Yes. It's true. I am back from St. Louis. My life is not exactly blog-friendly right now. Time is the enemy. But I was thinking today (weird eh?!) so here is an entry of questions inspired by my trip (but in no way an update of all that was learned. That'll have to wait):
If I had a dime for every time I was told, "It'll never change," "She/He will never change," "You need to let that go; it's useless," etc. I would be filthy rich. Like, I could go shopping with the Olsen twins kind of rich. What I want to know is WHY?! I realize that I'm younger than pretty much everyone else around me so maybe it's just me being naive. Maybe I'll go back in a few years and erase this blog out of shear humiliation, but for now I really don't get it. What's wrong with believing that people and circumstances can change? I know "you have to pick your battles," and I agree that I'm not good at that at all (I want to turn the tables of the money changers every single time, which is a problem in that, a: I'm not Jesus, and b: I'm a money changer,) nevertheless, here are my thoughts on the matter:
Maybe part of what Jesus meant when He said we must become/remain childlike is that we must be filled with unrestrained, unashamed expectancy. Kids believe the Easter Bunny hid all of those eggs. They believe that the tooth-fairy will come, even though they can't quite figure out how she can get the tooth from under the pillow without waking them up. And they believe that Santa will come down their chimney regardless of the fact that reindeer have to fly, there are burning coals in the fireplace, there's a tub of lard around his stomach, and there's a massive world with time limitations. Children have undying hope.
I guess I just have problems with being told that anything "won't ever change." It might! The God who changed a murderer into an apostle, prostitutes into missionaries, and a shepherd into a king, is still the God we serve. Surely He can handle my planks and their splinters. Apparently everyone grows out of this in 5-6 years, but for now I'm going to cling to the hope that it can be better, regardless of who tries to talk me out of it. It might kill me. But I think that for a while I will continue to see things as they could be instead of accepting them as they are. Everything inside me is just screaming out that we can hope for more (apparently we can hope for glory).
If everything inside me is wrong, and this is all hellish blasphemy, let me know. If nothing is going to change then I'll give up now (like I feel so many already have.) It'll probably save me some headaches and tears in the end anyway.

I'm going to St. Louis tonight...well...very early tomorrow morning. Should be quite the time. That means though that the bloglessness shall continue through the beginning of next week. You have a break. Rejoice. But for now, I decided to finally read about this Narnia place I've heard so much about. I'm through the wardrobe and still entertained. It truly would suck to be in a place where it's always winter and never Christmas.
"Is he---- quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"...'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."
I would like to meet this Aslan.

Part of me wants to apologize for the blogging frenzy but most of me is just going with it. Did anyone else (in the Flower-Plex) notice that the sky looked thin today? I'm reminded of Rick Mullins lyrics:
Sometimes the night was beautiful
Sometimes the sky was so far away
Sometimes it seemed to stoop so close
You could touch it but your heart would break
Sometimes the morning came too soon
Sometimes the day could be so hot
There was so much work left to do
But so much You'd already done

My heart might have broken if I had touched it, but it seemed so close and so very thin...

I have a book that tells what the great minds (whether in music, writing, philosophy, science, etc.) have thought about God. There are pages and pages of quotes from T.S. Eliot, Emerson, Einstein, Motzart, Bach, Voltaire, Melville, and many many others. Here are a few that struck my fancy:
"In the name fo God, I William Shakespeare...God be praised, do make and ordain this, my last will and testament in manner and form following. That is to say, first I commend my soul into the hand of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my saviour, to be made partaker of eternal life, and my body to the earth whereof it is made."
"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoguhts, the rest are details." -Einstein
"I believe that I am nearer to God by being humble before this splendour (Nature); by accepting the role I have been given to play in life; by honouring this majesty without self interests, and, above all, without asking for anything being confident that he who has created everything has forgotten nothing." -Renoir

Things I have to look forward to:
-Trip to St.Louis in a week.
-Thanksgiving! I'll be in the country this year. They don't celebrate that in England you know. go figure.
-various banquets, Lost and Found concerts, etc. throughout Dec.
-Christmas.
-My Canadian friend visiting.
-a brand spankin' new year.
-weekend in England in January.

Well, after a fantastic weekend in Pine Cove (camp in the beautiful east Texas,) I return to my blogging community. I'm exhausted and my voice is half gone, leaving me in that stage where I can talk but it's all raspy and low. But that's how you should sound after a weekend with mid-schoolers. We danced like fools, sang unreservedly, bowed hearts in worship, played tetherball with frozen fish, came up with a plot for the next MaryKate and Ashley movie, and crawled around on the forest floor in the middle of the night. There's nothing quite like a weekend in nature (with mid-schoolers especially) to fix my focus and renew my eternal perspective. Quotes to summarize the weekend:

"Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe. Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His, to the Father through the features of men's faces. Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all." --Joshua Abraham Heschel

"Trust clings to the belief that whatever happens in our lives is designed to teach us holiness. The love of Christ inspires trust to thank God for the nagging headache, the arthritis that is so painful, the spiritual darkness that envelopes us; to say with Job, 'If we take happiness from God's hand, should we not take sorrow too?'"

Today's blog is brought to you by the letter B, the number 4, and magnetic poetry.

these ricochet promises
forever reward
her vision
and dance her heavens.

Magnetic poetry challenge #1:
Use earthward, davenport, jubilant, bambino, and cobalt, in a poem of your own.

"One who knows how will always have a job working for one who knows why." I think I'll declare my major as "Why Communications."

"You will be given 3-4 weeks to complete each take-home exam. Use all of this time to your advantage as the activities and questions assigned will not be the kind that you can cram into the evening before the exam is due." Good instructions, in theory. I found myself thinking, "you wanna bet I can't do it all in one night?!" So I did. Another thing off my ahh-crap-I-have-so-much-to-do list.
so I'm reading Rumors of Antoher World by Phillip Yancy. Quite enjoyable thus far. Here is your first taste...(there will be more, I'm sure). "We see God best in the same way we see a solar eclipse: not by staring at the sun, which would cause blindness, but through something on which the sun is projected."

Interesting conversation I eavesdropped on yesterday at school (after a reminiscent chat about Y2K and how the world was supposed to end):
guy says: yeah, but the world will definitely end in the next [pause] 20 years.
girl says: oh yeah! There's way too much b.s. going on.
guy agreed. class started.