forgive my cursory introspection, but sometimes it entertains me.  i need a moment to escape from summer school, from the fact that since Christmas i have had exactly 2 weeks off from school, from comma splices and run-on-thoughts... and that another month remains between me and my BA. Still, i suppose i should be "proud" to finish Uni in 3 years.

i am beginning the process of packing ...because i'm moving... to A F R I K A

so i couldn't help myself from reading through old journals.... i think it had been a while since i laughed at myself like that. So, basically for my own procrastination from homework and so you can laugh at me as well, I offer you an ancient entry for your reading pleasure.  Its everything behind the words that make it funny...that process... 

I wrote the following when i was an intern:

2/8/02

Thinking... my curiosities frustrate me.  The brokenness of my heart, a game for my mind- playground of the enemy as his arrows fly threw me to His heart- the target.  What purpose does my pensiveness serve?  I travel this place within far too often- but the other option, numbness, is a road I've too often "trod."  Why must that question seem my whole life: why?  I pause occassionally, randomly really, and glance around, searching for something unknown.  I've done it since i was little.  When nothing appeared I created it.  Longing for a place I knew not of but saw somewhere in the deep recesses of myself.  And so, on my knees in my own self-provoked vomit, I cried- my heart teaching my mind things language runs from in fear because they reveal its inadequacy.  I longed for brokenness.  And now, sitting atop a 3-high bunkbed in the middle of Texas... I breathe a pain I had forgotten.  Worship music echoes just soft enough to haunt me with the knowledge of more- more pain borne for me already,and more instore, yet finished.  My brokenness is different now.  The tears come on their own. The joy is a reflection of the sorrow- so deep it crosses the spectrum... breaks the scale.  My heart still holds its breath.  Waiting for my Lover to rescue me.  To hold me in a place where "why" becomes "You" and fear becomes love and the unknown becomes trust.  When my backward steps finally lead me to the edge of the cliff and I fall. 

...University is my wicked stepmother.

Alice came to a fork in the road.
"Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

...ah, but it does.

luckily, this is not theology class. be thankful.
these are grossely unformed and unfinished thoughts...
but hey, we're all about the process, right?


fear

so love casts out all fear, right? He who fears is not made perfect in love, because fear has to do with punishment... ok. G*d has not given us a spirit of... you know where I am going.

so what about when fear _reveals_ love? those moments when your heart freezes only to uncover unexpected unselfishness. It's caught me offguard recently. Sharpest expample to provide here: a news story about 2 people drowning in a place that caused suspision evoked tears and "dear G*d, please don't let it be"s for someone whose place years ago was enthroned in bitterness. What causes parents/rooommates/spouses to wait up for a missing loved one? fear-anger-frustration: concern. so is that _fear_ as described above? or are lexicalized semantics misplaced in these morphemes? Is it another manifestation of "love"? An overflowing/escaping expressing of the reality of the heart? and what about fear of being left? ok, maybe this example involves too many variables. fear of losing something cherished. insecurity. moving on. my faith in words is lost. we grow in circles. what are emotions?

p r o o f   o f   g r a c e

(...[shaking head] i am flying to cali tonight to see some of my most beloved friends...i should be happy. ... i hate the fear of flying... friday is my birthday, and all i can think about is what happened 6 months ago to the day... how vastly things can change in 6 months... and how masochistically we mark time...)

Mein Flugel ist zum Schwung bereit,
ich kehrte gern zuruck,
denn blieh ich auch lebendige Zeit,
ich batte wenig Gluck.
-Gerhard Scholem, "Gruss vom Angelus"

_A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. but a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress._
-Walter Benjamin "Theses on the Philosophy of History"

(turnaroundturnaround)

You have to get burned to save your house from fire. -Hindi proverb

I bought my ticket.

on August 30 i will fly from British Columbia to London.

class starts in Tunisia on Sept. 16.

...and all my plans for the future have been obliterated. 

I don't have any anymore... past class ending in december, everything is a blank page.

Some recent conversations have inspired the following...



...am I liberal?

what does that even mean? a political slant? a thought process? a hairstyle?

as if any human being has ever actually been categorized that easily.

my "conservative" friends think I'm liberal and my "liberal" friends think I'm conservative



what is a woman's actual role and what are societal expectations?



oh miscommunications...
How does a woman show a man that she respects him?

...that whole love is unconditional but respect is earned thing is bogus, I know.
...women need unconditional love and men need unconditional respect, i know.

but what does that look like?

**what does respect look like practically to you? How do you feel respected and not respected?

and what about humility? How can one support without excusing and question without emasculating?


*sigh*

please, enlighten me.

yes... it's another one:

         AFRICA

Afflictions make
the heart more deep,

 more experimental, more knowing and profound,

and so, more
able to hold, to contain, and beat more.

–John Bunyan

(there are things i thought i knew and things i do know...

Shevy sent me quotes when i was an intern, i think
they were from Servants of the Call, but they could have just been
hers.  this one grabbed me the moment my eyes swam accross the
words and validated some deep places in me.  i thought i
understood it then.  i believed it anyway.  i still do,
though now i realize--more than i could have then-- that i shall be married to brokenness
for the rest of my life.  not that i would change that
if given a choice.  i am just exhausted.. of being
alone, and i cannot always see that there is so much more to
brake. 

brake.

i brake my own heart.  the heart is deceitful and desperatley wicked

there is more

though you slay me, yet will i trust in You )

School:

I have been so slammed lately.  Mostly with a bunch of Academia... and as much as I truly am honoured to be initiated into and speak as a representative of _____ (fill in the Academic blank of your choice), it's been so much that I can't even really enjoy it.  In two days last week I had FKF initiations, a 40 minute lecture to a class, and a presentation to the English department...  by then, what's even the point?

...I think the thing worse than the stress is when other people don't understand.  There are a couple students I know who are hurt that they were not asked to present, and so their pain gets shifted into bitterness towards presenters... it makes me sad, and it makes me keep my mouth shut about all the junk I have to do.  Then there are those that just don't get that I really love this stuff and it's a big deal to me (not the ceremony of it... I had enough banquets as an intern...) to be asked by my professors to represent them and have a chance to talk about material about which I am passionate.  When they think its a waste of time I end up feeling... devalued?  What a concept to try to grasp, huh?  The "you don't have to understand, you just have to understand that it's important to me" moment.  Wow I'm boring and predictable. 

...for tonight, I am presenting my Honors Thesis.  Finally.  It's really done and now I just get to talk about it in a black eastern dress and heels.  Drea--wish you were here to see the end result of all that stress.  Hope you'd be proud.     

*thank you for this weekend.

i don't think anyone on the planet is as lucky as i

to hold so many sacred hearts as cherished friends