a brief update

I am hoping to write some thoughts about my recent trip to the US and seeing it through my Spanish friends' eyes a bit since she came with me. I arrived back on Friday morning, am still fighting with jet lag (at least in the mornings), have watched four movies in the past 24 hours to prep for our film nights this fall, am trying to cram one and a million things into the next 24 hours, and leave tomorrow afternoon for two days of meetings in Barcelona.

On a side note: here are some fun books I've read recently or am hoping to read soon - Know it All by A.J. Jacobs who worked for Esquire, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (I've probably mentioned it before), and Reading Lolita in Tetuan. Oh and some good nonfiction books that I highly recommend are The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan, Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (or anything by Lewis for that matter), The Promises of Grace by Bryan Chappell (or Praying Backwards - also great), and The Prodigal God by Tim Keller (or anything by Keller).

As for movies...I have a list, so I'll finish watching them and then give you the reviews or send you to my ministry website.

the countdown

Inevitably before a big trip, there comes a point where it feels like there are a million and one things to do, time is ticking away, and I'm on a downhill slope with the momentum that comes from running downhill. All is well, I just feel the pressure of time running out. 9 times out of ten, or maybe 9.9 times out of ten, that which is left undone is fine that way but it doesn't change the sensation of it all - hoping I'm not forgetting anything too vital nor to tell anyone who needs to know that I'll be gone. This is only heightened by an overseas trip because my cell phone won't work and the lapse of time and frequency of checking all forms of communication is just a bit slower.

On my list are:

Paying rent & clearing bills with my roommates (including my former roommate who just moved to another city)
Updating ministry updates, websites, etc.,
Tying up loose ends having to do with the new semester that begins as soon as I get back (including applying for permission to do our fall outreach on campus and following up with the guy who may give us a place for our movie discussion night)
Seeing everyone I can who just got back into town from vacation (since Sept is the in-between month, between summer and fall)
Hmm... that's the first of the list...which I actually need to get to.

The other "countdown" per say underway is that into the fall semester. This is a fun, exciting, I can't wait kind of countdown, however. It's the kind of countdown before you take off on a sprint running as hard as you can for 200 meters, but with all the energy in the world. It's a good feeling, not at all overwhelming. And I guess the other one, if I don't worry about anything getting unknowingly dropped by the wayside, is also somewhat injuvenating. So, off I go to finish the lists...

thoughts on a sabbath rest

I've been reading "The Rest of God" by Mark Buchanan, which has been good, really refreshing, and it seems to fall in step with various things God is teaching me. This morning and then now as I read a quote on a friend's blog ("We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember." - Judith Shulevitz, Bring Back the Sabbath) , this book and many other little puzzle pieces come together a bit more. So, here below are some of quotes I've appreciated from Mark Buchanan's book on sabbath resting. I'm about halfway through the book and could put many more quotes here, but this will suffice for now.

“Sanctifying some time adds richness to all time, just as an hour with the one you love brings light and levity to the hours that follow. To spend time with the object of your desire is to emerge, not sullen and peevish, but elated and refreshed. you come away filled, not depleted.

The Greeks understood. Embedded in their language, expressed in two distinct words for ‘time,’ is an intuition about the possibility of sanctified time. Time, they knew, has two faces, two natures. It exists in two separate realms,...One is sacred time, the other profane.

The first word is chronos... It is the time of clock and calendar, time as a gauntlet, time as a forced march. The word derives from one of the gods in the Greek pantheon. Chronos was a nasty minor deity, a glutton and a cannibal who gorged himself on his own children. He was always consuming, never consummated. Goya depicted him in his work ‘Chronos Devouring His Children.’ In the painting, Chronos is gaunt and ravenous, wild-eyed with hunger. He crams a naked, bloody-stumped figure into his gaping mouth. peter Paul Rubens depicted Chronos even more alarmingly: a father viciously biting into his son’s chest and tearing the flesh away, the boy arching backward in shock and pain.

Chronos is the presiding deity of the driven.

The second Greek word is kairos. This is time as gift, as opportunity, as season. It is time pregnant with purpose. In kairos time you ask, not ‘What time is it?’ but ‘What is this time FOR?’ Kairos is the servant of holy purpose. ‘There is a time for everything,’ Ecclesiastes says, ‘and a season for every activity under heaven.’

‘A time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot, ...
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,...
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace, (3:1-2, 5-8)...” (p. 36-37, The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan)



“The Chinese join two characters to form a single pictograph for busyness: heart and killing. That is stunningly incisive. The heart of the place the busy life exacts its steepest toll...

One measure for whether or not you’re rested enough... is to ask yourself this: How much do I care about the things I care about? When we lose concern for people,...when we cease to laugh...or weep; when we hear news of trouble among our neighbors and our first thought is that we hope it isn’t going to involve us-- when we stop caring about the things we care about-- that’s a signal we’re too busy. We have let ourselves be consumed by the things that feed the ego but starve the soul.

Busyness kills the heart... Busyness makes us stop caring about the things we care about. And not only that. Busyness also robs us of knowing God the way we might... other facets of God we discover only through stillness. ‘Be still,’ the psalm instructs,’and know that I am God’ (Ps. 46:10)” (p.45, 48, 49, The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan)

I just read this on a friend of a friend's blog and thought it was worth repeating. It's actually from Rob Bell's book Sex God, which is a great book, by the way.

"You don’t need a man by your side to validate you as a woman. You already are loved and valued. You’re good enough exactly as you are. Do you believe this? Because it’s true. You have limitless worth and value. If you embrace this truth, it will affect every area of your life, especially your relationship with men.

You are worth dying for.

Your worth does not come from your body, your mind, your work, what you produce, what you put out, how much money you make. Your worth does not come from whether or not you have a man. Your worth does not come from whether or not men notice you. You have inestimable worth that comes from your Creator.

You will continue to be tempted in a thousand different ways not to believe this. This temptation will be to go searching for your worth and validity from places other than your Creator.

Especially from men.

But you don’t have to give yourself away to earn a man’s love. You’re better than that. You’re already loved.

When you give too much of yourself away too quickly, when you show too much skin, you’re not being true to yourself. When you dress to show us everything, then in some sense we have all shared in it, or at least been exposed to it. There is a mystery to you, infinite depth and endless complexity.

As the woman says in Song of Songs, “My own vineyard is mine to give.” In the ancient Near East, a vineyard was a euphemism for sexuality. She is saying that she doesn’t give herself to just anyone. She is fully in control of herself, and she is not cheap, and she is not easy.

Your strength is a beautiful thing. And when you live in it, when you carry yourself with the honor and dignity that are yours, it forces the men around you to relate to you on more than just a flesh level.

You are worth dying for.

When you live in your true identity, when you find your worth and value in your Creator, when you live “in Christ,” in who you really are, you force men to rethink what it means to be a man." -Sex God by Rob Bell

singleness

Hmm... okay, i somehow can't seem to fall asleep quite yet. As I lay awake I started to think about and pray for various friends at the beginning of new relationships, desperately desiring to be married and to find the right one, having babies or desiring babies, having kids and desiring time, getting married, or just about to be married, or recently married,... and I thought, thanks God for having me single right now. I love the opportunities I have to be involved in people's lives, young people in particular, that I wouldn't have in quite as much abundance nor with quite the same flexibility. You know, while I do desire to get married and have kids, I'm pretty happy (at least right now) about the stage of life I'm in and all that it provides. Not to be too cheery, but every stage has it's pros and cons and I just think that today and this week I've see to a larger degree some of the pros of being single, at least for now. :-)

friends

Okay, so yes it's true that I need to get some sleep, considering that I need to be up in about 7 hours, but I just read some friends' blogs and wrote a couple e-mails and have some quick thoughts on my mind.

So, today I met with so dear friends who I haven't seen all summer and I also talked to a far away friend via facebook. Both blessed me tremendously, one because he listened (albeit via messages) and the other two because they cared. Interestingly all three are men, but men for whom I am extremely grateful.

Two of the guys shared about their lives and summers and upcoming things. One of them wants to get married and likes a girl, whom he's pursuing. The other also recently started "to get to know" a girl recently to see where things go. And I suppose because they are in love, or at least in the clouds of liking someone, they've decided to make my love life their business, which makes me feel loved and cared for (obviously in a platonic way).

Awww, I love good friends! And honestly I love having good guy friends, ones that you know where things stand, who love you and have your back, but also you know are just friends. One thing I've missed living here in Madrid are good guy friends. And up until now it seemed like often there was ambiguity or that awkward tension of both sides intentions. So this is nice, freeing. (Not to say by any means that I wouldn't like a guy that were more than friends, if he were the right guy that is.) (And while this only mentions three of these guys there are some others too here who have become good friends.)

That's it. I'm now babbling and making no sense, so off to sleep. Oh, and thanks far away friend and fun here friends!