inspiration, inconsistency, and SUMMER

it's the sunday night before finals week.

except i don't have any finals, so it's officially the start of my first week of summer vacation. and it couldn't have come at a better time. i'm so spent it's ridiculous. but i must say that despite all of the madness and complaining that i've been doing about my schoolwork (i can't help it...i'm a perpetual complainer...), i'm truly grateful for this past school year. it hasn't been long enough since i've ended to be reflective (i think there needs to be a certain allotment of time in order to really get a sense of the things that i've learned), but i know that it's been a huge year of falling, learning, and getting back up only to repeat the process all over again.

anyway, i'm feeling inspired. hence the update. and also the realization of inconsistency. i write in a journal almost every day. but i completely FAIL when it comes to updating my blog. freaking angela always tells me that i should update my blog but for some reason just can't remember to do it. i don't think i'm profound enough to regularly update my blog.

i've come to see that life is beautiful. beauty is everywhere. i've been obsessed with a lot of things these days. airto (some random youtube singer. his covers are so, so good). philippians. furniture. sondre lerche, chrisette michele, jazmine sullivan. so you think you can dance (BEST show on TV right now). but mostly photography. i suck at it, but i love looking at it. the concept of photography is just crazy to me...paintings are pretty crazy too, just because of the sheer skill certain artists have to be able to make the connection between what's in their heads and how they represent it on the canvas, but it's just different. photography is so real.

there's a painted portrait, which can be painted as realistically as possible, but what we see is pure interpretation from the eyes of the artist who painted it. that's the whole point. if there was no interpretation, there'd be no intent, and then it would just be a bunch of chemicals thrown onto a blank board. but then there's a photographical portrait. there's definitely a certain degree of interpretation there too, what with the technical adjustments a photographer can make with lighting, focus, angles, etc..., but you can't manipulate the actual being of a person. the subject's eyes, mouth, nose, bone structure, hair, and feelings are all his or her own. looking at photographs of people is like looking at someone who never passed away. i don't think i'm explaining this very well, but it makes sense to me. tristan tzara (dadaist, writer, poet, wackiness personified) said something along the lines of how writing is meant for no one but the one writing it. i think this is very true.

anyway, i've been most obsessed with julia margaret cameron. victorian era photographer. she lived over 100 years ago, but the photographs could have been taken yesterday. her work is absolutely nuts.

SUMMER is here. i have work galore, but i'm excited for my first real job. i'm either going to love gallery work, or hate it immensely, i think.

maybe i'll take language classes this summer. just maybe. i want to learn french, italian, japanese, chinese, brush up on my spanish, refine my korean. all of that plus english, and i'd be septa-lingual :)

and i'm going to attempt to read the bible in its entirety over the summer. that gives me approximately 3 and a half months to finish the whole thing. plus i'm going to try and make a bigger dent in the randomhouse list of the 100 best modern books. i think i've read like 30 on that list.

and finally, my illusionist. finding paris. unlock those mysteries, and therein lies the key to my entire mind.

i don't think i've fully recovered from my sleep-deprived quarter quite yet.

making the pieces fit

i have a paper due tomorrow.

now, with that said, i've had a crazy few weeks. crazy few months, maybe, but everything's been coming together for me in the past few weeks, so i felt compelled to write something despite that nagging feeling of paper writing eating away at my good-student-conscience.

there are a few things i need to get off my chest.

1) God is so, so, so GOOD. it's amazing. it's the little things that make me realize just how NOT in control i am, and how sovereign and powerful He is. in the past few months, He laid out a plan for my majors/future, opened my mind to things i never even thought about before, settled my heart, and made me secure in Him and His unfailingness. i always wondered why i didn't really stress, even though i've had plenty of things to absolutely go crazy about. i just thought it was apathy, or indifference. but apathy and indifference are synonymous with lacking care or passion for the things that i do, and by no means did i NOT care about the stuff i did. weird.

a.  i just got into one of my classes that i needed to stay on track at seriously the last minute. i'm so happy and so relieved. my TA (who's totally cute, by the way) told me that i must be pretty darn lucky, cause 40 people were trying to crash a class of capacity 38, and that this is the last week to add, and that he was almost sure that no one was going to drop during week 3.

b. my classes end up complementing each other like you wouldn't believe. last quarter was victorian everything, because i took a class on victorian art and architecture AND another on british fiction, and the content for both classes overlapped like crazy. the same things were happening at the same time, so it made things so much easier for me to learn and WANT to learn. i thought this quarter was going to be completely different, because all my classes are pretty random and i added a lot at the last minute. but i have two classes, a seminar on the poetry of alexander pope and a lecture class on the topic of post-humanism. they seemed to be unrelated, but i came across a poem by pope called "eloisa and abelard," and line 209 served as the title for the movie "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind," which is part of the curriculum of my post-humanism class. weird. i love when my classes are relevant to each other. makes my job easier and more interesting. i think God knows that i'm more motivated to do work when it's fun. thanks.

2) memories. i have a freakishly good memory. i was reading their eyes were watching God, by zora neale hurston, and she opened up her novel with these words: "Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly." interesting, right? and if you've seen "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind," and read "eloisa and abelard," you'd be tripping out as much as i am about the concept of memory. i read an article for my post-humanism class about a memory-erasing pill for victims of traumatic incidents, or those suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and how the "drug" would be beneficial for people who have a hard time coping with the things they've seen or experienced. imagine what would happen if this thing were to get out on the market. i seriously got the chills thinking about it.

a. i don't know about anyone else, but i personally wouldn't want to erase any of my memories. the ability to remember, and connect to those memories and the emotions they invoke so vividly even after a lot of time has passed is intrinsically human. more than that, memories make us who we are. we are products of the things that happened every second of every minute before our current state of being. take that away, and all you're left with is a body going through the motions. no past, numb present, questionable future. 

b. and if there was something so traumatic and so haunting that i'd get nightmares or burst into tears every time i thought about it or remembered it....i don't know if i'd want to erase something powerful enough to make me feel. masochistic? maybe. i think we're all a little masochistic sometimes.

3) i should really be working on my paper instead of writing this nonsense.

4) this is going to be a busy, busy quarter. summer plans are up in the air, but i'm trusting that God will make things more definite for me. and next school year? ridiculous. but i'm a teensy bit excited for all the things to come.

5) there really isn't a point in #5. i just don't like even numbers. (:

a. i really like lists.

consistency

it's finals week

i've had a whole quarter of victorian art, architecture, and literature

enough of this. my classes are going to be all over the place next quarter. i look forward to it.

i think i'm going to try for consistency from now on and update this regularly, but...

whatever happens.

"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken."

Psalm 62:1-2

spring break and uninterrupted rest are calling my name.

sophomore slump??

fall '08 is just flying by.
i can't believe week 5 is already coming to a close. one more month and then it's finals! eek.

it's been so hard to keep a level head amidst all my schoolwork and other responsibilities, but i think morning devos are probably the only things that keep me sane.

these days i've just been turning to the lovely little jem of a book called...Ephesians! i think it's amazing, uplifting, encouraging...a real source of strength and a reminder of everything that i've been striving to do this year: to depend upon God and ask Him to work in me, to show love to people, to imitate Christ...and i think it's all working out well, or i hope it is.

i'm learning three things...

#1: prioritizing. it's so easy to get caught up in schoolwork, but it's also just as easy to avoid schoolwork & do things that just waste time and have little to no intrinsic value. and then where does God fit in in all of this? i would have to say that...God is #1. i am a christian. i firmly believe that if you are right with God, all things will fall into place. i learned that over summer through ghana and i think i'm re-discovering that. with that said, if God is #1, i would say that school is #2. kcm is #3, maybe? it is a priority, no doubt, but most definitely not #1, cause i think that my personal relationship with God and my responsibilites as a member of servant team are different entities. or maybe not. as a christian i'm called to serve, and kcm is the way i formally serve. then again, there are other ways to serve and not formally give it a title. i don't know. i'm still working on this.

#2: the power of prayer. sounds cliche, right? but there's so much strength in prayer. i'm learning to abandon conventional prayer...the thing where you close your eyes and bow your head and put your hands together. for a long time i thought that THAT was the only real way to pray. now...i pray at odd hours of the day. or maybe it's not praying, but i spend time with God. just talking to Him, seeking Him....whenever i can. it was weird at first, but i feel like my relationship with God is growing that much more because now i'm figuring out how to talk and listen to Him in all aspects of my life. my favorite time to talk to God would be when i'm driving back and forth between school and home. the drive is about an hour and a half, on average (sometimes 2 hours if there's traffic...stupid 101...stupid valley). and a lot of the time, i just talk to God and spend time with Him that way. it keeps me alert, and it allows me to talk to God without feeling like i have to be so formal or proper with Him. i can let out my frustrations, my worries, my contentments, my joy...it's extremely effective. i encourage everyone to try it. really...God is listening. and He's not afraid to show that He's listening, if i'm willing to listen to Him as well.

#3: self-preservation is not conducive to outreach. i've always been into self-preservation, mainly because i like the idea of nothing being able to affect me if i don't let it affect me. i suppose that kind of makes me a control freak. but outreach is not about protecting yourself and saving yourself from disappointment, or avoiding situations that might turn out to be negative. outreach entails just what its title indicates: reaching out of the ministry. i've never felt so inadequate in my entire life, but i think this self-preservation thing is holding me back. i'm naturally just a very careful person, but maybe i need a little recklessness to be able to fulfill my position as outreach in kcm because that's how we're supposed to worship- with reckless abandon. this is also a work in progress.

"I can do everything through Him who gives me strength."

(ahahah i love philippians too, but i'll save that for another time :D)

mission: incomplete

Ghana was...amazing.
i miss African babies.
God truly is good.

study habits

i don't think i ever understood the importance of good study habits.

i don't think any of my friends ever understood the importance of good study habits either. case in point...as i am writing this blog entry sophia is looking over and clapping her hands joyfully, saying "yay!" because i'm joining this cutesy little blogspot community.

and rebecca is sitting across from me distributing sour candy.

and then sophia is encouraging rebecca to make one as well.

we all have finals tomorrow.

i think angela might be the only honest one out of all of us. we're all pretending to be good students while hanging out at the library, but angela has accepted defeat and is heading back to her dorm. kudos to you.

i don't think i'm ready to admit that my study habits suck.