.

i was passionate. i dressed like punky brewster and insisted on wearing this sparkley wig my parents bought me at the fair. i walked into rooms of squabbeling children and sought peace. i marveled at the world. i was going to be the first woman president...and the first person to go their whole life without a singe cavity (although, i think that's probably been done before). i laughed. i played. i trusted that my friends would be my friends tomorrow and never wondered if they would betray or abandon me. when i was sad, i cried. when i wanted solitude, i curled up in my closet and talked to God. i was going to change the world---though, i didn't really know what needed to be changed yet - except that girls at private school shouldn't be forced to wear dresses to school, since they made the monkey bars impossible.

children are amazing. they aren't blank canvasses. they are complicated and complex people with stories and personalities in progress from day one. why do we treat them like blank canvasses? why do we try to paint mona lisa over punk brewster? why do we quiet their passion with rules? why do we attempt to worship without them? why are they in sunday morning classrooms to teach them how to worship when they already worship all the time and more whole-heartedly than most? why do we tythe 10% of our money without bringing 10% of the best coloring sheets children have done and dried out play dough teddy bears to the alter?

if i could only wear that sparkly wig today. if i could only trust my friends. if i could only fight for a better tomorrow regardless of how much i loved tolday. where did i go?

and forbid it, sweet saving Lord, that i ever stumble one of these little ones into becoming something other than the beatiful, worshippers and world-changers they are born to be.

i was cleaning out my car (for my brother's road trip) and i found my long lost reading glasses!

the world is new! (which sadly means that my eye sight is deteriorating as i never really needed them before - they were only for those days that i read over 300 pages in a day)

it makes me think about how rediscovering old things and trying them on can sometimes open a new way of seeing things...or, in this case, at least make things a bit clearer.

to jake

i just watched the princess bride with my mom. she'd never seen it before. how that happened, since it was a key part of my childhood, i don't know.

also, my brother got into a car accident and totalled his car. i offered him mine to take on a vacation he's been planning and desperately needs after a riduculously aweful quarter of school and life in general. my mom said i was sweet to do that. she seemed to marvel at how i would want to help my brother. it seemed almost as though she thought i was doing her a favor by loving her son.

i wasn't.

there's something different about a sibling. i am now and always will be closer to my brother than to anyone else in my family. he's the one that laughs with me when a preacher stands up and says, "mawage, mawage is what bwings us togevaw today." he's the one that knows why my blog is called have fun storming the castle. jake understands why i leave the room when the albino comes on - because my friends and i used to think that his mole was a pile of dried buggers and, to this day, it grosses me out.

further, jake knows what it is like to have the television raise you while your dad reads a book and your mom works 10 hour days with other people's children. he knows what it is like to go to the Christian schools we atteneded, to go through over 10 youth ministers in your jh/hs career. he knows what it is like to have your dad lose his job and your mom be diagnosed with cancer in the same two week period.

he was and is my war buddie from dangerous trenches and my fishing buddie from many unsuccessful fishing trips. he was my partner in many crimes, occasionally my mortal enemy, and often the person with whom i laughed and laugh at some ironic uber inside joke until the laughter hurts both internally and soulfully.

jake only does myspace (a point we agree to disagree on) so he'll never read this, but all the same, i wanted to take the time to reflect on my little bro and all we have meant to each other.