Musings

Okay, let's face it - I m-i-s-s blogging even after only two weeks. There was this Facebook thing (yes, I allow myself to use 'thing' for any word I cannot decide on!) doing the rounds with my friends this week. Yesterday I finally succumbed and am now writing 25 random facts/goals/whatever-else-it-specifies about myself.

Can you believe I was nearly 18 when I first used the internet? For a college project. It's also rather depressing to think that that was nearly six years ago.

There are things I remember about my life that make me incredulous now... more serious things. Things I grew out of, things I didn't even get to because I was being protected. God is so unbelievably busy loving us and making it right for us, eh! God, he's amazing.

I am still worried about church. Correction - I am not worried; I am just not at home. The things that I need to get working on - Church and my inherent laziness and procrastination about work... Actually it's not inherent. It's just been with this degree and now and particularly some weeks. I am going to kill it. Period.

Found John Waller this week. Love some of his work. Really listened to Newsong - beautiful lyrics on their 'Arise, my love'. It is a tear-your-lungs-out desperation when God isn't in your life anymore and to think that Jesus, who was so in union with him, agreed to do that for me... still blows my mind away. MR, our pastor, said there was something about God looking at God and saying 'Arise, my love' that gets you 'here'(and he held his stomach, lol!) - he was right.

I miss my dad.

Had my first ever doner kebab last night. Danced for the second time - well, I dance where no one can see whatever clumsiness I have... lol, but this was in a bop (an Oxford college party) and I actually enjoyed it. Because it was with people I love. The last time it was in a club that I was forced to go to because my erm countrymen declared I didn't want to spend time with them if I didn't. I hated it. This time (I never thought I would say this about a dance) was so much fun. There wasn't the least non-innocent smidge upon the evening and I actually kept time... Lol. There was even a chap who asked if I knew I was gorgeous like he meant it and even that remained innocent. I am not quite sure I liked it though.

Not for the first time, I am tempted to move blogs. I broke my rule of not giving people I know this address. I love you, guys. But I'm wondering what would happen if I stuck to the rules. It would be lonelier - but more to the purpose. No? What happens to this content though? Hhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...........

For AB

Here I am humbled by the love that you give
Forgiven so that I can forgive
Here I stand, knowing that I'm your desire
Sanctified by glory and fire


I rarely ever quote lyrics from somewhere else... perhaps it's pride. I think 'I write my own love songs to God' and I quote from the Bible. But now and again, a song written by people desperately in love with Jesus.

A long time ago, it seems now, I wrote a post when I was really tired. I'm tired now. And - completely incidentally - sleep-deprived. But I am also tired of ranting. I think I give so much love, sometimes I give more so obviously that it hurts... but I find my levels for myself are so often broken by people who surprise me (amma, AB (you made me think of this in the first place just now), CK, VP). But then you look and you find youI have always known the greatest love of all. It has always been yours. No amount of distraction can take His eyes off you.

But I know also that so often I look away. When Jesus looks at me, He knows I will turn away, be hurt by other things. And then in a heart-rending moment like this He reminds you that nothing and no one can make you laugh or cry like His love can. More fool me that I forget it.

Hotchpotch

Well, I still have too much to blog about to really blog about what I want to blog about - does that make sense? Do I ever?

It is Sunday morning and I am feeling blessed and slightly over-rested! Will go to RoL but also visit SE, although I might be a bit late. RoL is home but the students are at different churches and I'm still waiting on God for that one.

If you read my spiel about 'Facades, Inadequacy...' you'd be expecting a certain tone to my blog today. If you haven't, don't even think about it! I am very happy to be here, and I said that. But I may have sounded like I didn't mean it. I did though. I am where God wants me to be - and that's just perfect. It was just that I had noticed a few attitudes that I was ranting off about. EW wrote to me and said he thought maybe attitudes at OU had changed since his day. But that wasn't very long ago considering he also stayed and taught here for aeons! But I have met some of the loveliest people, and not just at Bible House... It's just that, having lost my luggage and staying at Marston way off from the city centre and Uni and all that, I guess it took a bit longer for me to meet... errrr... 'the race that knows Joseph' ;D. And while you do meet posh f-s, b-b's, some of them are great to talk to! And you meet all sorts anyway, like in any other place.

Let me illustrate:

So I ask directions from someone somewhere around Marston, as I am, not unusually, rather lost! And they are a bit UNwarm and unsmiling about this street I'm asking after. As if to say, 'I have no idea where students exist and have no desire to... the vermin!'... Lol. Then, I mention College upon which said someone snaps to attention... I get directions pronto! It suddenly dawns on me that they have assumed I'm at OB.

A few days later, I laughingly relate this to someone else who goes to the same college as I do. And their reaction? 'Well, I think it was really rude of them to assume you were from B right away, don't you??!' And I'm going... errr. Well, I think it was rude of them not to be nice in the first place - even if I didn't go to Uni at all. To be fair when I mentioned this take on the thing to her - she was impressed and said 'Well, now that we know where it is, we can make that difference.' Gah, however, gah!

I have all the proper respect for OU, and for higher education and everything else. I mean I was involved with all the events they had promoting it for local schools et al constantly like I had no research to do in the previous place! And I love the beauty of O and the grandeur of OU and its history. But people are people, and they deserve respect... at least at first, hehe. Innocent until proven guilty and bleh! No seriously though...

The CU has been great. More active than a few others I've known. And the president of it blogs (about it) here. Made quite a few friends. They have some fantastic clubs and societies at the University. Joined in quite a few. Volunteer work most of it - and I am pretty sure I cannot do all of it. But some of it is brilliant - and it's working with kids and I miss the old ones so much, I'm glad to find more near where I am. A lot of music going around too - and although I will probably mortally embarrass myself if I attempt to read music, I've signed up. Should have kept up with it. And whaddya know! Signed up for rowing - can you believe it? Well, actually I am generally consistently crazy. But lookign forward to it.

I also have this very annoying inability to say NO. Simple monosyllabic skill that eludes me. Which is why Freshers' Fair found me in the middle of a face-off between pro-animal-testing and anti-it. And found me smiling and nodding and taking leaflets from both!! Ah sometimes it is convenient to pretend you don't speak English very well!!

The song I've been listening to over and over again for the past couple of days!

I know my Redeemer Lives

- Nicole C Mullen



Who taught the sun where to stand in the morning
Who told the ocean you can only come this far?
Who showed the moon where to hide 'til evening
Whose words alone can catch a falling star?

Well I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
All of creation testify
This life within me cries
I know my Redeemer lives

The very same God that spins things in orbit
He runs to the weary, the worn and the weak
And the same gentle hands that hold me when I'm broken
They conquered death to bring me victory

Now I know my Redeemer lives
... He lives

To take away my shame
And He lives forever I'll proclaim
That the payment for my sin
Was the precious life He gave
But now He's alive
And there's an empty grave.

Randomness

Hmmm, why on earth would you listen to 'Ahuh, uh huh (good girl gone bad)' to make you feel better?? I mean why?

AB's having a bad case of nearly love again. AB's a darling.

Beautiful weather. There is absolutely nothing unlovely about rain. Or clouds.

I just might change to a new blogspot for complete anonymity. Just might be fun, seeing how people find me then or joining blogrolls and the like. Besides anonymity is necessary for a confession box - which is why I've never understood the parish priest's role... I mean look what happened in Zorro ;)

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Another ramble

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I was reading another blog recently and he (the blogger) complained that he had begun to blog just for the people who read his blog, instead of for himself as he had started. It's funny, I suppose, you keep wanting people to read it and then your line is crossed and you're going to have to start all over again. At least that looks like it's a long time coming by this way...

For the record, I have declared myself a pig! For the last ten days, I have been such a TV-watching, couch-dozing, juice-swigging, on-the-way-to-fat pig! Okay, okay I'll hold out on the verbal abuse, but it is true. Mum cooks all this fantastically mum-elicious food (and she can cook!) and when it's on the table I just sit there and keep finishing it ably aided by my sympathetic father. I've gone so used to the idea of finishing the serving on the table at home, because that's how I would cook, or RM or any of my single housemates would!

It is not helping. About three days ago, I weighed myself and I was a kilo more than I was before I landed here. Which makes it one kilo in seven days! Which makes it 'orrible!!!! If I keep this up, I shall be waddling up the drive in the uncanny semblance of a giant milk chocolate Swiss roll! No wonder, one of the dogs is a fat, but cute, sausage. Waaaahhhhh - so I dutifully promise myself I shall not eat as much. But I do, simply because I can't be bothered to be a perfect weight. It never mattered to me, but the trouble is I am also nearly entirely sedentary what with the job search and my happily retired dad who is always wanting to do something and therefore drives out everywhere and drives me everywhere I want to go too. It is fantastic. I LOVE being chauffeured by appa - ahhhh, luxury! And I do not always 'enjoy' bus rides. But this inactivity is sometimes stifling, LOL. I felt as if I had achieved greatness by moving my ahem and getting a bus and sitting in a hot, dusty, crowded van. I also now appreciate the space that some places have! In the bus, I had forgotten, everyone's hair is for sharing, as are everyone's peeves and foul language... Thankfully I was not standing and have not been reminded what else can be to share, however much one might protest. But I do not think I can actually go back to some of it now, it makes me wince and want to cry. But other bus phenomena I recognise with familiarity and not quite as much pain. LOL - it was great getting on a 29M again, and that feeling of thrill - with lines such as Ha!, Thank You, Lord and See what comes to those who wait, some of better tone than others, running through your brain, when you have missed your 29C and are rewarded with a 29M - had the smiling, silent recognition of a very old acquaintanceship without a disturbed history.

Ah well, that old feeling ;)

But this evening we watched a couple of Gaither DVDs. That is one bunch of blessed and talented people. And the feeling of family is so strong, it reminds me of BCC sometimes. It must be such a privilege to sing together and grow singing together. I wish one could ;O I hope at some point we will have people to sing with, and that we might stay together. Actually, you know what, we do :D and God asks us to make a joyful noise after all, doesn't He? But some of those songs are very insightful, as songs have a trick of being. And he sang "Thanks to Calvary, we don't live here any more". Sometimes it is so easy to let a reaction to what used to be creep up on you. Most times the reaction is fear - and fear can be so pervasive in satan's use of it, that you hardly notice it come. But it does, and you react as if redemption never happened and there had been no forgiveness, for you or for another person. But I pray that God will help me remember (for I know it already) that the old is really out.

We don't live there any more. I don't live there any more.

Lord of the dance :)

You make me dance, Jesus - thank You!

And coming from someone who cannot and finds the art physically and logically impossible, people, that is really saying something :D

Today it's to the song Shackles (Praise You) by Mary Mary...

poem

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DELAYED REACTION

- Subiksha Krishniah


Beautiful sunshine
shining warmth
picking out dust in the cracks
of memory.
I must hurry
to write before the cracks
cake into crevices in the
rock.
Inflation hits breakage
when I have loved you into idleness.
My heart trips now
when I have missed you.
A world of time to show
why God loves your metaphors.
I who met faithfulness
with contempt:
I pay now an ancient debt.
No longer second best;
not pity poetry now;
no childhood consolation prize.
Forgive the pain of second love.
Seven times brighter
for forgotten wounds,
I now pay the debt:
First daystar, healing-winged,
I love you,
Beautiful sunshine.

Beautiful

Quiet Time

- Susan Lenzkes, copyright 2004


On the night that I was born
into Your family, Lord,
did You dance upon the rain-slicked streets,
full of grace and joy at the
potential and pure eternal life
You had birthed in me?
Dipping a sacred finger into
Your Son's sacrificial love, You
traced my form from the
well of Your divine intention.
And then You called me
Your Beloved in Christ,
whispering that I would grow up
to be like Him one day.
Oh Father, can it be that
this is who I really am?