Enough

I need so much more.
Yet I have so much more than I need.
Help me to find the life that I need
In the life that I already have.

Happy First Day of Spring! (for real now)

Grow, green things! Grow!

La Primera Flor de Primavera

The beginning of Spring is probably one of my most 

favorite things in the whole wide world.

Parents

I am thankful for them today. While I was home my mom shifted her schedule to fit mine, lent me her car and paid for gas, sewed a new bottom into my backpack, fixed an uncomfortable worn spot in my shoes, looked for a new laptop battery to replace my old one, and was just purely awesome. My dad went on a last minute grocery run for me, rearranged his plans to adapt to some of mine, and filed my taxes.

I wouldn't say that this break has been the most restful of ones, but I cannot say that I have not been cared for.

Alienation in a Capitalist Society

“If workers wish to own the product of their own labor, they must buy it like anyone else. No matter how desperate the workers’ need, they cannot use the products of their own labor to satisfy their need. Even works in a bakery can starve if they don’t have the money to buy the bread that they have made. Because of this peculiar relation, things that we buy – that are made by others – seem to us to be more an expression of ourselves than the things we make at our jobs. People’s personalities are judged more by the cars that they drive, the clothes that they wear, the gadgets that they use – none of which they have made – than by what they actually produce in their daily work, which appears to be an arbitrary and accidental means for making money in order to buy things… Instead of work being the transformation and fulfillment of human nature, work is where we feel least human.” 

(Excerpted from George Ritzer’s chapter on Karl Marx, Classical Sociological Theory, 162)

Come and Be Beloved

It’s there again

That thing

The one that happens

When dads play with their sons

Or when we collect tears

From most beloved ones

It’s endless

That impossibly unrestrainable thing

That grows in the crevices

And secrets of mountains

And betwixt the small fingers

Of little ones splashing in fountains

It dances so furiously

That my chest cannot hold it

The flesh of my secret room

Parts as eagerly as the red sea

Love gushing out with the brute strength

Of a million and one city hydrants

No one cannot be reached

You are all wet

So come and play in it

Oh, please, I want nothing more

Than for you to come and play

A Hymn

I went to church for our lenten service tonight. I must admit, I'm not a huge fan of church, but I looove lent. I wish I was home to be a part of it here for the entire season.

We sang a hymn that I really liked. There was something about God's character that really stood out to me in the way it developed. The speaker starts out feeling like God has abandoned her; she wants God to be big and rescue her from the confusion and hurt and darkness she is experiencing. As the song progresses, God doesn't do anything God wasn't doing before, but the change happens in the speaker's awareness. She talks about God as the one that is holding her heart in its present state of weariness, not just taking the weariness away. God is suffering with her, and in having someone to suffer with, she is freed to have hope. She can see now that she was never abandoned, which is what she seems to have been most afraid of. And it is in her suffering that she grows and understands that God's comfort comes not from quick rescue, but from  being held and loved persistently through the process of healing.

O God, why are you silent? I cannot hear your voice;
the proud and strong and violent all claim you and rejoice;
you promised you would hold me with tenderness and care.
Draw near, O Love, enfold me, and ease this pain I bear.

My hope lies bruised and battered, my wounded heart is torn;
my spirit spent and shattered by life’s relentless storm;
will you not bend to hear me, my cries from deep within?
Have you no word to cheer me when night is closing in?

Through endless nights of weeping, through weary days of grief,
my heart is in your keeping, my comfort, my relief.
Come, share my tears and sadness, come, suffer in my pain,
oh, bring me home to gladness, restore my hope again.

May pain draw forth compassion, let wisdom rise from loss;
oh, take my heart and fashion the image of your cross;
then may I know your healing, through healing that I share,
your grace and love revealing your tenderness and care.