i've felt...

a lot of things lately, i suppose, but the looming feeling is unease. maybe someone else should be in charge for awhile, because i don't feel very qualified. most of me feels like a snapshot - i'm five or six, dressed up in adult's clothes. you can practically hear the thumping of nearly hollow shoes on the floor that swallow my feet right up. my arms are lost in the lengths of a sleeves-too-long shirt as four tiny pale fingers have found their way out of the tangled fabric just enough to hold up the waist attached to a flowing skirt. billowing across the floor, long past forgotten knees and ankles and everything else. there's a hat, all askew atop of my head, swallowing most parts of my face as it falls in every direction. my other hand is reaching through all that extra blouse, pushing the giant hat up, just enough to reveal a smile and a look that's caught in between being joyful and concentrating hard to navigate through chaos. i'm perpetually at that state of nearly toppling over, as i try to keep all my pieces in tact along the way.

but, largely, just unqualified. the more i feel like i'm supposed to be becoming refined, wrought with life experience and maturity, more appreciative because of a deeper understanding, the more i just feel like i'm becoming calloused. callousness won't get me anyplace worth being. perhaps i should just go make a snow angel and remember that it's good to be hopeful and have eyes fully capable of seeing beauty.

If we want to be agents of change and love, we must become what Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman calls "a ruthless idealist." You see the world that you want to live in and you live it out. You live as if that world has always been possible. Where love is the highest goal. Where grace restores. Where transformation is a daily way to live. Where passion for the love and redemption is the reason we breath. 

i've been accused of being an idealist a time or two, or thousand. maybe my filter isn't so skewed, after all.

nights like tonight, restlessness is at it's best.

i'm nostalgic and longing, for something i've had before and haven't found again yet - what's it called?

something. something. new, but it's old, maybe it comes and goes, maybe i only feel it through hindsight.

and stop it, we weren't meant to move backwards, suck it up - but just for a moment, could i please wish time to go the way i want it? i'd pick out stars in pennsylvania - not for the company, just for the feelings, the infinite in those moments. and laughter resounding against train's walls, loud and free, spirit filled. nights in the eighty-seven living room, the quiet connection of togetherness. sometimes i hate this big heart.

uncertainty.

after sleeping on a futon mattress for the past six weeks - bed, i do not take you for granted.

i'm no longer taking anything for granted about this place.

it's home, it's a luxury - one that i won't always have. one that i'll probably choose to leave eventually. and in all my restlessness and my itches to fly, it's really great here. i'm soaking it all in.

it's never an empty house,

always someone to eat with, talk with, play with,

fight with. there's that soft warm glow

of life greeting at the doorway, the smell

of seasons and home-cooked meals,

the smell of love.

it's a place to be naked - that is,

completely comfortable

within your own skin

to laugh, cry, yell

to talk aloud to yourself,

to sing horribly off-key while washing the dishes.

no one here cares

what your voice sounds like.

this place

is a place worn from life

its holes in the carpet tell stories

of feet dancing across the floor

and bodies sitting around a fireplace,

a christmas tree, a birthday child. 

they tell stories of existence.

no other arms extend

as widely as these walls stretch

wide and wider still

for me to sink

and breathe

and be wrapped in home.

i'm heavy inside of my chest.

i've been reading a lot of anti/pro pornography/prostitution feminist literature the past few days, wow. it's heavy stuff. i took this brilliant philosophy class my senior year that dealt with all these sorts of topics, namely, linking pornography to intimate violence and oppression toward women. being against pornography as someone who is a follower of christ and raised within the confines of western christianity is a given, something on the list of ways to define christianity. but i want it to be more than that for me, i'm not just blindly following some sort of legalistic structures because i'm told to, or because something is just morally wrong. god doesn't make commands that have no meaning - the bible speaks of purity and opposing sexual immorality for a reason, and i think many of those reasons lie with anti-pornography feminists, as seemingly ironic as it is (being that the generalized projections of feminism and christianity rarely hold hands). but i think that's silly, and being pro-humanity, and pro-justice, we are strong allies. i believe in seeing a better world, and i believe the things they say about pornography to be truth. that it's, on the whole of things, violent, brutal, de-humanizing towards women and children. that it enforces a misogynistic world, as covert or overt as that may be for each of us. i do, however, understand the dangers that go along with censorship, and the damaging effects that legislation against pornography and prostitution could have on women's rights and women in general. i also believe with all of my heart and soul that another world is possible. and another way is possible. it's not action, redemptive violence. it's also not pacifism. it's a third way, the way that jesus used - it's creativity, imagination, ringing in a new way of doing things. 

i imagine jesus suggesting for porn what he suggested about the oppressive roman rule to the jews: if someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. under roman rule, civilians were required and would be (sometimes brutally) forced to carry soldier's gear and walk with them for one mile. it was an assertion of authority from the romans, a reminder of who's in control. here, there was a clear distinction being made between dominant and subordinate. so this law allowed roman soldiers to force a civilian (read:jew) to carry his gear for one mile, but only one mile. any further would be seen as cruelty, and a soldier charged with forcing to someone to carry his stuff for over a mile would be in rebellion of the law. so when jesus tells the people they should carry packs for two miles instead of one, is he just being the kind and generous jesus he is? is he telling us to help people more, to force ourselves to be more selfless? sure, maybe. but given the context and the law of the roman rule, telling people to carry packs two miles is telling them to break the law. he's telling them to do something that is actually pretty badass. his message says carry the pack two miles, because when you do so, you change the power structure. the dominant soldier is now the subordinate. if he doesn't get his stuff back, he could lose his job. and maybe, just maybe, you'll force him to confront the conflict and messiness of this ridiculous power struggle in the first place.

jesus isn't here physically to come up with awesomely brilliant plans like this, but he gave us as followers of him the authority to do the same thing. and i believe at the heart of jesus, nothing was ever a moral issue, it was never an agenda or a plan for control. rather, and at the dismay of many, it was a humanity issue. it was about making the world a better place to live in - the place that god intended. it was about bringing the kingdom of heaven - that is, everything good, beautiful, fulfilling, right - to earth now.

"We have given the pornographers far too much power to construct our sexual imaginations. It is our world, not theirs. It is our world to take back. This is not just about taking back the night, but taking back the whole day, taking back the culture's imagination, taking back the way we see men and women and sex. If we do not, I fear that the light inside us will dim. Our hopes and dreams will be increasingly shaped by the pornographers. And our hopes for a desire based on equality, maybe even the dream of equality, may not survive. I am afraid of that.

We all need to work to make sure that does not happen."

 quote from robert jensen, who i am rapidly starting to adore. the article this came from is here. he co-authored a book called pornography: the production and consumtion of inequality, also wonderful.

the other night after church, i had a beautiful conversation with lovely people, all of whom encompass so much wisdom and intelligence. i left feeling so refreshed, like i had been breathing in clean air. it was a delight.

it got me thinking about faith things, about things like 'being saved' and only reading one specific version of the bible, or handing out tracts to strangers in order to invite them to christ. these things, all in all, feel so wrong to me. there's something deep inside of me that tightens up and presses in, causing me to hold my breath for fear that if this is the truth, i don't think i can stomach it. and so i create within myself mini-crises, because i worry that what i believe is wrong. i worry that seeing god everywhere is a cop-out. i worry that believing in rescuing people from their own hell now isn't as good as rescuing them from the idea of an eternal hell later on. i worry that selflessly serving others is just an after thought, rather than the forefront of following christ. that maybe the forefront really IS just getting people 'saved', making sure they're going to heaven.

but then there's this feeling i get when talking about the things i really believe to be true about following christ. that love really is the law of the land, not justice on people that we think are 'sinful'. that god really is everywhere, and he calls over and over and over for selfless service. not for bible tracts. that following jesus is about the here and now first, not the distant afterworld. and it's not an emotion that i feel, or a longing for these things to be true. it's something that resonates deep in my core, in my soul, that shouts a resounding yes. these are the things we're meant to live for. these things are truth, and nothing else really matters.

i hope i never become so legalistic that i miss out on the way god moves through the branches of the trees.

so like everyone i know, i've gone and jumped on the glee bandwagon. a little late, maybe, but i've now caught myself up to present speed. and at first, i couldn't understand what everyone's, including my own, fascination with the show is. yes, it's quirky, and cute - but it sort of reminds me of old after school television (like the tv adaption of clueless), or it's a little bit reminiscent of ugly betty, which i guess was/is a popular show, but only appeals to a few. everywhere, everyone i know is talking about glee. my intelligent, snarky friends love it. my friends that i would expect to like it, like it. my mom loves it. multitudes of both male and female friends love it. my pastor loves it. i simply couldn't understand this phenomenon. it's a whisper away from high school musical, throw in a few adult references and zac efron may as well be the star. the storyline is mostly predictable, the characters are stereotypical and politically correct, and there aren't any big named stars - not even underground big named stars, as the show's fallback. so what is it?

i'm still not entirely sure. all i can reason is my own love for the show. it comes because i am cheesy. and easily entertained. and maybe, (mostly) it's because i can live vicariously through the girls on the show who have amazing skills - something i always dreamed of in high school. having a pretty voice, being the star of an actual, live show - that would have made my life in high school. so maybe that's it, maybe that's what it is for everyone. there's a little bit of something for everyone in that, being able to live vicariously through these high school kids, the things we weren't able to do in high school, or the things we did that just weren't cool. making things like band and chorus socially acceptable. making being in a wheelchair okay, getting pregnant in high school okay, having a developmentally disabled person become a cheerleader okay.

so with all things that i read too deeply into, i'm hopeful with a show like this. what if this influences kids in ways that we were never influenced in high school? to allow kids to break from their rigid social roles and realize that's not how it is in real life? could you imagine the amazing things that would ensue if children were pushed to follow their dreams, rather than the dreams of their parents or the dreams of what is socially acceptable? it would be unbelievable. it's okay to know yourself. to learn how to be comfortable in your own skin. to stand up for your beliefs, values, interests, for yourself - and not be ashamed of what others think. and i'm hoping that's the underlying message glee is trying to send. i'm hoping, even if it isn't, that's the message that gets sent anyway. because it's a good one.