Made alive with laughter: 2005-05-08

my inspiration to mission

"Granny Brand was more alive than any person he had ever met. By giving away life she found it. Pain she knew well. But pain need not destroy. It can be transformed."

"I have watched these rare individuals (Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, disciples of Ghandi..) in action; any thought of personal sacrifice fades away. I find myself envying not pitying them. In the process of giving away life they find it, and achieve a level of contentment and peace virtually unknown to the rest of the world."

From "the gift nobody wants"

God knows

"In Italy for thirty years underthe Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed- but they produced Michealangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five-hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cukoo clock." --Graham Greene

"If I were to choose between pain and nothing, I would choose pain." William Faulkner

reflection

the past few years have been really hard. school and life kicked my butt. So here are some journal entries from last fall.

Lord God, I know you are still here, but am I? Life right now is really hard for me-- I know my life is easy compared to others', but for me right now it is hard...this twilight zone tinged with whispers of heaven and black buckets of hell oozing between every crack, person, doorway. "Well you're all scared and stiff, a sick stolen gift, and the people you're with, they're all scared stiff.".... had a bizarre weekend-- so life-like in being unpredictable, full of failures, heart breaking disappointment, soul wearying news, gut wrenching nervous fear, pride, indifference, jubilation, highest tops and lowest bottoms, success, sobbing, fun relaxation, dreadful impotence, free goodness, sick sin, new experiences, new frailties, utmost closeness and aloneness, irrational tears, dreadful sleep, surprising strength, tremulous insecure weakness, shameful complaining, selfish living, honest confessions, ominous withholding of that which truly weighs me down the most.

"I'll pirouette upon my grave for in Your path I'll run and hide"

Jesus I give all my burdens, fears,burning desires,
what haunts me night and day,
that awakens and stirs my heart,
fills me with yearning in daydreams and nightmares,
what scares me wit-less and makes my heart soar,
all that looms, pursues, invigorates, fills, frees, and makes me tremble,
makes me thankful sad ecstatic depressed.
All I entrust to Your care as Lord of me and this world,
My despair, loneliness, ecstasy, joys,
my devastation, scars, broken heart, ploys,
disillusionment, doubt, cheer, and rest
my sin, my failure, each endeavor, my best
my family, friends, crushes and foes,
my jealousy, relationships, rages, and woes
this world that dumps and tramples me
turns me inside out,
the brokenness that crushes me
'eternal life!'(trancendence), I shout
through the valleys and sunlit glades, forests dark and deep
through streams of death and endless life my soul you'll ever keep.
through ever present trouble
and satan's constant gloat
I praise You cause You've promised
and will ever be my hope.

Job 19:25-7
"I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes-- I and not another, how my heart yearns within me!"

Those To Come

This Shins song has been haunting me. Had to post some more lyrics:

Eyeless in the morning sun you were pale and mild a modern girl, taken with thought still prone to care, making tea in your underwear you went out in the yard to find something to eat to clear your mind, something bad inside me went away.
Quaking leaves and broken light, shifting skin, the coming night, the bearers of all good things arrive, climb inside us twist and cry, a kiss on your molten eyes, myriad lives like blades of grass yet to be realized bow as they pass.
They are cold, still, waiting in the ether to form, feel, kill, propagate only to die.. dissolve, magically, absurdly, they'll end, leave, dissipate, coldly and strangely return.
.....

I'm pretty sure I will never tire of the Shins. I have two albums to love, but hope they create more.