*Drowns in Talent*

So, the realization just hit (feeling somewhat like being shoved in a freezer after basking in the sunlight; in honor of Gabriel and his lovely simile...:), that I have no talent of great import in the world and that, wherever I go, there will always be more talent and more grace and more amazingness in other people.

:D

Isn't that wonderful?! Think about how exciting the world is, now that I do not need to be the best person in it. There are so many wonderful things to do; so many masterful artists to learn from and so many ridiculously talented people to appreciate.

*smacks self into agreement*

Ah, Perfectionism!

It's like trying to write a good stories while reading the Bible or Jane Eyre or T.S. Eliot or Harry Potter or Chicken Jane, and wondering, "Why on earth write a good story when there are such GREAT stories?" and it feels so utterly hopeless that you edit your pages into oblivion. Or like learning a piece by some nondescript composer that nobody knows about, when your brilliant friends are struggling through divine classics that are close-if-not-actually-at the virtuosic level...

Or trying to draw. At all. Without even looking at Rembrandt, or Degas, or Monet...(aw, I love Monet!). Cause if you look at Monet, when you're trying to draw, it's basically the equivalent of being shoved into an iceberg after living in California.

*sigh*

What is the point of this post? That's a very, very good question. Maybe it's...

The more you learn, the more you grow, and (oddly enough) the more humble you become. At least, that's how it should be, I think. I fail more often than not in remembering and applying this.

Plus, if we were all the best, we wouldn't have any motivation to learn, would we? (Well, none of us could ever be the best, since God has handily taken that position. Heck, he made that position! He IS that position!)

Anyways. I've been learning about the woes of pride and perfectionism, and about the grace of God and the necessity of humility.

In other news, I ate Milton's wheat toast with cream cheese and marionberry jam for breakfast, and I miss you guys. :D

Layout in the sun...

And you'll probably get burned! Har. Har.

Voila! Eet ees a new layout! What dost thou thinketh?

Funny Peoples...

The only way to describe us (my family and I) + new friends the Joneses is H-A-M...

Observe...except that, you don't have to, since these aren't exactly the most beautiful pictures of us, but by the time we're twenty we'll be ridiculously gorgeous, I'm sure...






(Yeah, that one was a little creepy...:S)

This is Headless Ben with oversized Chinchilla ball...:)


Mika looks oh-so-stylish in a beret, don't you think?

Anyways. There's a random bunch of tidbits for you! Now that you are seriously disturbed, go read Gabriel or Mary Kate's blog and be soothed by the sensibility of their wise words. :D

I am afraid.

So, recently I've been thinking about the five main things I'd like to do before I die.

(Item 0. Use the words "I", "me", and "myself" much, much less!)

Hah, yeah...Anyways, it's not as morbid of a subject as it might sound. In fact, it greatly assists in the arranging of priorities, the discovering of fears, the learning of things about oneself and such.

1. Get married and have...4-10 kids. :)
I'm afraid of never being loved in such a way.
2. Write something good and get it published.
I'm afraid of rejection by Editors and the General Populace.
3. Work as a missionary somewhere for 6 mo.-2 yrs. or so.
I'm afraid of failure.
4. Learn how to love life and how to love people for who they are; not for what I wish it was, or who I wish they were.
I am afraid of the emotional risk that accompanies loving anything truly and deeply.
5. Learn how to love God.
I am really, truly afraid of what He will ask me to do!

And no matter how much I "steel" myself against these fears (which basically means the more I ignore them), they will always find a way past the barrier unless I give them wholly to God.

Heh, if you can't beat them, join God!

Perhaps it is a lifelong journey, to realize more fears and give them up to God again and again and again. Perhaps it is a lifelong journey, to realize the holy ambitions placed in our hearts by God's own hand, and to pray for His Head, Heart, and Hand again and again and again.

Life is such an sad and joyful, complex and simple, devastating and renewing process! Life through death and death for new life; dead to the world's ways and alive in Christ.

Isn't it amazing how many paradoxes pop up? We learn to be content in God's plans and His providence, and then He stirs in us a restless desire for heavenly things. He urges us to lose everything and find everything in Him. We are unique individuals living as one Body in Christ. We are crucified with Him in order to live again.

We crucify our fears in order to live in His peace.

It's all so confusing until you find out that it makes perfect sense!! AAAHHH!!!

So, I don't know what college I'm going to, I don't know who I will marry if I ever do, I don't know how to perfectly live out what I believe and I don't understand why God can't just make me perfect now...

But I do know that God's one heck of a lot smarter than me and knows where all this is going. :)

What are five things you want to do before you die? (They can be silly too, by the way! I want to eat all the most expensive things at the most expensive restaurant the day I'm given a week or whatever to live...:) What are your fears, hopes, holy ambitions? What do you love about life?

(Wow, that was long! If you made it through, thank you and hopefully the next post will be more concise!)

Love,
Danielle

Crystal Hearts in Narrow Kages vs. Chopin

So my sisters, my sisters' friend and I decided one rather random afternoon to make one rather random band. After going through a bunch of both boring and cliched names, Kristina presents the idea of Crystal Hearts in Narrow Kages. ("Kages" because it makes the whole thing spell CHINK).

What does it mean?! I don't have a clue. Aside from having an amazingly nonsensical name, CHINK'S instruments consist of the recorder, my paltry piano of 3.5 years, four singers, the bottle (as in blowing over the top of a bottle), and a hot-cocoa-canister-turned-makeshift-drum.

Chopin might have performed in the presence of tsars by the time he was 11, but I'll bet he never made such a cool band with his siblings.

Ehem.

(Also, while I've been doing this extremely important business, my ultimately more amazing friends have been furthering the capabilities and capacities of their head, heart and hand. For summer fun.

I feel so behind in life.)

Edduficayshun...

Interesting Lessons I am learning whilst in Washingon, of both the Profound and Less Profound sort:

1. Mature sentiment and by-the-seat-of-your-pants passion/emotion are such funny creatures, in the sense that we seem mix them up a very lot. (Maybe we even long for mature sentiment and think we feel it so many times that when we truly achieve it we don't notice it for a while...)
2. It actually does get hot in Washington. Right now, it's 83 degrees INSIDE the house...:P
3. Choosing a college is a harder decision than I thought. Darn.
4. I am slowly learning where everything goes in the kitchen. Pots on the lazy susan, potatoes in the pantry...(We never even had a pantry in California! O, woe for lack of culinary education...)
5. God is quite in control of things, and I believe He finds well-warranted amusement and joy in showing us exactly how true that is.
6. Switchfoot is beyond cool. (In the good way, of course. :)
7. Perhaps the most difficult thing about moving to Washington is, as one gets to know new and very nice people, remembering to keep in touch with the equally wonderful comrades back home. (Please forgive me if you are in the oft-uncontacted; I would love to hear from you and it would help me greatly if you reminded me that I should email/call!)

Last, but definitely not least:
8. Never attempt the Bottle Dance from Fiddler on the Roof in barefeet, and especially not on carpet in barefeet. Unless you are particularly fond of rugburns.

Much love,
Danielle

Adventures in the Sunshine State

Here is a summary of my trip thus far!

Favorite Food Eaten:
Definitely strawberries, which are much less expensive here than in Washington.

Most Interesting Experiences:
Getting Sun Rash. (It's like an itchy sunburn. *scratch scratch*. Curse you, extremely white origins!). Oh yeah, and having a middle-aged surfer dude ask me where Mayport Beach was, and being later surprised to find that I was not, in fact, 20 years old.

Favorite Place Visited:
St. Augustine! :D :D :D It is a beautiful little town by the beach that has tons of interesting and varied shops. How can you go wrong with a city named after such a cool person?

Least Favorite Place Visited:
Texas. On our layover. (To be fair, it WAS only the airport, so I didn't actually see any of non-overpopulated-disgusting-building-with-loud-planes Texas.)

Favorite Quote:
"It's like ballroom dancing for your mouth!"
-Mr. Pizza Advertiser Man on the glories of his wares.

Favorite Souvenir:
A book of Aesop's Fables, Grimm's and Andersen's fairy tales.

Words of Wisdom:
-The evolution of women's swimwear is unfallible evidence of global warming.
-Wear sunscreen. Especially if the closest thing you can get to a tan is a faded sunburn.
-If you don't like airplane lavatories, politely decline their "complimentary beverage".
-Pools are for swimming in, not tanning by. (I HATE when people just sit by the pool and tan without swimming!!! IT'S SO ANNOYING!!! But then, maybe it's because I just can't tan...)
-Go to Washington, then go to Florida and feel how different 47 degrees is from 92! :D

I miss you all and hope you are well! Don't forget to lather on that sunscreen, my lovely friends of Dutch, Norwegian, English and generally White origin! :)

Summer Reading List 2008!

Yay for lots of books! Here we go...

"Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand which should come first, prayer or praise; or, indeed, whether knowledge should precede prayer. For how can one pray to you unless one knows you? If one does not know you, one may pray not to you you, but to something else. Or is it rather the case that we should pray to you in order that we may come to know you?" -The Confessions of St. Augustine,by Augustine, in a vivid contemporary translation by Rex Warner!

(Curiousity may have killed the cat, but it seems to have taken Augustine on quite the adventure! Everybody should listen to the Switchfoot song about Augustine, by the way...can't remember what it's called right now...)

"The day was now departing; the dark air released the living beings of the earth from work and weariness; and I myself alone prepared to undergo the battle both of the journeying and of the pity, which memory, mistaking not, shall show."
-Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, in a verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum!

(In intense agreement with Mr. Choo, who inspired the reading of this particular book, all I can say is: Dante Rocks!. You can tell how eloquent I've become since moving away from Torrey, eh?)

"Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman...with the infant at her bosom...an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity [and] only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant she had borne."-The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

(Oh, sad, sad book...Hawthorne has a way of describing things so vividly that it sends veritable pangs through one's heart.)

"[Raoul] was now twenty-one and looked eighteen. He had a little blond mustache, attractive blue eyes, and a girlish [personality, I mean] complexion." -The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux.

(Yup, that about sums it up.)

I'll probably be able to finish all of these on our two-week trip to Florida. Which starts tomorrow morning. At three. In the morning. Which is the problem with living in a small town, because the nearest commercial airport is 100 miles away in Seattle. Oh well. Anyways, yay for good and interesting books! What are your summer plans/books, friends?

*gaspeth* A (filler) Poste!

(Blarney walks in the room. The computer is ironically turned on to Blogger. It speaks.)

Blog (very, very irritatedly): WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?

Blarney (stares in awe at shiny computer screen): Um. You speak. -Eth.

Blog: KNOWETH THAT THY DOOM SHALT COME, O INSOLENT AIRHEAD, LEST YE MENDETH THY WAYS AND RETURNETH TO THE LAND OF PERSEVERANT BLOGGERS. BLOG, AND YE SHALT BE SAVED. (pronounced "save-ed", by the way).

Blarney: Er, okay.

Blog: I MEANETH IT.

Blarney: I believeth it.

Blog: BE QUIET.

Blarney: Then how am I supposed to blog? Should I mend my ways or zip the lips?

Blog: JUST DO IT.

Blarney: Which one?

Blog: ...

**************

Hi everybody! Apparently incarnate blogs speak in improper Olde English, but maybe that's just mine. Sorry I haven't done anything for a long time.

...

Ahem. COMING UP SOON in the land of Miscellany and Etcetera!

Not by the Fur of My Chinny-Chin-Chilla:

"Allow me to introduce myself. I, Eliot, am a gentle-chinchilla, and a rather smashingly good one at that. Never shall you see me at a loss for masterful small-talk, in need of an extra or unrumpled handkerchief, or dressed in anything but what is befitting a rodent of my rank.

I am also a poet. Or rather, I take on the appearance of one. In actuality, I am a spy.

But you would never betray a poetic gentle-chinchilla-spy (not to mention one on the good side) for what he truly is, now, would you?"

OOH! A story! Yay! And yes, I did spoof T.S. Eliot into a chinchilla. (Poetic license, if you'll pardon the pun.) It's an epic tale full of romance, adventure, and rodents who enjoy quoting The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Aha. Um. Goodnight. :) I miss you all!

Caput, Cor, Manus.

The head which laughed in infant glee,
The head which held the mind of God,
The head betrayed by traitor's kiss,
The head which bore both thorn and rod...
It lives in truth, now hangs in pain
And bears the weight of God's disdain.

The heart which hurt for king and slave,
The heart which felt each hope and fear,
The heart which wept at silent grave,
The heart which freely took the spear...
It aches for truth and lives in grace,
Worthy alone to see God's face.

The hand which grasped both cloth and hay.
the hand which touched the blind to see,
The hands which, broken, broke the bread
The hands, pierced, to set men free...
They, firm and soft, forever prove
The paradox of truth and love.

He who was Great became the least
Became for us the highest Priest
He who, alike, was Lord and man
Showed to us His head, heart and hand.

-Danielle