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.