You're my sweet charade

what with all this senior picture stuff going on, my thoughts have gravitated to the topic of my senior quote. what will it be? of all possible words in this language, what combination will sum up entirely who i am and what i want to be? what combination willl equal a compliation of every idea and dream i have racing around in my head?
well, here are some moving ones that i've found- here are my options so far:

"all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see" jack kerouac

"the air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley to great (that i though i was in a dream)" jack kerouac

"do not let your fire go out, spark by irresplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you have deserved but have never been able to reach. check your road and the nature of your battle. the world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."

"by believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. the nonexistent is whatever we have no sufficiently desired."

"of this i am certain: nothing great in this world was ever accomplished without passion." georg wilhelm friedrich hegel

"each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. it's our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit." mary lou retton

"you have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you." george lucas

i love them alll. i dono, maybe i just haven't found THE ONE yet, but if i never end up finding it, then i'm still going to have to choose between all of the choices here and the ones i find in the mean time :\

i need to make a long romantic mystery dramatic thriller about the origin of my screen name

and present to my friend scott in about 3 weeks upon his arrival home from a trip to a cabin and a band program at unh

i have some time, but my thoughts are already running.

i'll update more later.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.

ok so, i find these really entertaining and i found one in particular just now that its signifcantly amusing.

find out what your middle name means.. match each letter of your middle name up with its corresponding quality.

E= great in bed
L= unbelievably great in bed
I= great in bed
S= eay to fall in love with
E= great in bed

A : you like to drink.
B : You like people.
C : You are really silly.
D : one in a million.
E : Great in bed.
F : You are dead sexy.
G : You never let people tell you what to do.
H : You are Quirky.
I : Great in bed.
J : People Adore you
K : You're wild and crazy.
L : Unbelievably great in bed.
M : best kisser ever.
N: You like to drink.
O: awesome kisser.
P : You are popular with all types of people.
Q : You are a hypocrite.
R : Fuckin crazy.
S : Easy to fall in love with.
T : You're loyal to those you love.
U : You really like to chill.
V : You are not judgemental.
W : You are very broad minded.
X : You never let people tell you what to do.
Y : best boy/girl friend any one can ask for.
Z : Always ready.

repost as, "what does your middle name really mean

hmm.. awsome. where do we come up with these!?

p 48. back at college, i had asked one of my bible teachers if he still believed in miracles, like when jesus fed thousands of people with a couple of fishes and a handful of loaves. and i wondered if god was still into that stuff. i wanted miracles to be normal again. he told me that we have insulated ourselves from miracles. we no longer live with such reckless faith that we need them. there is rarely room for the transcendent in our lives. if we get sick, we go to a doctor. if we need food, we go to a store and buy it. we have eliminated the need for miracles. if we had enough faith to depend on god like the lilies and the sparrows do, we would see miracles. for is it not a miracle that the birds find enough worms each day? he was right. on the streets of philly, we experienced miracles. we would wake up sometimes with a blanket on us or a meal beside us that wasnt there when we went to sleep. other moments were so mystical im scared to try to crystallize them on paper lest you think im nuts... or even worse, that im a saint or televangelist. its enough to say i just wanted to be safe for god to trust with those little secrets that god seems to reserve for the weak and the destitute.

p 123. we preach, prophesy, and dream together about how to awaken the church from her voilent slumber. sometimes we speak to change the world; other times we speak to keep the world from changing us. we are about ending poverty, not simply managing it. we give people fish. we teach them to fish. we tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. and we figure out who polluted it.
we fight terrorism- the terrorism within each of us, the terrorism of corporate greed, of american consumerism, of war. we are not pacifist hippies but passionate lovers who abhor passivity and violence. we spend our lives actively resisting everything that destroys life, whether that be terrorism of the war on terrorism. we try to make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so the fewcan live as they wish. we believe in another way of life-the kingdom of god-which stands in opposition to the prinicpalities, powers, and rulers of this dark world.

p 134. once we get past the rebellious or reactive countercultural paradigm and muster up the courage to try living in new ways, most of us find that community if very natural and makes a lot of sense, and that it is not as foregin to most of the world as it is to us. community is what we are created for. we are made in the image of god who is community, a plurality of oneness. when the first human was made, thiings were not good until there was two, helping one another.
but that doesnt mean community is easy. for everything in this world tries to push us away from community, pushes us to choose ourselves over others, to choose independence over interdependence, to choose great things over small things, to choose going fast alone over going far together. the simple way is not the easy way. one of the things i think jesus is doing is setting us free from the heavy yoke of an oppresive way of life. i know plenty of people, both rich and poor, who are suffocating from the weight of the american dream, who find themselves heavily burdened by the lifeless toil and consumption we put upon ourselves. this is the yoke we are being set free from. the new yoke is still not easy, but we carry it together, and it is good and leads us to rest, espeically for the weariest traveler.
in fact, if our lives are easy, we must be doing something wrong. momma t used to say "following jesus is simple, but not easy. love until it hurts, and then love more." my friend brooke, with whom i went to india and later started the Simple Way, used to have the words "simple ubt not easy" painted on her wall. dorthy day of the catholic worker movement understood this as well. she said "love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer. this love is not sentimental but heartwrenching, the most difficult and the most beautiful thing in the world.

p 198. this burst of nationalism reveals the deep longing we all have for community, a natural thirst for intimacy that liberals and progressive christians would have done much better to acknowledge. september 11th shattered the self-sufficent, autonomous individual, and we saw a community= for the people to cry with, be angry with, to suffer with. people did not want to be alone in their sorrow, rage, and fear. but what happened after september 11th broke my heart. conservative christians rallied around the drums of war. liberal christians took to the streets. the cross was smothered by the flag and trampled under the feet of angry protesters. the church community was lost, so the many hungry seekers found community in the civic religion of american patriotism. people were hurting and crying out for healing, for salvation in the best sense of the word, as in the salve with which you dress a wound. a people longing for a savior placed their faith in the fragile hands of human logic and military strength, which have always let us down. they have always fallen short of the glory of god.

p 203. violence is always rooted in a myopic sense of community, whether it be nationalism or gangs. we long for people to fight with, mourn with, and celebrate with.martin luther king sense this myopia both in the ghettos and in the vietnam war and longed for our vision to be broader than our fam or our country. as king said, we are bound by alliegences and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism.... this call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond ones tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all. the tradgedy of the churchs reaction to september 11th is not that we rallied around the familes in new york and dc but that our love simply reflected the borders and alliegences of the world. we mourned the deaths of each soldier, as we should, but we did not feel the same anger and pain for each iraqi death, or for the folks abused in the abu ghriab incident. we got farther and farther away from jesus' vision, which extends beyond our rational love and tghe boundaries we have established.

p 207. essentialy i went to iraq because i believe in a god of scandelous grace. i have pledged alliegence to a king who loved evil doers so much he died for them, teaching us there is something worth dying for but not worth killing for. i went to iraq in the footsteps of an executed and risen god. the jesus of the margins suffered and imperial execution by an oppressive regime of wealthy and pious elites. and now he dares me and woos me to come and follow, to take up my cross, to lose my life to find it, with the promises that life is more powerful than death and that it is more corageous to love our enemies than to kill them.

p 221. rebirth means that we have a new pardigm of "us" and "them." our central identity is no longer biological. and our central allegiance is no longer national. our pronouns change. our new "us" as jesus teaches, is the church, and the people of god doing the will of the father. certainly, there are times when america is that. and there are times when america is not. when we hear that "we" were attacked, do we think "we" the church, or "we" as americans? what is our primary identity? when the bush administration said that a way of life was being attacked, it was true, but it was not the gospel that was being attacked. it is no coincedence that what was attacked wasnt the world council of churches but the symbols of the corporate global economy and the arms that would protect it. more than ever, we must be asking what will create a safer, more sustainable world. and i believe god has given us a vision for that, a vision that looks very different from the dream of america. one soldier i met returned from iraq deeply disturbed. he said "i just risked my life for the american dream, and i am not even sure i believe in it anymore. and i am pretty sure that the world cannot afford it." no wonder jesus began to weep as he overlooked jerusalem, crying out, "if you had only known what would bring you peace." (luke 19:42)

p 225. i had a college professor who said "all around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. but dear children, do not tiptoe. run, hop, skip, or dance, just dont tiptoe." in my youth group days i had seen all too many wild would be jesus radicals fall by the wayside because they had never been trusted with the adventure of revolutionary living. when i was a youth leader, one of the high school kids who had given his life to jesus got busted only a few weeks later from having acid in school. i remember asking in dissapointment what happened.. he just shrugged his shoulders and said he got bored. bored? god forgive us for all those we have lost because we made the gospel boring. i am convinced that if we lose kids to teh culture of drugs and materialism, of violence and war, its because we dont dare them, not because we dont entertain them. its because we make the gospel too easy, not because we make it too difficult. kids want to do somethign heroic with their lives, which is why they play video games and join the army. but what are they to do with a church that teaches them to tiptoe through life so they can arrive at death safely?

see 6/05. i didnt realize it.. but i hadn't published that one, and i just did, but oyu wouldnt realize it since it is published supposibly on the day i did it, which was actually partly today, so.. just.. in other words, scroll down and read it.

so, after learning that i am probably 80% bipolar, and should date a japanese guy because i am a mix of modern and traditional values, it has now been determined that, to show my love, i should dye my hair the same color and start wearing a white kimono. wow, i feel way cool already. (no offense to the japanese)

oh, and the extreme sport i should try is sandboarding.

ok, so, its 10:29 on thursday night and i have two finals due tomorrow:
earth and space: a powerpoint / 10 minute presentation on topic of my choice (comets and asteroids) as well as a 2+ page paper about my topic (comets and asteroids)
spanish: a movie / powerpoint complete with some words and many pictures about my 100 year-long life which is entirely ficitonal, the movie must be narrated and at least 5 minutes long

i am so stressed out about getting everything done, the spanish one more so than the sciece one

my concerns:
my science powerpoint is not long enough
i do not have the paper written for it
i will be basically reading the words off of the screen, though im fairly good at adlibing and speaking in general
i do not have my script for spanish finished, there fore it is not a 5 minute commentary
i do not have a movie or powerpoint
i definetally do not have my voice recorded onto the computor since i have nothing written to read, nor do any of these computors have a program on them that allows me to do so

on top of that, i havent slept for days and i have no clean laundry whatsoever so ive been wearing the most uncomfortable clothes i own which, i know normally shouldnt bother people, but, ontop of being stressed out and overwhelemed, only adds to the anxiety because i'm not even physically comfortable throughout the day

and im getting sick from not getting enough sleep.

and its fucking 10:35 now and i havent started solving any of my problems and i hate myself a lot right because i know its entirely my fault but i just cant seem to focus on them, or have enough motivation to continue working on them. i suppose that it seems like even if i were to work all night i simply would not have them done because there is so much left to do, so i suppose thats sparking the hopeless feeling im getting from all these projects so that subconsciously, ive decided they not worth doing if they, in the end, wont get done.

see what ive been going through?

and im not taking a math next year which is pretty sweet.

As summer, you like to keep things normal. You dont do anything too crazy, but you know how to have fun. You keep things quiet if you can, but if you want to, you can be a total party animal. You like the outdoors-nature, people-and looking at the sky can always interest you with what it offers. You want to change the world but dont know how or where to start, but dont worry, one day youll make a difference.





and i think, according to the description, it's right