Tolle Scribe

Together

2012-01-23T21:54:00.000-08:00

She's back from Afghanistan, safe and sound. And we were all together, even if only for a little bit. I love all the real smiles in this picture.

Today

2012-01-23T17:06:00.000-08:00

The raindrops form bright, clear pieces of glass on the dark branches of our trees. We have had strange weather lately: rain and grey skies for the mornings and most of the afternoons, but just around evening, it all clears up to reveal skies and colors that take my breath away. The sun causes a faint, gold glint in the windows of my neighbor's house. White clouds leave long trails on the hills, and hints of the snow-capped mountains can be seen. I watch as the sky slowly changes from the deep oranges, reds, and purples of sunset to the cold blue of dusk. My siblings are all home by now, either reading, emailing, or doing last-minute homework. There's a quiet around the house. I step outside for a moment and watch my breath make small clouds in the air around me. Here, at least, there's peace.

Light

2012-01-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

The Sixth Day of Christmas: Ending with Beginnings

2011-12-31T16:02:00.000-08:00

We're going to a wedding tonight, and I really can't think of a better to end this year. I ended both of my semesters with weddings. It felt so fitting to end with a beginning because no end points merely to the past, an end also looks towards the future.

It's been a good year, hard in so many ways, beautiful in more. Tonight will be a celebration of God's faithfulness: to our friends getting married, and also to His bride, the church.

Merry sixth day of Christmas, friends! Here's some T.S. Eliot to end the year and look forward to the next.

(excerpts from East Coker)

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls

Across the open field, leaving he deep lane

Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon.

[...]

On a summer midnight, you can hear the music

Of the weak pipe and the little drum

And see them dancing around the bonfire

The association of man and woman

In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie --

A dignified and commodiois sacrament,

Two and two, necessarye conjunction,

Holding eche other by the hand or the arm

Whiche betonketh concorde. Round and round the fire

Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,

Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter

Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,

Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth

Mirth of those long since under the eart

Nursing the corn. Keeping time,

Keeping the rhythm in their dancing

As in their living in the living seasons

The time of the seasons and the constellations

The time of milking and the time of harvest

The time of the coupling of man and woman

And that of beasts. Feat rising and falling.

Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

Dawn points and another day

Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind

Wrinkles and slides. I am here

Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

grace

2011-12-29T23:45:00.000-08:00

grace

here

holding us in the brokenness that defines our lives

filtering through the curtains

filling the empty rooms

sending out invisible bonds

tying us together

though we refuse to look at each other

here

grace

The Fourth Day of Christmas: Christmas in Real-Time

2011-12-29T23:17:00.000-08:00

This morning everything seemed to fall apart. There are so many blessings about being part of a big family - but sometimes, all it means is that there are eight different sinners all living under the same roof. Explosions are bound to happen. And that's exactly what happened this morning.

A couple hours into the mess, I went into the living and saw the line-up of Christmas cards on our wall. "Merry Christmas!" The happy smiles seemed to mock the turmoil we faced. Why did this have to happen on a day of Christmas? Everything was going so well. Then I realized what a silly question that was. Christmas is a celebration of the Incarnation of our Lord, and He came to earth precisely because of these awful, broken mornings. He didn't come because we stood around a table, smiling and loving each other. He came because we yell at each other and because we slam doors.

Christmas is a season to remember this beautiful truth. This truth is embedded in every minute of our lives, not just in the happy, beautiful moments. In fact, it is only because of this truth that we can have those moments of grace.

This evening, everything is peaceful. We're reconciled and healing together.

Merry fourth day of Christmas. May we realize how deeply embedded Christmas is in our every day fractured lives filled with grace.

"Innumerable and boundless substances of the Earth"

2011-12-29T01:20:00.000-08:00

Innumerable and boundless substances of the Earth:

Scent of thyme, hue of fir, white frost, dances of cranes.

And everything simultaneous. And probably eternal.

Unseen, unheard, yet it was.

Unexpressed by strings or tongues, yet it will be.

(From Amazement by Czeslow Milosz)

Second day of Christmas

2011-12-29T01:12:00.000-08:00

Poetry and sunshine filled my day. I stayed outside as long as I could, reading aloud and painting bright splotches of color on half-white pieces of paper. All my siblings came out and joined me, at some time or another.

That evening, the four of us older kids gathered in the living room. Two of us read books on one couch, while the other two sat on the other couch with their computers. We stopped what we were doing every ten minutes or so to laugh or talk about the randomest subjects. My sister leaves for UCSB in a week or so. We'll miss her.

First day of Christmas

2011-12-29T01:10:00.000-08:00

We all came together at my grandmother's house. There's a beautiful simplicity to family gathering: we come, we eat, we talk, we laugh, then we leave. This Christmas, all (except one) of my mom's siblings came together for the first time in awhile. My grandma keeps on getting weaker and weaker, and we all know it and are cherishing the time that we have with her. At one point in the evening, all the girls were sitting around the table with my grandma. I don't remember what we were talking about, but suddenly we heard a huge roar from the living room, where all the guys were watching a basketball (football?) game. And all of us laughed, the type of shared laughter that keeps on going and going until we're all out of breath. I saw the same smile on the faces of my Grandma, my mom, and all her sisters and the same laughter in all of our eyes. It was beautiful.

On the way home, I sat in the far back of my aunt's car and read by the light of passing light posts on the freeway.

Beautiful Things

2011-12-23T00:33:00.000-08:00

There's something beautiful about baking and listening to this. Something about the flour mess on the wood table, the used wrappers of butter, and half-opened bag of sugar. And somehow this strange conglomeration of ingredients, thrown into an old, beige oven, creates a fresh, warm loaf of bread.

I love the reminder of being dust, like the flour on the table. And yet, and still, there's beauty.

December Light

2011-12-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

Wanderlust

2011-12-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

(All of these pictures are stills from one of my video-art projects.)

For her birthday

2011-12-20T00:10:00.000-08:00

Daddy asked us to make Mom a delicious dinner as her gift. So, at 3:30 pm, my sisters and I sent her off shopping for a couple hours and began planning the menu.

All three of us love to cook, but this was our first attempt at combining forces and making a gourmet meal. The oven stayed on throughout the whole evening, hovering between 275 and 400 degrees. We used almost every pot, pan, and skillet in the house. And lots and lots and lots of butter.

After three and a half hours in the kitchen, we served the meal: Sweet Pea Crostini, Tuscan Stuffed Mushrooms, Sherry-based Cream Crab Dip, Scalloped Sun-Dried Tomato Rigatoni, Marsala Spicy Shrimp, Lemon Butter Asparagus, and Garlic Butter Lobster Tail.

It was a culinary triumph.

All of us kids dressed up, set candles on the table, and had Mom close her eyes until she sat down. She laughed and screamed and smiled when she opened her eyes. It was perfect. As she tried each new appetizer and dish, she would stop, close her eyes, and chew in silence for a few seconds. Those few seconds of contented silence made us all ridiculously happy.

We watched a movie later on, and when it finished, we just stayed together in the backroom. I fell asleep listening to Mom help my sister plan her upcoming summer trip to Europe. Mom would reminisce about her college trips to Europe and the many adventures she had, then give a piece of advice, then tell Jazz yet another wonderful story. The best way to end the evening.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

2011-12-18T23:47:00.000-08:00

It is not yet Christmas. But is also the great final Advent, the final coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate goes the longing for the final Advent, where it says: "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5). Advent is a time of waiting.Our whole life, however, is Advent - that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: "On earth peace to those on whom God's favor rests." Learn to wait, because He has promised to come. "I stand at the door..." We however call to him: "Yes, come soon, Lord Jesus!" Amen.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst, from Waiting for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas

.

2011-12-07T22:56:00.000-08:00

resting

in a darkness

in a silence that is You

in a broken, flawed existence

that's still yearning for the truth

these long and endless nights

filled with cold and flickering flame

of the candles, sitting by my desk

that help me bear the pain

waiting

for the light

for the words still yet to come

for the hope that has been promised

for the stem of Jesse's rod

2011-11-28T09:55:00.000-08:00

The second best thing...

2011-11-28T06:14:00.000-08:00

to actually watching The Tree of Life is listening to it from two rooms over. This movie has one of the most beautiful soundtracks ever.

First Sunday of Advent

2011-11-27T05:41:00.000-08:00

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace

Broken, and so we must

Love where we cannot trust, and

Trust where we cannot know

And must await the wayward-coming grace

That joins both the living and the dead,

Taking us where we would not go–

Into the boundless dark.

When what was made has been unmade

The Maker comes to His work.

(Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1999)

There's something about the boundless dark of the Advent season. It's not a dark that will stay, "for the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing" (TS Eliot). But it's not light yet.

And so we wait. Come, Lord Jesus.

Splashes of Color

2011-11-26T19:10:00.000-08:00

"We will have nothing less than heaven."

2011-11-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

"My prayer for all of you is that you prefer nothing else to Christ, that your hope of glory continually be Christ and Him crucified, and that you may daily take up your crosses, made lighter by the Word who carried the heavy load of our sins, and follow Him wheresoever he goes. I have no "warm fuzzies" to give you. I only have a cross, and the Eternal Word made flesh who was nailed to it. May you see in that a source of strength for the tough road we must all face, and may it inform your moments of joy and you moments of sorrow. Yes, it is ok to be sorrowful, but with this caveat: never give way to despair. There are sorrowful moments in life, and the proper response is sorrow. But when we sorrow, we sorrow not as the pagans do, without hope, but as people of faith, formed in hope, and with charity as our end. We will have nothing less than heaven."

I woke up to find this in my inbox. My Torrey mentor, the wonderful Dr. Llizo, sent this to all of his mentees.

Exactly what I needed to read today.

When words fail...

2011-11-06T19:57:00.000-08:00

looking around and finding light helps.

It'll Pass

2011-11-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

It'll pass, it'll pass

So, I say to myself and know it is true

But the truth doesn't help

You help and light helps and shadows that sway

And all those words I think and keep locked away

Till they splutter and fade

Like candles in the dark

And all that remains

Are small pieces of heart.

"For us, there is only the trying"

2011-11-02T23:15:00.000-07:00

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—

[...]

Trying to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

To emulate—but there is no competition—

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment

And not the lifetime of one man only

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

There is a time for the evening under starlight,

A time for the evening under lamplight

(The evening with the photograph album).

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

(TS Eliot - Four Quartets: East Coker)

--------

I turned twenty today. And because school doesn't stop for birthdays, I woke up promptly at 6:30 am and didn't return home until 10. The day was both long and weary, but there were surprising moments of joy and pure beauty.

Sometime around 1, I was utterly exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I felt weak and lost. So, I went to the olive grove. It's quiet, removed from the busy-ness of classrooms and dorms. And green (for the most part). I sat there and forgot time for a bit. The light sifted through the trees, and the wind made me feel alive.

I know this isn't new to anyone who has read my blog - this cycle of pain, exhaustion, and then coming to rest in peace and even joy. It's not new to me, but something I have to continually learn and relearn. I'm realizing today how much gratitude plays a part in being alive, in banishing the weariness and apathy. I love that the words grace and gratitude have the same root. Gratitude is a way of seeing the beautiful grace that is all around us.

So I sat there in the olive grove, and decided to be part of the "trying" that Eliot talks about. I made lists of 20s in my journal: 20 people I love, 20 places that feel like home, 20 beautiful memories, 20 conversations that have changed me, 20 shades of blue. And with each list, I gained a deeper love for this strange and unusual place called earth.

Earlier, a friend had asked me if I was happy, and that was a hard question to answer honestly. But after that time of seeing and listing beauty, I honestly could say I was happy. Not in a bouncy sense, but in a grounded happiness that comes from seeing and experiencing grace and beauty.

There is a crushing joy that crackles in every corner of this world. I am tiny and yet I am here. I have been given sense, awareness, existence, and placed on a stage so crowded with the vast, so teeming with the tiny, that I can do nothing but laugh, and sometimes laugh and cry.

Living makes dying worth it.

(ND Wilson, Notes from a Tilt-A-Whirl)

Portraits, II

2011-10-28T00:12:00.000-07:00

She has a gentle strength that amazes me.

Simple

2011-10-27T10:05:00.001-07:00

some days are just simple

bread and butter, please

all this growing, being, who we are

and the moments in between

St. Crispin's Day

2011-10-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

The weather seems perfectly fitted for the day. It seems as if Southern California has finally decided that autumn just may stick around for a bit. The clouds keep on rolling in. I love the way the cold, grey light falls over the piles of books and papers I have on my desk.

It's paper-week for us students at Torrey. And although this song really is perfect for anytime, its triumphant epic-ness of it seems particularly suited to this day and this week.

Enjoy!

The Way I See It: Growth

2011-10-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

It was The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring with live music. Live music! The film played through a projector on a huge screen, and right below it, the orchestra and choir played through the entire film. Pure beauty.

I've been thinking a lot about how beauty makes us grow. Seeing beauty is definitely a growing experience, but I struggle with how to explain it. It's a growing deeper into the world and ourselves, a type of becoming. The growth that beauty brings is unquantifiable. It pushes and pierces and prods us, until we reach a state of surprise and wonder. We become more human after encounters with beauty, after beauty makes us grow.

Just the day before the concert, I watched Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life with some friends. It is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen (and actually deserves an entire post for itself). At the end of the film, there was a wordless wonder that we all felt and a growing of our friendship that we shared this piece of beauty together. I felt the same way after the Lord of the Rings concert. Beauty helps us grow together, as friends and as humans.

Growing in beauty is something that seems just out of reach for our words.

(The Way I See It is hosted by Molly at Close at Home.)

Even in the smallest places

2011-10-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

but wait, oh wait

see how the morning breaks

it's the simplest of love songs, but it's all our hearts can take

and though we lose our stake

heaven is where we make it

even in the smallest places, can a garden grow

(Lyrics from Garden by Noah Gunderson, my newest favorite music artist)

(also, listen to the beautiful Honest Songs)

Somethings small and very beautiful

2011-10-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

patterned raindrops

watching worlds

autumned colors

rose-enthralled

The Way I See It: Peace

2011-10-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Peace feels familiar in the newness of the morning. I love watching the sun-patterns in my house - seeing the blue light fade and the gold light come.

This is the time of quiet. I can hear every step I take and fill the silence with words, not my own, but belonging to the prayers of old. Peace.

This afternoon, peace came when he fell asleep in my arms. Babysitting for six hours has its ups and downs, but this welcome moment made it all worth it.

------------

And sometimes, peace comes when I least expect it. I've been sick lately, even more than usual. Insomnia makes for some very, very long nights. In the middle of those nights, when I've exhausted myself with crying, I'll grab a blanket and try to catch a glimpse of the stars outside. City lights don't allow for too many, but the few I see, they're enough. Enough to remind me of plans bigger and greater than myself, of His faithfulness and His love.

There, also, I find peace.

-----

(The Way I See It is hosted by Molly at Close at Home. Next week's theme is growth.)

The Way I See It: Evening

2011-10-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

I always feel slightly guilty if I'm not outside during this time they call 'golden light'. I love the way the calm light settles over everything, turning yellows to golds and greens into emeralds. I would spend hours with this light. It only lasts for so long, though.

To the hedge on the side

And the light in your eyes

To the quiet long walks

Of fast-moving time

let evening come.

"Let it come, as it will, and don’t

be afraid. God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come."

(First verse is mine, then a direct quote from Jane Kenyon's Let Evening Come.)

-------
The Way I See It is hosted by Molly at Close to Home. This week's upcoming theme is peace.

Sunday (small) Joys

2011-10-02T22:29:00.000-07:00

I can hear each key that she types. It's a strange Sunday evening. We have the house to ourselves - two sisters, a labradoodle, and a very lazy cat.

I'm shelving encyclopedias back into our overcrowded bookshelves while she persuades herself to stop tumblr/youtube-ing and to start studying for precalculus. I'm definitely enjoying her internet adventures. She has wonderful taste in music (listen to this).

I should probably be studying also, or at least, preparing for the week. Instead, I spent most of this evening looking through delightfully random words in our encyclopedias. Wikipedia can't compete with the beautiful heavy weight of these books or the smooth, smooth feel of the pages.

Of course, when paper time comes around, I probably won't be spending much time with these particular gorgeous books, but for this Sunday night, I'll enjoy every minute with them.

Midnight Taco Runs

2011-10-02T00:14:00.000-07:00

As soon as we were hungry enough, we jumped in my truck, along with two willing siblings, then headed towards the nearest taco stand. It seemed like a small beacon on that darkly lit street.

I tried to catch that joy that comes in between their laughter and their smiles. But pictures can't catch their breathless giggles or the smell of fresh carne asada or even the small splash of water (was it soda?) that fell on my face when my sister started laughing mid-sip.

Tacos just taste better at midnight.

Portraits, I

2011-10-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

There's a simple beauty to her.

Learning to Sit Still (Capon)

2011-09-10T01:51:00.000-07:00

"There are more important things to do than hurry. If the prophets of automation and cybernation are right, leisure, not labor, is going to be the normal condition of man. Men will become philosophers, artists, and poets just to stay sane: Contemplation will be the only defense against drowning in our own spare time. Even now, the doctrine of justification by work is difficult to defend. Jobs are shorter and more boring than they used to be. It's hard to believe that five hours of a day button-pushing and paper-shuffling are the heart and soul of human existence. The grim old religion of salvation by rushing will go bankrupt altogether, and we shall go straight out of our minds - unless we learn to sit still.

The habit of contemplation, therefore - the ability to sit down in front of something and care enough to let it speak for itself - cannot be acquired soon enough. Accordingly, I invite you, too, to put your feet up o the stove. If some true believer in the gospel of haste comes along and asks us why we are wasting time, we shall tell him we are busy getting the seats of our pants properly shined up for the millenium."

- The Supper of the Lamb by Fr. Robert Farrar Capon

Moments

2011-09-10T01:18:00.000-07:00

"And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path, that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it." - Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

I love school, but sometimes it's exhausting. Wednesday was one of those days that had a beautiful start, but towards the end of the day, I could barely keep myself together. I felt hedged in by the heat, overwhelmed by the crowds of unknown faces, and rather lost and disoriented. My own weakness scared me. I almost went home, even though I still had a huge assignment for my three-hour class.

Then, just ten minutes later, I found myself with three friends, talking about prayers and plays. And then another friend joined us, and another, and another. We all sat there and talked about everything and anything from Plato to Indiana Jones. People drifted in and out of the conversation, and sometimes we just sat there with nothing to say. Still, we were there.

Somehow, in that room with its uneven lighting and strange assortment of tables and chairs, with the friends who came and the friends who left, I felt place. I still felt exhausted, yet the sharp feeling of displacement had left, and instead there was a quiet joy. It's strange how strong I feel during those moments of place, even when I'm at my weakest. Strange and absolutely beautiful.

Cobwebs and Light

2011-09-09T21:09:00.001-07:00

I came and sat underneath the sycamore trees. The larger-than-life sculpture towered over me. Strange, but I first noticed the cobwebs between the figures' massive hands. The webs, so light and fragile against the bronze matter, caught light and held it, but only for an instant. A blink of the eye or quick turn of head, and the light fled. It settled on the figures, sinking deep into the folds of their garments, the furrows on their brows.

I stayed there for an hour, watching the light fall all around. Such beauty.

(The sculpture is Rodin's Burghers of Calais at the Norton Simon Museum. Highly, highly, highly recommended, if you're ever in the area.)

Last day of summer

2011-08-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I joined my Mom and brothers on their weekly beach trip. I knew this would probably be my last beach trip with family for the summer. School starts next week, and I have homework assignments ready to be read. So I counted this as my last day of summer.

On our way there, my Mom and I sang along to Queen, Journey, and Bonnie Tyler. MA sat in the back with a half-smile, ready to wince when we reached extended high notes. He only protested at Bohemian Rhapsody. He didn't think a song should be legally allowed to be that long.

We spent hours at the beach - sitting, watching the waves, occasionally jumping into the cold, clear water, and just talking. My two aunts and lots of cousins were with us. Together, we squeezed lots of adventures into that one day.

I left early with MA, both of us too exhausted to want any more beach adventures. As I began driving, a peace settled on us. We've had so many car rides together this summer, just us two. He sits in the back, and when it's a good day, we fall into a rhythm: a rhythm of silence, music, some talk, and then more silence. We drove through the Laguna canyon along windy roads and saw shadows pass in and out between the hills. The light fell with such a heavy weight, I wanted to pull over and just watch the light transform the brown scrub plants into a landscape of gold and emerald.

An hour later, we drove through more hills and saw the sunset. The dirt and smog that had discolored the blue sky earlier now became brilliant shades of violet, orange, and blue. MA had fallen asleep, and I listened to a lecture on glory. Between the inspiring words coming from my speakers, the glorious sunset outside, and the quiet companionship of a sleeping brother, I could only smile and think a thousand thanks for the beauty of the moment.

I couldn't ask for a better way to end summer.

Beautiful Words

2011-08-13T02:00:00.000-07:00

"That the world is old and frayed is no surprise; that the world could ever become new beyond uncertainty was and is, such a surprise that I find myself referring all subsequent kinds of knowledge to it...I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down.”

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, (emphasis mine)

This post at the Image blog reminded me again of how much I love this quote.

Leave-Takings

2011-08-12T23:45:00.000-07:00

Saying goodbye to a place

To the light coming in

Through small, rectangle windows

With small dirt stains ahead

To the small chair that sits

With a confident air

And the streets that I've walked

Over and over again

Times I can't count,

Like grains of the sand

Or, at least, a handful or two.

And even harder, saying goodbye to the people

To their eyes and their smiles

And their constant alive, being beside

Us, all along the way while

We learned to stumble and grow

And even though it's for a moment, a few months of our lives

This saying goodbye couldn't be harder -

For them or for us?

We hardly know, but it's come.

So we say

Goodbye to this place, to these walls, to this home

And goodbye to the people, whom we know, and we love.

Poem

2011-08-07T17:35:00.000-07:00

And all the words I should have said
Come stumbling in with unwashed feet
They've waited, wandered, wondered why
I've left them incomplete.

Family

2011-08-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

We prepared a feast for them: Thai steak salad, shrimp-stuffed bacon-wrapped jalapeños, not-so-fluffy jasmine rice, and spiced chicken kabobs. The boys set up green and white tables outside. Then we waited until the sun set, and our house filled with people and hugs. When family comes to visit from out-of-state, it's always a delightful event.

I walked outside and listened for awhile. Spanish conversation with bits of English interjections slipped in between long, loud stretches of happy laughter. I love their smiles; the same smile reflected on the six faces of my Mom and her siblings, their inheritance from my Grandpa.

We moved inside when the night-air became too cold. I could hear one cousin playing the piano, another building legos with my brother, and the constant stream of aunts and cousins from the kitchen to the family room, bearing coffee and dessert to the men of the family.

The night ended so quickly, and we soon stood outside, waving as they all piled into different cars. We see some of them three times a year, others we haven't seen in three years, and we don't exactly know when we'll see them again. But for now, this time is beautiful. This is family.

Book-love

2011-07-30T19:14:00.000-07:00

My favorite used bookstore had a sale today. I walked away with all these books for only $10.

Happiness indeed, my friends.

Exploring

2011-07-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

'500 days of summer' bench

Some of the best days come when sisters have absolutely impromptu visits to downtown LA.

Two New Favorites

2011-07-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.curatormagazine.com/

"The Curator seeks to encourage, promote, and uncover those artifacts of culture – those things which humans create – that inspire and embody truth, goodness, and beauty. We do this through considering and grappling with the zeitgeist."

Image: Art - Faith - Mystery

http://imagejournal.org/page/blog/

"Understandably, religion and art also need each other. When we lack the kind of stimulus which only the imagination can provide, we make it more difficult to live the life of faith. And art, when it sees no creation to celebrate, and no soul in need of nurturing, loses its respect for truth."

On Joy

2011-07-18T22:42:00.000-07:00

"The world does bad things to us all, and we do bad things to the world and to each other and maybe most of all to ourselves, but in that dazzle of bright water as the glittering whales hurled themselves into the sun, we saw that joy is what we belong to. Joy is home. God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run, not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy, because whatever else it means to say that God created us in his image, it means that even when we cannot believe in him, even when we feel most spiritually bankrupt and deserted by him, his mark is deep within us.

We have God's joy in our blood."

Frederick Buechner, The Great Dance (emphasis mine)

A Summer Walk

2011-07-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

We decided to spend an afternoon walking. My youngest brother, MA, and I left the house together with a happy labradoodle at our side. I carried a letter because our nominal goal was to take the letter to the post-office, but honestly, we just wanted the time and space that the calm summer day offered us.

We walked a couple blocks singing bits of songs, everything from Justin Bieber to The Sound of Music. Then we talked about everything under the sun.

"I know a girl who likes me."

"Oh really? I knew a boy who liked me."

"Oh," he said and kept on walking, then in the same semi-serious tone, "Do you think I should buy a slushie or a candy?"

After two miles, we reached the post-office, passed under coffee-colored walls, and stepped on all the uneven stones. We spent a couple minutes trying to understand how to get my letter into the rather menacing blue postal box. Postal boxes are not as intuitive as one would think. Not at all. We celebrated our victory with slushies and bionicos and sat down under a small patch of shade, waving at the passing traffic.

On the way back, we took frequent stops on helpful green benches, both for his sake and mine. We also stopped at every house that had a dog. One of the dogs we passed had such a loud, deep bark that we flattened our hands and held them out in front of us to catch the sound vibrations. The barks sent tingles through our fingers.

He slipped his hand into mine whenever we crossed streets. He immediately withdrew it once we reached the safe sidewalk, but that small, almost unconscious movement of trust made me treasure that walk, this memory, as something I hope to never forget.

Cello Love

2011-07-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

At one moment...

2011-07-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

We had the moon above us,

the ocean below,

and the sun setting in the west.

Such a beautiful, perfect day.

Lessons from Art

2011-06-26T22:33:00.000-07:00

I have come to feel that everything, even the most ordinary affair, is enriched by the lessons that can be gleaned from art: that beauty is often where you don't expect to find it; that it is something that we may discover and also invent, then reinvent, for ourselves; that the most important things in the world are never as simple as they seem but that the world is also richer when it declines to abide by comforting formulas.

And that it is always good to keep your eyes wide open, because you never know what you wil discover.

From The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman

Enough

2011-06-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

Sidenote: I have at least twenty drafts sitting in my queue, and I fully intend on finishing and posting at least half of those. They're not current reflections of my life, but still, I'd like to post them.

[from April 2011]

Some days it just gets harder. Waking up with weakness and pain wears me down until some mornings I feel thin and stretched, too broken to even start the day.

At one point, I felt a strange, strong apprehension. Almost as if I saw depression, looked into the dark days ahead, felt the cold pain touch my mind. I cried in fear. I had faced this before. Please God, not again. My weakness crashed down on me - physical, emotional, mental - and I felt powerless to stop the depression. I wanted to choose joy, to see light, but I couldn't. Not on my own, not with this brokenness.

So I asked for prayer with a quick post on Facebook, which only a handful of friends could see. I quickly pressed enter, shut my laptop, and walked out of my room before I could delete my post.

I went outside and looked at the stars. Their beauty gave me clarity. I felt terribly small in the face of this terrifying and huge world. I lay on the concrete. It still held warmth from the forgotten sun. I felt small points of despair ebb away, and I knew joy would come in the morning.

That joy didn't wait for the morning. It came with the stars that faintly light up the LA sky, the chilling breeze that came through my window, in a peace that I cannot ever quite explain. The next morning, my pain was still there, but I had lost the sinking feeling of despair. But not the feeling of brokenness, I didn't feel whole, and still don't.

The miracle is - it wasn't my choice. I didn't choose joy, the way I didn't choose depression in the past. Joy chose me and sought me out in my darkness. It was the way the light filled my room, the prayers of my faithful friends, the text messages from classmates who missed me.

And for now, that's enough. Having joy is enough.

This gentle falling

2011-06-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

This gentle falling into grace

Held within a sunlit space --

I caught my breath and blossoms fell

Mingling light with softer smell

Of purple flowers, whole and crushed

And over all, a golden dust

Some part faery, some part pain

The pain that never leaves these days --

This gentle falling into grace

Helped some pieces fall into place.

Transitions

2011-06-10T19:50:00.000-07:00

It's strange to say that school has ended. I didn't write/blog much during the school year, mainly because I said all the words I had to say to the people around me. Conversations are the essence of school itself: between professors and students, students and students, students and books. I learned and loved so many things through these conversations. And now it's over. For two and a half months at least.

The end of school collided with a cousin's wedding and a sister's graduation, all events which traveled at the same velocity of the school year, so I didn't have much time to realize school is over. Now, these days should seem abrupt, unfamiliar, or at least new, yet they don't. They feel right, perfectly placed transitions between school days and summer days.

Hello books, golden light-ed evenings, and adventures always just around the corner.

Hello summer.

On Liturgy

2011-05-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

Liturgy pulls our prayers out of the tiresome business of looking after ourselves and into the exhilarating enterprise of seeing and participating in what God is doing. We are drawn into a large generosity where everyone is getting and receiving, offering and praising. We are drawn to the place where people are being loved and where they love us. We are deepened into the practice of humanity in covenant with God that goes both beneath and beyond our self-defined religious desire. We are put beside people who help us and whom we can help. Liturgy breaks us out of the isolation of ego and emotion where we are cut off from the large winds and landscapes of grace. God wants us outside the walls that quarantine us in our ego-sickness; he pulls us into the great dance of grace in which we find ourselves moving rhythmically and joyfully with partner after partner. Selah - indeed.

Eugene Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer

This Spring Break

2011-04-30T18:17:00.001-07:00

I read:

Reread:

And watched (for the very first time, thanks to the wonderful MK):

Weakness

2011-04-30T18:10:00.001-07:00

"Having lost everything, he gave his weakness to God, and it became his strength.

In a way, all tales are one tale, the tale of how God's power is found in weakness. But that is the story of the whole of life, if you know how to read it right."

~ Penelope Wilcock, The Hawk and the Dove

Life in Pictures

2011-04-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

Life has been quite an adventure these past few months. Here are a few snapshots of what's been going on.

Weakness and daily struggles with illness...

Bridesmaid-ing...

School! Lots of glorious, beautiful school with amazing people and tons of homework...

And more grace than I can ever account for, grace of light and music and every day beauty. Just, grace.

True Beauty

2011-03-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

"Define true beauty."

...

"Without looking at Jacob, I said slowly, 'Well, it seeps into you. It doesn't make you forget yourself but totally the opposite.'

I chanced a glance at him. He was watching me intently. No glaze in his eye.

So I continued more bravely: 'It connects you with everything and fills you with awe that you share the same space with something glorious. Like a sunrise or a clear blue day or the most extraordinary piece of glass. And then suddenly -' my hands escaped their tight grip in my lap, and now my fingers splayed like fireworks in the air - 'you have this epiphany that there's more world than just you and what you want or even who you are."

North of Beautiful by Justina Chen

Ordinary Beauty

2011-02-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

The blue sky stands silent behind the wind. Wind breathes life into everything. The trees sway and move, birds dart and fly, even the dead leaves dance. What an image of resurrection and complete dependence. Without the wind, the leaves sit - dead, brown, dull - on a landscape of black asphalt. But with the wind, they float and dance in graceful ways that exult in movement and life. The asphalt becomes a stage for their beauty.

The Impractical Life, Pt. 1

2011-02-22T12:08:00.000-08:00

I love watching people's reactions when I tell them I'm an art major. Reactions range from passionate interest to supercilious dismissal. It's always a great conversation starter. One way or another, most people ask about the practicality of it all.

We have this unspoken assumption that education is inherently about practicality. If I said I was a pre-med student, reactions would be entirely different. But how healthy is this idea of education and practicality?

Education has changed so much in past two, maybe even three, hundred years. It used to be about the liberal arts, the education worthy of a free person. The point was to create people with whole souls. Education had one primary goal: to learn how to love and how to love rightly. But now, it is vocation-based not soul-based. We're more concerned about churning out practical, competent humans than humans who have developed souls.

In some sense, isn't practicality just a piece of selfishness? The American Dream has no place for impractical things like love and kindness. It's about beating the odds, building an empire of practical goods, making the cover of Time magazine. There are instances when practicality is not selfishness, but here in our society, I doubt it.

After all, we serve an impractical God. He's self-sufficient, yet He created an entire world for His pleasure. He created practical things like food and animals, but He also created so-called impractical things like dirt, butterflies, rainbows. He sent His son to die for us in the the most unpractical manner. And we are called to go and serve him in a similarly impractical manner.

Maybe we need a strong dose of impractically in our lives. Something like well, the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness.

For what good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

Free Falling Thoughts

2011-02-14T22:17:00.000-08:00

This weariness presses onto my soul and my body. I'm learning how to see it - to see beyond the present pain, and somehow, to even see it as it truly is. An ordained grace from God. Learning involves lots of mistakes, dark nights and tears.

The world keeps on spinning. Spiraling by turns, over grief, over joy, over insecurity, over confidence, until a resting point lands with the keen precision of a knife. Rest - calm, sweet, small - in minutes that speak a lifetime and catch eternity. I love these moments.

Grace falls with a piercing beauty: in white petals on the black asphalt, black and white anatomy charts, printed photos on a sheet of blank paper.

These days have a heavy glory in themselves.

Carrying Light

2011-02-14T21:53:00.001-08:00

"We can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you."

(Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light shine in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness."

(Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son)

I don't know which quote is more true. Sometimes even though light dispels a lot of darkness, part of the darkness remains, a silent presence that I can't ignore. And yet the light stays as well, tethered by hope. It's that paradox of rejoicing in our sufferings, a simultaneous bit of light and dark.

Maybe both quotes are saying the same thing: the idea is to choose light, to hold onto hope, to carry it and find it whenever dark comes our way, to remember that night never lasts, and the sunrise always comes.

May the blessing of light be on you - light without and light within.

(Irish Blessing)

Finding Words

2011-02-06T00:13:00.000-08:00

It's strange that so much life can happen, and yet I cannot find the words to describe it. Or more accurately, I cannot pull the words together into a coherent whole. They are just fragments of thoughts floating around on the pages of my journals and emails. I started taking a picture a day. Sometimes the pictures capture exactly what I want to say, sometimes they don't. Quotes are different, though. In them, I find exactly what I want say in an even more beautiful fashion than I could ever have said it. Soon I'll gather my thoughts and marshal them into a blogpost. Yet for now, here are some quotes that fit my life so, so perfectly.

"The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater."

(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

"This is the real discipline. It requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visibile, and choosing for the truth even when I am surrounded with lies. ... Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy."

(Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son)

"And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path, that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it."

(Libba Bray, Rebel Angels)

"A sense of place is not sentimental: it is practical and necessary. The mistake is to consider place provincially. While a sense of place is based on local knowledge, it is not limited to local knowledge - it includes a range of places... what is one caught in the forced mobility of our culture to do? The answer lies in story... though I may be out of my place, I am not out of my story."

(Grace is Where I Live, John Leax)

Mark Helbrid

2011-01-13T15:23:00.000-08:00

"And yet if you asked me what [the truth] was, I can't tell you. I can tell you only that it overwhelmed me, that all the hard and wonderful things of the world are nothing more than a frame for a spirit, like fire and light, that is the endless roiling of love and grace. I can tell you only that beauty cannot be expressed or explained in a theory or an idea, that it moves by its own law, that it is God's way of comforting His broken children."

Mark Helbrid, Soldier of the Great War

Secret-Keeping

2011-01-11T22:32:00.000-08:00

"What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier . . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own . . . "

~ Frederick Buechner

These past few days have been secret-sharing days, days of being open and vulnerable, in the most frightening ways possible. Last Thursday, I decided that I just couldn't do it alone, couldn't bear the heaviness of life at the moment, and so I texted a friend. She didn't text back. Instead, she called me, and as soon as I heard her voice, I almost broke down with the gratitude of talking to someone else. I spent the evening talking and listening to her, instead of being a pathetic mess. We were roommates together last year, so she's seen me in the most pathetic states possible, and was just the absolutely perfect friend to talk to. She heard my secrets, and I heard hers.

I'm stubborn and proud too often, and most times, I try to escape my human-ness and weakness. Yet the moment I acknowledge my weakness, grace floods my life in the most beautiful and different ways. That evening on the phone marked the beginning of a grace flood.

The next day, another friend called and invited me over to her house. We climbed to the top of her bunk bed and talked about Miyusaki, Anna Karenina, and Jane Kenyon. Then we sat in her living room, she drank apple cider, I had strawberry white tea. I held her dog, Ginger, and met some new people. For the first time in awhile, I felt rested, whole, and strangely vulnerable with this girl who I have only just met five months ago. It's a good vulnerable, the type that we need with new friendships, the type that sometimes scares me to no end. I had hesitated to accept her invitation at first, it's so much easier to face friends when life doesn't seem like a crashing wreck, but I'm again filled with gratitude that she would trust me and that we're learning to trust and love each other as friends. I was absurdly happy that entire day.

And the flood continued.

Monday, I woke up and found a letter in a black-and-white envelope on my desk. "Fairy Land. We live because we 'dream.' Let's go out in a dreamy mood," it said. It had a picture of Little Red Riding Hood. I loved the letter even before I opened it. More stories and secret-keeping. I used Skype to reconnect with another new friend. It was lovely. That evening, I cooked Thai peanut chicken with another friend, then sat around a small table with five more friends, and we talked about Genesis and Noah and another type of flood, a flood of justice and a man saved by grace, and radical-ness and books.

Then again today, I used Skype with one of my best friends from high-school, and we talked as the light gradually slipped from dusk to evening. After our talk, I ran out to join my family for dinner and spent the evening reading about Rembrandt. The evening went on, and I had another totally unplanned phone call with another very dear friend.

I wonder if friendships are really just this - secret-keeping. Not secrets in a CIA form, but just the secrets of our shared weaknesses, the truths we're not so ready to tell a passing stranger. That's not the whole of friendships, obviously, but it has such a huge part. We're still growing and learning in this new, old world. But if we don't stop and share the quiet, lonely moments or the moments that we want to scream and shout, then those moments become hidden in the corner until we start denying their existence. We're not here alone, but with people, people placed here for a purpose.

Maybe this is just another reminder about how our weaknesses can bring glory and beauty to God. We would be arrogant autonomous beings if we didn't have these weaknesses that bind us together in love and friendships.

Let Evening Come

2011-01-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing

as a woman takes up her needles

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.

Let the wind die down. Let the shed

go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop

in the oats, to air in the lung

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t

be afraid. God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come.

Jane Kenyon, Let Evening Come

Project 365

2011-01-06T16:58:00.000-08:00

I decided to post those pictures on a new blog :) http://somethingsdontcompute.blogspot.com/

[2]

2011-01-06T14:33:00.000-08:00

[1]

2011-01-06T13:58:00.000-08:00

Project 365 :)

Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute

2011-01-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

"So friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.

[...]

Ask the questions that have no answers.

[...]

Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

[...]

Practice resurrection."

From The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry

A Beautiful End

2010-12-31T18:24:00.000-08:00

We decided to make today count. And so we jumped in the truck, drove forty minutes with music on blast, then ran to the sandy beaches of Laguna Niguel.

We walked up and down the beach, barefoot and ridiculously happy.

We didn't really do anything, just walked and laughed and talked and laughed. Sometimes we just sat in silence and pushed the sand around with our fingers. It was perfect. As the light died down, we visited the small shops and shared a small cup of gelatto.

We wanted to avoid traffic and leave early, but as we were running towards the car, we saw this.

We smiled and looked at each other. It was the last sunset of 2010 - how we could just run by it? So instead of running to the car, we ran to the most picturesque spot. I didn't have the camera just then, and for once, I was grateful for that. I heard the seagulls and smelt the salt air.

A beautiful end to a beautiful year.

Benedictus es, Domine, benedictus es.

Colors of December

2010-12-21T22:06:00.000-08:00

Dostoevsky on Love

2010-12-21T16:53:00.000-08:00

"A loving humility is a terrible power, the most powerful of all... love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire, it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for one ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time."

~ Brothers Karamazof

Advent: In the Waiting

2010-12-15T00:04:00.000-08:00

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,

The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed

With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama

And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away [...]

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,

The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy

Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony

Of death and birth.

~ T.S. Eliot, No. 2 of the Four Quartets

Spurgeon on Change

2010-11-19T20:45:00.000-08:00

Today felt strange and slightly off balance. I looked out the window and saw November fog, yet it outlined the silhouettes of a dozen palm trees. Fog and palm trees honestly just don't go together. Somewhere in the middle of muddled thoughts, I realized I was missing Idaho, and that it's almost exactly a year since we all left. It's strange to think about last year. I love where I am, am blessed and ridiculously thankful for it, but I still miss Idaho. Some days much more than others. I find myself wishing change didn't happen, and that life was back to how it was last year or even two years ago before I was sick. And then I remember one of my favorite passages in literature. Spurgeon's Morning and Evening for November 2, my birthday, is absolutely perfect. It deals with the idea of change far better than I can ever attempt.

Enjoy!

"I am the Lord, I change not." --Malachi 3:6

It is well for us that, amidst all the variableness of life, there is One whom change cannot affect; One whose heart can never alter, and on whose brow mutability can make no furrows. All things else have changed--all things are changing. The sun itself grows dim with age; the world is waxing old; the folding up of the worn-out vesture has commenced; the heavens and earth must soon pass away; they shall perish, they shall wax old as doth a garment; but there is One who only hath immortality, of whose years there is no end, and in whose person there is no change. The delight which the mariner feels, when, after having been tossed about for many a day, he steps again upon the solid shore, is the satisfaction of a Christian when, amidst all the changes of this troublous life, he rests the foot of his faith upon this truth--"I am the Lord, I change not."

The stability which the anchor gives the ship when it has at last obtained a hold-fast, is like that which the Christian's hope affords him when it fixes itself upon this glorious truth. With God "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." What ever His attributes were of old, they are now; His power, His wisdom, His justice, His truth, are alike unchanged. He has ever been the refuge of His people, their stronghold in the day of trouble, and He is their sure Helper still. He is unchanged in His love. He has loved His people with "an everlasting love"; He loves them now as much as ever He did, and when all earthly things shall have melted in the last conflagration, His love will still wear the dew of its youth. Precious is the assurance that He changes not! The wheel of providence revolves, but its axle is eternal love.

"Death and change are busy ever,
Man decays, and ages move;
But His mercy waneth never;
God is wisdom, God is love."

Rain

2010-10-04T23:02:00.000-07:00

Love this rain. How a raindrop settles on my face, then runs down, leaving way for the next inevitable drop. How it brings us closer, as we huddle for warmth in the library or around a cup of tea. How it makes the air feel alive and reborn. I love this rain.

Nobody stands still in the rain. Rain rushes us all from the shelter of one dry spot to the next. I found myself hurrying past the library with my hand above my head until a rebellious raindrop landed on my face. I had to stop. And look up. Rain is our common grace. It's easier to see grace with this image of rain. It falls from above and touches everything below. It is a gift.

I kept walking but with an uplifted head and entered class.

Two hours later, I forgot my moment of revelation when the pain set in. Rain makes my knees and hands feel a steel, sharp pain. I pulled my unwilling body across campus and hurried through the rain. Rain didn't feel beautiful or remind me of grace. Then I almost fell into a puddle that drenched my shoes and splattered my face. I had to laugh as I realized my stupidity, my sin. It began to rain harder. As it fell, the rain startled my soul into remembering God and His love. Maybe I wouldn't be so startled if there was no pain. Maybe it's not just the rain that startles my soul, but the pain as well. Maybe... no, not maybe, God ordained both. And I can rest in that.

"When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory

And I realize just how beautiful You are and how great Your affections are for me.

Oh. How He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. How He loves us, oh."

The Quiet World

2010-10-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

(by Jeffrey McDaniel)

In an effort to get people to look

into each other’s eyes more,

and also to appease the mutes,

the government has decided

to allot each person exactly one hundred

and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear

without saying hello. In the restaurant

I point at chicken noodle soup.

I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,

proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.

I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,

I know she’s used up all her words,

so I slowly whisper I love you

thirty-two and a third times.

After that, we just sit on the line

and listen to each other breathe.

October 1st

2010-10-02T00:54:00.000-07:00

Beginning in Wonder

2010-08-16T14:22:00.001-07:00

It's a new day, a new door, and a strange one, I don't know what all to expect. I'm hoping, I've been hoping that this day will come for a long time. School starts in an hour. Yes, yes, it does! Soon, I'll be on campus, a real college campus, as a real college student. I am so happy I'm lost in wonder.

I wonder at both the little things and the big and the paradoxes in between: how the sky opened up to receive the sun, how I can walk without any trace of a limp, how small my Bible feels in my hand, the fact that I'm even holding the very Word of God, how far some dear friends are yet how close their prayers and love have made them to me, and the wind blows through my window, how it makes me feel alive.

So, I start my college adventure now. I thank God for His faithfulness and mercy and love. And I wonder like a child at how great God is. Whatever happens next, He promises it will be glorious.

Redwoods

2010-08-14T20:11:00.000-07:00

Two Summer Blessings

2010-08-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

This beautiful girl came and visited from TX. She stayed for an entire week (!). We drove down PCH from Malibu, window shopped at Beverly Hills, squished seaweed in Laguna Beach, and saw the sunset at Santa Monica Pier. We watched Inception, and I took her to In-N-Out. We also managed to have gluten-free (GA) and dairy-free (me) meals for most of the week. We had a beautiful time together.

Mom, my two sisters, and I drove for 7 hours to see this lovely friend. We went star-gazing and saw blazing Arcturus through the eye of a telescope. We went up on the deck, and she read aloud by the light of candles. Sunday morning, we sang out of the Cantus and read some more. We had a beautiful time together.

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I love these girls :)

Thankful, So Thankful

2010-08-09T01:45:00.000-07:00

The test results were negative. :)

Praise God from whom all blessings flow...

The Box Called Tomorrow

2010-08-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

The word sits like a hot coal in my mind. It burns through all my defenses. No matter how many boxes I try to put around it, it breaks out and lands right beside me. For right now, I'm putting it in a box called tomorrow, far away from today. Please, stay there.

Rewind two weeks ago: I had gone to USC for a visit with my doctor, and she found a diagnosis - Job's syndrome. It's extraordinarily rare and also incurable, but definitely something that can be controlled. The downside is that it is connected to two forms of cancer. I was tested for one of those two weeks ago. I should get the results tomorrow. That's also the word (cancer) that burns through my mind. I have a ridiculously dramatic imagination.

Today, I found myself jumping every time the phone rings. I check the caller ID - if it's not USC, I put the phone down with a lot less enthusiasm than when I picked it up. It's silly, I know. Then I realized. I just have to laugh it off, hug whatever sibling is closest to me (there's a bunch of them), and go on with life. Let worry keep itself company.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll find out I do have cancer. Or maybe the sky will fall and dragons will populate the earth. My worrying will not change what comes tomorrow. I could spend a lot of time wondering what could happen, but what will happen is ordained by the Lord of the universe. I'm going to rest in that. And with His grace, I'll also take joy in it.

For now, there's a beautiful sunset. Stars will come out. And the Lord was, is, and always shall be faithful, holy, and sovereign over everything. Even that box of "Tomorrow".

These Small Hours

2010-08-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

The enormous expanse of blue above enveloped us in strong color. Sticky watermelon juice ran down on faces and through our fingers. We stood in the middle of nowhere. Goodness and mercy stood by our sides. The little one insisted on keeping his sweater on, even though it had to be above 75°.

We laughed and finished half of a watermelon. It was just us three - Dad, youngest brother, and me. Splashed cold water on our faces to erase the memory of the stickiness. Then chased each other with water bottles, making small puddles of mud in the dry dirt.

We climbed back into our small white car. Home was three hours behind us, and rest just four hours ahead. Dad started the car, and we drove on.

Time falls away, but these small hours,
These small hours still remain.

Epic Reading List (Literally)

2010-07-28T23:06:00.000-07:00

Finishing Milton

Epics! I received my fall semester reading list for Torrey sometime in June, and after scanning the book list, I couldn't stop smiling. I love, love these books. I thought of reading them during the summer, but quickly discarded the thought. I had already read them, so maybe this summer should be for non-Torrey books. But then I thought a little more. My amazing literature teacher, Mr. Callihan, always asked us to read, at the very least, portions of these books aloud. These books were meant to be read aloud. They are poetry. College schedules probably don't leave too much time for slowly reading through the books. (I think.) So, I made a summer goal: to read through all the epics out loud.

Last week, I finished the last epic, Milton's Paradise Regained. It was such delightful summer reading project.

New Favorite Book

2010-07-19T23:56:00.001-07:00

Snapshot

2010-07-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

We stared with wonder.

"A thunder storm in July? It can't be."

The thunder flashed and the lightening roared. The grey clouds traveled towards us. The sound of thunder mingled with our conversation. We laughed and talked about everything under the sun - my friend, my Mom, and I. We lost track of time.

Towards the end of the dinner, we gathered the white plates and plastic water jug and looked up at the sky. A double-rainbow stood out, clear and bright against the darkest clouds. I told Mom about my favorite passage from Morning and Evening.

"Jesus Christ is... the covenant Rainbow, displaying all the glorious hues of the divine character and betokening peace. To the believer, when his trials and temptations surround him, it is sweet to behold the person of our Lord Jesus Christ—to see him bleeding, living, rising, and pleading for us. God’s rainbow is hung over the cloud of our sins, our sorrows, and our woes, to prophesy deliverance."

Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, August 12

I talked with Mom. The rainbows not only prophesy deliverance, they prove that we are delivered. We will face grey clouds and thunderstorms. We face them now. But not alone, never alone. We have a God who loves us enough to send colored streaks of light after a storm, and even more so, He sent His son to bear the storm.

Mom smiled. We went inside.

And the storm passed over us.

Castles in the Sand

2010-07-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

A Story

2010-06-29T02:07:00.000-07:00

You felt it as soon as you walked into the house. Beauty so great that it was tangible. It wasn't just beauty: it was hope, grace, God-bringing-joy-out-of-suffering. The sun made us squint our eyes as we sat and waited for the ceremony to begin. That's the end to this story, but the beginning looks much different...

Two years ago, our pastor's wife died. It was unexpected, sharp, painful. I remember playing the piano at her funeral - people filled the church, and you could hear the rain pounding outside. We grieved her loss and his pain. There are no words for that grief, no answers for the question why. Pastor John clung to his faith in God's sovereignty, that day and in long months then years afterward. And although God's grace was evident, His purpose was not.

Six months ago, someone new came to our church. We're a small church, and newcomers are always noticed (and welcomed rather enthusiastically). Her name was Myrna. She came to lunch at our house, and we heard her story. She was a widow, and her husband had died four years ago. She spoke of God's love and sovereignty, how He gave her strength and hope. You could see her trust and faith, even during that short time. Someone else came to our house. And that was the day that Myrna met Pastor John.

Three days ago, they said "I do" and smiled and kissed under the bright June sun.

It was beautiful, so beautiful. My words fall flat, but it's the story that counts. I love and need stories like this. Even though my life is so different and my pain so much less than theirs, their story gives me hope. You could list Suffering as a main character in this story, and that would hold to the truth. But alongside it stands Hope and a God, a very real, incomprehensible, and marvelous God.

Two New Favorites

2010-06-29T00:27:00.000-07:00

On Living

2010-06-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

"I know sometimes it seems difficult..." I began.

"Difficult!" All she seemed able to do was echo my words, spitting them out as if they tasted bitter.

"Yes, I know, but we are alive," I argued, "Think how alive we are. It isn't like Southstone where we just went on and on and nothing ever happened. Here I can feel us living. Don't you feel as if you were being stretched?"

"It hurts to be stretched."

Greengage Summer, Rumer Godden

Living right now is just like that quote. The type of Living that stretches and stretches, pulls and pulls. There's just so much. I can't put my thoughts in order, so I'm leaning on quotes.

"We are never more in touch with life than when life is painful, never more in touch with hope than we are then, if only the hope of another human presence to be with us and for us." (Clown in the Belfry, Frederick Buechner)

"The characteristics of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality." (The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis)

If pain makes life real, it also makes hope unmistakably real. Hope becomes something to hold, something to wield. Also, something to lose. But it's there, undeniably there.

Sometimes, I have to pull myself out of my narrow world and just laugh. It's not a cynical laugh or a despairing laugh, but a laugh of pure joy. A laugh that realizes how small I am and how great God truly is.


THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;	5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;	10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

(God's Grandeur, Gerald Manley Hopkins)

Smash

2010-06-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

"Learn power, the smash of the holy once more, and signed by its name. Be victim to abruptness and seizures, events intercalated, swellings of the heart. You'll climb trees. You won't be able to sleep, or need to, for the joy of it."

Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard

No other quote can describe this month so well. The smash of the holy shattered my plans for June. From the start, I've been bewildered, angry, amazed, through the whole spectrum of emotion. This month feels fragmented and unclear. Nothing fits together (except in some great plan that I cannot see). I hope in that unseen plan. Life now just means unraveled plans and unanswered emails.

Two weeks ago, I planned to fly out to TX and visit two very, very dear friends for the first two weeks of June. But I had to cancel because of more health issues. Apart from the pain of the new illness, I was not happy that first day of June. Southwest kindly sent me an email confirming that my flight was indeed canceled. I tried not to break down crying. Tried being the key word. It sounds silly, but visiting friends really is a huge encouragement, and those girls are two of my best friends. I felt so little and lost.

Last Sunday, I made the whirlwind decision to spend the week with my Ninos in Oceanside. It was one of the best weeks ever. We watched movies, rode bikes, blasted Taylor Swift and Matchbox Twenty, talked about everything under the sun, read Narnia on top of bunk beds, and drank tea. I could feel the swelling of my heart towards joy. This completely unplanned week, this smash of holy, made me want to climb a tree and laugh out loud.

We gathered last Saturday, my Dad's side of the family. Just two months ago, we mourned the death of my Uncle Kenny, this time we mourned another death. Together in dark colors of black and purple, around a grave, tears and hugs. This death was another shock, a complete surprise, a smash of... holy?

Yet I have to believe this is a smash of holy. If this all really is the smash of the holy, then I can only stand back and bite my tongue. Silent, but with something else pulling at my heart. If the mark is of a God who is the holy, holy, holy Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. This month is part of His glory. And because of His only begotten son, I see part of His glory. And then there's the pull, the pull of joy. It definitely came after the smash, after I cried, whined, and argued. But it's there: a sign of grace, a gift, pure and beautiful joy.

What wondrous love is this, oh my soul, oh my soul...

Smash of holy.

May Book Love, I

2010-05-29T22:21:00.000-07:00

May 1-7

"Rejoicing with the morning stars that Thou art our God and we Thy children. Make strong and wild this secret song within until it bursts forth at last to thy glory and our saying."

The Hungering Dark

"Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, the glimpse always unforeseen."

The Man Who Was Thursday

"Don't believe the newspaper reports. Juliet was not arrested and taken away in handcuffs . . . She DID throw a teapot at Gilly Gilbert's head."

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

May 8-14

"There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady... Don't you know that secret yet? And don't you know- listen to me, now - don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?. . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."

Franny and Zooey

"Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating." He lifted his hands high above his head as if stretching for the sky. "But there are other ways to understanding!" he shouted, laughing like a child. He threw both arms to the cloudless arch of sky above us still laughing. "Look!" he shouted tilting his head back. "Blue! Blue! Blue!"

The Name of the Wind

And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do; churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God's blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. Who are we to demand explanations of God. (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) We forget ourselves, picnicking; we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. "God is at Home," says Meister Eckhart, "We are in the far country."

Holy the Firm

May 15-16

No quotes here, just some beautiful books with one of the most vulnerable, human, and absolutely wonderful protagonists in modern fantasy literature. The first book doesn't really hold a candle to the its sequels, but it's still good.

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I know some of these quotes may not make sense taken out of context, but these books deserve to be read from cover to cover. Some turned my world upside-down (notably, The Man Who Was Thursday and Franny and Zooey), and others came very close to it. I loved them all. So far, May has been a delightful month of reading.

Shadow and Light

2010-05-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

Life is complicated. Today affirmed that fact with a sfz(orzando). All things bright and beautiful, that was today: Shakespeare read-aloud on the cool grass in a deserted park with two younger brothers and handful of chocolates. Obviously, today was not the complicated part of life. But yesterday was, and Wednesday, and it's hard to believe Tuesday even existed in the same world of this Friday. Tuesday, the day that was tears, doctor visits, and the return of the oh-so-notorious antibiotics. This whole week has been a curious mixture of shadow and light. The shadows came from every bend and struck my body, heart and mind. They hurt. But the light was just as powerful as the dark.

Thursday, I met with friends, and we read together, talked, and prayed. We came out of that house with new and old truths that felt so real, so very close to us. It was beautiful.

A dear friend reminded me that "life is as fleeting as a breath." Oh yes, yes, and love is strong. These days of shadow and light make up the fabric of our very own narrative, the story that says: we are weak, and He is strong. He is also good, so very good.

It's easy to say that now, of course, now with healing wounds and fresh memories of gentle words and sunshine. I wish I could say I remembered His goodness during those times of shadow. I didn't. I cried, I whined and fell into a dreaful apathy where I almost didn't care if God was good or not. I wince, now with this solid truth of goodness in hand, I wince for my past sin and the future times when I know I'll forget this world-shattering truth. But for now. I'm grateful. And I can lay here on the grass with the dappled patterns of sunshine and shadow, and I can nothing. Just let the quiet wonder of His goodness flood my world.

.

2010-05-24T22:17:00.000-07:00

This. Is. Beautiful.

I pull the words out, forcing them and hoping that speaking is believing. I say them again. I'm curled tight on my side, pushing the words into my heart. But really? I don't think this is beautiful. I think this hurts. It hurts so much, it hurts too much. And as hard as I try, I can't blend my words with my feelings. They mix as well as oil and water. I am not thinking of beauty or trust or sanctification, I just feel pain of the open, raw skin all over me. This is not beautiful.

I'm scared now, and words come tumbling out: memorized verses, promises, quotes. The words fill the empty space of room around me, as if I hope to conquer my feelings with a sheer multitude of words. They don't work. I sit up. I'm surrounded by empty air, and the words batter against my heart. I'm exhausted. Maybe they're right. And then, some words begin to sink in...

Words: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. This isn't the valley of the shadow of death, and still I fear evil, I doubt Good. But Thou art with me. I repeat those words, over and over. Thou art with me. Maybe this is beautiful.

Words: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. In my weakness, in this weak pathetic body. I wrestle with those words. They break, bend, shatter my excuses. His power stands here, whether I admit it or not. His power and glory, I am just his whiskey priest.

And now the words make sense. They burst upon me as rushing water. This is beautiful. Because He who suffered death and wrath, He stands for me. This is beautiful. Because He comes to my weakness and sin. He doesn't heal me tonight, He restoreth my soul. And now I can say and believe, at least for tonight:

This. Is. Beautiful.

Hope, Revisited

2010-05-07T18:39:00.000-07:00

"This dragon of despair burns down all that I hold dear. I begin to sink deeper and deeper into depression and apathy. Why bother? It's a serious question. Why get up? Why make the bed? Why fight for anything at all? Because there is still hope yet! Because the dragon just might have a weakness. Because your heroes are uninformed enough to think they might have a chance. The fat lady hasn't sung. The concrete has not set yet. There is still time. Yes, this planet is wrought with horrors and pain and heartache, but there is beauty still. The dark horses are still running."

Jon Foreman, The Dark Horse

Three New Favorites

2010-05-06T23:20:00.001-07:00

Wait and See

2010-05-04T15:11:00.000-07:00

These days are filled with long hours of waiting. I'm not even exactly sure what I'm waiting for: maybe it's health, or the ever-hopeful idea of Biola next fall, or someone to just call and say, "Hi!" Either way, the days fall slowly and quietly (well, for the most part). But, somehow, through His grace, right now I really love this waiting. I love to sit outside and just watch. The sun cuts through the branches and makes dappled patterns on the ground. It truly is beautiful.

Wait on the LORD;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart.
Psalm 27:14

The Solution to Life

2010-05-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

"The most interesting questions continue to be questions. They are the wrapping around a mystery. You should add 'perhaps' to every answer. Only uninteresting questions have a definite answer."

"Do you mean there's no solution for life?"

"I mean that for 'life', there are several solutions, therefore no solution."

"That's what I think, too, Mamie Rose, there's no solution to life other than living."

~ Oscar and the Lady in Pink by Eric-Emmanual Schmitt

Here.

2010-04-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Today was beautiful. It still is, actually. The strong blues of the sky are clear and the green all over our house and yard defies description. And the wind! It's blowing, reckless and joyful.

I climbed to the top of our tree house and tried to journal. But the wind blew the words away. Something about the wind makes me feel so alive, so grateful for the present. I'm reminded of His faithfulness in ALL things. No circumstances change His character, He is the Lord of all creation. I stand with the wind, with blue skies, with green trees. And I am at a lost for words.

How great Thou art.

Benedictus es, Domine.