Advent

Don't you love it that snow somehow makes the sky pink at night?

Shady Glen has glorious pumpkin ice cream.

The scary history final has fled.

G. K. Chesterton.

People are starting to come home from college.

Tonight I am Christmas caroling and tomorrow...
Dining progressively!
Hopefully not in an ice storm.

Nightmarish

Just a random question...
Have you all had those dreams where a car alarm or a clock alarm or some sort of alarm is going off and it's extremely annoying and it's gets more and more annoying every minute, so you try to turn it off, you press all the buttons in different orders, and finally you punch them in the order you're sure will turn it off and it STILL WON'T GO OFF! And then at the pinnacle of frustration you wake up and your alarm clock is beeping away obsessive-compulsively. I don't like those dreams. :P

I used to have one of those old fashioned alarm clocks with the bells and the first morning I used it I heard Chloe wake up in her room and shout "OH NO!"

Ephesians 3:16-20

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine . . ."

Not only is Jesus sufficient for us, he is abundant. "My cup runneth over."

I saw the movie Bella today. Very good. Sad.

From Psalm 104

"He wraps himself in light as with a garment;
he stretches out the heavens like a tent
and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters."

"But at your rebuke the waters fled,
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight . . .
You set a boundary they cannot cross."

"The trees of the Lord are well-watered,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
There the birds make their nests;
the stork has its home in the pine trees.
The high mountains belong to the wild goats;
the crags are a refuge for the coneys."

"The sun knows when to go down."

"You bring darkness, it becomes night,
and all the beasts of the forest prowl.
The lions roar for their prey
and seek their food from God."

"There is the sea . . .
There the ships go to and fro,
and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there."

"These all look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth."

May the glory of the Lord endure forever . . ."


I'm doing a paper on Deism for my US History class, and this is a beautiful rebuke of subtle Deism, that says God wound up the world and let it go. But God sustains the world. I love that the LEVIATHAN frolics, and there are coneys! I had this great book about coneys when I was little, has anyone ever read it? They're little rabbity things who live in coneyland, and they discover that what they thought was a tree in their park is actually a giant carrot. Needless to say, they're thrilled.

The River

" 'Have you ever been baptized?' the preacher asked.
'What's that?' he murmured.
'If I baptize you,' the preacher said, 'you'll be able to go to the Kingdom of Christ. You'll be washed in the river of suffering, son, and you'll go by the deep river of life. Do you want that?'
'Yes,' the child said, and thought, I won't go back to the apartment then, I'll go under the river.
'You won't be the same again,' the preacher said, 'You'll count.' . . .
[H]e tightened his hold and swung him upside down and plunged his head into the water. He held him under while he said the words of Baptism and then he jerked him up again and looked sternly at the gaping child. Bevel's eyes were dark and dilated. 'You count now,' the preacher said. 'You didn't even count before.' "

From Flannery O' Connor's story The River. I don't want to give the end away, but the story is about a neglected little boy who learns to hunger for the Kingdom of Christ, which he associates with the river. Its highly disturbing and its all about meeting grace. I especially love this section where he gets baptized...You count now...

"And hail Him as thy matchless King..."

Reflexes

Today I went in the "out" door at the grocery store. People were coming out of it, so I couldn't tell. (If I'd thought about it...) I almost got my head sliced off. But I did this dazzling matrix move and slipped in and regained my composure before the cashiers noticed. And then I went and got margerine. I'm sure it looked like something out of a James Bond movie. But it was really just me being blonde.

Next: going up the down escalator!

:O)

Accounting in Afghanistan

I don't know if anybody saw this, but for a while my profile said that I live in Afghanistan and my industry is Accounting. I don't even know how to spell Afghanistan. I guess if you don't specify these things your profile gives you the first industry and country in the alphabet. Well.

I've discovered this new Wednesday night TV show (LOST doesn't start up again till February :P) called Pushing Daisies. Strange little funny British show, people randomly dropping dead. But I really like it, we'll see where it goes from here.

Scary US history midterm is over, scary writing assignment is over (just in time to start the next one!). Trying to decide whether to do a scary taekwondo tournament which would probably be good for me, but would do nothing for my peace of mind.

I was thinking today about all the passages in the Bible that talk about sharing in the sufferings of Christ, and how, when I'm feeling anxious and fearful about what He might be asking me to bear next, I'm actually rebelling against a crucified God. Deep down I realize that I wish Jesus had torn the nails out of his hands, come down from the cross, called up a legion of angels, because then being united to him would mean being united to triumph without pain. Instead I'm united to a God who had to suffer for glory.
But then I think of the thief on the cross, a man who very literally shared in Christ's sufferings. In the midst of the pain and shame of his own crucifixion he recognized that Jesus' suffering was greater than his. He realized that Jesus was an innocent man, that Jesus was choosing every moment to not call down angels, to stay and die beside sinners. Instead of causing him to despair, this knowledge gave the thief the confidence to ask a really presumptuous question. Something in watching Jesus die, in dying with Jesus, gave him hope of eternal life.
I wonder if the thief knew about resurrection. I wonder if when he asked Jesus to remember him he still expected to have to go to hell for a time, to moulder in prison for a while like Joseph did, waiting for the cupbearer to remember his promise. I wonder what Jesus' face looked like when he answered the man's question, I wonder if he had to yell so his voice would be heard and the people standing below caught his words and scoffed like I would have been tempted to.
"I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."
Verily verily.
I wonder if anyone laughed bitterly. I wonder if the thief himself laughed, in joyous disbelief. He probably heard Jesus die beside him. Maybe fear took him near the end, maybe Jesus' words filled his head as death filled his body. What did his heart cry when they broke his legs?
Verily verily.
I wonder if he even remembers being crucified now.
And I know that this has to frighten away my fear, has to make me laugh in joyous disbelief.

Weighty stuff.

Fortune Cookie

"You have been promised a starship ride with the galactic wizard"

(Or something like that)

"Shall we not take the adventure that Aslan hands us?" (one of the Narnia books)

Which is kind of an unnatural (for me) way of viewing life. I so envy those people who can embrace each new day with courage and confidence, who can glory in hardship because to them it is just another "adventure", just another opportunity to explore God's grace. I don't know, are there those people? Maybe hardship creates those people?

Isn't it funny how when you go out of state for just a few days the time speeds by, but you feel like you've been gone forEVER (and your homework testifies to this...)

"The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God." (1 John...something?)

Cinnamon toast is a wonderful thing. So is autumn. And isn't Cinderella a great story?

Deep Poem

I started learning Greek today!
The Greek alphabet is really neat. I'd show you but...I can't. This is not a Greek keyboard.

Here's a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins from this poetry anthology I was reading when I felt stressed out today. (Poetry is a good tonic for stress. At least good poetry is. Bad poetry is extremely stressful.)

God's Grandeur

"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;
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;
And through 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."

I just love the sounds in that. Especially "...have trod, have trod, have trod."
I'm not so good at analyzing poetry, but I think it's about how used up the world is, except that it isn't, underneath it is tingling with the glory of God. Everything new every morning. Including us, including our hearts?

Books

Yesterday I accumulated new books, which is always extremely satisfying. It makes me feel sort of warm for days. :-) I went to a library book sale, and the best part of that, besides cheapness, was that all the children's books were unalphebetized in boxes on a tarp on the ground, so you had to crawl around on the tarp and dig through the boxes to find your books. It definitely added to the experience. Very rewarding. Anyway, I also went to Borders and I found a really wonderful book called "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo. It's about a self-absorbed china rabbit who is separated from his little girl and goes through a series of very different owners. Here are just a few quotes from it:

"It was a singular sensation to be held so gently and yet so fiercely to be stared down at with so much love..."
It made me wonder, is that how God...?

"I have learned how to love. And it's a terrible thing. I'm broken. My heart is broken. Help me."
Do we ever think about love this way?

"You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next."
Is this how we should live?

(the beginning quote) "The heart breaks and breaks/and lives by breaking./It is necessary to go/through dark and deeper dark/and not to turn."--Stanley Kunitz
Sobering.

The thing is, there are these bubble trees in Perelandra. Everyone should read Perelandra, and not just to find out what bubble trees are.