blip

i've been really into blip.fm for the past couple of weeks. it's a website a lot like twitter, but instead of posting a status, you post the songs you're listening to. kind of a hybrid between pandora and twitter. only more legit than both. it's an easy way to create a playlist and listen to other peoples' music. [mine is blip.fm/abecksies.] props to gregarious for pointing me in blip's direction. elsewhere on the technology front, i have been trying to import my blog to wordpress because the layouts are so much more beautiful. but it won't really work.


i'm finished. done with work, done with class, done with finals, FINALly finished with my poetry project. now all i have to do is move out, graduate, have my little grad soiree, and drive twenty hours in my newly purchased motor vehicle with my texas roommate kat. then i'll be in my new home. for i don't know how long. doing i don't exactly know what. my endings and beginnings are starting to overlap.

now that i don't have so much attached to me [i.e. academic commitments, a job, and the like] and there's so much looming in the future, i'm already feeling a lot more creative and free. i hope i can find some kind of writing class in texas. and a life-giving, grace-giving church community. and a way to pay off school. i want a garden. i want to grow blackberries. i want a pet. and my own space to write.

my Father has already been so faithful to give to me. and will continue to be.


now,
i must consider the lilies.

slipping out quietly

i thought i'd make this big exit when i graduated and left minneapolis. you know, going to all my last classes and making a big deal about not having class anymore forever. or showing up at the last chapel of the school year and standing up when dean said "let's recognize all the seniors at their last chapel." scheduling goodbye appointments with all of my friends and sharing a tearful goodbye with someone at the airport on monday morning when i fly to lubbock.

alas,

i've slept through most of the chapels of the past few weeks, haven't really gone to much class, and am likely going to drive to lubbock now that my dad wants to get me a car. and i'm realizing that there is no possible way i can have a coffee date with every person i've loved since 2006.


i feel like my finish here is really cushioned. soft. i'm sleeping through milestones. whispering goodbyes. slipping out of a party quietly.

it's weird, and it's not what i would have picked or predicted, but i know God is being good to me in it.

write and wrong

I'm in this class about writing for profit. Basically, we're all learning how to be freelance writers. How to market ourselves. How to sell what we create and earn a living from it it. Budgets, expenses, cold calls, elevator speeches. I don't like it.

Yes, I've never taken a business class in my life. I do not understand how money works. (I mean, I thought until rather recently that banks stored the actual money I gave them in a safe with my name on it. What happens if a bank burns down? Where does all the money go?) I pay attention to and invest in things I love. It spilled out of me yesterday, how everything in my life points to this blazing center of language.

I just now realized why all of this freelance/professional writing/technical writing/grant writing/making writing academic mumbo jumbo is metamorphosing into something really undesirable to me. I want to learn writing as a craft, not as a means by which to earn money.

Writing is not a quadrant of my life or a hobby or job. It's my lenses; it's the way I see the world, the instrument God has given me to see and understand and enjoy the beauty of His creation.

Yes, God has gifted me and blessed me and ignited a fire in me for words. But I think that's why it's so sacred to me. I don't want to profane it.
I don't want my writing to be property. In my metaphorical mind, I equate that to human trafficking.


I don't want to write to make a living. For me, writing is living.

i am trying to break your heart

how do you know when you're passionate about something?

when everything else in your life points to it.


classes like philosophy and music - which would normally seem mundane and useless to me - become lifegiving to me when i see them pointing at poetry. i saw this when cadenza and melisma and hedonism and david hume started showing up in my writing.

the lenses of my eyes are poems.
my mind is a template for a poem. insert you, insert yesterday, insert grass and laundromats and nursing homes and madrid and summer and texas. . .

poems deconstruct the dams i've built to stop feeling things.
poems are reservoirs of emotion.
poems are dangerous and burdensome.



"If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the creator, there is no poverty." -rainer maria rilke

the answer

tea garden.

raspberry tangerine shake.

changed my life.

blessed are the peacemakers

The sermon from Bethlehem today was severely edifying.

Peacemakers are Mirrors of Jesus and His Gospel
Colossians 3:1-17
Ken Sande, Peacemaker Ministries

1. A "truncated gospel" can cripple our souls and relationships (Matthew 22:29).

2. If we truly understand the Gospel of peace, we will delight in mirroring and imitating it as peacemakers (Ephesians 5:1; Colossians 3:12-17).

*Reflect much on Jesus and his gospel, and you will reflect much of Jesus and His Gospel.

3. Conflict is an opportunity to exalt and reflect God's reconciling glory (Exodus 33:18-19; 34:5-8); 1 Corinthians 10:31; Philippians 4:4).

4. I delight in mirroring my union with Christ by guarding peace and unity in his Church (Philippians 2:1-2; Ephesians 4:1-4).

5. When others wrong me, I have the opportunity to imitate the loving correction and forgiveness Jesus gave me through the cross (Galatians 6:1; Colossians 3:13; Acts 7:60; Matthew 18:21-35).

6. Confessing my sins proves I trust in Jesus' mercy, helps me put off harmful habits, and enables me to reflect Jesus' likeness more fully (1 John 1:8-9; Proverbs 28:13; 2 Corinthians 3:18).

7. When people see God empowering me to break free from sin and make peace with others, they may hunger to know the source of that power and peace (Acts 2:42-47).

Blessed are the peacemakers, who mirror Jesus and his gospel, for they will be recognized as and called the sons of God (Matthew 5:9, paraphrased).

i'm here.

what a refreshing past few days-- cooking chicken curry, playing outside, talking to a good friend in a hammock by the pond, frolicking through the woods in dresses and taking dumb photos, variety show, staying up late, waking early, fresh vegetables, lots of good music, southern sweet tea...

i'm learning to keep both my feet planted in the ground God has me on now. not one foot here and one foot in what He has for me (or what I hope He'll have for me) in the future. i am still in school. i still live in minneapolis.

do not worry about tomorrow, for today has enough troubles of its own.


post script: please listen to/read the lyrics of "embracing accusation" by shane & shane. this song moves my soul to worship Jesus in such a unique, refreshing way every time i hear it. the story behind it is really cool too.