Monday

Poetry Series: Week 8

After writing the previous post, I'm in a miracle-y sort of mood :)



Ordinary Miracles
by Erica Jong

Spring, rainbows,
ordinary miracles
about which
nothing new can be said.

The stars on a clear night
of a New England winter;
the soft air of the islands
along the old
Spanish Main;
pirate gold shining
in the palm;
the odor of roses
to the lover's nose. . .

There is no more poetry
to be written
of these things.
The rainbow's sudden revelation--
behold!
The cliché is true!
What can one say
but that?

So too
with you, little heart,
little miracle,

but you are
no less miracle
for being ordinary.


[This last stanza is my favorite!]





Miracles by Robert William Service

Each time that I switch on the light
A Miracle it seems to me
That I should rediscover sight
And banish dark so utterly.
One moment I am bleakly blind,
The next--exultant life I find.

Below the sable of the sky
My eyelids double darkness make.
Sleep is divine, yet oh how I
Am glad with wonder to awake!
To welcome, glimmery and wan
The mighty Miracle of Dawn.

For I've mad moments when I seem,
With all the marvel of a child,
To dwell within a world of dream,
To sober fact unreconciled.
Each simple act has struck me thus--
Incredibly miraculous.

When everything I see and do
So magical can seem to me,
How vain it is to seek the True,
The riddle of Reality . . .
So let me with joy lyrical
Proclaim all Life a Miracle!

What I learned at camp:

Miracles happen.

I spent last week at another camp, which is a ministry of our Lutheran synod. The theme of the week was "Cross into the wilderness", about how God leads you through the wilderness -- whether it's a physical, emotional, mental or spiritual wilderness! -- and gives you everything you need to face challenges. Our group went on a four day "overnight". We all got massive hardcore hiking backpacks and were allowed to bring ONE extra shirt, ONE extra pair of shorts, a few pairs of dry socks and a sleeping bag. That's it. No toothbrush, no deoderant, no clean underwear, no pillow, nothing soap-related, etc. We filled our packs with 4 days worth of food, cooking/camping gear and gallons of water and set off. Theoretically, we were supposed to hike about 3 miles a day. We'd spend each night at a different campsite around the perimeter of the camp property (in the midde of the woods, of course).

Well, we got lost. A lot. We'd hike a mile or two only to find we'd been going the wrong way, so we'd have to backtrack to our original starting point (so we'd have hiked about 3 miles already with nothing to show for it) and THEN hike another three or so miles to the actual site. We had no tents, only two supremely large tarps. We'd tie a rope between two trees and throw a tarp across it and stake down the corners to make a tent-like structure, then we'd put the second tarp inside and sleep on top of that. But the ends were open, leaving plenty of room for rain to blow in.

There were no bathrooms, obviously, so we went to the bathroom in the woods. We had one roll of toilet paper which had to last 13 people for 4 days, so the counselors rationed it. And, you weren't supposed to use the TP for peeing -- "That's what leaves are for!" announced our counselors gleefully (we glared at them). This might not be a problem for the guys in the group, but it was slightly more uncomfortable for us girls. THAT was an experience.

Oh yeah, and it rained the entire four days. Not just mere drizzling, mind you; we're talking torrential downpours and thunderstorms and wind whipping it into your face. Now, I LOVE rain. I am a big fan of doing crazy things in the rain (I've gone to outdoor concerts in the middle of a tropical storm, gone boating in a thunderstorm, I go running and/or dancing in the rain fairily often, etc, etc) and for the first three days, I was honestly loving the whole camping in the rain thing. I mean, yeah, within an hour of leaving we had no dry clothes; it wasn't exactly fun to sleep in a drenched sleeping back and wet socks are rather uncomfortable to hike in, but I was still loving it, despite the circumstances....but by day 3 I'd had it. We all had. We were sick of each other, sick of being wet, sick of hiking, sick of being lost, sick of the whole experience. We begged our counselors to let us just go back to camp and skip the last day of the overnight. We were miserable and complaining and rather peeved at each other.

They were adament, though, that we stick it out and not go back to camp; at least, not yet. We could handle one more day, they said. Especially since the theme was about trusting God and doing things you thougth you couldn't do.

We disagreed. Eventually, they compromised. Since we couldn't seem to find our final campsite, they agreed that we'd circle around and stop back at the camp (briefly) so everyone could get some dry clothes. Then, miraculously, my counselor, Kathryn, pulled some strings and got permission for us to stay in a building on the edge of camp property called the Old Lodge. It was old, creaky, leaky, smelly and falling apart, the windows and doors didn't quite close, but it had a roof and four walls and we were thrilled. We hiked out there and for the first time in three days, the idea of being dry was within our grasp. Our moods improved drastically with just that thought alone!

But it gets better. Some other counselors, hearing how miserable we'd all been and how rotten our overnight experience had turned out to be, surprised us. They came out to the Old Lodge with hot chocolate, cake, ice cream and other goodies and had a surprise party for us, which was just so unbelievably sweet and wonderful and unexpected that it made some of us girls (yes, me included!) burst into tears!

Here's my favorite part. Our Bible story for that day was the one about Moses and the Israelites in the desert during the Exodus. (See Exodus 16) They're at the point where they've been wandering for awhile and they're hot and tired and cranky and running out of food and just plain miserable. They're all complaining to Moses that it would be much kinder just to admit defeat and go back, because it was just cruel of him to keep them out there to suffer. So Moses appeals to God on their behalf and God blesses them with manna and quail to keep them going.

I absolutely love the parallel between that story and our own notorious overnight experience. I love how similar they are -- just like the Israelites, we campers were miserable and tired and cranky and fighting with each other and begging our leaders just to admit defeat and take us back. And Kathryn appealed on our behalf and God turned things around so we had a slightly warmer, much drier place to stay for our final night and some excellent "manna" (cake!) and "quail" (ice cream!). In the end, our group, who, just 5 hours earlier had been hating each other, had a great final night of our overnight -- we all stayed up really late, singing and talking and actually bonding instead of fighting, and it was a pretty awesome experience! (I actually think that story would make a pretty good sermon. I'd like to write a sermon about it, if I can find the time.)

I love the fact that this is a real-life example of how the stories of miracles in the Bible are TRUE! I know a lot of people (me included, sometimes!) look at these unbelievable stories of God taking awful situations and working miracles in the Bible on a grand scale, and it can be awfully hard to believe sometimes. We often look for huge, incredible miracles in our own lives, things that copy the Biblical accounts exactly. And if we don't see water turning into wine right before our eyes and lepers being cleansed after going for a swim...if what we see doesn't meet our expectations, we tend to decide that these stories are really nothing more then mere fairy tales -- great stories, but they don't impact our lives.

But I'm sure you've heard stories of people with cancer being MIRACULOUSLY cured (could these be today's lepers?); people without food finding themselves the recipients of some kind of charity or aid...might this be current examples of God working miracles in TODAY'S society?

See, our overnight experience proved to me that miracles DO indeed happen! Sure, bread and birds didn't exactly come raining down from the clouds, but God took a situtaion and performed a miracle. Maybe the problem isn't that there's a lack of Old Testament-scale miracles in today's world -- maybe the problem is that we're expecting to see things exactly as they happened before, rather then looking for miracles in the context of today's society.

Look for a miracle today! Expect a miracle; watch for a miracle; look for God's intervention in your life. You might be surprised :)

Home again, home again, jiggety jog...

I know, I know, you're all DYING to hear about the latest camp experience and I promise, it was a doozie and I've got some good stories. Sorry I'm so behind; but I came home to 120+ emails and 100+ new items on Google reader, gah! It's taking me a while to get back on top of everything!!!

I promise, real posts coming soon. I'm even toying with the idea of posting this random little short story I've written, but I might wimp out and not...hmm. It needs some revising first, though, at any rate.

But for right now, it's waaaaaay after my bedtime and my soft, fluffy pillow is chanting my name so I must go. More later!

Sunday

Camp again!

Yep! Off on another adventure! This time to a Christian camp up north-ish. I think. Actually, I'm really not sure which way it is...I'd like to say North. Maybe north-west-ish. AH, well...Daddy's driving, so I really don't have to know anything :)

This one is a REAL camp, though; meaning: tents. No A/C. Mud. Bugs. Algae-infested lake. FIRE!!! Hiking. Lack of showers. Etc.

I AM PSYCHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Packing was bad. I successfully put it off ALL DAY yesterday and got home from church today just about an hour ago and managed to crazily throw everything I could remember or thought I might need into my duffel and it almost closes. So I have no idea if I have what I need, but I hate packing enough that I don't even care to go double check. I'll "rough it" for a week :)

We leave VERY SOON.

I'll be back Saturday....!

Wednesday

Reasons for my current state of..... *happy sigh*

Ahhhhhhh, it's days like today that make me think summer might actually be worth keeping. I mean, don't get me wrong; when I'm Dictator-of-the-World someday we certainly won't have three months of this revolting heat, laziness, and related misery, but maybe I'll allow a week or two. Maybe.

Current Reasons I'm at Peace with the Season of Summer:

-- Staying up freakishly late (I think it was 2am before I went to bed last night?) to work off a caffeine high and sleeping in the next morning without feeling guilty

-- Going to the library and finding that I have time to just hang out and chat with people instead of rushing off to somewhere else

-- Time to go for a run

-- Milkshakes (yeah, so that sort of negates the whole purpose of running, but whatever)

-- Swimming

-- Playing my guitar out on the patio as a breeze danced around me

-- Bare feet (I mean, sure, I've tried going barefoot in the winter, but it's rather painful; hypothermia and frostbite and all that)

-- Having the windows open


A very lovely day, all in all. And a very productive one as well! In addition to all of the above I also ran errands, unpacked from camp last week, started a load of laundry, scheduled a college campus visit, and sort of cleaned my room. Yahoo!

P.S. AP Psychology score came today -- I got a five. The perfectionist in me is finally satisfied.

*happy sigh*

Tuesday

The Spamley Cup

[EDIT: Now that I think about it, I could be wrong about the whole archaeologist thing. It might have begun differently; for some reason I'm thinking aliens may have played a role? I honestly can't remember. WVA-ers, feel free to correct me!!!!)

(more details, as per request....)

The Spamley Cup is only THE most pretigious award on the face of the earth!!! It is, naturally, an unbelievably large obnoxiously shiny trophy filled, obviously, with excessive amounts of Spam. (Yes, I am quite serious about all this).

It has a long and bloody history, actually, which, thankfully, the counselors at Worldview took the time to re-enact for us campers so we would be well-informed of how special the cup really is. You see, the Spamley Cup dates all the way back to the year 1941, when it was discovered in an archaeological dig. Clearly, the Cup of such importance manifested great powers, and word spread. The Nazis wanted the Cup's great powers to aid them in the war. The archaeologist, who was not very bright, decided to hide the Cup to keep it safe in a place where NO ONE could ever feasibly find it. The archaeologist was wrong. There was one man, you see, who COULD survive the perilous journey to find the Cup -- Indiana Jones. Indiana, began the long and desperate journey to find the cup before the Nazis. He fought off evil giant eyeballs, Darth Vader and a variety of snakes until finally, he was only mere inches away from the Cup. But when he reached out to take it, he was transported, port-key style, to the future; the insane year of 2008 into the middle of the Worldview Academy campus. Thinking quickly, he decided to create a competition for the prestigious Spamley Cup and award it to the group of campers who proved themselves to be the most worthy.

Indiana devised an ingenious plan to find out exactly which campers WERE the most worthy to posses such a coveted prize.The campers at Worldview Academy were randomly separated into four color teams: red, yellow, blue (WOOO HOOO!), and green. Then, all week long, campers would compete for color team points. Alumni could earn points in their special sessions; all students can answer trivia questions on topics such as LOTR, geography, philosophy, staff trivia and Star Wars. And just to shake things up, Indiana added some crazy games, too, including the ever-popular clap/snap/head turn/name game.

But all this was not enough, Indiana realized; there needed to be something big, something huge, something spectacular to guarantee that the cup would have the loudest, most unified, most creative, most spirited people around. And thus, the all-camp relay was bord. At the end of the week which color teams would compete head-to-head in a variety of crazy tasks. This year's theme would be the Greek Pentathalon.

Indiana Jones watched from afar as the events played out. Somehow, the green team was ALWAYS in first throughout the week. The amazing incredible fabulous awesome blue team (naturally, this was mismatchedsockgirl's team!) didn't even have ANY points until Wednesday; not a good sign! But things picked up and blue, yellow and red were tied with green only a few hundred ahead. The day of the relay rolled around; but first was the cheer competition -- Indiana smiled to himself at this stroke of genius; it would be an interesting competition indeed -- campers would have only a mere five minutes to come up with and practice a cheer, which must show as much team spirit, originality, unity and volume as humanly possible.
Sadly, though, the blue team had some issues and ran out of time, and therefore...erm...did not perform to their..er..best. *sigh* The red team, however, was fantastic.

It was now time for the relay itself. Blue was determined to redeem themselves. Sadly, it didn't go so well either. Blue was in last place until the second-to-last-event, the discus throw. By some miracle, we managed to pull ahead and were tied with Red for a few blissful moments; but then they completed the final task - solving a brainteaser -- and won the entire relay. Somehow over their victorious shouts, we continued playing; green and yellow had caught up and it was now neck-and-neck for 2nd place. Yellow finished next; we were a second or two behind and green came in LAST!!!!! It was over; all over; and even though we'd come in 3rd out of four teams and knew that we didn't stand a chance at the Spamley Cup, at least we'd beated Green.

Indiana sighed from his perch in a nearby tree as red celebrated their victory. He through a longing glance at the Blue team, who, he had been so sure, were the REAL rightful protectors of the cup; somehow it just didn't seem fair that they'd lost.
"Next year, Blue," Indiana whispered with a nod. "Next year."

Monday

Poetry Series: Week 7

(Yes, I know, I skipped a week of the poetry series while I was gone. Oh, well.)

I have always loved this poem. Something about the sound and the flow of the words just appealed to me; I like how it moves quickly and...bouncily, or something. I don't know enough about rhythm or meter or any of that fun stuff to try and explain how or why this poem works, but if someone who does know more about it would like to share, go for it!
All I know is I like the sound :)

We are playing host to four kittens for the next few weeks, just temporarily. Trying to name four kittens was an interesting job; eventually we settled on Heckle, Jekyll (the boys), Molly, and Ophelia (the girls). It's kind of an amusing concept, this naming of cats, because it's not as though any one of them will ever answer to their name, like a dog. They've got too much pride, independence and attitude for that! And yet we crazy humans do it anyway......!

The Naming of Cats
by T.S. Eliot

The naming of cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter
When I tell you a cat must have three
different names.

First of all, there's the name
that the family use daily,
Such as Victor, or Jonathan,
George or Bill Bailey--
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names
if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen,
some for the dames;
Such as Plato, Admetus,
Electra, Demeter--
But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you,
a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that is peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he
keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers,
or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind,
I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quazo or Coripat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellyrum--
Names that never belong
to more than one cat.

But above and beyond
there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you will never guess;
The name
that no human research can discover--
But The Cat Himself Knows,
and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought,
of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular
Name.

Honey, I'm hoooooooooome!

Ok, so really I've been home since Friday, but no matter; I've been too busy to post until now :)

Camp was AMAZING FANTASTIC AWESOME INCREDIBLE FABULOUS WONDERFUL EXCELLENT UNBELIEVABLE and MORE!!!!!!!!

Short version: decent cafeteria food, air conditioned dorms, EXCELLENT classses & speakers, street witnessing, reunions with old friends, ultimate frisbee, "TALLY HO!", LOTS of pictures, meeting new friends, evil cafeteria chairs, a stalker, "Ready cowgirls? YEEEE HAW!", a deceptive stop sign, card games, passing the final exam (only 1 question wrong, woo hoo!), the Spamley Cup (even if we did lose...), nightly worship services, singing, the cup game, and TONS more!!

The classes were positively incredible. Some of them were repeats of basic classes we did last year, but that was great, because apparently I've forgotten A LOT of stuff!!! It was excellent to have that review. I took so many notes and pictures and I definitely think that many of the things I learned/talked about this past week at Worldview Academy will be future topics on this blog. So watch out :)

Life continues to be crazy as I prepare for an interview, get ready for a bunch of meetings this week and register for college classes, gah!

Saturday

Packing:

abhorrent, abominable, alarming, appalling, atrocious, awful, bad, beastly, contemptible, cursed, deplorable, depressing, despicable, detestable, dire, disgusting, distressing, dreadful, fearful, foul, frightful, ghastly, grim, grody, gross, gruesome, grungy, harrowing, hateful, heinous, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrific, horrifying, nasty, obnoxious, odious, offensive, repulsive, revolting, rotten, shocking, stinking, terrible, ugly, unpleasant, unsightly, very bad, vile, wretched.

Packing.

Gah.

[Who doesn't love Thesaurus.com???]


I leave for camp in 20 hours. I've packed nothing. I really should get to it. But I happen to harbor a hatred of packing. Now, don't get me wrong; I am SO PSYCHED!!!!!!! for camp, but the packing is always somewhat of a challenge, due to my abhorring the whole process and all. *sigh*
But my bed is totally covered with a variety of things I want to bring with me, so I really do need to transfer it all to the duffel, or else I shall be sleeping on the floor tonight...... and it could very well take me hours just to get upstairs to my room to begin the bed-cleaning-off process. After all, my procrastination skills are pretty darn amazing.

I'll be back Friday. If I remember and am feeling particularly loquacious, I'll try to preschedule some posts; however if it is bizarrely quiet here for the next 6 days, well, now you know why :)
I expect to come home to plenty of comments telling me how much I was missed!!!! :-P


[edit: Sunday 8:15am: Well now. Apparently my procrastination skills are much more well-developed and unbelievably amazing then even *I* thought. I managed to waste the entire evening last night. The stuff on my bed? Still there. I slept on the floor last night. I now have 15 minutes of packing time before we leave for church (which I am squandering away here, online, instead of upstairs with my duffel. Hmm.) and, if I'm lucky, there will be a whole hour in between church and leaving for camp in which I can eat lunch, change, and finish packing.
Yep. We're cooking now.]

Tuesday

The taste of summer

This is the most amazing non-Starbucks cold drink on the face of the earth. It’s the perfect mix of coffee and chocolate; milkshake and frappucino.
And even I can make it. Successfully. And I’ve made it successfully REPEATEDLY, which is an even bigger deal.

Coffee Latte Shake

1 cup coffee, completely cooled
1 cup milk
10 ice cubes
2 tbsp. (unsweetened) cocoa powder
1/3 packet instant chocolate pudding mix (though I usually use ½, it’s easier to measure and I like the extra chocolate-ness)
French vanilla or hazlenut creamer, to taste
Sugar, to taste

Add all ingredients to blender; blend until thick and creamy.


Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!