Adam West

I am not my own.  No, I have been made new.  Please don’t let me go.  I desperately need you.

SotU

I can’t help it.  I mean, there are policies with which I disagree , decisions that leave me more than frustrated, problems I have only seen get worse, but man….I really like Barak Obama.  He is just winning.  I just feel like I’d like to take him out for a cup of coffee.  He seems like he cares.  And whether he does or no, I feel like that is a good skill for a president.

Plus….I think Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are getting their workout tonight.  They really can’t not participate in every stinkin standing ovation.

I’m not really one to have faith in the system.  I dont think America will save us all.  (Nor will Ender) I’ll always be throwing my harshmallows.  But I have to say, I think B.O. handles certain aspects of the executive role  well.  I’m glad he is the Pres.

…okay…some of the things he is saying bother me.  Sigh…Good image.  He has a good image.  Go B.O.

seriously

i’m getting so caught up in the inconsequential.  its ridiculous.  there are things that really matter. and then there are things that we only think matter.  to an extent.  but its also more complicated than that.  more later.

Saint-Exupery

My tat

Getting a new tattoo.  In t-13 minutes.

Ouch.

its cold here

I’m home, back in the States, in my second semester of classes at ISU, back to my life.

I dont know how I feel about it.

Selfishly, there are things I could escape from in Sierra Leone that are present realities here.  I have to make decisions about where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing in the next few years.  I have to make decisions about where I’ll work this summer, where I’ll be studying in the fall.  Lots of decisions.  And decisions aren’t my thing.  In SL, I had 3 skirts and 5 shirts, I wore whatever was cleanest.  I ate the same thing for bfast and dinner (biscuits, bahaha) and lunch was whatever Mommy Mary had cooked that day.  The honda I took was whichever one pulled over first and knew where I was going (You sabe JCC?  Fine.)  Here, I wake up to a closet AND dresser full of clothes, a refrigerator AND pantry full of (often less than nutritional) food, choices of which bus to take, which coffee to drink, which homework to start first, which values matter most, what out of all the things in my life will I give my emotion to and allow my heart to care about?  (Obviously not the grammar in that sentence)  SL was not this beautiful land of simplicity and poverty where material goods are no distraction and now is the only thing that exists.  Not at all.  But it lacked some of our cultural obsession with proving our value.

Which is a struggle for me.  I really struggle with coveting other people’s lives and personalities.  I fully believe in the created glory and beauty of each individual, endowed by their creator with a certain set of qualities.  But I still feel a nearly constant drive to prove myself.  A feeling of “If someone else observed my past 24 hours, would they approve?”

Also, I have been in the midst of a love affair with Russian literature.  Which I’m going to go out on a limb and say I probably couldnt study in grad school without speaking Russian.  “Dr. Lynnea!  We just found an incredible, world changing manuscript from Dostoyevsky’s years in prison!”  “Oh sorry guys, could you just get that translated into English quick there for me so I can study it?”  That is how I imagine this would play out.  Also, I imagined reindeer in the scene.  It was Russia after all.

“What Men Live By”:Tolstoy

“I understood that God does not wish men to live apart and therefore he does not reveal to them what each needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all. I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live.  He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.”

“Remember then: there is only one time that is important– Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.  The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!”

“All human temples are built on the model of this temple, which is God’s own world.  Every temple has its fonts, its vaulted roof, its lamps, its pictures or sculptures, its inscriptions, its books of the law, its offerings, its altars and its priests.  But in what temple is there such a font as the ocean; such a vault as that of the heavens; such lamps as the sun, moon, and stars; or any figures to be compared with living, loving, mutually-helpful men?  Where are there any records of God’s goodness so easy to understand as the blessings which God has strewn abroad for man’s happiness?  Where is there any book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart?  What sacrifices equal the self-denials which loving men and women make for one another?  And what altar can be compared with the heart of a good man, on which God Himself accepts the sacrifice?  The higher a man’s conception of God, the better will he know Him.  And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him, imitating His goodness, His mercy, and His love of man.  THerefore, let him who sees the sun’s whole light filling the world, refrain from blaming or despising that superstitious man, who in his own idol sees one ray of that same light.  Let him not despise even the unbeliever who is blind and cannot see the sun at all.”