to love.

society’s reality differs from love’s reality. “to live in love is life’s greatest challenge. it requires more subtlety, flexibility, sensitivity, understanding, acceptance, tolerance, knowledge, and strength than any other human endeavor or emotion, for love and the actual world make up what seem like two great contradictory forces.” -leo buscalgia challenge. Go out and love someone, experience it treasure it and honor it. God has called us to love. Don't be scared to show his love through a small gesture of kindness, we also don't need to be scared when people want to love us back.

“when you are interiorly free you call others to freedom, whether you know it or not. freedom attracts wherever it appears. a free man or a free woman creates a space where others feel safe and want to dwell. our world is so full of conditions, demands, requirements, and obligations that we often wonder what is expected of us. but when we meet a truly free person, there are no expectations, only an invitation to reach into ourselves and discover there our own freedom.” -nouwen

God sees the flowers in my dandelion weeds.

grace.

I forgive myself.












b.c HE forgave me a long time ago.

smooth wine.

Rise. oh one who's eyes are secure.

Embrace what is new. Shut out the dust and move toward the wind.

For only the wind will whisper the truth of what is to come.

Dream when you are nervous, but until then, be free and drink this smooth wine.

oh. please do read.

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life. I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

maya angelou

Our Story from Neighborhood Film Co. on Vimeo.

Grace.

“Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life... It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

"Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for that name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’ If that happens to us, we experience grace."

Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations

QUESTION: When have you been struck by grace?

dependence: a personal note

i’m the “life-long learner” type. constantly curious and inquisitive. wide-eyed with ears peeked to any new wisdom, insight, or lesson that i’ve not experienced before.

independence has held on with deep roots since my early years. i’ve admired people who appear as if they could do everything on their own if they had to, and i’ve become that type of young lady in many ways. but i’m realizing, through reading the insightful words of a friend and spending time in introspection, that a heart and mind in pursuit of independence can be stifling to my faith, my relationships, and my professional success.

independence and abundant life cannot flourish within the same individual.

i need God, friends, and family to breathe fresh perspective, encouragement, and pure love into me.

seems kind of obvious, right?

of course there is value in doing life with other people.

of course there is value in letting them hold you accountable to your dreams and goals as well as receiving their love and affirmation.

it’s a message i’ve known in my head but not through-and-through in my heart. i’m finally grasping it. and it’s freeing, let me tell you what.

go live WITH people this weekend. tuck your phone away and enjoy face-time with someone. let them in and nurture real, raw community.

art.

Art, like life, is a challenge. It challenges all our resources, mentally and physically. It can’t be predictably created from a linear didactic formula. It eludes methodology, technology, or ritual. It is, like life, more about being human, being vulnerable, being imperfect, and about things unexplainable. It is not a science. Art is about surprise, about the unexpected, about letting go and risking. It is about taking steps towards places where there may not be any footholds, and falling and failing.

– J. Fred Woell

what.

head. ponder. fear of the no. heavy heart. no light at the end. please remember me. Do I hang here holding on for nothing? Or do I hope that one day this emptiness will be filled, my dreams will appear and the worth of that little girl will shine.

Please remember me.

broken.

hands.

raised.



music addiction lately everyone should listen:

in this silence.

I will sit here, drink tea. write lyrics. draw pictures. listen to music and not give up.

live.

(and stretch your comfort zone to demonstrate love more than you typically would)

Nice is Not enough

‘Niceness’ - wholesome, integrated personality - is an excellent thing. We must try by every medical, educational, economic and political means in our power to produce a world where as many people as possible grow up ‘nice’; just as we must try to produce a world where all have plenty to eat. But we must not supposed that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls.

A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world- and might even be more difficult to save.

For mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.

It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do soL and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders - no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings- may even give it an awkward appearance.

from Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Love is there if you want it to be, you just have to see that it's wrapped in beauty and hidden away between the seconds of your life. If you don't stop for a minute you might miss it.....

- today I realized I wanted you to grow old with me.

“the stillness of soul is increasingly rare in this world addicted to speed and noise.”

she rode.

And she rode and rode and rode. As she pedaled, letting the wind and sun steal kisses on her cheek, a funny thing happened. With every pedal forward, every move in one direction, she unleashed the pieces of her past she drug for so long and left them in her wake. So she rode and rode and rode, until the only thing she carried on her shoulders was the weight of the dancing sun.

32.

I'm not trying to give my life meaning
by demeaning you
and I would like to state for the record
I did everything that I could do
I'm not saying that I'm a saint
I just don't want to live that way
no, I will never be a saint
but I will always say

squint your eyes and look closer
I'm not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I'm beyond your peripheral vision
So you might want to turn your head
Cause someday you might find you're starving
and eating all of the words you said -ad

oh.

“yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. what is your life? for you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. instead you ought to say, ’if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” james 4:14-15

My wish for you this weekend, is that you find rest and comfort in knowing that you - in your beautiful uniqueness - are so deeply loved by our compassionate God.

i know your hands will clap.

blessed are those whose lives unfold in wings, the butterflies, and those whom the moonbeams fall.

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."
— Jonathan Safran Foer