In high school I had to write a paper on the Beatles. Mmm—maybe that’s not entirely true. Actually I could write a paper on whatever I wanted but I chose to write about the Beatles and the cultural impact that they had on Brit and American society. It was a pretty largely sized paper and I did about a dump truck load of research for it. This included reading the entire Beatles Anthology. This is a book that was too large to fit on the library shelves so it sat on the very top of the bookcase and was covered in actual cobwebs. It’s the kind of book that was made to sit on someone’s coffee table to be flipped through on rainy days when you felt like learning something about culture. It was not the kind of book that was made to be read cover to cover in half a lifetime…it took me two weeks. I consumed more information about the Beatles in two weeks than most people consume in their entire lives. 2000 calories a day of pure John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I got to know these four lads from Liverpool pretty well. Anyways, this is running away from me a little.
Maybe I should have started with my second set of thoughts. I recently went to New York City which was GREAT! No lie, I love the city. I love the sheer amount of people, the wild clothing, the noise, language, piercings, buildings, parks, it’s chaos pure and simple—an intricated network of people living their lives on top of each other. And it is fabulous. Perhaps the center, the most chaotic, the most artistic, the most fantastic place in New York City is Times Square. It’s cool, plain and simple. Times Square is full of billboards advertising Broadway shows, IPod nanos, Giorgio Armani, and peace. Yes, you read correctly. The one in my head is a plain white sign with black text declaring, “WAR IS OVER! If you want it.” The board next to it says “imagine peace” in a bunch of different languages. These are the words of John Lennon. The whole concept is that if you are focusing on peace, it is hard to hate. I agree with this. God tells us something similar (whatever is true, noble, etc-- think on these things, right). If we are focusing on good stuff, that will be evident in our actions. If we are focusing on bad stuff, that’s gonna come out too. And I am still distracted. Main focus now.
John Lennon is huge. He’s a role model right now. I think he’s almost as big now as he was when he was actually alive. This man changed the world. I think I can say that legitimately. I find him to be really intriguing. Of course, I find Marilyn Manson intriguing too, but I’ll save that for another day. But right now, John Lennon is everyone’s man. He’s the background of Miley Cyrus’ Twitter page; his words are staring down Times Square for goodness sake. John Lennon’s message was one of peace and love. I’ve got a quote in my scrapbook, “It sort of dawned on me that love was the answer…it seems to be the underlying theme of the universe. Everything that was worthwhile got down to this love love love thing.” Alright—think about that last sentence for a second. “Everything that was worthwhile got down to this love love love thing.” Pretty intense statement, right? Love and peace are things that the world is eternally lacking and everyone wants.
If you guys know me moderately well, you’ll know that I am into the whole lovelovelove thing. But it doesn’t begin and end with me being sort of a hippie. Which I am. It’s true. I like to hug trees and protest formaldehyde in my vaccinations, and recycle. It’s not just being weird—it’s being a good steward of what God gave me. This world, my body, natural resources. But that’s not where the love thing is. It begins and ends with Jesus.
1 John—God is love. Think about that one. God. Is. Love. Love is a noun. Kate is excited—excited would be an adjective. That’s like Kate has excitement inside of her. No, this is a noun. God is love. Kate is human. Human is a noun. Human is what I am, my identity. My very essence is humanity. Person made in God’s image. God’s identity, his very essence is love. Cool, right?
Jesus was God. He said it, I believe it. Jesus while he was here on earth, shoveled out that love in intense ways. He healed people, forgave their sins, fed them, he made prostitutes and tax collectors feel worthwhile when society considered them similar to dirt. His commands were pretty simple. Love God. Love people. This may seem vague, but I don’t think that Jesus left us searching for answers on this one. I think that He defined love pretty well for us in 1Corinthians 13. Personally, I don’t believe that this passage was written just so that we have something to read at every conventional wedding ever performed. I think that it lays out a standard for us to live by. Love is patient, kind, doesn’t envy, boast, isn’t proud, isn’t rude, etc… It’s all there (and it’s also in calligraphy (a.k.a. my handwriting) on my wall). Love defined.
Keep moving toward the end of the New Testament (back to 1 John) and we are basically told that if we are not showing love to God and love to other people, our salvation is not real. Harsh but that’s what the Bible says and I believe that is truth. God didn’t promise us a chill and easy life. Serving and following him is hard work but it’s totally worth it.
Alright, back to John Lennon. Great guy. Have you heard his music? I firmly believe that the Beatles were the most influential musical group ever. Hands down. They talk about peace (Come Together), and love (All Need is Love), and rock and roll (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), and hope (Blackbird), and all kinds of great things. John Lennon was a cool guy. He had a lot of neat things to say about loving each other and living in peace and flowers and the world and war. We look at him and say, “wow, I want to run with what this guy’s saying!” but John Lennon was a man. That’s it. Just a man. A man who came to a lot of his “great conclusions” when he was coming off from a good drug trip. He was a sinful, addicted, confused, lost, unloving man. Why are we looking at him?
Why follow John Lennon when we can follow Jesus?
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
A Few Days Ago
One of those countless, endless night in the hospital I sat on the bed, holding my mother’s withered hand and feeling her exaggerated pulse every few seconds. I am not an emotional person. I do not cry. I had not cried until Dale came into the room.
“How, you doin’, Jilly Bean?” He addressed my unconscious mother, “How’s my girl?” He cradled her head, gently touching the side of her cheek. “Jill,” he said, “I’m giving you twenty more minutes to nap and then I am going to make you walk around the nurses’ station with me and you know I will. Doesn’t matter if you’re kicking and screaming…” his face softened and his playful smile melted a little at the bitter sweetness of their old jokes. I watched his long fingers stroke my mum’s wispy brown hair as he sunk into the stiff, colorless hospital chair next to the bed. “Not this time, girl.” He whispered, “It’s alright though. We’ve made enough memories.”
The character of Dale had formed early in my life when, at fourteen, he was the first openly gay man I had ever been in close contact with. During my first encounter with him as my mother’s nurse, he frightened me a little. His feminine airs and bubbly personality were something that I did not know how to process. Over the years, though, he proved himself worthy. He made my mum do things she did not want to do in order to make her better. He would kidnap her from her room for a McDonalds run at two in the morning. He hid in her room to do paperwork so that the other nurses would not be able to find him. He made my mother laugh and kept her spirits high throughout all of those long, miserable weeks and months on the sixth floor of Strong Memorial Hospital. He changed his hair all the time. My sisters and I made a game of guessing which color it would be with each visit. He gave my brother things like plastic tubing and rubber gloves to play with and he told the most outrageous stories.
This final visit of Dale to my mother was different…but it wasn’t. He told the same stories; talked to her the same way, called her the same pet names, and told her that she was the most stubborn person he had ever met. But instead of directing his words to her, or to my grandmother, or to the rest of the room, he was directing them at me.
My mother loved me. I know that. My mother loved me so much but I often did not feel it. She rarely showed me approval and she often questioned my hobbies, the way I dressed, my choice of friends. I knew she loved me, but it was hard to internalize that because she never told me that she was proud of me.
I sat on the side of the bed that night, my small weight barely rippling the bleached, white hospital blanket and my hands in Dale’s as he told me words I had wished to hear my mother say so many times. “Kate,” Dale said to me, looking me straight in the eyes, “Your mum was so proud of you. How many nights I would sit in here and she would talk about her dreams for you and how you were going to be such a great chef.” His words have run together now, inside of my head, they all ran down hill into a puddle of shining memory. But they are something that I intend to bottle and treasure forever. I felt like he was making sure. Making sure that although my mum always said things to me like, “why are you wearing that?”, “why can’t you just try harder?”, “why aren’t you more like your sisters?”, “why did you cut your hair?”; although she asked me so many questions that almost burned through the pit of my stomach, she had been proud of me and had loved me for who I was. After constant battering by her harsh questions and comments I so often felt that I was letting her down because I wasn’t competitive, I wasn’t beautiful, I wasn’t what she expected her daughter to be.
“Kate,” Dale said to me, his gentle smell of musk and cigarettes brushing my face, “your mum spent so many nights telling me how special you are. How you are such an individual. How she know you will do great things. All she wants for you is that you are happy and that you finish college. She told me that, honey. She said that to me so many times on nights when I would take her outside with me on my break. Promise me, Kate, promise me that you won’t let her down and that you will get me an invitation to that college graduation because I’m going to be there for her.”
My mum is dead. I never got to tell her that I am changing my major to counseling and that I will never be a great chef like she wanted for me. I never got to tell her that I want to pursue a doctorate degree and work with middle school girls and tattoo a chrysalis on my shoulder. The truth of the matter is that if I had told her any of these things she would have told me to aim a little lower, to do something more sensible, and that my skin was not meant to be art. But it seems there would be a lot that she wasn’t telling me too. And those are the things which seem to matter the most.
“How, you doin’, Jilly Bean?” He addressed my unconscious mother, “How’s my girl?” He cradled her head, gently touching the side of her cheek. “Jill,” he said, “I’m giving you twenty more minutes to nap and then I am going to make you walk around the nurses’ station with me and you know I will. Doesn’t matter if you’re kicking and screaming…” his face softened and his playful smile melted a little at the bitter sweetness of their old jokes. I watched his long fingers stroke my mum’s wispy brown hair as he sunk into the stiff, colorless hospital chair next to the bed. “Not this time, girl.” He whispered, “It’s alright though. We’ve made enough memories.”
The character of Dale had formed early in my life when, at fourteen, he was the first openly gay man I had ever been in close contact with. During my first encounter with him as my mother’s nurse, he frightened me a little. His feminine airs and bubbly personality were something that I did not know how to process. Over the years, though, he proved himself worthy. He made my mum do things she did not want to do in order to make her better. He would kidnap her from her room for a McDonalds run at two in the morning. He hid in her room to do paperwork so that the other nurses would not be able to find him. He made my mother laugh and kept her spirits high throughout all of those long, miserable weeks and months on the sixth floor of Strong Memorial Hospital. He changed his hair all the time. My sisters and I made a game of guessing which color it would be with each visit. He gave my brother things like plastic tubing and rubber gloves to play with and he told the most outrageous stories.
This final visit of Dale to my mother was different…but it wasn’t. He told the same stories; talked to her the same way, called her the same pet names, and told her that she was the most stubborn person he had ever met. But instead of directing his words to her, or to my grandmother, or to the rest of the room, he was directing them at me.
My mother loved me. I know that. My mother loved me so much but I often did not feel it. She rarely showed me approval and she often questioned my hobbies, the way I dressed, my choice of friends. I knew she loved me, but it was hard to internalize that because she never told me that she was proud of me.
I sat on the side of the bed that night, my small weight barely rippling the bleached, white hospital blanket and my hands in Dale’s as he told me words I had wished to hear my mother say so many times. “Kate,” Dale said to me, looking me straight in the eyes, “Your mum was so proud of you. How many nights I would sit in here and she would talk about her dreams for you and how you were going to be such a great chef.” His words have run together now, inside of my head, they all ran down hill into a puddle of shining memory. But they are something that I intend to bottle and treasure forever. I felt like he was making sure. Making sure that although my mum always said things to me like, “why are you wearing that?”, “why can’t you just try harder?”, “why aren’t you more like your sisters?”, “why did you cut your hair?”; although she asked me so many questions that almost burned through the pit of my stomach, she had been proud of me and had loved me for who I was. After constant battering by her harsh questions and comments I so often felt that I was letting her down because I wasn’t competitive, I wasn’t beautiful, I wasn’t what she expected her daughter to be.
“Kate,” Dale said to me, his gentle smell of musk and cigarettes brushing my face, “your mum spent so many nights telling me how special you are. How you are such an individual. How she know you will do great things. All she wants for you is that you are happy and that you finish college. She told me that, honey. She said that to me so many times on nights when I would take her outside with me on my break. Promise me, Kate, promise me that you won’t let her down and that you will get me an invitation to that college graduation because I’m going to be there for her.”
My mum is dead. I never got to tell her that I am changing my major to counseling and that I will never be a great chef like she wanted for me. I never got to tell her that I want to pursue a doctorate degree and work with middle school girls and tattoo a chrysalis on my shoulder. The truth of the matter is that if I had told her any of these things she would have told me to aim a little lower, to do something more sensible, and that my skin was not meant to be art. But it seems there would be a lot that she wasn’t telling me too. And those are the things which seem to matter the most.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
A few poems found wandering around
FREE SPIRIT
Our bodies are painted art.
Hands intertwined in signs of love
And circular signs of peace drawn in green on our rosy cheeks.
We are organic.
We are from the earth.
We are her ancient children.
Music is our sister.
Our hearts beat united in rhythm with her drums.
Our lungs’ song intertwines with her guitars.
We both consume electricity
Feeding off from the power in the wires and in the air.
Our cry is to stop death
Make love, not war!
Freedom from fear, freedom from government
Freedom from absolutes.
We are the earth; we must not kill our brothers and sisters.
Life is in us.
Life is in the earth, the trees, the flowers in our hair.
Stop the bleeding! Save our children!
We do not want them to see images of hate,
But of love.
We are young.
We are music, earth, and light!
We are free, dancing to the beating of our hearts.
With signs of peace painted on our faces.
And our bodies made into art.
REQUIRED TO WRITE ABOUT A RIVER
They say when you drown
you pass out
before you die.
Nothing hurts.
There is no pain.
Just water…
Water …
Water washing softly over your body.
Your lungs might burn for a little while
but not for long.
Then you’re done.
It’s over.
You are dead.
The river sings with lives
captive souls which cannot escape
from its murky,
lurking,
earthy tones.
Souls of those afraid of pain,
who wanted to feel nothing
but the ancient, wasted waters
coolly smoothing and softly soothing
their hardened skin
As emptiness fills their lungs
and their minds.
A hundred years since the intricate relationship between the river
and the bridge
was built.
The bridge to drop.
And the river to catch.
The water, the moss, the stones
to hold
the body,
wrap the soul,
to send it into forever
while darkness swiftly snags the breath
and stills the frantic heart.
The ancient river
its bloody veins stopped and slowed
by stones as old as the flood
delivers a method
a means
a cowardly way
to escape from pain
ESSENCE OF DORM ROOM
You would think it was tropical if you squeezed your eyes almost shut. The desk is almost a sandy hue surrounded by vibrant color and the air smells distinctly of juicy, artificial grapefruit. Leaning back in the chair and opening your eyes the rest of the way, you may realize that the island fantasy is actually a clever fallacy and the reality is that of a quirky eighteen year old girl. An overloaded bulletin board proclaims loudly that someone somewhere in the galaxy is “looking out for my stargirl”, the wall before you is plastered with even more loud messages such as “nice day for a revolution”, ”Recycling isn’t painful”, and “Omega 3 in fish is proven to fight heart disease”. Even more messages are conveyed in Japanese, through cartoons, photos, through facial expressions. The noise makes you dizzy but you cannot decide whether to cover your ears or your eyes in order to shut it out. A clean mug featuring the faces of John, Paul, George and Ringo, a framed needlepoint, a POM WONDERFUL glass, a ruby colored Nalgene bottle, crinkly tissue paper, and slim books all half filled with scrawling Tolkien-esque handwriting are all strewn over the surface of the desk. The sound quality depends on the depth of the desired concentration at hand. For a more serious meditative time the walnut colored clacking of a metronome hammering away somewhere in andagio is sufficient; and for less studious work, the essences of a jazz guitar, the roommate singing a Rihanna chorus, or an emotive screamo melody are present to entertain or enlighten.
Our bodies are painted art.
Hands intertwined in signs of love
And circular signs of peace drawn in green on our rosy cheeks.
We are organic.
We are from the earth.
We are her ancient children.
Music is our sister.
Our hearts beat united in rhythm with her drums.
Our lungs’ song intertwines with her guitars.
We both consume electricity
Feeding off from the power in the wires and in the air.
Our cry is to stop death
Make love, not war!
Freedom from fear, freedom from government
Freedom from absolutes.
We are the earth; we must not kill our brothers and sisters.
Life is in us.
Life is in the earth, the trees, the flowers in our hair.
Stop the bleeding! Save our children!
We do not want them to see images of hate,
But of love.
We are young.
We are music, earth, and light!
We are free, dancing to the beating of our hearts.
With signs of peace painted on our faces.
And our bodies made into art.
REQUIRED TO WRITE ABOUT A RIVER
They say when you drown
you pass out
before you die.
Nothing hurts.
There is no pain.
Just water…
Water …
Water washing softly over your body.
Your lungs might burn for a little while
but not for long.
Then you’re done.
It’s over.
You are dead.
The river sings with lives
captive souls which cannot escape
from its murky,
lurking,
earthy tones.
Souls of those afraid of pain,
who wanted to feel nothing
but the ancient, wasted waters
coolly smoothing and softly soothing
their hardened skin
As emptiness fills their lungs
and their minds.
A hundred years since the intricate relationship between the river
and the bridge
was built.
The bridge to drop.
And the river to catch.
The water, the moss, the stones
to hold
the body,
wrap the soul,
to send it into forever
while darkness swiftly snags the breath
and stills the frantic heart.
The ancient river
its bloody veins stopped and slowed
by stones as old as the flood
delivers a method
a means
a cowardly way
to escape from pain
ESSENCE OF DORM ROOM
You would think it was tropical if you squeezed your eyes almost shut. The desk is almost a sandy hue surrounded by vibrant color and the air smells distinctly of juicy, artificial grapefruit. Leaning back in the chair and opening your eyes the rest of the way, you may realize that the island fantasy is actually a clever fallacy and the reality is that of a quirky eighteen year old girl. An overloaded bulletin board proclaims loudly that someone somewhere in the galaxy is “looking out for my stargirl”, the wall before you is plastered with even more loud messages such as “nice day for a revolution”, ”Recycling isn’t painful”, and “Omega 3 in fish is proven to fight heart disease”. Even more messages are conveyed in Japanese, through cartoons, photos, through facial expressions. The noise makes you dizzy but you cannot decide whether to cover your ears or your eyes in order to shut it out. A clean mug featuring the faces of John, Paul, George and Ringo, a framed needlepoint, a POM WONDERFUL glass, a ruby colored Nalgene bottle, crinkly tissue paper, and slim books all half filled with scrawling Tolkien-esque handwriting are all strewn over the surface of the desk. The sound quality depends on the depth of the desired concentration at hand. For a more serious meditative time the walnut colored clacking of a metronome hammering away somewhere in andagio is sufficient; and for less studious work, the essences of a jazz guitar, the roommate singing a Rihanna chorus, or an emotive screamo melody are present to entertain or enlighten.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Last Monday
Tell me, am I being selfish? My mum died yesterday and there are so many things that I want. I want her amber ring, her orange scarf, her diamond necklace. I want to help plan the funeral, to have a say in things, and to be informed as to what the heck is going on. I am eighteen. I am her eldest daughter. I am her firstborn child. I am so frustrated with my family. I asked my dad about the ring and he said he would think about it, my grandmum decided that we are going to display her in the scarf I so dearly love, and the necklace—I really have no problem if my dad wants to keep it. That one I truly understand. I want a closed casket because I do not want the last image of my mother to be cold, sick, and dead. I want people to look at the photos and laugh and remember how beautiful and vibrant she was when she was healthy. Everything my dad plans, though, revolves around what is expected, what other people will want.
I am being selfish. I look at that last paragraph and see myself in every sentence. I have answered my own question. But I do not understand why my grandmother is insisting on displaying my mother in the scarf I so dearly love. I do not understand why no one listens to my voice. I do not understand why my dad feels this pressure to be defined by convention. Open casket hours are typical, but I do not see why we have to be typical. The idea of my mum being on display in a box makes my stomach turn. She was sick when she died. Her hair was wispy and cut short. Her face was all sunken in. I hated it. I want to look back and back at the old photographs where her hair was long and styled and she was laughing. I miss my mum’s laughter. I hate convention.
Everyone strives to be the same and then everyone complains that things are boring. We judge people because of their differences. As much as we hate to admit it, we do. I have always been a person who hates being usual, who is unpredictable. I am not ordinary. I am glad that I am not ordinary. I think that life is more beautiful to those few of us who have discovered freedom from the realm of society and are willing to take the chance and risk the judgment that will be passed on us by the more shallow and insignificant. I think that society itself is eventually thankful for those of us who are not ordinary. From us comes art, music, laughter, philosophy. We are the thinkers, the artists, we are freedom in society. To me there is constant beauty in life, and so much beauty in people. Sometimes I spend so much time looking for good, that I forget to see anything bad. This gets out of hand because it gives me an unrealistic view of things.
I hide things. We learn how to hide as children. My sister hid in a cupboard once and got stuck. No one found her until she started crying for help. She was panicked because she might not be found and everyone else was panicked because they could not find her. You would think that instances like this would teach us that hiding is a bad thing. However, my sister continued to love to hide. I always loved games like hide and go seek or sardines, but my greatest fear was not being found because then I had two choices, I could go on hiding forever until someone found me or I died of starvation or old age or I could show myself and lose the game and my pride. Pride causes us to hide things. To a certain extent an amount of pride is healthy…perhaps I am confusing pride with self respect. I think that these things are often confused. Personally, I hide things out of a mixture of fear and pride. I was so open with so many people until I was hurt by rumors, lies, and the way people began to treat me and then I became afraid.
I should not be afraid of people. I should not be afraid of horses either. There is no reason to fear horses. However, I am afraid of horses and the truth is that most people are deathly afraid of each other. I became afraid of people because of the cruelty of a small group of girls. It made me hide things because I did not want to experience that again. We talked about this in psych class. When people withdraw like that. Faye called it a defense mechanism which she implied is typically a bad thing. Somedays I swear that I am a walking contradiction. I do not conform to the realm of convention. I am different. You can see it in the way I dress, the things I draw, the art I have scattered over the walls of my dorm room. It is evident when I speak, what I think about, in the things I do--I am not ordinary. I have a distain for ceremony. I do not care what people think about how I do things so long as they are not Biblically wrong. I have no fear of what they think...yet I am afraid to share myself with them. This is not cool, my friend. Not cool at all.
I don’t know if I accomplished anything with this rambling of thoughts, though I feel a little bit better now. I know that I should go trawling through my Bible to look for scripture to back up or negate my words, but it is late and I am distraught. When I come back here on a someday perhaps I will finish this but not now. My thoughts are all there. The things I have learned are all scrawled across this page...these pages by now I guess. Maybe I will come back and make them beautiful sometime but I think that for now they will remain in their raw state of idea.
I am being selfish. I look at that last paragraph and see myself in every sentence. I have answered my own question. But I do not understand why my grandmother is insisting on displaying my mother in the scarf I so dearly love. I do not understand why no one listens to my voice. I do not understand why my dad feels this pressure to be defined by convention. Open casket hours are typical, but I do not see why we have to be typical. The idea of my mum being on display in a box makes my stomach turn. She was sick when she died. Her hair was wispy and cut short. Her face was all sunken in. I hated it. I want to look back and back at the old photographs where her hair was long and styled and she was laughing. I miss my mum’s laughter. I hate convention.
Everyone strives to be the same and then everyone complains that things are boring. We judge people because of their differences. As much as we hate to admit it, we do. I have always been a person who hates being usual, who is unpredictable. I am not ordinary. I am glad that I am not ordinary. I think that life is more beautiful to those few of us who have discovered freedom from the realm of society and are willing to take the chance and risk the judgment that will be passed on us by the more shallow and insignificant. I think that society itself is eventually thankful for those of us who are not ordinary. From us comes art, music, laughter, philosophy. We are the thinkers, the artists, we are freedom in society. To me there is constant beauty in life, and so much beauty in people. Sometimes I spend so much time looking for good, that I forget to see anything bad. This gets out of hand because it gives me an unrealistic view of things.
I hide things. We learn how to hide as children. My sister hid in a cupboard once and got stuck. No one found her until she started crying for help. She was panicked because she might not be found and everyone else was panicked because they could not find her. You would think that instances like this would teach us that hiding is a bad thing. However, my sister continued to love to hide. I always loved games like hide and go seek or sardines, but my greatest fear was not being found because then I had two choices, I could go on hiding forever until someone found me or I died of starvation or old age or I could show myself and lose the game and my pride. Pride causes us to hide things. To a certain extent an amount of pride is healthy…perhaps I am confusing pride with self respect. I think that these things are often confused. Personally, I hide things out of a mixture of fear and pride. I was so open with so many people until I was hurt by rumors, lies, and the way people began to treat me and then I became afraid.
I should not be afraid of people. I should not be afraid of horses either. There is no reason to fear horses. However, I am afraid of horses and the truth is that most people are deathly afraid of each other. I became afraid of people because of the cruelty of a small group of girls. It made me hide things because I did not want to experience that again. We talked about this in psych class. When people withdraw like that. Faye called it a defense mechanism which she implied is typically a bad thing. Somedays I swear that I am a walking contradiction. I do not conform to the realm of convention. I am different. You can see it in the way I dress, the things I draw, the art I have scattered over the walls of my dorm room. It is evident when I speak, what I think about, in the things I do--I am not ordinary. I have a distain for ceremony. I do not care what people think about how I do things so long as they are not Biblically wrong. I have no fear of what they think...yet I am afraid to share myself with them. This is not cool, my friend. Not cool at all.
I don’t know if I accomplished anything with this rambling of thoughts, though I feel a little bit better now. I know that I should go trawling through my Bible to look for scripture to back up or negate my words, but it is late and I am distraught. When I come back here on a someday perhaps I will finish this but not now. My thoughts are all there. The things I have learned are all scrawled across this page...these pages by now I guess. Maybe I will come back and make them beautiful sometime but I think that for now they will remain in their raw state of idea.
October I Think? Maybe November...
Define yourself in one word, then explain. In my opinion, this high school essay asks a self-defeating question. Why not just offer up a good definition and skip clear over the anxious pondering of that one word and the following apologetic explanation. Can a person really be defined in one word?
I do not believe that person can be defined. I know for certain that no sort of definition or label can be put on me. A person is formed of layers. What you see on the outside may not necessarily be what you get. I have a friend who makes cakes as a hobby and they all have beautiful layers. I think that if I were a cake, it would have so many layers that the ones on the bottom would be squashed by the sheer weight of the top. It would also have layer after layer of frosting covering the cake itself so as to disguise it and add more mystery to its character. However, my life is not a cake and I do not eat cake, so I suppose my example is slightly irrelevant.
When we try to boost middle schoolers’ self-esteem by embracing them with how special they are, we use stupid illustrations. “You are a beautiful and delicate flower…” I heard someone tell a girl once. I think that if someone told me that I was a flower, I would be more than a little put out because the truth is that I am more than that—I am a human being. Flowers are nice but, in reality, they are more than a little overrated. I like when they grow outside and add color to a landscape, produce oxygen, feed wildlife, but that’s it. That’s all they do. I suppose that they make the occasional girl overflow with happiness when she is given them by a special guy, but for me flowers are useless. If, by some stretch of the innermost imagination, a boy wanted to give me something, I would take two hours of time, or chocolate, or maybe a nice wok over flowers. The point that’s in this mess somewhere is that God made flowers with the small purpose of looking nice, feeding moths, and then dying. God made humans as so much more.
I like to look at my hands because they are a reminder to me of God. Without my hands, there would be so many things that I could not do. There are scars on them to remind me of my past and reinforce some of the lessons I have learned. The tiny bones and intricate muscle structures that allow my hands to do things like open a jar of salsa, put on my headphones, play my guitar, and draw pictures of things, are simply amazing. Every child in America learns about this incredible intricacy in ninth grade biology class and so many of them still do not realize that they are a person. Genesis 2:7 says that when God made Adam, he took the newly created earth and shaped it then, when he was finished with the form of the man, he breathed into Adam’s face. First, God shaped our race with his own hands. Second, God breathed into us with his own breath. How amazing is that?
If I took an old video camera, the kind with the crackley film and shaky edges, and made a documentary about what defines me, no one would want to watch it because it would be days and days long. There is so much depth inside of a human being. We are always being shaped. We are being changed daily by our life experiences, by the things we learn, by conversations we have, and people we talk to. This is one reason why it disgusts me when Christians judge each other. We do not take time to understand a person, to find out why they are the way they are. We simply put a label on them and play keep away. Evolution calls us animals. I dare one scientist to find depth inside of a chimpanzee. Rudimentary personality, ability to emote on a primitive level, learning—yeah, a monkey can have all of these things. But they don’t have depth. A monkey never asks why. A monkey never tries to learn in order to better understand. God didn’t breath into the monkey’s face in order to give him life.
Frankly, we diminish each other as humans. We fail to see God’s love and excellent craftsmanship in ourselves and each other. This is not just confined to the whole “you-evolved-from-an-amoeba-and-are-just-here-by-random-chance-for-no-purpose-but-to-live-life-and-die-but-don’t-worry -you-are-special” view of humanity. Christians do it too! Christians who are actually commanded to love one another as Christ loves us. John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.” I’ll spare you the seven or twelve pages which I could write on this subject if you can just take my word for it when I say that the majority of the Christian community isn’t loving each other as Christ loves us. We judge too quickly, we are selfish, and these are only two of the issues that face us.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t make sense. Lots of times I probably don’t. It’s frustrating sometimes because when I try to get my thoughts out of my head and into my journal they just don’t want to be logical and complete anymore without filling up the whole book and frankly, I just don’t have time for that tonight. I will say though, that the message of the 1960’s (a definite time of moral decay in America) was a message of peace and love, the message of Gandhi (a man who was a devout pagan) was peace and love, the message of today being spread around our high schools, by Hoobastank (“Where is the Love”, anyone? Old song, I know.), and by popular humanitarian efforts like “Rock for Darfur” and “To Write Love on Her Arms”—this is a message of peace and love. If our sinful, apathetic world can be so susceptible to these godly principles, what is wrong with Christians?
I do not believe that person can be defined. I know for certain that no sort of definition or label can be put on me. A person is formed of layers. What you see on the outside may not necessarily be what you get. I have a friend who makes cakes as a hobby and they all have beautiful layers. I think that if I were a cake, it would have so many layers that the ones on the bottom would be squashed by the sheer weight of the top. It would also have layer after layer of frosting covering the cake itself so as to disguise it and add more mystery to its character. However, my life is not a cake and I do not eat cake, so I suppose my example is slightly irrelevant.
When we try to boost middle schoolers’ self-esteem by embracing them with how special they are, we use stupid illustrations. “You are a beautiful and delicate flower…” I heard someone tell a girl once. I think that if someone told me that I was a flower, I would be more than a little put out because the truth is that I am more than that—I am a human being. Flowers are nice but, in reality, they are more than a little overrated. I like when they grow outside and add color to a landscape, produce oxygen, feed wildlife, but that’s it. That’s all they do. I suppose that they make the occasional girl overflow with happiness when she is given them by a special guy, but for me flowers are useless. If, by some stretch of the innermost imagination, a boy wanted to give me something, I would take two hours of time, or chocolate, or maybe a nice wok over flowers. The point that’s in this mess somewhere is that God made flowers with the small purpose of looking nice, feeding moths, and then dying. God made humans as so much more.
I like to look at my hands because they are a reminder to me of God. Without my hands, there would be so many things that I could not do. There are scars on them to remind me of my past and reinforce some of the lessons I have learned. The tiny bones and intricate muscle structures that allow my hands to do things like open a jar of salsa, put on my headphones, play my guitar, and draw pictures of things, are simply amazing. Every child in America learns about this incredible intricacy in ninth grade biology class and so many of them still do not realize that they are a person. Genesis 2:7 says that when God made Adam, he took the newly created earth and shaped it then, when he was finished with the form of the man, he breathed into Adam’s face. First, God shaped our race with his own hands. Second, God breathed into us with his own breath. How amazing is that?
If I took an old video camera, the kind with the crackley film and shaky edges, and made a documentary about what defines me, no one would want to watch it because it would be days and days long. There is so much depth inside of a human being. We are always being shaped. We are being changed daily by our life experiences, by the things we learn, by conversations we have, and people we talk to. This is one reason why it disgusts me when Christians judge each other. We do not take time to understand a person, to find out why they are the way they are. We simply put a label on them and play keep away. Evolution calls us animals. I dare one scientist to find depth inside of a chimpanzee. Rudimentary personality, ability to emote on a primitive level, learning—yeah, a monkey can have all of these things. But they don’t have depth. A monkey never asks why. A monkey never tries to learn in order to better understand. God didn’t breath into the monkey’s face in order to give him life.
Frankly, we diminish each other as humans. We fail to see God’s love and excellent craftsmanship in ourselves and each other. This is not just confined to the whole “you-evolved-from-an-amoeba-and-are-just-here-by-random-chance-for-no-purpose-but-to-live-life-and-die-but-don’t-worry -you-are-special” view of humanity. Christians do it too! Christians who are actually commanded to love one another as Christ loves us. John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.” I’ll spare you the seven or twelve pages which I could write on this subject if you can just take my word for it when I say that the majority of the Christian community isn’t loving each other as Christ loves us. We judge too quickly, we are selfish, and these are only two of the issues that face us.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t make sense. Lots of times I probably don’t. It’s frustrating sometimes because when I try to get my thoughts out of my head and into my journal they just don’t want to be logical and complete anymore without filling up the whole book and frankly, I just don’t have time for that tonight. I will say though, that the message of the 1960’s (a definite time of moral decay in America) was a message of peace and love, the message of Gandhi (a man who was a devout pagan) was peace and love, the message of today being spread around our high schools, by Hoobastank (“Where is the Love”, anyone? Old song, I know.), and by popular humanitarian efforts like “Rock for Darfur” and “To Write Love on Her Arms”—this is a message of peace and love. If our sinful, apathetic world can be so susceptible to these godly principles, what is wrong with Christians?
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Why?
I started keeping a journal about a year ago. It really made a difference in a lot of things. I could keep myself accountable, spew out all of my thoughts and feelings, and basically when I talk I can visualize my thoughts more clearly.
I now keep five journals all for different purposes. The first is my "fluff" journal which chronicles the insignificant details of my daily life The second is a book of things which people say to me that I want to remember--something funny, something kind, something that made me think. The third is boring but necessary--it's school, daily assignments, stuff for class. The fourth is probably the most fun--it is my list book. I love to make lists. I make lists of everything I think of inside that book. Some are serious like "10 things I need to work on in order to strive further for life and godliness" and "10 things I must not screw up in the future. Some are not so serious like "10 things which I have drawn on that are not made out of paper" and "10 things I would consider tattooing on my body". The last one is my serious journal. This one is filled with all of my thoughts about God and myself. It is the chronicle of my spiritual growth and the explaination of my convictions as well as my examination of the things which happen in my daily life.
It is my intention, to put pieces from this fifth and most precious journal here.
I stopped sharing myself with people because I was getting hurt. So I rolled myself all up inside and stopped giving. I can't do that anymore. I've been blogging for a while now, but never gave my URLs to anyone I know. But I want to use this. I'm making myself vulnerable again and inviting you to look at my life and my thoughts.
I now keep five journals all for different purposes. The first is my "fluff" journal which chronicles the insignificant details of my daily life The second is a book of things which people say to me that I want to remember--something funny, something kind, something that made me think. The third is boring but necessary--it's school, daily assignments, stuff for class. The fourth is probably the most fun--it is my list book. I love to make lists. I make lists of everything I think of inside that book. Some are serious like "10 things I need to work on in order to strive further for life and godliness" and "10 things I must not screw up in the future. Some are not so serious like "10 things which I have drawn on that are not made out of paper" and "10 things I would consider tattooing on my body". The last one is my serious journal. This one is filled with all of my thoughts about God and myself. It is the chronicle of my spiritual growth and the explaination of my convictions as well as my examination of the things which happen in my daily life.
It is my intention, to put pieces from this fifth and most precious journal here.
I stopped sharing myself with people because I was getting hurt. So I rolled myself all up inside and stopped giving. I can't do that anymore. I've been blogging for a while now, but never gave my URLs to anyone I know. But I want to use this. I'm making myself vulnerable again and inviting you to look at my life and my thoughts.
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