Living in Fear and Insecurity.

I'm reading a book right now about a character that had some pretty horrific things happen to her.  The funny thing is, the book is one of a series and in this third novel, our heroine (the books are science fiction) has something horrible happen to her, and you think she is going to save the day yet again, because that is what happens in fiction books usually.  But she gets scarred because she was rendered helpless.

Against the odds, this thing happens that we never think will happen.  How do we respond?
The trauma of the event rattles us, and fear snakes in.
In this current book, she is dealing with this trauma that took place, and thinks she's even past it, but the pain and fear snake in and cripple her with panic and anxiety attacks, ceasing to respond normally to whatever situation she is in.

Right now, something or someone knows her fears, and is somehow capitalizing on them making our heroine live in fear and panic, and she is unable to really see what is going on.

I relate all this to our lives.
Living in fear.
Living in fear of the stupidest day to day things, up to things we know we are called to do by God, like talk to someone walking down the street, or be willing to be vulnerable in a relationship with another person because you know that somehow, God wants to do something in whoever the person's life.  Whatever the reason, I know we can be hindered by our nervous fear.  We do not call it out for what it is, and forget to live our story by zoning into the TV and living someone else's story.
Not engaging and tackling fears in our own lives I think can be the biggest travesty as we no longer participate in living and engaging the world around us, the people around us...

We see and know how everything is supposed to go on our films and TVs and computers, yet, don't get in on it.  How have we become outsiders in our own lives.
Kinda weird concept, and we don't all fall under these categories, but I know we've looked at our neighbor and wanted to be more like them because we're insecure in what we are, and insecure in what God made in us.

Insecurity and fear can go hand in hand I think.
Maybe.
Just maybe.

Really Rambling Rita

Quest for knowledge will be my undoing.  No, the quest won't be the undoing...I suppose our undoing is never quite in the quest, but getting caught up in how much we know thinking it is a whole heap.  The truth is, the more we know the more we realize how little we know...
No arrogance in anything.
I think the quest for understanding is something that unties my shoelaces and tries to trip me daily.  Understanding WHAT exactly?  Anything and everything.  I just praise God my curiosity is still stirred.  Now to go about digging for the information to understand...

Whatever.

Storytime.
Once upon a time I woke up this morning and the words, 'Do not compromise' flew through my brainwaves.  My eyes opened and I kinda just looked at the ceiling for awhile.  My brain was still functioning in fog biscuits, but the phrase, 'Do not compromise' should be contemplated upon more frequently.

The depths of not compromising can apply to most things I suppose.  But there is good and bad compromise.  I don't think I should not compromise when I'm doing something just to get my way.  I don't think that is what God meant when he woke me up today with, 'don't compromise'.

I would LIKE it to mean do not GET compromised, as if I were in ALIAS being a spy...not to be found out while secretly trying to find out the bank codes or something...

I believe not compromising has more to do with do not compromise who God made me to be.  Do not forget who I am.  To know my roots, whatever I am, and am not, is in Christ.  I should not be comprised of other's thoughts of me, though they are a reality, my goal is not to please this world and be of this world...is it?  The busier my schedule becomes, does that mean I stop taking time to reflect on God's word and to be in constant communication in prayer all day long?  Am I looking at the boutique windows and flashy signs and lights and whistles and horns longing to be seduced by the advertising that I should be something completely opposite of what I am?  Should I be striving to be that other girl up there on the billboard because she has nicer teeth or better hair...
Not compromising didn't quite mean don't groom yourself...more like, there is such a thing as self control.  And even though there is a world against us out there telling us to indulge in everything....(we long to be seduced and pursued by these amazing advertisements...) indulge in this food, in this product, in taking more than your share...encouraging greediness...indulge in these movies and these leisurely activities and waste time, oh, and speak as crudely as you want, too...

I think not compromising has something to do with 'self control', and it is a fruit of the spirit.  I was in Galatians today and for some reason it just stood out that in order not to compromise myself to sin, I really need to be conscious of what is fruit of the spirit and what is the product of sin...Self control in the smallest of things like controlling our tongues.  I lose that battle every day.  But I need to strive to have self control...

Digression and Raisin Bran

Learning about a lot of new things.  Like what is going on inside my head.

Too often, I find things unfinished inside my brain.  Too many things vying for my attention.  I'm the idiot that keeps bouncing around, lacking the discipline sometimes to focus on one idea and see it through in its entirety before starting something new.

Time for some discipline.  Are we disciplined at all?  I find that though some of the coolest things are done by chance in art, a lot of the crazy ideas that capture us and perplex us are the ones that were well thought out, or the artist really mulled through the project and worked through it...when you view or hear the piece you hear the artist wrestling with the ideas and things proposed.  You can almost see them going mad over the ideas in the work, solving the problems, or thinking through to the solutions.

We long for some sort of solution and resolution.  We long and crave for it, but what happens when we find the deceptive resolution...instead of going back to the root chord, it goes to the sixth, and our ears are fooled.  We don't hate it, yet something somewhat unexpected happened, and it was just...different, and almost had a 'sweeter' effect to us.

In our lives we get so frustrated when it does something we don't expect, but if I lived the days as I have planned them, I would probably live the most boring and dull life.  My imagination would face no challenges, I would be in a box of my schedule, and I would never embrace chance to find and soak in the random of my day...the beautiful things God puts before us and lets us experience.  The different people I can choose to interact with, or really listen to for once...the colors in the grain of wood in this coffee table I sit at, the patterns the clouds are making across the gray sky....
I wonder if we dig into these things that we could dig into.
I long to interact with my world more than I ever planned to, and though the unexpected makes me uncomfortable, shouldn't I live it?  This is the life I have to live?  Why am I ignoring what is around me, waiting for the next 'planned' event of mine to sweep me off my feet....I cannot forget these moments and I cannot live in the future, 'waiting' for my next break from school, or 'waiting' until the next concert I'm going to, or 'waiting' until I'm finished with a project, or '''''fill'intheblank''''.

Our opportunities are crunching in our ears, a loud bowl of Raisin Bran, -two scoops ahead, so loud I can't do anything else but listen to the teeth grinding the...
and I digress.

Buried Movement at Park Street Church

Tonight I had the opportunity to play the kangaba (a little djembe-like drum played with the hands) for Sue Murad's performance art pieced.
The idea for Sue's piece centered around the idea of being Buried.  She sent out the word to create the collaboration between many different artists of many forms, and came up with the concepts, drama, and movement pieces.

I am currently in an Interdisciplinary Collaboration of the Arts class right now at school, so naturally, I was interested in Sue's work.  (I met Sue at an art night at our house through one of my roommates, Heidi)  Movement is a big part of what Sue does, and she choreographed a Nature Piece centered around the idea of Waves, and a Cultural piece that had 6 different movements.  Keep in mind, all of the pieces are centered around the idea of buried, being buried, or any form of bury.

The Nature piece was interesting because one person would come in at a time and sit on their knees first, hands on the ground, and would slowly arc upwards 'til their hands stretched towards the sky, then in a sway motion they would crash to the floor like a wave splashing.  Then another person would come in and sit in front of them and do a similar movement, and after a few people were doing the movement, you could almost close your eyes and hear the ocean as the sounds were rhythmic yet asymmetrical at the same time.  They would sway their hands on the carpets, sashaying back and forth until they would climb stretching upwards and crash.  The ocean is a blanket and buries and can suffocate.

The piece I musically participated in was the Culture piece.  They had on long sleeve orange shirts to show the brightness of culture.  But keep in mind buried.  We're all eventually buried.  This is one thing we share, whether we're buried by others in culture, or buried by nature.

I'm not going to give a complete rundown of everything, but I played different drum beats, some patterns, some asymmetrical noises that I tried to connect with the movements or concepts.  One piece was called pottery.  Ancient civilizations that are long dead were buried with their pottery, and it was a mark of their time.  I held my drum to the side, and would slap the wood, and pull upwards, trying to give the idea of making pottery, and slapping the clay onto the wheel.  I repeated these sounds because the repetition of those sounds is continual in making pottery.  That, and I didn't have any glass to break, nor did I want to clean that up.

Another movement was about tools.  We are buried with our tool, or our craft might be all we are.  We are a carpenter, we are an electrician, we are a chef, a homemaker, an artist.  You name it, but we are buried with these skills if not tools of things we've learned and acquired in our lifetime.

One of my favorite movements was the Brush.  Each woman came to lay on the ground almost in a running motion, heads together, so that they all looked like a bike wheel at the end.  The women one by one would come out, and there were several different movements about brushing hair, then the next would lie down.  For this, I couldn't help but imagine looking in a mirror myself, brushing my hair, and almost zoning out, just existing for a moment letting the feeling run through your fingers and head, feeling alive and numb at the same time.  In those moments, I have heard women singing to their daughters, and as those women grow up, sing to their children and so on, and I find a humming seems to happen a lot when women brush their hair in general.
So.  I started humming, and singing a hollow and haunting melody, almost zoned out, but thinking constantly of a mother singing to a daughter.  I kept thinking that this mother was almost urgent to tell  her daughter all these things, but could only speak them through a sad melody.  We are buried with our skin and bones and hair and whatever we are physically, this is what we are.

The last was a Make-Up movement and was really powerful.  As women we are buried with our looks.  For a lot of us, we've spent a lifetime trying and trying to alter our appearance and shape and craft it and mold it and we have wasted so much time.  What are we but aging and dying?
I drummed something out, a steady rhythm like we might listen to while we're getting ready, sculpting our faces.  Then there is this climax when we are finally finished, looking at this 'product' we've made, yet we, too, will be buried in the end.


Bottom line, this whole 'performance' was very moving, as it stirred me to think of our fate in so many ways, as well as all the people I've personally lost, and knowing what other's in the room have gone through.

Tickets.

When it comes to anger, I have some.
Sometimes.  But at the moment its like this wave that wants to completely engulf me in its madness.

What can cause such instant anger?
Well.  Today I came back to my car with another parking ticket.
This is the 3rd one within 20 days.  Which, I find funny but not funny at all...seeing as I've done an ok job at not getting that many.  But.  This stream of tickets is beginning to rip up my top layer of skin and sting.

I walked to the other side of my car, picked up the soggy ticket, (its raining) and I got into my car and screamed for a minute.  Felt kinda nice.
A childish temper tantrum.  I have them a lot, whether they are on the outside, or going on in my mind, like this entire set of explosions going off, or volcanos erupting, or smashing glass with a baseball bat, my mind goes bonkers sometimes.

All that said, I know that beneath my surface there are some fuses I need to lengthen so they don't go off.  I love it when good coincidence (is there any such thing) comes my way, but whine like an Antarctican on a summer day in Texas.
This could be the start to a heart problem.  Need some surgery cause I just feel my dirty gross human nature growing like a bad smelling moss, killing other plants in a garden, and just, not very pretty.  (some moss is pretty, this moss, however, is bad.news.)

To Withhold.

Workin' on it.
Trying to figure out what is going on in my own head.  Diving in deeply to dig through the dark.  Sometimes the lights get turned off, and no matter how cool it can be to walk around in the dark, and 'feel the night' as it were, I keep tripping over the garbage rolling around.  I am losing some sort of clarity, or needing to gain more clarity - one of the two.

Torn between.
In between.  I'm stuck here.  I am different fades and shades of these colors.  I am.  I am not.  I am.  I am not.  Maybe I took her from her mother too early.

Sometimes I deny anything ever happened and that there were no splinters or cracks in me at all.  But there are.  I see them.  I feel them.  I feel some of these gaps widening in the spaces of me.  Should there be any shell at all?  But raw exposed person...you cannot really exist...too eager, too open and innocent to be unhurt and unscathed by everything surrounding.

Let it work its magic on you.

When I was in middle school I argued with a teacher that when writing the word *its* as in *its green leaves* or something...I argued that the it was possessive, so *its* should have an apostrophe like any other noun possessing something.  I tried to get  her to tell me why I should not have possessive *its* written as *it's* but she couldn't really tell me.  She just said, 'That's how it is, and you need to deal with it.'
I was frustrated that I could have no why to quench my questioning.

I suppose I love to understand things to a great degree.
Where is your focus?  Is it on the right things?  I don't think they are all in order just yet.  I keep wavering again.  I keep tip toeing around the subject as if I'm going to break open a giant vase full of a liquid or substance I don't want to get out of the beautiful white carpet.  This mess is gonna stain...approach it gently and don't break open the canisters withholding the thoughts from you.

Possibilities.

A large set of midterms, a large set of hours of studying.
A large grouping of hours procrastinated,
A large amount of daydreaming of things I could be doing, but not doing those things, torn in a way of wavering between one thing and another, not doing one or the other.
Wasting time.

Why waste time in fear?
Why waste time in indecisiveness?
I don't know why I do, I just know this is something I am in a constant state of, forgetting to live, because of my indecision.

Ridiculous.

So.
Now that is out of the way, I can think on how much Jesus loves us and has loved us, and be shocked.  To not forget, but to remember that he walks with me.  He never left and never leaves, and is here, and I forget to talk to him like I could.  I forget to know him like I should because I can...he created us to commune with us.  Is that true?
In the garden when things were perfect, God and Adam walked around together.
Then there was broken communication at the sin thing.

But Jesus came, and the gap...this communication barrier was destroyed.  We have an opportunity all the time to know the Creator.  To think on this world and know that what He does is good.  To know his goodness, and to have a thankful heart every day changes my perspective from bitter, broken, and annoyed, to patient, calm, loving...maybe other good things.  I don't know.
I just know when I forget the Creator, I forget to seek truth.  I forget to let God's truth infect me in such a way that I love people even when I'm wronged.  What is my inner attitude?
How frequently do we have to keep this in check?
Moment to moment I suppose.