Thanks to the beauty of technology, I am blogging this to the FUTURE.
These are all the tabs I have open on Wednesday, articles and things I wanted to read and/or blog about before I went on vacation.
Emerging Women
Great Songs You've Never Heard from 2009
Ogden Wedding Teaser
Why I'm Not a New Calvinist
Jesus with Prostitute
The Crappiest Dad at Mothers' Morning Out
A year after the rest of Christendom, I have finally read The Shack.
Two things surprised me.
1. The theology wasn't nearly as wacked out as I'd been influenced to believe. In fact, I don't think the theology is any more misinformed than my own theology is. What I mean is, it's not perfect, but I don't think it's that far off. I would be totally willing to suggest the representation of God in this book as a decent starting point for understanding who He is. And it was a good reminder to me of the centrality of relationship in my worldview and interaction with God.
2. The writing was awful. The story itself has great potential, and there were moments of really powerful dialogue. But I wasn't even halfway through the prologue before I thought, This is going to be painful. This may be in part that it's a very didactic text (that is, a text intended to teach a specific point). But for a book that I believe made it on the NY Times Bestsellers' List, I was surprised. I had to skim. I was always one step outside the story. And that disappointed me.
So. I would recommend this book for a good spiritual discussion. I wouldn't recommend it for a good, mesmerizing read.
Ahem.
1. I am going away for the rest of my vacation and leaving the internet behind. No blogging until Sunday at the earliest. Farewell.
2. I got my nose pierced today. I had it pierced once before, six years ago (SIX YEARS AGO!?), but took it out after 4 months because of infection and a pride issue. I hope that this time around, neither pride nor pain force out my lovely ring.
Today has been a good day, don't get me wrong. But my mood these past weeks is a bit like the weather. Somber.
In the last couple of months, I have really been soaking things in. And one of the things I've observed is that life is complicated. Sometimes crappy. Often more difficult than we expect. And there isn't always much that I can do or say to people in difficult places.
Yesterday, this song came on my shuffle, and I thought, This is it. When I don't know what to say to my friends, this is what I really want them to know.
So this is for all my friends whose Sundays aren't Fundays.
Katie Herzig - "I Hurt Too"
When you’re weary
And haunted
And your life is not what you wanted
When you’re trying so hard to find it
When the lies speak the loudest
When your friends are starting to leave
When you’re broken by people like me
I hurt too, I hurt too
When an ocean sits right between us
There is no sign that we’ll ever cross
You should know now that I feel the loss
I hurt too, I hurt too
Even though you are drowning in valley’s of echoes
I believe there is peace in those hills up ahead
You will climb ‘til you find places you’ll never let go
And I will also be here praying just like I said
I hurt too, I hurt too
It surprises me, what songs are in my head when I wake up in the morning. Today it was Lady Gaga's Paparazzi, but I hate that song too much to link it here. It's horrible. Awful. And I don't know why it was in my head.
This week, other popular songs have included:
1. Jason Mraz - "I'm Yours"
I think this is because I watched a cover of this song, with lyrics to place an order at MacDonalds:
2. Florence + the Machine - "Kiss with a Fist" and "Between Two Lungs"
3. "Dancing With Myself" - originally by Billy Idol, lately performed on Glee:
Not stuck in my head, but thinking about all these "waking up" songs reminds me of this classic from my pre-teen years. I think it was my theme during all those growth spurts...except for the part where I might get fired. Since I didn't actually work.
"Sleep" - Riley Armstrong
Poetry and I have a bit of a love/hate relationship. Sometimes, I read poems that leave me making that strangely perplexed face. Even my own attempts at writing poetry are hit and miss. Am I brilliant or brutal?
I don't know.
But I do know that there are moments when poetry is exceedingly beautiful. Like this excerpt from Matthew Arnold's The Hymn of Empedocles:
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes;
That we must feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,
And while we dream on this
Lose all our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?
Not much, I know, you prize
What pleasures may be had,
Who look on life with eyes
Estranged, like mine, and sad:
And yet the village churl feels the truth more than you;
Who 's loth to leave this life
Which to him little yields:
His hard-task'd sunburnt wife,
His often-labour'd fields;
The boors with whom he talk'd, the country spots he knew.
But thou, because thou hear'st
Men scoff at Heaven and Fate;
Because the gods thou fear'st
Fail to make blest thy state,
Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are.
I say, Fear not! life still
Leaves human effort scope.
But, since life teems with ill,
Nurse no extravagant hope.
Because thou must not dream, thou need'st not then despair.
In grade school, once a year we had to memorize a poem and recite it for the whole class. Up until grade 5, at which point we had to start writing speeches. I detested public speaking, and have few memories of this part of my education.
I do, however, remember that I chose to memorize In Flanders Fields one year. I can still recall it from memory:
In Flanders Fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our graves, but in the sky
The lark, still bravely singing, flies -
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead.
Short days ago, we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow.
Loved and were loved.
But now we lie in Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep
Though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields
