We Will Watch the Universe Die

we were born in a time beyond time.
we were born in the mind of God, so
we were born in a time before time.

previous to the dust of stars
we were made before mars was a twinkle in God's eye;
before million-mile rings went twirling by
only to be caught in the arms of jupiter.

we will outlast those two
and the rest of the brothers nine
to watch the chest of the sun collapse upon itself
and take with it time
and day and night
and every measuring tool we used
to quantify...

what did we call it again?
back when there was a word for the space
between one point and another?
before we watched each solar system's stars
fall in on one another?

now there's no more dividing rods,
everywhere is God,
everywhere is God,
and everything is now.
now is all there is
in the mind of God because

now is eternity
and then is eternity. And
when is eternity?
eternity is now.

we were not born to burn out bright.
we were reborn through the firstborn of the wedding night
of God and God and God.
everywhere is God,
everywhere is God,
and every when is now.

by joshua blankenship

welcome to the neighborhood

this past weekend i got sick, and i never get sick! i even lost my voice friday and saturday, which was perfect timing with the mid-high lock-in and all! anyways i bring this up because i basically stayed in bed a lot today recovering from a busy weekend, and i was reading the gospel of John and the whole first 18 verses talk about "the Word". it reminded me of my freshman year of college when i heard a story about a friend who in high school nicknamed his bed "the word" so when people asked him what he had been doing all day; he would say, "man, i have been in 'the word' all day," and people would be really impressed. i just always thought that was a funny story. obviously, john though is talking about jesus as "the Word" and the friend was talking about the bible as "the word".
anyways i love how eugene peterson rephrases the first chapter of john and says, "the Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood." what a picture. jesus moving into our neighborhood! and it goes on to say that, "we did not recognize him" or choose to recognize him. it just makes me wonder at how many times i have failed to recognize jesus when he is right next door or even staring me straight in the face! how many times i have chosen to ignore him, because i did not have time for him or i did not want to make time for him.
just something i was thinking about. well i'm off to go spend a few hours in "the word" because i have to get up early tomorrow. peace.

So this was supposed to be a short post....

i don't know what the deal is with me posting late at night or actually i guess early in the morning, but it seems to be the only time i have to post. so here is an update.

i sent in my application for that year long travel around the world AIM trip. i sent it in on friday and am now just hoping to hear from them sometime this week to plan a phone interview. we will see what happens???

in other news i went to the counting crows and goo goo dolls concert last thursday at the woodlands and it was AmazinG! originally i had bought the tickets for andrew, elaine, and i to go. i tried to make it a family affair for my bro's bday since all 3 of us love them and you could kinda say we grew up listening to them due to our cousin, stephen. or at least you could say we spent a very memorable summer with our cousin that involved him taking care of us everyday while our dad was at work and mom was going to school. i think the only bands we listened to that whole summer were the counting crows, big head todd & the monsters and crash test dummies. i also remember watching a lot of american gladiators that summer, and being tempted to climb out my bathroom window to escape my brother and cousin who had teamed up against me while my sister was gone. that was like 12 or 13 years ago. sorry i am getting a little nostalgic. that was a crazy summer my family and i still laugh about. so my point is since then the counting crows have been one of my top 5 favorite bands of all time!
anyways my brother couldn't make it to the concert, but i already had the tickets and i was afraid i was going to have to go by myself. i definitely would have gone by myself, too. i had waited almost a decade to see the cc live, but then i remembered i have incredible friends and though my friend emily rice and i disagreed on who the better band was, we all had a fabulous time. At least vanessa agreed with me that the counting crows are AmazinG! The 10 year wait was worth it! i only wish they could have played for longer. i would have stayed and listened to them play all of their songs. i honestly must say that i have a greater love now for adam durtz then i did before. i mean before i was distracted by the hairdo, seriously, i never understood what girls saw in him. but now seeing him live, playing the piano and just the passion he has for his music...wow! he's an artist. and as emily would say, "i'd date him" :). i have to say that the cc were the best part of the whole night for me!!!
the goo goo dolls, on the other hand, i mean i love their songs, especially from dizzy up the girl and their new cd let love in, but the lead singer and the bass player grossed me out. johnny was drunk or high or something. he said he wasn't but that just makes me believe he was. so he said some pretty crazy things. then there was the bass player... my friend, emily, and i decided he reminded us of the torturer guy in the princess bride. remember the guy who says to wesley, "you're in the depths of despair" in that scratchy creepy voice. that is how the bass player sounded and he sang 3 songs that were horrible, but apparantly he sings on the cds and my only response to hearing that was "why!???"

the rest of the weekend was slow but nice. i took a few mid-high girls bowling and i did pretty well i must say, at least the first game. i mean i got at least 8 pins every turn, and i got a strike as well. so yeah i was pretty hot that game, the next one though stunk, oh well. we all had fun.

today or i guess now yesterday was my day off and i um pretty much did nothing of value. it took me 12 hrs to finally make it to the YMCA to workout. i woke up at 7:30 to go to Yoga, but i never made it and ended up in the woodlands at the mall looking for black pants and then wishing i had gone to workout, because i was depressing myself realizing that instead of losing weight i keep gaining it and am now a size larger than i was!!! AAAAAAAAAAH!!! well i bought the pants, (cuz i need to start dressing older or at least my age. i am tired of being thought of as a high schooler and dressing like i'm still in college.) then i came back and went to workout and it was good.
after the workout, i met up with vanessa at starbucks, because she was going to study and i was going to read...and we did for the last 30 min. we were there. the first hour though we talked about women in christianity and who do we have to look up to as role models. that started because we were talking about books we like to read and somehow got into christian fiction and a lot of that is geared to women and the way women are portrayed in some of those stories can be disheartening. it truly is confusing for a christian girl growing up in these evangelical southern churches to know what her role is? i mean is it right for her to teach if she has been given the gift of teaching? shouldn't she use this gift? and what is a woman's role who never marries? why does a woman's worth have to come from marriage and having children? whay are single women a lot of times looked down on or pitied by churches? there is only one place i can think of in the bible right now where it says "a woman will be saved through childbirth", 2 Tim 2:?, but that can be interpreted several different ways. in fact i think there are more convincing arguments for not getting married in the bible. also, the bible was written in a time where women had to get married, because they were not able to own property or vote and did not have means to support themselves. women nowadays do though. i am not arguing against ever getting married. i mean i know that one day i definitely would like to be a wife and mother, but i know that there is value in being single (i would not be able to even think about this AIM trip i am applying for if i were married and had children). it just makes me sad that i was fed all this legalistic crap when i was younger and i believed it whole-heartedly. now, though it's been a continuous struggle over the last couple of years, I am finally realizing and experiencing the freedom that Jesus offers and the adventure that life can be when i follow him.
anyways i am so grateful for vanessa's friendship, because i never know where our conversations will lead to and i have been challenged so many times by our conversations, which only helps me to grow firmer in my faith and God's love for me. God has a plan for me. He created me, he knows what i can do even when i don't. thanks God for knowing me, and help me to know you more.

a hundred questions and a lot of randomness

okay so i don't know why i am still awake at 1 am but i am. i think i just have a ton on my mind it's been a weird day. for example alan is gone this week and so it was just me and chad running the three programs (octane, vortex, route56) tonight. well chad had to go to the doctor this afternoon, and found out he has to have surgery tomorrow. crazy. i'm kind of scared for him. i hope everything goes well tomorrow. he ended up coming and taking care of route56 while i took over vortex and octane. i don't mind teaching the middle school, but i always have a hard time with the high school. they are more intimidating to teach, probably because i feel like they are constantly comparing me to chad, who is a great teacher. i don't know, i feel it went alright, though i definitely need to be more confident in myself and what i am saying.

i hate it confidence has always been a struggle for me. i think i go through these phases in life where i am really confident and then other periods where i am not. i feel like in college i was a confident person and i wonder if that had a lot to do with doing well in school, like i found my worth in my grades and since i did really well i was confident in myself. not being in school anymore and not having anything physical or tangible to base my worth on is difficult. i know i should find my worth in God's love and acceptance and belief in me, but that is a struggle for me. i am jealous of the people who know what they are good at and are able to do it. i don't know what i am good at. i was good at being a student, but i can't afford to be a student the rest of my life. i mean i hope i will always be learning, but not enrolled in a school the rest of my life.

so this last year i have been struggling to be confident and also to know what i am good at and figure out what i am going to do with the rest of my life. am i called to live my life overseas as a missionary or am i called to minister to the homeless in houston, and will i be good at either of those things? am i being stubborn and naive to not want any part of the corporate world? is a comfortable lifestyle really something i am willing to give up? right now i am definitely struggling with these questions, and honestly i am scared of the answers. following Jesus is scary, but i know it offers the best life possible. do i trust God enough or is our relationship close enough for me to actually abandon everything i love and follow him?

i finished my application for the world race tonight. it's a year long mission trip through adventures in mission, where you travel around the world to places like india, china, africa, europe, mexico, south america and you stay in each place for a month helping out with an orphanage or a summer camp or construction. whatever is needed to help that community your group does. i was reading one of the girl's blogs who is a member of the race right now and she told of how when they arrived at an orphanage the people who were running it were taken to prison for running a christian ministry. when this happens the children are dispersed to other relatives or anyone who will take them in to keep them safe. can you believe christians are still being persecuted; thrown in jail or killed? why do i feel like we ignore it in the US? why does it seem like the only christians american churches care about are american christians. how can we even call ourselves christians if we are not loving our fellow brothers and sisters let alone our enemies? ......

when i was finishing up one of the last questions on the application today i started thinking about peru, and the children there. i also started to get disgusted at myself, because those children are still there suffering from lack of food and dehydration while somehow i have managed to easily adjust back to my comfortable lifestyle and somehow compartmentalize what i saw there and say i did all i could do. that's a lie. why should i be given anymore than those children? i am no better. they deserve every opportunity that i have had. they shouldn't have to go to bed hungry or on a dirt floor. somehow i manage to convince myself that there is nothing i can do, but again that's a lie. why can't i do something? what am i so afraid of? God has entrusted me, us, to take care of each other to take care of this world. He believes we can. He believes I can. this is a big job. where do i start?
imagine if instead of looking out for ourselves and our own interests, everyone started looking out for their neighbor and making sure that if they had a need it was met? when if wealth and power were replaced with humbleness and love?

all of this to say i have finished my application but i have yet to submit it. i am scared. i really want to be accepted for this trip. when if they reject me? or when if i am accepted and on this trip i feel God call me to some remote place where only 1 in 100 people are christians and the rest hate christians? or when if i come back from this experience and still have no idea what direction my life is headed? should i be afraid of that? would that be wrong? i don't know. i will submit my application though tomorrow i just need an email address for a reference and it will be completely complete and i will send it in.

wow this is a crazy post. it's really random but what do you expect at this time in the morning? i just needed to write some thoughts down.

i love the beach!

I spent this past holiday weekend down at Surfside and it really was quite beautiful, seriously! Amazing weather and the water was not as brown and disgusting as it usually is, hardly any seaweed, and we saw porpoises (that is such a weird word to me, i prefer dolphin, but i was told they were not dolphins).
Hope and I were pretty far out (the ocean was really calm and shallow) just sitting and talking and I'm not joking when I say that about 2o feet away from me I see 2 porpoises jump out of the water. It was so unexpected and beautiful I shot up because I thought I was dreaming and screamed at Hope to look. She freaked out because she thought I saw a shark, because we were actually at that moment talking about sharks and shark attacks. Anyways it was pretty cool, but since we had freaked ourselves out with the shark stories we went back onto the beach and watched the porpoises from there. We must have seen at least 6 or 7 throughout the rest of the weekend it was pretty dang sweet!
I also had a pretty decent amount of time to read and finish Donald Miller's book Through Painted Deserts. It was great! It's not as "deep" as his other books, but it still had some great insights and it was a great story to read. I love his writing! It was definitely a great beach read.

I found a new band on myspace this morning, Clark. They sound a lot like Nick Drake. I like them a lot. I also splurged last night and bought the newest Muse cd and Ben Folds cd as well. Oh Itunes one day to save money I will be forced to delete you. I never realized how addicted I am to music until recently. Maybe it is a recent addiction since my Ipod, I don't know? I love music though and I love to play it, but I think I love listening to it more. I wish Kingwood offered more in the music area. If only Westheimer or Downtown Houston was closer. Anyways nothing insightful tonight. Maybe one of these days I will be more insightful. Not tonight though. I need to go to bed. Peace.