I Am a Privileged Woman

I am so excited and terrified for my future. This life is going to be such a long and powerful journey marked with suffering, joy, and faithfulness. It already has been.

I'm currently feeling overwhelmed with how many opportunities I have. I just hope I always always always give them away as much as I receive them. (Accountability always and forever welcome.) God is SO faithful. I am SO thankful.

Sociology FTW

Brain Drain

I've got this friend from Kenya who came to the US for a few years to work in Camden and attend grad school at the same place I go. She's one of the most intelligent, tender, and driven women I know. I found out she has a blog, and has recently written a series of posts about brain drain - the phenomenon where trained professionals leave developing (there has got to be a better word... developing into what?) countries in favor of more wealthy nations. If you don't know anything about it, you should educate yourself:

Brain Drain pt 1
Brain Drain pt 2
Brain Drain pt 3

And then, when you're done educating yourself, you should read her post about baboons. She must be one of the most patient women in the world, too, because I've asked her to share baboon stories an absurd amount of times, as does everyone else. They're so great:

Baboon Story

Individualism, How You Sadden Me

Some days (actually, most days), I just really long to live in a society where people notice and value their interconnectedness, viewing themselves as a collective first and individuals second.

"In earlier periods of Western history there was little demand that written books be attached to the names of single authors. Writing was not viewed as the expression of an individual mind." -Kenneth Gergen

God Speaks to Each of Us As He Makes Us

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, 
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall, 
go to the limits of your longing. 
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Mail

"Reading the New Testament is like reading somebody else's mail." -Peter Enns

Hurry

"Hurry ruins saints as well as artists." -Thomas Merton

Placenta Bears

Last night I hung out with a friend and looked up all of the "fun" (may be interpreted as "intensely bizarre and disgusting") things you can do with a placenta. This one takes the cake.

You're welcome. 

*Giddy Noises*

Man, I am just so thankful for the past (roughly) 24 hours. It included the following:

The kind of intense tears that come from desperately needed encouragement.

The way that encouragement enables me to encourage others so much more easily.

Friends who give their time at the drop of a hat.

Wine in a rocket ship sippy cup.

 9 hours of sleep.

Waking up to a phone call from a really fantastic niece who agreed to someday abandon her fear of foregoing recipes to experiment in the kitchen with me.

A long walk and thorough(ly good) conversation with a beautiful friend.

Tacos with lentils.

A story made up for me in which I was a super hero that reconciled the antagonism between people and trees.

Homeworky productivity.

Maté.

An especially fantastic night of stairwell music.

Division by Sociological Differences in the Church

"There is diversity within a large family - different aptitudes, different tastes, different personal characteristics. It would be a strange family, nonetheless, which would set up separate living arrangements to satisfy the particular peculiarities of each member. In a real family, the diversity is held within the unity of the family. The family lives in the same house, eats together, carries forward its group activities as a unity. In this way, the diversity enriches the whole family life, and each benefits from the other." -Donald Miller

A Birthday Quote

One of my favorite professors gave me this lyric today. I like it. :)

May you never tire of waiting
Never feel that life is cheap
May your life be filled with light
Except for when you're trying to sleep!
--'The Gift', Bruce Cockburn

This Is Where I Want to Be Right Now.

Nowhere else.

Plant Some Shit

I See the Moon and the Moon Sees Me

I was looking for a picture today and ran across some pictures from my astronomy lab last spring. I don't think I ever posted any. I lost a bunch of my favorite galaxy pictures, but I still have these three. Also, there's a nifty little binder stuffed in a cupboard back home that's got the cool galaxy pictures in it if you think this kind of stuff is super cool and want to see. Astronomy was a pain in the butt for a required lab science, but this stuff made it worth it.

This is a mosaic of the moon that I made. A mosaic, because in order to get a picture like this, you have to take lots of pictures of little sections of the moon and paste them all together. Any CCD (CCD = a telescope camera) picture you've ever seen of the moon is actually a mosaic.

Also, here's a picture I took of Saturn. It looks fake, but I promise, it's not. :)

And this is m95. We only took one color photo cuz they take a long time. You have to take 6 or 7 pictures in blue, green, red, and clear filters and then find the best version of each color filter and stack the pictures. M95 is a barred spiral galaxy located in Leo. It's 38ish million light years away.

But Really... A Real Bounce House

Goodbye, Mr. Conti - Letter from a Resigning Educator

"For the last decade or so, I have had two signs hanging above the blackboard at the front of my classroom, they read, “Words Matter” and “Ideas Matter”. While I still believe these simple statements to be true, I don’t feel that those currently driving public education have any inkling of what they mean." Read more.

All 6 Star Wars At Once

This:

Today Is a Great Day

1. I got this in the mail from the bestest friend anyone could ever ask for:

 (If you can't see, it says "Ellen's Ultimate Fort Building Kit")

*grin*

2. My English professor sent us an email saying that we were going to have a panel discussion in class on hair and how that relates to gender and post-colonial oppression and identity, and I was super skeptical, but daaaaaaamn. We had three incredible black women talk to us about their experiences with hair, and it captivated me for the whole two hours. I felt both amazed and sooo ignorantly white at the end of that class.

3. I got to hug a friend that I just really wanted to hug all break long.