Really, I Don't Even Like this CD.

Listening to martin sexton and contemplating my existence.

I am ready for a change. I am itching for a change. My spirit is ready to go somewhere and to start fresh. To go back to school. To start fresh somewhere with a clean slate. To grab onto the calling I hear so clearly.

But I feel blocked. I am unsure how reckless to be in this life. Finances scare me. And moving scares me. And leaving my parents scares me. But staying here scares me, too, in terrifyingly different ways. And I am ready to move on – every part of me except for my bank account and my lack of safety net. And these are stupid reasons to stay somewhere.

And I question the wisdom of doing this in a time of immense change in my life. Of a time of vision shifting and uncertainties about things such as health and family ties. So much has changed in the last few months. My everyday life looks so different now and has such different cares and concerns. My daily routines are filled with foreign-feeling tasks and movements. Some comforting, most frightening. In many ways, I thrive on this.

There aren’t many things in this life that scare me. I have learned to see challenges as opportunities; to embrace discomfort and to stare the devil in the face when he knocks at my door. I have faced many challenges in my life and came through them, bruised but wiser and bigger and more thankful. I am Euphemia. I have learned my strength in these situations. I have learned of my capacity to love and to stand through hardship. But it seems that in matters of money (and spiders), I can’t seem to overcome my fears and I become paralyzed, unable to move or to take risks. Unwilling to let Christ do Her thing; always resisting the calling to step into the abyss of blessing and to simply trust.

I want to overcome my fears. To overcome myself. I want to be godly and thankful and beautiful and follow the Spirit without question and without hesitation. I want to give and be given to and learn and grow and experience and follow my calling with conviction and courage and grace. I want the courage and the voice to push the church into a more loving and diverse being. I want to change everyday. To be scared everyday, to walk in and with faith and love and mercy and grace. I want to live.

Maybe its time.

pacifist.

If we care about human life and about freedom, we must reject war, no matter what our political leaders tell us. War poisons our souls, kills the children of "the enemy,' and mutilates the bodies and minds of our own soldiers. -Howard Zinn

timely reposting

Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears [their] grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge - from which new sorrorws will be born for others - then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply.
--Etty Hillesum
quoted in Marc Ellis, "Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation"

dude.

In a culture obsessed with consumption, I believe fasting needs to be considered in terms of its inner dynamic: abstinence . . . . The purpose of abstinence is to learn rightly to enjoy God's gifts. We need disciplines of abstinence because we have come to relate to food, drink, sex, money, recognition, and many other things in life not as lovely gifts to be enjoyed in moderation and gratitude, but as objects of consumption to fill emotional voids. When what we consume is consuming us, and what we possess is possessing us, the only way back to health and balance is to refrain from using those things that have control over us.
-Marjorie J. Thompson