the God interlude.

you've GOT to be kidding me, God...
ten minutes after that rather frustrated entry i read this
from our summer project director:

From: John Waidley
Subject: Number four coming around!!
To: all you summer project loves

Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:07:40 -0400


Hey all,
Sometimes you just wonder if God really worked...especially if didn't see what you hoped
you would see. I think of the HPU team this summer and the slugging and prayer walking
and wondering if it was worth it times you all had. It was a struggle at times especially
when you saw the other ministries beginning and you couldn't see what God was doing.

Below is an email that came to me minutes ago. I am in tears reminding myself not to
despise small things and to never underestimate what God wants to do! Sometimes (like
the hpu team this summer) soil prep it the key to fruitful ministry.
Enjoy.....

Aloha,
Hello my name is Maddie Ott, I am currently a junior at Hawaii
Pacific University. I am the new president of the student ministry here
called Christian Fellowship. God has recently directed me to reach out
to the HPU campus. I am also involved in the UH CRU, but my heart is
broken for the ministry here. I have prayed and prayed and am writing
in ask for assistance and help. I want to start a CRU on HPU campus, I
am currently getting it approved but have no idea on how to start a
crew here. I have a few fellow potential officers but would LOVE some
mentors and just support from Campus Crusades. Please help us! We will
continue to pray for the leaders to lead us, and the opportunities..
but we need your help. Our hearts are here, were eager we just need
your direction! Thanks so much and I am eager to hear back from you!!!
Thanks so much again for all you do.. Matthew 28:19-20

<>< Until All Have Heard,
Maddie Ott
bhpu12@yahoo.com

We are going to get Maddie the help she needs.
aloha

John Waidley
psw catalytic regional director




AHHHHHHHH!!!!
all that junk that led into a quasi dissertation on a disney movie of all things was prompted as i was sifting through what i was being led to take on this year.
and a dam has been broken
and i feel such release
!!
(o my soul, rejoice)
i think i really had felt like a failure going home then. rather than giving up that ministry to God (who oversees growth), i was saddened that circumstance (rather than coincidence) forced it out of my hands... and out of my hands it remained. and it's so much better for it!!
ahhhhh!

i do not believe my eyes (for i am going to do something in your time that you would not believe, even if you were told !! WORD, you're not kidding God!) at all. her heart breaks for that campus! is this really happening??

hahaha, so awesome.
man... i need to lie down. =0)





see, God interceding is so much more interesting than my pocahontas talk!!
hahahahaa
and i really did sleep... i passsed out on my stomach on my bible with drool
outside on the deck:
the best way to sleep!
tee hee

the pocahontas interlude.

[ i guess as a quick preface, i've been sick since i got up this morning; in fact, half a box of tissues has been destroyed because of me, all the remnants lay around me like popcorn, but like the kind that's deadly with virus. which really is no popcorn at all. never mind. but it makes for some good rambling!! oh, how i abuse xanga. hahahah]


is life at this stage of developing myself (what is the aim of college, really, if not about me) really meant to be when suffering dries up all the air around the world, but for me and the weak concentric circle i add to this great pond, my head is up and away - over and out - in the clouds inhaling with greed so much in place that it has become stale air.
what i am barely in motion for would give life to those who have never tasted fortune.
do i stand in their way?

is it true, that if each one of us gave 10% of our total assets, world hunger would be conquered.
i have no income, i only have my toys and insecurities.
what good is that?
and what good are my efforts if i can't even be troubled to put my heart- my whole self- into them
do i desire for universal change or to eliminate discomfort from myself
for the depths of desire indicate the focal point of the heart,
but i definitely can't go there
to examine my very motivations, convictions, meditations,
that which reigns and has total captivity of all that i claim beautiful and true-
means to surrender my pride.

where do i start?
cause now i cant even manage one foot in front of the other.

i remember going to see dctalk with amy yao, her laughing, her pulling us up the front. it must have been 1999, or 2000. ( a lifetime ago. )
i remember being captivated by this song.


Father please forgive me for I cannot compose
The fear that lives within me
or the rate at which it grows
If struggle has a purpose on the narrow road you've carved
Why do I dread my trespasses will leave a deadly scar
Do they see the fear in my eyes? Are they so revealing?
This time I cannot disguise all the doubt I'm feeling

What if I stumble, what if I fall?
What if I lose my step and I make fools of us all?
Will the love continue when my walk becomes a crawl?
What if I stumble, and what if I fall?



... what can i do?
i'll give it all up to you...



why can't my heart stay fixed in one place
why can't i will the necessary change
what keeps me believing i have all the tools on this earth
experience? necessity?
(ignorance?)

/////
i'm in the process of moving all my music onto my laptop.
i found the pocahontas soundtrack, dusty from non use (my lion king soundtrack actually has dried oily fingerprints that fit my own exactly. hahah! easily the best disney movie, but i digress. again. actually this whole post is a digression...), on an old shelf.
it's beautiful, all the woodwinds, bells, drums, desperation.
this whole movie is about desperation if you really think about it!
pocahontas with a sense that there is something more,
something foreign and beautiful just past her line of vision

and that she pursues the uncertain with such conviction actually rather shames me. hahaha
she murmurs, after her father entreats her to be 'steady as the beating drum',

"to be safe we lose our chance of never knowing"
should i choose the smoothest course steady as the beating drum
do i marry kocuom
is all my dreaming at an end?
or do you still wait for me, dream giver
just around the riverbend

so she goes. and runs. runs into john. and john smith loses thomas while he's running too. she almost loses her father. and finally she loses john smith too. it's not neatly packaged or perfect. the process was messy. a gun that was introduced in the first scene was indeed fired by the last act. and there was a goodbye sharp with ache.
but they both were profoundly, irrevocably changed
just by having met each other!
just by having shared experiences together
and i think in my heart summer project resonates that same way. were we so utterly captivated by our wildly imaginative God, who glories in all his creation, and commands us to follow, to a willing obedience - for us it's living on the edge, for him it's a wink, knowing smile and total affection... he runs ahead but he's also all around, guiding, shaping, giving choice but at the same time opportunity. did we live with such utter abandon?! (did we paint with all the colors of the wind?)
or did we come as ... the fat man... with the bratty pug dog... and destroy blindly what we did not know with our weapons of choice... guns, bayonets... hell, a-bombs if we're in such a position...
or with even more destructive things... distance, unbelief?

did something come in between us and the father's embrace, the grip we have on him that he wholly reciprocates, and if it did, did we ask ourselves if it was something of us that held back, instead of his. that is, did we allow something to come between us and our lord, when we embraced did we step aside when we started to feel ourselves slip? did we get cold feet at the same time we closed our eyes to the fear and pain? are we far and distant... for we know we can go through all the right motions but our nerves can get numb:

These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.

Isaiah 29:13 (NIV)

i'm unsettled thinking about it, trying to make the leap between having been swaddled by staff, supported by other marooned survivors (haha sorry... 'lost' tv influence), learning how to struggle, come to depend on God, water and plant soil that i could not even see with tools i had never used before, return and finish with a dazed sense of, "God, what exactly did you do here? and father, what exactly did you do in me?"... commissioned off and now approaching time to bring it all back home. transitioning between yet another known to yet another unknown. funny how that happens. i hope to be able to come back in another quarter, perhaps another year and be able to laugh at present fears, like i cherish lessons and tools that have been revealed to me... and help me come to paint a better picture, come to a better understanding of this big, great, totally irrational God - who operates on love that isn't crazy? - who simply desires to bring his people back to him? it's a total love story he's weaving, the best and longest and longest suffering tale. it's an odyssey that i'll actually read. ;) who knew that that love is trained on us, but for his name's sake.
so let my prayer constantly be, lord, as psalm 25:11 laments - "for your name's sake, o lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great." but all God's grace is bigger than all man's sin.


pocahontas ends with the theme, if i never knew you. it's not anywhere near as popular as colors of the wind, probably for how closely it follows the old saying that anything too stupid to be said is sung. tee hee. and also the blatantly '80s synthesizer beats. but, err, not my point... let's jump to what's by far my favorite line:

If I never knew you
I'd be safe but half as real (HALF AS REAL!!! talk about an epiphany.)

Never knowing I could feel
A love so strong and true

And If I never knew you
I'd have lived my whole life through
Empty as the sky
Never knowing why
Lost forever
If I never knew you

ahhh! so dead on, it hurts.
i love it.
we live, but only half as real, without him, in this life.


in closing it's by no stretch of the imagination a christian movie. i ascribe no such framework around it as i speak.
but it has values to my christian life, and that's the link. (i learned things i never knew i never knew.)
like when a familiar song plays, what makes it a favorite is the images we distill from it... from where we were when we first loved it, wherever we first fell in love, whoever we first fell in love with.
it's like that.
\\\\\


psalm 25
teach me your paths
of david.

to you, o lord, i lift up my soul.
o my God, in you i trust;
let me not be put to shame;
let not my enemies exult over me.
indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame;
they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

make me to know your ways, o lord;
teach me your paths.
lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you i wait all the day long.

remember your mercy, o lord, and your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions -
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for the sake of your goodness, o lord!