5 am brings ambition.

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Emily Hinman to paul.lundblad

show details 5:06 AM (20 hours ago)

Dear Paul,

Hello! I hope that you are doing well, first off. I hope that you are having a good season and will have a wonderful new year. I know that this may be completely unprofessional of me to write an email like this, but..I'm not looking to be professional, I suppose this is just a calling on my life, and to not respond to it would be disobeying God. Let me prerequisite this letter by telling you I'm a Philosophy undergrad at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. That's really not important, but I want you to know I'm actually studying Philosophy..Ihave been listening to RZIM since I was very young as my dad used to play the recordings over Moody Radio on the way to church. Ever since I was little I was enthralled with asking questions, whatever I could analyze to the core, I would. I, at some point, as a result became really fascinated with RZIM's ministry. I completely agree with Ravi when he says "What I believe in my heart must also make sense in my mind" and see that there are so many opportunities where I can learn more and gain more wisdom in this world to only increase my ministry that much more. How can I approach those with a background I'm so unfamiliar with? How can I love the unloved and unapproachable without being loving and able to be approached? but at the same time I believe if my wisdom is rooted in God I am not persuaded by these ideals and philosophies, I don't need them to talk to these people, but I think it does help. Anyway, for a long time I've just been coming to the RZIM website to pray. To listen to the messages online and to just meditate on what Scripture has laid out for me to do in life basically..and I feel the Spirit so strongly (and I'm such a logic, level headed person, so this doesn't come to often) but I feel God so strongly when I go over this ministry. I am so greatful for everyone God has in this team because they've all played a part in some way to touch the masses across the whole world. I didn't start this email with an objective goal, I just knew that God has been putting this ministry on my heart for a long time..and Just recently I came back to the website to find that there are internship opportunities. I am seriously overjoyed. Know that in the next semester's months I will be sending in my application with much prayer and much preparation. One of the struggles I've always had has been being a prestigious student, I've strove for good grades since the day I entered college but never have gotten above a 3.0 grade point average, I've tried to make up for it by being distinguishable in any other area I could be. I went overseas and went to five other countries and learned other cultures, I'm president of my school's Philosophy club, I have joined book clubs, attended all sorts of meetings, and enjoy Apologetics to the core. But none of those works have ever merited me anything if they weren't based on furthering His kingdom, they're just copied deeds of this earth that try to get you somewhere in life, when life is temporary, and my site is eternal. I don't mind not having a prestigious career or having the American dream, or even having money in my pockets when I die. But I do know that I will be the poorest girl on earth, if I haven't served the purpose God has for my life..of helping the insecure preaching of Christianity, where we build castles in the sky off of our emotions because we don't want to ask the bigger questions, where we believe God is indifferent to us and doesn't want to know our concerns or questions. I think RZIM agrees with me when I say, my God is not like that. I'm not trying to gain any sort of appeal to you to accept my application later on, or even to you as a person, know this. I just know that most of my life is a blur until God shows me whats ahead..or until i decide to listen, and I can see myself in this ministry if one day considered. As a personal request, I just ask that you would prayerfully see me through this, and reassure that this is not just on my heart and head, but that it is also God's will and I'm not lead astray by selfish desire.

Thank you for your time,

God bless you with the gift of Jesus Christ, (because He did, and He does, and He will),

Emily Hinman

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Paul Lundblad to me

show details 10:28 AM (14 hours ago)

Dear Emily,

Thank you so much for sharing your heart. I am truly moved by your letter and request. May God bless you exceptionally well during these days as you honor Him.

Please allow me some time to consider a more thorough response. It may be the first days of 2010 before I am able to do this.

Meanwhile, I'll pray that you have a wonderful New Years weekend and wonderful new year.

Thank you for writing, your interest in our ministry, and most of all for your love for God. I pray that He will lead you step by step throughout the coming days and you will continue to have joy and peace, knowing that He loves you so much.

In Christ,

Paul

Paul D. Lundblad
Vice President, International Affairs
paul.lundblad@rzim.org
Main: (770) 810-4216
Fax: (770) 810-4215
	www.rzim.org	Office (770) 449-6766
	4725 Peachtree Corners Circle Suite 250
	Norcross, GA 30092

---

From: Emily Hinman [mailto:spellboundphilosophy@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 5:07 AM
To: Paul Lundblad
Subject: Internship

- Show quoted text -

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this is where I started this blog, and all the previous ones are ones I have written on the course of finding out I could go to Liverpool, preparing for England, being in England, and now I am home.

I think this requires a new start, and I got tired of how tumblr was more of an artsy and media blog than an actual blog...to risk sounding like the biggest hipster of all. I think this is better, because people write more words here instead of just posting other peoples pictures, music, or one liners. Thats all well and good..but I think that we recycle words too much already, we recycle art too much already too because we think everything creative has already been done. But obviously it hasn't. This world needs more words, influential ones. I didn't say regurgitated or recycled words, ..i meant words with power, words trying to converse in dialectical form, a conversation between the creation and created, trying to make sense of where we are and how we got there, and where we should be.

I'm home.

I still can't believe it.

I don't think the transition is going very well. Not because I miss Liverpool, I do..but not because of that. just because as soon as I got home I felt so shocked and misplaced. And yet life goes on. with or without me. I don't feel like my family really cares to know or wants to know about me or my time, only the things that will be interesting to them..which is fine,..I can't answer broad questions like "how was england!" or "did you have a good time?" as if I was only there for a day. I thinkI do better with specifics..yet no one cares enough to ask specifics. When I think people don't care, or when I think people are faking their enthusiasm towards me, it makes me not want to talk at all. Needless to say, I'vebeen very quiet. It's not my familys fault, or anyones in particular, its a personality clash. I just feel so out of place at home, but I'm too stubborn, and my family is too stubborn to change. It's dna at its finest. I just can't stand ..ingenuinity. and I feel like theres so much of it around here to try and please everyone.

anyway. its Christmas eve today. I feel as though everyone I love is celebrating this holiday spread out across the earth, everyone I love is in a different place now..I like that. Screw the stereotype of being together, because we can love each other from this far away just the same. :)

I shouldn't be complaining about my family or transition right now when at least I got the opportunity and some people can't even afford to be together on Christmas or have a Christmas. Its so much more than that though, because if Christmas were just about getting together...I probably wouldn't be excited about it at all. But its the concept to verify that at least once a year people entertain the existence of God. If all else, thats what I'm greatful for..maybe they entertain that there isn't one or that their might be..but at least the thought is there, at least that much..

Wed, Dec 16 09

Emily Hinman is home from studying abroad in Liverpool. She called me. I missed it. I am bummed.

still love you with my whole heart :)

reblogged from :Jordan

Tues Dec 8, 09

Its only adequate to speak about love when in love

its only adequate to be, when you are

Sat Dec 5, 09

via lilitu

Mon Nov 30, 09

via kristintastic

Fri Nov 27, 09

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in the emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendour of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity. Hence I do nothing more to religion- and to speculative philosophy and theology also- than to open its eyes, or rather turn its gaze from the internal towards the external i.e. I change the object as it is in the imagination into the object as it is in reality.

-Feurerbach

Fri Nov 27, 09

reblogged from: Gatekeeper

“ Understand this: that love is a religion of birds, of restlessness, of flight. Of moving somewhere warmer when the cold sets in, of longing, of leaving, of being the one left behind, of feathers, of an empty nest in the heart of winter, nestled in some firm elbow of brittle branches that stopped reaching for the sky when the last leaf fell, bleak against a landscape of blacks and whites and greys save for one little piece of red string, tucked lovingly among the twigs, so dutifully gathered, piece by piece, by a creature who had seen winters before, but made a home for himself here anyway. Of leaving pieces. (via gatekeeper)

Thurs Nov 26, 09

Why is it just one day we set a time to be thankful for things in our lives? I know people often say that..but really? The greatest thing I was thankful for today was that I was at loss for time to count all of the things I’m thankful for. When you realize it would take more of a day to list, and even when you did by that time you’d have so many more things to also be thankful, you realize how wonderful life really is.

I think if we had a pessimist day it wouldn’t turn out as well.

(This is the day all of us foreigners from the Liverpool Hope campus got together and had thanksgiving at the carvery near the school.:))

Wed Nov 25, 09

via lilitu

Tues Nov 24, 09 - I'll write about Rome later

For now, I can’t really write about things that aren’t on my mind. I don’t often get inspired to write something…and if I do its at a really inconvenient time like right in the morning or in the middle of the day. I wish I wrote down those thoughts more though..because I think I’m going to remember them, and I never do. Sad thing, memory.

Right now I am reading up on some material to write an essay about Marx, and I came across one of his inspirations’ pieces and began to think instead of read. I can’t concentrate when this happens so I usually just shut the book, let em go and then decide if I’m going to do anything about it. Usually I don’t, usually its just in a storehouse somewhere in my brain where years from now I think it’ll come up in a conversation..who knows. A few weeks ago when I woke up the only thing I was thinking about was if indeed there was life on other planets..and maybe life in other Universes, if God died for them too. crazy to think about

okay

so my original intent in writing this was to suggest that maybe if we took away all the outer aspects of everything this world has fed us, and get down to the basics, we would realize that is all we need to know we need God. Our thought alone ..our senses alone (Which was another thought I had - which comes first, thinking or senses?) but regardless, our thought combined with senses alone abandoned by all possible influences (obviously we can’t change what kind of environment the earth has as a whole and the effects we were born with) but if you take away what you think benefits you, what people tell you, what church’s even feed your emotions with, if you think of yourself in a lone room with the only basic needs of survival around you none of that is included. I guess what I mean is we’ve made it a lot more complicated than it actually is.

We rely on matter, material and what’s already put in existence to gain inspiration from and develop new ideas and concepts, and in that way we’ve gone backwards as a society, you can’t take something that was already created and create ideas of how it was created out of that - it must first be a concept to be created, one which we can toss around ideas of how it was and where it’s leading, but ultimately that concept is whats important, whats true. It wasn’t matter first and then creation. It was a Creator and then matter.

Keeping that in mind, and my own self in mind. I think about the things I need to survive on this earth, water, oxygen, reason for thought. I think and I sense, therefore I exist, and if I exist there has to be a reason for me to be created to exist, and because of that I depend on whoever created me. I don’t depend on people using religion as a way of controlling people, or people acting as hypocrites to religion to magnify their own ego, or people making up religions/ideas of their own, or people creating God in their own image, whatever liberal theology is handed to me to tell me in lamen’s terms that all roads lead to one place and that I can think one way and another person can another way but ultimately it doesn’t matter and whoever is the deity will forgive our apathy - whatever we do with the image of God doesn’t matter, He’s still God, and at the basic realm of life, I still need Him. I don’t need anything else.

Resting on myself alone, I can’t. and I can’t be satisfied with anything this world tries to offer me to further the content with my own selfishness and greed. No matter what, I will still be unsatisfied because I’ve filled up every chasm in my heart with material, and yet its floating on a bed of temporary air, no longer held safe by a Creator who in one hand rests my heart and the other my head, my capacity to long for Him. I can’t imagine what it would be to wake up everyday questioning my existence and telling myself a lie that those questions are brought on by my environment, by people’s influence, by things that have happened to me and therefore my emotional need, that society has constructed religion, and as a result, God. When the basic necessity I have isn’t about an emotion, or a gravitation or a feeling that this is right, or logical necessity - even though that still follows suite - Its about my deprivation as a human, that I was created just to show the ability of God’s love and every lie I try to convince myself daily that this world was created for me to wonder through it aimlessly slips off my head when I realize how outside my body I feel, how lonely my body is apart from my soul.
I don’t own this thing at all, I’m just a soul contained in it, so how could I think I have any reservation or any place but what I’ve been created for. The beautiful thing about this is just because I’ve been created for love doesn’t mean I have to live by it. I can stagger my way through life thinking eventually I’ll come across my true purpose by science or by reason or by theory but ultimately just being satisfied by the next best thing or I can examine myself from the ground up, that just a minute ago I was a thought in God’s mind, and now I’m here as witness that his thoughts don’t stop.

Fri, Nov 20, 09

What else can I do but your way

Sun Nov 15, 09

I’m grateful to be a potential made by an actual.

Sun Nov 15, 09 - My mom. Is amazing

• [11/14/2009 5: 09:58 PM] Shirley Hinman: lOVE YA ANYWAY. i'M DYING MY HAIR, GUESS i MISSED YER CALL. dAD WILL BE HERE SUN NT IF YA WANT TO TRY, OR YOU CAN CALL ME AT 1 MY TIME, 8 A.M OR 9 AM YOUR TIME ON SUN. NOV 15.
• [11/14/2009 5: 10:30 PM] Shirley Hinman: BYE, LOVE MOM. iM STILL DYING MY HAIR AND HAVE DYD IN IT NOW.
• Emily: love ya ya gay
• Emily: did i get a package?
• Shirley Hinman: Love you too, be sure to call laterif you can. I am busy now,
• Emily: i cant its too late. stupid time difference. i talked to dad yesterday though
• Shirley Hinman: but dad should be here by about 6 our time, 11 your time. can you calll then or at least call at 10:30 your time??? Bye for now. I haven't been out at all.
• Shirley Hinman: My hair came out dark. And I've just been working on plans and practicing for a Christmas show at school
• Shirley Hinman: Call laterif ya can ok?
• Emily: okay if i am up but im not sure i will be
• Emily: it gets dark at 4:00 in the afternoon here so it gets me really tired
• Shirley Hinman: Make it10 or 5 your time, isthat ok? If not, I'll catch you soon. Bye. Love ya.
• Emily: i am ahead of you in time! not the other way around
• Emily: its already 8:30
• Shirley Hinman: Are you taking vitamins? I know, you have 5 p.m. when we are 10 p.m. right?
• Emily: no the other way around
• Emily: its 10:00 here when its five there
• Emily: although i think we're on a six hour difference now
• Emily: is it 3:30 there or 2:30?
• Shirley Hinman: I'll call you at 5:00 here then, nerd!
• Emily: youre a nerd! :)
• Shirley Hinman: Jeep!!!
• Emily: jeep?
• Shirley Hinman: I'll just call you then, Noel may not be home yet, as he had to take a later flight, due to Martha sending 49 extra pounds of stuff with him that he had to check baggage for.
• Shirley Hinman: So I'll just call ya if nothing else, love ya.
• Emily: i love how you knew it was exactly 49 pounds
• Emily: okay. love ya too
• Shirley Hinman: He told me.
• Emily: i know you were just so precise
• Emily: ill talk to you later!

Nov 14, 2009 - Absence makes the heart grow stronger?

I know this [quote] is true, and I know that right now I'm probably just being overananalytic (if there is such a thing) I just can't seem to have a level head about anything right now. I know that I am learning so much, but your heart grows weak when all the thoughts you have are jumbled together and not shared with anyone. I generally don't care that I am heard or even talked to but when you can't see what or where your ideas are going to play into life you feel so selfish and so isolated from everything. I've spent the whole day in my room learning about Kant and though I feel so strongly on the subject, I know these ideas are just going to remain in my head because i feel so uncomfortable and so out of sync with the rest of everyone else - its almost as if someone has to start off a sentence and I will finish it, i can't start it off myself. I feel so distant from everything, I feel so close to God when I am outside and when I've set aside time for him but He's really allowing me to see how lonely I can make myself.

its almost as if everyone my age has started their life- no matter where [geographically] and by influence of their environment theyve all learned to talk and write and speak correspondingly, and I just don't know how. I feel so awkward all of the time, i just don't feel like I fit. at all. I feel like I was wrought for another generation, but I don't know what generation that would be because i just don't feel at place anywhere. Which I know is a good thing in a sense, I mean in the Bible it says we are strangers of this earth and our kingdom is elsewhere,..but I mean just in the reality of things..I get so passive and so stressed over the littlest things yet can feel so relaxed and laid back over anything concerning my life. It's like I'm okay by myself, but I'm constantly in thought over other people that theyre stresses begin to be my own.

If you listen to the words of Bon Iver's song flume - he says

"Only love is all maroon,

lapping lakes like leery loons"

and Everyone has a different opinion of what this obscure lyric means, I'm sure to a lot of people it just looks like a piece of trying to be individual emotional angst, but whatever. why does music ever deserve to be depreciated when made fair, as in, created by someone who felt it, so what if its emotional, its supposed to be. to me I see this as maroon being that color- when you visualize - so rich and passionate yet such a harsh painful color at the same time, almost like a blur of equally characterized opposites, for instance when you're in love without conditions and are struggling to do everything you can without considering yourself at all. the weight of passion included in realizing how selfish your akin to be and how not youre trying to become for another, and at the same time the fervor you put into it, the time you spend without expecting anything in return and with no idea in mind of any distant focal point to aim for. Only love is that way, however painful it might be.

and a loon, as I'm told is the state bird of Minnesota which happens to be a very eery unexpected and mysterious kind of a creature that delves into water and comes up hundreds of feet away, just the imagery of this is amazing. those two vastly different lines i think come together to maybe tell of unexpectancies, of ourselves, of our ambition, of love itself. what we put in is what we wish to receive in return at most times, whether subconsciously or consciously, but in the end we get way more than we sought, by growth. its when people show for us nothing in return when they had the same advantage that we start feeling used, but why do we feel used.

I feel as though in my mind I've set up a place of comfort where I feel the most at home, and whoever I meet has a requirement to abide by that or fit into that environment. Almost like in my head theres a living room and theres only so many people that would go along with that environment..and it makes me see people for what i think they do wrongly, not focusing on the good things they do but what I see them do wrong.

we a lot of the times see in people the opposite of the traits we believe we have - as in, if I think I'm really patient..its easy for me to see others impatience, or if I think I'm really selfless, I see other people's selfishness. Ironically it takes a dramatic situation before we realize maybe we're arrogant and someone else is humble.

when you say youre in love, does it mean you're in love so long as some point in life the person youre in love with will regard it, or benefit you in return, or balance your qualities, or profit your life? or does it mean that you truly are in love with that person's qualities without reciprocation on your end, without regard and without display

i just don't know.

but I think I've gotten myself deeper than I thought.

A lot of the times I get angry when philosophers or just anyone in general tries to sound more intelligent than they are by words or by generic body language, I wish that they would just say what they think instead of weighing it down with terms people don't understand..but lately i've been seeing how beautiful proper language is, and that if we keep dumbing it down the future of language is at stake, while if we continue to speak educatedly we'll influence eloquence. I really don't know where this came from.

I hate speaking from my heart more than my head. and I feel like I just did that. but sometimes it's good to just be whatever you are for the moment to sit back and notice it, otherwise when you try to go back and write something else, it isn't genuine.

Sat Nov 14, 09

how can something be this beautiful

Thurs Nov 12, 09

When you are at sea, keep clear of the land.

[had to reblog this, love :)]

-m

Nov 8, 09 --Motorcycle Maintenence

I haven't been feeling well much lately so yesterday morning I got up early and took a walk for some fresh air. I'm sick of starting my day late, because it gets dark around 4 and its just kinda depressing. This really helped though,

something about those pearly gray skies just endlessly sweep every thought in your head away . in my case it was sweeping all of the prevalent thoughts in my head that don't matter away and concentrating on what I came here for. I need to remind myself daily that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I don't know when I'll be able to come back, and I'm across the world. I shouldn't just live as though I do everyday where I take things for granted and assume they'll be there the next day. I shouldn't even do that at home, but perhaps this will be a lesson to me.

I hate that the most prevalent things on your mind are seemingly the ones least important...I hold off on dwelling about the most important thoughts because I know they will take time and effort, I know they'll always be there resting and waiting on me to sort through them..so I just let them be. and they grow, and grow. Till finally you get to a place where I was yesterday, walking outside here

I look at those leaves so smashed into the pavement from the tread of people walking all over them, how beautiful they still are while they were in the trees and now going back to the earth where they started. they paint the ground with their colors and even the mud can't cover it up all the way. Its just incredible. I feel so privileged to live on this earth.

Anyway. I am on this walk, and once I get one question out, a number of others ones come right alongside of it. I've almost cornered God and I won't let him leave my conscious until he's given me a broad definition so I can go back and think about (but not really, cause im too protective of my thoughts) telling others of how He showed me outrightly what I was looking for. I'll just put it bluntly, I seek in God that which I predict He'll say. I realize this a lot more lately, after reading some philosophy of a very prevalent Marxist. Although I don't agree with what he says for the most part, I did resonate with something he said in a passage i read the other day. It was something like "to believe is to just increase the nihilism of man, he martyrs himself for his own sustainment and self righteousness and prays not out of desire, but duty - he receives word from God out of his own conscience, picking and choosing words "from God""--- that was entirely a summary and nothing at all like what I read, but maybe i'll get the real text later on here. the point is, a lot of the times I learn, I seek, and I argue about God and the topics surrounding God and in that sense I learn about Him but I don't learn through Him, I don't speak TO him I speak about Him, and in that sense..through my intellect, I prescribe qualities more of what I like about Him and not what He truly is

so I'm on this walk trying to just talk to God, not talk about Him or tell Him why I love Him or be a conversation with primarily me talking ..I actually just talked to Him, like normal, and waited for a response, like normal. But instead of having in mind things I would preconceive He would say, I apologized for trying to predict them. In a split second of what wasn't even words but a combination of breath, air, image, and my brain responding to my soul God showed me that just like the river and the nature around me I was in His world, not He was in mine. I don't mean that as He's not involved in mine - I mean it as though, I can't go around corrupting my own system..creating a world in which I solve it at the same time, adding God whenever need be and asking Him only when I require assistance

He's a real God. and everyday by dusk I realize that, and everyday at dawn I wonder how I was so convinced the night prior, because I have difficulty again.

A lot of people have trouble knowing God is real, I am the exact opposite, I know He is, I know it with my whole head. It is the believing I have trouble with, I know it, but I have trouble believing it. Cause it is easy for me to obey his Word, but its hard for me to grasp it. I don't know the connection yet between my heart and head..but somewhere its there. I just know that the best part of my life is finding a new reason everyday why I do believe, and that comes from knowing.

as in. a lot of people spend their whole life trying to know why God exists, and everyday i wake up ready for God to show me another reason to believe in Him, because I know him. He knows me,

better than I know Him.

I can't believe I am this loved. I cant believe I have the freedom to question my own God and He still loves me.

I thought about it today if someone asked me "Whos the supreme being of this world concrete answer" and at first i thought it was kind of ..cocky sounding and maybe even subjective to say "God, as in the Trinity three in one" --but the fact that I figured that as cocky sounding is just a result of my own insecurity. Why should anyone take any offense from that which is absolutely, objectively true. It may be also true in my opinion, but primarily, its true. It's been out there since the beginning of time, floating amonst us waiting to be discovered, we just haven't noticed it.

Do you think gravity didn't exist before we noticed it?

okay. so I'm tired,

I open up way too much on this thing. I never do this elsewhere. no idea where it comes from.

Sun Nov 8, 09

I hate when you have ideas to write about ..but then you forget them later on, or a bunch of stuff that you want to remember for the rest of your life..but then when you go to write it down, absolutely gone. awesome.

couple quotes from today that I want to jot down

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. -Kierkegaard

And faith is concerned with a decision once for all. Faith is not an opinion replaceable by another opinion. A temporary believer does not know what faith is. Faith means a final relationship. Faith is concerned with God with what He has done for us once for all. That doesnt exclude the fact that there are fluctuations in faith, But seen with regard to the object, faith is a final thing. A man who believes once believes once for all. Don’t be afraid; regard everything as an invitation. Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised he ought to not take his unbelief so seriously. - Karl Barth

..Revelation is meant t be understood, but to understand means to bring within some universe of discourse. Even a theology of the Word of God cannot avoid using the words of men.

But he has acquired the freedom to enjoy moral difficulties only at the cost of renouncing obedience. it is a retreat from the reality of God to the speculations of man, from faith to doubt. DB

You are not saved by grace and strengthened by works. -TS

Fri Nov 6, 09 - blogged by a very close friends

Observation 1:
No one truly realizes how beautiful they are. They focus on their imperfections and automatically consider themselves ugly. It doesn’t matter if you are too short, too tall, you have pimples, your nose is crooked or if your hair is all jacked. Doesn’t matter. These things are not what make people beautiful.
Smile more. You’re all so beautiful.
Observation 2:
Having any form of belief makes you look crazy.
but having no beliefs makes you envious in your isolation.

Tues Nov 3, 09

God has maybe taken me away from everything, to show me he can take everything away. I am the only one holding myself back from him,

I reach but then I push when I get to close

Fri, Oct 30, 09

How sweet it is to be loved by you.

Oct 28, 09

Dec 2,

Barcelona, Spain

La Sala Bikini

Oct 27, 09 on Missing someone

I wonder if missing someone is inadvertently selfish. You subjectively place all the characteristics they gave you of themselves, attributing the most outstanding ones at the top of the list and use it to remind yourself of that person. As soon as your away from that person, they are no longer there to correct your misjudgments or prove your conceptions of them correct, so whats left? Memory, and apart from seeing that person again it is the only piece we have of them. And the more we are away, the more the person becomes what we think more than who they are, if not corrected by they themselves. We may see photographs or read about them or even from them, but something must be initiated in our memory about them at first to be kept fed. I dearly miss my friends. I say that as if I am watching them from far away, and they are caught up in whatever they’re doing and don’t notice me admiring them. So that I can just truly long to see whatever they are enjoying, outside of what I think and wish that I were closer to enjoy it more. I guess in this way, it doesn’t matter how they benefit me, because what benefits me is what they enjoy doing. I can’t really make that up in my head. There are some people that I would just enjoy being inside their heads for a day. It helps to be able to talk and hear from people back home, but somewhere the reciprocal understanding of each other dims, somewhere in the middle of the atlantic. Because, I’m not there and they aren’t here, and understanding goes along with similar experience.

I’m finding what it means to long for certain aspects. I would long to tease my mom in person and watch her roll her eyes, I would long to watch my dad try to muster a huge laugh. I would long to be in Muncie for experiences that don’t come twice, to hear Maya talk about her passion (of the day), to pick up leaves with Chloe, to see Jakes perseverance and his journey, to play with Wednesday with Ashley..to Talk to Ben, -how I would long. I would love to just sit with Jordan, Al and Jack. I would love to have coffee with Kev Rhodes. I would sell all I have to see Stevie for an hour, we are like CS Lewis and JR Tolkien, and how I would give just to be at Philosophy club. There’s so many things I long for, and yet I am at peace everyday knowing that however much I want to be home protecting the things I love, God is protecting them for me. The love I cannot give out of my absence, I pray He flows over abundantly to them, showing them how imperfect mine is and how profoundly sufficient his is.

I do not long because I am absent of, no. I long because I never recognized that I wasn’t. Absence makes the heart grow fond, yet when you realize absence never was and never is, your heart is fond. My heart is full of joy, I am just sad that I cannot share it with you, when you are the ones that deserve it.

How beautifully painful it is to see I have every need fulfilled. God is just, and He is good.

Tues Oct 27

Mon Oct 26, 09 - I haven't written in awhile

I guess i’m so concerned with living it up while being here as much as I can that I forget to jot down all the thoughts contained in that. Even if i’m doing absolutely nothing - to not appreciate that I’m doing absolutely nothing and to fill it with something like writing about me doing nothing seems too meticulous. Life is just what it is, slow, fast, but always perceptive - not just perceptive..but you know what i mean. I tried to look at my life as a descriptional column today and realized I’m probably the most boring sounding person in the Universe.

What are your hobbies? Reading, ..hearing Philosophy, conversing about really deep stuff.

What do you do in your spare time? Read, go on walks, pick up leaves, admire nature, listen to music, drink coffee

Whats the most interesting thing about you? I can bend my thumb back and my knees are weird.

I just sound so..i dunno..like I don’t do anything, haha. And to be honest, I really don’t do much. My life is really spent on the simple pleasures, and I guess I enjoy that. But I’m such an ambitious girl that the simple pleasures often get mixed up. For instance, I want to go to Spain or Amsterdam next month - not to see famous sites or anything like that (I mean I will, but) for the majority of the reason is to see my favorite artist play. To watch my favorite voice perform across the world, thats more than anything I could ask for, and to watch it with people across the world loving it just as much as me, well.thats abundance of grace.

In Ireland, the best part of my whole trip there was just looking around me. I didn’t care where I was I was just awed. You break down your scenery to what was and then what now is..and for me all that was, is the most important. Thats what will stand the test of time, the trees, the scent of the air, the way that people react to their environment, how sturdy i feel the ground is holding me. We saw a castle made of stones, put in place one by one so intricately to form this entire structure, one by one, just incredible. I feel like its this false illusion too. Cause for me, basic nature is more exciting than anything ever built, yet we try to fortress even more beautiful things around it to distract us.

I just can’t get out of my head that things are so temporary sometimes. It’s frightening to me to see modern buildings and huge jumbo trons and screens everywhere I go. Screens of live people filmed, when their is live people around us anyway! Why are we more distracted by watching our world on television than watching it in real life? Thats why I really love art, because you take something temporary and make it last. Maybe its something mundane to everyone else, but the fact that you spent so much time on a piece so delicate..that says something about that place in time. You pick one setting, among millions of choices and choose to keep it. So its kept.

I can’t believe the world I live in right now. Everyday I wake up thinking I’m somewhere else and I always have to convince myself I’m in England. Theres something here that doesn’t feel like home, because it isn’t..but I’m so greatful to be in it. I look forward to the time I’m home just to take in what I experienced here, but then I get mad at myself for not taking my experience here more seriously. I thought about when I will get home tonight, about how when I get home I know I’ll recall how many people I saw who didn’t even know what earnest love was and how I didn’t show them my greatest interpretation of it ..and I got really sad, a sincere disappointment in myself, for things to come that I haven’t even been rightly guilty of yet. You expect yourself to sin, and because of that, you do.

I get so confused with myself. For the few months before this I knew I was meant for this trip and I knew that for some reason, God chose me and would send me here. And yet every day I just question my significance. Why was it me, the introverted shy, not really apt to talking about my faith one to go. I just don’t feel i’m making a difference, and perhaps I am but I really don’t know how to go about this. It seems so much easier in my head than when I actually try to talk to people.

I don’t want to think too egotistically that everywhere I go I have to make a difference and people should remember me and blah blah. For all I know this could be Gods way of secluding me from home so he can rebuild me in my head. I don’t know. I know I am growing, it’s just not in the way I fashioned. Which is probably a good thing.

I know one thing is for certain, and to know one thing for certain in such a subjective world would be considered subjective, If it wasn’t built objectively- In the Beginning, God. and because of that, I know everything after comes with “I’ll be okay.” Wherever I am, whatever I do, I’ll be okay for His glory. I can say that when I’m at my lowest, and I can more easily say it when I’m happy..but regardless, I’ll humbly know I always have to follow. Follow after him, follow after his Word, and follow after “made the heavens and the.”

Mon Oct 26, 09

“ The more exclusive we are to Jesus Christ, The more inclusive we are to the world. The more confident we are, the more welcoming we’ll be.thought

Mon - Oct 26,09 - Exerpts of Costly grace by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolations of his grace- that is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow upon ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church doctrine, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field, for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and it is grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son, and above all it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.

Cheap grace has turned out to be utterly merciless. Instead of opening up the way to Christ it has closed it. Instead of calling us to follow Christ, it has hardened us in our disobedience.

Happy are they who, knowing grace can live in the world without being of it, who, by following Jesus are assured of their heavenly citizenship that they are truly free to live their lives in this world. Happy are they that know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship. Happy are they who have become Christians in the sense of the word. For them the word of grace has proved a fount of mercy.

Mon Oct 19, 09 - Oh the simple joys in life

its around 12 am. this could quite possibly be my favorite time of day. When everyones left to themselves, you know that most people my age aren’t asleep, but they are on their own at this time. It’s like a silent understanding, I have to go be alone now. I have a big mug of tea steaming to my right and a few buiscuits beside it. and the only sound i can hear is the sound of me typing and the creak of the keypad as i lean my palms against it. Its moments like this, when it seems like the whole world is at rest, not asleep, but okay with just letting things be whatever they are. All the angst, anxiety and stress of a day seems to just go for the moment. I know that its been phrased to stand still while the earth is moving, but i wonder what it would be like to move while the earth is still. I really wonder what it would be like. I feel like that sometimes, but i obviously am carried by the tide, forcefully or willingfully. It would just be nice to go around examining things in the stillness of air, carrying about your normal day but this time having a chance to really assess things for what they are without someone casting a glance at you for looking at them too long, having a childlike awe without being accused of being childish.

this weekend we all went to dublin and cork, ireland. Something about that place is so alive, you wouldn’t think with an overcast sky that you would feel so alive but you do. I think its the green. I don’t just mean the grass or the mossy covered trees. It overtakes everything. Almost as if even the most old and unappreciated parts of the city couldn’t stop the flourish, everywhere you look theres little sprouts of color, even where it seems its the dreariest, even where it seems theres lack of any color at all, something grows. And it doesn’t grow faint either, in a world so blended of pearly whites and grays precipitating over everything, you’d think the grass and the trees would come out looking the same, but they show their most vibrant colors. the drear gets swarmed by the most golden yellows and the most chlorophylled greens ranging from the highlight to the shadow theres at least twenty shades involved. We went to an open market with the best food I’ve had in a long time, if not ever. Theres a difference between food, and food, I know now. The hands that offered it across the displays were hands grateful to share. Encouraging hands to let others know their passion. These people came from all over and brought the best materials together to make the most fascinating assortments one can only find in gatherings of their same kind. There wasn’t one fruit, one cake, one piece of chocolate, one breadcrumb, slice of meat, piece of fish, or piece of pasta that wasn’t carefully thought out, hand prepared, and considered a prize to those whod receive. The prices of these foods weren’t high, because you can’t put prices on these types of things, it really is an art. I had a cup of coffee grounded right in front of me, and after a croissant from a woman who cupped my hands as she handed it to me. What a lovely breakfast. After finishing it, and looking over at my friends who had ordered orange juice squeezed in front of their very eyes, there was this feeling of good intention. In my thoughts, God intended us to have nourishment to live, and to be creative with that nourishment but to not get away with what its supposed to be purposed for. And this, was that. I didn’t feel lacking, or sick, or compliant or just satisfied like many of the ways i feel after eating normally, i felt good. I felt alive, i felt joy. Such vast but under appreciated things in life like nature and nourishment are well often overlooked. I thought I’d write about them not because they are, but because I wanted to.

Thurs Oct 15, 09

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

CS Lewis

Wed Oct 14, 09

“ and ever since i just…..well, i dont talk much about it, cuz i dont, but i want to live for God. whatever i do, i want to make the world better somehow, and in the name of God. i dont know how yet. but i want to. it’s like, i have this idea in my head, and i didnt come up with it, and i dont even know what that idea is, but eventually, the haze will be lifted and i’ll know. i feel that way, anyways. j

Wed Oct 7, 09 - Jesus Culture

Tonight this girl from Scotland who didn’t even know me told me she was praying and God showed her that I resembled a pillar. That I was rising up out of something either in myself or amongst a group of people.

hmm.

Church is different here, different in that its almost the same, and I didn’t think it would be. So I guess different from my expectations.

hmm, i dunno I’ll write later. something i found funny though - said in philo class of course

“I have no choice but to have free will”