Demetri Martin Visual Jokes

One of my absolute favorite comedians. He's just plain dry and bizarre.
"With grapes, you always get another chance..." - love it!

:)

Be kind to this stranger.

I have a friend that I love very much. I was praying for her and some words started spilling out onto a page in my journal that felt very healing, not just for her, but for me. It's funny how God works like that - we are constantly reflecting truth onto each other and back to ourselves.

The words that came were these:

"...Sometimes giving yourself permission to accept NOT knowing who you are enables you to see clearly, with new eyes, to learn about yourself, find out what is really inside you. A season of befriending yourself, leaving the judgement, the criticism
aside, leaving room for a new voice, still and small to be heard. It's a loss
of control and security that eventually leads to a richness of self discovery
and new kinds of joy. Joy you need. Self you need. Be kind to this stranger,
and she will begins to unfold her secrets..."

There is something very powerful about those words. They hit me in that place way, way at down at the bottom of my well.

Permission to accept that you don't know yourself entirely, a sobering sense of having only seen the tip of the iceberg, not allowing that to be a fearful or unsettling realization.

Leaving the judgment and the criticism aside so you can start to receive truth.

Listening to what God is whispering in your ear; being led down new and exhilarating corridors of yourself, seeing doors to rooms you never knew existed, rooms you now have the opportunity to enter.

Creating space for joy and excitement to exist inside you once again.

Being kind to this stranger, even tender, until she feels safe enough to reveal her secrets, to show you more than just your 'potential' and what you will be, but perhaps what you have been all along.

Coming to understand that you were formed, specifically, on purpose - we cannot build, we can only build upon.

Take a deep breath in, fill my lungs, and breathe out.

It feels so much better seeing through this lens.



Amber.

Like Totally Whatever - You Know? by Taylor Mali

The preamble:
My friend, Alec, who is the intern pastor at my church, read this poem on Sunday to coincide with what he was teaching.

I think it's probably one of the most poignant poems I've ever heard in that it articulates with both playfulness and solemnity a very serious problem in our culture - the inability to speak with conviction, to stand behind your own thoughts and ideas, to be A TRUE individual.

Give this a read - it's quite powerful.

Kudos to Taylor Mali for writing it and to Alec for sharing it with all of us.



Totally Like Whatever, You Know?
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

I am listening now - a poem

This poem is a retrospective poem, I wrote it a couple of months ago reflective of this past year.

There is so much worth in slowing down, even breaking down, in order to hear God.

Here is the poem:



LISTENING NOW

My world is loud, so loud, in fact, I cannot hear my heart.
So many knots in my stomach, I want to unravel them.
All the callings, yearnings, questions from a place deep, a place hidden -
a place that got lost.
There must be bones buried there, bones of a creature I used to be,
a creature I'm meant to be.
I want to go through, walk in and sort it all out,
but I get to the door of trying and it’s just too hard.
I've posted a note to myself, it's so convincing, "ACCESS DENIED!".

Denied, my true longings, my true self, and in its place are so many tasks,
standards, to do's, to don'ts. Work, phone, e-mail and ipod, and I’m bowing every day to the clock.
A mechanical device, a merciless taskmaster, making sure I get on to the next thing, and the next, and the next after that. Striving to not fail, not let anyone down.
I am time impoverished.

Impoverished, I can't think, I can't rest, I can't even hear.
The still voice, the small voice, the one that knocks and waits for me to
answer. Always ready when I am. He navigates me through the storm toward Himself - the centre, the calm, a place He knows I will be able to hear Him, see Him. It's Eye contact.
Standing on top of a fearful ocean, calling me to step out and join him,
and I want to respond to this invitation.

This invitation, to stop, to Sabbath, to do as He does, receiveing His deep
covenant with me. He wants me to rest and be like a child,
to know, like Hagar alone by that spring in the desert,
"the God who sees me!". Building His Kingdom in my heart.
Feeling His kindness thick in the air even as He exposes me,
takes away my hiding places.
"Don't be afraid". I swallow these words like cold glacier water deep into my body, and I allow myself to be ushered into His courts.

His courts, this holy place, I cross the threshold, and I am altered.
Lucid, aware now that there is a profound freedom awaiting me,
a weightlessness that I thought belonged only to the angels, the clean ones. My heart begins again to feel that overflow, worship has returned.
“You are good! You are good! You are good! You are good!”.
I can smell his comforting scent all around me,
and I am reintroduced to joy as I slide down majestic hallways in my socks, landing in a pile of holy pillows.

Pillows, on which I rest all of my heaviness. Abiding. Full weight, body limp, eyes shut. I breathe, respirations in and out, a tide in my body.
I am quiet. "Like a weaned child is my soul within me".
The words echo in my heart, for I like King David have been fighting, seeking justification, offering excuses; now understanding that resistance is futile in light of the desperation in my heart, "I am that man!". I am that woman. Closer and closer, He is moving, and as the silence deepens, I can finally say in earnest, "I am listening now".


Listening, as He speaks so gently, His voice reaching the farthest horizon of all that I am. Slowly He begins to access that which I have denied.
Stinging tears on red cheeks, the shock and horror as I see the parts of
my conscious the hot iron has threatened to sear shut!
All of my secrets brought to light - grief, forgotten callings, unspoken prayers, shame, sin, and so many lies. Bars of iron, each one of these, built up all around me, and I didn't hear the clanking, the metal on metal,
because my world has been so loud.

And then with a weak voice I cry...

"YAWEH!"

Silence.

"YAWEH!"

Healing.

"YAWEH!"

Restoring.

YAWEH.

So loud, the cry of my heart for silence. So still and small, the voice that I need to hear. So free, the moment He speaks and I listen…

I am listening now.

Tibet Haiku

I ache for Tibet

Spiritual nomads live free

Why would you cage them?