Pulled My First All-Nighter

Time passed and then the sun came up again. Went by really quickly. Doesn't seem like a new day.

What is time, man?

Irrelevant! A construct.

Oh, Samuel.

Samuel's looking for the man God wants to be king. Jesse and his sons file in. Samuel sees someone good-looking and tall, and thinks, "Hey! That must be the guy!" God says, "Samuel! Stop judging people by their appearance! Just because he's pretty doesn't mean he has good character! I judge a person by their heart." And Samuel says, "Oh, okay" and goes to look for the others.

1 Samuel 16, guys.

Also, I think Jesse seems to be parading his children in front of Samuel. This one? Nope. Okay, keep walking. I'm reminded of a runway.

Then, when David's paraded in, he's ruddy, has beautiful eyes, and is handsome. God says: "That's the one." Wait... what is it about his character? What? Oh, we'll find out later? Okay...

Prayer of St. Francis

This Sunday was probably the thirtieth time I heard this prayer. But, for some reason, I heard it differently. Perhaps it was because it was in song, written by Allen Pote. I'm not sure.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, Thy pardon, Lord.
Where there is doubt, let there be faith. 

Where there's despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let there be light,
Where there is sadness, let there be joy.  

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console.
To be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. 

For it is in giving that we receive, and it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life, to eternal life. 

I realized that this prayer is essentially the goal of my life... It's what I hope to achieve, not just when I graduate college and can do things with my education, but every second of my life.

It is individual. It is personal. It is reactionary. The first clauses are the emotions or situations one encounters, the second clauses are what I hope to do. I want to bring people faith, hope, provide light when there is darkness.

St. Francis was apparently really great with birds. He's almost always pictured with animals, but especially birds. Loved 'em. Another thing we have in common, says the girl that follows birds around.

I've spent much of my life being consoled, worrying about whether or not people understood me. I still struggle with this more than I would like to. But I would rather console and understand and love others. This is so much greater than any comfort I would want for myself. To bring what I naturally want most of all to other people, because it is definitely what others want as well.

Michael Bruner told me something along these lines, and I didn't connect that he had probably gotten the idea from the prayer often repeated at our church. He told me that it wasn't so important for me to be understood, because I was not going to be understood all the time. He said I couldn't worry about it. It seemed harsh at the time, and I don't believe that a person should not want to be understood (if everyone was misunderstood, communication would become quite pointless), but perhaps it is not the most important thing in the world. This is an idea that resonates with St. Francis's prayer, and with Christianity.

To quote Shakespeare, the prayer of St. Francis is an attitude devoutly to be wished.

Communion

On Sunday, I was watching the reverends prepare for the communion, and I thought of my previous post. So this is sort of a continuation, but with a different theme.

Altars have been, for most of their history, places where humans sacrifice to gods. But in Christianity, we aren't offering anything to God on the altar. Instead, people are taking communion. There is food and wine, a typical offering, but we are eating it, not God. Furthermore, this is not simply bread and wine. It's flesh and blood. Jesus is the sacrifice; he is giving himself to us. In communion, we have both a food and drink sacrifice and a human sacrifice.

What great love does God have for us, that he has reversed the roles to offer his Son to us? That the people of God partake in the communion, eat the bread and wine blessed at the altar?

Jesus is giving to us, instead of people giving to him. That's one way to look at it. Like I said previously, what could we give God that he does not already have? Christianity answers this question. We give God what he gives us: Our lives. Our talents. Our gifts. God gives us these things, and we return them to him, devoting ourselves to Christ.

There was a short story I read once: "A Father's Story," by Andre Dubus. In it, the man comes to the reverend's house and says, "I want to receive." I realized on Sunday at least part of the significance of such a word. We receive Jesus.

Sacrifices and Altars

On Christmas Eve, kids and their parents bake chocolate chip cookies, pour a glass of milk, and set it near the fireplace in hopes that Santa will be able to have a snack while visiting their home. My family never did this. It might have been because my sister and I figured out that Santa wasn't real pretty early on, the little detectives that we often tried to be.

But when the kids go to bed, the parents sneak out, consume the milk and cookies, and drop the presents under the tree and in the stockings. Then the children wake up, and--oh, look! Santa ate the snack and left a thank-you note (at least, that's what my parents would have done. They were big on thank-you notes)!

If there weren't parents to eat the milk and cookies, though, the food would still be there. There has to be someone deceiving the kids in order for it all to work. I grew up applying this sort of idea to instances in historical fiction about sacrifices and altars. That is, I thought that the priests or others crept into the buildings in the middle of the night, and ate all the food so when the unknowing worshipers returned, it would be like the deity received their offering.

Except, I'm pretty sure now that such a thing often didn't happen.

I think most Christians tend to panic a bit when they think of other religions and those religions' sacrifices and altars. While the more traditional Christian churches have altars where communion is blessed and incense is poured over it, any actual sacrificing is seen as weird or disturbing. I'm speaking of leaving food, animals, etc. at altars for God/the gods.

Musings.

I can't remember hating myself this much since I was in seventh grade and dissolved into tears for a few hours because I hated how I looked with my glasses. This time is different, and the circumstances make more sense, but I can't get myself to cry. It's strange how, over the years, I've seen myself crying (not other people, just me, because I should know better) as a weakness. Now, when I want to, I can't. I've even tried prodding my eye, and there's no tears. It's weird how I can miss something I used to hate, and hate something I used to be proud of.

My consolation is that this too, shall pass. I just hope it's soon. And that I'm right.

Stuff.

I haven't posted in a long time. That's not actually a problem for anyone but me, because no one reads my blog (I think?), but it bothers me a little, because one of the ways I think is by writing. When I do happen to be thinking without writing it down, I often don't remember everything. That's a problem, because I struggle with a lot of important topics that I don't want to forget.

Knowing this, however, hasn't really changed the way I act.

But guess what motivates me more than positive life changes? GRADES! So my Astronomy Lecture requires some devotional (what does that mean? no one will tell me what a devotional is!) journaling and just plain journaling. And I don't want to devote a notebook to it (paper and money and stuff). and I want to keep up a blog, so I figured, hey! Why not post journal blogs?

So my next posts are probably going to include Astronomy in some way. Just as a heads up.

Which I realize as I write is a little pointless, because no one reads my blog. Except maybe sometimes my older sister. So, hello Megan!