south africa blog set up: check!
and here it is: http://andieandafrica.blogspot.com/
i will still be posting here, but day to day stuff and pictures will be posted there so everyone can live vicariously through me.
:)

"Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world."

Ammon Hennacy (Catholic activist, 1893-1970)

Shakespeare

"And this our life… Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

As You Like It

http://www.mediafire.com/?t47ffrpc8ypvqt1

alters

i think there are times when it is good to look back- good to remember and learn and build alters to remind us of the good that is so easy to forget when things get hard.
and my life since high school has been a story of making plans and God tearing them down again and again. but now i can't settle for anything less. if life had gone as expected, right now i would be a music production student with a future of money and family making ahead of me, and while there is nothing wrong with having a family, and there is nothing inherently wrong with money, my life would be so much less. it would be lacking in the huge, overwhelming moments, and the sunrises, and the people that love me. i would have missed so much great depth of Him and who He is, so much singing to Him, and understanding the preciousness of His very name. i don't know what i might have had, but i know where i am going now will be wrapped in beauty that is infinite and eternal. and i am so in awe of the beauty and love of our creator. that he would quietly create such amazing things out of us, right before us, when we aren't paying attention.
his plans are so much better than my own.

http://www.mediafire.com/?hgpvgrzyqggiqo4

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e.e. cummings

dear africa,

see you soon.

pic from here

meaning

“outside of a realtionship with God, life doesn’t mean anything.”

if we hold that to be true, the implications of that statement are huge.

things that live outside of that relationship, or things that don’t add to that relationship, the endless distractions, petty pursuits and goals- they don’t mean anything. there is no worth or meaning elsewhere.

where you go to school, what kind of jeans you are wearing, how white your teeth are, are the small things satan traps us in to keep us from meaning, from the beautiful magnitude of this life with God.

so let’s let go of worrying about the petty things satan throws at us, and let’s worry about things like light, and beauty, and truth instead of how much our pants or cars cost.

God, straighten our priorities, our vision. help us resist the distractions and live this life- this one shot, with meaning, with beauty, with brilliance, inside of you.

if you have a september birthday i can not urge you enough to do this. this is a beautiful way to glorify God and use our resources for the sake of the poor and to give up a day that celebrates our life for the celebration of the lives and welfare of many others.
it's a way of coming out of a story centered on us, and joining the great story of the kingdom of God coming here to earth. beautiful.

http://www.charitywater.org/september/

through painted deserts

"And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is that your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established in elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?"


Donald Miller
Through Painted Deserts

August 5, 2010

August 5, 2010
Originally uploaded by Parker Fitzgerald

Gérard de Nerval

dear summer,

everyone is going back to school.
see you next year.

http://www.mediafire.com/?6cpk5dqgyjrb609

winter winds

And my head told my heart
"Let love grow"
But my heart told my head
"This time no, this time no."


http://www.mediafire.com/?dd3yzmgg2yw

July 29, 2010

July 29, 2010
Originally uploaded by Parker Fitzgerald

Radical

"This, we remember, is the great reward of the gospel: God himself. When we risk our lives to run after Christ, we discover the safety that is found only in his sovereignty, the security that is found only in his love, and the satisfaction that is found only in his presence. This is the eternally great reward, and we would be foolish to settle for anything less."

Radical by David Platt

I can not urge you enough to read this book.

poetry

"All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love —a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek—
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains."

~C.S. Lewis

The early church in Hebrews "joyfully accepted the confiscation of their property" because they knew that had better and lasting treasure (Hebrews 10:34). they rejoiced that someone took their stuff. it seems ridiculous to the world, and most of the time to me too, but it's beautiful lunacy of following Christ. that having someone take your stuff would be a blessing and that pain would become precious in the light of what we are promised and given.

in one month

Kirstenbosch
Originally uploaded by Chantal Steyn

i will be on a plane to LA.
2 days after that i'll be on my way to Africa.
life sneaks up on you quick.

desiring God

"Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendships and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel…but not God. He was an idea- even a good one- and a topic for discussion; but He was not a treasure of delight.
Then something miraculous happened. It was like the opening of the eyes of the blind during the golden dawn. First the stunned silence before the unspeakable beauty of holiness. Then the shock and terror that we had actually loved the darkness. Then the settling stillness of joy that this is the soul’s end. The quest is over. We would give anything of we might be granted to live in the presence of this glory forever and ever."

John Piper, Conversion, “Desiring God”