Iconoclasm.

The Right Way

"Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side?" -Leo Tolstoy

Tears

Maybe if people in broken relationships showed each other their tears instead of hiding them from one another (and from themselves), there would be a lot less hurt and a lot more healing.

Vulnerability is terrifying.

Dumb Ways to Die

Purpose

“Everyone needs purpose. Everyone is designed for a reason. The worst thing in the world is a waste of talent – someone has someone to offer somebody else or the world or God, and it isn’t used.” -my friend Bill

I interviewed my friend about his former drug addiction, and I've had to take an hour's worth of interview material and condense it into five minutes, which has - needless to say - taken a long time. But as I've been listening over and over again, cutting and cropping and moving bits of information, I've really gotten to reap some good stuff, like the quote I just put up, that I didn't catch the first time. It's been a pretty great process. :)

One Love Baby

Even if rap isn't your thing or cussing makes you uncomfortable, give it a chance. He's got some great stuff to say.

I'M REALLY HAPPY SO I'M GOING TO EXPLOSIVELY SHARE LOTS OF THINGS I LIKE

1. This song:

2. A website that rewards you with a new picture of a kitten for every hundred words of a paper you write.

3. The part of being so sleep deprived where your emotions freak out in bursts of happiness and energy.

4. Getting to read books that *I* choose.

5. Good poems. And good beverages. And good people.

6. MUSIC. I LIKE PLAYING MUSIC. And I like singing harmonies to anything and everything, even if it makes me sound like a choral dork.

7. I like that the trees outside the window that I can see from my desk when I work still have red and orange leaves even though everything else is dead.

8. My Spanish class today lasted 5 minutes and consisted of my teacher showing us this video. I don't understand, and in the moment I was annoyed that I got out of bed for her to waste my time, but I'm over it:

9. I just remembered my Aunt is coming for Christmas.

9. Kumquats. I don't have one. Nor have I had one in a long time. Nor do I really want one. But I think they're really cute.

10. Making eye contact with Ellie from our respective locations across the Jammin Java and laughing hysterically for a long time at unspoken things while everyone else gets really confused.

11. Old people that go to college despite all sense and reason.

12. Making lists of things I like. It just enhances the liking because I like making lists.

Make Peace

I have this dinky little advent calendar as the backdrop of my desktop. It's nothing much. Inside the boxes for each day are two or three words that tell me to do something and a baby passage from the bible that I can read. I wanted to do something for advent, because there's something about the liturgical seasons and the way they beckon to you to be quiet that's just good in the kind of way that soaks through the bones and into the soul. Still, it's finals time, and I knew that if I got too ambitious, I wouldn't stick with it. So tiny boxes and sentence fragments it was. Even with a classic Spanish-anxiety-disorder night of no sleep, I'm on day 4 and haven't given up yet, which perhaps says something about the profit of smallness.

I like the little instructions I'm given. Even if they're sometimes silly sounding. I like to keep them in the back of my mind all day as I look for a way that I can do whatever it is that I'm told in way that has meaning to me.

Today's command was "make peace." It was kind of a bad day for making peace. I rolled out of bed dead tired, had a spanish oral exam this morning that I spent all day yesterday and all last night freaking out about. And there are all sorts of little voices inside of me fighting for my attention and time, and most of the past several days I have been sitting in the library shushing them or stifling them by demanding that they share space with all the academics I've been binging on. The knot that built up in me last night has been dissipating, but at roughly the speed of a fish swimming through peanut butter. Peace clearly was not dwelling in me today. So I didn't really have any good building materials at my disposal for the peace I was supposed to make.

As I was sitting in the library tonight, I remembered with a start that it was Wednesday night -- the night one of my friends was reading her poetry at a creative writing senior thesis presentation hosted by the English department. Thankfully, my sense of time is totally skewed today and I hadn't missed it, so I made my way over to the room it was being held in.

Ellie's a curious creature. I love her because there are parts of her that live in parts of me, and I can know her through that. But there are also parts of her that are unknown to me and I can be curious and look at her and love her with a sense of wonder and mystery.

She asked us not to come. Word got out about the presentation and she wanted none of her friends to be there. She does not read poetry out loud; not to people she knows, and especially not to more than one person at a time. Even talking about the possibility of coming weeks prior to the event made her visibly and blatantly uncomfortable. So when I asked her last night if I could come - unsure if she would even truthfully tell me what room the event was being held in - I was really surprised to hear her tell me that she thought she could handle it and that yes, I could come.

When I got there, half the people packed into the tiny library room were there for Ellie. I felt a small twinge of the huge terror she must have been feeling. And of course she had to wait through an hour and a half of presentations to go last. But her poetry. Her words... Maybe I sound stupidly obsessed. I think sometimes I come across that way on the rare occasion that she shares something with me and I freak out inside and gush to her about how good it is.

But I freak out inside precisely because through her pen, she is sharing a part of her soul that is so precious, so secret, and so naked and exposed as they pass through the ears of listeners. And that is terrifying, I am sure. But my insides shout with joy precisely because she is so right in taking that leap of vulnerability. This deeply effervescent creature with a loud laugh and whole secret world inside is baring pieces of her soul on paper and it is breathtakingly beautiful and something so invaluable to the world.

I catch glimpses of people in this way sometimes - like a taste of the way that God views us - and it's so good to just love them and celebrate them and know without a doubt that they have so much worth. And I want desperately for people to know that what I am feeling is true about them - and to not be afraid to feel it too, if only for a moment. To feel and know that they are such a good creation.

Anyway. Her words. They were so good for my soul. And the whole room's soul. I could just feel it. Honesty. Art. Fear and freedom painted by her mouth into our hearts. And my heart felt peace.

I know it was terrifying for her. I could see that in the fear and relief in her slightly-more-watery-than-usual eyes when we all bombarded her afterwards. But I hope that in some way it was worth it to her. It was definitely worth going for us; for me.

So maybe I didn't make peace today. But I am sitting with peace that was gifted to me by a friend. And I think what I received is more beautiful than whatever I could've tried to give today, so I am glad to be a receiver tonight.

The Snowman

Another good one from my childhood.

Charity

"Ancient Hebrew wisdom describes four levels of charity. The highest level is to provide a job for one in need without his knowledge that you provided it. The next, lower level is to provide work that the needy one knows you provided. The third level is to give an anonymous gift to meet an immediate need. The lowest level of charity, to be avoided if at all possible, is to give a poor person a gift with his full knowledge that you are the donor. Perhaps the deepest poverty of all is to have nothing of value to offer in exchange. Charity that fosters such poverty must be challenged...

...Perhaps the best giving is the kind that enables the poor to know the blessedness of being givers."

-Bob Lupton

The Paper Bag Princess

This used to be one of my favorite movies as a kid. My dad must have brought it home from the library a dozen times per my request. I never realized how feminist it was until now. So proud of my parents. =P

Milkshakes

A story I've always held on to is a story from a guy that graduated a few years ahead of me, in which he was in his room studying into the night for a big test when his friends came in and invited him to go out for milkshakes with them. He said no because he had too much work to do, and in response, they threw his textbook out the window so that he had to go with them to get milkshakes. The point of the story: sometimes it's okay to take a break.

Tonight I played hide-and-go seek in the dark in the university president's house (we weren't trespassing, don't worry). It was a great milkshake.

They Just Make Me So Happy

(I checked on that last one. It's not fake. Apparently you can actually go stay in these things (portaledges) in a high ropes forest in Germany. WHAT.)

Good Morning

The morning that lives outside my window today looks like a young theater major that played the role of an old man and has come out to the lobby after the show to be congratulated by his friends who can finally notice how fake his grey hair really is.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

-Robert Frost

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! 

-Rudyard Kipling

Laundry Room Aromatherapy

1. Mapping out the rest of the semester on paper
and being able to taste the end.
2. Anne Lamott.
3. Free gingerbread coffee.
4. Outdoors that smell like crisp winter night crossbred with clean laundry.
5. The way that the beat of a djembe carries my soul.*

*the word djembe comes from the phrase "Anke djé, anke bé," which means "everyone gather together in peace." That just makes my soul even more eager to be carried.

Other Noteworthy Small Moments of Goodness

1. Spending 6 hours on Spanish in the library and actually almost enjoying it.

2. Having a girl that I don't see that often come up to me, point out that I've been in the library for a long time, encourage me, and share the rest of her bag of pomegranate seeds. She's also one of those people that is such a patient friend to people that need especially patient friends, and she offers that friendship in such a genuine way. Her small act of thoughtfulness just caught me off guard and allowed me to ponder on the goodness of her soul for a moment.

3. I got a postcard from my friend who spent the semester in Iceland. And it is all in Icelandic. All I can read is "Good day!" (at least I think that's what it says) at the beginning and "love from Iceland" at the end. I asked some friends, jokingly, if they knew Icelandic, and two guys preceded to sing me a song in Icelandic in really high pitched voices, which made up for the fact that I can't read the postcard.

4. The 5 minutes of guitar time I am going to take right now before reading more Jacques Ellul.

5. Reading Jacques Ellul.

6. The bed I get to sleep in soon.

That One Time a Guy Farted In the Library

And the whole floor couldn't recover from laughter for a full minute. :)

I just hope he's not mortified. He seemed to take it like a champ.

Jacques Ellul is the MAN

I am learning so much good stuff right now. I'm SO glad that the Bible isn't actually talking about half of the things we are taught that it is talking about.

The Meaning of the City

Finals Time, It Is. Problems Writing with Correct Syntax, I Have.

I did it. Over Thanksgiving break two of my friends came home with me and we watched all 6 Star Wars movies in 4 days to remedy my ignorance. I loved them. So great. And for the record, while the original 3 might be better, I support watching them in chronological order rather than the way they came out. Also, I think Yoda has used the force to take over my neocortex (which I just learned is the name of the part of your brain that controls language). Also also, I want to adopt R2D2. He is my favorite thing ever. 

I Wish I Were 2

There's a little girl that comes with her mom every week to the cafe that I face when I sit in the little glass box where I work. I love watching her entertain herself while her mom and dad and their coworkers eat lunch together. I love watching her talk, and watching her comprehend and engage with the things the adults around her are saying. 2 year olds are amazing. They understand so much language. But they aren't pressured to speak it perfectly. Children are given so much flexibility,  patience and grace as they learn to speak and form syntax and correct grammar. *Sigh.* Maybe if I wear footie pajamas and pigtails when I go to Costa Rica, they'll treat me the same way. In the meantime, if anyone wants to read me Spanish picture books at bedtime, I won't turn you down.

Why I Hate Homelessness

An excellent blog by a fellow Mission Year alum.

I'll Rise

From the Book of Common Prayer

I liked parts of today's prayer a lot. 

Listen, Lord, listen: not to our words but to our prayer.

"We must be saved together. We cannot go to God alone; else he would ask, 'Where are the others?'" -Charles Peguy

Five Reasons Why I Like College

1. There are lots of people with amazing musical skills.

2. Those skilled people cover a spectrum of music tastes.

3. Because there is such a wide variety of musical geniuses, you are bound to find some people that feel your jam.

4. There are lots of stairwells to do said jamming in.

5. Fellow jammers live so close that spontaneous midnight music making sessions can be the norm. 

Basically, I am really really happy right now.

"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." --Wendell Berry

A Free Man

Guess who gets to go see Wendell Berry speak in 5 days??!!! THIS GIRL.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection. 

-Wendell Berry

Marshmallow Test

So hilarious.

The Line

Okay, this is my last post for the night, I promise. But if you have the time and haven't seen it already, this is definitely a worthwhile documentary that puts faces on poverty. And it's short and to the point, but in a really humanizing way.

Gollum

Yet another reason to go to New Zealand.

Perhaps Belated, But Still Good

An article Jim Wallis wrote about choosing a presidential candidate.

As a nonprofit, Sojourners (the magazine Wallis is editor-in-chief for) is subject to constraints on their political engagement and as a result, can't support or oppose any candidates. They've done a great job at meticulously keep their partisan stances out of their writing, and I think that very constraint has made the articles they've written in response to the presidential campaign especially good. They've been able to remain "committed to [their] mission, which is to 'articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world.'” (Jim Rice)

New Obsession?

Bonsai trees.

Before today, I just thought bonsai was the name of a type of tree species. But no! My friend walked into the library today with a bonsai she had just bought, and it turns out, as we learned, that "bonsai" literally means "tree in a pot" in Japanese. (Maybe you already know this, in which case, just humor my naive excitement.) It's basically the art of taking cuttings of pretty much any kind of tree and pruning and caring for it a certain way that keeps it tiny. It's like how when you're a kid, you wish your kitten or puppy would stay little forever. Except that your little tree CAN stay little forever. And it looks like a real tree. A real MINIATURE TREE.

They bonsai-fy apple trees that grow real tiny apples:

You can grow spruce tree forests:

You can pretend it's fall all the time with a teenie flowering delonix regia:

OR, you can get a California REDWOOD. Can't you just hear it? "What's that on your desk?" "Oh nothing, just a real live miniature redwood."

Poop

I wonder how long in history people have been picking up dog poop. And in what cultures. And for what reasons. I think that'd be a really fascinating anthropological study.

628 Walk

I realize this is totally dated, but a friend introduced me awhile ago to the blog of a guy that did mission year and then walked 628 miles home and relied on the goodness of people to feed him and let him stay in his tent in their yards. The whole thing is pretty cool, but I just read the last blog he posted before he got home, and I really liked it a lot. Thought I'd share:

Are You Ever Scared?

And People Wonder Why I Don't Listen To Music While I Do Homework

Okay, I was only sort of trying to read, but even if I was really trying hard, the jazz music would have just taken over my brain anyway. That stuff is tricky. So after sitting there, staring at meaningless words and inventing a whole world of riffs in my head for 20 minutes, I decided to succumb. Yay for youtube and people with insanely impossible skills that make my brain explode. 

Also: holy poop. Love me some bluegrass, too.

BAHHHHHH!!!!!!

Oh my gosh. This.

Rocks

"Sometimes, I guess there just aren't enough rocks." -Forrest Gump

Dreaming about Real Life

Sigh. Dreaming about the future is not as simple as people think.

Confedential

I have never failed to write (or draw) random things everywhere. My sister found a notepad that had "Ellen's Ideas: Confedential" scrawled on the back. And on a random middle page, she found this:

Goodness. I'm so glad 6-year-old-me was smart enough to make that confidential. God forbid it had gotten around that I could draw bloated cat heads so well. I never did get around to the games or stories or whatever.

*****

On another note, check this out:

http://www.freecycle.org/

Grassroots sharing and reusing. So great. 

Oh, Pooh Bear.

I Can't Stand It

I'm writing a paper on critical sociological theory and I got to writing about this guy. Jurgen Habermas. He wins the award for most adorable sociologist ever.

Laughter

"Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand." -Mark Twain

I've got a lot of friends with really bizarre and wonderful laughs that make everyone around them helpless but to laugh harder and longer. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if all of them happened to be in a room together. It is one of the best things I can think of.

Watercolor

Mother gets rebellious
And uncontrollably free
Every year ‘round this time -
Spewing watercolors
From the heavens
In fits of manic glory,
Infusing saplings and their abuelos
With the kind of absurdity
Found in the daydreams
Of small children.

When it rains,
Droplets of holy water
Roll off of leaves and
Mix with Mother’s paint,
Cascading into
Purple puddles that reflect the
Charismatic oaks
Who speak in tongues
And were blessed by Crayola’s
Atomic tangerine crayon.

Treasures are everywhere.
Like Raggedy-Anne Tree,
Whose haphazard reds and oranges
And amber freckles
Make her almost sassy,
But not quite. 

The well-worn blacktop
Is peppered with red and gold.
Like a perfectly seasoned cup
Of steaming broth,
It richens the natural flavor
Of Mother’s lunacy.

It all blends together,
This rebellion.
An expression of integration
Rising from the earth
Reminding us that fragmentedness
Is not natural.

This living painting of
Quiet pandemonium
Harvests forgiveness
And redemption.
Souls imbued beyond saturation point
Can only leave trails
Of speckled amber excess -
And hope - in their wake.

Caffeine and Other Things

1. Studying so much (read: too much) Spanish all day.
2. Pumpkin coffee. Twice. From two different places.
3. Spilling said pumpkin coffee on my shirt. Twice.
4. Whose Line Is It Anyway.
5. Christian college cafes: where bearded men casually ride razor scooters indoors (while sipping on their drinks)
6. Midterms are gross.
7. Of all the places I could ever wish to run away to, this is a pretty great option: