C'est La Vie
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What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be. Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy. And I use these words pretty loosely. There's so much more to life than words..
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Saturday, March 29, 2008
Steve (and everyone), now that my last Associate’s college class is over (yay!!!) I have a moment to post some excerpts from my speech at the Ball. It was a fifteen minute speech, which was three pages long with one-inch margins in Times New Roman size 12, and I won’t repost all of that. It was a women’s history month theme, so I talked about my Grandmother, my niece, and some others. It was also a benefit for an orphanage in Djibouti, run by six or seven French nuns, and so I talked about them. I used a lot of quotes throughout my speech, and the ones outside of the excerpts I’m going to post follow:As Erma Bombeck said, “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.” Joan Baez put it this way: “You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live now.” Ella Fitzgerald, who said, “Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.” And Annie Oakley’s remark, “I can truthfully say, I know of no other recreation that will do so much toward keeping a women in good health and perfect figure than a few hours spent occasionally at trap shooting” I would imagine that the nuns may relate strongly to Dorothea Dix when she said, “In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do.” Philosopher/artist Eric Gill reminds us that "the artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist." John Maxwell wrote, “A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision / comes from passion, not position.” …. And now the excerpts from the speech…… This is a compilation from different parts throughout my speech, while elaborations on women and art were interspersed between these sections. As a mini-summation of my whole speech, though, the following works quite nicely…… The theme for this year’s Women’s History Month is “Women’s Art: Women’s Vision”. We are celebrating the contributions within the art world of women throughout America’s history; specifically the fine arts, such as sculpting and drawing. Pablo Picasso once said, “There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun." Whether or not you feel talented in the area of visual arts, the world of art can inspire you in other areas. I’d like to challenge all of us to find new visions, or refresh those we’ve had for a while. I’d like to challenge all of us to make our lives into works of art. What does it mean to make our own lives into works of art? If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love for everyone to close your eyes for a moment and picture your favorite piece of artwork. It may be a sculpture, painting, drawing, perhaps even a graphic arts piece made with new computer technology. Bring it to the front of your mind now, and think about what makes it so appealing. For many of us, it may be a little hard to pinpoint. We simply LIKE it, right? Many people push aside the idea of ‘art appreciation classes’, preferring the “I know what I like” method of appreciating art. Really, in our lives, we can become appealing in this way. How many times have you heard it said of a person, “there’s just something about her. I can’t put my finger on it, but she’s just pleasant to be around.” Comments to that effect show us that in working towards work-of-art lives, we may find ourselves giving off an overall *feeling* of warmth and comfort, without necessarily having any specific, easy-to-name characteristics that others can pinpoint. One way this can manifest itself is when we become truly comfortable with who we are. There is a trend today towards being falsely modest or overly arrogant. In between the two, there is a balance of a healthy self-esteem. Understanding how much value we each have is really important. Harlem Renaissance Writer Zora Neale Hurston knew this quite well. She is humorously quoted, “Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.” I want to be one of those painters who can transform a yellow dot into the sun. I want everyone here to be such a painter. Again, I issue the challenge: Let’s find our vision, and make our lives into works of art. ------ It was a masquerade ball, and they gave me flowers and an award to say thank you, along with the wine glass everyone got with their tickets. I made my own mask, because I need more creative outlets... This was my first time having real flowers in my house here, too, so it was a really nice thank-you gift!!   ……. I think the most important part of the speech is the following section: ……. When I was nineteen, I began sponsoring a child through Compassion International, now called Compassion. This is a Christian relief organization, operating all over the world to bring help in poverty-stricken areas. One source of inspiration that Compassion uses in their mission is Proverbs 31:8-9: "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. … Defend the rights of the poor and needy." They provide healthcare, education, needed goods, and religious support for over one million children in 24 countries. When I signed up on their website for whatever child had been waiting longest, they sent me the packet for an eight-year-old Ugandan child named Jovanis. Over these past several years, I have gotten to watch Jovanis grow into a young woman, quite successful in school, who wants to be a social worker when she grows up. She writes me three to five letters a year, sends pictures whenever she can, and tells me all about her life and family in Uganda. One of the most memorable letters I got from her was in response to my question about her hobbies. She wrote back, “I love to sing, read, and do my chores. I take care of my younger sister and brother, and sometimes I go into the mountains to watch the gorillas.” (I’ll be able to send her a picture of me riding a camel this month, and I know she’ll have lots of questions after that!) The way that Jovanis wants to help her fellow Ugandans, to return the blessings that she has received through Compassion’s Child Development Center, is certainly not for her own gain. She is not seeking to become rich or to win a prize. Instead, she wants to make a real difference in her community and leave a legacy of service. Her life has already become a work of art.   (0) comments Sunday, March 16, 2008
Happy My Day, Everyone!!(2) comments I got my newest eval back today. It's got a low point-average, but that's because the signing authority on it has a MUCH lower historical average. It was a pretty positive briefing, though if I were going to stay in I may have seen some parts differently. But overall, it was a decent eval, and since it doesn't actually impact my career any longer anyway, and will have no impact at all on my civilian career, I was happy enough. I've had a few things coming to fruition for me that are pretty exciting. I've continued to get great feedback about my customer service and my teaching (the latter of which makes up a very small portion of my job, but perhaps one of my favorite parts). I've helped put some events, which have all gone very well, and I've had a wonderful time doing that. And also, I have now officially been a featured guest speaker at a big event!! I had to speak for 15 minutes straight, and I'm sure you can imagine I was capable of that. I think it went well, I've gotten some good feedback, and I had a great time. I'm really proud of the speech I put together for it, and it was a really nice environment to be getting my feet wet with low pressure and low potential risk. So that is basically my update. (1) comments (Rant Alert) What I hate is when people who are doggone tired of this world decide that they're gonna up and take folks out with them when they go. Or anyone else who uses violence against others as a way of making a statement. What I hate is when this is considered to be justified somehow. What I hate is ignorance, hard-earned bliss in this area. What I hate is people who are so busy trying to make statements through drawings, videos, editorials, articles, anything, that they don't give one darn tootin' for the effects that may have on other people. Not just in their feelings, but on the emotions way down in the deep of their quash, where the deepest, strongest, innermost sentiments are housed, where they can feel most vulnerable or threatened. And what do people (or animals) tend to do when they feel threatened? So, I hate this. I hate watching the news and seeing all the dirtbags who decide to take not only their own lives, but also the lives or welfare of others in the process. I hate hearing about people making plans to do things like that. I hate knowing that there are people out there right now, getting crackheaded ideas into their heads and thinking they're good. (0) comments |
Hippie: (after hearing Max wants to avoid the draft)You still have options man. "So how do i do normal "It's been known for a train to jump its track. It's ok, so you'll know, most times they come back. It's ok to lose your life, when you finally see your birth. It's ok to say, "I love you," and figure sometimes it's gonna hurt. "As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes, all exciting at first, but then by the end you're sick of 'em!" "Hey, this is weird! I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you?" "I love it!" "You're kidding! What a crazy random happenstance!" "Only one more trip," said a gallant seaman, "It was Flannery O'Connor who said that 'grace must wound before it heals.' Her words help me to separate what is most true about life from the things we want to be true. We want life to be painless. True grace is a hard sell because in order for the human heart to understand forgiveness and love, it must first experience darkness and isolation. A life lived under the rule of grace is a life of need which allows us to receive an appreciate the gift of the giver of grace. This is why we will always have the poor with us; this is why God will not allow us to ignore injustice; this is why we are called to a life we cannot handle alone, which can and will break us in the effort to live it -- because grace must wound before it heals." Regarding 2007: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, I thought Christmas Day would never come. But it's here at last, so Mom and Dad, the waiting's finally done. And you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, it's Christmas morning. O little town of Bethlehem, Walk humbly, son Strings of lights above the bed "In a little while I'll feel better "Please tell me once again that You love me. That You love me. Please tell me once again that I matter to You and You really care. Please tell me once again that You're with me, forever. It's not that I could ever doubt you, I just love the way it sounds. I just love the way it sounds." "Every once in a while, a bannerzen posts." "7:30. What kind of people have to be at work at 7:30?" have you seen my love Traveling is significant because it takes so much effort. Either you're going to some place you love, or you're leaving some place you love. Usually it's both. I think I have Bond's ability to get into trouble but not his ability to get out of it. Someday I'll be in some foreign country with 5 thugs with automatic rifles pointed at me, and I'll just.... fart "You had no alternative .. We must work in the world. The world is thus." --- "No .. Thus have we made the world." The summer ends and we wonder where we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And you both look so young And last night was hard, you said You packed up every room And then you cried and went to bed But today you closed the door and said "We have to get a move on. It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead, We push ourselves ahead." Looking out the bedroom at this snowy TV.. ever since commencement, no one's asking 'bout me. But I bet before the night falls, I could catch the late bus.. take small provisions and this Beethoven bust. I could find work in the outskirts of the city, eat some fish on the way.. befriend an old dog for a roadside pal, find a nice couch to stay -- a pull-out sofa, if you please!" Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying "The trouble with folks like Brownie is they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there's nobody noticing. Now that's the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man's got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird." "Life is a phantasmagoria .. It is a pell-mell of confused and tumultuous scenes. We try in vain to find a purpose - to bring an order, a unity to life. I suppose that is the appeal of art. Art is the blending of the real and the unreal, the conquering of nature. It is real enough for it to reflect life, but has the unity that life lacks." "in time memories fade. I've always had this feeling about Patty that she's complex and intriguing...I like Patty alot. She's got a good heart and tells terrible squirrel jokes. "Try to remember that world-weariness isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the book of Mark, I think its Mark, Jesus looks at a blind man and sighs. Jesus sighed before even telling the man he would be healed. He sighed, and I'm not sure that there's a much more human expression of frustration than this. Faced with the horrid picture of a cursed earth and looking into the white eyes of a man blind from the day he was born, He sighed. The Creator of the universe in human form was sad "of the evils of this world," the world He created. Your Creator sighed for you in the same way before He healed you and made you His." After the last secret's told After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone After the last child starves And the last girl walks the boulevard After the last year that's just too hard There is love -- Andrew Peterson, After the Last Tear Falls "when you most need people, you don't need perfection - just to know someone gives a damn" "A CALL TO ACTION: "My brother's always [telling me], 'You should be more mysterious--boys like that.' But I'm not good at that. It would just make me more uncomfortable." "Loners want to kill you, but not for any particular reason, and they'd probably like you if they weren't being guided by the violent voices in their head." "No one wants to oil a snake these days!"
-- Her mom: "We're all safe." -- Jamie Bevill and her mother during Christmas-Decorating dinner, December 20, 2002 i'd throw out all my shoes i'd set up cans for friends to dump their shoes senseless shoes a pioneer of callouses lordy-be and bless my soul i'd be a barefoot spaceman the first you'd ever know" "The best way to have God's will for your life is to have no will of your own!" "Generations circle and each one atones. The sins of the father are seperate from my own. In Pilgrim's Progress, it's forgiveness that makes whole, and as time levels and consoles, I place the daisies in your bowl." "For a moment he just stared at her. Then, with an urf-urf-urf of laughter, he turned back to the controls." "It's on the internet.. so, then, it must be true." "Be at least as interested in what people can become as you are in what they have been." Blessed be the rock stars!" Get up for the shower.. wash and scrub and scour every part as if a cleaner man could better bear the shame.. "She was eating gnarly amounts of calcium." Homeless man to girl trying to give him money: "No, thanks, ma'am. I never work on Sundays." "Wow! I never thought I'd need a radar-guided spatula!" "Isn't it great that I articulate? Isn't it grand that you can understand? ... I can talk, I can talk, I can talk!" I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know... I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten. When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand." CCM: You've spoken a lot more about crying than I ever thought you would. "Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. Preoccuptaions, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul." ""Don't go matchmaking for me, Ilse," said Emily wit a faint smile... "I feel in my bones that I shall achieve old-maidenhood, which is an entirely different thing from having old-maidenhood thrust upon you." "I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art" "Tomorrow seems like a long ways away. But it will come, just like any other day... Deep inside, where the wounded creatures hide, I am afraid. Maybe I got lost somewhere along the way somehow. Please rescue me... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me... Though I fear, though I am afraid, You are with me. Though I'm angry, tired, broken down and confused, You are with me. Though I sin like I've never sinned before, lose myself right out an open door, You are with me." "The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"" -- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader "When People object... that if Jesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, "Oh but you had an unfair advantage." It is because of His advantage that He can help." "But, you know, as a Christian, one of the big questions you always ask yourself is, "So we believe in Jesus, we believe in the teachings of the church, but what does that look like when it's lived out?" Because surely, one of the things that Jesus said that I think we often overlook is, "The person who hears my words and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." He didn't say "the person who hears my words and thinks about 'em" or "whoever hears my words and agrees with it." But he said, "Whoever hears it and does it." "find that which gives you breath and grants you more to give "I have packed all my belongings. I don't belong here anymore. This pair of sandles, one pack to carry, this old guitar and this tattered old Bible. And I know I won't be afraid. 'cause I know, I know Home is where You are." "Open up your weepy eyes, everyone is dancing. Angels peer through sweet disguise, through a fire of cleansing. "Long hair, no hair; Everybody, everywhere:
Breathe Deep, breathe deep the Breath of God!" "You may be bruised and torn and broken, but
you're Mine!" "I don't deserve to speak, and they don't deserve
to hear it. It's makin' me believe that it's not
about me." "Kickin' against these goads sure did cut up my
feet. Didn't your hands get bloody as you washed
them clean?" "They say God blessed us with plenty. I say
you?re blessed with poverty. ?Cause you never
stop to wonder whether earth is just a little
better than the Land of the Free" "Computers will know everything in the 21st
century. They'll be like me in the 20th
century." |
