January 2012
64 posts
inspired.
I cannot even say how much my grandmother inspires, and encourages me. As someone who has lived through so much pain and sorrow and suffering - 90 years of hardship - she is still the most faithful, joyful, patient, and honest woman I’ve ever met.
She has survived so much, yet has never been a victim.
Being born in 1922.
The Great Depression.
Working the fruit canning lines as a...
yet.
It’s another one of those lonely night, where I feel an absence next to me.
When my neck strains because it has no support when watching TV, I think of you.
When I’m cold, but not cold enough for a blanket, I think of you.
When I make frozen pizza and only want half, I think of you.
When all I need is a kiss on the forehead to make it all better, I think of you.
It’s an...
intrinsic.
A number of times this week people asked me how I deal with being so involved, and having so many leadership positions. My first answer, which is deeply true, is, “By the Grace of God”. Really, that’s the truest answer.
There is, though, another answer that comes to mind. I don’t always share it, because I want to encourage leadership potential in people and not divulge...
marble.
Tonight, I wrote for the first time in two years.
This is not to say that I have not typed words onto pages or scrawling in notebooks or even told long, sometimes even good stories. This is not to say that.
But until tonight, I had not hurt like I had before. A little over two years ago, I discovered the genre that will be my home, the place of creative non-fiction where truth-telling and...
offices.
Into offices, I have spoken. Echoes of me, asking reverberating questions that are released from between the spaces in my rib cage. By permitting me to ask, you have allowed me to breathe.
Do you know what you mean to me? Do you know that you are my heros, my understanding of grace, that you have shown me the face of God in the way you have allowed me to speak? Do you know what you have done for...
hospitality.
Come in. Come closer. Tell me your secrets, your stories, your
mind if I interrupt you?
mind if I say this biglongwordthatyoudontknowbuttrytofollow?
mind if I invite you to pretend that we both have bigger lives than we do?
Coffee. Tea. Milk. Water. Cookies. Anything. This is yours.
do you see these lines on my hands?
they trace out my callings, my dreams - you’ll never be able to...
this is just to say
bechanged:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
w c williams
invisibleforeigner asked: Duke. :) I'm taking a year off but I don't know what I'm doing yet. Hopefully I can just get a job that pays decently well while I take the GRE and apply to div schools next year.
invisibleforeigner asked: I've heard great things about the program from quite a few people, but I don't think I've met anyone in person who's done it. Otherwise I'd definitely put you in touch with them. :)
invisibleforeigner asked: Hi! I seem to recall that you said you wanted to do the Episcopal internship in Chapel Hill next year. Where do you go to school?
“My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell...”
– Telling Secrets, by Frederick Buechner
“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
– Zelda Fitzgerald (via misswallflower)
“Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It does not mean that we...”
– Paul Tillich
a week.
I can’t even put to words the significance of this week.
I can’t. I simply cannot.
It’s like I didn’t know life could be like this. It’s like I’m getting to know Jesus again, or for the very first time.
It all began a week ago, in the back of a chapel where I began to sing without shame for the very first time of my life. And among a thousand other things...
“In grace something is overcome; grace occurs in spite of something; grace occurs...”
– Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, ch. 19 (via littlebooklet)
The World Is in Pencil
rabbit-light:
—not pen. It’s got that same silken dust about it, doesn’t it, that same sense of having been roughed onto paper even as it was planned. It had to be a labor of love. It must’ve taken its author some time, some shove. I’ll bet it felt good in the hand—the o of the ocean, and the and and the and of the land.
Todd Boss
510.
Sitting in the library, listening to Pandora play New Found Glory and Jack’s Mannequin, trying to write up an assignment… staring at a blank page.
And my only thought… my God, what a year this has been.
This year has been a year of blank pages.
I feel like dancing. I feel like skipping. I feel like sobbing. I feel like laughing until I can’t breathe. And this blank...
echo.
I feel like months have gone by since the beginning of this semester. I feel like the growth of months, maybe even years, has happened in the last week. The last few days.
I’ve had questions I’ve been asking for years being answered within my heart. I’ve had hurts revealed that I’ve been hiding from, that I’ve been keeping locked away, that I’ve never put...
“It is the characteristic of human beings that by our nature we desire to know...”
– “Truth as a Good: A Reflection on Fides et Ratio” by MacIntyre
lessons.
I wish there was a way to say, “I’m exhausted and yet, in that exhaustion, I am hopeful because what that emptiness means is that I fought for what I believed in, cared for what I care about, and know more now than I did this morning.”
I wish there was a word for that. (German probably has one)
I am that. That kind of exhausted.
And I sit here, on my couch, just finally home...
“We do not begin with some adequate grasp of the concepts of knowledge and truth...”
– MacIntyre in Edith Stein
“He argues that essential to our learning to act is that we learn to behave in a...”
– Stanley Hauerwas on Alasdair MacIntyre’s “The Intelligibility of Action”
concrete.
I’ve come to realize lately that something foundational in the way I think has changed. I used to think in stories, in poetry, in dreams of another possibility. And I still do from time to time.
But ever since High Sierra, I’ve started to chase after the truth you can get your hands on. In the last 4 semester, my favorite classes have been Concepts of Human Nature (a philosophy...
ready.
I don’t know why I feel lonely all the time these days. I can be surrounded by my best friends and still feel it. It’s not as bad when they are around, but its still there.
It’s not a severe loneliness. It doesn’t physically hurt. I’ve been there before, when longing becomes pain. It’s not that.
I try to think my way out of it. I think about God and about...
Here’s where I see myself in ten years:
I see myself in the arms of a lover
strong enough to hold
all of me
humble enough to let
all of me
hold on.
Here’s where I see myself in ten years:
I see myself somedays
and other days
I still cannot find me
this child
who jumped off rocks and
believed she was flying
Here’s where I see myself in ten years:
I see myself...
sleep
scripture
poetry
prayer space
vision
food
class
gratitude
mentorship
tears
revelation
freedom
worship
hope
clay
music
running shoes
encouragement
journal
friends
canvas
breath
love
all these things the Lord gave today - He provides so abundantly.
canvas.
I began work on a canvas tonight, to take my mind off questions and answers, to let my heart be heard for a while in colors rather than arrest.
But before I work any further tonight, I must remember the story of this canvas. To say “begun” is a bit of a misnomer. For this canvas has been three distinct pieces, and has been subjected to too many experiments of texture and color. Upon it has been...
meet the ground.
I have met the ground.
I have met the ground on my back, the wind knocked out of me - my spirit disappearing with every torn and ragged half-breath. There I have met the ground, tasted soil, tasted the iron that fills my veins and fills the earth. I have thought that it might just be easier to stay there and wait for the rains and the droughts and the leaves of fall to bury me for good.
I have...
kellyhasadventures asked: baked hot chocolate?!?! ps ive been reading your posts...i'm headed to england in march to visit friends and check out the masters programs at some schools and see about writing internships and such things!
