The Faith of Children (in which I pay my respects to younger me and all the lovely large-hearted teens).

Sometimes, I get a little jealous of the enthusiasm that teenage girls bear.

It's cause I secretly love it. I want to be more open about that. Can we talk about this?

I love how everything means something to them, how engaged they generally are in their lives, their emotions and what they care about, whether it be for the better or for worse. As a result, I've harbored so much unexpressed outrage that these younger women have so many haters (although we can rightly be annoying at that age). But they have my respect. The girls have heart. They have so much heart.

They are one of my favorite demographic of people and I think part of it is because I was 15 years old when I decided to (as cheesy as it sounds) "give my heart to Jesus".

Sometimes, I want to stick my 16 year old brain-heart-thing in my body. I'm not saying so much that I want to go back and relive those days, because there's so many wonderful experiences I've learned from sense I turned the big 1-8 two years ago and crossed into adult-dom. But, I do wish that my teenage self had carried with her the vivid imagination that she was gifted with and her lack of creative inhibition. Somehow, those tools were a huge blessing to me, in my ability to express myself to G-d.

I didn't really care as much about being cool, even though I was insecure. I was just myself. I find myself struggling even more now with wanting to be cool, but I think my purer inner (child?) heart is trying to push me off that road.

For me it takes having a little less inhibition to take a mirror portrait and write a blog like this one.

And I'm glad about it.
I don't want to be hip, unaffected and cynical.
I don't want to be "over it" and dismiss anything that seems somewhat childish or simplified.
I don't want to pretend to be less excited about the things that encourage my heart. I want to have the courage to call out beauty when I see it and not be embarrassed just because it was written by this or that artist or said by this or that person. I don't want to dismiss the good that I was then in light of being "older" and "smarter".

I find that it can be easy to go on to the new thing and miss what was valuable about the old. As I've grown and discovered the complexity of the world, and even the complexity of my faith tradition, I wonder if I had unintentionally forgotten to protect my sense of wonder and imagination. I've been overtly encouraged by the sermons of Greg Boyd on imagination, which has played a huge role in his communion with Jesus as well as his longing for the Kingdom of G-d. Even though it may sound strange to use our imagination to commune and learn and experience G-d and what he is doing, I am not skeptical at all about this practice. It came so naturally to me as a younger one; I began to read the stories and imagine what Jesus was like from the accounts of him in the New Testament. (Maybe we can even argue that that is what little children do when they talk to and hang out with G-d: they use their imaginations!)

I miss the simplicity of my faith.
I miss my lack of inhibition and my creative responses.
I miss having my imagination in tune with my faith in G-d, my friend.
When I started listening to the Rocket Summer tonight, my heart leaped. Tears began to pour over my cheeks as I soaked the lyrics of "TV Family" in my then overtly troubled and running mind. I found myself extremely surprised how the lyrics still made such a huge impression on my heart, almost as if it had touched on some feelings and affections that I had long forgotten about.

I don't ever want to outgrow The Rocket Summer. There's so much in the music that communicates my heart to G-d.

The name of a Rocket Summer album.

I find that as I grow older, it is easier for my mind to try to "regulate" what I say or express to G-d. As if there are things that I shouldn't feel or think (and as if He didn't already know everything about me!) I find that I am more ashamed of what I share with G-d a lot these days. I'm so afraid to come off as childish, as "less" intellectual, as someone who isn't worthy of being taken seriously, so in my insecurity, I've developed a habit of stuffing my brain with all these academic books about G-d and then leave little room for him to be my friend and comforter in my alone time. It sucks. It really does. There's a place for theology learnin's, but, I find that I am extremely bogged down by my inhibitions. And my mind turns and stays a storm of angst and unrest because of it.

All I ever wanted was to use my voice to be loud and make a joyful noise about the hope that I have. I hope that through the gifts of those who inspire me, Christ will encourage me to do so boldly with the maturity of an adult, the passion of a teenage girl and the faith of children.

There's no such thing as caring too much about life.

A lot of people tell me that I should be a speaker or a writer. I'm told that I'm eloquent and that I have a lot of good ideas and yet, my voice freaks me out quite often. It really does.

Sometimes, my voice makes me cringe.

Especially when my thoughts chime in with thoughts like: "SERIOUSLY, RACHEL? WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS NOW. I MEAN. SRSLY. COME ON. STOP TALKING. STOP CARING SO MUCH. GEEZ!"

There's a lot of things that I care about and a lot of dreams that I have. But I constantly fear that I'm extremely overwhelming and agitating because I care so much about life. I fear that against the apathy in my society, that my voice sounds a lot like what drinking vinegar would taste like. I care so much about life that I don't want people to give up on it. I don't want to come off as annoying. I want people to see that life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

I have a really great friend who tries to remind me that there's no such thing as caring too much about life. Our immediate circle needs it: Our friendships, our families, our co-workers and the dirt underneath us. And the rest of the world needs it, too. People all around the world need other people who care about life enough that they're willing to respond to it, and share it and have conversations about their dreams and live in such a way that it demonstrates how much they care about life.

There's no such thing as caring "too much" about life. Besides, there are consequences to not caring about life.

I mean look. There's so much 

loneliness

and deception

and violence

and it makes a person wonder if life really does offer love, friendship, truth, meaning and beauty.

I just long to see people become so moved by the beautiful and true things of life that they can move past their fear and the circles of distraction that they get caught in. Caring about life (about your life and the life of others) can be as simple as choosing to call someone you appreciate to go on a walk with you instead of staying at home and feeling sorry for yourself. It is as simple as texting less when you're out to eat with a friend and being present more. I want to see people who are willing to say "ENOUGH!" to all the things that steal life and begin to seek those things that bring life despite the chance of failure.

There's no such thing as caring too much about life.

Repeat after me:

There's no such thing as caring "too much" about life.

There never has been.

//

What do you think?

I want the hope I have to catch people’s attention, not just my blue hair.

Sometimes I wonder if people care about inner beauty and inner lives.

I wrestle so much with my outer sense of worth because I wrestle a lot with my interior sense of worth. I struggle so much with the idea of how important the inner lives of people are to the world and whether or not people really see it and value it as much as they say they do.

This isn't a demand for folks to give me compliments and affirm my worth but it's me trying to speak out against the part of me that wants to be cute, dispassionate, "dumbed-down" and likeable all the time. I want to speak up, not only for me, but for those who struggle with wanting to be dreamy all the time, too.

I think outer beauty is important. I think it's important to affirm, because we're all created to reflect G-d's beauty, on the inside and the outside. I think we reflect Beauty itself when we are comfortable and delight in the shade of skin we live in, or we have fun with make up or none and paint on our toes and we dress up for special occasions like theatre performances and weddings or because we made pants that are the perfect shape and color for our body type. There's beautiful, eye-catching, soul-stirring stuff in our exterior lives. There really is.

But, sometimes, I find people hiding behind their exterior beauty. Constantly. As if it were a lifestyle. And that causes concern for me. I've been in situations where it's hard to meet people and make friends and be known because I find that there are men and women who focus so much of their life, so much of their money and their time on how attractive they can make themselves and make their lives seem. And so people will catch my attention on the outside, but I never get to know them and see the beauty and depth they boast on the inside. 

I'm not particularly immune to this behavior though. I often buy into the idea that being a smart women who cares about the things I care about won't get me the things I want in life, to be loved, to be accepted, to be someone. I see all around me that following the same trends seems to get more attention and more people to "like" me and that addressing things that matter brings into the room a lot more silence than what sells, what is trendy, what is cool. 

So, I struggle with wondering if my passion for life matters. If that's an important thing. I struggle with wondering if my hatred for warfare and violence is beautiful. I know it is beautiful. Most of the time. At least more than I did months and years before. I'm trying to learn to have conversations with people I meet about the things that make our hearts hurt instead of making conversations stay shallow for months and months. But, I have a hard time seeing that our grief, hope and and joy matters to the world. There are so many people who fight for real truth and real justice, who fight for Jesus' reign and Kingdom on earth, who clothe themselves in kindness and patience and beauty and love... But they go unnoticed because they're instagram feed might not be "cool" enough or nonexistent, they might not meet our nations impossible or oppressive standard of beauty, or they might not act enough like Zooey Deschenal's characters, Jess and Summer.

I, too, trick myself into thinking that letting people only into the exterior side of me gives me life and worth. And I find the temptation to "dumb myself down" or "be less sensitive" a constant in social contexts, especially around people my age. But, I don't want my outside self to be the only self I present to others. I want to bond with others and have fun and go to concerts and pet goats, but I don't want people to think that they are in love with me or inspired by me because of things that sell or things they see on the exterior that look pretty or because I have blue hair. I want people to find beauty in the real me, in all my passionate rants about how racism sucks and my struggle to grow in love with myself, just as I hope to find courage and strength and purpose in the real, full life of someone else. I find the most support for the real me to be with my older friends, the ones who are 33 and 54, who are growing to love the skin they were meant to be and live and love and serve in, the folks who think it's bold that I have blue hair, but know that I'm so much more than my decision to have a little color added in.

They like me because I'm so much more. I am beautiful and inspiring to them, inside and out. And I know this because these women tell me day in and day out what is beautiful about my soul and my desires and not just what is beautiful about my body or my tastes. They affirm both my exterior and internal lives. They don't elevate one above the other.

So, this is me, trying to be a little bolder and speaking up, hoping to believe more and more each day that there is real beauty in the Hope that I have, and that it matters, and it matters so much, too, when I see it illuminating in the heart of others.

I don't want people to know that I like my faith tradition.

A scene from the movie Blue Like Jazz.

I don't want to tell people I care about what I believe. I don't want to tell people that my deepest yearning is for a G-d that holds all of this, and that I do care a lot about the figure, Christ. I don't want to tell people that I associate with the more conservative Christians just as much as I associate with the Christian evolutionists and universalists.

I find so much awesome in my cheesy brothers and sisters as much as I love my more snobby ones. Because they're not just that: they're not just cheesy or snobby Christians: they're whole people with whole worlds in them. Our love for Christ is something we share in common, and I think it's good to be with those who share things in common just as much as it's good to be with those who don't.

When I talk about Christ, I don't mean proselytizing people. i don't want to "try" to convert people. That isn't want I'm talking about. I'm talking about this part of me that would rather be seen as simply a non-Christian humanist by friends who don't associate with the faith than for them to see this other part of me: I'm mesmerized by the wonder of Christ, this mystery that says that a man was incarnated into a limited human form to convey how magnificent the Creator of the Universe is.

I want to share about my life. My life as someone who is in wonder of One who shares the universe with everyone and everything. But, I'm afraid because in the media, on Facebook, television, movies, EVERYWHERE, I'm seeing the subtle message that says "Christians are ignorant, they're jerks, they are why everything sucks." Basically, I'm afraid of being considered stupid.

Yeah, I know, right? I don't want to be called stupid by people I'm getting to know. I'm afraid of not having a chance to be more, to be equal in someone's eyes. I'm afraid that because I choose to belong to this tradition, that someone's first impression of me is of being less.

I'm afraid that I'll have to justify myself in order to protect myself from being seen as stupid by someone who I respect, just because I choose to associate myself with Christ or Christians -- and not just "respected Christians" but also the ones that say hurtful things. I do not believe that Christians are stupid. Just because history and a lot of Pharisaic people in power in this age and of days before ruined it for the unknown parts of our heritage doesn't mean that Christians as a whole are generally horrendous or ignorant people. People who conform to this heritage, we are people, too. And, I want to love and speak well of those who share my spiritual heritage because we need respect and room for our failures, too. I refuse to join in the banter that condemns us as generally "sucking". I understand that there is a purpose for the media to call out hurtful things that Christians do. I respect that. And I agree with the points. But, I can't help but fear that someone I want to know will assume before they get to know me that I'm going to hurt them, if one day I casually make it known that "oh by the way, I think Jesus is awesome and I love going to church."

I LOVE my faith tradition. There is so much about it that's good to me. I find so much of my creative expression and inspiration is in its rich, imperfect, complex and diverse history. But, unfortunately, I can't be honest about how much I value it, because I'm so afraid of not being fully accepted by my friends who no longer consider themselves so or have never associated themselves with the church. I'm tired of feeling like I must be ashamed of these parts of myself, as if I should be responsible for the actions and words of those who are called out in the media for acting silly. 

It irks me when people say things like "you associate yourself with Christians because you want to fit in". Well this is true and at the same time it isn't. Because, yes, I do want to belong and to be accepted. But, I've been largely rejected by the church as well. And, I've been hiding parts of myself to my "secular" friends. So either way, I'm not completely winning. I'm not trying to fit in with just one group of people. Honestly, I'm a people pleaser. I want everyone to like me.

And it sucks. It's exhausting.

I don't want to be ashamed anymore. I don't want to be so freakin' awkward, trying to find the best way to describe how I met someone without using the word "church" in the story. I don't want to be so freakin' stiff, stopping myself every second just thinking about the best way to describe Mission Year without sharing that it's inspired by and associated with the tradition I value.

Maybe I shouldn't be ashamed because Christian privilege is a real thing in the Bible Belt, and I know that Christians aren't persecuted in the U.S. What I'm afraid of is being dismissed, because of the media's portrayal of the church as a laughing stock.

I don't want to be afraid anymore. I want to be myself, with my tradition and all. So, I'm speaking up. I'm a person, too. I'm a growing work in progress like everyone else. I'm not stupid or ignorant just because I choose to associate with a spiritual heritage that's made a lot of mistakes, and I'm not stupid because I find wonder in Christ. Being fond of my faith tradition for me, doesn't take away the value I find in others.

Oh, and let's get real here: its so painful what happens when a person breaks a heart like mine. It makes me want to be more like the ones I like, because I'm used to believing that being more like them would cause them to love me. It is what I was used to believing. It is what I believed growing up.

But love isn't earned, it just is. It's a gift from one friend to another. And, I made a friend who kept pestering me to be myself. When I was around him, I felt so much the insecurity of wanting to be less of myself -- less emotion-driven, less sensitive, more mathematical, logical, intellectual. And yet he insisted that I be myself.

So I want and will be myself, with my faith tradition and all.

A renewal that is embodied, as opposed to just intellectual.

Hey look it's a sad stock photo. :(

Despite how many of my thoughts are being renewed, thoughts that once had me living in shame are
still affecting my life and how I engage with others and with myself. 

My counselor suggested the idea that we operate on three minds: the body mind, the emotional mind, and the logical mind. As she went on to explain her thoughts and how they might relate to my life and the struggles that I face with social-emotional anxiety and panic, I came to see that it made some sense that each of us operate out of different minds (or memories), not just intellectual memory.

So now when I think of Romans 12:2 -- that is: "Do not conform to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what G-d's good perfect and pleasing will is" -- I think not only about what my brain is used to believing, but also about what my emotional self and my body is used to believing. I think about how my current emotional and physical being may or may not relate or be able to comprehend the reality of G-d's kingdom simply because she hasn't had a taste of it.

I think back to the panic attacks that I've had over the past few years of my life. I think about how, even with these panic attacks that I've had, I believed a lot of things intellectually, but experimentally -- heck no, I didn't! Intellectually, I believe that there is "freedom from shame", but emotionally, I don't most of the time. Emotionally, I'm an infant.

Dude, but how can that be? What does that look like to believe something intellectually but not dare I used the word holistically? Entirely? 

Believing in something intellectually but not emotionally-bodily (experiential) is like this: it's like hearing the truth, but never having evidence of it. It's like someone saying that you are worthy of love and relationship, but never having anyone show you that love in a way that you can experience. 

So while I can make you believe that I am mature intellectually, while I can impress you with all the knowledge that I have acquired through reading and reading and reading all these books by celebrated theologians and grace pastors... I'd be lying to myself if I told you that everything I believed intellectually, I believed enough to not run away from. Our actions can sometimes reveal more deeply what we believe or have been believing than what we profess intellectually. 

And so, I think for me, healing looks like seeking out places where I can grow and practice my muscle of trusting what G-d says is true of me: that I am worthy of relationship, that there is freedom from shame. Living with my housemates during Mission Year was one of places I got the chance to wrestle with my shame. I'm also thankful for the many others who have provided with empathy, compassion and truth-telling the space to challenge the lies that I believed emotionally, bodily - and yes -- intellectually. Having positive experiences outside the realm of the intellectual mind has confirmed and reinforced my brain belief, not taken away from it.

I think the church would be blessed by seeing itself as a safe place for people to seek healing from their wounds, and not just what wounded them intellectually. After all, Jesus doesn't command us to love each other for snakes and giggles, but rather, it's to give evidence of G-d and His Kingdom living already in each of us, and to testify to what will be coming. We do that by renewing and challenging our minds entirely -- intellectually, emotionally and bodily.

/////

What do you think? Share with me your thoughts!

It is hard not to worry about your life, but what would happen if we didn't let it control our lives?

I worry about my life. I worry about my life a lot more than I want to.

I think I worry about a lot of things, because there is a lot of things that I desire.
I desire to be in a place where I can do what I believe in while being fully myself.
I desire to not be alone and to have rich relationships filled with beauty, life, meaning and the goodness of G-d.
I long to be close to the people I love and for my love to be requited.
I desire real, messy, but loving community.
I long for the world, for Creation and for humanity to be whole.

But, I worry about my life.
I have a hard time not worrying sometimes. I see Christ's insistence that we shouldn't worry, and I think to myself maybe if I didn't long for these things, I wouldn't worry.
So I shut myself off and tell myself "no, I refuse to care about this person" or "no, I refuse to care about this dream."
Sometimes, I go to the other extreme and I tell myself that I should pursue things that aren't as beautiful to me; I'll make easy and cheap decisions that do not reveal my true self or the deepest joy I have. I will just survive and not think at all about thriving.

But then, I'm reminded that there is no fear in love (and love always trusts!).
I'm reminded that real beauty is wild and free and that the most beautiful of loves is the same.
I look at G-d's love and I see the beauty of his free choice, his choice to embody himself as a fellow human, our brother Jesus, and live with us to share in our suffering and bring glory to our human experience.
A free choice, beyond our control, not able to be tamed.
We couldn't make Him love us.
His love is free.
And there is no fear in love.

I think about control and how I have a tendency to want to control. I think about how I want to possess things, I want to control things when I"m afraid. When I'm afraid that someone isn't going to love me back, I try to control the situation. I might try to do that by pretending to be someone I think they would love, or I decide to hide the things I believe they would hate. When I'm afraid that I might not be able to have a good life doing what I love, I begin to settle for comfort, to something predictable, a life I think I can control.

But when we control things, I think we squander they're beauty. We destroy it's gift. We destroy it's authenticity and it's freeness. We fail to trust. We destroy the ability to be surprised and filled with wonder and gratitude.

There's so many costs to worrying, to trying to control our lives. It doesn't add an hour to our lives. It will shock us when we discovered we wasted so much energy saying "yes" to the illusion of being able to control our lives.

There are many costs to trusting, too. But I think that the joy of trusting G-d with our lives and our longings outweighs the pain that learning to trust may cause. In trusting, we may risk getting hurt, but in trusting, we have the opportunity to experience the beauty of freedom in our own lives and in the lives of others. Freedom can't be found where control is happening.

I want to stop worrying about my life. I don't think I can stop worrying about my life if I continue to look at everything that could go wrong. I don't think it would help to examine everything that is "wrong" with me. I cannot stop worrying if I continue to look into the face of fear. There are many things that could go the way that we wouldn't want it to. But Jesus promises that we will be fed regardless. He promises that we will be taken care of regardless of how much we worry. So why worry?

I wonder what our lives would look like if we worried less? Maybe we would find ourselves present with those in front of us and people would be present with us. Maybe we would. Maybe things will not be just as we imagined or expected, maybe they will turn out better.

In this season of my life, I am sad because I am away from the city and people that remind me of the joy I have. I want so badly to return to Philadelphia, and I am prone to worry and anxiety to whether I will be able to experience that warmth and goodness again. I want to trust that G-d is going to take care of me, and is already doing so. I want to trust even more that when I am sad, that he cares and that the deepest longings I have are not dismissed by him, but are embraced.

Peace be with you,
Rachel

Matthew 6:25-34

One day I wrote this.

The other day I lied in bed and i thought to myself “so much about being alive is beautiful.”
And it is one of those things that you think to yourself despite the pain of living
and despite the agony that comes upon the possibility that one day we won’t see or hear or feel.
And so I told thought in my head a little prayer that said
“That if you one day all of this will just be black holes, 
I do hope that isn’t so.
Please Mr. Universe, don’t ever end.”
Even if I am gone and will never perceive a thing once again.
Only for the hope that all this beauty will continue to be experienced again and again and again by someone else who I will never be;
my wish is that the beauty will still be here.

To what could be.

I do not know what to or what not to expect.

If anything, to say yes to forever, I hope never to neglect what form your insides have taken. They have a history all apart, all so different from my own. You had a life before we met. 

Your life. YOURS. Different from what I could imagine, though I like to believe that when I close my eyes and you recount the stories spilling into your memory and then out of your mouth, that I can see them in my head exactly... but probably not.

And when you will share your photographs with me, I would like to believe that when my mind attempts to chronicle the adventures and the laughter that shaped you into who you are today.. that I might be able to know them for myself... yet... probably not. Probably, I won't. Our timelines never touched until we met.

When I say yes to forever because forever is what we say to whom we hope to be our truest friends... I think that I do not want to know what to or what not to expect sense the way of perfectionism goes like this: I would like to have control of, to pretend to know and to say that I love mystery and yet not embrace him when I see him in you.

So I will say, "I will forsake friendship! And I will avoid romance! Because look at how noble I try to make myself seem! because look at all the mistakes I do not want to and probably will make!" I could and I will probably make the mistake of not letting you have your life one particular day. Or maybe many, so how could I live with myself at the thought of doing that to you? -- and yet, we are all traveling and everything beautiful comes our way when we choose to travel. And yet, we see only so little when we stay in one place, trapping ourselves in our lonely houses where we each grew up.

I do not know what to expect.

So if I should catch a glimpse of who you are and who you are not, I want to be able to say that more than few of the times that you've passed your filled hand to me that it was then that I offered you up into the sky like an explosion of confetti to twirl all around our world, landing into special places in the dirt that I could never pin point.

To be okay with that, I'd hope a peace like that would shape wrinkles of gladness to the side of my eyes.

But, I do not know what to expect. 

Perhaps for today, I can rest in that.

So Rachel, what are you into these days anyway? -- Part 1

I think, sometimes a person needs a place to reflect and share what they like. As someone who struggles with people pleasing and speaking up, I find it important to learn to share. I have gone too long, keeping my voice silent when I sense that others may disagree or that there is no one in the room who may affirm my thoughts. My supervisor says it's okay to march to the beat of our own drum, as long as we're being authentic with ourselves. Maybe then, we'll meet others who will care about our authentic selves, our authentic thoughts and our authentic loves.

So, I thought I would carve out a little place to share what I'm into these days, some of the things people are doing and writing about that I'm pretty dang excited about.

Blogs:

I read a heck of a log of blogs and right now, I have hella-huge cyber girl crushes on bloggers Kathy Escobar and Emily Maynard (among other bloggers I have cyber crushes on). These bloggers have some pretty fierce voices. Kathy is super passionate about:  "community, the marginalized, healing, spiritual transformation, equality, justice, “church”, relationships, diversity, and learning to love and be loved," as she shares in her about me on her website. On the other hand, Emily is unapologetically learning to speak up on topics having to do with purity culture, 

Right now, Kathy's particpating in a synchroblog about pain, a topic many people tend to avoid. But, as someone who is dealing with a lot of pain as of late (more on that later), I think this subject is so important, especially, too, seeing how so many people around me are in pain as well.

Finally, I want to promote Dan J. Brennan's blog. He tends to write mostly on friendship and intimacy and is a huge advocate for cross-gendered friendships. Dan believes that men and women truly can have platonic, non-romantic relationships that are honest and deep. As someone who happens to have a good portion of my closer friends be male, I enjoy getting to read Dan's thoughts on this subject. It is challenging and fairly sensitive to those who may disagree.

You can check these their blogs as well as some other neat blogs I read here:

kathyescobar.com 

emilyispeakingup.com  

danjbrennan.com 

papyruswillgrow.com

gabbingwithgrace.com

Books:

I'm still reading Community and Growth by Jean Vanier. We read the first chapter of the book as a printed PDF as part of my curriculum/training for Mission Year. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to order the whole book and read through it. It's basically about living in intentional community and Jean Vanier shares the insights that he has gained over the years that he spend with the L'arche community living and loving alongside people with disabilities.

I also picked up The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day from my friend Karen's place. The book is an autobiography about Day. Dorothy Day is a Catholic activist and one of the co-founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, which is a community of folks who work for peace and live in solidarity with the poor and oppressed. Now, there is a Catholic Worker in just about every major city (and maybe even your small town). I have a messy habit of reading multiple books at the same time and picking up past books in the middle of the new ones I'm reading. But, I've had a general curiousi

Other:

Seed Savers Exchange -- I requested a free catalog from this group after one of my new friends introduced me to it. They’re a non-profit dedicated to saving and sharing non-GMO heirloom seeds! I’ve yet to decide what else I want in my garden, but, it’s been sweet looking through the catalog and seeing how many type of tomatoes they have. Some of the species in the catalog were about to be extinct, but were saved! WOOHOO!

Cheap Girls -- I’ve been familiar with the name, but, I had not taken time to listen to until recently. I would describe them to be a pop rock band from a mid-western town called Lansing. I really like their song “Ruby” which I first heard played acoustically with Ryan Russell’s project, Nervous Energies.

Curly Nikki -- is a website started by a woman named Nikki Walton about "natural" hair and hair care. Hair is often a really big deal for women who identify as Black in many ways because of our unique hair texture and how it's been a struggle to embrace given the mainstream standard of beauty. Curly Nikki is one of the first "natural" hair blogs/ online communities that I've stumbled upon and I find it to be fairly positive. I've been "natural" sense last August, which basically means that I made the decision to not put harmful chemical hair straighteners, a "relaxer", in my hair anymore and instead embrace my natural curls. The website inspired me. It's been a journey, and the website is an awesome place to read about other women's hair journeys and get some hair advice and product reviews!

So, yes! I think... I will keep it to here for part one! After all, who says I have to share EVERYTHING I'm into now in just one blog? Writing this has helped me to realized that I have more things that I've been checking out lately than I thought. I hope you enjoyed this blog and that you will tune in later and allow me to share more things with you in the future. Until then, all links are in red, and grace and peace to you!

Love,

Rachel

"Oh snap!" she thought as she found some photos from last year.

I didn't have a very great day yesterday. I had woken up feeling bitterly down and remained that way for much of work here at the intersection of Kensington and Alleghany. Somewhere during the day however, it occurred to me that I still had two rolls of film in my backpack that I had meant to take someplace to get developed. It occurred to me that the Walgreens around the corner had a one-hour photo service, so I decided to drop my rolls of film and one survived the process.

My day was brightened by discovering these photos that I had taken just about a year ago. I have other photos, but I wanted to share ones from my time at the Wild Goose Festival, including the pretty snazzy double exposure of my dear friend Joel. I also got some snaps of Aaron Weiss with David Wimbish and the Collection. Last year was an adventurous summer and getting to see these pictures made me wish that I had started taking photos with my beloved analog cameras when Mission Year began.

 Definitely something I wish to do more often.

Peace be with you,
~Rachel

this is about the possibility that love might be at the center of the universe and that that love is worth trusting in.

I've been experiencing a lot of ups and downs the past few months. Mission Year has been tough, especially living within community. More than volunteering at Esperanza. More than reaching out to the community. These past few months have been causing me to grow up and out of old dead places in which I've spent so many years lying in.

There are people saying that they see my growth.

They're proud of me. The word left their lips. "Proud."

It's hard for me to see that growth most days. My heart has been breaking a lot. It's also been crawling closer to the truth -- the ridiculous and often ridiculous but life-giving truth -- the truth being that, i, AM beloved. Somehow.

My friend, Joel, asked me one time, if the search for transcendent love affected much of my life. And, I thought to myself "Of course." "OF COURSE DUH" I think, it does for most of us. Maybe all of us.

///

I've been thinking how important it is to remember that Jesus is a person, not an idea to be debated, a mantra to be recited, an ideal to live up to, or a figure stuck behind Mexican candles and rosaries... but a person. He's a someone I can relate to. There was a man who lived and breathed one day and wandered obscure towns upon the earth, trying to love people the way G-d, the Creator of the Universe, intended for all of us to be loved. Experiencing that love for myself and being able to imagine, believe and then sit in his love is changing me. It's causing me to hope for better things.

My heart is melting despite her constant breaking lately.

When it breaks, it threatens to freeze back up again, into the jadedness, conforming to the same irritable "you're stupid, Rachel!" and "nobody cares about your shit, Rachel" that I'm used to hearing in my brain.

When I think about the love that man embodied in light of my life... when I think about the way he would respond if he were in my shoes... when I remember the promises that I will never be left by him... when I see the way the people who love him light up and love in their broken sincerity and honesty....

my heart melts.

///

Sometimes, I look back at the past eight months and I notice that it wasn't what I thought it would be. I thought that by doing Mission Year, I would know what to do with my life. I thought I would narrow down the thousand passions raging in my heart down to one or two that I could allow to sail my life. I thought I would finally know what to go to school for. I thought I would find my place and my people.

Maybe I'm a little closer to those things now, but I think more than anything, I'm learning about who I want to be. I don't want to be sad anymore.
It's okay to be sad. It's okay to cry.
But, I don't want to lie in a pool of my tears.
If any tears, I wish that they could water the world around me and cause something beautiful to grow in my life.
I don't want a stagnant, un-moving bucket of tears in my life anymore. I don't want to drag around in the weight of my tears.

Life, life that is really life, is worth fighting for.
Love, love that is really love is worth trusting in.

I don't understand much of the mysteries of the universe (maybe multiverse!), and neither do I intend to know them all. I think the biggest mystery of all is there might be Love at the center of this thing at all. I think that's what that man suffered to prove.

That G-d is love.

///

P.S. I'm sorry that I've been so silent lately. There are many of you that I have wished to write or to call or see. I've been the opposite of brave and the opposite of encouraged a lot of times, but, I hope that you will forgive me, and that maybe, we can engage in having some sort of relationship again.

to flow and not deceive oneself is to remember what you care for: a rant.

What does it mean to have what I have?

What does it mean to have mobility?

For me to have things like instruments and cameras and even a little more influence and networks than I realize?

What do those things mean, while there are others who have not had the opportunity to travel, who may have hard access to instruments and cameras and equipment like I was (and sometimes still do have)? 

I remember when I was younger; I was about fourteen when I got my own instrument. I was so thankful for my guitar. It brought me rest. The melodies would let me express my heart until I fell asleep. I was thankful, and it was during stage in my life where I knew that I wanted to share with others what brought me hope, so I began to realize that there might be others like me who, because of circumstances in their life, whether financial or from a lack of meaningful relationship, etc, have a hard time being able to get an instrument and partake in the gift of making/ learning music.

Now that I think about it, it makes me happy to know that one of my housemates for instance, is sharing something he loves deeply, the gift of music, with people in our neighborhood. And that’s wonderful, and such a beautiful and natural way to start relationships: by sharing something you love.

And, so, I love the outdoors. And, I have some type of mobility. I'm not a resident of Philadelphia. I'm from Durham, sweet Carolina -- where the trees are. I wrote my first song about trees (so any adoration I express about trees is not feigned or an exaggeration). If I wanted to, I could pack up my stuff and leave this city because of the fact that I’m tired of it’s lack of natural spaces. I love the outdoors, and that’s why I’m soooo interested in the urban homesteading movement and efforts to make empty lots into outdoor spaces where people can lay under trees in the summer and climb them and rabbits can pop out at the sight of the morning sun and strike us with wonder. That's why I'm growing things in my house on Reedland Street.

I’m thankful for Teen Haven, that they take the youth to retreats away from the city to spend time at natural parks. Because a lot of retreats that I’ve been part of here in Philly are in the city. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, but, I just think that there is a stillness and a way that natural environments can speak to us about G-d and love and life that buildings and concrete cannot.

I think I want to fill the wall of my top bunk with things that inspire me. Prints by photographers that I admire and whose journey’s fill my heart and encourage my own. I’m thinking about why I loved photography in the first place. Photography was a portal to somewhere I could go and somewhere I hoped to be, and somewhere I liked being. I fell in love with photo in a time where I felt stuck. I wanted to be a street and travel photographer, because I love the adventure  and story of the city. I love the graffiti, the stickers plastered on the backs of signs and bus seats, the droop of the Puerto Rican flags in Kensington. Somewhere, in the stress and hurry and pressure of school and photo classes, I lost that vision. At school, I was worrying about whether I would get paid or have a website or get any credibility or a proper portfolio. I was fretting, and photo didn’t make sense anymore. It lost it’s meaning to me. And it sucked, so I dropped out.

I miss taking pictures. I miss spending most of my allowance on getting my film back from the drug store. I miss scanning the dreamiest ones.

So, I’m thinking about detoxing. I’m doing a lot of un-following and deleting on all my social media sites that I feel aren’t true to what I REALLY want or what is real to me or those things that don't challenge me. Yeah, I think a lot of the stuff floating around is pretty, but, I don’t really want the world I’m in to be about just Instagrammed girls with nice high buns holding baby breaths… although I do think it’s pretty. But those are the things that lead me astray.

I want to detox because I want to remember what brings me rest and what causes me to dream in confidence, hope without fretting. I want to take kids who aren’t mobile to the fields of the country and to the forests of towering trees.  I want to see hands and arms of all shades stretch into a sky spilling with bright gracious stars. I heard rumor that generations of children younger than me are not able to see stars because the lights in the city are too bright.  And here, I really can’t see them either. I only see one in the brown-orange sky.

The stars were something that I took for granted in Durham. How I miss the stars!

I’m going to take pictures for myself – not so it can drown in the endless whirlpool of what’s popular on tumblr or current blogs in my networking and friends circle. I don't want to sell my dreams and my journey away. The most meaningful photos to me that others have taken are the ones that often do not get noticed or seen – they are the ones that are connected to me in some way, that are tied to me through relationship and journey. I want the photos that I take and whatever I make to mean that to me, too.

I want them to be a whisper-shout of the word "ADVENTURE!"