vanilla raindrops

email: noreia@planet-save.com.

This is my blogchalk:
United States, California, sometimes Steiermark, Austria, something bored teenagers say when they speak useless words into brick walls of cotton candy, English, German, Noreia,creative writing, fiction, reading, college student, strange, cat power, mogwai, arap strap, dresden dolls, white oleander, the earth, my butt, and other big, round things, welcome to the dollhouse, fuckers.

body jewelry by bodyPUNKS!

body jewelry by bodyPUNKS!

body jewelry by BodyPUNKS!

 

Confess your hidden faults.

Approach what you find repulsive.

Help those you think you cannot help.

Anything you are attached to, let it go.

Go to places that scare you.

-- Advice from her teacher to the Tibetan Yogini Machik Labdroen

". . . The rawness of a broken heart. Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety and panic, sometimes to anger, resentment, and blame. But under the hardness of that armor there is the tenderness of genuine sadness. This is our link with all those who have ever loved. This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we're arrogant and soften us when we are unkind. It awakens us when we prefer to sleep and pierces through our indifference. This continual ache of the heart is a blessing that when accepted fully can be shared with all."

-- The Places That Scare You, by Pema Choedroen

I remember once deciding that I was not going to cover sadness in anger. That I was just going to be sad, because I loved and the love was not returned. But it was freeing to realize that I could continue to love, that that couldn't be taken away.

". . . The tragedy of experiencing ourselves as apart from everyone else is that this delusion becomes a prison. Sadder yet, we become increasingly unnerved at the possibility of freedom. When the barriers come down, we don't know what to do. We need a bit more warning about what it feels like when the walls start tumbling down. We need to be told that fear and trembling accompany growing up and that letting go takes courage."

Realizing that maybe it isn't easy for anyone. Conquering the fear of sorrow, the fear of fear and imprisonment.

"They (an Amnesty International delegation) heard first hand accounts of atrocities from displaced persons in camps and villages in western Darfur and in Nyala in southern Darfur. Two women described how armed militia attacked and bombed their village near Nuri, in western Darfur, leaving some 130 people dead. One woman said that so many men had been killed that it was left to the women to bury the dead; she and another woman had buried seven men. The women placed the bodies they could not bury that evening in a shelter, but they said that the Janjawid returned in the night and burnt the shelter and the bodies." -- Amnesty International USA

I am reading about Jesus. I am also reading about Buddhism, about Gypsies, about China. In church I hear sermons about the Christian work ethic, about worshiping God as you're stuck in traffic. In bookstores, the Christian section is filled with books about how to achieve your goals, how to have a "successful spiritual life." Ten steps. Five steps. Eight steps. Catch phrases and acronyms. But I worry about pain and loneliness. I wonder how to keep sanity in this violent and indifferent human race. I don't understand, but I don't think understanding would help. "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." "Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed."

"It is difficult to find a modern parallel, now that the Soviet empire has collapsed, to the brittle situation the Jews faced under Roman rule (in the time of Jesus' life on earth). Tibet under China perhaps? The blacks in South Africa before they gained freedom from minority rule? The most provocative suggestion comes from visitors to modern Israel, who cannot help noticing the similar plights of Galilean Jews in Jesus' day and Palestinians in modern times. Both served the economic interests of their richer neighbors. Both lived in small hamlets, or refugee camps, in the midst of a more modern and alien culture. Both were subject to curfews, crackdowns, and discrimination.

". . . Both groups, modern Palestinians and Galilean Jews, also share a susceptibility to hotheads who would call them to armed revolt. Think of the modern Middle East with all its violence, intrigues, and squabbling parties. Into such an incendiary environment, Jesus was born.

". . . Perhaps the best way to perceive the "underdog" nature of the incarnation is to transpose it into terms we can relate to today. An unwed mother, homeless, was forced to look for shelter while traveling to meet the heavy taxation demands of a colonial government. She lived in a land recovering from violent civil wars and still in turmoil -- a situation much like that in modern Bosnia, Rwanda, or Somalia. Like half of all mothers who deliver today, she gave birth in Asia, in its far western corner, the part of the world that would prove least receptive to the son she bore. That son became a refugee in Africa, the continent where most refugees can still be found."

-- The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey

Crisis in Sudan

Posted by: noreia at 22:07 | link | comments (12) |