“ I think you’ve heard me say my hands are cold but my heart’s on fire. Fear has always held me down. Been on my knees, now I’m aiming higher. ”
The Perishers
So lately I’ve been cycling around. I start out very happy and satisfied; kind warm, fuzzy, carefree, and a little bit determined. Then I proceed to feel a heaviness creep into me that I only partly understand. This is when words become unsatisfactory and I would like to just be left alone. But at the same time very much want to express how I feel. However, the concepts floating around in my head don’t lend themselves easily to words then. This lasts for a day or two, then I wake up and am back to my happy self for a little while. Next comes frustration. As I try to take in information to make sense of the world, I only become more bewildered by conflicting opinions. And there are masses of them. Sometimes I feel like I’m shuffling around them like fallen leaves. Don’t get me wrong, the basic truths I’m pretty clear on. But it has been driving me insane not knowing what’s true when it comes to say, the interpretation of a novel, or the explanation of why cells know how to become specific body parts during fetal development, or what mature behavior is. There seems to be a thousand different opinions for everything and, frankly, I feel overwhelmed and exhausted at the thought of having to sift through them for the rest of my freaking life. *sigh* And if I’m not busy being frustrated with opinion, I’m very likely being frustrated by my own inconsistency and trying not to think too much about my potential for negative behavior.
Oh - and to top it all off, I think I’m starting to like ……………. country music. Yes, yes. It’s true. Not SUPER country. But still …. That’s the worst of it all. Ok, not really. ;P But not what I expected of myself.
But underneath it all, I sense something happening. Something positive. Some sort of growth, some sort of forward motion. And so I’m guessing this is just growing up. Which is, when all is said and done, kind of exciting.
“ I never really ever know what to say when all of my emotions get in the way. I’m just trying to get us on the same page. I always get it better right afterward when all the wrong impressions are said and heard. How come I can never get the right words I need to convey? Wish I could explain. Can I let the trees do the talking? Can I let the ground do the walking? Can I let the sky fill what’s missing and can I let my mouth do the listening? ”
Lights
“ The more kinds of music you can learn to love, the greater your ultimate pleasure will be. ”
Patrick Kavanaugh (yep. and that’s why I listen to practically everything.)
“ ‘I will pour water upon him that is thirsty.’ Isaiah 44:3 When a believer has fallen into a low, sad state of feeling, he often tries to lift himself out of it by chastening himself with dark and doleful fears. Such is not the way to rise from the dust, but to continue in it. As well chain the eagle’s wing to make it mount, as doubt in order to increase our grace. It is not the law, but the gospel which saves the seeking soul at first; and it is not a legal bondage, but gospel liberty which can restore the fainting believer afterwards. Slavish fear brings not back the backslider to God, but the sweet wooings of love allure him to Jesus’ bosom. Are you this morning thirsting for the living God, and unhappy because you cannot find him to the delight of your heart? Have you lost the joy of religion, and is this your prayer, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation”? Are you conscious also that you are barren, like the dry ground; that you are not bringing forth the fruit unto God which he has a right to expect of you; that you are not so useful in the Church, or in the world, as your heart desires to be? Then here is exactly the promise which you need, “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty.” You shall receive the grace you so much require, and you shall have it to the utmost reach of your needs. Water refreshes the thirsty: you shall be refreshed; your desires shall be gratified. Water quickens sleeping vegetable life: your life shall be quickened by fresh grace. Water swells the buds and makes the fruits ripen; you shall have fructifying grace: you shall be made fruitful in the ways of God. Whatever good quality there is in divine grace, you shall enjoy it to the full. All the riches of divine grace you shall receive in plenty; you shall be as it were drenched with it: and as sometimes the meadows become flooded by the bursting rivers, and the fields are turned into pools, so shall you be—the thirsty land shall be springs of water. ”
C. H. Spurgeon
“ John Henry Newman wrote that the pursuit of knowledge will “draw the mind off from things which will harm it,” and added that it will renovate man’s nature by rescuing him “from that fearful subjection to sense which is his ordinary state.” This point—that knowledge will help a person to move from an infatuation with externals and toward worthy considerations—has been often repeated by philosophers for at least three thousand years. And if you consider for a moment the unhappiness caused by our society’s slavery to sense and appearance, I think you will agree that a deliverance from that is certainly desirable. ”
Robert Harris
“ I seen a dead, dead pony running through my dream. I seen the water, catching up with it. I got this cold, cold feeling like I wont forget and I need to make it stop, I need to make it stop. And you, you’re sitting on the bathroom floor drawing pictures, making sure it doesn’t even show. But your mother’s calling on the phone again what you going to say now that it got so late? One day you will wake up and everything that you thought you would be will be standing there staring right back at you. And I guess I should have said so but I swear I didn’t even know how to feel about it when it walked right out on you. And there’s a nervous calling running through the walls and it’s getting louder now, it’s begging you to please. You know that slow thing humming at the other side of skin, it’s what you listen to when you run out of you. So I hope, I hope you really get it now ‘cause there’s a reason why you keep on running out of time. And I just seen it crawling under your skin and it’s making everything feel like it just shouldn’t feel. ”
Nico Stai
“ In 1678 someone, perhaps Madame de La Fayette, published a little novel of profound significance. It’s popularity was such that people lined up at the publishers waiting, sometimes for months, for their copies. Take that, Harry Potter. ”
Thomas C. Foster, How To Read Novels Like A Professor
