song of the stars

Immortality

is a dinosaur

(or maybe a dragon)

a beautiful nightmare; a terrifying daydream

unending possibilities

unending heartache.

But you still don't know--would it be worth it?

You feel it stirring in your soul long before you give it a name. The eerie feeling you've been here and done this before, that you've known a thousand names and held a hundred hearts between your soft, living hands

but not here.

When you were twelve, you would lay under the stars and piece together constellations

tracing the stars on your arm

(Orion's belt--was it a sign? or just

a trick of fate)

They seemed to you kindred, singing

in voices as high and white as silver, of eternity

of oblivion

and you sang too

(but not aloud).

Now you sit in crowded coffee shops and stare across the table at

mortals. Caught up in their troubles, worrying

about jobs or romance or ethics.

You like being among them because

it grounds you and

keeps

     you

           from

               floating

away.

But when you feel 

the autumn wind in your hair

fresh from turning dying leaves into a dancing whirlwind

when you hear songs of kings and queens

or gods

or poets

when you stare up into the blackness of the night

and feel your heart whisper, "friends, I have missed you"

it is then that you recognize the dragon 

(or maybe the dinosaur)

for what it is.

Immortality.

The feeling that you alone know what it is

to live eternity over and over again

to catch a glimpse of the beyond

but never touch it

to always hear the song ringing in your ears

but never sing it.

Know this, mortals.

There may be only one of us

But we dwell among you

forever.

questioning

I've reached that stage where I understand why many great thinkers became atheists, and I'm not sure I'm quite comfortable with that.

First off--I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider myself a thinker. Yes, I know it's pompous and pretentious. But I think a lot, and I can't help but think I'm a little deeper than some of my friends, family, and co-workers.

For instance, I know when I'm being a fool. Well. Most of the time.

We've been hearing a lot about idols in church and it's just falling on deaf ears for me because I haven't got any idols. At least, not in the sense of "things you think your life would fall apart without." Not my writing anymore. Not my job. Not my friends. Not family.

It's almost scary, because I can't think of anything. But I know there are things I care about far too much--certain shows, certain feelings/emotions. Without the flash, without inspiration and Joy, life would be grim indeed...but are those Idols, or merely manifestations of His glory?

I know that the thought of heaven fills me with a greater joy than anything else on earth. I understand that it means fulfillment of all the things I desire but can't put a name to--the northernness, perhaps even what I've come to call "paganness." Yet while the abstract idea is grand to me, the everyday details of Christianity have come to feel trite and meaningless. Why do we stand around and sing songs about how alive we are now that another man has died? Why are lives (seemingly) transformed, only to revert back into practices of sin that becomes secret because of shame and fear of judgement?

A question was once posed to me that I failed to answer fully: How would your life look different if you were not a Christian?

In all honesty, I have to reply, "It wouldn't, very much."

I might not go to church. But then again I might, if only to please my parents, who I would still love and respect.

I would maybe curse a little more, and probably would have fewer inhibitions about believing things about certain social issues. I might be in love with different people. I might be less self-controlled, but also less guilt-ridden and angry at myself.

I would be more independent. I would be a little wilder. Yet I would probably choose the same people (Waves, over and over again) and the same groups and the same path. I would maybe do the things I hold back from doing for duty's sake--like spending my life traveling instead of trying to settle down and serve Him.

I wouldn't give my money to the church, but I think I would give it other places.

In other words, I'd be a fairly "good person" with fewer scruples about grey areas and a little more of a deathwish, probably, but still pretty stable. Just set on pursuing my own dreams and goals instead of trying to seek His will for my life.

That answer concerns me, because shouldn't my life with and without Christ look drastically different? Shouldn't I be living in such a way now that answering that question would stun me and make others marvel?

Ways I Could Be a Better Christian:
1. Sin less (obviously)
2. Better Bible/Prayer Habits
3. More Service/Selfless living
4. Humility, Kindness, Patience...more fruit of the Spirit
5. Less Pride
6. More Courage In Sharing the Gospel

And so on.

I know God doesn't want me to be a "better Christian." The work of purification and "washing and renewing" is HIS work, done by HIS hand, not mine. Yet I can't just sit by in a boat moored to the dock and expect for him to push me out to sea.

So many thoughts. Is it better that I doubt and have fear and such cynacism than if I lived in ignorant complacency?

I don't know. I only wish my faith was stronger, that I desired him more, that I had the energy and will to work harder at obeying and living in courage and faith.

Help me, Lord.

this is the first time you've been this old

"Sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but “Mom’s” probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else, but just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breathe in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes." 

-The Winter of the Air

---

This quote is still getting to me because even though I'm not 23, this is where I am. Albeit still at "Mom's" (which is still home and has ears that listen every day and arms that were never for anyone else, all of which do calm me down), but there's just something about all of it that makes me feel not at home in my skin, like I should be bursting into a rainbow-colored firework or diving underground to be replanted as a tree.

I spend a lot of time worrying about who I am, where I'm going, what I'm going to do with my life.

So many pieces of my life are a paradox: 

• I want to stay home with my family and watch them grow...but I want to see the world and travel, independent and free.
• I want to have this incredibly deep faith that can move mountains and truly seek after God...but I also want to have eyes open and not trust in things blindly. (Maybe not a paradox).
• I want to do what I love all the time and maybe become rich and famous...but I want to make next to nothing and give what's left away and help people with all that I am.

This crude matter can't be all those things at once. I have to know what to say and when, what fights to fight and when to run away.  And in those five minutes of nostalgia and panic, I see none of the good things, but only how far I have left to go--my faults and failures, my sins, my fears.

I am chained to my past with guilt and fear and a boundless lack of faith

so

how can you tell me that God's love is deeper and higher and greater and farther than my past?

Than my present?

Than my horrible, terrifying, heart-rendingly hopeless future?

Yet if I don't believe in His love, I have nothing left to cling to.

---

How is one supposed to rejoice in trials?

How can there be a point at which the light dawns and the darkness flees? When my faith becomes real and I have joy again in following the narrow way?

Father, give me faith. Help me to believe that You are greater than all the things that drag me down (even my fear, even my sin), and that one day, my faith will be made sight. 

As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness;

I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.

-Psalm 17:!5

fragments of frozen rain

"Under the endless rain of cosmic dust, the air is full of pollen, micro-diamonds, and jewels from other planets...people go about their lives surrounded by the unseeable." -Louie Schwartzberg

"The wind makes creatures of our trees." -Lullaby for a Stormy Night

"Histories of abolition, the civil rights movement, even environmentalism, don't begin with people who are powerful, realistic, or even normal. They begin with people who don't know better and who find the world they are born into intolerable. " -Jedidah Purdy

"Isn’t it funny the way some combinations of words can give you – apart from their meaning – a thrill like music?"-C.S. Lewis

"It wasn’t about reading the books – though God knows, the books I was reading at that time were more valuable to me than ever – but it was about being in the presence of books, of words, of the work I wanted so badly to do."-Dana Staves

"Sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but “Mom’s” probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else, but just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breathe in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes." -The Winter of the Air

"If it was an emotion, it was a totally emotionless one. It was hatred, implacable hatred. It was cold, not like ice is cold, but like a wall is cold. It was impersonal, not as a randomly flung fist in a crowd is impersonal, but like a computer-issued parking summons is impersonal. And it was deadly - again, not like a bullet or a knife is deadly, but like a brick wall across a motorway is deadly.” -Douglas Adams

before your face

The light penetrates my eyes, piercing
my face, stabbing deep into 
my heart, and suddenly
all the words I have ever spoken,
all the thoughts I have ever pondered, are there
trembling under your gaze.

I am ashamed. Woe is me, for even
standing in your presence--that alone is enough
to shake my heart and soul to the core
as your beauty and majesty surrounds me
overwhelms me
envelops me in its glory.

But
You see my thoughts, the futile workings
of my mind, plagued by sin and doubt.
You know my motives and my heart; there is
no secret I can keep
No nook or cranny too secret for you to uncover.

My heart is laid bare, and behold, it is barren.
My thoughts are nonsense, like the jawings of a
drunken two year old
My soul is a shattered cistern, unholy and broken
destroyed almost beyond saving
And I am undone.

Why did I doubt you?
Why did I lose hope?
Why could I not wait an hour and pray for my deliverance?

Why were my intentions misguided?
Why did I waste so much time?
Why did I not listen better to your prompting and study your Word?

Forgive me for my nonsense questions
For this babbling mouth, so lacking of wisdom.
Create in me a clean heart
and renew a right spirit within me.

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?” 

-C.S. Lewis

contemplating surrender

I am contemplating surrender and finding that it is not an easy task. It is simple enough to speak with your lips, "Lord, take my heart and let it be/ever only all for thee," to pray "Be my all-in-all; ruin my life, the plans that I've made. It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me."

But how does one sacrifice? How does one eternally give up all claim to earthly possessions and feelings and anxieties and desires? Or rather the question should be "CAN one give up all those things?"

I know with my head that You want The Whole Tree, Lord, and not just this branch here and that limb there. You want to uproot ME. To break ME. To unform ME so that you may plant in MY place a thing that is GOOD and of YOU. And I long for that, Lord, with all that my sinful heart can long.

But must it be a daily surrender?

Must I take up my cross every day?

Must I die a thousand deaths-of-self, offer up my will again and again on Your altar in the hopes of one day being conformed to Your likeness?

Will I ever be whole?

"Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus' Name, Amen."

-A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

wallflower in the ballroom of life

You move through the days like a machine--wake up, read your Bible, have a cup of coffee, classes, work, interact with people--but somewhere deep inside you is something troubling: a thought, a ponder, that maybe you don't fit in because you're not as real as everyone else (or maybe you're realer, and that might be worse).

You've stood at the edges of rooms and watched the grand dance take place around you. People talking. Laughing. Flirting. But wallflowers and shadows cling to the edges, like ghosts at the fringe of a living, breathing world, uncertain of how and where and when to join the dance. And once you finally step in and bat words back and forth with another human being, your smile feels stiff and false and your laugh a little forced and your eyes as hard and cold as diamonds (but maybe they're just cut glass). You wonder why the 'you' in a room full of people is a thousand miles away from the one who stands shimmering under starlight, like a tragic fairy tale or myth (your true form is only clear under the moonlight or in the dusk of evening, or when you're caught up in the mystery and beauty of a well written line of poetry) and you wonder if that's normal and everyone feels it or if you're just different that way.

You're pretty insecure about this life thing. Especially friends and goodness-let's-not-even-talk-about-boys because somehow, deep down, you feel like an observer on the sidelines, a reader of some epic tale in which you've accepted the role of a minor character. You don't deserve someone to love you, someone to sit with you in the dusk and listen to you spin your tapestries of fancy or woe. You're okay with being the sidekick--nodding and listening and "Oh, that's lovely!" or "I'm so sorry. I wish I could help," but some days you want to roar and don a crown and blast the hero to shreds with your diamond eyes (sharper than cut glass) because you are a person (and you matter too).

But mostly you just spend a lot of time listening and helping and hoping and loving and trying to believe that they actually like you because they like you and not just because they're being nice. Sometimes you catch yourself trying to earn their love and it makes you angry because that's not how it's supposed to work.

And then there's the future. A current tugs you along, persistent and patient as you struggle through the dregs of the river of indecision, but sometimes you just want to scream and smash something because you don't believe in destiny and why is it your fate to be human and limited to one lifetime, one century (or less--cut glass must shatter someday) on this spinning ball of mud and blood and angst and tears. You have had visions of yourself at fifty, at seventy, and you know that you cannot be contained by four walls and society's expectations

because

you are like ice and an autumn breeze, like
raindrops making ripples on the glassy surface of the lake
trembling with aliveness; quiet; and then still.

You can be anything. You can move mountains and write novels or be a pirate in the south pacific. You can open the best bookstore-library this side of Alexandria or lead little children on adventures that will shake their worlds to the core.

But some days you forget about the mountains (and the diamonds in your eyes) and it isn't until the moment when you realize that you are you that the sky opens up and you realize that you've been a character in this story all along.

(and no one, not even side characters, deserve less than a worthy ending)

On Change

The world changes. It is one of the facts of life. As the natural processes continue, ages come and go. People are born, and people die. Life begins and ends, but the world is not the same at the end as it was at the beginning.

In an age long ago, there was honesty and honor. Chivalry and courage were respected and revered among men, and justice was praised above all else.

But then the world changed.

Sometimes change is sudden, like a clap of thunder or flash of lightning. The ground shifts under our very feet, and things are abruptly not as they were. It is the gradual change, however, that is most common. The dull, yearly foot that after five-thousand, two-hundred and eighty years becomes a mile. It is not sudden. It is not obvious.

And often, we do not notice the change until it is too late.

With each passing moment there is change. This second in this day will never come again—nor will this night, or morn, or month, or year. Sixteen years becomes seventeen. There is courtship and marriage, children and empty-nesters, and then there is death. It is only in rare, somber moments that we see the change taking place during the years—in which we see that things will not always be the same. Some miss those moments altogether. Some find them daily.

Children grow old—as does romance. Is it not strange how one can spend one’s life wishing the days away ‘until’, and then wish the very opposite? At the end, when gray hair has replaced youthful color, and the Golden Age has set like a dying sun, there are only the memories of the way things were before the change.

For when change occurs, there is naught on earth that can undo it.

Many fear change, for no one understands it. Everyone wonders why the seasons shift from spring to summer, summer to fall, yet no explanation can be found. Change is a fearful thing—yet it also brings great joy. The chilling bliss of a moonlight night would never sweep across young lovers if the sun should never set. The amber rays of dawn would never stretch across the sky if the cool night never ended.

And if this life went ever on, would we really be the gladder? If things went unchanged—if age after age went by with not a difference in culture or inhabitants of this earth—would it make us happy?

Without change, there is no risk; without risk, no thrill, without thrill, nothing worth living for. If dull gray monotony rose over the horizon each dawn, what would be the point of rising from one’s bed? Change, therefore, is not always to be feared. If there was only gray unfeelingness, truly, there would be no sorrow, yet there would be no joy either.

Change comes and change goes. Life goes on, but things will never be the same as they were before. Therein is the victory and despair of the world. If joy was not worth risking sorrows for, we would not try it. But given the choice between an unchanging forever, or one that is different day by day, which would you chose?

As for our earth, our world, it changes more with every heartbeat. And that is the only thing that will ever remain the same.

The Mountains Are Calling

RMNP Mountain Lake

So. My family just got back from a very long, very exciting vacation. I won't go into details, but at one point we went on a very treacherous mountain pass which dropped off on both sides (think Shasta in Horse and His Boy). The views on both sides were fantastic. Scrumptious. Incredible.

There was a visitor center at the top (probably so you could rest a while and uncurl your fingers from their tight grip around the steering wheel or, in the passenger's case, from the sides of one's seat. One of the popular shirts at said visitor center read, "The Mountains are calling and I must go." It was by some naturalist...one I could probably find quickly were I not too lazy to google it right now.

On the way back, I snapped this picture with my phone out the window (hence the lousy light and terrible resolution). It's a mountain lake I'd noticed on the way in-a small body of water half hidden by the craggy mountainside and the forest and snow around it. As soon as I caught sight of it, the story ideas began. What would it be like to hike up to that lake? What if there was a hidden city on the side of the mountain I couldn't see, beside the lake? How many people had traveled through that forest-what if knights had made the journey, being more technologically advanced than we believed them to be. Were there lakes like this in the UK-in Ireland and Scotland and all those other lovely places I've always wanted to visit? Did knights wander through there, eventually passing similar remote mountain lakes on their quests or adventures?

And then it hit me-the longing. I suddenly wanted more than anything to go see this lake, to go stand on the edge of that mountain and feel content because I'd reached this secret, mysterious place.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

In the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis uses the illustration of "the old Narnia" to remind us of how we feel about our own world. Once the old Narnia is destroyed, the survivors, Peter and Lucy and Edmund and so on, are heartbroken. Then they realize that the new place in which they find themselves is almost exactly same as the old Narnia, only different-deeper, more wonderful, more like the real thing. Jewel the Unicorn says, "The reason we have loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this."

Every longing we feel in this world is a blind grasping for something else, something we'll never find in this world no matter how hard we look. Y'know the hope you get when you squinch your eyes shut and dive into a wardrobe, desperately longing to plunge, not into the wooden back of the thing that ends up giving you some nasty splinters, but into a field of lamp-post lit snow? That longing isn't for Narnia. It's for somewhere else, really. Somewhere we belong.

Again, from Jewel: "I have come home at last. This is my real country. I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, but I never knew it till now."

Personally, I can't wait until that longing is fulfilled. And it will be. For the Kingdom is calling, and eventually, I must go.