music

because it's the important things that really matter in life:
i updated the playlist on my blog.
and i'm excited about it.
holler!

new, please enjoy:

hymn, brooke fraser...
"...if to distant lands i scatter,
if i sail to farthest seas
would You find and firm and gather, 'til i only dwell in Thee?
if i flee from greenest pastures
would You leave to look for me?
forfeit glory to come after
'til i only dwell in Thee..."

simple life, the weepies...
"...is it enough to write a song and sing it to the birds?
they'd hear just the tune, not understand my love for words
but you would hear me and know
we'll have time to know our neighbors all by name
and every star at night
we'll weave our days together like waves and particles of light
i want only this,
i want to live a simple life..."

1234, feist...
"1, 2, 3, 4
tell me that you love me more!"

I am praying again, Awesome One. You hear me again...

Christine and I have been reading from Rilke's Book of Hours to pray together at bedtime. We found this one about a week ago and both loved it so much that we've read it three times since. I connect with it more every time I read/pray it...

...With my half-mouth I stammer You,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to You my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld You...

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of Your heart–
oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and You, God–spend them however you want.

-Rilke

but oh! when gloomy doubts prevail,
i fear to call Thee mine
the streams of comfort seem to fail, and all my hopes decline

yet gracious God, where shall i flee?
Thou art my only trust
and still my soul would cleave to Thee,
though prostrate in the dust.


-(...here let my soul retreat.)

10 joys of the moment

-long conversations where one or both people are figuring important things out in safe presence

-waking up and talking with my roommate while we're both still in bed

-peaceful, long-for-me (aka like 20-25 min) runs on the prairie path (especially now that i can actually breathe all the way through, yay for being on week 5 of my training! not for anything impressive)

-blossoming trees EVERYWHERE

-sitting reading alone on our back deck

-coffee dates with tamara

-rachael tuesday afternoons

-lists and piles of good books i can't wait to read, because-in-two-weeks-i'll-never-have-homework-again-and-can-read-for-pleasure-every-evening-oh-my-goodness...

-emails from Bolivia

-people speaking wisdom to me...

choosing to not answer my questions, doesn't mean He doesn't want to have a conversation.

all i keep hearing is that He loves me
and He loves them.
...and also, that i should do the dishes for my housemates even when it's not my turn.

"that doesn't explain rape or child abuse or poverty
or what i'm supposed to do with the rest of my life, God."

...He said,
"You're right."

i had taken a lack of answer to my questions as silence.
it's not, necessarily.
which was an interesting, frustrating,
and more-than-my-stubborn-self-wanted-it-to-be comforting new development.
i'd love to say i leaped to be having this conversation.
i didn't. i'm not.
but the answer to, "Do you want to hear from Me,
about what I choose,
even if it's not what you wanted Me to say?"
has to be yes.

...learning how to engage in a conversation different than the one I thought we'd be having?
not sure how it's gonna go.
i don't think it's a bad place to be.


(yes, Matt Maloy, I know you're excited.)

The two extremes...

There is a girl on campus who I know only because she is the girlfriend of my good friend Matt's roommate. She is very sweet, but our interactions have so far only included when a bunch of people are hanging out in those guys' apartment late at night. Thus, she has pretty much only ever seen me basically completely hyperactive and involved in massive making-fun-of-each-other sparring matches with Matthew.

Occasionally, I get self-conscious about this (everyone else who hangs out there I know from other contexts and they know I am basically a normal person). So last night, we had a conversation that went like this:

Me: So Elise, sometimes I feel kind of self-conscious that the only time we've ever talked has been when I'm here hanging out late at night. I mean you must think I'm kind of crazy.

Elise: Oh haha, no, I think you guys are really funny.

Me: Okay but I mean, just so you know, I'm not REALLY this hyper all the time.

Elise: Oh, I know. Actually, I heard you speak at the HNGR Mennonite dinner. So I have a totally different impression of you from there too.

Me: Oh, great! (Thinking, Oh good, HNGR, that means I hopefully sounded reasonably intelligent and put together and not all goofy all the time... except... crap.)

Me: (Pause) Mennonite Dinner... So you mean, you heard me speak about rape and start crying in front of a group of 60 people?

Elise: (Pause) ...Um... Yeah.

Oh good. Glad you can know these two sides of me.

Note to self, take her out to coffee and talk about the weather or something soon...

plucking open hearts and ears

...It is a lovely spring night. Lovely in every sense of the word. I am sitting on our back deck with a blanket over my legs and my computer in my lap, working on homework. The sky is deep blue above me, pine trees tower around, dusk has fallen, the air is warm and a breeze is blowing.

I am wrestling with theology questions so many more seconds of every day than I want to be, yet not my own doubts or frustrations, failings or anger can pluck me from His hand. I know people who inspire me. I have real friendships. And the possibility of a job that might feel purposeful (though I wrote in my journal over and over last year that I would be willing "to not feel purposeful if that's where You call me, Lord"...). I am not scared of graduation. I am excited for the summer.

I am excited about the possibility of Portland down the road, for my prayers and hopes of parenting those who need it in any way. I am thankful for words in a leather-bound book I can keep reading every day whether or not it makes sense in a given moment. I am grateful for any moment of self-sacrifice on my own part or those of others, for what taste of the Kingdom it is when we can love each other, even for a second. For the call to love the person in front of me, and for any chance to get to do that every once in awhile, when the list is so long of those I am failing. I'm grateful I can connect with those scared of being in a new place with an unfamiliar language and no support in a way I couldn't a year ago. I miss speaking Spanish every day. I miss Bolivia. I'm so glad I was there. I'm so glad I'm back.

I'm thankful for people who love me and accept me. I'm grateful for the laughter of those I know and love. For real hugs, casual touch, meaningful touch, human touch. For people meeting each other where they are. For seeing those around me use their gifts, hear the Lord, find joy and love, walk through struggles. For going for my ridiculously short runs that shock of all shocks are becoming consistent, that despite the ridiculous-shortness somehow make me feel more healthy and connected to the earth and joyful in the movement of my own body and (there it is again! interesting...) purposeful. For flowering trees. For my roommate. For classes held outside. Did I mention that leather bound book that somehow still has the same words between its pages that it always has, no matter where my heart is when I open it? I'm grateful for the Weepies. And Joshua Radin. And the Beatles.

I'm 21 and I like my body and the future is open before me and I love the people I know. My cell phone rings with the names and voices of people who inspire me and Ephesians 1 still reads the same as it always has and Deb Talan's voice and melodies and lyrics are beautiful.

Stream of consciousness.

It is a lovely spring night. Lovely in every sense of the word. I am sitting on our back deck with a blanket over my legs and my computer in my lap, working on homework. The sky is deep blue above me, pine trees tower around, dusk has fallen, the air is warm and a breeze is blowing.

don't you wish your roommate was hott like mine?

Christine is now officially a certified Zumba instructor.




Our dance parties just got so much cooler.

baby personalities and i love my parents

Today in my Psych senior seminar, we watched a movie clip where some psychologists presented 4-month-old babies with a "stimulus"- a colored mobile moving close to their faces. Apparently, their later personalities could be predicted from the way they reacted. Babies which tended to tense up or cry at the mobile, would become quiet and introverted as older children, teenagers, and adults; babies which were interested, smiled, or tried to play with it became extroverts. They followed the children in the study for years and it virtually always followed this exact pattern.

I emailed the parentals,
"Parents! ...When I was a baby, if I was exposed to stimulus aka mobiles, lots of people, movement and noise/color, etc... how did I generally react?" ...just to see if the theory worked.

Without knowing why I was asking, they sent me these replies:
"You were able to focus your attention, look delighted and generally did not seem to get overstimulated. You also babbled non stop." (yikes...), from Mom, and
"You reacted positively, reaching out (literally, with the mobile, to swat it), wishing to engage, smiling, curious", from my dad.

So apparently I fit the pre-extrovert baby type... huuuge shocker!

On another note, it makes me feel a surprising amount of warmth-and-fuzziness to think that my parents know exactly how I was as a baby. Is that weird? Maybe that should be obvious. But I mean. It was 21 years ago, and they both sent these detailed responses (those were just excerpts... my mom's email back was like a full paragraph detailing my napping style as compared to my sister's), within ten minutes of getting mine.

I was on the phone with my dad shortly after and pointed this out to him.
"Aw... that's cute that you remember how I was as a baby."

And he (after being like, um, duh), went all waxing poetic about how I was just like how I am now and Allie was making everybody laugh from the time she was 1 month old ("Really! You know that face she makes? I swear, she made it then too!") and when he thinks of us as infants it's like we're totally the same people we are now, "We already knew who you were so well! We could tell! You were so YOU!".

I like my parents.
I mean: when I was a 4-month-old babbling, mobile-reaching baby... I hadn't gotten into Wheaton, or George Fox. I hadn't gone to Bolivia. I had never loved anyone, or said anything important, or made a friend, or journaled in a coffee shop, or straightened my hair in a particularly attractive way, or organized a dorm room, or given a presentation on gender and sexuality (I mean I hadn't even BLOGGED!). And, they still thought this little baby was beautiful and exciting and worth remembering the details of two decades later. And they thought I was ME, even before I had done anything me-like. And maybe that's obvious, and maybe that's cheesy, but as an about-to-graduate-oh-crap-what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life-21-year-old, I find that lovely and wonderful and meaningful. (And oh, the spiritual analogies!) :-)

Okay, this is a really random post. In conclusion: I have always been fated to be an extrovert;
having cute parents is a highly recommendable state of existence;
and I really like my parents a lot in particular.

love this verse

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud;
be gracious to me and answer me.
You have said, "Seek My face."
My heart says to You,
"Your face, O Lord, I will seek!"
Hide not Your face from me...

Psalm 27:7-9

("Hast Thou not bid me seek Thy face... then shall I seek in vain?")

easter more.

Easter weekend:
Jesus died.
Death = all things that God is not.
All things that He hates.

Death:
Cigarette burns
and knife scars
and being left on the street like trash
from the people who were supposed to take care of them.
Bodies
beautiful bodies, designed for movement and joy and being held,
bodies being sold,
being used.
Grief, and fear.
Precious girls being raped.
Death...

Easter...
Jesus died.
Jesus came back to life
because death, all that death, could not hold Him.

So, I've gotten frustrated for most years of my Christian life at Easter time.
Christmas makes sense to me (who doesn't like Christmas carols?!)
but I've never been able to work up any sort of emotional response to Easter.

...Jesus came back to life
because He overcame death.

...Yeah. This past week, leading up to Easter? This Saturday Easter vigil,
when we started the night in the church in darkness, with solemn readings,
until we got to the point where they sang it, softly at first, and then we repeated:
Christ is Risen, He is Risen, Christ is Risen, Alleluia...
And the lights turned on and we rang our bells and we sang joyful songs,
because we were marking that: He had risen from death, the death had ended, His power was greater...

I don't really know what to say,
other than that
Easter means so much to me this year.

...Oh Lord, Lord who is greater than death,
You chose to enter and experience our world.
And not just Emily's world, my experience of sunflowers and happiness and friendship.
You willingly put Yourself into a world of cigarette burns and rape and fear and grief.
You experienced it to its fullest. There is no suffering that was not borne by You,
and so You identify with those who suffer.
And though I am so confused by You, though I want to be mad at You,
though I am so sad and freaking angry the world is not how it should be,
I am so grateful and bewildered that You would ever enter this world,
that You experienced suffering.
When I think now about
what lay upon You on that Cross...
well.
And, You are greater than death. Than all that death.
And to that we get to say, Alleluia, and we mean it,
in whatever way we can know how to understand it,
even the tiniest bit.

In my sad and confused and questioning but being-ever-held-by-You little heart,
I do love You, so much. Thank You for knowing that, in Your crazy, knowing-things-I-don't-know-how-to-say way.
Amen.

...My roommate was recently asked exasperatedly,
"Why on earth would you all do something you know you're going to need to be 'healed from'?"

Well... Easter,
would be one reason why.

happy easter.

"This is the irrational season,
when Love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason,
there'd have been no room for the Child."

-Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season