wild geese

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — 
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver 
published by Atlantic Monthly Press
© Mary Oliver

Dustin Lance Black's oscar acceptance speech for "Milk"

"Oh my God. This was, um, this was not an easy film to make. First off, I have to thank Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg and all the real-life people who shared their stories with me. And, um, Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn,Emile Hirsh, James Brolin, James Franco and our entire cast, my producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, everyone at Groundswell and Focus for taking on the challenge of telling this life-saving story.

When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me the hope one day I could live my life openly as who I am and then maybe even I could even fall in love and one day get married.

I wanna thank my mom, who has always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to. But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, by the government or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally, across this great nation of ours.

Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk".

This week in Hebrew…

Monday was a great class:

We started on a good note and didn’t have a quiz (yay!) and spent the day translating part of the story of Abraham and Sarah (at this point still Abram and Sarai). It bowls me over that I can translate parts of the bible, even if they are sections that are dumbed down for baby Hebrew scholars. If the bible is Jeopardy, our book has sections that are Celebrity Jeopardy. The author has taken it and put in into easier language so that we can read it all. So we read and translated and talked about the story as we were going through it, and we learned two of our teachers favorite words (this will be important later), in Hebrew the words for donkey differ if it’s a male donkey or a female donkey. So a male donkey is “hamor” and a female donkey is “aton”, just in case you ever need to know. The other word we spent a lot of time on was the word “hessid”, hessid is a type of kindness. It’s not random kindness but kindness that is ingrained in you, that is an automatic response. It’s hard to explain but our Hebrew teacher told us a lovely story illustrating the point.

Thursday, 8:30am:

Our second Hebrew class of the day is Thursdays at 8:30 in the morning. I think it should be illegal to have a language class (a biblical language class!!) at 8:30 in the morning, but that’s just me. Anyway, we went to Hebrew knowing we would have a quiz, and we did, but we had a class quiz, which means we get to answer the questions together and then everyone gets 100% on the quiz. Wahoo! So that was fantastic thing #1, then one of the guys in our class likes to bake, and frequently he brings in home baked goods for class and Thursday he brought us come lemon Poppy seed bread and some cinnamon coffee cake type stuff. It was warm and yummy. And then fantastic thing #3. We were reading from Genesis, this time actually reading out of our Hebrew bibles (regular Jeopardy) and I got all but one word correct with my pronunciation and I got to lead the class in reciting the verse :O) go me!

 

So after class I came home and was on my computer and I was talking to my sister and we had this conversation

sister:  ... also, some ass keeps smoking in our apartment building and it smells disgusting.

 me:  oh oh. is it a male or a female smoking?

 sister:  not sure....why

 me:  if it's a "male donkey or he-ass" he's "hamor"

 and if it's a "lady donkey" as my hebrew prof says, she is "aton"

 sister:  ......you need to see a movie or something

That's all for this installment of "This Week in Hebrew", stay tuned for more hilarious stories :O) 

get crafty!

looking for something to do? i bet this website can give you some ideas!! i just discovered it a few minutes ago while procrastinating. good stuff for the craftily inclined :O) 

http://www.craftstylish.com/

mary oliver...

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

God's Love

God's Love

Question of the day: How does accepting God's love change us?

God's love is total, unconditional, absolute and forever. The state of grace- God's attitude toward us- is eternal. We are the ones who change. 

Sometimes we are able to believe that God loves us unconditionally, absolutely and forever. That's grace! And sometimes because we get down on ourselves, and carry guilt and fear and burdens, we are not able to believe that God loves us.  Biblically, that's the greatest sin: not to believe the good news, not to accept the unconditional love of God. When we no longer believe God loves us, we can no longer love ourselves.  We have to allow God to continually fill us.  Then we find in our own lives the power to give love away. 

from The Great Themes of Scripture, p. 107

current mantra: I know and believe the love God has for me. 

This entry comes from a daily meditation email from Richard Rohr. It came to me from my pastor to an email list I'm on. It is good for me to hear things like this every once in awhile, indeed it's probably good to hear them every day. I may get told this everyday, but I know I don't hear it. Sometimes you just need to stop and listen. 

aaaannnd

in the spirit of valentines day, and because kerrie also loves it...here is the most fantastic ring EVER!  i'm not gonna lie, it does appear to be a pretty small diamond, but i think i could be ok with that. it's like a dr. seuss engagement ring. i LOVE it!! 

interview!!

so i applied to the starbucks in the target (aka heaven) and then i applied to the ywca of richmond for a part time shelter counselor type position. and i got a call yesterday to set up an interview for the shelter type job! i'm excited because it's something i've done before, something that would (i think) pretty easily fit into my life and would be conducive to being employed and still going to school.  and i've decided to do an internship here in richmond this summer so i can keep my job over the summer and then hopefully when i have august off (!!!!!) i will be able to get some time off to go home for a while. also, i'll get paid for my internship so i should be able to save a good deal of money over the summer. yay! ok, i need to finish reading (or at least skimming) my 100 pages of calvin for my history class. hope you all have a great weekend! happy valentines day! love and hugs, r

hello hello

So I played with my schedule last week and instead of taking the  class on ‘group process’ I’ve changed into a half credit class on ‘spiritual formation’. So I’m in 3.5 credits this semester, not 4, and I’m ok with that. There are a few reasons for switching my schedule, one reason is that 4 required courses was overwhelming. I do think I could have done it, I’m not sure I could have done the courses, been involved in the vagina monologues, been part of the ultimate Frisbee planning team, gone to the gym, and still been active on the ecological awareness committee. Oh and get a job (hopefully).  So I switched out. Another reason is that I don’t think I could have taken the class and held it together for all 3 months. The course is a very introspective course, the prof tries to get the course to engage in group therapy. When none of the group members are therapists ( I don’t even think the prof is). I’ve been in therapy in the not so distant past and I didn’t think I could enter into that environment, however artificial, and be ok. So peace out group process, hello spiritual formation. Spiritual Formation is what I think everyone thinks seminary is.  We learn new ways to pray, an ongoing assignment is to spend 20ish minutes a day in prayer, and we discuss how the types of prayer help or don’t help our personal spiritual formation.  It’s really the only course we have where we talk about our own relationship with God. Everything else is wicked cool, like Hebrew, or kinda cool, like ethics, but definitely academic, not spiritual. We can take spiritual formation twice if we want and get an entire credit for it. It’s pretty awesome and after just the first day I feel like everyone should have to take it each semester. We have chapel three times a week and most of us end up at a church, but we’re still in grad school. And unless it’s built in to a class, it’s really hard to have time for spiritual formation in your everyday schedule, along with all the other work we’re doing.  Believe it or not there are seminarians who don’t go to church. They say that this is the last time in their life that they won’t have to be in church every Sunday, so they’re taking it off. I don’t feel as grounded if I don’t go to church, and I’m loving meeting a new church family. I made my goal for this semester (and then hopefully forever) to take Sunday as a real Sabbath. To not work or do schoolwork on Sundays. I try to not go to any stores, but that’s not happened. I find that if I spend all day Saturday on schoolwork that I end up at the grocery Sunday after church. But it’s been very good, very nice to have a day to relax and to catch up with people and to spend some time with myself and in thought and doing some spiritual formation on my own. I’ve found that a lot of what I want to do on Sundays is read books. It might be a silly mystery novel or it could be ‘the omnivores dilemma’ (great book! I’m slowly getting through it) but it’s so regenerative, I find my Mondays much more agreeable. Although that might have more to do with no more 8:30am Monday class…

is it a brownie or a cookie?

both! 

like whoa

the semester started this week and i, along with every other person on this campus, am totally overwhelmed with the amount of work i have. the sheer number of pages i'm supposed to read and write on top of learning hebrew is really freaking me out. PLUS i'm looking to get a job. yikes. i'm currently in the MDIV/MACE dual degree program. 4 years, 2 masters degrees seems like a sweet deal to me, but i'm thinking now that i might want to drop the christian ed part of my plan. i'm already thinking of dropping my current education class- just too much work on top of everything else, and then if i do that i could potentially do a year long internship at a church and still graduate in 4 years, but be able to take less courses per semester as well as build up some really good experience, also there is a church nearby that i'm going to now that i think i can do a year long internship with. if i make any of these changes they'll be huge, but i am confident in the fact that if i do my MDIV degree and then want to get a MACE degree that i could tack it on at the end and it's still just an added year. i can make most of my electives education electives and just not do the degree till later. hmmmmm. lots to mull over. i am off to apply for a job at a starbucks that is located inside a target. heaven? perhaps :O)

perspective...

so i have been thinking about the whole OMG! michael phelps smoked POT!!!!!!!!!! scandal, and i think my inner hippy comes out because really, i don't care at all. he's 23, he's never failed a drug test during competition, he's spent most of his life in a pool, and he's a sick athlete. if the man wants to smoke weed in his off season, who am i to judge. i found this post today that puts the pot smoking in perspective. the world is freaking out about the man smoking weed, but in the world of sports there are so many hard core criminals. sexual assault, domestic violence, attempted murder, who cares?! they can play football/basketball/baseball/hockey/cricket/soccer/whatever. there are a few books out there that go through and talk about all the different crimes committed by athletes who are playing professional sports, i mean these are people who've been convicted of crimes, slapped on the wrist, and gone back into professional sports. anyway, here's the post, in my opinion it just throws the pot smoking into perspective.

i love me some big ben

HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO!

affirmation of faith

we read this affirmation of faith today at church, it comes from the iona community

We believe in God above us, Maker and Sustainer of all life, of sun and moon, of water and earth, of male and female.

We believe in God beside us, Jesus Christ the Word made flesh, born of a woman, servant of the poor, tortured and nailed to a tree.

A man of sorrows, he died forsaken.

He descended into the earth to the place of death.

On the third day he rose from the tomb.

He ascended into heaven to be everywhere present, and his kingdom will come on earth. 

We believe in God within us, the Holy Spirit of Pentecostal fire, life-giving breath of the Church, Spirit of healing and forgiveness, source of resurrection and of eternal life.