I was afraid

I was afraid, so I did not learn.
I did not learn, so I was afraid.
I might be wrong, so I did not wish to know.
What I loved might be gone, so I wished to hide.
What I believed might be false, so I cried.
Then I became false, became afraid, became alone.
And Then I heard a song within my heart echoed in the skies.

It was dark, so I did not know
whose figures, faces, feet walked beside
But I heard their voice--one song, arise.
And like the dawn it rose,
over the mountainside.

I cried and cried--because it was my own,
I had thought I was alone,
but was not, neither was it mine.
It echoed through the night,
and pierced my fright with peace,
and weak with might.
This air shook me--hair and bone,
because it carried something great--far greater
than I could ever have sung or known.

Now I walk above the lights far down beneath the path,
I can see where I can fall off,
yet do not.
Downwards I can see that warmth and fellowship of light
that comforts those who dwell inside with sight--
But I am not.
Stars are lights to me instead,
for though they give few light to go-
-it is enough, for now I know
path is here, and I must climb in spite of fear.
How the wind blows! How cold!
But my heart is warm, because my soul is free.

Guilt

One thing my research on Sarah Palin has been doing to me...making me feel guilty. The more I read and hear from others, about her and Todd's work ethic and drive (her 6am-midnight 7days a week shifts and Todd's fishing like 48-72hr shifts? ) I feel so spoiled and lazy...remembering my high-school past makes me feel even worse. Do other people feel the same way? Maybe that's why it's so hard to learn more about the Palins, because they make me feel bad. Well, I have to remember that they are not ordinary if they are champions of the Iron Dog & AGIA, yet they are...argh! I keep feeling embarrassed that I come from the sheltered lower-48, and East Coast, and the South, and everything possibly snobby and arrogant and mistaken...OK, so I need to deal with guilt.

1. Any guilt, self-loathing, self-hatred, or shame is SIN and a LIE. (OK, I know this doesn't look like help--but it will later)

2. Guilt is three-fold: emotion, reason, tradition (habit): guilt makes us feel bad, try to justify our actions, then continue the same bad habits.

3. Conquering guilt comes from God--peace (that passes understanding),truth (repentance), good habit (righteous living). (in any order)

To stop Guilt:

1. Invite the Peace that passes understanding (the Holy Spirit). Acknowledge that this creepy-cool, pseudo-catharsis of wanting to blame yourself, hate yourself, hurt yourself is wrong and a false relief. INSTEAD say "Jesus loves me" 10 times or 50x or whatever, inviting and trusting and focusing in the Truth and promise of these words, knowing that Jesus is present with you in this truth.(Jesus said he was the word.--this is independent from "context" of your life, religion or whatever.)

2. Pray for G-d's truth to illuminate your small errors--(not the big ones that stare at you in the face w painful consequence/aftermath). Focus on the small errors that surround bigger ones. These are usually assumptions we don't notice, "nice" and sympathizable desires or thoughts not the obvious (not like why did I drink so much, why didn't I study etc.) but often surrounding ones that deal with the pain and don't have directly immediate answers like "what were my thoughts right before when..." "why do I care so much of what others think of me?" "why am I afraid of failure?" "why do I feel bad for something that I don't think is wrong?"

--we can answer these questions analytically (family,religion, environment) and rationalize, but it doesn't go away because "wrong" has 3 relationships: when you think it's wrong, others think it's wrong, and it's wrong (or God thinks it's wrong). (Some people will be quick to think wrong is only when "God thinks it's wrong", but in my context "God thinks it's wrong" is applying to nature). Let me illustrate: Slapping my brother on his back can be a good or bad thing--yet this could be wrong for 3 reasons: if I meant it to be wrong, he took it to be wrong, or maybe it "was wrong" because his back got hurt. God, being a trinity, is connected to all 3--not just if "if it's naturally wrong" like my brother's back getting hurt. Wrong has all consequences just as guilt may be our intention, others intention, or nobody's intention.

3. Pray for healing and conviction and power.

--God is the Beginning and the End. He doesn't panic, cause fear, or despair. He can transform your past by entering into your life. Often we mistakenly think our past "is over" when it obviously affects and stays with us in the present--because we are also eternal beings. God can come into our past too, when we invite His presence, Truth, and peace.

--God can change us now. If you have niggling doubts or queasiness--it's because you don't have the conviction to change. None of us do. Pray for conviction of the Holy Spirit to enter your life--He will, and He alone has the power to change us. Remember what you can do on your own, God can't help you with. Only when it is IMPOSSIBLE for man, is it possible for God--this is God's power: that His grace is sufficient for you, for His power is made perfect in weakness. Amen.

Yom Kippur

2"Blessed is the man who does this,
and the son of man who holds it fast,
who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it,
and keeps his hand from doing any evil.

3 Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say,
"The LORD will surely separate me from his people";
and let not the eunuch say,
"Behold, I am a dry tree."


4 For thus says the LORD:
"To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast to my covenant,
5 I will give in my house and within my walls
a monument and a name better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

6 "And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,
to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD,
and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
and holds fast my covenant--

7 these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples."

8 The Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares,
"I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered."

amen. --Isaiah 56

Undefeated

For any of you brave souls who are curious enough to risk the fear of disappointment...watch this movie. I think you'll be surprised how dry and candid it is, as well as intriguing? It's oddly cathartic, if you just want to get the poison of the media out of your system.

It's power is in its simplicity. It's not a pity party or dramatic hagiography.

Instead, it gets pretty nerdy focusing half the movie on why Alaska is important, how Palin got to the governorship and what she did, how she started out as a mayor, when she resigned her six-figure-salary as an ethics commissioner because of her ethics, how she surprised people with actual results and then America by showing up in 2008.

The power of the documentary is that while extrinsically focused around Palin--is intrinsically not about Sarah Palin. The film doesn't even seem to focus on her personal achievements enough and get the audience more drawn in when it could, but focuses on her beliefs in God and America, and the role of the government--shared similarly by many in the tea-party movement--and her actions in carrying that out.

If it was supposed to make you vote, it didn't really hype on possible terrorist threats, wars, or abortion--things I think Obama is weak on and Palin is strong in--and very emotionally topics that could rouse voters. I was surprised how little they talked about Obama (like less than 2 minutes? of actual speeches) which seem to convince me that others could do a much better job than him. What the film did was focus on a cause that is greater than Palin, the Tea-Party movement or America. It's about Faith. Palin's very persecution from the mobs of media and hollywood from just about every vocal or artistic profession--she shows us how, we too, can and will be treated if we take a stand for just a little bit of truth, righteousness, and faith in God.(scary) Yet this small person's courage shows us a greater power when we fight for a greater cause. Now that's why liberals are scared of her. Obama and Palin have shown us that we can become self-proclaimed messiahs, or modern-day-martyrs. Persecution in this world, and in this time, shows us that we are on the right path. Let us choose to lose our lives, that we may gain it--for only then are we the "undefeated."

Sh'ma Yisrael! God bless America.

I feel the fell of dark, not day

I WAKE and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say 5
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; 10
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
--Gerard Manley Hopkins 1918

FB post: Bible contradicts itself?

In response to a Facebook chain in reference to St. Paul saying "I, not God, say this" So, inspired or uninspired?
kind of like when St. Paul said that the Cretan who said "all Cretans are liars" was true.
My response:
Often the Bible has apparent "contradictions" like this one, especially between OT and NT, but that is because God is a trinity not a duality, and where two may appear to "collide" a third dimension solves these readily, (like when Jesus was forced an either/or in the example of paying taxes to Caesar and showed a third way.) kind of like the way God gave us 2 eyes to see 3D...
So in short yes, Every word from St. Paul was inspired by God...including the ones that said he wasn't.

--(about the actual passage 1 Cor. 7:12-14 The "Christian alternative" to divorcing&remarrying is what St. Paul is clarifying from Separation: that not having to live with spouse is different from divorcing and that even if you were divorced against your will, you should still remain unmarried. Hence no one can "force" you to break your oath to God.) It seems impossible to be celibate or chaste these days, but Jesus promised us that "what is impossible for man is possible for God" Amen.

summer entry

Just got back from a family reunion, and caught a cold on the way back and spent all of yesterday in bed with fever...truck broke down during the weekend so had to spend a 2 more nights and a day and a half with very hospitable relatives...restless sunday night for fear the truck wouldn't be repaired by monday--there is a certain panic that besets any victim of prolonged compassion--anyway prayers were answered, and the truck got fixed that day.
Seeing so many relatives was like being too full of love and happiness and the bit of pain and suffering that life always gives. It's silly how easy it is to feel outcast by those who feel so lonely and dejected themselves, but remembering that I am sharing their pain and not receiving it, helps me. Finding out the stigma from living in a redneck state always surprises me, but how can I trade more suffering of living in the South than a little less suffering to live where I will not receive chaff? No, as Rodya says in Crime and Punishment, "if I must drink the cup, I shall drink all of it." How strange, I thought driving down the Appalachians, So this is how Blacks or Hispanics must feel: not too much blame, but just enough sympathy. Yrch! This East Coast snobbery almost tempts me to raise the Dixie, but Christianity humbles me to accept the truth in every blow. I am nothing and God is everything.
As St. Theresa of Avila said:
Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing make you afraid.
All things are passing.
God alone never changes.
Patience gains all things.
If you have God you will want for nothing.
God alone suffices.

P.S. I am alive

I was not swiped away by the tornadoes, and neither were my friends, thanks be to G-d. Well anyway, am working on several scripts or rewrites of Star Wars 5:the empire strikes back, Prince Caspian, and Anastasia. Saw two horrible Russian film adaptations of Hamlet and Crime and Punishment both for lack of realism and basic lack of interest for reality in general. Depressed about financial aid for the different schools I applied to transfer...BU, BC, and Bryn Mawr.

tornado day

today is tornado warnings everywhere.
Just went out with my Dad and saw the sky...the clouds were almost pink even before noon and everything was that dark green-blue color...the clouds above us were moving toward each other, but the sirens turned off, and then the torrent of rain hit us, so we're back inside. Everyone at this weather/science station was peeking and taking movies with their iphones. It was pretty awesome, because I consider my father a Zedekah, or righteous one, I feel safe beside him in the storms.
Blow winds, blow! you cannot break my soul or bend me--I shall only upwards float or fly.

To Re-Bekah

I forgive you naughty child
for wanting to be my mother
and then leaving me for another.
I forgive you a thousand times.
I forgive you for hiding spiders, dust, and toys
for wanting me to call them boys
and have me close my eyes.
I forgive you for wanting to surprise
me with a nasty sting.
I forgive you a thousand times.
I must remember you are not tall
and small too, is the bite that stings my arm.
Yet poison be strong, I too, shall hold you in this power of
all remaining strength, for true love knows the immortal song
that brings forth life and never dies.
So shall my eyes not shut nor my ears be closed,
I shall love you waking, while you repose
-that you may grow and some day become--
and set your seal upon my arm
to love you, a thousand times.

To Our Lady II

Come, look at the moon, she said
And I awoke and rose out of bed.
"Come to the window."
And she was dressed as dark as the sky
And just like the moon, she was glowing.
Who are you, I asked, yet somehow knew.
(And her face was stern, but when she looked at me her eyes were smiling.)
Do you know me? I asked again--instead of crying.
"The day is close, she said. The moon is rising."
Shall I be safe? I said.
"I cannot promise that" her eyes said gravely loving.

Lady

Follow me forward, she said
And I followed her side
Forgive me for lying, she said
and I cried.
For there is no friendship in both being blind.
After she died, I had a dream she was alive
and came to me, all dressed in white like a bride.
Look what I give to you, she said
smiling and shaking her head
"not that fruit, but this one instead."
and taking my hand, she placed it on her womb.
Confused, I said, "But our son is dead!"
"No," she said. "This one is new."

To Chagall:

What is your dream, dear Reuben
Where is your mother's tears?
Strong Cain, where is your sorrow
Has it grown or swallowed where it fell?
Can you hear or tell?
I see an old man sowing tears,
breaking up earth with crying--
His heart is rending the world.
3/25/2011

3rd week of Lent: entry

My spring break's over and I have a midterm today I don't think I'm ready for. It's been raining tons and the dogwoods are all in bloom. I haven't kept up with my psalms at all but I have been lighting quantities of candles. Hmm...I think I must be seeped in Catholic guilt.
After talking with my family from seeing Tangled, I decided I was a bit extreme in my emotional response (sobbing in the car for half an hour etc.) and that I underestimated the power of unconditional love (vs. possessive love) and perhaps overestimated the danger of the shriveled soul to eternal perdition...in any right, it's not that my assumptions proved false as much as I tend to be emotionally skewed. I think I'm learning that I should not so forcefully assume my emotional reactions to be impartial truth. (In middle of this discussion, I got a free evaluation on my current mental-health from my certified child-psych practitioner and was prescribed long outdoor walks. I pointed out my whole spring break was spent weeding and gardening, but somehow this did not convince my family of my strong constitution.) Of course this isn't fair because I had spent that entire evening with a sleeping child and a very unusual thunderstorm compelling me to turn off all the electrical devices in the house and light candles for the rest of my family who were apparently oblivious to the danger in the theater--which I forgo for Lent. So to content myself, I of course studied Hamlet and found new evidence and clues to suggest that not only was Ophelia not mad but neither was her father Polonius. The only person who currently seems to lack "smarts"--or correct evaluation--because all smarts led to the characters' ruin--in the whole play is Laertes, though apparently he is the most popular and easily justified. I hope to explain more later. So far I've produced a number of poems from inspiration after crayoning with the kids--(I was trying to copy Chagall and got numerous criticisms).

Lent: the beginning of birth pains

1 Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when His disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him.

2And He said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down."

3As He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"

4And Jesus answered and said to them, " See to it that no one misleads you.

5"For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will mislead many.

6"You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end.

7"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.

8"But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.

9" Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.

10"At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another.

11"Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.

12"Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold.

13" But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.

14"This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

--matthew 24, NASB

Ash Wednesday 2011

A colleague of my father's has just decided to publish a controversial scientific article after he found out he was diagnosed with cancer. Now he is getting the heat and the usual bashing from NASA etc. because it is about life on comets or extraterrestrial life, which apparently really freaks out traditional Evolutionists and Creationists.
This came out a couple days ago around the same time someone introduced us to the book "Heaven is for real" by Todd Burpo and is about his 4 year old son experiencing heaven in a near-death situation with a ruptured appendix and severe infection. I am so glad that G-d doesn't just favor the Muslims or Romanian prisoners like Pastor Richard Wurmbrand with visions of Jesus and heaven. All these things are so exciting and familiar and foreign to me now. I've decided to give up MOVIES & candies for Lent.
Let's see how this goes. Also, I'm gonna try to continue my Lenten Psalm memorization.
I've thought about fasting today since it's special, but boy does my tummy grumble.
According to this little boy, Jesus worked homework with him in heaven and was his teacher. Anyway, I guess I'd better do my Diff. Eq. homework too.

wind in the willows: continued

VII

THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
...
Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became
clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a
different look; the mystery began to drop away from them. A bird piped
suddenly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the
reeds and bulrushes rustling. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat,
while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate
intentness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat
moving while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with
curiosity.

"It's gone!" sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. "So
beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost
wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is
pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once
more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!" he
cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space,
spellbound.

"Now it passes on and I begin to lose it," he said presently. "O Mole!
the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy
call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the
call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole,
row! For the music and the call must be for us."

The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. "I hear nothing myself," he said,
"but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers."

The Rat never answered, if indeed he heard. Rapt, transported,
trembling, he was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing
that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless
but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp.

entry: 2nd snow day from 2nd snow

It's been the second snow day for schools, so I am at home dreading school. Breaks are fun only after you started school and my college hasn't started yet. I guess this should be a sign of some sort...Maybe that G-d can change all plans of men? Yesterday I went sledding with the neighbors who in the history of my 13 years in Alabama I've never met...Everyone of every age group and social profession was laughing and encouraging and cheering for each other--I guess this is why Alabama loves football. Anyway, today we took a walk with our neighbors in the forest and observed and did bird calls--"pishing" for birds to come near.

I've been memorizing my favorite hymns and psalms:
currently: Be Still My Soul--3 verses
reciting psalm 28 "To You, O Lord, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me"
My only creative accomplishments so far have been doodling on the piano with my younger sister who taught me, and sketching the ears of my family members.(I'm getting good!) Besides that it's quite dreary with the weather at times and everyone is lazying about.