humanity

"Ubuntu speaks of the very essence of being human.  We say, 'Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu.'  Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate.  You share what you have.  It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.'  We belong in a bundle of life.  We say, 'A person is a person through other persons.'
...
A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are."
-Desmond Tutu

my loves

I emailed my English advisor yesterday to tell him I'm changing my major (to liberal arts with an English concentration, for those of you who didn't know), and he responded by saying, "Though I hate to see you go as an English major, I completely understand your reasoning here.  It makes sense, particularly since your "first love" seems to be music."

    Which caused me to make a face sort of like this:

Because, obviously (to me), music isn't my first love, nor is it my primary love, and certainly not my only love.  It made me ask myself, then -- what is my "first love"?

I don't think I can confine myself by choosing one thing (which, now that I think about it, is a pretty good example of why I'm changing my major to liberal arts).  I love so many things I can't even list them all, and I'm always finding new things to love.  That's why I've spent several hours recently researching (and falling in love with) the art of growing bonsai trees.  :)
My deepest, truest love stems from pursuing a genuine, Christ-like, loving, community-centered way of living. I know that's about as broad a category as it could possibly be, and I like it that way.  That means that there's enough room for my whole life to fit in that category.  And that, ultimately, is my goal.

here's to porches

These days I am struck by my readiness to throw myself into community.  I spent a summer learning exactly what that means and exactly how important it is to me, and I am beyond excited that this year will (hopefully) involve embracing a similar kind of community.  In imagining the apartment and intentional community I'll be living in, I can see so many possibilities for grace, depth, and being Christ to each other.  I can't wait to experience the simplicity of living together:  cooking and eating together, sharing joys and burdens, walking together in mutual accountability and love.

It's not just this kind of community that I want, though.  Today I told someone that I'm turning myself into a porch-sitter.  It might sound more or less negligible, but I think there's something profound in simply moving yourself out to your front porch.  Not only does it allow you to be closer to nature and creation, it makes you physically visible and also more emotionally present to your neighbors (both literal and figurative).  It opens up opportunities to interact with those who pass by around you.  And perhaps most of all, it forces you to expand beyond your comfort bubble of your house.  I always say the one thing I want to avoid most in life is complacency, and letting myself remain comfortably within my own four walls seems overly complacent.

Maybe it's overanalyzing to claim that the act of sitting on your porch encompasses all these things, but I need a metaphor for the things I'm striving for.  So here's to becoming a society of porch-sitters:  people who venture beyond what is merely comfortable and strive for openness, acceptance, and risk-taking vulnerability.

love, courage, wisdom

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member.  Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier.  Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual.  But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world.


~Ammon Hennacy

joy of the redeemed

Isaiah 35

The desert and the parched land will be glad;   
  the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
   it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
   the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the LORD,
   the splendor of our God.
Strengthen the feeble hands,
   steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
   “Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
   he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
   he will come to save you.”


Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
   and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
   and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
   and streams in the desert.
The burning sand will become a pool,
   the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
   grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.


And a highway will be there;
   it will be called the Way of Holiness;
   it will be for those who walk on that Way.
The unclean will not journey on it;
   wicked fools will not go about on it.
No lion will be there,
   nor any ravenous beast;
   they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,
  and those the LORD has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
   everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
   and sorrow and sighing will flee away.