sunset over the dead sea

antes de 7 de la mañana,
el aire de afuera me pica mi garganta
y tengo problemas cuando trago.

that intermediate nearly-but-not half light
remembers dusk, remembers evening
shadows settled under your eyes
(which actually made them more attractive)
now lift to your forehead, hide in your hair.

they say early morning is tabula rasa,
the breeze refreshes the runners as they pass
and I lay on my back,
face to the sky, attention on mississippi.

dawn is still, the sun rises silently
and I am both alone and not alone,
entirely silent, entirely still.
morning.
--07/30/08

honey, I will stitch you.

so, I stayed up late thinking about this. especially what Josh said about love, and God being our ultimate lover whose goals for us are just that we'd figure out his love and apply it to the world, ourselves, and our relationship with him.

yesterday, chris asked me what I'm most afraid of. I don't really have any phobias or silly things, so I couldn't really come up with one. Then he switched it to what I most want for my life. I named a few things off my list, but couldn't come up with one that was the ultimate goal. I felt kind of lame.

Now I know. I think that what I most want and what I most fear are the same thing: loving completely: god, the world, and someone else. I've been praying about it since then, since it's kind of a crazy thing, to be scared to love God completely, but there's a lot that goes along with it--being completely committed to what he wants for my life. which, of course, is what, at the core, I want for my life. and I know that I am his, but how completely? how fearless is my love? and ditto that about the world--loving the world completely means allowing it to pull you out of your comfortable life. And as for another person, that's just as scary as the other two--I'm not sure if there's anything more vulnerable and raw, because the thing is, God we know will return our love, 100%. Other people, there's always the risk of rejection, and then the question of, "so, what does this mean?" if you actually do love each other. it's risky.

but, the funny thing is, I want all of these. More than anything else in my life, I want to be fearless in my love. I want to be fully God's, fully the world's, and fully someone else's.

So, my biggest goal in my life is my biggest fear. But I feel like the fear is a conquerable one. I think I work at it everyday, making it less scary. And I think that, while I am God's, I can always love more, committ more, gape in awe more. Because the thing is, so can he.

Umm. Geeze. I've been thinking about that a lot. It's kind of a crazy idea, and I love that I have a definitive answer now.

new york city

Blaring car horns wake me
in the light of a city that is always lit
but at dawn, the curves are all wrong.

when you have to look straight up to catch the sky
(unavoidable where I usually am)
it's hard to remember you're still on the ground
and beneath your feet, concrete, steel, rats, and rails,
dirt.

the native americans say that in order to speak with
the earth, and our ancestors within it,
we have to dig our feet into the grass, fingers in the dirt,
faces in the sky.
we have to live on the earth, not above it.

this bed feels wrong.

the buildings camoflage the hills that they once were
and imitate the trees,
whispers of which remember the parks.
(but it's hard to imagine it as nature
when my mind keeps returning to the rustling of the corn fields
and the music of the wind in the leaves).

when I turn over, her hips graze my side
and I'm kicked out of a dream, trying to cling to the stars of virginia,
because why are there hips in my bed?
-07/20/08

things.

hello again.

I've been thinking about lust lately. what it means, and how to avoid it. I think I've settled on defining it as treating someone else's body without respect, and outside the context of love and courage and trust that God's given to us. Which means looking away when someone is changing, or tossing them a sweatshirt when their tshirt is totally see-through. I also have been praying a lot about lust in my and josh's relationship--that if you feel something, desire to go further, move outside of those boundaries, etc, but you don't respond to it out of respect for each other and love for God, is that lust? Because the emotion is definately present, but it's controlled/subdued/extinguished/whatever by a recognization that this isn't how God meant it, and so you ignore it.

Is this okay? I'm still trying to figure it out. The best I've got is that we're broken, as sinful people, and so it's impossible for us to not feel these things that aren't all right, to not question boundaries and things like that, but it's the Spirit in us that brings us back to reality, that reminds us of the love God has for us and wants us to have for each other, but on his terms and in his time.

Does that make sense? It's starting to.

So, I look for precedent, biblical and otherwise. John Stott says, in Basic Christianity, that "it is by love that the centrifugal force of sin is counteracted, that sin divides where love unites, and sin separates where love reconciles." so, lust, then, should be divisive. it should tear down what love builds up. I don't feel that.

biblically, I think about 1thess4, which talks about controlling your body in a way that's holy and honorable, and seeing that honor and holiness in others. it says that we're not only called to be pure and holy, but that we should be "more and more" for God. So, that ties in a lot with the idea of overarching respect, and of wanting to bring your partner closer to God. It should be a mutual building up, and you should both see that in each other.

When it comes to a place where one or both of you feels like something's crossing a line, that's probably because it no longer treats the other with the respect they deserve. I dunno. I like the idea of seeing each other as a gift from God, something that's a blessing but that has to be treated with love and respect, because it is such a gift.

So, moral of story: I do understand lust. And even though I sometimes fall short, I don't think that Josh and my's relationship is lustful. Praise God for that.