Zest for Life

God has done great things!!

2011-06-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

My Dear Remembered Readers and anyone who happens to stumble upon this blog,

I know this blog has been left stratified in time and left untouched since last February, but I assure you it was not just random neglect, but rather very intentional. But now I have come back with the whole story, to satisfy the curiosity of the last year and a half's absence. However, though I am popping in here with my story now, I am not in the season of being a regular blogger again. I have not closed the door completely on this little blog, but instead have left it there, ready to fulfill it's purpose in my life, occasional though that may be. So knowing that I have not abandoned this blog altogether, rather post on it when it seems suitable to do so, I now share with you my story.

~~~

I, Julia am honored and excited to share with you the most exciting news... I am engaged to Joseph L!!!
God has truly blessed us with His most unfathomable goodness and has guided us through this relationship every step of the way. Our prayer is that in this time of engagement and preparation that all our thoughts, words, and actions may glorify Him and be united to His perfect Will.

Since some of you may not know the full history of our relationship to this point, I thought I'd better start at the very beginning. It was a cold January morning in 2010. After going on the Tulsa Walk for Life with a large group of family and friends, we all went to Chipotle for dinner. (Joseph) Joey and I were towards the tail end of the line, and so when we were ready to sit down, most of the tables were already full. Because the tables were bolted to the ground, sitting in smaller groups was a necessity, so Joey and I happened to end up sitting at a table together. I said a quick prayer for God to guide our conversation, as this was really our first conversation of real substance. He most definitely heard me, because that was one of the best conversations I have ever had in my life. :) We talked about everything, really, but especially about my passionate interests and pursuits, which throughout the conversation I realized were also especially his: Catholicism, the rebuilding of Christian culture, natural and simple lifestyles, ranching/ farming/ homesteading, etc. You could say that it was like the spark that started the fire and I think we both knew it.

After that, he started to make more of an effort to talk to me at various gatherings. He also offered to do some of the work that my family desperately needed help with, and I started to see a lot more of him. Our first project was working on fencing my family's pastures. One of the things I really wanted to do when coming out to OK was to learn how to do some real work. I had read and studied for years all about homesteading and regaining the skills of country life, and I was thrilled to have an opportunity to work with someone with his experience. Working together was just what we needed. We were able to see a lot about each others personality by having a non-awkward reason for spending time together and the ability to have a lot of good conversations. After that, and many, many other projects we did together, as well as a lot of time spent hanging out with family, it seemed clear, in a non-verbalized way, that we were definitely interested in each other. That was a huge time of trust for us, praying and trusting, praying and trusting some more, that God had a perfect plan for us and that He would make it known at the right time. Neither of us had said even a word about it yet, and I, especially, was praying that God would make "things" happen if that was His will.

Then one day I knew something was going to happen when Joey kept asking when my dad was going to be coming home from one of his trips. :) This was during Holy Week, a fitting time indeed. Then finally the bright light of Easter came and shone through all the haze, uncertainty, and struggle of emotions. Joey told me at last of the unspoken feelings that had been growing since January, feelings which were mutually felt but not communicated. God had brought us together, we who have SO many shared interests and goals (most of which are completely culturally weird...like who would intentionally want to live with less technology anyway? :P :), who agree on pretty much everything, and whose personalities balance one anothers in just the right way. So...the next 14 months was an incredible journey, full of innumerable joys and blessings, but also many, many opportunities to grow as people through struggles, challenges, and plenty of hard work. It was a process of learning what it means to truly love another person, and trying to love as Christ loves. It is amazing looking back at that time and realizing how God was teaching us exactly the lessons we needed to learn about ourselves and how He worked through one of us to help the other become a better person.

Starting this past October, Joey began building a house (or what is affectionately called "the cabin" because of its small size). As we got more and more serious and sure about our future, we worked together more earnestly on building it. It is now almost completed, we are just finishing up the wood floors and trim, with plans to build over the next few months a porch, and an addition out of more natural materials (we want to learn more about alternative, natural building methods). It has been an amazing experience - building our future house together, debt free and resourcefully (yup, amazing...$3 windows that Joe retrofitted), and I thank God for all the ways it has benefited our relationship.

Then one day after praying the rosary, Joey and I started talking, as we had on many occasions, about marriage, time frames, and the future. But this time especially, we looked at our situation as a whole, reflecting on all the different particular and practical aspects of what would be the best time to get married. I was feeling a little overwhelmed by it all, the whens, the ifs, and the hows, and really wanted to pray a novena for guidance. After a good talk with my wonderful, encouraging mother, I knew that was what we needed. It just so happened that that day was exactly 9 days (usual novena length) before the feast of the Queenship of Mary (Joey and I, since the very beginning of our relationship, have had a very special devotion to Our Lady, so this was a pretty perfect "coincidence" :). So we started our novena, unsure of what would be the conclusion. As each of the 9 days went by, the answers and confirmation got clearer and clearer, going from a complete haze to ever increasing clarity. On the last day, the feast day, we were both very sure, very much at peace, and very confirmed in numerous ways that we should get married this year.

The next day we talked to the priest that is guiding us, and as positivity and peace were the result, I knew that it would be just a matter of time before our engagement. (Yes I know that some people like the "popping the question out of nowhere" type of surprise, but I am not one of them, so having a little forethought and prayer was just what I needed.) However, I definitely wasn't expecting it to happen the very next day. :D With the mask of his sister nonchalantly inviting me, Joey planned a hiking trip to Eagles' Bluff. This is an awesome cliff edge with a beautiful view that is well loved in Clear Creek (this is as close as OK can get to a mountain. :). As I mentioned earlier, Joey first asked me to be in a relationship in the early morning of Easter of last year up on Eagles Bluff. So because of this, I was "slightly" suspicious.

We headed out early in the morning with some of his siblings and a friend. We had a lovely time up there, eating breakfast and talking. Then just as they had on Easter, Joe's siblings left quickly, leaving me to realize what was about to happen. And then it did... the moment of every girl's dream, when her prince charming gets down on his knee and speaks to her eloquent and beautiful words about self-giving love finding its greatest fulfillment in the sacrament of marriage, and saying those timeless words, "Julia, will you marry me?" :D :D :D He then put the most beautiful ring I have ever seen on my finger... and there it was shouting out love, and shining for all to see - bright and beautiful, peaceful and perfect... we were engaged.

Then all of a sudden it was 10:02 and we were late for Mass. The other most perfect thing was that it was the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord. Remember our relationship began on Easter, and now our engagement on the Ascension. :D Everything was so much a fulfillment of that first Easter morning, and now we were heading over to offer it all back to God at Mass. (And guess what, because of a long procession before Mass, we walked in 5 seconds before Mass started. :)

So now do you agree that ours was pretty much the most perfect engagement ever? (Yes, of course you married ones out there are saying, second best... naturally. :) All I can say is the four words that were so tangibly felt all day long... God is SOOO good! This is in fact the resounding theme of our relationship. In the words of our very own Blessed Mother, Queen of all Hearts and of the whole Universe... "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has done great things for me..."

(Sojourns)...of the Soul

2010-02-05T07:17:00.000-08:00

Instead of the usual Friday- Affections of the Soul, today I am announcing that I will be taking a temporary blogging break. It is not that I am sick of blogging (yet,) or need a break or anything like that, but that I will be traveling. I will be gone until the third week in February, at which point I will hopefully continue blogging (easier said than done though, that's for sure.) So while I sojourn in far away states, you have a wonderful three weeks and always remember...

Life is beautiful.

(There, now I actually have a Friday quote...;)

Affections of the Soul

2010-01-29T07:47:00.000-08:00

"The word is a sign or symbol of the impressions or affections of the soul." ~Aristotle

I did not actually think I would be able to write this today. For the last two days we have been preparing to lose power-- all electricity for an indefinite period of time. No, it is not that we decided we would rather choose to live without it for any moral reason, but rather that the weather has foisted it upon us unwillingly-- an ice storm to be exact. We do still have electricity and power, but with the lingering knowledge that at anytime as I write this, it could go. But as I prepared, cooking and cleaning and filled jug upon jug of water, I saw the need to reevaluate things, reevaluate my relationship and dependency on technology. As I looked at everything that is a part of our life, I realized that I could not go on living in any semblance of normalness without electricity. We would not even have our first most basic need- water, and as we went down the list: heating, cooking, lighting, cleaning, everything that are and always will be human necessities, were being jeapordized by one storm, breaking one little electric line. There is a reason it is called power.
So, as I found these quotes, they particularly resonated with my thoughts and very real experiences of the last few days; and while you may not be about to lose your electricity, it is worth it for everyone to read them and truly think about their significance.

“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology” ~ John Tudor

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it." ~Max Frisch

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." ~Albert Einstein

~

Affections of the Soul

2010-01-22T07:41:00.000-08:00

"The word is a sign or symbol of the impressions or affections of the soul." ~Aristotle

I had lofty aspirations of having an interesting and thought provoking post ready for you today, but I fear (unless I stay up until all the wee hours of the night) that it will just have to wait, as I have only just begun reading about those ideas and thoughts (which is of course the first step in the long ordeal of posting... at least it is for me, since I am as much a neophyte at blogging as is possible to be.) So my Friday post today will be merely a quote that epitomizes my current writing conundrum.

"Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas you've gathered." ~ Jane Yolen

Come to think of it... there are too many good quotes about writing to pass up, so while I'm on that topic, might as well indulge...

"I do not like to write - I like to have written. " ~Gloria Steinem

"All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. " ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one." ~Baltasar Gracián

"Every writer I know has trouble writing." ~Joseph Heller

"If I'm trying to sleep, the ideas won't stop. If I'm trying to write, there appears a barren nothingness. " ~Carrie Latet

"Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." ~Gene Fowler

"What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach." ~Logan Pearsall Smith

i never think at all when i write
nobody can do two things at the same time
and do them both well
~Don Marquis, Archy's Life of Mehitabel, 1933

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." ~Hart Crane

"I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head. " ~John Updike

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." ~E.L. Doctorow

"A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. " ~Charles Peguy

*Disclaimer* These quotes were posted by a tired, tired, and (did I mention tired) attempting-to-be-a-writer writer, they do not necessarily represent the true sentiments of the one who posted (ahem, laughed) at them.

~

Affections of the Soul...

2010-01-15T07:37:00.000-08:00

"The word is a sign or symbol of the impressions or affections of the soul." ~Aristotle

Well I am back after an "unannounced Christmas break," (a.k.a my excuse for not posting... :)
I am sure most all of you have heard this quote at one time or another, but because it is as timeless as the world it comes from, you can always gain something from it.

"Frodo, ' I wish none of this had happened.'
Gandalf, ' So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil... And that is an encouraging thought. "

~

Affections of the Soul...

2009-12-18T07:48:00.000-08:00

Trust... it must guide our every thought and action and breath, our very life. It must not be us working for ourselves, but God working through us. We are his instruments. Can a cello or piano play itself? How glorious a melody our lives could be if only we would put it in the hands of the Musician and Composer of the universe.

"For I know the plans I have for you, says, the Lord... to give you a future and a hope." (Jeremiah 29:11)

Affections of the Soul...

2009-12-11T06:09:00.000-08:00

This is a short one for today, but it is something that I need to be constantly asking in order to renew my determination to groggily force my tired self out of bed at 6:15 every morning, bury myself in a million layers and stumble out into 10 degree frostiness... to participate in one of the most incredible and yet profoundly overlooked things that man could ever do... to go to Mass.

“God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” (William A. Ward)

Affections of the Soul...

2009-12-04T09:32:00.000-08:00

"The word is a sign or symbol of the impressions or affections of the soul." ~Aristotle

As each day and week goes by, I read things that touch, thought provoke, inspire or encourage me, and I realized that since "The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels. ~Hazrat Inayat Khan", I ought to share them with others. After all, what good is something valuable with no one else to share it with? So at the end of every week, on Fridays, I will post my "affections of the soul," and share a quote, poem, part of a book... any words that I have read that have inspired me.

So I will start it off with a favorite poem. I have had a lot of time to contemplate it, as I have been playing and singing it over and over each day in a song that I composed on the piano. And I found that it beautifully relates to my last post, "For these seemingly common things are reflections of what is eternal, they are the mirrors in which we can see God in this earthly life."


	I See His Blood Upon the Rose:
	I see his blood upon the rose And in the stars the glory of his eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies.

	I see his face in every flower; The thunder and the singing of the birds Are but his voice—and carven by his power Rocks are his written words.

	All pathways by his feet are worn, His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree.

Gratitude for the Ordinary

2009-12-01T12:12:00.000-08:00

As I have been thinking about life over the past few days, the words that keep coming to me are: there is so much to be thankful for. But I realized that it is not so much the fancy turkeys and pies or the extraordinary celebrations that engenders my gratitude, but the ordinary, the "stuff of life." For true happiness comes from finding the significance in the common experiences of life: cooking, washing dishes, getting from place to place, waking, sleeping. And from witnessing the miracle of life: the rising and setting of the sun, the changing of the seasons, the growing and dying of living things. For these seemingly common things are reflections of what is eternal, they are the mirrors in which we can see God in this earthly life. That is why they are a gift from God to man, (just as I said in my previous post on work,) and ought to be received as such, with profound gratitude.

And now I must go to one who will say things infinitely better than I ever could: Thomas Howard, in Chance or the Dance. This is truly one of the best books ever written, and I could quote the entire book. But as difficult as it is, I will try and give just a few excerpts that capture this concept.

"There were some ages in Western History that have occasionally been called Dark. They were dark, it is said, because learning in them declined, and progress paused, and men labored under the pall of belief...Then the light came, It was the light that has lighted us men into a new age. Charms and devils, plagues and parthenogenesis have fled from the glare into the crannies of memory. In their place have come coal mining and E = mc2 and plastic and group dynamics and napalm and urban renewal and rapid transit. Men were freed from the fear of the Last Judgment; it was felt to be more bracing to face Nothing than to face the Tribunal. They were freed from the worry about getting their souls into God's heaven by the discovery that they had no souls and that God had no heaven... Altogether, life became much more livable since it was clear that nothing in fact lay behind things. The age was called enlightened. The myth sovereign in the old age was that everything means everything. The myth sovereign in the new is that nothing means anything. That is to the darkened mind it did not mean nothing that the sun went down and night came and the moon and the stars appeared and the dawn and the sun and morning again and another day, which would itself wax and then wane into twilight and dusk and night. It did not mean nothing to them that the time of work was under the aegis of the bright sun and that it was the sun that poured life into the seeds that they were planting, and that brought out the sweat on their foreheads, and that the time of rest was under the scepter of the silver moon. This was the diurnal exhibition of what was True-- that there was a panoply and a rhythm and a cycle, a waxing and a waning, a rising and a setting and a rising again.

The old myth would have seen the given (the humdrum, in most cases) as, on the other hand precisely the agent and mediator of something substantial- of the way things are in a word. This is not to say that everyone up to the Enlightenment went whistling about the kitchen and farmyard, merry and content in the knowledge that his broomstick or shovel was the summum bonum. It is simply to say that the old myth sanctioned the humdrum by seeing it, along with everything else in the world, as image. That is the commonplaces of life, the given rhythms of experience in which every human being is involved whether he is king or serf, jet set or typist (things like birth, growth, learning, work, marriage, and friendship), are themselves the occasions in which we may enact what is real, what lies at the root of things. In this view, there is no hiatus between what we are given to do by life, and what life is really about. There is on the contrary a synonymity. All this commonplace stuff is what life is really about. Three cheers for travel and theater and parties and fashions, but they aren't at the center. What is at the center is the given, the obvious things- like birth and growth and learning and marriage.
Whatever else a man may be doing, there are various things, which mark his experience, and the viewpoint being put here is that it is those universals, which lie at the center of significance... And it is the supposition here that these commonplaces- these given rhythms of experience- constitute the imagery under which we may all participate in the way things are. And, the corollary to this, that the failure to seize the humdrum commonplaces as vitally significant, or the effort to fly from them and seek fulfillment in various forms of substitution or diversion, represents a misapprehension of what it means to be authentically human.
This view, carried to the nth place, would go like this, then: things are not random; they are, finally, glorious, and the the diagram of this glory appears everywhere and on all levels- in astronomy, zoology and botany and anatomy and oceanography- and is enacted by man in his politics and institutions, and acknowledged and celebrated in his rituals and his art. And it is configured not immediately and obviously for him in the commonplaces of his life. So that, working from the bottom up he might see those commonplaces as the images of ultimate glory, and find in them clues as to the nature of that glory. But he might note, because he has looked around him at a thousand images, that it is not unobserved that life issues from death- that spring rises from winter, and the oak from the dead acorn, and dawn from night, and Phoenix from the ashes. And the rest of us may see it all either as a pointless jumble of phenomena, or as the diagram of glory- as grinding tediously toward entropy, or as dancing toward the Dance."

Or in the words of Albert Einstein, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

The Value of Work: Sinfulness to Sanctification

2009-11-19T04:43:00.000-08:00

"For the LORD your God will bless you... in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete." ~ Deuteronomy 16:15

It all started in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had just eaten the forbidden fruit. In His just wisdom, God said to Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you... through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food... until you return to the ground." (Genesis 3:17) It may seem like this is just an evil curse from God, but what man did was the true wrong, and this was the means of redeeming it. In one bite, the perfection meant for man was shattered; his entire future, his very nature changed, broken. We went from walking with God in a beautiful garden, picking the fruits of God's love, to being destined to toil for all the rest of time. And yet God, as always, is infinitely forgiving, and through that toil-filled curse gave us the means of regaining one fragment of that unblemished relationship man once had with God.

A closer look into the nature of work will reveal to us how very merciful God is to even give us that. Work redeems us through the virtues that it requires. Strictly speaking, these would be the seven cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity. Work is the epitome of these disciplines, both for the body and mind. Work disciplines us to have the prudence to know what the right thing is, and through justice to act upon it. Temperance is achieved through self-control and going against the current of sinful desires, not losing yourself in what you want, but rather doing hard things and pushing through to the end. That is the very essence of true, hard, work. But all of this requires, while at the same time affirming courage. Work is hard, becoming a better person is hard, that is why God calls us to have, through this hardness, complete faith and hope in Him. And it is through all of these things that we can truly love God. Work is about love. God created us and gave us a paradise to live in out of love. But when we shattered that gift, he still loved us so much that he allowed us, through our well-deserved fate of work and toil, to piece together the fragments which we had broken, to love him.

"We see in work, in men’s noble creative toil, not only one of the highest human values, but also a sign of God’s Love for His creatures, and of men’s love for each other and for God: we see in work a means of perfection, a way to sanctity." ~ Saint Josemaria Escriva

~This topic is definitely something that I want to keep thinking and posting about, this is hopefully just the beginning. But I would love to know what your thoughts and/or questions might be on this. :)

Excuses? Updates? Or just a post...finally.

2009-11-09T12:59:00.000-08:00

Well...I am back...and all I can say is that it has been a very, very, long time.
A lot has happened in my life during this indefinite blogging absence. I could give excuses as to why I have not blogged, I could also give you all the updates of the past year, but instead I will just say...hello again my dear blog readers and thank you for being patient.
There are so many thoughts and inspirations and ideas racing through my head of what I could possibly say and post, but you are again going to have to have patience with me as I get back into the swing of blogging and try to present them in a (somewhat) coherent way.
It is a bit like coming home after a long trip, there is so much to do and say, but one doesn't know exactly where to start. So as I am figuring this all out, I thought I would post some of the things that I have done (a.k.a written, thought, or read about) over the last year.

I do have one request of you though: could you (whoever you are) please leave a comment so that I know if and who is still reading my blog? Not only would it motivate me to post more often but also it would help me get to know my readers a little bit more. ;) Thank You!

World of blogging here I come...

I, Pencil

2008-10-13T13:06:00.001-07:00

Whew... sorry I haven't posted in a while!
I heard this poem or story a little while ago, and found it simply profound. It has been on my mind quite a bit lately, and I thought it was kind of a good run up to my "Story of Stuff" post.
It is pretty long but here it is:

I, Pencil
My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.*

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, "We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders."

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

Innumerable Antecedents

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's power!

Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this "wood-clinched" sandwich.

My "lead" itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder-cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!

Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.

Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as "the plug," the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called "factice" is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rape-seed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives "the plug" its color is cadmium sulfide.

No One Knows

Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me?

Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn't a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger can be dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items.

No Master Mind

There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier referred.

It has been said that "only God can make a tree." Why do we agree with this? Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in superficial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration manifests itself as a tree. But what mind is there among men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in molecules that transpire in the life span of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable!

I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.

The above is what I meant when writing, "If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing." For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive masterminding—then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.

Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity—the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental "master-minding."

Testimony Galore

If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what men and women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little faith would have a fair case. However, there is testimony galore; it's all about us and on every hand. Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating machine or a grain combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands of other things. Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person's home when it is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one's range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.

It really just makes me realize how utterly disconnected we are from everything we have and from each other. That seems to be one of our huge modern tragedies: disconnection.

Disconnection from:

~People: This is the age of... ipods and cell phones, where you walk on any street and almost everybody is holding up some device to their ears, cutting of any opportunity for real human interaction; of vehicles whizzing past you and your house, and not a clue or care as to who is in them; of computers and televisions and many other machines that replace real human interactions and experiences, real culture and life with some cyber and psuedo reality.

~Nature: I know how often for myself I can drive quickly by the same thing on our street hundreds of times and never notice anything for I am not going slowly enough to notice the beauty, then walk or ride my bike past the exact same things and notice so many beautiful or interesting little things I had never noticed before. How often this happens, and how much beauty and how many little kisses from the Creator am I missing out on just because I am so distracted and so disconnected from nature and ultimately God.

~Necessities/Belongings/Food: If you read the above poem and think, "wow all that just went into that pencil that I used a second ago," then think how much more goes into everything else we own. The clothes on your back, how many people were involved in creating your shirt and getting it to you so that you can wear it today? The chair you are sitting in, how many little pieces are in that thing and how much energy, how many resources, how much labor was used in the production of it? The computer that I am typing this on. This object that I take so much for granted, is marked by how many peoples sweat and labors? Or food! If you open your refrigerator and pull something off the shelf, how many other peoples hands touched it? If you had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, how many lives were involved to get that to your table, so that you could then eat it. First there is the milk, where are the cow/s that produced that milk and who do they belong to? Who milked them? And who ran the machines to process the milk? Then there is the cereal if you have wheat in your cereal, who owned the land? Who planted, and harvested and processed the wheat? Who transported the wheat? Nuts, where and who grew the nuts, who processed them, who transported them from place to place? Oil, who grew the nut, bean, etc. to make the oil from, who was involved in the making and transporting of it. The list goes on with EVERY other ingredient in the cereal. Then finally the combining of all of those ingredients and all of those peoples' labors in to a box ( which people are also involved with,) and then the transportation (which of course uses gas which people had to work for to get out of the ground and processed, and the metal and all the other parts of the vehicle,) to get it to the store at which point you could buy it. Imagine that, all the hundreds, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people involved in just one bite of cereal.
And yet how often do we actually care or think about it and them, all those people who exist somewhere in the world right now.
It is very difficult for me to put my mind around all this, and not feel a pang of guilt. Is it really right for me to eat the cereal when all those people, the running of all those factories and therefore pollution, and all those resources, etc. were all used just so I could eat it for breakfast without even acknowledging their existence and labors??? Sure they are paid, but are those nut growers in Brazil, or wheat farmers, or cow milkers really getting paid enough for what they worked hard for, when I only pay a buck and a half for that box of cereal? I honestly don't know! And it just goes to show how truly disconnected we have become from the very things that feed and keep us alive.

~God: Really I think ultimately the worst thing is that it makes us more disconnected from God. The farther away we step from the natural order, and the way He created things to be, the more disconnected we are from Him.

I don't really understand this (which is precisely why I posted, helps me to sort my thoughts I guess, :) and I don't expect anyone, myself included to never eat cereal again, or use a pencil, but I do find that poem very interesting, and I do think this is worth thinking about because it does make us realize our dependence on the sweat of other people and it makes me more grateful for what I do have.
I must say though there is quite an appeal to try and buy things more local. Imagine if your entire bowl of cereal could be traced within a 30-60 mile radius of your house. And because you make your own cereal, you get the wheat from a farmer friend down the road, the nuts from your local almond and pecan orchard, your honey from the beehive a friend has, the oil from melted butter that you got from your local dairy, where you also got your milk. Right, I know this is imaginary thinking, but it does seem so much nobler a breakfast, than that of the one with ingredients from all over the world, produced by people who we had no clue existed.
In the past it was always this way. If the family or person didn't milk the cow, and grow the wheat themselves, they would get it from friends or from the local store that got it from the local people. Before machines there was no way to transport things such far distances as we do now. And people either made it themselves (and therefore had a completely direct connection with it) or got it locally, with the exception of maybe sugar, which was probably extremely expensive anyways.
Why is our culture so completely different now and should it be this way? It all connects back up with disconnection. :)

A Second Blog

2008-09-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

Well I have been hesitating to do this because I don't want to have a bunch of different blogs all over the place, but I finally decided to start a second blog. It is a cooking, gardening, health, etc. blog. This is more of my intellectual blog, so I didn't want to mix the two. Here is the link: http://www.homesteadblogger.com/pursuitofthe3h/
I will also have a link to it below.
Hope you enjoy it and feel free to leave a comment to let me know you have been there.

A Poem...

2008-08-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

The Old Meeting Hall:
by Dick Warwick

An Old Grange hall stands bereft
In a field of waving wheat
The people all have long since left
Where once with flying feet

They danced the fiddle's lively reels,
And do-si-doed in squares
But television and automobiles
Have ended such affairs

Thee neighbors all came from their farms
For camaraderie
From tiny newborn babes in arms
To the deaf and doddery

And they knew eachother well, with all
their virtues, strengths, and faults;
They'd get together in the hall
For the foxtrot and the waltz

To share their pies and socialize,
Talk of kids and kitchens-
Of critters, crops, and days gone by;
Mark births and deaths and hitchin's.

For we were all one family then,
Though perhaps not blood related-
Yes, I remember way back when
We all cooperated.

We all helped each other in a pinch
Or sometimes just for fun;
If you needed help it was a cinch
Your project would get done.

Though times back then were somewhat lean,
Entertainment- it was free;
When folks would in that hall convene
And friends and neighbors see.

And that old grange all speaks to me
Of things gone quite askew
In our present-day society
With it's hype and ballyhoo.

For now folks travel fast and far,
Meet schedules with precision;
And when they're not out in the car
They're watching television.

The art of actual conversation
Is rather antiquated-
We've lots of information,
But can't communicate it.

Oh sure, we can download it
And shift it place to place;
But there's few who can decode it
Into words of style and grace.

So I miss the meeting hall of old,
And I wish you could have known
How it was to cross the threshold
Of that place, now overgrown.

And dance all night with the neighbor gal
That you'd known since you were small;
Or meet your fated femme fatale,
And in love forever fall.

Now that old building stands forlorn
Yet still foursquare and sound;
Though by the wind and weather worn
It could someday be rebound,

For it hasn't yet been set aflame
Nor from its footings torn,
And it may yet receive acclaim
From dancers yet unborn.

So keep the roof in good repair
And doors and windows sealed;
For the past and future meet right there
In that grange hall in the field.

Stuff...

2008-08-01T12:21:00.001-07:00

My family and I just watched the little movie "The Story of Stuff" at the website in the picture above. (If you want your thoughts to be provoked and you have 20 minutes I recommend you watch it too, it was really good.) And it really got me thinking (uh oh, there she goes again :)...So where does all this stuff come from?
Currently I am sitting in a mostly plastic chair, where did the plastic come from, who owned the factory where it was manufactured, who and where are the people who were involved in all the of the different steps involved in the making and getting the chair to me now, where I am sitting in it? I don't know...and part of the problem is, up until this point I didn't care. Just look around you now, do you know where half the things around you came from? Not only that but have we ever thought about all the energy, effort, and people who were behind each little object and possession of ours, all our JUNK??!
With everything we have now coming from big factories or imported from other countries, we have been trained to become so detached and separated from the things we buy and own and where or who they came from. There is no longer a connection between maker and buyer.
And the big corps probably want it to be that way too. Kind of the way they want you to be with God, just enjoy and use and waste all of this creation and beauty that God gave us, but never even stop to think about who it came from and why he gave it to us; it is yours so now you can use and trash it as you wish. What is the most sad thing is that just as we trash nature, we trash the stuff we have, and thereby trashing the effort that went into them. Statistics show that 99% of the stuff we buy is thrown out within the first 6 months of owning it. Not only is that unsustainable physically, it is unsustainable morally. What kind of moral character is being promoted and practiced. I like to say that we are a throw away nation, if something is ugly, if you don't like it or want it, if it is outdated, or old, even if there is a small fixable problem, what do we do... THROW IT AWAY!
I remember reading Farmer Boy, written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, about her husband's childhood. One thing that distinctly popped out in my brain was that each child had ONE, (not 2 not 5 not 10, ) 1 pair of shoes that they wore and used. Then if they were worn or they had grown out of them by the end of the year, the cobbler would stop by their house on his yearly rounds and measure and specially fit a new pair of shoes for the children. In fact he was a family friend and the family always looked forward to his yearly visit, to share meals, tell stories. And sometimes if the parents didn't have enough money, they would trade something they had in exchange for the shoes. Now what kind of a different mindset, what kind of different moral character does that show? The kids knew how to take care of their stuff, they knew where it came from, and saw with their own eyes the effort their cobbler friend put into them. They couldn't or wouldn't trash those shoes. Look at the huge contrast between then and now, that was less than 150 years ago. How could things have changed so much and so drastically?
At times like this I just feel hopeless, I feel like nothing will last and there is nothing we can do to help such a gargantuan problem. Then I have a speck of hope and think that half the work is acknowledging the problem and taking little steps every day to try and fix it. It all starts in the heart with the decision to value the things we have and the effort behind them, and once we have that perspective we can change a whole lot of things. Where there's a will there's a way!

(P.S.) I would love to know what your thoughts are on this, if I am absolutely crazy to you or what. :) More and more things have been sprouting up in my brain as a result of this, I am already formulating a whole new post in my brain, that is kind of an off shoot of this one. So let me know what you think! :)

Wedding, Life, Time... all that good stuff

2008-07-18T21:42:00.000-07:00

So this has been life recently...

Brandon and Morielle Danevicius were married on July 6 2008.

Wow that is weird... (I know it has already been almost 2 weeks, but I am still soaking it all up.)
After the wedding I realized how incredibly fast time goes by, and how I have all these memories about Morielle as fresh as the air I breath, but that are all now just the past. So I would like to post this poem that I wrote after the wedding, as I was trying to comprehend time and how it was the my sister is now a married woman.

Blink and it's gone

Just a few minutes ago you were taking your first breath
Everything was new and you couldn't even think of death

You blinked and it was all just the past
Now you are five, walking, talking, and everything happening so fast

Just a moment later you are blowing out ten candles on your birthday cake...
you are two digits now, with both hands counting your age
Blink and you'll see how many years time can take

Years passes by like seconds, and now you're a teen
dreaming about the future, as everyone does at 15

Don't wait another moment to savor every memory
Because then you'll blink and it will all be history

As quick as a breath five more years went by
And now you are walking with your daddy down the aisle
now ready for true love's first kiss
Just blink and you will see how many years you did miss

First five and then five more, and then ten years are gone like a bolt
You're forty now with a trail of kids behind you
your oldest an adult
With just one blink you saw how fast your children grew

Forty more years flew by like forty more seconds
A heart full of memories is all you have left
then when death was approaching and you didn't have long
It was then that you realized that you blinked and it was gone

After one moment you found what you waited your whole life to see
a place that no matter how many blinks
Time would stay still in happy eternity

This is not exactly Morielle's life it was just inspired by her wedding, and my revelation that because every blink means history, I have to savor life and spend it the best I can.

(Check back soon I am now hoping to keep my blog up more dutifully... and maybe if you persuade me I will start Saturday Sketches back up, (not that you want it or anything.) It just helps me to be more regular with my blog... we shall see... actually we shall blink. :)

God bless everyone!

:)

So Long and Farewell to the Lunds and the UP

2008-06-24T07:35:00.001-07:00

So this is the end, it is my last day here in the UP with the Lunds...:(

Arm wrestling with the girls, comparing when I first came and they all beat me miserably, and now on the last day, I beat them all once, at least. :)
This is where I was for the last month, and now I have to leave it... :(
GOODBYE to the UP!!!

Well I came and now I am leaving. I learned so much and had tons of fun with these wonderful people. Thanks to God and my parents that they allowed me to come here, and thank you to the wonderful Lunds for having me for so long (and tolerating me.) It was truly amazing!

Cabins, Clothes, and Craziness

2008-06-21T07:49:00.001-07:00

So these are a few of the things we were doing the last few days:

Theresa's fern hat...(just for me to look silly :)

Ok, so don't laugh... we were stomping a load of laundry, to save electricity, water and to get the clothes cleaner, (because they have a dysfunctional machine) and for fun, and it was VERY effective.
Don't they look lovely, they tell of hard work and of efficiency. :)

Mixing the cement, clay, and gravel mix, to fill the holes for the foundation.

Filling the hole for the last post... the last of 18 holes. :)

This is the foundation for the future cabin.

Does it look interesting? (Oh I know what you're gonna say, that I am now completely and officially cultured..:) but hey you gotta keep a healthy amount of fun insanity. :)

Prettiness and the Porkies

2008-06-16T11:08:00.000-07:00

These are pictures from the Porcupine (mountains as they call them, but bumps as I call them... :)
We went there yesterday, and did a little hiking here and a little trail walking there. It was fun and beautiful, so here are a couple pictures to capture it:

On the way to the Porkies
A creepy, crawly, cool, claustrophobic, cave... :) Just jokin!
Lake of the clouds
More of the bumps :P
This was supposed to be Nonesuch waterfall...it turned out as more of a little trickle
Beautiful rainbow at the end of the day
Prettiness...

Well we did do more than that, but this is all I had. If you want to see more pictures of last week, go to Mary Lund's blog: http://www.homesteadblogger.com/AHomesteadDaughter
Well thats life!

Pealing Logs, Making Baskets, and Spinning Wool with the Lunds

2008-06-05T08:38:00.000-07:00

Starting off the week with a beautiful rainbow

Carding and spinning wool (or at least attempting to)

Herding the cows with bikes

Carrying and peeling logs

Making baskets with Annie ( Not too bad for amateurs)

Well this has been life here in the UP with the Lunds... :) Anyone jealous? :P

A taste of life with the Lunds on a UP homestead

2008-05-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

All can be said of my life in just a few pictures:

Standing in Lake Superior

(Some ) of the Lunds: Mary, Theresa, Annie, Michael, Stephen, and Lizzy

An 8-9 mile bike ride in the UP countryside

I milked a cow!!! ( The poor thing I was probably doing it all wrong anyway)

And this is Johnny!!! (I couldn't resist :)

Wading through a (to me, not them) very cold creek.
An old, abandoned, one room school house

And that is life... (though I probably should have posted a picture of the homemade chocolate mint cookies and fresh raw milk we had for breakfast and dinner, but I didn't want you to feel too jealous of me.)

I am one travellin' girl

2008-05-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

So it seems like I really enjoy traveling a lot, I am going on another trip this time it is long but only a month. I will be going to four states, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida and Michigan.
I will not be doing my regular Saturday Sketches, but hopefully I will be posting about my adventures in Oklahoma and Michigan. In Oklahoma I will be going to the traditional Clear Creek Monastery and meeting some old friends of my dad. Then I will be spending most of the time with some friends in Michigan (hey Mary and Annie), where they live on a farm/homestead, and will be teaching me some AMAZING skills, and modeling to me a family living an agrarian (like what I was talking about before) lifestyle. So hopefully I'll get out a few pictures or posts here and there, and then I will start back on the regular Saturday Sketches when I return in July. Hope to see you and I will keep all you, my blog readers, in my prayers. Have a wonderful end of spring and beginning of Summer, (wow is it that already, time has flown bye.)

The Saturday Sketch

2008-05-09T15:52:00.001-07:00

This is for all you Mother's out there (especially mine :) you are amazing!

Motherhood "How could not the station of Motherhood, the very utterance of the word, evoke such wonder, such awe, such honor, as to render every human in its hearing speechless! For my very ability to hear the word, to ponder its meaning, exists only because I was given birth...by a mother...brought into the world through a series of miracles not even science can explain. "Mothers shape the world one family at a time. Family life is the foundation of human existence and mother is the cornerstone upon which the family is built."
Mary Carlisle Beasley

Have a wonderful Mother's day!
*I know this is a day early, but I will be gone on the actual day.

The Saturday Sketch

2008-05-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

First of all, I am so sorry this is so late in the day, I wasn't able to get to the computer 'till now.

I wanted to use this picture, because it in a way epitomizes the beauty of this spring. This particular drawing has two meanings, first, is that we can offer all this beauty and every wildflower or rose to Christ with joy and wonder, much like a child would; and second, it signifies that Christ has given it all to us in a perfect, beautiful, innocent and loving sacrifice and act of love. I can just picture every time I see a flower, Jesus' perfect hand that put it there. It almost gives a profound meaning to every flower, or at least we can view it as such, as God creating them for us to offer back to Him. Here is a little quote to state it more poetically:

"God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man's hands. " ~Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916

The Saturday Sketch

2008-04-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

(I feel a little bit conceited to put a picture of myself up here, but it is a self portrait I did a couple years ago and I thought that as I am striving to become a better person everyday, that it would be excusable. :)
Recently I have really been pondering the meaning of life. Everyday I realize how much I really do encounter so many different people in different walks of life. Yesterday I played the whole day with a 2 year old, and as I was leaving I looked at his hands and pictured them 10-20 years later. His precious little hands would no longer be holding my fingers on the playground, but would be much bigger and before long he would be all grown up. Then I examined my life and realized that my little two year old hands of the past, would never have expected to be sitting here typing this today, and these same hands today, are not expecting what will happen when I am an old lady with most of my life behind me. I am sort of in the "think, realize, and scold myself" mode right now, my brain will go off on these long tangents about the future and imagining what will happen someday, but then I realize and remember that I should be living in the present, then I mentally scold myself, and jerk back to the present. It is like a constant battle for me to keep time in perspective, time has always been a rather daunting and confusing prospect to me. To think that I am me and I live now and not in some other time, and that someday I will no longer be on this earth, and all those other befuddling concepts. When I was 9 and 10 I used to just lay in bed and cry, I wasn't exactly sad but I just couldn't comprehend time, it didn't make sense to me.
So basically I think what I am getting at here is, (if you haven't lost me on the strange path my brain takes me on,) is that I must make the best of this confusing time that I have been given and make sense out of it, become better because of it, and always strive to look for the good in it, and in the meantime be grateful for it, and not try and rush the future.

The Saturday Sketch

2008-04-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

I am sure as many of you know, Pope Benedict the XVI is in the United States right now, so I thought this would be a good picture to use. I also thought I would post a little part of his homily, because I found it very beautiful and inspiring. It is really what I have been trying to talk about and promote here on this blog, so here it is:
"In this morning’s second reading, Saint Paul reminds us that spiritual unity – the unity which reconciles and enriches diversity – has its origin and supreme model in the life of the triune God. As a communion of pure love and infinite freedom, the Blessed Trinity constantly brings forth new life in the work of creation and redemption. The Church, as “a people made one by the unity of the Father, the Son and the Spirit” (cf. Lumen Gentium, 4), is called to proclaim the gift of life, to serve life, and to promote a culture of life...The proclamation of life, life in abundance, must be the heart of the new evangelization. For true life – our salvation – can only be found in the reconciliation, freedom and love which are God’s gracious gift. This is the message of hope we are called to proclaim and embody in a world where self-centeredness, greed, violence, and cynicism so often seem to choke the fragile growth of grace in people’s hearts. Saint Irenaeus, with great insight, understood that the command which Moses enjoined upon the people of Israel: “Choose life!” (Dt 30:19) was the ultimate reason for our obedience to all God’s commandments (cf. Adv. Haer. IV, 16, 2-5). Perhaps we have lost sight of this: in a society where the Church seems legalistic and “institutional” to many people, our most urgent challenge is to communicate the joy born of faith and the experience of God’s love. "

The Saturday Sketch

2008-04-12T09:28:00.001-07:00

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air but to walk on Earth.
Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes.
All is a miracle.”

This is kind of a run off from my last Saturday Sketch, about our gathering wisdom from un-seemingly wise things like little children or flowers. In a way it is regaining our sense of wonder. Like the I hope you dance song: "I hope never lose your sense of wonder."
Or as my sister always says, "Finding beauty in the unexpected," (thank you Heather :)
Our culture is such that there is no longer time to just stop and be amazed or to have wonder in something beautiful. Look at cars, you zoom past everything so fast you don't have time to look or savor anything. The other day, I decided to walk the same road that we usually drive, and for the first time I noticed how beautiful a certain thing was, or how many lovely things had been there, but that I had never seemed to notice because we were always zooming past them. It reminded me how really important it is to stop and look at things in wonder.
I think I will leave you with this poem written by a girl who has cancer, she wanted to share with the world the importance of savoring every moment:

SLOW DANCE
Have you ever
Watched kids
On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to
The rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a
Butterfly's' erratic flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading
Night?

You better slow down.
Don't dance so
Fast.

Time is short.
The music won't
Last.

Do you run through each day
On the
Fly?
When you ask How are you?
Do you hear the
Reply?

When the day is done
Do you lie in your
Bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through
Your head?

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so
Fast.
Time is short.
The music won't
Last.

Ever told your child,
We'll do it
Tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see
His
Sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good
Friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call
And say,'Hi'

You'd better slow down.

Don't dance
So fast.

Time is short.
The music won't
Last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You
Miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry
Through your day,
It is like an unopened
Gift..
Thrown away.

Life is not a
Race..
Do take it slower
Hear the
Music
Before the song is over.

Our Missions

2008-04-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

I read this article from Spirit Daily : spiritdaily.com, and found it very interesting. :

Perhaps most intriguing in the depth of spirituality is the notion that in life we all -- each one of us -- have a special mission. We have written of this before. Let us explore it further. This is a very deep secret in your spirit. You have been sent here for a reason -- a specific reason that is unknown to you -- and it is important for you to fulfill that assignment. This is a prayer to be said each day -- that your mission be completed.

In fact, every person's mission is equal to every other person's. It may not make any "sense" to you -- any worldly sense -- but what God has assigned to you is as important as what He assigned to the President.

At a spiritual level, we all reverberate -- have effects -- that will not be recognized until later (that is, eternity).

Thus it is important for all of us to pray each day to fulfill the task.

That's not necessarily to know exactly what a mission is. Indeed, it may be against God's Will for you to precisely know what has been set for you. It may compromise the "test" of life. If we knew exactly what God expects, it would make the "test" easier" (and make no mistake: life is a constant test).

At the same time, we are not to dwell on what the mission is so much as fulfilling it according to its time. We are not to rush into what we think our mission may be. We are safest and most effective when we simply pray to do God's Will every moment.

This will take us to successful completion. A mission is defined as being sent forth with the authority to perform a specific duty. We get into difficulty when we stray from the authority (or misuse it).

"Your mission will be made known to you so that you might make a clearer decision," one woman claims she was told by Jesus. "But after this, you must decide. If you return to your life on earth, your mission and much of what you have been shown will be removed from your memory."

It could be simply raising a child. It could be helping someone who is ill. It could be offering up pain. It could be shining shoes. It could be suffering an illness to give another person the opportunity to help us! It could be simply praying for others. It could be leading a nation or cleaning the floors of a school -- both of which, in God's eyes, may be equal; it could be saying nice things to people as a cashier at a checkout.

For every time we do, it has a domino effect. A drop of goodness is a bright light that will cause other sparks of goodness.

Another spiritual truth:

Holiness sanctifies our surroundings.

The devil tries to twist the mission we have been assigned -- the grace we have been given, the gifts. He will seduce a leader into misleading a nation. He will cause a person who has been given the gift of income to use that money only on himself. He will influence a person who has a mission to build into construction of mansions instead of homes for the poor. The biggest traps are lust, selfishness, and materialism!

Doing God's Will (and following Sacred Scripture) is the answer.

One thing we can know: kindness will bring us joy and somewhere in the mysterious missions we have -- somewhere in the depths -- is the mission to love everywhere and everyone and despite the circumstances. Somewhere in that is always the "test"!

It is very interesting to me, because it seems that everyone is always pressuring, the world is always pushing you to go out there and get a career, be someone, get a good job and money so that you can live comfortably and "do" well. I have always had a negative reaction to this, I ask why? Why is it that this means success and being a babysitter or raising a family isn't success or isn't fulfilling your mission. But truly that is just what the world wants you to believe, not God. Babysitting or having a family is one of the best missions, just as cleaning floors or washing cars is. I think it was one time I was cleaning a floor or something like that, and I was kind of annoyed, why was I spending my time on this? then it dawned on me that maybe there could be some spiritual significance. That changed my attitude and then I decided to offer a prayer for all the people who had walked on that floor. Whenever I feel like I am doing so called "menial" tasks I must keep reminding myself that this may be greater than a senator giving a speech. Who am I to judge what is important in God's eyes.

That said I am going to go clean my room, and pray for whoever else is cleaning their room right now. :)

The Saturday Sketch

2008-04-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower. ~Mary Howitt

I found this quote and this picture to fit very well together. The reason for this is that so often it is the young children who have the ability to cherish a flower that are the happiest. One time I was babysitting a 4 yr old and a 2 yr old, and when we went outside they immediately discovered the little wildflowers that grew around the edge of the driveway. It was like it was a profound concept to them, these flowers. We spent quite some time out there looking at the different colors and textures, and picking a few here and there. Not only did they greatly appreciate them, but the 4 yr old spurted out some spiritual meaning connecting God with the flowers. It is about time that we take to heart the verse where God tells us to "be like the little children."
We can gather the wisdom from the children and from the wisdom they gather from little things like flowers.

The Saturday Sketch

2008-03-29T09:11:00.001-07:00

Well we have still been celebrating the resurrection of our Savior so I thought this would be a good one, seeing as we are rejoicing and praising the Lord. Then I thought of a verse in Psalms:
Angels of the Lord bless the Lord
Praise and exalt him above all forever
Bless the Lord all you works of the Lord
Praise and exalt Him above all forever

Well we are a work of the Lord so I look at it as a duty (at least this week:) to praise and exalt the Lord.

The Saturday Sketch

2008-03-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

Well here we are with one day left before easter, and with Jesus still in the tomb, so I thought this would be perfect for today. I also just watched The Passion last night, and all I have been thinking about is that ever since. A strange thought struck me, if I had lived during Jesus' time, would I have cried "Crucify him," or would I have been different. It is a hard question, as you look at his wounds and pain and sacrifice now, 2000 some years later, and to say, "poor Jesus," but what if we had been a part of that mob crying for death and pain, for Christ. It is just something that came to me, so I thought I would say it. The best we can do now though, is accept Christ's death and suffering as a forgiveness of our sins, and live like Christ's people, not the mob who crucified him. Have a good Holy Saturday, and a wonderful Easter, as we wouldn't be here the way we are without it.

An alternative Saturday post

2008-03-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

I decided today to post the comments from the last post. I have heard that the comment link is not behaving, and that not everyone can access it, so I decided to post the comments here so everyone can see. They are quite interesting, and long enough to be multiple posts. (For those of you have commented, I hope you don't mind.) I don't want to drop this yet, so I am going to keep pushing it. :)

"Well, Julia, I'm sure you already know that I am so utterly far removed from anyone's most remote definition or idea or thought of agrarianism that my commenting on this particular post seems laughable! Not to mention the fact that I haven't read the book (but I've heard of it, does that count?)

But, hey, you asked for comments!

I'm unlikely to ever be involved in this myself, though of course I can see its value. What can I say? I was raised in a certain culture, and have no desire or inclination to leave it. While I enjoy to a certain extent and at certain times the great outdoors, I guess in my "real life" I honestly prefer to mostly keep it at bay. Please don't hate me!! Just kidding, I know you'd never. :)

I mean, for example, we have a travel trailer, but we don't actually go camping in the purest sense of the word. No, we go RVing! Different concept altogether. And we often stay in concrete campgrounds and bring our laptop along, and have a perfectly smashing time doing it! (Of course, to be fair and not make us sound more urban than we are, other times we stay in more rustic campgrounds.)

I hope you or any one else will feel free to refute anything I've said! Of course, everything is just my personal opinion, I'm not against the ideals of agrarianism, I just wouldn't enjoy the lifestyle myself. And I am perfectly willing to admit that I probably don't even have an accurate picture of what it actually is that I've rejected. So feel free to educate me! (Actually, "rejected" is too strong a word. "Neglected" or "ignored" is probably closer to the mark.)"

March 11, 2008 6:47 PM

Jules said...

"Well that is a very interesting thing you have said there. Of course I would never even close to...(as you said) "hate" you in the slightest...:) I actually don't believe that everyone is called to this lifestyle, in the literal sense of the word, at all. This is why it is all so fascinating to me, there is such a wide range and variety of peoples lifestyle choices. And my goal is to understand that.
You said before: "I'm not against the ideals of agrarianism, I just wouldn't enjoy the lifestyle myself."
Well that is the beauty of Agrarianism, you don't have to actually LIVE the farming way, or anything like that. The real core of an Agrarian mindset is its values. No, you don't have to have a farm or even a garden to believe in agrarianism, in fact I believe many of the essays written in that book are written by urban-dwellers, but merely believe in the restoration of families and communities, that have become very separated in this modern day and age. That is really the real reason for any of this. People see Agrarianism (in its complete picture with values as its core) as the way to pull their families back together and the perfect opportunity for restoring community.
Another main idea of Agrarianism is that of restoration. Anyone can go and see all the economical and natural problems in the mainstream right now. I mean look at the disappearing bees, or at the horrible effects of the big companies getting a hold of our food and sustainability: genetic modification, hormones and antibiotics pumped into the meat, and many other problems with the big industrialization, and of mass-production our food sources.

Compare a modern meat plant, run by some rich businessmen, who only cares about the big bucks, in contrast to a family farm that gives nutritional, safety-assured, natural meat. The family is trying to support itself by working at home together. If any person could choose which one to get their meat from, what would it be? See, that is another huge aspect of Agrarianism,
"~In the community-supported agriculture group that links local food buyers and food growers into a partnership, one that sustains farmers, economically, promotes ecologically sound farming practices, and gives city dwellers a known source of wholesome food.

For those agrarians who are called to a city or more suburban lifestyle, finding and supporting that kind of local community is essential to their beliefs and practices, and the welfare of humanity. Here is a very interesting thing I found, it is like "Store Wars" except with the Matrix. (Mark would really enjoy it I think :)- www.themeatrix.com

That supporting of local and family farms and food sources and the values behind Agrarianism is really what I am getting at here. Like I said before, I am not asking everyone to drop it all and move to farms and raise food, but rather hoping to open up and restore a different lifestyle, a set of beliefs and values, all rooted in the sacred traditions of family and community. In their words,
"In all settings, agrarian practices can stimulate hope for more joyful living, healthier families, and more contented, centered lives."
That is my goal and my dream that we can all have that, no matter where we live or who we are. I am trying to understand it all, it is a deep hole that will take a long time to come to the bottom of, but once you start, you just want to keep pursuing it. But it sure is a glorious pursuit, well worth it all, and that is why I posted that, that is really my goal for this blog in general, to pursue what I believe and to call others to do the same.
This really great! I love talking about stuff like this, oh the joys of thinking!
Your post size is perfect, I want a a lot of discussion on this. So keep on posting! Bring it on!"

March 11, 2008 10:14 PM

"Hey Julia,

Again I couldn't click on the comments link, so I finally asked Brett about it, and he showed me a way to get around it. So now I'm good.

Thanks for your answer, I learned some things I hadn't considered before. For example, you said:

"That supporting of local and family farms and food sources and the values behind Agrarianism is really what I am getting at here. Like I said before, I am not asking everyone to drop it all and move to farms and raise food, but rather hoping to open up and restore a different lifestyle, a set of beliefs and values, all rooted in the sacred traditions of family and community."

Using this definition, I, even I, could call myself an agrarian! And yet I don't think anyone would consider me as such. I might support the idea, but my life is just so far removed from making it happen! I love the IDEA of supporting family farms, but my actions speak louder than words. I'm not willing to sacrifice in some other area in order to be able to afford that kind of food. If money was not an issue, I'd be far more inclined to do all my shopping at Whole Foods! Occasionally I do shop there, but it's the idea of sustained, consistent natural food choices that I quite literally can't buy into. It's sad that it really comes down to money. I mean, who wouldn't want to eat (and feed their children) the healthiest, most nutritious food available?

So much of what's been done to us in the last 70 years or so is a great big experiment. Everybody on the planet ate organic before then! There was no such thing as genetically modified food, grain-fed beef, milk from hormone- and antibiotic-injected cows. I certainly wouldn't have been eating delicious blueberries from Chile in January (which I did, by the way).

So I do love and am attached to my unnatural way of life, but am fully aware of the unnaturalness of it!

I also realize I'm totally in over my head trying to discuss a topic about which I know so little! You should invite all your family and friends to post comments, we could get a real round-table discussion going!"

March 13, 2008 6:02 PM

Jules said...

"Well! This is all very fascinating. Frankly I don't know what to say now.

I mean as far as I can tell, you understand it all perfectly well. So that is not even an issue. :)

You said "So much of what's been done to us in the last 70 years or so is a great big experiment."
I TOTALLY agree with you. That is a perfect way of saying it. But just as in any other experiment there are going to be the people who buy in to it, and the people who don't. I am not going to be a person who buys into, and that is why i believe in Agrarianism because it is for all those who won't. I guess once you know about it, it is just a matter of deciding what part you are going to play in it.

In terms of money, that is probably the number one thing that keeps people from buying locally and naturally. But the way I look at it, is that you are going to spend your money on something, so you might as well spend it on important things, such as your sustenance and nourishment. Not only is it bettering your body, but it is putting your money in the hands of families and local farmers who are trying to support their families and the local economy. Instead of putting it in the pockets of the big corporations, who are only out for money and not the betterment of the people, hence: GMO, antibiotics and hormones, and all that other nasty stuff they do for mass production.

See I think it is sooooo much bigger than we think. These corps. are tinkering with nature as if they were God, taking the natural structure of creation and turning it into a big experiment, or investment, it is so wrong what they are doing. So that is why something like Agrarianism, (or Crunchy Conservatism, they are all the same idea) is so important right now, we must tun things around, (there are already problems with bees disappearing and many other problems.) I am not trying to be a doomsday enviromentalist, but I do recognize a lot of problems as a cause of the horrible state of our food production and consumption, and I think that now we may need to compromise a little comfort here and there, for the betterment of the future.
We can't go on living the consumeristic way that we do, it won't last forever, it will end, and when it does those who put their life in it's hands and bought into it all, will really suffer. Agrarianism (with it's values of tradition and community) recognizes that and is trying to call people to be different, so that we will be able to last and not fall when consumerism and materialism falls. I really think that it goes beyond just our tables and homes, I think it is a choice that would effect everyone, so that is why I feel so passionately about this, that it is so important. We need to turn the culture around and it has got to start with every individual. As Gahndi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." That is really what it all comes down to I think.

Well I am sorry that the link is not working, is it the one at the bottom of the post that says "such-and-such comments." That has been working fine for me, but maybe I'll go look to the settings and try and fix it.
Yes I will ask the rest of the family to join in, (most of them don't even read my blog :) but I will ask them. I agree we can have a pretty good discussion going here.:)
Well thanks for all your input and hopefully I am not coming across too harsh, it's just that this is important to me... so that is why I'm here. "
~Jules

"You're not sounding harsh in the least. I'm enjoying the discussion. And I can't believe your family doesn't read your blog! They oughta.

The problem with the comment link is on our end, not yours. It has something to do with pop-ups, according to Brett, but he showed me a trick to get around it.

Julia, I think we really are in agreement about much of this. I have realized more and more that the way I actually live is not always in accordance with what I believe. The whole "experiment" idea is actually quite frightening to me, but even that has not been enough to motivate me to change my life in any meaningful way. Even though I'm concerned about what's being done to us, I can't muster up enough concern to stop eating fast food or junk food, other than for weight loss purposes. I know that must sound amazing to someone with your ideals, that the way I look is a far greater motivating factor for me, than is my and my family's health. I have no explanation for this. It just is.

I look forward to more of your thought-provoking posts!"

The New Agrarianism

2008-03-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

This is what I have been reading and what I have been thinking a lot about lately, so I thought I would share it with you.
This is from the book The New Agrarianism, Land, Culture, and the Community of Life; a collection of essays from various modern agrarians, including Wendell Berry and Gene Lodgson, with an intro be Eric T. Freyfogle.

Introduction:

" With no fanfare, and indeed with hardly much public notice, agrarianism is again on the rise. In small corners and pockets, in ways for the most part unobtrusive, people are reinvigorating their ties to the land, both in their practical modes of living and in the way they think about themselves, their communities, and the good life. Agrarianism, broadly conceived,reaches beyond food production and rural living to include a wide constellation of ideas, loyalties, sentiments and hopes. It is a temperament and a moral orientation as well as a suite of economic practices, all arising out of the insistent truth that people everywhere are part of a land community, just as dependent as other life on the land's fertility and just as shaped by it's mysteries and possibilities. Agrarian comes from the Latin word agrarius, "pertaining to the land," and it is the land--as place, home, and living community-- that anchors the agrarian scale of values.
For contemporary adherents, in cities as well as rural areas, agrarian traditions have provided a diverse set of tools for fashioning more satisfying modes of life. And as the writings here reveal, they are making extensive use of those tools, to strengthen families and local communities, to shape critiques of modern culture, and in various ways and settings to mold their lives to their chosen natural homes.

As a collection of practices, agrarianism has enjoyed a long and curious history in recorded western life, from Ancient Greece to the present. Prominent in that, of course, have been the methods of gaining food from the fields,forests, and waters. Just as important though have been the ways that farm life has figured in a people's social and moral imagination. Agrarianism's central image has long been (to use Southern writer Andrew Lytle's term) the livelihood farm-- the well-run farmstead provides the locus and cultural center of a family's life, the place where young are socialized and taught, where stories arise and are passed down, where leisure is enjoyed, where the tasks of daily living are performed, and where various economic enterprises take place, in garden, orchard, kitchen, woodlot, toolshed, and yard.
Such farmstead, diverse in crops and livestock, has stood in the the agrarian mind as the incubator of virtue and healthy families. It has exemplified the traditions and possibilities of essential work, well done, in familiar settings. It as linked humankind to other forms of life, to soil to rains, and to cycles of birth, death, decay, and rebirth.
In it's independence, it has provided both a haven from corrosive cultural values and much needed ballast to stabilize civil states. Generation upon generation, people have retreated to such farms in times of strife, figuratively if not figuratively, in order to heal, regroup and set out anew.
Given the history, it is unsurprising as it is heartening that agrarian ways and virtues are re-surging in American culture, prompted by a wide range of public and private ills. To the degradation of the modern age, a New Agrarian is quietly rising to offer remedies and defenses, not just to the noise, vulgarity, and congestion that have long affronted urban dwellers but to the various assaults on land, family, relious sensibilities, and communal life that have tended everywhere to breed alienation and despair.

Evidence of the New Agrarianism appears today all across the country, in the lives and work of individuals, families, and community groups:
~In the community-supported agriculture group that links loal food buyers and food growers into a partnership, one that sustains farmers, economically, promotes ecologically sound farming practices, and gives city dwellers a known source of wholesome food.
~In the individual family, rural or suburban, that mets its food needs largely through gardens and orchards, on its own land or on shared neighbor plots.
~In the family--urban, suburban, or rural--that embraces new modes of living to reduce its overall consumption, to integrate its work its work and leisure in harmonious ways, and to add substance to its ties with neighbors.
~ In the faith-driven religious group that takes seriously, in practical ways, its duty to nourish and care for its natural inheritance.
~In the motivated citizens everywhere who, alone and in concert, work to build stable, sustainable urban neighborhoods, to repair blighted ditches, and to stimulate government practices hat conserve land and enhance lives; and in dozens of other ways to translate agrarian values into daily life.
Many worries and hopes lie behind this welling up of interest in land-centered practices and virtues. The degradation of nature--problems such as water pollution, soil loss, resource consumption, and the radical disruption of plant and other wildlife populations--is everywhere a core concern. Other concerns center on food--its nutritional value, safety freshness, and taste, and on the radical disconnection today, in miles and knowledge, between typical citezens and their sources of sustenance. Then there are the broader anxieties, vaguely understood yet powerfully felt by many, about the declining sense of community; blighted landscapes; the separation of work and leisure; the shoddiness of mass-produced goods; the heightened sense of rootlessness and anxiety; the decline of the household economy; the fragmentation of families, neighborhoods, and communities; and the simple lack of fresh air, physical exercise, and the satisfaction of honest, useful, work. Permeating these overlapping concerns is a gnawing dissatisfaction with the core aspects of modern culture, the hedonistic, self-centered values and perspectives that now wield such power.
The New Agrarianism of the past has pruned key elements from older agrarian ways while nourishing other shoots and stimulating new ones. Gone entirely is the old slave-based, plantation strand of agrarians; a regional variant to begin with, it deviated markedly from family-based homestead ideal. Much strengthened, too, has been the New Agrarian challenge to materialism and the dominance of the market in so many aspects of life. And yet, even with its new shapes and manifestations, agrarianism today remains as centeredas ever on its core concerns, the land, natural fertility, healthy families and the maitenence of durable links between people and place.
Agrarianism is very much alive and flourishing in America today, in ways both new and old and in diverse vocations and avocations. One could not call it a major element of contemporary culture, yet once aware of agrarianism, one stumbles on its outcroppings at many a turn. Within the conservation movement, the New Agrarianism offers useful guiding images of humans living and working on the land in ways that can last. In related reform movements, it can supply ideas to help rebuild communities and foster greater virtue. In all settings, agrarian practices can stimulate hope for more joyful living, healthier families, and more contented, centered lives."

This is a very interesting topic, it is far from being finished here, I plan on posting more of the book and more of my own thoughts, but for now this is enough to get your brain ruminating. :-)
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, a discussion would be great, I want to know where your opinions lie on this. If you want to read the whole book, it is on Amazon, or I found mine at the library, it is well worth the time and/or money. This is a very important thing both for me and for every other individual and family. I hope that this will just be the beginning of a great search for us all. So like I said before, what are your thoughts?

The Saturday Sketch

2008-03-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

I don't exactly know why I posted this picture today, it kinda just jumped out at me. Did I tell you how much I love babies. There's a random fact about me. Probably half the drawings in my sketchbook are babies or mothers and babies. This is actually a real baby, I saw her in a newspaper and I just had to draw her. So this post is for this baby, she is probably 3-4 now, wherever she is, whoever she is, and whatever she is doing right now. I always try to not underestimate the power of a prayer, who knows, maybe someday this will really help her. :)

The Saturday Sketch

2008-03-01T09:14:00.000-08:00

I chose this picture because I have been thinking a lot about foreign countries lately. Not just the countries, but especially the children in foreign countries where extreme poverty is very prevalent. As I was washing my hands or something the other day, I suddenly stopped and looked at the water and thought, "Some poor, thirsty, little child could be drinking a cup of much needed water right now, if I weren't wasting all this."
Now I am not saying that we should never wash our hands, just because of that, but it is very sad how that consumerist, individualist, point of view and world view, has not only become normal but good in America today. It is for that materialist, "get as much as I can" perspective, that so many innocent children starve everyday. Everyday I try and pray for all those who will die that day, but to think that they are adorable, hungry, little babies, (and I'm not even talking about abortion) and that maybe I could have prevented it or done something to help, by living in a simpler more sparing and sharing way. This isn't just in foreign countries, it is happening in our own country everyday also, and we fellow citizens and dwellers of this world, can sit in our expensive houses, eating our expensive gourmet meals, and waste everything from food to electricity, while we don't think one snit about the poor, starving, cold, and homeless out there. I will leave you with a favorite quote of mine, said and believed by many good people, "Live simply so that others may simply live."

Crunchy Cons

2008-02-28T12:25:00.000-08:00

I have been reading the book Crunchy Cons, and found this passage very interesting and inspirational.

"By it's very nature, television technology teaches us to experience the world as a series of fragmentary images. It trains us to prize emotion and stimulation over logic and abstract thought.We are conditioned to expect quick resolutions to problems, and to develop evanescently short attention spans. We expect the world to be entertaining if ti is to hold our attention: eventually we learn to judge the world by essentially aesthetic criteria. For the man who gets his metaphysics from television, boredom is the root of all evil. As media critic Mercer Schuchardt told me, "Morality today is very point-and-click; life is completely about image and surface texture now...
The television medium is by its very nature a force against tradition, against continuity, against permanence and stability.
Schudardt, a former student of Postman's who when I spoke with him taught media theory at Marymount Manhattan College, in raising his six kids without a television. His students find their crunchy-con professor's TV-less existence hard to accept.
"They'll say things like 'What do you mean you don't have TV?' - almost like they think it's illegal." he said. "Part of it is people feel almost embarrassed not to have a TV. When they ask, 'How will I stay informed?' I tell them you'll find that you can't turn of the television, even when you get out of your house. It's on everywhere you go. You can't escape it. You'll still know what's happening, but you'll have four more hours in your day to use creatively.
The number one advice that I give my students is to be a culture creator, not a culture consumer," he continued. "You have to have time to create, and to create, you have to get rid of those things that steal your time. TV is the great time stealer in American life."
I used to be a TV critic, actually. and finally got so bored with it that I quit my job and moved to a country house down south to put myself through the media detox and figure out what to do with my life. I spent the fall and winter of 1993 living virtually alone, with no television, no newspaper, and no Internet ( I did ave a radio, and got my news from NPR). All i had was books, silence, and solitude.
The withdrawal was difficult. I was jittery and easily distracted. The monastic quiet unnerved me. But gradually i reconciled myself to it, and came to love it. There was no buzzing in my head anymore. I found I could write long letters, and sit for lengthy stretches reading novels. Prayer became easier. I started living by the rhythm of the day, awakening at daylight, and going to sleep not long after the sun went down. I began to feel, well, normal. I discovered how to be alone with my thoughts, and in turn to think in a sustained way. Had I ever known how to do that?
By the end of the four months at the house, I felt vastly less anxious, restored to myself, and had I learned to listen for life's quieter, deeper sounds drowned out by the daily media cacophony. That was a decade and a half ago and many times since then I have wished I could pack up my family and move to a place like that, where we could live the tranquility of a media-free existence.
...the goal is not to get rid of technology, but to limit its use "to restore a more integrated life, were you have the physical, the social, the mental, and the aesthetic aspects of life blending seamlessly as possible. When you make your technological selection, you have this one question in your head: does this enhance integration, or does it undercut it?"

I found this very inspiring and showing me that I'm not in this battle alone. That there are so many other people out there with the same questions, frustrations, and beliefs. I really recommend this book Crunchy Cons, written by Rod Dreher. Although I am not yet finished with it, what I have read so far has been amazing.

The Saturday Sketch

2008-02-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

This past week has not been the absolute best. It has been filled with a lot of rain, clouds, and heavy heartedness. I have been feeling depressed, tired, and scared about the state of the world. However I am posting this picture, because it reminds me of what I should be like, and pour all of my stresses and concerns to him, in loving prayer. This post is for anyone who is suffering right now for any reason, that as whole, as individuals, families, a country, and a world, that we will place them in God's hands where they belong.

The Saturday Sketch

2008-02-16T09:15:00.001-08:00

As I was browsing through my drawings to try and find one to use today, I came across this one and realized that it would fit right in with my ideas about technology and my last post. I was really thinking that the true beauty of the lifestyle where you walk through the door, is that it is free. I drew this because I think that the children who don't grow up with tv, etc. have so much more of an imagination. It is not just about avoiding the "techno-haven," because of the problems, it is also about the huge benefits that come from not having it. I wanted to capture in this girl the essence of that free life, and show that one of the higher forms of joy and entertainment is that which comes from your own mind and own imagination. There is so much out there to be seen and done with your own hands and your own life, and yet the very nature of a television is to be getting everything secondhand, watching others experience everything. It seems like such a waste of time, to watch other peoples lives. I babysit a little girl, who is about 4 years old and is one of the brightest children I know. Her family has no TV and they rarely watch movies at their relatives house. I was very curious because this child had an incredible imagination and wonderful vocabulary, I was trying to draw the connection between the two, so I asked her, "Do you like not having a television?" Then she laughed and looked at me and said, "Well you can't really sit on a televisions lap, or play a game with it, or give it a hug." That just blew my mind away, that a four year old child could have that kind of wisdom, beyond anything I have achieved by thinking and posting about this, and far beyond what America thinks about television, family life, and children. It is not impossible to achieve, this child has and you can too.

Our Trumanistic Lifestyles Contd.

2008-02-15T10:41:00.000-08:00

I am going to start back up with the quote I left off with, so we can get back into the idea of it better. "We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented, it's as simple as that." Isn't that so true of our lives today, that would describe perfectly the reason why the American culture has become so corrupt, surreal and artificial. Things such as the internet, television, and the media, have obviously caused an increase in problems such as divorce, teen issues, the dissipation of family life, immodesty, language and violence. We accept them because they are the world with which we are presented. Nobody doubts the goodness or benefits or normality of the individualistic, materialistic, and selfish reality of what technology has to offer. I am not the only one out there who is worried about the state of things. American Psychiatric Assoc. is noticing the effects of technology like TV, when they said, " By the time a child graduates he or she will have witnessed 200,000 violent acts including 16,000 simulated murders." That is just to list one of the many examples, not only that but Ted Turner, founder of CNN shows concern saying, "Television is the single most significant factor contributing to violence in America." Is that bad or what? Violence is not the only bad influence the media has had on America. Think about immodesty and immorality. I have really been experiencing this on a personal level. I was reading the Readers Digest the other day, which is one of my favorite magazines, and as I was scrolling through the pages I flipped open to a page with an ad for Dove lotion or shampoo or something, and it was a completely stark naked middle aged lady, sitting there showing off her "shiny" skin to the world. I looked at it and quickly turned the page and didn't even think twice. I remembered that experience as I was writing this and I thought to myself "You are pathetic, you are absolutely ridiculous, that you could see a picture of a naked woman and merely turn the page, block it of from your thoughts as if it were the most normal thing in the world." I realized from my reaction that I too am falling into the trap of thinking that disrespecting a woman and her body for the sake of an ad is not a completely wrong, perverted, corrupt and sick thing to do. But what is even more sad is that people, all people Christians or non Christians are being so demoralized that we would not think twice about the immorality that is being shown to a woman and to the human race. This is the case in movies, magazines, internet and television. How many of us have favorite movies that contain language, sex, violence or any other immorality in it. We justify it though because it is cute or sweet or good. Even 50 years ago an average person would've been shocked to have seen a woman in a modern bikini walking around or on a billboard or magazine. Just as they have slipped in violence and language into our modern lives and made them perfectly normal, so they have done with immodesty, (or should I say nudity) and immorality. The signs are all around us, google it the evidence is there whether we search for it or not. Are we going to sit here and accept the circumstances and effects of the anti god of technology, the way that Truman could have accepted the anti god of Cristoph? Oh it is much easier to stay and enjoy it all, Truman could have stayed in Sea Haven, life was easy there, no problems to face with other people, perfect scenarios every day and so on, but he wanted truth and reality, he wanted to walk away from the pre-created, pre-planned, controlled life that he was in. Yes, it was hard, but he did it. Not only was it hard but it was a choice that had to be made only by him, it was a personal conviction between two lifestyles. He could not live in between, he had to choose one or the other, just as we must choose for ourselves. Are we going to accept the world of lies and fake happiness that consumes America, or are we going to choose to walk away from that little world of pleasure and ease and search for the truth of a media free, violence free, lifestyle. Are we going to be the Truman who came to the end of the wall and walked through the door to the truth, or are we going to stay in our little technology haven. That is what it all comes down to for you to decide, which Truman are you?

Our Trumanistic Lifestyles

2008-02-12T13:38:00.000-08:00

I just recently watched the movie The Truman Show, and added it to my profile favorites, because of the eye opening message that unavoidably captures your mind and makes it analyze every aspect of your lifestyle, and twist and turn the meaning of life. I don't know if you have seen it so I will give a short summary of the movie before I try and tell you my thoughts on it.

Basically it starts out in this perfect town, with a 30 yr. old man living out a typical day of his life. To the viewer things seem different than a normal world, things seem surreal and fake, put on and overdone.The strange thing is that it is perfectly normal to him, Truman. The same people, in the same places, everyday. The perfect streets and buildings and town. And then as the movie progresses, he encounters some mind boggling things, such as seeing his father (who had drowned in the ocean when he was a boy,)and 2 people came out of nowhere and dragged the dad away, or the radio in his car geting messed up, with the man was saying everything he was doing, every street he was turning on, etc. All these happenings one after another seemed to undermine his very mindset and lifestyle and the fabric of his home, Seahaven. Even out of stress and confusion, brought to mind, a strange event in High school with a girl who said she wasn't allowed to talk to him, whose very character was a mystery, and who said to him that his life was fake, and that even the sand they stood on was also. She warned him, as she was being taken away, that his life was being watched. This is the whole turning point of the movie where it all makes sense, and where he starts to discover the truth. After that you realize that his whole life was controlled and and monitored and watched by millions of people around the world as a reality TV show. His life was a billion dollar business. The owner of the show spent his life controlling and watching another's. Truman had no privacy and nothing real, his life was a game, a mere thing that was disregarded for the sake of entertainment. As soon as Truman realizes the reality of his life, he is put into a twirl of confusion. He tries to leave but he can't because of a lifelong fear of the ocean (since his fathers death,) he can't get past the edge of the island. Then finally he does it, he conquers his fear and leaves. He is missing, and not a single one of the 5,ooo cameras could find him. The creator of the show, Cristoph, is put into panic, his fortune maker is missing. Until he realizes that not even a human life is controllable. Cristoph has taken for granted the fact that Truman would never doubt the reality of his surroundings. Just as any human would, he accepted the life with which he was given. He had no other reality to compare it to and therefore he thought it was the only. Even Cristoph admits it in the movie, when asked why Truman hadn't doubted anything before, " We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented, it's as simple as that."

I am going to stop here and continue on another day, but I want you to think about it. Why would our American lifestyles be similar to Truman's? I will post later explaining my reason, but until then I hope that your mind turns this around the way it did for me.

Americanism

2008-02-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

I have decided to make my blog more serious. There are a lot of problems and issues out there in the great big world, and I intend to think and talk about them, and my blog is just the place to do it. Basically I am going to start a new subject: Americanism. That would include all the problems and issues that we are facing in America right now. Politics, moral issues, and my belief about the lifestyle of Americans today. It will be happy, it will be sad, and it will be from me. You don't have to like it if you don't want to. I am putting it out there in the cold, whether or not people want me to. I feel like this blog is too mediocre, I don't really post anything important and I don't really post anything stupid. I just want it to be something. I will continue with the Saturday Sketch, but I will also try to do more. Check back tomorrow and I will post my first "radical post" I guess you could call it. I just need to work on it a little bit. We shall see where this takes us, but all of life is an adventure right?

The Saturday Sketch

2008-02-09T08:50:00.001-08:00

I chose this picture (even though I am a little embarrased by it, I think it is not very good at all,) in honor of my dad who is in New Zealand teaching right now. I hope that he is doing well and that he has a safe trip back. For those of you who have not actually seen him, he is much more handsome than this. This is a pathetic representation of him. I love you daddy!

The Saturday Sketch

2008-02-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody! I am back and a little bit sick. I chose this picture because in the last few days as I have been bedridden with a cold and flu, I am constantly reminded to offer up my suffering to Christ. Not only is it a good opportunity to grow closer to God through sacrifice, it is also a reminder that no matter how sick or dizzy or tired I am, it is all nothing in comparison to what Jesus had to suffer for me.

The Saturday Sketch

2008-01-26T09:47:00.001-08:00

"I am your Creator you were in my care even before you were born." - Isaiah
Considering the topic of my last post, I thought this would be a good picture to post. I saw the original one on a bumper sticker at a walk for life and I was so inspired that I just had to try it out on my own. I also did this one in 2005. I want to dedicate it to all the unborn babies, and for the souls of those millions of aborted children.

The Fight for Life

2008-01-25T09:42:00.000-08:00

January 22 was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, also just last weekend was the walk for life in San Francisco, so I want to write something about the fight for life.
I felt inspired about this whole issue because just last night I read the World magazine, whose main subject was on life and the increase in pro-life success. Fighting against abortion has always been something really important to me. The worst thing about it though, is that it must be a battle, the very fact that people would question the "humaness" or life of an unborn child. Every time I think about abortion, it just makes me want to cry, cry and cry. The fact that America is a murderer and at this very moment the life of a baby is being taken away, the very respect for life that the Constitution demands from America, is undermined every single minute of every day. America is like another Hitler, responsible for the death of millions of innocent children. We live in the claws of death, our entire mindset is a culture of death. Not only has abortion killed so many, it has also promoted the idea that children are a problem and that we must rid ourselves of that hindrance to our happiness. Then we ask ourselves, if children are something that are more of a burden than a joy , and because of that we justify murdering them, it would also mean that because the old, sick, and mentally ill, are also more of a bother than a joy, that we will one day rationalize "terminating" them for an increase in "joy," a peaceful end to their suffering lives, and a better population and effect as a whole? Look at Terri Schiavo, it is already happening.
Despite the amount of blood on America's hands, there is hope. People can't be blind forever. In Hollywood even, they are realizing that there is more to the abortion debate than just the right to "choose," that we are tampering with life and with the future population of America. There are and have been in Hollywood, multiple movies about women keeping their unwanted pregnancies, and choosing alternative options such as adoption. Some of them include: Bella, Knocked Up, Noelle, and in theaters now, Juno. Juno seems to be especially hopeful, seeing as a 16 yo girl decides to keep her baby after she finds out that it has fingernails. It portrays pro-lifers in a good light, and shows adoption as being the better, braver choice. I am planning to see it soon, because I want to support the making of pro-life movies. Not only is the movie industry becoming more pro-life, but so is the internet :) any person can go on youtube and hear the beating of a 7 week old baby. Nobody can deny life in the womb after that. ( I wanted to add the video but it wasn't cooperating.) Also in the World magazine it was showing the States that are funding a lot of money for alternative pregnancy centers. Texas, Pennsylvania, and Missouri are up in the millions. Ron Paul is also very inspiring, with his solid determination to do something about abortion and not just fantasize about the idea of being pro-life, as do so many other candidates. In fact he was the only Presidential candidate to go to the big walk for life, and talk about how, without a doubt, life begins at conception. 20 US states have said that if Roe v. Wade were to be reversed they would immediately ban abortion. The fight for life is not completely in vain. I pray every day that soon America will regain a respect for life, and that this culture of death will become a culture of life.

~ Jules

The Saturday Sketch

2008-01-15T17:20:00.001-08:00

And I'm back...
I wanted to start with this drawing because it signifies the beginning of my serious drawings, where I tried to start drawing the things that inspired me or that actually had a significance. In other words this is the beginning of my journal of drawings. I drew this first drawing on 12/20/05 with my aunt who is an incredible artist and is studying at an art school now. We found a statue of this angel and decided that we would draw it together and then show each other our drawings when we were done. So with that being said, I want to dedicate this drawing to my Aunt Pam.
~Julia

A Computer Break

2008-01-14T08:29:00.000-08:00

Hello my dear Readers,
I have decided I am going to take a break from the computer until Saturday. I have so much to do and so much I want to do and I end up spending those precious hours whiling away at the computer. Once I click on Firefox I am gone for hours checking my "email" and "blog," but then I think of all these other things I "have" to do and I don't get off for at least an hour. I will see you on Saturday when I will feel more accomplished and hopefully after I finish a book that is taking me forever to read. See you "soon"...
~Jules

The Saturday Sketch

2008-01-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

I have decided to start a new "feature," I guess you could call it, on my blog. It is called "The
Saturday Sketch." Every Saturday I will post a sketch from my art book of the past year, along with a poem or quote that inspired me to draw it. Hopefully this will help me to have at least one consistent post every week, and since my art is like a journal for me, it may help you to understand me better without me having to do a whole bunch of writing. I don't know if this will even work or if you guys will like it, but I will throw it out there anyway. Not to mention I think it is a good idea to have your original pictures somewhere other than on paper, for safety sake. If all that I own is burned in a fire and my only possession left is my pictures of my blog then that would be better than nothing at all, right? Anyway, even though my pictures are anything from perfect I hope that we will both gain something from this. Lastly I want to dedicate this new "feature" to my dear sister Heather, who recommended that I do this and who is always inspiring me by her wonderful ideas, and talented pictures and drawings. Well here it goes...

So much to study...

2008-01-07T15:38:00.000-08:00

...And not enough time to study it all.

It's the time of year, we have our noses buried in books at some time during the day or another, we get all snuggled up in our warmest socks and drink the best tea in our favorite mug. Winter brings work and cold weather, yes, but it also brings a great opportunity for study, contemplation, and that delightful thing called coziness.

Arms of Love

2008-01-05T12:42:00.000-08:00

Arms of love:

I sing a simple song of love To my Savior,
to my Jesus. I'm grateful for the things You've done,

My loving Savior, my precious Jesus.
My heart is glad that You've called me Your own.

There's no place I'd rather be than In Your arms of love, In Your arms of love.
Holding me still, holding me near, In Your arms of love.

~Kutless

Another Year Gone By

2008-01-01T17:18:00.000-08:00

2008!!! It sounds so surreal and yet delightfully exciting at the same time. It is so weird how fast time passes. It is as if when your in the present moment you are always looking forward to the next big thing in your life. 5 years ago today I was looking ahead to the future and what would happen in my life to come. And yet here I am now, and have already passed through those things. That's why I must always hold on to the moment. It is only a blip on the screen of life. So I must take advantage of this moment to ask God to Bless my year and yours and that we will all grow closer to Him and each other, that we will be blessed as a society and as a family, all in the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
~Have an amazing year.~
Julia

The Sacred Meaning of Christ's mass

2007-12-24T15:47:00.023-08:00

Here I am on Christmas eve, and surprisingly un-stressed. It is kinda sad that I have to say that, like Christmas is something to be stressed about, but it is true that is what it has basically become: Something that we start to dread in November and something to pain through in December and something that you are relieved is finished, but you know you will have to go through again in January. I am serious, this is what it seems like Christmas has become, that and a huge religious argument over whether you should even say "Merry Christmas", or put up a nativity scene in your own home. You pick up any newspaper or magazine and see the tragedy of what we have turned Christmas into. It reflects the consuming and greedy condition of our country. I just watched a recent episode of "Everybody loves Raymond" and I was disgusted to find that the whole basis of the plot for that episode was filled with the American delusion of happiness, that somehow stuff is what will bring you happiness. Materialism, materialism, and more materialism. Now I am not saying that it is a bad thing to buy presents and give them to others as a way of showing your love, it is just that the act of giving has been misconstrued into something so very much against what Jesus even came to earth on Christmas to teach us. I also just watched the movie Miracle on 34th Street, which is a movie about Santa Claus coming to New York City and trying to help a hardened child believe that there actually is a Santa Claus, and that he himself was that man. Santa is portrayed as a wonderful old man whose mission is to make children around the world "happy", and doing that by giving them what they want, when they want it. I was so boggled by the end of the movie because of the fact that they were creating a new meaning to Christmas, taking the whole reason for Christmas, and why it even became a holiday: Christ's birth, and replacing it with something superficial and stupid. They did not even mention ANYTHING religious once, and this movie was made in the thirties, when I thought that at least some Americans still had their heads on straight. This day is one of the most important days in the history of the world, the day that God's own Son came to earth and was born a human, so that we might have ETERNAL LIFE forever. And yet we all seem to forget this, as we are buried in the mountains of wrapping paper and toys, the mountains that we build for ourselves because of our unwillingness to look beyond it, to the life that Jesus came to give us. Because of what Christmas has become and what it's true meaning is prosecuted for, now in the 21st century, we as the people who have chosen the redemption of the little child Jesus, must not only as our duty but our joy, defend the sacred meaning of Christ's mass, of the coming into the world of our Lord and Saviour.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
Julia

"Sweet Home California!!!"

2007-12-20T09:33:00.000-08:00

Need I say more? :) Well we came home at 6:00 am on the 18 from a day of flying, sitting and driving. You might be thinking "oh, the poor things they must've been so tired," but actually we weren't that tired because we were so excited to see home again, and thoroughly woke ourselves up by running around the house shouting for joy and kissing everything. So because were the crazy Pudewas that we are, and in order to keep an early schedule, we decided to stay awake instead of to sleep. I was actually perfectly fine until 7 pm and then I conked and slept 12 hours... and here I am today. It is really weird coming home though, I am still trying to adjust. To see everything that we have been dreaming about and missing so much is really quite surreal, as if we are in a dream, or we never even went to South America. But we did and here we are back again to our "sweet home California." I will leave you now because carpet calls me, ( I have to replace the carpet in my room because of mold, so I must go and find a new carpet.) Good bye my friends.
Julia

Don't Cry for Me Argentina

2007-12-18T07:39:00.000-08:00

...The truth is I really left you, all through those wild days, my mad existence, I've kept my promise, now keep your distance.

That was our story. The story that's come and gone. The story of my life for the past 3 months, and the incredible experience that will mark a huge point in my life, and leave me with unforgettable memories. Don't you always expect that when you travel the world it will feel a certain way, you go there with expectations, and a feeling of wonder? Well at least I went to South America with those feelings. Now as I sit here on the plane, thinking over all that's happened, I realize that those countries and cultures are still part of a world filled with pain and suffering, and that no matter how legendary or incredible a certain place is, it is still going to be affected by the world's brokenness. So I believe that what it really means to experience another culture is, in understanding that brokenness, to soak up the essence of what you find, and not in comparison to your own country, to love it for it's own. Not only have I really come to appreciate Argentina's culture, I have also learned a lot of things about life from it. I have learned how very big and vast this little planet really can be, and how every person I saw, every thing I touched, every step I took, had been done once before by some other person/s. Someone who had their own whole life, a life with joys and sorrows, personality and preferences, lovers and enemies, and that they too will live their lives just as I live mine, that the will still be there when I return home, all completely detached from me. It is all too profound for me to ever fully grasp, but I know one thing now, that I should never underestimate the vastness of mankind and my littleness in the complexity of humanity. Another important thing I've learned from this trip is confidence. I am a very timid and frightenable person by nature, and putting that in the stress and busyness of traveling in a foreign country makes me feel like my whole world is being turned upside down. Everything familiar and all that I have learned to trust is pulled from underneath my very own feet, everything is foreign and unfamiliar even my own language is compromised, you'ld just feel like you want to curl up and estrange your self from the world itself. This is how I felt when I first came to South America. I didn't care how many cool things there were, they were all too weird anyway, but as time went on, it was no longer an option to be passive, your food depended upon it. That is when and how I conquered it. There are so many other things that I have learned on this trip, but it would take a whole book to write it all down. Regardless of all my personal stuff, I want to thank you all for joining me in this journey, with all its ups and down, joys and pains, and for encouraging and inspiring me through it all. You guys are the best. And yes this trip is and was all in God's perfect plan for our trip, praise the Lord I'm comin' home.
Julia

P.S. I have thought about it and have decided that I want to keep this blog going. If I've managed to do 14 posts in the last 3 months, then hopefully, I can try again with my original plan for this blog and post my ideas and inspirations. I hope you will all want to join me in my biggest journey, the journey of life.
I hope to see you all again in the mass world of Cyber communication. Thanks!

Time...it has whole new meaning

2007-12-16T18:52:00.000-08:00

Here we are in Montevideo once again. Except this time it's not a new experience, it' an old and familiar one. We have been away from home for 103 days or 3 months and 12 days. It is not even new news anymore, it's just weird, surreal, saddish, and also SUPER EXCITING. We have been here for so long and yet time has gone by faster than a light beam. 3 months ago this very day, in Montevideo. I could never have believed what the future of this trip would hold. And yet here I am with all those as memories, with more unknown moments in the future. It has all really made me realize how incredibly important it is to savor every second of every minute of these short lives that we live. All I ever look at is blindly towards the future, not even letting the present sink in and simmer There is so much to get out of life, and so that is why I wrote this entry at 1 am. To stop, take advantage of my ansomnia, stop and savor, stop and ponder, and stop and let live this crazy life of mine.
All in God's plan for our trip,
Julia

In the Midst of our Coziness and of the Mountains

2007-12-13T06:10:00.000-08:00

The Volcano at sunset
The delicious rainbow trout that Chris and Elli caught
The view from our house at dusk
I came home to this... everyone plugged in to their own little universe
This is our cozy little Cabana
On the horseback ride...

All views from the trail
My little horse

Those snow peaked mountains

Typical farmsteads that you see EVERYWHERE
The town of Pucon... the highly touristic haven just down the road

And oh look... it's the volcano... for the hundredth time :P
Villarrica Lake

Here we are as cozy as ever in our comfortable cabana that I mentioned in the last post. Today is our last day here and then we will start heading North again, so join me in my bittersweet parting of this comfortable and beautiful place, which is by far the most gloriously gorgeous one we have been in all of South America. It has all types of beauty: lush green farmlands, surrounded by volcanoes and snow-peaked mountains, Eucalyptus forests and wildflowers everywhere along the roadside. It is never ending you can't look somewhere and not see some kind of beauty. As you can see from the pictures above, we have done lots of different things lately. Living in California I never understood what was so pleasurable about "a Sunday drive", all I see driving through California is dry, dry, dry, (not to diss California or anything) I just prefer green, green, green. So when I came here one of my favorite things to do was drive and look at the incredible scenery everywhere. Sadly I am afraid that other people don't like going on drives with me because I am usually squishing over their bodies to take what they call "pictures of the exact same things " and to which I respond, "it is my passion." I am sure all of you can attest to that fact, from seeing my pictures from this and previous posts. :) I am sorry that you all have to suffer through "my passion" trust me this trip will be over soon enough and you can all rest your weary tolerances while I enjoy looking daily at my thousands of pictures of fields and mountains. :) Oh well I am afraid that I have lost my own mind and do not know what I am talking about anymore so maybe I will just talk about something else... our horseback ride. Yes, two days ago we went on a horseback ride through the wilderness. It was actually quite interesting, other than the fact that my short little horse was ALWAYS trying to steal a bite of the trailside shrubbery, especially while I was attempting to take a picture of the beauti... oop there I go again with my silly rantings about beauty. So I better stop now before we both go utterly insane. So now I'll leave you saying that we have completely enjoyed our time in this wonderful place and (at least I am) ready to say my partings to it and to return home to our dry and wildflowerless California. Until later then my friends, when I have access to free internet. All in God's perfect plan for our trip,
Julia

Millionaire Tourists

2007-12-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Wow and I thought the gas was bad in the US !

The delicious, gas station, shack, restaurant

A perfect day

The Volcano

This is my meager little life: the world's most comfortable
pillow, the world's most faithful backpack, and the world's most tightly crammed suitcase

La Colina: the comfortable hotel

Oh, the Andes!

Does it not look like Switzerland or something?

La Casa Chueca German Hostel

Those Beautiful lakes

The family farms everywhere

More of La Casa Chueca

Driving through the Andes

The beautiful view in Vina del mar

Poppies! (and they're not illegal to pick here ;)
Getting pulled over for driving the wrong way on a 1 way street...he was nice and he only gave us directions

I was definitely right about us being millionaire tourists once we got to Chile. I mean after all we started out by going to a very nice Best Western Hotel in Vina del Mar, which felt very luxurious after dysfunctional Cabanas and stinky rented houses, as Morielle put it " I am soooo comfortable " well that was until we found out that she had a severe infestation of lice. Yes, although I have not been lucky enough to get them myself, I have become quite an expert at nit-picking. Despite that realization, we spent a very fun day on Fiona's birthday in Vina del Mar, shopping at Artesenal fairs, eating at a deliciously expensive restaurant whose menu was practically a poem, riding in a dollar a minute horse drawn carriage (that was my mom and Elli's idea), walking along the beach, and watching the sunset.

The next day we drove for 4 hours through a sadly brown and dry Chile, really getting to know the beauty of gas station bathrooms ( trust that it was not my little voice asking for one every 30 min. : ) Fiona, Morielle and I had lots of fun trying to sing trios from Scarlet Pimpernel and Aida but decided that it always sounds much better with real music and gave up. Then with a car full of rumbling stomaches, we stopped at a shack restaurant in the middle of nowhere, and decided to try out the nonexistent menu of soup, lamb, and rice and beans. When the bread came and to my dad's great delight, hot sauce we decided that so far it was better than some restaurants in Uruguay. Our assumptions were immediately shattered, the moment we put the traditional Chilean food in our mouths. We left with wonderfully satisfied stomachs and two delighted old cooks who had probably never seen the likes of us before, and who would probably never get more compliments on their little gas station restaurant. After that the scenery of the countryside got much more beautiful, with more green and less brown, and of all things California poppies growing wild. When we finally got in view of the mountains, there were green farms, lakes, and hills everywhere. When we finally reached our "final destiny" as Elli so adorably said, we were surrounded by small family farms, grazing cows, and adorable little houses. In the midst of that we found our hostel/hotel La Casa Chueca. This was nothing normal, it was a sheltered community and gathering place of German speakers and travelers. They all spoke very good English and varying amounts of Spanish. It was equivalent to a bed and breakfast but more beautiful, cozy, and comfortable. Sadly we only stayed there for 1 night, and moved on, drove on. We drove closer to the mountains with the scenery becoming ever more gorgeous. Verdantly green valleys with yellow and white wildflowers, shadowed on one side by forests, and on the other side by the Andes, those majestic, snow peaked, wonders of nature. I felt like I could've been in Switzerland, it was beyond words. We kept driving through it all, then stopped at another gas station for lunch. My mom was very negative about eating at a gas station, but as soon as she went in and saw vegetables on the menu, she had a change of heart. After another very delicious meal we learned our lesson: Never underestimate! (especially when it comes to gas stations.) Satisfied and optimistic, we headed out to drive the last few hours. We reached the Volcano town of Villarica, and thought it looked more like Alaska than South America. In that town we got to our hotel La Colina. Everyone there speak English and the owner is actually from Montana. We have now been here 2 nights and have been perfectly comfortable, with wonderful service, cozy rooms, a delicious restaurant 3 steps from our door, and some of us (not me because I have another horrible cold) getting 3 scoops of homemade Ice Cream every night, just like any millionaire tourists would. ;)
All in God's plan for our trip,
Julia

Alta Gracian Times

2007-12-02T15:09:00.000-08:00

Talking in Spanglish in the river with our amazing Alta Gracia friends
Playing the guitar singing and drinking Mate with the same friends at the same river
Another one of my favorites: a sunset
Villa Los Aromas (right near Alta Gracia)
The worlds best Asado (made by Morielle)
The beauty of the trees
A Freak Hail Storm

The past few weeks...
I think because it still holds true that pictures are worth 100's of words, I wont write to much and rather let you savor the pictures. But I basically just wanted to summarize our Cabana life, our Alta Gracia times, and our last days in Argentina. So I will let the pictures speak.
All in God's perfect plan for our trip,
Julia

Sorry!!!

2007-11-24T07:15:00.000-08:00

Hello Again,
I am sorry about the last post. It kinda shows that I was really homesick, and having a bad day. We are not doing nothing right now, we just aren't travelling. We just moved from a cabana in Alta Gracia to a rented house in Villa Los Aromas, which is a beautiful, quiet little community completely surrounded by La Bolsa Rio (river). We actually have a backyard and are enjoying swimming in our backyard river, sun tanning (burning for me and my light skin) on rocks, and eating the wild mulberries that grow everywhere. Granted we are still a little bored sometimes, and are still extremely homesick, but life isn't that bad and there is a lot to be grateful for. My dad will be coming back from the States ( I started calling the USA " the States" ever since we came here) and we will take 1 last week of Spanish classes and then go travel to the scenic Bariloche and go check out the legendary Andes. Life is good in this hemisphere.
All in God's perfect plan for our trip,
Julia

P.S. For those of you who asked for pictures I posted in a previous post that I posted the pictures of Uruguay with the posts that I wrote in Uruguay. So if you check the first 3-4 posts there should be some pictures there. Sadly I am in the same pickle of only using the internet's computers so I can't post any pictures right now, but I will hopefully show all of you all of my hundreds of pictures when we come home in 24 days.
PP.SS. Not to mention it, but it really is encouraging when people comment, so if you so desire...then please do. Hasta luego!

Feelings of Discouragement

2007-11-19T08:45:00.000-08:00

Here I am in Alta Gracia, Argentina and I am feeling pretty discouraged about this blog. We are not doing anything on this trip anyway, other than sitting around waiting for a month. Everyone is probably really busy with their own lives right now, so I don't expect anyone to be reading this. But if any of you are then know that it is not because of business that I am not going to blog until I have something good to say or I know that people are actually reading my boring reviews. That is it for now. Check back some day. Chao people!

Pictures...Finally

2007-11-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I am going to post all the pictures of the past two months. But I will post them inside of the old posts that they belong in. For example I will post Panama pictures in the Panama post, etc. I will have to do it gradually though, different pictures different days, because it takes so long to load. I already posted for Panama, so check that. But keep checking up every day. At least I got my pictures...finally.
Gotta run!
Julia

A Very Extended Week and a Half

2007-10-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

We have officially finished our week and a half in Argentina and have loved it, so we have decided to stay here in Argentina for the rest of our trip instead of going back to Uruguay. We have been very impressed with Argentina for many reasons.

1. They have such a wonderful culture and people are proud of that, and wholeheartedly enjoy it.

2. The people are very energetic and taking as much as they can out of life, and striving for the best. But at the same time, being content with simplicity.

3. Catholicism instead of secularism is the Country´s religion, so people here are much more dedicated to God and what they believe in.

4. And last it is so beautiful, from rolling grass farmland to rugged, snow-peaked mountains. The moment we saw those mountains we knew our hearts would stay.

It is not a perfect country but it is still really amazing, and we all love it. Every day holds another adventure and we offer them all up to God in his perfect will for our trip. Until later then,
Julia

A Second-long Post

2007-10-18T07:19:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
This has to be a super fast post, because I am sitting in a Internet cafe in Argentina while Elli gets a tetnus shot because a stray dog bit her arm. Well to put a long story short, we left on Tuesday to leave our Piriapolis abode and travel in Argentina for a week and a half. It´s that simple and yet complicated. I really wish I could post pictures today but as I am using the cafe´s computer I cant. For the one day that we have been in Argentina we have loved it more than a month in Uruguay. We experienced a feeling that Uruguay was heavy with people´s unwillingness to look at life joyfully despite past depression and suffering. Yes, there were some very happy and kind people, but the general atmosphere and energy was very heavy, passive and lonely. When we arrived on the ferry in Buenos Aires, Argentina (which is a city of 10 million) gigantic city, we felt a much better, more willing, and joy despite pain, energy. It is kind of ironic that we noticed that, because ¨Buenos Aires¨ means ¨good air.¨ After laughing and picture-taking our way through Buenos Aires in our incredible 9 seater car, we arrived in Lujan, which is the home to the most visited shrine in the world. The Cathedral is incredible, and the people are so dedicated to it. There we took amazing pictures (which I will post asap), prayed, and went to mass. At the end of mass Elli accidently bumped a stray dog and got a bite on her arm. Because stray dogs arent very healthy and my mom couldnt get the cut to bleed we called the free, come to you ambulance, because of worries of rabies. When they came a super nice lady came went into the nearest bathroom with us and told us after looking at El´s arm that rabies wasn´t a worry but tetnus was. Accidentaly Elli has never had a tetnus shot so the doctor told us to go to the hospital the next day and get her a tetnus shot. Thanks to Elli´s bite we stayed in Lujan, and of all things it was the something-hundredeth anniversary of the creation of the town. Right across from the church, in the plaza was a traditional Argentine band playing then of all things a ballooning co. came and opened a huge hot air balloon. It was amazing I got literally 1 foot away from a full-sized air balloon. In the States they would have practically the whole plaza taped off, but here they let 5 year olds be 1 millimeter away from the giant fan. After happily deciding to stay the night we checked into a lovely little hotel and hurried back to hear another singer- the Josh Groban of South America. He sang with his guitar romantic love songs, throwing around his curly black hair. It was delightful! Only to finish a perfect day with fuegos artificiales- fireworks.
It was God´s providence that Elli got bit so that we could totally adore Argentina. That is the latest, and I will try to post all the pics from Uruguay and Argentina when we get back to Uruguay in 1 and a half weeks. Pray for us as we travel through one of the biggest countries, I will try to keep you as updated as possible. All in Gods will for our trip,
Julia

The End of the week and of Montevideo

2007-09-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

Hello again,
It has been more than a whole week already? It hardly feels like that. We have been so busy, doing everything imaginable, like school.Well fortunately and unfortunately it is over now...Spanish school. It has been three whole weeks and they have slipped right through my grasp, not to say though that I haven't learned an incredible amount. We had a little celebration today and I got a little certificate of completion. It was overall a really nice school with great teachers and a good learning system. It has been a very good experience. Our whole time here has practically been a blur. Well not completely, we have done so many amazing things in this city, but they all just seem to pass and another day flies by whether you want it to or not. Well...since I last blogged, I have learned much more in Spanish, enough that I could understand about half the sermon in church last Sunday. I am not even close to being fluent I'll have many more weeks and months of conversation before that will happen. I do feel more confident though. It is an improvement for me, but I still feel really stupid talking to people, another thing yet to practice. Other than Spanish, we went to a Murga which is like a parade with drums and dancers and some girls with " un poco ropa " we called them, and lots of people doing whatever the heck they wanted within the boundaries of the parade. I would not go so far as to say that it was an objectively good event, but it was enjoyable enough, if not interesting. Two days ago we went to Prado, which is the famous park on the edge of Montevideo. It was nice to go somewhere where I could actually see something natural, but in Uruguay things are always small, and this was no bigger than any normal park in California. We also went to these beautiful gardens and church that were near the park, ( I wish I could post pictures, but I don't have a camera cord, ) which was very refreshing after being cooped up for ever in a city. The last interesting thing we did, was our whole family went to the mall ( which is also very small to a Californian like me, but huge to an Uruguayan) and looked for sheets, then I ate MSG soaked Chinese food (and felt very flushed,) and finally we walked to Positos and got gelato -a kind of incredible ice cream here, then went home and plopped in bed. That was our last adventure here in Montevideo. After we go to the ferria- which is like a farmers market tomorrow, we will head off to Piriapolis which is a small beach town 2 hrs away from the city. I am so glad to get out of the city, and be somewhere smaller, the "country" as Chris and Elli call it. We will be staying there in a friend's duplex, for two weeks until my dad comes (yay, ) and then we might leave or we might stay two more weeks. As you can see that since school is over, our plans are very relative and will fluctuate a lot over the next few weeks or months. That is what we are doing for now, since Piriapolis has no Internet access, I will probably won't be able to blog for a while. I am still learning a lot about Uruguay, primarily that I can't go outside of the house without people seriously staring , honking or whistling at me or my sisters. Everyone always says "oh don't worry there are plenty of blonds and pale-skinned people there, you'll fit in fine." But no, unless I go down the street with a dark hat on and tanning lotion I don't think that is gonna happen. Well that is it down in South America, where time never stays still, and each day feels as short as an hour. Anyway, until later then my friends...
In God's perfect plan for our trip,
Julia

Great Expectations

2007-09-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

The View of Montivideo from the Beach
My room at the school

The Trash in raised Dumpsters because of Wild Dogs
You Gotta love Milk in a Bag
The Famous Rambla (sadly upside down)
The View of the City from the Rambla

Prado Park
The Uruguay Government Building

A beautiful Gothic church near Prado
A Beautifully Random Statue

Our Church 2 blocks away
A Montivideo Park
Well dear readers,
I am so sorry I have not blogged, for what feels like ages. I have been so busy here in Uruguay. We have now started up Spanish school and that takes up 4 hrs of my day not including homework. I am really enjoying studying in my class of 3 sisters and one man,(who is a farmer from New Zealand); and I really like my two teachers and am learning a tremendous amount from them, but my classes and various other high school work I can fit in to my day, are very time consuming. It has been especially hard because I have a nasty head cold, and trying to fight that, when it is 100% humidity and rain and thunder all day is not particularly easy. So I am afraid I will only be able to blog only on the weekend, but I will make them longer. Unfortunately I also forgot my camera cord so I won't post pictures until Oct. But other than that I am having a great time here in Montevideo. Actually I am lovin' it. Now this is a city of two million, and I am no city girl, but if I had to live in a city I could live here. I say this because it feels less like a "city" then San Luis Obispo. People walk everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE.It's amazing! People air-dry their clothes on their rooftops,there are adorable little shoppes and beautiful buildings everywhere, intermixed in residential areas,and there are little fruit stands all over the place. Some people may call it haphazard, but I call it charming. The family we were staying with for the first 3 days, had no car. If they needed anything they would walk there. For example, Emily C. - the mom, needed an eraser for something, so she put her baby on her hip, took her toddler's hand and called all the other kids and walked a block to get them from a craft store. It is just so much better than hopping in your car and driving 10 miles to get it at Target or something. Much more efficient. However every good place has it's disadvantages,(except of course heaven :) 1. There are bars on all the windows,in case of theft. 2. There are some not so nice advertisements and magazines as the main feature on some building and magazine stands. 3. People stare, stare, stare and don't even smile. It is the one thing that really gets on my nerves. But I guess it is just something I am going to have to get used to. There are a couple of other kinda quirky things here such as: bagged milk, cream and yogurt, non-refrigerated eggs, and the eighties hair styles- mullets, etc.
But it would probably be scary to name all the strange things in the US. Well I am really loving it here, and I thank God for the great opportunities He has and is giving me. My experiences so far have perfectly fulfilled my great expectations of what I wanted it to be like here in Uruguay and I am sure it will continue to do so as I see more of this beautiful country. Until I write again... and in God's perfect plan for our trip,
Julia

The Panama Detour

2007-09-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

Panama Sky Scraper Coast

The View from our hotel

The verdant view from the main road
Even though Panama City is huge it still has a beautiful view of the mountains.

Well I was planning to start this journal blog when we were in Uruguay, but what I am about to write is just an all-to-perfect beginning.-I am dangling my feet off the edge of a 12 story building,sitting on a grass-covered rooftop in Panama, watching an approaching thunderstorm. Sound a little odd? Well it is perfect for me. I sit seeing a whole new world around me.It is so easy to forget that there are other people out in the world living their lives, but thousands of miles away. And every time you see a car zoom past, you know that someone is in it and they have lives and feelings,dreams and families just like us,and they all were once in their mothers wombs,like all of us and yet our lives are so completely seperated. It is more than I can comprehend. Well the reason I am saying any of this is because (to make a long story short), our 2 am flight from La to Panama was delayed till 11 am the next day. that plane was late so we missed our connections from Panama to Montivideo,so we were put up in a hotel in Panama city the whole day till our flight left that night at 7 pm. Thats the story. We are know thankfully safe in Uruguay and will start school Monday.As annoying as it was I thank God for the delay so that I could experience Panama. Well my next post will be about Uruguay,unfortunately I did not remember a camera cord, so I will post the pics of Panama tommorow. Hasta luego!
Julia

A New Beginning...

2007-09-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

Well hello my friends,
it has been a dreadfully long time since I posted. I am so sorry. I have been busier then a bee; working, planning, but especially packing. That is actually the new beginning I was talking about. I have decided to use this blog for a Uruguayan journal. I am going to Uruguay and Argentina for three months with my family. We will be vacationing, immersing ourselves in a different culture, and learning Spanish/Espanól. It will be an adventure, for sure. Which is why I am going to blog and post pictures about it. I hope (for the tiny few that do read my blog), that you will enjoy this adventure with me. Adios me amigos!

Value in everything

2007-03-08T15:59:00.000-08:00

Well this is the begining... so I'll start by saying what I'm here for: To say my thoughts, to write, and hopefully to inspire. Seeing as my blog is zest for life I will share a long quote that I think sums up life in itself.

There is so much value in everything. There is value in the world as corrupted and
depraved as it is, there is value in the people in the world for all of their faults, there is value in everything even silly movies :), and there is value in me. And from whence comes all this value? God's divine hand. There is value because there is good and that good comes only from God.
-Unknown

If you actually think about it there is so much good in everything, if we try to find it. But that's the problem! I always get so caught up in everything of a worldly nature and don't even take time to see the value and good in just a flower, or smile and laugh, or even just the people passing by. I think that seeing the good is a choice, especially on a day to day basis.

There is value because there is good and that good comes only from God.
:-)