count the cost

...for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you must say.

depths of glory

when you enter the depths
of despair
and you keep going deeper
fearing the bottom, fearing eternity

when you cry
out
and there's no answer
you need

when you fear
the end
and no end

when thoughts assail
attack
dissemble
your mind

hold on to the one
who will never let go

when your head goes under
know you will
look up

when you light flickers
know you will
alight again

when you lose your grip

                           don't!




hold on
cling

grind your teeth
clench your fists
sob

hold on to Him.

hold on to Him
for he will                    
                               never
                                                                   never
                                                                                                              never

                                                                              
                                                      

                                                                 let go.

I wonder if things will be different this semester? Aside from subject matter.

I wonder if I will stress more or less. I hope I will worry less. What's the use, right?

I wonder if I will freeze less. My fingers are really cold as I type this because it only occurred to me right now as I type this that I may in fact close the windows in this room (not mine) which are wide open. But I'm not going to because a) that requires getting up and b) I'm almost done. Waste of useful energy, what.

I really really want to go on another outreach thingy. Soon. Soon. Emphasis on soon. You get the idea, right?

Any suggestions on raising funds will be welcome. As well as the funds themselves, haha...

I worried today. About whether 'tis honourable to change my degree from Education to Languages. The reason I worried is because it seems a bit selfish to change, seeing as how I would benefit from the change, but may be able to offer more to others in the short term if I don't. But long term it may be better to change. That just occurred to me as well. I love it when my brain follows the lead of my fingers and starts moving a bit. As opposed to freezing a bit, as they are still doing because my brain is not being insistent enough about the windows.

Siam

fun[k]y feelings

Feelings are weird. Mine are anyway. I think most people's are.

I feel so happy lately. When I think of going on a year journey one day (see www.gcex.org ) I feel even happier. In fact I suddenly finally understand why people say they feel as if they will burst. You get filled up inside with some immaterial insubstance that rises into your throat and escapes through your ears. I don't know where I get this random stuff from but it fits my mood.

(Moods are even weirder).

Getting back to feelings. I feel so excited. I feel like bouncing around. And nothing happened. Okay, I did have a cup of coffee this morning. Maybe it's the people I'm with. But it can't be the people, cos some of them upset me. Or annoy me. Or both.

Last night they had the cheek to watch a  movie about people who freeze on a sky-lift. I was super annoyed. Like super-super-super. The people in the movie were starting to take their fear out on each other and saying heartless things to each other, and I started getting really worked up for the same reason. That was a very effective movie emotion-wise. I wonder what it's intention was?

This morning I was still annoyed with the guy who chose the movie. But I was annoyed with him because of his personality as well. That episode is my main motivation for writing about feelings.

For about a week now I've been trying to understand this silent wonder, wondering about who he is and what he thinks about and then bam, can't stand the sight of him anymore. So I forgave him for his personality. He was the second person on this expedition I had to forgive for his/her personality. It's stupid to get annoyed with people because of who they are.

knitting for the aged

I. want. to. knit.

knitnknitknitknitnknitknit...

No seriously, I really feel like knitting. I ran out of wool for a baby sweater that I haven't worked on for weeks, for exactly that reason.

I'm tired of wearing this beanie that I knitted about four years ago, and I have this absolutely wonderful ball of wool at home and a beret pattern, but it's so faaar awaaay... I just want to knit. I'm starting to have wool fantasies.

Thankfully I am going home soon. This weekend, in fact.

I'm really glad to be home on Shavuot. Having two consecutive Shabbatot in a row, in res, would be torture. Whoohoo, no torture for me, thanks. :)

I want to bake chocolate cheesecake. The last time, and also the first time, that I made chocolate cheesecake, was on my sixteenth birthday. It was gooood. It was so rich that I haven't felt like making it again till now. Two and a half years later.  Somehow being eighteen seems young old at once very young and very old.

I should go do something constructive. Other than knitting. Like studying or something. There's an idea.

Ignorance, my dear Watson.

Ignorance.

In much of Europe, the Holocaust is taught extensively, as a sign of remorse and apology, and also to prevent it from happening again.

In the USA? One does indeed wonder whether the lack of Holocaust education is as a result of contrary aims to those stated above.

full circle

This week has been a maze. Having followed all leads and doors, and having agreed to defeat, I found the answer I needed at the place I started.

I am talking about the test. I told my lecturer I can't write my test on the Sabbath. Two days, six people and a million prayers later, I was back at the lecturer (without the document he required).

I had resigned myself to having to write the test. It was a difficult decision. I had a bit of hope from Scripture/Elohim that it would work out "very suddenly".

And it did. Every single thing I had tried before lead nowhere I wanted it to.

So strange that I had to navigate the whole infuriating circle route (it wasn't that bad, on retrospect) to get permission to postpone the test.

Praise Elohim.

update

There were some good things that happened this week as well.

I met a third-year Physicist who likes politics. Had a nice politics chat with him. Alhough I am quite ignorant on the subject. It was about Israel and Iran.

A guy I sort of like came to sit by me at supper. And he offered to lend me his phone and I had a deepish conversation with him about a bible passage. If he ever reads my blog he would/might recognise himself.

Amidst my freaked-out-ness about all my assigments and stuff I get a double Shabbat. This is debateably a good thing. Wait, this IS a good thing. Elohim decreed it, right?

I got to discuss the Shabbat-thing with my lecturer without making an appointment.

I didn't get soaked by the rain.

I didn't get run over by a car.

Bible-study was fun. We played games. I managed to get there in time.

Elohim answers prayer. That seems rather random but that's one of the things I learnt this week. "If you ask whatever in My Name it shall be granted". And Elohim answers questions out the Bible. Powerfully. 

Funny how my 'what I bad week I had' email is soooo long compared to my 'I guess I should be thankful' one. If I actually thought about it I might get more for this one.

My holiday was amazingly good. I expected it to be too. That should be a whole othe post, but I'm tired now.

downdate

So... this week has been very interesting. If not hilarious and highly infuriating.

The day I arrive, I find out that our group, many of them absent, has a presentation due in 4 working days. This presentation encompasses most of our year mark, if not at least our term mark. This comes as quite a shock.

On par, or even more importantly, I had forgot to bring my pillow with me to res. Sleeping on a fluffy ducky that was small when I was four, doesn't even begin to make up for it. Thankfully a kind benefactor lent me her pillow and gave me an avo-box full of matzah's. Very good matzah's.

The same day as before mentioned, I find out that I have a test scheduled for the Saturday. It' goes against my principles top write on Saturdays, them being Shabbat. (i.e. not just because I would like to sleep in).

The next day, I speak to my lecturer about the matter, he wants official documentation. Every single department seems to have a different procedure. The person who usually helps me with these matters did not reply to my messages, therefore I decided to go to the admin building and sort it out myself. Epic fail. I arrive there very shortly after they close. When I come back I decide to go for a bit of exercise, cycling. It would appear that someone had vandalised my chain in an attempt to steal my bicycle, and succeeded at the former. My bicycle was still there, but I was unable to budge it. The cord had been hacked at and somehow managed to coil in on itself and a random piece of wood. And of course the bike. So I couldn't open the lock, which was in fact one of my better excuses not to do exercise. Must say, that one worked.

The following day I go to the admin building again. They send me from one person to another to another all the way to the adjunct-registrar. Who did not darken the door of his office in the entire time I sat there. Granted, I didn't have an appointment.

Finally, the person I had contacted initally (let's call him Mr. Left) gets back to me, we have a bit of communication about the subject etc. and then I lose my phone. I had been busy for about eight hours since I left res, when I realised that I left it at the library. Back to the library on my way to bible study, it's not there. I almost burst into tears.

I am not very attached to my phone, I don't have that many contacts and I don't have BBM. But I had Mr. Left's no. on it. And he was probably frantically sending me messages and wondering what my problem was.

When I got back to res, my wallet wasn't in my handbag pocket. Which meant my key wasn't in there either. So I sat down on the floor, and I found it. Praise Elohim.

I had to make three phonecalls on the payphone (to get Mr. Left's no. and to call him). But I had hardly any coins. In fact, I had one fifty-cents. Thankfully I don't have too much pride to beg [sic].

But these phonecalls didn't go smoothly either. When I called my mom the first time, she didn't answer.When I called my friend to get Mr. Left's no (I had called my mom to get his), he couldn't hear me. I mean, seriously. And then when I finally reached Mr. Left I essentially ran out of money and the phone went dead.

After several agonising moments, he phoned me back. I still don't know whether my test was rescheduled for today.

But the irony is this: today is also a Sabbath, becasue it's the seventh day of Pesach. Thank goodness I only realised it today. Only, all that trouble was for nothing. I'm going to have to write my test on Shabbat anyway. Thankfully it's a really easy test. Well, I hope it is anyway.

This morning, I accidentally bunked two classes. Because I do not have a phone anymore, I couldn't set an alarm. My roomie kindly made sure that I was awake when she left at quarter past 6, but I only woke up again at quarter to 9. And then I found out that it's a Shabbat and I decided to bunk my other two classes as well.

I am a leetle bit worried about having two days off, but I know that Elohim will help me. I'd rather trust in Him than trust in Myself to work one day more. What's one extra day off in a whole term, right?

Okay, so let's recap all the bad things that happened to me this week (it's called a pity-party). I had a scary presentation to do. THe night before I had spent all evening unpacking my boxes and bags and futilely trying to make the room look nice. At least the shelves.

Also, I had struggled to get my assignment handed in, with all the correct forms and references attached. Last minute stuff. Though I never intend to do things last minute. Okay, hardly ever.

Then I had the whole test thing which consumed my week unneccesarily.

The bike that's stuck.

The phone that's gone.

I was such a squirrel by the end of the day that I only managed to get my pyjama shirt on the right way around by the third try.

Do not judge.

Atheism is unbelievable

Atheism is ridiculous.

It's a total cop-out.

I mean, this is the scenario humans are faced with:

• We exist.
• Why do we exist?
• How do we exist?

 Many people try to find answers to these questions.Many people stick to the answers handed to them by their society. Some people undertake deep personal searches to find these answers.

What do atheists do? They answer these questions at a level one does not expect (or should not expect) in normal humans. 

Why do we exist? "We just do."
How do we exist? "We just do." (It may have been an accident, at that.)

That's such a fundamentalist way to think. They decide what they want to believe and then close their minds to the questions that challenge them.

The thing is, why don't just exist. Had we been matter of the simplest form imaginable, perhaps the first answer would be feasible. But still the second would not.

Of course, we aren't dry matter. Which doesn't matter to atheists. If we as humans have no plan or purpose, we might as well have been pure matter.

To believe in a physical world alone is ludicrous.

How does a search for meaning even being to formulate itself without the existence of 'meaning' itself?

Lord Limerick the Last

There was an old man from the ocean
Who developed a new kind of lotion
It claimed to heal scabs
On the knees of pink crabs
What an extrodinary notion...

Growing up

I don't miss you
I miss us

it seems the friends we used to be
have trickled into kitchen cracks

have wafted off on summer breezes
died

or maybe grew
into people we don't know
didn't know we would become

and yet
I do not miss you when I'm with you
but I do

poem

i think that I may become a poet.

not that kind that are called poets

more the kind that are called people
who write
poems

the ease with which
disjointed sentences flow
makes one ponder
and think that this may indeed be
a way

to express

what?

I'm pretty tired.

My co-blogger-darer stated that this is the natural state of the university student. She should know right? I mean, she knows three of them. That counts. :P The person in question should hurry up and write her blog post, or else. Every time I open her blog I am confronted by baby elephants, eukeleles and lasagne. Unusual thought the combination may be, it does get tiresome.

I should actually be typing away furiously at an academic language assignment that's due in three and a half days. But I'm not. Want to make an attempt at surmising as to the reasons for this? i.e. Wanna guess why?

I'm tired. My eyes bore holes in's the screen, (more likely it's vica versa) and my fingers lie limply and uninspired by the keyboard.

Don't worry folks, that was a gross exaggeration. I did manage to cover two-thirds of the topic in half the minimum amount of words required. WHich will not do but oh well.

Shabbat has come timeously.

Tonight I am obliged to join the res in what they call a ladies' night a.k.a. 'pub crawl'and jive (jive being a verb). Ho ho what fun. We're going
 to tour the towns selection of pubs and bars, and hopefully not clubs (I have bad connotations to those, in my mind). I am not looking forward to the excursion. Not just because I'm tired already. Because it's not my scene, okay?

But here goes...

obligations and what-not

Righty-ho everyone.

I'm back! As you can see from the title, I am fulfilling an obligation. I am, infact, behind schedule, if time has ticked at all since a certain oral contract which you may or may not have read about recently. Or not that recently.

I am grateful to the previous post, as it gives me a point to start at.

Chinese classes. Favorite subject, naturally. I don't think I would have chosen that particular strategy for teaching and learning languages. It focuses more on learning phrases than words by themselves. But I am no expert on chinese. yet. ;) I do appreciate the large amount of practise we get. That is a bonus.

Making friends. Had a novel experience a week or two ago. We were at a Praise and Worship gathering of a few residences, and a girl randomly turned to me and said that she feels she should tell me that I will make friends this year. That had been on my mind for a while, actually. I mean, it's one thing to meet people. It's quite another to meet the kind of people you can be lifelong friends with. I was really pleased that Elohim would use someone to speak to me.

Getting my degree. So far so good. :)

Soo... mission accomplished, blog post wriiten.

Today I became excited about teaching. I imagined what I could accomplish by really making an effort and looking further ahead. Seeing my pupils as people who are going somewhere, and seeing my role in getting them there. It's cool. Now, I don't see myself as a revolutionary teacher or whatever, but I saw that this can be a really cool profession.

I have heard from several sources that the beginning of first year is tough, and also that being a student is the best part of your life. So far I haven't really experieced the former. Only during Mad2, and that's because of sleep deprivation and overcrowding and overbusiness. It doesn't count. But otherwise I'm a very happy first year. Hmm, i wonder who to ascribe that to? i hope you can guess.

semi finals en grande

Learn Chinese. Why would I want to do that? I don't like China. I don't like Atheism or Buddhism. I don't like over-crowded cities. I don't like Communism. I don't even like Chinese. (No, actually I do like Chinese, just not its comparative difficulty. Or then again maybe I do like the idea of learning something difficult).

Find a church. I am not a regular church goer. I find listening to sermons boring and, unless they are scholarly and make fresh, valid points, a bit pointless. But I want to make Christian friends and find a bit of Christian 'community'. Also, I think student churches will be a bit different from those I've known so far. Will probably be more like youth. :)

Get a quarter of a degree.

Make friends. The chances of me meeting no-one at university are so small I'm not even going to consider it.

These are my goals. Year one.

Semi-finals

My time at home is running out.

It seems to me that I am leaving home at exactly the right time. I can stay at home for another couple of days, but that's it.  It seems to me that My Life at Home has in fact not been interrupted, but is coming to its timely end. And that's good. A while back I was feeling worried and apprehensive about the whole pending aloneness issue, but at the same time I knew I'd rather go than stay. I just can't bear staying home another year. I have to, I want to, get out. It's time for a change.

I'm not running away from anything, though I am happy to get away from some things.

Friends who say they like you so much and yet practically ignore you when their special friend is around. Friends who make it hard for you to believe what they say, but you have yet to prove they're lying.
Family issues, arguments that come around again and again. Trying to get involved, to help sort it out, is so greatly discouraged its not even worth it. The argument just turns on you.

I don't imagine things will be better at University. I know it won't.
I know it will be hard.

I hope it will be fun.

And I'm looking forward to it.

Thank Elohim.

wash the rubble from your mind

In the lives of those that follow there is going to come a time
When rhythm starts to stumble and singsong swallows rhyme
When imaginations crumble, false foundations turn to dust
Towers fall to piles of stones and girders into rust
Til you let the blood of Yeshua wash the rubble from your mind
And your eyes again can see the one you almost left behind
When theology's in tatters and reason is absurd
Still your soul in silence and listen for His word
So many turns, so many ways, so many voices cry
Standing at the crossroads watching time go flashing by
Indecision paralyzes, it's the fear of choosing wrong
But waiting is a step itself, and your wondering too long
So again you search the scripture, and again you ask your friends
But last of all the One who knows the beginning from the end
In the clamor and confusion and the blindness of your choice
Still your soul in silence, and listen for His voice
Rome is full of ruins, Babylon is gone
The temple's just a memory that some still dwell upon
But deep within a place that sword and veil had once denied
A tree of life is growing, living waters flow beside
Far beyond all human reason and words upon a page
His glory lightens all who fret their hour upon this stage
To know Him is our freedom, to hear Him is release
To fix your heart and soul on Him is rest and perfect peace

one of the last

Ah, so I thought it pleasing to inscribe another of these ill-written testimonies to life before I am released.

Soonish, My Life At Home will be interrupted for the next episode: My Life At University.

I have mixed feelings about this. Naturally, the current episode must draw to a close sometime, as eighteen years is a fair length of time to play a daily show, daily. I am not at all sorry to call it a day and move on. The alarming prospect of spending one more year in my current fashion would induce a shallow state of depression, which is only being held at bay by the thought that I will not.

I want adventure. University is not the adventure I was looking for. Staying at home being the alternative however, I gladly take the plunge.

There are many unforeseen advantages to heading out to campus, as opposed, say, to China. For one, my granny is overjoyed. Important to keep your friends and relations at ease, I'd say. Naturally it would be more fun and make for more interesting conversation if I had gone to the East. Would have ruffled many feathers. I wouldn't have needed to say "Thank you, I also hope I have a splendid time." It appears I am obliged, by now, to enjoy myself as a student and all that.

Yes yes, I don't sound grateful. I am grateful. Not many people have the opportunity...etc. It's one of the best universities in the...etc.You think I do not know that? I do. I worried about it, but now I am over the fact that children are going hungry while I, the rich brat am going off to enjoy myself and get an education. I am very sorry that there are hungry children but my giving up university is not going to feed them. If it did I would feel... way more guilty. So lay off, I am grateful.

Another advantage to going to university, particularly the one I am going to, is that I know a lot of people there. This is not the case with China. That's probably why people go to the East to find themselves. If they went to a nearby town someone else would. Find them, that is.

At present I know where I am, and if not I'd rather be found before I go off to the land of the Squints. Wouldn't be of much use if I went there lost.

I try not to imagine what being there will be like. This way I can't be very surprised or disillusioned. I imagine it will be rough on me, that way I won't be disappointed by it's non-smoothness. Also, I expect that many of my preconceptions and prejudices (that I do not know I have) will be brought to light and challenged. I hope the way I think will only change in a good way.

I hope this year will be enjoyable.

I'll have to do something about me, in that case.