Fairy

I wish to belong one again
to that place of security and wonder
where all that mattered
was whether a mole had dug itself back home or not
and one concerned herself with the well-being of
what-some-call-weeds,
the unlikely flowers of whom would be at risk
of getting trampled at the park.

Legs part as they rise from a trampoline.
And the milky sweetness of plain ice-cream
pales the color of little lips.

I could have thought that every child I met
with her large eyes and delicate whisper
was a fairy,
Who knew how to play in the woods
Who knew how to make large of the world of everyday.

Awkward stage of life.

I think I am struggling to remember that I am younger than I think I am, and that there has always been more time to grow.

I have always been hard on myself, or at least more critical, and it has been hard to measure whether this is because I expect myself to be like others, or at least, to be in the same place that they are, whether it be socially, relational-ly, financially, and the list goes on...

Other times, I think it's okay where I hold myself to, because our society has put upon expectations on us early 20 somethings as if we are still 16... maybe because we see ourselves that way... or maybe because we feel allowed to, or expected to. I don't really know.

Maybe it is both perspectives. Again, I don't know. All I know is that my brain is hacked with this expectation to be more "grown up" than I am, but I also often feel like I'm too dorky, maybe even obnoxious and immature, to be a "grown up" or to "fit in" with the folks I look up to. It's an awkward tension that I've felt for quite a while now. I just wish that I knew more people my age to journey with, whom I could see more regularly. This is one reason why I wish I didn't take a year off school to volunteer, and that I was a college junior -- in order to conform to the traditional American "timeline" that many of the peers I miss find themselves in. It just feels so odd, not knowing how to perceive me, how much grace to give myself, to what standard I should be held to.

Should I be holding myself to the standards that I hold myself to?

Maybe. If there is oppression in those standards, probably not. And if there is joy and life in those standard, then, probably yes.

So then, within the every day struggle of both growing and accepting where one is at, perhaps the goal is to realize which spirit I am being influenced by: is it the spirit of oppression and lies and fear; or is it the spirit of love, freedom and joy?

//

I think I really want a "me, too" friend my age in Durham to journey through this awkward stage of life with.

In which I share my current pet peeve of social media reacting (and I invite you to join me in learning about one another).

I have noticed the past few months a lot of "news" articles being shared all over on social media on subjects of high controversy -- subjects that may ruffle a person who notices an attack on their ideology, or an attack on a social group that they may associate their identity with.

You know which trend of articles I'm talking about -- the ones published after Miley twerked on stage, while Robin Thicke got away with his "Blurred Lines". Oh! And The Duck Dynasty madness. On and on it goes. You know, the articles which make those who consider themselves "feminists" or "conservatives" or "anti-racists" angry and upset. Upset enough to flood their Facebook dash with arguments against the party that doesn't affirm their view. Upset enough to write ANOTHER article describing the evils of the person for allowing the racism, sexism, classicism, elitism to happen in this or that situation.

Most of these news subjects being situations which the news is most likely not going to follow up on a year from now.

But ignoring that fact, the arguments explode all over the social media. Of course, until everyone forgets or moves on to the next thing to get angry about.

I've gotten to the point where I've become very weary from all the dismissive articles and simplistic passive-aggressive memes I find on social media serving as some form of resistance. I've even begun to feel hostile feelings towards these expressions as I have progressively grown more and more frustrated. I decided to take a moment to reflect on the previous instances which I have gotten annoyed and frustrated from the sudden uprisings and disappearances of angry vocal people on social media to figure out why I felt this way.

Even though I would consider myself as someone who cares about social equality (and there are sides that I certainly lean a little stronger towards), I see the posts and the reactions and I find myself frustrated because I see so much energy but very little positive change around me. I wonder to myself where is all this anger going? In fact, where DOES it all go?

Does the anger just stay online on the forums, in the comment boxes, on our Wordpress dashboard and Twitter feeds? Does it just stay in our heads as an ideology? Does the anger not transform itself? Does it just stay as that: anger?

Frankly, I'm tired of this trend of immediate, angry reacting. This is a reaction to every little thing, every little post and news article with anger that I have no clue where it will lead us.

To be clear, I think it is alright to get angry. In fact, it's awesome that we get angry at all. If we are angry, that means that we are not apathetic about a situation! I think there is a place to get passionate and to have a desire for justice. But I also strongly believe that anger ought to leads us to do good, to seek solutions, to seek reconciliation, collaboration and dialouge with others. The purpose of getting angry doesn't have to be creation of more bitterness in our hearts. It doesn't have to bring us to attacking others or to further dehumanizing the person whose ideology we see as "the other".

I think such anger only brings a deeper divide, one that can get deeper and deeper and lead only to hopeless, paralysis and cynicism.

I think we can make a difference in the lives of those around us as well as larger society. We have the potential to help bring about justice. But, I don't believe that justice comes about by settling for ongoing figure pointing and long rants.

I want to see people who are curious about another point of view.

Not just an abstract point of view. But, yes: the point of view of the person who is opposing your own point of view.

I want to see people have the courage to LISTEN to the "other", because I believe that when we hold too tight to what we're angry about and we argue without listening, we miss out on opportunities to see how human "the other" is. We miss opportunities to reconcile and to let go what we can't or whom we can't reconcile to us. I believe that people have reasons why they think and feel and do the things we do, and I think they are worth learning about and sharing with others. People are so much more than their "isms". I have found that people, including myself, we have stories, and REAL reasons why they believe or embody their "ism", whether these are harmful or fruitful "isms".

I think we have to find enough self-control to sit still enough and imagine the voice of another side. There's a story behind the ideology of a person. There's a story behind the celebrity who annoys us or the people group that may disgust us. And I think that it takes MORE courage to surrender to that reality than to just stay angry all the time.

I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to this reaction trend of getting angry at and dismissing the one I disagree with. But I realize reacting isn't something I want to do anymore. It only makes me super pissy, with a lot of anger I don't know what to do with at times. In other words, it just leads to a bad night.

I want to see life get better. Don't you?

Tonight, instead of making a passive aggressive status-complaint on Twitter, I used my frustration to share my hopes and concerns with you, an invitation to become slower in reacting in anger and quicker to listen to other's stories. This requires vulnerability and courage from all parties, but if you are willing to take the road of justice, perhaps it is wise to put off the immediate reaction.

Let's listen more.


////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

What are your thoughts on anger and reacting? Do you ever get weary of passive-aggressive memes? Do you think the people and ideas that make your angry are worth investigating or learning more about?

the Hope List and favorite decisions of 2013

I miss having an outlet. I find that blogging is very different for me than journaling. When I blog, I feel like I don't have to have a chronological progress. I don't have to enter everyday where I left. I can start where I need to begin. It's a place where I have space to share my backstory and I can explain myself without having to explain myself. I know that I don't have to commit to a particular expression with my journaling, but after years of journaling, trying to do it a different way can sometimes feel wrong and disorganized to me. I decide to start and stop in various journals for various different things, when all I want is to communicate with myself and to others. I don't know what I'm doing. But I don't necessarily feel that much pressure on myself when I blog.

I wanted to write a list of things I want to do in the next couple of years. Things that are important to me so it wouldn't just float around my head and reappear or feel scattered like my journals do when they're strewn across the floor or hiding in various places in my room. My hope is to continue to look back upon this list and to add to the list.

Blogs are easier to edit than journals and penstrokes are. I like that. (I also look at my blog a lot more compulsively than my journal. it works out. really).

I don't do resolutions, so instead, this is my "Hope List".

-- get my analog camera fixed so i can shoot film again
-- land a steady farm opportunity
-- work towards being a homestead
-- find my niche with the dress project and finish it
-- continue to invest in North Carolina friends
-- get back to creative writing
-- finish Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
-- continue to read fiction
-- finish my first semester of community college
-- work on and improve how i present my art
-- buy a used iPod or CD player, Lord, I miss music on long commutes!
-- get a vehicle that runs on veggie oil
-- learn and get accustomed to biking like a pro in the streets
-- acquire a pocket knife
-- acquire extra warm socks
-- make iota chi patches to give to friends
-- continue to use my savings account for goal setting
-- continue my gratitude journal
-- sell what i have and unclutter my life
-- move into a home that feels right
-- establish a "rule of life"
-- have lots of adventures!
-- to live in grace for myself and confidence of G-d's love, even in seasons of silence and depression
-- play instruments again
-- read a few of the books on my amazon wishlist


My favorite investments and decisions of 2013 
-- buying my second-hand high quality rainboots for adventuring. I used them all the time. They help me in my morning walks to the bus stop and my hiking at the state park and they are sturdier than all my other shoes and one of my favorite colors. :)
-- allowing myself to get away and visit friends
-- making finding a church home a priority

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.