Cross my heart

I have been told that I really need to update this thang, and since it has been a couple of months and a LOT of stuff has happened since we last met, I will indulge in your requests.

And quite frankly, I am actually in a writing mood, which has not happened for a long time.

I was driving along to visit the 'lucky' 08 yitsers and had this massive feeling that everything was finally aok.

I think Christians often have this idea that its ok to lie and pretend that everything is honky-dory when, in actual fact, everything is kinda crapola. It is, as I call it, the 'Onward Christian Solider' mentality.

I was talking to someone I had never met on the phone last week, and the first thing out of my mouth was 'how are you?'

He replied that that was kind of a odd question to really answer, as people usually have a fairly blase answer, and the person who asked normally is just being polite in asking in the first place.

The conversation then went off on a totally different tangent.

Moving back to the 'Onward Christian Solider' idea:

I have to find out if there are any mental health issues (specifically depression) in my family .

Now I am dead sure that there is, but if I even thought about asking my grandparents, they would be dead sure that there weren't and aren't any such issues in the family.

I think depression is often such a taboo subject in the 'we are all sweet and nothing is ever wrong' world of Christianity and I am really not sure why.

I am aware that this post is most likely not making any sense to ya'll (that is if you have stuck around) but this is an issue that makes perfectly no sense to me.

So lets just leave it there.

God moving over the faces of the water..

The air around here has changed.

Last night it had a slight sticky feel to it, not a horrible one, but the beginnings of change.

Change of pace, change of seasons...change of the year as I have known it.

Driving home with Blair, we had our windows right down, and an arm out, feeling the cool breeze .

A soft scent of honey and sweet flowers was thick in the air. It was one of those smells that took you back to distant memories.

Last night was like God moving through the air, thick with expectancy and hope and excitement.

"Wrapped in the warmth of you

Loving every breath of you

Still in my heart this moment

Or it might burst

Could we stay right here

Until the end of time until the earth stops turning

Wanna love you until the seas run dry

Ive found the one Ive waited for"

lamb:Gorecki

Painting: Hot Summer Afternoon: Ann Ruttan

I am so consumed by all that I think to be real

But I am getting nowhere and I need you to be

Right here right now

I need you somehow to take whatever it is away

So I can believe

That you're right along side of me

I stand in an unfamilar place

I guess I've gone as far as I can on my own

So can you walk with me and know how I feel

Well I'll listen to you

So tell me what you see

Right here right now...

(the sundance kids: including the atmosphere: all you need to hear)

ashes

Being in a rut is something that makes me feel like I am slowly suffocating. Waves of thoughts crash and I get stuck in one more drift.

Its been a weird start to Yits for the second semester, when I am still slowly processing things from right back from the beginning of the year.

I have no energy

and that makes it feel like I am being useless.

Every couple of months I get urges to pack up and go anywhere but here. Do something unexpected..try something new. And it has hit again.

I need adrenalin. I am sick of living in a way that doesn't fully express what I believe, what I am passionate about (and even what that is at the moment I haven't the faintest idea) and continuing to live a mundane life with the same thoughts and no actions.

I need change

and the sooner the better.

~photo was taken in Melbourne~

Open up my door

The last three weeks have been quite a mind bending time. I am now in my fourth (out of six week) break from Yits. I don't think I have been expecting much from the break... I have heard many people who have done Yits in the past say that the break was one of the hardest times of the year. To this point, I failed to see where they were coming from. In a way I still do.

As a group, we have all become pretty tightly-knit. I have made some amazing (for lack of a better word) friends these past couple of months, and I wouldn't change that for anything. Friends who can tell that something is up when i walk into class...who will come up and tell me that they are going to pray for me. I am awestruck at how much these people mean to me in such a short amount of time.

I thought I would struggle these holidays to not see these people 4 out of 7 days. So far there has not been any of this. That is not to say, at all, that I don't miss them, because that is far from true.

I have been lacking in my commitment to study however. Not that i find the assignments unimportant (to a degree anyway..) but I have failed to see why I should put so much time and effort into working out my relationship with God, who I am in God, when in my head I thought I had it all figured out.

Last night i was listening to Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails "Hurt" and something in my mind clicked...and things started to make sense.

I was not wanting to put time, effort and trust into God, because I failed to realise that I had given God human like traits, I had given him human faults. I didn't want to put time, effort and trust into someone who was just going to move away.
I had put limitations on who God was, when i can never fully comprehend nor understand who He really is.
I have not given enough credit.
I thought if I placed my energy, my trust, my love in God, he would leave.
A consumeristic relationship with the Creator.
How wrong I have been

"Everything I thought I'd learned, ambition and illusion, turned to drawings on a loose leaf sheet, of tarts and cakes I couldn't eat"

mewithoutYou:Brownish Spider

amazing ( because thats what it is...)

I am in two minds at the moment.
One is looking at the world and how stuffed up it is. A story last night on Progeria had me hating that something so fucked up could happen. I look at hurt, how much it affects people that I know and love so so much, how it affects me. I look at pictures of my god kids, and wonder how much they know of what is going on in their lives. I wonder if at their age, they can even comprehend what is happening in their own home, let along the world outside their windows.
In the year 2020, there are predictions that there will be a new pandemic. Not of Aids, but of depression in young adults. Depression already affects far too many people that I know.
And I sit her and get so so angry. At injustice, and shitty things happening to good people. And I question how such a loving grace filled God can let this happen. Why can’t he point a magic finger and fix this bloody mess. And I sit, and I struggle.

But then I look around me. And thru all the muck and craziness, pictures and words are always there. Standing out in all the crap there are things that amaze me time after time. I see people who are not products of this world. Who constantly inspire me with their words, with their actions. And it’s in times like these that I am reminded that life is beautiful. Crazy but beautiful.

experience this

I was not promised anything by becoming a christian, and had verver really thought about it, but there is a sense of being ripped off. In influence a couple of weeks back, Mark was saying how that in life, it is sexpected that if we give, we will will (and expect) get something in return. And this expectation has seeped into christian expectation. That we are approching christianity in a consumeristic way.

Sitting in class, I thought I didn't do that. In reflection this is not the case. When I pray, I expect immeadiate answers. I expect that anything that is 'good' for me will happen.

I really hate it when people walk out of a church service and say 'oh that didn't do anything for me' etc. Church is not an experience. It is not about whether it made me feel good about myself.

I hate how church has become just another experience.

What I've done
*linkin park*

In this farewell,
There is no blood,
There is no alibi,
Cause I’ve drawn regret,
From the truth,
Of a thousands lies,

So let mercy come and wash away…

What I’ve Done,
I’ll face myself,
To cross out what I’ve become,
Erase myself,
And let go of what I’ve done…

Put to rest,
What you thought of me
While, I clean this slate,
With the hands,
Of uncertainty,

So let mercy come,
And wash away…

What I’ve Done,
I’ll face myself,
To cross out what I’ve become,
Erase myself,
And let go of what I’ve done…

For what I’ve done,
I start again,
And whatever pain may come,
Today this ends,
I’m forgiving what I’ve done…
I’ll face myself,
To cross out what I’ve become,
Erase myself,
And let go of what I’ve done…

What I’ve Done,
What I’ve Done,
Forgiving what I’ve done…

plain

Dear God

We struggle, we grow weary, we grow tired. We are exhausted, we are distressed, we despair. We give up. we fall down, we lat go. We cry. We are empty, we grow calm, we are ready. We wait quietly.

A small, shy truth arrives. Arrives from without and within. Arrives and it is born. Simple, steady, clear. Like a mirror, like a bell, like a flame. Like rain in summer. A precious truth arrives and is born within us. Within our emptiness.

We accept it, we observe it, we absorb it. We surrender to our bare truth. We are nourished, we are changed. We are blessed. We rise up.

For this we give thanks,

Amen.

Leunig

Bono's NAACP speech

I have looking and looking and looking for Bono's acceptance speech as mentioned in the below post...and i finally found what i was looking for (hehehe.....i couldn't help myself ;p)

A flipping amazing speech that gives a swift kick up the arse...

"......You see, I grew up in Ireland, when Ireland was divided along religious lines, sectarian lines. Young people like me were parched for the vision that poured out of the pulpits of black America, and the vision of a black Reverend from Atlanta…. A man who refused to hate because he knew love would do a better job.

These ideas travel, you know. And they reached me clear as any tune, lodged in my brain like a song. I couldn’t shake that. This was Ireland in the 70s growing up…. And people like me looked across the ocean to the NAACP. And I’m here tonight and that feels good. It feels very, very good.

Well today the world looks again to the NAACP. We need the community that taught the world about civil rights to teach it something about human rights. I’m talking about the right to live like a human.

The right to live, period. Those are the stakes in Africa right now.

Five and a half thousand Africans dying every day of AIDS – a preventable, treatable disease.

Nearly a million Africans, most of them children, dying every year from malaria – death by mosquito bite.

This is not about charity, as you know here in this room. This is about justice. It’s about justice and equality.

Now I know that America hasn’t solved all of its problems. I know AIDS is still killing people right here in America. And I know the hardest hit are African Americans, many of them young women. Today at a churchin Oakland I went to see such extraordinary people. This lioness here, Barbara Lee, took me around with her pastor, J. Alfred Smith. And may I say that it was the poetry and the righteous anger of the black church that was such an inspiration to me, a very white – almost pink – Irish man, growing up in Dublin.

This is true religion. True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Love thy neighbor is not a piece of advice. It’s a command. And that means a lot. That means a lot. That means that in the global village we’re gonna have to start loving a whole lot more people – that’s what that means. His truth is marching on.

Two million Americans have signed up to the ONE campaign to make poverty history. Tonight the NAACP is signing up to work with us. And so can you. His truth is marching on.

Because where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die.

And to those in the church who still sit in judgment on the AIDS emergency, let me climb into the pulpit for just one moment. Because whatever thoughts we have about God, who he is or even if God exists, most will agree that God has a special place for the poor.

The poor are where God lives.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house.

God is where the opportunity is lost and lives are shattered.

God is with the mother who has infected her child with the virus that will take both their lives.

God is under the rubble and the cries we hear during war time.God, my friends, is with the poor.

And God is with us, if we are with them.

This is not a burden. This is an adventure. Don’t let anyone tell you it cannot be done. We can be the generation that ends extreme poverty.

Thank you."

-BONO–2 March 2007

*found at poplemon.com

Wow....

Thoes who know me well (anybody who had ever met me really) knows how much i love U2. Their lyrics have such power to them, and so do the words of Larry Mullen Jr, Adam Clayton, The Edge and, of course, Bono.
So there is a button up the top of this blog......the 'next blog' tab...you get some shockers, but then every once in a while you will come across a gem.
I was doing the said action, when i came across a blog that had a youtube video of Bono's acceptance speech from the NAACP Image Awards, for which he was the Chairman Award's Winner.
In a lot of my classes with Yits, the idea of 'loving you neigbour as you love yourself' has been on high rotation. It is one of the most paramount teachings of the Bible...in my eyes thats the majority of what this whole thing is about.

Watching this clip...it really hit home about how much it really means. And as much as we can say it..doing it is what really counts.

Bono's acceptance speech


BYW...if someone (*cough bec) could tell me how to get a clip, such as the above, into my blog...that would be swell :)

Pinkie and the brain....

I finally dropped some of my stuff of the the house i shall soon be living in...and took some snaps:

My bedroom is VERY pink....

The kitchen has a rad as lounge in it...

The bath has claws on it....

Rad times ahead peeps :)

Leaving home (smell the morning air)

yes
i am finally leaving home again.
Sweet sweet new house with rad peeps sas and corrie.
Am hanging for my own space, independance and freedom...sweet sweet freedom. No more cranky parental-unit when i leave the milo out..when i leave the hallway light on for more then 10 seconds..when i breath lol.

Rad times ahead!
looking forward to you all coming and crashing and beers and bbqs (go the vegie burgers)

I just need to get my a into g and start packing.