my favorite things, revisited

1) baking, lately with pumpkin
2) Pandora's fantastic mix of some chill music
3) momma's homemade cranberry sauce
4) playing Mah-jong
5) food blogs, starting with this one
6) Edward Butternuts, when he's being nice
7) Jon Foreman's song "A Mirror is Harder to Hold"
8) making lists
9) snow days
10)crawling in a warm bed and staying there til morning
11) curling up with a good book
12) arts & crafts

.. to be continued

also, Hannah Coulter's wisdom

something i wanted to remember for later:

"Living without expectations is hard but, when you can do it, good. Living without hope is harder, and that is bad. You have got to have hope, and you mustn't shirk it. Love, after all, 'hopeth all things.' But maybe you must learn, and it is hard learning, not to hope out loud, especially for other people. You must not let your hope turn into expectation."

(Hannah Coulter, p. 146)

who am i?

several recent situations have really challenged me to evaluate who i am at the core of my being. what are my primary identifying characteristics? what are my convictions? who am i when no one's looking?

this is a short working list:
grace, forgiveness
hospitality, generosity, open hands
justice - equal opportunities for all
encouragement
community, fulfilling observed needs, feeling needed

... rather, this is who i want to be.

"Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus." --Philippians 3:12-14

still moving in, getting settled

i'm not a very good roommate. i mean, i'm neat and i contribute to the shared grocery money every week, but i fear that i'm not good at living with people.

i'm not good at figuring out ways to remind my roommates to do their dishes or to tell them to sweep off the sidewalk after they mow. i'm not good at remembering to ask how their days went, what went well and what went poorly. i'm not good at turning my alarm clock off, even when it rings a thousand times.

and i like to be alone, to have a room all to myself. it's weird sitting in the same room with someone who i don't feel very comfortable with, or loyal to, or loved by. when i come home from work, i just want to be alone and relax, go through my thoughts.

but the thing is, i DO want somebody to debrief with when i come home. i want a best friend to live with. i want to be understood and loved and comforted and encouraged.
but right now, that's not really happening. i lost a best friend, and the process of replacing that relationship is so slow.


maybe i'm being pessimistic right now, and everything will be fine again tomorrow.

jayber knows.

"But the worst day of all was when it hit me that Jesus' own most fervent prayer was refused: 'Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.' I must have read that verse or heard it a hundred times before without seeing or hearing. Maybe I didn't want to see it. But then one day I saw it. It just knocked me in the head. This, I thought, is what is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means that your will and God's will may not be the same. It means there's a good possibility that you won't get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer. It means you may be crucified.

After Jesus' terrible prayer at Gethsemane, an angel came to Him and gave Him strength, but did not remove the cup.

Before that time I may have had my doubts about public prayers, but I had listened to them complacently enough, even when they were for the football team. I had prayed my own private prayers complacently enough, asking for things I wanted, even though I knew well already that a lot of things I wanted I was not going to get, no matter how much I prayed for them.

But now I was unsure what it would be proper to pray for, or how to pray for it. After you have said 'thy will be done,' what more can be said? And where do you find the strength to pray 'thy will be done' after you see what it means?

And what did these questions do to my understanding of all the prayers I had ever heard and prayed? And what did they do to the possibility that I could stand before a congregation--my congregation, who would believe that I knew what I was doing--and pray for favorable weather, a good harvest, the recovery of the sick and the strayed, victory in war? Does prayer change God's mind? If God's mind can be changed by the wants and wishes of us mere humans, as if deferring to our better judgment, what is the point of praying to Him [or Her] at all? And what are we to think when two good people pray for opposite things--as when two devout mothers of soldiers on opposite sides pray for the safety of their sons, or for victory?

...

By then I wasn't just asking questions; I was being changed by them. I was being changed by my prayers, which dwindled down nearer and nearer to silence, which weren't confrontations with God but with the difficulty--in my own mind, or in the human lot--of knowing what or how to pray. Lying awake at night, I could feel myself being changed--into what, I had no idea. It was worse than wondering if I had received the call. I wasn't just a student or a going-to-be-preacher anymore. I was a lost traveler wandering in the woods, needing to be on my way somewhere but not knowing where."

from the writings of Wendell Berry in the narrative of Jayber Crow

"anxiety is the inability to be present."

what am i anxious about?

1) things not turning out the way i expected them to
2) not being good enough, prepared enough, deep enough, compassionate enough,... not having the answers
3) in 5 years not having realized at least some of the aspects of my idealized hippie dream life... see number 1
4) not living my life to the fullest

presence vs. purpose... and prayer

on Sunday at the First Nations Gathering in New Mexico, the pastor spoke about well, spoke about a lot of things. but one thing that got my attention was a deep reminder of God's presence with us. as i turned these words over and over in my mind, i realized that i've been focusing so much on God's purposes (and therefore my purpose in this world) that i've nearly forgotten the continuous presence of the Spirit. i think i do this because i understand God primarily as an academic. i've never really related to God on an emotional relationship-with-Jesus level. rather my spirituality has been rational, fairly systematic and idea-based, and i've been so caught up in learning-centered spiritual growth that i forget about the more mystical, unexplainable possibilities--such as the presence of the Spirit.

and i know we're supposed to pray without ceasing, and on an academic level, i wholeheartedly subscribe to this idea. yet in practice, it's another story. i think i use the praying-without-ceasing concept as a justification for not taking responsibility for my own spiritual health. if i'm in the Spirit's presence constantly, then there's no need to set aside specific periods of time to pray, right?

i was reading through some of my journal entries from last year at about this time, and it's surprising how jaded i've become. i used to scribble little prayers or reminders for myself on the bottoms of pages, but now all i can manage to put on paper is my laments (and they're not even good biblical laments because i can't bring myself to express a hope that God will restore the situation). why is life in this season so different?

i can't do it

i just need other people around. everybody has left me, and i've experienced this acutely in the past month: i am not ok alone. i need other people, but who? who cares about me anymore? and not in a pity way, but in a genuine way.

life is so meaningless if there aren't people to share it with, you know?

i don't want my life to be this way, but it's hard to change and i often don't know how.

14,000 things to be happy about

my world has recently been turned upside down. life as i knew it is entirely different now--no more homework, no more school supplies, no more close [in proximity] friend groups, no more jeans and t-shirts kind of days, no more comfortable shoes. grown-up life isn't as ideal as i'd pictured it. not yet, anyway--but i'm only on my second day, so i'm expecting some improvement, at least.

in this time of super-important transitions (which i'm finding kinda difficult, to be honest), i need to remind myself everyday of things that make me happy.

here is the list, in no particular order:

1) cooking for others
2) new [intellectual] ideas
3) farms
4) sharing experiences
5) summertime, right after dinner til dusk
6) moms
7) dangly earrings
8) stories
9) little girls who are cute and wave at me when i'm riding my bike
10) riding my bike... downhill
11) the smell of the shade
12) open windows
13) kittens!
14) organizing things
15) hospitality
16) black cherry Kool-Aid


..to be continued as i discover more things that make me happy.

about forgiveness

about forgiveness
(erin emenheiser, 4/24/08)

yesterday i ate
the strawberries—
your strawberries—
that i saw in the fridge.

it's just that—
they looked so—
i didn't mean to—
i'm sorry.


when the time is right
i promise
to buy you
another quart.

help my unbelief

this morning i was nonchalantly singing through Great is Thy Faithfulness when i stumbled across this line from the chorus: "All I have needed Thy hand hath provided; great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!"

it struck me how untrue this line is. no--all i have needed, i bought at the grocery store. or all i have needed my parents gave me. i can't honestly say that i depend upon God for any of my material possessions. not in the same way i depend upon my own cash flow.

this begs the question: do we, as affluent Americans, really understand what it might mean for God to provide for all our physical needs?

i say no. but i bet Mike Yankoski, who spent several months living among the homeless in several U.S. cities, understands what it means. his provisions--namely, food--came from others' generosity, and in our culture there's a sense of shame and vulnerability in receiving handouts.

Yankoski writes this: "Begging is hard. It's something you expect hungry dogs to do, but not men and women made in God's image. The minute you put out your hand, or open your guitar case, it feels like you're writing 'failure' and 'weakness' all over yourself. You're telling everyone who comes by, 'I am unable.' The message blares up and down the sidewalk, and across multiple lanes of traffic. And the message doesn't stop screaming until you pull back your hand, or close up your case." this is not some scholar's understanding of what somebody once reported to him--this is a first-hand account.

i can't even imagine.

space to think it through

several recent events/conversations have forced me to seriously consider what i believe about the atonement.

it's definitely not "thank you for the cross" (which is the equivalent of saying, "thank you, God, for killing your son." my God is not a divine child abuser.)

it's not "Jesus, you gave your life for me, therefore i will give my life for you" in an even exchange transaction.

it's more like this: thank you, God, for redemption, for sending your son to redeem us--your creations, your children--who have ignored our brothers' and sisters' needs emotionally, socially, economically, materially, spiritually, etc. we are far from how you have created us to live. but through the prophets, through Jesus, through the early church, you have shown us what you desire of us, how you desire us to live.


the thing is, in my "field" of "work" (or simply my area of interest), substitutionary atonement is not at all useful. "Jesus died for me--wow! i should spend all my time praising him" in an entirely vertical relationship. this says nothing of redemption or redistribution or our responsibility to love our brothers and sisters.

i find it much more helpful to consider the entirety of God's story--from creation to the fall and all the way through redemption. this gives me concrete examples of how God intended for God's creation to live in harmony, in shalom. certainly plead the case of the widow and the fatherless and care for the alien in your land. this is how i have to understand the atonement; nothing else moves me to care for others.

i'm secretly avoiding my homework

yes, i do have thoughts this month.
but unfortunately, they're all tied to various class assignments, and not yet cohesive.

this is a list of things i'm excited about:
1) my senior seminar paper. it's about rethinking charity and ministry with the poor.
2) continuing to plan the baccalaureate 2008 service
3) applying for a specific summer job which seems to fit me perfectly
4) graduation, of course. which right now means not having to read stupid theology textbooks anymore (unless i want to).
5) spring break with my family. and maybe friends.

ok, let's finish this reading before i crash.

3 things i learned at the rock and roll musuem

1) Van Morrison and Jim Morrison are NOT the same. they're not even related. duh.

2) rock and roll was a rebellious genre of music--not just some tame thing that dj's play on the oldies station. it came from outside of the Leave-it-to-Beaver "popular culture." people were getting pissed off about stuff like politics and the American dream, and they chose to voice their frustrations in music.

3) i discovered that i like live music much better than recorded music. the genuine emotions and energy of liver performances are just more exciting to me than the canned fake-ness of modern radio tracks.