Hinges of History, Wyle E. Coyote, and Gravity Lessons

I never understood how it worked, but it happened every time. Before Wyle E. Coyote held up a sign reading “Ahhhh” or something else in the category of a silent panic, and fell hundreds of feet to turn into a mushroom cloud with the Road Runner smirking and Meep-ing on the bluff above, before all this, he would run at least six feet on air. Then, as he realized there was no ground beneath his feet, he panicked and, inevitably, fell. I always wondered, “Did he fall because there is no ground beneath him, or because he realized it? If he didn’t realize it, could he have walked to the next bluff? Or, if he realized it, but didn’t panic, would he have calmly, though cautiously, continued to use his mind to create ground to walk on? At twenty-four with a Master’s degree under my belt, these questions still plague my mind. And, for the first time, they seem significant.


Last year, a friend and I sat down for coffee and conversation around the emergent church. Both being fans of Cahill, we saw the coming (present?) postmodern era as a hinge of history. The problem is, we live on the hinge, but the other side of the hinge, the land beyond the scenic bluff, doesn’t exist yet. The question beaconing us, as a church living on the hinge is this: Do we try to run back and clasp our weak fingers on the edge of the bluff called Christendom, hoping if we cling long enough and tight enough, we’ll not have to risk? Or, do we step off the bluff and, like Wyle E. Coyote, walk confidently on the air? Or, do we not panic, trust, and begin to create new ground on the other side of the hinge?

I'm in a class called "crafting transformational moments." However, a more appropriate title might be "re-imagining preaching workshop." Even in the class, we find ourselves re-imagining what a preaching class is like. Some days, we seem to fail. Others are glory. We're creating new ground, and I couldn't be more excited for the chance to a) create something new, and b) sometimes let that something new fail - fall - and get up, chalking it up to gravity lessons.

more naked, alone, and abandoned than anyone in history

what can you think of a God who leaves a righteous man naked and alone in his darkest hour - even though the betrayed man calls tenderly, like a child, for God?

This God sounds evil.



what can you think of a God who sacrifices everything and is humiliated as he dies for the sake of his very murderers?

This God sounds beautiful.



what can you think of a God who does both these things in the same instance?

This God is a mystery....but we must never forget this mystery is named love.

Fasting from eternity and waiting for the sun to set

The sun is still high in the sky. I want so badly for it to set. Please, please, please set so I can feast! The feelings of hunger invade my concentration and make the sight or smell of food a passionately ambivalent swirling of longing and hatred for the pain of lack. I smell more with each moment of fasting. The feasting around me becomes vibrant and holds my gave so covetously that I cannot avert my eyes as I voyeurously look on, participating in my heart.

When will the sun set? Five o-clock maybe? What will the sunset look like? Will it be brilliant and marked? Will it be subdued? Will it be purple, orange, yellow, or vibrant red? Will there be clouds or simply color smeared across a blank canvas sky?

I am curious, expectant, and longing.

Is this moment bad? Is there no good to be had simply because the feast is not here yet? Did I not passionately enjoy the juice I just drank? Did I not revel in it? No. no. Still, something better and bigger comes and the sunset and I will not be satiated as long as the sun remains in the sky.

Hmmm… are these eschatological feelings? Am I this hungry for the true feast? Does the hint of eternity sensuously and seducingly come to my nose and captivate my senses so that I cannot shake the thought of the feast to come? Can I look at the sun and revel in a beautiful day while longing for brilliant sunset and the feast that ensues? Do I see microcosms and tastes of eternity and find myself raptured in them? Do I feel hunger – see starving children (29,000/day), AIDS orphans, Bush/Cheney administration etc. – do I see the painful things and turn my eyes to the sun, waiting for it to set? Waiting for the eschatological end of hunger? And do I look for juice – for some nourishment to ease, though not quench the hunger residing in the now in wait of eternity?

How happily and unthoughtfully I fast from that which I was created for – and yet, how difficult it is for me to give up the material pinings of an only partially redeemed reality.

An “Honorific” Edition of Quotes out of Context

I’d like to begin this edition by saying that I greatly respect and admire Dan Allender. I am immeasurably blessed by and thankful for all he give me as a professor and school president. And, I am amazed at his intellect and wielding of words – ie, who would have guessed that “honorific” is actually a word – surprised me!

This man is amazing and “honorific,” but he does say some funny things!

Anyway, here you go:

“Do you love the way thorns and thistles feel as you weed your garden? If the answer is yes then we are in the realm of sexual disorders.”

“Sit here and watch Jerry Springer with me.”

“The task of a woman is to be a nuisance to her children.”

“I think they are involved in connubial bliss.”

“Am I for the hippopotamus?…This is not suitable for me.”

“My wife makes me cry a lot.”

“I like avoiding the conflict I tend to create.”

“Balance: obviously I’ve never achieved it and, therefore, do not like the word.”

“[All the Rambo movies were] bad, really wickedly stupid.”

“I am not claiming to be a completely mature human being.”

“Frankly my wife scares me to death.”

grieving great loss

I had drinks and painful moments with good people tonight.

I had really disconnected with the pain of being a woman going into ministsry. it really hurts.

it seems there is something important and beautiful in actually sitting in a sense of "woe is me that I am called to minsitry and get chastized for it when my brother is lauded for it." to actually sit and be in the depth of loss for myself and my sisters in the Kingdom that our brothers are embraced and even prodded into ministry and we only emerge through struggle - struggle that, as I experienced it, is numbing.

i have been deeply wounded, and pretending it away is not strong, but actually weak.

away in lake city, no place for a bed

sitting in a four hour meeting that should have been two hours, but everyone has an opinion and everyone's opinion is, apparently, worth more than families, than my school work, than health, than sanity, than the tireless work of underpaid ministers...so, it was a four hour meeting.

as the committee began to argue about increasingly petty things such as where and when coffee is served, my mind, under nourished - i made the faulty assumption that a 6-10 meeting would include dinner and hadn't eaten much more than carrotts all day - began to wander.

for a moment, i began to hold the good people have seen in me without dismissing them as uninformed or untruthful. i began to transport all the passion and hope i can feel when steeped in theology into the place i once hoped could be a community where theology lives. i began to feel a strange thing called confidence.

for a moment, i began to hold these things - i began to hold myself.

then, holding myself, i looked for a place to take and offer me. like a child, over excited about having bought the perfect gift, i looked with wide eyes for someone to take the gift and together marvel over it.

no one wanted it and, in fact, it disappeared behind some fogged curtian. i still saw its shadow as it left my hands and floated off to wherever it had been hiding.

why am i not that person? why is my ministry not that ministry? why do i have potential that seems to be imaginary or an optical illusion?

there's no space for me here. no space.

when i went on a mission trip to ireland, my mission team said they were amazed at how i moved into a place and a people and gently but firmly made space for myself.

and here, there is no space.

even as i hold myself, the space in my hands expires as the pain of wanting so desperately to give myself only to be rejected grows too bitter and intense and somewhere inside, i wish myself gone. i obediently disappear like a magic trick in a cloud of illusion.



then, who is our God?
our God had no place to be born, so Jesus came in a stable
our God's people had no place to live, so they prayed and marched and blew triumphant horns until walls fell and land became theirs.
our God was bannished to the point of death - not in a mystical cloud, but on a too real and ultimately cruel cross.
three days later, our God returned to embrace those who bannished "God with us."

quotes out of context, volume two, chapter two

Odd and deleterious things are coming out of [my] nose and mouth.

If I had my mind back, which I’m not sure it really was there ever, but I certainly don’t have it here right now.

If you want agony, be married.

My head is not fully on today.

You have 20 years to waste.

[Urination] for a male, is something he can stand almost completely apart from and yet participate in.

I got into a 15-minute discussion with a fellow urinator.

I really want to go to bed. I want to take a walk. I want sex, or I want something to eat.

You’re ridiculous. I should have just said that, you are ridiculous.

The night, actually, is fairly dark.

The suburban world kills marriages

You will have bloody hands every day of your life.

Imagine a Bitter Taste in Your Mouth

There are somethings that only some voices can share. I'm really tired of being "a women in ministry" because I just want to be a person in ministry - but, maybe it's important for people to see what pain following my calling and gifting has brought me...so, take a deep breath and begin to imagine being a woman called to ministry in middle class white America:

Imagine a decade of everytime you tell someone your dreams for the future, cowering like a beaten dog, wondering what chastization is coming your way.

Imagine being in high school and every time someone asks you the usual, "what are you going to do when you grow up" question, being scared - and meeting with not only disapproval of you, but even conversations with your parents about how they can fix the rebellious and sinful problem you are.

Imagine fianlly breaking away from that to dread the "what's your major" question in college.

Imagine your church praying for you to get married to a pastor so that you'll be satiated.

Imagine your friends all concocting some sort of career for you where you are not a pastor since "you've wasted all that education already."

Imagine just going to the cafeteria of your undergrad to eat lunch and having five or six people tell you that their pastor said that if you are a woman going into ministry, you need to repent and find a husband.

Imagine leaving everyone you know to cross the nation and arriving at a school where your first contact asks you how many women are in the MDiv and says the number scares him - you breathe a breath of rare hope - then he says he can't believe that a school like ours would let women into the MDiv program.

Imagine finally finishing that degree to be turned down for jobs because you are a woman - and worse - a single woman.

Imagine finally getting a position and being constantly mistreated by older men because you are a young woman.

This is only a taste, but maybe you see how a taste of something so bitter could be embittering.

Impressing No One

Who are we trying to impress? Who are we running for? Is God the evil scientist who places us in a rat race and watches us run around after some cheese that is, after all, just on the otherside of a piece of wood in God's maniacal maze?

Of course we know this is untrue. Of course we know God is love, God is personal, God ultimately sacrificed God's self for us - not so that we could be rats, but so that we could be more human - restored to God's image.

So, we are back to the question, who are we trying to impress - and what are we running for?

For the last two semesters, I worked full time at church and took a full load at school. Last semester, I even took my final class for GCTS. This semester, the work-aholism bug seems to have nuzzeled its way under a dear friend's skin and left her running from one job to the next. The only day she has off, she spends eight hours in class. Who are we trying to impress?

I am now only working 20 hours a week, but last week I worked something more like 60. This week I'll be at at least 30. Plus eleven credits. Who am I trying to impress?

Last night, I realized that I had been assigned 10 papers and probably close to 400 pages of reading due tomorrow. The syllabus arrived in my in-box on the 25th. A week and two days. There's just no possible way that can be done. So, I make plans not to sleep and break all my other engagements.

Then, it hits me: am I still a human being? Is my friend still a human being?

Somewhere, burried beneath the yoke we've opressingly put upon ourselves, we are still human. We are still creative, playful, tender, relational, and restful. We still possess the ability to enjoy something other than a late night television show before we rush to bed and start the rat race again.

So, last night, the human being deep inside me refused the old yoke. She stopped running the maze in search of not-even-God know's what. She stopped, and looked up at whom she had mistaken for an evil scientist and said, "I want to love you more than I want to do all this. I'm tired - bring me Sabbath!"

So, this morning I woke up, diligently and carefully chose an outfit for the day, enjoyed breakfast, refused to wear my painful high heels, and am now ready to go do the unthinkable: drop a class.

Today I will enjoy being human. I will savor minutes without fearing their end.

Today if you ask, "Who are you trying to impress?" My answer will be "No one. I'm just spending this day with God."

sin in general: be saved from this perverse generation

This weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a friend. We were discussing, in a geriatric style, the issues that face kids today versus other generations.

My friend said it’s all the same because it’s all “sin in general.” I told him that I think the issues facing our youth are much more difficult than in the past. To his surprise, I was not talking about drugs, sex, or alcohol. In fact, when I tried to explain that the tough issues facing our youth are much more though than the traditional problems he called “sin in general,” he seemed to completely ignore my response. It didn’t begin to marinate in his mind that other issues are more detrimental to an entire generation. Compassionately and passionately, I reminded him of global poverty and the AIDS pandemic. He clearly had no understanding of that meant. I threw out a stunning number: 18 million – the number of AIDS orphans expected by 2010. I further explained that, by 2010, it is expected that AIDS orphans could hold hands and circle the globe five times.

His response?

“What is that? I always hear stuff like that, you know, “these people could hold hands and go to the moon and back…[caloused and cynical laugh] it doesn’t mean anything.”

Sure, sure, maybe it is a little less meaningful than we might desire – at first. Then, imagine the faces – imagine them one by one until you’ve imagined 18 million sorrowful faces. Imagine their eyes – 36 million eyes - heavy with loss and fear, their hands, tired from caring for younger siblings, their ears, ringing from waling, their foreheads, un-kissed and naked to the trial of living amidst the greatest plague in human history. Then, suddenly, they all disappear as an American Evangelical announces, “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Sin in general. Sin in general….what does that mean? I don’t want to say it means sex, drugs, alcohol etc. I don’t want to say it means high crimes or even commercialism. I also don’t want to say, “it doesn’t mean anything.”

Maybe the toughest issue facing adolescents today is a “sin in general.” Maybe it is apathy and the removal of the image of God from the faces of the global suffering – especially children. Is this not the worst of all murders? Is murder not far worse that alcohol, sex, or drugs? Is apathy not a even greater and more destructive pandemic than AIDS?

Daily, we encounter verbal fornicators, ravaged by the disease of apathy and spreading it. I want to put a protective condom over my heart and require an apathy test of all that share intimate moments with me…and yet, that’s not right.

In Africa, there is a horrid rumor: if you have sex with a virgin, you can get rid of the disease.

Maybe, here, that is true. Maybe the cure for the apathy pandemic is deep and unique intimacy with those few resistant souls who press through cynicism to hold hope. Can hope and compassion be the cures to cynicism – which is, of course, the virus that turns to deadly apathy?

So, to this, I say, save me from “sin in general.” And to my beloved readers, in the words of Peter, I pray and urge, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” (Acts 2:40)

out of context again

here i sit, back in Dan's class, and with this return to Monday night disruption comes the triumphal re-entry of quotes out of context:

"the pink, the blue, and the yellow packets are not only carsonogenic, they are made by the devil. In people over 50 they are guaranteed to increase impotence, forgetfulness, and the ill effects of syphilis. well, i love spenda. in fact, i could eat it raw."

"All meat is good."

"It is impossible to scream and retain ellogance. i want you to hear, one cannot look good and yell."

"I'm fine with quiet times; I'm fine with noisey times; I'm fine with flannel graph."

"The nuclear family is crazy."

"You've got 2.2 this, and 2.2 that and the right kind of dog your particular culture says is acceptable."

"Please take out your check books and write a check to the Dan Allender yatch fund."

"I never go to a movie with out a book. I never go to a movie without a pen light to read my book. And I do it why? It infuriates my wife."

"Look, I don't like the Bible."

"Conversation between a man and a woman is never good. NEEEVVVEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRR!!!!!"

"I am willing to mess with you for literally years and years and years and..."

"I don't know what to do with my wife, she doesn't know what to do with me; the tv works."

desperately single amidst despairing divorce

pining, pining
rocking in a chair
like on a wave
come near, come near
leave me
not
alone

not alone

dining, dining
rocking in your arms
like on a wave
stay near, stay near
leave me
not
alone

not alone

dreaming, dreaming
rocking in my head
like on a wave
come here, come cheer
leave me
not
alone

not alone

scheming, scheming
rocking in my heart
like on a wave
come hear, come hear
leave me
not
alone

not alone

screaming, screaming
rocking in my own arms
like on a wave
come fear, come fear
leave me
now
alone

now alone

rocking on gentle waves
rocking in the high sea
wishing for peace

standing on placid oceans
stranded on currentless waters
wishing for some movement

woo and destroy
marry and divorce
wax and wane
it's all the same
it's all insane

and we're all
not
alone

not alone

so i stand, on the placid sea
i pray to be rocked
and grow nauseous at the thought of waves

The next film I watch will be: Gumnaam

"Billed in its outlandish trailer as "India's First Horror Thriller," Gumnaam follows the common Bollywood tradition of adapting a familiar convention or story into a psychedelic feast of music and mind-warping genre collisions. Up on the chopping block this time is Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, first filmed as And Then There Were None, which is followed with surprising faithfulness despite the frequent detours along the way.

A planeload of random passengers is forced into an emergency landing on a very large island with only one spooky house offering refuge from the torrential rain. Representing a cross section of society, the bewildered guests include a doctor (Madan Puri), a perpetually happy dancer (Nanda), studly would-be heartthrob Anand ('60s singer and director Manoj Kumar), and most memorably, a drunken showgirl named Miss Kitty (Bollywood favorite Helen). Inside the house they see a shrouded body which turns out to be the prankster butler/cook (Mehmood, with an odd Hitler moustache), who indicates he has been expecting them all to arrive and shows them into the dining room. There they find a book indicating that each person has committed murder at some point in their lives but escaped conviction, so their mysterious host has now decided to dole out punishment. One by one the visitors die over the following two evenings, but that doesn't stop them from indulging in a little beach party, a drunken duet, and an elaborate MGM-style dance fantasia in between all of the screaming and dead bodies. Christie fans, of course, shouldn't be remotely surprised by the way it all turns out."

Description from "www.mondo-digital.com/gumnaam.html"

crafting transformational moments and transforming fear

Did I hyperventalate? Not quite - but almost.

For months (okay, a month and a half), I've been dreading the arrival of a class: crafting transformational moments. When I read the title, excitement filled my naive mind. To top it off, the professor is from - or spent time in - IRELAND! I was nearly beyond my capacity for excitement.

Then, one deflating night, I talked with my dear friend Emily about the upcoming semester. I asked her what courses she was taking, "Crafting something or something like that - but it's really preaching."

"Shit." I said in my now anything but excited mind. It was not a "shit" of resignation, ambivilance, defeat etc. It was a deeply birthed cry of pain. Fear replaced my excitement and overcame my capacity even for fear. My mind and pulse raced as I attempted to make some peace with the fact that I would be in a preaching course. I never achieved that goal - at best, I achieved moments of denial and purposeful forgetfulness.

So, finally, today I went to class - with dread in hand and soul.

Several times, I breathed deep, and fearful sighs, but, over all was amazed at the gentle man who filled the threatening role of homeletics professor. In the midst of my phobia, I felt cared for. I sensed his desire to lead us as a group as we struggle to find voice for proclaimation in a post-Christian world.

Still I'm scared. Still I might hyperventalate - that may remain a possibility every Thursday throughout the semester. But, Hadden Robinson is miles away - along with his cold and frieghening critique. In his stead sits someone who is honest about struggle, gentle with fear, encouraging, collaborative, and so many other things I never dreamed a preaching prof to be.

Again, I am taken by the extravagent blessing of being a student at MHGS.

welcome back "Adventure," my friend and foe

the return of mars hill hit me tonight.

i was enjoying a quiet drive home from an eveing with jen, caleb, jaguar, and ocean - who proclaimed many many times "i don't want to see becky either!" sure, he's barely three, and therefore still acts as though he's two, missed his nap, and was overdue for bedtime - but it still hurts. anyway, i was driving home in my quiet (my cd player broke) car when questions of grief, presence, hope, story etc. invaded my head without warning.

"ahhh" i said to myself, "and so ends vacation. so many things to think about. so much disruption. so little time."

i journaled briefly in my car, having parked but not gone into my house yet, cataloguing the many stories and questions that met me, announcing the beginning of spring semester. then, i boldly though haggardly stepped out of my car and into my home (ok, there were some steps between the two as i do not park literally one step from my door).

the odd thing is, i had a soft and somewhat confident smile on my face. to quote bill murray, "this is an adventure." to the adventure i say, "welcome back - can't say i missed you much, but i'm glad you're here and will follow you wherever you lead."

stubbornly driven - pleading for freedom

"God leads; Satan drives."
Good words from Lisa Domke, my happily former (for her sake - meaning I am infinately glad she made her freeing exodus from my church) associate pastor.

I have been hoping and planning to leave my church as early as Easter and as late as August. I want to start a house church and begin working (probably volunteer to start) with street/at risk youth. This dream began to re-awaken hope, passion, vision etc.

Then, one of the congregants of my church decides to start a rumor that I won't stay longer than spring.

Crap. So, do I leave? Do I let him be right and continue his destructive way of being? Or, do I follow my heart?

I find myself revisiting Lisa's words and praying for less stubborness and more freedom.

a farewell to dearly loved SAM: why i am in deep depression today

sad, sad, deeply grieving news as the construction blight spreads:

I was all ready to go to SAM today - a bit sad that Louis Comfort Tiffany was no longer there, but still stoked for free Thursday (the first thursday of the month). Then...my roommate knocked on my door and, from the darkness, in an ominous voice, she bayed: "Starting today, SAM is closed for a year." By the time I got to my door, she had returned to her room, so that it was as though a ghost had come to speak doom then slink back into the depressing underworld.


Not only is my church plagued with construction that is at least six months behind, has left the church freezing cold with no heat, has pushed the youth from three different rooms and put two used toilets in temp youth room #3 during a lock-in - construction has not claimed another, more glorious, more joyously life-giving victum:
Seattle Art Museum is closed for a year - for construction -

so, it's everywhere.
okay, maybe that is a gross generalizaton - but
construction seems to disrupt many lives and much beauty.

So, goodbye dear SAM. I wish I would have known you were leaving. Why didn't you have a going away party? Every time I drive past the working man, I'll shed a tear for your absence - until we are gladly re-united.

To quote Michael W. Smith:
Packing up the dreams God planted
In the fertile soil of you
Can’t believe the hopes he’s granted
Means a chapter in your life is through
But we’ll keep you close as always
It won’t even seem you’ve gone
’cause our hearts in big and small ways
Will keep the love that keeps us strong
...Though it's hard to let you go
In the Father's hands we know
That a life time's not too long
(no a life time's not too long)
A life time's not too long


To live as

Friends

preparing for re-entry

i'm packing up and preparing to leave the bazaro universe known as disney world. no more haunting christmas music at every turn. no more cheesey and offensive approximation of diverse nations within mere footsteps. no more cartoon characters walking up to me and expecting that i will go crazy because they are waving a big, white foam hand in the air....and, no more enormous seas of people! yeah!

other things i'm leaving: spending 100% of my time with my parents and commercialism gone crazy, my dad (i know i already mentioned parents, but i think my dad deserved a second metion)

thing's i'm sad that i'm leaving: surprisingly good (though grossely over-priced) international wine, the span of a nation between me and my chuch/job, having my brother as a permabuffer between my parents and i.

the good news is, though, that in 12 hours, i'll be able to attempt some sort of real life again, without running to sacrasm and false laughter for defense at every turn.

my friends in seattle should know that the literal sea of people here has driven me to this decision: locking myself in my room for the majority of next week.

saturday i have a lock-in at church.
monday i'll be at greenlake - as always
tuesday and thursday i have youth group.
somewhere in there, i'm going to chill with jen.
other than this, i'm in my room and away from people - just a little detoxification time!

duet with jesse katsopolis

tonight, i sang with uncle jesse.

that's right, john stamos, formerly - and forever - uncle jesse from full house, and i had a sing along...with about a thousand other people....and only for one song in the middle of a choir concert he was narrating.

oh yes, the cheese is beyond mesaure here at disney world.

yesterday, we went to epcot. it was everything the simpsons spoofed and worse.

today we went to the animal kingdom. we saw numerous endangered species on a driven tour. the entire time, though, our "cast member/tour guide" (they call everyone who works here a "castmember") kept our minds on "big red" and "little red" - two fictional elephants who, in the end, are just like every other 1970's animatronic cheese-ball in disney world. depressing.

tomorrow - the magic kingdom.

the good/bad news: i've been in this non-sarcastic mood - trying to be present to the moment and not outside of it, judging it, and laughing rather than participating. in general, this is a good way to grow. the problem is that, at disney world, the moment is so ridiculously boring that being present to the moment means nap time. so.....i've reached new sarcastic heights and, paired with the biggest smart ass i know (my brother) i think tomorrow should be great fun!

i'll return to you with hokey photos and sincere posts once i return home and separate from my parents!

until then, dream sarcastic dreams for me!

free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, i'm free at at last!

over 100 pages - single spaced, but it's done and on a plane to Boston!

my final project from GCTS is finished and i am no longer a bi-coastal seminarian - just a mono-coastal one!


PRAISE GOD!
thank you friends for all your help and prayers!

look for a kick ass party in late january!

"You sit on a throne of lies."
-buddy the (not) elf

"liam neison is god"

-my intern neal

the day the lord has made

My mom and I can’t watch television together – least of all the news. She is drawn into the stories, makes dogmatic postulation and pronouncements of both judgment and affirmation. I laugh and constantly critique the information given and its validity. With local news, this is a laughable interaction. When we two step into the sacred world of Scriptures, on many levels these attitudes are troubling obstacles to relationship – both with each other and with the text. Put simply, this tectonic collide is a poster child for the meeting of modernity and post-modernity. If a mother and daughter who struggle so valiantly toward friendship abandon that sinking ship to the safety of separate shores and avoidance, where is unity? Beyond this uniquely unified relationship of mother and child, what hope is there for an already divided church? What does a church, who is one, do in the face of such a polarizing paradigmatic shift.

I am in the process of leaving an elderly church where I have been the youth minister for an agonizing year. In a conversation I recently had, I began to rage at the God who put me in this time – this desperate holding cell between modernity and post-modernity. Not only did we disagree, but our languages, though American English, were foreign. As in the wake of Babel, we were incapacitated to communicate. Like in Babel, our divergent generations seem hopelessly scattered. As these plates collide, the Himalayans are formed and old and young cry out on opposing sides – but with no language to be heard by each other.

Again, I wonder why I am here in this transition. Again, I wonder why I must inhabit the quick-sand between yesterday and tommorow? Then, again, is not the task of every servant, every generation, every morning which sun beakons, to live today - no matter how tattered the wake of yesterday and the pull of tomorrow may seem? Today may be a frustrating, paradoxical, and often strangling day to live - yet it is the day the Lord has made.

a broken heart for a broken world

i'm sitting in my office, sobbing uncontrollably.

today i recived my "one life revolution" resource packet. i watched some of the videos that come with it and my heart just broke.

where is God in a world where 20 million children are orphaned by aids?

where is God when a six year old contracts aids from caring for his dying mother's wounds?

how long have you been on the internet?
14 minutes? then one person has died of aids since you logged on.
28 minutes? less than a half an hour and two people are gone.

it's just too much.

how do you live in a world like this?
how do you worship God in this place?

job's life looks perfect in comparison.

what do we do?
how do i pay $13,000/year for school in the face of this?
how do i have netflix membership when that's nearly enough to care for an orphan?
how do i drive a car when one month's gas could send an orphan to school for a year?

more than one in three people in swaziland has aids.

how do you live?
how?

and in this, i want nothing to do with a God who allows such sorrow ---

------still, somewhere inside, i know that the ache i'm feeling right now is not mine, but Gods.

quotes and mullets: always beyond context

i went to everett yesterday - ooohhh the mulletude!

and....quotes out of context:

"Theraputic Llamas"

“Some of you eat, Some of you read theology. Again, how is that different than masturbation. Don’t fault me for occasionally pleasuring myself.”

“I think you find me attractive.”

“I’m not going to deny that I vomited 40 times.”

“I will eat you.”

Paraphrased: I hope the mariners beat the eagles tonight.

being kind to myself

here's my morning:

fear: shit. how did that happen? it's 10? at 3 i crawled into bed for a two-hour nap. shit. i'm so screwed!

resignation: there's no way i can get this project done.

frustration: [checking email] the church wants me do do what? before the 10th? do they even care that my final project is due then? why does no one there care about what they are doing to me?

fortitude: no, you know what, i am going to get this project done just so that i can get my masters and never end up at a church like that again.

resignation: who am i kidding. maybe if i hadn't gone to bed last night but...

epiphany: what if i weren't graduating? then i'd have an extra 8 days - 2 days after mhgs is finished.

budding hope: can i do that?

cynicism: probably not.

persistant hope: i should call them though.

[long confusing phone conversation of pulsating highs and lows as i eventually realized the girl i was talking to didn'y know what she was talking about and she finally knew too. finally, she asks someone else]

unbridaled enthusiasm: really!?! so all i do is fax you and tell you i'm not graduating in january and i get not 8 but 11 extra days! awesome.

cyncism bringing questions: one last question - i'm sorry - if i don't graduate in january, the only diffrence is that i don't get my diploma until may right?

unexpected glee: so i wouldn't get it until may again and since i'm not up for ordination or licensure, there absolutely no benefit to graduating now [brief moment of realizing how little my degree means - grieving that, but not caring since, no i get to sleep] awesome! thank you so much.

so, i'm not officially graduating in january.
seems a small thing...but if you know me, you know how driven i am.
so, i'm being kind and allowing myself to say, "who cares?"

scattered

"sounds like your life is pretty scattered," he kindly said - a wise understatement.

i am in constant motion passing from work to school to school work to my other school's work to a brief nap on annie's bedroom floor each night - only after forcing her to promise that she will make me get up at the end of my nap - to working on my arts organization. i want to scream most of the time, but don't simply for the lack of time.

again...prayers between now and 2006 are greatly appreciated.

to do lsd or to encounter - this is the question

“I wish you would try LSD.” I was lost in the wake of the words falling like pins off the tongue of my friend. One by one they had dropped – unheard. Suddenly, as the cumulative falling turned to a cascade, an unheard pin drop became a violently loud sound demanding response. She retreated from her shyly voiced hope, “But I know you never would.” My mind flew to many places. I remembered who I had always been. I remembered my negative morals, “I will never smoke. I will never drink. I will never have sex outside of marriage.” I remembered where these came from: my dad. More specifically, they came from the placard he placed on our door, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” More specifically yet, they came from the oft repeated phrase, “We don’t do that, we are Christians.” I realized that my old identity was buried deep within the bounds of a sturdy wall between us and them. More than the words my friend so cautiously spilled on the floor between us, I was lost in the wake of that identity. I seriously stumbled over the question, would I do LSD? Why? Why not? As I worked to catch my balance on the issue, I met the meat of the interaction, knowing the point at hand was not whether I would do LSD but whether I would abandon old scripts in the name of encountering my friend.
Sometimes my gratitude for eternity encasing itself in a single tense moment is beyond measure. I had time to collect and reach out to her, “Hmm. I’m wondering why you are inviting me to this?” This intentional turn opened up dialogue and meeting as she faithfully recalled our greatest story. Late one night, after I read Buber the first time, we found ourselves in the most exquisite encounter. “It’s like that all the time when you’re on LSD – you feel this weird connection. It reminds me a lot of all that Buber stuff you talk about.” There is the dilemma: I don’t know why I won’t do LSD, and I do want encounter. Then, suddenly, I do know why I won’t do LSD: all the tumultuously transformational words that accompany encounter – mutuality, reciprocity, understanding, and care.

the last sunny day

The rain had pounded the earth with soothing violence for days. Fog had muddied vision and left us living in a haze. Today, however, the sky was blue and the sun was warm. As what seemed like a chilly spring day met with the fresh scent of fall-turning-winter rain, we sat outside of Caffé Ladro on top of Queen Anne. She struggled as always to avoid eye contact. I wanted to dive into the deep corners of her life, but I also didn’t want to. She wanted to be seen, but also didn’t want to, so we shallowly danced.

“It’s a beautiful day. I didn’t think we’d get another one of these.”
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
“How’s running start going?
“It’s really hard.”
[Shit. I told her it was easy. It was easy for me…but then I’m hoping to get a PhD…shit. I need to stop telling people what to do, or that things are easy when they aren’t. shit.]
“Oh, maybe we could study together sometime.”
“That’d be nice.”
[silence]
“Yeah.”
[silence and multiple sips of our respective hot chocolate and soy medici]

I don’t remember how the dance became something intimate. I don’t remember how we got there, but before I knew it, I found myself telling a 16-year-old, whom I am paid to teach to love God, to be angry at God.

“Please be angry at God. You have every right to be angry with God and I would hate for you to flee this moment of anger in thinking you should not be angry at God.”

I watched as those words somehow spoke some magic word that opened the door to her heart. “Speak friend and enter.” Her fast and dodgy eyes quit darting and held mine as we entered that space between us. When her eyes steadied, something left. Or, maybe when something left, her eyes could steady.

For years she had shown a perfect Christian front, fundamentalist, Bible-reading [bashing?], finger pointing, judging. For years, under that, she had been angry. Under that, she was ashamed for her anger at God. Present to her heart, I invited her to accept that anger, in response, she invited me to share that anger. We sat in transformative silence, both of our eyes dampened with the rain that wasn’t in the sky this day.

belated thanksgiving and early christmas

I am staring out the window and all I see is the foreground. In the foreground stands a desolate tree. Her leaves have forsaken her and left her with nothing but exposure. Her depressing grey brown bark is covered with patches of moss, the greenery that grows when the sky rains tears and the earth seeps dew-drop tears leaving the surface drenched with seasonal sorrow. The tree stands as a prophetic marker for me and my heart sinks with the idea of winter.

There is history to this sinking. The two worst seasons of my life were winters at Gordon-Conwell. Once the trees lost their friendly foliage, it was gone for months. The first snow came before Reformer’s day then the snow and bone-chilling cold stayed for six months. The first year I was there, my friend and I banned together to find the white witch and kill her so that winter would end. By the time the leaves returned, they reflected my mood, as I would be traveling home to my beloved, green Seattle.

Barren trees have come to mean death, fear, isolation, dry and weary days. So, as I gaze at this pitiful lifeless tree, I see in it dark days, and, addictively, I give into the Seattle scene depression.

Still staring out the window, I notice a host of green leaves still clinging to trees. They are still sprightly and still alive. Some have turned yellow, but those are still clinging to the tree in an act of loving defiance. I sigh a slight breath of relief then let go. They will soon be bare as well. Their presence does not ward off winter.

Staring further out the window and encountering the landscape, I hear the voice of a further friend. Behind the green leaves lives my forever and for-granted friend: the evergreens. Every weary day, they will be green. Their tone is not sprightly. It is not breath-takingly bright. It is not something to get high off of like a spring or summer day in Seattle. It is simple and constant. It is nourishing. It asks of me, walk with me, in soft peace.

This time of year, we ask what we are thankful for. I am thankful for a God who is near, who is a deep and consistent green. Who will not forsake me to the winter. Who is always there, and so, always for-granted. Where, I tend to want your love only if you threaten to leave me, only if it is a game, only if your presence sends me grasping for unsatiating more and more – this season, I am thankful for a God whose love endures even when my eyes are glued to the barren tree in the foreground of a forest of brilliant evergreens.

May I encounter you, my steadfast friend and father, as often as I see your faithful green trees this season.

Psalm 75:1
We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks, for your Name is near; men tell of your wonderful deeds

I Chronicles 16:34
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.

i would write something better...but i'm tired.

there are so many meaningful things i would write---if i wasn't utterly exhausted.

instead, two meaningless things:

people have expressed that i should clarify why rockibilly boys are a problem. it's not because i don't like rockibilly boys. it is because i do like them.

pray for me. i have like zero down time for the next three weeks. then i have a week of church and family parties. then i'm going to florida with my immediate family for a week. if i make it to 2006, i've done well.

day dreaming

i was driving in my car and tripped into a memory. as my car sped on auto pilot and my mind wrapped me up and delivered me to a small dank office with 1971 carpetting, a slow and familiar voice tiptoed into my ears.
"Wooooww Beeeeccccky, thaaaaatttt iiiiissss aaaa lloooootttt tottttttt thhhiiiiinnkk aaaaabooouuuuttttt. Iiiii'mmm veeeeerrrrrryyy exciiiiiiited fffoooooorr yooouuuuu." Even his memory annoyed me as Dr. Schutz made each and every syllable stretch into eternity. "Could I praaaaaayyyy foooorr youuuuuu now?" I nodded my head and in my memory, the lights faded as my eyes lids dropped like curtians.

I'm not sure where I was, but I know I was no longer in that dank little office. I was somewhere, somewhere open, sacred, close, with God. I lost track of Dr. Schutz's words as even time seemed to fade into the background. I knew I was loved and that God was going to heal the fear and anger that had attached themselves to me by occupying the hole my illusion of a father left. I felt peace.

Then these words pounded in my ears and brought me fearfully back....

"I'm getting a word from the Holy Spirit." Dr. Schutz spoke quick and crisp and may as well have had a finger to his ear as he sounded like a network news reported about to say, "this just in." He continued, "Yooooouuuuuu..." the slow Schutz returned making each sound excruciating in its pregnancy, "aaaarrrreeee gooooiinnggggg tooooooooooo."

what!? what!? what am i going to do - ahhh you're killing me. just say it!

I remembered the feeling, but as I was driving, the dvd of this ministry skipped. i couldn't remember what Dr. Schutz said I was going to do.

"giiiiiivvvee"

come one!, come on! I'm waiting, get to the point - I can't handle this!

"biiiirrrrtttthhhh"

WHAT! never mind. stop. stop right now. don't you dare finnish that sentence. if i have kids, they are going to be adopted. NEVER WILL I GIVE BIRTH! stop!

"too maaaaaaaaaaaannnnyyyy [slow happy chuckle]"

MANY? fuck no!! do not finnish what you are saying. there is no fucking way i'm giving birth to many anything. no. No. [insert trembling and more fear than i remember feeling in my life].

I remembered all of this as the DVD became unstuck with the feeling of fear and hilarity as i related this story to friends: the fear of many children relieved as he said the next word....but i could not remember what the next word was. i remember that i sighed a breath so deep i cold feel it all over my body - but i could not remeber the word. i tried and tried. I was no longer in the room, but in my car pounding the steering wheel..."many what? this is so fucked up. someone prophesies over me and i can't remembere what he said. shit. many what?"

finally I remembered - and as I remembered, i began to cry.

"miiiiinnnniiiiiiiiiiisssstttrrrrriiiiiieeeeeeesssss."


now to remember. now to have faith for the future. now to work with the end in mind.

i may dream many far fetched things, but that doesn't mean they can't come true.

the (non) future of food

please watch "the future of food" - a documentary on food production in america and it's world wide tyranny.

walk the line

i got all dressed up in black and went to the midnight showing of "walk the line."

i have three things to say:

1. A movie full of rockibilly boys is too much. i love seattle, but there are no rockibilly boys here - which is probably actually a good thing for me. :(

2. "Your fans are good Christian people, they don't want to hear you singing in a prison trying to cheer up a bunch of rapists and murderers." "Well then they aren't Christian."

word. there's a pastor in Bellevue who needs to hear that.

3. over all, the movie was pretty disappointing.

never, never, never, never, NEVER, N-E-V-EEEEEEE-RRRRRR fly sun country!

As I type this, I am listening to a 1983 version of Broadway while sitting on a slightly padded vinyl seat and drinking a $7 Mike’s Lemonade. The cheese of the music is an intimidating mass of cheese topped only and brilliantly by the airport bar. Why, you may ask, did I spend almost enough for a Martini at the posh Martini bar across from Caffe Minnie’s in Seattle on a Mikes. The clever bar tender was wise enough to name the steep price after handing me the drink and letting me take my first, expensive sip. Why, you may ask, at 4:00pm was I that desperate for a drink? Why, you might also ask, are you experiencing a premenition of yet another sarcastic rant? These are all good questions and to each of them I offer this answer: Sun Country Airlines.

I am in the drawn-out process of returning home from a children’s ministry training, so in the name of this event, I will describe my Sun Country experience via an acrostic.

Seattle eludes me remaining my beautiful home but ever

Unreachable across mountains and snow – and once I return.

Never again. Never will I leave my love on a craft painted with the words Sun Country

Couldn’t I have paid the extra $50 for a ticket
On
United Airlines?
No doubt a minimum wage job would have made up the price on time I have spent on hold, in a holding pattern, or waiting for a grossly
Tardy flight to finally deliver me to a destination
Really
Y would I ever fly Sun Country again?

Sunday night, unexpecting, I rushed to the airport – thinking I might be late. A breath of relief surged through my tense body as I read that my flight was delayed. How long? An hour and a half. I calmed myself and optimistically thanked God for the extra time to work on a paper that never had any hopes of being worthy. Finally the plane boarded and thanks to Christian morals, my ride to Still Water was waiting for me at 2am – 3am to her.

Three days later, I show my apparent learning disability as I rush to the airport – thinking I might be late. A breath of relief surges through my body as I realize my clock is wrong and I’m on time. A sigh of helpless anger brings an aftershock, returning every ounce of stress as I see the sign, “Sea 7:15.” At first, I wonder – ok I’m pretty dumb sometimes – “Who has a flight to the sea?” Then I realize Sea is short for something… “Sea…l? Sea….ting? Sea….first? Sea…fair? No. I shook my head and laughed – Seattle. Is that the time in Seattle? That’s not right. Seattle’s BEHIND Saint Paul. They’ve got it all wron….no. No. Shit. Shit. SHIT! That’s my flight. That’s my fucking flight. THREE HOURS DELAYED!! What am I supposed to do in this dinky air port for THREE hours!? Are you kidding me? Ok, fine, I’ll go to the bar.

So, here am I. Here I will be for three hours – a time barely surpassing the time I spent on hold working out mistakes the airline made on my ticket.

Like I said, never! NEVER NEVER EVER! fly Sun Country Airlines.


Post Script:
By the time I actually arrived, my flight was going on 5 hours late!

an ego

dear and beloved male friends, please do not take this as male-bashing or as anything against you.

egotistical men in a circle of women make me want to scream. they are right in all they say. they are experts on every subject. when they aren't experts, they tell you they are smart or that they know someone smart or that they've read some book by a smart person and therefore, they now know more than you.

why is it so hard for a man to admit a woman knows more than him on any subject other than the ones he has relegated to his wife - and in such a case, his wife knows more than you.

there is not an inch to live in. there is not an ounce of respect. there is no permission to retain your own thoughts, opinions, or convictions in light of theirs. there is no room for me - and in that i pitty such men because they will never have an i/thou moment with a woman because no woman is allowed to be thou.

in the wake of one such man, tonight i find my self in rage and sorrow. i feel as though when he pushed me out the door, something of me left and it will take a couple of days to find it again. i'm sad. just sad.

transversely, i met another man today who empowered and blessed me. when we parted and he said he'd pray for me and that he wanted to know where my life goes from here, i believed him....well, i guess i believed the other man when he said the same thing, but i think he wants to know where i go so that he can add any greatness i meet to the long list of stories that make him cool. the other man had enough compassion for meeting and enough cynicism to know nothing is as simple as we can make it seem.

i guess i don't really have a point...just frustration.

incarnation as the beginning of a new song

A recommendation:
Listen to the album War
Then listen to Yahweh from How to dismantle an atomic bomb
The lyrics say:
“How long must we sing this song?”
“I will sing a new song.”
“How long to sing this song?”
“Bodies strewn across the dead end street.”
“A new heart is what I need. Oh God, make it bleed.”

War laments yet hopes amidst Irish desperation.

The latter album is named for the hope of peace.
The lyrics say:
“Take these shoes clicking clacking down some dead end street. Take these shoes and make them fit.”
“Take this soul and make it sing. Yahweh.”
“Still I’m waiting for the dawn.”
“The Sun is coming up on the ocean. This love is like a drop in the ocean.”
“Take this heart and make it break.”

It feels as though Bono has found a new song.
It feels as though the not yet of the already not yet is beginning to be found.
It feels as though the questions of War are beginning to be answered in How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb.
Maybe Bono asked for a new song and through the years has found that the life he lives – the life he co-authors with God is the new song we wait to sing,

Are our lives how to dismantle an atomic bomb?
Are our lives the answer to war?
Are we the already of the already/not yet?
Certainly the incarnation is.

My prayer for all of us: Let Jesus be born in us each day. Let us be makers of Shalom.

the body of christ - "i think i broke it"

as i am quitting my job and realizing how "broken" the church has made me...

picture "I think I broke it" from www.explodingdog.com

old wounds

ocean (my best friend's two-year old) fell and hit his chin so badly that he needed stitches a while ago. now, even though it's healed, every time he hits it slightly, it bruises.

old wounds are often that way.

today i walked into whole food and assumed i was safe. i have forgotten how often i am safe now that i live in seattle and am attending mhgs. the only bambi experiences* i have are at church - and i avoid that a lot. i live a safe life. so, i'm in whole foods, happily assuming everyon there is either a pagan or at least a liberal. i feel warm, like under a down blanket on a cold night, in the thought of an evangelical free zone - no one to pounce on old wounds.

in my confidence, i struck up conversation with the woman in front of me. already posing to apologize for being a part of the tradition that is soooo far from Christ, i stepped gently around the name of my school. when i finally said the words, "mars hill," her eyes rolled. i assured her that the school has nothing to do with the church. she said, i know, i go to the church. three or four sentences later, my safe grocery store visit turned into yet another condemnation for being a woman and a minister.

fuck. when will that end? if whole foods is not safe, is there a safe place???

it occurs to me, though, that i was ready to apologize for being christian, but not for being a minister.

like i said, old wounds are like that sometimes.



* a bambi experience comes from the scene where his mom tells him not to step out into the thicket - it's not safe there, hunters can see you there. when you step into unprotected ground with condemning evangelicals, that is a bambi experience. ie last year a friend and i were at gordon conwell joking with our friend johnny that he'd better shave his head now, because when he gets married in a couple of weeks, his wife won't let him. "Do you think that's what marriage is about? No. I'm not going to get my jollies before I get married...." he lectured us. Arrow in the heart - a bambi expereince.

manger art

December 3rd, 5:00pm-Midnight
At my house
$5 Suggested Donation
Live music
Art
Food
Espresso
Wine

Good times!

Artisan items for sale - good for Christmas gifts!

All money goes to benefit World Vision.

Manger Art is part of my small arts organization, "Work of Art"

Work of art seeks to affect global change on an organic, interpersonal, local and tangible level, putting faces on poverty and stories to injustice as we make the intangible tangible and the seemingly insurmountable within reach.

We desire to engage a generation emerging into adulthood in communal stewardship of time, talent, and finance by encouraging a life that engages global issues and values the beauty and voice of art.

warning!

i've been on hold the third time for 15 minutes.

never fly sun country airlines!

true confession

some time ago, i posted a link to one of dr. james' posts about reconciliation through confession. i asked people to envision what this might look like in seattle. dr. james lives in the town next to the infamous salem, ma, so confessing to witches was the proper confession for his context. what about seattle though? sure, we could confess to witches, and maybe we should, but my friend marilyn and i were talking yesterday and thought that the homosexual population in capitol hill might be a better fit.

i'm too busy to start dreaming about this until january. but, please start thinking about what that would look like.
* what community would the confessors come from?
* what would we confess?
* how do we bring sincerity to this rather than making something contrived?
* should we first study the history of the issue in capitol hill?
* what would something like this mean for our lives?
* how would we incarnate God in this?
* can we see God incarnated in those we confess to?

for james, kellie and jeff (not gentry - the one who was there), what do you think of this? for anyone from beverly or salem, what would be your wisdom in this regard?

dreams versus plans

a friend challenged me this week to dream and not just visualize.

dreams are often lofty, unatainable, wild etc. dreams rarely come true. but, the question is this: will the fact that dreams will not come true inhibit me from dreaming? the answer a friend offered was "no."

i can dream of a future or of a house church or of an art show that is far beyond my most insane hopes of reaching and allow that dream in itself to be art. i can allow it to testify to the image of God in me. i can allow it to testify that we are created for things better than this world could possibly offer. then, i can allow the dashed hopes that stingingly follow lost dreams to be prophetic testimonies against a world that destroys hope.

so, rather than visualizing what it possible and attempting to stretch it another step, i will attempt - dare - to dream....then maybe mediate the dream with a dose of reality.

i'm glad a house church is months away - time to dream before time to plan!

surprise

sometimes...just sometimes...growth doesn't have to hurt as much as you thought.

a cancerous body

with every passing day, i lose more hope for the church
do i lose hope for whose body she is?
with every passing day, i am bruised more deeply by the church
do i blame whose body she is?
with every passing day, i see her for more of a whore.
where is the fool whose bride she shall be?

with every passing day, she is more murderous.
with every passing day, she is treaterous
with every passing day, she further defaces me
until i am unrecognizeable

where is the face who held passion
where are the eyes in who's pupil was reflected a vision of hope
where are the cheeks that were rosey with the contentment of true love
where is the steady brow of faith
where has the voice of the prophet gone?

murdered. murdered. murdered. MURDERED!

"we have so long lived in the dark night of the soul that we know no light
if you bring it near us, we will kill you
in order to extinguish its faint but piercing glow"

and so today i declare my independence.
though i am you, you are nothing to me
and in that separation, i find an inch to breathe

may God raise me from the shallow grave you dug for me

may i, resurrected, one day have life enough to rejoin you
may i return to the body that has abused me
may i be rejoined to the dysfunctional family that has utterly destroyed me
may i find my face
may i find courage to live

another day

hoping

in

for

with

the cancerous body of Christ.

help!

i can't keep my eyes open.

i feel like i'm going to faint.

in two hours i'll be watching 20 kids until 10pm

then until midnight, i get to clean up

then get set up for the next morning when we walk the children through the exodus

then i have a work of art meeting

then i finish two papers and go to class all night on monday.


pray for me!!!

The icicles are always warmer on somebody else's home.

Sleepless (or near sleepless) night two of three begins.

I am sitting in my ice cold house. The heater is broken and I can no longer tell if the constant shivers and old-man like stiffness in my bones is sleeplessness or the beginnings of hypothermia. The table is so cold, I hesitate to put my computer on its surface. I feel as though I am back in Boston. I remember the night I wore two winter hats, a pair of tights, three sets of wool socks, three pairs of sweatpants, a t-shirt, a sweater, a hooded sweatshirt, a jacket, and three pairs of gloves to bed as a cuddled up inside a sleeping bag blanketed with three heavy blankets.

Then, at 3am, the fire alarm went off. Trust me! Trust me, there is no fucking fire! Nothing related to heat could possibly find an unthawed nook in our giant apartment complex. Finals are tomorrow and I will not leave the room temperature coccoon I've carefully made. I pull tighter into my warmer world where I can pretend it is a December night in Seattle, which would now seem like tropical paradise.

The alarm presists.

Then, the voice of a calm young woman, who obviously is not in danger herself of leaving a freezingt apartment complex to go into a below freezing night that, at 3am, is surely at least 20 below zero. Before coming to Boston, I never believed that there was even a purpose of single digit marks on a thermometer. Negative degrees? That's not possible. Are freezers even that cold? I still don't know. Kind of doubt it.

The woman says, "Floor 9, evacuate at the tone. Floor 9 evacuate at the tone."

I stared at the ceiling where her voice seemed to be coming from. "Don't you dare go down to floor five. If you go down to floor five, I will find you and rip those falsely soothing vocal cords right out of your safe and warm throat."

"Floor eight, evacuate at the tone."

"Floor seven,"

Her chorus dragged on like a blood curdling, sadistic version of 100 bottles of beer. "one thousand people sleeping warm in their beds. one thousand sleeping people. take 100 out, freeze them in three feet of snow, 900 people sleeping warm in their beds."

"Floor six."

I was no longer threatening and it was no longer in my head. Out loud I was praying: "God, you brought me to the fuckng tundra that has been a tundra to me in every sense of the world. It is spiritually dry and cold. It is freezing the life out of me making me hard and tired, and all I'm asking for in return for obediently following you to this wintery Hell is one night at room temperature, sleeping before a final exam. That is all."

God seemed not to care. There was more tundra for me to experience.

"Floor five, evacuate at the tone. Becky Tucker, move your freezing ass outside so that you can be emersed into an ice age at the tone."

I obeyed. I always obey. I talk big but am a people pleaser in the end. Authority runs me like Greenlake joggers run their pit bulls - the dogs may have been ferocious, but love lulled them into compliance and to matching the gate of some silly middle aged man in a bright blue sweat suit listening to sermon tapes from Chuck Colson as he starts his day at God's heal.

Five hours passed - ok 2 - ok, probably a half hour - but it felt like five hours and I'm writing the story so....five hours passed before they let us back in. "It's ok, there's no fire," they told us. I was too cold to be sarastic or indignant. I was too tired to run back to my bed. I gave in. Cold it is. Cold it will be. I give up fighting the weather - but not my dreams of home.

What's the point? I don't know. The table feels warmer now. The temperaturehas hints of a tropical breeze. Harry Middleton and fly fishermen everywhere are laughing at silly men claiming to know an equation for meldeing predestination and free will. Together with them I pitty those poor students who are cramming for their exams.

It could be worse. God has been good to show me the cold so that I can remember paradise when I am near it.

Two sleepless nights will be done in 8 short hours with only one more to endure. Praise God for Sunday night's rest. I'm sure I will meet God there and will have been changed in the compiled hours of deprivation.

why i hate fly fishing

so...i was up until 4am then up again at 7am. i'm probably going to be doing that two more times before monday.

i've to got be honest. i hate harry middleton and i hate fly fishing and if i have to read one more word about either, i might just quit school.

dreaming of brilliant fantasty worlds

i was talking with neal yesterday about a group from mhgs called eagle and child. i told him i might be ditching youth group on thursday so i can go.

he found the name first odd, then nerdy. i explained that it is the name of the pub that lewis and tolkien used to hang out at.

he laughed at me then asked, "are you going to dream up brilliant fantasy worlds." then he ventured on some silly tangent in a british accent. but i stayed with his words.

as i have been faced with the modern church and broken by it - made hopeless by it - it almost makes me scared to dream of something different. however, as i begin to ponder tomorrow's church - sinners and saints seattle maybe - i feel myself dreaming again...

so....yes neal, i hope we do dream of brilliant fantasy worlds.

...and that to the fantasy, may we add flesh

captian planet, kellie gentry, and a guy named jeff i don't think i know: forever my heroes

tears, the word wow, and swirling thoughts on how to do something similar are all i have in response to james' post, "Confessions Like Reed During Ren Fayre "

please read this blog...and if you're in seattle, think of what it might mean for us here.

oh to be sinners and sainst seattle - and to even remotely resemble our older brother...

academics runs through it

I read A River Runs Through It, watched the movie twice, and read the book again. I may still have missed it. Why? If Maclean is haunted by water, I am haunted by academics. The task of reading this text reminded me of walking to Kerry park with my friend Chris. “Where are you going?” he confoundedly asked. “K e r r y park?” I spoke the word so slowly it became at least four words. Why was Chris asking me where I was going when we just decided to walk to Kerry park. “Umm,” he still seemed confused, “is Kerry park going somewhere anytime soon? You’re walking like your chasing someone or something. What are you looking for.” Feeling chastised for my gate, I slowed, stood silent, and tapped my finger to my nose, as I always do when I am in deep thought. “Nothing I guess. Nothing. Maybe that’s the problem. What do I do when I’m looking for nothing? Am I present when I’m looking for something? Is it possible to be present here when I’m looking for something that must be ‘there’ because it isn’t ‘here.’ Or maybe it’s between us and I’m looking for encounter – but my rushing is a hinderance……….[on and on into nauseating infinity]” I’m sure Chris wondered if my existential response, floating once again to a cerebral place of philosophical inquiry, was a passive aggressive way to punish him for questioning me. At any rate, I’m sure he wished he had not interrupted my rush.

We walked in silence for a while as I thought. I am so used of rushing through academics and the many tasks academics push into a two-hour corner, that when I am not looking for the answer to a question, I don’t know how to be. “You’re doing it again. Dude, for a short chic, you walk really fast. Can you walk slowly and just take things in?” I stopped, breathed, and tried. Each step, I tried to match Chris’ gate. When I managed to match his gate, I began to multi-task by looking at the moonlit sky, the ivy growing on old brick walls, children and parents walking, elderly couples huddling for warmth, dogs dodging in and out of the brush, curious about every element and smell of their trek. All these things had been there always, but until I stopped and forced myself to look, I knew them not and robbed my journey of their beauty.

I am haunted by academics, and those few moments I allow a ghost to be nothing more and the haunting not to imprison me, I am raptured in a beauty that utterly destroys and reconstructs me. Nowhere is the difficulty of meeting such moments, nor the transformative beauty of these moments so stark as in reading.

Josipovici closes his chapter “reading” with a reading benediction:
Our task is to wrestle with this book as Jacob wrestled with the ‘man’ in pitch blackness, and not for the mere sake of the contest in order to wrest the book’s secret from it, but in order that we may hear it utter its blessing upon us: but that, we must not forget, is what we would expect of our encounter with any great book.

Though I’ve been thinking of that quote for four days, it still stings as powerfully as the first time it invaded my rushing mind just like Chris’ voice. I remember back to seminary when a TA suggested we read the Greek New Testament for devotions because the foreign language would “slow us down.” Expletives! I want to should endless expletives if this is what it has come down to. In order to encounter a text, I must have difficulty reading? In order to walk slowly, taking in the scenery from the Queen Anne Caffee Ladro to Kerry Park, maybe I need to forget how to walk or gain a physical impairment. So, after reading the text only to realize I failed miserably at encountering so much as a word, I watched the movie. After watching the movie a second time, I felt prepared to return to the text. I imagined the boys’ father with a metrenome, holding me to a gentle, artful pace as I sought God’s grace for the hurried mess that has become my reading. Could I enter the story the way Paul entered the water? Could I come even within three years of thinking like the characters? Could I sit on the shore and watch the way Norman did as the world melts into one thing and a river runs through it? Not quite, but I came closer, and that was enough for this week.

sinners and saints seattle

so...here's my new idea:
next summer or fall, i hope to start a house church.
i want to rent or possibly buy (scary but possible) a house in a poorer area of seattle then move in with a bunch of people (at least 6 or so but if i could, i'd love to get a HUGE house and have even more than that) to start a house church.

probably sometime in january, i want to sit down with all the people that are interested and start discussing what it would look like.

very little am i sure of except that the church would be called "sinners and saints seattle" and would be familially connected with my spiritual family back in boston.

righteous anger: an important story for knowing me

in this moment, i am overwhelmed with tearful, intense anger at gordon-conwell.

i realize a lot of you who read this now don't know the story, so here goes:
when i came to gordon-conwell, i wore my heart on my sleeve. i cried all afternoon every sunday my first four sundays because i missed the kids i worked with. empathy would make my eyes well up in phone conversations. the thought of global injustice, rather than burning as fotter for growing cynicism, broke my heart.

in a lot of ways, from the beginning, i feared that gcts would put me on spiritual prozac - evening out the once prophet-like emotion i had for the world, for those around me, and in my honest relationship with God. i vowed not to let this happen.

then, i come home for christmas and the rich oppertunity to enter into my friend's venture into motherhood. this christmas break was to be a time of new life - not death. after the punk rock baby shower i threw, we all went to lord of the rings. my brother and i came home tired and ready to sleep. he, though, hopped on the computer. as i put my pajamas on and hopped into the comfort of my childhood bed, the falsity of the comfort it offered - the falsity of comfort and of my childhood crashed to the floor and broke into irreconcilable shards as my brother knocked on the door. some haunting nuance to the knock informed me that what followed would change everything. i tended to be over-dramatic though, so i swallowed my fear and almost spoke as though i wasn't scared at all: "what's up jake?"
"ummm...you need to come down stairs and see what i found on the computer."
"is everything ok jake?"
my optimisticc brother said starkly, "no. no, nothing is ok."

i stopped in the moment and prayed, "God give me whatever i need for what is waiting in the dark cold of our "family" room."

what i found waas that my dad had been, yes, looking at some hardcore porn - but that was nothing. he had been ordering women's clothing, wigs, etc. he had been researching surgical procedures and had set up an identity not as michael but as micha.

where once my brother and i spent the week before christmas snooping for a peak at the gifts our parents had lovingly picked out and poorly hidden, we treked to my dad's office no in search of gifts or of love, but of a truth we began to realize went too deep to understand. we found letters, journal entries - proof after proof that my dad was living another life as a woman and was planning on leaving my mom to pursue this.

i didn't cry that night. i just sat shivering in bed until morning.

when morning came and my dad was gone, jake and i confronted our mother with the information. it was not news to her. it had been going on - to her knowledge - for at least 12 years. she never told us because she wanted us to have "normal" childhood. she was visibly broken by the fact that we now knew. jake was disturbed. i was disturbed. but, i decided to be strong for them and, when i returned to gordon-conwell, i would break down.

fast forward two excruciating weeks and arrive with me at gordon-conwell. michael paul and nate knew i needed them. i prepared them for me being a wreck. jenny picked me up at the airport and i dumped everything on her over some piss-poor pancakes at i-hop. she wanted to take care of me as i recovered and grieved. for possibly the first time, i was willing to be cared for. we arrived at gcts and it felt like relief - i could let go and fall apart.

jenny drove me to get my mail since my car was under about 5 feet of snow...how nice of gcts to transport all of the snow in the parking lot onto my car! i got my mail and there was a letter from the dean of students: concerns have been raised about your conduct as a student.

what! WHAT!!!!! i might have said fuck, but, at that point, i was still so evangelical and pure that i wouldn't have said fuck.

long story short, i almost got kicked out, and my instability as i began to fall apart over my dad played a huge role. i had to go to counseling for assessment and spent 10 weeks trying to prove to a stranger that i was stable.

meanwhile, michael paul, who had been protector and comfort in the fall now sat acroos a cafe table with me, arms crossed and leaning back in his chair. he laughed at my tears with judgement and told me - one month after finding out about my dad and two weeks after almost being kicked out of school - he told me, "you are wallowing. if you can't get over this, i don't know if we can be friends." probably not a verbatum re-telling, but essentially that is what i heard and i do know that he told me i was wallowing.

the conclusion: no one can hold my brokeness. when i grieve, i am unacceptable and will be abandoned and judged.

and so here i am - once fearless, once wearing my heart on my sleeve, and aparently, i have become hard.

maybe this is being hard, but fuck you gordon-conwell for that! fuck you for teaching me "pittied are those who mourn for they will not be comforted - they will be judged." i want myself back and don't know how to get there.

as i said, in this moment, i am overwhelmed with tearful, intense anger at gordon-conwell.

good news

my brother's recommendation got in. good thing. i didn't want to be a lapsed pacifist!

always a big sister

i'm a pacifist, but don't fucking fuck with my little brother!

he might not get into the degree he wants from his school because a recommendation is late in the mail and the dude who it was from may have failed to fax it.

so, rather than a degree in history with teaching certification, he might just have a degree in history - which is worth almost nothing.

i'm pissed for my little bro! i want to go yell at his reference then storm into western and demand they admit him.

i can't. i'm obviously a piss poor pacifist. but, i'll always be a protective older sister - nobody but me gets to mess with my brother!

...not to mention the heart attack my mom will have!

out of context

“Heavy drinking sometimes helps.”
“I am not like the other faces in this bland, cow-like universe.”
“[My wife and son] were both unhappy which is really the point of living well.”
“I was paying $50 a day for the privilege of having my child abused by someone else.”
“I found myself feeling like a free bird, a fat free bird.”
“My son and my wife collapsed in each other’s arms absolutely delighting in the violence they had just seen.”
-Dan Allender, 10/17/2005


though, this time especially, it seems off to quote him out of context as i -- who haven't cried in front of people since the gcts mess clumped itself with my dad and a close friend told me i was "wallowing." -- i was crying in class.

he said something to the effect that if you've lost the ability to weep over your story, then you've lost the capacity for compassion. have i lost compassion? it used to define me...but maybe i have lost it.

the question, then, is am i willing to mourn if that is the cost of compassion...is that a price i'm too stingy to pay?

lost

every once in a while, i get a glimpse of who i really am and am completely derailed.

this happened this weekend. at the end of a leadership training thing at school, i was struck with this question:
why am i in youth ministry (in a established church setting)?

it just isn't my passion anymore. i'm not sure if it ever was. i think i was trying to do what i am supposed to do and then i was locked into the fieldd my years of education and internship. my drive to achieve and accomplish took over and i ended up in a space where i cannot be anyting but tired, uninspired, and burnt-out.

so, what do i do?

if you know me well enough, you know my dreams and thoughts are scattered and ever changing.

here's some of the things i'm thinking about. please offer insight!!!

* starting a house church
* developing work of art ministries
* developing curriculum for missional communities/maybe eventually doing retreats or something
* creating opportunities for youth to interact with and serve diverse populations
* college ministry
* eventually, i think i want to be a professor
* maybe open a cafe/book store that creates space for christians to emerge from the ghetto and that is invitational for diverse interaction.

for the first time, i'm willing to admit that i'm lost and don't have a clue what comes next.
my cry to God and to God's many incarnations in my community is: help!

luther

Reformers days isabout a week and a half away...while working on a reformer's day post, I came across these quotes from Martin Luther:
(Note: I have left the sexist language in because, frankly, Luther was sexist.)

"God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars."

"It is pleasing to God whenever thou rejoices or laughest from the bottom of thy heart"

"Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart"

"So our Lord God commonly gives riches to those gross asses to whom He vouchsafes nothing else"

"Be thou comforted, little dog, Thou too in Resurrection shall have a little golden tail"

"When God wants to speak and deal with us, he does not avail himself of an angel but of parents, or the pastor, or of our neighbor"

"For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver."

"I am more afraid of my own heart than the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self."

"Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes"

"Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ."

"Every great book is an action, and every great action is a book."

beautiful death

(Photo by Tony Stone)

The leaves are changing. The season is changing. And fuck! It’s beautiful.

For those that don’t know me well enough, I love the color green. It makes me fall in love with God. The multiple colors of green in a single leaf amidst millions on a tree make me feel loved the way a little girl does when her father treats her as a princess. I feel like a royal heir to a kingdom too beautiful for words. Sometimes in a Seattle spring and summer I will simply stand and stare with so much awe that it is too much for mind to handle – I have to distract myself from the beauty so that I can remain living.

Now, all of that is dying, exiting my world. And the thing that is infuriating is that it is beautiful. When I see the death of my green gifts, and begin to delight in it, I sigh so deeply that even the sigh hurts and just want to shout, FUCK! DEATH IS BEAUTIFUL!

So, I can see the beauty in the death of beauty in my life.

The question that dawns on me, as I am feeling that I am living in a stage of the death of so much beauty: In the exiting of beautiful people, whose thoughts and way of seeking strike deep awe and longing in my heart, from my life. In the realization that, while amazing, Mars Hill is not the communal wonderland I had hoped. In the perpetual death and deeper death of my church. In the deepening realization that my keen intellect gets me less than nothing. In entering into practicum and feeling intensely that I am failing there and not receiving the transformation I so longed for and now shy away from.

In all this death, can I see beauty?

If I do, can I respond by saying anything other than FUCK!

Am I willing to see and receive seasons as a part of the story and to stop fighting the necessary death of transition and the loss that makes life life?

Can I thank God for and even see God in your rejection of me – in my rejection of me?

Is God there even? Or is it just one of those fallen fucked up things that is too dark even God cannot be present? Is death life or is it Hell?

dwight out of context

tuesday again! time for quotes out of context.

this week, i thought i'd give dan a bit of a rest. instead, this week, we have quotes out of context from dwight friesen.
(i hesitate to post these because i respect him soooooo much. i want to grow up and be just like dwight! - but he did say some crazy things yesterday.)


“If you’re every really mad and you just want to stare at someone, I find that using Foucault’s name sometimes works like you’re telling someone off, you know, ‘FOUCAULT!’ and you start to feel better.”

“It’s really fricking good!”

“[Brad Pitt] is so dreamy. Isn’t he? I mean he’s just gorgeous. Do you think I look like him?”

And…as a class, we sang “the B-I-B-L-E”

- Dwight Friesen, 10/10/2005

the world is beautiful sometimes

i left a party at a friend's house in greenlake today to see her neighbors out on the porch playing folk-ish music.

what a beutiful day.

what an amazing place i live in!

i'm going to make a point of really being "in" this place!

manger art

Work of art seeks to affect global change on an organic, interpersonal, local and tangible level, putting faces on poverty and stories to injustice as we make the intangible tangible and the seemingly insurmountable within reach.

We desire to engage a generation emerging into adulthood in communal stewardship of time, talent, and finance by encouraging a life that engages global issues and values the beauty and voice of art.

At Manger Art, our yearly art show and main event, we celebrate the incarnation by taking our prayers for the two-thirds world and stepping, ourselves, into incarnation. Our hope is that on the day of the art show, one could truly say and see, “Jesus Christ is born today.”

One year after desperation at the evil empire drove me to creativity and action, I am still moved by this calling. Here is maybe where I have enough faith in a loving God of grace to call myself Christian – that somehow, God chose me to head up this beautiful organization!

We met today to discuss the up-coming show.

Humbly, I need to seek your prayer and meditation on several issues:
Finding time enough to do everything.
Finding funds enough to make everything happen.
For more than 30 people to come this year - we're actually hoping for 250-300 each night for two nights.
For quality art to be either donated or loaned.
For those who come to truly value art and the two-thirds world enough to give and spend generously.
For enough capable volunteers

Here's the big one - we are debating renting a larger venue. This would be a huge leap of faith, and I'm faith poor these days. Please pray for wisdom and the perfect balance of prudence and courage - and ultimately for the grace to cover any imbalance of the two.

Humbly, I also need to seek help:
We need art/artists, street reps, church reps, supplies donated, musicians to play, poetry for a manger art book of poems, a discounted or free venue, music to sell, music to put on our "manger art" cd, tons of volunteers, and YOU THERE ON THE NIGHT!

Please, if you are in the Seattle area or if you know people in the Seattle area who might come, tell them to KEEP DECEMBER 2ND/3RD OPEN!!!!!!!!

Note: We need art to sell and art just to display. We are not auctioning this time. Instead we will have prices on the art that artists are willing to either donate or share the proceeds - ie, you might want $60 for a work and think it could sell for $80 - we could sell it for the $80 and $20 would go toward buying a farm for a family in the 2/3rd world.

Thank you and may Jesus Christ be born today in you and in those around you and in the blue sky and changing leaves!

jeremiah

this morning, i had a good conversation with my friend jeremiah...one of the few that i end with "well, i have to go do _______" and actually did have to go do ________. i wished i didn't have to. i didn't want the conversation to end.

he is so real, so honest, so still faith-filled.

he asked me what i still have faith in that makes me still a christian.

i tried to circumnavigate the question by starting, "Dan, the president of my school says________________" what a heap of shit.

he returned with more honesty and my eyes began to well up.

here is how i know jeremiah has more faith than he thinks - and more faith than i do: he is willing to admit his lack, to share those parts of himself that are obviously scared shitless that he might be faithless. it seems that such raw reality expresses a desire for genuine encounter - for incarnation. how stunningly beautiful he was on the phone.

to my dear, wise, real, ever passionate friend: thank you for being Jesus on the phone today. you may not be much more than this right now, but you are a striking follower of Christ - hold on to nothing else and i promise you will see his face!

hmmm...i wonder if your honesty and your open wrestling makes the face of your name sake shine in your own?

welcome

my first and most treasured house guest (jaguar) lounging on my pillow-covered bed:

spirit and truth

some visual thoughts on what truth is and how God is one:



a relationship occurs between text, author, and reader, that when perichortic (intimately dancing), they are joined and meet in genuine encounter. maybe, where they meet, that space is truth. you may have to squint and look closely to see truth. you may have to begin with faith that it is there. but once you see truth, you meet her and the world is changed.



what if God - Father, Son, and Spirit - are three distinct, separate persons, but the relationship, the dance between them is so intimate that it bonds them together. could it be that the spirit between God's I and Thou within God's self is what gives us a monotheistic religion and that a perichoretic relationship ought to be our primary doctrine and that as beings created and rstored in God's image, we should be growing in intimacy, dancing with God and with each other until we are one just as God is one. John 17.

a better blog

if you want to read some words that will change how you see God and others - that will invite you to transformation and reflect a wise and thoughtful journey, check out my friend bryan(d thou).

he's been writing some awesome stuff lately!

priority check

I am sitting in class eating canned corn and stale cheese nips for dinner because I can't afford anything better whilst wearing urban outfitter clothing.

My priorities are obviously fucked.

out of context quotes III

It's Tuesday again, and therefore, time to see what the wacky ring master (though actually wise leader) of the blessed circus that is MHGS said last night:

“I don’t know if you can remember junior high, but it is a prototype of hell.”

“Jeremiah has just discovered his penis.”

“the prophets were always getting stoned.”

“you need to become pregnant.”

“bray like an ass but bring some excrement so we can see what we might grow.”

and then he blew us a kiss.

Dan Allender 10/3/2005

battle scars

Sitting in class, I glanced down and noted the v-shaped scar on my hand. I remembered how I got it. The technician at the hospital told me it was impossible for him to cut me with the scissors he used to cut off my cast. He was cutting me, but assured me that it was just pinching and that I had a low pain tolerance. When he finally got the cast off, I was bleeding and the seed of my scar was created.

Stepping back, how did I, the overly cautious one, end up with a broken hand? My friend Dave said that I was a flake and that I never followed through on my plans with him. I made plans with him for Friday and swore to be there. When friends invited me out for drinks, I wanted Dave, then, to come – rather than flake out again. So, I ran to leave a note for him.

I was wearing platforms so that no one would know how short I was.

I tripped, fell hard, tried to save my cell phone with my right hand, landed badly on my left hand (i'm left handed) and broke my arm.

As I sit in class holding back brokenness and tears over my friend, and meet my scar again, I begin to wonder how many scars I will incur in attempt to have others see me in a kind light.

evil

the world seems grey and broken when you hear that a friend of a friend has a baby rushed to the hospital.

the darkened mess seems more empty when you hear that the child was moved to a different hospital and may not make it.

amidst these, life seems to continue with ease.

things stop and the darkened world seems dirty, evil, and filled with shameful hopelessness when the next news comes.

the problems are not a result of natural causes.
the baby's been abused by someone you know and might even count a friend.
your friend has been arressted for attempted homocide.

nothing is okay anymore.

when the depth of child - baby! - abuse steps onto your front door, the world feels too filthy and desperate to enter.

what the fuck is wrong with people?

i'm wise enough to know that the seed of this evil that found itself nestled and growing in my friend, is no different that that which is in me.

the evil is not out there, it is in here.
violence surrounds us.

my only prayer, "God save me and others from ourselves. Protect us for we know not what we do! God please protect these sweet, fragile gifts you've given the world!"