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http://video.nbcsports.com/player/?id=188438
I laughed out loud at this commentary.
Lately I realized what work it is fighting against the spirit of the day. It’s hard work and I live in an apostolic community. I’m just saying I should have it easier, and I probably do, it’s still really hard.
For some reason, I made a mental turn a year and a half ago and I decided I would not be silent, that I would begin to call good “good” and evil “evil”. This meant for me stopping my patterns of silent agreement. I determined I would no longer just listen to people with skewed moral concepts. I would talk back, I would argue even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it goes against popular cultural opinions.
I’ve had a hard time. I find myself saying things I have adamantly spoken against for years. I’m back tracking. Because I realize that at the end of the day I want to stand on the side of what was right, what was righteous. I don’t want to compromise what I feel is right for the best (of horrifically awful) political solutions.
I’ve cried in conversations with dear friends, I have told people straight up that they were not right with God. In the midst of all of this I have challenged myself to view things rightly, to view things righteously. I have had to constantly fight against my own logic, against my own mental process, I’m continually trying to tip my beliefs upside down.
All this rethinking and struggle against what I want to believe (because it makes more sense and it fits inside a already developed world view) hurts. It’s painful.
But you know I think I can do it, and I think I can still be myself. I think I can be righteous and untraditional. I’m praying that God moves me beyond the theoretical and into the possible, into His heart for his people.
I was driving around the other night and was doing some stream of consciousness thinking. I suppose that’s what thinking is in general, but I was thinking without borders. There were no goals, no problems to solve, I was just thinking and letting the thoughts flow easily from one to the other.
I looked up at into the sky and the moon was glowing and perfectly clear, and I thought to myself, “I can’t believe God loves me.” Not an a depressing sort of way, but in the sort of awe struck way. Like he’s so big, and I am one of a billion.
It made me think that it’s really no wonder that people worship the sun and the moon, and use the stars for guidance. There is this feeling when you look at them that makes your jaw go slack and your brain sort of arrests, and all you can think about is a higher power, something bigger than you.
I need something bigger than to me to arrest me. In high school there was a poem we read that really hit me as an odd way to talk about God, it’s that idea that in moments we need God to overtake us. We need him to arrest us.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
-John Donne, Holy Sonnet 14
He’s being doing it ever since there have been humans roaming the earth, he has used things in our lives to grab us, shake us, slay us.
I need that level of force in my life, I need that level of violence some days, and on other days all it takes is the sky.
So this is playing in my itunes right now…
I love good song writers. She is on the top of my list, as of this weekend. This is the song on repeat.
squint your eyes and look closer
I’m not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
and I’m beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
cause someday you’re going to get hungry
and eat most of the words you just said
both my parents taught me about good will
and I have done well by their names
just the kindness I’ve lavished on strangers
is more than I can explain
still there’s many who’ve turned out their porch lights
just so I would think they were not home
and hid in the dark of their windows
til I’d passed and left them alone
and god help you if you are an ugly girl
course too pretty is also your doom
cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room
and god help you if you are a phoenix
and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying back
I’m not trying to give my life meaning
by demeaning you
and I would like to state for the record
I did everything that I could do
I’m not saying that I’m a saint
I just don’t want to live that way
no, I will never be a saint
but I will always say
squint your eyes and look closer
I’m not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I’m beyond your peripheral vision
So you might want to turn your head
Cause someday you might find you’re starving
and eating all of the words you said
