twins

I´m presently babysitting. And while I love to do so, I´m realizing that two sick five month old twins can be a little bit of a handful. They are sleeping but every now and then one of them will cry and I´m supposed to then go running as fast as I can to soothe him, find his binkie and reposition him so he´ll go back to sleep and not wake up the other one. This is a little more complicated when it´s dark and they are already not sleeping too well because of all the congestion.

Now, after having written this, I´m not quite sure why I´m posting this other than I think it´s crazy that I go running as soon as one of them cries. I remember some other friends of mine who have twins (who are now about 6 or 7 yrs old) and I think I remember that they were of the philosophy that it was better to let kids cry a bit so that they learn to soothe themselves back to sleep. Somehow I´m liking that philosophy right about now. As for now, just thankful that both haven´t yet woken up at the same time.

Films...

Wow! While this week has been packed, I managed to find some time this evening to watch a couple of the movies in the running for our Film Discussion Night this fall. A friend of mine from high school suggested both "The Diving Bell and Butterfly" (a french film originally entitled Le scaphandre et le papillon) and "The Orphanage" (a Spanish film originally entitled El Orfanato) are both amazing films and definitely both film night worth, both in terms of quality of the film and in terms of being something good for discussion. Wow! I just watched the latter of the two and was very pleasantly surprised. I don't tend to love Spanish films nor do I love thrillers, but this was both and should definitely get some awards (maybe it has, I'm just not too up on that stuff). So here are two movies to put on your list when you have time and want a good film.

the prodigal God

I'm about halfway through this book and am loving it, so thought I'd pass on the suggestion. As usual it's a bit cheaper on Amazon.

What I love is that Tim Keller talks about the heart of the Gospel and of Christianity. He talks about the fact that the Gospel is just as much for people who are super-religious and have it all together, as for those who are a mess and know it. The latter group tend to get their need or God and the former tend to see themselves as self-sufficient, but are equally in desperate need of God. He talks about both being forms of making ourselves our own "savior," our own "god," and thus are rebelling from God, whether we seem to have it all together or not, whether we are "good" people or not. Anyway, the long short, good book! Really good book!

Oh, and as for the title, Keller points out two things: (1) "prodigal" actually means "recklessly extravagant; having spent everything", not wayward, and (2) the parable of the prodigal son, as it is often called (from Luke 18), is actually about TWO sons and is more about the Father's extravagant love than just the wayward son. I like it - God is definitely EXTRAVAGANT in loving us with what seems like pure recklessness.

my brief US trip...

So... let's see...I arrived back from 2 weeks in the States which was VERY brief.

First, a brief synopsis of the trip... Yolanda, a friend and I caught a plane in Madrid and headed to Brussels, Belgium. It occurred to me as we boarded the plane that this made NO sense; we were backtracking, but anyway. We arrived to Brussels and ran (at times literally) through the airport to our next gate, only very briefly glancing over our shoulders the yummy selections of chocolate. We literally ran to the gate only to have them ask us the million and one questions that are asked if you are headed to the US - about if anyone has given you anything, where your bags have been, etc., Yolanda struggled through this, with some translation on my part, since it was all in English and the people in Belgium don't tend to speak Spanish. She tried to get them to speak in Spanish, but no.

We board the plane only to quickly find that we are the minority. We are on Jet Airways and about 90% of the plane is Indian, as is the airline and the commercials. They speak English and Hindi, the food was Indian (yum), and we had a huge selection of Hollywood or Bollywood movies and a couple foreign films (one french, one arabic, and one chinese). Fun! A brief jaunt to another culture. The airline was great! Tons of leg room, they let you watch movies, play games, or listen to music from the time you boarded to the time you left the plane, and I didn't even feel the take off or landing (REALLY!). It took a smooth ride to a whole new level. Yolanda wasn't a huge fan of the food since it was quite spicy, but it was some of the best airline food I've ever had.

We arrived in New York City, took the train and then metro to Manhattan to the Meat Packing District, where my vegetarian sister was staying on work - at the Standard. We dropped off our stuff there, walked around a bit (along the river, through a cool market close by,...), and waited until my sister got off work. Yolanda kept saying, "It looks just like the movies!" "Everything is BIG!" (the streets, the cars, the houses,...) She was flipando. We found Sesame Street cupcakes, a store full of cookies, went into a European market and an Italian market, saw some cool art,... Then we headed back to the hotel to wait for my sister, who it was GREAT to see. Then off to dinner. We ate at this place called Olive & something. It was a fusion of European food, which was good (particularly after the Indian airplane) - something more normal for Yolanda's palate.

Backing up a bit... on the metro we met this guy who spent most of the trip there with us showing us pictures from his iPhone and my translating back and forth. He had somehow found a deal to pay something crazy like 500-800 dollars for 3 months of as much travel as he liked ANYWHERE in the world. So he had been to basically every continent and to lots of fun places in the past couple months. He had begun this after having traveled across the US in motorbike, or dirt-bike or something, from coast to coast, and then taken a van from California down to El Salvador, which he was only halfway there when he took off on this worldwide tour. He had a million and one stories to tell and we spent about an hour on the metro, so we were all ears. I'm guessing he just got out of college, or is in some type of transition, but was a little too tired to ask too many questions.

So, returning to above, after we got done with dinner (which we ordered WAY too much food at), we headed to catch the Megabus to Philly. We got there with plenty of time, boarded the bus in the last row so we could recline ALL the way - seriously it was flat, and went to sleep. The conductors were full of energy so they explained all the fun features of the bus - including wifi - and we were off. At some point some guy asked if I minded if they turned the sound for the movie on overhead. I did, but said no (realizing I'd probably sleep anyway), and went to sleep. Except for a few loud parts in the movie, I woke up as we arrived to Philly to the first stop. We stopped, I tried to pull up my seat for those passing by, but was too out of it to do so in a timely manner. We continued to the second stop, I woke up Yolanda, we got off the bus, we grabbed our luggage, and I hear, "Dawn!" I turn around and by God's grace my brother had gotten off work and realized, that while we would have made it to his place, I would hugely appreciate him showing up to help us. He took Yolanda's stuff since she was completely out of it by this time (probably close to 40 hours awake) and delirious and dealing with hearing a language she's still learning. It was SOOO great to see him. We took the trolley and then the metro and then walked to his place. It was raining a bit, but felt good.

We crashed and then woke up WIDE AWAKE bright and early. My brother and us headed to the historical part of town and we all saw the liberty bell, met up with my friend Cherith, and then to Independence Hall. My brother took off for work and we headed out for Philly Cheesesteaks, which Cherith continued to say were disgusting, but when in Rome do as the Romans. They were super yummy!

From there we went in search of coffee for me, tradition in Spain after lunch, and when you're jetlagged it becomes a necessity. We ended up walking all the way across Philly - stopping in a cool market, Chinatown, then heading to some cool statues (the famous LOVE statue, statues of board games and such), past some fountains, and the street with all the flags on it, down to the Philadelphia Art Museum (and Rocky statue), down to the Boathouses, and over to Fishtown (where Cherith and her husband live; and my brother does to). We saw the progress they're making on refurbing their house (right before leaving for Spain for a few years) and Cherith drove us to West Philly where a dear friend of mine lives. We had dinner with Carrie and fam, yummy vegan chili. And then about 8 or 9pm we became pumpkins and went back home to my brother's place. Of course I stayed up late both nights with my brother and his girlfriend to make the most of our little time together. One of the two nights we had delicious mojitos, which when made well is up there on my list of drinks.

We slept and got up bright and early for Drew to take us to the airport. On to St. Louis....

So we arrive to St. Louis late morning and are met by my mom who is full of tears and happy to see me. Sweet mom. We head out to the St. Louis Bread Company for lunch and then I convince her to take us home instead of us starting a tour of St. Louis. I am beat from all the running around, so we say hi to my dad (who has his office at home) and take off or Old Town St. Charles and to get some groceries. We came home and I worked, making calls & prepping for the week and for Sunday. That was Friday. I think we might have eaten in with some DELICIOUS, homemade cherry pie!

St. Louis is kind of a blur. Lots of meeting with people, speaking at churches, trying to be a good tour guide for yolanda, trying to spend quality time with my mom, sad because it was short and there are only 24h in a day and my dad had to leave monday morning for NH for work.

Saturday we went to the St. Louis Botanical Garden (aka Shaw Gardens), had some yummy Vietnamese food, and I think came home early so I could make some phone calls and prep for Sunday.

Sunday was church and sharing a bit there and lunch with people and then speaking at youth group (which unfortunately we were hugely jetlagged for; it was still fun I was just a bit delirious). A VERY full day.

Monday we saw my friend Catha, spoke at 5 spanish classes at a Christian high school a friend of mine is a spanish teacher at, and then came home.

The rest of the week was seeing some friends (some dear dear friends), seeing some ministry partners (many of whom are friends too), speaking as a few small groups that meet in homes (some smaller than others), hanging out with my mom, seeing St. Louis & St. Peters, some shopping, more sightseeing and meeting with people,...

The next weekend was similar to the last and then Tuesday morning we did the reverse. We flew to Philly, were met by my sweet friend Cherith who picked us up and took us to a Mediterranean restaurant and then to an incredibly delicious gelato place and then to catch our bus to NYC. We caught the bus, although this time our bus driver didn't speak English so we had some communication complications. I checked my e-mail and enjoyed the ride (sleeping some and just relaxing the rest). A guy on the bus said we might be 30-60 min late due to rush hour, so I sent a message to my friends who were there to meet us. We ended up at a different stop, in part to the communication problems, so walked several blocks and eventually found my friends who were in a bar waiting for us. It was SOOO SOOO good to see them - one a friend who came to visit last year and another a dear friend who just recently moved to NYC. We headed back to the apt we were going to stay at and then out for dinner. We ended up at an odd Spanish/Morroccan/Latin restaurant. I was not hungry at all, so just got something to drink and we caught up while I translated. I guess from the travel I was really tired again, so we went back early, talked through the next day and went online on this crazy high tech setup my friend has in his place. Karen went home and we went to sleep.

The next day Yolanda and I got up early and had the most delicious cappichino at City Girl Café, got a tad bit turned around, and headed to Battery Park to see Lady Liberty, then through Wall Street, past Ground Zero, walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, almost had some crazy good NY Italian food, but instead went to Central Park, to the John Lennon memorial, took a million and one pictures, and grabbed gyros on the street. While we were waiting for our food we met 10+ spaniards doing the same. We met up with Karen in Washington Square Park, got a quick tour of NYC and the oldest unchanged street in NYC, got a cappichino at one of the oldest places in Greenwich Village, tried to see Soho and the Village but got turned around a few times, so just took a lot of pictures and saw a few random things. We then met up with my friend Jonathan for dinner at a Mexican place and then to a chic coctail place. Again we went to bed tired.

The next morning we made sure our stuff was packed and that we knew how to get there okay, met up with Karen for brunch after seeing her digs in Harlem and getting a brief tour of the area, and then did the whirlwind tour - Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Fifth Avenue, NBA Store (for t-shirts for a friend of yolanda), coffee, Empire States Building (which unfortunately we didn't have time to go up in - yolanda was really sad), and then off to the airport in train and then another train. We boarded the plane and did the reverse, arriving home to Madrid a day later (Friday AM).

That is the brief outline of the trip. I have some observations and thoughts I was going to blog, but another day.

Four days later I had to jump on another plan to Barcelona for some meetings, which was FULL not to mention with jetlag on this side of the pond. Time in Barcelona I also want to blog about, as it was fun as always to stay and work with friends there.

la aventura de ser una single

"I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord - death can't and life can't, the angels can't and the demons can't, our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell, whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation." Romans 8:38-39

Yesterday I met with a pastor from a suburb of Madrid to talk about the youth group at his church and how I could lend them a hand and also to just catch up a bit after the summer. We talked about that and then he asked (as it seems has come up quite frequently in conversations with married couples) if I was single by choice or why.

I guess the positive side is that there is not a screamingly obvious reason why I haven't found the right guy. And, as is also been true quite frequently as of late (I think several times this past week), he asked if I was closed to the idea of people helping. I said no but that I also was both content where I am and desirous of being married and having kids (if it's God's will and in His timing to the right guy, of course). He then said that I had a hard road - that I had chosen the hard road, with its benefits of course, but not without its troubles. I appreciated his sympathizing and even affirming my chosen road to live as a missionary in a foreign land. But he also was right - choosing to follow Jesus doesn't mean the road will necessarily be easy, in fact often that isn't the case. But I wouldn't change roads, even if that is the case. The benefits of following Christ FAR out way the cost, both in this life and in the next. And while I do desire to marry, the Lord is fully sufficient. He does without fail provide, protect, encourage, sustain,...

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!

Music is a wonderful thing. I love how it can transport you to somewhere else, how it can somehow move you in a way much deeper than mere words.

So, I just have to say that while it is definitely a girly movie, You've Got Mail is definitely up there in the movie world. And I love the music. I'm listening to it right now and it makes me feel reminiscent. About what, I'm not quite sure. But it does make me happy. It makes me think of daisies and witty monologues about pencils and butterflies on metros and you've just got to love about a million things about that movie. Hmm....

Well, I don't actually have much to say, but I do think the guy who did the music, George somebody, is a genius, as is the playwright. Oh, I just finished the music. :-) I guess on to other things.

the cat sitter

It is strange, but it seems that over the past week I've become a bit of a cat sitter. Last weekend a friend (Julie) who was taking care of another friend's cat (the Tanzies) asked me if I could take care of the cat (Calabaza) until Bekah (another friend) got home to take over. Bekah got home and was exhausted so I offered to continue the cat duty.

That was pretty uneventful. I fed the kitty, cleaned the litter box, played with the kitty a little, borrowed some books (which were gems), found some very old and moldy coffee that the nice people who stayed at their house while they were gone had left behind (most likely because it didn't cross their mind that in two weeks no one else would likely be making coffee and clean it out).

So, Bekah left yesterday to go visit a friend for a week. Her cat Bailey somehow got a virus of some sort and she took him to the vet yesterday only to find out that he was really sick. So we took him again today for a checkup and to get some blood tested. Fortunately my friend Beth and her little boy (a year old) Lucas went with us.

We arrived at Bekah and Bailey's house, which was a bit warm despite the two fans going. We tried to coax Bailey out from under the couch, but then had to lift the couch and pull him out all while trying to hang on to a one year old who wanted to stick his hand in the fan, pull over anything heavy, or basically head toward anything that yelled danger. In a one bedroom, little tiny apartment that is not baby-proof finding danger is quite easy. So we coax Bailey out, Beth (my friend) inspects the litter box and smells the clump there to make sure she knows what it is. Yuck. We try to get him to eat or drink something, but to no avail. We took off.

Of course the first thing Bailey did was pee in the carrying case which we had to carry about 10 blocks (not really that far). We got there and the vet recognized Bailey from yesterday, but seemed to think his name was Baby instead of Bailey. I tried to correct him, but it seemed unimportant and a fairly lost cause. Fortunately the vet was nice and explained everything he did and fortunately Beth was taking care of Bailey while I entertained Lucas.

First the vet said that Bailey was fairly dehydrated and that it looked bad. He showed us his yellow skin and teeth to verify that he was sick and dehydrated. Then it was time to take blood. So he put this horrible homemade looking tourniquet on (which as I said before, it was a good thing that he was nice and explaining things because it looked odd). It was a rubber band synched tight with a clamp of sorts. Since Bailey didn't seem to care, I relaxed a bit. Then he had to shave the hair off the arm to search for the vein. (I'm thinking in the States that the vet tends to do this without you standing there. But it has been a long time since I was last in a vet's office.) He filled two vials with blood and then gave Bailey a saline drip, a shot of antibiotics, something else, and B vitamins. Bailey didn't seem to notice.

He then gave me instructions and some special cat food (which he said he probably wouldn't eat) and told me to try to give him food every two hours. Fortunately I live right around the corner and since Bailey isn't actually eating and I do have other things to be doing, I did it a little less frequently.

Tonight as I went back over after giving Bekah an update on her kitty, he actually came out (unlike the rest of the day where I had to drag him out from under the couch only to put food in his face and water too, none of which he would touch. I rubbed him awhile and tried to leave about five times, but couldn't seem to do it since he looked so pathetically lethargic and would meow when I tried to leave. If I weren't actually allergic to him, I might have spent the night, which I'm hoping my roommate might actually do when she returns tomorrow.

So that is the saga of the kitties. Hopefully Bailey will get better soon and my stint as a cat sitter will soon be over. I do actually like cats, but much prefer the cats we had growing up, cats that are healthy, and cats that don't make my throat hurt. And I would much rather take care of a sick person than a sick animal.

the rest of God

“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 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)

Excerpts taken from "The Rest of God" by Mark Buchanan

"The key to the joyful Christian life is having a clear understanding of who God really is.

It's not about me. I cannot fix myself...Only God can. Even my ability to have faith and believe God for great things is nothing more than a mere symptom of my view of God... What we believe to be true about God's character affects every aspect of our lives. God, and God alone is the issue." Forward to Discover God Bible Study Nº1

"He does not derive His power from any other source; all power has always been His and will continue to be His for eternity. Any power that we have comes ultimately from God." Bill Bright, Discover God

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of GOd was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light." Genesis 1.1-3

remember

1 : to bring to mind or think of again
2 archaic a : bethink 1b b : remind
3 a : to keep in mind for attention or consideration b : reward
4 : to retain in the memory
5 : to convey greetings from
6 : record, commemorateintransitive verb 1 : to exercise or have the power of memory
2 : to have a recollection or remembrance

— re·mem·ber·abil·i·ty \-ˌmem-b(ə-)rə-ˈbi-lə-tē\ noun

— re·mem·ber·able \-ˈmem-b(ə-)rə-bəl\ adjective

— re·mem·ber·er \-bər-ər\ noun
synonyms remember, recollect, recall, remind, reminisce mean to bring an image or idea from the past into the mind. remember implies a keeping in memory that may be effortless or unwilled (remembers that day as though it were yesterday). recollect implies a bringing back to mind what is lost or scattered (as near as I can recollect). recall suggests an effort to bring back to mind and often to re-create in speech (can't recall the words of the song). remind suggests a jogging of one's memory by an association or similarity (that reminds me of a story). reminisce implies a casual often nostalgic recalling of experiences long past and gone (old college friends like to reminisce).

a quiet sunday

I've been enjoying a few relaxing days after having had the stomach flu. And while I hate being sick, I love being forced to rest - completely. And since I had time (since I was supposed to be out of town) and didn't want to relapse, I did in fact rest well.

Since then I've been getting around to a few projects around the house, such as finally staining the dining room chairs to match the table - a dark walnut. The look very nice by the way. I've also gotten the desire to change a few things, to redecorate the living room and rearrange my room (which is going to be a challenge since everything presently fits perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle).

Some friend are out of town, so I'm feeding and taking care of their kitty. They have an amazing library, so I'm borrowing a few books. And since they return in a week, I need to get reading. One of the books I borrowed is a collection of C.S. Lewis writings, specifically The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Miracles, The Case for Christianity and Christian Behaviour. I just started the Screwtape Letters and was struck by a quote in the preface:

We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment. This, to begin with.

I'll probably add some more quotes here as I continue my way through these and several other books I have on loan from friends, or which I've been waiting way to long to read.

Another one from the preface, which by the way, is quite good:

Bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two motives. THe first is fear of punishment... Their second motive is a kind of hunger. I feign that devils can, in a spiritual sense, eat one another; and us. Even in human life we have seen the passion to dominate, almost to digest, one's fellow; to make his whole intellectual an devotional life merely an extension of one's own -- to hate one's hatreds and resent one's grievances and indulge one's egoism through him as well as through oneself. HIs own little store of passion must of course be suppressed to make room for ours. If he resists this suppression he is being selfish.

Letter #3:

My dear Wormwood,
I am very pleased by what you tell me about this man's relations with his mother. But you must press your advantage. The Enemy will be working from the centre outwards, gradually bringing more and more of the patient's conduct under the new standard, and may reach his behaviour to the old lady at any moment. You want to get in first. Keep in close touch with our colleague Glubose who is in charge of the mother, and build up between you in that house a good settled habit of mutual annoyance; daily pinpricks. The following methods are useful.
1. Keep his mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind-- or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.
2. It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very "spiritual", that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother - the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling form his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment's notice from impassioned prayer for a wife's or son's "soul" to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.
3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy - if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of that assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, that is easily managed
4. In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itslef by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but the tone of voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother's utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: "I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper." Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken....
Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape

In reading this letter, it is sad how close to reality this actually can be, in my life with roommates more often than i wish. Thank God that the Holy Spirit is present to bring truth to light and to bring about clarity of vision and conviction, so that while I am way too often blind, I do at some point see.

my bout with the stomach flu

Time for a story, although unfortunately a story with some gross details, so be warned...

The middle to end of July I went on the Camino and then went to the beach two days with a friend in beautiful Galicia, where my knee started to hurt excruciatingly bad. I'll have to blog about the Camino another time, but Maria (my olympic marathon running friend) and I went to meet her family at their beach "house" after we finished the Camino. We got there, walked along the beach a bit, which is just right down from their beachfront property, which is where they park their RV for the summer and have an outdoor sort of house, with an attachment, like a tent, for the living room (and guestroom), a little shed outside which houses the kitchen (equipped with a fridge, stove, sink) and then the kitchen table is outside in between the two, as is the grill. Not to mention that it all is up on a little hill directly above the beach. Nice. While we were on the beach the sun was warm, the water cold (but nice since the sun was hot), and there was a continual cool breeze. I wasn't ever hot, nor cold, just perfect.

So, we wandered around the coast (Rias Baixas) and enjoyed the beach the first day. We, of course, went for a run on the beach which was nice, other than feeling my knee a little and that my body had taken a toll from walking 10 days with a backpack probably a bit heavier than it should have been and from the last two days without much stretching and a lot of running around (literally) to try to take care of everyone else who was hurting. (At that point I felt just fine.) That night we went to another coastal town for some incredible seafood and then wandered around a bit in a beautiful little place that reminded me a bit of the grecian islands. The next day we took off for one of the islands closeby in Southern Galicia / Rias Baixas (still NW Spain) to do some hiking and then sunbathing. We started off just fine. I was a little disappointed with the vegetation, as I've been missing the lush greens of Missouri/Pennsylvania/much of the US, but the coastline was gorgeous with the crashing waves and such. We walked around, at the lunches we'd packed, went past a camp of kids on the island, and my knee started to hurt with a vengeance. I tried to just ignore it and kept going, slowing down a little. We then went down a somewhat large and steep hill. Fine, okay now I was limping and the pain really was excruciating. Maria asked how I was doing and I said not too good. Ironically some other people went by at this time and one of the guys said (obviously in spanish), "If you go to Santiago, don't tell me I didn't warn you." Maria then yelled back, "That's where she just came from."

So my walking is now pathetic. I'm trying not to put pressure on my left leg, but also not to make any quick movements. Maria convinces me to make it down to the beach below to put my leg in the cold water of the ocean while she goes off in search of some ice. It's a pretty rocky coast, so I just stop at the first pool of water I find, which only comes up to my calf when I'm sitting down, but it works a bit. Maria comes back with ice that we put on my knee, while she massages my leg with the remaining pieces. She also convinces me to take the medicine, since it is excruciating pain. (I'm not a huge fan of medicine, particularly when it's just to cover up the pain, or in this case when I don't actually know what I'm taking.) In fact I take two, which Maria assures me her mom does nearly everyday.

We stay there for awhile, alternating between icing my leg a couple times or submerging myself in freezing cold water, and laying out in the sun. It was a pretty beach. The other little glitch was that somehow in all our concern about the looming clouds and possible rain, and thus the rain ponchos from the camino, we had forgotten to bring a towel - not even one. So we laid out the bright yellow ponchos as our towels. That worked alright, although I still ended up a bit sand covered, until we went to re-ice my leg-knee. I was icing my knee and enjoying actually not having pain, while Maria was wandering around the rocks. One of the many seagulls began to peck at the yellow poncho. Maria went to shush him away. I was now laying on the nice cool rocks. Now the seagull was back with the poncho and now looking in my backpack. Maria ran back to shush him away, pack up the ponchos and came back. He was back once more, now looking in the bag for the ponchos. Maria made a pile of stuff so that he couldn't get into the bag nor see anything yellow. Pretty humorous.

We wandered back to the port, I'm actually walking normally now, careful, but normally, and thrilled about that fact. We make it back to the café alongside the pier, wait for our ferry back and head home. That night and then the next morning I take another pill of her mom's pain killers, thinking, "I just need to get back to Madrid and then can go to the chiropractor and get this taken care of." Both that night and then again the next morning it occurred to me that my mind was not as clear as normal and that I felt a little out of it. I mentioned to Maria that I thought these pain killers were pretty strong medicine. She didn't seem concerned.

They drove me to Santiago to catch my plane back to Madrid that morning and I got carsick on the way there, right as we get to the airport and I opened the door. It was a hot, poorly ventilated car with curvy coastal roads, no big deal. Not normal, but not to worry. Maria's parents scold me for not having told them sooner and I explain that it happened all really quickly at the very end. Her dad insists on carrying my backpack and walking with me in. I sit down and say goodbye. Later I check in and am noticing that I still don't feel 100%. I definitely feel nauseous, but probably just need some air, to walk a bit, some water on my face, something... I make my way to the gate, eat the lunch Maria's mom sent with me, read a bit, fan myself as I still feel a bit flush, and wait. We board the plane and all is well until about a half an hour before the landing, major turbulence. At this point, I start to think, "Dawn, you can make it, it's' just a little turbulence before landing. Just go to sleep." But the turbulence went on longer than a normal, turbulent landing. At this point, I think, "Okay, if I need it, I still have the bag from my lunch." Time passes, I ask the tall gal next to me to please open the vent a bit more to let some air come in. She can't seem to figure it out and I am fading. The horrible flush feeling starts to descend over me, I empty the bag of the tupperware and unfortunately throw up several times. I apologize to the people next to me. The turbulence continues awhile longer. The flight attendant comes by and takes my bag, which I then think, "Aren't you going to give me something else just in case?" He comes back, gives me three paper towels and hurries off. The kind girls next to me are saying, "Don't worry about it. Just relax." We land and of course it seems like an eternity getting off the plane. We get off and head to baggage claim.

As I wait for my backpack, I get a call from my ride (who I'd called that morning since I wasn't sure about hiking across town on the metro with my camino backpack, my bad knee, and the nausea). He said he was sorry, but he was locked out of his apartment and car and that his wife was far enough away that it didn't make sense for me to wait. It would be at least a couple hours before he could get there. I told him not to worry about it and that I would probably just take a taxi, which I mainly said to put him at ease.

After I got off the phone I found my backpack and walking stick and thought through my options... taxi, bus and metro, or just metro. Generally the second would have been my choice, since it's the quickest and easiest and cheapest of the latter two. But any moving object like a car or bus didn't sound that great in my physical state and since my knee didn't hurt too bad, I figured I'd try the long trek on the metro, even though it involved much more walking. I'd just go slow. So that's what I did and it was fine thanks in part to the smooth metros of Madrid.

So, I got home Tuesday afternoon and went immediately to the chiropractor, who was amazing, slept all day Wednesday, or almost, and tried to just kind of lay low getting ready for the Second Camino trip which left Sunday at 4am and weighing the pros and cons considering that my knee was still in a decent amount of pain, now without any medicine in my bloodstream.

Thursday I talked to my good friend Ruth who said that if worse came to worse I could just drive between places and see them in the evening, which sounded kind of lame. Time alone, yes, but not at all ideal for the camino. I met up with everyone going on Friday for lunch. They were super-excited about going and since they consider me an expert on the Camino the bombarded me with questions. We left and I went to pick up a smaller backpack and a couple other things from Decathlon, kind of like an REI but cheaper. We actually ended up going all together and it occurred to me that my knee hurt more when it was stationary too much time and that I felt more nauseous than before, particularly after eating. So I went home and after flip-flopping back and forth about a million times finally decided not to go. It was now Saturday and they had made me promise that I'd at least come over on Saturday night for awhile, even if I decided not to go. So, I grabbed my keys to leave and boom, I felt awful. Nauseous, weak, horrible headache, the works. I laid down, sent Ruth a message, and despite wanting to go, ended up staying home. Yuck. The next day I slept almost the entire day, with flu-like symptoms, a hurting knee, aching all over, a horrible headache, nausea, etc., I forced myself to go walk a bit and to ice my knee, but that was it. That lasted about a day and a half and then I actually got hungry and began to eat again. And thanks to a great chiropractor and some resting, my knee feels almost fine and I am dreaming of running. (A friend told me to wait a bit, but I may try out a short run sometime this week.)

going on a journey... un camino...

Tuesday I leave for NW Spain, to walk 10 days on the Camino de Santiago. Generally we take a group of about 50+ students and this year we are quite a bit smaller. Yet I am excited to embark on a new little adventure.

We will walk with all our earthly possessions for our time on our backs and, while we have some idea, will just have to figure out as we go where to find food and lodging. We will be walking through very sparsely populated, rural spain (which looks much like what i imagine ireland to be - very green, woodsy, cool (in fact at night cold, even though we're in the midst of july).

We will walk from about 6am to 2-4pm every day and in the evening alternate discussions to talk about Our Journey and that of Jesus. And the fun of this year is that everyone going I know well and are either new believers or contemplating Jesus for the first time. Please pray for us as we go -- we'll be going July 14-25, Ribadeo to Santiago.

Buen Camino!

crepúsculo

About a month ago I ran into a friend coming out of a bookstore close to my house after he had just bought a book. He later told me he was embarrassed to be caught buying the last in the series of the Twilight books, not anything he wanted to publicize, which I found humorous. I was surprised that he was reading them and that he said the movie was really good - it looked to me like a teenage flick that would just be okay. My friend said it was actually really good and that he thought i'd like both the movie and the books. I had been looking for a new book to read so, a few days later, I watched the movie and soon after bought the first book (i could have just borrowed them from dave other than the fact that he read them in english and somehow it's been easier to read in spanish these days, just so i don't have to change languages as much).

I have to say the first book is so far the best and then the third (which i will soon finish). Granted I'm reading a translation, so some of it might be lost, but they're good books. They're mainly about relationships, but are made more interesting by adding the reality of the main relationship being between a normal girl and a vampire. And, they are fairly quick reads, but all around pretty good books. And I thought it was funny that my sister just finished reading them as well. So, if you need a light good read for the summer, here you go.

July 4th

fireworks!!! it's funny. i generally wouldn't consider myself to be a very patriotic person and yet i am still an american and absolutely LOVED being in the US for the 4th of July. it was fun seeing people dressed up as abe lincoln and ben franklin (since it was abe's 200th bday and we were in philadelphia). it was fun visiting museums and thinking about way back when our founding fathers signed the declaration of the independence and such. and it was FABULOUS watching fireworks with thousands of others by the philadelphia art museum (or the steps rocky ran up).

and it was most definitely hilarious being with my brother and his girlfriend as he talked to my parents and literally gave them a play by play on the fireworks. they were at home watching fireworks on tv, but my parents LOVED getting to "be" with us thanks to my brother. he talked about the colors, where in the sky they were, how they exploded, he told them what we said, how we reacted,... everything. and while he was doing this his girlfriend and i were enjoying the fireworks and making fun of him (which he was fully aware of). eventually he passed the phone to me and i said bye to them, the fireworks continued, and then we made our way back - which definitely competes with the fireworks.

on the way to the fireworks, lauren and i took off from their house and then drew called when he got off work (yep, he worked on the 4th) and met us as we walked from the metro to the art museum. we were hoping to make it to the gazebo behind the art museum (which we later found was roped off and inaccessible) and had a ways to go and not much time. so my brother took off and we followed after. although it was humorous as lauren had to jog to keep up with us even though her legs are twice as long. ;-)

on the way back, drew shot out and then lauren competed as we expertly weaved in and out of the crowd. it was a race, not really between us, but between us and the crowd. and we were headed to the metro, which was a jaunt away, but it was partly the journey, partly the race that was what mattered. we were trying to see how many people we could pass, unbeknownst to them, of course. there was glass, empty beer cans, random people in random places. we weaved in and out, each of us with our own strategy, and yet trying to stay together in a crowd of thousands. crowd surfing at its finest. and amazingly when we got to the metro, while we had a little line to wait to get through the turnstile, we didn't wait even a minute for the next train (and i was amazed, living in madrid, at how unpacked it was. my brother said it was because most of those on the train were tourists or suburbanites, not true locals). and as we took the train a few stops back to drew and lauren's apt, i eavesdropped the conversations of the latino family next to us (whom i'm sure had no idea that i understood them). good times.

ode to my sister

The time I recently spent with my sister is definitely up there in my favorite times. We went to some fun places, enjoyed some great food, etc., but what I really enjoyed was just time with my sister, who has increasingly become more and more of a really good friend.

Growing up there were 6 years between us, which is a large age difference when you're 1 and 7, 10 and 16, or 16 and 22. But now that we're both adults that age difference is irrelevant and, interestingly enough, we are actually very much alike and like a lot of similar things (while obviously still being quite different). Heather is an amazing artist and I'm a missionary in Spain.

I found SUPER cheap tickets to the States while I toyed with the idea of going to visit my siblings, to go on a little vacation JUST to see the family - no work, no fundraising, no commitments,... and my motivation was the fact that I haven't seen much of either sibling, but less of my sister. (Last summer I saw them at a wedding for 2 days - :-( - that was it... and it had been a year since I'd seen my sister, so a longer visit just for them was long overdue.) So, I went to Philly to see my brother and the first weekend there (a day after I arrived) my sister just happened to have to be in NYC (which is just an hour or two away) for a photo shoot. She invited me to come up and stay at her swanky hotel, so I did. It was great! It poured rain half the time I was there, but we went to some fun restaurants, just caught up with each other, found out we both were reading the Twilight books, got a pedicure (since it was pouring rain outside and it's a good sister thing to do), she bought me a bday present, we wandered around the streets of NY between the meat-packing district and Greenwich Village, we walked along the Hudson river, etc., It was just the weekend, but fun.

Then a few days later (after spending a couple days with my brother in Philly), I took off for Columbus, Ohio, to spend more time with Heather. She took off a couple days of work to hang out, so we went to workout together (which was GREAT! - to workout, but to workout with my sister! who i never see), go for long walks through a cool and huge park in Columbus, drive around fun hidden parts of Columbus, walk around the fun college town part of Columbus, drink tea, eat AMAZING veggie burgers,... It was SOOO refreshing! Lavender tea, just sitting on the couch and talking about life, our lives..., laughing, walking through the Black Hand Gorge with heather and brandon, her boyfriend, and talking about imaginary creatures who would live in the enchanted forest we were in, making animal noises to scare the canoers down below (although my noises were fairly pathetic as my sister would confirm), swimming,... It was great!

And it was fun to get to know her boyfriend better and to see how in love they are, that he thinks the world of her and is so sweet to her. And he is definitely a quality guy. :-)

So now that I'm back in Madrid, I SOOO wish we lived closer. That I could go to the gym with her everyday and we could laugh at each other and with each other. That we could just hang out, play scrabble, watch thunderstorms, wander through the forest, etc., I miss my sister and am SO thankful for time with her!

Welcome

To all who are spiritually weary and seek rest;
to all who mourn and long for comfort;
to all who struggle and desire victory;
to all who sin and need a Savior;
to all who are strangers and want fellowship;
to all who hunger and thirst after righteousness;
and to whoever will come--

this church opens wide her doors
and offers her welcome in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ.

--- I saw this last week as I was looking for a church to go to while visiting my brother in Philadelphia (a short, but sweet visit to see my brother & sister). I ended up here, at Tenth Presbyterian Church, which was great!

Summer is here!!! This weekend has been great. Friday I had a birthday party and while I was more concerned about the food, which was quite tasty (actually fairly incredible), and just wanted people to come, I also got some fun presents. Saturday I got up late, since people left my apartment around 3am, went running with Maria (my marathon friend), we jumped in her apartment complex's pool (which had just opened) and felt great after running in 38ºC weather (100ºF), and had a nice summery lunch of gazpacho, salad and fresh fruit. When I returned home, my roommate Chery and I finished off the lemon sorbet we'd made for my bday party, which I have to say was incredible. Last night I went to my best friend Ruth's house for part 2 of my bday party, with her daughter and some friends. They made a "cake" out of fruit - watermelon, kiwi, and strawberries. And we just had a fun time talking, laughing, dancing, and just hanging out til the wee hours of the morning. I am so blessed! And I feel very loved. One of my favorite parts of last night was when Elia (her daughter) came over to me and threw homemade confetti all over the place. :-) And there was a thunderstorm last night, which is also fun. It only lasted a couple hours and was before we went to sleep, but fun. I am now trying to get some work done, but completely exhausted.

scum of the earth

I was looking at a friend's page and came across this church in Denver & Seattle. What drew me to look at their page was their name and their explanation as to WHY. I just listened to a talk about: "Healthy Female Sexuality." It's a good talk.

“To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.” (1 Corinthians 4:11-13)

WHY SCUM?

It doesn’t sound like a church name … on purpose. We really want to connect with people who have no interest in “church” by society’s definition. There are plenty of churches for “normal people” and we think we have a unique calling to reach out to our otherwise unreached friends. Our name is integral to that process. Whether outcast by society (e.g., punks, skaters, ravers, homeless people…) or by the church itself, many who come can identify with the name “Scum of the Earth” since they have been previously treated as such.

More important to us, however, the name implies that being people of faith does not mean we are better than anyone else. We know many non-Christians who think Christians are out to cast judgment on them. Our name makes it clear that we aren’t about that. We are just aware of our need for God, as Scum of the Earth. Fortunately, God never sees us like that! But the name is humble and we like that.

–Chris Baker

OUR MISSION STATEMENT

We strive to be a church who:
seeks intimacy with God and honest relationships with others
cultivates creativity and uses everyone’s gifts
asks questions while seeking Truth
recognizes our need for a Savior
passionately yet respectfully shares the saving love of Christ
demonstrates God’s love in our community

For more, check out their webpage.

Anyway, just thought I'd share. I don't know anymore than what I've said, but sounded cool. :-)

a quiet, lazy day

what i'm drinking right now... :-) a homemade iced café latte. and since it's a holiday here, corpus cristi, i'm enjoying some time to read, to relax, to listen to some sermons online, and to plan out the menu for my birthday party tomorrow night. :-) right now i'm listening to a sermon and enjoying my yummy coffee. :-)

happy birthday to me!

:-)

random mail

I've been going through a couple stacks I have in my room to try to get organized and to get rid of some clutter and I just came across an odd letter that arrived in the mail a few months ago. Honestly, I'm not 100% sure that it was intended for me, but phonetically the name written does sound like my full name, even if it's not entirely correct, and the address is mine, minus the correct zipcode. So, I opened it.

It's a brown medium size envelope. Inside are the following:

27 sets of used stamps cut from the envelopes on which they were sent

a few paper figurines - old and antiquey - a boy holding a pheasant, flowers, an english or swiss looking soldier, a sailor boy that i think is from some sort of old chocolate ad here, a little girl and dog on snow

a postcard from 1962 in french, but sent to an address in Madrid - it's a picture of the french alps

a small note signed: Besitos Amely

Now the whole thing is a bit odd, but it made my day when I got it (in part because it made me think of my dad - i send him clippings of cool stamps all the time because when i was little he and i collected stamps and he still does (even if they just sit in a box or a pile)) and now again today as I look through it and document the contents.

It made me feel like Amelie. So, no idea who this is from nor if they really intended to send it to me. And I'm half wondering if I should return it to the sender or send a note asking if they want me to return the contents or whatever (and hoping that someone else with an english name looking much like mine is not waiting for this envelope that remains unpostmarked and that was sent to my building), but part of me just wants to enjoy the peculiar, strange package that made me smile. If it weren't for the note from Amelie (or Amely), it would seem much more like a wrong address, but somehow the note makes me think that it was anonymous and meant to be that way. Writing me makes me think I am insane and living a bit in dreamland, but it could be, right? I do think it's awfully romantic (not in the actual love type of romantic, more the dreamy, surreal romantic, like something from the 1920s) and something from a book or the movies.

café - part 2

"Días Descafeinados" - Papel Maché

Si nieve o llueve, tu eres el porche
Que me protege.

Y si fuera un lienzo,
Serías el pincel.
Y si fuera un cuadro,
El pintor, mi dueño, y mi creador.

El azúcar en mi taza de café, tú eres
La pieza que cumple tal puzzle de mi vida, ah, ah.

Días descafeinados, ... cortados
Lo que sería sin ti.
Una flor sin sol, una pagina blanco.
Días descafeinados, fotos sin color,
Es lo que sería de mi.
Sin tener te a mi lado,
Me faltaría algo.

Eres la piedra angular de todos mis puentes,
La mama que me coge cuando no puedo y me caigo,
La canción mas bella de mi guitarra,
Las escuelas, el viento que empuje al heroe,...

El azúcar en mi taza de café, tú eres
La pieza que cumple tal puzzle de mi vida, ah, ah.

Días descafeinados, ... cortados
Lo que sería sin ti.
Una flor sin sol, una pagina blanco.
Días descafeinados, fotos sin color,
Es lo que sería de mi.
Sin tener te a mi lado,
Me faltaría algo.

café

:-) yum! well it seems like the web domain panic is just about gone, although i'm still waiting for it to get fully resolved (i'm waiting for wordpress support to write me back). but it does look like all is well, no information lost, it looks like we still have our web domain, it just doesn't actually work yet.

in the meantime, i'm drinking some coffee - just pure espresso this morning (i need to go buy some soymilk), which is probably helpful since i'm running low on sleep, and it does taste mighty good.

here are two quick side notes before i get back to being productive...

here are two blogs that made me laugh (i found them looking for coffee pics):

"how to defend your coffee habit"

"coffee as a cure for the plague

and, secondly, contrary to these blogs and to my love of coffee, i actually do think that it's much more advisable to not be addicted to coffee, but to merely use it now and then when necessary for either emotional or mental conditions. :-) it's definitely true that coffee addiction makes more tired in the long-run, as it drains your adrenal glands and causes you to need stimulant to function (and actually to function at a lower level of energy). bottom line, it's not so good (although it is tasty) and better in small doses, or on occasion.

note: i think i am mindlessly writing whatever, so this is probably very much random ramblings...

Yes, yes, I do really need to go to bed, particularly since I need to be awake and functional in about five hours. Anyway, I was hoping someone might be up in the US and write me back about the web domain predicament, but to no avail, so since I'm awake but tired I've been looking at friends' pages and such when it occurred to me something that I've been noticing here recently and thinking I should maybe blog about it.

So, obviously each culture has different social norms, some which vary little and some which vary a lot. Also, mind you, it is spring/summer and the pollen count is high and I can attest to the fact that my nose has been more stuffy than normal.

Generally in American culture staring isn't a socially acceptable thing, well here in most cases it is perfectly fine, particularly if there is something to stare about, then everyone will (and more so if you live in the south, really, I'm not making this up). In fact I can remember on many occasions when I lived in Sevilla, mainly when I first got there and didn't fit in as well, the ENTIRE bus, kid-you-not, turned around to stare at us for basically the entire bus ride. In Madrid, it's much more subtle. Generally people don't stare for too long, but much longer than would be socially acceptable in the US. In fact, I now find myself doing the same thing. But I digress.

Another custom that we as Americans are not quite used to is nose-picking. I can't say that it's encouraged here nor something you would do somewhere nice, but over the past few days the number of blatant nose-pickers that I've seen is astronomical. There just isn't the same stigma attached to it. Yes, allergy season is high, but still. So, in that vane, as I looked for pictures I found that wikihow has a page on "how to pick your nose inconspicuously". It's cracking me up. But there you go.

evil computer world

Ahhh!!! So, I was just going to update a website that we supposedly have for the Camino, which we will be walking this summer with university students (as we do every summer) and which we were planning on begin advertising tomorrow, but it seems that we are a bit technologically challenge or possibly too trusting that other people know what they are doing or something...

The problem, I think, is that the domain site wasn't renewed and thus it disappeared out of existence sometime in the past few days. Ahhh!!! So, right now I don't entirely know what that means. I'm assuming we lost what was there before, which sucks, and I'm assuming that it won't be too hard to get it back the domain, but that we'll probably be starting from ZERO. Hmm... oh well. I'm hoping that some of my computer savvy friends might be of some help both in figuring out how you buy or renew a domain and in recovering the former page. If you have any suggestions, I'd love the help. I'm going to send out a few socorro (help) e-mails and then hit the hay... each day has enough trouble of its own. :-)