Open Letter to Heath McNease

Dear Heath

I sent you some fan mail a while ago which was very confusing, I agree. I was very tired and so my thoughts flowed through my fingers in a rather disjointed way. I was trying to tell you the following:

You are really cool. I have gotten to know you in a very distant way through your music and your YouTube videos. I never used to be into listening to music as a hobby, but when I do listen, it sometimes ends up a research project… Basically, I have listened to The Weight of Glory so many times that it feels like it’s part of my brain. I have watched your Calls That Never Come video quite a few times and showed it to friends and family. Some of them just squinted and didn’t laugh but those who share my sense of humour (my dad being foremost) laughed all the way through, especially at the Jet Ski. My dad, in fact, was silent with laughter at that point, and almost blind with it too.

What I like about you, Heath, is this. You’re real. You don’t fit into a box, at least not into the boxes I know of. You don’t seem to try hard to be Christian, to appear to be Christian, or to be cool. You just are. And that is an inspiration to me, and to many others, I hope.

Carry on.

Be like that.

Marie

Blog is back, or is it?

For some strange reason, this blog has been on my mind a great deal the last few days.

I don't want to blog. Not really. I don't see the point.

I want to read Narnia, paint pictures for myself and my friends, practice jazz piano, study Greek, Hebrew, and linguistics, make lists of things I need to do, cook lovely healthy food, and learn Korean.

This past term, I have managed to do all of the above and work consistently on a documentary with Wesley van der Westhuizen. So I should be able to blog every now and then as well.

The only problemo is this: of all the things I did get done last term, I got a very little done. I wrote about one song, practiced a very little jazz, painted about seven pictures, studied enough greek and hebrew, did the doc for linguistics but think I did not study enough, cooked a great deal of lovely healthy food (one has to procrastinate on real work, no?), and learnt one Korean word (i heard some more but one stuck). So technically I did do all of the above but I'd like to do more. And I'd like to feel a bit more on top of my work.

The idea for the future of the blog is to share some profound thoughts, not to document my daily life or mood swings, and not to document my deepest dreams and desires. That's for my journal.

I just don't know if it will happen.

It feels like I should do it, because it's on my mind a lot and I like writing. However, those are poor reasons faced with the problemo outlined above and considering that the other things I want to do are things that I actually know what doing them will acheive.

This just seems like an egocentric waste of time. If it's not, please contact me and ask me to blog.

Dear reader,

These pages before you have been filled with sheep, and ponderings, and the occasional lyric. I long to ponder some more upon these pages, fill the spaces with words both eloquent and well put (well put).

But, alas, time is so limited. And the more I learn the more I know how little I know or understand.

I do so love putting thoughts into amusing musings.

So here I am again.

I highly doubt that this shall be a regular occurrence, but I do hope I shall find the time and the thoughts.

The secondary obstacle to my writing is the disorganized nature of my genius. To write well one has to think well. Lack of application delivers poor work, so I'm told.

But fun doesn't require serious appplication. See?

Do not despair, words of wisdom and folly may still come.

That Final Undiscovered Country

I think it was Lewis, C.S. Lewis, who referred to the future as 'that final undiscovered territory'. And that is the topic that has been impressing itself lightly but nevertheless on my consciousness.

The greatest portion of my life still lies ahead of me, should matters take the non-tragic course and I am not made a young martyr or come to a similar end before I reach a ripe age. I have an idea of what this portion of my life may look like, but that is merely a figment of my imagination, encouraged but what I would like it to be.

But we have no idea. I would like mine to be filled with children, joy and travelling. But at any moment the sea ahead of us (if time could be likened to an ocean stretching out before us) could present a tidal wave that changes our course entirely, or sinks our little ship and obliterates that future.

For a while before the possibilities of the future occupied my mind, I had been preoccupied with the idea that one shouldn't focus on the past or the future, but only on the present. And then a friend helped it occur to me that all along the 'present' we experience is actually the past, as everything we experience we experience after the fact. What we see, what we hear, we sense afterwards thanks to the speed of light and sound.

Which renders the present an uncertainty. The only certainty about it is the Lord, because he is there.

Which led me back to this: 

don't focus on the present, you can't. Focus on the Lord.

Things My Children Say

God has a sense of humour.

I am recently very aware of this. It's not that He's doing ironic things to me and it's my job in the divine game to find something funny about my circumstances. Not at all. It's actually a joyous awareness of God's sense of fun and funny.

I realised upon reading John Eldredge's Beautiful Outlaw that Jesus had a sense of fun. This should actually be pretty evident considering how joyfully funny many born-again believers are. It was not evident to me because I didn't recognise Jesus's sense of fun in the Gospels until the events therein were read and explained from the point of view that Jesus was a funny guy (due respect intended but alas never attained).

So, God has changed my perspective of Him through this book. Where before if i had a silly struggle i would solemnly ask God's forgiveness and His help to change me into the perfect being He [sic] wants me to be, now I grin sheepishly knowing that He's just laughing at me like a dad laughing at His little girl that puts on His glasses upside down. [cool picture eh?]

it's so awesome. soo so so awesome.

it's life changing to think of God as happy and enjoying me. Enjoying me because I'm silly and prone to mistakes and misconceptions. I'm his little girl, for crying out loud!

My mother has these little books in which she wrote down funny things me and my siblings said when we were small and even sillier than we are now. I wonder if somewhere on God's bookshelf he has one titled "Things My Children Say".

keep your eyes on Me

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 Jesus 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 you're 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.

by Don Francisco

Jewish Music

While this actually belongs in my other blog, hardly anyone ever reads it and so I repost it here:
 
An old mitnaged went to a neighboring town on business, but it took longer than expected and Sukkot prevented him from returning home. Since his host was a Chasid, he attended his first Chasidic services. When he came home, his wife asked him how the services were.

“Well,” said the farmer, “it was interesting. I don't know if it was good, but it was interesting. They did something different, however. Instead of regular, ordinary zmiros, they sang niggunim.”

“Niggunim?” said his wife, “What are those?”

“Oh, they're OK. They're sort of like zmiros, only different.”

“Well, what’s the difference?”

“Well, it’s like this—if I were to say to you, ‘Rivka, the cows are in the corn,’ so, that would be a zmiro. If, on the other hand, I were to say to you, ‘Rivka, Rivka, Rivka, OY! Rivka, Rivka ...the cows, ya-dee-diddle-ay-dah ... the brown one, the black one, the white one, the black and white one! AY-derri-da-ee-dum ... the cows are in the ay-chiri-biri-biddle-ay-bum-corn, in the corn—OY! Ribbono shel Oylom ... the cows ... !’ Then, if I were to repeat the whole thing two or three times, well, that would be a niggun.”

Meanwhile, in another part of the country... A young Chasid went to Germany on business, and while there attended his first Reform service. He came home and his wife asked him how it was.

“Well,” said the young man, “It was interesting. I don't know if it was good, but it was interesting. They did something different, however. Instead of regular niggunim, they sang choral anthems.”

“Choral anthems?” said his wife, “What are those?”

“Oh, they're OK. They're sort of like niggunim, only different.”

“Well, what’s the difference?’

“Well, it's like this—if I were to say to you, ‘Rivka, the cows are in the corn,’ well, that would be a regular niggun. If, on the other hand, I were to say to you:

‘Oh Rivka, my Rivka, do thou hear my cry,
May thine ear attend now to the words that I say,
Turn thou thine attention to me by and by
To the praise of the wondrous creation today!

‘For the way of the animals none can explain
There is in their heads not a shadow of sense,
They hearken no wise to God’s sun or His rain
Unless from temptation of corn they are fenced.

‘Yea, those cows in their bovine, rebellious delight,
Have broke free their shackles, their warm pens eschewed.
Then goaded by minions of darkness and night
They all of the gold of my sweet corn have chewed.

‘So look to the glory-day that is ahead,
When the impulses lowly are purged and reborn,
When the fences we build will stand un-trample-ed,
And we live righteous lives, not as cows in the corn.’

And then ... if I were to repeat verses one and three, and then two and four ... well, that would be a choral anthem.”