time for weddings: my first classmate from high school got married Saturday, and i was almost crying along with his mother, because he was like my brother, and now he's all graduated from college and planning to work in a church for a few years and then move back to India with his beautiful WIFE, and it's all just such a mystery, how a young man would decide to lead a woman from her home, to take her on his arm and up to the altar and into his soul and all over the world. why would someone do that, take so much responsibility for another human life? that's crazy.
time for prayer meetings: on Sunday the Daudt's had all the Mu Kappa seniors over to their house, and again i was almost crying as i shared my summer plans and sketchy ideas of what i might do next year, and as people prayed for me and shared scripture that came to their minds, and then we heard everyone else's stories and situations and prayed over each of them, and it's all such a scary storm of wondering where and who and how and what we will be and do in our journeys after graduation.
time for guitar tabs: it never fails, right around the last few weeks of every semester, i always get the urge to pull out mi guitarra whenever i have a few 'free' minutes every day, and try to work up callouses on my fingertips and perfect the few little ditties i have memorized and try to add new chords or new songs to my repertoire. no matter how busy i am, regardless of how many papers and meetings and presentations i have to prepare or emails i have to send or errands i have to run, my itch to play only seems to increase as i get closer to the end. this time i decided to tackle the new skill of reading actual guitar tabs online for a few of my favorite songs by Rosie Thomas and the Weepies, because i've only ever looked at chord charts before, but that doesn't quite do it for these pieces. so now i've got a few new little licks i like to play over and over again, trying to get them just right and improvise in my own style, too.
time for cooking Indian food and baking cookies, time for planning road trips, time for breakfast dates and coffee dates, time for feeding little blue beta fish, time for singing like a big blue beluga whale with the alto section of Chorale, time for doing laundry and taking showers, time for getting to chapel on time for once...
there is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
~ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Dona nobis pacem. O God. Grant us peace. [it's about time...Jesus, would you, please?...]
Showing posts with label taylor u. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taylor u. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
one.plus.one.plus.one.equals.one.
1 + 1 + 1 = 1. yes, es la verdad. on this Chorale tour, we learned that this is true. before the wheels roll, each person checks to makes sure that one (myself) plus one (the person who stands on my right in mixed formation) plus one (the person who stands on my left in mixed formation) equals one (the whole unified Chorale).
highlights:
1. singing at the Holmstad, a retirement home in Batavia, IL, and meeting George, an outgoing old guy who grew up as an MK in Venezuela and then spent most of his life as an international airline pilot, calling Hong Kong home for a while and seeing all kinds of other places. he and i chatted for quite a while, and then i think he found almost every other MK in the Chorale and talked to them at length, too. he was so overjoyed to find young people, young MKs using their talents, and he talked about being inspired to maybe find the college MK groups in his area to advise or encourage them or just see what they're up to these days. also, after the concert i ran into my childhood doctor and his wife, who were good friends with my grandparents back in the day, and recognized my name in the program! small, small world.
+
1. singing at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, for their free noon-time concert series, where a number of homeless guys were sleeping in the pews when we walked in, and i had tears squeezing from my soul and eyes when we got to sing "on Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand," because i knew that those guys truly had nowhere else to go, nothing else to stand on or build their lives on, and i wanted so much for the words we sang to sink into their hearts and invite them to put their hope in him if they couldn't put it in the street crowd, and make their home in him if they couldn't make it in an apartment or even a shelter, and be bathed in his unchanging love if not in a hot shower, and be fed by the bread of life if not by a bagel or a burger...but i wanted to do those things for them, too. and i met T.J., bless his heart, who told it to us straight about the hard life he was living, and about how he sometimes walks the streets and freezes and cries, or comes into Fourth Pres and chills on a pew and cries out to God, praying and trusting that there's a purpose for him to be so downtrodden these days and months, maybe God's gonna raise him up, or just use him wherever he is to be a blessing, whenever someone blesses him he shares, he passes it on to his friends on the street who having a hard time, and he prays, prays and cries, cries and prays. it ripped at me to leave him there, to know there are so many more beautiful souls living just as painfully all throughout the cities of this country and the world. i am so pitifully rich; it is a pity that i don't give away more of what i have more freely to those who need it more than i do.
+
1. singing at Elmbrook church in Brookfield, WI - the home church of Brad Larson, one of the students who was killed in the Taylor van accident my freshman year. his parents invited the Chorale to come and sing, kind of as a memorial for him and a gathering of Taylor alumni. so emotional - Solid Rock was what we sang at the memorial service the year after the accident, impossible to keep dry eyes when the memories flowed back so freely and we were singing straight into the teary eyes and tender hearts of his parents. almost three years later, but how can you recover from losing a son, seriously? everything and everyone on earth we could possibly put our hope in may fail us and leave us, but "our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness". and our children are not naturally supposed to get to our heavenly home before us, but if they do, we can trust in the promise that we're coming too!
=
1. one beautiful, blessed, final Chorale tour. sadness that it's over, but gladness that it happened and that the God of grace and God of glory made himself so deeply present throughout all of it, carrying our heavy burdens and preaching peace into us and revealing his dwelling place inside each person we met.
haha, i just remembered that Chorale Officer Matthew wanted to call it the 'Trinity Check', and i liked it ecstatically but then had to agree with Officer Mark that it sounded semi-blasphemous. ;-) but it is actually a pretty good expression of the mystery of the real Trinity, right? one (Father) plus one (Son) plus one (Holy Spirit) equals ONE!!!
peace, people. "shower the people you love with love"
highlights:
1. singing at the Holmstad, a retirement home in Batavia, IL, and meeting George, an outgoing old guy who grew up as an MK in Venezuela and then spent most of his life as an international airline pilot, calling Hong Kong home for a while and seeing all kinds of other places. he and i chatted for quite a while, and then i think he found almost every other MK in the Chorale and talked to them at length, too. he was so overjoyed to find young people, young MKs using their talents, and he talked about being inspired to maybe find the college MK groups in his area to advise or encourage them or just see what they're up to these days. also, after the concert i ran into my childhood doctor and his wife, who were good friends with my grandparents back in the day, and recognized my name in the program! small, small world.
+
1. singing at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, for their free noon-time concert series, where a number of homeless guys were sleeping in the pews when we walked in, and i had tears squeezing from my soul and eyes when we got to sing "on Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand," because i knew that those guys truly had nowhere else to go, nothing else to stand on or build their lives on, and i wanted so much for the words we sang to sink into their hearts and invite them to put their hope in him if they couldn't put it in the street crowd, and make their home in him if they couldn't make it in an apartment or even a shelter, and be bathed in his unchanging love if not in a hot shower, and be fed by the bread of life if not by a bagel or a burger...but i wanted to do those things for them, too. and i met T.J., bless his heart, who told it to us straight about the hard life he was living, and about how he sometimes walks the streets and freezes and cries, or comes into Fourth Pres and chills on a pew and cries out to God, praying and trusting that there's a purpose for him to be so downtrodden these days and months, maybe God's gonna raise him up, or just use him wherever he is to be a blessing, whenever someone blesses him he shares, he passes it on to his friends on the street who having a hard time, and he prays, prays and cries, cries and prays. it ripped at me to leave him there, to know there are so many more beautiful souls living just as painfully all throughout the cities of this country and the world. i am so pitifully rich; it is a pity that i don't give away more of what i have more freely to those who need it more than i do.
+
1. singing at Elmbrook church in Brookfield, WI - the home church of Brad Larson, one of the students who was killed in the Taylor van accident my freshman year. his parents invited the Chorale to come and sing, kind of as a memorial for him and a gathering of Taylor alumni. so emotional - Solid Rock was what we sang at the memorial service the year after the accident, impossible to keep dry eyes when the memories flowed back so freely and we were singing straight into the teary eyes and tender hearts of his parents. almost three years later, but how can you recover from losing a son, seriously? everything and everyone on earth we could possibly put our hope in may fail us and leave us, but "our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness". and our children are not naturally supposed to get to our heavenly home before us, but if they do, we can trust in the promise that we're coming too!
=
1. one beautiful, blessed, final Chorale tour. sadness that it's over, but gladness that it happened and that the God of grace and God of glory made himself so deeply present throughout all of it, carrying our heavy burdens and preaching peace into us and revealing his dwelling place inside each person we met.
haha, i just remembered that Chorale Officer Matthew wanted to call it the 'Trinity Check', and i liked it ecstatically but then had to agree with Officer Mark that it sounded semi-blasphemous. ;-) but it is actually a pretty good expression of the mystery of the real Trinity, right? one (Father) plus one (Son) plus one (Holy Spirit) equals ONE!!!
peace, people. "shower the people you love with love"
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