The craft closet is always next door to the nursery.

If you can't handle the truth**** in church,
You have two options,


Because art is a nice, quiet, "activity" to keep you busy while the grown ups talk.  And lets face it, that guy up there in the beginning can whip in shape what ever womanly damage you end up doing in leadership to those kids.

*if you aren't a man
*if you're an unmanly man
*if you like kids
*if you're good at being creative


So be careful when you call me creative...

Why I am a "feminist"...because Grace is too

God.

God have I wrestled with God.  God is irremovable. He's not deconstructable   You can run away, but He's not leaving.

Something interesting is in the God of Genesis.  God, breaths things into being.  We learn that when God speaks things exist.  He speaks=fact.  Our reality of language is fundamentally flawed to this principle.  We think we speak things into existence.  We think, I am a parent, I say clean your room (good) child then cleans his room.  I believe that if I speak, the room is clean.  But your voice did not make the room clean.  You called asking for the obedience but not the being.  

You may call a thing that what it is is something that it isn't, and yet is truly isn't.  

You can say the sky is purple, but it does not change because you speak, it cannot change colors.  Even if you were to reinvent the labels of the colors to our own language where in yourspeak purple=blue, it would not change the color of the sky.  You speak your mind into agreement, but not your existence to change.  There is no time in between for God.  His will can be perfect truly.  His reaction to our failure can be so perfect that it is indistinguishable to His first option.  He can have perfection.
We demand out constraints of 'carrying out' principle to God.  Foolish enough to think that we must believe something into existence because it is not without our agreement.  God spoke into void and there was light, He did not open his eyes, He did not name that which was into words that we can explain.  

There was nothing, and then there was.  

The opening of the bible.

And so, for some this is swallow-able, but it does not end.  God keeps speaking.  This book is about a redefined existence, not a redefined dictionary, or a redefined perspective.  A reality spoken.  It is the unity of causality and cause.

And so He makes male and female. 
Human and equal.  
Beautiful. Good. 
We were made 'very good.'

And then, we effed it up...

And then, we get this curse...

Unto the woman he said,"I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in sorrow you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you."

What a strange curse.  So so so taken for granted.  That we, must obey as the good-children. That (gladly) we must punish the woman as man finds himself punished in his work, we find ourselves so endowed to bring God's word into being.  Because while He spoke us into being surely He cannot bring this curse about.  

And this is the causality of sin.  That we are both the curse and the cursed locked in a spiral downward, into entropy we inflict just as we are afflicted. 

Isn't this the definition of sin, in the rejoicing of another's sorrow, to laugh while another mourns, to weep while others rejoice, to take pleasure in the punishment of another? Is that not the definition! The opposite of sin is not obedience but love.  To walk with God in the garden, or hide from him in the bushes.  To rejoice in the unity and love of man and woman and God, or demand distance. Hierarchy is the distance of God manifest.  The disbelief in God at His word, that His curses are made manifest by His speech and then broken in the grace speech of Christ's life.

The woman longing for her husband and cursed to be ruled over.  To live a servant in distance, longing for a lover. It is the festering of sin in the world not just to women.

"It’s about justice for the college student facing expulsion from her school for ever so bravely speaking up about being raped by a fellow student. 

It’s about justice for the young woman in Delhi who was brutally raped and murdered last December on her way home from a movie.

It’s about justice for the women who are paid only 77 cents on average for every dollar her male colleagues do for the same exact work. 

It’s about justice for those who identify outside of traditional gender norms and orientations to be who they are without fear of bullying, harassment, abuse, or even murder.

It’s about justice for the one-third of servicewomen who have courageously and heroically defended our country, only to be sexually assaulted and harassed by their fellow comrades. 

It’s about justice for the men, women, and children who are bought and sold in brick kilns and brothels and farms every day. 

It’s about justice for the young men and women stepping out from abusive church communities and seeking true freedom in Christ."

--Danielle (blogger: fromtwotoone.com)

It is the reconciliation of Christ and His bride as we are brides to man. That thousands of years lived and died longing and sorrow, thousands of years in brokenhearted distance, from billions of voiceless, the property and enslaved, would come to an end--could come to and end, as God speaks and we respond to speak,

Christ in me, the hope of glory

To carry out a curse upon another, is to drink the cup ourselves, it is to join with the sin and brokenness of a human short fall and deny the cup of grace, of blood spilled out for us.

Thoughts and a Wedding

Weddings don't make sense.  They are the ultimate contradiction.  In the mist of this chaotically crumbling social structure is the insurgence of social-media community.  That the peak of the redefined family unit, from the 3 generation, to the atomic, to the collaborate family, we are in love with tradition?  Weddings are strange, they are the glorious celebration of human rite and passion.  Endlessly unique in the celebration of rules as ageless as can be. It is the masterful redefinition and emotion in Micheal Angelo; confined to the canvas and paint, but also expressed within the system.

Culture? Culture doesn't get it.  Pinterest rules with a mighty grip far, far a head of the curve in fad and fashion.  The wedding magazines don't hold a candle to the collective luminary of the internet. This is the peoples party.

And why get married? Why?  To the religious it is the destination, it is the opening of a new life.  It is the start and the finish.  It is the expression of a love once whispered.  To the Greek the inevitable?  The love that is worth the journey, not for sex or acceptance.  A wedding is merely a stop along on the road.

To both it was a part of growing up.  Of establishment.  Of joining the next phase of life in society.  A wedding is garbing hands with the adult community of the time.  Of becoming woven into the loom of history and time and raising up another generation.  It is the nod to the past and the gaze of the future, fleeting as flowers and timeless as diamonds.  It laughs at its own fads and equally at its traditions.  It is human, all too human.

http://vimeo.com/29497176

The week in which I size up my demise and also become and adult.

This was the longest week, ever.

I've felt every hour.

I tried to sleep through it.  Getting 8.5 hours a night is a feat when the alarm clock goes off at 3:00 a.m.  But I'm used to it.  Really.  5 p.m. and I'm ready for sleep to take me.  I curl up (because my heater is broken) and am more than happy to close my eyes--this week all the more. Oh sweet sleep.  Sleep in this job was a treat I got to enjoy all for myself.

I'm finding it more and more apparent that my lack of confidence has ensured some rather "bad habits."  I'm going to call them that because my mind honestly wants to call them personality deficiencies and that simply will not do.  I'll never hear the end of it.  So for now I'll say that these "little bad habits" are more of a social handy capt than anything. A glass ceiling to the perceived adulthood I wish to aspire.

Aspire? Aspire you say? Yes.

I aspire to not be helped as some dear lost soul.  For those around me not to glow with pride when I fumblingly answer a question.  For your information Mr./Ms. Do-good, I am annoyed at your incompetence not shy. I am peeved at your inability to connect dots that have lead me to a thought 5 minutes back which is now interrupted by the requirement you felt needed to re-informing your wise and mature mind.  Thank you.  I'm so happy you stepped aside and "let me have my time" that I may grow flushed and feel a fool while you applause your excellent discipleship skills.  Totally feel discipled right now.

I wish I didn't have acne and such independent hair, then people would stop feeling bad for me.  Then my stumbling for words would be dismissed as the exhaustion that it actually is, not the obvious helplessness it gives off.  I mean as a girl my options are limited to bimbo and dunce, I'd still take my chances with bimbo.

I wish people would card before lecturing me on my friendship abilities.  Or perhaps put a little plaque on the wall explaining that I must be born after such and such a date before my lack of experience in hypothetical discussions cease to nullify my thoughts.

I wish I could turn in my responsibility to be a considerate (compliant) person like a V-card and replace it with feelings of rejection at every whiff of wind.  Yes, I am that nerd longing to be the cheerleader. With flauntingly short skirts of emotions, beguiling ways with everyone; the feeling whore.

As for these personality deficiencies "bad habits" at 21 I aspire to be more confident.  To bullshit my impenetrable fine-ness better.  To manipulate more smoothly.  I aspire like all, to be Miss America, I am an advocate for PEACE. My peace. So here's to 21, to responsibility, in capabilities, to everyone shutting up.

Washed Away

I am shore pounded and drained.  grating sand against sand, I stand in the way.  I am polished and smoothed, re-broken  redefined.  I am warn with in words new definitions new reasons for my, revoked opinion   I am given my rights, inalienably alienated.  I am as common as the grains of grit timeless as a momentary wave.  I am pushed and pulled within the tide, invited to converse and censored into despair.  I am a torrent unstoppable outlasted to the placid apathy of a ripple.

I am tired of redefined words to use in proper racisims, Indian  native, first nation, the proper way to define the space between us and them in a way that does not defile me in becoming a them from the socially sensitive and enlightened us.

I am tossed in the sea of another's feelings given no right to a sailors prayer.  I am fenced by the ever changing and intangible while the air around me, tangible, is ever threatened.

I am ever aware of myself on display, and yet caught screaming and hear all the less.  I am fast found ever at fault. My questions are judgments and my own actions accusations I am cut to the quick and at blame for bleeding  Wounds washed and drained into a sea that can hold all my blood without at drop of red color.  Swallowed by a blue that speaks none of its thousand sorrow swallowed in the deep.

We are in winter

This is the season.  The long wait in the dark begins.  The trees are truly dead.  Branches fall and I look in wonder.  I can not believe they will breath again. I can not believe they store the life of March and months warmer.  Darkness falls before the earth can warm.  The day passes painlessly, without a moment's thought, but the devil is the repetition.

The house is closing into itself.  Our dwelling of warmth is quiet.  The chicken's cooing within the hutch in the yard, the rain patters in the desolate garden, and smell of our ever laboring oven fogs the windows.  We are done with the outside world for this year.  Ready to rest. Ready to let our leaves go.  To die for a season.  Soup, and silence.

Morning is maker for a dark night in which to begin.  Morning is the cold that must be ventured into, the rain that must be tasted. We are ready to cry a season.

Winter is dying.  The last season.  The death who does not promise to resurrect, we enter in.  Into darkness we walk without the sun set before us.  Winter is the end, the colors of last year passed, the freedom of a summer passed.  It is the giving, it is the taking, it is the end.

And all that we ran in daylight, all the roar and rush of the months behind us.  All the fire and youth and laughter, hushed.

Hushed for a season of wait,
    hushed for a moment to contemplate,
        hushed until we are outlasted by the darkness,
until silence can be stood no more.


Passion waits within the warm earth bellow.
Dawn holds its breath to rise.
The color of spring prepares to dance again.

The praise of a new morning from the cold broken hallelujah waits to erupt.  The simple birth of a savoir waits for Calvary's unity.  The life in the the dead of winter waits for the final glory.  The darkness starts the greatest story.  That when we could not hope another night.  When we could not remember warmth of sun, we remember.

How an Emanuel came in decent.
Advent
the waiting.
Until we can not dream of ascending up to Him,
can our hearts can receive without pride.
The Hope of Glory.

108 days to holy week.

Winter

We are in Winter.
The trees have gasped, their leaves departed.
The rain has greened, the world again around us.
Quenched the world's lips but intends to stay.
It rolls in with the light of morning,
tapping its fingertips across the roofs at night,
coughing a cold wind, refusing to be ignored.

We throw ourselves into our harness,
the climb up icey roads,
sloshing through the mud of new days,
on old roads,
re-traversed,
the work begins.

Darkness falls.

A day becomes a moment,
an hour requires so much breathing,
plumes of steam we breath
chugging up the tracks well marked.
Forward.

Darkness falls,

Night so long we live it as day,
the chill our feet cannot heat our of the blankets,
sorrow that waits not to be scene in sun,
longing that is waiting for the passage of time.

We wait.
in whisper.

The darkness forgets the sun tomorrow
the darkness is the dawn that greets us as light is all too fleeting
we can not wait for her.

We wait,
until hope is not a smile or phrase,
not a thought to grow fond of.

No,
it is like the drum of rain,
it is the slosh of the puddles at our ankles
it is the wet that has soaked our shoes and does not dry
it is the chill that nips quickly to your nose
but last long in your bones

Hope lasts
though we no longer whisper.
No song of victory waits before us.
Darkness of darkness,
pass the life we could sing.

Death before us,
and all the ice deep within,
does not pray the prayers of sin.
It does not comfort,
or patently plead,
in silence it longs
for darkness to recede.

It is not hope from hearts sent
nor is it good will from men to men.

Oh but hope!
Hope beyond the call of joy,
beyond the eyes that reckon the void,
beyond the chill that causes our quakes
beyond the tears the wind does make.
Hope beyond the anguish and angst,
beyond the memories that have all but stayed.

We are in winter,
death and dark not staved.
We are in winter,
mud to trudge unpaved.
We are in winter,

a night.