road

watching elizabethtown makes me ready to hit the road.
i just hope i still feel this way a day and a half into the driving home after choir for a week.
don't be surprised if you get lots of calls from me over that 3 day period in an effort to stay awake.

working on it

peace

i need heavy prayers for peace right now and for the ability to say with integrity that God has my life, that it is no longer my own and that i am taking up my cross and following Him. cause that's what i want my baptism to mean and tonight i just realized that magnitude of that and how terrifying it is.

women's rights are not optional

amazing social change takes place when women are empowered in a society and i think that so many problems will get better when we establish international gender equality. that is not an easy task, nor something that is going to change quickly but this piece of legislation is making steps in that direction and i think especially as women we have a responsibility to our sisters to try and alleviate their burden of inequality and raise them up from their current second class status. this is not going to fix the underlying problems, we still are facing those here in the united states, but this is a step in a really great direction- i can not encourage you enough to click on the link and click on take action- fill our your info and it will send an email to your congressperson to ask them to support this legislation. we need make it clear that violence against women is a serious problem and not something that can be ignored.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/violence-against-women/international-violence-against-women-act/page.do?id=1051201

Red Eyes

http://www.mediafire.com/?0ncmig4xmfj

end of the year occurrences

i got my ear pierced today. just cause.
and me and some friends just played around with henna which we should totally do when we get home. so entertaining.
i think i need more hobbies. or homework.
down to 13 meals. and jill and i stole a grand total of 9 sandwiches and 2 gallon sized bags of cereal from the caf. i have a feeling that this is only going to get worse.

i have begun

the long packing up process.
it's making this done-with-school-in-2-weeks thing a little more real.
crazy nonsense.





http://www.mediafire.com/?mkmngdhmjml

eternal

i have so much broken.
i am twisted up and don't love right.
i am spiteful and prideful and listless, always searching for less wild lovers as if they will fill me.
but God is so much bigger than this, than my failings, and he is Yahweh, which literally means i was what i was, i am what i am, i will be what i will be.
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob calls me His.
i am learning that that does not make things easier- we are the new Israel which literally means, wrestles with God.
this life feels like wrestling with God a lot of the time, but His promises are rich and eternal.
He will be who He will be.
and i know He is good.

i've been keeping my eyes wide open

the love of God is a terrible, earth shaking, heart wrenching, hard, hard, hard, thing.
but it's so much better than just being comfortable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH6tXZxFaWA

joyfull

"where the blood of a husband silences wars for the girl who arrises to meet him, and she sings world, i've overcome you world, i've overcome you world, i've overcome by my song and the blood of a son"

http://www.mediafire.com/?d1jdmmyn5di

finding your feet again

i'll be home in exactly a month.
that doesn't even make sense yet.
i feel like i've been in college all my life and like i'll be here for the rest of eternity.
and south africa doesn't even seem real.
like something i dreamed or made up when i was bored.
life catches up with us so quickly.



but the small part of me that knows what's coming is so ready for bare feet and sitting on the porch and nights that stick to your skin.
we are so close.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1njkwnn5ttt

wisconsin and other things

we have a concert on saturday at Covina United Methodist Church and i walked in for the dress rehearsal yesterday and my first thought was,
"this place smells like wisconsin"
not in like a cheese and beer way, but in an old wood and black united methodist hymnals with favorite hymns marked way.
if you had asked me to describe home it would not have been old wood pews with outdated cushions and visitors name tags and tiny pencils and musty choir robes and closets waiting to be opened
but that's the most at home i have felt in a while.
funny where our hearts settle isn't it?



this is year is almost over and i barely recognize parts of my first semester self, and other parts i know far too well, now that i've sat with them on my own. but by the grace of God i'll have more time to figure them out, figure out how to get this right.
my friends Anna, Rachel, and i are going to baptize each other the last day of the semester so if you guys would pray that we would get this right, that we would do this with our hearts and minds in the right place to glorify God and to publicly proclaim that we are His children and co-heirs with Jesus, that we are not living for ourselves or for now, but for the city that is to come. Hebrews 13:14

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

reading

so much of it.



also, i am starting a 365- a picture every day for a year. this will be interesting.

http://www.mediafire.com/?vyk2m2gmhnb

i just climbed a mountain

She Came and Went

As a twig trembles, which a bird
Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent,
So is my memory thrilled and stirred;--
I only know she came and went.

As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven,
The blue dome's measureless content,
So my soul held that moment's heaven;--
I only know she came and went.

As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps
The orchards full of bloom and scent,
So clove her May my wintry sleeps;--
I only know she came and went.

An angel stood and met my gaze,
Through the low doorway of my tent;
The tent is struck, the vision stays;--
I only know she came and went.

Oh, when the room grows slowly dim,
And life's last oil is nearly spent,
One gush of light these eyes will brim,
Only to think she came and went.

She Came and Went by James Russell Lowell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvtRLtmEhvM&feature=related

home

http://www.mediafire.com/?minjzomhhh1

it would be cool

if california would stop shaking.
seriously.
spring break was awesome in lots of ways.
san francisco, the point of the trip was really interesting and i'm very glad i had the chance to go and see it- i would love to spend some real time there in the future with a local but my favorite part was absolutely the drive up and the central californian coast. it's green and rolling and beautiful on one side and the other is battered with endless blue.




my heart lives in these places.