Still

THE World is happening; it's all happening so fast. It's happening at a rate that feels not worth mentioning because it's bound to happen anyway. But I'm mentioning it now. It's all so fast. It's so fast that you have one chance of stepping off the merry-go-round to take a look at your life from a panoramic view, instead of a spinning one. That one chance lies in your ability to shut off any sound, light, wind and thought but this one: Be still and know the person of God. I've put it off for days at a time; I've pushed it aside for the silliest reasons. I've ignored it to my own regret and buried it for louder passions. I've feared the silence in which I can hear my own thoughts, because my own thoughts are intimidating. But still, in spite of that,there it is. Him. Speaking all along. Ignoring this is much like holding a pencil in my hand, longing to write with it a message but only using the eraser. Ridiculous. That is what it is. I know this. My future me knows this. It bypasses moral dilemma, religion, and spiritual reason, and pools into general insanity. There are those who do the craziest things for the dumbest reasons leading to unrewarding results. Then there are those who don't do the best things for no reason at all resulting in simple regret. Perpetually, which equals insanity. So I have felt, again, The Challenge. To Not Be Moved. To break the repetitive sludge of conforming to the world at my finger tips, by stopping long enough to get quiet. To taste and see that He is good. I write this as a person looking through a kaleidoscope darkly, a moving soul strapped in a reluctant sinewy flesh. We all have this body, yet in it the ability to take a step toward Him. I'm finding that the battlefield is indeed the mind, and if I keep my mind on Jesus the water is walkable. It seems to be the Key. To all the stuttering questions, all the restless darting about of eyes, all the unshaped longings I've had my entire life. I'm beginning to think He wants us to lock into His eyes, because what we behold, we become. He must be the most secure being in the universe. It's something He's been surely and slowly working in me, no matter how many times I've fearfully, acidically pulled back. This has been a struggle for me, but I'm stirred to excitement; what motivates me to push in, move forward, and be still is that He is always there waiting for me to do just that. You may not be like me, trying to sit tight and zen-like on a merry-go-round life structure, but I hope this helps you as it has helped me. To remind myself once again, to be still.:)

In Love.

A thought flew past my thoughts this morning, and settled it's flight somewhere in my soul before I hardly realized what happened. Jesus is desperately in love. With You. With Me.

town kids

town kids
Originally uploaded by all_LitUp♔Inside

Gravity will retrace every step

Relationships. With people. Sigh.
Don't get me wrong, that was a sigh laced with hope. I love people. I'm a people. People are lovely, they are magnetic, they reflect God's swagger like no other creature on earth, and they make really good food. But we're...kind of hilarious. Painfully. So funny. We keep looking in the refrigerator even when we know what's in it, hoping for something new to appear. And the capacity for being dumb is...staggering. We're like, captivating on a molecular level, provoking on a personal level. We really know how to pull drama. A bunch of sheep. We seek rest and won't rest until we find it. Loving lust while lusting for real love. Our automatic lack of wisdom must make us equally loveable, entertaining and revolting. I mean, are we the new little puppy that pees on the persian rug but looks up at his owner with the so-cute helpless "oops" face that the owner just loves to death? Is that how God sees us? At times I do get the slightest sensation that my guardian angels are laughing at me. Or passing notes about me that I would pay money to read.
Anyway, IMAO there are two kinds of people: actors and reactors (yes, I'm making heartless, trite and stereotypical labels, also known as psychology). And most people are both of these types of people. Which makes most people two kinds of people. Which equals a lot of people. And that induces a lot of acting and reacting going on all over the place.
And here I am, at a place where I can look back on my life any time I choose and cringe more at my reactions than even my actions. At how disappointed I am at my obscene flightiness, changing too much. But every day is a catalyst for chances to do the right thing. So I can always keep it moving in a forward motion (good song by Thousand Foot Krutch).
So our existence orbits around relationship. It's The Most Important Thing. I know you already know that, but it bears repetition. We write books on how to relate to relatives. I relate to God, my surroundings, my pets, my ipod. And did I mention people?
Yesss. Relationships. IMAO there are two kinds of relationships that happen to us. There's (pardon the outer space theme) the Meteor and the Star. Both of these have chemical actions and reactions. The Meteor relationship, well, you know, it's the one that without due warning, went peeling through the firmament in a spazzy flame of life and color, but just as suddenly took a nosedive (oh, gravity)as it fizzled out of its misery and hauled butt into a crash that left a crater somewhere, and pedestrians gawking in shock. And maybe you tried to salvage some of it, and good for you, but maybe it just wasn't a Star relationship at the moment.
A Star, on the other hand, sits tight. Burns brightly for all it's worth for a long and highly acidic lifetime. The Star rests in place as if separate from the anals of time. The relationship that knows its place and stays there, the friendship that sticks. I'm convinced Jesus wants my relationship with Him to be a Star. And the Meteors in my life-I think I should cherish the good in them, learn from the trails the craters paved, and somehow hope for the pieces to be redeemed.
Something heavenly like that:).

The Importance Of Dreams

I really felt like writing last night and today. For one,It's just that time of the month.For two, words kept coming to me. I don't think anyone reads these things (except my old roomie Nicole, kudos to her hah) but I need to practice writing again, so desperately.

Anyway, the appreciation of the importance of dreams,(and I don't mean dreams of the future and posterity, but the actual mind scenes taking place during rapid eye movement when one sleeps at night) directly follows a notable theme of my summer,

which would be

sleep.

Not enough sleep, oversleeping,sleeping at the wrong times, the horrid law of gravity directly related, the need to wake up in life and a recently noted teaching on how we spend a third of our lives asleep and that's when God tries to speak to us. And that loops me right back to the dream topic.

So dreams, sometimes they are really foggy and I can't for the life of me remember their allusive contents,leaving me distracted. Other times a dream I had is vague but leaves an extensive aftertaste like a traitor's kiss--- it's just painful but I can't even ascribe a theme to the dream, leaving me bereft of something and I don't even know what. Other times the dream is so real that at some point an action in the dream corresponds to physical reality (such as a dog biting me) and actually wakes me up with force, leaving me emotionally gawking at how close to home the dream had hit.

So it's said that everyone dreams, all the time, whether they remember or not.

So why do dreams matter? Do they?

After some reading up, I think it's true that "western" thought, versus eastern or more specifically Hebrew thought, has effected the way I've tended to view my dreams.

For example, western or "Greek" thought leans to the intellectual side of, well everything. Logos is everything. In contrast, Eastern thought leans to the spiritual significance of things.

Not that I should over-spiritualize everything, but dreams are getting my attention more lately, due to the fact that dreams I've had in the past, oh, two years or so have borne VERY strong symbolic resemblance to happenings since then.

I have to say, I rarely have had dreams with strong, scary negative subject matter. So when I do have one, it stands out.I still remember certain nightmares from when I was a young child and teen.

One that will bear repetition is a dream I had a couple years ago, sort of out of nowhere. Personally I believe it was God trying to prepare me for an event.

In the dream I was at home, and stepped outside. I noted my neighbor, and his pitbull.
I thought to myself, "watch out for that dog" but that threat faded when I realized the presence of a real enemy.There was a vehicle in front of me. Standing on it was someone I knew, someone close to me. With him were two black pitbulls. He smiled in a smug way and I instantly knew he would sic those animals on me. I also knew that while he thought he controlled the dogs, they were controlling him. It was weird.

Anyway, the dogs chased me and I of course, ran. (You would have too, trust me:)
I ran to a stairway. It was midway up that one of the dogs caught up. It bit me, specifically on the side of my abdomen. I recoiled from it so strongly that I just woke up.

Around this time and soon after events occurred in my life and the life of this person that confirmed symbolism in my dream.The colors, type of animal, people and objects in the dream fit together in ironic ways once I researched their possible meanings.

Since then I've had several of these kind of dreams.

One particularly very very scary dream I cant even remember the contents, they were too blurry. But I woke up with a very strong sense of fear and panic and even painful relief. The nature of the dream was such that something irrevocable had happened. I know the Lord doesn't give people a spirit of fear yet the dream became a warning to me to be alert to my circumstances. Shortly after, I discovered some things that confirmed the fears triggered by the dream.

The point of all this is, if you have a dream that stands out, take a closer look at it maybe. The Bible talks a lot about this subject, and I'm learning how to pay attention to these kind of things that at times I've pretty much brushed off as insignificant mental stuff.

Why would God try to reach us through things like dreams we have at night? Because our spirits are more attentive when we aren't mentalizing so much. Jesus used parables a lot to convey his messages to people. There is something about symbolism that takes root.

grandiose

The older I get the more I see, the more I hear, and I'm finding consequently I have to fight the dimness off my eyes, by blinking furiously, refusing to let the wonders I've witnessed be forgotten. And my ears, I have to quicken them. So that truth doesn't blend in with static and get old, or so familiar that I can't discern black from white. I'm talking about truth. Listening to "In The Valley Of The Dying Son" by House Of Heroes. It never fails, and I was watching Tim Skipper and co. describe their masterpiece of a song with keywords such as "grandiose", "cowboys", "disco", "robotic", "Jacob from the Old Testament" and "sci-fi". I just ate it all up. Anyways, it describes the eternal story of a man and God and the curse on his life and all the struggling spackled in-between. Actually, check the music video.This song, it's got screwy instrumentals that end up flowing into perfect choreography before I can comprehend what's happened. And somewhere in between the lines of bass and cowboy-boogie antics I get this gorgeous message. The man, a soldier if you will, wrestles the Angel of God and he wins by losing. Losing himself, you see? The curse is always a choice. He, like Jacob in the Bible, gets away scott-free by facing God. Anyway, RESISTING the dimness is a choice as well. Choose life; that's how God put it to me. Dangit, I shoulda put this in my Future of Music blog.

guess who's back

Ok, i'm returned because my espresso bean/70% dark chocolate just kicked in at approx. 2:01 AM.


i am now creative, emotionally alert and enlightened.^^


singing:::::::

"livin in the same town, for all these years, doing the same old thing, hangin with the same crowd, an it's startin to get cri--ppl----ing.
you've never felt in place
and you tell yourself its all ok
but somethin's different today
you want ta run the o----pposite, way
and it seems like you've been locked in a cage
you want to find a way to escape, when everyone
is settin the pace, its ok to run the opposite way
The Father sent His Son down, the Light of men
the cross He bore was cri----ppl---ing
rejected in His own town, they couldn't see
the Son shi-ning. He knelt in the
gar-den and, prayyyed
Father
let this cup pass, froom meee,
it's not Your will for me, to stay
Your will for me's the opposite way
and it seemed like He was locked,
in a cage, and He couldn't find a
but through the cross He conquered
the grave
my Jesus ran the
opposite way.