Quotes and Thoughts from Rob Bell's new book, Drops Like Stars
"In 1941, in a village in nazi-controlled polard, a young man came home to discover that his father had died while he was at work. what made his father's death exceedingly more unbearable was that several years earlier, both this young man's sister and mother had died. As he held his father's dead body in his arms, he lamented, "I'm all alone. At twenty, I've lost all the people I've loved"
One writer described it like this: "ripped out of the soil of his background, his life could no longer be what it used to be. He now began a journey to deeper communion with God. But it didn't come without tears, and it didn't come without what seems to have been a certain existential horror." Suffering can do that to us. We've jolted kicked, prodded, and shoved into new realities we never would have brought about on our own. We're forced to imagine a new future because the one we were planning on is gone. The key word here is, of course, "imagine." That young polish man sitting on the floor with his dead father in his arms was having all his boxes smashed to pieces. "His life could no longer be what it used to be."
That young polish man? His name was Karol Jozel Wojtyla, but later in life he was known as Pope John Paul II."
The first Christians insisted that Jesus died on the cross,
this wasn't just another execution by the Roman Empire.
They believed this was the divine, in flesh and blood, hanging there on the cross, bloody, thirsty, suffering.
A god who is not somewhere else - remote, detached, distant - but among us, feeling what we feel, aching how we ache, suffering like us.
"God came into the world and screamed alongside us. Interesting idea, that"
Perhaps that's why people across the religious spectrum, for thousands of years, continue to identify with the cross. It speaks to our longing to know that we're not alone, that there's someone else "screaming along side us"
Is the cross God's way of saying, "I know how you feel?"
Basically, this book is a Nooma film turned into a book. It's awesome.
it to be 20 degrees outside
to be laying under the stars in a field with a dear friend
to raise questions about the last year of my life
to make better work
school to be over so i can go on photo-gen-x
to be on the roadtrip i’m going on this weekend
to bounce ideas off you
to learn more
to be able to be ok with less
to cuddle
know if i can really talk to you
know just how much you’d trust me
to know just how much you miss me
to be on the receiving end of a hug
to be able to fall asleep
Well in the last 2 weeks I've been trying to get a blog post done, as you can plainly see, it hasn't been finished. I don't know, maybe once school starts again, I'll start blogging. There's just too much to write about I guess. I'm sorry for the let down.
I'd rather explain my life, struggles, and issues at the moment over some tim's, wouldn't you?
So go ahead and ask me, I'll make some plans with you friendly people.
(If you're out of the city, we can plan a skype date, ok?)
I'm planning to do some video work during the rest of the summer. Now that my 365 is wrapping up, I'll need to put my time into something else creative. Now that I have some 'L' glass, that also helps too. Going to Sylvan Lake on sunday and I plan on shooting quite alot there, well mostly on the way up. I'm excited as I haven't really shot video for video's sake, well, like ever.
To start it off, I was suppose to go to a info meeting on this marketing job based around the pyramid scheme, but on the way to the train station I remembered that I had lost a little foot clip for my flash last night. I knew approximately where it was and even though it's only like $12 to replace, it wouldn't hurt to go look for it for a second. When I found it (yay!), any part of me that wanted to go to that meeting to go learn more just disappeared. It was as it just melted away, almost like it was never there at all. It was just the strangest feeling. I then realized that I hadn't been wandering and just enjoying nature for myself in quite a while. For the last month basically, I've always been with a friend while adventuring. Not that I don't thoroughly love each and everyone of those adventures, I was always getting distracted while having conversations with them. So tonight I took to myself, I didn't have any set places I wanted to go, a time to be home by (although in bed before midnight would be nice). I just let myself go and my mind wander. I guess my brain needed a wander because it's been bombarded lately. I just haven't been giving it a rest as of late and it's been slowly eating me away from the inside.
Here is a 14 page text sent to a friend trying to describe how I felt this evening (context is that she asked why I didn't go to the meeting and after I found the flash shoe and I answered).
"Ya, but I ended up not going. I ended up just sitting (and still am) in babbling brook and reading The Screwtape Letters. It's a book by C.S. Lewis, my dad said it was a great read and it turns out to be quite interesting. Um I'm not entirely sure. I'm in a strange mood I guess right now. Not happy, yet not sad in any way. Or maybe it's a mixture of both. I don't really know how to put it into words. Like I felt something in me told me not to go. I felt like I needed to catch up with god I guess. It's all so strange. Like I want to drown out the sounds of the city and just scream and cry. But not in anger or sadness. Just to get old shit out and have room for more good. Like there's just a lot of shit that I just want to get out I guess. I don't know."
In the end I just got some time to think in a lovely little park in the middle of Canyon Meadows (it's a gem too). Walked home, stopped to watch the lightning storm for a bit, and turned up my ipod on this song.
I just was walking through communities while singing, not with an ounce of fear in my mind of what people would think. It was like the calm after the storm, but in my head. I was at peace. There is still much to get out, but it was a good start.
