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| Cheryl is an African American woman who is in her early 70s and has been living at the same retirement home on route 1 for nearly 15 years. I met her one day on my way home from class. I was at a crosswalk waiting for a blinking white light of a little man to let me know whether it was safe to cross the street or not, when from the corner of my eye I could see an elderly African American lady wheeling up next to me in her wheelchair. When it was safe to cross the road, I noticed the old lady's hestiancy in crossing. She was afraid that she might get hit by car (like her friend Bert) or fall in a pothole and not be able to get out, so I ended up wheeling her across the intersection to her building that happened to be right in front of mine. Our conversation began as she told me stories about how dangerous the neighborhood was. She warned me that a frail young gal like myself should be careful in these parts hea, especially them Chinese. I politely smiled and told her I was Korean... she ignored me. We continued walking as she rambled on and on about how her friend (something starting with the letter T) would collect Chinese antiques, especially priceless works of art, like pottery and paintings. She then continued to ask me what part of China I was from. I kindly reminded her that I was Korean.. again, she ignored me. I told her that I was actually born right here, in Maryland. She just laughed and told me that I had a strong Chinese accent when I spoke. She talked on and on, but I didn't mind once she stopped trying to convince me that I was a Chinese immigrant. She talked about other people she knew at the retirement home, and some people she knew for years in the neighborhood, but I noticed that she never talked about her family. As I dropped her off at her building, she seemed a little reluctant to let me go, bringing up just about anything else there was left to talk about. She seemed so eager to just talk to a complete stranger like me, and It wasn't because she was crazy, or senile.. but I think it was because she was just .. lonely. In my education 301 class, I am learning that it is important for kids to be heard and not only taught. I'm realizing that this might be one of those important life-lessons about humanity in general. | | |
| "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God, My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon-from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me- a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God my Rock, 'Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?' My bones suffer mortal agony, as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, 'Where is your God?' Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my savior my God." Psalm 42 | | |
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"He is able to take a little child and place that child at
the center of the kingdom of heaven, and he is able to look at Nicademus and
say “you’re a teacher and you can’t understand these things?”
He is able to take the sublime and make it simple,
He is able to take the simple and show you the sublimity
behind it.
The unfathomable depth of God’s riches.
You know what I think is going to be the biggest point of
our delight behind eternity.. that we will be silent when we are face to face
with the trinity.”
The Existence of God- Ravi Zacharias
Matthew 11:25
"I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes Father, for this was your good pleasure."
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"In Christ Alone"- Phillips Craig Dean
In Christ alone will I glory
Though I could pride myself in battles won
For I've been blessed beyond measure
And by His strength alone I overcome
Oh I could stop and count successes
Like diamonds in my hand
But those trophies could not equal
To the grace by which I stand
In Christ alone
I place my trust
And find my glory in the power of the cross
In every victory let it be said of me
My source of strength,
my source of hope
is Christ alone
In Christ alone will I glory
For only by His grace I am redeemed
And only His tender mercy could reach beyond my weakness to my need
Now I seek no greater honor than just to know Him more
And to count my gains but losses to the glory of
my Lord
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"What great gravity is this that drew my soul towards yours?
What great force, that though I went falsely, went kicking, went disguising myself to earn your love,
also disguised, to earn your keeping, your resting, your staying, your will fleshed into mine,
rasped by a slowly revealed truth, the barter of my soul,
the soul that I fear, the soul that I loathe, the soul that: if you will love, I will love.
I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.
I went looking, I wrote out a list, I drew an image, I bled a poem of you.
You were pretty, and my friends believed I was worthy of you.
You were clever, but I was smarter, perhaps the only one smarter, the only one able to lead you.
You see, love, I did not love you, I loved me.
And you were only a tool that I used to fix myself, to fool myself, to redeem myself.
And though I have taught you to lay your lily hand in mine, I was alone, for I cannot talk to you, lest you talk it back to me, lest I believe that I am not worthy, not deserving, not redeemed.
I want desperately for you to be my friend.
But you are not my friend; you have slid up warmly to the man I wanted to be, the man I pretended to be, and I was your Jesus and, you were mine.
Should I show you who I am, we may crumble. I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.
I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me.
My love, do I know you?
What is this great gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other?
Why do we not connect?
Will we be forever in fleshing this out?
Were I some sleeping Adam.
to wake and find you resting at my rib, to share these things that God has done,
to walk with you through the garden,
to counsel your timid steps, your bewildered eye, your heart so slow to love, so careful to love,
so sheepish that I stepped up my aim and became a man.
Is this what God intended?
That though He made you from my rib,
it is you who is making me, humbling me, destroying me, and in doing so revealing Him.
Will we be ashed before we are one?
What great gravity is this that drew my heart towards yours?
What great force collapsed my orbit, my lonesome state?
What is this that wants in me that want in you?
Don't we go at each other with yielded eyes, with cumbered hands and feet, with clunky tongues?
This deed is unattainable!
We cannot know each other!
I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away.
I will give you this, my love,
and I will not bargain or barter any longer.
I will love you, as sure as He has loved me.
I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God's own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmed chamber of my heart,
the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me.
And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.
I will Love you like God,
because of God, mighted by the power of God.
I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading your love, gaming for your love.
I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again.
I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.
God risked himself on me.
I will risk myself on you.
And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then,
understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us."
"I had been working on a play called Polaroids that year. It was the story of one man's life from birth to death, each scene delivered through a monologue with other actors silently acting out parts behind the narrator as he walks the audience through his life journey.
In the scene I had written a few nights before, I had the man fighting with his wife. They were experiencing unbearable tension after losing a son in a car accident the year before. I knew in my heart they were not going to make it, that Polaroids would include a painful divorce that showed the ugliness of separation.
But I changed my mind.
I wondered what it would look like to have the couple stick it out. I got up and turned on my computer. I had the lead character in my play walk into the bedroom where his wife was sleeping. I had him kneel down by her and whisper [these] lines."
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
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