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Today's Oswald

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they simply are!

Think of the sea, the air, the sun, the stars and the moon - all these are, and what a ministration they exert. So often we mar God's designed influence through us by our self-conscious effort to be consistent and useful. Jesus says that there is only one way to develop spiritually, and that is by concentration on God. "Do not bother about being of use to others; believe on Me" - pay attention to the Source, and out of you will flow rivers of living water. We cannot get at the springs of our natural life by common sense, and Jesus is teaching that growth in spiritual life does not depend on our watching it, but on concentration on our Father in heaven. Our heavenly Father knows the circumstances we are in, and if we keep concentrated on Him we will grow spiritually as the lilies.

The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould us.

Sims

    I've been sick the last couple of days and have been slightly bored. Only so bored that I've played about three weeks of the cell phone game Sims 2. I think there are other, real video games that exist which are related to this game-- you know, where you eat, sleep, pee, shower, love, etc.

   So I think I'm addicted, and because I'm addicted I'm going to philosophize. In this game, you meet and culture relationships with people, you get better jobs through each friend you meet, and with each new job, more money. As you earn more money, more "stuff" becomes available for you to buy-- like a bathtub, a stove, a living room, a party room, a juice bar, a  hot tub. In addition, there is always a list of "wants" a Sim has which range from "tell a dirty joke" to "get married" to "buy alarm clock."

    Once you get past the first three weeks or so, there's not a whole lot of additions you can add to your house, or stuff which will improve your quality of life-- sex is clearly the best way to pass the time, as you can do it for three hours in two seconds. (It takes thirty "minutes" to go to the bathroom, so you can imagine that three weeks without sex goes by incredibly slow.)

    I married "Ben" early in the game (by day two). I also found out that though I was married to him and we were having "sleep-overs" twice a day, I quickly fell in love with Penny, a friend of mine who got me a job as a head chef. And then one of the wants which popped up was "get divorced." I got divorced after two weeks of holding out just to see what would happen. I remarried Ben but asked Penny to move in. And despite the fact that I am now having sex-- excuse me, sleepovers-- with three other people, everybody still loves me 100 out of 100!

    So, clearly this is a very amoral game. Quite representative of American culture. Here's another reason. The absolute only reason I am still playing is to see what other things I can buy.

He who dies with the most toys wins!

It shames me to be this way.

Another Oswald morning

Exhaustion means that the vital forces are worn right out. Spiritual exhaustion never comes through sin but only through service, and whether or not you are exhausted will depend upon where you get your supplies. Jesus said to Peter - "Feed My sheep," but He gave him nothing to feed them with. The process of being made broken bread and poured out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other souls until they learn to feed on God. They must drain you to the dregs. Be careful that you get your supply, or before long you will be utterly exhausted. Before other souls learn to draw on the life of the Lord Jesus direct, they have to draw on it through you; you have to be literally "sucked," until they learn to take their nourishment from God. We owe it to God to be our best for His lambs and His sheep as well as for Himself.

It's Not so Black and White

    Husband and I were talking last night and we kind of ran one very winding loop around a few basic subjects. First we were exploring our options. Currently, Johnathan works about 30 hours a week and we are pretty tight financially so it would help if he had another job for which he does NOT volunteer (insert smiley face here.) He actually expressed interest in substitute teaching, which I know he would be amazing at. I think maybe he was surprised that I thought he would do well; but I figured out why when I asked him if he ever had a substitute in high school. He said he did, but his substitutes always taught the class and were usually student teachers. Mine never did that-- they always just gave us the homework assignment our teachers wrote down for us.

    So as I was trying to communicate why I thought Johnathan would be a great substitute teacher, we got to talking a little deeper. I was thinking specifically about the schools in Lynchburg city which are much more ethnic than the surrounding counties. Husband is a big strong black man and- what's more-- cool. I mean deep-down-got-that-presence-full-of-swagger going on. He is authoritative but funny and knows how to keep a firm hold on rowdy kids with attitude. I love it and don't know how he ended up with me.

    I tried to explain that he would do better than any cool white guy in Lynchburg city schools because of who he'd be connecting with. He agreed and told me about a voice teacher in Columbus, Ohio's schools. She had said that she would love to have Johnathan come in to the schools and sing opera and similar types of music. She explained that kids need to know that it is okay for young black men to learn to sing these songs that do not only represent "geekiness" or "whiteness." We got to talking about racial differences and about the African American culture in general. I love African American literature, and it was really great talking to him about a lot of the themes which pervade their stories: 1) the matriarchal figure (Johnathan's father is absent) 2) fear of losing men and women to the white race (the problems Johnathan and I have encountered) 3) racism within racism-- black on black prejudice (his family calls Johnathan's sister "Chocolate" and his cousin "Yellow"). 

    These are just a few of the things we talked about. He is also taking Human Services classes at the Master's level, so we discussed questions like "why don't the African American women give their babies up for adoption?" Johnathan was actually really frustrated about this, because he says that most of the women don't even consider it as an option-- they just do what their parents did who do what their parents did just like their children will do what they do. He is frustrated by African American male's evident lack of respect for women other than their mothers ("Just listen to our music." He said) We discussed the explosion of young mixed children but how couples like us (middle class black and white living in the South) are rarely found.

    These are actually really hard subjects, and kind of make you sad because no one knows how to fix these problems or whose responsible for fixing these problems. We talked about that, too. We had a really good talk.

Opinions on American Poverty

    I was reading our school paper today-- which I don't read that often because I suppose I don't really care. But inside I found an opinion article on poverty....

    Interesting...

    I turned to A5 and first scanned the opinions-- six students polled on the question: "Why does poverty still exist in America today?" (a poorly constructed sentence but I'll forgive it.)

Six answers:

    1. "I think it is a combination of a lack of genuine love and care for our fellow man and an attitude of laziness by those who could make their own lives better."

    2. "Because some people are too lazy to go out and get jobs." (just because some people are too lazy, doesn't mean other poor people are.)

    3. "It is a combination of laziness and missed opportunities." (what opportunities? for work? for the lottery?)

    4. "The answer is simple: pure selfishness." (yes, but selfishness on the part of whom? The lazy people or the wealthy people?)

    5. "Because the govenment spends money on wasteful research and projects rather than investing into worthwhile preventative measures against poverty." (ummm...like welfare?)

    6. "It doesn't...(WHAT!?) The welfare system in the US creates dependent people rather than an able-bodied workforce. Even the poorest in the US are wealthier than the third-world middle class." (And this ignorance from a senior!)

Any thoughts?

From JARED

    My friend Jared and I have been talking. I thought we'd share what we've been discussing. The following post is an e-mail Jared wrote in response to me in response to him. Good questions, which I haven't answered yet, incidentally.

"Yeah I dont know how we're supposed to make culture subservient to Christianity.
I like a lot of your ideas, Rach.
(Incidentally, if you're interested in the whole living homeless a little while thing - this is a book I read at NU which I really really loved - not a Christian author (that I know of) but really insightful)
Take a group like U2.  There's a group with phenomenal ability and popularity - and yet I think a great deal of salt in their music and lyrics.  I've always felt Jars of Clay has done a brilliant job of this balancing act too.
Anyhow - I don't know what's best.  Take scare-mare for example. {Rachel's EDIT: ScareMare is a haunted house put on by Christians to literally scare the hell out of people}  What do you think about that kind of event?  I've never been - so it's unfair of me to judge it - but that type of idea has always creeped me out (not in the halloween sense - just generally).

One thing I've been thinking about are the arts that I love so much - namely, drumming, singing, jazz and theatre.  In what ways should I/can I legitimately (and by legitimately I mean in such a way as to not compromise their quality) make them subserviant to my Christianity.  Drumming particularly is interesting to me in that - primarily, I enjoy it at it's most basic level - rhythm.  That is - merely the joy of being in time - or out of time!  Just this innate rhythmic sense that God has put in my soul.  Drumming itself can conjure very primal/spiritual feelings in oneself.  Thus, for me at least, it can be a worshipful experience to just enjoy the groove. But how do I turn that outward?  How do I in any way make my grooves glorify God?  Answer?  No clue.

Not sure if I just went on a tangent or if we're still discussing the same thing.  My mind is kind of scattered this morning.
What are your thoughts?

The rest of the e-mails are in the extended post. Click below! 

This Other Life

          Sometimes I get just a blurb of it-- that feeling of "this is the way it should be." When it comes, I really feel my soul open up in freedom and I lift my head and smile. I picture the feeling as light casting its glance through shuttered windows. (Doesn't this sound so disgustingly poetic?)

          And then, since it's so fleeting now and not real yet, it passes and I am disgusted with life as I know it. Usually it comes as I realize how chained I really am to myself, or when I hear or read how much Jesus's life really frees us. I know it does, because I really can see it. But then it passes and I just remember knowing the life of Jesus. I live on memories half the time, and die when the memories get sparse. But there is a whole other, engaging life that I miss since I thoroughly muddle it with my own. It's spiritual, human, pure, and altogether free of materialism, intellectualism, ignoramous, individualism, unitarianism. I wish it were mine so much!

        My posts lately have been very dry and sad. The strange thing is that I am not very dry and sad. I am not despairing or suffering "malaise", I just miss Jesus. I was in Home Depot today with Husband, in the garden section for flower bed siding, and that old song was playing-- I can't even remember who sings it or what it's called. But the song makes me think of how I treat Jesus (okay I just found the thing and I am going to put it all. It's by Vertical Horizon):   

" Somewhere there's speaking
It's already coming in
Oh, and it's rising at the back of your mind

You never could get it
Unless you were fed it
Now you're here and you don't know why

But under skinned knees
And the skid marks
Past the places where you used to learn

You howl and listen
Listen and wait for the
Echoes of angels who won't return

CHORUS:

He's everything you want
He's everything you need
He's everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
He says all the right things
At exactly the right time
But he means nothing to you
And you don't know why

You're waiting for someone
To put you together
You're waiting for someone to push you away

There's always another
Wound to discover
There's always something more you wish he'd say

CHORUS

But you'll just sit tight
And watch it unwind
It's only what you're asking for
And you'll be just fine
With all of your time
It's only what you're waiting for

Don't Much Like Poetry, but...

Excerpt from "The People, Yes"
-- Carl Sandburg

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
    They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
    The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
    You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
    "I earn my living.
    I make enough to get by
    and it takes all my time.
    If I had more time
    I could do more for myself
    and maybe for others.
    I could read and study
    and talk things over
    and find out about things.
    It takes time.
    I wish I had the time."

The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:
phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
"They buy me and sell me...it's a game...sometime I'll
break loose..."

    Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
    Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
    Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
    This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
    Yet this reaching is alive yet
    for lights and keepsakes.

    The people know the salt of the sea
    and the strength of the winds
    lashing the corners of the earth.
    The people take the earth
    as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
    Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
    They are in tune and step
    with constellations of universal law.
    The people is a polychrome,
    a spectrum and a prism
    held in a moving monolith,
    a console organ of changing themes,
    a clavilux of color poems
    wherein the sea offers fog
    and the fog moves off in rain
    and the labrador sunset shortens
    to a nocturne of clear stars
    serene over the shot spray
    of northern lights.

    The steel mill sky is alive.
    The fire breaks white and zigzag
    shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
    Man is a long time coming.
    Man will yet win.
    Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
    There are men who can't be bought.
    The fireborn are at home in fire.
    The stars make no noise,
    You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
    Time is a great teacher.
    Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
    the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
    "Where to? what next?"

A History of my Blog

.....I have found myself asking, "why do i blog?"

sometimes i feel like blogs can be a brag book for people to write about areas in their lives. they can create a verbal picture and create an illusion that things are great. i know people out there second guess their choice of words, how they are going to type something, how they can squeeze in extra details that really are not necessary. i do it. i admit it. and it really, really bothers me that i do it. especially when i read other people's blogs and accuse them of doing it as well. just as i point the finger at someone, i have three fingers pointing back at me. i do find some blogs that i read to be pretty shallow in content, yet light-heart...an easy read...which is great when you don't want to use your brain. there are blogs specifically to create community, blogs that document a child's life, blogs that network homeschooling moms, blogs that share pics of their kids for grandparents and family to view from far distances, blogs that read like poetry, or blogs that are confessionals where people are truly transparent....


so my desire is to blog about stuff that is of importance. i don't want to post to say look at me, look at me. i often worry about if i come across as "look at what we have or look at what we get to experience." i actually ran into this whole blogging dilemma when i first started this in 2004. i had posted several entries, but stopped because i felt like i was posting for other people's expectations. i picked it back up a year later only because i felt guilty for not keeping it up after being harassed by one of my youth group kids. i didn't know who my audience was or really is. since my blog is linked to my notecards site, i haven't a clue as to who drops by and reads. i know that my former students/youth group kids read it (all ages of life). i feel like my audience is so broad that i shy away from being totally who i am. i post about things that are safe, non-offensive, and age-appropriate. i sometimes struggle with that because i want to be authentic. but at the same time, i don't want to offend.

if i want people to read my blog, then i should probably produce work consistently; however, i don't want to blog just because i haven't posted in almost three weeks. i want a reason or an event to blog about. ... i guess i say that because the only blog that i view consistently is carlos's because i know that he blogs everyday and most days, he'll post more than once. i go there because i know other people go there. it's almost like going to be a part of a crowd (hence his ability to create community via his blog) . going where others are. however, i rarely speak. i think i have only left a couple of comments at his site. but i still like going because carlos makes me laugh, and he is real.

so here's to authenticity and hopefully to future posts that will be meaty and cause one to walk away with some things to think about

for the whole posting, please visit here.

Expressions

We discussed language yesterday and my professor- Dr. Prior- made the statement that language is a reflection of God. She wanted us to get in under that sentence and bring out all the mud. We had just been talking about different characteristics people attribute to God-- eternal, kind, angry, omnipotent-- and it struck me how much language shapes our worldviews. We all sense a vague difference in the words "joy" and "happy", but according to dictionary.com the definition of "joy" is "happiness." You can see when I am happy, but you can feel when I am joyful.

So anyway, I was thinking about how language is our expression of God-- the way we are able to wrap our minds around concepts like joy and eternality and justice.

We moved on to talk about the power of language, and somebody brought up how God spoke the world into being. Words came....and *bam*- life existed. But this connected with the first thing I was thinking about and I realized how you and I and my dog and that sunset are simply an expression of God. He was expressing Himself and created us....