Imperfection is Beauty

Monday, June 1, 2009

MICAH

MICAH IS SOOOOOOOO FUNNY.

HE NEEDS TO SING OPERA MORE OFTEN.

HIM AND JP NEED TO MAKE A COMEDY SHOW.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Life has been pretty busy lately. Good, but busy.

Let's see...last night was youth group, and one of the youth leaders is leaving. :''''''''''''''( I don't personally know him, but he was great to listen to, had great lessons, and you can really tell he has a heart for God. I'm gonna miss him.

So we had a partay for him, since it was his last night there. We had FOOOOOD. And, most importantly...DR. PEPPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

And I got to see DK! I hadn't seen him since Friday. Very happy. :]

So the partay was fun, and then we all went out to the playground. OH! I ALMOST FORGOT! JESS CAME TO YOUTH GROUP LAST NIGHT TOO!!!! I went over to her house to work on a project and we were talking about stuff and this one person came up, and I'm like, oh they go to my youth group, and then she wondered if she could come. So she came! It was great!

Anyway, we all went out to the playground and it was a lot of fun. Shep was himself and went off and wandered through the woods, found his "special" place...haha! Ok, funny story:

I went to Jess's house with a band aid in my pocket. Her dog usually attacks me and last time I started bleeding so I came prepared this time. Turned out I didn't need it. But we were at youth group, and DK jumped and 'fell' and scraped his leg, so he was just like, "I'm bleeding." and I just pulled a band aid out of my pocket. It was SO funny!

Chris freaked Jess out. :P Haha, that was funny...

Then today we had our last elementary jazz band gig, so I got to leave school in the morning. That's always fun. HAHA! Cara's brother is SOOO funny! He does the BEST impressions of her! Well, actually the impressions are terrible but it's just so FUNNY. And he's not a bad trumpet player.

I ALMOST got to skip Science class today, but Mr. O. didn't let me. :( Ah well, the test wasn't too bad.

I'm stressing about Science and English right now...but...I'll be ok. *deep breath*

You've given me many things to think about Cara...hmm...I hope I can talk to you later.

MARCHING BAND LEADERSHIP TRAINING TONIGHT!!!!!!!! WOOT WOOT!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Best Analogy EVA

So I made a horrible analogy, and then DK said...

"Analogies are like technology, they're just not Rachel's thing."

HAH. It was funny...

More and more amazing!!!

This book is getting more and more amazing!!! AHH!!!! I have SOOO much I want to put on here! But I'll just post my favorite parts (starts with Papa):

"If I were simply one God and only one person, then you would find yourself in this creation without something wonderful, without something essential even. And I would be utterly other than I am."
"And we would be without...?" Mack didn't even know how to finish the question.
"Love and relationship. All love and relationship is possible for you only because it already exists within me, within God myself. Love is not the limitation; love is the flying. I am love."
"You do understand," she continued, "that unless I had an object to love---or, more accurately, a someone to love---if I did not have such a relationship within myself, then I would not be capable of love at all? You would have a god who could not love. Or maybe worse, you would have a god who, when he chose, could love only as a limitation of his nature. That kind of god could possibly act without love, and that would be a disaster. And that is surely not me."

I don't know about you, but that totally made something CLICK in my head. If God didn't have the Trinity, then He would not be capable of love...W O W. That makes COMPLETE and total sense to me...

This was a part of the conversation they had at dinner (starts with Mack, and just so you know---Sarayu is the Holy Spirit):

"Now here I am telling you about my kids and my friends and about Nan, but you already know everything I am telling you, don't you? You're acting like it's the first time you've heard it."
Sarayu reached across the table and took his hand. "Mackenzie, remember our conversation earlier about limitation?"
"Our conversation?" He glanced over at Papa, who was nodding knowingly.
"You can't share with one and not share with us all," Sarayu said and smiled. "Remember that choosing to stay on the ground is a choice to facilitate a relationship, to honor it. Mackenzie, you do this yourself. You don't play a game or color a picture with a child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship. You will even lose a competition to accomplish love. It is not about winning and losing, but about love and respect."
"So when I am telling you about my children...?"
"We have limited ourselves out of respect for you. We are not bringing to mind, as it were, our knowledge of your children. As we are listening to you, it is as if this is the first time we have known about them, and we take great delight in seeing them through your eyes."
"I like that," reflected Mack, sitting back in his chair.
Sarayu squeezed his hand and seemed to sit back. "I do too! Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to hold power over another is to choose to limit oneself---to serve. Humans often do this---in touching the infirm and sick, in serving the ones whose minds have left to wander, in relating to the the poor, in loving the very old and the very young, or even in caring for the other who has assumed a position of power over them."

I am LOVING this...

Then Jesus and Mack went out to look at the stars and had another conversation:
"Jesus?"
"Yes, Mackenzie?"
"I am surprised by one thing about you."
"Really? What?"
"I guess I expected you to be more"---be careful here, Mack---"uh...well, humanly striking."
Jesus chuckled. "Humanly striking? You mean handsome." Now he was laughing.
"Well, I was trying to avoid that, but yes. Somehow I thought you'd be the ideal man, you know, athletic and overwhelmingly good-looking."
"It's my nose, isn't it?"
Mack didn't know what to say.
Jesus laughed. "I am Jewish, you know. My grandfather on my mother's side had a big nose. In fact, most of the men on my mom's side had big noses."
"I just thought you'd be better-looking."
"By whose standards? Anyway, once you really get to know me, it won't matter to you."
The words, though delivered kindly, stung. Stung what, exactly? Mack lay there a few seconds and realized that as much as he thought he knew Jesus, perhaps he didn't...not really. Maybe what he knew was an icon, an ideal, an image through which he tried to grasp a sense of spirituality, but not a real person. "Why is that?" he finally asked. "You said if I really knew you it wouldn't matter what you looked like."
"It is quite simple really. Being always transcends appearance---that which only seems to be. Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determined by your bias, the surface appearances fade away until they simply no longer matter."

Mmm...

THE SHACK

Ok, so AWHILE ago DK told me about this really great book that he had read and asked if I was interested in reading it. I said sure, so he gave me this book called "The Shack". Wellllllll....there was a bunch of stuff going on and I only read like the first chapter and it was SLOW. I just couldn't get into it. So it went on my shelf.

So then last weekend we went to Washington DC (WOOO!!!!!!!!!) and my dad saw the book, said he had heard of it, and asked if I could bring it along so he could read it. So I did. He started it, and then, just like me, complained that it was really slow and he couldn't get into it. But he was determined to finish it, so he kept reading. He finished it the other day and would NOT stop talking about it!! He said he absolutely loved it and he wants his own copy. MY DAD NEVER REALLY GETS INTO BOOKS AND HE NEVER WANTS TO BUY THEM. So I figured...ok, I have GOT to read this now.

I picked it up again last night from where I was at, and now I am HOOKED. I'm even shocked that I'm taking the time away from the book to write about it but it's just that GOOD.

Ok, there's a part in the book that I want to share. It's when Mack meets God (aka Papa), and strangely enough...Papa is a large African American female. SHE/HE CRACKS ME UP. So Mack is in the kitchen and has a REALLY great conversation with Papa that really made me think (it starts with Papa talking about Jesus dying on the cross):

"Don't ever think that what my Son chose to do didn't cost us dearly. Love always leaves a significant mark," she stated softly and gently. "We were there together."
Mack was surprised. "At the cross? Now wait, I thought you left him---you know---'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' " It was a Scripture that had often haunted Mack in The Great Sadness.
"You misunderstand the mystery there. Regardless of what he felt at that moment, I never left him."
"How can you say that? You abandoned him just like you abandoned me!"
"Mackenzie, I never left him, and I have never left you."
"That makes no sense to me," he snapped.
"I know it doesn't, at least not yet. Will you at least consider this: when all you can see is your pain, perhaps then you lose sight of me?"

Wow...doesn't that make SO much sense? I mean, during our times of pain and suffering we tend to blame God. We ask, "Why? Why did you do this to ME? What did I do to deserve this? Are you punishing me?" And then we tend to question God and if he's really there and if he really cares about us....well, I know that I do that. But just think about it---if all we do is focus on the PAIN, then it makes sense that we lose sight of God and it seems like he becomes distant. Wow.

The conversation continues:

Papa reached for the kitchen timer, gave it a little twist, and placed it on the table in front of them. "I'm not who you think I am, Mackenzie." Her words weren't angry or defensive.
Mack looked at her, looked at the timer, and sighed. "I feel totally lost."
"Then let's see if we can find you in this mess."
Almost as if on cue, a blue jay landed on the kitchen windowsill and began strutting back and forth. Papa reached into a tin on the counter and, sliding the window open, offered Mr. Jay a mixture of grains that she must have kept just for that purpose. Without any hesitation, and with a seeming air of humility and thankfulness, the bird walked straight to her hand and began feeding.
"Consider our little friend here," she began. "Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around." She paused to let Mack think about her statement. "You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around."
Mack nodded his head, not so much in full agreement, but more as a signal that at least he understood and was tracking. That seemed simple enough.
"Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you."
There's the rub. He didn't feel particularly loved at the moment.
"Mack, pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly." She waited a moment, allowing her words to settle. "And if it's left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place."

I love that analogy...and there's more (starts with Papa talking):

"When we three spoke ourselves into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird, whose nature it is to fly, choosing only to walk and remain grounded. He doesn't stop being a bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly."
She paused to make sure Mack was still tracking. While there was a definite cramp forming in his brain, he voiced an "Okay...?" inviting her to continue.
"Although by nature he is fully God, Jesus is fully human and lives as such. While never losing the innate ability to fly, he chooses moment-by-moment to remain grounded. That is why his name is Immanuel, 'God with us', or 'God with you', to be more precise."

I LOVE that explanation, it makes SO much sense to me. The 100% God and 100% Man always confused me, and I know that I'll probably never be able to FULLY comprehend it, but that explanation has got me thinking about it, and SLIGHTLY understanding, at least more than I used to.

I would paste this whole book up here, there is SO much good stuff! You know what? Just go buy the book!!! It's called "The Shack" and it's written by William Young. GO BUY IT.

I'm only on page 101, so I'm gonna go read some more!!!

Warning: I may be back to post some more later. :]