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new day - grateful in the ashes

hey, friends... just some scribbled thoughts from early monday morning. yesterday was pretty busy, given the sudden necessity to empty the entire contents of a certain first floor apartment - contents that are a bit smelly, but otherwise undamaged (the song above is one that was playing from the stereo out in the yard while we were working). we had lots of help from friends and family, and other than being a little sore from the house-emptying enterprise and still a bit groggy from the 2am sunday night/monday morning wake up call, we're utterly unscathed. we were blessed with a wonderful meal and a pleasant place to stay last night. i don’t know when i’ve ever been so grateful for the chance to get clean... or for my own undamaged body....

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saw the sun come up this morning in cleveland’s tremont neighborhood, where i’ve been hanging out with two of my sisters and their roommate since the beginning of july. it’s been swell times here. in fact, if i’m ever in a position to buy a house, i’d consider buying one here. real people live here and ride bikes here and greet each other from their front porches early in the morning. and there’s lots of cool stuff nearby - art galleries and fun shops and restaurants.

perhaps this seems a strange interlude, but it will all come together shortly. yesterday there was a guest speaker at my home church - a guy who was left with one arm and no legs after a horrific accident. there are a lot of people in the world with a lot of things to say, which makes for a whole lot of competition, you know? but everybody’s tempted to stop and stare at a guy with only one of his major limbs remaining. and you’d listen to what he had to say, wouldn’t you? the circumstances of the accident have made this guy a sort of rolling cautionary tale - he’s a regular speaker at schools and prisons. and in addition to the anti-drug message, he’s able to share the hope in christ that he’s found since that time. so i was thinking a lot about this yesterday... if i was asked directly, "would you be willing to give up a part of your body to gain a wider hearing for the gospel?" i don’t know that i’d jump at the chance. but shouldn’t that resonate with my soul? the apostle paul would have let traded his own salvation for that of his people, if such a trade would be possible. i am made of weaker stuff, but i was thinking a lot yesterday about the way God uses things like that. and maybe this is a thought that will be forever seared into my memory. i don’t know what God will build from these ashes, but He is immensely good. it was all so surreal. glass breaking, people yelling, something’s going on. people yelling. something about getting out of a house. the glow from the window offered further confirmation of the scenario playing out somewhere nearby, like maybe across the street. my sleepy 2am self stumbled to the door and experience the bizarre realization that we were the people in the burning house. thanks to the screaming kids and the unmistakable brick through the front window, within a few seconds we were all standing dumbfounded in the backyard, befuddled with irrational thoughts of doing things like packing everyone into one of the cars and careening wildly through the flames that were touching down at the end of the driveway. maybe it was the guy who appeared out of nowhere to rip the neighbor’s fence apart and make a way for us to get out, but running away suddenly seemed like the thing to do. huddled on the sidewalk, shoeless in our pajamas, unbelief faded into gratitude. thankfulness for even our smokey scented yet amazingly unscorched skin. for the tiny little lady who slept through the whole thing, safe and alive in her mother’s arms. i must have been the most terrifying of unbelievable apparitions to the eyes of the horrified neighbors, an anonymous figure framed in the doorway of a burning house. and i saw the sun rise this morning. we all did. and all of this was a crazy surprise to us, but not to God. and i don’t know what He’s gonna bring out of this mess, but i hear that ashes make for fertile soil. who can say what good things will grow from it.

Currently Listening The Other Side of Something By Sara Groves What I Thought I Wanted see related

what do you do when it doesn't make sense?

i've been struggling with that today. with myself. but i think sara's a wiser woman than i, 'cause she knows that living with the ambiguity... is part of the human condition. funny that growing older, rather than reducing all mysteries to the elementary level of the baking soda volcano, instead leads you into the understanding that there are some things you will never understand on this side of the universe.

...when i get to heaven i wanna go find job.
i wanna ask a few hard questions,
i wanna know what he knows
about what it is he wanted and what he got instead,
how to be broken yet faithful...

and whether or not it ever makes sense, that's what you have to do. press on in the face of ambiguity... a word that spans the linguistic distance from "annoying" to"rip-your-heart-out painful".... broken, yet faithful. and what is more, maintaining hope that God is faithful.

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

 'cause everybody knows what you really mean

one of my fave concepts from semantics and pragmatics class was the idea of illocutionary force: what people really mean by what they say. is it a request? do they want information? are they making a statement? sometimes the surface form and the intended meaning are skewed. but even in that case, you play the game and ignore the surface form unless you're either a) communicatively impaired or         b) obstinate. i'd go with the latter on this one.

(thanks to the seattle post-intelligencer for posting comics online :) ).

Currently Watching Taare Zameen Par see related

...well, i was watching that last night, anyway. very cool that this film seems to point to a growing understanding of and attention being given to children with common learning disabilities in the developing world, and if that's not the case, this film might spark that kind of awareness.

the good stuff

there is no shortage of stuff in the world. in fact, there's so much that sometimes it's hard to sort it all out. so in the hope that it might save you some time or energy, i'd like to share this list of a few things that i've found that i'd put in the category of moderately Good Stuff.

cell phone service: charity mobile
i held out for a long time, but necessity rather forced my hand, and i've entered the 21st century. one of the things that held me back for a long time was the issue of doing business with large corporations which make well-meaning charitable contributions to causes i don't want to support. i was about to dismiss my scruples as perhaps over-cautionary and sign up for a plan with one of the major carriers... when i came across an offer indicating their direct partnership with an organization i have serious objections to. if you want to know the details, feel free to ask. anyway... i did finally locate this company that offers good service at a comparable price and donates part of my bill to the pro-life charity of my choice. i've had it for a few months, and so far i've been pleased with the service.

squeaky clean
it seems like it's about time to give up the idea that i will someday grow out of the perpetual pimple problem. i've tried a lot of different stuff, some of which has been helpful, some not so helpful. this one is a bit expensive, but i think i like it. another concession has been made to the fact that somewhere along the line, my hair crossed the threshold from blond to brown. i remained in denial for many a year, probably, but the transition to thinking of myself as a brunette is somewhat tempered by the availability of suave's less expensive nod to john frieda - hey, i'll take "radiant" as an adjective any day!

in the interest of traffic safety: free headsets
it hasn't come in the mail yet, and i had started to wonder if this was, in fact, a scam, but i got an e-mail today saying that my order had been shipped. it seems this company has a great desire to lessen the dangers of cell phone using drivers on the road. and since i've become one of Those People, i thought maybe i'd try this out.

music
i'm no authority on this subject, but here are a few sources of quality tunes: the ruf hymnbook and indelible grace projects and the square peg alliance. some other specific artists who come to mind are sara groves (for thoughtful lyrics), the old blind dogs (for being a talented band that puts a modern twist on traditional scottish music), and the biscuit burners (for super fun bluegrass).

smart tv: an oxymoron? you decide.
a year or two ago i was pretty jazzed to run into a program on public tv that airs independent films. the first one i saw was a documentary about two children working in silver mines in peru. powerful stuff. it's called the independent lens. there's another similar program called wide angle. i've only seen a few of the films, but i appreciate the fact that there are some good, informative stories being produced and aired.

breaking the chain: going independent
i can't say that i never shop at chain stores (i recently had occasion to note that michaels has a happy selection of greeting card materials, but hobby lobby still wins the prize for photo albums - back home in cleveland pat catans has the standard stuff and some good surprises), but i really like to support the little guy and shop at local places. a few faves in my current home area are: cox farms for vitamins and healthy food, ben franklin for medicine, the greek bakery & cafe and toshio's for international cuisine even in duncanville, and america's best coffee for free wi-fi and a place to journal. back in the day, amidst efforts to boycott goods produced in unethical fashion, i used to ponder the thought of opening a store where you could shop with a clean conscience. i'm not really the entrepreneurial type, but i'm glad there are some folks who had that kind of idea and the expertise to pull it off - i haven't yet purchased anything from ten thousand villages, but i appreciate the concept.

'cause love is still a worthy cause
as long as i was on the subject of fair trade, i thought i'd throw in a few other organizations that do great things towards meeting physical and spiritual needs. food for the hungry, compassion international, the international justice mission, and project grace are a few that i think deserve mention. a friend who has been doing research that involves visiting a lot of pregnancy-related websites was especially impressed with this one: abort 73. there are some disturbing pictures, but this is a disturbing topic.) and for anyone who stumbles upon this page who might be in the very difficult position of facing an unplanned pregnancy, please know that there is hope and help - here is one site where you can go to find help in your area: Care Net's OptionLine.)

just a few things i thought i'd share, in case they're helpful to anybody else. feel free to add to the list!