Andrea Gibson – Thank Goodness
Once again, she does not disappoint. Listen listen listen, that’s beauty. She’s beauty. And passion and love and hope and anger and crudeness and … aaahhh I want to marry her.

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Wow it’s been a long time since I wrote here last, I keep thinking of it and opening the page and then just sitting here, wondering what to say. There’s either too much or too little and this is the problem with public blogging and never knowing exactly who’s reading, I don’t know what to say and what to keep back. Anyway. I’m going to update now.

School is over which is a blessing and a relief and now it’s summer summer summer, books and sunshine and more free time than I really know what to do with. I keep wavering back and forth between ‘enroll for next semester’ and ‘professional bum doesn’t sound that bad’, but I’ll probably be going back again because onestly what else am I going to do? I’m not sure why I’m bothering when all I want is a simple little day job so I can go home in the evenings and do what I really want to do, write and read and bake and run and live the way it’s meant to be done (haha what a nice rhyme). But that little piece of paper counts for a lot, more than it should so I’m going to get it and then I’m going to tell all the kids I meet not to bother. Yes I’m serious. Keep your kids away from me :P .

And in much more cheerful news, Miranda and I have finally moved into our own apartment. It’s a wonderful open sunny second-floor apartment and we have a round marble-topped table and lots of kitchen odds and ends and furniture from Miranda’s den. Cable and Internet are being turned on tomorrow (right now I’m stealing someone else’s) and my sister and her fiance are five steps away. I think the police car comforts Miranda’s mom, but she still checked for burglary when they came back after being out yesterday. Haha. There’s a fireplace and we each have our own bathroom and plenty of space in between our bedrooms for privacy’s sake and it’s just really nice. All this for only $485 a month, plus electric and cable. I’ll miss my hammock and my porch swing and my cat and grass to lie in but I’ll get over it, it’s time for this. Our families have been beyond wonderful, spending so much time helping us pack and move and unpack, giving us their furniture and buying us things (my stepdad bought us a washer and dryer and they’re really nice) and it’s already starting to feel a little bit like home. Next step: beginning The Great Cooking Adventure. Our kitchen appliances are pretty nice too, we have a dishwasher and an icemaker and a garbage disposal and things. Aaand I get to decorate, I want to buy the entire Earthbound store and bring it here but since I don’t have the money for that, I’ll settle for some oils and windchimes and beads and bamboo things. My sister’s actually the one who’s going to pick things out so we’ll se how it turns out, she’s pretty good at decorating. And also pretty good at eting our food even though they make more money than we do. Go figure.

That’s pretty much all that’s been happening, I’ve been working on “Beautiful Beasts” and fanfic (yesI’m a nerd, I finally admit this) and reading a lot, three Stephen Kings in one week, sad sad. And also making business calls terrifies me, I had to be the one to call and turn the electric on because OGNE are freakish about identity theft and ask all sorts of questions to make sure you are who you say you are and it made me very twitchy. I gave them one wrong digit on my social security number and by the time I figured out why it sounded wrong the lady had already switched to another screen, haha I nearly had a heart attack. Because then she was like, ‘I’m going to ask you some questions that only you would know’ and started asking me this weird stuff and I was like, oh no what if I give her the wrong answers because it’s someone else’s social security number and she thinks I’m an identity thief. Lol. And I either misheard or misremembered what I was told about the deposit needed because I said totally the wrong thing and was very confused and it was generally horrible. So yeah, I should never be allowed to do that. Ever. But I did manage to get the electric turned on so I guess it was a success in the end.

I need sleep. I don’t think I’ve quite caught up yet, waking up at 6:30 every morning for a week because of the wildlife convention in our attic was not fun and now that I can enjoy nights of blissful [mostly] uninterrupted sleep and wake up when I want to, I’ve been staying awake later and later. I’m a mass of contradictions. :) Oh but also I have cinnamon raisin bagels and strawberry yogurt and cupcakes and blueberry bread and glaze doughnuts and so much deliciousness I don’t know what to do, my eating habits are going to go all to hell now. Which is really no big loss since they weren’t very good to begin with. Okay some quotes and then I’m done.

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There is a beautiful moment in the Bible when the prophet Elijah feels God’s presence. The Scriptures say that a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart, but God was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. It was the whisper of God. Today we can hear the whisper where we least expect it: in a baby refugee and in a homeless rabbi, in crack addicts and displaced children, in a groaning creation. In the words that Indian activist and author Arundhati Roy proclaimed at the World Social Forum in Brazil, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” The whisper cries out for God to save the church from us Christians and breathe new life into the aging Body.

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There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of. And this little revolution is irresistible. It is a contagious revolution that dances, laughs, and loves.

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I remember hearing about an old comic strip back in the days of St. Ed’s. Two guys are talking to each other, and one of them says he has a question for God. He wants to ask why God allows all of this poverty and war and suffering to exist in the world. And his friend says, “Well, why don’t you ask?” The fellow shakes his head and says he is scared. When his friend asks why, he mutters, “I’m scared God will ask me the same question.” Over and over, when I ask God why all these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, “You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.”

–Shane Claiborne, “Irresistible Revolution”