Friday, March 25, 2011

First Bird

I was digging through my file folder while getting ready for taxes, and I found this poem. One of my roommates in college, Sarah, had sent it to me just after I graduated and was working at camp. It was handwritten on a piece of paper and illustrated beautifully with dogwood branches drawn in crayon. :) I loved it then, but it has this quiet depth I didn't really understand. Seven years later, I think I get it.

First Bird
by Julia Kasdorf

The first bird that sings
sings for all birds, even

when she stands for nothing
but herself, a dun-colored finch

on a dogwood branch.
No telling what a bird knows,

if this seems the first time
light glowed on the horizon,

or if she thinks her beak
alone has pierced the night.

We know nothing can be whole
that hasn't been torn.

There is no holy thing
that hasn't been betrayed,

the way notes, once forced
into her tiny throat,

come out this dawn as song.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

On Sunday, our pastor read this passage from a Puritan book of devotion called “The Valley of Vision.” I’ve never read any Puritan writing before; despite the bad wrap they’ve gotten in popular culture, everyone I know who’s into theology and has read them seems to like them. I may have to start. This piece struck me for its almost John Donne-ish passion and ecstasy, something I certainly hadn’t associated with that movement.
* * * * * * *

O Father of Jesus,
Help me to approach thee with deepest reverence, not with presumption,
not with servile fear, but with holy boldness.
Thou art beyond the grasp of my understanding,
but not beyond that of my love,
Thou knowest that I love thee supremely,
for thou art supremely adorable, good, perfect.

My heart melts at the love of Jesus,
my brother, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,
married to me, dead for me, risen for me;
He is mine and I am his,
given to me as well as for me;
I am never so much mine as when I am his,
or so much lost to myself until lost in him;
then I find my true manhood.

But my love is frost and cold, ice and snow;
Let his love warm me,
lighten my burden,
be my heaven;
May it be more revealed to me in all its influences
that my love to him may be more fervent and glowing;
Let the mighty tide of his everlasting love
cover the rocks of my sin and care;
Then let my spirit float above those things
which had else wrecked my life.

Make me fruitful by living to that love,
my character becoming more beautiful every day.
If traces of Christ's love-artistry be upon me,
may he work on with his divine brush
until the complete image be obtained
and I be made a perfect copy of him, my master.

O Lord Jesus, come to me,
O Divine Spirit, rest upon me,
O Holy Father, look on me in mercy for the sake of the well-beloved.

* * * * * * *

I particularly love the phrase “I am never so much mine as when I am his… but my love is frost and cold, ice and snow, let his love warm me…”
Getting lost in my relationship with Jesus this past year or so has helped me immensely to find myself. Where pain and sorrow have sought to carve away at my heart, I’ve found Jesus filling in the canyons, making level the paths in my life. I feel like I see him much more clearly than I ever have, and I am thrilled to know that my whole life is ahead of me on this route. As an actor, connecting to my partner is still a challenge for me, as it probably will be in life. But bit by bit, I am witnessing my own guard begin to be let down, and realizing that I’m not afraid. Reflecting on relationships, I realize my passion for the marriage commitment: I want to know how Christ loves me unconditionally. Brokenness in my life has kept me from fully grasping that, and I want to see it in a way that I can better understand. I am an overcomer. “My heart melts at the love of Jesus.”

Sunday, November 21, 2010

On Failing... Again...

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
Inever had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all my friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love--a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
~CS Lewis

Lately I’ve been continuously reminded of my own sinfulness. And there is a lot of it. These past few weeks for me have been overloaded with stress—spiritual, physical, mental. I broke once; scared all my teachers and half my classmates. I often allow myself to get overwhelmed, and I’ve been realizing more and more lately why that is. I just don’t trust God enough. Still. Of course that sounds a little trite, but here’s what I mean; I keep trying to do things on my own strength. I’ve been reading Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, and chapter by chapter, I am consistently awed by his frank honesty and willingness to admit things I will rarely, if ever, own up to. I’ve been needing a good hit in the head from a “spiritual 2x4” lately (that’s what we called it in youth group growing up), and I just got a few good ones. My heart has been so raw lately with all the stress from school and some potentially scary test results from my doctor (everything’s fine, btw), I see God is using all that inner turmoil to churn up my heart like tilled soil. I hope. All these scars and ugly blemishes on my life that I’ve allowed to fester unchecked… I hope to be rid of them. Watch me try to do it on my own once again. Watch me as I cry out to God briefly, and then turn to my own strength to try and heal myself. I wonder why I love so much to give to others and do things for others, but I never allow them to serve me. “You want me to help you with that?” “No thanks,” I say, obviously struggling, “I got it.” Not that I don’t want the person to help me, I just don’t want them to inconvenience their own life for me. I don’t want them to waste their energy. I do that with God. A lot. I know my problems aren’t as big as some people’s, I know the things I complain about often prove my gold shoes are too tight. But God still longs to help me carry my burdens, to teach me to give them up to him because he is way stronger than me. But still I insist on carrying them myself, because I feel like he ought to have bigger fish to fry. Like I'm not worth the trouble. When I try to do everything myself, I miss out on letting go of the struggle. When my heart struggles, I get stressed, and I don’t allow the peace of the Holy Spirit to calm my heart. I want my heart calm, so that I can reach out to others and allow that calm and love to flow into their lives. On my own strength, I feel a dam blocking anything flowing out of me. I feel my heart closed off to others, and I get snappy and selfish. In my busy-ness and stress, I let go of relationships and hurt people. I wallow in my own brokenness, walking around in my own open shackles like a fool. I learn of new mistakes, and I beat myself up for them, but I don’t turn to him and his grace. I won’t allow myself to accept it. Accepting it means I’ve failed, and I hate admitting failure. Just ask my teachers. They’ve been trying to cure me of my perfectionism from day 1. I seem to have poisoned myself thoroughly with the American notion of hard work and self-reliance. If I could just pull myself up by my bootstraps, I’d be ok. Such a lie. To borrow a concept from another writer whose name escapes me: without Christ, I would have neither boots, nor straps on which to pull. I wish I could write some sort of resolution at the end of this, but I have nothing. I have only myself, looking to what lies ahead, hoping that I will finally allow Christ to truly be center of my life. I want to stop doing this myself, because it is obvious that I can’t.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

I can hear the cicadas.

Wendell Berry - 2005, X

Mowing the hillside pasture--where
the flowers of Queen Anne's lace

float above the grass, the milkweeds
flare and bee balm, cut, spices

the air; the butterflies light and fly
from bloom to bloom, the hot

sun dazes the sky, the woodthrushes
sound their flutes from the deep shade

of the woods nearby--these iron teeth
chattering along the slope astound

the vole in her low run and bring down
the field sparrow's nest cunningly hung

between two stems, the young long flown.
The mower moves between the beauty

of the half-wild growth and the beauty
of growth reduced, smooth as a lawn,

revealing again the slope shaped of old
by the wearing of water and, later, the wear

of human will, hoof and share and wheel
hastening the rain's work, so that the shape

revealed is the shape of wounds healed,
covered with grass and clover and blesséd

flowers. The mower's work too is beautiful,
granting rest and health to his mind.

He drives the long traverses of the healed
and healing slant. He sweats and gives thanks.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

One Year in LA

O all wide places, far from feverous towns!
Great shining seas! pine forests! mountains wild!
Rock-bosomed shores! rough heaths! and sheep-cropt downs!
Vast pallid clouds! blue spaces undefiled!
Room! give me room! give loneliness and air!
Free things and plenteous in your regions fair.

O God of mountains, stars, and boundless spaces!
O God of freedom and of joyous hearts!
When thy face looketh forth from all men's faces,
There will be room enough in crowded marts;
Brood thou around me, and the noise is o'er;
Thy universe my closet with shut door.

Heart, heart, awake! the love that loveth all
Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb's cave.
God in thee, can his children's folly gall?
Love may be hurt, but shall not love be brave?--
Thy holy silence sinks in dews of balm;
Thou art my solitude, my mountain-calm.

~George MacDonald, from Longing

I came upon this poem shortlybefore moving out here, and it spoke to me through my fears of moving to an urban area. Fears I am still working to overcome, but who isn't a work in progress? I've been here in LA for exactly a year now. Aug 29, 2009 was my first full day in Los Angeles; and also the day I found my home church, Ecclesia, after 10 years of searching for one. I cannot fully express how good God has been to me this past year, although I've been trying to in previous posts. :)

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Late Night Thots

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I do not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

~Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII

i dunno why, but this poem came to mind recently. i haven't read it since college; i always found it so beautiful, but never understood it. it used to call to mind st. john of the cross, and his work "the dark night of the soul." today, i think i understand it, because i think i've come to a place with Christ where i'm beginning to learn what love is. and that final stanza sticks out to me, because that is essentially my prayer as an actor.
[this was hard for me to post.]

Sunday, August 15, 2010

File Under: Shameless Self-Promotion

I was in this! It was my first set shoot ever (besides something for YWAM)! The band is Chromeo, a French-Canadian duo who did a song for Yo Gabba Gabba. Real nice guys. My eyes are in the middle at 0:39 & 0:44, then I'm in it again at 2:25. Fun shoot, working for director Keith Schofield. My friend Matt was casting this; he's the dude w/ the golf clubs. :)

http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/musicvideo/6915-chromeo-dont-turn-the-lights-on-atlantic