January 2012
10 posts
los que no danzan
Una niña que es inválida dijo: —«¿Cómo danzo yo?» Le dijimos que pusiera a danzar su corazón…
Luego dijo la quebrada: —«¿Cómo cantaría yo?» Le dijimos que pusiera a cantar su corazón…
Dijo el pobre cardo muerto: —«¿Cómo danzaría yo?» Le dijimos: —«Pon al viento a volar tu corazón…»
Dijo Dios desde la altura: —«¿Cómo bajo del azul?» Le dijimos que bajara a danzarnos en la luz.
...
why my job changes my life. →
It was too dark to see the time exactly. She gave him credit for his thoughts, although too many of them made the space seem crowded and claustrophobia came like a mosquito on a summer night; pinching and driving her to scream.
She looked out the window and her heart sped up, not long ago she was on the road nearby and nobody could even read her face, let alone her mind. Now she was stuck and he...
“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to...”
– George Bernard Shaw
Dying for educational opportunity. →
Today: be thankful for the educational opportunities you are afforded. You can be sure that somewhere, someone is denied the same rights and resources that you take for granted. Practice everyday thankfulness for your education, stray from apathy and complaint.
at some point we must begin to remember how to forgive and forget and let go and start over. at some point we must learn to love ourselves again; because no matter how hard we try, we can never fully love others until we love the one most deeply connected to us: the self.
make the morning about a new beginning.
“there was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.”...
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow...”
– St. Francis of Assisi
Words to live 2012 by…
December 2011
12 posts
Love watching my girls in pursuit of a... →
2 tags
in that moment, something started to make sense to her. seasons came together like pieces of a puzzle and her eyes began to fall shut, heavy with the weight of humankind.
“keep faith,” he said to her. she nodded, paddling on down the stream of secrets and into the outlet beyond the marsh.
she turned around to look for his reflection in the stream beside her, but the ripples from her...
this is where I'll be tomorrow! →
He had no idea what he was getting himself into. He stepped out on the sidewalk, the air damp and the ground still soft beneath him. He didn’t know that life could change so quickly, but somehow in a matter of hours, he was gone. I saw him laying there innocently, a shriveled sort of soul, swallowed by the pavement and beaten by...
November 2011
10 posts
la caída:
otra vez, las hojas tienen sus colores. otra vez, soy libre.
pero así como las hojas se caen de sus lugares en el mundo, yo también estoy cayendo.
¿nuestro dolor es a causa de la libertad?
ojala que nos alcancemos juntos otra vez.
in everything I see, do, hear, smell, am; some kind of gravity brings me back to home. the way the leaves chuckle when I walk by, the smell of burning wood as we pass along the shore, the sky’s brilliant goodbye to us: it’s all there, spelled out. the mesmerizing chants and their undertones of a mysterious sort of love; they remind me of how wrong I am. how right I could have...
“Uno no escoge el tiempo para venir al mundo; pero debe dejar huella de su...”
– Belli
it's devastating:
when you can’t even talk to the people you breathe the same air as.
It’s been weeks since I felt a real feeling. Since I breathed in the air and smelled its sheer sweetness. Why is that? Why do we fall out of love with life? Why aren’t we always captivated by the way a baby can clap, or by the feeling of the sun on bare backs?
Why do we forget? We forget the ones we love, the...
“Amekuonyesa yaliyo mema, ee mwanadamu BWANA anataka nini kwako? Ila kutenda kwa...”
– Mika 6:8
it’s an interesting road, the one we stumble down together. gracefully we trip over our words and fall into one another’s arms again and again;
it’s remarkable: the way You always catch me, You created me, and you know my weaknesses. You know how far I can walk before I’ll grow weary. Lord you have searched me and you know me. Know my steps before I take them…
“Estoy feliz porque mi hija va a tener una vida mas fácil que lo que yo he vivido. Ella no va a endurar la violencia o la injusticia… aquí hay oportunidades tan grande como el cielo. Quiero darle el cielo.”
I asked one of my ESL students about why he was happy to be having his first child here instead of in his home country of Guatemala. He told me it’s because here he can...
“Am I living a lie?” “A legitimate question,” you told me. “Probably not true.” I rested, assured that I was the victim, that I wasn’t in the wrong.
Come to find out that all along, it’s been my fault. All along, it’s been my problem.
“Am I the sick one?” Maybe I should have asked that, first.
Would you have even told me?
October 2011
12 posts
we talk about the woman on welfare, but rarely do we watch as she teaches her daughter how to read by flashlight in the night, so she may have a better life one day.
we remember passing the man on the corner who begged for a handout, but we forget how he served our country holding far more than just a hand out.
we watch the “drug dealers on the corner” make what we think is a deal,...
shalom.
Every Monday and Tuesday night I drive 17 minutes down Route 128, walk through 3 sets of open doors, up two flights of highly trafficked stairs, and am transported into a different world. When I enter, I am greeted in at least a dozen different languages and am ushered to the front of a fairly tiny classroom to assume the role of “Teacher”. In front of a room full of adult...
La teología de la liberación
Los derechos del pobre son derechos de Dios. Este es un hecho de nuestra fe y puede ser visto en las escrituras. Los proverbios 14:31 nos dice que «El que oprime al pobre afrenta a su Hacedor; mas el que tiene misericordia del pobre, lo honra.» Sabemos que, como cristianos, necesitamos hacer lo que Dios nos pide. Esto es porque...
today i felt alone...
and it wasn’t unlike the day before.
“Kujikwa si kuanguka, bali ni kwenda mbele, kupoteya njia ndiyo kujua njia.”
– [To stumble is not falling down but it is to go forward, to get lost is to learn the way.]
Ninajikwa sana. Niwenda mbele sana.
“‘Lord, I resented your silence.’
Replies the Lord: ‘I was not silent. I...”
– Shusaku Endo
1 tag
it’s dark; and she wishes she could fly. away, where they could be everything. afternoons they’d spend laughing til wings sprouted & smiles never faded… with a crowbar, he opens up their memories and cleans them off - one by one- a lesson in love and time, spent. he strings them up to dry. it’s dark, and he’s beginning to fly…
“it’s dark and she wishes she could fly.”
September 2011
3 posts
To all my teacher friends, my student friends, my peers and those to come:
Happy first day of school. I pray that (for your sake, and the sake of your student/teacher couterparts) everything went off without a hitch and that you’re in good spirits. I long for the days (and cannot wait to find them soon again!) that I go to sleep dreaming of brand new sneakers and smelling freshly shaven...
jigsaw.
There’s something missing. Something that used to be here and has since gone away. It’s hard for me to place, amidst feelings and pains and excitement…but I know it’s gone.
It’s that piece of the jigsaw puzzle on the hardwood floor in your grandmother’s old lake house. The piece you saw after you cleaned up the puzzle, days later, a memory in your...
call to codependency?
Galatians 6:2 says we should “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ”.
What then, does that mean in day to day life? Certainly I want to fulfill His law, but I have to wonder- is there some way around this part? Do I really need to bear burdens? Does that make me the emotional pack mule of my relationships?
On a much larger scale I’d have to say of...
August 2011
6 posts
I wonder each day which is hardest: losing you or living with you. I’ve decided that the former is best, as the latter would require me to lose the self I’ve found in me.
For so long I wondered if I’d make it out of the valley, see the other side. I have, I did, and I’m here.
Nothing can make me fall from the mountain now, not even your words, your sticks, your stones.
...
trouble and disgrace
spells TRoUblE disGRACE.
it is through the hard times that we feel our Father’s love for us. Today: open your heart, and your arms. Love on someone else as He has loved you.
If you’re not a believer, maybe consider it Karma. Haven’t you felt loved lately?
I am so freaking lucky to have a roommate like
Ains!
Honestly, I could ask for no better partner, no stronger personality, no soul more loving, no heart more daring. She is PERFECT. I know I sound like I’m in love with this woman, and that actually may be true. She is honestly amazing. I hope she understands the extent to which I feel ridiculously blessed by her having chosen me as a room mate.
Please pray for her during this week....